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Update On The Jon Johansen Trial
nordicfrost writes "The trial against Jon Johansen goes on. Today, John Hoy of the DVD CCA was examined by phone by the defense and the prosecutor in Oslo. We have set up a page to follow the main events in the trial here, in English. The documentation of evidence, and the fact that Hoy didn't answer the phone when the court called, delayed the trial so the final proceedings may not be finished before Monday afternoon." Update: 12/12 23:50 GMT by T : This wasn't really a Science story ...
I'm glad they set up a page in English, for 99% of slashdot readers can only read english.
i'm waiting.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
What is this trial about? Why is he being tried? Where is it being held? Why was he phoned and not in court?
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
This article proves that this man is innocent.
Article
Text:
OSLO DISTRICT COURT (VG Nett) - There's nothing in the CSS-license stopping license holders from making a DVD player for Linux, says John Hoy, President and COO of the DVD Copy Control Association.
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In the penal trial against DVD-Jon, the case reached John Hoy, President and COO of DVD CCA Thursday morning. DVD CCA and Motion Pictures Association are the offended parts in the trial.
- I am calling from Oslo District Court, can you please call back us? Was the message on John Hoy's answering machine this morning. And when pohne contact finally was established between Oslo and Phoenix, Arizona, a statment on what Jon Johansen broke into followed.
Clear demand
Content Scrambling System (CSS) is made up of an encryption part and a license part. An encryption of DVD movies was, according to Hoy's statement, a clear demand from the film industry for accepting a high-quality format like DVD.
- All DVD movies would be a perfect copy, Hoy explained via interpreter.
A central point in the defense case of attorney Halvor Manshaus is that there was no DVD player for Linux in 1999.
- A company that recieves a CSS license can use the technology in any operating system, Hoy said to prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde.
- If someone wants to make a player for Linux, there's nothing in the license stopping that, he added later on.
Interested in timing
Manshaus was interested in the point of time for DVD CCAs taking over of the responsibility for handing out of CSS-licenses.
- We handed out licenses from the latter part of September 1999, and became the sole entity or publisher of CSS licenses from mid December 1999, Hoy said.
Manshaus made no point of the fact that this after DVD-Jon made the decryption tool DeCSS available mid September 1999.
Another interesting topic Manshaus touched in his examination was wether any clauses on region control existed in the license agreement between DVD CCA and the manufacturers of DVD players.
Would not comment
Hoy was read the clause in the definition list describing what is copy protection means in the CSS license agreement. The encryption part is not mentioned specifically there, and Hoy did not want to comment on what DVD CCA recognizes as the legal definition of copy protection and Manshaus finished off his questioning.
- I can't get himto answer the question, Manshaus said.
Before Hoy testified by phone, DVD-Jon was asked to go into detail on some of his answers from earlier in the trial. Prosecutor Inger Marie Sunde was mostly occupied by stating dates for the turn of events in autumn 1999, whil the defense was busy leveling out negative statements about the Linux community, that DVD-Jon was quoted with in September 1999.
Why Slashdot is under attack
Heh...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Clearly your CSS (Content Similar Smirnoff) decoder ring isn't working properly.
...when someone who would be a star witness does the telephone equivalent of not showing up in court? I wouldn't think that this would completely blow the case against the defendant, but I would imagine that many judges wouldn't give the prosecution much slack if they pulled a stunt like that.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Incase anyone forgot, This is the guy that wrote DeCSS (The program that lets people decode dvds so they can be played in free operating systems).
More info on the trial at Google News (Wouldnt it be cool if slashdot automagicly added a google news link to stories to show all relevant links?)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I give this troll 1/10.
Try harder next time.
It's disgusting comments like these that should have a -2
Shouldn't there be some sort of repercussions for this absence? they're wasting the legal system's time, as well as Jon's. What crap.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
No. The tenets of basic economics are hurting the legitmate consumers every time the MPAA accuses someone of stealing DVDs. The fact of the matter is that DVD piracy is almost nonexistent in North America - unlike MP3s, which can be and are downloaded and burned to CD in minutes, inexpensively. The time and cost of copying DVDs is huge in comparison. DVD piracy just isn't here on a large enough scale to warrant any price increase. Its the same reason gas prices are on the rise in every country on the planet - its making a very small number of people very, very rich.
It's because of people like him who copy DVDs that the prices for media are on the rise in practically every country on Earth.
Can't afford DVDs? Pirate them! Do what Tim O'Reilly would do.
Join us! Join us!!!
Synergy is your friend
DeCSS is, in theory, an excellent piece of coding. The problem, as is true with technologies along its lines, is that there is quite a bit of room for abuse.
I think the key here is rather than trying to put this guy away, DVD manufacturers should work with the DeCSS technology to find a happy medium. Obviously, free OS's will need some way to play DVD's, so it makes sense that the technology should expand to include these users. Just putting people on trial in hopes that all these issues will go away is ludicrous. If DVD manufacturers are worried about their products being pirated, imagine the response when the creator of DeCSS gets jailed. This isn't the way to go about it.
Of course, people who can legitimately play DVD's shouldn't exactly be going around DeCSS'ing every DVD and distributing it on Kazaa or your filesharing program of choice. Abusing the technology is just as big a problem as those trying to shut it down.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
Slashdot is really not the place to put such a post.
Find a non-Catholic Church.
Find an alcoholic beverage you like (I like Scotch).
Get a birlfirend that is smart and reasonably good looking.
Drive fast, but drive with precision and not recklessly.
Do not past that kind of stuff on Slashdot.
ordering information | shipping & returns | payment options | satisfaction guarantee, Goatse Merchandise,
Yikes!!
"The fact of the matter is that DVD piracy is almost nonexistent in North America"
But CSS wasn't created to address DVD piracy. It was created to prevent DVD piracy. Maybe it's working, or maybe the technology to copy DVD's is just too expensive right now.
Why Slashdot is under attack
It's because of people like him who copy DVDs that the prices for media are on the rise in practically every country on Earth.
They are? Funny, I though they were going down...
Reminder: find a new sig
Hmm,
I speak English,Spanish, Portequese, and a smattering of french. Born and bred in the US.
I would say that comment is far from the truth though. Even though Slashdot is a US based site so english the language and maybe the rest of you guys are interlopers. So why should citizens of an English Speaking country, visiting an english speaking site, be expected to speak another language? You like slashdot, so you read it in English.
I tend to disagree with that comment because with all the anti-american sentiment that floats around here that most people are foreigners(Canadians included). So I would say I good many of us speak another language.
I agree that many people in the US dont have another language when they should.
1. They dont see the necessity, as English is the dominant business language in the world. You need it for international business.
2. You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists.
3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge.
I think you are trolling. 45% of the US speaks spanish I beleive. We latinos are falling out the woodwork.
And most people on slashdot are fairly intelligent, including us North Americans, well traveled, and gasp, speak other languages.
We aint as dumb as you think. Course then Germans are all Nazis, Italian women are all Harry, I could go on.
Jeez
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I don't know who this "nordicfrost" is in person, but his home page is the index page of VG, the leading tabloid paper in Norway. Also, the link to "we have set up ... here in English" points to the same paper. I hereby assume that "nordicfrost" works for VG.
This auto-slashdotting appears the day after several Norwegian papers accuse the main tabloid competitor of VG for cheating in the national "we-have-the-most-popular-web-site-in-Norway". The competitor had made a popular Norwegian game site give all its web hits to them.
Some people may think that auto-slashdotting is more of a cheat, but as the Jon Johansen case shows, what "some people" may think is not necessarily what counts. Money rule.
Science? Or Movies?
Goatse merchandise. Anyone actually buy any of that?
The science of getting ass-reamed by the MPAA?
I think that the experiment will be resounding success, based on the data that 2600 has gathered.
What you say makes sense, so you must be a troll. Moderate -100 / reasonable
-- Hobbits suck!
I can't beleve that I am replying to a troll... You really think that the Million's of dollars that the MPAA is spending on prosecuting people in other countries isn't inflating the cost of DVD's faster then the "losses" from DVD pirating? This isn't even a DVD pirating ring of criminal masterminds... THis is a smart kid that was proving to himself that such a thing could be done. He wasn't profiting from the MPAA's IP, I bet he didn't even own a DVD burner. It is the high cost entertainment and IP laywers spending endless hours figuring out who they can sue to keep their job and Porche that are driving the (already over-inflated) cost of DVDs up. Not a 16 year old kid who can reverse engineer a weak encryption scheme.
:)(smile)
this has to be the best fricken advice I have ever seen.
The trial is in Europe & the person they we're calling lives in Arizona.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
When you read about Jon Johansen you shold realize that he is not a hero. Not only did tok credit for stuff other people did, he broke the GPL. http://people.debian.org/~kju//decsstruth.txt. However one thing he did not do was break norwegian law. The aternoey representing the state is even having trouble figuring out what illegal he has done. People talk about how this is important in regard to similar cases that may accure in the future. I say we found a pretty lousy guy to represent 'us'.
... because police confiscated his cell phone - thinking it was a hacking instrument??
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
No, it wasn't. You can make a total mirror copy of the DVD, including CSS, and it will work fine. CSS is about protecting "region coding".
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
Thank You, Yoda.
Why is this in the Science section? Shouldn't it be in YRO?
make up your mind this post has been modded offtopic, insightful and now funny
I heard they have a list of people who downloaded the decoder (5000 names) and charges will be raised against them also. They may have to fight a legal battle in court.
I believe DeCSS falls under this category.
This is what you're trying to do.
I'm not going to bother explaining to you how DeCSS has ethical or genuine purpose. I will point out, however, that the creators of the internet did not keep it to themselves because it was new technology that they felt should be open to the public. People commit crimes via the internet daily. Do you feel that the innovators of the internet deserve to be behind bars as well? If not, PLEASE respond because I'm very interested in hearing your argument.
"I speak English,Spanish, Portequese, and a smattering of french. Born and bred in the US."
And where did you learn "Poertquese"? In Poerteuqal?
There IS a country next to Spain called Portugal where they speak Portugese. Is that what you were referring to?
Sh*t man, sorry. I should have checked before I flamed you. Of course, "Portequese" is, surprise, Portugese for Portugese.
Sorry man, I'm a dumbass.
Come on folks, virtually everybody in Scandinavia can read and write English, who the heck did that translation? It reads like it was translated from the original Japanese into English by a unilingual Cantonese speaker then translated into Norwegian by a drunken Scotsmen, only to be translated back into English by a committee of patent attorneys.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Are we sure it wasn't "fUCKtHeMpAA"?
What Hoy is insinuating here, is that the DVD CCA has a government granted monopoly on anything CSS related. Judge Kaplan bought it, but it's simply not true. If the DVD CCA wanted a monopoly on decoding DVDs, they should have applied for a patent.
I don't know what the law is in Finland, but in the United States it is unconstitutional for the government to mix patents and copyrights.
Surely you mean "portuguese".
Smattering = smatter.
English Speaking = English-speaking.
"I tend to disagree with that comment--"
You get the comment a lot, then?
"because with all the anti-american sentiment that floats around here that most people are foreigners(Canadians included)"
Oh, the prejudiced foreigners. I'm sure everyone is suitably sorry to have tread on your mighty country.
"You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists."
No, they speak English because the tourists don't speak any other languages.
"The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge."
French. Spanish. Hawaiian.
"--bordered next to each other--Easy to learn another langauge."
Unfortunately agains common beliefs, being in motion doesn't make you learn faster.
" 45% of the US speaks spanish I beleive."
No, it's 95%. Of the latino group.
"Italian women are all Harry"
I don't even want to go there.
</tongue>
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I got a Johansen in my pants for ya!
"3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge."
/. comments are full of negative American Stereotypes. Anything that helps clarify details from different points of view will always alleviate this hostility.
Better understanding of this point right here would probably reduce some of the negative stereotypes about Americans. The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have. We're not geographically ignorant, we have enough to know about the US before branching out into other countries. (I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City.)
I realize this is off topic, but
This Jon Johansen makes Adolf Hitler look like Mister Rogers. He is a criminal and a terrorist and is deserving of only the most severe punishment.
I accidentally modded it "overrated" when I
meant to hit "insightful"! I am very sorry.
The problem is, if you try to select an option
from the mods droplist, then scrollwheel down
to the bottom of the page to hit the "Moderate"
button, IE6 scrolls the droplist to a random
value! Not at all the desired result.
And then I cannot undo the mod, or even burn
more points to put it back. I can't even post
an apology as me, only as AC (although being
embarassed, I don't really -want- to post as me).
Very sorry!
Consider suicide as an option.
Innovation != Ethical. The words don't even look the same. There's a reason for that - they're 2 different concepts.
We aren't talking about a system that protects a cure for cancer because the greedy drug companies want to make a fast buck selling chemotherapy. The information disclosed is not in the public interest, the only ethical defence I can think of to DVD-Jon's actions. It's Hollywood movies. It will not represent the end of the world if you never see Titanic. The sun will still rise tomorrow if not one single person sees The Two Towers.How is CSS stifling? You can produce an unencrypted, region-free DVD movie all you want and distribute it to who you want. No-one's going to stop you. CSS doesn't prevent anyone from expressing themselves with DVD media.
Oh, you mean that if anyone anywhere does anything entertaining it's their duty to pay for the privilege of showing it to you. Sorry, I didn't get that earlier.
Won't or can't?
The inventors of the internet did not copy other peoples' stuff. They created it as a way to secure communications and to publish original research. What DVD-Jon did was the digital equivalent of manufacturing a bunch of lockpicks and instructions, and then he handed them out free on the corner of the world's biggest high-crime area. Criminal negligence.
Hey, and because everyone doesn't share my view, Norwey's giving him a perfectly fair trial where he can defend his actions. The system works and all that.
Anyway, my point was: DVD-Jon painted a big bullseye on his forehead when he published DeCSS, so hell bloody mend him.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
...or should I say penile-ized. He should be locked up with the biggest, smelliest, and most violent homosexual in prison for at least 20 years.
"You go anywhere and people speak English because we are big tourists."
No, they speak English because the tourists don't speak any other languages.
No, it's because English is the new lingua franca. Anyone who wants to get along in international business had better learn English. Even businessmen with no customers in anglophone countries learn English, because it's the new common tongue. I once spoke with an anti-aircraft artilleryman in the Finnish military. To learn about the complex systems his unit uses, he had go to classes where they were manufactured: in Russia and France. What language do you think the classes were held in? English, of course!
This is not to say that Americans should not learn more foreign languages (I myself speak French, German and Italian), but we are often in the enviable position of being able to expect other people to learn our language. This is, of course, unfair, but it's also reality.
Don Johnson Trial???
Well, thats how I read it at first....
I need to go home....
Burma?
I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City
If you're going to jump to the defense of the notorious lack of geographic awareness in the US, at least make your arguments level. Afghanistan is a country, Kansas City is a might smaller than a country.
Had you said "I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Algeria," then you would be making a meaningful and FAIR argument. As it were, you are simply confirming the world's understanding of how important the rest of the world is to the US. Besides, most Americans probably couldn't point out KC on a map.
The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have.
Indeed, you certainly are huge.
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
Your argument, to my eyes, seems to miss a key point. (If not, I apologize and let's just drop it.) It is not sufficient for a technology to have potential ethical uses.
I can think of potentially ethical uses of VX nerve gas but as I technology, I think it should be 'stifled', with extreme prejudice. Now my comparison is unfair in terms of comparing lethal agents to copying a song or video, but I'm trying to make a legitimate point: the primary usages of the technology should be ethical to pass muster... I think the Betamax case hinged on this notion of "substantial non-infringing uses" which is pretty much what I'd like to see. The DMCA, from what I can tell, kind of moves the standard from "substantial non-infringing uses of a device means its OK" to "these dozen or so very narrowly defined usage circumstances are OK but devices in general, since they can be used to infringe in broader situations, are not OK."
Which I'd agree with you sucks. I prefer what I consider the Betamax standard.
Failing that, I would like a legal protection for citizen rights to time-shift and space-shift media. And perhaps some sort of archival right, although I understand why archival rights might need some restriction to preserve streaming media usage scenarios. Still, I don't want to end up in 25 years prosecuted for training my brain to memorize movie scenes and play them back to myself for my enjoyment... (I can see it now: "Your memory cells are an infringement technology! Really? I thought that was only if I had them artificially enhanced? Can I be prosecuted under the DMCA for giving birth to kids and enabling them to pass on the lyrics of a Disney song to their friends by singing them in a playground? Infringing technology indeed!")
--LP
"If you're going to jump to the defense of the notorious lack of geographic awareness in the US, at least make your arguments level. Afghanistan is a country, Kansas City is a might smaller than a country."
Kansas City is smack in the middle of the country. You don't even need to know what shape it is to find it. That's why I picked it.
"Indeed, you certainly are huge."
Whatever. If that's the best you can do... heh.
I am American. While most of the Slashdot crowd are fairly intelligent, American or otherwise, most Americans are idiots. Most Americans probably could not find Montana on a political map of the Unites States. They definately could not find Monaco, Andorra, or Luxemborg. We won't bother confusing the issue with places like Slovenia or Slovakia. Worse yet would be places like Chad and the Congo (would that be the Democratic Repubilic of the Congo or Republic of the Congo). Of course even I would have a hard time finding Belarus.
I am only fluent in English. I have studied a few years of other languages, but no where near fluent.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
My point was that the purpose of DeCSS is to be able to make a copy of your DVD. Have you ever misplaced a CD or a DVD? I haven't misplaced the latter, but I have lost a CD here and there and I know others that have, as well. If CDs came with the same copy protection, you would not be able to back it up and use the CD in other ways, ie. copying to your machine and creating a catalogue of all the music you own. Although DVDs are much larger and require much more space than CDs, that point is moot. It's a matter of fair use and being able to use something you've purchased in ways that are within the terms of the copyright, that is to say, in the case of CDs and DVDs, not to distribute them.
...where they were manufactured: in Russia...
They buy their AA-weaponry from the guys they are most likely to use them at? Weird.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
"Kansas City is smack in the middle of the country. You don't even need to know what shape it is to find it. That's why I picked it."
You really think anyone outside of US knows, or even gives a shit?
The real question here is: Will you continue showing us what self centered pricks you are?
not true. Sure, DVDs are NOT copied as much as music CDs are, but to say "almost nonexistent" is a lie. Use any P2P program and in less that 5 minutes u can find just about ANY movie available that was copied off a DVD. Sure, it's NOT in the millions yet, but that's becuase it takes so knowledge to copy DVD into a DivX AVI, but more and more people are doing every day. I'm d/ling the Road Warrior and Ichi the Killer from WinMX right now and both movies were copied off a DVD.
India could argue from the position that they need a platform that everyone can openly develop and therefore are only interested if Microsoft license the source to everyone. Without such openness, Linux may still be their best bet.
.dvdrip.divx.avi? Or is that only here in europe?
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
I bet he didn't even own a DVD burner.
If he had, and he indeed wrote DeCSS to copy DVD's, then DeCSS would never have been written. CSS does not protect against direct copy of DVD's at all. CSS is control protection, not copy protection.
NR
That wasn't me, that was the other guy.
Oh good lord! I would never have suspected that someone who didn't care about the copyright laws governing DVDs would give a hoot about laws protecting software.
Who would have thunk?
CSS does not protect DVD's from copying. It only protects the DVD-CCA's milti-million dollar licence scheme. If they can force anyone who wants to develop a DVD player capable of actually playing movies to buy the CSS licence then they can charge anything for it - and they do. They can also embed any sort of price fixing system they want into it and protect said system in the licence - even though said system is illegal...and they do.
There are hundreds of DVD rippers on the internet, only one of which has valid ethical uses, and only one of which is illegal and is being attacked. That would be DeCSS. Other rippers that piggy back the signal to the video card or just plain grab the information bit by bit and burn it to another DVD are not being attacked by the MPAA and their croneys...why? Because only the DeCSS algorithm can be used to create free DVD players capable of actually playing movies...bye bye information monopoly...bye bye "millions of dollars speant on R&D" for a 40 bit system that can be brute force attacked in less than a week.
If anyone can create a DVD player using the DeCSS algorithm, or one like it, then the MPAA cannot force feed the DVD manufacturers bad licencing terms that cost millions and require they obey region encoding. No law protects region encoding, and in fact it is illegal price fixing. This is the only legitamate reason they have for attacking DeCSS because none of the other claims hold water - anyone can copy a DVD without using DeCSS or ever breaking the encryption scheme. They of course cannot play the copy without decrypting it, which any DVD player will do regardless of if it is a copy or not.
CSS is NOT a copy protection scheme, it is control protection. They have control and want to keep it... it is as simple, and evil as that.
NR
This is not to say that Americans should not learn more foreign languages
We Americans all know a foreign language. It's English, after all.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't know if it's safe to say Americans are idiots - we're just uneducated. I think many of the problems in the US (I'm American, btw), boil down to the fact that too many people are either uneducated, or poorly educated (i.e. They have diplomas or degrees, but didn't really learn much). I think that's one of the major sources of American arrogance(and all the actions that go along with it), which is the main source of all the anti-american sentiment in the rest of the world.
"You really think anyone outside of US knows, or even gives a shit?" I'm seeing a connection here... If anyone in the US said this about, say, Monaco, guess what you would call us? "self centered pricks"
you can without a problem copy dvds, as long as you dont have dvd-r's that have the area where the css key goes filled with junk...
the thing decss did was to strip away the css from the vob files so that you ended up with the mpeg-2 files that was wraped inside. and given that mpeg-2 is a well known format you could do allmost anything with them...
Most of you had no idea where Iraq was, and you have had control over that country for 10 years now and will start a new war soon. I guess it's a good thing you have smart bombs that will find the way... Strange how Oceania, err, I mean Iraq, always been your enemy (except, it seems, during the 70's and the 80's, but lets not talk about that) and you don't even know where it is. It's been about a year since you learned that the guy who attacked you was Usama bin Laden, that he lived in Afghanistan and was protected by the Taliban. Most of you still, neither have no clue as to where that country is, nor do you know much about its history. Or, for that matter, Usamas history (he shares some history with USA, I believe?).
So, if you have people over the age of 18 who don't know where they live, I guess we can't expect you to know where other countries are...
Why should he answer the phone? Everyone knows those hackers at 1600.com are just a bunch of movie pirates who spend all their time stealing MPAA property. Good thing we have the DMCA to protect everyone ;-)
The tenets of basic economics are hurting the legitmate consumers every time someone steals DVDs.
Isn't another tenet of economics is to allow your customers to actually use the product you sell? If it weren't for DeCss open source users would have no reason to purchase DVDs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
1. They want to recieve license fees for every dvd-capable video player in existence.
2. They want every dvd-capable video player in existence to work by their rules-- i.e., the ones that allow content producers to completely set what it is possible to do with each disc.
I agree, but think you miss the point here:
the linux community" will not truly be happy using a closed source video player-- there will always be the person upset he couldn't play dvds on his 10-year-old sparc because the "approved" propeitary player is x86 and PPC only. But much more importantly, this is a problem because open source platforms inherently empower the user.
That user has every right to be angry, as do you. The DVD consortium has, with help from a few friends, make it a crime for you to figure out how to use your own equipment or even tell others how to do the same. It's a concept that matters and should not be belittled with absurd examples like trying to make a computer that does not have an IDE interface run a DVD player. Trade secrets should have no force outside of a signed contract, and should never trump free speech. My purchasing a DVD player is not equivalent to me signing a contract. "Open" OS only empower users to the extent that they have source code. If you don't have the power to help your friends do things there will be no free code and no Open OS and you will be at the mercy of those who exploit you to maintain tools you can't use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Your bloody little twat beats you!
Yes, that is true yet not my point. The point is that this kid wasn't pirating (arr, pirates).
:)(smile)
Actually that wouldn't supprise me.. for the longest time the radar used to detect incomming nukes from the USSR was fitted with replacement vacume tubes from the USSR.
International politics are rarely ever logical.
Ooops .. forgot to mention that was the NORAD early warning system the tubes were fitted in making it the US and Canada's joint project that still has that wonderfull leap of logic in place.
It is, by far, the worlds biggest second language. If a company from Hong Kong is doing bussiness with a company in Japan, the bussiness is almost always conducted in English. Why? Well most Japanese people doesn't speak Chinese, and most Chinese people don't speak Japanese. However most of both cultures does speak English as a second language.
If you want to write something in one language that has the greatest chance of being understood by people form all across teh world, choose English.
M-x doctor
consider yourself lucky. a native USian I still have quite the muddle trying to think in english. My twin sibling and I were allowed to use twinnish until kindergarten and i still get odd looks from cow-orkers when i lack the english to describe something and manage to not realise I'm going on with words they probably couldn't pronounce (the 'gsth' and 'ruuml' sounds seem to come up a lot.)
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
Too bad I'm out of moderator points - I would've modded you up as insightful:-)
You have the right idea but are taking it in the wrong direction. Just take a look at all the tools that we have that *could* be used for unethical purposes. If we were to ban them all we would no longer have cars, screwdrivers, hammers, bottles, pens, etc. All of these *can* be used, and have been used, to kill. Noone is discussing banning them.
The case for DeCCS is the same: it *can* be used illegally, but that does not make the tool itself illegal.
In fact it is slightly more complicated: CCS itself, in my mind, is illegal because it limits free trade. I cannot order a DVD from the US because I am in Europe, instead I am forced to pay (high) local prices for localized versions of the product (if it exists at all).
And if you think this is bad for the two major economic power houses of the world (the US and Europe), spare a thought for any of the people in the *other* five(?) regions. How many movies on DVD do you think make it to Afrika?
I know many people in Afrika have something else on their mind then DVD, but this is yet another barrier that we (the rich people of this world) have erected that makes their lives a little more miserable.
Most people are idiots, IME.
Most Americans probably could not find Montana on a political map of the Unites States.
I think I could do that.
They definately could not find Monaco, Andorra, or Luxemborg.
Well, they wouldn't be on a map of the United States! Assuming you meant on a European map then you've picked three of the hardest (outside the Balkans) and I'd have a little trouble with that.
I'm British, BTW; I think you're being a bit hard on Americans.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
My point with a political map was that every state would be colorized.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
It reads like it was translated from the original Japanese into English by a unilingual Cantonese speaker then translated into Norwegian by a drunken Scotsmen, only to be translated back into English by a committee of patent attorneys.
It looks like you've discovered the "technology" behind Babelfish.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
We Americans all know a foreign language. It's English, after all.
That joke might be too subtle for Slashdot.
CSS is mostly about extracting license fees from anyone wanting to build and distribute "legal" DVD player.
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
It's going to drive me crazy, and I know that's from some movie or something....
You know something? I am sick and tired of people claiming that they actually know something about masses of people in other countries. You don't. You don't have the slightest idea how many Americans can locate Iraq on a map. You don't have the slightest idea how many residents of Airstrip One know that Iraq, err, Oceania hasn't always been our enemy, nor do you have the slightest idea how many residents of the United States are polyglots. You know what? Neither do I. People hear a statistic about how many people in this population are ignorant of a fact the poll-taker believes everyone should know, and from this people draw absurd conclusions about the overall ignorance of an entire population!
The irresponsible parroting of statistics is a far more pervasive and detrimental social phenomenon than American ignorance or arrogance.
American's look ignorant overseas because of a simple phenomenon that is certainly not confined to the USA: Ignorant people are loudmouths. Ignorant people believe their prejudices are facts, and they give voice to every damnfool idea that comes into their heads because they do not know that they do not know anything
It would be best if you took a good look at your own attitudes and inflammatory statements before you accuse Americans as a class, as if there were a monolithic "American" opinion or personality.
I'm not proud of of my country's present administration. My overall impression is that George W. Bush may be one of the least intelligent people to hold the Presidency in many years. I understand that the world is nervous about a "cowboy" President backed by an angry population, and so am I. But remember that while this man appears popular in our polls, this is more a result of our collective outrage than an endorsement of the policies of this administration. Remember he was barely elected, and some still dispute that he was elected. In two years there will be another election, and even if he wins, in four more years he will be out.
Will we start another war? Personally, I doubt it. But let me ask you this: Would there be UN inspectors in Iraq right now if the threat had not been built to a very real level? Diplomacy sometimes has a gunboat component. So even here, while I do not personally know what our government intends, an intelligent person may draw a very different conclusion from the facts than you appear to do.
Ignorance and arrogance are clearly not confined to the United States. The fact that America weilds vast military power does, I grant you, make American ignorance and arrogance of greater import. But even here, consider that North Korea is flexing its nuclear muscles again because Pyongyang (Wow! He knows a foreign capital!) has made the reasonable calculation that we cannot build up the interational tolerance nor perhaps the military capability for two engagements a continent apart. Perhaps America is under greater constraints than you realize.
So this jejune attitude of superiority requires some additional reflection, perhaps, on both sides of the ocean.
FYI: I had roughly 15 minutes to translate this article yesterday, and no spellchecker.
Well in those circumstances, I wouldn't have done it. It looks amateurish. If you had explained at the top of the articles what the circumstances were, people wouldn't have been critical. I've done translation, and I know how difficult it is. Please don't think I was trying to be mean. I admit it was a cheap joke, but it wasn't meant to be hurtful. Humor doesn't translate well, and I apologize if I offended you.
cheers,
p.s. Thanks for posting the response instead of just leaving the negative mod. It allowed me to respond.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Ikkje for å gjere Slashdot om til ei chat side, men kva gjer du på i statane og korleis har du lært 6 språk?