I don't really trust the idea of an OO scripting langauge. Ok, well smalltalk could dose it when it tries, but not these procedural/OOP hybrid things like Python. It seems all the advnatages you get by OOP are nullified by the space constraints of scripting. Plus, they are not really inovative enough, i.e. part of making a langauge fun is making it weird in meaningful ways. I think the relevent quote is "A langauge which dose not teach you something about programming is not worth knowing."
Now, a monadic functional langauge like Haskell might make an interesting scripting langauge if you standardised all the tools (like regex) since it is so quick to write code in these things (monadic means you can do neet things like OOP and IO without really cheating the way lisp dose). I would really like to see someone perlify Haskell, i.e. say "we have enough syntatical purity for now, so lets be preatical and figure out how to make the langauge human without loosing too many of our cool functional short cuts." It's just really fucking cool (and very relevant to scripting) to be able to define a subtil algebraic datatype in like 2 or 3 lines. Plus, all the advantages of being able to extend things like regex on the fly (since they are actually in the langauge). The only real problem is that no one like Larry Wall has come allong to make a more fun & human version of the Haskell. Imagine all the weirdness of Haskell with all the weirdness of Perl.. that would be wonderful..:)
Yes, this would have an effect on the little guys, but this is still better then no reform at all. We could also make the patent holder liable for bringing a bad case to court, but I do not htink this is good enough since it dose not really keep anyone from getting patents in the first place. The bounty ideas really is a very good colution so long as the judge has some discression to make the punishment actually meaningful, i.e. he wont fine a little guy as much as a big guy.
You want to create an entire industry of "patent bounty hunting" leeches to clog the already burdened courts with false bounty claims on the hope they get lucky sometimes?
This would depend on the specifics of the legal implementation, i.e. you normally need to show you have been harmed to bring suit, so I doubt this would happen.
Your idea is silly and needs to be moderated down, not up. It isn't interesting. It is poorly conceived and ill thought out.
I disagree, even with the problems, it did contribute a good bit to the discussion. People should not be moderated down just because you disagree with them.
What truly stuns me is the lack of backlash from traditional christian denominations. Catholicism and the major protestan churches are letting these people dictate morality to them, even though their interpretation of the bible contradicts theirs.
This is a really interesting question. I suspect that the answer includes the following:
1) All the intelectuals are leaving organised religions for atheism/agnostism or new age religions becuase these 200 year old religions are irrelevent to our intelectual persuits and even our daily lives today.
2) The religious right is run by buisness men (like Pat Robertson) who really are out to make a buck and increase their power. Charisma is money to these people and traditional religions can not really fight off the ``memethetic attacks'' of these orginisations.
Personally, I would like to see the religious rights influence collapse and take organised christianity down with it in this country. Maybe they will fight the upcomming biotech revolution and lose big time, i.e. a "not learning evolution in high school could keep your kids from getting good biotech jobs" meme could kill their centrist support overnight. Also, we have changed our immigration policy to only allow rich and educated people from other countries (i.e. non-christian). These are pretty long term things (liek 20 years), but they could play a significant role in our political future.
I don't know why nobody has mentioned this, but what dose any one know about the subject matter of the following quote:
We formed what is called a copyright assembly just two weeks ago, in which every single enterprise in this country to which copyright protection is vital -- professional baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, NASCAR, NCAA, broadcasters, television stations, cable systems, music songwriters, movies, television programs -- they've all banded together to try and make it clear to the Congress that if a hosting or thievery or absconding or illegal use, or unauthorized use of the property of all these enterprises -- which, by the way, dominate the world -- is allowed to go untended by some kind of a protective shield, the nation's economy is the loser.
I assume this means a more consered lobing effort. What is the best way to discredit these lobiests? I mean when I call my congress person should I specifically ytalk about how bad this orginisation is for the future of the internet and how they don't really have a clue? Or should I focus on specific issues?
Consider how the GPL uses copyright against itself. I'm thinking of the same sort of strategy, although not as elegant as RMS did with GPL.
I think on of the versions of the OPL dose this, but it is also worth pointing out that you could possibly pay for a whole research institute with patent revinues. The institution would be a non-profit orginisation which was obligated to compramise between money and morals.
A still better idea is to get the NSF to say "universities and existing research institutes should attempt to take some minimal responcibility for who they let use their patents" and get a law passed which says "the courts can grant these institutions the right to deny the party who paid for the research the right to use the patent if it's use is questionable enough." This means that envoromentalists or OSSers can protest at the university (and/or get a judge to file a motion regarding the questionablness of the use of the patent) instead of protesting the company. This could be really effective for the enviromentalists (preventing things like terminator genes) and OSSers, i.e. it is an opertunity for a coallition which we should seriously investigate. Plus, once the nuts at green peace are earning a reputation for blugening corps with patents there will probable be a lot fewer people with money who want to increase the duration of patents.:)
It might also be a good idea to fight for some sort of patent "financial equality act" which basically says that you can be sued for patent abuse, but that limited finacial resources for an effective patent search will be taken into account if you are just some Joe OSS developer, i.e. we are allowed to do nasty things with patents, but the big corps are not. This could be sold as an "aww.. look at all the pore small buisnesses which have been strangled bill."
We could get honest free traders to support these things.. and maybe even the WTO (as labor and enviromentalists keep puttingthe presure on them).
This is not really a problem so long as they can construct an efficent means to ignore the dribble, like using non-lawyer readers to sort and categorize the ideas for the lawyers. The best design might be to produce a digest for the lawyers, like an on going slashdot interview. Most of us would read an moderate just for fun, but the people who are really doing something could just come allong and pick up the digests. The lawyers would also drop off the most recent cort documents and plans of attack to let the unwashed masses have a look and make suggestions.
It would keep people informed and keep the lawyers from making technical mistakes. It might also generate more pro-bono lawyers because it is a chance to become known to the rich sillion valley types and gain some techno-law-savey. This is exactly the kind of project we want our future politicians to brag about having been a part of when they graduated from law school.
They can lock it up WAY tighter than DVD, make sure no software players are made available, further curtail fair use, and make damned sure there's nothing us hapless customers can do about it.
This is a serious concern, but there are two reasons which may make things work out for the best:
1) These disks are so big that they may be seen as an industrial thing (permenant daily backups, large databases for crap government publications and reports, movie cameras and editors instead of distributing, etc.) instead of a consumer thing. This could mean that formats get established by people who do not need to play the political game with the MPAA. It really depends on their being a large market which is ready to shell out for a functional version soon and dose not want to wait for the MPAA to add all sorts of crap.
2) The MPAA is really violating consumer fair use rights with their region coding. It might not fly a second time arround. The only reason the MPAA got their shit in DVD is the traditional consumer advocates with clout didn't undrstand the technology. We can fight the MPAA tomarrow by killing SDMI today and making people wake up.
How can you have come to this conclusion from Quantum Mechanics? I would have exactly the opposite interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, i.e. our difficulty in ``understanding it'' (*) makes it more likely that we are the product of millions of years of evolution (practice at thinking about everyday things). The statment ``no one understands quantum mechanics'' is a statment about traditional philosophical ``understanding'' of theories and has *nothing* to do with scientific understanding of the theory, but it is exactly the failure of this tradional philosophical understanding that makes me not believe in ``design.'' Quantum Mechanics is not some great philosophical step. It is a rejecting of traditional human philosophical though in favor of the scientific method.. and that is why it works.
Tring to bring things a littlem ore ontopic: Why is it that people (like the author of this book) refuse to accept that they se want they want to see? What do I want to see?
I want to see a universe full of problems for me to answer. This means a universe where I am capable of addressing many problems, but without the strangaling intelectual safety of a god (including the idea that our current philosophies are the universal method of solving problems). This lack of intelectual safety is exactly what makes the universe beautiful to me.. and convinces me that their is progress to be made. I feal the unknown is wonderful because it is scary.. and can kill you.. and that will be the end. I can not imagine how anyone can be happy (especially in this age) beliving that the greatest days of our species were 200 years ago when
Now, is any of the above paragraph science? NO! Is it an objective argument for you to be an atheist? Not really. Is it an argument for the incompatibility between science and religion> Nope. It is a description of the emotions which motivate me. Yet, it is perfectly analogous to the kinds of arguemnts that theists make and that the book we are reviewing makes for the opposite of the above statments.
There is too much confusion in this world people.. try and seperate what you feal and what you want from what you know by objective reproducable experence. We will all make a little more intelectual progress.. and we will all be a little less likely to change the facts to fit the evidence.
I pity people who feel superior for this reason. Your arrogance doesn't impress me. Some people actually feel a spiritual aspect to their lives
This is a really funny statment. Was it not clear to you from his statment that tha abyss of the unknown is exactly what the person you are replying to finds spiritual? It is exactly the lack of a god / spirit / safety which makes understanding spiritual (this statment is intentionally ironic).
BTW> This discussion is getting off topic enough that we should drop our +1's people.
All I can say is I'm glad to see someone with some power pissed off over Echelon. Now, if only this will help our attempts to control the NSA's crap here at home.
The article did not post what the French want? Hopefully, they want damages and the shutdown of Echelon.. and don't just want in on the deal..:)
One thing I noticed:
Yesterday he said that he would bring an action on behalf of French civil liberty groups.
Actually, this makes it sound like it is not France suing the US and UK, but just French civil liberties groups. Can anyone clear this up?
That is weird, it spliced my last two paragraphs together, deleting 1/2 of each. Here is the corrected end of the above post:
I would really like to see the linear algebra based plausable denaiablility algorithm implemented for PGP key files. It would make your key files 16 times larger, but would allow you to have n It might be possible to have a psychological solution to the password problem, i.e. use long passwords which you can remember, but which you can also force yourself to forget (by chanting simmilar sounding things hundreds of times). It is an interesting idea.
I'd know the answer to this, but is there any way to verify that the plaintext version you supplied matches what's been encrypted?
Yes, they can force you to give them the key so that they can decrypt it, but there is hope: StegFS is an encrypted/stenographic filesystem for Linux (based on ext2) which provides plausable deniablility, i.e. it has n levels of access (diffrent passwords) and you may encrypt data at any level of access, but there is _no_way_ to prove that a higher level exists from a lower level. This means that when the cops make you give them the password you just give them the passwords to the lower levels, but not the higher levels.
The only hole in this system is that the cops may know you posses some information which you have not yeat shown them, so they could assume that their are unrevieled levels.
I would really like to see the linear algebra based plausable denaiablility algorithm implemented for PGP key files. It would make your key files 16 times larger, but would allow you to have n It might be possible to have a psychological solution to the password problem, i.e. use long passwords which you can remember, but which you can also force yourself to forget (by chanting simmilar sounding things hundreds of times). It is an interesting idea.
"To counter FUD or not to counter FUD, that is the question. Wether it is nobeler in the mind to suvver the slings and arrows of increased NSA funding and wiretapping, or to take arms against a see of NSA anti-hacker FUD and by opposing end them."
Seriously, why is no one talking about the update which proposes that this is an NSA stunt to increase their power and funding. I know people don't want to talk about conspiracy theories, but there is a really good reason to take action: The NSA will use this to their advantage even if it were to turn out to be just a network hickup, so we should lauch a premptive strike and tell all the news people that there is a good chance the NSA is behind this. It would mean a FUD attack against the NSA, but it may be warented since they are about to do it to us. I would like to hear some other people's views before Istart calling the more fringe libratarian talk show hosts in my area.
Jeff
BTW> it is possible that this is MS's fault, i.e. remember the WebTV thing?
I do not agree with you on most of your critical points, but your definitly making points worth discussing.
My library tried implementing a system like you describe, where the computers are out in the open and the librarians are supposed to watch. However, I could frequently walk by the computers to get online and see 50 year old men downloading pictures of pre-teen girls doing stuff that probably wouldn't be legal even if they/were/ over 18.
First, a failure in one library is not a convincing argument that the system is unworkable, but it dose raise the question (and I don't have an evidence one way or another). You are absolutly correct that the system requires the librarian to do a little bit of additional work, but the majority of librarians I have known had parts of the library they needed to pass through frequently and would have been willing to glance at the computers when they did. Where the computers are located is an essential part of the proposal. Still, your point that the quality of librarian must be considered before a community makes a decission is perfectly valid.
Now, lets talk about technological solutions. An open source filtering package is a good idea for homes (sicne parents currently have no acceptable filtering software), but it is still a bad idea to place too much censorship in a library since the riligious right will then preasure their own cnesorship into the system. I might be willing to accept a system where the library it's self censored site which it had a *problem* with people frequenting, but it would need to have a very powerful system to prevent abuse (i.e. they check the logs and notice hotsex.com, but they are required to notify hotsex.com and library patrons that hotsex.com is being censored.. and the library can be sued for inapropreat blocking).
A better solution would be to display a mutalated copy of the image cache from the web browsers at the librarian's desk. The mutilation of the image would provide privacy, but still allow the librarian to catch porn. The librarian will be much more likely to catch porn and can get in trouble if they do not take action (unlike the walk-by method). I think this is a good compramize between a technological and a personal solution. (Remember even if you get the censorware list open sourced they are stil pretty ineffective since they can not understand a picture in an HTTP directoy) This image mutilation program might be a worthy open source project.
Regarding parents blocking spoftware at home: I would like to see parents sue the censorware software for false advertising untill one of them opens their own list. The who false advertising aspect of this is generally overlooked by the anti-censorware people, but it should not be overlooked by consumers who payed good money for ineffective and biased software. Maybe they could start by suing the scientologists blocking software which is instaled without permission to try and set a presedent.
Here is a good review of this thing (which was posted in the previous article, but somehow failed to get moderated above 0). Look down at the bottom of the review to see exactly why this thing a piece of crap designed to trick consumers into buying it instead of an mp3 player.
Here is a post I wrote for the previous article which gives one idea about what we can do to kill the sails of these things.
Finally, I feal I should clear up a little miss understanding about the usefulness of this service to us. Many people have suggested that we will break the encryption and pirate the digitally distributed music via mp3. This is not totally correct. We will crack the encryption, but we will probable need to redistribute the songs as ATRAC3 files since the conversion to mp3 will lose a lot of quality. Note: the lose of quality in the MP3 -> ATRAC3 conversion is part of why the RIAA likes this thing, i.e. it prevents mp3 only artists from having good music. Distributing unencrypted ATRAC3 files will not be a problem, but playing them could be a problem and making our own could be an even bigger problem (Sony may have patents on ATRAC3 algorithms so that they can prosicute the people who write the decoding/encoding software). Plus, Sony charges more for the songs then they would cost if you got them via CD, so there is no advnatage in getting this kind of digital music.
The moral of the story is: SDMI and Sony are evil, they must die.
Jeff
BTW> Now, a project to do an ATRAC3 to mp3 transition without losing quality would be cool, but it would also be difficult (mathematically difficult so Joe Average Hacker could not do it).
I cannot see how anyone, in their right mind, would object to placing some sort of blocking software on PC's in childrens areas of a public library.
I object to it because it teaches our children that censorship is ok, it is ineffective, it targets groups for political reasons (women's rights, EFF, censorware warnings, etc.). The truth is that a normal reasonable parent could not find a blocking package which blocks only porn (and the more objectivly harmful stuff) because the AFA and company have a significant influence over the blocked sites list.
Finally, I object to censorware because there is a much better solution. Yes, that's right there is a better solution: Put the computers out in the open and have the librarians walk near them occasionally! This is immershuably more effective at elliminating porn then any blocking software. Parents who are concerned about their kids use of the internet should want their kids to use the internet at a library or school without blocking software but with an intelegant usage policy becuase the librarians can monitor usage.
If they computers really must be in an enclosed space then you could install a video fork to switch between the monitors and display a distorted image of the web page at the front desk. (You should distort the image enough to make text unreadable for privacy reasons, but you can keep nudity identifiable) Actually, you might be able to show random images from the recent cache on a libraians system for a total software solution since random out of context images might not constitute an invasion of privacy.
The AFA dose not want the libraries to adopt this more effective solution because it would not push for their political objectives (no gay rights, women's place is in the home, etc.) and it would work thus removing their ability to push for more restrictions.
Yes you can say the list should be public, but I do not hear you complaining about the types of books the library places in the childrens section to browse.
The lists should be public period, no execptions. I would like to see the current batch of companies prosicuted for their attempts to instal privatly controled censorship into schools and libraries. Also, we do not complain about the selection of childrens books specifically because the list is public (it's sitting on the walls of the children's section).
This post is going to do some serious damage to my puny Karma, but alas, I am willing to take that chance.:(
Has anyone else noticed that saing something like this is the best way to get a high scoring post? (even better then having a meaningful post)
I compose music, and wish to make CDs. I have an old track-at-once CD-R writer, though would want to buy a disc-at-once unit at some stage. Since I intend to use it for recording music of my own composition (and on which I own the copyright, not the Big 4 or the RIAA, damnit), I will be royally pissed off if I am prevented from doing this by those thieving corporate dogfsckers who purport to own all digitally encoded sound.
There was an article on Wired about the troubles this guy had getting the burner to work with some Sony 4x burner, but there was a happy ending because the limitations were controled by the software, so he could just pay $50 for a diffrent commercial burning program that lacked these "features." This guy ran windows, so there is a good chance that the burner would work fine under Linux. I would still be careful and check out the burner on the various hardware guides.. and get a burner which you can return if it dose not meat your standards. I suppose a good way to check the quality of a burner is to do a bit-for-bit copy of a normal audio CD, do a bit-for-bit compairison, and give the copy to a friend for $1 to recoup your test media cost.. and complete the irony of being forced to pirate music by the RIAA..:)
I would hope that there is a web page someplace which trackes the crappy things the RIAA/MPAA get included in various products and gives consumers a good place to track down this stuff. If someone knows of such a page please post a link.
Jeff
BTW> If you are making music and involved with all this stuff then maybe you can answer a couple of questions:
Is anyone currently selling advertising inside mp3s? It would seem to be a good way for musicians to make money, but you need a way to find companies who are willing to buy the space. You also need a way to push the mp3 with the ads on the comunity (maybe there is money in running a company which uploads mp3s to all the pirate sites). (That has got to be the greatest way to aviod piracy.. by make the pirates earn you money)
Are there devices which allow you to burn large numbers of CDs efficently? I noticed that the RIAA pulls some nasty stunts with CDs plants which look like they are inmtended to make it more difficult for independant artists to print CDs (whitness the negitiveland incedent).
Everybody's upset about it being SDMI-compliant". (Does that really mean it won't play "normal" MP3's I've ripped from my own CD's with AudioCatalyst? If so, how do they expect to sell any?)
SDMI devices *may* include a watermark detection system so that you will not be able to play any mp3s which come from newer watermarked CDs. This will force you to use the ripping software which comes with the player and only runs under windows (thus forcing you to pay the microsoft tax). It could also mean that if you lose your player and buy a new one you will need to rerip all your CDs (since the songs were only encoded for the old player). There may be all sorts of other nast preasents from the RIAA inside like sound degradation "features." They have managed to get sound degradation features included in some new CD burnners.
Regardless, there will be all sorts of nasty attempts to leverage the RIAA's control over SDMI into additional control over the music industry and additional restrictions on independant bands (The RIAA has been hostile to bands which refuse to get ripped off by the industry and sell their stuff directly; witness the Negitiveland fiasco where they attempted to leverage IP restrictions to keep independant or smaller labal bands from compeating).
The bottom line is we need to kill SDMI. Making an example of this thing would have a very positive influence on future mp3 players. The people who buy protable mp3 players are geeks anyway, so we can spread the word and start an effective boycott.
There is a link at the bottom of the page which helps you find dealer locations. I think we should all find the dealers in our area, print up a bunch of informative stickers about this product (mentioning that it may not play CDs you pay for in the future, the general nastiness of SDMI, etc.), and go stick them on the packages to warn customers about this.
I supose it cold say something like this:
WARNING: This is an SDMI compliant device. This means that this device will contin unessicary restrictions on your ability to play music. These restrictions may include limits on the kinds of downloadable music which is playable, restrictions on your ability to move digital music to another device (i.e. if you lose this one you may not be able to play the same digital music in a replacment device). The device may also contin additional restrictions which will only be activated at a later date such as preventing you from lissening to mp3s made from yeat to be released CDs. We highly recommend that you research the diffrences between this product and other protable mp3 player solutions before you spend any money.
Hey, CmdrTaco please add an update to the article mentioning the fact that this thing is SDMI compliant. I don't think any of us really want to be giving the SDMI people any money. Dose anyone know if SDMI compliant means it will not play mp3s from a water marked CD?
I think we should try to make an example of this thing by hurting their sales. It would have a very positive influence on future mp3 players. The people who buy protable mp3 players are geeks anyway, so we can spread the word and start an effective boycott.
There is a link at the bottom of the page which helps you find dealer locations. I think we should all find the dealers in our area, print up a bunch of informative stickers about this product (mentioning that it may not play CDs you pay for in the future, the general nastiness of SDMI, etc.), and go stick them on the packages to warn customers about this. I guess I need to come up with a concise list of problems with the product.
The anti-drug laws are one of the worst things to happen to this country. There is no shortage of objective independant evidence that the correct solution is legalisation (perhaps requiring you to get a lissence to sell or even take drugs; thus preventing dealers from abusing their clients additions, etc.) Instead, we imprison insane numbers of non-violent ciminals and create violent criminals to provide the serivce of a dealer. I think we all know I could go on for days agreeing with the above post about the evil shit our gov. dose in the name of the war on drugs, so instead I will draw your attention to one little point which is relevent to this discussion.
My question is: If this law is passed would it be illegal for slashdot to post this story?
His theory, as best as I can tell, depends on the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I prefer the Copenhagen interpretation, but you know what? Neither one of them is in the slightest bit scientific.
Bommeian (sp?) mechanics successfully predicts the behavior of quantum systems, but dose not require these "interpretations." Instead it say, there is this particle fling arround in phase space (it is a phase space particle so it dose not suffer from the locality problems of other hidden variable theories). Now, this particle can not be found, so it existance is not falsifiable and thus not scientific, BUT the consistancy of the theory prooves that quantum mechanics in not a weird as we think it is, i.e. Bommian mecahnics is to quantum mechanics as classical mechanics is to statistical mechanics. This means we should always try to seperate the "phase space weirdness" of quantum mechanics from the "statistical weirdness" of quantum mechanics. These interpretations of quantum mechanics are at best attemopts to explain the statistical weirdness and at worst attempts to muddle the distinctions between the difrent wierdnesses of quantum into one big weirdness.
As Wolfgang Pauli is supposed to have said to a colleague, "We are all divided on whether or not your theory is crazy. I do not believe it is crazy enough." In QM, crazy is good.
I like the quote, but as I showed above.. there has been much confusion on the craziness of quantum mechanics ad combining two diffrent crazinesses into one massive craziness is not a good idea.
In other words, it's a hell of a lot better than most evolutionary theories I've seen.
This is incorrect. The christian right has been yelling and screeming about the holes in evolution, but they manage to stay quite far (like 100 years) behind the current research. One would wonder if they go back and read very old articles improving the theory to find evidence to debunk the theory in the popular press.
The truth is the theory of evolution has been MUCH improved over the years. It seems that the evolutionary process loves to make devices (like sex, genes, central nervus systems, enviromental learning) to complicate the process and improve the rate of evolution.. just look at how evolution speeds up over time. I do not realy understand the mechinism, but it seems complex and the study of the mechinism of evolution seem quite scietific. I do not think of evolution as a single finnished theory, but as the only working principal we have by which to construct theories (since there is so much evidence that things have changed). Just like in math we have no evidence or proof that axioms are a good way to structure things, but they seem like a good idea and they provide the necissary framwork. When we find a contradiction in the axioms of set theory we do not all quit doing math, we fix set theory. Evolution works the same way. (I've heard people claim the big bang is one of these too, but I don't know)
Jeff
BTW> I do not know much aboutthe many worlds interpretation of QM, but it sounds like something I used to convince a friend of mine that logical contradiction allon is not enough to prove that time travel is not possible, i.e. maybe our statistics, probabilities, and logic come from QM in some way and traveling back in time to create a paradox would "cancel out" in the universes supper possition or something (like quantum computers get wrong answers to cancel out). I don't trust the idea of macroscopic supper possitions, like the above of the many world interpetations, but it is possible that they are the norm and our ideas of logic and probablility are just biproducts.
It is my understanding that in trademark law, a person or company has to defend the trademark through usage. If a person or company does not 'defend' a trademark by using it, the trademark will expire.
This is a very good idea, but we still need to have a time limitation. We do not want anyone to "own our culture" in 100 years, i.e. the companies would be quite happy to be required to sell all there old tapes via mail order just to prevent a Techno DJ from mixing in Mickey mouse saing something silly. Our culture can not evolve without the freedom to reuse bits. Trademarks have no time limitation because they are meant to discurage fraud, i.e. Disney can prevent someone else from claiming to be Disney.
Did you know that MLK's family try to prevent people, including civil rights activists, from using Kings speaches and stuff? MLK would be much more of a cultural icon today (and we would probable have less racism) execpt for the efforts of his children.
I don't even think that copyrights should be 28 years today since it dose not take so long to publish today. 7 years would probable be a good compamise with an extension to 14 if the copyright holder can show that they were not published for most of the first 7, but 7 years will probable be too long too in the near future.
Question: what kind of copyright laws to other countries have? We can just set up servers in countries without copyright laws, but we need to make shure that these countries will not bow to pressure. I have been tring to figure out wether "americans owning your culture" is scary enough to make people want to prevent copyrights.
I think it would be very interesting to see ideas thrown around for opensource music business models.
"Open source music" will be much more profitable for the average artists then open source programming has been for average the open source programmer. The reason is that music is closer to a true service then programming.
There are a million was to make money by giving away free mp3s: include advertisments and links back to your webpage, sell CDs, sell shirts, sell fan access to weakly tracks which may not be released (people will pay for access to the weakly directory and they wont pirate the stuff, buecause a newmix or version of a song every weeek is just too much to pirate). Just look at the success of web based comics like Sluggy Frelance. The bands will do fine if they promote themselves becuase they they will be the ones taking the risk and making the profit. I'm not talking about mp3.com, emusic, or a label in internet clothing.. I'm talking about doing it yourself.
There will even be companies which charge bands to upload their music to all the pirate sites as promoton.
Actually, I hope nobody licences the software. If they do we should boycott it. If we can't watch purchased DVD's on our terms, then to hell with them. I bet as Linux grows for home use that the economic blunder the MPAA is engaging in will start to sink in.
Clearly, if someone releases a closed source application for viewing DVDs in Linux we should definitly boycott it, but the issue is likely to be more complex. Specifically, If someone releases an open source application to view DVDs with a closed source decryption tool we will need to descided our actions based on the following question: Is the application realitivly interoperable with the open players that are currently being developed? i.e. I must be able to DL the open source application (without paying any money to the MPAA) and DL a module based on DeCSS to make a regionless player which uses no closed source code.
Message to you Linux companies: It would not be an intelegent move (politically) to release an open source player without a trully open source alternative. You should develop the player in the open and make shure that you are not putting the truly open alternative at a disadvnatage. A very well documented "decryption/region module" interface would be essential (document this one part of the program jsut to prove to the community that your intentions are honerable).
You could write a/. troll virus! It would post it's self as a link which submited a post contining it's self as a link when you clicked on the link. Would be very nasty. Lucky most of the/. trolls seem to have a sence of nobility and post silly stories instead of nasty things.
Also, it will not be to hard for Rob and eam to fix this hole in/. by having the submit button investigate things that web browsers interpret diffrently (and not just HTML tags). I just hope Rob sees my warning about the possbility of a/. troll virus.
Jeff
BTW> You would need javascript to make a troll virus with an unlimited life span, but you would not need javascript to make a troll virus which only lived for a limited number of reproductions, so it might also be a good idea for/. to refuse posts which are submitted using the GET method.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really trust the idea of an OO scripting langauge. Ok, well smalltalk could dose it when it tries, but not these procedural/OOP hybrid things like Python. It seems all the advnatages you get by OOP are nullified by the space constraints of scripting. Plus, they are not really inovative enough, i.e. part of making a langauge fun is making it weird in meaningful ways. I think the relevent quote is "A langauge which dose not teach you something about programming is not worth knowing."
:)
Now, a monadic functional langauge like Haskell might make an interesting scripting langauge if you standardised all the tools (like regex) since it is so quick to write code in these things (monadic means you can do neet things like OOP and IO without really cheating the way lisp dose). I would really like to see someone perlify Haskell, i.e. say "we have enough syntatical purity for now, so lets be preatical and figure out how to make the langauge human without loosing too many of our cool functional short cuts." It's just really fucking cool (and very relevant to scripting) to be able to define a subtil algebraic datatype in like 2 or 3 lines. Plus, all the advantages of being able to extend things like regex on the fly (since they are actually in the langauge). The only real problem is that no one like Larry Wall has come allong to make a more fun & human version of the Haskell. Imagine all the weirdness of Haskell with all the weirdness of Perl.. that would be wonderful..
Yes, this would have an effect on the little guys, but this is still better then no reform at all. We could also make the patent holder liable for bringing a bad case to court, but I do not htink this is good enough since it dose not really keep anyone from getting patents in the first place. The bounty ideas really is a very good colution so long as the judge has some discression to make the punishment actually meaningful, i.e. he wont fine a little guy as much as a big guy.
You want to create an entire industry of "patent bounty hunting" leeches to clog the already burdened courts with false bounty claims on the hope they get lucky sometimes?
This would depend on the specifics of the legal implementation, i.e. you normally need to show you have been harmed to bring suit, so I doubt this would happen.
Your idea is silly and needs to be moderated down, not up. It isn't interesting. It is poorly conceived and ill thought out.
I disagree, even with the problems, it did contribute a good bit to the discussion. People should not be moderated down just because you disagree with them.
What truly stuns me is the lack of backlash from traditional christian denominations. Catholicism and the major protestan churches are letting these people dictate morality to them, even though their interpretation of the bible contradicts theirs.
This is a really interesting question. I suspect that the answer includes the following:
1) All the intelectuals are leaving organised religions for atheism/agnostism or new age religions becuase these 200 year old religions are irrelevent to our intelectual persuits and even our daily lives today.
2) The religious right is run by buisness men (like Pat Robertson) who really are out to make a buck and increase their power. Charisma is money to these people and traditional religions can not really fight off the ``memethetic attacks'' of these orginisations.
Personally, I would like to see the religious rights influence collapse and take organised christianity down with it in this country. Maybe they will fight the upcomming biotech revolution and lose big time, i.e. a "not learning evolution in high school could keep your kids from getting good biotech jobs" meme could kill their centrist support overnight. Also, we have changed our immigration policy to only allow rich and educated people from other countries (i.e. non-christian). These are pretty long term things (liek 20 years), but they could play a significant role in our political future.
Jeff
I don't know why nobody has mentioned this, but what dose any one know about the subject matter of the following quote:
We formed what is called a copyright assembly just two weeks ago, in which every single enterprise in this country to which copyright protection is vital -- professional baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, NASCAR, NCAA, broadcasters, television stations, cable systems, music songwriters, movies, television programs -- they've all banded together to try and make it clear to the Congress that if a hosting or thievery or absconding or illegal use, or unauthorized use of the property of all these enterprises -- which, by the way, dominate the world -- is allowed to go untended by some kind of a protective shield, the nation's economy is the loser.
I assume this means a more consered lobing effort. What is the best way to discredit these lobiests? I mean when I call my congress person should I specifically ytalk about how bad this orginisation is for the future of the internet and how they don't really have a clue? Or should I focus on specific issues?
Consider how the GPL uses copyright against itself. I'm thinking of the same sort of strategy, although not as elegant as RMS did with GPL.
:)
I think on of the versions of the OPL dose this, but it is also worth pointing out that you could possibly pay for a whole research institute with patent revinues. The institution would be a non-profit orginisation which was obligated to compramise between money and morals.
A still better idea is to get the NSF to say "universities and existing research institutes should attempt to take some minimal responcibility for who they let use their patents" and get a law passed which says "the courts can grant these institutions the right to deny the party who paid for the research the right to use the patent if it's use is questionable enough." This means that envoromentalists or OSSers can protest at the university (and/or get a judge to file a motion regarding the questionablness of the use of the patent) instead of protesting the company. This could be really effective for the enviromentalists (preventing things like terminator genes) and OSSers, i.e. it is an opertunity for a coallition which we should seriously investigate. Plus, once the nuts at green peace are earning a reputation for blugening corps with patents there will probable be a lot fewer people with money who want to increase the duration of patents.
It might also be a good idea to fight for some sort of patent "financial equality act" which basically says that you can be sued for patent abuse, but that limited finacial resources for an effective patent search will be taken into account if you are just some Joe OSS developer, i.e. we are allowed to do nasty things with patents, but the big corps are not. This could be sold as an "aww.. look at all the pore small buisnesses which have been strangled bill."
We could get honest free traders to support these things.. and maybe even the WTO (as labor and enviromentalists keep puttingthe presure on them).
Jeff
This is not really a problem so long as they can construct an efficent means to ignore the dribble, like using non-lawyer readers to sort and categorize the ideas for the lawyers. The best design might be to produce a digest for the lawyers, like an on going slashdot interview. Most of us would read an moderate just for fun, but the people who are really doing something could just come allong and pick up the digests. The lawyers would also drop off the most recent cort documents and plans of attack to let the unwashed masses have a look and make suggestions.
It would keep people informed and keep the lawyers from making technical mistakes. It might also generate more pro-bono lawyers because it is a chance to become known to the rich sillion valley types and gain some techno-law-savey. This is exactly the kind of project we want our future politicians to brag about having been a part of when they graduated from law school.
They can lock it up WAY tighter than DVD, make sure no software players are made available, further curtail fair use, and make damned sure there's nothing us hapless customers can do about it.
This is a serious concern, but there are two reasons which may make things work out for the best:
1) These disks are so big that they may be seen as an industrial thing (permenant daily backups, large databases for crap government publications and reports, movie cameras and editors instead of distributing, etc.) instead of a consumer thing. This could mean that formats get established by people who do not need to play the political game with the MPAA. It really depends on their being a large market which is ready to shell out for a functional version soon and dose not want to wait for the MPAA to add all sorts of crap.
2) The MPAA is really violating consumer fair use rights with their region coding. It might not fly a second time arround. The only reason the MPAA got their shit in DVD is the traditional consumer advocates with clout didn't undrstand the technology. We can fight the MPAA tomarrow by killing SDMI today and making people wake up.
Jeff
the existence of will is simpler than physics
How can you have come to this conclusion from Quantum Mechanics? I would have exactly the opposite interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, i.e. our difficulty in ``understanding it'' (*) makes it more likely that we are the product of millions of years of evolution (practice at thinking about everyday things). The statment ``no one understands quantum mechanics'' is a statment about traditional philosophical ``understanding'' of theories and has *nothing* to do with scientific understanding of the theory, but it is exactly the failure of this tradional philosophical understanding that makes me not believe in ``design.'' Quantum Mechanics is not some great philosophical step. It is a rejecting of traditional human philosophical though in favor of the scientific method.. and that is why it works.
Tring to bring things a littlem ore ontopic: Why is it that people (like the author of this book) refuse to accept that they se want they want to see? What do I want to see?
I want to see a universe full of problems for me to answer. This means a universe where I am capable of addressing many problems, but without the strangaling intelectual safety of a god (including the idea that our current philosophies are the universal method of solving problems). This lack of intelectual safety is exactly what makes the universe beautiful to me.. and convinces me that their is progress to be made. I feal the unknown is wonderful because it is scary.. and can kill you.. and that will be the end. I can not imagine how anyone can be happy (especially in this age) beliving that the greatest days of our species were 200 years ago when
Now, is any of the above paragraph science? NO! Is it an objective argument for you to be an atheist? Not really. Is it an argument for the incompatibility between science and religion> Nope. It is a description of the emotions which motivate me. Yet, it is perfectly analogous to the kinds of arguemnts that theists make and that the book we are reviewing makes for the opposite of the above statments.
There is too much confusion in this world people.. try and seperate what you feal and what you want from what you know by objective reproducable experence. We will all make a little more intelectual progress.. and we will all be a little less likely to change the facts to fit the evidence.
I pity people who feel superior for this reason. Your arrogance doesn't impress me. Some people actually feel a spiritual aspect to their lives
This is a really funny statment. Was it not clear to you from his statment that tha abyss of the unknown is exactly what the person you are replying to finds spiritual? It is exactly the lack of a god / spirit / safety which makes understanding spiritual (this statment is intentionally ironic).
BTW> This discussion is getting off topic enough that we should drop our +1's people.
All I can say is I'm glad to see someone with some power pissed off over Echelon. Now, if only this will help our attempts to control the NSA's crap here at home.
:)
The article did not post what the French want? Hopefully, they want damages and the shutdown of Echelon.. and don't just want in on the deal..
One thing I noticed:
Yesterday he said that he would bring an action on behalf of French civil liberty groups.
Actually, this makes it sound like it is not France suing the US and UK, but just French civil liberties groups. Can anyone clear this up?
Jeff
That is weird, it spliced my last two paragraphs together, deleting 1/2 of each. Here is the corrected end of the above post:
I would really like to see the linear algebra based plausable denaiablility algorithm implemented for PGP key files. It would make your key files 16 times larger, but would allow you to have n It might be possible to have a psychological solution to the password problem, i.e. use long passwords which you can remember, but which you can also force yourself to forget (by chanting simmilar sounding things hundreds of times). It is an interesting idea.
I'd know the answer to this, but is there any way to verify that the plaintext version you supplied matches what's been encrypted?
Yes, they can force you to give them the key so that they can decrypt it, but there is hope: StegFS is an encrypted/stenographic filesystem for Linux (based on ext2) which provides plausable deniablility, i.e. it has n levels of access (diffrent passwords) and you may encrypt data at any level of access, but there is _no_way_ to prove that a higher level exists from a lower level. This means that when the cops make you give them the password you just give them the passwords to the lower levels, but not the higher levels.
The only hole in this system is that the cops may know you posses some information which you have not yeat shown them, so they could assume that their are unrevieled levels.
I would really like to see the linear algebra based plausable denaiablility algorithm implemented for PGP key files. It would make your key files 16 times larger, but would allow you to have n It might be possible to have a psychological solution to the password problem, i.e. use long passwords which you can remember, but which you can also force yourself to forget (by chanting simmilar sounding things hundreds of times). It is an interesting idea.
"To counter FUD or not to counter FUD, that is the question. Wether it is nobeler in the mind to suvver the slings and arrows of increased NSA funding and wiretapping, or to take arms against a see of NSA anti-hacker FUD and by opposing end them."
Seriously, why is no one talking about the update which proposes that this is an NSA stunt to increase their power and funding. I know people don't want to talk about conspiracy theories, but there is a really good reason to take action: The NSA will use this to their advantage even if it were to turn out to be just a network hickup, so we should lauch a premptive strike and tell all the news people that there is a good chance the NSA is behind this. It would mean a FUD attack against the NSA, but it may be warented since they are about to do it to us. I would like to hear some other people's views before Istart calling the more fringe libratarian talk show hosts in my area.
Jeff
BTW> it is possible that this is MS's fault, i.e. remember the WebTV thing?
I do not agree with you on most of your critical points, but your definitly making points worth discussing.
/were/ over 18.
My library tried implementing a system like you describe, where the computers are out in the open and the librarians are supposed to watch. However, I could frequently walk by the computers to get online and see 50 year old men downloading pictures of pre-teen girls doing stuff that probably wouldn't be legal even if they
First, a failure in one library is not a convincing argument that the system is unworkable, but it dose raise the question (and I don't have an evidence one way or another). You are absolutly correct that the system requires the librarian to do a little bit of additional work, but the majority of librarians I have known had parts of the library they needed to pass through frequently and would have been willing to glance at the computers when they did. Where the computers are located is an essential part of the proposal. Still, your point that the quality of librarian must be considered before a community makes a decission is perfectly valid.
Now, lets talk about technological solutions. An open source filtering package is a good idea for homes (sicne parents currently have no acceptable filtering software), but it is still a bad idea to place too much censorship in a library since the riligious right will then preasure their own cnesorship into the system. I might be willing to accept a system where the library it's self censored site which it had a *problem* with people frequenting, but it would need to have a very powerful system to prevent abuse (i.e. they check the logs and notice hotsex.com, but they are required to notify hotsex.com and library patrons that hotsex.com is being censored.. and the library can be sued for inapropreat blocking).
A better solution would be to display a mutalated copy of the image cache from the web browsers at the librarian's desk. The mutilation of the image would provide privacy, but still allow the librarian to catch porn. The librarian will be much more likely to catch porn and can get in trouble if they do not take action (unlike the walk-by method). I think this is a good compramize between a technological and a personal solution. (Remember even if you get the censorware list open sourced they are stil pretty ineffective since they can not understand a picture in an HTTP directoy) This image mutilation program might be a worthy open source project.
Regarding parents blocking spoftware at home: I would like to see parents sue the censorware software for false advertising untill one of them opens their own list. The who false advertising aspect of this is generally overlooked by the anti-censorware people, but it should not be overlooked by consumers who payed good money for ineffective and biased software. Maybe they could start by suing the scientologists blocking software which is instaled without permission to try and set a presedent.
Jeff
Here is a good review of this thing (which was posted in the previous article, but somehow failed to get moderated above 0). Look down at the bottom of the review to see exactly why this thing a piece of crap designed to trick consumers into buying it instead of an mp3 player.
Here is a post I wrote for the previous article which gives one idea about what we can do to kill the sails of these things.
Finally, I feal I should clear up a little miss understanding about the usefulness of this service to us. Many people have suggested that we will break the encryption and pirate the digitally distributed music via mp3. This is not totally correct. We will crack the encryption, but we will probable need to redistribute the songs as ATRAC3 files since the conversion to mp3 will lose a lot of quality. Note: the lose of quality in the MP3 -> ATRAC3 conversion is part of why the RIAA likes this thing, i.e. it prevents mp3 only artists from having good music. Distributing unencrypted ATRAC3 files will not be a problem, but playing them could be a problem and making our own could be an even bigger problem (Sony may have patents on ATRAC3 algorithms so that they can prosicute the people who write the decoding/encoding software). Plus, Sony charges more for the songs then they would cost if you got them via CD, so there is no advnatage in getting this kind of digital music.
The moral of the story is: SDMI and Sony are evil, they must die.
Jeff
BTW> Now, a project to do an ATRAC3 to mp3 transition without losing quality would be cool, but it would also be difficult (mathematically difficult so Joe Average Hacker could not do it).
I cannot see how anyone, in their right mind, would object to placing some sort of blocking software on PC's in childrens areas of a public library.
:(
I object to it because it teaches our children that censorship is ok, it is ineffective, it targets groups for political reasons (women's rights, EFF, censorware warnings, etc.). The truth is that a normal reasonable parent could not find a blocking package which blocks only porn (and the more objectivly harmful stuff) because the AFA and company have a significant influence over the blocked sites list.
Finally, I object to censorware because there is a much better solution. Yes, that's right there is a better solution: Put the computers out in the open and have the librarians walk near them occasionally! This is immershuably more effective at elliminating porn then any blocking software. Parents who are concerned about their kids use of the internet should want their kids to use the internet at a library or school without blocking software but with an intelegant usage policy becuase the librarians can monitor usage.
If they computers really must be in an enclosed space then you could install a video fork to switch between the monitors and display a distorted image of the web page at the front desk. (You should distort the image enough to make text unreadable for privacy reasons, but you can keep nudity identifiable) Actually, you might be able to show random images from the recent cache on a libraians system for a total software solution since random out of context images might not constitute an invasion of privacy.
The AFA dose not want the libraries to adopt this more effective solution because it would not push for their political objectives (no gay rights, women's place is in the home, etc.) and it would work thus removing their ability to push for more restrictions.
Yes you can say the list should be public, but I do not hear you complaining about the types of books the library places in the childrens section to browse.
The lists should be public period, no execptions. I would like to see the current batch of companies prosicuted for their attempts to instal privatly controled censorship into schools and libraries. Also, we do not complain about the selection of childrens books specifically because the list is public (it's sitting on the walls of the children's section).
This post is going to do some serious damage to my puny Karma, but alas, I am willing to take that chance.
Has anyone else noticed that saing something like this is the best way to get a high scoring post? (even better then having a meaningful post)
Jeff
I compose music, and wish to make CDs. I have an old track-at-once CD-R writer, though would want to buy a disc-at-once unit at some stage. Since I intend to use it for recording music of my own composition (and on which I own the copyright, not the Big 4 or the RIAA, damnit), I will be royally pissed off if I am prevented from doing this by those thieving corporate dogfsckers who purport to own all digitally encoded sound.
:)
There was an article on Wired about the troubles this guy had getting the burner to work with some Sony 4x burner, but there was a happy ending because the limitations were controled by the software, so he could just pay $50 for a diffrent commercial burning program that lacked these "features." This guy ran windows, so there is a good chance that the burner would work fine under Linux. I would still be careful and check out the burner on the various hardware guides.. and get a burner which you can return if it dose not meat your standards. I suppose a good way to check the quality of a burner is to do a bit-for-bit copy of a normal audio CD, do a bit-for-bit compairison, and give the copy to a friend for $1 to recoup your test media cost.. and complete the irony of being forced to pirate music by the RIAA..
I would hope that there is a web page someplace which trackes the crappy things the RIAA/MPAA get included in various products and gives consumers a good place to track down this stuff. If someone knows of such a page please post a link.
Jeff
BTW> If you are making music and involved with all this stuff then maybe you can answer a couple of questions:
Is anyone currently selling advertising inside mp3s? It would seem to be a good way for musicians to make money, but you need a way to find companies who are willing to buy the space. You also need a way to push the mp3 with the ads on the comunity (maybe there is money in running a company which uploads mp3s to all the pirate sites). (That has got to be the greatest way to aviod piracy.. by make the pirates earn you money)
Are there devices which allow you to burn large numbers of CDs efficently? I noticed that the RIAA pulls some nasty stunts with CDs plants which look like they are inmtended to make it more difficult for independant artists to print CDs (whitness the negitiveland incedent).
Everybody's upset about it being SDMI-compliant". (Does that really mean it won't play "normal" MP3's I've ripped from my own CD's with AudioCatalyst? If so, how do they expect to sell any?)
SDMI devices *may* include a watermark detection system so that you will not be able to play any mp3s which come from newer watermarked CDs. This will force you to use the ripping software which comes with the player and only runs under windows (thus forcing you to pay the microsoft tax). It could also mean that if you lose your player and buy a new one you will need to rerip all your CDs (since the songs were only encoded for the old player). There may be all sorts of other nast preasents from the RIAA inside like sound degradation "features." They have managed to get sound degradation features included in some new CD burnners.
Regardless, there will be all sorts of nasty attempts to leverage the RIAA's control over SDMI into additional control over the music industry and additional restrictions on independant bands (The RIAA has been hostile to bands which refuse to get ripped off by the industry and sell their stuff directly; witness the Negitiveland fiasco where they attempted to leverage IP restrictions to keep independant or smaller labal bands from compeating).
The bottom line is we need to kill SDMI. Making an example of this thing would have a very positive influence on future mp3 players. The people who buy protable mp3 players are geeks anyway, so we can spread the word and start an effective boycott.
There is a link at the bottom of the page which helps you find dealer locations. I think we should all find the dealers in our area, print up a bunch of informative stickers about this product (mentioning that it may not play CDs you pay for in the future, the general nastiness of SDMI, etc.), and go stick them on the packages to warn customers about this.
I supose it cold say something like this:
WARNING: This is an SDMI compliant device. This means that this device will contin unessicary restrictions on your ability to play music. These restrictions may include limits on the kinds of downloadable music which is playable, restrictions on your ability to move digital music to another device (i.e. if you lose this one you may not be able to play the same digital music in a replacment device). The device may also contin additional restrictions which will only be activated at a later date such as preventing you from lissening to mp3s made from yeat to be released CDs. We highly recommend that you research the diffrences between this product and other protable mp3 player solutions before you spend any money.
Jeff
Hey, CmdrTaco please add an update to the article mentioning the fact that this thing is SDMI compliant. I don't think any of us really want to be giving the SDMI people any money. Dose anyone know if SDMI compliant means it will not play mp3s from a water marked CD?
I think we should try to make an example of this thing by hurting their sales. It would have a very positive influence on future mp3 players. The people who buy protable mp3 players are geeks anyway, so we can spread the word and start an effective boycott.
There is a link at the bottom of the page which helps you find dealer locations. I think we should all find the dealers in our area, print up a bunch of informative stickers about this product (mentioning that it may not play CDs you pay for in the future, the general nastiness of SDMI, etc.), and go stick them on the packages to warn customers about this. I guess I need to come up with a concise list of problems with the product.
Jeff
The anti-drug laws are one of the worst things to happen to this country. There is no shortage of objective independant evidence that the correct solution is legalisation (perhaps requiring you to get a lissence to sell or even take drugs; thus preventing dealers from abusing their clients additions, etc.) Instead, we imprison insane numbers of non-violent ciminals and create violent criminals to provide the serivce of a dealer. I think we all know I could go on for days agreeing with the above post about the evil shit our gov. dose in the name of the war on drugs, so instead I will draw your attention to one little point which is relevent to this discussion.
My question is: If this law is passed would it be illegal for slashdot to post this story?
Jeff
His theory, as best as I can tell, depends on the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I prefer the Copenhagen interpretation, but you know what? Neither one of them is in the slightest bit scientific.
Bommeian (sp?) mechanics successfully predicts the behavior of quantum systems, but dose not require these "interpretations." Instead it say, there is this particle fling arround in phase space (it is a phase space particle so it dose not suffer from the locality problems of other hidden variable theories). Now, this particle can not be found, so it existance is not falsifiable and thus not scientific, BUT the consistancy of the theory prooves that quantum mechanics in not a weird as we think it is, i.e. Bommian mecahnics is to quantum mechanics as classical mechanics is to statistical mechanics. This means we should always try to seperate the "phase space weirdness" of quantum mechanics from the "statistical weirdness" of quantum mechanics. These interpretations of quantum mechanics are at best attemopts to explain the statistical weirdness and at worst attempts to muddle the distinctions between the difrent wierdnesses of quantum into one big weirdness.
As Wolfgang Pauli is supposed to have said to a colleague, "We are all divided on whether or not your theory is crazy. I do not believe it is crazy enough." In QM, crazy is good.
I like the quote, but as I showed above.. there has been much confusion on the craziness of quantum mechanics ad combining two diffrent crazinesses into one massive craziness is not a good idea.
In other words, it's a hell of a lot better than most evolutionary theories I've seen.
This is incorrect. The christian right has been yelling and screeming about the holes in evolution, but they manage to stay quite far (like 100 years) behind the current research. One would wonder if they go back and read very old articles improving the theory to find evidence to debunk the theory in the popular press.
The truth is the theory of evolution has been MUCH improved over the years. It seems that the evolutionary process loves to make devices (like sex, genes, central nervus systems, enviromental learning) to complicate the process and improve the rate of evolution.. just look at how evolution speeds up over time. I do not realy understand the mechinism, but it seems complex and the study of the mechinism of evolution seem quite scietific. I do not think of evolution as a single finnished theory, but as the only working principal we have by which to construct theories (since there is so much evidence that things have changed). Just like in math we have no evidence or proof that axioms are a good way to structure things, but they seem like a good idea and they provide the necissary framwork. When we find a contradiction in the axioms of set theory we do not all quit doing math, we fix set theory. Evolution works the same way. (I've heard people claim the big bang is one of these too, but I don't know)
Jeff
BTW> I do not know much aboutthe many worlds interpretation of QM, but it sounds like something I used to convince a friend of mine that logical contradiction allon is not enough to prove that time travel is not possible, i.e. maybe our statistics, probabilities, and logic come from QM in some way and traveling back in time to create a paradox would "cancel out" in the universes supper possition or something (like quantum computers get wrong answers to cancel out). I don't trust the idea of macroscopic supper possitions, like the above of the many world interpetations, but it is possible that they are the norm and our ideas of logic and probablility are just biproducts.
It is my understanding that in trademark law, a person or company has to defend the trademark through usage. If a person or company does not 'defend' a trademark by using it, the trademark will expire.
This is a very good idea, but we still need to have a time limitation. We do not want anyone to "own our culture" in 100 years, i.e. the companies would be quite happy to be required to sell all there old tapes via mail order just to prevent a Techno DJ from mixing in Mickey mouse saing something silly. Our culture can not evolve without the freedom to reuse bits. Trademarks have no time limitation because they are meant to discurage fraud, i.e. Disney can prevent someone else from claiming to be Disney.
Did you know that MLK's family try to prevent people, including civil rights activists, from using Kings speaches and stuff? MLK would be much more of a cultural icon today (and we would probable have less racism) execpt for the efforts of his children.
I don't even think that copyrights should be 28 years today since it dose not take so long to publish today. 7 years would probable be a good compamise with an extension to 14 if the copyright holder can show that they were not published for most of the first 7, but 7 years will probable be too long too in the near future.
Question: what kind of copyright laws to other countries have? We can just set up servers in countries without copyright laws, but we need to make shure that these countries will not bow to pressure. I have been tring to figure out wether "americans owning your culture" is scary enough to make people want to prevent copyrights.
Jeff
I think it would be very interesting to see ideas thrown around for opensource music business models.
"Open source music" will be much more profitable for the average artists then open source programming has been for average the open source programmer. The reason is that music is closer to a true service then programming.
There are a million was to make money by giving away free mp3s: include advertisments and links back to your webpage, sell CDs, sell shirts, sell fan access to weakly tracks which may not be released (people will pay for access to the weakly directory and they wont pirate the stuff, buecause a newmix or version of a song every weeek is just too much to pirate). Just look at the success of web based comics like Sluggy Frelance. The bands will do fine if they promote themselves becuase they they will be the ones taking the risk and making the profit. I'm not talking about mp3.com, emusic, or a label in internet clothing.. I'm talking about doing it yourself.
There will even be companies which charge bands to upload their music to all the pirate sites as promoton.
Jeff
Actually, I hope nobody licences the software. If they do we should boycott it. If we can't watch purchased DVD's on our terms, then to hell with them. I bet as Linux grows for home use that the economic blunder the MPAA is engaging in will start to sink in.
Clearly, if someone releases a closed source application for viewing DVDs in Linux we should definitly boycott it, but the issue is likely to be more complex. Specifically, If someone releases an open source application to view DVDs with a closed source decryption tool we will need to descided our actions based on the following question: Is the application realitivly interoperable with the open players that are currently being developed? i.e. I must be able to DL the open source application (without paying any money to the MPAA) and DL a module based on DeCSS to make a regionless player which uses no closed source code.
Message to you Linux companies: It would not be an intelegent move (politically) to release an open source player without a trully open source alternative. You should develop the player in the open and make shure that you are not putting the truly open alternative at a disadvnatage. A very well documented "decryption/region module" interface would be essential (document this one part of the program jsut to prove to the community that your intentions are honerable).
Jeff
You could write a /. troll virus! It would post it's self as a link which submited a post contining it's self as a link when you clicked on the link. Would be very nasty. Lucky most of the /. trolls seem to have a sence of nobility and post silly stories instead of nasty things.
/. by having the submit button investigate things that web browsers interpret diffrently (and not just HTML tags). I just hope Rob sees my warning about the possbility of a /. troll virus.
/. to refuse posts which are submitted using the GET method.
Also, it will not be to hard for Rob and eam to fix this hole in
Jeff
BTW> You would need javascript to make a troll virus with an unlimited life span, but you would not need javascript to make a troll virus which only lived for a limited number of reproductions, so it might also be a good idea for