Also, if I didn't make this clear, the reason that the prices are so low is because CMU has a special agreement with Microsoft to provide it at these prices. I mention the prices of the software to people and they say "oh cool, that's cheap" and decide not to pirate it. I don't think they realize that the reason the prices are so low is because the campus is probably paying the other $90 (or however much it is).
I go to CMU. MS Office XP costs $10. MS Windows XP costs $10. MS Visual Studio.NET costs $15. All these are without manuals, in tiny packages with a license for installing it one time (actually, the license is separate, and it claims it's illegal without a license, but the people at the computer store say it's a one time install).
Anyways, this cuts down on piracy on one hand. On the other hand, I'm seriously bothered by the fact that they are using MY highly priced college tuition to support a convicted felon.
What's really sad is that there is a Microsoft club at my university called MSImpact, supported by MS (and the girl who runs it is paid by MS to do this, she interned there one summer and has some sort of deal right now).
At Walmart.com, the $200 Microtel PC. 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 10 gig HD. Add linux. Add TV-out card or large monitor. Do lots more stuff than you could hope to do with the X-Box.
Sorry, but the days of the X-Box being a cheap PC are over. MS still loses money but the companies whom it buys the parts for surely are not. And I'd rather have a PC whose insides are not backwards (in order to prevent me from making it a PC).
Maybe a GNU/Linux mod on the X-Box is cool, but it is not functional.
It doesn't stream, it downloads the album in a protected albx format. It doesn't let you burn to CD but you can listen to it all you want on your computer and again, it's free (as in beer). He could theoretically release the whole thing in OGG or MP3 format but since people could copy and burn the CD easily and legally then it might hurt album sales, which I think we can understand him not wanting to do. Still, this is an amazing step!
Reggae pioneer and Grammy award winner Jimmy Cliff, famous for his starring role in cult movie classic The Harder They Come and several hit songs, has recently released his entire newest album online for free download at his website. You can listen to the music by downloading People Music Media from the site, a P2P application that streams the music to you. It's great that famous artists are finally developing new music distribution schemes and revenue making models for the Information Age! Perhaps the RIAA could take a few notes from him...
And I just downloaded the album last night, it is amazing. (-:
I don't quite understand this. Why does the article sound so upbeat and happy? In this article, user timothy writes "mesozoic points out that ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "ICANN has issued a report recommending that ISOC run the.org TLD... ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "I'm not surprised; are you?" This preliminary report may be disappointing to those who hoped that Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud would be successful in their bid to head up.org."
Slashdot, I never would have expected doublespeak from you! *sniff* I trusted you.
Uh, you might want to read the parent comment to my comment. I responded to someone else who disagreed with Lessig completely, saying that copyrights should not exist at all. I disagreed with him and the subject of my comment was his plus the word "Re:". See?
No, that's not my point. With copyright terms allowed, things like Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Dr. Strangelove get produced. GPL software is good in addition but this will get produced either way. You can argue that there is GPL software that does the same things as many other goods, but without copyright virtually all movies created in the last century would not have been created, or at least not as well. They wouldn't have the money to support the budgets they have, to buy their expensive SteadyCams to shoot them with and the film (which is very expensive), and their video editing studios. The educational videos wouldn't be made without public money since companies wouldn't make a profit on them.
My argument is that without copyrights, goods that cost money won't get produced to begin with. How can you free a DVD that doesn't exist? Without copyrights you'd force material to be free and thus keep lots from being created. With copyrights, creators have a financial incentive to create, and so their work will be created. How would you like if all the movies we had to watch were GPLed videos? All TV stations would be financed by public donations, and with public goods there is no way of excluding freeloaders.
Maybe cause a very very small fraction of these copyrights *are* used and profit Disney? The vast majority of work from this long ago is barely making any profit, but there is a very tiny percentage making a positive amount of money for companies such as Disney. Meanwhile, the public domain is a public good and doesn't give Disney any benefit.
Most corporations would completely disregard the environment since it costs them money to keep it clean (but anti environmental practices give them bad PR, so they only mostly disregard it). Disney and co disregard the public domain because instead of a nice fuzzy feeling they'd rather have their cold hard cash, even if it's just a bit. Remember that scene in Fight Club where Cornelius is on the airplane telling some woman about how auto companies measure the cost of settlements to keep quiet a problem with their cars that kills people versus the price that fixing them all would cost? That doesn't seem so far off (remember Firestone?).
My point is that companies don't care squat about the public good. If anything gives them an additional cent, they won't care about the side effects. Since Disney stands to gain an extra couple of cents based on these laws they don't mind about us losing some works forever that won't be preserved.
I'm sorry, I hate perpetual copyrights as much as you do, but I completely disagree that they are the problem. Imagine a world without copyrights. A movie is created, and instantly people with professional equipment are in there getting cam copies of the movie. They sell it in legitimate stores. More copies are made. A DVD is released, and since it is very easy to make a perfect copy, these are made. There are sold in legitimate stores, as this is perfectly legal. A CD is released, and perfect copies are made and sold for $1 each in stores. Software is made and immediately sold for the cost of the media in stores.
See the dilemna here? While you may argue that the RIAA and MPAA are evil (as they are), and that a lot of CDs these days are made according to a formula and forced down are throats (as many are), the fact is that there is much quality content created as books, audio CDs, movies, and software, that takes a large initial investment in order to create. If some company spends $8 million creating a piece of software then how are they going to recoup their profits if OfficeMax is selling $1 copies in the store in three days?
This is my argument for why limited copyrights are needed. But, it would be very nice if they only existed for perhaps 20 or 30 years.
Good thing Brazil has such a good voting system! It's unfortunate about all the corruption that goes on in third world nations that makes things inaccurate, such as in the recent election in this quant little place called Florida.
Re:Only 7 ammendments left in the Bill of Rights
on
That Link Is Illegal
·
· Score: 2
I disagree with your second argument. The Tenth Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Interpreting this very strictly might say that the national government can't make marijuana illegal, but if that were true then there wouldn't be public education, the federal government couldn't make murder illegal, and other similar items. I do think that marijuana is a health issue rather than a moral one, and that law enforcement officials should devote more resources to murder/rape/burglary or even to harder drugs than marijuana rather than fill our prisons with marijuana possessors, but the Supremacy clause says that federal law takes precedent over state law, and so thus if the federal government dictates marijuana is illegal, so be it. At least there's a wave of decriminalization of it across the world, public opinion is shifting, and civil disobedience is taking place.
Armagetron is a great 3D version of tron! I love it! Slick graphics and awesome sound effects and gameplay. I recommend the latest beta version, since the stable one doesn't have a good AI.
Yes, Red Hat is good, but Mandrake one ups it. And look at the publisher of OSNews -- David Adams. This man founded Akopia, which was acquired by Red Hat. Red Hat is good but this site reeks of bias and who knows what other special interests have stakes in it. Maybe his link with Red Hat didn't affect the article, but theoretically (of course), what if a big name in a major operating system advised the government on, say, software security? Would that smell fishy?
I wouldn't mind this so much, if not for the fact that tomorrow they were going to add a course in Jedi mythology as a requirement to the curriculum for religion majors.
but if you ask me, this will be the death of the music and movie industries.
--Jack V.
Yeah, and for books as well...
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 2
This is indeed a great idea, but just imagine the outrage that book publishers would have if someone tried to set up a large, public repository where someone could borrow books, read them, and return them! Oh, wait...
(for the humor impaired: I am always completely serious)
I agree that it is frightening about the nuclear secrets. Still, China having them wouldn't do too much in my opinion, since they already have enough nukes in my opinion. I guess some nukes might be stronger, but I sort of thing of nukes as nukes. Plus, there is the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that will keep most nuclear countries (China mainly) from attacking us (aside from North Korea). Hopefully India and Pakistan will soon catch on to MAD before blowing each other up.
I think that conventional war tactics are the more likely ones to be used in wars with this type of country if we have a war with them.
If this really is a true simulation of the US military, wouldn't that mean it might give away information on our army to anyone in the world that might want to know this intelligence? This worries me, I hope they didn't include any sensitive information in it.
The government of the United States presents this great first person shooter to you, bundled with your own personalized version of Magic Lantern! I mean, all you're doing is going around shooting people, it's not like they'd want to spy all over your computer. Just don't tell Osama, I hope he downloads it and they catch him!
Not necessarily. Just because a company states that it isn't liable for anything doesn't mean it is. Several rights cannot be forfeited in contracts. If they could, companies could make people indentured servants instead of foreclosing on them. The EULA is designed to make a user think he or she has no rights, not to actually take them all away (although it does take away some rights).
I can't believe GameSpy is doing this. It's sooo passé. Microsoft already did this. Next time GameSpy wants to get infected, it should be original and choose a different virus, maybe W32.Klez.E or even a McAfee homebrew bug, instead of just copying MS because it's an industry leader. Me, I prefer my KaZaA virus, because it has its own EULA.
Yes, I am very familiar with the ODP and the fact that Google's directory is made up of ODP sites and that it weights these heavily (possibly partly due to the fact that the pagerank will be increased since ODP links are all over the web on sites that use its data). I just was wondering if Google's bond with projects such as the ODP would be strengthened and enhanced due to these recent issues that have made it impossible to do everything automatically. If it runs purely on robots and fixed rules, its rules will be tested and broken by people submitting automatic queries and using other sophisticated methods.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, if I didn't make this clear, the reason that the prices are so low is because CMU has a special agreement with Microsoft to provide it at these prices. I mention the prices of the software to people and they say "oh cool, that's cheap" and decide not to pirate it. I don't think they realize that the reason the prices are so low is because the campus is probably paying the other $90 (or however much it is).
I go to CMU. MS Office XP costs $10. MS Windows XP costs $10. MS Visual Studio.NET costs $15. All these are without manuals, in tiny packages with a license for installing it one time (actually, the license is separate, and it claims it's illegal without a license, but the people at the computer store say it's a one time install).
Anyways, this cuts down on piracy on one hand. On the other hand, I'm seriously bothered by the fact that they are using MY highly priced college tuition to support a convicted felon.
What's really sad is that there is a Microsoft club at my university called MSImpact, supported by MS (and the girl who runs it is paid by MS to do this, she interned there one summer and has some sort of deal right now).
At Walmart.com, the $200 Microtel PC. 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 10 gig HD. Add linux. Add TV-out card or large monitor. Do lots more stuff than you could hope to do with the X-Box.
Sorry, but the days of the X-Box being a cheap PC are over. MS still loses money but the companies whom it buys the parts for surely are not. And I'd rather have a PC whose insides are not backwards (in order to prevent me from making it a PC).
Maybe a GNU/Linux mod on the X-Box is cool, but it is not functional.
It doesn't stream, it downloads the album in a protected albx format. It doesn't let you burn to CD but you can listen to it all you want on your computer and again, it's free (as in beer). He could theoretically release the whole thing in OGG or MP3 format but since people could copy and burn the CD easily and legally then it might hurt album sales, which I think we can understand him not wanting to do. Still, this is an amazing step!
Reggae pioneer and Grammy award winner Jimmy Cliff, famous for his starring role in cult movie classic The Harder They Come and several hit songs, has recently released his entire newest album online for free download at his website. You can listen to the music by downloading People Music Media from the site, a P2P application that streams the music to you. It's great that famous artists are finally developing new music distribution schemes and revenue making models for the Information Age! Perhaps the RIAA could take a few notes from him...
And I just downloaded the album last night, it is amazing. (-:
I don't quite understand this. Why does the article sound so upbeat and happy? In this article, user timothy writes "mesozoic points out that ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "ICANN has issued a report recommending that ISOC run the .org TLD... ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "I'm not surprised; are you?" This preliminary report may be disappointing to those who hoped that Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud would be successful in their bid to head up .org."
Slashdot, I never would have expected doublespeak from you! *sniff* I trusted you.
Uh, you might want to read the parent comment to my comment. I responded to someone else who disagreed with Lessig completely, saying that copyrights should not exist at all. I disagreed with him and the subject of my comment was his plus the word "Re:". See?
No, that's not my point. With copyright terms allowed, things like Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Dr. Strangelove get produced. GPL software is good in addition but this will get produced either way. You can argue that there is GPL software that does the same things as many other goods, but without copyright virtually all movies created in the last century would not have been created, or at least not as well. They wouldn't have the money to support the budgets they have, to buy their expensive SteadyCams to shoot them with and the film (which is very expensive), and their video editing studios. The educational videos wouldn't be made without public money since companies wouldn't make a profit on them.
My argument is that without copyrights, goods that cost money won't get produced to begin with. How can you free a DVD that doesn't exist? Without copyrights you'd force material to be free and thus keep lots from being created. With copyrights, creators have a financial incentive to create, and so their work will be created. How would you like if all the movies we had to watch were GPLed videos? All TV stations would be financed by public donations, and with public goods there is no way of excluding freeloaders.
Maybe cause a very very small fraction of these copyrights *are* used and profit Disney? The vast majority of work from this long ago is barely making any profit, but there is a very tiny percentage making a positive amount of money for companies such as Disney. Meanwhile, the public domain is a public good and doesn't give Disney any benefit.
Most corporations would completely disregard the environment since it costs them money to keep it clean (but anti environmental practices give them bad PR, so they only mostly disregard it). Disney and co disregard the public domain because instead of a nice fuzzy feeling they'd rather have their cold hard cash, even if it's just a bit. Remember that scene in Fight Club where Cornelius is on the airplane telling some woman about how auto companies measure the cost of settlements to keep quiet a problem with their cars that kills people versus the price that fixing them all would cost? That doesn't seem so far off (remember Firestone?).
My point is that companies don't care squat about the public good. If anything gives them an additional cent, they won't care about the side effects. Since Disney stands to gain an extra couple of cents based on these laws they don't mind about us losing some works forever that won't be preserved.
I'm sorry, I hate perpetual copyrights as much as you do, but I completely disagree that they are the problem. Imagine a world without copyrights. A movie is created, and instantly people with professional equipment are in there getting cam copies of the movie. They sell it in legitimate stores. More copies are made. A DVD is released, and since it is very easy to make a perfect copy, these are made. There are sold in legitimate stores, as this is perfectly legal. A CD is released, and perfect copies are made and sold for $1 each in stores. Software is made and immediately sold for the cost of the media in stores.
See the dilemna here? While you may argue that the RIAA and MPAA are evil (as they are), and that a lot of CDs these days are made according to a formula and forced down are throats (as many are), the fact is that there is much quality content created as books, audio CDs, movies, and software, that takes a large initial investment in order to create. If some company spends $8 million creating a piece of software then how are they going to recoup their profits if OfficeMax is selling $1 copies in the store in three days?
This is my argument for why limited copyrights are needed. But, it would be very nice if they only existed for perhaps 20 or 30 years.
Good thing Brazil has such a good voting system! It's unfortunate about all the corruption that goes on in third world nations that makes things inaccurate, such as in the recent election in this quant little place called Florida.
I disagree with your second argument. The Tenth Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Interpreting this very strictly might say that the national government can't make marijuana illegal, but if that were true then there wouldn't be public education, the federal government couldn't make murder illegal, and other similar items. I do think that marijuana is a health issue rather than a moral one, and that law enforcement officials should devote more resources to murder/rape/burglary or even to harder drugs than marijuana rather than fill our prisons with marijuana possessors, but the Supremacy clause says that federal law takes precedent over state law, and so thus if the federal government dictates marijuana is illegal, so be it. At least there's a wave of decriminalization of it across the world, public opinion is shifting, and civil disobedience is taking place.
Armagetron is a great 3D version of tron! I love it! Slick graphics and awesome sound effects and gameplay. I recommend the latest beta version, since the stable one doesn't have a good AI.
Yes, Red Hat is good, but Mandrake one ups it. And look at the publisher of OSNews -- David Adams. This man founded Akopia, which was acquired by Red Hat. Red Hat is good but this site reeks of bias and who knows what other special interests have stakes in it. Maybe his link with Red Hat didn't affect the article, but theoretically (of course), what if a big name in a major operating system advised the government on, say, software security? Would that smell fishy?
I wouldn't mind this so much, if not for the fact that tomorrow they were going to add a course in Jedi mythology as a requirement to the curriculum for religion majors.
--George L.
but if you ask me, this will be the death of the music and movie industries.
--Jack V.
This is indeed a great idea, but just imagine the outrage that book publishers would have if someone tried to set up a large, public repository where someone could borrow books, read them, and return them! Oh, wait...
(for the humor impaired: I am always completely serious)
A.L.I.C.E. = artificial linguistic Internet computer entity
I agree that it is frightening about the nuclear secrets. Still, China having them wouldn't do too much in my opinion, since they already have enough nukes in my opinion. I guess some nukes might be stronger, but I sort of thing of nukes as nukes. Plus, there is the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that will keep most nuclear countries (China mainly) from attacking us (aside from North Korea). Hopefully India and Pakistan will soon catch on to MAD before blowing each other up.
I think that conventional war tactics are the more likely ones to be used in wars with this type of country if we have a war with them.
"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car
gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!" --Abe Simpson (Homer's dad)
If this really is a true simulation of the US military, wouldn't that mean it might give away information on our army to anyone in the world that might want to know this intelligence? This worries me, I hope they didn't include any sensitive information in it.
The government of the United States presents this great first person shooter to you, bundled with your own personalized version of Magic Lantern! I mean, all you're doing is going around shooting people, it's not like they'd want to spy all over your computer. Just don't tell Osama, I hope he downloads it and they catch him!
Not necessarily. Just because a company states that it isn't liable for anything doesn't mean it is. Several rights cannot be forfeited in contracts. If they could, companies could make people indentured servants instead of foreclosing on them. The EULA is designed to make a user think he or she has no rights, not to actually take them all away (although it does take away some rights).
I can't believe GameSpy is doing this. It's sooo passé. Microsoft already did this. Next time GameSpy wants to get infected, it should be original and choose a different virus, maybe W32.Klez.E or even a McAfee homebrew bug, instead of just copying MS because it's an industry leader. Me, I prefer my KaZaA virus, because it has its own EULA.
Yes, I am very familiar with the ODP and the fact that Google's directory is made up of ODP sites and that it weights these heavily (possibly partly due to the fact that the pagerank will be increased since ODP links are all over the web on sites that use its data). I just was wondering if Google's bond with projects such as the ODP would be strengthened and enhanced due to these recent issues that have made it impossible to do everything automatically. If it runs purely on robots and fixed rules, its rules will be tested and broken by people submitting automatic queries and using other sophisticated methods.