From a mid-90s interview with Neil Young on Canada's Much Music...
Pop-tart interviewer: "How do you feel about the commercialisation of rock music? How do you feel when a Bob Dylan song is used to sell cars?"
Young: "I hold no illusions. We lost. Long ago."
interviewer:"Did you sell out?"
Young:"Well, I'm here on your show..."
I would actually use Ask Strongbad (e.g. "what goes best with a tuna sandwich?") as the response would be much more illuminating (and useful) than Ask Jeeves.
As an outside observer of American politics, I think the example of Barry Goldwater makes for a good study of how the US has changed in the last 50 years.
In the 1960s, Goldwater was seen as a reactionary outsider, aggressively pushing forward his conservative agenda into the populist Republican party. He was a proto-Reagan, the model of future successful Republican campaigns.
By the late 1990s, most of the Republican elite (including the Bush family) actively denounced any previous dealings with Goldwater on the basis that he was spouting dangerously liberal and progressive ideals. Goldwater believed in personal accountability (hence anti-equal rights amendment, but also pro-abortion) and did not feel religion had any place in the offices of government. He called Pat Robertson a 'religious kook', felt the Whitewater scandal was contrived, and felt gays should be allowed in the military.
I'm not saying Goldwater is the type of guy I'd have voted for, but Goldwater's position on issues didn't change -- the Republican party did.
I guess indeed there is a subtle difference between license holder and taxpaying citizens, but given that the UK government MANDATES that people watching tv pay a license, I'd argue its a tax disguised as a service.
in the big scheme of things I realise that BBC produced = public domain is fraught with problems (e.g. artists rights, people wouldn't want to creatively work for the BBC, etc) but I wanted to raise the point that the BBC viewship does have a stake of ownership by virtue of being its audience...slightly different than the north american model.
So if you pay and subsidise the BBC's operations, that means all of their productions are public domain material, having been paid by the taxpayers. Right? Right? (insert sound of crickets here)
This morning I woke up and the skies were coloured of sackcloth, and the sun coloured as blood, and there was this distinct crunching sound on the floor as I walked over a carpet of locusts, and there were these strange markings on the outside of my door.... now I know why.
its here to stay if the internet stays true to its roots, but i can think of a few ways the labels can stop it (or at least marginalise it). Its all a mattter of $ and strength-of-will...something the 'labels' appear to have in abundance.
1. Make it illegal. Sponsor bills over and over and over again until something sticks. This may or may not work. It at least can pollute the atmosphere enough to slow bittorrent adoption...a 'chilling' effect among users.
2. Buy up as many ISPs and digital communication carriers as possible. Or merge. Or become acquired by these networking/communications companies and prove the merit (e.g. profit) of your media rights. After that you customise service offerings to filter bittorrent traffic. Bittorrent isn't very useful if you can't get out of your subnet. Nothing illegal here, just users can't use the tool.
3. Continue the strategy of pummeling bittorent portals into oblivion with legal paperwork. Yes there will always be distribution lists, usenet, etc...but you can kill off 50-75% of the mainstream traffic pretty easily by eliminating the main portals of entry into bittorrent trading.
4. Buy anti-virus vendors, spyware vendors. Offer the product for free, but identify any bittorrent code as malware and remove it. This is the 'trojan horse' method... market to parents, OEMs for ready made systems, try to get Microsoft onboard.
5. Buy or sponsor bios code for retail/consumer highspeed modems, wireless cards, routers, etc. Get filters put in place on these devices.
Yes, all of these techniques aren't 100% effective and some are more reasonable than others...my point is a creative RIAA/MPAA lobby focusing their efforts on a multi-tier strategy can really reduce the availability and adoption of bittorrent in the future. Uber-geeks will always have backdoors, hacks, etc, but this is a much smaller portion of their potential market. I think they can live with the slashdotters trading warez...its the other 95% that they want to cripple.
PS Note that I never suggest the labels will be smart enough to discount their products to improve uptake/sales.
Ah, I think we're actually closer in thought than I realised. I think I misconstrued your cynical comment to be relating to the circumstances relating to Camp X-Ray vs quality and integrity in journalistic reporting.
Just because there were problems at Ahru-Garib doesn't necessarily mean there are problems at Camp X-Ray, and I do support your concerns relating to "reporters make the news, they don't report on it". I think that's why we need lots of different news sources so that the public can educate themselves and synthesize what they're being told.
As for Naked News vs CNN, believe it or not I think NN actually has better foreign and international coverage than CNN does.:) I recall testing myself by only ~listening~ to NN (when it was free) and was surprised to realise they had a really good copy editor. CNN is a joke, Fox is 90%+ editorials, and the major news networks are what they are. Me, I look forward to PBS' Frontline, BBC World Service, CBC's The Pasionate Eye, and The Economist.
Surely schematics for a device such as a cotton gin would be protected by patent, not copyright?
Yeah, you're probably right...but I don't know if that makes the situation better or worse.;)
Although I agree with your argument that the Patriot Act is not relevant in this case, I think the spin you put on news reporters looking to find a juicy story disengenuous.
These prisoners are either prisoners of war (hence subject to Hague and Geneva conventions) or prisoners of domestic terrorism (hence subject to US civil rights and the Patiot Act). Inventing a new category of classification is typically the behaviour of 3rd world despots and dictators, not of a nation proclaming itself to be the bastion of human rights, freedom, and democracy.
Maybe the prisoners are being treated well...maybe not, but the story itself is worthy of merit.
PS Please note that I suspect many of the prisoners are guilty of numerous crimes, but are deserving of resolution of their fates.
With the way copyright laws are going, we're lucky we see anything from the 20th century in the public domain. If the latest new copyright laws were grandfathered (e.g. 75 years after death of creator), we'd be looking at the 1850s.
"Get your 100% royalty free cotton-gin blueprints right here! For an unlimited time only!!!!"
This is actually fairly common in the movie industry. Its their way of getting outside negotiators involved. Messy, complicated, yes -- but not necessarily anything that would prevent them from working together again in the future.
Big money = big arguments. No matter how solid your contract is in the first place.
Proving once again that the Open Source community continues to be its own worst enemy. There's alot of pig-headed "If you don't play by ~my~ rules I'm taking my toys and going home!" attitude. I suspect its an artifact of the enterprenurial spirit that leads people to contribute to open source in the first place. And because the code is open, anyone can do this. Its the nature of the environment.
Unfortunately, a serious break with Mozilla at this point will INSTANTLY cripple Firefox adoption across enterprise organisations. Now not only do you have to pick a browser (or browser suite) to standardize upon, now you have to pick the flavour of that suite. IT managers (or CIOs) have to bet twice -- once that Firefox will continue to be an optimum choice down the road, and a second time that you chose the right 'branch'.
Microsoft, IBM, Google win their audience over by representing consistency. Here's a quick example: think of McDonalds -- poor quality food, but consistent in quality. People 99% of the time will go with what they know, rather than gamble on the family-run restaurant across the street, even though the family-run restaurant might represent a great hidden and unknown deal.
If this were the case, Paris Hilton could sue for every province that her video was accessible from the internet. In fact, all celebrities could sue someone on these same grounds
You're not familiar with Fred Durst's latest attempts to sue websites for $70 million, are you?
The article is ~ 5 minutes old, and there's 10+ anti-china/america sold out posts already.
China and Taiwan ~already~ mass-produce the vast majority of systems components, their final assembly was pretty much the only remaining domestic manufacturing process. Also, IBM is being VERY wise in this regard, cashing in a unit that has very little future projected revenue growth and miniscule profit margins, and will gain the capital for some future expansion. PCs are a commodity business, and with the exception of Dell are probably a loss-leader for most companies now (e.g. IBM, HP/Compaq).
This is a wise business move by IBM, and it was wise for the US gov't to involve themselves in the sale. The technology is 20+ years old, the industry is commoditised, and its all open-standards based... there is no strategic threat here.
Most modern schools of ethics are based on the harm principle. In this case, no individual person would be harmed as a result of you looking into records early; there isn't even a physical crime taking place. The results had been predetermined, your viewing the data would not change the result (Heisenberg notwithstanding).
This is another example of Harvard trying to take the morale high ground and protect its reputation after the fact. Maybe the president would like to filter out the female applicants since business classes are so mathematically heavy? Or maybe he'd like to ensure only the best future CEOs of Worldcom, Enron, Nortel, and Haliburton are produced by his business school.
Check out the Muro-100. I have the 256 model that I bought over a year ago... LED screen, directory browsing, USB key functionality, FM tuner built in...and FM transmitter and FM recorder.
iPod Shuffle is about a year behind the leading edge in flash mp3 players...they're going to dominate this segment (undeservedly) based on the brand recongition earned (deservedly) from the original iPod.
As for your comments on FM tuners...my experience has been that they're as good as any other portable walkman, and they're a good alternative when you're on low battery. I can get another hour or two out of my player w/ FM when they battery isn't charged enough to play more than a 5 minute mp3.
Meech Lake was not ratified, so using it as an example is specious.
Calling Quebecois 'racist' for demanding cultural considerations as a minority in a country overwhelming english merely demonstrates your personal biases.
As for the US Consititution getting 'amended' vs Canada's being 'rewritten', its a matter of semantics. Personally, I find the religious reverence paid to the US Consitution laughable...its a document written 250+ years ago, hopefully SOMEONE in America has had some good ideas since then worth updating.
Aside from hitting an arbitrary mark of 100km (which supposed is considered 'space'), he accomplished NOTHING in my mind. 500km is the benchmark for a low earth orbit, which is what the goal SHOULD have been. Mainly just because a glider won't get you there.
As far as research, I'm willing to bet that 99% of his aircraft was based on technology/concepts previously developed by NASA and introduced gradually into mainstream aeronautics.
The X-Prize was entertaining, but this was not the "Spirit of St Louis" for the 21st Century. The X-Prize was to aeronautics what "American Idol" is to music.
I think its a valid starting point though. The question is "does the electromagnetic frequency used for cellphones have the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes?" and the answer would be 'yes'.
The next step would be to test on higher-evolved species and mammals (e.g. guinea pigs, cats, eventually primates) to iron out the concerns you've identified. Most likely by the time it reaches humans this will not be a relevant matter... but at least there is some preliminary evidence that would suggest further testing is required.
I wonder how the current owners of Origin Systems Inc, or Chris Roberts, feel about this open source work.
Personally I would feel honoured and accept the compliment that my work is being resurrected ~10 years hence for people to enjoy, but I can't speak for them. How is this handled in the open source community?
Slashdot Mirror
From a mid-90s interview with Neil Young on Canada's Much Music...
Pop-tart interviewer: "How do you feel about the commercialisation of rock music? How do you feel when a Bob Dylan song is used to sell cars?"
Young: "I hold no illusions. We lost. Long ago."
interviewer:"Did you sell out?"
Young:"Well, I'm here on your show..."
I would actually use Ask Strongbad (e.g. "what goes best with a tuna sandwich?") as the response would be much more illuminating (and useful) than Ask Jeeves.
I would even pay for the burninator plug-in.
As an outside observer of American politics, I think the example of Barry Goldwater makes for a good study of how the US has changed in the last 50 years.
In the 1960s, Goldwater was seen as a reactionary outsider, aggressively pushing forward his conservative agenda into the populist Republican party. He was a proto-Reagan, the model of future successful Republican campaigns.
By the late 1990s, most of the Republican elite (including the Bush family) actively denounced any previous dealings with Goldwater on the basis that he was spouting dangerously liberal and progressive ideals. Goldwater believed in personal accountability (hence anti-equal rights amendment, but also pro-abortion) and did not feel religion had any place in the offices of government. He called Pat Robertson a 'religious kook', felt the Whitewater scandal was contrived, and felt gays should be allowed in the military.
I'm not saying Goldwater is the type of guy I'd have voted for, but Goldwater's position on issues didn't change -- the Republican party did.
oh...my...god....
:/
Goatse and tubgirl now have some serious competition for Slashdot-induced psychological trauma...
I guess indeed there is a subtle difference between license holder and taxpaying citizens, but given that the UK government MANDATES that people watching tv pay a license, I'd argue its a tax disguised as a service.
in the big scheme of things I realise that BBC produced = public domain is fraught with problems (e.g. artists rights, people wouldn't want to creatively work for the BBC, etc) but I wanted to raise the point that the BBC viewship does have a stake of ownership by virtue of being its audience...slightly different than the north american model.
So if you pay and subsidise the BBC's operations, that means all of their productions are public domain material, having been paid by the taxpayers. Right? Right? (insert sound of crickets here)
Oh.
This morning I woke up and the skies were coloured of sackcloth, and the sun coloured as blood, and there was this distinct crunching sound on the floor as I walked over a carpet of locusts, and there were these strange markings on the outside of my door.... now I know why.
its here to stay if the internet stays true to its roots, but i can think of a few ways the labels can stop it (or at least marginalise it). Its all a mattter of $ and strength-of-will...something the 'labels' appear to have in abundance.
1. Make it illegal. Sponsor bills over and over and over again until something sticks. This may or may not work. It at least can pollute the atmosphere enough to slow bittorrent adoption...a 'chilling' effect among users.
2. Buy up as many ISPs and digital communication carriers as possible. Or merge. Or become acquired by these networking/communications companies and prove the merit (e.g. profit) of your media rights. After that you customise service offerings to filter bittorrent traffic. Bittorrent isn't very useful if you can't get out of your subnet. Nothing illegal here, just users can't use the tool.
3. Continue the strategy of pummeling bittorent portals into oblivion with legal paperwork. Yes there will always be distribution lists, usenet, etc...but you can kill off 50-75% of the mainstream traffic pretty easily by eliminating the main portals of entry into bittorrent trading.
4. Buy anti-virus vendors, spyware vendors. Offer the product for free, but identify any bittorrent code as malware and remove it. This is the 'trojan horse' method... market to parents, OEMs for ready made systems, try to get Microsoft onboard.
5. Buy or sponsor bios code for retail/consumer highspeed modems, wireless cards, routers, etc. Get filters put in place on these devices.
Yes, all of these techniques aren't 100% effective and some are more reasonable than others...my point is a creative RIAA/MPAA lobby focusing their efforts on a multi-tier strategy can really reduce the availability and adoption of bittorrent in the future. Uber-geeks will always have backdoors, hacks, etc, but this is a much smaller portion of their potential market. I think they can live with the slashdotters trading warez...its the other 95% that they want to cripple.
PS Note that I never suggest the labels will be smart enough to discount their products to improve uptake/sales.
Yes, but "First Post Jones" is in a realm of normalcy... if he hangs w/ Rumour, Scout, Apple, and Dwezzel.
Ah, I think we're actually closer in thought than I realised. I think I misconstrued your cynical comment to be relating to the circumstances relating to Camp X-Ray vs quality and integrity in journalistic reporting.
:) I recall testing myself by only ~listening~ to NN (when it was free) and was surprised to realise they had a really good copy editor. CNN is a joke, Fox is 90%+ editorials, and the major news networks are what they are. Me, I look forward to PBS' Frontline, BBC World Service, CBC's The Pasionate Eye, and The Economist.
Just because there were problems at Ahru-Garib doesn't necessarily mean there are problems at Camp X-Ray, and I do support your concerns relating to "reporters make the news, they don't report on it". I think that's why we need lots of different news sources so that the public can educate themselves and synthesize what they're being told.
As for Naked News vs CNN, believe it or not I think NN actually has better foreign and international coverage than CNN does.
Surely schematics for a device such as a cotton gin would be protected by patent, not copyright? Yeah, you're probably right...but I don't know if that makes the situation better or worse. ;)
Although I agree with your argument that the Patriot Act is not relevant in this case, I think the spin you put on news reporters looking to find a juicy story disengenuous.
These prisoners are either prisoners of war (hence subject to Hague and Geneva conventions) or prisoners of domestic terrorism (hence subject to US civil rights and the Patiot Act). Inventing a new category of classification is typically the behaviour of 3rd world despots and dictators, not of a nation proclaming itself to be the bastion of human rights, freedom, and democracy.
Maybe the prisoners are being treated well...maybe not, but the story itself is worthy of merit.
PS Please note that I suspect many of the prisoners are guilty of numerous crimes, but are deserving of resolution of their fates.
With the way copyright laws are going, we're lucky we see anything from the 20th century in the public domain. If the latest new copyright laws were grandfathered (e.g. 75 years after death of creator), we'd be looking at the 1850s.
"Get your 100% royalty free cotton-gin blueprints right here! For an unlimited time only!!!!"
This is actually fairly common in the movie industry. Its their way of getting outside negotiators involved. Messy, complicated, yes -- but not necessarily anything that would prevent them from working together again in the future.
Big money = big arguments. No matter how solid your contract is in the first place.
Proving once again that the Open Source community continues to be its own worst enemy. There's alot of pig-headed "If you don't play by ~my~ rules I'm taking my toys and going home!" attitude. I suspect its an artifact of the enterprenurial spirit that leads people to contribute to open source in the first place. And because the code is open, anyone can do this. Its the nature of the environment.
Unfortunately, a serious break with Mozilla at this point will INSTANTLY cripple Firefox adoption across enterprise organisations. Now not only do you have to pick a browser (or browser suite) to standardize upon, now you have to pick the flavour of that suite. IT managers (or CIOs) have to bet twice -- once that Firefox will continue to be an optimum choice down the road, and a second time that you chose the right 'branch'.
Microsoft, IBM, Google win their audience over by representing consistency. Here's a quick example: think of McDonalds -- poor quality food, but consistent in quality. People 99% of the time will go with what they know, rather than gamble on the family-run restaurant across the street, even though the family-run restaurant might represent a great hidden and unknown deal.
If this were the case, Paris Hilton could sue for every province that her video was accessible from the internet. In fact, all celebrities could sue someone on these same grounds
You're not familiar with Fred Durst's latest attempts to sue websites for $70 million, are you?
The article is ~ 5 minutes old, and there's 10+ anti-china/america sold out posts already.
China and Taiwan ~already~ mass-produce the vast majority of systems components, their final assembly was pretty much the only remaining domestic manufacturing process. Also, IBM is being VERY wise in this regard, cashing in a unit that has very little future projected revenue growth and miniscule profit margins, and will gain the capital for some future expansion. PCs are a commodity business, and with the exception of Dell are probably a loss-leader for most companies now (e.g. IBM, HP/Compaq).
This is a wise business move by IBM, and it was wise for the US gov't to involve themselves in the sale. The technology is 20+ years old, the industry is commoditised, and its all open-standards based... there is no strategic threat here.
Most modern schools of ethics are based on the harm principle. In this case, no individual person would be harmed as a result of you looking into records early; there isn't even a physical crime taking place. The results had been predetermined, your viewing the data would not change the result (Heisenberg notwithstanding).
This is another example of Harvard trying to take the morale high ground and protect its reputation after the fact. Maybe the president would like to filter out the female applicants since business classes are so mathematically heavy? Or maybe he'd like to ensure only the best future CEOs of Worldcom, Enron, Nortel, and Haliburton are produced by his business school.
Check out the Muro-100. I have the 256 model that I bought over a year ago... LED screen, directory browsing, USB key functionality, FM tuner built in...and FM transmitter and FM recorder.
iPod Shuffle is about a year behind the leading edge in flash mp3 players...they're going to dominate this segment (undeservedly) based on the brand recongition earned (deservedly) from the original iPod.
As for your comments on FM tuners...my experience has been that they're as good as any other portable walkman, and they're a good alternative when you're on low battery. I can get another hour or two out of my player w/ FM when they battery isn't charged enough to play more than a 5 minute mp3.
Remember the golden rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Meech Lake was not ratified, so using it as an example is specious.
Calling Quebecois 'racist' for demanding cultural considerations as a minority in a country overwhelming english merely demonstrates your personal biases.
As for the US Consititution getting 'amended' vs Canada's being 'rewritten', its a matter of semantics. Personally, I find the religious reverence paid to the US Consitution laughable...its a document written 250+ years ago, hopefully SOMEONE in America has had some good ideas since then worth updating.
Aside from hitting an arbitrary mark of 100km (which supposed is considered 'space'), he accomplished NOTHING in my mind. 500km is the benchmark for a low earth orbit, which is what the goal SHOULD have been. Mainly just because a glider won't get you there.
As far as research, I'm willing to bet that 99% of his aircraft was based on technology/concepts previously developed by NASA and introduced gradually into mainstream aeronautics.
The X-Prize was entertaining, but this was not the "Spirit of St Louis" for the 21st Century. The X-Prize was to aeronautics what "American Idol" is to music.
I think its a valid starting point though. The question is "does the electromagnetic frequency used for cellphones have the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes?" and the answer would be 'yes'.
The next step would be to test on higher-evolved species and mammals (e.g. guinea pigs, cats, eventually primates) to iron out the concerns you've identified. Most likely by the time it reaches humans this will not be a relevant matter... but at least there is some preliminary evidence that would suggest further testing is required.
I wonder how the current owners of Origin Systems Inc, or Chris Roberts, feel about this open source work.
Personally I would feel honoured and accept the compliment that my work is being resurrected ~10 years hence for people to enjoy, but I can't speak for them. How is this handled in the open source community?
P.S. don't tell me what happened in Super Bowl XXVII. I taped it and haven't had a chance to watch it yet.
You'd better hurry... shelf life for Betamax is only ~ 10 years before the picture degrades.