Has anyone thought about adapting one of the napster clones - like OpenNAP - for use with scientific publications?
Are you suggesting an open solution that the scientists could adopt to self-publish their future work, or a way to get around the copyrights and license fees of the existing papers? If you're talking about the former, p2p is really unnecessary to share legally published scientific works (just set up a website.) If it's the latter, then maybe it's an idea... Albeit, not a terrifically legal one, and I can't see anyone going to the trouble of OCRing all the documents and setting it up, considering the small demand for many journals and their availability in libraries. I'm particularly curious how far these journals would go to crack down on illegal bootlegging?
Another system that would work, or possibly even better, would be to take something like SlashCode or Zope
That'd be a neat project. But would probably have to be a lot more sophisticated... Maybe a little bit more like SourceForge. It'd be an interesting project for a group of universities to tackle-- I wouldn't count on writing the code yourself and convincing anyone to actually use it, though.
> I meant can I send you a compressor and several compressed files whose
> total file size is less than the original uncompressed file and from
> which I can regenerate the original uncompressed file
>
> Patrick
Sure -- but you send me a *decompressor*, I don't need the compressor.
Sure means Sure. As far as I can tell this is acceptance of Patrick's request. As Mike is the guy inventing the rules, I don't see why this wouldn't be binding.
Companies have too much to gain by keeping Patent/IP laws the way they are. If you can get a patent on something, you can selectively put down your competition. Generally corporations are willing to license the really stupid stuff to non-threatening corporations at relatively low prices (see Amazon and Apple, with One-Click, for example.) But when a competitor (Barnes & Noble) comes along, they can flog them into submission with lawsuits.
Not to mention that the patent office only searches their own database for prior art. So even if it was published and used by a million people, it's perfectly likely that the PO'll miss it.
They're finally taking some steps to initiate peer-review and extended searches, but a lot of damage has already been done.
ecstacy, is striking hardest in white, middle class areas where drug addiction and the downwards spiral was previously unknown.
Then why does the government continue to strike hardest at poor, minority neighborhoods?
The end of the war on drugs will come when the gov't puts enough of a cramp in white, middle class voters lives that it triggers a significant backlash. Then it'll go the way of the prohibition. Most governments know this, so they do everything they can to tone down enforcement among that group (crack laws vs. cocaine laws, for instance.) Since supply-side restrictions appear to be a disaster, those middle class kids will continue to buy Ecstacy and others will continue to die for it.
I had acquaintances in high school were into inhaling butane. Godawful stupid thing to do, obviously. But apparently it was "psychologically addictive" enough to keep them at it, and god knows what sort of damage they were doing to themselves (or what they could have done with a poorly timed match-strike.)
But it's entirely legal, and it simply proves the point that stupid people will find a way to fuck themselves up (in every sense) no matter how many laws you pass.
I agree. What I was really looking for was a comparison of the performance of the languages (how fast is byte-code vs. the interpreted languages), how much overhead do the runtimes take up. And particularly, how do the packages available to the different languages compare, especially for database access.
While I know the answers to a couple of these questions, I would have liked to see a really thorough side-by-side comparison (at least of performance.) Anyone know of anything like this?
Market domination. Not yet, of course. But they're already including this in DVD-Audio and presumably it could be included in future technologies. It just takes a few simple licensing agreements between a few major hardware manufacturers and the Music Industry to insure that the next generation of CD/DVD/?? players include these features (ala CSS.)
Essentially, once the RIAA has something they trust, they patent the hell out of it and license it to some big hardware companies, who can either play along and get a big share of a new market-- or not play along and get left behind (with already paper-thin margins on audio equipment, where's the choice?) Because the standards are proprietary and patented (and protected by the DMCA and its ilk), content-producers can license it to whomever they please, wielding the power of life and death over manufacturers (who are, unfortunately, in an industry with actual competition.) Forget about anti-trust, this is a legally sanctioned cartel.
So don't get worried yet. Wait til your current CD players aren't working so well and most new music is being released in some other format (remember Betamax?)
This means the RIAA still gets to drag someone into court and wage a legal war of attrition, while the defense are argued. That's very, very, expen$$$ive.
Princeton's got enough money to fight them, if they've got the will. It would seem to be a worthwhile fight, as the DMCA could theoretically cause them (and other universities) an enormous amount of grief over the coming years (which could theoretically translate into enormous compliance costs.)
What are you talking about? These folks managed to hold every single one of their conferences in some exotic location like Florence or Hawaii, all at company expense. I would say they're quite clever, really.
So what if they never quite got any decent work done?
Um, what planet have you been living on? Napster announced their plans months ago. None of it's been implemented yet, but it's part of their deal with Bertelsman.
I was under the impression that "encryption research" was specifically excepted under the DMCA anti-circumvention clause. Does this letter take that into account? I would love to see this go to court, even though today's (apparently bought and paid for) federal courts give me little reason for optimism.
The only problem is that Napster now controls the format on the receiving end of the download (ie, it's not going to be a straight MP3, it'll be something protected.) It's a little harder to descramble when the file is encrypted and you don't control the player.
Most likely this will be cracked as well, but until then, scrambling the files isn't not quite as easy as it seems.
As was said in the above replies, it's probably a failing of C that it allows you to use the undelimited form. However, that hunk of C code will still have the same meaning even if some moron checks it out on their Win2000 box and screws up all the indentation while using Notepad.
The python code, on the other hand... Well, anything could happen to those indentations. Not to mention that it's a whole lot easier to accidentally hit/fail-to-hit a tab key then to skip a pair of curly braces (not that it's unheard of, of course)
Code from the above example should REQUIRE some comments explaining what x and y are and why they are being changed.
Regardless of how well labeled/commented the code is, a complex program is tougher to debug when you have to carefully read through every comment to determine whether there's been a (probably text-editor related) indentation mistake.
Agh, can you imagine debugging something like an MPEG encoder that way?
As far as I'm concerned, the indentation issue is a non-starter
I have yet to use Python, and reading about this issue has made me a little bit nervous about starting.
One of the more irritating problems I encounter when sharing code between Windows and Unix machines (not to mention various text editors) is the inconsistent indentation. This is mostly due to bad text editors interpreting tabs differently. A few CVS checkins later, code can look like it was hit with a shotgun blast. Now this is basically cosmetic with C and Java, but from what you're saying it could be fatal for Python code. Am I mistaken?
I agree that the concept of tightly-controlled Intellectual Property (ie, you can't even look at it without permission) doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But my feelings come from the belief that such models simply aren't sustainable in a world full of machines specifically designed to copy information.
Arguments that intellectual property shouldn't exist are as arbitrary as arguments that it should. The only thing that matters is what can be sustained, and unfortunately for the industries that make their money off of controlled, copyrighted content, such control is destined to evaporate.
Last I checked, @home was at least partially owned by AT&T and ran on most (if not all) of its cable networks. If they were afraid of Telcos, one would assume that they'd go after a different service, like Road Runner.
What will happen is that Tivo-like services will move into the cable head-end. You won't have to pay to buy a box or spend time hooking it up, it'll just come with your cable service (for a small extra charge, possibly.) There'll be customized ad-insertion and restrictions on forwarding through the commercials, of course. Perhaps for another extra charge, you'll be able to opt out of some/all of the commercials.
It really should be the TV networks wet dream, but they're a little slow to catch onto things. For one thing, their business model is heavily reliant on the time-slot in which a program airs. Their advertisers won't pay the same rates if people are watching time-shifted ER at 4am, even though this seems to me to be quite silly. At some point they'll be profiling the hell out of you anyway, so this will all work out.
You can use Tivo without the listing service. Just buy the box and don't sign up for the service, there's no requirement that you do so. No need to hook up the phone line or pay the outrageous monthly fees. You won't get the guides, which really does suck, but if you're looking for a slightly more capable VCR with pause/rewind of live TV, then you're all set.
I don't believe in taking societal regulation out of the picture. I merely favor allowing rational adults to make adult decisions
I like decisions too. Unfortunately, we don't always get the opportunity to make them. Every time you get on a plane, the airline company gains personal information about you. Even if they don't sell this, it's not impossible for somebody to get hold of it. You can pay cash, but by law you cannot hide your identity. If your privacy is important, the only adult choice is not to fly. Ok, well that really sucks and it's not the way I'd choose to have things in our country, but hey, there are alternatives like Amtrak. At present, Amtrak allows you to pay cash and travel semi-anonymously (although the fact that you paid cash raises a big red flag, which can result in your being searched and having your property confiscated, according to the articles posted in this thread.) However, there's no reason Amtrak, Greyhound and the other half-dozen national transportation agencies couldn't begin requiring ID just like the airlines. Even toll booths are becoming automated.
So you value your privacy and you don't fly. You don't take the train, or the bus. This is your adult "decision", to stay home. Now this really sucks, as we live in a big country and there are lots of reasons we need to travel. But you have a place to live and food to eat, so really all you're suffering is a decreased quality of life. Eventually it's possible that other important services could refuse to accept cash (mail order and e-commerce sites are a glimpse of this.) Want your privacy, but you also want to buy groceries? Do you really have a decision here? Of course not, your privacy eventually has to slip away; most people will give up long before this point, of course.
If you're wondering why privacy is so important, wait a decade or two. Even today there's always the devastating possibility of identity theft-- it's relatively easy for people to get hold of enough personal information to get you in a lot of trouble. If somebody could gain access to your up-to-date travel movements, burglary could become a science. And all that aside, I believe our government simply shouldn't be watching our every movement.
True personal liberty would allow a corporation to sell any information to any entity at any price
A lot of people are hung up on the idea that getting rid of all regulation ensures true personal liberty. That's just not true. When there's only one person in the whole world, that person has true personal liberty. As soon as you introduce another, that person's liberty is curtailed. The nature of society is such that we must give up certain liberties in order to survive together. Radical ideas like Anarco-Syndicalism attempt to push the limits as far as they will go, but they don't abolish the restrictions on your person, they just exchange them for new ones.
When I hear someone tell me that taking gov't out of the picture is going to increase personal liberty, I get worried for that person's sanity. Individuals, corporations and juntas are as capable of limiting others' personal liberty as is any state or federal government. If there are three airlines and one train company, can you really say that you have the freedom to travel anywhere you want without being monitored? Or to make things even more extreme, if every transaction you make is monitored or limited by some entities, do you really have personal freedom? What, you're not going to travel? Not going to eat?
The reason we live with governments is that they seem to be the only way to fairly balance the impositions we put on each other. That they fail much of the time seems to be a given. That they often become corrupt is another problem we just have to cope with. But don't fool yourself into thinking that taking societal regulation out of the picture is going to create any sort of personal freedom; it'll just create new oppressors.
So.. apple releases OS X for x86 and becomes a major software company as WELL as a hardware company.
Sure, but now your average Mac user has to figure out that PPC Mac applications don't run on X86 and vice versa. So we've got MacOS/PPC and MacOS/X86. Maybe some software publishers build their wares as some sort of Fat application, maybe they don't. Then maybe Apple builds emulators into the OS, everything gets cruddy and confusing and the whole world bails and learns Windows 2000.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you suggesting an open solution that the scientists could adopt to self-publish their future work, or a way to get around the copyrights and license fees of the existing papers? If you're talking about the former, p2p is really unnecessary to share legally published scientific works (just set up a website.) If it's the latter, then maybe it's an idea... Albeit, not a terrifically legal one, and I can't see anyone going to the trouble of OCRing all the documents and setting it up, considering the small demand for many journals and their availability in libraries. I'm particularly curious how far these journals would go to crack down on illegal bootlegging?
Another system that would work, or possibly even better, would be to take something like SlashCode or Zope
That'd be a neat project. But would probably have to be a lot more sophisticated... Maybe a little bit more like SourceForge. It'd be an interesting project for a group of universities to tackle-- I wouldn't count on writing the code yourself and convincing anyone to actually use it, though.
> total file size is less than the original uncompressed file and from
> which I can regenerate the original uncompressed file
>
> Patrick
Sure -- but you send me a *decompressor*, I don't need the compressor.
Sure means Sure. As far as I can tell this is acceptance of Patrick's request. As Mike is the guy inventing the rules, I don't see why this wouldn't be binding.
Why compete when you don't have to?
They're finally taking some steps to initiate peer-review and extended searches, but a lot of damage has already been done.
Then why does the government continue to strike hardest at poor, minority neighborhoods?
The end of the war on drugs will come when the gov't puts enough of a cramp in white, middle class voters lives that it triggers a significant backlash. Then it'll go the way of the prohibition. Most governments know this, so they do everything they can to tone down enforcement among that group (crack laws vs. cocaine laws, for instance.) Since supply-side restrictions appear to be a disaster, those middle class kids will continue to buy Ecstacy and others will continue to die for it.
But it's entirely legal, and it simply proves the point that stupid people will find a way to fuck themselves up (in every sense) no matter how many laws you pass.
While I know the answers to a couple of these questions, I would have liked to see a really thorough side-by-side comparison (at least of performance.) Anyone know of anything like this?
Market domination. Not yet, of course. But they're already including this in DVD-Audio and presumably it could be included in future technologies. It just takes a few simple licensing agreements between a few major hardware manufacturers and the Music Industry to insure that the next generation of CD/DVD/?? players include these features (ala CSS.)
Essentially, once the RIAA has something they trust, they patent the hell out of it and license it to some big hardware companies, who can either play along and get a big share of a new market-- or not play along and get left behind (with already paper-thin margins on audio equipment, where's the choice?) Because the standards are proprietary and patented (and protected by the DMCA and its ilk), content-producers can license it to whomever they please, wielding the power of life and death over manufacturers (who are, unfortunately, in an industry with actual competition.) Forget about anti-trust, this is a legally sanctioned cartel.
So don't get worried yet. Wait til your current CD players aren't working so well and most new music is being released in some other format (remember Betamax?)
Princeton's got enough money to fight them, if they've got the will. It would seem to be a worthwhile fight, as the DMCA could theoretically cause them (and other universities) an enormous amount of grief over the coming years (which could theoretically translate into enormous compliance costs.)
What are you talking about? These folks managed to hold every single one of their conferences in some exotic location like Florence or Hawaii, all at company expense. I would say they're quite clever, really.
So what if they never quite got any decent work done?
Um, what planet have you been living on? Napster announced their plans months ago. None of it's been implemented yet, but it's part of their deal with Bertelsman.
I was under the impression that "encryption research" was specifically excepted under the DMCA anti-circumvention clause. Does this letter take that into account? I would love to see this go to court, even though today's (apparently bought and paid for) federal courts give me little reason for optimism.
The only problem is that Napster now controls the format on the receiving end of the download (ie, it's not going to be a straight MP3, it'll be something protected.) It's a little harder to descramble when the file is encrypted and you don't control the player.
Most likely this will be cracked as well, but until then, scrambling the files isn't not quite as easy as it seems.
The python code, on the other hand... Well, anything could happen to those indentations. Not to mention that it's a whole lot easier to accidentally hit/fail-to-hit a tab key then to skip a pair of curly braces (not that it's unheard of, of course)
Regardless of how well labeled/commented the code is, a complex program is tougher to debug when you have to carefully read through every comment to determine whether there's been a (probably text-editor related) indentation mistake.
Agh, can you imagine debugging something like an MPEG encoder that way?
I have yet to use Python, and reading about this issue has made me a little bit nervous about starting.
One of the more irritating problems I encounter when sharing code between Windows and Unix machines (not to mention various text editors) is the inconsistent indentation. This is mostly due to bad text editors interpreting tabs differently. A few CVS checkins later, code can look like it was hit with a shotgun blast. Now this is basically cosmetic with C and Java, but from what you're saying it could be fatal for Python code. Am I mistaken?
Arguments that intellectual property shouldn't exist are as arbitrary as arguments that it should. The only thing that matters is what can be sustained, and unfortunately for the industries that make their money off of controlled, copyrighted content, such control is destined to evaporate.
Last I checked, @home was at least partially owned by AT&T and ran on most (if not all) of its cable networks. If they were afraid of Telcos, one would assume that they'd go after a different service, like Road Runner.
It really should be the TV networks wet dream, but they're a little slow to catch onto things. For one thing, their business model is heavily reliant on the time-slot in which a program airs. Their advertisers won't pay the same rates if people are watching time-shifted ER at 4am, even though this seems to me to be quite silly. At some point they'll be profiling the hell out of you anyway, so this will all work out.
You can use Tivo without the listing service. Just buy the box and don't sign up for the service, there's no requirement that you do so. No need to hook up the phone line or pay the outrageous monthly fees. You won't get the guides, which really does suck, but if you're looking for a slightly more capable VCR with pause/rewind of live TV, then you're all set.
I like decisions too. Unfortunately, we don't always get the opportunity to make them. Every time you get on a plane, the airline company gains personal information about you. Even if they don't sell this, it's not impossible for somebody to get hold of it. You can pay cash, but by law you cannot hide your identity. If your privacy is important, the only adult choice is not to fly. Ok, well that really sucks and it's not the way I'd choose to have things in our country, but hey, there are alternatives like Amtrak. At present, Amtrak allows you to pay cash and travel semi-anonymously (although the fact that you paid cash raises a big red flag, which can result in your being searched and having your property confiscated, according to the articles posted in this thread.) However, there's no reason Amtrak, Greyhound and the other half-dozen national transportation agencies couldn't begin requiring ID just like the airlines. Even toll booths are becoming automated.
So you value your privacy and you don't fly. You don't take the train, or the bus. This is your adult "decision", to stay home. Now this really sucks, as we live in a big country and there are lots of reasons we need to travel. But you have a place to live and food to eat, so really all you're suffering is a decreased quality of life. Eventually it's possible that other important services could refuse to accept cash (mail order and e-commerce sites are a glimpse of this.) Want your privacy, but you also want to buy groceries? Do you really have a decision here? Of course not, your privacy eventually has to slip away; most people will give up long before this point, of course.
If you're wondering why privacy is so important, wait a decade or two. Even today there's always the devastating possibility of identity theft-- it's relatively easy for people to get hold of enough personal information to get you in a lot of trouble. If somebody could gain access to your up-to-date travel movements, burglary could become a science. And all that aside, I believe our government simply shouldn't be watching our every movement.
Add to that the massive amounts of money slung around by Copyright holders, and it becomes even less likely that things are going to change.
A lot of people are hung up on the idea that getting rid of all regulation ensures true personal liberty. That's just not true. When there's only one person in the whole world, that person has true personal liberty. As soon as you introduce another, that person's liberty is curtailed. The nature of society is such that we must give up certain liberties in order to survive together. Radical ideas like Anarco-Syndicalism attempt to push the limits as far as they will go, but they don't abolish the restrictions on your person, they just exchange them for new ones.
When I hear someone tell me that taking gov't out of the picture is going to increase personal liberty, I get worried for that person's sanity. Individuals, corporations and juntas are as capable of limiting others' personal liberty as is any state or federal government. If there are three airlines and one train company, can you really say that you have the freedom to travel anywhere you want without being monitored? Or to make things even more extreme, if every transaction you make is monitored or limited by some entities, do you really have personal freedom? What, you're not going to travel? Not going to eat?
The reason we live with governments is that they seem to be the only way to fairly balance the impositions we put on each other. That they fail much of the time seems to be a given. That they often become corrupt is another problem we just have to cope with. But don't fool yourself into thinking that taking societal regulation out of the picture is going to create any sort of personal freedom; it'll just create new oppressors.
They launch rockets occasionally, they're just unmanned. They could potentially lie about the purpose of the launch in order to get someone up there.
Sure, but now your average Mac user has to figure out that PPC Mac applications don't run on X86 and vice versa. So we've got MacOS/PPC and MacOS/X86. Maybe some software publishers build their wares as some sort of Fat application, maybe they don't. Then maybe Apple builds emulators into the OS, everything gets cruddy and confusing and the whole world bails and learns Windows 2000.