The previous poster did use strong language, but I think that it's easy enough to understand his position as not being intended to be an accurate restatement of the law, but an argument about policy.
I think you're giving the poster too much credit. When one says, "Copyrights do not expire," that's an unambiguous statement of fact. In this case, it's a statement that's completely and utterly false.
Worse was posting that link to a web page that is so full of vitriol and bile as to be practically useless in any meaningful discussion. Making rude comments about Disney is amusing and all that, but it's not constructive.
Some rhetoric has no place in serious discussions of policy, I think. Exaggeration for effect is one, and I think that's what this poster was doing. If we're going to have a serious conversation about copyright policy, then let's keep it serious.
And just so you know, I'm well aware of the irony of trying to have a serious discussion of policy on Slashdot. Oh, well.
I will not discuss this matter with you any more. It is clear from your writings that you lack a basic moral compass on this issue. Different people come from different backgrounds, and they all have different guiding forces in their lives. Personally, though I am not a religious person, I believe in "Thou shalt not steal."
Taking something without giving the owner of that thing what he or she wants in return is stealing, plain and simple. If I make a thing-- be it a physical thing or a digital thing-- and ask people to pay me a dollar for it, taking a copy without paying me a dollar is stealing. And stealing is wrong.
Since you reject this basic truth, everything that you said in your post is wrong, and wrong-headed. I can see that no further conversation between us will be productive. I don't believe that a moral compass can be persuaded into a person, so I'm not all that motivated to try.
I only take comfort in the fact that you, and people who hold similar opinions to yours, make up an insignificant minority of our society.
Copyright in the United States and the European Union no longer expires.
Your statement is either incorrect, or a lie. Since you posted a link, it seems that you are informed and that you were trying deliberately to misrepresent the facts. On the other hand, since the link you posted is also full of misinformation, it's possible that you might just be ignorant. This question is between you and your god.
Copyright in the United States works like this: works owned by an individual remain the exclusive property of that individual for his or her lifetime, then the property of that individual's estate for seventy years. After that term, the copyright expires, and the ownership of the works reverts to the public domain.
Works owned by a corporations have a different term, because corporations don't have lifespans. A work owned by a corporation remains that corporation's property for ninety-five years before reverting to the public domain.
The laws governing EU member nations are similar.
It is a bald-faced lie to say that copyright no longer expires. Many uninformed reactionaries have written that copyright is now perpetual, because Congress can extend it any time they want. This has always been true, within the limits set forth by the Constitution. It doesn't mean that copyright is meaningless, or that it doesn't expire.
If you don't like this situation, run for office. Or at least try to persuade people in a calm and reasonable fashion. But to use lies in an attempt to manipulate your audience is evil and wrong, no matter how you look at it.
They're all information. Different types of information are valuable for different reasons - some may entertain, some may educate, and so on - but they're all information.
That limb you're out on is getting pretty thin. Your statements are starting to contradict what every child knows. Fact is different from fiction. Books of information are different from books that entertain. The encyclopedia has no author's name on the cover, because it wasn't written as much as it was compiled. A novel is the product of one (or more, I suppose) people's creative labor. It's no different from a chair or a house; those things are the product of people's manual labor.
Your argument about "excludable" versus "non-excludable" is irrelevant, because you have failed to acknowledge the underlying principle: creative products are different from pure information. Until you're willing to accept this basic fact of human existence, I regret that we have nothing more to say to each other on this subject.
You are wrong, not necessarily because your logic is flawed, but because your premises are incorrect.
Nope. There are 280 million people in the U.S. Approximately 260 million of those (just about everyone over the age of 2) people have written, or sung, or drawn. Maybe a million or so have ever been paid for it. Most artists don't want to get paid.
This is nuts. Are you trying to say that 260 million people in the US-- or, that is, "most" of them-- don't want to get paid? I think you're projecting your fringe opinions onto the majority, and doing so foolishly at that.
Everybody I've ever met who's not a child either has a job, or wants one, either directly (in terms of working himself or herself) or indirectly (in terms of being part of a family where somebody is bringing in the cash).
If you're so adamant about not wanting to get paid, then please forward your salary to my address.
Unless you don't receive one, of course. Which also seems just, somehow.
I'm quite impressed that your karma hasn't evaporated so far, and I assume that since you're worried about it then you must have some, which implies that you've been around on Slashdot for at least a little while without blowing your top..... impressive.
To be honest, I'm a little surprised that my post wasn't smacked down to -1 in short order. I attribute this to the fact that it was long. Most people read the first paragraph or two and gave up.
But I didn't mean to imply that I was worried about my karma. It's nice to know that I've got some, and all that, but it's not like I can redeem it for valuable prizes or a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni.
And finally, I blow my top plenty. I guess I just do it way down near the bottom of long threads, where moderators rarely go. Up near the surface, where there are more eyeballs, one should be more civil.
I can't say I totally understand your complete opposition to GPL - I think you could benefit from separating the message and the speaker.
Oh, you may have a point there. But RMS's rhetoric makes me slightly suspicious of everything he says and does-- not tin-foil-hat suspicious, but it definitely bothers me. So based on that, the GPL and all of RMS's other intellectual output is tainted. I'm even starting to wonder if Emacs is part of some hidden agenda....;-)
But in all seriousness, it's not hard to read the GPL and find yourself muttering the word "insidious." Buried deep in the document are restrictions and requirements that have serious implications for people who use GPL'd software. The case of GNU Readline is one example.
But as I said in my manifesto-- I mean post-- the thing that really gets my ire up is his misleading and deceptive use of the word "free" to apply to something which embodies the opposite of freedom.
When I've expressed that opinion before, people have responded that the GPL guarantees freedoms by imposing some slight restrictions. I think that's doublespeak. The GPL doesn't really guarantee freedom of any kind; it guarantees availability of source code. Once something has been licensed and released with the GPL, it can never be proprietary again. (There may be exceptions that I'm not aware of. I don't think they're that important to my point.)
Now, whether or not this is a good thing is not my bone of contention. Like all things, I'm sure there's a case for it and a case against it. My problem is that the true message of the GPL-- which is that you're putting severe limits on how people may use the software, and putting a heavy burden on them if they do-- is hidden behind that misused word: free.
I believe when most laymen hear the term "free software," the first thing they think is "zero cost." If they consider it a bit further, they think "unrestricted." I think it's reasonable to believe this, because even RMS writes at length on how that's not what "free software" means in one of his writings; I think it's "What is Free Software?" but I'm not in the mood to go look just now.
"Free" means "zero cost" and "unrestricted." That's where the average person will stop. That's where I stopped, back when I first ran into the stuff. In my case, my company acted without understanding all the meanings of the term "free software," and got in trouble for it. We were deceived, deliberately or inadvertently, into thinking that "free software" meant "unrestricted software," when in fact it means the opposite of that.
This is dangerously close to being a bait-and-switch tactic.
All the virtues of "free software" are right out there in public view. But once you start using it, you quickly find yourself obligated in ways you were not anticipating. I consider that to be the opposite of "free."
If they would drop the "free" label and go with some other name-- like Permanently Open Source Software, or Public Source Software maybe-- and clean up their rhetoric so it sounds a little more like Rousseau and less like Riefenstahl then I'd be happier. I still wouldn't agree, but I wouldn't be so vehemently opposed, either.
Wow. I'm used to people saying that free software is a bad business model and an unsound practice. I don't think I've ever encountered such a vehement, emotion-charged stand, though. In all seriousness, why do you "hate it, haite, hate it" so much?
Thanks for asking in a civil manner. I'm pleasantly surprised.;-)
Before I get into this, please understand that I'm not really looking for an argument. If you disagree with my ideas, you're naturally welcome to say so, but if you do you probably won't get a satisfactory response out of me. I apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.
(Much of this comes from reading this, and RMS's other writings. Any misunderstanding on my part of RMS's philosophy is all his fault. Just kidding.)
First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.
Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.
I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.
I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.
I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.
I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.
I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.
So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.
But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.
The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:
All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.
RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.
So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."
RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.
This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)
I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.
These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with your program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"
This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.
1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.
2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.
3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.
All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to "hate, hate, hate" RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose all that they stand for.
shell out a couple hundred bucks for an original bondi iMac 233, throw YellowDog Linux on there, and you've got a surfing (Mozilla/Netscape) and e-mail (Ximian Evolution) machine....
I think you've missed the point. Nobody who would buy an entry-level Dell would want to run Linux on anything.
Truth be told, in terms of getting the job done quickly and easily, I wouldn't wish Linux on my worst enemy. It's just not a very effective OS for desktop use, unless your only goal is to fart around with Linux.
I'm just astounded. Absolutely astounded. "God-given ability" indeed. Sounds like you're claiming some sort of divine right to steal MP3s.
I'm calling "bullshit" on you. Put your rhetoric aside and just answer the following essay questions completely and honestly:
John makes a recording of himself singing a song. John doesn't want to give the recording away for free; instead, he asks everybody to give him a dollar for a copy of it. Bob buys a copy of the song from John for a dollar, then puts his copy up on a web site where anyone can download it. Sally wants to buy John's song, but finds Bob's web site and downloads it for free instead. Jane also downloads a copy and listens to it for free, even though she never would have bought it from John.
1. Was it morally wrong of John to ask people to pay him to listen to his song?
2. Was it morally wrong of Bob to put the music on a web site where anybody could download it without paying John?
3. Was it morally wrong of Sally to download the song from Bob instead of buying it from John?
4. Was it morally wrong of Jane to download the song from Bob instead of buying it from John?
Of course, rather than answering the questions, you're just going to respond with another fuck-you comment about how I'm a small minded, greedy man and go on downloaded bootlegs and pirated MP3s off the Internet. So I really don't know why I bother.
In this case the moral man sees nothing wrong with distributing information or with receiving information.
You're either accidentally or deliberately confusing the situation by using the word "information" to mean "movies."
It seems to be a fairly common misconception among people on your side of the argument that music, movies, books, and software are all just data, and that they're in the same category as scientific knowledge. That's where your "sharing information is clearly a moral and good thing" comes from.
But this is clearly bullshit. It's not appropriate to compare movies to knowledge and say they should both be shared freely.
Movies, music, and books are not merely information. They're the result of somebody's creative effort. By taking them-- either permanently, by downloading a bootleg, or transiently, by watching an illegal stream-- you're stealing. If there's a loophole in the jurisdictions of the various parties involved that says it's not technically illegal, that doesn't make it any less wrong.
But you know who I feel bad for? I feel bad for the poor, ignorant person who moderated you up. Obviously somebody out there agrees with you, and doesn't even see the flaw in your argument. I hope he or she reads this, and reconsiders.
There a a big difference between the philosophies of the software libre movement and the philosophies of people who copy files without the copyright holder's authorization.
I don't agree with your philosophy, Sam, but I do agree completely with everything you just said, and I applaud you for saying it so well.
I despise the "free" software movement, or as you more accurately called it, the "software libre" movement. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I'll rant and rave and propagandize and try to convince people that it's misguided, that it's Bad and Wrong. I oppose it with everything I've got.
But you know what? Your post is one of the most reasoned, insightful things I've ever read on the delineation between the "software should be free" guys and the "gimme, gimme, gimme" guys. All too often it's hard to tell the two group apart. Thanks for taking a stand.
You are incorrect. Subpixeling, however the font was rendered behind the scenes, refers to using the R G B elements of an LCD's "pixel" to increase the horizontal (or vertical, depending on element orientation) resolution of the screen.
No, I am not incorrect. The word "subpixel" has been used to refer to pixel-splitting, but it's not true to say that it only refers to pixel-splitting.
I happen to have here on my desk a whitepaper written by Kurt Akeley of SGI about the Reality Engine graphics system. I can't seem to find a date on it, but it definitely pre-dates "ClearType" by many years.
One representative quote:
Alpha antialiasing of points and lines is common to second generation architectures. Alpha antialiasing is implemented using subpixel and line-slope indexed tables to generate appropriate coverage values for points and lines, compensating for the subpixel position of line endpoints.
So the use of the term "subpixel" clearly can refer either to pixel-splitting techniques (which date back to the Apple II, by the way; remember "double hi res?") or to multisampling at a resolution higher than final display resolution. The person to whom I responded thought I was talking about pixel-splitting when I used the word "subpixel," and I cleared that up. For you to come along behind and say that I had it wrong is just... well, wrong.
If your local affiliates are up to speed, or you've got Dish or DirecTV, there's quite a bit of astoundingly impressive HD content out there right now.
IMHO the ONLY reason to have a digital TV is for watching movies, or maybe sports.
:cough:farscape:cough:
You'd be surprised how much regular old entertainment TV is being mastered in HD these days. Enterprise has been shot and finished in HD since the pilot episode-- although I know that that doesn't make the quality of the writing any better. My point is that there's a lot of fairly low-rent TV out there that's being produced in HD. They're just waiting for the broadcasters to catch up.
I have been told-- although I can't swear to it-- that Farscape is in production on the 2002-2003 season (season 4, is it?) in HD.
When we get Buffy in HD, I'm gonna be pretty much set for couchly entertainment.
Doesn't Hollywood have a clue? When even AOTC is so crappy that I'd skip seeing it, maybe they need to seriously take a look at the steaming piles of you-know-what they're putting out.
Hollywood didn't have anything to do with AOTC. LucasFilm is completely, 100% independent of the Hollywood studios. Fox distributed it, but that's it.
And your opinion on AOTC seems to be very much in the minority, friend.
I pay much more attention to the vivid, full-color picture outside in my garden than I do to anything on TV.
I wonder if I could convince you to try the same trick with your computer.
Every time there's a TV-related story on Slashdot, you get people crawling out of the woodwork to post mildly off-topic comments about how they don't watch TV. You know what? Nobody asked you. If you have something to contribute, that's fine. But if all you have to say is, "I only watch Masterpiece Theater and those delightful Taster's Choice commercials with the English chap," then please just move along.
I dont know of a single person, anywhere, that owns a digital television.
You do now. I bought one last month, and so did a friend of mine. Another friend bought his last year; he kind of opened the flood gates for us. I watched the SuperBowl in January, 2001, in HD at another friend's place. He's our early adopter.
I'm not sure where you live or what kind of friends you have, but HDTV is more common than you realize.
Look closely at a Mac LCD display - if it was using pixel subsampling, you'd see little coloured bits around the edge. You don't.
Sigh. That's not what subpixel sampling means. When you antialias, you render the image at a higher resolution than you can actually display. For example, you might double the effective resolution, and each pixel on the screen would be represented by four pixels in memory. Each of these rendered-but-not-displayed pixels is called a subpixel.
That trick with using only the red, green, or blue parts of an LCD pixel to display edges of type ("ClearType," I think it's called) is a pretty lame attempt at increasing apparent visual resolution. In an informal survey of about 15 people around my office, nobody liked the little colored flecks around the letters. One person said it made him feel like his eyes were going in and out of focus.
So, first, you and I are talking about two different things. And second, ClearType is not superior.
An AC has already replied to say basically this (amazing!) but in the situation I was talking about, building a dumbed-down user interface for novices would be a huge waste of time and money for the vendor. There basically are no Inferno novices. Before anybody would hire you-- at well over $100,000 a year, going rates-- to work on a $650,000 system, you're going to have to have a clue. You might be an experienced effects artist who's just new to Inferno, but the point is that you have the basic knowledge you need to use the software.
Can a user find what he is looking for by starting with something general and working his way down? Could a wizard help out with this? There are dozens of games to play here.
"It looks like you're trying to apply a garbage matte to your luminance key. Would you like help with that?" Click. "This is the garbage matte wizard. It will guide you through the process of creating a garbage matte. Start by clicking the 'Next' button at the bottom of this box." (Fifteen minutes later.) "Now enter a floating-point number into the edge box to indicate how hard or soft you want the edge of the matte to be, and click 'Next.'"
Bah. If there's any person reading this post who actually thinks "wizards" are helpful user interface innovations, please post a reply, even if it's anonymously. I don't know anyone who can stand them, even the novice users with whom I work.
A friend and I once came to the conclusion that "wizards" are aptly named. My friend reads a lot of fantasy, and says that wizards are often mysterious hermits who jealously guard their knowledge, sharing it only reluctantly, and only after they've been defeated in hand-to-hand combat. Sounds perfect.
I really wish you would just back down from your assertion a little. I think it's clear that you were not correct when you made the blanket statement that "good software doesn't need a manual." That's just not a universal truth.
Of course, still user interface guidelines shouldn't be abondoned for the advanced users, but speed of interface can attained when intuitiveness is no longer the overriding concern.
It's an unfortunate myth that computer software needs to be intuitive. Basically, "intuitive" in this context means, "I can figure out what I want to do without reading a manual or asking for help." That's bull.
Microsoft Word-- at least the copy I was given to use at work-- comes with no manual. It depends entirely on on-line or context-sensitive help. Word is a complex piece of software, with hundreds or thousands of settings and functions. I would happily sit down for a few hours and read the manual so I could work more quickly and easily. But instead, Microsoft spends so much time trying to make their software "intuitive" (i.e., "figure it out on your own and don't bother us") that I'm forced to just slog through it.
If Microsoft took all the programmers who work only on making the software more "intuitive" or adding context-sensitive help or "advanced" options and fired them, they could hire a team of technical writers the likes of which the world has never seen. I dare say in a hundred years, Microsoft's manual for Word might be regarded as a pinnacle of early 21st-century literature.
But no. Instead we get, "Preparing index for first use... grind, grind."
I guess I'm just advocating the opposite opinion from yours. You say that good software has excellent on-line context-sensitive help and wizards, so requires no documentation. I say that good software has excellent documentation, so requires no on-line context-sensitive help or wizards.
This is not true. As much as I am an Apple and mac advicate (and I like to believe I am) the truth is that font antialiasing was available in the Windows 95 Plus Pack....
I do apologize. It was late, and I got all confused between QuickDraw support for antialiasing (way back in '87 or so) and OS-level text antialiasing, which came in OS 8 around 1998. My bad.
But... uh... Windows sucks!;-)
There are indeed two kinds of antialiasing in the MacOS, and with Quartz Extreme there will probably be three, if I am correct.
I don't believe so. I think Quartz Extreme just uses the same algorithm as regular Quartz, but implemented in OpenGL for advanced hardware acceleration.
Then again, I haven't had any coffee this morning, so I should evidently be careful what I say.
i say my rosary to OmniWeb. It (almost) makes my iBook have orgasms. Definatly my first choice for a while.
i'll be damned if i'm going to pay for it, though.
I don't mean to make fun, but I'll be damned if this isn't the perfect Slashdot comment. "Loved your software. Use it every day. I'll never pay you for it, ever."
Sheesh. Some of us make our living writing and selling software, you know. You could be just a little more tactful.
No need to apologize. In the past, there have been several companies that make digital theater systems. I'm sure they all do it differently. But like I said, all the ones I've been to use the Technicolor system, and they use DVD-ROMs for delivery instead of hard drives.
It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Not only are DVD-ROMs much more durable than hard drives-- no matter how carefully packed they are-- they're also a lot cheaper to reproduce and distribute.
Thats great! Windows XP has always provided this feature, and it's great to see that Apple is catching up.
Fucking ACs.
First of all, Mac OS had OS-level text antialiasing long before Windows did.
But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about Quartz antialiasing, which is a superior antialiasing algorithm to anything else out there. I believe it has to do with using a floating point coordinate system for subpixel rendering, but I'm not sure about that.
Slashdot Mirror
The previous poster did use strong language, but I think that it's easy enough to understand his position as not being intended to be an accurate restatement of the law, but an argument about policy.
I think you're giving the poster too much credit. When one says, "Copyrights do not expire," that's an unambiguous statement of fact. In this case, it's a statement that's completely and utterly false.
Worse was posting that link to a web page that is so full of vitriol and bile as to be practically useless in any meaningful discussion. Making rude comments about Disney is amusing and all that, but it's not constructive.
Some rhetoric has no place in serious discussions of policy, I think. Exaggeration for effect is one, and I think that's what this poster was doing. If we're going to have a serious conversation about copyright policy, then let's keep it serious.
And just so you know, I'm well aware of the irony of trying to have a serious discussion of policy on Slashdot. Oh, well.
I will not discuss this matter with you any more. It is clear from your writings that you lack a basic moral compass on this issue. Different people come from different backgrounds, and they all have different guiding forces in their lives. Personally, though I am not a religious person, I believe in "Thou shalt not steal."
Taking something without giving the owner of that thing what he or she wants in return is stealing, plain and simple. If I make a thing-- be it a physical thing or a digital thing-- and ask people to pay me a dollar for it, taking a copy without paying me a dollar is stealing. And stealing is wrong.
Since you reject this basic truth, everything that you said in your post is wrong, and wrong-headed. I can see that no further conversation between us will be productive. I don't believe that a moral compass can be persuaded into a person, so I'm not all that motivated to try.
I only take comfort in the fact that you, and people who hold similar opinions to yours, make up an insignificant minority of our society.
If you want the last word, it's all yours.
Copyright in the United States and the European Union no longer expires.
Your statement is either incorrect, or a lie. Since you posted a link, it seems that you are informed and that you were trying deliberately to misrepresent the facts. On the other hand, since the link you posted is also full of misinformation, it's possible that you might just be ignorant. This question is between you and your god.
Copyright in the United States works like this: works owned by an individual remain the exclusive property of that individual for his or her lifetime, then the property of that individual's estate for seventy years. After that term, the copyright expires, and the ownership of the works reverts to the public domain.
Works owned by a corporations have a different term, because corporations don't have lifespans. A work owned by a corporation remains that corporation's property for ninety-five years before reverting to the public domain.
The laws governing EU member nations are similar.
It is a bald-faced lie to say that copyright no longer expires. Many uninformed reactionaries have written that copyright is now perpetual, because Congress can extend it any time they want. This has always been true, within the limits set forth by the Constitution. It doesn't mean that copyright is meaningless, or that it doesn't expire.
If you don't like this situation, run for office. Or at least try to persuade people in a calm and reasonable fashion. But to use lies in an attempt to manipulate your audience is evil and wrong, no matter how you look at it.
They're all information. Different types of information are valuable for different reasons - some may entertain, some may educate, and so on - but they're all information.
That limb you're out on is getting pretty thin. Your statements are starting to contradict what every child knows. Fact is different from fiction. Books of information are different from books that entertain. The encyclopedia has no author's name on the cover, because it wasn't written as much as it was compiled. A novel is the product of one (or more, I suppose) people's creative labor. It's no different from a chair or a house; those things are the product of people's manual labor.
Your argument about "excludable" versus "non-excludable" is irrelevant, because you have failed to acknowledge the underlying principle: creative products are different from pure information. Until you're willing to accept this basic fact of human existence, I regret that we have nothing more to say to each other on this subject.
You are wrong, not necessarily because your logic is flawed, but because your premises are incorrect.
Nope. There are 280 million people in the U.S. Approximately 260 million of those (just about everyone over the age of 2) people have written, or sung, or drawn. Maybe a million or so have ever been paid for it. Most artists don't want to get paid.
This is nuts. Are you trying to say that 260 million people in the US-- or, that is, "most" of them-- don't want to get paid? I think you're projecting your fringe opinions onto the majority, and doing so foolishly at that.
Everybody I've ever met who's not a child either has a job, or wants one, either directly (in terms of working himself or herself) or indirectly (in terms of being part of a family where somebody is bringing in the cash).
If you're so adamant about not wanting to get paid, then please forward your salary to my address.
Unless you don't receive one, of course. Which also seems just, somehow.
I'm quite impressed that your karma hasn't evaporated so far, and I assume that since you're worried about it then you must have some, which implies that you've been around on Slashdot for at least a little while without blowing your top..... impressive.
;-)
To be honest, I'm a little surprised that my post wasn't smacked down to -1 in short order. I attribute this to the fact that it was long. Most people read the first paragraph or two and gave up.
But I didn't mean to imply that I was worried about my karma. It's nice to know that I've got some, and all that, but it's not like I can redeem it for valuable prizes or a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni.
And finally, I blow my top plenty. I guess I just do it way down near the bottom of long threads, where moderators rarely go. Up near the surface, where there are more eyeballs, one should be more civil.
I can't say I totally understand your complete opposition to GPL - I think you could benefit from separating the message and the speaker.
Oh, you may have a point there. But RMS's rhetoric makes me slightly suspicious of everything he says and does-- not tin-foil-hat suspicious, but it definitely bothers me. So based on that, the GPL and all of RMS's other intellectual output is tainted. I'm even starting to wonder if Emacs is part of some hidden agenda....
But in all seriousness, it's not hard to read the GPL and find yourself muttering the word "insidious." Buried deep in the document are restrictions and requirements that have serious implications for people who use GPL'd software. The case of GNU Readline is one example.
But as I said in my manifesto-- I mean post-- the thing that really gets my ire up is his misleading and deceptive use of the word "free" to apply to something which embodies the opposite of freedom.
When I've expressed that opinion before, people have responded that the GPL guarantees freedoms by imposing some slight restrictions. I think that's doublespeak. The GPL doesn't really guarantee freedom of any kind; it guarantees availability of source code. Once something has been licensed and released with the GPL, it can never be proprietary again. (There may be exceptions that I'm not aware of. I don't think they're that important to my point.)
Now, whether or not this is a good thing is not my bone of contention. Like all things, I'm sure there's a case for it and a case against it. My problem is that the true message of the GPL-- which is that you're putting severe limits on how people may use the software, and putting a heavy burden on them if they do-- is hidden behind that misused word: free.
I believe when most laymen hear the term "free software," the first thing they think is "zero cost." If they consider it a bit further, they think "unrestricted." I think it's reasonable to believe this, because even RMS writes at length on how that's not what "free software" means in one of his writings; I think it's "What is Free Software?" but I'm not in the mood to go look just now.
"Free" means "zero cost" and "unrestricted." That's where the average person will stop. That's where I stopped, back when I first ran into the stuff. In my case, my company acted without understanding all the meanings of the term "free software," and got in trouble for it. We were deceived, deliberately or inadvertently, into thinking that "free software" meant "unrestricted software," when in fact it means the opposite of that.
This is dangerously close to being a bait-and-switch tactic.
All the virtues of "free software" are right out there in public view. But once you start using it, you quickly find yourself obligated in ways you were not anticipating. I consider that to be the opposite of "free."
If they would drop the "free" label and go with some other name-- like Permanently Open Source Software, or Public Source Software maybe-- and clean up their rhetoric so it sounds a little more like Rousseau and less like Riefenstahl then I'd be happier. I still wouldn't agree, but I wouldn't be so vehemently opposed, either.
Wow. I'm used to people saying that free software is a bad business model and an unsound practice. I don't think I've ever encountered such a vehement, emotion-charged stand, though. In all seriousness, why do you "hate it, haite, hate it" so much?
;-)
Thanks for asking in a civil manner. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Before I get into this, please understand that I'm not really looking for an argument. If you disagree with my ideas, you're naturally welcome to say so, but if you do you probably won't get a satisfactory response out of me. I apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.
(Much of this comes from reading this, and RMS's other writings. Any misunderstanding on my part of RMS's philosophy is all his fault. Just kidding.)
First, know that I make my living by writing and selling software. That is, I write it, and my company sells it. We don't sell support, or training, or services. We sell software, plain and simple. This should tell you something about my point of view.
Now, on to the argument. The following are points on which RMS and I do not see eye-to-eye.
I believe that personal gain is a perfectly legitimate motivation. Just like anything else, too much of it is a bad thing. But to the extent that one's actions don't violate any laws, social norms, or moral or ethical guidelines, acting in one's own best interest is entirely appropriate.
I believe that the creators of computer programs own their creations. This is no different than any other type of creation. If I weave a basket, I own that basket. If I bake some bread, I own that bread. If my friend and I build a house together, we own that house jointly, unless we agree to some other arrangement. And if I write a computer program, I own that program's source code.
I believe that the owner of a computer program has the right to sell it. Specifically, the owner has the right to require everybody who uses the program to give the owner some money in return. In that situation, the owner of the program is entitled to receive that amount of money from every person who uses the program.
I believe that, in the above situation, if a person uses the program without paying the owner, the user is stealing the use of that program from the owner. I believe that this is theft, plain and simple.
I believe that all of the aforementioned things are true in an absolute sense, despite any possible harmful effects that may be attributed to them. The doctrine of personal property naturally implies scarcity and inequity. That doesn't make it any less so. Any discussion of a world in which the doctrine of property does not govern men's affairs moves out of the applied and into the abstract, and so is outside the scope of my interest. In other words, there's a time and place for talking about how things should or could be, but in discussing matters of policy or normative guidelines of behavior, it's far more important to talk about how they are.
So it should be clear by now that RMS and I couldn't disagree much more than we do. If that were the extent of it, then everything would be fine, and I would simply try to ignore RMS as much as possible.
But that's not the extent of it. The more I read RMS's writings, the more I find that they have moved out of the realm of pure philosophy and into the arena of hard-core propaganda. Consider the first two paragraphs of "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us. Not everyone wants it to be easier. The system of copyright gives software programs ``owners'', most of whom aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public. They would like to be the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.
Notice the use of language here. RMS carefully and deliberately establishes, at the very beginning of his essay, an "us-verus-them" situation. He describes owners-- notice his use of quotation marks, a subtle trick to discredit the term-- as being people who "aim to withhold software's potential benefit from the rest of the public." This kind of statement is wildly inaccurate and incomplete. It's also one tiny mustache away from being a great example of Godwin's Law. This is propaganda, plain and simple.
The rest of it carries on in the same vein-- ownership and property rights are inherently evil-- for page after page. Here's a particularly telling example from the same document:
All four practices [of the Software Publisher's Association] resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''.
RMS is quick to associate the Software Publisher's Association with totalitarianism and oppression. He uses this rhetorical technique time and time again in his writings to cast aspersions on his opponents by associating them with well-known evils. Here he associates the assertion of ownership rights with blasphemy:
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
This kind of rhetorical misdirection is found throughout RMS's published writings. When I see an author trying to persuade me emotionally rather than through reason or logic, it makes me suspicious.
So first, I disagree with RMS's ideas. Then, I am personally concerned by the tone and technique of his writings. But the last straw, for me, is what I consider to be the deliberate and calculated misapplication of the words "free" and "freedom."
RMS's definition of the term "free software" is so counter-intuitive and complex that it requires its own web page to define. It basically boils down like this: "free software," under RMS's definition, is quite thoroughly restricted in its use and distribution.
This is especially true of software like GNU Readline. Readline is a library; programmers are supposed to link the Readline library to their programs and call Readline functions from within their code. Readline is licensed under the GPL, and as such, any software that is linked to it must also be licensed under the GPL. (Note that this is distinctly different from the LGPL, although that license has serious restrictions as well.)
I have personal experience with this. Two years ago I was assigned the task of rewriting a large portion of one of my company's products to remove dependencies on Readline. The details of the GPL had not been sufficiently understood by our company's legal department, and approval had been given to use Readline in our program. Naturally we had no intention of releasing our software under the GPL, so we had no choice but to remove Readline from our program completely. This cost us a deadline, and several weeks of work.
These restrictions are carefully hidden under the banner "free software." Orwell could have taken lessons from RMS's use of newspeak here. "This license seriously restricts what you can and can't do with your program. We will therefore call it 'free.'"
This has gone on far too long, so I'll just stop here and sum up.
1. RMS and I do not agree on the basic assumptions of his philosophy.
2. RMS's writings are laced with rhetorical propaganda techniques that simply could not have crept in there by accident. This leads me to wonder why he chooses to resort to these techniques if he truly believes himself to be in the right, and to suspect that we might not know everything about his true agenda.
3. RMS's use of the word "free" to describe GPL-licensed software is deceptive. This blatant use of the word "free" in a misleading way really makes me angry.
All of these things, plus a few I didn't take the time to mention, have led me to "hate, hate, hate" RMS's beliefs, the GNU organization, and the Free Software Foundation, and to vocally oppose all that they stand for.
(Now I sit back and watch my karma evaporate.)
shell out a couple hundred bucks for an original bondi iMac 233, throw YellowDog Linux on there, and you've got a surfing (Mozilla/Netscape) and e-mail (Ximian Evolution) machine....
I think you've missed the point. Nobody who would buy an entry-level Dell would want to run Linux on anything.
Truth be told, in terms of getting the job done quickly and easily, I wouldn't wish Linux on my worst enemy. It's just not a very effective OS for desktop use, unless your only goal is to fart around with Linux.
I'm just astounded. Absolutely astounded. "God-given ability" indeed. Sounds like you're claiming some sort of divine right to steal MP3s.
I'm calling "bullshit" on you. Put your rhetoric aside and just answer the following essay questions completely and honestly:
John makes a recording of himself singing a song. John doesn't want to give the recording away for free; instead, he asks everybody to give him a dollar for a copy of it. Bob buys a copy of the song from John for a dollar, then puts his copy up on a web site where anyone can download it. Sally wants to buy John's song, but finds Bob's web site and downloads it for free instead. Jane also downloads a copy and listens to it for free, even though she never would have bought it from John.
1. Was it morally wrong of John to ask people to pay him to listen to his song?
2. Was it morally wrong of Bob to put the music on a web site where anybody could download it without paying John?
3. Was it morally wrong of Sally to download the song from Bob instead of buying it from John?
4. Was it morally wrong of Jane to download the song from Bob instead of buying it from John?
Of course, rather than answering the questions, you're just going to respond with another fuck-you comment about how I'm a small minded, greedy man and go on downloaded bootlegs and pirated MP3s off the Internet. So I really don't know why I bother.
In this case the moral man sees nothing wrong with distributing information or with receiving information.
You're either accidentally or deliberately confusing the situation by using the word "information" to mean "movies."
It seems to be a fairly common misconception among people on your side of the argument that music, movies, books, and software are all just data, and that they're in the same category as scientific knowledge. That's where your "sharing information is clearly a moral and good thing" comes from.
But this is clearly bullshit. It's not appropriate to compare movies to knowledge and say they should both be shared freely.
Movies, music, and books are not merely information. They're the result of somebody's creative effort. By taking them-- either permanently, by downloading a bootleg, or transiently, by watching an illegal stream-- you're stealing. If there's a loophole in the jurisdictions of the various parties involved that says it's not technically illegal, that doesn't make it any less wrong.
But you know who I feel bad for? I feel bad for the poor, ignorant person who moderated you up. Obviously somebody out there agrees with you, and doesn't even see the flaw in your argument. I hope he or she reads this, and reconsiders.
There a a big difference between the philosophies of the software libre movement and the philosophies of people who copy files without the copyright holder's authorization.
I don't agree with your philosophy, Sam, but I do agree completely with everything you just said, and I applaud you for saying it so well.
I despise the "free" software movement, or as you more accurately called it, the "software libre" movement. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I'll rant and rave and propagandize and try to convince people that it's misguided, that it's Bad and Wrong. I oppose it with everything I've got.
But you know what? Your post is one of the most reasoned, insightful things I've ever read on the delineation between the "software should be free" guys and the "gimme, gimme, gimme" guys. All too often it's hard to tell the two group apart. Thanks for taking a stand.
I wish you could moderate up past 5.
Besides, I was pretty drunk when I posted that. And since when is tact part of the /. experience? :-P
;-)
Since never... you pig!
The superbowl wasnt broadcast in High-Definition. It was 480p. Fox sux when it comes to HD.
I wasn't talking about the 2002 game. I was talking about the 2001 game, like I said, which was broadcast by CBS is glorious 1080i.
You are incorrect. Subpixeling, however the font was rendered behind the scenes, refers to using the R G B elements of an LCD's "pixel" to increase the horizontal (or vertical, depending on element orientation) resolution of the screen.
No, I am not incorrect. The word "subpixel" has been used to refer to pixel-splitting, but it's not true to say that it only refers to pixel-splitting.
I happen to have here on my desk a whitepaper written by Kurt Akeley of SGI about the Reality Engine graphics system. I can't seem to find a date on it, but it definitely pre-dates "ClearType" by many years.
One representative quote:
Alpha antialiasing of points and lines is common to second generation architectures. Alpha antialiasing is implemented using subpixel and line-slope indexed tables to generate appropriate coverage values for points and lines, compensating for the subpixel position of line endpoints.
So the use of the term "subpixel" clearly can refer either to pixel-splitting techniques (which date back to the Apple II, by the way; remember "double hi res?") or to multisampling at a resolution higher than final display resolution. The person to whom I responded thought I was talking about pixel-splitting when I used the word "subpixel," and I cleared that up. For you to come along behind and say that I had it wrong is just... well, wrong.
If your local affiliates are up to speed, or you've got Dish or DirecTV, there's quite a bit of astoundingly impressive HD content out there right now.
HD TiVo, dammit! HD TiVo!
IMHO the ONLY reason to have a digital TV is for watching movies, or maybe sports.
:cough:farscape:cough:
You'd be surprised how much regular old entertainment TV is being mastered in HD these days. Enterprise has been shot and finished in HD since the pilot episode-- although I know that that doesn't make the quality of the writing any better. My point is that there's a lot of fairly low-rent TV out there that's being produced in HD. They're just waiting for the broadcasters to catch up.
I have been told-- although I can't swear to it-- that Farscape is in production on the 2002-2003 season (season 4, is it?) in HD.
When we get Buffy in HD, I'm gonna be pretty much set for couchly entertainment.
Doesn't Hollywood have a clue? When even AOTC is so crappy that I'd skip seeing it, maybe they need to seriously take a look at the steaming piles of you-know-what they're putting out.
Hollywood didn't have anything to do with AOTC. LucasFilm is completely, 100% independent of the Hollywood studios. Fox distributed it, but that's it.
And your opinion on AOTC seems to be very much in the minority, friend.
I pay much more attention to the vivid, full-color picture outside in my garden than I do to anything on TV.
I wonder if I could convince you to try the same trick with your computer.
Every time there's a TV-related story on Slashdot, you get people crawling out of the woodwork to post mildly off-topic comments about how they don't watch TV. You know what? Nobody asked you. If you have something to contribute, that's fine. But if all you have to say is, "I only watch Masterpiece Theater and those delightful Taster's Choice commercials with the English chap," then please just move along.
Sheesh.
I dont know of a single person, anywhere, that owns a digital television.
You do now. I bought one last month, and so did a friend of mine. Another friend bought his last year; he kind of opened the flood gates for us. I watched the SuperBowl in January, 2001, in HD at another friend's place. He's our early adopter.
I'm not sure where you live or what kind of friends you have, but HDTV is more common than you realize.
Look closely at a Mac LCD display - if it was using pixel subsampling, you'd see little coloured bits around the edge. You don't.
Sigh. That's not what subpixel sampling means. When you antialias, you render the image at a higher resolution than you can actually display. For example, you might double the effective resolution, and each pixel on the screen would be represented by four pixels in memory. Each of these rendered-but-not-displayed pixels is called a subpixel.
That trick with using only the red, green, or blue parts of an LCD pixel to display edges of type ("ClearType," I think it's called) is a pretty lame attempt at increasing apparent visual resolution. In an informal survey of about 15 people around my office, nobody liked the little colored flecks around the letters. One person said it made him feel like his eyes were going in and out of focus.
So, first, you and I are talking about two different things. And second, ClearType is not superior.
An AC has already replied to say basically this (amazing!) but in the situation I was talking about, building a dumbed-down user interface for novices would be a huge waste of time and money for the vendor. There basically are no Inferno novices. Before anybody would hire you-- at well over $100,000 a year, going rates-- to work on a $650,000 system, you're going to have to have a clue. You might be an experienced effects artist who's just new to Inferno, but the point is that you have the basic knowledge you need to use the software.
;-)
Can a user find what he is looking for by starting with something general and working his way down? Could a wizard help out with this? There are dozens of games to play here.
"It looks like you're trying to apply a garbage matte to your luminance key. Would you like help with that?" Click. "This is the garbage matte wizard. It will guide you through the process of creating a garbage matte. Start by clicking the 'Next' button at the bottom of this box." (Fifteen minutes later.) "Now enter a floating-point number into the edge box to indicate how hard or soft you want the edge of the matte to be, and click 'Next.'"
Bah. If there's any person reading this post who actually thinks "wizards" are helpful user interface innovations, please post a reply, even if it's anonymously. I don't know anyone who can stand them, even the novice users with whom I work.
A friend and I once came to the conclusion that "wizards" are aptly named. My friend reads a lot of fantasy, and says that wizards are often mysterious hermits who jealously guard their knowledge, sharing it only reluctantly, and only after they've been defeated in hand-to-hand combat. Sounds perfect.
I really wish you would just back down from your assertion a little. I think it's clear that you were not correct when you made the blanket statement that "good software doesn't need a manual." That's just not a universal truth.
Of course, still user interface guidelines shouldn't be abondoned for the advanced users, but speed of interface can attained when intuitiveness is no longer the overriding concern.
It's an unfortunate myth that computer software needs to be intuitive. Basically, "intuitive" in this context means, "I can figure out what I want to do without reading a manual or asking for help." That's bull.
Microsoft Word-- at least the copy I was given to use at work-- comes with no manual. It depends entirely on on-line or context-sensitive help. Word is a complex piece of software, with hundreds or thousands of settings and functions. I would happily sit down for a few hours and read the manual so I could work more quickly and easily. But instead, Microsoft spends so much time trying to make their software "intuitive" (i.e., "figure it out on your own and don't bother us") that I'm forced to just slog through it.
If Microsoft took all the programmers who work only on making the software more "intuitive" or adding context-sensitive help or "advanced" options and fired them, they could hire a team of technical writers the likes of which the world has never seen. I dare say in a hundred years, Microsoft's manual for Word might be regarded as a pinnacle of early 21st-century literature.
But no. Instead we get, "Preparing index for first use... grind, grind."
I guess I'm just advocating the opposite opinion from yours. You say that good software has excellent on-line context-sensitive help and wizards, so requires no documentation. I say that good software has excellent documentation, so requires no on-line context-sensitive help or wizards.
I'm right, and you're wrong.
This is not true. As much as I am an Apple and mac advicate (and I like to believe I am) the truth is that font antialiasing was available in the Windows 95 Plus Pack....
;-)
I do apologize. It was late, and I got all confused between QuickDraw support for antialiasing (way back in '87 or so) and OS-level text antialiasing, which came in OS 8 around 1998. My bad.
But... uh... Windows sucks!
There are indeed two kinds of antialiasing in the MacOS, and with Quartz Extreme there will probably be three, if I am correct.
I don't believe so. I think Quartz Extreme just uses the same algorithm as regular Quartz, but implemented in OpenGL for advanced hardware acceleration.
Then again, I haven't had any coffee this morning, so I should evidently be careful what I say.
i say my rosary to OmniWeb. It (almost) makes my iBook have orgasms. Definatly my first choice for a while.
i'll be damned if i'm going to pay for it, though.
I don't mean to make fun, but I'll be damned if this isn't the perfect Slashdot comment. "Loved your software. Use it every day. I'll never pay you for it, ever."
Sheesh. Some of us make our living writing and selling software, you know. You could be just a little more tactful.
No need to apologize. In the past, there have been several companies that make digital theater systems. I'm sure they all do it differently. But like I said, all the ones I've been to use the Technicolor system, and they use DVD-ROMs for delivery instead of hard drives.
It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Not only are DVD-ROMs much more durable than hard drives-- no matter how carefully packed they are-- they're also a lot cheaper to reproduce and distribute.
Thats great! Windows XP has always provided this feature, and it's great to see that Apple is catching up.
Fucking ACs.
First of all, Mac OS had OS-level text antialiasing long before Windows did.
But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about Quartz antialiasing, which is a superior antialiasing algorithm to anything else out there. I believe it has to do with using a floating point coordinate system for subpixel rendering, but I'm not sure about that.
If you're going to be dumb, you have to be patient.
Ding! Fortune file.
bsartist is my hero