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Slashback: Decade, Fragmentation, RDRAM
A screenplay written by Jack Valenti? cc_pirate writes: "Apparently Sen. Fritz Hollings (D - Disney, er - SC) completed his hearings today on how the media needs to have content protection included in computers. Intel and other high tech companies resist and are chastized by Hollings."
Penguins are the new Turtles. Gerein writes "After many months of extreme lobbying, personal attacks, public petitions and surveys, the war over the future OS of the Bundestag (German parliament) is finally over (previous /. stories). As heise reports (in german, use the fish) Linux won't make it to the desktops (they're going with XP) but will take over the 150 servers. The last critical question over the directory service has finally been decided in favor to OpenLDAP instead of Active Directory. It's not the complete victory for Linux, many had hoped for, but it's a start for more Open Source in the German government."
Full disclosure seems like a nice idea. Merlynnus writes: "Yahoo! is running a story, Copy-protected CD makers lose battle, in which Music City Records, Fahrenheit Entertainment and digital rights management company Sunncomm have 'agreed' to stop collecting personal info, and to label copy-protected CDs as defective, er, play-challenged in certain devices. The agreement came as the result of court action by a Cali resident, Karen DeLise, over the Charlie Pride CD, 'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?"
This should have been transparent. Metrollica writes: "It turns out the transparent aluminium article at Spiegel was misunderstood. Sci-fighter published a correction. The transparent substance was not aluminium but alumina, shorthand for aluminium oxide. Slashdot reported on transparent aluminium here."
Odds are, somebody's written a thesis on it ... and here one is. Whether in response to this Ask Slashdot question or just a lucky guesser, Cine writes: "The standard filesystem benchmarking tools such as Bonnie++, Postmark , Mongo and others all test the optimum case for the block layouting algorithm. But in practice one also is interested to know how a filesystem performs when it is or was heavily used over a longer period (e.g. months and years).So Constantin Loizides has written a Master Thesis about the performance of filesystems under the influence of fragmentation."
Intel-Rambus break not as simple as portrayed.
Controlio writes: "Tom's Hardware Guide has posted a clarification regarding the EBN story with the sensational headline, 'Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products'. The article was also posted on Slashdot. Tom reports:
EBN had the sensational headline Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products, but the story goes on to say, "Intel will continue using Direct Rambus memory with its network processors. Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year." A little misleading, wouldn't you say? Hard to tell, but you read it for yourself, and make your own call.Great. More sensational journalism. Maybe someone should submit Jack Robertson's resume to Fox News."
Finally, some congratulations are in order. danny writes (does he ever): "February 28th marks the 10th anniversary of my first book review; there are now over six hundred. I have written an account of ten years writing book reviews, which illustrates something of how online publication has changed over the years."
"'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?"
Well, the idea here, as in many unsavory endeavors, is to establish a precedent. Go after something nobody should notice and then claim "but we've been doing it for so long and the consumers accepted it."
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?
With the huge success of a bluegrass music at last night's grammy awards, the demand for country (American Roots/bluegrass/traditional) music will, most likely, increase greatly.
I, as much as any code monkey, love "music to code by" -- especially metal -- but I was thrilled to see O Brother Where Art Thou do so well. It was a great movie with an even better soundtrack.
When I run, I really like my mp3 player. It doesn't skip like compact discs do, and it fits into my pocket. Oh wait, those aren't allowed. Ok...how about cassette tapes? Hmm...this is not as good, it's bigger and I don't have random access to songs. What's that Fritz? These aren't any good either? I can pirate stuff with these? Well, I guess I'm going to run without any of the shit that Hollywood pumps out then. It's not like Vivendi Universal is stepping in with an innovative new technology any time soon.
And of course, I would like to tape that show that is on while I'm running. Can't do that now, can I? God forbid using a PVR too, those things are brutal for Hollywood. Ok...I just won't watch it then....
I'm sure everyone on Slashdot knows where I'm going with this. If it becomes too cumbersome to access entertainment, people are going to look for something else. Lest our good friend, Fritz Hollings, the Senator from Disney forget, politicians are the same way. Too cumbersome, and before you know it, elected right out of office!
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
There's one of the fundamental issues. Disney has obviously benefited from the wealth of human knowledge available in the public domain. However, in their greed, they refuse to let any of THEIR contributions enter the public domain.
This is a fundamental problem, and one of the reasons that Disney is just as immoral, if not significantly more so, than the people "stealing" their content. At least with the "stolen" content ideas get passed around - Disney et al would have knowledge locked up and only available to the highest bidder.
Throughout history, technology has been key to opening up new markets. It only represents a problem if it is allowed to undermine existing markets by facilitating [unauthorized copying].
Wow! New technology is okay, as long as it doesn't undermine existing markets?? That's a great quote.
Welcome to New Capitalism: from each corporation according to their ability, to each corporation according to their need.
I don't know how accurate the article is, but it states that the reason we need mandatory copy-prevention is to encourage the major content distributors to put their wares in digital form. This, therefore, will drive the adoption of high speed Internet access and HDTV.
This is a completely circular argument, that doesn't make any sense to me. The media companies want to take away my ability to own a PC that does what I want, in return for services I also don't want.
So basically, the media companies basically want to own everything, and we should just turn over control of our networks and computers to them so that they can more easily make money from us.
If you want to go after the illegal distribution of your wares, fine, go ahead, I won't stop you. But just because you want to make money doesn't mean that you now have the right to take away our freedoms.
Let's say the entire technology industry agrees that intel and motorola have a DRM package and it's what they're going to roll out. For the sake of argument, let's say Motorola and Intel will make the chipsets and open driver information so the DRM can be easily integrated into any OS.
I just don't see the upside for the computer manufacturers to figure this one out. If the do it they'll be blamed for creating poor protection, or blamed for raising the cost of movies, or blamed for making your new home theater useless.
It's the studio's content -they should figure out how to lock it up. After all, I don't make my neighbors wear GPS tracking devices just because I refuse to lock my door.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I would rather not have movies at all than to be forced to use copy prevention on my PC. If the lack of copy prevention is what is keeping the MPAA from joining the internet age, well, they can just stay where they are as far as I'm concerned.
I will buy neither digital products that cannot be backed up, converted into other formats, or otherwise copied. I still use VHS for this reason. I'll buy a DVD player when I can finally make backups with DVD's. Nor will I buy disabled computers. Somehow I doubt the Pacific Rim manufacturers I buy computer parts from are going to bend over backwards for this.
The technologies that I can backup, copy and preserve? Sure, I download MP3's, but usually just to check out a band or to find something thats not available on CD. If its something I like I buy the CD, because MP3 takes away too much for me to fully enjoy the sound. I spend at least $100 a month on music, and another $50 or so buying movies. But I will spend $0 on products I can't back up or copy, or computers that are bastardized with copy protection.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
You forgot to mention K^HSimba, The Lion King.
Ahh yes, but they don't derive, look at their view of such things as:
'the kings new groove' (reality, the spaniards turned up and killed/tortured everyone)
'the hunchback of notre dame' (reality, being killed for looking different)
'pocahontis' (nope, I'm not even going to touch that one).
'anastasia' (reality, the violent murder of the russian royal family)
they certainly aren't COPYING stories, just rewriting history to be SO MUCH NICER, what more can we ask from our leaders (sorry, I mean media).
This ignorance has become dangerous to all of us. Like to back up your system using mass storage with Hollywood-style copy protection built in?
Hollywood has already bought the politicians who are going to decide on this. They don't get it. There's no political profit in getting this.
I've said for some time if the high-tech community from CEOs to end users all decided to pull together on an issue, that we can win regardless of opposition.
Collectively, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sybase, and Unisys are a probably lot bigger and employ more people than the motion picture industry. I mention these companies because their leaders signed an open letter to MPAA asking that the movie industry start having real discussions with them with respect to a solution everyone can live with.
Jack Valenti figures correctly that he doesn't have to compromise, and by the time Hollywood finds out that their own computers have been compromised by the solution the top corporate suits bought from Congress, he'll be in a very well paid retirement.
Perhaps it's time for high-tech industry to stop kissing their asses and start kicking them and see about enlisting our help in kicking them as well.
If these high-tech companies start buying media time and doing press campaigns about just what the Hollywood solution means (start with pictures of dark factory floors, blue screens on computers, etc.) in conjunction to putting out a call to write letters to Congress to their employees and their developer communities and to communities like this one.
I'd certainly write my own Senators over this issue even if the request was signed by Bill Gates.
I've been telling people to avoid XP and I've been running AMD in my boxes for years and years. However, there are issues where the most die-hard Linux fanatic with any sense will realize that we've got common interests.
If the Senators don't get the point, a number of them are up for re-election this fall. High-tech money and voters can make the difference between who wins and who loses.
We know who our enemies are. We can't do anything permanent on them by ourselves. A high-tech coalition can probably remake Congress in our own image. We don't have to like Microsoft, just be glad they're on our side for a change and be willing to work with them.
There are other major corporations who would be greatly inconvenienced by having MPAA use Congress to tell us what our computers are going to look like and what can and can't be done on the Internet.
It's coalition time. It's single-issue politics time. . . us vs. the laws Hollywood has used Congress to ram down our collective throats. I know that every major corporation I mentioned specifically has people reading slashdot. Carry the word back to your bosses that it's time to see what kind of coalition we can put together.
High tech developers and users plus high-tech corporate money is probably an unstoppable political force. There are few issues that we can all agree on, but on those issues, we need to work together.
Tech Public Policy stuff
That whizzing noise you hear is the point you missed flying by.
He wasn't saying Disney is wrong for remaking all these storys. As a matter of fact he is defending Disney's right to do so.
The point is that if *I* make a MickyMouse story I will be sued to bankruptcy. You see, the copyright on Micky Mouse fell into the public domain decades ago - No, way, it didn't - they rewrote the copyright laws. But then Micky Mouse fell into the public domain again, no wait a minute, they extended the copyright another 20 years. But it's ok, I'll be able to publish my Micky Mouse story RealSoonNow, the copyright has almost expired again.
The point is that they are free to use everything in the public domain. Everything they produce is protected for life+70 years, plus an extra 20 year extension every few years.
They benefit from the public domain, but never contribute to it. That is a violation of the original principles of copyright. The constitution requires limited duration for copyright protection. Unfortunately 10,000 years is "limited".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Tonight I ran into my first defective CD. It was the newly-released Alanis Morissette album (you have your tastes, I have mine). My wife and I bought this along with the new release from Pink, came home and popped it into one of our computers while we made dinner.
After a minute or two I noticed that the speakers remained mysteriously quiet, and that no music puntuated the sounds of rattling dishes in the kitchen. Ambling over to the computer I popped open Windows Explorer (my wife had booted into Windows on her computer to play a game and hadn't booted back to Linux) and noticed...
...nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. There was a 'special media presentation' on the CD just begging for our attention, but other than that *no tracks* appeared on the CD. Wisely expressing my confusion with the words "what the fuck?" I popped the disc back in...and still there were no tracks.
Just that goddamned media thingy trying to get my attention. I didn't buy the damned CD for any bloody commercial, I bought it for *music*. Fuck the damned commercial, where the hell was my MUSIC???
With growing horror I realized I'd just been given the RIAA shaft up the ass for the first time. Here I was, with a CD I legally purchased, unable to play it in my - goddamnit - CD player.
Quickly I scanned the case and the plastic wrap the CD came in, thinking I'd missed some disclaimer like 'won't play on a computer, you mp3-ripping pirate asshole'. But no. Even the tiny print on the back said nothing of the sort. There was no warning of any kind to indicate that the CD was intentionally defective.
With something akin to a cry of rage, echoed by my incredibly pissed-off wife, I transferred the cd to my computer - which was running Linux - and fired up the burning software to see if it could find the tracks. It did without any problem whatsoever. Put it back into the machine running windows - the tracks were gone. Rebooted my machine to windows - no tracks. Booted my wife's computer to Linux and ran the ripping software - the tracks were there.
Yep, no doubt about it, the CD was crippled with 'copy protection'. I'd heard about CDs that Windows couldn't play but that Linux could, but I'd never actually seen them before. This was my first.
So here I am, ripping the Alanis Morissette cd so that I can copy the tracks back onto one of my own blank cds, in the hopes that the protection is on the cd itself and not incorporated into the tracks. If I'm right I'll soon have an Alanis Morissette CD that'll play in Windows as well as Linux - which is what I goddamned well paid for when I went to the store in the first place.
It's one thing to hear about this shit and express outrage over another persons misfortune, and quite another to find out you've been fucked yourself. I work for my money and I bloody well expect value when I plunk down my cash; if they're going to cripple the CD then the motherfuckers had better goddamn well label the shitty product so I can avoid it in the first place.
Until now I've downloaded music off of Napster, Bearshare, Gnutella, etc. to 'try before I buy' - just like everyone else I know. Our CD collection has quadrupled in the last two years because we've discovered artists we'd never in a million years consider seriously if we hadn't been able to hear the album first. Alanis was one of those artists and we now own everything she's put out.
But I have to ask myself now: if the music industry is going to deliberately sell me defective products, why on God's green earth should I waste the money I work hard for on fucked-up CDs? In this case it looks as if I can rip the songs to the computer and burn them back to a blank CD; but why should I have to do this? I didn't consent to buy a defective product, nor was I informed of the defect before purchase. I was more than willing to hand over $16 bucks to the RIAA bloodsuckers to buy Alanis's new album - and they screwed me anyway.
Assholes. Please tell me - how is this supposed to encourage a generally honest joe like myself to remain honest and buy CDs of songs I've downloaded and liked? If I know I stand a chance of being reamed, with the potential battle of trying to return the CD for a refund to the tight-fisted music store bastards that own my town, what incentive do I have to buy? All this is going to do is encourage piracy, not contain it.
Well, at least the Pink CD works like it should.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?