"The only meaning I see from that is that since Napster has been shut down, he needs to buy music since he can't get it for free."
That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard. I find it hard to believe that CmdrTaco hasn't heard of any of the Napster alternatives (most to all of which haven't been neutered by the RIAA, yet). Hell, just doing a search on Gnutella brings up quite a number of Slashdot stories: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=gnutella
"In the meantime, they should not be penalised for an unproven
allegation."
When I first heard about this incident (about 4.5 months ago), PaeTec
had already received several affidavits from people who had had
addresses spammed that had been used exclusively for domain
name registration. I'm surprised that the judge hasn't considered
there to be enough evidence to revoke the injunction until the
completion of the trial.
This article has already gotten its own Slashdot story about 3-4 days ago (I'd post a link, but search and viewing older articles seems to be broken right now). General consensus seems to be that this is nothing more than unfounded hype built up over marketing research. ReplayTV merely wants to figure out what the demand would be for a unit of that capacity at that price. From the article I read, they haven't even cooked up a component list for a 320 hour unit, yet. My gut instinct says that they probably won't anytime soon.
"Debian can't be killed, it will probably go on for decades. Seriously -- what possible scenario could you think of that would cause it stop existing?"
In 2021, political infighting in the Debian community reaches an all-time high over with the distribution should be called "GNU/Debian GNU/Linux" or "Debian GNU^2 Linux" or "GNU Debian GNU Linux GNU". Once the nukes begin to fall, the Debian project (and all other life on Earth) is no more.
And while the preceeding is obviously a joke, it does underscore some very real potential threats to Debian's viability. Any free software project can die off from lack of interest, just like any company can die off from bankruptcy. The fact that Debian has a massive following is no different than the fact that Microsoft has a massive bank account -- both mean the entity in question has a much better chance at survival, but it doesn't guarantee it.
Debian could lose interest due to everything from a technology shift obsoleting the notion of a software distribution to heavy developer infighting over free software "religious" issues resulting in the disenfranchisement of too many core developers.
"True, you can't have "great things about Windows" as a topic on Slashdot without being flamed to a crisp"
I must respectfully disagree on this point. During the whole SmartTag issue, I mistakenly held the belief that SmartTags would be a happy, fun solution that would allow me right-click access to instantly google or dictionary-lookup a given word or phrase.
The responses were generally coherent, well-thought out replies that ranged from pointing me to an existing IE plugin that already did what I wanted to detailing the problem of a web designer trying to explain to technologically unsavvy customers how it's not the web designer's fault that the page has extra links.
In short, there are a lot of Slashdot posters out there who're wiser than you're giving them credit for. Admittedly, even time I come to fully believe that, I run into half a dozen idiots, but overall, I think a decent amount of worthwhile conversation takes place.
"They have no idea who they are, though, until they come into the store again, and the face recognition software spots them."
Up until reading this comment, I wasn't especially scared of the system. I assumed they'd populate the database with individuals who had previously been caught shop-lifting at Borders and had been asked never to return. In short, it would've been a high-tech version of the Simpsons's Comic Book Guy's "Banned for Life" wall.
But now I'm worried. Enough people look like me that my friends at school have told me about how they ran into several dopplegangers of me, who they mistook for me until they got closer. I suspect people who know me would have a hard time telling the difference from security camera footage. I suspect strangers and a computer system would easily be fooled.
It gets worse, however. My one defense against being mistaken for the shoplifter is that I've got a state-issued piece of paper that I carry around that says who I am. Unfortunately, if they don't know who the videotaped shoplifter was, pulling out my id will serve exactly one purpose -- to get my name listed on their records as the shoplifter.
"for example, it's taken for granted that people *will* work
without compensation on many things, e.g. Open Source
software."
Announcing the release of OpenAntiHystX 0.2b:
BECAUSE THE DRUG IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR
THE DRUG, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE DRUG "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE DRUG IS WITH
YOU. SHOULD THE DRUG PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
NECESSARY MEDICAL TREATMENT OR FUNERAL COSTS.
What's new in 0.2b:
Removed a protein group that caused some people who're allergic to
peanuts to enter anaphylactic shock, with potentially lethal
consequences. Thanks to the widow of Jerry Henderson for reporting
this.
The specified manufacturing process was resulting in residual
benzene being left in approximately 4% of the pills in each batch.
Temporary workaround applied (testing each pill) until we can come up
with a permanent fix.
I've set up a paypal account so people can contribute to the FDA
approval cost fund. It's still a long way off, but we should probably
start saving up now.
I've had several people mail me about abdominal cramps. MAKE SURE
YOU'RE USING THE LATEST VERSION. The abdominal cramp issue was fixed,
along with several other bugs, back in release 0.2a.
After several round-table discussions with both RMS and the FDA,
we've been able to agree that the licensing clause requiring
development forks to use a substantially different name (so as to
avoid consumer confusion) is acceptable within the Free Drug
tenets.
I can't help but notice that the article tends to focus on the
pharmaceutical companies developing and promoting "me too" drugs that
don't really do much that's new, but rely on advertising and promotion
to carry them along. As I understand it, the "me too" drugs are more
profitable but less helpful overall.
However, in the case of this drug, it seems to be one that's important
enough and unique enough that Brazil has chosen to embark on the
rather serious task of disregarding the world patent and beginning
local generic manufacture. Further, one could argue that the Brazil
situation will only further serve to scare pharmaceutal companies away
from innovative, life-saving drugs, causing them to go with research
in drugs that are less likely to be "pirated" for the short-term
public good.
"The mere fact of investment does not entail a responsibility for
returns."
If we don't provide some sort of protection, there won't be any
incentive for people to invest in the first place. Would Roche have
devoted the money necessary to develop this drug if anyone who is
capable of manufacturing it could do so? Hell no. This drug has
saved lives (well, extended them, at least -- which is all any drug
can really do). This drug would probably not exist if it weren't for
patents. QED...
"Maybe some day, a post like yours would be moderated down for
being too damn obvious."
Personally, I'm hoping that some day it'll get modded down for missing
the obvious fact that if people circumvent the intellectual property
rights of drug companies, the result is less money for research, less
new drugs, and ultimately less lives saved.
"You can only get access to the mp3's from mp3.com if you already own (or are at least IN POSESSION of) the CD."
On the possession issue, obviously even temporary possession was enough to satisfy the system. On the other hand, temporary possession is also enough to satisfy a CD burner, so...
The bigger potential abuse came in the form of account sharing. People could easily use shared accounts as a means of illegally distributing songs to a wider audience. Imagine, for example, if someone signed up with the userid and password of "Slashdot" and included a mention of it in their sig.
Still, overall, I honestly believe mp3.com was trying to provide a legitimate, fair use system that provided convenience to people who had already paid for the right to listen to a given CD, while at the same time trying to protect the artist from piracy. The latter was something completely ignored by Napster, and the reason I'm more or less unsympathetic to that plight. But every time I hear about mp3.com getting hit with a lawsuit, it annoys me as they were trying hard to develop a system to make everyone happy.
"No, i think this is just for the music that the regular MP3.com provides, not the My.mp3.com service."
That was what I thought at first, too. However, by reading the article a lot more closely, I came to the conclusion that they are probably referring to my.mp3.com. They specifically talk about mp3.com illegally providing the songs in question, which would tie back to my.mp3.com. In the case of regular mp3.com, they've got the consent of the artist to distribute it, so the initial distribution wouldn't be considered illegal.
Then again, trying to guess technical details from a less-than-clear news article is almost always a losing battle.
"There's a dairy farm next door...It's pretty rural here, but I've been on a DSL connection now (the first person activated in my area, imagine that!) for a few months."
...and when yet another DSL provider files for bankruptcy, I'm sure
the unemployed techs will be happy to hear it's because they weren't
able to sell DSL to any of the hundreds of cows at the dairy farm.
In other news, I'm considering trying to get 500,000 signatures on a
petition to get Loki to port the Qbasic classic, "This is a silly game
Erasmus Darwin wrote at 3am. It sucks." over to Linux. The joke'll
be on them when they only sell 1 copy. Suckers.
"The fact that the Turing Test is probably still the only widely recognized test for artificial intelligence says more about our pathetic understanding of the nature of intelligence than the validity and usefulness of the test."
I suspect that you may be confusing the Turing test with the Loebner test. The Turing test is more or less an empirical definition of intelligence. It relies on an entity being able to perform all conversational tasks that we would expect a human to perform.
The Loebner test, on the other hand, is a yearly spectacle where a number of chat bots attempt to fool a number of judges with varying degrees of competence.
"Many useful articles are modded "Funny" as well as insightful/interesting/flamebait."
Of course many useful articles are also unmoderated, causing them to fall below some users' moderation thresholds. However, that doesn't change the fact that it boils down to user choice. Sorting by score and hard filtering comments below 1 is a trade-off that I'm comfortable with -- it's my decision on how to spend my time reading Slashdot.
That being said, you could just have a number of options. "Normal" mode would be like it is now. "Ignore funny" would cause funny moderation to not add to an article's moderation score. "Ignore exclusive funny" would cause articles only positively moderated with funny to be boosted in score.
Despite the fact that the comment used humor, it still pointed out the fundamental absurdity of the previous poster's appeal to give Slashdot a fresh, new look. Visual change just for the sake of novelty is somewhat couter-productive in a group that's frequently known for preferring function over form.
"So what about the 10%, wherein, one has no message encoded in an
image, but triggers tha alarms anyway? If you get caught by the FBI,
what can you say?"
Last I heard, the FBI doesn't go around busting people for passing
around what might be secret messages. I know there's been complaining
about a general erosion of rights and privacy in the US, but I doubt
it's gotten that bad.
"I just can't help but think that as more and more people discover
flaws in encryption standards that we the users lose in the end. If
crackers won't release details of how they cracked an encryption
standard, where's the motivation for that standard to be
improved?"
I don't know about you, but I'm hardly losing sleep knowing that
anyone who breaks into my house at night can subvert the encryption on
my DVDs and watch "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" even if they aren't in
region 1.
This whole DMCA nonesense affects copyright protection schemes, not
all encryption. The people who lose are the content producers,
not the everyday users. These same content producers are the ones who
(arguably) benefit from the encryption cracks from being widespread --
remember that these encryption systems are all about trying to
maximize profitability, rather than trying to maintain 100% protection
at all costs.
"I can't speak for everyone else but In the last year I have
purchased exactly the same number of CD's that I would have had P2P
filesharing not been available. The RIAA or RIAK or whoever claiming
that they've lost revenue because of filesharing is bullshit."
Wait a minute. You preface your comments with "I can't speak for
everyone else", and then go on to assume that everyone else is exactly
the same as you. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that's
a bullshit way to prove a point. QED...
You must consider a wide variety of users (everyone from teens
to stereotypical cash-starved college students to working adults
to...), a wide variety of listening habits (some people listen to
music while at the computer, some listen in the car, some listen to
the radio instead), and a wide variety of "accessories" (modem
vs. DSL, in-car mp3 player vs. CD player, whether the person owns a CD
burner).
Furthermore, at the end of the article, they even have a quote from
one of the users talking about how he finds it stupid to buy the CD
when you can download the tracks for free. I don't know how typical
it is, but there's obviously at least one person who feels differently
from you, making your absolute decree about lost revenue dubious.
In short, the following is a valid *opinion*: "Copying information
is not as morally offensive than stealing my physical property, or
depriving me of my freedoms."
Let's say you're a software developer who sells his own software
package for $20. Let's say packaging (including a proportional share
of the overhead required to get new boxes and everything) is $5,
leaving a $15 profit.
Now let's say that I, as your neighbor, want your software product
quite badly, but I've only got $5 in my wallet. Which is worse:
1) I steal $15 from your wallet when you are looking, then give you
$20 for the product.
2) I copy the software off of the Internet.
In both cases, the net result is the same -- you're out $15. (In case
1, you've got an extra $5, but have one less box of software, which
we're making equivilant for the sake of argument.)
...next week, we'll argue that since information reproduction has no
marginal cost, CDs should cost several million dollars, but would have
no copyright restrictions.
A similar problem I've found is that when I'm searching on using 'foo'
and 'bar' together (for example, if they're two popular options in a
software package), I'll tend to get a lot of hits from mailing list
indexes. The page'll generally contain a link to a message about
'foo' and a separate link to a message about 'bar', and will be highly
rated from all the other things linking to the index.
"There is no end of posts on Loki's Tribes2 newsgroup of people
complaining that they bought the Windows version so they should have
the linux version for free just because the software has the same
name, looks the same and connects to other Tribes2 servers. Don't
people think that Loki should be paid for their work?"
If I had bought Tribes 2 and wanted the Linux version, I wouldn't
object to paying Loki for the work they did in porting it. However,
that $50 that you'd pay to Loki includes both paying Loki for their
effort and paying the original Tribes 2 developers. While
someone who already owns the Windows version hasn't paid the former
group, they've definitely paid the latter.
A more equitable agreement would be one where people who've already
bought Tribes 2 for Windows could purchase the Linux version at a
discount. Rather than cutting into Loki's revenue, the discount would
come out of the licensing fee. It wouldn't necessarily have to be
100% of the fee (allowing the original developer to still reap some
extra benefits from their relationship with Loki), but it should be
enough to help stimulate sales.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard. I find it hard to believe that CmdrTaco hasn't heard of any of the Napster alternatives (most to all of which haven't been neutered by the RIAA, yet). Hell, just doing a search on Gnutella brings up quite a number of Slashdot stories: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=gnutella
When I first heard about this incident (about 4.5 months ago), PaeTec had already received several affidavits from people who had had addresses spammed that had been used exclusively for domain name registration. I'm surprised that the judge hasn't considered there to be enough evidence to revoke the injunction until the completion of the trial.
This article has already gotten its own Slashdot story about 3-4 days ago (I'd post a link, but search and viewing older articles seems to be broken right now). General consensus seems to be that this is nothing more than unfounded hype built up over marketing research. ReplayTV merely wants to figure out what the demand would be for a unit of that capacity at that price. From the article I read, they haven't even cooked up a component list for a 320 hour unit, yet. My gut instinct says that they probably won't anytime soon.
In 2021, political infighting in the Debian community reaches an all-time high over with the distribution should be called "GNU/Debian GNU/Linux" or "Debian GNU^2 Linux" or "GNU Debian GNU Linux GNU". Once the nukes begin to fall, the Debian project (and all other life on Earth) is no more.
And while the preceeding is obviously a joke, it does underscore some very real potential threats to Debian's viability. Any free software project can die off from lack of interest, just like any company can die off from bankruptcy. The fact that Debian has a massive following is no different than the fact that Microsoft has a massive bank account -- both mean the entity in question has a much better chance at survival, but it doesn't guarantee it.
Debian could lose interest due to everything from a technology shift obsoleting the notion of a software distribution to heavy developer infighting over free software "religious" issues resulting in the disenfranchisement of too many core developers.
I must respectfully disagree on this point. During the whole SmartTag issue, I mistakenly held the belief that SmartTags would be a happy, fun solution that would allow me right-click access to instantly google or dictionary-lookup a given word or phrase.
The responses were generally coherent, well-thought out replies that ranged from pointing me to an existing IE plugin that already did what I wanted to detailing the problem of a web designer trying to explain to technologically unsavvy customers how it's not the web designer's fault that the page has extra links.
In short, there are a lot of Slashdot posters out there who're wiser than you're giving them credit for. Admittedly, even time I come to fully believe that, I run into half a dozen idiots, but overall, I think a decent amount of worthwhile conversation takes place.
Up until reading this comment, I wasn't especially scared of the system. I assumed they'd populate the database with individuals who had previously been caught shop-lifting at Borders and had been asked never to return. In short, it would've been a high-tech version of the Simpsons's Comic Book Guy's "Banned for Life" wall.
But now I'm worried. Enough people look like me that my friends at school have told me about how they ran into several dopplegangers of me, who they mistook for me until they got closer. I suspect people who know me would have a hard time telling the difference from security camera footage. I suspect strangers and a computer system would easily be fooled.
It gets worse, however. My one defense against being mistaken for the shoplifter is that I've got a state-issued piece of paper that I carry around that says who I am. Unfortunately, if they don't know who the videotaped shoplifter was, pulling out my id will serve exactly one purpose -- to get my name listed on their records as the shoplifter.
Announcing the release of OpenAntiHystX 0.2b:
BECAUSE THE DRUG IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE DRUG, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE DRUG "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE DRUG IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE DRUG PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY MEDICAL TREATMENT OR FUNERAL COSTS.
What's new in 0.2b:
I can't help but notice that the article tends to focus on the pharmaceutical companies developing and promoting "me too" drugs that don't really do much that's new, but rely on advertising and promotion to carry them along. As I understand it, the "me too" drugs are more profitable but less helpful overall.
However, in the case of this drug, it seems to be one that's important enough and unique enough that Brazil has chosen to embark on the rather serious task of disregarding the world patent and beginning local generic manufacture. Further, one could argue that the Brazil situation will only further serve to scare pharmaceutal companies away from innovative, life-saving drugs, causing them to go with research in drugs that are less likely to be "pirated" for the short-term public good.
And...?
Marketing -> more sales -> more revenue -> more research.
If we don't provide some sort of protection, there won't be any incentive for people to invest in the first place. Would Roche have devoted the money necessary to develop this drug if anyone who is capable of manufacturing it could do so? Hell no. This drug has saved lives (well, extended them, at least -- which is all any drug can really do). This drug would probably not exist if it weren't for patents. QED...
Personally, I'm hoping that some day it'll get modded down for missing the obvious fact that if people circumvent the intellectual property rights of drug companies, the result is less money for research, less new drugs, and ultimately less lives saved.
On the possession issue, obviously even temporary possession was enough to satisfy the system. On the other hand, temporary possession is also enough to satisfy a CD burner, so...
The bigger potential abuse came in the form of account sharing. People could easily use shared accounts as a means of illegally distributing songs to a wider audience. Imagine, for example, if someone signed up with the userid and password of "Slashdot" and included a mention of it in their sig.
Still, overall, I honestly believe mp3.com was trying to provide a legitimate, fair use system that provided convenience to people who had already paid for the right to listen to a given CD, while at the same time trying to protect the artist from piracy. The latter was something completely ignored by Napster, and the reason I'm more or less unsympathetic to that plight. But every time I hear about mp3.com getting hit with a lawsuit, it annoys me as they were trying hard to develop a system to make everyone happy.
That was what I thought at first, too. However, by reading the article a lot more closely, I came to the conclusion that they are probably referring to my.mp3.com. They specifically talk about mp3.com illegally providing the songs in question, which would tie back to my.mp3.com. In the case of regular mp3.com, they've got the consent of the artist to distribute it, so the initial distribution wouldn't be considered illegal.
Then again, trying to guess technical details from a less-than-clear news article is almost always a losing battle.
In other news, I'm considering trying to get 500,000 signatures on a petition to get Loki to port the Qbasic classic, "This is a silly game Erasmus Darwin wrote at 3am. It sucks." over to Linux. The joke'll be on them when they only sell 1 copy. Suckers.
I suspect that you may be confusing the Turing test with the Loebner test. The Turing test is more or less an empirical definition of intelligence. It relies on an entity being able to perform all conversational tasks that we would expect a human to perform.
The Loebner test, on the other hand, is a yearly spectacle where a number of chat bots attempt to fool a number of judges with varying degrees of competence.
Things you can do during a 20 minute visit to the video store:
Things you can do during a 30 minute download of a movie:
"Many useful articles are modded "Funny" as well as insightful/interesting/flamebait."
Of course many useful articles are also unmoderated, causing them to fall below some users' moderation thresholds. However, that doesn't change the fact that it boils down to user choice. Sorting by score and hard filtering comments below 1 is a trade-off that I'm comfortable with -- it's my decision on how to spend my time reading Slashdot.
That being said, you could just have a number of options. "Normal" mode would be like it is now. "Ignore funny" would cause funny moderation to not add to an article's moderation score. "Ignore exclusive funny" would cause articles only positively moderated with funny to be boosted in score.
Despite the fact that the comment used humor, it still pointed out the fundamental absurdity of the previous poster's appeal to give Slashdot a fresh, new look. Visual change just for the sake of novelty is somewhat couter-productive in a group that's frequently known for preferring function over form.
Last I heard, the FBI doesn't go around busting people for passing around what might be secret messages. I know there's been complaining about a general erosion of rights and privacy in the US, but I doubt it's gotten that bad.
I don't know about you, but I'm hardly losing sleep knowing that anyone who breaks into my house at night can subvert the encryption on my DVDs and watch "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" even if they aren't in region 1.
This whole DMCA nonesense affects copyright protection schemes, not all encryption. The people who lose are the content producers, not the everyday users. These same content producers are the ones who (arguably) benefit from the encryption cracks from being widespread -- remember that these encryption systems are all about trying to maximize profitability, rather than trying to maintain 100% protection at all costs.
Wait a minute. You preface your comments with "I can't speak for everyone else", and then go on to assume that everyone else is exactly the same as you. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think that's a bullshit way to prove a point. QED...
You must consider a wide variety of users (everyone from teens to stereotypical cash-starved college students to working adults to...), a wide variety of listening habits (some people listen to music while at the computer, some listen in the car, some listen to the radio instead), and a wide variety of "accessories" (modem vs. DSL, in-car mp3 player vs. CD player, whether the person owns a CD burner).
Furthermore, at the end of the article, they even have a quote from one of the users talking about how he finds it stupid to buy the CD when you can download the tracks for free. I don't know how typical it is, but there's obviously at least one person who feels differently from you, making your absolute decree about lost revenue dubious.
Let's say you're a software developer who sells his own software package for $20. Let's say packaging (including a proportional share of the overhead required to get new boxes and everything) is $5, leaving a $15 profit.
Now let's say that I, as your neighbor, want your software product quite badly, but I've only got $5 in my wallet. Which is worse:
1) I steal $15 from your wallet when you are looking, then give you $20 for the product.
2) I copy the software off of the Internet.
In both cases, the net result is the same -- you're out $15. (In case 1, you've got an extra $5, but have one less box of software, which we're making equivilant for the sake of argument.)
A similar problem I've found is that when I'm searching on using 'foo' and 'bar' together (for example, if they're two popular options in a software package), I'll tend to get a lot of hits from mailing list indexes. The page'll generally contain a link to a message about 'foo' and a separate link to a message about 'bar', and will be highly rated from all the other things linking to the index.
If I had bought Tribes 2 and wanted the Linux version, I wouldn't object to paying Loki for the work they did in porting it. However, that $50 that you'd pay to Loki includes both paying Loki for their effort and paying the original Tribes 2 developers. While someone who already owns the Windows version hasn't paid the former group, they've definitely paid the latter.
A more equitable agreement would be one where people who've already bought Tribes 2 for Windows could purchase the Linux version at a discount. Rather than cutting into Loki's revenue, the discount would come out of the licensing fee. It wouldn't necessarily have to be 100% of the fee (allowing the original developer to still reap some extra benefits from their relationship with Loki), but it should be enough to help stimulate sales.
Excuse me? On the RH6.2 errata page, it certainly looks like they're still issuing security fixes.