I could never managed to get it to compile. However, since you mentioned it I just checked and there have been several new versions since I last tried, so now I'll give it another shot..;-)
the fact that it was the users and not the operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator's liability for copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the services
So with the same logic, could they also sue the ISPs involved, and in fact any nodes in between? Rapidshare and similar sites are set up as simply temporary holding places --- tubes, if you will --- that allow users to send files from one to another.
This really again brings up the question of what should constitute a "common carrier", where do the boundaries start and end? Yes, Rapidshare is offering harddrive space, but every node in between is also carrying packets that contain copyrighted data. On the other hand, since sites like Rapidshare don't have big lists of hosted files, people don't usually download the distributed content until a link is posted in a forum or blog. So in a sense Rapidshare could itself be considered simply a carrier. I guess one difference is that it actually has a copy of the whole file at once, whereas a node only carries parts of the file, and (supposedly) is not actually examining the content. (Neither is Rapidshare though, even though it would be easier to do so.) Still, how and where should the line between "carrier" and "hosting service" be drawn?
For example, why is it that torrent sites can be sued, when they aren't even hosting the file?
Whereas Rapidshare _is_ hosting the file, but relying on outside media to provide access to it.
I'm gonna sit and wait until they perfect this, and just before it gets popular (because its so cheap) I'm going to patent the 2 pixel camera with twice the resolution for only a tiny higher cost, and beat them at their own game!
including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment
That's a lot more than just sending annoying emails. Basically, the guy is a crook. Why do you have a problem with him going to jail? People do time for things other than violent crime, you know.
I agree with you. I've always found it quite annoying when DJ's sell their mix tapes/CDs. To me it seems that it's one thing to be creating a mix and wanting people to hear it, but quite another to go and sell it without getting the requisite permissions.
Another point that I wanted to bring up though, is that the summary talks about the tapes being full of artists that "would never have had the exposure" without being on the mix tapes. If these are underground, unknown artists we are talking about, why is the RIAA interested? I thought the RIAA only represented those big huge record labels whose artists are advertised everywhere.
Is this a case of the RIAA trying to charge someone for breaking copyright that doesn't even belong to them?
In any case, I still think that it's totally unpardonable to be selling mixtapes without permission. Imho the practise brings a dark cloud over the otherwise well-meaning gesture of creating compilations of your favorite tracks.
I think its a common and sad misconception to think that people with alternative lifestyles are "disrespecting society". Usually they have alternative lifestyles because "society" doesn't satisfy them.
To put it another way... they don't go out of their way to piss off society, it's just that society is so easily hurt, and they're not going to let that slow them down.
(caveat: sure, some people _do_ go out of their way to piss off society. Also, of course there are limits. And there are those who understand those limits and those who don't. I'm not making excuses here, but I think its a little unfair to say that people who don't choose to wear a tie and work 9-5 are "disrepecting society".)
One of my favorite parts of the book was the story about Castle Turing. I can't wait to see how they pull that off.. (And I really hope they don't brush quickly over just a few parts of it.)
But ALL these apps have a COMPLETELY different interface from the standard UI.
Agreed. I'm not convinced that it's the main problem, but I'm sure it doesn't help the situation. (And it's goddamn annoying.)
I work at a local computer shop and see problems regarding virii and spyware even though these people supposedly use Norton/McAfee and Ad-aware.
I totally hate anti-virus software. [rant mode ON] I never tell people to remove it, instead I just shrug and tell them I think it's not important. I mean, I'm not going to cause them even more confusion by telling them I disagree with whoever recommended they install Norton or McAfee, but I will never go out of my way to help someone install anti-virus software.
At least three people I know were having virus/adware problems on XP. I simply switched them to firefox and told them to be careful, and they haven't had any problems since. (These people of course are not the types to browse porn or hacker sites, so the actual chances of them getting something unwanted is pretty low.)
I honestly, very honestly, with all my heart, think that anti-virus software does nothing good for a computer, and lots of bad.
(Bogs it down, clogs the "pipes", makes it difficult to help people with networking problems, etc..)
Imho, if you're going to get bitten by a virus, chances are it will be something relatively new that would have gotten by the anti-virus _anyways_. And even without that crap people end up having to reinstall Windows every once in a while, whether they are using AV or not.
From experience, I've seen that security-by-design does a far better job against viruses than any anti-virus bloatware I've ever had the displeasure to deal with.
I think another aspect of it, and a big difference between IT and the medical profession, is that in IT there are almost always clues in one place or another about how to fix a problem.
Certainly, there are plenty of times when the solution is totally non-obvious and requires real technical skill. But for a lot of questions, basically the answer is right there on the screen. IT people get frustrated when people don't READ what's right in front of them, choosing to ask over and over again like a techno-hypochondriac instead.
A lot of times people just click without reading, or don't think to check the obvious places. For example, someone will ask how to do something, and it turns out you accomplish the task by going to the Options dialog and finding the right checkbox -- annotated in plain English.
Generally there seems to be two classes of users -- those who explore the interface and try to figure things out before asking, and those who don't. Generally the former are far more likely to become computer literate more quickly. Naturally, some of the latter habit comes from fear. Usually misplaced fear of "breaking" things. Other times their inability to find the right option in a dialog just stems from semantics; not knowing the terminology well enough. That, to me, is an acceptable misunderstanding, as long as once it's explained, they retain the explanation.
But it can be extremely frustrating to help people with their computer problems when they basically refuse to read the text on the screen.
In contrast, in the medical profession, there is often no way to have the knowledge to fix a problem without asking someone who's read all the important textbooks and has experience dealing with similar issues in other patients. There is no dialog to read, no GUI to explore to find the right option, so we are left with no choice but to either consult textbooks which we may not have access to, or to ask a professional.
In IT, a large percentage of problems can be solved by simply trying it, before asking.
In any case, not to worry, I think this built-in "fear" of technology is a problem that will simply solve itself eventually. Kids growing up with computers around them is going to change everything.
If the real world price of this laptop is $200 (it is what the buyer pays, regardless of the fact that one is going to 3rd world country), and it is being sold to people in 3rd world countries for $100, then wouldn't this cause _not_so_good_people_ to buy/steal from the poor people and sell it here?
I've been following the development, and while the server install MAY be one cd, I haven't seen anything to suggest that such an artificial restriction would be set. If anything it may be a specific minimal spin.
Why is it that distros are still so predominantly media-based anyways? Every single time I've installed Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or Gentoo in the past.. oh.. 4 years or so, I've done it using a network-based method. It seems to me like it's much more efficient to just download the packages you need instead of downloading GB's worth of apps only to actually install and use a portion of them.
When I _have_ installed from CD, I tend to go and do an update to the latest packages immediately, and end up re-downloading new copies of most of the packages anyways, making it even more of a waste of bandwidth.
Why do distros still concentrate so much on CD and DVD releases, instead of just promoting the network-based install methods?
And when will we see a distro that incorporates bittorrent into its packaging download system?;-) (Slightly joking on that last one.. I've no idea if it would be appropriate, not to mention trust-worthy. But it is an interesting idea for distros that can't afford nice servers and don't have tons of mirrors.)
I can see through ice with my naked eyes if it's thin enough, but the same can't be said about granite because they're two completely different mediums, with different molecular structures, different opacities and different electromagnetic conducting properties.
Hm... actually I'd be willing to bet like $10 that you could see through granite too if it was thin enough.
Ps., on TFA topic... according to the article, "whats under greenlands ice" is a bunch of pretty colours streaked out horizontally. Wow. Exciting.;-)
I recently bought a brand-new laptop. Everything was PERFECT about it, according to the specs I was looking for, so I bought it, figuring I'd have no trouble solving any small Linux driver problems I'd inevitably run into. Well, to my dismay, it turns out this particular laptop contains the Broadcom 4311 chipset. Now, there IS a bcm43xx driver, but it seems that, just my luck, the 4311 is one of the more "problematic" chipsets that are supported by that driver. (And when I say supported, I mean, go clone the current git repository if you want something that sort of might work.)
Anyways, I DID finally manage to get it working, thankfully. The bcm43xx people are doing a FINE job with the information they have. Especially considering they have reported more than once that they don't have a card with 4311, it's amazing that it works at all. In fact, I'm writing this post over my wireless connection. It's not perfect -- slow, and doesn't always connect when there are many APs in the area, but I'm SO happy it works as much as it does.
But my point of this post is: Since I'd really prefer a working and reliable solution, I'm *this* close to buying an external wireless card. I don't particularly want a USB card that sticks 4 inches out of my computer. However, a lot of new laptops, including mine, no longer come with a PCMCIA slot!! This _really_ limits my options, meaning I'm stuck with getting the 4311 working as well as I can.
There seem to be VERY few ExpressCard options on the market. Is this going to change anytime soon? I appreciate that it's a better bus than PCMCIA, and I'm glad we're moving forward with better standards and higher bus bandwidth, but what's the point of having an ExpressCard slot if there are NO DEVICES for it?
So, in short, does anyone know of an ExpressCard wireless solution that is WELL supported under Linux?
Multi-GHz desktop CPUs have a hard time keeping up with gigabit ethernet. Imagine what kind of CPU your digital camera and USB flash drive is going to need...
That's probably true, you have a point there. I assume USB and 1394 hardware do something more direct-to-RAM in order to circumvent CPU needs. Perhaps something similar could be done with NICs.
Don't go into hardware... Please!
Don't worry about that, I won't.:)
I am absolutely software guy. But one thing I've learned from software is that it's usually better to build on something that works instead of starting over from scratch. It's silly that USB and Firewire even exist when there was already a perfectly good physical and transport layer for communication available. They should have incrementally improved the ethernet standard instead: added power, etc. I would love to see a backwards-compatible device standard based on ethernet. You could plug your devices in and they'd get power, but you could still plug it into your router and it would work that way too.
(Yes, I know about PoE, don't worry.. I haven't read that much but I know there are some problems associated with it.)
And once you have it connected, it still doesn't solve anything, because you have to decide on protocols over ethernet (unlike USB/Firewire/etc.) because there is no standard system of multi-user authenticated bidirectional communications over IP.
Of course there would have to be a standard communication protocol. USB, for example, implements one. I'm only advocating that the hardware and software should be decoupled. There's no reason a hardware protocol couldn't be defined for UDP. Hell, there's already IP over 1394, which I use every day. Maybe that's the direction we should be going.
Everyone will create their own propritary communication app, or downgrade to brain-dead file-copy-only with none of the useful features of the device (a lot like many MP3 players, sadly).
Exactly. They are already doing this with USB. I had to install big, ugly, annoying drivers on XP for the HP printer I just bought. Why can't it just use the built-in, standards-compliant drivers? MP3 players are going the same way.. unfortunately, no matter how hard the industry tries to set standards, there are always plenty of companies that choose to ignore them.
No, no, no. There has to be ONE standard, or there's no point.
What are you talking about? My whole post was advocating having one standard.
Anyways, all I'm saying is that I'd rather have 6 general-purpose ethernet ports on my computer than 1 ethernet port and 5 USB ports and 2 firewire ports, like it is now.
There's one set way for USB devices to communicate, so every system on the planet has those built in. Once you have 500 different protocols for different devices, you've completely ruined the utility of your Ethernet peripheral interface.
I never said there should be 500 different protocols for 500 different devices. I said they should agree on one standard protocol for devices that can be implemented over IP. Or at least one per device class: Imagine an ethernet mouse. You plug it in and it immediately starts sending UDP packets containing [X,Y] pairs. I don't see how this is really that different from what's done with USB.
When it comes down to it, it's the letter of the contract that matters, not the intent that was in the minds of the writers.
Well, it matters when everyone gets pissed off at you, you begin losing market share, and you start losing your best developers...
Fortunately we still live in a world where people can make choices, and people are affected by intent. (People... as opposed to Lawyers, I guess. swish!.. heheh.) So yes, it matters.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got an idea, let's call it "Soma"!
I could never managed to get it to compile. ;-)
However, since you mentioned it I just checked and there have been several new versions since I last tried, so now I'll give it another shot..
So with the same logic, could they also sue the ISPs involved, and in fact any nodes in between?
Rapidshare and similar sites are set up as simply temporary holding places --- tubes, if you will --- that allow users to send files from one to another.
This really again brings up the question of what should constitute a "common carrier", where do the boundaries start and end? Yes, Rapidshare is offering harddrive space, but every node in between is also carrying packets that contain copyrighted data. On the other hand, since sites like Rapidshare don't have big lists of hosted files, people don't usually download the distributed content until a link is posted in a forum or blog. So in a sense Rapidshare could itself be considered simply a carrier. I guess one difference is that it actually has a copy of the whole file at once, whereas a node only carries parts of the file, and (supposedly) is not actually examining the content. (Neither is Rapidshare though, even though it would be easier to do so.) Still, how and where should the line between "carrier" and "hosting service" be drawn?
For example, why is it that torrent sites can be sued, when they aren't even hosting the file?
Whereas Rapidshare _is_ hosting the file, but relying on outside media to provide access to it.
I wonder if these could be easily turned into standalone/local versions by bundling a customized web server and browser into an "application".
Or maybe that would be a waste of time.
I'm gonna sit and wait until they perfect this, and just before it gets popular (because its so cheap) I'm going to patent the 2 pixel camera with twice the resolution for only a tiny higher cost, and beat them at their own game!
Mouahahahah...
That's a lot more than just sending annoying emails. Basically, the guy is a crook. Why do you have a problem with him going to jail? People do time for things other than violent crime, you know.
I agree with you. I've always found it quite annoying when DJ's sell their mix tapes/CDs. To me it seems that it's one thing to be creating a mix and wanting people to hear it, but quite another to go and sell it without getting the requisite permissions.
Another point that I wanted to bring up though, is that the summary talks about the tapes being full of artists that "would never have had the exposure" without being on the mix tapes. If these are underground, unknown artists we are talking about, why is the RIAA interested? I thought the RIAA only represented those big huge record labels whose artists are advertised everywhere.
Is this a case of the RIAA trying to charge someone for breaking copyright that doesn't even belong to them?
In any case, I still think that it's totally unpardonable to be selling mixtapes without permission. Imho the practise brings a dark cloud over the otherwise well-meaning gesture of creating compilations of your favorite tracks.
People seem to often forget that being in space and being in orbit are two different (though related) concepts.
I think its a common and sad misconception to think that people with alternative lifestyles are "disrespecting society". Usually they have alternative lifestyles because "society" doesn't satisfy them.
To put it another way... they don't go out of their way to piss off society, it's just that society is so easily hurt, and they're not going to let that slow them down.
(caveat: sure, some people _do_ go out of their way to piss off society. Also, of course there are limits. And there are those who understand those limits and those who don't. I'm not making excuses here, but I think its a little unfair to say that people who don't choose to wear a tie and work 9-5 are "disrepecting society".)
One of my favorite parts of the book was the story about Castle Turing. I can't wait to see how they pull that off..
(And I really hope they don't brush quickly over just a few parts of it.)
Trippy, _and_ educational.
heheh, good one. :)
Agreed. I'm not convinced that it's the main problem, but I'm sure it doesn't help the situation. (And it's goddamn annoying.)
I totally hate anti-virus software. [rant mode ON] I never tell people to remove it, instead I just shrug and tell them I think it's not important. I mean, I'm not going to cause them even more confusion by telling them I disagree with whoever recommended they install Norton or McAfee, but I will never go out of my way to help someone install anti-virus software.
At least three people I know were having virus/adware problems on XP. I simply switched them to firefox and told them to be careful, and they haven't had any problems since. (These people of course are not the types to browse porn or hacker sites, so the actual chances of them getting something unwanted is pretty low.)
I honestly, very honestly, with all my heart, think that anti-virus software does nothing good for a computer, and lots of bad.
(Bogs it down, clogs the "pipes", makes it difficult to help people with networking problems, etc..)
Imho, if you're going to get bitten by a virus, chances are it will be something relatively new that would have gotten by the anti-virus _anyways_. And even without that crap people end up having to reinstall Windows every once in a while, whether they are using AV or not.
From experience, I've seen that security-by-design does a far better job against viruses than any anti-virus bloatware I've ever had the displeasure to deal with.
(In other words, using better software.)
And where do you think OUR troops are?? (canadian troops, that is)
I think another aspect of it, and a big difference between IT and the medical profession, is that in IT there are almost always clues in one place or another about how to fix a problem.
Certainly, there are plenty of times when the solution is totally non-obvious and requires real technical skill. But for a lot of questions, basically the answer is right there on the screen. IT people get frustrated when people don't READ what's right in front of them, choosing to ask over and over again like a techno-hypochondriac instead.
A lot of times people just click without reading, or don't think to check the obvious places. For example, someone will ask how to do something, and it turns out you accomplish the task by going to the Options dialog and finding the right checkbox -- annotated in plain English.
Generally there seems to be two classes of users -- those who explore the interface and try to figure things out before asking, and those who don't. Generally the former are far more likely to become computer literate more quickly. Naturally, some of the latter habit comes from fear. Usually misplaced fear of "breaking" things. Other times their inability to find the right option in a dialog just stems from semantics; not knowing the terminology well enough. That, to me, is an acceptable misunderstanding, as long as once it's explained, they retain the explanation.
But it can be extremely frustrating to help people with their computer problems when they basically refuse to read the text on the screen.
In contrast, in the medical profession, there is often no way to have the knowledge to fix a problem without asking someone who's read all the important textbooks and has experience dealing with similar issues in other patients. There is no dialog to read, no GUI to explore to find the right option, so we are left with no choice but to either consult textbooks which we may not have access to, or to ask a professional.
In IT, a large percentage of problems can be solved by simply trying it, before asking.
In any case, not to worry, I think this built-in "fear" of technology is a problem that will simply solve itself eventually. Kids growing up with computers around them is going to change everything.
Right on, brotha!
Isn't this a risk regardless?
So.... anyone know how to grab rtsp streams under Linux? Please? Thanks.
Oh, looks like mplayer works. Cheers.
Why is it that distros are still so predominantly media-based anyways?
Every single time I've installed Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or Gentoo in the past.. oh.. 4 years or so, I've done it using a network-based method.
It seems to me like it's much more efficient to just download the packages you need instead of downloading GB's worth of apps only to actually install and use a portion of them.
When I _have_ installed from CD, I tend to go and do an update to the latest packages immediately, and end up re-downloading new copies of most of the packages anyways, making it even more of a waste of bandwidth.
Why do distros still concentrate so much on CD and DVD releases, instead of just promoting the network-based install methods?
And when will we see a distro that incorporates bittorrent into its packaging download system?
(Slightly joking on that last one.. I've no idea if it would be appropriate, not to mention trust-worthy. But it is an interesting idea for distros that can't afford nice servers and don't have tons of mirrors.)
That's really smart.
Good one!
Hm... actually I'd be willing to bet like $10 that you could see through granite too if it was thin enough.
Ps., on TFA topic... according to the article, "whats under greenlands ice" is a bunch of pretty colours streaked out horizontally. Wow. Exciting.
I recently bought a brand-new laptop. Everything was PERFECT about it, according to the specs I was looking for, so I bought it, figuring I'd have no trouble solving any small Linux driver problems I'd inevitably run into.
Well, to my dismay, it turns out this particular laptop contains the Broadcom 4311 chipset. Now, there IS a bcm43xx driver, but it seems that, just my luck, the 4311 is one of the more "problematic" chipsets that are supported by that driver. (And when I say supported, I mean, go clone the current git repository if you want something that sort of might work.)
Anyways, I DID finally manage to get it working, thankfully. The bcm43xx people are doing a FINE job with the information they have. Especially considering they have reported more than once that they don't have a card with 4311, it's amazing that it works at all. In fact, I'm writing this post over my wireless connection. It's not perfect -- slow, and doesn't always connect when there are many APs in the area, but I'm SO happy it works as much as it does.
But my point of this post is: Since I'd really prefer a working and reliable solution, I'm *this* close to buying an external wireless card. I don't particularly want a USB card that sticks 4 inches out of my computer. However, a lot of new laptops, including mine, no longer come with a PCMCIA slot!! This _really_ limits my options, meaning I'm stuck with getting the 4311 working as well as I can.
There seem to be VERY few ExpressCard options on the market. Is this going to change anytime soon?
I appreciate that it's a better bus than PCMCIA, and I'm glad we're moving forward with better standards and higher bus bandwidth, but what's the point of having an ExpressCard slot if there are NO DEVICES for it?
So, in short, does anyone know of an ExpressCard wireless solution that is WELL supported under Linux?
Thanks.
I'll have ketchup, and relish, and... oh hell, just make it all-dressed please.
Everyone was so *happy* when they decided to actually play nice and use an established icon for RSS.
// patent crap.
Why would they turn around and piss everyone off?
WHY??
Oh wait... it's MS. Nevermind. Business as usual.
so hey.. does this mean Firefox will have to exclude that feature in upcoming Vista builds?
I can see it now:
#ifndef _MS_VISTA_
Links.AddLiveBookmark();
#endif
That's probably true, you have a point there. I assume USB and 1394 hardware do something more direct-to-RAM in order to circumvent CPU needs. Perhaps something similar could be done with NICs.
Don't worry about that, I won't.
I am absolutely software guy. But one thing I've learned from software is that it's usually better to build on something that works instead of starting over from scratch. It's silly that USB and Firewire even exist when there was already a perfectly good physical and transport layer for communication available. They should have incrementally improved the ethernet standard instead: added power, etc. I would love to see a backwards-compatible device standard based on ethernet. You could plug your devices in and they'd get power, but you could still plug it into your router and it would work that way too.
(Yes, I know about PoE, don't worry.. I haven't read that much but I know there are some problems associated with it.)
Of course there would have to be a standard communication protocol. USB, for example, implements one. I'm only advocating that the hardware and software should be decoupled. There's no reason a hardware protocol couldn't be defined for UDP. Hell, there's already IP over 1394, which I use every day. Maybe that's the direction we should be going.
Exactly. They are already doing this with USB. I had to install big, ugly, annoying drivers on XP for the HP printer I just bought. Why can't it just use the built-in, standards-compliant drivers? MP3 players are going the same way.. unfortunately, no matter how hard the industry tries to set standards, there are always plenty of companies that choose to ignore them.
What are you talking about? My whole post was advocating having one standard.
Anyways, all I'm saying is that I'd rather have 6 general-purpose ethernet ports on my computer than 1 ethernet port and 5 USB ports and 2 firewire ports, like it is now.
I never said there should be 500 different protocols for 500 different devices. I said they should agree on one standard protocol for devices that can be implemented over IP. Or at least one per device class: Imagine an ethernet mouse. You plug it in and it immediately starts sending UDP packets containing [X,Y] pairs. I don't see how this is really that different from what's done with USB.
Well, it matters when everyone gets pissed off at you, you begin losing market share, and you start losing your best developers...
Fortunately we still live in a world where people can make choices, and people are affected by intent. (People... as opposed to Lawyers, I guess. swish!.. heheh.) So yes, it matters.