You could always get her an Inmarsat satphone, these are those flat things about the size and shape of a laptop computer. You can buy them in the duty-free shop at Heathrow airport. Sure they're expensive and heavy, but did you ever see what an Iridium phone was like with all the bits attached?
While the Motley Fool points out that the CCA algorithm is no good for preventing piracy, after all you can just burn an image of the DVD, it fails to address the major piracy issue. What DECSS theoretically makes possible is decryption of a DVD into a series of unencrypted MPEGS, which would then be considerably easier to distribute. Given current trends in bandwidth availability, the DVD derived MPEGs would become as easy to trade as MP3s. So this would change the economics of piracy a little more favorable, making the decision to copy a little more casual. Granted, even a licenced CCA algorithm user could write a program to do the same thing. But the point is to make sure that someone trying to play a DVD is in posession of the actual physical disc. The overall point is correct, however: the music & video industries have been used to selling boxes with discs in them at extortionate prices, they now need to get to grips with the fact that they don't really know that much about selling and managing intellectual property.
The Transmeta processors seem to be part of a general trend to define increasing amounts of functionality in software, rather than actual physical hardware. Another great example of this is MIT's software defined radio project (http://www.sds.lcs.mit.edu/SpectrumWare/home.html ) which basically attaches a fast DSP to an aerial, allowing a single device to emulate anything from multiple flavours of cellphone (GSM, CDMA, AMPS) to a walky-talky or a radio. Combine Crusoe with a soft radio, and you have an incredibly powerful mobile communicator, that can change its fundamental nature with a software download!
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You could always get her an Inmarsat satphone, these are those flat things about the size and shape of a laptop computer. You can buy them in the duty-free shop at Heathrow airport. Sure they're expensive and heavy, but did you ever see what an Iridium phone was like with all the bits attached?
While the Motley Fool points out that the CCA algorithm is no good for preventing piracy, after all you can just burn an image of the DVD, it fails to address the major piracy issue. What DECSS theoretically makes possible is decryption of a DVD into a series of unencrypted MPEGS, which would then be considerably easier to distribute. Given current trends in bandwidth availability, the DVD derived MPEGs would become as easy to trade as MP3s. So this would change the economics of piracy a little more favorable, making the decision to copy a little more casual. Granted, even a licenced CCA algorithm user could write a program to do the same thing. But the point is to make sure that someone trying to play a DVD is in posession of the actual physical disc. The overall point is correct, however: the music & video industries have been used to selling boxes with discs in them at extortionate prices, they now need to get to grips with the fact that they don't really know that much about selling and managing intellectual property.
The Transmeta processors seem to be part of a general trend to define increasing amounts of functionality in software, rather than actual physical hardware. Another great example of this is MIT's software defined radio project (http://www.sds.lcs.mit.edu/SpectrumWare/home.html ) which basically attaches a fast DSP to an aerial, allowing a single device to emulate anything from multiple flavours of cellphone (GSM, CDMA, AMPS) to a walky-talky or a radio. Combine Crusoe with a soft radio, and you have an incredibly powerful mobile communicator, that can change its fundamental nature with a software download!