Apparently, in the attorney's world, once that lone copy is made, it pretty much automatically puts itself on the Internet with no further acts by any individual
Which misses the states' point about DeCSS -- it's uniquely dangerous precisely because it *isn't* a copying utility -- it's a decryption utility. Because of that, it makes it possible to "rip" protected content and convert it to all manner of different (more easily traded and recopied) formats.
Which completely misses michael's point: if you use DeCSS to convert a DVD file to a different format no distribution has taken place, and no copyright has been violated. The copyright violation occurs when the (converted or unconverted) file is put on the internet. The fact that the converted file is more easily distributed is irrelevant. Or did you want to outlaw all of the things which make distribution of copyrighted files easier?
AFAIK, the current plan is to have all of the versions packaged together... which has the added benefits for Linux users of a) making it easier to find, b) it being available at the same time as the Windows version, and c) increasing mindshare as a gaming platform. Hopefully, their implementation is good on Linux, and the game runs well (not like MS's version of IE runs on Solaris).
Presumably, when you connect to their Official Vault, they'll be able to get a good idea of how viable the Linux gaming community is. Also, isn't it the first Linux game that will be released concurrently with the Windows version?
Debian is like Redhat in this regard... all of the necessary files (package libc6-dev) are in/usr/include/linux. I don't even have a/usr/src/linux directory, and I get by fine...
The credit card company took the charges off, but beyond that, they didn't care about prosecuting the individual. The merchants had to foot the bill.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the merchants didn't foot the bill, the credit card company did. Credit card companies routinely write off fraud losses of up to 10% of the total purchases (of course, you and I pay for this through higher prices...).
In fact, the situation is even worse than this. My stepdad told me a few weeks ago that if he went into his bank, and told them that he didn't place a charge on his credit card, they would take off the charge no questions asked. That's right, the first time, they just eat the loss without looking into it any further. Obviously, if you try to get away with this many times, they'll look into it, but I found it pretty amazing that they wouldn't even look into it...
If you write out a very large number in binary their is very little chance that the zero's
and ones's used will be anywhere near or even close to 50% each.
Incorrect... the chance that there will be about half 0s and half 1s is quite good.
Quite good? Try probability 1. Such numbers are called "normal numbers", and have measure 1 in [0,1]. Moreover, the "completely normal numbers" (numbers which are normal with respect to every basis) also have measure 1 in [0,1]. Interestingly enough, no one has yet proved the complete normality of a single number! The number.12345678910111213141516... can be shown to be normal base 10, but I don't think it's normal in other bases. No one has yet produced a proof that e or pi or sqrt(2) are normal in any base.
Disclaimer: the above is based on my somewhat fuzzy recollections of material I read years ago. Sprinkle liberally with IIRCs.
My point is (and this comes from experience of hiring people) that recent graduates in CS *all* run free operating systems out of choice.
Well, not quite... I'm taking an OS class right now (I'm a math guy myself), and the prof took a poll early in the course... about half of the students are using Win2K, and half are using some free Unix. The math/engineering grad students I know are almost all using Linux/Unix, though.
Seems like MS has finally realized "pretty" is in the eye of the beholder.
It sure is... personally, I think those control panel icons are incredibly ugly. I especially hate the "alphabet soup vomit" appearance and themes icon, the "we wanna be AOL" user accounts icon, and the frequent use of sickly green. And people talk about GNOME's icons looking cheap?
But reading the articles takes valuable time, which is better spent spitting out a completely pointless post which will be moderated up (+1, first non-troll post), thereby earning you more of that all-important karma...
Maybe this will teach software companies to put less pressure overworked programmers trying desperately to meet unrealistic deadlines... Many of these companies will never learn their lesson...
The only way they'll learn their lesson is if they start losing sales because of security flaws. Right now, security doesn't sell (to the general public and PHBs), but "features" do, and that's why we're in the state we're in...
I've been doing that for months as well. The only complaint I have is that often the CDDB entries are rather shoddy in quality, so it's good to check them for typos before sending them on.
does it sound like a terribly astute business decision to port your applications (which are what lock users to your OS)
to your competitors' platform?
Yes. Remember, just because you port them doesn't mean you release them (right away). Figure it this way: Microsoft will do whatever they can to stifle Linux on the desktop. If, despite their best efforts, they fail, they want to have something to release so that they don't lose their influence. If Linux never takes off, then they're out the money that they spent to port their apps to Linux. That's a drop in the bucket, and insurance money well spent.
To explain the observed motion of the planets in a way consistent with the sun going around the earth, they invented "epicycles", which were essentially loops within loops on
the hypothical orbits. This went on for years, with the epicycles getting more and more complicated. They built amazing geared machines to simulate the motion of the planets.
Now we look back at them and shake our heads, thinking "Why didn't they look for the simpler explanation? Why did it take so long for a Copernicus to come along?"
Just to nit-pick a little bit, but Copernicus' explanation wasn't all that much better than the Ptolemaic version. While he accounted neatly for retrograde motion, his version had epicycles too (34 of them, in fact), since he used circular orbits. It wasn't until Galileo and Kepler came along that the evidence for a helio-centric solar system really started to get overwhelmingly convincing.
Math used to be a hobby for a lot of people, and many discoveries were made by people in their spare time
I find this rather hard to believe... can you give me any examples? Ideally, examples of original and/or important discoveries... My undergrad number theory prof told us an interesting story about when he was at Utah... seems one day the math dept got a packet in the mail from an amateur mathematician. It had several pages filled with Pythagorean triples. The person who sent them in said he did it because he thought they "might be helpful". Unfortunately, the problem of identifying Pythagorean triples has been completely solved, so all of his work was for nothing...
A few months ago I saw a list of unsolved mathematical problems that required no special knowledge to understand
Any chance you happen to remember where you saw it? Sounds interesting... My personal favorite is the Collatz problem (also called many other things...): define C(x) = 3*x+1 if x is odd, and C(x) = x/2 if x is even. Consider iterating C on a natural number N. Does C^n(N)=1 for some n? (Hint: it's true for N
assuming Fermat wasn't bluffing or erred in his proof, then a simpler method
awaits rediscovery.
I think it's pretty much assumed that Fermat didn't have a proof... partly because (as best as we can tell) he made that note several years before his death, and he had a proof in the case n=4. The generally accepted theory is that he thought this proof would work for the general case, and so he made that note in the margin. When he realized it didn't work, he didn't go back and scratch out that note...
Published lists of unsolved problems that can be comprehended by a layman may increase interest and make science "real" again for a lot of people who view things like
physics and chemistry as voodoo.
It's not too hard to do for math, but are there any of these types of lists for physics or chemistry?
If the goal is to deliver art that'd directly benefit its creators...
That wasn't really what I was getting at.
My comment was more along the lines of: this is what I would think about doing if I were in charge at one of the major labels. I should have also mentioned in the benefits to the major labels that it would probably stifle online "piracy". A recent survey of Napster users indicated that many of them were willing to pay $15 for the service. Comparing the quality of the Napster to something the majors could provide indicates to me that a lot of people would go for it... and hence have no need for Napster.
Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands. It especially won't work when it's faced with competition like the type I described. Who wants to pay $50/mo for unlimited downloading of unknown bands (the implicit assumption being: they're unknown because they're not any good), when you can pay $30/month for the artists you know? The only option that unknown bands have is to give their music away free, hope that they can start to build a reputation for themselves, and hope to make money selling CDs eventually.
I think the subscription model is the future of the music biz. Here's what I envision:
A set-top box (think cable box) that plugs into your stereo and/or a walkman-type device and/or a car stereo, which for $N a month provides you with on-demand access to the entire back catalog of the major labels (and presumably, any indie labels that want to join). Also available: for $M a month, a similar service for music videos. Of course, you also have the option of listening to various commercial-free radio-like broadcasts in whatever genre you want.
Everybody wins in a situation like this:
The consumer gets:
Convenience. No more CDs to store, get scratched, get stolen, get lost, get melted (in your car), etc.
More convenience. It's easy to hook up and the walkman version is portable.
Selection.
The music companies get:
Control. The consumers don't own the media anymore, so they're always indebted to the music companies.
A recurring, stable revenue stream. I figure the service provides a base revenue, plus some extra depending upon what actually gets requested.
(Just like a waitor/waitress getting a wage + tips)
Of course, there will be people who sign up for the service, hook the thing up to their computer and record all the stuff they want, then cancel the service. These people will be a negligable minority.
Of course, the big question is how to pick M and N. I'm thinking M in the range of $20-30, and N in the range of $10-20 (contingent upon having the music service, of course).
The service would probably be set up as a for-profit business, jointly owned by the major labels, but held in check by the US govt's anti-trust division.
I suppose someone is going try to make a arbitrary music writing program based on this info , no?
I don't see how it would be possible without using other techniques as well. The article states that they're looking at amplitudes (and presumably rhythm) of notes instead of pitches. Without some way to choose the pitches, you can't create music.
math... takes no feeling or creativity whatsoever (rather robotic computational ability, seeing as how our advanced graphing calculators could easily take the place of any well known mathematician
You don't know much about what math is about, do you? Care to give me a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem on a graphing calculator?
music requires soul and humanity... something which a computer can never create. A program would never compensate for the genius of Mozart or Bach.
I think you'd be surprised about that... there have been some very interesting experiments with creating new compositions using fractals (or other self-similar objects). Some of them have created music which is better than some human composers I've heard. (Of course, this isn't saying much...)
You'd also probably be interested in the experiments using neural nets to compose music in the style of a given classical composer. One of the surprising results is that Chopin is easier to emulate than Bach... at the talk I saw on this a few years back, most of the audience was fooled into thinking that the computer-composed piece was actually composed by Chopin.
Heh, I guess you've never heard of
The Great Kat.
Her version of Rossini's "William Tell Overture" is surprisingly good. In the past, she's covered Sarasate, Vivaldi, Wagner, Paganini, Bach, and Beethoven. Her original compositions pretty much suck ass, though.
Interesting site... I had considered setting up something similar a while back, but don't have the time or the industry experience to deal with it. I'm curious: how do you deal with bands that have broken up or who have had members leave? Do you just trust the one member who receives the payment to distribute it fairly amongst the other members? This seems like a recipe for disaster to me...
Otherwise, it's a cool site, and you have an impressive list of artists. The only thing I'd suggest (in addition to allowing Mastercard or PayPal) is to add a brief info/discography/address page. If I'm going to send $5 to an artist with a moderately popular name (Covenant. e.g.), I want to make sure it gets to the right band.
they hang up before I can ask to be put on that list. Does the law that requires them to honor such requests allow this?
A follow-up question: do they have to honor such requests if you don't say them live, but leave them in your answering machine message? I'm sure they have a loophole somewhere here...
At the same time, folks I know don't have much, if any, computer knowledge would much rather start up Word than WordPad. The interesting part of this really is the user interface aspects. Over the years MS has turned this massively complex and powerful program into a preferred choice for the greenest of the green out there using computers.
I don't think it's the preferred choice for "green" computer users. Most likely, they don't even know they have a choice, and think that Word(tm) is their only option. What Word(tm)'s ubiquity over the past 10 years has done is make "using a word processor" == "using Word(tm)", much the same way Kleenex and Xerox dominate their markets. That's why people use Word(tm) over WordPad, even for the simplest tasks.
It sure as hell isn't because Word(tm) is easy to use and intuitive. The user interface is a mess. When I had to write a business-type letter, I tried using Word(tm), but gave up after about five minutes of fumbling through options, looking for the specific option I needed. I ended up writing the letter in LaTeX in about five minutes.
The way I read it, it sounds like they're not just going to append or prepend the ads, but they're going to have the ads over the intro to the song. Here's a quote from the article:
"It's no more obtrusive than an FM DJ announcing a song."
Have you ever heard a DJ talk and talk and talk over the intro to a song, only shutting up right before the singer starts the first verse? So that's what this might be doing...
Therefore, even if you could come up with software which strips the ads (and is able to tell the difference between ads and the "real" music), you still lose the entire intro to the song.
Slashdot Mirror
Which misses the states' point about DeCSS -- it's uniquely dangerous precisely because it *isn't* a copying utility -- it's a decryption utility. Because of that, it makes it possible to "rip" protected content and convert it to all manner of different (more easily traded and recopied) formats.
Which completely misses michael's point: if you use DeCSS to convert a DVD file to a different format no distribution has taken place, and no copyright has been violated. The copyright violation occurs when the (converted or unconverted) file is put on the internet. The fact that the converted file is more easily distributed is irrelevant. Or did you want to outlaw all of the things which make distribution of copyrighted files easier?
Presumably, when you connect to their Official Vault, they'll be able to get a good idea of how viable the Linux gaming community is. Also, isn't it the first Linux game that will be released concurrently with the Windows version?
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the merchants didn't foot the bill, the credit card company did. Credit card companies routinely write off fraud losses of up to 10% of the total purchases (of course, you and I pay for this through higher prices...).
In fact, the situation is even worse than this. My stepdad told me a few weeks ago that if he went into his bank, and told them that he didn't place a charge on his credit card, they would take off the charge no questions asked. That's right, the first time, they just eat the loss without looking into it any further. Obviously, if you try to get away with this many times, they'll look into it, but I found it pretty amazing that they wouldn't even look into it...
Incorrect... the chance that there will be about half 0s and half 1s is quite good.
Quite good? Try probability 1. Such numbers are called "normal numbers", and have measure 1 in [0,1]. Moreover, the "completely normal numbers" (numbers which are normal with respect to every basis) also have measure 1 in [0,1]. Interestingly enough, no one has yet proved the complete normality of a single number! The number .12345678910111213141516... can be shown to be normal base 10, but I don't think it's normal in other bases. No one has yet produced a proof that e or pi or sqrt(2) are normal in any base.
Disclaimer: the above is based on my somewhat fuzzy recollections of material I read years ago. Sprinkle liberally with IIRCs.
Well, not quite... I'm taking an OS class right now (I'm a math guy myself), and the prof took a poll early in the course... about half of the students are using Win2K, and half are using some free Unix. The math/engineering grad students I know are almost all using Linux/Unix, though.
It sure is... personally, I think those control panel icons are incredibly ugly. I especially hate the "alphabet soup vomit" appearance and themes icon, the "we wanna be AOL" user accounts icon, and the frequent use of sickly green. And people talk about GNOME's icons looking cheap?
The only way they'll learn their lesson is if they start losing sales because of security flaws. Right now, security doesn't sell (to the general public and PHBs), but "features" do, and that's why we're in the state we're in...
I've been doing that for months as well. The only complaint I have is that often the CDDB entries are rather shoddy in quality, so it's good to check them for typos before sending them on.
Here, try this:
Its austere look rules
Results better than others
It is my first choice
Yes. Remember, just because you port them doesn't mean you release them (right away). Figure it this way: Microsoft will do whatever they can to stifle Linux on the desktop. If, despite their best efforts, they fail, they want to have something to release so that they don't lose their influence. If Linux never takes off, then they're out the money that they spent to port their apps to Linux. That's a drop in the bucket, and insurance money well spent.
1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime...
Just to nit-pick a little bit, but Copernicus' explanation wasn't all that much better than the Ptolemaic version. While he accounted neatly for retrograde motion, his version had epicycles too (34 of them, in fact), since he used circular orbits. It wasn't until Galileo and Kepler came along that the evidence for a helio-centric solar system really started to get overwhelmingly convincing.
I find this rather hard to believe... can you give me any examples? Ideally, examples of original and/or important discoveries... My undergrad number theory prof told us an interesting story about when he was at Utah... seems one day the math dept got a packet in the mail from an amateur mathematician. It had several pages filled with Pythagorean triples. The person who sent them in said he did it because he thought they "might be helpful". Unfortunately, the problem of identifying Pythagorean triples has been completely solved, so all of his work was for nothing...
A few months ago I saw a list of unsolved mathematical problems that required no special knowledge to understand
Any chance you happen to remember where you saw it? Sounds interesting... My personal favorite is the Collatz problem (also called many other things...): define C(x) = 3*x+1 if x is odd, and C(x) = x/2 if x is even. Consider iterating C on a natural number N. Does C^n(N)=1 for some n? (Hint: it's true for N assuming Fermat wasn't bluffing or erred in his proof, then a simpler method awaits rediscovery.
I think it's pretty much assumed that Fermat didn't have a proof... partly because (as best as we can tell) he made that note several years before his death, and he had a proof in the case n=4. The generally accepted theory is that he thought this proof would work for the general case, and so he made that note in the margin. When he realized it didn't work, he didn't go back and scratch out that note...
Published lists of unsolved problems that can be comprehended by a layman may increase interest and make science "real" again for a lot of people who view things like physics and chemistry as voodoo.
It's not too hard to do for math, but are there any of these types of lists for physics or chemistry?
That wasn't really what I was getting at. My comment was more along the lines of: this is what I would think about doing if I were in charge at one of the major labels. I should have also mentioned in the benefits to the major labels that it would probably stifle online "piracy". A recent survey of Napster users indicated that many of them were willing to pay $15 for the service. Comparing the quality of the Napster to something the majors could provide indicates to me that a lot of people would go for it... and hence have no need for Napster.
Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands. It especially won't work when it's faced with competition like the type I described. Who wants to pay $50/mo for unlimited downloading of unknown bands (the implicit assumption being: they're unknown because they're not any good), when you can pay $30/month for the artists you know? The only option that unknown bands have is to give their music away free, hope that they can start to build a reputation for themselves, and hope to make money selling CDs eventually.
A set-top box (think cable box) that plugs into your stereo and/or a walkman-type device and/or a car stereo, which for $N a month provides you with on-demand access to the entire back catalog of the major labels (and presumably, any indie labels that want to join). Also available: for $M a month, a similar service for music videos. Of course, you also have the option of listening to various commercial-free radio-like broadcasts in whatever genre you want.
Everybody wins in a situation like this:
The consumer gets:
- Convenience. No more CDs to store, get scratched, get stolen, get lost, get melted (in your car), etc.
- More convenience. It's easy to hook up and the walkman version is portable.
- Selection.
The music companies get:Of course, there will be people who sign up for the service, hook the thing up to their computer and record all the stuff they want, then cancel the service. These people will be a negligable minority.
Of course, the big question is how to pick M and N. I'm thinking M in the range of $20-30, and N in the range of $10-20 (contingent upon having the music service, of course).
The service would probably be set up as a for-profit business, jointly owned by the major labels, but held in check by the US govt's anti-trust division.
From the PAN FAQ (http://www.superpimp.org/faq.html):
1.5. Did the RIAA really sue Pan?
No. It's just a joke.
I don't see how it would be possible without using other techniques as well. The article states that they're looking at amplitudes (and presumably rhythm) of notes instead of pitches. Without some way to choose the pitches, you can't create music.
math... takes no feeling or creativity whatsoever (rather robotic computational ability, seeing as how our advanced graphing calculators could easily take the place of any well known mathematician
You don't know much about what math is about, do you? Care to give me a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem on a graphing calculator?
music requires soul and humanity... something which a computer can never create. A program would never compensate for the genius of Mozart or Bach.
I think you'd be surprised about that... there have been some very interesting experiments with creating new compositions using fractals (or other self-similar objects). Some of them have created music which is better than some human composers I've heard. (Of course, this isn't saying much...)
You'd also probably be interested in the experiments using neural nets to compose music in the style of a given classical composer. One of the surprising results is that Chopin is easier to emulate than Bach... at the talk I saw on this a few years back, most of the audience was fooled into thinking that the computer-composed piece was actually composed by Chopin.
Otherwise, it's a cool site, and you have an impressive list of artists. The only thing I'd suggest (in addition to allowing Mastercard or PayPal) is to add a brief info/discography/address page. If I'm going to send $5 to an artist with a moderately popular name (Covenant. e.g.), I want to make sure it gets to the right band.
A follow-up question: do they have to honor such requests if you don't say them live, but leave them in your answering machine message? I'm sure they have a loophole somewhere here...
I don't think it's the preferred choice for "green" computer users. Most likely, they don't even know they have a choice, and think that Word(tm) is their only option. What Word(tm)'s ubiquity over the past 10 years has done is make "using a word processor" == "using Word(tm)", much the same way Kleenex and Xerox dominate their markets. That's why people use Word(tm) over WordPad, even for the simplest tasks.
It sure as hell isn't because Word(tm) is easy to use and intuitive. The user interface is a mess. When I had to write a business-type letter, I tried using Word(tm), but gave up after about five minutes of fumbling through options, looking for the specific option I needed. I ended up writing the letter in LaTeX in about five minutes.
"It's no more obtrusive than an FM DJ announcing a song."
Have you ever heard a DJ talk and talk and talk over the intro to a song, only shutting up right before the singer starts the first verse? So that's what this might be doing...
Therefore, even if you could come up with software which strips the ads (and is able to tell the difference between ads and the "real" music), you still lose the entire intro to the song.