Good: -It has 5 gig. -It looks cool. -It encodes regular CD tracks to MP3. -It supports CDDB for track & disk titles.
Bad: -Hard drive == corruption is possible -"Familiar Windows "Explore" model for viewing and managing Jukebox content" (Where do I want to go?) -$10/listening hour seems great until you realize that the unit is about $800! -Damn! $800 for a stupid MP3 player?!? WTF??? -Oh, that is all of the bad...
Well if $$ was not an option, I would go for it. Oh, and I am sure we went through this whole thing on/. before... Perhaps here or here
In fact, I think that all of the above goods and bads were outlined in the comments of these articles too! Oh well...it is still a cool device..
Just so everyone like myself that said "Hey, what is with this Mark Williams guy, and what does/. mean about Tux???" knows, the page has been corrected.
I am sure news like this spread real fast and some M$ people were e-mailing the admin at usb.org...
I (unfortunately) have Time Warner cable, and about a year ago I asked them what plans they had for cable modems etc. The answer was "No Way José!" "Not at all in the foreseeable future."
Not only does TW cable S-U-C-K, I am positive that this is 100% AOL trying to cover their asses. Why else would AOL buy TW in the first place? We all heard the whispers of 'Anti-trust' in the air, and AOL knew that they had to get something fast that would still be profitable yet will make them look squeaky-clean!
IMHO, Time Warner is AOL's biatch, and they will get laid-out like a $2 whore.
Now that I am done ranting, I must add that I just signed a contract for DSL so I could give a rat's ass about TW anymore. Now all I have to do is get a dish, then I can dump this pathetic $35/mo basic cable service.
From an objective standpoint, what Slashdot does to sites is no different than little script kiddies with packet machine guns. Except it's legal.
Yes, I agree that from an objective standpoint the slashdot-effect is much like a DoS attack, but you know the difference. At least in this case people are trying to obtain information.
I guess the question should be who's obligation is it to serve information on the internet? Is it slashdot's obligation to tell the admins that they will be posting a link? Or is it the admin's job to make sure the site is up and running and can serve an amount of traffic that the slashdot effect can induce?
I feel that I am not personally qualified to answer this question, but I am sure it is a question that deserves some attention by all parties involved.
Whoah! I have been running 4.7 on NT 4.0 sp3&4 and 4.7 on Win2000. I have never seen that problem...
I wonder what makes this version so inconsistant?
Great news! But not the last of it...
on
Victory in Holland
·
· Score: 3
Well, I'm not the first to say it, and I won't be the last, but this is a great victory!
Being a Michigan native, I know how small conservitive communities work. I am really glad that the "Decency police" have suffered a hard blow to thier "My ideals should be imposed on you" campaign. Wow.
And the bad news is that they will not stop. I heard on an interview Tuesday and if defeated, they will keep moving from community to community in Michigan until the Governor and his congress recognize that this should become a state requirement! Now IMNAL, but I know that non-complying libraries would then lose all State endorsement and funding.
As with all great victories, celebrate for a minute, but then get back to work because the fight is not over yet!
Why is a big company like ati allowed to have the dvd specifications and develop software for it, while us, the norma everyday programmers not allowed to?
One word: GREED!
I am willing to bet that ATI must pay a pretty penny to the MPAA in order to write this stuff. Besides, they are 'licensed'. I would be willing to bet that even though this software is free, ATI must pay a royalty to the MPAA for each and every DVD capable video card they ship. That is also why you will never see any 3rd party software that is open source that will allow you to play a DVD regardless of the video card. (Ahm, DeCSS, cough) The game works like this: They make to movies. They sell the DVDs for a reasonable price to the consumer. The carge the manufacturer a 'per unit' royalty to be a 'licensed' DVD player manufacturer. They charge a 'per unit' royalty for every piece of commercial software that is used to play dvd movies. And there you have it, "Mo money, Mo money, Mo money!".
For everyone that uses DVD, they pay the MPAA in 3 ways: 1, the disk; 2, the player; and 3, the decoder (software).
Just because the decryption is a binary, I don't think that "sells you out" to the OSS community. The way I see it is that in some cases such as this, sending the decryption in a binary is ok as long as the decryption is the only thing in the binary. It is just a tool that you use to decode the data, but you can use it whichever way you wish!
Rather than just acting with complete disregard for the laws and whatever
Uh, last time I checked, it was not illegal to post and/or link to a program coincidentally named "DeCSS". IANAL, but you are not either and I would like to know what 'laws' this is in disregard to.
I apologize about the tone that I write this in, but your arguments sounds great in an ideal world yet when I woke up this morning, the MPAA still owned all of the media in the US, and even political candidates play dirty to make a point and capture the public so they can see things in another perspective. AFAIK, this is legal, and I will mirror and post this DeCSS until I am notified otherwise.
Thank goodness you never knew Rosa Parks!
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Really! I guess refusing to go to the back of the bus was a stupid idea too. Yeah it was dangerous, but the point was to draw attention to the situation.
Same with this DeCSS issue. We are sitting in the midst of letting a group of very powerful corporations set a precident on a new Act. This is the first case to challenge the DMCA, and it is very important! Personally, I cannot and will not sit by and let the MPAA win without a fight.
Sure, the fight is in the courtroom, and posting fake DeCSSs does not accomplish anything in itself, but our objective is not heard by the public and we must do dangerous things like this to make people say, "Hey, I wonder why all these people feel so strongly about this..."
I want to be heard, and it is hard to do when your opposition owns the media, and public opinion at large.
I can see the headlines now...
on
Brainball!
·
· Score: 4
Reigning BrainBall Champion Wins Yet Another to Continue an Amazing 37 Game Unbeaten Streak!
The MPAA beat a group of AOL hAx0r5 last Friday night in front of a capacity crowd to mark a new record for consecutive wins, 37. The previous record of 36 was held by a dead corpse early in the season last year, and was ironically ended by the very same MPAA team!
When asked about this amazing accomplishment, MPAA team captain and leading goal scorer Jack Valenti stated, "Wow... I am really happy that we could come together and do this. Heck, I have not felt so good about us since we submitted the source code of DeCSS on public record back in the 1999-2000 season." The AOL hAx0r5 claim that the contest was unfairly judged, however when asked to explain all they could say was "HEY, 7h|5 IZ n0t K3w1.."
I see this as an excellent stepping-stone for new linux users! One thing that is killing Linux in the PC desktop environment is that people are sick of taking the time to learn new stuff. Most users are just glad they kinda got Windows 9x figured out and they figure that if it is not broken, why fix it?
The fact is that it is broken, and the only way to get them to see the light is to offer something that is intuitive and does not require much knowledge to get things done! This is just to introduce the user to Linux, not a distribution that they would use forever! The cool thing about Linux is that once the user thinks that the OS is too dumbed down, or they have time for a challenge, or thier skills grow out of the easier distrib, they just install another distribution!
This is what Linux has been missing; a nice simple distrib that gets the user acquainted with the OS. That way they are actually learning the OS very gradually. Then they can go from there!
I am writing my letter right now, and I came across something interesting that I need help on.
Basically, I was looking at the transcript of the injunction hearing that took place a few weeks ago in New York and I noticed that the MPAA lawyers referenced the Section 1201 in question of the DMCA. In that hearing the MPAA lawyers stated:
"... the posting of DeCSS violates Section 1201(a)(2) of the statute, which prohibits unauthorized offering of products that circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works."
Ok, fine...right? But I also found out that on the US Copyright Office page it states:
Specifically, section 1201 provides that "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." This prohibition on circumvention becomes effective on October 28, 2000.
Last I checked, it was not Oct 28 yet! Am I totally missing something???
What's the point of buying a net-enabled box that won't work with my DSL line?
That is the point! (sarcasm=ON)M$ will only sell this thing with a 20 year contract with MSN! In fact, I think that if you die, the contract falls onto your next of kin. Not bad for $149! Oh, and 19.95/month for 20 years...
Total cost of ownership is a sweet $5k baby! (sarcasm=OFF)
I wrote this letter to the editor and though that it would be appropriate to have it posted here as well.
In this article, the author Damien Cave was explaining the lawsuits that the MPAA is currently active in. Damien described the DeCSS lawsuit to be against "a program that can unscramble encrypted digital video disks (DVD) and let people copy them."
I would like to know from what source Damien learned that the decryption allows for the disk to be copied? It is my understanding as a programmer/data analyst that the media can be copied with the right equipment whether the data stream is encrypted or not. It is like taking a book in a foreign language that you do not know and copying it; as far as the copying process is concerned, it just makes a duplicate.
Later in the interview, Damien asks Mr. Valenti the very important question "So what constitutes fair use of a DVD in your eyes -- besides simply buying a DVD and using one of the MPAA's authorized players?" This question was the most interesting part of the entire article. This question is the question that most proponents of the DeCSS program would like to ask the MPAA yet Mr. Valenti avoided it completely!
You may ask Why is this question so important?
DeCSS allows for a DVD to be decrypted. The encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents the unauthorized viewing of the media content. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Act (DMA), the MPAA copyright protects the way the DVD is viewed. The DeCSS program allows people to view the content on a DVD on different computer Operating Systems that the MPAA has not offered compatibility for. Furthermore, the DeCSS program also allows people to view media encoded for one region to view it in another region. (If you do not understand the region coding on DVDs, then don't buy a DVD player until you do!) Well, the lawsuit is about CONTROL and what constitutes 'fair use' and 'interoperability'. The big question is "Does the MPAA have to right to control how you watch a DVD that you bought??" Many feel that if they buy the movie, they can watch the movie as they please, and the MPAA is concerned about the possible ramifications of that. It is up to the courts to decide whether the DeCSS program falls into the 'fair use' category or not. This is also the first case to really challenge the Digital Millennium Act that was passed last year.
I wish that Mr. Valenti could have answered that question rather than giving an analogy that implicates 'fair use' as walking into a movie theatre without buying a ticket!
There you go, let me know what you all think. Do I understand this case well enough? Am I missing something? Does the MPAA see it this way??
This case is not about pirating DVDs! This case is about whether the MPAA is allowed to control how we watch the movies that we BUY!
Your kind of ignorance is the kind of ignorance that drives this whole case! I can copy a DVD if I had the (hardware) means to do so; it is just copying the data on the DVD whether it is encrypted or not! This is about watching the DVDs on out computers..the same computers that the MPAA has decided not to offer DVD decoding support for. Tell me that decoding the DVD encryption so I can watch a DVD which I purchased, on a DVD player which I purchased, on a computer which I purchased, on an OS that is free is PIRATING!!!
I happen to think not!
When was the last time you saw a 'pirated' copy of a DVD??? The media costs about the same as a movie ($15-20), and the DVD-R costs around $800! I don't know where you buy your movies, but where I get mine they cost about $20-$25 and are worth every penny that I give to the movie industry to make these movies.
You have been listening to the lies my friend, the lies...
I remember hearing that ABC WorldNews Tonight was gonna be interviewing Jon Johansen...does anyone know of any information confirming this and/or an airing date?
Another question is does anyone know the stance some of the presidential candidates are taking on the DMCA and this DeCSS issue? I am sure this whole fiasco will be going on in Nov. (In one way or another.)
Lastly, the DMCA is lame. I hope it gets looked over before the new millenium begins! (Only 10 months to go!)
If Mitnick isn't willing to demonstrate that the material on the drives is legit, then the assumption that it's illegit isn't too far off base.
So why don't we just throw the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing out the window. This is about how much power should the government have. Personally, I do not want the gov't walking around confiscating everyone's computer and not giving them back unless the owner proves that all the software is legit! It is all about precidents, and what will set the guidlines for the future.
Besides, we all know that the gov't really wants to get into Kevin's porn collection!
If I really wanted to read about the world's problems I would not be on Slashdot. If I wanted to get a quick jist of what is going on in the tech world, then a peek at Slashdot on my lunch hour is what I do.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a pricy pre-made one.
Here is a much cheaper one that is also pre-made.
And This is all you need to know to make your own car MP3 player!
you can put this thing out with a low price point and a high enough margin to make it worthwile to manufacture...
Very good idea! And if something like this really became a big deal, it would drive the prices on the other players down as well!
Good:
/. before...
-It has 5 gig.
-It looks cool.
-It encodes regular CD tracks to MP3.
-It supports CDDB for track & disk titles.
Bad:
-Hard drive == corruption is possible
-"Familiar Windows "Explore" model for viewing and managing Jukebox content" (Where do I want to go?)
-$10/listening hour seems great until you realize that the unit is about $800!
-Damn! $800 for a stupid MP3 player?!? WTF???
-Oh, that is all of the bad...
Well if $$ was not an option, I would go for it. Oh, and I am sure we went through this whole thing on
Perhaps here or here
In fact, I think that all of the above goods and bads were outlined in the comments of these articles too! Oh well...it is still a cool device..
Just so everyone like myself that said "Hey, what is with this Mark Williams guy, and what does /. mean about Tux???" knows, the page has been corrected.
I am sure news like this spread real fast and some M$ people were e-mailing the admin at usb.org...
Well, at least someone posted a screenshot here.
I (unfortunately) have Time Warner cable, and about a year ago I asked them what plans they had for cable modems etc. The answer was "No Way José!" "Not at all in the foreseeable future."
Not only does TW cable S-U-C-K, I am positive that this is 100% AOL trying to cover their asses. Why else would AOL buy TW in the first place? We all heard the whispers of 'Anti-trust' in the air, and AOL knew that they had to get something fast that would still be profitable yet will make them look squeaky-clean!
IMHO, Time Warner is AOL's biatch, and they will get laid-out like a $2 whore.
Now that I am done ranting, I must add that I just signed a contract for DSL so I could give a rat's ass about TW anymore. Now all I have to do is get a dish, then I can dump this pathetic $35/mo basic cable service.
From an objective standpoint, what Slashdot does to sites is no different than little script kiddies with packet machine guns. Except it's legal.
Yes, I agree that from an objective standpoint the slashdot-effect is much like a DoS attack, but you know the difference. At least in this case people are trying to obtain information.
I guess the question should be who's obligation is it to serve information on the internet? Is it slashdot's obligation to tell the admins that they will be posting a link? Or is it the admin's job to make sure the site is up and running and can serve an amount of traffic that the slashdot effect can induce?
I feel that I am not personally qualified to answer this question, but I am sure it is a question that deserves some attention by all parties involved.
Whoah! I have been running 4.7 on NT 4.0 sp3&4 and 4.7 on Win2000. I have never seen that problem...
I wonder what makes this version so inconsistant?
Well, I'm not the first to say it, and I won't be the last, but this is a great victory!
Being a Michigan native, I know how small conservitive communities work. I am really glad that the "Decency police" have suffered a hard blow to thier "My ideals should be imposed on you" campaign. Wow.
And the bad news is that they will not stop. I heard on an interview Tuesday and if defeated, they will keep moving from community to community in Michigan until the Governor and his congress recognize that this should become a state requirement! Now IMNAL, but I know that non-complying libraries would then lose all State endorsement and funding.
As with all great victories, celebrate for a minute, but then get back to work because the fight is not over yet!
Why is a big company like ati allowed to have the dvd specifications and develop software for it, while us, the norma everyday programmers not allowed to?
One word: GREED!
I am willing to bet that ATI must pay a pretty penny to the MPAA in order to write this stuff. Besides, they are 'licensed'. I would be willing to bet that even though this software is free, ATI must pay a royalty to the MPAA for each and every DVD capable video card they ship. That is also why you will never see any 3rd party software that is open source that will allow you to play a DVD regardless of the video card. (Ahm, DeCSS, cough) The game works like this:
They make to movies. They sell the DVDs for a reasonable price to the consumer. The carge the manufacturer a 'per unit' royalty to be a 'licensed' DVD player manufacturer. They charge a 'per unit' royalty for every piece of commercial software that is used to play dvd movies. And there you have it, "Mo money, Mo money, Mo money!".
For everyone that uses DVD, they pay the MPAA in 3 ways: 1, the disk; 2, the player; and 3, the decoder (software).
Anyone have advice?
Well, I have a little advice...Go with the ATI!
Just because the decryption is a binary, I don't think that "sells you out" to the OSS community. The way I see it is that in some cases such as this, sending the decryption in a binary is ok as long as the decryption is the only thing in the binary. It is just a tool that you use to decode the data, but you can use it whichever way you wish!
Rather than just acting with complete disregard for the laws and whatever
Uh, last time I checked, it was not illegal to post and/or link to a program coincidentally named "DeCSS". IANAL, but you are not either and I would like to know what 'laws' this is in disregard to.
I apologize about the tone that I write this in, but your arguments sounds great in an ideal world yet when I woke up this morning, the MPAA still owned all of the media in the US, and even political candidates play dirty to make a point and capture the public so they can see things in another perspective. AFAIK, this is legal, and I will mirror and post this DeCSS until I am notified otherwise.
Really! I guess refusing to go to the back of the bus was a stupid idea too. Yeah it was dangerous, but the point was to draw attention to the situation.
Same with this DeCSS issue. We are sitting in the midst of letting a group of very powerful corporations set a precident on a new Act. This is the first case to challenge the DMCA, and it is very important! Personally, I cannot and will not sit by and let the MPAA win without a fight.
Sure, the fight is in the courtroom, and posting fake DeCSSs does not accomplish anything in itself, but our objective is not heard by the public and we must do dangerous things like this to make people say, "Hey, I wonder why all these people feel so strongly about this..."
I want to be heard, and it is hard to do when your opposition owns the media, and public opinion at large.
Reigning BrainBall Champion Wins Yet Another to Continue an Amazing 37 Game Unbeaten Streak!
;)
The MPAA beat a group of AOL hAx0r5 last Friday night in front of a capacity crowd to mark a new record for consecutive wins, 37. The previous record of 36 was held by a dead corpse early in the season last year, and was ironically ended by the very same MPAA team!
When asked about this amazing accomplishment, MPAA team captain and leading goal scorer Jack Valenti stated, "Wow... I am really happy that we could come together and do this. Heck, I have not felt so good about us since we submitted the source code of DeCSS on public record back in the 1999-2000 season." The AOL hAx0r5 claim that the contest was unfairly judged, however when asked to explain all they could say was "HEY, 7h|5 IZ n0t K3w1.."
I had to do it...
Gotchya! Thanks for clearing that one up for me!
I see this as an excellent stepping-stone for new linux users! One thing that is killing Linux in the PC desktop environment is that people are sick of taking the time to learn new stuff. Most users are just glad they kinda got Windows 9x figured out and they figure that if it is not broken, why fix it?
The fact is that it is broken, and the only way to get them to see the light is to offer something that is intuitive and does not require much knowledge to get things done! This is just to introduce the user to Linux, not a distribution that they would use forever! The cool thing about Linux is that once the user thinks that the OS is too dumbed down, or they have time for a challenge, or thier skills grow out of the easier distrib, they just install another distribution!
This is what Linux has been missing; a nice simple distrib that gets the user acquainted with the OS. That way they are actually learning the OS very gradually. Then they can go from there!
I am writing my letter right now, and I came across something interesting that I need help on.
Basically, I was looking at the transcript of the injunction hearing that took place a few weeks ago in New York and I noticed that the MPAA lawyers referenced the Section 1201 in question of the DMCA. In that hearing the MPAA lawyers stated:
"... the posting of DeCSS violates Section 1201(a)(2) of the statute, which prohibits unauthorized offering of products that circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works."
Ok, fine...right? But I also found out that on the US Copyright Office page it states:
Specifically, section 1201 provides that "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." This prohibition on circumvention becomes effective on October 28, 2000.
Last I checked, it was not Oct 28 yet! Am I totally missing something???
What's the point of buying a net-enabled box that won't work with my DSL line?
That is the point! (sarcasm=ON)M$ will only sell this thing with a 20 year contract with MSN! In fact, I think that if you die, the contract falls onto your next of kin. Not bad for $149! Oh, and 19.95/month for 20 years...
Total cost of ownership is a sweet $5k baby! (sarcasm=OFF)
I wrote this letter to the editor and though that it would be appropriate to have it posted here as well.
In this article, the author Damien Cave was explaining the lawsuits that the MPAA is currently active in. Damien described the DeCSS lawsuit to be against "a program that can unscramble encrypted digital video disks (DVD) and let people copy them."
I would like to know from what source Damien learned that the decryption allows for the disk to be copied? It is my understanding as a programmer/data analyst that the media can be copied with the right equipment whether the data stream is encrypted or not. It is like taking a book in a foreign language that you do not know and copying it; as far as the copying process is concerned, it just makes a duplicate.
Later in the interview, Damien asks Mr. Valenti the very important question "So what constitutes fair use of a DVD in your eyes -- besides simply buying a DVD and using one of the MPAA's authorized players?" This question was the most interesting part of the entire article. This question is the question that most proponents of the DeCSS program would like to ask the MPAA yet Mr. Valenti avoided it completely!
You may ask Why is this question so important?
DeCSS allows for a DVD to be decrypted. The encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents the unauthorized viewing of the media content. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Act (DMA), the MPAA copyright protects the way the DVD is viewed. The DeCSS program allows people to view the content on a DVD on different computer Operating Systems that the MPAA has not offered compatibility for. Furthermore, the DeCSS program also allows people to view media encoded for one region to view it in another region. (If you do not understand the region coding on DVDs, then don't buy a DVD player until you do!) Well, the lawsuit is about CONTROL and what constitutes 'fair use' and 'interoperability'. The big question is "Does the MPAA have to right to control how you watch a DVD that you bought??" Many feel that if they buy the movie, they can watch the movie as they please, and the MPAA is concerned about the possible ramifications of that. It is up to the courts to decide whether the DeCSS program falls into the 'fair use' category or not. This is also the first case to really challenge the Digital Millennium Act that was passed last year.
I wish that Mr. Valenti could have answered that question rather than giving an analogy that implicates 'fair use' as walking into a movie theatre without buying a ticket!
There you go, let me know what you all think. Do I understand this case well enough? Am I missing something? Does the MPAA see it this way??
Actually, you can find Playboy at my library...
So what was your point?
This case is not about pirating DVDs! This case is about whether the MPAA is allowed to control how we watch the movies that we BUY!
Your kind of ignorance is the kind of ignorance that drives this whole case! I can copy a DVD if I had the (hardware) means to do so; it is just copying the data on the DVD whether it is encrypted or not! This is about watching the DVDs on out computers..the same computers that the MPAA has decided not to offer DVD decoding support for. Tell me that decoding the DVD encryption so I can watch a DVD which I purchased, on a DVD player which I purchased, on a computer which I purchased, on an OS that is free is PIRATING!!!
I happen to think not!
When was the last time you saw a 'pirated' copy of a DVD??? The media costs about the same as a movie ($15-20), and the DVD-R costs around $800!
I don't know where you buy your movies, but where I get mine they cost about $20-$25 and are worth every penny that I give to the movie industry to make these movies.
You have been listening to the lies my friend, the lies...
I remember hearing that ABC WorldNews Tonight was gonna be interviewing Jon Johansen...does anyone know of any information confirming this and/or an airing date?
Another question is does anyone know the stance some of the presidential candidates are taking on the DMCA and this DeCSS issue? I am sure this whole fiasco will be going on in Nov. (In one way or another.)
Lastly, the DMCA is lame. I hope it gets looked over before the new millenium begins! (Only 10 months to go!)
If Mitnick isn't willing to demonstrate that the material on the drives is legit, then the assumption that it's illegit isn't too far off base.
So why don't we just throw the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing out the window. This is about how much power should the government have. Personally, I do not want the gov't walking around confiscating everyone's computer and not giving them back unless the owner proves that all the software is legit! It is all about precidents, and what will set the guidlines for the future.
Besides, we all know that the gov't really wants to get into Kevin's porn collection!
If we use these things, and slowly train our mind not to react from motion the same way, we're putting ourselves in danger from things
I am not too sure about that...I am sure people were afraid of the same effect when roller coasters first came about!
Now this is news! I almost totally forgot that Kevin gets released tomorrow. (Don't tell anyone at 2600 that I almost forgot!)
....
Well, this deserves to be a headline, not patent crap over and over and over and over and
If I really wanted to read about the world's problems I would not be on Slashdot. If I wanted to get a quick jist of what is going on in the tech world, then a peek at Slashdot on my lunch hour is what I do.
Now if I could just find a cork...