The biggest problem with the DMCA -- and the
problem which this whole issue highlights -- is
that it criminalizes what should be a civil issue.
It may be that there's some room for civil penalties when someone distributes a copyrighted
work w/o permission. It might (a stretch, but
might) even be workable to have fines and accountability for tools whose sole purpose are
to distribute copyrighted works w/o permission.
But throw somebody in JAIL because they did this?
No way.
Not to mention the sovereignty issues. Just once I wish that some of the people I know who constantly carp about the the United Nations would wake up and realize that we're far more in danger of disolving the sovereignty of other nations and giving up ours to monied interests than becoming slaves a shadowy UN conspiracy.
I think part of the problem is that Lego, generally, is a toy where the joy is based more on imagination and creativity. Sure, you might have to do some tricky block stacking in order to get the form you want, and I guess there's a few hingy blocks, but that's about the limit. Erector sets (or whatever you call them) you have to make work. There's a higher degree of complexity than snaping blocks together.
Given a choice, I think most people would rather rely on imagination and creativity for their enjoyment than having to make something work.
Hey, I _like_ engineering, and I'm still one of those people sometimes.
--
The Science of Transmogrification
on
Net Cemetery
·
· Score: 2
That's spelled Transmogrify, thank you very much,
and I'll thank you not to denigrate this succesful science that I've so carefully tested.
(Then again, maybe a simple letter transposition is within the spirit of this great science!)
Yes, that old chestnut... beauty and order is proof of the existence of God. Um, no. Why should it be?
Did I say it was a proof? No. Did you
read my comment? Obviously not, or you would
have caught:
1) Noting the phenomenon of "beauty" and wondering what it implies is actually a start to some sophisticated philosophy.
2) The acknowledgement on my part that jumping immediately to the concept of an omnipotent anthropomorphic being isn't sound.
Why don't people ponder before they post? (My guess is either they have a axe to grind or they have been over certain segments of a discussion so many times that all they see anymore are their own categorized conceptual maps).
What is beauty? Beauty isn't absolute. It's a quirk of perception that instantiates an emotional response.
Now take on this one: What is good?
A quirk of perception that instatiates value judgements?
Good questions, but simplistic responses....
Of course, this is slashdot, we all have other things to do, and so we don't have time for much else....
This can actually be a fairly sophisticated philosophical observation. "Egad, there's beauty in the world... something must be going on here." The leap from there to an anthropomorphic omnipotent being is tenuous, but
the start isn't.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the argument used by this author: "God must exist because humans are purtier than slugs." Every time I see this argument, I am blown away by the arrogance of it. Man exists, therefore God must. Surely Jehovah, or Allah, or Shiva, or Zeus or Odin would rain fire on any human haughty enough to make God's existence contingent on his own.
I think that perhaps what the author meant is: there's something different about human beings. Possibly something that you can't account for via genetics. He did choose to attribute that to "God", but it's worth noting that what some people mean by God is different from the afforementioned anthropomorphic omnipotent being.
And the argument really isn't that arrogant...
it's just inductive.Concluding that God exists from observing the difference....
(Also, some mythologies (maybe even theologies) DO beleive that the power/existence of a God is dependent upon the beleif of humans, a la "Black and White", "Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul", and Fred Saberhagen's first three sword Books. It's an interesting concept.)
Embracing a better model might help you compete with the RIAA... independent artists like Jonatha Brooke and Peter Breinholt do it all the time. Who knows what the next succesful business to embrace the right model that could compete with the RIAA might be?
BUT.... saying that the RIAA is doomed because their basic model is flawed is very much like Eric Raymond saying Microsoft is doomed. They *might* die in the long run. However, for the better part of OUR lifetimes I bet we're going to see these organizations exist in some form or other, and quite possibly in the dominant form they are now.
I say this not so everybody gives up producing something better, just to remind those who were thinking "Whew! The RIAA _is_ going to fall" a little reality check. Any "new thing" is going to have to contend with the entrenched record industry powers, their mass media channeling, and their lawyers.
--
I Need Keaneau Reeves Motorcycle!
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 2
These are the times when I wish I had a motorcycle as fast as Keaneau Reeve's in
"Chain Reaction".... I mean, with these sorts of experiements going on, you never know when you're going to have to outrace some kind of explosion that can level 5 city blocks.
Also, I would like a few dates with that English woman he was running around with in the film.
(Ah, let's face it. I'd settle for a few dates OR the motorcycle).
There's compiler writing tools. There's GUI building tools. There's class frameworks out there for just about everything. Maybe we need file-format interpreting Meta-Tools and some codified domain specific knowledge for this problem.
This collaboration is a good start, if they concentrate on not only coming up with filters, but discovering HOW to come up with a good filter.
OK. I think the region coding thing is a pain and stupid, and if you're reading slashdot, you probably think so too.
The thing is, the DVD manufacturer's association has got to have some sort of official line laying around to explain why having region codes is important.
Does anyone know what this actually is? Because I can't think of one, but I'd like to know what load of bull they're trying to feed us....
maybe a more accurate assessment is that being in a community with such a large mormon population, similar people wind up in power structures throughout. So while there is no tacit collusion between parties, having a similar background lends the appearance.
Bingo.:) That's really an excellent way of putting it. I think I might use your phrasing in future discussions.
I think the larger problem is that people within the LDS community and people outside tend to not really try to understand each other and actually live together.
Sometimes it does work. I know that most people make fun of the liquor laws, but I think they're actually an example of a decent compromise. The cultural majority is happy because they feel like they've suffeciently curtailed/controlled an evil, and the minority, if they're willing to familiarize themselves with the system, can still get a drink. Whether the system actually does what people hope in practice is arguable, but there's a balance that's worth crediting.
With all due respect, I think that a lot of people here don't realize what Katz does.
He writes articles that are geared towards the general populace. Opinion pieces that belong in USA Today. Reader's Digest stuff.
Then he publishes them on Slashdot. And disorients half the slashdot readership in the process.
This is a heads-up opinion piece for the general populace. It's Anti-MS FUD for the masses. Lots of people will eat it up. And if, as I suspect, Jon just uses slashdot as a trial ground for his drafts and publishes his real work elsewhere, you'll probably hear this as dinner table discussion before too long.
> They took it from him, and got legal
> protection to do so. How? Likely the same
> Mormon racket owns both the university and
> the local judiciary.
The phrase "the Mormon racket owns [fill in your choice of something in Utah" really grows tiresome after a while. After spending some time here, you'd probably realize that even with some of the asinine politics and stupid policy decisions, it's not as if there is any kind of central machine pulling strings. There is a cultural norm, and sometimes it's frustrating to live with that, and especially frustrating to try and change.
But ESPECIALLY in the context of the University of Utah, no one has any business in suggesting central control. The U of U is the last organization in the state I'd suspect of being under the thumb of "The Church" here. With the exception of a few independent news sources, like the SLC Weekly and KRCL.
Speech in Utah takes exactly one approved form, and I don't think I even need to drop the name of the organization that determines what form that is. During this same previous trip, the local press had run a little drivel piece that pointed out, among other things,
If you knew Utah as well as you seem to assert you do, you'd realize that the University of Utah is the last entity that's likely to be controlled by your unammed organization.
Well, next to the City Weekly....
There was some noise a while back about AOL having Linux based (or other OS based) devices that were terminals for accessing AOL services.
Seems to me this announcement would pretty much shoot that all to SBN (some burning netherworld), what with IE for UNIX being a complete myth (other than an early bad version for Solaris and the Carbonized Mac OS X port which won't run anywhere else).
Schadenfreude = "harming joy" according to the fish.
German speakers: I'm wondering if this is along the lines of decadent/destructive pleasures ("tainted love") or if it's more like training for a marathon or putting up flaws in someone you love.
Also, I'm noticing more and more German borrowing in the hacker world. Is it just me? If it's not, any speculation on why?
And now that Altavista's owners are certifiably evil (having patented things like web crawlers), are there any other places we can go for translation needs?
If publishers can't produce higher quality tablature/sheet music than I can for free, then they deserve to go out of business.
They've got access to the artists who WROTE the piece, for heaven sakes. They're a business, so presumably they have some operating cash and employees they can put into getting it just right -- and the value of getting it just right is enough that I'd pay a buck or two for that, certainly.
But the strange thing is, there's a lot of tab/music out there that's sold for free that really sucks; I can produce a better variation by listening to the song and transcribing it myself.
So publishers: compete on quality. Compete on cool art and glossy covers and scribblings done in the artist's handwriting. Compete on actually selling a pre-printed and pre-bound product. In other words, actually provide a service for your fees. But don't whine that you can't compete with a bunch of amateurs who do this in their spare time.
The name "Ogg Vorbis" has way too geeky a sound to catch on with most people who are actually going to buy Win XP. It will have to be repackaged/remarketed as something else. Xiph is a cool name. It even works with the X in XP and OSX.
.xip files anyone?
(x-tinguish intellectual property, heh heh)
or maybe
.xph
(x-scape proprietary hedging)
(strong enough for a man, ph balanced for a computer)
...if you count Senator Hatch's little "re-elect me" special hearing in Provo last October. Shawn Fanning came, and several other P2P companies based in Utah. They all recited their little scripts and went home.
A friend of mine did the write up, but alas, slashdot didn't pick it up.
How exactly are CD warning labels censorship? Are those darn ingredient and nutritional information labels the FDA requires on food products censorship?
Ratings and labels are information about content, nothing more. Ideally, they're accurate information about content, making buyers aware of what they're getting in for and helping manufacturers take responsibility for what they produce by insuring information about the content is open.
Not all that different from insuring the source is distributed with the binary, really.:)
I've been wondering for a few weeks how feasable creating an ad hoc peer-to-peer phone network would be.
Could such a system be implemented? Where, say, every person involved bought/made a radioLanPhoneBox... and as more and more people get one, more and more areas can be reached....
Alright, maybe we can introduce a mild heirarchy if it's needed to make it work?
(fully expecting someone to tell my why this can't work)
This is sortof offtopic, but I'm curious: does anyone have references to the studies that say Napster increases CD sales?
It does relate, sortof. Because depending on how much they increase CD sales, the RIAA might be able to justify the cost of reimbursing the people who actually create the music.
But I'm not sure somebody didn't just pull the studies out of their butt....
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem with the DMCA -- and the
problem which this whole issue highlights -- is
that it criminalizes what should be a civil issue.
It may be that there's some room for civil penalties when someone distributes a copyrighted
work w/o permission. It might (a stretch, but
might) even be workable to have fines and accountability for tools whose sole purpose are
to distribute copyrighted works w/o permission.
But throw somebody in JAIL because they did this?
No way.
Not to mention the sovereignty issues. Just once I wish that some of the people I know who constantly carp about the the United Nations would wake up and realize that we're far more in danger of disolving the sovereignty of other nations and giving up ours to monied interests than becoming slaves a shadowy UN conspiracy.
--
So... if they're dumping the product, anyone know where we can get them for Dreamcast-like prices? Wholesale? Better than wholesale?
--
I think part of the problem is that Lego, generally, is a toy where the joy is based more on imagination and creativity. Sure, you might have to do some tricky block stacking in order to get the form you want, and I guess there's a few hingy blocks, but that's about the limit. Erector sets (or whatever you call them) you have to make work. There's a higher degree of complexity than snaping blocks together.
Given a choice, I think most people would rather rely on imagination and creativity for their enjoyment than having to make something work.
Hey, I _like_ engineering, and I'm still one of those people sometimes.
--
That's spelled Transmogrify, thank you very much,
and I'll thank you not to denigrate this succesful science that I've so carefully tested.
(Then again, maybe a simple letter transposition is within the spirit of this great science!)
--Calvin
--
Yes, that old chestnut... beauty and order is proof of the existence of God. Um, no. Why should it be?
Did I say it was a proof? No. Did you
read my comment? Obviously not, or you would
have caught:
1) Noting the phenomenon of "beauty" and wondering what it implies is actually a start to some sophisticated philosophy.
2) The acknowledgement on my part that jumping immediately to the concept of an omnipotent anthropomorphic being isn't sound.
Why don't people ponder before they post? (My guess is either they have a axe to grind or they have been over certain segments of a discussion so many times that all they see anymore are their own categorized conceptual maps).
What is beauty? Beauty isn't absolute. It's a quirk of perception that instantiates an emotional response.
Now take on this one: What is good?
A quirk of perception that instatiates value judgements?
Good questions, but simplistic responses....
Of course, this is slashdot, we all have other things to do, and so we don't have time for much else....
--
I know God exists 'cuz flowers are purty
This can actually be a fairly sophisticated philosophical observation. "Egad, there's beauty in the world... something must be going on here." The leap from there to an anthropomorphic omnipotent being is tenuous, but
the start isn't.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the argument used by this author: "God must exist because humans are purtier than slugs." Every time I see this argument, I am blown away by the arrogance of it. Man exists, therefore God must. Surely Jehovah, or Allah, or Shiva, or Zeus or Odin would rain fire on any human haughty enough to make God's existence contingent on his own.
I think that perhaps what the author meant is: there's something different about human beings. Possibly something that you can't account for via genetics. He did choose to attribute that to "God", but it's worth noting that what some people mean by God is different from the afforementioned anthropomorphic omnipotent being.
And the argument really isn't that arrogant...
it's just inductive.Concluding that God exists from observing the difference....
(Also, some mythologies (maybe even theologies) DO beleive that the power/existence of a God is dependent upon the beleif of humans, a la "Black and White", "Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul", and Fred Saberhagen's first three sword Books. It's an interesting concept.)
--
Embracing a better model might help you compete with the RIAA... independent artists like Jonatha Brooke and Peter Breinholt do it all the time. Who knows what the next succesful business to embrace the right model that could compete with the RIAA might be?
BUT.... saying that the RIAA is doomed because their basic model is flawed is very much like Eric Raymond saying Microsoft is doomed. They *might* die in the long run. However, for the better part of OUR lifetimes I bet we're going to see these organizations exist in some form or other, and quite possibly in the dominant form they are now.
I say this not so everybody gives up producing something better, just to remind those who were thinking "Whew! The RIAA _is_ going to fall" a little reality check. Any "new thing" is going to have to contend with the entrenched record industry powers, their mass media channeling, and their lawyers.
--
These are the times when I wish I had a motorcycle as fast as Keaneau Reeve's in
"Chain Reaction".... I mean, with these sorts of experiements going on, you never know when you're going to have to outrace some kind of explosion that can level 5 city blocks.
Also, I would like a few dates with that English woman he was running around with in the film.
(Ah, let's face it. I'd settle for a few dates OR the motorcycle).
--
I've said this before, but it bears repeating:
Vorbis needs a new name.
Ogg Vorbis is not catchy.
I recommend xph. It's a TLA, it's roughly
a derivitave of the people who make vorbis, it has the trendy "X" in it, and sounds cool.
--
There's compiler writing tools. There's GUI building tools. There's class frameworks out there for just about everything. Maybe we need file-format interpreting Meta-Tools and some codified domain specific knowledge for this problem.
This collaboration is a good start, if they concentrate on not only coming up with filters, but discovering HOW to come up with a good filter.
--
OK. I think the region coding thing is a pain and stupid, and if you're reading slashdot, you probably think so too.
....
The thing is, the DVD manufacturer's association has got to have some sort of official line laying around to explain why having region codes is important.
Does anyone know what this actually is? Because I can't think of one, but I'd like to know what load of bull they're trying to feed us
--
maybe a more accurate assessment is that being in a community with such a large mormon population, similar people wind up in power structures throughout. So while there is no tacit collusion between parties, having a similar background lends the appearance.
:) That's really an excellent way of putting it. I think I might use your phrasing in future discussions.
Bingo.
I think the larger problem is that people within the LDS community and people outside tend to not really try to understand each other and actually live together.
Sometimes it does work. I know that most people make fun of the liquor laws, but I think they're actually an example of a decent compromise. The cultural majority is happy because they feel like they've suffeciently curtailed/controlled an evil, and the minority, if they're willing to familiarize themselves with the system, can still get a drink. Whether the system actually does what people hope in practice is arguable, but there's a balance that's worth crediting.
--
And that one wasn't half bad.
--
With all due respect, I think that a lot of people here don't realize what Katz does.
He writes articles that are geared towards the general populace. Opinion pieces that belong in USA Today. Reader's Digest stuff.
Then he publishes them on Slashdot. And disorients half the slashdot readership in the process.
This is a heads-up opinion piece for the general populace. It's Anti-MS FUD for the masses. Lots of people will eat it up. And if, as I suspect, Jon just uses slashdot as a trial ground for his drafts and publishes his real work elsewhere, you'll probably hear this as dinner table discussion before too long.
--
> They took it from him, and got legal
> protection to do so. How? Likely the same
> Mormon racket owns both the university and
> the local judiciary.
The phrase "the Mormon racket owns [fill in your choice of something in Utah" really grows tiresome after a while. After spending some time here, you'd probably realize that even with some of the asinine politics and stupid policy decisions, it's not as if there is any kind of central machine pulling strings. There is a cultural norm, and sometimes it's frustrating to live with that, and especially frustrating to try and change.
But ESPECIALLY in the context of the University of Utah, no one has any business in suggesting central control. The U of U is the last organization in the state I'd suspect of being under the thumb of "The Church" here. With the exception of a few independent news sources, like the SLC Weekly and KRCL.
--
Speech in Utah takes exactly one approved form, and I don't think I even need to drop the name of the organization that determines what form that is. During this same previous trip, the local press had run a little drivel piece that pointed out, among other things,
If you knew Utah as well as you seem to assert you do, you'd realize that the University of Utah is the last entity that's likely to be controlled by your unammed organization.
Well, next to the City Weekly....
--
There was some noise a while back about AOL having Linux based (or other OS based) devices that were terminals for accessing AOL services.
Seems to me this announcement would pretty much shoot that all to SBN (some burning netherworld), what with IE for UNIX being a complete myth (other than an early bad version for Solaris and the Carbonized Mac OS X port which won't run anywhere else).
--
Schadenfreude = "harming joy" according to the fish.
German speakers: I'm wondering if this is along the lines of decadent/destructive pleasures ("tainted love") or if it's more like training for a marathon or putting up flaws in someone you love.
Also, I'm noticing more and more German borrowing in the hacker world. Is it just me? If it's not, any speculation on why?
And now that Altavista's owners are certifiably evil (having patented things like web crawlers), are there any other places we can go for translation needs?
--
Err. Should have used preview.
out there that's sold for free
should be "sold out there". No "for free". Selling something for free is an interesting concept, but not one I wanted to be part of that sentence.
--
If publishers can't produce higher quality tablature/sheet music than I can for free, then they deserve to go out of business.
They've got access to the artists who WROTE the piece, for heaven sakes. They're a business, so presumably they have some operating cash and employees they can put into getting it just right -- and the value of getting it just right is enough that I'd pay a buck or two for that, certainly.
But the strange thing is, there's a lot of tab/music out there that's sold for free that really sucks; I can produce a better variation by listening to the song and transcribing it myself.
So publishers: compete on quality. Compete on cool art and glossy covers and scribblings done in the artist's handwriting. Compete on actually selling a pre-printed and pre-bound product. In other words, actually provide a service for your fees. But don't whine that you can't compete with a bunch of amateurs who do this in their spare time.
--
The name "Ogg Vorbis" has way too geeky a sound to catch on with most people who are actually going to buy Win XP. It will have to be repackaged/remarketed as something else. Xiph is a cool name. It even works with the X in XP and OSX.
.xip files anyone?
(x-tinguish intellectual property, heh heh)
or maybe
.xph
(x-scape proprietary hedging)
(strong enough for a man, ph balanced for a computer)
Or perhaps I'm drunk on cheese.
--
...if you count Senator Hatch's little "re-elect me" special hearing in Provo last October. Shawn Fanning came, and several other P2P companies based in Utah. They all recited their little scripts and went home.
A friend of mine did the write up, but alas, slashdot didn't pick it up.
--
(CD warning labels)
:)
How exactly are CD warning labels censorship? Are those darn ingredient and nutritional information labels the FDA requires on food products censorship?
Ratings and labels are information about content, nothing more. Ideally, they're accurate information about content, making buyers aware of what they're getting in for and helping manufacturers take responsibility for what they produce by insuring information about the content is open.
Not all that different from insuring the source is distributed with the binary, really.
--
I've been wondering for a few weeks how feasable creating an ad hoc peer-to-peer phone network would be.
Could such a system be implemented? Where, say, every person involved bought/made a radioLanPhoneBox... and as more and more people get one, more and more areas can be reached....
Alright, maybe we can introduce a mild heirarchy if it's needed to make it work?
(fully expecting someone to tell my why this can't work)
--
This is sortof offtopic, but I'm curious: does anyone have references to the studies that say Napster increases CD sales?
It does relate, sortof. Because depending on how much they increase CD sales, the RIAA might be able to justify the cost of reimbursing the people who actually create the music.
But I'm not sure somebody didn't just pull the studies out of their butt....
--