"On the one hand we have media execs that demand tougher copyright laws "to protect artists" while having clauses inserted in the same bill to cheat them of their returned rights.
On the other we have a bunch of folk who want to have everything for free and construct elaborate explanations as to how this is great for the artists. "
I'm increasingly of the belief that the morality of file sharing is irrelevant. Right or wrong, I doubt even the government can stop it, as easy as it's become. And we're already at the point where companies' pursuit of profits are inhibiting the good of society, and stopping file sharing (if we are to assume that is even possible) would go much further than that, with a result a lot worse than starving artists and media executives.
I have to disagree. I believe that outright theft of someone's copyrighted work is wrong, regardless of whether it's done for personal use (what I call micropiracy) or commercial profit. Similarly, I believe that making copies of something you have (either that you bought legally or copied from somewhere else) to give to other people is wrong, with some exceptions.
I also have to state my objection to a single broad classification of 'piracy'. I believe there are legitimate uses of obtaining copyrighted works without paying for them, that do not fall under any ethical definition of 'theft' or 'piracy', despite being generally illegal (depending on your country). The biggest one of these I can think of is sampling before you buy; I can't see any moral problem with listening to an album a couple times to decide whether you want to buy it, provided you either buy it or stop listening to it afterwards. Similarly, there a number of things falling under 'fair use', such as educational purposes, criticism, etc., that the MAFIAA consider illegal that I do not consider wrong nor 'piracy'.
As for the topic of this thread, I believe they made the right decision for a couple reasons. 1. The cost/benefit ratio of prosecuting people committing micropiracy is far too high to be practical even with conventional definitions of piracy (e.g. any file sharing is piracy), and would be a huge drain on anyone who tries to enforce it 2. As there are legitimate uses unpaid for copyrighted media via file sharing (or otherwise), I don't believe it's enough to simply consider downloading or uploading copyrighted works to be piracy; the purpose must also be taken into account, which sets an impossibly high bar for enforcement 3. They couldn't stop micropiracy if they tried, at this point
Yeah. It was a joke (though sometimes it sure seems like the truth), although it hitting "5 informative" so fast ended up being a joke on me.:P If I understand correctly (IANAL), $750 is the minimum and $150,000 is the maximum for willful infringement.
You make a very good point about the music industry and the lack of need for copyright protection. I've always thought that copyright was way too long (I believe something like 10-20 years would be more appropriate), though you're making me reevaluate the need for even that in some specific media.
That said, I thought I should point out that your argument has limited applicability to copyright in general. Music is a special case because of the need for live performers in the music industry. Despite the ease of (in the absence of copyright) playing a CD for your customers in your store, in most cultures live music is preferred. Thus performers remain in demand even if the content those performers create is not protected. The same could be said about plays and operas.
However, this is not applicable to many (dare I say a majority) other cases where copyright and intellectual property are enforced. Movies, books, and computer programs, for example, do not depend on live performances, and so cannot be made into services using this business model. Similarly, this is entirely inapplicable to patents (which I'd also like to see scaled back).
Despite all the sucking that the RIAA has been doing lately (yes, I hate, them, too), the RIAA still has a useful role left to play in the digital distribution age; at some point they're going to have to remember what it is, and get back to doing productive things. It's now possible for anyone, large or small, professional or hobbyist, to publish their music online without help from a record label. However, what independent bands aren't equipped to handle is legal action against large-scale commercial piracy and counterfeiting rings.
P2P makes noncommercial piracy (defined by me as downloading something and using it indefinitely without ever paying for it) easier than ever before, and all these RIAA suits aren't going to be able to stop it (and I'd wager if they tried criminalizing it they will fail just like prohibition did); it's just going to be a fact of life from now on. They can, however, tackle the commercial piracy organizations, and going after those is actually one of the purposes of the RIAA, and one which is not going to become obsolete in the digital age (although it will probably become less frequent, given how simple and easy noncommercial P2P piracy is).
"I think that's mostly true, but that it's far less true than it would have been if the industry had pursued different polices over the past several years.
There's a whole generation out there now that's grown up with piracy, and that's totally comfortable with it. Because this fight has polarized people so much, it's pushed a lot of people into the pro-piracy side who wouldn't have been there otherwise."
There's plenty of precedent for that. Ever heard of the badman tradition? It's the component of modern culture (especially things like gangsta rap) that glorifies (or at least considers cool) killing cops and other authority figures, especially in black culture. This tradition began due to extreme racism in the US, especially in the south, where racism was especially strong. As whites still controlled all the infrastructure and government long after the abolition of slavery, this was often used to continue to oppress blacks through other, "legal" means. Consequently, there became an association between (predominantly white) authority and institutionalized (and often violent) oppression of blacks, and the mindset in black culture became them fighting (sometimes violently) for freedom from that oppression embodied by authority figures such as cops (which, to an extent, they were).
I'd like to think that racism has decreased significantly over the last few decades (whether that's true is left as an exercise to the reader), but the backlash against that racism is definitely still around.
There was an incident several weeks ago where I was unable to upload anything on BitTorrent for several days (though downloading worked fine). Looking at what was happening, it looked like new connections were getting instantly terminated in a variety of ways - everything from time out (gotta love 0 ms time outs) to connection actively refused by target computer. Only a few days before the incident BT was working, so this came as quite a surprise. This led me to suspect that my ISP (Yahoo! DSL through SBC/AT&T) was also forging a variety of packets to kill BT uploading. However, about a week after this began, it stopped, so I'm not sure if it was a test run of something to come, or what. I haven't been able to find anything online about AT&T blocking BT uploads, but all the information I was able to gather suggests that's what was happening.
I'm not sure they can defend themselves, frankly. I guess I differ from most of the most vocal Slashdot people in that I believe P2P file sharing (specifically a subset of that - theft) is hurting the music and movie industries, and I believe that stealing content via P2P is morally wrong. That said, I oppose their suits on a number of grounds (possibly more than I can recall off the top of my head); to name a few:
- Even in the worst case scenario - that the downloader and everyone they uploaded to are truly stealing the content (morally wrong), the suits they are bringing are orders of magnitude greater than the theft committed. $3k-$5k out-of-court settlements are nearly universal; tet most people will not upload much more than the amount they downloaded, and even in extreme cases not more than several times what they downloaded. So, if they downloaded a music CD worth $15, they have (assuming all parties are stealing) stolen (or willingly facilitated stealing) 2x-5x that (5x is a bit arbitrary), or $30-$75. Even at the high end of theft ($75) and low end of damages ($3k), that is *40 times* the value of that which was stolen; the other way around ($30 and $5k), it's almost 200 times the value. Can you honestly tell me that you support that? No, really, I want you to type in your answer and click "submit".
- The RIAA has been using downright illegal tactics to bring these cases (see Beckerman's site for details about this). And I'm not throwing the term "illegal" around lightly, like many Slashdotters. I mean they are literally defying direct orders made *by the courts* in order to bring law suits that they would not have been able to bring using purely legal methods.
- The RIAA has been using legal but immoral tactics to bring these cases. Most commonly, the RIAA picks people who they believe do not have the resources to defend against the suit, making the outcome the same, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent (and short-circuiting the justice system entirely): they have to settle, because they can't afford a lawyer to defend themselves (and if they do hire a lawyer, the RIAA lets them accumulate a sizable bill, then drops the case, so the people will usually have to pay more than the settlement would have been). This is done to build fear by maintaining a perfect prosecution record, to discourage others from sharing files or hiring a lawyer to defend themselves. I know of not a single case the RIAA has won - that is, the case has gone to verdict and the verdict was in their favor; if you know of a single case, click "reply" and link to it, right now. And because they drop cases once it becomes obvious they cannot win them, they have just the same never suffered a loss (though that tide appears to be slowly turning). They care so much about their perfect record that they will continue suits against people who they either knew from the beginning or learned during the trial are innocent, because dropping the case would show that they don't have absolute power, and diminish the fear they seek to create. Do you support each and every one of these methods? Again, that is not a rhetorical question; I am expecting a real answer.
- The RIAA needs to preserve their undefeated status because they cannot possibly catch all of (or even enough to save their business) the true P2P thieves out there, let alone distinguish the thieves from the ones who have not immoral uses (such as seeing if they want to buy and album/movie legally). This is a painful exercise in futility. Their only (false) hope is to try to generate enough fear to make everyone they don't have resources to sue stop sharing. This is *not* working, and cannot in theory work. While it's true that they may be able to reduce (not stop) theft via P2P in the US by going after web sites and individual P2P users, where they have the power of law suits, such suits cannot be brought in a majority of the world because they do not have jurisdiction (let alone the resources to sue that many people), meaning that even fear is outside the
That is a beautiful piece of logic you have there. If you violate the terms of MS' license, you're okay, because they were artificial and arbitrary restrictions, anyway. If you violate the GPL's equally artificial and arbitrary limitations, you're a pirate and a lawbreaker, because you've violated the terms of the license. See how absurd it is?
Now, I'm a programmer. I've recently been working on releasing a couple of my programs as open source, so I've had to take a good look at the various licenses, and see which one is closest to my ideals. Just about anything but the BSD license (and arguably even that, though that would almost be splitting hairs) is indistinguishable from DRM, save for one exception: most open-source licenses attempt to achieve maximal collective benefit (rights), while DRM seeks nothing more than to maximize the benefit (profit) of the creators. That is, DRM and source licenses both prevent you from doing things with the code/media that you would otherwise be able to do; if you think differently, you surely have given up the term "DRM" in favor of "consumer enablement" (which it actually looks like you have, from your post).
The CDDL, the license closest to my ideals, is based on a single restriction: that if you modify the open code, you have to keep the CDDL for your changes, keeping the work open; so long as this rule is followed, you can use the code in any way, in any project. This is an arbitrary restriction on the ability of other people to use my code. However, I justify this restriction with the reasoning that I want as many people as possible to be able to make use of my code (and thus any advances to it). I'm sacrificing the ability of individuals to use my code in an unrestricted manner for the calculated benefit of the whole programming community.
While the GPL does this as well, it does something else that I consider uselessly arbitrary (that is, it limits the freedom of users without contributing significantly to the common good) and, for that reason, particularly obnoxious. Anyone who's read the GPL knows what I'm referring to: the requirement that any project which so much as uses GPL code must itself be GPL in its entirety. This is a political rather than practical requirement: the GPL serves to promote free software, and will restrict the freedom of users to attempt to increase the amount of free code available in total. I'd imagine the reasoning is that if all software were free and open, the world would be a better place; but I can't really agree with the sentiment or the means used to achieve it. The LGPL is better, but not as close as CDDL to my ideals (if you want more info on the topic, I wrote a several-page justification of my choice of license on my blog).
Wow. There's a statistic in that article that really leaves an impression, and no, it's not 36/39 vs 12/27; it's 23 vs 1 - the number of severe security holes in XP and Vista found in the first six months. That brings up a few questions, like whether these metrics are the same (one person brought up the question of secret, unannounced fixes, another the issue of the number of people looking for problems). But if these numbers are comparable (heck, even if the Vista number is 3 or 4 times lower than is realistic), that's a huge improvement in Windows security, and an effort on MS' part worth applauding.
You seem to be grossly misinformed. While copyright infringement done without the intent to make a profit is indeed a civil matter, copyright infringement for the purpose of making a profit is very much illegal.
Speaking as someone who thinks the DMCA is insane, despises the way the RIAA treats its artists and then calls itself the defender of musicians everywhere, thinks that copyright needs reasonable term limits, has the current AACS key in his MSN Messenger tag-line, and checks Beckerman's blog regularly in the hope of good news, I support this action.
Well, I should congratulate you. In one post you've managed to provide some real (and interesting) information, and at the same time refute your entire argument (I can only hypothesize that that was the whole reason it took you so long to spit it out). It sounds like you've done a fine job (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, here) of updating that system with much more modern technology which didn't even exist when the machine was brought into service. That must have been a lot of work, and required learning many things to accomplish. Now what were you saying about having to learn one new thing in 22 years being for propeller-heads (that's referring to the bleeding edge, right? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that term or "space cadet", or other such insults, and can only guess the meaning based on context)?
Again you've managed to completely misunderstand every single one of my posts, and compensate by throwing random insults. I have never advocated wholesale replacement of an entire system. I have, from the very first post (in which it was explicitly stated, a fact which obviously went so far over your head that it got hijacked and flown into a major landmark) advocated an incremental improvement in existing programs to take advantage of newer, better hardware, and reduce the complexity and cost of both hardware and software (have you ever taken a hardware design course? how about an operating systems concepts class?). Apparently you're not just making your own stuff up as you go along, but you're also making up "my" stuff as you go along.
"22 years is an eternity? You must be young and dumb. I've worked on systems that have run for 15 years - before i was even in computing professionally - they show no sign of quitting and are constantly evolving, and I make good living servicing them."
I get the feeling you've given up on saying anything you actually believe, because the only way to keep fighting at this point is to make stuff up as you go. I notice you've not responded to any of my points from the very beginning, but rather reiterated your assertion that I'm wrong without proof, and mixed in varying insults in the process. In fact, the only fact you've stated in all of your three posts (assuming it's true) is that you work on old systems. Do you really expect to win a debate like that? But I guess when you're as special as you are, making arguments (which, by definition, involves evidence and reason) is beneath you.
Normally, right here I'd give you a lengthy tour of the technological progress of the last 22 years, containing dozens of specific examples. But frankly, as you've not actually made any attempt to refute any of my previous points, I'd have to be remarkably stupid to spend any effort making further points. So, I shall write one very brief and narrow paragraph on the x86 clock speed, as an example of what would be here, were I to actually spend the effort to write this section.
In the last 22 years, the x86 has increased from a clock speed of 16 Mhz to 2.9 Ghz: an increase of 183 times. This number is extremely misleading, however, as the 386 was single-core, single-cycle, single-ALU, with strong instruction ordering; new CPUs now have up to 4 cores, multiple instructions are executed concurrently on each core out of order, and with SIMD instructions allowing multiple values to be calculated per instruction. Of course this is still misleading, as the number of cycles per instruction has decreased dramatically. For example, the 386 could perform approximately 421 thousand 32-bit integer multiplications per second, while the Core 2 quad can perform almost 12 billion of the same - a speedup of 28,000 times.
Now, are you QUITE done fighting a losing battle and looking like an idiot in the process? Simply being loud and insulting is not enough to win a debate with someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
Mmm. Miss the entire point of the post, reply to something else, declare self winner and call other person an idiot, profit! Excellent debating strategy you have, there; bet you get a lot of satisfaction from it. Let me spell it out very carefully: we are in one of the most rapidly changing industries in the most productive period ever in history. Here, 22 years is an eternity. Anyone who complains about having to learn one new thing in this industry in 22 years is, as I pointed out, a total and complete crybaby (not to mention roadkill in the labor market). In fact, just that x86 has been the dominant chip for as long as it has is astounding.
As for offering an advantage, I totally agree. Unfortunately, you appear to have absolutely no idea what kind of advantages are on the market here, or you wouldn't have been able to come to the faulty conclusion that I advocate doing totally random things. And given your aversion to learning, I suspect it'd be far more productive to do work (or heck, even play World of Warcraft) than to try to explain it to you.
Do you work at McDonalds, by any chance? No wait, that was a stupid question. Obviously not, as you'd have to learn a new recipe every couple of years, if you did. Now excuse me while I (or perhaps I should say "we", as there are many, MANY of us) go maintain the status quo of light-speed progress while your brain shrivels up and dies in your learning deprivation chamber.
"Installing applications? I don't need a warning when I'm installing an application. I know that I'm installing an application."
Oh wow! A celebrity on Slashdot! Everyone say hello to Dilbert's boss!
"Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of a malicious device driver?"
They're called rootkits, Jim. Maybe you've heard of them.
Somehow I have a feeling that the joke's gonna be on me: that this guy was just trying to see how dumb people would believe he is, and isn't really that stupid. At least that would preserve my faith in humanity...
"Apple manages to support 32-bit and 64-bit architectures for both PPC and Intel. Linux supports *tons* of different architectures. Why is it that it's a particular stumbling block for Microsoft and Microsoft developers?"
Such a change requires the program be recompiled (assuming the code itself doesn't prevent use of 64-bit pointers for one reason or another). A moment of critical thought would reveal the answer for Linux. As for Apple, I'd bet money that it's related to the fact that there are almost two orders of magnitude more users of MS systems (Windows now, but DOS in the past) than of Macs, as well as the number of programs available and I'd bet the number of essential systems (I'm thinking of things like accounting or custom business software that runs on office computers). And from what I hear from my Mac programmer friend, they seem to have more influence over their coders in general.
"if it's too difficult for programmers to support different architectures, the solution isn't to restrict supported architectures, but rather to improve the ability to develop across multiple architectures."
It's funny you should mention that, as I write a little unofficially open-source (I haven't got around to officially releasing it with a formal license yet) Windows/POSIX cross-platform library of things that are typically very difficult to port (things like multi-core programming, asynchronous I/O, cross-architecture communication, etc.). Yet I doubt even my library will get most people to write portable code. And portability is just one of the major things people don't know how to do; add things like multithreading (the kind that allows your program to take full advantage of multiple cores; actually, myself and a friend are currently working on setting up a parallel programming class at his university), not require admin (mainly applies to sucky Windows programs), etc. I'm pushing for all of these, but I doubt I'll be able to change the world.
"Ideally you should be able to develop a program once and have it run on any architecture and on any OS with minimal changes."
It's not difficult like writing a game for the Cell (shudder), but it is a bit tricky. It's very common to store bit flags in a pointer because they're unused. Between converting the pointer to an integer to do bit manipulation and back, and the way programs (like Blizzard games) like to use the high bit, there's a lot of code that won't work right without being fixed. Even worse, people will usually typecast the pointer to an integer with a fixed size (the size on the processor they're writing for), which isn't forward compatible. Now, moving to 32 bits from 16 bits was a whole different ballgame (as pointers worked fundamentally differently, not just larger); such conversions were a huge pain for programs larger than 64 KB.
"If you don't agree, consider that the Intel x86-64bit processors probably won't be around forever. What happens the next time Microsoft decides to change their preferred platform. Do all the old platforms just become obsolete? Shouldn't they be working towards making these sorts of transitions seamless."
Haha, we can only hope; x86 is a pretty icky architecture (though that's not likely to ever become dominant, I personally am a big fan of the MIPS architecture; there's a reason it's so commonly used in teaching assembly classes - it has an incredibly nice instruction set and architecture). But that's what they said 10-20 years ago. At the rate things are going, there's no guarantee that Windows will move off of x86 before MS goes out of business (which is equally uncertain). In either case, they've really made the 32-bit to 64-bit transition as seamless as theoretically possible, short of a full, buggy emulator (the Mac approach).
Waaugh! Cry some more. It's been 22 years since the 32-bit x86 (the 386) came out, and the 16-bit to 32-bit transition was actually much harder than this 32-bit to 64-bit transition (I actually did some 16-bit DOS programming). Or, if you prefer, 11 years or so since Windows 95 came out.
Now run home to mommy. The adults are talking, here. Oh, and while you're leaving, take your crappy admin-required programs with you.
As a programmer I've been waiting for this. I was actually disappointed that Vista would support 32-bit CPUs, but I guess there was no way around that, given how common 32-bit x86s still are. Having one architecture to support will make things much easier, as well as get people to actually update their legacy code. Now if MS could get them to actually fix all the problems due to generally crappy code (like requiring admin)...
The title pretty much says it all. WHY is MS doing this? No, "they're dumb as dog shit" and "Bill Gates is the antichrist come to bring tribulation upon the righteous [OSS people]" aren't valid answers. I could imagine that they're greedy, and perhaps even scared by open source. But WHAT rational reason does MS have to take this action? If they reveal the list, they better have one or two really good ones, because most will be either easily invalidated or quickly patched by the many, many Linux nerds worldwide (and Gord help them if IBM or some of the other giants step into the ring). If they don't reveal the claims, well, that'll make it impossible to sue (and IANAL, but some of the other comments suggested that some could call MS' bluff and put a stop to the spreading of FUD).
At least MS getting SCO to pull a stunt like that (I have no comment on whether I think that's true) would make sense, as it wouldn't be any harm to MS; but time has shown the harm it's done to SCO, and I can't imagine MS would want to get into a losing fight like that, directly. Is there some way they could actually come out on top by this? I have a hard time believing people do things without a rational reason; now what is it?
Can anybody verify that this guy knows the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit? As far as I know CPUs don't usually live past 90 C or so, let alone 127 C.
Slashdot Mirror
John Doe thinks:
"Illegal music sounds horrible...
This music I got from BitTorrent doesn't sound horrible...
This music must not be illegal."
Foot, meet gun.
Canadian DMCA Won't Include Consumer Rights
What kind of expectation of special treatment is that? If consumers want rights they can pay for them just like everybody else!
"On the one hand we have media execs that demand tougher copyright laws "to protect artists" while having clauses inserted in the same bill to cheat them of their returned rights.
On the other we have a bunch of folk who want to have everything for free and construct elaborate explanations as to how this is great for the artists. "
I'm increasingly of the belief that the morality of file sharing is irrelevant. Right or wrong, I doubt even the government can stop it, as easy as it's become. And we're already at the point where companies' pursuit of profits are inhibiting the good of society, and stopping file sharing (if we are to assume that is even possible) would go much further than that, with a result a lot worse than starving artists and media executives.
I have to disagree. I believe that outright theft of someone's copyrighted work is wrong, regardless of whether it's done for personal use (what I call micropiracy) or commercial profit. Similarly, I believe that making copies of something you have (either that you bought legally or copied from somewhere else) to give to other people is wrong, with some exceptions.
I also have to state my objection to a single broad classification of 'piracy'. I believe there are legitimate uses of obtaining copyrighted works without paying for them, that do not fall under any ethical definition of 'theft' or 'piracy', despite being generally illegal (depending on your country). The biggest one of these I can think of is sampling before you buy; I can't see any moral problem with listening to an album a couple times to decide whether you want to buy it, provided you either buy it or stop listening to it afterwards. Similarly, there a number of things falling under 'fair use', such as educational purposes, criticism, etc., that the MAFIAA consider illegal that I do not consider wrong nor 'piracy'.
As for the topic of this thread, I believe they made the right decision for a couple reasons.
1. The cost/benefit ratio of prosecuting people committing micropiracy is far too high to be practical even with conventional definitions of piracy (e.g. any file sharing is piracy), and would be a huge drain on anyone who tries to enforce it
2. As there are legitimate uses unpaid for copyrighted media via file sharing (or otherwise), I don't believe it's enough to simply consider downloading or uploading copyrighted works to be piracy; the purpose must also be taken into account, which sets an impossibly high bar for enforcement
3. They couldn't stop micropiracy if they tried, at this point
Yeah. It was a joke (though sometimes it sure seems like the truth), although it hitting "5 informative" so fast ended up being a joke on me. :P If I understand correctly (IANAL), $750 is the minimum and $150,000 is the maximum for willful infringement.
Allow me to briefly explain to you how the laws regarding awarding of damages for willful copyright infringement work.
Infringement by an individual: $150,000 per infringement
Infringement by a corporation: $750 per infringement
You make a very good point about the music industry and the lack of need for copyright protection. I've always thought that copyright was way too long (I believe something like 10-20 years would be more appropriate), though you're making me reevaluate the need for even that in some specific media.
That said, I thought I should point out that your argument has limited applicability to copyright in general. Music is a special case because of the need for live performers in the music industry. Despite the ease of (in the absence of copyright) playing a CD for your customers in your store, in most cultures live music is preferred. Thus performers remain in demand even if the content those performers create is not protected. The same could be said about plays and operas.
However, this is not applicable to many (dare I say a majority) other cases where copyright and intellectual property are enforced. Movies, books, and computer programs, for example, do not depend on live performances, and so cannot be made into services using this business model. Similarly, this is entirely inapplicable to patents (which I'd also like to see scaled back).
Clearly Canada is working hard to produce a cure for Americans' general feeling of stupidity/inferiority from having Bush as president.
Despite all the sucking that the RIAA has been doing lately (yes, I hate, them, too), the RIAA still has a useful role left to play in the digital distribution age; at some point they're going to have to remember what it is, and get back to doing productive things. It's now possible for anyone, large or small, professional or hobbyist, to publish their music online without help from a record label. However, what independent bands aren't equipped to handle is legal action against large-scale commercial piracy and counterfeiting rings.
P2P makes noncommercial piracy (defined by me as downloading something and using it indefinitely without ever paying for it) easier than ever before, and all these RIAA suits aren't going to be able to stop it (and I'd wager if they tried criminalizing it they will fail just like prohibition did); it's just going to be a fact of life from now on. They can, however, tackle the commercial piracy organizations, and going after those is actually one of the purposes of the RIAA, and one which is not going to become obsolete in the digital age (although it will probably become less frequent, given how simple and easy noncommercial P2P piracy is).
"I think that's mostly true, but that it's far less true than it would have been if the industry had pursued different polices over the past several years.
There's a whole generation out there now that's grown up with piracy, and that's totally comfortable with it. Because this fight has polarized people so much, it's pushed a lot of people into the pro-piracy side who wouldn't have been there otherwise."
There's plenty of precedent for that. Ever heard of the badman tradition? It's the component of modern culture (especially things like gangsta rap) that glorifies (or at least considers cool) killing cops and other authority figures, especially in black culture. This tradition began due to extreme racism in the US, especially in the south, where racism was especially strong. As whites still controlled all the infrastructure and government long after the abolition of slavery, this was often used to continue to oppress blacks through other, "legal" means. Consequently, there became an association between (predominantly white) authority and institutionalized (and often violent) oppression of blacks, and the mindset in black culture became them fighting (sometimes violently) for freedom from that oppression embodied by authority figures such as cops (which, to an extent, they were).
I'd like to think that racism has decreased significantly over the last few decades (whether that's true is left as an exercise to the reader), but the backlash against that racism is definitely still around.
There was an incident several weeks ago where I was unable to upload anything on BitTorrent for several days (though downloading worked fine). Looking at what was happening, it looked like new connections were getting instantly terminated in a variety of ways - everything from time out (gotta love 0 ms time outs) to connection actively refused by target computer. Only a few days before the incident BT was working, so this came as quite a surprise. This led me to suspect that my ISP (Yahoo! DSL through SBC/AT&T) was also forging a variety of packets to kill BT uploading. However, about a week after this began, it stopped, so I'm not sure if it was a test run of something to come, or what. I haven't been able to find anything online about AT&T blocking BT uploads, but all the information I was able to gather suggests that's what was happening.
I'm not sure they can defend themselves, frankly. I guess I differ from most of the most vocal Slashdot people in that I believe P2P file sharing (specifically a subset of that - theft) is hurting the music and movie industries, and I believe that stealing content via P2P is morally wrong. That said, I oppose their suits on a number of grounds (possibly more than I can recall off the top of my head); to name a few:
- Even in the worst case scenario - that the downloader and everyone they uploaded to are truly stealing the content (morally wrong), the suits they are bringing are orders of magnitude greater than the theft committed. $3k-$5k out-of-court settlements are nearly universal; tet most people will not upload much more than the amount they downloaded, and even in extreme cases not more than several times what they downloaded. So, if they downloaded a music CD worth $15, they have (assuming all parties are stealing) stolen (or willingly facilitated stealing) 2x-5x that (5x is a bit arbitrary), or $30-$75. Even at the high end of theft ($75) and low end of damages ($3k), that is *40 times* the value of that which was stolen; the other way around ($30 and $5k), it's almost 200 times the value. Can you honestly tell me that you support that? No, really, I want you to type in your answer and click "submit".
- The RIAA has been using downright illegal tactics to bring these cases (see Beckerman's site for details about this). And I'm not throwing the term "illegal" around lightly, like many Slashdotters. I mean they are literally defying direct orders made *by the courts* in order to bring law suits that they would not have been able to bring using purely legal methods.
- The RIAA has been using legal but immoral tactics to bring these cases. Most commonly, the RIAA picks people who they believe do not have the resources to defend against the suit, making the outcome the same, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent (and short-circuiting the justice system entirely): they have to settle, because they can't afford a lawyer to defend themselves (and if they do hire a lawyer, the RIAA lets them accumulate a sizable bill, then drops the case, so the people will usually have to pay more than the settlement would have been). This is done to build fear by maintaining a perfect prosecution record, to discourage others from sharing files or hiring a lawyer to defend themselves. I know of not a single case the RIAA has won - that is, the case has gone to verdict and the verdict was in their favor; if you know of a single case, click "reply" and link to it, right now. And because they drop cases once it becomes obvious they cannot win them, they have just the same never suffered a loss (though that tide appears to be slowly turning). They care so much about their perfect record that they will continue suits against people who they either knew from the beginning or learned during the trial are innocent, because dropping the case would show that they don't have absolute power, and diminish the fear they seek to create. Do you support each and every one of these methods? Again, that is not a rhetorical question; I am expecting a real answer.
- The RIAA needs to preserve their undefeated status because they cannot possibly catch all of (or even enough to save their business) the true P2P thieves out there, let alone distinguish the thieves from the ones who have not immoral uses (such as seeing if they want to buy and album/movie legally). This is a painful exercise in futility. Their only (false) hope is to try to generate enough fear to make everyone they don't have resources to sue stop sharing. This is *not* working, and cannot in theory work. While it's true that they may be able to reduce (not stop) theft via P2P in the US by going after web sites and individual P2P users, where they have the power of law suits, such suits cannot be brought in a majority of the world because they do not have jurisdiction (let alone the resources to sue that many people), meaning that even fear is outside the
That is a beautiful piece of logic you have there. If you violate the terms of MS' license, you're okay, because they were artificial and arbitrary restrictions, anyway. If you violate the GPL's equally artificial and arbitrary limitations, you're a pirate and a lawbreaker, because you've violated the terms of the license. See how absurd it is?
Now, I'm a programmer. I've recently been working on releasing a couple of my programs as open source, so I've had to take a good look at the various licenses, and see which one is closest to my ideals. Just about anything but the BSD license (and arguably even that, though that would almost be splitting hairs) is indistinguishable from DRM, save for one exception: most open-source licenses attempt to achieve maximal collective benefit (rights), while DRM seeks nothing more than to maximize the benefit (profit) of the creators. That is, DRM and source licenses both prevent you from doing things with the code/media that you would otherwise be able to do; if you think differently, you surely have given up the term "DRM" in favor of "consumer enablement" (which it actually looks like you have, from your post).
The CDDL, the license closest to my ideals, is based on a single restriction: that if you modify the open code, you have to keep the CDDL for your changes, keeping the work open; so long as this rule is followed, you can use the code in any way, in any project. This is an arbitrary restriction on the ability of other people to use my code. However, I justify this restriction with the reasoning that I want as many people as possible to be able to make use of my code (and thus any advances to it). I'm sacrificing the ability of individuals to use my code in an unrestricted manner for the calculated benefit of the whole programming community.
While the GPL does this as well, it does something else that I consider uselessly arbitrary (that is, it limits the freedom of users without contributing significantly to the common good) and, for that reason, particularly obnoxious. Anyone who's read the GPL knows what I'm referring to: the requirement that any project which so much as uses GPL code must itself be GPL in its entirety. This is a political rather than practical requirement: the GPL serves to promote free software, and will restrict the freedom of users to attempt to increase the amount of free code available in total. I'd imagine the reasoning is that if all software were free and open, the world would be a better place; but I can't really agree with the sentiment or the means used to achieve it. The LGPL is better, but not as close as CDDL to my ideals (if you want more info on the topic, I wrote a several-page justification of my choice of license on my blog).
Wow. There's a statistic in that article that really leaves an impression, and no, it's not 36/39 vs 12/27; it's 23 vs 1 - the number of severe security holes in XP and Vista found in the first six months. That brings up a few questions, like whether these metrics are the same (one person brought up the question of secret, unannounced fixes, another the issue of the number of people looking for problems). But if these numbers are comparable (heck, even if the Vista number is 3 or 4 times lower than is realistic), that's a huge improvement in Windows security, and an effort on MS' part worth applauding.
You seem to be grossly misinformed. While copyright infringement done without the intent to make a profit is indeed a civil matter, copyright infringement for the purpose of making a profit is very much illegal.
Speaking as someone who thinks the DMCA is insane, despises the way the RIAA treats its artists and then calls itself the defender of musicians everywhere, thinks that copyright needs reasonable term limits, has the current AACS key in his MSN Messenger tag-line, and checks Beckerman's blog regularly in the hope of good news, I support this action.
Well, I should congratulate you. In one post you've managed to provide some real (and interesting) information, and at the same time refute your entire argument (I can only hypothesize that that was the whole reason it took you so long to spit it out). It sounds like you've done a fine job (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, here) of updating that system with much more modern technology which didn't even exist when the machine was brought into service. That must have been a lot of work, and required learning many things to accomplish. Now what were you saying about having to learn one new thing in 22 years being for propeller-heads (that's referring to the bleeding edge, right? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that term or "space cadet", or other such insults, and can only guess the meaning based on context)?
Again you've managed to completely misunderstand every single one of my posts, and compensate by throwing random insults. I have never advocated wholesale replacement of an entire system. I have, from the very first post (in which it was explicitly stated, a fact which obviously went so far over your head that it got hijacked and flown into a major landmark) advocated an incremental improvement in existing programs to take advantage of newer, better hardware, and reduce the complexity and cost of both hardware and software (have you ever taken a hardware design course? how about an operating systems concepts class?). Apparently you're not just making your own stuff up as you go along, but you're also making up "my" stuff as you go along.
"22 years is an eternity? You must be young and dumb. I've worked on systems that have run for 15 years - before i was even in computing professionally - they show no sign of quitting and are constantly evolving, and I make good living servicing them."
I get the feeling you've given up on saying anything you actually believe, because the only way to keep fighting at this point is to make stuff up as you go. I notice you've not responded to any of my points from the very beginning, but rather reiterated your assertion that I'm wrong without proof, and mixed in varying insults in the process. In fact, the only fact you've stated in all of your three posts (assuming it's true) is that you work on old systems. Do you really expect to win a debate like that? But I guess when you're as special as you are, making arguments (which, by definition, involves evidence and reason) is beneath you.
Normally, right here I'd give you a lengthy tour of the technological progress of the last 22 years, containing dozens of specific examples. But frankly, as you've not actually made any attempt to refute any of my previous points, I'd have to be remarkably stupid to spend any effort making further points. So, I shall write one very brief and narrow paragraph on the x86 clock speed, as an example of what would be here, were I to actually spend the effort to write this section.
In the last 22 years, the x86 has increased from a clock speed of 16 Mhz to 2.9 Ghz: an increase of 183 times. This number is extremely misleading, however, as the 386 was single-core, single-cycle, single-ALU, with strong instruction ordering; new CPUs now have up to 4 cores, multiple instructions are executed concurrently on each core out of order, and with SIMD instructions allowing multiple values to be calculated per instruction. Of course this is still misleading, as the number of cycles per instruction has decreased dramatically. For example, the 386 could perform approximately 421 thousand 32-bit integer multiplications per second, while the Core 2 quad can perform almost 12 billion of the same - a speedup of 28,000 times.
Now, are you QUITE done fighting a losing battle and looking like an idiot in the process? Simply being loud and insulting is not enough to win a debate with someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
Mmm. Miss the entire point of the post, reply to something else, declare self winner and call other person an idiot, profit! Excellent debating strategy you have, there; bet you get a lot of satisfaction from it. Let me spell it out very carefully: we are in one of the most rapidly changing industries in the most productive period ever in history. Here, 22 years is an eternity. Anyone who complains about having to learn one new thing in this industry in 22 years is, as I pointed out, a total and complete crybaby (not to mention roadkill in the labor market). In fact, just that x86 has been the dominant chip for as long as it has is astounding.
As for offering an advantage, I totally agree. Unfortunately, you appear to have absolutely no idea what kind of advantages are on the market here, or you wouldn't have been able to come to the faulty conclusion that I advocate doing totally random things. And given your aversion to learning, I suspect it'd be far more productive to do work (or heck, even play World of Warcraft) than to try to explain it to you.
Do you work at McDonalds, by any chance? No wait, that was a stupid question. Obviously not, as you'd have to learn a new recipe every couple of years, if you did. Now excuse me while I (or perhaps I should say "we", as there are many, MANY of us) go maintain the status quo of light-speed progress while your brain shrivels up and dies in your learning deprivation chamber.
"Installing applications? I don't need a warning when I'm installing an application. I know that I'm installing an application."
Oh wow! A celebrity on Slashdot! Everyone say hello to Dilbert's boss!
"Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of a malicious device driver?"
They're called rootkits, Jim. Maybe you've heard of them.
Somehow I have a feeling that the joke's gonna be on me: that this guy was just trying to see how dumb people would believe he is, and isn't really that stupid. At least that would preserve my faith in humanity...
"Apple manages to support 32-bit and 64-bit architectures for both PPC and Intel. Linux supports *tons* of different architectures. Why is it that it's a particular stumbling block for Microsoft and Microsoft developers?"
Such a change requires the program be recompiled (assuming the code itself doesn't prevent use of 64-bit pointers for one reason or another). A moment of critical thought would reveal the answer for Linux. As for Apple, I'd bet money that it's related to the fact that there are almost two orders of magnitude more users of MS systems (Windows now, but DOS in the past) than of Macs, as well as the number of programs available and I'd bet the number of essential systems (I'm thinking of things like accounting or custom business software that runs on office computers). And from what I hear from my Mac programmer friend, they seem to have more influence over their coders in general.
"if it's too difficult for programmers to support different architectures, the solution isn't to restrict supported architectures, but rather to improve the ability to develop across multiple architectures."
It's funny you should mention that, as I write a little unofficially open-source (I haven't got around to officially releasing it with a formal license yet) Windows/POSIX cross-platform library of things that are typically very difficult to port (things like multi-core programming, asynchronous I/O, cross-architecture communication, etc.). Yet I doubt even my library will get most people to write portable code. And portability is just one of the major things people don't know how to do; add things like multithreading (the kind that allows your program to take full advantage of multiple cores; actually, myself and a friend are currently working on setting up a parallel programming class at his university), not require admin (mainly applies to sucky Windows programs), etc. I'm pushing for all of these, but I doubt I'll be able to change the world.
"Ideally you should be able to develop a program once and have it run on any architecture and on any OS with minimal changes."
It's not difficult like writing a game for the Cell (shudder), but it is a bit tricky. It's very common to store bit flags in a pointer because they're unused. Between converting the pointer to an integer to do bit manipulation and back, and the way programs (like Blizzard games) like to use the high bit, there's a lot of code that won't work right without being fixed. Even worse, people will usually typecast the pointer to an integer with a fixed size (the size on the processor they're writing for), which isn't forward compatible. Now, moving to 32 bits from 16 bits was a whole different ballgame (as pointers worked fundamentally differently, not just larger); such conversions were a huge pain for programs larger than 64 KB.
"If you don't agree, consider that the Intel x86-64bit processors probably won't be around forever. What happens the next time Microsoft decides to change their preferred platform. Do all the old platforms just become obsolete? Shouldn't they be working towards making these sorts of transitions seamless."
Haha, we can only hope; x86 is a pretty icky architecture (though that's not likely to ever become dominant, I personally am a big fan of the MIPS architecture; there's a reason it's so commonly used in teaching assembly classes - it has an incredibly nice instruction set and architecture). But that's what they said 10-20 years ago. At the rate things are going, there's no guarantee that Windows will move off of x86 before MS goes out of business (which is equally uncertain). In either case, they've really made the 32-bit to 64-bit transition as seamless as theoretically possible, short of a full, buggy emulator (the Mac approach).
Waaugh! Cry some more. It's been 22 years since the 32-bit x86 (the 386) came out, and the 16-bit to 32-bit transition was actually much harder than this 32-bit to 64-bit transition (I actually did some 16-bit DOS programming). Or, if you prefer, 11 years or so since Windows 95 came out.
Now run home to mommy. The adults are talking, here. Oh, and while you're leaving, take your crappy admin-required programs with you.
As a programmer I've been waiting for this. I was actually disappointed that Vista would support 32-bit CPUs, but I guess there was no way around that, given how common 32-bit x86s still are. Having one architecture to support will make things much easier, as well as get people to actually update their legacy code. Now if MS could get them to actually fix all the problems due to generally crappy code (like requiring admin)...
The title pretty much says it all. WHY is MS doing this? No, "they're dumb as dog shit" and "Bill Gates is the antichrist come to bring tribulation upon the righteous [OSS people]" aren't valid answers. I could imagine that they're greedy, and perhaps even scared by open source. But WHAT rational reason does MS have to take this action? If they reveal the list, they better have one or two really good ones, because most will be either easily invalidated or quickly patched by the many, many Linux nerds worldwide (and Gord help them if IBM or some of the other giants step into the ring). If they don't reveal the claims, well, that'll make it impossible to sue (and IANAL, but some of the other comments suggested that some could call MS' bluff and put a stop to the spreading of FUD).
At least MS getting SCO to pull a stunt like that (I have no comment on whether I think that's true) would make sense, as it wouldn't be any harm to MS; but time has shown the harm it's done to SCO, and I can't imagine MS would want to get into a losing fight like that, directly. Is there some way they could actually come out on top by this? I have a hard time believing people do things without a rational reason; now what is it?
I was thinking Ballmer looked not unlike a freshly-killed zombie, actually.
Can anybody verify that this guy knows the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit? As far as I know CPUs don't usually live past 90 C or so, let alone 127 C.