Yes, I think it may be related to why they're called "artists".
ppl create a situation that debases all artists, bringing (insert your favorite band here) down to the level of a sisqo or christina aguilera.
False, again. The Grateful Dead didn't go out of business because people bootlegged their concerts. The Offspring (a MN band) isn't losing money because I loaned my CD out to a friend. There's a concept of "fair use" for non-commercial purposes that you need to be brought up to speed on. In some cases, it is (and/or should be) perfectly OK to listen to music without buying it. Shocking, huh? Second - yes, it's bad and wrong and evil for me to leech mp3's. Is it such a big deal though that we need draconian legislation like the DMCA to combat it? Isn't there something in the constitution about "cruel and unusual punishment"? Our justice system is supposed to mete(sp?) out punishment based on the severity of the crime. Why should people be liable for "billions" of dollars in "damages" and be sent to jail for years for this?
No, the genie is out. The genie was out long before the mp3 craze began. It started with consumerism - that people in this country are taught from a young age to satisfy all their material wants. The net effect of this is that they will do so at the lowest possible cost - people are kindof like electricity in this respect- they take the path of least resistance.
In short, the RIAA shot itself in the foot - with the high cost of CDs and the even higher cost of going to a concert/show, people weren't left with much alternative. Prepackaging songs they didn't like with songs they did like and not allowing previews pretty much put the finishing touches on their coffin.
So common people like their free stuff, and who cares about the law? (insert long idealogical rant here)
The other component of this is that geeks enjoy their online freedom - whether information "wants to be free" or not, geeks are out there making sure it gets shared to as wide of an audience as possible. Part of this is that geeks operate on a kind of gift culture - you get more popular when you give away more, and partly because many (most?) come from a recent history where geeks were ejected from society and scorned in schools and communities. This is a kind of self-conscious revenge - a little bit of "damn the man!".. ideologies aside there is a definite ego rush in standing up to authority. Now, I know I'm going to get flamed for the above statement - I'm not saying that everyone is like this, so keep that in mind, ok?
The last point I want to make is that the internet was designed specifically to share information. It was something of an accident and convergence of technologies that made it so you could share virtually everything - images, movies, pictures, text, it's all going into a huge funnel of digitalization making it even easier to share. The internet was designed to share information. The internet was designed to share information. From the hardware to the protocols to the software to the users, end-to-end it was designed to share information. What shall we do to put the genie in the bottle? Well, dismantling the internet and locking up all the geeks would be the only feasible way to do it. Good luck, guys.. there's a helluva lot more of us than you.
Re:OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!
on
The Eroded Self
·
· Score: 2
Look OOG, you're getting tiresome now. The first time, you were funny. The second time, you were just like all the other trolls here.
Well, that depends on your definition of perfect. I've always wanted to create a chess program that doesn't try to win - it tries to stalemate you.:)
Chess is a good game of logic and strategy, but it is hardly the epitome of either. I prefer RTS games like Red Alert or Warcraft - the AI stinks but when you play against a human there is no comparison.
So maybe it's possible they could make the perfect chess player.. one who never lost.. but who's to say you still couldn't stalemate it?
Considering how over-saturated current intelligence agencies are, I really feel sorry for them starting an initiative like this - it will only address a small subset of the people they want to track.
First off, YOU (yes, YOU) are not interesting enough for them to watch you. Sure, they could, but why would they? Did you e-mail this guy something the secret service didn't like? Do you have a small catchet of U-238 that you keep under your bed "for emergencies"? Arms dealer (no, supercomputers don't count)? Okay then, why are you worried?
Your system administrator should be feared much more than any "global eavesdropping network" - he can read your e-mail, see what pr0n sites you've been looking at, hell.. he can even let the president know what you think of him (using your own e-mail addy, how nice!). Why the hell do you care - as long as they aren't spying on domestic stuff I'm not worried. Let the boys have their toys.
It's alittle more basic than free speech or your "rights". It's about the government sanctioning something a large portion (the majority, if I may be so bold) of the population disapproves of. The DMCA was not passed by the common man in this country. The WIPO member countries never asked their citizens whether to pass that either. All around us is a growing aura of corporatism - back during the cold war it was called the "industrial-military complex". The assertion was that the two were inseperable - what benefits one benefits the other, what harms one harms the other. A symbiotic relationship.
I think they got it almost right - it's more along the lines of a commercial-government complex - the government in this country does not listen to it's citizens - it listens to the dollar sign and money'd interests. Which is dissapointing, considering that we were supposed to be a democracy.
I have yet to find an (informed) individual out there who agrees that the DMCA is necessary, or that Metallica should be suing it's fans (great way to encourage sales, eh?). I DO however see on a daily basis the rising frustration with our government - it is largely ineffective at solving the day to day problems people want solved.
Here's what people want solved - they want their big screen TVs, SUVs and low gas prices. They want job security and freedom from advertising/marketing. They want access to the internet so they can easily satisfy their need for entertainment - whether it be listening to music, reading/watching the evening news, grabbing the latest Southpark episode. They want to watch the Matrix on anything with a DVD player, or for that matter the Titanic or the next "chick-flick".
The flip-side of this is that they want to feel safe doing this - they want to explore the internet without fear that some government or corporation is watching their every move. They want to be able to hop online and gossip about the above-mentioned things. They want to be able to do it as easily and efficiently as possible.
As geeks, we built the infrastructure to allow this - most of it, anyway. Online people can satisfy their entertainment needs. With alittle help from software we produced, they can also provide a good measure of privacy for themselves. They can e-mail their friends to gossip, or hop into chatrooms. Key point: people are going to keep doing the same things online that they were doing in the real world before the 'net existed.
Now along comes the corporations and say "Hey, where's my share?" And then all hell breaks loose - the government "swings" into action at about 1 foot a fortnight and starts passing draconian legislation, trying to restrict these people's newfound freedom (freedom of choice, not freedom of speech) - and they are rightfully pissed.
This is the core of the matter, and why people are pounding their fists on the table - they have everything they want.. and now some greedy corporation is coming to make it harder to get ahold of, more expensive, and less appealing. Only one problem - it is backfiring badly for the corporations - they trained these people to blindly consume and consume and consume.. and now they can't make them stop.
It's going to be a long, bloody, legal war to get this one straightened out.
KAPLAH! The Klingon Empire fully endorses the use of this new processor. With it's large metal case it makes a sturdy weapons platform and is useful for sharpening your batleth.
Much bloodwine was used in the creation of this ultimate tool - many of our warriors were killed infiltrating the evil Intel and stealing the Pentiumgram Schematics. With this station we will be the ultimate power in the universe! (oops, wrong storyline)
Even the High Counsel likes it's smooth black design and holographic technology. The Duron sisters also appreciate it's diabolical looks! You will buy one today or DIE. KAPLAH!
Yes, horray for intel. Now, what about color printers embedding hidden codes? Or your ISP selling your browsing habits? What about doubleclick consolidating cookies with real world users? Why does the NY Times require me to sign in? Or for that matter, dozens of other websites? Where is the outrage over the HTTP standard being encoded to tell the next website you visit where you came from (and what you were searching for if you used a search engine like altavista, google, any "directory-like" service like yahoo, etc)?
Yes, a wonderful victory for consumers. But what about going after the root of the problem - marketing and insufficient legal protections?
Next we need to add a computer to it and hook it to the internet. Then we can watch and see what the teenagers in the sim family do when you try to "filter" the internet. And, of course, if you have a teenage geek, s/he will compulsively check his/her e-mail every 37.5 seconds.. raising the electric bill... which, if an entire neighborhood fills up with geekiness.. OMG - then the whole universe will collapse as they run out of electricity, creating brownouts...
For memory transfers over the AGP bus, yes. I forget the exact name of what they called this - but the XF86 crew really wanted it. That is what is under NDA, the rest of the chipset should be wide open. Why couldn't they have simply released a.obj file with a few documented library calls to the "mystery api" and left the rest open?
This isn't an open source driver. They forbid "Reverse-engineering".. you must own an nvidia card to even/use/ the software... the list goes on. "But wait.. I have an nvidia card and I want my driver. It's free!" Yes, you get your driver.. for linux. Only. No BeOS, no herd, no *BSD, nothing. Open Source allows the BSD crew to grab a linux driver, hack it to use BSD, and offer that support. Why can't Nvidia release the source so other (maybe less popular) OS' have a chance?
Blah. Nvidia needs to make a commitment - first it was obfusciated drivers, now just a binary. What next - shall we sign an NDA?
Eric, stop speaking for everyone. You're no ambassador to the internet. You're another e-mail address out there - just like the rest of us. That kind of attitude is 180 opposite of the charter of the internet - that we are peers. Equals. Nobody is better than anyone else - no authority over anyone else.
Now, having read both exchanges for round one and gotten thoroughly disgusted, I'll make my opinions known - first - both of these people are acting like the "adult" version of "I'm better than you are". Comeon - you had time to calm down, research your facts, and speak intelligently. Why didn't you?!
Last.. if you want my opinion on how so-called open source needs to be protected, it's simple: make sure the community has the legal options to keep doing what it's doing. We don't need more control, nor do we need less - there is a balance somewhere between laize fair(sp?) and government-lockdown-mode that we need to plant ourselves firmly on. Mistrust assertions that the correct answer is at the extreme. That last statement applies particularily well to engineering.. and since we are engineers - if only for software - we ought to take heed of some of the warnings of engineering. Yes, SOME government control IS necessary. If not, click-wrap licensing could easily put a serious damper on open source - imagine if Microsoft said "by using this software you agree to not use program X on any machine you use and/or interact with via any medium, including the internet, your local LAN..." What's to stop them? A paragraph in
There's better solutions out there - like StackGuard. Basic theory is this - buffer overflows write over the data segment and then write into the adjacent data segment. By placing a small amount of space between the two and writing a known value to it, you can detect when a buffer overflow occurs before executing that segment. Of course, this method has it's drawbacks in the form of additional memory, alittle more latency, and trusting that the attacker doesn't know the "magic numbers" in the mystery segment.
The best method is simply to code your programs from the ground up with security in mind to begin with - and then have alot of people audit your code. Is it foolproof? No. Then again, is anything?
Libsafe is a nice idea.. but a simple 'grep -H "strcpy(" *' would do the same thing.
It's a sterotype that's often true! Beyond about 72 hours, most weather forcasting falls apart. Even massively-huge events like hurricanes can't be predicted beyond a day or so as to where they'll land - we're reduced to probabilities.
I stand by my statement that weather forcasting over any length of time is still a shaky science - even if there's alot of people working on it.
This isn't good news, people. Weather forcasters have traditionally been wrong. All this advance means is that now they can be wrong faster. Using the miracles of distributed processing you can be assured within minutes that despite the fact that there's a big black cloud belching lightning 10 miles away the weather is still "95 and sunny" today.
Slashdot Mirror
False, it's about control, but please.. continue.
there's a reason why artists create albums
Yes, I think it may be related to why they're called "artists".
ppl create a situation that debases all artists, bringing (insert your favorite band here) down to the level of a sisqo or christina aguilera.
False, again. The Grateful Dead didn't go out of business because people bootlegged their concerts. The Offspring (a MN band) isn't losing money because I loaned my CD out to a friend. There's a concept of "fair use" for non-commercial purposes that you need to be brought up to speed on. In some cases, it is (and/or should be) perfectly OK to listen to music without buying it. Shocking, huh? Second - yes, it's bad and wrong and evil for me to leech mp3's. Is it such a big deal though that we need draconian legislation like the DMCA to combat it? Isn't there something in the constitution about "cruel and unusual punishment"? Our justice system is supposed to mete(sp?) out punishment based on the severity of the crime. Why should people be liable for "billions" of dollars in "damages" and be sent to jail for years for this?
In short, the RIAA shot itself in the foot - with the high cost of CDs and the even higher cost of going to a concert/show, people weren't left with much alternative. Prepackaging songs they didn't like with songs they did like and not allowing previews pretty much put the finishing touches on their coffin.
So common people like their free stuff, and who cares about the law? (insert long idealogical rant here)
The other component of this is that geeks enjoy their online freedom - whether information "wants to be free" or not, geeks are out there making sure it gets shared to as wide of an audience as possible. Part of this is that geeks operate on a kind of gift culture - you get more popular when you give away more, and partly because many (most?) come from a recent history where geeks were ejected from society and scorned in schools and communities. This is a kind of self-conscious revenge - a little bit of "damn the man!" .. ideologies aside there is a definite ego rush in standing up to authority. Now, I know I'm going to get flamed for the above statement - I'm not saying that everyone is like this, so keep that in mind, ok?
The last point I want to make is that the internet was designed specifically to share information. It was something of an accident and convergence of technologies that made it so you could share virtually everything - images, movies, pictures, text, it's all going into a huge funnel of digitalization making it even easier to share. The internet was designed to share information. The internet was designed to share information. From the hardware to the protocols to the software to the users, end-to-end it was designed to share information. What shall we do to put the genie in the bottle? Well, dismantling the internet and locking up all the geeks would be the only feasible way to do it. Good luck, guys.. there's a helluva lot more of us than you.
Since when is imitating AOLers funny?!
So how come Europe is getting all these cool technologies and decent lawmakers while the US is getting stuck with Microsoft and crummy laws? :(
But they'd be dead after only a few days without food....
Chess is a good game of logic and strategy, but it is hardly the epitome of either. I prefer RTS games like Red Alert or Warcraft - the AI stinks but when you play against a human there is no comparison.
So maybe it's possible they could make the perfect chess player.. one who never lost.. but who's to say you still couldn't stalemate it?
First off, YOU (yes, YOU) are not interesting enough for them to watch you. Sure, they could, but why would they? Did you e-mail this guy something the secret service didn't like? Do you have a small catchet of U-238 that you keep under your bed "for emergencies"? Arms dealer (no, supercomputers don't count)? Okay then, why are you worried?
Your system administrator should be feared much more than any "global eavesdropping network" - he can read your e-mail, see what pr0n sites you've been looking at, hell.. he can even let the president know what you think of him (using your own e-mail addy, how nice!). Why the hell do you care - as long as they aren't spying on domestic stuff I'm not worried. Let the boys have their toys.
Now, *clickity-click* what was your username?
I look forward to the appeal.
Sounds like part of the GPL just got invalidated - one might argue that about "derivative works". Oops.
Why not write a virus that randomly adds the line "You agree to sell your soul" to anything that has a paragraph written in all caps on a computer? :)
The resulting explosion of religious people screaming murder would be more than enough political controversy to kill the bill.
I think they got it almost right - it's more along the lines of a commercial-government complex - the government in this country does not listen to it's citizens - it listens to the dollar sign and money'd interests. Which is dissapointing, considering that we were supposed to be a democracy.
I have yet to find an (informed) individual out there who agrees that the DMCA is necessary, or that Metallica should be suing it's fans (great way to encourage sales, eh?). I DO however see on a daily basis the rising frustration with our government - it is largely ineffective at solving the day to day problems people want solved.
Here's what people want solved - they want their big screen TVs, SUVs and low gas prices. They want job security and freedom from advertising/marketing. They want access to the internet so they can easily satisfy their need for entertainment - whether it be listening to music, reading/watching the evening news, grabbing the latest Southpark episode. They want to watch the Matrix on anything with a DVD player, or for that matter the Titanic or the next "chick-flick".
The flip-side of this is that they want to feel safe doing this - they want to explore the internet without fear that some government or corporation is watching their every move. They want to be able to hop online and gossip about the above-mentioned things. They want to be able to do it as easily and efficiently as possible.
As geeks, we built the infrastructure to allow this - most of it, anyway. Online people can satisfy their entertainment needs. With alittle help from software we produced, they can also provide a good measure of privacy for themselves. They can e-mail their friends to gossip, or hop into chatrooms. Key point: people are going to keep doing the same things online that they were doing in the real world before the 'net existed.
Now along comes the corporations and say "Hey, where's my share?" And then all hell breaks loose - the government "swings" into action at about 1 foot a fortnight and starts passing draconian legislation, trying to restrict these people's newfound freedom (freedom of choice, not freedom of speech) - and they are rightfully pissed.
This is the core of the matter, and why people are pounding their fists on the table - they have everything they want.. and now some greedy corporation is coming to make it harder to get ahold of, more expensive, and less appealing. Only one problem - it is backfiring badly for the corporations - they trained these people to blindly consume and consume and consume.. and now they can't make them stop.
It's going to be a long, bloody, legal war to get this one straightened out.
Well.. the side of the Borg cube did have "Intel Inside" on it....
Much bloodwine was used in the creation of this ultimate tool - many of our warriors were killed infiltrating the evil Intel and stealing the Pentiumgram Schematics. With this station we will be the ultimate power in the universe! (oops, wrong storyline)
Even the High Counsel likes it's smooth black design and holographic technology. The Duron sisters also appreciate it's diabolical looks! You will buy one today or DIE. KAPLAH!
Yes, a wonderful victory for consumers. But what about going after the root of the problem - marketing and insufficient legal protections?
Hey Rob, if I ask you about the new server will it slow down for 24 hours? =)
Heh. Just a matter of time.... >:)
I own a guillemot GeForce 256. I'm not happy. NEXT!
For memory transfers over the AGP bus, yes. I forget the exact name of what they called this - but the XF86 crew really wanted it. That is what is under NDA, the rest of the chipset should be wide open. Why couldn't they have simply released a .obj file with a few documented library calls to the "mystery api" and left the rest open?
This isn't an open source driver. They forbid "Reverse-engineering".. you must own an nvidia card to even /use/ the software... the list goes on. "But wait.. I have an nvidia card and I want my driver. It's free!" Yes, you get your driver.. for linux. Only. No BeOS, no herd, no *BSD, nothing. Open Source allows the BSD crew to grab a linux driver, hack it to use BSD, and offer that support. Why can't Nvidia release the source so other (maybe less popular) OS' have a chance?
Blah. Nvidia needs to make a commitment - first it was obfusciated drivers, now just a binary. What next - shall we sign an NDA?
Now, having read both exchanges for round one and gotten thoroughly disgusted, I'll make my opinions known - first - both of these people are acting like the "adult" version of "I'm better than you are". Comeon - you had time to calm down, research your facts, and speak intelligently. Why didn't you?!
Last.. if you want my opinion on how so-called open source needs to be protected, it's simple: make sure the community has the legal options to keep doing what it's doing. We don't need more control, nor do we need less - there is a balance somewhere between laize fair(sp?) and government-lockdown-mode that we need to plant ourselves firmly on. Mistrust assertions that the correct answer is at the extreme. That last statement applies particularily well to engineering .. and since we are engineers - if only for software - we ought to take heed of some of the warnings of engineering. Yes, SOME government control IS necessary. If not, click-wrap licensing could easily put a serious damper on open source - imagine if Microsoft said "by using this software you agree to not use program X on any machine you use and/or interact with via any medium, including the internet, your local LAN..." What's to stop them? A paragraph in
Sounds like the next "paint ball holy war" for the next linux expo... =)
libsafe could only be effective if it wasn't a statically-linked executable. Otherwise, you'd need to modify the kernel itself.
The best method is simply to code your programs from the ground up with security in mind to begin with - and then have alot of people audit your code. Is it foolproof? No. Then again, is anything?
Libsafe is a nice idea.. but a simple 'grep -H "strcpy(" *' would do the same thing.
I stand by my statement that weather forcasting over any length of time is still a shaky science - even if there's alot of people working on it.
This isn't good news, people. Weather forcasters have traditionally been wrong. All this advance means is that now they can be wrong faster. Using the miracles of distributed processing you can be assured within minutes that despite the fact that there's a big black cloud belching lightning 10 miles away the weather is still "95 and sunny" today.