Your website has had a countdown on how long it will be until you are "truly free". What is truly free? Do you consider the ability to browse the internet "freedom", or would true freedom mean you are given a free hand to investigate vulnerabilities in other people's websites? Does being able to use a computer mean you are truly free or does true freedom rely on other things as well? Given you were behind bars for so long, what do you consider true freedom to consist of?
Gee, it's like he can predict the future - NOT!
on
Cringely on P2P
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· Score: 2, Insightful
From the article: "Of course, the recording and publishing executives, who often work for the same parent company, aren't going to go without a fight. We are approaching the end of the first stage of that fight, the stage where they try to have their enemy made illegal. But the folks at Microsoft Research now say quite definitively that legal action probably won't be enough. That's when we enter stage two, which begins with guerrilla tactics in which copyright owners use the very hacking techniques they rail against to hurt the peer-to-peer systems. This too shall pass when bad PR gets to the guerrillas. The trick to guerrilla or terrorist campaigns is to not care what people think, but in the end, Sony (just one example) cares what people think.
That's when the record companies and publishers will appear to actually embrace peer-to-peer and try to make it their own.
This will be a ruse, of course, the next step in the death of a corrupt and abusive cultural monopoly. They'll say they will do it for us. They'll say they are building the best peer-to-peer system of all, only this one will cost money and it won't even work that well. There is plenty of precedent for this behavior in other industries.
Is this supposed to be a prediction? All these things have already come to pass. Let me see if I can try to make a few similar "predictions":
There will be a decrease in the share price of technology companies that some will call the 'tech wreck' this will cause the NASDAQ to fall and investors to lose lots of money....
Unfortunately, scientists may not be able to find any more events that suggest the passage of strange quark matter through the Earth. In 1993 the US Geological Survey stopped collecting data from "unassociated events."
Mulder: Gee Skully, we're getting close to the truth, all we need is one more piece of data from an unassociated event and we can prove aliens are pulling the strings that ultimately control the earth's major climatological events and in effect control us all.
Skully: Don't be ridiculous Mulder these events are simply random firings of strange Quark matter that shoot through the earth at 400 km/sec without leaving a trace.
I was waiting for the inevitable Chinese people don't care about piracy, everything from fake watches to Windows are available in the streets of Hong Kong. Does it not seem weird that most people here defend KaZaA et al as an opportunity to distribute material, but point an angry finger when Chinese people make copies of US films?
Just because they steal with a camera, and you steal with software doesn't make you any less of a pirate.
So lets get off the anti-Asian rants and show a bit of consistency. Either both are bad, or both are a chance for artists to reach an audience they otherwise would not. Of course, IMHO they are both pretty insidious. Has the intellectual moral high-ground stopped me downloading? Umm....I best not answer that.
Does anyone know what this means to competition authorities in the rest of the world? I live in Australia, and I know that when the whole Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit began, our ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) said they were watching closely, because an adverse ruling could mean M$ faces charges in Australia. I have a feeling the same sort of thing was being said around parts of Europe. Anyone know how the rest of the world has reacted?
There is no doubt that during World War II the Germans perpetrated some evil crimes against the Jews, the Gays and the Communists. Millions of innocent people were slaughtered and it serves as a permament blight on the German people that they will have to live with forever more. I have been to Germany and I can tell you that they are among the most open people in the world. They have rebuilt a society that anyone would be proud of. Where civil liberties are held much higher than in the USA. What Americans fail to realise is that you are not an open society in the true sense of the word. Your journalists are free to write the truth, but not free to get the information. In Germany a few years ago, a newspaper was given access to the private email account of a politician, in the name of transparent government. Can you imagine someone from the Washington Post getting access to W's personal e-mail account? Oh, I am not a German either, or even European, so I have no vested interest in highlighting US hypocrisy.
Most people who have replied to this post have done so on the premise that processors of the future will use current computing techniques. Take a look at this article on quantum computing. In the future quantum computers will probably be able to calculate all possibilities simultaneously. OK, I'm sure this will annoy the hell out of people trying to make uncrackable encryption, but it will be great news for chess buffs. The aim of the game will be for a chamption to draw with a quantum computer, proof positive you have played the perfect game.
I studied archaeology for three years at university, so I feel I am pretty well qualified in this area. While you are essentially correct, what you fail to mention is that the 77 million would have come with a plus or minus potential variation. An acceptable date in archaeology is usually seen as being one that is taken to two standard deviations thus encapsulating more than 90 per cent probability that the date is accurate. That being said, it is patently ridiculous that Carbon dating would have been used. All the C14 would have disappeared in 70 million years. You may as well try dating a plastic bag (which is made from poly carbonates) There isn't any there. They would probably have used K-Ar dating. I am boring myself explaining this, so I will leave it to someone else to look up the pros and cons of that dating technique.
Phew! I'm glad they didn't dump that on us. It is such a relief it is not going to happen. I would have been peed off if it happened. It was a crappy patent anyway. It's not like people would have been lining up to implement it.
(Sorry, someone had to get all the obvious puns out of the way. Now we can all get on with the serious issue of discussing this story)
While I would tend to agree that Disney ignore the original copyright owners when it suits them (ie if legally they don't have to pay anything), my bet is that Alice in Wonderland is a bad example. I am sure the estate of Lewis Carrol has made quite a bit of money from the film. I think you will find that Disney didn't just use it without permission.
I don't know what the union density rate is in Canada, but I know that in Australia, IT professionals are among the least unionised of all workers. While I respect people's right to choose whether or not they will collectively bargain, posts such as this one indicate the problems that can emerge when workers aren't adequately unionised. Can you imagine dock workers or coal miners signing a form saying they won't be able to sue?
I am certainly no lawyer, but if the RIAA is losing money because of his software, I am pretty sure they can go over the the UK and sue. They can sue and sue and sue until he is shutdown. And the "silly US laws" are actually pretty much the same in Britain, when it comes to copyright to my understanding. If you have some other info, let me know, maybe I will move my servers to Britain and begin selling pirated MP3z at Glastonbury.
A least they are giving it a go
on
P2P Streaming Radio
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A lot of the feedback (no pun intended) is that there are problems with this system. It won't work, it will be traceable, it isn't Linux compatible, there are bugs, the RIAA will catch them, blah blah bloody-blah.
At least those guys are trying to come up with a system that will allow free, unfettered broadcasting over the internet. They are trying, and sure there are probably a million holes in their software at this stage, but hey, it never stopped Microsoft.
I say give them our support, and see if we can't one day have a working P2P broadcast model that is free and untouchable.
They should make their bias explicit
on
Is Linux Dead?
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· Score: 1
I agree with most of the other posters on this topic. This is really poor journalism, but not for the same reasons other people think. As MSNBC is connected to Microsoft, they should, as an ethical news organisation, reveal this either in the article, or at the end. All major news organisations do this, and for them to leave it out, they really opened themselves up for the type of claims of prejudice that they have been served tonight.
Australia moved a few years ago to remove all the tariffs on CDs, DVDs and tapes. This caused a bit of annoyance in the local music scene, with artists complaining that overseas music would get too cheap, and no-one would buy Australian stuff. In fact, CDs have gotten ridiculously cheap. I can buy a full top twenty CD for around $20 ($USD10). The new pricing scheme may seem cheap in the US, but to Australians, it is roughly what CDs cost already. In places like Indonesia, Thailand and China, CDs cost next to nothing by western standards, given the availability of high-quality pirated music. It seems that this "deal" is only a bargain for a few people in very wealthy countries who already pay too much for their music. For everybody else, this is no incentive to stop the downloads at all.
Re:Get your head from out of your arse
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 1
You have pretty much made my point for me. Not that Americans don't produce more, but that American workers don't. I am drawing a distinction between having a machine produce something, and having a worker produce something. Unfortunately I would disagree with your assertion that an American puts in more hours of work. Eight-ten hours a day five days a week is nothing compared to, say, the average worker in Eritrea, who works 11 hours a day six days a week, or someone in China who typically works six days a week.
You probably have not heard of Marie Curie. You will definitely not have heard of Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond, who won the prize for physics in 1929. Jean Baptiste Perrin won in 1926. They all attended the Sorbonne. There are tonnes more, but I wouldn't have expected you to have done any basic research. What with all your high 'falutin universities I guess you know everything already!
Re:Get your head from out of your arse
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Just a note, you spelled "beleive" wrong. It is actually B-E-L-I-E-V-E. If it helps you, the rule is generally "i before e except after c" but I guess your superior education missed that one.
Get your head from out of your arse
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
"American workers are still the most productive on earth, two-thirds more productive than our counterparts in Great Britain, for example. American technology is still the envy of the world, and her universities are the queens of learning."
Are American workers really two-thirds more productive than their counterparts in Great Britain, or are machines (probably made in Japan or China) used far more commonly in the US of Hey. I have travelled the world, and I can tell you the hardest workers and most productive workers are inevitably in the poorest countries. Alas, like the writer, I have no references for this assertion.
As for America's universities being the "Queens of learning" they may like to remember that to most of the world Oxford University, or the Sorbonne, are definitely the academic institutions of choice. American universities do seem to spend an awful lot of time on self-promotion though, which may explain why they spend millions of dollars to attract sporting heroes to their "learning" institutions. Oh, by the way, I am NOT British, or even from Europe, I am Australian.
Why didn't the law enforces just skip a PC and catch up to them?
But what about the struggling artists...
on
RIAA Sues Audiogalaxy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's all well and good to download and burn top 20 artists who make squillions every time they burp, but what do you say to a struggling artist like a friend of mine who has released just one solitary CD? I see her get together with her band and rehearse, I see how little she gets paid for singing in small-time pubs, and then I see people trading her music Online.
How can she survive if no-one is buying her music? I try to tell her she is getting valuable exposure by being traded on Kazaa et al, but she is not really keen to get exposure if it only leads to more people illegally downloading her music. It doesn't seem to encourage many people to her gigs.
She is unlikely to ever gross dollar one, but at one time people like her could still make some money on the side through their music to help earn some money while she is at university.
Is file sharing supposed to make music only for the elite, who can afford to have people steal their creativity?
I can't believe the RIAA is going about this the right way, given that since they began their campaign file trading has been steadily increasing, but something has to be done.
I constantly hear the the RIAA doesn't have the right "business model". Can anyone tell me what the right business model might be for my friend?
Even if one agrees with the ridiculous notion that someone can have a patent on a mode of sale, rather than a physical creation, it makes no sense that people who sell audio tracks from countries outside the country in which the patent is held would be bound by the patent. ie, if you sell MP3s from Australia, you are not bound by the US patent.
Another question which further highlights how ridiculous this patent is that someone from the States who downloads an MP3 from an Australian seller may in fact be breaking the law.
It doesn't change the fact that whoever allowed the patent to be registered initially should probably be shot. That's if pulling the trigger of a gun was not already patented by someone else.
"if you don't win the contest they don't really have much of a legal leg to take your idea, so you're pretty safe unless you're the winner"
What a crock. There is no copyright of ideas. They can take any element of your concept and use it without having to pay you diddly squat.
If you have a program, be certain to print out the source code, and send yourself a copy of the code via registered mail. (Don't open it up when it arrives). This way, they cannot just take your idea, because, as something put in a permanent form, it will be covered by international copyright laws. The envelope with the source code will provide proof of when you created the code, and from what period you owned copyright.
As for the 10 grand, I am writing from Australia, so it sounds pretty good to me.
During physics class we were studying an introduction to logic. I walked into the class five minutes late and my teacher demanded to know why I was tardy.
"Because I wasn't early, or on time," was my response.
Slashdot Mirror
Your website has had a countdown on how long it will be until you are "truly free".
What is truly free? Do you consider the ability to browse the internet "freedom", or would true freedom mean you are given a free hand to investigate vulnerabilities in other people's websites? Does being able to use a computer mean you are truly free or does true freedom rely on other things as well?
Given you were behind bars for so long, what do you consider true freedom to consist of?
"Of course, the recording and publishing executives, who often work for the same parent company, aren't going to go without a fight. We are approaching the end of the first stage of that fight, the stage where they try to have their enemy made illegal. But the folks at Microsoft Research now say quite definitively that legal action probably won't be enough. That's when we enter stage two, which begins with guerrilla tactics in which copyright owners use the very hacking techniques they rail against to hurt the peer-to-peer systems. This too shall pass when bad PR gets to the guerrillas. The trick to guerrilla or terrorist campaigns is to not care what people think, but in the end, Sony (just one example) cares what people think.
That's when the record companies and publishers will appear to actually embrace peer-to-peer and try to make it their own.
This will be a ruse, of course, the next step in the death of a corrupt and abusive cultural monopoly. They'll say they will do it for us. They'll say they are building the best peer-to-peer system of all, only this one will cost money and it won't even work that well. There is plenty of precedent for this behavior in other industries.
Is this supposed to be a prediction? All these things have already come to pass. Let me see if I can try to make a few similar "predictions":
There will be a decrease in the share price of technology companies that some will call the 'tech wreck' this will cause the NASDAQ to fall and investors to lose lots of money....
In 1993 the US Geological Survey stopped collecting data from "unassociated events."
Mulder: Gee Skully, we're getting close to the truth, all we need is one more piece of data from an unassociated event and we can prove aliens are pulling the strings that ultimately control the earth's major climatological events and in effect control us all.
Skully: Don't be ridiculous Mulder these events are simply random firings of strange Quark matter that shoot through the earth at 400 km/sec without leaving a trace.
I was wanting individuals to show a bit of consistency, not slashdotters en masse.
I was waiting for the inevitable Chinese people don't care about piracy, everything from fake watches to Windows are available in the streets of Hong Kong.
Does it not seem weird that most people here defend KaZaA et al as an opportunity to distribute material, but point an angry finger when Chinese people make copies of US films?
Just because they steal with a camera, and you steal with software doesn't make you any less of a pirate.
So lets get off the anti-Asian rants and show a bit of consistency. Either both are bad, or both are a chance for artists to reach an audience they otherwise would not.
Of course, IMHO they are both pretty insidious.
Has the intellectual moral high-ground stopped me downloading? Umm....I best not answer that.
Does anyone know what this means to competition authorities in the rest of the world?
I live in Australia, and I know that when the whole Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit began, our ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) said they were watching closely, because an adverse ruling could mean M$ faces charges in Australia.
I have a feeling the same sort of thing was being said around parts of Europe.
Anyone know how the rest of the world has reacted?
There is no doubt that during World War II the Germans perpetrated some evil crimes against the Jews, the Gays and the Communists. Millions of innocent people were slaughtered and it serves as a permament blight on the German people that they will have to live with forever more.
I have been to Germany and I can tell you that they are among the most open people in the world. They have rebuilt a society that anyone would be proud of. Where civil liberties are held much higher than in the USA. What Americans fail to realise is that you are not an open society in the true sense of the word. Your journalists are free to write the truth, but not free to get the information. In Germany a few years ago, a newspaper was given access to the private email account of a politician, in the name of transparent government. Can you imagine someone from the Washington Post getting access to W's personal e-mail account? Oh, I am not a German either, or even European, so I have no vested interest in highlighting US hypocrisy.
Most people who have replied to this post have done so on the premise that processors of the future will use current computing techniques.
Take a look at this article on quantum computing. In the future quantum computers will probably be able to calculate all possibilities simultaneously.
OK, I'm sure this will annoy the hell out of people trying to make uncrackable encryption, but it will be great news for chess buffs. The aim of the game will be for a chamption to draw with a quantum computer, proof positive you have played the perfect game.
I studied archaeology for three years at university, so I feel I am pretty well qualified in this area. While you are essentially correct, what you fail to mention is that the 77 million would have come with a plus or minus potential variation. An acceptable date in archaeology is usually seen as being one that is taken to two standard deviations thus encapsulating more than 90 per cent probability that the date is accurate.
That being said, it is patently ridiculous that Carbon dating would have been used. All the C14 would have disappeared in 70 million years. You may as well try dating a plastic bag (which is made from poly carbonates) There isn't any there.
They would probably have used K-Ar dating. I am boring myself explaining this, so I will leave it to someone else to look up the pros and cons of that dating technique.
Phew! I'm glad they didn't dump that on us. It is such a relief it is not going to happen. I would have been peed off if it happened. It was a crappy patent anyway. It's not like people would have been lining up to implement it.
(Sorry, someone had to get all the obvious puns out of the way. Now we can all get on with the serious issue of discussing this story)
While I would tend to agree that Disney ignore the original copyright owners when it suits them (ie if legally they don't have to pay anything), my bet is that Alice in Wonderland is a bad example. I am sure the estate of Lewis Carrol has made quite a bit of money from the film. I think you will find that Disney didn't just use it without permission.
I don't know what the union density rate is in Canada, but I know that in Australia, IT professionals are among the least unionised of all workers. While I respect people's right to choose whether or not they will collectively bargain, posts such as this one indicate the problems that can emerge when workers aren't adequately unionised.
Can you imagine dock workers or coal miners signing a form saying they won't be able to sue?
I am certainly no lawyer, but if the RIAA is losing money because of his software, I am pretty sure they can go over the the UK and sue. They can sue and sue and sue until he is shutdown. And the "silly US laws" are actually pretty much the same in Britain, when it comes to copyright to my understanding.
If you have some other info, let me know, maybe I will move my servers to Britain and begin selling pirated MP3z at Glastonbury.
A lot of the feedback (no pun intended) is that there are problems with this system. It won't work, it will be traceable, it isn't Linux compatible, there are bugs, the RIAA will catch them, blah blah bloody-blah.
At least those guys are trying to come up with a system that will allow free, unfettered broadcasting over the internet. They are trying, and sure there are probably a million holes in their software at this stage, but hey, it never stopped Microsoft.
I say give them our support, and see if we can't one day have a working P2P broadcast model that is free and untouchable.
I agree with most of the other posters on this topic. This is really poor journalism, but not for the same reasons other people think.
As MSNBC is connected to Microsoft, they should, as an ethical news organisation, reveal this either in the article, or at the end.
All major news organisations do this, and for them to leave it out, they really opened themselves up for the type of claims of prejudice that they have been served tonight.
Australia moved a few years ago to remove all the tariffs on CDs, DVDs and tapes. This caused a bit of annoyance in the local music scene, with artists complaining that overseas music would get too cheap, and no-one would buy Australian stuff. In fact, CDs have gotten ridiculously cheap. I can buy a full top twenty CD for around $20 ($USD10). The new pricing scheme may seem cheap in the US, but to Australians, it is roughly what CDs cost already. In places like Indonesia, Thailand and China, CDs cost next to nothing by western standards, given the availability of high-quality pirated music. It seems that this "deal" is only a bargain for a few people in very wealthy countries who already pay too much for their music. For everybody else, this is no incentive to stop the downloads at all.
You have pretty much made my point for me. Not that Americans don't produce more, but that American workers don't. I am drawing a distinction between having a machine produce something, and having a worker produce something.
Unfortunately I would disagree with your assertion that an American puts in more hours of work. Eight-ten hours a day five days a week is nothing compared to, say, the average worker in Eritrea, who works 11 hours a day six days a week, or someone in China who typically works six days a week.
You probably have not heard of Marie Curie.
You will definitely not have heard of Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond, who won the prize for physics in 1929.
Jean Baptiste Perrin won in 1926. They all attended the Sorbonne. There are tonnes more, but I wouldn't have expected you to have done any basic research. What with all your high 'falutin universities I guess you know everything already!
Just a note, you spelled "beleive" wrong. It is actually B-E-L-I-E-V-E. If it helps you, the rule is generally "i before e except after c" but I guess your superior education missed that one.
"American workers are still the most productive on earth, two-thirds more productive than our counterparts in Great Britain, for example. American technology is still the envy of the world, and her universities are the queens of learning."
Are American workers really two-thirds more productive than their counterparts in Great Britain, or are machines (probably made in Japan or China) used far more commonly in the US of Hey. I have travelled the world, and I can tell you the hardest workers and most productive workers are inevitably in the poorest countries. Alas, like the writer, I have no references for this assertion.
As for America's universities being the "Queens of learning" they may like to remember that to most of the world Oxford University, or the Sorbonne, are definitely the academic institutions of choice. American universities do seem to spend an awful lot of time on self-promotion though, which may explain why they spend millions of dollars to attract sporting heroes to their "learning" institutions.
Oh, by the way, I am NOT British, or even from Europe, I am Australian.
Why didn't the law enforces just skip a PC and catch up to them?
It's all well and good to download and burn top 20 artists who make squillions every time they burp, but what do you say to a struggling artist like a friend of mine who has released just one solitary CD? I see her get together with her band and rehearse, I see how little she gets paid for singing in small-time pubs, and then I see people trading her music Online.
How can she survive if no-one is buying her music? I try to tell her she is getting valuable exposure by being traded on Kazaa et al, but she is not really keen to get exposure if it only leads to more people illegally downloading her music. It doesn't seem to encourage many people to her gigs.
She is unlikely to ever gross dollar one, but at one time people like her could still make some money on the side through their music to help earn some money while she is at university.
Is file sharing supposed to make music only for the elite, who can afford to have people steal their creativity?
I can't believe the RIAA is going about this the right way, given that since they began their campaign file trading has been steadily increasing, but something has to be done.
I constantly hear the the RIAA doesn't have the right "business model". Can anyone tell me what the right business model might be for my friend?
Even if one agrees with the ridiculous notion that someone can have a patent on a mode of sale, rather than a physical creation, it makes no sense that people who sell audio tracks from countries outside the country in which the patent is held would be bound by the patent. ie, if you sell MP3s from Australia, you are not bound by the US patent.
Another question which further highlights how ridiculous this patent is that someone from the States who downloads an MP3 from an Australian seller may in fact be breaking the law.
It doesn't change the fact that whoever allowed the patent to be registered initially should probably be shot. That's if pulling the trigger of a gun was not already patented by someone else.
"if you don't win the contest they don't really have much of a legal leg to take your idea, so you're pretty safe unless you're the winner"
What a crock. There is no copyright of ideas. They can take any element of your concept and use it without having to pay you diddly squat.
If you have a program, be certain to print out the source code, and send yourself a copy of the code via registered mail. (Don't open it up when it arrives). This way, they cannot just take your idea, because, as something put in a permanent form, it will be covered by international copyright laws. The envelope with the source code will provide proof of when you created the code, and from what period you owned copyright.
As for the 10 grand, I am writing from Australia, so it sounds pretty good to me.
During physics class we were studying an introduction to logic. I walked into the class five minutes late and my teacher demanded to know why I was tardy.
"Because I wasn't early, or on time," was my response.