Seems to me it's more an issue of the rest of the world not trusting the US to act honourably in perpetuity. As a lot of the international economy now depends on the internet in one way or another, other countries don't want the US to be in full control of deciding who goes where/knows what on the internet. Imagine, if you will, that Iran controlled the root servers. Would people in the US trust them? Now recall that there are laws on the books in the US which allow various Federal agencies to access/modify data on the ICANN servers and forbid them from notifying anyone about it. See why the EU is worried?
However, this is all academic. It's easy enough to set up your own root servers and just peer into the ICANN ones, append all.com,.net,.org,.info,.biz,.etc entries found there with.us, and go from there. Anyone outside the US then just uses slashdot.org.us instead of slashdot.org, and life goes on as normal. Just like with telephone country codes.
One major question is why the Panel didn't mention the fact that religious fundamentalists are trying to legislate science out of the classroom, as illustrated by the Intelligent Design lawsuit going on in Pennsylvania? If you're not allowed to teach biology in science class, but instead, you must give "equal time" to "creationism", doesn't that tend to degrade science, too?
In a perfect world, it would tend to degrade science; however, it's hard to degrade something that doesn't exactly exist. When I was in highschool, my science teachers were intelligent enough to tell us when we started that not only was most of the science we'd learned up to that point lies, guesses, and gloss, but they continued, saying that much of what they'd be teaching us in highschool would be more scientific dogma than scientific fact. This allowed us to think critically about the "science" we were learning, so it didn't come as such a shock when we got to university and found that while the tools we'd learned were useful, the "science" itself had not been truthfully accurate.
It seems to me that spending some of that time we spent learning scientific dogma could have been spent learning religious dogma, and not much would have changed; the trick would be to apply the same scientific principles to either set of "facts," and make an informed decision; albeit this is more difficult with faith-based fact.
Public school isn't (or shouldn't be) about learning Truth; it's about learning how to use tools to solve problems. The moment this shifts to "learning creationism" OR "learning science," the society is on a downward spiral to ignorance, because nobody will be left who knows how to create, improve, or even maintain the knowledge infrastructure.
In conclusion, the panel didn't mention the "fact" because in the real world, the effect of this is negligible compared to the issue I presented above. Maybe after this mess has been cleaned up, we'll be able to measure the effects of dogma choice, and will then be better informed as to what to teach as "truth" in a schoolroom. Otherwise, the argument of "'science'/'creationism' is destroying science in the classroom" holds as much water as "p2p software is destroying the recording industry" -- the statements are ignoring too many variables.
Please read the parent, grandparent, and great-grandparent again; I wasn't talking about the GUI in Linux, I was talking about workflow. User interface is more than the pretty graphics; some of the best UIs I've used have been purely text-based. Also, you seem to assume I'm a Windows user, despite my signature;)
In fact, I use quite a few OSes, and was referring to the current shortcomings in Linux -- noting that Windows isn't that hot either in the clipboard management area, OR in unified widget interface. Windows' failings, however, have nothing to do with Linux; it should be able to stand or fall based on its own strengths and weaknesses.
To get back to my previous comment, I wasn't talking about learning the GUI for each program; I was talking about customizing a workflow on the computer, where the same keystrokes, mouse actions, and visual feedback transfer smoothly through the system, no matter what I'm trying to do. You'll also notice I didn't say this was impossible on Linux, as I said it's what I do myself; it's just not easy to configure, and could be made easier, as I also mentioned.
Then again, I'm starting to think you accidentally replied to the wrong level in the thread; I'll stop defending the obvious now:)
I like the Linux copy/paste methodology much better, and have posted
several times here defending it. As for being able to have richer
types of content in the clipboard, well... I've never used that in
my life in any OS, but I guess if you used it you would miss it in
Linux. I can only speak intelligently about things I use. =)
Which Linux copy/paste methodology? The one in GNOME/KDE apps where you control-c/v, the one in a terminal where you select and have it auto-buffered, the x-windows buffer management system? The problem is that these are all mutually exclusive, and often work together in unpredictable ways.
Then there's the rich content buffer issue you mentioned; however, I rarely need it for rich text content; usually I use the buffer for copying bitmap content, or filepaths (which I want to be handled as text in some programs, but as file descriptors in others... you never know how it's going to end up in Linux [text, reference, not available] until you've used that kind of content buffer in that specific app.
I guess the main thing about Linux UI is that you are required to learn the UI for each program you use, and how it interfaces with your window manager and the OS as a whole. If you use a limited set of programs, and understand how they all work together, Linux can be very efficient -- but anyone else using your specific configuration can get very lost very quickly, as something fails to work "as expected." I generally find I spend time tweaking each new program I install to work using common workflow paradigms, so that I can use the same muscle reflex actions no matter which window is frontmost at the time.
Maybe what FreeDesktop and Tango to do is create a workflow database, which individual programs (including desktop managers) could refer to in order to configure themselves - the coders would just have to include a workflow stub, and that would define how menus, button layout, clipboard buffers, etc. work in the program; if there's no defined global for that specific workflow element, the program's default would be used.
Everything else is more sane, stable, and beautiful in Linux, by a wide margin.
Including clipboard/buffer management? Windows does a horrible job of it, and still manages to do it better than Linux. How about audio support? If all software worked with a single standard (like ALSA), everything would be fine; but this isn't the case.
This doesn't touch on the point that oil is a finite non-renewable resource, but unlike the US, Canada produces more oil than it consumes. This means that Canada is, in the short term, not only self-sustainable, but can also sell off surplus energy (also in the form of surplus HydroElectric energy from Quebec, Ontario, and BC, and Nuclear energy from Ontario).
Canada tends to meddle in the affairs of oil producing countries a) as a peace-keeper, after someone else has gone in and upheaved the local politics, and b) as a backer of a US-led plan, with the agreement that the US will reciprocate in some way (such as lifting illegal trade sanctions placed on Canadian exports).
Out of curiosity, does anyone know where the MPAA players master and replicate their DVDs currently? I seem to recall that there was some Asian country where some factories replicated movies for the MPAA by day and then did black market replicating for the local market at night.
If that country was China (can't recall if it was), then why couldn't they just insist that they press to their own format for domestic release? The studios should love that -- forced region lockout and lower licensing fees; not to mention the fact that the HD-DVD factories wouldn't be able to black market the product as easily.
The problem is that there's no value without a transaction. If you can't sell copyright, it takes away a lot of the potential value.
I don't quite follow this logic: copyright "value" is relative. At the moment, everyone can sell their copyright on a work, therefore the value is whatever the market will bear.
If nobody could sell their copyright, the product value would still be identical; therefore, what the copyright holder could do is enter into a contract whereby distribution rights for their work are to be given exclusively to company X in return for monetary compensation.
The problem with this method is in the area of bureaucracy -- if a corporation can't own a copyright, then that corporation has to, for the rest of time, track which contracts link to which product. If you have a software development team working on MegaOfficeCRMServer DLX, each line of code is owned by the person who wrote it, with further copyright owned by those who modified those lines with permission.
In this scenario, if an individual copyright holder decides he doesn't like how the project is going, he is within his rights to return the money to the corporation, and deny them those distribution rights on his code (which has now been moved around, modified, and copied within the project).
I use software development as an illustration that I feel most people here can understand; the truth of the matter is that music, movie, and, in some cases print (think magazine, newspaper, etc.) development is very similar; there is no single author, and copyright as it is defined doesn't handle collaberative works particularly well.
All that being said, I think that copyright itself should not be sellable, but any work written under contract to a corporation automatically assigns the copyright to that corporation. In this scenario, if a corporation is dissolved, it legally dies, and all copyright is treated in the same manner as if a person had died. If the corporation is bought by a parent corporation (corporate slavery?), then as long as the sub-corp still exists, it is still considered "living," but the parent corp. does NOT own the copyrights; it just has a contractual agreement to use them. Please feel free to point out any flaws; I feel that this system would be much more effective than the current mess, however.
Even if that does violate the DMCA, only certain people would have standing to sue about it...mostly Sony. Anyone else getting a piece of the profits would, as well, but it's possible that their contracts surrender that particular right to sue to Sony. Also, the artists may be just as interested in Sony in getting around this particular manifestation of the law of unintended consequences, so they might not want to sue, either.
In the US, DMCA is a criminal law; that means that disobeying it is a crime against the state, not against a copyright holder. You are prosecuted for circumvention, not for copyright infringement, which is a different (and private) legal issue.
People do not fill up their iPods with legally acquired music.
That's right -- they fill them with music, podcasts, an emergency bootable OS X, a backup of their home system's critical data files, and a bunch more... and even then, they're often not filled up.
Also, some people like to store their music in Apple Lossless format, not 128kbit MP3/AAC. 40GB doesn't go quite so far when you do this.
Didn't PayPal just announce "micro" payments? We might be seeing Skype turn into a real VoIP system here. Not only that, but everyone's been looking at Skype as a vehicle for buyers interacting with sellers -- why not have *both* interact with eBay itself using Skype/POTS? Now, instead of having to have a broadband connection at the ready, you can easily bid/list/track by phone on eBay, just like the more traditional auctions. If the rumours are true, this is the direction I perceive eBay going.
In the "real world," we have games like Monopoly, Taboo, Baulderdash, Scrabble, Yahtzee, numerous card games, etc. These games have been around for years and years, and still play the same way, with no rule upgrades, extra pieces added, new hardware requirements, etc.
In the Movie world, we have every movie ever made being stuck on DVD.
In the computer world, old DOS games still work.
The point I'm getting at is that the world of entertainment is actually quite crowded. It is getting increasingly difficult to create something new and unique.
Why should I continue to go out and purchase new entertainment when the stuff I've owned for 5-20 years still has great replay value? After all, we can watch our favorite TV shows from the 70's and 80's on DVD, play the same board games, and we still have Fallout, System Shock 2, and Deus Ex.
The only thing that new entertainment has going for it other than the possibility of a new interface or higher quality feedback is the "newness" angle. People like things they've never experienced before. However, more than that, people like things that they are used to that let them show off their skills to their friends.
You're forgetting something else; most people who read/. regularly know how to spoof their browser. Currently, I'm Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) -- I'm not sure what that does to your statistics.
(Try browsing as googlebot sometime -- you'd be amazed at how different the web looks!)
The article calls this a measurement of the quality of the information, which they say has no bearing on the quantity. The thing about quantum information is that due to the fact that the amount of information contained can lessen by measuring the information, it is actually possible to know more about a quantum object than actually describes it. Think of it more like looking at a comet in space. You can learn more about it by hitting it with explosives and measuring the spectral result, but in doing so you are actually destroying bits of the comet. So eventually, you can know all about an object that doesn't actually exist. Of course, unlike comets, quantum objects can be both there and not there at the same time; the time factor of it being destroyed after it has been measured is effectively removed.
Rackspace already answered this: they wanted to guarantee that no modifications to the data were made while it was under investigation, so they sent the FBI one copy, and kept the other copy offline until they could verify that neither the customer nor the FBI had modified files pertinent to the investigation.
Of course, why they didn't make a second copy, and keep that one live for all the other sites concerned, I have no clue.
I'm sorry, but I bought a lot of games in the 90's that are now unplayable. Why? Because the copy protection scheme made it "impossible" to make a backup of the game, so when the media died, the game was gone. This despite the fact that they insisted that they sold me a license, not a copy of the game. I still own the license, but I can no longer play the game.
The problem with the new DRM schemes is not that they currently stop me from using what I purchased, but that I have no say in how long I continue to have that right. If you buy a product with DRM, you're really renting the product, with the length of rental being variable, based on the lifetime of the rest of your equipment, or the desire of the DRM management company to let you have the product, whichever ends first.
Actually, I think that IWTBF is one of the most often taken out of context catchphrases on/.
You see, all anthropomorphised information does indeed want to be free... the catch is that for any subset of information, a subset of people don't want the information to be free.
This is why we must fight for privacy; without fighting against information's innate desire to be free, we would have no privacy except through obscurity.
Unless you're a shepherd or work at a geriatric facility, you're most likely not in a situation where a pet is required to fulfill needs. And then it's usually a trained work animal, not a pet, and gets the appropriate shots and tied tubes.
As far as want goes, why limit yourself to dogs and cats? A duck tends to like water more than a dog; a rat tends to be more intelligent.
Yes, but the reason it's legal in many cases is *because* of the levy, which justifies letting basic pirating go, since compensation has already been paid via the levy. It's not that the government have said "pirating music is and has always been okay, but we're going to take a tonne of your money because we can". It's more like "pirating music is bad, but as long as everyone agrees to pay this tax (which will fall disproportionately on those who pirate music) to compensate those who own the rights to the music, we'll let it slide".
Sort of like "speeding is bad, but as long as speeding saves lives (in the case of ER), we'll let it slide." Note how this is different than "speeding is bad, but as long as people pay the fines we'll let it slide." If there wasn't an exception made for ER vehicles, the police would have to pull themselves over. I'll let the reader draw the rest of the conclusions (one way or the other).
Re:Copyright holders aren't crooks, infringers are
on
No Levy on iPods in Canada
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
People steal (yes copyright infringement is theft, don't bother with equivocating) music, and the only option the Canadian govt. gives music labels is this lame tariff on media. So music labels accept this as better than nothing, but they're the crooks? Give me a break.
I agree with you 100% that it's the infringers who are the crooks. The difference is, in Canada, not all trading of music is defined as copyright infringement. If you make copies from someone else's CD, this is not copyright infringement in Canada. Ergo, it is not theft. The tarriff is the tool used to enable this kind of copying while protecting the copyright holders. Remember -- copyright infringement doesn't exist until it is legislated to exist. Theft of material goods exists de-facto.
The motion blur you get when running 60FPS content at 120FPS on a CRT is usually due to the fact that they're out of sync. With proper VSYNC, the blur tends to vanish, and the image becomes much crisper (not to mention that it leaves you with more relaxed eyes).
Slashdot Mirror
And in other news, Zonk and the other editors of Slashdot refused to plead guilty to spelling and grammar fixing in articles they post.
However, this is all academic. It's easy enough to set up your own root servers and just peer into the ICANN ones, append all .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .etc entries found there with .us, and go from there. Anyone outside the US then just uses slashdot.org.us instead of slashdot.org, and life goes on as normal. Just like with telephone country codes.
In a perfect world, it would tend to degrade science; however, it's hard to degrade something that doesn't exactly exist. When I was in highschool, my science teachers were intelligent enough to tell us when we started that not only was most of the science we'd learned up to that point lies, guesses, and gloss, but they continued, saying that much of what they'd be teaching us in highschool would be more scientific dogma than scientific fact. This allowed us to think critically about the "science" we were learning, so it didn't come as such a shock when we got to university and found that while the tools we'd learned were useful, the "science" itself had not been truthfully accurate.
It seems to me that spending some of that time we spent learning scientific dogma could have been spent learning religious dogma, and not much would have changed; the trick would be to apply the same scientific principles to either set of "facts," and make an informed decision; albeit this is more difficult with faith-based fact.
Public school isn't (or shouldn't be) about learning Truth; it's about learning how to use tools to solve problems. The moment this shifts to "learning creationism" OR "learning science," the society is on a downward spiral to ignorance, because nobody will be left who knows how to create, improve, or even maintain the knowledge infrastructure.
In conclusion, the panel didn't mention the "fact" because in the real world, the effect of this is negligible compared to the issue I presented above. Maybe after this mess has been cleaned up, we'll be able to measure the effects of dogma choice, and will then be better informed as to what to teach as "truth" in a schoolroom. Otherwise, the argument of "'science'/'creationism' is destroying science in the classroom" holds as much water as "p2p software is destroying the recording industry" -- the statements are ignoring too many variables.
In fact, I use quite a few OSes, and was referring to the current shortcomings in Linux -- noting that Windows isn't that hot either in the clipboard management area, OR in unified widget interface. Windows' failings, however, have nothing to do with Linux; it should be able to stand or fall based on its own strengths and weaknesses.
To get back to my previous comment, I wasn't talking about learning the GUI for each program; I was talking about customizing a workflow on the computer, where the same keystrokes, mouse actions, and visual feedback transfer smoothly through the system, no matter what I'm trying to do. You'll also notice I didn't say this was impossible on Linux, as I said it's what I do myself; it's just not easy to configure, and could be made easier, as I also mentioned.
Then again, I'm starting to think you accidentally replied to the wrong level in the thread; I'll stop defending the obvious now :)
Which Linux copy/paste methodology? The one in GNOME/KDE apps where you control-c/v, the one in a terminal where you select and have it auto-buffered, the x-windows buffer management system? The problem is that these are all mutually exclusive, and often work together in unpredictable ways.
Then there's the rich content buffer issue you mentioned; however, I rarely need it for rich text content; usually I use the buffer for copying bitmap content, or filepaths (which I want to be handled as text in some programs, but as file descriptors in others... you never know how it's going to end up in Linux [text, reference, not available] until you've used that kind of content buffer in that specific app.
I guess the main thing about Linux UI is that you are required to learn the UI for each program you use, and how it interfaces with your window manager and the OS as a whole. If you use a limited set of programs, and understand how they all work together, Linux can be very efficient -- but anyone else using your specific configuration can get very lost very quickly, as something fails to work "as expected." I generally find I spend time tweaking each new program I install to work using common workflow paradigms, so that I can use the same muscle reflex actions no matter which window is frontmost at the time.
Maybe what FreeDesktop and Tango to do is create a workflow database, which individual programs (including desktop managers) could refer to in order to configure themselves - the coders would just have to include a workflow stub, and that would define how menus, button layout, clipboard buffers, etc. work in the program; if there's no defined global for that specific workflow element, the program's default would be used.
Including clipboard/buffer management? Windows does a horrible job of it, and still manages to do it better than Linux. How about audio support? If all software worked with a single standard (like ALSA), everything would be fine; but this isn't the case.
Canada tends to meddle in the affairs of oil producing countries a) as a peace-keeper, after someone else has gone in and upheaved the local politics, and b) as a backer of a US-led plan, with the agreement that the US will reciprocate in some way (such as lifting illegal trade sanctions placed on Canadian exports).
If that country was China (can't recall if it was), then why couldn't they just insist that they press to their own format for domestic release? The studios should love that -- forced region lockout and lower licensing fees; not to mention the fact that the HD-DVD factories wouldn't be able to black market the product as easily.
I don't quite follow this logic: copyright "value" is relative. At the moment, everyone can sell their copyright on a work, therefore the value is whatever the market will bear.
If nobody could sell their copyright, the product value would still be identical; therefore, what the copyright holder could do is enter into a contract whereby distribution rights for their work are to be given exclusively to company X in return for monetary compensation.
The problem with this method is in the area of bureaucracy -- if a corporation can't own a copyright, then that corporation has to, for the rest of time, track which contracts link to which product. If you have a software development team working on MegaOfficeCRMServer DLX, each line of code is owned by the person who wrote it, with further copyright owned by those who modified those lines with permission.
In this scenario, if an individual copyright holder decides he doesn't like how the project is going, he is within his rights to return the money to the corporation, and deny them those distribution rights on his code (which has now been moved around, modified, and copied within the project).
I use software development as an illustration that I feel most people here can understand; the truth of the matter is that music, movie, and, in some cases print (think magazine, newspaper, etc.) development is very similar; there is no single author, and copyright as it is defined doesn't handle collaberative works particularly well.
All that being said, I think that copyright itself should not be sellable, but any work written under contract to a corporation automatically assigns the copyright to that corporation. In this scenario, if a corporation is dissolved, it legally dies, and all copyright is treated in the same manner as if a person had died. If the corporation is bought by a parent corporation (corporate slavery?), then as long as the sub-corp still exists, it is still considered "living," but the parent corp. does NOT own the copyrights; it just has a contractual agreement to use them. Please feel free to point out any flaws; I feel that this system would be much more effective than the current mess, however.
In the US, DMCA is a criminal law; that means that disobeying it is a crime against the state, not against a copyright holder. You are prosecuted for circumvention, not for copyright infringement, which is a different (and private) legal issue.
That's right -- they fill them with music, podcasts, an emergency bootable OS X, a backup of their home system's critical data files, and a bunch more... and even then, they're often not filled up.
Also, some people like to store their music in Apple Lossless format, not 128kbit MP3/AAC. 40GB doesn't go quite so far when you do this.
Didn't PayPal just announce "micro" payments? We might be seeing Skype turn into a real VoIP system here. Not only that, but everyone's been looking at Skype as a vehicle for buyers interacting with sellers -- why not have *both* interact with eBay itself using Skype/POTS? Now, instead of having to have a broadband connection at the ready, you can easily bid/list/track by phone on eBay, just like the more traditional auctions. If the rumours are true, this is the direction I perceive eBay going.
In the "real world," we have games like Monopoly, Taboo, Baulderdash, Scrabble, Yahtzee, numerous card games, etc. These games have been around for years and years, and still play the same way, with no rule upgrades, extra pieces added, new hardware requirements, etc.
In the Movie world, we have every movie ever made being stuck on DVD.
In the computer world, old DOS games still work.
The point I'm getting at is that the world of entertainment is actually quite crowded. It is getting increasingly difficult to create something new and unique.
Why should I continue to go out and purchase new entertainment when the stuff I've owned for 5-20 years still has great replay value? After all, we can watch our favorite TV shows from the 70's and 80's on DVD, play the same board games, and we still have Fallout, System Shock 2, and Deus Ex.
The only thing that new entertainment has going for it other than the possibility of a new interface or higher quality feedback is the "newness" angle. People like things they've never experienced before. However, more than that, people like things that they are used to that let them show off their skills to their friends.
(Try browsing as googlebot sometime -- you'd be amazed at how different the web looks!)
The article calls this a measurement of the quality of the information, which they say has no bearing on the quantity. The thing about quantum information is that due to the fact that the amount of information contained can lessen by measuring the information, it is actually possible to know more about a quantum object than actually describes it. Think of it more like looking at a comet in space. You can learn more about it by hitting it with explosives and measuring the spectral result, but in doing so you are actually destroying bits of the comet. So eventually, you can know all about an object that doesn't actually exist. Of course, unlike comets, quantum objects can be both there and not there at the same time; the time factor of it being destroyed after it has been measured is effectively removed.
Slashdot was "latest tech" in the late 90's -- expect the new medium to have something to do with instant newsfeeds and cellphones.
Rackspace already answered this: they wanted to guarantee that no modifications to the data were made while it was under investigation, so they sent the FBI one copy, and kept the other copy offline until they could verify that neither the customer nor the FBI had modified files pertinent to the investigation.
Of course, why they didn't make a second copy, and keep that one live for all the other sites concerned, I have no clue.
There's a slight issue here... who would I sue? Some of the game companies have been out of business for 10 years.
The problem with the new DRM schemes is not that they currently stop me from using what I purchased, but that I have no say in how long I continue to have that right. If you buy a product with DRM, you're really renting the product, with the length of rental being variable, based on the lifetime of the rest of your equipment, or the desire of the DRM management company to let you have the product, whichever ends first.
You see, all anthropomorphised information does indeed want to be free... the catch is that for any subset of information, a subset of people don't want the information to be free.
This is why we must fight for privacy; without fighting against information's innate desire to be free, we would have no privacy except through obscurity.
People do this all the time -- it's called service contracts. Talk to your employer; they might let you do it too.
As far as want goes, why limit yourself to dogs and cats? A duck tends to like water more than a dog; a rat tends to be more intelligent.
Sort of like "speeding is bad, but as long as speeding saves lives (in the case of ER), we'll let it slide." Note how this is different than "speeding is bad, but as long as people pay the fines we'll let it slide." If there wasn't an exception made for ER vehicles, the police would have to pull themselves over. I'll let the reader draw the rest of the conclusions (one way or the other).
I agree with you 100% that it's the infringers who are the crooks. The difference is, in Canada, not all trading of music is defined as copyright infringement. If you make copies from someone else's CD, this is not copyright infringement in Canada. Ergo, it is not theft. The tarriff is the tool used to enable this kind of copying while protecting the copyright holders. Remember -- copyright infringement doesn't exist until it is legislated to exist. Theft of material goods exists de-facto.
The motion blur you get when running 60FPS content at 120FPS on a CRT is usually due to the fact that they're out of sync. With proper VSYNC, the blur tends to vanish, and the image becomes much crisper (not to mention that it leaves you with more relaxed eyes).