The intent of copyright is to bribe authors to produce value for the public domain. Patents and copyrights exist for the same purpose.
Read these comments by Greenspan for a good introduction to economic thought on intellectual property law. Greenspan asks one question I think is key in characterizing copyright law.
Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as to shut down follow-on innovation?
If the protections shut down follow-on innovation, as DRM does, then they are too broad and must not be supported by law.
You, as an "athiest", believe, by faith, in at least one unchanging and eternal power or law. You believe, by faith, that despite the existence of an eternal law, there is no eternal personality, emotion, or intellect.
And, yes, you do believe in at least one eternal physical law or force. That law may be statistical in nature, or difficult to understand. It may not be embodied by any law currently understood. But, if there is no eternal law, or force, or power: how? How are we here? How did all this begin? So, you believe by faith.
Most of the religious nuts you disparage believe, by faith, in an eternal personality. They believe that the eternal law, or force, in which you also believe, has personality.
So, given that you share an a-rational, but necessary, belief in an eternal law or force... who are you do disparage anyone for believing that the law or force also has personality. It's just a silly distinction to make. Why, rationally, should an eternal force be any more likely than eternal personality?
Anyhow, you're blaiming rationalizations when you should blaim desires. Religion is just a rationalization. On a historic perspective, it's been one of the least effective rationalizations for violence against others. Racism and nationalism are far more effective. Racism and nationalism are strong components of the current plague of suicide bombings.
The only difference between religion and a cult is... unthinking obedience to another person.
Baysian filters for spam work because spam has a significantly different vocabulary distribution than useful e-mail. This is true because spam must deliver a commercial message and play on people's uncertainties.
Good trolls, on the other hand, look ALMOST like insightful, well written articles. The vocabulary distribution in good trolls is not significantly different than the vocabulary distribution of useful posts. So, Baysian filters would be useless, unless you come up with some smarter characteristics on which to train the filter.
You could easily develop a filter for ascii-art porno. But, those are offtopic or flaimbait, not trolls.
Neither system is self-supporting. The London Underground gets several million pounds a year in subsidies. New York city pays around half a billion dollars a year to support the rail system. The state pays some too, but I don't know how much. Those are reoccuring operating costs, not the up-front capital costs. The systems were incredibly costly in up front capital and are very expensive to expand.
New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.
More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.
So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers
Point-to-point travel - no routes to memorize.
On-demand travel - no schedules to memorize.
No traffic problems.
No parking problems.
40 mph average speed.
We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.
It is amazing to me that even guides such as this one make no mention of the potential of personal rapid transit. Sure, no one's deployed such a system yet. But...
Given a choice, what transit system would you ride?
A train that you have to walk 2 miles to catch, you might have to wait 15 minutes for, and which averages 15 mph over your trip.
A car 1/4 mile away, is waiting for you when you get there, and averages 30 mph over your trip.
A PRT car that you have to walk 1/2 mile to reach, is waiting for you when you get there, and averages 40 mph over your trip.
PRT systems have almost all the advantages of a car.
Direct point-to-point transit. No stops.
Average speed is higher than a car, even if 3/4ths of the trip is freeway.
No need to share space with strangers.
The transit system waits for you, you don't wait for it.
Every non-PRT public transit system has proven itself a failure. That is, the systems fail to attract significant percentages of commuters. And, they fail to cover operating costs by huge margins, let alone recouping capital cost.
The best public transit models available suggest that PRT systems would attract a significant percentage of commuters, cover operating costs, and eventually recoup the capital costs. It's amazing to me that no one has built such a system yet.
Then again, Atlas Shrugged. The auto industry and rail industry have a pretty entrenched interest in preventing progress. Politicians want to be able to say "it's not my fault that the transit system failed. We used proven technologies." Proven to fail, but proven nonetheless...
Re:SCO did not copy the infringing code in SCO Lin
on
SCO DOS'ed
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· Score: 1
I'm not the AC that posted, but here's the article the AC referred to. McBride is quoted as saying that he won't specify which code was copied so the Linux community can't launder the code and somehow erase the evidence ?!?!?
What if they'd been called to respond to gun shots, but found two adults smoking a small amount of pot for recreational purposes, should they have excused themselves and walked out?
I mean, an individual cop might walk out, maybe. But, if they witness the crime as a group, and they know it's a crime, there's going to be an arrest.
I found this article on the issue to be pretty interesting. It's by a Republican senator who believes the law should be abolished, legislatively.
I still think there will be a major problem with selling format shifted copies if the original cd still exists.
Suppose a brick and mortar shop wanted to get a competitive advantage. So, they use their fair use rights to burn an exact copy of every music cd they receive for archival purposes. But, they put both the original and the backup back into the cd case, and sell the combination for the normal price. If the store were sued, they'd lose because they're selling two copies when the copyright holder only authorized the sale of one copy.
The same problem still exists if the store copies the cd, converts the tracks to mp3s, burns those mp3s to a cd, and bundles the mp3 cd with the original. Two copies are still being distributed when the copyright owner only authorized one copy.
If the original cd still exists, you'll be doing exactly what the brick and mortar store I described is doing. I'd be amazed if you won that lawsuit. It would be a radical shift in thinking on copyright law.
You have to remember that the judge in such a case is going to look for an out that lets him set as little precedent as possible while upholding all previous precedent, unless he's purposely trying to institute reform. If you're selling 2 copies, that's a really easy out that lets the judge avoid setting precedent on the legality of format shifting. So, you lose.
However, if the store were to burn a new mp3 cd, destroy the original, then sell the mp3 cd in it's place... there are fewer legal attacks to pursue. In that situation, a legal attack would have to focus on the legality of format shifting, then selling the format shifted copy.
If you sell two copies, I'm pretty positive you'll lose. I'm not saying that you'll win if you only sell 1 format shifted copy, but that approach has a better shot. Talk to a copyright lawyer to find out for sure. He may shoot it down immediatly based on some precedent I haven't heard of.
Be very careful in setting this up. It is explicitly illegal to rent, lend, or lease any music recording without permission from the copyright owner. You could try to claim that this setup isn't renting or lending, but there's a good chance you'd lose. Software and music are the ONLY two artistic works that are protected this way. Sigh.
However, it is explicitly legal to lend music recordings or software if you are a non-profit library or educational institution. So, if you can get the co-op declared a non-profit library, you might be alright.
Even under the non-profit library exemption, you'll still have to work out whether it's legal to format shift, destroy the original, then sell the new format as you would have sold the original. If it's legal to do that, it would be legal to buy a book, type it into the computer, burn the book, then sell the unprotected digital copy. Hmmm. Reasonable, but possibly not legal in today's insanely paranoid world.
You'll definitely have to destroy the original CD, or they'll get you for keeping a copy after sale. I'd consult a lawyer to find out if lending the format shifted version is going to fly or not.
IANAL. For the details on music rentals, look at section 109 paragraph b here
The answer for a consultant is the same as the answer for an employee.
What's the chance that you're wrong?
What will the company lose if you're right and they don't follow your advice?
What will the company lose if you're wrong and they follow your advice?
Multiply and compare
probability of right * cost of being right if your advice is not followed.
probability of being wrong * cost of being wrong if your advice is followed.
If the two numbers are close to equal, forget it. It's not worth fighting over. Of course, most costs aren't quantifiable, so take that whole mess, chuck it, and flip a coin. If it comes up head, fight until they fire you.
I love music. I own over 100 cds. I am now instituting a personal boycot of all cds associated with RIAA member companies.
This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content.
General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning.
As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine.
However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly.
If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it.
Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen.
In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources.
If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
I love music. I own over 100 cds. I am now instituting a personal boycot of all cds associated with RIAA member companies.
This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content.
General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning.
As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine.
However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly.
If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it.
Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen.
In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources.
If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
See, the thing is, you aren't chasing 97.8 billion dollars. You're chasing a bankruptcy filing, and everyone knows it. The anything over $200,000 is probably irrelevant, the kid will just file bankruptcy, and that's that.
Sorry, I was really busy for a bit, so this answer is really late.
Of course, you're absolutely right that there is no difference between the http network and filesharing networks, no matter what the courts think (Napster is different from Google, how?)
You asked about posting material, while I've been talking about downloading material. Still, it's a fair question. Posting is illegal at the moment, responsible downloading isn't. However, posting will eventually be legal, or anonymous speech will be illegal, one of the two. There's no other possible outcome for our society as technology improves.
You've probably read the recent Freenet buzz. Can you imagine the US outlawing Freenet because it allows anonymous speech? The public relations nightmare of trying a "criminal" who used an anonymous speech program would end the career of a politician who helped pass such a law. I don't think it will happen in the United States, unless we truly sacrifice all backbone in an attempt to avoid terrorism.
Technological advances are making bandwidth so cheap that even movie transfers will take a trivial amount of time and resources in the future. In an environment with virtually unlimited bandwidth and anonymous communication, any law against posting copyrighted information becomes unenforceable. So, eventually, non-commercial posting will be legal. Commercial posting might remain illegal because it will be possible to follow the money trail to the person who's profiting. Good enough for me.
There are therefore two routes for content producers in the world that is coming.
They can cripple their content with draconian controls that make their content inconvenient for legitimate users. That will create a high demand for cracked content. The anonymous net will provide easy and safe distribution of the cracked content. Since using "illegal" cracked content will be easier than using legitimate content, piracy will explode and content publishers that don't adapt will go bankrupt. That's the free market for you. It kills the stupid, eventually.
On the other hand, if content producers make it easier to retrieve and use a legitimate copy than it is to get a illegitimate copy, the law of human laziness will take over. People will pay for an increase in convenience. The best way to make legitimate copies more convenient is to provide the files in a format people enjoy using and provide the files with absolute reliability. Who wouldn't spend a couple dimes to make sure they got a good copy of their favorite song instead of whatever was floating around Freenet?
Oh, and as to the viability of 20 cent songs... Most cds cost around $15.00. 8% goes to the artist and composer (each), 39% to the publisher, and 45% to distrubiton costs. Assuming 12 songs per cd, artists and composers cost 20 cents per song sold. Distribution costs will drop to the cost of bandwidth and maintenance of the computer facilities, which are trivial compared to the logistic cost of negotiating store space and shipping cds all over the world. The publisher will spend less per song sold because they won't have to burn cds or print covers. So, their cut can be reduced. In addition, they won't be bearing the risk of spending the cd printing and distribution costs without getting a return, so their obscene profit margin per song sold can be reduced without harming their investment in new artists. Even if sales remain constant in such an environment, it would surely be possible to make a profit selling songs for 30 cents a piece. However, since the product being sold will be more useful to the consumer and far less costly at $2.40 per cd equivalent, sales will go up. Use of the filesharing networks will drop. And everyone will be happy once more.
Personally, I think a 2 cent per song model is viable. In that environment, I think consumers would treat music as "pay per play" by default in that environment. Why bother to store and organize all that music yourself if your friendly neighborhood super-publisher does it for
Otherwise, I will say that legal sampling is a perfectly adequate for nearly all popular music albums, and you have no possible response.
Bunk. As I've already pointed out, listener driven sampling is inherently more trustworthy and completely legal. I have anecdotal evidence, but it's too long winded for this forum, so I'll stand by the principle.
If you want to claim that user driven sampling is not more useful, prove to me that the RIAA members do not use deceptive and manipulative marketing practices to sell lower quality material for artificially high prices. Oh, they agreed to a settlement to avoid being labelled a price fixing monopoly in court, so good luck.
[File sharing networks] are not huge "listener driven sample" networks, and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
When I was in college, I was a music fiend, as we all were. Everyone I know sampled everyone else's music - full cds in their entirety. As a result of that environment, I bought about 65 cds. I didn't purchase all those cds while I was at school because I was poor. However, those 65 cds represent artists I discovered through the massive file sharing social network that every college campus embodies. That comes out to about 15 cds a year because of college.
After college, I stopped discovering new artists for the most part, until Napster came along. I added 1 new artist to my repetoire in over a year and didn't buy much music.
However, in about a year of Napster's life, I discovered about 15 new artists and bought over 30 cds by those artists. I would not have discovered the music or bought the cds if Napster hadn't been around. So, I payed the recording industry about $300.00 for a years worth of Napster. I actually bought more music per year than when I was in college - astounding.
I also own about 15 cds by artists I already liked because I discovered they were "must have" cds by using Napster or Gnutella. That's another $150 or so in revenue for the recording industry because of file sharing.
Gnutella and such are far less effective for music discovery. Nonetheless, I have over 15 cds on my list to get because of file sharing. I'll get them as soon as my wife lets me;) Many of those cds I would not buy except that I was able to listen to almost all of them and determine that they were cds I wanted to keep.
I don't keep music that isn't in my collection or on my buy list.
Say what you like, but for me, file sharing is a massive sampling network that lets me stay in touch with current music and delve into the roots of music history. My appreciation for music would be greatly diminished if I could not sample this way, as would the amount of money I spend on music.
I think I'm pretty representative of music sharers. Some steal. Some engage in civil disobedience and pay the artists directly because recording companies rip artists off. Most just want to figure out which cds they should buy.
Why do you think you are entitled to sample every track from every CD you might buy? How is music different from books or movies?
Almost all movies are easily available rent for a reasonable convenience fee. So, I can sample almost all movies in their entirety before buying. Note - the motion picture industry hated the rental market and tried to sue it out of existence when it first started.
Almost all books are available at a library I have access to, so I can sample almost all books in their entirety before buying. Note, book publishers hated circulating libraries when they first started and tried to legislate them out of existence.
Music audio CDs are not available for rent. A very small subset of cds are available at a library I have access to.
So, that's how books, videos, and music differ. It's been easy to sample all of almost any book for a long time because of libraries. It became easy to sample all of a movie for a reasonable convenience fee when the MPAA failed to cripple the rental industry in the 80s. It became reasonably easy to sample all of a cd in the 90s with the advent of file sharing. For more info, see this site on the history of rental businesses, including circulating libraries.
You're implying that for some reason, performers are trying to hide the "bad" portions of their songs so listeners will somehow be suckered into buying their music. However, you have no real evidence of this.
It doesn't matter whether there's evidence that deceit is currently practiced or not. The fact that deceit is easy in producer driven sampling and impossible in listener driven sampling makes listener driven sampling inherently more valuable to the listener. I'm using this argument because it's simpler than arguing over whether the samples available for a particular album are representative or not. That argument would never stop.
The Audio Home Recording Act explicitly makes it legal for anyone to make a sampler compilation for a friend as long as there's no commercial motive. Non-commercial listener driven sampling is legal.
Filesharing is a very effective method for accomplishing the legal goal of listener driven sampling.
Oh, and I tried the Sam Goody search for Ann Reed. No luck. Yes, she is a real artist. My wife loves her music. Good luck finding a sample of her stuff to listen to without the file sharing networks.
Neither could I find out whether I wanted the Led Zeppelin "Maximum" album or not, as none of the tracks were available to sample.
That's the way it goes with producer generated sampling. You hear what's pushed, not what you want to hear.
If intellectual property is exactly like physical property then ownership should never expire - except perhaps by obsolescence. So, Tolkien's books should be considered part of Tolkien's estate and have been willed to an heir. That heir should be able to will the books to anyone they like, and so on into perpetuity.
The same should hold for patents. The internal combustion engine should be the sole property a descendent of it's inventor, whoever he may be.
It is obvious that any system like this would lead to complete stagnation in intellectual and cultural development.
The fact is that ideas are different than physical objects in many ways. Arguing by direct analogy from physical property to the ownership of ideas is a very wrong thing to do, though many people do it.
I agree that we need to work through our representatives to achieve change, but physical property is vastly different from the ownership of ideas, both in theory and in law.
However, it's easy to make a copy of the material you borrow from the library and keep it. And, libraries do loan cds, dvds, and every other form of digital media out there. I don't think this is really a difference.
There is a strong difference in that each purchased copy of an item can only serve a limited group of people - the patrons of the library that owns it. So, if every library across the country buys a copy of something, the publisher probably recouped costs even if a thousand people share each copy.
Perhaps we need a national library that buys a few thousand copies of any copyrighted material that gets traded in substantial quantities? I guess people will just set up fake download networks to bump the numbers on useless junk. We all know you couldn't trust the publishers to be honest in a system like that.
Sampling is diven by the listener, not the performer. When the performer drives sampling, they feed the listener the "best bits" to sell the product. When the listener drives sampling, they listen to more random bits to see if the product is worth buying. Or, they listen to a bunch of bits from a single cd to see if that cd is worth buying.
The library, file sharing, and friends in the same city are the only sources for real sampling. The library and my local friends have very limited selection. That leaves...
You wouldn't necessarily need physical access to the machine itself. It might be possible to perform this exploit by gaining access to a machine's air conditioning unit and disabling it at an inconvenient time. That could raise heat enough to cause RAM performance to degrade and make the success of the exploit more likely.
If the air conditioner went out at midnight, most system administrators wouldn't know until the morning.
Just for the record - hotmail works just fine under Mozilla, and there's an official quicktime player for linux, if you want it. Two problems solved.
I wouldn't have recommended Linux on the desktop 2 years ago. Now it's pretty much ready. Install Debian, XFree, KDE, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, and a random IRC client, and the desktop is ready for the true non-geek.
Of course, the real problem will come when a particular professor's pet program doesn't run on Linux, they depend on it for their curriculum, and they don't want to learn/can't find a Linux equivalent.
Ummm, unless Digital Impact is planning on sending out e-mail with fraudulent header information, they won't be violating Washington State law as it stands. The poster of the story doesn't seem to have read the text of the law he provided a link to.
The current law can be found here. A report on a successfully prosecuted case can be found here. If one reads either, it's easy to see that the current law only applies to fraudulent headers.
Given that the current law only covers fraudulent headers, I doubt that Microsoft is maliciously trying to destroy the current law.
However, last year the senate introduced bill 6568 which extended the old law to require that commercial e-mail contain ADV: as the first 4 characters of the subject line. That bill passed the senate with flying colors. Unfortunately, it got locked up in committee in the house and died.
House bill 5734 is a watered down version of last year's senate bill 6568.
I don't like Microsoft much. That said, the story at the Seattle Times is riddled with half-truths and inaccuracies. For example, it claims that 5734 completely exempts ISPs. The senate summary of the bill says
Interactive computer services may not be held liable for acting as an intermediary between
the sender and the recipient of commercial spam sent in violation of the law, or for providing
transmission over its computer network or facilities of commercial spam that is sent in
violation of the law.
So, ISPs aren't liable for transporting SPAM, as they aren't liable for transporting copyrighted material or child porn. They can still be liable for originating, or aiding in the origination, of spam. I think that's a reasonable exemption.
I'd be really interested in knowing whether lobbyists that are partially funded by Microsoft also supported senate bill 6568 from last year. If so, this is definitely unjustified Microsoft bashing. However, if their lobbyists locked it up in the house then we can villify them for weakening a good bill.
Too bad the article doesn't comment on that, and I don't have a way to find out.
However, looking at the Autoduel code isn't going to help you much in creating a new game. Most of the graphics and collision detection will be done in unreadable machine code. The approaches used in 1985 won't help you much in writing the game in 2003.
The code dealing with actual weapon effects and such just implements a subset of Car Wars, a game by Steve Jackson. The settings and characters are also based off his work.
Also, Origin was bought by Electronic Arts. Lord British no longer works there. Good luck prying anything out of EA's greedy grasp. Talk about a company I have no good-will for.
Anyhow, instead of thinking about the old code, sit down with the smooth scrolling demo code for OpenGL for a couple hours instead. Once you understand that, you can draw some nifty block graphics and build some maps to scroll across. Add a car in the middle and some direction controls and you'll have most of the graphics for autoduel.
You'll also need to design a new setting and new game play rules so you don't have to license Car Wars, since this is probably a hobby project.
After that will come the hard part - figuring out how to communicate real time critical information across a wire with variable latency between clients. Oh, and you have to do it without trusting the client very much because people can hack their clients to try to gain an advantage.
Good luck with it though. I, too, would love to see Autoduel in the wild again. That game taught me to count cards in blackjack and made me memorize poker odds. I owe alot to that game;)
Slashdot Mirror
The intent of copyright is to bribe authors to produce value for the public domain. Patents and copyrights exist for the same purpose.
Read these comments by Greenspan for a good introduction to economic thought on intellectual property law. Greenspan asks one question I think is key in characterizing copyright law.
If the protections shut down follow-on innovation, as DRM does, then they are too broad and must not be supported by law.
Good point, we could filter out most ascii art. But, we couldn't filter ascii porno from ascii landscapes.
You, as an "athiest", believe, by faith, in at least one unchanging and eternal power or law. You believe, by faith, that despite the existence of an eternal law, there is no eternal personality, emotion, or intellect.
And, yes, you do believe in at least one eternal physical law or force. That law may be statistical in nature, or difficult to understand. It may not be embodied by any law currently understood. But, if there is no eternal law, or force, or power: how? How are we here? How did all this begin? So, you believe by faith.
Most of the religious nuts you disparage believe, by faith, in an eternal personality. They believe that the eternal law, or force, in which you also believe, has personality.
So, given that you share an a-rational, but necessary, belief in an eternal law or force... who are you do disparage anyone for believing that the law or force also has personality. It's just a silly distinction to make. Why, rationally, should an eternal force be any more likely than eternal personality?
Anyhow, you're blaiming rationalizations when you should blaim desires. Religion is just a rationalization. On a historic perspective, it's been one of the least effective rationalizations for violence against others. Racism and nationalism are far more effective. Racism and nationalism are strong components of the current plague of suicide bombings.
The only difference between religion and a cult is... unthinking obedience to another person.
Baysian filters for spam work because spam has a significantly different vocabulary distribution than useful e-mail. This is true because spam must deliver a commercial message and play on people's uncertainties.
Good trolls, on the other hand, look ALMOST like insightful, well written articles. The vocabulary distribution in good trolls is not significantly different than the vocabulary distribution of useful posts. So, Baysian filters would be useless, unless you come up with some smarter characteristics on which to train the filter.
You could easily develop a filter for ascii-art porno. But, those are offtopic or flaimbait, not trolls.
In both cities, most people still prefer to drive cars. Here's an overview of the London public transit system's ridership over the last 40 years. Right now, public transit has 17% of the market and have lost steadily since the 60's.
New York does better. However, as of '97, at least 50% of commutes were made in cars, 42% on the subway, and 8% on bus, ferry, etc. [pdf] So, even with the horrible state of traffic and parking, 50% of people still prefer to drive point-to-point in New York.
London and New York share some relatively unique properties that make them suited to heavy rail. Most large cities can't expect as good a result if they invest in heavy rail.
More to the point, neither city can expect to get much bang for the buck if they expand their public transit service. Public transit ridership is pretty inflexible with respect to supply for the current modes of public transit. People prefer not to ride these systems, given the choice.
So, we can quibble over whether they "fail" or not. But, we can certainly both agree that neither system is particularly attractive compared to a solution that offers
We can build such a system to support the same volume for a much lower cost than an underground heavy rail system.
Given a choice, what transit system would you ride?
PRT systems have almost all the advantages of a car.
Every non-PRT public transit system has proven itself a failure. That is, the systems fail to attract significant percentages of commuters. And, they fail to cover operating costs by huge margins, let alone recouping capital cost.
The best public transit models available suggest that PRT systems would attract a significant percentage of commuters, cover operating costs, and eventually recoup the capital costs. It's amazing to me that no one has built such a system yet.
Then again, Atlas Shrugged. The auto industry and rail industry have a pretty entrenched interest in preventing progress. Politicians want to be able to say "it's not my fault that the transit system failed. We used proven technologies." Proven to fail, but proven nonetheless...
Support your local PRT movement.
I'm not the AC that posted, but here's the article the AC referred to. McBride is quoted as saying that he won't specify which code was copied so the Linux community can't launder the code and somehow erase the evidence ?!?!?
What if they'd been called to respond to gun shots, but found two adults smoking a small amount of pot for recreational purposes, should they have excused themselves and walked out?
I mean, an individual cop might walk out, maybe. But, if they witness the crime as a group, and they know it's a crime, there's going to be an arrest.
I found this article on the issue to be pretty interesting. It's by a Republican senator who believes the law should be abolished, legislatively.
Suppose a brick and mortar shop wanted to get a competitive advantage. So, they use their fair use rights to burn an exact copy of every music cd they receive for archival purposes. But, they put both the original and the backup back into the cd case, and sell the combination for the normal price. If the store were sued, they'd lose because they're selling two copies when the copyright holder only authorized the sale of one copy.
The same problem still exists if the store copies the cd, converts the tracks to mp3s, burns those mp3s to a cd, and bundles the mp3 cd with the original. Two copies are still being distributed when the copyright owner only authorized one copy.
If the original cd still exists, you'll be doing exactly what the brick and mortar store I described is doing. I'd be amazed if you won that lawsuit. It would be a radical shift in thinking on copyright law.
You have to remember that the judge in such a case is going to look for an out that lets him set as little precedent as possible while upholding all previous precedent, unless he's purposely trying to institute reform. If you're selling 2 copies, that's a really easy out that lets the judge avoid setting precedent on the legality of format shifting. So, you lose.
However, if the store were to burn a new mp3 cd, destroy the original, then sell the mp3 cd in it's place... there are fewer legal attacks to pursue. In that situation, a legal attack would have to focus on the legality of format shifting, then selling the format shifted copy.
If you sell two copies, I'm pretty positive you'll lose. I'm not saying that you'll win if you only sell 1 format shifted copy, but that approach has a better shot. Talk to a copyright lawyer to find out for sure. He may shoot it down immediatly based on some precedent I haven't heard of.
Again, IANAL. Good luck.
Be very careful in setting this up. It is explicitly illegal to rent, lend, or lease any music recording without permission from the copyright owner. You could try to claim that this setup isn't renting or lending, but there's a good chance you'd lose. Software and music are the ONLY two artistic works that are protected this way. Sigh.
However, it is explicitly legal to lend music recordings or software if you are a non-profit library or educational institution. So, if you can get the co-op declared a non-profit library, you might be alright.
Even under the non-profit library exemption, you'll still have to work out whether it's legal to format shift, destroy the original, then sell the new format as you would have sold the original. If it's legal to do that, it would be legal to buy a book, type it into the computer, burn the book, then sell the unprotected digital copy. Hmmm. Reasonable, but possibly not legal in today's insanely paranoid world.
You'll definitely have to destroy the original CD, or they'll get you for keeping a copy after sale. I'd consult a lawyer to find out if lending the format shifted version is going to fly or not.
IANAL. For the details on music rentals, look at section 109 paragraph b here
If the two numbers are close to equal, forget it. It's not worth fighting over. Of course, most costs aren't quantifiable, so take that whole mess, chuck it, and flip a coin. If it comes up head, fight until they fire you.
This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content.
General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning.
As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine.
However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly.
If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it.
Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen.
In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources.
If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
I love music. I own over 100 cds. I am now instituting a personal boycot of all cds associated with RIAA member companies. This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content. General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning. As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine. However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly. If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it. Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen. In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources. If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
See, the thing is, you aren't chasing 97.8 billion dollars. You're chasing a bankruptcy filing, and everyone knows it. The anything over $200,000 is probably irrelevant, the kid will just file bankruptcy, and that's that.
Of course, you're absolutely right that there is no difference between the http network and filesharing networks, no matter what the courts think (Napster is different from Google, how?)
You asked about posting material, while I've been talking about downloading material. Still, it's a fair question. Posting is illegal at the moment, responsible downloading isn't. However, posting will eventually be legal, or anonymous speech will be illegal, one of the two. There's no other possible outcome for our society as technology improves.
You've probably read the recent Freenet buzz. Can you imagine the US outlawing Freenet because it allows anonymous speech? The public relations nightmare of trying a "criminal" who used an anonymous speech program would end the career of a politician who helped pass such a law. I don't think it will happen in the United States, unless we truly sacrifice all backbone in an attempt to avoid terrorism.
Technological advances are making bandwidth so cheap that even movie transfers will take a trivial amount of time and resources in the future. In an environment with virtually unlimited bandwidth and anonymous communication, any law against posting copyrighted information becomes unenforceable. So, eventually, non-commercial posting will be legal. Commercial posting might remain illegal because it will be possible to follow the money trail to the person who's profiting. Good enough for me.
There are therefore two routes for content producers in the world that is coming.
They can cripple their content with draconian controls that make their content inconvenient for legitimate users. That will create a high demand for cracked content. The anonymous net will provide easy and safe distribution of the cracked content. Since using "illegal" cracked content will be easier than using legitimate content, piracy will explode and content publishers that don't adapt will go bankrupt. That's the free market for you. It kills the stupid, eventually.
On the other hand, if content producers make it easier to retrieve and use a legitimate copy than it is to get a illegitimate copy, the law of human laziness will take over. People will pay for an increase in convenience. The best way to make legitimate copies more convenient is to provide the files in a format people enjoy using and provide the files with absolute reliability. Who wouldn't spend a couple dimes to make sure they got a good copy of their favorite song instead of whatever was floating around Freenet?
Oh, and as to the viability of 20 cent songs... Most cds cost around $15.00. 8% goes to the artist and composer (each), 39% to the publisher, and 45% to distrubiton costs. Assuming 12 songs per cd, artists and composers cost 20 cents per song sold. Distribution costs will drop to the cost of bandwidth and maintenance of the computer facilities, which are trivial compared to the logistic cost of negotiating store space and shipping cds all over the world. The publisher will spend less per song sold because they won't have to burn cds or print covers. So, their cut can be reduced. In addition, they won't be bearing the risk of spending the cd printing and distribution costs without getting a return, so their obscene profit margin per song sold can be reduced without harming their investment in new artists. Even if sales remain constant in such an environment, it would surely be possible to make a profit selling songs for 30 cents a piece. However, since the product being sold will be more useful to the consumer and far less costly at $2.40 per cd equivalent, sales will go up. Use of the filesharing networks will drop. And everyone will be happy once more.
Personally, I think a 2 cent per song model is viable. In that environment, I think consumers would treat music as "pay per play" by default in that environment. Why bother to store and organize all that music yourself if your friendly neighborhood super-publisher does it for
Bunk. As I've already pointed out, listener driven sampling is inherently more trustworthy and completely legal. I have anecdotal evidence, but it's too long winded for this forum, so I'll stand by the principle.
If you want to claim that user driven sampling is not more useful, prove to me that the RIAA members do not use deceptive and manipulative marketing practices to sell lower quality material for artificially high prices. Oh, they agreed to a settlement to avoid being labelled a price fixing monopoly in court, so good luck.
[File sharing networks] are not huge "listener driven sample" networks, and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
When I was in college, I was a music fiend, as we all were. Everyone I know sampled everyone else's music - full cds in their entirety. As a result of that environment, I bought about 65 cds. I didn't purchase all those cds while I was at school because I was poor. However, those 65 cds represent artists I discovered through the massive file sharing social network that every college campus embodies. That comes out to about 15 cds a year because of college.
After college, I stopped discovering new artists for the most part, until Napster came along. I added 1 new artist to my repetoire in over a year and didn't buy much music.
However, in about a year of Napster's life, I discovered about 15 new artists and bought over 30 cds by those artists. I would not have discovered the music or bought the cds if Napster hadn't been around. So, I payed the recording industry about $300.00 for a years worth of Napster. I actually bought more music per year than when I was in college - astounding.
I also own about 15 cds by artists I already liked because I discovered they were "must have" cds by using Napster or Gnutella. That's another $150 or so in revenue for the recording industry because of file sharing.
Gnutella and such are far less effective for music discovery. Nonetheless, I have over 15 cds on my list to get because of file sharing. I'll get them as soon as my wife lets me ;) Many of those cds I would not buy except that I was able to listen to almost all of them and determine that they were cds I wanted to keep.
I don't keep music that isn't in my collection or on my buy list.
Say what you like, but for me, file sharing is a massive sampling network that lets me stay in touch with current music and delve into the roots of music history. My appreciation for music would be greatly diminished if I could not sample this way, as would the amount of money I spend on music.
I think I'm pretty representative of music sharers. Some steal. Some engage in civil disobedience and pay the artists directly because recording companies rip artists off. Most just want to figure out which cds they should buy.
Why do you think you are entitled to sample every track from every CD you might buy? How is music different from books or movies?
Almost all movies are easily available rent for a reasonable convenience fee. So, I can sample almost all movies in their entirety before buying. Note - the motion picture industry hated the rental market and tried to sue it out of existence when it first started.
Almost all books are available at a library I have access to, so I can sample almost all books in their entirety before buying. Note, book publishers hated circulating libraries when they first started and tried to legislate them out of existence.
Music audio CDs are not available for rent. A very small subset of cds are available at a library I have access to.
So, that's how books, videos, and music differ. It's been easy to sample all of almost any book for a long time because of libraries. It became easy to sample all of a movie for a reasonable convenience fee when the MPAA failed to cripple the rental industry in the 80s. It became reasonably easy to sample all of a cd in the 90s with the advent of file sharing. For more info, see this site on the history of rental businesses, including circulating libraries.
It doesn't matter whether there's evidence that deceit is currently practiced or not. The fact that deceit is easy in producer driven sampling and impossible in listener driven sampling makes listener driven sampling inherently more valuable to the listener. I'm using this argument because it's simpler than arguing over whether the samples available for a particular album are representative or not. That argument would never stop.
The Audio Home Recording Act explicitly makes it legal for anyone to make a sampler compilation for a friend as long as there's no commercial motive. Non-commercial listener driven sampling is legal.
Filesharing is a very effective method for accomplishing the legal goal of listener driven sampling.
Oh, and I tried the Sam Goody search for Ann Reed. No luck. Yes, she is a real artist. My wife loves her music. Good luck finding a sample of her stuff to listen to without the file sharing networks.
Neither could I find out whether I wanted the Led Zeppelin "Maximum" album or not, as none of the tracks were available to sample.
That's the way it goes with producer generated sampling. You hear what's pushed, not what you want to hear.
The same should hold for patents. The internal combustion engine should be the sole property a descendent of it's inventor, whoever he may be.
It is obvious that any system like this would lead to complete stagnation in intellectual and cultural development.
The fact is that ideas are different than physical objects in many ways. Arguing by direct analogy from physical property to the ownership of ideas is a very wrong thing to do, though many people do it.
I agree that we need to work through our representatives to achieve change, but physical property is vastly different from the ownership of ideas, both in theory and in law.
There is a strong difference in that each purchased copy of an item can only serve a limited group of people - the patrons of the library that owns it. So, if every library across the country buys a copy of something, the publisher probably recouped costs even if a thousand people share each copy.
Perhaps we need a national library that buys a few thousand copies of any copyrighted material that gets traded in substantial quantities? I guess people will just set up fake download networks to bump the numbers on useless junk. We all know you couldn't trust the publishers to be honest in a system like that.
The library, file sharing, and friends in the same city are the only sources for real sampling. The library and my local friends have very limited selection. That leaves...
If the air conditioner went out at midnight, most system administrators wouldn't know until the morning.
I wouldn't have recommended Linux on the desktop 2 years ago. Now it's pretty much ready. Install Debian, XFree, KDE, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, and a random IRC client, and the desktop is ready for the true non-geek.
Of course, the real problem will come when a particular professor's pet program doesn't run on Linux, they depend on it for their curriculum, and they don't want to learn/can't find a Linux equivalent.
Oh, sorry, here's senate bill 6568, for comparison with house bill 5734.
The current law can be found here. A report on a successfully prosecuted case can be found here. If one reads either, it's easy to see that the current law only applies to fraudulent headers.
Given that the current law only covers fraudulent headers, I doubt that Microsoft is maliciously trying to destroy the current law.
However, last year the senate introduced bill 6568 which extended the old law to require that commercial e-mail contain ADV: as the first 4 characters of the subject line. That bill passed the senate with flying colors. Unfortunately, it got locked up in committee in the house and died.
House bill 5734 is a watered down version of last year's senate bill 6568.
I don't like Microsoft much. That said, the story at the Seattle Times is riddled with half-truths and inaccuracies. For example, it claims that 5734 completely exempts ISPs. The senate summary of the bill says
So, ISPs aren't liable for transporting SPAM, as they aren't liable for transporting copyrighted material or child porn. They can still be liable for originating, or aiding in the origination, of spam. I think that's a reasonable exemption.I'd be really interested in knowing whether lobbyists that are partially funded by Microsoft also supported senate bill 6568 from last year. If so, this is definitely unjustified Microsoft bashing. However, if their lobbyists locked it up in the house then we can villify them for weakening a good bill.
Too bad the article doesn't comment on that, and I don't have a way to find out.
However, looking at the Autoduel code isn't going to help you much in creating a new game. Most of the graphics and collision detection will be done in unreadable machine code. The approaches used in 1985 won't help you much in writing the game in 2003.
The code dealing with actual weapon effects and such just implements a subset of Car Wars, a game by Steve Jackson. The settings and characters are also based off his work.
Also, Origin was bought by Electronic Arts. Lord British no longer works there. Good luck prying anything out of EA's greedy grasp. Talk about a company I have no good-will for.
Anyhow, instead of thinking about the old code, sit down with the smooth scrolling demo code for OpenGL for a couple hours instead. Once you understand that, you can draw some nifty block graphics and build some maps to scroll across. Add a car in the middle and some direction controls and you'll have most of the graphics for autoduel.
You'll also need to design a new setting and new game play rules so you don't have to license Car Wars, since this is probably a hobby project.
After that will come the hard part - figuring out how to communicate real time critical information across a wire with variable latency between clients. Oh, and you have to do it without trusting the client very much because people can hack their clients to try to gain an advantage.
Good luck with it though. I, too, would love to see Autoduel in the wild again. That game taught me to count cards in blackjack and made me memorize poker odds. I owe alot to that game ;)