So long as we follow Asimov's rules for robot behavior:
1) A robot may not injure a human being, or allow a human to come to harm through inaction.
2) A robot must obey orders, except where doing so would violate the first rule.
3) A robot must protect its own existance, so long as that doe not violate the first or second rule.
Follow those three, and we are all set. And if we don't follow those three...well, we can always build EMP cannons;)
Both of the two major services talked about in that article, PressPlay and MusicNet, offer absolutely no advantage to me. I won't be subscribing to either one anytime soon because:
Anything you download stops working the second you don't renew your subscription. So even if I don't want anything new, and I'm happy with my downloads, I have to keep shelling out money to keep them? That's a far worse deal than just going out and buying the CD. And it's especially a lot worse for people who are used to the Napster/Morpheus paradigm of downloading and having it forever.
Both focus too much on streaming. And Rhapsody focuses entirely on streaming. Am I the only one who loathes streaming anything?! I want to download it once, not every time I want to hear it. Streaming is too dependant on my connection and their servers, which I don't like. The quality always suffers, and if you are on dialup, forget it; you'll have to rebuffer every 10 seconds.
Limited File Movement. At least Pressplay offers you the option to make CDs from what you download. But what if you don't want CDs? What if you want to move them to a RIO/iPod, or to a minidisc?? You're stuck. And MusicNet doesn't let you do anything with them, just download them and listen to them on your PC. Nevermind the fact that a LOT of people listen to the majority of their music in their car, or on a portable MP3 players, you simply don't have the option anymore.
Bad file quality. I won't even subscribe to non-crippled services like eMusic because of the fact that they only offer downloads at 128kbps. This is AWFUL sound quality. First off, I don't want anything in mp3 format, and if does have to be mp3, it should be variable bitrate encoded. Offer me a service that lets you download Oggs, and then I'll consider. But otherwise, I just cringe when I hear a song in mp3 at 128kbps.
Selection of artists. Most of the stuff I listen to is rather obscure by the standards of most of music industry (I listen to progrock & hardcore, if you care). These services don't offer any of the artists I like, besides a few of the more mainstream ones (i.e. Rush), whose work I already own on CD. So where is the incentive? Sure, I like to hear new music in different genres, but when I'm working or trying to relax, I want something by a band I already know & love, or something in a similar vein. (i.e. if I'm in the mood for Kings X, I might listen to some Pain of Salvation or Fates Warning instead, but I won't put on the hottest rap album on the market instead.) So for me anyway, there is really no point whatsoever, since I'm not going to get anything good out of it. When they start carrying Dark Day Dawning or Madball, then I might reconsider.
I especially won't subscribe to MusicNet, because where does my subscription money go? That's right, to the already-overflowing pockets of Hilary Rosen, not to the artists.
I'll subscribe when there is a service that offers music I like, in a format I like, that I can do what I want with it, and that supports the artists directly. Of course, this is exactly what the RIAA doesn't want, so it probably won't ever happen.
From the article: For instance, it would note if an individual lived at the former address of someone considered high-risk.
Great. So now if my former college roommates do anything bad and get on the high-risk shit-list, then I'm going to be detained at an airport.
Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch for people with links to restaurants or other places thought to be favored by terrorist cells.
Hypothetical sitation: I'm visiting a friend in town. I stop into a coffee shop a few times while I'm there. Joe Terrorist also frequents that shop. A few weeks later, he tries to blow something up. As a recent patron of that store, am I going to be questioned?? I know this is a more extreme example, but it shows the type of situations that could arise.
The thing I mainly don't like about systems like these are that they filter out people that "mainstream" society generally thinks are going to be dangerous or problematic, regardless of their actual behavior. It is also becomes a problem of drawing a line for inspections. Even if a person comes up as a "green light" in one of these systems, they will probably be stopped if they have visible tattoos and/or piercings, or if they are flying one-way, or if they frequently travel alone.
Is there anything that can actually be done about things like this??
D-VHS, on the other hand, will support HDTV resolutions, and will allow you to record a HDTV signal. There may or may not exist ulterior motives on the studios part to get people to buy into D-VHS, but unfortunately for now, of you want to record or view HDTV quality movies, D-VHS is your only alternative.
Do you honestly really think that D-VHS players would let you record HDTV broadcasts right off the air?
Any supposed benefit about being able to record HDTV signals does not exist; copy "protection" will kill any chance this thing has of surviving.
Besides the fact that I don't find it aesthetically pleasing whatsoever, it's just not big enough for me.
The only monitors I use are at least 21". Combine the desk space taken up by the average 21" crt, add in a keyboard, mouse, speakers, microphone, phone, and you are well out of desk real estate. The novelty of having a glass top quickly disappears when you realize that you'll be covering the entire thing with other devices.
Instead, I use a Jerker-series workstation desk from Ikea. The tabletop is big enough and strong enough to hold 2 21" Sun monitors (each almost 90lbs), 2 keyboards & mice, router, stereo receiver, plus it has a nice overhead shelf that I have speakers mounted from, and side shelves that hold my printer, phone, scanner, and CD/DVD players. Its not too bad looking, and it has space for everything I need, which is much more important to me than anything else.
Every episode of "The Simpsons" broadcast in syndication has a few scenes cut for insertion of extra commercials. I wouldn't mind if they ran this process on each episode if it meant they were able to give us back those scenes.
Good luck, but you will most likely never see those scenes in syndication.
Not only do they cut out several (of the arguably funniest) scenes per episode, but they also fade out to commercials ridiculously early; I mean they don't even allow the scene to properly end. They will literally fade the audio out in mid-sentence of the last line of the scene, so that they can start the commercials earlier.
If that wasn't enough, they then split-screen the ending credits so that they can show ads on half of the screen! This is especially frustrating since the Simpsons often puts gags in the credits, such as voiceovers, songs, etc., which get completely talked over.
Then, as the coup de grâce, in each of the 3 scenes, they randomly flash a barely translucent "THE SIMPSONS ON FOX" banner over the top 1/4" of the screen, and they randomly put in promos for other shows over the bottom 1/4" of the screen!
...And Fox wonders why so many people are trying to download copies of the original episodes online...
and one I use as a database server and to pcAnywhere into work.
Unfortunately, they will most likely reply to this saying that pcAnywhere constitutes a VPN, or that since you are doing anything related to work, you need a business-class connection. Sure, it won't increase your speed, give you a static IP, or give you any other benefits...but it will cost a lot more! Whoopie! Oh...wait...nevermind.
It will still require some sort of addon hardware to get PVR functionality out of the Xbox, unless they have thought about that already and the Xbox can be software upgraded to make it a PVR. (Anyone know for sure?) At the minimum, I would guess at least another/bigger hardrive.
While I can't say for sure if the PVR functionality is in the software or not, I don't think it matters; a 5400 RPM, 8gig HDD is pretty weak for PVR use. People can and do get better recording ability out of Tivo. Therefore, a hardware upgrade or a new version of the Xbox is necessary.
Re:WMA 8 is the way
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
I don't know about the rest of you, but to my ears, NOTHING is "picture perfect" at 128kbps. 192 is minimum for any lossy compression.
While AOL could provide a huge shot in the arm to Linux (it wont make a huge jump to the desktop without being able to run AOL, sad but true), what geek wants to run an AOL OS?? Would AOL/TW put their icons everywhere, or try to include DRM in it?? AOL/TW isn't much better than MS after all, they cater to the lowest common denominator.
Oh well, if they do, I'll just go to another distro, I suppose.
Alliance estimates that more than half of the software in use in Asia is illegally copied, resulting in annual losses of more than $4 billion for the software industry.
Of course, like every other piracy report, they are assuming that every person who has a copy of their software would have purchased it if they couldn't get their hands on it. Which of course isn't true at all, the people would have just moved on to another piece of software.
I'm surprised at a move like this. After all, it was piracy that largely resulted in Adobe getting the market share they have now.
And praytell, what browser are you using? You should see this thing in Netscape, Konqueror, or IE on a Mac, where it errors out something awful on every single page.
It Forces Javascript, uses font tags instead of CSS, and the links are the same color as the text, along with not being underlined. Big no-no. It might not be a problem for most of us, but if you have an older machine, you have vision problems, etc., this site is going to suck.
Oh well, at least they did the ALT tags the first time around this time, unlike the last site done by IBM.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released drafts of a report commissioned after 11 September to look at the state of America's computer systems.
If the USA Patriot Act could get passed after 9/11, so could this. Let's not forget that rationale goes the way of the buffalo in the months following an attack. And while I think a lot of software would be better than it is now if it were more secure, this wouldn't just affect MS.
Let's hope nothing comes of this, as it could mean lawsuits against anybody and everybody if any piece of data becomes available to the wrong party.
You know, you'd think with Disney's constant backing of DRM, as well as basically funding the SSSCA, that/. would encourage a boycott of them, and not encourage supporting them, regardless of what products they have to offer.
I would love Tron on a collectors DVD as much as the next geek, but until Disney starts respecting our rights, I won't be buying it. Mod me down if you want, but I feel that/. can and should be a place where actions start. If anyone else feels the same way, please make your voices heard, or at least contact me.
Say I have a DVD player in my computer, which is in my bedroom. But my TV is in my living room. What's the difference between buying a DVD player and putting it in my living room, or streaming the content to a wireless receiver at my TV??
Unless doing that is somehow illegal (which is unbeknowst to me), I don't see a problem with it at all. I own the media, so why does it matter if I stream it to a different TV in my own house?
This seems like an attempt to get people to pay if they want to stream the content which they purchased to another location in their own home.
well, USB 1 has a max transfer rate of 12 Mbits/sec. 12/8 = ~1.5, so a little more than 1 megabyte per second. Therefore, 1 gig would be rougly 670 seconds, or 11 mins, give or take. Full drive would be over 220 minutes, or 3.6 hours. And that is at theoretical best rate possible. Realistically, closer to 4 hours. I don't know about the rest of you, but I dont have 20 gigs of mp3, or 4 hours to spare transferring them.
For those complaining about the comcast 15/K bandwidth cap...check your @Home AUP. Every contract from @Home has 128kbps upload speed written in it--if you had faster speed before (like I did), it was because they didn't enforce the policy. Mine switched over many months ago, and I was way pissed, but couldn't do anything; it was what I agreed to. Its annoying, BUT Comcast will be offering different rate plans for higher upload speeds, if you need them. That's one reason why I'm happy with the switch.
Also, up here in the Philly region, the switchover is already complete. It happened last Friday, but without ANY notice whatsoever. I was expecting to VNC into my machine from work, but I couldn't because my static IP changed. I'm posting right now from comcast.net, not home.com.
Couldn't just about any service that delivered greeting cards online for the last 3+ years (for example, Blue Mountain, etc.), be considered prior art for this??
If this keeps up, we'll soon see a patent for "facilitating data-entry via an alphanumeric input device";)
I sent in this exact story earlier today, and it was rejected in under 1 minute.
2002-01-02 23:15:00 'NSYNC to appear in "Attack of the Clones" (articles,news) (rejected)
I was always curious as to why near identical stories get rejected, and others make the cut. Either way, I don't think my submission was even read, as I refreshed about 30 seconds after submission, and it was already rejected.
How does devaluing happen now??
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2
I just have one question about this switch--since they are all using the same currency, how does the currency become devalued in one country?
All of these countries have different values to their money; some of them are currently very strong, and others are currently very weak. So what happens to your Euro when you go from say Ireland to Italy? Do they just inflate/deflate the price of goods/services to compensate?
I'm honestly not sure how it will work, since there is no longer a currency exchange between these countries. Is it just me, or does this seem like it's not the brightest idea on the surface??
The documents are available in Word and.PDF format. These are pretty industry standard at this point, and.pdf can be read a multitude of ways. What's the problem?
I believe the point is supposed to be that a document about OSS is only available in 2 closed formats. It's called irony.:)
The article specifically mentions that the player software on the disk is Windows only. Will I be able to play this disk on my Mac/PlayStation2/Linux/Car CD Changer?
I was recently in a local music store that carried "The Fast & The Furious" soundtrack. (First off, figures Universal would start with a CD like this--no one wants it, so there won't be a huge outrage over it!) On the back, it states something to the effect of "This CD is copy protected and it meant to be played in standard CD Audio players or Windows-based PCs"
No, it will not play in your Mac. No, it will not play in your consoles. It may play in your car CD player, but that totally depends on the model. And to be honest, I'm not sure about Linux--I'm not going to spend $20 on that POS CD to see if it works under redhat or not.
On top of the fact that this protection decreases the quality of the CD-Audio, etc., it also further extends Microsoft's monopoly. Now if you want to play an Audio CD in your computer, you had better have Windows! This is something that needs to be fought immediately. (Some nice "DEFECTIVE CD" stickers would help, I think)
Slashdot Mirror
So long as we follow Asimov's rules for robot behavior:
;)
1) A robot may not injure a human being, or allow a human to come to harm through inaction.
2) A robot must obey orders, except where doing so would violate the first rule.
3) A robot must protect its own existance, so long as that doe not violate the first or second rule.
Follow those three, and we are all set. And if we don't follow those three...well, we can always build EMP cannons
- Anything you download stops working the second you don't renew your subscription. So even if I don't want anything new, and I'm happy with my downloads, I have to keep shelling out money to keep them? That's a far worse deal than just going out and buying the CD. And it's especially a lot worse for people who are used to the Napster/Morpheus paradigm of downloading and having it forever.
- Both focus too much on streaming. And Rhapsody focuses entirely on streaming. Am I the only one who loathes streaming anything?! I want to download it once, not every time I want to hear it. Streaming is too dependant on my connection and their servers, which I don't like. The quality always suffers, and if you are on dialup, forget it; you'll have to rebuffer every 10 seconds.
- Limited File Movement. At least Pressplay offers you the option to make CDs from what you download. But what if you don't want CDs? What if you want to move them to a RIO/iPod, or to a minidisc?? You're stuck. And MusicNet doesn't let you do anything with them, just download them and listen to them on your PC. Nevermind the fact that a LOT of people listen to the majority of their music in their car, or on a portable MP3 players, you simply don't have the option anymore.
- Bad file quality. I won't even subscribe to non-crippled services like eMusic because of the fact that they only offer downloads at 128kbps. This is AWFUL sound quality. First off, I don't want anything in mp3 format, and if does have to be mp3, it should be variable bitrate encoded. Offer me a service that lets you download Oggs, and then I'll consider. But otherwise, I just cringe when I hear a song in mp3 at 128kbps.
- Selection of artists. Most of the stuff I listen to is rather obscure by the standards of most of music industry (I listen to progrock & hardcore, if you care). These services don't offer any of the artists I like, besides a few of the more mainstream ones (i.e. Rush), whose work I already own on CD. So where is the incentive? Sure, I like to hear new music in different genres, but when I'm working or trying to relax, I want something by a band I already know & love, or something in a similar vein. (i.e. if I'm in the mood for Kings X, I might listen to some Pain of Salvation or Fates Warning instead, but I won't put on the hottest rap album on the market instead.) So for me anyway, there is really no point whatsoever, since I'm not going to get anything good out of it. When they start carrying Dark Day Dawning or Madball, then I might reconsider.
I especially won't subscribe to MusicNet, because where does my subscription money go? That's right, to the already-overflowing pockets of Hilary Rosen, not to the artists.I'll subscribe when there is a service that offers music I like, in a format I like, that I can do what I want with it, and that supports the artists directly. Of course, this is exactly what the RIAA doesn't want, so it probably won't ever happen.
From the article:
For instance, it would note if an individual lived at the former address of someone considered high-risk.
Great. So now if my former college roommates do anything bad and get on the high-risk shit-list, then I'm going to be detained at an airport.
Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch for people with links to restaurants or other places thought to be favored by terrorist cells.
Hypothetical sitation: I'm visiting a friend in town. I stop into a coffee shop a few times while I'm there. Joe Terrorist also frequents that shop. A few weeks later, he tries to blow something up. As a recent patron of that store, am I going to be questioned?? I know this is a more extreme example, but it shows the type of situations that could arise.
The thing I mainly don't like about systems like these are that they filter out people that "mainstream" society generally thinks are going to be dangerous or problematic, regardless of their actual behavior. It is also becomes a problem of drawing a line for inspections. Even if a person comes up as a "green light" in one of these systems, they will probably be stopped if they have visible tattoos and/or piercings, or if they are flying one-way, or if they frequently travel alone.
Is there anything that can actually be done about things like this??
D-VHS, on the other hand, will support HDTV resolutions, and will allow you to record a HDTV signal. There may or may not exist ulterior motives on the studios part to get people to buy into D-VHS, but unfortunately for now, of you want to record or view HDTV quality movies, D-VHS is your only alternative.
Do you honestly really think that D-VHS players would let you record HDTV broadcasts right off the air?
Any supposed benefit about being able to record HDTV signals does not exist; copy "protection" will kill any chance this thing has of surviving.
Besides the fact that I don't find it aesthetically pleasing whatsoever, it's just not big enough for me.
The only monitors I use are at least 21". Combine the desk space taken up by the average 21" crt, add in a keyboard, mouse, speakers, microphone, phone, and you are well out of desk real estate. The novelty of having a glass top quickly disappears when you realize that you'll be covering the entire thing with other devices.
Instead, I use a Jerker-series workstation desk from Ikea. The tabletop is big enough and strong enough to hold 2 21" Sun monitors (each almost 90lbs), 2 keyboards & mice, router, stereo receiver, plus it has a nice overhead shelf that I have speakers mounted from, and side shelves that hold my printer, phone, scanner, and CD/DVD players. Its not too bad looking, and it has space for everything I need, which is much more important to me than anything else.
Every episode of "The Simpsons" broadcast in syndication has a few scenes cut for insertion of extra commercials. I wouldn't mind if they ran this process on each episode if it meant they were able to give us back those scenes.
...And Fox wonders why so many people are trying to download copies of the original episodes online...
Good luck, but you will most likely never see those scenes in syndication.
Not only do they cut out several (of the arguably funniest) scenes per episode, but they also fade out to commercials ridiculously early; I mean they don't even allow the scene to properly end. They will literally fade the audio out in mid-sentence of the last line of the scene, so that they can start the commercials earlier.
If that wasn't enough, they then split-screen the ending credits so that they can show ads on half of the screen! This is especially frustrating since the Simpsons often puts gags in the credits, such as voiceovers, songs, etc., which get completely talked over.
Then, as the coup de grâce, in each of the 3 scenes, they randomly flash a barely translucent "THE SIMPSONS ON FOX" banner over the top 1/4" of the screen, and they randomly put in promos for other shows over the bottom 1/4" of the screen!
and one I use as a database server and to pcAnywhere into work.
Unfortunately, they will most likely reply to this saying that pcAnywhere constitutes a VPN, or that since you are doing anything related to work, you need a business-class connection. Sure, it won't increase your speed, give you a static IP, or give you any other benefits...but it will cost a lot more! Whoopie! Oh...wait...nevermind.
It will still require some sort of addon hardware to get PVR functionality out of the Xbox, unless they have thought about that already and the Xbox can be software upgraded to make it a PVR. (Anyone know for sure?) At the minimum, I would guess at least another/bigger hardrive.
While I can't say for sure if the PVR functionality is in the software or not, I don't think it matters; a 5400 RPM, 8gig HDD is pretty weak for PVR use. People can and do get better recording ability out of Tivo. Therefore, a hardware upgrade or a new version of the Xbox is necessary.
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
I don't know about the rest of you, but to my ears, NOTHING is "picture perfect" at 128kbps. 192 is minimum for any lossy compression.
AOL did buy Nullsoft, and then they made Winamp freeware. So, for once, AOL did good.
This is great and awful news at the same time.
While AOL could provide a huge shot in the arm to Linux (it wont make a huge jump to the desktop without being able to run AOL, sad but true), what geek wants to run an AOL OS?? Would AOL/TW put their icons everywhere, or try to include DRM in it?? AOL/TW isn't much better than MS after all, they cater to the lowest common denominator.
Oh well, if they do, I'll just go to another distro, I suppose.
Alliance estimates that more than half of the software in use in Asia is illegally copied, resulting in annual losses of more than $4 billion for the software industry.
Of course, like every other piracy report, they are assuming that every person who has a copy of their software would have purchased it if they couldn't get their hands on it. Which of course isn't true at all, the people would have just moved on to another piece of software.
I'm surprised at a move like this. After all, it was piracy that largely resulted in Adobe getting the market share they have now.
And praytell, what browser are you using? You should see this thing in Netscape, Konqueror, or IE on a Mac, where it errors out something awful on every single page.
It Forces Javascript, uses font tags instead of CSS, and the links are the same color as the text, along with not being underlined. Big no-no. It might not be a problem for most of us, but if you have an older machine, you have vision problems, etc., this site is going to suck.
Oh well, at least they did the ALT tags the first time around this time, unlike the last site done by IBM.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released drafts of a report commissioned after 11 September to look at the state of America's computer systems.
If the USA Patriot Act could get passed after 9/11, so could this. Let's not forget that rationale goes the way of the buffalo in the months following an attack. And while I think a lot of software would be better than it is now if it were more secure, this wouldn't just affect MS.
Let's hope nothing comes of this, as it could mean lawsuits against anybody and everybody if any piece of data becomes available to the wrong party.
This was first brought up several months ago in an article on The Register, but everyone widely dismissed it as a hoax.
PC Format also covered it a few weeks ago, and people still dismissed it as a hoax.
Now its on C|Net, is it still consired a hoax??? Or is it now a definite sign of things to come?
You know, you'd think with Disney's constant backing of DRM, as well as basically funding the SSSCA, that /. would encourage a boycott of them, and not encourage supporting them, regardless of what products they have to offer.
/. can and should be a place where actions start. If anyone else feels the same way, please make your voices heard, or at least contact me.
I would love Tron on a collectors DVD as much as the next geek, but until Disney starts respecting our rights, I won't be buying it. Mod me down if you want, but I feel that
Say I have a DVD player in my computer, which is in my bedroom. But my TV is in my living room. What's the difference between buying a DVD player and putting it in my living room, or streaming the content to a wireless receiver at my TV??
Unless doing that is somehow illegal (which is unbeknowst to me), I don't see a problem with it at all. I own the media, so why does it matter if I stream it to a different TV in my own house?
This seems like an attempt to get people to pay if they want to stream the content which they purchased to another location in their own home.
well, USB 1 has a max transfer rate of 12 Mbits/sec. 12/8 = ~1.5, so a little more than 1 megabyte per second. Therefore, 1 gig would be rougly 670 seconds, or 11 mins, give or take. Full drive would be over 220 minutes, or 3.6 hours. And that is at theoretical best rate possible. Realistically, closer to 4 hours. I don't know about the rest of you, but I dont have 20 gigs of mp3, or 4 hours to spare transferring them.
FYI, USPS outsourced Priority Mail to FedEx last year. So I wouldn't be surprised if we saw FedEx scanning packages in a similar fashion.
For those complaining about the comcast 15/K bandwidth cap...check your @Home AUP. Every contract from @Home has 128kbps upload speed written in it--if you had faster speed before (like I did), it was because they didn't enforce the policy. Mine switched over many months ago, and I was way pissed, but couldn't do anything; it was what I agreed to. Its annoying, BUT Comcast will be offering different rate plans for higher upload speeds, if you need them. That's one reason why I'm happy with the switch.
Also, up here in the Philly region, the switchover is already complete. It happened last Friday, but without ANY notice whatsoever. I was expecting to VNC into my machine from work, but I couldn't because my static IP changed. I'm posting right now from comcast.net, not home.com.
Couldn't just about any service that delivered greeting cards online for the last 3+ years (for example, Blue Mountain, etc.), be considered prior art for this??
;)
If this keeps up, we'll soon see a patent for "facilitating data-entry via an alphanumeric input device"
I sent in this exact story earlier today, and it was rejected in under 1 minute.
2002-01-02 23:15:00 'NSYNC to appear in "Attack of the Clones" (articles,news) (rejected)
I was always curious as to why near identical stories get rejected, and others make the cut. Either way, I don't think my submission was even read, as I refreshed about 30 seconds after submission, and it was already rejected.
I just have one question about this switch--since they are all using the same currency, how does the currency become devalued in one country?
All of these countries have different values to their money; some of them are currently very strong, and others are currently very weak. So what happens to your Euro when you go from say Ireland to Italy? Do they just inflate/deflate the price of goods/services to compensate?
I'm honestly not sure how it will work, since there is no longer a currency exchange between these countries. Is it just me, or does this seem like it's not the brightest idea on the surface??
The documents are available in Word and .PDF format. These are pretty industry standard at this point, and .pdf can be read a multitude of ways. What's the problem?
:)
I believe the point is supposed to be that a document about OSS is only available in 2 closed formats. It's called irony.
The article specifically mentions that the player software on the disk is Windows only. Will I be able to play this disk on my Mac/PlayStation2/Linux/Car CD Changer?
I was recently in a local music store that carried "The Fast & The Furious" soundtrack. (First off, figures Universal would start with a CD like this--no one wants it, so there won't be a huge outrage over it!) On the back, it states something to the effect of "This CD is copy protected and it meant to be played in standard CD Audio players or Windows-based PCs"
No, it will not play in your Mac. No, it will not play in your consoles. It may play in your car CD player, but that totally depends on the model. And to be honest, I'm not sure about Linux--I'm not going to spend $20 on that POS CD to see if it works under redhat or not.
On top of the fact that this protection decreases the quality of the CD-Audio, etc., it also further extends Microsoft's monopoly. Now if you want to play an Audio CD in your computer, you had better have Windows! This is something that needs to be fought immediately. (Some nice "DEFECTIVE CD" stickers would help, I think)