Ummmm, yeah, that's exactly the problem, at least for those of us who live in a democracy.
I know the parent post was a troll but it's not such a bad idea, minus the flag-waving BS.... $500 million is nothing to the fed govt (though they could do it for a lot less) and we certainly spend way more on that to build weapons we don't need. And the gov't would save $ in the long run - a lot of it - by not having to pay M$ licenses....
Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!
on
Open Courses at MIT
·
· Score: 1
But the scenario you described: "thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably", also applies perfectly to those who may be extremely bright but don't adapt well to the lecture format.
I agree with most of what you said in this message, but this point is BS. Such students - and I was often one of them, depending on the lecturer - can and do skip lectures and read the books and do well. I know I did that often as an undergrad. But I agree with your basic argument:
The systems in use need to become more flexible - a wider variety of options need to be made available to students.
I fully agree with this; that's why I do teach all my classes at least partially online using web sites and hypernews as a discussion forum (yeah I know I should use slashcode or something like that but not today...). I also put most of my course materials, often including lecture notes, on the web so students can access them at their leisure. They are also publicly available to other instructors and so forth that way.
The WWW has truly enriched my students' educational experience, and it's a hell of a lot better way to deliver information. It's one thing to tell students something unusual that they may not have heard before; it is quite another to show them the evidence of it at the click of a button. The problem is often getting them to click the button, but that is another story....
I
know at this point you're thinking "does this guy know how many graduates we have to churn out every year?"
Nah. As far as I am concerned, "churning out graduates" is Administration's problem. My problem is educating those students who do wind up in my classroom.
Heh, speaking of which, I should get back to grading papers and quit reading slashdot....
Re:Not Everybody Learns Well in the Classroom!
on
Open Courses at MIT
·
· Score: 1
I'm a college prof and I use both traditional lecture and the web. I agree that the traditional lecture format leaves something to be desired, but the complete abandonment of it would only help those students who are highly self-motivated and who have excellent reading comprehension skills. I don't teach at MIT or Oxford so I can't count on having more than one or two such students in a class. And contrary to what another poster said, this is not about graduating as many rich students as possible; it is about trying to actually educate those students that you have, whatever the level they are at. My students are neither rich nor exceptionally brilliant, and their high schools and community colleges have done a poor job of teaching them basic reading comprehension skills (much less the ability to read and process significant amounts of material on their own). I have taught a few classes totally online, and that works very well for certain kinds of students (who self-select into the online formats), but if the majority of students were thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably.
Maybe 40% of Napster's users really *do* use the service to trade bootlegs, live recordings, and other unregulated music.
Yeah; people are trading cool music that the RIAA doesn't own (or at least didn't put on their list). Napster is better than ever. It's faster, and its easier to find rare stuff by known artists since all their proprietary stuff isn't in the way. By looking at other people's files based on common interests you can discover new bands. Why do people always assume "piracy" is the only thing p2p tech is good for? Just because that's what the RIAA says?
As long as the RIAA attack on p2p remains at the level of filtering I think Napster - at least the spirit of Napster not Napster Inc./Bertelsmann - wins. Sure it's harder to trade copyrighted stuff but that is technically illegal and they have the legal muscle to enforce the law - so let them waste their money doing so. (Besides, that stuff is easy to find in stores anyway!)
If filtering Napster makes them happy I am not complaining. The real fear is that they will limit the functionality of the internet. This is a radical new distribution mechanism and in the long run it is better for musicians even though it may not be better for the music industry as it currently exists.
At the risk of repeating myself, I must say that while the RIAA thinks they have won this round, in the long term they will lose to the march of technology. They can't legislate it out of existence. And frankly, if Napster continues to operate with all the RIAA's list of songs blocked, it is still a terrific tool. Perhaps more so - and here is where the RIAA's egos are getting in the way of them having a clue about what they are doing. The RIAA's list of blocked songs? Guess what: I can buy that crap in stores. I don't need Napster to find my precious Britney songs. If I want super-leet pirated copies I can tape that sh*t off the radio. If the only music I could get on Napster was indie labels, bands that support napster, and unknown artists -- well, that's a lot of great music. I say let the RIAA take their stuff off Napster; we're better off without it. Sure I like a lot of that stuff too but my point is that Napster (or a Napster-like clone that adequately filters copyright violations) is a great means of distribution and of discovering new artists. And guess where the RIAA labels will come looking for hot new bands to sign in a couple years? Having already built followings via Napster, these new artists will be in a lot better position to call the shots of their contracts, and some may even tell the RIAA to f*ck off.
They have egos the size of Jupiter. For the execs and the lawyers this isn't just about extorting Napster for every penny of its investors' money (though it certainly is about that - here is RIAA lawyer Russell Frackman in Friday's LATimes: "the damages will be very, very large. There will be lots of zeros [at the end of that number]")- that's just the side benefit of the real crusade, which is, "We're not going to let a bunch of fscking teenagers do whatever they want with our stuff damnit!!" They want total, 100% control over every sound they own. They can't bear the thought of fans having any control over music distribution. The guy I quoted above claims to have been "fighting piracy" for 30 years starting with "8-track piracy." They can't stand the thought of 15year olds listening to what they want to listen to rather than what they are told to listen to. It's about control more than money, which is why they seem so blind to the fact that everything they do will backfire. They are also burned to high hell that a college dropout had the gall to capitalize on an idea they should've seen coming a million miles away. So they're going to steal the idea and make the kid fork over money there is no way they would have made in the absence of Napster.
What is hysterical is that this will backfire ridiculously, or at least it should. If we end up with a Napster where you can only trade stuff that RIAA doesn't own.... Here's a news flash, gentlemen: I can buy that crap in stores if I really want it. If the only music I could get on Napster was indie labels, bands that support napster, and unknown artists -- that sounds pretty cool to me! Sure I like a lot of the RIAA stuff and would love to have access to that as well (especially the stuff you can't even find in stores), but if they want to take it off Napster, let 'em. That means many of us will spend more time discovering new artists. And new artists have an easy means of distribution, without worrying that people will be too busy downloading Metallica to find them. And guess where RIAA labels will eventually come looking to find new artists to sign. Having already built followings via Napster, these artists will be in a lot better position to call the shots of their contracts, and a lot more knowledgeable about the way the industry exploits artists. In some ways this is not that different from what college radio did in the 80s but it is much more dramatic and far-reaching. The recording industry will never go away but it just might become what it really should have been in the first place - a tool for artists.
Cost of:cue:cat: free
Cost of Cross:convergence pen: $89.95
You want a $90 pen that can save 300 web addresses (only from companies who have:cue:cat cues embedded in their ads)? I'll stick to writing them down with a pen when I need them (when do I need to remember 300 URLs?) or jotting them in my palm pilot. Also, most of these companies have their own domain names (if they can afford to put:cues in their ads, they can afford $35/year), so they are hella easy to find anyway..... Like I need a $90 pen to remember ibm.com or smuckers.com....
I still have issue 1:1 where they explain (briefly) how to hack a cell phone to turn it into a scanner and monitoring device. Now, Phrack it ain't and never was, but the rag was at least slightly more readable than it is today.
Check it out. No problems registering it, but we had trouble getting search engines to list it, and seem to have offended many people when we linked to their sites from this domain. Whatever. Also, the folks at datapimp.net have a bunch of dirty domains, including the essential fuckthatshit.org. I believe there was a story on slashdot about registering dirty domains a couple years ago but I am too lazy to search for it....
The author Joel Kotkin is a well paid shill for the corporatist worldview. I've encountered his "work" before in some of his right-wing think-tank sponsored projects on the economic boom in the Pacific Rim (check out this silly piece on China, published in The American Enterprise alongside an essay by Pat Buchanan, for an example, or his rant on the supposedly left-wing media). He frequently writes for the Los Angeles Business Journal and I have heard him on NPR. His unique brand of armchair capitalism allows him to champion such "new economy innovations" as sweatshops by calling them the manifestation of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new immigrants. He portrays himself as a champion of immigrants and the poor while supporting policies and initiatives designed to undermine the majority of them. I think his most recent claim to fame was jumping on the mean-spirited trashing of scholar and historian Mike Davis that was initiated by Malibu realtor Brady Westwater. It is no surprise that his new book continues the legacy of intellectual ineptitude that was embodied by his book Tribes. I am sure Katz is on the mark about Kotkin's writing - despite his credentials, he is a poor writer and a poorer intellectual. While his claims are sometimes interesting and provocative, they are rarely original, and usually tied to a specific technocratic agenda - portraying the increasing disparity of wealth as something that will be overcome through the continuation of predatory globalization. Kotkin is a paid spokesperson for corporatist economic interests; while we can take many of his claims seriously (and even agree with some of them), we should be aware of whose interests his work represents.
In that case, if I have
the ability to view the source of a web page that I like and take it, I should also do so. If I don't thank the
artist of the MP3 that I take or the director of the DVD that I decrypt, I don't have to thank the author of the
web site.
This is ludicrous. There is a huge difference between the two. A better analogy would be if you decrypt the DVD, put your name on it, call yourself the director, and then go sell it. Or if you take Metallica_Sue.them.all.mp3 and change it to spevack_sue.them.all.mp3 and upload it to mp3.com without asking Metallica's permission. I doubt very many/. readers would support this, even if they(we) do support the right of people to use deCSS to watch DVDs.
I just don't get it. There are tons of valid reasons to be for or against Napster, and I respect everyone's opinion on this, but I don't understand why you - or anyone else - would waste time and energy protecting someone else's corporate profits. Hey, guess what, the companies in the RIAA all have large and well-paid legal staffs to do this job much more efficiently and legally. They don't need your help and didn't ask for it, why are you volunteering it? If you want to contribute to the music industry, send Lars a check, get an internship at Sony, or help your girlfriend write a song. Or, hell, write one yourself! There are plenty of ways to spend your time that might actually be useful.
Here's what I'd like to see - one of these in an Intel box running Linux with mac-on-linux running... Then those of us who want to can run the MacOS off of the G3/4s from within Intel Linux. It's my understanding that mac-on-linux can run on any PPC chip, whether or not the chip actually supports the MacOS. Anyone know if this would work?
Haven't seen anyone mention this yet but check out gnutallica -- they encourage you to share Metallica mp3s, as long as they are live bootlegs. Metallica encourages such trading themselves, and Lars reiterated that in the slashdot interview. Now how is netPD or other software going to determine whether the mp3 is copyrighted studio releases or a bootleg live show?
Actually, Coca-Cola was originally a coca-based wine product (no kola nut), when the anti-alcohol movement made the company take the wine out (leaving the coca in) and market Coca-Cola as a "temperance" beverage. Coca-based products, including pure cocaine, were extremely popular at the time in the US. The company removed the coca from the product sometime around 1905 I believe. Of course, the Coca-Cola archives have much of this information but from what I hear the company is very strict about making people sign a contract agreeing they won't say anything without the company's permission once they get a look at the archives....
Seems like metahtml is a similar tool and is open source; it was used to create the outstanding zippy the pinhead filter, which makes all web browsing a pleasure. I only wish there was a way to integrate the zippy filter into my everyday life so I could filter conversations, meetings, and television programs through it....
Yeah, nuking the moon would have been good for the world by making it safer for capitalist culture! I mean, look at the decadence that has ensued as a direct result of not nuking the moon. Elian's father wants to stay in Cuba. Micros~1 was declared a monopoly. In general, commie threats abound!! Remember the lines of people in the former Soviet Union waiting to buy bread!! That would never happen in a capitalist country, where we only line up for Pokemon!! I say let's finish the Cold War properly and nuke the moon today!!
As Napster states, they have no way of verifying that the people on Metallica's list did indeed infringe copyrights. Napster could get into further legal trouble by banning users who did nothing wrong and were merely misidentified by Metallica as doing something illegal.
That is why, in my opinion, Napster, Inc. should have demanded that Metallica prove (or at least jump through hoops to figure out) that each one of those Napster users was violating copyright. This is, to my knowledge, the way the DCMA is supposed to work. I once found a website that had taken one of my own web pages word for word, fucked up the html, and reposted it without my permission (and with my name even left on there). I contacted the web provider several times, asking that the page be removed or that the author at least explain themselves to me, and they wouldn't do a damn thing until I "proved" they were violating my copyright (I even had to jump through the hoop of registering the copyright to the web page). This in spite of the fact that my name was plainly visible on the copied web page, and that a comparison of the two pages made the copying obvious. I think Napster should have at the very least made Metallica show some proof that they have listened to the mp3s to ensure they were actually copyright violations.
This is not even Etoy and Etoys type of case (were there was adult type images)
Where in etoy were there adult images? I think the only "adult" issue was that the etoy site originally asked users to "download the fucking flash plugin" if they couldn't see their animations. To my knowledge there were no obscene or "adult" images on their site; that was just a red herring thrown up by etoys' liars^H^H^H^Hawyers to make people think etoy was some kind of pr0n site. Of course, IANASCJ (I am not a Supreme Court Justice); perhaps "fucking flash plugin" somehow falls under the Miller Standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummmm, yeah, that's exactly the problem, at least for those of us who live in a democracy.
I know the parent post was a troll but it's not such a bad idea, minus the flag-waving BS.... $500 million is nothing to the fed govt (though they could do it for a lot less) and we certainly spend way more on that to build weapons we don't need. And the gov't would save $ in the long run - a lot of it - by not having to pay M$ licenses....
I agree with most of what you said in this message, but this point is BS. Such students - and I was often one of them, depending on the lecturer - can and do skip lectures and read the books and do well. I know I did that often as an undergrad. But I agree with your basic argument:
The systems in use need to become more flexible - a wider variety of options need to be made available to students.
I fully agree with this; that's why I do teach all my classes at least partially online using web sites and hypernews as a discussion forum (yeah I know I should use slashcode or something like that but not today...). I also put most of my course materials, often including lecture notes, on the web so students can access them at their leisure. They are also publicly available to other instructors and so forth that way.
The WWW has truly enriched my students' educational experience, and it's a hell of a lot better way to deliver information. It's one thing to tell students something unusual that they may not have heard before; it is quite another to show them the evidence of it at the click of a button. The problem is often getting them to click the button, but that is another story....
I know at this point you're thinking "does this guy know how many graduates we have to churn out every year?"
Nah. As far as I am concerned, "churning out graduates" is Administration's problem. My problem is educating those students who do wind up in my classroom.
Heh, speaking of which, I should get back to grading papers and quit reading slashdot....
I'm a college prof and I use both traditional lecture and the web. I agree that the traditional lecture format leaves something to be desired, but the complete abandonment of it would only help those students who are highly self-motivated and who have excellent reading comprehension skills. I don't teach at MIT or Oxford so I can't count on having more than one or two such students in a class. And contrary to what another poster said, this is not about graduating as many rich students as possible; it is about trying to actually educate those students that you have, whatever the level they are at. My students are neither rich nor exceptionally brilliant, and their high schools and community colleges have done a poor job of teaching them basic reading comprehension skills (much less the ability to read and process significant amounts of material on their own). I have taught a few classes totally online, and that works very well for certain kinds of students (who self-select into the online formats), but if the majority of students were thrown into that format, they would drift away or fail miserably.
Yeah; people are trading cool music that the RIAA doesn't own (or at least didn't put on their list). Napster is better than ever. It's faster, and its easier to find rare stuff by known artists since all their proprietary stuff isn't in the way. By looking at other people's files based on common interests you can discover new bands. Why do people always assume "piracy" is the only thing p2p tech is good for? Just because that's what the RIAA says?
As long as the RIAA attack on p2p remains at the level of filtering I think Napster - at least the spirit of Napster not Napster Inc./Bertelsmann - wins. Sure it's harder to trade copyrighted stuff but that is technically illegal and they have the legal muscle to enforce the law - so let them waste their money doing so. (Besides, that stuff is easy to find in stores anyway!)
If filtering Napster makes them happy I am not complaining. The real fear is that they will limit the functionality of the internet. This is a radical new distribution mechanism and in the long run it is better for musicians even though it may not be better for the music industry as it currently exists.
I thought Al Gore invented Pong?
At the risk of repeating myself, I must say that while the RIAA thinks they have won this round, in the long term they will lose to the march of technology. They can't legislate it out of existence. And frankly, if Napster continues to operate with all the RIAA's list of songs blocked, it is still a terrific tool. Perhaps more so - and here is where the RIAA's egos are getting in the way of them having a clue about what they are doing. The RIAA's list of blocked songs? Guess what: I can buy that crap in stores. I don't need Napster to find my precious Britney songs. If I want super-leet pirated copies I can tape that sh*t off the radio. If the only music I could get on Napster was indie labels, bands that support napster, and unknown artists -- well, that's a lot of great music. I say let the RIAA take their stuff off Napster; we're better off without it. Sure I like a lot of that stuff too but my point is that Napster (or a Napster-like clone that adequately filters copyright violations) is a great means of distribution and of discovering new artists. And guess where the RIAA labels will come looking for hot new bands to sign in a couple years? Having already built followings via Napster, these new artists will be in a lot better position to call the shots of their contracts, and some may even tell the RIAA to f*ck off.
What is hysterical is that this will backfire ridiculously, or at least it should. If we end up with a Napster where you can only trade stuff that RIAA doesn't own.... Here's a news flash, gentlemen: I can buy that crap in stores if I really want it. If the only music I could get on Napster was indie labels, bands that support napster, and unknown artists -- that sounds pretty cool to me! Sure I like a lot of the RIAA stuff and would love to have access to that as well (especially the stuff you can't even find in stores), but if they want to take it off Napster, let 'em. That means many of us will spend more time discovering new artists. And new artists have an easy means of distribution, without worrying that people will be too busy downloading Metallica to find them. And guess where RIAA labels will eventually come looking to find new artists to sign. Having already built followings via Napster, these artists will be in a lot better position to call the shots of their contracts, and a lot more knowledgeable about the way the industry exploits artists. In some ways this is not that different from what college radio did in the 80s but it is much more dramatic and far-reaching. The recording industry will never go away but it just might become what it really should have been in the first place - a tool for artists.
For those who care, we have a brief wrap up of most Linux distros available for PPC at GNUpples. Enjoy.
Cost of Cross
You want a $90 pen that can save 300 web addresses (only from companies who have :cue:cat cues embedded in their ads)? I'll stick to writing them down with a pen when I need them (when do I need to remember 300 URLs?) or jotting them in my palm pilot. Also, most of these companies have their own domain names (if they can afford to put :cues in their ads, they can afford $35/year), so they are hella easy to find anyway..... Like I need a $90 pen to remember ibm.com or smuckers.com....
I still have issue 1:1 where they explain (briefly) how to hack a cell phone to turn it into a scanner and monitoring device. Now, Phrack it ain't and never was, but the rag was at least slightly more readable than it is today.
Check it out. No problems registering it, but we had trouble getting search engines to list it, and seem to have offended many people when we linked to their sites from this domain. Whatever. Also, the folks at datapimp.net have a bunch of dirty domains, including the essential fuckthatshit.org. I believe there was a story on slashdot about registering dirty domains a couple years ago but I am too lazy to search for it....
The author Joel Kotkin is a well paid shill for the corporatist worldview. I've encountered his "work" before in some of his right-wing think-tank sponsored projects on the economic boom in the Pacific Rim (check out this silly piece on China, published in The American Enterprise alongside an essay by Pat Buchanan, for an example, or his rant on the supposedly left-wing media). He frequently writes for the Los Angeles Business Journal and I have heard him on NPR. His unique brand of armchair capitalism allows him to champion such "new economy innovations" as sweatshops by calling them the manifestation of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new immigrants. He portrays himself as a champion of immigrants and the poor while supporting policies and initiatives designed to undermine the majority of them. I think his most recent claim to fame was jumping on the mean-spirited trashing of scholar and historian Mike Davis that was initiated by Malibu realtor Brady Westwater. It is no surprise that his new book continues the legacy of intellectual ineptitude that was embodied by his book Tribes . I am sure Katz is on the mark about Kotkin's writing - despite his credentials, he is a poor writer and a poorer intellectual. While his claims are sometimes interesting and provocative, they are rarely original, and usually tied to a specific technocratic agenda - portraying the increasing disparity of wealth as something that will be overcome through the continuation of predatory globalization. Kotkin is a paid spokesperson for corporatist economic interests; while we can take many of his claims seriously (and even agree with some of them), we should be aware of whose interests his work represents.
This is ludicrous. There is a huge difference between the two. A better analogy would be if you decrypt the DVD, put your name on it, call yourself the director, and then go sell it. Or if you take Metallica_Sue.them.all.mp3 and change it to spevack_sue.them.all.mp3 and upload it to mp3.com without asking Metallica's permission. I doubt very many /. readers would support this, even if they(we) do support the right of people to use deCSS to watch DVDs.
You live in the UK.
I just don't get it. There are tons of valid reasons to be for or against Napster, and I respect everyone's opinion on this, but I don't understand why you - or anyone else - would waste time and energy protecting someone else's corporate profits. Hey, guess what, the companies in the RIAA all have large and well-paid legal staffs to do this job much more efficiently and legally. They don't need your help and didn't ask for it, why are you volunteering it? If you want to contribute to the music industry, send Lars a check, get an internship at Sony, or help your girlfriend write a song. Or, hell, write one yourself! There are plenty of ways to spend your time that might actually be useful.
no way; this stuff is strictly for trading pirated Metallica songs.
Here's what I'd like to see - one of these in an Intel box running Linux with mac-on-linux running... Then those of us who want to can run the MacOS off of the G3/4s from within Intel Linux. It's my understanding that mac-on-linux can run on any PPC chip, whether or not the chip actually supports the MacOS. Anyone know if this would work?
Haven't seen anyone mention this yet but check out gnutallica -- they encourage you to share Metallica mp3s, as long as they are live bootlegs. Metallica encourages such trading themselves, and Lars reiterated that in the slashdot interview. Now how is netPD or other software going to determine whether the mp3 is copyrighted studio releases or a bootleg live show?
Actually, Coca-Cola was originally a coca-based wine product (no kola nut), when the anti-alcohol movement made the company take the wine out (leaving the coca in) and market Coca-Cola as a "temperance" beverage. Coca-based products, including pure cocaine, were extremely popular at the time in the US. The company removed the coca from the product sometime around 1905 I believe. Of course, the Coca-Cola archives have much of this information but from what I hear the company is very strict about making people sign a contract agreeing they won't say anything without the company's permission once they get a look at the archives....
Seems like metahtml is a similar tool and is open source; it was used to create the outstanding zippy the pinhead filter, which makes all web browsing a pleasure. I only wish there was a way to integrate the zippy filter into my everyday life so I could filter conversations, meetings, and television programs through it....
Yeah, nuking the moon would have been good for the world by making it safer for capitalist culture! I mean, look at the decadence that has ensued as a direct result of not nuking the moon. Elian's father wants to stay in Cuba. Micros~1 was declared a monopoly. In general, commie threats abound!! Remember the lines of people in the former Soviet Union waiting to buy bread!! That would never happen in a capitalist country, where we only line up for Pokemon!! I say let's finish the Cold War properly and nuke the moon today!!
Commodore Sloat
That is why, in my opinion, Napster, Inc. should have demanded that Metallica prove (or at least jump through hoops to figure out) that each one of those Napster users was violating copyright. This is, to my knowledge, the way the DCMA is supposed to work. I once found a website that had taken one of my own web pages word for word, fucked up the html, and reposted it without my permission (and with my name even left on there). I contacted the web provider several times, asking that the page be removed or that the author at least explain themselves to me, and they wouldn't do a damn thing until I "proved" they were violating my copyright (I even had to jump through the hoop of registering the copyright to the web page). This in spite of the fact that my name was plainly visible on the copied web page, and that a comparison of the two pages made the copying obvious. I think Napster should have at the very least made Metallica show some proof that they have listened to the mp3s to ensure they were actually copyright violations.
Where in etoy were there adult images? I think the only "adult" issue was that the etoy site originally asked users to "download the fucking flash plugin" if they couldn't see their animations. To my knowledge there were no obscene or "adult" images on their site; that was just a red herring thrown up by etoys' liars^H^H^H^Hawyers to make people think etoy was some kind of pr0n site. Of course, IANASCJ (I am not a Supreme Court Justice); perhaps "fucking flash plugin" somehow falls under the Miller Standard.