I don't think anyone really cared very much.
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Wired on Kipling
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· Score: 1
I mean, the only reason anyone cared at all is because they were deliberately confusing the meaning of the word "hacker" with the definition of the word "cracker". I mean, they have some text on their site defining the word "hacker" that has the precise definition of "cracker" with "hacker" pasted in front. The main reason people were annoyed is that they don't like to be associated with crackers. So, a Wired article talking about the pathetic cracking skills of people who aren't crackers anyway is pretty stupid. I mean, what's the point? So Kipling's security wasn't breached by anyone. Well, big deal, why would anyone need to breach their security anyway? The actual encoding of the username and password is freely available from the javascript on the page, so there's no need to break the security. True, someone might get around actually figuring out the username and password by breaking into their server and simply finding the url that's encrypted, but most Slashdotters aren't really interested in breaking security. I really, really don't understand what that Wired guy was going on about. As for the people at Kipling:
"The game challenges every pirate out there to break into our security and win a Hacker bag,"
Aside from being inaccurate since there's really no need to break their security at all to win the contest, they now confuse the definition of the term "pirate" too. "Pirate" is a term coined by the computer industry to demonize people who copy their software without permission. It's something completely different from either a hacker or a cracker. Sure, it's actually a better analogy for breaking security than it is for copying software, but to paraphrase Larry Lein, executive vice president of Kipling, USA "[pirate] is the term in common parlance". Of course, Kiplings indifference to how real hackers define the term demonstrates who their real market is. They're not selling to real hackers, they're selling to B1FF, the kewl D00d or whatever. Their market is people who've seen movies like "the net" or "hackers" and think that that's what a hacker is.
You can't just use "a very large number of" monkeys and typewriters. That doesn't provide any certainty. The point about the _infinite_ number of monkeys is that the chances that you won't get the complete works of Shakespeare drop to zero. Even if you had enough monkeys and typewriters to have three hundred quadrillion to one odds that you'd get the complete works of Shakespeare, there's still a chance that you won't.
Infinity is not a number, it's a mathematical concept. You can't actually get an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters together. Your example about a nonterminating, nonrepeating decimal doesn't really apply with monkeys and typewriters. In fact, since you didn't even type out your example number all the way, I can't even be sure that it will never contain the digits 42. For all I can tell from what you show, the equation the number you give is based on could be: (some equation that generates a nonterminating, nonrepeating decimal with only the digits 0 and 1, with one more 0 being added between the ones each time) + 4.2*10^-56 or something else along those lines. In any case, it's silly to say that the monkey and typewriter thing might not work because there might be some restriction on what the monkeys can type. Obviously there will be some chance that the monkeys will press any given key. Whatever the chance may be that a monkey will not press a given key, it approaches zero as the number of monkeys at work approaches infinity. So, at infinity, which is attainable in a thought experiment, there really is zero chance that a given character that can be typed will be typed. Also, whatever the chance that Shakespeares entire works will be produced, with an infinite number of monkeys, they will be produced. Sure, the ratio of gibberish to complete works will redefine enormous, but that's not the point. In fact, the revised editions, total rewrites, modern retellings, etc. will probably dwarf the complete works. Of course, you'll still have an infinite number of complete works.
The Heart of Gold, as I'm sure you know, used an infinite improbability drive. The thing about the infinite number of monkeys predates the Hitchhikers Guide and is a very famous thought experiment regarding probability. The point is that if you have either an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly and/or an infinite amount of time for them to work in, they will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare. Adams was parodying that, and demonstrating some of the working principles of the ship at the same time. There was a funny story based on the monkey idea by R.A. Lafferty titled "Been a Long, Long Time". It was about a seraph who was punished with indecision by being given the responsibility of overseeing six monkeys typing randomly to produce the complete works of Shakespeare. To keep time, the seraph was given a clock, made from a cubic parsec of solid stone and a bird that would come to sharpen its beak every thousand years. If you want to read the story, it's published in the Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy.
I remember reading somewhere that the Edsel didn't sell because the front grille resembled part of the female anatomy. Of course, that might just be one of those myths that builds up in an industry.
For one thing, Slashdot isn't really a Linux site. It covers other things. Sure Linux stories have a good representation here, but there's lots of other stuff. You can just edit out what you're not interested in. You can do this in your head, or you can use Slashdot's new features, and the site will (hopefully) do it for you.
She was on some sort of board with someone important at IBM. I think it might have been the chairman. Anyway, Bill had connections with IBM through his wealthy family for sure.
I think it is pretty important to point out here that Bill Gates has always been rich. He's always had money. His family has been well of for years before Microsoft. I remember reading that, when he was born, his grandfather set up a million dollar trust fund for him. He attended a prestigious prep school, then Harvard. Many of his classmates, who were also rich by no effort of their own, have ended up in very important and lucrative positions. Sure, they probably had talent as well as money, but they wouldn't have gotten to where they are now on just the talent. So, I would have to say that people like Bill Gates were lucky to be born rich.
Sorry to butt in here with something fairly irrelevant to the conversation, but you did it first (nyah nyah:P). Isn't "math" short for "mathematics"? Isn't it "mathematics" instead of "mathematic" because it's plural, what with there being many different branches of study in mathematics. So, is it unreasonable to make an abbreviated form of the word "mathematics" plural? It seems to me that saying "maths" is actually more correct than saying "math". By the way, I'm fully aware that many, many people say "math", but that doesn't neccessarily make it right. Wide usage does make it acceptable to use, and will probably eventually probably push out other forms of the word as acceptable, but no need for that right now hmmm? It's kind of like the term "hacker". The way things are going, it will eventually be officially incorrect to call yourself a hacker if you don't maliciously break computer security as a hobby. At the moment, it's just de facto incorrect among most of the population to use hacker the way I prefer to use it.
Well, yes, their patent may not only be on the data, that's true. But, as I understand it, and I admit I'm no audio expert, their results are basically a set of ranges and special conditions that occur in recorded sounds that most people don't even hear. I would consider those ranges to be natural measurements, and I don't really see how anyone can disagree on that point. And as you point out, their patent isn't technically on that data, because a patent has to be on a process or invention of some kind. I have not seen Fraunhofer's patent, but I imagine it boils down to: "discard these particular ranges from a sound stream". In other words, any set of data can be turned into a set of instructions as anyone who has ever taken a computer science course should know. If that's not how Fraunhofer's patent goes, and we really are open to make our own alternative, well then, I won't worry, and I agree that there's nothing wrong with rewarding them for their efforts (although I do get the feeling that they pulled a bit of a gif: i.e., they waited until a format using their technique had become widely used and many applications were available to encode it before swooping down with licensing terms). But, if that is the way that their patent goes, then what they are doing is theft from the public domain. Yes, they worked hard to steal the use of that information from all of us, but that doesn't make it right. They don't deserve it any more than a bank robber who has planned for months deserves to succeed at the first national. All of that aside, I don't really feel that software patents are moral anyway. Until fairly recently, they weren't even legal. As it is, it seems that the US patent office is handing the things out hand over foot without any decent quality control or regard to the damage that may be done. I, for one, do not like to be made to wait twenty years to use an idea or technique that should belong to everyone.
Well, yes. But, if you've patented the shape of this ideal chair, isn't that pretty much the same thing as patenting the data? I mean, the data is freely available, it's just that no-one can use it.
Cryo-something, I can't remember the name. They make computers with really, really good cooling systems and overclock the processor. Their customers know exactly what they are getting.
Although I think only two of them are used by the GSM modems. There's some sort of GSM booster box thingie replacing the spare tire that makes this possible.
Once again: Free Beer/Free Speech
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Linux on CNN
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· Score: 1
I'm not going to cover the same points that others have about how the time spent on Linux is more of an investment than a waste. I am going to point out, for the thousandth time (honest, really, I'm counting, would I lie?) that the "Free" in free software does not mean gratis. There's an often used analogy: Free Speech vs. Free Beer. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. Which is not to say that Linux is not also available gratis. That the software is available gratis (Free Beer) is a side effect inseperable from the fact that it is free (as in free speech). Some people claim that since you don't get the net bandwidth or the cd, or whatever other medium you use to obtain Linux, for free, Linux is therefore not gratis. That's ridiculous. As an example, let's say that someone is giving away free christmas trees. Just because they don't also transport the tree to your home, set it up, decorate it, and then come back after Christmas and remove it for you doesn't mean that the tree was not gratis. The same thing applies to time spent on Linux as well, it may be that you can add it to total cost of ownership, but that doesn't make it non-free.
Sorry, I couldn't tell if you were doing a Borg impression or a Dalek impression. Actually, it always seemed to me that the Borg dialogue was lifted straight from the Daleks dialogue with "exterminated" replaced with "assimilated".
But I don't see my comment here now. Either it's a bug, or I just forgot to hit the submit button. Anyhow, I have two things to say about your assertion that Fraunhofer has every right to do what it does. The first is that Fraunhofer has at least partial public funding. The rest of its funds come from contract research, where most of the contracts belong to public entities. So, if the perceptual encoding research is paid by public money, why are royalties required to use the research? The other thing I have to point out is that under any sane system of patent laws, and in fact even under the insane ones like the US uses, natural measurements are not patentable. Patenting natural measurements is essentially what Fraunhofer has done here. You evidently agree with me on that, which is why I'm confused about the way you seem to think that an Open Source alternative can be made. The patent stops anyone, even if they do the same research all over again, or make up their own research method, from using the results that Fraunhofer got. If Fraunhofer's results are not flawed, then no-one will get different results than thos Fraunhofer got, and they will not be able to use their results. So, in my opinion, this is a patent that should never have been granted since it's a flagrant violation of patent standards. Also, even if the patent is only on use of such data in a sound compression scheme, then it's also unreasonable, since that's not "non-obvious". In fact, that's about the only obvious use of such data.
I don't care how much it cost them to get the results, natural measurements are not patentable. You can't patent the speed of light, you can't patent the range of colors that human beings can see, so why should you be able to patent the range of sounds that human beings can hear? It makes no sense, it's unethical, and it should be illegal. The fact that they hold a patent on this data means that no-one can use this data even if they gather it themselves, because, provided the data is valid, anyone else doing the same thing will record the same data within a certain error rate. Perhaps they could use some sort of compilation copyright, although that's really, really iffy, but there is no way they should be allowed a patent on this stuff. I can't say that enough times. Your analogy about star maps doesn't work because, in that situation, I'm allowed to gather the same data myself. Would it be reasonable to say that I'm not allowed to make my own star maps from my own collected data just because someone else has done it first? No, of course it wouldn't be reasonable, just like Fraunhofer's patent isn't reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the people at Kipling:
Aside from being inaccurate since there's really no need to break their security at all to win the contest, they now confuse the definition of the term "pirate" too. "Pirate" is a term coined by the computer industry to demonize people who copy their software without permission. It's something completely different from either a hacker or a cracker. Sure, it's actually a better analogy for breaking security than it is for copying software, but to paraphrase Larry Lein, executive vice president of Kipling, USA "[pirate] is the term in common parlance".
Of course, Kiplings indifference to how real hackers define the term demonstrates who their real market is. They're not selling to real hackers, they're selling to B1FF, the kewl D00d or whatever. Their market is people who've seen movies like "the net" or "hackers" and think that that's what a hacker is.
You can't just use "a very large number of" monkeys and typewriters. That doesn't provide any certainty. The point about the _infinite_ number of monkeys is that the chances that you won't get the complete works of Shakespeare drop to zero.
Even if you had enough monkeys and typewriters to have three hundred quadrillion to one odds that you'd get the complete works of Shakespeare, there's still a chance that you won't.
Infinity is not a number, it's a mathematical concept. You can't actually get an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters together.
Your example about a nonterminating, nonrepeating decimal doesn't really apply with monkeys and typewriters. In fact, since you didn't even type out your example number all the way, I can't even be sure that it will never contain the digits 42. For all I can tell from what you show, the equation the number you give is based on could be: (some equation that generates a nonterminating, nonrepeating decimal with only the digits 0 and 1, with one more 0 being added between the ones each time) + 4.2*10^-56 or something else along those lines.
In any case, it's silly to say that the monkey and typewriter thing might not work because there might be some restriction on what the monkeys can type. Obviously there will be some chance that the monkeys will press any given key. Whatever the chance may be that a monkey will not press a given key, it approaches zero as the number of monkeys at work approaches infinity. So, at infinity, which is attainable in a thought experiment, there really is zero chance that a given character that can be typed will be typed. Also, whatever the chance that Shakespeares entire works will be produced, with an infinite number of monkeys, they will be produced. Sure, the ratio of gibberish to complete works will redefine enormous, but that's not the point. In fact, the revised editions, total rewrites, modern retellings, etc. will probably dwarf the complete works. Of course, you'll still have an infinite number of complete works.
The Heart of Gold, as I'm sure you know, used an infinite improbability drive. The thing about the infinite number of monkeys predates the Hitchhikers Guide and is a very famous thought experiment regarding probability. The point is that if you have either an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly and/or an infinite amount of time for them to work in, they will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare. Adams was parodying that, and demonstrating some of the working principles of the ship at the same time.
There was a funny story based on the monkey idea by R.A. Lafferty titled "Been a Long, Long Time". It was about a seraph who was punished with indecision by being given the responsibility of overseeing six monkeys typing randomly to produce the complete works of Shakespeare. To keep time, the seraph was given a clock, made from a cubic parsec of solid stone and a bird that would come to sharpen its beak every thousand years. If you want to read the story, it's published in the Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy.
I remember reading somewhere that the Edsel didn't sell because the front grille resembled part of the female anatomy. Of course, that might just be one of those myths that builds up in an industry.
For one thing, Slashdot isn't really a Linux site. It covers other things. Sure Linux stories have a good representation here, but there's lots of other stuff. You can just edit out what you're not interested in. You can do this in your head, or you can use Slashdot's new features, and the site will (hopefully) do it for you.
She was on some sort of board with someone important at IBM. I think it might have been the chairman. Anyway, Bill had connections with IBM through his wealthy family for sure.
I think it is pretty important to point out here that Bill Gates has always been rich. He's always had money. His family has been well of for years before Microsoft. I remember reading that, when he was born, his grandfather set up a million dollar trust fund for him. He attended a prestigious prep school, then Harvard. Many of his classmates, who were also rich by no effort of their own, have ended up in very important and lucrative positions. Sure, they probably had talent as well as money, but they wouldn't have gotten to where they are now on just the talent. So, I would have to say that people like Bill Gates were lucky to be born rich.
Sorry to butt in here with something fairly irrelevant to the conversation, but you did it first (nyah nyah :P). Isn't "math" short for "mathematics"? Isn't it "mathematics" instead of "mathematic" because it's plural, what with there being many different branches of study in mathematics. So, is it unreasonable to make an abbreviated form of the word "mathematics" plural?
It seems to me that saying "maths" is actually more correct than saying "math". By the way, I'm fully aware that many, many people say "math", but that doesn't neccessarily make it right. Wide usage does make it acceptable to use, and will probably eventually probably push out other forms of the word as acceptable, but no need for that right now hmmm? It's kind of like the term "hacker". The way things are going, it will eventually be officially incorrect to call yourself a hacker if you don't maliciously break computer security as a hobby. At the moment, it's just de facto incorrect among most of the population to use hacker the way I prefer to use it.
Actually, it's supposed to be "He's over there." before the "Splitter!"
Well, yes, their patent may not only be on the data, that's true. But, as I understand it, and I admit I'm no audio expert, their results are basically a set of ranges and special conditions that occur in recorded sounds that most people don't even hear. I would consider those ranges to be natural measurements, and I don't really see how anyone can disagree on that point. And as you point out, their patent isn't technically on that data, because a patent has to be on a process or invention of some kind. I have not seen Fraunhofer's patent, but I imagine it boils down to: "discard these particular ranges from a sound stream". In other words, any set of data can be turned into a set of instructions as anyone who has ever taken a computer science course should know. If that's not how Fraunhofer's patent goes, and we really are open to make our own alternative, well then, I won't worry, and I agree that there's nothing wrong with rewarding them for their efforts (although I do get the feeling that they pulled a bit of a gif: i.e., they waited until a format using their technique had become widely used and many applications were available to encode it before swooping down with licensing terms). But, if that is the way that their patent goes, then what they are doing is theft from the public domain. Yes, they worked hard to steal the use of that information from all of us, but that doesn't make it right. They don't deserve it any more than a bank robber who has planned for months deserves to succeed at the first national.
All of that aside, I don't really feel that software patents are moral anyway. Until fairly recently, they weren't even legal. As it is, it seems that the US patent office is handing the things out hand over foot without any decent quality control or regard to the damage that may be done. I, for one, do not like to be made to wait twenty years to use an idea or technique that should belong to everyone.
Well, yes. But, if you've patented the shape of this ideal chair, isn't that pretty much the same thing as patenting the data? I mean, the data is freely available, it's just that no-one can use it.
to the Popular Group of Linux Users?
Cryo-something, I can't remember the name. They make computers with really, really good cooling systems and overclock the processor. Their customers know exactly what they are getting.
Although I think only two of them are used by the GSM modems. There's some sort of GSM booster box thingie replacing the spare tire that makes this possible.
I'm not going to cover the same points that others have about how the time spent on Linux is more of an investment than a waste. I am going to point out, for the thousandth time (honest, really, I'm counting, would I lie?) that the "Free" in free software does not mean gratis. There's an often used analogy: Free Speech vs. Free Beer. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.
Which is not to say that Linux is not also available gratis. That the software is available gratis (Free Beer) is a side effect inseperable from the fact that it is free (as in free speech). Some people claim that since you don't get the net bandwidth or the cd, or whatever other medium you use to obtain Linux, for free, Linux is therefore not gratis. That's ridiculous. As an example, let's say that someone is giving away free christmas trees. Just because they don't also transport the tree to your home, set it up, decorate it, and then come back after Christmas and remove it for you doesn't mean that the tree was not gratis. The same thing applies to time spent on Linux as well, it may be that you can add it to total cost of ownership, but that doesn't make it non-free.
Sorry, I couldn't tell if you were doing a Borg impression or a Dalek impression. Actually, it always seemed to me that the Borg dialogue was lifted straight from the Daleks dialogue with "exterminated" replaced with "assimilated".
But I don't see my comment here now. Either it's a bug, or I just forgot to hit the submit button.
Anyhow, I have two things to say about your assertion that Fraunhofer has every right to do what it does. The first is that Fraunhofer has at least partial public funding. The rest of its funds come from contract research, where most of the contracts belong to public entities. So, if the perceptual encoding research is paid by public money, why are royalties required to use the research?
The other thing I have to point out is that under any sane system of patent laws, and in fact even under the insane ones like the US uses, natural measurements are not patentable. Patenting natural measurements is essentially what Fraunhofer has done here. You evidently agree with me on that, which is why I'm confused about the way you seem to think that an Open Source alternative can be made. The patent stops anyone, even if they do the same research all over again, or make up their own research method, from using the results that Fraunhofer got. If Fraunhofer's results are not flawed, then no-one will get different results than thos Fraunhofer got, and they will not be able to use their results. So, in my opinion, this is a patent that should never have been granted since it's a flagrant violation of patent standards. Also, even if the patent is only on use of such data in a sound compression scheme, then it's also unreasonable, since that's not "non-obvious". In fact, that's about the only obvious use of such data.
I don't care how much it cost them to get the results, natural measurements are not patentable. You can't patent the speed of light, you can't patent the range of colors that human beings can see, so why should you be able to patent the range of sounds that human beings can hear? It makes no sense, it's unethical, and it should be illegal. The fact that they hold a patent on this data means that no-one can use this data even if they gather it themselves, because, provided the data is valid, anyone else doing the same thing will record the same data within a certain error rate.
Perhaps they could use some sort of compilation copyright, although that's really, really iffy, but there is no way they should be allowed a patent on this stuff. I can't say that enough times.
Your analogy about star maps doesn't work because, in that situation, I'm allowed to gather the same data myself. Would it be reasonable to say that I'm not allowed to make my own star maps from my own collected data just because someone else has done it first? No, of course it wouldn't be reasonable, just like Fraunhofer's patent isn't reasonable.
Doesn't the RIAA get its funding from a tax imposed on all recording media and equipment? Should this be legal?