so do you sit on a chair when:
you're reading ?
you're eating ? - I can just picture you going to some reaturant and insisting to sit on the floor
you're writing ?
you're doing your administration ?
you're receiving your clients ?
your logic seems to be: find the most uncomfortable position you can work in so that it causes the desire not to stay in that position long. I think I should start coding in an electric chair with sublethal current running through it ?
I don't think you get it; when I watch my kid brother sitting on the floor playing nintendo for basically the whole saturday he doesn't look very comfortable but he stays there because he wants to finish the nth level and beat the end monster. I think the same sort of stuff goes for a lot of programmers; they want to program so they will stay in uncomfortable positions if they have to. It's a matter of focus, you get so focused on the game/program that you tend to forget any discomfort.
(higher quality is recognizable by the fact that it immediately feels better when you first change to it, and it feels worse when, after using for several hours, you switch back to a lower-quality piece)
isn't ergonomics just the science of designing chairs that 'immediately feel better' ? I have had rsi and I can tell you that a lot of ergonomics stuff does help, ok I agree there is a lot of stuff that claims to be 'ergonomic' just because it has some weird shape. Excersize definitely helps, but a good working position (ergonomically correct) makes a huge difference.
well it's different; when you're sleeping your muscles are supposed to be relaxed. A lot of people that suffer from rsi (i had it) don't relax during their sleep which aggrevates/causes the condition.
calculated pi to the quadrillionth-1 decimal ? And could he say quadrillion-1 without saying "quadrillion-1" ? It would seem a mouthfull, "I calculated pi to the 9 (tridrillion ?)... 999 decimal today "
yeah, I entirely agree, if I were an engineer switching between 2 car manufacturers I would take certain knowledge that I'd learnt at the first company to the second... This happens everyday and nobody cares. All of a sudden it's different when it's M$ ? I don't understand why, why does having seen M$ code make all code written after that by a person theft by default ? Why ? I'm serious, it seems as if the burden of proving the person is not a thief falls on that person himself, why should it not fall on M$ to prove he is (and having seen the code is not enough IMO, let them prove he used it...)? It's a total opposite to the engineer switching jobs, there the burden of proof falls on the accusing company and the engineer is innocent 'till proven guilty.
Since when does seeing a car's blueprint make a person a thief automatically ? Since when is it illegal to look at a blueprint even if it's not yours ? Since when will the engineer not be able to work for any other car maufacturers if he's seen some blueprint ?Man, the digital age seems to give all kinds of evil companies a carte blanche to interpret the law exactly how they want to. The governments seem too clueless to realize what's going on.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid here but it seems as if a lot of things are moving in a totally wrong direction.
mp3 is not popular because it saves hard drive space, it is popular because it saves internet bandwidth... (all those people using napster thru a modem)
Marijuana is illegal, but how often (if *ever*) do we hear of anybody getting killed by it?
It is a not so well known 'fact' that smoking marihuana can greatly risk the chances of psychosis. Personally I know 2 people (I've heard of more) that had to be institutionalized and are currently on heavy medication after an extended period of smoking dope. It's hard to prove that the psychosis is caused by marihuana since psychosis is a pretty vague condition. I know that the doctors of the guys I know strongly reccomended stopping to smoke pot. The problem with pot is that although physically it doesn't mess a person up like alcohol does, psychologically it *does* have an effect. I live in Holland and a lot of people that smoke dope a lot seem to be 'different' - not as quick to comprehend and seemingly not really in reality. I don't know if there are any statistics for that
It's ironic, in Holland the government just passed a law that makes it illegal for a person to read e-mail not sent to that particular person. It falls under the same law as written letters (the constitution is going to be changed to cover electronic commucication). If they read your mail, you can sue them... (of course you'd have a hard time proving it.) I think it's a great law and it shows that 'our' government has at least some sense when it comes to new communication technology.
They own the building that you're using to eat the sandwiches your wife made for you too... Does that give them the right to read a letter you wrote during lunchbreak with your own pen and paper ?
Of course they can monitor the usage of *their* equipment but that's totally different from reading someone's e-mail. the equipment is *theirs*, the content of your e-mail is *yours*. Let them install a cpu usage log if they are so concerned with the use of their equipment. if an employee has too much use, tell him to lower his private usage, there's absolutely *no* reason to read his/her mail.
i don't understand why companies are so paranoid over their employees using the internet too much, if a person doesn't do his job, fire him, if he does do his job then why worry about how many e-mails he sends ? Even in the old days there were a lot of ways to do non work-related stuff at the office, drink coffee every 5 minutes, read newspaper and magazines, write your personal letters and the list goes on... suddenly internet comes along and then companies start worrying about how much their employees use it instead over if they do their job or not, that's stupid.
my theory is that a lot of managers spend too much time on the web and because of that think that all the others must be doing it too...
I know this guy that did a mcse course, at the end they gave him an envelope with his diploma, the envelope was sealed. There was an accompanying letter that said "by breaking the seal you agree to..." and then a whole bunch of things including something like: "not critize microsoft or it's products". the guy didn't feel comfortable about agreeing to that and breaking the seal so he cut open the bottom end of the envelope and took out his diploma ! never broke the seal, never agreed to any of their garbage and got his diploma anyway. i thought that was a pretty practical solution.
Remember, when Microsoft got started in the 70's, people actually owned the software they bought... Microsoft helped 'pioneer' the idea that its use is merely licensed through obfuscated conditions of agreement.
I can't believe that there are no laws against that, governments are so slow to realize the implications of seemingly benign developments in the technology world.
Microsoft just 'innovates' new ways of use of their software and try to forbid them or 'tax' them.
It's so stupid, I mean if I buy a Ferrari (or a Lada in Microsoft's case) I can do with it what I like, I can take it apart, paint it purple, kick a dent in the door, use it to tow a trailer and many other things that it's makers probably didn't have in mind. No-one thinks anything about it because after all it would be *my* car right ?
If Microsoft were to make cars, people would (because of the eula):
1. not be allowed to take them apart
2. not be allowed to upgrade them in ways other than microsoft allowed
3. not be allowed to fix them
4. not be allowed to buy them second-hand
5. not be allowed to drive them outside the city it was bought in
nobody would accept this, the government would make laws against it and there would be no problems after that, why doesn't the government realize what the software industry is doing ?
just think about how many legal problems jimi hendrix would have had if fender stratocasters would have come with eula's: "sorry sir, setting fire to your guitar is not permitted by the eula to which you agreed by plugging in your guitar" "I also see that you are playing a right handed stratocaster left handed, this constitutes another violation of the eula"
yeah, i had thought of it after i had posted. you are correct, i spoke too fast, i'm sorry.
this still seems a contradiction or a clumsy statement at least:
In fact, every true male ant has wings, as well as the queen. This occurs when the ant colony has grown large enough to migrate.
what do you mean by this occurs ? it would be logical if you would refer to every male ant has wings by this. by saying occurs after that you seem to imply that male ants would only have wings if their colony becomes large enough (to migrate), which is not true and seems to contradict what you said in the preceding sentence. but what you are probably refering to with this is the case in which a colony becomes large enough to produce male ants.
btw. afaik being able to migrate is not a condition which needs to be met for male ants to be produced, the colony simply needs to be large enough. also not all male ants have wings check this page if you like.
let's leave it here ok ? i made some mistakes in the discussion but i thought you presented some of the things you said in a confusing manner and besides, the discussion has gone completely ot.
Good morning, Senator Hatch. Thank you for inviting me for my first visit to Utah and my first appearance before a Congressional committee. Napster has broadened my own horizons in many ways that I never expected, and these are two examples. I also want to introduce Hank Barry, Napster's CEO, who is here with me today.
I am very happy to have this opportunity to tell you about Napster's origins, describe how the technology works and discuss the future potential of peer-to-peer file sharing and distributed computing.
Napster's Beginnings in a Northeastern Dorm Room
You may have heard or read that I started working on Napster in my dorm room at Northeastern University; while that's true, the story is a little more complicated than that.
I grew up in Massachusetts and during my high school years lived in Harwich. In 1996, between my sophomore and junior years in high school, my uncle, John Fanning, gave me a computer and access to the Internet. That was my first real experience with computers. I was a good student and focused a lot of attention on school, but my real love at that time was sports: I played baseball, basketball and tennis. The computer and the Internet fascinated me totally, and before long I gave up sports so I could spend more of my spare time at the computer learning about programming.
I started my freshman year at Northeastern University in the fall of 1998 intending to major in computer science. Looking for a challenge beyond the entry-level courses, I decided to start writing a Windows-based program on my own. I spent a lot of time in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms getting advice and information from the experienced developers and programmers who hang out there. IRC is a network of people organized into communities, through real time channels, on various topics including programming and Internet security. "Napster" was my nickname, and I used it for my e-mail address and as my user name in IRC rooms.
One of my college roommates loved listening to MP3s and used Internet sites such as MP3.lycos.com to find them. He often complained about the unreliability of those sites, finding links to sites that were often dead ends, and indexes that were out of date because they were updated infrequently. I started thinking about ways to solve the reliability problems my roommate was experiencing.
I began designing and programming a real-time system for locating MP3 files of other users on the Internet. I designed the Napster software to find MP3s because they are the most compressed format (in consideration of bandwidth) and they were very popular at the time. The system I had in mind was unlike traditional search engines at that time.
A traditional search engine sends out "robots" to roam the Internet periodically, updating itself every hour or more to remove sites that are down or unavailable. The database created is entirely driven by what the central computer finds by "crawling" the Internet. The indexes become outdated as sites go up or down, a significant problem when looking for MP3s because most of the files were housed on people's home computers.
My idea was to have users list the files they were willing to share on a computer that they all could access. That list would then be updated each time a person logged on to and off of that computer. The index computer would at all times have an up-to-date list of the files people were willing to share, and the list would be voluntarily made by the users as they logged on and off the system. A user searching the index would see all the files shared by users on the network and available to others on the network at that moment.
In contrast to traditional search engines, the system I envisioned would be affirmatively powered by the users, who would select what information they wanted to list on the index. Then, when the user exited the application, their portion of the list (their files) would automatically drop from the index. The index was only one part of participating in the community. I also wanted users to be able to chat with each other and share information about their favorite music, so I added these functions to the application.
I very quickly became totally absorbed in this project. It was more compelling than my classes and more meaningful than socializing at school. I wrote a small design for this real-time search engine, and then began the implementation. I first wrote the server software. I next worked on writing the client application, i.e., the user interface. I ordered a Windows programming book over Amazon.com to learn what I needed and wrote the client software.
The Napster application I designed combined a real time system for finding MP3s with chat rooms and instant messaging (functionality similar to IRC). The chat rooms and instant messaging are integral to creating the community experience; I imagined that they would be used similarly to how people use IRC -- as a means for people to learn from each other and develop ongoing relationships. I also added a "hotlist" function that enables people to see other's musical preferences by viewing the files they have chosen to share. This synergy of technologies created a platform for a community of users interested in music with different channels organized by genres of music (again, similar to IRC), and with genuine opportunity for participation, interaction and individual involvement by the members sharing files together.
During the winter, I made the decision to leave school - I found I couldn't concentrate on developing the program and deal with my classes and life on campus. I was driven to figure out if I could make the program actually work. Initially, I didn't intend to even build it out; I was focused purely on establishing a "proof of concept." I figured that if I could make it work, others could too, and someone else would take it from there. There were many unknowns. The design required a networking infrastructure of servers and bandwidth in order to maintain large numbers of user connections. I didn't know if enough users had access to sufficient bandwidth. Other people were skeptical about whether users would be willing to share their files.
After developing the software prototype, I started sending it to friends, who sent it to other friends. A few early adopters provided feedback and helped track down bugs in the software. The consistently supportive and enthusiastic responses I got convinced me to try to build out the system. My uncle and I incorporated the company in May 1999 and he raised some money from angel investors. I released an early beta version of the Napster software during the summer and it spread quickly by word of mouth.
In September 1999, Napster, Inc. obtained office space and I moved to California. Download.com featured Napster in its Download Spotlight in early fall 1999, and the user community grew significantly.
It hasn't stopped growing since. Today the Napster community numbers over thirty-two million; for the past four months, it has been growing at the rate of one million new users each week. There are consistently over 800,000 people using the system simultaneously, limited only by our network resources. Napster users are in all corners of the world, and while I think it was initially adopted mostly by college students, a significant portion of our users are now over 30 (we received email just last Friday from one 91 year-old man).
An underlying assumption of the technology and the service is that people determine entirely for themselves how they are going to use the system and participate in the community - Napster provides the tools, but has no ability to impose limitations or exercise control. The music people are sharing and discussing ranges from the rock music you might expect to classical, opera, country, gospel, jazz, you name it. I receive thousands of emails personally and the company receives hundreds of thousands. People tell us that they use Napster to sample new music before deciding what to buy, find new artists, and house music in their computers that they already own on CD, cassette, vinyl and sometimes 8-track. We hear regularly from mothers who say they use Napster to screen the music their children are listening to and parents who say that Napster is a shared activity that helps them communicate with their teenagers.
I am an avid music fan myself and it is important to me that Napster benefit artists. Many users have told us that using Napster has led them to buy more CDs. Napster has implemented a range of features, most notably our New Artist and Featured Music programs, that help users find out about new and emerging artists and help artists promote their music throughout the Napster community, making it possible for them to reach a broad audience. When Napster is able to implement a business model, there will be other benefits for artists as well, including payments to rightsholders.
How Napster Works
Napster is a throwback to the original structure of the Internet. Rather than build large servers that house information, Napster relies on communication between the personal computers of the members of the Napster community. The information is distributed all across the Internet, allowing for a depth and scale of information that is virtually limitless.
Napster does not post, host, or serve MP3 files. The Napster software allows users to connect with each other, so that they may share MP3 files stored on their individual hard drives. The number of song files available at any given time depends on the number of song files that active users choose to share from their hard drives. Users need not share any or all of their files - they, and only they, can choose which ones to make available to others. MP3 files do not pass through a centralized server. The transfer is directly from computer to computer, known as "peer-to-peer."
Unlike traditional web-based search engines, the Napster system cannot index files based on their content and organize them in a meaningful way for the users. MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files are not currently designed for such content-based indexing. Instead, such files can only be located and organized based on the file names assigned by the users, specific information in the MPEG header, bandwidth or ping time of the source (such as T1, cable DSL, 35 milliseconds) or by manually opening each file, listening to the file and then categorizing the file based on a personal judgment about what the file contains. Napster provides a directory through which users may find files, by file name, residing on the computers of other Napster users. The Napster service also provides location information allowing a computer to connect to the other user and transfer the file from its location.
Other Napster functions include chat rooms, instant messaging, hotlists, and message boards. We are constantly working to refine the functionality of the client and improve
the user experience.
The Unlimited Potential of Peer-to-Peer Technology
I believe that the peer-to-peer technology on which Napster is based has the potential to be adopted for many different uses. People generally speak about the ability to share other kinds of files in addition to music, and indeed, Napster has been contacted by entities such as the Human Genome Project that are interested in sharing information among specific communities of interest. But peer-to-peer, or distributed computing, also has tremendous opportunity for sharing resources or computing power, lowering information and transaction costs. Peer-to-peer could be used to create a pool of resources in aggregate to solve a range of complex storage, processing and bandwidth problems.
Peer-to-peer also has the potential to change today's understanding of the relationship between source and site. Think how much faster and more efficient the Internet could be if instead of always connecting you to a central server every time you click on to a website, your computer would find the source that housed that information nearest to you - if it's already on the computer of the kid down the hall, why travel halfway around the world to retrieve it? A number of companies, from Intel on down to small start-ups, are looking at ways to develop peer-to-peer technology, and I believe that many of them will succeed. The result will be not just a better use of computing resources, but also the development of a myriad of communities and super-communities fulfilling the promise of the Internet that its founders envisioned.
But people shouldn't be required so pay for the costs of other people's illnesses.
and why not ? where would stephen hawkins have been today if insurers would have refused him ? there are so many people that contribute to humanity even though they're in need of some sort of medical attention. It's not a matter of right and wrong it's simply a matter of choice; do the healthy people want to pay for the sick people ? I can honestly say that I do, and i'm a healthy person with no family history on any special diseases. what if you fall in love with someone, are you gonna get them take a genetic test before deciding to start a relationship ? off course you're not.... what if your child gets sick, would you pay the cost ?, your neighbor ? your countrymen ?
Professor Durant said this would not be a legal obligation, but insurance companies would have
the right to refuse to offer insurance if a customer refused to reveal details.
i've lived in africa and asia for most of my life and must have seen billions of ants, 99.99% of them did not have wings. it's *not* easy to find winged ants. maybe where you live there are lots, but in the rest of the world there are relatively little. you contradict yourself by saying that every ant has wings and then later on you say it 'only occurs when...'
i've seen ants live in anthills, i've seen them live in trees, i've seen them live underground, i've seen ants in all fucking sizes and colors, i've even been attacked twice by an ant colony when i was sleeping, none of *all* these fuckers had wings....
Capitalism should not be a goal in itself; human (rights/happiness/freedom, call it what you will) should have a higher priority of governments. Capitalism is just a method, and without having laws for basic human liberties will turn democracy into bureaucratic fascism.
I couldn't care less whether 'the market moves forward' or not, I care whether humanity will move forward (I don't think it will, so at I hope it will move backwards as slow as possible).
I couldn't agree more.... When you buy something that should include the right to do with it *whatever* you like, destoy it, reverse engineer (aka take apart) it, misuse it, abuse it or whatever. I'm just wondering; before software was it illegal to 'reverse engineer' anthing ? I can't think of anything. When software manufacturers first started making it illegal to disassemble software, the law should have seen the implications of this and should have forbidden it. Now that it's accepted it's starting to spread to other fields as well. IMO the law is so far behind on understanding the new digital world. man, when I was a kid I loved to take things apart and put them back together again, walkmans, bicycles, radios etc. When I compare my intuitive understanding of electronical and mechanical devices with that of friends who never took anything apart as a child, mine is almost always larger... I learnt so much from taking stuff apart.
All this stuff is going way too far and I think that there needs to be some basic foundation laid down in the law for the right of every human to reverse engineer something he owns.
anyone ever heard the song 'multinationals' or something like that by a band called 'fischer z' ? man, those guys were ahead of their time....
well, in a broader sense the expiriment is about using the insect's sense of direction and ability to avoid obstacles and translating that to paramaters required to steer the vehicle. The means of translation is not so important. an ant doesn't have wings, so i would never be able to measure it's wing activity. ok, i agree using an optical device on an ant would be hard, but theoretically it could be done. I don't care if they use a locust, an ant or any other insect, the idea would be the same. I don't see why you have to say stuff like
Sometimes I get the feeling people aren't thinking before they post all the time, who do you think you are anyway ? obviously you didn't even think about an ant not having wings before you posted either, so that feeling might originate from your own expirience. or was it a *flying* ant you were thinking of ? - that's probably what you're gonna say....
Slashdot Mirror
I realize this but much of the internet "security" media hype is about outlook express forwarding e-mail viruses and other dumb stuff like that.
yeah, well, if 90% of the people are using windows you're gonna hear a lot more about security problems with windows than with some obscure os.
I'm just wondering; will this thing cause interference with 900Mhz CPUs ?
Anyone ?
so do you sit on a chair when:
you're reading ?
you're eating ? - I can just picture you going to some reaturant and insisting to sit on the floor
you're writing ?
you're doing your administration ?
you're receiving your clients ?
your logic seems to be: find the most uncomfortable position you can work in so that it causes the desire not to stay in that position long. I think I should start coding in an electric chair with sublethal current running through it ?
I don't think you get it; when I watch my kid brother sitting on the floor playing nintendo for basically the whole saturday he doesn't look very comfortable but he stays there because he wants to finish the nth level and beat the end monster. I think the same sort of stuff goes for a lot of programmers; they want to program so they will stay in uncomfortable positions if they have to. It's a matter of focus, you get so focused on the game/program that you tend to forget any discomfort.
(higher quality is recognizable by the fact that it immediately feels better when you first change to it, and it feels worse when, after using for several hours, you switch back to a lower-quality piece)
isn't ergonomics just the science of designing chairs that 'immediately feel better' ? I have had rsi and I can tell you that a lot of ergonomics stuff does help, ok I agree there is a lot of stuff that claims to be 'ergonomic' just because it has some weird shape. Excersize definitely helps, but a good working position (ergonomically correct) makes a huge difference.
well it's different; when you're sleeping your muscles are supposed to be relaxed. A lot of people that suffer from rsi (i had it) don't relax during their sleep which aggrevates/causes the condition.
calculated pi to the quadrillionth-1 decimal ? And could he say quadrillion-1 without saying "quadrillion-1" ? It would seem a mouthfull, "I calculated pi to the 9 (tridrillion ?) ... 999 decimal today "
yeah, I entirely agree, if I were an engineer switching between 2 car manufacturers I would take certain knowledge that I'd learnt at the first company to the second... This happens everyday and nobody cares. .
All of a sudden it's different when it's M$ ?
I don't understand why, why does having seen M$ code make all code written after that by a person theft by default ? Why ? I'm serious, it seems as if the burden of proving the person is not a thief falls on that person himself, why should it not fall on M$ to prove he is (and having seen the code is not enough IMO, let them prove he used it...)? It's a total opposite to the engineer switching jobs, there the burden of proof falls on the accusing company and the engineer is innocent 'till proven guilty
Since when does seeing a car's blueprint make a person a thief automatically ? Since when is it illegal to look at a blueprint even if it's not yours ? Since when will the engineer not be able to work for any other car maufacturers if he's seen some blueprint ?Man, the digital age seems to give all kinds of evil companies a carte blanche to interpret the law exactly how they want to. The governments seem too clueless to realize what's going on.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid here but it seems as if a lot of things are moving in a totally wrong direction.
mp3 is not popular because it saves hard drive space, it is popular because it saves internet bandwidth... (all those people using napster thru a modem)
do you always feel like you're going fast at 45 ? if not then the dope *is* having an effect on you....
Marijuana is illegal, but how often (if *ever*) do we hear of anybody getting killed by it?
It is a not so well known 'fact' that smoking marihuana can greatly risk the chances of psychosis. Personally I know 2 people (I've heard of more) that had to be institutionalized and are currently on heavy medication after an extended period of smoking dope. It's hard to prove that the psychosis is caused by marihuana since psychosis is a pretty vague condition. I know that the doctors of the guys I know strongly reccomended stopping to smoke pot. The problem with pot is that although physically it doesn't mess a person up like alcohol does, psychologically it *does* have an effect. I live in Holland and a lot of people that smoke dope a lot seem to be 'different' - not as quick to comprehend and seemingly not really in reality. I don't know if there are any statistics for that
It's ironic, in Holland the government just passed a law that makes it illegal for a person to read e-mail not sent to that particular person. It falls under the same law as written letters (the constitution is going to be changed to cover electronic commucication). If they read your mail, you can sue them... (of course you'd have a hard time proving it.) I think it's a great law and it shows that 'our' government has at least some sense when it comes to new communication technology.
They own the building that you're using to eat the sandwiches your wife made for you too... Does that give them the right to read a letter you wrote during lunchbreak with your own pen and paper ?
Of course they can monitor the usage of *their* equipment but that's totally different from reading someone's e-mail. the equipment is *theirs*, the content of your e-mail is *yours*. Let them install a cpu usage log if they are so concerned with the use of their equipment. if an employee has too much use, tell him to lower his private usage, there's absolutely *no* reason to read his/her mail.
i don't understand why companies are so paranoid over their employees using the internet too much, if a person doesn't do his job, fire him, if he does do his job then why worry about how many e-mails he sends ? Even in the old days there were a lot of ways to do non work-related stuff at the office, drink coffee every 5 minutes, read newspaper and magazines, write your personal letters and the list goes on... suddenly internet comes along and then companies start worrying about how much their employees use it instead over if they do their job or not, that's stupid.
my theory is that a lot of managers spend too much time on the web and because of that think that all the others must be doing it too...
I know this guy that did a mcse course, at the end they gave him an envelope with his diploma, the envelope was sealed. There was an accompanying letter that said "by breaking the seal you agree to..." and then a whole bunch of things including something like: "not critize microsoft or it's products". the guy didn't feel comfortable about agreeing to that and breaking the seal so he cut open the bottom end of the envelope and took out his diploma ! never broke the seal, never agreed to any of their garbage and got his diploma anyway. i thought that was a pretty practical solution.
I can't believe that there are no laws against that, governments are so slow to realize the implications of seemingly benign developments in the technology world.
Microsoft just 'innovates' new ways of use of their software and try to forbid them or 'tax' them.
It's so stupid, I mean if I buy a Ferrari (or a Lada in Microsoft's case) I can do with it what I like, I can take it apart, paint it purple, kick a dent in the door, use it to tow a trailer and many other things that it's makers probably didn't have in mind. No-one thinks anything about it because after all it would be *my* car right ? If Microsoft were to make cars, people would (because of the eula):
1. not be allowed to take them apart
2. not be allowed to upgrade them in ways other than microsoft allowed
3. not be allowed to fix them
4. not be allowed to buy them second-hand
5. not be allowed to drive them outside the city it was bought in
nobody would accept this, the government would make laws against it and there would be no problems after that, why doesn't the government realize what the software industry is doing ?
just think about how many legal problems jimi hendrix would have had if fender stratocasters would have come with eula's:
"sorry sir, setting fire to your guitar is not permitted by the eula to which you agreed by plugging in your guitar" "I also see that you are playing a right handed stratocaster left handed, this constitutes another violation of the eula"
yeah, i had thought of it after i had posted. you are correct, i spoke too fast, i'm sorry.
this still seems a contradiction or a clumsy statement at least:
In fact, every true male ant has wings, as well as the queen. This occurs when the ant colony has grown large enough to migrate.
what do you mean by this occurs ? it would be logical if you would refer to every male ant has wings by this. by saying occurs after that you seem to imply that male ants would only have wings if their colony becomes large enough (to migrate), which is not true and seems to contradict what you said in the preceding sentence. but what you are probably refering to with this is the case in which a colony becomes large enough to produce male ants.
btw. afaik being able to migrate is not a condition which needs to be met for male ants to be produced, the colony simply needs to be large enough. also not all male ants have wings
check this page if you like.
let's leave it here ok ? i made some mistakes in the discussion but i thought you presented some of the things you said in a confusing manner and besides, the discussion has gone completely ot.
cheers
"In fact, every true male ant has wings, as well as the queen"
right there... check your post if you like....
i'm not gonna reply to your posts anymore though, 'cause i get the feeling you're just trolling me...
Good morning, Senator Hatch. Thank you for inviting me for my first visit to Utah and my first appearance before a Congressional committee. Napster has broadened my own horizons in many ways that I never expected, and these are two examples. I also want to introduce Hank Barry, Napster's CEO, who is here with me today.
I am very happy to have this opportunity to tell you about Napster's origins, describe how the technology works and discuss the future potential of peer-to-peer file sharing and distributed computing.
Napster's Beginnings in a Northeastern Dorm Room
You may have heard or read that I started working on Napster in my dorm room at Northeastern University; while that's true, the story is a little more complicated than that.
I grew up in Massachusetts and during my high school years lived in Harwich. In 1996, between my sophomore and junior years in high school, my uncle, John Fanning, gave me a computer and access to the Internet. That was my first real experience with computers. I was a good student and focused a lot of attention on school, but my real love at that time was sports: I played baseball, basketball and tennis. The computer and the Internet fascinated me totally, and before long I gave up sports so I could spend more of my spare time at the computer learning about programming.
I started my freshman year at Northeastern University in the fall of 1998 intending to major in computer science. Looking for a challenge beyond the entry-level courses, I decided to start writing a Windows-based program on my own. I spent a lot of time in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms getting advice and information from the experienced developers and programmers who hang out there. IRC is a network of people organized into communities, through real time channels, on various topics including programming and Internet security. "Napster" was my nickname, and I used it for my e-mail address and as my user name in IRC rooms.
One of my college roommates loved listening to MP3s and used Internet sites such as MP3.lycos.com to find them. He often complained about the unreliability of those sites, finding links to sites that were often dead ends, and indexes that were out of date because they were updated infrequently. I started thinking about ways to solve the reliability problems my roommate was experiencing.
I began designing and programming a real-time system for locating MP3 files of other users on the Internet. I designed the Napster software to find MP3s because they are the most compressed format (in consideration of bandwidth) and they were very popular at the time. The system I had in mind was unlike traditional search engines at that time.
A traditional search engine sends out "robots" to roam the Internet periodically, updating itself every hour or more to remove sites that are down or unavailable. The database created is entirely driven by what the central computer finds by "crawling" the Internet. The indexes become outdated as sites go up or down, a significant problem when looking for MP3s because most of the files were housed on people's home computers.
My idea was to have users list the files they were willing to share on a computer that they all could access. That list would then be updated each time a person logged on to and off of that computer. The index computer would at all times have an up-to-date list of the files people were willing to share, and the list would be voluntarily made by the users as they logged on and off the system. A user searching the index would see all the files shared by users on the network and available to others on the network at that moment. In contrast to traditional search engines, the system I envisioned would be affirmatively powered by the users, who would select what information they wanted to list on the index. Then, when the user exited the application, their portion of the list (their files) would automatically drop from the index. The index was only one part of participating in the community. I also wanted users to be able to chat with each other and share information about their favorite music, so I added these functions to the application. I very quickly became totally absorbed in this project. It was more compelling than my classes and more meaningful than socializing at school. I wrote a small design for this real-time search engine, and then began the implementation. I first wrote the server software. I next worked on writing the client application, i.e., the user interface. I ordered a Windows programming book over Amazon.com to learn what I needed and wrote the client software.
The Napster application I designed combined a real time system for finding MP3s with chat rooms and instant messaging (functionality similar to IRC). The chat rooms and instant messaging are integral to creating the community experience; I imagined that they would be used similarly to how people use IRC -- as a means for people to learn from each other and develop ongoing relationships. I also added a "hotlist" function that enables people to see other's musical preferences by viewing the files they have chosen to share. This synergy of technologies created a platform for a community of users interested in music with different channels organized by genres of music (again, similar to IRC), and with genuine opportunity for participation, interaction and individual involvement by the members sharing files together.
During the winter, I made the decision to leave school - I found I couldn't concentrate on developing the program and deal with my classes and life on campus. I was driven to figure out if I could make the program actually work. Initially, I didn't intend to even build it out; I was focused purely on establishing a "proof of concept." I figured that if I could make it work, others could too, and someone else would take it from there. There were many unknowns. The design required a networking infrastructure of servers and bandwidth in order to maintain large numbers of user connections. I didn't know if enough users had access to sufficient bandwidth. Other people were skeptical about whether users would be willing to share their files.
After developing the software prototype, I started sending it to friends, who sent it to other friends. A few early adopters provided feedback and helped track down bugs in the software. The consistently supportive and enthusiastic responses I got convinced me to try to build out the system. My uncle and I incorporated the company in May 1999 and he raised some money from angel investors. I released an early beta version of the Napster software during the summer and it spread quickly by word of mouth. In September 1999, Napster, Inc. obtained office space and I moved to California. Download.com featured Napster in its Download Spotlight in early fall 1999, and the user community grew significantly.
It hasn't stopped growing since. Today the Napster community numbers over thirty-two million; for the past four months, it has been growing at the rate of one million new users each week. There are consistently over 800,000 people using the system simultaneously, limited only by our network resources. Napster users are in all corners of the world, and while I think it was initially adopted mostly by college students, a significant portion of our users are now over 30 (we received email just last Friday from one 91 year-old man).
An underlying assumption of the technology and the service is that people determine entirely for themselves how they are going to use the system and participate in the community - Napster provides the tools, but has no ability to impose limitations or exercise control. The music people are sharing and discussing ranges from the rock music you might expect to classical, opera, country, gospel, jazz, you name it. I receive thousands of emails personally and the company receives hundreds of thousands. People tell us that they use Napster to sample new music before deciding what to buy, find new artists, and house music in their computers that they already own on CD, cassette, vinyl and sometimes 8-track. We hear regularly from mothers who say they use Napster to screen the music their children are listening to and parents who say that Napster is a shared activity that helps them communicate with their teenagers.
I am an avid music fan myself and it is important to me that Napster benefit artists. Many users have told us that using Napster has led them to buy more CDs. Napster has implemented a range of features, most notably our New Artist and Featured Music programs, that help users find out about new and emerging artists and help artists promote their music throughout the Napster community, making it possible for them to reach a broad audience. When Napster is able to implement a business model, there will be other benefits for artists as well, including payments to rightsholders.
How Napster Works
Napster is a throwback to the original structure of the Internet. Rather than build large servers that house information, Napster relies on communication between the personal computers of the members of the Napster community. The information is distributed all across the Internet, allowing for a depth and scale of information that is virtually limitless.
Napster does not post, host, or serve MP3 files. The Napster software allows users to connect with each other, so that they may share MP3 files stored on their individual hard drives. The number of song files available at any given time depends on the number of song files that active users choose to share from their hard drives. Users need not share any or all of their files - they, and only they, can choose which ones to make available to others. MP3 files do not pass through a centralized server. The transfer is directly from computer to computer, known as "peer-to-peer."
Unlike traditional web-based search engines, the Napster system cannot index files based on their content and organize them in a meaningful way for the users. MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files are not currently designed for such content-based indexing. Instead, such files can only be located and organized based on the file names assigned by the users, specific information in the MPEG header, bandwidth or ping time of the source (such as T1, cable DSL, 35 milliseconds) or by manually opening each file, listening to the file and then categorizing the file based on a personal judgment about what the file contains. Napster provides a directory through which users may find files, by file name, residing on the computers of other Napster users. The Napster service also provides location information allowing a computer to connect to the other user and transfer the file from its location.
Other Napster functions include chat rooms, instant messaging, hotlists, and message boards. We are constantly working to refine the functionality of the client and improve the user experience.
The Unlimited Potential of Peer-to-Peer Technology
I believe that the peer-to-peer technology on which Napster is based has the potential to be adopted for many different uses. People generally speak about the ability to share other kinds of files in addition to music, and indeed, Napster has been contacted by entities such as the Human Genome Project that are interested in sharing information among specific communities of interest. But peer-to-peer, or distributed computing, also has tremendous opportunity for sharing resources or computing power, lowering information and transaction costs. Peer-to-peer could be used to create a pool of resources in aggregate to solve a range of complex storage, processing and bandwidth problems.
Peer-to-peer also has the potential to change today's understanding of the relationship between source and site. Think how much faster and more efficient the Internet could be if instead of always connecting you to a central server every time you click on to a website, your computer would find the source that housed that information nearest to you - if it's already on the computer of the kid down the hall, why travel halfway around the world to retrieve it? A number of companies, from Intel on down to small start-ups, are looking at ways to develop peer-to-peer technology, and I believe that many of them will succeed. The result will be not just a better use of computing resources, but also the development of a myriad of communities and super-communities fulfilling the promise of the Internet that its founders envisioned.
my genes tell me that i'm not gonna get sick ?
and why not ? where would stephen hawkins have been today if insurers would have refused him ? there are so many people that contribute to humanity even though they're in need of some sort of medical attention. It's not a matter of right and wrong it's simply a matter of choice; do the healthy people want to pay for the sick people ? I can honestly say that I do, and i'm a healthy person with no family history on any special diseases.
what if you fall in love with someone, are you gonna get them take a genetic test before deciding to start a relationship ? off course you're not.... what if your child gets sick, would you pay the cost ?, your neighbor ? your countrymen ?
'nuff said.....
hey at least you're predictable...
i've lived in africa and asia for most of my life and must have seen billions of ants, 99.99% of them did not have wings. it's *not* easy to find winged ants. maybe where you live there are lots, but in the rest of the world there are relatively little. you contradict yourself by saying that every ant has wings and then later on you say it 'only occurs when...'
i've seen ants live in anthills, i've seen them live in trees, i've seen them live underground, i've seen ants in all fucking sizes and colors, i've even been attacked twice by an ant colony when i was sleeping, none of *all* these fuckers had wings....
Capitalism should not be a goal in itself; human (rights/happiness/freedom, call it what you will) should have a higher priority of governments. Capitalism is just a method, and without having laws for basic human liberties will turn democracy into bureaucratic fascism.
I couldn't care less whether 'the market moves forward' or not, I care whether humanity will move forward (I don't think it will, so at I hope it will move backwards as slow as possible).
Everyone has the right to reverse engineer.
I couldn't agree more.... When you buy something that should include the right to do with it *whatever* you like, destoy it, reverse engineer (aka take apart) it, misuse it, abuse it or whatever.
I'm just wondering; before software was it illegal to 'reverse engineer' anthing ? I can't think of anything. When software manufacturers first started making it illegal to disassemble software, the law should have seen the implications of this and should have forbidden it. Now that it's accepted it's starting to spread to other fields as well. IMO the law is so far behind on understanding the new digital world.
man, when I was a kid I loved to take things apart and put them back together again, walkmans, bicycles, radios etc. When I compare my intuitive understanding of electronical and mechanical devices with that of friends who never took anything apart as a child, mine is almost always larger... I learnt so much from taking stuff apart.
All this stuff is going way too far and I think that there needs to be some basic foundation laid down in the law for the right of every human to reverse engineer something he owns.
anyone ever heard the song 'multinationals' or something like that by a band called 'fischer z' ? man, those guys were ahead of their time....
well, in a broader sense the expiriment is about using the insect's sense of direction and ability to avoid obstacles and translating that to paramaters required to steer the vehicle. The means of translation is not so important.
an ant doesn't have wings, so i would never be able to measure it's wing activity.
ok, i agree using an optical device on an ant would be hard, but theoretically it could be done. I don't care if they use a locust, an ant or any other insect, the idea would be the same.
I don't see why you have to say stuff like Sometimes I get the feeling people aren't thinking before they post all the time, who do you think you are anyway ? obviously you didn't even think about an ant not having wings before you posted either, so that feeling might originate from your own expirience. or was it a *flying* ant you were thinking of ? - that's probably what you're gonna say....