Maybe not related to the new altavista, but the thing is I received a visit from altavista's bot 3 days ago, first time since my website is somewhat new. I've been listed in google for a couple of months, from today I am as well in altavista. The thing is, maybe you should expect altavista's bot in your place one of these days.
Imagine a future where music bands only make a small percentage of money of what they earn now because of piracy, a future where the most popular band is not even close to being millionaire. Do you think music would disappear? In other words, would musicians (both new and already well-known) compose, play, perform as good if money were not there? How important is money in all of this?
Reprogramming the IMEI is now an offence. So what? Is it like, a burglar would steal a phone with no remorse and then say, wait! I am not going to reprogram the IMEI, that is so illegal!
One of the advantages of ad-hoc over traditional (with an access point) is that, you don't need planning beforehand: you can have a network wherever 2 or more computers are close together. The main disadvantage is that, since there is no planning, it is difficult to guarantee good quality of service: you can have coverage or not, depending on the conditions at that moment, the number of connected computers, how far they are, if they are moving or not...
Ad-hoc networks work great, as well, for expanding coverage area: in a true ad-hoc network, relaying is part of the system, so that spending money in expensive access points is not required as long as there are terminals (computers) that do the function.
One of the problems to be solved in ad-hoc networks, though, is that of billing: since every computer in the ad-hoc network is going to use its own resources for the benefit of others, how is this going to work? I mean, it is like giving free rides to others, that cost you money or time... In fact, this is how free software works, anyways... All in all, watch for more ad-hoc in the near future.
Marker pens should be included in the list of dual use goods and technologies.
No more exports to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, North Korea, Syria, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Burma, China, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro), Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and
Zaire.
Readily available DeCSS + DivX is a good choice if you want to copy DVDs. I have heard there is plenty of people using it! Definitely, at least for DVDs, DMCA has proven completely useless at stopping piracy. And for a DVD->DVD copier, just wait a little...
"starring almost no one you've heard of..."
on
Review: U-571
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I've not seen the film but went to imdb to see the cast for U-571.
The movie can be horrible, i don't know, but you must have heard of Matthhew McConaughey (EdTv, Contact), Harvey Keitel (Pulp Fiction, Smoke, The Piano) or Bill Paxton (Twister, Titanic). Or at least from John Bon Jovi!
This is not the problem they are trying to address. Creative Commons will create a license, a legal text for me to use, to let people know what are the conditions of use for my works: I see it as something equivalent to GPL, only a license, if I don't have the rights from the first place, then, the license couldn't apply and could be challenged. An example: I can place a copy of MS Win on my website, claim that I own the rights and license it as GPL for everyone. Yeah, I can do that, but of course the license won't apply... even if my site is cached on google (equivalent to having my artwork on Cretive Commons search database).
Out of laziness, but lately I am not patching IE or any of the other known vulnerabilities on the software I have installed, unless the vulnerability is really dangerous: It comes to a point, that simply, I don't care anymore.
You might say that this is against me, not to patch my software, and you are right, but I am tired.
I think the security model used by MS and others (well, assuming this is a security model) is not valid anymore, I cannot go patching my software every morning after booting the computer!!
In fact, I think Napster deserves some credit. Agreed, it didn't start the music-sharing thing: before CD-Rs and MP3s we all had double decks.
It didn't start the MP3 revolution either: way back before Napster, lots of people were already encoding MP3s (L3enc first then Fraunhoffer and Xing...) and sharing with friends, normally using burned CDs but also with some useful useful FTPs, where one had to enter 'hidden' directories until the music could be found.
And it didn't even start P2P, because it is not a real P2P service...
But still, Napster deserves lots of credit, because it is the single thing that started the revolution, for its simplicity of use, bringing many users that were not computer geeks to the world of music sharing. It is, in a word, the service that made MP3 sharing popular, and now that it is popular, it will remain that way forever, no matter how hard they try. Cheers for Napster.
btw, if you want to read about what is p2p and what is not, check this.
To start off, 'the globalization of the media' means that we all watch CNN, not that we have access to different and diverse points of view as it would be desirable.
Then, we give too much credibility to the media. Think about how mainstream media covers, often, news about a technology you know well and you know the stupidities that they say, don't you feel upset and think they completely misunderstand? Why should it be different with other kind of news?
We should be able to have access to other points of view (language is a barrier here) and try to look at them with an open mind, this would be more information about one another, not what we have now.
It took a while to realize what kind of spyware kazaa was, even with lots of people using it for a long time. Now we have this 'hacked' version with the spyware apparently removed. I don't know the author, there is no company behind it, it is not open source... and nonetheless we all jump over it, trusting it does what it says... How do I know it doesn't contain some extra spyware? I have not any indication that kazaalite is not a legitimate software, but again, I have not any indication on the contrary... I think there is something very wrong in the way we accept and instantly trust new software. My question is WHY should I trust this more than kazaa?
I bought WARP as a Christmas present, the first time I paid for retail software instead of copying it, so you can imagine I really had faith in OS/2, I wanted to get rid of Windows forever.
But, it never worked for me, I had some strange BIOS/HD combination that made it impossible to install. After many failures and talks with support, I gave up.
I bought a new computer after some months, but I was so bored with OS/2 that I never tried again and of course, now I regret having spent money and time in something that I never used.
If Linux is ever to succeed, the first time experience will have to be completely painless, that is, easy to install, easy to run, visually appealing, no troubles with that new device just bought...
I run Windows and everything works fine for me, if I change, I want to be able to read my documents, play my music, use my LAN adapter, my new digital camera, my webcam, my printer at its full capabilities, I want the energy settings to work, I want to connect my cellphone to my address book... everything that works now has to work in Linux and then, provide something extra so that switching to Linux is worth it.
I'm affraid right now, I cannot change, (and I have tried!), but my LAN doesn't work, no drivers for my digital camera, the same for my cellphone, the sound is crappy... I know it's getting better, but Linux, still, is not good enough for me and many, many other people. I hope it changes...
At present, software is considered like a literary work in terms of copyright, that is, it enjoys 50 years of protection before they become public domain (WIPO copyright treaty).
I think this is a case where, "the need to maintain a balance between the rights of the authors and the larger public interest", should be enough to shorten the period for this kind of software. I say, give 7 years, or something around that. Really, after this time, the commercial value is zero, why not give it for free then?
After Napster and all the other file-sharing services it seems downloading music (and movies) without paying a cent has become the norm. Do you think that, by using cryptography, watermarking or other copy-protection/prevention technologies, the entertainment industry can go back to the past situation when everyone paid (a lot) for having their copies of music/movies or, on the contrary, the technologies don't exist and will never exist to prevent the parallel distribution that we have nowadays?.
The wrong concept of freedom is 'do whatever you want to do'.
This is the one used by the 1st ammendment, 'say whatever you want to say'.
In the US, the 'do whatever you want to do' is certainly not applied always, you are not allowed to kill people, for instance, substantially reducing your freedom. The reason is that killing others, harms.
In Europe, the same limit is applied. If it harms others, then it is not allowed. And this is also used for speech.
I agree that saying 'All the (your_choice_here) should be killed because they are the root of the problems in our country' is not as bad as effectively killing them, but hate speech, I believe, helps very much in creating the situation that leads to killing. That's why in some countries, it is not allowed.
Now I'll give you an example: do you think that Osama Bin Laden's hate speech, broadcasted all over the muslim countries has an influence on the latest terrorists attacks?
My opinion is that it has a lot of influence. To me, that man should not have the freedom to say what it says because using his speech (only words!) can convince a lot of confused people that yes, the US is the devil. He is not _literally_ pulling the trigger but his speech does.
They can fight against Napster, Morpheus, audiogalaxy Musicity, Kazaa, Gnutella... and they might win individually, closing Napster, maybe Kazaa, defeating Limewire, but it is quite stupid to think that they can stop it.
Napster closed, so what? Alternatives appeared, and for everyone that is shut down, 5 new ones will appear.
I can tell you, a lot of people demands this service, now it is on the mainstream public, some of them have a big time trying to find where are the downloaded files the first time but they use the services anyways.
How wonderful it is to get that song, now! It cannot be stopped... it will never be, this way is better and besides it, much cheaper.
Now my advice for the music industry: it cannot be stopped, join the wave! you'll have to stop charging 12$ per CD, maybe give them away free, focus on promoting concerts, live music, offer a file-downloading service, flat-rate (it will have to be cheap though!) and always highest-quality non-broken non buggy-names MP3s and I would be on it. Boys, reshape your business or it will die... I think it will die.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe not related to the new altavista, but the thing is I received a visit from altavista's bot 3 days ago, first time since my website is somewhat new. I've been listed in google for a couple of months, from today I am as well in altavista.
The thing is, maybe you should expect altavista's bot in your place one of these days.
Imagine a future where music bands only make a small percentage of money of what they earn now because of piracy, a future where the most popular band is not even close to being millionaire.
Do you think music would disappear? In other words, would musicians (both new and already well-known) compose, play, perform as good if money were not there? How important is money in all of this?
Reprogramming the IMEI is now an offence.
So what? Is it like, a burglar would steal a phone with no remorse and then say, wait! I am not going to reprogram the IMEI, that is so illegal!
Really, I don't see how it helps.
One of the advantages of ad-hoc over traditional (with an access point) is that, you don't need planning beforehand: you can have a network wherever 2 or more computers are close together.
The main disadvantage is that, since there is no planning, it is difficult to guarantee good quality of service: you can have coverage or not, depending on the conditions at that moment, the number of connected computers, how far they are, if they are moving or not...
Ad-hoc networks work great, as well, for expanding coverage area: in a true ad-hoc network, relaying is part of the system, so that spending money in expensive access points is not required as long as there are terminals (computers) that do the function.
One of the problems to be solved in ad-hoc networks, though, is that of billing: since every computer in the ad-hoc network is going to use its own resources for the benefit of others, how is this going to work? I mean, it is like giving free rides to others, that cost you money or time... In fact, this is how free software works, anyways... All in all, watch for more ad-hoc in the near future.
I just checked on gracenote's site.
"The Eminem show" is now on top, number 1, the most-played this week.
Marker pens should be included in the list of dual use goods and technologies.
No more exports to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Burma, China, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Zaire.
Link to Mist-on's FAQ on google cache.
And find here the alleged copy, Gilley's FAQ on google.
What do you think? To me, the only thing they have in common is the question marks, and that's not copyright infrigement.
Readily available DeCSS + DivX is a good choice if you want to copy DVDs. I have heard there is plenty of people using it!
Definitely, at least for DVDs, DMCA has proven completely useless at stopping piracy. And for a DVD->DVD copier, just wait a little...
I've not seen the film but went to imdb to see the cast for U-571.
The movie can be horrible, i don't know, but you must have heard of Matthhew McConaughey (EdTv, Contact), Harvey Keitel (Pulp Fiction, Smoke, The Piano) or Bill Paxton (Twister, Titanic). Or at least from John Bon Jovi!
Unfortunately, at $20 million a trip, the average citizen-next-door will only be able to bid, never win...
My PC turned on after any phone ring (very disturbing while installing some new hardware :( )
I don't want to sound obvious, but, did you ever try unplugging the computer before installing new hardware?
and now makes for a good museum in Stockholm, where you can learn the history and see the warship Vasa.
This is not the problem they are trying to address.
Creative Commons will create a license, a legal text for me to use, to let people know what are the conditions of use for my works: I see it as something equivalent to GPL, only a license, if I don't have the rights from the first place, then, the license couldn't apply and could be challenged.
An example: I can place a copy of MS Win on my website, claim that I own the rights and license it as GPL for everyone. Yeah, I can do that, but of course the license won't apply... even if my site is cached on google (equivalent to having my artwork on Cretive Commons search database).
From the article: "disrupt competitors, not customers".
I think the reason for Dvorak not to succeed is that forces users (customers) to change the way they type, and that's way too demanding.
Out of laziness, but lately I am not patching IE or any of the other known vulnerabilities on the software I have installed, unless the vulnerability is really dangerous: It comes to a point, that simply, I don't care anymore.
You might say that this is against me, not to patch my software, and you are right, but I am tired.
I think the security model used by MS and others (well, assuming this is a security model) is not valid anymore, I cannot go patching my software every morning after booting the computer!!
In fact, I think Napster deserves some credit.
Agreed, it didn't start the music-sharing thing: before CD-Rs and MP3s we all had double decks.
It didn't start the MP3 revolution either: way back before Napster, lots of people were already encoding MP3s (L3enc first then Fraunhoffer and Xing...) and sharing with friends, normally using burned CDs but also with some useful useful FTPs, where one had to enter 'hidden' directories until the music could be found.
And it didn't even start P2P, because it is not a real P2P service...
But still, Napster deserves lots of credit, because it is the single thing that started the revolution, for its simplicity of use, bringing many users that were not computer geeks to the world of music sharing. It is, in a word, the service that made MP3 sharing popular, and now that it is popular, it will remain that way forever, no matter how hard they try. Cheers for Napster.
btw, if you want to read about what is p2p and what is not, check this.
Good point this thing about Microsoft being the referee... Only if they had chosen IETF instead of MS as their partner...
To start off, 'the globalization of the media' means that we all watch CNN, not that we have access to different and diverse points of view as it would be desirable.
Then, we give too much credibility to the media. Think about how mainstream media covers, often, news about a technology you know well and you know the stupidities that they say, don't you feel upset and think they completely misunderstand? Why should it be different with other kind of news?
We should be able to have access to other points of view (language is a barrier here) and try to look at them with an open mind, this would be more information about one another, not what we have now.
It took a while to realize what kind of spyware kazaa was, even with lots of people using it for a long time.
Now we have this 'hacked' version with the spyware apparently removed. I don't know the author, there is no company behind it, it is not open source... and nonetheless we all jump over it, trusting it does what it says...
How do I know it doesn't contain some extra spyware?
I have not any indication that kazaalite is not a legitimate software, but again, I have not any indication on the contrary... I think there is something very wrong in the way we accept and instantly trust new software.
My question is WHY should I trust this more than kazaa?
I bought WARP as a Christmas present, the first time I paid for retail software instead of copying it, so you can imagine I really had faith in OS/2, I wanted to get rid of Windows forever.
But, it never worked for me, I had some strange BIOS/HD combination that made it impossible to install.
After many failures and talks with support, I gave up.
I bought a new computer after some months, but I was so bored with OS/2 that I never tried again and of course, now I regret having spent money and time in something that I never used.
If Linux is ever to succeed, the first time experience will have to be completely painless, that is, easy to install, easy to run, visually appealing, no troubles with that new device just bought...
I run Windows and everything works fine for me, if I change, I want to be able to read my documents, play my music, use my LAN adapter, my new digital camera, my webcam, my printer at its full capabilities, I want the energy settings to work, I want to connect my cellphone to my address book... everything that works now has to work in Linux and then, provide something extra so that switching to Linux is worth it.
I'm affraid right now, I cannot change, (and I have tried!), but my LAN doesn't work, no drivers for my digital camera, the same for my cellphone, the sound is crappy... I know it's getting better, but Linux, still, is not good enough for me and many, many other people. I hope it changes...
At present, software is considered like a literary work in terms of copyright, that is, it enjoys 50 years of protection before they become public domain (WIPO copyright treaty).
I think this is a case where, "the need to maintain a balance between the rights of the authors and the larger public interest", should be enough to shorten the period for this kind of software.
I say, give 7 years, or something around that. Really, after this time, the commercial value is zero, why not give it for free then?
Open-source it and I will believe all of that; otherwise I won't take the risk.
After Napster and all the other file-sharing services it seems downloading music (and movies) without paying a cent has become the norm. .
Do you think that, by using cryptography, watermarking or other copy-protection/prevention technologies, the entertainment industry can go back to the past situation when everyone paid (a lot) for having their copies of music/movies or, on the contrary, the technologies don't exist and will never exist to prevent the parallel distribution that we have nowadays?
The wrong concept of freedom is 'do whatever you want to do'.
This is the one used by the 1st ammendment, 'say whatever you want to say'.
In the US, the 'do whatever you want to do' is certainly not applied always, you are not allowed to kill people, for instance, substantially reducing your freedom. The reason is that killing others, harms.
In Europe, the same limit is applied. If it harms others, then it is not allowed. And this is also used for speech.
I agree that saying 'All the (your_choice_here) should be killed because they are the root of the problems in our country' is not as bad as effectively killing them, but hate speech, I believe, helps very much in creating the situation that leads to killing. That's why in some countries, it is not allowed.
Now I'll give you an example: do you think that Osama Bin Laden's hate speech, broadcasted all over the muslim countries has an influence on the latest terrorists attacks?
My opinion is that it has a lot of influence. To me, that man should not have the freedom to say what it says because using his speech (only words!) can convince a lot of confused people that yes, the US is the devil. He is not _literally_ pulling the trigger but his speech does.
They can fight against Napster, Morpheus, audiogalaxy Musicity, Kazaa, Gnutella... and they might win individually, closing Napster, maybe Kazaa, defeating Limewire, but it is quite stupid to think that they can stop it.
Napster closed, so what? Alternatives appeared, and for everyone that is shut down, 5 new ones will appear.
I can tell you, a lot of people demands this service, now it is on the mainstream public, some of them have a big time trying to find where are the downloaded files the first time but they use the services anyways.
How wonderful it is to get that song, now! It cannot be stopped... it will never be, this way is better and besides it, much cheaper.
Now my advice for the music industry: it cannot be stopped, join the wave! you'll have to stop charging 12$ per CD, maybe give them away free, focus on promoting concerts, live music, offer a file-downloading service, flat-rate (it will have to be cheap though!) and always highest-quality non-broken non buggy-names MP3s and I would be on it.
Boys, reshape your business or it will die... I think it will die.