This is a great idea! If Forbes can force MS to carry their DRM, then any one of us can too! How about someone write a 'DRM script generator' which slaps together some rudimentary DRM Code, and form e-mails to MS for inclusion. When Microsoft gets six hundred different DRM libraries they have to incorporate into the next Visa update, suddenly Bill isn't so DRM-friendly any more. With Steve and Bill staring down those movie studio pirates (I'm referring to the studio executives who steal from their producers and authors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting ), suddenly life will get hard.
Same with the 'own an integer' program. (This was on slashdot recently: encrypts a Haiku using this integer, which you can then claim as your 'key' and send a DRM takedown notice to anyone else who lists it).
See where this is going: "DRM takedown notice? I'll give you a DRM takedown notice. How about a million of them?" Any recipient who ignores or blocks it will be subject to DMCA penalties. How ironic!!!
DAFIF was a free listing of every aviation facility on the planet: runways, airports, navaids, beacons. One day the US NGIA who compiles it pulled the plug on public access. They said some 'foreign content providers' had claimed copyright on their portion of the data. Instead of distributing a partial worldwide database (which would be kind of useless), they thought "screw it" and dropped public access. Not just US citizens lost out on this, but the whole world did.
Who did this affect? Everyone in Aviation.
So who was behind it? They wouldn't say at the time.
Turns out it was these little greasers: Air Services Australia. They did it because they wanted to rip off Australian Aviators, and they couldn't do that while the US made available an aviation database for free. This is one of these government organizations which pretends to 'privatize'. You get these pompous, stuffed-shirt public servants who think they built an organization from the ground up, when they were really handed something build from public money and said 'charge everyone'. So, Air Services Australia: Thanks a lot.
Under the USC government doesn't copyright their products: citizens already paid to produce it with their taxes. In Australia and Britain, there is a long tradition of fleecing the public.
> That the Nvidia logo and slogan "the way it's meant to be played" will > have a disclaimer on the bottom like most car commercials, or tacked on to the splash screen?
I've tried complaining to nVidia about a bug in their drivers. They're unreachable. The support forums have no employees, so it's users trying to help users. They have no e-mail and their feedback form is still 'under construction'. They refer you to your OEM for all questions, which of course your OEM (someone who slaps chips on a PCB) can't answer. nVidia are your typical company in a death spiral: They antagonize their current users because they know that won't affect them until next year. Meanwhile they hope clueless n00bs come along and continue to buy their products.
Since the nVidia drivers are shonky in Vista (and for that matter XP), the answer is easy: ATI.
51st state? If only. Americans look after their own. The Australian Government does not.
The Australian Government giving up an Aussie because the American Government asks for it? Happens all the time.
The American Government giving up an American citizen? Hah! It'd never happen.
The Aussie Government routinely passes American laws because it's a kiss ass nation.
The American Government passing Aussie laws? Bloody unlikely, 'mate'
The Aussie and US Government signed a free trade agreement. It banned agriculture which is Australias prime export. Since the deal, the trade balance has favoured the US. America looks after America's interests. Australia kisses asses.
Australia isn't worthy of being the 51st state (because it doesn't act like one) Australia is an ass kisser.
> Blender isn't well thought out - it's evolved. The user interface is still pretty terrible.
Same can be said for 3DSMAX. Extremely powerful because it's evolved, but with a terrible, archaic user interface that newcomers like VUE leave for dead. Same for Poser and DAZ.
Being first to market is a huge advantage, but in time, you're left lugging a dinosaur around while sleek, warm blooded animals breed and overrun you. Say... is that snow?:-)
Thanks for that info: I've had bad experiences with IBM, Toshiba, HP Compaq and Acer. I'm running out of laptops, and am considering trying Fujitsu. At least when it broke on you they did try. Unlike most else, they are still made in Japan. Japanese are big on quality. Even their 'Discount Shops' ('Hundred Yen Stores' they call them) reek of quality. Unfortunately, Fujitsu is the only manufacturer still making laptops in Japan. Everyone else has moved to China, including Toshiba:
Toshiba: The LCD had some bad rows. When I tried to get it fixed under their International Warranty (in Japan where Toshiba are located), rather than a local service center, they insisted I ship it at my expense to Tokyo (a long way away from where I was staying) *and* stay in the country for two weeks while they service it. When I returned home would they ship it back? No. When I did get back, the warranty was expiring. I used the laptop for a couple of years with the bad LCD rows before its connection to the powerboard failed. Despite my better judgement, fell in love with an bought a Qosmio/Cosmio Toshiba laptop in Japan. Reasonable unit, but there's some brown stuff that leaks near the bottom of the LCD (not the battery) and something loose that rattles around inside. Not the stuff of confidence.
HP Compaq: Their customer service is run in India by rude telephone operators who try and con customers out of their consumer rights. At home I'm sure they're nice people, but at work they think customers are on par with rats and cockroaches. If it does break, HP will pay for some guy working out of his apartment to fix it. It's in this guys financial interest for your laptop to fail again. Know your consumer rights, because it's Bob/Kumar's job to make sure you don't get them. These guys are absolute assholes.
Acer: Complete disaster. Wouldn't use their products no matter what.
IBM: Also bad. Failed 2 months out of warranty. The IBM authorized repair center charged me $40 to say 'Sorry, don't know what the problem is. I can replace the motherboard for $X (more than the price of the PC). They also had hard drives (DeskStars aka DeathStars) that had many failures. IBM denied the problem to the ire of users. I got mine replaced, but would never touch IBM again. Well, now I can't: IBM pulled out of the PC business. I wonder why. The IBM brand is worth crap.
So I'm fast running out of PC vendors! I think I'll try Fujitsu next. There's really little else. Maybe ASUS?
When you buy a PC, the warranty is very important but we don't know how good or bad they are until it breaks.
> didn't learn anything from the countless other times this has happened to other forms > of DRM, I don't know what makes you think they'll learn anything from this one.
What too many corporate cubicle drones forget is that if the customer isn't happy, the company loses. In theory executives are supposed to craft a 'mission statement' that reminds employees of this. Trouble is the employees are all temporaries, on contracts or outsourced (how sweet is that? Insult someone else's customers and not even have to use your or your companies real name!)
Instead, too many executives treat their customers with contempt too (Hello Vista, Hello DRM). Listen to Bill Gates speak. Has he said anything in the last 15 years that sounded genuine or empathic or like he really cared at all about Microsoft's millions of customers. We're in the situation where companies can treat their customers like crap, but we still keep buying from them, reasoning they're all the same and it's too hard to change. (me too:-(
Kudos to Apple and Jobs. It's smart business and it's not asking much, but they've realized what the likes of Microsoft, HP and eBay couldn't. Doesn't take much to stand out in the crowd these days. Good for them!
But this time the cartel wrote the law. Would anyone living in his district be sure to thank US Congressman Howard Coble at the next election? Coble was the guy that introduced the DMCA into Congress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Coble
> school officials found he created a video game map of his school. > School district police arrested the teen and searched his home > where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'.
They also impounded "Barabdar Daimao", the Demon King monster whose mesh he was designing. "He's a real scary looking critter", said Deputy Sheriff Billy Jack Houston, "If he ever got one of them there things into a Quake match, he could be doing lots of damage to innocent folks and all whose just having fun killin' each other."
Beautiful! Kevin of Digg's Response has all the signs of an arrogant businessman who flipped the bird to his users, and was freaked out when they flipped the bird back. He even pulls out the "What about the Children Argument" claiming '(eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.)'. He then goes on to add 'If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.' I mean, how childish. The guy made a bad call, and now he thinks he's Gandhi.
The thing these arrogant upstarts forget is when you create something and the public use it, the public own it. Sure legally you have 'title', but if you try and mess with it the public will be at your throat. They've invested their time and effort in building up your business, and they're now a part of it too. MMPOGs like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have discovered it the hard way, to the point Raph Koster warns upstarts once others use it, you cease to own it. But the message still hasn't got out.
The smartest thing Kevin could have done is admitted a mistake and canceled the HD DVD Digg sponsorship to avoid conflict of interested. The smartest thing the board could do now is fire Kevin, before their investors see their hard earned cash peed up against the wall. The longer Kevin hisses and spits at his users, the more damage it does Digg. Digg dugg their own grave.
I stand corrected. I read about the angry $10K bannerman and thought he was the unlucky one, but looks like everyone missed out. All Google has is excited blogs about people getting ready and not one saying "look at us":
Maybe Google's Army of ex-CIA Photointerpreters were working to a deadline? Or maybe she just means "we looked at a few". Seriously it did happen: Here are photo blogs of expectant advertisers (and one poor sucker who blew $10,000 on a sign they didn't fly over).
Google Earth used to be cool, but it's turning into one massive billboard (perhaps one of the ideas all along). In Sydney for Australia Day, Google (and whatever the Microsoft's copy of it is called) did flyovers with huge pre-publicity. People lay out banners,.com wannabees stuck huge logos on their rooves, people picnicked and love-maked all on the hope of becoming 'famous' (with four million other people). Google put it up and at the end of the day, Sydney wasn't Sydney any more. Instead, Sydney was transformed into one big banner ad:
Then we had the world's biggest photojournalism fakery with Google restoring New Orleans to pre-Katrina. Beyond weird. Did they think the residents wouldn't notice?
Google Earth is sponsored infotainment. If you'd like to see Earth without the Ads, there's a little mob called NASA I hear are going places: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/
> 'endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, > undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order'
Jobs argument is actually coherent, although the actual points he made was never reported in the Mainstream Moron Media. Jobs argues the biggest failings of DRM is:
* It doesn't work. * It's too easily cracked, and patching the DRM software to stop cracks is a losing battle. * The RIAA sell the very same music unprotected on CDs anyway(!!!!!!)
These absurd IP Laws and Congresses unwillingness to do anything about it will come back to haunt the What is the status of US IP Laws in China and India and other countries? Copyright is one thing, but US patent law has got completely out of control. If these countries don't sign on to US IP law (the way US client states like Australia have), they will make themselves more attractive centers for IT industry and investment.
"The new feature, called {Google} Web History, allows users to look back in time at the websites they have browsed and search them for specific lines of text." and "Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke said of the new feature: "Every URL that you ever go to at any time is being sifted through at Google and thrown into their archives to help them build a profile about you forever.""
This isn't evil in itself, but it's certainly open to abuse. Yahoo said they were complying with the laws of China when they turned those dissidents in. Google have the potential to do that, and now with doubleclick, even more. As Scott McNeally snarled: "You have no privacy. Get over it!"
Slashdot Mirror
Using a bad law to fight itself:
This is a great idea! If Forbes can force MS to carry their DRM, then any one of us can too! How about someone write a 'DRM script generator' which slaps together some rudimentary DRM Code, and form e-mails to MS for inclusion. When Microsoft gets six hundred different DRM libraries they have to incorporate into the next Visa update, suddenly Bill isn't so DRM-friendly any more. With Steve and Bill staring down those movie studio pirates (I'm referring to the studio executives who steal from their producers and authors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting ), suddenly life will get hard.
Same with the 'own an integer' program. (This was on slashdot recently: encrypts a Haiku using this integer, which you can then claim as your 'key' and send a DRM takedown notice to anyone else who lists it).
See where this is going: "DRM takedown notice? I'll give you a DRM takedown notice. How about a million of them?" Any recipient who ignores or blocks it will be subject to DMCA penalties. How ironic!!!
DAFIF was a free listing of every aviation facility on the planet: runways, airports, navaids, beacons. One day the US NGIA who compiles it pulled the plug on public access. They said some 'foreign content providers' had claimed copyright on their portion of the data. Instead of distributing a partial worldwide database (which would be kind of useless), they thought "screw it" and dropped public access. Not just US citizens lost out on this, but the whole world did.
Who did this affect? Everyone in Aviation.
So who was behind it? They wouldn't say at the time.
Turns out it was these little greasers: Air Services Australia. They did it because they wanted to rip off Australian Aviators, and they couldn't do that while the US made available an aviation database for free. This is one of these government organizations which pretends to 'privatize'. You get these pompous, stuffed-shirt public servants who think they built an organization from the ground up, when they were really handed something build from public money and said 'charge everyone'. So, Air Services Australia: Thanks a lot.
http://www.fcw.com/article91698-12-12-05-Prin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFIF
http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/
Under the USC government doesn't copyright their products: citizens already paid to produce it with their taxes. In Australia and Britain, there is a long tradition of fleecing the public.
> That the Nvidia logo and slogan "the way it's meant to be played" will
> have a disclaimer on the bottom like most car commercials, or tacked on to the splash screen?
I've tried complaining to nVidia about a bug in their drivers. They're unreachable. The support forums have no employees, so it's users trying to help users. They have no e-mail and their feedback form is still 'under construction'. They refer you to your OEM for all questions, which of course your OEM (someone who slaps chips on a PCB) can't answer. nVidia are your typical company in a death spiral: They antagonize their current users because they know that won't affect them until next year. Meanwhile they hope clueless n00bs come along and continue to buy their products.
Since the nVidia drivers are shonky in Vista (and for that matter XP), the answer is easy: ATI.
51st state? If only. Americans look after their own. The Australian Government does not. The Australian Government giving up an Aussie because the American Government asks for it? Happens all the time. The American Government giving up an American citizen? Hah! It'd never happen. The Aussie Government routinely passes American laws because it's a kiss ass nation. The American Government passing Aussie laws? Bloody unlikely, 'mate' The Aussie and US Government signed a free trade agreement. It banned agriculture which is Australias prime export. Since the deal, the trade balance has favoured the US. America looks after America's interests. Australia kisses asses. Australia isn't worthy of being the 51st state (because it doesn't act like one) Australia is an ass kisser.
> Blender isn't well thought out - it's evolved. The user interface is still pretty terrible.
:-)
Same can be said for 3DSMAX. Extremely powerful because it's evolved, but with a terrible, archaic user interface that newcomers like VUE leave for dead. Same for Poser and DAZ.
Being first to market is a huge advantage, but in time, you're left lugging a dinosaur around while sleek, warm blooded animals breed and overrun you. Say... is that snow?
Thanks for that info: I've had bad experiences with IBM, Toshiba, HP Compaq and Acer. I'm running out of laptops, and am considering trying Fujitsu. At least when it broke on you they did try. Unlike most else, they are still made in Japan. Japanese are big on quality. Even their 'Discount Shops' ('Hundred Yen Stores' they call them) reek of quality. Unfortunately, Fujitsu is the only manufacturer still making laptops in Japan. Everyone else has moved to China, including Toshiba:
Toshiba: The LCD had some bad rows. When I tried to get it fixed under their International Warranty (in Japan where Toshiba are located), rather than a local service center, they insisted I ship it at my expense to Tokyo (a long way away from where I was staying) *and* stay in the country for two weeks while they service it. When I returned home would they ship it back? No. When I did get back, the warranty was expiring. I used the laptop for a couple of years with the bad LCD rows before its connection to the powerboard failed. Despite my better judgement, fell in love with an bought a Qosmio/Cosmio Toshiba laptop in Japan. Reasonable unit, but there's some brown stuff that leaks near the bottom of the LCD (not the battery) and something loose that rattles around inside. Not the stuff of confidence.
HP Compaq: Their customer service is run in India by rude telephone operators who try and con customers out of their consumer rights. At home I'm sure they're nice people, but at work they think customers are on par with rats and cockroaches. If it does break, HP will pay for some guy working out of his apartment to fix it. It's in this guys financial interest for your laptop to fail again. Know your consumer rights, because it's Bob/Kumar's job to make sure you don't get them. These guys are absolute assholes.
Acer: Complete disaster. Wouldn't use their products no matter what.
IBM: Also bad. Failed 2 months out of warranty. The IBM authorized repair center charged me $40 to say 'Sorry, don't know what the problem is. I can replace the motherboard for $X (more than the price of the PC). They also had hard drives (DeskStars aka DeathStars) that had many failures. IBM denied the problem to the ire of users. I got mine replaced, but would never touch IBM again. Well, now I can't: IBM pulled out of the PC business. I wonder why. The IBM brand is worth crap.
So I'm fast running out of PC vendors! I think I'll try Fujitsu next. There's really little else. Maybe ASUS?
When you buy a PC, the warranty is very important but we don't know how good or bad they are until it breaks.
> didn't learn anything from the countless other times this has happened to other forms
> of DRM, I don't know what makes you think they'll learn anything from this one.
They'll ram DRM down our throats or die trying.
Despite the warm smiling photos, has *anyone* here had a positive experience with customer service in any corporation, big or small, lately? http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=st ock_photos
:-(
What too many corporate cubicle drones forget is that if the customer isn't happy, the company loses. In theory executives are supposed to craft a 'mission statement' that reminds employees of this. Trouble is the employees are all temporaries, on contracts or outsourced (how sweet is that? Insult someone else's customers and not even have to use your or your companies real name!)
Instead, too many executives treat their customers with contempt too (Hello Vista, Hello DRM). Listen to Bill Gates speak. Has he said anything in the last 15 years that sounded genuine or empathic or like he really cared at all about Microsoft's millions of customers. We're in the situation where companies can treat their customers like crap, but we still keep buying from them, reasoning they're all the same and it's too hard to change. (me too
Kudos to Apple and Jobs. It's smart business and it's not asking much, but they've realized what the likes of Microsoft, HP and eBay couldn't. Doesn't take much to stand out in the crowd these days. Good for them!
But this time the cartel wrote the law. Would anyone living in his district be sure to thank US Congressman Howard Coble at the next election? Coble was the guy that introduced the DMCA into Congress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Coble
> school officials found he created a video game map of his school.
> School district police arrested the teen and searched his home
> where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'.
They also impounded "Barabdar Daimao", the Demon King monster whose mesh he was designing. "He's a real scary looking critter", said Deputy Sheriff Billy Jack Houston, "If he ever got one of them there things into a Quake match, he could be doing lots of damage to innocent folks and all whose just having fun killin' each other."
A rule to live by: There's never any harm admitting a mistake, when everyone knows you're wrong anyway! ;-)
Beautiful! Kevin of Digg's Response has all the signs of an arrogant businessman who flipped the bird to his users, and was freaked out when they flipped the bird back. He even pulls out the "What about the Children Argument" claiming '(eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.)'. He then goes on to add 'If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.' I mean, how childish. The guy made a bad call, and now he thinks he's Gandhi.
The thing these arrogant upstarts forget is when you create something and the public use it, the public own it. Sure legally you have 'title', but if you try and mess with it the public will be at your throat. They've invested their time and effort in building up your business, and they're now a part of it too. MMPOGs like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have discovered it the hard way, to the point Raph Koster warns upstarts once others use it, you cease to own it. But the message still hasn't got out.
The smartest thing Kevin could have done is admitted a mistake and canceled the HD DVD Digg sponsorship to avoid conflict of interested. The smartest thing the board could do now is fire Kevin, before their investors see their hard earned cash peed up against the wall. The longer Kevin hisses and spits at his users, the more damage it does Digg. Digg dugg their own grave.
(pause) feel the power, boys!
How did an abusive troll get modded insightful?
Agreed. Didn't realize it fizzled that bad.
I stand corrected. I read about the angry $10K bannerman and thought he was the unlucky one, but looks like everyone missed out. All Google has is excited blogs about people getting ready and not one saying "look at us":
m aps-sydney-flyover/
m l
http://swiftcity.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/google-
Shrinking flyzones: No wonder she couldn't find any ads. Maybe they'll get their act together for Independence Day?
http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives/009605.ht
Maybe Google's Army of ex-CIA Photointerpreters were working to a deadline? Or maybe she just means "we looked at a few". Seriously it did happen: Here are photo blogs of expectant advertisers (and one poor sucker who blew $10,000 on a sign they didn't fly over).
m l2 56978.html
- circles/2007/02/01/1169919445548.html
http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives/009502.ht
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/01/29/1169919
Though good luck to the guy from SOS Print+Media! Hahahahahha!
Google say they're thinking about doing the same over parts of the US on Independence Day. Don't think they'll try it over the UK though: Too many swear words and phallasus. http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/google-spots--crap
Google Earth used to be cool, but it's turning into one massive billboard (perhaps one of the ideas all along). In Sydney for Australia Day, Google (and whatever the Microsoft's copy of it is called) did flyovers with huge pre-publicity. People lay out banners, .com wannabees stuck huge logos on their rooves, people picnicked and love-maked all on the hope of becoming 'famous' (with four million other people). Google put it up and at the end of the day, Sydney wasn't Sydney any more. Instead, Sydney was transformed into one big banner ad:
- day-flyover/
n s_demolished/page2.html
http://googlesightseeing.com/2007/02/27/australia
Then we had the world's biggest photojournalism fakery with Google restoring New Orleans to pre-Katrina. Beyond weird. Did they think the residents wouldn't notice?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/02/new_orlea
Google Earth is sponsored infotainment. If you'd like to see Earth without the Ads, there's a little mob called NASA I hear are going places: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/
> 'endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government,
> undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order'
I'm speechless. No, literally!
> but now Negroponte says that the OLPC machine will be able to run Windows as well as Linux.
Not surprising that Negroponte changed his mind. Waking up and finding that chair in his bed must have really rattled him.
Jobs argument is actually coherent, although the actual points he made was never reported in the Mainstream Moron Media. Jobs argues the biggest failings of DRM is:
* It doesn't work.
* It's too easily cracked, and patching the DRM software to stop cracks is a losing battle.
* The RIAA sell the very same music unprotected on CDs anyway(!!!!!!)
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Anything that causes Macrovision stock to crash has to be a good thing.
> Sony Takes on YouTube with Video-Sharing Site
Considering how badly SONY has been run, they couldn't take on a 10 year old kid armed with a cardboard box.
Ummm... taking notes in class maybe? :-)
e ntations
Sorry, You're right: It's a typo: I meant Steganography. This is where P2P stops pretending to be P2P or even encrypted P2P, and starts moving content through covert channels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Implem
MPAA and RIAA: You'll never beat the hackers. MPAA: Stick ads in torrents and make even more money. RIAA: Fans and Bands don't need you any more.
And two words of Ohio U: Give up.
These absurd IP Laws and Congresses unwillingness to do anything about it will come back to haunt the What is the status of US IP Laws in China and India and other countries? Copyright is one thing, but US patent law has got completely out of control. If these countries don't sign on to US IP law (the way US client states like Australia have), they will make themselves more attractive centers for IT industry and investment.
Just saw this in the SMH:
c ks-your-online-habits/2007/04/23/1177180549441.htm l
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/search-service-tra
"The new feature, called {Google} Web History, allows users to look back in time at the websites they have browsed and search them for specific lines of text." and "Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke said of the new feature: "Every URL that you ever go to at any time is being sifted through at Google and thrown into their archives to help them build a profile about you forever.""
This isn't evil in itself, but it's certainly open to abuse. Yahoo said they were complying with the laws of China when they turned those dissidents in. Google have the potential to do that, and now with doubleclick, even more. As Scott McNeally snarled: "You have no privacy. Get over it!"