It's an al Qaeda memo that was originally in Arabic. This was the transliterated version.
Re:Not possible to take all threats seriously
on
Saving Lives with Design
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The problem is, that there are soooooo many theats that its impossible to take all of them seriously.
That would make sense if this was the first they had ever heard of bin Ladin. By the time of this memo, he had been openly at war with the U.S. for over five years, and had been slaughtering people in ever-more spectacular attacks designed for maximum civilian damage for even longer. He had demonstrated his deadliness and determination to destroy American interests around the world; they goddamn better have taken a memo like this seriously. I don't give a shit what font it is in, this is an important memo. That they missed it -- and ignored the bin Laden threat completely during most of 2001 -- is not excusable.
How the hell can you use an ipod to create "electronic flash cards"? Maybe that's the secret extra port on the ipod that slashdot reported a few months back.
I think the benefits professors are seeing from the iPods are actually coming from the reality distortion field that comes free with every unit.
and not just because slashdotters don't have girlfriends. I teach at a university too, and I think your imaginary girlfriend is wrong. I mean, sure, perhaps you should be able to do these things, but the fact is if you did that you would be violating copyright, and a professor could sue you for infringement.
This is a false dichotomy with no basis in law. There is no distinction between "creative work" and "free and open speech" in any legal sense. A lecture is both of these things, and the lecturer owns the copyright to the work he or she produces.
So if you pay for a ticket to a movie you can bring in a cam and record it to watch it at home? I think the MPAA would have an argument with you there.
Well you could argue that for all those thousands of years the technology to mass produce perfect duplicates simply didn't exist. So despite the fact that I agree with you, the logic isn't really sound.
That's true but it has nothing to do with the soundness of my logic. You're saying that technology changed the playing field as far as art and commerce goes. I agree. For the last hundred years, the technology of p2p didn't exist. Now it does. Technology, once again, has changed the playing field as far as art and commerce goes. So roll with the punches.
Yes, yes, of course, and the hash-spoofers won't be able to stand in the way of the anti-hash-spoofer techniques that will be developed to respond to this. My point is that we might all be better off actually focusing intellectual energy on the potential benefits of the new technology rather than on developing countermeasures and counter-counter-measures. I can't believe, for example, that it's been seven years since Napster and we still do not have an easily searchable peer to peer network that functions as an archive of otherwise difficult to find audiovisual content. And no I'm not just talking about copyrighted content but certainly that is a large part of it -- old, out of print blues albums, speeches, obscure classical recordings, etc. There is a lot of content that I used to be able to easily find on Napster that I would have gladly paid for if I could find it in a record store. Peer to peer is, in my mind, a tremendous advancement in human knowledge, and people can't pursue it in an open and direct manner because they'll get sued.
Of course you miss my point entirely, but that's ok - I think I agree with your conclusion -- the RIAA/MPAA fight is not worthwhile but I too can see why they would try. But nobody is breaking down their house -- unless by "house" you mean "theoretical profit based on faulty assumptions about the market and the available technology." Your house already exists, so breaking it down would legitimately be taking something from you. Whereas the profits the industry claims to be losing are theoretical at best, and are based on a model of economic and technological change that is completely irrational. Therein lies the problem. The copyright issues, as I said, will work themselves out -- people will always find ways to make a living by producing culture, which is as it should be.
this is a lot better solution than having to sue warez websites, or the users who illegally trade movies.
An even better solution is to stop standing in the way of advances in technology on the basis of pure greed. As I noted before, humanity survived without a multimillion dollar entertainment industry; we will manage without one if need be. The greediness of the *AA companies is no excuse for attempting to cripple the use of new technologies - whether you're talking about corrupting files that you consider illegal or whether you're talking about suing people you consider pirates. It is not the role of law to protect the business model of a few companies.
If the copyright issues were not present here and someone built a program that did something like this, they would be universally reviled as a malicious hacker. Hey! Here's a program that creates phony web pages with false information masquerading as legitimate pages! Here's one that copies Excel spreadsheets on the web and subtly pollutes the database with phony information, then stores multiple copies around with the same name! This handy tool attaches to a photocopy machine and randomly scrambles the words on the page you are photocopying!!
P2P is a technology. Yes it can be used for copyright violations, just like a photocopy machine or tape recorder. But it also has amazing possibilities in terms of creating a universal organic archive. Crippling like this -- and through using lawsuits -- is an unnecessary attack on a system in its infancy.
The copyright issues will work themselves out -- until the 20th century human art and ingenuity survived for thousands of years without the ability to make millions selling recorded music and video. If p2p has a major effect on the entertainment industry's ability to profit (and I'm still not convinced that it really will), human art and culture will survive. And people will continue to find ways to make a living creating art.
I was under the impression that when Stephen King writes a novel, it is just as much copyrighted in Arial as in Times New Roman. Not only that, but a movie based on the book is also part of his IP, and he can sue if someone should make a movie based on his book without his permission.
That's correct - that's one reason I think all this is FUD. That part of my post was an attempt to speculate as to why a font owner might think differently.
Copyright does not cover the author's idea; what it covers is the expression of the idea. So what would theoretically be derivative is the work as produced using the font -- the exact expression of the idea as printed on the page (or on the screen) using the "original" work, which is the font. I suspect this involves imagining a word processed document as a visual work of art rather than as text with meaning.
In any case, this is all ridiculous speculation, and the association with the GPL is pure FUD. The GPL is less restrictive than proprietary licenses or than ordinary copyright law. It allows redistribution of works without the "original" author's permission or knowledge. All it requires is redistribution of the code (presumably, the words themselves?) Whereas under ordinary copyright law, you simply cannot redistribute copyrighted work without permission. So if you use proprietary fonts, you should ask Adobe if it is ok to turn in your homework (or whatever). It's all bullshit. If the story is true, then the situation is even worse for proprietary fonts than for GPL.
Thankfully there is about zero chance that any font author is going to try to claim ownership of documents produced by their font, and if they did, everyone would simply stop using that particular font.
The GPL is in fact less restrictive than normal copyright law. By this logic, it seems that all documents that use proprietary fonts would not be allowed to be redistributed at all. GPL is not the issue at all; the only issue is messed-up IP law surrounding fonts and a hypothetical scenario dreamed up by someone with too much imagination. As the parent to this post points out, it is highly unlikely that any actual font author wants to use his or her ownership of a font to prevent users from distributing documents using that font. This entire story is pure FUD.
and someone slap the grandparent with a trout. I'm sick of that rhetoric. Yes you're right (some) criminals have ignored the rights of others, and perhaps they don't "deserve" rights. But our society is not based on the notion that rights are something you "deserve." I'm not talking about the right to drive or something (which is a privilege in US law anyway) but the right to vote, which is a fundamental component of participatory democracy. The theory of government that the right to vote is based on falls apart if you assume you can take it away like that (forever). The universal right to vote is not something you "earn" but rather something that legitimizes the very notion of this government as being a government of the people. It is not a question of whether this or that person "deserves" to be considered part of the society; it is a question of what kind of society do we have if we allow the state to usurp the notion of participatory government for those people who broke a rule. It cuts to the legitimacy of the rules themselves.
Eric S Raymond comes into the room bitching that he wasn't invited to the death match, whips out an AK-47, and blows all of them away, all the while muttering something about "damn socialists"
I think you're right, and that may be on the horizon, but many people want PVR now. Hence EyeTV -- am I missing something here, or does EyeTV replicate everything that TiVO offers? Why would someone buy TiVo over EyeTV?
Slashdot Mirror
It's an al Qaeda memo that was originally in Arabic. This was the transliterated version.
That would make sense if this was the first they had ever heard of bin Ladin. By the time of this memo, he had been openly at war with the U.S. for over five years, and had been slaughtering people in ever-more spectacular attacks designed for maximum civilian damage for even longer. He had demonstrated his deadliness and determination to destroy American interests around the world; they goddamn better have taken a memo like this seriously. I don't give a shit what font it is in, this is an important memo. That they missed it -- and ignored the bin Laden threat completely during most of 2001 -- is not excusable.
Bush has aids?
I think the benefits professors are seeing from the iPods are actually coming from the reality distortion field that comes free with every unit.
and not just because slashdotters don't have girlfriends. I teach at a university too, and I think your imaginary girlfriend is wrong. I mean, sure, perhaps you should be able to do these things, but the fact is if you did that you would be violating copyright, and a professor could sue you for infringement.
This is a false dichotomy with no basis in law. There is no distinction between "creative work" and "free and open speech" in any legal sense. A lecture is both of these things, and the lecturer owns the copyright to the work he or she produces.
So if you pay for a ticket to a movie you can bring in a cam and record it to watch it at home? I think the MPAA would have an argument with you there.
That doesn't explain why the intellectual property issues involving recording lectures would be different when an ipod is involved.
That's true but it has nothing to do with the soundness of my logic. You're saying that technology changed the playing field as far as art and commerce goes. I agree. For the last hundred years, the technology of p2p didn't exist. Now it does. Technology, once again, has changed the playing field as far as art and commerce goes. So roll with the punches.
Yes, yes, of course, and the hash-spoofers won't be able to stand in the way of the anti-hash-spoofer techniques that will be developed to respond to this. My point is that we might all be better off actually focusing intellectual energy on the potential benefits of the new technology rather than on developing countermeasures and counter-counter-measures. I can't believe, for example, that it's been seven years since Napster and we still do not have an easily searchable peer to peer network that functions as an archive of otherwise difficult to find audiovisual content. And no I'm not just talking about copyrighted content but certainly that is a large part of it -- old, out of print blues albums, speeches, obscure classical recordings, etc. There is a lot of content that I used to be able to easily find on Napster that I would have gladly paid for if I could find it in a record store. Peer to peer is, in my mind, a tremendous advancement in human knowledge, and people can't pursue it in an open and direct manner because they'll get sued.
Of course you miss my point entirely, but that's ok - I think I agree with your conclusion -- the RIAA/MPAA fight is not worthwhile but I too can see why they would try. But nobody is breaking down their house -- unless by "house" you mean "theoretical profit based on faulty assumptions about the market and the available technology." Your house already exists, so breaking it down would legitimately be taking something from you. Whereas the profits the industry claims to be losing are theoretical at best, and are based on a model of economic and technological change that is completely irrational. Therein lies the problem. The copyright issues, as I said, will work themselves out -- people will always find ways to make a living by producing culture, which is as it should be.
An even better solution is to stop standing in the way of advances in technology on the basis of pure greed. As I noted before, humanity survived without a multimillion dollar entertainment industry; we will manage without one if need be. The greediness of the *AA companies is no excuse for attempting to cripple the use of new technologies - whether you're talking about corrupting files that you consider illegal or whether you're talking about suing people you consider pirates. It is not the role of law to protect the business model of a few companies.
P2P is a technology. Yes it can be used for copyright violations, just like a photocopy machine or tape recorder. But it also has amazing possibilities in terms of creating a universal organic archive. Crippling like this -- and through using lawsuits -- is an unnecessary attack on a system in its infancy.
The copyright issues will work themselves out -- until the 20th century human art and ingenuity survived for thousands of years without the ability to make millions selling recorded music and video. If p2p has a major effect on the entertainment industry's ability to profit (and I'm still not convinced that it really will), human art and culture will survive. And people will continue to find ways to make a living creating art.
And, since they did this, everything feels snappier!
That's correct - that's one reason I think all this is FUD. That part of my post was an attempt to speculate as to why a font owner might think differently.
In any case, this is all ridiculous speculation, and the association with the GPL is pure FUD. The GPL is less restrictive than proprietary licenses or than ordinary copyright law. It allows redistribution of works without the "original" author's permission or knowledge. All it requires is redistribution of the code (presumably, the words themselves?) Whereas under ordinary copyright law, you simply cannot redistribute copyrighted work without permission. So if you use proprietary fonts, you should ask Adobe if it is ok to turn in your homework (or whatever). It's all bullshit. If the story is true, then the situation is even worse for proprietary fonts than for GPL.
Thankfully there is about zero chance that any font author is going to try to claim ownership of documents produced by their font, and if they did, everyone would simply stop using that particular font.
The GPL is in fact less restrictive than normal copyright law. By this logic, it seems that all documents that use proprietary fonts would not be allowed to be redistributed at all. GPL is not the issue at all; the only issue is messed-up IP law surrounding fonts and a hypothetical scenario dreamed up by someone with too much imagination. As the parent to this post points out, it is highly unlikely that any actual font author wants to use his or her ownership of a font to prevent users from distributing documents using that font. This entire story is pure FUD.
at least it wasn't under "Apache".
and someone slap the grandparent with a trout. I'm sick of that rhetoric. Yes you're right (some) criminals have ignored the rights of others, and perhaps they don't "deserve" rights. But our society is not based on the notion that rights are something you "deserve." I'm not talking about the right to drive or something (which is a privilege in US law anyway) but the right to vote, which is a fundamental component of participatory democracy. The theory of government that the right to vote is based on falls apart if you assume you can take it away like that (forever). The universal right to vote is not something you "earn" but rather something that legitimizes the very notion of this government as being a government of the people. It is not a question of whether this or that person "deserves" to be considered part of the society; it is a question of what kind of society do we have if we allow the state to usurp the notion of participatory government for those people who broke a rule. It cuts to the legitimacy of the rules themselves.
"I want to wok you with some vegetables
I want to taste you in a stir fry...
I want to wok you with some vegetables
With tofu, mushrooms, and rice!"
Eric S Raymond comes into the room bitching that he wasn't invited to the death match, whips out an AK-47, and blows all of them away, all the while muttering something about "damn socialists"
There is free as in speech, free as in beer, and now free as in Longhorn.
So it's true? Longhorn will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever?
I think you're right, and that may be on the horizon, but many people want PVR now. Hence EyeTV -- am I missing something here, or does EyeTV replicate everything that TiVO offers? Why would someone buy TiVo over EyeTV?