I did think about that, but is it not slightly different?
I don't know much about the conditions at see (so potentially over-qualified to talk about it on/.;) ) but wouldn't there be stronger winds higher up? Think of a normal kite - you hold it at ground level and you get a bit of a gust, but get it up to flying altitude and it is really pulling.
So they may have re-invented "the really high sail" by removing the mast and putting it on the end of a rope/tether instead, but not just a normal sail.
Okay, so maybe I was a bit sweeping on the domains. Their main purpose in many situations (and as far as squatters are concerned) is web content, though.
I've been in the same situation with a squatter. They're selling the.com of a.co.uk that I own. I'd like the.com, but I'd only shell out a year or two's registration fee equivalent (so up to about $20) to buy it off someone. They want $1000 for it (not a clue why they think it is worth so much) and the site won't accept offers of less than $60 or something. On the plus side at least it is just held rather than being crammed full of adverts as well.
I think your suggestion for rules is potentially one of the most sensible I've seen. It allows for mass purchases (e.g. companies with typos and ad campaigns) but also weakens the position of squatters. I'm sure people would still try to work ways around it, though.
Real estate: As someone else pointed out you have to pay taxes on it (normally proportional to its worth). Also, you can improve it and sell it on because anything you do is fairly permanent in terms of increased value. Domains are transient and so is any content you may (but squatters don't) put on it.
Stocks: Again, someone covered that. If the company had nothing to gain from stocks then they wouldn't issue them in the first place. Also, the whole point of the stock market is to prospect on it.
Gold: Pratchett was insightful in his latest book, "Making Money". We 'need' gold to prop up the currencies, but only because people think we need it. Nothing ever actually moves anywhere (except maybe five feet across the vault to another marked area) it's all just the fact that it is there if we want it that makes people happy. Everything in the modern economy is based on moving numbers, not moving gold.
Coins/stamps: but the problem also affects companies and big community projects. example.com would be the perfect domain for a project with great content that would benefit lots of people, but they have to go with e.xample.co.us because some squatter has bought up all of the decent domains and in some cases isn't even doing anything with it.
Art: Erm, how about the fact that the early painters of large paintings (I'm thinking the Renaissance here) were generally doing it on the pay of some local lord or other important person? They painted, the sponsor paid them, the sponsor then owned it and displayed it (or put it in a private display). Modern painters do a similar thing, only they put it in a gallery and then auction it off rather than being sponsored from the start.
Domains: The section you quoted isn't supported by the arguments, but that's because the arguments were about why domains aren't like other things that are prospected on/invested in while the quoted section was about what people do when they squat on domains (which, come to think of it, is quite an apt word for the outcome).
Real Estate - you can buy it, improve it, sell it on to someone who is unable to improve it themselves Stocks - you buy it and a company gets an investment to spend and improve their business Gold - meh, we don't need it, everything is based on 1s and 0s. No-one misses it if you 'buy' some and it remains sitting in some bank vault somewhere Coins/stamps - Millions of almost identical ones. To most people they don't have much value or use. Art - it was designed to be collected and displayed Domains - squatters (which is what they are) don't improve it after they buy it. In real estate terms they leave it to rot with minimal attention and invest nothing in it. In terms of stock then no-one (except the registrar) sees the benefit of an investment, and they're getting bulk purchasing so it isn't as much as it could be. In terms of gold then people actually need domain names, since the only other alternative is IP addresses and folders that aren't portable. In terms of coins and stamps then each is unique and they have value to the masses that want to visit. In terms of art then they were created to access a website, not a load of adverts, and they certainly weren't designed to be collected.
So I think there might be one or two differences there.
So that's how they register all of these expiring domains: well trained and literate monkeys that are shackled to computers and then forced to read lists of expiring domains before repeatedly filling in the form required to register them!
Don't waste your spare monkey - set him folding, or running SETI or something!
Fair enough, but somehow I suspect the amount they make from classical music is somewhat smaller than the amount they make from mass-produced crap. Until a large enough proportion of the main purchasing group stop buying/start complaining then they'll still have a revenue stream that they feel is valid and the needs 'protecting' from piracy.
What is it going to take for the shareholders of all these companies to stand up and say enough?
Erm, maybe when their shares stop making them money? People will invest in all sorts of things and ignore moral/ethical dilemmas, as long as it is making them money. Such is human greed and capitalism.
What is it going to take before all consumers simply say "enough of this hassle, no more music purchases"?
That'll only happen when Joe Public who buys the random, mass-produced crap that makes it into the charts feels he is affected. For the moment it is only the comparative minority who rip and share MP3s en-mass who really worry, and those geeks who keep track of the news who can see where it will end up.
What is it going to take before these people wake up, realize that they need to stop treating their paying customers like criminals?
Maybe when their business model finally bites the dust and some other group using online distribution without DRM is still going strong. Even then it is only a maybe.
When are they going to realize that rather than litigate against the pirates, they should simply realize that they should compete against them by offering great service for reasonable prices and get rid of all the DRM?
Again, it'll cost money to do that. They can sue lots of people for tens of thousands or they can spend millions restructuring and working on a better model. Which one seems better in the corporate world?
They're comparing Granny Smiths apples to Golden Delicious apples:
Set of computers that can run all required email and office apps (the latest versions) along with a server to support the mail etc, all based on Linux
Vs
Set of computers that can run all required email and office apps (the latest versions) along with a server to support the mail etc, all based on Vista
The only difference is that the base specs required for one is much higher than the other, which is the whole point of the article.
Okay, so it might not be as viable in a huge company where everyone (especially admins) already have Windows training, but for a ~100 person or less SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) then the huge savings on costs would be a boon.
And, importantly from a non-techy point of view, it normally fails without a visible message.
Okay, so.Net apps aren't greatly better with their cryptic error and error number, but at least it gives you something to look for to work out why it isn't working.
Jars being libraries and executables can be advantageous in one way but at the same time then it is a bit like bending to rules and botching a solution. Yes, you can re-use an app that is Jared up as a library for another app, but that then means you've not properly separated your library code from your GUI code. The.Net app I'm writing at the moment purposefully has back-end DLLs and then an exe for the GUI so that I can easily write separate GUIs and plug them onto the same back end because of good separation.
Answer 2: it is also Sun's for having JAR files that aren't necessarily executable and can't be differentiated from library JARs..Net, on the other hand, has.exe for executable and.dll for library code (normally). To your basic user then that's far more accessible and understandable than these strange JAR files that sometimes run and sometimes don't.
Even after I've installed Sun's JRE/JDK on Windows then JAR files end up with a "text file" icon. That's sure to confuse people and should be something that Sun have control over in their installer.
I'm not saying.Net is perfect, but for a.exe application then it is much closer to what the vast majority of the public consider "the norm" and is much easier for them to run (e.g. no command line with class path to mess around with as it is generally all in the right places). I've also yet to see a JAR that shows its own icon like an exe does in Windows.
I've never seen a "full app" written in Python, and especially not one for Windows, only small config utilities and the like for Gnome etc. It is possible, since Exaile is a Python app, but Python is still very much in the minority.
As for Java, it still doesn't have the direct runable-ness of an exe that.Net does that Windows users are used to. If you're publishing for the non-tech savvy then that counts for a lot.
There may have been other cross-platform, garbage collected languages before.Net, but how many of them are as widely installed?
What is it with legal speak putting commas in funny places? I know they leave them out to be ambiguous so it can be read in a favourable light later, but adding them in at incorrect positions?
Provided, That none of the funds...
That doesn't even make sense. "Provided that..." (i.e. "on the basis that the following is true") makes sense, but not with a comma.
As for the ban, those are some interesting ways to get around it. "Humanoid exploration" could potentially also include a human-shaped robot that has tactile feedback to a suit that someone wears in orbit. We're a little way off a decent tactile suit, but then again I'd imagine we're a while off properly and realistically exploring Mars with humans and that this is just "pro-active", forward planning legislation.
No, the parent post to that said "don't you think it's strange that..." so I was saying no it's not strange for.Net but yes it is string for OOXML. It wasn't "do I want.Net? No. Do I want OOXML? Yes" as that would just be crazy;)
Gnome people might not be just desktop people, but Gnome (to me and probably most people) is based around the desktop and the window management/appearance (yes, WM is metacity, but metacity is generally Gnome and not KDE). It includes various config apps and some of the core stuff (basic games, text editors, calculators, file compression, file management) but why should it bother about which complex proprietary format to support as a whole project?
Abiword isn't Gnome, although Gnumeric is. If there is a decision to be made in one of the sub-projects about whether they add support for a format or not then surely it should be within the sub-project as the ability to open/edit a file rather than in the whole of Gnome as whether format X should be approved or not?
Not sure that was clear, but basically: why is Gnome seemingly (as a project) fighting about what format to support to get standardised? Apps should decide what they open/edit and people can have their own personal opinions, but that kind of battle isn't something directly related to the whole of Gnome.
For the developer who wants to spend his time developing applications rather than worrying about memory management then.Net is a great framework. The fact that it is cross-platform (as long as you're careful with windowing toolkits) is also a bonus. Microsoft purposefully released specs for the framework and it seems to be fairly well specified based on the amount of support in Mono.
OOXML is a bit stranger for Gnome to get involved in. Surely it's something that apps like Open Office should be concerned about, not the desktop people? I'd rather they were putting their effort into improving some of the tools they do have rather than working in things they don't have to directly support.
.
Disclaimer: I use Linux, I even use Gnome (have done since Redhat 7.3), I enjoy the freedom and power of open source, and I do dual-boot Windows XP. I code my own projects in C# and don't hate things purely because they're MS, just because they're generally not as well specified or obviously flawed compared to alternatives.
The place I work at does some security work and as part of one of their tests they too a directional aerial up the nearby hill. The hill is only about a mile away, but from the top of it then they could pick up wireless networks and some keyboards from the main site. AFAIK it wasn't anything overly fancy either, just a fairly standard directional aerial of the type that could be done to a lesser extent with a normal aerial and a Pringles tin.
Only in terms of degrees, though. And if it is in terms of degrees then how do you set at which degree it is sufficiently 'degree-ful' to be something that shouldn't be done?
That was what I was thinking as well - surely the EULA says not to reverse engineer the code.
Now, do the people on slashdot agree with breaking a legal(ish) contract to find a GPL violation when they don't agree with breaking privacy laws to catch criminals/terrorists? Interesting dilemma:)
While yes, they did get a very perfect match on that record, the line about it is:
...our algorithm identified the records of two users the Netflix Prize dataset with eccentricities of around 28 and 15, respectively.
Granted they went for a small number of IMDB users due to their TOS, but that's still a tiny fraction. They mention finding a perfect match in IMDB and 1/8th of the NetFlix database towards the start of the report (although the sentence is a bit clunky and unclear). If that's their general accuracy then even if they can perfectly match some people (a statistical possibility) then they can't match enough to leave most people needing to worry.
Exactly - all they did was found that there was a correlation that might mean that the people are the same on IMDB and NetFlix. There's also the possibility that they're different people and that they just voted similar on different places.
Besides, this all relies on people voting for a) really obscure films so they can be easily identified and b) voting similarly or identically on lots of films so that they can get a better idea as to whether it is the same person based on them liking the same films the same amounts.
Just because two people from two different data sets both like (and are the only people in the data sets to like) lemon and custard jam as well as peanut butter with chips doesn't mean they're the same person, it just means they could be the same person and have similar tastes in obscure foods.
gDesklets (for the old school method) or others to put in a docker, Slight Mac top-bar look with Gnome defaults, loads of various OS X cloned themes for Metacity ("Tish" comes to mind, but there are pinstripe, graphite and all other styles), Compiz to give you the 'wow' of desktop cubes (which you can crank up to 32x32 if you want) and fancy hidable widget layers etc. You can even move the buttons to the other side of the title bar quite easily.
And then after a month or so you decide it's just stupid to make it look like a Mac when it isn't a Mac and go for something more normal.
Hang on, don't DVDs (at least ones in the UK) have unskippable bits already?
I know some of my DVDs (the CSI boxed sets for one) have some crap from the film copyright people about "you wouldn't steal an old lady's handbag and knock her to the floor, you wouldn't steal thousands of pounds worth of car before causing large amounts of terror and damage, you wouldn't kill a school full of children in a murderous rampage, so don't copy a load of bits from a disk valued at about £10-£20".
There's also some trailers and some intro sections (like the film producer/publisher titles) that can't be skipped on a lot of films.
Not quite sure where they get a patent without prior art for from that lot (unless it's specifically for 'product advertising' as opposed to 'information' or 'trailers', at which point it's a small logical step anyway).
...the content of traffic is never examined or displayed...
Given that the aim of the toolkit is supposedly to
...help identify students who were downloading/sharing movie files...
then how do they manage it without examining traffic? If the toolkit monitors BitTorrent (and other) ports then that would tell you who is using P2P, but not who is sharing movies. Maybe all that traffic is from students internally torrenting various Linux distros or their garage bands' MP3s.
The problem with that side of his argument is that even if the companies do pay for the bandwidth then how does it get to the consumer's PC? You've still got to pay for an ISP (or struggle for hours/days on 'free' local rate dial-up) so you're still leaving the consumer to pay for it in part.
Also, even if they hosted it on websites rather than getting it redistributed for free by consumers then you're suddenly either going to get a load of extra content on You Tube/Google Videos and the like (which will require more servers to share the load) or they set up their own sites (which will need servers to run on). Either way it'd shrink the IPv4 pool faster than it already is.
Slashdot Mirror
I did think about that, but is it not slightly different?
/. ;) ) but wouldn't there be stronger winds higher up? Think of a normal kite - you hold it at ground level and you get a bit of a gust, but get it up to flying altitude and it is really pulling.
I don't know much about the conditions at see (so potentially over-qualified to talk about it on
So they may have re-invented "the really high sail" by removing the mast and putting it on the end of a rope/tether instead, but not just a normal sail.
Okay, so maybe I was a bit sweeping on the domains. Their main purpose in many situations (and as far as squatters are concerned) is web content, though.
.com of a .co.uk that I own. I'd like the .com, but I'd only shell out a year or two's registration fee equivalent (so up to about $20) to buy it off someone. They want $1000 for it (not a clue why they think it is worth so much) and the site won't accept offers of less than $60 or something. On the plus side at least it is just held rather than being crammed full of adverts as well.
I've been in the same situation with a squatter. They're selling the
I think your suggestion for rules is potentially one of the most sensible I've seen. It allows for mass purchases (e.g. companies with typos and ad campaigns) but also weakens the position of squatters. I'm sure people would still try to work ways around it, though.
Real estate: As someone else pointed out you have to pay taxes on it (normally proportional to its worth). Also, you can improve it and sell it on because anything you do is fairly permanent in terms of increased value. Domains are transient and so is any content you may (but squatters don't) put on it.
Stocks: Again, someone covered that. If the company had nothing to gain from stocks then they wouldn't issue them in the first place. Also, the whole point of the stock market is to prospect on it.
Gold: Pratchett was insightful in his latest book, "Making Money". We 'need' gold to prop up the currencies, but only because people think we need it. Nothing ever actually moves anywhere (except maybe five feet across the vault to another marked area) it's all just the fact that it is there if we want it that makes people happy. Everything in the modern economy is based on moving numbers, not moving gold.
Coins/stamps: but the problem also affects companies and big community projects. example.com would be the perfect domain for a project with great content that would benefit lots of people, but they have to go with e.xample.co.us because some squatter has bought up all of the decent domains and in some cases isn't even doing anything with it.
Art: Erm, how about the fact that the early painters of large paintings (I'm thinking the Renaissance here) were generally doing it on the pay of some local lord or other important person? They painted, the sponsor paid them, the sponsor then owned it and displayed it (or put it in a private display). Modern painters do a similar thing, only they put it in a gallery and then auction it off rather than being sponsored from the start.
Domains: The section you quoted isn't supported by the arguments, but that's because the arguments were about why domains aren't like other things that are prospected on/invested in while the quoted section was about what people do when they squat on domains (which, come to think of it, is quite an apt word for the outcome).
Lets see:
Real Estate - you can buy it, improve it, sell it on to someone who is unable to improve it themselves
Stocks - you buy it and a company gets an investment to spend and improve their business
Gold - meh, we don't need it, everything is based on 1s and 0s. No-one misses it if you 'buy' some and it remains sitting in some bank vault somewhere
Coins/stamps - Millions of almost identical ones. To most people they don't have much value or use.
Art - it was designed to be collected and displayed
Domains - squatters (which is what they are) don't improve it after they buy it. In real estate terms they leave it to rot with minimal attention and invest nothing in it. In terms of stock then no-one (except the registrar) sees the benefit of an investment, and they're getting bulk purchasing so it isn't as much as it could be. In terms of gold then people actually need domain names, since the only other alternative is IP addresses and folders that aren't portable. In terms of coins and stamps then each is unique and they have value to the masses that want to visit. In terms of art then they were created to access a website, not a load of adverts, and they certainly weren't designed to be collected.
So I think there might be one or two differences there.
So that's how they register all of these expiring domains: well trained and literate monkeys that are shackled to computers and then forced to read lists of expiring domains before repeatedly filling in the form required to register them!
Don't waste your spare monkey - set him folding, or running SETI or something!
And then either:
a) Repeat the above after it expires and some other automated domain farm snaps it up
or
b) spend the next 25-to-life* being careful about not dropping the soap
I guess killing the domain squatter may have its momentary element of fun, though.
* Apologies for the Americanism
Fair enough, but somehow I suspect the amount they make from classical music is somewhat smaller than the amount they make from mass-produced crap. Until a large enough proportion of the main purchasing group stop buying/start complaining then they'll still have a revenue stream that they feel is valid and the needs 'protecting' from piracy.
Erm, maybe when their shares stop making them money? People will invest in all sorts of things and ignore moral/ethical dilemmas, as long as it is making them money. Such is human greed and capitalism.
That'll only happen when Joe Public who buys the random, mass-produced crap that makes it into the charts feels he is affected. For the moment it is only the comparative minority who rip and share MP3s en-mass who really worry, and those geeks who keep track of the news who can see where it will end up.
Maybe when their business model finally bites the dust and some other group using online distribution without DRM is still going strong. Even then it is only a maybe.
Again, it'll cost money to do that. They can sue lots of people for tens of thousands or they can spend millions restructuring and working on a better model. Which one seems better in the corporate world?
They're comparing Granny Smiths apples to Golden Delicious apples:
Set of computers that can run all required email and office apps (the latest versions) along with a server to support the mail etc, all based on Linux
Vs
Set of computers that can run all required email and office apps (the latest versions) along with a server to support the mail etc, all based on Vista
The only difference is that the base specs required for one is much higher than the other, which is the whole point of the article.
Okay, so it might not be as viable in a huge company where everyone (especially admins) already have Windows training, but for a ~100 person or less SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) then the huge savings on costs would be a boon.
And, importantly from a non-techy point of view, it normally fails without a visible message.
.Net apps aren't greatly better with their cryptic error and error number, but at least it gives you something to look for to work out why it isn't working.
.Net app I'm writing at the moment purposefully has back-end DLLs and then an exe for the GUI so that I can easily write separate GUIs and plug them onto the same back end because of good separation.
Okay, so
Jars being libraries and executables can be advantageous in one way but at the same time then it is a bit like bending to rules and botching a solution. Yes, you can re-use an app that is Jared up as a library for another app, but that then means you've not properly separated your library code from your GUI code. The
Answer 2: it is also Sun's for having JAR files that aren't necessarily executable and can't be differentiated from library JARs. .Net, on the other hand, has .exe for executable and .dll for library code (normally). To your basic user then that's far more accessible and understandable than these strange JAR files that sometimes run and sometimes don't.
.Net is perfect, but for a .exe application then it is much closer to what the vast majority of the public consider "the norm" and is much easier for them to run (e.g. no command line with class path to mess around with as it is generally all in the right places). I've also yet to see a JAR that shows its own icon like an exe does in Windows.
Even after I've installed Sun's JRE/JDK on Windows then JAR files end up with a "text file" icon. That's sure to confuse people and should be something that Sun have control over in their installer.
I'm not saying
I've never seen a "full app" written in Python, and especially not one for Windows, only small config utilities and the like for Gnome etc. It is possible, since Exaile is a Python app, but Python is still very much in the minority.
.Net does that Windows users are used to. If you're publishing for the non-tech savvy then that counts for a lot.
.Net, but how many of them are as widely installed?
As for Java, it still doesn't have the direct runable-ness of an exe that
There may have been other cross-platform, garbage collected languages before
That doesn't even make sense. "Provided that..." (i.e. "on the basis that the following is true") makes sense, but not with a comma.
As for the ban, those are some interesting ways to get around it. "Humanoid exploration" could potentially also include a human-shaped robot that has tactile feedback to a suit that someone wears in orbit. We're a little way off a decent tactile suit, but then again I'd imagine we're a while off properly and realistically exploring Mars with humans and that this is just "pro-active", forward planning legislation.
No, the parent post to that said "don't you think it's strange that..." so I was saying no it's not strange for .Net but yes it is string for OOXML. It wasn't "do I want .Net? No. Do I want OOXML? Yes" as that would just be crazy ;)
Gnome people might not be just desktop people, but Gnome (to me and probably most people) is based around the desktop and the window management/appearance (yes, WM is metacity, but metacity is generally Gnome and not KDE). It includes various config apps and some of the core stuff (basic games, text editors, calculators, file compression, file management) but why should it bother about which complex proprietary format to support as a whole project?
Abiword isn't Gnome, although Gnumeric is. If there is a decision to be made in one of the sub-projects about whether they add support for a format or not then surely it should be within the sub-project as the ability to open/edit a file rather than in the whole of Gnome as whether format X should be approved or not?
Not sure that was clear, but basically: why is Gnome seemingly (as a project) fighting about what format to support to get standardised? Apps should decide what they open/edit and people can have their own personal opinions, but that kind of battle isn't something directly related to the whole of Gnome.
.Net? No. OOXML? Yes.
.Net is a great framework. The fact that it is cross-platform (as long as you're careful with windowing toolkits) is also a bonus. Microsoft purposefully released specs for the framework and it seems to be fairly well specified based on the amount of support in Mono.
For the developer who wants to spend his time developing applications rather than worrying about memory management then
OOXML is a bit stranger for Gnome to get involved in. Surely it's something that apps like Open Office should be concerned about, not the desktop people? I'd rather they were putting their effort into improving some of the tools they do have rather than working in things they don't have to directly support.
.
Disclaimer: I use Linux, I even use Gnome (have done since Redhat 7.3), I enjoy the freedom and power of open source, and I do dual-boot Windows XP. I code my own projects in C# and don't hate things purely because they're MS, just because they're generally not as well specified or obviously flawed compared to alternatives.
The place I work at does some security work and as part of one of their tests they too a directional aerial up the nearby hill. The hill is only about a mile away, but from the top of it then they could pick up wireless networks and some keyboards from the main site. AFAIK it wasn't anything overly fancy either, just a fairly standard directional aerial of the type that could be done to a lesser extent with a normal aerial and a Pringles tin.
Only in terms of degrees, though. And if it is in terms of degrees then how do you set at which degree it is sufficiently 'degree-ful' to be something that shouldn't be done?
That was what I was thinking as well - surely the EULA says not to reverse engineer the code.
:)
Now, do the people on slashdot agree with breaking a legal(ish) contract to find a GPL violation when they don't agree with breaking privacy laws to catch criminals/terrorists? Interesting dilemma
Granted they went for a small number of IMDB users due to their TOS, but that's still a tiny fraction. They mention finding a perfect match in IMDB and 1/8th of the NetFlix database towards the start of the report (although the sentence is a bit clunky and unclear). If that's their general accuracy then even if they can perfectly match some people (a statistical possibility) then they can't match enough to leave most people needing to worry.
Or maybe they like cowboy films and are open minded, as well as liking expose material and documentaries (not sure about the others).
Maybe they're not, but there's always the possibility.
Exactly - all they did was found that there was a correlation that might mean that the people are the same on IMDB and NetFlix. There's also the possibility that they're different people and that they just voted similar on different places.
Besides, this all relies on people voting for a) really obscure films so they can be easily identified and b) voting similarly or identically on lots of films so that they can get a better idea as to whether it is the same person based on them liking the same films the same amounts.
Just because two people from two different data sets both like (and are the only people in the data sets to like) lemon and custard jam as well as peanut butter with chips doesn't mean they're the same person, it just means they could be the same person and have similar tastes in obscure foods.
Or Linux can do it for free.
gDesklets (for the old school method) or others to put in a docker, Slight Mac top-bar look with Gnome defaults, loads of various OS X cloned themes for Metacity ("Tish" comes to mind, but there are pinstripe, graphite and all other styles), Compiz to give you the 'wow' of desktop cubes (which you can crank up to 32x32 if you want) and fancy hidable widget layers etc. You can even move the buttons to the other side of the title bar quite easily.
And then after a month or so you decide it's just stupid to make it look like a Mac when it isn't a Mac and go for something more normal.
Hang on, don't DVDs (at least ones in the UK) have unskippable bits already?
I know some of my DVDs (the CSI boxed sets for one) have some crap from the film copyright people about "you wouldn't steal an old lady's handbag and knock her to the floor, you wouldn't steal thousands of pounds worth of car before causing large amounts of terror and damage, you wouldn't kill a school full of children in a murderous rampage, so don't copy a load of bits from a disk valued at about £10-£20".
There's also some trailers and some intro sections (like the film producer/publisher titles) that can't be skipped on a lot of films.
Not quite sure where they get a patent without prior art for from that lot (unless it's specifically for 'product advertising' as opposed to 'information' or 'trailers', at which point it's a small logical step anyway).
Given that the aim of the toolkit is supposedly to
then how do they manage it without examining traffic? If the toolkit monitors BitTorrent (and other) ports then that would tell you who is using P2P, but not who is sharing movies. Maybe all that traffic is from students internally torrenting various Linux distros or their garage bands' MP3s.
Thank goodness I never lived in University halls.
The problem with that side of his argument is that even if the companies do pay for the bandwidth then how does it get to the consumer's PC? You've still got to pay for an ISP (or struggle for hours/days on 'free' local rate dial-up) so you're still leaving the consumer to pay for it in part.
Also, even if they hosted it on websites rather than getting it redistributed for free by consumers then you're suddenly either going to get a load of extra content on You Tube/Google Videos and the like (which will require more servers to share the load) or they set up their own sites (which will need servers to run on). Either way it'd shrink the IPv4 pool faster than it already is.