But no one would. Admit it. Technically, Amazon.com has been boycotted by the same community who would boycott Nvidia, for almost a year now (because of their use of software patents). They had over $500 million in revenues this year. It's easy to sit around and be firebrands and scream "screw the man!" but all of five people would actually carry it out. Amazon.com is too convenient to use, so everyone still does.
As much as I hate to say it, Nvidia has by far the hottest 3D hardware on the market. Their new chip can do full screen antialiasing, which no one can do. Also, it destroys 3dfx's competitor hands down. There are too many people here (and yes, I am one of them) who care more about their FPS in Quake 3 than a protest against Nvidia. I don't think a boycott would do anything.
Ha! Hardly. My question to you is, we who? Do you want to pay legal fees for this case. Is it even within your rights to pursue litigation. After all, it wasn't your copyright that was violated, it was whoever wrote bttv.c. The only means of recourse here is to sue, but no one wants to because it costs more money than "we," whoever that it, has.
An inherent problem with the distributed nature of open source software development is aggressively defending IP rights. I have yet to see a viable solution to this problem yet. Although the author of the story lauded Nvidia's action, IMO it's total bullshit. As another poster astutely remarked, if "we" had ripped off their source code, they'd bury us in cease-and-decists, petition our ISPs to yank the offending code and delete our accounts, and maybe, if we're lucky, let us off at that, assuming there was no profit made from their work.
Yet all they get is a minor slap on the wrist. Clearly, a lawsuit would be a very smart option, not only to leverage them into open their drivers, but to set some sort of legal precedent for the GPL.
Oh that's right, you did realize that the GPL is/completely/ untested in the legal realm, didn't you? There has never been, to my knowledge, a case where a judge or jury actually used the GPL license to determine a case. Never! Despite it's total pervasiveness, trendiness, etc., despite the fact that literally thousands of apps are now distributed under the GPL/LGPL, despite the fact that multi-billion dollar coporations rely on the open nature of the GPL for their revenue models, we really have only vague premonitions as to if the GPL is actually binding or not.
I'd really like to see this thing tested on, esp. on such a clear cut case as this. Trouble is, I can't afford it. Neither can anyone. So it never happens.
Now WTF are you going to do? I'm all for playing tough, I just don't see a way how. Boycotting Nvidia is a pretty symbolic gesture, but financially pointless.
Technically, the programmers could sue for copyright violation and win. Money. Maybe a lot. But they're not going to. They probably can't afford it.
I share your feelings, but what pisses me off most is what hypocrites they are about it. You are 100% correct about what would happen it we ripped off their code. And if there's one thing I hate, it's hypocrites who get away with it.
All valid points, but what, exactly, do you propose as a solution? Last time I checked, GNU made money by selling manuals and T-shirts. Each of these problems could be solved with a couple of million dollars and a good lawyer. GNU, unfortunately, has neither.
Has anyone ever heard of one documented case where a developer willingly violated the GPL and actually recieved anything besides a collective browbeating from OSS advocates?
AFAIK there's one. Look at the case of QuakeLives - the guy basically violated section 6 of the GPL from day one by taking a bunch of OSS Quake code and closing it, and then telling people they had to forfeit their rights under the GPL in order to download it. The only reason he ever backed down was because John Carmack stepped in and threatened legal action (which he, certainly, can afford).
That's the only time I'm aware of. It's obvious that this problem will only grow as time progresses, the GPL becomes more pervasive, and the computer industry grows exponentially. But there's really no obvious solution. So to your final proposition, I say, "don't tempt fate" - eventually something like this will happen. It will be interesting to see what, if any, repercussions there are.
Maybe I'm missing the humor/irony here, but, are you serious?. What's the point of even having IP rights if you can't ensure the sanctity of your own privacy? I really am shocked to see such an Orwellian notion appear in a serious vein - maybe what people say about "creeping despotism" isn't that far off.
Personally, I'd chuck my IP rights out the window long before I let a keystroke-by-keystroke log of everyone thing I do be made.
The Creative OSS drivers are crippled in features compared to their closed source counterparts. I like what CL did, but in all honesty they're kind of half-assing the effort ostensibly to entice potential customers for whom open drivers is a selling point w/o a full committment of resources.
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Re:Don't worry about it, Napster's a different iss
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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Haha the newbie is exposed! If you think HTTP, FTP, IRC were invented 6 fscking years ago, then you are the clueless luser, not me. That you have the gall to admonish me and then make just stupid suppositions like that, you arrogant little fuck... well, let's just say you're lucky I'm dignifying it with a response.
Napster is not doing anything illegal. Get that through your think, trogolodyte skull and we'll all be a little better off. Did you even read the threads before you posted (no). There are legitimate MP3s on Napster. Ones that artists have released to the public domain, and don't care if they are traded. Furthermore, Napster is not distributing MP3s. That's illegal. They are not doing it. They are just telling you where to find them. If I tell you where to find drugs, assault rifles, or any other sort of contraband, is that illegal?/NO/ - not in the correct context. It doesn't fucking matter if Napster is an open protocol or not, you jargon-regurgitating moron. That's a moot point. It doesn't matter if a single company distributes it. It doesn't matter if its sole function is to find MP3s. It wouldn't even matter if they had a mechanism in place to only find pirated MP3s and tell you where to find them. That information is not illegal. That information is not illegal. (Repeated for your benefit, since I've said it about 6 times in previous posts and you have yet to understand this most basic concept. My dog fucking gets it).
PLEASE - why don't you think about it. How do you think magazines like High Times can get away with telling you where to buy pot seeds, telling you how to grow pot, telling you what kind of pot is best? Because they aren't selling pot. Just providing the framework for an illegal activity is not illegal. This has been proven again and again. Linking to it is legal. What is illegal is physically giving someone MP3s. Only the users of Napster do that.
I pray to god that you understand what I say. If you don't, e-mail me and I will personally sit down and draw it out in big, vibrantly-colored pictures for you and send them as an EPS. Otherwise, shut up.
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Re:Don't worry about it, Napster's a different iss
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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Functionally, that's all Napster is too. Get your facts straight. I suggest you toodle on over to freshmeat.net and type in the word "Napster". You will find more than ten clients available. Functionally, Napster is a protocol. Although the client is not open, for all intents and purposes the protocol is. It has been reverse engineered many times over.
And you are just flat wrong about company X and whatever else you say. Company X and or Napster aren't doing anything illegal. They are merely providing a search function. No copyrighted material resides on their server. None. Do we sue Altavista for telling us where to find child porn? Google for telling kids how to make bombs? Of couse not. What Napster is doing is no different, except for the packaging.
Flash memory has a very finite lifespan. You can only get a limited number of read/writes out of a flash chip (something ~ 1 billion IIRC) before it goes kablooey. Thus preventing read/write intensive operations is of the utmost importance. This, obviously, precludes letting fsck thrash your flash chip up.
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Re:Don't worry about it, Napster's a different iss
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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That's not a sound, legal argument. You just can't go throwing around ambiguities like "generalized purpose" and expect any sort of law to stick. Napster does have a generalized purpose: to share MP3s. To that end, HTTP, FTP, IRC are just as guilty; I can get MP3s over every single one of those. The fact that they have alternate, legal uses makes no difference whatsoever. So does Napster - transferring public domain MP3s.
Think about all the angles. You can't outlaw MP3 trading programs because there are a lot of legitimate MP3s out there. Such a blanket ruling would be tossed out faster than you can say "appeal".
You can't outlaw programs that only trade MP3s, as you mentioned, because within the day Napster would be coded to trade any sort of file. Hell, people have already hacked the client to do this based on binary patches. Napster proper could do it fast, and Napster would instantly become legal again.
You can't outlaw anything that allows you to trade MP3s, period. Oh, what a clusterfuck that would be. SMTP, FTP, IRC, HTTP, Usenet - all guilty. That's another ruling that would get tossed in a heartbeat.
I take exception to your "If napster could share any kind of file" theory, by the way. The reason Napster was so popular is because it was first to market. Had it not been for the fact that Napster was literally Shawn Fanning's first Win32 programming project, that ability probably would exist. What makes him a smart guy is not that he coded Napster - a lot of us here could have done that, some better - but that he knew the timing, knew it was better to release a crappily-coded version of Napster and build a user base rather than sit back and add features to the client. The latest client, Napster 2.0 beta 5, still blows, but that doesn't matter, because there are so many users of it that people are willing to put up with a shoddy interface for the added selection. Meanwhile, there are Napster clones which are infinitely better, have the ability to share all types of files, tons more features, that are floundering because they came to late into the game. Just download GlobalScape's CuteMX, which is free, to see what I mean.
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Re:Open source this, open source that
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Ask Gneeves?
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He got caught up in jargon, but I think I understand what he's trying to say. True; the actual software to perform the searching isn't anything revolutionary, and releasing the source to it wouldn't place it head and shoulders above any other search engine. People tend to use "Open Source" liberally to signify a community based, distributed effort. In this case, that's of questionable worth here as well. Wouldn't it be better just to petition the Open Directory for natural language searches?
The Open Source iriduim thing really was lame, BTW:)
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Re:Don't worry about it, Napster's a different iss
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MP3.com Loses In Court
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Exactly. Try to define just what Napster is without coming up with a blanket definition for pretty much the whole Internet. Just try it! I did, and I couldn't. Napster is no different from HTTP, FTP, or SMTP, except in implementation. Any attempt to outlaw Napster will either be so far-reaching and thereforce stifling to legitimate progress on the Internet that it will be immediately struck down, or it will encompass minute differences between Napster and other services, in which case the Napster client could be altered the same day as a way around the ruling. Mark my words, Napster will never be outlawed functionally. It's impossible.
MP3.com has a market cap of almost $500 million dollars. See for yourself. And this is after losing almost 40% on news of the ruling. If there's one thing - the only thing - I think these insane.com market (over)valuations are good for, it's be able to compete financially with entities that traditionally have been able to spend their way to favorable court rulings. Viz. AOL suing AT&T for open access to cable lines, this, Napster standing up to fight against all the artists (not sure how they works, since they have no visible source of income), etc.
Hehe nice analogy. Exactly. It's pretty funny to watch the often knee-jerk reaction around here to any new piece of hardware, which is basically, "What will it take to run Linux?" All around the world, there are efforts underway to port chairs, phone poles, alligators, keyboards, toasters, etc. to Linux.;)
BTW the robot has a BASIC microcontroller so programming wouldn't be a total bitch. It's certainly a step up from the old Z80 chips we used to write assembly code for to control our robots. Nevertheless, not portable to Linux.
Have you ever copied and entire book at the library? Of course not. Maybe my analogy sucked too - the point is that Napster makes it far, far easier to copy entire works in seconds. I just downloaded Chronic 2001 - the WHOLE thing - in like 2 minutes. As far as I'm concerned, if you've got the panache to actually go make 400+ photocopies of an entire book, well then you're entitled to it. Aside from the fact that at a nickel a pop you'd have paid for it anyways. Look, as much as I hate to say this, I Am Not A Lawyer (C)(TM)(R). I'm not well versed in copyright law. Just from my personal experience, it seems that exceptions to copyright law have always been made where there is no real financial threat to the bearer. That's the litmus test. AHRA allows us to make degraded, but full and fast copies, of copyrighted audio, on the premise that if we liked it enough we would get annoyed by the quality and go buy it. DAT & Minidisc have SCMS built in to ensure that we would only make copies for personal use, thereby not costing artists a cent in lost sales when we go copy it for 50 other people. The networks got injunctions for copyright violation against DirecTV on the grounds that rebroadcasting a national signal outside of its local area was costing them money. AFAICT it always goes back to money. I don't think I need to tell anyone here that MP3s stand to cost a lot of people a lot of money. Ripping off library books has never been a problem as stated above. If it were, I'm sure something would be done.
I'm sure the fact that the artists & labels have a massive, rich, tempestuous, greedy, and very vocal trade group can't help either:) Hadn't heard of one of those for books.
All valid points. Personally I think the whole argument is moot considering the idiot government would just go after both parties involved and get it over with:)
Libraries don't make copies of books. Copiers do. This is why you see copyright notices posted over many copiers - that's where copyright law is physically broken. The act of checking out a book and reading it is no different than listening to a CD. But the act of copying that book does violate copywright, much like the act of copying music on Napster does.
Napster, by combining the archival and copying functions into one easy-to-use package, certainly makes its users (not Napster, Inc., though) libel for copyright damages. The fact is that if you don't ever install Napster, run it, and allow it to search your hard drive for music, then all subsequent distribution of copyrighted material would never occur. That alone makes the serving computer break copyright law.
No one knows. That particular scenario falls in a really, really gray area of the law; there's not much precedent for it. We will find out pretty soon though since this is exactly what my.mp3.com does and exactly what RIAA is suing them for. The case will have its day in court, and the decision can either stifle a lot of progress on the internet or open the floodgates for an entire new paradigm of artistic enjoyment. I'm praying, of course, that this is legal.
I doubt if that would stand up in court. The act of installing Napster on your computer, and even moreso, telling it where to find the MP3s on your computer, would most certainly be considered distribution. If not, they would fix that quickly.
There used to be a loophole along these same lines for narcotics. Drug dealers would carry a cell phone, make a deal, and then just go leave the drugs inside their unlocked car in the parking lot. Even if the cops found the knew about the deal and found the car/drugs, they couldn't bring charges against the dealer for anything more than posession, which is a way smaller offense than trafficking (a felony). I gather they patched that hole pretty quickly too.
My thoughts exactly. This has gotten quite a bit easier as of late though, because several huge mirrors have put up ISOs. In my case, acs-mirror.ucsd.edu (622mbps located about 100 miles away from me) now has full RedHat ISOs online. Anyone in California or the West Coast in general should get great throughput - I manage to pull about 200kbps steadily on @Home. I highly suggest them.
...you must own an nvidia card to even/use/ the software...
Yeah I found that out the hard way when it plugged in my Matrox G400 and was shocked to learn that it didn't work. The nerve of some companies...
BTW your viewpoint is very politically correct amongst open source zealots (and moderators, unsurprisingly), but also rather asinine. You obviously don't actually own a Nvidia card. For the thousands of us that do, we'll happily take a closed source driver for Linux (like me, for example) rather than sniff our noses at their offerings and issue some sort of dumbass ultimatum a la "Nvidia needs to make a commitment (!!!)". You take what you can get.
What should not be done is to go on Slashdot and bitch and moan and use phrases like "Don't fall for it" and in general encourage people to ignore this very colossal step of even supporting alternative OSs. I personally would have soiled myself had I heard a year or two ago that Nvidia was going to actually support Linux. That's great. It's huge. Not many people are doing it. The only prayer you ever have of seeing them release their specs is if they realize that a large portion of their customer base uses alt. OSs and that they stand to gain a lot by doing so. And how do we do that? By praising them, buying their cards, sending in the bug reports, giving them a positive reception - in general showing them that they could easily realize some synergy between the very zealous and talented open-source community and their own engineers by releasing the specs and letting us help out. Not by being typical OSS snobs about the whole ordeal and bitching.
Can you guess where I stand on Stallman and his "Open Source purity" shenanigans after all this?
BTW I am very happy with my Nvidia X server. Haven't tried OpenGL yet, but just having that support straight from the manufacturer
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Re:roll your own TIVO replacement
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Tivo Hacking?
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Only the OS. Their software is totally proprietary and not for sale. It is not open source, if that's what you're thinking.
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Re:roll your own TIVO replacement
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Tivo Hacking?
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You forgot the most important part: software. Remember that TiVO's real master stroke here isn't the MPEG2 hardware, case, processor - nothing. It's the software. Literally they have enabled people who couldn't set the clock on their VCR to automatically record shows, replay, slo-mo, etc etc. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd bet my firstborn that such robust, integrated, and easy-to-use software doesn't even exist for Windows, let alone Linux.
On Linux, you would probably have to run several different programs to get all the functionality that TiVO has, assuming such software even exists (AFAIK video support for Linux is shaky at best, and realtime hardware-assisted MPEG2 encoding is practically nonexistant). Something like one program for playback, another for recording, possibly another for slo-motion and certainly another for TV guide. All told it would be a horrendous pain-in-the-ass to setup, assuming you could. Then further integrating all that functionality into a single IR remote - well, you get the picture. Personally, I'll shell out $300 any day over doing this myself, although I could, and it probably would be cooler. There comes a point in every hacker's life where he seems to realize that there are just more important things in life;)
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Re:Do it yourself video recorder
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Tivo Hacking?
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Don't be too hard on TiVo. Realize that they are likely selling the hardware at a loss depending on customer's monthly subscription to make up the difference.
Of course we should be hard on them! If businesses want to survive in a capitalist economy such as our own, then they should not come to rely on a consumer willing to pay a pointless fee to make up for their loss. I'm tired of all these companies (Netpliance, FreePC) crying foul when their loss-leader plans blow up in their face. You should come to expect that and count on it, and not feel like the consumer owes you something to make up for your manufacturing loss.
Slashdot Mirror
But no one would. Admit it. Technically, Amazon.com has been boycotted by the same community who would boycott Nvidia, for almost a year now (because of their use of software patents). They had over $500 million in revenues this year. It's easy to sit around and be firebrands and scream "screw the man!" but all of five people would actually carry it out. Amazon.com is too convenient to use, so everyone still does.
As much as I hate to say it, Nvidia has by far the hottest 3D hardware on the market. Their new chip can do full screen antialiasing, which no one can do. Also, it destroys 3dfx's competitor hands down. There are too many people here (and yes, I am one of them) who care more about their FPS in Quake 3 than a protest against Nvidia. I don't think a boycott would do anything.
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Ha! Hardly. My question to you is, we who? Do you want to pay legal fees for this case. Is it even within your rights to pursue litigation. After all, it wasn't your copyright that was violated, it was whoever wrote bttv.c. The only means of recourse here is to sue, but no one wants to because it costs more money than "we," whoever that it, has.
/completely/ untested in the legal realm, didn't you? There has never been, to my knowledge, a case where a judge or jury actually used the GPL license to determine a case. Never! Despite it's total pervasiveness, trendiness, etc., despite the fact that literally thousands of apps are now distributed under the GPL/LGPL, despite the fact that multi-billion dollar coporations rely on the open nature of the GPL for their revenue models, we really have only vague premonitions as to if the GPL is actually binding or not.
An inherent problem with the distributed nature of open source software development is aggressively defending IP rights. I have yet to see a viable solution to this problem yet. Although the author of the story lauded Nvidia's action, IMO it's total bullshit. As another poster astutely remarked, if "we" had ripped off their source code, they'd bury us in cease-and-decists, petition our ISPs to yank the offending code and delete our accounts, and maybe, if we're lucky, let us off at that, assuming there was no profit made from their work.
Yet all they get is a minor slap on the wrist. Clearly, a lawsuit would be a very smart option, not only to leverage them into open their drivers, but to set some sort of legal precedent for the GPL.
Oh that's right, you did realize that the GPL is
I'd really like to see this thing tested on, esp. on such a clear cut case as this. Trouble is, I can't afford it. Neither can anyone. So it never happens.
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Bravo!
Now WTF are you going to do? I'm all for playing tough, I just don't see a way how. Boycotting Nvidia is a pretty symbolic gesture, but financially pointless.
Technically, the programmers could sue for copyright violation and win. Money. Maybe a lot. But they're not going to. They probably can't afford it.
I share your feelings, but what pisses me off most is what hypocrites they are about it. You are 100% correct about what would happen it we ripped off their code. And if there's one thing I hate, it's hypocrites who get away with it.
But what can we do?
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Very nice thread we have here. It will scare off every company that ever considered using GPLed code.
No, it will scare off every company that ever considered using GPLed code in a closed-source product. Which is what we want.
I fail to see how it would have any other adverse effects.
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All valid points, but what, exactly, do you propose as a solution? Last time I checked, GNU made money by selling manuals and T-shirts. Each of these problems could be solved with a couple of million dollars and a good lawyer. GNU, unfortunately, has neither.
Has anyone ever heard of one documented case where a developer willingly violated the GPL and actually recieved anything besides a collective browbeating from OSS advocates?
AFAIK there's one. Look at the case of QuakeLives - the guy basically violated section 6 of the GPL from day one by taking a bunch of OSS Quake code and closing it, and then telling people they had to forfeit their rights under the GPL in order to download it. The only reason he ever backed down was because John Carmack stepped in and threatened legal action (which he, certainly, can afford).
That's the only time I'm aware of. It's obvious that this problem will only grow as time progresses, the GPL becomes more pervasive, and the computer industry grows exponentially. But there's really no obvious solution. So to your final proposition, I say, "don't tempt fate" - eventually something like this will happen. It will be interesting to see what, if any, repercussions there are.
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Maybe I'm missing the humor/irony here, but, are you serious?. What's the point of even having IP rights if you can't ensure the sanctity of your own privacy? I really am shocked to see such an Orwellian notion appear in a serious vein - maybe what people say about "creeping despotism" isn't that far off.
Personally, I'd chuck my IP rights out the window long before I let a keystroke-by-keystroke log of everyone thing I do be made.
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The Creative OSS drivers are crippled in features compared to their closed source counterparts. I like what CL did, but in all honesty they're kind of half-assing the effort ostensibly to entice potential customers for whom open drivers is a selling point w/o a full committment of resources.
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Haha the newbie is exposed! If you think HTTP, FTP, IRC were invented 6 fscking years ago, then you are the clueless luser, not me. That you have the gall to admonish me and then make just stupid suppositions like that, you arrogant little fuck... well, let's just say you're lucky I'm dignifying it with a response.
/NO/ - not in the correct context. It doesn't fucking matter if Napster is an open protocol or not, you jargon-regurgitating moron. That's a moot point. It doesn't matter if a single company distributes it. It doesn't matter if its sole function is to find MP3s. It wouldn't even matter if they had a mechanism in place to only find pirated MP3s and tell you where to find them. That information is not illegal. That information is not illegal. (Repeated for your benefit, since I've said it about 6 times in previous posts and you have yet to understand this most basic concept. My dog fucking gets it).
Napster is not doing anything illegal. Get that through your think, trogolodyte skull and we'll all be a little better off. Did you even read the threads before you posted (no). There are legitimate MP3s on Napster. Ones that artists have released to the public domain, and don't care if they are traded. Furthermore, Napster is not distributing MP3s. That's illegal. They are not doing it. They are just telling you where to find them. If I tell you where to find drugs, assault rifles, or any other sort of contraband, is that illegal?
PLEASE - why don't you think about it. How do you think magazines like High Times can get away with telling you where to buy pot seeds, telling you how to grow pot, telling you what kind of pot is best? Because they aren't selling pot. Just providing the framework for an illegal activity is not illegal. This has been proven again and again. Linking to it is legal. What is illegal is physically giving someone MP3s. Only the users of Napster do that.
I pray to god that you understand what I say. If you don't, e-mail me and I will personally sit down and draw it out in big, vibrantly-colored pictures for you and send them as an EPS. Otherwise, shut up.
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Functionally, that's all Napster is too. Get your facts straight. I suggest you toodle on over to freshmeat.net and type in the word "Napster". You will find more than ten clients available. Functionally, Napster is a protocol. Although the client is not open, for all intents and purposes the protocol is. It has been reverse engineered many times over.
And you are just flat wrong about company X and whatever else you say. Company X and or Napster aren't doing anything illegal. They are merely providing a search function. No copyrighted material resides on their server. None. Do we sue Altavista for telling us where to find child porn? Google for telling kids how to make bombs? Of couse not. What Napster is doing is no different, except for the packaging.
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Flash memory has a very finite lifespan. You can only get a limited number of read/writes out of a flash chip (something ~ 1 billion IIRC) before it goes kablooey. Thus preventing read/write intensive operations is of the utmost importance. This, obviously, precludes letting fsck thrash your flash chip up.
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That's not a sound, legal argument. You just can't go throwing around ambiguities like "generalized purpose" and expect any sort of law to stick. Napster does have a generalized purpose: to share MP3s. To that end, HTTP, FTP, IRC are just as guilty; I can get MP3s over every single one of those. The fact that they have alternate, legal uses makes no difference whatsoever. So does Napster - transferring public domain MP3s.
Think about all the angles. You can't outlaw MP3 trading programs because there are a lot of legitimate MP3s out there. Such a blanket ruling would be tossed out faster than you can say "appeal".
You can't outlaw programs that only trade MP3s, as you mentioned, because within the day Napster would be coded to trade any sort of file. Hell, people have already hacked the client to do this based on binary patches. Napster proper could do it fast, and Napster would instantly become legal again.
You can't outlaw anything that allows you to trade MP3s, period. Oh, what a clusterfuck that would be. SMTP, FTP, IRC, HTTP, Usenet - all guilty. That's another ruling that would get tossed in a heartbeat.
I take exception to your "If napster could share any kind of file" theory, by the way. The reason Napster was so popular is because it was first to market. Had it not been for the fact that Napster was literally Shawn Fanning's first Win32 programming project, that ability probably would exist. What makes him a smart guy is not that he coded Napster - a lot of us here could have done that, some better - but that he knew the timing, knew it was better to release a crappily-coded version of Napster and build a user base rather than sit back and add features to the client. The latest client, Napster 2.0 beta 5, still blows, but that doesn't matter, because there are so many users of it that people are willing to put up with a shoddy interface for the added selection. Meanwhile, there are Napster clones which are infinitely better, have the ability to share all types of files, tons more features, that are floundering because they came to late into the game. Just download GlobalScape's CuteMX, which is free, to see what I mean.
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He got caught up in jargon, but I think I understand what he's trying to say. True; the actual software to perform the searching isn't anything revolutionary, and releasing the source to it wouldn't place it head and shoulders above any other search engine. People tend to use "Open Source" liberally to signify a community based, distributed effort. In this case, that's of questionable worth here as well. Wouldn't it be better just to petition the Open Directory for natural language searches?
:)
The Open Source iriduim thing really was lame, BTW
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Exactly. Try to define just what Napster is without coming up with a blanket definition for pretty much the whole Internet. Just try it! I did, and I couldn't. Napster is no different from HTTP, FTP, or SMTP, except in implementation. Any attempt to outlaw Napster will either be so far-reaching and thereforce stifling to legitimate progress on the Internet that it will be immediately struck down, or it will encompass minute differences between Napster and other services, in which case the Napster client could be altered the same day as a way around the ruling. Mark my words, Napster will never be outlawed functionally. It's impossible.
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MP3.com has a market cap of almost $500 million dollars. See for yourself. And this is after losing almost 40% on news of the ruling. If there's one thing - the only thing - I think these insane .com market (over)valuations are good for, it's be able to compete financially with entities that traditionally have been able to spend their way to favorable court rulings. Viz. AOL suing AT&T for open access to cable lines, this, Napster standing up to fight against all the artists (not sure how they works, since they have no visible source of income), etc.
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Hehe nice analogy. Exactly. It's pretty funny to watch the often knee-jerk reaction around here to any new piece of hardware, which is basically, "What will it take to run Linux?" All around the world, there are efforts underway to port chairs, phone poles, alligators, keyboards, toasters, etc. to Linux. ;)
BTW the robot has a BASIC microcontroller so programming wouldn't be a total bitch. It's certainly a step up from the old Z80 chips we used to write assembly code for to control our robots. Nevertheless, not portable to Linux.
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Have you ever copied and entire book at the library? Of course not. Maybe my analogy sucked too - the point is that Napster makes it far, far easier to copy entire works in seconds. I just downloaded Chronic 2001 - the WHOLE thing - in like 2 minutes. As far as I'm concerned, if you've got the panache to actually go make 400+ photocopies of an entire book, well then you're entitled to it. Aside from the fact that at a nickel a pop you'd have paid for it anyways. Look, as much as I hate to say this, I Am Not A Lawyer (C)(TM)(R). I'm not well versed in copyright law. Just from my personal experience, it seems that exceptions to copyright law have always been made where there is no real financial threat to the bearer. That's the litmus test. AHRA allows us to make degraded, but full and fast copies, of copyrighted audio, on the premise that if we liked it enough we would get annoyed by the quality and go buy it. DAT & Minidisc have SCMS built in to ensure that we would only make copies for personal use, thereby not costing artists a cent in lost sales when we go copy it for 50 other people. The networks got injunctions for copyright violation against DirecTV on the grounds that rebroadcasting a national signal outside of its local area was costing them money. AFAICT it always goes back to money. I don't think I need to tell anyone here that MP3s stand to cost a lot of people a lot of money. Ripping off library books has never been a problem as stated above. If it were, I'm sure something would be done.
:) Hadn't heard of one of those for books.
I'm sure the fact that the artists & labels have a massive, rich, tempestuous, greedy, and very vocal trade group can't help either
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All valid points. Personally I think the whole argument is moot considering the idiot government would just go after both parties involved and get it over with :)
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Libraries don't make copies of books. Copiers do. This is why you see copyright notices posted over many copiers - that's where copyright law is physically broken. The act of checking out a book and reading it is no different than listening to a CD. But the act of copying that book does violate copywright, much like the act of copying music on Napster does.
Napster, by combining the archival and copying functions into one easy-to-use package, certainly makes its users (not Napster, Inc., though) libel for copyright damages. The fact is that if you don't ever install Napster, run it, and allow it to search your hard drive for music, then all subsequent distribution of copyrighted material would never occur. That alone makes the serving computer break copyright law.
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No one knows. That particular scenario falls in a really, really gray area of the law; there's not much precedent for it. We will find out pretty soon though since this is exactly what my.mp3.com does and exactly what RIAA is suing them for. The case will have its day in court, and the decision can either stifle a lot of progress on the internet or open the floodgates for an entire new paradigm of artistic enjoyment. I'm praying, of course, that this is legal.
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I doubt if that would stand up in court. The act of installing Napster on your computer, and even moreso, telling it where to find the MP3s on your computer, would most certainly be considered distribution. If not, they would fix that quickly.
There used to be a loophole along these same lines for narcotics. Drug dealers would carry a cell phone, make a deal, and then just go leave the drugs inside their unlocked car in the parking lot. Even if the cops found the knew about the deal and found the car/drugs, they couldn't bring charges against the dealer for anything more than posession, which is a way smaller offense than trafficking (a felony). I gather they patched that hole pretty quickly too.
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My thoughts exactly. This has gotten quite a bit easier as of late though, because several huge mirrors have put up ISOs. In my case, acs-mirror.ucsd.edu (622mbps located about 100 miles away from me) now has full RedHat ISOs online. Anyone in California or the West Coast in general should get great throughput - I manage to pull about 200kbps steadily on @Home. I highly suggest them.
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...you must own an nvidia card to even /use/ the software...
Yeah I found that out the hard way when it plugged in my Matrox G400 and was shocked to learn that it didn't work. The nerve of some companies...
BTW your viewpoint is very politically correct amongst open source zealots (and moderators, unsurprisingly), but also rather asinine. You obviously don't actually own a Nvidia card. For the thousands of us that do, we'll happily take a closed source driver for Linux (like me, for example) rather than sniff our noses at their offerings and issue some sort of dumbass ultimatum a la "Nvidia needs to make a commitment (!!!)". You take what you can get.
What should not be done is to go on Slashdot and bitch and moan and use phrases like "Don't fall for it" and in general encourage people to ignore this very colossal step of even supporting alternative OSs. I personally would have soiled myself had I heard a year or two ago that Nvidia was going to actually support Linux. That's great. It's huge. Not many people are doing it. The only prayer you ever have of seeing them release their specs is if they realize that a large portion of their customer base uses alt. OSs and that they stand to gain a lot by doing so. And how do we do that? By praising them, buying their cards, sending in the bug reports, giving them a positive reception - in general showing them that they could easily realize some synergy between the very zealous and talented open-source community and their own engineers by releasing the specs and letting us help out. Not by being typical OSS snobs about the whole ordeal and bitching.
Can you guess where I stand on Stallman and his "Open Source purity" shenanigans after all this?
BTW I am very happy with my Nvidia X server. Haven't tried OpenGL yet, but just having that support straight from the manufacturer
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Only the OS. Their software is totally proprietary and not for sale. It is not open source, if that's what you're thinking.
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You forgot the most important part: software. Remember that TiVO's real master stroke here isn't the MPEG2 hardware, case, processor - nothing. It's the software. Literally they have enabled people who couldn't set the clock on their VCR to automatically record shows, replay, slo-mo, etc etc. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd bet my firstborn that such robust, integrated, and easy-to-use software doesn't even exist for Windows, let alone Linux.
;)
On Linux, you would probably have to run several different programs to get all the functionality that TiVO has, assuming such software even exists (AFAIK video support for Linux is shaky at best, and realtime hardware-assisted MPEG2 encoding is practically nonexistant). Something like one program for playback, another for recording, possibly another for slo-motion and certainly another for TV guide. All told it would be a horrendous pain-in-the-ass to setup, assuming you could. Then further integrating all that functionality into a single IR remote - well, you get the picture. Personally, I'll shell out $300 any day over doing this myself, although I could, and it probably would be cooler. There comes a point in every hacker's life where he seems to realize that there are just more important things in life
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Don't be too hard on TiVo. Realize that they are likely selling the hardware at a loss depending on customer's monthly subscription to make up the difference.
Of course we should be hard on them! If businesses want to survive in a capitalist economy such as our own, then they should not come to rely on a consumer willing to pay a pointless fee to make up for their loss. I'm tired of all these companies (Netpliance, FreePC) crying foul when their loss-leader plans blow up in their face. You should come to expect that and count on it, and not feel like the consumer owes you something to make up for your manufacturing loss.
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