My opinion is that YES, for a 28 year maximum copyright law, giving the distribution channels their pound of flesh would be worth it. (Note I said "distribution channels" because we all know precious little money will still go to the creators and artists.)
Howerver, you raise some good points.
And in the meantime, we wont' be able to make backup copies, mix cd's, a copy for the car, a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original, etc.
Hmm, I think backups and CD-RWs (and DVD-RWs) will still be around, you just won't beable to make a back up of material the copyright holder doesn't want you too. Back in the bad old days of piracy (when software came on floppies), some makers allowed you to make one back up copy, or two. We just bought from those guys and left the others on the shelf.
mix cds, a copy for the car,
This kinda goes along with the backup thing, you could just buy only from record companies who expictly allow you to make one or two copies for personal use. Nor is it that hard to actually put your CDs into one of the CD wallets and carry them between the car and your house.
a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original
Well, since it's in the constitution, I think you'll still legally be able to quote for review purposes, although the copy protection itself may thrawrt you there.
So I guess I don't see any of your points as acutally overiding the benefits of a shorter, 28 year copyright law. Bring it on, I say.
> Also, in flight a wing uses reduced air pressure above the curved top of the wing surface (Bernoulli's Principle) for most of its lift. Does anyone know if this effect applies in water? Intuitively it seems like it would not.
Yes, water flowing over a foil (technical name for a wing) produces lift. Keels on modern sail boats are foils, and use lift to help the sail boat sail *up* wind. That lift is one of the reasons why a modern sloop can point so high to the wind. Rudders on sailboat produce lift also, which is what turns the boat. (Flat surfaces can produce lift just like a foil can.)
> But now you gotta' pay the "independant promoter" companies (which are subsiderary companies to the radio stations) lots of money to get it played on the radio. Thats an extra $10k.
Just an aside. This is IMO the real reason that the RIAA has gone after internet radio, peer to peer sharing and other forms of eletronic music distribution. It's not really about the lost profit (although that has some impact), it's about the loss of control.
Right now, much of your "new music" comes from the radio. If it gets played, people will buy it. If people are listening to Garden Salad on the intenet radio instead, no one is going to hear it, and the promoters and big music companies are out of luck.
A friend of mine, an elctrical engineer, got a job at a CD reproduction place right out of college (years back when we were all fresh out of college). I believe he told me that it cost $300 for a master (gold) CD, and $300 for the first 150 CDs to be pressed, so it came to $600 for the first 150 CDs. After that, they'd make as many as you want for $2 each, in lots of like 300 or so.
This was with out any fancy packaging (or maybe no packaging at all), but I think with at least like a paper sleeve over the CD. More packaging (cases, liner notes, boxes, etc.) was obviously extra.
That's what I recall. Prices may have gone up, or maybe even down, but I bet a lot of folks would still charge you about that. This was in the US too, really big companies I'm sure get their CD's pressed overseas for less than $1.
> The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.
I have a marvelous proof of this, but this post is too small to contain it. And I don't won't anyone to know that the factors of a prime number are just itself and 1, which is really, really easy to figure.
I think this is ok. The segways go 12.5 mph (3 times faster than a pedestrian can walk) and weigh 69 pounds, which I believe is way more than any bike. There are many areas of San Francisco that are very crowded already (esp. Market and the touristy areas). The segways would add to the congestion since they take up more space on a sidewalk, and would be even more of a hazard in those crowds.
Hopefully in the future though, the city will ease off a bit, and allow the segways at certain times (late evening and night, for example), and in certain uncongested neighborhoods. I'd also like to see more infrastucture devoted to both bikes and segways, so both can be ubiquitous and yet not endanger pedestrians in the slightest. Devoting one lane on all streets to light wheeled traffic (segway, bikes, skateboards, etc.) and leave the sidewalks to the pedestrians, would be a huge step forward, IMHO.
So how does this actually work, legally speaking? I thought the GPL prevented code from changing licenses after being released under the GPL. So I don't see in Mandrake's case how they can go from a GPL product back to more restritive licensed one.
I understand that there are original copyright holders who are different from the GPL itself, and those copyright holders retain many rights. But I though once the code was out under GPL that was pretty much it.
Is it just where you get the code? Same source, but a different text file to read and click "ok" on? So someone agrees to a different license in exchange for something else (better support, in Mandrakes case). Whereas if you got the source under GPL the copyright owner can't retro-actively change your righs to something else? But you can voluntarely agree to a different license?
That's the only way I can figure this would work. IA like way NAL, so I can't figure this out. Does anyone know for sure?
Oh this is easy. I hade this idea a long time ago. In fact, it's normally something us hardware engineers try to avoid.
It's called bleed over. It happens when light leaking out from the edges of your screen get caught in some physical device (plastic, glass) and then start leaking out the sides / cracks / whatever of your display.
Now, I guess that if you did it carefully, you could get some interesting effects. It seems like it would be difficult to align whatever you are using to conduct the light (light pipes?) from the edge of the screen to where ever you want it to go, but if you could do it accurately enough, you could get some nice looking abstract patters.
My idea was to basically have a border ("window frame") around the edge of the screen, and also some light conductive plastic. (Light conductive plastics are called light pipes and they are a readily available item.) Then you would just twidle the colors of the pixels of the screen border, and let the light pipes pick it up and do things with it. Mostly I wanted to do it w/ existing LCD / Flat Panel type screens, because CRTs I think would be to bulky once you got all that paltic covering a portion of the edge of the scree. If you were clever and had market pull, you might even be able to have screens specially made that leaked light out of their edges.
This idea is not new, and I'm sure there's prior art for this. There's no way I would have thought to patent this, for sure. I seem to remember some wall clocks that would tell time by splashing light on the wall behind them to make it look like "big hands" and "little hands". Plus anyone one from the 60's who ever used a colored light to light their white walls, or even a lava lamp. Heck, how about discos and dance halls, did they ever color stuff with lights? Hmm, I think so...
I have to second a vote for Shadowbane, "The MMOG without all that pesky RPG stuff" lol. This game has been waiting for release "next month" since like December of 2000. Pure vapor!
Notice how cotton and wool have never quite been displaced as clothing. I was explaining the inferiority of polyester to my son at Target today... I wondered why all the kids sleepwear was poly. They're treated for fire-resistance on the one hand, yet melt into your skin on the other.
It's like everything else, things have appropriate times and places.
Hickers and backpackers have a motto: "Cotton kills". Cotton does not insulate when it is wet, but polyester does. (Wool does too, but wool is scratchy and heavy. Polyester is light and comfy.) Nearly every weekend, the rangers have to medivac someone off a trail somewhere in California because they went out unprepared in just a cotton T and jeans -- and got rained on in a mountain squall. They get wet, cold, and then hypothermic. It's usually not actually fatal but it can be if you don't get warm quickly, and it's damn uncomfortable, not to mention scary.
I have several sets of lightweight polyester long underear that I carry on a trail just in case. They are VERY lightweight, they can be rolled up small in a day pack, they are cheaper and more durable than silk, but they'll save your but if something happens. Look for them at an REI or Northface store, they're great.
Teach your kids that everything is good for something, you just have to know what. They'll have fewer hang-ups later in life.
In other news, University of Michigan has re-invented the dongle. "You know those things you hated and were a pain in the ass to use? We'll, we got it all figured out, trust me."
Great, something else to buy. My fingers are cheaper and I'm not one of the people who has a problem logging in with a password. Why should I fork out cash for this?
The Complaint asks the Spokane County Superior Court to award punitive damages against Bonzi in the amount of $500 per class member, as well as compensatory damages in the amount of $5.00 per deceptive advertising banner issued by Bonzi. The Complaint also seeks an order enjoining Bonzi from issuing similar Internet advertising banners in the future.
I know the lawyers will get 90% of these damages, but wooohoooo, I hope it puts Bonzia out of business.
Anyone know Bonzia's IP address? I'm going to log it in my firewall, then join the lawsuit, with my logs as proof that I was deceived by these scoundrels.
Well, I'm using a P166 w/ 32 megs of RAM as a firewall and NAT. And I'm only running the shell, no GUI. With X, that system would barely run, but with just the shell, it's really fast.
I found RAM to be the limiting factor, rather than CPU speed. Thirty two megs is the minimum Red Hat recomends for it's 7.X system (which is what I have). The kernel plus modules and buffers seem to take up most of the available memory (according to/proc/meminfo). So I wouldn't want to try it with much less. And for networking, you're much better off if you don't have to swap stuff out to disk just to route a packet.
I think you could get it to work with 16 megs but less I'd be worried that performance would truly suck. Anyone know different?
The answer, of course, depends on who is asked: Marketers say it's the brand, psychologists say it's a social relationship, and Apple loyalists say it's the merits of the machine, its friendliness, its simplicity.
But some common themes emerge: community, the alternative to Microsoft, and the brand, which connotes nonconformity, liberty and creativity.
I thought this quote from the article was particularly interesting. The various Lunux distros strike me as similar to what Wired describes. The distros have a community, logos that allow others to recognize each other, a sense of liberty and creative programming.
Basically, Linux distros have everything Apple does except the "easy to use" part!:) (Kidding!)
But seriously, this seems like a good way for many distros to proceed, if they aren't already. Develope a theme for each disto based on some sort of killer app or need, like Apple's artistic bent. Then use the social aspects of that community to promote loyalty and recognition.
Just my 2 cp. And of course, many distros may already be doing this. But I have to say, as just a computer user, I have no idea what the marketing thrust or theme behind any of the distros is. And I'm not unfamilar with open source. I think more marketing here is needed.
The turbine is driven by a water current, not a tide, so it's not "tidal power". Yes, the current is driven by the tide but it's still a current (the article calls it a "tidal current"). Tides are the vertical movement of water, current is the horizontal movement of water. I just thought you all might appreciate this chance to expand your nautical knowledge.:)
My tide and current book for San Francisco Bay says the average peak tide at the gate is about 4.5 knots, which if I did my math right is about 7.6 feet per second, a little less than the one in Oslo.
I think though that Norway has many fjords, which are rather long, where they can line up a lot of thise turbines one after the other. Whereas the 'Gate is a just a relatively short constriction. They plan to build 20 of these things in Oslo just to generate enough power for about 1000 homes. I don't think there's 20 good places for a turbine like this in the Bay, so I'm not sure it would be very practical for us. Dunno, but that's my idle speculation for the day.:)
Tidal harness: increases energy production of this square by +2. Built by sea formers (*-1-4), 8 turns.
The thermal borehole is the one I'd really like to see in action, though. 6 energy and 6 minerals is a lot, and could really cut down on our dependency on oil.
Yes, but IIRC, you can still get food from squares with tidal harnesses. And theroectically, you can have 20 of them around your city!
Whereas bore-holes are basically all you can do with a square, as it's just a big hole now. And they cause hecka pollution. I think the tidal harnesses are the way to go, esp. once you get preasure domes.
Wake-up Call for OSS
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> In fact, their [Microsoft's] figures indicate that we [OSS] are winning. It looks like all we have to do is stay the course.
This is wrong. The leaked document does show that OSS is winning. The same document also shows that Microsoft knows that OSS is winning, and now Microsoft will changes it's strategy, possibly to something far more effective than it has used before.
The author of the article, who I quoted above, is wrong. Now is not the time for OSS to rest on it's laurels. Now that MS has realized it's blunders, you can bet they will be doing something about it. MS ain't stoopid, and they've got lots of money to power any initive they can dream up.
OSS projects should redouble their efforts. The community needs stable, useful technology now more than ever to battle MS with.
Actually, it's only improved if you sit quietly in the middle of 5 speakers. If you're wandering around the house, then the articles says that most people would likely not notice any difference.
But I won't buy until there's one clear winner. No more competing formats for me!
>You will probably on the other hand sneak this under the nose of everyone that does not read slashdot because I have found that everyone else is dumb.
I read the article on CNN yesterday, as I'm sure many people did. ^_^ CNN has a rather larger readership than/.
>Two: Someone will break your "copy protection" two weeks before you release it and this will not effect me any more than playing DVDs on my linux box does now.
This is sort of the crux of the matter. Artists and distributers need a fair profit to stay in business. Most of the public wants to be able to make copies for their own use. P2P was, IMHO, a mistake, one that alienated the two sides completly.
What we need is a copy scheme that lets the consumer make a few copies and still assures a reasonable return on investment for the artists and distrubuters. How to do this technically, I'm not sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Deny rules depend on which firewall you use, if you need the ones for IP Tables, I can just copy those for you.
host xupiter.com
xupiter.com has address 63.236.32.50
mail is handled by mx1.xupiter.com
host mx1.xupiter.com
mx1.xupiter.com has address 63.236.50.196
whois -h whois.arin.net 63.236.32.50
Qwest Communications NET-QWEST-BLKS2 (NET-63-236-0-0-1)
63.236.0.0 - 63.239.255.255
Qwest Cybercenters QWEST-CYBERCENTER (NET-63-236-0-0-2)
63.236.0.0 - 63.236.127.255
Internext Media, Inc. QWEST-JSV-INTERNEXT1 (NET-63-236-32-0-1)
63.236.32.0 - 63.236.32.63
whois -h whois.arin.net 63.236.50.196
Qwest Communications NET-QWEST-BLKS2 (NET-63-236-0-0-1)
63.236.0.0 - 63.239.255.255
Qwest Cybercenters QWEST-CYBERCENTER (NET-63-236-0-0-2)
63.236.0.0 - 63.236.127.255
Snapshot Productions LLC. QWEST-JSV-SNPSHTPR (NET-63-236-50-192-1)
63.236.50.192 - 63.236.50.223
so I added 63.236.32.0 - 63.236.32.63 and 63.236.50.192 - 63.236.50.223
to my firewall block list, and they shalt never trouble me henceforth.
Done! Next!
Howerver, you raise some good points.
And in the meantime, we wont' be able to make backup copies, mix cd's, a copy for the car, a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original, etc.
Hmm, I think backups and CD-RWs (and DVD-RWs) will still be around, you just won't beable to make a back up of material the copyright holder doesn't want you too. Back in the bad old days of piracy (when software came on floppies), some makers allowed you to make one back up copy, or two. We just bought from those guys and left the others on the shelf.
mix cds, a copy for the car,
This kinda goes along with the backup thing, you could just buy only from record companies who expictly allow you to make one or two copies for personal use. Nor is it that hard to actually put your CDs into one of the CD wallets and carry them between the car and your house.
a digital work of criticism which incorporates a "quote" from the original
Well, since it's in the constitution, I think you'll still legally be able to quote for review purposes, although the copy protection itself may thrawrt you there.
So I guess I don't see any of your points as acutally overiding the benefits of a shorter, 28 year copyright law. Bring it on, I say.
Yes, water flowing over a foil (technical name for a wing) produces lift. Keels on modern sail boats are foils, and use lift to help the sail boat sail *up* wind. That lift is one of the reasons why a modern sloop can point so high to the wind. Rudders on sailboat produce lift also, which is what turns the boat. (Flat surfaces can produce lift just like a foil can.)
Just an aside. This is IMO the real reason that the RIAA has gone after internet radio, peer to peer sharing and other forms of eletronic music distribution. It's not really about the lost profit (although that has some impact), it's about the loss of control.
Right now, much of your "new music" comes from the radio. If it gets played, people will buy it. If people are listening to Garden Salad on the intenet radio instead, no one is going to hear it, and the promoters and big music companies are out of luck.
It's all about market saturation and control.
This was with out any fancy packaging (or maybe no packaging at all), but I think with at least like a paper sleeve over the CD. More packaging (cases, liner notes, boxes, etc.) was obviously extra.
That's what I recall. Prices may have gone up, or maybe even down, but I bet a lot of folks would still charge you about that. This was in the US too, really big companies I'm sure get their CD's pressed overseas for less than $1.
I have a marvelous proof of this, but this post is too small to contain it. And I don't won't anyone to know that the factors of a prime number are just itself and 1, which is really, really easy to figure.
Oh wait...
doh!
Hopefully in the future though, the city will ease off a bit, and allow the segways at certain times (late evening and night, for example), and in certain uncongested neighborhoods. I'd also like to see more infrastucture devoted to both bikes and segways, so both can be ubiquitous and yet not endanger pedestrians in the slightest. Devoting one lane on all streets to light wheeled traffic (segway, bikes, skateboards, etc.) and leave the sidewalks to the pedestrians, would be a huge step forward, IMHO.
I understand that there are original copyright holders who are different from the GPL itself, and those copyright holders retain many rights. But I though once the code was out under GPL that was pretty much it.
Is it just where you get the code? Same source, but a different text file to read and click "ok" on? So someone agrees to a different license in exchange for something else (better support, in Mandrakes case). Whereas if you got the source under GPL the copyright owner can't retro-actively change your righs to something else? But you can voluntarely agree to a different license?
That's the only way I can figure this would work. IA like way NAL, so I can't figure this out. Does anyone know for sure?
It's spelled Xboxen.
Or some shit...
No, that was just Al Gore.
It's called bleed over. It happens when light leaking out from the edges of your screen get caught in some physical device (plastic, glass) and then start leaking out the sides / cracks / whatever of your display.
Now, I guess that if you did it carefully, you could get some interesting effects. It seems like it would be difficult to align whatever you are using to conduct the light (light pipes?) from the edge of the screen to where ever you want it to go, but if you could do it accurately enough, you could get some nice looking abstract patters.
My idea was to basically have a border ("window frame") around the edge of the screen, and also some light conductive plastic. (Light conductive plastics are called light pipes and they are a readily available item.) Then you would just twidle the colors of the pixels of the screen border, and let the light pipes pick it up and do things with it. Mostly I wanted to do it w/ existing LCD / Flat Panel type screens, because CRTs I think would be to bulky once you got all that paltic covering a portion of the edge of the scree. If you were clever and had market pull, you might even be able to have screens specially made that leaked light out of their edges.
This idea is not new, and I'm sure there's prior art for this. There's no way I would have thought to patent this, for sure. I seem to remember some wall clocks that would tell time by splashing light on the wall behind them to make it look like "big hands" and "little hands". Plus anyone one from the 60's who ever used a colored light to light their white walls, or even a lava lamp. Heck, how about discos and dance halls, did they ever color stuff with lights? Hmm, I think so...
2. Fly a C130 "Ghost" Gunship over their house.
3. Open Fire.
4. Enjoy "Miller" brand beer in a Spam Free world.
I have to second a vote for Shadowbane, "The MMOG without all that pesky RPG stuff" lol. This game has been waiting for release "next month" since like December of 2000. Pure vapor!
It's like everything else, things have appropriate times and places.
Hickers and backpackers have a motto: "Cotton kills". Cotton does not insulate when it is wet, but polyester does. (Wool does too, but wool is scratchy and heavy. Polyester is light and comfy.) Nearly every weekend, the rangers have to medivac someone off a trail somewhere in California because they went out unprepared in just a cotton T and jeans -- and got rained on in a mountain squall. They get wet, cold, and then hypothermic. It's usually not actually fatal but it can be if you don't get warm quickly, and it's damn uncomfortable, not to mention scary.
I have several sets of lightweight polyester long underear that I carry on a trail just in case. They are VERY lightweight, they can be rolled up small in a day pack, they are cheaper and more durable than silk, but they'll save your but if something happens. Look for them at an REI or Northface store, they're great.
Teach your kids that everything is good for something, you just have to know what. They'll have fewer hang-ups later in life.
Great, something else to buy. My fingers are cheaper and I'm not one of the people who has a problem logging in with a password. Why should I fork out cash for this?
I know the lawyers will get 90% of these damages, but wooohoooo, I hope it puts Bonzia out of business.
Anyone know Bonzia's IP address? I'm going to log it in my firewall, then join the lawsuit, with my logs as proof that I was deceived by these scoundrels.
I found RAM to be the limiting factor, rather than CPU speed. Thirty two megs is the minimum Red Hat recomends for it's 7.X system (which is what I have). The kernel plus modules and buffers seem to take up most of the available memory (according to /proc/meminfo). So I wouldn't want to try it with much less. And for networking, you're much better off if you don't have to swap stuff out to disk just to route a packet.
I think you could get it to work with 16 megs but less I'd be worried that performance would truly suck. Anyone know different?
The answer, of course, depends on who is asked: Marketers say it's the brand, psychologists say it's a social relationship, and Apple loyalists say it's the merits of the machine, its friendliness, its simplicity.
But some common themes emerge: community, the alternative to Microsoft, and the brand, which connotes nonconformity, liberty and creativity.
I thought this quote from the article was particularly interesting. The various Lunux distros strike me as similar to what Wired describes. The distros have a community, logos that allow others to recognize each other, a sense of liberty and creative programming.
Basically, Linux distros have everything Apple does except the "easy to use" part! :) (Kidding!)
But seriously, this seems like a good way for many distros to proceed, if they aren't already. Develope a theme for each disto based on some sort of killer app or need, like Apple's artistic bent. Then use the social aspects of that community to promote loyalty and recognition.
Just my 2 cp. And of course, many distros may already be doing this. But I have to say, as just a computer user, I have no idea what the marketing thrust or theme behind any of the distros is. And I'm not unfamilar with open source. I think more marketing here is needed.
Do you think Bill will give me a discount on Windows XP Pro? $80 instead of $299 would be great!
(Laugh, it's funny :-)
The turbine is driven by a water current, not a tide, so it's not "tidal power". Yes, the current is driven by the tide but it's still a current (the article calls it a "tidal current"). Tides are the vertical movement of water, current is the horizontal movement of water. I just thought you all might appreciate this chance to expand your nautical knowledge. :)
My tide and current book for San Francisco Bay says the average peak tide at the gate is about 4.5 knots, which if I did my math right is about 7.6 feet per second, a little less than the one in Oslo.
I think though that Norway has many fjords, which are rather long, where they can line up a lot of thise turbines one after the other. Whereas the 'Gate is a just a relatively short constriction. They plan to build 20 of these things in Oslo just to generate enough power for about 1000 homes. I don't think there's 20 good places for a turbine like this in the Bay, so I'm not sure it would be very practical for us. Dunno, but that's my idle speculation for the day. :)
The thermal borehole is the one I'd really like to see in action, though. 6 energy and 6 minerals is a lot, and could really cut down on our dependency on oil.
Yes, but IIRC, you can still get food from squares with tidal harnesses. And theroectically, you can have 20 of them around your city!
Whereas bore-holes are basically all you can do with a square, as it's just a big hole now. And they cause hecka pollution. I think the tidal harnesses are the way to go, esp. once you get preasure domes.
This is wrong. The leaked document does show that OSS is winning. The same document also shows that Microsoft knows that OSS is winning, and now Microsoft will changes it's strategy, possibly to something far more effective than it has used before.
The author of the article, who I quoted above, is wrong. Now is not the time for OSS to rest on it's laurels. Now that MS has realized it's blunders, you can bet they will be doing something about it. MS ain't stoopid, and they've got lots of money to power any initive they can dream up.
OSS projects should redouble their efforts. The community needs stable, useful technology now more than ever to battle MS with.
Actually, it's only improved if you sit quietly in the middle of 5 speakers. If you're wandering around the house, then the articles says that most people would likely not notice any difference.
But I won't buy until there's one clear winner. No more competing formats for me!
>You will probably on the other hand sneak this under the nose of everyone that does not read slashdot because I have found that everyone else is dumb.
I read the article on CNN yesterday, as I'm sure many people did. ^_^ CNN has a rather larger readership than /.
>Two: Someone will break your "copy protection" two weeks before you release it and this will not effect me any more than playing DVDs on my linux box does now.
This is sort of the crux of the matter. Artists and distributers need a fair profit to stay in business. Most of the public wants to be able to make copies for their own use. P2P was, IMHO, a mistake, one that alienated the two sides completly.
What we need is a copy scheme that lets the consumer make a few copies and still assures a reasonable return on investment for the artists and distrubuters. How to do this technically, I'm not sure.