A statutory solution to a previous form of piracy. A sort-of sensible one as well. I wonder what the sort-of sensible compromise will be found this time around...
In the Stephen King case, he put a story on the internet, for nothing, then said he might consider continuing if he got loads of donations. He didn't, so he stopped.
Wasn't that when the USA tried to invade Cuba and got repelled? How was that Cuba doing something nasty to the USA? Was that a simple mistake, or am I totally wrong here?
That last link ended with a message that can apply beyond brain simulations: "Size doesn't matter; it's what you put into your model and how you embed it into the environment."
Deep packet sniffing can be employed, but that would be terribly costly. Considering the amount of traffic that a typical UK ISP would be dealing with, you're already talking about some massively parallel computer just to handle that. To then go and do some pattern matching stuff on every packet to see if it's a case of copyright infringement would not only be hell to actually code, it would take a ridiculous amount of computing power. What's worse, this could be defeated by encryption.
Some kind of shallow packet sniff could be done to check for hashes of copyrighted material, and ban people referring to that hash. That requires a database of infringing hashes, and new materials could be appearing all the time. It would also require knowledge of how every P2P protocol communicated these hashes. There is always the chance of mistaking some unrelated innocent communication with an illicit one, that will increase with the size of the copyright database and the number of protocols checked. And this can be defeated with encryption too.
There is another way of approaching this problem. Take a protocol, say, BitTorrent. You could use your database of copyrighted works, and check out trackers of those works for whether UK IP addresses are connected. You have a problem choosing which trackers to check, as you usually only get a name and a description. This one can't be beaten by encryption, but some elaborate series of proxies could elude it.
One of the common weaknesses with all of these approaches, beyond what has already been mentioned, is that the infringing works must first be identified. This could be done by downloading all the files and then manually checking them or by using some kind of fingerprinting technique. This is going to be either expensive in terms of equipment (big server farms for fingerprint analysis) or in terms of people checking the files manually.
The problem here isn't really technical, it's economic. Although most of the costs of blocking customers will have to be done by the ISPs, it will probably be up to the media companies to pay for identifying (say) trackers/hashes for copyrighted works. As this brief analysis seems to suggest that most of the cost is in the identification stage by a long margin, there would have to be a significant payout to justify this investment. I'm not convinced that it's there.
The other aspect of this is that the actual costs of P2P file sharing can only be guessed. Without at least some kind of checking described above it will remain that way. You don't know how many people are sharing this stuff, and you don't know how many of them would have bought it if they couldn't share the stuff. These are unknown risks, so deciding what kind of effort should be expended in avoiding them is a very very difficult task. It's hard to tell whether you've spent more money preventing the risk than the risk would have actually cost. Inevitably, they will have to choose whether to step off the ledge and actually do something on a big scale, or give up altogether. It seems to me that option with least risk business-wise would be to give up trying to stop it and use other means to reduce the probability of it occurring such as lowering prices or offering a better service than pirates.
In the UK, if the firefighters go on strike the Army takes over. They have their own rather cute fire engines, which, as it happens, are a fetching shade of green.
It is a real shame, because I do like pretty much all of the other applications. Granted, I use Firefox rather than Epiphany, but I'd rather have the extensions and suffer the dreadful lack of integration in that case. With File Roller, it's just annoyances all the way.
I know what needs to be done. I have a vague idea how to do it. By golly, I think I'm going to have a bash. Hurray for free software.
and about half of you are too hostile to religion in general to care.
Were you referring to Slashdot? If so, then maybe, who knows? these things aren't collected. In the wider world, atheists (or those who describe themselves as neither spiritual or religious) occupy only about two percent of the population.[1] It varies by region; in the USA it's about ten percent.[2] (Those were brief googlings)
Of those who are nonbelievers, I don't think more than half are "hostile to religion in general." I would describe myself as such, and I'm not too bothered about most of it.
Whether militant atheism (or anti-theism or whatever) is more predominant in geekdom than in the wider world is probably the subject of many awful blog posts somewhere, but would be an interesting study to undertake. I've no idea how to go about it. It would seem a very thorny task from the ten seconds of thought I've put into it, but I wouldn't mind seeing the results.
I am a GNOME user. And I like it. It's all good. With one exception: the "File Roller" application, which is used to examine archives.
Using it is basically a chore. You open it up, and you get a list of files. So, you think, it's just a matter of dragging those files into a directory you want, and it'll extract them there. Oh no. Total rejection. So you click on "extract," and if you're already in the directory you want to extract those files into, you have to leave that directory, and then re-enter it, before the OK type button (it's also called "extract") actually does anything.
I'm very lazy. I don't want to have to open a terminal window, navigate to the necessary directory, and run tar or whatever in order to get at my files. File Roller makes me do that due to its problems of usability. I suppose I could try looking for something that integrates with GNOME better, but this is part of the package, it should already be integrated.
acupuncture is an AMA-approved treatment for several ailments now... even though it cannot be explained with our current understanding, even by the placebo effect.
In the 7th Century what we know as France today, along with the low countries and some of western Germany, was known as Francia and was ruled, at least in theory, by the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. This century saw the rise of the Carolingian dynasty within Francia, which reached their height in the late 8th and early 9th Centuries with the reign of Charlemagne.
Germany wasn't a single political entity until the 19th Century, and the Franks were Germanic, which is more of a group of identities, but as close as your going to get at this point in time.
Francia would form the basis of the Carolingian Empire, which would itself lead on to the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the most important political entities in Western Christendom throughout the High Middle Ages, when it was more usually thought of as a continuation of the Roman Empire in the West, even though it was nothing of the kind.
I did appreciate the joke, and I'm not being a pedant or anything. I just thought I'd share with you some of the history of the time. After the Volkerwanderungzeit, but before the second wave of barbarian invasions, this is a crucial period in the early formation of Europe.
If you look at the case this way, then you will probably see it as frivolous. However, if you believe the relationship between a company and a consumer should be similar to a parent-child relationship, where the parent looks out for the child, then you will probably see the case as a legitimate one.
Uh, how about a business-client relationship... you know, what it actually is? There are obligations, expectations and so on that differ from those of a parent or a friend.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's an issue. What about having a meter in the car that gets read at toll booths or something?
Physics simulations? AI? Actual game logic?
A statutory solution to a previous form of piracy. A sort-of sensible one as well. I wonder what the sort-of sensible compromise will be found this time around...
The industrial revolution started before steam power was effectively harnessed.
Loads of mills next to canals in the town where I live are a testament to this.
In the Stephen King case, he put a story on the internet, for nothing, then said he might consider continuing if he got loads of donations. He didn't, so he stopped.
OMG slavery!!!!!
One of the more plausible elements in that show. I can imagine being able to buy a toaster that will annoy me as much as Toastie in my lifetime.
Wasn't that when the USA tried to invade Cuba and got repelled? How was that Cuba doing something nasty to the USA? Was that a simple mistake, or am I totally wrong here?
That last link ended with a message that can apply beyond brain simulations: "Size doesn't matter; it's what you put into your model and how you embed it into the environment."
I was played that infernal noise, and it really pissed me off. Good for him, I hope he succeeds.
I imagine this is redundant by now. what the hell, I've got karma to burn.
Deep packet sniffing can be employed, but that would be terribly costly. Considering the amount of traffic that a typical UK ISP would be dealing with, you're already talking about some massively parallel computer just to handle that. To then go and do some pattern matching stuff on every packet to see if it's a case of copyright infringement would not only be hell to actually code, it would take a ridiculous amount of computing power. What's worse, this could be defeated by encryption.
Some kind of shallow packet sniff could be done to check for hashes of copyrighted material, and ban people referring to that hash. That requires a database of infringing hashes, and new materials could be appearing all the time. It would also require knowledge of how every P2P protocol communicated these hashes. There is always the chance of mistaking some unrelated innocent communication with an illicit one, that will increase with the size of the copyright database and the number of protocols checked. And this can be defeated with encryption too.
There is another way of approaching this problem. Take a protocol, say, BitTorrent. You could use your database of copyrighted works, and check out trackers of those works for whether UK IP addresses are connected. You have a problem choosing which trackers to check, as you usually only get a name and a description. This one can't be beaten by encryption, but some elaborate series of proxies could elude it.
One of the common weaknesses with all of these approaches, beyond what has already been mentioned, is that the infringing works must first be identified. This could be done by downloading all the files and then manually checking them or by using some kind of fingerprinting technique. This is going to be either expensive in terms of equipment (big server farms for fingerprint analysis) or in terms of people checking the files manually.
The problem here isn't really technical, it's economic. Although most of the costs of blocking customers will have to be done by the ISPs, it will probably be up to the media companies to pay for identifying (say) trackers/hashes for copyrighted works. As this brief analysis seems to suggest that most of the cost is in the identification stage by a long margin, there would have to be a significant payout to justify this investment. I'm not convinced that it's there.
The other aspect of this is that the actual costs of P2P file sharing can only be guessed. Without at least some kind of checking described above it will remain that way. You don't know how many people are sharing this stuff, and you don't know how many of them would have bought it if they couldn't share the stuff. These are unknown risks, so deciding what kind of effort should be expended in avoiding them is a very very difficult task. It's hard to tell whether you've spent more money preventing the risk than the risk would have actually cost. Inevitably, they will have to choose whether to step off the ledge and actually do something on a big scale, or give up altogether. It seems to me that option with least risk business-wise would be to give up trying to stop it and use other means to reduce the probability of it occurring such as lowering prices or offering a better service than pirates.
Looks like he found out the hard way!
In the UK, if the firefighters go on strike the Army takes over. They have their own rather cute fire engines, which, as it happens, are a fetching shade of green.
http://www.kid666.com/blog/wp-content/greengoddess.jpg
They're called "Green Goddesses."
I'd be interested in seeing that proof.
But it'll just get optimised into an iterative acronym...
You fool! You should have put one in the parent's as well. Then comedy would have been totally assured!
And when do you think that was?
It is a real shame, because I do like pretty much all of the other applications. Granted, I use Firefox rather than Epiphany, but I'd rather have the extensions and suffer the dreadful lack of integration in that case. With File Roller, it's just annoyances all the way.
I know what needs to be done. I have a vague idea how to do it. By golly, I think I'm going to have a bash. Hurray for free software.
I remember going up to an ATM when I was at University, and it had a BSOD on it. I couldn't believe it.
Were you referring to Slashdot? If so, then maybe, who knows? these things aren't collected. In the wider world, atheists (or those who describe themselves as neither spiritual or religious) occupy only about two percent of the population.[1] It varies by region; in the USA it's about ten percent.[2] (Those were brief googlings)
Of those who are nonbelievers, I don't think more than half are "hostile to religion in general." I would describe myself as such, and I'm not too bothered about most of it.
Whether militant atheism (or anti-theism or whatever) is more predominant in geekdom than in the wider world is probably the subject of many awful blog posts somewhere, but would be an interesting study to undertake. I've no idea how to go about it. It would seem a very thorny task from the ten seconds of thought I've put into it, but I wouldn't mind seeing the results.
[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Worldwide_percentage_of_Adherents_by_Religion.png
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm
I am a GNOME user. And I like it. It's all good. With one exception: the "File Roller" application, which is used to examine archives.
Using it is basically a chore. You open it up, and you get a list of files. So, you think, it's just a matter of dragging those files into a directory you want, and it'll extract them there. Oh no. Total rejection. So you click on "extract," and if you're already in the directory you want to extract those files into, you have to leave that directory, and then re-enter it, before the OK type button (it's also called "extract") actually does anything.
I'm very lazy. I don't want to have to open a terminal window, navigate to the necessary directory, and run tar or whatever in order to get at my files. File Roller makes me do that due to its problems of usability. I suppose I could try looking for something that integrates with GNOME better, but this is part of the package, it should already be integrated.
I think food has been banned while driving in the UK...
It's not a spelling error. He's obviously a Windows user.
It most certainly can. http://www.badscience.net/?p=540
In the 7th Century what we know as France today, along with the low countries and some of western Germany, was known as Francia and was ruled, at least in theory, by the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. This century saw the rise of the Carolingian dynasty within Francia, which reached their height in the late 8th and early 9th Centuries with the reign of Charlemagne.
Germany wasn't a single political entity until the 19th Century, and the Franks were Germanic, which is more of a group of identities, but as close as your going to get at this point in time.
Francia would form the basis of the Carolingian Empire, which would itself lead on to the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the most important political entities in Western Christendom throughout the High Middle Ages, when it was more usually thought of as a continuation of the Roman Empire in the West, even though it was nothing of the kind.
I did appreciate the joke, and I'm not being a pedant or anything. I just thought I'd share with you some of the history of the time. After the Volkerwanderungzeit, but before the second wave of barbarian invasions, this is a crucial period in the early formation of Europe.
Uh, how about a business-client relationship... you know, what it actually is? There are obligations, expectations and so on that differ from those of a parent or a friend.