I'm disgusted not only by what Blizzard has done, but by the fact that they feel the need to slander the bnetd project as well.
This is from the announcement on battle.net's main page:
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
This paragraph contains at least on case of spin-doctoring, as well as one outright lie:
"Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process." Technically, this is true, but it's a gross misstatement of the bnetd project's aims. This sentence implies that circumventing copy-protection was bnetd's primary purpose, when in fact it was not.
"...they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased." Again, making it sound as though that's the primary goal of the program, and ignoring the fact that the bnetd team asked Blizzard if they could implement CD-key checking.
"Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers." This is a lie, pure and simple. Blizzard will stll be able to protect leigimate users on battle.net from malicious ones; the existence of bnetd won't change that one bit. Bnetd poses no danger to batle.net users, and claiming that it does is scurrilous. Blizzard is fabricating this to make users think it's acting in their interests. It's not.
Record Labels' Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed
By NEIL STRAUSS
In their bitter battles against Napster and other free music downloading services, record company executives have wielded one moral argument that has placed their position beyond self-interest: the fans take the music without proper permission and don't pay the artists a dime.
Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent, according to the calculations of disgruntled managers and lawyers.
And, artists and their managers say, the labels, like Napster, aren't putting the music online with proper permission either.
"I'm not an opponent of artists' music being included in these services," said Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem, Aerosmith and TLC. "I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared."
Because the sites are new, no payments have been made yet, but the payment plan has so infuriated scores of best-selling pop acts, including No Doubt, the Dixie Chicks and Dr. Dre, that their lawyers have demanded their clients' music be removed from the sites, with some even sending cease-and-desist orders. Only in some cases have the major record companies complied.
Since Napster was born on college campuses in the late 1990's, peer-to- peer file sharing services have become the bane of the established music business, with, at their peak, some 60 million Napster users sharing nearly 40 million songs illicitly. Even after a federal district court shut Napster down, other free services proliferated, with Kazaa and Morpheus attracting an ever-growing base of users sharing not just music but movies and software as well.
In December, the music business responded with Pressplay and MusicNet, both pay-to-use subscription services where users can listen to or download a specified number of songs each month. Pressplay is a joint venture between Universal and Sony Music, and MusicNet teams BMG, EMI and AOL Time Warner (news/quote) with Real Networks.
"All of my clients had their attorneys advise the labels that if they did use my clients' music on Pressplay or MusicNet, they would be in breach of contract," said Simon Renshaw, who manages the Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige and others. "Some artists they took off, but some they didn't. It's becoming very obvious to me and my peers that we're becoming victims of what is a huge conspiracy."
Representatives of the five major record labels would not talk on the record about the payment system or their rights to use the music. But in comments not for attribution, several executives at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward.
In a letter responding to a lawyer who is trying to remove an artist from Pressplay, the head of business affairs for several Universal labels, Rand Hoffman, set out a company position. It is a view shared by other record executives, who say they are investing heavily to fight piracy and develop a fair compensation system for artists who are ungrateful.
"We are now spending tens of millions of dollars to help launch Pressplay in the hope that a legitimate response to the illegitimate services will provide an attractive alternative to consumers," Mr. Hoffman wrote in the letter. "Pressplay is committed to making music available on the Internet in a manner that is legal and that ensures that artists and publishers will be paid. This is truly a time for artists and record companies to be working together."
He added that it was "beyond logic" that artists would choose to leave their music off Pressplay and "effectively encourage the use of illegal services."
Though the two new services don't appear to be widely used, what worries artists and managers is that a precedent is being set, so that if the labels finally come up with a viable online music subscription service, they won't have to share a significant portion of the proceeds with artists and can claim that this is the way business has always been done.
The crux of the debate over artists' compensation involves whether they should get a licensing fee or a royalty payment.
When their music is used in movies, in commercials and on Internet sites, artists are paid a licensing fee, which, after payments to the producer and the publisher, is split 50-50 between artist and label. Although Pressplay and MusicNet license the music, the bands are not paid a licensing fee. Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold.
This means that the artist gets on average less than 15 percent instead of 50 percent. But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies -- expenses that obviously don't exist in the online world.
As one rock manager computes it, if a consumer buys the standard Gold Plan on Pressplay, paying $19.95 for 75 songs downloaded to a hard drive and 750 streamed so that they can be heard only once, an artist, after these deductions, gets $.0023 per song downloaded. To earn a penny, more than four songs must be downloaded.
"I did the math with several other managers and lawyers, and the labels and Pressplay get just under 91 percent after they've paid all the artists for all the downloads," said Jim Guerinot, who manages No Doubt, Offspring, Beck and Chris Cornell. Other managers come up with other figures that they say are even worse for the artists.
The artists' managers and lawyers say the record companies have not committed their payment system to writing.
Representatives for Pressplay and MusicNet said that the payment schedule was a decision made by the labels. "Pressplay licenses its content from record labels and in turn packages the music on our service," said Seth Oster, a spokesman for the company. "The compensation of artists takes place at the label level."
"Pressplay was developed as a legitimate service to make sure artists' rights were respected and artists were compensated," he added.
A spokeswoman for MusicNet said, "We are deeply committed to artists' rights and to ensuring that copyright holders are compensated."
Another irritant for the artists, several lawyers and managers say, is the distribution of the $170 million settlement from MP3.com, an Internet company that offered a music storage service in violation of copyright law.
The labels were to share that money with artists whose music was put online without authorization, but several artists' representatives said nothing had been distributed.
Spokesmen for Sony (news/quote ) and BMG said those companies were arranging to distribute the money. According to Warner Brothers and Universal Music, the money has been distributed, although it may not have been spelled out exactly in the accounting statements artists received. EMI did not call with a comment.
For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services.
The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. "And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free," she said.
Another complaint is that the labels are licensing music to the subscription services without seeking permission from the musicians.
"All of a sudden this thing launches," Mr. Guerinot said, "and myself and a lot of other managers and lawyers had never even been asked about it. We have coupling rights in our contract, which means they can't just take our music and put it wherever they please. When I try to talk to them, they say that they don't have to discuss this."
Mr. Guerinot said he sent cease- and-desist letters on behalf of Offspring, Beck and No Doubt. As a result, he said, music from No Doubt and Offspring was removed from Pressplay, but not the music of Beck.
One manager of million-selling acts, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "We've written them letters and put them on notice up front, as did most managers and lawyers, saying, `Don't put our artists' music up.' But they'll do it anyway. They're so arrogant. They're taking the position of: `We don't care. Let's just do it without asking.' They're ignoring their contracts. It's ridiculous. Obviously it will be litigated."
Some managers, however, said that they felt bullied into including their music on the services and were powerless to do anything about it. "Of course we're upset about it," said the manager of one male artist. "But he hasn't even turned in his record yet, so what leg do we really have to stand on?"
To try to avoid future protests, most major labels have added a clause to their standard recording contracts allowing the label to sell an act's songs on the Internet, including all subscription and pay-per-use services. It is very difficult, said Mr. Stiffelman, for a new band to have enough leverage to remove this clause from its contract.
After the colonists spend a few centuries or millenia traveling to another star system, their society will have adapted to life in space. They'll have become emotionally acclimated to living in a confined habitat surrounded by vacuum, and they'll have learned the technical skills necessary for survival there. Hell, they'll probably be agoraphobic.
So why bother going back down and living on a planet again? Any other star system will have enough comets, meteors, and other matter to provide plenty of resources for the colonists to live. Why go back down to a planet to live in a gravity well and have to deal with all those scary wide-open spaces?
Quite simply, the society that Brin sees us moving more towards is unamerican in its principles. If our government and society are to collapse and fail eventually, then let it do so because of a failure of the principles that it was founded on, not because of our collective unwillingness to stick to those principles.
What Brin espouses is that the actions of those in power be visible to everyone, and that they be held accountable for those actions. Frankly, I can't think of anything more American, or closer to the principles the U.S. was founded on.
It wasn't always this way. There used to be things called vision, ideals, morals, justice and great men who fought for them. America was founded by great men. Today it is run by corrupt, small-minded intellectual dwarfs.
Even a casual reading of U.S. History is enough to show that the United States has always been run by the folks with money and power. The railroad tycoons and oil barons of the 19th Century regularly enlisted government authority to break strikes and get good deals on land purchases. Even the Founding Fathers were mostly wealthy men, and one of their main motivations for seceding from Britain was creating a government closer to home and therefore easier to control. (At the time of the Revolutionary War, George Washington was the richest man in America.)
I'm not bringing this up to say "Well, things have always been this way, so we shouldn't bother trying to change them." Rather, I'm trying to point out that all the good things that were accomplished in the past were accomplished in spite of the greed and corruption at those times. Corruption has been beaten before, and we can do it again.
A) I can use one Windows CD(-Key) on multiple computers
No, the judgement doesn't reach that far. You're allowed to sell a copy of Windows that you don't want, but you're not allowed to install the same copy (with same CD-key) on multiple machines. (Unless you have a license from Microsoft that says you can.)
B) I can incorporate GPL into my for-sale products
Again, no; this decision doesn't reach that far. The author(s) of the code still hold copyright on it. The GPL is a license that actually gives you certain abilities (reproduction, modification, etc) in exchange for you obeying certain rules (e.g. placing derivative works under the GPL). If you choose to reject the GPL, you can do that, but then the work in question is still covered by the author's copyright, and you don't have the right to re-use the code (because you refused to accept the license).
Do these BSA guys realise what they are doing? Scaring off their customers? Being extremely arrogant and intrusive? What about that old adage of your customer being the king?
I guess _this_ is one of the best reasons for switching away from vendors that are members of the BSA: None of those license troubles with free software. None of those expensive audits to do (is that included in those MS TCO calculations?). None of those guilt assumptions. No insecurity.
I think one of the main reasons free software hasn't caught on is that most people get their software (beer-)free anyway, whether it's supposed to be free or not. After all, why install and learn, say, Mandrake+KDE+KOffice when you can just install someone else's copies of NT and MSOffice and not have to learn anything new?
So as a free/open-source supporter, I'm all in favor of the BSA cracking down on copyright violators. If they make sure everyone pays full price for their proprietary software, people will start giving serious consideration to the truly free alternatives.
But the Microsoft white paper and the Lineo/RedHat responses aren't targeted at consumers; they're targeted at developers of embedded systems. I would guess that the responses will reach most of the people the white paper did.
...other nonsense, like photoshopped Ringwraiths...
Is "photoshop" falling into common usage as a word meaning "to digitally modify [an image]" similar to the way "xerox" is now synonymous with "photocopy"? (Even if you're using, say, a Canon copier.)
Personally I'd rather hear them referred to as "gimped Ringwraiths".
TheFrood
Re:Another game I suggest
on
Uplink
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· Score: 2, Funny
It's called "Internet". My friend came over and installed it on my computer. It's amazing! It's like a virtual copy of our world in the computer. For example you type cnn.com, and you get plausible computer generated news, like if there were a mirror copy of the world inside the computer!
I tried that game. In my version, the World Trade Center got blown up by terrorists, starting a war in Afghanistan. Pretty far out, huh?
In the interests of brevity I'll leave out details, but suffice to say that linux is NOT the best choice.
If you really want to make your case, you're going to have to include those details. No offense intended, but without them your argument boils down "Linux on the desktop doesn't work; just trust me."
There are a number of economists, sociologists, and dynamic systems modelers that have observed 50- to 60-year cycles in economic output, political attitudes, birth rates, tecnological adaptation, and other indicators. The work dates back to the 1920s, when Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff predicted the Great Depression a decade in advance. (He wasn't popular with his communist colleagues, because he also predicted that the capitalist economies would rebound.)
Here's an article [wholeearthmag.com] from 1998 that gives a good overview of Kondratieff's work as well as more recent studies, and a website [1-888.com] with links to several others.
If these people are right, the good news is that things should go uphill over the next few decades.
So for those of you wondering why some of us always use "he" in the unknown or general case, it could very well be because we're speaking English, rather than engaging in an Orwellian campaign to change the way people think by modifying the language.
Language does affect the way people think and for that reason it should be a flexible thing, as long as the flexibility doesn't impede clear communication. If you want to say "he" for the general case, that's fine. If you want to say "she" (as teraflop user did), that's also fine. (And naturally, some idiot has modded him down as "offtopic".)
Regarding the female CS prof mentioned earlier in the thread, she would have been better served by making the programmer "female" and the user "male" or vice versa. That way, each pronoun refers unambiguously to one or the other.
People should stop complaining when organisations do what they are designed to do - namely make money (in the Patent Office's case, this means granting as many patents as possible). Don't bitch about the RIAA when they push for freedom-curtailing laws - THEY DON'T CARE - their job is to protect the interests of those who pay their salaries. Don't bitch when a for-profit corporation exploits dumb laws to increase their profit margins - THEY ARE DESIGNED TO DO THAT.
Every time a story about a company doing something irresponsible or evil gets posted on Slashdot, somebody invariably makes this argument. "Don't blame them! They're just trying to make a profit!" Apparently the idea is that anyone who's trying to make money is exempt from any moral responsibility whatsoever. I've never heard a good explanation for why this is supposed to be true. In fact I've never heard any explanation for it; some people just assume that the profit motive is enough to justify any misdeed, as long it stops short of breaking an actual law.
Abusing the system by filing frivolous patents is wrong. Yes, there should be a law against it, but the fact that there isn't doesn't mean that the people who do it shouldn't be criticized.
And you thought falling into a frozen lake was a health hazard before... just wait until you have an artificial heart run by your body heat.
Even after the EMTs pull you from the lake they couldn't restart your heart for at least half an hour until your body temperature increased. Bad news.
Good point. If my heart ever fails and they offer to put in a body-heat-powered heart, I'll just tell them "No thanks, I'd rather die now than risk that frozen-lake scenario."
David Brin, the science-fiction author, has long been a proponent of a transparent society, i.e., ubiquitous surveillance in public areas, with public access to all cameras. Law enforcement officials can watch everything you do out of doors, but you can also watch _them_. So the surveillance helps the police do their job, while at the same time providing a check against abuse of their power.
Brin's rationale is that at some point the police/spooks/Bill Gates will have the ability to monitor everything that goes on in public whether we like it or not. Privacy is a lost cause, so let's not worry about it, but rather focus on keeping our freedom.
Events this morning have made me start to think that this is the way to go.
To the best of my knowledge, Caldera's business model isn't really an "Open Source" model in the sense that, e.g., Red Hat's is. Red Hat makes money by giving away software and selling services. Caldera tries to make money by giving away free software (Linux) and selling proprietary stuff along with it.
Remember that Caldera CEO Ransom Love publicly said that he agrees with Craig Mundie's statement that "Open Source is bad for business". That's because even though they give away Linux, at the end of the day they still make their money by selling proprietery software, just like Microsoft.
The first person I heard put forth this idea was Vernor Vinge, the SF writer who also came up with the idea of the Singularity (the point where the pace of technological advance becomes so fast that it's impossible to predict what happens afterward.) He referred to the concept of linking human minds to computers as "Intelligence Amplification," abbreviated IA.
Vinge suggested that IA research could be spurred by having an annual chess tournament for human/computer teams. This doesn't even require cyborg-type implants; it could be started today, simply by having the human players use a terminal to access their computers. The idea would be to set up a system that harnesses the intuition/insight/nonlinear-thinking of the human and supplements it with the raw computing power of the machine (perhaps by letting the human "try out" various moves on the computer and having the computer project the likely future positions 10 or so moves ahead.) In theory, a human-computer team should be able to trounce any existing coputer program or any human playing alone.
TheFrood
New Theme!
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Netscape 6.1
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Netscape has released a new Toy Factory theme for Netscape 6.1. Big bright buttons!
TheFrood
Re:How much deeper does this hole get?
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Netscape 6.1
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The more Netscape keeps releasing beta code, the more users it's alienating. I know it's tough not having the latest and greatest 5.x (err 6.x) browser to market, but come on. By the time we get to 6.2 (i.e. Mozilla 1.0 stable), there will be five Netscape users left.
Basing 6.0 on Mozilla 0.6 (or whatever it was) was an incredibly stupid idea. But building 6.1 now off the Moz-0.9.2 source is the right thing to do. First, because Moz-0.9.2 is actually very stable -- the Mozilla folks are setting very high standards for Moz-1.0, and Moz-0.9.2 is already better then Netscape 4.x. Second, and more importantly, releasing 6.1 now gets 6.0 off the market and out of sight as soon as possible.
Even if 6.1 isn't a perfect browser yet, it at least gets rid of the abomination that is 6.0.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm disgusted not only by what Blizzard has done, but by the fact that they feel the need to slander the bnetd project as well.
This is from the announcement on battle.net's main page:
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
This paragraph contains at least on case of spin-doctoring, as well as one outright lie:
"Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process." Technically, this is true, but it's a gross misstatement of the bnetd project's aims. This sentence implies that circumventing copy-protection was bnetd's primary purpose, when in fact it was not.
"...they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased." Again, making it sound as though that's the primary goal of the program, and ignoring the fact that the bnetd team asked Blizzard if they could implement CD-key checking.
"Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers." This is a lie, pure and simple. Blizzard will stll be able to protect leigimate users on battle.net from malicious ones; the existence of bnetd won't change that one bit. Bnetd poses no danger to batle.net users, and claiming that it does is scurrilous. Blizzard is fabricating this to make users think it's acting in their interests. It's not.
TheFrood
My Karma is maxed out, so no, I'm not whoring.
Record Labels' Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed
By NEIL STRAUSS
In their bitter battles against Napster and other free music downloading services, record company executives have wielded one moral argument that has placed their position beyond self-interest: the fans take the music without proper permission and don't pay the artists a dime.
Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent, according to the calculations of disgruntled managers and lawyers.
And, artists and their managers say, the labels, like Napster, aren't putting the music online with proper permission either.
"I'm not an opponent of artists' music being included in these services," said Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem, Aerosmith and TLC. "I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared."
Because the sites are new, no payments have been made yet, but the payment plan has so infuriated scores of best-selling pop acts, including No Doubt, the Dixie Chicks and Dr. Dre, that their lawyers have demanded their clients' music be removed from the sites, with some even sending cease-and-desist orders. Only in some cases have the major record companies complied.
Since Napster was born on college campuses in the late 1990's, peer-to- peer file sharing services have become the bane of the established music business, with, at their peak, some 60 million Napster users sharing nearly 40 million songs illicitly. Even after a federal district court shut Napster down, other free services proliferated, with Kazaa and Morpheus attracting an ever-growing base of users sharing not just music but movies and software as well.
In December, the music business responded with Pressplay and MusicNet, both pay-to-use subscription services where users can listen to or download a specified number of songs each month. Pressplay is a joint venture between Universal and Sony Music, and MusicNet teams BMG, EMI and AOL Time Warner (news/quote) with Real Networks.
"All of my clients had their attorneys advise the labels that if they did use my clients' music on Pressplay or MusicNet, they would be in breach of contract," said Simon Renshaw, who manages the Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige and others. "Some artists they took off, but some they didn't. It's becoming very obvious to me and my peers that we're becoming victims of what is a huge conspiracy."
Representatives of the five major record labels would not talk on the record about the payment system or their rights to use the music. But in comments not for attribution, several executives at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward.
In a letter responding to a lawyer who is trying to remove an artist from Pressplay, the head of business affairs for several Universal labels, Rand Hoffman, set out a company position. It is a view shared by other record executives, who say they are investing heavily to fight piracy and develop a fair compensation system for artists who are ungrateful.
"We are now spending tens of millions of dollars to help launch Pressplay in the hope that a legitimate response to the illegitimate services will provide an attractive alternative to consumers," Mr. Hoffman wrote in the letter. "Pressplay is committed to making music available on the Internet in a manner that is legal and that ensures that artists and publishers will be paid. This is truly a time for artists and record companies to be working together."
He added that it was "beyond logic" that artists would choose to leave their music off Pressplay and "effectively encourage the use of illegal services."
Though the two new services don't appear to be widely used, what worries artists and managers is that a precedent is being set, so that if the labels finally come up with a viable online music subscription service, they won't have to share a significant portion of the proceeds with artists and can claim that this is the way business has always been done.
The crux of the debate over artists' compensation involves whether they should get a licensing fee or a royalty payment.
When their music is used in movies, in commercials and on Internet sites, artists are paid a licensing fee, which, after payments to the producer and the publisher, is split 50-50 between artist and label. Although Pressplay and MusicNet license the music, the bands are not paid a licensing fee. Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold.
This means that the artist gets on average less than 15 percent instead of 50 percent. But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies -- expenses that obviously don't exist in the online world.
As one rock manager computes it, if a consumer buys the standard Gold Plan on Pressplay, paying $19.95 for 75 songs downloaded to a hard drive and 750 streamed so that they can be heard only once, an artist, after these deductions, gets $.0023 per song downloaded. To earn a penny, more than four songs must be downloaded.
"I did the math with several other managers and lawyers, and the labels and Pressplay get just under 91 percent after they've paid all the artists for all the downloads," said Jim Guerinot, who manages No Doubt, Offspring, Beck and Chris Cornell. Other managers come up with other figures that they say are even worse for the artists.
The artists' managers and lawyers say the record companies have not committed their payment system to writing.
Representatives for Pressplay and MusicNet said that the payment schedule was a decision made by the labels. "Pressplay licenses its content from record labels and in turn packages the music on our service," said Seth Oster, a spokesman for the company. "The compensation of artists takes place at the label level."
"Pressplay was developed as a legitimate service to make sure artists' rights were respected and artists were compensated," he added.
A spokeswoman for MusicNet said, "We are deeply committed to artists' rights and to ensuring that copyright holders are compensated."
Another irritant for the artists, several lawyers and managers say, is the distribution of the $170 million settlement from MP3.com, an Internet company that offered a music storage service in violation of copyright law.
The labels were to share that money with artists whose music was put online without authorization, but several artists' representatives said nothing had been distributed.
Spokesmen for Sony (news/quote ) and BMG said those companies were arranging to distribute the money. According to Warner Brothers and Universal Music, the money has been distributed, although it may not have been spelled out exactly in the accounting statements artists received. EMI did not call with a comment.
For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services.
The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. "And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free," she said.
Another complaint is that the labels are licensing music to the subscription services without seeking permission from the musicians.
"All of a sudden this thing launches," Mr. Guerinot said, "and myself and a lot of other managers and lawyers had never even been asked about it. We have coupling rights in our contract, which means they can't just take our music and put it wherever they please. When I try to talk to them, they say that they don't have to discuss this."
Mr. Guerinot said he sent cease- and-desist letters on behalf of Offspring, Beck and No Doubt. As a result, he said, music from No Doubt and Offspring was removed from Pressplay, but not the music of Beck.
One manager of million-selling acts, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "We've written them letters and put them on notice up front, as did most managers and lawyers, saying, `Don't put our artists' music up.' But they'll do it anyway. They're so arrogant. They're taking the position of: `We don't care. Let's just do it without asking.' They're ignoring their contracts. It's ridiculous. Obviously it will be litigated."
Some managers, however, said that they felt bullied into including their music on the services and were powerless to do anything about it. "Of course we're upset about it," said the manager of one male artist. "But he hasn't even turned in his record yet, so what leg do we really have to stand on?"
To try to avoid future protests, most major labels have added a clause to their standard recording contracts allowing the label to sell an act's songs on the Internet, including all subscription and pay-per-use services. It is very difficult, said Mr. Stiffelman, for a new band to have enough leverage to remove this clause from its contract.
After the colonists spend a few centuries or millenia traveling to another star system, their society will have adapted to life in space. They'll have become emotionally acclimated to living in a confined habitat surrounded by vacuum, and they'll have learned the technical skills necessary for survival there. Hell, they'll probably be agoraphobic.
So why bother going back down and living on a planet again? Any other star system will have enough comets, meteors, and other matter to provide plenty of resources for the colonists to live. Why go back down to a planet to live in a gravity well and have to deal with all those scary wide-open spaces?
TheFrood
Quite simply, the society that Brin sees us moving more towards is unamerican in its principles. If our government and society are to collapse and fail eventually, then let it do so because of a failure of the principles that it was founded on, not because of our collective unwillingness to stick to those principles.
What Brin espouses is that the actions of those in power be visible to everyone, and that they be held accountable for those actions. Frankly, I can't think of anything more American, or closer to the principles the U.S. was founded on.
TheFrood
I agree with everything you say up to this point:
It wasn't always this way. There used to be things called vision, ideals, morals, justice and great men who fought for them. America was founded by great men. Today it is run by corrupt, small-minded intellectual dwarfs.
Even a casual reading of U.S. History is enough to show that the United States has always been run by the folks with money and power. The railroad tycoons and oil barons of the 19th Century regularly enlisted government authority to break strikes and get good deals on land purchases. Even the Founding Fathers were mostly wealthy men, and one of their main motivations for seceding from Britain was creating a government closer to home and therefore easier to control. (At the time of the Revolutionary War, George Washington was the richest man in America.)
I'm not bringing this up to say "Well, things have always been this way, so we shouldn't bother trying to change them." Rather, I'm trying to point out that all the good things that were accomplished in the past were accomplished in spite of the greed and corruption at those times. Corruption has been beaten before, and we can do it again.
TheFrood
Two overlapping graphs in the New York Times last April 1 (in an article called "Paperback Music") made the point vividly.
Unfortunately, April 1st is not the best date to be citing newspaper articles from.
TheFrood
So... if EULAs are un-enforceable, then...
A) I can use one Windows CD(-Key) on multiple computers
No, the judgement doesn't reach that far. You're allowed to sell a copy of Windows that you don't want, but you're not allowed to install the same copy (with same CD-key) on multiple machines. (Unless you have a license from Microsoft that says you can.)
B) I can incorporate GPL into my for-sale products
Again, no; this decision doesn't reach that far. The author(s) of the code still hold copyright on it. The GPL is a license that actually gives you certain abilities (reproduction, modification, etc) in exchange for you obeying certain rules (e.g. placing derivative works under the GPL). If you choose to reject the GPL, you can do that, but then the work in question is still covered by the author's copyright, and you don't have the right to re-use the code (because you refused to accept the license).
TheFrood
Warm fuzzy feelings don't put food in your stomach.
Uh, no, that's what the money from the grant is supposed to do while you're writing the software.
TheFrood
Do these BSA guys realise what they are doing? Scaring off their customers? Being extremely arrogant and intrusive? What about that old adage of your customer being the king?
I guess _this_ is one of the best reasons for switching away from vendors that are members of the BSA: None of those license troubles with free software. None of those expensive audits to do (is that included in those MS TCO calculations?). None of those guilt assumptions. No insecurity.
I think one of the main reasons free software hasn't caught on is that most people get their software (beer-)free anyway, whether it's supposed to be free or not. After all, why install and learn, say, Mandrake+KDE+KOffice when you can just install someone else's copies of NT and MSOffice and not have to learn anything new?
So as a free/open-source supporter, I'm all in favor of the BSA cracking down on copyright violators. If they make sure everyone pays full price for their proprietary software, people will start giving serious consideration to the truly free alternatives.
TheFrood
No, I don't believe that the profit motive is an excuse for rigging a poll. But I'm surprised that someone hasn't tried to make this argument yet.
TheFrood
...or does the picture at the start of the article make everyone else think of "Missile Command"?
TheFrood
But the Microsoft white paper and the Lineo/RedHat responses aren't targeted at consumers; they're targeted at developers of embedded systems. I would guess that the responses will reach most of the people the white paper did.
TheFrood
You mean Lord of the Rings was inspired by clustering software?
(Too easy, I know.)
TheFrood
Mod me down for being OT if you must, but...
...other nonsense, like photoshopped Ringwraiths...
Is "photoshop" falling into common usage as a word meaning "to digitally modify [an image]" similar to the way "xerox" is now synonymous with "photocopy"? (Even if you're using, say, a Canon copier.)
Personally I'd rather hear them referred to as "gimped Ringwraiths".
TheFrood
It's called "Internet". My friend came over and installed it on my computer. It's amazing! It's like a virtual copy of our world in the computer. For example you type cnn.com, and you get plausible computer generated news, like if there were a mirror copy of the world inside the computer!
I tried that game. In my version, the World Trade Center got blown up by terrorists, starting a war in Afghanistan. Pretty far out, huh?
TheFrood
If you really want to make your case, you're going to have to include those details. No offense intended, but without them your argument boils down "Linux on the desktop doesn't work; just trust me."
TheFrood
There are a number of economists, sociologists, and dynamic systems modelers that have observed 50- to 60-year cycles in economic output, political attitudes, birth rates, tecnological adaptation, and other indicators. The work dates back to the 1920s, when Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff predicted the Great Depression a decade in advance. (He wasn't popular with his communist colleagues, because he also predicted that the capitalist economies would rebound.)
Here's an article [wholeearthmag.com] from 1998 that gives a good overview of Kondratieff's work as well as more recent studies, and a website [1-888.com] with links to several others.
If these people are right, the good news is that things should go uphill over the next few decades.
TheFrood
So for those of you wondering why some of us always use "he" in the unknown or general case, it could very well be because we're speaking English, rather than engaging in an Orwellian campaign to change the way people think by modifying the language.
Language does affect the way people think and for that reason it should be a flexible thing, as long as the flexibility doesn't impede clear communication. If you want to say "he" for the general case, that's fine. If you want to say "she" (as teraflop user did), that's also fine. (And naturally, some idiot has modded him down as "offtopic".)
Regarding the female CS prof mentioned earlier in the thread, she would have been better served by making the programmer "female" and the user "male" or vice versa. That way, each pronoun refers unambiguously to one or the other.
TheFrood
People should stop complaining when organisations do what they are designed to do - namely make money (in the Patent Office's case, this means granting as many patents as possible). Don't bitch about the RIAA when they push for freedom-curtailing laws - THEY DON'T CARE - their job is to protect the interests of those who pay their salaries. Don't bitch when a for-profit corporation exploits dumb laws to increase their profit margins - THEY ARE DESIGNED TO DO THAT.
Every time a story about a company doing something irresponsible or evil gets posted on Slashdot, somebody invariably makes this argument. "Don't blame them! They're just trying to make a profit!" Apparently the idea is that anyone who's trying to make money is exempt from any moral responsibility whatsoever. I've never heard a good explanation for why this is supposed to be true. In fact I've never heard any explanation for it; some people just assume that the profit motive is enough to justify any misdeed, as long it stops short of breaking an actual law.
Abusing the system by filing frivolous patents is wrong. Yes, there should be a law against it, but the fact that there isn't doesn't mean that the people who do it shouldn't be criticized.
TheFrood
And you thought falling into a frozen lake was a health hazard before... just wait until you have an artificial heart run by your body heat.
Even after the EMTs pull you from the lake they couldn't restart your heart for at least half an hour until your body temperature increased. Bad news.
Good point. If my heart ever fails and they offer to put in a body-heat-powered heart, I'll just tell them "No thanks, I'd rather die now than risk that frozen-lake scenario."
TheFrood
David Brin, the science-fiction author, has long been a proponent of a transparent society, i.e., ubiquitous surveillance in public areas, with public access to all cameras. Law enforcement officials can watch everything you do out of doors, but you can also watch _them_. So the surveillance helps the police do their job, while at the same time providing a check against abuse of their power.
Brin's rationale is that at some point the police/spooks/Bill Gates will have the ability to monitor everything that goes on in public whether we like it or not. Privacy is a lost cause, so let's not worry about it, but rather focus on keeping our freedom.
Events this morning have made me start to think that this is the way to go.
TheFrood
To the best of my knowledge, Caldera's business model isn't really an "Open Source" model in the sense that, e.g., Red Hat's is. Red Hat makes money by giving away software and selling services. Caldera tries to make money by giving away free software (Linux) and selling proprietary stuff along with it.
Remember that Caldera CEO Ransom Love publicly said that he agrees with Craig Mundie's statement that "Open Source is bad for business". That's because even though they give away Linux, at the end of the day they still make their money by selling proprietery software, just like Microsoft.
Vinge suggested that IA research could be spurred by having an annual chess tournament for human/computer teams. This doesn't even require cyborg-type implants; it could be started today, simply by having the human players use a terminal to access their computers. The idea would be to set up a system that harnesses the intuition/insight/nonlinear-thinking of the human and supplements it with the raw computing power of the machine (perhaps by letting the human "try out" various moves on the computer and having the computer project the likely future positions 10 or so moves ahead.) In theory, a human-computer team should be able to trounce any existing coputer program or any human playing alone.
TheFrood
TheFrood
Basing 6.0 on Mozilla 0.6 (or whatever it was) was an incredibly stupid idea. But building 6.1 now off the Moz-0.9.2 source is the right thing to do. First, because Moz-0.9.2 is actually very stable -- the Mozilla folks are setting very high standards for Moz-1.0, and Moz-0.9.2 is already better then Netscape 4.x. Second, and more importantly, releasing 6.1 now gets 6.0 off the market and out of sight as soon as possible.
Even if 6.1 isn't a perfect browser yet, it at least gets rid of the abomination that is 6.0.
TheFrood