Yikes- you failed to mention the one site (?) that does let you upload oggs. Ampcast. Mind you, that doesn't mean you'll find them there, but you do get to upload formats other than mp3.
They are coming from a massive bureaucracy. Where else? That's how something like Microsoft works. Concepts and ideas are transmitted through memos, presentations and paperwork in general.
If they can push Shared Source on the Indian developers they can target them for later lawsuits and take them out of the game entirely, anytime they want. I think that would be the point, at least on Microsoft's side.
Right, you're a loony. If you can't comprehend a system that doesn't show linear distortion with frequency, then you're totally out to lunch as far as modern signal processing theory.
Honestly, it's as bad as talking about 'stair-steps' on PCM digital. You're making the same type of error, and roughly the same severity.
Don't you understand that DSD concentrates error increasingly into the high frequencies? Maybe this will help: my own work including some PCM noise shapers with similar error distribution characteristics to DSD.
Now, given that- being able to radically suppress noise and error at very low frequencies, like 20 or 100 hz, has a profound effect because error is either a matter of incorrect amplitude, or spurious harmonics. You can hear LOTS of harmonics of 100 hz before they go out of the range of human hearing.
Let's say for the sake of argument that DSD has 10% harmonic distortion at 16K. It doesn't, but let's pretend that it does. Are you seriously arguing that spurious information at 32K is going to completely ruin the music for you? Are you a dog, or a bat? If you're arguing about even stronger spurious information at 100K or 200K, are you a tweeter manufacturer? Except that if you were, you'd be happy- *blow* woops, build up some more tweeters for the DSD users! kaching!
Sorry man- you couldn't be wronger. Or more anonymous, but then I can understand not wanting to be associated with opinions that are just loony:)
"within a matter of months more or less all audio media worldwide are copy protected"
Bullshit!
It's one thing if these guys seize control of all broadcast media, shut out anyone smaller than say Polygram, lock out all the rack jobbers and Wal-Marts so it's flat impossible for a competing record label to get in, ever, and brainwash the people into believing they are the gatekeepers to *feh!* quality. Fine. Go ahead and do that, oops, done it already, cheers.
However the set of all audio media is not equal to the subset of all RIAA-controlled audio media.
You know, I produce audio media myself. There's the main page where I've got songs so new I don't even have a CD for them yet- also has a number of full CDs of other types of music. There's the other page which also contains numerous full CDs, this time of much more unusual and eccentric music. These are for sale, OK?
Just because the RIAA has poisoned the well so completely that people won't even fscking buy CDs from anybody, doesn't mean that these aren't commercial, for-sale, professional quality, dithered-and-mastered-from-24-bit, Red Book Compact Discs. It is THEIR fault indies are struggling (which they are). Thanks to them, people have a vague notion that it's important to never give anybody money for 'audio media', including me.
Thanks to them, they manage to set the terms and expectations for all these things, even when they have no right or jurisdiction. I mentioned the CDs I sell through Ampcast. I mentioned they're Red Book compliant. That means they are rippable, back-upable, iTunesable etc etc. Now, I also have mp3s up on the page. I used to have a lot more- and the page got so it'd take forever to load. I axed a lot of the mp3s- those songs are still on the CDs. Does that mean I want to suppress trading of the mp3s? NO, in fact on every CD I put out through Ampcast, written ON THE CD ITSELF is the message 'Please copy this CD for your friends'. And I mean it.
If I ever earn money through CDs and music, it will be because I do such good music, and conduct my business in such an enlightened way, that people WANT to support it by buying CDs of mine, and getting the cover art and stuff along with it, and knowing they contributed to my doing more music.
Thanks to the RIAA, this enlightened attitude is so UNTHINKABLE that nobody in the world would ever for a second consider it possible, so people come to one of two conclusions: (1) I am moneygrubbing slime like the RIAA, or (2) I want to work for years and blister my fingers and labor endlessly over music solely for art's sake and would be offended if anyone offered to buy a CD from me, because obviously I'd rather they download the mp3s and burn their own.
*scream*
I have to say, I am very angry with the RIAA for bringing about this state of affairs. They make a fscking mockery of anyone who wants to try and earn the occasional buck by working really hard at producing music. Music can be an all-consuming thing- some people who can do music aren't much good at anything else. I'm a lot like that in some ways. And I understand, I can accept if there's no place for it, if I can never even after decades of practice and work earn a poverty level living from making music. But GOD DAMN IT, is it necessary to poison the well so completely that nobody can even pay for their own guitar strings through selling their music? And then, to make public announcements that 'all' audio media worldwide will now be copy protected, further putting across the meme of 'there IS nothing but us' and having people eat it right up and fight over, pay attention to, only what the RIAA produces...
Now I know what being an 'unperson' feels like. And as it happens I need to go into the studio and work tonight- there's a tune I need to get on tape and get out there, based around a lyrical hook of 'this town ain't small enough for the two of you anymore', pushing the concept of third party politics. I have a killer chimey guitar hook for it. I don't have all the lyrics but one verse is going to end with comparing the Republicans and Democrats to 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee with fat and dirty faces'. I care about this stuff, I'm going for the throat and the stress of trying to produce something that can get OUT THERE and actually be heard is grating on me in a big way. It's a very tall order. Even if you know a lot of the tricks, making a hit song is damned hard work and will leave you wiped out with the ends of your fingers shredded.
And for what? I'm an unperson. I'm a serf and don't matter. The RIAA says so. And, odds are, YOU believe them without questioning it, because you're fixated on whether to, or whether not to, freely trade the stuff THEY make.
I'm a stubborn unperson- I'm going to go ahead anyway even though nothing happens and nobody notices and the RIAA will probably make uncopycontrolled media illegal next, forcing me to be not only an unperson but a criminal, and still for basically nothing.
A lot of life feels like that these days- maybe partly because I _do_ have that 'musician' gene. So rather than just despair about being made the unwilling serfs of psycho corporate Republicans, now I can pour heart and soul into music which I can then despair about its never being heard, due to years of determined work by guess who? Lord RIAA.
Maybe THAT would make for a good song- a song called Lord RIAA. Bearing in mind that it's not terribly singable like that, also to keep the length between three and four minutes (closer to three is better) and keep the hooks clear of overcomplications, and be sure to have the song title recognisable as the hook of the chorus.
Which is of course How You Do It, pity that by now it's completely a moot point because nobody will ever hear it regardless.
Gah. Kill me now:P
*stubbornly goes off to record anyway. hitting drums sometimes helps.*
What if the only security you're threatening is their political security? Do they still get to shoot you?
It's a serious question, this has happened many times. The question is whether it's to happen on US soil.
I'm inclined to agree with you about the privacy issue, provided the transparency can be made to go both ways- but even that is a problem, and once you start going 'okay, shoot me if I am a terrorist' you're on dangerous ground.
I've had the pleasure of checking out from the library both Gelernter's 'Mirror Worlds', and 'The Cult Of Information' by Theodore Roszak. The latter is a wary diatribe about high-tech bullshitters and carnival-barkers, and Gelernter is SUCH a perfect example of just what Roszak is talking about, and complete justification for Roszak's skepticism and caution:)
Re:When did politics become vital for geeks?
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It's really the 'Homeland Security' stuff that will cross the line for many people. It's like post-Columbine geek profiling writ large. It's going to become possible for the government to kick down a lot of geek doors and drag people away in chains to sit in military prisons.
It's going to be possible for these people to pull up the records of anyone who's put together the words 'Bush Sucks!', and come up with some good excuse for taking that person away in the middle of the night. And the computer geeks will be the EASIEST because computer monitoring, well- when was the last time you got interested in some person and googled the hell out of them, coming up with all kinds of stuff? The government will be doing that now, and more.
Very possibly the most striking challenge about this will be knowing that it's happening, because there will certainly be a complete media lockout- that sort of thing is already done. In the Gulf War, media was completely micromanaged to present the appearance of a wildly supportive populace.
I think it is very, very unlikely that government agents will drag off geeks and KILL them for expressing anti-Bush opinions- only in the event of serious, continuing popular uprising will they go to that extreme. Unfortunately, serious continuing popular uprising is the only hope left for a country that even vaguely resembles the one described in the Constitution and other important historical documents. The Republican voters are thoroughly in thrall to party politics, and the Republican _leaders_ and executive office are fond of dictatorship and imperial-type rule, sometimes vocally and on record.
What would REALLY suck is if they, needing scapegoats like the National Socialists needed the Jews, chose to actively go after computer geeks and 'hackers' as a form of terrorism. This is not unthinkable, and you'd better be ready for it because you're probably not ready for Homeland Security agents coming to your house in the middle of the night to take you away for questioning.
Do you or do you not have the technical facility to be able to disrupt and sabotage the (Microsoft, let's say) government servers supporting the war effort? That would make you a potential terrorist, and the best you can hope for is for your movements and loyalties to be closely monitored and controlled.
You were asking when politics became vital for geeks?
I think the whole 'people with guns coming to take you away' issue (in a limited fashion, relevant even to BSA raids and audits, which are technically not government actions, but use government firepower as support) is a good indicator...
Re:It's only media and Democrats ...
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Look, you may be right about Democrats cheating their asses off in elections. I don't know- I wasn't there. If that's so, then it serves them right that they're going down in flames.
Your people are worse.
Do you have any USEFUL suggestions, Sparky? Or are you laboring under the misapprehension that just because the Dems are scum, it's any kind of improvement to go around voting for your people who are _shameless_ scum?
Between the story on 'bad coders' in government, and other examples like Fritz Hollings the Senator From Disney (tm), it just makes you want to scream.
If you can't figure out anything better than the status quo and the eventual armed uprising and revolution, maybe you should have a nice tall glass of Shut The Hell Up.
Re:Dont get it wrong, they ARE on the run..
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You're only confused because you're standing around in a group of regular people and customers. They're running at their own customers with swords drawn. Guess the money isn't coming fast enough! This could eventually produce a PR problem for 'em independent of anything Linux does:)
Here in Vermont, the major actual three-party race was for lieutenant governor. It was Dubie (R), Shumlin (D) and Pollina (P). P is for the Progressive party, which is distinctly hard left and has some wild ideas like having a MAXIMUM wage, having people's income relate to the amount of actual work they do etc.
Final results:
Dubie 40%
Shumlin 33%
Pollina 25%
I stood around holding a Pollina/Bernie Sanders sign for a while (I made it out of two lawn cards- what, me funded?;D ). Well, our guy damn near beat the Democrat in a THREE way race. Nobody got the 50% they needed to automatically win. It'll go to the Legislature- which needs to give the nod to Dubie, who is apparently not a bad guy, he's a moderate, and he certainly did win on numbers.
We don't have many 'name' candidates- Pollina ran previously for Governor, so he ended up being the front-man. We also had a neat Attorney General candidate, Cindy Hill, though she didn't win.
40/33/25. I call that a message to the major parties. On the one hand, we can tell the Republican to act right or maybe next time we'll be that 40% number- on the other hand, we can suggest to the Democrats that for the sake of party unity they should all quit and support the Progressive candidates, because we are obviously a lot better at getting people out there working and voting:D
There's lots of other interesting stuff that happened- for instance, BECAUSE the Democrats lost control of everything (PLURALITY SUCKS! Make them stop acting like it is a goddamn wrestling match!), it turns out our dear old senator from Disney Fritz Hollings (remember HIM?) will no longer be heading the Commerce Committee. So ironically, some of the geek-hostile interests LOST power because of this.
It all warrants a lot of mulling over I think. But it's really eye-opening what the Progressives managed to do here in Vermont. The biggest irony is- suppose that Libertarian group had in fact moved to Vermont and ran a guy for Lieutenant Governor themselves- taking votes from both Democrats and Republicans, mostly Republicans, definitely NOT many Progressives?
To what extent will Microsoft now be forced to change their current, ongoing strategies of releasing information in discriminatory fashion?
I refer to licensing designed to block usage of the GPL- and more than that, the attempts through the Shared Source license to produce a population of coders with built-in vulnerability to Microsoft legal attack (the admissions of being privy to MS proprietary information, the abandoning of patent rights etc)
How much of this will they have to immediately change because it conflicts with the Judge's requirement that they not be discriminatory? It happens to be central to their strategy, and I can't believe this discrepancy will go un-noted.
You're missing my point- their privacy is shot to hell, the committee is largely a trick for holding the board members PERSONALLY responsible for compliance, and Kollar-Kotelly literally warned them against being Machiavellian and doing precisely what you say they're gonna do.
And, her court RETAINS AUTHORITY over them for five years, and can unilaterally change the judgement in any way. Repeat, unilaterally- she does not need their permission or even the request of a plaintiff to do so. Hell, she could break them up four years in, if she wished. They never left court! They're still in court, and if you don't like the judgement, well, literally any part of it could be changed to anything, at Kollar-Kotelly's whim.
If the board won't release information, that's what the State inspectors are for- and you know quite well that most of the low nasty stuff they do is quite public- if they decide IBM isn't professional enough to get info on SMB, that's not going to be a secret thing, it'll be a public move on their part- and again, the judge specifically warned them against making up reasons, and is aware of that situation and tendency.
Don't underestimate the reality that the court document can legally be changed by the judge at any time- if they sign off on that, she's got them. If you don't like it, wait until they do something with the loopholes, write to Colleen and ask her to change it.
Most loophole laden judgements are final documents. This one is a trap, if I'm not mistaken. It is begging to be abused- but any of the loopholes can be closed off with a simple court order, AND the board would be held personally responsible for abusing it, and no new court proceeding would be needed.
Two words: 'briar patch'. Oh, please don't abuse those loopholes, Mr Gates, who is now personally responsible for abiding by the judgement.
What I'm wondering is: could this lead to criminal charges against Microsoft board members? As in, Gates in federal prison? That would be a mind blower, and it is not impossible at this point. Remember he's now being held personally responsible rather than being able to hide behind the corporate veil.
They're gonna have to change those licenses- at least some of 'em. They're discriminatory. Their whole 'attack the GPL' thing just went out the window- they're not allowed to impose anti-GPL conditions any more.
That is interesting. You're right- she's leaving herself the option of changing the judgement unilaterally. Hell, she could change it to break them up, if it came to it- 'including but not limited to'? 'punishment of any violation thereof', with NO limitation on the mode of punishment in question? I hope she hasn't over-reached with this, but it looks like if they accept this, she gets Godlike power over them in the event of their misbehaving. In fact, she can issue court orders of any degree of severity, even if no plaintiff has said a word of complaint- if SHE thinks they're acting wrongly, *ZOT*.
Also note that thanks to Kollar-Kotelly, there will be watchers privy to ALL paperwork, code and information, underfoot at Microsoft poking into things- and that the Board of Directors is personally responsible for compliance and cannot plead ignorance of any further problems.
That's an interesting twist, as normally the board of a corporation is pretty insulated from responsibility for its decisions. In this case that won't work anymore. 'I don't recall' won't fly when there are State representatives around writing stuff down and looking up memos and bits of code.
In a way I hope they do react with contempt- because it seems to me that they've been given no punitive punishment, but have suffered a complete loss of privacy. I've never heard of the corporate veil being ripped aside in this way. Of course, if Microsoft are just nice guys at heart and just sit around making nice software, it wouldn't matter at all...
Wrong: the committee you mention is meaningless. The watchdogs aren't the committee. The watchdogs are State representatives, who are given license to go into Microsoft at any time, go anywhere and get access to anything. The term is 'any and all' code, memos, reports, backs of old envelopes- the representative gets to see absolutely anything.
That's the watchdog. Not the committee. The committee is a figurehead- or a directive as to how to comply, and who is to be hands-on with complying with the judgement. She's having members of the board of directors get their hands dirty with it- possibly as a set-up in case they do continue to misbehave, so they can't claim ignorance.
I think Judge Kollar-Kotelly is pretty damned smart, really. Instead of doing squat to them now, she's setting up a situation in which IF they immediately reform, they get off scot free. And if they persist in misbehaving, it can backfire on them in more ways than you could imagine. She seems to have set it up that way- perhaps in the belief that, if she had acted more directly, the appeals court would overturn her remedy too? Note how she sucks up to the appeals court.
Yes, but again: given that any representative of the plaintiff States gets to go into Microsoft at any time during normal office hours and look at anything, ANYTHING there... what the hell difference does it make if this committee is a complete joke?
What are they going to do, conduct all their business planning in mime? Switch to verbal agreements for everything? The other side has perma-access to all areas and all paperwork of every kind for the duration. I think you're underestimating the significance of the auditing powers granted to State representatives. Their powers are not limited to code printouts- they get pretty much carte blanche to check out anything written down at Microsoft, even if it's the back of an envelope. Microsoft no longer has the slightest shred of privacy, legally. Has it escaped your attention that before this, their corporate offices could be considered private property, and nobody allowed in to read what's written down there? They just lost that, any State rep or any number of State reps can go read absolutely anything they want.
The board can go right ahead and be dishonorable and business as usual. It'll show up in memos and instructions and briefings and the inspectors will find it. They can go ahead and claim that everything is a 'security' issue. The inspectors can find the memos saying 'better lie about this being a security issue', and they can look over any and all of the code that is being withheld on the grounds of it being a security issue. I don't see anything about swearing the inspectors to secrecy and making them take NDAs. They're straight-up third parties who get to go in and look at anything they want- any and ALL things they want.
I don't buy your argument. The fact that there's a committee of Microsoft board members means precisely squat. They have no power to obstruct or conceal anything, because they aren't the ones in charge of the auditing. They are theoretically the ones in charge of Microsoft voluntarily playing nice. Since this is never gonna happen what difference does it make who gets that job description?
Yes, it nicely counterbalances the 'committee' which is now made up entirely of Microsoft board members. The committee that was supposed to monitor MS is turned into a total mockery and joke- but at the same time ANY representative of the plaintiff States- note, no limit in terms of numbers, no qualification other than being an official representative of the state!- can go in to Microsoft and audit ANY AND ALL of ANYTHING. Code, memos, post-it notes, you name it!
The committee (of Microsoft board members) is meaningless because the states have complete license to go anywhere and audit anything.
What the states need to do is deputize a freaking army of inspectors and send them en masse to inspect everything. Read every line of code, have Microsoft turn over every post-it note. Given enough manpower, you could have the states come up with an inspector to sit by every Microsoft employee, two by Gates, and three ON Ballmer, to make sure they don't get up to any funny stuff! Okay, sitting ON Ballmer would probably not be allowed- but as long as it's within normal office hours, I see no reason there couldn't be a state inspector there to read every word His Billness writes, as he writes it. And that would be a lovely revenge. "Hi! We'll just watch you being as honest and trustworthy as your lying ass has always claimed to be. Don't mind us!"
IBM or some similar Microsoft-hostile company may be able to get the APIs and develop OPEN SOURCE interoperability stuff. It depends on whether people can reverse-engineer it, and whether Microsoft is supposed to be allowed to say 'okay, anybody even thinking about connecting to our software has to pay us X amount of money'.
They are specifically not being allowed to say 'okay, you can get our APIs, on the condition that you never develop any open source/Free software that uses them'. And they've shown great interest in just such restrictions in the past.
As someone in the Free Software camp, I have to say that this appears to have loads of loopholes in OUR favor. It requires friends in high places, maybe- support from IBM, Sun, some big company who can afford to buy access- but Microsoft is being restricted in what terms they can impose on licensees. It's all or nothing- they can refuse to disclose anything in defiance of the parts of the judgement that say 'Microsoft SHALL disclose...' but they can't place conditions on the disclosure, the one thing they most wish to do.
Come to think of it, this may totally screw their 'Shared Source' license. It may now be in noncompliance of the judgement, due to its discriminatory language. Actually if I'm not mistaken they've been doing a LOT of stuff with discriminatory language, targeting the GPL particularly... all that is now in noncompliance...
That interpretation of the judgement would be inconsistent with other parts of the judgement saying that Microsoft 'SHALL' disclose its APIs for, specifically, interoperability stuff.
Possibly this is a 'well fine, we'll get IBM to ask for it and THEY can GPL their results'. After all, the judgement very specifically prohibits Microsoft imposing discriminatory terms on this API disclosing. They are not allowed to require that people privy to the information be forbidden from doing open source work.
And currently, they're trying like hell to do exactly that- twist their source release so that GPL-type licenses are discriminated against. They just got a serious obstacle to that plan, whether or not you think it important. They're not allowed to intentionally discriminate against free and OSS work- and there are huge companies, like IBM, who participate in that sort of work.
It's a matter of getting one of the big OSS-friendly companies to do the heavy lifting. Hell, ask some outfit like Oracle or Sun who absolutely hate Microsoft to do it. Some of those guys would delight in turning over Microsoft APIs to the Free Software world, specifically because Gates would hate it and it would make him crazy.
Given that other people can go in at any time during office hours and audit them at will... is this not a token committee? What do you think they would be doing that could not be uncovered by simple auditing of a third party?
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Yikes- you failed to mention the one site (?) that does let you upload oggs. Ampcast. Mind you, that doesn't mean you'll find them there, but you do get to upload formats other than mp3.
They are coming from a massive bureaucracy. Where else? That's how something like Microsoft works. Concepts and ideas are transmitted through memos, presentations and paperwork in general.
If they can push Shared Source on the Indian developers they can target them for later lawsuits and take them out of the game entirely, anytime they want. I think that would be the point, at least on Microsoft's side.
Honestly, it's as bad as talking about 'stair-steps' on PCM digital. You're making the same type of error, and roughly the same severity.
Don't you understand that DSD concentrates error increasingly into the high frequencies? Maybe this will help: my own work including some PCM noise shapers with similar error distribution characteristics to DSD.
Now, given that- being able to radically suppress noise and error at very low frequencies, like 20 or 100 hz, has a profound effect because error is either a matter of incorrect amplitude, or spurious harmonics. You can hear LOTS of harmonics of 100 hz before they go out of the range of human hearing.
Let's say for the sake of argument that DSD has 10% harmonic distortion at 16K. It doesn't, but let's pretend that it does. Are you seriously arguing that spurious information at 32K is going to completely ruin the music for you? Are you a dog, or a bat? If you're arguing about even stronger spurious information at 100K or 200K, are you a tweeter manufacturer? Except that if you were, you'd be happy- *blow* woops, build up some more tweeters for the DSD users! kaching!
Sorry man- you couldn't be wronger. Or more anonymous, but then I can understand not wanting to be associated with opinions that are just loony :)
Bullshit!
It's one thing if these guys seize control of all broadcast media, shut out anyone smaller than say Polygram, lock out all the rack jobbers and Wal-Marts so it's flat impossible for a competing record label to get in, ever, and brainwash the people into believing they are the gatekeepers to *feh!* quality. Fine. Go ahead and do that, oops, done it already, cheers.
However the set of all audio media is not equal to the subset of all RIAA-controlled audio media.
You know, I produce audio media myself. There's the main page where I've got songs so new I don't even have a CD for them yet- also has a number of full CDs of other types of music. There's the other page which also contains numerous full CDs, this time of much more unusual and eccentric music. These are for sale, OK?
Just because the RIAA has poisoned the well so completely that people won't even fscking buy CDs from anybody, doesn't mean that these aren't commercial, for-sale, professional quality, dithered-and-mastered-from-24-bit, Red Book Compact Discs. It is THEIR fault indies are struggling (which they are). Thanks to them, people have a vague notion that it's important to never give anybody money for 'audio media', including me.
Thanks to them, they manage to set the terms and expectations for all these things, even when they have no right or jurisdiction. I mentioned the CDs I sell through Ampcast. I mentioned they're Red Book compliant. That means they are rippable, back-upable, iTunesable etc etc. Now, I also have mp3s up on the page. I used to have a lot more- and the page got so it'd take forever to load. I axed a lot of the mp3s- those songs are still on the CDs. Does that mean I want to suppress trading of the mp3s? NO, in fact on every CD I put out through Ampcast, written ON THE CD ITSELF is the message 'Please copy this CD for your friends'. And I mean it.
If I ever earn money through CDs and music, it will be because I do such good music, and conduct my business in such an enlightened way, that people WANT to support it by buying CDs of mine, and getting the cover art and stuff along with it, and knowing they contributed to my doing more music.
Thanks to the RIAA, this enlightened attitude is so UNTHINKABLE that nobody in the world would ever for a second consider it possible, so people come to one of two conclusions: (1) I am moneygrubbing slime like the RIAA, or (2) I want to work for years and blister my fingers and labor endlessly over music solely for art's sake and would be offended if anyone offered to buy a CD from me, because obviously I'd rather they download the mp3s and burn their own.
*scream*
I have to say, I am very angry with the RIAA for bringing about this state of affairs. They make a fscking mockery of anyone who wants to try and earn the occasional buck by working really hard at producing music. Music can be an all-consuming thing- some people who can do music aren't much good at anything else. I'm a lot like that in some ways. And I understand, I can accept if there's no place for it, if I can never even after decades of practice and work earn a poverty level living from making music. But GOD DAMN IT, is it necessary to poison the well so completely that nobody can even pay for their own guitar strings through selling their music? And then, to make public announcements that 'all' audio media worldwide will now be copy protected, further putting across the meme of 'there IS nothing but us' and having people eat it right up and fight over, pay attention to, only what the RIAA produces...
Now I know what being an 'unperson' feels like. And as it happens I need to go into the studio and work tonight- there's a tune I need to get on tape and get out there, based around a lyrical hook of 'this town ain't small enough for the two of you anymore', pushing the concept of third party politics. I have a killer chimey guitar hook for it. I don't have all the lyrics but one verse is going to end with comparing the Republicans and Democrats to 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee with fat and dirty faces'. I care about this stuff, I'm going for the throat and the stress of trying to produce something that can get OUT THERE and actually be heard is grating on me in a big way. It's a very tall order. Even if you know a lot of the tricks, making a hit song is damned hard work and will leave you wiped out with the ends of your fingers shredded.
And for what? I'm an unperson. I'm a serf and don't matter. The RIAA says so. And, odds are, YOU believe them without questioning it, because you're fixated on whether to, or whether not to, freely trade the stuff THEY make.
I'm a stubborn unperson- I'm going to go ahead anyway even though nothing happens and nobody notices and the RIAA will probably make uncopycontrolled media illegal next, forcing me to be not only an unperson but a criminal, and still for basically nothing.
A lot of life feels like that these days- maybe partly because I _do_ have that 'musician' gene. So rather than just despair about being made the unwilling serfs of psycho corporate Republicans, now I can pour heart and soul into music which I can then despair about its never being heard, due to years of determined work by guess who? Lord RIAA.
Maybe THAT would make for a good song- a song called Lord RIAA. Bearing in mind that it's not terribly singable like that, also to keep the length between three and four minutes (closer to three is better) and keep the hooks clear of overcomplications, and be sure to have the song title recognisable as the hook of the chorus.
Which is of course How You Do It, pity that by now it's completely a moot point because nobody will ever hear it regardless.
Gah. Kill me now :P
*stubbornly goes off to record anyway. hitting drums sometimes helps.*
It's a serious question, this has happened many times. The question is whether it's to happen on US soil.
I'm inclined to agree with you about the privacy issue, provided the transparency can be made to go both ways- but even that is a problem, and once you start going 'okay, shoot me if I am a terrorist' you're on dangerous ground.
Microsoft is WAY too smart to hire this joker :)
I've had the pleasure of checking out from the library both Gelernter's 'Mirror Worlds', and 'The Cult Of Information' by Theodore Roszak. The latter is a wary diatribe about high-tech bullshitters and carnival-barkers, and Gelernter is SUCH a perfect example of just what Roszak is talking about, and complete justification for Roszak's skepticism and caution :)
It's going to be possible for these people to pull up the records of anyone who's put together the words 'Bush Sucks!', and come up with some good excuse for taking that person away in the middle of the night. And the computer geeks will be the EASIEST because computer monitoring, well- when was the last time you got interested in some person and googled the hell out of them, coming up with all kinds of stuff? The government will be doing that now, and more.
Very possibly the most striking challenge about this will be knowing that it's happening, because there will certainly be a complete media lockout- that sort of thing is already done. In the Gulf War, media was completely micromanaged to present the appearance of a wildly supportive populace.
I think it is very, very unlikely that government agents will drag off geeks and KILL them for expressing anti-Bush opinions- only in the event of serious, continuing popular uprising will they go to that extreme. Unfortunately, serious continuing popular uprising is the only hope left for a country that even vaguely resembles the one described in the Constitution and other important historical documents. The Republican voters are thoroughly in thrall to party politics, and the Republican _leaders_ and executive office are fond of dictatorship and imperial-type rule, sometimes vocally and on record.
What would REALLY suck is if they, needing scapegoats like the National Socialists needed the Jews, chose to actively go after computer geeks and 'hackers' as a form of terrorism. This is not unthinkable, and you'd better be ready for it because you're probably not ready for Homeland Security agents coming to your house in the middle of the night to take you away for questioning.
Do you or do you not have the technical facility to be able to disrupt and sabotage the (Microsoft, let's say) government servers supporting the war effort? That would make you a potential terrorist, and the best you can hope for is for your movements and loyalties to be closely monitored and controlled.
You were asking when politics became vital for geeks?
I think the whole 'people with guns coming to take you away' issue (in a limited fashion, relevant even to BSA raids and audits, which are technically not government actions, but use government firepower as support) is a good indicator...
Your people are worse.
Do you have any USEFUL suggestions, Sparky? Or are you laboring under the misapprehension that just because the Dems are scum, it's any kind of improvement to go around voting for your people who are _shameless_ scum?
Between the story on 'bad coders' in government, and other examples like Fritz Hollings the Senator From Disney (tm), it just makes you want to scream.
If you can't figure out anything better than the status quo and the eventual armed uprising and revolution, maybe you should have a nice tall glass of Shut The Hell Up.
You're only confused because you're standing around in a group of regular people and customers. They're running at their own customers with swords drawn. Guess the money isn't coming fast enough! This could eventually produce a PR problem for 'em independent of anything Linux does :)
We don't have many 'name' candidates- Pollina ran previously for Governor, so he ended up being the front-man. We also had a neat Attorney General candidate, Cindy Hill, though she didn't win.
40/33/25. I call that a message to the major parties. On the one hand, we can tell the Republican to act right or maybe next time we'll be that 40% number- on the other hand, we can suggest to the Democrats that for the sake of party unity they should all quit and support the Progressive candidates, because we are obviously a lot better at getting people out there working and voting :D
There's lots of other interesting stuff that happened- for instance, BECAUSE the Democrats lost control of everything (PLURALITY SUCKS! Make them stop acting like it is a goddamn wrestling match!), it turns out our dear old senator from Disney Fritz Hollings (remember HIM?) will no longer be heading the Commerce Committee. So ironically, some of the geek-hostile interests LOST power because of this.
It all warrants a lot of mulling over I think. But it's really eye-opening what the Progressives managed to do here in Vermont. The biggest irony is- suppose that Libertarian group had in fact moved to Vermont and ran a guy for Lieutenant Governor themselves- taking votes from both Democrats and Republicans, mostly Republicans, definitely NOT many Progressives?
Our guy might have WON.
Politics is weird! :D
I refer to licensing designed to block usage of the GPL- and more than that, the attempts through the Shared Source license to produce a population of coders with built-in vulnerability to Microsoft legal attack (the admissions of being privy to MS proprietary information, the abandoning of patent rights etc)
How much of this will they have to immediately change because it conflicts with the Judge's requirement that they not be discriminatory? It happens to be central to their strategy, and I can't believe this discrepancy will go un-noted.
And, her court RETAINS AUTHORITY over them for five years, and can unilaterally change the judgement in any way. Repeat, unilaterally- she does not need their permission or even the request of a plaintiff to do so. Hell, she could break them up four years in, if she wished. They never left court! They're still in court, and if you don't like the judgement, well, literally any part of it could be changed to anything, at Kollar-Kotelly's whim.
If the board won't release information, that's what the State inspectors are for- and you know quite well that most of the low nasty stuff they do is quite public- if they decide IBM isn't professional enough to get info on SMB, that's not going to be a secret thing, it'll be a public move on their part- and again, the judge specifically warned them against making up reasons, and is aware of that situation and tendency.
Don't underestimate the reality that the court document can legally be changed by the judge at any time- if they sign off on that, she's got them. If you don't like it, wait until they do something with the loopholes, write to Colleen and ask her to change it.
Most loophole laden judgements are final documents. This one is a trap, if I'm not mistaken. It is begging to be abused- but any of the loopholes can be closed off with a simple court order, AND the board would be held personally responsible for abusing it, and no new court proceeding would be needed.
Two words: 'briar patch'. Oh, please don't abuse those loopholes, Mr Gates, who is now personally responsible for abiding by the judgement.
What I'm wondering is: could this lead to criminal charges against Microsoft board members? As in, Gates in federal prison? That would be a mind blower, and it is not impossible at this point. Remember he's now being held personally responsible rather than being able to hide behind the corporate veil.
They're gonna have to change those licenses- at least some of 'em. They're discriminatory. Their whole 'attack the GPL' thing just went out the window- they're not allowed to impose anti-GPL conditions any more.
Very interesting.
That's an interesting twist, as normally the board of a corporation is pretty insulated from responsibility for its decisions. In this case that won't work anymore. 'I don't recall' won't fly when there are State representatives around writing stuff down and looking up memos and bits of code.
In a way I hope they do react with contempt- because it seems to me that they've been given no punitive punishment, but have suffered a complete loss of privacy. I've never heard of the corporate veil being ripped aside in this way. Of course, if Microsoft are just nice guys at heart and just sit around making nice software, it wouldn't matter at all...
Sit down, Bill. And quit playing pocket-pool ;)
That's the watchdog. Not the committee. The committee is a figurehead- or a directive as to how to comply, and who is to be hands-on with complying with the judgement. She's having members of the board of directors get their hands dirty with it- possibly as a set-up in case they do continue to misbehave, so they can't claim ignorance.
I think Judge Kollar-Kotelly is pretty damned smart, really. Instead of doing squat to them now, she's setting up a situation in which IF they immediately reform, they get off scot free. And if they persist in misbehaving, it can backfire on them in more ways than you could imagine. She seems to have set it up that way- perhaps in the belief that, if she had acted more directly, the appeals court would overturn her remedy too? Note how she sucks up to the appeals court.
What are they going to do, conduct all their business planning in mime? Switch to verbal agreements for everything? The other side has perma-access to all areas and all paperwork of every kind for the duration. I think you're underestimating the significance of the auditing powers granted to State representatives. Their powers are not limited to code printouts- they get pretty much carte blanche to check out anything written down at Microsoft, even if it's the back of an envelope. Microsoft no longer has the slightest shred of privacy, legally. Has it escaped your attention that before this, their corporate offices could be considered private property, and nobody allowed in to read what's written down there? They just lost that, any State rep or any number of State reps can go read absolutely anything they want.
The board can go right ahead and be dishonorable and business as usual. It'll show up in memos and instructions and briefings and the inspectors will find it. They can go ahead and claim that everything is a 'security' issue. The inspectors can find the memos saying 'better lie about this being a security issue', and they can look over any and all of the code that is being withheld on the grounds of it being a security issue. I don't see anything about swearing the inspectors to secrecy and making them take NDAs. They're straight-up third parties who get to go in and look at anything they want- any and ALL things they want.
I don't buy your argument. The fact that there's a committee of Microsoft board members means precisely squat. They have no power to obstruct or conceal anything, because they aren't the ones in charge of the auditing. They are theoretically the ones in charge of Microsoft voluntarily playing nice. Since this is never gonna happen what difference does it make who gets that job description?
(yes, I do think that was blatant currying favor from the appellate court, and nicely done too)
The committee (of Microsoft board members) is meaningless because the states have complete license to go anywhere and audit anything.
What the states need to do is deputize a freaking army of inspectors and send them en masse to inspect everything. Read every line of code, have Microsoft turn over every post-it note. Given enough manpower, you could have the states come up with an inspector to sit by every Microsoft employee, two by Gates, and three ON Ballmer, to make sure they don't get up to any funny stuff! Okay, sitting ON Ballmer would probably not be allowed- but as long as it's within normal office hours, I see no reason there couldn't be a state inspector there to read every word His Billness writes, as he writes it. And that would be a lovely revenge. "Hi! We'll just watch you being as honest and trustworthy as your lying ass has always claimed to be. Don't mind us!"
They are specifically not being allowed to say 'okay, you can get our APIs, on the condition that you never develop any open source/Free software that uses them'. And they've shown great interest in just such restrictions in the past.
As someone in the Free Software camp, I have to say that this appears to have loads of loopholes in OUR favor. It requires friends in high places, maybe- support from IBM, Sun, some big company who can afford to buy access- but Microsoft is being restricted in what terms they can impose on licensees. It's all or nothing- they can refuse to disclose anything in defiance of the parts of the judgement that say 'Microsoft SHALL disclose...' but they can't place conditions on the disclosure, the one thing they most wish to do.
Come to think of it, this may totally screw their 'Shared Source' license. It may now be in noncompliance of the judgement, due to its discriminatory language. Actually if I'm not mistaken they've been doing a LOT of stuff with discriminatory language, targeting the GPL particularly... all that is now in noncompliance...
Possibly this is a 'well fine, we'll get IBM to ask for it and THEY can GPL their results'. After all, the judgement very specifically prohibits Microsoft imposing discriminatory terms on this API disclosing. They are not allowed to require that people privy to the information be forbidden from doing open source work.
And currently, they're trying like hell to do exactly that- twist their source release so that GPL-type licenses are discriminated against. They just got a serious obstacle to that plan, whether or not you think it important. They're not allowed to intentionally discriminate against free and OSS work- and there are huge companies, like IBM, who participate in that sort of work.
It's a matter of getting one of the big OSS-friendly companies to do the heavy lifting. Hell, ask some outfit like Oracle or Sun who absolutely hate Microsoft to do it. Some of those guys would delight in turning over Microsoft APIs to the Free Software world, specifically because Gates would hate it and it would make him crazy.
Kollar-Kotelly may even have foreseen this.
Given that other people can go in at any time during office hours and audit them at will... is this not a token committee? What do you think they would be doing that could not be uncovered by simple auditing of a third party?