We have prepared a section by section analysis of the bill that can be found here. Also you can read,a href="http://www.ccianet.org/press/02/0418.php3"&g t;our press release opposing the bill.
I don't think the problem is in positive reviews. The problem people have is that/. makes money from the same company that they are "independently" reviewing. That causes some people to be skeptical of the source. Case in point, why do people get skeptical of the same firm auditing someone's books and giving them consulting advice with lucrative contracts. B/c even if there is no wrongdoing, it gives the appearance that there is. And as recent events::cough:: enron:: cough:: tell us, in cases more then the appearance. Am I saying that this is evil and the same scale as enron? No, but there are obvious problems with taking money from those you review.
However, I still trust the credibility of slashdot, and would trust this review based on what I read here in the past and based on the peer-review comment system. However, if this were to be the trend, I would not be so forgiving. In general, one can hawk product, one can review products, but when you make money from companies and then review their products (or their competitors), there is a credibility gap and a redflag goes up.
Before you flame away, I do see this as different from a PC print mag accepting advertisements and reviewing products, there is a bigger wall between the editorial board, the product review board and the advertising board. But to those who complain when the see particular stories on MSNBC or the like, question the same here.
I have a Quadra 660 AV sitting in the closet collecting dust. I was wondering if anyone knew of a linux distro for an 040 mac and could point me in the right direction. I would like to try it on this box if that is possible, or is this just a really stupid idea. I seem to recall that this machine has a 500 meg HD (somewhere round that, and believe me, I thought that was huge after upgrading from a 40 meg HD on my LC) and no cd rom, but i think it has ethernet built in to dl anything.
Congress is interested, contact them, here is how
on
Web Radio and the RIAA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This was on Declan's list a few weeks ago but a House Subcommittee is seeking interested parties views on digital media and DMCA issues. This is the text of their letter. If you chose not to respond to their request and live in the US, then chose not to complain that Congress is not listening or only listening to $$, deadline for comment is April 8, so that gives you all close to a week:
March 11, 2002
To all parties interested in the application of copyright law to the digital environment:
The growth of the Internet has raised complex and controversial issues over the application of copyright law to the digital environment. Examination of these issues is increasingly important in light of growing digital music piracy, expanding public demand for online music services and the willingness and ability of many entities to meet that demand.
The Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property has held a series of oversight hearings on digital music issues, culminating in a December 2001 hearing on the recommendations made by the U.S. Copyright Office in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 104 Report. Legislation (H.R. 2724) addressing online music issues has also been introduced in the House of Representatives.
Given the topical nature of this subject matter, we are initiating a process to review relevant digital music issues and related proposals to amend the Copyright Act that have been brought or will be brought to our attention.
All interested parties are encouraged to submit written views on the merits of relevant digital music issues and related proposed amendments to the Copyright Act. The Subcommittee deadline for receipt of comments is 5:00 p.m. on April 8, 2002. The merits of the proposals will be evaluated in light of the views received and input from other Members of the Subcommittee, with the goal of discerning whether consensus exists on meaningful solutions to address identifiable harms. Subsequently, at a date and time to be determined, we will schedule a general meeting with all interested parties to share our findings.
We thank you in advance for your participation in this process. We believe it will produce valuable discourse on these very important issues and hope it will result in meaningful solutions to some of the problems and controversies surrounding the application of copyright law to the digital environment.
Sincerely,
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR JOHN CONYERS, JR. HOWARD COBLE HOWARD L. BERMAN CHRIS CANNON RICK BOUCHER
IANAL (but a first yr student, so sue me) but I wonder if there is a constituional challenge to this. Can this be denied under the 14th amdt, equal protection under the law. Webcasters and traditional radio stations are essentially the same thing (pushing music into a box, one does though radio frequency, the other does through 1s and 0s), both can be copied with roughly the same quality (.ra and the like are not high quality and approach the level of quality as a cassette or radio output, i'll let the audio geeks hash that out), but one group is denied the ability to play for free based on federal regulation.
Is this have basis of being a valid argument, Lawyers speak up!!
Dell has something to say on this matter. Read it here. Basically MS e-mails/memos released at the trial last week discussig "hitting the OEM [Dell] harder than in the past with anti-Linux actions," while other e-mails urged Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to remind Dell "of the meat of why it's smart to be partnered with Microsoft."
Dell's response? A spokesman for Dell, Mike Maher, declined to comment on the case but said the company sells computer equipment with the Linux operating system installed if requested.
"We still offer [Linux] on the [corporate] side and as needed as customers ask for it," he said.
Naturally, this shows a fear of retribution, but shortly after the emails, Dell stopped offer linux on the desktop.
Yes, you can find the complete non-settling state's proposal here. This is a redlined version as they made some alterations on this from their original one (not to be confused with the sellout DoJ/MS crafted settlement).
Well it is around 6 months since the Appeals court confirmed that MS is a monopolist, and less than that since the supreme court denied cert (essentially saying there was nothing wrong with the appeals court ruling). So we are talking about less than half a year to set the case up, that is not much time given the complexities of the issue. They wanted to wait for a confirmed ruling so thy would not have to establish that as part of the case.
Except AOL does not employ anticompetive tactics and run others out of the business. How many viable OS' are there for the Intel/AMD box (that have more than 5% usage) mmm. Windows, ow many viable magazines/cable channels/ISP/Movie Studios etc are there besides AOL TW...hmm, I don't have enough time to count.
Point is just because a company is big does not mean that they employ anticompetive methods to acheive or maintain that end. Or kill their competition which is what 2 federal courts and 8 Federal judges have ruled that MS did to Netscape.
This is a bit of old news, but interesting new commentary provided in the original posting. Essentially metals and footware (good thing Nike's are manafactured in Viet Namese sweat shops and not Ukraine sweat shops, I would hate to see Michael Jordan battling with Hilary Rosen of RIAA)
The white house sent the following email to people on their trade/tech related listserv. Also see here for the Trade Office's (u.s. govt) press release.
TO: High Tech Leaders
US imposes sanctions on Ukraine in CD piracy row
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - The United States will impose sanctions on $75
million worth of Ukrainian goods in retaliation for the continued piracy of U.S.
music compact disc and other optical media products, a spokesman for the U.S.
Trade Representative's office said on Thursday.
The action follows repeated warnings that the United States would impose
sanctions unless Ukraine stopped the illegal reproduction of the products within
its borders.
The U.S. industry estimates annual losses from Ukrainian piracy at more than
$200 million.
Actually, this is a private antitrust suit. You should let your views be known here:
The Honorable J. Frederick Motz
Chief Judge
United States District Court for the
District of Maryland
101 West Lombard Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
and you can email here:
robert_wolinsky@mdd.uscourts.gov
The DoJ is not involved with this as it is a private suit. Two letters that we wrote can be found here and here.
If you have a problem with the DoJ proposed settlement, there are places you can file your comments too. They have been listed repeatedly here.
There is nothing wrong with having market share or perhaps even being a monopoly. But when you abuse your position to foreclose competition, not only does that hurt competition (which hurts consumers) but is illegal.
That is great that you had that option to choose your OS. However, most people buy their computers through major OEMs and don't have the luxery of building a system and compiling their own OS on the system. They have a system with Windows pre-installed, whether they know they have another option or not. An average user is not going to dl an iso and re-partition their drive to put another OS on it. They are not going to purchase another OS (even for super cheap) at CompUSA when their is an OS right there. And OEMs are not going to offer another OS pre-installed because of MS retalitory conduct (and that part is illegal).
So, the user brings their computer home and it has windows preinstalled. Included is a web browser so the user is not going to dl netscape/opera or whatever else. Also included is a media player (hard bolted into the browser) so they are not neccesarily going to dl another player. Not included is Java, so develepers will stop java development (don't believe me, why do so many web builders, aside from laziness, code pages for IE that look wierd on different browsers).
Another key consideration is office. In a business, files are transferred in MS formats. Why would a company put on an OS that can't handle applications that they need? MS will not port office to linux for this specific reason (and as good as Star Office is, it can't handle conversions flawlessly).
What MS does is limit users choice. They do this by taking one monopoly and leaveraging that into another monopoly. I could care less what OS people use, what browser people use, and what software people use. But I do like to have a choice as to what to use, and I like venture capitalists to not fear investing in technologies that MS already is competing in , intends to compete in, or may just so happen to decide later to compete in. As Barksdale, now a VC, said in his letter, a VC will not invest in a technology if MS ever has an intention to use their monopoly to "compete" (read destroy) that technology. And while the open source community is great, VC is also neccesary otherwise these technologies will wither on the vine.
Senator Leahy had invited Jim Barksdale (co-founder of Netscape) to testify on the effects the RPFJ would have had if it was in place when Netscape was starting up. Microsoft balked at having him testify and said they would have refused to appear if Barksdale was there. So Barksdale was dis-invited, but sent a letter giving his answer. That letter was partially read by Sen. Hatch and said that Netscape would have never received VC funding. Pretty damning stuff.
Leahy asked Charles James (head of Antitrust for DoJ) to respond. He dodged saying that he had not read the letter yet and it seemed like typical hyperbole that was being spouted off (but also said he could not characterize it as such given he has not read the letter). Leahy asked him to formally respond for the record, which will be done in writing (I assume).
It was a little suprising to see such a little used procedural movement to kill the hearing. Leahy was visablly upset, but admitted its a Senator's perogative. Ironically, it was Sen Byrd (who knows every minutia of procedure) who was upset over TPA (fast track trade negotiation authorization for the President on trade treaties) and called that mark-up to a halt--however, it had already been succesfully reported out of committee at that point.
So what was left was 4 Senators upbraiding MS and calling the settlement for the sham it is. The only one defending the settlement was Sen. McConnell who clearly wanted to get his 1 minute in before the first recess (for votes, asked to be heard when Leahy tried to do a 20 minute break so he would not have to come back). All McConnell said was that 70% of the public favor a settlement, so any settlement is good. Leahy responded by saying that he too favored a settlement, but not a meaningless one riddled with loopholes.
FYI, the 4 senators attacking MS were Leahy (D-VT), Kohl (D-WI), Hatch (R-UT), and DeWine (R-OH), a bi-partisan group to say the least.
This is great, man some of the passages seem like they are straight out of the mouth of Ashcroft's critics. Anyways, here is the link to the original article, in case you need some better sourcing than just the usenet url.
WinXP actually. The IR is an IrDA as far as I can tell from tech specs. I guess linux would have made things easy with LIRC, but I am not switching over to linux just for that (believe me, there are good reasons for me not, namely, this is for school and the exam software they give us is for Windows only). I saw some utilities I could use, but how do I configure a remote for use? If you could point me to some good utilities or FAQs that would be great. Otherwise, I guess I could just assemble an IR for the serial port from scratch (though I aint an engineer).
Just curious. I have a compaq laptop with an IR port in it. I bought this used so don't have the documentation. Is it possible for me to use a universal remote on this? I assumed that this was just for trasferring data with another IR device (but I suppose that is exaclty what a remote is). Can anyone point me to some helpful site or has anyone had experience with this?
Oh thanks god for that, I just did a quick search and I guess I loved usenet when I was a high school lad, like 10 yrs ago (at least there is proof now when i say I was using the net before there was a GUI web browser). Jeez, how stupid was I. My sig had my home addy on it and I was talking about things that should have not been talked. I need to do a remove of many of those when I get the chance.
I don't know if I can support a standard that is responsible for bringing us another 'n sync video. Really, forget copy controls, just limit these media players from playing (or producing) crap like that and I will be happy. Now if Linux did not have the ability to play any boy band crap, think of how it would take off!
Perhaps Monkey-boy ballmer can star in there next video, sweat filled crap
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops, that's what happens when you accidently submit before previewing-- now with correct html:
We have prepared a section by section analysis of the bill that can be found here. Also you can read our press release opposing the bill.
We have prepared a section by section analysis of the bill that can be found here. Also you can read ,a href="http://www.ccianet.org/press/02/0418.php3"&g t;our press release opposing the bill.
We have prepared a section-by-section analysis of this bill that can be found here.
Enjoy!
I don't think the problem is in positive reviews. The problem people have is that /. makes money from the same company that they are "independently" reviewing. That causes some people to be skeptical of the source. Case in point, why do people get skeptical of the same firm auditing someone's books and giving them consulting advice with lucrative contracts. B/c even if there is no wrongdoing, it gives the appearance that there is. And as recent events ::cough:: enron :: cough:: tell us, in cases more then the appearance. Am I saying that this is evil and the same scale as enron? No, but there are obvious problems with taking money from those you review.
However, I still trust the credibility of slashdot, and would trust this review based on what I read here in the past and based on the peer-review comment system. However, if this were to be the trend, I would not be so forgiving. In general, one can hawk product, one can review products, but when you make money from companies and then review their products (or their competitors), there is a credibility gap and a redflag goes up.
Before you flame away, I do see this as different from a PC print mag accepting advertisements and reviewing products, there is a bigger wall between the editorial board, the product review board and the advertising board. But to those who complain when the see particular stories on MSNBC or the like, question the same here.
I have a Quadra 660 AV sitting in the closet collecting dust. I was wondering if anyone knew of a linux distro for an 040 mac and could point me in the right direction. I would like to try it on this box if that is possible, or is this just a really stupid idea. I seem to recall that this machine has a 500 meg HD (somewhere round that, and believe me, I thought that was huge after upgrading from a 40 meg HD on my LC) and no cd rom, but i think it has ethernet built in to dl anything.
This was on Declan's list a few weeks ago but a House Subcommittee is seeking interested parties views on digital media and DMCA issues. This is the text of their letter. If you chose not to respond to their request and live in the US, then chose not to complain that Congress is not listening or only listening to $$, deadline for comment is April 8, so that gives you all close to a week:
March 11, 2002
To all parties interested in the application of copyright law to the digital environment:
The growth of the Internet has raised complex and controversial issues over the application of copyright law to the digital environment. Examination of these issues is increasingly important in light of growing digital music piracy, expanding public demand for online music services and the willingness and ability of many entities to meet that demand.
The Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property has held a series of oversight hearings on digital music issues, culminating in a December 2001 hearing on the
recommendations made by the U.S. Copyright Office in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 104 Report. Legislation (H.R. 2724) addressing online music issues has also been introduced in the House of Representatives.
Given the topical nature of this subject matter, we are initiating a process to review relevant digital music issues and related proposals to amend the Copyright Act that have been brought or will be brought to our attention.
All interested parties are encouraged to submit written views on the merits of relevant digital music issues and related proposed amendments to the Copyright Act. The Subcommittee deadline for receipt of comments is 5:00 p.m. on April 8, 2002. The merits of the proposals will be evaluated in light of the views received and input from other Members of the Subcommittee, with the goal of discerning whether consensus exists on meaningful solutions to address identifiable harms. Subsequently, at a date and time to be determined, we will schedule a general meeting with all interested parties to share our findings.
We thank you in advance for your participation in this process. We believe it will produce valuable discourse on these very important issues and hope it will result in meaningful solutions to some of the problems and controversies surrounding the application of copyright law to the digital environment.
Sincerely,
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR
JOHN CONYERS, JR.
HOWARD COBLE
HOWARD L. BERMAN
CHRIS CANNON
RICK BOUCHER
IANAL (but a first yr student, so sue me) but I wonder if there is a constituional challenge to this. Can this be denied under the 14th amdt, equal protection under the law. Webcasters and traditional radio stations are essentially the same thing (pushing music into a box, one does though radio frequency, the other does through 1s and 0s), both can be copied with roughly the same quality (.ra and the like are not high quality and approach the level of quality as a cassette or radio output, i'll let the audio geeks hash that out), but one group is denied the ability to play for free based on federal regulation.
Is this have basis of being a valid argument, Lawyers speak up!!
Does this mean I can also deduct my dsl cost as the spare cycles would be worthless without broadband?
Dell has something to say on this matter. Read it here. Basically MS e-mails/memos released at the trial last week discussig "hitting the OEM [Dell] harder than in the past with anti-Linux actions," while other e-mails urged Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to remind Dell "of the meat of why it's smart to be partnered with Microsoft."
Dell's response? A spokesman for Dell, Mike Maher, declined to comment on the case but said the company sells computer equipment with the Linux operating system installed if requested.
"We still offer [Linux] on the [corporate] side and as needed as customers ask for it," he said.
Naturally, this shows a fear of retribution, but shortly after the emails, Dell stopped offer linux on the desktop.
Yes, you can find the complete non-settling state's proposal here. This is a redlined version as they made some alterations on this from their original one (not to be confused with the sellout DoJ/MS crafted settlement).
Enjoy, fun read!
The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) submitted this filing as part of our 3 part Tunney Act filing. The other two parts are our legal analysis and an economic analysis by nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Well it is around 6 months since the Appeals court confirmed that MS is a monopolist, and less than that since the supreme court denied cert (essentially saying there was nothing wrong with the appeals court ruling). So we are talking about less than half a year to set the case up, that is not much time given the complexities of the issue. They wanted to wait for a confirmed ruling so thy would not have to establish that as part of the case.
treble damages is legalese for triple damages. Not a tyupo (and not a plug for .ogg)
Except AOL does not employ anticompetive tactics and run others out of the business. How many viable OS' are there for the Intel/AMD box (that have more than 5% usage) mmm. Windows, ow many viable magazines/cable channels/ISP/Movie Studios etc are there besides AOL TW...hmm, I don't have enough time to count.
Point is just because a company is big does not mean that they employ anticompetive methods to acheive or maintain that end. Or kill their competition which is what 2 federal courts and 8 Federal judges have ruled that MS did to Netscape.
On Declan's website, here is the RIAA response to Gilmore--Don't cheer piracy! (RIAA words, not mine).
This is a bit of old news, but interesting new commentary provided in the original posting. Essentially metals and footware (good thing Nike's are manafactured in Viet Namese sweat shops and not Ukraine sweat shops, I would hate to see Michael Jordan battling with Hilary Rosen of RIAA)
The white house sent the following email to people on their trade/tech related listserv. Also see here for the Trade Office's (u.s. govt) press release.
TO: High Tech Leaders
US imposes sanctions on Ukraine in CD piracy row
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - The United States will impose sanctions on $75
million worth of Ukrainian goods in retaliation for the continued piracy of U.S.
music compact disc and other optical media products, a spokesman for the U.S.
Trade Representative's office said on Thursday.
The action follows repeated warnings that the United States would impose
sanctions unless Ukraine stopped the illegal reproduction of the products within
its borders.
The U.S. industry estimates annual losses from Ukrainian piracy at more than
$200 million.
Actually, this is a private antitrust suit. You should let your views be known here:
The Honorable J. Frederick Motz
Chief Judge
United States District Court for the
District of Maryland
101 West Lombard Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
and you can email here:
robert_wolinsky@mdd.uscourts.gov
The DoJ is not involved with this as it is a private suit. Two letters that we wrote can be found here and here.
If you have a problem with the DoJ proposed settlement, there are places you can file your comments too. They have been listed repeatedly here.
There is nothing wrong with having market share or perhaps even being a monopoly. But when you abuse your position to foreclose competition, not only does that hurt competition (which hurts consumers) but is illegal.
That is great that you had that option to choose your OS. However, most people buy their computers through major OEMs and don't have the luxery of building a system and compiling their own OS on the system. They have a system with Windows pre-installed, whether they know they have another option or not. An average user is not going to dl an iso and re-partition their drive to put another OS on it. They are not going to purchase another OS (even for super cheap) at CompUSA when their is an OS right there. And OEMs are not going to offer another OS pre-installed because of MS retalitory conduct (and that part is illegal).
So, the user brings their computer home and it has windows preinstalled. Included is a web browser so the user is not going to dl netscape/opera or whatever else. Also included is a media player (hard bolted into the browser) so they are not neccesarily going to dl another player. Not included is Java, so develepers will stop java development (don't believe me, why do so many web builders, aside from laziness, code pages for IE that look wierd on different browsers).
Another key consideration is office. In a business, files are transferred in MS formats. Why would a company put on an OS that can't handle applications that they need? MS will not port office to linux for this specific reason (and as good as Star Office is, it can't handle conversions flawlessly).
I would suggest that anyone who questions what MS did is illegal read Judge Penfield's findings of facts. Or read this article for a basic summary This details all the ways that MS broke the law. Contrary to what MS says, a conservative 7 Judge Court of Appeals upheld the majority of this decision and found MS behaved illegaly.
What MS does is limit users choice. They do this by taking one monopoly and leaveraging that into another monopoly. I could care less what OS people use, what browser people use, and what software people use. But I do like to have a choice as to what to use, and I like venture capitalists to not fear investing in technologies that MS already is competing in , intends to compete in, or may just so happen to decide later to compete in. As Barksdale, now a VC, said in his letter, a VC will not invest in a technology if MS ever has an intention to use their monopoly to "compete" (read destroy) that technology. And while the open source community is great, VC is also neccesary otherwise these technologies will wither on the vine.
Senator Leahy had invited Jim Barksdale (co-founder of Netscape) to testify on the effects the RPFJ would have had if it was in place when Netscape was starting up. Microsoft balked at having him testify and said they would have refused to appear if Barksdale was there. So Barksdale was dis-invited, but sent a letter giving his answer. That letter was partially read by Sen. Hatch and said that Netscape would have never received VC funding. Pretty damning stuff.
Leahy asked Charles James (head of Antitrust for DoJ) to respond. He dodged saying that he had not read the letter yet and it seemed like typical hyperbole that was being spouted off (but also said he could not characterize it as such given he has not read the letter). Leahy asked him to formally respond for the record, which will be done in writing (I assume).
It was a little suprising to see such a little used procedural movement to kill the hearing. Leahy was visablly upset, but admitted its a Senator's perogative. Ironically, it was Sen Byrd (who knows every minutia of procedure) who was upset over TPA (fast track trade negotiation authorization for the President on trade treaties) and called that mark-up to a halt--however, it had already been succesfully reported out of committee at that point.
So what was left was 4 Senators upbraiding MS and calling the settlement for the sham it is. The only one defending the settlement was Sen. McConnell who clearly wanted to get his 1 minute in before the first recess (for votes, asked to be heard when Leahy tried to do a 20 minute break so he would not have to come back). All McConnell said was that 70% of the public favor a settlement, so any settlement is good. Leahy responded by saying that he too favored a settlement, but not a meaningless one riddled with loopholes.
FYI, the 4 senators attacking MS were Leahy (D-VT), Kohl (D-WI), Hatch (R-UT), and DeWine (R-OH), a bi-partisan group to say the least.
This is great, man some of the passages seem like they are straight out of the mouth of Ashcroft's critics. Anyways, here is the link to the original article, in case you need some better sourcing than just the usenet url.
WinXP actually. The IR is an IrDA as far as I can tell from tech specs. I guess linux would have made things easy with LIRC, but I am not switching over to linux just for that (believe me, there are good reasons for me not, namely, this is for school and the exam software they give us is for Windows only). I saw some utilities I could use, but how do I configure a remote for use? If you could point me to some good utilities or FAQs that would be great. Otherwise, I guess I could just assemble an IR for the serial port from scratch (though I aint an engineer).
Just curious. I have a compaq laptop with an IR port in it. I bought this used so don't have the documentation. Is it possible for me to use a universal remote on this? I assumed that this was just for trasferring data with another IR device (but I suppose that is exaclty what a remote is). Can anyone point me to some helpful site or has anyone had experience with this?
Oh thanks god for that, I just did a quick search and I guess I loved usenet when I was a high school lad, like 10 yrs ago (at least there is proof now when i say I was using the net before there was a GUI web browser). Jeez, how stupid was I. My sig had my home addy on it and I was talking about things that should have not been talked. I need to do a remove of many of those when I get the chance.
Good thing I do not need a security clearance.
go here
This could have some real teeth in it and is not riddled with the loopholes that plague the M$/DoJ crafted settlement
I don't know if I can support a standard that is responsible for bringing us another 'n sync video. Really, forget copy controls, just limit these media players from playing (or producing) crap like that and I will be happy. Now if Linux did not have the ability to play any boy band crap, think of how it would take off!
Perhaps Monkey-boy ballmer can star in there next video, sweat filled crap