This is irrelevant in most cases (unless you are transferring data between peripherals). The advantage of the USB approach is that the everything is considerably simpler and cheaper.
It's a circuit board and a cable. The costs are negligible in either USB's or Firewire's manufacture; the cost was in the initial implementation in hardware and software.
How exactly does Intel (or Microsoft, for that matter) profit from USB being the standard? It was just that Firewire was considerably more expensive than USB to implement -- both on the host and on the peripheral side. To this day, the only popular Firewire peripherals I know of are DV camcorders.
Apple and Intel were engaged in simultaneous R&D on a high-speed serial bus. An old story. Who benefits? Well, for one, Intel didn't want to find it wasted time and money.
Secondly, and most importantly: Intel is in the business of making processors. They designed USB to require an Intel processor to operate. (3. Profit!) That simply wasn't necessary, and it slowed the actual data rate a great deal.
Remember, we had to wait a long time before USB2. We were putting up with pokey speeds on bloody everything. Webcams sucked mostly because they were trying to send a video signal down a telegraph wire. Firewire worked fine, but was unavailable because Intel made it clear to everyone concerned that supporting Firewire would not make Intel happy. (AMD wasn't a factor yet.)
It was a Catch-22 for Firewire. With no boards or peripherals supporting it, no incentive to build same. USB's unit cost dropped, Firewire stayed high. And as electronics companies usually do, they cranked up the price of the technically superior Firewire components because those who needed the speed would pay through the nose for it.
Maybe that's because the complex protocol makes everything expensive while offering few advantages?
Firewire was more complex than USB - but a Celeron is also more complex than a 486SX. Yet a Celeron costs less than the old 486SX. After the initial costs are recovered, it's just mass production. Ditto USB and Firewire components.
-Firewire is freely licensed by Apple. -USB is not. At least last I heard.
-Firewire does not require a CPU, ie a PC, to mediate file transfers. -USB requires a PC. And originally, Windows, tho that changed eventually.
-Firewire 400 is faster than USB. -Firewire 800 is faster than USB2. Note that contention on the inferior bus and the mediation of the CPU are two big factors that retard USB and USB2.
-Firewire, six-pin, has a superior ability to power peripherals compared to USB.
-(Bone to pick) Firewire and USB were introduced by Apple and Intel, respectively. Intel used its influence in mobo design and OEM to promote its own, inferior, standard over Apple's. (And Apple waived the licensing fees - $1 per mobo, I believe, early, so that was not a factor). As a result, to this day Firewire still hasn't hit the magic numbers to drop the cost down to parity with USB. Microsoft had no small role in retarding the introduction of Firewire in Windows. MS/Intel swing a lot of weight. They did not exactly like Apple making a new standard.
So we're stuck with a slower data transfer rate in real life and a lousy peripheral power option because Intel wanted to rool over all.
It might have something to with the name. "Ogg" isn't exactly dressing for marketing success. People don't want to listen to "oggs". At least "MP3" sounds cool and techie.
".music" would have worked. or: ".tune", ".sound", ".tun", ".mix", ".track"... anything but Ogg!
Names have power. As Bankie would say, there were the fingers of the Ogg developers, far from the people's pulse...
How about thousands of books? If it can manage an ebook library, I'd think it might be worth it. That said, are all these PMP manufacturers allergic to Firewire? Why am I consigned to USB hell?
"Has anyone tried defending an infringement suit on the theory that they paid a copyright levy on the media and thus paid for making the copy?"
I believe they got the law giving them lovely money to compensate them for the FAIR-USE copies.
A beautiful, nasty, WRONG argument, because a copyright holder is not entitled to compensation for Fair Use copying. That's WHY it's called Fair Use: because it is fair for the user to copy without paying.
But it sidetracks the whole Why-Am-I-Being-Sued-For-Copying-When-I've-Already- Paid-Them? argument:( Although it makes my skin crawl.
That's why word meanings are important! You can't let your foe own the win by redefining the terms used in your arguments so that you can't even make yourself understood in the debate. Orwell made this clear. L. Ron Hubbard used word redefinitions (Win, Enemy, etc) in his writings to redefine how his followers thought when certain key words were used, making argument with his ideas impossible. Redefinitions of the word "pirate" and "thief" to describe copying intangibles was intentional on the **AA's part. Bush's PR people reconstituted the simple idea of the word "torture" into the less objectionable "abuse" in the news media. It's all about the words. If your opponent removes your ability to express yourself in words understandable by a third party, you've lost.
Think of all the lovely interest they've earned on those millions in the past few years.
There's all SORT of ways to steal, ain't there?
Magazine arguement: "We're TV Guide, not the TV!"
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 1
"Lokitorrents probably falls into the common carrier clauses of the DMCA, since they do not host the actual content themselves."
I'd suggest that sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova fall into the category of a magazine like TV Guide, or Soldier of Fortune. They index; they do not carry content. They point out where it is.
TV Guide tells you where and when to tune in to a TV program. Their critics sometimes watch the programs and rate them, as well. If the program was inproperly copyrighted or illegally distributed to a channel is none of their legal concern.
Soldier of Fortune tells you where mercenary markets are, and how to find them. They print articles about the actions in question. Whether or not the merc offers are legal in the jurisdiction of the country in combat matters nothing to them, nor are they held liable.
I am aware of the 2600 linking decison in which the court decided that linking to illegal content was itself illegal. I'd use the Magazine Defense. If that isn't usable, there are a lot of magazines that need closing down.
And if you were watching at a +4 threshold, an hour show would consist of nothing but 30 second snippets of Morgan Webb's upper frontal floatation devices. No that there's anything wrong with that. Them. Whatever.
Re:TSS was a goner long before G4
on
Inside TechTV/G4
·
· Score: 4, Informative
" TSS was steadily going downhill long before G4 got ahold of them. Once Leo Lapporte [leoville.com] it was all Patrick could do to stay afloat."
Leo left because his contract permitted him to do so. The others would have left, but theirs did not.
Everyone at TechTV saw it coming. Some just had options ready, some couldn't leave immediately. When you're 48 and accomplished, there are doors awaiting, even if you have to make them yourself. A 21 year old has to ride the wave. Not many tech television jobs around.
You have noticed the oil cartels just raped us for hundreds of billions of extra bucks in the U.S.? And it had nothing to do with the government? At least the Europeans get less pollution, get smaller cars with better mileage, and use the taxes on gas for the public good? We in the U.S. gave trillions over to the oil industry -- which will then buy up more of our private sector, bribe the public sector, and make sure we never see a non-oil-based economy established. SUCH A DEAL.
Getting or giving oral sex for fun is not "predatory" behavior. Trying to redefine another english word for political advantage again? Piracy didn't mean "copying" until enough PR firms changed the meaning of the term thru constant repetition - the "Big Lie" technique.
Now getting a BJ is equivalent to rape, if Rush says it is so. Does this mean Newt Gingrich and Bill O'Reilly are finally outted as the serial rapists they truly are?
No, the U.S. sprays the poison directly on the marijuana crops. Paraquot, I believe. If you smoke pot and are poisoned, that pretty much adds up to "police" putting it in your joint to put you off smoking.
The difference is responsibilty. The Corporatist model is beloved of businessmen for one reason only: personal responsibility is eliminated. A thug in a corporation can do ANYthing, and nothing will happen to him personally. An individual, obviously, will lose his job, his savings, his future earnings, his marriage and his kids, his personal reputation, his right to vote, and any possibility of getting a decent job.
This is the real evil of the corporate model. They are fake individuals running cover for real people breaking laws. That, of course, and the fact that they can literally write the legislation regulating themselves, with the right party in Congress -- and can redefine crime at will.
You... completely ignore the entire history of the last three years in Venezuela. You've excised the entire coup from your memory. The landslide election. The failed "recall", which was not an election but an attempt to roll back the election AFTER the armed assault on the elected president failed. You ignore Bush's role in the coup, and why the people hate the right wing so much down there.
I... just don't understand how the Right's brains work. You just carry your own reality around with you in a self-contained bubble? You literally do not hear anything which contradicts your version of the universe?
Um, they tried to oust him in a military coup endorsed by Dubya within hours? They committed acts of armed treason? They are agents of U.S. interests? They killed people?
Let's try a thought experiment. Let us say that two years ago, the Democratic party leadership, with the help of the wealthiest people in the country, and with foreign endorsement and aid from, say, FRANCE, overran the White House, held Bush prisoner, and declared the 2000 election invalid on ideological grounds. And they failed to overturn the government.
Then, later, those Democrats faked up a recall election, which failed.
HOW FAST WOULD BUSH HAVE BEEN BUSTING DOWN HARD ON ANY DAMNED BODY HE WANTED TO? How many people in Gitmo getting razors up their backsides? How many new "security" measures cracking down on the First Amendment? How many dead in the street as he sent in the freakin' Marines? If past behavior is any guide, he'd have laughed as people were mowed down in the street.
Chavez has been far, far more lenient on traitors than Bush ever, EVER would be.
Not because we haven't managed to spread there so much as because there's no water easily available in the empty parts. A good part of the American west is uninhabitable were it not for piping in water from the places that have some. If it were possible to build cities with plentiful water supplies west of the Mississipi, there'd be Chicagos all over the map. Without massive federal tax revenues from the states WITH water, there'd be far fewer people out in the west than there is now. The dams, pipelines and highways out west are what made large-scale settlement possible. The arid state populations exist because they are subsidized by the wet states. They take in far more Federal funds for infrastructure building than they pay in taxes.
"You have no right to "free speech" using non-government controlled facilities. Yes, that means you can be told to be quiet and a private security guard can make it stick. Not a "government-employed police officer". So don't be silly."
Um, that logically means that you have no free speech rights. At all. What -- we only have the right not to be silenced by the government, but anyone else can shut you up at will because you are on their property? Put a roof over land, and the constitution ends at the parking lot? Work - school - malls - airports - anyplace on earth - is private property. This is madness.
The only place you can "speak" freely would be your house! IF it wasn't a rental!
This isn't freedom. This isn't America. If you can't speak outside your home, can't distribute speech, can't speak at work, can't speak freely on a private company's communications equipment - which applies to ALL ISPs and phone companies -- then the first ammendment is a dead letter. Game over. The United States is over.
Keeping it simple: answer to all astroturf posters
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
There are so many here hammering the "it's illegal - it's piracy - " meme injection that I strongly suspect the MPAA has hired astroturfing agents to dominate the thread. Holy Scientology, Batman.
Answers for their contentions, all at once:
It's not "piracy"; it's copying without permission. If you sell copied films, then you're a pirate.
Copying without permission wasn't a criminal matter until the content producers bought such laws. It was a civil matter, and conviction required evidence of monetary loss on the complaintant's part.
Copyright was a compromise in U.S. law. One faction in the constitutional convention wanted NO copyrights, another was more of the current IP ilk's way of thinking. Compromise: copyrights were to exist for a limited time, to get the best of both worlds -- enticement to produce new works, and the graduation to public domain of old works for the common good.
With the Sonny Bono Law, the deal was destroyed. No compromise. Copyright for life of author plus 75 years for an author, a HUNDRED years for a corporation. And no guarantee at all that future congresses would keep extending the terms for ever and ever and ever...
The deal is over. And we didn't break it, the "intellectual property owners" broke it - savagely, permanently. Now works are owned for all time. No public good. Just private. No derivative works allowed. And corporate "owners" can use their profits to buy larger and larger blocks of "property" indefinitely. We may see a small handful of chummy corporations eventually owning all the published works of mankind - science, art, literature -- everything.
The law broke the deal. The corporations wanted anarchy. They got it. They have guns on their side. The Scientologists are peeing themselves with glee.
What we have here is more than downloading copies of movies or music. If copyright lasted only 20 years, I would honestly be fighting alongside the owners so that they could make a profit from their works. That is, if the artists actually owned the copyrights, rather than the corporations they signed rights over to.
But this is not what copyrights is about. It isn't about property. That's a 20th century legal fiction. Music and images are not "property"; items are property. Copyright was about licensing copies.
Fair Use law mandated that the public could copy even without paying, within limits. THAT'S out the window. If it's illegal to break encryption, you can't copy within those rights.
I will not accept the shutdown of the Constitution's purpose of copyright. I will not accept the death of Fair Use. I will not countenance the elimination of the Deal. I will not watch the works of man fall under the eternal control of immortal corporations. Science and art as we know it cannot survive the imprisonment-with-conditional parole of human endeavor. If copying files annoys them and shakes their control, then let it be so. I want this regime of control shaken and stirred until such day we can install real limits on copyright once more.
This box sounds like Apple's answer to small form factor PC's running Myth or Microsoft's media center software. It's a multimedia box.
There's been a sea change in monitors. Back in ye Olden Days, you had a Commodore 64 using a TV for a display. Fuzzy.
Then came RGB monitors, which cost more than a TV, couldn't be used as a TV, but made computer video output much more usable.
Then the monitors developed into hi-rez monsters. They showed TV better than TV sets showed TV.
But now, lookee: hi-end high def TV's can run 1080i, or even 1080p with a converter. We have consumer TV's that can handily act as a not-bad monitor for a PC.
What's an Apple to do with the situation of Microsoft end-running the entire entertainment industry by making their DRM and Media Center the de facto standard? They take the guts of a iMac and make a cheap Small Form Factor computer for cheap. It doesn't have Bill's virus problem inherent in the OS, and, also, most importantly, it doesn't crash.
"Troll"? This comment was meant to list a few thoughts on the implications of a laser weapon. It's meant to make people think and comment. We're going to see such weapons really soon, in the hands of the military and the police -- who are becoming interchangeable.
Don't like the homeland security comments? That's not what moderation is about.
Hm. Not many cases of people trying to intentionally blind people with marshmallows. Or rocks. Or pebbles.
Lots of cases of people being blinded by lasers fired by people who want to cause such trouble.
The Army tried a weapon system called the KLAW back in the 80's and 90's. It was a laser system mounted on a pole. It fired continuously at eye level with the intention of blinding anyone who looked at it.
To my knowledge, they did not test a marshmallow gun for this purpose.
Not that funny. Different weapons, different purposes. A weapon that does nothing but cause blindness is a terror weapon.
Slashdot Mirror
This is irrelevant in most cases (unless you are transferring data between peripherals). The advantage of the USB approach is that the everything is considerably simpler and cheaper.
It's a circuit board and a cable. The costs are negligible in either USB's or Firewire's manufacture; the cost was in the initial implementation in hardware and software.
How exactly does Intel (or Microsoft, for that matter) profit from USB being the standard? It was just that Firewire was considerably more expensive than USB to implement -- both on the host and on the peripheral side. To this day, the only popular Firewire peripherals I know of are DV camcorders.
Apple and Intel were engaged in simultaneous R&D on a high-speed serial bus. An old story. Who benefits? Well, for one, Intel didn't want to find it wasted time and money.
Secondly, and most importantly: Intel is in the business of making processors. They designed USB to require an Intel processor to operate. (3. Profit!) That simply wasn't necessary, and it slowed the actual data rate a great deal.
Remember, we had to wait a long time before USB2. We were putting up with pokey speeds on bloody everything. Webcams sucked mostly because they were trying to send a video signal down a telegraph wire. Firewire worked fine, but was unavailable because Intel made it clear to everyone concerned that supporting Firewire would not make Intel happy. (AMD wasn't a factor yet.)
It was a Catch-22 for Firewire. With no boards or peripherals supporting it, no incentive to build same. USB's unit cost dropped, Firewire stayed high. And as electronics companies usually do, they cranked up the price of the technically superior Firewire components because those who needed the speed would pay through the nose for it.
Maybe that's because the complex protocol makes everything expensive while offering few advantages?
Firewire was more complex than USB - but a Celeron is also more complex than a 486SX. Yet a Celeron costs less than the old 486SX. After the initial costs are recovered, it's just mass production. Ditto USB and Firewire components.
Valid question.
-Firewire is freely licensed by Apple.
-USB is not. At least last I heard.
-Firewire does not require a CPU, ie a PC, to mediate file transfers.
-USB requires a PC. And originally, Windows, tho that changed eventually.
-Firewire 400 is faster than USB.
-Firewire 800 is faster than USB2. Note that contention on the inferior bus and the mediation of the CPU are two big factors that retard USB and USB2.
-Firewire, six-pin, has a superior ability to power peripherals compared to USB.
-(Bone to pick) Firewire and USB were introduced by Apple and Intel, respectively. Intel used its influence in mobo design and OEM to promote its own, inferior, standard over Apple's. (And Apple waived the licensing fees - $1 per mobo, I believe, early, so that was not a factor). As a result, to this day Firewire still hasn't hit the magic numbers to drop the cost down to parity with USB. Microsoft had no small role in retarding the introduction of Firewire in Windows. MS/Intel swing a lot of weight. They did not exactly like Apple making a new standard.
So we're stuck with a slower data transfer rate in real life and a lousy peripheral power option because Intel wanted to rool over all.
It might have something to with the name. "Ogg" isn't exactly dressing for marketing success. People don't want to listen to "oggs". At least "MP3" sounds cool and techie.
".music" would have worked. or: ".tune", ".sound", ".tun", ".mix", ".track"... anything but Ogg!
Names have power. As Bankie would say, there were the fingers of the Ogg developers, far from the people's pulse...
How about thousands of books? If it can manage an ebook library, I'd think it might be worth it. That said, are all these PMP manufacturers allergic to Firewire? Why am I consigned to USB hell?
Some of them have vaginas, you insensitive clod.
"Has anyone tried defending an infringement suit on the theory that they paid a copyright levy on the media and thus paid for making the copy?"
- Paid-Them? argument :( Although it makes my skin crawl.
I believe they got the law giving them lovely money to compensate them for the FAIR-USE copies.
A beautiful, nasty, WRONG argument, because a copyright holder is not entitled to compensation for Fair Use copying. That's WHY it's called Fair Use: because it is fair for the user to copy without paying.
But it sidetracks the whole Why-Am-I-Being-Sued-For-Copying-When-I've-Already
That's why word meanings are important! You can't let your foe own the win by redefining the terms used in your arguments so that you can't even make yourself understood in the debate. Orwell made this clear. L. Ron Hubbard used word redefinitions (Win, Enemy, etc) in his writings to redefine how his followers thought when certain key words were used, making argument with his ideas impossible. Redefinitions of the word "pirate" and "thief" to describe copying intangibles was intentional on the **AA's part. Bush's PR people reconstituted the simple idea of the word "torture" into the less objectionable "abuse" in the news media. It's all about the words. If your opponent removes your ability to express yourself in words understandable by a third party, you've lost.
Think of all the lovely interest they've earned on those millions in the past few years.
There's all SORT of ways to steal, ain't there?
"Lokitorrents probably falls into the common carrier clauses of the DMCA, since they do not host the actual content themselves."
I'd suggest that sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova fall into the category of a magazine like TV Guide, or Soldier of Fortune. They index; they do not carry content. They point out where it is.
TV Guide tells you where and when to tune in to a TV program. Their critics sometimes watch the programs and rate them, as well. If the program was inproperly copyrighted or illegally distributed to a channel is none of their legal concern.
Soldier of Fortune tells you where mercenary markets are, and how to find them. They print articles about the actions in question. Whether or not the merc offers are legal in the jurisdiction of the country in combat matters nothing to them, nor are they held liable.
I am aware of the 2600 linking decison in which the court decided that linking to illegal content was itself illegal. I'd use the Magazine Defense. If that isn't usable, there are a lot of magazines that need closing down.
2 cents worth.
And if you were watching at a +4 threshold, an hour show would consist of nothing but 30 second snippets of Morgan Webb's upper frontal floatation devices. No that there's anything wrong with that. Them. Whatever.
" TSS was steadily going downhill long before G4 got ahold of them. Once Leo Lapporte [leoville.com] it was all Patrick could do to stay afloat."
Leo left because his contract permitted him to do so. The others would have left, but theirs did not.
Slashdot TV? I like that! It's a perfect marriage. TechTV was multimedia Slashdot as it was. They were symbiotes.
All you TSS old timers reading this -- and I know you are -- harken to nxtr. This could have legs.
Everyone at TechTV saw it coming. Some just had options ready, some couldn't leave immediately. When you're 48 and accomplished, there are doors awaiting, even if you have to make them yourself. A 21 year old has to ride the wave. Not many tech television jobs around.
You have noticed the oil cartels just raped us for hundreds of billions of extra bucks in the U.S.? And it had nothing to do with the government? At least the Europeans get less pollution, get smaller cars with better mileage, and use the taxes on gas for the public good? We in the U.S. gave trillions over to the oil industry -- which will then buy up more of our private sector, bribe the public sector, and make sure we never see a non-oil-based economy established. SUCH A DEAL.
Getting or giving oral sex for fun is not "predatory" behavior. Trying to redefine another english word for political advantage again? Piracy didn't mean "copying" until enough PR firms changed the meaning of the term thru constant repetition - the "Big Lie" technique.
Now getting a BJ is equivalent to rape, if Rush says it is so. Does this mean Newt Gingrich and Bill O'Reilly are finally outted as the serial rapists they truly are?
No, the U.S. sprays the poison directly on the marijuana crops. Paraquot, I believe. If you smoke pot and are poisoned, that pretty much adds up to "police" putting it in your joint to put you off smoking.
The difference is responsibilty. The Corporatist model is beloved of businessmen for one reason only: personal responsibility is eliminated. A thug in a corporation can do ANYthing, and nothing will happen to him personally. An individual, obviously, will lose his job, his savings, his future earnings, his marriage and his kids, his personal reputation, his right to vote, and any possibility of getting a decent job.
This is the real evil of the corporate model. They are fake individuals running cover for real people breaking laws. That, of course, and the fact that they can literally write the legislation regulating themselves, with the right party in Congress -- and can redefine crime at will.
You... completely ignore the entire history of the last three years in Venezuela. You've excised the entire coup from your memory. The landslide election. The failed "recall", which was not an election but an attempt to roll back the election AFTER the armed assault on the elected president failed. You ignore Bush's role in the coup, and why the people hate the right wing so much down there.
I... just don't understand how the Right's brains work. You just carry your own reality around with you in a self-contained bubble? You literally do not hear anything which contradicts your version of the universe?
Um, they tried to oust him in a military coup endorsed by Dubya within hours? They committed acts of armed treason? They are agents of U.S. interests? They killed people?
Let's try a thought experiment. Let us say that two years ago, the Democratic party leadership, with the help of the wealthiest people in the country, and with foreign endorsement and aid from, say, FRANCE, overran the White House, held Bush prisoner, and declared the 2000 election invalid on ideological grounds. And they failed to overturn the government.
Then, later, those Democrats faked up a recall election, which failed.
HOW FAST WOULD BUSH HAVE BEEN BUSTING DOWN HARD ON ANY DAMNED BODY HE WANTED TO? How many people in Gitmo getting razors up their backsides? How many new "security" measures cracking down on the First Amendment? How many dead in the street as he sent in the freakin' Marines? If past behavior is any guide, he'd have laughed as people were mowed down in the street.
Chavez has been far, far more lenient on traitors than Bush ever, EVER would be.
"Actually, most of the U.S. is pretty empty."
Not because we haven't managed to spread there so much as because there's no water easily available in the empty parts. A good part of the American west is uninhabitable were it not for piping in water from the places that have some. If it were possible to build cities with plentiful water supplies west of the Mississipi, there'd be Chicagos all over the map. Without massive federal tax revenues from the states WITH water, there'd be far fewer people out in the west than there is now. The dams, pipelines and highways out west are what made large-scale settlement possible. The arid state populations exist because they are subsidized by the wet states. They take in far more Federal funds for infrastructure building than they pay in taxes.
"You have no right to "free speech" using non-government controlled facilities. Yes, that means you can be told to be quiet and a private security guard can make it stick. Not a "government-employed police officer". So don't be silly."
Um, that logically means that you have no free speech rights. At all. What -- we only have the right not to be silenced by the government, but anyone else can shut you up at will because you are on their property? Put a roof over land, and the constitution ends at the parking lot?
Work - school - malls - airports - anyplace on earth - is private property. This is madness.
The only place you can "speak" freely would be your house! IF it wasn't a rental!
This isn't freedom. This isn't America. If you can't speak outside your home, can't distribute speech, can't speak at work, can't speak freely on a private company's communications equipment - which applies to ALL ISPs and phone companies -- then the first ammendment is a dead letter. Game over. The United States is over.
There are so many here hammering the "it's illegal - it's piracy - " meme injection that I strongly suspect the MPAA has hired astroturfing agents to dominate the thread. Holy Scientology, Batman.
Answers for their contentions, all at once:
It's not "piracy"; it's copying without permission. If you sell copied films, then you're a pirate.
Copying without permission wasn't a criminal matter until the content producers bought such laws. It was a civil matter, and conviction required evidence of monetary loss on the complaintant's part.
Copyright was a compromise in U.S. law. One faction in the constitutional convention wanted NO copyrights, another was more of the current IP ilk's way of thinking. Compromise: copyrights were to exist for a limited time, to get the best of both worlds -- enticement to produce new works, and the graduation to public domain of old works for the common good.
With the Sonny Bono Law, the deal was destroyed. No compromise. Copyright for life of author plus 75 years for an author, a HUNDRED years for a corporation. And no guarantee at all that future congresses would keep extending the terms for ever and ever and ever...
The deal is over. And we didn't break it, the "intellectual property owners" broke it - savagely, permanently. Now works are owned for all time. No public good. Just private. No derivative works allowed. And corporate "owners" can use their profits to buy larger and larger blocks of "property" indefinitely. We may see a small handful of chummy corporations eventually owning all the published works of mankind - science, art, literature -- everything.
The law broke the deal. The corporations wanted anarchy. They got it. They have guns on their side. The Scientologists are peeing themselves with glee.
What we have here is more than downloading copies of movies or music. If copyright lasted only 20 years, I would honestly be fighting alongside the owners so that they could make a profit from their works. That is, if the artists actually owned the copyrights, rather than the corporations they signed rights over to.
But this is not what copyrights is about. It isn't about property. That's a 20th century legal fiction. Music and images are not "property"; items are property. Copyright was about licensing copies.
Fair Use law mandated that the public could copy even without paying, within limits. THAT'S out the window. If it's illegal to break encryption, you can't copy within those rights.
I will not accept the shutdown of the Constitution's purpose of copyright. I will not accept the death of Fair Use. I will not countenance the elimination of the Deal. I will not watch the works of man fall under the eternal control of immortal corporations. Science and art as we know it cannot survive the imprisonment-with-conditional parole of human endeavor. If copying files annoys them and shakes their control, then let it be so. I want this regime of control shaken and stirred until such day we can install real limits on copyright once more.
Approximately 2 dekatatertots.
This box sounds like Apple's answer to small form factor PC's running Myth or Microsoft's media center software. It's a multimedia box.
There's been a sea change in monitors. Back in ye Olden Days, you had a Commodore 64 using a TV for a display. Fuzzy.
Then came RGB monitors, which cost more than a TV, couldn't be used as a TV, but made computer video output much more usable.
Then the monitors developed into hi-rez monsters. They showed TV better than TV sets showed TV.
But now, lookee: hi-end high def TV's can run 1080i, or even 1080p with a converter. We have consumer TV's that can handily act as a not-bad monitor for a PC.
What's an Apple to do with the situation of Microsoft end-running the entire entertainment industry by making their DRM and Media Center the de facto standard? They take the guts of a iMac and make a cheap Small Form Factor computer for cheap. It doesn't have Bill's virus problem inherent in the OS, and, also, most importantly, it doesn't crash.
Run, Steve, run!
"Troll"? This comment was meant to list a few thoughts on the implications of a laser weapon. It's meant to make people think and comment. We're going to see such weapons really soon, in the hands of the military and the police -- who are becoming interchangeable.
Don't like the homeland security comments? That's not what moderation is about.
Hm. Not many cases of people trying to intentionally blind people with marshmallows. Or rocks. Or pebbles.
Lots of cases of people being blinded by lasers fired by people who want to cause such trouble.
The Army tried a weapon system called the KLAW back in the 80's and 90's. It was a laser system mounted on a pole. It fired continuously at eye level with the intention of blinding anyone who looked at it.
To my knowledge, they did not test a marshmallow gun for this purpose.
Not that funny. Different weapons, different purposes. A weapon that does nothing but cause blindness is a terror weapon.