Posted on by lhl

tcl syntax is retarded. so i have to set a but put put $a? that’s moronic. and wtf is set overloaded anyway? if you’re gonna have that way of assigning variables, why not just make a get command?

Posted on by lhl

michael robertson – friend or foe to artists?

Chuck D sums it up with this: “It’s real funny because the majors, at the end of the day, they just want too be in the same position that they’ve always been in. A lot of the record companies own the copyrights from the last century. It’s easy to look at a scapegoat excuse – ‘oh yeah, we’re looking out for artists’ . . . It’s never been about the music over the last couple of years; it’s about figuring out ways that they can squeeze the consumer dollar.”

“I don’t think artists are in the position of being risk-takers like that,” Vidich (vp warner music) said. “They would rather get a big advance.” — this is from a disheartening article in yesterday’s nytimes. now, view the industry’s fud in light of the recent copyright developments (and vs. copyright’s original intent).

… This shift may effectively end even the possibility of legal unlicensed uses of copyrighted materials — especially since Congress continues to extend the period of copyright protection whenever it looks like Disney’s first Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie” (1928), might enter the public domain…

as booboo said: no more wearing the man’s clothes, no more speaking the man’s language.

Congress, she said, “is firmly in the pocket of the content industries, and there’s not much hope that that’s going to change anytime soon.” An attempt to rewrite the law now “would be an exercise in tilting at windmills,” she said.

She was slightly less pessimistic about the prospect that the courts might construe the existing law — the original Copyright Act, plus the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which added the anticircumvention provisions — “in a way we could live with.” But that won’t happen, she said, until courts cease to regard anyone who’s interested in enabling people to overcome those technological roadblocks as a presumptive “pirate.” The “demonization” of those who engage in what were once understood to be lawful (although unlicensed) copying of copyrighted works has to end.

Her audience had gotten pretty gloomy at this point. One individual stood up and asked her how, if Congress couldn’t be reached, and the courts were biased in favor of the copyright holders, the rest of us might be able to change the law. And this was when she unleashed her final shocking bolt.

“Oddly enough,” Litman said, “I’m coming around to the view that the best ray of hope, at least in the United States, lies in widespread noncompliance.”

emphasis mine. go ahead, read the whole article. it’s worth it.

Posted on by lhl

was looking for analysis on ms’ .net announcement (which i’d been sort of ignoring), and managed somehow to happen on linus’ extracted kernel notes from the linux kernel v 0.01 Kernel Notes

rafe has an interesting opinion: Microsoft’s utter humiliation of its former competitors continues apace. First, Steve Jobs kissed the ring before the crowd at a MacWorld conference a few years ago. Now we see Marc Andreessen swearing fealty to Gates at this announcement. I wonder if we’ll ever see Scott McNeally or Larry Ellison kneeling before the Microsoft throne?.

dave has a different opinion: First, Microsoft didn’t get to where they are by being stupid. But taken at face-value, there’s something really stupid about broadcasting your five year product plan to your competitors. They even named them, AOL, Sun, IBM, Oracle and Linux. Without a doubt, the key strategists at these places must be poring over every detail they can get about Dot-Net. What are they concluding? “We could beat them to market, by years.” Now, remember, they’re smart at Microsoft. Are they laying a trap? I think not. It’s a chess game, but with a twist. “To get the government off our back,” I imagine the Microsoft thinking goes, “we have to have real competition.”.

i’m not really buying that, but nielsen is right when he talks about the doj os/application split is ill-fated. .net seems to be what a lot of people have been expecting out of ms since the doj ruling (shift to .net ruling). why the sudden announcement? beats me. to rally the stock price is my guess.