Last update: 2001-11-06 23:40 UTC
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sbp: A neat article discussing "cellar doors"
sbp: Cool references to Welsh and Finnish
Morbus: "There is an ancient and hallowed tradition: if you get a reply that reads "RTFM", the person who sent it thinks you should have Read The Fucking Manual. He is almost certainly right. Go read it.
Morbus: RTFM has a younger relative. If you get a reply that reads "STFW", the person who sent it thinks you should have Searched The Fucking Web. He is almost certainly right. Go search it.
Morbus: You shouldn't be offended by this; by hacker standards, he is showing you a rough kind of respect simply by not ignoring you. You should instead thank him for his grandmotherly kindness.
Morbus: Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offence. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.
Morbus: (Some people assert that many hackers have a mild form of autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and are actually missing some of the brain circuitry that lubricates `normal' human social interaction. This may or may not be true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope with our eccentricities if you think of us as being brain-damaged. Go right ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever it is we are, and generally have a healthy skepticism a
Morbus: "I tried X, Y, and Z on the S2464 motherboard. When that didn't work, I tried A, B, and C. Note the curious symptom when I tried C. Obviously the florbish is grommicking, but the results aren't what one might expect. What are the usual causes of grommicking on MP motherboards? Anybody got ideas for more tests I can run to pin down the problem?"
AaronSw: "I used a Content Management System called Windows Notepad."
AaronSw: Java had the chicken problem: "It popped its head up, saw a web browser and thought it was an applet."
AaronSw: "Any color you want, as long as it's black. Any platform you want as long as it's Windows."
AaronSw: Tim O'Reilly introducing Hillary Rosen of the RIAA: "We've sometimes demonized [the RIAA]."
AaronSw: "Here's the Jack Valenti part of my speech."
AaronSw: "We have the most thriving economy in the World right now [...] precisely because we have found the right balance between creation and protection."
AaronSw: People trying to change IP law are "short-term thinkers for a popular cause".
AaronSw: "Maybe [record companies] encourage piracy [by not putting all their music online]."
AaronSw: "The fact that it is one of the number one transmitters of child pornography has not gone unnoticed by law enforcement." (many groans from audience)
AaronSw: Hillary says that with file sharing there's no hope for anything but the status quo. Heh!
AaronSw: "We have no choice but to continue [our legal threats] as long as the copyrights are being infringed."
AaronSw: "Each of us is in the business of innovation."
AaronSw: "There was really no choice [to taking legal action against Kazaa]."
AaronSw: Lucas Gonze asks a question: He asks how developers can do DRM when they don't look inside the files. "More likely for us it's accounting files or something."
AaronSw: Hillary seems unready for this question.She says there's no digital fingerprinting system to identify content.
AaronSw: Zooko quotes Bruce's Counterpane: """Every time I write about [...] protecting digital files [...], I get responses from people decrying the death of copyright. "How will authors and artists get paid for their work?" they ask me. Truth be told, I don't know. I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be
AaronSw: asked: "How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?" I'm sorry, but I don't know that, either."""
AaronSw: "There's too much music in the marketplace. [...] People only have a certain amount of headspace for new music. [...] The cost of music is in making it popular."
AaronSw: Tim O'Reilly asks if Hillary can quantify the margins in the record industry.
AaronSw: Wesley Felter, on seeing Tim wearing an Endeavors T-Shirt: "Tim [O'Reilly] is renting out space on his shirt." (Endeavors is a Platinum Sponsor of the P2PCon.)
AaronSw: Hillary says that artists generally get $3-$7 per CD, depending on contract, sometimes, maybe.
AaronSw: "It's hard to give you an exact cost [...] because of that kind of fluctuation."
AaronSw: "It's an industry of advances not royalties, not advances." She paraphrases her friend: "If an artist of mine ever gets a royalty I haven't done a good enough job."
AaronSw: Hillary says making copies for your other players is not fair use. "The fair use rights have been stretched in that way."
AaronSw: Hillary left and entered with a long trail of video cameras, boom mikes and photographers.
AaronSw: Tim O'Reilly: "Denial of Service should be a service -- the RIAA would like that." From Audience: "Or the other way around."
sbp: Related article
sbp: intersting: "Even in the vast confusion of the World Wide Web, on the average, one page is only about 16 to 20 clicks away from any other." - CU computer scientist helps explain how 'six degrees of separation' works