Due to lack of standard format, discs containing MP3 or WMA files...
Why would anyone other than Microsoft care that there's a standard for playing CDs of WMA files? Is the sound quality of WMA files that much better, or is Microsoft hoping someday to leavage their might to surplant MP3s with their own file format?
Just something I've been wondering since using Media Player on Windows 2000...
From what I gathered from the article/press releases, United Devices is pumping money into this deal and D.net supplies muscle/brains. I assumed United Devices was a bigger company as far as market cap goes. After all, the story was D.net Joins United Devices, not vice-versa.
But that's a moot point. Why is this "news for nerds". Big deal D.net has a deal with them. I'd rather hear about new projects D.net is working on, not every stupid little deal they make.
Unless this article was supposed to make us scream "D.net is doomed! They sold out!" In that case, I think the author and editors here should be shot. There's too much BS about this, that, and some other company and how insanely great/unbelievably evil they are and not enough news about *what* they are doing.
Or maybe I've been reading with comments set to -1 for too long.;)
Optimistic about what? Where did I flame on about D.net sucking ass and be doomed? It's great news for D.net; I'm glad they've teamed with Distributed Devices; it looks like a good deal for both sides...
...but so what? Lots of companies merge together and enter deals with each other everyday. What does this mean? D.net can sponsor larger projects? Nothing? The end of D.net? I'd rather hear about D.net cracking 256-bit encryption with 10,000 computers, 6 toasters, and a half loaf of bread than reading about a deal that may or may not have a bearing on D.net's business.
Sorry if I offended your sensiblities by calling D.net employees "cracker-jack". Obvivous, Cracker Jacks must disagree with you; frankly, I think they've been skimping on the peanuts over the years, but I still enjoy a box while watching the game at Fenway.
I think I'll hum the Cracker Jack jingle to myself now.
...a scheme to make money of a bunch of hyper, sugar-powered kids fails. The teachers can hardly keep Johnny's attention long enough to explain why OH- bonds with H+ because of its extra electron, nevermind a company trying to keep Johnny's attention long enough to explain why the cool kids will bond with him because of his extra cool electron-colored sneakers.
Granted, it's a very nice basket, but I wonder about any university's computer science department that blesses only one platform/language as the one for them. IMHO, I think their doing their students a bit of a disservice by not exposing them to a wider range of OSes. I thought an university would tend to try to give students (especially undergradates) as broad of range of experience as possible.
Blade Runner/Cyberpunk? Dark dismal and cold - run by mega corps... sounds more realistic as the MPAA and other big companies are (at least) beginning to run the government.
Beginning to? What alternative universe have you been in?
The government has always been influenced more by businesses than any other cause. From the Revolution, to the Civil War, to the Conntential Railroad, etc., the government has always been willing to do whatever is in the interest of "Big Business".
Heck, this is a trend in world history. Those who have more resources to influence the way the land is governed will tend to use those resources.
Especially when they have a stake in land being governed. In this case, businesses have more money and resources to lobby Congress to pass favorable laws than your average citizen does. Plain and simple.
*Cough, cough* I have *five* different Hendrix CDs with Purple Haze on it, include *two* greatests hits and the orignal album.
Jesus, Hendrix's family puts out *another* greatest hits release *every year*. Right in your local record store. In the record bin labeled Hendrix. Obvivously, there's *no way* to buy a copy of this song through "RIAA approved" ways. No sireey.
Here's a question, Sparky: how many tracks on Napster are still in print and how many are out of print. And why do people insist on storing music that they wouldn't buy in a record store?
Just because it is possible to take advantage of the system does not mean the system is at fault.
...because that's talking out of both sides of their mouths. MP3.com's defense is that their system allows only owners of CDs to listen to them online. They can't turn around and then say "Well, it's not the system's fault if the system doesn't work. People are taking advantage of it."
With that logic, why don't they put digital copies of every CD ever made online, and require people to click on a dialog agreeing that they will only listen to CDs they own?
please give me a detailed list of what's wrong with Load/Reload.
When "Load" came out, I was *very* disappointed with the album. It seemed Metallica had gone from crafting metal masterpieces ("...And Justice For All" and before) to writing more poppy rock with heavy metal influences (The Black Album) to writing pop rock with only a smattering of metal riffs to tip people off that Load is a Metallica album.
In retrospect, Load/Reload would be opuses for most other rock bands. But this is Metallica, and they're always going to have new work compared to "Master of Puppets" or "Ride the Lighting", and, although I think they're still a great rock band, they've stop doing serious metal. (Granted, they haven't done so since "...And Justice for All".)
What I think is really needed is a clear line between the legality of an action and the the tool that facilitates that action.
Maybe not the *legality* of that tool, but the legal responsibilities the maker takes upon him or herself by offering that tool. I mean, metal tubing that accelerates small objects with a hammer can be dangeous...you can poke an eye out with it! Should there be a net at the end of a gun barrel that catches projectiles? Close-source the specs of the barrel?
And note the word projectiles. What prevents mini-nerf bullets from being used? Nothing. Here's a question: Do gun manufactures make the bullets for their guns? If they don't make bullets, how can they be responsible for other people making bullets that just happen to work with their guns?
I guess my point is that I agree with you, and, also, I'm wondering what happens when it becomes unfestible/impossible for the maker of a tool to design it such that no illegal actions can occur with it?
DeCSS doesn't facilitate piracy - nor does it inhibit it.
Excellent point. But it highlights, in my mind, one of the main questions surrounding this case: Is code a purely "neutral" thing? This is like the gun debate, where one side claims "guns don't kill, people do", while the other side claims guns function to kill people, hence gun-manufacturers hold some responsibility to making guns "safe". (Well, safe from accidentally discharge.)
DeCSS just filters data. It's the *users* who are either playing their DVDs with it, or making pirated copies of DVD. How much responsiblity do the authors of DeCSS have to prevent piracy using their code? One could say DeCSS is, at worse, neutral, since it just filters, *but* one could say DeCSS is (sort of) malicious if one could show that DeCSS could prevent piracy, but doesn't.
I've always wondered about this statement. Is it that information wants to be free, or *people* want information to be free. The government and military (for the most part) do a crack job keeping information they want secret secret. Seems like information can be kept secret if *people* don't spread it. And information only a dead person knows is completely secure.;)
Speaking of information wanting to be free, doesn't the telephone effect become more pronounced as information becomes "freer" (that is, information becomes corrupted over time as it passes further and further along.) So, if information *wants* to be free, it *wants* to be misinformation?
It will be interesting to see how Gnutella developers deal with filtering SPAM, but, since Gnutella is Open Sourced, clever SPAMmers such be able to look at what type of filtering is
in place and come up with counter measures.
Seems like the anonimity of Gnutella is working against itself. It would be ironic (in the Alanis sense, I guess) if SPAMmers make Gnutella as effective at trafficking W@r3z as Usenet...
The fact that this attitude isn't really hypocritical either is less cut-and-dried than the first one, but here goes: In the case of both the music and the source code here, the 'right' being claimed is that "I have it, and I should be allowed to look at it as closely as I want, all the way down to source code". Since the 'bits' in the case of music amounts to the 'source code' of the mp3/ogg file, I see nothing hypocritical about this at all.
A little misfire there. The previous poster was making the arguement that slashdoters want music bits to have no type of intellectual property protection, while supporting copyrights for source code.
"Looking" at music bits isn't the problem; redistrubiting them (via binary or CD-R) is; much like redistrubiting code bits (via binary or CD-R) is. What makes one piracy and not the other?
I guess the previous poster believes most./ers say "Your code is my code, but my code isn't your code", unless they believe in the FSF ("Your code is my code and my code is your code"), or are my boss ("Your code is shit.");)
I agree with Marcus's contention that not every person who exposes security holes do so to help companies fix their software. (And creating tools to exploit these holes definitely don't help, much like making lock-picks don't help improve locking mechanisms.)
But who's fault are these holes in the first place? These holes tend to be serious bugs that need immediate attention to be fixed. True, having script kiddies exploit these holes left and right is less than desireable, but they should provide even more incentive to getting these holes patched.
Is Marcus arguing security holes shouldn't be announced to the general public because software companies have more important things to do than to fix bugs?
Before you start blaming the RIAA for ozone depletion, note that the judge said the following:
Napster is enjoined from copying or assisting or enabling or contributing to the copy or duplication of all copyrighted songs and musical compositions of which the plaintiffs[i.e. the RIAA]hold rights"
The fact that Napster would rather shudown completely than just remove RIAA points to how much they "promote" independent music.
So what you're saying, jamie, is Stephen should take all the risk of not making a profit and release the whole novel rather than risk part of the novel and withhold the rest if he doesn't make a reasonable profit?
Basically, Stephen's put his book in escrow; hoping that there's enough honest people who are willing to pay a buck per installment. Why should he swap the book for the money in escrow? So he can lose what little leverage he has to encourage someone to pay? So the M0r@1 31337 can throw his novel around the ethernet like some sort of football?
I like Stephen's plan. The big, bad publishing industry gets the Shaft*, Stephen can pay the mortage on his fourth house, and the reader pays less for the book. And if Stephen doesn't get his profits, he can take his book and go home. And you know what? If we don't like what we've read, we can take our money and go home, too.
Kudos to the copyright laws when they foster an environment wherein an artist can give birth to art without having to starve. Humbug to them when, as now, those copyright laws serve to hinder and impede artistic expression.
I half agree with you. Starving artists is a Bad Thing.
But how do copyright laws impede "artistic expression"? "Pede artistic expression" as in "prevent the artist from expressing his or her unique vision through their art" or "restricting the experiencing of such work" (like listening to music, looking at a painting, reading a book, etc.)? As far as I'm concerned, copyright laws do not prevent artists from creating their great works, and only restrict who can experience those works the way artists want them restricted.
BTW, please blockquote the whole quote and not the parts that suit you. The whole sentence indictated that there *are* other reasons to create art. And let's be frank. What benefits serve artists and society better? A swift pat on the artist's back for a job well done, while sending them back to their job at McDonald's to make ends meet? Or actually paying these artists in apprehication for their work, which just might encourage them to create more work?
Do you feel it's clearly wrong to obtain a copy of a novel without paying for it? I guess we should get to work shutting down/burning all these warez-mongering public libraries if so.
*walks around remains of staw man*. Nice work. Try this on for size.
Libraries have bought/have been given books with they loan to people to read. These books are legally theirs, and they can loan them out because that's covered under fair use.
If libraries made copies of books and gave them to people to read and keep, that would be a different story, wouldn't it?
(This doesn't say a library can't give someone a book; just that that book has to be an orginal copy the library owned)
Copyright and Patents protecting the process of innovation, and not the actual innovation itself.
Not to nick-pick, but protecting the process of innovation includes, *not* protecting the innovation, but protecting the *innovator* should that the innovator can reap the benefits of his/her innovation (i.e. $$$). Without this protection, there's no incentive to innovate (that involves making a reasonable profit from one's work), and, thus, protecting the process is a moot point.
Slashdot Mirror
Due to lack of standard format, discs containing MP3 or WMA files...
Why would anyone other than Microsoft care that there's a standard for playing CDs of WMA files? Is the sound quality of WMA files that much better, or is Microsoft hoping someday to leavage their might to surplant MP3s with their own file format?
Just something I've been wondering since using Media Player on Windows 2000...
George Lee
But that's a moot point. Why is this "news for nerds". Big deal D.net has a deal with them. I'd rather hear about new projects D.net is working on, not every stupid little deal they make.
Unless this article was supposed to make us scream "D.net is doomed! They sold out!" In that case, I think the author and editors here should be shot. There's too much BS about this, that, and some other company and how insanely great/unbelievably evil they are and not enough news about *what* they are doing.
Or maybe I've been reading with comments set to -1 for too long.
George Lee
...but so what? Lots of companies merge together and enter deals with each other everyday. What does this mean? D.net can sponsor larger projects? Nothing? The end of D.net? I'd rather hear about D.net cracking 256-bit encryption with 10,000 computers, 6 toasters, and a half loaf of bread than reading about a deal that may or may not have a bearing on D.net's business.
Sorry if I offended your sensiblities by calling D.net employees "cracker-jack". Obvivous, Cracker Jacks must disagree with you; frankly, I think they've been skimping on the peanuts over the years, but I still enjoy a box while watching the game at Fenway.
I think I'll hum the Cracker Jack jingle to myself now.
George Lee
George Lee
Excuse me while I "share" some Windows source code with my Russian friends.
George Lee
Granted, it's a very nice basket, but I wonder about any university's computer science department that blesses only one platform/language as the one for them. IMHO, I think their doing their students a bit of a disservice by not exposing them to a wider range of OSes. I thought an university would tend to try to give students (especially undergradates) as broad of range of experience as possible.
George Lee
...then it must be Mac OS X.
Coming to a box near you... (if you live near someone who owns a Macintosh, that is...<HOMER>DOH!</HOMER>) ;)
George Lee
Blade Runner/Cyberpunk? Dark dismal and cold - run by mega corps... sounds more realistic as the MPAA and other big companies are (at least) beginning to run the government.
Beginning to? What alternative universe have you been in?
The government has always been influenced more by businesses than any other cause. From the Revolution, to the Civil War, to the Conntential Railroad, etc., the government has always been willing to do whatever is in the interest of "Big Business".
Heck, this is a trend in world history. Those who have more resources to influence the way the land is governed will tend to use those resources. Especially when they have a stake in land being governed. In this case, businesses have more money and resources to lobby Congress to pass favorable laws than your average citizen does. Plain and simple.
George Lee
*Cough, cough* I have *five* different Hendrix CDs with Purple Haze on it, include *two* greatests hits and the orignal album.
Jesus, Hendrix's family puts out *another* greatest hits release *every year*. Right in your local record store. In the record bin labeled Hendrix. Obvivously, there's *no way* to buy a copy of this song through "RIAA approved" ways. No sireey.
Here's a question, Sparky: how many tracks on Napster are still in print and how many are out of print. And why do people insist on storing music that they wouldn't buy in a record store?
George Lee
Just because it is possible to take advantage of the system does not mean the system is at fault.
...because that's talking out of both sides of their mouths. MP3.com's defense is that their system allows only owners of CDs to listen to them online. They can't turn around and then say "Well, it's not the system's fault if the system doesn't work. People are taking advantage of it."
With that logic, why don't they put digital copies of every CD ever made online, and require people to click on a dialog agreeing that they will only listen to CDs they own?
George Lee
Ebay them!
A nice featured auction with a low starting bid, and no reserve, and Motorola might get enough money to start their own cell phone company. ;)
George Lee
Of course, you never passed the beer around recursively either. If you had, you might be just a wee bit more skeptical.
Of course, you never drank Bud, I guess. Piss goes in, piss goes out.
God, I miss my college days... ;)
George Lee
please give me a detailed list of what's wrong with Load/Reload.
When "Load" came out, I was *very* disappointed with the album. It seemed Metallica had gone from crafting metal masterpieces ("...And Justice For All" and before) to writing more poppy rock with heavy metal influences (The Black Album) to writing pop rock with only a smattering of metal riffs to tip people off that Load is a Metallica album.
In retrospect, Load/Reload would be opuses for most other rock bands. But this is Metallica, and they're always going to have new work compared to "Master of Puppets" or "Ride the Lighting", and, although I think they're still a great rock band, they've stop doing serious metal. (Granted, they haven't done so since "...And Justice for All".)
And that's what makes me sad
George Lee
What I think is really needed is a clear line between the legality of an action and the the tool that facilitates that action.
Maybe not the *legality* of that tool, but the legal responsibilities the maker takes upon him or herself by offering that tool. I mean, metal tubing that accelerates small objects with a hammer can be dangeous...you can poke an eye out with it! Should there be a net at the end of a gun barrel that catches projectiles? Close-source the specs of the barrel?
And note the word projectiles. What prevents mini-nerf bullets from being used? Nothing. Here's a question: Do gun manufactures make the bullets for their guns? If they don't make bullets, how can they be responsible for other people making bullets that just happen to work with their guns?
I guess my point is that I agree with you, and, also, I'm wondering what happens when it becomes unfestible/impossible for the maker of a tool to design it such that no illegal actions can occur with it?
George Lee
DeCSS doesn't facilitate piracy - nor does it inhibit it.
Excellent point. But it highlights, in my mind, one of the main questions surrounding this case: Is code a purely "neutral" thing? This is like the gun debate, where one side claims "guns don't kill, people do", while the other side claims guns function to kill people, hence gun-manufacturers hold some responsibility to making guns "safe". (Well, safe from accidentally discharge.)
DeCSS just filters data. It's the *users* who are either playing their DVDs with it, or making pirated copies of DVD. How much responsiblity do the authors of DeCSS have to prevent piracy using their code? One could say DeCSS is, at worse, neutral, since it just filters, *but* one could say DeCSS is (sort of) malicious if one could show that DeCSS could prevent piracy, but doesn't.
George Lee
I've always wondered about this statement. Is it that information wants to be free, or *people* want information to be free. The government and military (for the most part) do a crack job keeping information they want secret secret. Seems like information can be kept secret if *people* don't spread it. And information only a dead person knows is completely secure. ;)
Speaking of information wanting to be free, doesn't the telephone effect become more pronounced as information becomes "freer" (that is, information becomes corrupted over time as it passes further and further along.) So, if information *wants* to be free, it *wants* to be misinformation?
Boy, I've got to lay off the peace pipe. ;)
George Lee
It will be interesting to see how Gnutella developers deal with filtering SPAM, but, since Gnutella is Open Sourced, clever SPAMmers such be able to look at what type of filtering is in place and come up with counter measures.
Seems like the anonimity of Gnutella is working against itself. It would be ironic (in the Alanis sense, I guess) if SPAMmers make Gnutella as effective at trafficking W@r3z as Usenet...
George Lee
The fact that this attitude isn't really hypocritical either is less cut-and-dried than the first one, but here goes: In the case of both the music and the source code here, the 'right' being claimed is that "I have it, and I should be allowed to look at it as closely as I want, all the way down to source code". Since the 'bits' in the case of music amounts to the 'source code' of the mp3/ogg file, I see nothing hypocritical about this at all.
A little misfire there. The previous poster was making the arguement that slashdoters want music bits to have no type of intellectual property protection, while supporting copyrights for source code.
"Looking" at music bits isn't the problem; redistrubiting them (via binary or CD-R) is; much like redistrubiting code bits (via binary or CD-R) is. What makes one piracy and not the other?
I guess the previous poster believes most ./ers say "Your code is my code, but my code isn't your code", unless they believe in the FSF ("Your code is my code and my code is your code"), or are my boss ("Your code is shit.") ;)
George Lee
I agree with Marcus's contention that not every person who exposes security holes do so to help companies fix their software. (And creating tools to exploit these holes definitely don't help, much like making lock-picks don't help improve locking mechanisms.)
But who's fault are these holes in the first place? These holes tend to be serious bugs that need immediate attention to be fixed. True, having script kiddies exploit these holes left and right is less than desireable, but they should provide even more incentive to getting these holes patched.
Is Marcus arguing security holes shouldn't be announced to the general public because software companies have more important things to do than to fix bugs?
George Lee
Before you start blaming the RIAA for ozone depletion, note that the judge said the following:
Napster is enjoined from copying or assisting or enabling or contributing to the copy or duplication of all copyrighted songs and musical compositions of which the plaintiffs [i.e. the RIAA] hold rights"
The fact that Napster would rather shudown completely than just remove RIAA points to how much they "promote" independent music.
George Lee
So what you're saying, jamie, is Stephen should take all the risk of not making a profit and release the whole novel rather than risk part of the novel and withhold the rest if he doesn't make a reasonable profit?
Basically, Stephen's put his book in escrow; hoping that there's enough honest people who are willing to pay a buck per installment. Why should he swap the book for the money in escrow? So he can lose what little leverage he has to encourage someone to pay? So the M0r@1 31337 can throw his novel around the ethernet like some sort of football?
I like Stephen's plan. The big, bad publishing industry gets the Shaft*, Stephen can pay the mortage on his fourth house, and the reader pays less for the book. And if Stephen doesn't get his profits, he can take his book and go home. And you know what? If we don't like what we've read, we can take our money and go home, too.
* Right on!
George Lee
Kudos to the copyright laws when they foster an environment wherein an artist can give birth to art without having to starve. Humbug to them when, as now, those copyright laws serve to hinder and impede artistic expression.
I half agree with you. Starving artists is a Bad Thing.
But how do copyright laws impede "artistic expression"? "Pede artistic expression" as in "prevent the artist from expressing his or her unique vision through their art" or "restricting the experiencing of such work" (like listening to music, looking at a painting, reading a book, etc.)? As far as I'm concerned, copyright laws do not prevent artists from creating their great works, and only restrict who can experience those works the way artists want them restricted.
BTW, please blockquote the whole quote and not the parts that suit you. The whole sentence indictated that there *are* other reasons to create art. And let's be frank. What benefits serve artists and society better? A swift pat on the artist's back for a job well done, while sending them back to their job at McDonald's to make ends meet? Or actually paying these artists in apprehication for their work, which just might encourage them to create more work?
George Lee
Do you feel it's clearly wrong to obtain a copy of a novel without paying for it? I guess we should get to work shutting down/burning all these warez-mongering public libraries if so.
*walks around remains of staw man*. Nice work. Try this on for size.
Libraries have bought/have been given books with they loan to people to read. These books are legally theirs, and they can loan them out because that's covered under fair use.
If libraries made copies of books and gave them to people to read and keep, that would be a different story, wouldn't it?
(This doesn't say a library can't give someone a book; just that that book has to be an orginal copy the library owned)
George Lee
Copyright and Patents protecting the process of innovation, and not the actual innovation itself.
Not to nick-pick, but protecting the process of innovation includes, *not* protecting the innovation, but protecting the *innovator* should that the innovator can reap the benefits of his/her innovation (i.e. $$$). Without this protection, there's no incentive to innovate (that involves making a reasonable profit from one's work), and, thus, protecting the process is a moot point.
George Lee
Licence? We Mac programmers need no stinkin' licences to distribute programs.
Did Apple *ever* require that?
George Lee