hehehe just last night i was watching an anime film about a kid who flies around the universe in an old-school train. i thought it was completely looney, but now i'm beginning to wonder if flying trains might have some special place in the Japanese psyche... j/k
Linux is nearly assured a place on desktops within a few years, considering Microsoft's very gradual fall from grace.
Since everyone is talking about Linux, where do you see the BSDs in the next few years? Will they be Sprite to Linux's 7-Up, or will they make a surprise upset and nab the market from M$ before Linux has a chance?
Or are the BSDs simply (and respectably) destined to a place other than the end user's desktop?
Katz talks about how wonderful the Net is in allowing new artists to make it around the record industries selection procedures. The whopping majority of mp3s being traded, however, are the works of the bigshot celebs who have already made it. Sure the new kids have a chance to distribute their music, but it's not as though they've suddenly found an equal market. The primary purpose of mp3s is (and always has been) to steal the latest best-selling albums so that you don't have to fork out a couple bucks for it.
The DMCA is not trying to redefine entertainment on the web. It is trying to reclaim what is legally theirs. Record companies spend millions of dollars signing artists and releasing albums so that they can make a profit -- this is no less noble than any other business. People have found an easy way around this, however, and they're taking advantage of it. The purpose of the DMCA is to defend against outright copyright infringement, which is what we are all doing.
College students don't have the ability to download mp3s onto college sites simply because the schools think it's harmless; They can do it because the schools generally don't know about it. Most schools will attempt to eliminate any type of non-official server they are aware of.
I hate having to repeat this, but copyright issues are not why schools are concerned. They're primary issue is with *bandwidth*. If napster didn't hog up so much space in the pipes, nobody would give a damn.
Free music sites did not proliferate because they piggy-backed off of educational sites where users. They proliferated because they had FREE MUSIC. Sites run off of school servers are nearly impossible to find. Go to the UC Berkeley web page and tell me where you see mp3s.
Katz admonishes colleges and universities for worrying more about copyright infringement than about free speech; He absolutely fails to realize that these artists' never intended that their work be given away. Free speech doesn't mean "gratis."
It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself.
There is no music revolution. We're just trying to find better ways to steal.
What's a few million here and there? It probably won't make a serious dent in NASA's budget, and if anything will help them explain why they should get more money next year.
Seriously, though, what would happen if we get there and all we find is a single alien village with a lot of corpses and a wrecked satellite?
Oops!
Do they really have a choice? I know a lot of us are pissed off that three cents of our tax money is going toward possibly saving a lifeform other than humans, but isn't that -- objectively speaking -- the wisest decision?
You will probably find as much money between the cushions on your sofa as you have invested into this project. Chill out, people.
We all know that e-mail should be private, the but the question is, "Why isn't it?"
E-mail can't be used to "prove" anything. It's disturbingly easy to forge. A printout of an e-mail could easily have simply been typed. There are no signatures, no postmarks, just bytes of data that can be forged by anyone who has half a clue what they're doing.
The ".sucks" thing will never work. Every company that registers a ".com" will grab the ".sucks" as well, just in case. Microsoft will, without question, own "www.microsoft.sucks." The article says that companies will be prohibited from registering their own names under such a domain, but how can that be enforced? It goes against some very basic laws that give a company the right to control what happens to its name (a la eToys).
TLDs are not mean to simply be clever endings to website names. They serve a purpose. If ".sucks" is accepted, then so must be every other clever idea that someone comes up with for a URL. Why not ".ate.my.balls," for example. Yeah, they're cute, and yeah, it would be nice in some ways to have more URL flexibility, but it goes against the basic purpose of TLDs.
If it goes through, I have dibs on "www.linux.sucks" so that it can't fall into the wrong hands. *grin*
You mean Microsoft put a spin on an old Unix thing? *gasp*
Oh wait a minute...isn't that what they've been doing since DOS? (Except for Windows, which was an innovation because they stole it from Apple [who in turn stole it from...etc....]).
It sure didn't hurt SJG in terms of publicity. This more than anything else has probably spread their name around the net. I wish my company would be raided by feds!:o)
Many people replying to this article are completely missing the boat. Legality is not the issue. The universities are concerned about their bandwidth being choked; Brittney Spears' copyright concerns are irrelevant to them.
I have seen university officials state over and over that the copyright issues are not their concern, that they simply want to maintain bandwidth for other users who might be doing something more academic than downloading the latest Eminem single.
That said, I have to give my own $0.02 on the bandwidth issue:
Academic pursuits typically use very little bandwidth. I doubt that many research articles one would find on the web are anywhere over a few thousand bytes. I'm currently a senior at my state's university (which incidentally is also grumbling about Napster), and in all the research I've conducted, bandwidth has never been a problem because nothing I have looked for has ever been much more than a simple text file.
The bandwidth problem is more imaginary than anything else. I doubt that some graduate student is scratching his head over why he's only getting 50k/sec instead of 100k/sec (still ten times faster than I get at home!) because some frosh is sitting in his dorm smoking pot and downloading Puff Daddy.
The problem is that neither the engineers who see the bandwidth problem nor the officials who are told about it really have any conception of what is going on. The engineers don't know the students and the officials don't know the networks. So people jump to confusions and we get actions such as the banning of Napster.
The sad truth is that AOL need not employ monopolistic practices such as pipeline hogging because they are, and likely will always be, the most end-userly ISP there is.
Little if any actual thought is required to operate an AOL account. The only thing necessary to get connected is to run the setup software and let AOL dig its tentacles into your computer. It's perfect for your grandmother when you don't feel up to serving as tech support as she tries to set up her Mindspring e-mail.
As nerds and geeks, we are almost religiously opposed to the terribly, terribly unsexy AOL. But to the archetypal end user, it's a blessing right from $DEITY. No thought necessary. What could be greater?
So AOL can feel free to bust a public relations move by opening their pipelines, because it's just going to put their name in the news yet again.
What's the big deal with etoy being back up? eToys wanted to squash them long enough to get through the Christmas season, and they succeeded. Now that (A) everyone knows the difference between etoy and eToys, and (B) Christmas is over, eToys doesn't care, and *let* etoy have their domain back (though lawyers and supporters may claim the credit for the "victory").
My understanding of Trademark law is that if you don't put up a good show by defending your own trademark in small instances, then the government isn't going to bail you out when you've got much larger trademark issues.
"The government helps those who help themselves" -- at least in this instance.
I definitely don't see this as a case of MegaCorp cracking down on the innocent little opensourcers. Whoever made the theme *did* use the Apple logo, which to a newbie could possibly be construed as meaning that the theme was officially supported by Apple.
I've seen lots of Apple-logo themes, and I had always wondered why Apple was doing anything, since it could cause them major problems down the road (if a *real* trademark issue ever came up).
We've got an old PPC at work, and few of the linuxheads around here decided to repartition the harddrive and toss LinuxPPC on it, just to see how it would work. On the whole, I was rather impressed. It actually performs better (IMHO) than the MacOS 8.5 that occupies the other partition. I've been using LinuxPPC almost exclusively on this computer now, only booting into MacOS when I have to retrieve a particular file or run a certain application.
So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86.
At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance.
The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless.
We've got an old PPC at work, and few of the linuxheads around here decided to repartition the harddrive and toss LinuxPPC on it, just to see how it would work. On the whole, I was rather impressed. It actually performs better (IMHO) than the MacOS 8.5 that occupies the other partition. I've been using LinuxPPC almost exclusively on this computer now, only booting into MacOS when I have to retrieve a particular file or run a certain application. So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86. At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance. The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless. Oh, well.:o) ZP
Personally, I think the whole topic is moot because I know *VERY* few girls who even read video game magazines. Yeah they might play every once in a while, but they don't get into it as a hobby, at least not as much as the guys do. I don't think these ads really turn girls away from video games, because the girls just aren't seeing them. ZP
sam raimi's kind of a nerdy guy (i mean that as a compliment), and spiderman is dear to the heart of nerds everywhere. i don't see what this *doesn't* have to do with slashdot! huzzah!
Slashdot Mirror
hehehe just last night i was watching an anime film about a kid who flies around the universe in an old-school train. i thought it was completely looney, but now i'm beginning to wonder if flying trains might have some special place in the Japanese psyche... j/k
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Uh oh. If AIBO implements this technology, I might have to buy one after all!
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
The book was one of the greatest books ever written.
The movie was one of the worst movies ever made.
I can only hope that a miniseries, which will benefit from a smaller budget than the film, will fall somewhere in between....
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Now we know what happened after he broke up with Paul Simon.
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Since everyone is talking about Linux, where do you see the BSDs in the next few years? Will they be Sprite to Linux's 7-Up, or will they make a surprise upset and nab the market from M$ before Linux has a chance?
Or are the BSDs simply (and respectably) destined to a place other than the end user's desktop?
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
someone read my e-mail once. i was mad.
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Considering that the girls of FF just seem to be getting cuter and cuter, I can only wonder who's going to be in the movie! :o)
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
We get all riled up when someone squats on, say, openssh, but we feel its our right and privilidge to be able to grab www.microsoft.sucks.
The whole point of trademarks is that companies can have some control over how their name is used. Am I the only one who notices a double standard?
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
If anyone could remind me where that was, I'd be much obliged!
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
- Katz talks about how wonderful the Net is in allowing new artists to make it around the record industries selection procedures. The whopping majority of mp3s being traded, however, are the works of the bigshot celebs who have already made it. Sure the new kids have a chance to distribute their music, but it's not as though they've suddenly found an equal market. The primary purpose of mp3s is (and always has been) to steal the latest best-selling albums so that you don't have to fork out a couple bucks for it.
- The DMCA is not trying to redefine entertainment on the web. It is trying to reclaim what is legally theirs. Record companies spend millions of dollars signing artists and releasing albums so that they can make a profit -- this is no less noble than any other business. People have found an easy way around this, however, and they're taking advantage of it. The purpose of the DMCA is to defend against outright copyright infringement, which is what we are all doing.
- College students don't have the ability to download mp3s onto college sites simply because the schools think it's harmless; They can do it because the schools generally don't know about it. Most schools will attempt to eliminate any type of non-official server they are aware of.
- I hate having to repeat this, but copyright issues are not why schools are concerned. They're primary issue is with *bandwidth*. If napster didn't hog up so much space in the pipes, nobody would give a damn.
- Free music sites did not proliferate because they piggy-backed off of educational sites where users. They proliferated because they had FREE MUSIC. Sites run off of school servers are nearly impossible to find. Go to the UC Berkeley web page and tell me where you see mp3s.
- Katz admonishes colleges and universities for worrying more about copyright infringement than about free speech; He absolutely fails to realize that these artists' never intended that their work be given away. Free speech doesn't mean "gratis."
- It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself.
There is no music revolution. We're just trying to find better ways to steal.ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Seriously, though, what would happen if we get there and all we find is a single alien village with a lot of corpses and a wrecked satellite?
Oops!
Do they really have a choice? I know a lot of us are pissed off that three cents of our tax money is going toward possibly saving a lifeform other than humans, but isn't that -- objectively speaking -- the wisest decision?
You will probably find as much money between the cushions on your sofa as you have invested into this project. Chill out, people.
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
We all know that e-mail should be private, the but the question is, "Why isn't it?"
E-mail can't be used to "prove" anything. It's disturbingly easy to forge. A printout of an e-mail could easily have simply been typed. There are no signatures, no postmarks, just bytes of data that can be forged by anyone who has half a clue what they're doing.
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Oh wait a minute...isn't that what they've been doing since DOS? (Except for Windows, which was an innovation because they stole it from Apple [who in turn stole it from...etc....]).
And so the cycle continues...
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Ewige Blumenkraft.
ZP
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
I have seen university officials state over and over that the copyright issues are not their concern, that they simply want to maintain bandwidth for other users who might be doing something more academic than downloading the latest Eminem single.
That said, I have to give my own $0.02 on the bandwidth issue:
Academic pursuits typically use very little bandwidth. I doubt that many research articles one would find on the web are anywhere over a few thousand bytes. I'm currently a senior at my state's university (which incidentally is also grumbling about Napster), and in all the research I've conducted, bandwidth has never been a problem because nothing I have looked for has ever been much more than a simple text file.
The bandwidth problem is more imaginary than anything else. I doubt that some graduate student is scratching his head over why he's only getting 50k/sec instead of 100k/sec (still ten times faster than I get at home!) because some frosh is sitting in his dorm smoking pot and downloading Puff Daddy.
The problem is that neither the engineers who see the bandwidth problem nor the officials who are told about it really have any conception of what is going on. The engineers don't know the students and the officials don't know the networks. So people jump to confusions and we get actions such as the banning of Napster.
*sigh*.
ZP
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Little if any actual thought is required to operate an AOL account. The only thing necessary to get connected is to run the setup software and let AOL dig its tentacles into your computer. It's perfect for your grandmother when you don't feel up to serving as tech support as she tries to set up her Mindspring e-mail.
As nerds and geeks, we are almost religiously opposed to the terribly, terribly unsexy AOL. But to the archetypal end user, it's a blessing right from $DEITY. No thought necessary. What could be greater?
So AOL can feel free to bust a public relations move by opening their pipelines, because it's just going to put their name in the news yet again.
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Megacorp always wins.
*sigh*
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
"The government helps those who help themselves" -- at least in this instance.
I definitely don't see this as a case of MegaCorp cracking down on the innocent little opensourcers. Whoever made the theme *did* use the Apple logo, which to a newbie could possibly be construed as meaning that the theme was officially supported by Apple.
I've seen lots of Apple-logo themes, and I had always wondered why Apple was doing anything, since it could cause them major problems down the road (if a *real* trademark issue ever came up).
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Sorry :o)
So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86.
At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance.
The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless.
Oh, well. :o)
ZP
We've got an old PPC at work, and few of the linuxheads around here decided to repartition the harddrive and toss LinuxPPC on it, just to see how it would work. On the whole, I was rather impressed. It actually performs better (IMHO) than the MacOS 8.5 that occupies the other partition. I've been using LinuxPPC almost exclusively on this computer now, only booting into MacOS when I have to retrieve a particular file or run a certain application. So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86. At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance. The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless. Oh, well. :o) ZP
I smell a put-on here...why did he cancel his e-mail address and start another one? I don't know if I buy this...
Personally, I think the whole topic is moot because I know *VERY* few girls who even read video game magazines. Yeah they might play every once in a while, but they don't get into it as a hobby, at least not as much as the guys do. I don't think these ads really turn girls away from video games, because the girls just aren't seeing them. ZP
sam raimi's kind of a nerdy guy (i mean that as a compliment), and spiderman is dear to the heart of nerds everywhere. i don't see what this *doesn't* have to do with slashdot! huzzah!