Labeling all truckers as foul-mouth offenders on CB radio is akin to labeling all hackers as script-kiddies or crackers.
That's a good point, a lot of my information was not directly observed but rather came from people more experienced with CBs, and of course they might have been wrong about the source of the noise.
Right. My first inclination when I heard about "Free wireless networks" was, "That'll never work. People won't give service away forever."
But then I got to thinking about Citizens' Band (CB) radio. It was a bit before my time, but my grandfather still had one when I was a child, and it was apparently all the rage in the late 70s. It was basically a huge network of private radios that people used to get help in emergency situations, warn others of speed traps, or just generally chat on the road.
Of course the difference between that and free
internet, is that there's up "uplink" from CB's. You just chat with each other. But I definitely think an "alter-net," if you will, might work; people sharing their wireless bandwidth to send email, share their webcams, whatever, even if the ISPs crack down on sharing an internet uplink.
But anyway, why this is a response to the kiddie pr0n post: the downfall of this free wireless net could be the same as the downfall of CBs. They're still available and the bandwidth is still there, except that now it's full of foul-mouthed truckers cursing all night and all day, making civilized conversation all but impossible. Even on the emergency channel, apparently, it's just people hurling insults. So to the average user, it's objectionable and serves no use.
If the free wireless net started getting up to the same level of conversation, for instance, rampant porn (or free mp3...) trading, it would probably fall by the wayside for legitimate users. Even worse, if it was used primarily for child porn or bootleg video swapping, the bandwidth would be swamped AND the cops would crack down, making it not only objectionable, but downright evil in the eyes of some. Let's hope this project doesn't get ruined the same way.
Okay, maybe this is a tiny bit off-topic, but the author of that article, David Goodstein, RULES. Did anyone else watch "The Mechanical Universe" in high school?! It was simultaneously brilliant and terrible: half animated and half "live action" in a genuine lecture hall, it included such hokey inventions as "the derivative machine" which would chew up equations and spit out their derivatives (always with respect to X:). But it also had some really stunning visuals relating the position of a dynamic object to its velocity vector, as well as great "live" demonstrations of, for instance, light polarization. It was great for pre-calc or just-starting-calc students to get a grasp on what all these d/dx's were all about.
Long live David Goodstein! Professor, if you're reading this, thanks for a great series on elementary physics!
It's really unfortunate that MP3.com was chosen to be the whipping boy for all of the RIAA (and other artist)'s frustrations. They had the one online music service I actually LIKED and would have been willing to - gasp! - pay for, if only they'd let it go.
Back in the glory days, I made a purchase at cheap-cds.com, and the CDs I bought were AUTOMATICALLY made available on my mp3.com account! Unfortunately, I only listened to them about 3 times each at work before mp3.com locked everything up in response to the Universal complaint.
Think about it: mp3.com was everything Napster claimed to be. "I have the right to space shift! I have the right to backup!" Well, mp3.com actually allowed for just those things, with (and admittedly cursory) verification that you actually owned the CD you were listening to. All arranged in neat lists, with high-quality mp3s and decent bandwidth. If, for example, cdnow had the option to charge an extra 50 cents or buck per CD to enable functionality like that, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
A much bigger concern with mp3.com, it seems, and one that's widely ignored, is the way they screw over their own independent artists. They take a big share and charge huge fees for services like "payback for playback," and you have to sign away all kinds of rights to put your stuff up there. But all this about "contributory infringement" (I can only assume that's what they meant by "viral"?) is hogwash. Bring back my online music locker!
What, are they rival military forces now?
Is java going to storm C++'s Bastille? Land at its Normandy? Make it sign a punitive treaty at Versailles? Enough with the war metaphors already! They're inanimate programming languages and can coexist in peace, damnit!
(p.s. Yes, I know I could RTFA to clear this up, but it's an editorial complaint)
I'm writing this note to apologize. I think I broke your new server. You said the new hardware and software were maybe not completely configured yet, but I clicked on the link anyway, and now I think your server is down.
I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to break anything, I know I should be more careful in the future. Hope this doesn't set you back too far.
That was NOT a troll. I am completely sincere in this
LOL... I'm sure, but I hate to break it to ya: any post whose subject includes "fuck them til they bleed" is by nature a troll. Or maybe more appropriately a flame. Part of maintaining a civil, productive discussion is the "productive" part.
Disclaimer: I am not "that moderator." But I don't disagree w/ him.
I thought there were some weather satellites. What functionality does this satellite possess over the others?
It would sit at the legrange 1 point, hovering more or less statically between the earth and the sun. I mean, not static, but not in constant freefall like your normal orbiting satellite either. Why this makes it better/worse for climate observation, I don't know.
Why do politicians have to kill great science projects for their own political vandettas?"
Who says they did? My understanding of the article is that no funding was actually cut from the Triana project itself -- the satelite is done. In fact,
"NASA is limited by a budget pinch to just six space shuttle flights a year and most of them are being taken up with building the international space station, re-servicing the Hubble Space Telescope and other projects with a higher priority than Triana."
Moan all you want about NASA being underfunded, but this doesn't sound at all like a matter of anyone taking "political revenge" at Al Gore's project. NASA has to prioritize, and they have.
Personally, I question why the space station (a run-down tenement in orbit! whoo hoo!) is more important than this climate-research vessel. But I don't smell a political attack here.
Re:OT: pedantic correction
on
Code Redux
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· Score: 1
I don't know if it works, I don't have a Win boxes to test it on...
I can imagine someone flooding Microsoft's 'Crash Dump Servers'
What I'm really waiting on is the technology to dial up to the internet after windows has crashed. If I could consistently do that, then BSODs wouldn't bother me nearly so much.
Of course, they wouldn't really be "... of death" anymore, either.
Hm. Both the ZDNet and Reuters articles contradict the MSNBC one on at least one important points: MSNBC says that the RIAA is "open to the idea," but both other sources say that the RIAA "bashed" the proposal or "was sure to oppose [it]."
Personally, I can't see why they'd like it, except that it's not technically compulsory license. But the RIAA never seemed willing to settle for the "not worst" case before, they usually go whole hog. What's MSNBC smoking?
Compulsory IP licensing is not like eminent domain, because the copyright holder still has the stuff when it's licensed to someone else. Furthermore, it generally only applies to one medium.
Compulsory licensing is already implemented with regards to music broadcasting, I'm pretty sure. That's what ASCAP and BMI are for; radio stations can play any song they want, and they just pay a bit more to ASCAP or BMI (more like ASCAP _and_ BMI) for the priviledge. So that's the kind of thing we're talking about. Not "taking" the music from the labels.
Furthermore, this seems silly, because napster would still have to pay royalties. At least as much as a radio station, and probably more since it's music-on-demand. So, there would still be usage fees and/or tons and tons of advertising to support it, both of which seem to be death knells for that service.
Well, okay, we only visited Kenyatta University briefly, and I don't think I saw that particular lecture hall. Primarily I attended the U of Nairobi.
And lemme say, these comments about "Africa really needs water/food/health care before the Internet" are way off mark. Yes, all those things are necessary, but you must realize that in some cases, particularly with food and water, it's a matter of distribution, not lack of production, and the fact that the economy is largely subjugated by corrupt governments and international treaties which relegate them to commodity-production only. Which is a famously unstable way to make a living.
Moreover, an educated, informed populace is a great way to get around these obstacles. And wiring up the universities and teaching people software engineering is actually a GREAT step. No one's saying "to hell with food, we want you to be our new cheap code monkeys!" A lot of people are genuinely interested in helping African countries recover from poverty.
First of all, not freakin' much, because they don't HAVE much. Maybe under a grand (US$) per month. But believe me, that's luxury pay for the area. You would have an entire house, fenced and probably manually guarded, most likely a live-in servant or two, and probably a nice land rover. Plus domestic vacations would be inanely cheap once you learned the language and the local bartering/haggling proceedures.
Of course maybe you wouldn't learn any of that, because you make yourself sound tremendously ignorant in that comment. ebola is primarily found in remote areas and you're almost certain not to get it. I won't even discuss the best ways to avoid aids. You take prophylactic malaria medication; that's one more thing the natives have to struggle with but which you can remain blissfully ignorant of. The "insane" governments, which are being suffocated by equal parts corruption and IMF debt, can generally be bought off if you really have a problem with them. And there aren't really "rebel factions" within 200 miles of nairobi.
So all around, it would be a pretty great opportunity for a geek to have a great time relatively safely, as long as you dig swimming in the indian ocean and seeing lions in their natural habitat instead of stocking up a fat paycheck. So maybe YOU shouldn't go, but I had a great time.
I quickly realised that mass transit ONLY works in huge cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta, Detriot...
Ah ha ha ha, clearly you've never been to detroit, the DPM is one of the most abysmal examples of public transit in the nation. The Motor City's "mass" transit system consists of 3 whole miles of elevated rail which stop operating at midnight and don't even go anywhere fun, like the freaking baseball stadium even, let alone to residential districts.
Well, that review won't load for me right now, so I'm going to shoot my mouth off before reading it.
That's SOP around here, right?;)
Anyway, I installed slack 8 a couple nights ago, and my main concern is that I can't find any X server besides the frame buffer X server. Oh, excuse me, there's print-only as well. Anyway, the VESA framebuffer is nice to install with, although the slack 8 interface takes no advantage of it, BUT it's not really nice to keep running in VESA mode.
Most of us have accellerated graphics cards, to say the least; do you really want to keep running that GeForce in VESA mode? I was told in the #slackware channel that one has to compile one's own X server for a particular card...? Now, I know slackware is a DIY distro, but this seems like a huge step backwards. I used to be able to plug in the precompiled mga driver for my Matrox card, but no longer by the looks of things.
If anyone else can prove me wrong, I'd love it. I like lots of other things about slack, but I'd really rather not need to compile X just to get accelerated graphics performance.
Okay. I've got to admit, until just a few minutes ago, I hadn't really read the DMCA in comparison to any other laws.
Basically, what it does is add a provision to the US Code title 17 (the copyright section) which additionally makes it illegal to gain unauthorized access to a copyrighted work. Well, technically, it makes it illegal to "circumvent" a technological access control measure, but that's basically the same thing.
The thing is, there is an exception that makes it legal to breach COPY protection to excersize fair use right. But you still can't breach ACCESS protection, since, get this, there's no "access" provisions in the fair use section of title 17.
Basically what the DMCA does is convert copyright law into "accessright" law, or "controlright." Accordingly, we need additional provisions in the fair use sections to allow access for all the purposes for which we are currently allowed to make copies. After all, legal copies don't mean anything if they're still illegal to access.
Anyway, isn't this all unconstitutional? Maybe not. The constitution (Article I, section 8) grants authors and inventors "exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Seems like this could conceptually include access restrictions.
The only real argument I see is the "limited times" provision in that same section of Article I. As currently implemented, access control is permanent and irrevocable - there's no conceivable way to call this "securing [the rights] for a limited time." Maybe a judge could force them to insert an expiration date on their encryption, after which it would let anyone in. But other than that, the DMCA looks constitutionally defensible.
Hmmm... Microsoft wants to argue that they didn't "commingle" the functions in the same file? Guess they'll have to submit their source code as evidence, and will then be a matter of public record. Guess open source is kind of viral after all!
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good point, a lot of my information was not directly observed but rather came from people more experienced with CBs, and of course they might have been wrong about the source of the noise.
Right. My first inclination when I heard about "Free wireless networks" was, "That'll never work. People won't give service away forever."
But then I got to thinking about Citizens' Band (CB) radio. It was a bit before my time, but my grandfather still had one when I was a child, and it was apparently all the rage in the late 70s. It was basically a huge network of private radios that people used to get help in emergency situations, warn others of speed traps, or just generally chat on the road.
Of course the difference between that and free
internet, is that there's up "uplink" from CB's. You just chat with each other. But I definitely think an "alter-net," if you will, might work; people sharing their wireless bandwidth to send email, share their webcams, whatever, even if the ISPs crack down on sharing an internet uplink.
But anyway, why this is a response to the kiddie pr0n post: the downfall of this free wireless net could be the same as the downfall of CBs. They're still available and the bandwidth is still there, except that now it's full of foul-mouthed truckers cursing all night and all day, making civilized conversation all but impossible. Even on the emergency channel, apparently, it's just people hurling insults. So to the average user, it's objectionable and serves no use.
If the free wireless net started getting up to the same level of conversation, for instance, rampant porn (or free mp3...) trading, it would probably fall by the wayside for legitimate users. Even worse, if it was used primarily for child porn or bootleg video swapping, the bandwidth would be swamped AND the cops would crack down, making it not only objectionable, but downright evil in the eyes of some. Let's hope this project doesn't get ruined the same way.
Long live David Goodstein! Professor, if you're reading this, thanks for a great series on elementary physics!
Back in the glory days, I made a purchase at cheap-cds.com, and the CDs I bought were AUTOMATICALLY made available on my mp3.com account! Unfortunately, I only listened to them about 3 times each at work before mp3.com locked everything up in response to the Universal complaint.
Think about it: mp3.com was everything Napster claimed to be. "I have the right to space shift! I have the right to backup!" Well, mp3.com actually allowed for just those things, with (and admittedly cursory) verification that you actually owned the CD you were listening to. All arranged in neat lists, with high-quality mp3s and decent bandwidth. If, for example, cdnow had the option to charge an extra 50 cents or buck per CD to enable functionality like that, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
A much bigger concern with mp3.com, it seems, and one that's widely ignored, is the way they screw over their own independent artists. They take a big share and charge huge fees for services like "payback for playback," and you have to sign away all kinds of rights to put your stuff up there. But all this about "contributory infringement" (I can only assume that's what they meant by "viral"?) is hogwash. Bring back my online music locker!
Judging from what happened with the 1.2.x series, I'm sure the next 2.4 revision will be called 2.4.10, then 2.4.11... you get the picture.
(p.s. Yes, I know I could RTFA to clear this up, but it's an editorial complaint)
Security Hold... huh? Is that where they put all security that's missing from the rest of Windows? Tell me if you find it!
I'm writing this note to apologize. I think I broke your new server. You said the new hardware and software were maybe not completely configured yet, but I clicked on the link anyway, and now I think your server is down.
I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to break anything, I know I should be more careful in the future. Hope this doesn't set you back too far.
Sincerely,
rkent
Shame on this moderation! If someone posts useful info as AC, for the love of God, mod it UP! It can't possibly be whoring.
Oops, I meant "civil."
(moderation: -1, Reply to self...)
LOL... I'm sure, but I hate to break it to ya: any post whose subject includes "fuck them til they bleed" is by nature a troll. Or maybe more appropriately a flame. Part of maintaining a civil, productive discussion is the "productive" part.
Disclaimer: I am not "that moderator." But I don't disagree w/ him.
It would sit at the legrange 1 point, hovering more or less statically between the earth and the sun. I mean, not static, but not in constant freefall like your normal orbiting satellite either. Why this makes it better/worse for climate observation, I don't know.
Who says they did? My understanding of the article is that no funding was actually cut from the Triana project itself -- the satelite is done. In fact,
Moan all you want about NASA being underfunded, but this doesn't sound at all like a matter of anyone taking "political revenge" at Al Gore's project. NASA has to prioritize, and they have.
Personally, I question why the space station (a run-down tenement in orbit! whoo hoo!) is more important than this climate-research vessel. But I don't smell a political attack here.
LOL! I bow before your excellence.
Okay, if you're going to use the archaic, tongue-in-cheek unix-guru term "boxen," at least bother to learn that its denotation is plural.
And now back to your regularly scheduled worm discussion.
What I'm really waiting on is the technology to dial up to the internet after windows has crashed. If I could consistently do that, then BSODs wouldn't bother me nearly so much.
Of course, they wouldn't really be "... of death" anymore, either.
Personally, I can't see why they'd like it, except that it's not technically compulsory license. But the RIAA never seemed willing to settle for the "not worst" case before, they usually go whole hog. What's MSNBC smoking?
Compulsory licensing is already implemented with regards to music broadcasting, I'm pretty sure. That's what ASCAP and BMI are for; radio stations can play any song they want, and they just pay a bit more to ASCAP or BMI (more like ASCAP _and_ BMI) for the priviledge. So that's the kind of thing we're talking about. Not "taking" the music from the labels.
Furthermore, this seems silly, because napster would still have to pay royalties. At least as much as a radio station, and probably more since it's music-on-demand. So, there would still be usage fees and/or tons and tons of advertising to support it, both of which seem to be death knells for that service.
---
And lemme say, these comments about "Africa really needs water/food/health care before the Internet" are way off mark. Yes, all those things are necessary, but you must realize that in some cases, particularly with food and water, it's a matter of distribution, not lack of production, and the fact that the economy is largely subjugated by corrupt governments and international treaties which relegate them to commodity-production only. Which is a famously unstable way to make a living.
Moreover, an educated, informed populace is a great way to get around these obstacles. And wiring up the universities and teaching people software engineering is actually a GREAT step. No one's saying "to hell with food, we want you to be our new cheap code monkeys!" A lot of people are genuinely interested in helping African countries recover from poverty.
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First of all, not freakin' much, because they don't HAVE much. Maybe under a grand (US$) per month. But believe me, that's luxury pay for the area. You would have an entire house, fenced and probably manually guarded, most likely a live-in servant or two, and probably a nice land rover. Plus domestic vacations would be inanely cheap once you learned the language and the local bartering/haggling proceedures.
Of course maybe you wouldn't learn any of that, because you make yourself sound tremendously ignorant in that comment. ebola is primarily found in remote areas and you're almost certain not to get it. I won't even discuss the best ways to avoid aids. You take prophylactic malaria medication; that's one more thing the natives have to struggle with but which you can remain blissfully ignorant of. The "insane" governments, which are being suffocated by equal parts corruption and IMF debt, can generally be bought off if you really have a problem with them. And there aren't really "rebel factions" within 200 miles of nairobi.
So all around, it would be a pretty great opportunity for a geek to have a great time relatively safely, as long as you dig swimming in the indian ocean and seeing lions in their natural habitat instead of stocking up a fat paycheck. So maybe YOU shouldn't go, but I had a great time.
---
Ah ha ha ha, clearly you've never been to detroit, the DPM is one of the most abysmal examples of public transit in the nation. The Motor City's "mass" transit system consists of 3 whole miles of elevated rail which stop operating at midnight and don't even go anywhere fun, like the freaking baseball stadium even, let alone to residential districts.
---
Anyway, I installed slack 8 a couple nights ago, and my main concern is that I can't find any X server besides the frame buffer X server. Oh, excuse me, there's print-only as well. Anyway, the VESA framebuffer is nice to install with, although the slack 8 interface takes no advantage of it, BUT it's not really nice to keep running in VESA mode.
Most of us have accellerated graphics cards, to say the least; do you really want to keep running that GeForce in VESA mode? I was told in the #slackware channel that one has to compile one's own X server for a particular card...? Now, I know slackware is a DIY distro, but this seems like a huge step backwards. I used to be able to plug in the precompiled mga driver for my Matrox card, but no longer by the looks of things.
If anyone else can prove me wrong, I'd love it. I like lots of other things about slack, but I'd really rather not need to compile X just to get accelerated graphics performance.
---
Basically, what it does is add a provision to the US Code title 17 (the copyright section) which additionally makes it illegal to gain unauthorized access to a copyrighted work. Well, technically, it makes it illegal to "circumvent" a technological access control measure, but that's basically the same thing.
The thing is, there is an exception that makes it legal to breach COPY protection to excersize fair use right. But you still can't breach ACCESS protection, since, get this, there's no "access" provisions in the fair use section of title 17.
Basically what the DMCA does is convert copyright law into "accessright" law, or "controlright." Accordingly, we need additional provisions in the fair use sections to allow access for all the purposes for which we are currently allowed to make copies. After all, legal copies don't mean anything if they're still illegal to access.
Anyway, isn't this all unconstitutional? Maybe not. The constitution (Article I, section 8) grants authors and inventors "exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Seems like this could conceptually include access restrictions.
The only real argument I see is the "limited times" provision in that same section of Article I. As currently implemented, access control is permanent and irrevocable - there's no conceivable way to call this "securing [the rights] for a limited time." Maybe a judge could force them to insert an expiration date on their encryption, after which it would let anyone in. But other than that, the DMCA looks constitutionally defensible.
Counterarguments?
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