The ironic thing about all the various forms of DRM, copy protection, etc., is that the more intrusive it gets, the more it is going to actually encourage piracy.
I'd love to use something like iTunes. Unfortunately, because of the DRM, the fact that the files aren't compatible with Linux, my Palm, and whatever else I want it to be with, I'd rather just pirate the damned thing. Then I get it in a format I know works.
Computer software. If the first damned thing that I'm going to do is scour the net for a "nocd" patch to get rid of the ridiculous SecureROM crap, then I'm more likely to grab the entire package. Add to that a point-of-sale variation on DRM, the no-return policies, and the fact that so much of the software out there sucks, doesn't perform as advertised, crashes, or is incompatible with hardware it should work with, and people are more likely to pirate the software.
The content companies can keep shooting themselves in the foot. Hopefully, the U.S. government will eventually come in and slap all these companies down with anti-trust violations and the like, but I'm not holding my breath. Microsoft, the RIAA, et al. donate a lot of money, you know.
Thanks for a very clear answer. (Not quite like I needed a simplistic answer, but there are thousands out there -- yes, who are also reading Slashdot -- who do.)
Whenever I read an article like this, the first thing that truly springs to mind is how it will impact me. I don't send spam. I don't abuse the net. But I run my own mail server, and receive mail on a dynamic DNS domain.
In other words, I might support it if it does its job (reduces spam) while simultaneously allowing me a reasonable level of freedom (i.e., ability to continue running my mail system). The concern I always have is that it might turn into what port 25 blocking has become: a mechanism to force users to route mail through pathetic "approved' servers that do bizarre things with mail.
For better or worse, I think when that happens you might see an alternative to SMTP and the standard mail system come about. I personally think that will be a good thing.
I must have missed something here. In fact, I'm sure I have.
If they broke in and the system was properly designed, shouldn't they have what amounts to an/etc/passwd file which they then have to crack? In other words, if you used strong passwords, you should be safer than if you used "Z1ON101" or "secret" as the password?
Not that this by any stretch of the imagination implies that a "strong" password can't be cracked in this situation, just that it's more trouble.
It wasn't random bashing of companies. Well, okay, the comment about Gator was, but the BSOD issue actually happened to me. Judging from the BSOD, I'd guess it was some kind of driver issue.
To its credit, the thing did detect that it was out to lunch and reboot, and it did return my card when it rebooted and discovered that it had one in the reader.
Today I fired up an old Pentium 133 machine that I had in mothballs with the intent of using it as a secured file server, internal mail server, and internal low-load database server. The system should be able to handle all that just fine.
On the other hand, it's been compiling its systems upgrade for hours now, and is just now on package 10 of 118. Right now, it's compiling gcc 3.4.4, and by the looks of it, it'll be compiling this stuff until the weekend.
Linux is very, very, very good at making the best out of low-value hardware. I do wish compiling was faster like it was "in the good old days."
How does this relate to the parent? Simple. I have a P4 laptop with 512MB of RAM, and sometimes even it runs like a pig in X11. Most of that is because software authors insist on having obscene memory footprints for their packages. (Come on, 50MB+ to run a file sharing program? Good lord. Stop writing it in Java.)
And for the people who are unable to see the obvious, no I am NOT running a GUI or anything of the sort on that P133, no I don't expect things to be optimized for that kind of low-end hardware (I'd bitch if it was), and no I don't use that previously mentioned filesharing program for just that reason.
Yep. And you haven't lived until you drive up to an ATM on a dark night in a admittidly well-lit area, stick you card in, get asked the stupid "Engles or Espanol?" question, and then watch it BSOD with your card still inside. Then you sit by until it reboots, hoping your card will come out.
What seems like five minutes later, your card comes rocketting out of the machine at warp 9 like it always does. Then wash, rinse, repeat.
Ah, the joys of a Windows world. Every time I walk up to one of the Diebold machines, I expect it to start popping up sex ads, asking me if I want to install Gator, or God only knows what else.
No, we're in total agreement. What I was complaining about was integrated hardware that comes from OEMs. For example, these cheap-ass BroadCOM WiFi cards in HP laptops. Sure, I could go buy a decent WiFi card and hang it out of a slot, but I shouldn't have to.
As I stated, I really don't care too much if they produce an actual driver. But they need to release the specs so that I can make a driver myself for the community if I'm so inclined.
You aren't missing anything. These hardware vendors are in bed with Microsoft. Nothing keeps them from releasing the specs, letting someone else write a driver for it, and letting someone else do the technical support. And before someone says that then they'll be flooded with tech support calls, they already are from users who can't get their hardware to work, or are using some kludge piece of crap like ndiswrapper and having problems under it.
One machine I have has a DLink wireless card in it. I installed the acx_100 driver, which seems to be the driver for it. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has some bogus "feature" in the hardware that causes the network card to reset itself every so often. When that happens, the network card drops off the net, and doesn't come back up until a reboot.
The proper thing for the manufacturer to do is either release a Linux driver for their card, or document the incompatability so that I can hack support for it into the driver and release it. In this case, I've done the work for them, for crying out loud.
By the way, I did call the DLink cretins and ask about this. They knew nothing. Their answer was that they don't support Linux. When you release hardware, either release drivers for the predominant operating systems (which is now Linux and Windows), or at least have the decency to release the specs so someone can cover your lazy ass. They don't do this.
I think they honestly think that someone isn't eventually going to get pissed off enough to reverse engineer the damned card, which if I can ever isolate the problem I'm going to do and blow all over the Internet, along with a message proclaiming how much their company sucks.
BroadCom is another one. They release no information about their cards, and lock users into them by building them into the laptop. So you buy a new HP laptop, and its wireless card is a BroadCom. Oops. Sorry.
Vendors like Intel do, for the most part. Vendors of hardware like WiFi cards most certaintly do NOT, and I can personally attest to this. Currently, I'm having to use ndiswrapper, which is a kludge that tries to place an API over a Windows network card driver so that the Windows driver will work. This should never have to happen in the first place, because the hardware vendor should release a damned driver.
Pretty sure there is at least 1 windows box running in a local hospital. Police stations don't use computers, no? Well, I guess these aren't important after all.
I might as well comment on this since health care came into it.
Most hospitals use Windows exclusively for user interface boxes. Their backend systems use things like AIX, Linux, or some other flavor of UNIX to run the databases and such. The catch is that universally these user (Windows) systems are overloaded, cumbersome, full of security holes, and a total mess.
Take a real life example of a hospital system that has one major inpatient facility, and a bunch of outlying clinics. Their backend uses some UNIX variant, and they use some Windows program to interface with it. So far not bad. Enter the problems.
First off, there is no unified user home directory system. (Yes, Windows can do this.) Under UNIX, the simplest way to handle it is do a networked stock setup of all the user machines, mount home directories under NFS (or preferably something better), and avoid a lot of problem. This helps with data security, because patient information (e.g., the progress note I just typed in Word) is saved under my user account with default permissions of -rw-------. Second, this means that if I go to one of the outlying clinics, I can still access my files.
I've actually thought really hard for a few years now about why these hospitals blow literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Windows machines, when they could set up Linux machines that are better administatable for much less. After they set this up, they have to deal with all the random crap of people violating the security protocol by installing God only knows what (Gator, anyone?) which, even if it affects only their account, is still a problem.
But perhaps the biggest problem with Windows in these environments is this: The things take so god awful long to log a user in (two minutes at least at my last place of work on a 2GHz box) for whatever reason that much of the time people don't even bother to log in and out. That leaves a terminal sitting there, and makes the password protection at the OS level worthless. (Yes, obviously something is wrong with all these installations -- probably Novell -- but it's universal. I've never seen a Linux installation that bad, EVER, in ten years.)
There are two situations in which I pirate games. The first is to quite literally try before I buy. You laugh and say "suuuure," but I've gotten burned on so many supremely bad games, not to mention games that just don't run, that what the software houses are experiencing here is a result of their "no return" policies.
The second is for games that I just can't find. This is the result of shoddy marketting, or the retail houses refusing to stock them. A perfect example of this is "Falcon 4: Allied Force" which I pirated, and will buy when I find it...and as soon as they release a package to keep the damned thing from crashing to desktop on bombing runs when you switch to engage an air-to-air threat.
Now, expense. I don't fault the software houses for selling these games at what they do, because I know how much it often costs to make these things. Unfortunately, the cost combined with the proliferation of software that is basically crap forces people to spend their money a little more wisely. I'm a student on a shoestring budget, and also happen to have a relatively short attention span, so these things aren't exactly affordable for me much of the time.
Does this excuse pirating? No. Frankly, I'd say that the assinine "no return" policies do, but the expense doesn't. Nevertheless, it makes it a lot more understandable.
As for movies and TV, I exclusively pirate those movies that I won't go to see anyway. Either because I don't have time, or I'm in a position where I'm going to have my ass paged out of it two or three times and therefore can't go see one. In this sense, the industry has lost nothing at all, and if the movie is decent benefits from my recommending it. For television, I don't watch the ads anyway, so again, no loss there.
"But that doesn't make it right!" No it doesn't. but think about it.
The half-assed solution to that is after you finish updating a lib with a security vulnerability, run a hacked version of (more or less) 'lsof' on all processes that prefixes each line with the process ID. Then grep the output for the library in question. Then, at least, you know what to fix.
I'd like to say that this shouldn't even be an issue, but unfortunately that would damn us to Windows-like constant reboot-on-install-and-update hell. (I assume this is a large reason of why Windows demands reboots after updates.)
A somewhat less foolproof solution would be to drop the machine to single user, then bring it back to multiuser. That has its own set of obvious problems that aren't acceptible in every situation.
FWIW, if you have a Lifedrive -- Palm's new top-level device with an internal HDD -- you can have some of the built-in applications crash. Especially if you switch back and forth a lot.
Mine crashes a fair bit, but it's mostly because of some crappy freeware medical software I have installed.
However, the reboot takes minutes, not seconds. Now that is farking rediculous and makes crashing a royal pain in my ass.
I have s aneaky suspicion that he did it to make a point. Unfortunately, if he comes out and says or blatently acts like he did it only to make a point, it won't work anymore. So he files bogus, stupid lawsuits in an attempt to get the law changed.
What i mean is that you pirate a game, no one really makes any money.
If say 10% of those who pirate, actually went out and bought legal copies (went to theaters,...) then the govermnent would get their share in taxes.
They do. The Matrix Revolutions comes out, and lines and crowds at the theatre are ridiculous. Maybe some people want to see the movie before it's totally spoiled by people talking about it, but can't because they actually have jobs, so they pirate it. A large percentage of them in this case will still go see it in the theatre, because it's part of the "experience."
Computer games are similar, but for a different reason. You have no idea how many computer games I've bought that have just flat-out SUCKED, or wouldn't run, or were full of bugs. Because of that, I tend to pirate first, and if it's good, I buy it. Even if I didn't, the industry as a whole still got a lot of money it in no way deserved because I bought shitty products in the past.
I'm not condoning the behavior. It's just more complicated and nowhere near as damaging as the industry would like you to believe.
I had an issue like this come up for my home LAN. It houses three machines that are on all the time (including the router), two laptops that are transient, and a desktop that is transient.
I took an old P133 machine and installed Linux on it, then set up an iptables ruleset to handle the NAT and firewall. The router machine runs SMTP, a web server when I need it, torrents, etc.
Now for a university network, I don't know if a P133 could handle the load. But considering that it's hard to find a machine that low-end anywhere these days, I doubt this is a problem. Find a chucked out HP Pavillion (Athlon) machine and set it up this way.
My major problem with the "improper photography" laws, if that's what you're referring to, relates to the fact that it removes a defense that men are using for false rape allegations. (i.e., taping their sexual encounters then locking the things up in case some girl ever claims that she was raped.)
Indeed, like I said, this will take videobloggery to the next level. Yes, people will start posting on their blogs videos of themselves performing the sexual rites. That's just part of the liberalization of the youth of America and Europe. This is the technology that'll allow the social changes to bloom.
Well, more free porn, I guess. We all know there isn't enough of that on the Internet now.:)
A control of the media player used by the majority gives microsoft leverage, and I think we can all agree that giving microsoft control over anything a bad idea..
True enough. To everyone else, it's a moot point so long as the codecs are either open, or can be easily and legally ripped for other media players and other platforms. We all know Microsoft has a terrible record with this.
No kidding. It's a stupid concept. I'm in no way a Microsoft-lover, but the reality is that this changes nothing. Linux has xine, totem, gxine, mplayer, and plenty of other variants. Windows users can, and likely will, just download Media Player.
What difference does it really make? Am I missing something?
Indeed.
At the top of my screen right now, as I type this, is a stupid ad for tigerdirect.com. I'm never going to buy anything from tigerdirect.com, at least not in any way based on that ad. In well over a decade of using the net, I have yet to actually click on a damned banner ad intentionally, and I've never bought anything based on one. I find the ads annoying. In fact, given that advertisers are usually bullshit artists, I'm more likely to not buy from a company because they have a stupid ad.
Am I costing Slashdot money? Well, maybe, since I'm using their bandwidth, and maybe they get paid per ad display. But am I costing the company hosting that ad or the company advertising money? No. I'm chosing not to send my business there, and I'm not swayed by their annoying ad. Ironically, I'm causing the ad hosting company and the company advertised to not waste money on something that is totally ineffective when targetted towards me. Slashdot loses because they have a flawed business model by relying on ads. The advertising hosting company loses because they have a flawed business model based on relaying ads. The advertised company loses nothing.
Over the last few months, I've gotten literally about a hundred envelopes marked things like "IMPORTANT STUDENT LOAN INFORMATION -- TIME SENSITIVE -- DO NOT DISCARD!!!" They were all ads. Every one of them. As a result of the fradulent business practice and the fact that it's horribly annoying, I won't do business with them either.
When I'm driving in my car and they go into a block of advertising, I change the channel. If all the channels I flip through have ads on at the same time, I switch bands (AM to FM, or visa versa). If that happens, I usually turn the damned radio off for a few minutes.
I have a Tivo. I use it to time-shift programs. If the program has 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of ads (i.e., all of them except for "premium" cable like HBO), I 30-second-skip through the ads. Yes, I guess I'm mooching off the poor television station. But I'm not going to buy the crap they're shovelling anyway! How many ads for feminine hygene products, Viagra, Plavix, car dealerships, and community service announcements must I sit through?
When I want to buy something, I'll go look in the paper, or go to the store, or open an advertising rag, or do a web search. At that point, and only at that point, might the ads be effective.
Americans are in total and utter ad overload. The ads are for many people, like me, completely ineffective because we just ignore the damned things. Since they aren't effective, they are losing absolutely nothing by me skipping the things.
Frankly, I've half a mind to start sorting through my U.S. Mail and cramming the worthless junk crap that's without even the slightest interest to me back in the box after obliterating the recipient's address (mine) and writing "return to sender." Not that it would accomplish anything except saving me from cluttering my trashcan.
Add to all this those advertisements that have no effect but to piss me off because they're bullshit, filled with bad logic, are mind-numbingly stupid, are literally insulting (e.g., ads painting all men as buffoons), or are just out-and-out annoying, and it's simpler for me to simply stop listening to them.
Want to fix it? Target ads somehow. Don't make annoying ads. Don't make offensive ads. Don't make utterly stupid ads. Don't make ads with complete non-sequitors like "The year is coming to and end, so COME OUT AND GET A NEW DEAL ON A BRAND NEW CAR!"
Advertisers abused an effective thing. (Yes, spammers also did wonders on this front.) The business models that depend on a fundamentally flawed model of being advertiser-supported in the ways outlined are going to fail too unless they figure out another way to deal with it.
As for why I haven't subscribed to Slashdot? Do micropayments and charge me $1 a month or something, and I might pay. Get rid of the dumb "per page" subscription model.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to use something like iTunes. Unfortunately, because of the DRM, the fact that the files aren't compatible with Linux, my Palm, and whatever else I want it to be with, I'd rather just pirate the damned thing. Then I get it in a format I know works.
Computer software. If the first damned thing that I'm going to do is scour the net for a "nocd" patch to get rid of the ridiculous SecureROM crap, then I'm more likely to grab the entire package. Add to that a point-of-sale variation on DRM, the no-return policies, and the fact that so much of the software out there sucks, doesn't perform as advertised, crashes, or is incompatible with hardware it should work with, and people are more likely to pirate the software.
The content companies can keep shooting themselves in the foot. Hopefully, the U.S. government will eventually come in and slap all these companies down with anti-trust violations and the like, but I'm not holding my breath. Microsoft, the RIAA, et al. donate a lot of money, you know.
*sigh* Nothing new here. Move along now.
Thanks for a very clear answer. (Not quite like I needed a simplistic answer, but there are thousands out there -- yes, who are also reading Slashdot -- who do.)
In other words, I might support it if it does its job (reduces spam) while simultaneously allowing me a reasonable level of freedom (i.e., ability to continue running my mail system). The concern I always have is that it might turn into what port 25 blocking has become: a mechanism to force users to route mail through pathetic "approved' servers that do bizarre things with mail.
For better or worse, I think when that happens you might see an alternative to SMTP and the standard mail system come about. I personally think that will be a good thing.
If they broke in and the system was properly designed, shouldn't they have what amounts to an /etc/passwd file which they then have to crack? In other words, if you used strong passwords, you should be safer than if you used "Z1ON101" or "secret" as the password?
Not that this by any stretch of the imagination implies that a "strong" password can't be cracked in this situation, just that it's more trouble.
To its credit, the thing did detect that it was out to lunch and reboot, and it did return my card when it rebooted and discovered that it had one in the reader.
On the other hand, it's been compiling its systems upgrade for hours now, and is just now on package 10 of 118. Right now, it's compiling gcc 3.4.4, and by the looks of it, it'll be compiling this stuff until the weekend.
Linux is very, very, very good at making the best out of low-value hardware. I do wish compiling was faster like it was "in the good old days."
How does this relate to the parent? Simple. I have a P4 laptop with 512MB of RAM, and sometimes even it runs like a pig in X11. Most of that is because software authors insist on having obscene memory footprints for their packages. (Come on, 50MB+ to run a file sharing program? Good lord. Stop writing it in Java.)
And for the people who are unable to see the obvious, no I am NOT running a GUI or anything of the sort on that P133, no I don't expect things to be optimized for that kind of low-end hardware (I'd bitch if it was), and no I don't use that previously mentioned filesharing program for just that reason.
What seems like five minutes later, your card comes rocketting out of the machine at warp 9 like it always does. Then wash, rinse, repeat.
Ah, the joys of a Windows world. Every time I walk up to one of the Diebold machines, I expect it to start popping up sex ads, asking me if I want to install Gator, or God only knows what else.
No, we're in total agreement. What I was complaining about was integrated hardware that comes from OEMs. For example, these cheap-ass BroadCOM WiFi cards in HP laptops. Sure, I could go buy a decent WiFi card and hang it out of a slot, but I shouldn't have to.
As I stated, I really don't care too much if they produce an actual driver. But they need to release the specs so that I can make a driver myself for the community if I'm so inclined.
One machine I have has a DLink wireless card in it. I installed the acx_100 driver, which seems to be the driver for it. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has some bogus "feature" in the hardware that causes the network card to reset itself every so often. When that happens, the network card drops off the net, and doesn't come back up until a reboot.
The proper thing for the manufacturer to do is either release a Linux driver for their card, or document the incompatability so that I can hack support for it into the driver and release it. In this case, I've done the work for them, for crying out loud.
By the way, I did call the DLink cretins and ask about this. They knew nothing. Their answer was that they don't support Linux. When you release hardware, either release drivers for the predominant operating systems (which is now Linux and Windows), or at least have the decency to release the specs so someone can cover your lazy ass. They don't do this.
I think they honestly think that someone isn't eventually going to get pissed off enough to reverse engineer the damned card, which if I can ever isolate the problem I'm going to do and blow all over the Internet, along with a message proclaiming how much their company sucks.
BroadCom is another one. They release no information about their cards, and lock users into them by building them into the laptop. So you buy a new HP laptop, and its wireless card is a BroadCom. Oops. Sorry.
Vendors like Intel do, for the most part. Vendors of hardware like WiFi cards most certaintly do NOT, and I can personally attest to this. Currently, I'm having to use ndiswrapper, which is a kludge that tries to place an API over a Windows network card driver so that the Windows driver will work. This should never have to happen in the first place, because the hardware vendor should release a damned driver.
I might as well comment on this since health care came into it.
Most hospitals use Windows exclusively for user interface boxes. Their backend systems use things like AIX, Linux, or some other flavor of UNIX to run the databases and such. The catch is that universally these user (Windows) systems are overloaded, cumbersome, full of security holes, and a total mess.
Take a real life example of a hospital system that has one major inpatient facility, and a bunch of outlying clinics. Their backend uses some UNIX variant, and they use some Windows program to interface with it. So far not bad. Enter the problems.
First off, there is no unified user home directory system. (Yes, Windows can do this.) Under UNIX, the simplest way to handle it is do a networked stock setup of all the user machines, mount home directories under NFS (or preferably something better), and avoid a lot of problem. This helps with data security, because patient information (e.g., the progress note I just typed in Word) is saved under my user account with default permissions of -rw-------. Second, this means that if I go to one of the outlying clinics, I can still access my files.
I've actually thought really hard for a few years now about why these hospitals blow literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Windows machines, when they could set up Linux machines that are better administatable for much less. After they set this up, they have to deal with all the random crap of people violating the security protocol by installing God only knows what (Gator, anyone?) which, even if it affects only their account, is still a problem.
But perhaps the biggest problem with Windows in these environments is this: The things take so god awful long to log a user in (two minutes at least at my last place of work on a 2GHz box) for whatever reason that much of the time people don't even bother to log in and out. That leaves a terminal sitting there, and makes the password protection at the OS level worthless. (Yes, obviously something is wrong with all these installations -- probably Novell -- but it's universal. I've never seen a Linux installation that bad, EVER, in ten years.)
The second is for games that I just can't find. This is the result of shoddy marketting, or the retail houses refusing to stock them. A perfect example of this is "Falcon 4: Allied Force" which I pirated, and will buy when I find it...and as soon as they release a package to keep the damned thing from crashing to desktop on bombing runs when you switch to engage an air-to-air threat.
Now, expense. I don't fault the software houses for selling these games at what they do, because I know how much it often costs to make these things. Unfortunately, the cost combined with the proliferation of software that is basically crap forces people to spend their money a little more wisely. I'm a student on a shoestring budget, and also happen to have a relatively short attention span, so these things aren't exactly affordable for me much of the time.
Does this excuse pirating? No. Frankly, I'd say that the assinine "no return" policies do, but the expense doesn't. Nevertheless, it makes it a lot more understandable.
As for movies and TV, I exclusively pirate those movies that I won't go to see anyway. Either because I don't have time, or I'm in a position where I'm going to have my ass paged out of it two or three times and therefore can't go see one. In this sense, the industry has lost nothing at all, and if the movie is decent benefits from my recommending it. For television, I don't watch the ads anyway, so again, no loss there.
"But that doesn't make it right!" No it doesn't. but think about it.
I'd like to say that this shouldn't even be an issue, but unfortunately that would damn us to Windows-like constant reboot-on-install-and-update hell. (I assume this is a large reason of why Windows demands reboots after updates.)
A somewhat less foolproof solution would be to drop the machine to single user, then bring it back to multiuser. That has its own set of obvious problems that aren't acceptible in every situation.
Mine crashes a fair bit, but it's mostly because of some crappy freeware medical software I have installed.
However, the reboot takes minutes, not seconds. Now that is farking rediculous and makes crashing a royal pain in my ass.
Idiots.
I have s aneaky suspicion that he did it to make a point. Unfortunately, if he comes out and says or blatently acts like he did it only to make a point, it won't work anymore. So he files bogus, stupid lawsuits in an attempt to get the law changed.
They do. The Matrix Revolutions comes out, and lines and crowds at the theatre are ridiculous. Maybe some people want to see the movie before it's totally spoiled by people talking about it, but can't because they actually have jobs, so they pirate it. A large percentage of them in this case will still go see it in the theatre, because it's part of the "experience."
Computer games are similar, but for a different reason. You have no idea how many computer games I've bought that have just flat-out SUCKED, or wouldn't run, or were full of bugs. Because of that, I tend to pirate first, and if it's good, I buy it. Even if I didn't, the industry as a whole still got a lot of money it in no way deserved because I bought shitty products in the past.
I'm not condoning the behavior. It's just more complicated and nowhere near as damaging as the industry would like you to believe.
I took an old P133 machine and installed Linux on it, then set up an iptables ruleset to handle the NAT and firewall. The router machine runs SMTP, a web server when I need it, torrents, etc.
Now for a university network, I don't know if a P133 could handle the load. But considering that it's hard to find a machine that low-end anywhere these days, I doubt this is a problem. Find a chucked out HP Pavillion (Athlon) machine and set it up this way.
My major problem with the "improper photography" laws, if that's what you're referring to, relates to the fact that it removes a defense that men are using for false rape allegations. (i.e., taping their sexual encounters then locking the things up in case some girl ever claims that she was raped.)
Well, more free porn, I guess. We all know there isn't enough of that on the Internet now. :)
True enough. To everyone else, it's a moot point so long as the codecs are either open, or can be easily and legally ripped for other media players and other platforms. We all know Microsoft has a terrible record with this.
What difference does it really make? Am I missing something?
Bite me.
Indeed. At the top of my screen right now, as I type this, is a stupid ad for tigerdirect.com. I'm never going to buy anything from tigerdirect.com, at least not in any way based on that ad. In well over a decade of using the net, I have yet to actually click on a damned banner ad intentionally, and I've never bought anything based on one. I find the ads annoying. In fact, given that advertisers are usually bullshit artists, I'm more likely to not buy from a company because they have a stupid ad. Am I costing Slashdot money? Well, maybe, since I'm using their bandwidth, and maybe they get paid per ad display. But am I costing the company hosting that ad or the company advertising money? No. I'm chosing not to send my business there, and I'm not swayed by their annoying ad. Ironically, I'm causing the ad hosting company and the company advertised to not waste money on something that is totally ineffective when targetted towards me. Slashdot loses because they have a flawed business model by relying on ads. The advertising hosting company loses because they have a flawed business model based on relaying ads. The advertised company loses nothing. Over the last few months, I've gotten literally about a hundred envelopes marked things like "IMPORTANT STUDENT LOAN INFORMATION -- TIME SENSITIVE -- DO NOT DISCARD!!!" They were all ads. Every one of them. As a result of the fradulent business practice and the fact that it's horribly annoying, I won't do business with them either. When I'm driving in my car and they go into a block of advertising, I change the channel. If all the channels I flip through have ads on at the same time, I switch bands (AM to FM, or visa versa). If that happens, I usually turn the damned radio off for a few minutes. I have a Tivo. I use it to time-shift programs. If the program has 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of ads (i.e., all of them except for "premium" cable like HBO), I 30-second-skip through the ads. Yes, I guess I'm mooching off the poor television station. But I'm not going to buy the crap they're shovelling anyway! How many ads for feminine hygene products, Viagra, Plavix, car dealerships, and community service announcements must I sit through? When I want to buy something, I'll go look in the paper, or go to the store, or open an advertising rag, or do a web search. At that point, and only at that point, might the ads be effective. Americans are in total and utter ad overload. The ads are for many people, like me, completely ineffective because we just ignore the damned things. Since they aren't effective, they are losing absolutely nothing by me skipping the things. Frankly, I've half a mind to start sorting through my U.S. Mail and cramming the worthless junk crap that's without even the slightest interest to me back in the box after obliterating the recipient's address (mine) and writing "return to sender." Not that it would accomplish anything except saving me from cluttering my trashcan. Add to all this those advertisements that have no effect but to piss me off because they're bullshit, filled with bad logic, are mind-numbingly stupid, are literally insulting (e.g., ads painting all men as buffoons), or are just out-and-out annoying, and it's simpler for me to simply stop listening to them. Want to fix it? Target ads somehow. Don't make annoying ads. Don't make offensive ads. Don't make utterly stupid ads. Don't make ads with complete non-sequitors like "The year is coming to and end, so COME OUT AND GET A NEW DEAL ON A BRAND NEW CAR!" Advertisers abused an effective thing. (Yes, spammers also did wonders on this front.) The business models that depend on a fundamentally flawed model of being advertiser-supported in the ways outlined are going to fail too unless they figure out another way to deal with it. As for why I haven't subscribed to Slashdot? Do micropayments and charge me $1 a month or something, and I might pay. Get rid of the dumb "per page" subscription model.