I remember I used to get Apple World-Wide Developer's Conference CDs (WWDC) around '92-'95 (I think...). They would put these hypercard presentations together on the CDs and talk about upcoming Apple news, developer stuff, etc.
When they announced that Apple, Motorola, and IBM were getting together to make PowerPC's, I remember simply not believing it. But I watched the whole hypercard presentation... I just kept wondering if it was some kind of April Fool's joke.
And then I saw someone with a PowerPC. Sure, everything ran slower at first, with everything running in emulation, but you should have seen that graphing calculator fly!
Well, part of the problem is that the material sold by LEXIS is indeed copyrighted- they consider it value-added, much like the hard-bound court reporters in the library, because they add footnotes, key legal terms, etc. So they are well within their rights to commercialize the information, even though it is derived from the public domain (note that public domain works are not copyleft, and thus cannot prevent capitalization on derivative works).
Were you to take their information and post it up on a website, I think you would discover a LEXIS legal representative breathing down your neck very quickly.
Part of the problem is the expense in getting the "public domain" source material in the first place. There are a tremendous number of court documents surrounding a case, and while they are all publicly accessible, the FOIA stipulates that you must pay for copying fees, etc. Those expenses can add up.
Some courts (I read an article in WSJ not too long ago about this... alas, I cannot remember which court and my subscription has run out) have begun putting this information on the web, but were met with protest by the people to whom the information applied. It's one thing to have your criminial record be a matter of public record, but it's another matter to have it easily-accesible.
It's a big deal because regular people, people that trust the system, *don't* know about it. I didn't know about it, and though I knew locks could be picked, I didn't know that they could be circumvented so easily.
Sure, locksmiths knew this. A good sysadmin also knows the weaknesses in their systems. But as a user of both locks and ecommerce, I blindly put my trust in those systems in part because I *don't* know their weaknesses!
How many sysadmins know that the door to their server closet can be opened by an employee with a regular key?
It's like with PGP: what can you trust? Regular people know now that you cannot trust master-key systems.
This question has been puzzling me for awhile... because, unlike other 'laws' that have fallen into disfavor, we never even expected Moore's "law" to ring true for even a relatively short duration. That we would call this set of observations a law in the first place strikes me as odd, considering that it's expression is dependent on so many other socio-economic factors.
Write a perl script that is triggered by cron at some point everyday to send you this guy's IP address, like via sendmail. He obviously uses the internet, since he scammed someone off of eBay. How many people take the time to reinstall the system on a used computer? (I have no idea, really)
Would be funny if he actually did this. I can't read the article since it's been/.'ed.
Yes, I know, there are quite a few differences, but it reminded me of this program which I spent a lot of time playing with when I was a kid hanging out in my dad's office at BBN.
Being a BSD'er, I'm used to being able to do the OS updates for free. Since development continues on Darwin, does anyone know if it is possible to update Darwin under 10.2 without breaking it?
Ack, I've already bought software for 10.2. Anyone know if 10.2 software will be forward-compatible with future "MacOS X"'s?
IMHO, it seems a bit abrupt to be charging for an upgrade already- the developer community seems to have just gotten rolling...
As a computer user and advocate for open-source software, I am writing to
express my concern about your intention to pass the Uniform Computer
Information Transactions Act (UCITA).
It is clear that this set of rules has been drafted hastily. The paper,
"Overview of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act" states:
"The chaos in a national and international Internet is self-evident and
wholly unacceptable."
Yet, aside from the lack of a nationally-unified set of rules governing
internet transactions, you provide no evidence for this "self-evident"
"chaos". As a body that determines laws for a new medium profoundly
affecting business, academic, and social transactions, this dearth of
justification is wholly unacceptable.
Contrary to your claim, the Internet, as it stands, is highly
self-organized. Consider the evidence: many, if not most, of the
standards for data transmission, application interoperability, security,
and authentication have been developed and tested by a large open-source,
community-fueled effort. Given the economic benefit of the Internet, and
given its initial development by the open-source community, the NCCUSL
must take the open-source community and its software into account.
The UCITA's provisions governing warranty and distribution are not
appropriate for the open-source development model and will certainly bring
harm to this important community. Applications are developed by a
community of programmers who may have never met each other in person, and
who engage in no formal relationships with regard to the product.
Development of these applications are engaged in freely and voluntarily,
and with no compensation for the developer. These applications are
distributed freely or at-cost to the distributor (i.e., the cost of the
medium), and the user is allowed to freely change the functionality of the
application and to donate those changes back to the original developer.
This is a unique kind of commerce, one that is not accounted for by the
UCITA.
I applaud efforts standardize rules regarding Internet commerce to protect
consumers and businesspeople, but not at the expense of the self-organized
community that brings life to the Internet. As an influential source for
Internet innovation, commerce will be harmed if the open-source community
is harmed. A better UCITA would take this important community into
account, thus truly bringing the Internet to its commercial potential.
Sincerely,
Daniel Barowy
Mostly I got back autoresponders, but I did get this message, so at least open-source has one friend, even if not for the same reasons:
I have opposed UCITA since it was hijacked by the BSA in 1995. I remain
on the standby drafting committee to try to moderate its effects. The
Massachusetts delegatiion, supported by the Governor's Office, the
Attorney General and many legislators, oppose UCITA and are unlikely to
adopt it. I do agree with the view that it establishes a certain business
model (1992 shrink wrap) that is inappropriate at this time of change in
business models, both to new ones and back to old ones, and that it is
important to oppose UCITA at the national level.
I actually discovered that an alledgedly incompatible USB CD-R worked just fine once I took it out of the external chassis and replaced the ATAPI CD-ROM that was in my case.
This prompted me to buy a refurbished Matsushita DVD/CD-R/CD-RW for $50 which I tried the very same trick with, and it works beautifully. Apparently there was an issue with the USB bridge, but not the actual burner mechanism itself.
Maybe when Perens gets thrown in jail he can use this defense: Congress cannot delegate power to make laws.
The DMCA allows the producer of content to determine what rules apply to their creations- by the DMCA, these rules have the force of law, even if they impinge on fair use provisions.
In 1926, the Zenith Radio Corp. challenged the Secretary of Commerce over the legality of the Radio Act of 1912 which allowed the aforementioned Secretary to create rules regarding enforcement of the spectrum (12 F.2d 614). The court (District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.) ruled against the U.S., and although this was not a Supreme Court decision, Congress quickly responded by drafting new legislation that created the FCC.
Here are the relevant portions:
If section 2 is construed to give to the Secretary of Commerce power to restrict the operation of a station as the United States contends is done by this license, what is the test or standard established by Congress, by which the discretion of the Secretary is to be controlled? In other words, what rule has Congress laid down for his guidance in determining division of time between the defendant and the General Electric Company? U.S. v. Grimaud, 220 U.S. 506, 519, 31 S. Ct. 480, 55 L. Ed. 563; Union Bridge Co. v. U.S., 204 U.S. 364, 27 S. Ct. 367, 51 L. Ed. 523; Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 692, 12 S. Ct. 495, 36 L. Ed. 294. No language is more worthy of frequent and thoughtful consideration than these words of Mr. Justice Matthews, speaking for the Supreme Court in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369, 6 S. Ct. 1064, 1071 (30 L. Ed. 220):
"When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power."
Congress cannot delegate its power to make a law, but it can make a law to delegate a power to determine some fact or state of facts upon which the law makes or intends to make its own action depend. Has Congress prescribed the rule or standard which is to control the Secretary of Commerce in the exercise of his discretion with the degree of certainty required in criminal statutes? It is axiomatic that statutes creating and defining crimes cannot be extended by intendment, and that no act, however wrongful, can be punished under such a statute, unless clearly within its terms. There can be no constructive offenses, and, before a man can be punished, his case must be plainly and unmistakably within the statute. U.S. v. Weitzel, 246 U.S. 533, 543, 38 S. Ct. 381, 62 L. Ed. 872; U.S. v. Harris, 177 U.S. 305, 310, 20 S. Ct. 609, 44 L. Ed. 780; Todd v. U.S., 158 U.S. 278, 282, 15 S. Ct. 889, 39 L. Ed. 982.
IMHO, this seems like a pretty good defense against the DMCA. Perhaps I am wrong?
Actually, that's not quite right either. Typical audio CDs are PCM formatted as either Red Book or Blue Book audio.
AIFF was a format developed by Apple for whatever reason (I don't know). Really, nowadays, it doesn't really matter whether you prefer WAV or AIFF, since they both support the uncompressed, 44kHz 16-bit audio found on CDs.
Here's an article about a couple of Hampshire College boys who converted a diesel VW bus into a completely fryer-oil vehicle. Apparently, they also set up a company to make diesel-to-fat conversion kits for diesel vehicles with venture capital, but I haven't heard anything about it lately.
Apparently, since many of the restaurants they got their fat from had to pay to have their fry grease removed, they were more than happy to give it away for free. The article sez they drove clear across the U.S.
This seems to me to be a unique way of sharing data, since it isn't machine centric. Rather, it focuses on the user and the user's data. I have no experience with Amoeba, but on the face, it seems to answer this person's question.
My question is this: Why has interest for Amoeba dried up? (Or has it?) What with the proliferation of alternative OS'es over the past few years, why hasn't Amoeba caught on?
When the GNU Project states that "software should be free", they mean "software should be free like speech". Not proprietary.
It just so happens that the GNU Public Licence, which applies to software in the GNU system, expressly provides that the software should also be free of charge.
RMS and the GNU project, as far as I understand it, do not advocate against making money from software. What they *do* advocate for is that software be patent-free, and that the community have access to the source code.
The idea is that the whole concept of 'intellectual property' can only serve against the 'public good'. It stifles creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication.
How many mp3 traders out there really care all that much about sound quality? Firstly, Red Book satifies most people; stereo audio within the human range of hearing. Secondly... if I'm not mistaken, most traded mp3's are encoded at a bitrate of 128 kbit/s... compression artifacts and all.
Thus, I don't think our "pirates" will be overly concerned about sound quality.
If I were a record exec, I would be more worried that the "temporary" increase in CD costs would encourage more audio piracy.
And, of course, eventually someone would break the strong encryption on the higher-quality layer anyway...
How does one get these market-share facts? I'll believe it when someone says that IE has the largest market share, but 93%? Of what? I can't tell you how may people I know are still running Communicator 4.x, let alone the thousands, if not millions of people running browsers on platforms MS doesn't even make browers for.
A figure like 93% just makes me question their data-gathering methodology. Sounds to me like they count the copies of IE that come pre-installed with Windows that *you can't remove*.
You'd be surprised how much mileage you can get out of a processor. For most of my uses, my Thinkpad 365 (486DX75, 24 Mb RAM) running AbiWord, etc... does most of what I need to do (really!), and I find that when I need real firepower, I just jump on my desktop G4 system.
A speedier iBook would be nice, but really, do you need it? I say just remove software that wastes processor cycles (read: MS). How many people (me included) really utilize their G4's?
Taligent, the company that was created between IBM, Apple, and Motorola in the early 90's - tied with Rhapsody - with the goal of creating a an open platform? I thought that IBM was in the openness game waaaay before Java (???).
Except that judges, and legal workers in general, *are* very knowledgable about "free speech", and the legal and political histories of free speech. Knowing the minutae of programming will not make a legal worker a better judge of free speech in the context of video games, just as having an intimate knowledge of cars will not make a legal worker a better judge of liability.
If you are angry that the law has come down on the side of regulation, you should at least be assured that the conditions of such regulation have been clarified to some degree, *and*, I might add, rather favorably for video games. Considering that a regulatory regime already exists for video games, I don't see this changing much. And given that violent and sexually explicit video games are a large (and established) commodity, I don't see any danger of them disappearing altogether anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, in case you're not joking: PF = packet filter
Packet Filter, the best way to do whatever you want with your packets.
I remember I used to get Apple World-Wide Developer's Conference CDs (WWDC) around '92-'95 (I think...). They would put these hypercard presentations together on the CDs and talk about upcoming Apple news, developer stuff, etc.
When they announced that Apple, Motorola, and IBM were getting together to make PowerPC's, I remember simply not believing it. But I watched the whole hypercard presentation... I just kept wondering if it was some kind of April Fool's joke.
And then I saw someone with a PowerPC. Sure, everything ran slower at first, with everything running in emulation, but you should have seen that graphing calculator fly!
Well, part of the problem is that the material sold by LEXIS is indeed copyrighted- they consider it value-added, much like the hard-bound court reporters in the library, because they add footnotes, key legal terms, etc. So they are well within their rights to commercialize the information, even though it is derived from the public domain (note that public domain works are not copyleft, and thus cannot prevent capitalization on derivative works).
Were you to take their information and post it up on a website, I think you would discover a LEXIS legal representative breathing down your neck very quickly.
Part of the problem is the expense in getting the "public domain" source material in the first place. There are a tremendous number of court documents surrounding a case, and while they are all publicly accessible, the FOIA stipulates that you must pay for copying fees, etc. Those expenses can add up.
Some courts (I read an article in WSJ not too long ago about this... alas, I cannot remember which court and my subscription has run out) have begun putting this information on the web, but were met with protest by the people to whom the information applied. It's one thing to have your criminial record be a matter of public record, but it's another matter to have it easily-accesible.
It's a big deal because regular people, people that trust the system, *don't* know about it. I didn't know about it, and though I knew locks could be picked, I didn't know that they could be circumvented so easily.
Sure, locksmiths knew this. A good sysadmin also knows the weaknesses in their systems. But as a user of both locks and ecommerce, I blindly put my trust in those systems in part because I *don't* know their weaknesses!
How many sysadmins know that the door to their server closet can be opened by an employee with a regular key?
It's like with PGP: what can you trust? Regular people know now that you cannot trust master-key systems.
Because unless we explicitly put works into the public domain (or something like it anyway), we can't rely on them ever coming back out.
This question has been puzzling me for awhile... because, unlike other 'laws' that have fallen into disfavor, we never even expected Moore's "law" to ring true for even a relatively short duration. That we would call this set of observations a law in the first place strikes me as odd, considering that it's expression is dependent on so many other socio-economic factors.
Yes, which explains why nuclear weapons are on that list.
How 'bout this? It's running OSX, right?
/.'ed.
Write a perl script that is triggered by cron at some point everyday to send you this guy's IP address, like via sendmail. He obviously uses the internet, since he scammed someone off of eBay. How many people take the time to reinstall the system on a used computer? (I have no idea, really)
Would be funny if he actually did this. I can't read the article since it's been
This is possibly illegal. I really wouldn't know.
Yes, I know, there are quite a few differences, but it reminded me of this program which I spent a lot of time playing with when I was a kid hanging out in my dad's office at BBN.
Ack, I've already bought software for 10.2. Anyone know if 10.2 software will be forward-compatible with future "MacOS X"'s?
IMHO, it seems a bit abrupt to be charging for an upgrade already- the developer community seems to have just gotten rolling...
Mostly I got back autoresponders, but I did get this message, so at least open-source has one friend, even if not for the same reasons:
This prompted me to buy a refurbished Matsushita DVD/CD-R/CD-RW for $50 which I tried the very same trick with, and it works beautifully. Apparently there was an issue with the USB bridge, but not the actual burner mechanism itself.
The DMCA allows the producer of content to determine what rules apply to their creations- by the DMCA, these rules have the force of law, even if they impinge on fair use provisions.
In 1926, the Zenith Radio Corp. challenged the Secretary of Commerce over the legality of the Radio Act of 1912 which allowed the aforementioned Secretary to create rules regarding enforcement of the spectrum (12 F.2d 614). The court (District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.) ruled against the U.S., and although this was not a Supreme Court decision, Congress quickly responded by drafting new legislation that created the FCC.
Here are the relevant portions:
IMHO, this seems like a pretty good defense against the DMCA. Perhaps I am wrong?
Besides, who really wants to spend their time pouring over XFree86 configs?
AIFF was a format developed by Apple for whatever reason (I don't know). Really, nowadays, it doesn't really matter whether you prefer WAV or AIFF, since they both support the uncompressed, 44kHz 16-bit audio found on CDs.
Apparently, since many of the restaurants they got their fat from had to pay to have their fry grease removed, they were more than happy to give it away for free. The article sez they drove clear across the U.S.
I found this on google: Amoeba WWW Home Page
This seems to me to be a unique way of sharing data, since it isn't machine centric. Rather, it focuses on the user and the user's data. I have no experience with Amoeba, but on the face, it seems to answer this person's question.
My question is this: Why has interest for Amoeba dried up? (Or has it?) What with the proliferation of alternative OS'es over the past few years, why hasn't Amoeba caught on?
You seem to be missing the point.
When the GNU Project states that "software should be free", they mean "software should be free like speech". Not proprietary.
It just so happens that the GNU Public Licence, which applies to software in the GNU system, expressly provides that the software should also be free of charge.
RMS and the GNU project, as far as I understand it, do not advocate against making money from software. What they *do* advocate for is that software be patent-free, and that the community have access to the source code.
The idea is that the whole concept of 'intellectual property' can only serve against the 'public good'. It stifles creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication.
Thus, I don't think our "pirates" will be overly concerned about sound quality.
If I were a record exec, I would be more worried that the "temporary" increase in CD costs would encourage more audio piracy.
And, of course, eventually someone would break the strong encryption on the higher-quality layer anyway...
Just like science, right?
How does one get these market-share facts? I'll believe it when someone says that IE has the largest market share, but 93%? Of what? I can't tell you how may people I know are still running Communicator 4.x, let alone the thousands, if not millions of people running browsers on platforms MS doesn't even make browers for.
A figure like 93% just makes me question their data-gathering methodology. Sounds to me like they count the copies of IE that come pre-installed with Windows that *you can't remove*.
You'd be surprised how much mileage you can get out of a processor. For most of my uses, my Thinkpad 365 (486DX75, 24 Mb RAM) running AbiWord, etc... does most of what I need to do (really!), and I find that when I need real firepower, I just jump on my desktop G4 system.
A speedier iBook would be nice, but really, do you need it? I say just remove software that wastes processor cycles (read: MS). How many people (me included) really utilize their G4's?
This is, by far, the funniest thing that has ever been posted to /. A maximis ad minima.
Taligent, the company that was created between IBM, Apple, and Motorola in the early 90's - tied with Rhapsody - with the goal of creating a an open platform? I thought that IBM was in the openness game waaaay before Java (???).
Except that judges, and legal workers in general, *are* very knowledgable about "free speech", and the legal and political histories of free speech. Knowing the minutae of programming will not make a legal worker a better judge of free speech in the context of video games, just as having an intimate knowledge of cars will not make a legal worker a better judge of liability.
If you are angry that the law has come down on the side of regulation, you should at least be assured that the conditions of such regulation have been clarified to some degree, *and*, I might add, rather favorably for video games. Considering that a regulatory regime already exists for video games, I don't see this changing much. And given that violent and sexually explicit video games are a large (and established) commodity, I don't see any danger of them disappearing altogether anytime soon.