Here's the solution: Limit IP laws to extend only to for-profit transactions. What this means is that if I want to do a free download of a book or a song off from a file-sharing service, there's nothing to stop me. However, if I want to buy a nice book for my shelf, or a CD with nice packaging, only the copyright holders can sell that to me. This results in:
Ideas and information are free, as they should be.
Artists still have a means to make profit, by contracting the rights to sell their content in a package (book, CD, etc).
Prices for packaged creative content will drop to reasonable prices. If I can download the latest Dave Matthews songs for free, I'm not going to pay $18 for a CD. But I might pay $3-5 for a nicely packaged CD so I can have the cover art and a high quality original, and also so I can support the band.
Yes, this screws with the current system, and means trouble for some companies and artists in the short term, but it makes things better for everyone in the long term. The current IP laws have just been forcibly purchased by the big corporations, they are not inherently "right."
Why are there so many laws (i.e. DCMA) to protect every imaginable right for these big content creation companies? Like they need the help to make billions of dollars. What I would love to see is a new law to protect the consumers, not the companies. Something that enforces common sense, like in this case: If you buy the right to use software, then you can sell at least your one copy of the software. The big companies should not have the right to put all sorts of weird restrictions on us because they feel like it.
We could call it a new DMCA: Deny Monopolistic Corporations from being Assholes.:)
Hmmm, take a look at this Slashdot story, also on today's front page. It looks like somebody just built the first Itanium cluster. That's really impressive if the chip doesn't exist for another two years...
Ha! LDAP is an exercise in how to take the simplest thing and make it as freaking complex as possible. All it does is store some basic info, such as people's contact information. I shouldn't have to think about it to make it work. I shouldn't have to buy two books and wrestle with it. It should just go! I've been forced to use it and I don't like it. I could've implemented the important functionality in a servlet with a flat file quicker than I could figure out how to make LDAP happy.
What if the guy knew it was a honeypot, and he wanted to get caught? What if he wanted you all to mount the file system images, so he could take over your computers? Maybe he'll use you all to mount a DoS attack on slashdot. Oh, the irony!
Or what if I want to listen to a song I purchase on my computer, and on my rio mp3 player, and burned to a CD so I can listen in my car, and then copied off the CD to my work PC so I can listen at work, and then backed up on an archive CD, and posted to a private ftp server so I can download it while at a different computer, and also copied to my laptop, and plus a clip to play on my toaster when my toast pops up...
The point is, it's MY song and I want to put it where I want to. I couldn't imagine ever buying technology that would stop me from doing that.
The current limitation of HD transfers is not the connection between the HD and the MB, but it's the speed of the HD read/write heads. Now, given, if there is some caching on the HD, you might see some speed improvement. But how much, really?
I upgraded my computer last year and moved from ATA/33 to ATA/66. I guess maybe it's sorta faster. Maybe. Or that could be wishful thinking. I even tried some benchmarks, and they looked good. But on the day-to-day use of my computer, how different is it? Am I really booting much faster? Do my applications really start that much quicker? And if the hard drive can't read data any faster, would it do me any good to have a 500 TB/s transfer rate?
Well, how about the Photo CD format? It sounds like it's just some graphics on a CD, but only certain CD drives can read or write photo CD's. Couldn't ths be similar?
If you talk to your landlord, he might not only allow you to run cables, he might do what mine did and pay for the supplies. My landlord is paying for cabling and a $200 router, and we're doing the work ourselves. We get networking, he gets his property upgraded for no labor cost. It's worth a shot!
In my area, DSL isn't available, and the only cable modem service I can get is @Home. I'm about to sign up with them, and if they treat me like crap, what can I do about it? I have to either deal with them or not have high speed access, and they know it. So until they have some real competition, I doubt that they'll be pouring much cash money into customer service.
Holy cow! It's a rock! And it's in space! And it's got holes in it! And now we've got pictures!
And in a year, we're gonna smash our spacemobile into the rock! Yeah! Who's king of the world now, huh? King of the universe is more like it! Cha-cha-cha!
A method of completing an online transaction whereby the user may complete an order with only two mouse clicks, including the click required to bring the user to the host company's page.
Note that this means I would be the only one allowed to link to any site with one-click shopping. Noone would be allowed to advertise for or link to Amazon. (Put that in your business model!)
It seems to make sense that there could be a legitimate copyright on HTML, even if the code contained no innovative new HTML methods. Perhaps they used the tag just like everyone else, but they may have poured hundreds of manhours into a large SYSTEM of HTML files which, together, do something useful. Sure, you could find all the concepts in free sample code on the web, but putting it all together into one (semi-) coherent package is a valuable contribution. If it wasn't worth anything, then why not just recreate it rather than face the lawsuit?
So, even if the ad agency provided all the graphics and concept, there is still a very real piece of intellectual property here. Sure, I agree the lawsuit sounds like crap, but it's crap which may be legitimate in the courts.
Ah, but you... yes, you are very clever. It's nice of you to help out all the poor Linux folk who don't have access to Windows Calculator to perform those types of big calculations.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell us what you really think of Commercial Unix!
We could call it a new DMCA: Deny Monopolistic Corporations from being Assholes. :)
Hmmm, take a look at this Slashdot story, also on today's front page. It looks like somebody just built the first Itanium cluster. That's really impressive if the chip doesn't exist for another two years...
If you want to compare, a better match is what NCSA is already running. 1024 processors, over half a TFLOP sustained, a full TFLOP at peak.
Wow, not only that, but it's like more than 4 times the display area of a 21 inch monitor! Go figure.
Ha! LDAP is an exercise in how to take the simplest thing and make it as freaking complex as possible. All it does is store some basic info, such as people's contact information. I shouldn't have to think about it to make it work. I shouldn't have to buy two books and wrestle with it. It should just go! I've been forced to use it and I don't like it. I could've implemented the important functionality in a servlet with a flat file quicker than I could figure out how to make LDAP happy.
"conductive underwear" heh.
What if the guy knew it was a honeypot, and he wanted to get caught? What if he wanted you all to mount the file system images, so he could take over your computers? Maybe he'll use you all to mount a DoS attack on slashdot. Oh, the irony!
The point is, it's MY song and I want to put it where I want to. I couldn't imagine ever buying technology that would stop me from doing that.
I upgraded my computer last year and moved from ATA/33 to ATA/66. I guess maybe it's sorta faster. Maybe. Or that could be wishful thinking. I even tried some benchmarks, and they looked good. But on the day-to-day use of my computer, how different is it? Am I really booting much faster? Do my applications really start that much quicker? And if the hard drive can't read data any faster, would it do me any good to have a 500 TB/s transfer rate?
Linux port if they know what's good for you and 4 other geeks. Not to be mean, that's just reality.
Well, how about the Photo CD format? It sounds like it's just some graphics on a CD, but only certain CD drives can read or write photo CD's. Couldn't ths be similar?
If you talk to your landlord, he might not only allow you to run cables, he might do what mine did and pay for the supplies. My landlord is paying for cabling and a $200 router, and we're doing the work ourselves. We get networking, he gets his property upgraded for no labor cost. It's worth a shot!
In my area, DSL isn't available, and the only cable modem service I can get is @Home. I'm about to sign up with them, and if they treat me like crap, what can I do about it? I have to either deal with them or not have high speed access, and they know it. So until they have some real competition, I doubt that they'll be pouring much cash money into customer service.
Holy cow! It's a rock! And it's in space! And it's got holes in it! And now we've got pictures!
And in a year, we're gonna smash our spacemobile into the rock! Yeah! Who's king of the world now, huh? King of the universe is more like it! Cha-cha-cha!
Ok, I'm done now.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of Emmanuel Goldsteins?
A method of completing an online transaction whereby the user may complete an order with only two mouse clicks, including the click required to bring the user to the host company's page. Note that this means I would be the only one allowed to link to any site with one-click shopping. Noone would be allowed to advertise for or link to Amazon. (Put that in your business model!)
Yeah, that'll teach 'em not to be just plain mean! Oh wait...
It seems to make sense that there could be a legitimate copyright on HTML, even if the code contained no innovative new HTML methods. Perhaps they used the tag just like everyone else, but they may have poured hundreds of manhours into a large SYSTEM of HTML files which, together, do something useful. Sure, you could find all the concepts in free sample code on the web, but putting it all together into one (semi-) coherent package is a valuable contribution. If it wasn't worth anything, then why not just recreate it rather than face the lawsuit?
So, even if the ad agency provided all the graphics and concept, there is still a very real piece of intellectual property here. Sure, I agree the lawsuit sounds like crap, but it's crap which may be legitimate in the courts.
Ah, but you... yes, you are very clever. It's nice of you to help out all the poor Linux folk who don't have access to Windows Calculator to perform those types of big calculations.