Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
Countries like (...) Saudia Arabia (...) are allies because the share US values.
I'll assume you mean the Saudi monarchy here, and invite you to think over what you have written. To the extent that this is true, it's rather sadly true.
My first remark is that pushing for even more drastic laws is certainly, in part, a tactic to draw pressure away from the DMCA. Let's not fall into this trap.
The second is that as usual, the general public cannot be made to care about this unless we strip the question down to its (nontechnical) essentials.
Let's do ourselves a favor. Forget all our beloved jargon (TCP/IP, p2p, FTP, usenet, freenet, etc.), concentrate on something like simply email -- which people know about, care for and roughly understand --, and publically ask Senators Hollings and Stevens elementary questions like this:
1) Any viewable item on a computer exists as a file, that is, a sequence of 0's and 1's stored in memory.
2) e-mail is a popular device which allows jack@university.edu to send a copy of any file to jill@provider.net, completely independent of whether the copy is "legitimate" or not.
Are you opposed to email? If not, then exactly how do you intend to prevent "illegitimate" uses of it, without invading everyone's privacy?
No problem. But I do disagree with compelling everyone to release the source code for all of the software that has ever been written. If you follow the writings and speeches of RMS and the rest of the FSF, you will see that freeing all of the source code is their ultimate goal.
Thanks for the reply. I may, indeed, not be following the FSF output closely enough:-)
But my impression is that the goal is not to force anyone into anything (how?...), only to produce a Free alternative for those who prefer things that way. Since a free OS can run proprietary apps, you still have the choice to publish your creations in binary form only...
I find this a recurrent theme around here, this idea that somehow people are being "forced" to give up what belongs to them. "Would you share your credit card info?", we are asked. Hell no! There is still room for secrets, trade serets, anything you want. But it's up to you to keep them!
Same with file sharing: whe Lars complains about people trading mp3s of private sessions, I say watch your own backyard and use engineers who don't leak them in the first place!
It's still your choice to release your stuff anyway you want, or not at all - like jazzman Freddie Keppard in 1917 chose to never record, for fear that others would steal his music. If you release stuff in a digital world, then there are consequences, but it's not like anyone is hiding them from you, is it?
Re:An argument I don't understand
on
Microsoft vs. Ximian
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I do not like the notion that my ideas, the ideas formed with my own genius and hard work, should be thrown into the public domain just because I formulated them. I should have the freedom to share my ideas, keep them secret, or sell them to the highest bidder. Taking away that freedom in the name of other freedoms not only tramples some of my liberties, but also cheapens the others.
Nothing in the GPL "takes away that feedom" from you. From the GPL FAQ:
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL.
Seems like a reasonable trade-off for the right to use the (unmodified) source in the first place, no?
What's disturbing is that not only you (if sincere) are buying into that FUD, but so is the Washington Post article (the following is so misconstrued it sounds almost like Craig Mundie):
That model holds that if you use open-source code, you have to put your enhancements in the public domain and offer it to others with the same privileges that you got, i.e. free.
as well as another one two days ago (from a widely read French daily that should know better):
GPL (General Public License). En premier lieu, chacun est libre de décortiquer le logiciel en accédant au code source, les lignes de programme qui en constituent les secrets de fabrication. Ensuite, chacun est libre de le modifier, de l'améliorer ou de l'adapter à ses besoins. Une condition: tous les changements doivent être rendus publics [transl: all changes must be made public] et faire l'objet des mêmes modalités d'utilisation et de diffusion.
I never thought I'd see the day when I'd welcome more legalese on documents... but any sensitive documents should really have that blurb, quoted (well, mostly) here:
The information contained in this document is proprietary and confidential and may not be transmitted to others in any form without the express written consent of $COMPANY. If you
have received this document in error, please call $NAME at $PHONE and promptly destroy all copies.
One way to do this would be to say that anyone can make
changes to the code and whatever, but they cannot distribute
alternate versions of the code under the name of your program
--
% This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all
rights are reserved.
% Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E.
Knuth, or if
% (2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (...)
If this program is changed, the resulting system should
not be called
`\TeX'; the official name `\TeX' by itself is reserved
for software systems that are fully compatible with each other.
a) It would be impossible for the U.S. to become third
world--it's not a wealth/development issue. U.S./Europe/US-sphere
is 1st world. Soviet Union and it's sphere is second world. Then
there's the third world, not drawn in by either.
OK... then again, the distinction is not quite as "noncommittally
geographic" as this wording suggests, is it? Not sure who first spoke in terms of this hierarchy,
but I think it comes from the three states in France (first
was noblesse, second clergy, then tiers-état --
the rest).
No doubt it was invoked by some well-meaning person, but like
religion before, what it does is provide the ideological superstructure
to colonize the world in the name of evangelizing it. Today,
instead, we go around lecturing "developing" countries
on democracy and human rights -- as if many of them had not been
culturally and scientifically developed far before us. (Take India
for one, or if you prefer, Irak = Babylon [*ducks*].)
Thus I remember, last February, a whole National Public Radio
show on how the new administration intends to make Nigeria a privileged
partner in Africa, because for some reason, that would be where
we can expect expect "the best human-rights-and-democracy
return" on our investment. All right... but as not one
speaker saw fit to observe (this on NPR...), Nigeria
happens to be also the largest oil producer on the continent...
The keyword here is indifference. People just no longer get
their pants in a knot about anything beyond the weather, sports,
the stock exchange, and whatever the current Simpson / Lewinsky
/ Columbine / Florida Recount psychodrama.
PSU, case in point. Tens of thousands of students there, quite
a few in foreign languages or journalism I suppose, but nary a
vendor of foreign newspapers around campus. You're in luck if
you find the LA Times or the Washington Post at Ben & Jerry's
-- that's about as exotic as it gets. Compare any European
newsstand.
How does this tie in with this thread? Thus:
To the initial post, people are calmly and matter-of-factly
responding that grad school just isn't a good investment for them.
Very subdued response, I think, to an initial post which could
be construed as inflammatory (1 flamebait moderation). But disquieting
response, too, as it reveals the extent to which disinterested
knowledge just isn't a value in our system.
Oh my. Parent gets a silent "overrated" mod within 3 minutes of posting (hence before it's even been "rated" by anyone). Making the "holy wars" point for me, perhaps...?
Blah. Anyway, if you want Linux, don't waste your money on Apple
hardware. Just stick with some cheap ol' Intel stuff. Go buy
a used Sony Vaio, like my old one I'll be eBay'ing soon.:)
The point is, if you do get an iceBook (say, because
the hardware or OS X appeal to you), then why not run Linux on
it also? Why do those
holy wars always have to involve exclusion?
In my configuration, mouse3 (right button) is bound to the enter
key just right of the spacebar. My mouse2 (middle button) is
bound to F11.
Would be nice to have buttons 1, 2, 3 emulated by (command-)click,
option-click, control-click (...thus allowing
combinations) -- a bit as happens in OS X if you use XonX / XDarwin.
(Such
as, say, the old PPC I use as a gateway to the net. 3 years
old, 180 MHz, 32 meg RAM.)
On such a machine, you need something
to
Browse local help pages;* **
Search the web for code and rpms;
Download these onto the machine.
* Bonus if it can read
man and info pages, (like
gnome-help-browser). ** Double bonus if it supports find string on page (unlike g-h-b).
Skipstone is
nice (uses gecko and fewer gnome libs than galeon), but I found
it still memory hungry and a quite bit slower than g-h-b, or legacy Netscape for Mac on the same hardware.
(The one I tried compiled against Mozilla 0.9. Although there
may be good progress since, I wonder if gecko may just not be
lean enough... Moz 0.9.2 is still a big memory hog
on my other machine -- like 50 meg after a little browsing, where
legacy Netscape would stay around 30.)
Encompass
uses gtkhtml instead. Can anyone comment on it? Will it do (1),
(2) and (3) above? I still need to figure out exactly what dependencies
it needs to compile. Anyway, it seems promising -- see this review
and some more
recent news.
bottom line, it's all about who generates revenue.
"All"? How about getting out of this econodroid's mindset, once in a while?
if they disappeared tomorrow, they'll be forgotten due to some other company taking their place.
No, they'll be forgotten because "companies" are not what people want to remember. We'll remember Charlie Parker, Erwin Schrödinger, Charles Chaplin, Crick & Watson,...
...although it may soon be history in some countries.
Shakespeare is public domain, and likewise in Europe, so is
any sound recording older than 50 years. This is what allows labels
such as Document
or Chronological
Classics to systematically reissue 20th century jazz, blues,
rhythm & blues, etc., from collectors' 78s onto CD.
Such documentation is invaluable to (e.g.) researchers, and
we know damn well that it would not be happening if we
relied on the goodwill of former copyright owners (RIAA companies,
for the most part) which concentrate on much more lucrative goals.
Given that these 78s are justifiably free for anyone
to publish on CD, I see absolutely no reason why anyone could
not likewise distribute them on the internet. As (and so long
as) the public domain grows, this makes a hell of a lot legitimate
uses for p2p.
Hilary Rosen actually has a decent donation list. She gave Hatch 1000, but then took it back (apparently) and donated a decent chuck to a pro-choice group.
Of course. You see, she's consistent. Making kids is a blatant violation of copyright.
IMHO, Aimster made a nice pass at this, but screwed up.
They needed to put a license on download
so that it was only allowed for personal use. RIAA can simply
use the program like anyone else and then search for the results
like anyone else, download the file like anyone else, and then
listen to it and confirm that it's a violation. If it were only
licensed for personal use, this would not be possible.
I have to assume that you disabled animated gifs... for that
is how Aimster brag about precisely such a license on their homepage. ("Can't Touch This!
The Aimster Service is Private and Encrypted!") While I'm
part way down the comments, it would seem that a great many people
are missing Aimster's irony altogether... from the linked page:
"And please check out Aimster at www.aimster.com,
if you have a chance. Aimster is the first file and messaging
service to give you full encryption over all your messages and
files"
Which is not to say that (having a central server) they are
immune to the "loophole in the loophole" that you point
out. Freenet, on the other hand...
It seems like corporations have no desire other than to
strip us of what few remaining freedoms we have, and the government
is doing nothing to check their power scramble.
Here's the take of someone who lived many years on both sides
of the pond. The U.S. is still a young country, and a lot remains
to go through. The Constitution was ideally adapted to the early
days of conquest and "Far West". Now, a dominant class
has emerged and naturally attempts to perpetuate its power and
transmit it to their offspring.
(Good examples of that are the way copyright extensions were
bought from congress, or a whole education system where money
can buy degrees.)
Western European countries are neither better nor worse, they
are just older and more settled. There people have learned to
fight for their freedom in the face of economic oppression, obtain
things like free education, and another kind of equilibrium has
been reached. Some things you may consider "rampant socialism"
in these countries may ultimately happen here as well -- when
a strong enough majority deems it necessary.
Unless of course, Europe sells itself out in the name of "globalization"...
This law has absolutely nothing to do with french "cultural"
protection. It it just a problem of big bucks.
Nobody seems to notice it, but actually it has no influence
on the french-made movies, since they obviously are not
imports. (...)
The real thing is that this law is there to protect interests
of huge american film companies, which are the one that will
make (a bit) more money, since they always have greater margins
on oversea sales than on their domestic market.
Now, you'll ask why french law became so pro-american??
Just remember universal (yes, universal studios etc...) has been
bought by media giant vivendi which is.. yes you start to understand
it... french..
Please moderate this up! Also #212. I think they're the ones
getting it. Why everyone took it, instead, as a signal to start and beat
a "French paranoia" straw man, is beyond me.
It's not about "cultural exception". (Except, perhaps,
to the extent they would invoke it to defend this bill in European
Court. But what a strange argument that would be! This is a law
that allows Hollywood to have it their
way.)
It's not about that 6 or 9 months theatre-to-video delay, either.
In the U.S., copyright holders seem good enough to enforce themselves
whatever delay they see fit.
To DVD Zone system is meant for something else -- a (now artificial)
delay between continents so that, among others, the PR
steamroller can take one country after another.
They can't have Sharon Stone do all magazines and talk shows
in L.A. and Paris and Barcelona at the same time.
If anything, this circumstance might have helped Euro movies (most
of which are co-produced in France nowadays) compete on a more
level playing ground. So why should the French bend over backwards
and "correct" it by law??
Slashdot Mirror
The second is that as usual, the general public cannot be made to care about this unless we strip the question down to its (nontechnical) essentials.
Let's do ourselves a favor. Forget all our beloved jargon (TCP/IP, p2p, FTP, usenet, freenet, etc.), concentrate on something like simply email -- which people know about, care for and roughly understand --, and publically ask Senators Hollings and Stevens elementary questions like this:
Thanks for the reply. I may, indeed, not be following the FSF output closely enough
But my impression is that the goal is not to force anyone into anything (how?...), only to produce a Free alternative for those who prefer things that way. Since a free OS can run proprietary apps, you still have the choice to publish your creations in binary form only...
I find this a recurrent theme around here, this idea that somehow people are being "forced" to give up what belongs to them. "Would you share your credit card info?", we are asked. Hell no! There is still room for secrets, trade serets, anything you want. But it's up to you to keep them!
Same with file sharing: whe Lars complains about people trading mp3s of private sessions, I say watch your own backyard and use engineers who don't leak them in the first place!
It's still your choice to release your stuff anyway you want, or not at all - like jazzman Freddie Keppard in 1917 chose to never record, for fear that others would steal his music. If you release stuff in a digital world, then there are consequences, but it's not like anyone is hiding them from you, is it?
Nothing in the GPL "takes away that feedom" from you. From the GPL FAQ:
Seems like a reasonable trade-off for the right to use the (unmodified) source in the first place, no?
What's disturbing is that not only you (if sincere) are buying into that FUD, but so is the Washington Post article (the following is so misconstrued it sounds almost like Craig Mundie):
as well as another one two days ago (from a widely read French daily that should know better):
That's just not true.
No, no! What we need is point-1-click!
Methinks St Donald had the same idea :
dochawk@psu.edu wrote:
OK... then again, the distinction is not quite as "noncommittally geographic" as this wording suggests, is it? Not sure who first spoke in terms of this hierarchy, but I think it comes from the three states in France (first was noblesse, second clergy, then tiers-état -- the rest).
No doubt it was invoked by some well-meaning person, but like religion before, what it does is provide the ideological superstructure to colonize the world in the name of evangelizing it. Today, instead, we go around lecturing "developing" countries on democracy and human rights -- as if many of them had not been culturally and scientifically developed far before us. (Take India for one, or if you prefer, Irak = Babylon [*ducks*].)
Thus I remember, last February, a whole National Public Radio show on how the new administration intends to make Nigeria a privileged partner in Africa, because for some reason, that would be where we can expect expect "the best human-rights-and-democracy return" on our investment. All right... but as not one speaker saw fit to observe (this on NPR...), Nigeria happens to be also the largest oil producer on the continent...
The keyword here is indifference. People just no longer get their pants in a knot about anything beyond the weather, sports, the stock exchange, and whatever the current Simpson / Lewinsky / Columbine / Florida Recount psychodrama.
PSU, case in point. Tens of thousands of students there, quite a few in foreign languages or journalism I suppose, but nary a vendor of foreign newspapers around campus. You're in luck if you find the LA Times or the Washington Post at Ben & Jerry's -- that's about as exotic as it gets. Compare any European newsstand.
How does this tie in with this thread? Thus:
To the initial post, people are calmly and matter-of-factly responding that grad school just isn't a good investment for them. Very subdued response, I think, to an initial post which could be construed as inflammatory (1 flamebait moderation). But disquieting response, too, as it reveals the extent to which disinterested knowledge just isn't a value in our system.
Oh my. Parent gets a silent "overrated" mod within 3 minutes of posting (hence before it's even been "rated" by anyone). Making the "holy wars" point for me, perhaps...?
The point is, if you do get an iceBook (say, because the hardware or OS X appeal to you), then why not run Linux on it also? Why do those holy wars always have to involve exclusion?
Would be nice to have buttons 1, 2, 3 emulated by (command-)click, option-click, control-click (...thus allowing combinations) -- a bit as happens in OS X if you use XonX / XDarwin.
Has anyone managed that in Linux?
I say : As a maintenance tool for low end boxes.
(Such as, say, the old PPC I use as a gateway to the net. 3 years old, 180 MHz, 32 meg RAM.)
On such a machine, you need something to
Skipstone is nice (uses gecko and fewer gnome libs than galeon), but I found it still memory hungry and a quite bit slower than g-h-b, or legacy Netscape for Mac on the same hardware.
(The one I tried compiled against Mozilla 0.9. Although there may be good progress since, I wonder if gecko may just not be lean enough... Moz 0.9.2 is still a big memory hog on my other machine -- like 50 meg after a little browsing, where legacy Netscape would stay around 30.)
Encompass uses gtkhtml instead. Can anyone comment on it? Will it do (1), (2) and (3) above? I still need to figure out exactly what dependencies it needs to compile. Anyway, it seems promising -- see this review and some more recent news.
Actually no, it's gravity...
"All"? How about getting out of this econodroid's mindset, once in a while? No, they'll be forgotten because "companies" are not what people want to remember. We'll remember Charlie Parker, Erwin Schrödinger, Charles Chaplin, Crick & Watson,...Shakespeare is public domain, and likewise in Europe, so is any sound recording older than 50 years. This is what allows labels such as Document or Chronological Classics to systematically reissue 20th century jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, etc., from collectors' 78s onto CD.
Such documentation is invaluable to (e.g.) researchers, and we know damn well that it would not be happening if we relied on the goodwill of former copyright owners (RIAA companies, for the most part) which concentrate on much more lucrative goals.
Given that these 78s are justifiably free for anyone to publish on CD, I see absolutely no reason why anyone could not likewise distribute them on the internet. As (and so long as) the public domain grows, this makes a hell of a lot legitimate uses for p2p.
I have to assume that you disabled animated gifs... for that is how Aimster brag about precisely such a license on their homepage. ("Can't Touch This! The Aimster Service is Private and Encrypted!") While I'm part way down the comments, it would seem that a great many people are missing Aimster's irony altogether... from the linked page:
Which is not to say that (having a central server) they are immune to the "loophole in the loophole" that you point out. Freenet, on the other hand...
The proposed tax also makes tonight's headlines (and 7 articles) in Paris' major daily Libération
Here's the take of someone who lived many years on both sides of the pond. The U.S. is still a young country, and a lot remains to go through. The Constitution was ideally adapted to the early days of conquest and "Far West". Now, a dominant class has emerged and naturally attempts to perpetuate its power and transmit it to their offspring.
(Good examples of that are the way copyright extensions were bought from congress, or a whole education system where money can buy degrees.)
Western European countries are neither better nor worse, they are just older and more settled. There people have learned to fight for their freedom in the face of economic oppression, obtain things like free education, and another kind of equilibrium has been reached. Some things you may consider "rampant socialism" in these countries may ultimately happen here as well -- when a strong enough majority deems it necessary.
Unless of course, Europe sells itself out in the name of "globalization"...
Please moderate this up! Also #212. I think they're the ones getting it. Why everyone took it, instead, as a signal to start and beat a "French paranoia" straw man, is beyond me.
It's not about "cultural exception". (Except, perhaps, to the extent they would invoke it to defend this bill in European Court. But what a strange argument that would be! This is a law that allows Hollywood to have it their way.)
It's not about that 6 or 9 months theatre-to-video delay, either. In the U.S., copyright holders seem good enough to enforce themselves whatever delay they see fit.
To DVD Zone system is meant for something else -- a (now artificial) delay between continents so that, among others, the PR steamroller can take one country after another.
They can't have Sharon Stone do all magazines and talk shows in L.A. and Paris and Barcelona at the same time. If anything, this circumstance might have helped Euro movies (most of which are co-produced in France nowadays) compete on a more level playing ground. So why should the French bend over backwards and "correct" it by law??
Unofficial and Preliminary Results
Note: Write-ins are manually tabulated, and will be reported at a later date.
T he page to watch. As of 3:53 AM the difference is back up to 2,210 votes:
Bush 2,904,198 (20 minutes ago: 2,898,864)
Gore 2,902,988 (20 minutes ago: 2,898,235)
99.9% counted
It's Napster eating Harvard's bandwidth...
Valenti: I'm not sure -- I've heard the term, but I really don't know what it means.
This is probably online somewhere, so if anybody knows a link, please post it.
It's here.