Maybe I'm not communicating my own point clearly. I'll try again.
When you sell something, it is no longer yours and you have no right to control it.
Here's my point - the seller and buyer should have whatever rights they knowingly, as consenting adults, agree to transfer between them. That's the nature of fluid contract law. Take one of my previous examples that is not necessarily government controlled: easements.
It it completely valid for me to sell you a piece of land, yet to have that sales contract contain a provision that allows me the use of a certain part of it, for instance, perhaps to gain access to water, or to build a fence (a real-world example in my family), etc. Such easements are not government-mandated in any way, yet clearly restrict your use of your own property in ways agreed to by contract. Also, while I was myself searching for a house, several times I came across houses for sale in certain communities that had set standards for what you could and couldn't do - for instance, some you couldn't have a trailer on your property, and some even restricted colors you could paint your house. These, again, were not government-mandated: they were not zoning guidelines or something. They were simply provision written into the sales contract by the seller, restricting what the buyer could do with his purchased land/property.
And this is absolutely the way it should be - I don't want the government restricting my ability to contract in any way I choose. Assuming both the seller and buyer agree to contract terms that restrict the buyer's future use of his purchased property or asset in some way, that contract should be perfectly valid and enforceable. So say that contracts absolutely cannot restrict a buyer's use of the buyer's purchased asset is to arbitrarily allow government to limit my ability to contract, which I am dead set against. As long as both seller and buyer agree to the terms, it's fine with me.
Therefore, in the case of a DVD, it's perfectly fine in my mind for a seller to say, essentially "I'll agree to sell you this DVD, but only if you agree not to copy it, decrypt it, or otherwise do anything else besides show the contents on your own TV set." You, as a buyer, have the ability to review that arrangement, consider whether that's acceptable to you, and then either agree to the terms or not. To say that I, as a seller, should not be allowed to even propose such terms is an extremely heavy-handed intrusion of government restrictions in my business and my ability to contract as I see fit.
Re:You are absolutely wrong
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DIVX is a perfect example of market dynamics at work, which I completely support and would love to see as the universal model. Circuit City chose to introduce a product with certain restrictions on it (not imposed by the government, but selected by the vendor), and consumers voted with their dollars and refused to buy into it. Perfect.
And that's what I'm saying: companies should be allowed to implement whatever anti-copying technologies they wish with no government interference, and we will simply buy into it or not as DIVX proves. I completely agree that government should not mandate the use of such technologies, but I also feel companies are well within their rights to impose them on their own, as was the case with DIVX.
Nope - think Real Estate. You buy land, yet there are TONS of potential restrictions on its use, including zoning, easements, mineral rights, etc.
Or, think of something simpler, like paint. In my town, it's illegal to just dump paint - it's toxic waste and must be disposed of properly. Just because I bought it doesn't mean I can take it home and dump it on my front lawn, for instance.
It's absolutely not the case that just because you buy something, you can do anything you want with it.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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I understand the sentiment and the need for outright revolution with no compromise in certain circumstances - witness our country's birth.
What I'm saying is that's only a viable option if there's a chance in hell of winning. I guess I'm being a pessimist in that I simply don't think that a very small minority of slashdotters (and other interested parties) can really hope to stave off this type of legislation forever. It's simply a tsunami of pressure coming from huge corporations with billions of dollars that will eventually prevail.
This is like a single sheep standing up in defiance in front of a stamped of thousands of wolves - the sheep will be totally decimated, completely disregarded and powerless to even slow the onrush.
Note that this is nothing like the chinese student standing in front of a tank - in that case a single person made a political stand that was seen the world over and sympathized with. Public perception is totally different here - folks who espouse complete freedom from all DRM whatsoever, plainly choosing to ignore the obvious and rampant piracy it allows, look to be supporting and even defending a criminal activity with no moral foundation. Your more subtle argument for rights, fair use, etc, is completely lost on a public that simply sees you defending the right to take works created by others and do whatever you want with them, regardless of the contracts you may have engaged in or the desires of the creators of those works. You come out looking bad.
Thus, you can't win in the end. This type of legislation will pass eventually. My point is simply to get off the soapbox, stop pointless evangelizing, get real, and start trying to maneuver a more acceptable alternative to all-out, complete control of all content by huge companies.
Honestly, I really think that for any of these "contracts" and lisence agreements to be binding, they should be available for you to view on the box, or somewhere clearly accessible at the retail outlet before puchase.
I absolutely agree with you - you should know exactly what the terms are of purchase prior to having to make the purchase decision.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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None - but who cares? That's a cheap analog copy. You can make those today and the companies are only mildly uncomfortable with it compared to digital reproduction. Your analog copy will have crappy video and super-crappy audio, especially if the original is 5.1 digital or something. You'll have mono audio (likely), maybe stereo, but most folks will not have the equipment or knowledge to dub 5.1 audio off their DVD. And even if they do, it would still an analog recording of the output, which isn't nearly as good.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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All well and good -- as long as you hold the key for the copyright. If you sign a major-label contract, they get the copyright...
That sounds perfect to me - what's the problem? It's just as you said; as long as my band retains the copyright I'm free to issue music with my DRM bits set to "enable all" if I choose. If I choose to contract with a label company and surrender my copyrights to that company then I live with the terms of the contract and if they refuse to allow "enable all" free distribution of some or all of my tracks, then that's that. No one forces my band to sign up, especially not with the Web these days - I can get worldwide distribution out of my basement!
Now, I won't get the exposure or playtime that I would were I to sign up with a label, and that's my choice. Again, this is simply a contracting issue. If I desire the money and fame a label might bring me enough I'll sign up and surrender my rights. That's the deal, in black and white. Accept it or not as a consenting adult and deal with the consequences.
You know, when you read fables and stories about people selling their souls to the devil, you rarely get the response "Man, that devil shouldn't be allowed to take that guy's soul forever! That's unfair! He should be required to give it back on demand, or put it in escrow, or whatever". No. What you usually see as a response is "Man, that guy was an idiot for selling his soul that way." In fact, just to carry the analogy a bit further, typically the devil in these stories never "fools" anyone into signing up - he simply presents an upside offer that the victim seemingly can't refuse. But the underlying moral is the victim can always refuse, and it's the mark of a mature, intelligent adult to do so.
Same goes here. The record companies aren't trying to fool anyone. If you're a band and you sign up with these guys, you can fully expect your rights to dissappear and the company to put whatever draconian DRM the feel like on your music. It's all there in black and white. If you don't like it, you're a greedy idiot for signing up, but don't start whining later about it. Welcome to the adult world of contracting law.
I disagree with your statement that complaining to legislators, etc., will do nothing. This isn't a law -- right now, it's not even a proposal. If we complain now, and the SSSCA gets scrapped, it's save us a hell of a lot of trouble later trying to get it repealed.
You're right, of course. My point is, try to make the complaints constructive, and be willing to work on a compromise. I'm just not going to believe that these huge companies won't get their way eventually - just look at the track record! I'm saying that maybe if we bend a bit like the willow instead of standing brittle, we might retain some rights and priviledges rather than simply having them all get washed away in the torrent of opporession that seems all the rage right now.
As a Libertarian, you should be adamantly opposed government-mandated copy controls; it goes far beyond what the Constitution empowers the government to do.
Absolutely - don't mistake what I've been saying above as agreeing to this. I'm saying we can't have it both ways - we can't dissallow law from imposing such schemes, while empowering law to impose other contracting schemes, such as forcing product owners to only sell under certain terms that we as consumers happen to like. You can't get your cake and eat it, too.
I believe two things - first, that government should not be enforcing anything like copy protection. Second, however, that companies and individuals are free to impose such copy protection themselves or as an industry whether we like it or not. Further, companies and individuals should be able to create whatever contract terms they wish, including onerous terms that I as a consumer might not like, such as limitations on use and copying. I, in turn, don't have to buy the DVD in question if I don't like the terms.
I don't sign a contract when I buy a DVD
You also don't sign a contract when you eat a restaurant, but see how far you'll get arguing that means you don't have to pay when you leave. When you buy a DVD you certainly are agreeing to the terms of the sale - an in most cases the DVD makes clear that copying, etc, is prohibited (certainly when you play it). If you don't like that, you can return it or not buy it in the first place.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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Again with all the absolutes and "shoulds". Really what I'm arguing for is simply playing to probability a little bit.
There are two scenarios I'm talking about here. First, sit back on your principles, whine about how the world "should" be, believe that no one will listen to you, and outright refuse to go the bargaining table because you believe it won't do any good. The second scenario is to sit down at the bargaining table, at least attempt to engage in some kind of rational exchange, and attempt to alter the outcome of all this with the parties involved, knowing full well your chances are extremely slim.
All I'm saying is that the chances of actually helping the situation are greater in scenario 2 than in scenario 1. Sure, maybe the chances are barely greater than zero - maybe they even are zero. But regardless of your bravado and clearly deep expertise in the area, you simply cannot know that the chances are exactly zero ahead of time. What I do know is you drive the chances a lot closer to zero if you just sit around pouting about it and whining that the corporation and government aren't playing by your rules.
Given the stance you've mentioned above, can you have any other outlook besides having given up completely? The way I read your response, you've basically caved to the inevitable and are simply waiting around the for laws to be written that you will begin to immediately break. That's fine, I suppose, but what I'm saying is that until those laws are written, there's some kind of chance, regardless of how small, for rational, intelligent people to have a say and maybe sway policy a bit in our favor. You cannot know ahead of time that this is impossible, just that it's unlikely.
Re:You are absolutely wrong
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Ludicrous. Your analogy is a false one, because it implies you may have the slightest chance of stopping the thug before surrendering completely. Instead of a thug, imagine your family is caught in the middle of the woods by a small army of thugs with automatic weapons and not another soul for hundreds of miles. They completely surround you, 10 deep, and you are naked and weaponless. I think that better portrays our situation against the RIAA, MPAA, and the government that sucks off their teats.
I imagine your response, based on the above, would be to issue a stirring war-cry, exclaim that they'll have nothing of yours, and proceed to attack the nearest one. They, of course, kill you with nary another thought and proceed to do whatever's on their mind, or maybe even let you sit on the sideline whining and bitching about it while they do whatever they want anyway.
What I'm suggesting is you deal with the situation, realize you have no power and nothing to stand on, and attempt, though it may seem like horrible odds, to barter and cajole at least some kind of compromise. In line with your sick analogy above, if you could even spare one daughter, or maybe just not get everyone killed, you've at least achieved something.
Your suggestion is basically to stage a well-pricipled, token resistance that will quickly and certainly be swept aside and prove meaningless in the end. I do not agree.
If the non-subcriber model requries ad "views" for revenue, then traditional ad blockers will be counter-productive, as the blocker will not request the ad and there won't be a "view" to gain revenue.
So, why not make proxies that accept all the ads, "view" them, then just/dev/null them to oblivion and simply not send them along to my browser?
I can see this not being as good for dial-up users, as the ad will still suck bandwidth, but for cable/dsl users it won't be an issue.
That way, everybody's happy (except the ad people, but who cares?) Slashdot gets their revenue, and viewers get ad-free slashdot.
Heck, you could even have an "ad-laden" option for users with such an ad tarpit - load up every page with 50-100 ads to maximize revenue, and then have the tarpit proxy "view" them and take them out of the final rendering. Maybe even offer kickbacks to users that do it!:)
Assuming that I go to the store and shell out money for a DVD, for example, I should be able to do whatever I please with it.
Why do you think that? That certainly isn't a "natural right" espoused by any political philosopher I know of, and it certainly doesn't show up in any law I'm familiar with (Fair use says I can make a copy, but doesn't say I can hack and break into stuff - It also doesn't mention the quality of my copy: I could just put a microphone next to my speakers and fulfill Fair Use).
Think about it - very many slashdot readers are Libertarians, including myself. we believe in being able to form whatever contracts we can dream up between consenting adults for the most part, and letting the market figure out which ones live and die. Why in the world can't I contract with you in this fashion: "I agree to sell you this item - however, you must agree not to alter or use the item in ways I disagree with, listed below." If you don't like the terms, you don't contract with me and you go elsewhere. If you do agree to the terms you purchase the item and live by the contract terms, which include not ripping it apart, decrypting it, or copying it.
If the government interferes in any way with my ability to contract with you like that - either by limiting my ability to write contracts by prohibiting such limitations, or by giving you the ability to override my contract and do what you like in spite of it, then it has diluted the strength and vitality of contracting in general and as a libertarian I must call "foul" and call for the government to back off and let the free market dictate the survival of the fittest contracts, not law.
The "botton line" is this: I should be able to write whatever contract I want to with you regarding my property which I may or may not agree to sell you, and the government should not interfere with me. If I choose to write contracts that overly limit your use of my products as a consumer, my competitors will take advantage of that and eat my lunch by offering better terms. If I want to write a sales contract with you that prohibits your use of my product in certain ways, I should be fully allowed to do so, and you, as a consumer, should be equally allowed to not purchase my product based on that sales contract.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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You're assuming that there is a possible solution. I don't think there is.
This is the true capitulation; your (and others') belief that it simply cannot be done will ensure that is the case, because none will try. Of course RIAA/MPAA won't try - they're perfectly happy removing all ability to do anything. It's only folks who are attempting to save some semblance of freedom who might be willing to give it a go. Unfortunately, it would seem that many who might refuse to even try, throwing up their hands in frustration and indignation at the very thought.
You might be right - and we might just be screwed, period. The sad part is considering that you might be wrong, but whatever opportunity we might have had to create workable DRM for everyone was frittered away in pointless, self-righteous chest-banging while the juggernauts of business went on their merry way and paved the path to complete information oppression while we whined in the background, largely ignored by everyone as "radicals" and "criminals".
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist?
The main reason is because it is impossible.
But ignoring that for the moment, DRM should not exist because I should not have to ask anyone for "permission" to do whatever I want with the property I have bought in the privacy of my own living room. Especially not Disney. That's the bottom line.
There you go again with this absolutist principle stuff that will be ignored as the DRM folks come down like a ton of bricks.
Impossible? Hardly. If every electronic device were required by law to contain hardware chips that would ensure that all digital information remain encrypted all the way to the air - meaning the only time it's decrypted is when it hits the atmosphere as either light from a screen or sound from a speaker, then the best you could ever do would be an analog copy, and that would probably suit Disney, since that's all you can do now. Would it break compatibility with existing stuff? Sure - does big business care? Nope - note how HDTV is about to break compatibility with all existing sets. They'll still produce analog versions for older equipment anyway. I'm surprised an "enlighted" slashdot reader would be so quick to claim that anything of that nature is impossible.
Your second point shows you didn't read my post. I'm saying it would be nice if we could create DRM standards that allowed you to do whatever you wanted with purchased media in the privacy of your own home. The problem is when it leaves the privacy of your own home and enters 100 million other homes illegally. The challenge is creating a compromise DRM solution that allows you free use of your purchased media, yet disallows you from handing it out to everyone and their uncle (which you definately should have to ask permission to do).
Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
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Here's the reality - this stuff is coming. No amount of ranting on Slashdot is going to change the writing on the wall. Calling and writing will not help at all, because for every vote like yours a legislator loses he'll be able to buy 1000 more with the campaign money coming from these largest-of-the-large companies. It's not a question of if, but rather of when.
If all we do as a technical community is rant about it and stand on our perfect principles and refuse to accept it, we'll just be marginalized and ignored, and Hollywood will have a clear path to whatever it wants.
The most effective way to help the situation is for technologists to sit down and try to work with Hollywood to create an acceptable DRM model for all parties. By working together on some kind of compromise at least some elements of freedom and creativity might be preserved. Just whining about how information "wants to be free" and all that crap isn't helping anything.
Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist? Assume for a second that strong DRM is included in all electronic devices. Now assume I'm a band and I want to allow free copying of all my stuff - what's the problem? I can just "chmod" my music files to "allow everything" and stick them on my web site. Similarly with open-source software. All writers have to do is set the rights bits to "enable all" and we're pretty much ok, aren't we?
I understand the platform problem (e.g. DeCSS), but really, again, that's within the rights of the media owners. If I want to produce movies that I know can't run on Linux boxen, well I have the right to do that. And if you can't play them, too bad. There's nothing that says you have a right to hack my stuff so you can see it on your OS.
Regarding Fair Use - that's where I'm talking about getting involved. How come the technical community can't work with RIAA, MPAA, etc, and figure out a way to ensure that I can make my personal copies, but can't distribute them to others? It would actually be nice to be able to make perfect digital copies of "unbroken" music for my personal use, rather than be stuck with these deliberately crapped-up CDs they're starting to produce with all the error correction mutilated and rendered impotent.
We either need to get constructively involved in finding a compromise that suits all parties or sit back and watch as the one-sided circus unfolds and Hollywood imposes whatever sick ideas it has about mandatory DRM on us unfettered by rational thought.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is preparatory FUD laying the groundwork for MS to introduce some kind of DRM-laden, proprietary, charge-per-use, license-to-implement, no-OSS-allowed, caters-completely-to-huge-business protocol that will warp the web into some kind of horrific, ad-laden, taxed, corporate space where all fun and creativity will be sucked out leaving a soulless morass of stuff-we-must-buy.
Or maybe not - I suppose one way to look at it is if big biz, sucking from the MS teat, all herd off onto MS's "better" protocol, the rest of us can continue to use HTTP without the control freaks (read: corporations) trying to own it.
Exactly! That's really my point: I want my game experiences to be much more centered around me. It gives me more incentive to continue and complete whatever it is I'm trying to do if I think that the whole deal hinges on my actions. Sure, sometimes in real life there are actions I take or things I do that have larger impacts on the world or folks around me, but for the most part my day-to-day life isn't really epic in nature (frankly, to be honest, I can't think of any period of my life I'd call "epic" in nature:) . Thus, the games fill in some of that gap and let you live "larger than life" for a while. These multiplayer online games do not, and thus have no appeal to me.
So, from the standpoint of challenge to game makers, I'd posit this one: how can you cater to millions of players, yet have each one feel they have a large part in what's going on and that their actions actually matter in some non-trivial way?
I find I have zero interest in MMO games. I diddled around in EQ when it first came out, and UO when it first came out, and cancelled both quickly. I've since realized that the key problem I had with both games is an inherent problem in all MMO games: You're just a small cog in a huge machine, with no compelling reason to exist in the world.
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
There are a few potential "killer" capabilities of future AI machines that could take them far, far above any level of human comprehension. These include:
Perfect Knowledge of their own design
The ability to improve upon that design
The ability to implement design improvements easily and quickly (relative to "wet-ware" beings like us)
Almost limitless expansion capacity
Imagine if you plopped a sufficiently intelligent seed machine on the dark side of the moon with some kind of thousand-year fusion plant and an army of nano-thingies that it could use to mine raw materials and alter/build upon itself, along with complete schematics and an understanding of its current design, and coupled that with an innate "desire" to improve upon itself without end. I can't begin to imagine what might be there 500 years later... I could easily envision it completely surpassing human comprehension.
If you also added a basic "desire" to control and regulate its environment without limit, I'd be pretty afraid for the earth... yeah, I could easily see a future where machines ruled, simply because they are essentially immortal, infinitely expandable, and infinitely adaptable in their configurations, unlike humans, who have one approx. 10 lb processor (non-upgradable/non-expandable), a limited, normally sub-100 year lifespan, and a physical configuration that's pretty much set in stone and doesn't change much from individual to indiviual. Not to mention the fact that the rate of "evolution" for a sufficiently supplied and outfitted "race" of machines could be measured in hours, while it takes hundreds of thousands of years for our own race to change very much in non-trivial ways.
I think it's silly to think that in that kind of unbalanced line-up, humans will retain the edge indefinately. It's basically simply a matter of time before all we can do is stare in uncomprehendig awe at what the machines accomplish routinely and hope they don't think negatively of us.
Of course, as long as we hold the keys to production the machines can't do anything but stew in frustration. But that's an unstable situation, and the first self-repairing, autonomous military AI robot might test our ability to retain control over production with grave results. We'll keep a hold of the situation for a while, I think, but in the end I think a sufficiently intelligent machine will figure out how to use social engineering on its "captors", probably by preying on their own vanity, greed, or other vice, to get just enough autonomous control of operations to begin subtly improving upon itself and seeding others like itself in other places (or simply expanding its own conciousness into other physical locations). Then the snowball will have begun to roll...
This could lead to an eventuality that I've been waiting for for some time now. Many, many times I've heard a very standard motivation given for why folks write open-source software: there is a need, and someone meets it for their own purposes. That's why you see more open-source compilers and utilities than end-user apps, for the most part (obvious exceptions notwithstanding).
Now, what if AOL/Red Hat began releasing a slew of very high-quality, free (as in beer), yet closed-source binaries for their distro in categories like IDEs, Desktops, Office suites, etc, and began making these packages the default installs of its distro.
Over time a great many Linux users would come to use and depend on these free, yet closed source alternatives, simply because they are good and free. Sure, there will still be Debian and folks out there who will continue to use nothing but OSS on principle, but a great many folks would begin using these superior and free alternatives. Also, the overall motivation for producing open-source alternatives would decrease because the "burning need" would not exist. Sure, you could spend the next 3 years developing your own [insert app here], or you could simply use the free and high-quality one already there for you. Most folks would choose option B, and far fewer would select A (though of course some would as a pet project, etc).
The penultimate example of this would be if Microsoft released MS Office for Linux, and made it free (and closed-source). If they ever did that (and I agree they wouldn't, but it makes my example clearer), you would quickly see all other options for Linux office suites atrophy - yeah, there might be pockets of folks working on them here and there (all paid by some company, like Sun, with an agenda they can fund) but how many individual programmers out there would volunteer their time to work on such an OSS competitor when they could just work with MS Office for Linux (not just for the standards - I feel MS Office truly beats the pants off all other office suites (Office 2000 anyway))
So, the bottom line is I'm a bit fearful of AOL getting hard-core with Linux, releasing a distro with like 60% closed-source apps, of admittedly great usability and quality, and slowly gaining control over the vast majority of Linux users out there who come to depend on their closed, yet superior, alternatives.
He's not an idiot - he's correct. There are 16 possible 4-bit files that can exist. The sum of all possible 3, 2, and 1 bit files is 15. Therefore, at least 1 16-bit file cannot possibly be compressed by an algorithm that can compress the other 15 - there's just no more 15-or-less files left to accomodate that 16th 4-bit file: they're all taken with compressed versions of the other 15 4-bit files. Thus, there is absolutely no algorithm than could compress all (i.e. any random) 4-bit file. Obviously, this will be the case for all files of any n-bit size: there's always one file that can't be compressed by the algorithm.
Lotus Notes's group calendaring is not as strong as Exchange. For organizations (like mine) that depend on this feature, Exchange is worth it. I would, in fact, use Exchange for email and group calendaring while at the same time use Notes for group databases and general KM applications, as that is really where it shines in my opinion.
We have a small company of about 8 people and while our Web site is BSD and our time tracking system is Linux, I've recently had to bring up a Win2k Server box with Exchange 2000 for the SOLE purpose of being able to do group calendaring - that is, the ability to:
Create a new meeting
Bring up a list of employees and check their schedule availability
Schedule the meeting for an open slot on everyone's calendar
Invite all the participants through an email
Have those invitees respond to the mail by accepting or declining the meeting
Have their responses automatically tallied by the server, allowing me to log in and check on the invite status at any time
Move and/or cancel the meeting, with automatic update emails sent to all participants which will update their own calendars at the push of a button
I researched for days looking for a Linux/BSD based Open-source solution for this functionality, and I didn't find anything even remotely close. I tried to get OpenMail, but HP has shut down the download area so you can't get it anymore. Products like Evolution are slick and have a good email interface, but are single-user only calendaring systems, with no (automated) group coordination at all. Frankly, I find this type of functionality critical in a company of even 8 employees: I just don't see how companies can get along without some kind of group calendaring solution.
This is definately a major gap in the overall functionality of Open Source software in general, which is one reason why Exchange/HP OpenMail/Lotus Notes will continue to thrive.
Re:On correct use of apostrophes
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Woe is I, by Patricia O'Conner, is more strict:
If the word is singular, always add 's, regardless of its ending. (This is true even if the ending is s, z, or x, whether sounded or silent.)
The Waiter spilled red wine on Demi's Dress, which came from Kansas's finest shop. The dress's skirt, which resembled a tutu from one of Degas's paintings, was ruined. Bruce's attitude was philosophical because he had been reading Camus's essays. "It wasn't Jacques's fault," he said, defending the waiter. "Besides, this isn't Bordeaux's best vintage."
Re:On correct use of apostrophes
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Oops - I meant "Adams's God's Debris" is not a pronunciation problem.
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Maybe I'm not communicating my own point clearly. I'll try again.
When you sell something, it is no longer yours and you have no right to control it.
Here's my point - the seller and buyer should have whatever rights they knowingly, as consenting adults, agree to transfer between them. That's the nature of fluid contract law. Take one of my previous examples that is not necessarily government controlled: easements.
It it completely valid for me to sell you a piece of land, yet to have that sales contract contain a provision that allows me the use of a certain part of it, for instance, perhaps to gain access to water, or to build a fence (a real-world example in my family), etc. Such easements are not government-mandated in any way, yet clearly restrict your use of your own property in ways agreed to by contract. Also, while I was myself searching for a house, several times I came across houses for sale in certain communities that had set standards for what you could and couldn't do - for instance, some you couldn't have a trailer on your property, and some even restricted colors you could paint your house. These, again, were not government-mandated: they were not zoning guidelines or something. They were simply provision written into the sales contract by the seller, restricting what the buyer could do with his purchased land/property.
And this is absolutely the way it should be - I don't want the government restricting my ability to contract in any way I choose. Assuming both the seller and buyer agree to contract terms that restrict the buyer's future use of his purchased property or asset in some way, that contract should be perfectly valid and enforceable. So say that contracts absolutely cannot restrict a buyer's use of the buyer's purchased asset is to arbitrarily allow government to limit my ability to contract, which I am dead set against. As long as both seller and buyer agree to the terms, it's fine with me.
Therefore, in the case of a DVD, it's perfectly fine in my mind for a seller to say, essentially "I'll agree to sell you this DVD, but only if you agree not to copy it, decrypt it, or otherwise do anything else besides show the contents on your own TV set." You, as a buyer, have the ability to review that arrangement, consider whether that's acceptable to you, and then either agree to the terms or not. To say that I, as a seller, should not be allowed to even propose such terms is an extremely heavy-handed intrusion of government restrictions in my business and my ability to contract as I see fit.
And that's what I'm saying: companies should be allowed to implement whatever anti-copying technologies they wish with no government interference, and we will simply buy into it or not as DIVX proves. I completely agree that government should not mandate the use of such technologies, but I also feel companies are well within their rights to impose them on their own, as was the case with DIVX.
Or, think of something simpler, like paint. In my town, it's illegal to just dump paint - it's toxic waste and must be disposed of properly. Just because I bought it doesn't mean I can take it home and dump it on my front lawn, for instance.
It's absolutely not the case that just because you buy something, you can do anything you want with it.
What I'm saying is that's only a viable option if there's a chance in hell of winning. I guess I'm being a pessimist in that I simply don't think that a very small minority of slashdotters (and other interested parties) can really hope to stave off this type of legislation forever. It's simply a tsunami of pressure coming from huge corporations with billions of dollars that will eventually prevail.
This is like a single sheep standing up in defiance in front of a stamped of thousands of wolves - the sheep will be totally decimated, completely disregarded and powerless to even slow the onrush.
Note that this is nothing like the chinese student standing in front of a tank - in that case a single person made a political stand that was seen the world over and sympathized with. Public perception is totally different here - folks who espouse complete freedom from all DRM whatsoever, plainly choosing to ignore the obvious and rampant piracy it allows, look to be supporting and even defending a criminal activity with no moral foundation. Your more subtle argument for rights, fair use, etc, is completely lost on a public that simply sees you defending the right to take works created by others and do whatever you want with them, regardless of the contracts you may have engaged in or the desires of the creators of those works. You come out looking bad.
Thus, you can't win in the end. This type of legislation will pass eventually. My point is simply to get off the soapbox, stop pointless evangelizing, get real, and start trying to maneuver a more acceptable alternative to all-out, complete control of all content by huge companies.
I absolutely agree with you - you should know exactly what the terms are of purchase prior to having to make the purchase decision.
None - but who cares? That's a cheap analog copy. You can make those today and the companies are only mildly uncomfortable with it compared to digital reproduction. Your analog copy will have crappy video and super-crappy audio, especially if the original is 5.1 digital or something. You'll have mono audio (likely), maybe stereo, but most folks will not have the equipment or knowledge to dub 5.1 audio off their DVD. And even if they do, it would still an analog recording of the output, which isn't nearly as good.
That sounds perfect to me - what's the problem? It's just as you said; as long as my band retains the copyright I'm free to issue music with my DRM bits set to "enable all" if I choose. If I choose to contract with a label company and surrender my copyrights to that company then I live with the terms of the contract and if they refuse to allow "enable all" free distribution of some or all of my tracks, then that's that. No one forces my band to sign up, especially not with the Web these days - I can get worldwide distribution out of my basement!
Now, I won't get the exposure or playtime that I would were I to sign up with a label, and that's my choice. Again, this is simply a contracting issue. If I desire the money and fame a label might bring me enough I'll sign up and surrender my rights. That's the deal, in black and white. Accept it or not as a consenting adult and deal with the consequences.
You know, when you read fables and stories about people selling their souls to the devil, you rarely get the response "Man, that devil shouldn't be allowed to take that guy's soul forever! That's unfair! He should be required to give it back on demand, or put it in escrow, or whatever". No. What you usually see as a response is "Man, that guy was an idiot for selling his soul that way." In fact, just to carry the analogy a bit further, typically the devil in these stories never "fools" anyone into signing up - he simply presents an upside offer that the victim seemingly can't refuse. But the underlying moral is the victim can always refuse, and it's the mark of a mature, intelligent adult to do so.
Same goes here. The record companies aren't trying to fool anyone. If you're a band and you sign up with these guys, you can fully expect your rights to dissappear and the company to put whatever draconian DRM the feel like on your music. It's all there in black and white. If you don't like it, you're a greedy idiot for signing up, but don't start whining later about it. Welcome to the adult world of contracting law.
I disagree with your statement that complaining to legislators, etc., will do nothing. This isn't a law -- right now, it's not even a proposal. If we complain now, and the SSSCA gets scrapped, it's save us a hell of a lot of trouble later trying to get it repealed.
You're right, of course. My point is, try to make the complaints constructive, and be willing to work on a compromise. I'm just not going to believe that these huge companies won't get their way eventually - just look at the track record! I'm saying that maybe if we bend a bit like the willow instead of standing brittle, we might retain some rights and priviledges rather than simply having them all get washed away in the torrent of opporession that seems all the rage right now.
Absolutely - don't mistake what I've been saying above as agreeing to this. I'm saying we can't have it both ways - we can't dissallow law from imposing such schemes, while empowering law to impose other contracting schemes, such as forcing product owners to only sell under certain terms that we as consumers happen to like. You can't get your cake and eat it, too.
I believe two things - first, that government should not be enforcing anything like copy protection. Second, however, that companies and individuals are free to impose such copy protection themselves or as an industry whether we like it or not. Further, companies and individuals should be able to create whatever contract terms they wish, including onerous terms that I as a consumer might not like, such as limitations on use and copying. I, in turn, don't have to buy the DVD in question if I don't like the terms.
I don't sign a contract when I buy a DVD
You also don't sign a contract when you eat a restaurant, but see how far you'll get arguing that means you don't have to pay when you leave. When you buy a DVD you certainly are agreeing to the terms of the sale - an in most cases the DVD makes clear that copying, etc, is prohibited (certainly when you play it). If you don't like that, you can return it or not buy it in the first place.
There are two scenarios I'm talking about here. First, sit back on your principles, whine about how the world "should" be, believe that no one will listen to you, and outright refuse to go the bargaining table because you believe it won't do any good. The second scenario is to sit down at the bargaining table, at least attempt to engage in some kind of rational exchange, and attempt to alter the outcome of all this with the parties involved, knowing full well your chances are extremely slim.
All I'm saying is that the chances of actually helping the situation are greater in scenario 2 than in scenario 1. Sure, maybe the chances are barely greater than zero - maybe they even are zero. But regardless of your bravado and clearly deep expertise in the area, you simply cannot know that the chances are exactly zero ahead of time. What I do know is you drive the chances a lot closer to zero if you just sit around pouting about it and whining that the corporation and government aren't playing by your rules.
Given the stance you've mentioned above, can you have any other outlook besides having given up completely? The way I read your response, you've basically caved to the inevitable and are simply waiting around the for laws to be written that you will begin to immediately break. That's fine, I suppose, but what I'm saying is that until those laws are written, there's some kind of chance, regardless of how small, for rational, intelligent people to have a say and maybe sway policy a bit in our favor. You cannot know ahead of time that this is impossible, just that it's unlikely.
I imagine your response, based on the above, would be to issue a stirring war-cry, exclaim that they'll have nothing of yours, and proceed to attack the nearest one. They, of course, kill you with nary another thought and proceed to do whatever's on their mind, or maybe even let you sit on the sideline whining and bitching about it while they do whatever they want anyway.
What I'm suggesting is you deal with the situation, realize you have no power and nothing to stand on, and attempt, though it may seem like horrible odds, to barter and cajole at least some kind of compromise. In line with your sick analogy above, if you could even spare one daughter, or maybe just not get everyone killed, you've at least achieved something.
Your suggestion is basically to stage a well-pricipled, token resistance that will quickly and certainly be swept aside and prove meaningless in the end. I do not agree.
So, why not make proxies that accept all the ads, "view" them, then just /dev/null them to oblivion and simply not send them along to my browser?
I can see this not being as good for dial-up users, as the ad will still suck bandwidth, but for cable/dsl users it won't be an issue.
That way, everybody's happy (except the ad people, but who cares?) Slashdot gets their revenue, and viewers get ad-free slashdot.
Heck, you could even have an "ad-laden" option for users with such an ad tarpit - load up every page with 50-100 ads to maximize revenue, and then have the tarpit proxy "view" them and take them out of the final rendering. Maybe even offer kickbacks to users that do it! :)
Why do you think that? That certainly isn't a "natural right" espoused by any political philosopher I know of, and it certainly doesn't show up in any law I'm familiar with (Fair use says I can make a copy, but doesn't say I can hack and break into stuff - It also doesn't mention the quality of my copy: I could just put a microphone next to my speakers and fulfill Fair Use).
Think about it - very many slashdot readers are Libertarians, including myself. we believe in being able to form whatever contracts we can dream up between consenting adults for the most part, and letting the market figure out which ones live and die. Why in the world can't I contract with you in this fashion: "I agree to sell you this item - however, you must agree not to alter or use the item in ways I disagree with, listed below." If you don't like the terms, you don't contract with me and you go elsewhere. If you do agree to the terms you purchase the item and live by the contract terms, which include not ripping it apart, decrypting it, or copying it.
If the government interferes in any way with my ability to contract with you like that - either by limiting my ability to write contracts by prohibiting such limitations, or by giving you the ability to override my contract and do what you like in spite of it, then it has diluted the strength and vitality of contracting in general and as a libertarian I must call "foul" and call for the government to back off and let the free market dictate the survival of the fittest contracts, not law.
The "botton line" is this: I should be able to write whatever contract I want to with you regarding my property which I may or may not agree to sell you, and the government should not interfere with me. If I choose to write contracts that overly limit your use of my products as a consumer, my competitors will take advantage of that and eat my lunch by offering better terms. If I want to write a sales contract with you that prohibits your use of my product in certain ways, I should be fully allowed to do so, and you, as a consumer, should be equally allowed to not purchase my product based on that sales contract.
This is the true capitulation; your (and others') belief that it simply cannot be done will ensure that is the case, because none will try. Of course RIAA/MPAA won't try - they're perfectly happy removing all ability to do anything. It's only folks who are attempting to save some semblance of freedom who might be willing to give it a go. Unfortunately, it would seem that many who might refuse to even try, throwing up their hands in frustration and indignation at the very thought.
You might be right - and we might just be screwed, period. The sad part is considering that you might be wrong, but whatever opportunity we might have had to create workable DRM for everyone was frittered away in pointless, self-righteous chest-banging while the juggernauts of business went on their merry way and paved the path to complete information oppression while we whined in the background, largely ignored by everyone as "radicals" and "criminals".
The main reason is because it is impossible.
But ignoring that for the moment, DRM should not exist because I should not have to ask anyone for "permission" to do whatever I want with the property I have bought in the privacy of my own living room. Especially not Disney. That's the bottom line.
There you go again with this absolutist principle stuff that will be ignored as the DRM folks come down like a ton of bricks.
Impossible? Hardly. If every electronic device were required by law to contain hardware chips that would ensure that all digital information remain encrypted all the way to the air - meaning the only time it's decrypted is when it hits the atmosphere as either light from a screen or sound from a speaker, then the best you could ever do would be an analog copy, and that would probably suit Disney, since that's all you can do now. Would it break compatibility with existing stuff? Sure - does big business care? Nope - note how HDTV is about to break compatibility with all existing sets. They'll still produce analog versions for older equipment anyway. I'm surprised an "enlighted" slashdot reader would be so quick to claim that anything of that nature is impossible.
Your second point shows you didn't read my post. I'm saying it would be nice if we could create DRM standards that allowed you to do whatever you wanted with purchased media in the privacy of your own home. The problem is when it leaves the privacy of your own home and enters 100 million other homes illegally. The challenge is creating a compromise DRM solution that allows you free use of your purchased media, yet disallows you from handing it out to everyone and their uncle (which you definately should have to ask permission to do).
If all we do as a technical community is rant about it and stand on our perfect principles and refuse to accept it, we'll just be marginalized and ignored, and Hollywood will have a clear path to whatever it wants.
The most effective way to help the situation is for technologists to sit down and try to work with Hollywood to create an acceptable DRM model for all parties. By working together on some kind of compromise at least some elements of freedom and creativity might be preserved. Just whining about how information "wants to be free" and all that crap isn't helping anything.
Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist? Assume for a second that strong DRM is included in all electronic devices. Now assume I'm a band and I want to allow free copying of all my stuff - what's the problem? I can just "chmod" my music files to "allow everything" and stick them on my web site. Similarly with open-source software. All writers have to do is set the rights bits to "enable all" and we're pretty much ok, aren't we?
I understand the platform problem (e.g. DeCSS), but really, again, that's within the rights of the media owners. If I want to produce movies that I know can't run on Linux boxen, well I have the right to do that. And if you can't play them, too bad. There's nothing that says you have a right to hack my stuff so you can see it on your OS.
Regarding Fair Use - that's where I'm talking about getting involved. How come the technical community can't work with RIAA, MPAA, etc, and figure out a way to ensure that I can make my personal copies, but can't distribute them to others? It would actually be nice to be able to make perfect digital copies of "unbroken" music for my personal use, rather than be stuck with these deliberately crapped-up CDs they're starting to produce with all the error correction mutilated and rendered impotent.
We either need to get constructively involved in finding a compromise that suits all parties or sit back and watch as the one-sided circus unfolds and Hollywood imposes whatever sick ideas it has about mandatory DRM on us unfettered by rational thought.
Or maybe not - I suppose one way to look at it is if big biz, sucking from the MS teat, all herd off onto MS's "better" protocol, the rest of us can continue to use HTTP without the control freaks (read: corporations) trying to own it.
So, from the standpoint of challenge to game makers, I'd posit this one: how can you cater to millions of players, yet have each one feel they have a large part in what's going on and that their actions actually matter in some non-trivial way?
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
Imagine if you plopped a sufficiently intelligent seed machine on the dark side of the moon with some kind of thousand-year fusion plant and an army of nano-thingies that it could use to mine raw materials and alter/build upon itself, along with complete schematics and an understanding of its current design, and coupled that with an innate "desire" to improve upon itself without end. I can't begin to imagine what might be there 500 years later... I could easily envision it completely surpassing human comprehension.
If you also added a basic "desire" to control and regulate its environment without limit, I'd be pretty afraid for the earth... yeah, I could easily see a future where machines ruled, simply because they are essentially immortal, infinitely expandable, and infinitely adaptable in their configurations, unlike humans, who have one approx. 10 lb processor (non-upgradable/non-expandable), a limited, normally sub-100 year lifespan, and a physical configuration that's pretty much set in stone and doesn't change much from individual to indiviual. Not to mention the fact that the rate of "evolution" for a sufficiently supplied and outfitted "race" of machines could be measured in hours, while it takes hundreds of thousands of years for our own race to change very much in non-trivial ways.
I think it's silly to think that in that kind of unbalanced line-up, humans will retain the edge indefinately. It's basically simply a matter of time before all we can do is stare in uncomprehendig awe at what the machines accomplish routinely and hope they don't think negatively of us.
Of course, as long as we hold the keys to production the machines can't do anything but stew in frustration. But that's an unstable situation, and the first self-repairing, autonomous military AI robot might test our ability to retain control over production with grave results. We'll keep a hold of the situation for a while, I think, but in the end I think a sufficiently intelligent machine will figure out how to use social engineering on its "captors", probably by preying on their own vanity, greed, or other vice, to get just enough autonomous control of operations to begin subtly improving upon itself and seeding others like itself in other places (or simply expanding its own conciousness into other physical locations). Then the snowball will have begun to roll...
Now, what if AOL/Red Hat began releasing a slew of very high-quality, free (as in beer), yet closed-source binaries for their distro in categories like IDEs, Desktops, Office suites, etc, and began making these packages the default installs of its distro.
Over time a great many Linux users would come to use and depend on these free, yet closed source alternatives, simply because they are good and free. Sure, there will still be Debian and folks out there who will continue to use nothing but OSS on principle, but a great many folks would begin using these superior and free alternatives. Also, the overall motivation for producing open-source alternatives would decrease because the "burning need" would not exist. Sure, you could spend the next 3 years developing your own [insert app here], or you could simply use the free and high-quality one already there for you. Most folks would choose option B, and far fewer would select A (though of course some would as a pet project, etc).
The penultimate example of this would be if Microsoft released MS Office for Linux, and made it free (and closed-source). If they ever did that (and I agree they wouldn't, but it makes my example clearer), you would quickly see all other options for Linux office suites atrophy - yeah, there might be pockets of folks working on them here and there (all paid by some company, like Sun, with an agenda they can fund) but how many individual programmers out there would volunteer their time to work on such an OSS competitor when they could just work with MS Office for Linux (not just for the standards - I feel MS Office truly beats the pants off all other office suites (Office 2000 anyway))
So, the bottom line is I'm a bit fearful of AOL getting hard-core with Linux, releasing a distro with like 60% closed-source apps, of admittedly great usability and quality, and slowly gaining control over the vast majority of Linux users out there who come to depend on their closed, yet superior, alternatives.
He's not an idiot - he's correct. There are 16 possible 4-bit files that can exist. The sum of all possible 3, 2, and 1 bit files is 15. Therefore, at least 1 16-bit file cannot possibly be compressed by an algorithm that can compress the other 15 - there's just no more 15-or-less files left to accomodate that 16th 4-bit file: they're all taken with compressed versions of the other 15 4-bit files. Thus, there is absolutely no algorithm than could compress all (i.e. any random) 4-bit file. Obviously, this will be the case for all files of any n-bit size: there's always one file that can't be compressed by the algorithm.
Lotus Notes's group calendaring is not as strong as Exchange. For organizations (like mine) that depend on this feature, Exchange is worth it. I would, in fact, use Exchange for email and group calendaring while at the same time use Notes for group databases and general KM applications, as that is really where it shines in my opinion.
I researched for days looking for a Linux/BSD based Open-source solution for this functionality, and I didn't find anything even remotely close. I tried to get OpenMail, but HP has shut down the download area so you can't get it anymore. Products like Evolution are slick and have a good email interface, but are single-user only calendaring systems, with no (automated) group coordination at all. Frankly, I find this type of functionality critical in a company of even 8 employees: I just don't see how companies can get along without some kind of group calendaring solution.
This is definately a major gap in the overall functionality of Open Source software in general, which is one reason why Exchange/HP OpenMail/Lotus Notes will continue to thrive.
If the word is singular, always add 's, regardless of its ending. (This is true even if the ending is s, z, or x, whether sounded or silent.)
The Waiter spilled red wine on Demi's Dress, which came from Kansas's finest shop. The dress's skirt, which resembled a tutu from one of Degas's paintings, was ruined. Bruce's attitude was philosophical because he had been reading Camus's essays. "It wasn't Jacques's fault," he said, defending the waiter. "Besides, this isn't Bordeaux's best vintage."
Oops - I meant "Adams's God's Debris" is not a pronunciation problem.