Just too many lawsuits? The MuVo can already record radio broadcasts. Why hasn't the RIAA sued them? What will happen when every company has sued every other company?
So why does Money magazine and... hmmm, salary.com, hey hey there's a clue... want to promote "software engineer" (a deliciously vague tite) as the best job in America? I don't know about Money magazine, but you can guess where salary.com's income comes from. ("Salary.com profitably sells advertising and licenses online content to hundreds of websites via its syndication network.") If we traced the money trail long enough, it would be fascinating to see where the hard currency comes from in this web. All I know is this flies in the face of all empirical evidence to the contrary, and... that means it's time to follow the money.
From the press release, the most remarkable aspect of this new whatever-it-is is that it doesn't actually do anything. If you wade through the marketroid-language crud, and translate phrases like whatever-it-is "has extended the opportunities for individuals and organizations of all kinds to participate in developing, selling and using digital services" into English, they're building a proprietary lock-in, top-heavy infrastructure no one wants, to solve a problme no one has, in an age dominated by lightweight apps. IBM actually did this a while back with a be-all end-all Java platform I can't even remember the name of now (!) that was going to be the glue that ran business into the next century. (My memory of this IBM platform was that it didn't even run. I couldn't figure out what it did or didn't do.) I don't know if SCO's whatever-it-is has gone beyond vaporware (it sure isn't at sourceforge:)), but they're asking other people to sell a solution that has no track record, but requires 100% proprietary lock-in to the platform that doesn't actually do anything. So all the risk is on their MLM partners and the unfortunate people who adopt this platform. This makes SCO's lawsuit strategy look good. (By the time your engineers learn this platform, they could already have built the app out of Perl...)
If it's time to point fingers for these DRM song companies going south, let's blame used CDs. They are cheap and plentiful (after all, many popular groups have gone through two different remastering releases by now, creating a glut of used CDs). They have baout the same per-song price as DRM downloads, but you can rip them and play them on any computer or player without restrictions, software overhead, or hassle.
Sure, you can count units of RISC boxes sold, and you can count Windows licenses, but how much of the installed Linux base is ever counted? After all, the point of Linux is cheap hardware and a useful server OS. It makes more sense to me to buy a lot of cheap, redundant parts at Newegg, and build servers to the specs I need, and have plenty of spares for failure rates. Plus you can build as you go - my little test Linux box is now this monster server because I keep adding stuff to it. (I expect any IT staff who can use Linux can stick a few cards on a motherboard. This is not rocket science:)) Will Newegg make all these comparison numbers worthless?
I haven't seen this one mentioned. I see a lot of nitpicking wanting people to take tests and demonstrate encyclopedic knowledge of every last detail of technologies. Who could remember all that stuff? I routinely use Perl, PHP, Java, C, and REXX; plus MySQL, Oracle, and DB2; and I do Linux system administration and MVS systems programming on an ad-hoc basis. How the heck would I remember some trivial detail I could look up in an O'Reilly book or google? I solve problems, not memorize trivia. Most of the job related stuff I see is taking these inane tests which expect people to know all these details.
So the RIAA is sending the strong and unmistakeable message that the safest place to hide is out in the open. They sue parents because of what their children do, sue a guy who wiped his hard drive, sue a woman who has never used a computer. The only safe thing to do is BE A PIRATE because they're the ONE GROUP NO ONE IS SUING!!! Fire up WinMX - er, BearShare now - and get to work being very OPEN about BLATANT DISSIMENATION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. That's the only way to avoid the RIAA. (And you have to wonder what the POINT of all this is, since it has zero effect on any sort of file sharing.)
Re:Python
on
Beyond Java
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· Score: 2, Informative
Not only that, but with Jython you get the killer embedded scripting language for zero effort other than adding a jar file - it allows you to drive all your object model's objects in a script. If you have a good MVC design in the first place, you can do amazing stuff to extend your application using Jython scripting. I wouldn't even design a Java program anymore without embedding Jython. (You can do this with JavaScript too, but the language isn't as powerful.)
Author: cheerleader for Ruby but has good points!
on
Beyond Java
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I read this book too, and my impression overall was the author is a cheerleader for Ruby. Which is fine, because Ruby has made some important OO design contributions. It seems like a very elegant language, what Python could have been.
The book's assessment of Perl seems superficial. I am sure I could write bad code in Ruby if I wanted to. Just because Perl embeds regular expressions into the language syntax rather than making you import a library, this doesn't mean Ruby (or any other language) would be any more readable if you had to put regular expressions into its source code. Sooner or later, you'll have regexes in your code regardless of the language. Try writing something useful in clean, elegant REXX which has no regex support!
The PHP snippets are something no PHP programmer would write, and make me wonder if the author knows anything about the language. I don't think PHP gets a fair shake. Curious that PHP and Perl both don't impress the author much, and both are real-world, get-it-done languages. The author tends to like Ruby, LISP, etc more.
The author does get credit for looking seriously at non-mainstream alternatives like LISP!
I don't remember the author mentioning that Python can run in a JVM and give you an instant, full-featured scripting language for your Java object framework. I love Jython, even though I'm not a big Python fan in general. Listen up, Ruby evangelists: You need to get Ruby running natively in the JVM like Jython! Then you'd have the KILLER language.
Overall, the author doesn't mention that the goal of my-favorite-scripting-language is to rewrite CPAN's core modules in the language. It's like a language used to have to compile itself. Now, a new language has to have a huge standard library to be serious. Library inertia is what will hurt Ruby, Python, etc - after spending huge amounts of time writing to the Perl or PHP core modules, am I going to rewrite all my web site's code in a new language, or try to learn a lots-of-little-differences syntax for a new standard module library? Probably not.
Overall, a thought-provoking book whether you agree or disagree.
Isn't Napster just a me-too user of MS's DRM like everyone else? It's just a brand name slapped on top of MS's proprietary (but free-as-in-koolaid) media system, right? Why would Google buy technology (they sure don't want the logo/brand) based on lock-in to a MS proprietary DRM layer? Aren't they trying to unseat MS?
The real issue that has never been resolved is what constitutes proof of ownership of music. I know of no court precedent or legal definition of what I must do to prove I own the music I have, if I'm asked to. (Original media? Original cash register receipts? Does anyone save their music receipts and keep them forever?) Producing the original CDs is one thing, but what about (1) I bought and paid for several CDs of which I made a compilation, but lost the originals a while back in a move or something. I still have my mp3s and CD-R. I legally bought the music, but how do I prove it? (2) I digitized a song or two from old LPs/cassettes, but don't want to lug those obsolete media around with me the rest of my life (I don't even have a cassette player anymore and threw out 90% of my cassettes) just to prove I own them. (3) I copy my MP3 collection to a computer at work... etc etc etc... record companies want you to license the music on either the fast food (pay every time you consume a song) or cable TV (pay for the service even when you're not using it) model. I don't like either one better than CDs. If someone pre-loads an IPOD with stuff and sells it (example: https://ecom.ligonier.org/ecom/product.asp?idProdu ct=IPO11Z), what is the legal status of the files? If someone loads someone else's MP3s, that's clearly illegal dissimination of copyrighted material. But, I've heard even ripping a CD and making MP3s is illegal or a gray area. So who committed the crime? At some point, someone is going to rule on this, and I imagine the outcome will not be good. Prohibition days again? Speakeasies where you load your IPOD? Boot screens for MP3 players that list only the public-domain King James Bible audio, with a secret key to pull up the real music? Will a judge be enlightened enough to think better of making something that (a) everyone does and (b) there is no realistic way to enforce or stop the illegal behavior? We'll see...
Not only that, but after an all-nighter or two of uploading my 5GB of MP3s, how long will these people be in business? Will the transfer even complete before they're gone? What happens to my MP3s when they are bought out by a larger fish? (Do I cede my ownership of the CDs? I've seen crazier EULA terms...)
Business model: I pay them $40 a year to listen to my own MP3s? Can't quite see the must-have attraction of this. You could buy a flash MP3 player for about that much. Or burn your MP3s to a DVD to take with you for much less. Is the sock puppet involved in this?
Perl 6 = COBOL 9x
on
What is Perl 6?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Perl 6 reminds me of the super-revamped, object-oriented COBOL that came out in the 90s -- by the time this perfect language was created (and it was a decent upgrade, although the OO stuff was so verbose it wasn't funny), COBOL 85 had such a huge installed base that COBOL 9x was irrelevant. The amount of code written to the COBOL 85 standard was immense, and most new development had moved on to other languages. Maybe Perl 6 can escape the Fortran 9x and COBOL 9x trap of being really great languages about a decade too late. The biggest hurdle Perl 6 is going to face is its own installed base. It will have to be 100% compatible with Perl 5 to get people with a code base of Perl 5 code to even think about using it. Plus, it needs to have a compelling story to tell. I was excited about Perl 6 five or six years ago.
Too bad there's not much growth in fear mongering now. Y2K really killed the cottage industry of predicting the end of the world - not much room for growth until a generation or two comes along who did not experience the monumental hype-up for, and the consequent ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of Y2K. I can't even remember any interesting doomsday theories since Y2K, although I guess a few people have predicted stuff just to keep their hand in it for when an opportunity comes along. Most of the stuff is penny-ante after the nuclear age and Y2K. Hard to come up with something scary enough to motivate people into action (which is usually emptying their pockets!). So dump any stock you own in fear mongering enterprises... I can't predict, but there will probably be a round of cult growth before we get back to fear mongering. I've noticed the TM people taking out ads for "peace palaces" in the NY Times.
Never been sure what Calc II adds to comp sci; something like discrete math would be more useful if you're required to take higher math. I guess if you're going into a domain that uses calc, you'd need it.
"Unlike Perl" -- why are they so defensive? If Perl loses, it'll go the way of FORTRAN into the museum. If Perl wins, there's still plenty of room for other programming languages. Perl hasn't exactly made REXX, Pike, PHP, LISP, etc extinct or anything. (Not trolling, but I think Python users are so defensive because Python is the first language I know of since COBOL to make the whitespace of indention a significant part of the syntax.)
Unless I'm in a time warp: I have some CD-Rs I made in 1998, when I got my first CD burner. I was recently scouring through these, putting interesting stuff on DVDs. They worked perfectly. As long as they're stored properly,I would expect them to last forever. (In a jewel case, in the dark, in a cool place like a basement, etc.) Also, use decent brands - not no-name blanks. The only CDs I have ever had fail were no-name CDs with a sticker-like top that peeled off in a case where they were inserted into plastic sleeves (not jewel cases) - any modern CDs like Maxell should be fine. I like Maxell and Memorex color CDs, because they make them to their specs and don't buy whatever is cheapest that week. I also like the Maxell CD-R Pros - I copied my CD collection to those recently.
I've seen these numbers, and wonder what counts as a "Linux" vulnerability - does every little PHP bulletin board package that generates hundreds of bug reports a month on bugtraq count towards the total? All vulnerabilities aren't in the same class, although these numbers seem to lump them all together. Something like this WMF thing affects every machine running Windows. It's not like the Linux kernel, Apache, etc have bugs of this class. (Plus, most "little PHP bulletin board package" things for Windows are proprietary, and there is no master list of vulnerabilities the way there is for open source stuff. It's almost like these numbers are more "found vulnerabilities" than anything else, and a higher number would be good.)
Where are the FACTS? "Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer..." Was she accused of DOWNLOADING SONGS, or was she accused of sharing i.e. DISSIMINATING copyrighted material? Why is reporting on these cases so SLOPPY and imprecise? If a reporter was this sloppy in Iraq (were the troops under fire, or were they firing?) someone would get fired.
Timely article, because I've just been ripping. A lot of the music I have is out of print or very difficult to get (imports, etc). I'd be reluctant to mail/fedex/etc anyone my CD collection, because I've spent years collecting what is now rare music and would be in bad shape if it was lost/damaged/etc.
Of course, I have made a set of who-cares-if-it-gets-scratched Maxell CDPro copies of my favorite mix CDs (albums, rarities, you name it) for everyday wear and tear listening -- I could send those, but to make the custom mixes, I had to rip the CDs in the first place:) So a batch run of lame and oggenc took care of that overnight...
Ok, so why doesn't this group spend $1.5 million giving computers to kids who can't afford them? After all, for $1k or less, a kid could have a maxed-out Linux box and learn C++, Java, etc. Isn't there a shortage of software-related talent now? Why are these companies blowing their money on a research lab when they could be capturing the next generation? (BTW, is any of this $7+mil actual cash money, or is it just full-market-price proprietary software donations?)
I have a question about the facts of this case: is this case, or any of these cases, concerning someone illegally "downloading" songs? TFA explicitly says this. I thought that all of these cases were against people who distributed songs for others to download. The imprecision of terminology in this matter is confusing. Has the RIAA actually begun suing people who download but did not distribute songs?
I am particularly interested in what the legal proof of music ownership is. Has this ever been determined? (I've never been able to find it, if so.) E.g. If I move and lose a CD, but have a song from it on a mix CD, how do I prove I own a song? If I digitize a cassette (or LP or whatever), must I lug around the cassette tape for the rest of my life to prove I once bought it? If a judge asks a citizen "prove that you own this song", what does the citizen have to do?
I wonder how the effect of P2P can be isolated from the dynamics of the market overall. Used CDs must depress sales. The CD industry has re-remasters which have glutted the used CD market with remasters and original unremastered CDs, creating more supply than demand. P2P could very well be stimulating CD sales, only for used CDs which are in great supply (unlike LP and Cassette, CDs last virtually forever). Plus older CDs don't have DRM! Plus, how are sales calculated? When an artist has 2 or 3 "best of" CDs for sale, do they compete with each other? (If so, is this intentional to artifically depress sales?) Don't these constant best-of releases, usually with one or two extra tracks for fans who have the back catalog, cut into back-catalog sales? Sure, some people steal music, but isn't it good to have them in a sandbox of ever-decreasing returns as leeches leech off of each other and nothing new ever comes into the mix? That would be like all the diamond thieves stealing the same diamonds from each other all the time. It goes without saying that the effect we saw of CDs replacing LP and Cassette will never happen again. Exacerbating the slump after people replacing their LP/Cassette with CD is the fact that younger generations probably won't get into the 1980s - 1970s - 1960s - and earlier groups in the same way that people who LIVED through those times would, and won't have the emotional (i.e. willing to spend $$$) attachment to buy the full back catalogues on CD. (Music stores already reflect this - they don't carry back catalogs much anymore, just the best-of compilations.) Artists have to take some of the blame also for producing CDs that won't sell (can anyone give away copies of Yes' Magnification?)...
What I would be most interested in about ad-supported windows apps is the terms under which advertizers got to see the content I was working on (my rough drafts, e-mails I don't send, etc). Will they get to scan my text for keywords, etc? Will they automatically get copies of my texts? Will Google Print automatically get copies of my rough drafts for people to search? Will I sign away the ownership of the content I create to the advertizers or vendors? (If MS does it, there will be copycats...) Until this is known, no one will know if ad-supported apps are a good idea or not, but if the past is any indication (AOL owning the content you chat, DRM rootkits, etc), this is probably not going to work out very well. If these ad-supported apps are wrapped in EULA-style legalese, it might be a boost for Open Office. Oh, and remember WMP 7: You can't install it now because URLs have changed and the install bombs when it tries to contact the MS site. If I write my novel in Ad-Word, MS will finally have my document linked to phoning home. This means you could literally not be able to install the software anymore. Throw in a DRM-protected file format, and all your content belongs to them. Scary.
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Just too many lawsuits? The MuVo can already record radio broadcasts. Why hasn't the RIAA sued them? What will happen when every company has sued every other company?
So why does Money magazine and ... hmmm, salary.com, hey hey there's a clue ... want to promote "software engineer" (a deliciously vague tite) as the best job in America? I don't know about Money magazine, but you can guess where salary.com's income comes from. ("Salary.com profitably sells advertising and licenses online content to hundreds of websites via its syndication network.") If we traced the money trail long enough, it would be fascinating to see where the hard currency comes from in this web. All I know is this flies in the face of all empirical evidence to the contrary, and ... that means it's time to follow the money.
From the press release, the most remarkable aspect of this new whatever-it-is is that it doesn't actually do anything. If you wade through the marketroid-language crud, and translate phrases like whatever-it-is "has extended the opportunities for individuals and organizations of all kinds to participate in developing, selling and using digital services" into English, they're building a proprietary lock-in, top-heavy infrastructure no one wants, to solve a problme no one has, in an age dominated by lightweight apps. IBM actually did this a while back with a be-all end-all Java platform I can't even remember the name of now (!) that was going to be the glue that ran business into the next century. (My memory of this IBM platform was that it didn't even run. I couldn't figure out what it did or didn't do.) I don't know if SCO's whatever-it-is has gone beyond vaporware (it sure isn't at sourceforge :)), but they're asking other people to sell a solution that has no track record, but requires 100% proprietary lock-in to the platform that doesn't actually do anything. So all the risk is on their MLM partners and the unfortunate people who adopt this platform. This makes SCO's lawsuit strategy look good. (By the time your engineers learn this platform, they could already have built the app out of Perl...)
If it's time to point fingers for these DRM song companies going south, let's blame used CDs. They are cheap and plentiful (after all, many popular groups have gone through two different remastering releases by now, creating a glut of used CDs). They have baout the same per-song price as DRM downloads, but you can rip them and play them on any computer or player without restrictions, software overhead, or hassle.
Sure, you can count units of RISC boxes sold, and you can count Windows licenses, but how much of the installed Linux base is ever counted? After all, the point of Linux is cheap hardware and a useful server OS. It makes more sense to me to buy a lot of cheap, redundant parts at Newegg, and build servers to the specs I need, and have plenty of spares for failure rates. Plus you can build as you go - my little test Linux box is now this monster server because I keep adding stuff to it. (I expect any IT staff who can use Linux can stick a few cards on a motherboard. This is not rocket science :)) Will Newegg make all these comparison numbers worthless?
I haven't seen this one mentioned. I see a lot of nitpicking wanting people to take tests and demonstrate encyclopedic knowledge of every last detail of technologies. Who could remember all that stuff? I routinely use Perl, PHP, Java, C, and REXX; plus MySQL, Oracle, and DB2; and I do Linux system administration and MVS systems programming on an ad-hoc basis. How the heck would I remember some trivial detail I could look up in an O'Reilly book or google? I solve problems, not memorize trivia. Most of the job related stuff I see is taking these inane tests which expect people to know all these details.
So the RIAA is sending the strong and unmistakeable message that the safest place to hide is out in the open. They sue parents because of what their children do, sue a guy who wiped his hard drive, sue a woman who has never used a computer. The only safe thing to do is BE A PIRATE because they're the ONE GROUP NO ONE IS SUING!!! Fire up WinMX - er, BearShare now - and get to work being very OPEN about BLATANT DISSIMENATION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. That's the only way to avoid the RIAA. (And you have to wonder what the POINT of all this is, since it has zero effect on any sort of file sharing.)
Not only that, but with Jython you get the killer embedded scripting language for zero effort other than adding a jar file - it allows you to drive all your object model's objects in a script. If you have a good MVC design in the first place, you can do amazing stuff to extend your application using Jython scripting. I wouldn't even design a Java program anymore without embedding Jython. (You can do this with JavaScript too, but the language isn't as powerful.)
I read this book too, and my impression overall was the author is a cheerleader for Ruby. Which is fine, because Ruby has made some important OO design contributions. It seems like a very elegant language, what Python could have been.
The book's assessment of Perl seems superficial. I am sure I could write bad code in Ruby if I wanted to. Just because Perl embeds regular expressions into the language syntax rather than making you import a library, this doesn't mean Ruby (or any other language) would be any more readable if you had to put regular expressions into its source code. Sooner or later, you'll have regexes in your code regardless of the language. Try writing something useful in clean, elegant REXX which has no regex support!
The PHP snippets are something no PHP programmer would write, and make me wonder if the author knows anything about the language. I don't think PHP gets a fair shake. Curious that PHP and Perl both don't impress the author much, and both are real-world, get-it-done languages. The author tends to like Ruby, LISP, etc more.
The author does get credit for looking seriously at non-mainstream alternatives like LISP!
I don't remember the author mentioning that Python can run in a JVM and give you an instant, full-featured scripting language for your Java object framework. I love Jython, even though I'm not a big Python fan in general. Listen up, Ruby evangelists: You need to get Ruby running natively in the JVM like Jython! Then you'd have the KILLER language.
Overall, the author doesn't mention that the goal of my-favorite-scripting-language is to rewrite CPAN's core modules in the language. It's like a language used to have to compile itself. Now, a new language has to have a huge standard library to be serious. Library inertia is what will hurt Ruby, Python, etc - after spending huge amounts of time writing to the Perl or PHP core modules, am I going to rewrite all my web site's code in a new language, or try to learn a lots-of-little-differences syntax for a new standard module library? Probably not.
Overall, a thought-provoking book whether you agree or disagree.
Isn't Napster just a me-too user of MS's DRM like everyone else? It's just a brand name slapped on top of MS's proprietary (but free-as-in-koolaid) media system, right? Why would Google buy technology (they sure don't want the logo/brand) based on lock-in to a MS proprietary DRM layer? Aren't they trying to unseat MS?
The real issue that has never been resolved is what constitutes proof of ownership of music. I know of no court precedent or legal definition of what I must do to prove I own the music I have, if I'm asked to. (Original media? Original cash register receipts? Does anyone save their music receipts and keep them forever?) Producing the original CDs is one thing, but what about (1) I bought and paid for several CDs of which I made a compilation, but lost the originals a while back in a move or something. I still have my mp3s and CD-R. I legally bought the music, but how do I prove it? (2) I digitized a song or two from old LPs/cassettes, but don't want to lug those obsolete media around with me the rest of my life (I don't even have a cassette player anymore and threw out 90% of my cassettes) just to prove I own them. (3) I copy my MP3 collection to a computer at work ... etc etc etc ... record companies want you to license the music on either the fast food (pay every time you consume a song) or cable TV (pay for the service even when you're not using it) model. I don't like either one better than CDs. If someone pre-loads an IPOD with stuff and sells it (example: https://ecom.ligonier.org/ecom/product.asp?idProdu ct=IPO11Z), what is the legal status of the files? If someone loads someone else's MP3s, that's clearly illegal dissimination of copyrighted material. But, I've heard even ripping a CD and making MP3s is illegal or a gray area. So who committed the crime? At some point, someone is going to rule on this, and I imagine the outcome will not be good. Prohibition days again? Speakeasies where you load your IPOD? Boot screens for MP3 players that list only the public-domain King James Bible audio, with a secret key to pull up the real music? Will a judge be enlightened enough to think better of making something that (a) everyone does and (b) there is no realistic way to enforce or stop the illegal behavior? We'll see...
Not only that, but after an all-nighter or two of uploading my 5GB of MP3s, how long will these people be in business? Will the transfer even complete before they're gone? What happens to my MP3s when they are bought out by a larger fish? (Do I cede my ownership of the CDs? I've seen crazier EULA terms...)
Business model: I pay them $40 a year to listen to my own MP3s? Can't quite see the must-have attraction of this. You could buy a flash MP3 player for about that much. Or burn your MP3s to a DVD to take with you for much less. Is the sock puppet involved in this?
Perl 6 reminds me of the super-revamped, object-oriented COBOL that came out in the 90s -- by the time this perfect language was created (and it was a decent upgrade, although the OO stuff was so verbose it wasn't funny), COBOL 85 had such a huge installed base that COBOL 9x was irrelevant. The amount of code written to the COBOL 85 standard was immense, and most new development had moved on to other languages. Maybe Perl 6 can escape the Fortran 9x and COBOL 9x trap of being really great languages about a decade too late. The biggest hurdle Perl 6 is going to face is its own installed base. It will have to be 100% compatible with Perl 5 to get people with a code base of Perl 5 code to even think about using it. Plus, it needs to have a compelling story to tell. I was excited about Perl 6 five or six years ago.
Too bad there's not much growth in fear mongering now. Y2K really killed the cottage industry of predicting the end of the world - not much room for growth until a generation or two comes along who did not experience the monumental hype-up for, and the consequent ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of Y2K. I can't even remember any interesting doomsday theories since Y2K, although I guess a few people have predicted stuff just to keep their hand in it for when an opportunity comes along. Most of the stuff is penny-ante after the nuclear age and Y2K. Hard to come up with something scary enough to motivate people into action (which is usually emptying their pockets!). So dump any stock you own in fear mongering enterprises... I can't predict, but there will probably be a round of cult growth before we get back to fear mongering. I've noticed the TM people taking out ads for "peace palaces" in the NY Times.
Never been sure what Calc II adds to comp sci; something like discrete math would be more useful if you're required to take higher math. I guess if you're going into a domain that uses calc, you'd need it.
"Unlike Perl" -- why are they so defensive? If Perl loses, it'll go the way of FORTRAN into the museum. If Perl wins, there's still plenty of room for other programming languages. Perl hasn't exactly made REXX, Pike, PHP, LISP, etc extinct or anything. (Not trolling, but I think Python users are so defensive because Python is the first language I know of since COBOL to make the whitespace of indention a significant part of the syntax.)
Unless I'm in a time warp: I have some CD-Rs I made in 1998, when I got my first CD burner. I was recently scouring through these, putting interesting stuff on DVDs. They worked perfectly. As long as they're stored properly,I would expect them to last forever. (In a jewel case, in the dark, in a cool place like a basement, etc.) Also, use decent brands - not no-name blanks. The only CDs I have ever had fail were no-name CDs with a sticker-like top that peeled off in a case where they were inserted into plastic sleeves (not jewel cases) - any modern CDs like Maxell should be fine. I like Maxell and Memorex color CDs, because they make them to their specs and don't buy whatever is cheapest that week. I also like the Maxell CD-R Pros - I copied my CD collection to those recently.
I've seen these numbers, and wonder what counts as a "Linux" vulnerability - does every little PHP bulletin board package that generates hundreds of bug reports a month on bugtraq count towards the total? All vulnerabilities aren't in the same class, although these numbers seem to lump them all together. Something like this WMF thing affects every machine running Windows. It's not like the Linux kernel, Apache, etc have bugs of this class. (Plus, most "little PHP bulletin board package" things for Windows are proprietary, and there is no master list of vulnerabilities the way there is for open source stuff. It's almost like these numbers are more "found vulnerabilities" than anything else, and a higher number would be good.)
Where are the FACTS? "Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer..." Was she accused of DOWNLOADING SONGS, or was she accused of sharing i.e. DISSIMINATING copyrighted material? Why is reporting on these cases so SLOPPY and imprecise? If a reporter was this sloppy in Iraq (were the troops under fire, or were they firing?) someone would get fired.
Timely article, because I've just been ripping. A lot of the music I have is out of print or very difficult to get (imports, etc). I'd be reluctant to mail/fedex/etc anyone my CD collection, because I've spent years collecting what is now rare music and would be in bad shape if it was lost/damaged/etc.
Of course, I have made a set of who-cares-if-it-gets-scratched Maxell CDPro copies of my favorite mix CDs (albums, rarities, you name it) for everyday wear and tear listening -- I could send those, but to make the custom mixes, I had to rip the CDs in the first place :) So a batch run of lame and oggenc took care of that overnight...
Ok, so why doesn't this group spend $1.5 million giving computers to kids who can't afford them? After all, for $1k or less, a kid could have a maxed-out Linux box and learn C++, Java, etc. Isn't there a shortage of software-related talent now? Why are these companies blowing their money on a research lab when they could be capturing the next generation? (BTW, is any of this $7+mil actual cash money, or is it just full-market-price proprietary software donations?)
I have a question about the facts of this case: is this case, or any of these cases, concerning someone illegally "downloading" songs? TFA explicitly says this. I thought that all of these cases were against people who distributed songs for others to download. The imprecision of terminology in this matter is confusing. Has the RIAA actually begun suing people who download but did not distribute songs?
I am particularly interested in what the legal proof of music ownership is. Has this ever been determined? (I've never been able to find it, if so.) E.g. If I move and lose a CD, but have a song from it on a mix CD, how do I prove I own a song? If I digitize a cassette (or LP or whatever), must I lug around the cassette tape for the rest of my life to prove I once bought it? If a judge asks a citizen "prove that you own this song", what does the citizen have to do?
I wonder how the effect of P2P can be isolated from the dynamics of the market overall. Used CDs must depress sales. The CD industry has re-remasters which have glutted the used CD market with remasters and original unremastered CDs, creating more supply than demand. P2P could very well be stimulating CD sales, only for used CDs which are in great supply (unlike LP and Cassette, CDs last virtually forever). Plus older CDs don't have DRM! Plus, how are sales calculated? When an artist has 2 or 3 "best of" CDs for sale, do they compete with each other? (If so, is this intentional to artifically depress sales?) Don't these constant best-of releases, usually with one or two extra tracks for fans who have the back catalog, cut into back-catalog sales? Sure, some people steal music, but isn't it good to have them in a sandbox of ever-decreasing returns as leeches leech off of each other and nothing new ever comes into the mix? That would be like all the diamond thieves stealing the same diamonds from each other all the time. It goes without saying that the effect we saw of CDs replacing LP and Cassette will never happen again. Exacerbating the slump after people replacing their LP/Cassette with CD is the fact that younger generations probably won't get into the 1980s - 1970s - 1960s - and earlier groups in the same way that people who LIVED through those times would, and won't have the emotional (i.e. willing to spend $$$) attachment to buy the full back catalogues on CD. (Music stores already reflect this - they don't carry back catalogs much anymore, just the best-of compilations.) Artists have to take some of the blame also for producing CDs that won't sell (can anyone give away copies of Yes' Magnification?)...
What I would be most interested in about ad-supported windows apps is the terms under which advertizers got to see the content I was working on (my rough drafts, e-mails I don't send, etc). Will they get to scan my text for keywords, etc? Will they automatically get copies of my texts? Will Google Print automatically get copies of my rough drafts for people to search? Will I sign away the ownership of the content I create to the advertizers or vendors? (If MS does it, there will be copycats...) Until this is known, no one will know if ad-supported apps are a good idea or not, but if the past is any indication (AOL owning the content you chat, DRM rootkits, etc), this is probably not going to work out very well. If these ad-supported apps are wrapped in EULA-style legalese, it might be a boost for Open Office. Oh, and remember WMP 7: You can't install it now because URLs have changed and the install bombs when it tries to contact the MS site. If I write my novel in Ad-Word, MS will finally have my document linked to phoning home. This means you could literally not be able to install the software anymore. Throw in a DRM-protected file format, and all your content belongs to them. Scary.