According to your line of reasoning, the release of Linux 2.4 will be no big deal and not worth reporting on Slashdot, because it will be an very small, incremental change over the last 2.3.x kernel.
Well, no given that the 2.4 kernel is the equivalent to the beta kernel (2.3) going Gold which was reported on/. . Given that when a distro goes gold too their is more in it than the kernel, especially for Redhat (and maybe other distro) who make further changes to the kernel in their distro (it helps to have AC in your company;)), it is also newsworthy but their was no change in W2k since it went gold. Anyway, I am not a fan of MS but I would have liked to see some story about the launch.
The entertainment industry wants to ensure that only licensed players can play encrypted DVD's so that they can ensure players won't have a, "Save as unencrypted..." or even a "Save as..." option
Did you know that there is a part of copyright laws called Fair Use that gives me exactly the right to do that? Forbiding me to do this is an infringement to my right of fair use, they can do it if they want but I still have every right to bypass it as long as I don't redistribute the copies I made.
and will respect the region encoding system.
you know what, companies are wanting what is called globalisation, that is remove most (all?) barriers to exportation/inportation, me I think this can be a good idea if done properly (which isn't the case today, but this is another subject) but i also believe that it should work both way.
If the world remove custom barriers for companies so they can choose the best price anywhere I must also be able to choose the best price anywhere in the world, that is i must be able to buy a US DVD and play it on my French player, otherwise this is mondialisation only to the benefit of the companies, not of the customers (that have other names: citizens and humans, and their rights are ultimately more important than thos of companies however big they are).
Without region encoding, movie studios would have to wait until the movie is done in all parts of the world before releasing the DVD.
Like other people pointed out, I don't understand why they so much are afraid that i will buy a Charlie Chaplin movie instead of watching it in theaters that they need to encrypt it, this seem like a lot of paranoia to me.
And if they do it so they can sell it to me for more bucks because I am a poor French student but wealthy compared to an extremely poor (compared to me) Indian then I don't give a fuck, if they want mondialisation and the possibility to fabric things at the cheaper price I also want the right to buy it at the cheaper price I can find.
However, the CSS encryption allows the studios to choose to protect their assets.
No, it allows the studios to screw me, they have the right to try but I have the right not to be screwed (i.e. DeCSS).
You don't have the right to unencrypted content
Oh yeah, and I don't have right either to my VHS (unencrypted), audio-CD's (unencrypted), books (unencrypted), webpages (unencrypted),... The truth is once they sold the DVD to me I have the right to the decrypted version, what I don't have the right to is to re-distribute the encrypted version, or if I do sell a copy I must include ANY copy I have and the original too, otherwise this is copyright infringement, but I still have the right to the movie, encrypted or not.
and DeCSS would basically grant you that right.
You know what, VCR grant me the right to copy movies, CR-R the right to copy audio CD's, crowbars the right to open this fucking drawer on my desk for which I lost the key but have my report in it which I must give back yesterday morning and in which I put three months of work, and all these tools are perfectly legals, so why should DeCSS be illegal? Would you then agree that VCR, CD-burners and crowbars to be outlawed?
In some other countries (e.g. France) movies are almost always dubbed, because a lot of people don't want english movies either, but it doesn't take any more time or work than for the North America because in North America their is a country called Canada with a region called Quebec (you know "Vive le Quebec libre") with people speaking French (well, writing, because when they speak French people can't understand them;)) and despite the fact that movies and software are already dubbed for them they are released later and more expensively (even if you take taxes differences in account), do you still find it normal? I don't.
It's about time a nation complained about being economically spied by other government.
That a company spy another is one (bad) thing, but that a GOVERNMENT AGENCY spies over companies is much different.
Of course France is unlikely to gain any money back with this but if at least it helps raise the awareness in the population this would be good. I must also say that one thing they can do against it is make crypto free (it still is more restrictive than the US:(), this would help.
BTW, this didn't stop Airbus to take the #1 spot this year if what I have heard is true.
I am currently in the UK but am not a UK citizen, although I am an citizen of an European Union member (I'm French), so I don't think that the MP of the region I live give a sh*t about what I think.
So what can I do to help? Talk about it to other (English) people to raise their awareness, yeah! What more?
<I>32 states have legislations that disallow you to publically discuss possible health dangers in any agricultural produce.</I>
What? and this isn't inconstitutional? What is the first amendment for?
I can understand that you forbid people to shout fire in a theater but forbidding discussion of the lack of fire protection in theatres probably isn't forbidden and would be a violation of free speech, why isn't it the same for these stupid laws?
I -- just the other day -- made some Slashdot reader question some assumptions about gender when we chatted via ICQ. Fun.
I have some difficulty to understand your sentence, do you mean that you where making them believe you were of the opposite gender, or didi you make them change their point of view on the differences between genders (most likely this I think)? Or maybe you may have make them change their point of view not one what are the difference between genders but what gender is?
I see a computer slant. It's not like GNOME icons feature naked women or anything.
Whaou, THAT is a good idea! No, just kiding;) Now I will be marked as a Macho geek (which I may well be:(). Anyway, what is great about the web is that you can't really know what gender/race/religion/... the person you're talking to really is, after all, what prove your a girl? (I don't doubt it, I just makes a point), which make people (well, me at least) act consequently, they don't change their reactions because you are a girl or because you have a black face. Otherwise I found it to be a good article but I do remember reading an article that looked a lot like this one (maybe the same author?).
a) UDF pre-patches were already available (CD-RWs are UDF format, so there was no shortage of test discs) and b) All DVD-Videos I've seen are in "bridged"
Are there in the production kernel? No, so they don't count.
b) All DVD-Videos I've seen are in "bridged" UDF/ISO-9660 format where they'll mount fine as either format.
Yup, but there still is the scientific reason: if i try to reproduce a phenomena, I try to minimise the differences in the two experimentations, an OS is quite a big variable you know.
There was a problem where ISO-9660 in Linux couldn't go past 4 gigs (it'd crap out in the middle of Titanic, right before the good part;-), but that's since been resolved.
The Perfect Gift: a Clone of Yourself? Are you kidding? One of the best part of my life is that I don't have to support myself, I am myself, if I must also support somebody as stupid and boring as me I will never survive five minutes! No, but a clone of me probably would be a perfect gift for my worse ennemy. Of course if I must have a clone I would prefer it to be the clone of Laetitia Casta;)
Universe: description of the universe Superficy: Infinite. Population: Null, given that not all planets carry life, there must be a finite number of planets that are inhabited and given that the superficy of the Universe is infinite the population per kilometer square is a finite number of people divided by the infinite superficy of the universe gives zero person per square kilometer, therefore any person that you may encounter can only be the fruit of your disturbed imagination.
the quote from Bill Gates. That was the funniest thing I had ever read when I first saw it!
Yeah, me too, which is why I took it as a sig in the first place;)
What is even more funny is to think that the people reviewing the book before the publication didn't catch this..or did they but found it so funny that they didn't want to correct it? Anyway, this is not by that that I would judge him, errors happen to everybody (although combining MS-DOS and Windows in one life make quite a lot of errors;)).
Linux-Mandrake has joined SUSE, Red Hat and Caldera in porting their distribution to Alpha and SPARC architectures
You mean they ported their changes to Redhat Linux to the Alpha, right?
Mandrake Linux are clever in the way they produce their distro by basing it on RedHat, this make less development cost and is compatible with one of the best distros around (ok, some will prefer Debian (or Corel?), Suse, Caldera or Slackware, I know, no need for a flame war) but at least they play the game by contributing to the development of Linux contrary to a certain society that doesn't seem to be able to understand the spirit of the community on behalf of which they wish to make money (do i need to give a name?), furthermore they are French, like me;)
<I>My interpretation of it -- which may be voided; I believe a judge has ruled that the content is not software</I><P>
No, but it is a data file, which is permitted to reverse engineer.<P>
View it this way: you buy a DVD drive for your computer running under Linux and a DVD you want to watch, unfortunately the DVD players given with your DVD equipment is not compatible with your computer (it doesn't run under Linux), what we (the Free Software community) did was trying to reverse engineer the player (Xing) to make a compatible version that would run on Linux and other Free OS's, which is completely permited by the DMCA. Of course we were first forced to work under Windows for at least two reason:<P>
1. Practical reason, UDF wasn't supported during the development of DeCSS.<P>
2, Scientific reason, when you try to reproduce an experiment you try to change the variables as little as possible, so it made sense to make it under windows.<P>
However I think that MoRE should not have released the Windows version but should have waited a little bit more and do a Linux only version, there would be less mess now (but still a lot given that the DMCA seems to kill fair use).<P>
Given that they hadn't the time to put together their defense in NY they couldn't made this point correctly, which is why Mr Kaplan took the opposite view, to say that given that it permit the access to copyrighted work it wasn't covered by the RE clause. This view is very dangerous because what i am currently writing right now is <I><B>copyrighted by me</B></I>, as are all the files I do using a word processor. The problem with this point of view is that given that what you produce with a word processor <I>is</I> copyrighted material (but generally you don't go made at other people over it like the MPAA because you have little financial incentive to do it) it can set a precedent where doing a reverse engineering of, say. Microsoft Word format <I>is considered as creating a mean to access to copyrighted work</I>, which would make it illegal.<P>
Of course this shouldn't stand up in any reasonable court, but lately (well, during the 50 last years) this haven't really been the case of American "justice".<P>
<I>It also seems to me that parallels can be drawn between what MPAA/CSS is doing, and that you're not allowed to haul a camcorder into a movie theatre to make a copy that you can take home.</I><P>
there is a big difference. If I go to the cinema I didn't buy the good, I have no right to fair use, while when I buy a DVD I should be able to do whatever i want with short of sell unauthorized duplicate, that is I should be able to watch it under any DVD drive I have, regardless of what is my software configuration, I should be able to make copies of it (although if I sell one of these copies the original DVD must be part of the deal and I must not retain copies for myself), break it in two, wipe my ass with it (not very parctiful, but I have the right to do it), and all these things are considered fair use, but the DMCA says that no, you can't copy it any more, because to do this you need to circumvent the copy protection scheme which is now illegal, and no, you can't do your own DVD player any more, because to do this you must circumvent the method to control the <B>access</B> to the DVD, which is now illegal.<P>
See how subtle they are, they didn't suppress fair use, but they outlawed all the ways to achieve it.<P>
The most scary thing is that if they manage to do it to fair use they probably can do it to free speech.<P>
<I>And what about Polaroid Instamatics? AFAIK, you can only load Polaroid film into an Instamatic; and you can only load an Instamatic with Polaroid film. Kodak lost big-time in that fight. Isn't that the same as saying you can only load a DVD into Brand X/Y/Z players?</I><P>
Like the other poster I think it is a patent problem, not a trade secret/copyright one.<P>
The laws--European and American--clearly state that the copyright holder has the right to dictate the means of playback.
That must be fairly new because, for the European part at least, we still have a right of fair use that allow us to view the copyrigthed work we bought by any mean we want. Furthermore what the MPAA/DVD-CCA are doing looks a lot like product tying, givne that DVD's are tied to the licensed players. It wouldn't be so if we were allowed to make our own players, but given that they are enclined to sue anobody who do so they are tying DVD's to players, which is strictly forbiden.
<I>It's nice to see someone giving $10,000, certainly... But isn't Alan a muli-millionaire now?</I>
The other day I was wondergin why ESR wasn't donating money too, given that he helps in the DeCSS distribution contest, but then I remembered that his probation period was going until something like June, I wonder if Alan is also subject to this probation, being a developer (although an important one) and not a part of the head of Redhat, and I wonder wether they still are under probation and for how many time.
<I>If you compare that to software engineering, we are still in the early years of last century.</I>
Do you mean the beginning of the 20th century or the beginning of the 19th century.
I ask that because given that 2000 is either taken for the first year of the 21th century (by popular belief) or as the last year of the 20th century (because of the way the calendar was done) when you say the beginning of the last century we don't know wether you are taking the century's definition from popular belief or from scientifical truth, so we can't say.
<I>It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed.</I>
If it is pure GPL then it is violating it by linking to a proprietary library, they should either use the LGPL (but then other companies can use their software with their own library, I don't know if they are willing to allow it) or use a GPL with a special clause, or (and this amy be the better thing for them maybe) they can us e the MPL/NPL adapted for them.
Personally I would prefer to have it GPL'd completely but for a company this is not always possible, or at least not always the better solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, no given that the 2.4 kernel is the equivalent to the beta kernel (2.3) going Gold which was reported on /. . Given that when a distro goes gold too their is more in it than the kernel, especially for Redhat (and maybe other distro) who make further changes to the kernel in their distro (it helps to have AC in your company ;)), it is also newsworthy but their was no change in W2k since it went gold. Anyway, I am not a fan of MS but I would have liked to see some story about the launch.
You mean this :)
Did you know that there is a part of copyright laws called Fair Use that gives me exactly the right to do that? Forbiding me to do this is an infringement to my right of fair use, they can do it if they want but I still have every right to bypass it as long as I don't redistribute the copies I made.
and will respect the region encoding system.
you know what, companies are wanting what is called globalisation, that is remove most (all?) barriers to exportation/inportation, me I think this can be a good idea if done properly (which isn't the case today, but this is another subject) but i also believe that it should work both way.
If the world remove custom barriers for companies so they can choose the best price anywhere I must also be able to choose the best price anywhere in the world, that is i must be able to buy a US DVD and play it on my French player, otherwise this is mondialisation only to the benefit of the companies, not of the customers (that have other names: citizens and humans, and their rights are ultimately more important than thos of companies however big they are).
Without region encoding, movie studios would have to wait until the movie is done in all parts of the world before releasing the DVD.
Like other people pointed out, I don't understand why they so much are afraid that i will buy a Charlie Chaplin movie instead of watching it in theaters that they need to encrypt it, this seem like a lot of paranoia to me.
And if they do it so they can sell it to me for more bucks because I am a poor French student but wealthy compared to an extremely poor (compared to me) Indian then I don't give a fuck, if they want mondialisation and the possibility to fabric things at the cheaper price I also want the right to buy it at the cheaper price I can find.
However, the CSS encryption allows the studios to choose to protect their assets.
No, it allows the studios to screw me, they have the right to try but I have the right not to be screwed (i.e. DeCSS).
You don't have the right to unencrypted content
Oh yeah, and I don't have right either to my VHS (unencrypted), audio-CD's (unencrypted), books (unencrypted), webpages (unencrypted),... The truth is once they sold the DVD to me I have the right to the decrypted version, what I don't have the right to is to re-distribute the encrypted version, or if I do sell a copy I must include ANY copy I have and the original too, otherwise this is copyright infringement, but I still have the right to the movie, encrypted or not.
and DeCSS would basically grant you that right.
You know what, VCR grant me the right to copy movies, CR-R the right to copy audio CD's, crowbars the right to open this fucking drawer on my desk for which I lost the key but have my report in it which I must give back yesterday morning and in which I put three months of work, and all these tools are perfectly legals, so why should DeCSS be illegal? Would you then agree that VCR, CD-burners and crowbars to be outlawed?
In some other countries (e.g. France) movies are almost always dubbed, because a lot of people don't want english movies either, but it doesn't take any more time or work than for the North America because in North America their is a country called Canada with a region called Quebec (you know "Vive le Quebec libre") with people speaking French (well, writing, because when they speak French people can't understand them
It's about time a nation complained about being economically spied by other government.
That a company spy another is one (bad) thing, but that a GOVERNMENT AGENCY spies over companies is much different.
Of course France is unlikely to gain any money back with this but if at least it helps raise the awareness in the population this would be good. I must also say that one thing they can do against it is make crypto free (it still is more restrictive than the US
BTW, this didn't stop Airbus to take the #1 spot this year if what I have heard is true.
We Rock (I'm French)
I am currently in the UK but am not a UK citizen, although I am an citizen of an European Union member (I'm French), so I don't think that the MP of the region I live give a sh*t about what I think.
So what can I do to help? Talk about it to other (English) people to raise their awareness, yeah! What more?
Compare this to the nwe 35h law in france
I must say that 40h is OK (IMHO) but I wouldn't want to do much more unless this is my own business of course.
<I>32 states have legislations that disallow you to publically discuss possible health dangers in any agricultural produce.</I>
What? and this isn't inconstitutional? What is the first amendment for?
I can understand that you forbid people to shout fire in a theater but forbidding discussion of the lack of fire protection in theatres probably isn't forbidden and would be a violation of free speech, why isn't it the same for these stupid laws?
I have some difficulty to understand your sentence, do you mean that you where making them believe you were of the opposite gender, or didi you make them change their point of view on the differences between genders (most likely this I think)? Or maybe you may have make them change their point of view not one what are the difference between genders but what gender is?
Whaou, THAT is a good idea! No, just kiding ;) Now I will be marked as a Macho geek (which I may well be :(). Anyway, what is great about the web is that you can't really know what gender/race/religion/... the person you're talking to really is, after all, what prove your a girl? (I don't doubt it, I just makes a point), which make people (well, me at least) act consequently, they don't change their reactions because you are a girl or because you have a black face. Otherwise I found it to be a good article but I do remember reading an article that looked a lot like this one (maybe the same author?).
Are there in the production kernel? No, so they don't count.
b) All DVD-Videos I've seen are in "bridged" UDF/ISO-9660 format where they'll mount fine as either format.
Yup, but there still is the scientific reason: if i try to reproduce a phenomena, I try to minimise the differences in the two experimentations, an OS is quite a big variable you know.
There was a problem where ISO-9660 in Linux couldn't go past 4 gigs (it'd crap out in the middle of Titanic, right before the good part ;-), but that's since been resolved.
When was it included in the produciton kernel?
Linux is POSIX certified implementation and includes...
I have heard that a company was selling a POSIX certified version of Linux but thought this was only this version that was certified.
Have anyone more informations about the POSIX certification of the Linux kernel in general, or a site talking about it?
The Perfect Gift: a Clone of Yourself? Are you kidding? One of the best part of my life is that I don't have to support myself, I am myself, if I must also support somebody as stupid and boring as me I will never survive five minutes! No, but a clone of me probably would be a perfect gift for my worse ennemy. Of course if I must have a clone I would prefer it to be the clone of Laetitia Casta ;)
(hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy of course)
Which goes something like that:
Universe: description of the universe
Superficy: Infinite.
Population: Null, given that not all planets carry life, there must be a finite number of planets that are inhabited and given that the superficy of the Universe is infinite the population per kilometer square is a finite number of people divided by the infinite superficy of the universe gives zero person per square kilometer, therefore any person that you may encounter can only be the fruit of your disturbed imagination.
Yeah, me too, which is why I took it as a sig in the first place ;)
What is even more funny is to think that the people reviewing the book before the publication didn't catch this..or did they but found it so funny that they didn't want to correct it? Anyway, this is not by that that I would judge him, errors happen to everybody (although combining MS-DOS and Windows in one life make quite a lot of errors ;)).
You mean they ported their changes to Redhat Linux to the Alpha, right?
Mandrake Linux are clever in the way they produce their distro by basing it on RedHat, this make less development cost and is compatible with one of the best distros around (ok, some will prefer Debian (or Corel?), Suse, Caldera or Slackware, I know, no need for a flame war) but at least they play the game by contributing to the development of Linux contrary to a certain society that doesn't seem to be able to understand the spirit of the community on behalf of which they wish to make money (do i need to give a name?), furthermore they are French, like me ;)
forgot to switch to html
<I>My interpretation of it -- which may be voided; I believe a judge has ruled that the content is not software</I><P>
No, but it is a data file, which is permitted to reverse engineer.<P>
View it this way: you buy a DVD drive for your computer running under Linux and a DVD you want to watch, unfortunately the DVD players given with your DVD equipment is not compatible with your computer (it doesn't run under Linux), what we (the Free Software community) did was trying to reverse engineer the player (Xing) to make a compatible version that would run on Linux and other Free OS's, which is completely permited by the DMCA. Of course we were first forced to work under Windows for at least two reason:<P>
1. Practical reason, UDF wasn't supported during the development of DeCSS.<P>
2, Scientific reason, when you try to reproduce an experiment you try to change the variables as little as possible, so it made sense to make it under windows.<P>
However I think that MoRE should not have released the Windows version but should have waited a little bit more and do a Linux only version, there would be less mess now (but still a lot given that the DMCA seems to kill fair use).<P>
Given that they hadn't the time to put together their defense in NY they couldn't made this point correctly, which is why Mr Kaplan took the opposite view, to say that given that it permit the access to copyrighted work it wasn't covered by the RE clause. This view is very dangerous because what i am currently writing right now is <I><B>copyrighted by me</B></I>, as are all the files I do using a word processor. The problem with this point of view is that given that what you produce with a word processor <I>is</I> copyrighted material (but generally you don't go made at other people over it like the MPAA because you have little financial incentive to do it) it can set a precedent where doing a reverse engineering of, say. Microsoft Word format <I>is considered as creating a mean to access to copyrighted work</I>, which would make it illegal.<P>
Of course this shouldn't stand up in any reasonable court, but lately (well, during the 50 last years) this haven't really been the case of American "justice".<P>
<I>It also seems to me that parallels can be drawn between what MPAA/CSS is doing, and that you're not allowed to haul a camcorder into a movie theatre to make a copy that you can take home.</I><P>
there is a big difference. If I go to the cinema I didn't buy the good, I have no right to fair use, while when I buy a DVD I should be able to do whatever i want with short of sell unauthorized duplicate, that is I should be able to watch it under any DVD drive I have, regardless of what is my software configuration, I should be able to make copies of it (although if I sell one of these copies the original DVD must be part of the deal and I must not retain copies for myself), break it in two, wipe my ass with it (not very parctiful, but I have the right to do it), and all these things are considered fair use, but the DMCA says that no, you can't copy it any more, because to do this you need to circumvent the copy protection scheme which is now illegal, and no, you can't do your own DVD player any more, because to do this you must circumvent the method to control the <B>access</B> to the DVD, which is now illegal.<P>
See how subtle they are, they didn't suppress fair use, but they outlawed all the ways to achieve it.<P>
The most scary thing is that if they manage to do it to fair use they probably can do it to free speech.<P>
<I>And what about Polaroid Instamatics? AFAIK, you can only load Polaroid film into an Instamatic; and you can only load an Instamatic with Polaroid film. Kodak lost big-time in that fight. Isn't that the same as saying you can only load a DVD into Brand X/Y/Z players?</I><P>
Like the other poster I think it is a patent problem, not a trade secret/copyright one.<P>
Dear An Ominous Cow Herd, I contacted him and he told me that he will send you a bag full of little green things... a bac full ofgrass of course ;)
That must be fairly new because, for the European part at least, we still have a right of fair use that allow us to view the copyrigthed work we bought by any mean we want. Furthermore what the MPAA/DVD-CCA are doing looks a lot like product tying, givne that DVD's are tied to the licensed players. It wouldn't be so if we were allowed to make our own players, but given that they are enclined to sue anobody who do so they are tying DVD's to players, which is strictly forbiden.
<I>It's nice to see someone giving $10,000, certainly... But isn't Alan a muli-millionaire now?</I>
The other day I was wondergin why ESR wasn't donating money too, given that he helps in the DeCSS distribution contest, but then I remembered that his probation period was going until something like June, I wonder if Alan is also subject to this probation, being a developer (although an important one) and not a part of the head of Redhat, and I wonder wether they still are under probation and for how many time.
For the DeCSS distribution contest i was thinking that someone should make a (somewhat pleasant if possible) song using DeCSS for the lyrics.
And of course this is under the GPL, isn't it?
<I>If you compare that to software engineering, we are still in the early years of last century.</I>
Do you mean the beginning of the 20th century or the beginning of the 19th century.
I ask that because given that 2000 is either taken for the first year of the 21th century (by popular belief) or as the last year of the 20th century (because of the way the calendar was done) when you say the beginning of the last century we don't know wether you are taking the century's definition from popular belief or from scientifical truth, so we can't say.
<I>It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed.</I>
If it is pure GPL then it is violating it by linking to a proprietary library, they should either use the LGPL (but then other companies can use their software with their own library, I don't know if they are willing to allow it) or use a GPL with a special clause, or (and this amy be the better thing for them maybe) they can us e the MPL/NPL adapted for them.
Personally I would prefer to have it GPL'd completely but for a company this is not always possible, or at least not always the better solution.