WTF is with the 'offtopic' moderation on this!!! People aren't allowed to respond appropriately to other posts without losing karma! It's not like we were using our +1 bonuses or had been mis-moderated up. The original poster might have been off topic, but I don't expect people replying to get dragged down.
That's it, fuck this place.
Sucks too much time out of my day anyways.
My password is 'ncLxReVL'. The time is 9:30 EST, I currently have karma of 30. Go wild ACs.
They are pursuing action against one single individual, who was COMPLETELY mirroring absolutely EVERYTHING in near realtime, from Penthouse's internal pay-site to Usenet.
Literally hours after being put up, shoots were appearing on Usenet.
In the time since the story (May 2) another person or two have taken up the 'mirroring'. I haven't heard whether he/they/(she?) have been brought to task yet or not.
> I don't think you guys understand. I made something. I invented > it. I can do with it whatever I want to,
Certainly. But so can I, without interfering physically in any way with your use of it. That's the whole problem.
> It is not something that I happened to "find",
Actually, technically, yes it is.
The fundamental schism between material property (made out of matter) and copyrighted 'property' (like your book, song, invention, or process), is that one is capable of being physically posessed, the other is not, the other is an idea. Albeit sometimes it can be a highly complicated idea, it's still at the root, just an idea. A thought. A train of logical knowledge and information.
An idea. It can be posessed by everyone at once, with almost no cost. It can be obtained by anyone independently of one another given the right circumstances. It can also be obtained by anyone through mere observation of one who already 'posesses' it.
Let us answer the question: What right does anyone have to claim ownership over an idea?
What fundamental source of thought or logic would provide the basis for the 'right' of 'ownership' over an idea?
In fact, we might want to think for a minute about the following: where does the right of ownership for anything come from? The objects in your dwelling. Your dwelling. The ground your dwelling is built on. The trees someone cut to build your house with. Trace the ownership of *all* of these physical objects back to their sources. You end up asking, who owns the the mountains? The air? The moon and mars? And how did a small part of one tree on the side of that mountain come to 'be yours'?
I find two answers. Firstly, everything belonged to everyone in the world, collectively. Society owned it all. And little by little, for society's good, parts of it were given (in return for some compensation) to individuals. Secondly these individuals added their efforts to the 'worth' of the objects, now in private hands, and so things went, until you ended up with them, having 'obtained' them in return for some of your own efforts.
Where do ideas and information originate?
Clearly the idea of a wheel, a circle, or how to start a fire existed before mankind existed. Just like the mountains. Just like the carbon that ended up in the trees, oil, and steel that became your chair.
Clearly then, society must 'own' them before any individual does. Whether society actually knows about the gold in that mountain or not is immaterial.
Remember how 'things' ended up in private hands? Society assigns 'ownership' based on what is considered best for all.
Would it feel right to you, to have a system where someone could be given the right to derive benefit, in perpetuity, from the 'innovation' of concentrating heat with a combustible and a flow of oxygen to create a self perpetuating combustion reaction? Certainly it would have been worth it to reward the individual who first comes up with the idea. But to give his descendents a large share of the rewards of its use by *all* mankind, forever? Surely someone else would have come up with it sooner or later.
Clearly we cannot allow someone to 'own' an idea in perpetuity, no matter how innovative nor complex. It would be too potentially damaging to the good of mankind.
In the long long long run, your descendents will completely and utterly mix with all of mankind. In the end, your 'innovation' *will* belong to everyone else. (unless there's some moderate inbreeding or abstenance in your family...:) When all of this logic is applied to something simple like fire or the wheel, it all makes perfect sense. I guess it could get a little more complicated when we're talking about highly complex 'ideas' like a musical composition or your book. But they are still merely 'information'. We're simply left deciding how *much* of a *finite* reward one should get(*).
Physics tells us that quite literally, one immortal monkey with one arm tied behind his back would eventually re-create your work. Some of us are a lot smarter than monkeys. And there are four billion years until the sun goes out.
Damn I'm good.
-NH
BTW: I've raised this point before, but I don't think we got a good answer. Without doubt mankinds greatest philosophers and thinkers have gone over this idea before. Where can we find a definitive summary of their train of thoughts and conclusions? Any historians out there who can point out the way? Clearly it would be idiotic to have to work this out from first principles all by ourselves over again.
It would be most efficient if we could just re-educate ourselves, our politicians, and everyone else, with what mankind has already likely learned, from a definitive respected source of information.
(*) I'd agree with you about 10 years being too short for your book. But I CLEARLY think that the life of the author PLUS 50 years is WAY too much. I liked the original 28 + 28 year terms. I don't mind *automatically* assigning copyright to the creator.
Personal note: It almost feels like the wisdom with which our society was created hundreds of years ago is being torn down by mediocre elected morons at the behest of the naked greed and aggression of bureacratic corporations. Anyone else feel this way?
I'd have to concur with your general feelings. My own feelings are only moderated by the fact that I view his intransigence towards making his pages more usable and instead strictly adhering to the standards as a 'protest' against how badly browsers handle the standards.
But I'm still left with a very very bad taste in my mouth, to think that someone leaves webpages up that look horrid in the browsers of 25% of all the people who view them (unless they have javascript turned ON), and yet will crash that same 25% of all the people that try and view them (unless they have Javascript turned OFF).
I'm using Netscape 4.61 on Win98, I have most advertisers in my HOSTS file aliased to 127.0.0.1(*), (and have a webserver running so pages that MUST get replies before displaying don't 'freeze' until they time out in trying), and I keep Javascript turned off most of the time so that sites whose ads 'redirect' to 404 pages when an ad isn't available, don't. Thus when I went to see his 'steal' webpage, my browser crashed. Thanks. Thanks a lot buddy. I don't need you to remind me that Netscape and Microsoft products suck. You've simply pissed me off at you yourself.
I don't use IE because of it's secuirty hell, and because it's "favorites" management sucks ass, nor Opera because it isn't free (beer) and doesn't (or didn't) do everything needed, nor do I 'upgrade' to 4.63 or 4.7 because, well, "upgrading" is a pain and risky with almost all products.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not holding him fully responsible for how bad his site looks in my setup. I spread the blame everywhere appropriate. I hate the guts of Netscape and Microsoft (well, especially their consumer OS division) and most of the people who have made a large portion of the software I've ever used as well.
Sign me - Mad as hell at almost everyone.
(*) I didn't get around to 'aliasing into nullspace' all the advertisers until I got pissed off at being forced to wait for slow ads before pages would display.
Wasn't there also a type of 'air breathing' battery for laptops being worked on 5 or so years ago? It was either a type of fuel cell (what you describe) or it was a special battery which simply didn't have it's oxygen stored internally, and so it got it from the air.
The net effect was that the battery/cell could last a full 5-10 times longer than current ones.
Unfortunately, they had a habbit of bursting into fire. The manufacturers tried to hide it as long as possible, but they eventually got sussed out and the investors lost their shirts.
There is a big huge gaping hole in your opinion. The fact of the matter is that most people aren't smart enough, like you and I. Therefore companies that do such bad things will always profit, survive, and maybe even crush the competition who are not doing such bad things.
That's why we have a lot of laws in the first place! That's why "buyer beware" has never cut it in many many situations.
Now this situation doesn't result in anyone losing money or property without compensation(*), which is what most of our laws deal with. It deals with the loss of privacy.
Does privacy deserve the same protection as property? Does it deserve any protection at all? Is the shrink-wrap license enough?
I think a lot of us would argue quite successfully that yes, it deserves a hell of a lot more protection than it has now, and no, shrink wrap licenses should not be valid for half the stuff that is often in them.
There are certain types/sizes of 'contracts' which are valid when made 'in passing', and others that need a lot more than an 'in passing' contract, that need signed documents, adequate two party communication and understanding, and adequate compensation. How many of us have heard of contracts or events being overturned by courts because there wasn't a signed contract? We all know that there are some contracts that the courts won't enforce with at least a token measure of compensation. And some that aren't enforcable when that token is effectively meaningless. And others that are deemed 'fraud' because the 'contract' was so obscured and desceptive.
Personally I think this world will degenerate into hell if we don't produce an adequately balanced system of legislative, enforcement, and legislative system. Human beings in general are just too stupid to 'figure it all out for themselves' and solve it through individual actions as you suggest.(**)
-NH
(*) Here's a unique argument. Information *IS* property. We've got that ingrained in our society. So how come this information isn't worth anything or isn't protected? Shouldn't I be in control of who obtains this information from my life? Shouldn't taking this information without my consent or compensation be illegal?
Now of course it was in the disclaimer/shrink-wrap license. And you are getting 'compensation' in the form of software that does work for you. But is that enough?
If someone came up with a new way to screw people over and get 10-50 bucks from them without them really noticing that they had agreed to it, don't you think there would be a clamour to deal with it legislatively? We've already done so in many cases. We're seriously cracking down on phone-'fraud' organizations that do this exact thing to old and gullible people.
(**) Some of us don't like having to wade through the shit that your idiot friends effectively allow in this world. And some of us take pity on your idiot friends who are in effect powerless to protect themselves or change the world, because hey, they're idiots. And most of us take deep offence to shucksters and con-men depriving the weak of their property and rights.
IE: If you want to go live in the wild west, take your damn six shooters with you, we don't want your kind around here.
> If you want to see something scary . . . . check out this file, on the Samhain project.
Jesus H __rist, that scared the __it out of me.
I don't know how(*), but when I (thought that I) clicked on that link, Netscape Composer came up and began filling with a massive block of junk (only partially text)... boy did I freak!
After many minutes checking my outbox, examining the slashdot page source, examining a saved-as-a-file copy of the link, I dared click on it again... normal plain text.
(*) I'm not so un-coordinated that I could have mistakenly clicked on the e-mail address link instead of the 'this file' link, perhaps I was holding down some special key or something, or perhaps Netscape decided to wig out and pretend that I was clicking on an e-mail address..?
Seriously, I now *rarely* go anywhere else to search, except for Deja for Usenet searches. The difference between before Google and now is like night and day for me. For such a big increase in efficiency and results, I figure they deserve a patent.
You still have to use your noodle a bit for each search to get the best results. Notice that they do NOT match partial words. Only the full words. So if you've got a world in your expression or word-set that could be plural or something, make sure and try that as well. And occasionally what you're looking for won't be a site that is linked to by the most others, and so then I go to AltaVista.
There is all this talk about how screwed artists are nowdays because just getting a label to sign them is so hard that they'll sign anything, and most labels use roughly the same crappy legal agreements, screwing over the artists.
There is one thing that the labels can NOT currently ask them to sign over, and that is the rights "in perpetuity" (where perpetuity means as long as copyrights are valid, which is what, 90 years?). As I read it currently an artist can get back the rights to his work when the work comes up for 'renewal' of the copyright, which is after the first (28, 32?) years.
So currently if you're an artist and you make a deal with the devil to go big, there are limits to what the labels can demand in the contract. This is one of those natural limits. They aren't guaranteed the copyright in perpetuity.
Works for hire do NOT come up for the same kind of copyright renewal which means that in effect labels would now be allowed to demand the rights in perpetuity.
Yes yes, if an artist is stupid enough to sign away this much rights then they deserve it.
HOWEVER, we as a society make it illegal for a person to sign away certain rights, due to the potential repercussions due to abuses. You can not sign away your fundamental freedoms. You can NOT consent to be physically assaulted.
Labels have so much power that allowing them to demand rights in perpetuity would give them a potential goldmine at the expense of the artists, who would get nearly nothing extra. Do you really think the labels are going to give artists a fair deal in exchange for that 'in perpetuity' (aka work for hire) clause?
No way in hell. You can bet your ass that Elvis (ok, a rich example, but a good one) would have been given a pittance for the 'extra' future rights signed over, and his family would have been left with a lot less, in perpetuity.
Pardon: Are you saying that "Pegasus Mail" was also named or commonly known by the term 'pmail'? If so, then yeah, they had a right to ask him to change the name.
[ NH goes away to do some homework after the fact... so he can provide a definitive clear explanation of the circumstances of this obscure topic.. like someone should have done in the beginning instead of rambling on as though everyone in the planet knows the details about what is being talked about:) ]
Ok, I've easily found Scott Bender's pmail, and it looks like he's being forced to change his package name as well. The pmail domain is owned by David Harris and his free Pegasus Mail, which he claims was first released in 1990. David's site doesn't refer to Pegasus Mail by the term pmail, other than pmail being in the name of the downloadable files, and other than having the domain name.
However at some other scattered sites where Pegasus Mail is mentioned, the term pmail is used to refer to it.
Hmmmmm. Looks like there is another commercial product called pmail, over here. Not a full e-mail client. But e-mail related.
Then there is Personal Mail (pmail.net), which turns up in my search. (Goofballs, if I have javascript turned off I get a page of white text on a white background.)
None the less, it is clear that the users of Pegasus Mail do refer to it by the name 'pmail'. This was not adequately clear in any of the other messages.
Personally I can easily see how others could 'miss' pmail, aka Pegasus Mail, in a search for 'prior use'. I've never heard of it before, and I've been on the net since 1992. If I did a search for pmail and found what I found above, I would have presumed that pmail was a commonly used name without a firm claim on it. Especially since the official Pegasus Mail pages do not refer to itself as pmail. And 95% of the sites that refered to Pegasus Mail as pmail were in a foreign language, if I hadn't paid close attention to them, I might have missed the connection between Pegasus Mail and pmail all together.
The rate cards for UserFriendly and Slashdot/Andover are available, and show their rates ranging between $22 and $70 CPM. So your million dollar a year estimate is around 4-10 times too low. Furthermore with a third of a million registered users, and each one viewing at least 5 stores per day, (I'm understimating here, I must generate 100-300 views per day, depending on how many comments I read), we're talking another factor of 3-10.
So by my estimates, SlashDot could bring in anywhere from $12 million to $100 M per year.
That's enough to make me want to get in on the goldrush!
Damn that sucks. You couldn't bluff in case they were bluffing themselves..? Forcing them to give up or face filing with the courts? Just because they wrote you a letter doesn't necessarily mean they think they have a case... it means they're hoping they can get you to change without taking you to court.
I don't see any confusion at *all* between the names 'pmail' and 'pegasus mail'. An idiot could have won that case for you.. (which means you could have represented yourself:)
No offence.. You know the old saying: "he who represents himself has an idiot for a lawyer."
BTW: I initially thought exactly what ignatz stated, however reading the rest of the thread it's clear that you were unclear in your original statement.
IE: You said "demanded that I rename my program pmail because", and I and everyone interpreted that as "they demanded that you rename your program to pmail", which left us thinking you originally named your program 'pegasus mail', hence ignatz' reply. Clearly what you meant was "demanded that I rename my program (originally named pmail) to something else".
Re:It's far too early for this
on
Quantum Project
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· Score: 1
God, I hear you! Quicktime utterly screwed with my Netscape audio associations, took a bit of work to sort that out.
I've finally got it so that clicking on a wav link instantly brings up Sound Recorder, which plays the wav automatically, then exits. None of this 'open a full new page and 0wait 10 seconds for quicktime to initialize'. Not only that but it would truncate the last half second of really small wavs. What a piece of sh*t.
Upside is I still have Quicktime on my box, but it's not integrated with the browser any more. So I just save the quictime movies to disk and watch them later. I have not yet come across a situation where looking at the page source doesn't reveal the target so it can be 'saved', even for highly embedded movies.
Downside is that I don't dare upgrade my quicktime player, lest it screw me over again.
Oh, I'm not too damn impressed that Netscape allows some associations to be set up that can NOT be edited or deleted by the user. As well I should be able to 'freeze' specified associations. But nooooooo. Hmmm, same goes for Win98 I guess.
I really should find/create something that will allow me to 'save' my Win98 associations/icon-references, and 'restore' them if I ever install software that screws with them on me. And I should publish some code/instructions to do the 'auto play/exit sound recorder for wavs in Netscape' association... Help out all the less technically inclined people of the world.
One last tidbit. Anyone notice that if you don't have real audio installed/integrated that 'streaming' mp3's from mp3.com doesn't work? Well, not really. They just have some javascript that checks and then tells you that you can't stream mp3 just because you don't have Real Audio.
Turn off javascript and it streams directly to winamp, no problems!
Damn fscking marketing bastards and engineer whores!
> I see this as the future (actually, the present if you look at their > posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.
Umm, no. That will/would be quite explicitly barred by the judgement. The breakup proposed already has all the language, requrements, and teeth necessary to prevent that.
The descriptions we've seen about how internal company procedures, work, and communications was excruciatingly examined/recorded/archived for years afterwards in the Bell breakup shows us how impossible it would be to do what you describe without it being detected.
What? You thought you'd outsmarted a few hundred lawyers?:) It's damn rare that a human thinks of something that hasn't been thought of by someone else:(
Re:It's far too early for this
on
Quantum Project
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· Score: 1
Low penetration? Aren't there two million of us? Ok, that's only 1-2% of the total, but it seems to me that this is a good sized base of people to work with.
... holy... IE5 is a minimum requirement!? Ok, now I'm with you. There's no way in hell I'm installing IE5 to watch a movie.
Oh hell, you can ignore the request to reboot nearly 75% of the time with software in general, and everything will work just fine! (WinNT or 98) I *frequently* ignore requests by applications for a reboot.
I have gut feelings for what types of functional upgrades and pieces of software will actually change things that really need a reboot, which are just bluffing to cover their asses, and which were simply programmed by idiots... I'm usually right. Most software falls into the latter two categories.
I work for a product house. Much to my chagrin, a couple years after I discovered the above properties about software in general, our own management forced us to put in a request to reboot one product upon install or upgrade simply to *try* and prevent a bug from happening and getting a support call.
We have only observed this bug once, ever. We're only guessing that a reboot would prevent that problem. It might also need a service pack re-application, but we don't know, we've never been able to repeat the problem.
On another of our series of products, we request that the user stop and start a major component (which affects any and all users using the application at the time)... for no reason! Someone wrote the instructions for a specific item that needed it a year ago, and some other developer copied the instructions verbatim without re-examining that requirement.
The current project that I'm working on violates nearly everything Steve McConnell has ever written... and there's no way I'm getting my neck cut off trying to point this out..
- shudder -
Tombstone Technology - pers exp's and lawn sprays
on
Silicon Hell
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· Score: 1
A man got killed and the fine was $1000, because "it was mostly his own fault". That's one massive chronic failing in many things in our society. Regulations without *ANY* teeth, effective 'control' by the groups who have a vested interest in the status quo, and an utterly idiotic amount of outrageous incidents and tragedies before anything is done.
The term 'tombstone technology' applies to nearly everything mankind does.
Doing a MSc in Physics (opto-electronics), I got fully indoctrinated into my University's safety system and regulations (which were impressive, strict, enforced, and followed), so I know a bit about what they are talking about. WRT the above incident, our regs were basically "yes you are responsible for your own safety, but so is your manager/supervisor, and so is your supervisor's supervisor, etc etc". Responsibility doesn't just 'stop' with one or two people.
In my and my co-orker's work, we dealt with comparatively small amounts of these chemicals, and yet we were highly protected. Tri-choroethylene, HF, and the other things mentioned frequently in that article, were not handled unless you were fully suited ( heavy rubber smock, heavy rubber gloves, full face mask, etc ), and were never used outside of a fume cabinet with the partition lowered as far as possible. Haz mat chemical lockers were *everywhere*, and 1 gallon bottles and even squirt bottles were NEVER left out unless actually in use. You only kept out the minimum quantities for what you were doing, no pouring a few ml from the gallon jugs. NOTHING was unlabled. No one got to work in a given lab until they had spent a serious amount of time (a couple days for 10 pages for me for 4 labs) writing up a major paper (on their own) describing in detail all of the hazards in the lab, what the procedures to reduce the hazards were, what the responses to incidents with each specific hazard was, etc etc.
Now the kicker. Remember our friend Tri-cloroethylene? The one I didn't handle even in small quantities unless fully suited and with a fume cabinet? The one suspected of being a cancer causing agent, that is highly flamable, that blew up on the guy in the story above (who was mixing 'vats' of it with no personal protection or fume hood?)
It's used as the 'carrying agent' in 10% of lawn herbicides. That's right. They spray a 90% solution of it on YOUR lawn, or one of your neighbours lawns.
You should have seen the look on my face as I sat on my couch watching the investigative news report about this back in 1996, knowing what I know about how we in a University semiconductor lab dealt with this compound.
Re:OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!
on
The Eroded Self
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· Score: 1
He still makes me smile. But yeah, I can see it wearing thin.
Taking a look at user profiles, Oog has gotten approximately 25 karma in the past two weeks, while Signal 11 has gotten just over 20. He would have had around 30, but he occasionally gets knocked down (some bad moderation, some other things...).
We'll know oog is wearing too thin when:
a) He doesn't get mod'd up any more
b) He starts getting mod'ed down.
If the latter occurs, we'll have flamefests arguing over whether that's right or not, whether or not someone should be allowed to represent their opinions in mod-speak, whether he is being sincere but funny or insincere for the karma... etc.
> And we need either a well known or an integrated point and click method (for average > people) of creating hyperlinks on webpages in different languages that automatically > cause the 'viewing' of such pages to be translated.
Ack! I preview! I preview!! Then something like this slips through.
What I *meant*, is that I want an easy way for my Mom to put a hyperlink on her English homepage to a German webpage such that when my Grandma follows the link, the German page gets translated into English.
Ok, someone must have thought of this before. Are there any plans/work-underway for translation software that would integrate with a browser? A plugin for Mozilla? Commercial? OpenSource?
Of course, I keep forgetting about that Babelfish Javascript 'translate' button in my 'Personal Toolbar'. But I've not used it once since I put it there... there hasn't been any English pages with links to interesting things in other languages!
However now that I think about it, I keep forgetting about babelfish all together when my google searches turn up 80% of their hits in a foreign language, which happens all of the time.
I was doubting for a moment that an integrated translation plugin would be worthwhile, but for the average person, who doesn't have a babelfish javascript shortcut in their personal toolbar (do IE people have anything similar?), it would be nice if their browser recognized the foreign language in search engine results and what not and translated it automatically, without asking. I guess then we'd need 'language' tags. ( Or XML perhaps?)
And we need either a well known or an integrated point and click method (for average people) of creating hyperlinks on webpages in different languages that automatically cause the 'viewing' of such pages to be translated. I presume that us knowledgable people can do that now with babelfish... so why haven't we?
Clearly there are some tools and enabling mechanisms that aren't widely known or in place yet... if we want large scale cross-language linking and interaction to come to fruition.
-NH
BTW: Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by the restrictiveily small 'subject' box? Come to think of it, a wider composition box would be nice too. Hey! It should be user configurable!
> On closer reading, the article seems to suggest that this originates with the judge.
No it doesn't!!
It says the Judge prohibited him from using hardware that can allow net access. It says that the request (or 'order') to quit the talk circuit originated from the federal probation department.
On the one hand I think it's not right to limit someone's speech this way. On the other hand I'm all in favour of rulings that prevent individuals from profiting from their crimes... Are there any clauses in his sentence that prevent him from profiting from movie/book deals? How would/do they apply to stuff like this?
Slashdot Mirror
WTF is with the 'offtopic' moderation on this!!! People aren't allowed to respond appropriately to other posts without losing karma! It's not like we were using our +1 bonuses or had been mis-moderated up. The original poster might have been off topic, but I don't expect people replying to get dragged down.
That's it, fuck this place.
Sucks too much time out of my day anyways.
My password is 'ncLxReVL'. The time is 9:30 EST, I currently have karma of 30. Go wild ACs.
EOF
They are pursuing action against one single individual, who was COMPLETELY mirroring absolutely EVERYTHING in near realtime, from Penthouse's internal pay-site to Usenet.
Literally hours after being put up, shoots were appearing on Usenet.
In the time since the story (May 2) another person or two have taken up the 'mirroring'. I haven't heard whether he/they/(she?) have been brought to task yet or not.
> I don't think you guys understand. I made something. I invented
> it. I can do with it whatever I want to,
Certainly. But so can I, without interfering physically in any way with your use of it. That's the whole problem.
> It is not something that I happened to "find",
Actually, technically, yes it is.
The fundamental schism between material property (made out of matter) and copyrighted 'property' (like your book, song, invention, or process), is that one is capable of being physically posessed, the other is not, the other is an idea. Albeit sometimes it can be a highly complicated idea, it's still at the root, just an idea. A thought. A train of logical knowledge and information.
An idea. It can be posessed by everyone at once, with almost no cost. It can be obtained by anyone independently of one another given the right circumstances. It can also be obtained by anyone through mere observation of one who already 'posesses' it.
Let us answer the question: What right does anyone have to claim ownership over an idea?
What fundamental source of thought or logic would provide the basis for the 'right' of 'ownership' over an idea?
In fact, we might want to think for a minute about the following: where does the right of ownership for anything come from? The objects in your dwelling. Your dwelling. The ground your dwelling is built on. The trees someone cut to build your house with. Trace the ownership of *all* of these physical objects back to their sources. You end up asking, who owns the the mountains? The air? The moon and mars? And how did a small part of one tree on the side of that mountain come to 'be yours'?
I find two answers. Firstly, everything belonged to everyone in the world, collectively. Society owned it all. And little by little, for society's good, parts of it were given (in return for some compensation) to individuals. Secondly these individuals added their efforts to the 'worth' of the objects, now in private hands, and so things went, until you ended up with them, having 'obtained' them in return for some of your own efforts.
Where do ideas and information originate?
Clearly the idea of a wheel, a circle, or how to start a fire existed before mankind existed. Just like the mountains. Just like the carbon that ended up in the trees, oil, and steel that became your chair.
Clearly then, society must 'own' them before any individual does. Whether society actually knows about the gold in that mountain or not is immaterial.
Remember how 'things' ended up in private hands? Society assigns 'ownership' based on what is considered best for all.
Would it feel right to you, to have a system where someone could be given the right to derive benefit, in perpetuity, from the 'innovation' of concentrating heat with a combustible and a flow of oxygen to create a self perpetuating combustion reaction? Certainly it would have been worth it to reward the individual who first comes up with the idea. But to give his descendents a large share of the rewards of its use by *all* mankind, forever? Surely someone else would have come up with it sooner or later.
Clearly we cannot allow someone to 'own' an idea in perpetuity, no matter how innovative nor complex. It would be too potentially damaging to the good of mankind.
In the long long long run, your descendents will completely and utterly mix with all of mankind. In the end, your 'innovation' *will* belong to everyone else. (unless there's some moderate inbreeding or abstenance in your family... :) When all of this logic is applied to something simple like fire or the wheel, it all makes perfect sense. I guess it could get a little more complicated when we're talking about highly complex 'ideas' like a musical composition or your book. But they are still merely 'information'. We're simply left deciding how *much* of a *finite* reward one should get(*).
Physics tells us that quite literally, one immortal monkey with one arm tied behind his back would eventually re-create your work. Some of us are a lot smarter than monkeys. And there are four billion years until the sun goes out.
Damn I'm good.
-NH
BTW: I've raised this point before, but I don't think we got a good answer. Without doubt mankinds greatest philosophers and thinkers have gone over this idea before. Where can we find a definitive summary of their train of thoughts and conclusions? Any historians out there who can point out the way? Clearly it would be idiotic to have to work this out from first principles all by ourselves over again.
It would be most efficient if we could just re-educate ourselves, our politicians, and everyone else, with what mankind has already likely learned, from a definitive respected source of information.
(*) I'd agree with you about 10 years being too short for your book. But I CLEARLY think that the life of the author PLUS 50 years is WAY too much. I liked the original 28 + 28 year terms. I don't mind *automatically* assigning copyright to the creator.
Personal note: It almost feels like the wisdom with which our society was created hundreds of years ago is being torn down by mediocre elected morons at the behest of the naked greed and aggression of bureacratic corporations. Anyone else feel this way?
I'd have to concur with your general feelings. My own feelings are only moderated by the fact that I view his intransigence towards making his pages more usable and instead strictly adhering to the standards as a 'protest' against how badly browsers handle the standards.
But I'm still left with a very very bad taste in my mouth, to think that someone leaves webpages up that look horrid in the browsers of 25% of all the people who view them (unless they have javascript turned ON), and yet will crash that same 25% of all the people that try and view them (unless they have Javascript turned OFF).
I'm using Netscape 4.61 on Win98, I have most advertisers in my HOSTS file aliased to 127.0.0.1(*), (and have a webserver running so pages that MUST get replies before displaying don't 'freeze' until they time out in trying), and I keep Javascript turned off most of the time so that sites whose ads 'redirect' to 404 pages when an ad isn't available, don't. Thus when I went to see his 'steal' webpage, my browser crashed. Thanks. Thanks a lot buddy. I don't need you to remind me that Netscape and Microsoft products suck. You've simply pissed me off at you yourself.
I don't use IE because of it's secuirty hell, and because it's "favorites" management sucks ass, nor Opera because it isn't free (beer) and doesn't (or didn't) do everything needed, nor do I 'upgrade' to 4.63 or 4.7 because, well, "upgrading" is a pain and risky with almost all products.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not holding him fully responsible for how bad his site looks in my setup. I spread the blame everywhere appropriate. I hate the guts of Netscape and Microsoft (well, especially their consumer OS division) and most of the people who have made a large portion of the software I've ever used as well.
Sign me - Mad as hell at almost everyone.
(*) I didn't get around to 'aliasing into nullspace' all the advertisers until I got pissed off at being forced to wait for slow ads before pages would display.
Wasn't there also a type of 'air breathing' battery for laptops being worked on 5 or so years ago? It was either a type of fuel cell (what you describe) or it was a special battery which simply didn't have it's oxygen stored internally, and so it got it from the air.
The net effect was that the battery/cell could last a full 5-10 times longer than current ones.
Unfortunately, they had a habbit of bursting into fire. The manufacturers tried to hide it as long as possible, but they eventually got sussed out and the investors lost their shirts.
There is a big huge gaping hole in your opinion. The fact of the matter is that most people aren't smart enough, like you and I. Therefore companies that do such bad things will always profit, survive, and maybe even crush the competition who are not doing such bad things.
That's why we have a lot of laws in the first place! That's why "buyer beware" has never cut it in many many situations.
Now this situation doesn't result in anyone losing money or property without compensation(*), which is what most of our laws deal with. It deals with the loss of privacy.
Does privacy deserve the same protection as property? Does it deserve any protection at all? Is the shrink-wrap license enough?
I think a lot of us would argue quite successfully that yes, it deserves a hell of a lot more protection than it has now, and no, shrink wrap licenses should not be valid for half the stuff that is often in them.
There are certain types/sizes of 'contracts' which are valid when made 'in passing', and others that need a lot more than an 'in passing' contract, that need signed documents, adequate two party communication and understanding, and adequate compensation. How many of us have heard of contracts or events being overturned by courts because there wasn't a signed contract? We all know that there are some contracts that the courts won't enforce with at least a token measure of compensation. And some that aren't enforcable when that token is effectively meaningless. And others that are deemed 'fraud' because the 'contract' was so obscured and desceptive.
Personally I think this world will degenerate into hell if we don't produce an adequately balanced system of legislative, enforcement, and legislative system. Human beings in general are just too stupid to 'figure it all out for themselves' and solve it through individual actions as you suggest.(**)
-NH
(*) Here's a unique argument. Information *IS* property. We've got that ingrained in our society. So how come this information isn't worth anything or isn't protected? Shouldn't I be in control of who obtains this information from my life? Shouldn't taking this information without my consent or compensation be illegal?
Now of course it was in the disclaimer/shrink-wrap license. And you are getting 'compensation' in the form of software that does work for you. But is that enough?
If someone came up with a new way to screw people over and get 10-50 bucks from them without them really noticing that they had agreed to it, don't you think there would be a clamour to deal with it legislatively? We've already done so in many cases. We're seriously cracking down on phone-'fraud' organizations that do this exact thing to old and gullible people.
(**) Some of us don't like having to wade through the shit that your idiot friends effectively allow in this world. And some of us take pity on your idiot friends who are in effect powerless to protect themselves or change the world, because hey, they're idiots. And most of us take deep offence to shucksters and con-men depriving the weak of their property and rights.
IE: If you want to go live in the wild west, take your damn six shooters with you, we don't want your kind around here.
Jesus H __rist, that scared the __it out of me.
I don't know how(*), but when I (thought that I) clicked on that link, Netscape Composer came up and began filling with a massive block of junk (only partially text)... boy did I freak!
Instant section 8. QUICK-QUICK-CTL-ALT-DEL-KILL-NETSCAPE-REALLY-QUICK -NOW!
After many minutes checking my outbox, examining the slashdot page source, examining a saved-as-a-file copy of the link, I dared click on it again... normal plain text.
(*) I'm not so un-coordinated that I could have mistakenly clicked on the e-mail address link instead of the 'this file' link, perhaps I was holding down some special key or something, or perhaps Netscape decided to wig out and pretend that I was clicking on an e-mail address..?
That's just what I was thinking.
Seriously, I now *rarely* go anywhere else to search, except for Deja for Usenet searches. The difference between before Google and now is like night and day for me. For such a big increase in efficiency and results, I figure they deserve a patent.
You still have to use your noodle a bit for each search to get the best results. Notice that they do NOT match partial words. Only the full words. So if you've got a world in your expression or word-set that could be plural or something, make sure and try that as well. And occasionally what you're looking for won't be a site that is linked to by the most others, and so then I go to AltaVista.
There is all this talk about how screwed artists are nowdays because just getting a label to sign them is so hard that they'll sign anything, and most labels use roughly the same crappy legal agreements, screwing over the artists.
There is one thing that the labels can NOT currently ask them to sign over, and that is the rights "in perpetuity" (where perpetuity means as long as copyrights are valid, which is what, 90 years?). As I read it currently an artist can get back the rights to his work when the work comes up for 'renewal' of the copyright, which is after the first (28, 32?) years.
So currently if you're an artist and you make a deal with the devil to go big, there are limits to what the labels can demand in the contract. This is one of those natural limits. They aren't guaranteed the copyright in perpetuity.
Works for hire do NOT come up for the same kind of copyright renewal which means that in effect labels would now be allowed to demand the rights in perpetuity.
Yes yes, if an artist is stupid enough to sign away this much rights then they deserve it.
HOWEVER, we as a society make it illegal for a person to sign away certain rights, due to the potential repercussions due to abuses. You can not sign away your fundamental freedoms. You can NOT consent to be physically assaulted.
Labels have so much power that allowing them to demand rights in perpetuity would give them a potential goldmine at the expense of the artists, who would get nearly nothing extra. Do you really think the labels are going to give artists a fair deal in exchange for that 'in perpetuity' (aka work for hire) clause?
No way in hell. You can bet your ass that Elvis (ok, a rich example, but a good one) would have been given a pittance for the 'extra' future rights signed over, and his family would have been left with a lot less, in perpetuity.
> about once a month, so I guess I'm out of luck for a while.
Is this true? Are they banning IPs?
If so, guess how screwed all the people that get 'dirty' IPs are going to be!
[ NH notices the automatic +2 just after he hits submit ]
AAAAHHHHhhh!!! Don't hurt me!
I didn't notice that I had just today reached enough karma and had recieved the +1 bonus!
Damn it, it should default to OFF! And it should show up in the preview! I'm a faithful previewer...
[ grumble grumble ]
Pardon: Are you saying that "Pegasus Mail" was also named or commonly known by the term 'pmail'? If so, then yeah, they had a right to ask him to change the name.
[ NH goes away to do some homework after the fact... so he can provide a definitive clear explanation of the circumstances of this obscure topic.. like someone should have done in the beginning instead of rambling on as though everyone in the planet knows the details about what is being talked about :) ]
Ok, I've easily found Scott Bender's pmail, and it looks like he's being forced to change his package name as well. The pmail domain is owned by David Harris and his free Pegasus Mail, which he claims was first released in 1990. David's site doesn't refer to Pegasus Mail by the term pmail, other than pmail being in the name of the downloadable files, and other than having the domain name.
However at some other scattered sites where Pegasus Mail is mentioned, the term pmail is used to refer to it.
Hmmmmm. Looks like there is another commercial product called pmail, over here. Not a full e-mail client. But e-mail related.
Here is another pmail package, from Be.com, developed by a Dennis Ryan.
Then there is Personal Mail (pmail.net), which turns up in my search. (Goofballs, if I have javascript turned off I get a page of white text on a white background.)
None the less, it is clear that the users of Pegasus Mail do refer to it by the name 'pmail'. This was not adequately clear in any of the other messages.
Personally I can easily see how others could 'miss' pmail, aka Pegasus Mail, in a search for 'prior use'. I've never heard of it before, and I've been on the net since 1992. If I did a search for pmail and found what I found above, I would have presumed that pmail was a commonly used name without a firm claim on it. Especially since the official Pegasus Mail pages do not refer to itself as pmail. And 95% of the sites that refered to Pegasus Mail as pmail were in a foreign language, if I hadn't paid close attention to them, I might have missed the connection between Pegasus Mail and pmail all together.
Cheers
The rate cards for UserFriendly and Slashdot/Andover are available, and show their rates ranging between $22 and $70 CPM. So your million dollar a year estimate is around 4-10 times too low. Furthermore with a third of a million registered users, and each one viewing at least 5 stores per day, (I'm understimating here, I must generate 100-300 views per day, depending on how many comments I read), we're talking another factor of 3-10.
So by my estimates, SlashDot could bring in anywhere from $12 million to $100 M per year.
That's enough to make me want to get in on the goldrush!
Damn that sucks. You couldn't bluff in case they were bluffing themselves..? Forcing them to give up or face filing with the courts? Just because they wrote you a letter doesn't necessarily mean they think they have a case... it means they're hoping they can get you to change without taking you to court.
I don't see any confusion at *all* between the names 'pmail' and 'pegasus mail'. An idiot could have won that case for you.. (which means you could have represented yourself :)
No offence.. You know the old saying: "he who represents himself has an idiot for a lawyer."
BTW: I initially thought exactly what ignatz stated, however reading the rest of the thread it's clear that you were unclear in your original statement.
IE: You said "demanded that I rename my program pmail because", and I and everyone interpreted that as "they demanded that you rename your program to pmail", which left us thinking you originally named your program 'pegasus mail', hence ignatz' reply. Clearly what you meant was "demanded that I rename my program (originally named pmail) to something else".
God, I hear you! Quicktime utterly screwed with my Netscape audio associations, took a bit of work to sort that out.
I've finally got it so that clicking on a wav link instantly brings up Sound Recorder, which plays the wav automatically, then exits. None of this 'open a full new page and 0wait 10 seconds for quicktime to initialize'. Not only that but it would truncate the last half second of really small wavs. What a piece of sh*t.
Upside is I still have Quicktime on my box, but it's not integrated with the browser any more. So I just save the quictime movies to disk and watch them later. I have not yet come across a situation where looking at the page source doesn't reveal the target so it can be 'saved', even for highly embedded movies.
Downside is that I don't dare upgrade my quicktime player, lest it screw me over again.
Oh, I'm not too damn impressed that Netscape allows some associations to be set up that can NOT be edited or deleted by the user. As well I should be able to 'freeze' specified associations. But nooooooo. Hmmm, same goes for Win98 I guess.
I really should find/create something that will allow me to 'save' my Win98 associations/icon-references, and 'restore' them if I ever install software that screws with them on me. And I should publish some code/instructions to do the 'auto play/exit sound recorder for wavs in Netscape' association... Help out all the less technically inclined people of the world.
One last tidbit. Anyone notice that if you don't have real audio installed/integrated that 'streaming' mp3's from mp3.com doesn't work? Well, not really. They just have some javascript that checks and then tells you that you can't stream mp3 just because you don't have Real Audio.
Turn off javascript and it streams directly to winamp, no problems!
Damn fscking marketing bastards and engineer whores!
> posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.
Umm, no. That will/would be quite explicitly barred by the judgement. The breakup proposed already has all the language, requrements, and teeth necessary to prevent that.
The descriptions we've seen about how internal company procedures, work, and communications was excruciatingly examined/recorded/archived for years afterwards in the Bell breakup shows us how impossible it would be to do what you describe without it being detected.
What? You thought you'd outsmarted a few hundred lawyers? :) It's damn rare that a human thinks of something that hasn't been thought of by someone else :(
Low penetration? Aren't there two million of us? Ok, that's only 1-2% of the total, but it seems to me that this is a good sized base of people to work with.
Oh hell, you can ignore the request to reboot nearly 75% of the time with software in general, and everything will work just fine! (WinNT or 98) I *frequently* ignore requests by applications for a reboot.
I have gut feelings for what types of functional upgrades and pieces of software will actually change things that really need a reboot, which are just bluffing to cover their asses, and which were simply programmed by idiots... I'm usually right. Most software falls into the latter two categories.
I work for a product house. Much to my chagrin, a couple years after I discovered the above properties about software in general, our own management forced us to put in a request to reboot one product upon install or upgrade simply to *try* and prevent a bug from happening and getting a support call.
We have only observed this bug once, ever. We're only guessing that a reboot would prevent that problem. It might also need a service pack re-application, but we don't know, we've never been able to repeat the problem.
On another of our series of products, we request that the user stop and start a major component (which affects any and all users using the application at the time)... for no reason! Someone wrote the instructions for a specific item that needed it a year ago, and some other developer copied the instructions verbatim without re-examining that requirement.
The current project that I'm working on violates nearly everything Steve McConnell has ever written... and there's no way I'm getting my neck cut off trying to point this out..
- shudder -
A man got killed and the fine was $1000, because "it was mostly his own fault". That's one massive chronic failing in many things in our society. Regulations without *ANY* teeth, effective 'control' by the groups who have a vested interest in the status quo, and an utterly idiotic amount of outrageous incidents and tragedies before anything is done.
The term 'tombstone technology' applies to nearly everything mankind does.
Doing a MSc in Physics (opto-electronics), I got fully indoctrinated into my University's safety system and regulations (which were impressive, strict, enforced, and followed), so I know a bit about what they are talking about. WRT the above incident, our regs were basically "yes you are responsible for your own safety, but so is your manager/supervisor, and so is your supervisor's supervisor, etc etc". Responsibility doesn't just 'stop' with one or two people.
In my and my co-orker's work, we dealt with comparatively small amounts of these chemicals, and yet we were highly protected. Tri-choroethylene, HF, and the other things mentioned frequently in that article, were not handled unless you were fully suited ( heavy rubber smock, heavy rubber gloves, full face mask, etc ), and were never used outside of a fume cabinet with the partition lowered as far as possible. Haz mat chemical lockers were *everywhere*, and 1 gallon bottles and even squirt bottles were NEVER left out unless actually in use. You only kept out the minimum quantities for what you were doing, no pouring a few ml from the gallon jugs. NOTHING was unlabled. No one got to work in a given lab until they had spent a serious amount of time (a couple days for 10 pages for me for 4 labs) writing up a major paper (on their own) describing in detail all of the hazards in the lab, what the procedures to reduce the hazards were, what the responses to incidents with each specific hazard was, etc etc.
Now the kicker. Remember our friend Tri-cloroethylene? The one I didn't handle even in small quantities unless fully suited and with a fume cabinet? The one suspected of being a cancer causing agent, that is highly flamable, that blew up on the guy in the story above (who was mixing 'vats' of it with no personal protection or fume hood?)
It's used as the 'carrying agent' in 10% of lawn herbicides. That's right. They spray a 90% solution of it on YOUR lawn, or one of your neighbours lawns.
You should have seen the look on my face as I sat on my couch watching the investigative news report about this back in 1996, knowing what I know about how we in a University semiconductor lab dealt with this compound.
Nor moderate everything that you read ...
He still makes me smile. But yeah, I can see it wearing thin.
Taking a look at user profiles, Oog has gotten approximately 25 karma in the past two weeks, while Signal 11 has gotten just over 20. He would have had around 30, but he occasionally gets knocked down (some bad moderation, some other things...).
We'll know oog is wearing too thin when:
a) He doesn't get mod'd up any more
b) He starts getting mod'ed down.
If the latter occurs, we'll have flamefests arguing over whether that's right or not, whether or not someone should be allowed to represent their opinions in mod-speak, whether he is being sincere but funny or insincere for the karma... etc.
> people) of creating hyperlinks on webpages in different languages that automatically
> cause the 'viewing' of such pages to be translated.
Ack! I preview! I preview!! Then something like this slips through.
What I *meant*, is that I want an easy way for my Mom to put a hyperlink on her English homepage to a German webpage such that when my Grandma follows the link, the German page gets translated into English.
Ok, someone must have thought of this before. Are there any plans/work-underway for translation software that would integrate with a browser? A plugin for Mozilla? Commercial? OpenSource?
Of course, I keep forgetting about that Babelfish Javascript 'translate' button in my 'Personal Toolbar'. But I've not used it once since I put it there... there hasn't been any English pages with links to interesting things in other languages!
However now that I think about it, I keep forgetting about babelfish all together when my google searches turn up 80% of their hits in a foreign language, which happens all of the time.
I was doubting for a moment that an integrated translation plugin would be worthwhile, but for the average person, who doesn't have a babelfish javascript shortcut in their personal toolbar (do IE people have anything similar?), it would be nice if their browser recognized the foreign language in search engine results and what not and translated it automatically, without asking. I guess then we'd need 'language' tags. ( Or XML perhaps?)
And we need either a well known or an integrated point and click method (for average people) of creating hyperlinks on webpages in different languages that automatically cause the 'viewing' of such pages to be translated. I presume that us knowledgable people can do that now with babelfish... so why haven't we?
Clearly there are some tools and enabling mechanisms that aren't widely known or in place yet... if we want large scale cross-language linking and interaction to come to fruition.
BTW: Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by the restrictiveily small 'subject' box? Come to think of it, a wider composition box would be nice too. Hey! It should be user configurable!> On closer reading, the article seems to suggest that this originates with the judge.
No it doesn't!!
It says the Judge prohibited him from using hardware that can allow net access. It says that the request (or 'order') to quit the talk circuit originated from the federal probation department.
On the one hand I think it's not right to limit someone's speech this way. On the other hand I'm all in favour of rulings that prevent individuals from profiting from their crimes... Are there any clauses in his sentence that prevent him from profiting from movie/book deals? How would/do they apply to stuff like this?
Is there a digital camera out yet which can use it's compact flash card for MP3's???
It seems like such an OBVIOUS perfect match.