When I was younger and more naive, I used to hold the same beliefs that yamamushi does. Now, however, I a) work in the IT department for a school district, and b) know a bit more about formal security policies, and as such my perspective has shifted a bit.
Our district has 10,000 (unique) users and about 4000 computers. We have a staff of five people. We have hundreds of kids every day actively looking for holes in the system. Legally, we have to prevent students from accessing proxies, but you and I both know that proxies pop up all the time... and there's a lot of kids looking for open proxies. No automatic blacklist filter can stay ahead of that, and we're not going to have the staffing resources to go through all the logs and trace where people went.
So we have policies. Any security person will tell you that written Acceptable Use Policies are an integral part of an organization's plan for dealing with insider threat (read: you). I see your district has its AUP posted on the website, so presumably you read and signed the AUP. I see no room for whining after getting suspended. Granted, our district would suspend you for three days rather than three months, but I can't fault the idea of district suspending you after you signed a contract saying "if I circumvent the logon system, I will be suspended."
Kudos to you for telling the tech people how to disable devices, and shame on them for not fixing it. But at the same time, I've known about security holes for years that still havn't been fixed -- because they're not big gaping holes, and I haven't had time to fix them. So they go to the bottom of the list, and we trust you, the user, to use the system responsibly and play by the rules.
Hardened systems are good, but they're no replacement for responsible student behavior. Let's switch the analogy. We don't have a technological mechanism in place to prevent a DoS of the grading system if you're in a specific spot. Nor do we have a technological mechanism in place to keep the wrestling team from kicking the shit out you in the bathroom. But we shouldn't need to, because we expect students to behave. Granted, they don't always... which is why people get suspended.
Okay, let's say someone is scraping your site. If they are scraping your site and redistributing the information, you have a very, very clear violation of copyright and I urge you to contact your lawyer.
If it's just some guy scraping your site for his own edification, it's probably fair-use -- regardless of your crazy terms of service no one read.
Ultimately, an LWP::Simple based "scraper" is just a specialized browser -- unless they're redistributing your work.
Someone using Google to violate your rights is not Google's fault. It's an opportunity to ask for punitive damages.
> many copy prevention systems that deliberately > malform the data on the CD, breaking its > compliance with the Red Book spec
Well let's see. The red book consists both of physical specifications as well as a data structure for digital audio. Computer data on a CD-ROM breaks compliance with the red book no matter what... even if the physical specifications part of the equasion are the same.
> Now a 6.5mhz crystal and a tone dialer on the other hand...
If I saw someone buying a 6.5mhz crystal and a tone dialer... I'd tear the dot-matrix schematic printout from their hands and them about this magical new thing called "the internet."
"Kinda like BBSs, only better!" I would say.
Then I would hit them and steal their Kid-N-Play tapes.
Y'know, I think we as a society owe OJ Simpson a debt of gratitude. As an athelete and a bit-part actor, he didn't really _contribute_ anything _useful_ to our society. But here we are, a decade after his actions took place, and we still use _his_ case to explain the difference between civil and criminal law. In fact, I can't ever remember the difference being explained to someone _without_ OJ being brought up. Heck, just glance through the posts in this story.
This difference used to be a difficult thing for people to comprehend. Now that understanding is almost a given in our society -- everyone gets it.
To me, this is OJ's great contribution to our culture. He has enriched the minds -- and expanded the legal knowledge -- of _millions_ of Americans.
When a song is played every hour for days at a time, people tend to think the song is played out. That probably hurts the sales of the song in the long run, IMHO.
Worrying about the long run? Wait... I thought we were talking about the record industry!
> Using such blocks assumes that the {MP|RI}AA > are using easy to identify blocks, like those > at their corporate headquarters or those of > well known underlings. The whole IP blocking > strategy fails when they start having their > enforcers work from home now and then.
Yeppers. The *AA's have stated in print that they contract that work out. The companies that do the "dirty" work just get dsl lines that look innocous enough to the casual observer.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of religous peerguardian users that wound up getting cease and desists.
> And what will stop someone from recording what is on their screen.
An RMVB transcoded (read: re-encoded) to the mpeg-4 flavour of your choice? I'd think the painfully abysmal quality of the resulting file would be motivator enough to discourage such action.
Yeah, I know (some) people watch camjobs and such, but those are new movies. No one would settle for that kind of quality when you're talking about the clunky old movies on starz, particularly when you consider the time expenditure (okay, a couple hrs) of grabbing the frames from the screen and reencoding.
> There is much more to art than just crapping > out random shapes, colors and patterns -- which > it appears is all this thing does.
Crikey. At least read the faq for the project:
Q: Isn't this just a bunch of random shapes?
A: Well, yes and no. I have already begun to make aesthetic decisions, like assigning a color pallete to the shading and constraining how far the shapes can be flung. Also, the "randomSymphonic" class does something very common in Kandinsky's work - ararnges either 3, 5 or 7 shapes in a vertical pattern. Usually, these look like brush strokes. It's a start.
So, already the beginnings of human aesthetics are poking their way in to the picture. I'll need to bear these in mind as a baseline when I start applying more advanced principles.
[http://ns1.peakepro.com/rpeake/robertpeake_com/ Ca nnedKandinsky/faq.html]
> I'd suggest the developers take a course in > Art101, study up on color theory and > composition and then create code that takes > aesthetics, design and ambient factors into > account.
Yeah... so uh, after reading the faq and the docs, it appears as if that's pretty much what they did -- take art101 and then write a wrapper for ming.
HOWEVER, the real point here is: people have neat ideas sometimes. Maybe it's not how you would have liked to have seen it done. Maybe the idea has been done before -- and done really well at that. But christ, if some guy comes up with a clever way to get some existant library to emulate the style of a well-known painter, pat him on the back and say "good for you."
It kills me to see all these people -- who in many cases were NOT significantly encouraged by their peers earlier in life -- verbally defiling each other's accomplishments over semantic debates or dispirate notions as to what constitutes an "authentic" work.
It might not be art. But it's pretty clearly _design_ at least, and that should count for something.
> i'm happy with my 32x burner... and would have upgraded to a dvd-burner whenever i could afford one
DVD-writer prices havn't exactly bottomed out... but the prices arn't going to move a whole lot more in the near future. (Though media prices will still drop further...) I bought a lite-on 4x +/-R about five months ago for $80. It seems like every week frys is pushing some rebranded BTC for like $79...
I'd like to take a moment here to second that emotion.
I borrowed a TV-Wonder PCI from work. I have an nVidia graphics card. Any time MMC is launched, it stops and tells me I don't have the latest raedon drivers installed, telling me to click OK to continue. Well no shit, considering I don't have a radeon. ATI's kb says this is a known issue that doesn't affect one's TV watching experience.
That is true. HOWEVER, any time the ATI scheduler goes to record a program, it launches MMC. But then the "you don't have the radeon drivers" message pops up, and because there's no one there to hit OK the program doesn't get recorded.
The '86 PIL release was called "Album" or "Cassette" or "Compact Disc" depending on which format you purchased it on. One of the very few times in recording history where the cannonical title of the release changed with the format it was released on. This makes it difficult for you to claim that you are entitled to download MP3s made from "Compact Disc" when in fact you only own "Album."
I see humor there.
I also see humor in the fact that you'd want to touch anything PIL put out after '83 or so.
Okay, I'll bite. I believe the following to be very important, so please take note.
People in general (and musicians specifically) like products that fit into their preconcieved notions of what those products _should be_. The people that eventually became synthesizer players originally formulated their opinions of what a synthesizer _should be_ by listening to records featuring "classic" synths. Thus, to them, the ideal synthesizer timbre consists of analogue electronics and the associated imperfections; this is part of _that sound_.
Example: Physical modeling didn't take off. This is not because of any technological flaw in the design, but rather because a plucked-string model just doesn't sound like Rick Wakeman or what have you.
Thus, the manufacturers began reinventing the wheel because that's what people wanted.
And frankly, I'm pretty stoked about this.
I used to have a rack. And multi-tiered keyboard stands. And more keyboards leaned up against walls. Now, I have a usb-powered midi controller and softsynths. Does it sound a little different? Sure. Would anyone who isn't an enthusiast be able to tell the difference? Probably not.
The following is a short list of things that I simply don't miss from the analogue synth days:
1. Grounding problems / hum. (Thank god!) 2. RF Interference. 3. Tape sync. 4. Microphones (placement and selection). 5. Room acoustics. 6. MIDI daisy-chain delay. 7. Moving mixer faders up and down. 8. Having to set preamp levels before you start. 9. Patch bays and rewiring. 10. Add your own here.
It used to take like, hours to set up and test for recording. Now I just flick the keyboard on, launch the software and start diddling.
I like it for the same reason the manufacturers like it: It's cheaper, faster, and better.
I'm going to disagree strongly here, because I believe the art of "getting a good picture" has expanded beyond the mechanics of photography.
[For the sake of the purists (with whom I agree in regards to semantics if nothing else), in this post "photography" will involve nothing other than optics and chemistry, and "picture-taking" will be the catch-all. Me, I use an original Nikon F1.]
You bring up a very important point when you mention that there's a significant amount of post-processing done in the developing stage on non-slide film.
However, I think we all need to get beyond the antiquated notion that anything done in post is "bad" -- or cheating, for that matter. As I understood it, the goal here is to get some good lookin' pictures. Thus, we should embrace post production techniques instead of shunning them. Not just film development, but photoshop/gimp and the whole bit.
Why? Because it makes for (what most folks consider) better pictures. News photographers are shooting digital, dumping to the laptop and tweaking their shit in PS before sending their work to their editors now. ANY commerical motion picture has gone through BANKS of color correction and post processing to remove film "defects." When "professionals" regularly (if not universally) engage in VIOLENT post-processing of their works, it becomes part of the picture-taking process.
Back in the day photographs were taken directly onto postivies. Now we shoot on negatives, and the act of developing has become part of the process. Similarly, more and more post techniques are becoming PART OF THE PROCESS.
I can see the appeal of the "walk before you run" school of teaching here. Tell the photography student that they should master the (mechanical) basics before they move on to the sundries and tweakery. However, if that were truly the case we'd be discussing techniques for how to best create a pinhole (for a pinhole camera) rather than how to score a dope SLR on the cheap.
SLRs are pretty damn advanced pieces of machinery. If you suggest someone start their serious forays into photgraphy with an SLR, you invalidate any sort of the "walk-before-you-run" argument. So why tell them to shoot only on slides?
Remember: While a motion picture is copyrighted as a whole, that copyright includes EVERY FRAME. Taking a still from a 35mm print, blowing it up, putting it on a poster and giving it to your friend for Christmas is pretty clearly infringment. Likewise, sharing a snippet over BT is as well.
> The difference between "virtual worlds" and your average role playing game is that companies that run MMOGs can get away with making sub-par games and provide crappy customer service. This is because the target audience for MMOGs have proven that they will actually keep paying for this type of customer service and buggy products.
Wait... so TSR didn't realease a lot of sub-par games (boot hill? gangbusters?) and provide crappy customer service? Sure they did!
Their customers may have been bitter, calling them T$R and the like... but they still went out and bought the new source books.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the most professional course of action. Particularly if you have questionable photos posted.
Indies also sell their music, and anyone who professes to hate the RIAA should be sure to buy music from indie performers.
Or better still, just listen to SongFight!s http://songfight.org/
Hit the Windows button on the keyboard, type appwiz.cpl, hit enter. Add/Remove programs is open, and it took about a second and a half.
Hello.
When I was younger and more naive, I used to hold the same beliefs that yamamushi does. Now, however, I a) work in the IT department for a school district, and b) know a bit more about formal security policies, and as such my perspective has shifted a bit.
Our district has 10,000 (unique) users and about 4000 computers. We have a staff of five people. We have hundreds of kids every day actively looking for holes in the system. Legally, we have to prevent students from accessing proxies, but you and I both know that proxies pop up all the time... and there's a lot of kids looking for open proxies. No automatic blacklist filter can stay ahead of that, and we're not going to have the staffing resources to go through all the logs and trace where people went.
So we have policies. Any security person will tell you that written Acceptable Use Policies are an integral part of an organization's plan for dealing with insider threat (read: you). I see your district has its AUP posted on the website, so presumably you read and signed the AUP. I see no room for whining after getting suspended. Granted, our district would suspend you for three days rather than three months, but I can't fault the idea of district suspending you after you signed a contract saying "if I circumvent the logon system, I will be suspended."
Kudos to you for telling the tech people how to disable devices, and shame on them for not fixing it. But at the same time, I've known about security holes for years that still havn't been fixed -- because they're not big gaping holes, and I haven't had time to fix them. So they go to the bottom of the list, and we trust you, the user, to use the system responsibly and play by the rules.
Hardened systems are good, but they're no replacement for responsible student behavior. Let's switch the analogy. We don't have a technological mechanism in place to prevent a DoS of the grading system if you're in a specific spot. Nor do we have a technological mechanism in place to keep the wrestling team from kicking the shit out you in the bathroom. But we shouldn't need to, because we expect students to behave. Granted, they don't always... which is why people get suspended.
Okay, let's say someone is scraping your site. If they are scraping your site and redistributing the information, you have a very, very clear violation of copyright and I urge you to contact your lawyer.
If it's just some guy scraping your site for his own edification, it's probably fair-use -- regardless of your crazy terms of service no one read.
Ultimately, an LWP::Simple based "scraper" is just a specialized browser -- unless they're redistributing your work.
Someone using Google to violate your rights is not Google's fault. It's an opportunity to ask for punitive damages.
> We worship entertainment in this society.
I worship plumbers.
> many copy prevention systems that deliberately
> malform the data on the CD, breaking its
> compliance with the Red Book spec
Well let's see. The red book consists both of physical specifications as well as a data structure for digital audio. Computer data on a CD-ROM breaks compliance with the red book no matter what... even if the physical specifications part of the equasion are the same.
> Now a 6.5mhz crystal and a tone dialer on the other hand...
If I saw someone buying a 6.5mhz crystal and a tone dialer... I'd tear the dot-matrix schematic printout from their hands and them about this magical new thing called "the internet."
"Kinda like BBSs, only better!" I would say.
Then I would hit them and steal their Kid-N-Play tapes.
> IAALBIANYL--GYOGDL,YMNO
I am a lawyer but i am not your lawyer -- get your own god damn lawyer, you... mother nookin' orangutan?
Help me out here.
Y'know, I think we as a society owe OJ Simpson a debt of gratitude. As an athelete and a bit-part actor, he didn't really _contribute_ anything _useful_ to our society. But here we are, a decade after his actions took place, and we still use _his_ case to explain the difference between civil and criminal law. In fact, I can't ever remember the difference being explained to someone _without_ OJ being brought up. Heck, just glance through the posts in this story.
This difference used to be a difficult thing for people to comprehend. Now that understanding is almost a given in our society -- everyone gets it.
To me, this is OJ's great contribution to our culture. He has enriched the minds -- and expanded the legal knowledge -- of _millions_ of Americans.
This is why OJ is truly an American Hero.
When a song is played every hour for days at a time, people tend to think the song is played out. That probably hurts the sales of the song in the long run, IMHO.
Worrying about the long run? Wait... I thought we were talking about the record industry!
> Using such blocks assumes that the {MP|RI}AA
> are using easy to identify blocks, like those
> at their corporate headquarters or those of
> well known underlings. The whole IP blocking
> strategy fails when they start having their
> enforcers work from home now and then.
Yeppers. The *AA's have stated in print that they contract that work out. The companies that do the "dirty" work just get dsl lines that look innocous enough to the casual observer.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of religous peerguardian users that wound up getting cease and desists.
> And what will stop someone from recording what is on their screen.
An RMVB transcoded (read: re-encoded) to the mpeg-4 flavour of your choice? I'd think the painfully abysmal quality of the resulting file would be motivator enough to discourage such action.
Yeah, I know (some) people watch camjobs and such, but those are new movies. No one would settle for that kind of quality when you're talking about the clunky old movies on starz, particularly when you consider the time expenditure (okay, a couple hrs) of grabbing the frames from the screen and reencoding.
Totally oogie.
> There is much more to art than just crapping
/ Ca nnedKandinsky/faq.html]
> out random shapes, colors and patterns -- which
> it appears is all this thing does.
Crikey. At least read the faq for the project:
Q: Isn't this just a bunch of random shapes?
A: Well, yes and no. I have already begun to make aesthetic decisions, like assigning a color pallete to the shading and constraining how far the shapes can be flung. Also, the "randomSymphonic" class does something very common in Kandinsky's work - ararnges either 3, 5 or 7 shapes in a vertical pattern. Usually, these look like brush strokes. It's a start.
So, already the beginnings of human aesthetics are poking their way in to the picture. I'll need to bear these in mind as a baseline when I start applying more advanced principles.
[http://ns1.peakepro.com/rpeake/robertpeake_com
> I'd suggest the developers take a course in
> Art101, study up on color theory and
> composition and then create code that takes
> aesthetics, design and ambient factors into
> account.
Yeah... so uh, after reading the faq and the docs, it appears as if that's pretty much what they did -- take art101 and then write a wrapper for ming.
HOWEVER, the real point here is: people have neat ideas sometimes. Maybe it's not how you would have liked to have seen it done. Maybe the idea has been done before -- and done really well at that. But christ, if some guy comes up with a clever way to get some existant library to emulate the style of a well-known painter, pat him on the back and say "good for you."
It kills me to see all these people -- who in many cases were NOT significantly encouraged by their peers earlier in life -- verbally defiling each other's accomplishments over semantic debates or dispirate notions as to what constitutes an "authentic" work.
It might not be art. But it's pretty clearly _design_ at least, and that should count for something.
w0w!! My first ten installations are exactly the same!!
Trillian - to hook up with fellow warezd00dz!
Winrar - for decompressing my warez!
Firefox - it lets me turn off pop ups so I can surf to warez sites!
Winamp - so I can listen to all my uh... legally purchased mp3s!
SmartFTP - for warez, obviously
Azureus - bittorrent 0wnz for getting warez!
NMap - so I can find unsecure b0xen to put warez on!
GKrellM - Chixx0rz dig status monitors!
PowerDVD - so I can watch all the movies I got off bittorrent!
> i'm happy with my 32x burner ... and would have upgraded to a dvd-burner whenever i could afford one
DVD-writer prices havn't exactly bottomed out... but the prices arn't going to move a whole lot more in the near future. (Though media prices will still drop further...) I bought a lite-on 4x +/-R about five months ago for $80. It seems like every week frys is pushing some rebranded BTC for like $79...
So the time to buy is pretty much now.
I'd like to take a moment here to second that emotion.
I borrowed a TV-Wonder PCI from work. I have an nVidia graphics card. Any time MMC is launched, it stops and tells me I don't have the latest raedon drivers installed, telling me to click OK to continue. Well no shit, considering I don't have a radeon. ATI's kb says this is a known issue that doesn't affect one's TV watching experience.
That is true. HOWEVER, any time the ATI scheduler goes to record a program, it launches MMC. But then the "you don't have the radeon drivers" message pops up, and because there's no one there to hit OK the program doesn't get recorded.
Making the tv wonder a useless POS.
ATI bastards.
At this point, I pull Marshall McLuhan out from behind a column to tell you you're misinterpreting his thesis.
1. The medium is not the problem here. It's the message.
2. 2D vs 3D is not what Disney should be concerned with
The preceeding two clauses have no relation to each other.
Heh. You know what's _really_ funny there?
The '86 PIL release was called "Album" or "Cassette" or "Compact Disc" depending on which format you purchased it on. One of the very few times in recording history where the cannonical title of the release changed with the format it was released on. This makes it difficult for you to claim that you are entitled to download MP3s made from "Compact Disc" when in fact you only own "Album."
I see humor there.
I also see humor in the fact that you'd want to touch anything PIL put out after '83 or so.
Okay, I'll bite. I believe the following to be very important, so please take note.
People in general (and musicians specifically) like products that fit into their preconcieved notions of what those products _should be_. The people that eventually became synthesizer players originally formulated their opinions of what a synthesizer _should be_ by listening to records featuring "classic" synths. Thus, to them, the ideal synthesizer timbre consists of analogue electronics and the associated imperfections; this is part of _that sound_.
Example: Physical modeling didn't take off. This is not because of any technological flaw in the design, but rather because a plucked-string model just doesn't sound like Rick Wakeman or what have you.
Thus, the manufacturers began reinventing the wheel because that's what people wanted.
And frankly, I'm pretty stoked about this.
I used to have a rack. And multi-tiered keyboard stands. And more keyboards leaned up against walls. Now, I have a usb-powered midi controller and softsynths. Does it sound a little different? Sure. Would anyone who isn't an enthusiast be able to tell the difference? Probably not.
The following is a short list of things that I simply don't miss from the analogue synth days:
1. Grounding problems / hum. (Thank god!)
2. RF Interference.
3. Tape sync.
4. Microphones (placement and selection).
5. Room acoustics.
6. MIDI daisy-chain delay.
7. Moving mixer faders up and down.
8. Having to set preamp levels before you start.
9. Patch bays and rewiring.
10. Add your own here.
It used to take like, hours to set up and test for recording. Now I just flick the keyboard on, launch the software and start diddling.
I like it for the same reason the manufacturers like it: It's cheaper, faster, and better.
I'm going to disagree strongly here, because I believe the art of "getting a good picture" has expanded beyond the mechanics of photography.
[For the sake of the purists (with whom I agree in regards to semantics if nothing else), in this post "photography" will involve nothing other than optics and chemistry, and "picture-taking" will be the catch-all. Me, I use an original Nikon F1.]
You bring up a very important point when you mention that there's a significant amount of post-processing done in the developing stage on non-slide film.
However, I think we all need to get beyond the antiquated notion that anything done in post is "bad" -- or cheating, for that matter. As I understood it, the goal here is to get some good lookin' pictures. Thus, we should embrace post production techniques instead of shunning them. Not just film development, but photoshop/gimp and the whole bit.
Why? Because it makes for (what most folks consider) better pictures. News photographers are shooting digital, dumping to the laptop and tweaking their shit in PS before sending their work to their editors now. ANY commerical motion picture has gone through BANKS of color correction and post processing to remove film "defects." When "professionals" regularly (if not universally) engage in VIOLENT post-processing of their works, it becomes part of the picture-taking process.
Back in the day photographs were taken directly onto postivies. Now we shoot on negatives, and the act of developing has become part of the process. Similarly, more and more post techniques are becoming PART OF THE PROCESS.
I can see the appeal of the "walk before you run" school of teaching here. Tell the photography student that they should master the (mechanical) basics before they move on to the sundries and tweakery. However, if that were truly the case we'd be discussing techniques for how to best create a pinhole (for a pinhole camera) rather than how to score a dope SLR on the cheap.
SLRs are pretty damn advanced pieces of machinery. If you suggest someone start their serious forays into photgraphy with an SLR, you invalidate any sort of the "walk-before-you-run" argument. So why tell them to shoot only on slides?
But then again, I'm a pragmatist, so hey.
Remember: While a motion picture is copyrighted as a whole, that copyright includes EVERY FRAME. Taking a still from a 35mm print, blowing it up, putting it on a poster and giving it to your friend for Christmas is pretty clearly infringment. Likewise, sharing a snippet over BT is as well.
> Actually, that's exactly the size of a CD jewel case.
Well golly. I guess that means for my next server rack I can just go get one of those CD storage towers.
> The difference between "virtual worlds" and your average role playing game is that companies that run MMOGs can get away with making sub-par games and provide crappy customer service. This is because the target audience for MMOGs have proven that they will actually keep paying for this type of customer service and buggy products.
Wait... so TSR didn't realease a lot of sub-par games (boot hill? gangbusters?) and provide crappy customer service? Sure they did!
Their customers may have been bitter, calling them T$R and the like... but they still went out and bought the new source books.
Welp, after watching that one I figured someone had to go and make a dancing Neos animation.
So I did.
dancing neos at monsterkitty
oh yeah.