If you ask me, the party to blame for this godsdamned mess isn't the judge, MPAA, or 2600. It's Congress. We are in a position where we need to prove that our product was developed for the *sole purpose* of running DVD's on Linux (if this were true, it wouldn't run on BSD, HURD, or Windows). Congress should have written the law so that the plaintiff has the burden of proof that the product is written for the purpose of copyright infringement.
We also need to lobby Congress for a "free software" exception -- that copyright infringement technologies can be reverse-engineered for the purpose of writing "free (open source) software", which constitutes an important part of our public infrastructure.
Let me be honest here...I'm about ready to give up writing software entirely if this bullshit continues. What's going on here could kill the Linux dream, and I don't want to go back to a world where computing isn't fun.
What the hell is wrong with our world today. Okay, maybe AOL is not playing nice, but maybe people should learn to not just blindly click "ok" to everything when they install software. Maybe people who don't RTFM should have to learn the hard way. But....NOOOOOOOOOOO... in todays society if your an idiot..it's quite alright to just not take responsibility for your own actions and then look for somebody to sue. I think the cluless morons should be thrown in jail for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
AOL made an arguably defective product. A reasonable person would not have been able to forsee the defect; there were no warnings, &c, to indicate that AOL 5 would disable non-AOL network access. $8 billion is ridiculously excessive, but this is far from a frivolous lawsuit. I'm not the judge, but if I were, I'd start by smirking at plaintiffs' counsel, then I'd let this lawsuit go right on ahead. It might send a signal to companies (such as Microsoft) that you can't put out software that sucks without risking serious, perhaps even business-threatening, consequences. Which is as it should be.
Just speaking for myself personally, I would love to see Linux ports of Ultima I, II, III, IV, V and VI. Those games don't have all the fancy graphics of, say, Quake, but they were a of a lot of fun to play. Ultima IV, released I think in 1986, is still a great game. Since most of these games are over 15 y.o. I would think it would be a sinch to get them ported.
What would be better is to have these games GPL'ed. A GPL Ultima IV would be better than NetHack!:)
Don't mind me if I'm in no mood to celebrate. Between eToys, DVD and the MPAA, I've developed a distaste for the legal system as it applies to intellectual property.
Just don't do it in the People's Republik of Kalifornia, as that carbine is now an 'assault weapon'. (because its less than 30 inches long, whereas the feds say a rifle is 26 inches or longer since 1934.)
Doesn't it have to be semiautomatic in order to qualify as an assault rifle in California?
Yet another reason why we need to boycott DVD technology and, probably, anything that one of the MPAA's associates puts out, until this lawsuit settles. Let's not give these jerks the ammunition they need to prosecute the case (our money.)
It's one thing to be pissed off at the studios. It's another thing to boycott them! DVD's are great, and these companies make most of them. So screw this boycott!!!
I say, screw you. These companies are trampling on your rights, and you're paying them to do it every time you buy a DVD or rent a video. I for one refuse to feed the mouth that bites me. I've joined the boycott. If you gave a damn about your freedom of expression, you'll stop giving these people your hard earned money.
I like movies too. But if having movies means paying people to destroy open-source software, then fuck the movies. I'll play Quake instead. At least ID software supports what we're doing.
2600 is calling for demonstrations against the MPAA, and I for one agree. We need to educate ordinary people on the fact that their right to free speech is in serious jeopardy thanks to the greed and stupidity of an organization (the MPAA) that fell for the DVD-security snake oil and can't admit that it's been had.
If you're not a member of EFF or the ACLU, join now.
If you are a member, or want to be more active, contact your local 2600 cell or Linux User's Group and help to organize a demonstration.
If you have a DVD player, and you're too sick to even look at it, consider donating it to a local Geeks with Guns outing, in exchange for plenty of photos. Post them on a website, and mail them to DVD CAA and the members of the MPAA (listed on the 2600 announcement of the injunction).
Consider buying a DeCSS source shirt; or if you're really radical, consider becoming a DOE (one of the 500+ anonyous people mentioned in the first injunction hearing).
Boycott movies and videos until the MPAA drops the lawsuit!
Most importantly: SPREAD THE WORD to other geeks and non-geeks. This is too important for us to keep silent!
This and the Etoy lawsuit are probably the most significant fights to hit our commmunity since the Clipper Chip fiasco. The lines are drawn, ladies and gentlemen; we need to fight with everything we've got to prevent Internet from becoming nothing but a huge, suburban shopping mall. Get involved in an historical fight and have something that you'll be proud to tell your kids and grandkids about, twenty years from now.
This actually happened to me. A person who shall be un-named (but I know who it is, and he is on my permanent shit list) sent emails to the dean of a school I went to, complaining that I was sending him harrassing emails and making obscene posts to a newsgroup. The dean recieved a lot of these emails, who were signed with a pseudonym (with NO contact information). The Dean tried contacting me at a Groupwise address that I never used, and made no attempts to contact me by any other means (even though he obviously had my home phone number, knew I had a mailbox with the department, could have used any of my other email addresses, &c.) He shut down my email service on all accounts for 24 hours as a result. He claimed that he would eventually revoke my email service, but that never happened. Eventually it came down to a shouting match between the dean and the department sysadmin.
I have very fond memories of that institution and I recommend it highly. But even in the best of institutions, there will occasionally be idiots in charge. Those are the people you need to watch out for.
This is a two step proposal. One step is trival. The second takes a lot of work.
Include a moderation, -1, naked and petrified post
Allow people to screen out posts, or highlight posts, with certain moderations. Thus, if Nitrozac (who presumably posts at 2 by default) posts a "I want Linus Torvalds Naked and Petrified!!" and gets moderated down for a naked and petrified post, I wouldn't even see it if I was "bottom feeding" at a threshold of -1, if I didn't want to see a naked and petrified post. This would save considerable time and trouble for moderators, who would otherwise have to waste valuable moderation points moderating a "Naked and Petrified" post down to -2 (invisible). The downside is that "naked and petrified" posters wouldn't lose much karma...but hell, most of them post as AC's anyways, right?
One possible abuse: moderators who disagree with someone's comments can abuse the "Naked and Petrified" option. Blip their comments are never seen again, until meta-moderation, and then the moderator loses only one karma point. I'm not sure how to fix this except to up the karma penalty for an unfair "Naked and Petrified" post to -5.
If there's to be a proposition for a Hedy Lamarr award, why not make it for the person of any gender who's had the best out-of-left-field idea that made the most impact?
Speaking of lateral thinking, that's a far better idea than the one I came up with. Hat's off to you.
How about it Slashdot? If you want I'll start developing products that we can sell...proceeds to go to the Hedy Lamarr Award for Lateral Thinking.
The problem with this proposition is that it is not ok. Women are inferior to men (1 Timothy 2:11-14) and should act like it and obey the bible in order to save there lustfull and sinful souls from the flames of hell.
Dude...this is exactly the kind of ignorant, sexist garbage that keeps talented people from using their talents. (You do remember the parable of the talents, right?) If women using their God-given talents is against your religious code, then maybe you ought to re-think the way you worship.
I certainly hope your children don't grow up to resent you. Gods know if I had been raised to think the way you do, I'd end up bitter and angry at my own father as I came to the realization that the real world is completely different from what my father told me.
The methanol fuel is toxic, but the by-products aren't
This isn't quite true. Carbon dioxide is poisonous in sufficient quantities, and could cause the respiratory system to fail if the partial pressures get thrown out of whack. No big deal if you're running a whole bunch of these things in a very large closed system (say, the Earth). A big deal if enough of these are running in a small enclosed system (say, a safe). I suspect the risk of suffocation, even if everyone on a crowded jet were running two cells simultaneously (laptop and cd player?), would be just about zero, but it is a low-grade potential problem. Gods know it's enough of a problem to get pseudoscientists up in arms...you know, the same people who refuse to buy aluminum pans on the grounds that it might cause Altzheimer's Disease...
Now, if the government would just let us start converting cannibis into methanol again, we could run our laptops for days off of pot.
This might seem trite, but there's a serious side here. If Motorola &C can turn this technology into one capable of -- cheaply -- running, say, an automobile -- then demand for methanol is going to go up. WAY up. Right now we easily produce enough cellulose (in the form of corn cobs, wheat stalks, &c) to meet our present demand. Once we run cars off the stuff though, we may need to look for other supplies of cellulose...and cannibis farming will probably be the cheapest solution.
It's pure speculation, but interesting to think about, nonne?
What would problably work in this day and age would be a WDP (Web Death Penalty). Block port 80 from and to known ISPs that spam. Boy will that get people's attention.
If you really want to nail them to the wall, declare an email death penalty as well. Block any connections to port 25 to and from @Home. The two services used MOST these days are email and web. Shut those down and the customers are paying $65 for nothing.
Re:Media monopoly time ...
on
AOL Nation
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· Score: 2
Given the partisan nature of newspapers like The Sun (backed up by a slightly more erudite Times that sings the same tune), it's got to the point where media moguls can swing the outcome of elections... And if you don't believe me, look at UK elections following the Falklands war. The jingoism and patriotic bullshit spouted by the media ensured Margaret Thatchers's return to power despite the appaling state of the economy.
Then again, the jingoistic BS spouted during our own media (here in the States) after the Gulf War didn't save Bush....
So...now that Congress has more or less gutted funding for pure science, how can we change the way we do Physics to make up the difference? Could the next Physics breakthrough be done in someone's garage, for example? If this is the case, what advice do you have to offer those who want to conduct (experimental) physics research on a shoestring budget?
(Oh yeah, one last question: Cubs fan or Sox fan?)
yea, those are sites dedicated to girls or whatever but most of them are made by men and those are like 10 sites. I know that you could find more but why don't you try to count sites made by men and see the difference.
First one to come up with a good, reliable algorithm to determine the sex of a web-page author, feel free to tell me and I'll buy you a beer.:)
Slashdot Mirror
If you ask me, the party to blame for this godsdamned mess isn't the judge, MPAA, or 2600. It's Congress. We are in a position where we need to prove that our product was developed for the *sole purpose* of running DVD's on Linux (if this were true, it wouldn't run on BSD, HURD, or Windows). Congress should have written the law so that the plaintiff has the burden of proof that the product is written for the purpose of copyright infringement.
We also need to lobby Congress for a "free software" exception -- that copyright infringement technologies can be reverse-engineered for the purpose of writing "free (open source) software", which constitutes an important part of our public infrastructure.
Let me be honest here...I'm about ready to give up writing software entirely if this bullshit continues. What's going on here could kill the Linux dream, and I don't want to go back to a world where computing isn't fun.
AOL made an arguably defective product. A reasonable person would not have been able to forsee the defect; there were no warnings, &c, to indicate that AOL 5 would disable non-AOL network access. $8 billion is ridiculously excessive, but this is far from a frivolous lawsuit. I'm not the judge, but if I were, I'd start by smirking at plaintiffs' counsel, then I'd let this lawsuit go right on ahead. It might send a signal to companies (such as Microsoft) that you can't put out software that sucks without risking serious, perhaps even business-threatening, consequences. Which is as it should be.
Just speaking for myself personally, I would love to see Linux ports of Ultima I, II, III, IV, V and VI. Those games don't have all the fancy graphics of, say, Quake, but they were a of a lot of fun to play. Ultima IV, released I think in 1986, is still a great game. Since most of these games are over 15 y.o. I would think it would be a sinch to get them ported.
What would be better is to have these games GPL'ed. A GPL Ultima IV would be better than NetHack! :)
TOYWAR!!
Don't mind me if I'm in no mood to celebrate. Between eToys, DVD and the MPAA, I've developed a distaste for the legal system as it applies to intellectual property.
TOYWAR!!
Doesn't it have to be semiautomatic in order to qualify as an assault rifle in California?
TOYWAR!!
If you really want to get rid of all your MPAA stuff, find a local chapter of Geeks with Guns and a good outdoor range.
If you're in the Pacific Northwest, email me. I'd like to try a carbine out on some DVD equiptment...
TOYWAR!!
Yet another reason why we need to boycott DVD technology and, probably, anything that one of the MPAA's associates puts out, until this lawsuit settles. Let's not give these jerks the ammunition they need to prosecute the case (our money.)
TOYWAR!!
Oh what I wouldn't do to be living in this person's district, so I could run against her.
TOYWAR!!
I say, screw you. These companies are trampling on your rights, and you're paying them to do it every time you buy a DVD or rent a video. I for one refuse to feed the mouth that bites me. I've joined the boycott. If you gave a damn about your freedom of expression, you'll stop giving these people your hard earned money.
I like movies too. But if having movies means paying people to destroy open-source software, then fuck the movies. I'll play Quake instead. At least ID software supports what we're doing.
TOYWAR!!
2600 is calling for demonstrations against the MPAA, and I for one agree. We need to educate ordinary people on the fact that their right to free speech is in serious jeopardy thanks to the greed and stupidity of an organization (the MPAA) that fell for the DVD-security snake oil and can't admit that it's been had.
This and the Etoy lawsuit are probably the most significant fights to hit our commmunity since the Clipper Chip fiasco. The lines are drawn, ladies and gentlemen; we need to fight with everything we've got to prevent Internet from becoming nothing but a huge, suburban shopping mall. Get involved in an historical fight and have something that you'll be proud to tell your kids and grandkids about, twenty years from now.
TOYWAR!!
This actually happened to me. A person who shall be un-named (but I know who it is, and he is on my permanent shit list) sent emails to the dean of a school I went to, complaining that I was sending him harrassing emails and making obscene posts to a newsgroup. The dean recieved a lot of these emails, who were signed with a pseudonym (with NO contact information). The Dean tried contacting me at a Groupwise address that I never used, and made no attempts to contact me by any other means (even though he obviously had my home phone number, knew I had a mailbox with the department, could have used any of my other email addresses, &c.) He shut down my email service on all accounts for 24 hours as a result. He claimed that he would eventually revoke my email service, but that never happened. Eventually it came down to a shouting match between the dean and the department sysadmin.
I have very fond memories of that institution and I recommend it highly. But even in the best of institutions, there will occasionally be idiots in charge. Those are the people you need to watch out for.
TOYWAR!!
Haven't they been doing this with genes in fruit flies for years?
TOYWAR!!
This is a two step proposal. One step is trival. The second takes a lot of work.
One possible abuse: moderators who disagree with someone's comments can abuse the "Naked and Petrified" option. Blip their comments are never seen again, until meta-moderation, and then the moderator loses only one karma point. I'm not sure how to fix this except to up the karma penalty for an unfair "Naked and Petrified" post to -5.
TOYWAR!!
Speaking of lateral thinking, that's a far better idea than the one I came up with. Hat's off to you.
How about it Slashdot? If you want I'll start developing products that we can sell...proceeds to go to the Hedy Lamarr Award for Lateral Thinking.
TOYWAR!!
Oh...well...this explains everything.
Care for some tea? One lump or two?
TOYWAR!!
Dude...this is exactly the kind of ignorant, sexist garbage that keeps talented people from using their talents. (You do remember the parable of the talents, right?) If women using their God-given talents is against your religious code, then maybe you ought to re-think the way you worship.
I certainly hope your children don't grow up to resent you. Gods know if I had been raised to think the way you do, I'd end up bitter and angry at my own father as I came to the realization that the real world is completely different from what my father told me.
TOYWAR!!
Maybe a Slashdot Hedy Lamarr Award for the most outstanding contribution made by a woman in the last year?
Hey, it could work.
TOYWAR!!
To Hedy Lamarr, the original, never-to-be forgotten, Tech Talking Babe.
TOYWAR!!
This isn't quite true. Carbon dioxide is poisonous in sufficient quantities, and could cause the respiratory system to fail if the partial pressures get thrown out of whack. No big deal if you're running a whole bunch of these things in a very large closed system (say, the Earth). A big deal if enough of these are running in a small enclosed system (say, a safe). I suspect the risk of suffocation, even if everyone on a crowded jet were running two cells simultaneously (laptop and cd player?), would be just about zero, but it is a low-grade potential problem. Gods know it's enough of a problem to get pseudoscientists up in arms...you know, the same people who refuse to buy aluminum pans on the grounds that it might cause Altzheimer's Disease...
Now, if the government would just let us start converting cannibis into methanol again, we could run our laptops for days off of pot.
This might seem trite, but there's a serious side here. If Motorola &C can turn this technology into one capable of -- cheaply -- running, say, an automobile -- then demand for methanol is going to go up. WAY up. Right now we easily produce enough cellulose (in the form of corn cobs, wheat stalks, &c) to meet our present demand. Once we run cars off the stuff though, we may need to look for other supplies of cellulose...and cannibis farming will probably be the cheapest solution.
It's pure speculation, but interesting to think about, nonne?
If you really want to nail them to the wall, declare an email death penalty as well. Block any connections to port 25 to and from @Home. The two services used MOST these days are email and web. Shut those down and the customers are paying $65 for nothing.
Then again, the jingoistic BS spouted during our own media (here in the States) after the Gulf War didn't save Bush....
So...now that Congress has more or less gutted funding for pure science, how can we change the way we do Physics to make up the difference? Could the next Physics breakthrough be done in someone's garage, for example? If this is the case, what advice do you have to offer those who want to conduct (experimental) physics research on a shoestring budget?
(Oh yeah, one last question: Cubs fan or Sox fan?)
First one to come up with a good, reliable algorithm to determine the sex of a web-page author, feel free to tell me and I'll buy you a beer. :)
This is just with five minute's looking.