The french PTT have been doing precisely that for the last 100 years or so.
And they don't need robots to do that.
Actually, a joint venture with the french railroads and the water company will compete with the PTT: they use railroad right-of-ways to lay cable between cities, they put the switches in train stations, and go the last kilometer though the sewers (also) used by the water company.
As many have pointed out, CPRM is probably useless on a
"general purpose" computer -- there's just too many
software packages and operating systems and filesystems to deal
with, not to mention the somewhat educated userbase.
However, where it is useful is Single Purpose devices.
What if you could just wedge out the IDE drive on your HD-Tivo
and get access to the unencrypted MPEG-2 stream. Instant Internet
Rebroadcast. Repeat for various other audio and video devices.
Ha! I just can't believe that an industry whose prime directive
rule #1 is "the mental age of the average Joe Q. Public
is 12" would be afraid of Joe Sixpack pulling out
the disk drive from his TiVO and stuffing it into his PC to pirate
the latest broadcast of Seinfeld...
Your post is very interesting and makes me wonder: what
if the entertainment industry somehow uses DMCA against OSs'
that don't enforce the copy-protection?
In that case, the rest of the world will sit back and relax
enjoying a good laugh at the stupid yankees who do whatever Hollywood
decides...
Drives that do not support CPRM will be made illegal.
Fine. Elsewhere in the world, we'll be able to buy normal disk
drives and laugh our brains out at how stupid the yankees are
in making custom-made laws for Hollywood...
Unless I'm remembering my Red Book spec wrong, there's no
reason you couldn't apply the same technique to a CD. Someone in a pressing
house should give it a try.
I don't think that the 44 khz bandwidth of a CD will faithfully reproduce
a 20 khz or more signal without seriously mangling it (by aliasing it)...
Setup a fake company to peddle the product either to your employer, or to the client, making sure you stay at arm's length from it and they can't trace you back to it.
Ain't got the dough to plunk down for lengths of track or Athearn hogs? Ain't got the patience to do the itty-bitty wiring or superdetailing on your hogs?
No problem. Just head to the nearest rail museum, enroll as a volunteer, and you get to play with REAL TRAINS (at 12 inches to the foot scale) for (gasp!)FREE...
All I want to know is: why the hell do the labels have lawyers
that move at warp speed, and engineers that move like snails?
That's because in the U.S. of A., companies who have
engineers that move at warp speed and lawyers that move like snail go belly
up so fast that they don't even register a blip at the stock exchange.
Oooooh...capitalistic. How terrible. Please propose a system
which works better than capitalism. There are about hundred million dead
people from Stalin, Mao, and other various Communist goons' experiments
in non-capitalism.
100 million people? That's about the death-count attributable to automobiles
since they exist. Now, automobiles are quite a capitalistic product; so,
try to imagine what the total death count of capitalism would be, when
you ALSOinclude the victims of worplace disease and injury, ill-paid
workers who can't afford doctors, and third-world workforce that work in
sweatshops, all the result of your fine capitalist system.
It's 2012, we get hit by a bad solar flare. A Payload Assist
Module accidentally ignites and in a freak accident takes out one of the
GPS satellites. Every bit of consumer electronics in the 'North American
Marketing Region' immediately shuts down because it is 'out of the authorized
market area'. The crowds do go wild - but not in a nice way. The heads
of the networks will go up on pikes right alongside the heads of the government
for letting em foist the technology on us.
[...]
- And one by one, the [atomic-powered] washing machines, automobiles,
radios, autocookers will cease to function. The people will get angry.
- What are you expect? A jacquerie? The peasants shouting "give
us back our roto-zoom cleaning machines!!"? I'm afraid that it takes
more than that to instill a revolution!!
Salvor Hardin to a planetary king's advisor, in The merchant princes (Foundation),
by Isaac Asimov
Toast: You may toast bread slices or bagels not exceeding
44 mm in width in this device. Waffles are not allowed in this device without
the purchase of the WAFFLE EXPANSION LICENSE.
Powell relies on the fact that most law enforcement in the
world doesn't really know very much about criminal activity related to
the internet. A few years back I was actually questioned by the local police
department about some internet related threats, and the officer in charge
of the investigation admitted that she knew practically nothing about computers.
Some years ago, a joint I used to work at sold some computers to what turned
out to be a bunch of scammers (scamming U.S. pensioners out of Canada).
Well, lo and behold, the RCMP, upon learning we sold them the computers
they had seized, promptly came to our place and asked them to fix the computers
they had fucked-up after seizing them. They did stupid thing like swapping
the file server hard disk with a workstation's. The scary thing is that
this tampered evidence was accepted by the court.
During the long chats we had with some of the squad members responsible
for that stunt while we were waiting for the drive-images to be done, we
learned that they got the computer crime squad assignment because they
were considered to be 133t k0p5, since they were fresh from a stint in the antiterrorist squad...
(Btw, they were the same dudes who pinned-down Mafiaboy, which, ironically, lived on the same street as my boss...)
Shades like that typist we heard earlier here who was promoted to head
of the IT department because she was the one who typed the fastest...
I want to tag my tools, so my toolbox will remind me that
I forgot to put away my hammer. If I ignore that reminder, my database
can tell me I last used the hammer in attic.
I just hope the tags don't look like tacks.
Naaaah, forget is, 'cause when all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail...
Even the Amish are giving in to pressure. As I understand
it, cellphones are just about acceptable as long as they're not used in
the house, and not on the Sabbath. They've had (legally mandated) battery
operated turn signals on their carriages for years now.
Amish "rejection" of technology is not blindly stupid luddism; they have
quite valid reasons for it.
Their objections to (landline) telephones is quite reasonable: they
cannot dig a device that distracts the attention from an actual visitor
in order to give attention (talk) to someone who is too lazy to show up
in person. In other words, it's impolite to cut one's in person
conversation to answer the phone. I don't have a problem with that at all;
personally, I just hate it having to wait for someone to finish
a phone call before talking to me; if I took the trouble to go all the
way to see you, it's kinda important, no? And likewise, whenever I call
someone, I can perfectly well understand that he can't answer me at once;
the first thing I ask is "Am I disturbing you?".
Interestingly, the Amish didn't have deep objections to fax machines;
they simply put the fax in a shed away from the house, they go check it
a few times a day, when they'll be sure it won't interfere with any conversation.
Likewise, they dig cellphones because they can be answered when one
is out (litterally) in the field...
Interestingly, the first cellphone operator who got a hint of that made
a killing amongst the Amish, simply by having a contract that didh't require
a credit card (another thing Amish ain't too fond of).
I recently needed to buy an airline ticket from KLM (http://www.klm.com).
They had this lovely browser detect JavaScript, and because I always disable
JavaScript until I get to verify the authors intentions, I got a blank
screen. So, I got a blank screen, glanced quickly over the code and enabled
JavaScript.
Next time, fly Britshit Earways, Air Chance, Butchansa
or SABENA*...
Of course, you have to wonder why the STANDARD wasn't hashed
out a LONG time ago. Instead they keep upgrading the standards and thats
whats causing these problems. As I once heard, lack of planning on your
part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
For this, you can blame the (god blessed) "free" market "competition",
where every browser "maker" is pulling in it's own direction (and you can
guess in whose general direction my stare is gazing at right now).
It is SLOW,
It bogs down the machine's ressources
It is used for totally useless fluff in 99% of the time, stuff that can STILL be done with plain-vanilla HTML
Slashdot Mirror
And they don't need robots to do that.
Actually, a joint venture with the french railroads and the water company will compete with the PTT: they use railroad right-of-ways to lay cable between cities, they put the switches in train stations, and go the last kilometer though the sewers (also) used by the water company.
--
Ha! I just can't believe that an industry whose prime directive rule #1 is " the mental age of the average Joe Q. Public is 12 " would be afraid of Joe Sixpack pulling out the disk drive from his TiVO and stuffing it into his PC to pirate the latest broadcast of Seinfeld...
--
Ha! Au contraire, mon cher!
Boy would Microsoft LOVE that one: a law that would FORCE all current users of Windoze to UPGRADE!!!!
--
In that case, the rest of the world will sit back and relax enjoying a good laugh at the stupid yankees who do whatever Hollywood decides...
--
Fine. Elsewhere in the world, we'll be able to buy normal disk drives and laugh our brains out at how stupid the yankees are in making custom-made laws for Hollywood...
--
--
--
--
No problem. Just head to the nearest rail museum, enroll as a volunteer, and you get to play with REAL TRAINS (at 12 inches to the foot scale) for (gasp!) FREE...
--
--
Not in the USA, where "anyone with big bucks" ==* "government".
* I did put the "==" to make believe that I program in C, but in reality, I'm a Delphi junkie...
--
--
- And one by one, the [atomic-powered] washing machines, automobiles, radios, autocookers will cease to function. The people will get angry.
- What are you expect? A jacquerie? The peasants shouting "give us back our roto-zoom cleaning machines!!"? I'm afraid that it takes more than that to instill a revolution!!
--
How about POP TARTS???
--
During the long chats we had with some of the squad members responsible for that stunt while we were waiting for the drive-images to be done, we learned that they got the computer crime squad assignment because they were considered to be 133t k0p5 , since they were fresh from a stint in the antiterrorist squad...
(Btw, they were the same dudes who pinned-down Mafiaboy, which, ironically, lived on the same street as my boss...)
Shades like that typist we heard earlier here who was promoted to head of the IT department because she was the one who typed the fastest...
--
--
And what happens when private corporations controls culture?
--
he has some brain-damage
have had an unhappy childhood
does not have all his marbles
is woefully ill-informed
has a father that's got oodles of dough
is terribly naive in thinking that the "american dream(tm)" can apply to him
most of the above
--
Later, when they show-up in court, just say "I never signed that. That's not my signature".
--
Naaaah, forget is, 'cause when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...
--
Their objections to (landline) telephones is quite reasonable: they cannot dig a device that distracts the attention from an actual visitor in order to give attention (talk) to someone who is too lazy to show up in person . In other words, it's impolite to cut one's in person conversation to answer the phone. I don't have a problem with that at all; personally, I just hate it having to wait for someone to finish a phone call before talking to me; if I took the trouble to go all the way to see you, it's kinda important, no? And likewise, whenever I call someone, I can perfectly well understand that he can't answer me at once; the first thing I ask is "Am I disturbing you?".
Interestingly, the Amish didn't have deep objections to fax machines; they simply put the fax in a shed away from the house, they go check it a few times a day, when they'll be sure it won't interfere with any conversation.
Likewise, they dig cellphones because they can be answered when one is out (litterally) in the field...
Interestingly, the first cellphone operator who got a hint of that made a killing amongst the Amish, simply by having a contract that didh't require a credit card (another thing Amish ain't too fond of).
--
Wow, I didn't know that Slashdot had flash!!!!
I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade from Mosaic...
--
Next time, fly Britshit Earways, Air Chance, Butchansa or SABENA*...
* Such A Bad Experience, Never Again.
--
--
It bogs down the machine's ressources
It is used for totally useless fluff in 99% of the time, stuff that can STILL be done with plain-vanilla HTML
--