The richest 10% don't have to worry about whether they can afford to heat their homes this winter. They don't have to worry about getting their kids a basic college education. They don't have to choose between buying prescription drugs or food.
Maybe you've never known what it's like to be poor. I've had to sleep in unheated trailer homes; I've faced the choice between Ramen noodles or a doctor's visit. I clawed my way out of those hard times. But a lot of people are in those dire situations, and they need help. To pass them by so that Mr. Goldshorts can afford to buy his daughter another Lear jet strikes me as simply cruel.
One responsibility of the government is to help its citizens when they require it. And so yes, the richest Americans should pay most of the taxes, and no, they shouldn't get a tax break, because darnit, they don't need the help!
Hey, anyone on slashdot have David Brin's email address? He's always been a man I wanted to communicate with. Mostly, I think, to explain my love/hate attitude towards him. I need some closure on this.
It started in '92 when I met him at a sci-fi con. I'm a physicist who wants to write; he's a writer who learned physics. (Or so he told me then.) I was annoying, I admit, following him for about half an hour asking how one could do both physics and sci-fi at the same time. And he eventually rebuffed me as I deserved. After reading Startide Rising and Sundiver, see, I was just another worshipping fanboy, and although he was polite he did remind me that he was just human and I should get a life.
Then came what I call the 'political' era of Brin's writing, and I lost some interest in him as an author. Still a good thinker, though. After the IMO failed stories of his last trilogy, I find myself still reading Brin for his political and opinion pieces. I lost taste for his writing, even though he's the man I wanted to emulate...but I'm learning more from him now than before.
Now I'm a bit older, a bit wiser, I have a life and I've had one story published so far. (I'm planning on more, but I'm in no rush. I too shall one day spawn a trilogy or three.;) ) And here he's giving me reasons to hold my nose and vote for someone, when I'm so far planning to not even vote because of how depressing the choices are this election.
It's an interesting cycle I'm in with David Brin. I act childish, and get kicked in the ass. I grow up. I act childish again, and get kicked in the ass again. Pardon me, I think it's time I registered to vote.
I hate giving personal info on the web, for various reasons. I should have started this thread anonymously. But you are correct, and I am wrong, to an extent.
I was told by coworkers that no 3rd party candidates are on the ballot. Took me some time, (and a work hour of web searching) but I found that was wrong -- Browne and Buchanan also made it in. To me those are two more bad choices; as I said, Libertarian policies (especially drug policies) scare the hell out of me. Nader isn't on the ballot.
I'm still very upset that I am not permitted a write-in vote. At least now I do have the option of making a protest vote...although I'd still be voting for someone who I dislike as much as the main party candidates. I'm sorry, I still don't see much point in doing that.
I don't think you people read my initial post. MY STATE DOES NOT ALLOW WRITE-IN CANDIDATES. NO THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES WERE ABLE TO GET ON THE BALLOT THIS ELECTION. The *only* two ways I am allowed to vote are for Gore or Bush. And I don't want to vote for either.
If you have any suggestions for me, I'm more than willing to hear them. I seem to have only three options; Gore, Bush, or frustrated silence.
I am in a midwest state that has voted Republican in every election for over 30 years. I don't like either Bore or Gush. And this state does not allow write-in votes, so I couldn't vote for Nader/Buchanan/Bugs Bunny even if I wanted to.
There's a larger problem in that I don't agree with *any* of the parties. From what I can see, republicans are evil, democrats are stupid, Nader is a fruit loop, Libertarians are scary-stupid, and Buchanan is dangerously insane. I have to go to really obscure people (the Natural Law party) before I find anyone whose policies I can agree with.
I don't feel any incentive to vote this election. Furthermore, I don't want to take part of the blame for putting either of the two frontrunning bozos into office.:p
I have invented a new business plan that resembles the internet loss-leader model, but works in the brick-and-asphalt world.
The concept is simple; provide a service, namely instant unsolicited lavage of vehicular ports during brief periods of cessation. It is important to provide your own materials to do this -- thus the resemblance to the loss-leader model -- so that you can control the quality of the service. Depending upon customer temperment, you should either begin with a high quality service (and thus expect compensation), or a low quality service (afterwhich the customer will demand a high quality service, which you only provide after compensation).
The only start-up equipment needed is a bucket of water, a squeegee, and a street corner with a stoplight. Watch the income roll in!
The real question is why are you posting your raving nonsense with a +2 bonus?
Even valuable, conscientious posters have to kick back and be silly now and again.;)
You're quite right about all your criticisms -- especially 1 tera = 10^12, not 10^16, which was a mental lapse on my part. I'll be more careful about posting lighthearted stuff with a +1 bonus in the future.
I never liked 'terabyte' as a computing term. Just doesn't fit in with the 'million, billion, trillion' nomenclature.
I would like to propose that we redesignate one thousand trillion bits as equal to one Electronic Ton. After all we have british tons, metric tons, even a volumetric ton. Why not an Electronic Ton? When you realize that 10 tera-tera (10*(10^16)^16) electrons actually weighs about a metric ton, it seems especially relevant!:)
Welcome to the age of the 1 ton computer! Next year I predict we'll all have half-ton palmpads!;)
Yep, that's 90 megavoxels. But before you get too excited, that's about a 600x600x250 pixel display. In 8 colors. So what we have here is the first 3D EGA monitor.:)
You need truly frightening numbers of voxels to do anything really interesting. I've done heat transfer simulations that crippled a SGI supercomputer for only a 30 cm tall by 50 cm wide tank filled with fluid. Shame the oil tanks we *wanted* to simulate were 10 meters high and 15 meters across...
Forget all the electronic stuff. What I really want for Xmas is a Leatherman. (No, not a sweaty guy in leather. Look here.) Every geek should own one, and do a hobby away from the keyboard for a while.
Failing that, I'd like free unlimited bandwidth website hosting for a year, and a puppy.
Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.
The holy grail of nanotechnology is the Assembler -- a machine that can be used to construct objects atom-by-atom. Scientists already know what nanotech machines they want to build, but the technology isn't there to let them do it. With an assembler you can. This STM looks like a crude jury-rigged assembler...and it sounds as if, with patience, you could actually build Respirocytes or a Mesoparticle Sling or a Planetary Gear with this tool.
Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.
This is a robotic arm capable of moving individual cells. Exciting, but only a step to something useful.
The noocytes in Blood Music were self-contained computers designed to mimic white blood cells, who could network together and create a very powerful (sentient, in the story) computer.
How do the two have anything to do with one another? I'm confused. Or was the Blood Music reference just name-dropping in an attempt to get the story accepted?
The original question is one that's been on my mind also, as I'm considering putting up a parody/fiction site. But I'm concerned about my legal exposure. My proposed site will have references (clearly labelled as fiction and satire, and posted by both me and my guests) to some 'in-joke' rumors about popular corporations (e.g: Microsoft is owned by aliens, Hormel's SPAM is made of ground human meat, the Teletubbies are mutated lab experiments, etc.)
Is a disclaimer, stating that all contents are fiction/parody/satire, enough to deflect legal threats to a parody website? Is there something else that can be done to protect me if I do create this site?
The US Government doesn't work that way. Why kill a spy when you can monitor him instead? They won't take over a subversive form of communication ; they'd try to subvert it themselves, and use it as a tool to monitor the populace.
That's easy to say, but it's not so easy to do with Freenet. Queries are anonymized, and content files are passed from server to server. It's near-impossible to find out who's looking for information, and completely impossible to find the person providing it. To get their hooks into Freenet, government (or corporations, who also may want to use such a tool) would have to be involved in the design process NOW, planting backdoors. And there's no sign of that happening.
So...that leads to a prediction.
In a year or so Freenet will become popular; the next Napster. A year or so after that, corporations will start making their own versions of Freenet, possibly with a proprietary protocol and definitely with a neat new GUI. They'll try to lure Freenet users to their new, 'better' software. And one or all of these corporate offerings will be subsequently proven to be not-so secure and not-so anonymous.
Freenet may be destined to remain a niche network, but Freenet-like networks will become popular, although these glossy clones will be compromised. And they'll become accepted because most of the public won't know and won't care.
The RIAA and MPAA are not monopolies because the first 'A' in each acronym stands for Association. They're both composed of a group of corporations who compete against each other, but have formed associations as a truce so that they can do important things like invent standards, generalize licensing agreements, and sue college-age kids.;)
Here's a not-so-rhetorical question. Corporations are more powerful, legally, than individual human beings these days. A legislating group of human beings is called a government. What is a legislating group of corporations called?
Distributing DeCSS as a t-shirt, as images, on fortune cookie notes -- as *anything*, shows just how simple and easy an idea it is. The more forms in which it is used, the more it resembles speech...and like speech, it should not be subject to unnecessary regulation.
The purpose is to show that open source code is free as in 'air' -- it is as pervasive as language itself. Only then will courts realize that how futile it is to attempt to keep it in check.
Sorry, but this smacks of immaturity. Saying 'Nyaah nyaah nyaah nyaah nyaah you can't stop us!!!' doesn't help the studios, the lawyers, the media at large or the general public to take this seriously.
Yes, it does. The argument here is that source code is free speech. By showing how prevelant and pervasive source code is, we show how difficult it will be to contain. It's a form of non-violent protest; a directed disobediance of the law. It's also the only thing we, as individual citizens without law degrees, can do to help this case.
It's as if a court outlawed the word 'quibble'. Once the lawyers notice that word being spoken by everyone on TV, everyone in the street, and in every home in America, they should begin to understand how ridiculous it is to outlaw something so simple and natural as a spoken word. Civil disobediance is a necessary means of making government understand that they have made an unwanted law.
Their business model is one I support, and one that I could see growing quite quickly - the one where you give people some physical thing that ties them to the service that pays for it. I don't think that it's a bad business model - but it needs legal protection because it would be very easy to destroy it.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
I think it would be cool if my Mom got a "free" device that would let her read Email and do basic Web stuff, even if it had a great big ad across the bottom (FreePC style). I for one don't want to see the business model that would permit that to happen, be destroyed.
Okay. What if some company gave your mom a free device that let her read Email and do basic Web stuff, but it also monitored her phone calls and took pictures of her in the shower, which the company then sold for a profit. And your mom didn't know what it was doing. Would you still want her to use it?
Now you're technically competant -- you know how to change that device so that it does everything except invade her privacy. But you're not allowed to change it because the law that you hoped for says you can't. In fact, the law may even prevent you from telling your mom what this device is doing (e.g: the DCMA).
The CueCat scanner's normal operation sends marketing data on your books, CDs, etc to a database, and they're selling that information about you to marketers. The business model of giving away free hardware isn't just about ads anymore. Now they want to use gifts of 'free' hardware as a carrot to get you to submit to invasions of privacy. Yes, you have the choice of not using the product...but only the technically savvy user will know enough to detect what products to avoid. The regular citizen is screwed. They're even more screwed if the law prevents us geeks from warning or helping them avoid these products.
Free hardware in return for waiving basic human rights is a BAD business model, in so many ways.
Yes, but the beauty of the internet is that if only one person understands the complicated applications, he can write a GUI that will allow the masses to access them easily. That's what happened with Napster, and it's happening with Gnutella and Freenet as we speak.
The RIAA's only option is to legislate the monitoring of 100% of all file transfers, and to make unauthorized transfers illegal. The public should not allow such legislation to be made.
I worked for a beltway bandit contractor, who wanted a security SCIF built cheap. So what they did was buy an office that used to be a bank. The work spaces were set up in what was the bank vault, complete with steel walls, a 2-foot thick door, and instructions on the wall about what to do if you got locked in. There was no temperature control other than 'cold', and the acoustics made it sound as if every PC in the room was venting directly behind your ear. Eventually the vault was inspected by the client; it failed the criteria for a security SCIF, and we moved to saner surroundings.
Now I work at a different company in a rather spacious and comfortable cubicle. I just don't understand it when people say they couldn't work in a cube.:)
There's a band I really like -- Big Daddy. (Not the current rapper known as Big Daddy, but a 50's style band of the same name who did parody songs in the '80s.) Big Daddy put out 4 albums, only two of which were released as CDs. The other two were vinyl-only...and are totally unavailable. The record company doesn't sell them, used record stores can't find them. Those songs are in serious danger of being lost forever.
And yet, if I were to rip my Big Daddy albums into MP3s, burn them to a CD, and give the CDs to friends so they can experience Big Daddy's music, I'm breaking the law. Yet if I don't break the law, this music will eventually disappear completely.
I have a hard time understanding how preservation of music or software became illegal. If the publisher doesn't supply or support it, and it's unavailable through normal means, why not let the public do with it what they will? There's no more money to be made on these works -- the creators aren't even trying to make money on them anymore. They should be in the public domain, and if the public wants to preserve them they should be allowed to do so.
Note that if copyright only lasted 15 years (as I believe it was originally written), Big Daddy's works would be in the public domain by now, and the public could rescue them freely. It seems as though copyright is interfering with the process of restoring and recording history.
The decentralized nature of Gnutella would make it trivial to launch DOS attacks. If the music industry wanted to shut it down, they would just have to have various clients return garbage to queries, send nonsense messages, etc. Yes, future Gnutella clients could have some protections built in, but it's an arms race Gnutella would lose.
I wouldn't be too sure about this. First of all, DOS attacks are illegal. If the RIAA is connected to this sort of activity they'll wind up in a lawsuit they're guaranteed to lose. Second, I think the OSS method of Gnutella development may be able to patch vulnerabilities faster than people can invent them. And third, Gnutella is just an intermediate technology -- the real threat to the industry is Freenet, which already has schemes to protect against the attacks you mention.
Technologically, the RIAA is screwed. Having a dinosaurian brain, however, they haven't noticed this yet.
Slashdot Mirror
The richest 10% don't have to worry about whether they can afford to heat their homes this winter. They don't have to worry about getting their kids a basic college education. They don't have to choose between buying prescription drugs or food.
Maybe you've never known what it's like to be poor. I've had to sleep in unheated trailer homes; I've faced the choice between Ramen noodles or a doctor's visit. I clawed my way out of those hard times. But a lot of people are in those dire situations, and they need help. To pass them by so that Mr. Goldshorts can afford to buy his daughter another Lear jet strikes me as simply cruel.
One responsibility of the government is to help its citizens when they require it. And so yes, the richest Americans should pay most of the taxes, and no, they shouldn't get a tax break, because darnit, they don't need the help!
Hey, anyone on slashdot have David Brin's email address? He's always been a man I wanted to communicate with. Mostly, I think, to explain my love/hate attitude towards him. I need some closure on this.
;) ) And here he's giving me reasons to hold my nose and vote for someone, when I'm so far planning to not even vote because of how depressing the choices are this election.
It started in '92 when I met him at a sci-fi con. I'm a physicist who wants to write; he's a writer who learned physics. (Or so he told me then.) I was annoying, I admit, following him for about half an hour asking how one could do both physics and sci-fi at the same time. And he eventually rebuffed me as I deserved. After reading Startide Rising and Sundiver, see, I was just another worshipping fanboy, and although he was polite he did remind me that he was just human and I should get a life.
Then came what I call the 'political' era of Brin's writing, and I lost some interest in him as an author. Still a good thinker, though. After the IMO failed stories of his last trilogy, I find myself still reading Brin for his political and opinion pieces. I lost taste for his writing, even though he's the man I wanted to emulate...but I'm learning more from him now than before.
Now I'm a bit older, a bit wiser, I have a life and I've had one story published so far. (I'm planning on more, but I'm in no rush. I too shall one day spawn a trilogy or three.
It's an interesting cycle I'm in with David Brin. I act childish, and get kicked in the ass. I grow up. I act childish again, and get kicked in the ass again. Pardon me, I think it's time I registered to vote.
I hate giving personal info on the web, for various reasons. I should have started this thread anonymously. But you are correct, and I am wrong, to an extent.
I was told by coworkers that no 3rd party candidates are on the ballot. Took me some time, (and a work hour of web searching) but I found that was wrong -- Browne and Buchanan also made it in. To me those are two more bad choices; as I said, Libertarian policies (especially drug policies) scare the hell out of me. Nader isn't on the ballot.
I'm still very upset that I am not permitted a write-in vote. At least now I do have the option of making a protest vote...although I'd still be voting for someone who I dislike as much as the main party candidates. I'm sorry, I still don't see much point in doing that.
I don't think you people read my initial post. MY STATE DOES NOT ALLOW WRITE-IN CANDIDATES. NO THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES WERE ABLE TO GET ON THE BALLOT THIS ELECTION. The *only* two ways I am allowed to vote are for Gore or Bush. And I don't want to vote for either.
If you have any suggestions for me, I'm more than willing to hear them. I seem to have only three options; Gore, Bush, or frustrated silence.
Yep! I'm an odd individual, no denying that. :)
:/
Still, odd individuals have voting rights too. And (at least this year), apparently no reason to exercise them.
Honestly, why should I bother to vote?
:p
I am in a midwest state that has voted Republican in every election for over 30 years. I don't like either Bore or Gush. And this state does not allow write-in votes, so I couldn't vote for Nader/Buchanan/Bugs Bunny even if I wanted to.
There's a larger problem in that I don't agree with *any* of the parties. From what I can see, republicans are evil, democrats are stupid, Nader is a fruit loop, Libertarians are scary-stupid, and Buchanan is dangerously insane. I have to go to really obscure people (the Natural Law party) before I find anyone whose policies I can agree with.
I don't feel any incentive to vote this election. Furthermore, I don't want to take part of the blame for putting either of the two frontrunning bozos into office.
I have invented a new business plan that resembles the internet loss-leader model, but works in the brick-and-asphalt world.
The concept is simple; provide a service, namely instant unsolicited lavage of vehicular ports during brief periods of cessation. It is important to provide your own materials to do this -- thus the resemblance to the loss-leader model -- so that you can control the quality of the service. Depending upon customer temperment, you should either begin with a high quality service (and thus expect compensation), or a low quality service (afterwhich the customer will demand a high quality service, which you only provide after compensation).
The only start-up equipment needed is a bucket of water, a squeegee, and a street corner with a stoplight. Watch the income roll in!
Even valuable, conscientious posters have to kick back and be silly now and again.
You're quite right about all your criticisms -- especially 1 tera = 10^12, not 10^16, which was a mental lapse on my part. I'll be more careful about posting lighthearted stuff with a +1 bonus in the future.
I never liked 'terabyte' as a computing term. Just doesn't fit in with the 'million, billion, trillion' nomenclature.
:)
;)
I would like to propose that we redesignate one thousand trillion bits as equal to one Electronic Ton. After all we have british tons, metric tons, even a volumetric ton. Why not an Electronic Ton? When you realize that 10 tera-tera (10*(10^16)^16) electrons actually weighs about a metric ton, it seems especially relevant!
Welcome to the age of the 1 ton computer! Next year I predict we'll all have half-ton palmpads!
Yep, that's 90 megavoxels. But before you get too excited, that's about a 600x600x250 pixel display. In 8 colors. So what we have here is the first 3D EGA monitor. :)
You need truly frightening numbers of voxels to do anything really interesting. I've done heat transfer simulations that crippled a SGI supercomputer for only a 30 cm tall by 50 cm wide tank filled with fluid. Shame the oil tanks we *wanted* to simulate were 10 meters high and 15 meters across...
But...if you did outfit a robot with a CueCat, would it be sporting a penis or a pussy? ;)
(Oh, hell. I didn't really want karma anyway... )
Failing that, I'd like free unlimited bandwidth website hosting for a year, and a puppy.
Take one of my favorite nanite designs: the Respirocyte. This artificial blood cell does nothing more than load and unload oxygen and CO2. Infuse a person's blood with it, and they can spend hours underwater, run 12 minutes at top speed without taking a breath, or live for 3.8 hours with their heart stopped .
Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.
Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.
This is a robotic arm capable of moving individual cells. Exciting, but only a step to something useful.
The noocytes in Blood Music were self-contained computers designed to mimic white blood cells, who could network together and create a very powerful (sentient, in the story) computer.
How do the two have anything to do with one another? I'm confused. Or was the Blood Music reference just name-dropping in an attempt to get the story accepted?
The original question is one that's been on my mind also, as I'm considering putting up a parody/fiction site. But I'm concerned about my legal exposure. My proposed site will have references (clearly labelled as fiction and satire, and posted by both me and my guests) to some 'in-joke' rumors about popular corporations (e.g: Microsoft is owned by aliens, Hormel's SPAM is made of ground human meat, the Teletubbies are mutated lab experiments, etc.)
Is a disclaimer, stating that all contents are fiction/parody/satire, enough to deflect legal threats to a parody website? Is there something else that can be done to protect me if I do create this site?
The US Government doesn't work that way. Why kill a spy when you can monitor him instead? They won't take over a subversive form of communication ; they'd try to subvert it themselves, and use it as a tool to monitor the populace.
That's easy to say, but it's not so easy to do with Freenet. Queries are anonymized, and content files are passed from server to server. It's near-impossible to find out who's looking for information, and completely impossible to find the person providing it. To get their hooks into Freenet, government (or corporations, who also may want to use such a tool) would have to be involved in the design process NOW, planting backdoors. And there's no sign of that happening.
So...that leads to a prediction.
In a year or so Freenet will become popular; the next Napster. A year or so after that, corporations will start making their own versions of Freenet, possibly with a proprietary protocol and definitely with a neat new GUI. They'll try to lure Freenet users to their new, 'better' software. And one or all of these corporate offerings will be subsequently proven to be not-so secure and not-so anonymous.
Freenet may be destined to remain a niche network, but Freenet-like networks will become popular, although these glossy clones will be compromised. And they'll become accepted because most of the public won't know and won't care.
The RIAA and MPAA are not monopolies because the first 'A' in each acronym stands for Association. They're both composed of a group of corporations who compete against each other, but have formed associations as a truce so that they can do important things like invent standards, generalize licensing agreements, and sue college-age kids. ;)
Here's a not-so-rhetorical question. Corporations are more powerful, legally, than individual human beings these days. A legislating group of human beings is called a government. What is a legislating group of corporations called?
Re-read my post. :)
Distributing DeCSS as a t-shirt, as images, on fortune cookie notes -- as *anything*, shows just how simple and easy an idea it is. The more forms in which it is used, the more it resembles speech...and like speech, it should not be subject to unnecessary regulation.
The purpose is to show that open source code is free as in 'air' -- it is as pervasive as language itself. Only then will courts realize that how futile it is to attempt to keep it in check.
Yes, it does. The argument here is that source code is free speech. By showing how prevelant and pervasive source code is, we show how difficult it will be to contain. It's a form of non-violent protest; a directed disobediance of the law. It's also the only thing we, as individual citizens without law degrees, can do to help this case.
It's as if a court outlawed the word 'quibble'. Once the lawyers notice that word being spoken by everyone on TV, everyone in the street, and in every home in America, they should begin to understand how ridiculous it is to outlaw something so simple and natural as a spoken word. Civil disobediance is a necessary means of making government understand that they have made an unwanted law.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
I think it would be cool if my Mom got a "free" device that would let her read Email and do basic Web stuff, even if it had a great big ad across the bottom (FreePC style). I for one don't want to see the business model that would permit that to happen, be destroyed.
Okay. What if some company gave your mom a free device that let her read Email and do basic Web stuff, but it also monitored her phone calls and took pictures of her in the shower, which the company then sold for a profit. And your mom didn't know what it was doing. Would you still want her to use it?
Now you're technically competant -- you know how to change that device so that it does everything except invade her privacy. But you're not allowed to change it because the law that you hoped for says you can't. In fact, the law may even prevent you from telling your mom what this device is doing (e.g: the DCMA).
The CueCat scanner's normal operation sends marketing data on your books, CDs, etc to a database, and they're selling that information about you to marketers. The business model of giving away free hardware isn't just about ads anymore. Now they want to use gifts of 'free' hardware as a carrot to get you to submit to invasions of privacy. Yes, you have the choice of not using the product...but only the technically savvy user will know enough to detect what products to avoid. The regular citizen is screwed. They're even more screwed if the law prevents us geeks from warning or helping them avoid these products.
Free hardware in return for waiving basic human rights is a BAD business model, in so many ways.
Yes, but the beauty of the internet is that if only one person understands the complicated applications, he can write a GUI that will allow the masses to access them easily. That's what happened with Napster, and it's happening with Gnutella and Freenet as we speak.
The RIAA's only option is to legislate the monitoring of 100% of all file transfers, and to make unauthorized transfers illegal. The public should not allow such legislation to be made.
I worked for a beltway bandit contractor, who wanted a security SCIF built cheap. So what they did was buy an office that used to be a bank. The work spaces were set up in what was the bank vault, complete with steel walls, a 2-foot thick door, and instructions on the wall about what to do if you got locked in. There was no temperature control other than 'cold', and the acoustics made it sound as if every PC in the room was venting directly behind your ear. Eventually the vault was inspected by the client; it failed the criteria for a security SCIF, and we moved to saner surroundings.
:)
Now I work at a different company in a rather spacious and comfortable cubicle. I just don't understand it when people say they couldn't work in a cube.
There's a band I really like -- Big Daddy. (Not the current rapper known as Big Daddy, but a 50's style band of the same name who did parody songs in the '80s.) Big Daddy put out 4 albums, only two of which were released as CDs. The other two were vinyl-only...and are totally unavailable. The record company doesn't sell them, used record stores can't find them. Those songs are in serious danger of being lost forever.
And yet, if I were to rip my Big Daddy albums into MP3s, burn them to a CD, and give the CDs to friends so they can experience Big Daddy's music, I'm breaking the law. Yet if I don't break the law, this music will eventually disappear completely.
I have a hard time understanding how preservation of music or software became illegal. If the publisher doesn't supply or support it, and it's unavailable through normal means, why not let the public do with it what they will? There's no more money to be made on these works -- the creators aren't even trying to make money on them anymore. They should be in the public domain, and if the public wants to preserve them they should be allowed to do so.
Note that if copyright only lasted 15 years (as I believe it was originally written), Big Daddy's works would be in the public domain by now, and the public could rescue them freely. It seems as though copyright is interfering with the process of restoring and recording history.
The decentralized nature of Gnutella would make it trivial to launch DOS attacks. If the music industry wanted to shut it down, they would just have to have various clients return garbage to queries, send nonsense messages, etc. Yes, future Gnutella clients could have some protections built in, but it's an arms race Gnutella would lose.
I wouldn't be too sure about this. First of all, DOS attacks are illegal. If the RIAA is connected to this sort of activity they'll wind up in a lawsuit they're guaranteed to lose. Second, I think the OSS method of Gnutella development may be able to patch vulnerabilities faster than people can invent them. And third, Gnutella is just an intermediate technology -- the real threat to the industry is Freenet, which already has schemes to protect against the attacks you mention.
Technologically, the RIAA is screwed. Having a dinosaurian brain, however, they haven't noticed this yet.