You missed my point. If Altavista started advertising warez.altavista.com then I think software companies would have the beginnings of a foundation for a suit. If Lycos were a bit more circumspect in their approach with mp3.lycos.com - prominent positioning for sites like mp3.com, et al., who distribute "legal" files, some sort of tree index like Yahoo that gives you legitimate mp3s and is more prominent than the raw search tool (so you find artists offering mp3s more easily than a rip of the Titanic soundtrack), and lots of disclaimers regarding copyright issues - then they would have a stronger leg to stand on.
The depth found in such writing cannot exceeed the depth of the mind it splashes down in.
That's funny. I was thinking it was the inverse. Metaphysics is one thing. Even if it does want to deal with "remote viewing" (I didn't even get that far). But fluffy, overblown, affective writing that pretends to say something but really says very little?
This was deep all right, and it's kind of funny how many people stepped in it.
...can you summarize the main idea of this essay in once sentence for the rest of us.
I'll try:
"Life inside a computer is beautiful, though cramped with all these wires and stuff."
Then you haven't read anything really good.
on
But To What Purpose?
·
· Score: 2
I've never read an O'Reilly book. I have read lots of other books, including lots of literature and philosophy. I didn't make it past the first paragraph. If you want some interesting writing with a more philosophical bent there's a whole world that this piece doesn't come close to belonging in.
For a quick example of good writing check out the NY Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/index.html
Not necessarily/.'s cup of tea, but even the weakest of reviewers put Katz and this fellow to shame. Try Umberto Eco, he's fascinatingly intelligent, yet appealingly down to earth in many of his essays. I'd recommend "Travels in Hyperreality" for a start. And if you want something that makes your brain hurt in a good way, try Douglas Hofstadter. I disagree with much of his worldview, but he'll make you smarter.
Don't bother. His arguments were well-refuted in *several* InfoWorld forums several months back. His primary argument was that, if you run a business, you can't trust anyone who works for you, not even the person who has root on your system, and so if they have the source to the OS, they can rip you off. And he completely ignored the counter-arguments that the same can be done with less work on closed-source systems. Rather than addressing the multitude of rational counter-arguments, he simply re-asserted his argument (only grudgingly and in bits and pieces revealing the complete argument) over and over and over and over.... And of course, as people got fed up with his methods, he began to get seriously flamed. So he seized upon the flames as justification that open-source advocates didn't care about security and ignored the objections and has moved on to ZDNet, where I suppose he thinks that his Esq. will be taken more seriously.
If only it were that simple. Let's use a fictional illustration. Say I own a company called Sun Inc. I sell photovoltaic (solar electric) systems in several Western states. I trademark the name Sun in connection with the sale of PV equipment. It's the early 90's. The Internet is beginning to attract attention in the wider world. I hear about the World Wide Web, and decide, in a bold move, to get my company on it. So I buy the domain sun.com before a certain other company does. On my site I have product and ordering info for my merchandise. A certain other company, that has trademarked its business name connected to the sale of, say computers, finally gets off its butt and realizes it needs to be on the Web. It goes to buy the sun.com domain and finds out that I own it. This other company cries "trademark infringement" and my domain is hijacked.
Is there really an infringement there? We both have trademarks. We're both intending to use the domain to do the business for which our respective trademarks are registered. Who deserves the domain?
One problem with that, however, is that the same term can be trademarked by different entities for different types of business. Revisit the Ajax.org dispute - there's at least a dozen or so trademarks for Ajax, all owned by different companies and all used for different things, from cleanser to construction companies. So say the construction company gotten on the net first and registered ajax.com, then a few months or years later P&G decides they want a website for their cleanser. Whose trademark has dominance? P&G is huge and has more lawyers and lobbyists. Who do you think the courts and NSI will choose?
The courts seem to be showing they don't have a clue about how to deal with this sort of dispute with any sort of equitable, common-sense judgment.
The Web is local, the Web is global. With the exception of a small number of made-up words, trademarks cannot be defended in the traditional way, because "infringement" becomes a much more slippery category.
This is a situation where, I believe, legislation has to redefine the situation, rather than depend on the irrational, ignorant, contradictory rulings of the courts.
Potentially an even bigger problem than it seems
on
Lycos Mp3 Lawsuit?
·
· Score: 1
Not necessarily. My feeling is that, should Lycos fight this and lose, then whatever ruling comes out, whether in the original trial or appeal, it's Lycos' front-end for the mp3 search that will be at issue, not whether a generic search engine can be used to search for whatever (at least I hope it would come down to that). mp3.lycos.com practically invites users to search for mp3s that are infringing copyright ("enter your favorite band or song"). They're walking a fine line with it, and a lot will depend on the skill of their lawyers to redefine how a "reasonable" person would interpret the meaning of the site.
The "legality" of mp3s is irrelevant in this case. The copyright status of the mp3s that can be found via the search engine is. Being able to do a search for "mp3" on any search engine is one thing, and could/should not be restricted. Setting up a front end that is tailored to find mp3s that are being distributed without the permission of the copyright holder is probably akin to setting up a search engine for the express purpose of locating people selling stolen cars.
And just because the mp3s aren't "advertised" as illegal, doesn't mean a thing if it can be shown that the search engine was designed to facilitate the distribution of infringing mp3s.
Stop deluding yourself. Yes, the *format* itself is legal. But distributing copyrighted content in that format without permission from the copyright holder is called infringement. And I would wager that > 99 percent of the searches on mp3.lycos.com are for copyrighted material being distributed without the permission of the copyright holder. Lycos certainly seems to have built the site to encourage such searches, as well. "Just type in the name of your favorite band or song title and let MP3 Search do the rest."
Plane tickets cost a hell of a lot more than books. Assuming an average of $300 per transaction, I believe (someone can check my work;o) ) that works out to about half a million transactions per day.
I have an idea for Rob that would encourage whiners to register - Have the default view of/. be blank. In order to see articles, you'd have to register and select which ones they want to see. Then they might get a clue.;o)
A) The United States is not the only country that refers to their head of state as "President" B) Not every country that has a President has the same requirements for holding that office. B) The character in Phantom Menace is not a President.
As long as I've been reading/. (over a year), Star Wars has been part of Rob's content - it's stuff that matters to him, and as it's his site well, you know, it doesn't really matter if it doesn't matter to you.:op
It was originally developed just for their demo, but I guess enough people asked for it that they've turned it into a full-fledged app/utility to be released as part of R4.1. It blew me away. I've got friends who are involved in home studio recording, and I think they would be quite impressed with that piece of software. Move tracks forward and back in the mix, move them left/right in the stereo mix, apply effects - all in real-time with a mouse.
Because/rowt/ is another accepted pronunciation of route. And, also according to Webster's, "router", meaning something that routes, can be pronounced either way.
For the most recent entries in the series, go to http://cgi.pathfinder.com/fortune/1999/03/29/mic.h tml
I didn't see if there was anything on the press conference, but there's a lot of links to previous installments. The "Witnesses in Wonderland" segment is very good reading.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed my point. If Altavista started advertising warez.altavista.com then I think software companies would have the beginnings of a foundation for a suit. If Lycos were a bit more circumspect in their approach with mp3.lycos.com - prominent positioning for sites like mp3.com, et al., who distribute "legal" files, some sort of tree index like Yahoo that gives you legitimate mp3s and is more prominent than the raw search tool (so you find artists offering mp3s more easily than a rip of the Titanic soundtrack), and lots of disclaimers regarding copyright issues - then they would have a stronger leg to stand on.
The depth found in such writing cannot exceeed the depth of the mind it splashes down in.
That's funny. I was thinking it was the inverse. Metaphysics is one thing. Even if it does want to deal with "remote viewing" (I didn't even get that far). But fluffy, overblown, affective writing that pretends to say something but really says very little?
This was deep all right, and it's kind of funny how many people stepped in it.
...can you summarize the main idea of this essay in once sentence for the rest of us.
I'll try:
"Life inside a computer is beautiful, though cramped with all these wires and stuff."
I've never read an O'Reilly book. I have read lots of other books, including lots of literature and philosophy. I didn't make it past the first paragraph. If you want some interesting writing with a more philosophical bent there's a whole world that this piece doesn't come close to belonging in.
/.'s cup of tea, but even the weakest of reviewers put Katz and this fellow to shame. Try Umberto Eco, he's fascinatingly intelligent, yet appealingly down to earth in many of his essays. I'd recommend "Travels in Hyperreality" for a start. And if you want something that makes your brain hurt in a good way, try Douglas Hofstadter. I disagree with much of his worldview, but he'll make you smarter.
For a quick example of good writing check out the NY Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/index.html
Not necessarily
Don't bother. His arguments were well-refuted in *several* InfoWorld forums several months back. His primary argument was that, if you run a business, you can't trust anyone who works for you, not even the person who has root on your system, and so if they have the source to the OS, they can rip you off. And he completely ignored the counter-arguments that the same can be done with less work on closed-source systems. Rather than addressing the multitude of rational counter-arguments, he simply re-asserted his argument (only grudgingly and in bits and pieces revealing the complete argument) over and over and over and over.... And of course, as people got fed up with his methods, he began to get seriously flamed. So he seized upon the flames as justification that open-source advocates didn't care about security and ignored the objections and has moved on to ZDNet, where I suppose he thinks that his Esq. will be taken more seriously.
If only it were that simple. Let's use a fictional illustration. Say I own a company called Sun Inc. I sell photovoltaic (solar electric) systems in several Western states. I trademark the name Sun in connection with the sale of PV equipment. It's the early 90's. The Internet is beginning to attract attention in the wider world. I hear about the World Wide Web, and decide, in a bold move, to get my company on it. So I buy the domain sun.com before a certain other company does. On my site I have product and ordering info for my merchandise. A certain other company, that has trademarked its business name connected to the sale of, say computers, finally gets off its butt and realizes it needs to be on the Web. It goes to buy the sun.com domain and finds out that I own it. This other company cries "trademark infringement" and my domain is hijacked.
Is there really an infringement there? We both have trademarks. We're both intending to use the domain to do the business for which our respective trademarks are registered. Who deserves the domain?
One problem with that, however, is that the same term can be trademarked by different entities for different types of business. Revisit the Ajax.org dispute - there's at least a dozen or so trademarks for Ajax, all owned by different companies and all used for different things, from cleanser to construction companies. So say the construction company gotten on the net first and registered ajax.com, then a few months or years later P&G decides they want a website for their cleanser. Whose trademark has dominance? P&G is huge and has more lawyers and lobbyists. Who do you think the courts and NSI will choose?
The courts seem to be showing they don't have a clue about how to deal with this sort of dispute with any sort of equitable, common-sense judgment.
The Web is local, the Web is global. With the exception of a small number of made-up words, trademarks cannot be defended in the traditional way, because "infringement" becomes a much more slippery category.
This is a situation where, I believe, legislation has to redefine the situation, rather than depend on the irrational, ignorant, contradictory rulings of the courts.
Not necessarily. My feeling is that, should Lycos fight this and lose, then whatever ruling comes out, whether in the original trial or appeal, it's Lycos' front-end for the mp3 search that will be at issue, not whether a generic search engine can be used to search for whatever (at least I hope it would come down to that). mp3.lycos.com practically invites users to search for mp3s that are infringing copyright ("enter your favorite band or song"). They're walking a fine line with it, and a lot will depend on the skill of their lawyers to redefine how a "reasonable" person would interpret the meaning of the site.
The "legality" of mp3s is irrelevant in this case. The copyright status of the mp3s that can be found via the search engine is. Being able to do a search for "mp3" on any search engine is one thing, and could/should not be restricted. Setting up a front end that is tailored to find mp3s that are being distributed without the permission of the copyright holder is probably akin to setting up a search engine for the express purpose of locating people selling stolen cars.
And just because the mp3s aren't "advertised" as illegal, doesn't mean a thing if it can be shown that the search engine was designed to facilitate the distribution of infringing mp3s.
Stop deluding yourself. Yes, the *format* itself is legal. But distributing copyrighted content in that format without permission from the copyright holder is called infringement. And I would wager that > 99 percent of the searches on mp3.lycos.com are for copyrighted material being distributed without the permission of the copyright holder. Lycos certainly seems to have built the site to encourage such searches, as well. "Just type in the name of your favorite band or song title and let MP3 Search do the rest."
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."
Plane tickets cost a hell of a lot more than books. Assuming an average of $300 per transaction, I believe (someone can check my work ;o) ) that works out to about half a million transactions per day.
I'm reading this in BeOS using NetPositive right now, and the pages are coming up way faster than NS4.x under Linux or Windows.
So where does he say he dislikes OS X?
I have an idea for Rob that would encourage whiners to register - Have the default view of /. be blank. In order to see articles, you'd have to register and select which ones they want to see. Then they might get a clue. ;o)
A) The United States is not the only country that refers to their head of state as "President"
B) Not every country that has a President has the same requirements for holding that office.
B) The character in Phantom Menace is not a President.
As long as I've been reading /. (over a year), Star Wars has been part of Rob's content - it's stuff that matters to him, and as it's his site well, you know, it doesn't really matter if it doesn't matter to you. :op
It was originally developed just for their demo, but I guess enough people asked for it that they've turned it into a full-fledged app/utility to be released as part of R4.1. It blew me away. I've got friends who are involved in home studio recording, and I think they would be quite impressed with that piece of software. Move tracks forward and back in the mix, move them left/right in the stereo mix, apply effects - all in real-time with a mouse.
Check your dictionary. Webster's at least shows both pronunciations as acceptable.
Because /rowt/ is another accepted pronunciation of route. And, also according to Webster's, "router", meaning something that routes, can be pronounced either way.
For the most recent entries in the series, go to http://cgi.pathfinder.com/fortune/1999/03/29/mic.h tml
I didn't see if there was anything on the press conference, but there's a lot of links to previous installments. The "Witnesses in Wonderland" segment is very good reading.