Meeting 2007-11-28
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Information
- Date: Wednesday, November 28, 2007
- Time: 8:30PM
- Place: Squires Yorktown
Attendance
Plan on attending:
- Conley
- Sarah
- Matt
- Duff (will be an hour late)
- Ashton
Plan on skipping:
Goodies
Game
I forgot to call home Monday and tell my sister Happy Birthday. Can the game this time be we all sing Happy Birthday on the phone for her? --Conley 04:19, 29 November 2007 (JST)
News
Creative Commons announces CC 0
It's public domain, but not quite.
- Does anyone know the difference? --Conley 07:36, 17 November 2007 (JST)
Anepsosis uses CC by-sa for character art
- Doesn't CC by-sa still conflict with the GPL though? I don't think it is listed as a compatible license yet. --Conley 09:58, 17 November 2007 (JST)
- It does conflict with the GPL. From the FSF:
- "Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 license (a.k.a. CC-BY-SA)
- This is a copyleft free license that is good for artistic and entertainment works, and educational works. Please don't use it for software or documentation, since it is incompatible with the GNU GPL and with the GNU FDL." --Matt 10:47, 26 November 2007 (JST)
Another Uploader D-Elite'd
The fallout from the FBI raid on EliteTorrents in 2005 continues, with a seventh defendant associated with the uploading of Star Wars Episode III facing the prospect of 10 years in prison coupled with a $500,000 fine.
FSF releases the GAGPL
[License http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html].
It's a license for network software that requires those employing it to release it and all changes to their users.
- Yay! --Conley 06:32, 21 November 2007 (JST)
Google lets you edit their maps
- Expect buildings to be moved around and streets to go into rivers. Matt 10:31, 26 November 2007 (JST)
FSF starts expert witnesses defense fund
KDE 4.0 RC1 released
SFLC and BusyBox double team two more
The SFLC and BusyBox filed law suits against High-Gain Antennas of Parker, Colorado, and Xterasys of City of Industry, California.
- They were successful against Monsoon, I think they will be successful again. --Conley 06:12, 22 November 2007 (JST)
Amazon manages to get the 1-click shopping patent back in
- Ugh...software patents...ugh. --Conley 05:03, 23 November 2007 (JST)
Guitar Hero sued
They had rights to do a cover of The Romantics That's What I Like About You...but apparently the cover sounded too much like the original.
- No way...there's just no way. --Conley 11:23, 23 November 2007 (JST)
- Haha --Matt 10:31, 26 November 2007 (JST)
CC'd video ranks 5th of all time on Youtube
- I watched this several months ago...It reminded me how horrible my Spanish is, because I understood very little. --Conley 07:46, 27 November 2007 (JST)
RIAA Ordered to come up with real figures
"The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros. Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and SONY BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant's lawyers, in UMG v. Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA's attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process."
Obama calls for an open document standard in the US
Other countries have been hoping on the ODF train, but we have yet to.
Blog entry about the Google speech.
CC turns 5 on December 15th
- Anyone want to give me a ride to Frisco? --Conley 03:05, 28 November 2007 (JST)
Slysoft commercializes next-gen DVD circumvention
New CC'd book, Roo'd, is the first modern book in the iphoneebook repo
A cyberpunk exploration of one geek's search for meaning. - Joshua Klein
Asus resolves Eee GPL violation
Nigerian Company sues OLPC
LANCOR is suing over a multilingual keyboard patent.
Playstation 2 game is violating the GPL
ICO is using code from libarc. Sony could have to open source the entire game!
Google announces the Highly Open Participation contest
From Google: "Following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google is pleased to announce this new effort to get young people involved in open source development. We've teamed up with the open source projects listed here to give student contestants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to all aspects of open source software development, from writing code and documentation to preparing training materials and conducting user experience research."
- Does it bother you how much Google takes from open source and does not give back? (It itself does not give back...it gets others to.) The GAGPL is going to kick Google's butt. --Conley 22:52, 28 November 2007 (JST)
EFF releases reports and software to spot interference with internet traffic
"In the wake of the detection and reporting of Comcast Corporation's controversial interference with Internet traffic, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published a comprehensive account of Comcast's packet-forging activities and has released software and documentation instructing Internet users on how to test for packet forgery or other forms of interference by their own ISPs."
New Jersey blogger fights for anonymous free speech
FC Sock Assassin
Check out the rules and the standings.
FC board elections
There is a second debate going on next Tuesday from 10:00 to 11:00 on IRC in #freeculture on freenode. Stop in and meet the candidates.
FC RPG
Let's discuss organizing a CC'd rpg.
- This could quite possibly be the nerdiest thing this club has done to date. --Matt 11:19, 27 November 2007 (JST)
- Actually there are quite a number of them. Wizards of the Coast (Current owners of Dungeons and Dragons and the D20 system) have licensed the core D20 system in their own open source license, [Open Gaming License] There are also a number of other game systems that are licensed in similar fashion, including the system my gaming group is using for our current game, [FATE]. D20 is great for Hack-and-Slash gaming, while FATE is better for story telling. These are both open licensed gaming systems, as in rules and mechanics; so you would also have to find a CC'd campaign or game setting. (We have been using a published commercial campaign called 50,000 Fathoms) --Yashton 13:16, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- I'm glad you are knowledgeable on this. I have done a little research in the past and know of the OGL, and what systems are open, but not on what is good. I think this could be a lot of fun, with the right DM. --Conley 14:12, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- I don't know who we could get to DM. I wouldn't mind, but I've never ran a full session before. It also depends on interest, who is playing, and what kind of game we want. Usually if you get a good published campaign, a lot of the world details and plot elements are given by the campaign manual and it's the DM's job to interpret and apply. Other times, the DM just comes up with everything, which can be fun as well. I'll have to look around for some more details.--Yashton 14:26, 28 November 2007 (JST)
A-frame
Did Conley, Ashton, and Sarah do this?
- Hahahahaha --Conley 14:12, 28 November 2007 (JST)
Free the Collegiate Times
What's the status?
Fighting the tablet PC requirement
Killing the tablet requirement
Did Conley tie this up to be continued next semester?
College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007
Does anyone have any ideas on what we should do about this or more details on current events pertaining to this? Put them up here.
EFF article from before the vote on the 13th.
Discussion
Possible topics:
- Is illegal file-sharing a good thing?
- Who is hurt by it; are the possible benefits that can only be derived from sharing, even illegally;
- How differently should patents and copyrights be treated?
- Should we tolerate tolerated use?
- Making money with open source software and CC media. (Interesting insights in software from Solaris talk) --Yashton 13:43, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- Is free content a viable distribution/creation model for large projects, or is it only going to work with corporate support? (ex. lack of major video game development/large scale motion pictures; open source software's reliance on corporate sponsors) --Yashton 13:49, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- Is License proliferation a significant problem? --Matt 18:56, 28 November 2007 (JST)
Show and tell
Several people: Free film from last week
We watched Route 66. What did those who watched think?
- I have a really perverse relationship with this movie. I've watched it three times, despite how painfully horrible it is. Until Bloodspell, this was the least restrictively licensed feature-length film at time of publication. Do I really like Free Culture so much that I will consume any junk that it produces? I have some issues to deal with. --Conley 00:02, 16 November 2007 (JST)
- Indeed. --Matt 12:45, 16 November 2007 (JST)
Conley, Ashton, Matt
Went to the OpenSolaris talk and got T-shirts.
- Ashton was taking a ton of notes. I was impressed...intimidated...out-nerded. --Conley 12:17, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- It was only three pages scribbled on the back of scratch paper. There was a bunch of things I wanted to look up later, and he had some great quotes. Cool stuff all around, now I just need to scrounge up an x86 machine somewhere so I can put Solaris on it. --Yashton 13:25, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- Conley invoked Godwin's Law during an argument with Ashton. --Matt 13:37, 29 November 2007 (JST)
Open floor
Josh Woodward
Maybe I'm a bit behind on this piece of news, but did you all know that Josh Woodward has three of his albums for sale on iTunes for $10 each? I was a bit surprised, since you can get them for free off his site. I wonder if they've got DRMs. ~Sarah
- Yes I did. I did not know whether or not the albums are DRM'd, but a lot of artists want to put their music as many places as they can so that they can get discovered. I don't think free artists are motivated so much by the altruism of Free Culture as much as they are by the ability to quickly spread their work. He is also on Amazon I believe. --Conley 06:32, 21 November 2007 (JST)
- AFAIK, If the song is available in iTunes Plus then there is no DRM. There is purchasing data in the file information though. --Matt 11:24, 27 November 2007 (JST)
- Usually the artist will post low quality copies on mySpace and their website, then sell CDs or high quality copies for download. Quick look at the mp3s available on Woodward's site shows that they are encoded at 128 kbps, which is not bad as far as online files go; but not very tolerable quality to my ear, I rip at 320 kbps or FLAC (joys of being an audiophile). I don't know much about iTunes quality, but it's not very good either. Once again, the issue comes up on where they make money; which from everything I've seen, even for big artists who sell millions of records, ultimately comes from merchandise and concert revenue. Does iTunes or Amazon have a fixed price, or could I put up all my songs for $.01 just to get my music out?--Yashton 14:17, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- I don't think Josh Woodward is trying to gyp anyone on quality. Sure he doesn't have FLACs up, but that could just be because he's too lazy to get into torrenting, and doesn't want that burden on his account. I'm sure that if you bought a CD of his (they are very cheap), he wouldn't mind you ripping the FLACs and torrenting them. He's put two albums on Jamendo, and it's more than likely that he used the original quality for that (they require FLAC or WAV) and they have converted them to q8 OGGs. Talking about all this has reminded me that we will probably do a radio show next semester. I'm so excited! We have such cool people in the chapter. Radio connections, indy film making, an open source FPS development, free electronic music making, etc --Conley 14:26, 28 November 2007 (JST)
Ed Felton
I didn't know that Ed Felton was an EFF board member until today, did you? --Conley 04:33, 29 November 2007 (JST)
Free Film
Check out a list of free films
Suggestions:
- I do in fact still have Cactuses on my computer but was not able to find it earlier. I'll bring my charger to the next meeting so we can watch it. --Matt 12:44, 16 November 2007 (JST)
- PS: It doesn't seem like Ubuntu's free ATI driver has quite figured out yet how to get the VGA port working. This is probably why. I'll see what I can do if I can find a spare screen to test workarounds on, but needless to say we might have to run Windows to view this. :( --Matt 11:22, 27 November 2007 (JST)
- I already have Cactuses and Rashomon on my computer, with all relevant cables and connectors and easily configurable dual monitor setup. Does Robert have more info on the licensing status Kurosawa's other movies? (Seven Samurai, etc) --Yashton 13:34, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- You did it last time. I want to be the one who shows the movie. I just got the duel screens working so that isn't an issue anymore. --Matt 17:24, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- Haha, alright Matt. If everything works out, you can show the movie. It's not that big of a deal. --Conley 22:45, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- No, Robert and I discussed this. He actually found Rashomon while trying to figure out what the license status of Seven Samuri was. Neither of us could find anything confirming (or even suggesting) that it was under the public domain. --Conley 14:02, 28 November 2007 (JST)
- You did it last time. I want to be the one who shows the movie. I just got the duel screens working so that isn't an issue anymore. --Matt 17:24, 28 November 2007 (JST)
