it's pretty clear that suprnova's INTENT is to contribute to copyright infringement.
(Honest question, I'm not trolling or flaming.) Does "suprnova's intent" refer to the intent of the administrators of suprnova, or to individuals who post links there? I think the distinction is important. If it's the administrator(s) we're ascribing intent to, how is it obvious that they intend that copyrighted materials be shared, as opposed to any materials? If it's the individuals posting to suprnova to whom we're ascribing intent, then maybe it would be more accurate to say "Some users of suprnova clearly intend to share copyrighted materials". I'm not trying to split hairs; it's these specific distinctions on which related legal cases will hinge.
Agreed. For me, DVDs beat VHS because the rendered field is distortion free, static free, and has no color dropouts, even over time. That matters to me.
By contrast, more pixels do not matter to me. People who want higher resolution will always be able to build a case for it by talking about huge screens, but when it comes right down to it you have to step back from a huge screen enough to allow your field of vision to encompass the whole thing. How many steradians (2D-degrees) of a visual field can a person pay attention to at once?
And even if the number is much higher than I think it is, I'm not the kind of person for whom more pixels would equal better storytelling. Which is what watching videos is to me: a medium for storytelling. Not "immersion", not losing myself, not thinking I'm "really there"... just having a story passed onto me. Ever want to really lose yourself? For the price of an HDTV, you could buy a lot of tabs of acid, and believe me you'll go farther and it'll be much more real.
Now imagine that you're the one competing with somebody like Macromedia, or Adobe, or IBM. You have a great idea for a product, you've done your market research, and you want to make a go of it. Now imagine telling potential investors and customers that yes, because your product is Open Source, anybody can read the code and see how you solved a particularly prickly problem that up until now nobody else has tackled well.
So he's concerned that innovation will be stifled? I find it disingenuous that someone from Microsoft would put this argument forward, given that Microsoft files more patents then just about anybody, and that collectively the big corporations use patents to prevent the entry of competition. This "circle the wagons" use of IP by big companies becomes, in my opinion, a good argument for open source innovation, where practically the only basis for grass-roots innovation will be that the innovators did not have a business plan that could get crushed.
It wouldn't save you entirely, but it would prevent someone from arbitrarily examining the catalog of files you're sharing. Instead, they'd have to correctly guess something you're sharing.
"If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"
Old person: "Listening to other people talk makes me suicidal." Snuggling Ifbot: "Listening to other people talk makes you suicidal? What do you want to do? Tell me, what? Surely there is something you want to do? Can you tell me what it is?"
I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.
That's right... now people between the ages of fourteen and forty, from all walks of life, assemble by the thousands in warehouses and take ecstasy, ketamine, and a whole host of other cool substances we couldn't even conceive of when we were kids.
A difference between spammers and drug dealers: spammers were both annoying and a threat to existing infrastructural capacity even before those in government started throwing jailtime at the problem. Whereas drug dealers - before the outlawing of marijuana then alcohol then acid then anything even mildly euphoric and not produced by Merck/Phizer - were simply salesmen of the same kind as those who sold shirts, groceries, and vaccuum cleaners.
So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox,'A revolution requires that people leave their house.'"
Yeah, and it used to be the case that to make a purchase you had to leave your house. Yawn. I'm bored of people who say that it's only revolution if people bleed, it's only activism if you spend a night in jail, it's only significant if it's significant in the particular way prescribed by the self-appointed arbiter of meaningfulness. What if there's a revolution in revolutions? What if suddenly people are free to assign their OWN notions of worth to their actions and the consequences thereof? "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, "... Cox's attempt to pose as an authority sounds like the laughter/derision of stage two, just before "then they fight you".
[Having the mechanism be transparent to servers] is a good thing, but potentially a bad as well, for how some sites make money... I think a needed features is a robot.txt entry that blocks dijjer from caching the site.
I'd state it differently: this potentially breaks the formerly viable business model of certain websites, therefore requiring that such websites adapt or go under... and in so doing, perpetuate the natural competition of a free marketplace rather than restricting the evolutionary opportunities of new, more efficient mechanisms.
Correction: the specs I included were for the even cheaper ($598) walmart model. The specs I SHOULD have included for the $698 model are as follows (deltas are combo drive, double the ram, and slightly faster processor):
Mobile AMD Athlon 4 1.2 GHz processor 14.1-inch XGA TFT LCD screen 40 GB hard drive 256 MB RAM DVD-ROM/CDRW drive Integrated 802.11b wireless networking Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Actually, the prices looked extremely reasonable enough that I'm considering a purchase. The LC2410 is only $1499. The 2430, the one in the review, is only $1699.
I'm rather impressed they can have prices this reasonable, "Windows tax" or not.
Another cheap machine (admittedly different specs) can currently be had at walmart for just under $700:
Mobile AMD Athlon 4 1.1 GHz processor 14.1" XGA TFT LCD screen 40 GB hard drive 128 MB RAM DVD-ROM drive Integrated 802.11b wireless networking Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
There is a degree X of dominance that, when crossed by a species S, allows S to stay dominant, if no regulation happens. This has happened on the planet earth
Don't worry, humans are gearing up for voluntary self-regulation in this regard via a combination of nukes and voting Bush into office.
it will prevent uncontrolled ripping and copying....for the first couple of months, you mean.
I really wonder why they even bother. Unless they include hardware DRM to disallow access to all unauthorized programs, this WILL be cracked.
I'm not so sure. I'm thinking of the XBox, which uses a 2048-bit key. It has not been cracked, and even a massive distributed effort to do so can be shown to be mathematically infeasible. There are mod chips, but that's not cracking the DRM...
Right idea, wrong metaphor. Linux is a source of gold, but it's more like The Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs [bartleby.com]. As in Aesop's fable, you can feed and care for the goose and a reliable source of gold will come your way. Darl is trying to kill the goose to get at all the eggs at once but, like the fool in the story, he's ending up with nothing. Those who have been looking after the goose (Red Hat, Novell, IBM, et al) have profitted.
Might be worth noting that unlike the golden goose, Linux can't be killed. Perhaps we could use a reverse-Midas analogy where everything Darl tries to possess turns into dung, whereas it becomes gold in anyone else's hands.
The license you find troublingly ambiguous is also known as the MIT License. It's identical. And the MIT License has been used for years on many successful software products. Is is as well-honed as the Modified BSD license? Not quite, but some people seem to prefer it because it's so damned simple.
Thank you for this information.
What part of "deal without restriction" and "including, without limitation" don't you understand?
I understand those parts readily. It's the other questions that I mentioned in my previous post that are the puzzlers to me, namely (a) whether binary only distributions of incorporating works need include the license, and to what end, and (b) whether the intent of the license is to apply to incorporating works, like the GPL.
The license applies to binary and source form distributions, they are generally held to both be covered by copyright law, so they are both implicitly under the license.
So what does it mean to include a license for software incorporated into a product when the license says that the software ("this software") may be used in any way desired?
As for "this software", the license only applies to _this software_. Not to other software that you write, that links to this software - that's the way copyright law works, unless you put unusual clauses in place like the GPL does.
To say that "copyright works this way" is to attribute licensing terms to convention, rather than to the terms specified in the license, such as the GPL as you point out. And as for the terms applying only to "this software"... I'm no linguist, but once that verbiage appears in a new piece of software, I'm pretty sure that convention holds that "this" now refers to the NEW software. Unless there exists some convention for explicitly scoping the terminology to apply to the original software; if so, I'd welcome hearing about such a convention.
You are looking for surprises where there aren't any.
No, I truly am eager to understand. As a person with legal training, I know that if someone *can* argue something in a court of law, they *will*. That's why licenses and contracts get so explicit; to minimize the likelihood that somebody later will get confused as to who meant what.
This isn't some strange new license, it's just the simplest possible Open Source license
I didn't mean to imply to the contrary. Perhaps someone out there would be kind enough to point me to whatever precedents have emerged from the courts when interpreting this time-tested license.
I get the impression from your response that perhaps you think I am looking for ways to subvert this license; I assure you I am not. If anything, I would welcome the chance to strengthen such a license by clarifying its intent, because the broad brushstrokes of the license seem very good-spirited to me.
Or perhaps you're frustrated with people who don't share your opinion of what is "obvious". In the domain of law, different interpretations of the same language require that "obviousness" not be presumed too early.
Copyright (c) 2002-2004 by Viewpoints Research Institute... Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
I'm honestly not trying to be a dope here, but I find this troublingly ambiguous. Two main questions:
Does the requirement to include the above notice apply only to source distributions, or also to binary distributions? If the latter, then I suppose there must be something like a menu item which brings up this notice? How would it even make sense to include the notice in a binary, given that a binary can't be merged or readily modified? Is there an unstated implication that source must accompany such a binary?
The license refers to "this software". Including this license in a different product which incorporated Viewpoint's software would seem to indicate that likewise the different product was also being licensed under the same terms, i.e. free for any use including modification, merging, and distribution. Is this the intent of this license?
You know almost all of the 9/11 terrorist had valid state issued ID? Why would adding a RFID tag help stop terrorists? The can still go up and apply for a valid id just like everyone else.
The real advantage is that it would have helped identify the terrorists' bodies in the aftermath of the wreckage. Or at least given an indication of where to center a search for their body parts. See, if we could have found and analyzed their DNA after the attack, we might have gained valuable insight into the flawed nature of their humanity. That knowledge, combined with the capabilities of some kind of time machine research funded by taxpayers, might just lead to the holy grail of terrorism prevention: landing on the planet Endor.
publishers pushed, against the preferences of the Constitution's authors, for copyright to protect themselves from other publishers.
Interesting. Our different takes may spring from our different notions of "original intent of copyright". I'm thinking of the original intent as that framed in the US constitution, whereas perhaps you're referring to the motivations of lobbyists (publishers) pulling for various versions of what ultimately became part of the constitution.
The relevant part of the constitution (article 1, section 8, clause 8) reads:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
I have difficulty spotting any giveaways to the publishing industry in this clause. I wonder what the dream version would have been as far as the publishers were concerned.
Wow, word for word I haven't seen such densely packed, confidently asserted non-truths here on slashdot in a while.
It's OK to use a piece of GPL software in your own code until you decide to sell it.
No, it's ok to use a piece of GPL software in your own code until you decide to DISTRIBUTE it, whether for money or not.
This is the original intent of copyright, to control the use of materials by commerce, not individuals. Follow the money and the logic is clear and unambiguous.
No, the original intent of copyright was to increase the public's access to useful/beautiful works by granting a temporary monopoly to those who create such works, thereby incentivizing production.
Thanks for the intelligent discussion.:) Interested in your take on the following:
Firstly, it can only make educated guesses at the available bandwidth of the nodes. Nodes will lie/cheat/steal in order to get more packets, and you can't trust the clients. They're greedy.
BT guards against this by verifying throughput as stated by a receiving node. This doesn't make it impossible to fool the tracker, but it forces more than one node to collaborate in such a lie to have an effect.
Secondly, it doesn't really know the network topology. Again, you're only able to make educated guesses. If my neighbor and me are on the same torrent, then ideally the tracker would be able to tell us about each other, we'd connect, and share at very high speeds, being that we're both close to each other and on the same subnet and such. That case might be easy to recognize, sometimes, not so easy other times. Without full knowledge of the whole network, it's impossible to do perfectly in any case.
The tracker has all the information needed to determine throughput, just not a priori. The tracker can experiment with different node routes and decide which ones it thinks are optimal, based on reported throughputs from receivers. (Prioritized alongside other considerations like how reliably a given node has been participating.)
I note that I can't swear I've actually seen this in the BT description, but at this point I'm trying to assert that if BT doesn't already do this, there's nothing stopping it from doing so with minor tweaks, and therefor comparing favorably with a broadcast architecture.
Third, even with the most efficent possible tracker, the grandparent is right. You have X users downloading, and they all are downloading Y bits of data. All data transfer is point to point, meaning that X*Y bits of data must be sent out for everybody to get the complete file. For every byte downloaded, there's a byte uploaded. You can make that fast by maximizing your throughput and managing it all into small sub-networks, but it still doesn't scale to everybody in the world.
There are essentially two assertions in the above statement:
1) That the number of bytes transferred in a BT architecture is significantly more than in a broadcast architecture, and
2) That the BT architecture doesn't scale.
(1) is, I think, incontrovertibly true. (2) seems far less certain, and whether true or not does not logically follow from (1). Looking at an ever-larger-scaling BT network from the viewpoint of an individual node, all a given node must do is send out as many bytes as it receives; so from that perspective (cpu time and collective distributed buffer size), scaling is no problem. I think the aspect you're homing in on is bandwidth. I think it may be right that BT right now may not be sophisticated enough to mitigate throughput snarls for an arbitrarily large network, but to reframe the issue: could BT become sophisticated enough to do so with relatively minor logic changes in the tracker, without the large conceptual transition to a broadcast architecture? I think it's possible. A clever engine modeling speculations about throughput, verifying and discarding hypotheses with feedback information from participating nodes, might just do the trick.
As you suggest, I think perhaps the ultimate architectural direction would be a hybrid of what BT is today combined with tracker-managed subnets which can spontaneously be arranged into mini streaming broadcast form. Such a hybrid would be better than BT today because of the efficiencies realized. And it would be better than a classic single broadcast architecture because of the latter's inflexible susceptibility to disruption, as well as the front-end administrative costs.
Think about how the network bandwidth is being used in BitTorrent - I open up connections to as many providers as I can find, and download data from them. Other clients do the same, and try to download data from me. The exact same data will go back and forth across my connection multiple times. And, across the entire network, there are N nodes connecting to as many of each other as possible, a mesh of size NxN, and each of those connections is carrying essentially the same data. As N grows, the amount of resources required to maintain those NxN connections grows geometrically. You cannot sustain that kind of growth rate, the physical network will collapse when the system gets popular enough.
I will admit to only skimming the whitepaper at bitconjurer, but my impression of BTs operation is different from that which you describe. Notably, the tracker is doing things somewhat more intelligently. A downloader does not open as many connections as possible to other nodes; instead, a downloader is instructed by the tracker as to specifically which node(s) it shall connect to at a given moment, with the tracker handling the logic to optimize distribution in terms of most efficient use of resources (e.g. making use of high bandwidth when apparently available in up/down directions, minimizing risks associated with nodes dropping out unexpectedly, etc). If my notion of BT operation is accurate, then proving that BT can scale is probably beyond me, but making a solid case that it can't scale would require more than the NxN model.
Any connection-based protocol suffers from scaling problems, especially on the scope this article implies. If you want to do a media broadcast, you should be using IP multicast in realtime.
I don't understand the objection to using bittorrent. Why must distribution be broadcast and realtime instead of multicast and/or buffered? Doing the latter eliminates arguments about I-frames and maintaining real-time frame speeds. And it's what's happening right now at bittorrent/suprnova, with what seems to me a highly scalable rate of success.
TCPA (the chip that's in these PCs) is simply a Crypto co-processor. It provides acceleration for common crypto algorithms and it also provides a tamper-resistant storage location for keys.
I have no objection to the above, but if there's more to the story (e.g. a hardwired key which the manufacturer need not reveal to the buyer, or hardware functions for revealing identity which the user is not in complete control of) then I'd have serious objections. If TCPA is as you describe, then there'd be no reason such a chip couldn't be fully emulated in software. Would this be correct?
Slashdot Mirror
(Honest question, I'm not trolling or flaming.) Does "suprnova's intent" refer to the intent of the administrators of suprnova, or to individuals who post links there? I think the distinction is important. If it's the administrator(s) we're ascribing intent to, how is it obvious that they intend that copyrighted materials be shared, as opposed to any materials? If it's the individuals posting to suprnova to whom we're ascribing intent, then maybe it would be more accurate to say "Some users of suprnova clearly intend to share copyrighted materials". I'm not trying to split hairs; it's these specific distinctions on which related legal cases will hinge.
Agreed. For me, DVDs beat VHS because the rendered field is distortion free, static free, and has no color dropouts, even over time. That matters to me.
By contrast, more pixels do not matter to me. People who want higher resolution will always be able to build a case for it by talking about huge screens, but when it comes right down to it you have to step back from a huge screen enough to allow your field of vision to encompass the whole thing. How many steradians (2D-degrees) of a visual field can a person pay attention to at once?
And even if the number is much higher than I think it is, I'm not the kind of person for whom more pixels would equal better storytelling. Which is what watching videos is to me: a medium for storytelling. Not "immersion", not losing myself, not thinking I'm "really there"... just having a story passed onto me. Ever want to really lose yourself? For the price of an HDTV, you could buy a lot of tabs of acid, and believe me you'll go farther and it'll be much more real.
So he's concerned that innovation will be stifled? I find it disingenuous that someone from Microsoft would put this argument forward, given that Microsoft files more patents then just about anybody, and that collectively the big corporations use patents to prevent the entry of competition. This "circle the wagons" use of IP by big companies becomes, in my opinion, a good argument for open source innovation, where practically the only basis for grass-roots innovation will be that the innovators did not have a business plan that could get crushed.
It wouldn't save you entirely, but it would prevent someone from arbitrarily examining the catalog of files you're sharing. Instead, they'd have to correctly guess something you're sharing.
That's right... now people between the ages of fourteen and forty, from all walks of life, assemble by the thousands in warehouses and take ecstasy, ketamine, and a whole host of other cool substances we couldn't even conceive of when we were kids.
A difference between spammers and drug dealers: spammers were both annoying and a threat to existing infrastructural capacity even before those in government started throwing jailtime at the problem. Whereas drug dealers - before the outlawing of marijuana then alcohol then acid then anything even mildly euphoric and not produced by Merck/Phizer - were simply salesmen of the same kind as those who sold shirts, groceries, and vaccuum cleaners.
Yeah, and it used to be the case that to make a purchase you had to leave your house. Yawn. I'm bored of people who say that it's only revolution if people bleed, it's only activism if you spend a night in jail, it's only significant if it's significant in the particular way prescribed by the self-appointed arbiter of meaningfulness. What if there's a revolution in revolutions? What if suddenly people are free to assign their OWN notions of worth to their actions and the consequences thereof? "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, "... Cox's attempt to pose as an authority sounds like the laughter/derision of stage two, just before "then they fight you".
I'd state it differently: this potentially breaks the formerly viable business model of certain websites, therefore requiring that such websites adapt or go under... and in so doing, perpetuate the natural competition of a free marketplace rather than restricting the evolutionary opportunities of new, more efficient mechanisms.
Correction: the specs I included were for the even cheaper ($598) walmart model. The specs I SHOULD have included for the $698 model are as follows (deltas are combo drive, double the ram, and slightly faster processor):
Another cheap machine (admittedly different specs) can currently be had at walmart for just under $700:
But what about all the mental piracy? Surely that counts for something...
Don't worry, humans are gearing up for voluntary self-regulation in this regard via a combination of nukes and voting Bush into office.
I'm not so sure. I'm thinking of the XBox, which uses a 2048-bit key. It has not been cracked, and even a massive distributed effort to do so can be shown to be mathematically infeasible. There are mod chips, but that's not cracking the DRM...
Better engineering. MUCH better.
If they bill it as standing up well to being dropped, I'd say they're squarely targeting the "showering inmate" market niche.
I get the impression from your response that perhaps you think I am looking for ways to subvert this license; I assure you I am not. If anything, I would welcome the chance to strengthen such a license by clarifying its intent, because the broad brushstrokes of the license seem very good-spirited to me.
Or perhaps you're frustrated with people who don't share your opinion of what is "obvious". In the domain of law, different interpretations of the same language require that "obviousness" not be presumed too early.
Did what I said make sense?
The relevant part of the constitution (article 1, section 8, clause 8) reads:
I have difficulty spotting any giveaways to the publishing industry in this clause. I wonder what the dream version would have been as far as the publishers were concerned.I note that I can't swear I've actually seen this in the BT description, but at this point I'm trying to assert that if BT doesn't already do this, there's nothing stopping it from doing so with minor tweaks, and therefor comparing favorably with a broadcast architecture.
There are essentially two assertions in the above statement:- 1) That the number of bytes transferred in a BT architecture is significantly more than in a broadcast architecture, and
- 2) That the BT architecture doesn't scale.
(1) is, I think, incontrovertibly true. (2) seems far less certain, and whether true or not does not logically follow from (1). Looking at an ever-larger-scaling BT network from the viewpoint of an individual node, all a given node must do is send out as many bytes as it receives; so from that perspective (cpu time and collective distributed buffer size), scaling is no problem. I think the aspect you're homing in on is bandwidth. I think it may be right that BT right now may not be sophisticated enough to mitigate throughput snarls for an arbitrarily large network, but to reframe the issue: could BT become sophisticated enough to do so with relatively minor logic changes in the tracker, without the large conceptual transition to a broadcast architecture? I think it's possible. A clever engine modeling speculations about throughput, verifying and discarding hypotheses with feedback information from participating nodes, might just do the trick.As you suggest, I think perhaps the ultimate architectural direction would be a hybrid of what BT is today combined with tracker-managed subnets which can spontaneously be arranged into mini streaming broadcast form. Such a hybrid would be better than BT today because of the efficiencies realized. And it would be better than a classic single broadcast architecture because of the latter's inflexible susceptibility to disruption, as well as the front-end administrative costs.
I don't understand the objection to using bittorrent. Why must distribution be broadcast and realtime instead of multicast and/or buffered? Doing the latter eliminates arguments about I-frames and maintaining real-time frame speeds. And it's what's happening right now at bittorrent/suprnova, with what seems to me a highly scalable rate of success.