Main Entry: integer
Pronunciation: 'in-ti-j&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, adjective, whole, entire -- more at ENTIRE
Date: 1571
1 : any of the natural numbers, the negatives of these numbers, or zero.
Seems you will go to any lengths to try and prove that a pile of bits contain more information than a continous audio signal.
It;s really simple. Vinyl is capable of making more waves of pressure move through the air. These little waves cause objects (including your ear) to resonate.
They also interfere with lower frequency waves of air. Integers like 2 do not interfere with intergers like 4. A 2hz wave WILL interfere with a 4hz wave. The number 2 does not have amplitude or phase, a wave of air does, albiet reletive to the observer or another wave.
As much as I'd like to regress into relearning wave theory again this will be my last post on the subject. I will give you the honor of having the last word.
I will also go back to my books about harmonics since you have managed to cast the shadow of doubt in my mind. I'll have to re-read the bit about multiplying a positive number by 0 NOT making the number smaller. This of course has nothing to do with little waves of air.
Sorry, harmonics go up, not down. You can claim that the higher frequencies "somehow" add in to the experience and make for better listening, but you can't use fake science or math to back it up.
Harmonic frequency: "Any acoustic frequency that is an integral multiple of the fundamental frequency". "Any" would include lower as well as higher frequencies all which are harmonics of the the fundamental frequency even if they were not produced by it. If they were produced by the high frequency they would be vanishingly small.
BTW any scientific theory that is not falsifiable is not real science. This is why psychoanalysis is not a science.
I buy at least as much vinyl as I do CDs. I used Baudline to tune the setup before creating a digital representation of the music on my hard disk in the form of an OGG file.
I have a number of artists; old and new on heavy vinyl. Stunning.
Try this interesting experiment. Play a CD and a vinyl record of the exact same track into Baudline's spectrum analyzer and notice the average DB across the high frequencies. Doing so with Fugazi's "End Hits" album showed me that the CD cuts off above 16Khz while the vinyl continues to reproduce the signal up to 20khz.
Most people can't hear above 16Khz but such signals create harmonics that extent down into the audible range.
"People are stupid and dangerous, stay away from them as much as possible." --Henry Rollins.
"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" --Yogi Berra.
People who use the Internet all day long and even take an Internet device with them to the nearest coffee shop are:
People who love to meet other people face to face.
People who like to keep the Internet as a buffer of selectivity and anonymity.
Two different crowds.
I don't know personally any of you slashdot people and I'm perfectly fine with that. If fact I like it that way. It's like voting, you get to voice your opinion without giving away your identity.
When I walk outside I rarely ever get excited or even mildly interested in the fact that numerous other people are in my vicinity. In fact the trend in highly populated cities is to ignore your neighbors.
I think that it was Cliff Stoll who said that computers make us disconnect from our neighbors and families. This software facilitates a society where everyone knows each other without actually having met.
I can imagine a cafe with several people chatting, only every one of them is looking into his/her computer screen utterly oblivious that they are chatting with the person beside them.
"Software for shy people - We make you new friends... so YOU don't have to!"
Rant over and out. I have to answer someone on IRC...
I've just been granted a patent on reading between the lines. Everyone must now take every Slashdot article and posting at their literal value only. Failing to do so may incur patent suits.
Also it is forbidden to try and find hidden meanings and sarcasm in this post as doing so would clearly infringe on said patent.
Note that creating a mechanism that circumvents the above is a clear breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
I'm talking about reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material. That does not cost on the Net what it costs in the material world.
You are talking about royalty checks. If you think that royalties are inclusive in redistribution then you looking at royalties in a simplistic way. No matter how much royalties EMI pays for redistribution that sum is neglegent compared to what they gross. Since when is it news that artists get %1 of the revenue their music generates (if they are the lucky few that recap anything at all)?
Bandwidth? We are talking about EMI here not slashdot. These are companies that buy actuall real world shelf space in Virgin Megastores. If they smell money they will buy entire server farms without batting an eye.
From the article: "...giving them access to most songs on today's top-selling charts.". "them" being the consumers.
I could not care less about the top-selling quote artists unquote. I want EMI's back catalog. Unlike the material world the Internet does not entail the costs of reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material.
I will not get exited and more importantly I will not open my wallet until I see that the record labels are making an effort. There are ways to make music better through Internet distribution. As long as I sense that the music labels take care of numero uno first, so will I!
How can music be better? I'm glad you asked.
Small artists can get published for free through major labels and the second they catch on they can start selling. It sure beats touring like Black Flag did. The overhead of publishing a number of small new bands with a couple of songs each on an EMI server farm will be negligible.
If the user has bandwidth to spare uber-high fidelity downloads should be an option. We are not limited to CD quality on the net. High paying consumers can have custom stereo/mono/bitrate/hz files generated from the masters real time. These custom packages can be downloaded or burnt onto DVD and mailed. Will this allow you to get a perfect master and facilitate piracy? No more than high fidelity vinyl. 99.9% of the people that spend big bucks buying a custom remastered 60GB version of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" will not be disposed to spread it around until the technology allows them to.
To reiterate, I want back catalogs and so do most serious music lovers. I cannot imagine people buying rare Hendrix, King Crimson and Brittney Spears in one group.
Maybe "chart toppers" should be printed on disposable CDs? The music will be irrelevant in weeks anyway so why print them on the same material that you print real music?
I just had to put that in because I'll always remember putting the FPU chip on said machine and then running AutoCAD for the first time on my new Amber Hercules display.
SNIFF, SNIFF (dabs at eyes with hanky) now look what you did... I'm all sentimental.
"With broadband, they were concerned with trying to push the idea with their own IT dept..."
I cannot follow the logic behind the IT department issue. My company does not deal primarily over the Internet and yet we have tens of different services running software in and out of corporate ports. We have Citrix and different VPNs running all the time. We have people dialing into their accounts from abroad 24 hours a day. Almost all the routers and hubs accept remote administration. Where do you think the vast and overwhelming majority of security issues lie? Emails of course! While one hacker is trying to jump through the corporate firewall through an open port two scores of infected Emails are being opened by the end users. Every user clicks away at javascripts and VM apps without discretion every day and the IT department is usually working hard just keeping everyones global time synced in MS Outlook for meeting and conference calls.
How many break ins through SSH? Asymptotic to zero I presume, barring stupid passwords and their ilk. I really don't have the numbers so please take that as my opinion only.
I remain unconvinced that a modern sizable company is afraid of having a port open. How do they deal with the rest of the gamut and why should this service be any different? Never heard of the concept behind "unpriveledged account"? People read off their Web servers every day using one. It probably boils down to being afraid of the wording "remote administration". If it were dressed up as a Fancy GUI with a name like "your screen away from home V7.0 professional" they would probably feel allot better (at least thats what happens in our company).
The possible uses for more computing power was explored recently in an article here. The article I am referring to is Paul Graham's "The Hundred Year Language" and should chill the "my 4.77MHZ XT with a 8087 FPU is all I'll ever need!" crowd a couple of degrees.
We have a misunderstanding. For the geek "broken" means one thing and for the would be live support client it would mean something else completely. When my father's computer needs fixing it means that he has an rpm dependency problem, wants Sorenson for his Xine or wants new fonts copied into the right directory. These things are very simple to a geek and would not be classified as a fault or instability.
The end user usually can not and should not have to deal with these issues. The automation of these simple tasks usually creates more trouble by introducing a vastly more complex layer of GUI above simple software that really works.
and I thought the beauty of Linux was that it _didn't_ need weekly fixen because the registry got messed up.
The registry really doesn't get messed up but from my father's viewpoint there is no noticeable difference. How can he tell the difference between the registry messing up the sound and Redhat not including mp3 support (real example). He simply noticed that the sound was not working and therefore for all intents and purposes "broken". It took me 5 minutes with SSH and Lynx to download and install it for him one night.
This distinction is crucial. The very fact that you mix the two levels of proficiency mirrors the corporate stance. The would be company will be free from fixing really broken (geek level broken) machines and will deal with fonts, installation of newer software and such. It's Linux's reliability that makes such an enterprise plausible. When I log into my dad's machine I'm never looking for kernel errors and the uptime is usually measure of time between power failures.
My father runs Linux at home and is as happy as can be. The only reason this situation exists is that I SSH into his machine every week and build/fix/configure/backup whatever is wrong or out of date.
I'm happy he runs Linux. He's happy that his box magically updates without him every seeing or doing anything. This is the kind of hands off tech support I like to get from my plumber, mechanic and company IT department. Why shouldn't the end user enjoy this model as well? I could theoretically fix and update a dozen Linux boxes per day through SSH. A room full of geeks could take care of hundreds a day.
Anyone can run Linux if they have a dedicated geek or live support contract. Currently the clueless have only geeks to turn to. With a company that does everything (I repeat: everything) through live support there can be a Linux box anywhere anytime.
Companies are not leveraging Linux's remote access abilities for the end users. This gives the user a perfect box an a constant stream of cash for the support company. Most will not care if you log into a part of their system and do a weekly fix/backup/upgrade as long as you present it in the right way. The privacy concern is no greater than giving your box to a computer shop for a couple of day.
I doubt that any given mob of customers can be more difficult and demanding than my dad, but I guess we all feel like that sometimes.
The above model is actually taking place right now. How many of you log into another Linux box and fix it every week? All I'm suggesting is to put a bunch of us in the same room while we do it and place a company logo outside the door.
The above idea has some obvious problems with it but I'd like to think that what we all do for our families family could possibly scale.
My paranoid mind is imagining that I'm the only human on/. and that all the other posts are automatically generated by Slashcode. Fortunately for me some of the trolls are too imaginative to have been produced by a machine.
Then you won't mind if mandatory searches are done in your house every month by a group of government appointed "concerned citizens".
Neither should you mind if your next workplace will be able to access genetic, political and sexual histories in order to better profile you. Why would they waste time on someone less than perfect? Why should they believe you if they can check you up using a hypothetical Information Transparency Act?
Your insurance company would like to know how you spend your holidays, how you eat and how fast you drive.
Have you ever wanted to have a personal conversation with someone? If you close the door while you have a heart to heart with someone, would you mind if I walked in and recorded you? After telling me to mind my own business I'll just say "hey man, you should just chill out".
I think that you could easily replace every occurrence of the word "programmer" in the article with the job title of almost anyone who works in a non-preparadigimatic field. Spending money on the individualities of your workers may be applicable in certain situations and outright wrong in others. The army is a good example of an environment where individuals dress, act and perform in a bland, stringent and uniform manner and yet are highly productive (in their specified field).
I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".
Those people who are technologically adept will have realized most of the article's points beforehand. I must admit that I haven't managed to formalize the arguments as well as the article's authors have.
I would like to have leaflets containing the gist of the text to hand out with every ISP account opened. The leaflet should read in bold: "please read and grok before attempting to connect to your new account".
As for being a "stupid network of ends", I bet that the neurons in my brain can be called that too...
...but not to my face.
Oohhh, look at all the pretty colors
on
Inside the Tuna Can
·
· Score: 4, Funny
From MIT's IQuarium FAQ:
"...Having a combined virtual lab on the Infinite Corridor has these advantages:
- Because it is large, colorful, inviting, and fun, it will excite people and attract attention..."
I can see it now; A professor stands in front of the class and begins his lecture:
"Modern science doesn't have to be all boring numbers, bridges and wires. Today we will learn how to make FUN and EXCITING stuff. Be sure to make it COLORFUL and LARGE otherwise investors will take their money else ware!"
What's next, rides? "I'm sorry Timmy, you have to be This High to ride the particle accelerator."
Software Quote Piracy Unquote is an interesting subject. There is no such thing. When I perform a copy I must obey the set of rules that govern copying. Copyright law is a set of rules that govern copying, but you already know that, or do you? Everyone keeps talking about this Quote Piracy Unquote thing that doesn't even exist.
If anything at all I might be breaking a certain part of copyright law under certain conditions. The courts are there to decide if this is illegal. The law includes allot more than "pirated" and "unpirated".
I'll give some examples of similar terms: Zealots, Trusted, Rights Management, Western and Intelligent. They are all over-simplified cop-outs that help us avoid the real issues and replace them with sensationalized crap.
When you use a single word to describe an entire complex system of rules and the manner in which they are sometimes interpreted someone loses and someone else wins. Using "piracy" is alike to carrying a slogan. I'm not saying that you should or should not. Just try to realize who's dictionary does it come from, and to what end is it used.
I've never committed Quote Piracy Unquote. All I've done is work within the system of copyright rules to the best of my knowledge and with my own best intention in mind.
Avoidance of this term will in my humble opinion force people to try and rethink the subject.
Nothing has changed in the minds of our administrators and generals. They have always done this in the past. What has changed is that they need not apologize anymore. They can cut corners and costs. The information that they once had to collect covertly is now available on demand. So now that they demand information publicly, what new depths of covert intelligence is being collected? If this is what they get willingly, what are they taking under cover?
Slashdot Mirror
Main Entry: integer Pronunciation: 'in-ti-j&r Function: noun Etymology: Latin, adjective, whole, entire -- more at ENTIRE Date: 1571 1 : any of the natural numbers, the negatives of these numbers, or zero.
Seems you will go to any lengths to try and prove that a pile of bits contain more information than a continous audio signal.
It;s really simple. Vinyl is capable of making more waves of pressure move through the air. These little waves cause objects (including your ear) to resonate.
They also interfere with lower frequency waves of air. Integers like 2 do not interfere with intergers like 4. A 2hz wave WILL interfere with a 4hz wave. The number 2 does not have amplitude or phase, a wave of air does, albiet reletive to the observer or another wave.
As much as I'd like to regress into relearning wave theory again this will be my last post on the subject. I will give you the honor of having the last word.
I will also go back to my books about harmonics since you have managed to cast the shadow of doubt in my mind. I'll have to re-read the bit about multiplying a positive number by 0 NOT making the number smaller. This of course has nothing to do with little waves of air.
Harmonic frequency: "Any acoustic frequency that is an integral multiple of the fundamental frequency". "Any" would include lower as well as higher frequencies all which are harmonics of the the fundamental frequency even if they were not produced by it. If they were produced by the high frequency they would be vanishingly small.
BTW any scientific theory that is not falsifiable is not real science. This is why psychoanalysis is not a science.
I buy at least as much vinyl as I do CDs. I used Baudline to tune the setup before creating a digital representation of the music on my hard disk in the form of an OGG file.
I have a number of artists; old and new on heavy vinyl. Stunning.
Try this interesting experiment. Play a CD and a vinyl record of the exact same track into Baudline's spectrum analyzer and notice the average DB across the high frequencies. Doing so with Fugazi's "End Hits" album showed me that the CD cuts off above 16Khz while the vinyl continues to reproduce the signal up to 20khz.
Most people can't hear above 16Khz but such signals create harmonics that extent down into the audible range.
"People are stupid and dangerous, stay away from them as much as possible." --Henry Rollins.
"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" --Yogi Berra.
People who use the Internet all day long and even take an Internet device with them to the nearest coffee shop are:
Two different crowds.
I don't know personally any of you slashdot people and I'm perfectly fine with that. If fact I like it that way. It's like voting, you get to voice your opinion without giving away your identity.
When I walk outside I rarely ever get excited or even mildly interested in the fact that numerous other people are in my vicinity. In fact the trend in highly populated cities is to ignore your neighbors.
I think that it was Cliff Stoll who said that computers make us disconnect from our neighbors and families. This software facilitates a society where everyone knows each other without actually having met.
I can imagine a cafe with several people chatting, only every one of them is looking into his/her computer screen utterly oblivious that they are chatting with the person beside them.
"Software for shy people - We make you new friends... so YOU don't have to!"
Rant over and out. I have to answer someone on IRC...
I've just been granted a patent on reading between the lines. Everyone must now take every Slashdot article and posting at their literal value only. Failing to do so may incur patent suits. Also it is forbidden to try and find hidden meanings and sarcasm in this post as doing so would clearly infringe on said patent.
Note that creating a mechanism that circumvents the above is a clear breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Ok, just read the line again.
I'm talking about reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material. That does not cost on the Net what it costs in the material world.
You are talking about royalty checks. If you think that royalties are inclusive in redistribution then you looking at royalties in a simplistic way. No matter how much royalties EMI pays for redistribution that sum is neglegent compared to what they gross. Since when is it news that artists get %1 of the revenue their music generates (if they are the lucky few that recap anything at all)?
Bandwidth? We are talking about EMI here not slashdot. These are companies that buy actuall real world shelf space in Virgin Megastores. If they smell money they will buy entire server farms without batting an eye.
From the article: "...giving them access to most songs on today's top-selling charts.". "them" being the consumers.
I could not care less about the top-selling quote artists unquote. I want EMI's back catalog. Unlike the material world the Internet does not entail the costs of reprinting, repackaging and redistributing out of print material.
I will not get exited and more importantly I will not open my wallet until I see that the record labels are making an effort. There are ways to make music better through Internet distribution. As long as I sense that the music labels take care of numero uno first, so will I!
How can music be better? I'm glad you asked.
Small artists can get published for free through major labels and the second they catch on they can start selling. It sure beats touring like Black Flag did. The overhead of publishing a number of small new bands with a couple of songs each on an EMI server farm will be negligible.
If the user has bandwidth to spare uber-high fidelity downloads should be an option. We are not limited to CD quality on the net. High paying consumers can have custom stereo/mono/bitrate/hz files generated from the masters real time. These custom packages can be downloaded or burnt onto DVD and mailed. Will this allow you to get a perfect master and facilitate piracy? No more than high fidelity vinyl. 99.9% of the people that spend big bucks buying a custom remastered 60GB version of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" will not be disposed to spread it around until the technology allows them to.
To reiterate, I want back catalogs and so do most serious music lovers. I cannot imagine people buying rare Hendrix, King Crimson and Brittney Spears in one group.
Maybe "chart toppers" should be printed on disposable CDs? The music will be irrelevant in weeks anyway so why print them on the same material that you print real music?
I just had to put that in because I'll always remember putting the FPU chip on said machine and then running AutoCAD for the first time on my new Amber Hercules display.
SNIFF, SNIFF (dabs at eyes with hanky) now look what you did... I'm all sentimental.
I cannot follow the logic behind the IT department issue. My company does not deal primarily over the Internet and yet we have tens of different services running software in and out of corporate ports. We have Citrix and different VPNs running all the time. We have people dialing into their accounts from abroad 24 hours a day. Almost all the routers and hubs accept remote administration. Where do you think the vast and overwhelming majority of security issues lie? Emails of course! While one hacker is trying to jump through the corporate firewall through an open port two scores of infected Emails are being opened by the end users. Every user clicks away at javascripts and VM apps without discretion every day and the IT department is usually working hard just keeping everyones global time synced in MS Outlook for meeting and conference calls.
How many break ins through SSH? Asymptotic to zero I presume, barring stupid passwords and their ilk. I really don't have the numbers so please take that as my opinion only.
I remain unconvinced that a modern sizable company is afraid of having a port open. How do they deal with the rest of the gamut and why should this service be any different? Never heard of the concept behind "unpriveledged account"? People read off their Web servers every day using one. It probably boils down to being afraid of the wording "remote administration". If it were dressed up as a Fancy GUI with a name like "your screen away from home V7.0 professional" they would probably feel allot better (at least thats what happens in our company).
The possible uses for more computing power was explored recently in an article here. The article I am referring to is Paul Graham's "The Hundred Year Language" and should chill the "my 4.77MHZ XT with a 8087 FPU is all I'll ever need!" crowd a couple of degrees.
We have a misunderstanding. For the geek "broken" means one thing and for the would be live support client it would mean something else completely. When my father's computer needs fixing it means that he has an rpm dependency problem, wants Sorenson for his Xine or wants new fonts copied into the right directory. These things are very simple to a geek and would not be classified as a fault or instability.
The end user usually can not and should not have to deal with these issues. The automation of these simple tasks usually creates more trouble by introducing a vastly more complex layer of GUI above simple software that really works.
and I thought the beauty of Linux was that it _didn't_ need weekly fixen because the registry got messed up.
The registry really doesn't get messed up but from my father's viewpoint there is no noticeable difference. How can he tell the difference between the registry messing up the sound and Redhat not including mp3 support (real example). He simply noticed that the sound was not working and therefore for all intents and purposes "broken". It took me 5 minutes with SSH and Lynx to download and install it for him one night.
This distinction is crucial. The very fact that you mix the two levels of proficiency mirrors the corporate stance. The would be company will be free from fixing really broken (geek level broken) machines and will deal with fonts, installation of newer software and such. It's Linux's reliability that makes such an enterprise plausible. When I log into my dad's machine I'm never looking for kernel errors and the uptime is usually measure of time between power failures.
My father runs Linux at home and is as happy as can be. The only reason this situation exists is that I SSH into his machine every week and build/fix/configure/backup whatever is wrong or out of date.
I'm happy he runs Linux. He's happy that his box magically updates without him every seeing or doing anything. This is the kind of hands off tech support I like to get from my plumber, mechanic and company IT department. Why shouldn't the end user enjoy this model as well? I could theoretically fix and update a dozen Linux boxes per day through SSH. A room full of geeks could take care of hundreds a day.
Anyone can run Linux if they have a dedicated geek or live support contract. Currently the clueless have only geeks to turn to. With a company that does everything (I repeat: everything) through live support there can be a Linux box anywhere anytime.
Companies are not leveraging Linux's remote access abilities for the end users. This gives the user a perfect box an a constant stream of cash for the support company. Most will not care if you log into a part of their system and do a weekly fix/backup/upgrade as long as you present it in the right way. The privacy concern is no greater than giving your box to a computer shop for a couple of day.
I doubt that any given mob of customers can be more difficult and demanding than my dad, but I guess we all feel like that sometimes.
The above model is actually taking place right now. How many of you log into another Linux box and fix it every week? All I'm suggesting is to put a bunch of us in the same room while we do it and place a company logo outside the door.
The above idea has some obvious problems with it but I'd like to think that what we all do for our families family could possibly scale.
My paranoid mind is imagining that I'm the only human on /. and that all the other posts are automatically generated by Slashcode. Fortunately for me some of the trolls are too imaginative to have been produced by a machine.
Works @ about 13fps 800x600 and high detail (32bit textures, dynamic lights etc...) with:
Hardware- Athlon 1.7
- Nvidia TNT2 M64
- 294MB RAM
SoftwareI'm waiting for a NWN Emacs mode.
"Nothing to hide"???
Then you won't mind if mandatory searches are done in your house every month by a group of government appointed "concerned citizens".
Neither should you mind if your next workplace will be able to access genetic, political and sexual histories in order to better profile you. Why would they waste time on someone less than perfect? Why should they believe you if they can check you up using a hypothetical Information Transparency Act?
Your insurance company would like to know how you spend your holidays, how you eat and how fast you drive.
Have you ever wanted to have a personal conversation with someone? If you close the door while you have a heart to heart with someone, would you mind if I walked in and recorded you? After telling me to mind my own business I'll just say "hey man, you should just chill out".
Thanks,
I'm amazed that streaming isn't more ubiquitous judging by the low end gear needed to run a decent stream. The ISPs still seem to be the bottleneck.
Very cool. I appreciate the effort taken to broadcast this.
I listen to quite a few streams regularly and this is a pretty well recorded stream for 24KBPS.
What is the hardware being used to trasmit this?
I think that you could easily replace every occurrence of the word "programmer" in the article with the job title of almost anyone who works in a non-preparadigimatic field. Spending money on the individualities of your workers may be applicable in certain situations and outright wrong in others. The army is a good example of an environment where individuals dress, act and perform in a bland, stringent and uniform manner and yet are highly productive (in their specified field).
A good followup might be to pick up "An Anthropologist on Mars" and "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks.
The books do not mention face transplants but deal with a good many of the issues concerning how our mind defines itself.
I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".
Those people who are technologically adept will have realized most of the article's points beforehand. I must admit that I haven't managed to formalize the arguments as well as the article's authors have.
I would like to have leaflets containing the gist of the text to hand out with every ISP account opened. The leaflet should read in bold: "please read and grok before attempting to connect to your new account".
As for being a "stupid network of ends", I bet that the neurons in my brain can be called that too...
I can see it now; A professor stands in front of the class and begins his lecture:
"Modern science doesn't have to be all boring numbers, bridges and wires. Today we will learn how to make FUN and EXCITING stuff. Be sure to make it COLORFUL and LARGE otherwise investors will take their money else ware!"
What's next, rides? "I'm sorry Timmy, you have to be This High to ride the particle accelerator."
Software Quote Piracy Unquote is an interesting subject. There is no such thing. When I perform a copy I must obey the set of rules that govern copying. Copyright law is a set of rules that govern copying, but you already know that, or do you? Everyone keeps talking about this Quote Piracy Unquote thing that doesn't even exist.
If anything at all I might be breaking a certain part of copyright law under certain conditions. The courts are there to decide if this is illegal. The law includes allot more than "pirated" and "unpirated".
I'll give some examples of similar terms: Zealots, Trusted, Rights Management, Western and Intelligent. They are all over-simplified cop-outs that help us avoid the real issues and replace them with sensationalized crap.
When you use a single word to describe an entire complex system of rules and the manner in which they are sometimes interpreted someone loses and someone else wins. Using "piracy" is alike to carrying a slogan. I'm not saying that you should or should not. Just try to realize who's dictionary does it come from, and to what end is it used.
I've never committed Quote Piracy Unquote. All I've done is work within the system of copyright rules to the best of my knowledge and with my own best intention in mind.
Avoidance of this term will in my humble opinion force people to try and rethink the subject.
This subject is in dire need of rethinking.
Nothing has changed in the minds of our administrators and generals. They have always done this in the past. What has changed is that they need not apologize anymore. They can cut corners and costs. The information that they once had to collect covertly is now available on demand. So now that they demand information publicly, what new depths of covert intelligence is being collected? If this is what they get willingly, what are they taking under cover?
I see the fnords.