There's actually a book that's right up your alley and it's evidently a popular one as every time I've gone to the Apple store downtown to attempt buy it, they've been sold out.
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks really digs into the BSD core of OS X and covers such interesting topics as rebuilding the XNU kernel and a little bit about hacking Netinfo (although I wish there were more).
at least from the sounds of ZDnet's review, but I doubt myself or many others are going to take the time to read through the EU's whole document. Are there any other summaries/reviews of this proposed legislation available?
What really behooves me about all this is that up until recently, I counted myself among the advocates of the European way of dealing with IP, and pointed to the flow of software/hardware innovation out of the US as an example of that 'superiority'. Now it appears that through harmonizing their laws with ours (or even being more restrictive, it seems), they will lose the advantage myself and many others have been touting.
Reading the article just makes me yearn for a true BSD ports system on OS X.
The closest thing available right now is DarwinPorts but it's horrendously incomplete; I don't think any good package system can get away with lacking any way to track installed packages or perform upgrades; not only is there no facility for system-wide upgrades, but even upgrading an individual package requires an explicit uninstall, download, and reinstall.
I know that the Gentoo, Fink, and OpenDarwin folks are supposed to be collaborating on a unified package system for OS X. Does anyone in the know have any inklings that it might be like BSD ports? A BSD ports system does seem ideal for an OS that is, at the core, BSD.
I think the lame SCO jokes are getting on everybody's nerves; there have been, however, a few gems.
As to your second point:
>> I'm pretty certain that they would not have made such a
>> fuzz about it unless they have some basis behind their
>> claims. So I guess they know what they are doing.
I think you're giving SCO, and litigious companies in general, quite a bit of undue credit there. I see no reason to infer from a company's litigation/statements that there is any validity to their allegations until they produce some sort of proof; having failed to do so, SCO has about as much credibility in my book as the instigators of SLAPP lawsuits.
If you mean to say 'FreeBSD's ports tree has BitTorrent', I thought you should know that Debian and Fink both provide it as well. I've never used portage, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was available there as well.
My solution to this debacle has been simple; I don't share music released on labels represented by the RIAA. Of course, I guess I can count myself lucky that 95% of that music doesn't appeal in the slightest to me (as do many others, having read the comments), but I still find myself downloading it at times; it's just not in my shared folder.
At the same time, I have no qualms about sharing nearly 10 gb of drum n' bass on Direct Connect. The copyright infringement is the same, but the fact that the music I share is released mostly by independent labels, many of whom only release their music on vinyl, makes a whole world of difference.
The way I see it, the RIAA's purpose is not to destroy file-sharing completely. It's just to stop the sharing of content produced by the labels they represent. However you may view it, they are protecting their property; you and I may not agree with their tactics (I am of the firm belief that sharing mp3s is an extension of one's fair-use rights, but I digress) but their aim is clear: get RIAA music off p2p networks, not destroy p2p networks entirely.
I will probably be accused of being an RIAA astroturfer (which could not be farther from the truth; I'm just your average college student who likes to get something for nothing) but at least try to put yourself in their shoes and realize the motivation behind what they're doing.
Music sharing has been going on for much longer than p2p networks and the RIAA never raised a peep; what networks like Napster, and then AudioGalaxy, and then Kazaa and others did is bring music downloading to the masses; the reason 60 million US citizens use peer-to-peer networks is because the technology is so accessible, and when your average Joe, Bill and Henry are all downloading tunes, you must admit that the labels' profits will be affected.
If the RIAA doesn't succeed in stopping sharing of tunes released by labels they represent, but instead causes file sharing to once again become the domain of the more technically-inclined music-lovers and collectors who have the will and expertise to use secure systems (Waste and Freenet come to mind) or private servers (ftp, DC hubs, Carracho, etc.), the effect will be similar. Gross infringement of their copyrights will be significantly reduced, and myself and many others who dislike the lowest-common-denominator element that has been introduced to file sharing will be satisfied.
A close look at the Windows 95 UI will reveal that significant parts are very similar to NeXTStep and CDE, both of which predate it. I doubt Microsoft has much of a claim here, and am even more doubtful that the same company that got sued for theft of UI concepts will now be assuming the role of the plaintiff.
It's pretty clear that Bram's intention with BitTorrent was exactly for situations like this; a file is posted with a huge surge of immediate demand (i. e. slashdot linkage) and download speeds become intolerable.
I'm sure the kernel.org servers are quite formidable, but with a BT-based solution everybody could be happily downloading 2.6-test2 at a steady clip.
Slashdot Mirror
There's actually a book that's right up your alley and it's evidently a popular one as every time I've gone to the Apple store downtown to attempt buy it, they've been sold out.
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks really digs into the BSD core of OS X and covers such interesting topics as rebuilding the XNU kernel and a little bit about hacking Netinfo (although I wish there were more).
at least from the sounds of ZDnet's review, but I doubt myself or many others are going to take the time to read through the EU's whole document. Are there any other summaries/reviews of this proposed legislation available?
What really behooves me about all this is that up until recently, I counted myself among the advocates of the European way of dealing with IP, and pointed to the flow of software/hardware innovation out of the US as an example of that 'superiority'. Now it appears that through harmonizing their laws with ours (or even being more restrictive, it seems), they will lose the advantage myself and many others have been touting.
Bookmarked!
:)
I'm going to be giving this a shot when I have some time tomorrow. Looks like I finally have an excuse to format a UFS partition.
Thanks
Reading the article just makes me yearn for a true BSD ports system on OS X.
The closest thing available right now is DarwinPorts but it's horrendously incomplete; I don't think any good package system can get away with lacking any way to track installed packages or perform upgrades; not only is there no facility for system-wide upgrades, but even upgrading an individual package requires an explicit uninstall, download, and reinstall.
I know that the Gentoo, Fink, and OpenDarwin folks are supposed to be collaborating on a unified package system for OS X. Does anyone in the know have any inklings that it might be like BSD ports? A BSD ports system does seem ideal for an OS that is, at the core, BSD.
I think the lame SCO jokes are getting on everybody's nerves; there have been, however, a few gems.
As to your second point:>> I'm pretty certain that they would not have made such a
>> fuzz about it unless they have some basis behind their
>> claims. So I guess they know what they are doing.
I think you're giving SCO, and litigious companies in general, quite a bit of undue credit there. I see no reason to infer from a company's litigation/statements that there is any validity to their allegations until they produce some sort of proof; having failed to do so, SCO has about as much credibility in my book as the instigators of SLAPP lawsuits.
If you mean to say 'FreeBSD's ports tree has BitTorrent', I thought you should know that Debian and Fink both provide it as well. I've never used portage, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was available there as well.
My solution to this debacle has been simple; I don't share music released on labels represented by the RIAA. Of course, I guess I can count myself lucky that 95% of that music doesn't appeal in the slightest to me (as do many others, having read the comments), but I still find myself downloading it at times; it's just not in my shared folder.
At the same time, I have no qualms about sharing nearly 10 gb of drum n' bass on Direct Connect. The copyright infringement is the same, but the fact that the music I share is released mostly by independent labels, many of whom only release their music on vinyl, makes a whole world of difference.
The way I see it, the RIAA's purpose is not to destroy file-sharing completely. It's just to stop the sharing of content produced by the labels they represent. However you may view it, they are protecting their property; you and I may not agree with their tactics (I am of the firm belief that sharing mp3s is an extension of one's fair-use rights, but I digress) but their aim is clear: get RIAA music off p2p networks, not destroy p2p networks entirely.
I will probably be accused of being an RIAA astroturfer (which could not be farther from the truth; I'm just your average college student who likes to get something for nothing) but at least try to put yourself in their shoes and realize the motivation behind what they're doing.
Music sharing has been going on for much longer than p2p networks and the RIAA never raised a peep; what networks like Napster, and then AudioGalaxy, and then Kazaa and others did is bring music downloading to the masses; the reason 60 million US citizens use peer-to-peer networks is because the technology is so accessible, and when your average Joe, Bill and Henry are all downloading tunes, you must admit that the labels' profits will be affected.
If the RIAA doesn't succeed in stopping sharing of tunes released by labels they represent, but instead causes file sharing to once again become the domain of the more technically-inclined music-lovers and collectors who have the will and expertise to use secure systems (Waste and Freenet come to mind) or private servers (ftp, DC hubs, Carracho, etc.), the effect will be similar. Gross infringement of their copyrights will be significantly reduced, and myself and many others who dislike the lowest-common-denominator element that has been introduced to file sharing will be satisfied.
A close look at the Windows 95 UI will reveal that significant parts are very similar to NeXTStep and CDE, both of which predate it. I doubt Microsoft has much of a claim here, and am even more doubtful that the same company that got sued for theft of UI concepts will now be assuming the role of the plaintiff.
It's pretty clear that Bram's intention with BitTorrent was exactly for situations like this; a file is posted with a huge surge of immediate demand (i. e. slashdot linkage) and download speeds become intolerable.
I'm sure the kernel.org servers are quite formidable, but with a BT-based solution everybody could be happily downloading 2.6-test2 at a steady clip.