I won't have Real on any PC I own or use at work. I don't mind users I support installing Real Player because it teaches them to never install anything like that ever again and is only just difficult enough to remove to make a point.
However, there are obviously some talented people in Real. Their player was bundled with my N-Gage and is very capable of playing pre-recorded videos and TV news streams over GPRS. It's just a shame these talented people hooked up with a company that went so off the rails.
I suggest that anyone protesting about this first understand the total picture, otherwise the protests are going to be discarded as they'll be considered to have come from a bunch of people that don't really understand nor know what they are talking about. That's a fact of life.
Do you really think the average MP will know this. Just write a generic "Copyright is being abused letter" to get them thinking about these things. Best you can hope for anyway. Here's my letter I just sent in case anyone wants to rip bits out of it:
Dear Mr Wilkie,
The text of the US-Australian Preferential Trade Agreement has recently been released. Section 17, titled "Intellectual Property Rights", contains a number of worrisome parts. Implications include extension of copyright terms, software patents and something that looks suspiciously like America's DMCA.
America's DMCA basically provides legal protection for technical protection of already legally protected copyright works. Yes, there are that many layers. In practice, the DMCA has been used to turn what would normally be accountable procedures into "black boxes" and to squash free speech. An example is Diebold's electronic voting machines and a number of documents questioning their reliability (have a search on the Internet for "Diebold" and "DMCA".)
Most of America's latest changes to copyright legislation have been designed to have exactly the opposite effect to the original spirit of copyright. The very artificial concept of Copyright was supposed to be designed to encourage creation of works. With the repeated extension of copyright in the US a company can effectively take from the public domain then receive income based on their work forever -- greatly reducing the incentive for them to continue creating and seriously affecting other artists from drawing on prior work for new creations.
America's copyright laws seem destined to destroy the public domain. Since I was born, not a single new thing I may have seen, watched or heard has reached the public domain unless the copyright hold specifically wished it to be so. What do I get out of copyright? I certainly don't get a rich, dynamic public domain or works onto which I can build.
Copyright was not created to make big companies bigger. It was created to enrich the community by encouraging works that would ultimately be able to be freely used by everyone. Please do not support Section 17 of the US-Australian Preferential Trade Agreement.
Thank you,
I'm sure there are some holes you can poke in it if you really know what you're talking about, but I feel it adequately expresses my position -- which is really all one can hope for in a democracy.
Re:Prediction about "social network software"
on
ICQ Universe
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· Score: 1
That said, it would be interesting to see social-networking sites with really useful added value, perhaps in a niche-specific fashion.
You mean like listservs, newsgroups and web forums?
When I used my 8810 as a 9600 modem it was charged at some high rate based on connection time. Now that I have an N-Gage, if I use it as a (much faster) modem it's charged at a high rate based on data transfer. Either way it costs way too much to use. Nothing has changed.
Yes, but that's for the parallel port which, if my experience with the Bung GB Xchanger and Windows XP Pro is anything to go by (ie; it doesn't work), is an even worse option now than it used to be. That's if your PC still has one.
When a windows patch disabled plain-text passwords for network authentication I worked at a place that ran a very fragile samba system on some Solaris servers. We had to edit the registry on all the PCs that received the patch so they could get to network files again. I similarly expect that if a Windows patch prevents other insecure behaviour will will need to be able to disable that too, at least for a while. Any idea if this feature can be turned off?
Re:Warning: Vaporware Company Detected
on
The Universal Card
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· Score: 1
Come April I will be the average business traveller. Maybe it's an Australian thing, but I need none of the non-credit cards you have listed, while I do in fact have more than one credit card.
Re:Warning: Vaporware Company Detected
on
The Universal Card
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's also stupidware. I might have enough IR remotes for it to be worth me investing in a universal remote, but I do not have enough cards in my wallet to equal the bulk of a unit like this. And with a ten minute TTL, you've got to carry it everywhere.
Meanwhile, I've got a bunch of Swatch Access watches with contactless smartcards built-in. Why can't we upgrade to something like this instead?
I'm sorry that you can't follow Shirow's stories. Perhaps if you realise that he askes questions but doesn't answer them, that might help you cope. Appleseed, Orion and to some extend Dominion Tank Police are all questions about sustainable society, spirituality and militarisation of the police, repectively. No, the movie may not contain as much story as his comics, but "Shirow to the core: Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty" is just wrong. If he was born in the english-speaking western world he'd be a Sci-Fi writer in the order of Gibson or Stirling (somewhere I personally place him already).
Games come out in November and December because thats when everyone is out buying toys
Ah, but is everyone only buying toys at that time because that's when they're released?
Not just video games but also gadgets, I noticed a huge upsurge in available cool stuff in the lead up to xmas. I would have bought what I bought at any time of the year.
If companies really are going to just head for Nov/Dec releases, they should tell us and we can all just close our gadget weblogs for the other ten months.
I downloaded the demo version and installed it yesterday. It does exactly what it advertises, but I have a hard time believing that there's 15 euro worth of value in there. 4 euro would probably be pushing it. Postcardware is probably more approriate.
Then if someone was abusing the legal system in order to attack you, you'd only have to report it to the police and they'd handle it from there. This would reduce costs to the target quite substantially, while putting a trained group of independant professionals into the system in order to prevent abuse of an anti-abuse law. (Filing false police reports is already a crime.)
Apart from serious security upgrades, what does Windows XP actually need? I loved 98 but you had to reboot after changing any network settings and it effectively maxed out at 384 of RAM. XP doesn't have any annoyances of that magnitude that I can think of.
Okay, well at work the backup system involves a two week rotation, off-site backups, monthly snapshots archived to DVD and two-hourly backups of the main database (during work hours), for something in the order of twenty copies at any one time -- each slightly different versions in case that someone makes a mistake and it takes a while to spot (which only happens about once every six months now, as opposed to once or twice a week the last place I worked). That's where I care about "disaster recovery".
At home, I just keep at least two copies of stuff at any one time. Big archives are tested upon creation and backups on media are turned over fast enough to tell if there's been any data loss. Since I returned a Zip Drive I haven't lost anything I've cared about, despite fairly dramic failure of two CDs (the surface just lifted right off).
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However, there are obviously some talented people in Real. Their player was bundled with my N-Gage and is very capable of playing pre-recorded videos and TV news streams over GPRS. It's just a shame these talented people hooked up with a company that went so off the rails.
Insightful? Waste of time more likely. Haven't you got number portability over there? Just leave AT&T and move to another provider.
When I used my 8810 as a 9600 modem it was charged at some high rate based on connection time. Now that I have an N-Gage, if I use it as a (much faster) modem it's charged at a high rate based on data transfer. Either way it costs way too much to use. Nothing has changed.
Yes, but that's for the parallel port which, if my experience with the Bung GB Xchanger and Windows XP Pro is anything to go by (ie; it doesn't work), is an even worse option now than it used to be. That's if your PC still has one.
When a windows patch disabled plain-text passwords for network authentication I worked at a place that ran a very fragile samba system on some Solaris servers. We had to edit the registry on all the PCs that received the patch so they could get to network files again. I similarly expect that if a Windows patch prevents other insecure behaviour will will need to be able to disable that too, at least for a while. Any idea if this feature can be turned off?
Come April I will be the average business traveller. Maybe it's an Australian thing, but I need none of the non-credit cards you have listed, while I do in fact have more than one credit card.
Meanwhile, I've got a bunch of Swatch Access watches with contactless smartcards built-in. Why can't we upgrade to something like this instead?
That's what I was going to say. So if this goes through I'll know if I'm a spam relay because my pipe saturates AND my CPU load goes to 100%.
I'm sorry that you can't follow Shirow's stories. Perhaps if you realise that he askes questions but doesn't answer them, that might help you cope. Appleseed, Orion and to some extend Dominion Tank Police are all questions about sustainable society, spirituality and militarisation of the police, repectively. No, the movie may not contain as much story as his comics, but "Shirow to the core: Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty" is just wrong. If he was born in the english-speaking western world he'd be a Sci-Fi writer in the order of Gibson or Stirling (somewhere I personally place him already).
I wonder how many you can talk to simultaneously if they're all in a pile. What's the RAM footprint for the D.Net RSA core?
If that doesn't work, get in the lift.
Not just video games but also gadgets, I noticed a huge upsurge in available cool stuff in the lead up to xmas. I would have bought what I bought at any time of the year.
If companies really are going to just head for Nov/Dec releases, they should tell us and we can all just close our gadget weblogs for the other ten months.
Well, the headline ended in a question mark, so it must be a question, right?
I downloaded the demo version and installed it yesterday. It does exactly what it advertises, but I have a hard time believing that there's 15 euro worth of value in there. 4 euro would probably be pushing it. Postcardware is probably more approriate.
So start looking now. You have no future at your current job. Even if you stay on, you career will stall. Time to move up and out.
I'd rather pay the extra and get a computer with a built-in UPS :) These machines have most of the compromises of a laptop without the portability...
I would, but shipping a 1st party Toyota Rav4 roof rack to Australia is just too damn expensive.
Then if someone was abusing the legal system in order to attack you, you'd only have to report it to the police and they'd handle it from there. This would reduce costs to the target quite substantially, while putting a trained group of independant professionals into the system in order to prevent abuse of an anti-abuse law. (Filing false police reports is already a crime.)
Overrated? If someone can perhaps come up with some features that XP, as an OS, is missing I'll concede that I might be overrated.
d'oh! (Actually, that mistake will probably drop the traffic to my little site to something it can cope with.)
You mean these? Yep, I currently have to walk around three piles of them to sit at my PC at home.
Apart from serious security upgrades, what does Windows XP actually need? I loved 98 but you had to reboot after changing any network settings and it effectively maxed out at 384 of RAM. XP doesn't have any annoyances of that magnitude that I can think of.
At home, I just keep at least two copies of stuff at any one time. Big archives are tested upon creation and backups on media are turned over fast enough to tell if there's been any data loss. Since I returned a Zip Drive I haven't lost anything I've cared about, despite fairly dramic failure of two CDs (the surface just lifted right off).