An mp3 can be copied any number of times with no loss of quality. Third generation bootleg tapes sound awful. The effort to copy an mp3 for someone else is negligible whereas dubbing an album to tape takes time and care.
With mp3 it is no trouble to copy the song for millions of people you don't know. Therefore the damage to the artist's sales is potentially much greater.
If the artists lose $5 a week to tape trading and $50000 to mp3s, does that count as a difference?
How can pirates make a profit on a $3 disc. For this price they can press up the disc, print the packaging (substandardly...), distribute, store it, sell it and make a tidy profit for all involved?
When we buy a disc over here where do the other $13 (nearer $17 in the uk) go? Granted the sales tax is probably more, and the costs of production might be higher (except that the music industry can produce on a larger scale than any pirate) Surely this means that someone is making or wasting around $10 per cd sold!!!!
Offspring sound OK and they're pretty fun live - but their music is fairly derivative. Their main success comes from bringing an eMpTyV marketing ethic to a sound that originated with much more creative bands. The bands that did it first did it better and deserve your money more than the offspring. Try picking up music by Bad Religion, The Descendents or maybe some Dead Kennedys stuff. If you want something punk but a little louder and faster then try some NYHC like Sick of it All or Agnostic Front. +++++
If the truth is spoken by a fool then it is still the truth. If I hadn't credited the quote would you have bothered with this senseless response? +++++
Man has the right to live by his own law -- to live in the way that he wills to do: to work as he will: to play as he will: to rest as he will: to die when and how he will.
Man has the right to eat what he will: to drink what he will: to dwell where he will: to move as he will on the face of the earth.
Man has the right to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mold, build as he will: to dress as he will.
Man has the right to love as he will.
Man has the right to kill those who thwart those rights.
--The Equinox: A journal of Scientific Illuminism, 1922 (edited by Aleister Crowley)
Any person or document that tells you otherwise is attempting to infringe and erode your rights. If you decide to abide by it, fine. If you decide to ignore all laws and rules of your society and country then you are within your rights.
If he edited the article submission script to automatically mirror any pages and images the article directly linked to then it would make the load slacken off a lot
I guess he'd have to get in touch with a site admin before duplicating any of their content, but otherwise I can't see any problems - this probably wouldn't be necessary for the.com stories. It would enhance/. for the readers and stop other people's servers being squashed. +++++
This is why most unix systems don't include . in your PATH. Unless you've helpfully short-circuited this security precaution then you have to type./ls to run a bogus local version of ls. +++++
Yeah but as an average person you don't need to build a credit card transaction system. Online processing dosn't really force the user to care about encryption except having an https url prefixed to the site.
The discussion isn't about who builds the cryptographic system, just about who uses it. The encrypted material created in an e-commerce transaction is generated by your browser before leaving your computer. If you sent illegal encrypted material to an online forum that was hosted with https (perhaps a version of slashdot for neo-nazis...or a website for paranoid yet harmless flower arrangers) then you would be creating information, encrypting it, and sending it somewhere. You might be liable for prosecution under these or similar laws for using a system implemented by somebody else.
Also a really, really, really, big assumption. Not everyone will be online. And ceternally not everyone will need cryptography. This still dosn't invalidate my argument.
Bet you 5 bucks that over 70% of both US and English populations are online within 20 years. Most of them are going to try buying stuff on line, and probably more than half of them will find some reason to do it regularly. The more people get on the web the cheaper and easier it will be to do so. People are eager to buy cheaper goods with wider choice and many companies can supply those demands better through the internet.
Oh yeah - if I win the bet I'll buy you a clue. You need it. +++++
Because you might want to order stuff on-line? People (especially those in card companies) really care about credit card fraud. Encrypting your card number before you send it is the most pragmatic way to prevent financial loss and the hassles of cancelling your card etc.
Besides, most people now assume that an actual internet connection is soon going to be as ubiquitous as electricity or water supply is today. Cryptography will be useful for everyone and should therefore be available and adequately strong. +++++
About 5 years ago I was trekking in Himachal Pradesh -- one of the bits of india up near the himalayas. I was surprised to see that some of the small villages (just a few muddy huts) had a satellite dish like the one on the death star....
Moral: Even if you live in the indian himalayas your kids'll still be able to skip school and watch jerry springer at a friends house. +++++
Nail an all weather line printer on everyone's gatepost. That way computer-phobes can read e-mail, and the post office can send a guy round every morning to fill it with paper:) +++++
Someone had to be first, but it doesn't mean they can hog the whole arena. The whole thing is just so blindingly obvious nobody else thought there was a race on.
Where is the idea in using cookies for identifying a repeat visitor? That's what cookies were meant for.....
I think this case is a little more complex than a link to static information would be. Bidder's Edge could be constantly spidering all the changing auctions on e-bay in order to provide their service -- it could cost ebay more than the increase in sales the links create.
Deep-linking to a book on amazon is a completely different issue. Anyone following the link is likely to be interested in buying, and the only time there is a load on amazon's servers is when the potential buyer visits. With spidering the ebay server could be visited many more times than the increased sales would warrant. If many people took BE's position they could almost mount a denial of service attack on ebay. Ebay's hosting costs would rise and sales drop because of server load. Bidder's Edge and their ilk make a buck at ebay's expense.
In addition, sales through bidder's edge would bypass any advertising that ebay targets for people browsing it's sites - this could be an issue even if bidder's edge aren't spidering.
Bidder's Edge could provide their service by running a query on multiple auction sites on behalf of the user. That way there is only a demand on ebay when a potential buyer is interested - both parties should be happy unless they still want to fight over ads. Unfortunately this solution would be slightly slower for a user of Bidder's edge, so they may have chosen to make ebay foot the bill for their service instead of their customers.
1) You open your home directory by clicking the desktop icon. You drag some files around, then open some other application. A few minutes later, when you close the other application, your home directory window has disappeared. You click the desktop icon again and there is a new file with a dead-smiley-face icon, labeled "core."
Isn't there potential to waste a lot of diskspace with these things? On a machine with multiple accounts and a fair bit of memory - say a school classroom workstation with 30 pupil accounts - then you couldn't you easily fill the disk with a 256mb or more core file in each home dir?
Extending the line of logic, we should demand ending all wars (basis: loss of potential) and redistribution of wealth to third world countries (who knows how many geniuses are lost to malnutrition, disease, insufficient education...).
That is exactly what we should demand, or at the very least what we should aim for. It makes for the most pragmatic use of the worlds resources. As a race we should help each other achieve what we can, rather than holding other people back to further our own causes.
There is nothing wrong (or right) with the demands as such; it's just that basing them on the premise of unknown talent that just might, conceivably, exist or come to exist somewhere isn't a sound argument.
Venture Capital companies make their money solely by investing in areas with potential - there must be some sense behing their policies. I'm not sure I advocate the forced redistribution of wealth - but I think it makes sense to voluntarily invest in the people around you. If you make the world a better place then you get to live in one.
This is going to be the new art in future, HIDING INFORMATION
Actually, its a really old art. It's called STEGANOGRAPHY. I think it is named after some ancient greek (Steganos?) -- probably a general.
Mulder's masking tape cross signal is a good example. The sender and receiver must be the only people to know about the message for it to be secure.
You can already get programs (I think SCRAMDISK is one - haven't used it) that hide text inside images. Unless this approach is combined with some more conventional form of cryptography (involving a key) the only security is afforded by nobody knowing which images contain the messages.
After all his freedom of information and "buffy for all" speeches why is katz turning round and suggesting we need to implement some kind of self-censorship project?
I have yet to encounter a novice Windows user who even knows about the "add/remove software" panel.
Fair point. I don't think windows has a particularly intuitive interface or consistant metaphors and I agree that the "add/remove" dialog doesn't really work properly once you do find it.
I do think that a single, simple way of installing and removing programs is a good thing. It should have a simple interface, and be standard for all programs. It should be a consistant part of the desktop environment rather than a different procedure for each application.
Most well behaved applications use "installshield" which keeps track of all files installed and (at least in theory) lets people remove redundant applications very easily - they don't even have to know where the files are to remove them, they can just use the "add/remove applications" dialog.
To make things simpler for the user, all installations should follow the same path and be reversible.
Who else could katz be talking about - unless he's trying to volunteer himself..... Let me guess, malda for prez, katz for spin-doctor?
Exhibit A:
The candidate of the Net would re-engineer the political website [snip] to a genuinely democratic forum that uses digital technologies to amass continuously - updated information on what citizens want their leaders to address.
Exhibit B:
He or she would bang the drums about preserving freedom online, [blah, blah] encryption, [blah] megacorporations [blah, blah, blah]. [blah, blah, blah, blah] open source and free software.
Exhibit C:
He might push for some national discussion [blah] supercomputing, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, [blah, blah, blah......]
Sorry. Please moderate this post "redundant". +++++
Anonymous cowards are scored 0 because they might be garbage - only one moderation point is needed to knock the article below the default viewing threshold. If a moderator decides that a coward's article contains something interesting it should be scored 2, as if it were a normal post moderated up by one point.
Any post actively moderated up should be scored higher than a redundant post from a logged in user.
Once the post is at 2 it should probably be treated normally.
Slashdot Mirror
A careless developer can make anything insecure whatever flavour OS it's running.
AFAIK The hotmail problems were backdoors and mistakes written into the server side programming, not the system configuration.
+++++
An mp3 can be copied any number of times with no loss of quality. Third generation bootleg tapes sound awful. The effort to copy an mp3 for someone else is negligible whereas dubbing an album to tape takes time and care.
With mp3 it is no trouble to copy the song for millions of people you don't know. Therefore the damage to the artist's sales is potentially much greater.
If the artists lose $5 a week to tape trading and $50000 to mp3s, does that count as a difference?
+++++
How can pirates make a profit on a $3 disc. For this price they can press up the disc, print the packaging (substandardly...), distribute, store it, sell it and make a tidy profit for all involved?
When we buy a disc over here where do the other $13 (nearer $17 in the uk) go? Granted the sales tax is probably more, and the costs of production might be higher (except that the music industry can produce on a larger scale than any pirate) Surely this means that someone is making or wasting around $10 per cd sold!!!!
+++++
If you credited his work then it would probably just end up bringing a few more hits to slashdot.
+++++
Offspring sound OK and they're pretty fun live - but their music is fairly derivative. Their main success comes from bringing an eMpTyV marketing ethic to a sound that originated with much more creative bands. The bands that did it first did it better and deserve your money more than the offspring. Try picking up music by Bad Religion, The Descendents or maybe some Dead Kennedys stuff. If you want something punk but a little louder and faster then try some NYHC like Sick of it All or Agnostic Front.
+++++
If the truth is spoken by a fool then it is still the truth. If I hadn't credited the quote would you have bothered with this senseless response?
+++++
Any person or document that tells you otherwise is attempting to infringe and erode your rights. If you decide to abide by it, fine. If you decide to ignore all laws and rules of your society and country then you are within your rights.
+++++
If he edited the article submission script to automatically mirror any pages and images the article directly linked to then it would make the load slacken off a lot
.com stories. It would enhance /. for the readers and stop other people's servers being squashed.
I guess he'd have to get in touch with a site admin before duplicating any of their content, but otherwise I can't see any problems - this probably wouldn't be necessary for the
+++++
...to reward an anonymous tip off with a free t-shirt????
+++++
This is why most unix systems don't include . in your PATH. Unless you've helpfully short-circuited this security precaution then you have to type ./ls to run a bogus local version of ls.
+++++
Yeah but as an average person you don't need to build a credit card transaction system. Online processing dosn't really force the user to care about encryption except having an https url prefixed to the site.
The discussion isn't about who builds the cryptographic system, just about who uses it. The encrypted material created in an e-commerce transaction is generated by your browser before leaving your computer. If you sent illegal encrypted material to an online forum that was hosted with https (perhaps a version of slashdot for neo-nazis...or a website for paranoid yet harmless flower arrangers) then you would be creating information, encrypting it, and sending it somewhere. You might be liable for prosecution under these or similar laws for using a system implemented by somebody else.
Also a really, really, really, big assumption. Not everyone will be online. And ceternally not everyone will need cryptography. This still dosn't invalidate my argument.
Bet you 5 bucks that over 70% of both US and English populations are online within 20 years. Most of them are going to try buying stuff on line, and probably more than half of them will find some reason to do it regularly. The more people get on the web the cheaper and easier it will be to do so. People are eager to buy cheaper goods with wider choice and many companies can supply those demands better through the internet.
Oh yeah - if I win the bet I'll buy you a clue. You need it.
+++++
Because you might want to order stuff on-line? People (especially those in card companies) really care about credit card fraud. Encrypting your card number before you send it is the most pragmatic way to prevent financial loss and the hassles of cancelling your card etc.
Besides, most people now assume that an actual internet connection is soon going to be as ubiquitous as electricity or water supply is today. Cryptography will be useful for everyone and should therefore be available and adequately strong.
+++++
About 5 years ago I was trekking in Himachal Pradesh -- one of the bits of india up near the himalayas. I was surprised to see that some of the small villages (just a few muddy huts) had a satellite dish like the one on the death star....
Moral: Even if you live in the indian himalayas your kids'll still be able to skip school and watch jerry springer at a friends house.
+++++
Nail an all weather line printer on everyone's gatepost. That way computer-phobes can read e-mail, and the post office can send a guy round every morning to fill it with paper :)
+++++
Someone had to be first, but it doesn't mean they can hog the whole arena. The whole thing is just so blindingly obvious nobody else thought there was a race on.
Where is the idea in using cookies for identifying a repeat visitor? That's what cookies were meant for.....
+++++
I think this case is a little more complex than a link to static information would be. Bidder's Edge could be constantly spidering all the changing auctions on e-bay in order to provide their service -- it could cost ebay more than the increase in sales the links create.
Deep-linking to a book on amazon is a completely different issue. Anyone following the link is likely to be interested in buying, and the only time there is a load on amazon's servers is when the potential buyer visits. With spidering the ebay server could be visited many more times than the increased sales would warrant. If many people took BE's position they could almost mount a denial of service attack on ebay. Ebay's hosting costs would rise and sales drop because of server load. Bidder's Edge and their ilk make a buck at ebay's expense.
In addition, sales through bidder's edge would bypass any advertising that ebay targets for people browsing it's sites - this could be an issue even if bidder's edge aren't spidering.
Bidder's Edge could provide their service by running a query on multiple auction sites on behalf of the user. That way there is only a demand on ebay when a potential buyer is interested - both parties should be happy unless they still want to fight over ads. Unfortunately this solution would be slightly slower for a user of Bidder's edge, so they may have chosen to make ebay foot the bill for their service instead of their customers.
+++++
You still don't get it, do you? He'll find slugs. That's what he does. That's all he does!
+++++
1) You open your home directory by clicking the desktop icon. You drag some files around, then open some other application. A few minutes later, when you close the other application, your home directory window has disappeared. You click the desktop icon again and there is a new file with a dead-smiley-face icon, labeled "core."
Isn't there potential to waste a lot of diskspace with these things? On a machine with multiple accounts and a fair bit of memory - say a school classroom workstation with 30 pupil accounts - then you couldn't you easily fill the disk with a 256mb or more core file in each home dir?
+++++
Extending the line of logic, we should demand ending all wars (basis: loss of potential) and redistribution of wealth to third world countries (who knows how many geniuses are lost to malnutrition, disease, insufficient education...).
That is exactly what we should demand, or at the very least what we should aim for. It makes for the most pragmatic use of the worlds resources. As a race we should help each other achieve what we can, rather than holding other people back to further our own causes.
There is nothing wrong (or right) with the demands as such; it's just that basing them on the premise of unknown talent that just might, conceivably, exist or come to exist somewhere isn't a sound argument.
Venture Capital companies make their money solely by investing in areas with potential - there must be some sense behing their policies. I'm not sure I advocate the forced redistribution of wealth - but I think it makes sense to voluntarily invest in the people around you. If you make the world a better place then you get to live in one.
+++++
This is going to be the new art in future, HIDING INFORMATION
Actually, its a really old art. It's called STEGANOGRAPHY. I think it is named after some ancient greek (Steganos?) -- probably a general.
Mulder's masking tape cross signal is a good example. The sender and receiver must be the only people to know about the message for it to be secure.
You can already get programs (I think SCRAMDISK is one - haven't used it) that hide text inside images. Unless this approach is combined with some more conventional form of cryptography (involving a key) the only security is afforded by nobody knowing which images contain the messages.
+++++
After all his freedom of information and "buffy for all" speeches why is katz turning round and suggesting we need to implement some kind of self-censorship project?
Censor yourself to stay sane!!!
+++++
I have yet to encounter a novice Windows user who even knows about the "add/remove software" panel.
Fair point. I don't think windows has a particularly intuitive interface or consistant metaphors and I agree that the "add/remove" dialog doesn't really work properly once you do find it.
I do think that a single, simple way of installing and removing programs is a good thing. It should have a simple interface, and be standard for all programs. It should be a consistant part of the desktop environment rather than a different procedure for each application.
+++++
Most well behaved applications use "installshield" which keeps track of all files installed and (at least in theory) lets people remove redundant applications very easily - they don't even have to know where the files are to remove them, they can just use the "add/remove applications" dialog.
To make things simpler for the user, all installations should follow the same path and be reversible.
+++++
CMDRTACO for president!
Who else could katz be talking about - unless he's trying to volunteer himself..... Let me guess, malda for prez, katz for spin-doctor?
Exhibit A:
The candidate of the Net would re-engineer the political website [snip] to a genuinely democratic forum that uses digital technologies to amass continuously - updated information on what citizens want their leaders to address.
Exhibit B:
He or she would bang the drums about preserving freedom online, [blah, blah] encryption, [blah] megacorporations [blah, blah, blah]. [blah, blah, blah, blah] open source and free software.
Exhibit C:
He might push for some national discussion [blah] supercomputing, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, [blah, blah, blah......]
Sorry. Please moderate this post "redundant".
+++++
I think this makes sense.
Anonymous cowards are scored 0 because they might be garbage - only one moderation point is needed to knock the article below the default viewing threshold. If a moderator decides that a coward's article contains something interesting it should be scored 2, as if it were a normal post moderated up by one point.
Any post actively moderated up should be scored higher than a redundant post from a logged in user.
Once the post is at 2 it should probably be treated normally.
+++++