Q: Do you feel that artists have a right to own works that they create?
Jack's Mind: profits interefered with... A: Well of course I do. We just want to receive just compensation for our unparalleled efforts to promote these artists
Q: Do you feel that provisions of the DMCA violate certain freedoms?
JM: profits over freedom, freedom good profit better A: Absolutely not. We are simply trying to protect the artist's works.
Q: As far as Naptster and Gnutella are concerned, has the RIAA given any thought to embracing these distributed technologies?
JM: ?? distributed huh? bzzzzz ?? A: We are mainly concerned with the potential of abuse that lies in these new technologies from pirates and terrorists and pedophiles.
Q: How do you sleep at night knowing how much you and your associates have abused both artists and the American legal system?
I'm sorry man, but as relativistic as I am your comments are absolutely asinine. So fucking WHAT if she can "sing and dance"? Give me a good choreographer and I can do the same thing. Do you not understand the fact that she is totally superficial? If it weren't for looks, we'd have zip. She is yet another bubble-gum pop-star that will be forgotten as soon as her tits start to sag.
Let's flash back to the 80's... Remember Tifanny? Or Debbie Gibson? How about Samantha Fox? And where are they today? How have they recently made your life better? Examples abound of pretty-girls that have two, three hits and are tossed aside by the next new thing. Talent requires staying power, imagination, originality, and meaning. Spears' talent is skin deep. You've been sold an odorous pile of shit, pal, no matter how fuckable it looks.
Spears is the music equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos: occasionally humorous, but ultimately forgettable.
It would not surprise me in the LEAST if you could waive these rights. As the concept of "rights" becomes increasingly laughable, signing away said writes to some corporate behemoth is increasingly common. "Justice? What the fuck is that? We got PROFITS to worry about, boy!"
If you haven't done so yet, GO READ THIS SPEECH. The following quote comes from the end, and could have very easily come from a/. reader:
In the last few years, business pulled our culture away from the idea that music is important and emotional and sacred. But new technology has brought a real opportunity for change; we can break down the old system and give musicians real freedom and choice. A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. Let's return to our purity and our idealism while we have this shot.
I have felt for a long time that rock music (and all music, really) suffers when business interests enter into the equation. Business is about making money, which means selling as many copies of a given CD as you can. When this is your focus, artists who make great art but who are unpopular get left behind or ignored. As St. Hicks said: "If you do a commercial you are off the artistic roll call forever. Unless you're Willie Nelson." When money is held more important than art, Truth suffers a fatal blow.
All hail Courtney Love! May her tummy be forever flat and her music eternally jammin! You shall be in my masturbatory fantasies forever more! I was absolutely amazed at the erudite reasoning she gave in this speech. The RIAA should be terrified: we now have a hero. And not only is she a hottie, she's a fucking brain.
I have been in the minority for a long time in saying that Courtney Love is a great artist that even the caustic Bill Hicks would respect. She's not just another talentless bimbo a la Britney Spears or Celine Dion. She is intelligent, can act pretty well, and has a lot of experience under her belt. Plus it is my opinion that Hole rocks pretty hard.
But this speech solidifies the fact that there are brains above that sexy belly-button. Her comments are dead on right, and are anti-establishment enough to warrant deep respect. Maybe this will put the final nail in the coffin of the "riding Kurt Cobain's coattails" meme.
The only problem that I have with solar power is that while the energy source itself is clean, the process to make solar cells is very expensive and harmful to the environment in itself. I don't remember the exact figures, but it takes something like 10 years of clean energy production for a solar cell to "make up" for the environmental damage caused during its production.
In case it is not blatantly obvious, I am not an engineer. Someone with hard numbers back me up (or even better, contradict me!) here.
HAhahahahahahaha! BWAAAAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAH! Oh man, hahahaahahahaha. That was DAMN funny. Hoo-whee. That got my funny bone a goin. Slapped my momma! HAHAHAAHAHAHA!! COMBAT BOOTS! AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!! Oh yeah, good stuff. Classic.
1) There is a not-all-that-slim chance that if activities began to occur on your data haven that the Western powers disagreed with, they would find a way to excuse an invasion and confiscate your equipment. The obvious wrong answer to this would be to build your own defense. Is such an invasion even a conern for you? Have you given any thought to signing treaties or other such matters of statecraft, or do you think the international community doesn't take you seriously enough to consider such offers?
2) Second, with the coming of sites such as Freenet, do you feel that a data haven such as you have envisioned is still necessary?
With some degree of hesitation I have got to say that it's fake. There aren't enough details about how he did what he did, but there is alot of pomp and circumstance. Plus, those *pictures*! I find it difficult to believe that any human looks that goofy. But then there's Linda Tripp... The documentation of addresses and telephone numbers gives a certain amount of credence, but the technical details were so sketchy that I'm really having a hard time believing this. And the picture with the chat from the "cuosin" and the porn ad in the background was too stereotypical to be believable.
The emotional content of modern political campaigns will hopefully be dulled somewhat as people continue to use the net to make their political decisions. First, I make the assumption that the public as a whole gets most of its political information from television. Television is an emotive medium, short on depth and long on knee-jerk reactions, "sound bites", and momentary focus. The net allows for more depth to enter into our political discussions. There is no linking on TV. The nature of the net is such that there is an abundance of available information. (To use an analogy: TV is left-brained [emotional], the net is right-brained[logical].) I believe (and fervently hope) that this logical nature of the net this will decrease the ability for emotional manipulation that has been so prevalent since the 60's.
As far as the educated congressman is concerned, I think you would be surprised to find out the average education level of our elected leaders. It is actually quite high, much higher than the population as a whole. And while they are as a whole corrupted by their need for cash, the system that steers the educated elite towards public servitude seems to work.
We're a virus with shoes. I can prove it on an Etch-a-Sketch. End of story. --bathroom wall, Jax, FL
This is OT, but the your sig was originally from Bill Hicks, a Texas comedian that is damn near required listening material for most/.ers. There are a bunch of MP3s of his stuff floating around; email me if you want a sample (including the one with the above quote.)
I would have emailed this but a cursory investigation turned up no email address.
Remember kiddies! In the land of the free, home of the brave, you:
Can't see movies unless they are banal and without morally objectionable content
Can't drink under any circumstances, even at your own wedding reception.
Can't drop out of school
Can't (apparently) criticize your peers or schoolmasters on the web
Can't buy borrow or steal cigarettes
Can't "play doctor" lest you risk being sued by someone's parents
CAN buy guns
Hmm. Gee, and some people say our priorities are skewed. Wonder why.
- Rev.
Ghost in the Shell is a must-see
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
Masamune Shirow, the artist and writer of the Ghost in the Shell series, is an artist that, for me, defines the genre. Shirow was a former engineer before becoming a manga artist, and his grasp of technical issues is deep and impressive. The footnotes in the GITS book were worth reading in and of themselves: as an example, he posited that working androids would be difficult to achieve because of the lack of a workable lymphatic system and what this implied.
GITS the movie does not get into technical discussions as deeply, but it is still a beautiful work of cyberpunk, hauntingly beautiful at times and so sleek it floors you. The existential issues dealt with in the movie will be scorned by most American viewers, who tend to cringe when philosophical issues are brought up, but in GITS it is done with class and is in many ways antithetical to the way classic American sci-fi, such as Star Trek, deals with similar issues.
The only other anime I have seen that even comes close to GITS is Ninja Scroll. But that movie, while excellent, didn't resonate as deeply with me as GITS did. Ninja Scroll was a very well animated ninja story with an excellent writer, but it didn't have the depth that GITS did.
Gotta disagree with you there. Q3 is a pure multiplayer game, so there is no need for a plot. But Half-Life had a very interesting and well-presented storyline that kept me curious all the way through. The ending sucked, but that's a separate issue.:) I cared very much about the story line in that game, specifically wanting to find out who the hell the Agent-looking guys with the suits and sunglasses were.
It is the nature of television that it is a visual medium, and is therefore superficial and shallow when it attempts to deal with deep and complicated issues <plug>(except for Frontline, Tuesdays on PBS.)</plug>. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Internet has the potential to make for a super-informed voter. Do you feel that the text-based Internet is allowing for more in-depth analysis of issues to more people? Or is the abundance of information potentially confusing to those who are most interested in various issues?
Hey! Aren't 1040 forms public data? It seems like every year I hear about the President and Vice President's tax filings, including earnings, deductions, etc. Does anyone know how to go about getting this info from the IRS? It sure would be helpful if we could document the fact that Metallica's members make $x/yr, and how little they have lost due to Napster...
You could pull a better design out of your ass? Then do it. Let's see it. Post the link here. We'll vote on it. And you better scan around zeldman.com, webstandards.org, and alistapart.com to make sure you know whereof you speak. Oh, and remember: Having a successful site (original content, community, etc.) will get you bonus points.
But if, as I suspect, you're yet another trash talking punk, then please shut the hell up. Thank you.
Zeld-mon, I would just like to hear your two bits about Mozilla, not just as a standards compliant browser (which Gecko certainly is) but as an application deployment platform as some advocates/developers are claiming. If Mozilla does become such a beast, the nature of the game will almost certainly be changed, especially re: Microsoft's desktop domination. Do you see real potential for Mozilla to evolve into such a platform, or are the developers getting over-exuberant? - Rev.
While the ACLU tends to be a rabid bunch of lawyers with too much time on their hands (the Onion article about the ACLU suing the police for stopping someone from blowing up the ACLU HQ comes to mind), I'd have to go with them on this one.
1) The Onion article was satirizing the ACLU's unwavering dedication to freedom of expression, not their overlitigiousness.
2) Can you name me a SINGLE CASE brought by the ACLU that wasn't germane and noble? I get pretty defensive about this because much of my community is Baptist, and to Baptists the (ACLU==Satan). Ergo, I hear all SORTS of shit that the ACLU supposedly did that is patently and ridiculously false. So I get a little defensive.
Slashdot's strength does not lie in fighting Microsoft in the courts or in the corporate arena. Slashdot is much stronger in the ideological arena, and it is here where it should make it's stand.
So WHAT if Microsoft wants you to remove a few posts? It doesn't matter in the long run. If the open-source model is truly the threat that you believe it to be, if it will truly crumble the mighty giant from Redmond, then this legal bullying doesn't matter.
Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
If you pursue this through legal channels you risk losing. There can be no doubt that copyrighted material was posted, and judges do not care about your beliefs in open source and freedom, and common carrier status is not clear here. And where victory is not assured, consider other stratagems. Remove the posts! Meekly cry that you have been wronged by the bully with the billions. You readers will remember. Maintain the moral high ground while risking nothing. This is not the time to strike at either M$ or the DMCA, the facts being what they are.
The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
In short, do not let your hatred of Redmond cloud your judgement. Free speech is a noble virtue to uphold, but it is not an absolute right and few courts in the land will back you on this one. Illegal activities on the behalf of AC's makes your position much less than pure. So instead of battling in the courts where you have the disadvantage, battle where you have power: here, on Slashdot. The Internet community is behind you in spirit. Build on this and better opportunities will present themselves.
Does /. have an IPv6 address? Does Wired?
on
IPv6 Over OpenBSD
·
· Score: 1
That's great that OpenBSD has IPv6 support, and it looks like it has for some time. But the simple fact of the matter is that IPv6 isn't going to take off until people start actually USING it. Are there *any* non-research sites hooked up to the 6Bone? If the leaders (term used loosely) on the Net--such as/., Wired, Salon, Ars Technica, etc.--began using it and advertising the fact that they were we'd start to see more usage and interest. And let's face it folks: MS ain't gonna commit resources to IPv6 until they see demand for it, and it ain't *really* gonna take off until they do. But in the meantime, some of the movers and shakers in the dubya-dubya-dubya world CAN do things to promote it.
So to all you sysops out there: Please do so. PLEASE.
-Rev.
This is actually a great idea & Gnutella/IPv6?
on
IPv6 Over OpenBSD
·
· Score: 2
It seems to me that historically it has been the "underground" that has utilized cutting-edge technologies first. BBS's first became popular (at least among the people I hung out with) whenever you could trade warez and txt files. The internet was popular with geeks and Phrack types way before.com mania shook the world, and John Carmack is definately not mainstream. All of these examples show that the edges are where innovation and application of new technologies takes place.
So I vote "yay" to implementing some sort of pseudo-proprietary net using IPv6, expecially IPsec just to piss of the MPAA attorneys. Could Gnutella be ported to IPv6?
This would off course be possible, because it's just the kind of thing XML is designed to handle. If Word stored their documents using one DTD/schema, and you wanted to load it in WordProcessorX, you could just use their stylesheet to convert it over. No problem.
Really I only see two (minor) drawbacks to using XML as an end-user document storage mechanism. 1) The file size would be larger by quite a bit. No biggie with today's hard drives. 2) It would be editable by end users. This is a good thing if you know what you're doing, but if you don't and fuck up the well-formedness of the XML document you would be up a creek.
Having said this, I think that companies will be moving towards using XML as a stardard format soon, if not sooner. Microsoft is already using XML pretty extensively to store info in Win2k. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they added a "Save As|XML Document" to the Office suite.
Slashdot Mirror
Q: Do you feel that artists have a right to own works that they create?
Jack's Mind: profits interefered with...
A: Well of course I do. We just want to receive just compensation for our unparalleled efforts to promote these artists
Q: Do you feel that provisions of the DMCA violate certain freedoms?
JM: profits over freedom, freedom good profit better
A: Absolutely not. We are simply trying to protect the artist's works.
Q: As far as Naptster and Gnutella are concerned, has the RIAA given any thought to embracing these distributed technologies?
JM: ?? distributed huh? bzzzzz ??
A: We are mainly concerned with the potential of abuse that lies in these new technologies from pirates and terrorists and pedophiles.
Q: How do you sleep at night knowing how much you and your associates have abused both artists and the American legal system?
JM: grr ruff! RUFF! BOWOWOWOWOW!
- Rev.A: Well, the tranqualizers help. [Laughs]
I'm sorry man, but as relativistic as I am your comments are absolutely asinine. So fucking WHAT if she can "sing and dance"? Give me a good choreographer and I can do the same thing. Do you not understand the fact that she is totally superficial? If it weren't for looks, we'd have zip. She is yet another bubble-gum pop-star that will be forgotten as soon as her tits start to sag.
Let's flash back to the 80's... Remember Tifanny? Or Debbie Gibson? How about Samantha Fox? And where are they today? How have they recently made your life better? Examples abound of pretty-girls that have two, three hits and are tossed aside by the next new thing. Talent requires staying power, imagination, originality, and meaning. Spears' talent is skin deep. You've been sold an odorous pile of shit, pal, no matter how fuckable it looks.
Spears is the music equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos: occasionally humorous, but ultimately forgettable.
- Rev.It would not surprise me in the LEAST if you could waive these rights. As the concept of "rights" becomes increasingly laughable, signing away said writes to some corporate behemoth is increasingly common. "Justice? What the fuck is that? We got PROFITS to worry about, boy!"
- Rev.Because I am the only source for this quote. In other words: I made it up. Call it an exercise in memetics.
- Rev.If you haven't done so yet, GO READ THIS SPEECH. The following quote comes from the end, and could have very easily come from a /. reader:
In the last few years, business pulled our culture away from the idea that music is important and emotional and sacred. But new technology has brought a real opportunity for change; we can break down the old system and give musicians real freedom and choice. A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. Let's return to our purity and our idealism while we have this shot.
I have felt for a long time that rock music (and all music, really) suffers when business interests enter into the equation. Business is about making money, which means selling as many copies of a given CD as you can. When this is your focus, artists who make great art but who are unpopular get left behind or ignored. As St. Hicks said: "If you do a commercial you are off the artistic roll call forever. Unless you're Willie Nelson." When money is held more important than art, Truth suffers a fatal blow.
All hail Courtney Love! May her tummy be forever flat and her music eternally jammin! You shall be in my masturbatory fantasies forever more! I was absolutely amazed at the erudite reasoning she gave in this speech. The RIAA should be terrified: we now have a hero. And not only is she a hottie, she's a fucking brain.
- Rev.I have been in the minority for a long time in saying that Courtney Love is a great artist that even the caustic Bill Hicks would respect. She's not just another talentless bimbo a la Britney Spears or Celine Dion. She is intelligent, can act pretty well, and has a lot of experience under her belt. Plus it is my opinion that Hole rocks pretty hard.
But this speech solidifies the fact that there are brains above that sexy belly-button. Her comments are dead on right, and are anti-establishment enough to warrant deep respect. Maybe this will put the final nail in the coffin of the "riding Kurt Cobain's coattails" meme.
- Rev.Umm, I don't get it.
The only problem that I have with solar power is that while the energy source itself is clean, the process to make solar cells is very expensive and harmful to the environment in itself. I don't remember the exact figures, but it takes something like 10 years of clean energy production for a solar cell to "make up" for the environmental damage caused during its production.
In case it is not blatantly obvious, I am not an engineer. Someone with hard numbers back me up (or even better, contradict me!) here.
- Rev.HAhahahahahahaha! BWAAAAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAH! Oh man, hahahaahahahaha. That was DAMN funny. Hoo-whee. That got my funny bone a goin. Slapped my momma! HAHAHAAHAHAHA!! COMBAT BOOTS! AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!! Oh yeah, good stuff. Classic.
- Rev.hahahahaha
1) There is a not-all-that-slim chance that if activities began to occur on your data haven that the Western powers disagreed with, they would find a way to excuse an invasion and confiscate your equipment. The obvious wrong answer to this would be to build your own defense. Is such an invasion even a conern for you? Have you given any thought to signing treaties or other such matters of statecraft, or do you think the international community doesn't take you seriously enough to consider such offers?
2) Second, with the coming of sites such as Freenet, do you feel that a data haven such as you have envisioned is still necessary?
- Rev.With some degree of hesitation I have got to say that it's fake. There aren't enough details about how he did what he did, but there is alot of pomp and circumstance. Plus, those *pictures*! I find it difficult to believe that any human looks that goofy. But then there's Linda Tripp... The documentation of addresses and telephone numbers gives a certain amount of credence, but the technical details were so sketchy that I'm really having a hard time believing this. And the picture with the chat from the "cuosin" and the porn ad in the background was too stereotypical to be believable.
I'm skeptical, is all I'm saying.
- Rev.The emotional content of modern political campaigns will hopefully be dulled somewhat as people continue to use the net to make their political decisions. First, I make the assumption that the public as a whole gets most of its political information from television. Television is an emotive medium, short on depth and long on knee-jerk reactions, "sound bites", and momentary focus. The net allows for more depth to enter into our political discussions. There is no linking on TV. The nature of the net is such that there is an abundance of available information. (To use an analogy: TV is left-brained [emotional], the net is right-brained[logical].) I believe (and fervently hope) that this logical nature of the net this will decrease the ability for emotional manipulation that has been so prevalent since the 60's.
As far as the educated congressman is concerned, I think you would be surprised to find out the average education level of our elected leaders. It is actually quite high, much higher than the population as a whole. And while they are as a whole corrupted by their need for cash, the system that steers the educated elite towards public servitude seems to work.
- Rev.This is OT, but the your sig was originally from Bill Hicks, a Texas comedian that is damn near required listening material for most /.ers. There are a bunch of MP3s of his stuff floating around; email me if you want a sample (including the one with the above quote.)
I would have emailed this but a cursory investigation turned up no email address.
- Rev.Remember kiddies! In the land of the free, home of the brave, you:
Can't see movies unless they are banal and without morally objectionable content
Can't drink under any circumstances, even at your own wedding reception.
Can't drop out of school
Can't (apparently) criticize your peers or schoolmasters on the web
Can't buy borrow or steal cigarettes
Can't "play doctor" lest you risk being sued by someone's parents
CAN buy guns
Hmm. Gee, and some people say our priorities are skewed. Wonder why.
- Rev.Masamune Shirow, the artist and writer of the Ghost in the Shell series, is an artist that, for me, defines the genre. Shirow was a former engineer before becoming a manga artist, and his grasp of technical issues is deep and impressive. The footnotes in the GITS book were worth reading in and of themselves: as an example, he posited that working androids would be difficult to achieve because of the lack of a workable lymphatic system and what this implied.
GITS the movie does not get into technical discussions as deeply, but it is still a beautiful work of cyberpunk, hauntingly beautiful at times and so sleek it floors you. The existential issues dealt with in the movie will be scorned by most American viewers, who tend to cringe when philosophical issues are brought up, but in GITS it is done with class and is in many ways antithetical to the way classic American sci-fi, such as Star Trek, deals with similar issues.
The only other anime I have seen that even comes close to GITS is Ninja Scroll. But that movie, while excellent, didn't resonate as deeply with me as GITS did. Ninja Scroll was a very well animated ninja story with an excellent writer, but it didn't have the depth that GITS did.
- Rev.Gotta disagree with you there. Q3 is a pure multiplayer game, so there is no need for a plot. But Half-Life had a very interesting and well-presented storyline that kept me curious all the way through. The ending sucked, but that's a separate issue. :) I cared very much about the story line in that game, specifically wanting to find out who the hell the Agent-looking guys with the suits and sunglasses were.
- Rev.It is the nature of television that it is a visual medium, and is therefore superficial and shallow when it attempts to deal with deep and complicated issues <plug>(except for Frontline, Tuesdays on PBS.)</plug>. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Internet has the potential to make for a super-informed voter. Do you feel that the text-based Internet is allowing for more in-depth analysis of issues to more people? Or is the abundance of information potentially confusing to those who are most interested in various issues?
- Rev.
Hey! Aren't 1040 forms public data? It seems like every year I hear about the President and Vice President's tax filings, including earnings, deductions, etc. Does anyone know how to go about getting this info from the IRS? It sure would be helpful if we could document the fact that Metallica's members make $x/yr, and how little they have lost due to Napster...
My 2 bits.
- REv.
You could pull a better design out of your ass? Then do it. Let's see it. Post the link here. We'll vote on it. And you better scan around zeldman.com, webstandards.org, and alistapart.com to make sure you know whereof you speak. Oh, and remember: Having a successful site (original content, community, etc.) will get you bonus points.
But if, as I suspect, you're yet another trash talking punk, then please shut the hell up. Thank you.
- Rev.Zeld-mon, I would just like to hear your two bits about Mozilla, not just as a standards compliant browser (which Gecko certainly is) but as an application deployment platform as some advocates/developers are claiming. If Mozilla does become such a beast, the nature of the game will almost certainly be changed, especially re: Microsoft's desktop domination. Do you see real potential for Mozilla to evolve into such a platform, or are the developers getting over-exuberant? - Rev.
While the ACLU tends to be a rabid bunch of lawyers with too much time on their hands (the Onion article about the ACLU suing the police for stopping someone from blowing up the ACLU HQ comes to mind), I'd have to go with them on this one.
1) The Onion article was satirizing the ACLU's unwavering dedication to freedom of expression, not their overlitigiousness.
2) Can you name me a SINGLE CASE brought by the ACLU that wasn't germane and noble? I get pretty defensive about this because much of my community is Baptist, and to Baptists the (ACLU==Satan). Ergo, I hear all SORTS of shit that the ACLU supposedly did that is patently and ridiculously false. So I get a little defensive.
- Rev.
Slashdot's strength does not lie in fighting Microsoft in the courts or in the corporate arena. Slashdot is much stronger in the ideological arena, and it is here where it should make it's stand.
So WHAT if Microsoft wants you to remove a few posts? It doesn't matter in the long run. If the open-source model is truly the threat that you believe it to be, if it will truly crumble the mighty giant from Redmond, then this legal bullying doesn't matter.
Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
If you pursue this through legal channels you risk losing. There can be no doubt that copyrighted material was posted, and judges do not care about your beliefs in open source and freedom, and common carrier status is not clear here. And where victory is not assured, consider other stratagems. Remove the posts! Meekly cry that you have been wronged by the bully with the billions. You readers will remember. Maintain the moral high ground while risking nothing. This is not the time to strike at either M$ or the DMCA, the facts being what they are.
The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
In short, do not let your hatred of Redmond cloud your judgement. Free speech is a noble virtue to uphold, but it is not an absolute right and few courts in the land will back you on this one. Illegal activities on the behalf of AC's makes your position much less than pure. So instead of battling in the courts where you have the disadvantage, battle where you have power: here, on Slashdot. The Internet community is behind you in spirit. Build on this and better opportunities will present themselves.
That's great that OpenBSD has IPv6 support, and it looks like it has for some time. But the simple fact of the matter is that IPv6 isn't going to take off until people start actually USING it. Are there *any* non-research sites hooked up to the 6Bone? If the leaders (term used loosely) on the Net--such as /., Wired, Salon, Ars Technica, etc.--began using it and advertising the fact that they were we'd start to see more usage and interest. And let's face it folks: MS ain't gonna commit resources to IPv6 until they see demand for it, and it ain't *really* gonna take off until they do. But in the meantime, some of the movers and shakers in the dubya-dubya-dubya world CAN do things to promote it.
So to all you sysops out there: Please do so. PLEASE.
-Rev.It seems to me that historically it has been the "underground" that has utilized cutting-edge technologies first. BBS's first became popular (at least among the people I hung out with) whenever you could trade warez and txt files. The internet was popular with geeks and Phrack types way before .com mania shook the world, and John Carmack is definately not mainstream. All of these examples show that the edges are where innovation and application of new technologies takes place.
So I vote "yay" to implementing some sort of pseudo-proprietary net using IPv6, expecially IPsec just to piss of the MPAA attorneys. Could Gnutella be ported to IPv6?
This would off course be possible, because it's just the kind of thing XML is designed to handle. If Word stored their documents using one DTD/schema, and you wanted to load it in WordProcessorX, you could just use their stylesheet to convert it over. No problem.
Really I only see two (minor) drawbacks to using XML as an end-user document storage mechanism. 1) The file size would be larger by quite a bit. No biggie with today's hard drives. 2) It would be editable by end users. This is a good thing if you know what you're doing, but if you don't and fuck up the well-formedness of the XML document you would be up a creek.
Having said this, I think that companies will be moving towards using XML as a stardard format soon, if not sooner. Microsoft is already using XML pretty extensively to store info in Win2k. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they added a "Save As|XML Document" to the Office suite.
-Rev.