Really, make up your minds: either file sharing a la KaZaa is ok and the people who bought these devices shouldn't pay for the content they "downloaded" for free or file sharing a la KaZaa is *not* ok and the people who bought these devices should pay for the content they downloaded.
As others have pointed out, the issue is whether there is a non-infringing use. File sharing, VCRs, and knives all have legal uses. Stealing cable doesn't.
(If you really want the shows, get them from KaZaA.;-)
In reality, from experience these people tend to fall into two camps.... "I don't like digital", and "anything digital is good". And its for the exact same reason: how easy is it to pirate the material and how likely they are to accept change.
Me, I own a ReplayTV. When I moved recently and ordered cable service I specifically asked for analog service (they really wanted to sell me digital) because the ReplayTV can use its tuner to get the programming.
Otherwise I would have had to set up the "IR Blaster" (came with the ReplayTV, and is now lost -- a small IR transmitter wired to the box, which you place in front of the digital cable box) in order for the ReplayTV to change the channel on the digital cable box.
Apparently some people are using the IR Blaster and like it but "I've always done it this way" (your comment about resistance to change), and I lost the IR Blaster anyway so I'd have to buy a new one.
We had free PPV for awhile, and we couldn't figure out why.
I just started getting HBO and Cinemax, which I'm not paying for. The PPV channels are still scrambled, but I'm at a loss for why this happened. I haven't contacted the cable company, but I will keep an eye on my next bill (perhaps someone impersonated me and upgraded my service? I don't have that many friends...).
I'm curious what speeds freenet can pull down from individual users.
Some people are getting up to 100 k/s, but not me. I opened the Gateway page (right click on the blue rabbit in the system tray, select "Open Gateway") and then middle-clicked on each of the 4 sites (to open in separate tabs in Mozilla), and after 20 minutes the second one ("The Index Index") has completed but the other 3 are still loading.
This seems rather unusable. I haven't gone farther but so far I'm unimpressed.
Wouldn't combining Project Gutenberg's freely available texts with Freenet's distributed storage be a great enhancement for both projects?
Slightly OT but I was following a discussion on Project Gutenberg the other day and came across an interesting site, Distributed Proofreading. This site lets you proofread a page at a time, comparing the scanned image with the OCR'd text and making corrections. According to the site, they are now "the main source of PG e-books."
I've only done a dozen or so pages. Each page takes between 5-10 minutes, depending on the complexity (I just did an index page, which took quite some time, but most are quicker). The OCR software does a good job; there are few errors. Hopefully they'll use the "output" of the human part of this effort to combine with the output from the OCR, to refine the OCR so even fewer errors get through as time goes on.
It's a bit time-consuming but if you just do one or two pages at a time it's a nice break from whatever you're doing.;-) And you can think of it as volunteer work.
As for Freenet being stable enough, I (and others) have a problem with Freenet dropping information which is "unpopular" (i.e., noone's requesting it). Example, not all of Shakespeare's works are downloaded, so a few of them "disappear." Then there is no longer a "complete collection of Shakespeare" on Freenet. (Yes, I know the solution is to constantly insert the data, but that requires effort and a running computer, and when the "maintainer" disappears without notifying anyone then the data runs the risk of disappearing as well.)
In the future, perhaps advertisers targeting Tivo users will buy an extra-long commercial slot to play a greatly slowed-down version of their regular ad that appears normal when fast-forwarded.
This came out years ago.
For about a year before I owned a ReplayTV, I was taping everything I watched (I'd work long hours, back when stocks fell out of the sky in the mid-late 90s). I remember seeing a commercial for the new VW Beetle, which was just a flower filling most of the screen, and spinning slowly. The last instant had a picture of the Beetle. I was greatly impressed by that ad, as if they knew I was fast forwarding and wanted to catch my attention anyway.
With the ReplayTV I have a 30-second skip button; I still see one instant per ad, and sometimes I do stop and rewind and watch the ad (if it's for other shows on that network, or for upcoming movies -- I rarely watch product blipverts).
And then when you confront these idiots with these facts, they get all defensive because they don't want to think about it and hope that some solution will magically appear.
Studies have shown that you're much less likely to die in an accident if you're in an SUV.
My parents have owned almost exclusively Volvos for the same reason. Safety. Perhaps it's not the number one reason people are buying SUVs but it's a big positive. And like everything else in life, there are tradeoffs: you pay extra for the safety, both in terms of cost of vehicle and maintenance/consumables.
You've covered dasher before, but the source code is now available for download under the GPL. [...]
I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but it would really help if you describe the thing you're talking about. I have no idea what dasher is or whether I'd want it based on your submission.
Perhaps this is a neat trick to get click-throughs, and I should be impressed, but c'mon -- if the submitter's not going to say what it is then at least the "editor" should.
Besides, I was talking about my use of the radio, not the internal politics of the business of radio. It is fair use for me to tape music and talk shows from the radio (including college).
In the end, the RIAA is still a business and has a right to make money.
No business has a right to make money. It's like the pursuit of happiness -- you don't have a right to happiness, you have the right to seek it out.
In the same vein, businesses have the right to attempt to make a buck; they don't have a right to be profitable. If the RIAA/MPAA/TLAA can't embrace the new technology then that's their problem, and they should die like the buggy whip manufacturers.
Or as Heinlein much more aptly put it,
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or turned back, for their private benefit.
(I had to google for this. Here it is (scroll down to "What Inspired Heinlein?"))
The internet file sharing model isn't 'listen and buy,' it's just 'listen.'
So's the radio. I used to tape the radio when I was a kid[1] -- did that make me a criminal?
[1] -- man was I naive -- I taped it through a RS mono tape player, in the same room as the radio (right next to it). Didn't know what benefits wires gave. I loved it! "Hey, shh, I'm taping." I still have some of those old Dr. Demento shows that I couldn't listen to because they were past my bedtime; I was allowed to stay up long enough to start the tape. Then I could listen to them the next day.
Did you ever think that some of us actually still believe in God?
Some of us have a newfound belief in a supreme being. Note that I greatly disapprove of "organized religion" because they came into existence as a way to control "the populace" -- being spiritual and being religious are to me two very different things.
Below is something I wrote recently which attempts to explain how I view "God". I attempt to use science and extrapolate known facts to explain a larger unknown. It's very primitive and can be improved upon but I think it'll click with a number of you.
Believing in a being more powerful than us, composed of us, is not "primitive." It is, in my mind at least, enlightened.
Think of us as cells. There are 10-100 trillion cells in the human body. Each cell, if it had consciousness, could be thinking, "I'm an individual. There is no Thing 1!"
And it wouldn't matter to me whether my cells believed in me or not, as long as they were acting to further my interests. As soon as one or more turn cancerous (and I notice), they're outta there.
I believe that humans are the "cells" of God. God is a quantum structure, created by quantum effects which our collective brains produce. One example follows, which is how I learned to believe in the possibility of telepathy a few years ago.
There were two articles I read, separated by about 2 weeks. The first said we had isolated a quantum effect in the laboratory, that of entanglement, and we had proven that information could be transmitted at a distance of up to 10 km (perhaps more, that's the greatest distance they tested) using entangled particles.
The second article said that the human brain works not only on chemical, biological, and electrical principles, but also on the quantum level.
So if the human brain can use quantum effects, and one quantum effect is transmission of information at a distance, and evolution tends to take advantage of existing phenomena -- then I believe that telepathy is possible.
There is also the anecdotal evidence; we hear about a mother knowing her child's in danger, or twins knowing what's happening to the other -- but we never hear about a father knowing. This is because during the 9 months of gestation, through exchange of molecules between the mother and embryo, entanglement is taking place. I would bet that the link between twins is stronger than the link between a child and mother, because the twins are in closer proximity during gestation.
Coming back to the issue, if our brains work on the quantum level, this is just one example. We have no idea what the limits are to quantum effects. We have created a simple 7 qubit quantum computer which can factor 15 into 3 and 5. Who's to say (speculation, I know) that there aren't greater effects that can be produced by billions of brains working in concert to create something greater than ourselves?
I think the rotation of the planet has a lot to do with the creation of God as well. We have night, which reduces the effectiveness of our vision, so we go into a dormant mode. We're rather vulnerable in this mode, however; if we all concentrate during sleep on "powering" God, then God will act to protect its cells while they are dormant. Perhaps God is strongest when we're asleep (but since half the world is sleeping while the other half is awake, God is powered full-time).
There are hundreds of religions, but the ones in which there is a single God are most dominant. This makes sense because resources are limited -- human brains can more easily power a single God than multiple, and that one God will be more powerful than the multiple Gods. Evolution of religion (sorry Kansas).
I know I lack direct evidence that there really is a God, but don't confuse a higher power with the actions of religious nuts. Or as my friend's bumper sticker reads, "God please save me from your Followers."
If I copy text from, say, a Web page, to an OpenOffice doc, I want that text to appear in the font face, style, and size of the current context, not what I copied from.
I agree and run into this problem so much (under Windows) that I have developed a speedy workaround:
1. Select text, hit Ctrl+C (copy).
2. WindowsKey+R (run program), "notepad", Enter.
3. Ctrl+V (paste), Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+C (copy).
4. Alt+F4 (close Notepad).
5. Switch to Word or whatever, Ctrl+V (paste).
It takes a lot less time to do than it takes to describe, and copy-and-pasting through Notepad removes any and all formatting.
I know this is Slashdot and I should provide a Linux-specific way to do this but I primarily run Windows.
When office copiers were first coming out, publishers of recipe books fought to prevent them from being available too easily. Their fear? Secretaries, who at the time were mainly female, would copy recipes out of books for swapping amongst
Anybody else remember the brou-ha-ha from the (of all things) sewing pattern companies which kicked up right around the same time as Lars was badmouthing Napster?
Seems grannies were swapping sewing patterns on-line and not paying for them, and it got quite a bit of press.
Here's a post (the article link in the post doesn't work, but the post has the full story as text in it).
We've already got large sectors of the population randomly leaving the letter "P" out of words...
One of my favorite nursery-school jokes: Johnny is reciting the alphabet, and says "abcdefghijklmnoqrstuvwxyz". Teacher asks "Johnny, where is the 'P'?" Johnny replies, "Running down my legs."
I worked at a nuclear power plant which ran FORTRAN software on MODCOMP computers. One of the programs was designed to test the access control lists, and was thus named "testacl".
People routinely cracked up when I discussed this tool because I pronounced it "testicle."
My favorite came directly from Microsoft, when they wrote a utility for their WindowsUpdate.com site. They called it the "Critical Update Notification Tool."
Later they changed "Tool" to "Utility" but we had already laughed at them.
Slashdot Mirror
1. The US did a "decapitation attempt" to kill Saddam before the 48 hours were up.
2. CNN compared Iraq to CA.
Saddam just used the word "zionist" three times in his "You missed me NYAAAA" speech on CNN.
As others have pointed out, the issue is whether there is a non-infringing use. File sharing, VCRs, and knives all have legal uses. Stealing cable doesn't.
(If you really want the shows, get them from KaZaA. ;-)
Me, I own a ReplayTV. When I moved recently and ordered cable service I specifically asked for analog service (they really wanted to sell me digital) because the ReplayTV can use its tuner to get the programming.
Otherwise I would have had to set up the "IR Blaster" (came with the ReplayTV, and is now lost -- a small IR transmitter wired to the box, which you place in front of the digital cable box) in order for the ReplayTV to change the channel on the digital cable box.
Apparently some people are using the IR Blaster and like it but "I've always done it this way" (your comment about resistance to change), and I lost the IR Blaster anyway so I'd have to buy a new one.
I just started getting HBO and Cinemax, which I'm not paying for. The PPV channels are still scrambled, but I'm at a loss for why this happened. I haven't contacted the cable company, but I will keep an eye on my next bill (perhaps someone impersonated me and upgraded my service? I don't have that many friends...).
I hope they have a good relationship with Highlift Systems, because their FAQ is a copy of Highlift's .
Some people are getting up to 100 k/s, but not me. I opened the Gateway page (right click on the blue rabbit in the system tray, select "Open Gateway") and then middle-clicked on each of the 4 sites (to open in separate tabs in Mozilla), and after 20 minutes the second one ("The Index Index") has completed but the other 3 are still loading.
This seems rather unusable. I haven't gone farther but so far I'm unimpressed.
Slightly OT but I was following a discussion on Project Gutenberg the other day and came across an interesting site, Distributed Proofreading . This site lets you proofread a page at a time, comparing the scanned image with the OCR'd text and making corrections. According to the site, they are now "the main source of PG e-books."
I've only done a dozen or so pages. Each page takes between 5-10 minutes, depending on the complexity (I just did an index page, which took quite some time, but most are quicker). The OCR software does a good job; there are few errors. Hopefully they'll use the "output" of the human part of this effort to combine with the output from the OCR, to refine the OCR so even fewer errors get through as time goes on.
It's a bit time-consuming but if you just do one or two pages at a time it's a nice break from whatever you're doing. ;-) And you can think of it as volunteer work.
As for Freenet being stable enough, I (and others) have a problem with Freenet dropping information which is "unpopular" (i.e., noone's requesting it). Example, not all of Shakespeare's works are downloaded, so a few of them "disappear." Then there is no longer a "complete collection of Shakespeare" on Freenet. (Yes, I know the solution is to constantly insert the data, but that requires effort and a running computer, and when the "maintainer" disappears without notifying anyone then the data runs the risk of disappearing as well.)
This came out years ago.
For about a year before I owned a ReplayTV, I was taping everything I watched (I'd work long hours, back when stocks fell out of the sky in the mid-late 90s). I remember seeing a commercial for the new VW Beetle, which was just a flower filling most of the screen, and spinning slowly. The last instant had a picture of the Beetle. I was greatly impressed by that ad, as if they knew I was fast forwarding and wanted to catch my attention anyway.
With the ReplayTV I have a 30-second skip button; I still see one instant per ad, and sometimes I do stop and rewind and watch the ad (if it's for other shows on that network, or for upcoming movies -- I rarely watch product blipverts).
So it runs Linux but requires Windows? Hahahahaha.
Studies have shown that you're much less likely to die in an accident if you're in an SUV.
My parents have owned almost exclusively Volvos for the same reason. Safety. Perhaps it's not the number one reason people are buying SUVs but it's a big positive. And like everything else in life, there are tradeoffs: you pay extra for the safety, both in terms of cost of vehicle and maintenance/consumables.
I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but it would really help if you describe the thing you're talking about. I have no idea what dasher is or whether I'd want it based on your submission.
Perhaps this is a neat trick to get click-throughs, and I should be impressed, but c'mon -- if the submitter's not going to say what it is then at least the "editor" should.
College radio is. And that's still legal.
Besides, I was talking about my use of the radio, not the internal politics of the business of radio. It is fair use for me to tape music and talk shows from the radio (including college).
No business has a right to make money. It's like the pursuit of happiness -- you don't have a right to happiness, you have the right to seek it out.
In the same vein, businesses have the right to attempt to make a buck; they don't have a right to be profitable. If the RIAA/MPAA/TLAA can't embrace the new technology then that's their problem, and they should die like the buggy whip manufacturers.
Or as Heinlein much more aptly put it,
(I had to google for this. Here it is (scroll down to "What Inspired Heinlein?"))
So's the radio. I used to tape the radio when I was a kid[1] -- did that make me a criminal?
[1] -- man was I naive -- I taped it through a RS mono tape player, in the same room as the radio (right next to it). Didn't know what benefits wires gave. I loved it! "Hey, shh, I'm taping." I still have some of those old Dr. Demento shows that I couldn't listen to because they were past my bedtime; I was allowed to stay up long enough to start the tape. Then I could listen to them the next day.
"Greendale is a bodaciously small town, Lane. I can't even get real drugs[1] here!" [1] - said while brandishing whipped cream in supermarket.
"This is pure snow! It's everywhere! Have you any idea of what the street value of this mountain is?"
"Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
Mostly from memory but aided a bit by this google search .
Yes, OT, but thanks for taking me back. High school was Commander Keen and Better Off Dead, I must have seen that movie 30 times.
Actually, it mimics the Windows XP look and feel and behavior, not Windows 2000. (Hence the name XPde -- "XP desktop environment.")
Some of us have a newfound belief in a supreme being. Note that I greatly disapprove of "organized religion" because they came into existence as a way to control "the populace" -- being spiritual and being religious are to me two very different things.
Below is something I wrote recently which attempts to explain how I view "God". I attempt to use science and extrapolate known facts to explain a larger unknown. It's very primitive and can be improved upon but I think it'll click with a number of you.
Believing in a being more powerful than us, composed of us, is not "primitive." It is, in my mind at least, enlightened.
Think of us as cells. There are 10-100 trillion cells in the human body. Each cell, if it had consciousness, could be thinking, "I'm an individual. There is no Thing 1!"
And it wouldn't matter to me whether my cells believed in me or not, as long as they were acting to further my interests. As soon as one or more turn cancerous (and I notice), they're outta there.
I believe that humans are the "cells" of God. God is a quantum structure, created by quantum effects which our collective brains produce. One example follows, which is how I learned to believe in the possibility of telepathy a few years ago.
There were two articles I read, separated by about 2 weeks. The first said we had isolated a quantum effect in the laboratory, that of entanglement, and we had proven that information could be transmitted at a distance of up to 10 km (perhaps more, that's the greatest distance they tested) using entangled particles.
The second article said that the human brain works not only on chemical, biological, and electrical principles, but also on the quantum level.
So if the human brain can use quantum effects, and one quantum effect is transmission of information at a distance, and evolution tends to take advantage of existing phenomena -- then I believe that telepathy is possible.
There is also the anecdotal evidence; we hear about a mother knowing her child's in danger, or twins knowing what's happening to the other -- but we never hear about a father knowing. This is because during the 9 months of gestation, through exchange of molecules between the mother and embryo, entanglement is taking place. I would bet that the link between twins is stronger than the link between a child and mother, because the twins are in closer proximity during gestation.
Coming back to the issue, if our brains work on the quantum level, this is just one example. We have no idea what the limits are to quantum effects. We have created a simple 7 qubit quantum computer which can factor 15 into 3 and 5. Who's to say (speculation, I know) that there aren't greater effects that can be produced by billions of brains working in concert to create something greater than ourselves?
I think the rotation of the planet has a lot to do with the creation of God as well. We have night, which reduces the effectiveness of our vision, so we go into a dormant mode. We're rather vulnerable in this mode, however; if we all concentrate during sleep on "powering" God, then God will act to protect its cells while they are dormant. Perhaps God is strongest when we're asleep (but since half the world is sleeping while the other half is awake, God is powered full-time).
There are hundreds of religions, but the ones in which there is a single God are most dominant. This makes sense because resources are limited -- human brains can more easily power a single God than multiple, and that one God will be more powerful than the multiple Gods. Evolution of religion (sorry Kansas).
I know I lack direct evidence that there really is a God, but don't confuse a higher power with the actions of religious nuts. Or as my friend's bumper sticker reads, "God please save me from your Followers."
I'm guessing "PF" is "Post, First" but what do the others mean?
I agree and run into this problem so much (under Windows) that I have developed a speedy workaround:
1. Select text, hit Ctrl+C (copy).
2. WindowsKey+R (run program), "notepad", Enter.
3. Ctrl+V (paste), Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+C (copy).
4. Alt+F4 (close Notepad).
5. Switch to Word or whatever, Ctrl+V (paste).
It takes a lot less time to do than it takes to describe, and copy-and-pasting through Notepad removes any and all formatting.
I know this is Slashdot and I should provide a Linux-specific way to do this but I primarily run Windows.
I had to Google for this, so perhaps others don't know it either. A/S/L is "Age, Sex, Location." See item "2)" on this page .
Anybody else remember the brou-ha-ha from the (of all things) sewing pattern companies which kicked up right around the same time as Lars was badmouthing Napster?
Seems grannies were swapping sewing patterns on-line and not paying for them, and it got quite a bit of press.
Here's a post (the article link in the post doesn't work, but the post has the full story as text in it).
One of my favorite nursery-school jokes: Johnny is reciting the alphabet, and says "abcdefghijklmnoqrstuvwxyz". Teacher asks "Johnny, where is the 'P'?" Johnny replies, "Running down my legs."
People routinely cracked up when I discussed this tool because I pronounced it "testicle."
Later they changed "Tool" to "Utility" but we had already laughed at them.