Re:Finally a Solution for Rural Areas
on
Homebrew S/ADSL
·
· Score: 3
Most likely this won't do much for your mom. The problem is, who's gonna be at the other end of the pair? This is not a DSL line to the internet. It's a high speed connection between 2 places. It's basically a cheap way to set up a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network).
As someone else explained, a dry pair, is just a set of wires connecting the two points. I don't believe that the phone co. even runs power to them. So the distance, realistically is irrelevant. Once the wire is in the ground, if they get $0.05 a month from you for it, it's essentially found money. They have virtually no costs, once it's buried. And they do bury a ton of it, so that they have lots of room to grow in the future.
Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright.
Nice to see that you can keep a discussion logical, and civilized. Rather than explaining anything as a counterpoint to what I said, your only response, was a personal attack. How insightful. It would kill you to advance the conversation?
The Internet makes control of digital media impossible. Deal with it.
So simply because an enabling technology exists, that gives you the moral mandate, to copy whatever you want, without any concern for the rights of those that labored to create it? In short, might makes right. How charming, that you have such a neo-fuedal sense of civilization.
In theory, the idea of a decentralized shared library, is a nice idea. In practice, by design, this program is for sharing.mp3's, and other multimedia filetypes. The bulk of which are in circulation illegally.
And by designing this app, and marketing it for these filetypes, it rapidly turned into that being the only purpose that people were using it for.
I suppose it could be used to share documents that a totalitarian regime frowns upon. But a geocities site could do much the same, with much higher reliability. And something that is focused on distributing simple text files/html docs is going to be alot less likely to have script kiddies swarming all over it.
And the way that the search algorithyms work on Gnutella, it's impossible to get much of an idea about what a file is. The web is a much better medium for distributing most documents. It lets you show connections to a document, with information that provides clues as to relevancy, at the point of the link to the file.
It just seems to me, that programs like Napster, and Gnutella exist solely so people can set up a warez/mp3 site, without actually getting storage space, and setting up a real ftp site. I have yet to see an application of this type, being used for much else.
Maybe it's just me, but the GnutellaNet sure seems to be collapsing under it's own weight, and user's greed. I have been running it, but am quickly starting to realize that there isn't much point to it, anymore. It's been over a week since I've had anything successfully download. And over the weekend, at least half a dozen people grabbed a huge mpg off my system, how many copies of it are now available for grabbing - 1. Nice to see that once people leech the stuff, they have no intention of sharing it back out, thus reducing the potential load on my machine.
And last but not least, what's the point anyhow. I know that the pages about the program, claim that it's a tool for filesharing. But be realistic. There are a million easier ways to share files, that are far more reliable. If I have a file to share with a bud, I'll email it to him. Not tell him to log into Gnutella, and grab it. Or I'll toss it onto something like FilesAnywhere. The only reason that I can think of, that people love stuff like this, is it's so much more anonymous than even an FTP site. After all, someone has to be a designated contact for a domain name. On Gnutella, et al, nobody has to identify themselves at all.
The refernce to legitimacy, was regarding who's releaseing the stuff. It's a reference to the fact that these versions are being released by the legitimate developers. Rather than someone throwing together a hacked up version of a clone, and calling it Gnutella.x.
By and large, whenever anyone makes any attempt at all to limit peoples ability to copy digital data, the bulk of the populace of slashdot, and the editors scream bloody murder.
I do agree, that DMCA might night be a panacea, but neither is the system we have now. Look at how excited people were, to have Gnutella. This sites denizens, has fallen all over itself, to promote it, and there is little use for it, other than easing the distribution of stolen digital media. I'm sure that you can come up with some justification where it's a perfectly acceptable sounding tool, but I can't think of anything that couldn't be accomplished just as easily with other tools. The big difference is, that Gnutella does an excellent job of masking who is sharing what, so that it's much more difficult to backtrack who's pirating stuff.
Thus CSS discriminates against those who don't own set-top boxes or Windows machines, but wish to play the DVD's they paid for legitimately and have already bought the necessary equipment to do so (namely, a computer and a DVD drive).
I'm supposed to feel sorry for them, because they bought something that was not compatible with their computer? Why in gods name should I pity them, just because they didn't read the instructions before buying???
I, or my school, or my parents would have purchased the books that I drew information from, thus recompensing the authors. You still haven't given any reason at all, why my expression of a particular sequence of thoughts, shouldn't be my property to do with as I wish. I didn't say that someone can't draw inspiration from my particular expressions, just that I think that I should have some property rights over those exact expressions.
I won't deny that it's a very slippery slope to consider. I think it very difficult to draw exact lines of where, and how to grant rights on intellectual property. And I'm not sure where the most reasonable place is, to draw the line. But I do think that there ought to be some protections for IP. And I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
Why shouldn't there be a natural property right, to intellectual property? Why should the works of my mind, be any less mine, than the works of my body?
I was merely trying to point out, that the way that stuff is worded on this site, shows a severe bias on material like this.
And I totally agree that the way that the content providers have behaved, has been atrocious in many regards lately. They are getting very adept at poor customer relations. And it's costing them, and will continue to do so.
One can contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, without having ones specific creation be freely available. You could read what I created, and grow intellectually based on that reading. If you then go out, and create your own works, based on ideas that I helped nourish in your mind, then the body politic as a whole is improved by works that I created. It's not necessary that you have a right to do whatever you please with my exact words.
And I should have the right to license my works, and share them, in any manner that I deem appropriate. I didn't say that I don't want to share them. I merely said that I should have the right to control how they are shared, and to control who derives economic benefits from them being shared.
The line about Stephen King, is a great piece of slanted journalism. Got me curious as heck, when I read the line too. All the article really says, is that Anyone, including the holder of a copyright, is not allowed to use tools that circumvent protections that were placed on that copyright.
Stephen King is only not allowed to read his own work, on his platform of choice (a Mac). And only because someone screwed up, and made it a PC only download. I'm sure that he's absolutely allowed to read the original copy that he typed in.
I do so wish that the editors here wouldn't lean so far to the "make all date free for everyone, and who cares if nobody stops making it when the no longer get paid" extreme.
The people aren't parties to the "contract" of a copyright. Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright. Why should the creator of a work, have to give away his art after any arbitrary period of time? If I create something, I should be able to do what I will with it, for as long as I see fit. And if you don't approve of the fact that I'm not willing to give it away, then you don't have to support me, by giving me money. I fail to see how you not liking my control over my creation, gives you any right to take it and do whatever you want, regardless of my wishes. If I choose not to share something, that should be my right.
And the Ex Post Facto bit, is a red herring. At no time has it been suggested, that someone be prosecuted for a crime that wasn't illegal at the time of commission. It would have been illegal to copy the works in question before the law was passed, as the copyrights hadn't expired.
I fail to see why everyone on this site seems to think that they have a god given right to take whatever they want, just because it's in an electronic form.
The granularity of the RAM architecture, is a non-issue at this point tho. The RAMBUS stuff is so much more expensive, that it's as cheap to put 4 times as much RAM in a box using PC-133 type modules, than it is to use RDRAM.
The Granularity issue might become a real one someday, but at this point, it's totally irrelevant.
I would assume that Sony bet on RDRAM being affordable early in the design cycle. And pitched it in marketing as being a best of breed solution. By the time they figured out what a hole they were digging for themselves, they were trapped into it.
The reason that the PSX2 can afford to use god-awful expensive RAM in it, is that they don't expect to make any profit on the consoles. The video game market is built on an age old premise. "Give away the razor, and charge for the blades." MS appears to not be trying that with the X-box. They don't typically get licensing from ISV's. However they may be planning on charging to allow an X-box logo on your software package.
I know Bruce is big and important when it comes to Free software. What in gods name did he say in that 3 line comment that was sooo incredibly insightful, that it needed to be moderated to a 5??? I don't know for sure that I would down it as redundant, but it's damn close.
Just because a free software advocate farts, doesn't mean that you have to breathe deep, and say how sweet it is.
From my experience, Gnutella seems to be falling on it's face. For the first day or two after running into it here, It seemed to be running ok. And I mostly could grab files. For the last week tho, I NEVER get anything, when I try to grab files. Most of the time, I get a requesting tag, forever. But maybe a third of the time, it just errors out. It's been at least a week, since I successfully downloaded anything at all.
Further, the quality of the stuff you get it atrocious. Back when I could grab files, I was having to scan through the file when it was done, to make sure that it was complete. That was one thing that Napster does right, since it's a particular type of data, and very specific, it was easy to show the quality info (bitrate, etc), before grabbing the file. Since anything at all can be made available on Gnutella, there is no guarantee that you're getting anything other than white-noise.
As an example of a technology idea, it's pretty cool. But it would seem that there are enough trolls out there, that they can cripple it.
JK seems to suffer from an extremely subjective view of reality. He looks at the world, and sees everything in terms of how it fits in with how he thinks the world works.
Would someone please explain to him, that the world is not run by, and for the benefit of geeks? It never ceases to amaze me, that everything that we (IT aware people) do, is good and proper. And everything that anyone does that isn't for the benefit of technologically aware people, is bad, and MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.
The fact that/. gives him a bully pulpit from which to pontificate, is a huge black eye, on the operators of this place. When I first found the site, I used to read faithfully, because it had alot of good material. Now I read it, mostly because I'm bored out of my skull at work.
I'll admit, that when I saw it last year, Matrix impressed the hell out of me.
Then, a few months later, I watched the DVD of Dark City. WOW, no comparison in my mind.
They cover some of the same thematic ground. But Dark City did it without the freeze frame trickery. Frankly, I thought that DC was a much better film. It just didn't have a marquee star like Keanau (god it's sad that he's become a marquee star at all).
If you haven't seen Dark City, go check it out. It's an awesome movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Most likely this won't do much for your mom. The problem is, who's gonna be at the other end of the pair? This is not a DSL line to the internet. It's a high speed connection between 2 places. It's basically a cheap way to set up a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network).
As someone else explained, a dry pair, is just a set of wires connecting the two points. I don't believe that the phone co. even runs power to them. So the distance, realistically is irrelevant. Once the wire is in the ground, if they get $0.05 a month from you for it, it's essentially found money. They have virtually no costs, once it's buried. And they do bury a ton of it, so that they have lots of room to grow in the future.
We've bought systems from Dell, without having them slob MS code onto them.
Oh, that's right, you're the idiot who said..
Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright.
Nice to see that you can keep a discussion logical, and civilized. Rather than explaining anything as a counterpoint to what I said, your only response, was a personal attack. How insightful. It would kill you to advance the conversation?
The Internet makes control of digital media impossible. Deal with it.
So simply because an enabling technology exists, that gives you the moral mandate, to copy whatever you want, without any concern for the rights of those that labored to create it? In short, might makes right. How charming, that you have such a neo-fuedal sense of civilization.
In theory, the idea of a decentralized shared library, is a nice idea. In practice, by design, this program is for sharing .mp3's, and other multimedia filetypes. The bulk of which are in circulation illegally.
And by designing this app, and marketing it for these filetypes, it rapidly turned into that being the only purpose that people were using it for.
I suppose it could be used to share documents that a totalitarian regime frowns upon. But a geocities site could do much the same, with much higher reliability. And something that is focused on distributing simple text files/html docs is going to be alot less likely to have script kiddies swarming all over it.
And the way that the search algorithyms work on Gnutella, it's impossible to get much of an idea about what a file is. The web is a much better medium for distributing most documents. It lets you show connections to a document, with information that provides clues as to relevancy, at the point of the link to the file.
It just seems to me, that programs like Napster, and Gnutella exist solely so people can set up a warez/mp3 site, without actually getting storage space, and setting up a real ftp site. I have yet to see an application of this type, being used for much else.
Just as a minor point, some cable systems use DHCP, and apparently PacBell DSL is starting to use it as well.
Maybe it's just me, but the GnutellaNet sure seems to be collapsing under it's own weight, and user's greed. I have been running it, but am quickly starting to realize that there isn't much point to it, anymore. It's been over a week since I've had anything successfully download. And over the weekend, at least half a dozen people grabbed a huge mpg off my system, how many copies of it are now available for grabbing - 1. Nice to see that once people leech the stuff, they have no intention of sharing it back out, thus reducing the potential load on my machine.
And last but not least, what's the point anyhow. I know that the pages about the program, claim that it's a tool for filesharing. But be realistic. There are a million easier ways to share files, that are far more reliable. If I have a file to share with a bud, I'll email it to him. Not tell him to log into Gnutella, and grab it. Or I'll toss it onto something like FilesAnywhere. The only reason that I can think of, that people love stuff like this, is it's so much more anonymous than even an FTP site. After all, someone has to be a designated contact for a domain name. On Gnutella, et al, nobody has to identify themselves at all.
The refernce to legitimacy, was regarding who's releaseing the stuff. It's a reference to the fact that these versions are being released by the legitimate developers. Rather than someone throwing together a hacked up version of a clone, and calling it Gnutella .x.
By and large, whenever anyone makes any attempt at all to limit peoples ability to copy digital data, the bulk of the populace of slashdot, and the editors scream bloody murder.
I do agree, that DMCA might night be a panacea, but neither is the system we have now. Look at how excited people were, to have Gnutella. This sites denizens, has fallen all over itself, to promote it, and there is little use for it, other than easing the distribution of stolen digital media. I'm sure that you can come up with some justification where it's a perfectly acceptable sounding tool, but I can't think of anything that couldn't be accomplished just as easily with other tools. The big difference is, that Gnutella does an excellent job of masking who is sharing what, so that it's much more difficult to backtrack who's pirating stuff.
Thus CSS discriminates against those who don't own set-top boxes or Windows machines, but wish to play the DVD's they paid for legitimately and have already bought the necessary equipment to do so (namely, a computer and a DVD drive).
I'm supposed to feel sorry for them, because they bought something that was not compatible with their computer? Why in gods name should I pity them, just because they didn't read the instructions before buying???
I, or my school, or my parents would have purchased the books that I drew information from, thus recompensing the authors. You still haven't given any reason at all, why my expression of a particular sequence of thoughts, shouldn't be my property to do with as I wish. I didn't say that someone can't draw inspiration from my particular expressions, just that I think that I should have some property rights over those exact expressions.
I won't deny that it's a very slippery slope to consider. I think it very difficult to draw exact lines of where, and how to grant rights on intellectual property. And I'm not sure where the most reasonable place is, to draw the line. But I do think that there ought to be some protections for IP. And I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
Why shouldn't there be a natural property right, to intellectual property? Why should the works of my mind, be any less mine, than the works of my body?
I was merely trying to point out, that the way that stuff is worded on this site, shows a severe bias on material like this.
And I totally agree that the way that the content providers have behaved, has been atrocious in many regards lately. They are getting very adept at poor customer relations. And it's costing them, and will continue to do so.
One can contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, without having ones specific creation be freely available. You could read what I created, and grow intellectually based on that reading. If you then go out, and create your own works, based on ideas that I helped nourish in your mind, then the body politic as a whole is improved by works that I created. It's not necessary that you have a right to do whatever you please with my exact words.
And I should have the right to license my works, and share them, in any manner that I deem appropriate. I didn't say that I don't want to share them. I merely said that I should have the right to control how they are shared, and to control who derives economic benefits from them being shared.
The line about Stephen King, is a great piece of slanted journalism. Got me curious as heck, when I read the line too. All the article really says, is that Anyone, including the holder of a copyright, is not allowed to use tools that circumvent protections that were placed on that copyright.
Stephen King is only not allowed to read his own work, on his platform of choice (a Mac). And only because someone screwed up, and made it a PC only download. I'm sure that he's absolutely allowed to read the original copy that he typed in.
I do so wish that the editors here wouldn't lean so far to the "make all date free for everyone, and who cares if nobody stops making it when the no longer get paid" extreme.
The people aren't parties to the "contract" of a copyright. Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright. Why should the creator of a work, have to give away his art after any arbitrary period of time? If I create something, I should be able to do what I will with it, for as long as I see fit. And if you don't approve of the fact that I'm not willing to give it away, then you don't have to support me, by giving me money. I fail to see how you not liking my control over my creation, gives you any right to take it and do whatever you want, regardless of my wishes. If I choose not to share something, that should be my right.
And the Ex Post Facto bit, is a red herring. At no time has it been suggested, that someone be prosecuted for a crime that wasn't illegal at the time of commission. It would have been illegal to copy the works in question before the law was passed, as the copyrights hadn't expired.
I fail to see why everyone on this site seems to think that they have a god given right to take whatever they want, just because it's in an electronic form.
The granularity of the RAM architecture, is a non-issue at this point tho. The RAMBUS stuff is so much more expensive, that it's as cheap to put 4 times as much RAM in a box using PC-133 type modules, than it is to use RDRAM.
The Granularity issue might become a real one someday, but at this point, it's totally irrelevant.
I would assume that Sony bet on RDRAM being affordable early in the design cycle. And pitched it in marketing as being a best of breed solution. By the time they figured out what a hole they were digging for themselves, they were trapped into it.
The reason that the PSX2 can afford to use god-awful expensive RAM in it, is that they don't expect to make any profit on the consoles. The video game market is built on an age old premise. "Give away the razor, and charge for the blades." MS appears to not be trying that with the X-box. They don't typically get licensing from ISV's. However they may be planning on charging to allow an X-box logo on your software package.
WTF is this lane thing that they refer to in the segment?
I know Bruce is big and important when it comes to Free software. What in gods name did he say in that 3 line comment that was sooo incredibly insightful, that it needed to be moderated to a 5??? I don't know for sure that I would down it as redundant, but it's damn close.
Just because a free software advocate farts, doesn't mean that you have to breathe deep, and say how sweet it is.
In the immortal words of one of my co-workers. "You can't spell a**hole, without AOL"
From my experience, Gnutella seems to be falling on it's face. For the first day or two after running into it here, It seemed to be running ok. And I mostly could grab files. For the last week tho, I NEVER get anything, when I try to grab files. Most of the time, I get a requesting tag, forever. But maybe a third of the time, it just errors out. It's been at least a week, since I successfully downloaded anything at all.
Further, the quality of the stuff you get it atrocious. Back when I could grab files, I was having to scan through the file when it was done, to make sure that it was complete. That was one thing that Napster does right, since it's a particular type of data, and very specific, it was easy to show the quality info (bitrate, etc), before grabbing the file. Since anything at all can be made available on Gnutella, there is no guarantee that you're getting anything other than white-noise.
As an example of a technology idea, it's pretty cool. But it would seem that there are enough trolls out there, that they can cripple it.
JK seems to suffer from an extremely subjective view of reality. He looks at the world, and sees everything in terms of how it fits in with how he thinks the world works.
/. gives him a bully pulpit from which to pontificate, is a huge black eye, on the operators of this place. When I first found the site, I used to read faithfully, because it had alot of good material. Now I read it, mostly because I'm bored out of my skull at work.
Would someone please explain to him, that the world is not run by, and for the benefit of geeks? It never ceases to amaze me, that everything that we (IT aware people) do, is good and proper. And everything that anyone does that isn't for the benefit of technologically aware people, is bad, and MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.
The fact that
I'll admit, that when I saw it last year, Matrix impressed the hell out of me.
Then, a few months later, I watched the DVD of Dark City. WOW, no comparison in my mind.
They cover some of the same thematic ground. But Dark City did it without the freeze frame trickery. Frankly, I thought that DC was a much better film. It just didn't have a marquee star like Keanau (god it's sad that he's become a marquee star at all).
If you haven't seen Dark City, go check it out. It's an awesome movie.
I'm glad to see that games are being ported onto Linux. It's always good to see the market for something that interests me, being expanded.
But that "interview" had significantly less real information than the average corporate press release might have. There was no substance to it at all.