A close friend of mine used to be a financial manager in the music business back in the late 60s and early 70s and handled some fairly well-known groups and individual singer/songwriters of the time. You wouldn't believe some of the stories, and that was from 30 years ago. I seriously doubt that the industry has grown a set of ethics since then, and their profound lack thereof is one of the reasons he got out. He loved his clients, but at the end of the day, it was more important for him to look himself in the mirror than to hustle a buck. So, yes... legal intimidation, graft, corruption, kickbacks... it's all built into a system that is designed to enrich the labels; the artist is like a vein of coal, and they're there to strip mine.
That said, the poster also admittedly went into a business venture and was way over his head. I've seen the same thing in the software world, where someone who can write code thinks "Hey, I'll start my own software company!" and then finds out that developing a product that someone will actually pay money for is just the first step down a long road populated with IP lawyers, tax attorneys, marketing managers, accountants, ad infinitum. When starting your own business, no matter how large or small, the devil is always in the details not the broad strokes. That's a valuable lesson to learn.
...it's an opt-in system, with the owner of the computer being the one in control.
The concern of course is not that end-users won't be able to opt-out of this kind of technology, but that applications -- or even the operating system -- will refuse to load if it has been disabled. For example, a media player may simply refuse to play that video or audio clip unless the user has "opted in", and then will use it as part of its DRM implementation to ensure that you are allowed to view, copy or even store the data (in the case of streaming data over the net).
One argument is that such operating systems and/or applications will only be implemented in the absence of a) resistance by the customer, b) competing products which do not implement this kind of technology. That if the marketplace decides that these kinds of tactics to control access to digital media are onerous, then it will fall to the wayside by virtue of consumer choice and the power of the almighty buck. But I think that ignores the significant influence that organizations like the MPAA and RIAA have, particularly now that they've publically climbed into bed with the major software vendors out there rather than try to shovel through legislation that mandates compliance. When you're talking about implementation at the operating system level and a company that owns 95% of the desktop market, market forces and a user's ability to "opt in" become moot points.
In the end, it's not about what consumers want, it's about what companies want on both sides of the fence.
If SCO were to go off the deep end assert patent rights over IP that has found its way into Linux...
1. Is there any idea of what patent rights they would assert?
2. Is there any idea of what percentage of the code base would be affected by their patents?
3. Since patents cover ideas, not just implementation, how realistic would it be that (presuming they have a significant number of patents) companies like RedHad or SuSe could rewrite unencumbered code?
4. Would SCO asserting their patent rights now, after all this time, limit their ability to collect monies from existing distributions?
I love the form letters that the DMA wants folks to send in to their congressman:
I am opposed to the creation of a national do-not-call list.
I simply do not see it as the role of the federal government to encourage the destruction of a $700 billion sector of our economy by putting its immense power behind creating, promoting and expanding a national do-not-call list. This list is certain to contain millions of people who might otherwise have become (or already are) satisfied consumers of teleservices products and services, and who we need to survive and grow.
At a time when we are experiencing budget deficits and struggling to emerge from recession, can we afford to risk losing the billions in tax revenues this industry generates, not to mention the millions of jobs it provides?
Professional telemarketers are trained to respect people's right to say "no," hang up, or be permanently taken off of a calling list. In addition, The Direct Marketing Association already has a national do-not--call list and requires all of its members to screen these names from their lists or suffer penalties, including possible expulsion from The DMA.
In my view, the Federal government should not be in the business of destroying this productive, economically vital form of sales communication. It is my sincere hope that the FTC reconsiders this anti-business, anti-competitive, job-killing proposal.
The irony is, if the DMA's DNC was actually effective (and used) by their member organizations, state and federal governments wouldn't be pressured by citizens to implement something like this. They've taken their proverbial mile walk with the inch given them and now they're screaming that it's anti-competitive. I also find it somewhat amusing that they consider minimum wage telemarketing jobs as "productive" and "economically vital".
Ok, what's the deal with The Register article? In multiple places, they refer to Stinger as "Stinker"...
"...after promising that StinkerOS was ready in the middle of last year, Microsoft used the delays to uncover Sendo's integration secrets..."
"Stinker still hasn't shipped, so Sendo can't sell a phone".
"Sendo claims that Microsoft demanded it cease all other development to ship the Stinker..."
Is this intentional, or some kind of repetitive Freudian slip on the part of the author? I mean, hell, who could blame Microsoft for not wanting to ship "StinkerOS"?
The biggest problem with folders is no one wants to be a file clerk and weed, sort, and file their docs....
No one wants to add searchable metadata to their docs either. How many people who use Word actually bother to fill in the document summary for what they've written (which is fully searchable using the indexing service)? Damned few, I'd wager.
I see the potential for something like this to only give users enough rope to hang themselves with.
Good question. Never having used DirecTV, I wonder... do you actually purchase their decoders, or are they in effect licensed to you only as long as you maintain an account with them in good standing?
Wait a second here. How is what DirecTV doing stifling the flow of information? I could only see that holding water if they were a single source of television programming. If you don't like how DirecTV works and don't want to pay for OTA broadcasts, then by all means, hook yourself up a pair of rabbit ears. I fail to see how the argument that "information wants to be free" extends to "information should be made available at the highest quality at no charge to the consumer".
Bottom line, whatever his motivations, it's a mistake to romanticize this as "stealing from the rich to give to the poor".
What does someone stealing documents from a law firm have to do with anyone's online rights? It's not like he reverse engineered anything. And while I agree that the kid was (a) stupid, and (b) deserves to be punished, I do think that they're using the legal equivalent of an elephant gun to hunt a mosquito. Even the DirecTV folks acknowledge that the information he posted doesn't give people specific information needed to hack their service, so I think that it's going to be tough to prove the specific intent that he (or anyone else) was looking for financial gain. Some notoriety and "street cred" is more like it.
According to one of the newspaper pieces, Gene's son has contacted them, praising the effort and offering support for the project. I wonder if he has any mojo with the studios...
For those who use Eudora on Windows, Spamnix is a plugin that is based on spamassassin and it works really well. Although you still have the overhead of downloading the mail, you never actually see it (I just have everything dump right into my trash folder). I'd say that at most, two or three spams slip through a day, which is something that I can tolerate.
The contents of the header fields in a message have nothing to do with SMTP protocol itself; the sender is identified with MAIL FROM at the beginning of the transaction and could choose to validate the address if they wish (either returning a 550 or 553 result code if they don't like it for some reason). Requiring that the From: and/or Reply-To: header fields match the return path means that you're effectively eliminating relaying, "smart hosts" and some gateways that forward messages from different mail systems.
And, bottom line, it wouldn't do anything to stop spammers, or even slow them down. So what if they have to use a "traceable user account" with some service provider? Spammers move from provider to provider (often providing false information), or they use spam-friendly/neutral providers who don't give a damn as long as they get their monthly fee.
How exactly could anyone take a site like oldanon.com seriously when they have discussions with subjects like "The Venerable Pegaspasia's Rotting Gorilla-flesh Knickers"?
Online games clearly aren't their problem.
Personally, I just find it humorous that the "editor in chief" is someone who effectively tells readers to STFU if there's spelling or grammatical errors.
I think that people forget this, and see computers as a solution to a problem, rather than a tool to help in the process of solving it. I suspect that most educators either don't understand computers at all, or tend to think of them in terms of replacing -- rather than adding to -- the educational process as a whole.
Most service providers have restrictions in their AUP about residential customers running servers; many of them outright prohibit it. So what's all the excitement about?
The cyberyogi is basically a human being which learns to control and recon-
figure his nervous system in a way that he becomes capable to use his skin's
nervous system to create in it additional vibration patterns similar to a
SIS-struct(but much more variable),with the main purpose of becoming capable
to use it to receive the holy software of cosmic consciousness and also to
perform telepathic broadcast for sending messages to the mankind to lead it
to higher levels of spiritual development.
The system of spiritual exercises created to learn this is called the cyber-
yoga.
The "holy software of cosmic consciousness"? My fellow human beings frighten me horribly at times.
Not that this guy is credible, but there has been research done on the effects of what's called Baker-Miller pink (ie: "drunk-tank pink", about the color of pink bubble gum), which is a color that has a short-term calming affect on people who are highly agitated or aggressive. Some police stations took the idea and painted their holding cells that color of pink and it did have some beneficial effects; fewer outbursts, reduced aggression towards other people, etc. So, they decided to try painting the interior of prison cells that color.
Big mistake. It turns out that the effect is only temporary, and when exposed to the color for a longer period of time, it actually heightens one's agitation and makes things worse. So while it calmed folks down in the holding cells, it had them beating each other's brains in with extra vigor in prisons.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a bit of both.
A close friend of mine used to be a financial manager in the music business back in the late 60s and early 70s and handled some fairly well-known groups and individual singer/songwriters of the time. You wouldn't believe some of the stories, and that was from 30 years ago. I seriously doubt that the industry has grown a set of ethics since then, and their profound lack thereof is one of the reasons he got out. He loved his clients, but at the end of the day, it was more important for him to look himself in the mirror than to hustle a buck. So, yes... legal intimidation, graft, corruption, kickbacks... it's all built into a system that is designed to enrich the labels; the artist is like a vein of coal, and they're there to strip mine.
That said, the poster also admittedly went into a business venture and was way over his head. I've seen the same thing in the software world, where someone who can write code thinks "Hey, I'll start my own software company!" and then finds out that developing a product that someone will actually pay money for is just the first step down a long road populated with IP lawyers, tax attorneys, marketing managers, accountants, ad infinitum. When starting your own business, no matter how large or small, the devil is always in the details not the broad strokes. That's a valuable lesson to learn.
You guys still have that whole Queen thing going, eh? I thought you dumped her a while back. :)
The concern of course is not that end-users won't be able to opt-out of this kind of technology, but that applications -- or even the operating system -- will refuse to load if it has been disabled. For example, a media player may simply refuse to play that video or audio clip unless the user has "opted in", and then will use it as part of its DRM implementation to ensure that you are allowed to view, copy or even store the data (in the case of streaming data over the net).
One argument is that such operating systems and/or applications will only be implemented in the absence of a) resistance by the customer, b) competing products which do not implement this kind of technology. That if the marketplace decides that these kinds of tactics to control access to digital media are onerous, then it will fall to the wayside by virtue of consumer choice and the power of the almighty buck. But I think that ignores the significant influence that organizations like the MPAA and RIAA have, particularly now that they've publically climbed into bed with the major software vendors out there rather than try to shovel through legislation that mandates compliance. When you're talking about implementation at the operating system level and a company that owns 95% of the desktop market, market forces and a user's ability to "opt in" become moot points.
In the end, it's not about what consumers want, it's about what companies want on both sides of the fence.
Well, given that software isn't a physical invention, aren't software patents really patents on ideas?
If SCO were to go off the deep end assert patent rights over IP that has found its way into Linux...
1. Is there any idea of what patent rights they would assert?
2. Is there any idea of what percentage of the code base would be affected by their patents?
3. Since patents cover ideas, not just implementation, how realistic would it be that (presuming they have a significant number of patents) companies like RedHad or SuSe could rewrite unencumbered code?
4. Would SCO asserting their patent rights now, after all this time, limit their ability to collect monies from existing distributions?
INAL, and inquiring minds and whatnot...
The biggest problem with folders is no one wants to be a file clerk and weed, sort, and file their docs....
No one wants to add searchable metadata to their docs either. How many people who use Word actually bother to fill in the document summary for what they've written (which is fully searchable using the indexing service)? Damned few, I'd wager.
I see the potential for something like this to only give users enough rope to hang themselves with.
If I purchase a DirecTV box...
Good question. Never having used DirecTV, I wonder... do you actually purchase their decoders, or are they in effect licensed to you only as long as you maintain an account with them in good standing?
Sorry, your land rights have nothing to do with the theft and dissemination of intellectual property. Thanks for playing.
Wait a second here. How is what DirecTV doing stifling the flow of information? I could only see that holding water if they were a single source of television programming. If you don't like how DirecTV works and don't want to pay for OTA broadcasts, then by all means, hook yourself up a pair of rabbit ears. I fail to see how the argument that "information wants to be free" extends to "information should be made available at the highest quality at no charge to the consumer".
Bottom line, whatever his motivations, it's a mistake to romanticize this as "stealing from the rich to give to the poor".
What does someone stealing documents from a law firm have to do with anyone's online rights? It's not like he reverse engineered anything. And while I agree that the kid was (a) stupid, and (b) deserves to be punished, I do think that they're using the legal equivalent of an elephant gun to hunt a mosquito. Even the DirecTV folks acknowledge that the information he posted doesn't give people specific information needed to hack their service, so I think that it's going to be tough to prove the specific intent that he (or anyone else) was looking for financial gain. Some notoriety and "street cred" is more like it.
According to one of the newspaper pieces, Gene's son has contacted them, praising the effort and offering support for the project. I wonder if he has any mojo with the studios...
For those who use Eudora on Windows, Spamnix is a plugin that is based on spamassassin and it works really well. Although you still have the overhead of downloading the mail, you never actually see it (I just have everything dump right into my trash folder). I'd say that at most, two or three spams slip through a day, which is something that I can tolerate.
The contents of the header fields in a message have nothing to do with SMTP protocol itself; the sender is identified with MAIL FROM at the beginning of the transaction and could choose to validate the address if they wish (either returning a 550 or 553 result code if they don't like it for some reason). Requiring that the From: and/or Reply-To: header fields match the return path means that you're effectively eliminating relaying, "smart hosts" and some gateways that forward messages from different mail systems.
And, bottom line, it wouldn't do anything to stop spammers, or even slow them down. So what if they have to use a "traceable user account" with some service provider? Spammers move from provider to provider (often providing false information), or they use spam-friendly/neutral providers who don't give a damn as long as they get their monthly fee.
How exactly could anyone take a site like oldanon.com seriously when they have discussions with subjects like "The Venerable Pegaspasia's Rotting Gorilla-flesh Knickers"? Online games clearly aren't their problem.
Touché :)
Personally, I just find it humorous that the "editor in chief" is someone who effectively tells readers to STFU if there's spelling or grammatical errors.
I think that people forget this, and see computers as a solution to a problem, rather than a tool to help in the process of solving it. I suspect that most educators either don't understand computers at all, or tend to think of them in terms of replacing -- rather than adding to -- the educational process as a whole.
Most service providers have restrictions in their AUP about residential customers running servers; many of them outright prohibit it. So what's all the excitement about?
Not that this guy is credible, but there has been research done on the effects of what's called Baker-Miller pink (ie: "drunk-tank pink", about the color of pink bubble gum), which is a color that has a short-term calming affect on people who are highly agitated or aggressive. Some police stations took the idea and painted their holding cells that color of pink and it did have some beneficial effects; fewer outbursts, reduced aggression towards other people, etc. So, they decided to try painting the interior of prison cells that color.
Big mistake. It turns out that the effect is only temporary, and when exposed to the color for a longer period of time, it actually heightens one's agitation and makes things worse. So while it calmed folks down in the holding cells, it had them beating each other's brains in with extra vigor in prisons.