The souls of the victims are watching in horror as you people squander your finite, precious time on this earth playing video games!
I think it's the height of unmitigated arrogance for anyone -- including you! -- to state definitively the opinion of those souls. Perhaps the worst thing is when some self-appointed spokesperson appropriates their tragedy and horror to advance his/her own narrow and oft unsupportable cause...
Life goes on. If there is ever to be a victory in the "war" on terrorism -- if we as a species are ever to vanquish this psychosocial parasitic infection from the body politic -- then it will come about only because we remember that life goes on. That doesn't mean we forget. It doesn't mean we trivialize. But it does mean that we consciously decide not to obsess, to fixate, to mire ourselves in the unchangeable past.
Mourning is good. At times, even outrage is good. But you can't mourn forever. You can't maintain active outrage forever. It's simply not healthy. And I don't think psychological self-destruction is the proper way of honoring the worthy dead.
Re:Slate is hardly unbiased journalizm
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
anybody riping and collecting works they don't pay for are simply stealing
No. No. No. and a final time, No. They are "infringing" -- a well-defined crime, distinct from stealing. How do I know? Leaving aside the single-user issue, let's also consider: No court anywhere has ever set up guidelines for "reasonable theft" of physical property. But for intellectual "property", the courts have -- as much as the RIAA wishes to God they hadn't -- carved out an expanse called "Fair Use", wherein use of copyrighted material without compensation is considered legal. (I am not arguing that Napster was or was not Fair Use. I am just pointing out that Fair Use exists in well-codifed law.) Likewise, real property rights don't expire. If you own a car and never ever sell it to anyone, then guess what? It's yours, forever and ever, world without end, amen. But if you publish a copyrightable item, and never ever sell a copy to anyone else, do you know what happens? Eventually your "property" rights evaporate, again without compensation... it's not a government "taking", it's the (legal) nature of the beast.
So unless you're willing to draw the analogy both ways -- that is, to allow "Fair Use" of your physical property and to recognize that your ownership is time-limited -- then stop BSing and drop the "infringement is stealing" crap.
Yeah, it wasn't "stealing" in the traditional dictionary definition, but what would you have said if someone were "sharing" binary-only modified copies of GPL'd software? Would that still be sharing? Or would it now be stealing?
What Napster did was "filesharing", in the traditional and well-known networking sense: A given file was placed on a network and made accessible to others on the network. Or are you morally opposed to MS Windows "share folder" mechanism, too?
Now, it's legitimate to feel that supporters of Naptser liked to use the word "fileshare" because "sharing" has such a nice connotation -- everyone's all nice and friendly and Sesame Street-like. But then, the RIAA chose "piracy" to utilize the negative connotation of the word, even though infringing a copyright is nothing at all like raping and pillaging on the high seas. But at least in Napster's case, the word has a legitimate technical meaning that is actually related to how it's being used.
If someone took GPL code but violated the license, well, that would breach-of-contract and also copyright infringement -- both well-defined crimes but neither "stealing".
irrespectful of the fact that we ARE IN A RECESSION, it will be the music-swappers' faults this happened. Just like it was cassette tapes back in the day, right?
I don't think the RIAA goes far enough. I blame cassette tapes for
that's easy 2/3 of the population are morally straight, 19% of the population doesn't care about music CD's, and 15% are just plain thieves without any moral compass.
You know, just because someone's moral compass points in a different direction than your own, doesn't imply that they don't have one. But then, people who can throw around phrases and judgments like that are generally terrified by the idea that someone might believe legitimately other than them, and so must tar everyone with a broad brush. What a sad world to inhabit.
For the record, I don't download anyway. So you can just close the reply you'd opened saying "You're just trying to justify your theft."
The only reason Napster made it so big was the response of the millions of automaton drones spread across American that only know how to follow the latest trend.
And, ironically, those automatons had been trained to fanatically follow trends by none other than... the marketing army called the RIAA.:)
Hmmmmmmmm. I could buy the Shrek soundtrack for $19 or I could buy the Shrek DVD for the same $19. Whats wrong here? Seems we get a lot more content on the DVD.
I've seen this argument 4 times today. You know what the end result will be, if we relentlessly point out this disparity? $50 DVDs.:)
didn't your mother ever teach you that coding with line numbers and go to statements is evil?
Whippersnapper! You can have my GOTOs when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers!:)
The game is over... they just don't know it
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
we'll actually have at least half the population buying these copy-protected CDs without thinking twice about Fair Use
The recording industry (and through them, the movie industry) has already lost this fight. They lost it around 1995 or 1996. Everything since then is just a King Canute maneuver. They've lost for the following, single reason: For more than six years -- 1.5 student "lifetimes" -- college students have been getting music for free and getting used to playing it where, when, and how they want. And their younger siblings have been watching them. Game over.
You're right. Most of them probably don't know or care about "Fair Use" rights or copyright law or the DMCA. But they know MP3. They know timeshifting and spaceshifting. They know what they like to do with their music. And they are, statistically, going to be a demographic the RIAA/MPAA want: For no one is discretionary income so high a ratio to total income as for 20-somethings. The *AAs desparately, desparately want to sink their hooks into this demographic and extract all the cash they can. Yet these people expect free music.
And it won't get better. Maybe the culture machine will drive people to buy the protected CDs. At least as likely, the teen set will say, "Screw this -- I want my MP3".
The corpse hasn't stopped moving yet, but no technological fix is going to breathe life back into the old music distribution model. And Holllywood knows it's next... why do you think they combined a crappy protection scheme with the draconian DMCA? Because they know (a) people can draw the line from copying music to copying movies and (b) only a massive legal campaign will have any hope of stopping that, by stigmatizing movie copying before it becomes socially acceptable.
But they are too late. People can draw the line. And people already accept movie copying... somewhat fringe now, but growing.
The buggy-whip makers hear the thunder of tomorrow and are scared. Rightfully so.
Because Palm took a universally-understood benchmark -- bit depth in colour -- and advertised an incorrect value. That's either incompetence or dishonesty. Then, when caught, they suddenly want to redefine the universally-accepted benchmark into something that is more palatable to them but incomprehensible to everyone else.
Both the original error/lie and the spin are designed to obfuscate and make it harder to make a rational, intelligent decision. This, to me, implies that even Palm feels it cannot compete on a level playing field... which is why Palm is off my list for my next handheld.
I'm not sure how you can accuse a company of not admitting a mistake when your proof of that mistake is the company's admission of it.
Well, "announcement" and "admission" are two different things. You can announce something unconsciously, through the actions you take. But you can only admit something through an act of will... indeed, the essence of admission is the standing apart and making that act of will. Here, Palm recognized that they used 12 bits, not 16 bits... but they're trying hard to spin that it wasn't a (major) mistake. They want it to be a counting error (58,000 instead of 65,000 -- oops) and not a major design/programming issue.
My issue with Palm's behavior is this: They seem to be changing how they count colors -- falling back on this undefined "color combination" thing -- and they seem to be doing it in midstream without telling anyone. As far as I'm concerned that's tantamount to falsifying data.
(b) Forfeiture and Destruction.--When any person is convicted of any violation of subsection (a), the court in its judgment of conviction shall, in addition to the penalty therein prescribed, order the forfeiture and destruction or other disposition of all infringing copies or phonorecords and all implements, devices, or equipment used in the manufacture of such infringing copies or phonorecords.
So.... Junior posts to KaZaa, and Daddy's home computer is seized and torched? Oh, that's nice.
The Linux kernel is copyrighted... I have a billion dollars worth of copyrighted software on my computer I didn't pay a dime for. And I have the source code too! Am I going to prison?
Only if the holder of the copyright insists on it. As far as I know -- and of course IANAL, so don't go to jail on this -- the government can't step in until there's someone with standing who claims actual damages.
Interesting acronym. I think we should avail ourselves of this fine opportunity. Henceforth, ISOC's BoT shall be known as "the ISOC ROBOT" -- the ISOC Remotely-Owned Board of Trustees.
Maybe we can just replace the human Board with a little script that trundles the web automatically..
hy not? Because how much easier is it to remember "slashdot.org" than it is to remember "3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566"
The top poster did say, "Why not get rid of DNS?" (A different argument, altogether.) but "Why not get rid of TLD?" Is there any longer -- was there in fact ever -- a reason for partitioning the namespace into.com,.org,.gov,.mil, etc.?
As long as I have been a memeber, ISOC has never done anything shady... Become informed before you bash them, I challenge anyone to come up with anything ISOC has done that harmed the internet community.
Over the past two years ISOC's Board of Trustees (BoT) has engaged in what it calls the "reform" of ISOC. At its December 2001 meeting in Salt Lake City, the BoT made major changes to the ISOC governance structure. This was done without announcement or broad consultation with ISOC members.
The main elements of ISOC's new governance structure are: - Reduction of the percentage of Trustees elected by individual members,
from 100% to 20% (from 15 seats down to 3 seats) -
or even to 15%, if the option of coopting an additional 5 members
is taken into account, leaving theoretically 3 out of 20. - Suspension of voting rights of individual members in 2002. - Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by organizational members,
from 0% to 40% (from 0 to 6 seats). - Linkage of organizational members' voting rights to their financial contribution
(i.e. the more an organization pays, the more votes it gets.) - Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by standards bodies
(IETF, IESG, IAB) from 0% to 20% (from 0 to 3 seats). - Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by chapters
from 0% to 20% (from 0 to 3 seats). - Suspension of individual membership categories up to 35 US$ per year.
(In combination with this, ISOC Administration made it impossible,
to sign up or renew memberships in higher paying categories.) - Introduction of global free individual membership.
These changes effectively transfer ISOC governance authority away from individual members and over to organizational members (mostly large information technology firms.) Such changes make ISOC a mass membership association in which decision-making power is concentrated in a small set of IT firms. This is a major departure from what ISOC has been to date. Moreover, it risks creating public confusion about ISOC's public positions, which will be made by a few firms but could be perceived as being made by its membership.
Some critics seem to demand nothing short of ICANN's head on a silver platter...
Hmmm, an alleged non-controversial infrastructure overseer which expanded its mandate, tried to assess an unauthorized tax, and then summarily and unilaterally dismantled its already-small semblance of democracy and accountability (not to mention illegally hid its internal workings to prevent criticism)... yeah, I think "head on a silver platter" is just about right.
Here in Australia (and in many other countries, I'm told) people have much fewer problems with fractions because we don't have to learn them until we're capable of comprehending them fully.
So people only have birthday parties in groups of ten (so that the cake can be divided metrically)? Families have no fewer than ten kids? If the drugtsore is 1 km away, you can't go someplace halfway there until 9th grade? Fractions arise naturally in many situations, not just in math problems involving metric or imperial units.
As a US high school Physics teacher, I'm all for full metric conversion and abandonment of the imperial system. There are a lot of really strong reasons to do so. But this isn't one of them, in my eyes.
But algebra you never use unless you're programming a specific program that does something algebraicly in which case you have the formula. And, as a network administrator I have *never* once needed to know algebra.. just lower level math...
You've never done anything like "Hmmm, I have 1 GB of storage and 15 users... what quota should I set?"
You've never used an assignment statement in any programming language for anything more complex than indexing? (And by the way, even that usually has algebraic roots.)
Either your system is way unstable or the real issue is: You've never been taught to recognize algebra, but rather just to manipulate some random symbols.
I am a firm believer in the not-common-enough practice of "open book" tests or allowed "cheat sheets", which in the proper teaching and testing environment would promote actual learning and understanding as the mind is freed from the need to focus on memorization.
That's my philosophy. One of the few joys of September, as teacher, is watching their reactions when I tell them, "All tests are open-notes." All the eyes light up in happiness and joy. Then, after about half a minute, a handful of kids cloud over, doubt on their face as they realize exactly what I can ask on an open-notes test. Suddenly those kids aren't quite as enthusiastic about the prospect...
Those always turn out to be the most able students...:)
It's always burned me that so many people see arithmetic and mathmatics as the same thing.
Hear, hear! One of the bumper-sticker witticisms I throw at my Physics students is "Math is about numbers the way that Shakespeare is about letters." It's dumb but it makes them stop and think... what is math?
It's convenient, and this is how it's used, but it doesn't mean an exercise in seeing 6x differently is somehow bad.
If the exercise is explicit, OK. If it's snuck in, then no. The value of math is that certain symbols, manipulated in certain ways, yield truth. You can't go mucking about with the convention willy-nilly. As I tell my students: Math and nature don't care what symbols you use, but they care that you use the same ones.
Most people in my generation in Ontario are scared stiff of the same things.
Well, I got a minor in math, a masters in physics, and aced all the way through tensor calculus, and I'm still scared stiff of fractions.:) My first rule is always, clear fractions -- they'll stab you in the back eventually.:)
After all, how could the jackass that wrote the DMCA and the dumb slut who was ignorant enough to carry his seed possibly mix genes in a manner that would result in a positive IQ? It would throw the theory of entropy right out the window.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's the height of unmitigated arrogance for anyone -- including you! -- to state definitively the opinion of those souls. Perhaps the worst thing is when some self-appointed spokesperson appropriates their tragedy and horror to advance his/her own narrow and oft unsupportable cause...
Life goes on. If there is ever to be a victory in the "war" on terrorism -- if we as a species are ever to vanquish this psychosocial parasitic infection from the body politic -- then it will come about only because we remember that life goes on . That doesn't mean we forget. It doesn't mean we trivialize. But it does mean that we consciously decide not to obsess, to fixate, to mire ourselves in the unchangeable past.
Mourning is good. At times, even outrage is good. But you can't mourn forever. You can't maintain active outrage forever. It's simply not healthy. And I don't think psychological self-destruction is the proper way of honoring the worthy dead.
No. No. No. and a final time, No. They are "infringing" -- a well-defined crime, distinct from stealing. How do I know? Leaving aside the single-user issue, let's also consider: No court anywhere has ever set up guidelines for "reasonable theft" of physical property. But for intellectual "property", the courts have -- as much as the RIAA wishes to God they hadn't -- carved out an expanse called "Fair Use", wherein use of copyrighted material without compensation is considered legal. (I am not arguing that Napster was or was not Fair Use. I am just pointing out that Fair Use exists in well-codifed law.) Likewise, real property rights don't expire. If you own a car and never ever sell it to anyone, then guess what? It's yours, forever and ever, world without end, amen. But if you publish a copyrightable item, and never ever sell a copy to anyone else, do you know what happens? Eventually your "property" rights evaporate, again without compensation... it's not a government "taking", it's the (legal) nature of the beast.
So unless you're willing to draw the analogy both ways -- that is, to allow "Fair Use" of your physical property and to recognize that your ownership is time-limited -- then stop BSing and drop the "infringement is stealing" crap.
What Napster did was "filesharing", in the traditional and well-known networking sense: A given file was placed on a network and made accessible to others on the network. Or are you morally opposed to MS Windows "share folder" mechanism, too?
Now, it's legitimate to feel that supporters of Naptser liked to use the word "fileshare" because "sharing" has such a nice connotation -- everyone's all nice and friendly and Sesame Street-like. But then, the RIAA chose "piracy" to utilize the negative connotation of the word, even though infringing a copyright is nothing at all like raping and pillaging on the high seas. But at least in Napster's case, the word has a legitimate technical meaning that is actually related to how it's being used.
If someone took GPL code but violated the license, well, that would breach-of-contract and also copyright infringement -- both well-defined crimes but neither "stealing".
I don't think the RIAA goes far enough. I blame cassette tapes for
the 1979 oil crisis
the hostage crisis in Iran
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
and El Nino
You know, just because someone's moral compass points in a different direction than your own, doesn't imply that they don't have one. But then, people who can throw around phrases and judgments like that are generally terrified by the idea that someone might believe legitimately other than them, and so must tar everyone with a broad brush. What a sad world to inhabit.
For the record, I don't download anyway. So you can just close the reply you'd opened saying "You're just trying to justify your theft."
And, ironically, those automatons had been trained to fanatically follow trends by none other than... the marketing army called the RIAA.
I've seen this argument 4 times today. You know what the end result will be, if we relentlessly point out this disparity? $50 DVDs.
I assume that, from the mis-spelling of "knucklehead", you're being cute. But in case not: (from Merriam-Webster)
So, no, it really is "proofread". And it really is "may have", too.
Whippersnapper! You can have my GOTOs when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers!
The recording industry (and through them, the movie industry) has already lost this fight. They lost it around 1995 or 1996. Everything since then is just a King Canute maneuver. They've lost for the following, single reason: For more than six years -- 1.5 student "lifetimes" -- college students have been getting music for free and getting used to playing it where, when, and how they want. And their younger siblings have been watching them. Game over.
You're right. Most of them probably don't know or care about "Fair Use" rights or copyright law or the DMCA. But they know MP3. They know timeshifting and spaceshifting. They know what they like to do with their music. And they are, statistically, going to be a demographic the RIAA/MPAA want: For no one is discretionary income so high a ratio to total income as for 20-somethings. The *AAs desparately, desparately want to sink their hooks into this demographic and extract all the cash they can. Yet these people expect free music.
And it won't get better. Maybe the culture machine will drive people to buy the protected CDs. At least as likely, the teen set will say, "Screw this -- I want my MP3".
The corpse hasn't stopped moving yet, but no technological fix is going to breathe life back into the old music distribution model. And Holllywood knows it's next... why do you think they combined a crappy protection scheme with the draconian DMCA? Because they know (a) people can draw the line from copying music to copying movies and (b) only a massive legal campaign will have any hope of stopping that, by stigmatizing movie copying before it becomes socially acceptable.
But they are too late. People can draw the line. And people already accept movie copying... somewhat fringe now, but growing.
The buggy-whip makers hear the thunder of tomorrow and are scared. Rightfully so.
Because Palm took a universally-understood benchmark -- bit depth in colour -- and advertised an incorrect value. That's either incompetence or dishonesty. Then, when caught, they suddenly want to redefine the universally-accepted benchmark into something that is more palatable to them but incomprehensible to everyone else.
Both the original error/lie and the spin are designed to obfuscate and make it harder to make a rational, intelligent decision. This, to me, implies that even Palm feels it cannot compete on a level playing field... which is why Palm is off my list for my next handheld.
Well, "announcement" and "admission" are two different things. You can announce something unconsciously, through the actions you take. But you can only admit something through an act of will... indeed, the essence of admission is the standing apart and making that act of will. Here, Palm recognized that they used 12 bits, not 16 bits
My issue with Palm's behavior is this: They seem to be changing how they count colors -- falling back on this undefined "color combination" thing -- and they seem to be doing it in midstream without telling anyone. As far as I'm concerned that's tantamount to falsifying data.
So.... Junior posts to KaZaa, and Daddy's home computer is seized and torched? Oh, that's nice.
Only if the holder of the copyright insists on it. As far as I know -- and of course IANAL, so don't go to jail on this -- the government can't step in until there's someone with standing who claims actual damages.
So don't honk off Linus.
Maybe we can just replace the human Board with a little script that trundles the web automatically..
The top poster did say, "Why not get rid of DNS?" (A different argument, altogether.) but "Why not get rid of TLD?" Is there any longer -- was there in fact ever -- a reason for partitioning the namespace into
Ah, but blockquoth the site openISOC:
Seems pretty shady to me...
Hmmm, an alleged non-controversial infrastructure overseer which expanded its mandate, tried to assess an unauthorized tax, and then summarily and unilaterally dismantled its already-small semblance of democracy and accountability (not to mention illegally hid its internal workings to prevent criticism)... yeah, I think "head on a silver platter" is just about right.
So people only have birthday parties in groups of ten (so that the cake can be divided metrically)? Families have no fewer than ten kids? If the drugtsore is 1 km away, you can't go someplace halfway there until 9th grade? Fractions arise naturally in many situations, not just in math problems involving metric or imperial units.
As a US high school Physics teacher, I'm all for full metric conversion and abandonment of the imperial system. There are a lot of really strong reasons to do so. But this isn't one of them, in my eyes.
You've never done anything like "Hmmm, I have 1 GB of storage and 15 users... what quota should I set?"
You've never used an assignment statement in any programming language for anything more complex than indexing? (And by the way, even that usually has algebraic roots.)
Either your system is way unstable or the real issue is: You've never been taught to recognize algebra, but rather just to manipulate some random symbols.
That's my philosophy. One of the few joys of September, as teacher, is watching their reactions when I tell them, "All tests are open-notes." All the eyes light up in happiness and joy. Then, after about half a minute, a handful of kids cloud over, doubt on their face as they realize exactly what I can ask on an open-notes test. Suddenly those kids aren't quite as enthusiastic about the prospect...
Those always turn out to be the most able students...
Hear, hear! One of the bumper-sticker witticisms I throw at my Physics students is "Math is about numbers the way that Shakespeare is about letters." It's dumb but it makes them stop and think... what is math?
If the exercise is explicit, OK. If it's snuck in, then no. The value of math is that certain symbols, manipulated in certain ways, yield truth. You can't go mucking about with the convention willy-nilly. As I tell my students: Math and nature don't care what symbols you use, but they care that you use the same ones.
Well, I got a minor in math, a masters in physics, and aced all the way through tensor calculus, and I'm still scared stiff of fractions.
Well, if they pumped in a lot of energy...