Since when does the AHRA "allow[ed] the sale of DAT, MD, and home audio CD Burners"? These devices were going to be illegal unless a special law was passed? Or do you mean that this law staves off lobbying for such a prohibition by providing for financial penalties to be levied against the users of non-prerecorded media?
And let's not forget the obvious implications of the fact that one of the biggest members of the MPAA is Time-Warner. The same people running this ISP.
How the f*ck do you defend against this sort of complete end-to-end channel ownership? You don't.
"If you're smart enough, you're guilty". Isn't that already the legal standard? Seems like plenty of perfectly ethical hackers are getting busted doing stuff that isn't wrong, simply because someone somewhere got afraid of something they didn't understand and decided to play "call the cops on the smart guy" as their way of dealing with it. In fact, they passed their whole stupid DMCA law to codify the practice.
It does make some sense with Access, which is my primary MS application, and Excel still uses it (above and beyond the worksheet model-- which is a fine UI within a document). But I see now that you've pointed it out to me that it is gone in Word, which I avoid. There is a version of emacs for Windows, y'know.;)
Except that the article is about E, which is head-and-shoulders above Windows, except that it hasn't been able to force a bunch of application developers to behave. And I will grant that getting developers in line is important. It pisses me off to no end when I run across applications running under Windows which violate the conventions (which are heavily borrowed from Mac anyway).
How can you say it's deprecated when I'm still seeing it in every Office 2000 application I use? Only now they've decided to put a taskbar button for each document. Ugh. Even worse.
Your point about the modality issue on Macs is taken. I guess that's something you get used to early on. Which kind of supports my original point, the GUI is something you have to learn to use and when it comes to learning curves, Windows' curve is at least as steep as any other GUI I've seen.
I use Windows every weekday for at least 8 hours with a variety of MS and non-MS applications. Have for the last four years. I think I've used it enough to have a valid opinion. And in my opinion it's not intuitive or friendly or particularly clean or nice to look at or easy to use. If your opinion is different, then we disagree. You can't really prove this stuff.
Personally I don't think MS has done anything to attempt to improve their UI-- so whatever they're spending is largely wasted, the few changes I've found between Win95 and Win2k are not necessary and do not improve usability. Some of their basic architecture is pretty cool (what with the way they support drag and drop and cut and paste), but the UI itself is not top notch.
As for your "directly copied" assertion: prove it. Name one thing that KDE or GNOME has taken directly from Windows that wasn't either obvious or that Windows didn't take from Mac or some other existing GUI. It's not like Windows is the place where GUI progress is made.
If you can figure out windows, you can figure out most any other window manager I've run across that even remotely considered itself "for the typical user". Windows is horribly unusable, especially for those of us used to Macintosh. The very design of Windows with its BS document-window-inside-application-window is a major drag on its usability, imho... If you're not in maximized mode you spend time hunting for your toolbar-- and now with Win2K you'll be clicking at the bottom of your menu to actually get to see the whole menu. Thank god for right-clicking, but that's no real compensation for a crippled menu bar.
Windows is one of the worst window manager in existence. It doesn't do one thing and do it well, it doesn't have any shining features whatsoever. NOT ONE. So, my point is simple. The fact that Windows is so widespread has nothing to do with usability. The fact that many users are comfortable in Windows has nothing to do with usability. But they've learned to use it, so they consider it natural. But it's a computer. Using it is going to take practice-- and maybe even training. It's a very complex machine.
Nobody expects to be able to drive a car five minutes after taking it out of the box, unless they've driven before. And yes, if you go changing all the controls radically, the driver's going to need retraining. So look at it this way. Would you expect to be able to drive an F1 just because you can drive a Ford Escort? I wouldn't. Same goes for powerful window managers like E versus crap like Windows.
My biggest problem with E is that there don't seem to be any E applications. If I use E I still need to load half of KDE to run Konqueror, and then I'll need gtk for GIMP, and then there's all those applications that have pretty windows around them, but are really just ugly X applications. I cut my losses and just run KDE, but I'd rather run E.
I don't know... Me, I prefer Grandma that can type to the one that just points and drools.
That said, most of your average old people are very good at using language and have adapted to more technological whatsits, widgets, and gimcracks than you can possibly imagine. And considering that typing is a very standard skill for the average person likely to become a computer user (they'll need it even if they have a GUI), I can't imagine that Grandma can't figure out "ls" means "list files in this directory" and that "cat" means "print the file out to the screen". I mean, if she learned to speak English after she moved here from wherever the hell she came from, she can probably learn the 50-100 commands on the average CLI system.
And have you ever watched someone learn to double-click? Or mouse? Now let's explain right-clicking... give up. It's just not that simple. GUI isn't some dumbed-down interface, it's a useful tool. A CLI isn't some highly technical, wizard tool, it's just typing!
Now configuring DNS with a GUI may look easy, and that's deceptive, especially since the interface may be poorly designed, but it doesn't say anything about the difference between GUI and CLI. I myself am a happy emacs user, love my CLI, and can't imagine a future without language-based interaction with my computer (see the/. recent HAL article-- drool drool), but was overjoyed to find that http://localhost:631 will help me set up and administer my printers via a web page. This is a task that is made way more complex than it needed to be, and the GUI brought it into line. Would I want to administer everything that way? Probably not.
In addition to the other fine points made in response here, I would point out that computing machines have been around for quite some time, the Babbage Difference Engine and Babbage Analytical Engine are from the 1820s-30s. Ada Lovelace wrote the first program in the 1840's. Hollerith's tabulating machine was first used on a large scale for the 1890 census. The Differential Analyzer was in the 1930's, and it used vacuum tubes and punched paper tape to solve differential equations.
www.slashcode.com - read all about it, download the source, find exploits (?!), chitchat with others who tinker with this code, fork your very own slashfork...
I don't think look & feel is supposed to be very different, this is about the code behind the scenes.
Not to be snide, but as a long-time Oracle user do you have any similar complaints about postgreSQL? On MySQL, I agree. I wouldn't it for any serious database need. It's better than a raw filesystem, obviously... I might use it as the backend for a simple web database or for an MS Access replacement (if it saves me the hassle of convincing an ISP to switch to pgSQL or installing software), but I'd never consider it for any serious data warehousing, inventory control, or analytics types of uses.
But most of the limits you mention are not in postgreSQL, so what does it lack? And why do you think MySQL has caught on so well, where postgreSQL has not?
Considering that Loki is simply releasing games originally written by other companies, perhaps it simply too expensive to port existing games when you have to pay license fees for the right to do so.
And this isn't a "going out of business" event. This is a bad thing, yes, but Loki still has a chance to pull this off. Maybe they've just been managing their cash flow poorly, or putting their money into areas that don't directly feed revenue growth.
But should someone with deep pockets save Loki? I think we both agree that is pretty stupid. For my part, I don't really care if there are a bunch of proprietary games available for Linux. Should I be so concerned about Linux "taking over" that I'm willing to spend money on something that I would barely play, and isn't Free Software anyway, just to see that happen? Hell no.
Do we really think that millions of Windows machines out there are just waiting for Sim City 8000 to be ported to Red Hat before they become Linux desktops? Absurd. I can think of so many better reasons why people aren't switching to Linux. And the availability of non-Free games for Linux isn't one of them.
I'm sure you did this, but both encodings came from the same WAV file? I have to wonder if comparisons are being done using different rippers, resulting in slightly different source files. After all, it's the ripping process, not the encoding process that is likely to reproduce the noise from the disc, no? Isn't that why cdparanoia is "paranoid" and has extra "paranoia" available?
What international law is the USA violating? Please tell me, I'll add it to the next letter I send a politician about this. And I realize the DMCA may be an unconstitutional law, but unfortunately the system is built to allow such laws to pass and requires that court cases be tried in order for the judicial branch to find otherwise. Generally laws are only subject to judicial review after such time as they have been enforced. If not, they should be, since issuing injunctions against the enforcement of laws until such time as they have undergone judicial review is in itself a subversion of the Constitution (as it essentially adds another layer to the veto process).
Given the enormous attention given the civil case of the MPAA vs. 2600, and the civil case of the RIAA vs. Napster, one would have to assume that at some point the criminal portions of the DMCA would be enforced as well. I'm guessing that Adobe, as part of their discussions with the FBI, made it clear that they were having a hard time suing a Russian company for violating the non-Russian DMCA by doing something that is entirely legal in Russia, but here was an opportunity to hold the perpetrator accountable by the only means pragmatically available according to the DMCA. Obviously the Feds bought it, since Dmitry is still in jail. Or maybe the FBI was just frustrated that it couldn't find anyone else to arrest at Def Con. In which case, you're probably right. It was completely arbitrary.
That works great for text. But it doesn't retain formatting information if I copy from Konqueror and paste into KWord. Just as a "for instance" I can do this from MSIE to MS Word-- with all formatting table structures, even hyperlinks in place. Is the situation better with GNOME, or any other desktop environment on Unix/Linux?
I'm not naysaying... most of what we are constantly hearing the parrots say is "essential" for Linux to gain desktop acceptance is nonsense. Even my example is unlikely to be a common need. I've never done it except for testing it, nor seen anyone else do it. I also managed to crash MS Word during my simple test of that feature, so it may not be so useful anyway.:)
For general, typical office use, any GUI requires training and learning, and the curve for KDE or GNOME is no steeper than for Windows. And most of the "essential", advanced features MS Office provides have little to no benefit, since most users do not have the time or inclination to learn them (and if they do, they often have a peer group which isn't going to be keeping up, making the use of the feature largely useless).
Dmitry must have had some clue he was in something of a grey area when he decided to come to America to present his work at a hacker convention (I mean, it's Def Con, not the O'Reilly Open Source convention, after all). If he was so completely unaware of the potential for his situation to go this way, then I'd have to ask who invited him here without giving him some background and pointing out some potential risks. He's Russian, he should have an understanding of what it means to go against the political will of the local secret police (in our case, the FBI). That the Russian secret police don't give a damn about copyrights (in part because their laws are different) doesn't mitigate the fact that the secret police in the USA do-- and are not known for how they treat Russian computer experts.
But he is a hero either way, because the definition of "hero" does not always require the subject to have high-minded, lofty goals at the outset. He is quite possibly going to be central in overturning this law, or he will be one of the most obvious victims of it-- in a way that Eric Corley can never be. I fully expect "Free Dmitry" to replace Mitnick references... at least the new rallying cry will have a more ethical foundation.
No kidding. This is exactly the problem. Hopefully the next generation of computer users will be a little more aware for the most part-- having grown up with things like e-mail as a part of their lexicon. Of course, mail fraud happens everyday and we've had the postal system for at least 100 years-- so maybe I'm being too optimistic.
For the rest of us, I suppose we could simply refuse to accept any and all unsigned (y'know what I mean, PGP/GPG-signed) mail. The same as we'd probably throw out snail mail envelopes that aren't informative about the sender-- or don't include some other clue that the contents are not just junk mail. Of course, the only snail mail I get like that's anonymous at the envelope level is from Planned Parenthood, they seem to think it's a good marketing gimmick.
No one is hoping the quality of effects goes down. The point is that now, thanks to the success of the first movie, there are lots of action movies doing the same effects. They are going to have to push themselves really hard to just to keep ahead of all the people catching up to them. The key here is that for the next Matrix to be intresting they are going to have to either develop the story (easier, imho) or pull off another special effects revolution (harder, imho).
If we have full access via web browser to the system, can't we simply send a GET with a URL ending in a goddam "poweroff" command or at least "kill -9 IIS" or "rm -rf/IIS/"? (Note that I include only Unix commands because I have no idea what these commands would be on NT)
Have you looked at Practical C++? I can't vouch for it's quality, but I did start using Practical C (by the same author). I am switching to Sam's "C++ in 21 Days (Linux edition)" though, to learn C++, since it focuses specifically on the GNU compiler tools and has sections on GNOME and KDE.
Dear AC, this is the last time I respond to an AC, so I'll make it good. You're the idiot. The point is this: if I'm "sharing" files in order to avoid paying the purchase price of a CD, do you really expect that I would have paid market price for all of that music? I'm guessing that a lot of the time I wouldn't. File sharing is not a big convenience over simply picking up the CD, and I could never afford all that extra music above and beyond what I would normally buy anyway. Napster was about getting free stuff-- much of which most of us would not have bought if we had no alternative.
My example point at which I would buy those CDs was as used CDs, where the record company has made no additional profit after the first sale. The only price I've paid went in part to the person who sold their used CD and to the used CD store. That's zero profit to the record company beyond first sale. Repeat after me, buying used CDs does not generate additional revenue for record companies or artists.
As for your example of clearance bins-- please tell me when you find a clearance bin that has CDs that are only two months old and were actually popular when they came out. I'll go there and buy the whole bin full (provided they're not cutouts, see the following discussion of cutouts), I'll be able to sell those CDs near full price here in the real world. And do you really think that major retailers who end up dumping stock into a clearance bin don't get a rebate of some sort from their suppliers? Booksellers learned this trick a long time ago WRT magazines and unsold books. They rip the cover off and throw the rest away. Do you really think the cutout process is any different? You have heard of cutouts right? Of course, you have, you just conveniently forgot what this probably signifies-- it means that you can't take and sell the CD at full price again if you're a normal record store. That would be like Barnes & Noble trying to sell cover-less books and magazines. Clear violation of their contract with their suppliers.
Re:Napster Fair Use? Give Me a Break!
on
The End of Innovation?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
BS. I am not "depriving" an artist of a profit if I copy something I would not have purchased at the market price. If I actually had to pay for Britney Spears and Eminem, I would have waited for the used bins to fill up so I could buy them at $4-$8 -- and bing! still no profits for the artist.
But I agree with the statement that Napster contributed to copyright infringement. Sharing Britney Spears and Eminem with people I don't know is not Fair Use. It is an attempt to get the goods at less than market price or for free. The question is still there, would Napster survive if it somehow was limited to legal file sharing? The answer is still pretty obvious: no. It required a mass of popular music to have sufficient users to be useful.
I am hosting two mp3s for your entertainment at www.ichimunki.com, just go there and type 'mp3' into the command line. I permit you and everyone to share these files as much as you will-- and I can do that. I created the songs and the files. However, there is not enough interest in work like mine to keep a Napster viable legally. And most work in which there is enough interest to get a Napster up and running is going to be work that the copyright holders do not want to share for free to the world.
But just because I am giving my files away for free online, does not mean I'd condone stealing the CD from a store. That results in the real loss of physical property. And if my bandwidth needs become excessive due to the files' popularity, I would-- of course-- have to charge for them to help cover the expense of hosting them. Internet services cost money to provide, and the people who do the work need to eat. This is the lesson we are learning in 2001.
so? should this really affect our concernc about whether such copying or ethical? how many people actually share this stuff? my guess is that most fair use personal copying is for personal use, or for the occasional small gathering of friends or family.
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Since when does the AHRA "allow[ed] the sale of DAT, MD, and home audio CD Burners"? These devices were going to be illegal unless a special law was passed? Or do you mean that this law staves off lobbying for such a prohibition by providing for financial penalties to be levied against the users of non-prerecorded media?
And let's not forget the obvious implications of the fact that one of the biggest members of the MPAA is Time-Warner. The same people running this ISP.
How the f*ck do you defend against this sort of complete end-to-end channel ownership? You don't.
"If you're smart enough, you're guilty". Isn't that already the legal standard? Seems like plenty of perfectly ethical hackers are getting busted doing stuff that isn't wrong, simply because someone somewhere got afraid of something they didn't understand and decided to play "call the cops on the smart guy" as their way of dealing with it. In fact, they passed their whole stupid DMCA law to codify the practice.
It does make some sense with Access, which is my primary MS application, and Excel still uses it (above and beyond the worksheet model-- which is a fine UI within a document). But I see now that you've pointed it out to me that it is gone in Word, which I avoid. There is a version of emacs for Windows, y'know. ;)
Except that the article is about E, which is head-and-shoulders above Windows, except that it hasn't been able to force a bunch of application developers to behave. And I will grant that getting developers in line is important. It pisses me off to no end when I run across applications running under Windows which violate the conventions (which are heavily borrowed from Mac anyway).
How can you say it's deprecated when I'm still seeing it in every Office 2000 application I use? Only now they've decided to put a taskbar button for each document. Ugh. Even worse.
Your point about the modality issue on Macs is taken. I guess that's something you get used to early on. Which kind of supports my original point, the GUI is something you have to learn to use and when it comes to learning curves, Windows' curve is at least as steep as any other GUI I've seen.
I use Windows every weekday for at least 8 hours with a variety of MS and non-MS applications. Have for the last four years. I think I've used it enough to have a valid opinion. And in my opinion it's not intuitive or friendly or particularly clean or nice to look at or easy to use. If your opinion is different, then we disagree. You can't really prove this stuff.
Personally I don't think MS has done anything to attempt to improve their UI-- so whatever they're spending is largely wasted, the few changes I've found between Win95 and Win2k are not necessary and do not improve usability. Some of their basic architecture is pretty cool (what with the way they support drag and drop and cut and paste), but the UI itself is not top notch.
As for your "directly copied" assertion: prove it. Name one thing that KDE or GNOME has taken directly from Windows that wasn't either obvious or that Windows didn't take from Mac or some other existing GUI. It's not like Windows is the place where GUI progress is made.
If you can figure out windows, you can figure out most any other window manager I've run across that even remotely considered itself "for the typical user". Windows is horribly unusable, especially for those of us used to Macintosh. The very design of Windows with its BS document-window-inside-application-window is a major drag on its usability, imho... If you're not in maximized mode you spend time hunting for your toolbar-- and now with Win2K you'll be clicking at the bottom of your menu to actually get to see the whole menu. Thank god for right-clicking, but that's no real compensation for a crippled menu bar.
Windows is one of the worst window manager in existence. It doesn't do one thing and do it well, it doesn't have any shining features whatsoever. NOT ONE. So, my point is simple. The fact that Windows is so widespread has nothing to do with usability. The fact that many users are comfortable in Windows has nothing to do with usability. But they've learned to use it, so they consider it natural. But it's a computer. Using it is going to take practice-- and maybe even training. It's a very complex machine.
Nobody expects to be able to drive a car five minutes after taking it out of the box, unless they've driven before. And yes, if you go changing all the controls radically, the driver's going to need retraining. So look at it this way. Would you expect to be able to drive an F1 just because you can drive a Ford Escort? I wouldn't. Same goes for powerful window managers like E versus crap like Windows.
My biggest problem with E is that there don't seem to be any E applications. If I use E I still need to load half of KDE to run Konqueror, and then I'll need gtk for GIMP, and then there's all those applications that have pretty windows around them, but are really just ugly X applications. I cut my losses and just run KDE, but I'd rather run E.
I don't know... Me, I prefer Grandma that can type to the one that just points and drools.
/. recent HAL article-- drool drool), but was overjoyed to find that http://localhost:631 will help me set up and administer my printers via a web page. This is a task that is made way more complex than it needed to be, and the GUI brought it into line. Would I want to administer everything that way? Probably not.
That said, most of your average old people are very good at using language and have adapted to more technological whatsits, widgets, and gimcracks than you can possibly imagine. And considering that typing is a very standard skill for the average person likely to become a computer user (they'll need it even if they have a GUI), I can't imagine that Grandma can't figure out "ls" means "list files in this directory" and that "cat" means "print the file out to the screen". I mean, if she learned to speak English after she moved here from wherever the hell she came from, she can probably learn the 50-100 commands on the average CLI system.
And have you ever watched someone learn to double-click? Or mouse? Now let's explain right-clicking... give up. It's just not that simple. GUI isn't some dumbed-down interface, it's a useful tool. A CLI isn't some highly technical, wizard tool, it's just typing!
Now configuring DNS with a GUI may look easy, and that's deceptive, especially since the interface may be poorly designed, but it doesn't say anything about the difference between GUI and CLI. I myself am a happy emacs user, love my CLI, and can't imagine a future without language-based interaction with my computer (see the
In addition to the other fine points made in response here, I would point out that computing machines have been around for quite some time, the Babbage Difference Engine and Babbage Analytical Engine are from the 1820s-30s. Ada Lovelace wrote the first program in the 1840's. Hollerith's tabulating machine was first used on a large scale for the 1890 census. The Differential Analyzer was in the 1930's, and it used vacuum tubes and punched paper tape to solve differential equations.
www.slashcode.com - read all about it, download the source, find exploits (?!), chitchat with others who tinker with this code, fork your very own slashfork...
I don't think look & feel is supposed to be very different, this is about the code behind the scenes.
Not to be snide, but as a long-time Oracle user do you have any similar complaints about postgreSQL? On MySQL, I agree. I wouldn't it for any serious database need. It's better than a raw filesystem, obviously... I might use it as the backend for a simple web database or for an MS Access replacement (if it saves me the hassle of convincing an ISP to switch to pgSQL or installing software), but I'd never consider it for any serious data warehousing, inventory control, or analytics types of uses.
But most of the limits you mention are not in postgreSQL, so what does it lack? And why do you think MySQL has caught on so well, where postgreSQL has not?
No one has proven anything!
Considering that Loki is simply releasing games originally written by other companies, perhaps it simply too expensive to port existing games when you have to pay license fees for the right to do so.
And this isn't a "going out of business" event. This is a bad thing, yes, but Loki still has a chance to pull this off. Maybe they've just been managing their cash flow poorly, or putting their money into areas that don't directly feed revenue growth.
But should someone with deep pockets save Loki? I think we both agree that is pretty stupid. For my part, I don't really care if there are a bunch of proprietary games available for Linux. Should I be so concerned about Linux "taking over" that I'm willing to spend money on something that I would barely play, and isn't Free Software anyway, just to see that happen? Hell no.
Do we really think that millions of Windows machines out there are just waiting for Sim City 8000 to be ported to Red Hat before they become Linux desktops? Absurd. I can think of so many better reasons why people aren't switching to Linux. And the availability of non-Free games for Linux isn't one of them.
I'm sure you did this, but both encodings came from the same WAV file? I have to wonder if comparisons are being done using different rippers, resulting in slightly different source files. After all, it's the ripping process, not the encoding process that is likely to reproduce the noise from the disc, no? Isn't that why cdparanoia is "paranoid" and has extra "paranoia" available?
well, in that case, can it be made to do Start->Shut Down... remotely?
What international law is the USA violating? Please tell me, I'll add it to the next letter I send a politician about this. And I realize the DMCA may be an unconstitutional law, but unfortunately the system is built to allow such laws to pass and requires that court cases be tried in order for the judicial branch to find otherwise. Generally laws are only subject to judicial review after such time as they have been enforced. If not, they should be, since issuing injunctions against the enforcement of laws until such time as they have undergone judicial review is in itself a subversion of the Constitution (as it essentially adds another layer to the veto process).
Given the enormous attention given the civil case of the MPAA vs. 2600, and the civil case of the RIAA vs. Napster, one would have to assume that at some point the criminal portions of the DMCA would be enforced as well. I'm guessing that Adobe, as part of their discussions with the FBI, made it clear that they were having a hard time suing a Russian company for violating the non-Russian DMCA by doing something that is entirely legal in Russia, but here was an opportunity to hold the perpetrator accountable by the only means pragmatically available according to the DMCA. Obviously the Feds bought it, since Dmitry is still in jail. Or maybe the FBI was just frustrated that it couldn't find anyone else to arrest at Def Con. In which case, you're probably right. It was completely arbitrary.
That works great for text. But it doesn't retain formatting information if I copy from Konqueror and paste into KWord. Just as a "for instance" I can do this from MSIE to MS Word-- with all formatting table structures, even hyperlinks in place. Is the situation better with GNOME, or any other desktop environment on Unix/Linux?
:)
I'm not naysaying... most of what we are constantly hearing the parrots say is "essential" for Linux to gain desktop acceptance is nonsense. Even my example is unlikely to be a common need. I've never done it except for testing it, nor seen anyone else do it. I also managed to crash MS Word during my simple test of that feature, so it may not be so useful anyway.
For general, typical office use, any GUI requires training and learning, and the curve for KDE or GNOME is no steeper than for Windows. And most of the "essential", advanced features MS Office provides have little to no benefit, since most users do not have the time or inclination to learn them (and if they do, they often have a peer group which isn't going to be keeping up, making the use of the feature largely useless).
Dmitry must have had some clue he was in something of a grey area when he decided to come to America to present his work at a hacker convention (I mean, it's Def Con, not the O'Reilly Open Source convention, after all). If he was so completely unaware of the potential for his situation to go this way, then I'd have to ask who invited him here without giving him some background and pointing out some potential risks. He's Russian, he should have an understanding of what it means to go against the political will of the local secret police (in our case, the FBI). That the Russian secret police don't give a damn about copyrights (in part because their laws are different) doesn't mitigate the fact that the secret police in the USA do-- and are not known for how they treat Russian computer experts.
But he is a hero either way, because the definition of "hero" does not always require the subject to have high-minded, lofty goals at the outset. He is quite possibly going to be central in overturning this law, or he will be one of the most obvious victims of it-- in a way that Eric Corley can never be. I fully expect "Free Dmitry" to replace Mitnick references... at least the new rallying cry will have a more ethical foundation.
No kidding. This is exactly the problem. Hopefully the next generation of computer users will be a little more aware for the most part-- having grown up with things like e-mail as a part of their lexicon. Of course, mail fraud happens everyday and we've had the postal system for at least 100 years-- so maybe I'm being too optimistic.
For the rest of us, I suppose we could simply refuse to accept any and all unsigned (y'know what I mean, PGP/GPG-signed) mail. The same as we'd probably throw out snail mail envelopes that aren't informative about the sender-- or don't include some other clue that the contents are not just junk mail. Of course, the only snail mail I get like that's anonymous at the envelope level is from Planned Parenthood, they seem to think it's a good marketing gimmick.
No one is hoping the quality of effects goes down. The point is that now, thanks to the success of the first movie, there are lots of action movies doing the same effects. They are going to have to push themselves really hard to just to keep ahead of all the people catching up to them. The key here is that for the next Matrix to be intresting they are going to have to either develop the story (easier, imho) or pull off another special effects revolution (harder, imho).
If we have full access via web browser to the system, can't we simply send a GET with a URL ending in a goddam "poweroff" command or at least "kill -9 IIS" or "rm -rf /IIS/"? (Note that I include only Unix commands because I have no idea what these commands would be on NT)
Have you looked at Practical C++? I can't vouch for it's quality, but I did start using Practical C (by the same author). I am switching to Sam's "C++ in 21 Days (Linux edition)" though, to learn C++, since it focuses specifically on the GNU compiler tools and has sections on GNOME and KDE.
Dear AC, this is the last time I respond to an AC, so I'll make it good. You're the idiot. The point is this: if I'm "sharing" files in order to avoid paying the purchase price of a CD, do you really expect that I would have paid market price for all of that music? I'm guessing that a lot of the time I wouldn't. File sharing is not a big convenience over simply picking up the CD, and I could never afford all that extra music above and beyond what I would normally buy anyway. Napster was about getting free stuff-- much of which most of us would not have bought if we had no alternative.
My example point at which I would buy those CDs was as used CDs, where the record company has made no additional profit after the first sale. The only price I've paid went in part to the person who sold their used CD and to the used CD store. That's zero profit to the record company beyond first sale. Repeat after me, buying used CDs does not generate additional revenue for record companies or artists.
As for your example of clearance bins-- please tell me when you find a clearance bin that has CDs that are only two months old and were actually popular when they came out. I'll go there and buy the whole bin full (provided they're not cutouts, see the following discussion of cutouts), I'll be able to sell those CDs near full price here in the real world. And do you really think that major retailers who end up dumping stock into a clearance bin don't get a rebate of some sort from their suppliers? Booksellers learned this trick a long time ago WRT magazines and unsold books. They rip the cover off and throw the rest away. Do you really think the cutout process is any different? You have heard of cutouts right? Of course, you have, you just conveniently forgot what this probably signifies-- it means that you can't take and sell the CD at full price again if you're a normal record store. That would be like Barnes & Noble trying to sell cover-less books and magazines. Clear violation of their contract with their suppliers.
BS. I am not "depriving" an artist of a profit if I copy something I would not have purchased at the market price. If I actually had to pay for Britney Spears and Eminem, I would have waited for the used bins to fill up so I could buy them at $4-$8 -- and bing! still no profits for the artist.
But I agree with the statement that Napster contributed to copyright infringement. Sharing Britney Spears and Eminem with people I don't know is not Fair Use. It is an attempt to get the goods at less than market price or for free. The question is still there, would Napster survive if it somehow was limited to legal file sharing? The answer is still pretty obvious: no. It required a mass of popular music to have sufficient users to be useful.
I am hosting two mp3s for your entertainment at www.ichimunki.com, just go there and type 'mp3' into the command line. I permit you and everyone to share these files as much as you will-- and I can do that. I created the songs and the files. However, there is not enough interest in work like mine to keep a Napster viable legally. And most work in which there is enough interest to get a Napster up and running is going to be work that the copyright holders do not want to share for free to the world.
But just because I am giving my files away for free online, does not mean I'd condone stealing the CD from a store. That results in the real loss of physical property. And if my bandwidth needs become excessive due to the files' popularity, I would-- of course-- have to charge for them to help cover the expense of hosting them. Internet services cost money to provide, and the people who do the work need to eat. This is the lesson we are learning in 2001.
so? should this really affect our concernc about whether such copying or ethical? how many people actually share this stuff? my guess is that most fair use personal copying is for personal use, or for the occasional small gathering of friends or family.