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We'll get this simplicity with Mount Rainier. From the Mount Rainer FAQ, "The purpose of the proposal made by the Mount Rainier group is to make CD-RW easier to use for data storage and interchange. The changes proposed will enable the operating system support of dragging and dropping data to CD-RW discs. Formatting delays will also be eliminated and the use will be comparable to using a hard disk or a floppy."

My question is: Are there any OSes that natively support Mount Rainier now?

Typically the beta tests are pretty small. The current one is only 100 people.

And I wouldn't have said a thing if the parent hadn't said "Heheh, I'm not telling." :P

link

Total rubish, eh? Try this link in Mozilla 1.0.

Philips is developing blue laser technology for use as a digital video recorder, but with removable media. See it here. It sounds like they want to continue to use a hard drive like in TiVo for short term storage, but then have a built-in (re)writable media for removable storate built on optical blue laser technology. Seems like a pretty neat idea to me, but I doubt this particular techology will stick.. too costly to impliment, and all the momentum is moving towards DVD.

Philips already makes DVD recorders. I suppose that answers your question?

OK, this thread has turned into a complete joke. First - I would like to tell everyone to go take a course in reading comprehension. Obviously with more then one acronym per post everyone gets confused. ;-)

Now, having said that:

• I know that VLIW means very long instruction word, not data path
• I know that Intel processors are based on a RISC like core - I'm not talking about execution, I'm talking about decoding,scheduling,dispatch, and issue.
• Anything that does more then one operation at a time is superscalar.

RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) are distinctly different methods of CPU design. VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) computers use multiple RISC like instructions packed into each VLIW instruction word. The sub-instructions are called atoms; the packed together instructions are called molecules. The point of doing this is to get rid of the decoding/scheduling/dispatch circuitry, since the compiler already pairs atoms together that can run in parallel. The atoms are always occupying the same bits, and are all of the same form... That is what RISC like means folks. The only difference between a RISC processor and a VLIW processor is that the RISC processor still has to pair instructions together as it gets them. The pairing of VLIW atoms has already been accomplished by the compiler.

Go read. Then reply.

Those were the days.

Now CDs cost $19 or $20. The dot-com boom is, well, you know. Napster's gone. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has survived a legal challenge, which has only encouraged our fine Congress to pile on more onerous legislation.

Granted, none of this is as alarming as the apparent suspension of habeas corpus in the extended detention of more than 1,000 unnamed people in the U.S. since 9/11, but it's pretty darned ominous just the same.

Added to this heady mixture in recent weeks is a new generation of digital copy protection that's been showing up on music CDs distributed by Sony in Europe. Fast becoming known as the case of "Celine Dion Killed My iMac," initial reports indicate that these discs are not only unreadable by computers, but may actually crash them and prevent them from rebooting, necessitating a service call.

Aside from the immediate hardware questions--"Where the !@#$% is the iMac's manual CD eject hole and how the !@#$% do I get to it?!?"--several major questions about this situation have gripped the Mac universe. Here, without further ado, are the Curmudgeon's curmudgeonly answers to the top five. Some are techical, some are legal, some are political, some are a mix of all three.

Dayplanner note: if you already know exactly how CDs and copy protection work and you're pressed for time, feel free to skip right on down to Question #3. That's where things get, as they say in New England, wicked controversial.

QUESTION #1: Why do Macs and other computers choke on copy protected CDs?

When you look at the business side of a normal audio CD, you see one continuous semi-glossy surface that contains the audio information, or the "program". Bracketing the program are the lead-in and lead-out sections, which are the high-gloss rings at the inside and outside edges of the disc, respectively. The CD's audio tracks are not arranged in a particularly orderly fashion on the disc. As Robert Starret explains in an old but still definitive Emedia Professional article:

Red Book [i.e Audio CD] tracks are not files, per se. They are made up of a bunch of data that is meant to stream, and within the stream there is more than music. ... Data on an audio disc is organized into frames in order to ensure a constant read rate. Each frame consists of 24 bytes of user data, plus synchronization, error correction, and control and display bits. One of the first things that it is crucial to understand about CDs is that [their] data is not arranged in distinct physical units. Instead, the data in one frame is interleaved with the data in many other frames so that a scratch or defect in the disc will not destroy a single frame beyond correction.

Audio discs were designed to be read sequentially, in real time, with the digital data converted to an analog signal that would be played through a stereo's speakers. There was no need to have data on the disc to pinpoint the exact location of the beginning of a song. It is good enough just to get close. That extra data containing an exact starting address for each song takes up space that could otherwise be used for musical data.

So what a computer sees when it looks at an audio CD is not a foreign language, as when a Mac sees a DOS-formatted disc. Rather, it sees no language at all. There's no map, no file cabinet. Everything's just strewn out on the floor. This is why you can't just double-click an audio CD's icon in the Finder and drag one of the files to your hard drive. (If you do, the copied file will be zero k and contain no data.) Instead, you have to "rip" the file with a special digital audio extraction program or utility that manually searches out and extracts the tracks on the disc. That, by the way, is most likely why the term "ripping" came about. The kind of translation necessary for digital audio extraction no doubt struck many folks as analogous to the process of printing postscript-encoded fonts and images on a printer. Converting postscript to bitmap (so a printer can shoot ink droplets or laser-heated toner dots onto the paper) requires a Raster Image Processer, or RIP; hence "ripping."

Now, the key thing to understand here is that since audio CDs have no filesystem, and therefore no real data files, audio CD players do not need to be able to read data. Any data on an audio CD is ignored.

Computers, of course, come at CDs from the opposite perspective: data is their first order of business. So computers look for--and, if they find one, read--a data track on a CD before they look for, or read, an audio track. Data first, audio second, with each being treated separately.

You will be able to see this separate treatment in action if you have an "Enhanced CD" that contains bonus data material in addition to the audio program. Sara McLaughlin's 1999 release Mirrorball is one of the best-known Enhanced CDs. Stick it in your Mac and you'll see two separate CD icons, or volumes, show up on your desktop, one for the audio CD tracks and one for the data.

Look on the underside of the CD and you'll see that a very shiny band interrupts the normally continuous semi-gloss surface. This band is the lead-out for the audio disc, which is normally at the edge of the disc. But on an Enhanced CD, there's a second patch of program material after the lead-out. This is the data portion. Now look at a picture provided by German Magazine Chip of the underside of a disc that uses the Key2Audio copy protection technology Sony has employed most famously on the European release of Celine Dion's most recent album (ignore the disembodied hand holding the felt-tip marker for now).

Note the shiny band about 1/4 of the way in from the outside edge of the disc, just like you'd see on the underside of Mirrorball. The material from that band out to the disc's edge is a data track. Unlike a normal Enhanced CD, however, the data track on this CD is corrupt. I don't know exactly how it works, but it is formatted in such a way that a computer will initially recognize it as a valid data track but will not in fact be able to read it successfully. This situation will result in: the computer endlessly trying to read the disc; the computer giving up and ejecting the disc (or asking you to eject it); or the computer giving up with the disc sitting in the drawer, unmounted on the desktop and invisible to the OS. The second possibility is annoying; the first and third possibilities are potentially disastrous.

So computers choke on Sony's copy protected discs because (1) computers read data tracks first, and (2) Key2Audio data tracks are corrupt. Audio CD players, on the other hand, aren't capable of reading data tracks--remember, audio CD tracks lack a filesystem and there are no directories or headers to read. So audio CD players simply ignore the data track, just as they do for normal Enhanced CDs.

QUESTION #2: What's with this magic marker trick to defeat copy protection? Does it really work?

You betcha. Computers read data tracks first, but the data track has to be located at the end of the CD. Sounds confusing, but it has to be that way. In computer parlance, an Enhanced CD is a form of multisession CD. The CD is written to more than once; in the case of Enhanced CDs and Mac-PC hybrid CDs, this happens because you want to write two different types of data to the same CD. Audio CD players can only read the first session on a CD--again, no need or ability to know what multiple sessions are since an audio CD is expecting to see only audio CD tracks. So the audio content has to be the first thing on the disc, located on the inside of the disc surface. The data track is on the outside.

So if you take a magic marker--or, more dangerously a piece of electrical tape or a Post-it note--and use it to cover over that shiny band that divides the audio program from the data track, your computer won't realize that there even is a data track as it scans from the beginning of the CD--the inner part where the audio stuff is--to the outside looking for data. What your computer will see is a final audio track that seems to go on and on until it reaches the edge of the disk. This will put a whole lot of silence at the end of the last track when you rip the CD (a problem you can rectify using the Quicktime Player as an audio editor), but otherwise you'll be good to go.

QUESTION #3: Is Apple liable for the damage caused to my iMac by these CDs?

The answer to this one as far as the Curmudgeon is concerned is a big fat hairy NO. Before I explain why, I must say that I find it disheartening that so many folks on Usenet and the Mac Web are complaining about Apple in regards to this issue. Yes, it sucks to have to take your iMac to a repair shop and pay something on the order of $250US just to get a stuck CD removed. Yes, it's annoying that modern Macs have manual-eject holes that are difficult to see and hidden behind decorative outer CD doors. But I think the root of folks' complaints is that some Apple machines seem to be damaged more seriously by these disks than most WinTel PCs (largely, from what I can tell, by the aforementioned difficulty in detecting and accessing Macs' manual eject holes). While I don't want to downplay the real expense and misery some folks have experienced, it seems to me that the knee-jerk blaming of Apple comes from a kind of Mac inferiority complex run amok: "Why do Apple machines have to react worse to this than WinTel machines?!? My PC friends are going to rake me over the coals on this one! I thought Macs were supposed to be easier to use and better-built, and yet my PC just let me eject the CD!" And so on.

These sentiments are understandable, but they don't form the basis for a proper understanding of whether or not Apple should pay to fix this problem. Putting aside the question of legal liability for the moment, it's just not right to expect Apple or any computer manufacturer--or any CD player manufacturer whose machines won't play these new CDs, for that matter--to anticipate technology that hadn't been invented when the machine was designed. Early CD players were confused by Enhanced CDs; many home and car CD players still can't play CD-RWs; many DVD players (which are always labeled "DVD/CD/VCD") can't handle CD-Rs. In fact, the different CD formats are covered by different technology standards: Red Book for normal audio CDs, Yellow Book for data CDs, Orange Book for CD-R and CD-RW, and Blue Book for Enhanced CDs. Incidentally, the fact that CD-R and CD-RW are grouped together under a single standard explains why manufacturers are hesitant to certify that their CD and DVD players will play home-brewed recordable CDs: unless a player can handle both CD-R and CD-RW discs, it's not Orange Book compliant.

Now the funny thing is that much of the debate over Apple's responsibility here has skipped over this simple, and to my mind obvious, fact. Instead, the debate has proceeded to another, related question:

QUESTION #4: Are these new Sony discs really CDs or not? Should Apple support them even if they're not CDs?

Here's where the Curmudgeon throws you a curve ball, because contrary to what you've read, it's entirely possible, even likely, that these copy protected discs are in fact CDs.

Of course, Apple's position, as stated in a now-infamous Knowledgebase article is that Key2Audio discs "are technically and legally not Compact Discs (CD format)" because they do not conform to the CD audio format, and so Apple is under no obligation to make Macs work with them.

Sony agrees, having removed the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" badge and logo from discs that use the Key2Audio system.

But I don't think that really settles the matter. Attentive readers of the Mac Web might recall that the first draft of Apple's knowledgebase article stated that inserting such a disc into a Mac constituted misapplication of the product (the Mac, not the disc) and therefore any resulting problems were not covered under warranty. Apple has since removed that portion of the article, no doubt on the advice of legal counsel.

I don't know why that paragraph got removed from the article, but I have a hunch it's because the question of whether or not a Key2Audio disc is a CD has not come close to being settled.

Consider this: while the Sony discs don't conform to the Red Book CD standard, they appear to conform to the Blue Book standard--the one that governs Enhanced CDs. It's not possible to look at the full specs for CD standards without paying Philips (co-creator of the CD format along with, ironically, Sony) quite a bit of money. But available summaries of the Blue Book standard indicate that the standard does not say what has to be on that data track. Philips presumes that data tracks on Enhanced CDs "will in general contain items like disc and track titles, lyrics, and background information on the music," (quoted from here), but the Blue Book spec doesn't actually prescribe specific uses for the data track. The only requirement, as far as I can see, is that the data track be formatted with a known filesystem, typically ISO-9660 (DOS), and/or HFS. Since the Key2Audio system works precisely by getting the computer to "take the bait" by first recognizing the data track, and then confuses it by messing up the actual structure or nature of the data, it's reasonable to assume that the Key2Audio system does in fact conform to the Blue Book standard. (In other words, if the data track was not formatted with a valid filesystem, the computer would ignore it or spit the disc out.) Aside from the obvious marketing nightmare ("Our Enhanced CDs are unique because they diminish the product!") The only difference between a Key2Audio disc and an Enhanced CD is that the Key2Audio CD's data track is used to implement copy protection rather than to provide song lyrics, videos and other more traditional Enhanced CD data content.

Now, you might think the Curmudgeon is splitting hairs here. Who cares if you call it (A) an out-of-spec disc that's not a real CD, or (B) an Enhanced CD with a screwy data track?

It seems to me that there's a huge difference. It might seem like Sony is shooting itself in the foot by omitting the official "CD Digital Audio" badge from its copy protected discs. But to my eyes it's the opposite: Sony is weaseling out of the truth, which is that its discs are in fact Blue Book-compliant CDs that are not out-of-spec but rather are defective, and have intentionally been made defective, using the Blue Book format as a trojan horse to disable the user's hardware when that hardware is a computer.

Insofar as these discs damage or disable computers, they operate like computer viruses, except that instead of working on the software side, they attack via hardware and firmware. Their method of copyright protection is less like MacroVision and CSS (the copy protection mechanisms used on VHS and DVD), and more like the "zapping" techniques used by cable companies to disable cable boxes in homes where cable service or premium channels are being received illegally. In those cases, however, there's a way of distinguishing between legal and illegal activity. Legal cable setups don't get their boxes zapped. With Key2Audio, the technology behaves as though inserting a CD in your computer makes you a criminal.

Now, if a court were to agree with my argument that Key2Audio discs are in fact really CDs, then Sony (and Key2Audio) could be liable to lawsuits from computer users who lost time, money and perhaps data as a result of damage done to their computers by these discs. Conceivably, Sony could also be liable to suits brought by computer manufacturers for sabotaging their machines or interfering with their business practices. By saying these discs aren't CDs, Sony hopes to extricate itself from such liability. One can only hope that Sony gets its ass handed to it by the European Union courts--which are routinely more consumer-friendly than their U.S. cousins--before this situation gets out of hand.

This brings us to the second part of this question: Should Apple support these discs even if they're not really CDs? To which the Curmudgeon replies: Heck No! Key2Audio discs do not represent a new technology or a new CD spec. They are a malicious corruption of an existing spec. Without manual intervention by the user on a disc-by-disc basis, it's impossible to design drive firmware or CD driver software that can differentiate between an Enhanced CD and a Key2Audio CD.

That said, it would be nice if drives used in Macs had their firmware updated so that insertion of a Key2Audio disc would generate a normal "This disc is unreadable" message from the OS, allowing for a smooth and uneventful eject procedure.

Even better would be a user-selectable option to "ignore data volumes on multisession CDs" via a CD Preference Pane (OS X) or Control Panel (OS 9). You could select that option and use Key2Audio discs to your heart's content. If you needed to use an Enhanced CD, you could uncheck the option. It would be a bit of a kludge, but that's the best that can be done given the insidious nature of the Key2Audio technology.

QUESTION #5: What about Fair Use?

The much-ballyhooed concept of "fair use" is much more complicated than it seems, and much too complicated to cover fully here. Its value in helping us fight the good fight against Sony is significant but limited.

It is of course true that it's not a violation of fair use to rip a CD and load its songs onto your hard drive or mp3 player, or onto a mix CD-R. The essence of the famous, then obscure, now famous again "Betamax" case (in which Sony was the defendant, ironically, and which was decided by the Supreme Court exactly one week before the release of the first Macintosh) is that it is permissible for you to record or copy copyrighted material so long as it does not deprive the copyright holder of revenue it could obtain if your copy did not exist. So in that sense we all do have a legal "right" to rip CDs.

At the same time, fair use does not obligate Sony to make its music CDs technologically compatible with your Mac, particularly if Sony gets away with claiming that these things aren't really CDs. Technological compatibility is a matter for the market, not the courts: if enough people refuse to buy such discs, Sony will stop making them. If folks buy them, then they'll keep on making them.

The tragedy here is that the market doesn't work like a democracy. Consumers will never have the ability to choose between copy protected and non-copy protected versions of the same CD. You won't see Virgin Records marketing their non-copy protected version of the Celine Dion CD against Sony's copy protected version. It's that old problem of copyright.

So if we leave the fantasy world of economics textbooks and travel to the real world, in which demand is not merely met but created, shaped and channeled, we see that relatively few people--especially children and teens--want or "demand" a non-copy protected CD. What they desire is the music that happens to be on the CD (or the persona, or fame, or body, of the person who makes the music). So the kid hears Britney on the radio or sees her in a video on MTV, or sees her in that Pepsi commercial on broadcast TV, and then goes to the store to buy the music. Upon arrival, our young consumer is presented with a CD. The fact that it costs $18.99 even though it cost Sony about 99 cents to manufacture isn't really relevant. The fact that it's copy protected probably isn't relevant either. The $19 copy protected CD is the product, end of story. There's no other legal way to get the music. Thus, there's no way to gauge the consumer's preference for copy protection, because the consumer isn't choosing or rejecting a content-delivery medium; rather, the consumer is choosing (or rejecting) the music.

So fair use gets lost in the muddle of the market. But we can try to find it again if we take a gander at the reason Key2Audio exists in the first place: online music swapping.

The record industry says that CD ripping and music piracy go hand-in-hand; hence the need for digital copy protection. Yet a moment of reflection yields the following observations:

(A) Most noncommercial piracy these days (i.e. mp3 sharing) does indeed involve ripping CDs onto computers.

(B) At the same time, most ripping does not lead to piracy.

(C) Virtually no commercial, for-profit piracy involves ripping CDs onto someone's computer and distributing them via file sharing. Instead, it is likely that commercial, high-volume piracy involves mass copying of audio CDs via standalone CD duplicators that can copy any kind of copy protected disc as easily as they copy Playstation CDs (which use a similar copy protection mechanism). To stop this sort of pirating, the record companies will have to continue to rely on the same law enforcement agencies and tactics as clothing manufacturers and electronics manufacturers do in their efforts to shut down counterfeit designer jeans plants and "Sorny" or "Sonee" Walkman manufacturing operations.

(D) No more than one successful rip of a song from a CD is necessary in order for it to be disseminated all across the internet. In order to accomplish such a successful rip, a person can spend less than $300 for a standalone CD duplicator or less than $3 for a Sharpie felt-tip marker.

These observations all point to one undeniable conclusion: digital copy protection schemes like Key2Audio will not stop illegal music copying. So not only will Key2Audio infringe on fair use, but that's all it will do.

The "casual" illegal copyer, who rips a CD, makes a mix CD for his or her car, puts another copy on an mp3 player, and gives three CD-R copies of the original CD to three friends, may in fact be prevented by Key2Audio technology from using his original CD to engage in this mixture of legal and illegal uses. But as long as someone, somewhere, has managed to rip the CD, this person will still be able to download the album and make that mix CD, copy that file onto an mp3 player, and make those CD-R dubs for friends. The source material, being in mp3 format, will be of slightly inferior quality, but it will hardly be noticeable, let alone objectionable, to most people listening with most audio equipment.

With all this in mind, a new picture emerges. We no longer see a push-pull between fair use and copyright, or between consumer desire and intellectual property. Instead, we see piracy continuing more or less undisturbed, with fair use being seriously disrupted.

It would be paranoid and silly to think that Sony and other record companies would want to destroy fair use just for the heck of it. There has to be a method to their madness, yes?

Let's return to the Betamax case. There was an equally important, but lesser known, second prong to that case. As detailed on this helpful web page, Sony was sued by two movie studios, not two television networks. One of the studios' major complaints was that Sony's Betamax allowed for the creation of a video rental market, which allowed video stores to buy one copy of a movie on tape and rent it out hundreds, even thousands, of times until the tape wore out, without ever paying an additional dime to the movie studios. The Supreme Court ruled that this kind of video rental business was covered under fair use by what's known as First Sale Doctrine, which in essense means that when you buy something you can do whatever you want with it (as long as it's the original, not a copy). That's right--it's legal for you to rent your music CDs to your friends for fun and profit, as long as you're not renting them CD-R copies or keeping a copy for yourself while you rent the original. First Sale Doctrine, it turns out, is what propelled the Betamax case to the Supreme Court: it was the part of the original District Court Decision that was overturned at the Appelate level, enabling Supreme Court review of the entire case. First Sale Doctrine, by the way, is also why you can "license" as much software as your bank account will allow, but you cannot actually buy any.

It is First Sale Doctrine, rather than the more well-known "personal copy" rule, that is ultimately under attack by the record industry. For what reason could there be to prevent you from ripping your own CDs, except to offer you the "opportunity" to purchase multiple versions of the same music so you can listen to that music in ways that currently are defined as fair use: a CD for your stereo; an mp3 for your hard drive, and a "secure digital" copy for your record-industry approved portable digital music player? With a CD priced at $19, an mp3 at $5 (which would include a royalty to counteract the inevitable hard drive-to-hard drive copying), and a secure digital version priced at $2.50, that'd be $26.50 for one music album. No doubt you'd be able to buy all three togeter in a package deal for "only" $25. Or maybe you could license all three formats for the low, low price of $9.95 a year, for the rest...of...your...life--remember DivX DVDs?

Key2Audio is the first step in a dreadful double perversion of Fair Use. The first perversion is the idea that by making a copy of music for yourself, you are depriving the copyright holder of the ability to obtain revenue from selling you additional copies of the same music. The second, linked, perversion is that by destroying your ability to exercise fair use, the record company extends its copyright power beyond the content (the music) to the delivery medium (the CD).

There's no doubt this will all be fought out in the courts. And a recent New York Times article indicates that tech companies might finally be waking up to the threat posed by Hollywood and the RIAA.

But more than that, this requires grassroots action by all of us. As I wrote at the beginning of this column, Key2Audio isn't the worst threat we face by a long shot. But it's ominous as one more little indication of the broad threat to notions of freedom and privacy that are crucial to the quality of life in our country as we know it.

For more information, or to get involved, try The Campaign for Digital Rights at http://uk.eurorights.org/, the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org/, or the ACLU at http://www.aclu.org/.

We have nothing to lose but most of our rights.

At least MiniDisc's are rewritable and if their MD-Data drives didn't cost so much it may have taken over from the humble floppy back when it was released (well before CDRW, or Zip), however in today's market something that is even more limited than MD simply doesn't stand a chance.

DataPlay is essentially a small CDR then, but you can already buy small 8cm CDR's for under $1, burn your own MP3's onto them (i.e. pick your own bitrate and selection) and play them on things like the eXpanium, all less money, more control and higher quality than DataPlay.

Record companies should concentrate on delivering good music (that's why record sales are 5% up in the UK) on CD and then leave it upto the consumer whether they want to transfer it to a handheld player, car etc, on whatever format they desire.

What ever happened to all the engineers in terms of quality, everything released is "near CD Quality" why not go further? It's ridiculous today's technology has to claim to be "near" a technology that was released 20 years ago, if only SACD takes of, even then your fair-use rights have been taken away from your, DVD-Audio offers multichannel capability but they use AC3 compression :/

SACD stands for Super Audio CD. Here's some info on it. The basic differences are it uses a much higher sampling rate than regular CDs and can include 5.1 channel audio.

There's also the Philips eXpanium. It's nice, but not great -- poor battery life (three hours on one AA) and a poor interface are my main gripes.

I2S information closed? I see I2S specifications on Philips's site. Is that outdated?

such as these models that Philips offers. Sony is really targeting a very specific group of people here.

"Something can be an invention without being patentable"

No, this is the same bug again.

I think we're going to have to agree on which dictionary we will use. The EPC makes "being an invention" one of the requirements for patentability, but not the only one. The light bulb, as originally invented by Edison, is an invention, but it is known and so cannot be patented today (although it was in the 1880s).

Inventions are patentable, and there are no inventions that are unpatentable.

So, you would say that the lightbulb isn't an invention, but rather that it was an invention, I suppose. Ok, I can understand that (it's the common use of the word), but please keep in mind that when dealing with patent law, it works best if you use the legal terms and legal meanings rather than the common, layman terms.

Nevertheless, for the present discussion it does not matter, and the EPC does not consider computer programs as such to be inventions - in both senses of the word. :-)

You _know_ programming is about logical problem solution because you can program. Lawyers can't, and they think everyting about computing is technical.

True. That's why I was surprised when the EPO Board of Appeals (which btw includes several technically qualified people) came up with the "further technical effect", and made the distinction with "normal technical effects" that all computer programs exhibit. So it is not enough to say "This is a computer program", you have to demonstrate what this particular program does and why that particular effect is technical. I've given some examples in the context of business methods on my site.

You know Thomson? Do you know they have a patent on BladeEnc? Do you know how they got it? Answer: IP-technology.

I thought the MP3 encoding patents were held by Fraunhofer, but I could be wrong. My own area of expertise is digital rights management, not signal coding. And I don't think I want to comment in public on patents held by direct competitors of my company.

I suggest you take a look into EPO practice before you go to far in looking for consistency and logics in EPO legal doctrine. As a matter of fact, I'd be surprised if you found them since those are not usually the main objectives of powerful institutions.

Well, you will have noticed by now that I work at the patent department of one of the largest electronics firms in Europe. So I am quite familiar with the state of the case law regarding software and business methods at the EPC. While I agree that the case law leaves much to be desired, I do believe that by now they have worked out a sensible compromise: a computer program is patentable if it qualifies as an invention, just like any other device, method or apparatus. Basically, it doesn't matter that the invention is embodied in software. If it were embodied in hardware, would the resulting effects then be technical? If so, it is patentable (assuming novelty and nonobviousness).

"So they simply moved it into the heading of the article corresponding to 52(2)."

No - the other way around. I think England insisted on inserting 52.3 while other member countries were happy with their wording, but I could be wrong

I'm going to have to take your word for the translations of the EPC into Danish and Swedish. It would be interesting to see how these countries defend being in compliance with the EPC whilst ignoring this provision.

(can I get an url for "Beresford, p. 19" to erik@sslug.dk ?). From comparison I think it is evident that 52.3 was inserted.

"Beresford" refers to the book Patenting software under the EPC by Keith Beresford (ISBN: 0-752-006339). Oh, I see FFII has a review.

According to Beresford, they didn't even have an exclusion for software at all at first. It appeared first in 1971 as a point under discussion in the list of items like "mere discoveries" and "purely aesthetic creations". These "merely" and "purely" qualifications were finally moved to 52(3) when the EPC was adopted.

Finally (and here I rearrange your wording), the EPC, according to the latest case law, excludes only computer programs as such if they are not claimed as what they are. That is, if it does nothing more than any other computer program would (display things, produce electrical currents, etc), it is claimed to have a "further technical effect". I guess you know that there are IP-tech instruction manuals for this:

Yes. In fact, I've sat through several conferences that purport to teach you how to draft claims to get protection for software as such. It is not quite as simple as this article makes it appear. You can't just say "It's process control software and so it is an invention".

Also you better make sure you are not infringing on the great "inventions" EP0895689, EP0747840 and EP0522591 on your homepage.

I am running my website as a private individual and so, by law, cannot infringe on any patents. Further, EP0895689 is not a patent. It's just a published applications, and those have no legal force.

Weither EPC should be drafted in another way or not we have to discuss another day. I think the important part is: Could you consider defending the intellectual property of european software creators instead of inviting an american lawbenders army?

I am defening the IP of a European software creator, although the software my employer makes is for a large part embedded in hardware. Our innovations were traditionally realized in hardware, and as such clearly patentable. Now that the industry trend is to move to more and more functionality in software, and we still desire to same level of protection for our innovations, you'll understand where I'm coming from. It is simply not fair that an innovation could be copied or imitated merely because it could be realized in software. So a balance has to be struck between "all software is patentable" and "all software-related patents should be abolished."

As a final note, I am not speaking on behalf of my employer, in case that wasn't clear already. :-)

Yes, the monitor communicates with the PC via IEEE 802.11b at 11 Mbits/s. This isn't really adequate for anything that refreshes the screen a lot, especially since I doubt the communications protocol between the monitor and the PC is as high-level as the communication between an X client and an X server.

The philips page here gives more details. I don't know why the Slashdot article links to the Philips home page instead of the Philips page that discusses the monitor.

It's not only Mozilla. I tried their site in Internet Explorer 6 and their menu is still oddly out of place.

Yes, that is correct.

And that's where SACD comes into play, eh? (For those not aware, SACD uses a 4.7 GB disc -- but for standard-length albums -- yielding much higher audio quality than ordinary CDs)

More clearly: Cactus cannot call these Compact Disks because the trademark owner, Philips says they are not.

I suggest another name, maybe "Cruel Deceivers". More stories:

Philips moves to put 'poison' label on protected audio CDs

FEATURE-CD creator Philips blasts labels over protected discs

From the second link in the orginal article:


There is a similar tracking requirement imposed on CD recorders (by
the patent licenses issued by Philips). It requires that each CD
burner record on the CD the serial number of the recorder, so that
every burned CD-R can be traced back to which individual CD-burner
recorded it.

These schemes are described here:

http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/sid/

Yes, indeed, it is the same Philips.

Philips Intellectual Property and Standards, including CD digital audio and the Red Book.

Philips Semiconductors, the ones who are in a tizzy about wireless "broadcasts" within a home.

Yes, indeed, it is the same Philips.

Philips Intellectual Property and Standards, including CD digital audio and the Red Book.

Philips Semiconductors, the ones who are in a tizzy about wireless "broadcasts" within a home.

Yes, indeed, it is the same Philips.

Philips Intellectual Property and Standards, including CD digital audio and the Red Book.

Philips Semiconductors, the ones who are in a tizzy about wireless "broadcasts" within a home.

For those people who don't know, Philips has the marketing phrase "Let's make things better".

It's Philips, folks, with one "l", please. This is not a screwdriver or a petroleum company or an auction house, but a consumer electronics company née bulb factory headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Thank you.

Everyone get out there and buy a Philips product of some sort, doesn't matter what, it's just important you tell Philips what you did and why. Showing a tangible result will only encourage them in the future.

It's little known, but Philips makes sound cards too. The best one they have is the Philips Acoustic Edge, which is better than that Audigy shit.

http://www.pcsound.philips.com/flash_intro.html

Note: This appears not to work in Mozilla 0.9.7. :-(

Tell Philips you appreciate their stance on fair use (even though, yes, I realize they have their own motivations):

www2.consumer.philips.com/global/b2c/common/custom ercare/contact.jhtml

Going to pricewatch and purchasing Philips equipment is great, but let them know your doing so and why.

It's *Philips* NOT Phillips, the poster got it right, but almost without exception everyone else is using the superfluous 'l' in the name...

I know it's anal, but there's a big difference between Philips and Phillips... or Phillips for that matter...

Perhaps it would be wise for the crowd to contact Phillips and let them know how we feel about their stance.

Perhaps a suggestion that we would support (read buy/recommend) their products should they decide to fight this battle and refuse to incorporate silly copy protection schemes in their hardware seems to be in order.

If you do decide to contact them, be sure to be brief and to the point. Also it would probably be wise to only send to one or two people as I'm sure these people have business to attend to outside of reading 5000 emails that show up from the Slashdot faithful.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

According to the logo license agreement issued by Philips

Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA)
This logo may only be used on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (also known as the RED Book).

If any Record company issues 'copy-protected' discs that violate the spec, they should not use this logo on the packagaing.

When I was involved with pressing CDs, including this logo on the artwork was mandatory. If Philips is smart, they will enforce this clause to preserve their brand as the gold standard in audio quality.

I guess it's more and more like kernel hacking, in that you have to get into minute detail for minor changes.

Check out Neuspeed for what's involved with supercharging modern Volkswagens and Audi's. Since these cars are computer controlled, adding a supercharger involves reworking the ECM. This is not a simple chip swap anymore!

For more fun, check out the Philips Automotive Lighting Forum for people hacking their headlights to use Xenon High Intensity Discharge (HID) light systems. People in this group hack all sorts of ways around Benz and BMW computers that throw hissy fits when they think that a light bulb has burned out.

-- Len

You can have windowless cars that are completely safe because the inside can be plastered with Closed Circuit pictures of what's outside. Heck, imagine walking to your door and being able to look at whose standing there, without them being able to look in, because your door has a sheet of this paper on it.

Of course, take it a step further. You can folder this paper, imagine now that you mold it to someone's face, where it as a mask, and used a computer controlled face to impersonate someone.

There some picture from the developers here

Basically my understanding of this question is:
"Can Linux act as a USB slave, and provide a slave or 'target' implementation of the USB Mass Storage Class?"

In other words, can I build a fancy MP3 box with lots of storage that appears to be a USB hard drive to the host PC, but is really a Linux machine pretending to be "just" a USB hard disk?

USB slave drivers and an Open Source implementation of the slave side of the USB Mass Storage Class would be cool.

Philips also has the Expanium which can read ISO/Joliet/UDF discs and play MP3 and AAC. Using UDF (DirectCD) you can drag and drop files onto the CD and not have to burn an entire CD at once without closing the session and such.

here is a line-up of the products including the new tiny 8cm player which plays 8cm discs which you can create in any CDR/CDRW drive.

some have remote controls and come with car adapters and such and some have text displays and others just numbers. it's a full line-up of decent CD Players and the best part is that AAC is supported for much higher quality smaller file size files.

This device is NOT a 'dream inducer' nor is it a machine to control what you actually dream about. This is a projection machine onto the wall, that doubles as an alarm clock. It makes sleep more enjoyable by creating pleasing images on the wall, which may cause dreaming.

Crackpot Theory #1: If the machine senses my movements, then doesn't it have a camera? Can't people spy on me?
It does not have a camera, it senses movement based on pads on the bed. How could it tell what's going on underneath sheets anyway?
How Nebula Works (Quicktime video)

Crackpot Theory #2: If the machine is connected to the Internet, can't people hack my dreams?
The Nebula device gets content from the Internet, yes. However, the machine's output is controlled by the "pebbles" you insert, not by the Internet. Therefore it is impossible for hackers to control your dreams, as the device is not connected to the Internet as you sleep.

Crackpot Theory #3: What about subliminal advertising?
Nebula doesn't actually control or induce dreams. Once again, it just displays pictures on the walls (and lets you have a little fun if there's someone in there with you.) Everyone interprets experiences, sights, and sounds in different ways during sleep, which means that the only way for subliminal advertising to work is if an image is displayed that is a) indiscernable enough to not be picked up at the conscious level and b) discernable enough to be unwaveringly interpreted in the same fashion at the subconscious level. This is both impractical and all but impossible. There are much easier ways of advertising to us, even at a subliminal level.

I'm not saying this is a bad device though - it sounds like it's seriously cool. I can't wait till it comes out, I'm going to be first in line to get one.

-Chardish

A rough video of this can be found here

This all sounds a little strange so off I trotted to philips to chuck Nebula in there search engine (to no avail) then on the front page was there new other form of time saving life changing device... a fridge that scans barcodes as you put stuff in it. One massive pic of a barcode sat deed centre of the homepage. Do I remember this from a cretin TV programme on FOX, Dark Angel perhaps?

Be afraid....

No joke, actually. I first saw that in T3 Magazine, June 2001 issue (pg. 34). The pictures were rather cool. But to be honest, the first thing that came to mind when I read the article was the thing's potential to be hacked.

For more details on this and some other cool/weird concepts by Philips, check out their site at http://www.design.philips.com/smartconnections/

--SC

You can see what this thing looks like and get some more details here on Philip' site.

... And check out these amazing introductory offers, available for a limited time only through [jingle] SleepNET! *buy*... *spend*... *shop*...

Personally, I think i'll pass and opt for a regular projection system, pc, and virtual i/o device like one of these or these . I wonder if they're waterproof...

BTW: Information on the phillips website and a picture of the system can be found here: http://www.news.philips.com/mondial/archive/2001/m ay/artikel4_2.html

Not reading every post isn't THAT bad.
But posting a correctly formed URL so it works is more important.

The correct link is HERE

A picture can be found here. Pass the bong...

As for it being an April Fool's Joke...

newVALUEnews #8 (PDF)

...pretty pictures and all.

Philips Pronto. A programable touch screen remote.

Steve M

Yes. It says so here in the third question from the bottom:
http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/mtr/d ocuments102.html

OK, Mount Rainier is a hardware command specification, not a file format. Mt. Rainier is geared towards the UDF file format, but other file formats could be used. The key point was, that Mt. Rainier would allow the OS to see a MR CD-RW as a block-addressable (rather than a packet-addressable) device. An OS can just write a file system onto a MR CD-RW on the dics without having to worry about packet sizes or bad-block mapping.

The big point here really is: This would have created a lucrative business for Mount Rainier licensees in selling preformatted MR media

So in any case, any OS could have operated on MT CD-RW (as far as I understood that), but it was the formatting that was blocked.

Hope that helps,

Alex

Here's Intervideo's WinDVD compatibility list (shows a lot of cards support 5.1 and S/PDIF). I would assume that other cards would work fine with WinDVD if they support it, but I skipped over all the ones in the list that don't have those checked.

Here's Neoseeker's audio card reviews. Links to other review sites as well. PC AV Tech seems good as well.

And the list of ones I'm still looking at:

• Midiman's Delta Series. These are professional cards, but the bottom ones might be affordable (the Audiophile 2496 in particular). Good Linux support. I'm considering going all the way and getting the Delta 66 (quite expensive...one place has it at $350) to be sure I have something that works. The audio quality would be much, much better than I need for sure. One thing I'll certainly check out more before spending all that money: I don't know if the Windows drivers support consumer game APIs like EAX and such. None of the professional cards mention this and I'm not sure if it's a "of course, even the consumer cards do that, why bother to mention it" or a "these are for recording, not games" sort of deal.
• Philips Acoustic Edge 705 and 706. These looked pretty good in a review site. I haven't checked Linux support.
• Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. One review site said they had crappy drivers as well (stability problems under 95/98), so I'm not too likely to get this one. It was an old review, though. I hadn't realized Turtle Beach was in danger of going out of business.
• Hercules Game Theater XP. This wasn't on my list before; thanks for the tip.

And they cost about 1/3 of the iPod price.

There's the Philips eXpanium 401 here, the Compaq PM-1, just announced or the Q-Sonic which is being sold for about $125 by Pearl in Germany.