I've been hearing about cars which run on compressed air for some time. They are not, unsurprisingly, sold in the US...does anyone in a foreign country have access to an "air car"? If so, how well does it work?
Streaming MPEG 2 is nowhere near as efficient as some of the MPEG 4 codecs available. Take a look at www.3ivx.com. I got a 12 to 1 compression ratio over an MPEG 2 file which I ripped from a DVD [which I own]. Basically there is almost no loss in visual quality and a 77 MB file dropped in size to around 6.8 MB. Worth a look if you ever wanted to exercise your right to fair use...
Why do we always assume "inner city" means black? Isn't that presumptuous? I think "inner city" means "high pressure environment where metal detectors are common place in educational institutions [apparently for good reason]" so why the automatic, knee-jerk hanging?
Python is a good way to introduce non-programmers to programming in general. From Python you can realistically branch into simple C [I wouldn't recommend C++].
This is currently taking place in high school comp sci classes
http://www.python.org/workshops/2000-01/proceedi ng s/papers/elkner/pyYHS.html
Steve Wozniak has been teaching children computer science for quite some time now. If you can get in touch with him [I have no idea how to do so], he would most likely give some very valuable pointers.
I worked for a company which was a subsidiary [of sorts] of UGO. Well, after working for them for a while, I gave them a month or so of notice. A day or so before I left, I received this threatening letter basically saying that I agreed never to say anything negative about UGO and gave up my rights to sue them for practically any reason and that I agreed to pay any bills which they might have outstanding for me.
Well...(@#*&#$ that! I basically told them that there was no way I was going to sign over my constitutionally protected right to state my opinion about them nor was I going to sign a blanket statement agreeing to pay for possible money their accounting department might decide that I owed them. I told them they could send me an itemized list of dues that I owed them and I would discuss those items with my accountant and that if they had some desire to sue me, they could notify my lawyer of their intent. I also told them that all further such correspondence should be sent via email rather than fax [as in, I don't have a fax!]. Their HR department tried to reach me by phone after that [to assure me the contract was harmless of course:-?]. After that sort of draconian gag attempt, I'll never deal with them again...
I'm not an expert on clusters but it may be simpler to use something like MOSIX
http://www.mosix.cs.huji.ac.il/
MOSIX uses transparent migration of processing amongst other nodes on an Ethernet network [read the site for more particulars]. It's also pretty easy to set up [basically just run the install script and make sure the nodes can locate each other].
Might be helpful if Beowulf is a bit much for your needs.
"by sharing your files on, and downloading files from Napster you are breaking the LAW. "
Not true if I am downloading music from cds which I have purchased in the past... And this would be AMERICAN law wouldn't it? If I download in Zaire, why should I care about your American law? Scoff all you like, there are societies where possessions and profit are almost meaningless concepts. "Go live there?" you might say...I think I would rather build such a place HERE AND NOW.
"The law that has existed to protect artists for many years now but that with the digital revolution, appears to have been thrown out the window."
If the law protects artists so well, why do so few artists profit in the face of the rising profits of the RIAA? The point of copyright is to allow an innovator/artist to profit for a reasonable amount of time from their works. Now we have efforts in place to extend copyright to mean that some entity will profit *forever* from a work. This is CONTRARY to the original intent of copyright. If the artists own the copyrights [which IS the intent of a copyright] then why haven't they profited from them in the past? Because the record labels do the profiting. They garner the control of copyrights and profit from the sale of music to the exclusion of the artist. The artists, if profitable, are generally profitable from concerts and merchandise sale *not the the music which they have copyrighted*. This is a gross generalization, but so many people want to define my rights in an environment which exists outside of national and therefore legislative boundaries and so many are getting self-righteous about copyright. Why should I bow to your LAW? Your LAW locks up hackers for years *without trial* while *denying them bail*...an act that is ILLEGAL, yet our court system enacted such activity. We have police officers who are *permitted* to execute black citizens and are found to have *committed no crime*. If killing an unarmed black man who's fumbling for his wallet is not a criminal activity, why are you getting so HUFFY about MP3 downloading?
Talking about the LAW is always a funny thing because it works so differently depending upon social and economic factors. MAYBE IT IS TIME TO REDEFINE THE LAW...MAYBE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE NOW DOING ONLINE.
IT'S CALLED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO PRACTICE IT, JUST AS THE RIAA HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO HIRE LAWYERS TO TRY TO STOP US.
THE LAW IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN IN BOOKS IT IS WHAT SOCIETY DEFINES IT TO BE.
What country should determine the laws of the internet? It should be the US? The US Recording Industry? The MPAA? How are any of these organizations, even the United States, qualified to dictate online usage for the entire world.
The real problem is that the online community needs to begin to define its *own* laws.
This is not necessarily true. You cannot distribute the source code to Bruce Schneier's APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY as source code/application code on a disk outside the US, but you *can* distribute the book [which contains the full source code!]. I would imagine that a T-Shirt with Blowfish on it is still just a T-Shirt.
I sent this to everybody listed on the napster site at <br> <a href="http://www.napster.com/labels.html">http://w ww.napster.com/labels.html</a> <br>
<p> Basically, the issue of piracy is still being linked to the use of Napster and this is absurd. THE PEOPLE USING THE TECHNOLOGY CAN MISUSE IT OR CHOOSE TO USE IT APPROPRIATELY. BLAME THE PEOPLE NOT NAPSTER!
<p> By conspiring to shut down a file sharing program due to unconfirmed charges of piracy, you have demonstrated your greed and unwillingness to change. The thinking exemplified by companies such as yourself in accusing customers of being "pirates" when you regularly expand your already considerable profits at the expense of those same customers demonstrates that you are neither in line with the needs of your customers nor dedicated to establishing a more reasonable economic system. You are further attacking technologies when it is unquestionable that it is the persons involved in the use of the technologies [rather than the technologies themselves] who are the "pirates" if any such "pirates" exist.
<p> In response to your attack, I would like you to know that I will no longer purchase CD based music unless that music is published by companies which are independent of the auspices of the RIAA and similar organizations. By attacking a file sharing program you have begun a war which you will not win and you have lost at least one customer <b>for life.</b>
<p> I hope you will re-consider attacks of this nature and engage in open debate with your customers as to the future of your industry because if you are truly unwilling to do so, then you will soon find a substantial decline your CD sales. This decline will not be accompanied by any web sites toward which you can point your finger. It will come because you yourselves have raised public consciousness on this issue to the point where real questions are now being asked about your industry's role in the future of music and those questions will be answered by consumers who now know that their freedoms are limited by your narrow perspectives. <br> <br> James Richards<br> Former buyer of RIAA CDs
Some of us are trapped in jobs working 10-15 hour days 5-6 days a week. We might dearly love to code that brand new browser...how about you fork over a little cash to go along with *your* gripes?
Clearcase is pretty good and Visual Source Safe works well on Win32. I think CVS is superior because it is more cross platform and *flexible* about what you can do with it. I like being able to migrate development over various platforms because you never know when Win32 will suddenly cease to be viable or Linux will pale next to Solaris for some high-performance server side code [hey, it could happen]...
There doesn't seem to be any evidence that MNN was under a NDA with Adobe. A representative of MNN claims [in the article on law.com at the top of the page] that the material which they used to publish their report was "in the public domain". This means that they retrieved it from the Internet or some other public source without having to agree to not disclose anything. If that's true, Adobe is wasting its time and making itself look like the greedy money sucker which it is. Photoshop is overpriced and really no more useful or functional than the Gimp [www.gimp.org] and Adobe is probably aware of that by now. Use Gimp, down with these corporate pigs!
Iridium for the masses...
on
Iridium Saved?
·
· Score: 2
First post?
What we need is a public infrastructure effort to support Iridium and similar systems on a global scale. Some sort of a public consortium for effectively enabling communication for the masses...or am I dreaming?
The patent office is in the throes of fallout over their too-broad patents issued of late. Patenting things like using a single mouse click to submit a transaction [Amazon's stupendous and ridiculous "One Click" patent], a web-based affiliate program [thank Amazone again] and now the notion of a thin client and a related standard web application infrastructure for enabling such a thin client to issue remote commands is a perfect example of the out dated nature of most government copyrighting and patenting procedures and a clear call for the public at large to take measures to protect themselves from slick individuals patenting away our every basic computer concept behind a wall of "geek speak" as effective as any used by lawyers to confuse the issues with innuendo.
So basically, all these years that I have been building web applications I have been hosing this man's patent without ever even being aware of it? How can he claim control of procedures developed independently of him with no fore-knowledge of his supposed technical advances?
Something must be done about ridiculous patents before we all end up paying for the concept of dialing up to a service provider and using a phone line as a means of digital communication...
Mao Tse-Dong actually horrified *Stalin* during WWII by suggesting that victory in the war had a very simple solution:
At the time, among civilized non-third world nations, Communist countries had a far larger percentage of world population. Mao's solution was to have a nuclear armageddon in which full tactical strikes were made. His theory? We have more people and so more of our people will survive. This was his notion of victory and he has had by far the most profound effect upon the thoughts of his people in the last two centuries. Napoleon called China the sleeping dragon for very good reasons. Should China regain its former splendor, do not believe that they have abandoned the notion of Chinese supremacy any more than the fascists still running around in the US have abandoned theirs. Ignorance is a hard beast to kill. And how do you think Cuba got those nuclear missiles? You don't think Castro had them developed in one of his cigar plants, do you? Russia/China [memory fails as to which of the two] supplied those missiles and China would do so again if it served the cause of Chinese domination.
Slashdot is an open, Internet based forum. Just because it is in English doesn't mean that everyone who posts to it is necessarily in the US. China's policies towards the Internet are as important to the global Internet economy as anything that happens in the US.
The above is a good example of the possibilities for new thinking with regards to the proper use of copyrights. Copyrights exist ostensibly for the benefits of the artists whose works are copyrighted. Beneath the auspices of certain organizations, such as the RIAA, copyrights have been turned into a mechanism for extracting higher gross profits in an attempt to "offset" the "losses" which are said [by the RIAA!] to accrue from the illegal use of DATs, CD-R and even cassette tapes.
These profits are not, however, returned to the rigthful artists but are used by the industry to offset losses from less successful artists and to cover other similar "costs"!
This is essentially a CYA tax for artists who aren't very good and the industry executives who are foolish enough to sign artists who can't sell. You are paying for artists you probably never even cared to listen to, much less purchase. Basically, the incredibly high profit margin associated with the sales of CDs is used to fund the industry and its tight grip upon the profit making potential of signed artists. This is neither in the true spirit of copyrights nor is it to the benefit of the vast majority of artists.
In short, the RIAA is complaining because they cannot directly control a distribution mechanism like Napster. Venues such as orangealley.com, candaentertainment.com and rapstation.com are aware that technologies such as MP3 level the playing field and obviate the need for hard media such as CDs. By cutting the costs of traditional distribution, artists are, in fact, easily able to distribute their music themselves. Promotion and management can now become the specialized focus of companies which would previously have been unable to compete with industry heavyweights. None of this makes the RIAA very happy and given the history of abuse which the music industry has heaped upon its many artists, this could be termed the wheel of karma coming back with a vengeance.
Copyrights are a valuable tool when they are not subverted and it is important that the wishes of artists be observed with regards to their works.
If Metallica does not want Napster users listening to their music then Napster users should listen to other bands who have no such feelings. That is the beauty of MP3 and Napster. This is also the surest way to subvert the attempt by Metallica [and the RIAA behind them] to defame a perfectly valid means of communication.
Napster is not the problem.
Rather than attack 300,000+ users and alienate a large number of fans, Metallica would have been far more prudent to simply let people know that they did not want their music traded in such a fashion. That would have been the polite thing to do. This would have kept a much larger percentage of people in their corner and would have opened up the possibility for a much more reasonable debate on this issue.
Linus is right, artists have the right to control their copyrights, but the real question is if any but the most incredibly successful of artists in fact control anything at this point. The RIAA has been excruciatingly effective at taking control of art from the artists and they are not in any sense seeking to discontinue this practice. The current attack on Napster is not so much about the copyrights of artists as it is about the industy profiting from the copyrights of artists.
My question is [ostensibly] very simple and it is really a question about the copyrighting of addendums to material which is already within the public domain. Kerberos is an open Internet protocol that has been widely published, analysed and freed by its creators and maintainers for general public use. Unknown numbers of users make use of this protocol daily. Microsoft has published a copyrighted extension that purports to be a "trade secret"... There are a number of relevant issues with this:
1) Microsoft has indeed created an addition to the Kerberos protocol by making use of a currently unused data field within Kerberos packets to inject OS specific data into what network systems will identify as Kerberos authentication packets. If Kerberos is an open protocol and the net effect of the Microsoft extension is to effectively nullify the inter-operability of non-Microsoft Kerberos clients which access the Microsoft specific pseudo-Kerberos servers, then the additional data field could constitute an attempt by Microsoft to deny users the free use of a previously open protocol.
2) How can a document which is not encrypted and yet publicly traded over an inherently insecure network [which is the Internet] be considered to be a trade secret? If the trade secret nature of the document is inapplicable [because only a token effort at security was established] and the intention of the copyright was to enforce the trade secret nature of the document, then is the copyright itself valid? Put another way, is there not a requirement on the part of the corporate entity to ensure proper security measures in order to claim the establishment of a trade secret and the related copyright of that trade secret?
3) The specification which Microsoft has published is an addition to the Kerberos specification. The Kerberos specification is within the public domain and any modifications to that specification affect current users within the public domain. What are the issues with copyrighting [and attempting to hold secret] an addition to a public specification? Are there any fair knowledge restraints upon such modifications to an open protocol?
I am not an expert in copyright law and only have a basic understanding of Kerberos, however the issues involved with this seem understandable and the above questions are based on an "a priori" understanding on my part which I am attempting to validate.
I do not think that blatant disregard for a copyright is a good thing, however I do not support the restriction or intentional damaging of an open protocol through questionable corporate actions. The copyright itself is present in the posting on Slashdot and my question is if the copyright itself is viable given what it is attempting to copyright. If the copyright is valid, then the posting of copyrighted material was the action of a single user, not that of Slashdot and hence at most a single post is affected under any legal resolutions. Further, Microsoft states clearly that their posting is an attempt to enable assessment of the level of security which their proposed specification represents. This is an accepted practice among the cryptographic community for engendering higher levels of security through public scrutiny. The attempt to restrict the propagation of knowledge gained through that scrutiny has a number of ramifications which separate it from the accepted practice:
1) the knowledge of any flaws in the specification cannot be made public
2) the knowledge of genuine enhancements represented by the specification cannot be made public
3) the public nature of the Kerberos specification is inherently affected by additions to it which are not public
Again, while I am not a lawyer and not a Kerberos guru:
1)I am certainly capable of using Kerberos for authentication needs
2) I can read a specification pretty well
3) I fully support the *right* of users to have a *freely* secure and *consistent* means for navigating the Internet and establishing their identities. Kerberos represents such a means and I therefore consider it to be a public property which may not be crippled or damaged without such damage constituting an attack upon the rights of the public as a whole.
I am very interested in any expert opinions upon this issue...
The problem with Microsoft is very simple. They have a corporate mandate of "embrace and extend". This is a philosophy whereby a dominant technology is accepted by M$ into their system and is then extended with proprietary, platform-specific hooks which prevent non-M$ users from interacting with previously standard technologies. They have employed this strategy with JavaScript, with Java, with TCI/IP[!], and now with Kerberos. This is detrimental to the goal of truly standardized software that is open and free for all. It prevents users of non-M$ systems from interacting with users of M$ systems effectively and produces what Microsoft terms FUD [Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt].
FUD is the core of Microsoft's marketing strategy.
Once FUD is in place, M$ can point the finger at [Java,Netscape,Kerberos] and say "They did it." This is the reason Sun sued M$, the reason Netscape fell into AOL's greedy maw and now the reason Slashdot is going to kick M$'s ass over the Internet wide cryptographic standard known as Kerberos. It's not just the rebooting that pisses me off, it's the whole subversive system they have in place that's made my software development life suck balls for years. End users are almost never aware of what really goes on behind the scenes. They just see the pretty windows and think everything's OK. Think about it this way...they deliberately make incompatible versions of simple file formats so that you are forced to upgrade simply to read [for example] an M$ Excel file. They are not producing value-added functionality, they are not making a magic new Excel format that can do more things, they are rendering essentially the same file format incompatible by bloating it with unpublished additions. Bloating being the key term.
They send mangled TCP/IP packets increasing network traffic exponentially by forcing servers to re-transmit packets like there's no tomorrow. An NT network is often its own worst enemy. They can't make a scripting language that doesn't open your ass up to every script kiddie on the Net. ActiveX happens to be a really good way to make Internet viruses [now why wouldn't they wanted distributed software that works well...because then less people would buy Office if they could just rent a Word program for an hour or two via the Web, pay 50 cents and be done with?].
I've watched so much expensive software fall to its knees like a crack ho in a back alley. Why? Because the systems were Java tied to M$. No other reason. And Java was NOT the problem. You can build stable systems in pure Java.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been hearing about cars which run on compressed air for some time. They are not, unsurprisingly, sold in the US...does anyone in a foreign country have access to an "air car"? If so, how well does
it work?
http://www.theaircar.com/
Streaming MPEG 2 is nowhere near as efficient as some of the MPEG 4 codecs available. Take a look at www.3ivx.com. I got a 12 to 1 compression ratio over an MPEG 2 file which I ripped from a DVD [which I own]. Basically there is almost no loss in visual quality and a 77 MB file dropped in size to around 6.8 MB. Worth a look if you ever wanted to exercise your right to fair use...
Why do we always assume "inner city" means black? Isn't that presumptuous? I think "inner city" means "high pressure environment where metal detectors are common place in educational institutions [apparently for good reason]" so why the automatic, knee-jerk hanging?
Actually, I did a google on steve wozniak and he can be contacted:
http://www.woz.com/wozscape/index.html
Give him a shout!
Take it from Guido:
l d0 01.htm
i ng s/papers/elkner/pyYHS.html
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/ppt/acm-cp4e/s
Python is a good way to introduce non-programmers to programming in general. From Python you can realistically branch into simple C [I wouldn't recommend C++].
This is currently taking place in high school comp sci classes
http://www.python.org/workshops/2000-01/proceed
Steve Wozniak has been teaching children computer science for quite some time now. If you can get in touch with him [I have no idea how to do so], he would most likely give some very valuable pointers.
I worked for a company which was a subsidiary [of sorts] of UGO. Well, after working for them for a while, I gave them a month or so of notice. A day or so before I left, I received this threatening letter basically saying that I agreed never to say anything negative about UGO and gave up my rights to sue them for practically any reason and that I agreed to pay any bills which they might have outstanding for me. Well...(@#*&#$ that! I basically told them that there was no way I was going to sign over my constitutionally protected right to state my opinion about them nor was I going to sign a blanket statement agreeing to pay for possible money their accounting department might decide that I owed them. I told them they could send me an itemized list of dues that I owed them and I would discuss those items with my accountant and that if they had some desire to sue me, they could notify my lawyer of their intent. I also told them that all further such correspondence should be sent via email rather than fax [as in, I don't have a fax!]. Their HR department tried to reach me by phone after that [to assure me the contract was harmless of course :-?]. After that sort of draconian gag attempt, I'll never deal with them again...
I'm not an expert on clusters but it may be simpler to use something like MOSIX
http://www.mosix.cs.huji.ac.il/
MOSIX uses transparent migration of processing amongst other nodes on an Ethernet network [read the site for more particulars]. It's also pretty easy to set up [basically just run the install script and make sure the nodes can locate each other].
Might be helpful if Beowulf is a bit much for your needs.
"by sharing your files on, and downloading files from Napster you are breaking the LAW. "
Not true if I am downloading music from cds which I have purchased in the past... And this would be AMERICAN law wouldn't it? If I download in Zaire, why should I care about your American law? Scoff all you like, there are societies where possessions and profit are almost meaningless concepts. "Go live there?" you might say...I think I would rather build such a place HERE AND NOW.
"The law that has existed to protect artists for many years now but that with the digital revolution, appears to have been thrown out the window."
If the law protects artists so well, why do so few artists profit in the face of the rising profits of the RIAA? The point of copyright is to allow an innovator/artist to profit for a reasonable amount of time from their works. Now we have efforts in place to extend copyright to mean that some entity will profit *forever* from a work. This is CONTRARY to the original intent of copyright. If the artists own the copyrights [which IS the intent of a copyright] then why haven't they profited from them in the past? Because the record labels do the profiting. They garner the control of copyrights and profit from the sale of music to the exclusion of the artist. The artists, if profitable, are generally profitable from concerts and merchandise sale *not the the music which they have copyrighted*. This is a gross generalization, but so many people want to define my rights in an environment which exists outside of national and therefore legislative boundaries and so many are getting self-righteous about copyright. Why should I bow to your LAW? Your LAW locks up hackers for years *without trial* while *denying them bail*...an act that is ILLEGAL, yet our court system enacted such activity. We have police officers who are *permitted* to execute black citizens and are found to have *committed no crime*. If killing an unarmed black man who's fumbling for his wallet is not a criminal activity, why are you getting so HUFFY about MP3 downloading?
Talking about the LAW is always a funny thing because it works so differently depending upon social and economic factors. MAYBE IT IS TIME TO REDEFINE THE LAW...MAYBE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE NOW DOING ONLINE.
IT'S CALLED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO PRACTICE IT, JUST AS THE RIAA HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO HIRE LAWYERS TO TRY TO STOP US.
THE LAW IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN IN BOOKS IT IS WHAT SOCIETY DEFINES IT TO BE.
What country should determine the laws of the internet? It should be the US? The US Recording Industry? The MPAA? How are any of these organizations, even the United States, qualified to dictate online usage for the entire world.
The real problem is that the online community needs to begin to define its *own* laws.
This is not necessarily true. You cannot distribute the source code to Bruce Schneier's APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY as source code/application code on a disk outside the US, but you *can* distribute the book [which contains the full source code!]. I would imagine that a T-Shirt with Blowfish on it is still just a T-Shirt.
I sent this to everybody listed on the napster site atw ww.napster.com/labels.html</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.napster.com/labels.html">http://
<br>
<p>
Basically, the issue of piracy is still being linked to the use of Napster and this is absurd. THE PEOPLE USING THE TECHNOLOGY CAN MISUSE IT OR CHOOSE TO USE IT APPROPRIATELY. BLAME THE PEOPLE NOT NAPSTER!
<p>
By conspiring to shut down a file sharing program due to unconfirmed charges of piracy, you have demonstrated your greed and unwillingness to change. The thinking exemplified by companies such as yourself in accusing customers of being "pirates" when you regularly expand your already considerable profits at the expense of those same customers demonstrates that you are neither in line with the needs of your customers nor dedicated to establishing a more reasonable economic system. You are further attacking technologies when it is unquestionable that it is the persons involved in the use of the technologies [rather than the technologies themselves] who are the "pirates" if any such "pirates" exist.
<p>
In response to your attack, I would like you to know that I will no longer purchase CD based music unless that music is published by companies which are independent of the auspices of the RIAA and similar organizations. By attacking a file sharing program you have begun a war which you will not win and you have lost at least one customer <b>for life.</b>
<p>
I hope you will re-consider attacks of this nature and engage in open debate with your customers as to the future of your industry because if you are truly unwilling to do so, then you will soon find a substantial decline your CD sales. This decline will not be accompanied by any web sites toward which you can point your finger. It will come because you yourselves have raised public consciousness on this issue to the point where real questions are now being asked about your industry's role in the future of music and those questions will be answered by consumers who now know that their freedoms are limited by your narrow perspectives.
<br>
<br>
James Richards<br>
Former buyer of RIAA CDs
No more Jar Jar!
Opera is what I use when I want to browse *information* and IE is what I use when I have to browse the crap that they call HTML at my work.
Standards are fine, but M$ and Net$cape fought their little war until the real casualty was the mere notion of compatibility.
Some of us are trapped in jobs working 10-15 hour days 5-6 days a week. We might dearly love to code that brand new browser...how about you fork over a little cash to go along with *your* gripes?
Clearcase is pretty good and Visual Source Safe works well on Win32. I think CVS is superior because it is more cross platform and *flexible* about what you can do with it. I like being able to migrate development over various platforms because you never know when Win32 will suddenly cease to be viable or Linux will pale next to Solaris for some high-performance server side code [hey, it could happen]...
There doesn't seem to be any evidence that MNN was under a NDA with Adobe. A representative of MNN claims [in the article on law.com at the top of the page] that the material which they used to publish their report was "in the public domain". This means that they retrieved it from the Internet or some other public source without having to agree to not disclose anything. If that's true, Adobe is wasting its time and making itself look like the greedy money sucker which it is. Photoshop is overpriced and really no more useful or functional than the Gimp [www.gimp.org] and Adobe is probably aware of that by now. Use Gimp, down with these corporate pigs!
*Zork*. 'Nuff said...
First post?
What we need is a public infrastructure effort to support Iridium and similar systems on a global scale. Some sort of a public consortium for effectively enabling communication for the masses...or am I dreaming?
The patent office is in the throes of fallout over their too-broad patents issued of late. Patenting things like using a single mouse click to submit a transaction [Amazon's stupendous and ridiculous "One Click" patent], a web-based affiliate program [thank Amazone again] and now the notion of a thin client and a related standard web application infrastructure for enabling such a thin client to issue remote commands is a perfect example of the out dated nature of most government copyrighting and patenting procedures and a clear call for the public at large to take measures to protect themselves from slick individuals patenting away our every basic computer concept behind a wall of "geek speak" as effective as any used by lawyers to confuse the issues with innuendo.
So basically, all these years that I have been building web applications I have been hosing this man's patent without ever even being aware of it? How can he claim control of procedures developed independently of him with no fore-knowledge of his supposed technical advances?
Something must be done about ridiculous patents before we all end up paying for the concept of dialing up to a service provider and using a phone line as a means of digital communication...
Wait a minute...
Mao Tse-Dong actually horrified *Stalin* during WWII by suggesting that victory in the war had a very simple solution:
At the time, among civilized non-third world nations, Communist countries had a far larger percentage of world population. Mao's solution was to have a nuclear armageddon in which full tactical strikes were made. His theory? We have more people and so more of our people will survive. This was his notion of victory and he has had by far the most profound effect upon the thoughts of his people in the last two centuries. Napoleon called China the sleeping dragon for very good reasons. Should China regain its former splendor, do not believe that they have abandoned the notion of Chinese supremacy any more than the fascists still running around in the US have abandoned theirs. Ignorance is a hard beast to kill. And how do you think Cuba got those nuclear missiles? You don't think Castro had them developed in one of his cigar plants, do you? Russia/China [memory fails as to which of the two] supplied those missiles and China would do so again if it served the cause of Chinese domination.
The more things change...
Slashdot is an open, Internet based forum. Just because it is in English doesn't mean that everyone who posts to it is necessarily in the US. China's policies towards the Internet are as important to the global Internet economy as anything that happens in the US.
Isolationism is passe...
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html
The above is a good example of the possibilities for new thinking with regards to the proper use of copyrights. Copyrights exist ostensibly for the benefits of the artists whose works are copyrighted. Beneath the auspices of certain organizations, such as the RIAA, copyrights have been turned into a mechanism for extracting higher gross profits in an attempt to "offset" the "losses" which are said [by the RIAA!] to accrue from the illegal use of DATs, CD-R and even cassette tapes.
These profits are not, however, returned to the rigthful artists but are used by the industry to offset losses from less successful artists and to cover other similar "costs"!
This is essentially a CYA tax for artists who aren't very good and the industry executives who are foolish enough to sign artists who can't sell.
You are paying for artists you probably never even cared to listen to, much less purchase.
Basically, the incredibly high profit margin associated with the sales of CDs is used to fund the industry and its tight grip upon the profit making potential of signed artists. This is neither in the true spirit of copyrights nor is it to the benefit of the vast majority of artists.
In short, the RIAA is complaining because they cannot directly control a distribution mechanism like Napster. Venues such as orangealley.com, candaentertainment.com and rapstation.com are aware that technologies such as MP3 level the playing field and obviate the need for hard media such as CDs. By cutting the costs of traditional distribution, artists are, in fact, easily able to distribute their music themselves. Promotion and management can now become the specialized focus of companies which would previously have been unable to compete with industry heavyweights. None of this makes the RIAA very happy and given the history of abuse which the music industry has heaped upon its many artists, this could be termed the wheel of karma coming back with a vengeance.
Copyrights are a valuable tool when they are not subverted and it is important that the wishes of artists be observed with regards to their works.
If Metallica does not want Napster users listening to their music then Napster users should listen to other bands who have no such feelings. That is the beauty of MP3 and Napster. This is also the surest way to subvert the attempt by Metallica [and the RIAA behind them] to defame a perfectly valid means of communication.
Napster is not the problem.
Rather than attack 300,000+ users and alienate a large number of fans, Metallica would have been far more prudent to simply let people know that they did not want their music traded in such a fashion. That would have been the polite thing to do. This would have kept a much larger percentage of people in their corner and would have opened up the possibility for a much more reasonable debate on this issue.
Linus is right, artists have the right to control their copyrights, but the real question is if any but the most incredibly successful of artists in fact control anything at this point. The RIAA has been excruciatingly effective at taking control of art from the artists and they are not in any sense seeking to discontinue this practice. The current attack on Napster is not so much about the copyrights of artists as it is about the industy profiting from the copyrights of artists.
Support the movement, free the music.
For anybody who hasn't had the chance to check it out, here are some links I found interesting:
e s.html e uman-tso.html
s -faq.html#ntbroken
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1510.txt
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/
http://www.isi.edu/gost/info/kerberos/open_issu
http://www.isi.edu/gost/publications/kerberos-n
Further, here is an earlier page on the prospect of an upcoming NT 5 [yeah, you read it right, NT 5] Kerberos "enhancement":
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/CCS/people/kenh/kerbero
My question is [ostensibly] very simple and it is really a question about the copyrighting of addendums to material which is already within the public domain. Kerberos is an open Internet protocol that has been widely published, analysed and freed by its creators and maintainers for general public use. Unknown numbers of users make use of this protocol daily. Microsoft has published a copyrighted extension that purports to be a "trade secret"... There are a number of relevant issues with this:
1) Microsoft has indeed created an addition to the Kerberos protocol by making use of a currently unused data field within Kerberos packets to inject OS specific data into what network systems will identify as Kerberos authentication packets. If Kerberos is an open protocol and the net effect of the Microsoft extension is to effectively nullify the inter-operability of non-Microsoft Kerberos clients which access the Microsoft specific pseudo-Kerberos servers, then the additional data field could constitute an attempt by Microsoft to deny users the free use of a previously open protocol.
2) How can a document which is not encrypted and yet publicly traded over an inherently insecure network [which is the Internet] be considered to be a trade secret? If the trade secret nature of the document is inapplicable [because only a token effort at security was established] and the intention of the copyright was to enforce the trade secret nature of the document, then is the copyright itself valid? Put another way, is there not a requirement on the part of the corporate entity to ensure proper security measures in order to claim the establishment of a trade secret and the related copyright of that trade secret?
3) The specification which Microsoft has published is an addition to the Kerberos specification. The Kerberos specification is within the public domain and any modifications to that specification affect current users within the public domain. What are the issues with copyrighting [and attempting to hold secret] an addition to a public specification? Are there any fair knowledge restraints upon such modifications to an open protocol?
I am not an expert in copyright law and only have a basic understanding of Kerberos, however the issues involved with this seem understandable and the above questions are based on an "a priori" understanding on my part which I am attempting to validate.
I do not think that blatant disregard for a copyright is a good thing, however I do not support the restriction or intentional damaging of an open protocol through questionable corporate actions. The copyright itself is present in the posting on Slashdot and my question is if the copyright itself is viable given what it is attempting to copyright. If the copyright is valid, then the posting of copyrighted material was the action of a single user, not that of Slashdot and hence at most a single post is affected under any legal resolutions. Further, Microsoft states clearly that their posting is an attempt to enable assessment of the level of security which their proposed specification represents. This is an accepted practice among the cryptographic community for engendering higher levels of security through public scrutiny. The attempt to restrict the propagation of knowledge gained through that scrutiny has a number of ramifications which separate it from the accepted practice:
1) the knowledge of any flaws in the specification cannot be made public
2) the knowledge of genuine enhancements represented by the specification cannot be made public
3) the public nature of the Kerberos specification is inherently affected by additions to it which are not public
Again, while I am not a lawyer and not a Kerberos guru:
1)I am certainly capable of using Kerberos for authentication needs
2) I can read a specification pretty well
3) I fully support the *right* of users to have a *freely* secure and *consistent* means for navigating the Internet and establishing their identities. Kerberos represents such a means and I therefore consider it to be a public property which may not be crippled or damaged without such damage constituting an attack upon the rights of the public as a whole.
I am very interested in any expert opinions upon this issue...
Anyone who thinks Win98 is a great product has my heartfelt sympathies...
The problem with Microsoft is very simple. They have a corporate mandate of "embrace and extend". This is a philosophy whereby a dominant technology is accepted by M$ into their system and is then extended with proprietary,
platform-specific hooks which prevent non-M$ users from interacting with previously standard technologies. They have employed this strategy with JavaScript, with Java, with TCI/IP[!], and now with Kerberos. This is detrimental to the goal of truly standardized software that is open and free for all. It prevents users of non-M$ systems from interacting with users of
M$ systems effectively and produces what Microsoft terms FUD [Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt].
FUD is the core of Microsoft's marketing strategy.
Once FUD is in place, M$ can point the finger at [Java,Netscape,Kerberos] and say "They did it." This is the reason Sun sued M$, the reason Netscape fell into AOL's greedy maw and now the reason Slashdot is going to kick M$'s ass over the Internet wide cryptographic standard known as Kerberos. It's not just the rebooting that pisses me off, it's the whole subversive system they have in place that's made my software development life suck balls for years. End
users are almost never aware of what really goes on behind the scenes. They just see the pretty windows and think everything's OK. Think about it this way...they deliberately make incompatible versions of simple file formats so that you are forced to upgrade simply to read [for example] an M$ Excel file. They are not producing value-added functionality, they are not making
a magic new Excel format that can do more things, they are rendering essentially the same file format incompatible by bloating it with
unpublished additions. Bloating being the key term.
They send mangled TCP/IP packets increasing network traffic exponentially by
forcing servers to re-transmit packets like there's no tomorrow. An NT network is often its own worst enemy. They can't make a scripting language that doesn't open your ass up to every script kiddie on the Net. ActiveX happens to be a really good way to make Internet viruses [now why wouldn't they wanted distributed software that works well...because then less people
would buy Office if they could just rent a Word program for an hour or two via the Web, pay 50 cents and be done with?].
I've watched so much expensive software fall to its knees like a crack ho in a back alley. Why? Because the systems were Java tied to M$. No other reason. And Java was NOT the problem. You can build stable systems in pure Java.
Caveat emptor.
As for linking to sites hosting a document illegally...go talk to the person owning the site...not the person linking to it.