In addition to this, I would also like to be paid indefinitely for work that I have done.
Like this: I fix your PC - you pay me 10EUR/month for the rest of my life. Fixing 1000 PCs would give me income of 10kEUR/month and I would not have to work anymore...
With a new release every 3 years...
Changing an OS involves installing that OS and then installing all applications and drivers, configuring that OS to suit my needs etc. If it is not way better than my current one (and/or if all applications still run on my current OS) I am not going to do it.
Of course, a HDD recorder will do just the same: you can pause the recording and resume it after the ads end. But wait, it is even more practical! Just record the whole show to HDD (you may even do something else in the mean time), and then, before you want to burn it to DVD, you can edit/cut the ad blocks out with extreme precision (up to a single frame, if you're a purist), and you may fast-forward between and within the ad blocks and get the work done in a couple of minutes (say, 5 minutes or so copy-editing out the ads for an average length movie).
My experience with video editing on a PC:
I wanted to record some TV shows and then wanted to cut out the commercials and had only one VCR. So I went to wikipedia, read about some video editing programs and downloaded them (p2p) (to try them out, maybe I would have bought the best one later). My TV tuner has a hardware MPEG2 encoder, so I recorded from tape to MPEG2. So, now I just launch some software and edit it? Right...
One application crashed while loading a 6GB long file (it tried to load that file for about half an hour and then crashed). The other loaded the file, I could make edits and save the result, but with a minor problem - the sound was out of sync with the video (and it started after the first cut).
After trying to edit the recording for some time I said "screw it" and bought a second VCR...
And the HDD recorders are more expensive than VHS VCRs and I read somewhere that a lot of HDD recorders have DRM so hat you can't transfer the recording to PC (except using analog connections which force you to transfer in real time, just like VHS).
Yes, digital media are good that you can make infinite generations of it and it will still be a perfect copy of the original, however, to do that, you mus actively copy the data every few years. If you forget - it's gone. Now, I can play an almost 100 year old shellac record or a vinyl record about first man on the moon released in the same year that the landing happened. The didn't need a lot of copying. The same with photos. Sure, they became discolored, but I can still see what my grand parents looked like when they were young, they also didn't need copying.
Who is going to copy your collection of hundreds of DVDs? You? Really, even if your day job takes a lot of energy from you, and when you come back home, you can't even think about that huge pile of 7 year old DVDs?
I am currently using LTO-1 tape to archive digital data and VHS to archive TV shows that I record from the TV (the downloaded ones go to LTO tape). It is written that LTO-1 tape should last about 30 years, but I'll probably copy everything to some newer format after 10 and still keep the originals as a backup).
The good thing about analog is that is degrades gracefully. On a bad/old VHS tape you will see some snow, the video may even lose color, but it will still work. On a very old R2R tape that I have, the frequency response is down to about 4kHz and some parts are very hard to understand, but it still works. OTOH, a DVD with a single scratch in a wrong place will not work (it won't even become a snowy black&white video).
I have an idea. How about converting data to some analog signal and writing that signal to vinyl? That should last for a long time in archival storage.
Probably. At least on Acmes site they say that their cassettes are made with BASF and ECP tape (it is not written where the shells are made)...
It seems that Fuji is still making SVHS tape, though I can't buy it locally (I do have one SVHS VCR, and have tried recording SVHS signal on VHS tape, and while the result is of higher quality than VHS I usually record VHS signals for greater compatibility).
I can buy tapes made by Maxell, Fuji, Emtec, Sony and Acme (at least I can buy all of them locally, did not try eBay...). Which manufacturer has stopped making tapes? I probably should buy a lot of them because I still record to VHS.
Now, I know DVD has higher video quality and is cheaper (the media at least), but can DVD recorders join recorded parts seamlessly (sp?) ? What I mean - When I am recording some TV show and a commercial starts, I just press stop on the VCR. When the commercial ends, I press record. The result is smooth, as if the commercial was never there. I can do the same when I connect two VCRs to cut commercials out of a TV show that I had recorded by setting the VCR to do so without my presence. Can DVD and/or hard drive recorders do so?
I ask because I used to record TV shows using my PC and a TV tuner, but I always had problems - the PC was too slow to start recording (like 5 seconds after I pressed "record" it actually started recording) and each recording was in a different file, sometimes the file did not have sound, or video...
So really, all locks and keys do 99% of the time is present a constant inconvenience for legitimate users. If we lose them, we're locked out of our own houses or cars. Yet strangely enough, you won't find a groundswell of popular opinion stating firmly around the Internet that "door locks don't work!" and demanding that everyone remove them because of the inherent inconvenience that they impose. Why is that? Probably because everyone is the owner of physical property of some kind, and is willing to endure the constant inconvenience of various locks and keys in their daily lives in the hopes of protecting that property from potential theft, even if in reality it actually provides them with no real protection against most thieves.
If I have a lock on my door, it only inconveniences ME (the owner) and the thieves. Now if I want at least some protection from thieves with added inconvenience to ME, it is my right. The lock on MY door will not inconvenience YOU (if you are not a thief).
DRM inconveniences CUSTOMERS and not the OWNER (the company which made the game).
Now, you know that stores use video surveillance and those detectors near the doors that beep if you have something stolen. Those measures are relatively not intrusive, but do not eliminate shoplifting 100%. Suppose a store decides to really eliminate shoplifting - by having every person leaving the building stripsearched. How many customers would that store have?
Audio has no corresponding "unplayable" signal range unless you inject an inaudible, high-frequency "don't copy me" signal – however, that would be trivial to take out with a low-pass filter without harming the sound fidelity of the audible frequencies. Furthermore, since the audio sampling process acts like a low-pass filter in and of itself (see the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem), present recording devices might not be affected by the signal at all.
For this to work, the audio device has to "look" for the high frequency signal. Present devices do not and will either record the signal or record the audio without ir (because they cannot record such high frequencies). You can also try to introduce some "unnoticeable" flutter (IIRC they tried to do it (are still doing it?) for bluray audio tracks, so that it would be possible to know which device decoded the audio), so that the destination device can detect it and refuse to record, but that also won't work with present devices.
Macrovision works because VCRs have a fast AGC and TVs have slow AGC, so VCRs react to Macrovision pulses and TVs don't (they are too slow).
Audio CD recorder tries to record the incoming signal as accurately as it can, also most (if not all) CD recorders not have AGC, instead, you have to set the recording level manually (like on a tape recorder). Now, you could embed something in that signal that CD recorders would detect and refuse to record, but that would only work on compliant (made after the copy protection was created) recorders, also, one could record the signal onto analog tape and then record it to CD. Analog tape has wow and flutter, even if it is not noticeable for human ear, it would destroy the other unnoticeable signal that forbids recording.
Now, you may say that recording using analog outputs/inputs (or even recording to analog tape) would reduce the quality of the recording. Yeas it would, but very slightly, and, since a lot of people are unable to distinguish between CD and 128-320kbps MP3 (or do not care), a lot of people would not be able to distinguish the quality (which would still be higher than 320kbps MP3).
People, who are able to distinguish between MP3 and CDs and do care about quality, are buying CDs and/or vinyl instead of downloading MP3s.
Now let's compare that to taking your old PC and turning it into a gaming rig:
New graphics card - $299
New laser mouse - $50
Battery charger for the mouse - $30
I could use my old mouse or buy a new one that has a tail. Actually, I wouldn't buy a wireless mouse.
More hard drive and RAM - $75
Or I can use my old hard drive. Games need a lot of space, but not that much space that a dedicated 100GB drive couldn't handle them. If you want to store movies on that drive, then... you need a bigger one.
New CPU, if you decide yours is too slow - $200
Backup to the hard drive - $50
Headphones - $75
Since you already have an old PC, you probably already have the headphones, so you don't need to buy new ones. Backup is always a good thing, however, you do not need to back up your games (just saves), because if the drive fails, you can reinstall the games from CDs/DVDs/Steam. Backing up saves is still needed, but your backup plan will likely be shrunk to a couple of DVDs for those saves. If you want to back up your system, movies and important work, well, you can reinstall windows and movies+work do not have anything to do with games.
$779. And if you decided to upgrade your monitor from the ol' CRT to a big flatscreen or dual monitor setup, $900 and up.
My CRT can do 2048x1536@80Hz (though the refresh rate is too low for me, so I use it only up to 1920x1440@85Hz). My older 17" CRT could do up to 1280x1024@85Hz and 1600x1200@60Hz. SDTCs can do only 720x480@60Hz (NTSC) or 720x576@50Hz (PAL), so upgrading to an HDTV (even the one that cannot do full 1080p) is a big jump in resolution. Upgrading from a 1280x1024 capable CRT monitor to a 1680x1050 capable LCD is no a big jump in resolution. Even 1920x1440 vs 1280x1024 is that much of a difference than 1920x1080 vs 720x576.
(2) Under the new paradigm the record company has a loss of 0.1 cent (approximate cost of bandwidth I used). 0.1 cent may not sound like much but when multiplied by a few million non-purchasing listeners, it adds up.
So... just let people download the song using p2p, that way, they will use zero bytes of your bandwidth to download the song.
I run BOINC, so my CPU usage is 100% 24/7. Also, I like that the game uses 100% (of at least one core) and gives me higher FPS or better graphics than using 50%.
What router has to remember all of my connections? My NAT router? OK, I can use one that has enough RAM. The ISPs? Why should it? If I am not sitting behind my ISPs NAT (and have an IP address that is publicly routable), no other router has to remember my connections, just that my IP is "this way".
I *buy* games over steam. It is actually *easier* and *faster* than the pirated scene.
Unless you are waiting for the download to start because "all servers are currently busy", in which case it is faster to download the files from thepiratebay, copy them to steamapps directory, start steam and let it update (updates seem to have a higher priority). That's how my friend got to play TF2 on one of the free weekends.
You can't crackproof your software. You can't even really make it crack-resistant. No matter what protections you take, your software will come up against some guy who lives in his mom's basement, has a dozen hours a day to spend on the problem, who knows more about cracking software than you ever could, and most importantly who thinks that cricking your stuff is fun. And he will win.
Sure you can make software crack resistant. Just make it unpopular enough that the "guy in a basement" does not find out about it. I wanted to use a few programs that I could not find cracks for (our could find cracks, but only for old versions) - of course, I didn't buy them either, just went on to search for a program that meets my needs and I can find a crack for.
To prevent piracy, one would have to make it not smart then. Like making the risk so big that it is not smart. 20 years in jail and personal bankrupcy seems like it would do it. To further increase the risk, a high sum could be paid to people who tell on others.
So it would be actually better to rob someone then use the money to buy software instead of pirating said software?
Also, the day this becomes a law is the day I stop playing games and restart my hobby of recording music from the radio...
Go to BIOS setup - select "boot sector protection" - done. Or just boot from windows install cd to recovery console and type fixmbr. Or just don't play the game (my choice).
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In addition to this, I would also like to be paid indefinitely for work that I have done.
Like this:
I fix your PC - you pay me 10EUR/month for the rest of my life.
Fixing 1000 PCs would give me income of 10kEUR/month and I would not have to work anymore...
With a new release every 3 years...
Changing an OS involves installing that OS and then installing all applications and drivers, configuring that OS to suit my needs etc. If it is not way better than my current one (and/or if all applications still run on my current OS) I am not going to do it.
Of course, a HDD recorder will do just the same: you can pause the recording and resume it after the ads end. But wait, it is even more practical! Just record the whole show to HDD (you may even do something else in the mean time), and then, before you want to burn it to DVD, you can edit/cut the ad blocks out with extreme precision (up to a single frame, if you're a purist), and you may fast-forward between and within the ad blocks and get the work done in a couple of minutes (say, 5 minutes or so copy-editing out the ads for an average length movie).
My experience with video editing on a PC:
I wanted to record some TV shows and then wanted to cut out the commercials and had only one VCR. So I went to wikipedia, read about some video editing programs and downloaded them (p2p) (to try them out, maybe I would have bought the best one later). My TV tuner has a hardware MPEG2 encoder, so I recorded from tape to MPEG2. So, now I just launch some software and edit it? Right...
One application crashed while loading a 6GB long file (it tried to load that file for about half an hour and then crashed).
The other loaded the file, I could make edits and save the result, but with a minor problem - the sound was out of sync with the video (and it started after the first cut).
After trying to edit the recording for some time I said "screw it" and bought a second VCR...
And the HDD recorders are more expensive than VHS VCRs and I read somewhere that a lot of HDD recorders have DRM so hat you can't transfer the recording to PC (except using analog connections which force you to transfer in real time, just like VHS).
And when you are doing that for hundreds of DVDs?
Yes, digital media are good that you can make infinite generations of it and it will still be a perfect copy of the original, however, to do that, you mus actively copy the data every few years. If you forget - it's gone. Now, I can play an almost 100 year old shellac record or a vinyl record about first man on the moon released in the same year that the landing happened. The didn't need a lot of copying. The same with photos. Sure, they became discolored, but I can still see what my grand parents looked like when they were young, they also didn't need copying.
Who is going to copy your collection of hundreds of DVDs? You? Really, even if your day job takes a lot of energy from you, and when you come back home, you can't even think about that huge pile of 7 year old DVDs?
I am currently using LTO-1 tape to archive digital data and VHS to archive TV shows that I record from the TV (the downloaded ones go to LTO tape). It is written that LTO-1 tape should last about 30 years, but I'll probably copy everything to some newer format after 10 and still keep the originals as a backup).
The good thing about analog is that is degrades gracefully. On a bad/old VHS tape you will see some snow, the video may even lose color, but it will still work. On a very old R2R tape that I have, the frequency response is down to about 4kHz and some parts are very hard to understand, but it still works. OTOH, a DVD with a single scratch in a wrong place will not work (it won't even become a snowy black&white video).
I have an idea. How about converting data to some analog signal and writing that signal to vinyl? That should last for a long time in archival storage.
Probably. At least on Acmes site they say that their cassettes are made with BASF and ECP tape (it is not written where the shells are made)...
It seems that Fuji is still making SVHS tape, though I can't buy it locally (I do have one SVHS VCR, and have tried recording SVHS signal on VHS tape, and while the result is of higher quality than VHS I usually record VHS signals for greater compatibility).
I can buy tapes made by Maxell, Fuji, Emtec, Sony and Acme (at least I can buy all of them locally, did not try eBay...). Which manufacturer has stopped making tapes? I probably should buy a lot of them because I still record to VHS.
Now, I know DVD has higher video quality and is cheaper (the media at least), but can DVD recorders join recorded parts seamlessly (sp?) ? What I mean - When I am recording some TV show and a commercial starts, I just press stop on the VCR. When the commercial ends, I press record. The result is smooth, as if the commercial was never there. I can do the same when I connect two VCRs to cut commercials out of a TV show that I had recorded by setting the VCR to do so without my presence. Can DVD and/or hard drive recorders do so?
I ask because I used to record TV shows using my PC and a TV tuner, but I always had problems - the PC was too slow to start recording (like 5 seconds after I pressed "record" it actually started recording) and each recording was in a different file, sometimes the file did not have sound, or video...
From TFA:
So really, all locks and keys do 99% of the time is present a constant inconvenience for legitimate users. If we lose them, we're locked out of our own houses or cars. Yet strangely enough, you won't find a groundswell of popular opinion stating firmly around the Internet that "door locks don't work!" and demanding that everyone remove them because of the inherent inconvenience that they impose. Why is that? Probably because everyone is the owner of physical property of some kind, and is willing to endure the constant inconvenience of various locks and keys in their daily lives in the hopes of protecting that property from potential theft, even if in reality it actually provides them with no real protection against most thieves.
If I have a lock on my door, it only inconveniences ME (the owner) and the thieves. Now if I want at least some protection from thieves with added inconvenience to ME, it is my right. The lock on MY door will not inconvenience YOU (if you are not a thief).
DRM inconveniences CUSTOMERS and not the OWNER (the company which made the game).
Now, you know that stores use video surveillance and those detectors near the doors that beep if you have something stolen. Those measures are relatively not intrusive, but do not eliminate shoplifting 100%. Suppose a store decides to really eliminate shoplifting - by having every person leaving the building stripsearched. How many customers would that store have?
If pirating is stealing then why do you pirate the game?
Support the developers - steal the money and then buy the game if it is the same to you.
Audio has no corresponding "unplayable" signal range unless you inject an inaudible, high-frequency "don't copy me" signal – however, that would be trivial to take out with a low-pass filter without harming the sound fidelity of the audible frequencies. Furthermore, since the audio sampling process acts like a low-pass filter in and of itself (see the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem), present recording devices might not be affected by the signal at all.
For this to work, the audio device has to "look" for the high frequency signal. Present devices do not and will either record the signal or record the audio without ir (because they cannot record such high frequencies). You can also try to introduce some "unnoticeable" flutter (IIRC they tried to do it (are still doing it?) for bluray audio tracks, so that it would be possible to know which device decoded the audio), so that the destination device can detect it and refuse to record, but that also won't work with present devices.
Macrovision works because VCRs have a fast AGC and TVs have slow AGC, so VCRs react to Macrovision pulses and TVs don't (they are too slow).
Audio CD recorder tries to record the incoming signal as accurately as it can, also most (if not all) CD recorders not have AGC, instead, you have to set the recording level manually (like on a tape recorder). Now, you could embed something in that signal that CD recorders would detect and refuse to record, but that would only work on compliant (made after the copy protection was created) recorders, also, one could record the signal onto analog tape and then record it to CD. Analog tape has wow and flutter, even if it is not noticeable for human ear, it would destroy the other unnoticeable signal that forbids recording.
Now, you may say that recording using analog outputs/inputs (or even recording to analog tape) would reduce the quality of the recording. Yeas it would, but very slightly, and, since a lot of people are unable to distinguish between CD and 128-320kbps MP3 (or do not care), a lot of people would not be able to distinguish the quality (which would still be higher than 320kbps MP3).
People, who are able to distinguish between MP3 and CDs and do care about quality, are buying CDs and/or vinyl instead of downloading MP3s.
Now let's compare that to taking your old PC and turning it into a gaming rig:
New graphics card - $299
New laser mouse - $50
Battery charger for the mouse - $30
I could use my old mouse or buy a new one that has a tail. Actually, I wouldn't buy a wireless mouse.
More hard drive and RAM - $75
Or I can use my old hard drive. Games need a lot of space, but not that much space that a dedicated 100GB drive couldn't handle them. If you want to store movies on that drive, then... you need a bigger one.
New CPU, if you decide yours is too slow - $200
Backup to the hard drive - $50
Headphones - $75
Since you already have an old PC, you probably already have the headphones, so you don't need to buy new ones. Backup is always a good thing, however, you do not need to back up your games (just saves), because if the drive fails, you can reinstall the games from CDs/DVDs/Steam. Backing up saves is still needed, but your backup plan will likely be shrunk to a couple of DVDs for those saves. If you want to back up your system, movies and important work, well, you can reinstall windows and movies+work do not have anything to do with games.
$779. And if you decided to upgrade your monitor from the ol' CRT to a big flatscreen or dual monitor setup, $900 and up.
My CRT can do 2048x1536@80Hz (though the refresh rate is too low for me, so I use it only up to 1920x1440@85Hz). My older 17" CRT could do up to 1280x1024@85Hz and 1600x1200@60Hz. SDTCs can do only 720x480@60Hz (NTSC) or 720x576@50Hz (PAL), so upgrading to an HDTV (even the one that cannot do full 1080p) is a big jump in resolution. Upgrading from a 1280x1024 capable CRT monitor to a 1680x1050 capable LCD is no a big jump in resolution. Even 1920x1440 vs 1280x1024 is that much of a difference than 1920x1080 vs 720x576.
(2) Under the new paradigm the record company has a loss of 0.1 cent (approximate cost of bandwidth I used). 0.1 cent may not sound like much but when multiplied by a few million non-purchasing listeners, it adds up.
So... just let people download the song using p2p, that way, they will use zero bytes of your bandwidth to download the song.
and put the power source 5m behind the car...
Input power: 3.6kW
Output power: 775W
Efficiency: 21.5%
Well... It's not that good. And just for 5 meters you lose more than 4 times the amount of power you transfer.
I run BOINC, so my CPU usage is 100% 24/7. Also, I like that the game uses 100% (of at least one core) and gives me higher FPS or better graphics than using 50%.
What router has to remember all of my connections? My NAT router? OK, I can use one that has enough RAM. The ISPs? Why should it? If I am not sitting behind my ISPs NAT (and have an IP address that is publicly routable), no other router has to remember my connections, just that my IP is "this way".
I *buy* games over steam. It is actually *easier* and *faster* than the pirated scene.
Unless you are waiting for the download to start because "all servers are currently busy", in which case it is faster to download the files from thepiratebay, copy them to steamapps directory, start steam and let it update (updates seem to have a higher priority). That's how my friend got to play TF2 on one of the free weekends.
It does not have to be terrible - just specialized enough that only a few people (or companies) have a use for it.
You can't crackproof your software. You can't even really make it crack-resistant. No matter what protections you take, your software will come up against some guy who lives in his mom's basement, has a dozen hours a day to spend on the problem, who knows more about cracking software than you ever could, and most importantly who thinks that cricking your stuff is fun. And he will win.
Sure you can make software crack resistant. Just make it unpopular enough that the "guy in a basement" does not find out about it. I wanted to use a few programs that I could not find cracks for (our could find cracks, but only for old versions) - of course, I didn't buy them either, just went on to search for a program that meets my needs and I can find a crack for.
Oh, I didn't know about that. Some years ago I searched for PCI (32bit 33MHz) expander because all 6 slots on my PC were full, but could not find any.
In contrast, a single fast PCIe SSD can drop right in. ...
Also you are limited so no more than 7 of them, in contrast to SCSI or even SATA (with 8 port controllers).
Now if someone created a PCIe "hub"...
IMO, he could as long as he does not break any laws (otherwise he would go to jail just as homo sapiens do).
Just remember that there are rights and then there are responsibilities...
There is also a setting on my hard drive - "read only", you can't work around that...
However, if I read somewhere that a game was overwriting MBR, I certainly wouldn't buy or download it.
To prevent piracy, one would have to make it not smart then. Like making the risk so big that it is not smart. 20 years in jail and personal bankrupcy seems like it would do it. To further increase the risk, a high sum could be paid to people who tell on others.
So it would be actually better to rob someone then use the money to buy software instead of pirating said software?
Also, the day this becomes a law is the day I stop playing games and restart my hobby of recording music from the radio...
Go to BIOS setup - select "boot sector protection" - done.
Or just boot from windows install cd to recovery console and type fixmbr.
Or just don't play the game (my choice).
if by "rendering" you mean that It outputs analog signal then yes. I have 4.0 speakers and I can use them without any external DAC.