Sure, just like Microsoft is "lucky" to have people and companies "just" install their software, so they shouldn't be going after people using warezed copies. Just like the RIAA is "lucky" to have people "just" listen to their members music, and the MPAA is "lucky" to have people "just" watch their movies, so they should stop suing those who violate their copyrights. Why don't I see any of these things happening? Oh, that's right - the content creators get to set the rules for how their content is used, and if you don't like their license, you don't get to use it. How would you be doing your public image any good if you didn't defend your rights? Would Adobe be better off if they let me edit the credits and title bars on Photoshop and distribute it as "LiquidSin's Virtual Darkroom"? We're not even talking about suing random people with no warning like the **AA, these people were asked to adhere to the license that the authors set out, and they refused. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
You can't make sure your users are careful, but you CAN make sure that shitty passwords don't get used. A script to check their passwords against a dictionary is simple, and I've seen it implemented as a default on some distros (redhat, I'm looking at you). So you check against a dictionary file, common names, and strings of only numbers. Force them to use a password that doesn't involve a word straight out of the dictionary with a number tacked on the end. Not by policy, but by technological measures. If they try to set a password outside those boundaries, have a little two or three line tutorial pop up on how to create mnemonic passwords. Strings of random upper and lower case letters with numbers thrown in are fantastic passwords and can be very easy to remember. Then only allow them to log in through encrypted channels (ssh for shells, https for web forms) and you've got a fairly secure setup.
Re:Linux of course costs less
on
Linux in Canada
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but that means that my linux license, after exchange, will end up costing me $927.74 CAD.
If you're concerned about monitoring of your chats, try SimpLite. The free versions support seperate keys for two different logins, and the only restriction on it is that you can only use encryption for one IM protocol (AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo) at a time, although I think the pro version lets you use them all simultaneously. And all of the encryption is done client-side, so there's no need to worry about a third party sharing your keys with the federales. And if you're *really* paranoid, I'd think it'd be trivial to write a plugin for your preferred IM platform that utilizes PKI, encryption outgoing messages with the recipients public key and linking keys to everyone on your buddy list so it can automatically encrypt/decrypt all the trafic transparently.
There was a clip of an interview with Henry Rollins on 102.1 FM (the edge in toronto) the other day and he was talking about file sharing as relates to music, and said (not an exact quote, put pretty damn close from what I remember) "my company makes and sells double disc sets for about $10 U.S. and we even give a dollar of every sale to charity. When kids see the latest J.Lo CD in stores for $20 and they only like two songs of hers, of course they're going to download them and not waste their money. The record industry needs to realize that and work with them or lower prices".
I have no issue with anything but your last argument. Capitalism gives the poor as much freedom as the well-to-do. There are many stories of self made millionaires, many of whom weren't even "properly educated". Being poor doesn't mean you'll always be poor any more than being rich means you'll always be rich. Besides, there ARE things in life that money just can't buy. I'm by no means wealthy, but I'm pretty damn happy with my life.
You can't petition the gov't for help with a name like "Security Across the Software Development Cycle Task Force". S.A.S.D.C.T.F. won't get anyone's attention. You need a cool acronym like P.A.T.R.I.O.T. How about "Funding Received from Everyone, Everywhere to Defend Our Monopolies". With a name like F.R.E.E.D.O.M., it'll *certainly* get government backing. Feel free to add more gov't friendly acronyms.
The LD-50 for caffeine is estimated to be about 150mg/kg in humans (192mg/kg in lab rats). For humans weighing 80kg (175 lb, seemed about avg to me), consuming 12g of caffeine would kill half of them. An average 6oz cup of coffee contains about 100mg of caffeine, which means to hit the LD-50 that average person would need to consume 120 6oz cups of (average) coffee *simultaneously*. Caffeine will work its way through your system as normal, so consuming the 4.2 cups of coffee per hour or so that you'd need to drink a hundred cups in a day, you shouldn't need to worry about dying of a caffeine overdose. But hey, I'm not a doctor, so don't take my word for it.
it's the american way, my friend. the country was founded by a group of people running away from things they didn't like. oh yeah, that and the fact that every damn slashdot reader giving five bucks to the EFF would still be a tiny drop in the bucket against the lobbying cashflow of the people who buy these shitty laws in the first place.
I'm not arguing the massive sharing of music, or even that it's right. I'd like to see reform in the system. We can't entirely blame the RIAA for not embracing it - could you see a bar trying to tell the cops "sure, we could kick out 15 yr olds but they're good for business!". They're only trying to enforce the laws that are in place to protect them. I just believe that the laws are doing more harm than good to *all* parties involved. But since the RIAA doesn't really seem to care so much about the money as they do about the control, none of this will ever happen, since they'll buy...er..."lobby for" any laws they can that will help them keep control of all music distribution.
And suppose all illegal file sharing instantly stopped this second. What makes you think that CDs would be released without copy protection? What makes you think that online distribution channels would suddenly become DRM-free? The RIAA has absolutely ZERO interest in stopping P2P because it hurts their profits. They only want control of distribution. If I felt so inclined I could be recording everything off of the radio. But they already make their tax on cassettes, and the only thing that gets radio play is what the RIAA says should be played. It was just as easy to copy a CD before Napster as it is now. I was trading and burning discs with friends even then, and burners were far enough along to be not terribly expensive. But there was no copy protection on audio discs then. The RIAA fails to realize that P2P is essentially the *new* radio. It's probably got an even wider audience, since just about nobody I know (yeah, anecdotal evidence) listens to the radio at home, and most don't even listen to it in their cars or at work - they're all about CDs and mp3. Entirely free advertising, but they don't have a goddamn thing to say about who can get it, or when, or who ELSE can distribute the same way, so they don't want it. It's all about control.
You forgot one other thing. What if radio in your area sucks? Most radio stations play the same thing over and over and over and over again. Try finding new music, or for that sake, a genre that's not carried in your local market. Good luck. Radio stations play what the RIAA tells them to, which means Top 40. So just by loading up CleanKMD and searching "techno" I was exposed to many new artists, many of whose cds I purchased, and who I'd never heard on any radio stations around me. So, yeah, as far as my anecdotal evidence goes, the P2P sharing that the RIAA is fighting so hard to squash is actually HELPING them sell cds, with NO COST to them.
If the public is willing to buy 10 individual cds to get 12 songs they like, then why bother putting all 12 songs on 1 cd?
You fucked up my plans to moderate on this thread, you bastard. You think like the record companies, now try thinking like the rest of us. $BAND puts out ten albums, with twelve songs total that I like, and the rest suck. Just like your idea. Now, I buy album one, find out it sucks except for that one song (or maybe two), I'm not buying the rest of their suck (once bitten...). I'm gonna download the ones I want rather than throw away a hundred and fifty of my dollars. Right or wrong, it's what happens. So now what looks better to Mr. Record Exec, the general populace buying one out of every twelve albums for fifteen bucks, or one CUSTOM cd for twenty bucks? There's a reason that so many bands release "best of" collections, they just need to realize that everyone's tastes will differ, but they CAN adjust their business model and continue to rake in the fat dough without purposely trying to hump their consumers.
Dude, if you're so offended, DON'T READ. Are you going to stalk your way through this whole thread and call everyone who makes a joke tasteless? This is the second time I've seen you bitching, and I've only been reading the thread for five minutes.
I'll field this one as a musician, so I think my perspective counts. The *instant* that I decide to play MY song for someone - whether it's in my basement, on the stereo in my car, or at a concert - I've *shared* MY idea. Am I supposed to charge them if I catch them whistling the tune a week later? Should I try to magically erase it from their brain? Music gets radio play for one reason only - advertising. Releasing a single into radio play is a way for a musician to share their music (these "ideas" of which you speak) with potential fans. If you don't share your music, you get no fans. Now I know somebody wants to draw a parallel to patents here, so let me nip that one in the bud. Patent system: you disclose the method and hope to sell licensing. So of course, music is the same, and the cd is the license, so downloading is wrong. Problem is, every musician I know would much rather sell cds at a show for five bucks a pop then have them rot on the shelves at HMV marked $19.99. The labels are the ones selling them so ridiculously high, and barely cutting the artists in at all. So before you speak on behalf of all musicians, try asking around, and I guarantee you that almost all of us would rather let the file sharing go (I mean, hey, I can record it off of the radio if I want a free copy) and put some asses in seats at the shows then toil on in obscurity because we're afraid someone might actually like our music enough to download it.
How long was the term on copyright when Hendrix passed? Maybe he didn't feel the need to put it into the public domain, since he assumed it would go there soon enough...
Well, he didn't put it in the public domain, either immediatly or at his death.
Oh, and I seriously doubt that there has ever been a person, nor will there ever be one, whose dying words are "make sure all of my creative works...(gasp)...become public...domain (gasp, death)"
Fucking phenomenal. But I have a question. What happens if MS tells the EU to go fuck themselves? I doubt that they'd want to not sell software to Europe, but what if they just really don't want to open the APIs, so they stop selling in the EU? Who would cave first?
Well if they go seeking out things that offend them just so they've got something to bitch about, that's their own fucking dysfunction. Why is it so hard to grasp this? If it offends you, turn it off, but don't fuck it up for the rest of us. I'm gonna find these people, go to their church service (they're obviously high-and-mighty christians) and bitch loudly through the whole service, since I don't believe in god and they're offending me. See if they get it then...
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring all that you mentioned, what stuck out the most to me was his use of the "think of the children" defense. I *hate* that.
Sure, just like Microsoft is "lucky" to have people and companies "just" install their software, so they shouldn't be going after people using warezed copies. Just like the RIAA is "lucky" to have people "just" listen to their members music, and the MPAA is "lucky" to have people "just" watch their movies, so they should stop suing those who violate their copyrights. Why don't I see any of these things happening? Oh, that's right - the content creators get to set the rules for how their content is used, and if you don't like their license, you don't get to use it. How would you be doing your public image any good if you didn't defend your rights? Would Adobe be better off if they let me edit the credits and title bars on Photoshop and distribute it as "LiquidSin's Virtual Darkroom"? We're not even talking about suing random people with no warning like the **AA, these people were asked to adhere to the license that the authors set out, and they refused. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
You can't make sure your users are careful, but you CAN make sure that shitty passwords don't get used. A script to check their passwords against a dictionary is simple, and I've seen it implemented as a default on some distros (redhat, I'm looking at you). So you check against a dictionary file, common names, and strings of only numbers. Force them to use a password that doesn't involve a word straight out of the dictionary with a number tacked on the end. Not by policy, but by technological measures. If they try to set a password outside those boundaries, have a little two or three line tutorial pop up on how to create mnemonic passwords. Strings of random upper and lower case letters with numbers thrown in are fantastic passwords and can be very easy to remember. Then only allow them to log in through encrypted channels (ssh for shells, https for web forms) and you've got a fairly secure setup.
Yeah, but that means that my linux license, after exchange, will end up costing me $927.74 CAD.
How comedic. A drug originally intended to prevent stroking is now used to facilitate it.
If you're concerned about monitoring of your chats, try SimpLite. The free versions support seperate keys for two different logins, and the only restriction on it is that you can only use encryption for one IM protocol (AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo) at a time, although I think the pro version lets you use them all simultaneously. And all of the encryption is done client-side, so there's no need to worry about a third party sharing your keys with the federales. And if you're *really* paranoid, I'd think it'd be trivial to write a plugin for your preferred IM platform that utilizes PKI, encryption outgoing messages with the recipients public key and linking keys to everyone on your buddy list so it can automatically encrypt/decrypt all the trafic transparently.
Try this out for some fun with bad PC labels.
There was a clip of an interview with Henry Rollins on 102.1 FM (the edge in toronto) the other day and he was talking about file sharing as relates to music, and said (not an exact quote, put pretty damn close from what I remember) "my company makes and sells double disc sets for about $10 U.S. and we even give a dollar of every sale to charity. When kids see the latest J.Lo CD in stores for $20 and they only like two songs of hers, of course they're going to download them and not waste their money. The record industry needs to realize that and work with them or lower prices".
I always just do disk maintenance by booting off of the OS X install cd. I haven't had a Mac with a floppy drive in years.
I have no issue with anything but your last argument. Capitalism gives the poor as much freedom as the well-to-do. There are many stories of self made millionaires, many of whom weren't even "properly educated". Being poor doesn't mean you'll always be poor any more than being rich means you'll always be rich. Besides, there ARE things in life that money just can't buy. I'm by no means wealthy, but I'm pretty damn happy with my life.
You can't petition the gov't for help with a name like "Security Across the Software Development Cycle Task Force". S.A.S.D.C.T.F. won't get anyone's attention. You need a cool acronym like P.A.T.R.I.O.T. How about "Funding Received from Everyone, Everywhere to Defend Our Monopolies". With a name like F.R.E.E.D.O.M., it'll *certainly* get government backing. Feel free to add more gov't friendly acronyms.
Now I'll go read the article...
The LD-50 for caffeine is estimated to be about 150mg/kg in humans (192mg/kg in lab rats). For humans weighing 80kg (175 lb, seemed about avg to me), consuming 12g of caffeine would kill half of them. An average 6oz cup of coffee contains about 100mg of caffeine, which means to hit the LD-50 that average person would need to consume 120 6oz cups of (average) coffee *simultaneously*. Caffeine will work its way through your system as normal, so consuming the 4.2 cups of coffee per hour or so that you'd need to drink a hundred cups in a day, you shouldn't need to worry about dying of a caffeine overdose. But hey, I'm not a doctor, so don't take my word for it.
it's the american way, my friend. the country was founded by a group of people running away from things they didn't like. oh yeah, that and the fact that every damn slashdot reader giving five bucks to the EFF would still be a tiny drop in the bucket against the lobbying cashflow of the people who buy these shitty laws in the first place.
I'm not arguing the massive sharing of music, or even that it's right. I'd like to see reform in the system. We can't entirely blame the RIAA for not embracing it - could you see a bar trying to tell the cops "sure, we could kick out 15 yr olds but they're good for business!". They're only trying to enforce the laws that are in place to protect them. I just believe that the laws are doing more harm than good to *all* parties involved. But since the RIAA doesn't really seem to care so much about the money as they do about the control, none of this will ever happen, since they'll buy...er..."lobby for" any laws they can that will help them keep control of all music distribution.
And suppose all illegal file sharing instantly stopped this second. What makes you think that CDs would be released without copy protection? What makes you think that online distribution channels would suddenly become DRM-free? The RIAA has absolutely ZERO interest in stopping P2P because it hurts their profits. They only want control of distribution. If I felt so inclined I could be recording everything off of the radio. But they already make their tax on cassettes, and the only thing that gets radio play is what the RIAA says should be played. It was just as easy to copy a CD before Napster as it is now. I was trading and burning discs with friends even then, and burners were far enough along to be not terribly expensive. But there was no copy protection on audio discs then. The RIAA fails to realize that P2P is essentially the *new* radio. It's probably got an even wider audience, since just about nobody I know (yeah, anecdotal evidence) listens to the radio at home, and most don't even listen to it in their cars or at work - they're all about CDs and mp3. Entirely free advertising, but they don't have a goddamn thing to say about who can get it, or when, or who ELSE can distribute the same way, so they don't want it. It's all about control.
Well, Jar Jar was on the side of good, and had good intentions, he was just a bumbling moron. So I vote for a /. editor *COUGH*Michael*COUGH*
You forgot one other thing. What if radio in your area sucks? Most radio stations play the same thing over and over and over and over again. Try finding new music, or for that sake, a genre that's not carried in your local market. Good luck. Radio stations play what the RIAA tells them to, which means Top 40. So just by loading up CleanKMD and searching "techno" I was exposed to many new artists, many of whose cds I purchased, and who I'd never heard on any radio stations around me. So, yeah, as far as my anecdotal evidence goes, the P2P sharing that the RIAA is fighting so hard to squash is actually HELPING them sell cds, with NO COST to them.
If the public is willing to buy 10 individual cds to get 12 songs they like, then why bother putting all 12 songs on 1 cd?
You fucked up my plans to moderate on this thread, you bastard. You think like the record companies, now try thinking like the rest of us. $BAND puts out ten albums, with twelve songs total that I like, and the rest suck. Just like your idea. Now, I buy album one, find out it sucks except for that one song (or maybe two), I'm not buying the rest of their suck (once bitten...). I'm gonna download the ones I want rather than throw away a hundred and fifty of my dollars. Right or wrong, it's what happens. So now what looks better to Mr. Record Exec, the general populace buying one out of every twelve albums for fifteen bucks, or one CUSTOM cd for twenty bucks? There's a reason that so many bands release "best of" collections, they just need to realize that everyone's tastes will differ, but they CAN adjust their business model and continue to rake in the fat dough without purposely trying to hump their consumers.
Patent this idea immediately! Call it something catchy, like "Pay-Per-View".
Dude, if you're so offended, DON'T READ. Are you going to stalk your way through this whole thread and call everyone who makes a joke tasteless? This is the second time I've seen you bitching, and I've only been reading the thread for five minutes.
You can do better, we know it. Let me get you started.
I'd like to mount her filesystem.
I'd like to fsck that.
I'd love to probe those ports.
etc.
I'll field this one as a musician, so I think my perspective counts. The *instant* that I decide to play MY song for someone - whether it's in my basement, on the stereo in my car, or at a concert - I've *shared* MY idea. Am I supposed to charge them if I catch them whistling the tune a week later? Should I try to magically erase it from their brain? Music gets radio play for one reason only - advertising. Releasing a single into radio play is a way for a musician to share their music (these "ideas" of which you speak) with potential fans. If you don't share your music, you get no fans. Now I know somebody wants to draw a parallel to patents here, so let me nip that one in the bud. Patent system: you disclose the method and hope to sell licensing. So of course, music is the same, and the cd is the license, so downloading is wrong. Problem is, every musician I know would much rather sell cds at a show for five bucks a pop then have them rot on the shelves at HMV marked $19.99. The labels are the ones selling them so ridiculously high, and barely cutting the artists in at all. So before you speak on behalf of all musicians, try asking around, and I guarantee you that almost all of us would rather let the file sharing go (I mean, hey, I can record it off of the radio if I want a free copy) and put some asses in seats at the shows then toil on in obscurity because we're afraid someone might actually like our music enough to download it.
How long was the term on copyright when Hendrix passed? Maybe he didn't feel the need to put it into the public domain, since he assumed it would go there soon enough...
Well, he didn't put it in the public domain, either immediatly or at his death.
Oh, and I seriously doubt that there has ever been a person, nor will there ever be one, whose dying words are "make sure all of my creative works...(gasp)...become public...domain (gasp, death)"
Fucking phenomenal. But I have a question. What happens if MS tells the EU to go fuck themselves? I doubt that they'd want to not sell software to Europe, but what if they just really don't want to open the APIs, so they stop selling in the EU? Who would cave first?
Well if they go seeking out things that offend them just so they've got something to bitch about, that's their own fucking dysfunction. Why is it so hard to grasp this? If it offends you, turn it off, but don't fuck it up for the rest of us. I'm gonna find these people, go to their church service (they're obviously high-and-mighty christians) and bitch loudly through the whole service, since I don't believe in god and they're offending me. See if they get it then...