Look carefully at the comments by Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy during the Senate hearings on Napster. They made it pretty clear that they held fair use near and dear and that if the RIAA and others can't figure out that DMCA is about more than them, that Congress would cheerfully define fair use for them, a step that neither of them figured that the industry would like overmuch.
I see that the industry may have seen DMCA as a means to stomp out competition, which is counter to the point. It is pretty clear that with the consent decree against the music labels and the way in which Jack Valenti made an ass out of himself and his organization during the DeCSS depositions, that lots of people are becoming more informed and are bridling at the idea that they might not be able to use their DVDs as they please. Americans -really- don't like to get screwed over in the consumer market place--makes 'em really really testy.
The side of right can only win when they are paying attention.
Anyone deluded to enough to think that genetics is the only factor in the making of beautiful, stable, and happy people is probably also sold on the idea that we need to lock kids in prison for 12 years and make them into neurotic consumers of whatever ABC leaves a message to watch on their answering machines.
Technology can never replace the innate spark that makes us human, undesirable genes or not.
I never thought that blackholing someone manually could feel so good. Quite freeing, really. More if us should put the Slashdot Effect to good use and give Yesmail a really big headache.:)
Word of mouth can do more damage to a company than most people imagine. The product fails to perform and you return it. They give you a song and dance, write it down, document it, spread the word. Tell your friends and the people running various Linux sites that said company is -not- supporting Linux and offer them quotable material. Most reputable companies are terrified of dissatisfied customers, because while a happy customer tells a couple people, an unhappy one will tell lots more.
Of course, if some Linux site were to run reviews of supposed Linux support services, manufacturers, etc, you could readily nip a lot of it in the bud.
Where public education is concerned, there is no such thing as a 'low stakes' test. Tests represent a measurement and one that is of interest to parents. The NAEP battery is apparently used as a means to determine funding in my state and parents are having fits because it is a test which their children are given, but have no access to the results.
So, is a 'low stakes' test that doesn't tell you how you did really 'better'? Should children be used as PR tools?
I think, where these things are concerned, that it is all a very dangerous game and probably one we shouldn't be playing.
Okay, I was raised in that generation where we were 'struggling' for equality. Or was that carping about the fact that the men wanted to us to serve coffee and look at our tits....
So, we are told now that our children need us, that the workforce needs us, and that we have to make up for the lack of scientists and engineers that are being pushed out by the HB1A visas.
Um, you guys don't ask this much of -men-, why are you laying this crap on us girls? The GNP doesn't benefit from me being at home, but the kids do. And if the schools of the world would teach something other than political correctness on campus, people might have more time to study hard sciences.
Get the social engineering out of the picture and the world comes up downright better. I'm grabbing my rolling pin and going back to the kitchen now. Tata until after dinner!
In consumer desktops, if you change things radically, you are apt to lose the average users. I personally hate vast changes in design, as visual cues are a lot of the way I navigate. You make someone learn a brand new way, without careful incremental change, and you have the common person fighting their machine....
Then again, I'm not sure there is much difference, since most people use Windows and fight their machines all the time anyway.:P
Yeah, like standardized testing hasn't caused a heap of problems in and of itself??! You look at the atrocities being committed with standardized tests in public schools and you see quickly that computers ain't nothing.
Honestly, all this crap...computers in the classroom, standardized testing, 'discipline' and such is all just PR hype for administrators and politicians to use as a means to leverage more money out of the taxpayers.
You start with education choice and let the big money interests in schools find themselves losing revenue...then someone realizes that money isn't everything and the kids -are-.
He's engineered in a test tube, implanted, carried to term, and released into the 'wild'. He grows up happy as any other kid, healthier for his genetic enhancements, bright, more athletic....
And then G-E boy keels over dead in a sports contest, or a test, or on his way from English to Physics class....
And then you watch the world fly into fits about the death of this kid. It will be high profile, you can bet every doctor, company, and researcher involved will get slapped with a suit. You think Big Tobacco is a sitting duck? Try when a pack of parents of GE 'perfect' children start asking questions in the wake of this.
Basically, I'm not worried about this kind of engineering. It would seem to be quite self-correcting at the end of the road. This is especially true with the fact that most people are still taught to believe that life is sacred, and that genetic manipulation goes against the plan of almost every god out there. The people duped into the scheme will pay for the rest of their lives for having let their hubris endanger their children, much as smoking and drinking do now.
I am, however, far more worried about being genetically tested without my consent or permission and having that information made available to people who would use it, intentionally or inadvertantly, to harm me and mine. The HGP simply makes it easier for me to think twice before going to any doctor office or allowing any sampling to be done anywhere. You don't have to be a Luddite to realize that this is going to happen--and when it happens to you, it is going to suck.
Someone should initiate class action against NSI for their consumer practices. Ralph Nader could have a field day with DN registrations and other related matters.
You're complaining the Rambus is leveraging their patent for profit??
Actually I'm not complaining about that at all. What I am complaining about is a company that is, for all intents and purposes, trying to stifle a new technology before it debuts, through price fixing. If I am not mistaken, RAMBUS is basically a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to stifle other technologies. Mind you, M$ isn't the only company to do this, but it sure does stink to think that the costs of everything that uses or will use SDRAM, especially once it becomes practical to use it in aftermarket applications like gas pumps and the like, will go up purely because RAMBUS is desperate to push a technology that may or may not work--at all costs.
Is that good for the consumer? I'm extremely doubtful. Is it good for technology and innovation? Certainly not.
As has been mentioned before, the best way to deal with the Patent Office is to make sure that we pay attention to appointees in the coming administration--and let our Senators know that we want appointees who understand the delicate nature of technology patents and the issues that surround them.
Where is DoJ at times like these? Seems that RAMbus is engaging in some pretty heavyhanded BS to wipe out competing technology. Innovation, consumer choice, price, are all negatively impacted by their tactics.
Is total boycott an option or are they so far into the meat of the RAM industry that it is impossible?
What you find there is a calculated campaign by the Clinton administration, and his little buddy Al Gore, to subvert the rights of the American people through the new technology. In the almost 8 years of this bunch, we have seen our freedom eroded more than in the 20 years previous.
That I have more security for my private information on the phone than I do for my email is alarming. This business with Cookies is outrageous, not because it was done, but because they are claiming that it was some kind of positive show of technology at work.
Yeah, Bill. Right. You didn't inhale or have sex with that woman, either.
So, after blasting the conventions of corporatism that bring us things like WAVE America, lack of internet privacy, and things like DMCA, Katz is telling us that our government should join with the dark side so I don't have to wait 5 minutes at the DMV.
Wow, this one might be big and bad enough that the whole patent system might take a shake. I can see all those ISPs calling up representatives to get the matter dealt with.
Good one, BT. You may yet absolve us of stupid software patents.
Valenti's testimony is amusing. He sounds like Bill Gates and we all know where that got M$....
But let's see here. He's attacking HDTV in Congress and I wonder if this is really going to be wise. In fact, I think he's actually attacking anything digital as a threat to their bottom line. This is the same tactic they used in the BetaMax fights of the 80's. Jack Valenti lost that one, too.
Lucasfilms Ltd -isn't- part of MPAA. Why the hell is Valenti using TPM as an example?
How I want to see this go to court--and get trashed for the rot that it is. We also need to write more letters.
I find this interesting, since credit card companies(VISA, MC, AmEX, etc) are complaining that online sales are secure enough that they don't make any money off the 'risk' there. They build their business models around a certain percentage of fraud(apparently), that usually isn't present in online sales. Crazy, weird, but fascinating.
Personally, with the general condition of privacy policy and my overall distrust of sites using M$ software for any kind of secure transaction, I refuse to order online anymore. This is counsel that I extend to family and friends liberally. If the company doesn't have an order line, then I just go somewhere else.
The laws governing phone sales fall under conventional consumer protections. Online transactions are still in that murky stink that has me wondering if they are going to be sending the telemarketers after me or not. Since I have my letter into the DMA telling them to make their organizations leave me alone, it is far better for me to follow traditional paths to goods and services, at least until the e-commerce people figure out that the backlash against them will be severe and devastating the moment they break the trust of consumers.
Curiously enough, I put up a piece about the House Small Business Committee meeting and how to do activism in regard to congress. Unfortunately the article was rejected.
It would help if/. could decide whether they want to post information helpful in the fight or not.
Oooh! Can you say 'invasion of privacy'?
on
Universal Access
·
· Score: 1
Sure you can!
Pardon me if I am having trouble seeing where my company giving me machines and access benefit me as a person. For one, the company can then easily use existing case law as a means to inspect and uncover all of me and my family's net habits, and potentially fire me if they don't like what they see being done with that home equipment.
If this spectre doesn't give you pause, it should. This is one of the primary reasons why we don't have employer-sponsored ISDN access at home--so we don't have some suit looking at the clickstreams and sites we visit, snoop out email, etc. Case law is not currently in the favor of the employee on these issues.
Plus, many companies stand to benefit from selling info they collect about us to the highest bidder and the people who aren't net savvy coming in on these wonderous programs aren't going to be nearly as well informed as even my mother is.
Further, I am a parent who happens to think that the internet is hardly the place for children. Between content issues, criminal and corporate predators(the latter more realistic dangers than the former), and the overwhelming amount of stupidity that the net offers to kids, it's simply not a place you take them. Internet != babysitter. Internet !=substitute for proper education in the 3Rs.
And if Al Gore invented it, it's even less a place I want impressionable kids to be hanging out.;P
So, today's lesson is to Beware of Greeks, generous corporations, and governments bearing gifts. Someone is undoubtedly going to sack Troy(or maybe just you).
I learned that Bertrand Meyer has strong differences with Richard Stallman. Many people do.
I learned that Bertrand Meyer thinks people have a right to be paid for their work. Many people feel the same way.
Then he got off on a long, long rant about Eric Raymond's statements about guns and made a demand that Stallman and Torvalds distance themselves from someone who writes about and supports the right to bear arms. Oh, and made political rant about the NRA.
Am I missing something? Since when did Raymond's love of guns and support of gun rights have -anything- to do with Open Source or GNU/FSF/Linux?
I guess I was okay up to that point, but then BM's message was clearly lost in his rant...kinda like when you tell Stallman that you're a commercial software developer....
I feel for you in your support nightmare, but let me ask this:
Why not VMWare or some other package to negate the need for the dual booting?
I'm a big fan of emulation, especially in something as stable as a Unix based OS. Several of my friends use VMWare and other variants on the theme to great success. It can be argued that interoperability can be gained in a lot of different ways and this is merely a variation on the theme, imo.
Personally, I won't give up my Mac, simply because the desktop is a friend I've had for 15+ years now, but I do use the linux machine on the LAN for my other important work and see no reason not to possibly put some windows emulator on the machine just for the comfort of being able to muck around with a few apps I got sent but can't use.
There probably is a hazard to human health at Los Alamos. This is where they did all the original testing for the Bomb, and actually well beyond it into modern times. They wisened up about the dangers of radiation and -slowly- started to handle nuclear materials 'responsibly'(as in with some caution instead of wreckless abandon).
There are likely places all over the southwest where nuclear testing was done that are still hot. They did a lot of above ground stuff in New Mexico. I'm also betting there is a lot of stuff that they haven't/never will disclose.
And remember that the US Military is one of the worst polluters around. Chesapeake Bay pollution has strong roots in things dumped/burned/buried at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Let's not even start talking about the contaminated places at Fort McClellan Alabama, home of the Army Chemical Corps.
The threat of lawsuit is generally regarded as a no-no in this country. It can result in the disbarment of the offending attorney. Lawyers really like to hang each other more than they like hanging everyone else, since giving the masses actual proof of unethical behavior is much different than the usual hearsay.;-)
And yes, Andover needs to ask for just this letter, citing that it is a news site and that the information provided was for news/editorial/educational purposes as related. Also, I believe that the laws covering newspapers would apply to online magazines with the publication rate of/. and that it could readily be demonstrated that/. is such a news organization.
Remember that M$ controls a major media outlet(MSNBC), so they probably think they can embrace and extend their way into everybody else's news outlets.
And always, raise a stink with your Congressman, your local paper, and anybody else you can get the attention of. DMCA needs to have a legal challenge at some point. It's just a question of who is going to do it.
Oh, and get the guy doing the case for 2600. He likes fighting the man.
Slashdot Mirror
Look carefully at the comments by Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy during the Senate hearings on Napster. They made it pretty clear that they held fair use near and dear and that if the RIAA and others can't figure out that DMCA is about more than them, that Congress would cheerfully define fair use for them, a step that neither of them figured that the industry would like overmuch.
I see that the industry may have seen DMCA as a means to stomp out competition, which is counter to the point. It is pretty clear that with the consent decree against the music labels and the way in which Jack Valenti made an ass out of himself and his organization during the DeCSS depositions, that lots of people are becoming more informed and are bridling at the idea that they might not be able to use their DVDs as they please. Americans -really- don't like to get screwed over in the consumer market place--makes 'em really really testy.
The side of right can only win when they are paying attention.
Anyone deluded to enough to think that genetics is the only factor in the making of beautiful, stable, and happy people is probably also sold on the idea that we need to lock kids in prison for 12 years and make them into neurotic consumers of whatever ABC leaves a message to watch on their answering machines.
Technology can never replace the innate spark that makes us human, undesirable genes or not.
I never thought that blackholing someone manually could feel so good. Quite freeing, really. More if us should put the Slashdot Effect to good use and give Yesmail a really big headache. :)
Word of mouth can do more damage to a company than most people imagine. The product fails to perform and you return it. They give you a song and dance, write it down, document it, spread the word. Tell your friends and the people running various Linux sites that said company is -not- supporting Linux and offer them quotable material. Most reputable companies are terrified of dissatisfied customers, because while a happy customer tells a couple people, an unhappy one will tell lots more.
Of course, if some Linux site were to run reviews of supposed Linux support services, manufacturers, etc, you could readily nip a lot of it in the bud.
Where public education is concerned, there is no such thing as a 'low stakes' test. Tests represent a measurement and one that is of interest to parents. The NAEP battery is apparently used as a means to determine funding in my state and parents are having fits because it is a test which their children are given, but have no access to the results.
So, is a 'low stakes' test that doesn't tell you how you did really 'better'? Should children be used as PR tools?
I think, where these things are concerned, that it is all a very dangerous game and probably one we shouldn't be playing.
Okay, I was raised in that generation where we were 'struggling' for equality. Or was that carping about the fact that the men wanted to us to serve coffee and look at our tits....
So, we are told now that our children need us, that the workforce needs us, and that we have to make up for the lack of scientists and engineers that are being pushed out by the HB1A visas.
Um, you guys don't ask this much of -men-, why are you laying this crap on us girls? The GNP doesn't benefit from me being at home, but the kids do. And if the schools of the world would teach something other than political correctness on campus, people might have more time to study hard sciences.
Get the social engineering out of the picture and the world comes up downright better. I'm grabbing my rolling pin and going back to the kitchen now. Tata until after dinner!
In consumer desktops, if you change things radically, you are apt to lose the average users. I personally hate vast changes in design, as visual cues are a lot of the way I navigate. You make someone learn a brand new way, without careful incremental change, and you have the common person fighting their machine....
Then again, I'm not sure there is much difference, since most people use Windows and fight their machines all the time anyway. :P
Yeah, like standardized testing hasn't caused a heap of problems in and of itself??! You look at the atrocities being committed with standardized tests in public schools and you see quickly that computers ain't nothing.
Honestly, all this crap...computers in the classroom, standardized testing, 'discipline' and such is all just PR hype for administrators and politicians to use as a means to leverage more money out of the taxpayers.
You start with education choice and let the big money interests in schools find themselves losing revenue...then someone realizes that money isn't everything and the kids -are-.
He's engineered in a test tube, implanted, carried to term, and released into the 'wild'. He grows up happy as any other kid, healthier for his genetic enhancements, bright, more athletic....
And then G-E boy keels over dead in a sports contest, or a test, or on his way from English to Physics class....
And then you watch the world fly into fits about the death of this kid. It will be high profile, you can bet every doctor, company, and researcher involved will get slapped with a suit. You think Big Tobacco is a sitting duck? Try when a pack of parents of GE 'perfect' children start asking questions in the wake of this.
Basically, I'm not worried about this kind of engineering. It would seem to be quite self-correcting at the end of the road. This is especially true with the fact that most people are still taught to believe that life is sacred, and that genetic manipulation goes against the plan of almost every god out there. The people duped into the scheme will pay for the rest of their lives for having let their hubris endanger their children, much as smoking and drinking do now.
I am, however, far more worried about being genetically tested without my consent or permission and having that information made available to people who would use it, intentionally or inadvertantly, to harm me and mine. The HGP simply makes it easier for me to think twice before going to any doctor office or allowing any sampling to be done anywhere. You don't have to be a Luddite to realize that this is going to happen--and when it happens to you, it is going to suck.
Someone should initiate class action against NSI for their consumer practices. Ralph Nader could have a field day with DN registrations and other related matters.
CHash is actually a hashing code produced by someone well outside M$ and is open sourced for the use of text based games like MUDs and MUSHes.
CHash itself is good stuff, so let's not sully the good name of a complete innocent. :-)
Actually I'm not complaining about that at all. What I am complaining about is a company that is, for all intents and purposes, trying to stifle a new technology before it debuts, through price fixing. If I am not mistaken, RAMBUS is basically a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to stifle other technologies. Mind you, M$ isn't the only company to do this, but it sure does stink to think that the costs of everything that uses or will use SDRAM, especially once it becomes practical to use it in aftermarket applications like gas pumps and the like, will go up purely because RAMBUS is desperate to push a technology that may or may not work--at all costs.
Is that good for the consumer? I'm extremely doubtful. Is it good for technology and innovation? Certainly not.
As has been mentioned before, the best way to deal with the Patent Office is to make sure that we pay attention to appointees in the coming administration--and let our Senators know that we want appointees who understand the delicate nature of technology patents and the issues that surround them.
Where is DoJ at times like these? Seems that RAMbus is engaging in some pretty heavyhanded BS to wipe out competing technology. Innovation, consumer choice, price, are all negatively impacted by their tactics.
Is total boycott an option or are they so far into the meat of the RAM industry that it is impossible?
What you find there is a calculated campaign by the Clinton administration, and his little buddy Al Gore, to subvert the rights of the American people through the new technology. In the almost 8 years of this bunch, we have seen our freedom eroded more than in the 20 years previous.
That I have more security for my private information on the phone than I do for my email is alarming. This business with Cookies is outrageous, not because it was done, but because they are claiming that it was some kind of positive show of technology at work.
Yeah, Bill. Right. You didn't inhale or have sex with that woman, either.
So, after blasting the conventions of corporatism that bring us things like WAVE America, lack of internet privacy, and things like DMCA, Katz is telling us that our government should join with the dark side so I don't have to wait 5 minutes at the DMV.
I do wish Katz would make up his mind.
Wow, this one might be big and bad enough that the whole patent system might take a shake. I can see all those ISPs calling up representatives to get the matter dealt with.
Good one, BT. You may yet absolve us of stupid software patents.
Valenti's testimony is amusing. He sounds like Bill Gates and we all know where that got M$....
But let's see here. He's attacking HDTV in Congress and I wonder if this is really going to be wise. In fact, I think he's actually attacking anything digital as a threat to their bottom line. This is the same tactic they used in the BetaMax fights of the 80's. Jack Valenti lost that one, too.
Lucasfilms Ltd -isn't- part of MPAA. Why the hell is Valenti using TPM as an example?
How I want to see this go to court--and get trashed for the rot that it is. We also need to write more letters.
I find this interesting, since credit card companies(VISA, MC, AmEX, etc) are complaining that online sales are secure enough that they don't make any money off the 'risk' there. They build their business models around a certain percentage of fraud(apparently), that usually isn't present in online sales. Crazy, weird, but fascinating.
Personally, with the general condition of privacy policy and my overall distrust of sites using M$ software for any kind of secure transaction, I refuse to order online anymore. This is counsel that I extend to family and friends liberally. If the company doesn't have an order line, then I just go somewhere else.
The laws governing phone sales fall under conventional consumer protections. Online transactions are still in that murky stink that has me wondering if they are going to be sending the telemarketers after me or not. Since I have my letter into the DMA telling them to make their organizations leave me alone, it is far better for me to follow traditional paths to goods and services, at least until the e-commerce people figure out that the backlash against them will be severe and devastating the moment they break the trust of consumers.
Curiously enough, I put up a piece about the House Small Business Committee meeting and how to do activism in regard to congress. Unfortunately the article was rejected.
It would help if /. could decide whether they want to post information helpful in the fight or not.
Sure you can!
Pardon me if I am having trouble seeing where my company giving me machines and access benefit me as a person. For one, the company can then easily use existing case law as a means to inspect and uncover all of me and my family's net habits, and potentially fire me if they don't like what they see being done with that home equipment.
If this spectre doesn't give you pause, it should. This is one of the primary reasons why we don't have employer-sponsored ISDN access at home--so we don't have some suit looking at the clickstreams and sites we visit, snoop out email, etc. Case law is not currently in the favor of the employee on these issues.
Plus, many companies stand to benefit from selling info they collect about us to the highest bidder and the people who aren't net savvy coming in on these wonderous programs aren't going to be nearly as well informed as even my mother is.
Further, I am a parent who happens to think that the internet is hardly the place for children. Between content issues, criminal and corporate predators(the latter more realistic dangers than the former), and the overwhelming amount of stupidity that the net offers to kids, it's simply not a place you take them. Internet != babysitter. Internet !=substitute for proper education in the 3Rs.
And if Al Gore invented it, it's even less a place I want impressionable kids to be hanging out. ;P
So, today's lesson is to Beware of Greeks, generous corporations, and governments bearing gifts. Someone is undoubtedly going to sack Troy(or maybe just you).
I learned that Bertrand Meyer has strong differences with Richard Stallman. Many people do.
I learned that Bertrand Meyer thinks people have a right to be paid for their work. Many people feel the same way.
Then he got off on a long, long rant about Eric Raymond's statements about guns and made a demand that Stallman and Torvalds distance themselves from someone who writes about and supports the right to bear arms. Oh, and made political rant about the NRA.
Am I missing something? Since when did Raymond's love of guns and support of gun rights have -anything- to do with Open Source or GNU/FSF/Linux?
I guess I was okay up to that point, but then BM's message was clearly lost in his rant...kinda like when you tell Stallman that you're a commercial software developer....
I feel for you in your support nightmare, but let me ask this:
Why not VMWare or some other package to negate the need for the dual booting?
I'm a big fan of emulation, especially in something as stable as a Unix based OS. Several of my friends use VMWare and other variants on the theme to great success. It can be argued that interoperability can be gained in a lot of different ways and this is merely a variation on the theme, imo.
Personally, I won't give up my Mac, simply because the desktop is a friend I've had for 15+ years now, but I do use the linux machine on the LAN for my other important work and see no reason not to possibly put some windows emulator on the machine just for the comfort of being able to muck around with a few apps I got sent but can't use.
There probably is a hazard to human health at Los Alamos. This is where they did all the original testing for the Bomb, and actually well beyond it into modern times. They wisened up about the dangers of radiation and -slowly- started to handle nuclear materials 'responsibly'(as in with some caution instead of wreckless abandon).
There are likely places all over the southwest where nuclear testing was done that are still hot. They did a lot of above ground stuff in New Mexico. I'm also betting there is a lot of stuff that they haven't/never will disclose.
And remember that the US Military is one of the worst polluters around. Chesapeake Bay pollution has strong roots in things dumped/burned/buried at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Let's not even start talking about the contaminated places at Fort McClellan Alabama, home of the Army Chemical Corps.
EXCELLENT POINT!
The threat of lawsuit is generally regarded as a no-no in this country. It can result in the disbarment of the offending attorney. Lawyers really like to hang each other more than they like hanging everyone else, since giving the masses actual proof of unethical behavior is much different than the usual hearsay. ;-)
And yes, Andover needs to ask for just this letter, citing that it is a news site and that the information provided was for news/editorial/educational purposes as related. Also, I believe that the laws covering newspapers would apply to online magazines with the publication rate of /. and that it could readily be demonstrated that /. is such a news organization.
Remember that M$ controls a major media outlet(MSNBC), so they probably think they can embrace and extend their way into everybody else's news outlets.
And always, raise a stink with your Congressman, your local paper, and anybody else you can get the attention of. DMCA needs to have a legal challenge at some point. It's just a question of who is going to do it.
Oh, and get the guy doing the case for 2600. He likes fighting the man.
First Post!
And an excellent question. It might be worth a info gathering site to collect this kind of thing, database it, and make it searchable.
I been trying to find a use for Slashcode :)