If we have become so weak as a people to no longer be able to stop ourselves from any activities, then we need more legislation than the DMCA.
Legislation won't stop determined (or unwitting) crooks. It's just paper, after all. If we have become as irresponsible as you suggest, we need martial law and troops on every street corner.
Can someone please take their time to explain to me why the words "linux" and "kernel" are contained in the above post?
The only explanation I can think of is those words automagically alter the probability of acception and posting of ones` submission to slashdot, in much the same way the words FREE and ENLARGEMENT alter the probability of e-mail ending up at/dev/null.
It's natural that they should go together. When you said FREE and ENLARGEMENT, I automatically thought of downloading and compiling the latest Linux kernel.
[rant]
I've seen a lot of posts saying "use HTTP because you don't have problems with firewalls". This attitude pisses me off. If you don't want firewalls to interfere with your traffic, then dyke them out of your network. If you can't, then you're probably at work and shouldn't be sharing files over the open 'net anyway. Understand that firewalls are there to protect you, and that for each time you curse them, 1000 hackers are denied access to your kiddie pr0n and stolen credit card numbers. Also understand that port 21 is blocked for a reason, and port 80 should be too except for direct connections to your web site. If you're on an ISP that blocks port 80, and you still want to share your ripped MP3s, get a business account. Don't whine about how life is unfair.
On a related note, a big "what the fuck are you thinking" goes out to people who design/run non-HTTP services over port 80, or even port 443 (you know who you are). Did you people bother to read the OSI layer 4 spec? If all your services are going to run over port 80 to avoid firewalls, why the hell bother with port numbers in the first place? Build your own protocol, fine, but release an RFC and get your own assigned port number for it for fuck's sake. That's their entire purpose in life, after all.
[/rant]
Microsoft bundles an extraordinary array of products with Windows XP. [snip] Wouldn't most people these days consider these things fairly standard applications that should come with an OS.
Yes, but that's not the point. By normal rules for separate markets, each of these products should be sold at a price at least equal to the marginal cost to produce them. The anti-trust complaint is that these applications are bundled with a product in another market (Windows is an OS, not an app), and sold for effectively zero price. This bundling undercuts everyone else in the (browser/word processor/media player) market, who have to sell their product for what it actually costs them to make. Since they can't compete with a competitor who's selling something for zero, they go out of business. It is precisely this chain of events that led to Netscape releasing their browser code, since they realized they could no longer make money from that product.
Who is to say that there was not some lifeform living at the first 10e-32 second that was looking forward and saying (translating into English) "One day, seconds from now, all life as we know it will cease, and the universe will be far too cold to support life."
It takes the most die-hard corporate libertarian to argue that someone should be allowed to profit off basic human needs. And they'd be wrong. [snip] I want to see some (relatively local) level of government controlling electricity, energy, water, and telecommunications distribution.
If the government controls basic infrastructure, they will tax it, because it costs lots of money to run, and they need taxes to cover the expense. So what you're really saying is that it's OK for someone to profit off of basic human needs, as long as it's the government and not a corporation?
By the way, basic macroeconomics theory says that the government gets the most revenue from taxing a good for which there is highly inelastic demand (all of the basic human needs: food, clothing, shelter, air). I'm not a die-hard corporate Libertarian, I think you meant to insult Objectivists.
That dollar bill in your wallet is no more or less money than a digit in a Wells Fargo computer. Both represent a unit of confidence in the issuing body - the US government. That is all they represent. You cannot redeem that dollar bill for a fraction of preciou metal.
You know, I used to believe that too. More and more, however, I am coming to realize that there is a new truth. The dollar bill represents faith in something other than the US government, it represents faith in the world economy. I can take that single US dollar to another country and exchange it for other fiat currency, or for precious metal on the world exchange. If I want gold, I can get it, just not from the US Treasury as previous generations could.
You are correct, I may not receive a set unit of foreign currency for it. Foreign governments may or may not decide to honor my US dollar; however, if they don't, it's likely in this age of the 'global village' that their own economies will be adversely affected. The concept of economy has become larger than national borders, and as a result, paper fiat currency has more power now than it did before.
And arguments about "inherent value" are really silly. Value is something we humans ascribe to things. Nothing in nature has any value independent of that. But if we're going to start assigning values to things, than we in the US may as well use units of dollars, and my piece of paper may as well be worth 1 unit.
The 9th Circuit is the most overturned appeals court...
I really would not hold any decision they make of any value at least until it has had a chance to go through the appeals system.
Do you realize that what you just said is laughable? They are the appeals system. The only court above them is the Supreme Court.
And as far as being overturned goes, your statistics are worthless. How many of their decisions has the Supreme Court upheld? And how do you think the Supreme Court chooses which cases to hear? Not ones for which they entirely agree with the lower court's decisions, I'll wager.
Folks, here in USA, W. has had the government start tapping the phone network at OC-48 and OC-192 level. Our e-mails... have been being watched for some time now.
Wow, Bush and Ashcroft must have REALLY big penises and MILLIONS of Nigerian $$$ by now.
The issue isn't "MS sucks". The issue is that MS may be intentionally leveraging their MSN portal business to squash the Opera browser business. If so, this would be a violation of anti-trust laws. Yes, you can choose to break your site if you want, but MS can't. You don't run a multi-billion dollar, multinational corporation with a stranglehold on several key technology markets. They do, and they have to be held accountable.
Since when does anyone has the "right" on filesharing over IRC??
Since when do you have the "right" to use the Source IP address bits in an IP header? Don't confuse the issue by talking about rights. The point isn't about rights, it's about protocols. DALnet are enforcing restrictions on an open protocol. DCC is part of the IRC spec, and they're putting in place administrative restrictions on when that part of the spec can be used.
This can be either a good thing or a bad thing. For example, people who use spam filters and the like place similar restrictions on SMTP traffic. As long as this change affects only DALnet users, I say let them make their bed. If I hit my guess, however, much of their user base won't lie in it after March 1.
Let's think logically about the situation. People are downloading music that they don't have the right to copy. This act is criminally illegal. When someone is engaging in criminally illegal activities in America, whose responsibility is it to help? Answer: the Executive branch (law enforcement). If you've got a problem with people downloading your music, call up the FBI and haul them in to court. Haul all of them into court. This is the only acceptable course of action in a society that believes in personal freedom as strongly as ours.
Note that complaining to Congress for new laws just makes the Executive branch's job harder, since they now have even more laws to attempt to enforce. [Note to Joe Public: the DMCA means the FBI is spending more time catching "MP3 pirates" and less time catching serial rapists and other unmentionables who flee across state lines.] Also note that creating new laws doesn't prevent determined criminals from breaking existing ones. If I shoot someone in cold blood, does it make a difference that I violated one law or 100? I didn't think so. If I'm going to download MP3s illegally, do you think the DMCA is going to stop me? I didn't think so.
As I see it, you're not going to stop copyright infringement without getting the FBI to engage in mass arrests. Of course, if you do, it will be a PR nightmare for you that you will never live down. Either way, you're in a great deal of trouble.
if there was a substantial chance that sharing files meant a $100 ticket, they would dry out pretty fast.
Sorry, but you're wrong. If I can download $10,000 worth of music for every $100 ticket, I'm gonna go along happily downloading. If they throw me in jail, that's a different story.
"The people who are most decisively against GW's politics are also those who are most for space exploration."
Who, the Democrats?
[troll] Democrats are the same as Republicans, they both want big government controlling your lives. Democrats want a fascist communism (let's make a welfare state where everyone is equally poor and controlled), Republicans want a fascist corpocracy (let's make a state where everyone bows down to big business). How about we regain some personal responsibility and trust ourselves for a change? [/troll]
In related news, next week Microsoft will begin work on the Microsoft PIANO framework. The PIANO framework will support applications written in C, C#, D, D#, and Microsoft's just-announced language Bb (pronounced "be-flat", as in "if you don't buy Microsoft, we'll send someone around and you'll be flat on your ass").
Yes, lameness for replying to my own post. What I meant by short is a few hours, enough time to see that an attack is in progress and intervene before the next zone transfer. I meant short relative to 6 months.
I have a question... Why does a cache have to expire?
Two words: cache poisoning. Imagine if a few large ISPs extended their DNS cache from 1 day to 6 months. Now drop in a few bogus records for yahoo.com, msn.com, and aol.com. See here for how easy this is.
You too can experience the fear of watching the smaller ISPs accept the zone transfers (during their normal nightly updates), after which it's impossible to fix. Even if someone with a Clue scratches their head and says "Wait a sec, something isn't right" and asks for another zone transfer from an authoritative server, they get the same list. When people log in the next day, all their homepages are redirected to goatse. Do you wanna be the tech support guy that has to explain what happened?
No no no, DNS expiries should be short, especially for the large ISPs.
No matter how many statistical guesses different scientists make, the question of habitable planets, not to mention the question of other intelligences, will not be answered without actually going out and visiting them. This will not happen in your lifetime. You will not know. Sorry!
You're forgetting something: 'the truth is out there.' [cue X-files theme]
If the requirement is that there be a "region" around the star where a planet could have water in liquid state all-year-round, wouldn't almost every star satisfy this?
For those of you who didn't read the article: not if you take into account the gravitational effects from other planets in the solar system.
If the party has not had or consented to contact with the forum, it is a violation of substantive due process to impose jurisidiction. You don't have to visit the state to get into trouble there. Yet it is important also to consider fairness to the plaintiff, who may have been injured by something really foul done by the defendant -- they're not all as sympathetic as Pavlovich.
Whoa there, wait a second. Don't confuse forum (the state of CA) and plaintiff (DVD CCA). To make your argument symmetric, you would have to reword your third sentance to say:
Yet it is important also to consider fairness to the
forum, who may have been injured by something really foul done by the defendant -- they're not all as sympathetic as Pavlovich.
Note now that it's not always the case that a forum is damaged by certain actions which damage a business headquartered or operating within that forum. The question of whether or not the damage is enough to warrant intervention must be answered by the state legislators. It may not be, after all. In this case, the entertainment industry is involved, and they are so important to the CA economy that the state Supreme Court felt intervention was warranted.
In any case, it seems clear to me that any intervention must necessarily be conducted at the federal level, as it clearly involves interstate commerce. The CA Supreme Court felt the same way, and O'Connor is right on the money with this call.
This is sort of a repost of a reply to another comment, but what the heck.
Just so everyone is up to speed here, all filesystems have to store data on a physical disk. Pretty basic stuff, but when you start to think about the ideas suggested here (SQL queries against a raw disk device?? Physical layout by file type??), you need to rethink things a bit. The reason we have used HFS for the last 30 years is that it's very easy and efficient to store data on a disk using the directory/file paradigm at both the physical and UI levels. If someone here is smart enough to figure out a way to do a DB-on-a-disk, and (heaven forbid!) actually implements such a beast, you will forever be my hero.
All on-disk HFSes store metadata, and most (all?) store file metadata right next to the physical file. I know for sure this is the way ext2 and reiserfs work, having gone over the code myself recently. The hooks in the Linux 2.x FS API are designed to be even more flexible than this. If anyone knows of more and better metadata than any current FS implements, I invite you to roll your own and release a module.
In addition, there is no reason why anyone couldn't put together a user-space daemon to go over the on-disk filesystem recursively, say as a cron job, and put together a searchable index of metadata. This index could then be searched (via SQL even) by another user-land process, maybe even a new shell (sqlsh, anyone?). This shell (and the associated replacements for 'ls', 'cd', etc) wouldn't have to present the FS in hierarchical terms.
In any event, what we've got on disk isn't likely to change any time soon without a radical insight by someone who has experience bit-grovelling, and what we see as users is most likely to go on reflecting what we've got on disk unless someone writes the aforementioned userland tools. I have too many other things I'm working on right now, but mabye someone else will help us all out and start a new project?
Honestly, I think the idea of computers holding a lot of "files" organized into "directories" is a little old. It was great in 1970 but maybe (like this guy is doing) we should rethink it a little. Why not say a computer has certain knowledge ("files") and certain capabilities ("executables")? Rather than naming files, describe the data you want the computer to retain, and retreive it later from that description.
Having written a proprietary, disk-based filesystem module for Linux, I suggest you attempt to write one yourself before criticizing what we've got now. Things are the way they are for a very simple reason, one that hasn't changed in these past 30 years: there are only so many ways you can do bit layout on a (logical) disk platter.
If you can come up with a way to put your database idea into bits and implement it on a physical disk, by all means, do some bit grovelling and I'll give you props. If you can find a way to abstract your system above current inode/FAT/whatever models, then implement it entirely in lieu of a HFS, more power to ya. I'll be the first in line to recommend your solution to everyone else. Until then, please don't supply us with rhetorical criticism sans code, we get enough of that here already.
I noticed an interesting thing in the packaging that came with one of my kids' Disney DVDs last week: You can now register your purchases with Disney and, in return, they will send you a new copy of any registered DVD if the original gets damaged.
"Oops, I broke my [movie] DVD. Please send me another." Give the replacement to your buddy. Wait six months. Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, this is no longer copyright infringement, since they're making the copies. It may be fraud, but that's another matter. In any event, if they do sue you, it'll be civil (tort) and not criminal. (Ob IANAL)
Added bonus: Have fun with your friend when they start getting snail-mail spam with your name on it. Figure out to whom Disney sells their customer lists.
On the other hand, I have to wonder if this isn't just part of their strategy to eliminate Fair Use exemptions.
No way. One company cannot be allowed to dictate or usurp the law. You'll never see this argument be taken seriously by legislators unless the government steps in and regulates the DVD distribution industry. Fat chance that, the MPAA will kill that legislation.
Slashdot Mirror
Legislation won't stop determined (or unwitting) crooks. It's just paper, after all. If we have become as irresponsible as you suggest, we need martial law and troops on every street corner.
The only explanation I can think of is those words automagically alter the probability of acception and posting of ones` submission to slashdot, in much the same way the words FREE and ENLARGEMENT alter the probability of e-mail ending up at /dev/null.
It's natural that they should go together. When you said FREE and ENLARGEMENT, I automatically thought of downloading and compiling the latest Linux kernel.
I've seen a lot of posts saying "use HTTP because you don't have problems with firewalls". This attitude pisses me off. If you don't want firewalls to interfere with your traffic, then dyke them out of your network. If you can't, then you're probably at work and shouldn't be sharing files over the open 'net anyway. Understand that firewalls are there to protect you, and that for each time you curse them, 1000 hackers are denied access to your kiddie pr0n and stolen credit card numbers. Also understand that port 21 is blocked for a reason, and port 80 should be too except for direct connections to your web site. If you're on an ISP that blocks port 80, and you still want to share your ripped MP3s, get a business account. Don't whine about how life is unfair.
On a related note, a big "what the fuck are you thinking" goes out to people who design/run non-HTTP services over port 80, or even port 443 (you know who you are). Did you people bother to read the OSI layer 4 spec? If all your services are going to run over port 80 to avoid firewalls, why the hell bother with port numbers in the first place? Build your own protocol, fine, but release an RFC and get your own assigned port number for it for fuck's sake. That's their entire purpose in life, after all.
[/rant]
Yes, but that's not the point. By normal rules for separate markets, each of these products should be sold at a price at least equal to the marginal cost to produce them. The anti-trust complaint is that these applications are bundled with a product in another market (Windows is an OS, not an app), and sold for effectively zero price. This bundling undercuts everyone else in the (browser/word processor/media player) market, who have to sell their product for what it actually costs them to make. Since they can't compete with a competitor who's selling something for zero, they go out of business. It is precisely this chain of events that led to Netscape releasing their browser code, since they realized they could no longer make money from that product.
Um, I'll say it.
If the government controls basic infrastructure, they will tax it, because it costs lots of money to run, and they need taxes to cover the expense. So what you're really saying is that it's OK for someone to profit off of basic human needs, as long as it's the government and not a corporation?
By the way, basic macroeconomics theory says that the government gets the most revenue from taxing a good for which there is highly inelastic demand (all of the basic human needs: food, clothing, shelter, air). I'm not a die-hard corporate Libertarian, I think you meant to insult Objectivists.
You know, I used to believe that too. More and more, however, I am coming to realize that there is a new truth. The dollar bill represents faith in something other than the US government, it represents faith in the world economy. I can take that single US dollar to another country and exchange it for other fiat currency, or for precious metal on the world exchange. If I want gold, I can get it, just not from the US Treasury as previous generations could.
You are correct, I may not receive a set unit of foreign currency for it. Foreign governments may or may not decide to honor my US dollar; however, if they don't, it's likely in this age of the 'global village' that their own economies will be adversely affected. The concept of economy has become larger than national borders, and as a result, paper fiat currency has more power now than it did before.
And arguments about "inherent value" are really silly. Value is something we humans ascribe to things. Nothing in nature has any value independent of that. But if we're going to start assigning values to things, than we in the US may as well use units of dollars, and my piece of paper may as well be worth 1 unit.
I really would not hold any decision they make of any value at least until it has had a chance to go through the appeals system.
Do you realize that what you just said is laughable? They are the appeals system. The only court above them is the Supreme Court.
And as far as being overturned goes, your statistics are worthless. How many of their decisions has the Supreme Court upheld? And how do you think the Supreme Court chooses which cases to hear? Not ones for which they entirely agree with the lower court's decisions, I'll wager.
Wow, Bush and Ashcroft must have REALLY big penises and MILLIONS of Nigerian $$$ by now.
The issue isn't "MS sucks". The issue is that MS may be intentionally leveraging their MSN portal business to squash the Opera browser business. If so, this would be a violation of anti-trust laws. Yes, you can choose to break your site if you want, but MS can't. You don't run a multi-billion dollar, multinational corporation with a stranglehold on several key technology markets. They do, and they have to be held accountable.
Since when do you have the "right" to use the Source IP address bits in an IP header? Don't confuse the issue by talking about rights. The point isn't about rights, it's about protocols. DALnet are enforcing restrictions on an open protocol. DCC is part of the IRC spec, and they're putting in place administrative restrictions on when that part of the spec can be used.
This can be either a good thing or a bad thing. For example, people who use spam filters and the like place similar restrictions on SMTP traffic. As long as this change affects only DALnet users, I say let them make their bed. If I hit my guess, however, much of their user base won't lie in it after March 1.
Note that complaining to Congress for new laws just makes the Executive branch's job harder, since they now have even more laws to attempt to enforce. [Note to Joe Public: the DMCA means the FBI is spending more time catching "MP3 pirates" and less time catching serial rapists and other unmentionables who flee across state lines.] Also note that creating new laws doesn't prevent determined criminals from breaking existing ones. If I shoot someone in cold blood, does it make a difference that I violated one law or 100? I didn't think so. If I'm going to download MP3s illegally, do you think the DMCA is going to stop me? I didn't think so.
As I see it, you're not going to stop copyright infringement without getting the FBI to engage in mass arrests. Of course, if you do, it will be a PR nightmare for you that you will never live down. Either way, you're in a great deal of trouble.
Sorry, but you're wrong. If I can download $10,000 worth of music for every $100 ticket, I'm gonna go along happily downloading. If they throw me in jail, that's a different story.
Who, the Democrats?
[troll]
Democrats are the same as Republicans, they both want big government controlling your lives. Democrats want a fascist communism (let's make a welfare state where everyone is equally poor and controlled), Republicans want a fascist corpocracy (let's make a state where everyone bows down to big business). How about we regain some personal responsibility and trust ourselves for a change?
[/troll]
The Pepto-Bismol/meth industry. (pepto for the stomach ache and meth to counter the depression) Now where's my cookie?
Play Yahoo Towers. No, I'm not affiliated with them, I've just spent way too much time playing this dumb game.
In related news, next week Microsoft will begin work on the Microsoft PIANO framework. The PIANO framework will support applications written in C, C#, D, D#, and Microsoft's just-announced language Bb (pronounced "be-flat", as in "if you don't buy Microsoft, we'll send someone around and you'll be flat on your ass").
Yes, lameness for replying to my own post. What I meant by short is a few hours, enough time to see that an attack is in progress and intervene before the next zone transfer. I meant short relative to 6 months.
Two words: cache poisoning. Imagine if a few large ISPs extended their DNS cache from 1 day to 6 months. Now drop in a few bogus records for yahoo.com, msn.com, and aol.com. See here for how easy this is.
You too can experience the fear of watching the smaller ISPs accept the zone transfers (during their normal nightly updates), after which it's impossible to fix. Even if someone with a Clue scratches their head and says "Wait a sec, something isn't right" and asks for another zone transfer from an authoritative server, they get the same list. When people log in the next day, all their homepages are redirected to goatse. Do you wanna be the tech support guy that has to explain what happened?
No no no, DNS expiries should be short, especially for the large ISPs.
You're forgetting something: 'the truth is out there.' [cue X-files theme]
For those of you who didn't read the article: not if you take into account the gravitational effects from other planets in the solar system.
Whoa there, wait a second. Don't confuse forum (the state of CA) and plaintiff (DVD CCA). To make your argument symmetric, you would have to reword your third sentance to say:
Note now that it's not always the case that a forum is damaged by certain actions which damage a business headquartered or operating within that forum. The question of whether or not the damage is enough to warrant intervention must be answered by the state legislators. It may not be, after all. In this case, the entertainment industry is involved, and they are so important to the CA economy that the state Supreme Court felt intervention was warranted.In any case, it seems clear to me that any intervention must necessarily be conducted at the federal level, as it clearly involves interstate commerce. The CA Supreme Court felt the same way, and O'Connor is right on the money with this call.
Just so everyone is up to speed here, all filesystems have to store data on a physical disk. Pretty basic stuff, but when you start to think about the ideas suggested here (SQL queries against a raw disk device?? Physical layout by file type??), you need to rethink things a bit. The reason we have used HFS for the last 30 years is that it's very easy and efficient to store data on a disk using the directory/file paradigm at both the physical and UI levels. If someone here is smart enough to figure out a way to do a DB-on-a-disk, and (heaven forbid!) actually implements such a beast, you will forever be my hero.
All on-disk HFSes store metadata, and most (all?) store file metadata right next to the physical file. I know for sure this is the way ext2 and reiserfs work, having gone over the code myself recently. The hooks in the Linux 2.x FS API are designed to be even more flexible than this. If anyone knows of more and better metadata than any current FS implements, I invite you to roll your own and release a module.
In addition, there is no reason why anyone couldn't put together a user-space daemon to go over the on-disk filesystem recursively, say as a cron job, and put together a searchable index of metadata. This index could then be searched (via SQL even) by another user-land process, maybe even a new shell (sqlsh, anyone?). This shell (and the associated replacements for 'ls', 'cd', etc) wouldn't have to present the FS in hierarchical terms.
In any event, what we've got on disk isn't likely to change any time soon without a radical insight by someone who has experience bit-grovelling, and what we see as users is most likely to go on reflecting what we've got on disk unless someone writes the aforementioned userland tools. I have too many other things I'm working on right now, but mabye someone else will help us all out and start a new project?
Having written a proprietary, disk-based filesystem module for Linux, I suggest you attempt to write one yourself before criticizing what we've got now. Things are the way they are for a very simple reason, one that hasn't changed in these past 30 years: there are only so many ways you can do bit layout on a (logical) disk platter.
If you can come up with a way to put your database idea into bits and implement it on a physical disk, by all means, do some bit grovelling and I'll give you props. If you can find a way to abstract your system above current inode/FAT/whatever models, then implement it entirely in lieu of a HFS, more power to ya. I'll be the first in line to recommend your solution to everyone else. Until then, please don't supply us with rhetorical criticism sans code, we get enough of that here already.
"Oops, I broke my [movie] DVD. Please send me another." Give the replacement to your buddy. Wait six months. Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, this is no longer copyright infringement, since they're making the copies. It may be fraud, but that's another matter. In any event, if they do sue you, it'll be civil (tort) and not criminal. (Ob IANAL)
Added bonus: Have fun with your friend when they start getting snail-mail spam with your name on it. Figure out to whom Disney sells their customer lists.
On the other hand, I have to wonder if this isn't just part of their strategy to eliminate Fair Use exemptions.
No way. One company cannot be allowed to dictate or usurp the law. You'll never see this argument be taken seriously by legislators unless the government steps in and regulates the DVD distribution industry. Fat chance that, the MPAA will kill that legislation.