The BSA does fuckall outside of the US and Western Europe. If Panthip Plaza can stay open year after year after year after year, then there's no fucking way the BSA is doing a thing in as chickenshit a country as jordan.
I agree. Let's marginalize developing countries further by suggesting that they use software that is not the de facto standard in the business world.
Furthermore, let's teach them that software skills have no value, because only work in capital intensive industries, for example, like those that produce computer hardware and happen to NOT be located in Jordan, deserves to be rewarded by anything other than the ludicrous propositions of ESR's "gift culture."
Indeed, it is likely, no, even probable that developing countries will catch up to developed ones if they use software that is harder to configure, less usable, and that practically requires use of the english language to read 90% of manuals for.
The underlying claim from your argument is that P2P solves a technological problem - namely, bandwidth limitation. This was echoed a few posts above by somebody (quoting a limewire press release?) giving the example of where an "art history department could share its works with limewire rather than by having a dedicated server." Bandwidth limitations (the art history example arguably uses MORE bandwidth in P2P form) will be solved by people developing more wires, and other technologies are far more suited and adapted to "efficient radio broadcasts" over the web than anything relating to the porn-eminem-dvd-rip-warez-a-thon that is current p2p.
You are trying to justify a technology by mating it to a perceived, likely non-existent problem or future benefit of indeterminate nature.
Just because VCRs spawned a video industry doesn't mean that P2P will spawn any sort of money maker (and, to counter the patently assinine claim of somebody further up that rightsholders need to adjust their technologies because new technologies have come into being, I don't see anybody arguing that we should all grow bulletproof skin because of the development of handguns). Even if in the case of videos, the MPAA (or whoever) initially protested against what would ultimately be in their own self-interest doesn't mean that they are necessarily in the same position now.
I am curious to hear stories of anybody who has at any point used gnutella to do anything but transmit copyrighted material in any substantial way.
By "monitoring" requests in limewire or by putting in ambiguous search terms, I estimate that well, well, well over 99% of files available through gnutella-based p2p services are copyrighted.
Oh yes, we all have heard the usual arguments. Technology doesn't break the law, people do. Aka, the Pontius Pilate / Eichmann defense.
'Having such virtualization environments run within each other is an important milestone in the lives of these projects, it is a remarkable technical feat that requires a great deal of maturity'.
No, it's a party trick. Milestones include running actual applications that matter and getting large numnbers of users to use the emulators as a bridge from one OS to anther.
FWIF, Since 1995-1996 or so I've had linux people telling me about how wine is close to obsoleting my windows systems. Hence, my skepticism. These emulators always seem to be amazing technical accomplishments, yes, but like Soviet televisions made of vaccuum tubes for sale at Best Buy, not ready for prime time by anybody but tinkerers. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that they are chasing a moving target..
well, of course it's a little over the top - the article is meant to be funny, of course. but it also has elements of truth. i prefer to admire people (or rather, would prefer for my kids to admire people) for what they do rather than who their parents were.
Actually, and I'm no expert here, but to me this seems to be the primary difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. While I am sure to be corrected on this by the geektelligencia, my understanding is that there is something special in Star Wars in the Skywalker bloodline--indeed, the people with that bloodline seem to be disproportionately close to "the Force," Lucas' thin metaphor for Christian Faith. Those without the faith are just slackers--the other guys in the pod race or the well-meaning rebel pilots whose actions we know instinctively will be inconsequential.
Star trek to me much more a meritocracy (at least the picard version that I am most familiar with and the one with the woman captain janeway that I saw a few episodes of--I dont know much about the latest and greatest trek permutations.) Picard maintained his positon because he was brilliant and a good leader, etc.
I think this article does a great job of explaining why Harry Potter is a fraud.
Not to put too fine a point on it--the first movie was fun (and reminded me of my Oxford days, with good reason), but I was always uncomfortable with the messiah-like qualities given potter in the film. The article does a great job of expounding on them.
Re:Percentage-of-Revenue royalty payments?
on
Congress Passes SWSA
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Probably not percentage of revenue, but were you to use Led Zepplin's "The Lemon Song" playing on a jukebox as part of your stand's self-promotion, it would probably be wise to come to a flat-fee licencing agreement with the rightsholders in order to protect yourself.
This is not meant to be funny. Don't mod it +1 Funny. Don't!
That's up for negotiations to decide, isn't it? One side POTENTIALLY benefits from "free promotion", the other from having some filler between advertisements (or some other benefit).
Making things interesting is that in the marketplace of music, webcasters can always go to alternative music sources if they can't come to what they think is an equitable agreement with their first choice rightsholders--be that agreement the rightsholders get paid, pay, or whatever.
While there may indeed have been film recovery of satellite films (this sounds marginal, but not outside of the realm of possibility), the idea that the film was designed at an airbase if the parachute failed is absolute bollocks.
given the aerodynamics of a tumbling film canister and high altitude winds or whathave you, they'd be lucky to hit a given county, much less a given airbase. The plan is stupid--if the film cannister is designed to potentially survive a parachute-less fall, why would they bother with the parachute?
That there was something top-secret flying near an airbase during the cold war is not hard to believe. The notion that this was a film cannister recovery device with lights on it (let me get this straight--it has lights on it AND is designed to renter the atmosphere?) is incredibly hard to believe.
The chance that ogg will ever be seriously adapted is about zero.
The argument for OGG is that some MP3 patent/process is owned by somebody.
In this way, the ogg campaign is similar to the days of 'burn all.gifs.'
Anti-gif campaigning went, essentially nowhere. Basically, Compuserve didn't go after anybody of import and PNG continues to be a marginally used format.
PNG is marginally used, despite being superior to.GIF, technically. The thing is, OGG is INFERIOR to even MP3, and certainly to WMA, etc, at least according to the OGG FAQ.
a path away from GIF entrenchment was relatively easy to do--just give everybody a new browser that supports both. The problem is that it's much harder to consider this for audio files considering how many mp3 (hardware) players are already in the field--it may not be technically ideal, but Mp3 is here to stay unless there is a compelling reason to switch.
Compelling reasons include:
technical superiority (WMA has this, but even it can barely make a dent in mp3's market hold)
mandates from hardware companies / ip holders - ie something that better considers DRM.
I can see no compelling reason why OGG will ever gain any significant market share.
While there is (justifiably) considerable debate with regards to this in the arena of domain names, as far as the world at large as concerned, it's been pretty much established that even if your given name is Microsoft Apple and you were born in 1911, you are not entitled to use those names in conjunction with a computing business.
If the government makes a law that says you can't use missiles to blow up other cars in traffic, then the engineers have to abide by that law, even if they have access to plenty of knowhow and missiles. If the engineers want to blow up traffic with their missiles, they have to lobby legislators.
Explain to me again why similar logic should not apply to these stanford computer scientists?
If they are indeed working on systems to which the law does not apply, then that's one thing. That's scientific progress and appropriate technology policy needs to be formulated. But trying to tell legislators "we know better than you" is immoral.
The services are fundamentally dissimilar. One is "on demand". The other is "when the post brings you a DVD"
You do get "DRM crap" with your by-mail service. it's called the physical DVD. Not foolproof / ripproof, of course, but as every pinhead will point out as soon as there's any news article that features some new DRM technology, nothing is.
With your service, you get the pleasure of dealing with the post. For my tastes, id much prefer the pleasure of downloading.
Re:BioMetric User Identification
on
Secure PDAs
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
"If MS did biometric authentication you can bet they'd store all our info in a central database somewhere."
And since when did slashdot become a place for slippery-slope knee-jerk microsoft bashing?...
Oh, wait..
BioMetric User Identification
on
Secure PDAs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If microsoft did "biometric user identification", we'd be screaming bloody 1984.
Instead, it's linux-based. Neat-o.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. ~André Gide
This thread will not be read by anybody and if it does, I'll probably be labelled a troll. I don't care. I have to say this:
David Gelertner doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
I had him for a class at Yale (got an A, so I'm not bitter). He was going off about his journaling os or whatever the hell it was (sorry, it's been several years). It was SUCH bullshit. Everybody in the class basically signed up to see this semi-celebrity professor, and everybody more or less had the same impression. The guy is a complete fraud.
Look, I don't mean to sound insensitive, but the Unabomber thing was probably the best thing that happened to his career. I mean, he sits there making pie in the sky os predictions not more complicated than any first year cs student could make and acts like the sun shines out of his ass for it.
I don't dislike the guy personally. He's a bit of a slob, but he's ok. it's his really bad academic work that I take issue with.
or, more likely--this is a reminder to all that are working on this sort of stuff to consider the environmental consequences of their actions.
basically, you could write the same case about the auto industry 30 years ago. then, people started becoming interested in environmental issues, and attitudes within the industry changed. While we're not at ideal yet, we're at least at where even SUV owners have embedded in their minds somewhere that such gas guzzling is not the best idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Workshop participants = zealots.
The BSA does fuckall outside of the US and Western Europe. If Panthip Plaza can stay open year after year after year after year, then there's no fucking way the BSA is doing a thing in as chickenshit a country as jordan.
Linux Macht Frei
(if you don't understand the above, go back to school.)
Furthermore, let's teach them that software skills have no value, because only work in capital intensive industries, for example, like those that produce computer hardware and happen to NOT be located in Jordan, deserves to be rewarded by anything other than the ludicrous propositions of ESR's "gift culture."
Indeed, it is likely, no, even probable that developing countries will catch up to developed ones if they use software that is harder to configure, less usable, and that practically requires use of the english language to read 90% of manuals for.
Let not your good luck be confused with good judgement.
Of course, when i take WAGN in the afternoons, I ususally get a whole car to myself and nobody collects tickets. Fucking stupid British system.
Is it near Philadelphia?
The underlying claim from your argument is that P2P solves a technological problem - namely, bandwidth limitation. This was echoed a few posts above by somebody (quoting a limewire press release?) giving the example of where an "art history department could share its works with limewire rather than by having a dedicated server." Bandwidth limitations (the art history example arguably uses MORE bandwidth in P2P form) will be solved by people developing more wires, and other technologies are far more suited and adapted to "efficient radio broadcasts" over the web than anything relating to the porn-eminem-dvd-rip-warez-a-thon that is current p2p.
You are trying to justify a technology by mating it to a perceived, likely non-existent problem or future benefit of indeterminate nature.
Just because VCRs spawned a video industry doesn't mean that P2P will spawn any sort of money maker (and, to counter the patently assinine claim of somebody further up that rightsholders need to adjust their technologies because new technologies have come into being, I don't see anybody arguing that we should all grow bulletproof skin because of the development of handguns). Even if in the case of videos, the MPAA (or whoever) initially protested against what would ultimately be in their own self-interest doesn't mean that they are necessarily in the same position now.
By "monitoring" requests in limewire or by putting in ambiguous search terms, I estimate that well, well, well over 99% of files available through gnutella-based p2p services are copyrighted.
Oh yes, we all have heard the usual arguments. Technology doesn't break the law, people do. Aka, the Pontius Pilate / Eichmann defense.
'Having such virtualization environments run within each other is an important milestone in the lives of these projects, it is a remarkable technical feat that requires a great deal of maturity'.
No, it's a party trick. Milestones include running actual applications that matter and getting large numnbers of users to use the emulators as a bridge from one OS to anther.
FWIF, Since 1995-1996 or so I've had linux people telling me about how wine is close to obsoleting my windows systems. Hence, my skepticism. These emulators always seem to be amazing technical accomplishments, yes, but like Soviet televisions made of vaccuum tubes for sale at Best Buy, not ready for prime time by anybody but tinkerers. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that they are chasing a moving target..
Actually, and I'm no expert here, but to me this seems to be the primary difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. While I am sure to be corrected on this by the geektelligencia, my understanding is that there is something special in Star Wars in the Skywalker bloodline--indeed, the people with that bloodline seem to be disproportionately close to "the Force," Lucas' thin metaphor for Christian Faith. Those without the faith are just slackers--the other guys in the pod race or the well-meaning rebel pilots whose actions we know instinctively will be inconsequential.
Star trek to me much more a meritocracy (at least the picard version that I am most familiar with and the one with the woman captain janeway that I saw a few episodes of--I dont know much about the latest and greatest trek permutations.) Picard maintained his positon because he was brilliant and a good leader, etc.
I think this article does a great job of explaining why Harry Potter is a fraud.
Not to put too fine a point on it--the first movie was fun (and reminded me of my Oxford days, with good reason), but I was always uncomfortable with the messiah-like qualities given potter in the film. The article does a great job of expounding on them.
I was too preoccupied with the post Sausage-week festivities that I didn't realize that it was Domino day!
Probably not percentage of revenue, but were you to use Led Zepplin's "The Lemon Song" playing on a jukebox as part of your stand's self-promotion, it would probably be wise to come to a flat-fee licencing agreement with the rightsholders in order to protect yourself. This is not meant to be funny. Don't mod it +1 Funny. Don't!
That's up for negotiations to decide, isn't it? One side POTENTIALLY benefits from "free promotion", the other from having some filler between advertisements (or some other benefit).
Making things interesting is that in the marketplace of music, webcasters can always go to alternative music sources if they can't come to what they think is an equitable agreement with their first choice rightsholders--be that agreement the rightsholders get paid, pay, or whatever.
in life, you get what you negotiate.
While there may indeed have been film recovery of satellite films (this sounds marginal, but not outside of the realm of possibility), the idea that the film was designed at an airbase if the parachute failed is absolute bollocks.
given the aerodynamics of a tumbling film canister and high altitude winds or whathave you, they'd be lucky to hit a given county, much less a given airbase. The plan is stupid--if the film cannister is designed to potentially survive a parachute-less fall, why would they bother with the parachute?
That there was something top-secret flying near an airbase during the cold war is not hard to believe. The notion that this was a film cannister recovery device with lights on it (let me get this straight--it has lights on it AND is designed to renter the atmosphere?) is incredibly hard to believe.
With intelligence-gather incapabilities like that, no wonder we won the cold war.
The chance that ogg will ever be seriously adapted is about zero.
- The argument for OGG is that some MP3 patent/process is owned by somebody.
- In this way, the ogg campaign is similar to the days of 'burn all
.gifs.'
- Anti-gif campaigning went, essentially nowhere. Basically, Compuserve didn't go after anybody of import and PNG continues to be a marginally used format.
- PNG is marginally used, despite being superior to
.GIF, technically. The thing is, OGG is INFERIOR to even MP3, and certainly to WMA, etc, at least according to the OGG FAQ.
- a path away from GIF entrenchment was relatively easy to do--just give everybody a new browser that supports both. The problem is that it's much harder to consider this for audio files considering how many mp3 (hardware) players are already in the field--it may not be technically ideal, but Mp3 is here to stay unless there is a compelling reason to switch.
- Compelling reasons include:
- technical superiority (WMA has this, but even it can barely make a dent in mp3's market hold)
- mandates from hardware companies / ip holders - ie something that better considers DRM.
I can see no compelling reason why OGG will ever gain any significant market share.While there is (justifiably) considerable debate with regards to this in the arena of domain names, as far as the world at large as concerned, it's been pretty much established that even if your given name is Microsoft Apple and you were born in 1911, you are not entitled to use those names in conjunction with a computing business.
In other news, slashdot editors have decided that premium members are just as entitled to blatant advertisements as anybody else.
If the government makes a law that says you can't use missiles to blow up other cars in traffic, then the engineers have to abide by that law, even if they have access to plenty of knowhow and missiles. If the engineers want to blow up traffic with their missiles, they have to lobby legislators.
Explain to me again why similar logic should not apply to these stanford computer scientists?
If they are indeed working on systems to which the law does not apply, then that's one thing. That's scientific progress and appropriate technology policy needs to be formulated. But trying to tell legislators "we know better than you" is immoral.
And since when did slashdot become a place for slippery-slope knee-jerk microsoft bashing? ...
Oh, wait..
Instead, it's linux-based. Neat-o.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. ~André Gide
David Gelertner doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
I had him for a class at Yale (got an A, so I'm not bitter). He was going off about his journaling os or whatever the hell it was (sorry, it's been several years). It was SUCH bullshit. Everybody in the class basically signed up to see this semi-celebrity professor, and everybody more or less had the same impression. The guy is a complete fraud.
Look, I don't mean to sound insensitive, but the Unabomber thing was probably the best thing that happened to his career. I mean, he sits there making pie in the sky os predictions not more complicated than any first year cs student could make and acts like the sun shines out of his ass for it.
I don't dislike the guy personally. He's a bit of a slob, but he's ok. it's his really bad academic work that I take issue with.
or, more likely--this is a reminder to all that are working on this sort of stuff to consider the environmental consequences of their actions.
basically, you could write the same case about the auto industry 30 years ago. then, people started becoming interested in environmental issues, and attitudes within the industry changed. While we're not at ideal yet, we're at least at where even SUV owners have embedded in their minds somewhere that such gas guzzling is not the best idea.