Yes, Dr. Chawla was of Indian descent and grew up there, but she is a US citizen. She is an American astronaut, and no doubt proud of her Indian heritage.
I've been trying to read this lately, mostly over lunch. Big mistake. There are ditto bodies melting all over the place. It's one of the most violent things I've read in a long time. Yuck. And here's the thing: I disagree with a fundamental premise of the book. Brin's constructed a world where you send your ditto (copy) out to do things for you. It lives a very short time (24 hours or whatever). You can pull its memories back into your "real" self, if it physically survives. The dittos are treated really badly; shot at, spat on, you name it, because they're disposable. But if these memories are coming back to the real people, why would dittos be treated so badly? Some kind of "net good" effect would happen, I'd think...where people would do unto others etc... Upshot? Nasty, violent society that isn't much fun to read about, so far.
Personally I think this is more important than the war on terrorism. I mean, nobody's tried to blow me up lately, but these calls happen every single day. So who isn't going to want to be on the national do not call list? Predictive dialing should simply be recognized as harassment and prosecuted as such under current law. If you or I repeatedly call somebody and then hang up, don't you think the police and/or phone company are going to be interested? Oh yeah, I forgot, the phone company is making money on all those calls. We could also legislate that all unsolicited commercial phone calls carry a surcharge. This surcharge can be rebated to consumers directly -- it shows up on your phone bill. The more you've been called, the more you get back.
How about we get rid of ads and just let me buy the programs I want? Oh yeah -- the television economy would bottom out if people actually paid for the programming they wanted to watch, 'cause there isn't very much of it. $0.01 per commercial skipped? Bullshit. How about I just pay $1 for each program I want to watch, without any commercials in it.
Sounds like this may be needed. Note that this is not the same as having a semantic model for the web itself. Clark talks about having various parts of a web page -- the search dialog, various navigation panes, and so forth. With a proper, extensible, and well defined semantic model for essential web page characteristics that could be acted on by rule bases that can tune and alter the resulting web page for a particular user, rearranging content and presentation to suit.
Uh huh. I guess I am naive to believe that 99% of the programs on this planet don't run on embedded devices. You still write in assembler for embedded stuff?
There should be as much technological distance between static buffers and your average application program as possible. There just isn't a need.
Solidarity with embedded systems guys isn't a good enough reason.
What I am saying is that the OS should be constructed such that the program or server doesn't need to get outside the sandbox. Exactly why does it need to access other things on your system anyway? Is it a system-level program that must have that access? If so, you'll be getting a program like that from a very trusted source. Why on earth should a web server require system level access just so it can push a listener onto port 80?
Most of this crap stems from the brain-dead security apparatus in Unix that requires root level access to do relatively simple things. A much finer, set-based security system is far preferable, keeping the kingdoms well apart.
You gotta treat programs running on your systems in exactly the same way you'd treat a user on your system. Would you give root/sys privilege to just anyone? Hell no. What kind of operating system makes you grant that kind of access just to get simple things done?
Because there are two engines and certified aircraft need to be able to climb on just one of them. Engine failure during takeoff is the worst possible scenario for a twin engine plane. There's usually an airspeed range where, if you lose an engine, you're pretty much screwed. You want to get above that as soon as possible, where the plane is controllable with a single engine.
Takeoff is when the engine is generating maximum power, continuously. It's the most stressful time on the aircraft's systems.
phliar's point is important -- most accidents happen because of fuel exhuaustion. aircraft gross weight occupied by a parachute instead of fuel isn't good.
I'll tell you what'll save lives, better than a parachute. Get some of friggin' paperwork and ridiculously expensive testing out of the hair of aircraft electronics manufacturers, and give them a measure of defense against lawsuits...that'll give more and more planes a sophisticated gps/terrain system, like the big boys fly, and it'll save lives.
If you want to see something really cool, check out Blue Mountain Avionics. I don't know if Greg Richter reads SlashDot, but companies like his should have the government beating down his door to help him test, for free his avionics suite. It's cheap, awesome, and could save a lot of lives.
This is real old news to aviation types. Cirrus has been producing these things for a couple of years now. A few points:
1. The Cirrus safety record is pretty poor compared to other plane types. There have been at least six fatal crashes in Cirrus planes already, which is unusually high, statistically. There have been a number of theories advanced as to why this is -- mostly it seems that there are pilots who buy one thinking it's a "lexus in the sky" and who get themselves into conditions they can't handle. 2. This was a good scenario for deployment. Stuck aileron means the plane is gonna be almost impossible to land. 3. You might have a parachute out there but you're dropping at 2600 fpm in an SR-22. I would not want to hit the ground going that fast. If you still have control authority I'd be going in for an emergency landing unless the terrain below prohibited it, or it was night. 4. This guy landed in some trees which may have helped out with the 2600 fpm factor noted above.
Light general aviation aircraft don't suffer very many airframe problems -- they're pretty damn strong. You can get yourself into trouble if you exceed Vne which is how most airframe breakups happen. And that usually happens because of sensory confusion during flight into weather the pilot can't handle (clouds).
Ultralights are where the BRS parachute system has saved at least a hundred people's lives. Who the hell would ride in one of those things anyway? Crazy fools.
All you slashdot types should start flying planes. I did. It's the best way I know to burn money.
Here's a thought. Stop writing programs in languages that HAVE static buffers. Stop writing programs in languages that have memory buffers that the program is free to overwrite. The problem isn't the programmers. What you're saying is that every programmer in the world has to write perfect code every time, and that's never gonna happen. Programs need to run in safe environments. The sandbox concept for running applets has been with us for a while, and it's a good one. You have a single place where you can fix things. It's gotten pretty hard to write an applet that can screw up a machine.
I think that ALL programs should be running in the equivalent of a sandbox at all times. There should be sandboxes inside sandboxes. When you download something off the net, you can go ahead and run it in a relatively safe, walled-off environment. There should be NO need for the program to look outside of that. Later on you might decide to allow the program more access to your system, once you begin to trust it, or some else in your web of trust has trusted it.
The OS needs to be designed to do this from the beginning.
I'll add the following point -- a company I used to work for was once charged $2000 (that's two THOUSAND dollars) by three union pricks to spend 30 minutes hanging a sign above our booth. Two of them stood around and did nothing while the third operated a crane. The disgusting presence of these unions has permanently turned me off to these kinds of shows. I don't mind paying for floor space, but I won't be extorted so that some jerk with a union card only has to work three weeks a year.
The intended purpose of copyright law was to provide stimulation to authors to create new works. There is a simple trade at the heart of this proposition -- society offers to enforce copyright, for a limited time, at its expense. In exchange for that free protection, the author will cede the work into the public domain.
Somehow the idea that the author and publisher of a work is entitled to free protection of that work has taken hold. Current copyright law has eliminated the ceding of works into the public domain. Society is now in the position of providing unlimited protection, at unlimited cost, for works in perpetuity, without receiving any returned benefit. This is a ridiculous situation.
If the record companies and movie companies think that their works are going to be stolen if the public communications mechanisms are used (internet and so forth), then they should not release those works in digital form. The media companies want the taxpayer to secure and entrench their business model for them, paying through the nose for it, and sacrificing a whole series of privacies and capabilities on the way.
The thing is, what the media companies want is to reduce the capability of our devices. General purpose computation is their enemy -- they don't want devices that can be programmed and altered to be available to the consumer. It's the only way that their precious content can be fully controlled. And it won't stop with simple digital rights management -- the next step will be to impose monitoring. I find that unacceptable.
Imagine a world where CB radios have special circuits in them that, every time you push the "talk" button, check to see if the contents of your transmission match against known music. If your transmission matches, it prevents your broadcast and reports you to the authorities. It sounds silly, but this is exactly what the media companies want for your computer, and for you.
We have to preserve the purity of our communications channels. If the media companies think the digital world is too dangerous and unpredictable for them, they shouldn't play. And they shouldn't be permitted to destroy or belittle the internet because it makes their profiteering more complicated.
Trying to secure an individual workstation is pointless and impossible. Trying to validate that the data stored in one place is correct is also pointless. You cannot secure one instance of the data. You can, however, secure and verify a distributed, replicated store of information. The essential steps are: 1. Separate the validation of identity from identity codes. An agency can validate who you are...a private key is used to encode your identity into the voting system. 2. Use one part of a distributed system to enter a valid vote. The vote is replicated to all interested observing parties. 3. Use another part of a distributed system to verify that vote. Verification can be done against any observation point. 4. Continuously allow any group that wishes it to verify the contents of their replicated result set against any other set. Any discrepancies trigger analysis to determine the source of the fault.
Here's what I don't understand. This kind of crap is EXACTLY why we have "auditors" who are supposed to validate a company's books. We've got all kinds of news stories about bad CEOs going to jail. I don't have a problem with that. I have a HUGE problem with the fact the no auditing company's CEO has been sent away yet. The accounting companies conspired to hide all these losses and artificially inflate these bogus companies stocks.
First the conservatives said that global warming wasn't happening. Then they said that, sure, it's happening, but you stupid environmentalists don't realize that it's a totally natural process. I think it's simple. If the environmentalists are wrong, then we all pay a few bucks more for cars that are more efficient, or run on hydrogen, or behave in a way that makes us less dependent on foreign oil. If the conservatives are wrong, all life on earth dies a slow heat death with the total breakdown of the ecosphere, and the only interesting planet we're currently aware of goes down the tubes.
Conservatives better feel pretty fucking confident they're right, in my opinion.
I trust that Slashdot readers will not confuse this "Tocqueville" institution with any level of sophistication or insight. Taken as a whole, their web site declares positions and malformed thought on a whole range of issues. There is a clearly intentional lack of background information on their "scholars".
ADTI's inability to parse basic issues surrounding open source software calls into question their credibility on other issues.
Ken Brown would be well advised to keep this paper away from informed scrutiny. Perhaps he will fine some like-minded light-weight industry types who, finding their desired points parroted with considerable precision, will scurry away to create a dog-pack chorus of agreeing howls.
We are faced with trying to determine if Brown is simply incompetent (distinctly possible, as the piece reads like a high school essay), or deliberately trying to cloud the discussion of a real issue: What is the role of open source software in current and future society?
Most modern software professionals will agree that open source can play a significant and important role in furthering the development of systems. Most would also agree that the GPL, in particular, is highly appropriate to certain kinds of development.
I think the important questions are as follows. Who funds ADTI? Who is Ken Brown, and what is his background? What media exposure is this report likely to generate? What are the most precise rebuttals to this document?
Can you even imagine giving a kid an email account these days? I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but...if I had an 8 year old (which I don't), would I let that child have an email account? No way. Any leakage of that email address could result in my child having horse p0rn after horse p0rn email. And if she checked her email without me having a chance at it first, it could slip through. We need another email system. We need a system that uses technical solutions to make spam identifiable, early on in the chain. Systems should not relay spam, period. You're either participating in the transparent email relay system or you're not. Email that goes through shadows should be marked as such. We only need a few of the very big guys to provide, as a choice to their users, the ability to opt into the safe email system. When I receive email on one of my older accounts, the first thing I do is highlight everything, then pick and choose through the subject headers for what's relevant. Usually I'll find two real emails out of about 30.
Here's my take. The record companies are the milkmen of tomorrow. In the old days, milk was delivered door to door by milkmen. There was a certain convenience involved, but refrigeration, pasteurization, and the fact that you need to go to the grocery store anyway pretty much eliminated the need for them. They were optimized out of the process.
Artists today make their money performing. A very tiny percentage of artists make significant money from their recordings. Total, open promotion of their music is really in most artists' best interest -- they can fill their shows with fans who'll pay $10 a ticket, and buy a T-shirt for good measure.
In this world where fans listen to tons of different music for free, directly support their favorite artists, and creativity (rather than marketing) is rewarded, the record companies are...milkmen. Say goodbye.
Here, though, the milkmen have enough money to buy friends. And to buy laws that keep them in business. Push back, whenever you can. When M'shell releases an MP3 for $0.99, how much of that does she get? When broadcasting rights are negotiated with online radio stations, where does the revenue go? 90% artist? Somehow I doubt it.
Actors guilds have contracts that state the maximum amount an actor can pay an agent (10%). Great woe would become a record industry faced with an organized public, or organized artists. Deserved woe.:)
In the mean time, GENERAL COMPUTATION IS AT RISK. Your right to make any program you'd like, for your own purposes, to explore Raymond's noosphere, is at risk. Milkmen want laws and circuits to keep them in business.
We discussed this in Fair Software Installation. I didn't think it would come true so fast. What this really points to is the necessity to have good defenses in an operating system against malicious installations.
Headline just appears to be wrong
on
Is MOXI Toast?
·
· Score: 2
See this NEWS.COM story. Looks like both companies are just fine, and it seems to make a considerable amount of sense.
"In a setback for efforts to halt copyright abuse, a Dutch appeals court on Thursday told a technology firm it could distribute a software program that is designed to let users share music and films on the Internet."
Nice spin. Yes, there wasn't anything else at stake other than "copyright abuse". Nothing at all. And the efforts to halt copyright abuse? That's all they're trying to do - just halt abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
6,253,203 Privacy-enhanced database
This patent amounts to "select * from tbl where tbl.give_my_email_address_to_others = false".
Seriously. That's the whole thing. Read it.
Shit, I'm not even American myself -- I just think we should be accurate about these things.
Yes, Dr. Chawla was of Indian descent and grew up there, but she is a US citizen. She is an American astronaut, and no doubt proud of her Indian heritage.
Hey, what kind of backup would be able to survive this? Optical would, I assume. Is there any kind of magnetic that would?
I've been trying to read this lately, mostly over lunch. Big mistake. There are ditto bodies melting all over the place. It's one of the most violent things I've read in a long time. Yuck.
And here's the thing: I disagree with a fundamental premise of the book. Brin's constructed a world where you send your ditto (copy) out to do things for you. It lives a very short time (24 hours or whatever). You can pull its memories back into your "real" self, if it physically survives. The dittos are treated really badly; shot at, spat on, you name it, because they're disposable.
But if these memories are coming back to the real people, why would dittos be treated so badly? Some kind of "net good" effect would happen, I'd think...where people would do unto others etc...
Upshot? Nasty, violent society that isn't much fun to read about, so far.
Personally I think this is more important than the war on terrorism. I mean, nobody's tried to blow me up lately, but these calls happen every single day. So who isn't going to want to be on the national do not call list?
Predictive dialing should simply be recognized as harassment and prosecuted as such under current law. If you or I repeatedly call somebody and then hang up, don't you think the police and/or phone company are going to be interested? Oh yeah, I forgot, the phone company is making money on all those calls.
We could also legislate that all unsolicited commercial phone calls carry a surcharge. This surcharge can be rebated to consumers directly -- it shows up on your phone bill. The more you've been called, the more you get back.
How about we get rid of ads and just let me buy the programs I want? Oh yeah -- the television economy would bottom out if people actually paid for the programming they wanted to watch, 'cause there isn't very much of it. $0.01 per commercial skipped? Bullshit. How about I just pay $1 for each program I want to watch, without any commercials in it.
Sounds like this may be needed. Note that this is not the same as having a semantic model for the web itself. Clark talks about having various parts of a web page -- the search dialog, various navigation panes, and so forth. With a proper, extensible, and well defined semantic model for essential web page characteristics that could be acted on by rule bases that can tune and alter the resulting web page for a particular user, rearranging content and presentation to suit.
Uh huh. I guess I am naive to believe that 99% of the programs on this planet don't run on embedded devices. You still write in assembler for embedded stuff?
There should be as much technological distance between static buffers and your average application program as possible. There just isn't a need.
Solidarity with embedded systems guys isn't a good enough reason.
What I am saying is that the OS should be constructed such that the program or server doesn't need to get outside the sandbox. Exactly why does it need to access other things on your system anyway? Is it a system-level program that must have that access? If so, you'll be getting a program like that from a very trusted source. Why on earth should a web server require system level access just so it can push a listener onto port 80?
Most of this crap stems from the brain-dead security apparatus in Unix that requires root level access to do relatively simple things. A much finer, set-based security system is far preferable, keeping the kingdoms well apart.
You gotta treat programs running on your systems in exactly the same way you'd treat a user on your system. Would you give root/sys privilege to just anyone? Hell no. What kind of operating system makes you grant that kind of access just to get simple things done?
Because there are two engines and certified aircraft need to be able to climb on just one of them. Engine failure during takeoff is the worst possible scenario for a twin engine plane. There's usually an airspeed range where, if you lose an engine, you're pretty much screwed. You want to get above that as soon as possible, where the plane is controllable with a single engine.
Takeoff is when the engine is generating maximum power, continuously. It's the most stressful time on the aircraft's systems.
phliar's point is important -- most accidents happen because of fuel exhuaustion. aircraft gross weight occupied by a parachute instead of fuel isn't good.
I'll tell you what'll save lives, better than a parachute. Get some of friggin' paperwork and ridiculously expensive testing out of the hair of aircraft electronics manufacturers, and give them a measure of defense against lawsuits...that'll give more and more planes a sophisticated gps/terrain system, like the big boys fly, and it'll save lives.
If you want to see something really cool, check out Blue Mountain Avionics. I don't know if Greg Richter reads SlashDot, but companies like his should have the government beating down his door to help him test, for free his avionics suite. It's cheap, awesome, and could save a lot of lives.
This is real old news to aviation types. Cirrus has been producing these things for a couple of years now. A few points:
1. The Cirrus safety record is pretty poor compared to other plane types. There have been at least six fatal crashes in Cirrus planes already, which is unusually high, statistically. There have been a number of theories advanced as to why this is -- mostly it seems that there are pilots who buy one thinking it's a "lexus in the sky" and who get themselves into conditions they can't handle.
2. This was a good scenario for deployment. Stuck aileron means the plane is gonna be almost impossible to land.
3. You might have a parachute out there but you're dropping at 2600 fpm in an SR-22. I would not want to hit the ground going that fast. If you still have control authority I'd be going in for an emergency landing unless the terrain below prohibited it, or it was night.
4. This guy landed in some trees which may have helped out with the 2600 fpm factor noted above.
Light general aviation aircraft don't suffer very many airframe problems -- they're pretty damn strong. You can get yourself into trouble if you exceed Vne which is how most airframe breakups happen. And that usually happens because of sensory confusion during flight into weather the pilot can't handle (clouds).
Ultralights are where the BRS parachute system has saved at least a hundred people's lives. Who the hell would ride in one of those things anyway? Crazy fools.
All you slashdot types should start flying planes. I did. It's the best way I know to burn money.
Here's a thought. Stop writing programs in languages that HAVE static buffers. Stop writing programs in languages that have memory buffers that the program is free to overwrite. The problem isn't the programmers. What you're saying is that every programmer in the world has to write perfect code every time, and that's never gonna happen. Programs need to run in safe environments. The sandbox concept for running applets has been with us for a while, and it's a good one. You have a single place where you can fix things. It's gotten pretty hard to write an applet that can screw up a machine.
I think that ALL programs should be running in the equivalent of a sandbox at all times. There should be sandboxes inside sandboxes. When you download something off the net, you can go ahead and run it in a relatively safe, walled-off environment. There should be NO need for the program to look outside of that. Later on you might decide to allow the program more access to your system, once you begin to trust it, or some else in your web of trust has trusted it.
The OS needs to be designed to do this from the beginning.
I'll add the following point -- a company I used to work for was once charged $2000 (that's two THOUSAND dollars) by three union pricks to spend 30 minutes hanging a sign above our booth. Two of them stood around and did nothing while the third operated a crane. The disgusting presence of these unions has permanently turned me off to these kinds of shows. I don't mind paying for floor space, but I won't be extorted so that some jerk with a union card only has to work three weeks a year.
The intended purpose of copyright law was to provide stimulation to authors to create new works. There is a simple trade at the heart of this proposition -- society offers to enforce copyright, for a limited time, at its expense. In exchange for that free protection, the author will cede the work into the public domain.
Somehow the idea that the author and publisher of a work is entitled to free protection of that work has taken hold. Current copyright law has eliminated the ceding of works into the public domain. Society is now in the position of providing unlimited protection, at unlimited cost, for works in perpetuity, without receiving any returned benefit. This is a ridiculous situation.
If the record companies and movie companies think that their works are going to be stolen if the public communications mechanisms are used (internet and so forth), then they should not release those works in digital form. The media companies want the taxpayer to secure and entrench their business model for them, paying through the nose for it, and sacrificing a whole series of privacies and capabilities on the way.
The thing is, what the media companies want is to reduce the capability of our devices. General purpose computation is their enemy -- they don't want devices that can be programmed and altered to be available to the consumer. It's the only way that their precious content can be fully controlled. And it won't stop with simple digital rights management -- the next step will be to impose monitoring. I find that unacceptable.
Imagine a world where CB radios have special circuits in them that, every time you push the "talk" button, check to see if the contents of your transmission match against known music. If your transmission matches, it prevents your broadcast and reports you to the authorities. It sounds silly, but this is exactly what the media companies want for your computer, and for you.
We have to preserve the purity of our communications channels. If the media companies think the digital world is too dangerous and unpredictable for them, they shouldn't play. And they shouldn't be permitted to destroy or belittle the internet because it makes their profiteering more complicated.
Trying to secure an individual workstation is pointless and impossible. Trying to validate that the data stored in one place is correct is also pointless. You cannot secure one instance of the data. You can, however, secure and verify a distributed, replicated store of information.
The essential steps are:
1. Separate the validation of identity from identity codes. An agency can validate who you are...a private key is used to encode your identity into the voting system.
2. Use one part of a distributed system to enter a valid vote. The vote is replicated to all interested observing parties.
3. Use another part of a distributed system to verify that vote. Verification can be done against any observation point.
4. Continuously allow any group that wishes it to verify the contents of their replicated result set against any other set. Any discrepancies trigger analysis to determine the source of the fault.
Here's what I don't understand. This kind of crap is EXACTLY why we have "auditors" who are supposed to validate a company's books. We've got all kinds of news stories about bad CEOs going to jail. I don't have a problem with that. I have a HUGE problem with the fact the no auditing company's CEO has been sent away yet. The accounting companies conspired to hide all these losses and artificially inflate these bogus companies stocks.
First the conservatives said that global warming wasn't happening. Then they said that, sure, it's happening, but you stupid environmentalists don't realize that it's a totally natural process. I think it's simple. If the environmentalists are wrong, then we all pay a few bucks more for cars that are more efficient, or run on hydrogen, or behave in a way that makes us less dependent on foreign oil. If the conservatives are wrong, all life on earth dies a slow heat death with the total breakdown of the ecosphere, and the only interesting planet we're currently aware of goes down the tubes.
Conservatives better feel pretty fucking confident they're right, in my opinion.
I trust that Slashdot readers will not confuse this "Tocqueville" institution with any level of sophistication or insight. Taken as a whole, their web site declares positions and malformed thought on a whole range of issues. There is a clearly intentional lack of background information on their "scholars".
ADTI's inability to parse basic issues surrounding open source software calls into question their credibility on other issues.
Ken Brown would be well advised to keep this paper away from informed scrutiny. Perhaps he will fine some like-minded light-weight industry types who, finding their desired points parroted with considerable precision, will scurry away to create a dog-pack chorus of agreeing howls.
We are faced with trying to determine if Brown is simply incompetent (distinctly possible, as the piece reads like a high school essay), or deliberately trying to cloud the discussion of a real issue: What is the role of open source software in current and future society?
Most modern software professionals will agree that open source can play a significant and important role in furthering the development of systems. Most would also agree that the GPL, in particular, is highly appropriate to certain kinds of development.
I think the important questions are as follows. Who funds ADTI? Who is Ken Brown, and what is his background? What media exposure is this report likely to generate? What are the most precise rebuttals to this document?
Can you even imagine giving a kid an email account these days? I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but...if I had an 8 year old (which I don't), would I let that child have an email account? No way. Any leakage of that email address could result in my child having horse p0rn after horse p0rn email. And if she checked her email without me having a chance at it first, it could slip through.
We need another email system. We need a system that uses technical solutions to make spam identifiable, early on in the chain. Systems should not relay spam, period. You're either participating in the transparent email relay system or you're not. Email that goes through shadows should be marked as such. We only need a few of the very big guys to provide, as a choice to their users, the ability to opt into the safe email system.
When I receive email on one of my older accounts, the first thing I do is highlight everything, then pick and choose through the subject headers for what's relevant. Usually I'll find two real emails out of about 30.
Here's my take. The record companies are the milkmen of tomorrow. In the old days, milk was delivered door to door by milkmen. There was a certain convenience involved, but refrigeration, pasteurization, and the fact that you need to go to the grocery store anyway pretty much eliminated the need for them. They were optimized out of the process.
:)
Artists today make their money performing. A very tiny percentage of artists make significant money from their recordings. Total, open promotion of their music is really in most artists' best interest -- they can fill their shows with fans who'll pay $10 a ticket, and buy a T-shirt for good measure.
In this world where fans listen to tons of different music for free, directly support their favorite artists, and creativity (rather than marketing) is rewarded, the record companies are...milkmen. Say goodbye.
Here, though, the milkmen have enough money to buy friends. And to buy laws that keep them in business. Push back, whenever you can. When M'shell releases an MP3 for $0.99, how much of that does she get? When broadcasting rights are negotiated with online radio stations, where does the revenue go? 90% artist? Somehow I doubt it.
Actors guilds have contracts that state the maximum amount an actor can pay an agent (10%). Great woe would become a record industry faced with an organized public, or organized artists. Deserved woe.
In the mean time, GENERAL COMPUTATION IS AT RISK. Your right to make any program you'd like, for your own purposes, to explore Raymond's noosphere, is at risk. Milkmen want laws and circuits to keep them in business.
We discussed this in Fair Software Installation. I didn't think it would come true so fast. What this really points to is the necessity to have good defenses in an operating system against malicious installations.
See this NEWS.COM story. Looks like both companies are just fine, and it seems to make a considerable amount of sense.
"In a setback for efforts to halt copyright abuse, a Dutch appeals court on Thursday told a technology firm it could distribute a software program that is designed to let users share music and films on the Internet."
Nice spin. Yes, there wasn't anything else at stake other than "copyright abuse". Nothing at all. And the efforts to halt copyright abuse? That's all they're trying to do - just halt abuse.
Sure.