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Microsoft Ties DRM Technology To Windows
Andy Tai writes: "This InteractiveWeek article describes how Microsoft, without much public attetion, has built multimedia content protection technology into Windows, thus encouraging the movie and music industries to adapt the Windows Media formats for their content. Microsoft's offering is not very different from other DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies, but MS has the advangage of being able to place it in the OS, which gives it credibility in the eyes of content providers. 'What's novel is that it's built directly into (Windows Media) that is quickly gaining ground on its own, and that the two (DRM and media) technologies are inextricably linked. The technologies, in turn, are being set deeply into the Windows operating system. Other technologies being built into Windows further boost content-protection features, such as the so-called Secure Audio Path, which scrambles output from a computer sound card so that music streams can't be tapped and copied at that point.'"
the correct link
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I only partially agree, the beauty of WMP is that it accept both secure (content provider friendly) data, and open data (cosnumer friendly).
When the client sees this, s/he won't think, "Oh, Microsoft is evil!" they would think that the one who sold them the media (file, cd,dvd, whatever) is evil.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I support artists by buying CD's. Quite literally NONE of the music in my collection's come from any source OTHER than my own private CD collection or tape collection (in cases where no CD-version's available).
I want to be able to move the music that I paid for wherever I want. If that means off my desktop system to a laptop, so be it. If that means off to a CD/DVD for a "compilation album", I have that right.
Or am I supposed to pay the artist for each and every instance in where I listen to their music?
Nobody gives a flying fsck about them limiting piracy. But their methods also take away rights given to us to utilize this media for personal use in any way we see fit. They're treating the symptoms, and not the problem.
THAT is what we're griping about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Huh? They didn't get more market-share then Netscape until they had a better product than Netscape.
What happens when technology advances to a point where high-end music making equipment is dirt-cheap? It's already getting close to that now. You can go out and buy a 24-bit/96KHz digital audio card for your computer for practically nothing. Sure it has cheap ADCs, but that will change.
Someday, it's going to be so easy and inexpensive to make high-quality recordings that everybody will be doing it. Obviously talent is still required on the part of the musicians and recording engineers, but the high availability of the equipment will make more of those people come out of the woodwork.
It won't take long for new musicians to start recording and distributing their own stuff. No more record companies. It'll be direct from musician to listener. In a scenario such as this I can see many musicians not favoring encryption of their work. They're going to want as many people as possible to hear their stuff. Especially new bands just getting started.
Our society has advanced to the point where many things are highly available and easy to obtain. As technology keeps on advancing, it's only going to get easier. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the ideals of capitalism, which thrives on scarcity. That's why we're seeing so much activity in the area of encryption. Money is made by controlling who can use your product.
Maybe it's utopian to think that someday money won't exist. In order for that to happen though, people will have to stop chasing after the almighty dollar and find something else to strive for. I think humanity has the potential to achieve that, if we would only get off our asses and do it.
Well, that's just not true for me anymore My Windows 2000 randomly freezes these days, right after I changed my motherboard and processor. Yup, I have reinstalled Windows 2000.
RH7 Linux and Win98 works very well though.*shrugs*
* They screwed up Netscape, which in the past had 70% market share
Sorry, but they didn't screwed up Netscape.
Netscape did it to itself all by its own.
It started with total ignorance of standards, went on to *two* years (what is that in internet years?) with no meaningful update. It was buggy as hell, heavy, and unfriendly.
MS had a superior product since 4 versions.
That Netscape did nothing to improve their browser while MS worked on making IE the best browser they could produce, is Netscape's fault.
If they hadn't abused their users for so long, this wouldn't have happened.
I remember using NS 3.?? and I loved it, the only times I would've used IE 3 was to get the superior View Source (open in editable notepad window, instead of the ugly netscape one) feature.
But since versions 4? IE got better, Netscape didn't.
It also doesn't help that NS (especially 6)devour memory like there is no tomorrow, minimum requirement for Netscape 6 is two to four times those of IE 5.5.
And it gets worse if you open several windows at the same time, I've opened three NS6 windows and watched as it ate 65MB. I currently have 5 IE windows open, and IE takes 9MB (peaked at 20MB)
I sometimes has up to 20 - 25 windows open, I don't feel like buying Gigabytes of RAM just to accomedate NS.
When I'm on a *nix, it's lynx or konquerer (usually lynx), Netscape doesn't come *near* my servers.
Isthere lynx for windows?
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
What makes you say that?
Consumers have accepted encrypted and regional encoded DVD players. As most consumers use Windows, this probably makes perfect sense because it will encourage Windows to be used in home computers and internet appliances.
"A very good reason" to switch is ideological... Some of us just want to see Microsoft extreme Capitalism die.. then again I'm Canadian :)
Have you really tried Mandrake? That's what I'm using and along with StarOffice I can't really see any reason why someone wouldn't feel comfortable.. OK, Abiword is even better looking, but can't import MS files as well..
My sister-in-law, 15 yrs.old, looked at the screen after Kde started and proclaimed "that looks better than Windows.. cool!"
Peace, Dan
> A quick glance at the latter's diagrams shows that, if nowhere else, they are clearly vulnerable to hardware based attack, but of course, the whole scheme, as has already been pointed out in this forum, is also vulnerable to a $15 tape recorder.
Surely you're not suggesting that Microsoft would push a product with a security hole the size of... of... of the one at goatse?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Rephraise that to say "as long as it plays reliably and easily under ideal circumstances".
Because once one thing in that huge mess of a content-control chain breaks in the slightest way, then you have no way to listen to that music and no way to fix it.
This will probly lead to yet more forced hardware/software upgrades.
How many >1-year-old soundcards are they going to bother to write/verify drivers for?
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
You shouldn't make fun of the WIPO Troll like that. Last person that tried to make fun of him like that ended up like this guy.
-- CmdrTaco
Of course Microsoft is putting stuff in their operating systems to make them more attractive to content providers. Stop complaining about it - if some Linux people had gotten together and actually made a Linux alternative, they might have had a chance of setting a standard. However, it's probably a bit late now.
Seriously. ZDNet is little more than an rubber stamp on MS products and practices. They portray everything in such a sunny, and cheerful light. All the while forgetting to mention that their largest revenue stream comes from...TADA! Microsoft Corp.
Even before I moved into using Linux full-time, I avoided ZDNet like the plague. FUD. Uselessly shallow reviews. FUD. Fluffy articles. FUD. Idiotic commentaries. Oh yes. And did I mention the FUD?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You're a poast wh0re and you're gonna get bitchslapped back into the Dark Ages. Now get down on your knees and kiss my boots or I'll take Slashdot away from you forever!!!
-- CmdrTaco
Well, it's been stricken from the Earth now. How dare some troll post that ugly ugly thing on my baby, Slashdot!? I'll smite him next... Evil troll...
-- CmdrTaco
Remember when all the parts in a computer were about Computing?
Seems that the "Evil© Media(TM) Companies®" want computers to be about protecting them from something I haven't even done to them.
What are the chances that we'll see price increases in computer parts because of this? :(
Well, judging by how I hear people at my school (even teachers!) casually talking about 'modding' their Playstations and other hardware hacks like that. I have no doubt that if it were a simple modification to one element of hardware in a soundcard or whatnot, people would do it without flinching.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
A company could make a fortune for digital speakers that had a headphone jack... :)
In fact, *my* digital speakers have a headphone jack!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
That guy must not know what he is doing.
Two months ago, we moved our desktops from Win98SE to Win2k. Some of them have been running for the entire two months. My workstation has been rock solid, and I have 15 to 20 apps open constantly (Outlook, Excel, our ERP system client, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, MSSQL Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, VB, Interdev, Seti, IIS Web/FTP server, SQL DB Server, MS Terminal Server client, and a few others are basically open 24x7). Not once has a workstation locked up or become bogged down and needed rebooting. Oh, and they got rid of that need to reboot every time you touch something.
We have several Win2k servers now, and they are solid as a rock. We've got a Win2k terminal server that has been up since day 1 accepting about 40-50 client sessions a day running client software for our ERP system.
Hey, I like Linux and use it at home. I'd like to use it at work. I don't like Win9x or NT4 because they are not very stable. However, there is not much argument that Win2k is unstable.
>Once it's on my computer, it's mine too.
A lot of people doesn't agree with you.
ISVs, artists, RIAA, the courts, and the like.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Now you certainly aren't going to be watching Windows Media under linux...
Actually, the Windows Media Format is properly known as ASF - Advanced/Active Streaming Format. Microsoft claims the codec is open and documented - which is true, in an MS like way...i.e, without a licensing agreement and NDA, the only publicly avaliable documents descrive ASF version 2. This would bea good thing if 100% of the content found on the Internet wasn't in ASF 1 format, which is is.
Luckily some smart folk have reverse engineered and documented the ASF 1 format and are using it to make the avifile project (which currently plays DivXs and ASF using thin layer of Wine to implement the Win32 avifile API) actually implement its codecs natively.
This is a good thing. So help them out.
And don't make a player. We have enough. Port more codecs and fix the existing players.
> system as easy-to-use as Napster, which makes
> payment so easy it's automatic; and if this
Payment so easy it's automatic? A lot of words ran through my mind when I read the word "automatic" and easy wasn't one of them...
Why does this absolutely not surprise me? All that it's going to do is stop lamers from copying/pirating stuff. Anybody who really wants to dupe stuff is going to find A Way(tm). All they're doing is pushing Windows Media format which in turn just proves how monopolistic they are.
Now you certainly aren't going to be watching Windows Media under linux...
MicroSoft makes me mad sometimes...
-Andy
At this point, the decrypted music is available to applications and plug-ins that can intercept the music, leaving it susceptible to hacking.
Hacking music? Isn't that like dancing about architecture?
Amazing how certain misused-in-the-first-place terminology gets around... wonder what they'll think of next...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Take a minute and look at how consumers have soundly thrashed other lame single-provider "solutions" such as DivX. If the consumers have demonstrated anything over the past few years, it is that they will not allow themselves to be blackmailed into these kinds of situations. If Microsoft attempts to succeed where Circuit City has failed, then let them try. Their inevitable failure will only be more humorous.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If you make your own music, video, etc, will this prevent you from giving it away free? If so, can you then sue MS and company for anything? Prehaps civil rights violation sucah as restricitng free speech?
I don't know why they're even bothering trying this... the only way to secure streaming media from being copied is to use 100% proprietary hardware, right down to the speakers. As it is now anyone can hook up the audio out of their sound card to the audio in of another computer and record to their heart's content.
I'm not advocating proprietary hardware, of course, but MS trying to make it secure at the OS level won't change anything; it's like if you put bars on the window of your house if it doesn't have a functional front door lock.
# debian/rules
anything that's coming out of the sound card itself is not going to be scrambled if you want anyone to be able to hear it through speakers.
My guess is a Macrovision type method - experiement until you find an inaudible signal that screws up recording. The format could sent lots of data beyond the range of human hearing. Would a large chunk of data beyond the extreme range (say 30khz?) of most mp3 encoders do? Badly written ones might choke.
Yes, that solution isn't perfect. Make another encoder. But copy protection isn't about making it impossible. its about making it difficult enough.
Or just start seeling consumers, new cooler `Windows Media Enabled!' speakers which only decrypt on the way to the speaker cones. Add some real features in there so people will but them.
Hey!!! I'm gonna cry now.. you've hurt my feelings...
-- CmdrTaco
Thank god for Microsoft! I am looking forward to the day when Microsoft can place safeguards in their products that prevents the user from composing ideas that do not match the status quo.
Only in a competitive market. The music market certainly isn't a competitive market and so the price will probably go up instead. Looks at CD's, much cheaper to produce and sell then LP's, but they cost more. Ditto with DVD's vs video tapes. If they can encode all their stuff, they'll start charging per song, with higher profit margins per album.
come on have a sense of humor, besides you know how the japanese love thier scat.
A blog about stuff.
"Secure Audio Path, which scrambles output from a computer sound card so that music streams can't be tapped and copied at that point."
o ved-media-format based music onto a TDK D cassette tape and there isn't a damned thing anyone can do about it. Want better quality sound? Use a metal formula tape and it'll be near-digital.
I think this must be some kind of misunderstanding. I can see how the internal software level stream might be scrambled, but anything that's coming out of the sound card itself is not going to be scrambled if you want anyone to be able to hear it through speakers.
Got tape deck? Then you too can record your favorite super-duper-crackproof-secure-hollywood-RIAA-appr
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Ermm.. hardware based attacks are wiretaps to the speakers. Nothing can stop that.
Mmmm.. Donuts
It will be only a matter of time and technology until they encrypt the sound waves and require decoding chips implanted in our brains.
> Compare the stability of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems and there you have it - death to Windows
t .a sp
/. ???
Please don't put 9x & NT line on the same sentence.
> All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death".
Not this one, exactly one BSOD in nearly 8 months of nearly constant use.
And that was when I because a bad driver (IRQL_IS_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO)
> Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server.
I followed some old Talk Back messages on ZDNet, and got several 404 Messages, refreshing (sometimes I'd to do three or four refreshing) fixed it.
Does this mean that Solaris isn't capable of handling the load?
It seems that you are unfamiliar with Win2K.
Go here and give it a try:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/edk/defaul
And, for the record, why are you saying this at
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Okay - I can't just let some broad open-ended statements like these stand.
For the record, I'm not a musician myself but I have a lot of friends that are. I find it amusing that RMS says, "Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it. There is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way," as most of the professional musicians I know spend their nights & weekends doing music, but they program durring the day to pay the bills.
My 2 bits,
-"Zow"
Have you ever programmed a sound card?
Ultimately, there is a 16-bit hardware register which receives this 1/44000sec sample of sound level, which will soon be converted to a voltage, amplified, and fed to your speakers.
Have you ever designed a hardware peripheral? The CPU puts an address on a bus which announces to any piece of hardware in the machine that there is data on the data bus which might be of interest to it. The CPU does not know and does not care which or how many devices grab the output of a write, and if multiple devices respond to a read there is nothing it can do to stop the resulting data corruption when both devices try to assert an answer at the same time.
Unless, as another poster has suggested, the decrypter is built into the DAC, which would be a radical change of architecture requiring (at minimum) for everyone in the world to buy a new sound card, there is nothing at all the industry can do to stop you from adding a piggyback card to pick off the outgoing audio stream and make it available to some other totally unrelated piece of software for recording. This requires a board to be built, which is why it is called a hardware hack.
Picking off the sound at the driver is a software hack, and it is remotely possible that uSoft might prevent you from doing this for, oh, a few months until someone hacks the OS itself and provides a patch which prevents it from realizing that output is going to unsigned drivers. Unless uSoft decides to encrypt the whole damn operating system, there isn't much they can do to prevent this, either.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Actually, yes, it would.
MS is currently in an interesting position, when it no longer have any serious rivals in the desktop OS field.
But is facing *very* hard competition on the server OS field.
On the desktop side, they have to compete with *themselves*.
On the server side, they have to compete with Unix, VMS, Nonstop, Linux, BSD, etc...
They have to get better, or else they wouldn't sell OSs, wouldn't be able to extract monopoly power, and basically stop being MS and become Apple.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but MP3 sounds like crap.
WMA is only just tolerable crap, but it is most certainly better than MP3. A WMA encoded stream at 160kbps sounds about like a MP3 stream at 256kbps.
Even VBR MP3 doesn't help... the 160kbps WMA stream sounds better than MP3 VBR at 320kbps top encoding.
Hmm, this has answers one of my deep question why can't microsoft make a stable OS. Well, it is very simple they put every thing and the kitchen sink into the OS it self probably right in to unprotected parts of kernel and then when apps or movies come out that use. 1/2 of windows boxes will freeze because not to much REAL world testing was done because nothing in the REAL world existed at the time to test it. When MicroSoft writes a program or makes a movie to test it. They known exactly how to test it. So when Joe Blow skips over the SDK Manuals and some Source Code and even if he reads everything twice. He doesn't Build it just right or uses it in a new and creative way that makes a cool hack. When it works (1/2 of the time). The more you put into a program or anything for that matter the harder it is to see and test how it will work in the real world.
One reason I feel the Linux Kernel is so stable is that it has taken quite a while to develop and in that time has had a lot of real world testing by Idiots, Geniuses and those in-between. This is an other reason why Win 95/98/ME (not sure about NT and 2000) has so many bugs is that it was develop with little REAL world testing. Sorry to go off subject.
know that with scrabbling the sound out of the sound card is just going to get a little filter like those for Block Buster Movies. But it would be more useful to a monitor, so tempisting would not work. but of course someone will just filter it and you probably need to do it at the hardware level.
-- "FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
> I use Windows for the software that runs under it, not the OS itself.
Switch Windows for any other OS (except maybe 9x, in this case you use it in order to look at BSOD), and I would agree with you.
> So with Windows, you are stuck between stability and compatibility. Win2K is a nice try, but you still can't have both.
Well, the good news is that you wouldn't need to compromise much longer.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I think this shows why market share is important
for Linux. As long as microsoft owns the market
they can provide solutions like this - tieing the
consumer to their OS, because the media won't
be accessible on other systems. And the
entertainment industry will happily provide
MS-only content to their conditions.
On the other hand, maybe when the price of CDs drops, fewer people will rip off the labels.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Ermm.. hello?? Real world calling head-in-sand Slashdotter. Have you actually spoken with any people outside the ones who visit you in your basement? Microsoft makes BILLIONS of dollars by selling their operating system. Rather well for a complete failure, isn't it?
Mmmm.. Donuts
The music industry is not about to abandon cd audio anytime soon, and that people will probably just continue to do what they are doing now. rip cd into mp3s, and them trade them over the net with napster, gnutella, freenet etc..
Actually, it's likely that they are doing us a favor by preventing us from using unsigned drivers. I'm pretty shure that it's easy to get ring zero in ALL microsoft products (Bo2K can do it to 98 and NT right?), so you cna just write a patch for the running code to totally disable to DRM software. This is a superior solution to just capturing the output stream since it will enable to you copy files instantly instead of taking 3 min to play.
I would bet that the visualization/EQ plug-in authors will have stripped the necissary code from Bo2K to get ring zero and writen hacks to disable DRM long before we ever see much music distributed under Microsoft's DRM.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
A similar technology exists for monitors.
Windows 2000 is stable. Solid as a rock. The open-source/Linux community needs to come to terms with the hard fact the Win2k is stable OS. And to sooner the better.
You write:
All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000
This has the sad tone of wishfull thinking. Give it a try before you attempt to review it.
Okay, this link has shown up a few times, so I thought I may as well see if it is real. That is the most offensive thing I have ever seen in my life. It truly made my stomach (physically) hurt.
Because the basic cost of hosting an auction is cheap, it works well. Everyone in the world gets US$10.00 in credit. (You didn't used to even have to give them a credit card #, and now they require it mainly for ID, not for payment security.) You post auctions. You are charged US$0.25 each time you do. You are charged more if there is a successful bidder.
When your balance reaches US$-10.00 you either stop holding auctions or pay up. You can send a cheque, or use your CC. I don't know if they have an automatic CC charge but another "business," a local toll bridge, does -- when my toll tag account gets in breathing distance of zero they run another receipt.
If the music were fairly priced -- I'd call US$0.25 per song very fair, considering the ease of distribution; much higher than US$0.50 would probably not be accepted, because of the amount of music you're likely to download before finding out how little you like it -- then a system like this would probably be widely accepted.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
no i really am just bored.
A blog about stuff.
The next consumer version of Windows will unify the code base. That means that grandma will be using Win2k technology.
This argument against Windows stability is really getiing old.
"It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see how Microsoft, as the sole "signer" of drivers, to favor its own hardware/software over other third party products. "
Yep, those Microsoft sound cards will get top priority over anything made by Creative!
Of course since Microsoft doesn't make sound cards, top priority really isn't all that important, is it?
Maybe you ought to leave the conspiracy theories to the more experienced kooks.
The answer, of course, is that the Internet is the great enabler and you don't have to be a big company to provide content anymore. I think eventually we'll start to see professional grade productions being put on the Internet. Again, the danger here is that the industry will try to tie up the formats you can release the content in. I'm sure it'll be quite a fight.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Are the corporations going to hand over the keys to the public so we can copy the music freely? Are they going to fulfill their side of the social contract that copyright is supposed to be - a limited period of monopoly in return for the public good? If their past exploits are any indication, they'll just keep buying politicans to extend the "limited" term of copyright in perpetuity, and if you choose to listen to the music of your ancient forebears you'll pay whatever they demand.
In Britain in 1534, as the printing press became more available, the Crown made it illegal for anyone to publish without a license. In 1557, the Crown granted a monopoly to the Stationers' Company - only one guild had sole right to publish books, by royal decree, in return for censoring any works the Crown disapproved of. It didn't matter if the authors had been dead for a thousand years, only the guild could publish their work. It didn't matter if the authors were alive and well either!
See any similarities in where we're heading? It's congress instead of royalty, and corporations instead of a guild, but only the names have changed.
I found it interesting to discover that the Stationers' Company still exists today, more than four hundred years since its incorporation. Maybe if I manage to live that long, I'll be able to listen to music created today without having to pay a corporation for the privilege. Oh, wait. I'll still need the decryption keys.
Here you go, forget the tape player...
Step 1) Install second soundcard
Step 2) Connect output of first sound card to input of new soundcard
Step 3) Record off second soundcard, and plug speakers into it.
Step 4) Repost content in MP3 (or whatever) on to the net/napster/gnutella/IRC/etc
Sounds easy enough, eh?
VANBO
No. That's what "watermarking" is about. The idea is that cracked, but watermarked, content won't play on an unmodified player. Thus, it can't be widely distributed. The cracker community can play it, but only on a "hacker system", like Linux.
There's a further step, and we may yet see it. Only signed content will play at all. It's quite possible that consumer tools will never be allowed to create HDTV-quality content that will play on consumer players. Already, Whistler (Microsoft's next OS) doesn't like to run unsigned software.
Giving credit where credit is due? Man, that's just not the Slashdot way!
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
> Don't expect to see anyone sensible do this until the decrypting DAC can be reprogrammed.
By who? I've a DVD that used to be limited to 5 zone changes before it locked, I changed this (had to go to DOS for that, YUCK).
I have no intention of restoring the block again.
So I don't see why would anyone would want to put decryption on the sound card, I don't think that many will do an update that:
A> require them to use dos.
B> maim their sound card.
Or did you expect the sound card companies to be able to reprogram the sound cards?
*I* wouldn't buy those sound cards.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Here's a nifty little shareware program that records the sound stream to a .wav or .mp3 file. I use it to time shift and save streaming RealAudio feeds. I believe and hope that even MS's plans to scramble the digital output after it reaches the soundcard (I wonder how? watermarking?) could be circumvented by using this program because it records the feed generated by the soundcard itself. I highly recommend it if you're looking for a way to timeshift and record RealAudio files.
http://www.highcriteria.com/faq_tr.htm
If I recall correctly, the new versions of WMP have a menu option to back up keys(Tools:License_Management). They say if you ever move computers, you music will not play, unless you move the key backups too. After you restore the backups through WMP, all the music from your old computer will play fine. Seems to me people could distribute their key files along with the pirated music. Just following microsofts instructions on how to pirate stuff ;)
I see, if someone can't think of the mystic google search terms, they must be a moron. *sigh*
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Why reverse engineer when you can read the ASF patent.
I can just see it now, "all you need to copy music illegally is an EE degree, an ASIC burner and some software that's been banned - build your own ripper - yours for only $1,299.95"
Alternatively, maybe the price of CDs will come down when people stop ripping off the labels...
Yeah, but there's only ever 4 good songs on a CD anyway ;-)
MSFT: Or you could just save us the trouble and send us all your money now. We're going to get it anyway, so why make things hard on yourself?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Well, as long as audio is decrypted in _software_ and not in the sound card you can always patch Windows kernel to _first_ dump it to file and only _then_ look for "authenticated components in the path".
--
"Man in the Moon and other weird things" - wfmh.org.pl/thorgal/Moon/
I agree completely?
forth ?love if honk then
Uhm, yes, M$ is making money on software, but their software based income has been dropping for months to the point where they are actually making more money on their investments than on software.
IOW: M$ is not primarily a software house any more, so hopefully thei will stick with doing investments, that's what they seem to be good at:)
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
"Scramble output", unless this security thing is supported in hardware, this sounds math intensive. Won't these features have an impact on performance?
- Knut S.
Now, I'm probably goint to be modded down for mentioning the Bible, but I think it's an interesting correlation. In the Bible, it says that one day, no one will be able to buy or sell without the "mark of the Beast". Could these "licenseing fees" and encryption be the first steps?
Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings,
The truth about Michael
Actually the Xbox runs a scaled down windows 2000 kernal
When it is sanely priced. $4.00 for a song is pure stupidity, and the record companies/microsoft know this. This is one of the reasons why napster/GnuTella and all the other music sharing systems that existed before it came about. Example: A cassette costs more to make than a CD, yet a CD is more expensive? now here's a digital transport that removes any manufacturing and the price jumps higher? If My kids could buy the latest Nsync (Yuck) cd for 10 bucks, they'd buy it. Now? they record it off of the radio,DMX,friends,etc... because $20.00 to a $9-13 year old might as well be $1000.00. (Except for you spoiled rich kids out there twenty bucks is alot of money to a child, and most adults that work for a living)
No matter what they come up with, it will be hacked minutes after release (Time registered WMA's can be converted to wav and then MP3 by using winamp - copy an older version of winamp over the current version and voila, the file out works again!)
I hope thy keep trying, as it will keep us real hackers entertained.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ever try to play one of these in Win98 with Windows Media Player? No sound.....
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Maybe this would be a Good Thing for Linux, as people get sick of having all the restrictions and want an OS that isn't Big Brotherware.
Also, since it's 100% in software, I estimate about two months before the patches start to come out to nullify the offending Windows code.
The reasons you quote are also the thinking behind much of the proclaimed 'post pc era'. Having given us access to all this technology, the powers that be are now getting worried about what we're able to do with it. The answer of course is to get us all back to the dumb terminal days, when everything you did on a computer was entirely under the control of someone else. You can have lots of cool devices around your home all doing dedicated tasks like fetching you music or playing you movies or whatever, but only of course if you cough up the readies.
What you're talking about is a common confusion: DRM and Windows Media files are two seperate things - you apply DRM to a WM file. Total Recorder and other current apps that take advantage of the non-secure audio paths do indeed provide a working solution for pirating current generation DRMd Windows Media files. (And for kilrogg, there are indeed wma2mp3 apps out there, if you look around.) The New New Thing here is the Secure Audio Path DRM level - files that won't be playable if you don't have a verifiably secure audio playback path. It'll likely still be the same old Windows Media file underneath, but only apps respecting the SAP/DRM security will be able to play back the files.
Sorry, but you're making the all-too-common on /. mistake WRT Windows. Not that I blame those who make it, because you're already living with Linux, so you don't come from the same perspective as a Windows user or even a (shudder) Mac user.
/. This was ~late 1998/early 99. I'd been reading /. based on the recommendation by a Linux-running friend. For more than two years now, I have known about Linux, and have dabbled in Linux, but never switched, even though I agree with much of the philosophy behind it and would on some levels like to switch. So, I just got my new computer, a KT7-RAID with a proc that easily overclocks to 1GHz without even getting as hot as my old k6-2 did at its measly 400MHz--in honor of the occasion I backed up all my data files onto the new HD and reformatted my two old small ones. What operating system did I choose to install as my main one? I had copies of Windows 98SE, Win2k, Win 2k Advanced Server (pirated, of course), and recent versions of Mandrake, Corel Linux, BeOS, and some other various stuff.
.rtf or text. Likewise, betwen Media Player and RealPlayer I can open all the audio formatsI'm likely to run across--but even so, since I'm used to WinAMP and have used it since before it was bought by AOL, I still use the latest WinAMP to play mp3s. And even though any of the three players I just mentioned can now play audio CDs, I still install Virtuosa to play them for me, because it's what I've always used, I like it, and it works and is pretty while doing so. I use ACDSee to view image files, IrfanView to open weird formats that ACDSee can't decode, and have done so for years. I edit images with an older version of Photoshop, though I do use the Win32 port of GiMP for some of its special script-fu. I use Scramdisk for security and GetRight for managing downloads, WinZip and WinRAR to uncompress stuff. It's what I'm used to and I can operate any one of these apps without even thinking about it, andsince I'm just an end user who only needs a few hours at a time with his computer I haven't seen a single BSOD in over a year if you discount the few times I've put a badly damaged CD in the drive and ejected it while Windows was still trying to read it since it was taking too long to try. Even though I do video capture and use my PC as my DVD player, I still never have BSODs or conflicts or any other stereotypical Windows ills, except for that CD problem I mentioned. Now, with all this experience invested, why would I want to switch to Linux and have to pick out apps all over again, basically starting from scratch and throwing away all my former computer experience?
/., and do it every day, for more than 2 years. Yes, I agree with most of the philosophy expressed here against the practices of certain patently unethical corporations. I don't buy Intel, beause I can just buy AMD and still run the apps I'm used to. I hate Disney, so I don't buy Disney stuff--I get other types of toys for the kids. I support the EFF monetarily. Etc. etc. But, even though I dislike the tactics used against Netscape and OS/2 and the other tresspasses of Microsoft, I still use Windows because it works, it's unified, standardized, and above all else it's what I'm used to and I don't have to throw out years worth of apps.
So, here's your mistake: you think most end users care about stability and an overwhelming breadth of apps and the ability to make custom changes thanks to access to the source code. Well, sorry, but we don't care about any of that.
Here's why--but first, some background, so you can see where I come from. I've been using computers since my first day at college in 1995. I started out at the lab with a 20MHz 68k Mac running, I think, System 7 with a plethora of tools like Netscape 1, Fetch, and NCSA Telnet to grab my e-mail off the campus VAX. Being a Mac campus, and having no previous computer experience, I learned to use Macs and was happy with them--except that they always seemed to lock up every hour or so whenever I was doing more than one thing. OS 8 and PPC 7200 Macs in the lab changed that in coming years, and things were stable enough. When I graduated I needed my own computer, so I bought an old used WinBook XP laptop running Windows 95, because I couldn't afford a Mac. Soon after I started being actually interested in what the computer did, what settings I could tweak and why, etc. So, I became computer literate under Windows. I started collecting and using lots of apps. When the laptop dies of old age, I bought a brand-new k6-2 400, based in part on a dislike of Intel's P!!! ID number and its possible misuse if adopted, which I learned about by reading
I installed Windows 98SE as my primary operating system, although I cheated a bit and used 98lite to allow me to install it without Internet Explorer and most of the other useless crap, and I use Powerdesk 4 as my file browser instead of Explorer/IE. But why would a partially-sane, fairly computer literate guy like me, who's played with all the operating systems I listed above on spare drives and what not, do such a thing?
Because, like most people, I don't need uptime measured in months, weeks, or even days--an uptime of 3 or 4 hours is more than sufficient, unless I'm leaving the computer on all night to download something huge in which case it isn't doing anything that will make it crash. I turn my computer off whenever not in use, as do most people. Giving the computer a minute to boot up isn't at all annoying to me or most people--press the button, go get a soda or take a wee-wee, and by the time you get back it's ready to go.
Now, even so, why on Earth would I install Win98SE, out of all the possible choices? Simple: It has all the apps I like to use, and is compatible with almost every bit of software and hardware I would like to use, without much fiddling about and such. End users don't care about having all the software that's available with Linux--we just want to use what's easy and familiar. Linux apps are usually neither. Every app I'm running on my machine, and almost every app I could possibly download for it, uses the same key combos, and most of them have a consistent and predictable UI, and consistent and predictable install options. We don't want to apt-get-make-etc-etc anything; we want to download it or browse to the CD that has it, and double-click. The vast majority of people never ever ever would want to compile something even if they knew how, so the source code is meaningless to almost all end users. And the breadth of software available to end users with Linux is also largely useless--most of it has incomprehensible names which are useful if you're a hacker typing all day on your CLI but a total hindrance if you're an end user who just wants to download and click on something intuitively-named, like "Media Player," or something whose name is common parlance like "WinAMP" or "Napster." There's no wondering, "uhh, what's slrn do?"
The most important part of all that is that end users value consistency, both amongUI features and shortcuts and the ability to cut and paste between apps and the like, and consistency with whatever software they're used to. Which gets me back to why I chose Win98 from among all possible worlds: It runs every app I have ever used. Win2k may be more stable, but it won't run all of my old games, even though most of the other apps I use will run or have versions for it. People don't like to throw out stuff they like, and that goes for software. I mean, I *could* change to an open-source or Linux-supporting word processor like Star Office or WordPerfect, but why give up the same Word97 I've been using for years? When in college even, I was using Word for the Mac. It's comfortable. I'm used to it, and everyone can read it, though if sending to a guy who uses Linux or is mindful of security I just save in
Like most end users, I wouldn't. There has to be a compelling reason to upgrade, to make me throw away all my beloved apps and go wandering around for new ones. Sure, I like reading
That's why end users aren't flocking to Linux and never will. End users don't flock--they just use what they're used to and what works. Windows works well enough. You're never going to woo most users with technical superiority. Lots of superior tech ends up in the dustbins of history. The only way to get most users is to get in touch with new computer users. Get into as many schools and universities as possible, and you'll indoctrinate fresh users who have no predisposition, and they'll probably use Linux for the rest of their lives. The only way to win over old users, people who already have used Windows or Mac for a long time and have a bunch of software they're happy with, is to have a very compelling reason to undergo the upheaval of change. Being able to run your PC rock-solid stable for a month without rebooting isn't a compelling reason, since Windows is stable *enough* and Mac OS X will probably be nearly as stable as Linux. You mentioned having to wait ages for tech support for Windows--also not a compelling reason, since most people either learn Windows or Mac in school, or have a knowledgeable friend to help them learn. The same can't be said about Linux--I have only 1 friend who uses it, and most people have none.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
If the waves of air pressure can still reach my eardrums, if the photons still hit my retina, I can copy it.
Ho hum.
Mark my words, this is going to hurt the linux revoloution badly.
Ol' Bill has made a very cunning move to help lock the penguin off the desktop, for as long as possible.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Alternatively, maybe the price of CDs will come down when people stop ripping off the labels...
Back in the day, before CDRs were affordable when all you could do was make a tape, CDs were not cheap. Do you really believe that record companies have a set profit target that they won't want to exceed?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
That's exactly the point of this. What if it was just as fast and in fact easier for you to buy the track than it was to hunt down a semi-corrupted poorly recorded copy of it on Gnutella?
I have heard acts in Holiday Inn bars that were clearly more talented than some pop stars. Some of them weren't interested in fame, but most simply lost out in the lottery that leads to superstardom.
You said: Obviously talent is still required on the part of the musicians.
Well, duh. The same is true of writers, actors, directors, and many others who create entertainment media. The middleman distribution industry we all love to hate does, unfortunately, serve a useful function, by directing us to artists who have been pre-selected out of the vast sea of wannabe's as being superior and worthwhile. The fact that this industry is biased, self-serving, and rapacious is irrelevant; we still need it.
Look at the situation with books. Now that the publishing industry is consolidated into abou 1.5 houses it is nearly impossible for an unknown to get a novel published. But wait, you say, you can publish your novel on the Web! Well, that's true -- if you don't care about getting paid -- but have you read much of the free fiction that's out there on the Web? Most of it is bad. Even though some of it may be worthwhile, without an editor to preselect it -- even a biased, greedy rapacious editor -- it just isn't worth the effort. Which is why I still buy the latest Grisham instead of surfing up free entertainment. At least I can expect the Grisham to be entertaining.
What we really need is a replacement for the entertainment industry. But we also need a way for artists to be paid. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a novel or a set of decent songs. (The shareware software industry can give you a good idea of the rate of payment in voluntary systems. We studied it in Calculus under "limits.") Perhaps there is a way to do this over the 'net, with volunteer editors and some kind of honor system for rewarding the good artists, but I haven't seen it yet.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
No, that's like saying "all you need to copy music is ONE PERSON with and EE degree, an ASIC burner and some semi-illegal software."
It would be the same situation as Playstation (and others?) mod chips.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
WRONG. Most people don't give a damn about the finder, or the fact that random apps might not adhere to the common GUI styleguide. Otherwise, they would have already been put off by WinDOS.
There are plenty of apps that violate common UI standards or just plain replace common dialogs.
The fact that you find the need to bring up emacs or slrn only demonstrates that you have nothing meaningful to say in this discussion. Linux has moved past that point already.
You prove nothing by trying to pretend that the last 5 years of Linux development never occured.
As far as minor desktop differences go: the need to search for the "print" command in one of the other 4 drop down menus should be no great burden for anyone that's made it out of kindergarten.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No you won't.
The file and edit menus are only defaults generated by a particular editor. ANY developer is free to ignore them.
That aspect of windows is NOT infact enforced by the OS.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Microsoft doesn't have to invent an uncrackable scheme; they just have to invent one that makes it a bit more difficult and annoying to steal, while at the same time they make it as easy as possible to just pay for the song. I'm all in favor of this. (I want this to work on Linux too, so I don't really want Microsoft to control it. But the idea itself isn't evil.)
I disagree. The best way for the record labels to make money off of their music on the internet is to release high quality, unencrypted digital music that can be played on all hardware, all OS's, everywhere. Currently that format is MP3.
They bundle the music, they use Akamai so the downloads are fast, and they sell an album or a song for a small fraction of the price they charge for an album or a single.
They stop worrying about Napster and other P2P because they know that real fans of the music won't mind paying for it if it's EASY TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ALBUM, EASY TO PAY FOR, and most importantly, EASY TO PLAY ANYWHERE THEY WANT!
All encryption does is prevent honest people from using the music they paid for in the manner they wish. It doesn't stop the lamers who want to steal the music, because they will still circumvent the protections and encryptions.
ALWAYS.
-thomas
"And like that
Paying for someone's hard work? Man, that's just not the Linux way...
Dont eat yellow snow
As for USB digital speaker systems, they still rely on an analog speaker. If need be you can get one of these, open it up
And in the process, breaking the tamper-evident seal, which is detected by the hardware, and the speaker no longer decrypts audio.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How aboot a more stable OS for the consumers?
Is this really helping anything at all? Maybe they should spend more time making there OS better rather than try to monopolize the OS market even more.
If it wasn't for HALO and Oni I'd probably be running Linux right now.
Which brings us to the point that Microsoft is also trying to hijack the gaming industry with the X-Box (which runs an ME Kernel). I bet the X-Box OS will be pirated onto PCs before we're done cracking Microsoft "Subscription OS" [MS: SOS].
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
course, there's nothing stopping you from providing your own sound card driver, or a shim
Have you even read the article? Secure Audio Path specifically excludes drivers that have not been tested for conformance and signed by Microsoft Corporation.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I regret already replying to a troll, but I just want to point out that decent game includes good music in my book and therefore it's automatically much more valuable than good music only.
And yes, I think $50 for a game and $20 for a music CD is far too much. Not least for the fact that author(s) receive only very little of that money. And I'm afraid MS's DRM isn't going to help that at all, possibly making things only worse. Only question is how much time it'll take to crack the system.
_________________________
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Watermarks can be removed by point-and-click tools.
There's also the likelihood that someone will design another point-and-click tool that disables the D"R"M in your average user's system, even if just to restore the fair use rights that have been stolen from us.
It just takes 2x quality audio sampling to get 100% copy of digital signal in analogue output.
If you sample at 88khz 24bit of a 44/16 output, then that sample converted back to 44/16 will be damn near enough , perhaps even to the bit the same as the original. Do it once then leak the mp3 (192kbs) to irc and off you go.
The damn morons (50year old + ceos) have no fscking clue, and the programmers know it its impossible to make it secure, but hell they dont care, they get paid to try.
Why dont they spend their $ on more artists, not more $ per artist or more $ on crap.
So what if they embed it wondoze, it is not going to stop the dedicated music cracking professionals. It will have the same non-effect as adding extra sync pulses to video signals so that the VCRs loose sync.. There was a similar thing done with DAT and a local a kit was soon available from EA (Electronics Austraila) to, on the fly, remove the security..
... although I also like C#..
You could either record the signal directly with the mixer return, or, if there was some software that wouldn't allow that -- record directly off the sp/dif connector with another machine. -- all with no generational loss
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
As I was writing, you said you wanted to go on fact, not FUD. Well, those are the facts. Most of the advantages of Linux are irrelevent to the average end user, while most of Linux's shortcomings are in areas end users need to have strong, like program standardization and interoperability and in a clean and serviceable GUI that behaves predictably and has standard features adhered to by most apps.
When those issues are resolved--hopefully soon, with Ximian seeming to gain steam--Linux will be ready for most end users. That's when there needs to be a real push to get Linux into every school and university possible.
Now, with all my naysaying above and my tacit approval of Microsoft by virtue of using Windows, I have to throw this in as a counterweight: I do think that Linux will reach the stage where people like me, even us people who have been using certain software for years and don't want to have to switch to something new, will upgrade to Linux. It *will* happen--but how quickly depends on how quickly people start realizing that technological superiority means absolutely nothing against an entrenched marketplace in which the competition is *good enough* and easier to learn. End users used to MS and Apple aren't going to switch over in droves to something which asks them weird questions about whether to install emacs or xemacsor vi or slrn etc. etc. End users are not going to be happy with something in which the file menus and widgets are very different from app to app, and where not all apps can cut and paste between each other. This of course means standardization on a particular set of desktop components for end-user oriented distros, which seems a very contentious issue still.
So, it'll happen--but how soon is enturely dependent on how soon the Linux community can resolve petty bickering over whether this or that is an acceptable inclusion with certain distros and such, and decide that taking control of the desktop away from Microsoft is more important than arguing ad nauseam over whether such-and0such should go into free or nonfree on the Debian CD or whether Gnome or KDE or Ximian should be the desktop shipped as standard on consumer oriented distros. Up to y'all...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Trolling makes Baby Taco cry...
-- CmdrTaco
as an *artist* ( and by this I do not mean a generic 'art field' term but instead use the truer term for it, a person who *creates* art, and through their individual aspirations wishes to further the creative field with their individual and unique perspective on life and the world) I can say that I do *NOT* enjoy the term 'artist' being used in such a flagrant and abusive way.. granted some singers aren't all that hot, hell most are only barely able to hold a tune.. but that by no means makes them an artist... it barely makes them a singer... so as an artist (and yes I have written songs, yes I CAN play an instrument, I also draw/paint/sculpt/write) I feel that heaping me in with low talent, lower minded persons like no talent singers is like saying 'homids are all useless, blunt skulled neaderthals' :
.sig under construction
You're trolling: if you don't install the Adaptec CD-Burning Plug-in, you don't reboot. It's called "device driver". You either have to completely tear down and rebuild the driver stack to insert it or you have to reboot the machine. There is NO other solution to this particular issue within Win32.
Most of the world will buy a DVD. From there, there are no liberties.
I don't think that the DRM is more secure because it is tied to the OS; it is more secure because it is buried under megabytes of mess. Competitor's DRM technologies could be hidden in a big mess too, but people wouldn't appreciate having to run a 64MB binary. Microsoft's advantage comes from the fact that they already have a mess installed on every desktop they can use to hide stuff.
All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death".
I am familiar with it. It's what my NT Workstation used to do before I install Win2k pro. I don't think either of my desktop W2K systems has ever BSODed on me.
The error message you cite is more of a sign of a bad DBA than anything (the DB server's disk is full - that's not the OS's fault, or Microsoft's).
Everything beyond that is fact, or close to it, but I doubt the open-sourceness is relevant to 97% or so of MS's customers. Price is more likely a factor. But so is familiarity - even moving from one linux distro to another can take a fair bit of re-orientation.
I'm not a microsoft fan particularly, but I'm less of a fan of people who feel that 'microsoft fan' is somehow the ultimate insult.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
IIRC, there was also 3K$US Redhat version, tuned for Oracle.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Speaking of AVI, do you know any way of converting MPEG to AVI in Linux?
I know of avi2divx and mpeg2divx, available here.
They use a similar WINE based interface and motion JPEG as an intemediary format, using a Morgan Multimedia demo codec.
Ah, then what's needed is an "audio card device driver" which "appears to be" but is not actually a sound card -- to intercept the data between the kernel and the hardware.
since most users won't have a compiler on their system, it shouldn't compromise "security" too much
The DOS and Windows versions of GCC are quite easy to install (unzip, set a couple environment variables in autoexec, reboot, and you can gcc files). Seeing as you have to compile your own MP3 encoder, I see the free DJGPP compiler gaining a wide userbase.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Okay, then you rip appart your speakers
And in the process set off the tamper detection, causing the speakers to stop decrypting incoming audio. Yes, it is possible (see also Capcom Suicide).
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In addition, it can be hard specialised work being a _plumber_, or a toilet maintenance expert, or a long distance truck driver, or a pallet loader at UPS. Nobody behaves like these people are deities, but they sure are useful.
In my way I am an artist. I can honestly say that I work at it as hard as any top-of-the-line plumber, or UPS pallet loader. There's a lot that goes into it, and it costs a lot for equipment, and requires some pretty serious dedication to learn the craft. I think it is absolutely absurd to expect to be treated like Picasso just for being _an_ artist (thing about Picasso is, not only was he an absolute virtuoso but he kept it up his entire life), but I do expect to get as much respect as a UPS pallet loader or long distance trucker- and, in turn, extend it instead of getting all haughty and Mick Jagger about it ;)
The fact is, any artist who's any good either is a bit of an idiot savant or put a lot of work into their craft or both. I admit to both. But I only want the _chance_ to earn respect over my lifetime as a music creator (not 'career', music business careers are about 2 1/2 years now if you're lucky).
That isn't the same thing as saying I want the chance to earn _money_. If digital copying means almost nobody makes or is forced to spend lots of money as a musician, I can accept that. But in order to have the chance to earn respect I need to continue to be able to produce digital music myself and have people download it. That's what's at risk now- the danger is, the content controls will lock down so much that people won't be _allowed_ to listen to what I'm able to produce unless I go through channels. That's bad.
Back in the early days of Microsoft NetShow, before it was renamed to Media Player, Microsoft had a beta version of NetShow out for Linux. It did a nice of job of playing those ASF files. Unfortunately, surprise surprise, the program one day disappeared from Microsoft's site and new versions have not since come out.
>rationalize your 40 gig divx/mp3
Sure, why not. My collection includes:
- Free promotional material.
- Fair use MP3 backups of all my CDs.
- Time shifted videos that I still need to watch.
If that ain't legal then sue me.
>but please don't ignore the fact that you are really stealing.
Huh? Say what? Oh, I see. You're confused about the distinction between format (MP3/DiVX) and the content.
Okay, I'll clear it up for use in terms you might understand.
A long time ago there were these "VTR Format Wars" in which the Beta format (owned by Sony) and the VHS format (freely licensed by JVC) were competing. I'm sure some people confused the VHS format with stolen content, since VHS was used for many things, including Home Recordings, and "unlicensed" distribution of movies [as JVC was fully open with their format]. Sony, on the other hand, preferred a stranglehold grip on the market (at first). So, if one couldn't make the distinction between casette size, then YES, Beta only held "legal" movies.
But once consumers got over these hangups in the late 70's/early 80's they realised how much nicer it was to have the _format_ abstracted from the _content_ and simply chose VHS.
Another example:
TVs vs. Theaters. At a theater you'll notice that only licensed content is shown. On a TV any content can be shown, legal and stolen. So one might, erroneously, conclude that the Theater format precludes the possibility of showing stolen material.
Let me clear that up. If you were to purchase the equipment to make your own ceullulite movie strip, then all of a sudden the theater is a "stolen" format only, right?
Nope, because you have to make the abstratction between content (stolen vs. legal) and format (VHS, Beta, TV, Teater, DiVX, MP3).
Does that clear it up at all for you? I'm sure I can come up with more examples if that doesn't explain it.
>just because a post has the word "microsoft" in it doesn't necesarily mean you need to bash it.
I was looking for the keywords "Rights Management", "Secure Audio Path", "scrambles", and "content-protection", simply because I don't agree with these ideas. I couldn't care less if Linus integrated these into Linux. These words make anything they touch suck, IMHO.
Microsoft chose to use them. Their problem, not mine.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Please. If IBM hadn't handed MS a monopoly in the PC market and MS hadn't spent a lot of time squashing the alternatives they would have disappeared a long time ago. The appalling quality of their software is made up for by their brilliant marketing and their pushing alternatives out of the market.
BTW how do you know that your blue screens were caused by bad drivers? Does Win2K have core dumps and a good syslog? NT4 certainly doesn't.
I hate Microsoft because so many better alternatives have been crushed due to their abuse of their monopoly.
They are mostly interested in people making copies of the media that are undiscernable from the original
I can hear the quality degradation from a CD to a 128 Kbit/s MP3 stream, even with the excellent LAME and Fraunhofer encoders and cheap-@$$ Sony Walkman headphones. 128 Kbit/s MP3 files are common on Napster, but they're not "undiscernable from the original." So, from your argument, why in the world is RIAA going after Napster?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I can remember when I was free.. free to choose my browser, free to choose my word processor, free to copy my music if I wanted.. ahh well. Thanks M$ SOOOOoooooo much for protecting me and the rest of the world from ourselves. -Celtic
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
People want that audio on their stereo, on headphones, on their belt as they jog, and they aren't gonna buy it if they can't get it there. And as soon as you put a headphone jack on your secure digital speakers, they aren't secure any more. Even Joe Doofus can run an attenuating patch cord from the headphone jack back to the input of his real sound card, and sure he'll lose a little quality (the .MP3 compression doesn't bother him though, does it?) he won't lose any more quality when he passes further copies to his 12,000,000 closest friends on Napster.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Unless your line out is in a digital format, that's lossy.
(It won't be digital because of Secure Audio Path.) But the quality degradation from using an audiophile-quality analog setup is still a couple orders of magnitude less than the degradation from encoding to 128 Kbit/s MP3 format (the most popular format on Napster) even with excellent LAME or Fraunhofer encoders.
Even then, you run into the SDMI watermarks on new content.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Read the article: it's a kernel-level change 'new' to Whistler. It's not *going* to run on Win9x.
Windows DRM can disable your S/PDIF output because there is no way to "secure" S/PDIF.
Now if you had 1394 going to your "secure" Sony amplifier/speaker combo, then Windows would presumably authenticate with the amp and data could leave your computer.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That is EXACTLY what Linus did, you ignorant fuckhead. That is why Linux is called
drumroll please
an OPEN SOURCE operating system.
What Linus doesn't do, it turns out, is put his personal blessing on hacks/mods that don't meet his personal standards. This doesn't mean that you or I can't download the code and do whatever we want with it under the GPL.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
>just because a post has the word "microsoft" in it doesn't necesarily mean you need to bash it.
Yes it does.
>please don't ignore the fact that you are really stealing. technology doesn't change that.
I know Im stealing, but I could care less.
I don't have a lot of money, and Im not wasteing all of my money on $20-25 CDs and DVDs.
Let's see, as a poor college student do I a) send $$$ to Bill G. and his henchmen [LOL], b) download a cracked Win2K ISO from Russia and keep running Win2K "illegally" or c) wipe the partition and put a free OS like Linux or BSD on it?
Why would I try Win2K if I need to get newer, faster hardware just to get it to run acceptably? Why would I try it if I need updated apps get the best performance out of it? And most importantly, if I am going to put a free OS on it four months later, then why should I waste those 120 days messing around with Win2K if I am eventually going to get rid of it?
Try Win2k? No thanks, I don't need another monkey on my back...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
somebody never took econ as a kiddie. price is set by demand and supply, not cost.
In a truly competitive market with unlimited supply, cost does indeed becomes the driving factor in price. As you point out, the music industry is not competitive. You'll notice that as much as the new copy prevention schemes battle fair use and piracy, they also raise the barriers to entry in digital music. The latter is probably the real point, since otherwise, their market maigh (GASP) become competitive.
This on itself is bad. But check out this story to find out what might happen with your mandatorily provided registration data...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
But, no matter how different the HCI of the web page, you're still going to be able to highlight something and hit Ctrl-C to copy it in Windows; You're still going to have a file menu with filey-stuff on it, and an edit menu with edity-stuff on it.
The web page HCI is only layered on top of the familiar HCI of whatever desktop you are running, and I think the author has a valid point.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Compare the stability of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 with the stability of GNU/Linux and other systems and there you have it - death to Windows.
It definitely doesn't help that Microsoft is trying to extend their vendor lock-in tactics to MEDIA files too, now!! Windows 2000 is Microsoft's best offer. Let's look at it logically:All Windows 2000 users are familiar with the "Blue Screen of Death". Poor reliability is one of the major drawbacks of Windows 2000. Some of the current problems will be fixed in Windows Whistler, but "code bloat" is almost certain to introduce many more reliability problems. In the performace arena, there is no comparison...Windows 2000 is adequate for routine desktop apps, but it is unable to handle heavy network loads. A few organizations try to make it work as an Internet server. For instance, barnesandnoble.com uses Windows 2000, as can be verifyed by the error messages that their webserver produces, such as this recent example: Error Message:
The software development world in particular is becoming more and more open source. In the future, most development tools will be free and open source - already the free software world has grabbed a large portion of the developer mindshare. With Ximian, this will soon include an even larger portion of user mindshare. So let's see how well Windows 2000 does in regards to free software...Oh, wait. The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is available for Unix. Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user. Ok then, let's move on to support. Although support is available for Windows 2000, you should be prepared to spend as long as an hour on hold, with no guarantee that your problem will be resolved. Because of the closed source nature of Windows 2000, there is no informal, free support available, and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule, not your's. Since Windows 2000 is not updated frequently (besides an SP before it was released), you may wait years for bugs to be fixed. (Or alternatively just shell out another $600 for Windows Whistler).
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. Documentation is expensive, and very little on-line documentation is provided. A license is required for every computer, which means delays and administrative overhead.I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
I thought Windows already had 3d-hardware acceleration? Oh, wait . . .
Eventually.
Geeks are extremely afraid of divide and conquer. They see shit on other platforms they start to be suspicious.
Business is business and it'll bite whoever it sees fit.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Well, if you're at all like me, the phrase "Secure Audio Path" raised a lot more questions than it answered, so I've done a little digging around the msdn site and found some information. My apologies for the blockquote spam, but I think they explain it quite well:
The best information seems to be in their SDK documentation for windows media:
A quick glance at the latter's diagrams shows that, if nowhere else, they are clearly vulnerable to hardware based attack, but of course, the whole scheme, as has already been pointed out in this forum, is also vulnerable to a $15 tape recorder. :) At any rate, just some extra info for those similarly piqued.
> Of course, clever intelligent people will be
> able to hack it. But the question is whether
> your average Joe Punter is going to.
All it takes is one clever, intelligent person writing a little tool that does the hack and making it available for Joe Punters everywhere to download (somewhere out of the reach of the DMCA).
The "economic argument" just doesn't hold up in a world where everything can be automated.
So run WIndows 2000 in a virtual box on VMWare and write a hardware emulation of an "approved" soundblaster soundcard (ie: with signed drivers).
It's almost always possible for programs to discern whether or not they are run under emulation (VMWare is a virtualizer, that is, a motherboard emulator). For example, check out this four-line 6502 assembly segment that determines to 99.x% certainty whether it's running on a real NES or the NESticle emulator. There will probably be several similar flaws in VMWare that Microsoft can detect, and Windows will refuse to enable the Secure Audio Path in those cases.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
3: Good point. Will this still be possible with the content "protection" that the RIAA wants ?
Windows Media Player runs pretty well under Wine, oddly enough...
- Other technologies being built into Windows further boost content-protection features, such as the so-called Secure Audio Path, which scrambles output from a computer sound card so that music streams can't be tapped and copied at that point.
So are we talking about the death of SPDIF? Will consumer audio devices not be allowed to feed preamps and receivers unencrypted signals? Is all our home audio gear obsolete? At what point in the audio path do I need to stick my recording software/hardware?!It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see how Microsoft, as the sole "signer" of drivers, to favor its own hardware/software over other third party products.
Same goes for software -- since visualization/EQ plug-ins, etc. need access to decoded raw audio, you can bet that MS will enforce a similar signing policy for such software before allowing API-level accesss to decrypted bitstream.
MS could oh so conviently "delay" signing of say, WinAmp's plugins, while MS's own Media Player can work with these formats right out of the box!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
But what's to stop someone from dismantling the secure speakers and tapping the audio just before it gets to the speakers
A tamper-evident seal that, when broken, causes the secure speaker to stop decrypting content. Try to get around that.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
You need to be an admin to install the sound card device driver, so you can just install the DRM-bypassing, audio-ripping device driver at the same time.
You're right, NT security isn't going to help at all.
Excellent points, and I agree that the University level is the primary beachhead to establish early adopters, who will go on to bring Linux into their future job sites. But people have to realize that this will take years to accomplish.
However, as far as your comfort level and experience with Windows is concerned, I don't think things are quite as entrenched as it may seem. At first, looking at the thousands of software titles available for Windows, it looks hopeless: how will we ever port all those apps to Linux? But then, realize that as fast as the industry moves, whole industries can be recycled in a few years. Think about this: look at all the Windows software at Wal-Mart -- none of it was there five years ago (not just the software titles...Wal-mart barely had a computer section 5 years ago). Most of our non-computer friends had barely heard of this "Internet thing" five years ago. Napster and MP3's have been famous for only a year (two?). Games are in the bargain bin within a year or two, and even though Office has barely changed since version 5.0, we have had regular industry-wide migrations (95, 97, 2000) at enormous cost every couple of years.
So, even though there seems to be an enourmous amount of inertia in the form of available software, it's really not that immoveable an object. It will take years to finally begin picking away at the monolith, but these facts remain:
1. Linux is free (as in beer)
2. Sooner or later people will realize that free is cheaper than paying. (Win9x + Office ~ $200 installed), (Win2K + Office ~ $400). What will bring about this realization, I don't know. Recession? Sub-$300 PC's? A good awareness/PR campaign? Who knows.
Also, I disagree with the common-GUI is easier theory, and I think the Web provides decent proof for that. I rarely have to help a newbie navigate a web page, even though web pages all use completely different widget sets and look-and-feels. However, how many times have you had to help a newbie do something simple in Windows like save to a floppy or copy a file? It's the old mainframe-style step-by-step menu operation of Web pages that make them easy to use, not a consistent look and feel.
...it was a late night. I stand corrected :)
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
...that they want to build in all that stuff into their OS? Did they not learn from their past mistakes of "building in" things *cough* web browser *cough*. Maybe I am just being cynical, but I don't like the idea of "secure" formats anyway. It's silly to think anything is secure. SDMI was only lasted a few months before being cracked. Its all about marketing in the world of windows...
___________
I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
Let's see, how can I rationlize my 13 gig mp3 collection? If some fact of nature made it virtually impossible to sell a house without a real estate agent, they might be able to get away with charging 90% commissions instead of 7%. In my book THAT would be stealing, legal or not, and that is what music companies have been doing to musicians and their fans for nearly a century. Everything becomes obsolete eventually, even copyrights. Progress is a wonderful thing.
Just remember what happened when CDs were released. We were told "the price will go down as they gain acceptance and producing them gets cheaper". Now they're almost universal, and I don't see a price cut anywhere nearby, do you? The music industry seems to want to be able to force people to buy their products and only their products (want to be that, to be able to distribute properly encrypted audio, you're going to have to wade through enough red tape to make DVDs seem open?) for insane prices. One has to hope that they'll die, and die fast.
-RickHunter
"which scrambles output from a computer sound card so that music streams can't be taped and copied at that point."
What? So when we listen to our digitally protected audio the sound comes out of our speakers scrambled? WTF? No.
No matter what they do I can still replace my speakers with an eigth inch line out to a tape recorder, or even straight into the line-in of my other computer for immediate re-conversion to digital. Better yet, with true digital speaker output, I bet the sound quality remains perfect. There's nothing they can do about it. They need to give up now and start changing their market to fit new technology, instead of trying to do impossible things with technology to maintain a market that should have ended 5 years ago when they started charging 20$ for a 10-song CD.
HINT: you should be able to tell that this was joke because the goatse.cx link was clearly marked as "adult entertainment".
I don't see how someone could mistake this post as a troll, unless they were an idiot or something.
Hmmm... more idiot at Slashdot, more idiot moderators. Maybe someone should write a "Slashdot Moderating for Dummies" book...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
You say that when costs fall, prices always fall... This is not how the music industry has worked to date - the production cost of CDs is tiny compared to vinyl LPs, but a typical CD costs the same as an LP. So why should they massively reduce costs for online delivery?
Of course, if copy protection works badly enough, these higher prices create an economic incentive for hackers to get round the various mechanisms.
yeah thanks for that one. I have trouble with big words like "abstraction and media"
guys i was just talking about pirated music/movies. i like the mp3 format. and all you computer naturalists or whatever that cry every time you delude yourself into thinking your rights are being infringed need to slow up and let microsoft try to sell their product. if you think it's poop, don't buy it. if you have a political issue, write your congressman.
peace i'm done
It doesn't matter that it takes the average geek two weeks to figure out how to put a wrapper around the codec DLLs and play the stuff under Linux. What matters is that companies will start investing into this "secure" format, and that means they will haveto buy Windows 2000 because the server software exists only there.
Example: Internet Movie Database. Started out as a hobby project (I still have their old text-based complete database here, on CD). Nowadays, they provide advertisements, DVDs, lots of ads - and trailers. Guess in what format. So, you see, this is another of Microsoft's attempts at getting into the server market. Take something that people will BELIEVE is good and offer it only in combination with that other product that OTHERWISE nobody would have wanted (but which is critical to take over the world), Windows 2000.
This really hurts in combination with the recent Netcraft survey. Microsoft still has a measly 20% of the web server market (and that's not about to change), but they seem to have the 20% where 80% of the money is made.
Home Page
Luckily some smart folk have reverse engineered and documented the ASF 1 format and are using it to make the avifile project (which currently plays DivXs and ASF using thin layer of Wine to implement the Win32 avifile API) actually implement its codecs natively.
Of course Microsoft could claim DRM is a copy-protection scheme to "effectively" enforce the copyright on the works, and this effort would become a felony under the DCMA. (Running somebody ELSE's software under WINE might skate by, but doing your own would run right into the Feds.)
This strikes me as Microsoft trying to sweet talk the move studios into putting all their content out on their proprietary format. (It shouldn't be too hard, given the association in the studio execs' minds between Linux software and DeCSS.)
If they succeed, they've set up a situation similar to the way VHS pushed out Betamax: The Beta format was better, but VHS had all the movies.
Linux as Betamax, Windows as VMS, and the DCMA to make it a federal felony to fight back.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What continually gets my blood boiling and has done since CD's came out is that when we buy our recordings from the shop we are only licensed to be able to listen to the tunes. We don't actually own them. And yet these greedy fsckers expect me to pay full price all over again to get the media on which the sounds came on upgraded i.e. vinyl to CD. I already paid for the right to listen to the tunes yet no one in government is interested protecting my rights to be able to move formats. Which is why I will continue to line the pockets of my local pirate at a couple of quid a shot to move my vinyl to digital formats.
"Using one monopoly to gain another", I think it means. They're using their O/S monopoly to establish a digital media monopoly. Playing digital media content is definitively an application function, not an operating system one, more clearly so than the browser thingy IMO.
Do not underestimate the Power Of The Dark Side.
:) Well, here a look from other side:
Do underestimete the Power Of The Consumer Side - they ussualy do not realize they are paying all this (extra HW coders and decoders, extra SW coders and decoders, extra CPU cycles and other HW required to handle all previous).
And after paying all this infrastracture (which is intended to guard Dark Side "rights" for income, not consumenr's rights) consumers will pay FAT money for things which were till now not even free but legal and common too.
hany
At least we won't have to pay a music industry tax for owning a technology that can copy music!
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Uh duh.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
(note: I'm not going to even go near the ethics of using a method like this to pirate media. I'm just commenting that it's possible)
"Secure Audio Path" will not work. All I have to do is play whatever godawful WMA+DRM "content" I want, connect the line-out of my sound card to my line-in, and hit record. Quality is not an issue here (at least not with a good sound card); I'd wager that the quality loss would be less than that sustained by the watermarking/compression process.
Even if they somehow manage to mess with this (disabling recording to a sound card while it's playing their shit), there are solutions... two sound cards... two computers... Sure, using two computers (or even connecting line out to line in) isn't something you're average Joe will do... but that doesn't matter. Once a few people defeat the DRM and make Ogg Vorbis / MP3's out of their WMAs, everyone else can get them via Napster or whatever peer-to-peer method they want. (Side note: The day they start charging for Napster, www.napigator.com is going to suffer an unintentional DoS. Opennap can't be sued out of existence so easily.)
That last hop from computer to speakers is an unencrypted analog one, and will likely remain analog for a long time. That means that it can be redirected and recorded. The *ONLY* way for the XXAA to stop people from copying their "content" (how I hate that word) is to make piracy not worth it. There are two ways of doing this: increase the (opportunity) cost of piracy and decrease the cost of music/videos. The opportunity cost of piracy keeps going down, and attempts like DRM won't stop it... there's only one solution left to them. If their "business model" can't stand up to the Internet, it should die an ungraceful death.
Wow, and you find a bunch of stuff in portuguese! that really is helpful! .org straight!
Anybody who has'nt tried this search and come up with a bunch of stuff from brzilian mailing lists is, you're right, ever so stupid.
Thank you for setting the
Juln
With my cable modem it's WAY faster for me to download copies then rip them from my CDs.
Futhermore, music piracy is just as popular with the "old frontier" people (windoze users?) as it is by us "new frontier" people.
"Napster is not an evil thing for content owners," [..] "It's just that it doesn't have any DRM in it."
.NET distibuted application framework and their upcoming "one CD-key per computer" licence model - and I can just imagine the next step:
Translation: We're not making money out of it, but we want to.
It's hard to start charging people money for things that they can get for free. But if they're already paying for something, it's easy to get them to pay a little more. If digital content management is deeply embedded into the OS - figure in the
"With your Windows Subscription(TM) [a mere $40 per month, major credit card required for automatic paperless billing], just point and click to download and listen to music - and the fee will automatically be charged to your account!"
And then what next? A small fee for each and every time you listen to a song - even if you've already downloaded it? As far as I can tell, this is spookily close to being possible, and there could be some messy privacy intrusions if that was the case. 1984 and "Big Brother"? More like Win2k and the omnipresent Willy G... it's not hard to imagine.
(Posting anonymously because Microsoft [indirectly] gives me money. I'm so sorry..)
Di$ney couldn't dream of releasing the mouse. Life plus 70 years will be expanded. Have no doubts.
You are making terrible generalizations here: In response... I shall offer you a resource to "open source bands" who offer free recordings and taping rights to their shows... http://www.jambands.com Bands like the Greatful Dead, Phish, Allman Brother's, Dave Mathews Band, Gov't Mule and dozens more have done this for years. Out of respect, there fan's *do not* copy thier "official" recordings. These band's are true artists and improvisational musicians. I fear no content protection scams... cause true artists will always make their works available to their fans...
"I have no fear for atomic energy, cause not even that can stop the time" Bob Marley
Actually, there might be software hacks which do not require faking a signed driver. Specifically, Windows has never been very good about keeping ring zero to it's self. BO2K (open source) can get ring zero in 98 and NT right? Anyway, it's highly unlikely that they will monitor the checksum of running code, so you can just disable all the rights managment stuff in the OS on a running system.
You could also just use protected mode to redirect the sound card IO ports, but I'd consider this and hardware hacks to be inferior solutions compaired with just "fixing" the running DRM code since you could only transfer music from secure to insecure at playback speeds. If you just fix the DRM then you can copy anything that you want to copy.
BTW> I will laugh my ass off if they try to add runtime monitoring of code. That would be so much work for such a bandaid fix for the fact that they can not improve their protected mode handling.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I have personally seen Win2k lose the mouse pointer (move the mouse, yet pointer stays in the same place) many times. And we all know that windows without a mouse is like a bicycle without wheels. Reboot. I have also seen Win2k lock hard if IE crashes. Reboot.
So I see that Win2k is stable on some machines, while on others it is not. Hasn't this always been the truth with some form of Windows? This leads me to believe that Win2k is not stable. It simply cannot be trusted on all machines.
And when Win2k stops losing the mouse or locking hard when IE crashes *on all machines*, then I will agree that Win2k is stable.
And although the argument against Windows's stability is getting old, it's still valid. Perhaps you should be attacking that which causes the criticism, not the criticism itself.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Just prove that P=NP and their whole bloody system will come crashing down, forever. :-)
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
t.
Just a hypothesis, but major record companies who go aong with this system could be cutting their own throats in the medium-to-long term. Today the web's all about horizontal communication, and this goes for discs as much as anything else. Here's how it goes: Companies make transmission of musical data a Microsucks monopoly, so people (those who don't necessarily have pirate friends) are no longer able to listen to the big names without paying the Microsucks/Record Company tax. But wait a minute - aren't the big names simply the ones we're allowed to discover once the record companies have finished filtering? Yes, but now, with horizontal communication, we don't need to rely on the record companies any more, do we. Musicians can make their music available to anyone in the world, and we can now discover the 99% of artists that the record companies left behind. That's fine by me. I don't mind the companies making money out of the 1% of artists we allow them to keep.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
OK, so Micro$oft starts using their DRM technology, and the RIAA starts selling music in M$'s format. Some people will go buy the music, but others won't, so to mkae money they will still continue to sell CDs to people, and the difference from right now will be minimal. If they don't get rid of every single device used to record sound, music will still be pirated. There's nothing they can do, and in the end, things will be hacked, music will be free, and Microsoft will just be another company trying to figure out why their closed format never worked out.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
Don't forget the proposed changes to the ATA (IDE) protocols, and accepted changes to the SCSI and Firewire protocols, which allow third parties to control access to sectors on your disk. With compliant software (and you can be damn sure Windows 2002 will support it!) sectors can be rendered unreadable, even un-deletable, to every other program.
On my darker days, I suspect Windows will flip that secure bit on the boot sector for "protection" from "malicious" software such as Linux or *BSD. But I digress..
It's clear that this is a nearly end-to-end solution for "secure" media - you <b>can't</b> read the data from the disk without one encryption key, you can't read the bitstream without a second encryption key, and while first-generation drivers will decrypt the datastream in software, it's not hard to predict that the decryption will be pushed onto the sound card in the near future. You don't have to modify the codec itself, all you need is a bit of silicon between the bus and the codec which handles the decryption.
Looking just a wee bit further ahead, why do you need a sound card at all? USB speakers, with decryption and codecs in the speaker itself!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Interesting that you accuse me of trolling.
Maybe you should go educate yourself before posting as an Anonymous coward.
how about every other nanosecond? i mean c'mon... 'fess up.
Actually yes, Win2k does have an adequate core dump. I knew the crash's were caused by bad drivers both from the blue screen message (I can't remmeber it, it was so long ago) as well as the fact the updating the drivers solved all my problems.
You are right, however, that many competitors have been squashed, but, unfortunately, that's bussiness.
BTW, have you used 2k?
------------------------------------
I agree with most of your comments. The end user only cares that it works, even if it doesn't work all of the time. The source code is not important to end users. This is also correct. Most end users couldn't troubleshoot their own pc. However, this is not where Linux is growing the fastest. The desktop, will be the hardest battle for Linux. Servers, special purpose workstations, and PDA's are an easy market for linux.
The otherside is for industrial engineering applications. Let me explain. I have a friend who works in industrial engineering. He and his colleagues constantly complain about being tied to a particular software or vendor. They are techies and therefore do not want to mess with client license fees. Linux and the LinuxPLC project fill this void perfectly. Linux is very promising for these folks because they have the source code and can tweak it to work with a Staubly robot or an Omron PLC. Linux is ideal for industrial engineering areas. Unfortunately, most people who write Linux apps do so for the end user and not for an industrial application. This is where the money is folks.
The battle for the desktop will be the hardest for Linux. I'm not saying that it won't happen. It could, but the average users wants to point and click and have something install without dependency problems. Linux will take the server arena from Microsoft, but they will have a hard time fighting them on the desktop because so many users are already entrenched there. Users don't see the back end, they only see their desktop.
I guess I really don't care if Linux makes it as a mainstream desktop. I do care if it doesnt make it in the server world. Microsoft as a server platform just doesn't set well with me. There is too much potential for abuse and too much instability for serious work to get done. If Linux steals the server platform then Microsoft will not be the monopoly that you know today. They can remain on the desktop where some of the best productivity applications exist. That's fine, they created good apps and an ok desktop. That's where Microsoft will be in the future - the desktop.
HI, I used Win2k.
... thats 'business'
I had to repeatedly download updates to try to get internet connection sharing (worked fine in 98SE...) working on my computer. It never worked. After each update, they would suggest 'That update didn't work? Try this one...'.
Also, I liked it when i would reboot and it would find new hardware, all of a sudden, and then crash while installing 'drivers' for this 'new hardware'!
Wow! What a great OS! You are right!
ps.. no
Juln
it most CERTAINLY does... IN SPADES AND CONSTANTLY
it just smells funny
Are we talking about .wma files in Windows Media Player 7 or something else? Because I see absolutely nothing that prevents piracy in .wma files. It's mp3 files in wma format.
I read on zdnet that it is supposed to make it as easy to buy songs as it is to pirate them, that way more people will buy.
Well, if you mean content, say it. ;-)
:-( It's hard to guess that's what you really meant so say, especially in print. I've had that same trouble too, even though I do try to be precise with what words I choose.
Say "rationalize your 40 gig pirated music/movies collection" if that's what you mean. Although there are some here who would flame you for saying "pirated" because that implies rape, destruction of property, etc.
I wasn't trying to be a jerk, but I've lost count of how many times I hear stories about people being "busted for owning MP3s".
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
As much as I can't stand Spears' style, I must
respect her vocal range and quality. I' afraid
I do respect her as a musician. She would have
made a fine mezzo, had she only studied real
music instead of this horrid tripe they call pop.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I personally have a couple of microsoft.com and msn.com addresses in my etc/host file. They all point to 127.0.0.1. This is not a problem for me since I never go to Microsoft's websites. But if I had to, I think I would use an anomyzer site to keep some distance between the beast and me. Better to remove that TCP-IP route between MS and me since I don't need it. But maybe Microsoft does...
sorry. i'm feeling angry today.
Juln
I'll also add that Win2k is very stable, 63 k worth of bugs be damned. Yet another reason not to switch, heh.
Also, as for programming: most all the unix tools have been ported to Windows, we have Mingw32 and Cygwin for POSIX support, etc., etc. -- there's just no good reason for the average user to switch.
Dateline April 1, 2003 MEDIA CORPORATIONS ANNOUNCE PRICE CUTS Secure Media Systems Credited for lower prices Most major media corporations announced today that they would be slashing their prices on Compact Discs, DVDs, and pay-per-view downloadable media this week due to the success of Microsoft's DRM technology and other secure content-delivery systems. "Without pirates eating up a portion of our profits anymore, we no longer need to charge a premium to our paying customers" said Heidi Rosen, CEO of Global Music Marketing Consortium Conglomerates, Inc. "And since our customers no longer have any choice about where to obtain their music, we felt lowering prices to reflect our costs plus a reasonable markup was the only decent thing to do." Spokesmen for other media concerns echoed Rosen's remarks, saying that "in our field, customers always come first. If we weren't delivering the highest quality content to our customers at the lowest possible price, we just wouldn't feel like good people. I mean, how would we sleep at night? There are certain industries where they might feel that just because they have a captive audience, they can get away with charging high prices--check out the price of a beer at a football game, for example. But here at Sony RCA Time Warner AOL McDonald's Corporation, we aren't in it for the money. We do what we do because we love the work." (Note: As a result of the new content price cuts, MS-Slashdot news has billed your MasterCard only $6.95 for reading this article, instead of the regular $9.95 rights fee)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This will probably give you an incredible sound quality since the drivers are usually rated as 8 ohms impedance which is really a nice way of dumbing down the fact that the drivers are really just big nasty non linear inductors. If you replace them with a nice resistor (and they don't try to detect such things) you should get amazingly undistorted sound from which to sample from. Then all you need is a really nice A/D converter and you will get something close enough to the original that is completely indistinguishable.
Now all you have to do is remove the watermark so the poor souls, who aren't as smart as you, can play it on their SDMI compliant HW.
and i have stamped your ticket, little boyo
I'll stop smoking crack tomorrow.
My Freakin Blog
That's all right, we all have bad days ;). Yeah, there are a few updates out there, atleast they are easy to apply (that said, i here getting RedHat updated is hell.... but then again updating Debian is easy). And yeah it can misbehave at times. That said, I'm having a hell of a time have the Debian installler to even recognize one of three network cards i've tried using (and i know i've used one before to install). Ah well, such is life.
------------------------------------
From: http://www.bus.miami.edu/~jdavis/Starwars/sw-scrip t.html
GOVERNOR TARKIN: Princess Leia, before your execution I would like you to be my guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.
LEIA: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Heh. Reminds me of Dire Straits' Money For Nothing:
Look at 'em yo-yos, that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't working, that's the way you do it
Money for nothing and chicks for free
(...)
The little faggot got his own jet airplane
The little faggot is a millionaire
OK, I'm sorry, but I just have to comment on this .sig ... ... The sort of people who just browse the Web, play games, and do spreadsheets have absolutely no reason to run Linux - especially not as root. Sure, they can still drive the car, but they should not be able to pop up the hood and trim the engine ...
You are perfectly correct - mechanics shouldn't be the only people to drive cars. This is the point where M$ actually are doing something good
Just in from Bill Gates himself:
"Users don't want freedom or features. All these linux users, they're just frightened of the many options available to a Windows user. The average Windows user can have a shadow under the mouse pointer. I'd like to see a Linux user do anything like that. We are confident that with these new, um, features we will give every user what they want. Now please everyone out of my way, Napster version 2.8 is out. WOOOHOOOO"
Please note Bill Gates has never used the expression WOOOHOOOO outside the Windows source.
Thank you for the correction. You are, of course, correct. The main point I was trying to make is that you're depriving the owner of revinue illegally - revinue that the (copyright) owner is entitled to. I would contrast this with the Warez community, much of which collects Warez not to use, but just because that's what they do. I believe the statement that the SPA's claim of millions of lost sales of some software packages is overstated because an unauthorized copy doesn't mean that software is being used (and by extention, that it should have been purchaced).
Good point. Will this still be possible with the content "protection" that the RIAA wants ?No. But I will go a step further and note that this level of content protection will not be achieved as it requires rather severe measures such as tying the song to one playback device (so you need a separate copy for home, car & office) or authorization at the time of playback (like Circuit City's Divx did). Consumers have rejected both models repeatedly and I expect (hope) that they will continue to in the future.
-"Zow"
It already has been extended. The mouse was due to be public domain in 3 years, until works for hire got extended 50 more years to protect the mouse, beatles, etc. The copyright extensions are granted to solely protect a small number of valuable properties.
Here's why that's important: of that $20, artists see less than a dollar, and typically less than $.25.
Excellent point! Now I feel better because I'm stealing not from people but huge corporations.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Would that it were true, but alas, 'tis not so. Disney, for example, has been around long enough that its famous mouse would now be public domain, if not for the most recent copyright extension. All signs are that they will continue to exist until the current one pans out, too.
Let me put it this way: I have music at besonic.com/chrisj for free downloading. There's a lot there- put a lot of effort into it because it's what I love to do and I can't get music like what I want out of the major labels anyhow, gotta make it myself.
That said, there comes a point where I don't even care if people go listen to this music- what I am appreciating is a situation where people can go listen to it, if they like, without costing me anything. I can't maintain a distribution network that would put physical CDs in people's hands all over the world for pennies or for free- the CDs that I have made are white elephants, physical media isn't as popular as it used to be, it's a losing deal. Internet distribution is so much better because it's so much more flexible...
So, my primary concern here is not to get better access to major label stuff (I don't even care- it basically sucks, who wants it?) or to gain equal access for my stuff. I'm perfectly happy to have a situation where my stuff can only thrive on its own merits, always out-publicised by other stuff. What I don't want is to be outflanked- don't want to lose the distribution media (redbook CD audio, mp3, internet file distribution) that I _do_ have available at this time.
I consider that a very serious risk- after all, every single one of those taken-for-granted technologies is under attack, up to and including redbook CD audio (see BMG's attempts to introduce a copy protected version). So from my perspective, I totally, completely agree that the music industry wants to be able to force people to buy their products and only their products. As an independent musician, studio owner, recording and mastering engineer not affiliated with the RIAA, I really don't like the idea of the general public being forced _not_ to buy/use _my_ products. Call that capitalism? *spit*
It's a 'boiling the frog' problem- do it slowly and steadily enough and the general public doesn't really notice, particularly when they're not told. The general public does not, for instance, understand exactly what 'music CDRs' are, or why they are more expensive, where the money goes, why some newer players may refuse to play music off 'data CDRs'. None of this is done in daylight- it's done in scheming silence as a fait accompli. It's done through totalitarian processes rather than capitalistic processes, and the intended result resembles state socialism as practiced by the USSR rather than capitalism.
It's funny how much respect I've gained for capitalism once I figured out we Americans don't have it. I'd like to see us have more of it, in addition to the socialist tinge that moderates our government. There's no freaking point in proceeding with a corporate oligarchy totalitarian state and then grudgingly slapping a coat of social-policy socialism onto it to cover up the uglier bits. If we expect to be considered 'capitalist' by history we'd better shape up and start considering the nature of power and where it settles, and take steps to establish that we do have something at least vaguely resembling a free market.
I'm here to tell you that a world in which the only way you can distribute music content to consumers is through corporate-controlled encrypted formats backed by law is not even vaguely resembling a free market from where I'm standing. Please do everything possible to prevent things ever getting to that state, even to the point of boycotting the RIAA labels and intentionally pirating their wares to injure their profit, which is being used against capitalism and for totalitarianism.
I won't be doing that part because I have my hands full simply taking care of my side of things- upgrading my studio, producing music intended to be circulated freely, keeping informed of how things are in the music business. But because of the direction I see things going, I have to say I completely support and respect anyone who's actually trying to use music piracy as a weapon to hurt the RIAA labels. Hey, name one other weapon we have? I don't see any other defense against them, and just because it's not being fought in _your_ trenches doesn't mean it's not a war.
You got it to work? I remember downloading it and trying it (why does mentioning this make me feel so dirty?)... it was a ~2.5 MB static linked binary, and I never could get it to play anything. It'd start up, and you could not persuade it to stream anything. It just sat there, looking like ass, and taking up memory and disk space. Needless to say, it quickly entered the big bit-bucket in the sky.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
And in X, I highlight "text" in any application, and it's in the copy button. I press the middle mouse button in any text field in any application, and it's pasted. X has better support for cut and paste than Windows does. Now, that's not "Linux" but "X," but X comes on most distros I've seen.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
That seems to be what I've heard before - and I believe it. The latest pop sensations seem to be the only ones making the money. And of course, if it's true, it kind of disproves the whole "artists need to make money to create, otherwise they wouldn't do it" spiel - I believe that a real artist will do what he/she enjoys as a sideline, if nothing else, not because it makes them money, but because it brings them enjoyment.
That's the big problem with the whole theory of the need of the "entertainment industry" - it seems like the best stuff comes from those who aren't making the big bucks. Kinda like free software/open source?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
There was an allegation that about 7 years ago Microsoft did use undocumented API calls in their only internal software. This came out during the court case which resulted in the consent decree of 1995.
You're probably referring to the calls described in Andrew Schulman's book. Actually, there's not a shred of evidence that Microsoft now maintains an impermeable membrane between their OS design and applications people. In fact, several of their departments perform both tasks.
Really, no shit sherlock. Every windows browser I have seen has them though, and that is what we were talking about.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. People think the music industry is competitive but in one essential respect it is not: if I want to buy song X I *must* buy it from record company Y. Copyright keeps anyone else from `manufacturing' that song. That permits company Y to charge monopolistic prices. More than anything else the record companies want to preserve this selective monopoly.
I HAVE used NT5. Infact, I use it on a daily basis. If I don't treat it gently, it will lock up on me within a couple of days. My wife also uses NT5. She treats it even more gently than I do and she can still get it to crash..
So far, Win2K does NOT seem to be "leaps and bounds" of NT4. Certainly on the desktop it is not.
Don't just blindly assume that those of us that criticize WinDOS or NT haven't been using it steadily since version 5.0 (DOS) or version 3.51 (NT).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Really? *Good* to know.
I had no idea.
But why would you need to reboot for a device driver?
I've hot plugged devices (mainly HDs) into Win2K before, they worked.
I understand that for some stuff you *have* to reboot.
It should be fixed, ASAP.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Because: It's a patent, so it's enforcable even if it's reverse engineered.
VirutalDub was forced to remove ASF support because of this patent protection.
(Sure a file format patent can probably be challenged, but who has time and money to fight Microsoft on that one when you could just use AVI.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Its interesting how many of these media access control architectures that the various large corporations are pushing are built around software.
What these big corporations are forgetting is that software is just a bunch of bits stored on some magnetic media somewhere. These bits can be looked at, pondered over, duplicated and modified.
Yes, your operating system may verify that your software is special in some way. Perhaps your programs must be signed by one of these corporation's master keys before the program can even begin play with the imprisoned audio and video. But your operating system itself is just a bunch of bits, and bits can be changed. How can an operating verify it has not been altered or even verify that it verified itself?
Of course, there is always hardware. Sure, your hardware may insist that your software meets some specific, magical criteria before the software gets the privilege of looking at that imprisoned song, book or movie, but the hardware still depends upon the software. And software is just a bunch of bits. And bits can be learned from or changed. And hardware can be deceived.
And then there is the hardware itself. The opaque, unchanging, mysterious hardware. Or is it? Opaque? No, hardware can be studied as well. Logic analyzers, in-circuit emulators, oscilliscopes and other toys allow for the exploration of the depths of the machines. Unchanging? Also wrong. Flash memory, EPROMs, and soldering irons abound. Nothing is immutable. Mysterious? No as well. Someone designed it. Somewhere out there exists the source code to the firmware and the VHDL for the chips themselves. Nothing can go undiscovered forever.
So where does this leave us?
No matter what obstacles are thrown at us by those who espouse the ideal that absolutely no action should go uncharged, they will be overcome. There will always be a Jon Johansen or a Julien Stern and Julien Boeuf that step out of the corner and say "Hey wait, your system isn't so special at all."
Then those big corporations will start all over again. They will come up with their Next Great Thing, their New Magic Bullet, their Unbreakable Secure System. Their marketing departments and PR flaks will crow about how wonderfully great their new system is. Until someone else steps out of the depths...
Information is unstoppable.
---
The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
You got that straight. The music industry has been ripping off the masses for years now. The only reason we accept CDs for $20 is because we've been trained to think thats how much they're worth, just like we've been trained to think how impossibly special and talented "artists" actually are.
Please don't preach to me about hard working artists. It's not hard work being an artist. Some record exec decides what songs you'll sing, what look you'll have, what demographic you'll be targetting. Some dip shit writes your songs. All the "artist" has to do is sing(wow, that's real hard to learn how to do) and go on Leno once in a while to demonstrate his/her stupidity in an interview ("I've been singing since I was 3!"). It's hard work being a pediatrician, or researcher, but instead, the artists are becoming billioners instead of these people, who are actually doing something for humanity.
And please, no business majors preaching about "supply and demand". $20 a cd is theft, in my book, and I dont care about anyone else's book.
gnapster and opennap is all I need. it will take a long while before the lawyers smash these up. poetic justice.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
It looks more like Copy Control to me. If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, calling it a mallard doesn't make it any less of a duck.
Strangely enough, It does have core dumps on crash. You simply gotta turn the feature on (*gasp*).
--matt Cowger
I've never seen this particular type of code in the wild, and I'd suspect that the people who wrote the Adaptec CD-Burning installer either weren't aware of how to do this or didn't have enough time to give this good code coverage.
I've heard from a very reliable source that any MS app that causes a reboot will get increasingly pointed reminders from increasingly upper management that Thou Shalt Not Reboot. I'd bet dollars to donuts that they figure out some way around this issue for v.next.
::sings:: The sound card's connected to the stereo mini-dual mono adapter. The adapter's connected to the mixer. The mixer's connected to the ADAT And I'll record my songs. The joys of being a musician. Bite me, Microsoft.
The Internet, one place where if you're not right, someone else will set you straight... maybe.
Jay Samit seems to get it.
Microsoft doesn't have to invent an uncrackable scheme; they just have to invent one that makes it a bit more difficult and annoying to steal, while at the same time they make it as easy as possible to just pay for the song. I'm all in favor of this. (I want this to work on Linux too, so I don't really want Microsoft to control it. But the idea itself isn't evil.)
But it won't work while the record companies try to charge too much money for the songs. $4 each? That's one-fourth the cost of a CD!
Whenever I consider copy-protection issues, I always remember the example Borland set in the mid-80's. At a time when other companies were charging high prices and using copy protection, Borland charged low prices and didn't use copy protection, and sold a ton of products. The lesson is clear: if you charge a fair price, most people will pay you instead of ripping you off.
So if Microsoft or anyone else can make a system as easy-to-use as Napster, which makes payment so easy it's automatic; and if this system is then loaded with music the average person thinks is fairly priced... it will be a gold mine.
But what makes a fair price?
Serving up music via the Net should reduce costs for everyone. No need to pay for warehouse space to store piles of CDs. No need to pay a CD manufacturer; no defective CDs to throw away. No guessing wrong what the people want, and having to destroy thousands of CDs no one would buy. No retail markup. The band makes the music, the web page sells it, the consumer listens. Not a middle-man in sight, which (as Scott McCloud says) is great news as long as you aren't one of the middle-men.
When costs fall, prices always fall too. If they can make money now selling a CD for $15, they ought to be able to make money charging a heck of a lot less just for a copy of the bits.
Well, here is the kicker: the record companies seem to want to lock the prices in where they are now, despite costs that will be lower to them. In other words, they want their profit margin to go up, a lot. And they seem to think that just by using the right copy-protection technology, they will be able to do it. It won't work.
In the future, the cost of music will fall. It's going to happen. The record companies can get on board and make money, or they can try to use copy-protection to prop up prices and go broke.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Which is just bullshit. The 'honest people' are going to get the decrypted versions of these files over systems like Napster or, since Napster is going full-on-corporate gnutella, cutemx, or whatever pop up to replace these if they disappear. They won't know or care that the original file had to be hacked using some obscure hacked Windows kernal with 'Secure Audio Path' code disabled. And I'm ignoring, for now, the fact that anyone can still just rip the original CD and ignore the music company's 'approved' digital version of the file (at least until they supplant CDs with something that has more protetion built in).
The core problem is this: Many people have already gotten used to the free distribution of this type of media...Since this is the case, systems designed only to keep 'honest people honest' are doomed to failure because the 'dishonest' people (the hacker/cracker/whateveryouwanttocallthem) will disable any protections and then get the unprotected versions out onto these distribution channels where the honest ignorant people are.
...when all devices in our lives are digital. All connected together on the same fiber-optic network. Data from any device could be routed to any other, anywhere on the planet in an instant. Think of the possibilities.
The downside however is that most of this data will probably be encrypted. The manufacturers will claim it's in the interests of fighting piracy, but it's more than that. In actuality, you won't be able to use the data in any way, shape or form without obtaining some kind of costly license, thus enabling the makers of these fine products to control innovation. In other words, they don't want to allow anyone to make a better product unless they get a cut.
If this scenario happens I can see two possible outcomes. Either the world will wake up and smell the feces, or those of us who cherish our freedom to create and interoperate will be labeled outcasts and outlaws.
>please turn off the cron'd perl scrips
it's a bash script, ok... geez...
=)
-andy
I think not. I will pour gas all over myself and light a match before I let them do that to me.
> I've heard from a very reliable source that any MS app that causes a reboot will get increasingly pointed reminders from increasingly upper management that Thou Shalt Not Reboot. I'd bet dollars to donuts that they figure out some way around this issue for v.next.
Thank you!
It seems that some sense has been finally beaten into MS.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
i have no problems stealing from an industy that has codified fucking over consumers, do you know what industry colusion means, it means you have no fucking choice.
A blog about stuff.
Singing is real work. Having spent 8 years training with private teachers and professors at conservatories, Singing is a real career, and real work.
Granted, the manufactured spice girls/britney spears, etc... only work there is the choreography, which is no small task... I don't like their music, and don't really respect them as musicians, but they do know how to dance.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
I tried to shit standing up today but it didn't work... I got brown runny shit all up and down my legs now...
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called "alternative sexuality," which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
Linus Torvalds is an anagram of SLIT ANUS OR VD "L", clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
Richard M Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual "movement" is an anagram of MANS CRAM THRILL AD.
Alan Cox is barely an anagram of ANAL COX which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, [Buy At Amazon] is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for SECONDARY RIM and CORD IN MY ARSE. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
As far as Richard "Master" Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following:
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about "flaming," who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of Corrupting the Innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, jon??????? and letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as "Slashdot's resident Gasbag." Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux "Sauce Code", a "Gasbag" is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, "piss-pipe"), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.
Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.
In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a distribution is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the Slack-wear fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of CLAW ARSE, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for DARK AMEN and RAM NAKED, which is what they do.
Another "distro," (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like "Disco," which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970's), is Debian, an anagram of IN A BED, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. "Woody" is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with precum. But far sicker is the phrase "Frozen Potato" that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual "Sauce Code," refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen "potato" up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.
And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.
To summarise: Linux is gay. "Slash - Dot" is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled "stumpers."
Feedback:
Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux "Sauce code" once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase "Monolithic Kernel"?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to WARN them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.
Doesn't it give you a hard on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!
Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the "Open Sauce" movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.
We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of "Baywatch" until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.
Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux "sauce code" is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: "Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow." And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!
For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M - The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.
Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by A Black Man. Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.
Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that PERL (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to "Pearl Monocle", "Pearl Nosering", and the ubiquitous "Pearl Enema".
One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple - It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely. There are two colons next to each other! As Larry "Balls to the" Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts - having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of "colon kissing," whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming circles as "Parameter Passing".
And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I DO know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.
However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerebus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an "extension" to the Linux "Sauce Code," for the sake of "interoperability." (The slang term they use for unconsensual intercourse - their favorite kind.)
In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the "Samba Server," into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the recturm, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the "Samba Server" collapses due to "overload," and needs to be "rebooted." (i.e. Kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their "uptime" in such situations.
If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by voting this message up as often as possible. I recommend +1 Underrated, as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened Bender???
IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator) across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License, according to geekacronyms.org) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is KNOWN to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.
Come to think of it, the whole concept of "Source Control" unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like "Sauce Control," which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And "Open Sauce" is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, "Closed Sauce" is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.
Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of "soggy biscuit" that open "sauce" development has become) Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Jon Katz, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.
ANUX - A full Linux distribution... UP YOUR ASS!
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
I believe the word you intended there was "celluloid".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
90%, come on lets be realistic. how much does a artist get from each cd sale, they dont get $6-$10 this is more like 500% commision.
A blog about stuff.
Instead of having the DoJ tear them apart, M$ will now shoot themselves in the head, tightening the leash they have on the end user by further limiting what he can do with his shit (not like it already does for the sake of "system stability"). I can't wait until M$ products require each person to submit retinal scans, fingerprint ID, and sperm samples to validate that you are indeed in the database of official license holders. Hell, stamp barcodes on our foreheads while you're at it, Bill!
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. -Friedrich Nietzsche
good point, well argued too.
A blog about stuff.
just thought you should know.
A blog about stuff.
"This InteractiveWeek article describes how Microsoft, without much public attetion, has built multimedia content protection technology into Windows, thus encouraging the movie and music industries to adapt the Windows Media formats for their content."
None of you people actually use any Micros~1 products, Right? So what's all the fuss?
forth ?love if honk then
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called "alternative sexuality," which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
Linus Torvalds is an anagram of SLIT ANUS OR VD "L", clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
Richard M Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual "movement" is an anagram of MANS CRAM THRILL AD.
Alan Cox is barely an anagram of ANAL COX which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, [Buy At Amazon] is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for SECONDARY RIM and CORD IN MY ARSE. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
As far as Richard "Master" Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following:
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about "flaming," who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of Corrupting the Innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, jon??????? and letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as "Slashdot's resident Gasbag." Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux "Sauce Code", a "Gasbag" is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, "piss-pipe"), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.
Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.
In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a distribution is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the Slack-wear fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of CLAW ARSE, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for DARK AMEN and RAM NAKED, which is what they do.
Another "distro," (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like "Disco," which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970's), is Debian, an anagram of IN A BED, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. "Woody" is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with precum. But far sicker is the phrase "Frozen Potato" that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual "Sauce Code," refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen "potato" up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.
And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.
To summarise: Linux is gay. "Slash - Dot" is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled "stumpers."
Feedback:
Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux "Sauce code" once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase "Monolithic Kernel"?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to WARN them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.
Doesn't it give you a hard on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!
Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the "Open Sauce" movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.
We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of "Baywatch" until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.
Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux "sauce code" is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: "Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow." And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!
For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M - The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.
Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by A Black Man. Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.
Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that PERL (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to "Pearl Monocle", "Pearl Nosering", and the ubiquitous "Pearl Enema".
One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple - It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely. There are two colons next to each other! As Larry "Balls to the" Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts - having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of "colon kissing," whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming circles as "Parameter Passing".
And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I DO know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.
However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerebus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an "extension" to the Linux "Sauce Code," for the sake of "interoperability." (The slang term they use for unconsensual intercourse - their favorite kind.)
In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the "Samba Server," into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the recturm, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the "Samba Server" collapses due to "overload," and needs to be "rebooted." (i.e. Kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their "uptime" in such situations.
If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by voting this message up as often as possible. I recommend +1 Underrated, as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened Bender???
IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator) across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License, according to geekacronyms.org) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is KNOWN to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.
Come to think of it, the whole concept of "Source Control" unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like "Sauce Control," which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And "Open Sauce" is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, "Closed Sauce" is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.
Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of "soggy biscuit" that open "sauce" development has become) Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Jon Katz, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.
ANUX - A full Linux distribution... UP YOUR ASS!!
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called "alternative sexuality," which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
Linus Torvalds is an anagram of SLIT ANUS OR VD "L", clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
Richard M Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual "movement" is an anagram of MANS CRAM THRILL AD.
Alan Cox is barely an anagram of ANAL COX which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, [Buy At Amazon] is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for SECONDARY RIM and CORD IN MY ARSE. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
As far as Richard "Master" Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following:
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about "flaming," who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of Corrupting the Innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, jon??????? and letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as "Slashdot's resident Gasbag." Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux "Sauce Code", a "Gasbag" is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, "piss-pipe"), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.
Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.
In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a distribution is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the Slack-wear fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of CLAW ARSE, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for DARK AMEN and RAM NAKED, which is what they do.
Another "distro," (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like "Disco," which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970's), is Debian, an anagram of IN A BED, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. "Woody" is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with precum. But far sicker is the phrase "Frozen Potato" that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual "Sauce Code," refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen "potato" up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.
And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.
To summarise: Linux is gay. "Slash - Dot" is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled "stumpers."
Feedback:
Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux "Sauce code" once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase "Monolithic Kernel"?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to WARN them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.
Doesn't it give you a hard on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!
Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the "Open Sauce" movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.
We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of "Baywatch" until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.
Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux "sauce code" is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: "Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow." And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!
For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M - The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.
Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by A Black Man. Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.
Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that PERL (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to "Pearl Monocle", "Pearl Nosering", and the ubiquitous "Pearl Enema".
One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple - It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely. There are two colons next to each other! As Larry "Balls to the" Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts - having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of "colon kissing," whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming circles as "Parameter Passing".
And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I DO know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.
However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerebus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an "extension" to the Linux "Sauce Code," for the sake of "interoperability." (The slang term they use for unconsensual intercourse - their favorite kind.)
In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the "Samba Server," into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the recturm, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the "Samba Server" collapses due to "overload," and needs to be "rebooted." (i.e. Kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their "uptime" in such situations.
If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by voting this message up as often as possible. I recommend +1 Underrated, as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened Bender???
IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator) across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License, according to geekacronyms.org) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is KNOWN to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.
Come to think of it, the whole concept of "Source Control" unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like "Sauce Control," which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And "Open Sauce" is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, "Closed Sauce" is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.
Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of "soggy biscuit" that open "sauce" development has become) Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Jon Katz, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.
ANUX - A full Linux distribution... UP YOUR ASS!!!
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
And, with an ass as hairy as mine, how the hell do I then get that tape off???
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
And, with an ass as hairy as mine, how the hell do I then get that tape off???
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
By the time they shall, under the present law, give away the copyright keys to the public, those corporations will have been dead for long... very long.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so-called "alternative sexuality," which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
Linus Torvalds is an anagram of SLIT ANUS OR VD "L", clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
Richard M Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual "movement" is an anagram of MANS CRAM THRILL AD.
Alan Cox is barely an anagram of ANAL COX which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, [Buy At Amazon] is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for SECONDARY RIM and CORD IN MY ARSE. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
As far as Richard "Master" Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following:
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about "flaming," who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of Corrupting the Innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, jon??????? and letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as "Slashdot's resident Gasbag." Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux "Sauce Code", a "Gasbag" is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, "piss-pipe"), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.
Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.
In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a distribution is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the Slack-wear fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of CLAW ARSE, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for DARK AMEN and RAM NAKED, which is what they do.
Another "distro," (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like "Disco," which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970's), is Debian, an anagram of IN A BED, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. "Woody" is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with precum. But far sicker is the phrase "Frozen Potato" that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual "Sauce Code," refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen "potato" up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.
And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.
To summarise: Linux is gay. "Slash - Dot" is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled "stumpers."
Feedback:
Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux "Sauce code" once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase "Monolithic Kernel"?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to WARN them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.
Doesn't it give you a hard on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!
Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the "Open Sauce" movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.
We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of "Baywatch" until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.
Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux "sauce code" is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: "Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow." And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!
For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M - The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.
Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by A Black Man. Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.
Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that PERL (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to "Pearl Monocle", "Pearl Nosering", and the ubiquitous "Pearl Enema".
One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple - It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely. There are two colons next to each other! As Larry "Balls to the" Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts - having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of "colon kissing," whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming circles as "Parameter Passing".
And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I DO know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.
However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerebus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an "extension" to the Linux "Sauce Code," for the sake of "interoperability." (The slang term they use for unconsensual intercourse - their favorite kind.)
In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the "Samba Server," into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the recturm, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the "Samba Server" collapses due to "overload," and needs to be "rebooted." (i.e. Kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their "uptime" in such situations.
If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by voting this message up as often as possible. I recommend +1 Underrated, as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened Bender???
IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator) across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License, according to geekacronyms.org) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is KNOWN to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.
Come to think of it, the whole concept of "Source Control" unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like "Sauce Control," which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And "Open Sauce" is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, "Closed Sauce" is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.
Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of "soggy biscuit" that open "sauce" development has become) Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Jon Katz, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.
ANUX - A full Linux distribution... UP YOUR ASS!
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
Everything can be cracked, as long as a path for retrieving the information exists. In this case, since speakers do output consistent data, the intermediate node can be replaced by a non-fucked one. It's just a question of time and logic. A kind of game some people love to solve. You may have to wait months before the solution comes out, but when the protection is cracked, the game is over for the fucking corporation which relies on it to steal people's right to copy content. And the corporation's gonna bye-bye.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
whoops, yeah, what was I thinking....
:-# -- Is that the international smiley for "barfing"?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
> All that it's going to do is stop lamers from
> copying/pirating stuff. Anybody who really > wants to dupe stuff is going to find A Way(tm).
I'm afraid you're missing an important point: the only reason there's _so_ much content out there right now is because lamers put it there. It doesn't take too much savvy to start Napster and share your hard-to-find mp3s via the cable modem.
If the industry is smart, they will infuse copy protection in the softest way possible. This is the start. Next time you search for anything out of the mainstream, you might find a "pirated" copy of it in the Windows Media Format, set to expire in 30 days. Most people who share the content aren't nerds like us. They'll use whatever is easiest (which happens to be mp3 at the moment).
It's because of this type of "soft tyranny" that it's become nearly impossible to live in a UNIX-only world (there's very little I can do to stop my boss's boss from thinking that PowerPoint is a standard graphics format).
>MicroSoft makes me mad sometimes...
...as it should
I wonder if I can make music, scramble it, and offer it - or do I have to pay BIG BUCKS like the BIG COMPANIES in order to protect my work? Am I even entitled to use this technology to my own protection? Is this monopolizing the Media Mogulls as well?
Is their opinion as humble as mine?
--------
* Sigh *
thats a great idea, and except for the fact that the mpaa and the riaa have a virtual monopoly on music and movie it would work.
A blog about stuff.
But good luck playing digital content from RIAA companies on anything else.
*evil cackle*
I'm sorry, have you actually used win2K, or are you just assuming that it's win95 SP27. Win2k is stable. Very stable. I have seen 2 blue screens using, and both were do to a bad driver. It may not be as stable as every *nix varient out there, but it's close.
Also, comparing the stability of 9x to 2k, it is obvious that microsoft is working on making a better, more stable product (even if part of that is simply switching home users to the NT kernel... that said, 2k is leaps and bounds ahead of NT4).
Please, in the future don't just blindly flame Windows and MS, if they made products as bad as you potray then they wouldn't be in the position they are today... good (evil?) bussiness tactics can only go so far!
------------------------------------
I hate to interrupt you, but...
Many Windows applications are provided as "shareware", without source code, so the programs cannot be customized, debugged, improved, or extended by the user.
Fascinating...but I should tell you that...
That brings us to price. The server edition of Windows 2000 costs nearly $650. Even basic applications cost extra. Users often spend many thousands of dollars for programs that are included for free with Linux or FreeBSD. I think that says it all, really. Sorry to all you Microsoft fans - but try going on fact - like the facts stated above, rather than FUD, like the FUD contained on Microsoft's web site.
Your in a tight spot if you're trolling for 'Microsoft Fans', sorry.
Oh yeah, someone rated this 'Interesting'?
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
The problem is that the people who want free music get in the way of people like me who have non-pop musical tastes and need not to have to haunt auction sites for years to track down elusive tracks. I'm all up for paying for music, because:
- I'll get great hi-fidelity copies of the music
- I'll have a better chance of getting those rare tracks
- the artists get paid and will be more likely to continue to make more music for me
- more tracks can be released because there's no longer any confinement to physical time-length limitations
The idea here is that there SHOULD be a music industry, and that all the jerks that would like to have the Art of Noise working at food kitchens alongside the music execs (don't forget: pirating hurts all parties who have a commercial interest) shouldn't spoil the digital music scene for the rest of us.If they have this built into the OS, then it's going to give people producing commercial content a big incentive to only produce content for Windows Media Player. Think in corporate management terms: "Hey, 90% of people use Windows, so that's where our big market is. And if we try to reach that other 10%, we're not going to be able to protect our content!"
I believe the term for this is "Leveraging a Monopoly to Acheive Another Monopoly".
IANAL. Use your own judgement.
--Kai
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
gnapster and opennap is all I need.
And should gnapster and opennap ever fail you, I have only but 3 words to say... Audiogalaxy dot com
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
> The technologies, in turn, are being set deeply into the Windows operating system.
Very true, they are so interwhined into Windows that in order to update Windows Media Player, you've to reboot!
Talking about Windows 2000 here, I mean, how deep did they stuck WMP, if they need to reboot in order to update it?
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
...or have you not tried it yet?
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
There isn't even any pretense that these sort of measures are aimed at large scale commercial pirates. They're very clearly pushed as being a way to stop people in general from getting what we want.
This is a big mistake.
The marketing message that content producers should want to send is that people want their product, that their product with the packaging, the assurance of quality and knowing that you are supporting the artists etc. is something that you/me/everyone wants.
The message they're actually sending to the public at large is that people don't want to buy thier product and want to get a copy instead, but that they will use technology to stop us getting what we want so that we'll have to get their product as a second best.
This seems to be incredibly ill advised. If people are sold on the idea by the content producers themselves that the product isn't really something they want just something they have to accept because they can't get the free copies they do want then of course they're going to go running to the download sites every time a scheme gets cracked.
The music industry seems to be marketing against itself.