I think that the day that we allow the government to keep a perfectly safe product from shipping is the day that we have finally undermined all our principles of capitalism and the free market.
Absolute nonsense...
The assumption that the only 'real' free market economent is a laissez faire economy is complete rubbish. The capitalist economic ideal is not the maximization of profit but the efficient use of resources. Government intervention has often stifled such efficient use, but that in no way implies that every form of government intervention runs contrary to the ideals of capitalism. Anti trust legislation is a perfect example of this in action. Yes, it is intervention. Yet it is a form of intervention that keeps the market moving in its desired direction (away from monopoly, closer toward perfect competition). In an economic (not a corporate) context, individual profits are certainly not held above the efficient operations of the market.
I assume that the press release is either a poor translation of the original (presumably in Swedish) or drafted by somebody for whom English is not a first language. While it certainly does come across as being juvenile, I think it's excusable in this case
Yet this entire mess (the IM failure) has occured on a completely distributed network as well. Micrsofts explanation citing "odd hardware failures" demonstrates that the distributed nature of their network is in fact, nothing more then an illusion. While hardware failures are a reality within this industry, to see a distributed network brought down to its knees illustrates the existance of a single point of failure.
You take for granted precisely that which is the point of concern. Can Hailstorm and.NET be designed in such a way that even the most unexepected of hardware failures would allow users uninterupted service. This is the point raised by the IM fiasco and one hopes that users take note and proceed cautiously before adopting Hailstorm and.NET
This has nothing to do with monopolies. It's just the natural and healthy survival of the fittest that has always been the core of capitalism.
While mergers, acquisitions and growth are certainly a healthy component of a capitalist, it is somewhat rash to assume that the consequences of these free market operations are justified simply because of they occur in the free market. The notion of certain industries (especially those with high fixed cost and low marginal cost) shifting toward monopoly is one of which economists have been acutely aware of for decades. The same economists who champion what appears to be your ideal; a "laissez faire" economy, are vigilant in their attempt to maintain a market that is conducive to healthy competition. It is generally agreed that monopolistic practices are one's which preclude market forces from operating in way that benefits the consumer. While the shift toward monopoly may be one which is a cause of natural capitalist tendencies, the emergence of a monopoly works to stifle those tendencies. Herein lies the tension between regulation and allowing markets to operate in as natural a way as possible. Your argument, and this article, both offer an all too lucid demonstration of this tension in operation.
What I disagree with is defining Napster as a 'tool'. I think the definition was embraced too quickly, and as a result we have some inaccurate analogies (comparison of Napster to media distributors for example). Napster is an arena, a gathering place, that is where its value is found, not in the technology that has been used to create that arena. The software and the arena are intrinsically linked and therefore the difference between the two has grown cloudy. I am, as well as the RIAA, arguing against an arena for music piracy.
I believe that mp3 has terrific potential to eliminate the music industry and I would love to see that. However, Napster does not fit the bill.
Napster, and people who support it are constantly trying to solidify their position by engaging in debates which are absolutely not relevant to the topic at hand.
The case made by Napster that people who use Napster are or are not more likely to buy CD's is equally irrelevant.
The fact is, the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music is illegal. People have been doing it for decades and will continue to do so. However, let us not hide behind baseless self righteousness by saying that we are empowering the artist by opening distribution channels or other clever rhetoric.
While I agree that mp3 technology has tremendous potential to eliminate the despised record industry, this is not the arena to debate this issue. I wince while I type this, but I must agree with the RIAA's legal brief when they state that "napster is facilitating copyright infringement on a massive scale... "
Unlike most of the post's which seem to be directed (justifiably or otherwise) at the incompetence of Jon Katz, I actually feel like commenting on one of the movies in question.
Being a football fan, Any Given Sunday was on my list and I managed to see it opening night. Certain things really impressed me such as the cinematography on the football field as well as the choreography. The movie seemed to have a good balance between actual football being played and the politics behind it. I can't comment on whether or not it's accurate because I don't know. However, it is a movie, entertainment, some you see for enjoyment. I enjoyed the movie, enough said.
This reminds me of the controversy surrounding the kid who couldn't get into Comdex. They don't check for ID at Comdex, go and have a good time. The same applies in this case. If you're a minor and you want a copy of Corel Linux, go and buy, go and download it, I really doubt the 'EULA Police' are going to come to your door and bash it down and confiscate your computer.
I think we need to step away from this 'holier the thou' attitude and take a closer look at the situation. Companies like that don't get into the position they are currently in by leaving themselves wide open to stupid lawsuits. Judging by the amount of posts on Slashdot regarding the whole 'if user x is a minor, then x cannot legally accept the GPL therefore . . . ', i'd say that the entire issue is very grey and Corel is just covering their ass.
As for the people at Debian, chill the hell out, Have you tried to contact Corel and ask them their reasons for putting such a clause in their EULA. One thing I appreciate about the open source community is that fact that people are willing to look at problems from a variety of angles. However, it seems to me that everyone automatically has a problem with Corel because they are a company that 'GASP' actually makes money by selling commercial software. Instead of jumping all over them, why isn't a little constructive criticism offered. If I was running the Corel Linux development I would seriously get discourged by having the Linux community try to bite me in the ass every time I took a step.
My point is this, the issue is obviously somewhat complicated because it doesn't seem like anyone on Slashdot has posted a definitive legal opinion on the matter. Lets take a bit of time and analyze things before we start making accusations.
I don't shop online because I see ads in mall windows or on shopping bags. I shop online because I find that most stores still don't understand the basic concept of customer service.
I live in Toronto and we have a beautiful downtown core. There are many unique little shops scattered all over the place. Most of the things you find in these stores are probably unique to that store and I don't think you'd be able to find it online. I doubt if these people are worried about losing out to e-business.
Malls are scared because they know that what they do is provide an arena for middlemen to sell their goods. These goods are not all the unique, you can by them at any store. So why not save yourself the trouble and do it online, avoiding those marked up prices, the annoying sales people, the crowds etc.
15 months for breaking into a computer. Whats the going rate for assault and battery, probably close to the same. I'm sure that people have gotten 15 months plus/minus for manslaughter. Lets look at the damage that was done here, someone posted 'j00 h4v3 b33n 0wn3d' with a list of names at the website. And now White House officials are screaming and yelling that he caused two days of downtime to their internal and external networks. I'm not a sysadmin but I know enough to be able to say that a hacked webserver should not affect a well built network to that extent. Plus, this kid is 19 years old. In our current day and age, lets be happy that he was messing around in front of his computer rather then planning to bomb his school. What will 15 months in jail teach this kid, do you really think he will come out with some positive reinforcement.
Personally I don't even think this item is newsworthy. Let's be realistic, mp3's aren't being stored in data form but in MD's native audio formt. So, by my calculations, I'd say that this has been possible ever since MD's were introduced. Bleh, another company trying to jump on the mp3 bandwagon.
I'm happy to see that IBM decided to take the step and release VAJ 3.0 for Linux. However, the only benefit in this whole scenario is the recognition of Linux. I've worked with VAJ 2.0 NT for several months and this whole IDE concept is flawed. IBM has too many proprietary classes for it to be flexible. The IDE is bloated as hell, its slow and basically annoying.
I think the biggest problem with the user/pass scheme is the user him/herself. Anytime your security scheme is dependant on the user, you are vulnerable. We all remember the recent DVD DeCSS crack, broken because the people over at Xing were sloppy.
What is it with this "sob sob sob... if they had DVD support for linux, this never would have happened, it's all their fault". Lets not kid ourselves, this technology would have been cracked sooner or later regardless of if it was available for linux. They were stupid for using 40bit encryption and they were stupid for assuming that all their licencees were intelligent enough to assume that "YES, our keys should also be encryption". Next off, as far as ethics are concerned, I admit to downloading commercial mp3's at work. But chances are that if I like the album I'll go and buy it. Try to support the artist (as if they actually see any of the money any way). For most people its too much of a pain in the ass to pirate music, movies etc. I think that people are making this to be a much bigger deal then it actually is.
Lets look at the issues
1 - A new technology has been cracked, whoop dee doo. Can anyone name something that has been released in the last decade that *hasn't* been cracked.
2 - People have the ability to pirate commercial DVD's. People have had the ability to pirate commercial anything for ages. Software, music (tapes, cds), movies(vhs, asf, vcd) etc.
I think this whole issue has been blown way out of proportion. I hope the movie industry is smart enough to realize that.
Its been said a million times before but i'm going to say it again. Security is 90% common sense. Don't be an idiot and open exe's from people you don't know. Although... what should we expect from aol users.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the day that we allow the government to keep a perfectly safe product from shipping is the day that we have finally undermined all our principles of capitalism and the free market.
Absolute nonsense...
The assumption that the only 'real' free market economent is a laissez faire economy is complete rubbish. The capitalist economic ideal is not the maximization of profit but the efficient use of resources. Government intervention has often stifled such efficient use, but that in no way implies that every form of government intervention runs contrary to the ideals of capitalism. Anti trust legislation is a perfect example of this in action. Yes, it is intervention. Yet it is a form of intervention that keeps the market moving in its desired direction (away from monopoly, closer toward perfect competition). In an economic (not a corporate) context, individual profits are certainly not held above the efficient operations of the market.
Send him Norton Anti-Virus, Poor Chap
Notice - Uppsala, Sweden, 12 July 2001
I assume that the press release is either a poor translation of the original (presumably in Swedish) or drafted by somebody for whom English is not a first language. While it certainly does come across as being juvenile, I think it's excusable in this case
Yet this entire mess (the IM failure) has occured on a completely distributed network as well. Micrsofts explanation citing "odd hardware failures" demonstrates that the distributed nature of their network is in fact, nothing more then an illusion. While hardware failures are a reality within this industry, to see a distributed network brought down to its knees illustrates the existance of a single point of failure.
You take for granted precisely that which is the point of concern. Can Hailstorm and
This has nothing to do with monopolies. It's just the natural and healthy survival of the fittest that has always been the core of capitalism.
While mergers, acquisitions and growth are certainly a healthy component of a capitalist, it is somewhat rash to assume that the consequences of these free market operations are justified simply because of they occur in the free market. The notion of certain industries (especially those with high fixed cost and low marginal cost) shifting toward monopoly is one of which economists have been acutely aware of for decades. The same economists who champion what appears to be your ideal; a "laissez faire" economy, are vigilant in their attempt to maintain a market that is conducive to healthy competition. It is generally agreed that monopolistic practices are one's which preclude market forces from operating in way that benefits the consumer. While the shift toward monopoly may be one which is a cause of natural capitalist tendencies, the emergence of a monopoly works to stifle those tendencies. Herein lies the tension between regulation and allowing markets to operate in as natural a way as possible. Your argument, and this article, both offer an all too lucid demonstration of this tension in operation.
I believe that mp3 has terrific potential to eliminate the music industry and I would love to see that. However, Napster does not fit the bill.
The case made by Napster that people who use Napster are or are not more likely to buy CD's is equally irrelevant.
The fact is, the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music is illegal. People have been doing it for decades and will continue to do so. However, let us not hide behind baseless self righteousness by saying that we are empowering the artist by opening distribution channels or other clever rhetoric.
While I agree that mp3 technology has tremendous potential to eliminate the despised record industry, this is not the arena to debate this issue. I wince while I type this, but I must agree with the RIAA's legal brief when they state that "napster is facilitating copyright infringement on a massive scale
Then came Undernet in an attempt to add some security to the threadbare IRCd with the X, W bots.
Then came Dalnet in an attempt to add security without the bandwidth consumption that the X, W bots took.
EFnet is usually agreed on as being the longest running IRC network
an unconditional script at that.
Honey, can you order a new hard drive for our PC, I want to cook dinner?
Al Pacino - Jerry Jones
LL Cool J - Randy Moss
Cameron Diaz - A Bitch
Shark - Lawrence Taylor
Jamie Foxx - Ray Lucas
Al Pacino - Jerry Jones
LL Cool J - Michael Irving
Cameron Diaz - A plain old bitch
Shark - Lawrence Taylor
Jamie Foxx - Ray Lucas
Being a football fan, Any Given Sunday was on my list and I managed to see it opening night. Certain things really impressed me such as the cinematography on the football field as well as the choreography. The movie seemed to have a good balance between actual football being played and the politics behind it. I can't comment on whether or not it's accurate because I don't know. However, it is a movie, entertainment, some you see for enjoyment. I enjoyed the movie, enough said.
I think we need to step away from this 'holier the thou' attitude and take a closer look at the situation. Companies like that don't get into the position they are currently in by leaving themselves wide open to stupid lawsuits. Judging by the amount of posts on Slashdot regarding the whole 'if user x is a minor, then x cannot legally accept the GPL therefore . . . ', i'd say that the entire issue is very grey and Corel is just covering their ass.
As for the people at Debian, chill the hell out, Have you tried to contact Corel and ask them their reasons for putting such a clause in their EULA. One thing I appreciate about the open source community is that fact that people are willing to look at problems from a variety of angles. However, it seems to me that everyone automatically has a problem with Corel because they are a company that 'GASP' actually makes money by selling commercial software. Instead of jumping all over them, why isn't a little constructive criticism offered. If I was running the Corel Linux development I would seriously get discourged by having the Linux community try to bite me in the ass every time I took a step.
My point is this, the issue is obviously somewhat complicated because it doesn't seem like anyone on Slashdot has posted a definitive legal opinion on the matter. Lets take a bit of time and analyze things before we start making accusations.
I live in Toronto and we have a beautiful downtown core. There are many unique little shops scattered all over the place. Most of the things you find in these stores are probably unique to that store and I don't think you'd be able to find it online. I doubt if these people are worried about losing out to e-business.
Malls are scared because they know that what they do is provide an arena for middlemen to sell their goods. These goods are not all the unique, you can by them at any store. So why not save yourself the trouble and do it online, avoiding those marked up prices, the annoying sales people, the crowds etc.
15 months for breaking into a computer. Whats the going rate for assault and battery, probably close to the same. I'm sure that people have gotten 15 months plus/minus for manslaughter. Lets look at the damage that was done here, someone posted 'j00 h4v3 b33n 0wn3d' with a list of names at the website. And now White House officials are screaming and yelling that he caused two days of downtime to their internal and external networks. I'm not a sysadmin but I know enough to be able to say that a hacked webserver should not affect a well built network to that extent. Plus, this kid is 19 years old. In our current day and age, lets be happy that he was messing around in front of his computer rather then planning to bomb his school. What will 15 months in jail teach this kid, do you really think he will come out with some positive reinforcement.
you get to go for hayrides around the barn
It holds 74 minutes of audio
Personally I don't even think this item is newsworthy. Let's be realistic, mp3's aren't being stored in data form but in MD's native audio formt. So, by my calculations, I'd say that this has been possible ever since MD's were introduced. Bleh, another company trying to jump on the mp3 bandwagon.
I'm happy to see that IBM decided to take the step and release VAJ 3.0 for Linux. However, the only benefit in this whole scenario is the recognition of Linux. I've worked with VAJ 2.0 NT for several months and this whole IDE concept is flawed. IBM has too many proprietary classes for it to be flexible. The IDE is bloated as hell, its slow and basically annoying.
I think the biggest problem with the user/pass scheme is the user him/herself. Anytime your security scheme is dependant on the user, you are vulnerable. We all remember the recent DVD DeCSS crack, broken because the people over at Xing were sloppy.
I also want my microwave and toaster to run linux.
What is it with this "sob sob sob... if they had DVD support for linux, this never would have happened, it's all their fault". Lets not kid ourselves, this technology would have been cracked sooner or later regardless of if it was available for linux. They were stupid for using 40bit encryption and they were stupid for assuming that all their licencees were intelligent enough to assume that "YES, our keys should also be encryption".
Next off, as far as ethics are concerned, I admit to downloading commercial mp3's at work. But chances are that if I like the album I'll go and buy it. Try to support the artist (as if they actually see any of the money any way). For most people its too much of a pain in the ass to pirate music, movies etc. I think that people are making this to be a much bigger deal then it actually is.
Lets look at the issues
1 - A new technology has been cracked, whoop dee doo. Can anyone name something that has been released in the last decade that *hasn't* been cracked.
2 - People have the ability to pirate commercial DVD's. People have had the ability to pirate commercial anything for ages. Software, music (tapes, cds), movies(vhs, asf, vcd) etc.
I think this whole issue has been blown way out of proportion. I hope the movie industry is smart enough to realize that.
Its been said a million times before but i'm going to say it again. Security is 90% common sense. Don't be an idiot and open exe's from people you don't know. Although... what should we expect from aol users.
sweet... yet another mechanism for practical jokes, I'm looking forward to this one.