1. The power supply is 14dbA? Yea right. The reviewers didn't even test it. That number is highly unlikely, especially from an unbranded PSU.
2. What about case fans? What's the dBA on those? What about the CPU fan, which isn't even included? Both of these will have a big impact on the total overall noise of the system.
3. Not to mention the hard drive! But enough.
This is not a "silent" HTPC. It's a quickstart HTPC. It should be judged on those grounds. Calling it truly silent is just going to confuse people.
Re:A few words from the original author
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Your essay is the best summary I've seen so far of the reasons not to use yEnc. You have done a service to those of us who have been annoyed with yEnc -- now we don't have to explain it to anyone, we can just point them to your essay.
So, be it resolved that yEnc leaves much to be desired.
However, if yEnc is the impetus which actually gets the community moving toward implementing a good, solid standard, then it will have served its purpose. Perhaps if we had had yEnc 5 years ago, we would have a standard already. But we didn't, and now we must pay the piper.
Since people aren't going to give up the advantages of yEnc without a substitute, the priority going forward is clear: to develop a better standard. If it truly is better (and not simply another hack) then ensuring its wide adoption shouldn't be too much of a problem. If, however, people can't be persuaded to switch, so much the worse for Usenet -- but no point in dwelling on doomsday scenarios. As you say, the cat is out of the bag, and all we can do is damage control.
The purpose of Reynolds' article appears to be to convince Republicans to oppose the SSSCA by appealing to their hatred of Democrats. He has chosen the perfect venue for such a ploy, since no one left of Jesse Helms takes Fox News seriously. Why this was posted to Slashdot, I'm not sure -- perhaps we just like it when our pet issues get picked up by the big media.
As for the substance of the article, Reynolds seems to be making a cynical attempt at painting Democrats as corporate shills. Of course, as everyone who's heard of Enron knows, the Republicans are much worse. Still, if Republicans side with the angels on this one, perhaps the SSSCA can be derailed before "Heil Valenti, Heil Rosen" is added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
After all, it is not the additional security that privacy advocates are against, it is the potential for harm through abuse of the system that they decry. Precisely this harm is what is limited and eliminated by the oversight that Brin speaks of.
Who could possibly be against more government oversight? (Except the government, of course.) This is not the question. The question is whether
and how we can get sufficient oversight. Brin seems to be a bit thin on just how we are to do that.
Furthermore, he does not seem to be saying that ubiquitous surveillance should be *conditional* upon oversight. Rather, he says that "[w]e are
protected by enhancing our ability to see them, not by reducing their ability to see us." "Cute," as Brin would say, but it is self-evident that
we are protected from the government by reducing their ability to see us.
And while openness (our ability to see them) is *necessary* to prevent abuse, it is not necessarily *sufficient* to do so. Our legislature and our courts are both open to public scrutiny, but that doesn't mean that the Bill of Rights is unnecessary (as the repeated attempts to censor the internet attest.)
In short, I'm unsure how the conclusion that we should give the government more power to surveil us follows from the common sense argument that democracy requires openness and accountability from our government. While decrying the "false dichotomy" of safety vs. freedom, Brin sets up his
own dichotomy of freedom-through-accountability vs. freedom-through-secrecy. Both accountability and secrecy have value, and both have a place in
democracy as a check against government misrule.
But you may not extract or appear to be the origin of information...
Misrepresenting the origin of information is known as plagiarism. Copyright doesn't apply.
As for extracting information, copyright does not restrict the ability to, for instance, name a page number where a particular image may be found in a book. Whether or not you have access to that book is not the concern of the person who provides the page number to you. As it happens, Kelly provides access to any and all askers.
Kelly, and any other webmaster, has the right to restrict access to his images in any way he wants. If he wants to prevent users of the Arriba search engine from viewing his images, he is certainly welcome to. But presumably, all he really wants is to prevent someone from seeing his images unless they also see the rest of his site.
The question then becomes, does he have the right to demand that the viewer of his images also view the rest of his site? If we say yes, then we start down a slippery slope. Any utility like wget would become infringing, because it allows you to recursively download all JPEGs from the website without ever being exposed to the HTML. (Indeed, the Junkbuster HTTP proxy, by removing ads, would be the height of contributory copyright infringement. Even turning off javascript to prevent pop-ups would be infringement!)
In my view, Arriba is the equivalent of wget. It allows you to see the images without seeing the HTML. It seems to me that if we allow one, we must allow the other. (And if we disallow one, both must be prohibited.)
To add insult to injury, they'd use his bandwidth to serve them up!
The very fact that the images are coming from Kelly's server, not from Arriba's, would seem to be a crucial distinction. If Arriba had stored the image on its own server, and then served it from there, clearly that would be copyright infringement. But if Kelly's server transfers an image, how can Kelly possibly claim that his copyright is being infringed by that transfer?
Now, it is true that if you put no lock on your door, that doesn't make it legal to rob you. However, if you walk out in public wearing a t-shirt with your copyrighted image on it, it seems to me you cannot legitimately claim that anyone who points at your t-shirt has violated your copyright.
If you want to consider the "context," you might say that you cannot possibly point to the image without also pointing to its context, ie, the wearer. Furthermore, as far as origin, the pointer cannot possibly pretend that he is the one wearing the t-shirt (though he might claim to own the image.)
But the URL to an embedded image on a webpage, which anyone can see with a few mouse clicks, establishes origin definitively, and allows anyone to get context, if they desire. Furthermore, if the image has identifying information on it (like notice of copyright and website), this issue would be even clearer. It is, of course, the obligation of the pointer to establish the origin of an image (when not obvious), or else it is plagiarism. However, I can't see how it can be considered infringement.
If Kelly wishes to control access to his images, he is certainly not without options (cookies, the Referer tag, temporary filenames, etc.) But this ruling makes all that beside the point. The act of pointing is rendered infringement.
Re:New source of ad revenue?
on
C.S.I.
·
· Score: 1
Katz has been doing a review each Sunday for some time now. The idea behind this is that there aren't usually that many good stories on Sunday, so why not liven it up with a review? This is the first review of a television program I have seen, the rest have been movie reviews.
Filtering by name? Something tells me this wouldn't satisfy the record companies. They know as well as we do that you can just rename all your files. And somehow I think the court will realize that too. Filtering is not a REAL solution to this problem, it's a token gesture. Like that billion dollars Napster offered. Get real, Napster.
On the other hand, by forcing people to rename their files, it makes it just that teensy bit more difficult to find files. And as we all know, many Napster users have never even heard of "FTP" and have no idea that MP3 sharing dates to well before Napster. Hence, this little bump in the road may be enough to prevent them from using Napster with any degree of success.
[Anyway as for myself I'd rather just go to MP3.com and get my music legally. So what if you can't download the latest N'Sync album for free... who wants to listen to N'Sync anyway? I'm more interested in classical piano, and there is a lot of great music available for download.]
What RMS doesn't understand is that this battle won't be won all at once.
I won't pretend to know what RMS does or does not understand, but in any case I'm not really sure which "battle" you're referring to. If you mean convincing the corporate world to use free software, well, I don't think that's exactly a priority for RMS. If people use free software it is because it's better suited to their needs, or they believe in the free software ideals -- not because they have been hypnotized into using it through propaganda of Allchin's sort. And if the corporate world only understands the Allchins and Microsofts, so be it. Free software got this far without them...
What about Debian GNU/Linux? Personally, I don't see the problem with the prefix... In any case, details are important for an advocate -- for the rest of us, not so much. Compare "GNU/" with the (R) and (TM) symbols that nobody ever uses in email but which you will always find in magazines...
They are too lazy or too narcissistic to pay for others' work...
One question: if the pirates are so lazy and narcissistic, why do they offer things to the public at all? If we were talking about conventional piracy where money changes hands, then the motivation is obvious. But why would someone post to a newsgroup without any hope of repayment?
One reason people give back is that they realize that if no one provided the goods, piracy wouldn't exist--they want to contribute. They want to help out people like themselves--people who can't or won't pay 15 dollars for a CD, or 500 for audio software. It is essentially an altruistic impulse, not a narcissistic one.
Now, you can criticize this altruistic impulse and call it idealistic or simple-minded -- but you can't call it ingenuine.
Intellectual-property owners don't have a fundamental natural-law right to restrict the copying of their intellectual property.
There is no right to steal others' IP.
These two statements are in direct opposition to each other. If, as you pointed out, there is no natural right to prevent copying of IP, then by definition we can copy it if we like ("steal" if you prefer).
Why are we still talking about this?
Well, for one thing, some people care deeply about this issue, in particular artists and pirates (despite your characterizations of pirates as lazy etc.)
...but the fact that most of the internet consists of Porn is a rather embarrassing statement about the Human Civilization today.
The majority of porn sites have no original photos, and exist primarily because the porn site operators think they can make a few bucks on advertising. It speaks more to greed than to lust. But as far as whether it's "embarrassing" or not, it's hardly surprising that the lowest common denominator will proliferate most widely -- it's practically a tautology.
If tomorrow I can not post photographs of Less than artistic nudes - do I have Free Speech?
There are arguments that can be made as to why we shouldn't be allowed to have pornography; and if those arguments are reasonable, censorship of pornography is reasonable. (eg, child porn laws) But simply outlawing porn "because we say so" is not only silly but (in the US) unconstitutional.
I'm no constitutional expert or anything but just a brief clarification of the right to bear arms... The Second Amendment to the US Constitution specifies:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The primary intention is to preserve the (free) state against foreign threats; the constitution itself is meant to serve as a guarantee that the state remains free (ie does not become a dictatorship.) Additionally, the right to bear arms has been limited over time (through legislation and the judicial process)... gun licenses, assault weapons bans, and so on.
As far as a common sense check for legislation goes... In the US, Congress can go ahead and pass any censorship law they want (and have done so in at least one instance.) It is up to the Supreme Court to nullify it if it is unconstitutional -- politicians may realize full well that a bill will not pass constitutional muster, but they vote for it anyway to score political points with their constituents. In a system in which legislators will vote for a bill which is clearly unconstitutional, a "common sense" check is superfluous...
On the other hand, bills which are not intended primarily as political gestures undergo common sense checks as a matter of course... Or perhaps I just have too much faith in the political process. In any case I'm just glad we have the First Amendment...
Ideally, democratic government avoids the necessity of revolution by delivering the power of governing directly to the people. Except where that government is corrupt, voting should be a sufficient method of revolt. This ignores of course the vast legions of voters who don't know or care why they should vote one way or another -- indeed, freedom of speech is meant to guarantee that the populace will be well informed. Censorship helps to insure that dissent is muffled -- part of why freedom of speech is so important.
They're not anti-sex except insofar as Christianity is anti-sex. Sex is for procreation only, not fun. Religion is at the root of many of the bizarre views of sexuality in society today. Even those who are not overtly religious have been influenced subconsciously by these anachronisms.
On the other hand I can't help feeling a bit embarrassed when I'm watching TV with my parents and a sex scene comes on. I think it is this embarrassment, more than any sort of moral righteousness, which allows people to believe that censorship is a good idea. Just a theory.
I can only speculate as to the politics of this, but keep in mind that President W. introduced lots of standardized tests in primary and secondary education in Texas. The Republicans like to say that this has improved the quality of education there significantly. Democrats see the issue another way of course, and Dr. Atkinson seems to be among those.
While Atkinson isn't referring to these issues specifically, I just wonder as to the effect politics has here.
Actually let's look at this from another perspective. OK. So, the music industry likes to harass people. Frankly, I don't blame them. If I had power and money, I'd love kicking around the proles as well. And, in this case, since the majority of mp3 listeners are so addicted to music that they are unable to go a day without a download, it's pretty fair to say that no amount of harassing is going to get them to stop listening to music. All they have to do is harass us *enough* that we'll stop trading MP3's illegally. You see, they know that MP3's are actually good for them, because they create dependence in the listener... drug dealers don't give away samples out of the goodness of their heart. And they also know that if they can cut off our free source, they can get us to pay. At the same time, they can retain the moral high ground, and the mp3 addicts can be dismissed as a bunch of whiny kids who want something for nothing. Never mind that many napster users are in their 30's or older. It's really quite heart-warming to see worldwide addiction on such a massive scale.
As for this whole Music DNA crap or whatever it is -- it's just Hillary Rosen dressed up as the bogeyman.
I get your point, but... couldn't they send out threatening emails to anybody who has an MP3 with (for instance) Metallica in the file name, with roughly the same effect? Distinguishing between what is real and what's not is probably only useful in court... (correct me if I'm wrong...) But which is more convincing to a judge? A printout that says "This MP3 REALLY is a Metallica song," or listening to the CD version and the MP3 version in turn? At the very least I guess it could help the RIAA decide who to file charges against... but I've yet to see actual trials.
Threatening emails are one thing; publicized court action is quite another. As soon we start seeing some martyrs, I imagine we'll think twice before signing up for the next Napster-clone.
In theory that would be a non-trivial use, but I get the feeling that this technology is not for public consumption -- you could use it to verify that your MP3's were undetectable, and that would defeat the purpose of it. So, I imagine there would be hefty licensing fees.
However if somebody wanted to create an independent freeware version for this purpose... well, that seems like a lot of work to go to for not much gain.
I was wondering about that too, but I figured that, assuming it is based on both harmony/melody and a fairly exact timing, it could probably distinguish between two different versions of the same song. No two pianists will play all the corresponding notes with the same duration, even given a similar tempo. (This is especially true of pieces from the romantic era and later.) But naturally I have no idea how the analysis is really done...
Even assuming the techonology operates perfectly, I can't imagine this having any effect whatsoever. When someone posts an MP3 file, it is pretty much a given that the music is authentic and illegal. Having proof positive of that fact is not particularly useful is it?
If it were to be used in a legal case I would think that actually playing the MP3s in court would be far more persuasive than the results of this program. (Although I can't really envision a court case involving MP3's... perhaps at some point MP3 trading will be an offense akin to speeding, with a similar fine. And those fined for it will complain as bitterly as when fined for speeding -- "everyone does it! it's not like anyone is hurt")
And of course this assumes that people won't take the simple precautions that have already been suggested to keep the bots away. All in all I can't imagine this having any real value except as a scare tactic. But perhaps that value is enough...
Cool friends aren't all they're cracked up to be. I straddled the line between the cool and uncool (at a private school) and quite frankly the in-crowd was boring. But not being harassed was a nice benefit. I certainly wouldn't have gone out of my way to give the finger to the in-crowd... it wouldn't have accomplished anything. They weren't bad people, they just were interested in different things... (never could have discussed linguistics or WWII with any of them for instance...)
Slashdot Mirror
1. The power supply is 14dbA? Yea right. The reviewers didn't even test it. That number is highly unlikely, especially from an unbranded PSU.
2. What about case fans? What's the dBA on those? What about the CPU fan, which isn't even included? Both of these will have a big impact on the total overall noise of the system.
3. Not to mention the hard drive! But enough.
This is not a "silent" HTPC. It's a quickstart HTPC. It should be judged on those grounds. Calling it truly silent is just going to confuse people.
See http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for real silent computing.
Your essay is the best summary I've seen so far of the reasons not to use yEnc. You have done a service to those of us who have been annoyed with yEnc -- now we don't have to explain it to anyone, we can just point them to your essay.
So, be it resolved that yEnc leaves much to be desired.
However, if yEnc is the impetus which actually gets the community moving toward implementing a good, solid standard, then it will have served its purpose. Perhaps if we had had yEnc 5 years ago, we would have a standard already. But we didn't, and now we must pay the piper.
Since people aren't going to give up the advantages of yEnc without a substitute, the priority going forward is clear: to develop a better standard. If it truly is better (and not simply another hack) then ensuring its wide adoption shouldn't be too much of a problem. If, however, people can't be persuaded to switch, so much the worse for Usenet -- but no point in dwelling on doomsday scenarios. As you say, the cat is out of the bag, and all we can do is damage control.
The purpose of Reynolds' article appears to be to convince Republicans to oppose the SSSCA by appealing to their hatred of Democrats. He has chosen the perfect venue for such a ploy, since no one left of Jesse Helms takes Fox News seriously. Why this was posted to Slashdot, I'm not sure -- perhaps we just like it when our pet issues get picked up by the big media.
As for the substance of the article, Reynolds seems to be making a cynical attempt at painting Democrats as corporate shills. Of course, as everyone who's heard of Enron knows, the Republicans are much worse. Still, if Republicans side with the angels on this one, perhaps the SSSCA can be derailed before "Heil Valenti, Heil Rosen" is added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
After all, it is not the additional security that privacy advocates are against, it is the potential for harm through abuse of the system that they decry. Precisely this harm is what is limited and eliminated by the oversight that Brin speaks of.
Who could possibly be against more government oversight? (Except the government, of course.) This is not the question. The question is whether and how we can get sufficient oversight. Brin seems to be a bit thin on just how we are to do that.
Furthermore, he does not seem to be saying that ubiquitous surveillance should be *conditional* upon oversight. Rather, he says that "[w]e are protected by enhancing our ability to see them, not by reducing their ability to see us." "Cute," as Brin would say, but it is self-evident that we are protected from the government by reducing their ability to see us.
And while openness (our ability to see them) is *necessary* to prevent abuse, it is not necessarily *sufficient* to do so. Our legislature and our courts are both open to public scrutiny, but that doesn't mean that the Bill of Rights is unnecessary (as the repeated attempts to censor the internet attest.)
In short, I'm unsure how the conclusion that we should give the government more power to surveil us follows from the common sense argument that democracy requires openness and accountability from our government. While decrying the "false dichotomy" of safety vs. freedom, Brin sets up his own dichotomy of freedom-through-accountability vs. freedom-through-secrecy. Both accountability and secrecy have value, and both have a place in democracy as a check against government misrule.
But you may not extract or appear to be the origin of information...
Misrepresenting the origin of information is known as plagiarism. Copyright doesn't apply.
As for extracting information, copyright does not restrict the ability to, for instance, name a page number where a particular image may be found in a book. Whether or not you have access to that book is not the concern of the person who provides the page number to you. As it happens, Kelly provides access to any and all askers.
Kelly, and any other webmaster, has the right to restrict access to his images in any way he wants. If he wants to prevent users of the Arriba search engine from viewing his images, he is certainly welcome to. But presumably, all he really wants is to prevent someone from seeing his images unless they also see the rest of his site.
The question then becomes, does he have the right to demand that the viewer of his images also view the rest of his site? If we say yes, then we start down a slippery slope. Any utility like wget would become infringing, because it allows you to recursively download all JPEGs from the website without ever being exposed to the HTML. (Indeed, the Junkbuster HTTP proxy, by removing ads, would be the height of contributory copyright infringement. Even turning off javascript to prevent pop-ups would be infringement!)
In my view, Arriba is the equivalent of wget. It allows you to see the images without seeing the HTML. It seems to me that if we allow one, we must allow the other. (And if we disallow one, both must be prohibited.)
To add insult to injury, they'd use his bandwidth to serve them up!
The very fact that the images are coming from Kelly's server, not from Arriba's, would seem to be a crucial distinction. If Arriba had stored the image on its own server, and then served it from there, clearly that would be copyright infringement. But if Kelly's server transfers an image, how can Kelly possibly claim that his copyright is being infringed by that transfer?
Now, it is true that if you put no lock on your door, that doesn't make it legal to rob you. However, if you walk out in public wearing a t-shirt with your copyrighted image on it, it seems to me you cannot legitimately claim that anyone who points at your t-shirt has violated your copyright.
If you want to consider the "context," you might say that you cannot possibly point to the image without also pointing to its context, ie, the wearer. Furthermore, as far as origin, the pointer cannot possibly pretend that he is the one wearing the t-shirt (though he might claim to own the image.)
But the URL to an embedded image on a webpage, which anyone can see with a few mouse clicks, establishes origin definitively, and allows anyone to get context, if they desire. Furthermore, if the image has identifying information on it (like notice of copyright and website), this issue would be even clearer. It is, of course, the obligation of the pointer to establish the origin of an image (when not obvious), or else it is plagiarism. However, I can't see how it can be considered infringement.
If Kelly wishes to control access to his images, he is certainly not without options (cookies, the Referer tag, temporary filenames, etc.) But this ruling makes all that beside the point. The act of pointing is rendered infringement.
Katz has been doing a review each Sunday for some time now. The idea behind this is that there aren't usually that many good stories on Sunday, so why not liven it up with a review? This is the first review of a television program I have seen, the rest have been movie reviews.
Filtering by name? Something tells me this wouldn't satisfy the record companies. They know as well as we do that you can just rename all your files. And somehow I think the court will realize that too. Filtering is not a REAL solution to this problem, it's a token gesture. Like that billion dollars Napster offered. Get real, Napster.
On the other hand, by forcing people to rename their files, it makes it just that teensy bit more difficult to find files. And as we all know, many Napster users have never even heard of "FTP" and have no idea that MP3 sharing dates to well before Napster. Hence, this little bump in the road may be enough to prevent them from using Napster with any degree of success.
[Anyway as for myself I'd rather just go to MP3.com and get my music legally. So what if you can't download the latest N'Sync album for free... who wants to listen to N'Sync anyway? I'm more interested in classical piano, and there is a lot of great music available for download.]
What RMS doesn't understand is that this battle won't be won all at once.
I won't pretend to know what RMS does or does not understand, but in any case I'm not really sure which "battle" you're referring to. If you mean convincing the corporate world to use free software, well, I don't think that's exactly a priority for RMS. If people use free software it is because it's better suited to their needs, or they believe in the free software ideals -- not because they have been hypnotized into using it through propaganda of Allchin's sort. And if the corporate world only understands the Allchins and Microsofts, so be it. Free software got this far without them...
What about Debian GNU/Linux? Personally, I don't see the problem with the prefix... In any case, details are important for an advocate -- for the rest of us, not so much. Compare "GNU/" with the (R) and (TM) symbols that nobody ever uses in email but which you will always find in magazines...
They are too lazy or too narcissistic to pay for others' work...
One question: if the pirates are so lazy and narcissistic, why do they offer things to the public at all? If we were talking about conventional piracy where money changes hands, then the motivation is obvious. But why would someone post to a newsgroup without any hope of repayment?
One reason people give back is that they realize that if no one provided the goods, piracy wouldn't exist--they want to contribute. They want to help out people like themselves--people who can't or won't pay 15 dollars for a CD, or 500 for audio software. It is essentially an altruistic impulse, not a narcissistic one.
Now, you can criticize this altruistic impulse and call it idealistic or simple-minded -- but you can't call it ingenuine.
Intellectual-property owners don't have a fundamental natural-law right to restrict the copying of their intellectual property.
There is no right to steal others' IP.
These two statements are in direct opposition to each other. If, as you pointed out, there is no natural right to prevent copying of IP, then by definition we can copy it if we like ("steal" if you prefer).
Why are we still talking about this?
Well, for one thing, some people care deeply about this issue, in particular artists and pirates (despite your characterizations of pirates as lazy etc.)
The majority of porn sites have no original photos, and exist primarily because the porn site operators think they can make a few bucks on advertising. It speaks more to greed than to lust. But as far as whether it's "embarrassing" or not, it's hardly surprising that the lowest common denominator will proliferate most widely -- it's practically a tautology.
If tomorrow I can not post photographs of Less than artistic nudes - do I have Free Speech?
There are arguments that can be made as to why we shouldn't be allowed to have pornography; and if those arguments are reasonable, censorship of pornography is reasonable. (eg, child porn laws) But simply outlawing porn "because we say so" is not only silly but (in the US) unconstitutional.
I'm no constitutional expert or anything but just a brief clarification of the right to bear arms... The Second Amendment to the US Constitution specifies:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The primary intention is to preserve the (free) state against foreign threats; the constitution itself is meant to serve as a guarantee that the state remains free (ie does not become a dictatorship.) Additionally, the right to bear arms has been limited over time (through legislation and the judicial process)... gun licenses, assault weapons bans, and so on.
As far as a common sense check for legislation goes... In the US, Congress can go ahead and pass any censorship law they want (and have done so in at least one instance.) It is up to the Supreme Court to nullify it if it is unconstitutional -- politicians may realize full well that a bill will not pass constitutional muster, but they vote for it anyway to score political points with their constituents. In a system in which legislators will vote for a bill which is clearly unconstitutional, a "common sense" check is superfluous...
On the other hand, bills which are not intended primarily as political gestures undergo common sense checks as a matter of course... Or perhaps I just have too much faith in the political process. In any case I'm just glad we have the First Amendment...
Crowds: http://www.research.att.com/projects/crowds/
Page linking to it, with various other things (anonymizing, peer-to-peer etc.): http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=special&page=resour ces
Ideally, democratic government avoids the necessity of revolution by delivering the power of governing directly to the people. Except where that government is corrupt, voting should be a sufficient method of revolt. This ignores of course the vast legions of voters who don't know or care why they should vote one way or another -- indeed, freedom of speech is meant to guarantee that the populace will be well informed. Censorship helps to insure that dissent is muffled -- part of why freedom of speech is so important.
They're not anti-sex except insofar as Christianity is anti-sex. Sex is for procreation only, not fun. Religion is at the root of many of the bizarre views of sexuality in society today. Even those who are not overtly religious have been influenced subconsciously by these anachronisms.
On the other hand I can't help feeling a bit embarrassed when I'm watching TV with my parents and a sex scene comes on. I think it is this embarrassment, more than any sort of moral righteousness, which allows people to believe that censorship is a good idea. Just a theory.
I can only speculate as to the politics of this, but keep in mind that President W. introduced lots of standardized tests in primary and secondary education in Texas. The Republicans like to say that this has improved the quality of education there significantly. Democrats see the issue another way of course, and Dr. Atkinson seems to be among those.
While Atkinson isn't referring to these issues specifically, I just wonder as to the effect politics has here.
Let's see...
$ nc www.keele.ac.uk 80 /research/cmrkeele.htm HTTP/1.0
HEAD
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 11:39:15 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12
Last-Modified: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 12:16:30 GMT
ETag: "239a2-f60-37bd471e"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 3936
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Last modified 20 Aug 1999? Not what I'd call "breaking news"... If you don't believe the server date, try this corroborating evidence: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/pipermail/postpc/1999-S eptember/000002.html
Why news.ft.com decided to post the story now, I couldn't say...
== Sparrow
Actually let's look at this from another perspective. OK. So, the music industry likes to harass people. Frankly, I don't blame them. If I had power and money, I'd love kicking around the proles as well. And, in this case, since the majority of mp3 listeners are so addicted to music that they are unable to go a day without a download, it's pretty fair to say that no amount of harassing is going to get them to stop listening to music. All they have to do is harass us *enough* that we'll stop trading MP3's illegally. You see, they know that MP3's are actually good for them, because they create dependence in the listener... drug dealers don't give away samples out of the goodness of their heart. And they also know that if they can cut off our free source, they can get us to pay. At the same time, they can retain the moral high ground, and the mp3 addicts can be dismissed as a bunch of whiny kids who want something for nothing. Never mind that many napster users are in their 30's or older. It's really quite heart-warming to see worldwide addiction on such a massive scale.
As for this whole Music DNA crap or whatever it is -- it's just Hillary Rosen dressed up as the bogeyman.
I get your point, but... couldn't they send out threatening emails to anybody who has an MP3 with (for instance) Metallica in the file name, with roughly the same effect? Distinguishing between what is real and what's not is probably only useful in court... (correct me if I'm wrong...) But which is more convincing to a judge? A printout that says "This MP3 REALLY is a Metallica song," or listening to the CD version and the MP3 version in turn? At the very least I guess it could help the RIAA decide who to file charges against... but I've yet to see actual trials.
Threatening emails are one thing; publicized court action is quite another. As soon we start seeing some martyrs, I imagine we'll think twice before signing up for the next Napster-clone.
In theory that would be a non-trivial use, but I get the feeling that this technology is not for public consumption -- you could use it to verify that your MP3's were undetectable, and that would defeat the purpose of it. So, I imagine there would be hefty licensing fees.
However if somebody wanted to create an independent freeware version for this purpose... well, that seems like a lot of work to go to for not much gain.
I was wondering about that too, but I figured that, assuming it is based on both harmony/melody and a fairly exact timing, it could probably distinguish between two different versions of the same song. No two pianists will play all the corresponding notes with the same duration, even given a similar tempo. (This is especially true of pieces from the romantic era and later.) But naturally I have no idea how the analysis is really done...
Even assuming the techonology operates perfectly, I can't imagine this having any effect whatsoever. When someone posts an MP3 file, it is pretty much a given that the music is authentic and illegal. Having proof positive of that fact is not particularly useful is it?
If it were to be used in a legal case I would think that actually playing the MP3s in court would be far more persuasive than the results of this program. (Although I can't really envision a court case involving MP3's... perhaps at some point MP3 trading will be an offense akin to speeding, with a similar fine. And those fined for it will complain as bitterly as when fined for speeding -- "everyone does it! it's not like anyone is hurt")
And of course this assumes that people won't take the simple precautions that have already been suggested to keep the bots away. All in all I can't imagine this having any real value except as a scare tactic. But perhaps that value is enough...
Cool friends aren't all they're cracked up to be. I straddled the line between the cool and uncool (at a private school) and quite frankly the in-crowd was boring. But not being harassed was a nice benefit. I certainly wouldn't have gone out of my way to give the finger to the in-crowd... it wouldn't have accomplished anything. They weren't bad people, they just were interested in different things... (never could have discussed linguistics or WWII with any of them for instance...)