"Banging pots together is "art", as is splashing paint on canvas. Who is to say it isn't? Given those modest requirements, we'll easily see upwards of 20M folks register as artists, diluting the $40K salary to $1K/year. Hardly worth it."
You assume that as many people will donate their voucher to an unemployed scammer, as to the musicians they regularly listen to. Is such an assumption really valid, or would you expect the 1/x statistical distribution that you see in every other such market? The better the work, the more you get paid.
"I wonder if it ever occured to Christina Hall or Mark Reiter to ask Paul Shryock how Buckeye figured these 13 home users "stole" such a massive amount"
Easy. The same way that microsoft calculates losses from piracy to be larger than the world economy -- You simply take the most expensive price you can find, and multiply it by the number of potential users.
"The FBI declines to do ANYTHING about it because it wasn't high-dollar enough to warrent investigation."
What do you expect?
(a) that the police act like policemen and protect members of the public?
(b) that the police act like stooges, and protect the revenues of local business?
Well, it appears the "we won't investigate computer crime unless it reaches $5000 of alleged damage" pretty much answers that question.
What kind of a country do you live in, where bent cops can steal your computer without evidence of guilt in any crime? "Innocent until proven guilty"?? No, Guilty until you sue the FBI for theft.
"somebody in UK, please write your queen about this"
Concerted attempts have been made to wield the clue-stick in the direction of parliament, however, they're still thick as pigshit when it comes to computers:
The bill, as it stands, would outlaw everything which causes somebody else's computer to slow down without the owner's permission. Read the bill if you think I'm exaggerating.
That means, anytime you use a computer for anything, you are to some extent a criminal if this gets passed. Again, our MPs need some computer experience, p.d.q. if they think this is a good solution to d.o.s.!
(p.s. side issue, but if a program of yours is insecure (even with GPL's disclaimed liability) and your program causes someone else's computer to slow down, or to divert any resources away from its normal functioning, you'll have broken the law if this piece of legislation gets passed. Software liability by the back door?)
Yeah it does. When you buy windows, you start emailing files to world+dog (colleagues) as microsoft word files, so for them to work at the same office as you, they all need to install windows too.
And once your whole office is publishing IE-only websites with Powerpoint presentations on them, then anyone who wants to do business with you has to install windows too. The virus is already starting to spread.
Eventually it reaches a government department, and they make laws saying all tax-filings need to be done electronically, then write a website that only reads MS digital cerificates. Then anyone who has to pay tax (i.e. everyone except the queen) needs to install Windows.
Course it's a virus. Just because it relies on stupidity to spread doesn't mitigate anything -- loads of 'real' virii spread that way.
"Warn all your friends - you MUST delete command.com which is a virus" "Warn all your friends - you MUST send your CV in.DOC format"
"This kind of recklessness by Microsoft is criminal negligence!"
I think the phrase you're looking for is "disclaimed criminal negligence, supplied without warranty, nor claims of mercahantability or suitability for any particular purpose"
If they'd been supplied in Maryland, Virginia, Alaska or Hawaii, then UCITA would have made it criminally negligent. But it wasn't, and it isn't.
The roman fire service (in ancient Rome, I mean) was funded by purchasing the burning house for a knock-down price, and then extinguising the fire thus providing a healthy profit to whoever was playing fireman. Of course, fires were so common there that the fire service wouldn't need to start their own, but there was always the suspicion...
(and now the firemen just read your email, how times have changed!)
Wait till you try compiling an embedded operating system (or any other large program) with you company's virus-scanner set to stun.
The IT guys thought how great it would be to scan every file we opened regardless that it was a library which hadn't changed in a year, or that it was a temporary compilation file, whatever. Result: a 20-second compile took 5 minutes every time.
As you say, use linux, or use a decent email program, or both.
"The years allocated to man are three score and ten", -- people live for about 90 years with normal statistical variation.
Copyright as you say is either 90 years since a company wrote something, or 70 years after the death of an individual author, or 50 years after the presumed death of an anonymous author.
70 years after the death seems reasonably unlimited from the point of view of the person who dies. Where will you be in 2160 when the copyright on your latest drawing expires?
And 90 years between each iteration or improvement of an artistic concept? 90 years between subsequent improvements to a piece of music, or to a dance composition? That sounds like it's trying to slow down the progress of art until it becomes static.
If you want a realistic example, look at music where every possible arrangement (of fundamental melodies) have been copyrighted, can't be used again until 2060, and modern music is bland and crap as a result. What sort of an art world is that?
Fair enough, you're a hacker, most of the people here are hackers, lets do the proper thing and build it!
"Ad-hoc network assembly" as you say sounds a lot like a group of geeks with laptops and WiFi cards, rewriting the bluetooth protocol but simpler.
Then it sounds like being able to make repeater/router kits available for next to no cost (remember the 802.11 repeaters built-into cars discussion) so as to make the network spread.
It's all wery well moaning about being "denied the technology" but given that it doesn't exist yet, someone needs to build it. And who better than a quarter-million electronic engineers, linux programmers, free-speech advocates, and WiFi experts, all linked together by the borg of slashdot?
Well worth trying...
(p.s. here in the UK we don't have the right to meet in public anymore, go figure! )
Apparently it's an X bug which can crash the GIMP and others as well -- only reason mozilla's special is that you can exploit it remotely.
Ctl-Alt-Backspace if you get hit with it, and reboot your X-server. If you want a bit more protection, run XFS font server separately (rather than letting X handle fonts) then only the font server will crash.
As for "time to fix", well XFree86 has been out for a while now, so presumably it was vulnerable all along.
The "dig" is: what the hell does disney have to do with mobile communications (apart from painting cartoon characters on mobile-phone front panels) and are they trying to get "a seat on the board" to screw any future WiFi they don't like?
Remember, it doesn't have to involve DRM, it could be as simple as "tracable, logged calls" which would make access to warez sites from your phone a whole lot less convenient.
It could be as simple as pushing a centralised model when direct inter-node communications are possible, squashing possibility of an unmoniterable comminications medium.
Well worth keeping an eye on them in the long term, but probably not worthy of a quick flurry of disapproval and subsequently forgetting it.
-- sig: "This post brought to you by AolDisneyTimeWarnerMicrosoft, a wholly owned subsiduary of UkUsGovernment inc., a wholly owned subsiduary of The Corporation (TM)"
Ok, I'll take you to task for that: Imagine that the next government specify that copyright exists for a LIMITED time of 37 x 10 ^ 99 years,...
According to your logic, this is still constitutional, despite that the universe will have long since ceased to exist by the time the "limited" period of copyright expires.
Well, assuming that that's a P.O.S. (which I sincerely hope you do, else there's no point in trying to continue a logical argument) then explain how increasing copyright by 90 years in the last 100 years is any different?
You what? Do you have no clue whatsoever what copyright law represents?
Everything becomes public domain - that is the default state of ANY information. Copyright law exists to make even more stuff public-domain, simply by giving authors an incentive to write more.
Of course, current US copyright laws don't say that, but then current US copyright laws are illegal. Derive what you like from them, it'll still be wrong.
Secondly, writing something without copyright attached is not "charity" any more than owning a home and not shooting any who approach it is "charity" -- copyright is a gift by the law which an author only need take if they intend to use their monopoly on distribution by attacking others who distribute it.
Thirdly, if you think free software is about charity, I suggest you keep the hell away from free software until you understand it, rather than insulting us with your crippled opinions. People who write free software do not do so out of mercy for those who use it.
Lastly, free software does not exist to provide jobs, it does not exist to provide money, it exists to provide software. If you want a job rehashing the same shit over and over again, go ask microsoft. If you just want the software, programmed once by a handful of people, and left as-is because it already works, that's what free software does. We are not a sweat-shop, we do not exist 'to provide jobs'.
"Why is it that you have to purchase the software to read the EULA."
Same way that insurance companies won't tell you the terms and conditions until a month after their cover starts... because they're fraudulent cheating bastards.
Of course if you can't agree to the EULA, you should definitely return it to the store for a refund -- if they're selling a defective product (i.e. unusable "as sold") then they take it back, and if they don't, you report them to trading standards and get their shop closed down.
Damn. Well noticed. Although according to microsoft, having access to the source code gives Austria enough knowledge to cause unspeakable damage to other users of windows (reference: the Ms/DoJ testimony), so I suppose this gives Austria a military advantage over any U.S. departments dim enough to use Ms/Windows software...
"I just hope that if this law goes through, every single Labour politician gets a speeding ticket on the way home to their wife/mistresses. Somehow it's more likely to be the Conservative party that get's it though."
No, that's not the hope. Our hope is that we can successfully campaign for the entire government to be imprisoned for 10 years for having infringing copies of copyrighted images in their browser-cache.
New laws suggest that you can get a search warrant on "reasonable suspicion that the victim, err, suspect, has infringing material in their home
Slashdot Mirror
can't beat the feds for enforcing some laws.
"Banging pots together is "art", as is splashing paint on canvas. Who is to say it isn't? Given those modest requirements, we'll easily see upwards of 20M folks register as artists, diluting the $40K salary to $1K/year. Hardly worth it."
You assume that as many people will donate their voucher to an unemployed scammer, as to the musicians they regularly listen to. Is such an assumption really valid, or would you expect the 1/x statistical distribution that you see in every other such market? The better the work, the more you get paid.
"200,000 person protest against War in Iraq. All marginalized in the news."
Plenty more than that was marginalised in the news
Why should Joe Schmoe, who is sharing a bunch of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit MP3s, spend time in PRISON for doing so?
This linkin park?
"Oh, no. Anything but free trade."
The Free Trade Area of the Americas is about protectionism? That's worse than "fighting for peace".
"Just what we need... another reason not to fly to Europe."
You can't fly to Europe anyway: your data-collection requirements for air passengers are illegal in Europe.
"I wonder if it ever occured to Christina Hall or Mark Reiter to ask Paul Shryock how Buckeye figured these 13 home users "stole" such a massive amount"
Easy. The same way that microsoft calculates losses from piracy to be larger than the world economy -- You simply take the most expensive price you can find, and multiply it by the number of potential users.
"The FBI declines to do ANYTHING about it because it wasn't high-dollar enough to warrent investigation."
What do you expect?
(a) that the police act like policemen and protect members of the public?
(b) that the police act like stooges, and protect the revenues of local business?
Well, it appears the "we won't investigate computer crime unless it reaches $5000 of alleged damage" pretty much answers that question.
What kind of a country do you live in, where bent cops can steal your computer without evidence of guilt in any crime? "Innocent until proven guilty"?? No, Guilty until you sue the FBI for theft.
"somebody in UK, please write your queen about this"
Concerted attempts have been made to wield the clue-stick in the direction of parliament, however, they're still thick as pigshit when it comes to computers:
The bill, as it stands, would outlaw everything which causes somebody else's computer to slow down without the owner's permission. Read the bill if you think I'm exaggerating.
That means, anytime you use a computer for anything, you are to some extent a criminal if this gets passed. Again, our MPs need some computer experience, p.d.q. if they think this is a good solution to d.o.s.!
(p.s. side issue, but if a program of yours is insecure (even with GPL's disclaimed liability) and your program causes someone else's computer to slow down, or to divert any resources away from its normal functioning, you'll have broken the law if this piece of legislation gets passed. Software liability by the back door?)
"it does not spread itself around automatically"
.DOC format"
Yeah it does. When you buy windows, you start emailing files to world+dog (colleagues) as microsoft word files, so for them to work at the same office as you, they all need to install windows too.
And once your whole office is publishing IE-only websites with Powerpoint presentations on them, then anyone who wants to do business with you has to install windows too. The virus is already starting to spread.
Eventually it reaches a government department, and they make laws saying all tax-filings need to be done electronically, then write a website that only reads MS digital cerificates. Then anyone who has to pay tax (i.e. everyone except the queen) needs to install Windows.
Course it's a virus. Just because it relies on stupidity to spread doesn't mitigate anything -- loads of 'real' virii spread that way.
"Warn all your friends - you MUST delete command.com which is a virus"
"Warn all your friends - you MUST send your CV in
"This kind of recklessness by Microsoft is criminal negligence!"
I think the phrase you're looking for is "disclaimed criminal negligence, supplied without warranty, nor claims of mercahantability or suitability for any particular purpose"
If they'd been supplied in Maryland, Virginia, Alaska or Hawaii, then UCITA would have made it criminally negligent. But it wasn't, and it isn't.
The roman fire service (in ancient Rome, I mean) was funded by purchasing the burning house for a knock-down price, and then extinguising the fire thus providing a healthy profit to whoever was playing fireman. Of course, fires were so common there that the fire service wouldn't need to start their own, but there was always the suspicion...
(and now the firemen just read your email, how times have changed!)
Wait till you try compiling an embedded operating system (or any other large program) with you company's virus-scanner set to stun.
The IT guys thought how great it would be to scan every file we opened regardless that it was a library which hadn't changed in a year, or that it was a temporary compilation file, whatever. Result: a 20-second compile took 5 minutes every time.
As you say, use linux, or use a decent email program, or both.
Ah, why not continue the discussion.
"The years allocated to man are three score and ten", -- people live for about 90 years with normal statistical variation.
Copyright as you say is either 90 years since a company wrote something, or 70 years after the death of an individual author, or 50 years after the presumed death of an anonymous author.
70 years after the death seems reasonably unlimited from the point of view of the person who dies. Where will you be in 2160 when the copyright on your latest drawing expires?
And 90 years between each iteration or improvement of an artistic concept? 90 years between subsequent improvements to a piece of music, or to a dance composition? That sounds like it's trying to slow down the progress of art until it becomes static.
If you want a realistic example, look at music where every possible arrangement (of fundamental melodies) have been copyrighted, can't be used again until 2060, and modern music is bland and crap as a result. What sort of an art world is that?
"Also, this is _not_ a DOS attack."
Well, it denies you the service of your computer. And if there are other people using the same computer, it denies service to all of them as well...
And the Department of Trade and Industry will be able to ask your cellphone where you were on friday night
Reprogramming mobile phones to become illegal in the UK, currently under discussion in parliament
Fair enough, you're a hacker, most of the people here are hackers, lets do the proper thing and build it!
"Ad-hoc network assembly" as you say sounds a lot like a group of geeks with laptops and WiFi cards, rewriting the bluetooth protocol but simpler.
Then it sounds like being able to make repeater/router kits available for next to no cost (remember the 802.11 repeaters built-into cars discussion) so as to make the network spread.
It's all wery well moaning about being "denied the technology" but given that it doesn't exist yet, someone needs to build it. And who better than a quarter-million electronic engineers, linux programmers, free-speech advocates, and WiFi experts, all linked together by the borg of slashdot?
Well worth trying...
(p.s. here in the UK we don't have the right to meet in public anymore, go figure! )
Apparently it's an X bug which can crash the GIMP and others as well -- only reason mozilla's special is that you can exploit it remotely.
Ctl-Alt-Backspace if you get hit with it, and reboot your X-server. If you want a bit more protection, run XFS font server separately (rather than letting X handle fonts) then only the font server will crash.
As for "time to fix", well XFree86 has been out for a while now, so presumably it was vulnerable all along.
The "dig" is: what the hell does disney have to do with mobile communications (apart from painting cartoon characters on mobile-phone front panels) and are they trying to get "a seat on the board" to screw any future WiFi they don't like?
Remember, it doesn't have to involve DRM, it could be as simple as "tracable, logged calls" which would make access to warez sites from your phone a whole lot less convenient.
It could be as simple as pushing a centralised model when direct inter-node communications are possible, squashing possibility of an unmoniterable comminications medium.
Well worth keeping an eye on them in the long term, but probably not worthy of a quick flurry of disapproval and subsequently forgetting it.
-- sig: "This post brought to you by AolDisneyTimeWarnerMicrosoft, a wholly owned subsiduary of UkUsGovernment inc., a wholly owned subsiduary of The Corporation (TM)"
Ok, I'll take you to task for that: Imagine that the next government specify that copyright exists for a LIMITED time of 37 x 10 ^ 99 years,...
According to your logic, this is still constitutional, despite that the universe will have long since ceased to exist by the time the "limited" period of copyright expires.
Well, assuming that that's a P.O.S. (which I sincerely hope you do, else there's no point in trying to continue a logical argument) then explain how increasing copyright by 90 years in the last 100 years is any different?
You what? Do you have no clue whatsoever what copyright law represents?
Everything becomes public domain - that is the default state of ANY information. Copyright law exists to make even more stuff public-domain, simply by giving authors an incentive to write more.
Of course, current US copyright laws don't say that, but then current US copyright laws are illegal. Derive what you like from them, it'll still be wrong.
Secondly, writing something without copyright attached is not "charity" any more than owning a home and not shooting any who approach it is "charity" -- copyright is a gift by the law which an author only need take if they intend to use their monopoly on distribution by attacking others who distribute it.
Thirdly, if you think free software is about charity, I suggest you keep the hell away from free software until you understand it, rather than insulting us with your crippled opinions. People who write free software do not do so out of mercy for those who use it.
Lastly, free software does not exist to provide jobs, it does not exist to provide money, it exists to provide software. If you want a job rehashing the same shit over and over again, go ask microsoft. If you just want the software, programmed once by a handful of people, and left as-is because it already works, that's what free software does. We are not a sweat-shop, we do not exist 'to provide jobs'.
"Why is it that you have to purchase the software to read the EULA."
Same way that insurance companies won't tell you the terms and conditions until a month after their cover starts... because they're fraudulent cheating bastards.
Of course if you can't agree to the EULA, you should definitely return it to the store for a refund -- if they're selling a defective product (i.e. unusable "as sold") then they take it back, and if they don't, you report them to trading standards and get their shop closed down.
Laughing customers out of the shop is no defense.
Damn. Well noticed. Although according to microsoft, having access to the source code gives Austria enough knowledge to cause unspeakable damage to other users of windows (reference: the Ms/DoJ testimony), so I suppose this gives Austria a military advantage over any U.S. departments dim enough to use Ms/Windows software...
Interesting
"I just hope that if this law goes through, every single Labour politician gets a speeding ticket on the way home to their wife/mistresses. Somehow it's more likely to be the Conservative party that get's it though."
No, that's not the hope. Our hope is that we can successfully campaign for the entire government to be imprisoned for 10 years for having infringing copies of copyrighted images in their browser-cache.
New laws suggest that you can get a search warrant on "reasonable suspicion that the victim, err, suspect, has infringing material in their home