We always seem to see the hacker vs Joe 6pak mentality battle on/., and how so many of these information issues are hacker issues, and how Joe 6pak won't notice them.
Joe 6pak is going to notice this.
After all, it's only legislation, and legislation can get repealed about as quickly as it is enacted, if the voters feel strongly enough about it. It's just got to come to their attention.
At the moment, I'm equally worried about all of this DRM mess slowing down the tech industry even further. It's bad enough as it is, but just wait for new consumer products are mandated to have features that only hinder. They'd like to say it's going to spark new demand, as we all run out and spend bux upgrading all of our electronics. But since those electronics are going to cost more, and in many cases grant only reduced function, I say we'll hold on to what we have. We're going to see a further slump in consumer electronics, and therefore the rest of the electronics industry.
Do you go to your PCs to listen to music, or do you play music on your PCs while you're hacking or surfing? Would you want to compromise the capability and reliability of the PCs just so you can listen, or would you buy a Walkman? (or hack the DRM?)
> I don't know what your analogy has to do with fighting Palladium. Should we dismiss your analogy if it is built on bogus information?
My point was that DRM has nothing to do with getting music to the customer. It does nothing directly for the customer, and exists only to protect the producer. The only way it conceivably helps the customer is by keeping the producer in business.
OTOH, the existing business model for media production has problems. It's not a stretch to think that there might be a better/more efficient business model that can deliver music to the customer more conveniently and/or at a better price.
My argument is that pervasive DRM may well prevent business model experimentation, and stick us in the ??AA age, especially if the DRM is mandated and the ??AA holds the keys.
The analogy was an attempt to support the above idea, not the basis for it. Even if the analogy is bogus, it doesn't deny the potential existence of media business models better than the ??AA ones.
> First, I suspect you will find that the period of the galleon [ucla.edu]didn't overlap with the period of the clipper ship.
Oops. Urban legend strikes. I heard this one long ago, and thought it was interesting. Mr. Gorsky strikes, again.
Re:Best way to stop Palladium
on
Stopping Palladium?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
> Repeat after me : We will not win a lobbying/PR war. period.
> So let them (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, RIAA, MPAA) try to please Hollywood : if Joe User has a true alternative to > the annoyances of Palladium, he will switch in no time.
I agree 100%.
But there is one other thing that we MUST fight for. Palladium MUST always be optional. It MUST always be possible to distribute non-encumbered media through non-encumbered PCs. At the very least, this leaves the door open for a new business model to emerge and compete with the ??AA on it's own content, leaving theirs under DRM.
I'd like to bring back an old analogy I once heard with Clipper Ships and Galleons. Both were shipping and both had piracy problems on the high seas. The Galleons had armaments and even more heavily armed escorts, perpared to fight off any pirates. The Clipper Ships were simply FAST, and couldn't be attacked or boarded by pirates. Both were viable shipping models, and both got the cargo there. But the armed escort of the Galleon did *nothing* beyond make sure the cargo got there. The speed of the Clipper made sure the cargo got there, plus it got there faster, delighting the customer.
Guess which won in the market? (The steamship, obviously. But in the days of sail shipping, the clipper was IT.)
Re:Best way to stop Palladium
on
Stopping Palladium?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
> I don't understand why you think the end user will be annoyed by palladiun. It will be resident and running by default on > his system and because those services are running, the 'media providers' will allow said movies and music to stream > to his system.
What on Earth make you think that Microsoft will field a bug-free Palladium? They have enough troubles making the PC work when it's only trying TO work. Now they're going to add a TON of code whose whole purpose is to make the PC NOT work under certain circumstances. It goes a lot further, because when the PC is booting under Palladium, the PC is trying NOT to load its device drivers and other critical OS components, under certain circumstances.
This thing is SOOOOOO rife with possiblities for things to go wrong that I'll be amazed if it doesn't backfire, or have better than a 75% success rate on first release to the real world.
Besides....
What do you do with your PC today? How often do you really use it to view/listen to media? For my own part, most of my media usage is on dedicated media machines, not my PC. I'm not going to "break" my PC so I can play media with it, and I suspect a lot of others won't, either.
> Or as tough as telling someone who is allergic to penicillin to a life-threatening degree that other means of fighting an > equally life-threatening disease are 'off-limits' until the next rotation period.
I would certainly hope that any rotation scheme would leave some sort of overlap to handle allergies, etc. My brother and son are allergic to penicillin, but there are numerous other antibiotics that they can take. Of course I don't know what the situation is with multi-allergic people.
In one article I read on this topic, antibiotic resistance was described as an armor for the bacteria. The analogy was further extended to show that there is a metabolic cost for that resistance. In other words, all else being equal, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are less competitive than those without the resistance. It's just that when antibiotics are around, that resistance makes all of the difference.
Antibiotics come in families, and a given family will work against bacteria in largely the same way. Imagine if we could take an entire antibiotic family out of use around the world for some period of years.
As mentioned earlier antibiotic resistance comes with a cost. If an antibiotic family is intentionally unused, under evolutionary pressure bacteria would now tend to drop their resistance. I have no idea how long it would take, but I'm sure it could be estimated by someone 'skilled in the art.'
This would suggest a worldwide policy of antibiotic rotation. Of course doing anything on a worldwide basis is tough, as is telling someone to quit making money on penicillin-family antibiotics for a decade.
Because honestly I have better things to do with my money than merely try to hurt MS. Besides, my buying an XBox isn't going to do anything significant to them.
I would buy an XBox if I had a purpose that it would fit well and cost effectively. Then I would also enjoy the teeny amount of harm I was doing to MS. Though as you say, I'm probably just hurting my own tax bill.
At the moment, I don't have enough spare time to play console games, not even enough time to pursue the PC-based games I already have. So for me, an XBox might be worth considering as a DVD player or a resource on my LAN. If I then had an XBox for other purposes, I might consider games. But for both functions I mentioned, there are cheaper alternatives.
BTW, Microsoft isn't all evil, they just do a good job of looking that way. My brother loaned me "Breaking Windows," an inside view written around/during the antitrust years. It's very interesting and portrays a terribly divided company. I'm only about halfway through, so don't know if today's MS has mended fences inside, or not.
Monopoly status can kick in well below 100% market share. It's more a matter of what the monopolist is capable of doing to a given market than the absolute share. Once you're big enough to twist the arms of competitors and customers, monopoly concerns begin.
Part of the problem is the attitude apparently shipped with MS products that MSCE==competent sysadmin for those systems.
I don't have the numbers on my fingertips, but I suspect that none of the major Win-exploits of the past few years used a new hole. They spread so badly because of poor administration. By that token, it would seem that a competent sysadmin could indeed run a secure Win-based business.
But a few weeks back there was a new kid in town, and this time it hit Linux - slapper. From what I understand, this was a newly discovered hole that was made into a worm in record time. Still the infection rate turned out to be minor, mostly because of competent sysadmins and the **rapid release** of a security fix.
Slapper broke new ground in several respects, between hole-to-worm time and its use of peer-to-peer. Now try running this combination against the more common (not yours obviously, though you can only deploy released patches) Windows security environment. Add to this the chilling effect of the DMCA on grey-hat activities, especially in the closed-source security arena.
They didn't say *whose* security they were improving. They said nothing whatsoever about customers' security.
I suspect it's really the game developers' security and most important of all, Microsoft's security.
Don't forget that the XBox is a loss-leader, meant to generate revenue by selling games. If people are buying an XBox for other missions, and don't buy games, then it's costing MS money. If I weren't so cash-strapped at the moment, I would consider doing this. Imagine spending money on a Microsoft product and hurting their bottom line. Brings a grin. In the future I may still consider an XBox for dedicated function, but you can be sure that 'chipability will be part of the decision process.
1: That the changes really are only on the hardware backend, and don't really affect games currently marketed and in development. Sometimes hardware/software interactions can be quite subtle, and don't act the way you expected.
2: That some customers don't choose and buy a game box precisely *because* it can be 'chipped. At the moment, I don't own a DVD player. But whenever I do choose to get one, it *will* be one that can be and has been readily 'chipped.
A week or two back, in Vermont
on
Aurora Season Begins
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
We had a spectacular aurora display, visible even with the street lights. Reds, greens, even some blue and yellow, with both fast and slow flickering. It was only between 9:00 and 9:30, so we told several neighbors, and were all standing in the (dead end) street watching.
I'm glad that especially the kids got to see it, since they'd never had the chance, before.
I thought that The Source was just about the original, it was the first online service I'd ever heard of. I still remember the $99 sign-up fee, though I never did. My first connection was CompuServe, with a 5,3 digit number.
Nor do I argue about your points a, b, and c. But I think you've neglected connecting people to each other by focusing on the MCI failure. My mom (late 70's) is lost without the Internet, because it's how she keeps in touch with here scattered family and friends, not to mention the ones in town. (She routinely does instant messaging with a friend who is a local phone call - go figure.) She can't consistently figure out how to use the web, in spite of multiple lessons. My sister keeps in touch with a bunch of friends on an author's mailing list - an online community. I suspect MCI failed either because the market wasn't ready, they had business problems, or some part of their offering wasn' right.
As for "different from the current internet." No Problem. I like the net as it is, except for the absurd TOS of my broadband provider. I'm more fearing the Internet as the media giants would reshape it.
Nor would I want to lock out all for-pay information. But I believe the fundamental difference is still present. The Internet is connectivity, and that for-pay information is just one of the thing we can connect to. Retaining the freedom to connect "directly" to each other (neglecting a few centralized facilities like SMTP and POP servers, which exist in order to give us virtual direct connectivity) is the essence, as well as the option to connect to whichever for-pay facilities I choose.
Some of the media industry proposals have also attempted to case "asymmetry" into the system. Simply crippling peer-to-peer is a form of asymmetry, where some connections are better than others.
is that broadband Internet is a disruptive technology.
Unfortunately we have current business trying to deploy broadband, and figure out how to make money from it in the context of their current business models. Hence Adelphia has this black cable coming into my house, and feeds me both TV and Internet over it. Now if I've already got TV/movies coming over that cable, and the TV/movie is seldom worth watching, why-oh-why do I want to turn my Internet into an alternative TV/movie distribution medium?
The real value of broadband is going to be in things that don't happen over other means, or at least where broadband makes them happen markedly cheaper/better. Two things pop up immediately, network gaming and filesharing. For both of these, the Internet is a unique piece of plumbing, and broadband Internet gives true enablement.
Of course, filesharing currently seems to be criminalized, but that's not necessarily true. That's largely because ??AA business models haven't adapted. In that respect, the IMHO ??AA business model (artificial scarcity) is the greatest impediment to widespread broadband. Coming up with another business model that works in this environment and allows artists/publishers to make a reasonable ROI is another issue, but it needs exploration. Unfortunately the current route being taken by the ??AA may well attempt to deny that exploration.
There's another ramification, in that the ??AA business model and current (especially cable, which is highly tied into the MPAA) broadband service is not friendly toward peer-to-peer, which is really desirable for gaming. Sure, there are the big game servers, but it would also be highly desirable for a few kids to get together on their own. From a parental point of view direct connect between my kids and their friends is preferableover a big gameserver, too.
Back in the early days of telecomputing, there were outfits like The Source, CompuServe, Genie, and the like. Those that survived realized that their users really wanted to get in touch with each other. Maybe they started out serving informaton, but either they wound up serving connectivity, or they died. Just about the entire industry seems to have forgotten that lesson, and is trying its hardest to turn the Internet from connectivity into information. *Their* information, for a price, preferably paid *every* time. Precisely the model that failed decades before.
So until someone gets a clue, and figures out that broadband will enable new markets rather than old, and begins to explore those new markets, I don't see much change. Alternatively, by dropping the cost significantly, it's just better than dialup, which others have mentioned.
Right here we're all falling into "The Hollywood Trap." Their apparent belief is that all of us have computers for no reason other than to pirate their precious IP, which is why they're trying to push DRM so deep into the infrastructure.
Their starting point is simply wrong. The PC is a general purpose machine. Even if I'm using it to view/hear media, that's only one of the things I do with it. If I only wanted to view/hear media, I'd buy a DVD player and be done with it.
Especially since the DRM push includes Microsoft's Palladium, none of us believe it will be without glitches. There are going to be some PCs and PC parts that won't play some media. Sometimes it'll change from boot to boot. When booted in "DRM Mode" sometimes these PCs won't even boot at all, because there'll be a missed handshake of some sort in the DRM validation.
I'll put forth the guess that most of the time, DRM PCs will be booted in non-DRM mode, only booting DRM mode to view/hear DRM media. For several years, when booting DRM mode, it's going to be a hit-or-miss thing to hope the system really comes up, and really plays the media. (I'll guess at an 85-90% success rate to boot and play DRM media, elevated within 6-9 months to 90-95%, and slow progress after that.)
When the first PC maker gets to your step 5, that machine will be rejected in the marketplace.
Remember, the PC is a general-purpose machine, and DRM potentially impairs function, only allowing the PC to act like a DVD/CD player. It enables a side-purpose usually handled better by specialized hardware, and only gets in the way of the prime mission.
If all PC makers undertook Step 5 together, it might go, but that's not going to happen. Someone will be first with some model, and first the returns will be horrible, then sales will be dismal. Nobody will follow.
Since you've mentioned both intelligence and science-fiction wish-fulfillment...
I recently read a short story called Swarm, by Bruce Sterling. SPOILER FOLLOWS
The story is about contact between warring factions in our solar system and a hive entity called the Swarm. One of our factions is hoping to pick up advanced biological techniques from the apparently unintelligent Swarm to use in its war with the other faction. The other faction has already failed fatally in its similar efforts.
By the end of the story, the protagonists encounter a previously unknown type of larva being gestated by the Swarm. It is "Intelligence," and goes on to discuss the Swarm's position with the remaining protagonist.
It turns out that (drum roll, please) in the Swarm's long experience, intelligence is not a survival trait. Nearly all of the time, the Swarm is just plain better off without Intelligence, and has adapted to exist that way. Every now and then, such as the particular time the story occurs, the Swarm determines that it needs some Intelligence, and gestates an appropriate larva. The larva lives a few thousand years, long enough to handle the crisis, and then dies, leaving the Swarm to go its merry way.
Intelligence has proven a survival trait for the human species, at least for the past 30,000 years or so. But from Nature's perspective, that's only the short run.
Deals with chemically-induced near-death experiences, I suppose in the same realm as out-of-body. One researcher studying the chemical/neurotransmitter side, one studying the meaning of the experience.
The whole thing goes back to, in your words, "being silly" because that's what I was doing. My second point, a minor one, was that as silly as my first point was, I'm sure that there are people who would take it.
As for my co-worker who believes, or at least believed, in NaMBLA, he's not on the net, and as far as I know, has no web site. His mention was the first time I'd ever heard of it, and I've only ever heard one other reference. I still don't think I'm smearing, though perhaps I'm expressing a negative attitude towards neo-conservatives, but certainly more gently than much of what I've seen on/.
I've known some neo-conservatives at work who think that way. Maybe some of them aren't quite that silly, but they're darned close. At least some of them really believe in NaMBLA, or at least used to.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you arguing in favor of a preemptive biosphere change?
That could set a bad precedent. You never know when the Martians might decide the Earth is too wet for their liking.
We always seem to see the hacker vs Joe 6pak mentality battle on /., and how so many of these information issues are hacker issues, and how Joe 6pak won't notice them.
Joe 6pak is going to notice this.
After all, it's only legislation, and legislation can get repealed about as quickly as it is enacted, if the voters feel strongly enough about it. It's just got to come to their attention.
At the moment, I'm equally worried about all of this DRM mess slowing down the tech industry even further. It's bad enough as it is, but just wait for new consumer products are mandated to have features that only hinder. They'd like to say it's going to spark new demand, as we all run out and spend bux upgrading all of our electronics. But since those electronics are going to cost more, and in many cases grant only reduced function, I say we'll hold on to what we have. We're going to see a further slump in consumer electronics, and therefore the rest of the electronics industry.
Do you go to your PCs to listen to music, or do you play music on your PCs while you're hacking or surfing? Would you want to compromise the capability and reliability of the PCs just so you can listen, or would you buy a Walkman? (or hack the DRM?)
> I don't know what your analogy has to do with fighting Palladium. Should we dismiss your analogy if it is built on bogus information?
My point was that DRM has nothing to do with getting music to the customer. It does nothing directly for the customer, and exists only to protect the producer. The only way it conceivably helps the customer is by keeping the producer in business.
OTOH, the existing business model for media production has problems. It's not a stretch to think that there might be a better/more efficient business model that can deliver music to the customer more conveniently and/or at a better price.
My argument is that pervasive DRM may well prevent business model experimentation, and stick us in the ??AA age, especially if the DRM is mandated and the ??AA holds the keys.
The analogy was an attempt to support the above idea, not the basis for it. Even if the analogy is bogus, it doesn't deny the potential existence of media business models better than the ??AA ones.
> First, I suspect you will find that the period of the galleon [ucla.edu]didn't overlap with the period of the clipper ship.
Oops. Urban legend strikes. I heard this one long ago, and thought it was interesting. Mr. Gorsky strikes, again.
> Repeat after me : We will not win a lobbying/PR war. period.
> So let them (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, RIAA, MPAA) try to please Hollywood : if Joe User has a true alternative to
> the annoyances of Palladium, he will switch in no time.
I agree 100%.
But there is one other thing that we MUST fight for. Palladium MUST always be optional. It MUST always be possible to distribute non-encumbered media through non-encumbered PCs. At the very least, this leaves the door open for a new business model to emerge and compete with the ??AA on it's own content, leaving theirs under DRM.
I'd like to bring back an old analogy I once heard with Clipper Ships and Galleons. Both were shipping and both had piracy problems on the high seas. The Galleons had armaments and even more heavily armed escorts, perpared to fight off any pirates. The Clipper Ships were simply FAST, and couldn't be attacked or boarded by pirates. Both were viable shipping models, and both got the cargo there. But the armed escort of the Galleon did *nothing* beyond make sure the cargo got there. The speed of the Clipper made sure the cargo got there, plus it got there faster, delighting the customer.
Guess which won in the market?
(The steamship, obviously. But in the days of sail shipping, the clipper was IT.)
> I don't understand why you think the end user will be annoyed by palladiun. It will be resident and running by default on
> his system and because those services are running, the 'media providers' will allow said movies and music to stream
> to his system.
What on Earth make you think that Microsoft will field a bug-free Palladium? They have enough troubles making the PC work when it's only trying TO work. Now they're going to add a TON of code whose whole purpose is to make the PC NOT work under certain circumstances. It goes a lot further, because when the PC is booting under Palladium, the PC is trying NOT to load its device drivers and other critical OS components, under certain circumstances.
This thing is SOOOOOO rife with possiblities for things to go wrong that I'll be amazed if it doesn't backfire, or have better than a 75% success rate on first release to the real world.
Besides....
What do you do with your PC today? How often do you really use it to view/listen to media? For my own part, most of my media usage is on dedicated media machines, not my PC. I'm not going to "break" my PC so I can play media with it, and I suspect a lot of others won't, either.
> Or as tough as telling someone who is allergic to penicillin to a life-threatening degree that other means of fighting an
> equally life-threatening disease are 'off-limits' until the next rotation period.
I would certainly hope that any rotation scheme would leave some sort of overlap to handle allergies, etc. My brother and son are allergic to penicillin, but there are numerous other antibiotics that they can take. Of course I don't know what the situation is with multi-allergic people.
In one article I read on this topic, antibiotic resistance was described as an armor for the bacteria. The analogy was further extended to show that there is a metabolic cost for that resistance. In other words, all else being equal, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are less competitive than those without the resistance. It's just that when antibiotics are around, that resistance makes all of the difference.
Antibiotics come in families, and a given family will work against bacteria in largely the same way. Imagine if we could take an entire antibiotic family out of use around the world for some period of years.
As mentioned earlier antibiotic resistance comes with a cost. If an antibiotic family is intentionally unused, under evolutionary pressure bacteria would now tend to drop their resistance. I have no idea how long it would take, but I'm sure it could be estimated by someone 'skilled in the art.'
This would suggest a worldwide policy of antibiotic rotation. Of course doing anything on a worldwide basis is tough, as is telling someone to quit making money on penicillin-family antibiotics for a decade.
Evolution happens primarily through death, or at least failure to reproduce.
Are you volunteering?
Because honestly I have better things to do with my money than merely try to hurt MS. Besides, my buying an XBox isn't going to do anything significant to them.
I would buy an XBox if I had a purpose that it would fit well and cost effectively. Then I would also enjoy the teeny amount of harm I was doing to MS. Though as you say, I'm probably just hurting my own tax bill.
At the moment, I don't have enough spare time to play console games, not even enough time to pursue the PC-based games I already have. So for me, an XBox might be worth considering as a DVD player or a resource on my LAN. If I then had an XBox for other purposes, I might consider games. But for both functions I mentioned, there are cheaper alternatives.
BTW, Microsoft isn't all evil, they just do a good job of looking that way. My brother loaned me "Breaking Windows," an inside view written around/during the antitrust years. It's very interesting and portrays a terribly divided company. I'm only about halfway through, so don't know if today's MS has mended fences inside, or not.
Monopoly status can kick in well below 100% market share. It's more a matter of what the monopolist is capable of doing to a given market than the absolute share. Once you're big enough to twist the arms of competitors and customers, monopoly concerns begin.
You're obviously better than the average MSCE.
Part of the problem is the attitude apparently shipped with MS products that MSCE==competent sysadmin for those systems.
I don't have the numbers on my fingertips, but I suspect that none of the major Win-exploits of the past few years used a new hole. They spread so badly because of poor administration. By that token, it would seem that a competent sysadmin could indeed run a secure Win-based business.
But a few weeks back there was a new kid in town, and this time it hit Linux - slapper. From what I understand, this was a newly discovered hole that was made into a worm in record time. Still the infection rate turned out to be minor, mostly because of competent sysadmins and the **rapid release** of a security fix.
Slapper broke new ground in several respects, between hole-to-worm time and its use of peer-to-peer. Now try running this combination against the more common (not yours obviously, though you can only deploy released patches) Windows security environment. Add to this the chilling effect of the DMCA on grey-hat activities, especially in the closed-source security arena.
They didn't say *whose* security they were improving. They said nothing whatsoever about customers' security.
I suspect it's really the game developers' security and most important of all, Microsoft's security.
Don't forget that the XBox is a loss-leader, meant to generate revenue by selling games. If people are buying an XBox for other missions, and don't buy games, then it's costing MS money. If I weren't so cash-strapped at the moment, I would consider doing this. Imagine spending money on a Microsoft product and hurting their bottom line. Brings a grin. In the future I may still consider an XBox for dedicated function, but you can be sure that 'chipability will be part of the decision process.
There are two presumptions here:
1: That the changes really are only on the hardware backend, and don't really affect games currently marketed and in development. Sometimes hardware/software interactions can be quite subtle, and don't act the way you expected.
2: That some customers don't choose and buy a game box precisely *because* it can be 'chipped. At the moment, I don't own a DVD player. But whenever I do choose to get one, it *will* be one that can be and has been readily 'chipped.
We had a spectacular aurora display, visible even with the street lights. Reds, greens, even some blue and yellow, with both fast and slow flickering. It was only between 9:00 and 9:30, so we told several neighbors, and were all standing in the (dead end) street watching.
I'm glad that especially the kids got to see it, since they'd never had the chance, before.
I thought that The Source was just about the original, it was the first online service I'd ever heard of. I still remember the $99 sign-up fee, though I never did. My first connection was CompuServe, with a 5,3 digit number.
Nor do I argue about your points a, b, and c. But I think you've neglected connecting people to each other by focusing on the MCI failure. My mom (late 70's) is lost without the Internet, because it's how she keeps in touch with here scattered family and friends, not to mention the ones in town. (She routinely does instant messaging with a friend who is a local phone call - go figure.) She can't consistently figure out how to use the web, in spite of multiple lessons. My sister keeps in touch with a bunch of friends on an author's mailing list - an online community. I suspect MCI failed either because the market wasn't ready, they had business problems, or some part of their offering wasn' right.
As for "different from the current internet." No Problem. I like the net as it is, except for the absurd TOS of my broadband provider. I'm more fearing the Internet as the media giants would reshape it.
Nor would I want to lock out all for-pay information. But I believe the fundamental difference is still present. The Internet is connectivity, and that for-pay information is just one of the thing we can connect to. Retaining the freedom to connect "directly" to each other (neglecting a few centralized facilities like SMTP and POP servers, which exist in order to give us virtual direct connectivity) is the essence, as well as the option to connect to whichever for-pay facilities I choose.
Some of the media industry proposals have also attempted to case "asymmetry" into the system. Simply crippling peer-to-peer is a form of asymmetry, where some connections are better than others.
is that broadband Internet is a disruptive technology.
Unfortunately we have current business trying to deploy broadband, and figure out how to make money from it in the context of their current business models. Hence Adelphia has this black cable coming into my house, and feeds me both TV and Internet over it. Now if I've already got TV/movies coming over that cable, and the TV/movie is seldom worth watching, why-oh-why do I want to turn my Internet into an alternative TV/movie distribution medium?
The real value of broadband is going to be in things that don't happen over other means, or at least where broadband makes them happen markedly cheaper/better. Two things pop up immediately, network gaming and filesharing. For both of these, the Internet is a unique piece of plumbing, and broadband Internet gives true enablement.
Of course, filesharing currently seems to be criminalized, but that's not necessarily true. That's largely because ??AA business models haven't adapted. In that respect, the IMHO ??AA business model (artificial scarcity) is the greatest impediment to widespread broadband. Coming up with another business model that works in this environment and allows artists/publishers to make a reasonable ROI is another issue, but it needs exploration. Unfortunately the current route being taken by the ??AA may well attempt to deny that exploration.
There's another ramification, in that the ??AA business model and current (especially cable, which is highly tied into the MPAA) broadband service is not friendly toward peer-to-peer, which is really desirable for gaming. Sure, there are the big game servers, but it would also be highly desirable for a few kids to get together on their own. From a parental point of view direct connect between my kids and their friends is preferableover a big gameserver, too.
Back in the early days of telecomputing, there were outfits like The Source, CompuServe, Genie, and the like. Those that survived realized that their users really wanted to get in touch with each other. Maybe they started out serving informaton, but either they wound up serving connectivity, or they died. Just about the entire industry seems to have forgotten that lesson, and is trying its hardest to turn the Internet from connectivity into information. *Their* information, for a price, preferably paid *every* time. Precisely the model that failed decades before.
So until someone gets a clue, and figures out that broadband will enable new markets rather than old, and begins to explore those new markets, I don't see much change. Alternatively, by dropping the cost significantly, it's just better than dialup, which others have mentioned.
Right here we're all falling into "The Hollywood Trap." Their apparent belief is that all of us have computers for no reason other than to pirate their precious IP, which is why they're trying to push DRM so deep into the infrastructure.
Their starting point is simply wrong. The PC is a general purpose machine. Even if I'm using it to view/hear media, that's only one of the things I do with it. If I only wanted to view/hear media, I'd buy a DVD player and be done with it.
Especially since the DRM push includes Microsoft's Palladium, none of us believe it will be without glitches. There are going to be some PCs and PC parts that won't play some media. Sometimes it'll change from boot to boot. When booted in "DRM Mode" sometimes these PCs won't even boot at all, because there'll be a missed handshake of some sort in the DRM validation.
I'll put forth the guess that most of the time, DRM PCs will be booted in non-DRM mode, only booting DRM mode to view/hear DRM media. For several years, when booting DRM mode, it's going to be a hit-or-miss thing to hope the system really comes up, and really plays the media. (I'll guess at an 85-90% success rate to boot and play DRM media, elevated within 6-9 months to 90-95%, and slow progress after that.)
When the first PC maker gets to your step 5, that machine will be rejected in the marketplace.
Remember, the PC is a general-purpose machine, and DRM potentially impairs function, only allowing the PC to act like a DVD/CD player. It enables a side-purpose usually handled better by specialized hardware, and only gets in the way of the prime mission.
If all PC makers undertook Step 5 together, it might go, but that's not going to happen. Someone will be first with some model, and first the returns will be horrible, then sales will be dismal. Nobody will follow.
Since you've mentioned both intelligence and science-fiction wish-fulfillment...
I recently read a short story called Swarm, by Bruce Sterling. SPOILER FOLLOWS
The story is about contact between warring factions in our solar system and a hive entity called the Swarm. One of our factions is hoping to pick up advanced biological techniques from the apparently unintelligent Swarm to use in its war with the other faction. The other faction has already failed fatally in its similar efforts.
By the end of the story, the protagonists encounter a previously unknown type of larva being gestated by the Swarm. It is "Intelligence," and goes on to discuss the Swarm's position with the remaining protagonist.
It turns out that (drum roll, please) in the Swarm's long experience, intelligence is not a survival trait. Nearly all of the time, the Swarm is just plain better off without Intelligence, and has adapted to exist that way. Every now and then, such as the particular time the story occurs, the Swarm determines that it needs some Intelligence, and gestates an appropriate larva. The larva lives a few thousand years, long enough to handle the crisis, and then dies, leaving the Swarm to go its merry way.
Intelligence has proven a survival trait for the human species, at least for the past 30,000 years or so. But from Nature's perspective, that's only the short run.
I'd think it's more a matter of light being rather inflexible about its speed, though I guess that is relative.
Agreed. But I thought there was something about wireless cards, too. Those would, and there was talk about winmodem-like in there.
Good book, too.
Deals with chemically-induced near-death experiences, I suppose in the same realm as out-of-body. One researcher studying the chemical/neurotransmitter side, one studying the meaning of the experience.
Lighten up.
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The whole thing goes back to, in your words, "being silly" because that's what I was doing. My second point, a minor one, was that as silly as my first point was, I'm sure that there are people who would take it.
As for my co-worker who believes, or at least believed, in NaMBLA, he's not on the net, and as far as I know, has no web site. His mention was the first time I'd ever heard of it, and I've only ever heard one other reference. I still don't think I'm smearing, though perhaps I'm expressing a negative attitude towards neo-conservatives, but certainly more gently than much of what I've seen on
I've known some neo-conservatives at work who think that way. Maybe some of them aren't quite that silly, but they're darned close. At least some of them really believe in NaMBLA, or at least used to.