Coulda bought it for $1.50.
on
Hackers
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· Score: 1
Yes, abebooks.com is a great site (based here in my hometown), but you have to consider that when you buy through them, you're buying from a bookstore which has a vested interest in maintaining collectors' prices for many books.
You could've bought it through half.com. There are paperback copies of the book available for as little as $1.50. --
I got my first personal computer (a 386sx) a little over eleven and a half years ago.
The only original equipment from that machine that I still own is the keyboard, and I still use it.
While it was originally that particular shade of beige/ecru that most PC keyboards were molded in at that time it is not a colour not found in nature, some odd combination of grey-brown-green-orange. It doesn't reflect light the same way that other materials do.
In fact, I haven't upended it to clean out the cruft in more than two years.
Strangely enough, the only fault with the keyboard is that my left shift-key contact is getting worn. Other than that, it works perfectly. I may never replace it.
A quick calculation tells me that I've likely written more than 8,000,000 words on it during its lifetime.
And since I subject it to massive damage playing MAME arcade games on it, it's all the more amazing that it's survived as long and as well as it has. --
Paypal is meant for "real" purchases. Micropayments, as far as I can tell, are considered to be payments so tiny that traditional means of payment are impossible -- like paying someone 0.1 cent for the privilege of viewing a web page or somesuch.
PayPal is still not set up to handle these kinds of micropayments. PayPayl is a *payment* system, yes, but I don't think it should be considered a micropayment system.
And as has been said, 95% of the world's population cannot get a PayPal account, so it is by no means the Final Solution. --
Jon Johansen was arrested because the authorities in Norway suspected that what he was doing was a criminal act in Norway. His appearance in the US was voluntary.
You cannot be extradited on a civil matter.
I'm a Canadian. Suppose that I slander you. You can sue me in a US court; I dont have to show up, and I never have to pay any judgment (although I'd be foolish to visit the US). You can, however, try to sue me in a Canadian court -- however, as you're not a citizen, your rights are limited.
This does not extend to copyright, as an example, because Canada is signatory to the Berne convention; if I as a Canadian infringe on the copyright of an American, they can easily sue me in Canadian court, and/or pursue criminal charges against me in Canada (similarly, you could sue me in a US court, but, again, I wouldn't have to show up and would never have to pay a judgment, and copyright violation is not an extraditable offense, so criminal charges pressed against me in the US would be irrelevant).
Again, no non-US citizen should ever worry about being sued in a US court.
--
It is trivial to add a web bug to a.pdf document, too. This security "feature" is not limited to Microsoft products.
The only solution is to accept only plaintext, and to only open plaintext documents on old computers that were headed for Asset Recovery anyway, and which are not connected to the Net.
And to never leave your home or get in the bathtub or eat anything but cabbage. --
]The district court granted a permanent
]injunction against (1) posting on any Internet
]site, or in any other way manufacturing,
]importing or offering to the public, providing,
]or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any other
]technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS,
]and (2) linking any Internet web site, either
]directly or through a series of links, to any
]other Internet web site containing DeCSS.
(Emphasis mine)
There was a study that showed that just like everyone in the world is no more than six degrees of separation away from everyone else in the world, every web page in the world is no more than nineteen links away from every web page in the world.
Hence, every webpage that has a link to any other webpage is linking to DeCSS through "a series of links", and hence, we're all criminals under Kaplan's ruling.
--
They've left out a genre: the pure puzzle game
on
Vanishing Game Genres
·
· Score: 1
The article missed an important genre, and one that was extremely popular at one time: the pure puzzle game. No twitch-puzzles like Tetris, but real puzzles.
Cliff Johnson (most recently known for "The Light and the Darkness") produced several games in this genre: The Fool's Errand, At the Carnival, 3 in Three (released only for Mac, I believe) and so forth.
This genre involved nothing more than puzzle-solving; any plot involved was mere window-dressing, and easily ignored. about the only recent example of this genre is Pandora's Box, from Microsoft (a good effort). Games Magazine has released two collections of puzzles from their magazine, and labelled thm "Games Interactive." Give me ten minutes alone in a room with the dumbass who purported to develop the software.
Dreamcatcher has also produced a few in this line, but they've been gradually moving from the pure puzzle format (Jewels of the Oracle) to a more Myst-like game with their moer recent releases.
I used to be able to buy a piece of software like this about once a month; now I'm lucky if two or three titles are released a year.
--
All you need to do is figure out a way to block URLs linked to pages that keyword spam with their META tags. Most pron sites keyword spam with just about every body part, naughty word, and purity-test buzzword in the book. Rather than blocking the word "breast", block "breast penis fsck oral facial three-way [etc.]"
How do you reconcile this with free-expression views? Simple: with a school across the street, you don't want to be liable for any damage that the business may suffer if they get shut down by the morality police. When you have to balance free expression and being on the receiving end of the legal bureaucracy's 14-inch chubby, the choice should be obvious.
There's a time and place to take a stand to make a point; IMHO, this is not even close to the best time or place to do so. --
All you need to do is figure out a way to block URLs linked to pages that keyword spam with their META tags. Most pron sites keyword spam with just about every body part, naughty word, and purity-test buzzword in the book. Rather than blocking the word "breast", block "breast penis fsck oral facial three-way [etc.]"
How do you reconcile this with free-expression views? Simple: with a school across the street, you don't want to be liable for any damage that the business may suffer if they get shut down by the morality police. When you have to balance free expression and being on the receiving end of the legal bureaucracy's 14-inch chubby, the choice should be obvious.
There's a time and place to take a stand to make a point; IMHO, this is not even close to the best time or place to do so. --
Well, you know how dumb the average person is, right? By definition, half the people out there are even dumber than that.
But seriously, one would think that after a couple of years people would understand that 98% of the 'information' you see on the Net is rumour, innuendo, falsehood, deliberately misleading or aggrandizing.
I think it behooves reporters to consider the Net to be a source for story ideas, but that nothing can beat picking up the phone, making a call, and asking for confirmation before printing a story.
Actually, it's small and silver, not big and red. But the sign is there.
It wasn't put there by the manufacturer of the copier.
And if those twenty million happen to be wearing army jackets, carrying guns and answer to Saddam over in Bagdad, it's still a law-making and unstoppable force? Or an illegal invasion?
Between you and the AC, one might think Godwin's Law should be applied. Unpopular opinion warning: it's debatable whether or not Iraq's invasion was illegal. But this is irrelevant. Rights only exist when they can be defended; there are no natural rights. Since 20 million people are a voting block large enough to create appropriate laws...
Ethics are tricky. It's not about bullshitting the people around you into doing what you want them to do--it's about setting rules we all can live by. And just because everyone on the road speeds on the highways doesn't mean that speeding isn't illegal and dangerous...
Um, why do you think they raised the highway speed limits in both the US and Canada? Because most people were speeding. If a large enough people break the law, then the law must be flawed.
I'm not advocating speeding, BTW -- I'd rather see cars taxed to death and limited to 30 km/h most places. --
So what this is really about, then, is 20 million people infringing on an entire industry by stealing that industry's copyrighted works. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter if it's an evil industry. It doesn't matter whether Courtney Love can write a moving diatribe against it. This isn't Robin Hood vs. the Sherrif of Nottingham. This is nothing more than people convienently deluding themselves into the ethics of self-interest.
No, I don't think you do get it. Yes, Napster has that proviso in their license, but they don't need that proviso to make it a legal technology.
Does your VCR have a big red sign on it that says "you may not use this device to make copies of commercial movies"? No.
Does your photocopy machine have a big red sign on it that says "you may only photocopy copyrighted works for personal research use or archival as per the fair use clause of the Copyright Act"? No.
It is entirely irrelevant if the device is used for illegal purposes (and I have to agree with Mr. Boies that the AHRA permits the trading of copyrighted works in this manner). If it can be used for wholly legal purposes (and clearly it can be and is) then it's not illegal.
One person is a criminal. Ten people are a gang. A thousand people are a movement. 20 million people are a law-making and unstoppable force. --
If the RIAA was able to legally turn Napster's headquarters into a smoldering obsidian crater, it will not stop the users of Napster. Thanks to the variety of open Nap-like servers (such as OpenNap) the quantity of music available through the Napster protocol will continue to rise, even if Napster closes down.
I was one of the millions of people who downloaded Napigator for the first time in the last week. There were NINE TIMES as many music files available through the open servers as through Napster's own server. This figure will continue to grow.
What's better is that the open servers have a better selection of indepdnent, non-RIAA-sponsored and free (speech and beer) music. I was able to find the Warlock Pincher's cover of "Back in Black" for the first time, after scouring the Net for months, and scouring local record stores for years.
What's the RIAA going to do? Sue everyone? We can say now (albeit with only one data point) that for every Napster server that the RIAA takes to court, fifty more will pop up.
In the final analysis, I think we all know that this is going to end up before the Supreme Court, and it'll be two or three years before it's resolved. Is the AHRA applicable? Is the DMCA constitutional?
Hell, this doesn't affect me anyway; I'm Canadian, and I can't photocopy my ass without the RCMP coming after me. --
Let's take a movie example: I can go down to the local cinema, where in front of the theatre will be displayed a quantity of "one-sheets", those big movie posters. Those posters are protected by copyright.
However, I can take a photograph of one, in precisely the same way that I can take a photograph of a building whose architect owns the copyright on. I can photograph the front cover of a novel. I can paint a watercolour rendition of the opening page of Neuromancer.
I can even sell any of the above; they're fair use.
The code on the t-shirt is not code. Why? Because it's not running anything. What's on the t-shirt is a graphic representation (a photograph, if you will) of a piece of code. Regardless of who owns the original code, the reproduction of that code on a t-shirt is fair use (and, no, for the hard-core out there, it's not a derivative work by the legal definition).
To claim that this t-shirt is infringing would be like Scholastic Publishing suing me for putting a photo up on my web page of me reading the new Harry Potter book -- because, after all, they own the cover and all the words inside.
Suppose, however, that the MPAA is claiming that the code is protected as a trade secret. At this point we get into the territory of hypocrisy; if they wanted to keep CSS secret, they should've used a better scheme. By the DMCA, the legal tenet of "first sale" would be null and void ("first sale" advises that the owner of a work only has control over the first sale of that work, and loses control after that). Buy a used DVD? No, sorry, since you didn't actually license it from the copyright holder, your DVD player is infringing on our rights under the DMCA.
I remember the old D&D comics. Spells cast by characters were identified with word balloons outlined in purple. Very silly, very cheesy.
And now the D&D movie. Watch the teaser and play "identify the magic item" and "identify the spell". I can't help but imagine what the dialogue will be like:
"Fool! I will smite you with my Frostbrand +3!(tm)"
"Now, you chaotic evil(tm) half-elf(tm) fighter(tm), you will feel the wrath of my Delayed Blast Fireball!(tm)"
And you'd think a movie with a title like Dungeons and Dragons would at least have prominent...um...dungeons? The fractionally visible grade-eight CGI dragon at the end of the teaser doesn't bode well, methinks(tm). --
OK, your party of six characters (the Jedi, the Wookiee, the Smuggler, the Princess, the Yappy Droid, and the Short Droid) walks into a 10" x 10" room. In the room are six Stormtroopers. Roll for initiative.
Ten minutes later...
Through clever strategy and a great deal of space-bar-pausing, you have defeated the Stormtroopers. After searching the bodies, you find a Blaster +1, a Green Key, and 87 gold pieces. Your party turns the corner and are surprised by two Wampas. Roll for initiative.
I'm looking forward to the day when new and used auto sales are taxed at 100% of retail. After all, 2500 people a year are killed in car accidents in Canada. And people use cars as getaway vehicles. The unmitigated gall!
And what about crowbars? I mean, not everyone uses crowbars to pry open their *own* doors. Since it's a tool that could be used for theft, we need to tax the sale of crowbars, so that the victims of B&Es can get compensation.
Joe Trader's sitting in his gopher hole, coding away, and gets the latest, reetest, bestest MP3 in the mail from his pal across the hall.
Joe fires up Napster, or Gnutella, or Scour, or whatever the latest, reetest, bestest flavour-of-the-month sharing package happens to be. Joe downloads a four-meg file. Hell, he's got plenty of bandwidth, so he downloads five or six of them.
Joe mails these files out. Some to his bud across the hall. Some to his bestest girl, working at the startup down the street. One goes to his mommy.
Joe has tied up company bandwidth, used e-mail for personal communications, and billed for time when he didn't actually work.
Where I come from, that's called "termination with cause." Do not pass go. Do not collect unemployment benefits.
Slashdot Mirror
You could've bought it through half.com. There are paperback copies of the book available for as little as $1.50.
--
The only original equipment from that machine that I still own is the keyboard, and I still use it.
While it was originally that particular shade of beige/ecru that most PC keyboards were molded in at that time it is not a colour not found in nature, some odd combination of grey-brown-green-orange. It doesn't reflect light the same way that other materials do.
In fact, I haven't upended it to clean out the cruft in more than two years.
Strangely enough, the only fault with the keyboard is that my left shift-key contact is getting worn. Other than that, it works perfectly. I may never replace it.
A quick calculation tells me that I've likely written more than 8,000,000 words on it during its lifetime.
And since I subject it to massive damage playing MAME arcade games on it, it's all the more amazing that it's survived as long and as well as it has.
--
The way I figger it, if you can afford $1200+ for a first-run P4 CPU + mobo, you can certainly afford $30 for a new case.
--
Before the first commercial release of Doom, they were all as rich as Croesus.
Tipping works.
--
PayPal is still not set up to handle these kinds of micropayments. PayPayl is a *payment* system, yes, but I don't think it should be considered a micropayment system.
And as has been said, 95% of the world's population cannot get a PayPal account, so it is by no means the Final Solution.
--
Jon Johansen was arrested because the authorities in Norway suspected that what he was doing was a criminal act in Norway. His appearance in the US was voluntary.
You cannot be extradited on a civil matter.
I'm a Canadian. Suppose that I slander you. You can sue me in a US court; I dont have to show up, and I never have to pay any judgment (although I'd be foolish to visit the US). You can, however, try to sue me in a Canadian court -- however, as you're not a citizen, your rights are limited.
This does not extend to copyright, as an example, because Canada is signatory to the Berne convention; if I as a Canadian infringe on the copyright of an American, they can easily sue me in Canadian court, and/or pursue criminal charges against me in Canada (similarly, you could sue me in a US court, but, again, I wouldn't have to show up and would never have to pay a judgment, and copyright violation is not an extraditable offense, so criminal charges pressed against me in the US would be irrelevant).
Again, no non-US citizen should ever worry about being sued in a US court.
--
Regardless of how nasty the US legal system is, it has absolutely no power over foreign nationals when it comes to civil cases.
--
The only solution is to accept only plaintext, and to only open plaintext documents on old computers that were headed for Asset Recovery anyway, and which are not connected to the Net.
And to never leave your home or get in the bathtub or eat anything but cabbage.
--
]The district court granted a permanent
]injunction against (1) posting on any Internet
]site, or in any other way manufacturing,
]importing or offering to the public, providing,
]or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or any other
]technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS,
]and (2) linking any Internet web site, either
]directly or through a series of links, to any
]other Internet web site containing DeCSS.
(Emphasis mine)
There was a study that showed that just like everyone in the world is no more than six degrees of separation away from everyone else in the world, every web page in the world is no more than nineteen links away from every web page in the world.
Hence, every webpage that has a link to any other webpage is linking to DeCSS through "a series of links", and hence, we're all criminals under Kaplan's ruling.
--
Cliff Johnson (most recently known for "The Light and the Darkness") produced several games in this genre: The Fool's Errand, At the Carnival, 3 in Three (released only for Mac, I believe) and so forth.
This genre involved nothing more than puzzle-solving; any plot involved was mere window-dressing, and easily ignored. about the only recent example of this genre is Pandora's Box, from Microsoft (a good effort). Games Magazine has released two collections of puzzles from their magazine, and labelled thm "Games Interactive." Give me ten minutes alone in a room with the dumbass who purported to develop the software.
Dreamcatcher has also produced a few in this line, but they've been gradually moving from the pure puzzle format (Jewels of the Oracle) to a more Myst-like game with their moer recent releases.
I used to be able to buy a piece of software like this about once a month; now I'm lucky if two or three titles are released a year.
--
How do you reconcile this with free-expression views? Simple: with a school across the street, you don't want to be liable for any damage that the business may suffer if they get shut down by the morality police. When you have to balance free expression and being on the receiving end of the legal bureaucracy's 14-inch chubby, the choice should be obvious.
There's a time and place to take a stand to make a point; IMHO, this is not even close to the best time or place to do so.
--
How do you reconcile this with free-expression views? Simple: with a school across the street, you don't want to be liable for any damage that the business may suffer if they get shut down by the morality police. When you have to balance free expression and being on the receiving end of the legal bureaucracy's 14-inch chubby, the choice should be obvious.
There's a time and place to take a stand to make a point; IMHO, this is not even close to the best time or place to do so.
--
Hunh. Independent creation. Who'da thunk it.
--
I think that says it all, dunnit?
--
I know the difference. "You know how dumb the median person is, right?" doesn't scan as well as what I wrote.
--
But seriously, one would think that after a couple of years people would understand that 98% of the 'information' you see on the Net is rumour, innuendo, falsehood, deliberately misleading or aggrandizing.
I think it behooves reporters to consider the Net to be a source for story ideas, but that nothing can beat picking up the phone, making a call, and asking for confirmation before printing a story.
--
It wasn't put there by the manufacturer of the copier.
And if those twenty million happen to be wearing army jackets, carrying guns and answer to Saddam over in Bagdad, it's still a law-making and unstoppable force? Or an illegal invasion?
Between you and the AC, one might think Godwin's Law should be applied. Unpopular opinion warning: it's debatable whether or not Iraq's invasion was illegal. But this is irrelevant. Rights only exist when they can be defended; there are no natural rights. Since 20 million people are a voting block large enough to create appropriate laws...
Ethics are tricky. It's not about bullshitting the people around you into doing what you want them to do--it's about setting rules we all can live by. And just because everyone on the road speeds on the highways doesn't mean that speeding isn't illegal and dangerous...
Um, why do you think they raised the highway speed limits in both the US and Canada? Because most people were speeding. If a large enough people break the law, then the law must be flawed.
I'm not advocating speeding, BTW -- I'd rather see cars taxed to death and limited to 30 km/h most places.
--
No, I don't think you do get it. Yes, Napster has that proviso in their license, but they don't need that proviso to make it a legal technology.
Does your VCR have a big red sign on it that says "you may not use this device to make copies of commercial movies"? No.
Does your photocopy machine have a big red sign on it that says "you may only photocopy copyrighted works for personal research use or archival as per the fair use clause of the Copyright Act"? No.
It is entirely irrelevant if the device is used for illegal purposes (and I have to agree with Mr. Boies that the AHRA permits the trading of copyrighted works in this manner). If it can be used for wholly legal purposes (and clearly it can be and is) then it's not illegal.
One person is a criminal. Ten people are a gang. A thousand people are a movement. 20 million people are a law-making and unstoppable force.
--
If the RIAA was able to legally turn Napster's headquarters into a smoldering obsidian crater, it will not stop the users of Napster. Thanks to the variety of open Nap-like servers (such as OpenNap) the quantity of music available through the Napster protocol will continue to rise, even if Napster closes down.
I was one of the millions of people who downloaded Napigator for the first time in the last week. There were NINE TIMES as many music files available through the open servers as through Napster's own server. This figure will continue to grow.
What's better is that the open servers have a better selection of indepdnent, non-RIAA-sponsored and free (speech and beer) music. I was able to find the Warlock Pincher's cover of "Back in Black" for the first time, after scouring the Net for months, and scouring local record stores for years.
What's the RIAA going to do? Sue everyone? We can say now (albeit with only one data point) that for every Napster server that the RIAA takes to court, fifty more will pop up.
In the final analysis, I think we all know that this is going to end up before the Supreme Court, and it'll be two or three years before it's resolved. Is the AHRA applicable? Is the DMCA constitutional?
Hell, this doesn't affect me anyway; I'm Canadian, and I can't photocopy my ass without the RCMP coming after me.
--
Let's take a movie example: I can go down to the local cinema, where in front of the theatre will be displayed a quantity of "one-sheets", those big movie posters. Those posters are protected by copyright.
However, I can take a photograph of one, in precisely the same way that I can take a photograph of a building whose architect owns the copyright on. I can photograph the front cover of a novel. I can paint a watercolour rendition of the opening page of Neuromancer.
I can even sell any of the above; they're fair use.
The code on the t-shirt is not code. Why? Because it's not running anything. What's on the t-shirt is a graphic representation (a photograph, if you will) of a piece of code. Regardless of who owns the original code, the reproduction of that code on a t-shirt is fair use (and, no, for the hard-core out there, it's not a derivative work by the legal definition).
To claim that this t-shirt is infringing would be like Scholastic Publishing suing me for putting a photo up on my web page of me reading the new Harry Potter book -- because, after all, they own the cover and all the words inside.
Suppose, however, that the MPAA is claiming that the code is protected as a trade secret. At this point we get into the territory of hypocrisy; if they wanted to keep CSS secret, they should've used a better scheme. By the DMCA, the legal tenet of "first sale" would be null and void ("first sale" advises that the owner of a work only has control over the first sale of that work, and loses control after that). Buy a used DVD? No, sorry, since you didn't actually license it from the copyright holder, your DVD player is infringing on our rights under the DMCA.
For chrissakes.
--
Reuters
CBC
Wired News
MSNBC
CNN
--
And now the D&D movie. Watch the teaser and play "identify the magic item" and "identify the spell". I can't help but imagine what the dialogue will be like:
"Fool! I will smite you with my Frostbrand +3!(tm)"
"Now, you chaotic evil(tm) half-elf(tm) fighter(tm), you will feel the wrath of my Delayed Blast Fireball!(tm)"
And you'd think a movie with a title like Dungeons and Dragons would at least have prominent...um...dungeons? The fractionally visible grade-eight CGI dragon at the end of the teaser doesn't bode well, methinks(tm).
--
OK, your party of six characters (the Jedi, the Wookiee, the Smuggler, the Princess, the Yappy Droid, and the Short Droid) walks into a 10" x 10" room. In the room are six Stormtroopers. Roll for initiative.
Ten minutes later...
Through clever strategy and a great deal of space-bar-pausing, you have defeated the Stormtroopers. After searching the bodies, you find a Blaster +1, a Green Key, and 87 gold pieces. Your party turns the corner and are surprised by two Wampas. Roll for initiative.
--
And what about crowbars? I mean, not everyone uses crowbars to pry open their *own* doors. Since it's a tool that could be used for theft, we need to tax the sale of crowbars, so that the victims of B&Es can get compensation.
--
Joe Trader's sitting in his gopher hole, coding away, and gets the latest, reetest, bestest MP3 in the mail from his pal across the hall.
Joe fires up Napster, or Gnutella, or Scour, or whatever the latest, reetest, bestest flavour-of-the-month sharing package happens to be. Joe downloads a four-meg file. Hell, he's got plenty of bandwidth, so he downloads five or six of them.
Joe mails these files out. Some to his bud across the hall. Some to his bestest girl, working at the startup down the street. One goes to his mommy.
Joe has tied up company bandwidth, used e-mail for personal communications, and billed for time when he didn't actually work.
Where I come from, that's called "termination with cause." Do not pass go. Do not collect unemployment benefits.
Of course, I'm posting this from work...
--