While its legality could still be proved valid, to consider an EverQuest emulator a "competitor" to the legit EverQuest service is a joke. An EverQuest emulator is clearly a derived work -- you need the original data files to play the game, and the emulator's game world is still reliant on Origin for new material. To file a "leech" like the emulator in the same class as Meridian 59 or Ultima Online -- both of which are completely original programs -- is absurd, and no court would ever hold up and opinion like that.
That's not to say that an emulator isn't legal -- certainly, it's not in any danger of killing off the EverQuest craze^H^H^H^H^Hlicense to print money anytime soon. But it's certainly not competing with EverQuest; after all, if the actual EQ world went out of business, the emulator authors would be left without any new material! An emulator is a derived work and has been legally proven to be such.
Walter Charles Beckett is a fairly well-known pro-IP advocate; he was in the news as an "expert" in the field for a little while back when the RIAA got its short-lived injunction against Napster. I think he's written a couple of articles at Digital Forecast; in any case, he's a kook and his opinions shouldn't receive nearly the amount of attention that they do;).
Out of all the Slashdot, kuro5hin, and advogate readers, fewer than ten bothered to submit comments on the most important act of Congress in our generation? If that's it, that's a pretty sad commentary on how empty most of our rhetoric is. We rant and rave on these threads all day, but never take a moment to explain our views to the outside world. You there, reading this post -- have you done anything about DMCA? If you're a typical Slashdot reader, probably not.
It's time for the anti-IP community to put its money where its mouth is. Contact your Congressmen, write some editorial letters, stage a demonstration, e-mail the Library of Congress -- just do something. We can't win this fight by sitting back and bragging about how much smarter we are. Is there any sort of organization devoted to opposing IP? An organized resistance with some key spokespeople -- RMS, or Linus himself, or Shawn Fanning, or some other household name -- would do wonders for our cause. Right now, we're suffering from a PR problem: Big business has successfully spun this into an issue of thievery. We need to put the issue back in favorable terms; convince people that this isn't about stealing, but freedom and the right to fair use. And what about a catchy slogan?
Remember, all that is necessary to evil to triumph is the absence of good. Let's put aside our elitism and bring back the forces of good. Stop talking about what you could do and do something.
Having read Adam Curry's proposal, I have to say that this is exactly what we don't want to see happen to MP3 -- driving it into the same sorry state as American radio.
Mr. Curry claims that "you may hear Madonna one time and Jennifer Lopez the next", but what if I wanted to listen to Madonna and got Lopez instead? I want to choose the songs I listen to; I don't want some impersonal AI with no inkling of my emotions to try to decide what I'll like. Curry says that this would be "my radio station", but I don't want a radio station -- I want a collection of my favorite songs that I can sort through at will.
The whole concept behind the digital music revolution has been to empower consumers to be able to listen to the music they want, whenever they want to -- and not just be forcefed the Britney Spears / Blink-182 / Metallica / Moby drivel that record label fat cats want you to pay for. How can you expect a system like the one Mr. Curry proposes not to be abused? Napster is already under substantial pressure from the recording industry to stop distributing free music-on-demand.
Implementing "formats" in Napster might finally make Shawn Fanning and Jon Johansen rich, but it would be a huge step backwards for the digital music revolution. Let's not turn MP3s files into "My Radio Station" -- let's keep them in the independent state they should be in.
I'm glad this issue is being brought into greater scrutiny. If the FCC rules that copy protection cannot be built into VCRs, the MPAA and RIAA will have to drop the issue. It's easy to bash lawyers and government employees for the sorry state of technology laws (see DMCA, EULA, etc.), but remember that if employed properly, they can be on our side as well.
Don't pass up the opportunity to submit comments to the FCC on this. You don't have any right to complain about what happens if you don't make your voice heard. Let's seize this opportunity to strike a blow against intellectual property and protect our freedom to fair use.
Some actual software release news! I'm glad to see to see that Freshmeat is getting back to reporting on new software instead of this extraneous garbage they've been running lately. It seems like every third story on Freshmeat these days is about about Microsoft and licensing issues. Hell, I even saw an anime story on Freshmeat this morning... I could've sworn that I was looking at the front page of Slashdot!
This looks just another example in a long string of recent difficulties funding content-based services. Companies are steadily waking up to the fact that banner ads aren't a very effective means of promotion for their product -- indeed, much of the/. readership probably has them automatically removed. As banner advertising rates plummet, it's going to become more and more difficult to run a successful content-based web site. (Obviously, retailers like Amazon or eBay won't be affected... they do have revenue, even if it's not enough to make a profit:) ). Sure, Slashdot and Wired will stay around, but do you really think myQuakeNewsPortal.com is going to stay in business?
My advice to you, then, would be to adopt the business plan that we're going to see a lot more of in the future: Turn your content into a service. You could either charge a subscription (as you suggested), or use cookies to track how long a reader was on the site and bill them using a low hourly rate. Just like how open source software works, this guarantees you an income even when other people reproduce your works (which isn't necessarily bad, of course!). If you're selling downloads, people can easily mirror the pages elsewhere, and you lose your money. But mirroring the server power that keeps a service running isn't easy -- they'd need to charge, too, which means that they're not really competing with you.
A Eudora-type model probably isn't a good idea -- few people are going to go out of their way to pay to eliminate the ads, and the choice between "free, but ads" and "pay for no ads" could be difficult to pitch to both consumers and investors.
Best of luck to you regardless of which method you choose -- I've consulted Linux IP Stacks Commentary quite a number of times, and I'd love to see an updated version of the "book"!
I hate to have to be the wet blanket here, but I think these kinds of standards are something that the Linux community is better off without. As soon as we start letting major corporations assign labels as to what's "Linux Certified" and "Not Linux Certified" for Linux use, we run the risk of losing Linux's independence.
Part of what makes working with Linux so exciting is that everybody's free to do with what they will. Each distro has its own way of customizing programs and directories -- would you want to see that standardized? IBM, Intel, and the other companies involved here are all hardware manufacturers; what's to prevent them from refusing to certify programs by competitors or that favor competitors? Sure, you don't have to use "Linux Certified" software... but let's face it, as soon as a bunch of big corporations start pushing a standard, it catches on whether it's a good standard or not -- just look at the Kerberos fiasco! I doubt very many of the PHBs in the world are going to pay much attention to the alternatives when there's a "Certified" option out there.
Linux may remain an open source project forever, but the freedom to change it doesn't matter much if no one will use those changes. And that's exactly what will happen when you adopt standards as to what's "Linux Certified" and what's not.
I have to admit -- the idea of "seeing" smells by color is a pretty clever solution to the age-old problem of how to get electronics to recognize smells. Unfortunately, I can't see too many uses for this that aren't rather dangerous. I certainly wouldn't bother setting up my computer to smell things -- it would be about as most useful as voice-recognition software; a novelty feature at best.
The area where I see where this having the most popularity is in spying^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaw enforcement. We already have police dogs that sniff out criminals; electronic smell recognition seems to be a (un)natural extension of this. Can't you imagine the FBI or NSA with a huge database of peoples' "smells" and matching them with gloves left behind at a crime or sperm samples from a rape? Of course, you wouldn't have to register your smell with them -- after all, you don't really need that driver's license!
It's amazing how quickly technology is eradicating whatever notions of privacy that people still had. We already have our appearance, blood type, and actions recorded and disseminated all around the world; now we're going to have our smells tracked too? What's next, our skin texture?
Are nitrogen powered cars the future? Probably. Plenty of people have shown that they're not interested in giving up their cars for public transit or other means of transportation. It's kinda like the whole DivX/DVD thing -- people like to own a car instead of having to rely on someone else's pay-per-use service to transport them. Plus, a lot of people like tuning up the cars, sticking bumper stickers on them, or even (gag) hanging fuzzy dive in the windshield -- and you just can't do that with public transportation.
Given that we're stuck with cars for the time being, nitrogen power really makes sense as a power source. One of the glaring problems that people tend to overlook when gushing about electric cars is that the electricity is almost as environmentally-unfriendly to generate as the original gasoline. Nitrogen isn't a perfect solution, but it could well be a major part of the future of transportation.
Now NASA workers adore a twinge of pain in their daily work. Then one wildly waves his hand and complains. Mysteriously, they fired him and called him a mighty mass of mangy monkey zits! You know the director - thinks he's a movie star, and at night he rubs himself. Jim Bult's arms were no sound to himself. From there, he stepped around each other's waists. Then he was fired. The way everyone is. Left the ground floor landing and moved in with mighty sailing man named Jed. He listened carefully, which you always do when you're in the public eye. "Let's go with the flow and try to change things from the inside," he thought.
His cousins are all over his story, and his wife Rachel, and the media. They thought he was trumping up his accusations against NASA. He stood firm. They told him to can it.
NASA is a bungling sack of ancient history. A degenerate vat of a despicable sack of sloshy mule froth!
It's sad to see how many great programmers are throwing away their time working on completely useless projects. Getting DOOM running on a digital camera is quite an impressive feat, but I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to play the game that way -- given how the tiny the screen is (and how obsolete DOOM is), is anybody actually going to play DOOM on a digital camera?
Look at how many great programming problems remain unsolved. People are dying for better graphics and video capabilities (particularly a video editor) for Linux, which is certainly a much more popular OS than Digita! Even in the realm of entertainment, there's a lot of better things to do (we still don't have a working Sega CD emulator!). And there's always distributed projects like SETI@Home, the hunt for prime numbers, and the RSA cracks.
It's sad that the most talented people are often the least willing to contribute to society. I hate to see brilliant kids behind hacks like this fritter away their time instead of committing to the important stuff. Imagine if Linus had spent his time porting Bubble Bobble to his digital calculator instead of coding the Linux kernel.
One of the responsibilities that comes along with being talented is using that talent in a responsible manner -- and this is a good example of a good way of not using talent to help people. No, there' nothing specifically wrong with porting DOOM to Digita OS, but it's hardly a project that's going to benefit anyone. It's like those old superhero comics, where Spiderman or the X-Men realize they can't ignore the powers they've been given and decide to fight crime.
Wouldn't molecular computers be a lot less stable than our conventional computers? The article talks about working at room temperature -- it sounds like if the temperature changed, the computer would stop working, or might even lose data. Not only is this a pain to work with it, it would be easy to sabotage someone else's computer -- just heat it up or cool it, and, presto, it stops working!
There just seem to be a whole lot of risks involved with molecular computing. Wouldn't it be easy for the molecules to be jarred out of position? If a part of the computer breaks, would all the molecules inside be lost? This kind of research sounds like a waste of time -- given how fast conventional processors are accelerating (Moore's Law and all), do we even need molecular computing?
Please tell me I'm not the only one who's envisioning the T-1000 right now. It's almost scary how reality sometimes ends up being so similar to science-fiction -- we've always been reading stories about deadly robot guards, and now we have the technology to create them? Sure, this is just a beginning step, but it certainly won't be long before we create even more "intelligent" and realistic guards that really could effectively replace a human.
On one hand, there's a clear benefit to this technology: it doesn't put human lives at risk -- at least not directly. If a robot guard is destroyed, it can be easily replaced, whereas a human soul can never be. Perhaps one day we'll even be able to use robot soldiers to fight our wars instead of shepherding the poor and the minority into our military.
Unforunately, the problem is that a human mind is a lot more secure than the lines of code powering these machines. It wouldn't be hard for some cracker to take out a robot guard, especially if the guards can be controlled over the Internet. It seems like only a matter of time before someone reverse-engineers the instruction protocol and uses it to start robbing banks. In fact, the robot guards can actually be used to aid crime -- when the police come to stop you, the robots would gun them down. Or the robots could commit a crime entirely by Internet control, leaving no human suspects or witnesses.
Internet security needs to improve -- and fast. We've been relying on the same RSA technology for far too long, and it's in technology like an armored guard that security becomes essential. Our banks are already vulnerable to crackers; do you want to make them even more insecure?
This isn't flamebait -- it's a honest question. Why should I, John Q. Public, care about this case? What's in it for me? What would I lose if the MPAA were to ultimately win? What would I gain from a 2600 victory? In other words, please explain why this case should matter to the average American citizen.
Let's face it - 2600.com had it in from the beginning. I'm sure everyone would like them to have won -- after all, nobody likes to see the MPAA get its way -- but they really had no case to stand on. The MPAA has the DMCA on its side; 2600 has merely a rather tenuous connection to the 1st Amendment. And, remember, the MPAA has the right to do business too, which defeats 2600's entire case.
Now, IANAL, but did 2600 have any legal defense for their actions? As far as I can, they relied entirely upon dogma, which is why the judge labeled them a "radical" group. I wanted to see them win too, but it simply wasn't within the boundaries of the law for them to do so. What should happen and what the law says are two totally different and unrelated things.
Yes, 2600 are the moral winners in this case. But why did we expect them to win in court when they have no legal footing?
Your Rights Online: Shawn Fanning Receives Speeding Ticket
Posted by Hemos on Tuesday, Friday 18, @06:38AM from the damn-those-fascist-capitalist-plutocrat-bastards dept. Signal 11 writes: "Yahoo! News is reporting that Napster founder Shawn Fanning has been given a speeding ticket. The police claim that Fanning had exceeded the speed limit by over 15 mph, but we all know that he was acting in full compliance of traffic laws.". In a truly free world, there would be no need for speed limits. When will the establishment learn that speeding laws simply can't be enforced? Even if Fanning receives a ticket, thousands of other drivers will continue to speed.
( Read More... | 768 comments | Your Rights Online )
Miniskirt-clad girls save universe
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @08:25AM from the roketto-ga-sugoi dept. AnimeNewsNetwork.com is reporting that earlier this morning in Tokyo, five girls in color-coded blouses and miniskirts transformed into scantily-clad superheroes. The five girls then screamed, hurled glowing balls of energy, and screamed some more at a thirty-tentacled monster. Still no word on whether this is connected to the large humanoid robots spotted battling last week in Osaka.
( Read More... | 168 comments )
Slashback: Frisson, Sesquipedalianity, Responsitivitiness
Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 08, @10:45AM from the beware-the-froomious-bandersnatch dept.
It was a dark and stormy night. In a salutiferous octastyle basement, an ultracrepidarian man was hermtically hunched over a piperaceous desk beneath a ornate mazarine, typing furiously away on an obumbrate keyboard. Meanwhile, in a meandrine corner of the world, several setose seeds were being entrenched in the muculent minds of the hoi polloi.
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Traffic Cops' "Justice" and Napster
Posted by JonKatz on Friday August 18, @11:30AM from the post-hellmouth-world dept.
Just as Shadowrun predicted, The Corporate Republic took another step in assailing geeks today by handing Shawn Fanning a $L00 speeding ticket. This narcissism is harmful because it shrinks the creative universe of media workers and disconnects them from the new global conversation taking place online. Hubcaps have sparked a cultural and economic revolution that is just beginning to be understood. Will we see an increase in the number of Chickdrivers receiving "closed" traffic tickets as well, or will the Edge power a paradigm shift to "open" community-based traffic laws?
( Read More... | 598235 bytes in body | 657 flames | Features )
Ask Slashdot: Are Corporations Trying To Make Money?
Posted by Cliff on Friday August 18, @1:25PM from the yet-another-article-from-the-something-to-think-ab out dept. www.sorehands.com writes: "Today I visited Yahoo and was shocked to see a banner advertisement - I thought I'd managed to block every form of advertisement possible with Junkbusters. After thinking about it some, I realized Yahoo was probably running advertisement in a crass, commercialized attempt to make money off of my web-surfing habits! Could there be any other corporations out there engaged in similarly devious practices?" An interesting question here: Are some companies attempting to turn a profit, and, if so, what can we do to prevent it?
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Autospy of a Furby
Posted by michael on Friday August 18, @3:43PM from the deja-vu dept.
Vladinator writes "Ever wonder what it's like to take apart a Furby? I don't, because I saw this on Slashdot two years ago, but I needed some karma so I submitted it anyway. Fawking trolls!" Those of who you started reading Slashdot this week may not have seen this page yet, so I'm re-running this classic for you three newbies.
( Read More... | 1 FIRST POST! )
Interstate Highway Boycott Planned
Posted by emmett on Friday August 18, @6:25PM from the fight-the-power dept. Bowie J. Poag writes: "You guys are idiots and VA sucks, but being the nice guy that I am [Update: 08/18 11:11 AM by CT: Further investigation reveals that he isn't ] I thought I'd let you know that know Wired is reporting that a boycott is being proposed against the interstate highway system for its treatment of Shawn Fanning. The interstate highway sucks almost as much as anime! PROPAGANDA RULES!!!!!" It's good to see that some people are taking the battle for free (as in Willy) highways into their own hands.
( Read More... | 218 comments )
Holland Convenience Store Switches To Linux
Posted by Hemos on Friday August 18, @9:33PM from the key-victory-for-open-source dept.
Today while visiting my local 7-11 in Holland, MI, I noticed that their inventory computer was running Linux! Best of all, a representative from the store assured me, due to complaints from Bruce Perens, that the store may consider GPLing its inventory "sometime in the future." Looks like another business has finally "got it" and adopted the tenets of the free software movement.
( Read More... | 164 comments )
Napster? Napster Napster
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @11:25PM from the napster dept.
Napster Napster Napster. Napster, Napster Napster Napster! Napster Napster (Napster) Napster Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster. "Napster Napster Napster," Napster Napster. Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster.
This may sound a bit strange, but I think that the Soldier of Fortune ruling is actually good for the gaming industry. Right now, the biggest problem facing the industry is the perception that games are still "toys" for kids -- the gaming industry actually makes more money than the movie industry, and yet it's never taken seriously by any mainstream media. Why not? Because everyone thinks back to the Atari and Nintendo 2600 days and remembers all games as being "for kids." The Soldier of Fortune ruling more firmly establishes the idea that there are games that are targetted at adults, not kids.
This isn't really a free speech issue -- the game isn't being banned or censored; it's simply kept out of the hands of minors. Is this really such an odd idea? Nobody questions the concept that you have to be 17 to get into an R-rated movie -- everyone understands that's just the way things work. And yet when anyone tries to apply the same concept to games, all the screaming banshee gamers throw a huge temper tantrum. Just because 13-year-olds can play violent games right now doesn't mean that they have the right to. The game industry is maturing from a kid-targeted money machine to a more traditional, artistic form of media, and it's hardly bizarre for the regulations governing it to mature at the same time.
If gamers want to be taken seriously, we need to acknowledge that not all games should be played by everyone. Soldier of Fortune is a very violent game, and if I had kids, I wouldn't want them playing it. By clinging to the notion that all games should be available for everyone, we're forcing developers to only create games that can be sold to anyone -- i.e., kid-friendly games. With a ratings system in place, game manufacturers have the freedom to develop games for any age level, knowing that they'll be rated appropriately and no one can complain that iD and Sony are trying to sell violence to kids.
Instead of wasting time trying to turn into Linux into a desktop OS, why isn't someone designing a new one from scratch? Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but Linux just isn't designed to be a desktop OS. Linux is based off of Minix, which was based off of UNIX. And UNIX was designed to run on mainframes, not on my grandmother's PC. Never did any expect that people would be running solitaire games, Outlook, and Instant Messenger on it. It simply wasn't designed for it -- look at all the command-line entry you still have to do, even with using the GNOME or KDE window managers.
This isn't to say that Linux is a bad OS. It's a terrific OS for servers, routers, and other non-end-user computers. But it doesn't make any sense to try to hack shiny, happy desktop features into it. Everything has its purpose right? Linux's purpose is to be the best server operating system available (whether or not it succeeds is your call), not to battle Microsoft.
Rather than that constantly remake Linux in order to compete with Windows, it would make a great deal more sense for the FSF to create a brand new operating system designed from the ground up to be a desktop OS. Not only would this OS include all the necessary components for a desktop OS (GUI support built in from the beginning, no CLI, journaling file system, plug-and-play devices, advanced multimedia support, etc.), it would eliminate all the problems seen in current desktops -- licensing problems with KDE; feature bloat with GNOME. And right now, there's simple no free OS that does this -- sure, there's BeOS, but it's only free as in beer, not as in speech.
Remember P.T. Barnum's famous quote "You can please all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time?" Right now, Linux is trying to please all of the people all of the time, and that just isn't working. It's time to divide and conquer. Leave Linux to the server market and design the efficient, stable, user-friendly, and most importantly, open-source desktop OS that the world has been waiting for.
Now, I'm not trying to start a MySQL / PostgreSQL flamewar at all -- I think both projects have their own merits and uses -- but is this supposed to surprise us? Of course the MySQL developers are going to cast asperions on benchmarks that show them coming out ahead. Likewise, if PostgreSQL had lost to MySQL and the commercial databases, the PostgreSQL developers would have slammed the tests. No one wants to come out looking inferior.
The only benchmarks we can trust are those that are totally independent. (The benchmarks being disputed here were sponsored by PostgreSQL.) I'm not accusing benchmarkers of being dishonest, but the only way we can be assured of impartiality is to run completely independent tests. We shouldn't care what the developers say -- we need to know what the users are saying.
Before everyone starts slagging on Cowpland for "screwing Debian", let's at least give him a chance with his new business venture. A lot of people are involved with Corel, and few of its failures are entirely Cowpland's fault. (It's always easy to pin crimes on a public figure, but that doesn't make them guilty!) Sometimes the most successful companies have been spawned from the ashes of the least successful ones -- look at Jobs' return to Apple and its miraculous turn-around.
Cowpland's learned from his mistakes. Corel suffered from a lack of a vision; the new start-ups he advises will be likely big players in the Linux market. Given Cowpland's fantastic business sense and experience in the industry, this could actually be a huge boost for Linux. Let's give Michael Cowpland the respect he deserves and wait to see what his second chance brings to the table.
What an amazing project... it's a shame that I'd never heard of this site until it already bit the dust. Artificial intelligence has always been a fascinating field for me, and it's amazing the progress that has been made in the past 10-15 years. Sometimes it seems like we're not that far off from a Turing-complete machine.
I guess the big question now is whether any other sites going to be carrying on Forum2000's memory. We recently saw ION Storm pick up the defunct Thief series to continue; would something like that ever happen to the Forum2000 project? It would certainly be a waste to have all this research and development vanish into nothing.
Okay, "open sourcing" Iridium didn't made a lot of sense, but Forum2000 sounds like the perfect project to open source. If the creators aren't interested in carrying it on anymore, why not like other members of the community carry on the torch? Guess this will end up being yet another example of how open sourcing a project could have saved it.
A great step in the right direction
on
Online Voting?
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· Score: 3
Online voting really needs to become a staple of democracy if we're going to do anything to reduce the trend towards non-voting. I remember reading that something like 50% of the U.S. population is registered to vote, and, of those, only 25% actually bothered to vote. That might not sound bad, but think about it: only one in every six people is actually trying to make a difference.
These days, it seems most voters are too apathetic about the country (at least in the U.S.A.) to spend times researching the issues, reading the voter's manual, and then actually driving out to the polling place to vote. For people who never trust the government, there doesn't seem to be much reason to put any effort into the process -- but with online voting, all they have to do is skim one page and click to make their voice heard. It's hard to imagine that very people wouldn't vote if it was that easy.
Let's face it: most of the people that vote are either radicals or rich white guys. Middle America, as well as people like you and me -- cynical outsiders -- just don't bother to vote. And yet, these people are often the most vocal when it comes to what should be done about various issues. Online voting could finally give the people the power they wish they had -- there wouldn't be such a wide schism between policy and popular opinion.
Sure, true online voting may be a few decades off still, as there's still numerous security hassles and other issues to iron out. But it's exciting to see that we may finally be able to fulfill the promise of democracy at last.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not to say that an emulator isn't legal -- certainly, it's not in any danger of killing off the EverQuest craze^H^H^H^H^Hlicense to print money anytime soon. But it's certainly not competing with EverQuest; after all, if the actual EQ world went out of business, the emulator authors would be left without any new material! An emulator is a derived work and has been legally proven to be such.
Walter Charles Beckett is a fairly well-known pro-IP advocate; he was in the news as an "expert" in the field for a little while back when the RIAA got its short-lived injunction against Napster. I think he's written a couple of articles at Digital Forecast; in any case, he's a kook and his opinions shouldn't receive nearly the amount of attention that they do ;).
It's time for the anti-IP community to put its money where its mouth is. Contact your Congressmen, write some editorial letters, stage a demonstration, e-mail the Library of Congress -- just do something. We can't win this fight by sitting back and bragging about how much smarter we are. Is there any sort of organization devoted to opposing IP? An organized resistance with some key spokespeople -- RMS, or Linus himself, or Shawn Fanning, or some other household name -- would do wonders for our cause. Right now, we're suffering from a PR problem: Big business has successfully spun this into an issue of thievery. We need to put the issue back in favorable terms; convince people that this isn't about stealing, but freedom and the right to fair use. And what about a catchy slogan?
Remember, all that is necessary to evil to triumph is the absence of good. Let's put aside our elitism and bring back the forces of good. Stop talking about what you could do and do something.
Mr. Curry claims that "you may hear Madonna one time and Jennifer Lopez the next", but what if I wanted to listen to Madonna and got Lopez instead? I want to choose the songs I listen to; I don't want some impersonal AI with no inkling of my emotions to try to decide what I'll like. Curry says that this would be "my radio station", but I don't want a radio station -- I want a collection of my favorite songs that I can sort through at will.
The whole concept behind the digital music revolution has been to empower consumers to be able to listen to the music they want, whenever they want to -- and not just be forcefed the Britney Spears / Blink-182 / Metallica / Moby drivel that record label fat cats want you to pay for. How can you expect a system like the one Mr. Curry proposes not to be abused? Napster is already under substantial pressure from the recording industry to stop distributing free music-on-demand.
Implementing "formats" in Napster might finally make Shawn Fanning and Jon Johansen rich, but it would be a huge step backwards for the digital music revolution. Let's not turn MP3s files into "My Radio Station" -- let's keep them in the independent state they should be in.
Don't pass up the opportunity to submit comments to the FCC on this. You don't have any right to complain about what happens if you don't make your voice heard. Let's seize this opportunity to strike a blow against intellectual property and protect our freedom to fair use.
Oh, wait a second...
please ignore
My advice to you, then, would be to adopt the business plan that we're going to see a lot more of in the future: Turn your content into a service. You could either charge a subscription (as you suggested), or use cookies to track how long a reader was on the site and bill them using a low hourly rate. Just like how open source software works, this guarantees you an income even when other people reproduce your works (which isn't necessarily bad, of course!). If you're selling downloads, people can easily mirror the pages elsewhere, and you lose your money. But mirroring the server power that keeps a service running isn't easy -- they'd need to charge, too, which means that they're not really competing with you.
A Eudora-type model probably isn't a good idea -- few people are going to go out of their way to pay to eliminate the ads, and the choice between "free, but ads" and "pay for no ads" could be difficult to pitch to both consumers and investors.
Best of luck to you regardless of which method you choose -- I've consulted Linux IP Stacks Commentary quite a number of times, and I'd love to see an updated version of the "book"!
Part of what makes working with Linux so exciting is that everybody's free to do with what they will. Each distro has its own way of customizing programs and directories -- would you want to see that standardized? IBM, Intel, and the other companies involved here are all hardware manufacturers; what's to prevent them from refusing to certify programs by competitors or that favor competitors? Sure, you don't have to use "Linux Certified" software... but let's face it, as soon as a bunch of big corporations start pushing a standard, it catches on whether it's a good standard or not -- just look at the Kerberos fiasco! I doubt very many of the PHBs in the world are going to pay much attention to the alternatives when there's a "Certified" option out there.
Linux may remain an open source project forever, but the freedom to change it doesn't matter much if no one will use those changes. And that's exactly what will happen when you adopt standards as to what's "Linux Certified" and what's not.
The area where I see where this having the most popularity is in spying^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaw enforcement. We already have police dogs that sniff out criminals; electronic smell recognition seems to be a (un)natural extension of this. Can't you imagine the FBI or NSA with a huge database of peoples' "smells" and matching them with gloves left behind at a crime or sperm samples from a rape? Of course, you wouldn't have to register your smell with them -- after all, you don't really need that driver's license!
It's amazing how quickly technology is eradicating whatever notions of privacy that people still had. We already have our appearance, blood type, and actions recorded and disseminated all around the world; now we're going to have our smells tracked too? What's next, our skin texture?
Given that we're stuck with cars for the time being, nitrogen power really makes sense as a power source. One of the glaring problems that people tend to overlook when gushing about electric cars is that the electricity is almost as environmentally-unfriendly to generate as the original gasoline. Nitrogen isn't a perfect solution, but it could well be a major part of the future of transportation.
NASA is a bungling sack of ancient history. A degenerate vat of a despicable sack of sloshy mule froth!
Look at how many great programming problems remain unsolved. People are dying for better graphics and video capabilities (particularly a video editor) for Linux, which is certainly a much more popular OS than Digita! Even in the realm of entertainment, there's a lot of better things to do (we still don't have a working Sega CD emulator!). And there's always distributed projects like SETI@Home, the hunt for prime numbers, and the RSA cracks.
It's sad that the most talented people are often the least willing to contribute to society. I hate to see brilliant kids behind hacks like this fritter away their time instead of committing to the important stuff. Imagine if Linus had spent his time porting Bubble Bobble to his digital calculator instead of coding the Linux kernel.
One of the responsibilities that comes along with being talented is using that talent in a responsible manner -- and this is a good example of a good way of not using talent to help people. No, there' nothing specifically wrong with porting DOOM to Digita OS, but it's hardly a project that's going to benefit anyone. It's like those old superhero comics, where Spiderman or the X-Men realize they can't ignore the powers they've been given and decide to fight crime.
There just seem to be a whole lot of risks involved with molecular computing. Wouldn't it be easy for the molecules to be jarred out of position? If a part of the computer breaks, would all the molecules inside be lost? This kind of research sounds like a waste of time -- given how fast conventional processors are accelerating (Moore's Law and all), do we even need molecular computing?
...can the Atari 2600 no longer run DeCSS?
On one hand, there's a clear benefit to this technology: it doesn't put human lives at risk -- at least not directly. If a robot guard is destroyed, it can be easily replaced, whereas a human soul can never be. Perhaps one day we'll even be able to use robot soldiers to fight our wars instead of shepherding the poor and the minority into our military.
Unforunately, the problem is that a human mind is a lot more secure than the lines of code powering these machines. It wouldn't be hard for some cracker to take out a robot guard, especially if the guards can be controlled over the Internet. It seems like only a matter of time before someone reverse-engineers the instruction protocol and uses it to start robbing banks. In fact, the robot guards can actually be used to aid crime -- when the police come to stop you, the robots would gun them down. Or the robots could commit a crime entirely by Internet control, leaving no human suspects or witnesses.
Internet security needs to improve -- and fast. We've been relying on the same RSA technology for far too long, and it's in technology like an armored guard that security becomes essential. Our banks are already vulnerable to crackers; do you want to make them even more insecure?
This isn't flamebait -- it's a honest question. Why should I, John Q. Public, care about this case? What's in it for me? What would I lose if the MPAA were to ultimately win? What would I gain from a 2600 victory? In other words, please explain why this case should matter to the average American citizen.
Now, IANAL, but did 2600 have any legal defense for their actions? As far as I can, they relied entirely upon dogma, which is why the judge labeled them a "radical" group. I wanted to see them win too, but it simply wasn't within the boundaries of the law for them to do so. What should happen and what the law says are two totally different and unrelated things.
Yes, 2600 are the moral winners in this case. But why did we expect them to win in court when they have no legal footing?
Posted by Hemos on Tuesday, Friday 18, @06:38AM
from the damn-those-fascist-capitalist-plutocrat-bastards dept.
Signal 11 writes: "Yahoo! News is reporting that Napster founder Shawn Fanning has been given a speeding ticket. The police claim that Fanning had exceeded the speed limit by over 15 mph, but we all know that he was acting in full compliance of traffic laws.". In a truly free world, there would be no need for speed limits. When will the establishment learn that speeding laws simply can't be enforced? Even if Fanning receives a ticket, thousands of other drivers will continue to speed.
( Read More... | 768 comments | Your Rights Online )
Miniskirt-clad girls save universe
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @08:25AM
from the roketto-ga-sugoi dept.
AnimeNewsNetwork.com is reporting that earlier this morning in Tokyo, five girls in color-coded blouses and miniskirts transformed into scantily-clad superheroes. The five girls then screamed, hurled glowing balls of energy, and screamed some more at a thirty-tentacled monster. Still no word on whether this is connected to the large humanoid robots spotted battling last week in Osaka.
( Read More... | 168 comments )
Slashback: Frisson, Sesquipedalianity, Responsitivitiness
Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 08, @10:45AM
from the beware-the-froomious-bandersnatch dept.
It was a dark and stormy night. In a salutiferous octastyle basement, an ultracrepidarian man was hermtically hunched over a piperaceous desk beneath a ornate mazarine, typing furiously away on an obumbrate keyboard. Meanwhile, in a meandrine corner of the world, several setose seeds were being entrenched in the muculent minds of the hoi polloi.
( Read More... | 9235 bytes in body | 214 comments )
Traffic Cops' "Justice" and Napster
Posted by JonKatz on Friday August 18, @11:30AM
from the post-hellmouth-world dept.
Just as Shadowrun predicted, The Corporate Republic took another step in assailing geeks today by handing Shawn Fanning a $L00 speeding ticket. This narcissism is harmful because it shrinks the creative universe of media workers and disconnects them from the new global conversation taking place online. Hubcaps have sparked a cultural and economic revolution that is just beginning to be understood. Will we see an increase in the number of Chickdrivers receiving "closed" traffic tickets as well, or will the Edge power a paradigm shift to "open" community-based traffic laws?
( Read More... | 598235 bytes in body | 657 flames | Features )
Ask Slashdot: Are Corporations Trying To Make Money?b out dept.
Posted by Cliff on Friday August 18, @1:25PM
from the yet-another-article-from-the-something-to-think-a
www.sorehands.com writes: "Today I visited Yahoo and was shocked to see a banner advertisement - I thought I'd managed to block every form of advertisement possible with Junkbusters. After thinking about it some, I realized Yahoo was probably running advertisement in a crass, commercialized attempt to make money off of my web-surfing habits! Could there be any other corporations out there engaged in similarly devious practices?" An interesting question here: Are some companies attempting to turn a profit, and, if so, what can we do to prevent it?
( Read More... | 3082 bytes in body | 345 comments )
Autospy of a Furby
Posted by michael on Friday August 18, @3:43PM
from the deja-vu dept.
Vladinator writes "Ever wonder what it's like to take apart a Furby? I don't, because I saw this on Slashdot two years ago, but I needed some karma so I submitted it anyway. Fawking trolls!" Those of who you started reading Slashdot this week may not have seen this page yet, so I'm re-running this classic for you three newbies.
( Read More... | 1 FIRST POST! )
Interstate Highway Boycott Planned
Posted by emmett on Friday August 18, @6:25PM
from the fight-the-power dept.
Bowie J. Poag writes: "You guys are idiots and VA sucks, but being the nice guy that I am [Update: 08/18 11:11 AM by CT: Further investigation reveals that he isn't ] I thought I'd let you know that know Wired is reporting that a boycott is being proposed against the interstate highway system for its treatment of Shawn Fanning. The interstate highway sucks almost as much as anime! PROPAGANDA RULES!!!!!" It's good to see that some people are taking the battle for free (as in Willy) highways into their own hands.
( Read More... | 218 comments )
Holland Convenience Store Switches To Linux
Posted by Hemos on Friday August 18, @9:33PM
from the key-victory-for-open-source dept.
Today while visiting my local 7-11 in Holland, MI, I noticed that their inventory computer was running Linux! Best of all, a representative from the store assured me, due to complaints from Bruce Perens, that the store may consider GPLing its inventory "sometime in the future." Looks like another business has finally "got it" and adopted the tenets of the free software movement.
( Read More... | 164 comments )
Napster? Napster Napster
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @11:25PM
from the napster dept.
Napster Napster Napster. Napster, Napster Napster Napster! Napster Napster (Napster) Napster Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster. "Napster Napster Napster," Napster Napster. Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster.
( Read More... | 304 comments | Napster!! )
This isn't really a free speech issue -- the game isn't being banned or censored; it's simply kept out of the hands of minors. Is this really such an odd idea? Nobody questions the concept that you have to be 17 to get into an R-rated movie -- everyone understands that's just the way things work. And yet when anyone tries to apply the same concept to games, all the screaming banshee gamers throw a huge temper tantrum. Just because 13-year-olds can play violent games right now doesn't mean that they have the right to. The game industry is maturing from a kid-targeted money machine to a more traditional, artistic form of media, and it's hardly bizarre for the regulations governing it to mature at the same time.
If gamers want to be taken seriously, we need to acknowledge that not all games should be played by everyone. Soldier of Fortune is a very violent game, and if I had kids, I wouldn't want them playing it. By clinging to the notion that all games should be available for everyone, we're forcing developers to only create games that can be sold to anyone -- i.e., kid-friendly games. With a ratings system in place, game manufacturers have the freedom to develop games for any age level, knowing that they'll be rated appropriately and no one can complain that iD and Sony are trying to sell violence to kids.
This isn't to say that Linux is a bad OS. It's a terrific OS for servers, routers, and other non-end-user computers. But it doesn't make any sense to try to hack shiny, happy desktop features into it. Everything has its purpose right? Linux's purpose is to be the best server operating system available (whether or not it succeeds is your call), not to battle Microsoft.
Rather than that constantly remake Linux in order to compete with Windows, it would make a great deal more sense for the FSF to create a brand new operating system designed from the ground up to be a desktop OS. Not only would this OS include all the necessary components for a desktop OS (GUI support built in from the beginning, no CLI, journaling file system, plug-and-play devices, advanced multimedia support, etc.), it would eliminate all the problems seen in current desktops -- licensing problems with KDE; feature bloat with GNOME. And right now, there's simple no free OS that does this -- sure, there's BeOS, but it's only free as in beer, not as in speech.
Remember P.T. Barnum's famous quote "You can please all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time?" Right now, Linux is trying to please all of the people all of the time, and that just isn't working. It's time to divide and conquer. Leave Linux to the server market and design the efficient, stable, user-friendly, and most importantly, open-source desktop OS that the world has been waiting for.
The only benchmarks we can trust are those that are totally independent. (The benchmarks being disputed here were sponsored by PostgreSQL.) I'm not accusing benchmarkers of being dishonest, but the only way we can be assured of impartiality is to run completely independent tests. We shouldn't care what the developers say -- we need to know what the users are saying.
Cowpland's learned from his mistakes. Corel suffered from a lack of a vision; the new start-ups he advises will be likely big players in the Linux market. Given Cowpland's fantastic business sense and experience in the industry, this could actually be a huge boost for Linux. Let's give Michael Cowpland the respect he deserves and wait to see what his second chance brings to the table.
I guess the big question now is whether any other sites going to be carrying on Forum2000's memory. We recently saw ION Storm pick up the defunct Thief series to continue; would something like that ever happen to the Forum2000 project? It would certainly be a waste to have all this research and development vanish into nothing.
Okay, "open sourcing" Iridium didn't made a lot of sense, but Forum2000 sounds like the perfect project to open source. If the creators aren't interested in carrying it on anymore, why not like other members of the community carry on the torch? Guess this will end up being yet another example of how open sourcing a project could have saved it.
These days, it seems most voters are too apathetic about the country (at least in the U.S.A.) to spend times researching the issues, reading the voter's manual, and then actually driving out to the polling place to vote. For people who never trust the government, there doesn't seem to be much reason to put any effort into the process -- but with online voting, all they have to do is skim one page and click to make their voice heard. It's hard to imagine that very people wouldn't vote if it was that easy.
Let's face it: most of the people that vote are either radicals or rich white guys. Middle America, as well as people like you and me -- cynical outsiders -- just don't bother to vote. And yet, these people are often the most vocal when it comes to what should be done about various issues. Online voting could finally give the people the power they wish they had -- there wouldn't be such a wide schism between policy and popular opinion.
Sure, true online voting may be a few decades off still, as there's still numerous security hassles and other issues to iron out. But it's exciting to see that we may finally be able to fulfill the promise of democracy at last.