Sure. I just don't buy that it is simultaneously "[crippling] the government's ability to observe and investigate" (upthread) and "meh, somebody else's problem" for the Navy.
And did they have any influence even at the start?
But the important thing, IMO, is that the project was sponsored at all. According to Tor's Sponsors page, they still receive funding from the Navy; presumably they are not unaware that various "bad" people can use (and are using) the network as well.
IMO this is a good appropriation of the material in the spirit of "rhyming and stealing" that both hip-hop and the demo scene spawn from. Yes, the demo scene artist got screwed over. But, if Timabland is scouring the internet for.SID files I'm pretty sure it would not have been unfeasible to contact him directly and ask what's up?
That's a +1 Insightful, right there.
Music, and the way it's traditionally been practiced (I have sort of a folk music and demo scene cultural background, and they are remarkably similar) doesn't necessarily fit that well with current law. The important thing here is to note that musicians generally work these things out anyway. If you use music without giving credit, then you're a jerk and other musicians will let people know that.
But any culture has different ways of doing it, and different definitions of what they think is plagiarism and being a jerk. So when hip hop culture meets demo scene culture, it's no surprise that things don't agree. I'm no expert on the former, but I would guess that obscure enough is fair game, and Timbaland might not even know who made it, or even realize that there is a person on the other end expecting some recognition for his work.
So like other posters have said, they should talk. Bringing up lawsuits and "oh, but downloading is ok?" just has nothing to do with this.
I have just trying to make the point that digital output isn't necessarily lossless as so many people seem to believe, and the benefits of digital instead of analog in this case are probably nil.
Not necessarily, no; and it doesn't magically solve all problems. But up- and downsampling can be lossless. I just don't see how you can so easily claim that there is a loss. (Unless you define "loss" as "anything that changes the bitstream". My definition is closer to "anything that removes (audible) information".)
Yes, in reality obviously you will have to make a tradeoff; we don't have hardware with infinite floating point precision, etc, and so resampling will introduce some noise. But it's still not as easy as "that's all there is to it".
As long the errors are outside our range of hearing, or of a kind we can't percieve (phase...) there is, for musical purposes, no difference.
Resampling applies to the full waveform, so it's not just affeting sub or super sonic sounds. Whether you can hear it or not depends on how good your ears are. It's certainly possible for someone with good ears to hear it.
Oh, it's affecting audible frequencies too, I'm not disputing that. But there's still no audible difference.
Did you actually read the post I was replying to?
I read the whole thread. I believe you were replying to the statement "Your ears cannot hear a difference between the two, because there technically is no difference".
Anyway, we're probably not going to come to any agreement based on a Slashdot discussion, so I suggest we agree to disagree.
Windows Media Player does the tough job of converting the 1s and 0s particular to that codec the music was stored as into an analog output that is played through the sound card. While the song is playing, AnalogWhole re-routes this analog signal back into the recording input of the sound card. As it is recording the music it stores it as an MP3 file.
Ridiculous. 44.1 doesn't go into 48 evenly, and that's all there is to it.
Well, I disagree. Parent mentioned that "your ears cannot hear a difference"; don't forget that our ears and brains throw away lots of information. As long the errors are outside our range of hearing, or of a kind we can't percieve (phase...) there is, for musical purposes, no difference.
You're right that you won't end up with a "pure digital copy" (like GGP claimed), and you are right that this sort of thing should be avoided if possible, of course.
My point is that it's not that simple, and while there might be distortion, it's not necessarily audible.
You can't just insert samples of "nothing" in a digital audio signal and get an audio stream.
Obviously. You need a low-pass filter too. (This is actually a common method of resampling with interpolation, in case anyone was wondering...)
In all fairness, modern operating systems also cache disk accesses, even what is being paged out, so supposedly most things will still stay in memory, under normal conditions.
In practice, this might not always work perfectly (especially when you're doing a lot of disk I/O); but I suppose it works pretty well most of the time for most people. It does - most of the time - for me at least.
Actually, that's not too far from one of the existing approaches:
Yikes, those pictures make it look like some insane torture... apparatus. I remember reading about it and found it interesting, but now I'm not so sure.
It's mentioned in the article too (4th paragraph):
Weighted blankets and vests have been used for several years, offshoots of the original ``hug machine" designed by Temple Grandin, who wrote the book, ``Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism."
That doesn't sound like such a bad idea actually. I imagine you would start with simpler and more immediately practical spare parts first (intestine, blood vessels, etc).
Hands (and feet, think about anti-personnel mines) would be hard, probably too hard; and you'd still be out for a long time, so you might as well take the time to do it from scratch, I suppose. Internal organs might be worth it.
I bet it's been done in science fiction a long time ago. (If not, I demand royalties!)
How would a human mind cope with the increased memory requirements?
[...]
Perhaps the brain could drop its oldest memories in favour of new ones, but would this seem like immortality to mind of that person?
Dropping old memories is pretty much how it works now. It is not stored like on flash memory or a hard drive. (What were you doing a year ago, at exactly this time? Two years? Five? Fifteen?)
And our minds change all the time, just not quickly enough that we notice. With the possible exception of when we're small kids (but I tell you, kids these days just don't pay attention...).
(Note that in keeping with Internet custom, I am posting porn in response to a "useless without pics" comment. Specifically bondage, although "messy racks" are also mentioned.)
It might not be the best choice of words for objectivity, but it seems they are well chosen for those of us who read the Inq. We already know DRM is bad, trying to "present both sides fairly" would just feel tacked on and fake.
I'm perfectly okay with a basic form of DRM that simply makes sure you're authorized to play the music that you just bought, so that you can't go distributing it on P2P networks and raping the rights of the artist.
It is not rape, it's piracy; robbery on the high seas. Get your facts straight.
The rules in Sweden are interesting. The way they were explained to me was something like:
"...so basically, the rules say that you may do the installations yourself, provided you have the necessary knowledge."
"Okay, that sounds reasonable. But what exactly is meant by 'necessary knowledge'?"
"Well, if you wire your house yourself, and there's an electrical fault and it burns down... you did not have the necessary knowledge."
I don't know if this is completely true, but at least it's a good story.:-)
Considering that they let us build switched extension cords, and use them, in shop class (what's the term I'm looking for?) when I was 14, it seems it can't be that far off.
Sharing Party? Good name, but it doesn't really translate well, unfortunately. And we're stuck with "pirate" now, for better or worse.
To answer the question, I suppose that "piracy" actually doesn't have that much of a negative connotation over here. I don't know about "less", does the word actually mean anything outside the Third World? What does the word mean to you?
As for vikings, interesting hypothesis... but no. (And yes, our "eastern" vikings were mostly traders, and "western" vikings did most of the pillaging, afaik, but I'm not a historian.)
But that it's scope is way too limit to warrent a political party.
I mean, i support a lot of what they lobby for, but I'd much rather vote for a party which also supports my ideas on a whole range of other issues.
I think everyone would agree with you here. Who would not want to vote for a party that "supports your ideas on a whole range of issues"?
But where exactly do you find such a party? We currently have seven major political parties in parliament, and none of them fit with the things I care about. Start my own?
I assure you, if I could pick and choose policies, I'd most likely come up with such "unnatural" combinations (I like the environment - and personal freedom! And state-sponsored healthcare too?! Gasp!) that the resulting party would hardly receive more than 0.5% in an election anyway.
The Swedish election system is different from that in the US. It is actually possible for a single-issue party to significantly influence government policies here - Miljöpartiet (The Environment Party; the Greens) did just that. So, without going into too much background about our political system, trust me when I say that there is no need for a party to have solutions for all problems.
From the standpoint of a small party, it's certainly not bad focussing on the core issues, if you think you have a shot of passing the 4% barrier for entry into parliament. Why alienate potential voters by taking sides in issues that aren't absolutely vital? Sure, you and I as voters may dislike single-issue parties - but why should they care, if they can get in?
Yeah, but you're in for a surprise when you discover that Sony/Microsoft/whoever has a patent that covers a part of the program that is your mind, and they start sending C&D letters. One thing at a time.:-)
(But what would a transhumanist party actually do? And could it even really be democratic, giving equal voting power to everyone? (And what if I fork() ?)
What would be a good name? I don't know. The Freedom Party? Lots of parties claim that one. The Info Party? Freedom of Info Party? Free Info Party? Free Knowledge Party? Info Justice?
The problem with those sort of names is that they are so bland. Nobody can really identify with them, it's like naming your party "The Justice, Apple Pie and Just Being Nice to Each Other Party". You need something that is simple, something that people will instantly know what it is about.
And here in Sweden, we already had The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån ("The Pirate Bureau"). Having "pirate" in your party name doesn't look all that crazy in that context.
That said, perhaps something along the lines of "intellectual freedom" would have better represented the issues involved. (Or not..)
I think you summed the whole thing up perfectly. Just to clarify one little thing: The party really does want filesharing (for private use) to be completely legalized - uploading and downloading. Downloading was recently criminalized, uploading always was. (And all major parties now say that "of course downloading should be okay", dodging the issue.)
(Your third paragraph could be read to imply that they want to legalize file sharing only of older works, by shortening the copyright terms.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. I just don't buy that it is simultaneously "[crippling] the government's ability to observe and investigate" (upthread) and "meh, somebody else's problem" for the Navy.
And did they have any influence even at the start?
But the important thing, IMO, is that the project was sponsored at all. According to Tor's Sponsors page, they still receive funding from the Navy; presumably they are not unaware that various "bad" people can use (and are using) the network as well.
Music, and the way it's traditionally been practiced (I have sort of a folk music and demo scene cultural background, and they are remarkably similar) doesn't necessarily fit that well with current law. The important thing here is to note that musicians generally work these things out anyway. If you use music without giving credit, then you're a jerk and other musicians will let people know that.
But any culture has different ways of doing it, and different definitions of what they think is plagiarism and being a jerk. So when hip hop culture meets demo scene culture, it's no surprise that things don't agree. I'm no expert on the former, but I would guess that obscure enough is fair game, and Timbaland might not even know who made it, or even realize that there is a person on the other end expecting some recognition for his work.
So like other posters have said, they should talk. Bringing up lawsuits and "oh, but downloading is ok?" just has nothing to do with this.
Oh, it's affecting audible frequencies too, I'm not disputing that. But there's still no audible difference. I read the whole thread. I believe you were replying to the statement "Your ears cannot hear a difference between the two, because there technically is no difference".Yes, in reality obviously you will have to make a tradeoff; we don't have hardware with infinite floating point precision, etc, and so resampling will introduce some noise. But it's still not as easy as "that's all there is to it".
Anyway, we're probably not going to come to any agreement based on a Slashdot discussion, so I suggest we agree to disagree.
You're right that you won't end up with a "pure digital copy" (like GGP claimed), and you are right that this sort of thing should be avoided if possible, of course.
My point is that it's not that simple, and while there might be distortion, it's not necessarily audible.
Obviously. You need a low-pass filter too. (This is actually a common method of resampling with interpolation, in case anyone was wondering...)In practice, this might not always work perfectly (especially when you're doing a lot of disk I/O); but I suppose it works pretty well most of the time for most people. It does - most of the time - for me at least.
Interesting, I didn't know that the ABI emulation was that far along. Too bad that there's been so little interest in the whole thing. :-/
Now where did I put my Baron-Cohen AQ test...It's mentioned in the article too (4th paragraph):
I keep thinking that I should check it out some day. I never even knew it existed back in the day.
Hands (and feet, think about anti-personnel mines) would be hard, probably too hard; and you'd still be out for a long time, so you might as well take the time to do it from scratch, I suppose. Internal organs might be worth it.
I bet it's been done in science fiction a long time ago. (If not, I demand royalties!)
And our minds change all the time, just not quickly enough that we notice. With the possible exception of when we're small kids (but I tell you, kids these days just don't pay attention...).
Stewart seems to have a pretty loyal following among those who get the show in 175-megabyte chunks a few hours late.
You did better than the people with mod points, at least. (What do you need, a laugh track?)
(Note that in keeping with Internet custom, I am posting porn in response to a "useless without pics" comment. Specifically bondage, although "messy racks" are also mentioned.)
IMHO.
"...so basically, the rules say that you may do the installations yourself, provided you have the necessary knowledge."
"Okay, that sounds reasonable. But what exactly is meant by 'necessary knowledge'?"
"Well, if you wire your house yourself, and there's an electrical fault and it burns down
I don't know if this is completely true, but at least it's a good story. :-)
Considering that they let us build switched extension cords, and use them, in shop class (what's the term I'm looking for?) when I was 14, it seems it can't be that far off.
To answer the question, I suppose that "piracy" actually doesn't have that much of a negative connotation over here. I don't know about "less", does the word actually mean anything outside the Third World? What does the word mean to you?
As for vikings, interesting hypothesis ... but no. (And yes, our "eastern" vikings were mostly traders, and "western" vikings did most of the pillaging, afaik, but I'm not a historian.)
But where exactly do you find such a party? We currently have seven major political parties in parliament, and none of them fit with the things I care about. Start my own?
I assure you, if I could pick and choose policies, I'd most likely come up with such "unnatural" combinations (I like the environment - and personal freedom! And state-sponsored healthcare too?! Gasp!) that the resulting party would hardly receive more than 0.5% in an election anyway.
From the standpoint of a small party, it's certainly not bad focussing on the core issues, if you think you have a shot of passing the 4% barrier for entry into parliament. Why alienate potential voters by taking sides in issues that aren't absolutely vital? Sure, you and I as voters may dislike single-issue parties - but why should they care, if they can get in?
(But what would a transhumanist party actually do? And could it even really be democratic, giving equal voting power to everyone? (And what if I fork() ?)
And here in Sweden, we already had The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån ("The Pirate Bureau"). Having "pirate" in your party name doesn't look all that crazy in that context.
That said, perhaps something along the lines of "intellectual freedom" would have better represented the issues involved. (Or not..)
(Your third paragraph could be read to imply that they want to legalize file sharing only of older works, by shortening the copyright terms.)