"Who can afford the court costs to fight these obvious patents?"
Anyone who operates beyond the reach of the US civil court system. There is no rule set in stone that says the US has to always be important, or that your product needs to be legal there.
"China about 40 years behind the West space-tech-wise"
Just because they waited until now does not mean they are using low tech methods. It could be quite the contrary, since they have the benefit of current technology and a clean slate (whereas all we can think to do is launch a space shuttle that follows the same basic design as the original concept that I saw as early as 1971).
> and about 350 years behind Human Rights-wise.
Well, on one hand, the Chinese government is atrocious, and on another hand the Chinese people seem frighteningly complacent to this. But individual accounts from people who have lived there do not paint such a horrible picture at all. I'm not willing to paint all of China with the brush that certain conservative interests want me to use.
Could you please explain what you are talking about, for the benefit of the nearly 100% of the world's population who are neither Canadian nor economists?
How can I disable the scroll lock key in Linux, both on consoles and in X keyboard mapping?
My KVM switch uses Scroll Lock to switch hosts, but, often this confuses my terminals, sometimes to the point where I must do mad-bomber techniques to reset the keyboard, and sometimes badly enough that I've chosen to reboot.
Is there a way to disable the scroll lock key at the keyboard driver level?
Since King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle, and the Jamie Kennedy Experiment all went off the air (or moved to times I can't watch?) I haven't turned the TV on. I think I have literally not turned the thing on for 6 weeks. (Counting on my fingers, because that's incredible). Yep. 6 weeks, plus a couple of days.
I watch my fishtank more than my TV. And that is no lie, and I'm not even joking or exaggerating.
"IF WE CHANGE THE LAW. That's how it can be legal. Jesus."
My academic work has exposed me to people from various cultures, whose attitudes about authority simply shock and frighten me.
There are a lot of people on this planet who are brought up in such a way as to actually believe that anything which is not mandatory, should be assumed to be forbidden.
If you do not have explicit permission to do a thing, you should feel guilty for doing it.
Incredible attitude. Utterly incompatible with free thought, and seemingly incapable of understanding that there is a fundamental difference between their beliefs and mine.
For these people, the idea that laws can be changed hardly seems to enter their imagination.
Re:Theft is not what anybody wants
on
Why Only Music?
·
· Score: 1
"I am not saying P2P sharing of copyrighted material is legal and justified - it's not."
Sure it is. If you come across my copyrighted photographs, poems, or music, you are completely and expressly welcome to share it. Copyrighted material, shared on P2P networks, utterly and irrevocably legal and justified.
"Copyrights haven't been around forever. In fact, they are a very recent invention of American society."
Even governments and societies in the Renaissance had a notion of copyright. I believe the earliest English law specifically addressing the subject of copyright was passed in 1710, but long before then it was possible to bring a dispute over the right to publish a book, to court.
The classical scholars definitely dealt with issues of copyright, but they were limited to matters of recognition, and not economic considerations.
Hardly anyone cared enough before the 15th century of course. Publishing before the printing press was limited to the number of copies an author could pen in his own hand, or to whatever could be accomplished by scribes and monks. Even with the early printing press, it was a difficult and costly endeavor to print books. The medium itself was expensive enough to dwarf the cost of the content, if people in the baroque and renaissance periods had thought of it in such terms.
The "recent" invention of copyright law by America was actually a conspiracy between Britain and America, the Berne Convention of 1886-1887, and the British were pressing for it more urgently than the Americans.
What's weirder, that they will do this, or that doing it hasn't turned the scene into a ghost town? I think it is a bad sign that there is a nonzero number of people willing to subject themselves to this treatment. In fact, I consider that to be a scarier thing than the idea that the bar people will do the ID check stuff.
Why hasn't this created an underground network of speakeasies already?
"Let's just hope that VeriSign is prevented from ever breaking DNS like this again."
They still are in business, and ICANN has not really done anything in the way of harsh punishment, nor has the question seriously been raised of handing over authority to anyone else.
So I don't see where your hope stems from. Verisign retains the ability to do what they want. I expect this incident to help VS understand what they can get away with, and I expect them to do something else that is more within the gray area, and nobody will be able to do anything about it.
I realize the world doesn't work when extreme vigilante justice is taken between corporations, but I also think this is one case where the first inkling of the plan should have caused severe and final consequences to come down on Verisign, immediately, before they even took any action.
Now that the damage is done, the remedy just makes ICANN look weak, and just leaves VS in the same position of authority they were in before. In fact, now that they've tested the limits, I'm sure their lawyers are looking into exactly what consequences could be dealt if they just roll it right back out again.
Judging by the fact that the root servers haven't been redelegated, root passwords changed, doors locked, machines seized as evidence, etc., I'm guessing that will be sooner not later when they do the sitefinder blunder or something similar again.
I'll bet you a dollar that UK distributions won't carry this particular artifact anyway, except for second-hand prints that were originally distributed for US runs.
If we were talking about it on slashdot long before it went online, then ICANN had time to file a TRO. I personally don't believe VS should be operating today. I think that a truly authoritative handling of this situation would have involved a complete termination of the contract, and an entirely new administration would be running the root servers today. I actually think this could have happened BEFORE letting VS go ahead with their plan. The mere suggestion of it was enough to sound the alarms and cause immediate, and harsh action.
Why did ICANN have to reveal how weak they are by waiting for the deal to go down, and then, reluctantly take a limp, ineffective action?
They could be ending the contract and asking for billions in civil damages today, but instead, Verisign is being rewarded for their actions, and they are still in a position to commit even more violations in the future.
If we were talking about it on slashdot weeks before it rolled, I just can't buy that it came as a surprise to anyone. Anybody who claims it was a surprise was just being irresponsible.
ICANN shares some guilt here, and should share the consequences.
They still behave like they have the government contract a la IANA. They have a monopoly on the product. I think if you tried to compete with them you'd run into some serious opposition from the government. They are the closest thing the Internet has to a federal regulatory agency, and they have worse processes and less protection to the consumer. For all intents and purposes, they are the state.
"I thought the cable companies totally funded the construction (or purchase of pre-existing) system, and had no government assistance financially or otherwise? "
Because the people granted the rights of way for the cable, it's not completely a private enterprise.
UPS wouldn't be able to build their own interstate highways and not let others use them.
(I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.)
IF the STATE has given you the sole authority to distribute beverages to all fast food chains, THEN you have an analogy...
You said they rolled out sitefinder "without warning", but I disagree, and that has been my problem with this from the beginning.
There WAS advance notice. And what didn't happen then was quite surprising: ICANN should have come down hard on VS for even suggesting that they might do this. They waited, and now they look like reactionary cowards instead of proactive stewards. ICANN looks weaker than Verisign at the end of the day, and Verisign isn't really discouraged.
I think they should ALREADY have their contract pulled, there should ALREADY be a termination date delivered to them, and there should be no discussion. THAT would send a message that says "this is not something you fuck with, and this is damned sure not a fuckup you have the opportunity to make twice in your position because, guess what, you're out of business. Have a nice live. Goodbye."
I really don't understand why that hasn't happened, except that ICANN is too weak and has too many conflicts of interest to make that happen and be done with it and we can wash our hands of Netsol and Verisign once and for all.
I don't speak for my employer, but they feel that way as well, and would say so with fewer f-words...
"Err...I think you'll find there are cinemas that use a two-projector system."
I don't plan to visit pakistan. Even the drive in on the Navajo reservation (where I sometimes go) has platters system.
I had the pleasure of working in the infamous Texas Theatre on Jefferson Blvd in Oak Cliff Texas, (the place where they arrested Oswald), when the renovation was done in 1983. I personally supervised the switchover from the old reel system to a platter system, and I trained the projectionists. I think that was the last UA Theatre in Texas to have a 2-reel system.
Certainly there are independent houses that run old gear, and it's probably because they choose to out of a sense of anachronism. It's not because of budget though. Most big auditoriums were divided into 2 screens, and the 2 projectors were moved apart and a dual platter system put in.
So you get more bang for the buck on your lenses, your lamps, and you can afford to have a movie flop.
I am a musicologist. I have a degree in music theory. I have also studied law, and I am not afraid of lawyers just because they are lawyers. I also do not give a fuck. I find that not giving a flying fuck helps immensely in a great many situations.
>Yeah, superman. With the super-speed, you are >able to get this done if you spend 25 hours a >day on it?
I know people who do it (grow a substantial amount of their own food.) Including a frequent poster on slashdot who grows all kinds of grain and makes flour and cereal. It's not that big a deal.
I left off "making your own clothes".
A generation ago, everybody in my family made their own clothes. The best tailored suit I ever had was made by my mother. And it was not at all uncommon for families to be this way. My "generation ago" is the people who were teenagers during WWII, in case you are wondering.
Also a generation ago, everybody in my family farmed. Also not at all uncommon.
What's so "superman" about doing something that my grandparents had no problem doing?
"Apparently, the various members of the RIAA have decided that the traffic will bear quite a bit."
They decided that, but then when the market turned out not to bear their prices, they happened to have a nice red herring to correlate with the pheomenon: "Piracy".
Since it's so convenient to deduce that this correlation is a cause, and also because there are so many beneficial side effects from following this course of reasoning, it's become the new focus of the entire model.
I think the analysts and decision makers realize that "file sharing" is a red herring, and that there are many more important influences on the demand curve for their product. I also think that these people are aware of just how much political power they gain from strategies like lobbying for the DMCA, or making huge public displays of how big the piracy problem has become (this CD discussion is just an example of that!)
They don't care if you're copying the CD. They are more interested in making sure you, the public, understand that copying the CD is wrong and that it creates a problem for them.
It doesn't MATTER that the scheme does not stop CD copying! It doesn't matter that marijuana is a harmless plant! It doesn't matter that socialism is a workable political system.
What matters is that people can be influenced to believe that copying CD's for ANY reason is wrong... and that this power can be wielded to change government so that it does in fact become illegal to do so. And the people end up believing it was a choice they made - cognitive dissonance takes care of the rest. (We spend 10 billion a year to keep marijuana down, we sacrificed thousands of lives to stop socialism, how can we back down now?)
Yes, I think the people who make decisions in the media companies are well aware of the kind of stuff that gets pointed out on slashdot. But while we sit here with our mouths open, aghast, wondering how they could be so ham-handed as to trample our rights, wondering how they could be so ignorant to the facts that their own analysts spell out, the truth is that they are intentionally doing this stuff, with higher motivations than merely "stopping you from copying the media." That's the propaganda, the goal is something far more insidious -- total control of the means of production, and maintaining high barriers for entry into the marketplace.
My solution has been to just forget them. I make my own music. I put a nice aquarium where my television used to be. I listen to music when it bounces off my ears, but I don't bother to seek it out by brand. I break down when it's time to see certain films, but you know which ones I think. That's about it.
Slashdot Mirror
The computers may have more precise tactics and a better endgame, but the humans are having more fun.
The computer is not capable of playing chess games for the price of beer, getting shitfaced, and having fun at it.
And that is the bottom, final line on man versus computer in chess.
Is the Radeon FrameBuffer Console fixed?
It's been horribly broken in the 2.6 test kernels I've tried.
"Who can afford the court costs to fight these obvious patents?"
Anyone who operates beyond the reach of the US civil court system. There is no rule set in stone that says the US has to always be important, or that your product needs to be legal there.
"China about 40 years behind the West space-tech-wise"
Just because they waited until now does not mean they are using low tech methods. It could be quite the contrary, since they have the benefit of current technology and a clean slate (whereas all we can think to do is launch a space shuttle
that follows the same basic design as the original concept that I saw as early as 1971).
> and about 350 years behind Human Rights-wise.
Well, on one hand, the Chinese government is atrocious, and on another hand the Chinese people seem frighteningly complacent to this. But individual accounts from people who have lived there do not paint such a horrible picture at all.
I'm not willing to paint all of China with the brush that certain conservative interests want me to use.
>echo "keycode 70 = Escape" | loadkeys
Yep, that does it for the consoles, which solves my problem so far. Thanks!
Could you please explain what you are talking about, for the benefit of the nearly 100% of the world's population who are neither Canadian nor economists?
How can I disable the scroll lock key in Linux, both on consoles and in X keyboard mapping?
My KVM switch uses Scroll Lock to switch hosts, but, often this confuses my terminals, sometimes to the point where I must do mad-bomber techniques to reset the keyboard, and sometimes badly enough that I've chosen to reboot.
Is there a way to disable the scroll lock key at the keyboard driver level?
Since King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle, and the Jamie Kennedy Experiment all went off the air (or moved to times I can't watch?) I haven't turned the TV on. I think I have literally not turned the thing on for 6 weeks. (Counting on my fingers, because that's incredible). Yep. 6 weeks, plus a couple of days.
I watch my fishtank more than my TV. And that is no lie, and I'm not even joking or exaggerating.
"IF WE CHANGE THE LAW. That's how it can be legal. Jesus."
My academic work has exposed me to people from various cultures, whose attitudes about authority simply shock and frighten me.
There are a lot of people on this planet who are brought up in such a way as to actually believe that anything which is not mandatory, should be assumed to be forbidden.
If you do not have explicit permission to do a thing, you should feel guilty for doing it.
Incredible attitude. Utterly incompatible with free thought, and seemingly incapable of understanding that there is a fundamental difference between their beliefs and mine.
For these people, the idea that laws can be changed hardly seems to enter their imagination.
"I am not saying P2P sharing of copyrighted material is legal and justified - it's not."
Sure it is. If you come across my copyrighted photographs, poems, or music, you are completely and expressly welcome to share it. Copyrighted material, shared on P2P networks, utterly and irrevocably legal and justified.
"Copyrights haven't been around forever. In fact, they are a very recent invention of American society."
Even governments and societies in the Renaissance had a notion of copyright. I believe the earliest English law specifically addressing the subject of copyright was passed in 1710, but long before then it was possible to bring a dispute over the right to publish a book, to court.
The classical scholars definitely dealt with issues of copyright, but they were limited to matters of recognition, and not economic considerations.
Hardly anyone cared enough before the 15th century of course. Publishing before the printing press was limited to the number of copies an author could pen in his own hand, or to whatever could be accomplished by scribes and monks. Even with the early printing press, it was a difficult and costly endeavor to print books. The medium itself was expensive enough to dwarf the cost of the content, if people in the baroque and renaissance periods had thought of it in such terms.
The "recent" invention of copyright law by America was actually a conspiracy between Britain and America, the Berne Convention of 1886-1887, and the British were pressing for it more urgently than the Americans.
What's weirder, that they will do this, or that doing it hasn't turned the scene into a ghost town? I think it is a bad sign that there is a nonzero number of people willing to subject themselves to this treatment. In fact, I consider that to be a scarier thing than the idea that the bar people will do the ID check stuff.
Why hasn't this created an underground network of speakeasies already?
"Let's just hope that VeriSign is prevented from ever breaking DNS like this again."
They still are in business, and ICANN has not really done anything in the way of harsh punishment, nor has the question seriously been raised of handing over authority to anyone else.
So I don't see where your hope stems from. Verisign retains the ability to do what they want. I expect this incident to help VS understand what they can get away with, and I expect them to do something else that is more within the gray area, and nobody will be able to do anything about it.
I realize the world doesn't work when extreme vigilante justice is taken between corporations, but I also think this is one case where the first inkling of the plan should have caused severe and final consequences to come down on Verisign, immediately, before they even took any action.
Now that the damage is done, the remedy just makes ICANN look weak, and just leaves VS in the same position of authority they were in before. In fact, now that they've tested the limits, I'm sure their lawyers are looking into exactly what consequences could be dealt if they just roll it right back out again.
Judging by the fact that the root servers haven't been redelegated, root passwords changed, doors locked, machines seized as evidence, etc., I'm guessing that will be sooner not later when they do the sitefinder blunder or something similar again.
"My core question is this: When writing music, what steps do you take to prevent yourself from making the same mistake George Harrison made? "
Step One: I don't worry about it.
Step Two: I don't get famous and try to sell my songs for millions of dollars.
I'd sell my soul for the opportunity to make the same mistake George Harrison made.
I'll bet you a dollar that UK distributions won't carry this particular artifact anyway, except for second-hand prints that were originally distributed for US runs.
If we were talking about it on slashdot long before it went online, then ICANN had time to file a TRO. I personally don't believe VS should be operating today. I think that a truly authoritative handling of this situation would have involved a complete termination of the contract, and an entirely new administration would be running the root servers today. I actually think this could have happened BEFORE letting VS go ahead with their plan. The mere suggestion of it was enough to sound the alarms and cause immediate, and harsh action.
Why did ICANN have to reveal how weak they are by waiting for the deal to go down, and then, reluctantly take a limp, ineffective action?
They could be ending the contract and asking for billions in civil damages today, but instead, Verisign is being rewarded for their actions, and they are still in a position to commit even more violations in the future.
If we were talking about it on slashdot weeks before it rolled, I just can't buy that it came as a surprise to anyone. Anybody who claims it was a surprise was just being irresponsible.
ICANN shares some guilt here, and should share the consequences.
They still behave like they have the government contract a la IANA. They have a monopoly on the product. I think if you tried to compete with them you'd run into some serious opposition from the government. They are the closest thing the Internet has to a federal regulatory agency, and they have worse processes and less protection to the consumer. For all intents and purposes, they are the state.
"I thought the cable companies totally funded the construction (or purchase of pre-existing) system, and had no government assistance financially or otherwise? "
Because the people granted the rights of way for the cable, it's not completely a private enterprise.
UPS wouldn't be able to build their own interstate highways and not let others use them.
(I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.)
IF the STATE has given you the sole authority to distribute beverages to all fast food chains, THEN you have an analogy...
You said they rolled out sitefinder "without warning", but I disagree, and that has been my problem with this from the beginning.
There WAS advance notice. And what didn't happen then was quite surprising: ICANN should have come down hard on VS for even suggesting that they might do this. They waited, and now they look like reactionary cowards instead of proactive stewards. ICANN looks weaker than Verisign at the end of the day, and Verisign isn't really discouraged.
I think they should ALREADY have their contract pulled, there should ALREADY be a termination date delivered to them, and there should be no discussion. THAT would send a message that says "this is not something you fuck with, and this is damned sure not a fuckup you have the opportunity to make twice in your position because, guess what, you're out of business. Have a nice live. Goodbye."
I really don't understand why that hasn't happened, except that ICANN is too weak and has too many conflicts of interest to make that happen and be done with it and we can wash our hands of Netsol and Verisign once and for all.
I don't speak for my employer, but they feel that way as well, and would say so with fewer f-words...
"Err...I think you'll find there are cinemas that use a two-projector system."
I don't plan to visit pakistan. Even the drive in on the Navajo reservation (where I sometimes go) has platters system.
I had the pleasure of working in the infamous Texas Theatre on Jefferson Blvd in Oak Cliff Texas, (the place where they arrested Oswald), when the renovation was done in 1983. I personally supervised the switchover from the old reel system to a platter system, and I trained the projectionists. I think that was the last UA Theatre in Texas to have a 2-reel system.
Certainly there are independent houses that run old gear, and it's probably because they choose to out of a sense of anachronism. It's not because of budget though. Most big auditoriums were divided into 2 screens, and the 2 projectors were moved apart and a dual platter system put in.
So you get more bang for the buck on your lenses, your lamps, and you can afford to have a movie flop.
I am a musicologist. I have a degree in music theory. I have also studied law, and I am not afraid of lawyers just because they are lawyers.
I also do not give a fuck. I find that not giving a flying fuck helps immensely in a great many situations.
>Yeah, superman. With the super-speed, you are
>able to get this done if you spend 25 hours a
>day on it?
I know people who do it (grow a substantial amount of their own food.) Including a frequent poster on slashdot who grows all kinds of grain and makes flour and cereal. It's not that big a deal.
I left off "making your own clothes".
A generation ago, everybody in my family made their own clothes. The best tailored suit I ever had was made by my mother. And it was not at all uncommon for families to be this way. My "generation ago" is the people who were teenagers during WWII, in case you are wondering.
Also a generation ago, everybody in my family farmed. Also not at all uncommon.
What's so "superman" about doing something that my grandparents had no problem doing?
"Apparently, the various members of the RIAA have decided that the traffic will bear quite a bit."
They decided that, but then when the market turned out not to bear their prices, they happened to have a nice red herring to correlate with the pheomenon: "Piracy".
Since it's so convenient to deduce that this correlation is a cause, and also because there are so many beneficial side effects from following this course of reasoning, it's become the new focus of the entire model.
I think the analysts and decision makers realize that "file sharing" is a red herring, and that there are many more important influences on the demand curve for their product. I also think that these people are aware of just how much political power they gain from strategies like lobbying for the DMCA, or making huge public displays of how big the piracy problem has become (this CD discussion is just an example of that!)
They don't care if you're copying the CD. They are more interested in making sure you, the public, understand that copying the CD is wrong and that it creates a problem for them.
It doesn't MATTER that the scheme does not stop CD copying! It doesn't matter that marijuana is a harmless plant! It doesn't matter that socialism is a workable political system.
What matters is that people can be influenced to believe that copying CD's for ANY reason is wrong... and that this power can be wielded to change government so that it does in fact become illegal to do so. And the people end up believing it was a choice they made - cognitive dissonance takes care of the rest. (We spend 10 billion a year to keep marijuana down, we sacrificed thousands of lives to stop socialism, how can we back down now?)
Yes, I think the people who make decisions in the media companies are well aware of the kind of stuff that gets pointed out on slashdot. But while we sit here with our mouths open, aghast, wondering how they could be so ham-handed as to trample our rights, wondering how they could be so ignorant to the facts that their own analysts spell out, the truth is that they are intentionally doing this stuff, with higher motivations than merely "stopping you from copying the media." That's the propaganda, the goal is something far more insidious -- total control of the means of production, and maintaining high barriers for entry into the marketplace.
My solution has been to just forget them. I make my own music. I put a nice aquarium where my television used to be. I listen to music when it bounces off my ears, but I don't bother to seek it out by brand. I break down when it's time to see certain films, but you know which ones I think. That's about it.