Bah, that was at the *new* office... I was employee #1 there (the first guy who didn't have a stake in the company) - installing BSDi, finally getting a terminal server instead of a big multi-serial-port card... twist-tying modems to pegboard... setting up the Metaverse... serial.io.com, eie.io.com,... gopher and archie and ftp... signup scripts cobbled together in perl. EFF-Austin and Ho-Ho Con... the world and the internet were very different places back then.
Not being able to make money on TV without ad revenue will be big news to Cable and Sattelite TV providers... Not to mention PBS channels which are typically member/community/government supported. And yes fund-raisers are somewhat annoying, but the channels seem to survive anyway....
This is just standard anti-GPL FUD. Symptoms include harping on:
1) lack of "accountability, warranties, or liability" (For counterexamples, see Redhat, Caldera, etc)
2) 'must release modifications' (Get it straight, people, you only have to distribute the source *IF YOU DISTRIBUTE THE BINARIES*.. if you're just using your modifications internally, then YOU DONT HAVE TO DISCLOSE ANYTHING)
3) tie-ins to the.com crash (crashes happen because idiots throw money at bad business plans, not because some of the bad business plans had access to some good free tools to base them on)
etc etc.
I hope someone with more time than me writes a nice rebuttal. ESR maybe.
--Z
Re:The author of that article needs some cheese...
on
The Future of Ogg Vorbis
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And what does 'Audio Decompression Hardware' mean to you? You rezlize that any such hardware would be format-specific, right? You realize that only very large corps can really afford to get ASICs fab'd, right? And you realize that it's likely much more cost effective, as well as much more *flexible*, to shove the latest-generation embedded CPU (which is probably $20 in quantity) into the machine, and do your audio decomp in software? Well, obviously you don't realize one of those or you wouldn't have asked the question...
--Z
Re:The author of that article needs some cheese...
on
The Future of Ogg Vorbis
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What kind of embedded system would have an Ogg player? How about a car stereo? Like, say.. an empeg? Which doesn't have a much in the way of CPU, including the fine lack of a floating point processor?
Actually, I got the impression that the author was very frustrated at trying to do an independent 'from-spec' implementation of Ogg... which is impossible since there's no spec.
Code defines an implementation, not a specification, and using code as a spec leads to 'bug compatible' further implementations (ie. Yeah, that's feature's done really poorly, but it has to in order to be compatible with the bug(s) in the original) This is ungood.
Watermarking is doomed because any modification to a dataset that is unnoticeable can be filtered out. Noticeable modifications won't be tolerated by users. Copy any mp3 by playing out one soundcard and in another... A watermark is going to have a hard time surviving that. Heck, most would fail to survive conversion from mp3->wave->mp3. The whole idea of digital copyprotection is just broken: at some point whatever it is has to be output (to the soundcard, or screen, or CPU), and since all of that can be emulated, no digital copyprotection method can tell if it's outputting to a real device or an emulator that's taking that output and saving it off somewhere else. Simply put: all protection must be removed at the endpoints, or it's useless - so foolproof digital copyprotection is impossible, making any possible scheme no more than a deterrent. "Locks only keep honest people honest".
--Z
The real target consumers for this
on
Tiqit Handheld PC
·
· Score: 1
...are field techs who don't want to have to lug a huge notebook everywhere with 'em. A ruggedized version could easily replace 2-3 seperate specialized instruments that a phone company tech carries on him right now (have you seen the teeny vt100 terminals those guys carry as an interface to their dialup order/status tracking database?)
Something like this is also much easier to 'embed' as a frontend/interface to complex manufacturing or testing equipment...
Their main hurdle will likely be price, as something so integrated can't possibly be cheap.
And I don't know that 148 students is really too small a sample size (stastics is tricky that way... ask yourself what *would* be a decent sample size?), although I do admit to some skepticism since they don't quote margins of error.
Update your software; sounds like you have an older load with the 'at' scheduling bug that would make it wake up once an hour. This is fixable. Use the source, Luke.
Sourcecode expresses a direct, unambiguous idea about how a certain task is to be performed. There is an aesthetic to clean or clever code that, like appreciation of a piece of art, is difficult to convey. Consider Duff's Device as an example of a particularly clever way of expressing the idea of copying data from one place to another. The first time I saw Duff's Device, I literally gasped in amazement at its boldness. I was sure that it violated some syntax rule, that it couldn't possibly work. But like a man who disbelieved airplanes could fly until he studied the physics of how they worked, further study convinced me that it could indeed fly.
C and Perl and Pascal and the rest are languages with rules and syntax like most languages have, and like other languages excel at expressing some kinds of ideas better than others (C is good for details, Perl for overviews, French for love, and Russian for despair) The fact that humans aren't the only ones that can understand them doesn't change their expressive power.
2) What 'fair uses' require full quality copyability?
Media shifting is one candidate here - Since I own video Y, should I not be able to view it at full quality by whatever means I have available? When my library of DVDs numbers in the hundreds, should I not be able to accumulate all of them on one massive digital 'video library' system? It'd be legal by any standard if I were to create such a system using some kind of robotic DVD changer, but somehow it's different when I want to spend less money and just buy a really big hard drive to copy them all to. Yes, their copyright on the content is still valid, and yes I could be prosecuted for infringement if I were to start duplicating that hard drive and handing it out - that's clear. But if I do neither of those things, I should still be able to view the DVDs that I've legally purchased even from another media. It's the content that's copyrighted, not the viewing mechanism.
Another consideration in the full-quality vs. reduced quality argument is.. where do you draw the line? pointing a videocamera at the screen has been suggested as acceptable. One then posits that a version of DeCSS modified to insert the same amount of degradation would be just as acceptable. So then there must clearly be some minimal amount of degradation that the copyright holders feel is necessary for duplication to be acceptable - it's their onus to define it. Is it any less legal to make copies of video or audio tapes for personal use if I can somehow contrive to make them at equal quality to the original?
What responsibilities do universiies incur when they have such overbroad AUPs and reserve such powers for themselves? What if, in their browsing through my data, they delete or destroy important information (thesis data or papers or somesuch)? Are they liable for it? What if they 'leak' damaging data either unknowingly or through misunderstanding? Can they be held responsible?
I'm afraid that I know the answers to all these questions and am even more afraid of those answers. So what can be done about it beyond the standard SSH and PGP rhetoric ? Is there a way to make them take responsibility for these actions, preferably a heavy enough responsibility to discourage them from wanting to take these actions in the first place?
'p2p DNS'...uh... write up a nice RFC and if it's worthwhile I'm sure it will get done. However, I suspect you're either trolling or have NO clue how/why DNS works the way it does.
One thing to keep in mind when you're coming up with arguments for this is that the suits and megacorps all think in terms of atoms, not bits, so the fact that you broke your original CD in half and want to replace it from backup is equivalent to them to saying that you broke your
gold watch in half but want to be able to magically put it back together. They want you to buy a new watch. And their arguments are mostly based on the fact that if your CD was in fact a gold watch, you wouldn't be able to put it back together, so you'd've lost its value and would HAVE to buy another one - they want to maintain the same advantage of reproduction difficulty in the digital domain as they have in the physical one. *WE* know this doesn't really translate. But the best arguments will be ones that 'end run' this controversy and instead address other failings in the DCMA (of which there are plenty).
Just a thought on the construction of effective arguments.
It seems to me that the main benefit of an Open Source-based product has to a large institution like a hospital or government is its longlivedness... the source isn't going to go away or become obsoleted by the next rev of features they dont need. It's not going to never get ported to the latest fastest machine. The company that supports it isn't going to go bankrupt and turn their investment worthless.
Instead, since the institution has the source, they can contract out for people to add features they want or need, or to have it ported or whathaveyou. There will always be programmers willing to (for a price) make the system do just about anything desired; think any company can guarantee that in 100 years their software will still be supportable? I thought not.
As for quality guarantees, well, having someone to sue doesn't bring people back to life. And were I administering a hospital, I think it would be comforting to know I had direct control over the quality of the software being used there (by hiring good people to work on it) - up to and including the ability to inspect the source code personally!
When have politicians ever let little things like real data influence them? It's a nice emotional buttonpushing issue, one they can get all righteously indignant over so anyone watching will have no doubt that they Truly Care About Their (future) Constituents. That they are Shocked And Appalled That Such Things Are Allowed (nevermind the 1st amendment, what do old dead guys know anyway?) and of course If They Were Elected, Things Would Be Different.
Politicians spout views so disconnected with reality that only those caught up in the whole self-aggrandizing affair find them remotely intelligible or relevant. Same shit, different year. The two main parties are beyond help, and I'm not sure the independents can build a strong enough following while maintaining their integrity to be able to make a difference. Once you stoop to the Democrats and Republicans level, you become them.
...an adaptation for Quake? Use the webcam to track where I'm pointing my QuakePistol, which produces a flash of light when I pull the trigger that gets turned into a shot... turning it on solid is like holding down the fire button... maybe different colors or color-patterns of light are different weapons. Have to move to a 2nd gun in the other hand to control movement/grappling hook/crouch etc. though. I guess it devolves into a pointing device, ableit a uniquely 'wireless' one. Not sure how it'd stackup UI-wise against the standard keyboard/mouse combo for Quake though... but it'd be fun to try!
--Z
PS: Someone keep this post so it can be cited as prior art when the inevitable fairly-obvious patent comes around...
Slashdot Mirror
It was spun off way back in '96 or '97 or so, then went through some acquisitions.
Bah, that was at the *new* office... I was employee #1 there (the first guy who didn't have a stake in the company) - installing BSDi, finally getting a terminal server instead of a big multi-serial-port card... twist-tying modems to pegboard... setting up the Metaverse... serial.io.com, eie.io.com, ... gopher and archie and ftp... signup scripts cobbled together in perl. EFF-Austin and Ho-Ho Con... the world and the internet were very different places back then.
Email is not the Internet. The web is not the Internet. Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is no danger of balkanization.
Not being able to make money on TV without ad revenue will be big news to Cable and Sattelite TV providers... Not to mention PBS channels which are typically member/community/government supported. And yes fund-raisers are somewhat annoying, but the channels seem to survive anyway....
Have 'em apply to the linuxfund. Sure it may not be *all* their funding but it could help...
--Z
They should just link to something like
this instead.
...the best site I've found is Steve's Digicams... summaries of most of the cameras on the market today, from low end to digital SLR...
--Zachary
This is just standard anti-GPL FUD. Symptoms include harping on:
.com crash (crashes happen because idiots throw money at bad business plans, not because some of the bad business plans had access to some good free tools to base them on)
1) lack of "accountability, warranties, or liability" (For counterexamples, see Redhat, Caldera, etc)
2) 'must release modifications' (Get it straight, people, you only have to distribute the source *IF YOU DISTRIBUTE THE BINARIES*.. if you're just using your modifications internally, then YOU DONT HAVE TO DISCLOSE ANYTHING)
3) tie-ins to the
etc etc.
I hope someone with more time than me writes a nice rebuttal. ESR maybe.
--Z
And what does 'Audio Decompression Hardware' mean to you? You rezlize that any such hardware would be format-specific, right? You realize that only very large corps can really afford to get ASICs fab'd, right? And you realize that it's likely much more cost effective, as well as much more *flexible*, to shove the latest-generation embedded CPU (which is probably $20 in quantity) into the machine, and do your audio decomp in software? Well, obviously you don't realize one of those or you wouldn't have asked the question...
--Z
What kind of embedded system would have an Ogg player? How about a car stereo? Like, say.. an empeg? Which doesn't have a much in the way of CPU, including the fine lack of a floating point processor?
Actually, I got the impression that the author was very frustrated at trying to do an independent 'from-spec' implementation of Ogg... which is impossible since there's no spec.
Code defines an implementation, not a specification, and using code as a spec leads to 'bug compatible' further implementations (ie. Yeah, that's feature's done really poorly, but it has to in order to be compatible with the bug(s) in the original)
This is ungood.
--Z
Watermarking is doomed because any modification to a dataset that is unnoticeable can be filtered out. Noticeable modifications won't be tolerated by users. Copy any mp3 by playing out one soundcard and in another... A watermark is going to have a hard time surviving that. Heck, most would fail to survive conversion from mp3->wave->mp3. The whole idea of digital copyprotection is just broken: at some point whatever it is has to be output (to the soundcard, or screen, or CPU), and since all of that can be emulated, no digital copyprotection method can tell if it's outputting to a real device or an emulator that's taking that output and saving it off somewhere else. Simply put: all protection must be removed at the endpoints, or it's useless - so foolproof digital copyprotection is impossible, making any possible scheme no more than a deterrent. "Locks only keep honest people honest".
--Z
...are field techs who don't want to have to lug a huge notebook everywhere with 'em. A ruggedized version could easily replace 2-3 seperate specialized instruments that a phone company tech carries on him right now (have you seen the teeny vt100 terminals those guys carry as an interface to their dialup order/status tracking database?)
Something like this is also much easier to 'embed' as a frontend/interface to complex manufacturing or testing equipment...
Their main hurdle will likely be price, as something so integrated can't possibly be cheap.
uhm...
53 - (0.25 * 53) is about 40...
And I don't know that 148 students is really too small a sample size (stastics is tricky that way... ask yourself what *would* be a decent sample size?), although I do admit to some skepticism since they don't quote margins of error.
...otherwise this is a blatant DMCA violation. Maybe this should be used as an example of why the DMCA is a bad idea...
Update your software; sounds like you have an older load with the 'at' scheduling bug that would make it wake up once an hour. This is fixable. Use the source, Luke.
1) What is expressive about sourcecode?
Sourcecode expresses a direct, unambiguous idea about how a certain task is to be performed. There is an aesthetic to clean or clever code that, like appreciation of a piece of art, is difficult to convey. Consider Duff's Device as an example of a particularly clever way of expressing the idea of copying data from one place to another. The first time I saw Duff's Device, I literally gasped in amazement at its boldness. I was sure that it violated some syntax rule, that it couldn't possibly work. But like a man who disbelieved airplanes could fly until he studied the physics of how they worked, further study convinced me that it could indeed fly.
C and Perl and Pascal and the rest are languages with rules and syntax like most languages have, and like other languages excel at expressing some kinds of ideas better than others (C is good for details, Perl for overviews, French for love, and Russian for despair) The fact that humans aren't the only ones that can understand them doesn't change their expressive power.
2) What 'fair uses' require full quality copyability?
Media shifting is one candidate here - Since I own video Y, should I not be able to view it at full quality by whatever means I have available? When my library of DVDs numbers in the hundreds, should I not be able to accumulate all of them on one massive digital 'video library' system? It'd be legal by any standard if I were to create such a system using some kind of robotic DVD changer, but somehow it's different when I want to spend less money and just buy a really big hard drive to copy them all to. Yes, their copyright on the content is still valid, and yes I could be prosecuted for infringement if I were to start duplicating that hard drive and handing it out - that's clear. But if I do neither of those things, I should still be able to view the DVDs that I've legally purchased even from another media. It's the content that's copyrighted, not the viewing mechanism.
Another consideration in the full-quality vs. reduced quality argument is.. where do you draw the line? pointing a videocamera at the screen has been suggested as acceptable. One then posits that a version of DeCSS modified to insert the same amount of degradation would be just as acceptable. So then there must clearly be some minimal amount of degradation that the copyright holders feel is necessary for duplication to be acceptable - it's their onus to define it. Is it any less legal to make copies of video or audio tapes for personal use if I can somehow contrive to make them at equal quality to the original?
>why don't pda's support PCMCIA cards..?
Two words: power consumption
I'm afraid that I know the answers to all these questions and am even more afraid of those answers. So what can be done about it beyond the standard SSH and PGP rhetoric ? Is there a way to make them take responsibility for these actions, preferably a heavy enough responsibility to discourage them from wanting to take these actions in the first place?
--Z
'p2p DNS'...uh... write up a nice RFC and if it's worthwhile I'm sure it will get done. However, I suspect you're either trolling or have NO clue how/why DNS works the way it does.
They're not the ones that pay the costs... *we do*
gold watch in half but want to be able to magically put it back together. They want you to buy a new watch. And their arguments are mostly based on the fact that if your CD was in fact a gold watch, you wouldn't be able to put it back together, so you'd've lost its value and would HAVE to buy another one - they want to maintain the same advantage of reproduction difficulty in the digital domain as they have in the physical one. *WE* know this doesn't really translate. But the best arguments will be ones that 'end run' this controversy and instead address other failings in the DCMA (of which there are plenty).
Just a thought on the construction of effective arguments.
Instead, since the institution has the source, they can contract out for people to add features they want or need, or to have it ported or whathaveyou. There will always be programmers willing to (for a price) make the system do just about anything desired; think any company can guarantee that in 100 years their software will still be supportable? I thought not.
As for quality guarantees, well, having someone to sue doesn't bring people back to life. And were I administering a hospital, I think it would be comforting to know I had direct control over the quality of the software being used there (by hiring good people to work on it) - up to and including the ability to inspect the source code personally!
Politicians spout views so disconnected with reality that only those caught up in the whole self-aggrandizing affair find them remotely intelligible or relevant. Same shit, different year. The two main parties are beyond help, and I'm not sure the independents can build a strong enough following while maintaining their integrity to be able to make a difference. Once you stoop to the Democrats and Republicans level, you become them.
...an adaptation for Quake? Use the webcam to track where I'm pointing my QuakePistol, which produces a flash of light when I pull the trigger that gets turned into a shot... turning it on solid is like holding down the fire button... maybe different colors or color-patterns of light are different weapons. Have to move to a 2nd gun in the other hand to control movement/grappling hook/crouch etc. though. I guess it devolves into a pointing device, ableit a uniquely 'wireless' one. Not sure how it'd stackup UI-wise against the standard keyboard/mouse combo for Quake though... but it'd be fun to try!
--Z
PS: Someone keep this post so it can be cited as prior art when the inevitable fairly-obvious patent comes around...