Jon has used his fme for everything it is worth. I would say that he was very dumb-headed to go public with the little GUI he made for the DeCSS at an early time. Furthermore, when the Economical Crimes Division in Norway (Økokrim) got interested, he did not erase chat-logs or dispose of his (In Norwegian copyright law) illegal CD-ROM copies of Macromedi Flash or something.
Well, he got a job as a result of the fame so he quit school in an age of 16 (The earliest age where you can quit school legally in Norway). The.com company that hired him went belly-up and now he works for some third-rate.com.
Lesson (In mr. T-voice): Don't be a fool, stay in school!
OK.Jon Johansen made the GUI + some subsystem to break the CSS DVD encryption. Mind you, he got these codes from a German fellow, he did not get the codes himself.
In current Norwegian copyright law, you are entitled to make a copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (Åndsverkloven 12, 1st section. This does not apply to computer programs or databases.). Jons program does not facilitate the copying of the DVD, just the reading the contents. He also argued that DeCSS could be used for making backups of the DVD.
Jon argues that he made DeCSS to view the contents of the DVD on this Linux computer. The prosecution argues that he mocks Linux and was a BSD-guy at the time of DeCSS. Anyway, the DeCSS program first appeared on Windows.
The prosecution wanted to nail Jon on the paragraph 145 of the Norwegian penal code. It says that (summary) "anyone gaining illegal access to locked data, also computer data can be punished with jail for a maximum of six months". Note the "illegal" part here. The judge ruled that Jon had only gained access with DeCSS to data HE had bought. It was his copy of the work in question so he had a right to access it. He did not distribute any illegal copies, and he did not gain unlawful access to the DVD although his program might be used for that.
The Norwegian legal system is quite different from the american. Suing for malicious use of the court system has to be very, very well founded in the charges brought agains Jon. In this case the prosecutor (Økokrim) has a duty to intercept and investigate. After all,Jon HAS done something that comes quite close to breaking the law. So the Økokrim is in their right.
As for retriution, he can sue for money lost due to the case and a small ammount of money for damages. As a rule, in the courts of Norway, penal money retributions does not exist.
As a representative for The Evil Media (TM), the largest tabloid in Norway, I must say that the largest resistance to the use of the word "Cracker" is currently in the public. I strive to make a difference in the articles I write, but every time I write the word "cracker" I end ut in a time-consuming discussion with some pedant who tracks the history of the word "hacker" all the way into the 15th century. Usually I say "whatever floats your boat" and refer to the Jargon File. But american media has really fucked up the usage of the Hacker-word.
Really HIGH high-res pictures
on
Snowflake Photos
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I have a gripe about wallpapers. Not long ago, a 1024x768 pixel wallpaper was HUGE. Not so anymore. At work we use screens with perverse resolutions, and any wallpaper on the looks pixelated and not very pretty. Why not store the wallpapers as 4000x3000 px pics? (Aside from size and transfer times) These are professional pictures, the input should be more than enough to do it...
Pleas have a look at this node on Everything2.com. It is a short piece I wrote up on the bombings and the massive attempt to thwart Hitler's atomic ambitions.
The Opera guys seem to be quite media-savvy, but not without irony. Go to the webpage of Håkon Wium Lie and discover what the did there. Håkun Veeoom Leee-a indeed...:D
I talked to Mr. Håkon Wium Lie myself, and he said that they repeatedly hav complained to MS about this and other problems over a long time, but nothing happened. The Opera problem was very, very obvious and could be seen very easily. Yet, they did not fix it. The error MSN on Opera error was the most reported Opera error of them all and I imagine that MSN got their fair share of complaints from the MSN on Opera users as well.. Mr. Lie said to me that "there's a fair shar of incompetence at Microsoft, but this problem is not caused by that." Seems like he has borked his own site as well...:)
My mom bought an iBook, a lovely tool for actually getting some work done. It turns out there's only one thing the five year old PC can do, that the iBook can't; access the web bank. The Skandiabanken bank exists only on the net, so you'd think they want to optimize it for most browsers. Nope, if you want to use it (And remember, the bank is only one or two years old) you have to use "either the latest Internet Explorer browser or Netscape 7.4". Jesus!
This really annoys me. I work a t a place where the webpages are tested for the four largest browsers in Mac, Lin and Win. It is really not that hard. They even look at it in Lynx, just to see that the pages aren't completely inaccsessible for the evolution-impaired.
Last week, I wrote an article on how MSN pages look screwed up on Opera browsers (For the Slasdot story, click here!). This MS guy, the director / editor, told me that they write a special version of the page for Opera that all Opera users get directed to, but it it is broken. Now comes the funny part: They never bother to check the Opera-specific page with Opera. I had problems believing what he said, so he explains that Opera was so small (Yeah. 8-10 mill users. Small. M-hm.) that it was not tested as standard, but they did test it here in Norway.
Well, if they did test it in Norway and the error was a typo, then the test crew (and the guys reading their mail feedback) would have to be blind.
This (in addition to lack of commercial indifference) is one of teh many good reasons the Cannes film festival, the Berlin film festival and the Venice film festival is a lot better than the sell-out Academy Awards. Spirited Away won the Golden Bear (The highest award) at the Berlin film festival, the second animated picture to win it since Cinderella won the first golden bear in the 50's. The oscars suck, and is nothing more than an advertising system for big companies and huge stars.
Pardon me, but I always thought the caption was stored as image files and then superomposed onto the picture. It seems like that here, where the process of OCR'ing and re-encoding the subtitles is described. This method is also described by the person who made the pictures available. But I still do not believe that someone can hear a phrase from this movie and translate it into "get your pussy-face to my ass" or whatever. It might be possible if it was translated from Mandarin (Or any other dialect) into English, but wouldn't it be easier to just listen to teh English track? I know there's English-speaking versions of this DVD out there.
But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text. Futhermore, I can understand that funny mistakes occur when you translate e.g. Japanese into English, but when transcribing English? You'd have to be a complete moron...
I love my Ericsson T68i (i is for "Intercooler"...) It has the classic game Naval Fleet, where you try to sink the opponents boats by guessing where they are. This game can be played by one player, vs the computer, two players on the same phone, or with another player connected vi IR or Bluetooth. Now, this is cool and all, but why not connect players via GPRS? GPRS is based on who much traffic (in MB) you transfer so a game of Naval Fleet shouldn't cost that much. Too bad Ericsson didn't include GPRS gameing instead of just posting the highscores via GPRS.
I was going to keep my big mouth shut about this subject but I can't anymore. This article is crap. Beta has always, ALWAYS, been ahead of VHS in quality and features take a look here for a description of some of the Beta features that dwarfs VHS. And have a look at the tape times as well. Although the longest tapes weren't available at first, they became available. The video rental place the author of the article visited, presumably did not rent out films with 1/3 of the movie left out...
The demise of Beta was crappy marketing and high prices. Period.
Yeah, I realize that my thoughts did not quite make it to the screen. What I tried to illustrate was that The development of Beta (U-matic -> Betamax -> Betacam -> Betacam SP -> Betacam Digital) has always been on a higher level than VHS. Betamax had stereo in the very, very early 80ies (For consumer products in 1982) while VHS couldn't get their shit together to make a stereo player until the late 80ies. I'm also surprised to see that Betacam SP kicks SVHS' ass big time in colour, sound and durability. SVHS, after all, was supposed to be vastly superior to Betacam...
Indeed, the main thing that didn't fit was the idea was that Betamax was "technically superior". Standing in a shop at the time, there was absolutely no visible difference in picture quality, and some reviews had found that VHS's quality was superior.
This is simply not correct. At work, we have several VCRs for professional use, and the Betacam SP rox in picture quality, sound quality and durability in comparison with SVHS. There is a VERY good reason for the Betas use in professional enviroments since long ago, and the superiority in all-over quality is one of them. If you can't see any difference in picture, you're either colour blind for severely seeing impaired. Or maybe two and a half glances at the screen in a videostore 15 years ago isn't enough.
As for the one hour tapes, this is flat out wrong. Sony did introduce longer running tapes, when the tape technology got better. But in contrary to its competitor, the tapes maintained the Beta quality and seldom broke down as the VHS E120+ tapes have a tendency to do. Especially the E240, don't store any valuable memories on them!
From realufos.com: I asked the world famous psychic Sollog about this video. He says it is REAL!
Well, I'm convinced!
Seriously; this happens over New York. Is this the only footage of this UFO? At any time, there's so many camera crews in atcion in Manhattan (ref. the WTC plane crash first footage) that someone had to get this on tape in addition to the ones in the helicopter.
I believe in extraterrestial life, but I also beleive that if you can travel 10 + light years, you don't smash into a planet like a Mars probe (ref. the Roswell incident.) or expose yourself like this.
The ruling in favor of Jon is only valid here in Norway, of course. But if this case opens for fair use copying and use of the keys to watch DVDs on other players than approved, this could make for legal non-DVD CCS players in the US.
The reasoning is simple; laws and rulings allowed in similar countries are assumed to be legal in other countries. I.e. a legally vaild marriage made in Norway is also recoginised as valid in the US. And vice versa.
Unless there are specific rules against the use of this program, it may be assumed legal in the US too, since the Norwegian legal system approves of it. (Well, not completly and not yet.)
This argument gets stronger if the Norwegian court has used the same basic arguments that a US court could have used. We are talking about the right to watch a DVD on any player you like and I'm sure there are rulings in the US that can back this verdict in the district court.
Acutally, the manufacturer of the Xing DVD player could sue Jon for damages. They have, without dispute, lost A LOT of money after this incident. Not only was their CSS-keys retracted from the market, they also had to pay a fine to the DVD CCA. They are the real losers in this ordeal.
What the Norvegian prosecutor is doing is claiming that Jon broke the protection on the DVD keyblock. Almost. He is charged as an accessory to this, not as the main offender. That Frank Stevenson guy must have cojones the size of grapegruits. He met in court as a witness this Thursday.
It is quite common here for a court to interview persons via phone. However, I totally agree that they should make the effort to appear in person. Even though it's only the first district trial, it sends negative vibes... And that is good for Jon, I guess.
The person (can't remember his name... Facuss or something) releasing some source code under GPL, used in DeCSS was to be examined by telephone from Japan. He was supposed to meet at the Norwegian embassy in Tokyo, but the court was not able to reach him easely. Too bad, because he could give us the inside info on wether the decsstruth.txt document is true or not.
Well, my boss contacted me and said that we are stopping the English translation. Partly because of the critisism here on Slashdot. FYI: I had roughly 15 minutes to translate this article yesterday, and no spellchecker.
I was planning to invite Jon a readers-asks-the-questions type of online meeting with Jon, also in English, but that's off now I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon has used his fme for everything it is worth. I would say that he was very dumb-headed to go public with the little GUI he made for the DeCSS at an early time. Furthermore, when the Economical Crimes Division in Norway (Økokrim) got interested, he did not erase chat-logs or dispose of his (In Norwegian copyright law) illegal CD-ROM copies of Macromedi Flash or something.
.com company that hired him went belly-up and now he works for some third-rate .com .
Well, he got a job as a result of the fame so he quit school in an age of 16 (The earliest age where you can quit school legally in Norway). The
Lesson (In mr. T-voice): Don't be a fool, stay in school!
OK.Jon Johansen made the GUI + some subsystem to break the CSS DVD encryption. Mind you, he got these codes from a German fellow, he did not get the codes himself.
In current Norwegian copyright law, you are entitled to make a copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (Åndsverkloven 12, 1st section. This does not apply to computer programs or databases.). Jons program does not facilitate the copying of the DVD, just the reading the contents. He also argued that DeCSS could be used for making backups of the DVD.
Jon argues that he made DeCSS to view the contents of the DVD on this Linux computer. The prosecution argues that he mocks Linux and was a BSD-guy at the time of DeCSS. Anyway, the DeCSS program first appeared on Windows.
The prosecution wanted to nail Jon on the paragraph 145 of the Norwegian penal code. It says that (summary) "anyone gaining illegal access to locked data, also computer data can be punished with jail for a maximum of six months". Note the "illegal" part here. The judge ruled that Jon had only gained access with DeCSS to data HE had bought. It was his copy of the work in question so he had a right to access it. He did not distribute any illegal copies, and he did not gain unlawful access to the DVD although his program might be used for that.
Disclaimer: IAANLS (I am a Norwegian law student)
The Norwegian legal system is quite different from the american. Suing for malicious use of the court system has to be very, very well founded in the charges brought agains Jon. In this case the prosecutor (Økokrim) has a duty to intercept and investigate. After all,Jon HAS done something that comes quite close to breaking the law. So the Økokrim is in their right.
As for retriution, he can sue for money lost due to the case and a small ammount of money for damages. As a rule, in the courts of Norway, penal money retributions does not exist.
Disclaimer: IAANLS (I am a Norwegian law student)
Solaris, the 1972 version knocks the panties off George Clooney in the americanized 2002 version. Nothing beats good ol' soviet-era sci-fi.
As a representative for The Evil Media (TM), the largest tabloid in Norway, I must say that the largest resistance to the use of the word "Cracker" is currently in the public. I strive to make a difference in the articles I write, but every time I write the word "cracker" I end ut in a time-consuming discussion with some pedant who tracks the history of the word "hacker" all the way into the 15th century. Usually I say "whatever floats your boat" and refer to the Jargon File. But american media has really fucked up the usage of the Hacker-word.
I have a gripe about wallpapers. Not long ago, a 1024x768 pixel wallpaper was HUGE. Not so anymore. At work we use screens with perverse resolutions, and any wallpaper on the looks pixelated and not very pretty. Why not store the wallpapers as 4000x3000 px pics? (Aside from size and transfer times) These are professional pictures, the input should be more than enough to do it...
Pleas have a look at this node on Everything2.com. It is a short piece I wrote up on the bombings and the massive attempt to thwart Hitler's atomic ambitions.
The Opera guys seem to be quite media-savvy, but not without irony. Go to the webpage of Håkon Wium Lie and discover what the did there. Håkun Veeoom Leee-a indeed... :D
I talked to Mr. Håkon Wium Lie myself, and he said that they repeatedly hav complained to MS about this and other problems over a long time, but nothing happened. The Opera problem was very, very obvious and could be seen very easily. Yet, they did not fix it. The error MSN on Opera error was the most reported Opera error of them all and I imagine that MSN got their fair share of complaints from the MSN on Opera users as well.. Mr. Lie said to me that "there's a fair shar of incompetence at Microsoft, but this problem is not caused by that." Seems like he has borked his own site as well... :)
My mom bought an iBook, a lovely tool for actually getting some work done. It turns out there's only one thing the five year old PC can do, that the iBook can't; access the web bank. The Skandiabanken bank exists only on the net, so you'd think they want to optimize it for most browsers. Nope, if you want to use it (And remember, the bank is only one or two years old) you have to use "either the latest Internet Explorer browser or Netscape 7.4". Jesus!
This really annoys me. I work a t a place where the webpages are tested for the four largest browsers in Mac, Lin and Win. It is really not that hard. They even look at it in Lynx, just to see that the pages aren't completely inaccsessible for the evolution-impaired.
Last week, I wrote an article on how MSN pages look screwed up on Opera browsers (For the Slasdot story, click here!). This MS guy, the director / editor, told me that they write a special version of the page for Opera that all Opera users get directed to, but it it is broken. Now comes the funny part: They never bother to check the Opera-specific page with Opera. I had problems believing what he said, so he explains that Opera was so small (Yeah. 8-10 mill users. Small. M-hm.) that it was not tested as standard, but they did test it here in Norway.
Well, if they did test it in Norway and the error was a typo, then the test crew (and the guys reading their mail feedback) would have to be blind.
This (in addition to lack of commercial indifference) is one of teh many good reasons the Cannes film festival, the Berlin film festival and the Venice film festival is a lot better than the sell-out Academy Awards. Spirited Away won the Golden Bear (The highest award) at the Berlin film festival, the second animated picture to win it since Cinderella won the first golden bear in the 50's. The oscars suck, and is nothing more than an advertising system for big companies and huge stars.
Pardon me, but I always thought the caption was stored as image files and then superomposed onto the picture. It seems like that here, where the process of OCR'ing and re-encoding the subtitles is described. This method is also described by the person who made the pictures available. But I still do not believe that someone can hear a phrase from this movie and translate it into "get your pussy-face to my ass" or whatever. It might be possible if it was translated from Mandarin (Or any other dialect) into English, but wouldn't it be easier to just listen to teh English track? I know there's English-speaking versions of this DVD out there.
But the text doesn't seem to be a real subtitle. It's too large to be a standard DVD caption text. Futhermore, I can understand that funny mistakes occur when you translate e.g. Japanese into English, but when transcribing English? You'd have to be a complete moron...
Or am I just not getting the humour?
I love my Ericsson T68i (i is for "Intercooler"...) It has the classic game Naval Fleet, where you try to sink the opponents boats by guessing where they are. This game can be played by one player, vs the computer, two players on the same phone, or with another player connected vi IR or Bluetooth. Now, this is cool and all, but why not connect players via GPRS? GPRS is based on who much traffic (in MB) you transfer so a game of Naval Fleet shouldn't cost that much. Too bad Ericsson didn't include GPRS gameing instead of just posting the highscores via GPRS.
I was going to keep my big mouth shut about this subject but I can't anymore. This article is crap. Beta has always, ALWAYS, been ahead of VHS in quality and features take a look here for a description of some of the Beta features that dwarfs VHS. And have a look at the tape times as well. Although the longest tapes weren't available at first, they became available. The video rental place the author of the article visited, presumably did not rent out films with 1/3 of the movie left out...
The demise of Beta was crappy marketing and high prices. Period.
Yeah, I realize that my thoughts did not quite make it to the screen. What I tried to illustrate was that The development of Beta (U-matic -> Betamax -> Betacam -> Betacam SP -> Betacam Digital) has always been on a higher level than VHS. Betamax had stereo in the very, very early 80ies (For consumer products in 1982) while VHS couldn't get their shit together to make a stereo player until the late 80ies. I'm also surprised to see that Betacam SP kicks SVHS' ass big time in colour, sound and durability. SVHS, after all, was supposed to be vastly superior to Betacam...
Indeed, the main thing that didn't fit was the idea was that Betamax was "technically superior". Standing in a shop at the time, there was absolutely no visible difference in picture quality, and some reviews had found that VHS's quality was superior.
This is simply not correct. At work, we have several VCRs for professional use, and the Betacam SP rox in picture quality, sound quality and durability in comparison with SVHS. There is a VERY good reason for the Betas use in professional enviroments since long ago, and the superiority in all-over quality is one of them. If you can't see any difference in picture, you're either colour blind for severely seeing impaired. Or maybe two and a half glances at the screen in a videostore 15 years ago isn't enough.
As for the one hour tapes, this is flat out wrong. Sony did introduce longer running tapes, when the tape technology got better. But in contrary to its competitor, the tapes maintained the Beta quality and seldom broke down as the VHS E120+ tapes have a tendency to do. Especially the E240, don't store any valuable memories on them!
From realufos.com:
I asked the world famous psychic Sollog about this video.
He says it is REAL!
Well, I'm convinced!
Seriously; this happens over New York. Is this the only footage of this UFO? At any time, there's so many camera crews in atcion in Manhattan (ref. the WTC plane crash first footage) that someone had to get this on tape in addition to the ones in the helicopter.
I believe in extraterrestial life, but I also beleive that if you can travel 10 + light years, you don't smash into a planet like a Mars probe (ref. the Roswell incident.) or expose yourself like this.
Yeah, that's true. They should have obfuscated their code in order to make the keys hard to get.
The ruling in favor of Jon is only valid here in Norway, of course. But if this case opens for fair use copying and use of the keys to watch DVDs on other players than approved, this could make for legal non-DVD CCS players in the US.
The reasoning is simple; laws and rulings allowed in similar countries are assumed to be legal in other countries. I.e. a legally vaild marriage made in Norway is also recoginised as valid in the US. And vice versa.
Unless there are specific rules against the use of this program, it may be assumed legal in the US too, since the Norwegian legal system approves of it. (Well, not completly and not yet.)
This argument gets stronger if the Norwegian court has used the same basic arguments that a US court could have used. We are talking about the right to watch a DVD on any player you like and I'm sure there are rulings in the US that can back this verdict in the district court.
Acutally, the manufacturer of the Xing DVD player could sue Jon for damages. They have, without dispute, lost A LOT of money after this incident. Not only was their CSS-keys retracted from the market, they also had to pay a fine to the DVD CCA. They are the real losers in this ordeal.
This is stated in the verdict.
What the Norvegian prosecutor is doing is claiming that Jon broke the protection on the DVD keyblock.
Almost. He is charged as an accessory to this, not as the main offender. That Frank Stevenson guy must have cojones the size of grapegruits. He met in court as a witness this Thursday.
It is quite common here for a court to interview persons via phone. However, I totally agree that they should make the effort to appear in person. Even though it's only the first district trial, it sends negative vibes... And that is good for Jon, I guess.
The person (can't remember his name... Facuss or something) releasing some source code under GPL, used in DeCSS was to be examined by telephone from Japan. He was supposed to meet at the Norwegian embassy in Tokyo, but the court was not able to reach him easely. Too bad, because he could give us the inside info on wether the decsstruth.txt document is true or not.
Well, my boss contacted me and said that we are stopping the English translation. Partly because of the critisism here on Slashdot. FYI: I had roughly 15 minutes to translate this article yesterday, and no spellchecker.
I was planning to invite Jon a readers-asks-the-questions type of online meeting with Jon, also in English, but that's off now I guess.