Here's my angle. Yes, I have perfect pitch most of the time, both singing and hearing. In church, they'll call for a song I haven't heard in years, and I'll hum the first few bars in the right key before the first note is played or sung.
Even I can see the benefits of pitch correction when used in moderation. It means that instead of spending those extra hours re-recording spots and trying to match the exact tone of the voice where you slipped in pitch just a hair in the wee hours of the morning after a long session, you can instead spend that time creating more music.
As for the live concert thing, it's hard to do a concert lasting more than an hour and not get tired. When your voice gets tired, it gets harder and harder to maintain exacting pitch all the time, and you just plain slip every so often. Sure, most people won't notice this, but the ones who do will leave disappointed that your CD was much better than your live show, not because you used pitch correction on the CD, but because you weren't utterly exhausted when you recorded that track on the CD.
Now when such technology is used to make someone with no sense of pitch sound like they can hold a tune, that's horrible (and beyond the abilities of these devices anyway, in most cases). Such use is an abomination, and usually sounds bad even if it is on pitch.
And before you ask, no, I don't use one, thanks. However, I don't feel any less respect for those who do. Music, and particularly singing, can be grueling, even for the most talented of performers. So before you judge them, let's see you go up there on stage and try it. We'll see what you say when you listen to the tapes.
Some people would also say cotton growers. Hemp makes a strong rope, among other things, and is far easier to process than cotton because the entire plant can be used rather than just part of the contents of the seed pods. Ditto for paper made out of hemp.
Many conspiratorial (and/or possibly pot-smoking---it's kind of hard to tell which) people I've talked to have suggested that this was the actual reason marijuana (the term used for pharmocological uses of the cannabis plant) was made illegal.
It is rather interesting that the same Republican party that wants reductions in environmental laws to protect logging for paper production is also against legalization of marijuana, though in my opinion it could just as easily be attributed to moralizing rather than some vast right-wing conspiracy. The latter is much more fun to think about, though.:-)
If that includes blocking access to the startup configuration, then it does increase data security. as any computer security person will tell you. It means you can't boot from a CD or an external drive and gain root access trivially. If the method of locking the console also locks the case closed, it also makes it much harder to rip the machine open and steal the drives.
Rule #1 of computer security:
If you don't have physical security, you don't have security.
Programming wouldn't be technician work, though. Programming is design work. There's the mechanical design (building the machine/car), but then there's the non-mechanical design (writing the software, programming the computer that controls fuel injection). That's not the kind of thing a technician would do. It's a totally different level of work.
At best, a technician would say "oh, the computer isn't opening the air intake soon enough, and the intake itself is working fine. Replace the computer." Similarly, a computer technician would say, "oh, the software crashes. Reinstall windows." It's roughly the same level of skill---that which can usually be determined by following a list of testing steps in order and taking the action prescribed upon failure.
In other words, it's reasonable to call you a tech if you can replace parts of a computer. Calling you an engineer would be a stretch.:-)
I thought you were wrong, so I looked it up. You were wrong, in several areas.
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
However, what really throws things in the computer user's favor is Chapter 10, subchapter D, section 1008.
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?
It seems to me that this whole thing is a sham. The RIAA and others got laws passed that cost us money to protect their copyrights. Then when people actually start taking advantage of the intended purpose of those laws, they come back and whine that "oh, those laws don't apply here."
That having been said, the application could be shown to meet the requirements of fair use, and its users would thus also meet said requirements. The RIAA would then have a much, much steeper hill to climb in prosecuting. They would have to prove that not only did you get/put files, but you also put them repeatedly without getting them back, which means much more intrusive monitoring, many fewer suits, and hopefully most people would use it the "right way" and wouldn't be at risk of suit at all.
The word you're looking for is "digital library". It has been proposed before, and no doubt will be again.:-)
True. You might get held for some civil liability, though, if the injured party can prove that you were negligent in not securing your system, even if it wasn't willful. Much as ignorance is no defense, incompetence isn't either---unless a judge declares you incompetent, of course, but that's a bit different....:-p
was Matt Oppenheim's comment, "Their arguments have already been addressed by federal court and been rejected."
This strikes me as a statement made by someone who knows he is going to lose. What he failed to mention was that it was upheld by the DC Circuit Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
Now if you've ever studied the law, you probably know that the circuit court decisions are only considered binding in the circuit in which they were filed. When a Massachusetts court ruled that the subpoenas were invalid in their court system, that means that the RIAA in those cases is now bound by the decisions of the 1st circuit courts, which may not match those of the DC circuit (and probably won't, given that the DC courts are one of the more conservative circuits, and thus more likely to be friendly to the RIAA than the 1st circuit would be....
Now enter Jane doe in Sacramento, CA. California is part of the 9th circuit. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is well-known to be one of the most liberal circuits in the country. It also issues the most zany rulings of any circuit, probably largely to force touchy issues to the Supreme Court. (It is the circuit with the most overturned rulings as well, though, so don't assume that a favorable ruling there will necessarily stand.)
The point is that this won't end until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue, and to my knowledge, they have not. This injunction filing in a California court is a very good and potentially effective step towards kicking the abusive parts of the RIAA squarely in the nuts.
Not all of the RIAA is technologically inept, though. I've dealt with parts of the RIAA recently, and they were very professional and courteous. It's too bad their upper management has taken that organization, which performs a lot of very useful services, and corrupted it, co-opting it to make abusive attacks on the public. I daresay that they do not speak for all of the RIAA, much less for all of its members. Here's hoping they get put in their place.
Except that this was settled in the early 90s in a lawsuit between the USL (the then-owners of the now-largely-worthless code that SCO currently owns) and BSDi.
If SCO would like to take back that settlement, I'm sure the good folks at Wind River (who owns BSDi) would have a thing or two to say---especially since they published a white paper (yesterday, according to Google) whose cover page implies that they're considering doing something with Linux....
Well, they're clearly lying. I just found a copy of that code under a BSD license, and it was written by the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. From MkLinux's Mach Kernel, we see:
/* * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986 Regents of the University of California. * All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement * specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution. * * @(#)subr_rmap.c 7.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/86 */
(more code snipped)
/* * Allocate 'size' units from the given * map. Return the base of the allocated space. * In a map, the addresses are increasing and the * list is terminated by a 0 size. * * Algorithm is first-fit. */ long rmalloc(mp, size) register struct map *mp; long size; { register struct mapent *ep = (struct mapent *)(mp+1); register int addr; register struct mapent *bp;
The function also encapsulates the other code sample as well, and dates back a decade before the USL/BSD suit. In other words, the IP holder from whom SCO purchased the UNIX rights, in fact, clearly and without question, stole this code from the open source community, not the other way around.
Please write to whoever owns BSDI now and encourage them to sue SCO for violation of licensing terms. This code was stolen long before the advertising clause was removed, and it seems likely that this violates the terms of the USL/BSDI settlement....
Ah, but you have it all wrong. The trailer people are the good guys, giving you the high points of the movie to make you want to go watch it. It's the writers who could only think of eight funny lines in the entire "comedy" screenplay who you should be blaming....:-)
And before you ask, yes, I have written screenplays, and the day the industry gets too bad for me to bear, I'll make another one of them. We have a long way left to go.
Why do you think they still produce 3.5" 5400 RPM drives? Quieter, uses less power
Cooler. Ever try to stick eleven large 10,000 RPM drives in a tower?:-)
(And in other news, a blackout has swept the northeast. Investigators have traced the cause back to the sudden drain when a slashdot reader turned on his computer. More details as they become available....)
The problem is that it's hard to be unbiased when the natural order of things in the industry is to be biased towards what already exists. There are, as far as I am aware, exactly zero applications fully optimized for the G5 currently. To get a fair application benchmark, you would have to have that number be nonzero.
Frankly, benchmarks are only modestly interesting at this point. The Apple benchmarks, which tried to minimize compiler differences and application optimizations, gave some indication of the chip's potential---which is truly incredible, IMHO---but the real-world benchmarks won't be useful or interesting until the chip is more mainstream and in the hands of a lot more developers.:-)
Come back in a year and ask for a speed vs. price breakdown. At that point, someone might be able to compare the state of the platform wars in a reasonably fair and unbiased way. Until then, you can take your pick between processor benchmarks that tell only part of the story (G5 really fast) or app benchmarks that tell only another part (P4 really fast), with the truth lying somewhere in-between....
Well, you wouldn't get much more work done on a 386 if it were up for a week than you would in a millisecond.... Sounds like a couple of AA batteries just might fill the bill. Use them to charge a large capacitor, then crank that sucker up.... (Warning: kids, don't try this at home.)
I guarantee I can make any RedHat application run unmodifed in any other Linux distro with a handful of caveats:
1. Both the host distro and the binary must be of the same architecture and must both be of the same binary format (e.g. two ELF-x86 distributions).
2. The binary may not use any system calls outside those required for the single UNIX spec. (This rules out things like ipchains/ipfilter/ipfw/ipfoo and various other kernel-version-dependent tools). This rule could probably be relaxed a lot before anything would break, but YMMV.
3. The kernel must be patched to fix any known bugs in SUS-compliant syscalls.
With the note that there may be other important directories needed in step 4, the basic procedure should go something like this:
Step 1: Install the distro.
Step 2: Install RedHat onto another machine and configure ssh and networking between the two machines.
Step 3: On the non-RedHat machine: mkdir/rhbox ; cd/rhbox
Step 4: ssh username@redhathostname.domain.top "tar -czf -/usr/lib/bin/sbin/etc/var" | tar -xzf -
Step 5: alias appname chroot/rhbox appname
I tend to ignore the request to reboot and simply force-quit the installer, then continue working until it is convenient to reboot (which may or may not be that day). The only exception is when I'm installing a new device driver. To make the device driver usable, I do a "sudo kill -HUP xxx" where xxx is the PID of kextd.
In the case of a security update that changes libraries, though, it's prudent to reboot, or at least shut down any daemon processes and restart them.... Anything newly launched will be bound to the new library, but anything already running will continue using the old one, hence any program that uses the buggy function needs to be restarted. A reboot is certainly the easiest way.:-)
Actually, I don't believe that is correct. IIRC, common law permits an end user to make a single backup copy. That's based on the courts' interpretation of fair use, and is not explicitly stated in the written body of law, to the best of my knowledge. Other fair use rights are explicit, but not that one.
Here's why the SCO attack on the GPL will fail:
USC TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1, SECTION 106A
e. 1. Transfer and Waiver.
The rights conferred by subsection (a) may not be transferred, but those rights may be waived if the author expressly agrees to such waiver in a written instrument signed by the author. Such instrument shall specifically identify the work, and uses of that work, to which the waiver applies, and the waiver shall apply only to the work and uses so identified. In the case of a joint work prepared by two or more authors, a waiver of rights under this paragraph made by one such author waives such rights for all such authors.
I assume you meant to say "not all G3s will run OS X". My iBook (900 MHz G3) runs OS X just fine, thanks. And actually, with XPostFacto, you should be able to run it on even unsupported G3 machines, AFAIK.
I think it depends on which model of optical drive you're using. I hear wildly varying stories about 5" Optical Audio copy protection (it is NOT a CD) and their effects on Macs, so that's the only conclusion I can come to.
Any chance any of those CDs are available in the U.S.? Could you reply with a list of a handful of popular CDs that exhibit this? I'd like to see what's going on just out of curiosity.
I suspect the former MS sinner recently saved from eternal darnation in heck... err...^U
I suspect the former MS engineer meant that they ran application tests that intentionally leaked like a sieve to test the VM subsystem, not that the OS itself leaked so much memory that it became unusable after a few days. Of course, the latter could be a much more effective solution to stability problems. I mean, if it gets so slow that you have to reboot it every couple of days, nobody will notice the crashes.:-p
Just the very thought of MS still allowing kernel-mode printer drivers makes me very scared. Printer drivers belong in user space and nowhere else. Period.
Chalk another one up to Microsoft in their infinite mediocrity.... *shivers*
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Even I can see the benefits of pitch correction when used in moderation. It means that instead of spending those extra hours re-recording spots and trying to match the exact tone of the voice where you slipped in pitch just a hair in the wee hours of the morning after a long session, you can instead spend that time creating more music.
As for the live concert thing, it's hard to do a concert lasting more than an hour and not get tired. When your voice gets tired, it gets harder and harder to maintain exacting pitch all the time, and you just plain slip every so often. Sure, most people won't notice this, but the ones who do will leave disappointed that your CD was much better than your live show, not because you used pitch correction on the CD, but because you weren't utterly exhausted when you recorded that track on the CD.
Now when such technology is used to make someone with no sense of pitch sound like they can hold a tune, that's horrible (and beyond the abilities of these devices anyway, in most cases). Such use is an abomination, and usually sounds bad even if it is on pitch.
And before you ask, no, I don't use one, thanks. However, I don't feel any less respect for those who do. Music, and particularly singing, can be grueling, even for the most talented of performers. So before you judge them, let's see you go up there on stage and try it. We'll see what you say when you listen to the tapes.
Many conspiratorial (and/or possibly pot-smoking---it's kind of hard to tell which) people I've talked to have suggested that this was the actual reason marijuana (the term used for pharmocological uses of the cannabis plant) was made illegal.
It is rather interesting that the same Republican party that wants reductions in environmental laws to protect logging for paper production is also against legalization of marijuana, though in my opinion it could just as easily be attributed to moralizing rather than some vast right-wing conspiracy. The latter is much more fun to think about, though. :-)
At best, a technician would say "oh, the computer isn't opening the air intake soon enough, and the intake itself is working fine. Replace the computer." Similarly, a computer technician would say, "oh, the software crashes. Reinstall windows." It's roughly the same level of skill---that which can usually be determined by following a list of testing steps in order and taking the action prescribed upon failure.
In other words, it's reasonable to call you a tech if you can replace parts of a computer. Calling you an engineer would be a stretch. :-)
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
However, what really throws things in the computer user's favor is Chapter 10, subchapter D, section 1008.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?It seems to me that this whole thing is a sham. The RIAA and others got laws passed that cost us money to protect their copyrights. Then when people actually start taking advantage of the intended purpose of those laws, they come back and whine that "oh, those laws don't apply here."
I call bullshit.
The word you're looking for is "digital library". It has been proposed before, and no doubt will be again. :-)
This strikes me as a statement made by someone who knows he is going to lose. What he failed to mention was that it was upheld by the DC Circuit Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
Now if you've ever studied the law, you probably know that the circuit court decisions are only considered binding in the circuit in which they were filed. When a Massachusetts court ruled that the subpoenas were invalid in their court system, that means that the RIAA in those cases is now bound by the decisions of the 1st circuit courts, which may not match those of the DC circuit (and probably won't, given that the DC courts are one of the more conservative circuits, and thus more likely to be friendly to the RIAA than the 1st circuit would be....
Now enter Jane doe in Sacramento, CA. California is part of the 9th circuit. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is well-known to be one of the most liberal circuits in the country. It also issues the most zany rulings of any circuit, probably largely to force touchy issues to the Supreme Court. (It is the circuit with the most overturned rulings as well, though, so don't assume that a favorable ruling there will necessarily stand.)
The point is that this won't end until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue, and to my knowledge, they have not. This injunction filing in a California court is a very good and potentially effective step towards kicking the abusive parts of the RIAA squarely in the nuts.
Not all of the RIAA is technologically inept, though. I've dealt with parts of the RIAA recently, and they were very professional and courteous. It's too bad their upper management has taken that organization, which performs a lot of very useful services, and corrupted it, co-opting it to make abusive attacks on the public. I daresay that they do not speak for all of the RIAA, much less for all of its members. Here's hoping they get put in their place.
If SCO would like to take back that settlement, I'm sure the good folks at Wind River (who owns BSDi) would have a thing or two to say---especially since they published a white paper (yesterday, according to Google) whose cover page implies that they're considering doing something with Linux....
Please write to whoever owns BSDI now and encourage them to sue SCO for violation of licensing terms. This code was stolen long before the advertising clause was removed, and it seems likely that this violates the terms of the USL/BSDI settlement....
And before you ask, yes, I have written screenplays, and the day the industry gets too bad for me to bear, I'll make another one of them. We have a long way left to go.
Quieter, uses less power
Cooler. Ever try to stick eleven large 10,000 RPM drives in a tower? :-)
(And in other news, a blackout has swept the northeast. Investigators have traced the cause back to the sudden drain when a slashdot reader turned on his computer. More details as they become available....)
Frankly, benchmarks are only modestly interesting at this point. The Apple benchmarks, which tried to minimize compiler differences and application optimizations, gave some indication of the chip's potential---which is truly incredible, IMHO---but the real-world benchmarks won't be useful or interesting until the chip is more mainstream and in the hands of a lot more developers. :-)
Come back in a year and ask for a speed vs. price breakdown. At that point, someone might be able to compare the state of the platform wars in a reasonably fair and unbiased way. Until then, you can take your pick between processor benchmarks that tell only part of the story (G5 really fast) or app benchmarks that tell only another part (P4 really fast), with the truth lying somewhere in-between....
1. Both the host distro and the binary must be of the same architecture and must both be of the same binary format (e.g. two ELF-x86 distributions).
2. The binary may not use any system calls outside those required for the single UNIX spec. (This rules out things like ipchains/ipfilter/ipfw/ipfoo and various other kernel-version-dependent tools). This rule could probably be relaxed a lot before anything would break, but YMMV.
3. The kernel must be patched to fix any known bugs in SUS-compliant syscalls.
With the note that there may be other important directories needed in step 4, the basic procedure should go something like this:
Step 1: Install the distro. /rhbox ; cd /rhbox /usr /lib /bin /sbin /etc /var" | tar -xzf - /rhbox appname
Step 2: Install RedHat onto another machine and configure ssh and networking between the two machines.
Step 3: On the non-RedHat machine: mkdir
Step 4: ssh username@redhathostname.domain.top "tar -czf -
Step 5: alias appname chroot
Different operating system, my ass.
In the case of a security update that changes libraries, though, it's prudent to reboot, or at least shut down any daemon processes and restart them.... Anything newly launched will be bound to the new library, but anything already running will continue using the old one, hence any program that uses the buggy function needs to be restarted. A reboot is certainly the easiest way. :-)
Here's why the SCO attack on the GPL will fail:
Any chance any of those CDs are available in the U.S.? Could you reply with a list of a handful of popular CDs that exhibit this? I'd like to see what's going on just out of curiosity.
"Their guns are designed to sense the heat from your body and refuse to fire. That way, they'll never accidentally kill a tourist."
"Nothing can possibly go wrong. Nothing can possibly go wrong... go wrong... go wrong.... go wro... go... go... go... go wrong...."
I suspect the former MS engineer meant that they ran application tests that intentionally leaked like a sieve to test the VM subsystem, not that the OS itself leaked so much memory that it became unusable after a few days. Of course, the latter could be a much more effective solution to stability problems. I mean, if it gets so slow that you have to reboot it every couple of days, nobody will notice the crashes.
Chalk another one up to Microsoft in their infinite mediocrity.... *shivers*