In the 70s and 80s there was a reasonably robust trade in 'import records' -- even entire stores devoted to the market. If someone was an especially strong devotee of a given artist or record, they could get the 'foreign' version -- often in addition to the 'local' version. This is simply impractical (and commercially infeasible) with DVDs.
You either put up with the local rendition, or you starve to death.
Region Locking may have more of an effect than you think. It prevents us (in North America) from even considering buying, for example, a Japanese or European video. Like Anime? Want to see the original Japanese cut of "Ghost in the Machine"? You're going to be hard put to find it in any shop in your city. Your only real choices are:
obtain a bootleg copy,
Buy it Direct from Japan -- which would also require a Japanese-region DVD player.
Thus it is that most people don't even think about option 2, unless they're seriously considering building a large library of Japanese video...
The effective result is that most people don't even consider option 2. Either they get a bootleg copy, find (and limit themselves to) americanized version of foreign movies or they forget about buying foreign DVDs altogether.
In terms of cross-culture polination, it simply sucks.
No, you need a computer mounted (or mountable) on the dash -- and a (bi-directional) internet connection to violate their patent. (I read the patent a couple weeks ago, so my memory's not solid).
That doesn't change the fact that it's completely bogus. It basically covers the idea of putting a net-capable computer into or on your dash. For Prior Art, you should probably watch "The Jetsons".
I work for Free Geek Vancouver. Free Geeks are a loosely associated set of organizations dedicated to computer reuse and recycling (in that order). It's often the case (in Vancouver, anyways) that people will pop a drive before dropping by with a donation, so it's sometimes a problem that 'larger' drives run short ('larger' being in the 40G and up range for desktops and 20G+.
Free Geek organizations (I can't speak for others) have a comittment to destroying data on donated drives before they go out again. If you don't want to (or are not allowed to) trust that, then you can download a copy of DBAN and nuke your drives for a few hours (or days) before you donate them.
For most civilian uses, 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX' is sufficient (with today's drive density) to make the data on the drive effectively irrecoverable. --- but, if the NSA is after you for violating the Nuclear Secrets Act, all bets are off.
It's apparently a known path for MS in maintaining their monopoly that they'll lock a provider into 'promising' more product than they can really sell and then 'rolling that over' on top of their projections for the next year... and so on.. and so on. (There was just a tad of sarcasm in my note.)
In the meantime, the MS 'customer' is left run out on a string year after year.
If they were allowed to sell their excess product elsewhere, it would pretty much kill the impetus of MS's tactic.
The real difference is that, now, it seems like MS middlemen are getting desperate enough that they're now willing to jump out of the MS boat and swim to the apparently safer shores of Free software.
Well, they can always sell the unused licenses on Ebay -- if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft has browbeaten Ebay into making that effectively verboten.
If you're looking to make it impossible for people to install unsanctioned programs, you can mount the home directories noexec. That won't prevent things like shell scripts (bash myfile), but it will prevent people from installing binaries. If you have specific users that you trust, then you can give them a writable directory on an exec-capable mount, and (if it's not their entire home directory), symlink that directory into their home directory.
If that's not what you're talking about, then just what kind of lockdown do you require?
Unless he stole Adobe code, the DMCA takedown notice was probably illegal. Giving people the right to read what they bought is not a violation of copyright that DMCA takedowns are meant to refer to..
copyright gives you the right to control other people's ability to make and distribute further copies of your work, not the right to control how they use the copies tha they have -- or even the right to give the copy that you sold them to someone else (aka 'the right of first purchase').
DRM is being used to control the end-user far beyond what copyright is supposed to be about.
The GPL, on the other hand, only kicks in if/when you go beyond what copyright would allow a normal user to do (i.e. when you try to make/distribute further (possibly modified) copies). Until that point, the GPL claims no ability to control what you do.
Counterfeits can often be convincingly realistic, and since counterfeiting benefits terrorism, you don't want to buy them.
The only way to make sure that you never buy a counterfeit DVD is.... to never buy a physical DVD.
This means that downloading movies (whether legitimately or not) rather than buying DVDs (whether legitimate or not -- since we really can't always tell the difference) is a counter-terrorism effort.
No. Diebold marketed their machines as being capable of producing secure and accurate results, and delivered something mind-numbingly incompetent (at best).
'criminal negligence causing....' All that is required is to prove a willingness to accept an unconscionable level of risk. All that it is necessary to prove is that diebold knew tha their code was broken and was capable of being used to produce a subverted election,and that they promoted this product as something entirely different.
Code has been found in the diebold system that has no reasonable explanation for its existence other than the rigging of elections.
In any event, this stuff is not a case of the system messing up randomly or just working badly. Diebold has marketed their system as being capable of producing secure, accurate election results, and is nowhere near that level of competence.
Given the brutal simplicity of what is required, I see no reason why they shouldn't be held to the same level of responsibility as someone who is making a heart monitor, or even an electronic slot machine.
An, yes, you're right. You're not an apologist for anybody, you're an apologist for someone very, very specific -- Diebold.
Hey, these companies were secure in the knowledge that a critical piece of software was supported by a massive company like Microsoft -- and Microsoft is not going away (just their support).
This compares to companies that trust in open source... You never know when the company that's at the centre of open source development is going to go belly up, leaving customers with nothing more than the source code and the ability to support the product themselves for as long as it's important enough to them.
OK that was a major breaker for software and hardware alike, but we haven't had to suffer it in 8 years and there's no threat looming in the future. Why can't MS work this way?
Because Apple's OSs are designed by their engineers, while Microsoft's OSs seem to be designed by their marketing department.
Microsoft's mantra to keep people from trying Linux has been "
It's not compatible with windows XP,
there are so many devices that don't work with it,
people are going to have to learn a new system, and
your current software may not work with it.
.....
Now that all of these issues apply to people 'upgrading' to Vsta/Win7, why not actually upgrade their system by going to an OS that really works for it's users, like Gnu/Linux?
I seriously doubt that a geological conflageration that drops a surface city 3 miles underwater is going to leave the city grid intact and easily identifiable.
Slashdot Mirror
In the 70s and 80s there was a reasonably robust trade in 'import records' -- even entire stores devoted to the market. If someone was an especially strong devotee of a given artist or record, they could get the 'foreign' version -- often in addition to the 'local' version. This is simply impractical (and commercially infeasible) with DVDs.
You either put up with the local rendition, or you starve to death.
Thus it is that most people don't even think about option 2, unless they're seriously considering building a large library of Japanese video...
The effective result is that most people don't even consider option 2. Either they get a bootleg copy, find (and limit themselves to) americanized version of foreign movies or they forget about buying foreign DVDs altogether.
In terms of cross-culture polination, it simply sucks.
That doesn't change the fact that it's completely bogus. It basically covers the idea of putting a net-capable computer into or on your dash. For Prior Art, you should probably watch "The Jetsons".
Free Geek organizations (I can't speak for others) have a comittment to destroying data on donated drives before they go out again. If you don't want to (or are not allowed to) trust that, then you can download a copy of DBAN and nuke your drives for a few hours (or days) before you donate them.
For most civilian uses, 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX' is sufficient (with today's drive density) to make the data on the drive effectively irrecoverable. --- but, if the NSA is after you for violating the Nuclear Secrets Act, all bets are off.
In the meantime, the MS 'customer' is left run out on a string year after year.
If they were allowed to sell their excess product elsewhere, it would pretty much kill the impetus of MS's tactic.
The real difference is that, now, it seems like MS middlemen are getting desperate enough that they're now willing to jump out of the MS boat and swim to the apparently safer shores of Free software.
If companies go bankrupt, MS will still get some money -- it may just take a little while longer.
Well, they can always sell the unused licenses on Ebay -- if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft has browbeaten Ebay into making that effectively verboten.
If you're looking to make it impossible for people to install unsanctioned programs, you can mount the home directories noexec. That won't prevent things like shell scripts (bash myfile), but it will prevent people from installing binaries. If you have specific users that you trust, then you can give them a writable directory on an exec-capable mount, and (if it's not their entire home directory), symlink that directory into their home directory.
If that's not what you're talking about, then just what kind of lockdown do you require?
DMCA takedown notices have rather specific requirements. If they don't meet those requirements then they are, in fact, illegal.
This is starting to sound like the witch test from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
Unless he stole Adobe code, the DMCA takedown notice was probably illegal. Giving people the right to read what they bought is not a violation of copyright that DMCA takedowns are meant to refer to..
DRM is being used to control the end-user far beyond what copyright is supposed to be about.
The GPL, on the other hand, only kicks in if/when you go beyond what copyright would allow a normal user to do (i.e. when you try to make/distribute further (possibly modified) copies). Until that point, the GPL claims no ability to control what you do.
That doesn't matter, as long as you're not paying for the download.
This means that downloading movies (whether legitimately or not) rather than buying DVDs (whether legitimate or not -- since we really can't always tell the difference) is a counter-terrorism effort.
Long Live Counter-Terrorism!
Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort
George Bush Jr. is the best thing to have happened to Al Quaeda since their inception.
QED.
Throw the bastards in jail.
In any event, enemies of democracy are enemies of the state.
'criminal negligence causing ....' All that is required is to prove a willingness to accept an unconscionable level of risk. All that it is necessary to prove is that diebold knew tha their code was broken and was capable of being used to produce a subverted election,and that they promoted this product as something entirely different.
In any event, this stuff is not a case of the system messing up randomly or just working badly. Diebold has marketed their system as being capable of producing secure, accurate election results, and is nowhere near that level of competence.
Given the brutal simplicity of what is required, I see no reason why they shouldn't be held to the same level of responsibility as someone who is making a heart monitor, or even an electronic slot machine.
An, yes, you're right. You're not an apologist for anybody, you're an apologist for someone very, very specific -- Diebold.
Yeah, better to give them Linux and show them how to install CSS to view the DVDs that they paid good money for.
This compares to companies that trust in open source... You never know when the company that's at the centre of open source development is going to go belly up, leaving customers with nothing more than the source code and the ability to support the product themselves for as long as it's important enough to them.
The fact that the city hired some consultants that broke the system while trying to fix it isn't his problem.
Yeah, I'll just tell my current CIO that he should roll out Linux to all 120,000 desktops shall I ?
-Jar
Well, that's better than taking responsibility for a roll out of Vista/Win7 to all 120,000 desktops.
sometimes you just have to recognize the difference between pointing a pea-shooter at your foot, and a shotgun.
OK that was a major breaker for software and hardware alike, but we haven't had to suffer it in 8 years and there's no threat looming in the future. Why can't MS work this way?
Because Apple's OSs are designed by their engineers, while Microsoft's OSs seem to be designed by their marketing department.
Microsoft's mantra to keep people from trying Linux has been "
Now that all of these issues apply to people 'upgrading' to Vsta/Win7, why not actually upgrade their system by going to an OS that really works for it's users, like Gnu/Linux?
Well, if the water is less shallow than the boat is tall...
.... Then we've got a 'well rounded ship'.
Now that it's documented, it's a feature, not a bug.
QED