Wasn't this basically the same pattern reported for Microsoft's arrangements with a cellphone OS company (was it "Orange"?) "Partner" with them, starve them to death and let them die, then walk off with their "Intellectual Property"?
I haven't managed to get the DRI drivers to compile, install, and run from CVS/SVN in quite some time - I keep hoping there'll be a new release that supports it (yeah, I know, it's not ATI or NVidia performance, but I can't exactly swap the graphics chip in my laptop...)
I tried following the links, but the download section for my actual ProSavage/DDR chipset only has Windows drivers...
And when the crappy consumer grade stuff fails they can swap in a new one for cheaper than two weeks maintenance on a cisco box.
And that, in a nutshell(tm), is what I absolutely hate about the "high end" stuff. The fact that the up-front cost to gain ownership of the physical device is one thing, but the hefty recurring fees to get ANY kind of support (including, as far as I can tell, bug-fixes, security updates, and so forth) get insane very quickly. Especially when you're presumably willing to pay the premium "ownership" price because the device should then not NEED much of anything in the way of "maintenance" to keep it running. I've come to think of this as just another "protection" racket - "Nice network you've got, and such an expensive router. it sure would be a shame if someone happened to find a security flaw and you didn't have access to updates, wouldn't it?" Taking that into account, it may often cost LESS to just replace the "consumer grade" stuff as it fails that it costs to keep paying "maintenance" fees on the expensive stuff.
I've gotten quite irritated with Cisco on this front - I picked up a Cisco 768 DSL router to replace the "Actiontec" piece of junk that the phone company was renting out. I went to Cisco's website to check for updated firmware and so forth, and got told "you have to register to see this". So, I went and gave out all the precious marketing information (name, address, phone number, blood type, shoe size, etc. etc. etc.), finally got to the end of the "registration" process, and got "Ha, ha, sucker, you STILL can't see this stuff because you're not a 'paid support' user or a 'Cisco partner'...". Thanks, Cisco, thanks a lot.
(On the upside, the router HAS been very reliable so far...and doesn't decide to just stop routing packets for no good reason until rebooted like the Actiontec modem did...)
There is also a lot of anti-KDE bias here as well. There are just too many people that have their personal identity and self-esteem wrapped up in particular software packages that they use. That includes a number of Mac OS and Microsoft Windows people as well.
It's like whenever there's a story about MySQL, a small group of rabid PostgreSQL zealots (once again, not to be confused with normal users) jump in and start yelling about how much MySQL sucks. Or whenever there's a story about Perl, PHP, or Java, the Python zealots (insert usual disclaimer here) go out of their way to pop in and explain that Python is WAY better because it's not [insert name of language that the story is about], which naturally sucks. Same goes for stories about Ogg (whatever) codecs and how much the Ogg file format "sucks" (or at least it's name does, should the poster be insufficiently technical to feel able to explain why Ogg "sucks"...) There's always a few obnoxious and insecure zealots lurking in any sufficiently large population.
Honestly, from my own perspective, Gnome zealots (not to be confused with normal Gnome users, who are a much quieter and saner majority) are a lot louder about how much "KDE Sucks" than KDE zealots (again, not to be confused with far saner normal KDE users) are about how much "Gnome sucks".
And in this particular story's comments, most of the "anti"-gnome comments seem to just be pointing out what a pain Gnome can be to compile and maintain due to the interdependent mass of (largely undocumented) separate libraries. I tend to concur - if the Slackware maintainer had to pick ONE collection of packages to remove from Slackware in order to reduce the amount of labor involved in trying to keep it current, I'd have to say Gnome was probably a good choice. On the other hand (haven't read the update directly yet) I DO hope he keeps the not-Gnome-dependent-but-related glib2/gtk2+ collection of packages.
Now, I AM a KDE user, but I wouldn't care if he wanted to remove KDE as well - I compile that stuff from source anyway (and I might be using Gnome if it weren't for the fact that every time I try to compile IT myself I end up sinking into the interdependent library tarpits, while with KDE it's just a matter of QT/arts/kdelibs/kdebase, and then the rest in whatever order you want...)
I think if the US wants to have any chance of maintaining its strong scientific and technological global standing, this kind of attitude must take root. And soon. (Particularly in the face of what seems to be a very anti-science sort of government at the moment - and I say this as someone quite skeptical of "the other side's" own agenda as well.)
And if it doesn't, any bets on which country (or countries) will be taking over as top bastion of science-and-technology research and when?
And, not EXACTLY the same thing, but I've been wondering if it's possible to separate out OpenOffice's import and export filters to build a command-line batch document-converter ("Microsoft Word.doc"->openofficeconvert->"Export to PDF") or (my personal favorite) "Microsoft(r) Powerpoint(r)"->converter->"Export to Flash".
Anybody know if that's possible or feasible? That strikes me as a bit of functionality that'd be EXTREMELY useful...
things like these need to be kept, yknow, secret....
No, they don't - not if they're GOOD security.
The intention is that with good encryption techniques, the "bad guys" can know all about how the system works...and it will work anyway. What's the point in making sure nobody sees you hiding your key under the doormat (security-through-obscurity) if the key doesn't work for anyone but you anyway?
On the other hand...closer examination of the "Symantec Antivirus" logs seems to show that no viruses have been detected in the last week (while ClamAV is still showing viruses being caught), where before one or two were slipping through every day or so. Looks like perhaps whatever had been confounding ClamAV before got worked out and updated in the virus pattern data files.
[...]I still have some viruses get picked up by my Exchange server[...]
I'm seeing the same thing - it looks like some variants of the Netsky ("SomeFool" as ClamAV's database calls it) virus manage to elude ClamAV somehow. I spotted several references to this happening to other people poking around on Google, and there doesn't seem to be a fix for it yet (I'm not sure if ANYONE's yet figured out how some of them get past). On the other hand, ClamAV DOES seem to catch pretty much everything else (including most variants of Netsky/SomeFool).
This is true - it's easy to conflate "Gnome" applications and libraries with "GTK" applications and libraries. Unfortunately, the Gnome/GTK developers often don't make clear or care whether this happens.
The Gstreamer libraries and plugins, for example, can supposedly be compiled without Gnome, yet I've never been able to get it to stop complaining about a pile of missing Gnome libraries, and so far I've not been able to Google up an explanation of how to get it to work.
I'm not certain, but I think there may also be a certain amount of "feature creep" in some projects that, if not carefully managed, tends to result in Gnome dependencies (a developer notices a nice feature in one of the Gnome-specific libraries and decides to add that capability to the program. Another developer sees the new capability and decides to add another feature that uses it. Repeat as necessary. If the project is not explicitly paying attention to being able to be independent of Gnome, suddenly it has become dependent on the tangled mass of Gnome library dependencies rather than being able to run purely from Glib/GTK any more...), which only adds to the perception that GTK+ applications are "for Gnome only" even though there ARE so many good Gnome-independent projects (Gimp and GAIM, as you've mentioned.).
Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin X11 and OpenSSH packages.
Just realized I should clarify that in this part I mean the capability to be a "terminal" - to USE X11 over SSH to run a remote X11 session. Cygwin's X11 packages theoretically should also be able to serve connections from remote terminals as well, but only for X11/Cygwin applications, you can't run "Microsoft Word" (for example) via X11-over-SSH...
I honestly haven't gotten around to trying to compile and install the mess of little packages that make up the free sources for the FreeNX server and client, but combined with X's "built in" network transparency it may do what you need. (NoMachine sells licenses for a pre-built commercial version of the server and appears to have some binary downloads for clients as well.)
X11 itself already has mechanisms built in (for quite a long time now) to handle remote "terminal server" type connections, but by themselves they're really only suited to being used over a LAN. For "remoter" access (e.g. over the internet) FreeNX supposedly adds the functionality that you need to do this.
(Anybody want to comment on their experiences getting FreeNX installed and configured?)
As other posters have suggested, X-over-SSH is also an option, and is more likely to be more or less built-in for whatever distribution of Linux you're using. Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin X11 and OpenSSH packages.
VNC is a third option, though I gather it doesn't work quite as well for this sort of thing as FreeNX or X11-over-SSH does.
In this case, one "pays" by providing media to the metaphorical media bank if you're using their hosting service, and you "pay" by giving attention to the media posted there (and therefore directly or indirectly attention to the creator(s) of the media) thus encouraging people who want their media distributed to continue providing more if you are simply downloading media from them.
Still, I agree with your sentiment. In the USA, we USED to have this thing called "The American Dream", which referred to the idea that anyone could come to the country, and if they worked hard, they'd be "successful" (which meant having a home and a reasonable selection of minor luxuries e.g. a car, television, etc.). We STILL have something called "The American Dream", but it's not the same one, now it just means "getting a pile of money for little or no work", such as through winning the lottery or profitable lawsuits. The part of the equation that related the amount of success to the amount of work one did has somehow been removed from the concept, and it really bothers me...
Re:Good LORD it's got some useless stuff!
on
KDE 3.4 Released
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· Score: 2, Funny
Are you kidding? It goes PERFECTLY with the "fuzzy" clock settings. Oh, sorry, according to my clock it's "evening". Time for me to go...
These people are coding this on their own free time, for their own enjoyment.
I was under the impression that Gnome development was heavily backed by corporations (e.g. Sun), implying that at least some of the coders were paid to work on Gnome.
I occasionally wonder if all these complaints about the developers being "elitist" or "not paying attention to what the users want" (or being accused of insisting that whatever they decide is what the users want) has something to do with that. The complaints seem to mirror the sorts of complaints that more proprietary corporate-driven development gets. Is the corporate backing for Gnome affecting some of the developer's outlooks?
Purely speculation. For my part, I'd be trying out Gnome myself if it weren't such a pain to figure out all of the interdependencies in the umpteen little libraries that make it up...whether the the interface for Gnome is really good or bad I've got no idea...
The whole concept of naming things in Asian culture versus American culture is really at odds[...]
Some of those names are pretty odd. But, maybe they're still adapting to not using the "Adjective Noun Propername" ("Neon Genesis Evangelion", "Serial Experiments Lain", etc. etc.) formula for everything. Give them time, they'll work it out.
(Still, I think you're right about this movie's name - USAians are pretty much conditioned to assume that "(something)Boy/Man/Girl/Woman" names belong to comic-book superhero material...)
Does this mean, then, that you can "effectively" rewrite files on NTFS natively (i.e. without Microsoft DLL's), by copying the NTFS file to RAM [or another filesystem], updating the file, creating a "blank" file of that size on NTFS, and then overwriting the blank file on NTFS with the new data? (The article is sparse on details here...)
If so, is there a HOWTO somewhere that describes how to set this up to work transparently (so that it looks as though you're directly editing files on NTFS to the rest of the system)?
Patent laws: made for the benefit of little inventors[...]
Correction - made for the benefit of the PUBLIC, who are the ones collectively paying with the rights-restricting monopoly grant for the information in the patent filings. The intention is to convince an inventor to share the details of how his or her (or, these days, "its" e.g. corporations) invention works so that it can be built on, rather than keep his/her/its invention a "trade secret". The limited-time monopoly on the patented invention's use is the "payment" that the inventor gets in return for the information.
I still say that if something cannot convincingly be kept as a trade secret, then it has no place on a patent application as the patent has no value to the public.
Also, if you pay by credit/debit card you enter your 4 digit PIN code at the terminal (every store has had these terminals for more than 10 years now) and hence never sign any "slip".
Or don't you? Granted, right now I don't think there are too many courts that would consider the PIN to be a Digital Signature, but that could conceivably change.
After all, when you use a debit card, what is it that gives the seller permission to take money from your account? The answer is of course the fact that you entered your PIN. Doesn't that make it functionally equivalent to the signature on a credit card slip? Can you go back to your bank later and say "Hey, I didn't SIGN anything, so put the money back!"?
I understand what you're getting at, but it's getting off the original poster's point - it's not only dishonest but also dangerous to enter into an agreement with the intent to ignore it "because they can't enforce it".
Consider what'll happen as broadband becomes more widely available and Microsoft et al no longer need to rely on retail sales at all. Instead, you'll order your software online, paying for it and then downloading it (or just downloading an authorization code to activate the software). Then it becomes trivial to throw up a "you must agree to these license terms" screen before you pay. Enforceability problem solved, and everyone's screwed because they're still assuming "I can click through this because they can't enforce it anyway"...
Considering the huge efforts to get Europe to adopt some of the worst US-style legislation (DMCA, Software patent policies, etc.) I am also simultaneously amused and alarmed at the continued complacency I keep seeing in Europe ("Ah, that's a USA problem, that'll never happen here, I'll just keep ignoring it...")
So when linux reaches critical mass and people spend as much time searching for/writing worms for it as they do for windows, how's that support ration going to look?
The same as it looks for the more popular Apache vs. IIS...
Well, you could write a Samba VFS module or something of the sort which automatically intercepts video media and re-encodes it to Ogg Theora on the fly or something I suppose...
(You know, I was joking when I started writing that, but the poster DID say it was for storing "large media files" - maybe he DOES intend to do some sort of server-side processing of the files...)
And you know what, I shouldn't even have to justify _why_ I make a copy of my movie[...]
That is exactly correct, in my opinion - the whole problem has never BEEN "copying". It's distribution that is the issue. There is no reason whatsoever that you, or I, or anyone else should be prohibited from making as many copies of our legally-purchased material as we want. It's if and when those copies are distributed to people who haven't paid for the original that reasonable legal restrictions come into play.
As you (and most other sensible people) have been pointing out, the whole conflation of "copying" with "distribution" by distributing companies is simply a ploy for control to squeeze more money out of people. Somebody ought to update "copyright" law to strike all mention of the word "copying" and replace it with "distribution", and I suspect a lot of the unreasonable legal restrictions currently derived from copyright law would go away...
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Wasn't this basically the same pattern reported for Microsoft's arrangements with a cellphone OS company (was it "Orange"?) "Partner" with them, starve them to death and let them die, then walk off with their "Intellectual Property"?
I haven't managed to get the DRI drivers to compile, install, and run from CVS/SVN in quite some time - I keep hoping there'll be a new release that supports it (yeah, I know, it's not ATI or NVidia performance, but I can't exactly swap the graphics chip in my laptop...)
I tried following the links, but the download section for my actual ProSavage/DDR chipset only has Windows drivers...
And that, in a nutshell(tm), is what I absolutely hate about the "high end" stuff. The fact that the up-front cost to gain ownership of the physical device is one thing, but the hefty recurring fees to get ANY kind of support (including, as far as I can tell, bug-fixes, security updates, and so forth) get insane very quickly. Especially when you're presumably willing to pay the premium "ownership" price because the device should then not NEED much of anything in the way of "maintenance" to keep it running. I've come to think of this as just another "protection" racket - "Nice network you've got, and such an expensive router. it sure would be a shame if someone happened to find a security flaw and you didn't have access to updates, wouldn't it?" Taking that into account, it may often cost LESS to just replace the "consumer grade" stuff as it fails that it costs to keep paying "maintenance" fees on the expensive stuff.
I've gotten quite irritated with Cisco on this front - I picked up a Cisco 768 DSL router to replace the "Actiontec" piece of junk that the phone company was renting out. I went to Cisco's website to check for updated firmware and so forth, and got told "you have to register to see this". So, I went and gave out all the precious marketing information (name, address, phone number, blood type, shoe size, etc. etc. etc.), finally got to the end of the "registration" process, and got "Ha, ha, sucker, you STILL can't see this stuff because you're not a 'paid support' user or a 'Cisco partner'...". Thanks, Cisco, thanks a lot.
(On the upside, the router HAS been very reliable so far...and doesn't decide to just stop routing packets for no good reason until rebooted like the Actiontec modem did...)
There is also a lot of anti-KDE bias here as well. There are just too many people that have their personal identity and self-esteem wrapped up in particular software packages that they use. That includes a number of Mac OS and Microsoft Windows people as well.
It's like whenever there's a story about MySQL, a small group of rabid PostgreSQL zealots (once again, not to be confused with normal users) jump in and start yelling about how much MySQL sucks. Or whenever there's a story about Perl, PHP, or Java, the Python zealots (insert usual disclaimer here) go out of their way to pop in and explain that Python is WAY better because it's not [insert name of language that the story is about], which naturally sucks. Same goes for stories about Ogg (whatever) codecs and how much the Ogg file format "sucks" (or at least it's name does, should the poster be insufficiently technical to feel able to explain why Ogg "sucks"...) There's always a few obnoxious and insecure zealots lurking in any sufficiently large population.
Honestly, from my own perspective, Gnome zealots (not to be confused with normal Gnome users, who are a much quieter and saner majority) are a lot louder about how much "KDE Sucks" than KDE zealots (again, not to be confused with far saner normal KDE users) are about how much "Gnome sucks".
And in this particular story's comments, most of the "anti"-gnome comments seem to just be pointing out what a pain Gnome can be to compile and maintain due to the interdependent mass of (largely undocumented) separate libraries. I tend to concur - if the Slackware maintainer had to pick ONE collection of packages to remove from Slackware in order to reduce the amount of labor involved in trying to keep it current, I'd have to say Gnome was probably a good choice. On the other hand (haven't read the update directly yet) I DO hope he keeps the not-Gnome-dependent-but-related glib2/gtk2+ collection of packages.
Now, I AM a KDE user, but I wouldn't care if he wanted to remove KDE as well - I compile that stuff from source anyway (and I might be using Gnome if it weren't for the fact that every time I try to compile IT myself I end up sinking into the interdependent library tarpits, while with KDE it's just a matter of QT/arts/kdelibs/kdebase, and then the rest in whatever order you want...)
Ah, so THAT'S how they make "Baby Oil"! (I mean, if you make "Olive Oil" by squishing Olives...)
Hey, I warned you that it was tasteless and off-topic...
I think if the US wants to have any chance of maintaining its strong scientific and technological global standing, this kind of attitude must take root. And soon. (Particularly in the face of what seems to be a very anti-science sort of government at the moment - and I say this as someone quite skeptical of "the other side's" own agenda as well.)
And if it doesn't, any bets on which country (or countries) will be taking over as top bastion of science-and-technology research and when?
And, not EXACTLY the same thing, but I've been wondering if it's possible to separate out OpenOffice's import and export filters to build a command-line batch document-converter ("Microsoft Word .doc"->openofficeconvert->"Export to PDF") or (my personal favorite) "Microsoft(r) Powerpoint(r)"->converter->"Export to Flash".
Anybody know if that's possible or feasible? That strikes me as a bit of functionality that'd be EXTREMELY useful...
...how badly patent-encumbered these ciphers are going to end up being?
No, they don't - not if they're GOOD security.
The intention is that with good encryption techniques, the "bad guys" can know all about how the system works...and it will work anyway. What's the point in making sure nobody sees you hiding your key under the doormat (security-through-obscurity) if the key doesn't work for anyone but you anyway?
On the other hand...closer examination of the "Symantec Antivirus" logs seems to show that no viruses have been detected in the last week (while ClamAV is still showing viruses being caught), where before one or two were slipping through every day or so. Looks like perhaps whatever had been confounding ClamAV before got worked out and updated in the virus pattern data files.
I'm seeing the same thing - it looks like some variants of the Netsky ("SomeFool" as ClamAV's database calls it) virus manage to elude ClamAV somehow. I spotted several references to this happening to other people poking around on Google, and there doesn't seem to be a fix for it yet (I'm not sure if ANYONE's yet figured out how some of them get past). On the other hand, ClamAV DOES seem to catch pretty much everything else (including most variants of Netsky/SomeFool).
This is true - it's easy to conflate "Gnome" applications and libraries with "GTK" applications and libraries. Unfortunately, the Gnome/GTK developers often don't make clear or care whether this happens.
The Gstreamer libraries and plugins, for example, can supposedly be compiled without Gnome, yet I've never been able to get it to stop complaining about a pile of missing Gnome libraries, and so far I've not been able to Google up an explanation of how to get it to work.
I'm not certain, but I think there may also be a certain amount of "feature creep" in some projects that, if not carefully managed, tends to result in Gnome dependencies (a developer notices a nice feature in one of the Gnome-specific libraries and decides to add that capability to the program. Another developer sees the new capability and decides to add another feature that uses it. Repeat as necessary. If the project is not explicitly paying attention to being able to be independent of Gnome, suddenly it has become dependent on the tangled mass of Gnome library dependencies rather than being able to run purely from Glib/GTK any more...), which only adds to the perception that GTK+ applications are "for Gnome only" even though there ARE so many good Gnome-independent projects (Gimp and GAIM, as you've mentioned.).
Just realized I should clarify that in this part I mean the capability to be a "terminal" - to USE X11 over SSH to run a remote X11 session. Cygwin's X11 packages theoretically should also be able to serve connections from remote terminals as well, but only for X11/Cygwin applications, you can't run "Microsoft Word" (for example) via X11-over-SSH...
I honestly haven't gotten around to trying to compile and install the mess of little packages that make up the free sources for the FreeNX server and client, but combined with X's "built in" network transparency it may do what you need. (NoMachine sells licenses for a pre-built commercial version of the server and appears to have some binary downloads for clients as well.)
X11 itself already has mechanisms built in (for quite a long time now) to handle remote "terminal server" type connections, but by themselves they're really only suited to being used over a LAN. For "remoter" access (e.g. over the internet) FreeNX supposedly adds the functionality that you need to do this.
(Anybody want to comment on their experiences getting FreeNX installed and configured?)
As other posters have suggested, X-over-SSH is also an option, and is more likely to be more or less built-in for whatever distribution of Linux you're using. Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin X11 and OpenSSH packages.
VNC is a third option, though I gather it doesn't work quite as well for this sort of thing as FreeNX or X11-over-SSH does.
In this case, one "pays" by providing media to the metaphorical media bank if you're using their hosting service, and you "pay" by giving attention to the media posted there (and therefore directly or indirectly attention to the creator(s) of the media) thus encouraging people who want their media distributed to continue providing more if you are simply downloading media from them.
Still, I agree with your sentiment. In the USA, we USED to have this thing called "The American Dream", which referred to the idea that anyone could come to the country, and if they worked hard, they'd be "successful" (which meant having a home and a reasonable selection of minor luxuries e.g. a car, television, etc.). We STILL have something called "The American Dream", but it's not the same one, now it just means "getting a pile of money for little or no work", such as through winning the lottery or profitable lawsuits. The part of the equation that related the amount of success to the amount of work one did has somehow been removed from the concept, and it really bothers me...
Are you kidding? It goes PERFECTLY with the "fuzzy" clock settings. Oh, sorry, according to my clock it's "evening". Time for me to go...
This guy seems to think that it's not important to have a really good lock on your door, so long as nobody sees you hide the key under the doormat...
I was under the impression that Gnome development was heavily backed by corporations (e.g. Sun), implying that at least some of the coders were paid to work on Gnome.
I occasionally wonder if all these complaints about the developers being "elitist" or "not paying attention to what the users want" (or being accused of insisting that whatever they decide is what the users want) has something to do with that. The complaints seem to mirror the sorts of complaints that more proprietary corporate-driven development gets. Is the corporate backing for Gnome affecting some of the developer's outlooks?
Purely speculation. For my part, I'd be trying out Gnome myself if it weren't such a pain to figure out all of the interdependencies in the umpteen little libraries that make it up...whether the the interface for Gnome is really good or bad I've got no idea...
Some of those names are pretty odd. But, maybe they're still adapting to not using the "Adjective Noun Propername" ("Neon Genesis Evangelion", "Serial Experiments Lain", etc. etc.) formula for everything. Give them time, they'll work it out.
(Still, I think you're right about this movie's name - USAians are pretty much conditioned to assume that "(something)Boy/Man/Girl/Woman" names belong to comic-book superhero material...)
Does this mean, then, that you can "effectively" rewrite files on NTFS natively (i.e. without Microsoft DLL's), by copying the NTFS file to RAM [or another filesystem], updating the file, creating a "blank" file of that size on NTFS, and then overwriting the blank file on NTFS with the new data? (The article is sparse on details here...)
If so, is there a HOWTO somewhere that describes how to set this up to work transparently (so that it looks as though you're directly editing files on NTFS to the rest of the system)?
Correction - made for the benefit of the PUBLIC, who are the ones collectively paying with the rights-restricting monopoly grant for the information in the patent filings. The intention is to convince an inventor to share the details of how his or her (or, these days, "its" e.g. corporations) invention works so that it can be built on, rather than keep his/her/its invention a "trade secret". The limited-time monopoly on the patented invention's use is the "payment" that the inventor gets in return for the information.
I still say that if something cannot convincingly be kept as a trade secret, then it has no place on a patent application as the patent has no value to the public.
Or at least, that's the way it SHOULD work...
Or don't you? Granted, right now I don't think there are too many courts that would consider the PIN to be a Digital Signature, but that could conceivably change.
After all, when you use a debit card, what is it that gives the seller permission to take money from your account? The answer is of course the fact that you entered your PIN. Doesn't that make it functionally equivalent to the signature on a credit card slip? Can you go back to your bank later and say "Hey, I didn't SIGN anything, so put the money back!"?
I understand what you're getting at, but it's getting off the original poster's point - it's not only dishonest but also dangerous to enter into an agreement with the intent to ignore it "because they can't enforce it".
Consider what'll happen as broadband becomes more widely available and Microsoft et al no longer need to rely on retail sales at all. Instead, you'll order your software online, paying for it and then downloading it (or just downloading an authorization code to activate the software). Then it becomes trivial to throw up a "you must agree to these license terms" screen before you pay. Enforceability problem solved, and everyone's screwed because they're still assuming "I can click through this because they can't enforce it anyway"...
Considering the huge efforts to get Europe to adopt some of the worst US-style legislation (DMCA, Software patent policies, etc.) I am also simultaneously amused and alarmed at the continued complacency I keep seeing in Europe ("Ah, that's a USA problem, that'll never happen here, I'll just keep ignoring it...")
The same as it looks for the more popular Apache vs. IIS...
Well, you could write a Samba VFS module or something of the sort which automatically intercepts video media and re-encodes it to Ogg Theora on the fly or something I suppose...
(You know, I was joking when I started writing that, but the poster DID say it was for storing "large media files" - maybe he DOES intend to do some sort of server-side processing of the files...)
That is exactly correct, in my opinion - the whole problem has never BEEN "copying". It's distribution that is the issue. There is no reason whatsoever that you, or I, or anyone else should be prohibited from making as many copies of our legally-purchased material as we want. It's if and when those copies are distributed to people who haven't paid for the original that reasonable legal restrictions come into play.
As you (and most other sensible people) have been pointing out, the whole conflation of "copying" with "distribution" by distributing companies is simply a ploy for control to squeeze more money out of people. Somebody ought to update "copyright" law to strike all mention of the word "copying" and replace it with "distribution", and I suspect a lot of the unreasonable legal restrictions currently derived from copyright law would go away...