(Related one-time-no-financial-interest-rant: How many hours of quality reading do you get in a week on Slashdot? Toss your five bucks into the hat already...)
I come to Slashdot for the content: the links to articles of interest that people submit, the editorial comments that accompany story postings (mainly I like to complain about these), the comments and responses to comments that are contributed by the Slashdot user base.
Sending money to SlashDotCorp does not reward the users that make the site a powerful community resource, the ones that give me a reason to be here, the ones that give me something to read.
In fact, it's a quite good example of the trend you identified in the music industry: enriching the messengers rather than the content providers themselves.
web-broadcasters thinking they could play commercial music without paying for it was naive at best.
Offtopic and entirely irrelevant to the issue before the court.
Putting aside the question of what you meant by "commercial music", the small webcasters ARE willing to pay to license content from the copyright holders. Their complaint is that the compulsory licensing fees are too high, and were set that way intentionally to keep the little guy out of the market.
Additionally, the organization responsible for collection webcasting licensing fees is entirely beholden to the RIAA -- as a webcaster you'd have to deal with them whether or not you played any music owned by RIAA-member labels. It's like the BSA's tactics against alleged floppy-copiers--the onus lands on you to prove you AREN'T out of compliance.
The md5 hashing algorithm has been proven to contain flaws allowing two files to produce identical md5 sums.
You mean that an algorithm for distilling an arbitrary-large data stream m into a far, far smaller number n has a possibility of hash collisions? Noway!
In order to create a truly, globally unique MD5 sum, the size of the sum would have to be identical to the size of the source file.
I hope the Ph.D.s running the whole thing realize that while they are trying to do stuff for the "Department of Energy" they are releasing so many thousands of pounds of junk in the land/air/water to run this giant supercomputer.
Your desktop PC uses more energy when it's on than when it's off, too. Why don't you do Mother Earth a favor and shut down?
In fact, why don't we ALL stop wasting energy on our computers and appliances, and just lie motionless in bed 24 hours a day???
There's no hypocrisy here, except for what you're erroneously perceiving.
How many of you would do business with a company who would buy a license from SCO?
I'd best most of us already do, whether we're aware of it or not. Do you research every company a vendor does business with when you evaluate their product?
No, IANAL, but I'm wondering how much of a lawyer Glenn really is.
Hmm. Well, he studied Law intensively for at least three years, and I'm guessing your studies in the area amount to maybe a single-semester Civics course and whatever you picked up from reading the Slashdot IANALers argue with each other.
If I had to guess, I'd say he's right and you're wrong.
I say almost all the modern musicians are promoted based on how they look.
I say you need to look beyond the bubblegum acts on MTV Total Request Live and go find some real music.
M TV has done more damage to music than you can imagine.
Promoting image over talent in the music industry is nothing new. Why do you think our parents grew up listening to Elvis Presley and Frankie Valli instead of the black musicians who actually CREATED rock 'n' roll?
A few years, and bulk diamonds will be on the Home Shopping Channel.
Doubtful. The companies researching synthetic gem-quality diamonds aren't spending all that time and money just so they can glut the market and watch their profits dwindle to practically nothing.
The diamond market will remain tightly controlled -- just instead of DeBeers being the only market force, there will be three or four major players. Prices will fall, maybe to half of what the presently are, but the diamond cartels and neo-cartels still want to make money hand-over-fist.
minsky proved that 2-layer neural networks were not capable of generalizing to many tasks. the proof is indeed notable, but then came *gasp* three layer neural networks
Isn't it possible that Minsky's proof convinced the AI research community to abandon development of 2-layer networks and move forward into 3-layer networks?
I've actually gotten irritated enough with "Linux is more secure than anything!" zealots that I've considered writing a Linux worm. I seriously doubt it would be hard.
Robert T. Morris already did this (or would have, had Linux existed 20 years ago)...
Windows operates on an everyone is root notion, allowing anyone to make changes to system resource files.
BZZT
This is not true of NT-based Windows OSes, meaning pretty much all of the MS server solutions. In fact, NT has stronger access controls than a standard Unix-like system. ACLs anyone?
Let's keep the first amendment out of this, okay? DeCSS is code. It's not free expression, it's not an Art form. It's simply a useful tool that let's you watch DVDs on your linux box.
Where did you get the idea that in order for speech to be protected, it must be artistic and not utilitarian?
Code is speech. I can't put it any more simply.
It should be legal to distribute it, not because of free speech, but because you simply should be allowed to write code that let's you watch movies.
If only we could have some sort of memorable term for that allowedness... hmm... how about 'freedom of expression'?
If you fix the DeCSS problem with 1st amendment logic, you've fixed the DeCSS problem. But if you fix it by repealing the DMCA, you've fixed a whole lot of other problems as well.
If you get a court to rule that prosecution of DeCSS-related cases using the DMCA is a violation of free speech principles, then you've proven that the DMCA itself is unconstitutional. Problem solved.
If you do the math, the regular old light bulb is still most efficient overall when compared to fluorescents or neobulbs.
For now, perhaps. There are tens if not hundreds of traditional light bulbs being produced for each modern energy-saving bulb, so economies of scale tip the economy-meter in favor of Old Incandescent.
Would the total costs per unit still be the same if half the bulbs manufactured were energy-efficient?
So why not use a large "white" LED, and then have a smaller blue LED to complement it -- but wire the blue one in backwards, so that instead of putting out blue light, it absorbs it?
(Yeah, yeah, mission critical machines should be kept uber patched...)
EXACTLY WRONG. Mission-critical machines (using your definition that lives could be lost if they were to fail) should never be patched. The software has to be done right the first time.
This means, in many cases, a custom-written embedded OS that's undergone exhaustive testing. Windows has never been appropriate for this type of system, and Microsoft will be the first to tell you that.
One should read their ISP's Terms of Service. If it says "we will assist law enforcement authorities and copyright holders" (maybe not in so many words) then yer screwed.
Every ISP's TOS is going to say this. What's the alternative? "We will ignore our legal duties whenever we see fit"?
The DMCA is the law. The ISP is obligated to comply with the terms of the DMCA.
The DMCA is a bad law. It violates the right to due process. It is unconstitutional.
There's a legend that Microsoft actually encountered this back with Microsoft Word 1.0 - it formatted the hard drive if the CRC of the program changed.
Knowing the quality Microsoft code, that was probably unintentional.
Slashdot Mirror
Sir, you just blew my mind.
You mention early on that Unix filesystems have the concept of symbolic links, implying that Windows systems do not.
Yet, a scant few paragraphs later, you describe how dragging a file in Windows can create a Shortcut.
Shortcuts are the Windows implementation of... symbolic links.
(Related one-time-no-financial-interest-rant: How many hours of quality reading do you get in a week on Slashdot? Toss your five bucks into the hat already...)
I come to Slashdot for the content: the links to articles of interest that people submit, the editorial comments that accompany story postings (mainly I like to complain about these), the comments and responses to comments that are contributed by the Slashdot user base.
Sending money to SlashDotCorp does not reward the users that make the site a powerful community resource, the ones that give me a reason to be here, the ones that give me something to read.
In fact, it's a quite good example of the trend you identified in the music industry: enriching the messengers rather than the content providers themselves.
Didn't you know? We're Free Software advocates, not free software advocates.
Maybe you are.
What about the other 98% of the computer market?
web-broadcasters thinking they could play commercial music without paying for it was naive at best.
Offtopic and entirely irrelevant to the issue before the court.
Putting aside the question of what you meant by "commercial music", the small webcasters ARE willing to pay to license content from the copyright holders. Their complaint is that the compulsory licensing fees are too high, and were set that way intentionally to keep the little guy out of the market.
Additionally, the organization responsible for collection webcasting licensing fees is entirely beholden to the RIAA -- as a webcaster you'd have to deal with them whether or not you played any music owned by RIAA-member labels. It's like the BSA's tactics against alleged floppy-copiers--the onus lands on you to prove you AREN'T out of compliance.
What you'll hear is not, "oh this is Linux. I know it" Rather it will be "oh this is Redhat"
Which distro was it in "Jurassic Park" that the little girl knew the GUI for?
The md5 hashing algorithm has been proven to contain flaws allowing two files to produce identical md5 sums.
You mean that an algorithm for distilling an arbitrary-large data stream m into a far, far smaller number n has a possibility of hash collisions? Noway!
In order to create a truly, globally unique MD5 sum, the size of the sum would have to be identical to the size of the source file.
I hope the Ph.D.s running the whole thing realize that while they are trying to do stuff for the "Department of Energy" they are releasing so many thousands of pounds of junk in the land/air/water to run this giant supercomputer.
Your desktop PC uses more energy when it's on than when it's off, too. Why don't you do Mother Earth a favor and shut down?
In fact, why don't we ALL stop wasting energy on our computers and appliances, and just lie motionless in bed 24 hours a day???
There's no hypocrisy here, except for what you're erroneously perceiving.
How many of you would do business with a company who would buy a license from SCO?
I'd best most of us already do, whether we're aware of it or not. Do you research every company a vendor does business with when you evaluate their product?
Being that I am uninformed, I refrain from having an opinion on this subject.
No, IANAL, but I'm wondering how much of a lawyer Glenn really is.
Hmm. Well, he studied Law intensively for at least three years, and I'm guessing your studies in the area amount to maybe a single-semester Civics course and whatever you picked up from reading the Slashdot IANALers argue with each other.
If I had to guess, I'd say he's right and you're wrong.
I say almost all the modern musicians are promoted based on how they look .
I say you need to look beyond the bubblegum acts on MTV Total Request Live and go find some real music.
M TV has done more damage to music than you can imagine.
Promoting image over talent in the music industry is nothing new. Why do you think our parents grew up listening to Elvis Presley and Frankie Valli instead of the black musicians who actually CREATED rock 'n' roll?
A few years, and bulk diamonds will be on the Home Shopping Channel.
Doubtful. The companies researching synthetic gem-quality diamonds aren't spending all that time and money just so they can glut the market and watch their profits dwindle to practically nothing.
The diamond market will remain tightly controlled -- just instead of DeBeers being the only market force, there will be three or four major players. Prices will fall, maybe to half of what the presently are, but the diamond cartels and neo-cartels still want to make money hand-over-fist.
presumably generated heat could easily be carried away with heat-sinking technologies.
Carried away to where?
Are we going to have to hook up our diamond-powered PCs to the dryer vent to send all the excess heat outside?
minsky proved that 2-layer neural networks were not capable of generalizing to many tasks. the proof is indeed notable, but then came *gasp* three layer neural networks
Isn't it possible that Minsky's proof convinced the AI research community to abandon development of 2-layer networks and move forward into 3-layer networks?
Blocking messages like this results in missed personal communication. This could possibly result in lawsuits from consumers themselves.
Lawsuits that would be dismissed immediately.
Internet e-mail does not have guaranteed delivery.
I've actually gotten irritated enough with "Linux is more secure than anything!" zealots that I've considered writing a Linux worm. I seriously doubt it would be hard.
Robert T. Morris already did this (or would have, had Linux existed 20 years ago)...
Windows operates on an everyone is root notion, allowing anyone to make changes to system resource files.
BZZT
This is not true of NT-based Windows OSes, meaning pretty much all of the MS server solutions. In fact, NT has stronger access controls than a standard Unix-like system. ACLs anyone?
Let's keep the first amendment out of this, okay? DeCSS is code. It's not free expression, it's not an Art form. It's simply a useful tool that let's you watch DVDs on your linux box.
Where did you get the idea that in order for speech to be protected, it must be artistic and not utilitarian?
Code is speech. I can't put it any more simply.
It should be legal to distribute it, not because of free speech, but because you simply should be allowed to write code that let's you watch movies.
If only we could have some sort of memorable term for that allowedness... hmm... how about 'freedom of expression'?
If you fix the DeCSS problem with 1st amendment logic, you've fixed the DeCSS problem. But if you fix it by repealing the DMCA, you've fixed a whole lot of other problems as well.
If you get a court to rule that prosecution of DeCSS-related cases using the DMCA is a violation of free speech principles, then you've proven that the DMCA itself is unconstitutional. Problem solved.
If you do the math, the regular old light bulb is still most efficient overall when compared to fluorescents or neobulbs.
For now, perhaps. There are tens if not hundreds of traditional light bulbs being produced for each modern energy-saving bulb, so economies of scale tip the economy-meter in favor of Old Incandescent.
Would the total costs per unit still be the same if half the bulbs manufactured were energy-efficient?
So why not use a large "white" LED, and then have a smaller blue LED to complement it -- but wire the blue one in backwards, so that instead of putting out blue light, it absorbs it?
No?
(Yeah, yeah, mission critical machines should be kept uber patched...)
EXACTLY WRONG. Mission-critical machines (using your definition that lives could be lost if they were to fail) should never be patched. The software has to be done right the first time.
This means, in many cases, a custom-written embedded OS that's undergone exhaustive testing. Windows has never been appropriate for this type of system, and Microsoft will be the first to tell you that.
Small white text, black background, dark purple links.
Do they expect anyone to read through eleven long pages of this when a single half-page is enough to give anyone serious eyestrain?
Those who live in glass houses...
One should read their ISP's Terms of Service. If it says "we will assist law enforcement authorities and copyright holders" (maybe not in so many words) then yer screwed.
Every ISP's TOS is going to say this. What's the alternative? "We will ignore our legal duties whenever we see fit"?
The DMCA is the law. The ISP is obligated to comply with the terms of the DMCA.
The DMCA is a bad law. It violates the right to due process. It is unconstitutional.
Think about LoJack, the car anti-theft mechanism, that tracks the car. Isn't that effectively the same thing?
No. If the LoJack device reported back the driver's license and social security numbers of the person who stole the car, THAT would be the same thing.
There's a legend that Microsoft actually encountered this back with Microsoft Word 1.0 - it formatted the hard drive if the CRC of the program changed.
Knowing the quality Microsoft code, that was probably unintentional.
WEEE LOOK AT ME I'M A KARMA WHORE!