Oscarfish wrote in about a fantastic "Wall Street Journal article at ZDNet reporting that Napster executives are in meetings with record label executives.
Finally. Instead of suing, they're trying to work out a reasonable solution (or so it seems). This should be interesting.
This here is a good one. KingOfBongo told us about the Economist article that suggests "...the music industry could easily build a closed commercial news distribution service superior to rogue freeware Napster."
A closed commercial news distribution service? Anyway, a "legal" version of Napster and of distributing MP3s would be great, but since the software would now be under the control of the RIAA et al. instead of Napster, I see a potential for price gouging or other similar abuses. For example, "Napster 2 is now out in stores! Works just like the original Napster, but uses your credit card to ensure legality! Only $59.99!" But who knows, maybe that won't happen. Time will tell...
Weather.com is replacing the SUN?!?!? What does this mean, that instead of having the sun's rays heat the earth, we will now have the output of a Linux box heating the earth?
I saw a program on PBS not 5 minutes ago where a Symantec spokesperson was saying that online privace is really basically the responsibility of the users:)
True, very true. Who else would have the responsibility? The government? Remember, the internet is an international entity, and as such can not logically be held to be under the domain of any one particular government. Sure, you can say that servers in the US are under the domain of the US government, but what about a server in, say, [small country of your choice]? It is inevitable that you will eventually run across a server that is not covered by any reasonable rules of privacy (or whatever other subject you want to discuss).
What this means is that even though governments may say that they have author-i-tah(tm) over what goes on in the servers based in their country, the final responsibiltiy rests with the end user.
Huh? The interesting part is the algorithm, not the file format. It would take all of five seconds (literally) to get it to do 320kbit/s or 320Mbit/s or 320Tbit/s.
As you said, huh?
The compression ratios that would be required to obtain 320 Tbit/s would require a very well written compression algorithm (which would probably need to be quite lossy to obtain anything even approaching the Tbit/s spectrum), not to mention a file that lends itself very well to compression. True, raw waveform data compresses well, but I'm talking about much much much tighter compression than that. In other words, it would have to have all kinds of digital noise removal performed first. The white noise would have to be changed to 00000000s. This alone would complicate the encoding process by an exponential amount.
One more thing...given the speed of the internal data busses of modern PCs (IDE busses can do several Gbps IIRC), Tbit/s wouldn't be possible anyway unless you had some cutting-edge, really expensive equipment. And forget streaming it...streaming a 320 Tbit/s file? Assuming that your equipment's internal structure could handle that speed, that would require 320 * 1024 = 327680 nodes of gigabit ethernet. Not within any reasonable price range. 320 kbit/s? Sure. 320 Mbit/s? Possibly. 320 Tbit/s? Given today's technology, no. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't be achievable one day.
That would be cool, but that reminds me of another point I've always wondered about... Most clock radios have a 9v battery for time backup. Works well. I've even seen a couple of VCRs with something like this. Why not all VCRs (people seem to have so much trouble programming them), or in this case, microwaves.
One small problem with this is with time zones. My VCR can auto-set its clock via XDS time data that is transmitted on certain channels, and while this has the potential to be a convenient feature, I often find myself having to adjust the clock one hour back. I live in CST and the VCR likes to set itself to EST. No, there isn't a way to tell it what time zone I'm in. Yes, this feature can be disabled, but for some reason it keeps reenabling itself.
Point is, a similar feature in microwaves/other household items can be handy, but can also be a pain.
Why shouldn't Windows come with a web browser? I mean, KDE has one built in doesn't it? I think the problem is when Microsoft forces HW vendors to include their software or not include anyone else's software.
True, KDE has a browser built in, but is it really a full-featured web browser? Not really. KFM was meant to be a file manager (hence the name K File Manager), and it just so happens that it doubles as a simple web browser. This is why most Linux distros also come with NS -- many users want something that is a little more than just a small program capable of browsing the web.
This is the kind of driving that I want to let to my car. It's on the 2000th drive home when you get lazy looking at the same thing day after day and your mind drifts just a little bit. Yes the driver still needs control, yes the driver is still the driver, but automation is perfect for those little erands around town.
This mind drift alone causes a large number of wrecks every day. It kills people, and it injures even more people. The "automation" that is referred to here would make that somewhat less likely. The computer would be doing the redundant work, thus eliminating the human error factor here, but the driver would still need to pay attention to what is going on and tell the computer what to do.
=================================
Current breakup plan probably wont help much
on
Microsoft Quickies
·
· Score: 1
What good will it do to split MS into an OS company and an applications company as the court is currently planning to do? The OS company will still have a monopoly.... =================================
By virtue of being/.'ed, the low powered potato server will now be overloaded. They did warn against too many accessing at once on the page, but my guess is that everyone at slashdot will go ahead and connect to the potato server anyway, overloading its small potato power capacity. Oh well...I thought it was pretty cool.
IIRC, potatoes can only put out a volt or two of electricity, and they only last for a few days before you have to replace them with fresh potatoes. At this rate, it could get very costly to run a web server (or pretty much anything else) off of potatoes. I remember having a potato-powered clock when I was younger, and while it was nifty to be able to run something like that off of a potato-powered chemical reaction, there's only so much it can do. Perhaps it would be a more economical idea to use *gasp* batteries or *gasp* AC?
You might want to rethink that brick house. You will actually get more of a dose from a brick house than a wood house, since the bricks themselves release radiation.
But the wood emits radiation as well. Every living or once-living thing (wood included) contains a fair amount of carbon. No, most of the naturally-occurring isotopes of carbon aren't radioactive, but carbon-14 is. How do you think they are able to do carbon dating? Carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioisotope of carbon with a half-life of 5715 years. Therefore, all living things are slightly radioactive. Therefore, wood is radioactive. Therefore, YOU are radioactive.
Say I make a home movie with this thing, and don't want others to be able to copy it. Will I be able to CSS encode it? I sure wouldn't want any non-encrypted DVDs of my stuff floating out there, because it would make it easier for the pirates. Sure, they'll spend $30-$45 for a blank DVD (plus a whole lot more for a DVD burner) just so they can pirate my videos, but they won't spend ~$15 just to buy another copy of the bloody thing. </sarcasm>
btw...
RIAA == recording industry MPAA == motion picture industry
The MPAA is responsible for all the crap surrounding CSS, not the RIAA.
If everybody honked their horn, all the time, when driving, nobody would be able to hear police sirens and move out of the way. So honking automobile horns should be made illegal.
The thing about spam that makes it different from situations like this is that spam consists of theft of resources. When you spam me, you are stealing my bandwidth and stealing my time (remember, "time is money). Therefore, spam is theft, plain and simple. But what is someone "stealing" from you when they honk their horn at you? That's right, nothing (well, they might be stealing some increased blood pressure and an obscene gesture or two, but that's beside the point).
More companies are claimed to have patents on mp3 technology (they are listed in the ISO documentations), but they are currently not enforcing them. What if they suddenly start to demand licenses for the use of their technology? Then it doesn't help that you have Fraunhofer/Thomson's permission, you also need another license to go on...
US law provides that if a company does not enforce its trademarks [I believe it's trademarks, could be something similar like copyrights] and knowingly allows violations to occur, the trademark is considered null and void. Would that apply here? True, patents and trademarks are not exactly the same thing, but they are similar enough that something like this _might_ be possible. So if the companies that claim to own patents on various aspects of the MP3 technology suddenly decide to "enforce" their patents, would they be legally able to do so?
Does anybody know if Bleem! has started to reverse engineer the Playstation2, hopefully for Bleem2!?
The DVD player in the PSX2 (earlier versions anyway) paid no attention to the region codes and thus could play DVDs from anywhere on the planet. Will this feature be ported too?
it seems to me that when the supreme court finally got around to racially intergrating public schools, the legalleese included the term "in due time," which some schools interperted as "years from now." these schools managed to keep intergration on the bottom of their to-do lists for a very long time.
True, very true. Some schools held off integration for so long that the Supreme Court had to issue a ruling that has been dubbed "Brown 2" (Brown v. Board being the original case; the exact case name for Brown 2 escapes me). In this ruling, the Court stated that schools were to proceed "with all deliberate speed." This ruling came after people realized that schools would take advantage of such legal loopholes as the one fsck! is describing here.
To tie this information on Brown 2 into what is being discussed here, this means that it is very possible that Microsoft will take their sweet time to do whatever they are instructed to do. Legal rulings tend to be worded very vaguely, and defendants (Southern schools in the case of BvB2, MS in this case) can and do take advantage of this.
I can just see it now...the RIAA will be griping about car MP3 players such as this because they "encourage piracy." Whatever. Sooner or later, the proliferation of MP3 devices like this will have to make them realize that MP3 is here to stay.
Metallica should sue the users engaged in piracy rather than the service itself (their lawyers have it half right).
And just how are they going to go after the hundreds of thousands of individuals that are pirating their music? Are they going to file 335000 lawsuits? That would be very wasteful. No, it's not Napster's fault that people are doing this (hence the reason why they have no business suing Napster), but it would be a logistics nightmare to go after even a small fraction of the individual users who are pirating their music. This is more than likely the main reason why they're going after Napster and not the users -- because of the "world's smallest violin" factor that would be involved.
But there should be a "purchase" option or a "rent to own" option that after 20 rentals ($30) licenses the game to a user permanently. Good idea, but I think $30 is a bit steep for a Genesis game nowadays. Maybe something in the $5 to $10 range would be more appropriate, considering that 1) Genesis games wouldn't go for that much in stores anyway, and 2) you wouldn't be paying for packaging, manuals, etc.; you'd just be paying the license fees.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't slackware derived from the old SLS distro?
Dunno, but Slackware does aim to be the most UNIX-like of the Linux distros.
=================================
Oscarfish wrote in about a fantastic "Wall Street Journal article at ZDNet reporting that Napster executives are in meetings with record label executives.
Finally. Instead of suing, they're trying to work out a reasonable solution (or so it seems). This should be interesting.
This here is a good one. KingOfBongo told us about the Economist article that suggests "...the music industry could easily build a closed commercial news distribution service superior to rogue freeware Napster."
A closed commercial news distribution service? Anyway, a "legal" version of Napster and of distributing MP3s would be great, but since the software would now be under the control of the RIAA et al. instead of Napster, I see a potential for price gouging or other similar abuses. For example, "Napster 2 is now out in stores! Works just like the original Napster, but uses your credit card to ensure legality! Only $59.99!" But who knows, maybe that won't happen. Time will tell...
=================================
Weather.com is replacing the SUN?!?!? What does this mean, that instead of having the sun's rays heat the earth, we will now have the output of a Linux box heating the earth?
(Just kidding, I know what a Sun box is).
=================================
I saw a program on PBS not 5 minutes ago where a Symantec spokesperson was saying that online privace is really basically the responsibility of the users :)
True, very true. Who else would have the responsibility? The government? Remember, the internet is an international entity, and as such can not logically be held to be under the domain of any one particular government. Sure, you can say that servers in the US are under the domain of the US government, but what about a server in, say, [small country of your choice]? It is inevitable that you will eventually run across a server that is not covered by any reasonable rules of privacy (or whatever other subject you want to discuss).
What this means is that even though governments may say that they have author-i-tah(tm) over what goes on in the servers based in their country, the final responsibiltiy rests with the end user.
=================================
Huh? The interesting part is the algorithm, not the file format. It would take all of five seconds (literally) to get it to do 320kbit/s or 320Mbit/s or 320Tbit/s.
As you said, huh?
The compression ratios that would be required to obtain 320 Tbit/s would require a very well written compression algorithm (which would probably need to be quite lossy to obtain anything even approaching the Tbit/s spectrum), not to mention a file that lends itself very well to compression. True, raw waveform data compresses well, but I'm talking about much much much tighter compression than that. In other words, it would have to have all kinds of digital noise removal performed first. The white noise would have to be changed to 00000000s. This alone would complicate the encoding process by an exponential amount.
One more thing...given the speed of the internal data busses of modern PCs (IDE busses can do several Gbps IIRC), Tbit/s wouldn't be possible anyway unless you had some cutting-edge, really expensive equipment. And forget streaming it...streaming a 320 Tbit/s file? Assuming that your equipment's internal structure could handle that speed, that would require 320 * 1024 = 327680 nodes of gigabit ethernet. Not within any reasonable price range. 320 kbit/s? Sure.
320 Mbit/s? Possibly.
320 Tbit/s? Given today's technology, no. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't be achievable one day.
=================================
That would be cool, but that reminds me of another point I've always wondered about... Most clock radios have a 9v battery for time backup. Works well. I've even seen a couple of VCRs with something like this. Why not all VCRs (people seem to have so much trouble programming them), or in this case, microwaves.
One small problem with this is with time zones. My VCR can auto-set its clock via XDS time data that is transmitted on certain channels, and while this has the potential to be a convenient feature, I often find myself having to adjust the clock one hour back. I live in CST and the VCR likes to set itself to EST. No, there isn't a way to tell it what time zone I'm in. Yes, this feature can be disabled, but for some reason it keeps reenabling itself.
Point is, a similar feature in microwaves/other household items can be handy, but can also be a pain.
=================================
Found a pic of our pal OOG THE CAVEMAN posting to Slashdot.
Yes, I know, this is OT; but it is intended to be funny. Please treat it as such.
=================================
Why shouldn't Windows come with a web browser? I mean, KDE has one built in doesn't it? I think the problem is when Microsoft forces HW vendors to include their software or not include anyone else's software.
True, KDE has a browser built in, but is it really a full-featured web browser? Not really. KFM was meant to be a file manager (hence the name K File Manager), and it just so happens that it doubles as a simple web browser. This is why most Linux distros also come with NS -- many users want something that is a little more than just a small program capable of browsing the web.
=================================
This is the kind of driving that I want to let to my car. It's on the 2000th drive home when you get lazy looking at the same thing day after day and your mind drifts just a little bit. Yes the driver still needs control, yes the driver is still the driver, but automation is perfect for those little erands around town.
This mind drift alone causes a large number of wrecks every day. It kills people, and it injures even more people. The "automation" that is referred to here would make that somewhat less likely. The computer would be doing the redundant work, thus eliminating the human error factor here, but the driver would still need to pay attention to what is going on and tell the computer what to do.
=================================
What good will it do to split MS into an OS company and an applications company as the court is currently planning to do? The OS company will still have a monopoly....
=================================
By virtue of being /.'ed, the low powered potato server will now be overloaded. They did warn against too many accessing at once on the page, but my guess is that everyone at slashdot will go ahead and connect to the potato server anyway, overloading its small potato power capacity. Oh well...I thought it was pretty cool.
IIRC, potatoes can only put out a volt or two of electricity, and they only last for a few days before you have to replace them with fresh potatoes. At this rate, it could get very costly to run a web server (or pretty much anything else) off of potatoes. I remember having a potato-powered clock when I was younger, and while it was nifty to be able to run something like that off of a potato-powered chemical reaction, there's only so much it can do. Perhaps it would be a more economical idea to use *gasp* batteries or *gasp* AC?
=================================
I hate Regis Philbin.
Is that your final answer?
=================================
Several issues/questions are raised by having gargantuan amounts of bandwidth as in this story:
1. Streaming video. Streaming TV. A good idea I think, but when you get people who start to stream movies, that will naturally piss off the MPAA.
2. MB overload. Even the most modern computer systems can only handle so much bandwidth...
3. Overki...never mind, there's no such thing as overkill when it comes to having too much bandwidth.
And last but not least....
4. $$$$$. Bandwidth is a Good Thing(tm), but it can get rather expensive.
=================================
And who dares to claim that the guys (verio.com) who got priority for their link to display on top have not paid google?
Does this mean that Microsoft (which is listed first in such searches as "more evil than Satan himself") has paid google advertising fees?
=================================
What the hell is an 'exothermic reaction'?
An exothermic reaction is one that emits energy in the form of heat. An endothermic reaction is one that absorbs heat energy.
=================================
You might want to rethink that brick house. You will actually get more of a dose from a brick house than a wood house, since the bricks themselves release radiation.
But the wood emits radiation as well. Every living or once-living thing (wood included) contains a fair amount of carbon. No, most of the naturally-occurring isotopes of carbon aren't radioactive, but carbon-14 is. How do you think they are able to do carbon dating? Carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioisotope of carbon with a half-life of 5715 years. Therefore, all living things are slightly radioactive. Therefore, wood is radioactive. Therefore, YOU are radioactive.
=================================
Say I make a home movie with this thing, and don't want others to be able to copy it. Will I be able to CSS encode it? I sure wouldn't want any non-encrypted DVDs of my stuff floating out there, because it would make it easier for the pirates. Sure, they'll spend $30-$45 for a blank DVD (plus a whole lot more for a DVD burner) just so they can pirate my videos, but they won't spend ~$15 just to buy another copy of the bloody thing.
</sarcasm>
btw...
RIAA == recording industry
MPAA == motion picture industry
The MPAA is responsible for all the crap surrounding CSS, not the RIAA.
=================================
If everybody honked their horn, all the time, when driving, nobody would be able to hear police sirens and move out of the way. So honking automobile horns should be made illegal.
The thing about spam that makes it different from situations like this is that spam consists of theft of resources. When you spam me, you are stealing my bandwidth and stealing my time (remember, "time is money). Therefore, spam is theft, plain and simple. But what is someone "stealing" from you when they honk their horn at you? That's right, nothing (well, they might be stealing some increased blood pressure and an obscene gesture or two, but that's beside the point).
Any questions?
=================================
More companies are claimed to have patents on mp3 technology (they are listed in the ISO documentations), but they are currently not enforcing them. What if they suddenly start to demand licenses for the use of their technology? Then it doesn't help that you have Fraunhofer/Thomson's permission, you also need another license to go on...
US law provides that if a company does not enforce its trademarks [I believe it's trademarks, could be something similar like copyrights] and knowingly allows violations to occur, the trademark is considered null and void. Would that apply here? True, patents and trademarks are not exactly the same thing, but they are similar enough that something like this _might_ be possible. So if the companies that claim to own patents on various aspects of the MP3 technology suddenly decide to "enforce" their patents, would they be legally able to do so?
=================================
Does anybody know if Bleem! has started to reverse engineer the Playstation2, hopefully for Bleem2!?
The DVD player in the PSX2 (earlier versions anyway) paid no attention to the region codes and thus could play DVDs from anywhere on the planet. Will this feature be ported too?
=================================
it seems to me that when the supreme court finally got around to racially intergrating public schools, the legalleese included the term "in due time," which some schools interperted as "years from now." these schools managed to keep intergration on the bottom of their to-do lists for a very long time.
True, very true. Some schools held off integration for so long that the Supreme Court had to issue a ruling that has been dubbed "Brown 2" (Brown v. Board being the original case; the exact case name for Brown 2 escapes me). In this ruling, the Court stated that schools were to proceed "with all deliberate speed." This ruling came after people realized that schools would take advantage of such legal loopholes as the one fsck! is describing here.
To tie this information on Brown 2 into what is being discussed here, this means that it is very possible that Microsoft will take their sweet time to do whatever they are instructed to do. Legal rulings tend to be worded very vaguely, and defendants (Southern schools in the case of BvB2, MS in this case) can and do take advantage of this.
=================================
According to t his NY Times article (free reg. required), Microsoft said the following:
Free reg not required. Use this link instead.
=================================
I can just see it now...the RIAA will be griping about car MP3 players such as this because they "encourage piracy." Whatever. Sooner or later, the proliferation of MP3 devices like this will have to make them realize that MP3 is here to stay.
=================================
Metallica should sue the users engaged in piracy rather than the service itself (their lawyers have it half right).
And just how are they going to go after the hundreds of thousands of individuals that are pirating their music? Are they going to file 335000 lawsuits? That would be very wasteful. No, it's not Napster's fault that people are doing this (hence the reason why they have no business suing Napster), but it would be a logistics nightmare to go after even a small fraction of the individual users who are pirating their music. This is more than likely the main reason why they're going after Napster and not the users -- because of the "world's smallest violin" factor that would be involved.
=================================
But there should be a "purchase" option or a "rent to own" option that after 20 rentals ($30) licenses the game to a user permanently.
Good idea, but I think $30 is a bit steep for a Genesis game nowadays. Maybe something in the $5 to $10 range would be more appropriate, considering that 1) Genesis games wouldn't go for that much in stores anyway, and 2) you wouldn't be paying for packaging, manuals, etc.; you'd just be paying the license fees.
=================================