Another solution is a world-wide effort to update infrastructure (better throughput, either hardware or software). But who's gonna pay for that? The last mile ISP's can't and won't and granted, it's not fair they should pay all of it.
Um, in the US, we're already paying for it. We have since the late 90's when congress passed huge tax breaks on to telcos to develop our 40Mbps connections - you have one of those don't you? The telco's promised us one years ago, I'm sure mine is just around the corner.
Anderson completely missed this fact. He was all rah-rah about what it meant for consumers (who have more options) and big retailers (who make big money on small margins) but paid zero attention to the artists, who get tiny wins but not big wins.
It's not just artists, it applies to everything. Most things follow a fad trend - even industrial equipment to some degree - there is a period where something is new and shiny & everyone wants one, then it's commonplace & everyone has one, after a while people who want one for a specific reason either find a used one & rebuild it or they find the 1 manufacturer who still makes it & gets one.
The point is that at some point, the tail can support a minimal economy, but no more. The LOC is filled with recordings - still under copyright - that are the only copy surviving - plenty of which are completely unusable because they've degraded so much. In a physical age, the tail value of those recordings literally ended when that recording ended up in the LOC. In a digital age, the tail value effectively ends rather than literally ends. The point is the same - at some point, the volume isn't sufficient to warrant the retention any longer by a reseller.
Most importantly, the long tail theory is part of why it's supposedly important to extend copyright. The problem is that when you examine it - copyright isn't helping anyone except the middlemen who deal in huge volumes - and this is the point I believe you are trying to make. The big media control millions of copyrights, therefor, even if they receive only $1/quarter on 90% of their catalog, it's big business. To the individual artists, they're lucky to even get a royalty check since the stamp costs more than the check is worth.
In summary: the tail is real, and it has an place in economics, however - that place isn't the glory-hole it's been made out to be.
Absolutely not. The general shape is fixed, however the specifics are not. Per Eric Flint, sales of his old books spike whenever a new book of his is printed. Thus the curve would have additional peaks rather than a single head w/ subsequent fall off.
The real point of issue is - is there sufficient value in the tail to warrant a niche market. The answer is 'obviously' - so long as you define the 'tail' as far enough towards the head.
You see diminishing returns... so sales people observe the 80/20 rule, 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers/products, etc., it's the power curve... But long tail observes that if you can only carry 100 products, 80% will come from your top 20%, but if you carried infinite inventory, the long tail exceeds the bulbous head because it's infinite.
It's been 20 years since I've done Calculus, however I do remember that even with an infinite tail, the area under the curve isn't infinite - Specifically the integration of 1/x from 0=> infinity is e or about 2 2/3. No matter where the curve starts or shapes, it will eventually converge to this pattern - 600 years from now, this months must have will only be of interest to some scholar doing their thesis on archaic trends.
Hmm, might I suggest you investigate your competition? - Perhaps a trip to Black Rose in the DC market or perhaps the summer or winter Fetish Flea in the Boston area may give you some marketing ideas. - $400-600 per belt for the simple ones in stainless steel & a good buggy whip goes for $40+. And canes, expand into canes, always a good market there for replacements.
Actually, from what I read, it's a directive from the executive & legislative branch directing judges to dismiss cases if the Telco has a written request from the Govt requesting a tap. From what I know of judges, there are a lot of them that would look at that directive & decide the paper was too course to wipe their ass with. You do not tell a judge to toss out the law & dismiss a case because you want it done. You either change the law, or argue why the action is within the law - those are your options.
One thing I have never understood in these cases is why the plaintiffs are letting them quote the 60's case of 'State Secrets' unopposed**. If anything that case is the absolute perfect case for why 'State Secrets' shouldn't be an instantly accepted argument to block evidence.
** The current standard for 'State Secrets' involves the govt declaring the results of a crash investigation a 'State Secret' supposedly because releasing the information would provide foreign powers with top secret information about the contents of the plane. This was used to block wrongful death suits by the families of the crash victims. When the report was declassified, the only secret was that the govt wasn't performing maintenance on engines properly.
I can guarantee that I can put a bomb in a working laptop that isn't going to look any different than your regular laptop. That bay for a 2nd battery or HD is more than large enough to hold a detonator & enough explosive to take down a plane. Wrapped in a HD case, it's going to show as a single block of metal to the xray machine - exactly like a real HD.
A terrorist from an organization isn't going to have a problem getting onto a plane with exactly what he needs to accomplish his goal. The whole ID thing is stupid - refuse & be denied - loose it & have a nice flight. Yeah that makes me feel safe - especially when you remember that every member of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID which would allow them to fly today. These people are not stupid, they are capable of coordinating complex schemes taking years to bring to fruition - the chances of catching them with some random search is so minimal as to be laughable.
This type of crap may - on a really good lottery win kind of day - catch some nut-job, however putting more into having well trained competent agents at the border instead of bored rent-a-cop dropouts would be a hell of a lot more effective.
I think we can.
Depending on the drive & how you're doing the copy, it's insane to try & copy every drive that crosses the border.
Figure 30 minutes to an hour minimum just to copy files to a USB based NAS - longer for duplication - for each hard drive that passes through. There is no practical way to make that work - and that's not including the flash cards & USB stick. Once you have it, what are you going to do with it? Datamine it for keywords/hash values - any keyword you're looking for is going to almost certainly be buried in the browser cache of anyone who reads the news online.
It comes down to security vs security theater. This is theater. The manpower/processing power required to make this even vaguely practical would be better spent by simply increasing the number of regular agents doing their normal jobs.
When the Feds were looking to increase data retention requirements & debating grants to pay for it, the FBI figured the price @ above $100,000 per prosecution & told the senate they would rather just have the money for more agents.
This is the same - by making a show of being careful, the TSA is 'doing something'. Just adding more agents doesn't change the perception of security, and therefore isn't in their interest. The job of the TSA isn't to make you safe, it's to make you feel safe. Unfortunately, most people just feel harassed and irritated.
Yeah, it seems to me that it was an oversight that networking wasn't encrypted in the first place. When lots of these protocols were being developed, security didn't seem to be much of a consideration.
Um, when most of these protocols were being developed, computers with 8 bit processors and KiloBytes of memory were a pipedream. My $14 disposable cell phone has more processing power than the launch center for the Apollo space missions.
Encryption wasn't included in the protocols because:
yes security wasn't a major concern
encryption wasn't a practical option for any but the most important transfers, and a tape by classified currier would have been faster than encrypting & decrypting them anyway.
I gave up tickets for a Greatful Dead show, because I could get ones for the next month when friends could go with me... didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped.
A 5-4 decision means that the somewhat-sane members of the court outnumbered the completely-crazy members of the court by One Single Vote. We've got ourselves a Supreme Court that's divided on the meaning of some of the most fundamental aspects American law. This doesn't bode well for the next 30 years.
Actually, the problem that 2 of the judges had was that they felt the court was overstepping itself in ruling on the core issue rather than on the point of law. Note that the court was unanimous in their decision that 2 US citizens held in military custody in Iraq are eligible for HC so long as they are detained by people under the US chain of command.
The case as it came to SCOTUS was - are military detainees eligible for HC or not. If they are eligible - contrary to the Federal appeals court's ruling - then the case was supposed to go back to the Federal court to rule whether the the military appeals tribunal constituted an equivalent within the scope of the military. Given that the detainees have been held for several years already, 5 judges felt that the case was extraordinary in it's nature and ruled not only the the eligibility for HC, but also on the matter of equivalence.
Taken together, I don't believe that the court is in as bad a shape as you believe. Without the matter of equivalence, I believe the matter would have been much less divisive.
I regard lawyers (mine or not) as instruments of the client's will. It is the RIAA that is the scumbags, because they're the ones asking for, or at least not blocking, their tactics
First & foremost, lawyers are officers of the court. That means that part of their job is to ensure that the legal process is adhered to - failure to do so is grounds for disbarment. The problem is that the foxes have been watching the henhouse for a long time. I do however see some light in the several high profile sanction cases in the last couple of months. Perhaps the judges will start dishing out more in an effort to bring their courts back to a civil dispute rather than a back-alley brawl.
Re:Phoronix will pay to fix X
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If someone is going to pursue a task because the task is its own reward, and you entice them to pursue a different task that isn't its own reward by offering them money, that's bribery.
'I will pay you to make my problem your top priority' is among the many things that people are saying about how a FOSS economy is supposed to work. Paying people to do work for you that you can't/don't want to do dates back to at least the bronze age, and probably farther. I would go so far as to say that it's one of the cornerstones of civilization.
I think the OP went about it the perfect way:
Identified his problem
Identified the existing bug
Identified the existing timeframe on fixing the bug (there was none)
Offered some financial support to the project as a whole in order to get his problem addressed as a priority.
Essentially, he tried to hire a programmer/programmers to fix his problem from the pool of programmers who know the code the best - the active developers. Anyone with a serious intent to fix a software problem is going to go the same route - grabbing a coder off the street isn't going to be nearly as productive as grabbing the guy who wrote it in the first place.
3. Is it just me or are there just some odd fantasy "archetypes" in there? Tieflings, Dragonborn and Eladrin - where on Earth does the teleporting Noldor archetype fit into the traditional fantasy mold?...or is it just cool for the kids...?
English Legend. The Sidhe were noted for that nasty little bit of witchery - stepping from the Fey world to ours & back again. They are in effect bringing back the original Elves, not the sweat Tolkeinized versions - watch out for them - they have very bad tempers & take offense quickly.
Again, a totally subjective matter. I'm not aware of any other living being that IS monogamous, so I question whether monogamy for humans is really the "normal and natural behavior."
Swans, eagles, wolves, and some species of doves all exhibit monogamy. Many species practice serial monogamy - having one mate per season - bird species where the male helps tend the young usually fall in this category. Birds where the female raises the chicks alone are often promiscuous. Harem behavior is common in primates - gorillas principally - and felines - Lions being the most obvious example.
This has nothing to do with copyrighting the act of performance, which no one is talking about. You're clearly struggling with this situation, and not understanding the effects and mechanisms of copyright in this scenario. The performance in question is fixed, and recordings of it do fall under the scope of copyright.
NYCL might have a better interpretation of it, but in general, no.
A performance is just that a specific individual performance. It is not fixed. Tonight Prince is 4hz above C on that note, tomorrow he's 12Hz low. It's not fixed, it's a performance. Specifically, tonights performance is ephemeral - once done it's gone - it can be remember, or it can be relived through a recording, but the performance itself is gone. A recording is fixed. Tonight, tomorrow, 30 years from now, it's exactly the same. The fact that Prince gave the performance tonight, doesn't entitle him to any copyright control over recordings made by other people. He can argue contract issues over the actual recording - IE, violations of the festival rules which prohibited recordings - in which he can pursue transfer of the copyright as a remedy, but until he receives those copyrights, they belong to the person/people who made the recordings.
Now, if you're trying to argue that the arrangement, lyrics, etc are the controlling issue, Prince doesn't own them either - they belong to Radiohead. So no matter how you look at this, Prince isn't the controlling party for copyright complaints. He gave a performance of someone else's music. People recorded that performance. No matter how you look at it, by issuing a DMCA complaint, he's claiming copyright control over other people's recordings of his performance. The problem is, his performance isn't eligible for copyright protection.
So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider
Ideally you would want to trip them to attack you, then have all your traffic shunted to a federal site - say the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DHS. Though it might also be fun to point them at the new AF cyber command.
Or you know...HTTP/FTP, which would be better suited for small files.
Um, small is not a word normally associated with manuals issued by either the Government or Insurance companies.
"Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
Um, if I remember correctly, SCOTUS already shot down one law that dealt with 'pseudo' child porn - if it's not a real child doing real porn, it's not child-porn. Of course this is congress, passing good laws is so much harder than 'thinking of the children'.
The other problem is that they are budgeting $125M/year - but not, evidently, using it to put more FBI into cubicles. It looks like they are throwing the money at whoever promises to solve the problem without adding cops.
no, the cross-join (or unbounded join) was deliberate, I think adding a nice left outer join on top of the cross-join would be just the icing on the cake, or sand in the bearings.
why join tables anyway? if you really want to fsck your server just SELECT * FROM HUGE_TABLE t1, HUGE_TABLE t2, HUGE_TABLE t3;
Because the unbounded join on bbbt is the most likely type of problem you'll see in letting other people write their own sql statements, so it stands as a perfect example as to why they shouldn't be allowed to do it.
too simple, select bt.* from big_table bt, bigger_table bbt, biggest_table bbbt where bt.id=bbt.bt_id order by non_indexed_column;
Perhaps a good left outer join tossed in there to really thrash the drives.
I think I understand your TOS vs EULA comparison, but I'm not sure how it applies...the way I see it (which may be incorrect, IANAL) is that where she broke the letter of the law was using a false name when she created her account, i.e., if she had used her own name no crime would have been committed.
If that's true, something's seriously fucked up.
It's not as fucked up as you seem to think. I can call myself George Bush & even get credit cards under that name - so long as I am not engaging in fraud. If I try to get a credit card using the name George Bush & the Shrub's SSN, I get hammered with extra crimes listed. Using a pseudonym isn't a crime, using one to commit another crime is.
In this case, a service was provided - the account - in exchange for demographic information used to drive marketing. By screwing with the demographic info, she defrauded the company - reducing the effectiveness of the marketing & increasing their expenses while reducing their return. It's basic fraud, obtaining services under false pretenses - I'm not sure why they are using hacking laws instead of fraud/wirefraud ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, in the US, we're already paying for it. We have since the late 90's when congress passed huge tax breaks on to telcos to develop our 40Mbps connections - you have one of those don't you? The telco's promised us one years ago, I'm sure mine is just around the corner.
It's not just artists, it applies to everything. Most things follow a fad trend - even industrial equipment to some degree - there is a period where something is new and shiny & everyone wants one, then it's commonplace & everyone has one, after a while people who want one for a specific reason either find a used one & rebuild it or they find the 1 manufacturer who still makes it & gets one.
The point is that at some point, the tail can support a minimal economy, but no more. The LOC is filled with recordings - still under copyright - that are the only copy surviving - plenty of which are completely unusable because they've degraded so much. In a physical age, the tail value of those recordings literally ended when that recording ended up in the LOC. In a digital age, the tail value effectively ends rather than literally ends. The point is the same - at some point, the volume isn't sufficient to warrant the retention any longer by a reseller.
Most importantly, the long tail theory is part of why it's supposedly important to extend copyright. The problem is that when you examine it - copyright isn't helping anyone except the middlemen who deal in huge volumes - and this is the point I believe you are trying to make. The big media control millions of copyrights, therefor, even if they receive only $1/quarter on 90% of their catalog, it's big business. To the individual artists, they're lucky to even get a royalty check since the stamp costs more than the check is worth.
In summary: the tail is real, and it has an place in economics, however - that place isn't the glory-hole it's been made out to be.
Absolutely not. The general shape is fixed, however the specifics are not. Per Eric Flint, sales of his old books spike whenever a new book of his is printed. Thus the curve would have additional peaks rather than a single head w/ subsequent fall off.
The real point of issue is - is there sufficient value in the tail to warrant a niche market. The answer is 'obviously' - so long as you define the 'tail' as far enough towards the head.
It's been 20 years since I've done Calculus, however I do remember that even with an infinite tail, the area under the curve isn't infinite - Specifically the integration of 1/x from 0=> infinity is e or about 2 2/3. No matter where the curve starts or shapes, it will eventually converge to this pattern - 600 years from now, this months must have will only be of interest to some scholar doing their thesis on archaic trends.
Hmm, might I suggest you investigate your competition? - Perhaps a trip to Black Rose in the DC market or perhaps the summer or winter Fetish Flea in the Boston area may give you some marketing ideas. - $400-600 per belt for the simple ones in stainless steel & a good buggy whip goes for $40+. And canes, expand into canes, always a good market there for replacements.
Actually, from what I read, it's a directive from the executive & legislative branch directing judges to dismiss cases if the Telco has a written request from the Govt requesting a tap. From what I know of judges, there are a lot of them that would look at that directive & decide the paper was too course to wipe their ass with. You do not tell a judge to toss out the law & dismiss a case because you want it done. You either change the law, or argue why the action is within the law - those are your options.
One thing I have never understood in these cases is why the plaintiffs are letting them quote the 60's case of 'State Secrets' unopposed**. If anything that case is the absolute perfect case for why 'State Secrets' shouldn't be an instantly accepted argument to block evidence.
** The current standard for 'State Secrets' involves the govt declaring the results of a crash investigation a 'State Secret' supposedly because releasing the information would provide foreign powers with top secret information about the contents of the plane. This was used to block wrongful death suits by the families of the crash victims. When the report was declassified, the only secret was that the govt wasn't performing maintenance on engines properly.
I can guarantee that I can put a bomb in a working laptop that isn't going to look any different than your regular laptop. That bay for a 2nd battery or HD is more than large enough to hold a detonator & enough explosive to take down a plane. Wrapped in a HD case, it's going to show as a single block of metal to the xray machine - exactly like a real HD.
A terrorist from an organization isn't going to have a problem getting onto a plane with exactly what he needs to accomplish his goal. The whole ID thing is stupid - refuse & be denied - loose it & have a nice flight. Yeah that makes me feel safe - especially when you remember that every member of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID which would allow them to fly today. These people are not stupid, they are capable of coordinating complex schemes taking years to bring to fruition - the chances of catching them with some random search is so minimal as to be laughable.
This type of crap may - on a really good lottery win kind of day - catch some nut-job, however putting more into having well trained competent agents at the border instead of bored rent-a-cop dropouts would be a hell of a lot more effective.
Depending on the drive & how you're doing the copy, it's insane to try & copy every drive that crosses the border.
Figure 30 minutes to an hour minimum just to copy files to a USB based NAS - longer for duplication - for each hard drive that passes through. There is no practical way to make that work - and that's not including the flash cards & USB stick. Once you have it, what are you going to do with it? Datamine it for keywords/hash values - any keyword you're looking for is going to almost certainly be buried in the browser cache of anyone who reads the news online.
It comes down to security vs security theater. This is theater. The manpower/processing power required to make this even vaguely practical would be better spent by simply increasing the number of regular agents doing their normal jobs.
When the Feds were looking to increase data retention requirements & debating grants to pay for it, the FBI figured the price @ above $100,000 per prosecution & told the senate they would rather just have the money for more agents.
This is the same - by making a show of being careful, the TSA is 'doing something'. Just adding more agents doesn't change the perception of security, and therefore isn't in their interest. The job of the TSA isn't to make you safe, it's to make you feel safe. Unfortunately, most people just feel harassed and irritated.
I still get to call dibs on XXX?
what is wrong with you people?!
Um, when most of these protocols were being developed, computers with 8 bit processors and KiloBytes of memory were a pipedream. My $14 disposable cell phone has more processing power than the launch center for the Apollo space missions.
Encryption wasn't included in the protocols because:
I gave up tickets for a Greatful Dead show, because I could get ones for the next month when friends could go with me ... didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped.
Actually, the problem that 2 of the judges had was that they felt the court was overstepping itself in ruling on the core issue rather than on the point of law. Note that the court was unanimous in their decision that 2 US citizens held in military custody in Iraq are eligible for HC so long as they are detained by people under the US chain of command.
The case as it came to SCOTUS was - are military detainees eligible for HC or not. If they are eligible - contrary to the Federal appeals court's ruling - then the case was supposed to go back to the Federal court to rule whether the the military appeals tribunal constituted an equivalent within the scope of the military. Given that the detainees have been held for several years already, 5 judges felt that the case was extraordinary in it's nature and ruled not only the the eligibility for HC, but also on the matter of equivalence.
Taken together, I don't believe that the court is in as bad a shape as you believe. Without the matter of equivalence, I believe the matter would have been much less divisive.
'I will pay you to make my problem your top priority' is among the many things that people are saying about how a FOSS economy is supposed to work. Paying people to do work for you that you can't/don't want to do dates back to at least the bronze age, and probably farther. I would go so far as to say that it's one of the cornerstones of civilization.
I think the OP went about it the perfect way:
Essentially, he tried to hire a programmer/programmers to fix his problem from the pool of programmers who know the code the best - the active developers. Anyone with a serious intent to fix a software problem is going to go the same route - grabbing a coder off the street isn't going to be nearly as productive as grabbing the guy who wrote it in the first place.
English Legend. The Sidhe were noted for that nasty little bit of witchery - stepping from the Fey world to ours & back again. They are in effect bringing back the original Elves, not the sweat Tolkeinized versions - watch out for them - they have very bad tempers & take offense quickly.
Swans, eagles, wolves, and some species of doves all exhibit monogamy. Many species practice serial monogamy - having one mate per season - bird species where the male helps tend the young usually fall in this category. Birds where the female raises the chicks alone are often promiscuous. Harem behavior is common in primates - gorillas principally - and felines - Lions being the most obvious example.
Whoot, only cost me about 40K to learn that :)
A performance is just that a specific individual performance. It is not fixed. Tonight Prince is 4hz above C on that note, tomorrow he's 12Hz low. It's not fixed, it's a performance. Specifically, tonights performance is ephemeral - once done it's gone - it can be remember, or it can be relived through a recording, but the performance itself is gone. A recording is fixed. Tonight, tomorrow, 30 years from now, it's exactly the same. The fact that Prince gave the performance tonight, doesn't entitle him to any copyright control over recordings made by other people. He can argue contract issues over the actual recording - IE, violations of the festival rules which prohibited recordings - in which he can pursue transfer of the copyright as a remedy, but until he receives those copyrights, they belong to the person/people who made the recordings.
Now, if you're trying to argue that the arrangement, lyrics, etc are the controlling issue, Prince doesn't own them either - they belong to Radiohead. So no matter how you look at this, Prince isn't the controlling party for copyright complaints. He gave a performance of someone else's music. People recorded that performance. No matter how you look at it, by issuing a DMCA complaint, he's claiming copyright control over other people's recordings of his performance. The problem is, his performance isn't eligible for copyright protection.
So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider Ideally you would want to trip them to attack you, then have all your traffic shunted to a federal site - say the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DHS. Though it might also be fun to point them at the new AF cyber command.
so it's free however you want to use it.
Um, if I remember correctly, SCOTUS already shot down one law that dealt with 'pseudo' child porn - if it's not a real child doing real porn, it's not child-porn. Of course this is congress, passing good laws is so much harder than 'thinking of the children'.
The other problem is that they are budgeting $125M/year - but not, evidently, using it to put more FBI into cubicles. It looks like they are throwing the money at whoever promises to solve the problem without adding cops.
no, the cross-join (or unbounded join) was deliberate, I think adding a nice left outer join on top of the cross-join would be just the icing on the cake, or sand in the bearings.
too simple,
select bt.* from big_table bt, bigger_table bbt, biggest_table bbbt where bt.id=bbt.bt_id order by non_indexed_column;
Perhaps a good left outer join tossed in there to really thrash the drives.
It's not as fucked up as you seem to think. I can call myself George Bush & even get credit cards under that name - so long as I am not engaging in fraud. If I try to get a credit card using the name George Bush & the Shrub's SSN, I get hammered with extra crimes listed. Using a pseudonym isn't a crime, using one to commit another crime is.
In this case, a service was provided - the account - in exchange for demographic information used to drive marketing. By screwing with the demographic info, she defrauded the company - reducing the effectiveness of the marketing & increasing their expenses while reducing their return. It's basic fraud, obtaining services under false pretenses - I'm not sure why they are using hacking laws instead of fraud/wirefraud ones.