As for "shutting them down", I seriously doubt it will be that drastic - a win here would definitely start pushing things in the right direction, but this is civil law, not sports.
As for "if they win, we are screwed", as above it wouldn't be that drastic either, it would push things in the other direction. However - and IANAL, just a criminal justice/IT student, I'm willing to bet that if it started looking like the RIAA was going to start winning, it could be withdrawn. (the RIAA cannot withdraw it if it looks like they're going to lose, because they didn't file - that doesn't stop the other, plaintiff party, from withdrawing)
Legal crap like this is never so clear cut - it's usually just a big goatfuck no matter what side your on - the only winners are the lawyers.
This doesn't change anything really - colleges have been acting as an enforcement arm for the RIAA for years now. Here at RIT they've almost admitted as much - students are told straight up that RIT will give the RIAA the names of anyone they ask for, no subpoena or court action required.
It's hard to blame the colleges themselves though, when the RIAA has the FBI and DOJ their enforcing too.
Or join a smaller one, one that doesn't have a zillion developers. Know php? check out http://www.xoops.org/ - they'd be happy to have a developer I'm sure. Just surf around on sourceforge and find one you like and would be valuable to with not a whole lot of developers, and jump in. The worst that can happen is the project dies or it's dead and nobody responds.
(I don't have anything to do with Xoops beyond being a user - although I do have some input at http://www.winpackman.org/ where I'm positive they would love to have you =) )
(full disclosure - my brother made/runs/writes the windows package manager (http://www.winpackman.org)) - It is tough, and slow, especially when attempting to do it right (not a criticism of anyone), but windows installers tend to throw crap everywhere, especially into the far reaches of the registry. That is one of the goals of the winpackman, to organize the files a little better and provide an undelete function.
That being said, Winpackman is still pretty early in development, after some problems with GTK and some messy installers, there has been a total rewrite (the first version had a HORRIBLE GUI).
Btw - not to jump on the "criticize Slashdot bandwagon", but about 6 months or so ago I submitted an eerily similar story about our Winpackman. I'm not mad at slashdot, it's just kinda creepy. haha
Do these people, the AACS, MPAA, etc. realize that "bloggers" are not some type of mutant monster, but are human beings that also happen to be THEIR CUSTOMERS? Seriously - I realize the whole "customer is always right" thing is a little ridiculous, but to go to these lengths to where you are actually going out of your way to BULLY your customers, that's a little bit counterproductive dont you think? "bloggers" aren't from the moon, and neither are the people buying your ridiculously over priced products. You might wanna think about that when you're filling out the chapter 11 reorganization paperwork because nobody wants to buy yet another shitty copy of "Snow White".
(I know AACS is not a content producer, it is a consortium made up of Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers, IBM, Toshiba and Sony, and maybe others. Those are the companies that will take the hit when more and more people get sick of their crap.)
Yeah, Digg is a joke - and i'm not saying that as a "slashdotter" or anything goofy like that. I'm saying that as they act like their site is all "democratic", but in reality they censor the living shit out of it. Like when i disagreed with a bunch of the racist stories at the hate site "littlegreenfootballs" and "buried" their Digg stories - which quickly led to my account being deleted for "abuse".
Check it out, "Digg this you Biased Bastards"
"I havn't updated yet but there were a lot of bugs in the beta I have on my home computer, they should not be in the final release"
-- You guys are bitching about bugs that you don't even know are still there. You haven't updated yet, but are assuming they are still there and bitching about it? Come on. At least install the thing before knocking it.
I'm just tired of having every website I have or am involved in called a "blog". It's not a goddamned blog, it's a website. That word makes me want to live in a little shack in the woods and spend the rest of my life having nothing to do with technology.
Well, I RTFA, and it was pointless. FTFA:
"and we're absolutely adamant that the benchmarks were chosen to show the two Penryn-based CPUs off in the best possible light."
-and-
"Further, it's not an apple-to-apple comparison as both 45nm processors were clocked in at 3.33GHz and the QX6800 at 2.93GHz. Our requests for clock and FSB parity were politely ignored. "...I appreciate the disclosure that it was in fact ruled by Intel and your requests were ignored, but with that, why did you do it then? If the whole thing is skewed by the manufacturer, you've just become part of their advertising campaign.
Intel set it up, they weren't gonna set themselves up to fail. Besides, isn't benchmarking supposed to at least resemble a scientific-like process? If you were going to benchmark you're own machines for whatever reason, would you set it up like this?
Easy there, sparkplug - i realize that everything is a gray area - so just say that. In a non interactive interview format like that, answering questions with questions doesn't accomplish anything, except adding more questions. It's not your fault, everything in the law does depend on something, so perhaps this wasn't the right format for asking questions dealing with legal issues.
rights that have been taken away (or they are working on): my right to privacy on the phone, my right to privacy on the internet, my right to VOTE (and have it count).
do you see the Isralie government fucking incessently with it's citizens? Do you see them running around crying because the terrorists are going to get them? They go about their daily lives, terrorists be damned. (i didn't say their military didn't give a fuck)
... who didn't get anything from that? Who needs lawyers, I can answer every question with a synonym for "depends" myself. I realize, the law is incredibly complicated (i'm a criminal justice student myself), but come on - "I don't know what MP3 files you are talking about, how do you know you were entitled to make those copies legally?" - well fuck i don't know, was I? Stop answering questions with questions and i'll stop talking shit about lawyers.
That is probably the most accurate reasoning i've heard on the subject so far - look at Israel (and other middle east countries), they don't give a FUCK about terrorist attacks, they know that it's a chance they have to take in order to live how they want to live. The current attitude of the country, and this administration is the complete opposite of what this country was founded on - it was "Give me liberty or give me death", not "take all my rights away to save me from the boogie men".
No, they didn't play it all. I went around in a circle a few years back with the ESRB because of this. Here's how it works: They have some guy play the game and make short video clips that are supposed to represent the game. Then they sit around with volunteer parents and watch the clips and give their rating based on that. Yes, we all know this is bullshit, some of these games have 100 hours of content and they are basing the entire game on a 20 minute video clip, not to mention how easily everything can be taken out of context when you take it out of the story. When I told them that was a really dumb idea they didn't respond, instead complaining to my ISP that I was sending "rude" emails.
I would totally agree that their days as a market leader were over if it wern't for the stranglehold that it has on everything. I mean the majority of people judge computers on what "Windows" it has (98, xp, etc.). To most people Microsoft products are a given, it makes the saying of "the Microsoft Tax" less of a joke and more of a reality.
So the !great Dvorak says that MS is dead in the water, yet they are still going to make a ton of money. Then how are they dead in the water? I'm sure Gates and Co. give a shit what people think as long as the money is running in the door. If MS is dead in the water yet making a lot of money, then what does that make Apple?
I see all these sites trying to get me to download "free" songs but there is ALWAYS a catch, and it is always a catch that makes it not worth it. Here at RIT we have CTRAX - same thing. Free music, as long as you don't want to keep it longer than a month or burn it to a CD.
RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.: We want to KEEP what we buy and what we do with it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Until they all realize this, pirating will stay on the rise. If you don't believe me, keep making those stupid EULAs and coming up with DRM garbage, and see what happens.
I think that might be the single most intelligent post I have read on Slashdot yet. What's fucked up is, Stephen Colbert does this type of thing on his TV show, and sound exactly like guys like Bill O'reilly and Rush Limbaugh. This tactic seems to be being used more and more by the religious right to shut up their oppostion. It's the new McCarthyism.
It's a buzzword when it is used by people to describe things that have nothing to do with it. Like when 40 year old rednecks talk about one of my sites saying it is a "blog", instead of what it is and always has been, a website. A word like "slashdotting" would be a slang or scene type word, when a word like "blog" gets repeated all day in the media, usually to describe things that used to be "websites".
Yeah I'm with you - tired of the buzzword crap. Why would anyone really care about the "blogosphere" to begin with - there is a reason these people have "blogs", because nobody will listen to them. It's worse than the tabloids. Why would I want the opinion of these people to begin with? Are they educated on a specific subject? Or, more likely, wannabe pundits?
Btw, its a GODDAMN WEBPAGE, WEBSITE, SITE, not a "blog" or "weblog". It's the same damn thing with the same crappy layouts and the same crappy content. Need proof? You can "blog" on MySpace! Enough said.
Slashdot Mirror
As for "shutting them down", I seriously doubt it will be that drastic - a win here would definitely start pushing things in the right direction, but this is civil law, not sports. As for "if they win, we are screwed", as above it wouldn't be that drastic either, it would push things in the other direction. However - and IANAL, just a criminal justice/IT student, I'm willing to bet that if it started looking like the RIAA was going to start winning, it could be withdrawn. (the RIAA cannot withdraw it if it looks like they're going to lose, because they didn't file - that doesn't stop the other, plaintiff party, from withdrawing) Legal crap like this is never so clear cut - it's usually just a big goatfuck no matter what side your on - the only winners are the lawyers.
This doesn't change anything really - colleges have been acting as an enforcement arm for the RIAA for years now. Here at RIT they've almost admitted as much - students are told straight up that RIT will give the RIAA the names of anyone they ask for, no subpoena or court action required. It's hard to blame the colleges themselves though, when the RIAA has the FBI and DOJ their enforcing too.
Or join a smaller one, one that doesn't have a zillion developers. Know php? check out http://www.xoops.org/ - they'd be happy to have a developer I'm sure. Just surf around on sourceforge and find one you like and would be valuable to with not a whole lot of developers, and jump in. The worst that can happen is the project dies or it's dead and nobody responds. (I don't have anything to do with Xoops beyond being a user - although I do have some input at http://www.winpackman.org/ where I'm positive they would love to have you =) )
(full disclosure - my brother made/runs/writes the windows package manager (http://www.winpackman.org)) - It is tough, and slow, especially when attempting to do it right (not a criticism of anyone), but windows installers tend to throw crap everywhere, especially into the far reaches of the registry. That is one of the goals of the winpackman, to organize the files a little better and provide an undelete function. That being said, Winpackman is still pretty early in development, after some problems with GTK and some messy installers, there has been a total rewrite (the first version had a HORRIBLE GUI). Btw - not to jump on the "criticize Slashdot bandwagon", but about 6 months or so ago I submitted an eerily similar story about our Winpackman. I'm not mad at slashdot, it's just kinda creepy. haha
Do these people, the AACS, MPAA, etc. realize that "bloggers" are not some type of mutant monster, but are human beings that also happen to be THEIR CUSTOMERS? Seriously - I realize the whole "customer is always right" thing is a little ridiculous, but to go to these lengths to where you are actually going out of your way to BULLY your customers, that's a little bit counterproductive dont you think? "bloggers" aren't from the moon, and neither are the people buying your ridiculously over priced products. You might wanna think about that when you're filling out the chapter 11 reorganization paperwork because nobody wants to buy yet another shitty copy of "Snow White". (I know AACS is not a content producer, it is a consortium made up of Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers, IBM, Toshiba and Sony, and maybe others. Those are the companies that will take the hit when more and more people get sick of their crap.)
Yeah, Digg is a joke - and i'm not saying that as a "slashdotter" or anything goofy like that. I'm saying that as they act like their site is all "democratic", but in reality they censor the living shit out of it. Like when i disagreed with a bunch of the racist stories at the hate site "littlegreenfootballs" and "buried" their Digg stories - which quickly led to my account being deleted for "abuse". Check it out, "Digg this you Biased Bastards"
"I havn't updated yet but there were a lot of bugs in the beta I have on my home computer, they should not be in the final release" -- You guys are bitching about bugs that you don't even know are still there. You haven't updated yet, but are assuming they are still there and bitching about it? Come on. At least install the thing before knocking it.
I'm just tired of having every website I have or am involved in called a "blog". It's not a goddamned blog, it's a website. That word makes me want to live in a little shack in the woods and spend the rest of my life having nothing to do with technology.
The Nvidia drivers are somewhat of a pain. Try the guide here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowt o/Nvidia
Well, I RTFA, and it was pointless. FTFA: "and we're absolutely adamant that the benchmarks were chosen to show the two Penryn-based CPUs off in the best possible light." -and- "Further, it's not an apple-to-apple comparison as both 45nm processors were clocked in at 3.33GHz and the QX6800 at 2.93GHz. Our requests for clock and FSB parity were politely ignored. " ...I appreciate the disclosure that it was in fact ruled by Intel and your requests were ignored, but with that, why did you do it then? If the whole thing is skewed by the manufacturer, you've just become part of their advertising campaign.
Intel set it up, they weren't gonna set themselves up to fail. Besides, isn't benchmarking supposed to at least resemble a scientific-like process? If you were going to benchmark you're own machines for whatever reason, would you set it up like this?
The cops must of found it and shut it down. Viva Le Resistance!
Easy there, sparkplug - i realize that everything is a gray area - so just say that. In a non interactive interview format like that, answering questions with questions doesn't accomplish anything, except adding more questions. It's not your fault, everything in the law does depend on something, so perhaps this wasn't the right format for asking questions dealing with legal issues.
rights that have been taken away (or they are working on): my right to privacy on the phone, my right to privacy on the internet, my right to VOTE (and have it count). do you see the Isralie government fucking incessently with it's citizens? Do you see them running around crying because the terrorists are going to get them? They go about their daily lives, terrorists be damned. (i didn't say their military didn't give a fuck)
... who didn't get anything from that? Who needs lawyers, I can answer every question with a synonym for "depends" myself. I realize, the law is incredibly complicated (i'm a criminal justice student myself), but come on - "I don't know what MP3 files you are talking about, how do you know you were entitled to make those copies legally?" - well fuck i don't know, was I? Stop answering questions with questions and i'll stop talking shit about lawyers.
That is probably the most accurate reasoning i've heard on the subject so far - look at Israel (and other middle east countries), they don't give a FUCK about terrorist attacks, they know that it's a chance they have to take in order to live how they want to live. The current attitude of the country, and this administration is the complete opposite of what this country was founded on - it was "Give me liberty or give me death", not "take all my rights away to save me from the boogie men".
No, they didn't play it all. I went around in a circle a few years back with the ESRB because of this. Here's how it works: They have some guy play the game and make short video clips that are supposed to represent the game. Then they sit around with volunteer parents and watch the clips and give their rating based on that. Yes, we all know this is bullshit, some of these games have 100 hours of content and they are basing the entire game on a 20 minute video clip, not to mention how easily everything can be taken out of context when you take it out of the story. When I told them that was a really dumb idea they didn't respond, instead complaining to my ISP that I was sending "rude" emails.
I would totally agree that their days as a market leader were over if it wern't for the stranglehold that it has on everything. I mean the majority of people judge computers on what "Windows" it has (98, xp, etc.). To most people Microsoft products are a given, it makes the saying of "the Microsoft Tax" less of a joke and more of a reality.
So the !great Dvorak says that MS is dead in the water, yet they are still going to make a ton of money. Then how are they dead in the water? I'm sure Gates and Co. give a shit what people think as long as the money is running in the door. If MS is dead in the water yet making a lot of money, then what does that make Apple?
I see all these sites trying to get me to download "free" songs but there is ALWAYS a catch, and it is always a catch that makes it not worth it. Here at RIT we have CTRAX - same thing. Free music, as long as you don't want to keep it longer than a month or burn it to a CD. RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.: We want to KEEP what we buy and what we do with it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Until they all realize this, pirating will stay on the rise. If you don't believe me, keep making those stupid EULAs and coming up with DRM garbage, and see what happens.
It only affects X11R6.9.0 and X11R7.0.0, you might be fine.
Who cares about his servers, why is the Department of Homeland Security running x on THEIR servers.
I think that might be the single most intelligent post I have read on Slashdot yet. What's fucked up is, Stephen Colbert does this type of thing on his TV show, and sound exactly like guys like Bill O'reilly and Rush Limbaugh. This tactic seems to be being used more and more by the religious right to shut up their oppostion. It's the new McCarthyism.
It's a buzzword when it is used by people to describe things that have nothing to do with it. Like when 40 year old rednecks talk about one of my sites saying it is a "blog", instead of what it is and always has been, a website. A word like "slashdotting" would be a slang or scene type word, when a word like "blog" gets repeated all day in the media, usually to describe things that used to be "websites".
Yeah I'm with you - tired of the buzzword crap. Why would anyone really care about the "blogosphere" to begin with - there is a reason these people have "blogs", because nobody will listen to them. It's worse than the tabloids. Why would I want the opinion of these people to begin with? Are they educated on a specific subject? Or, more likely, wannabe pundits? Btw, its a GODDAMN WEBPAGE, WEBSITE, SITE, not a "blog" or "weblog". It's the same damn thing with the same crappy layouts and the same crappy content. Need proof? You can "blog" on MySpace! Enough said.