They can't take early payment online, either. You have to pay within a 2 week window. You'd think a system so advanced would accept payment when it's tendered and send a new disc when the old one expires.
Nah, at least you can prosecute Australians sending spam to other Australians and perhaps abroad. If every country banned it then spam would decrease dramatically.
Fair enough, it might not help you now but it's a step in the right direction in my opinion.
This may be an unpopular view, but this effort reminds me of the way another desktop environment developed. Creating more and more apps that rely on the mozilla codebase makes it central to the desktop... rather like IE.
"It's not about hiding illegal activity. It's about privacy and it's about keeping a single authority from being able to harass individuals regardless of innocence."
It's about both. Privacy allows people to hide illegal activity. You have to find a compromise that allows the law to be enforced yet prevents harassment.
I think it matters more what the information is used for than whether or not it can be obtained. It would be quite easy to slap the RIAA for abusing this power. The fear is that no-one will. That, and that the economics of the US court system will get in the way of justice. But they aren't problems with this ruling.
"The judge told jurors...[that] merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction"
so I don't think it's a win for the DMCA. If you make a product that could break copyright but repent and withdraw it when the concerned companies complain then you're not guilty. That's not my understanding of the DMCA says.
It doesn't address whether you could be convicted if you ignore the complaints either, so it's not a win for the programmers. I think this is what makes the case different from DeCSS. That and the nature of ebooks makes them less prone to piracy, so there aren't any cracked versions out there. How much the "crime" costs business (as opposed to the morality of the issue) seems to be a big concern for American law.
Re:Ethical? Doubtful. Cool? Speak for yourself.
on
NYTimes Year in Ideas
·
· Score: 1
You're right on every point. I, personally, think experimenting for scientific research *can* be OK. 1 mouse for a good discovery would be OK, loadsa mice for not much would be bad. I don't know what they're trying to cure or the likely mouse count in this case. If experimentation was stopped I wouldn't be upset. I think you'd argee that this is slighly distasteful rather than "cool?"
Re:Ethical? Doubtful. Cool? Speak for yourself.
on
NYTimes Year in Ideas
·
· Score: 1
I think the primary motive behind the brain research is advancing scientific knowledge while cosmetic research is motivated mostly by improving the (unnecessary?) product.
Here's three situations: your daughter is starving, you could feed her on mice; your daughter has a terrible brain disease and you could cure it by experimenting on mice; your daughter wants to look prettier by experimenting on mice. Is there any distinction between these?
I know some people wouldn't distinguish, and that's OK. I know I wouldn't want to harm the cute mice myself. But when push came to shove, I think most people would hurt the mice in the first two situations, but a lot would not for the sake of cosmetics. On the other hand, if the cosmetic experiments really were conducted to discover harmful chemicals then perhaps people would be more accepting. How do you think carcenogenic chemicals are identified (I'm sure cosmetics comapnies aren't responsible though)?
UK law doesn't cater too well for self defense using guns. A farmer was recently sent down for shooting (in his own home) two teenage intruders who'd repeatedly burgaled his house. The argument was that he'd told his neighbours if he caught them he'd shoot them, so it was premeditated murder.
The police repeatedly tell you that if you're threatened you should give the criminal what they want. To paraphrase their argument "It just makes sense -- is your life worth more than any of your possessions?" I just wish more "small" crimes like burgalary/car crime/mugging were solved after the event. They never find your stuff and insurance costs spiral. Unless there's violence there's no resources.
I think it's this sort of apathy that's leading to increases in crime in Britain. Criminals realise there's no resistance. All the policing resources are spent on crime that attracts media attention like child abduction, rape and murder. Of course you can't let people get away with stuff like that, but it would be nice if the odds were poor for the less serious criminals too.
So in short, the UK legal system is set up so that the police enforce the law. That removes potential areas for abuse, but places a heavy strain on the police, which they aren't able to meet at the moment, especially since the laws are weighted to avoid wrongful convictions. You need a lot of proof to make a conviction stick.
I think US law allows you to defend yourself more heavily, which lowers the requirements on the police force. Frankly, though, if I'm in a shoot out with a criminal I think I'd lose. I don't use a gun to make my living the way an armed criminal would. If I were to commit such crimes I'd make very sure I could handle the weapon better than the majority of my victims. I'd rather put up a fight to an unarmed assailant and perhaps take a beating.
Yes, OK, an option would be nice. But debian is more flexible than many other distros, as the parent metioned. You can install to Sun/SGI workstations over a serial link, so you don't need a monitor or keyboard for the installed machine. Once you get it bootable and the network is up you can remote administer it. Debian's installer is well engineered for that sort of problem, though I admit for home x86 installations it sucks a little.
Viewing sites funded by advertisements without looking at the ads is bad for, as they say. It removes the site's source of revenue.
The problem is that popups are not that nice either. I hate having to close a load of windows when I click on a link. I'm quite happy for them to invoke this warning system. I won't come again. Why can't they use banners? I don't mind those nearly so much.
Yes, I agree. You need to decide up front how much money your project is worth. Base this on the number of hours invested and your experience/skill/creativity.
I know some authors may write one superb application that could have made them millions, but instead pays them for the effort they invested. That's unfortunate, but they are still rewarded as their reputation should allow them to raise their price / hourly rate next time around.
You must assume some risk to enter the scheme, but you're your own boss. You should get paid for the work you do, provided it's accepted and used by customers. If it's not, then do you deserve payment?
I think this is an excellent model for music distribution as well. The artists/studios etc. paid for the work put into producing and marketing an album. The quality of the work and the artist's reputation can be reflected in the price. Finally, customers eventually "own" the music, and can p2p it legally after a certain point, so formerly popular titles can be easily obtained after the event. It also discourages the unfair practice of bundling a load of garbage with 2 or 3 good songs and releasing the lot as an "album". Each track could be individually valued, with proportional contributions being made from each compilation sale.
Surely this is a good compromise serving everyone's best interests?
One final thought. Can you charge for successive versions. If you write an popular application and almost give it away (small ransome) can you charge each of the established users a small amount for the extra coding going into the next version, generating a lot of revenue for a small amount of work by virtue of the popularity of the app?
I too have stopped buying CDs. I've used Gnutella and it made me buy CDs. I downloaded specific tracks from bygone one-hit wonders and music I knew by reputation only, Jimi Hendrix for example. Try before you buy.
I decided not to download music and I deleted what I'd got. Occaisonally I'll buy an old classic but they're harder to find without Gnutella. I've bought too many new albums that are padded with rubbish. I simply can't buy classic singles from one-hit wonders.
I don't believe in p2p so I don't buy music. I'm a student, about to finish. I look forward to spending my first wage packets on cheap camping holidays, new clothes, video games, broadband, things for my house and the odd CD. I'd spend more on CDs if they could compete better with the other things I want. Simple as that.
Now, my question is, why can't record stores install machines that allow me to buy the classic singles of one-hit wonders that are available on p2p. I miss those tracks. I'd pay 1/3-1/5 the cost of an album (2-4GBP) and get one track, burnt to order. A machine could be made that also prints a nice label, and perhaps an inlay, obtaining all the data from a central database. That's not too ambitious, surely?
The labels could really cream the cash from me with one of those machines. Why hasn't this been done? Doesn't anyone else want this type of service? In the meantime, Q3A looks good to me -- I know its good, I'll play for hours and I only have to sacrifice one or two CDs to get a copy.
I think you're being a little harsh. The computer imposes certain limitations on how you can interact, but there are still real people controlling the characters. That's why people play online instead of against AI. It's why people troll FPS -- the other players get annoyed and react and you know you've upset a real human and they can't respond.
I compare online games to a game of football at the park. All the players have personalities and people often chat while there's no action. They get to know each other. If you run off with the ball one day people will remember. If you were fun to play with people remember that too. The community wanted to homour this guy, so they had a ceremony. That's cool in my opinion -- the other players obviously thought a lot of this guy, and the practicalities of a real life ceremony would prevent it.
Perhaps you've never been a regular on a good game server. There's definately a community spirit.
Maybe I've oversimplified this, but I see it like this:
Let's say I write, for example, libpng. It's a library for working with png graphics. If it gets linked into someone's browser, then that's OK by me (LGPL style). Of course, they mustn't touch the library. If they do then they have to release the changes *to the library*.
Further, consider the case where my library only decodes images, and someone decides to augment it with encoding algorithms. I see two scenarios:
1) I should have called my library libpngdecode and someone writes a completely separate libpngencode. They keep libpngencode (its all their own code).
2) They re-use some of my code while extending the API to include encoding routines. They have to release the changes to the library.
The key here is whether they are making a buck off my effort. If I write it then I can LGPL it. If I didn't then I can't.
I specified the API by writing the code. You can call anything that was designed to be called (perhaps I document the API, or supply a header file that defines the API). If you call anything more deeply routed then the calling routine is a derivative work of my library.
I have no problem with libraries being a product in their own right. All the LGPL requires is that you release any changes or improvements you make to the library back to the pool. I can see that this may be a little more difficult to write in strict legalese, though. Where am I going wrong?
Is it me, or is that logaritmic plot badly fitted? The data points are all above or on the curve. Maybe it's too late in the day for me!
I dug around to find out how computer ownership had altered during that period. The best figures I found were here, suggeting the increase in PC ownership ~10% (i.e. 10-60%). Thats similar to the increase in linux use (41%). A little dissapointing.
Does anyone have accurate figures so that I can amend this calculation in the time honoured tradition (to get the result I want)? It'd be nice if Linux use was increasing twice as fast as PC use, or similar. Mind you, considering most PCs come with Windows pre-installed and PCs are penetrating less geeky markets this isn't such a bad result, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends which economy and where the kid lives...
They can't take early payment online, either. You have to pay within a 2 week window. You'd think a system so advanced would accept payment when it's tendered and send a new disc when the old one expires.
The product is heavily layered and interdependent. Government should make sure the market can have a say.
OK, so the record companies are greedy. I think most money is spent on marketing anyway. But, given these cheap tools, what alternatives are there.
Could good, well produced records be sold over the web on the back of a marketing image created cheaply on the web?
Nah, at least you can prosecute Australians sending spam to other Australians and perhaps abroad. If every country banned it then spam would decrease dramatically.
Fair enough, it might not help you now but it's a step in the right direction in my opinion.
This may be an unpopular view, but this effort reminds me of the way another desktop environment developed. Creating more and more apps that rely on the mozilla codebase makes it central to the desktop... rather like IE.
"It's not about hiding illegal activity. It's about privacy and it's about keeping a single authority from being able to harass individuals regardless of innocence."
It's about both. Privacy allows people to hide illegal activity. You have to find a compromise that allows the law to be enforced yet prevents harassment.
I think it matters more what the information is used for than whether or not it can be obtained. It would be quite easy to slap the RIAA for abusing this power. The fear is that no-one will. That, and that the economics of the US court system will get in the way of justice. But they aren't problems with this ruling.
There's also this quote:
so I don't think it's a win for the DMCA. If you make a product that could break copyright but repent and withdraw it when the concerned companies complain then you're not guilty. That's not my understanding of the DMCA says.It doesn't address whether you could be convicted if you ignore the complaints either, so it's not a win for the programmers. I think this is what makes the case different from DeCSS. That and the nature of ebooks makes them less prone to piracy, so there aren't any cracked versions out there. How much the "crime" costs business (as opposed to the morality of the issue) seems to be a big concern for American law.
You're right on every point. I, personally, think experimenting for scientific research *can* be OK. 1 mouse for a good discovery would be OK, loadsa mice for not much would be bad. I don't know what they're trying to cure or the likely mouse count in this case. If experimentation was stopped I wouldn't be upset. I think you'd argee that this is slighly distasteful rather than "cool?"
I think the primary motive behind the brain research is advancing scientific knowledge while cosmetic research is motivated mostly by improving the (unnecessary?) product.
Here's three situations: your daughter is starving, you could feed her on mice; your daughter has a terrible brain disease and you could cure it by experimenting on mice; your daughter wants to look prettier by experimenting on mice. Is there any distinction between these?
I know some people wouldn't distinguish, and that's OK. I know I wouldn't want to harm the cute mice myself. But when push came to shove, I think most people would hurt the mice in the first two situations, but a lot would not for the sake of cosmetics. On the other hand, if the cosmetic experiments really were conducted to discover harmful chemicals then perhaps people would be more accepting. How do you think carcenogenic chemicals are identified (I'm sure cosmetics comapnies aren't responsible though)?
UK law doesn't cater too well for self defense using guns. A farmer was recently sent down for shooting (in his own home) two teenage intruders who'd repeatedly burgaled his house. The argument was that he'd told his neighbours if he caught them he'd shoot them, so it was premeditated murder.
The police repeatedly tell you that if you're threatened you should give the criminal what they want. To paraphrase their argument "It just makes sense -- is your life worth more than any of your possessions?" I just wish more "small" crimes like burgalary/car crime/mugging were solved after the event. They never find your stuff and insurance costs spiral. Unless there's violence there's no resources.
I think it's this sort of apathy that's leading to increases in crime in Britain. Criminals realise there's no resistance. All the policing resources are spent on crime that attracts media attention like child abduction, rape and murder. Of course you can't let people get away with stuff like that, but it would be nice if the odds were poor for the less serious criminals too.
So in short, the UK legal system is set up so that the police enforce the law. That removes potential areas for abuse, but places a heavy strain on the police, which they aren't able to meet at the moment, especially since the laws are weighted to avoid wrongful convictions. You need a lot of proof to make a conviction stick.
I think US law allows you to defend yourself more heavily, which lowers the requirements on the police force. Frankly, though, if I'm in a shoot out with a criminal I think I'd lose. I don't use a gun to make my living the way an armed criminal would. If I were to commit such crimes I'd make very sure I could handle the weapon better than the majority of my victims. I'd rather put up a fight to an unarmed assailant and perhaps take a beating.
Yes, OK, an option would be nice. But debian is more flexible than many other distros, as the parent metioned. You can install to Sun/SGI workstations over a serial link, so you don't need a monitor or keyboard for the installed machine. Once you get it bootable and the network is up you can remote administer it. Debian's installer is well engineered for that sort of problem, though I admit for home x86 installations it sucks a little.
It did, they just cut those bits ;)
In case anyone wants to use it, I knocked this together to look at those vt100 animations:
#include <stdio.h>
#define BAUD 9600
#define SLEEP_FUNCTION usleep
#define SLEEP_SECOND 1000000
#define BUF_SIZE 100
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
FILE *infile;
unsigned long sleeptime=SLEEP_SECOND/BAUD;
char buf[BUF_SIZE+1];
int bpos, end;
if (argc<2)
{
infile=stdin;
}
else
{
infile=fopen(argv[1],"r");
if (!infile)
{
fprintf(stderr,"Can't open file %s.\n",argv[1]);
exit(1);
}
}
while (!feof(infile))
{
end=fread(buf, sizeof(char), BUF_SIZE, infile);
buf[end]='\0';
printf("%s",buf);
SLEEP_FUNCTION(sleeptime*end);
}
exit(0);
}
Yes, in my University (in UK) packets bound for ports assosciated with Gnutella won't pass the first router.
Viewing sites funded by advertisements without looking at the ads is bad for, as they say. It removes the site's source of revenue.
The problem is that popups are not that nice either. I hate having to close a load of windows when I click on a link. I'm quite happy for them to invoke this warning system. I won't come again. Why can't they use banners? I don't mind those nearly so much.
Yes, I agree. You need to decide up front how much money your project is worth. Base this on the number of hours invested and your experience/skill/creativity.
I know some authors may write one superb application that could have made them millions, but instead pays them for the effort they invested. That's unfortunate, but they are still rewarded as their reputation should allow them to raise their price / hourly rate next time around.
You must assume some risk to enter the scheme, but you're your own boss. You should get paid for the work you do, provided it's accepted and used by customers. If it's not, then do you deserve payment?
I think this is an excellent model for music distribution as well. The artists/studios etc. paid for the work put into producing and marketing an album. The quality of the work and the artist's reputation can be reflected in the price. Finally, customers eventually "own" the music, and can p2p it legally after a certain point, so formerly popular titles can be easily obtained after the event. It also discourages the unfair practice of bundling a load of garbage with 2 or 3 good songs and releasing the lot as an "album". Each track could be individually valued, with proportional contributions being made from each compilation sale.
Surely this is a good compromise serving everyone's best interests?
One final thought. Can you charge for successive versions. If you write an popular application and almost give it away (small ransome) can you charge each of the established users a small amount for the extra coding going into the next version, generating a lot of revenue for a small amount of work by virtue of the popularity of the app?
I too have stopped buying CDs. I've used Gnutella and it made me buy CDs. I downloaded specific tracks from bygone one-hit wonders and music I knew by reputation only, Jimi Hendrix for example. Try before you buy.
I decided not to download music and I deleted what I'd got. Occaisonally I'll buy an old classic but they're harder to find without Gnutella. I've bought too many new albums that are padded with rubbish. I simply can't buy classic singles from one-hit wonders.
I don't believe in p2p so I don't buy music. I'm a student, about to finish. I look forward to spending my first wage packets on cheap camping holidays, new clothes, video games, broadband, things for my house and the odd CD. I'd spend more on CDs if they could compete better with the other things I want. Simple as that.
Now, my question is, why can't record stores install machines that allow me to buy the classic singles of one-hit wonders that are available on p2p. I miss those tracks. I'd pay 1/3-1/5 the cost of an album (2-4GBP) and get one track, burnt to order. A machine could be made that also prints a nice label, and perhaps an inlay, obtaining all the data from a central database. That's not too ambitious, surely?
The labels could really cream the cash from me with one of those machines. Why hasn't this been done? Doesn't anyone else want this type of service? In the meantime, Q3A looks good to me -- I know its good, I'll play for hours and I only have to sacrifice one or two CDs to get a copy.
I think you're being a little harsh. The computer imposes certain limitations on how you can interact, but there are still real people controlling the characters. That's why people play online instead of against AI. It's why people troll FPS -- the other players get annoyed and react and you know you've upset a real human and they can't respond.
I compare online games to a game of football at the park. All the players have personalities and people often chat while there's no action. They get to know each other. If you run off with the ball one day people will remember. If you were fun to play with people remember that too. The community wanted to homour this guy, so they had a ceremony. That's cool in my opinion -- the other players obviously thought a lot of this guy, and the practicalities of a real life ceremony would prevent it.
Perhaps you've never been a regular on a good game server. There's definately a community spirit.
Let's say I write, for example, libpng. It's a library for working with png graphics. If it gets linked into someone's browser, then that's OK by me (LGPL style). Of course, they mustn't touch the library. If they do then they have to release the changes *to the library*.
Further, consider the case where my library only decodes images, and someone decides to augment it with encoding algorithms. I see two scenarios:
1) I should have called my library libpngdecode and someone writes a completely separate libpngencode. They keep libpngencode (its all their own code).
2) They re-use some of my code while extending the API to include encoding routines. They have to release the changes to the library.
The key here is whether they are making a buck off my effort. If I write it then I can LGPL it. If I didn't then I can't.
I specified the API by writing the code. You can call anything that was designed to be called (perhaps I document the API, or supply a header file that defines the API). If you call anything more deeply routed then the calling routine is a derivative work of my library.
I have no problem with libraries being a product in their own right. All the LGPL requires is that you release any changes or improvements you make to the library back to the pool. I can see that this may be a little more difficult to write in strict legalese, though. Where am I going wrong?
Is it me, or is that logaritmic plot badly fitted? The data points are all above or on the curve. Maybe it's too late in the day for me!
I dug around to find out how computer ownership had altered during that period. The best figures I found were here, suggeting the increase in PC ownership ~10% (i.e. 10-60%). Thats similar to the increase in linux use (41%). A little dissapointing.
Does anyone have accurate figures so that I can amend this calculation in the time honoured tradition (to get the result I want)? It'd be nice if Linux use was increasing twice as fast as PC use, or similar. Mind you, considering most PCs come with Windows pre-installed and PCs are penetrating less geeky markets this isn't such a bad result, I guess.