1. The industry was cool in the meeting. Guys from Intel, Philips, Listen.com, etc. They're anti-DRM, and they totally rock.
2. We hate, as usual, the media companies: RIAA, MPAA, AOL/TW, etc. But we're also not thrilled about the geek-activists who interrupting, being obnoxious, and generally doing more harm than good.
3. There was something of a fight between tech industry and media, and I'd say the techies won. Media wants DRM legislated now, and the techs know that's bullshit.
I'd like to thank the post a couple parents up for questioning reading comprehension. I said the majority of the discussion, not "the majority of what Jack Valenti had to say." I was juxtaposing his unreasonable and laughable attitudes with the otherwise reasonable folks. Do I need to spell it out? I don't like Jack Valenti! But neither does the tech industry, and in that I feel we've got a voice.
I was there, I'm the author, and a ruckus got the offending audience members reprimanded for their outburst, and alternately ignored and disdained by the people who actually have the power to make a difference.
The ruckus basically ruined the chance of their view getting across. Fortunately, the tech industry folks are competent and eloquent enough to get it across for them.
Prediction [wise up sucker!] Next roundtable discussion, like this one, will be intellgient, reasonable, and civilised, and there's only going to be a rep from the OSS community if they get off thier asses and lobby with the big boys.
Yeah, sorry. As I say in a comment above, I didn't expect Slashdot to post this so I submitted it to k5 as well. But different communities will have different reactions, so I hope this proves useful here, too.
A bunch of the comments y'all are about to make have already been made at Kuro5shin (sorry for double-posting, I didn't think Slashdot would pick this up!). I've already responded to a bunch of them, defending my questioning of what has been the geek party line, one that I've towed vehemently for a long, long time.
I'm happy, however, to at least offer my views and any clarifications readers want. Thanks!
Thanks, Slashdot editors (and readers), for simultaneously proferring and undermining any sense of community or worthwhileness amongst those who oppose DMCA-mongers like Vivendi Universal, owner of Blizzard. Oh, sure, editors, you covered it in your FAQ: "You take your yin with your yang," yadda yadda bullshit. The notion of "objective journalism" is inherently false, a logical fallacy. When you pick facts, events, or say GAMES for your readers out of a vast pool of potential content, you're already unobjective from square one. And this material in the FAQ hides behind the same shield as the mainstream newsmedia who take cover under "objectivism." The Slashdot editors are trying to avoid responsibility, something everyone who influences the views of others is cursed with, justify it or not.
So, editors and readers alike, you DO have a responsibility, and you can't "Have you Cake and Eat it Too" as the most highly modded post for this story suggests. How typically American to think that you can support a corporation that undermines your rights and on the same day support a nonprofit that fights for those rights and expect the karma to all balance out in the mix. We want the instant gratification of getting what we want, and the morally bankrupt ease of not having to answer any hard questions in the process.
There's no real sacrifice involved here. To boycott this game wouldn't involve an expenditure of money, or effort, or anything. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that dire. You just sit there on your ass like you always do, perhaps playing a game from a company that won't sue you for developing software that support their products. YOU COULD DO NOTHING, AND BE DOING THE RIGHT THING. But every free Slashdot promotion for Big Media output continues to pull a consumer revolution right out from under the feet of the people who started it.
Big Media isn't scared of the Slashdot crowd. They know they own your geek bitchasses like they own the Britney Spears cheerleader crowd. You're just another target market, willing to gulp it down at a pretty price. Every story like this, littered with comments from drooling otakus ready to fund Vivendi with mommy's Visa, makes that abudently clear.
I rather liked this quote in his conclusion: "The real future tensions between the open and closed system communities will be defined by struggles for power and control over standards." Realistically, it's people like Slashdot readers who are waging the rather useless "ground war" of open vs closed debate. Vendors control what happens, and if you think customer demand has a serious effect on vendor action, look at Microsoft, or any of the the other loathed, despised, and hugely succesfully vendors of hideous software. It's just like politics: you can debate all you want with your peers, but it's the folks in power who make the decisions, and they could give a rat's ass about your opinion.
Check out Blackhole by the Groovy Organization, which integrates really well with Qmail but will work with just about any MTA. I found SpamAssassin's documentation to be mediocre at best, and had a helluva time getting it operable. Blackhole worked right off the bat for my Qmail/Courier IMAP/OpenBSD 3.0 setup, and can use Razor amongst other filtering methods. The software is constantly updated, and the developer plesant and responsive. Give it a try!
Of course, one could say that the good ol' US of A "exceed[s] its authority, does not operate in an open fashion, and is dangerously unaccountable to Internet users, [small] businesses and other key interest groups." I'm definitely not crazy about ICANN, but the suggstion that "The U.S. needs to ensure ICANN operates with the same sort of internal processes as in any other federal agency" makes me shudder. That's a terrible thing to wish on an organization, and is clearly no improvement. But the emphasis in the ZDNet article on security issues makes me wonder if this is a play by the US to localize more root servers, thus making legislation with broad constraits on previously international networks viable. Conspiritorial? Well, it's hard to regulate network traffic that doesn't stay within your physical jurisdiction, so you've either got to undermine international law or re-localize that traffic.
Okay, same deal as when the editors were hyping Spiderman and StarWars: it's not cool to bash the RIAA and MPAA, and then go and slurp down their output (especially this high-visibility, fake-controversey, ultra-marketed crap). I know how damn BORING hypocrisy is, but this is really just disgusting. The entertainment industry is never going to take their self-proclaimed opposition seriously if they can count on them as CUSTOMERS!!!
Let me say that I tried to reinforce in my post that movies, music, etc. (even pop ones) have cultural value. I don't deny this. I also don't think we as taxpayers need to pay to save the distribution channels that provide them when those channels are inconvienient, costly, and full of middlemen with fat pockets. I like to veg out as much as the next guy ^_^ All I was saying is that we haven't non-voluntarily supported this industry before, and I don't think we should continue to do so with further legislation.
Let me say that I tried to reinforce in my post that movies, music, etc. (even pop ones) have cultural value. I don't deny this. I also don't think we as taxpayers need to pay to save the distribution channels that provide them when those channels are inconvienient, costly, and full of middlemen with fat pockets. I like to veg out as much as the next guy ^_^
We already make the distinction between "quality" art - worthy of taxpayer funds - and the rest of it. Some people may disagree with that funded art (as in the elephant dung Virgin Mary thing in NYC about a year ago), but we fund it anyway. That's why we make the distinction of "the arts" and "entertainment." People seem to agree with that.
There's a difference between legal protections deployed by a government based on existing laws, and redefining theft. I think many people feel that the DMCA and similar laws redefines what's illegal to a detrimental extent. Everyone deserves due process, and I don't believe I recind the entertainment industry's right to it anywhere in my post. I just don't believe that they should get a clearly unfair advantage - if they're legislating for changing times, than consumers should get a "consumer bill of rights/fair use declaration" for the changing times.
The entertainment industry's war on Fair Use and consumer rights is often debated in terms of legal precedent. You'll see Slashdot comments fumbling towards a constitutional justification of Fair Use, or authors like Lawrence Lessig positing ideas like a digital commons as a rebuttal to the wave of copyrighting and litigation. But there's one simple, clear argument against much of what the entertainment industry would like to do. Read on.
It's clear that the purveyors of movies, television, records and so forth are scared. They're losing money (or claim to be), and this does not make them happy. Their scapegoat is digital copying, as they refuse to accept that perhaps the content they provide is simply of poor quality, or badly and inconviently distributed, thus explaining their drops in sales. The response of the RIAA and MPAA has been to call for endless litigation and lawmaking, outlawing any behaviour that undercuts their profits at the taxpayer's expense. As above, many "activists" argue that this is illegal, immoral, etc. My response is different.
The key concept to note is "at the taxpayer's expense." The entertainment industry has every right to protect their content. What they don't (or should not) have, however, is the resources of government and public money. When public funds and time are used to save a failing industry, this is called protectionism, and it's a concept more familiar to Communist ideology than our Free Market. Of course, this White House is no stranger to protectionism, bailing out airlines, the steel industry, and offering farmers massive subsidies. And perhaps one can justify saving these industries: people need transportation, crops, building materials. But who can justify saving the entertainment industry?
It's entertainment, the superflous recreation that we fill our idle time with. While it generates a lot of money (and ergo political influence), entertainment has, ultimately, zero effect or worth to a population. Sure, music, film, and so forth are part of what defines a culture. But what the public agrees to support are the arts, works of inherant cultural value, not "Dude, Where's My Car?"
With this in mind, I think any debate about the worth of RIAA- and MPAA-proposed legislation comes to a grinding halt. The entertainment industry is allowed to protect itself using its own time and money; if they want copy protection schemes, for example, let them pay for research and development. But the instant taxpayer time and money is being spent to save big media, we've entered into profoundly unamerican territory.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm puzzled by your statement. Could you elaborate, or perhaps provide evidence that the MPAA is not fiscally benefiting from the wide distribution and publicitiy of this film and associated previews and advertisements? Is it not MPAA rated, and ergo sanctioned? Please clarify; I'm genuinely interested.
I've said it before, and it'll be modded down as "flamebait" again, but I think it's appalling that the same editors who decry the practices of the MPAA at every turn go out and spend their money and give publicity to the most crass and over-marketed of MPAA-sanctioned output. Saying you hate the organization but love the content just isn't good enough: every dollar you spend on a MPAA film is another dollar that says "I want to be legislated against; I want to be treated like a criminal; I encourage you to use my tax dollars to hunt me down."
I'm a Gentoo user, and as much as I love the distribution, I can tell you that its source-based nature does not "fix" packaging issues. Gentoo has its own package layout/format, and even though few, if any, modifications are made to much of the source tarballs that these packages grab, bugs still appear. Sometimes it's with another dependent package, and sometimes it's a matter of the packages becoming out of date.
The "balance" you talk about is key, and right now some of us in the Gentoo world are trying to figure out a way to spread the burden of package maintenience a little more evenly. Debian could probably benefit from some re-thinking of these problems, too.
Am I the only one who notices that the editors, who keep posting anti-MPAA stories, seem to be eager to slurp up whatever the movie industry throws their way?
Granted, hypocrisy doesn't amount to much. But how about some consistency in values?
Some folks have tossed the idea around here that publishers are, in fact, being "hurt" by the common practice of overproduction. But that's lacking one important fact: taxpayers actually pay for the "pulping" of unsold, overproduced books. I reccomend you follow the money before you go sympathizing.
Large book publishers are no different than the RIAA, MPAA, or other such organizations with few friends here on Slashdot. These organizations, acting to "protect the interest of their artists" are simply watching the bottom dollar. As in so many arenas, the idea of a cultural responsibility, in this case for large publishing houses to introduce interesting and challenging new works and authors, is ignored. Bestsellers are overproduced not based on demand from companies like Amazon who later renig on sales, but in the interest of a profitable monoculture. The lowest common denominator is easy to sell. Don't think that books have any sacred protection from the same profiteering mentality that drives the Recording and Motion Picture industries.
I draw the connection to RIAA/MPAA issues here: those two organizations have used taxpayer money to punish consumers by invoking the DMCA. It doesn't take a genius to realize that taxpayers ARE those consumers; they're paying once for content, and again to have their rights revoked. The book publishers, like the RIAA and MPAA expect taxpayers to cover their bottom line; they're happy to overproduce the bestseller garbage you're supposed to buy in hardcover and swallow down, and then charge you again for destroying the excess crap they've flooded the market with.
And now the book publisher's tactic is unerring from the RIAA/MPAA platform: treat customers like theives, apparently by attacking any company that wants to give customers an option.
I'll begin with a sobering fact. I interviewed for a job with one of the larger computer security companies not too long ago. When I asked the cluefull gentleman who interviewed me why they didn't use several Open Source security tools recognized as the clear best-of-breed in the security community, his answer was blunt: Accountants and clients don't understand the benefits of Open Source, even when they're hearing it from security professionals.
That said, those Open Source packages were auditing and intrusion detection tools, not operating systems. Tools, individual packages, have always been the strength of the Open community, born out of the legacy of "hacks" and elegant solutions. But putting all these tools together is a tough task, and harder still when every tool is a potential weak link. Open software suffers from the existing operating system model just as much as proprietary software, and the statistics on "holes per year," as with all petty statistical arguments, should be ignored.
As a constructive but near-sighted solution, code audits are at least a first stab at improved security. Measures like this, in tandem with ugly PR campaigns, are the constant fallback of the American corporate world; the end result is about looking good this fiscal quarter, positive press, and return for shareholders; long-term benefits to community and consumers be damned.
If Microsoft or the Open Source community was truly interested in security, the proposed solution and counter-arguments would not even consider today's operating systems. Anyone following security can see a trend in all sub-arenas (incidents, viruses, defense) towards virtualizing computing processes. The metaphors vary: sandboxes, virtual machines, analysis queues. But they all result a way of operating a machine that's far removed from today's server OS world.
Indeed, "removal" would be the key concept. Removing processes from their environment and associated weaknesses; removing computations that violate trusted measures; removing the weaknesses that come with the bulk of a "modern" OS. Of course, many Open projects aim to re-work existing platforms to be "trusted.". Nonetheless, it's clear that while server OSes are built on this legacy design, we're still going to be tallying up vulnerabilities. Whether the proprietary world that Microsoft embodies or the Open community will offer the solution first is unknown. If you see security as an altruistic endevor, as I clearly do, then put your bets on Open folks to sit down and rethink the way this all works. If you don't see such massive changes in thinking happening without the money and industry connections of the Big Boys, then there you go.
But don't think that in a day when the boundaries between client machine and server machine, operating system and network, are dissolving (or at least being questioned) that this game is going to look the same for long.
While the article is informative, the author doesn't speculate on why Fair Use isn't a constitutional right. Without any sarcasm implied, could it be that it's simply too recent a concept/development to be established as an amendment? Is there too much opposition to establishment of Fair Use laws? Is it too murky an issue, or is there no sense of a "need" to draw those lines on Capital Hill?
The article was culled from a morass of court decisions, which when strung together form something of a grounding for this issue, but nothing conclusive. I think something like DigitalConsumer.org's Digital Consumer Bill of Rights is in order, at least to draw the lines in the sand. However, this is about as likely to pass as a Patient Bill of Rights. Your response could be that with big money influences the little guy will never win, or maybe just that it's too complex an issue for lawmaker's to tackle right now, and they'd rather leave it up to the courts, case by case. Regardless, even a Supreme Court decision will be too specific to nail down this sector of law, and I don't think a definite answer from our government on what our Digital Rights are is an unreasonable request. I'm willing to bet, however, that "unreasonable" is just what we'll find the answer to be.
Re:So is this a distro for broadband users ?
on
Gentoo 1.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
They actually are going to be making a "binary" install with everything you mentioned available. In it's current form, yeah, you either have a fast connection or wait a damn long time. But it's very cool, well worth it.
Yes, it is like Sorceror, and the two projects began around the same time. However, I would venture to say that Gentoo is less of a "hobbyist" effort, with an eye more towards production servers. They have the support of some cool companies, and generally feel more "professional" than Sorcerer without loosing geekiness. And, of course, the Sorcerer community recently split, so those looking for a long-term commitment on their distro might feel safer with Gentoo.
I became interested in Gentoo when a source distribution sounded like an interesting challenge, and just different from the usual binary distros. I chose it over Sorceror because at that point the Sorceror world was falling apart (some ex-Sorcerors have found their homes with Gentoo, btw). I found the Gentoo documentation to be right on course, and the install was comfortable and informative if you're used to Linux/BSD (it's not for the newbies, but it would make a good learning experience). The portage system is wonderful, it has all the graces of APT and more, is amazingly current, and can do "fake" installs ala OpenBSD (one my favorite *nixices). Getting your system going may take a few hours while stuff compiles, but everything runs smoothly.
If I didn't have to use a wireless card, I'd be writing this from inside a Gentoo install right now. However, getting my 802.11b card operable proved to be a trial, though the kind folks on the Gentoo mailing lists were beyond helpful. Ultimately I went back to RedHat, as I had lost too much time trying to get wireless support, but this wasn't a fault of the distro, just my crunch for time (note to kernel and pcmcia-cs folks: standardize your functions and modules together!).
If you're looking for a distro that's very active and, above all, enjoyable, I reccomend Gentoo. It does take some work, and the performance benefits of source vs binary are debatable, but what matters is the pleasantness and effectiveness of the Gentoo community. Daniel Robbins, the project's architect, is really a neat, smart guy, and the other folks involved are helpful and motivated. Using a Gentoo system is great for experienced folks who want serious control while retaining more community than a "Linux from Scratch" build. It's also a great way for a less experienced user to get familiar with Linux, or a good bridge from Linux to *BSD (if you need one). I don't think the folks out there saying "yet another distro?" understand that the beauty of the open community is choice. If you don't like it , ignore it, but good things are happening around Gentoo.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the author. I'd be happy to.
1. The industry was cool in the meeting. Guys from Intel, Philips, Listen.com, etc. They're anti-DRM, and they totally rock.
2. We hate, as usual, the media companies: RIAA, MPAA, AOL/TW, etc. But we're also not thrilled about the geek-activists who interrupting, being obnoxious, and generally doing more harm than good.
3. There was something of a fight between tech industry and media, and I'd say the techies won. Media wants DRM legislated now, and the techs know that's bullshit.
Easy enough for ya?
I'd like to thank the post a couple parents up for questioning reading comprehension. I said the majority of the discussion, not "the majority of what Jack Valenti had to say." I was juxtaposing his unreasonable and laughable attitudes with the otherwise reasonable folks. Do I need to spell it out? I don't like Jack Valenti! But neither does the tech industry, and in that I feel we've got a voice.
I was there, I'm the author, and a ruckus got the offending audience members reprimanded for their outburst, and alternately ignored and disdained by the people who actually have the power to make a difference.
The ruckus basically ruined the chance of their view getting across. Fortunately, the tech industry folks are competent and eloquent enough to get it across for them.
Prediction [wise up sucker!]
Next roundtable discussion, like this one, will be intellgient, reasonable, and civilised, and there's only going to be a rep from the OSS community if they get off thier asses and lobby with the big boys.
Yeah, sorry. As I say in a comment above, I didn't expect Slashdot to post this so I submitted it to k5 as well. But different communities will have different reactions, so I hope this proves useful here, too.
I'm happy, however, to at least offer my views and any clarifications readers want. Thanks!
Thanks, Slashdot editors (and readers), for simultaneously proferring and undermining any sense of community or worthwhileness amongst those who oppose DMCA-mongers like Vivendi Universal, owner of Blizzard. Oh, sure, editors, you covered it in your FAQ: "You take your yin with your yang," yadda yadda bullshit. The notion of "objective journalism" is inherently false, a logical fallacy. When you pick facts, events, or say GAMES for your readers out of a vast pool of potential content, you're already unobjective from square one. And this material in the FAQ hides behind the same shield as the mainstream newsmedia who take cover under "objectivism." The Slashdot editors are trying to avoid responsibility, something everyone who influences the views of others is cursed with, justify it or not.
So, editors and readers alike, you DO have a responsibility, and you can't "Have you Cake and Eat it Too" as the most highly modded post for this story suggests. How typically American to think that you can support a corporation that undermines your rights and on the same day support a nonprofit that fights for those rights and expect the karma to all balance out in the mix. We want the instant gratification of getting what we want, and the morally bankrupt ease of not having to answer any hard questions in the process.
There's no real sacrifice involved here. To boycott this game wouldn't involve an expenditure of money, or effort, or anything. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that dire. You just sit there on your ass like you always do, perhaps playing a game from a company that won't sue you for developing software that support their products. YOU COULD DO NOTHING, AND BE DOING THE RIGHT THING. But every free Slashdot promotion for Big Media output continues to pull a consumer revolution right out from under the feet of the people who started it.
Big Media isn't scared of the Slashdot crowd. They know they own your geek bitchasses like they own the Britney Spears cheerleader crowd. You're just another target market, willing to gulp it down at a pretty price. Every story like this, littered with comments from drooling otakus ready to fund Vivendi with mommy's Visa, makes that abudently clear.
I rather liked this quote in his conclusion: "The real future tensions between the open and closed system communities will be defined by struggles for power and control over standards." Realistically, it's people like Slashdot readers who are waging the rather useless "ground war" of open vs closed debate. Vendors control what happens, and if you think customer demand has a serious effect on vendor action, look at Microsoft, or any of the the other loathed, despised, and hugely succesfully vendors of hideous software. It's just like politics: you can debate all you want with your peers, but it's the folks in power who make the decisions, and they could give a rat's ass about your opinion.
Check out Blackhole by the Groovy Organization, which integrates really well with Qmail but will work with just about any MTA. I found SpamAssassin's documentation to be mediocre at best, and had a helluva time getting it operable. Blackhole worked right off the bat for my Qmail/Courier IMAP/OpenBSD 3.0 setup, and can use Razor amongst other filtering methods. The software is constantly updated, and the developer plesant and responsive. Give it a try!
Of course, one could say that the good ol' US of A "exceed[s] its authority, does not operate in an open fashion, and is dangerously unaccountable to Internet users, [small] businesses and other key interest groups." I'm definitely not crazy about ICANN, but the suggstion that "The U.S. needs to ensure ICANN operates with the same sort of internal processes as in any other federal agency" makes me shudder. That's a terrible thing to wish on an organization, and is clearly no improvement. But the emphasis in the ZDNet article on security issues makes me wonder if this is a play by the US to localize more root servers, thus making legislation with broad constraits on previously international networks viable. Conspiritorial? Well, it's hard to regulate network traffic that doesn't stay within your physical jurisdiction, so you've either got to undermine international law or re-localize that traffic.
Okay, same deal as when the editors were hyping Spiderman and StarWars: it's not cool to bash the RIAA and MPAA, and then go and slurp down their output (especially this high-visibility, fake-controversey, ultra-marketed crap). I know how damn BORING hypocrisy is, but this is really just disgusting. The entertainment industry is never going to take their self-proclaimed opposition seriously if they can count on them as CUSTOMERS!!!
Let me say that I tried to reinforce in my post that movies, music, etc. (even pop ones) have cultural value. I don't deny this. I also don't think we as taxpayers need to pay to save the distribution channels that provide them when those channels are inconvienient, costly, and full of middlemen with fat pockets. I like to veg out as much as the next guy ^_^ All I was saying is that we haven't non-voluntarily supported this industry before, and I don't think we should continue to do so with further legislation.
Let me say that I tried to reinforce in my post that movies, music, etc. (even pop ones) have cultural value. I don't deny this. I also don't think we as taxpayers need to pay to save the distribution channels that provide them when those channels are inconvienient, costly, and full of middlemen with fat pockets. I like to veg out as much as the next guy ^_^
We already make the distinction between "quality" art - worthy of taxpayer funds - and the rest of it. Some people may disagree with that funded art (as in the elephant dung Virgin Mary thing in NYC about a year ago), but we fund it anyway. That's why we make the distinction of "the arts" and "entertainment." People seem to agree with that.
There's a difference between legal protections deployed by a government based on existing laws, and redefining theft. I think many people feel that the DMCA and similar laws redefines what's illegal to a detrimental extent. Everyone deserves due process, and I don't believe I recind the entertainment industry's right to it anywhere in my post. I just don't believe that they should get a clearly unfair advantage - if they're legislating for changing times, than consumers should get a "consumer bill of rights/fair use declaration" for the changing times.
The entertainment industry's war on Fair Use and consumer rights is often debated in terms of legal precedent. You'll see Slashdot comments fumbling towards a constitutional justification of Fair Use, or authors like Lawrence Lessig positing ideas like a digital commons as a rebuttal to the wave of copyrighting and litigation. But there's one simple, clear argument against much of what the entertainment industry would like to do. Read on.
It's clear that the purveyors of movies, television, records and so forth are scared. They're losing money (or claim to be), and this does not make them happy. Their scapegoat is digital copying, as they refuse to accept that perhaps the content they provide is simply of poor quality, or badly and inconviently distributed, thus explaining their drops in sales. The response of the RIAA and MPAA has been to call for endless litigation and lawmaking, outlawing any behaviour that undercuts their profits at the taxpayer's expense. As above, many "activists" argue that this is illegal, immoral, etc. My response is different.
The key concept to note is "at the taxpayer's expense." The entertainment industry has every right to protect their content. What they don't (or should not) have, however, is the resources of government and public money. When public funds and time are used to save a failing industry, this is called protectionism, and it's a concept more familiar to Communist ideology than our Free Market. Of course, this White House is no stranger to protectionism, bailing out airlines, the steel industry, and offering farmers massive subsidies. And perhaps one can justify saving these industries: people need transportation, crops, building materials. But who can justify saving the entertainment industry?
It's entertainment, the superflous recreation that we fill our idle time with. While it generates a lot of money (and ergo political influence), entertainment has, ultimately, zero effect or worth to a population. Sure, music, film, and so forth are part of what defines a culture. But what the public agrees to support are the arts, works of inherant cultural value, not "Dude, Where's My Car?"
With this in mind, I think any debate about the worth of RIAA- and MPAA-proposed legislation comes to a grinding halt. The entertainment industry is allowed to protect itself using its own time and money; if they want copy protection schemes, for example, let them pay for research and development. But the instant taxpayer time and money is being spent to save big media, we've entered into profoundly unamerican territory.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm puzzled by your statement. Could you elaborate, or perhaps provide evidence that the MPAA is not fiscally benefiting from the wide distribution and publicitiy of this film and associated previews and advertisements? Is it not MPAA rated, and ergo sanctioned? Please clarify; I'm genuinely interested.
I've said it before, and it'll be modded down as "flamebait" again, but I think it's appalling that the same editors who decry the practices of the MPAA at every turn go out and spend their money and give publicity to the most crass and over-marketed of MPAA-sanctioned output. Saying you hate the organization but love the content just isn't good enough: every dollar you spend on a MPAA film is another dollar that says "I want to be legislated against; I want to be treated like a criminal; I encourage you to use my tax dollars to hunt me down."
I'm a Gentoo user, and as much as I love the distribution, I can tell you that its source-based nature does not "fix" packaging issues. Gentoo has its own package layout/format, and even though few, if any, modifications are made to much of the source tarballs that these packages grab, bugs still appear. Sometimes it's with another dependent package, and sometimes it's a matter of the packages becoming out of date.
The "balance" you talk about is key, and right now some of us in the Gentoo world are trying to figure out a way to spread the burden of package maintenience a little more evenly. Debian could probably benefit from some re-thinking of these problems, too.
Am I the only one who notices that the editors, who keep posting anti-MPAA stories, seem to be eager to slurp up whatever the movie industry throws their way?
Granted, hypocrisy doesn't amount to much. But how about some consistency in values?
EMACS = Endangered Microcosm of Anti-Componentization?
Some folks have tossed the idea around here that publishers are, in fact, being "hurt" by the common practice of overproduction. But that's lacking one important fact: taxpayers actually pay for the "pulping" of unsold, overproduced books. I reccomend you follow the money before you go sympathizing.
Large book publishers are no different than the RIAA, MPAA, or other such organizations with few friends here on Slashdot. These organizations, acting to "protect the interest of their artists" are simply watching the bottom dollar. As in so many arenas, the idea of a cultural responsibility, in this case for large publishing houses to introduce interesting and challenging new works and authors, is ignored. Bestsellers are overproduced not based on demand from companies like Amazon who later renig on sales, but in the interest of a profitable monoculture. The lowest common denominator is easy to sell. Don't think that books have any sacred protection from the same profiteering mentality that drives the Recording and Motion Picture industries.
I draw the connection to RIAA/MPAA issues here: those two organizations have used taxpayer money to punish consumers by invoking the DMCA. It doesn't take a genius to realize that taxpayers ARE those consumers; they're paying once for content, and again to have their rights revoked. The book publishers, like the RIAA and MPAA expect taxpayers to cover their bottom line; they're happy to overproduce the bestseller garbage you're supposed to buy in hardcover and swallow down, and then charge you again for destroying the excess crap they've flooded the market with.
And now the book publisher's tactic is unerring from the RIAA/MPAA platform: treat customers like theives, apparently by attacking any company that wants to give customers an option.
I'll begin with a sobering fact. I interviewed for a job with one of the larger computer security companies not too long ago. When I asked the cluefull gentleman who interviewed me why they didn't use several Open Source security tools recognized as the clear best-of-breed in the security community, his answer was blunt: Accountants and clients don't understand the benefits of Open Source, even when they're hearing it from security professionals.
That said, those Open Source packages were auditing and intrusion detection tools, not operating systems. Tools, individual packages, have always been the strength of the Open community, born out of the legacy of "hacks" and elegant solutions. But putting all these tools together is a tough task, and harder still when every tool is a potential weak link. Open software suffers from the existing operating system model just as much as proprietary software, and the statistics on "holes per year," as with all petty statistical arguments, should be ignored.
As a constructive but near-sighted solution, code audits are at least a first stab at improved security. Measures like this, in tandem with ugly PR campaigns, are the constant fallback of the American corporate world; the end result is about looking good this fiscal quarter, positive press, and return for shareholders; long-term benefits to community and consumers be damned.
If Microsoft or the Open Source community was truly interested in security, the proposed solution and counter-arguments would not even consider today's operating systems. Anyone following security can see a trend in all sub-arenas (incidents, viruses, defense) towards virtualizing computing processes. The metaphors vary: sandboxes, virtual machines, analysis queues. But they all result a way of operating a machine that's far removed from today's server OS world.
Indeed, "removal" would be the key concept. Removing processes from their environment and associated weaknesses; removing computations that violate trusted measures; removing the weaknesses that come with the bulk of a "modern" OS. Of course, many Open projects aim to re-work existing platforms to be "trusted.". Nonetheless, it's clear that while server OSes are built on this legacy design, we're still going to be tallying up vulnerabilities. Whether the proprietary world that Microsoft embodies or the Open community will offer the solution first is unknown. If you see security as an altruistic endevor, as I clearly do, then put your bets on Open folks to sit down and rethink the way this all works. If you don't see such massive changes in thinking happening without the money and industry connections of the Big Boys, then there you go.
But don't think that in a day when the boundaries between client machine and server machine, operating system and network, are dissolving (or at least being questioned) that this game is going to look the same for long.
While the article is informative, the author doesn't speculate on why Fair Use isn't a constitutional right. Without any sarcasm implied, could it be that it's simply too recent a concept/development to be established as an amendment? Is there too much opposition to establishment of Fair Use laws? Is it too murky an issue, or is there no sense of a "need" to draw those lines on Capital Hill?
The article was culled from a morass of court decisions, which when strung together form something of a grounding for this issue, but nothing conclusive. I think something like DigitalConsumer.org's Digital Consumer Bill of Rights is in order, at least to draw the lines in the sand. However, this is about as likely to pass as a Patient Bill of Rights. Your response could be that with big money influences the little guy will never win, or maybe just that it's too complex an issue for lawmaker's to tackle right now, and they'd rather leave it up to the courts, case by case. Regardless, even a Supreme Court decision will be too specific to nail down this sector of law, and I don't think a definite answer from our government on what our Digital Rights are is an unreasonable request. I'm willing to bet, however, that "unreasonable" is just what we'll find the answer to be.
They actually are going to be making a "binary" install with everything you mentioned available. In it's current form, yeah, you either have a fast connection or wait a damn long time. But it's very cool, well worth it.
Yes, it is like Sorceror, and the two projects began around the same time. However, I would venture to say that Gentoo is less of a "hobbyist" effort, with an eye more towards production servers. They have the support of some cool companies, and generally feel more "professional" than Sorcerer without loosing geekiness. And, of course, the Sorcerer community recently split, so those looking for a long-term commitment on their distro might feel safer with Gentoo.
I became interested in Gentoo when a source distribution sounded like an interesting challenge, and just different from the usual binary distros. I chose it over Sorceror because at that point the Sorceror world was falling apart (some ex-Sorcerors have found their homes with Gentoo, btw). I found the Gentoo documentation to be right on course, and the install was comfortable and informative if you're used to Linux/BSD (it's not for the newbies, but it would make a good learning experience). The portage system is wonderful, it has all the graces of APT and more, is amazingly current, and can do "fake" installs ala OpenBSD (one my favorite *nixices). Getting your system going may take a few hours while stuff compiles, but everything runs smoothly.
If I didn't have to use a wireless card, I'd be writing this from inside a Gentoo install right now. However, getting my 802.11b card operable proved to be a trial, though the kind folks on the Gentoo mailing lists were beyond helpful. Ultimately I went back to RedHat, as I had lost too much time trying to get wireless support, but this wasn't a fault of the distro, just my crunch for time (note to kernel and pcmcia-cs folks: standardize your functions and modules together!).
If you're looking for a distro that's very active and, above all, enjoyable, I reccomend Gentoo. It does take some work, and the performance benefits of source vs binary are debatable, but what matters is the pleasantness and effectiveness of the Gentoo community. Daniel Robbins, the project's architect, is really a neat, smart guy, and the other folks involved are helpful and motivated. Using a Gentoo system is great for experienced folks who want serious control while retaining more community than a "Linux from Scratch" build. It's also a great way for a less experienced user to get familiar with Linux, or a good bridge from Linux to *BSD (if you need one). I don't think the folks out there saying "yet another distro?" understand that the beauty of the open community is choice. If you don't like it , ignore it, but good things are happening around Gentoo.