. . . Europe and Asia. Wait: I guess that isn't one place!
And yet you can walk across all of Asia and a good deal of Europe, from the Pacific to the Baltic, without ever leaving the political bounds of a single nation.
Imagine Paul and Ringo using a sample of Yellow Submarine (the only way to include George and John) in a live concert which was recorded.
They'd owe everybody all at once. Half the money for their own songs skimmed right off the top, before you even get into the shennanigans that record companies use to skim even more behind the scenes (like the producer paying his kid $3000 to "courier" a tape across the hall).
I'd point out that the scenario you depict bears similarities to the ones often used by independents these days. Within certain frameworks it works. The price of producing physical media is so low these days that nearly anyone who can afford insturments can afford to press their own limited run of CDs though, so what would work even better would be for artists to produce their own records and use the labels for what they claim to be for.
Distribution.
You'd press your own 5000 copies and then assign the rights to distribute them, for a reasonable cut, to Rounder or whoever. Rounder would make their money by ensuring the CD got into the stores and sold, but wouldn't acquire any continuing rights to the work itself.
Yep, that would work for official versions of major projects and not a bad idea at all.
It has several possible points of failure though, each relying on someone else to do their job properly. Myself I'd still feel more comfortable downloading three or five packages and comparing the MD5 sums personally, especially if I were working in the name of a corporation or government who would be paying me for my time and caution.
Or if I were working in oppostition to a government, say as a Chinese dissident.
Which is done. ..in writing. Go figure. I seem to have some experience and talent with the art form. Expressing that art form on/. is no different than Basho inscribing his haiku on rocks.
I might reply at greater length, but I have to make sure all my gear and instruments are in order, I have a solo performance in a few hours. Today I'm doing a program of prerevolutionary colonial songs in "celebration" of my city's massacre in February 1690, by Canadians. The border wasn't always friendly.
The songs are all in the public domain. ASCAP can blow me.
And I made the first fretless banjo that Arlo ever played. Jackie Alper, nee Gibson, an old girlfriend of Woody's and the original female vocalist of the Weavers is an old family friend. It was a terrible day when Woody died. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the Guthrie family or the Woody Guthrie Foundation.
That doesn't change my point one bit, nor its accuracy, even if all of Woody's songs were in the hands of the foundation.
Copyright was not intended to finance heirs and foundations, even those that are doing good deeds. If Nora wishes to raise money for the fight agaisnt Huntington's Disease she can call me or any number of other musicians who would be perfectly willing to donate time, labor and performances to the cause.
There are other ways to leverage works than royalty streams. Other foundations not so blessed use them. It's time children can stick their finger in the air without potential legal consequences.
Woody explictly released songs into the public domain. In print. Lawyers for commercial enterprises yanked them back for their own benefit.
This song is my song This song is your song Woody wrote it So we could sing it He didn't write it To endow a foundation This song was writ for you and me
I can live without public domain Mickey Mouse too, and I'm a fan of classic Disney. I only own nine DVDs, and two of them are pre WWII Disney. Had they been in the public domain I still would have payed for the Disney discs anyway. Only they could provide the extra materials.
See how that could work? Public domain, and yet they'd still be making money from it by leverage the work.
But I'll tell you what I can't live without. Public domain Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie Ledbetter, Woody Guthrie.
All long dead. They don't need any money. But corporations are still making money from them, and the corporations would keep renewing, and renewing and renewing.
And suing, and suing, and suing.
Disney can have Mickey, but music is something eveyone gets directly involved with, even if it's only whistling your favorite tune, and music is a group cooperative art. Every generation builds its own musical identity on the foundation of the previous generations.
Only under current law music is protected unto the seventh generation. People in high school today will be dead of old age before the music of Nirvana would become their public property.
And that's death to musical arts.
No. Copyright needs to expire automatically, and it needs to do so within a reasonable fraction of a single human's life.
I always like the 14 years renewable for 14 more. It allowed a broader scope of protection for an author's works if he were still actually making money from it and cared to file again, but fast tracked it into the public domain if nobody thought enough of it to refile.
It seemed a fair compromise, even with the rights of the public, since the maximum span of 28 years isn't really that long.
Anything more than 30 really isn't reasonable. Write another decent song/book/movie if you want more money.
The rest of us actually have to work every day too, it won't kill you.
Yes. The primary downside being the comparitively slow read times from the CD. Not a big deal for occasional use, but it can get annoying as part of your regular working enviroment.
It works best with tasks where you typically open an app and work in it all day. Spend the money you save on the drive on memory to avoid as much swapping as possible.
It kicks butt for receptionsit and kiosk type use.
As, perhaps, one of the cognescenti I have some agreement with your general premise. The level of deep erudition here, even with regards to computer engineering, is remarkably low.
But as to your specific premise:
You're right, few here will appreciate this distro, even those among the cognoscenti, because some of us work in distinctly different fields. As a physicist or engineer this distro is pretty worthless to me. I have enough intellect, thank you very much, but I am both ignorant and uncaring. It does, however, stand as a generalized example of what can be done and thus appreciated on that level.
I believe it was in this spirit that the story was posted.
It has been many, many years since since Martin Luther nailed his challange to the church door. Before that time were others who promoted free and open exchange of information.
No, it isn't the people who seek to willfully distribute open knowledge who are the revolutionaries. It is the people who seek to hold it private.
Even when it comes to making Cola that secret has been out of the bag for over 100 years and thousands of little bottling plants around the world churn out psuedo "Coke" by the billions of gallons. If you think there's really some deep dark secret to it you've been reading marketing as nonfiction.
It's flavored sugar water. You play around with the flavorings until you get it right. When you make your own you even get to use real sugar in your sugar water.
You don't really think that KFC's spices are a secret, do you? You can taste them. Any decent cook could figure them out if he really wanted to. In fact, here's a list. Make your own:
When commercial entities and large sums of money are at stake comapanies even employ chemists to analyze ingredients of competitors products. You can't hide physical reality. It isn't like code, and even code can be reverse engineered as soon as you know what it does.
I'm all for open distribution of knowledge, but to claim that Open Source invented it is a bit daft. The libraries are full of the stuff.
If I may be so bold as to quote from the Armadillo Book as to how to go about using Open Source code with minimal risk:
Always build the program from source code. Don't even consider running pre-compiled binaries.
This is just one item on a long list of how to build secure code.
Other items include:
Look over the source code to as great an extent as you can. ..
Examine the archive before unpacking it. ..
Examine the objects created by the build process with the strings command. ..
There's no need for grandma to go through all of this, but in any situation where security is an issue you'd have to be pretty daft to simply trust a compiled binary. Especially if you're a government agency handling sensitive data. ..and especially if that compiled binary came from outside your national borders and stores it's files in binary form.
If you're a French diplomat using MS Word to write sensitive missives back home you're just begging for the CIA to to pour over the hidden information in the binary of your document.
His suggestion was that someone supplying code to a single entity could corrupt that code, making it differ from that publicly available, thus the "many eyes" wouldn't catch the difference between the code with the back door and the code from a public site. The code was never publicly distributed at all. It was "fake" open source.
You create publicly available code, so while you may put in a back door there are still many, generalized, eyes that have a chance to see it and raise the alarm.
The scenario has nothing to do with simply corrupting an ftp site.
And of course, the solution for a government concerned with issues of national security is to always build from audited source taken from multiple public download sites and checked against each other.
This doesn't ensure that you won't get nailed by corrupt code, only that every one in the world gets nailed by the same code and so the "many eyes" argument of Open Source security applies.
Actually, there is tons of research to be gained. Look at nearly any car company that actively engages in racing.
Note that I only addressed the issue of research available to car companies by people chip modding their production engines.
There is no knowledge there to be gained by the manufacturers.
My computer did not run as delivered. It was a box of parts. I am solely responsible for making it run, and run well. The same can be said of a few of my cars. I did not speak against modifying cars, computers or anything else.
Yes, the companies that make mod chips are relatively young. Some of them are very good nonetheless. Most of them are rip off artists though. You have to know who you're dealing with.
Personally these days I work outside the automotive industry as a force of good.
Whether Saleen Mustangs are a good thing or not is a matter of taste. I'd rather have a Morgan.
As a former automotive engineer I'll have to say that there is no research to be gained. We've already done our research. We understand how engines work and the laws of physics that apply to them. We run simulations. We spend dyno time. We do massive amounts of research.
We've been researching the damned things for nearly 150 years. It's a mature technology. For every value you change in a chip we can tell you exactly what the result will be ahead of time.
It would be nice though if people did understand it voids their warrenty though, and if the car doesn't run right afterward it's the chip modders fault, not the manufacturers.
Experience shows they do not understand this, hence the unhappiness when it goes on. They aren't spitting on their customers in this case, they're just a bit tired of being spit on for something they didn't do.
Slashdot Mirror
Drink a lot of Hacker-Pschorr?
KFG
. . . Europe and Asia. Wait: I guess that isn't one place!
And yet you can walk across all of Asia and a good deal of Europe, from the Pacific to the Baltic, without ever leaving the political bounds of a single nation.
Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmmmmm."
KFG
But wait, don't order now, there's more!
Imagine Paul and Ringo using a sample of Yellow Submarine (the only way to include George and John) in a live concert which was recorded.
They'd owe everybody all at once. Half the money for their own songs skimmed right off the top, before you even get into the shennanigans that record companies use to skim even more behind the scenes (like the producer paying his kid $3000 to "courier" a tape across the hall).
I'd point out that the scenario you depict bears similarities to the ones often used by independents these days. Within certain frameworks it works. The price of producing physical media is so low these days that nearly anyone who can afford insturments can afford to press their own limited run of CDs though, so what would work even better would be for artists to produce their own records and use the labels for what they claim to be for.
Distribution.
You'd press your own 5000 copies and then assign the rights to distribute them, for a reasonable cut, to Rounder or whoever. Rounder would make their money by ensuring the CD got into the stores and sold, but wouldn't acquire any continuing rights to the work itself.
KFG
Yep, that would work for official versions of major projects and not a bad idea at all.
It has several possible points of failure though, each relying on someone else to do their job properly. Myself I'd still feel more comfortable downloading three or five packages and comparing the MD5 sums personally, especially if I were working in the name of a corporation or government who would be paying me for my time and caution.
Or if I were working in oppostition to a government, say as a Chinese dissident.
KFG
All you can do is blow hot air at /.
.in writing. Go figure. I seem to have some experience and talent with the art form. Expressing that art form on /. is no different than Basho inscribing his haiku on rocks.
Which is done. .
I might reply at greater length, but I have to make sure all my gear and instruments are in order, I have a solo performance in a few hours. Today I'm doing a program of prerevolutionary colonial songs in "celebration" of my city's massacre in February 1690, by Canadians. The border wasn't always friendly.
The songs are all in the public domain. ASCAP can blow me.
KFg
And I made the first fretless banjo that Arlo ever played. Jackie Alper, nee Gibson, an old girlfriend of Woody's and the original female vocalist of the Weavers is an old family friend. It was a terrible day when Woody died. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the Guthrie family or the Woody Guthrie Foundation.
That doesn't change my point one bit, nor its accuracy, even if all of Woody's songs were in the hands of the foundation.
Copyright was not intended to finance heirs and foundations, even those that are doing good deeds. If Nora wishes to raise money for the fight agaisnt Huntington's Disease she can call me or any number of other musicians who would be perfectly willing to donate time, labor and performances to the cause.
There are other ways to leverage works than royalty streams. Other foundations not so blessed use them. It's time children can stick their finger in the air without potential legal consequences.
Woody explictly released songs into the public domain. In print. Lawyers for commercial enterprises yanked them back for their own benefit.
This song is my song
This song is your song
Woody wrote it
So we could sing it
He didn't write it
To endow a foundation
This song was writ for you and me
KFG
I can live without public domain Mickey Mouse too, and I'm a fan of classic Disney. I only own nine DVDs, and two of them are pre WWII Disney. Had they been in the public domain I still would have payed for the Disney discs anyway. Only they could provide the extra materials.
See how that could work? Public domain, and yet they'd still be making money from it by leverage the work.
But I'll tell you what I can't live without. Public domain Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie Ledbetter, Woody Guthrie.
All long dead. They don't need any money. But corporations are still making money from them, and the corporations would keep renewing, and renewing and renewing.
And suing, and suing, and suing.
Disney can have Mickey, but music is something eveyone gets directly involved with, even if it's only whistling your favorite tune, and music is a group cooperative art. Every generation builds its own musical identity on the foundation of the previous generations.
Only under current law music is protected unto the seventh generation. People in high school today will be dead of old age before the music of Nirvana would become their public property.
And that's death to musical arts.
No. Copyright needs to expire automatically, and it needs to do so within a reasonable fraction of a single human's life.
KFG
I always like the 14 years renewable for 14 more. It allowed a broader scope of protection for an author's works if he were still actually making money from it and cared to file again, but fast tracked it into the public domain if nobody thought enough of it to refile.
It seemed a fair compromise, even with the rights of the public, since the maximum span of 28 years isn't really that long.
Anything more than 30 really isn't reasonable. Write another decent song/book/movie if you want more money.
The rest of us actually have to work every day too, it won't kill you.
KFG
You are confusing the sound recordings with the publishing rights.
If you sample the Beatles you owe EMI. If you record the Beatles you owe the brother of the boob. If you sing the Beatles you owe ASCAP.
Ain't the music industry grand?
KFG
A diamond ring needs to cost about twenty bucks.
Until then it's cubic zirconia and $3980 worth of food and heating oil for you, my sweet.
KFG
No. The diamond industry is very tightly locked into only small number of countries.
So every other country actually benefits financially by participating in the synthetics market.
Check into the history of porcelain. Same deal.
KFG
Indeed, why, without the option to post as an AC I wouldn't have the guts right now to tell you how moronic most of your posts are, stupid git.
Nanny, nanny, poo poo, yoooou caaaaan't seeeeee me!
KFG
an enamored vole following me around?
KFG
Well, if you're going to just mug the rich anyway it doesn't hurt to be polite about it.
KFG
Anyone ever consider this?
Yes. The primary downside being the comparitively slow read times from the CD. Not a big deal for occasional use, but it can get annoying as part of your regular working enviroment.
It works best with tasks where you typically open an app and work in it all day. Spend the money you save on the drive on memory to avoid as much swapping as possible.
It kicks butt for receptionsit and kiosk type use.
KFG
As, perhaps, one of the cognescenti I have some agreement with your general premise. The level of deep erudition here, even with regards to computer engineering, is remarkably low.
But as to your specific premise:
You're right, few here will appreciate this distro, even those among the cognoscenti, because some of us work in distinctly different fields. As a physicist or engineer this distro is pretty worthless to me. I have enough intellect, thank you very much, but I am both ignorant and uncaring. It does, however, stand as a generalized example of what can be done and thus appreciated on that level.
I believe it was in this spirit that the story was posted.
KFG
Damn if I know, dude.
It may well be the challenge;
Geeks are funny sorts.
KFG
It has been many, many years since since Martin Luther nailed his challange to the church door. Before that time were others who promoted free and open exchange of information.
No, it isn't the people who seek to willfully distribute open knowledge who are the revolutionaries. It is the people who seek to hold it private.
KFG
become some sort of revolutionary act?
I always thought of it as the standard model.
Even when it comes to making Cola that secret has been out of the bag for over 100 years and thousands of little bottling plants around the world churn out psuedo "Coke" by the billions of gallons. If you think there's really some deep dark secret to it you've been reading marketing as nonfiction.
It's flavored sugar water. You play around with the flavorings until you get it right. When you make your own you even get to use real sugar in your sugar water.
You don't really think that KFC's spices are a secret, do you? You can taste them. Any decent cook could figure them out if he really wanted to. In fact, here's a list. Make your own:
KFC's "Secret" recipe
When commercial entities and large sums of money are at stake comapanies even employ chemists to analyze ingredients of competitors products. You can't hide physical reality. It isn't like code, and even code can be reverse engineered as soon as you know what it does.
I'm all for open distribution of knowledge, but to claim that Open Source invented it is a bit daft. The libraries are full of the stuff.
Ok, let the monogram bashing begin.
KFG
If I may be so bold as to quote from the Armadillo Book as to how to go about using Open Source code with minimal risk:
.
.
.
.and especially if that compiled binary came from outside your national borders and stores it's files in binary form.
Always build the program from source code. Don't even consider running pre-compiled binaries.
This is just one item on a long list of how to build secure code.
Other items include:
Look over the source code to as great an extent as you can. .
Examine the archive before unpacking it. .
Examine the objects created by the build process with the strings command. .
There's no need for grandma to go through all of this, but in any situation where security is an issue you'd have to be pretty daft to simply trust a compiled binary. Especially if you're a government agency handling sensitive data. .
If you're a French diplomat using MS Word to write sensitive missives back home you're just begging for the CIA to to pour over the hidden information in the binary of your document.
KFG
You mistake the point of the original criticism.
His suggestion was that someone supplying code to a single entity could corrupt that code, making it differ from that publicly available, thus the "many eyes" wouldn't catch the difference between the code with the back door and the code from a public site. The code was never publicly distributed at all. It was "fake" open source.
You create publicly available code, so while you may put in a back door there are still many, generalized, eyes that have a chance to see it and raise the alarm.
The scenario has nothing to do with simply corrupting an ftp site.
And of course, the solution for a government concerned with issues of national security is to always build from audited source taken from multiple public download sites and checked against each other.
This doesn't ensure that you won't get nailed by corrupt code, only that every one in the world gets nailed by the same code and so the "many eyes" argument of Open Source security applies.
The backdoor gets found and patched.
KFG
Whats to stop them from making this sort of printing mandatory for copyright sake?
Then your pencil eraser would become a tool for violating copyright.
Oh the ironies we weave.
KFG
Actually, there is tons of research to be gained. Look at nearly any car company that actively engages in racing.
Note that I only addressed the issue of research available to car companies by people chip modding their production engines.
There is no knowledge there to be gained by the manufacturers.
My computer did not run as delivered. It was a box of parts. I am solely responsible for making it run, and run well. The same can be said of a few of my cars. I did not speak against modifying cars, computers or anything else.
Yes, the companies that make mod chips are relatively young. Some of them are very good nonetheless. Most of them are rip off artists though. You have to know who you're dealing with.
Personally these days I work outside the automotive industry as a force of good.
Whether Saleen Mustangs are a good thing or not is a matter of taste. I'd rather have a Morgan.
KFG
As a former automotive engineer I'll have to say that there is no research to be gained. We've already done our research. We understand how engines work and the laws of physics that apply to them. We run simulations. We spend dyno time. We do massive amounts of research.
We've been researching the damned things for nearly 150 years. It's a mature technology. For every value you change in a chip we can tell you exactly what the result will be ahead of time.
It would be nice though if people did understand it voids their warrenty though, and if the car doesn't run right afterward it's the chip modders fault, not the manufacturers.
Experience shows they do not understand this, hence the unhappiness when it goes on. They aren't spitting on their customers in this case, they're just a bit tired of being spit on for something they didn't do.
The bloody thing ran just fine as delivered.
KFG
I hate imp shit. Nasty stuff. Stinks all the way to high heaven, and sticks to your shovel. So put me down for metric I guess.
KFG