Well, it could just be that unless you give a thought about those who makes the movies, they will not be able to make them.
That being said, what is happening now is clearly wrong. It is a urgent need to think about what is happening, and make a better way of encouraging art. I firmly believe that a freer distribution of art will only benefit art and artists, we don't need anybody to control it. Certainly not RIAA and MPA.
I agree that the high road is to do everything openly. Instead of being anonymous, I prefer the "I am Spartacus" approach, a whole community taking the blame and facing prosecution. In a society that is not actually very bad, just heading in the wrong direction, this will probably have an effect.
That being said, I think it is worthwhile to develop models to help those who are fighting an oppressing regime, who has no free speech rights, and who desparetely are trying to get a message out. By keeping connections open, redistribute information, ways to ensure that web sites remain online even if equipment is seized by police, etc.
And, if everything else fails, we can use it ourselves.
OK, I'm not that much of a computer geek, only thing I know is that my father's computer will be connected to the internet from his home at 10Mbit/s by the end of the year and that I am myself connected at 100Mbit/s right now.
It seems to me that the good old ISDN connection that my parents have now, which is usually at 64kbits/s is usually as fast at loading web pages as my connection, the reason is of course that it is almost always a bottleneck somewhere else.
What I do not understand is why this going to change when connections in the homes get faster, the same mechanisms is still in place to give everybody their part of the bandwidth? For a while, it's just going to be the same bottlenecks, won't it? If someone care to explain, it'll be great.
I don't expect my parents to notice much of a difference with their ethernet connection, just that they won't have to dial up, and that I can grab Dads old computer and run a webserver on it....:-)
I have been e-mailing a couple of times with IM Sunde. I voiced my concern that they had a link to Business Software Alliance on their pages clearly without understanding that BSA is a highly political lobbying organization. Further, they demonstrate that they have no concept of "free as in speech" vs. "free as in beer". What's worse, my attempt to educate her on the distinction failed.
The problem with this unit is that they are highly incompetent. They run around after script kiddies, because anything more advanced is clearly beyond their reach. So, if you'd like to do e.g. industrial espionage, Norway is the country, cause legal enforcement is too stupid to figure it out (well, don't take that as legal advice...:-) ).
I'm pretty sure Ecocrime is not getting anywhere. Fortunately, we have The Data Inspectorate and the Consumer Ombudsman that are highly clued in many areas. I have been highly impressed by how these people have handled the spam issue (spam is outlawed in Norway with reference to long existing laws, new laws are in development). (In the medicall area, it is my opinion that the Data Inspectorate is too strict, their insistence that it must be totally impossible for anybody to unauthorized access medical data does in many cases hinder effective treatment).
Also, Ecocrime
have an excellent track record in loosing court cases as well, and I'm pretty sure they are not going to get anywhere with the DeCSS case either.
The reason why I say they are a real problem is that their incompentense makes them do whatever they are told to do. The result is that they can harass citizens without having any case at all. They'll loose in court, but the mere threat of having the police knocking down the door seizing equipment may be enough to silence critics. I wrote an e-mail to the Minister of Justice about it (she's not awfully clued either), I haven't heard anything, but at least it didn't bounce...:-)
OK, this question came up on the DCMA stuff as well, but anyway...:
I'm in Norway and I do have an opinion. The opinion is that I won't shop in a netshop of any kind that is based in a state where UCITA has been accepted, because it takes away fundamental consumer rights and because IANAL, I don't know how this will affect me. Just the proposal of UCITA has caused a lot of FUD, and it has hurt netcommerce a lot allready as it has had some attention.
Well, it seems to have front fork damping, so it should go off road. That means you'll crash, occasionally. At least I do. So, what's going to happen to all that expensive equipment when you crash....?
At my University, and all other universities and colleges in Norway, there are xerox (as in making paper copies) machines all over the place, and you buy cards to be able to use them. Now, a part of the cost of buying such a card goes to Kopinor (it's the Norwegian branch of IFRRO). The reason is of course that a significant portion of what is copied is copied from stuff their members have produced, also fair use stuff. However, if I make a copy of stuff I have written myself, or lecture notes taken by friends, I still have to pay Kopinor, and that doesn't feel right.
Dad told me not to worry, because Kopinor is good at getting the money back to their individual members. He is the author of several books, and has had a number of good scholarships from these money, and he said that if I keep up my pace of writing I'll be eligible for a scholarship soon (they count words, pretty much). In spite of that, it doesn't feel right, they are raising money from other people's work, it doesn't matter if I get the money back as a scholarship, it still feels wrong.
I agree with you. Probably it is just a matter of getting the authors of those two pieces of software that were mentioned to sign a paper saying "I forgive", and everything would be on a firm foundation. I bet this won't take more than five minutes of anybody's time. That's not much work for a firm foundation, we really need that.
KDE shouldn't be insulted, I think RMS really cares for KDE as well as for the gnomes, and besides, there is good reason to be paranoid about IP laws these days, isn't it?:-)
I really don't like the seven person limit they have set for a region. I really don't see why this needs to be so, as long as there are so strict (2%) requirements to enter the ballot at all. If it hadn't been for that limit, Lutz Donnerhacke would have been in, and Burkov would be really close.
OK, ESR had a good point in a lecture I heard him giving: With the GPL you are pretty much entitled to fork, give no credit to anybody, but nobody is doing it. Why? Because it is a taboo. You just don't do it. If you do, you lack social intelligence. And if you lack social intelligence, nobody will join you in developing software.
So, this kid lacks a bit social intelligence, he copied linux.com, so what, he is not going to make big bucks on it, and he will most certainly be educated the hard way about it. I think he can be educated.... He may deserve some flames, but he does not deserved to be sued.
I also don't think he should be told that he violates copyrights (while it is true), he should be told that he steps on peoples toes, and that if he wants to be real hacker, you don't copy, you create.
I think it is worthwhile to check out W3C'S Micropayments Overview. They have recently issued a working draft on Common Markup for Micropayment per-fee-links for last call review.
I want to see the following question answered in the FAQ:
"I am a techie, and I think this stuff sucks bad. What will you do to satisfy highly competent students?":-)
A finally, someone stands up and say "the stuff you designed for us suck, you've got to do better than this!"
While there is a lot more to accessibility than a simple ALT-attribute, the ALT-attribute is required by HTML4, and if you hire someone and they give you code that doesn't validate, then I think you are in your full right to say that "the product you delivered doesn't work, fix it".
Yeah, I've suggested to Google that they accept POSIX or Perl regexps for the geeks....:-)
Anyway, it is my impression that Altavista sucks bad. Very bad. It's years since it was my search engine of choice, but it is among the first I try when I don't find the stuff I'm looking for on Google (that's because of the alphabet), but it very rarely gives me anything relevant, most of the times, the hits are just totally off.
But, I agree that the flexibility is greater with other search engines, and that Google has a lot they should work on. Hm, they should open the source, the hackers would be rushing to implement things.:-)
My advice for anybody who is starting higher education is always to go for whatever interests you, for whatever you are enthusiastic about.
Nobody can predict what the job market will look like in 5 years from now, at least not very accurately, and it is those that choose things that are mainstream who runs the greatest risk of being unemployed (around here, political scientists are crawling all over the place, and run a great risk of being unemployed right now).
So, if computer history fascinates you, go for it. Have no fear for employment, there'll be some position somewhere. It might not make you a fortune, but at least you get to do what you like the most. And, I agree, it is an interesting field
And certainly very needed, many seem to think that the Internet was invented by AOL or M$ or something, or that it is something that just is, ignoring the contribution by brilliant hackers. And ignoring that hackers built the internet, not knowing a hacker from a cracker.
I never said that. Marketdroids are the scum of the earth (kind of), so engineers and scientists has to be very careful when they feed them. Was that any better? After all, engineers and scientists are the only people who are smart enough to see the consequences of what they're doing!:-)
I agree, this is the scariest thing I've heard (the the link, BTW). I have really hard time understanding that anybody would say such a thing, it is a fundamental free speech-right. Obviously, this is something that the defense should use against him in the appeals. It makes so extremely clear that Jack Valenti is a cynic, he is totally corrupt and has a sense of morality that is despicable. Whew....
Anyway, it is the fair use issue that is significant here, and what's more, I think further attention to the matter should be to show that it is not DeCSS that is wrong, it is CSS that is immoral. CSS is specifically designed to deprive people of their fair use right, a right that is an important part of free speech.
I thought that when Garbus asked Valenti about what a student could do if she wanted to play a 3 minutes of "Schindler's List" and Valenti replied that she could get the analog version, I felt it had to be obvious to anyone that CSS did take away fair use rights, but Kaplan actually bought Valenti's argument. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. How ignorant is it possible to get? Yes, today, analog versions exist, but they won't in a few years. I mean, I have a hard time awarding voting rights to people who are as ignorant as Kaplan was in this case, and when a judge exhibits such extreme ignorance, then democracy is at stake.
In the appeals, it should be very easy to demonstrate that Kaplan put words in the defendants mouths that they had never expressed, and that he was completely ignorant about matters of fundamental importance.
CSS is immoral. The engineers who designed CSS should have understood the consequences of what they where told to make, and should not have made them. That's their social responsibility. It is obvious that CSS takes away fair use rights. It is less obvious, yet important to realize, that it is a threat to free speech if a single body controls distribution of human communication. If DVD gets popular, you can't distribute communication by any other carrier, so in principle, it puts DVD-CCA (?) in the position that they can deny someone to produce a movie that is critical towards e.g. MPAA. Now, it is probably a long way before this is going to happen, but it is a serious threat to free speech if you make it possible. Therefore, I think it is important in the following to hammer on the point that it is not DeCSS that is immoral, it is CSS, and that breaking CSS was a moral act.
Talking about social responsibility, 2600 has one too, and sometimes, they should consider what the consquences of reporting a story is, that's the only bad feeling I get when I read the article, they seem to run away from the social responsibility of reporting a story. I think they would have been much better off if they said that "yes, we are responsible for reporting this story. The consequence of reporting this story is that a security hole will be fixed faster/it is being pointed out that MPAA is taking away our fair use rights", etc.
I would imagine this extends to the rest of Western Europe as well, because despite the language
differences, the cultures and economies were quite similar. The fact that their economies are
doing quite as well will also make them a little less wasteful and linux is an excellent way to do
that.
I'm in Norway, and a friend of mine who is doing projects for the suits said that whenever IT people gets the last word, it's very seldom Windoze. I really have no other clues, I have the impression that suits prefer to use Windoze, but as long as they don't need to interact with Linux, they might not care. I'm trying to kick the suits I know abit, though, like: "you're not using Excel for statistics, are you? You are? Uh-oh, go and read Journal of Computational
Statistics and Data Analysis, volume 31, issue 1, 28 July 1999."
I bet for one, most of the governments over there use Linux because they would rather not give
money to some American company. Atleast with linux they can argue there are Germans who
have had a hand in making it and they aren't spending money.
Nah, they're often hysterical about being business-like. It's coming, though, however slow. Some argue that Linux should be used in schools. I think that is going more slowly than use in web hosting though.
Slashdot Mirror
That being said, what is happening now is clearly wrong. It is a urgent need to think about what is happening, and make a better way of encouraging art. I firmly believe that a freer distribution of art will only benefit art and artists, we don't need anybody to control it. Certainly not RIAA and MPA.
That being said, I think it is worthwhile to develop models to help those who are fighting an oppressing regime, who has no free speech rights, and who desparetely are trying to get a message out. By keeping connections open, redistribute information, ways to ensure that web sites remain online even if equipment is seized by police, etc.
And, if everything else fails, we can use it ourselves.
It seems to me that the good old ISDN connection that my parents have now, which is usually at 64kbits/s is usually as fast at loading web pages as my connection, the reason is of course that it is almost always a bottleneck somewhere else.
What I do not understand is why this going to change when connections in the homes get faster, the same mechanisms is still in place to give everybody their part of the bandwidth? For a while, it's just going to be the same bottlenecks, won't it? If someone care to explain, it'll be great.
I don't expect my parents to notice much of a difference with their ethernet connection, just that they won't have to dial up, and that I can grab Dads old computer and run a webserver on it.... :-)
Well, you mean 100Mbit/s, right? I'm being picky, but then, the difference is important.... :-)
The problem with this unit is that they are highly incompetent. They run around after script kiddies, because anything more advanced is clearly beyond their reach. So, if you'd like to do e.g. industrial espionage, Norway is the country, cause legal enforcement is too stupid to figure it out (well, don't take that as legal advice... :-) ).
I'm pretty sure Ecocrime is not getting anywhere. Fortunately, we have The Data Inspectorate and the Consumer Ombudsman that are highly clued in many areas. I have been highly impressed by how these people have handled the spam issue (spam is outlawed in Norway with reference to long existing laws, new laws are in development). (In the medicall area, it is my opinion that the Data Inspectorate is too strict, their insistence that it must be totally impossible for anybody to unauthorized access medical data does in many cases hinder effective treatment).
Also, Ecocrime have an excellent track record in loosing court cases as well, and I'm pretty sure they are not going to get anywhere with the DeCSS case either.
The reason why I say they are a real problem is that their incompentense makes them do whatever they are told to do. The result is that they can harass citizens without having any case at all. They'll loose in court, but the mere threat of having the police knocking down the door seizing equipment may be enough to silence critics. I wrote an e-mail to the Minister of Justice about it (she's not awfully clued either), I haven't heard anything, but at least it didn't bounce... :-)
I'm in Norway and I do have an opinion. The opinion is that I won't shop in a netshop of any kind that is based in a state where UCITA has been accepted, because it takes away fundamental consumer rights and because IANAL, I don't know how this will affect me. Just the proposal of UCITA has caused a lot of FUD, and it has hurt netcommerce a lot allready as it has had some attention.
So, how can I voice my concern?
Well, it seems to have front fork damping, so it should go off road. That means you'll crash, occasionally. At least I do. So, what's going to happen to all that expensive equipment when you crash....?
Dad told me not to worry, because Kopinor is good at getting the money back to their individual members. He is the author of several books, and has had a number of good scholarships from these money, and he said that if I keep up my pace of writing I'll be eligible for a scholarship soon (they count words, pretty much). In spite of that, it doesn't feel right, they are raising money from other people's work, it doesn't matter if I get the money back as a scholarship, it still feels wrong.
KDE shouldn't be insulted, I think RMS really cares for KDE as well as for the gnomes, and besides, there is good reason to be paranoid about IP laws these days, isn't it? :-)
I really don't like the seven person limit they have set for a region. I really don't see why this needs to be so, as long as there are so strict (2%) requirements to enter the ballot at all. If it hadn't been for that limit, Lutz Donnerhacke would have been in, and Burkov would be really close.
Yep, or as I once had in my .sig:
So, this kid lacks a bit social intelligence, he copied linux.com, so what, he is not going to make big bucks on it, and he will most certainly be educated the hard way about it. I think he can be educated.... He may deserve some flames, but he does not deserved to be sued.
I also don't think he should be told that he violates copyrights (while it is true), he should be told that he steps on peoples toes, and that if he wants to be real hacker, you don't copy, you create.
I think it is worthwhile to check out W3C'S Micropayments Overview. They have recently issued a working draft on Common Markup for Micropayment per-fee-links for last call review.
I haven't seen the dead trees version of the NYT article that had a picture of the T-shirt, but somebody else may have.... Was the code readable?
I want to see the following question answered in the FAQ: "I am a techie, and I think this stuff sucks bad. What will you do to satisfy highly competent students?" :-)
While there is a lot more to accessibility than a simple ALT-attribute, the ALT-attribute is required by HTML4, and if you hire someone and they give you code that doesn't validate, then I think you are in your full right to say that "the product you delivered doesn't work, fix it".
Anyway, it is my impression that Altavista sucks bad. Very bad. It's years since it was my search engine of choice, but it is among the first I try when I don't find the stuff I'm looking for on Google (that's because of the alphabet), but it very rarely gives me anything relevant, most of the times, the hits are just totally off.
But, I agree that the flexibility is greater with other search engines, and that Google has a lot they should work on. Hm, they should open the source, the hackers would be rushing to implement things. :-)
Like in Finland, or all over the world.... :-)
Nobody can predict what the job market will look like in 5 years from now, at least not very accurately, and it is those that choose things that are mainstream who runs the greatest risk of being unemployed (around here, political scientists are crawling all over the place, and run a great risk of being unemployed right now).
So, if computer history fascinates you, go for it. Have no fear for employment, there'll be some position somewhere. It might not make you a fortune, but at least you get to do what you like the most. And, I agree, it is an interesting field
And certainly very needed, many seem to think that the Internet was invented by AOL or M$ or something, or that it is something that just is, ignoring the contribution by brilliant hackers. And ignoring that hackers built the internet, not knowing a hacker from a cracker.
I never said that. Marketdroids are the scum of the earth (kind of), so engineers and scientists has to be very careful when they feed them. Was that any better? After all, engineers and scientists are the only people who are smart enough to see the consequences of what they're doing! :-)
I'd say wait until the appeals....
Check out MPAA's FAQ. Then, read up, you'll understand that they are lying to you. The truth doesn't count there, it's the $ and the $ only.
I agree, this is the scariest thing I've heard (the the link, BTW). I have really hard time understanding that anybody would say such a thing, it is a fundamental free speech-right. Obviously, this is something that the defense should use against him in the appeals. It makes so extremely clear that Jack Valenti is a cynic, he is totally corrupt and has a sense of morality that is despicable. Whew....
Anyway, it is the fair use issue that is significant here, and what's more, I think further attention to the matter should be to show that it is not DeCSS that is wrong, it is CSS that is immoral. CSS is specifically designed to deprive people of their fair use right, a right that is an important part of free speech.
I thought that when Garbus asked Valenti about what a student could do if she wanted to play a 3 minutes of "Schindler's List" and Valenti replied that she could get the analog version, I felt it had to be obvious to anyone that CSS did take away fair use rights, but Kaplan actually bought Valenti's argument. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. How ignorant is it possible to get? Yes, today, analog versions exist, but they won't in a few years. I mean, I have a hard time awarding voting rights to people who are as ignorant as Kaplan was in this case, and when a judge exhibits such extreme ignorance, then democracy is at stake.
In the appeals, it should be very easy to demonstrate that Kaplan put words in the defendants mouths that they had never expressed, and that he was completely ignorant about matters of fundamental importance.
CSS is immoral. The engineers who designed CSS should have understood the consequences of what they where told to make, and should not have made them. That's their social responsibility. It is obvious that CSS takes away fair use rights. It is less obvious, yet important to realize, that it is a threat to free speech if a single body controls distribution of human communication. If DVD gets popular, you can't distribute communication by any other carrier, so in principle, it puts DVD-CCA (?) in the position that they can deny someone to produce a movie that is critical towards e.g. MPAA. Now, it is probably a long way before this is going to happen, but it is a serious threat to free speech if you make it possible. Therefore, I think it is important in the following to hammer on the point that it is not DeCSS that is immoral, it is CSS, and that breaking CSS was a moral act.
Talking about social responsibility, 2600 has one too, and sometimes, they should consider what the consquences of reporting a story is, that's the only bad feeling I get when I read the article, they seem to run away from the social responsibility of reporting a story. I think they would have been much better off if they said that "yes, we are responsible for reporting this story. The consequence of reporting this story is that a security hole will be fixed faster/it is being pointed out that MPAA is taking away our fair use rights", etc.
I'm in Norway, and a friend of mine who is doing projects for the suits said that whenever IT people gets the last word, it's very seldom Windoze. I really have no other clues, I have the impression that suits prefer to use Windoze, but as long as they don't need to interact with Linux, they might not care. I'm trying to kick the suits I know abit, though, like: "you're not using Excel for statistics, are you? You are? Uh-oh, go and read Journal of Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, volume 31, issue 1, 28 July 1999."
Nah, they're often hysterical about being business-like. It's coming, though, however slow. Some argue that Linux should be used in schools. I think that is going more slowly than use in web hosting though.