... where 75% of narrowband surfers are tied to an ISP that charges them a fortune for the priviledge of handing out their confidential information to anyone who asks, where the government censors citizens' net access, where innovation is smothered by a patent, copyright and legal system that ensures that access to lawyers, not conformance with laws, decides right from wrong, where private corporations use government money to perform global control of the internet by fiat and decree, where...
Yeah, I'd hate to live in a foreign country like the USA. Those guys have seriously lost the plot.
The problem was not in the law, but in the legal system itself.
Darn right. Step 1, award reasonable legal costs to the winner in clear cut cases that only reached court because of the obstinacy of defendants. Makes the Big Guy a little more likely to be the first to blink in the pre-trial game of chicken. Seems to work OK in the UK.
Depends on how big the statuatory damages in DMCA are, and whether there's any scope for punative damages as well. Any ideas?
As an aside, in the UK courts very often awards the winner their legal costs in the settlement, meaning that Little Guys with a clear cut case can bring suits much more confidently. Anyone know how prevalant this is outside the USA?
Monsanto is to Microsoft what the Borg are to Dr. Evil
Kudos to Matt Groening for mentioning this en passant in Futurama; Monsanto, along with AOL, are one of his year 3000 survivors.
I'm with you there. So far, we've only managed to do "minor" damage to the planet, i.e. nuking bits of it, poking holes in the ozone, and giving lube jobs to the occasional coastline. We can recover from that, given time. But Monsanto can wreck the entire biosphere. For ever. For short term profit. Let's just hope that they're really are smart as they think they are.
Have you seen the WinME install? Splash after splash of grinning little kids, grinning old folks, grinning gentlemen of colour, and grinning ladies of all sorts. IIRC, there's only one image of an actual computer purchaser (i.e. a pasty faced 20-30ish bloke), but, hey, at least he's doing the M$ grin.
Might this be just a tad bit embellished for the reporter's sake?
Bwah ha ha. The "reporter" is just running free advertising for Dan Clements of AdCops, who's fevered imagination is responsible for this piece of tosh. "Evil thieves everywhere! Only Dan can protect you! Won't someone think of the children?!"
The scary bit is that it actually looks like it was written by a clueless reporter, not someone who should have at least an inkling of how to write a plausible story. But bear in mind that it's fright fiction written for the benefit of purchasing execs, and it becomes clear why it's so risible.
Which we're due for anyway. Considering that we've already raped all the easily accessible fossil and mineral resources and we just can't seem to get the hang of re-use or recycling, I can't be alone in thinking that if we don't get off this planet before the next ice age hits (Coming To a Generation Near You!), then our little monkey race is going back to the trees.
He even advocates "must-carry" rules, also in the form of links, for even the most highly partisan websites, designed to ensure that viewers learn about opposing views
And is he volunteering to decide what view, overt or hidden, a forum is pushing, and what consitutes an opposing view, and what links best represent that opposing view? Or does he at least propose an oversight mechanism for deciding who watches the online watchmen?
Slashdot has already answered that question. We're all watchmen, and we all watch the watchmen. Seems to be working OK.;)
You could do a lot worse than looking for disgruntled games programmers. They tend to be talented, highly motivated, interested in science, flexible, badly paid, and are often sick to death of being treated like dirt.
Offer a sexy project, a decent environment, some toys, plenty of caffiene, then stand well back and watch the results roll in.
This is about re-writing history, not about trademarks per se. The original license explicitely allowed use of the SSH name as long as the derived protocol fully conformed to the specification. It was the attempt to retroactively withdraw that license and prang the existing good faith implementations of SSH that caused the furore.
Analogy: GNU licenses its logo to a T-shirt manufacturer. A million shirts are printed and sold in good faith. GNU changes its mind, tells the manufacturer that their shirts now contain illegal intellectual property, and they have to recall all the shirts, or track them all down and scribble over the logo. Insane? Exactly.
How do you produce hydrogen? [...] you need to get the energy from some place
Same place we get all of our energy from; Sol, or some older nuke furnace in the case of fission plants. Where do you think all that stored energy in petroleum came from?
One benefit of hydrogen is that it's more practical to produce it in a distributed (and idiot proof) fashion, using home solar panels / wind turbines, compared to the alternative, alcohol. Which is why the oil companies and politicos will kill it dead. I mean, can you imagine it; citizens actually producing untaxable fuel.
Actually... there's some meat for the Black Helicopter brigade. A gubmint mandated meter on all home energy production. Beyond the pale?
Sooner or later, I think, we will have a reason to try traveling through space
"Not because [it] is easy, but because [it is] hard." Cynical old bugger that I am, I still get choked up even thinking about Kennedy making that speech. Even though I know on an intellectual level that it's a carefully crafted piece of political manouvering, it touches some deep place that makes me believe that even our lazy, greedy short sighted little race can occasionally reach it's grubby monkey paw to grasp at all that is great and noble and transcendent.
Maybe someday when someone finds the funding, we'll have a space based interferometer with big mirrors and a few thousand klicks in between for a baseline
Or, better yet, we move the optics closer to the target, e.g. by a couple of light years.;)
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, but does anyone else remember the days when space exploration was something we went out and did? This story shows a smart use of limited resources, but there's only so far we can go with this approach. And I'm wondering if cheap CGI has put the nail in the space exploration coffin.
I mean, look at the headline, even on/. "Blah blah To Find Planets". When (if) the mass media picks this up, how do you think they'll want to run it? Interferometer patterns and a dry factual piece? Hahahaha. No, they'll show some swooshy CGI of a speculative alien world, while Stacey Implants gasps that scientists are on the brink of discovering alien life. Why bother to make bigger collectors when you can just upgrade your copy of 3D Studio?
I'm (semi seriously) picturing a day when NASA becomes not much more than a huge animation lab and PR machine, with a crew of "scientainers" throwing real data on a slush pile of news bite concepts. Sorry, I don't quite know how I got to Cynical City from a nice article, it's just that it's 2001, and we're still not out there!
Unfortunately, there is an abundance of prior art...
Sure! And it's neat that all you have to do to prove that is to mortage your house to pay your legal fees, hope that you don't get the mutant offspring of the Rodney King and O.J. juries, then spend years and your third mortgage on a counter-suit to recover your money.
Work should provide personal satisfaction and pride, not just a paycheck
When you find that perfect job, let me know - I'll send you my resume.
Ideally I'd make longbows for a living, but not until I've paid off my mortgage. Until then, I'll climb the corporate ladder and hope that one day I'll receive a stock offer that's worth more than the paper it's not written on.;)
Er, jedidiah, I completely agree with everything you've just said. I'm not really sure what the relevance is to what I posted though.
I agree that it would be nice if music wasn't owned by big labels, and that artists should try and retain rights and distribute their own work. If the artists that I like were to put their work online, easily available and at a reasonable price - e.g. $3 an album, which, after reasonable production costs, would still give the artist way way more than they get now - then I'd happily buy it.
The only problem with this approach is giving new artists mass market exposure. If MTV was really into the Napster thing (as they like to profess when their audience is listening) they'd give up on grossly manipulated singles sales and showcase a NapChart including new artist slots. Only they won't, because without a $5 million video, they've got nothing to show. Feel free to mail them and suggest they play new artist tracks along with a WinAmp visualisation.;)
I live in the UK and have always found the weather too cold around there...
If we could get a tropical weather that would be wonderfull!
If the latest research pulled out of a research assistant's bunghole actually turns out to be valid, the Gulf Stream's going bye-bye, and we'll end up with UK temperatures comparable to inland areas at our latitude - think Moscow.
now you're missing the difference between ozone layer and greenhouse effect.
Correct, but there's relationship the other way. An ozone hole lets more short wave UV in, which leads to more long wave IR getting trapped by the blanket.
That aside, we should legislate against those damn New World Order stooges, volcanoes. Put a punitive tax on unlicensed eruptions. Yeah, that'll show the gas and dust spewing commie sympathising bastards.
And for the millionth time: what rights does an artist signed to a major music label have? Please quote figures on the proportion of Napster featured artists who retains the intellectual property rights on their music.
The vast majority of artists sell all their legal (and moral) rights to their creations, and retain only a limited and strictly contractual right to royalties from sales of it. They don't own the music.
So, if I wasn't going to buy the music anyway (I haven't bought any music since the 1980's), then how, exactly, does the artist suffer? The legal and moral loser is the owner of the intellectual property rights - and that's MegaRecordCorp.
Now, if we're talking about artists that retain their own rights, and distribute online, then that's a different issue. But I doubt you were thinking clearly enough to be talking about that.
Yet, you take the work of musicians and distribute and use it against their expressed wished. How is this any different?
I don't think this is a troll, just a very confused question.
What the question should be is: would it be right for MegaRecordCorp to take some independent artists' MP3's off of Napster, slap a "MegaRecordCorp" sticker on them, and then try and sell them back to the artists that produced them?
While I generally agree with your comments, and with the usage of camera in general, there's a couple of points I have to take you up on.
feel safer for having [cameras] around.
Fine, but don't step out of the field of view. Cameras just move the problem around. Recorded violent street crime and public disorder offences are at an all time high in England and Wales, despite attempts to fudge the figures to the contrary. Also, AFAIK, cameras only deter property theft, not violence, so they don't really enhance your personal safety.
whilst at the same time causing no further decrease in our freedom or privacy.
That's a strange ol' definition of privacy you have there. What does privacy mean to you? It's easy to say that this extends the existing tools/powers of the police just a little, but where will you draw the line?
Specifically, face recognition. When a violent criminal face that happens to look a lot like yours goes on the list, how many times will you be prepared to be stopped or violently set upon and made to prove your identity and innocence, before you start wondering if this amazing new technology is worth the occasional "unfortunate incident". Bear in mind that there's already been a successful legal defence of "pepper spray first, ask questions later" policing in England. Ponder the situation when Joe Copper gets radioed that there's a violent and probably armed criminal standing right behind him. Dixon of Dock green approach, or Dirty Harry with a pepper spray: which will it be today?
I'm not knocking the technology per se, or the potential benefits, I'm just wondering what the cost will be in "unfortunate incidents" and a shifting in the burden of proof.
With CCTV, allegations of brutality can be more easily verified and rascist / thuggish cops thrown in jail, where they belong.
You'd certainly think that, but US precedent seem to say otherwise. Much as I hate Black Helicopter paranoia, it does seem as though we're now at the stage where riot cops are habitually wearing masks and anonymising ponchos and administering punishment beatings and gassings seemingly without fear of consequence. But then, that's always been the case - all they have to do is to marginalise the victims. Terrorists, eco freaks, militant gays, commie beatnick puppets, and Rodney King spring to mind.
When the US marines start mass marketing their nice clean invisible media safe maser scorchers, protesting is going to become a very painful business indeed.
So it tops out at 90mph, does 100 miles then takes an hour to recharge? That's cute, but it's hardly an important or even a particularly impressive alternative to gasoline.
Here's a telling quote from the spec: recombinant lead Acid [...] production battery, and replacements are readily availble at reasonable cost.
Yes, replacements. When we're dribbling on about how clean and efficient electric cars are, how come we never consider the environmental cost of making then "recycling" (== dumping) all those lead acid cells? Or mention that the energy to power them mostly comes from horrendously inefficient coil, oil or gas plants? Bah. We need to stop mucking around with these overgrown R/C toys and throw some serious money at fuel cells or even good old alcohol burners.
any kind of official unification or synchronization is just bad news.
Can you give a brief precis of why? For bonus marks, use the phrases "black helicopters", "chemtrails" and "accursed sinister foreign monkey jabbering UN devils".
Slashdot Mirror
... where 75% of narrowband surfers are tied to an ISP that charges them a fortune for the priviledge of handing out their confidential information to anyone who asks, where the government censors citizens' net access, where innovation is smothered by a patent, copyright and legal system that ensures that access to lawyers, not conformance with laws, decides right from wrong, where private corporations use government money to perform global control of the internet by fiat and decree, where...
Yeah, I'd hate to live in a foreign country like the USA. Those guys have seriously lost the plot.
The problem was not in the law, but in the legal system itself.
Darn right. Step 1, award reasonable legal costs to the winner in clear cut cases that only reached court because of the obstinacy of defendants. Makes the Big Guy a little more likely to be the first to blink in the pre-trial game of chicken. Seems to work OK in the UK.
Depends on how big the statuatory damages in DMCA are, and whether there's any scope for punative damages as well. Any ideas?
As an aside, in the UK courts very often awards the winner their legal costs in the settlement, meaning that Little Guys with a clear cut case can bring suits much more confidently. Anyone know how prevalant this is outside the USA?
Monsanto is to Microsoft what the Borg are to Dr. Evil
Kudos to Matt Groening for mentioning this en passant in Futurama; Monsanto, along with AOL, are one of his year 3000 survivors.
I'm with you there. So far, we've only managed to do "minor" damage to the planet, i.e. nuking bits of it, poking holes in the ozone, and giving lube jobs to the occasional coastline. We can recover from that, given time. But Monsanto can wreck the entire biosphere. For ever. For short term profit. Let's just hope that they're really are smart as they think they are.
Have you seen the WinME install? Splash after splash of grinning little kids, grinning old folks, grinning gentlemen of colour, and grinning ladies of all sorts. IIRC, there's only one image of an actual computer purchaser (i.e. a pasty faced 20-30ish bloke), but, hey, at least he's doing the M$ grin.
Might this be just a tad bit embellished for the reporter's sake?
Bwah ha ha. The "reporter" is just running free advertising for Dan Clements of AdCops, who's fevered imagination is responsible for this piece of tosh. "Evil thieves everywhere! Only Dan can protect you! Won't someone think of the children?!"
The scary bit is that it actually looks like it was written by a clueless reporter, not someone who should have at least an inkling of how to write a plausible story. But bear in mind that it's fright fiction written for the benefit of purchasing execs, and it becomes clear why it's so risible.
blocking out the sun and causing an ice age.
Which we're due for anyway. Considering that we've already raped all the easily accessible fossil and mineral resources and we just can't seem to get the hang of re-use or recycling, I can't be alone in thinking that if we don't get off this planet before the next ice age hits (Coming To a Generation Near You!), then our little monkey race is going back to the trees.
He even advocates "must-carry" rules, also in the form of links, for even the most highly partisan websites, designed to ensure that viewers learn about opposing views
And is he volunteering to decide what view, overt or hidden, a forum is pushing, and what consitutes an opposing view, and what links best represent that opposing view? Or does he at least propose an oversight mechanism for deciding who watches the online watchmen?
Slashdot has already answered that question. We're all watchmen, and we all watch the watchmen. Seems to be working OK. ;)
You could do a lot worse than looking for disgruntled games programmers. They tend to be talented, highly motivated, interested in science, flexible, badly paid, and are often sick to death of being treated like dirt.
Offer a sexy project, a decent environment, some toys, plenty of caffiene, then stand well back and watch the results roll in.
This is about re-writing history, not about trademarks per se. The original license explicitely allowed use of the SSH name as long as the derived protocol fully conformed to the specification. It was the attempt to retroactively withdraw that license and prang the existing good faith implementations of SSH that caused the furore.
Analogy: GNU licenses its logo to a T-shirt manufacturer. A million shirts are printed and sold in good faith. GNU changes its mind, tells the manufacturer that their shirts now contain illegal intellectual property, and they have to recall all the shirts, or track them all down and scribble over the logo. Insane? Exactly.
How do you produce hydrogen? [...] you need to get the energy from some place
Same place we get all of our energy from; Sol, or some older nuke furnace in the case of fission plants. Where do you think all that stored energy in petroleum came from?
One benefit of hydrogen is that it's more practical to produce it in a distributed (and idiot proof) fashion, using home solar panels / wind turbines, compared to the alternative, alcohol. Which is why the oil companies and politicos will kill it dead. I mean, can you imagine it; citizens actually producing untaxable fuel.
Actually... there's some meat for the Black Helicopter brigade. A gubmint mandated meter on all home energy production. Beyond the pale?
Sooner or later, I think, we will have a reason to try traveling through space
"Not because [it] is easy, but because [it is] hard." Cynical old bugger that I am, I still get choked up even thinking about Kennedy making that speech. Even though I know on an intellectual level that it's a carefully crafted piece of political manouvering, it touches some deep place that makes me believe that even our lazy, greedy short sighted little race can occasionally reach it's grubby monkey paw to grasp at all that is great and noble and transcendent.
Maybe someday when someone finds the funding, we'll have a space based interferometer with big mirrors and a few thousand klicks in between for a baseline
Or, better yet, we move the optics closer to the target, e.g. by a couple of light years. ;)
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, but does anyone else remember the days when space exploration was something we went out and did? This story shows a smart use of limited resources, but there's only so far we can go with this approach. And I'm wondering if cheap CGI has put the nail in the space exploration coffin.
I mean, look at the headline, even on /. "Blah blah To Find Planets". When (if) the mass media picks this up, how do you think they'll want to run it? Interferometer patterns and a dry factual piece? Hahahaha. No, they'll show some swooshy CGI of a speculative alien world, while Stacey Implants gasps that scientists are on the brink of discovering alien life. Why bother to make bigger collectors when you can just upgrade your copy of 3D Studio?
I'm (semi seriously) picturing a day when NASA becomes not much more than a huge animation lab and PR machine, with a crew of "scientainers" throwing real data on a slush pile of news bite concepts. Sorry, I don't quite know how I got to Cynical City from a nice article, it's just that it's 2001, and we're still not out there!
Unfortunately, there is an abundance of prior art...
Sure! And it's neat that all you have to do to prove that is to mortage your house to pay your legal fees, hope that you don't get the mutant offspring of the Rodney King and O.J. juries, then spend years and your third mortgage on a counter-suit to recover your money.
There must be a better way of doing this. :(
Work should provide personal satisfaction and pride, not just a paycheck
When you find that perfect job, let me know - I'll send you my resume.
Ideally I'd make longbows for a living, but not until I've paid off my mortgage. Until then, I'll climb the corporate ladder and hope that one day I'll receive a stock offer that's worth more than the paper it's not written on. ;)
Er, jedidiah, I completely agree with everything you've just said. I'm not really sure what the relevance is to what I posted though.
I agree that it would be nice if music wasn't owned by big labels, and that artists should try and retain rights and distribute their own work. If the artists that I like were to put their work online, easily available and at a reasonable price - e.g. $3 an album, which, after reasonable production costs, would still give the artist way way more than they get now - then I'd happily buy it.
The only problem with this approach is giving new artists mass market exposure. If MTV was really into the Napster thing (as they like to profess when their audience is listening) they'd give up on grossly manipulated singles sales and showcase a NapChart including new artist slots. Only they won't, because without a $5 million video, they've got nothing to show. Feel free to mail them and suggest they play new artist tracks along with a WinAmp visualisation. ;)
I live in the UK and have always found the weather too cold around there... If we could get a tropical weather that would be wonderfull!
If the latest research pulled out of a research assistant's bunghole actually turns out to be valid, the Gulf Stream's going bye-bye, and we'll end up with UK temperatures comparable to inland areas at our latitude - think Moscow.
now you're missing the difference between ozone layer and greenhouse effect.
Correct, but there's relationship the other way. An ozone hole lets more short wave UV in, which leads to more long wave IR getting trapped by the blanket.
That aside, we should legislate against those damn New World Order stooges, volcanoes. Put a punitive tax on unlicensed eruptions. Yeah, that'll show the gas and dust spewing commie sympathising bastards.
What'cho talkin' about, fool? We have special visors that let us see neutrino streams - from the side, even. I saw them on TV, so it must be true.
Oh... wait... that might have been Star Trek...
It's denying the rights of the artist
And for the millionth time: what rights does an artist signed to a major music label have? Please quote figures on the proportion of Napster featured artists who retains the intellectual property rights on their music.
The vast majority of artists sell all their legal (and moral) rights to their creations, and retain only a limited and strictly contractual right to royalties from sales of it. They don't own the music.
So, if I wasn't going to buy the music anyway (I haven't bought any music since the 1980's), then how, exactly, does the artist suffer? The legal and moral loser is the owner of the intellectual property rights - and that's MegaRecordCorp.
Now, if we're talking about artists that retain their own rights, and distribute online, then that's a different issue. But I doubt you were thinking clearly enough to be talking about that.
Yet, you take the work of musicians and distribute and use it against their expressed wished. How is this any different?
I don't think this is a troll, just a very confused question.
What the question should be is: would it be right for MegaRecordCorp to take some independent artists' MP3's off of Napster, slap a "MegaRecordCorp" sticker on them, and then try and sell them back to the artists that produced them?
While I generally agree with your comments, and with the usage of camera in general, there's a couple of points I have to take you up on.
feel safer for having [cameras] around.
Fine, but don't step out of the field of view. Cameras just move the problem around. Recorded violent street crime and public disorder offences are at an all time high in England and Wales, despite attempts to fudge the figures to the contrary. Also, AFAIK, cameras only deter property theft, not violence, so they don't really enhance your personal safety.
whilst at the same time causing no further decrease in our freedom or privacy.
That's a strange ol' definition of privacy you have there. What does privacy mean to you? It's easy to say that this extends the existing tools/powers of the police just a little, but where will you draw the line?
Specifically, face recognition. When a violent criminal face that happens to look a lot like yours goes on the list, how many times will you be prepared to be stopped or violently set upon and made to prove your identity and innocence, before you start wondering if this amazing new technology is worth the occasional "unfortunate incident". Bear in mind that there's already been a successful legal defence of "pepper spray first, ask questions later" policing in England. Ponder the situation when Joe Copper gets radioed that there's a violent and probably armed criminal standing right behind him. Dixon of Dock green approach, or Dirty Harry with a pepper spray: which will it be today?
I'm not knocking the technology per se, or the potential benefits, I'm just wondering what the cost will be in "unfortunate incidents" and a shifting in the burden of proof.
With CCTV, allegations of brutality can be more easily verified and rascist / thuggish cops thrown in jail, where they belong.
You'd certainly think that, but US precedent seem to say otherwise. Much as I hate Black Helicopter paranoia, it does seem as though we're now at the stage where riot cops are habitually wearing masks and anonymising ponchos and administering punishment beatings and gassings seemingly without fear of consequence. But then, that's always been the case - all they have to do is to marginalise the victims. Terrorists, eco freaks, militant gays, commie beatnick puppets, and Rodney King spring to mind.
When the US marines start mass marketing their nice clean invisible media safe maser scorchers, protesting is going to become a very painful business indeed.
So it tops out at 90mph, does 100 miles then takes an hour to recharge? That's cute, but it's hardly an important or even a particularly impressive alternative to gasoline.
Here's a telling quote from the spec: recombinant lead Acid [...] production battery, and replacements are readily availble at reasonable cost.
Yes, replacements. When we're dribbling on about how clean and efficient electric cars are, how come we never consider the environmental cost of making then "recycling" (== dumping) all those lead acid cells? Or mention that the energy to power them mostly comes from horrendously inefficient coil, oil or gas plants? Bah. We need to stop mucking around with these overgrown R/C toys and throw some serious money at fuel cells or even good old alcohol burners.
any kind of official unification or synchronization is just bad news.
Can you give a brief precis of why? For bonus marks, use the phrases "black helicopters", "chemtrails" and "accursed sinister foreign monkey jabbering UN devils".