We'd also like to support, for example, PHP, Ruby, Python, BASIC, Scheme, COBOL, Java, Befunge, TECO, Rebol, REXX, and... I can't quite make out that one on the bottom there [brainf*ck]. And if I could, I wouldn't say it anyway, because there are children present, and I wouldn't want to fuck up their brains.
Thanks, Larry.
Seriously, though, didn't he have anything better to do? Over half of the damn thing is his mind wandering as he types up some speech notes.
A friend of mine works for a company that is currently using an Access database for their product's backend. This product is almost the ideal environment for Access: one user at a time, small (less then 50 MB) databases, slow accesses.
He's petitioning to get it removed. Why? It seems that on a small database (> 10 MB), it will sometimes go corrupt. He's using VB with all of the Microsoft controls to use the damn thing, so there should be no problems. By the time the database hits 30 MBs, it's having to be rebuilt (a time-expensive operation) twice a day.
That site is ugly. Is it just mozilla, or does eveyone have the problem of all the text being in a 20 character column?
Anyway, doesn't that seem like common sense? How could a law not be public? If a law was copyrighted, does that mean I couldn't reproduce it for the purposes of telling people the laws? What if I gave a (paid) class on laws to be careful of (obscure laws, maybe)?
A breath of fresh air as someone shows our legal system hasn't gone completely insane...
I can't help but say that most CS/IT majors need this. I've seen too many people write apps (simple ones even) that relied on that ethernet connection that the dorms give, 10Mbit between machines. "Scale down? Who has less than a fast cable modem these days?"
Now they just need to break the schedulers on the machines, to make them randomly almost-starve a process to make sure it can cope with a slow machine.
No, that's because every Mac.app is actually a directory (you can't view the directory in Finder [at least, I couldn't figure out how], but it's perfectly clear from a console) which contains the binaries, resources, and user config files. Windows (barring Win16) is mostly the same, it just uses the registry for some of those purposes and scatters resources in a user-viewable directory. That's not so much a trait of the Mac's common software environment as it is of a *better* software environment (at least for users, in my opinion).
"Yeah! The Mac just puts everything for a program in one folder. Windows does the same things, except spread across the system instead of in one folder..."
Wait, what? That's not remotely the same thing? Damn it!
The libtheora reference implementation has reached its 'alpha 2' milestone. A lot of bugs have been fixed and new features added, including all the planned changes to the bitsteams format.
This is more of an internal milestone than a public release, but we are making a source tarball available for convenience. Nevertheless we recommend using the cvs version if possible. This release also requires cvs libogg and libvorbis to compile; you might try the cvs nightly tarball if you don't already have these checked out. You will need to build and install the 'ogg' and 'vorbis' modules.
---end whoring---
Note that it's not a user release, but a developer release.
Finally, here is a mirror, to help out with their bandwidth costs.
Cluster computing really is the future. Supercomputers are expensive, run wierd OSes (sometimes), and have infrasructure requirements. A cluster (I prefer OpenMosix, but Beowulf if you like) just requires fast ethernet or fibre.
Plus, think of all the computers that go unused at night in places like school computer labs. All those free machines could, at night, join a cluster and do number crunching for researchers.
Good to know that your "Comp Sci." courses are nothing more than a trade school embedded into a college/university. The study of computer science is going horribly astray if students are actually lead to beleive that there is no possible way that we will ever be able to make robust software cost effectively.
"The study of Computer Science" isn't going anywhere. Just because some guy's classes say that we're not going to write robust software doesn't mean everyone is going that way.
For instance, at my Uni, we have a class (which I just completed) called "Zero-Defect Programming". Does it work? Like magic. Is it easy? Noooo... It takes work. Once you know what you're doing, you can write your code (bug-free, or damn near) in the time it takes you to do the normal "write-compile-test-debug-repeat" bit. To do it right with peer verification takes longer, but the rewards are great. Everyone in the class wrote a program of at least 10 "modules" (functions or objects) that were bulletproof.
The class text was "Toward Zero-Defect Programming" by Allen Stavely, ISBN: 0201385953. It's dry reading, but worth it. With this book in hand, you can strive towards a point where you no longer wonder if your code works, you know it does.
In what sane land would PRICES be protected under law? You can't really keep them secret, so "trade secret" is right out. It's not a identifying mark (unless you're a dollar store), so much for trademark. There's nothing useful that hasn't been done before, fuck patenting them. Copyright? It's a simple derivation of what the supplier charges you.
There is nothing creative about pricing stuff. Good lord.
Good lord, it's getting slow...
Try here for those files. It'll be a few minutes before the MP4 one is downloaded, but it'll be there. QT is there already.
/. proof mirror
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Sorry, no links.
Why Grokster and Morpheus Won, Why Napster Lost, and What the Future of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Looks Like Now By CHRIS SPRIGMAN ---- Thursday, May. 08, 2003
On April 25, in M-G-M v. Grokster, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of movie studios and record companies against Grokster and Morpheus. (Grokster and Morpheus are peer-to-peer services that enable users to share copyrighted music, movies, and other content over the Internet without paying a dime to the copyright owners.)
Many observers were surprised. They had assumed that Grokster and Morpheus would - like Napster in A&M Records v. Napster - be shut down for facilitating individual file sharers' copyright infringement. But Judge Wilson, after carefully examining the underlying technology, found that though users' infringement was occurring, Grokster and Morpheus were not contributing to or authorizing it. Thus, they could not be held liable.
The decision is obviously bad news for Hollywood studios and record companies. If it is upheld on appeal, they will continue to face wide-scale infringement of their copyrights.
If the decision is indeed upheld on appeal, will that be good news for consumers? That is a more complicated question. The answer depends heavily on Hollywood's reaction. Will it continue its battle on other fronts - focusing perhaps not on the services, but on their users? Or will it, instead, launch new strategies to take advantage of the powerful business opportunities that peer-to-peer might provide?
Comparing and Contrasting Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster
To see what is likely to occur in the future, it's helpful first to take a closer look at the differences between Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster.
First, Grokster. It offers for download a branded version of software owned by Sharman Networks, a company incorporated in Vanuatu - a remote Pacific island chain that markets itself as protecting corporate secrecy.
When a user boots the software, his computer is directed to sign on to a "root supernode" (a server owned by Sharman), which then directs the user to a "local supernode." The "local supernode" is some user's computer, which has been temporarily designated to route file-sharing requests among a large number of other users. (A particular user's computer may function as a local supernode one day but not the next; the process is largely invisible to the user).
Suppose a Grokster user requests a certain file - it could be a song, a movie clip, a video game, or an e-book. His search request is relayed among a large number of local supernodes and on to individual users. Once the requested file is found, it is transferred directly between the users.
Now let's look at Morpheus. Its software is based on the Gnutella peer-to-peer platform, built from "open source" code. Morpheus users connect to the Gnutella network by contacting another user who is already connected. (This initial connection is usually made by linking to a computer on the network that maintains a constantly changing list of IP addresses for certain currently active nodes.)
The Gnutella network is a "pure" peer-to-peer network - composed of users running Gnutella-compatible software such as LimeWire, BearShare and Shareaza. It does not use supernodes. Instead, user search requests are passed from user to user in the network until the requested file is found. The file is then transferred directly between the two users.
So what's the difference between Grokster and Morpheus, on one hand, and Napster, on the other? It is this: when Grokster and Morpheus users search for and receive digital files, they do so without information being relayed to or by any computer owned or controlled by Grokster or Morpheus. Thus, as the district court noted, if Grokster or Morpheus shut down, their users could continue to share files with little or no disruption.
Personally, I don't see a lot of use for an iPod in education (and I say that as a happy iPod owner), but it has nothing to do with religious reasons such as whether it's running an open source OS.
As a happy iPod owner and student, I disagree:)
I listen to a lot of music each day. I love it. I study to it. Some teachers let me listen to music during tests (as long as I can leave it in my pocket), and it helps.
And, of course, there's the use of a Firewire drive to cart around papers and such, but I use the internal network for that
Gentoo has something similar to Windows Update. True, it's not as (shiny | graphically intensive) as WU, but it does the same thing. It even updates more than just those Microsoft programs, too.
I've only had it require watching in two instances: upgrading glibc, and upgrading PAM with a server (not just PAM, not just the server). In those two cases, reboot of the machine for glibc, or a restart of the service for PAM/service took care of it.
Ahh, now I remember what I pay the school that monthly fee for. ~300 KB/s download for the whole thing.
I find it odd that they don't provide instructions on the site anywhere easy to find on providing mirrors. I'd like to, but fucked if I can find where.
Did anyone else find that the mirrors aren't complete yet?
midrange wintel office desktops for $1000
Fully equipped Apples would be nearly double the cost
Imagine that! Fully-equipped machines cost more than mid-range? I would have never guessed!
Lowend iMac (in my opinion, competitive with a "mid-range" PC) starts at $1300. I bet you could do a lot better if you were buying enough for a company.
An eMac starts at $1000. Even cheaper.
Our friends at Dell.com say... Dimension 8250 for $1000. That's a comparable machine, I think (based on how it uses, not specs).
You need to have equipment (your eyes) to read a book as well. Does that mean it is copy protected? Just because your brain can't read ones and zeros doesn't mean that it's "copy protected", that means that it's formatted.
Copy protection is when reading the thing (with whatever equipment it takes) is restricted in some manner to limit what you can do with it.
Perhaps the field should split so there is a relatively large group of people with highly technical skills to do most of the labor, and another, smaller, group of the cream of the crop to do the actual computer science.
That divide already exists. The larger group are called IT Students:P
I have a few friends in my classes who have this. Sprint "Vision" unlimited plan ($100 / mo) + laptop with wireless card in Ad-Hoc mode makes a few people very happy:)
$100 / mo is far too expensive for me (the poor college student), but if you can afford it you'll be happy. 256Kb/s from Socorro NM is nothing to laugh at.
I think that learning-via-the-internet is a "killer app" for rural areas. I go to a engineering school, and we use this piece of shite called "WebCT". It is bad enough that no one wants to use it. The few (cruel) teachers that use it have a good thing going though. Homework via a webpage, instant grading (for things like Physics), and the theoretical ability to take a class from somewhere off campus.
I would kill for the ability to take some classes remotely over the summer. Though nothing replaces a real teacher, there are some subjects that could do it.
Also, this would mean worlds of difference for people outside the big cities. The ability to start a degree while living in some-godawful-place, NM could mean the difference between living your life in said godawful-place, and being able to get out if you wanted.
The real question is, will people use it? Or will distance-learning stay the toy of masters students?
I have read the abstract, and everyone who has their nipples in a twist should actually read the abstract. He's not patenting web advertising per se, but advertising relating to bids in auctions. I would have thought that the word "bid" in the patent application would have given this away.
I love it when people act indignant but are wrong:)
The "bid" is for the advertising. This is the method of taking bids from advertisers ($x for y impressions) and having the webpage decide which one to use on the fly. In essence, the ad serving system used by most of the web.
Like so many other posters, I am torn. Would they actually slow/stop the ever growing flood of web ads? Would they simply be assholes and demand money from their enemies? Will they siply sit on it like a nuclear weapon, ready to loose at the poor company that pisses them off?
Slashdot Mirror
We'd also like to support, for example, PHP, Ruby, Python, BASIC, Scheme, COBOL, Java, Befunge, TECO, Rebol, REXX, and... I can't quite make out that one on the bottom there [brainf*ck]. And if I could, I wouldn't say it anyway, because there are children present, and I wouldn't want to fuck up their brains.
Thanks, Larry.
Seriously, though, didn't he have anything better to do? Over half of the damn thing is his mind wandering as he types up some speech notes.
A friend of mine works for a company that is currently using an Access database for their product's backend. This product is almost the ideal environment for Access: one user at a time, small (less then 50 MB) databases, slow accesses.
He's petitioning to get it removed. Why? It seems that on a small database (> 10 MB), it will sometimes go corrupt. He's using VB with all of the Microsoft controls to use the damn thing, so there should be no problems. By the time the database hits 30 MBs, it's having to be rebuilt (a time-expensive operation) twice a day.
Is that really something we want for our votes?
That site is ugly. Is it just mozilla, or does eveyone have the problem of all the text being in a 20 character column?
Anyway, doesn't that seem like common sense? How could a law not be public? If a law was copyrighted, does that mean I couldn't reproduce it for the purposes of telling people the laws? What if I gave a (paid) class on laws to be careful of (obscure laws, maybe)?
A breath of fresh air as someone shows our legal system hasn't gone completely insane...
"Last you checked" was a while ago.
Ask the FSF
That's not really nanotech. They weren't using the nanomaterials directly, or intentionally. The particles just happened to be the right size.
Site's down.
Get it here
I can't help but say that most CS/IT majors need this. I've seen too many people write apps (simple ones even) that relied on that ethernet connection that the dorms give, 10Mbit between machines. "Scale down? Who has less than a fast cable modem these days?"
Now they just need to break the schedulers on the machines, to make them randomly almost-starve a process to make sure it can cope with a slow machine.
No, that's because every Mac .app is actually a directory (you can't view the directory in Finder [at least, I couldn't figure out how], but it's perfectly clear from a console) which contains the binaries, resources, and user config files. Windows (barring Win16) is mostly the same, it just uses the registry for some of those purposes and scatters resources in a user-viewable directory. That's not so much a trait of the Mac's common software environment as it is of a *better* software environment (at least for users, in my opinion).
"Yeah! The Mac just puts everything for a program in one folder. Windows does the same things, except spread across the system instead of in one folder..."
Wait, what? That's not remotely the same thing? Damn it!
First, allow me to whore a bit...
---start whoring---
[ June 9, 2003 - Theora alpha 2 release ]
The libtheora reference implementation has reached its 'alpha 2' milestone. A lot of bugs have been fixed and new features added, including all the planned changes to the bitsteams format.
This is more of an internal milestone than a public release, but we are making a source tarball available for convenience. Nevertheless we recommend using the cvs version if possible. This release also requires cvs libogg and libvorbis to compile; you might try the cvs nightly tarball if you don't already have these checked out. You will need to build and install the 'ogg' and 'vorbis' modules.
---end whoring---
Note that it's not a user release, but a developer release.
Finally, here is a mirror, to help out with their bandwidth costs.
Cluster computing really is the future. Supercomputers are expensive, run wierd OSes (sometimes), and have infrasructure requirements. A cluster (I prefer OpenMosix, but Beowulf if you like) just requires fast ethernet or fibre.
Plus, think of all the computers that go unused at night in places like school computer labs. All those free machines could, at night, join a cluster and do number crunching for researchers.
Good to know that your "Comp Sci." courses are nothing more than a trade school embedded into a college/university. The study of computer science is going horribly astray if students are actually lead to beleive that there is no possible way that we will ever be able to make robust software cost effectively.
"The study of Computer Science" isn't going anywhere. Just because some guy's classes say that we're not going to write robust software doesn't mean everyone is going that way.
For instance, at my Uni, we have a class (which I just completed) called "Zero-Defect Programming". Does it work? Like magic. Is it easy? Noooo... It takes work. Once you know what you're doing, you can write your code (bug-free, or damn near) in the time it takes you to do the normal "write-compile-test-debug-repeat" bit. To do it right with peer verification takes longer, but the rewards are great. Everyone in the class wrote a program of at least 10 "modules" (functions or objects) that were bulletproof.
The class text was "Toward Zero-Defect Programming" by Allen Stavely, ISBN: 0201385953. It's dry reading, but worth it. With this book in hand, you can strive towards a point where you no longer wonder if your code works, you know it does.
In what sane land would PRICES be protected under law? You can't really keep them secret, so "trade secret" is right out. It's not a identifying mark (unless you're a dollar store), so much for trademark. There's nothing useful that hasn't been done before, fuck patenting them. Copyright? It's a simple derivation of what the supplier charges you.
There is nothing creative about pricing stuff. Good lord.
Good lord, it's getting slow...
Try here for those files. It'll be a few minutes before the MP4 one is downloaded, but it'll be there. QT is there already.
Sorry, no links.
Why Grokster and Morpheus Won, Why Napster Lost, and What the Future of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Looks Like Now
By CHRIS SPRIGMAN
----
Thursday, May. 08, 2003
On April 25, in M-G-M v. Grokster, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of movie studios and record companies against Grokster and Morpheus. (Grokster and Morpheus are peer-to-peer services that enable users to share copyrighted music, movies, and other content over the Internet without paying a dime to the copyright owners.)
Many observers were surprised. They had assumed that Grokster and Morpheus would - like Napster in A&M Records v. Napster - be shut down for facilitating individual file sharers' copyright infringement. But Judge Wilson, after carefully examining the underlying technology, found that though users' infringement was occurring, Grokster and Morpheus were not contributing to or authorizing it. Thus, they could not be held liable.
The decision is obviously bad news for Hollywood studios and record companies. If it is upheld on appeal, they will continue to face wide-scale infringement of their copyrights.
If the decision is indeed upheld on appeal, will that be good news for consumers? That is a more complicated question. The answer depends heavily on Hollywood's reaction. Will it continue its battle on other fronts - focusing perhaps not on the services, but on their users? Or will it, instead, launch new strategies to take advantage of the powerful business opportunities that peer-to-peer might provide?
Comparing and Contrasting Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster
To see what is likely to occur in the future, it's helpful first to take a closer look at the differences between Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster.
First, Grokster. It offers for download a branded version of software owned by Sharman Networks, a company incorporated in Vanuatu - a remote Pacific island chain that markets itself as protecting corporate secrecy.
When a user boots the software, his computer is directed to sign on to a "root supernode" (a server owned by Sharman), which then directs the user to a "local supernode." The "local supernode" is some user's computer, which has been temporarily designated to route file-sharing requests among a large number of other users. (A particular user's computer may function as a local supernode one day but not the next; the process is largely invisible to the user).
Suppose a Grokster user requests a certain file - it could be a song, a movie clip, a video game, or an e-book. His search request is relayed among a large number of local supernodes and on to individual users. Once the requested file is found, it is transferred directly between the users.
Now let's look at Morpheus. Its software is based on the Gnutella peer-to-peer platform, built from "open source" code. Morpheus users connect to the Gnutella network by contacting another user who is already connected. (This initial connection is usually made by linking to a computer on the network that maintains a constantly changing list of IP addresses for certain currently active nodes.)
The Gnutella network is a "pure" peer-to-peer network - composed of users running Gnutella-compatible software such as LimeWire, BearShare and Shareaza. It does not use supernodes. Instead, user search requests are passed from user to user in the network until the requested file is found. The file is then transferred directly between the two users.
So what's the difference between Grokster and Morpheus, on one hand, and Napster, on the other? It is this: when Grokster and Morpheus users search for and receive digital files, they do so without information being relayed to or by any computer owned or controlled by Grokster or Morpheus. Thus, as the district court noted, if Grokster or Morpheus shut down, their users could continue to share files with little or no disruption.
In contrast, Napster users relayed se
Right... I meant me providing a mirror, not "where the hell are the mirrors".
Personally, I don't see a lot of use for an iPod in education (and I say that as a happy iPod owner), but it has nothing to do with religious reasons such as whether it's running an open source OS.
:)
As a happy iPod owner and student, I disagree
I listen to a lot of music each day. I love it. I study to it. Some teachers let me listen to music during tests (as long as I can leave it in my pocket), and it helps.
And, of course, there's the use of a Firewire drive to cart around papers and such, but I use the internal network for that
I'll throw my 2 cents in on this.
Gentoo has something similar to Windows Update. True, it's not as (shiny | graphically intensive) as WU, but it does the same thing. It even updates more than just those Microsoft programs, too.
I've only had it require watching in two instances: upgrading glibc, and upgrading PAM with a server (not just PAM, not just the server). In those two cases, reboot of the machine for glibc, or a restart of the service for PAM/service took care of it.
Ahh, now I remember what I pay the school that monthly fee for. ~300 KB/s download for the whole thing.
I find it odd that they don't provide instructions on the site anywhere easy to find on providing mirrors. I'd like to, but fucked if I can find where.
Did anyone else find that the mirrors aren't complete yet?
midrange wintel office desktops for $1000
Fully equipped Apples would be nearly double the cost
Imagine that! Fully-equipped machines cost more than mid-range? I would have never guessed!
Lowend iMac (in my opinion, competitive with a "mid-range" PC) starts at $1300. I bet you could do a lot better if you were buying enough for a company.
An eMac starts at $1000. Even cheaper.
Our friends at Dell.com say... Dimension 8250 for $1000. That's a comparable machine, I think (based on how it uses, not specs).
Wow, slow down there.
You need to have equipment (your eyes) to read a book as well. Does that mean it is copy protected? Just because your brain can't read ones and zeros doesn't mean that it's "copy protected", that means that it's formatted.
Copy protection is when reading the thing (with whatever equipment it takes) is restricted in some manner to limit what you can do with it.
Perhaps the field should split so there is a relatively large group of people with highly technical skills to do most of the labor, and another, smaller, group of the cream of the crop to do the actual computer science.
That divide already exists. The larger group are called IT Students :P
--
Bill, who is very much a CS student
I have a few friends in my classes who have this. Sprint "Vision" unlimited plan ($100 / mo) + laptop with wireless card in Ad-Hoc mode makes a few people very happy :)
$100 / mo is far too expensive for me (the poor college student), but if you can afford it you'll be happy. 256Kb/s from Socorro NM is nothing to laugh at.
Sorry, I'm not the admin (yet). I've just heard stories that it's awful, hard to admin, worse to patch, etc.
I think that learning-via-the-internet is a "killer app" for rural areas. I go to a engineering school, and we use this piece of shite called "WebCT". It is bad enough that no one wants to use it. The few (cruel) teachers that use it have a good thing going though. Homework via a webpage, instant grading (for things like Physics), and the theoretical ability to take a class from somewhere off campus.
I would kill for the ability to take some classes remotely over the summer. Though nothing replaces a real teacher, there are some subjects that could do it.
Also, this would mean worlds of difference for people outside the big cities. The ability to start a degree while living in some-godawful-place, NM could mean the difference between living your life in said godawful-place, and being able to get out if you wanted.
The real question is, will people use it? Or will distance-learning stay the toy of masters students?
I have read the abstract, and everyone who has their nipples in a twist should actually read the abstract. He's not patenting web advertising per se, but advertising relating to bids in auctions. I would have thought that the word "bid" in the patent application would have given this away.
I love it when people act indignant but are wrong :)
The "bid" is for the advertising. This is the method of taking bids from advertisers ($x for y impressions) and having the webpage decide which one to use on the fly. In essence, the ad serving system used by most of the web.
Like so many other posters, I am torn. Would they actually slow/stop the ever growing flood of web ads? Would they simply be assholes and demand money from their enemies? Will they siply sit on it like a nuclear weapon, ready to loose at the poor company that pisses them off?