Here's why the porn industry doesn't like it - because porn spam is ready made for people with "impulse control problems." They don't really care if you, person with reasonable self-control, deletes their spam, as it cost them whatever ridiculous fraction of a cent to send. They really don't like it if Mr. self-recognized porno compulsive can filter their stuff out.
"Saved?" Don't get me wrong, I found the prequels to be pale imitations of the original, um, first two... Basically following the downward trend of RoTJ. But what does Lucas care? He doesn't exhibit the least sense that he's making shoddy movies dressed up in ridiculously baroque special effects, he's making a fortune, it all gets marketed up the yin-yang, he's beloved by little children and most of the hardcore nerds just think they're okay... and hell, what can I say - I'll be ponying up my 10+ bucks to be dissapointed yet again sometime around mid-June '05, just like freaking last time. Nothing to fix there - at least from the perspective of them as are paying for it. And their perspective is all that matters.
From the AdTI website: " AdTI's Kenneth Brown reviews the origins and development of Linux -- in light of repeated expressions of contempt for intellectual property rights by Torvalds and some (but by no means all) open source programmers." (emphasis added).
I don't have to read the book -particularly after reading Tanenbaum's very convincing presentation that the author doesn't know dick about intellectual property, not to mention he was basically lying about writing a book about the history of Unix, when it is clear his notion from the get go was to write a book titled "SCO is telling the truth about Linux - Really!" The quote above makes it clear that rather than bother to, oh, find some actual copyrighted code in Linux that is stolen, he is arguing the stellar logic that: 1) Open source advocates are contemptuous of copyright law 2) People who are contemptuous of copyright law are plagiarists 3) The people who wrote Linux are open source advocates...
Remind me what de Toqueville said about weaselly corporate shills again?
A quote from the Yahoo article -
"The report," according to Gregory Fossedal, a Tocqueville senior fellow, "raises important questions that all developers and users of open source code must face. While you cannot group all open source programmers and programs together; many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights, while others speak of intellectual property rights with open contempt." -Emphasis, again, added.
Get it? Failing evidence for any credible claim that they are actually TREATING intellectual property rights with contempt, they will note that they "speak" of them with open contempt... as if there were something wrong with that.
I fail to see how your points conflict in any way with mine. The article specifically speaks to agriculture based generation, the benefits I suggest seem valid. Your point?
On a more serious note, it sounds like a win-win. If waste-lagoons are being covered and methane tapped for energy, it stands to reason that it will reduce both potentially global-warming inducing methane releases into the atmosphere (yes, it will be released as CO or CO2 emissions eventually from combustion, but by displacing other fuels it will be a net win, and please, let's not have the conversation about whether global warming is real or not today) and reduce noxious emissions, a win for the neighbors of big farming facilities.
More and more I'm starting to wonder if an equally important factor of this is the music industry using this "piracy is killing us" excuse to justify lackluster financial performance. When you consider the markup between the commodity and the retail price, the fact that they've been convicted of price-fixing (meaning for a long time they were not even having to deal with genuine market dynamics affecting their pricing), if the "piracy" complaint is bull then there's really no excuse for them. It's vilify the dirty pirates or admit to gross incompetence. Rather than figure out how to do business properly (hint, utilize new communications technologies to figure out what's worth magaproducing rather than blowing billions on thousands of non-starters to find the one superstar, for example) they're cooking up a business model that screws the consumer even harder: my personal belief (and I've been saying this for years now) is the cherished dream of the biz is to eventually create a system where you are NEVER allowed to "own" the data comprising copyrighted material - just to "rent" it for a single use from their databases, over and over and over and over...
Well, I argued at the beginning that above and beyond the widely reported design flaws, it was just a stupid idea from the get-go. Considering how portable, say, a GBA is, and all the more relevant extras you could stuff into a phone, and how battery life is a really primary concern for phones making you not want to repurpose them for something battery-intensive, and how Nintendo has such a lock on the handheld market - a dominance they've maintained for 15 years, a pretty good feat in this business... and how it looks like you're holding a big taco up to your head talking on one... just dumb. It baffles me how a project like this ever gets green-lighted.
I don't think the fundamental issue is necessarily that someone is looking into this. It seems reasonable to me that a request for information about fundamental infrastructure merits review.
What bothers me is first the nature and thrust of the FBI's investigation - their obsession with whether he is a memeber of this UT watch, which, if you look into it, is a campus watchdog group who's stated mission is "We promote campus democracy, affordable education, and genuine access to higher education for all Texans. We resist corporate control of education, authoritarian decision-making, and misuse of public money." Reviewing their website, it seems pretty clear that they are targetted for suspician because they disseminate information questioning Department of Defense funding of univeristies and calling for a student movement for peace. There is not the slightest inclination of a hint or radicalism, call for the downfall of government, or incitement to violence or even disruption. It's just a liberal students' group. They asked if he had considered "filing a lawsuit through the American Civil Liberties Union." What the hell?
The second thing that bothers me is that he can't get an answer to how the information that he filed this information request ended up on the FBI's desk. It may be legal and appropriate for the FBI to look into this, but in that case the process of a legal action being reported to an authority and a decision being made to investigate should be open and transparent - I mean, okay, secrecy can be preserved if necessary for an open investigation but it's obvious that there is no secret this person is being investigated, so I think he has a right to know what process resulted in that decision.
But my main issue is this: news flash to the FBI: the threat to our national security is not coming from campus activism. The ACLU is not a terrorist organization. You may say better safe than sorry but I say it is exactly the opposite: in case you don't read the papers we do not have enough money, resources, or agents allocated to investigating terrorism. Every man hour spent on stupid garbage like this is one less spent on investigating credible threats. Somebody higher up the food chain needs to be slapping up texas Feddies looking for the terrorist white college boys and telling them to go do some real work.
I'm not playin' along, personally, at least as far as music is concerned. Other media... well, there are a lot of variables. But with tunes at least, between used CDs and legally free stuff freaky artists make available online and indies who aren't bothering with this DRM stuff, and new pay-per content through outfits like bitpass who offer unrestricted files, I certainly don't need any of this junk. About twenty times, thinking of some song I have a fondness for, I've thought, what the hell, I'll just hit the iTunes store, shell out a buck... and every time I hit that paragraph about the "Plus Generous Personal Use Rights" - and I just have to say no. I define my personal use rights... and they say, among other things, that I don't have to repurchase songs when they need to move to their sixth new computer home. Just say no, they'll get the point eventually.
Yeah, but only here in the home of the brave circa 2004 can you get arrested and prosecuted for breaking it, regardless of whether you intend to do something illegal with the data when you do, thanks to our incompentent legislature canonizing prior restraint into the consitution with the DMCA.
I wouldn't presume to argue the legality of this for people outside Russia. I have no idea. I'll continue my policy of trying not to purchase or access new copies of copyrighted materials unless I'm confident they are sold with the approval of the copyright owner or their agent. I would be curious to know if copyright owners are getting anything back from these sales.
The primary interest in this to me is how it points out the growing gap between the major content conglomerates' business models and the reality of what they're producing. We all know the prices on CDs are ridiculously high compared to their production costs - one or two dollars versus ten or twenty, very very roughly. With online it has become even more ridiculous - pennies to deliver the data versus a dollar or more to buy a song. Yet Apple tells us it can't make money.
The lesson I wish was being learned here is that we have entered the age where a recording contract with a major label is like a huge freaking albatross around your neck. The reason Apple can't make money on iTunes is because between the cumbersome necessity of verification and the enormous skim the labels are demanding there's nothing left over - bringing the ridiculous situation where they can't make money selling data transfers of say 3-10 MB for a buck.
The labels are indeed to blame but I personally don't want to rectify the situation by finding a way to get their stuff for free or extra cheap. I'd much rather see artists realize that they don't need the labels anymore, they just need some technical help and better organized consumers. Just as anyone can now go and pay someone a pretty nominal amount to burn CDs in bulk with whatever data they want on them, anyone can now go and pay an even more nominal fee per bit to have someone serve whatever data they want on demand. Screw Russia, go hit http://www.bitpass.com and check the music offerings - songs for pennies. That's a real revolution, my friends.
I think this story is most liklely bunk, there certainly is nothing particularly compelling about the "evidence" that there's anything to be found where they're looking... but the snark about faking photographs seems gratuitous and sort of stupid.
I think you misconstrue the basic principle of being truly disgustingly rich. Any average dozen garden-variety millionaires can buy what the like without much considering the consequences, always insist on the best, and force all their friends to constantly muse over what to get the (wo)man who has everything. But there comes a point where the only direction to go is from unecessary consumption to downright ridiculous consumption. The fact that it's useless and stupid is the point - it highlights wealth at such a gross level that discernment itself is frowned upon as an annoying habit of the hoi polloi.
The really stupid ones are the ones who can't afford it but buy it anyway - the kind of person who leases a Bentley.
Well it's gotta be said (and someone I guess needs to coin some Godwin equivalent) - but yeah, you know, I'd rather they put their citizen serving energies into, oh, I don't know, catching fucking terrorists?
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I agree that excess noise is not signal, and the idea that something is more authentic because it's showing the age and limitations of its media is very questionable. I think it is true though that many methods of eliminating noise also end up eliminating some of the signal. I have a number of early CDs with relatively noise free but unfortunately flat, lifeless recordings that don't sound half as good as an old LP, scratches and all.
But it seems like the methods for this are getting better and better. You're always walking a line, I think, when you start "extrapolating" information, and the more damaged a recording, the more of this you end up doing. It's all artifice in the end, I guess, but it does get you into interesting territory about recording... once it becomes digital it becomes totally fungible and who's to say what it "really" sounds like?
Slashdot Mirror
dude, loving yourself IS your impulse control problem.
Here's why the porn industry doesn't like it - because porn spam is ready made for people with "impulse control problems." They don't really care if you, person with reasonable self-control, deletes their spam, as it cost them whatever ridiculous fraction of a cent to send. They really don't like it if Mr. self-recognized porno compulsive can filter their stuff out.
"Saved?" Don't get me wrong, I found the prequels to be pale imitations of the original, um, first two... Basically following the downward trend of RoTJ. But what does Lucas care? He doesn't exhibit the least sense that he's making shoddy movies dressed up in ridiculously baroque special effects, he's making a fortune, it all gets marketed up the yin-yang, he's beloved by little children and most of the hardcore nerds just think they're okay... and hell, what can I say - I'll be ponying up my 10+ bucks to be dissapointed yet again sometime around mid-June '05, just like freaking last time. Nothing to fix there - at least from the perspective of them as are paying for it. And their perspective is all that matters.
"They could have called it Attack of the Clones II
yeah, thank God scientists are around to tell me why I'm vibrating head to toe after a grande of the Starbucks dark roast.
"active camoflage" - pfft - I can TOTALLY see that guy.
I don't have to read the book -particularly after reading Tanenbaum's very convincing presentation that the author doesn't know dick about intellectual property, not to mention he was basically lying about writing a book about the history of Unix, when it is clear his notion from the get go was to write a book titled "SCO is telling the truth about Linux - Really!" The quote above makes it clear that rather than bother to, oh, find some actual copyrighted code in Linux that is stolen, he is arguing the stellar logic that:
1) Open source advocates are contemptuous of copyright law
2) People who are contemptuous of copyright law are plagiarists
3) The people who wrote Linux are open source advocates...
Remind me what de Toqueville said about weaselly corporate shills again?
A quote from the Yahoo article -
"The report," according to Gregory Fossedal, a Tocqueville senior fellow, "raises important questions that all developers and users of open source code must face. While you cannot group all open source programmers and programs together; many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights, while others speak of intellectual property rights with open contempt." -Emphasis, again, added.
Get it? Failing evidence for any credible claim that they are actually TREATING intellectual property rights with contempt, they will note that they "speak" of them with open contempt... as if there were something wrong with that.
I think it says something that the link to "Accomplishments" at the AdTI website is broken... (see here)
Paypal Deals Blow To Freenet
Am I the only one who read this and tried to figure out how it was that Paypal was selling cocaine to Freenet?
I fail to see how your points conflict in any way with mine. The article specifically speaks to agriculture based generation, the benefits I suggest seem valid. Your point?
On a more serious note, it sounds like a win-win. If waste-lagoons are being covered and methane tapped for energy, it stands to reason that it will reduce both potentially global-warming inducing methane releases into the atmosphere (yes, it will be released as CO or CO2 emissions eventually from combustion, but by displacing other fuels it will be a net win, and please, let's not have the conversation about whether global warming is real or not today) and reduce noxious emissions, a win for the neighbors of big farming facilities.
Manure-Powered Generators On The Rise
Is "generator" really an accurate name for political campaigns?
More and more I'm starting to wonder if an equally important factor of this is the music industry using this "piracy is killing us" excuse to justify lackluster financial performance. When you consider the markup between the commodity and the retail price, the fact that they've been convicted of price-fixing (meaning for a long time they were not even having to deal with genuine market dynamics affecting their pricing), if the "piracy" complaint is bull then there's really no excuse for them. It's vilify the dirty pirates or admit to gross incompetence. Rather than figure out how to do business properly (hint, utilize new communications technologies to figure out what's worth magaproducing rather than blowing billions on thousands of non-starters to find the one superstar, for example) they're cooking up a business model that screws the consumer even harder: my personal belief (and I've been saying this for years now) is the cherished dream of the biz is to eventually create a system where you are NEVER allowed to "own" the data comprising copyrighted material - just to "rent" it for a single use from their databases, over and over and over and over...
Well, I argued at the beginning that above and beyond the widely reported design flaws, it was just a stupid idea from the get-go. Considering how portable, say, a GBA is, and all the more relevant extras you could stuff into a phone, and how battery life is a really primary concern for phones making you not want to repurpose them for something battery-intensive, and how Nintendo has such a lock on the handheld market - a dominance they've maintained for 15 years, a pretty good feat in this business... and how it looks like you're holding a big taco up to your head talking on one... just dumb. It baffles me how a project like this ever gets green-lighted.
What bothers me is first the nature and thrust of the FBI's investigation - their obsession with whether he is a memeber of this UT watch, which, if you look into it, is a campus watchdog group who's stated mission is "We promote campus democracy, affordable education, and genuine access to higher education for all Texans. We resist corporate control of education, authoritarian decision-making, and misuse of public money." Reviewing their website, it seems pretty clear that they are targetted for suspician because they disseminate information questioning Department of Defense funding of univeristies and calling for a student movement for peace. There is not the slightest inclination of a hint or radicalism, call for the downfall of government, or incitement to violence or even disruption. It's just a liberal students' group. They asked if he had considered "filing a lawsuit through the American Civil Liberties Union." What the hell?
The second thing that bothers me is that he can't get an answer to how the information that he filed this information request ended up on the FBI's desk. It may be legal and appropriate for the FBI to look into this, but in that case the process of a legal action being reported to an authority and a decision being made to investigate should be open and transparent - I mean, okay, secrecy can be preserved if necessary for an open investigation but it's obvious that there is no secret this person is being investigated, so I think he has a right to know what process resulted in that decision.
But my main issue is this: news flash to the FBI: the threat to our national security is not coming from campus activism. The ACLU is not a terrorist organization. You may say better safe than sorry but I say it is exactly the opposite: in case you don't read the papers we do not have enough money, resources, or agents allocated to investigating terrorism. Every man hour spent on stupid garbage like this is one less spent on investigating credible threats. Somebody higher up the food chain needs to be slapping up texas Feddies looking for the terrorist white college boys and telling them to go do some real work.
Can I live in your world? I mean, seriously - do you have a happy love filter on your internet connection, or do you just not get around much?
I'm not playin' along, personally, at least as far as music is concerned. Other media... well, there are a lot of variables. But with tunes at least, between used CDs and legally free stuff freaky artists make available online and indies who aren't bothering with this DRM stuff, and new pay-per content through outfits like bitpass who offer unrestricted files, I certainly don't need any of this junk. About twenty times, thinking of some song I have a fondness for, I've thought, what the hell, I'll just hit the iTunes store, shell out a buck... and every time I hit that paragraph about the "Plus Generous Personal Use Rights" - and I just have to say no. I define my personal use rights... and they say, among other things, that I don't have to repurchase songs when they need to move to their sixth new computer home. Just say no, they'll get the point eventually.
Yeah, but only here in the home of the brave circa 2004 can you get arrested and prosecuted for breaking it, regardless of whether you intend to do something illegal with the data when you do, thanks to our incompentent legislature canonizing prior restraint into the consitution with the DMCA.
The primary interest in this to me is how it points out the growing gap between the major content conglomerates' business models and the reality of what they're producing. We all know the prices on CDs are ridiculously high compared to their production costs - one or two dollars versus ten or twenty, very very roughly. With online it has become even more ridiculous - pennies to deliver the data versus a dollar or more to buy a song. Yet Apple tells us it can't make money.
The lesson I wish was being learned here is that we have entered the age where a recording contract with a major label is like a huge freaking albatross around your neck. The reason Apple can't make money on iTunes is because between the cumbersome necessity of verification and the enormous skim the labels are demanding there's nothing left over - bringing the ridiculous situation where they can't make money selling data transfers of say 3-10 MB for a buck.
The labels are indeed to blame but I personally don't want to rectify the situation by finding a way to get their stuff for free or extra cheap. I'd much rather see artists realize that they don't need the labels anymore, they just need some technical help and better organized consumers. Just as anyone can now go and pay someone a pretty nominal amount to burn CDs in bulk with whatever data they want on them, anyone can now go and pay an even more nominal fee per bit to have someone serve whatever data they want on demand. Screw Russia, go hit http://www.bitpass.com and check the music offerings - songs for pennies. That's a real revolution, my friends.
I think this story is most liklely bunk, there certainly is nothing particularly compelling about the "evidence" that there's anything to be found where they're looking... but the snark about faking photographs seems gratuitous and sort of stupid.
If I win you can even borrow the gold medal for bar hopping every other weekend.
The really stupid ones are the ones who can't afford it but buy it anyway - the kind of person who leases a Bentley.
Oh, sorry, did I get here late?...
Well it's gotta be said (and someone I guess needs to coin some Godwin equivalent) - but yeah, you know, I'd rather they put their citizen serving energies into, oh, I don't know, catching fucking terrorists?
But it seems like the methods for this are getting better and better. You're always walking a line, I think, when you start "extrapolating" information, and the more damaged a recording, the more of this you end up doing. It's all artifice in the end, I guess, but it does get you into interesting territory about recording... once it becomes digital it becomes totally fungible and who's to say what it "really" sounds like?