Then again, the people who are submitting their personal data to the SpreadFirefox servers assume that it is safe to do so, regardless of whether or not it actually is. It all depends on how you want to place liability - caveat emptor (the users are liable) or negligence liability (the admins are liable).
When I first got online, the Web didn't exist yet. I was in elementary school, and my advanced studies teacher was helping me learn about computers. I remember sending an e-mail over a 300bps modem, from the only internet-capable computer in our school. This was back in the days when I programmed in BASIC on an Apple IIgs (IIe?).
I find it unfortunate that I never got into the BBS scene - moreso, that I didn't know it existed. When I got my first modem-equipped computer, the modem sat unused until we eventually got dial-up internet service. Nowadays I enjoy telnetting into some newer BBSes, but it's just not the same...
I need to be more clear...
When I said "That's simply not true," I was referring to putting any creative work into a fixed tangible form automatically confers the protection of copyright, effective from that moment. What "protection" is there without registration? Certainly not the protection of your right to profit from your work.
It all really started when he said he would "sue them for millions of dollars for breaking the copyright restrictions on [his] site". I meant to convey the point that he couldn't get any money without registering the copyright.
In the United States, putting any creative work into a fixed tangible form automatically confers the protection of copyright, effective from that moment. No notice or registration is required.
That's simply not true. You have to be able to prove that you created it first, and if you want the right to be the sole receiver of royalties from your work, you have to register it with the copyright office. This isn't free, either.
I love that I was modded 'troll'. I was dead serious. When I roomed with a guy who owned a projector, I lived in a dorm with painted cinder-block walls. All we did was hang up a sheet, and you simply cannot tell the difference from across a room. It's ludicrous to spend $110 on a screen when you can have a nearly identical quality image on a bedsheet.
The question, of course, is whether or not you actually had legally-enforceable restrictions. Did you set up your robots.txt file? Does simply stating that a site is copyrighted, without registering it, actually mean that it is copyrighted?
... if they lose this fight.
For example, 2600 Magazine's old web site containing a copy of the DeCSS source code is stored in the Archive. Could the Archive be held in violation of the DMCA for mirroring someone else's old site?
A lot of my own personal projects came about that way - for example, a program to quickly scan a disk for large files, a command-line program that resolves an IP to a domain name, etc. It makes sense, really - if nobody else is doing it, or it isn't cheap/free, do it yourself!
Funny; last I checked, "I applaud the degree to which the BBC is embracing the open-source model" is a positive comment... and no, I'm not pissed that a non-American organization is doing this. I don't care who does it.
I applaud the degree to which the BBC is embracing the open-source model. I just wish that some American groups would do the same.
A couple questions, though. What inspired the British Broadcasting Corporation to suddenly leap into the software programming foray? Are they hoping to build some sort of new service out of all of this, or is it just going to end up as a bunch of disconnected apps?
Regardless of whether or not you hear the difference, there is literally a 77% loss of recording quality. Your perception is irrelevant to hard numbers!
I really feel sorry for the/. subscribers whose paid-for ad-free page views are going towards dupes. It almost seems like the/. eds are trying to make them buy more views just to be able to see new articles...
If music is released on iTunes before it comes out on CD, the only ways that that music could be pirated are:
1. burn it to a CD, then rip the CD, thus losing quality
2. record the audio as you play it
3. crack the encryption.
However, with a video, #1 and #2 are out of the question. Unless, of course, you really want to hook up an S-Video/etc. out plug to a digital camera or VCR, record the playback to the camera, and transfer it back. It's just not feasible. Unless (until?) the encryption is cracked, this won't help piracy one bit.
The caption to this image: ... The circles represent the position of each spherical particle, and the central color of each circle represents the degree of positional fluctuation of each colloidal particle...
Um, uncertainty principle, anyone? How can you measure velocity and position of a microscopic particle?
Of course I'm kidding. I know that we're talking about above-atomic-size particles here... and that measuring positional fluctuation is not measuring velocity, because velocity includes a direction.
Mod this guy up. I was about to say the same thing. See here.
However, this probably only applies to internet-over-cable connections; VoIP, DSL, high-speed wireless, T1, OC-n lines and others might face the tax. However, would cable USERS face the tax since the cable OWNERS won't?
Somehow I just don't care.
Sun may be shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to join the FOSS movement. Simply offering software for free is obviously not good enough; they need to make it totally accessible for it to meet its potential.
But this doesn't matter, really. If Sun decides that they're going to keep their toys to theirselves, the FOSS community will come up with something to rival it. It happened with lots of other programs, and now we have OpenOffice, Linux, MonoDevelop, Audacity, PDFCreator, GiMP, Blender, Firefox, 7-Zip, and more. It can happen with Java, too.
Regardless of the fact that the new alternatives would no doubt mimic Java, the fact that their source would be universally available would give them an edge over the original.
Will the other smaller chipmakers somehow benefit from this? For example, I seem to recall a story about some company or another tanking because they couldn't sell competitive chips anymore. Is this really just an AMD publicity stunt, or do they somehow hope to help the "little guys"?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh man. If Maddox heard about this, he'd be pretty upset.
Oh wait. No, he wouldn't. Because he's a badass pirate, and according to the Uncyclopedia, "it is important to note that pirates will never, ever stop being cool."
Not to be confused with Ninjas, who "just totally flip out and cut people's heads off ALL the time". Ninjas would not make good bloggers, because they would constantly be attacking their monitors because they look like heads.
Then again, the people who are submitting their personal data to the SpreadFirefox servers assume that it is safe to do so, regardless of whether or not it actually is. It all depends on how you want to place liability - caveat emptor (the users are liable) or negligence liability (the admins are liable).
When I first got online, the Web didn't exist yet. I was in elementary school, and my advanced studies teacher was helping me learn about computers. I remember sending an e-mail over a 300bps modem, from the only internet-capable computer in our school. This was back in the days when I programmed in BASIC on an Apple IIgs (IIe?).
I find it unfortunate that I never got into the BBS scene - moreso, that I didn't know it existed. When I got my first modem-equipped computer, the modem sat unused until we eventually got dial-up internet service. Nowadays I enjoy telnetting into some newer BBSes, but it's just not the same...
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.
I need to be more clear...
When I said "That's simply not true," I was referring to putting any creative work into a fixed tangible form automatically confers the protection of copyright, effective from that moment. What "protection" is there without registration? Certainly not the protection of your right to profit from your work.
It all really started when he said he would "sue them for millions of dollars for breaking the copyright restrictions on [his] site". I meant to convey the point that he couldn't get any money without registering the copyright.
In the United States, putting any creative work into a fixed tangible form automatically confers the protection of copyright, effective from that moment. No notice or registration is required.
That's simply not true. You have to be able to prove that you created it first, and if you want the right to be the sole receiver of royalties from your work, you have to register it with the copyright office. This isn't free, either.
I love that I was modded 'troll'. I was dead serious. When I roomed with a guy who owned a projector, I lived in a dorm with painted cinder-block walls. All we did was hang up a sheet, and you simply cannot tell the difference from across a room. It's ludicrous to spend $110 on a screen when you can have a nearly identical quality image on a bedsheet.
Cost: $174
Cost of SCREEN to project onto: $110
Why would you not just hang a sheet on your wall?
The question, of course, is whether or not you actually had legally-enforceable restrictions. Did you set up your robots.txt file? Does simply stating that a site is copyrighted, without registering it, actually mean that it is copyrighted?
... if they lose this fight.
For example, 2600 Magazine's old web site containing a copy of the DeCSS source code is stored in the Archive. Could the Archive be held in violation of the DMCA for mirroring someone else's old site?
A lot of my own personal projects came about that way - for example, a program to quickly scan a disk for large files, a command-line program that resolves an IP to a domain name, etc. It makes sense, really - if nobody else is doing it, or it isn't cheap/free, do it yourself!
Funny; last I checked, "I applaud the degree to which the BBC is embracing the open-source model" is a positive comment... and no, I'm not pissed that a non-American organization is doing this. I don't care who does it.
I applaud the degree to which the BBC is embracing the open-source model. I just wish that some American groups would do the same.
A couple questions, though. What inspired the British Broadcasting Corporation to suddenly leap into the software programming foray? Are they hoping to build some sort of new service out of all of this, or is it just going to end up as a bunch of disconnected apps?
Regardless of whether or not you hear the difference, there is literally a 77% loss of recording quality. Your perception is irrelevant to hard numbers!
The iTunes songs are, I believe, encoded at 320kbps. A pressed audio CD is 1411kbps. That's a more than 75% quality loss - quite enough to mention.
I really feel sorry for the /. subscribers whose paid-for ad-free page views are going towards dupes. It almost seems like the /. eds are trying to make them buy more views just to be able to see new articles...
Just FYI: if there is any degradation, the compression is not lossless. Lossless, by definition, means that there is no degradation.
If music is released on iTunes before it comes out on CD, the only ways that that music could be pirated are:
1. burn it to a CD, then rip the CD, thus losing quality
2. record the audio as you play it
3. crack the encryption.
However, with a video, #1 and #2 are out of the question. Unless, of course, you really want to hook up an S-Video/etc. out plug to a digital camera or VCR, record the playback to the camera, and transfer it back. It's just not feasible. Unless (until?) the encryption is cracked, this won't help piracy one bit.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/01/021 8209
The caption to this image:
... The circles represent the position of each spherical particle, and the central color of each circle represents the degree of positional fluctuation of each colloidal particle...
Um, uncertainty principle, anyone? How can you measure velocity and position of a microscopic particle?
Of course I'm kidding. I know that we're talking about above-atomic-size particles here... and that measuring positional fluctuation is not measuring velocity, because velocity includes a direction.
Mod this guy up. I was about to say the same thing.
See here.
However, this probably only applies to internet-over-cable connections; VoIP, DSL, high-speed wireless, T1, OC-n lines and others might face the tax. However, would cable USERS face the tax since the cable OWNERS won't?
Exactly. The perception of Java becoming free-as-in-open was something everyone else created.
Somehow I just don't care.
Sun may be shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to join the FOSS movement. Simply offering software for free is obviously not good enough; they need to make it totally accessible for it to meet its potential.
But this doesn't matter, really. If Sun decides that they're going to keep their toys to theirselves, the FOSS community will come up with something to rival it. It happened with lots of other programs, and now we have OpenOffice, Linux, MonoDevelop, Audacity, PDFCreator, GiMP, Blender, Firefox, 7-Zip, and more. It can happen with Java, too.
Regardless of the fact that the new alternatives would no doubt mimic Java, the fact that their source would be universally available would give them an edge over the original.
Will the other smaller chipmakers somehow benefit from this? For example, I seem to recall a story about some company or another tanking because they couldn't sell competitive chips anymore. Is this really just an AMD publicity stunt, or do they somehow hope to help the "little guys"?
Due to special relativity, I accuse you of stealing my joke and posting it before I could.