Ah, but Wolfram is a mathematician, no? Presumably, then he thinks in a way that an expository style would match well to a first cut at code -- I'd bet his comments are merely code for a non-existent programming language in his mind.
I tend to do this too, when I'm developing, but I use a less precise C++ish pseudo code. It's the best way for me to think about code that will have to be shoehorned and implemented in a particular language that's likely a good implementation fit.
...but we can't publish anything because of NDA agreements with Sigma Designs
That's really sad. Perhaps Sigma could be encouraged to be more open as a way of making up for thier GPL faux-pas. I very much want to leverage a GCT Allwell iDVD3036 as a thin client set-top box, as it uses a low-power processor, with an em8400 MPEG decoder, and a CyberPro graphics chip (with two CCIR601 ports -- one for the em8400 -- digital overlay, yay!), but the em8400 and CyberPro are poorly supported -- the latter with proprietary XV extention drivers for XFree, but buggy, not doing alpha-blending and overlay properly. As this is a personal pet project, I certainly can't afford the US$15k (I'm told) CyberPro SDK.
Some here have noted that the "rogue programmer" excuse is lame on their part, but I can certainly attest to the very real risk of that happening. I once was involved in a project that deployed proprietary code on a GNU/Linux base, and made extensive use of GPL'd and open code (though our proprietary code was not extentions of any of that). With my encouragement, management hosted RMS to come and explain the "dos and don'ts" of mixing free and non-free code. Even so, programmers come and go, and cluefullness fades with time. Furthermore, while our build process was tuned to getting all the necessary binaries made, keeping track of sources to distribute (remember, there were hundreds of packages, mostly free, yet the non-free ones had to stay "very secret"), was very much an afterthought to the process and kludged in. I was forever afraid that someone would forget to tag what was free and what wasn't, or worse, get it wrong.
Sadly, while I tried my best to make sure that sources got distributed to our customers, the nature of the product was such that we'd have a few big ones, and not lots of little ones. (Think seven-figure contracts.) Furthermore, each customer would have little incentive to freely distribute the free code they received -- if they had to pay us millions for the app, they'd be damned if someone else get bits for free. So, while we complied with the GPL, our extentions to much of the GPL code (particuarly the Red Hat Anaconda installer), remain unavailable to the public at large.
The biggest problem, and one which Sigma does not face is that, while we'd put source on distribution CDs, our customers would get fully installed hardware, complete with maintenance contracts, and didn't care about installation CDs. If you make an installation and source CD, and install binaries on some hardware and just ship the hardware and not the CD, have you complied with the GPL? No, but making it clear that we either have to provide the CDs, or a transferrable written offer was a hard sell to management: "The customer does not WANT them". Convincing management that the requirement was one placed on us by the authors of the GPL code and not the customer took some doing, but I was persistent.
I'm in a similar situation today (for another employer), where installation CDs will likely not get to customers, but I've taken care to ensure that installation installs sources as well as binaries (we can afford the disk space, fortunately... so far).
I have a Sigma Designs Netstream 2000 card, complete with Linux kernel source drivers. But, the user-space library, while having a reasonably documented API, is available binary only, presumably because of CSS and Macrovision issues.
The kernel drivers appear to be little more than marshelling/unmarshelling stubs to let the user space library communicate with the card. While register-level documentation is available, it isn't developer friendly, as there is no designers' guide that would help a non-hard-core video hardware embedded developer to write their own code: maybe it's just me, but I find the lack of context establishment in the register-only documentation limiting.
People have found Sigma's proprieteray user-space code somewhat buggy, and the present situation makes it difficult for the community to write its own. While I can sympathize with Sigma Designs' predicament following the apparent mistake of a rogue programmer, one way they can "make it up" to the community would be to go beyond the minimal legal GPL requirements and release more source and documentation for their other fine products.
You may be thinking of Alphastar or some other company that had different technology.
I probably have the provider wrong, but there is a digital LNB/polarization technology called DiSecQ, or something like that, that is very much alive today. You need special splitters and multiswitches to use it. The splitters are covered under patent and, IIRC, are horribly expensive (something like $25 a piece).
This problem is very real - if you got 2 satellite dishes and 10 television sets, you need 20 satellite receivers and potentially more than 1 kilometer antenna cable to make it all work.
Aye. Though, you'd only need 10 receivers (unless you wanted to watch and record different channels at each TV site). I have two satellite LNBs (well only one dish), and 6 coax drops in the house, with two RG6/U cables to each drop. Not quite a kilometer, but the Home Depot guy did think I was insane for buying 2000 feet of RG6/U. It was enough. Barely.
Most people I know that have satellite dishes, are not able to watch satellite TV on all their television sets, simply because that would require too much cabling.
That, and the need for an extra $5/month receiver at each TV. Generally you don't watch different programs at every TV at once, so, the number of receivers can be smaller than the number of TVs. But, the current head-end solution involves analog transcoding of the received channel to in-house cable channels. This is expensive, and results in lousy quality. But, yeah, running 2xRG6/U and 2xCat5e to a bunch of drops results in a surprisingly thick cable bundle. Dropping the RG6/U would be nice.
If you instead put up 2 ethernet devices at the satellite dish and 1 ethernet video receiver at each television, you have reduced the number of devices by almost 50%, and instead of doing expensive and complicated antenna cabling with 3dB loss for each split, you just use your existing ethernet cables.
Er, you don't split satellite signals that way: the receiver controls the selection of the LNB and polarization with either a voltage and 20 kHz signal (DirectTV), or a digital signal (diSeq, I think, used by USSB and maybe Echostar, not sure). The lines are home-run. What you describe can work, but then the "extra" TVs are slaves to what the "primary" selects, and can only tune the primary LNB/polarization channel set. There are "stacked" LNB systems that take the two polarized channel banks and put them on the coax at the same time, but then you're driving the cable out to 2 GHz, and signal fades real fast -- slope compensators are almosta a must.
If a TV transmission takes 2Mbps, and you have 100Mbps, there is plenty of bandwidth.
The raw MPEG2 stream can be some 10 Mb/s, IIRC. HDTV is closer to 30 Mb/s, so you will fill a 100 Mb/s switched ethernet pretty fast. I can't see avoiding having the tuners at the headend, and just streaming the single program you want (PVRs would go at the headend too and two program PIP might be feasable).
The only problem is that this technology makes it possible to transmit pay-per-view transmissions via 802.11 wireless to your neighbors - and that's not legal.
So? Don't DO that.
I rip movies from DVDs for eventual serving to STB thin clients (over ethernet, yay!) (which, by it self probably violates the DMCA: phhhhbt), but it stays in my house behind my firewall. I don't redistribute copyright material to others.
I see no reason to have satellite receivers, decoders, PVRs etc. at the television. To me, it's much more logical to put those into the cellar and then only have ethernet in the TV or in a single set-top box. Why not be able to view your recorded TV shows anywhere in your house instead of connecting the PVR to a single TV set?
Why not indeed? Because the technology to do this can also facillitate the illegal redistribution of copyright material outside your house. So, we suffer: it is criminal, in the U.S.A., at least to offer such devices, and to describe how to make them. No "self-respecting" company is going to risk offering them. We, therefore, are left to our own morals and devices, and risk arrest for breaking stupid laws.
In other words, let me put it succinctly: STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY COMPUTER UNLESS I WANT YOU THERE
And, my response is, "If you leave a port open, particularly port 80 and other well-known ones, you are saying, 'Welcome! Look, but don't touch, and please don't repeatedly enter and exit the revolving door -- it gets in the way of others'".
There are ways for you to say the equivalent of "keep out". Learn how to use them! The Internet only functions as an effective information exchange medium when the presumption is that one can actively seek things out -- the whole notion of search engines would not exist if this were not possible (and even here, you have the option of controlling spiders with robots.txt).
On a more practical note, I can't keep my traffic out of your computer as I have no control how my packets get routed -- only you can chose to not be a router in the public net.
If you wish to push the idea that access to information available by the Internet should be "by invitation only", then I think a lot of those who believe the opposite would want you to live by your words and stay away from our sites (particularly mine - you are not invited and I'll be watching my access logs). How can you tell where you can and can't surf? You can't. So, just unplug your net connection and go home to your pre-networked life. We don't want your kind here. While I wish you no physical harm, it nevertheless gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that there are those who believe that preserving the open nature of the net trumps the right to life of those who would forcefully deny this to us by ultimately threatening our freedom to communicate as we chose.
An unlocked door does NOT imply a "big honking sign that says 'enter'".
Ah, but it certainly does, as far as the Internet is concerned. You are making the traditional mistake of comparing cyberspace to meatspace, where your statement would be true.
The internet may not have been intended to be designed in the spirit of an open community, but that's how it turned out: it was used as a collaborative research tool for the exchange of information. Things were made available with the implicit cultural assumption that copies were free to be taken and examined. The meatspace analogy would be a community where the norm was that people were free to wander into any house, and look around, just not damage anything. If there was a door, just jiggle the lock if it's stuck. People asking about FTP passwords weren't rebuffed, they were told about "anonymous" and were gently asked to leave their "email address at the door", as it were.
While some security was available, in terms of password-protected telnet access, the general rule was that you didn't put stuff on an internet connected computer that you'd mind becoming public.
This culture extended to the development of the WWW: it was designed as a way to facilitate the sharing of information enhanced with links to related stuff: all pages were equal. The concept of "deep-linking" didn't make sense -- it mattered more that you could get to a page of interest.
Fast forward to commercialization, constrained-navigation (so you're forced to see ads), and the desire to use the open community's communication mechanism for virtual private communication (VPN, duh, but also plain old SSL and IPSec encrypted traffic). Enhanced privacy, security, and constrained site navigation are exceptions, not the rule. There are legitimate reasons to support these, you can beef up security if you wish, but, and this is the kicker, when it comes to "old-net culture", the onus is on you to lock things down and not presume that the norm is "stay away unless invited". Rather than a community of homes, the analogy is a mall of stores, public libraries, and free art exhibits, inviting and open to all.
This is why I wrote "If you don't understand the Internet, stay the fuck away."
Here was a peaceful, cooperative community, that helped provide the means for secure communication to those that wanted it, and wound up getting culturally hijacked by people who refuse to accept that there are certain customs to follow if you really want people to not look and stay away.
We gave them an "Http-Referrer" field for <insert deity here>'s sake. How arrogant of the "thou shalt not deep link" hounds to not use it. It's like someone building a two-way road and a bunch of idiots insisting on driving on the "wrong" side because it's the "right" side where they came from. Funny, Yanks drive on the left in the U.K., Brits drive on the right in the U.S.A. Perhaps when someone whines about the curious seeing what they oughtn't in an ignorantly open site, the data should be blown to a bunch of mirror sites, like car parts thrown from an auto collision.
You know, those that designed the internet protocols should have patented them (you can patent a protocol, I think), and used the clout to take away the right to play on the net from those that refused to adapt to the lingua franca's idioms. Of course, they probably would have to assign such patents to the DoD and others, so that dream is a bit foolish, but the lesson should be learned: if you don't want others to pollute and poison what you make, you need to protect it from those that would try while making it available to all others (which is why the GPL is so brilliant a concept, though it appear we need to get some clue-clubs to help enforce it).
O.K., I'm out of breath, so this rant is over. Mod me down as you will.
I dunno, I've always gotten the impression that when you refer to someone by three initials, it is more "regal", as it were, than only two (something traditionally reserved for H'wood B-movie directors of the '50s).
RMS evokes the thought "Richard Matthew Stallman" in a more respectful way, when compared to RS. The psychological effect is subtle, but it is there.
Perhaps we should refer to Her Honor as J.KK, then (the period indicating an abbreviation of title, as opposed to an initial for a given name).
Well, yeah. But, it took a 27 page judgement to reach this conclusion? Somehow, that is not comforting: neither when it comes to the legal process, nor how absurd the case was (or wasn't).
mean, mode, median
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CD Copy Stopper
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
This is why, whenever I utter the related phrase, "... if you're of average intelligence, half the people you meet are likely dumber than you," I prefix it with, "Ignoring the difference betweem mean, mode, and median,..." (which is a reasonable assumption for large numbers of observations that tend to a normal distribution).
My complete monologue on this goes something like, "Ignoring the difference between mean, mode, and median; if you're of average intelligence, half the people you meet are likely dumber than you. In a democracy, they vote. Be afraid."
The problem with explicit and formal requirements, is that, all too often, one does not know what they are.
While this can, and does, lead to unstable code, sometimes the coding process is part of trying to discover what reasonable requirements are, by experimenting and seeing what kind of programs best fit a desired work flow.
We've all seen applications that are clumsy and awkward to use, as well as bits and pieces of code that have to be tied together in order to do anything useful: the former may have rigid well-refined requirements, but the wrong ones and result in code that is stable but not useful. The latter can be made useful, and if not constantly tweaked, stable too, and can be of use in suggesting what reasonable requirements for an application that meets a desired subset of the possible problem solution space is.
The point is that much of the free software development mindset revolves around sharing code in order to find out what the best way to tackle the problem is in the first place: you might have an idea for reasonable requirements, but they might fail to address a very significant way in which the app might reasonably want to be used.
Architecturally, the conflicting desires to close requirements up and keep things open is addressed by punting: trying to identify areas for dynamic, and user, extensibility (viz. plugins), and providing APIs for them. Of course, even this isn't perfect.
From (a lot) of experience, I can say too that rigid requirements never are (rigid, that is). Mistakes happen, requirements change, and code changes to meet them. Yes, this introduces instability, and must be managed as any other risk. But a design process that is based on the mantra "Produce formal requirements that will never change" is a self-deceiving lie: my bullshit radar goes off whenever I hear the word "never". People make mistakes, and while an error-free requirements and design phase might lead to a pleasant, and perhaps even automated, implementation phase that results in a stable product, that just ain't gonna happen: mistakes will be made in the requirements phase, and like any other change, the risks involved in correcting those mistakes must be assessed.
So, like a skyscraper built in an earthquake zone, requirements must have a designed-in degree of flexibility, so that within certain reasonable parameters, change can be accomodated without unduly increasing the risk of resulting instability.
Yes, those that don't contribute, either with code, or $$$, don't really have as say.
The whole point of free software is that we do it for US, not them, US!. The moral freedom to do this is that them can share in the fruits of our labour freely.
Be glad that there is an (absurd) movement afoot to make free softeare illegal -- that's far better than taxing it.
I've worked in banks for years, and I know if someone comes in claiming to be Ms. Smith, then steals all of the real Ms. Smith's money/safety deposit box items/etc, the bank is held accountable for fucking up.
Yes, the "bank" was real careful when I came in asking for a certified cheque for some $45000 from one of my accounts (I was putting a down payment on a house from the proceeds of the sale of a previous one).
That said, you probably "live" where your "head meets the pillow", and work there as well. The tax residence of the LLC probably matters the most, as well as the temporary/permanent nature of your relationship with them (i.e. you're not employed in one state, temporarily working in another).
I trust my title was a fair-use extraction of charnov's post above..
I TOO make copies of my DVDs (and CDs), Mr. Valenti, specifically to archive the contents and eventually serve same from a central server in my home to the thin-client connected to the TV of my choice.
With the threats against Felten, the arrest of Skylarov, and the onoing harassment of Johansen, as well as people telling me that I break the law and am the equivlant of a child-molesting monster when I explain how I plan to serve the content from DVDs I paid for to a thin-client in my entertainment room, I hardly think the EFF is exaggerating.
I think the threat is quite real, and you either have to have deep pockets or great intenstinal fortitude to stomach it.
This "yet more DMCA fodder to generate ad views" comes at a conicidental time: in my efforts to serve content to thin-clients around my house from a central server, I combined the best of tstdvd and css-cat (from css-auth, sporadically mirrored in a bunch of places), so I could get the disk and title keys off a DCD and decrypt the content in one fell swoop. I have no intention of distributing decrypted copies of the movies I have, and will probably use PKI between server and thin-clients lest my firewall gets breached -- I don't want the content to escape because of my negligence. I just want to watch the movies I paid to see with the equipment infrastructure I have, or will soon have.
Obviously, as I've written before, I flout the DMCA, and do so openly: it's a bad law, and I believe quite unconsititutional.
But, what if push comes to shove? What if a police officer shows up at my door, sidearm at the ready, with a warrant for my arrest for "watching movies I paid for in an unauthorized manner?" Do I give in, hoping enough people notice my arrest (yeah, right)? Do I resist this arrest and defend what I believe to be a constitutional fair use right? Do I struggle to the point of trying to relieve the officer of his sidearm and killing him or her in my fight?
The last scenario might actually be worthwhile if the media carried the story, "Father kills police officer trying to arrest him for watching a movie he purchased".
But, of course, that wouldn't happen: the arrest warrent would be cryptic and vague -- "copyright violation", and the charge not obviously egregious on it's face. If I struggled I would clearly be taking the law into my own hands (the only real defense against bad law) in a battle where the distinction between right and wrong ("copyright violation") isn't as clear as, say, an issue of civil rights. While the noble notion of "dying on my feet" instead of "living on my knees" might be romantic, I doubt I'd be presented as anything other than a "cop-killer deserving of the chair".
Nevertheless, there is this nagging feeling that if I am not willing to take extreme measures to defend a freedom I believe in, as simple, and farcical as the right to watch a movie my way might seam, the principles that make it a crime (I might redistribute copyright materially illegally) could be extended to justify all sorts of pre-emptive arrests by the state on the basis of crimes that might be comitted. I don't think it is so preposterous to be willing to kill and die if it helps prevent such a horrible future.
The media monster might care only about rigid access control, but the legal principles that permit this, could be very horribly perverted to make everyone guilty from birth of the most heinous crimes, unless deemed innocent, for the time being. A few years ago, in Canada, a woman receiving financial support from an ex-husband fought, and won, the right to not be taxed on the income. This was stupid since she was in a lower tax bracket than the payer and it was to her benefit that she pay the tax instead of him (and clearly someone "must"). With the precedent set, the government gleefully rejoiced in it's new-found tax grab, while declaring the "victory for women".
The notion of pre-emptive criminalization that the DMCA codifies in law will surely be exploited further, if it is not nipped in the bud, and soon.
DRM makes it possible to forbid traditional fair uses (time and space-shifting, interoperability, extraction for criticism, etc.) that do nothing except inconvenience the consumer of the copyright content. It is unreasonable that these fair uses be lost solely to prevent unauthorized redistribution. However, the present DRM proposals do just that, and, if they become a wide-spread defacto standard, would dampen any DRM systems that are more friendly toward fair use, yet still prevent unauthorized reproduction.
For example, I wish to keep all my copyright media on a central server, to be distributed to authorized clients within my home. I also want to be able to make archival copies that are useless to anyone but me. PKI can be used to make this possible, however such systems are more complicated than those that lock content to one and only one playback system.
At present, the various ??AAs are proposing DRM systems that are far too crude. They need to be refined so that traditional fair use is protected as much as mitigating unauthorized redistribution. In fact, if copyright is interpreted as a means to benefit the public by encouraging the production of creative works, fair use should be more important than preventing so-called piracy.
I can understand that there are reasonable uses for some kind of DRM, but as long as those who ostensibly wish the valid uses embrace this foul variety, I would be happiest if they were driven out of business. And I don't believe their protestations of "we only want what's proper" either.
Those that embrace this foul variety probably don't give a rat's ass about legitimate uses for DRM, yet can trot out examples of legitimate uses to justify their own heinous plans. The electorate and elected are too ignorant to tell that they are being deceived.
But, I'd hate to think that we have to discard the baby, as it were, because the bathwater is so polluted.
I had written my thoughts on what might be acceptable DRM in my slashdot journal a while back. It doesn't provide for all the fair use rights we have traditionally come to enjoy, but I think it is impossible to come much closer and have any form of DRM at all (that is, it is the least-oppressive form of DRM I can envision).
Why does this matter?
Because there are very legitimate reasons for providing others access to content, software, etc. without having to tie them via a remote access protocol to secured hardware (servers). Imagine any type of distributed, cooperative P2P network where the clients could not be easily hacked to abuse the network. Control over unauthorized redistribution of copyright material is but one such application of DRM.
Of course, the ??AAs don't want simple redistribution control: they want complete access control as well, turning the world into a pay-per-view-of-our-content nightmare. Deployment of oppressive DRM could certainly bring this about.
I keep thinking how Microsoft had to bend to an open Internet, not under their control, except for the few protocols they tried to keep closed -- the net was fundementally designed to be as decentralized as possible. If a non-oppressive means is not found to safely store foriegn content on one's computer with regard to unauthorized redustribution to others, but that respects, as much as possible, the computer-owner's traditional fair use rights and technical freedoms, we will have a far more oppressive one shoved down our throats.
There are problems with my attempt at "less-oppressive" (non-oppressive would not be completely correct) DRM attempt: it's deployment and required PKI trust infrastructure would involve a huge capital cost. More oppressive DRM schemes would be, sadly, cheaper to deploy. The only way that the infrastructure costs could be mitigated would be if a PKI web of trust could be built on traditional trust models rather than few certificate authorities, and grow the way roads spring up between communities desiring to engage in communication and trade.
Or maybe you have just built up a tolerancy against caffeine.
I don't think so. I remember a doctor prescribing a cup of coffee to calm me down after overactive play as a child, saying that it has a depressive effect for some (this was before the whole ADD/ADHD hoopla) -- my parents wanted a child that was seen, but not heard.
So THAT'S why coffee has so little effect on me
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I have to drink massive quantities of strong coffee to feel anything. It's effect on me is mostly psychological: "... ah, that first cup of warm coffee in the morning shakes off the cold of getting out of bed..." ('course I now live in Texas, where it can be 95F at 6:00AM, but you get the idea).
Perhaps I have a genetic mutation that causes this protein to not be present. Researchers also said that it may play a role in enhancing the effects of cocaine and amphetemines. If coke's reputation weren't so dangerous, it might be worth snorting a small line to see if I was immune to that too (though I do not indulge in illicit drugs for recreational purposes). Of course the U.S.'s "War on Drugs" makes such research practically impossible. Perhaps people with an excess of this protein are more likely to become addicted to coke. Certainly formal research in this area might go a long way toward understanding the chemical basis for certain drug addictions.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, everywhere
I tend to do this too, when I'm developing, but I use a less precise C++ish pseudo code. It's the best way for me to think about code that will have to be shoehorned and implemented in a particular language that's likely a good implementation fit.
That's really sad. Perhaps Sigma could be encouraged to be more open as a way of making up for thier GPL faux-pas. I very much want to leverage a GCT Allwell iDVD3036 as a thin client set-top box, as it uses a low-power processor, with an em8400 MPEG decoder, and a CyberPro graphics chip (with two CCIR601 ports -- one for the em8400 -- digital overlay, yay!), but the em8400 and CyberPro are poorly supported -- the latter with proprietary XV extention drivers for XFree, but buggy, not doing alpha-blending and overlay properly. As this is a personal pet project, I certainly can't afford the US$15k (I'm told) CyberPro SDK.
Some here have noted that the "rogue programmer" excuse is lame on their part, but I can certainly attest to the very real risk of that happening. I once was involved in a project that deployed proprietary code on a GNU/Linux base, and made extensive use of GPL'd and open code (though our proprietary code was not extentions of any of that). With my encouragement, management hosted RMS to come and explain the "dos and don'ts" of mixing free and non-free code. Even so, programmers come and go, and cluefullness fades with time. Furthermore, while our build process was tuned to getting all the necessary binaries made, keeping track of sources to distribute (remember, there were hundreds of packages, mostly free, yet the non-free ones had to stay "very secret"), was very much an afterthought to the process and kludged in. I was forever afraid that someone would forget to tag what was free and what wasn't, or worse, get it wrong.
Sadly, while I tried my best to make sure that sources got distributed to our customers, the nature of the product was such that we'd have a few big ones, and not lots of little ones. (Think seven-figure contracts.) Furthermore, each customer would have little incentive to freely distribute the free code they received -- if they had to pay us millions for the app, they'd be damned if someone else get bits for free. So, while we complied with the GPL, our extentions to much of the GPL code (particuarly the Red Hat Anaconda installer), remain unavailable to the public at large.
The biggest problem, and one which Sigma does not face is that, while we'd put source on distribution CDs, our customers would get fully installed hardware, complete with maintenance contracts, and didn't care about installation CDs. If you make an installation and source CD, and install binaries on some hardware and just ship the hardware and not the CD, have you complied with the GPL? No, but making it clear that we either have to provide the CDs, or a transferrable written offer was a hard sell to management: "The customer does not WANT them". Convincing management that the requirement was one placed on us by the authors of the GPL code and not the customer took some doing, but I was persistent.
I'm in a similar situation today (for another employer), where installation CDs will likely not get to customers, but I've taken care to ensure that installation installs sources as well as binaries (we can afford the disk space, fortunately... so far).
The kernel drivers appear to be little more than marshelling/unmarshelling stubs to let the user space library communicate with the card. While register-level documentation is available, it isn't developer friendly, as there is no designers' guide that would help a non-hard-core video hardware embedded developer to write their own code: maybe it's just me, but I find the lack of context establishment in the register-only documentation limiting.
People have found Sigma's proprieteray user-space code somewhat buggy, and the present situation makes it difficult for the community to write its own. While I can sympathize with Sigma Designs' predicament following the apparent mistake of a rogue programmer, one way they can "make it up" to the community would be to go beyond the minimal legal GPL requirements and release more source and documentation for their other fine products.
I probably have the provider wrong, but there is a digital LNB/polarization technology called DiSecQ, or something like that, that is very much alive today. You need special splitters and multiswitches to use it. The splitters are covered under patent and, IIRC, are horribly expensive (something like $25 a piece).
Aye. Though, you'd only need 10 receivers (unless you wanted to watch and record different channels at each TV site). I have two satellite LNBs (well only one dish), and 6 coax drops in the house, with two RG6/U cables to each drop. Not quite a kilometer, but the Home Depot guy did think I was insane for buying 2000 feet of RG6/U. It was enough. Barely.
Most people I know that have satellite dishes, are not able to watch satellite TV on all their television sets, simply because that would require too much cabling.
That, and the need for an extra $5/month receiver at each TV. Generally you don't watch different programs at every TV at once, so, the number of receivers can be smaller than the number of TVs. But, the current head-end solution involves analog transcoding of the received channel to in-house cable channels. This is expensive, and results in lousy quality. But, yeah, running 2xRG6/U and 2xCat5e to a bunch of drops results in a surprisingly thick cable bundle. Dropping the RG6/U would be nice.
If you instead put up 2 ethernet devices at the satellite dish and 1 ethernet video receiver at each television, you have reduced the number of devices by almost 50%, and instead of doing expensive and complicated antenna cabling with 3dB loss for each split, you just use your existing ethernet cables.
Er, you don't split satellite signals that way: the receiver controls the selection of the LNB and polarization with either a voltage and 20 kHz signal (DirectTV), or a digital signal (diSeq, I think, used by USSB and maybe Echostar, not sure). The lines are home-run. What you describe can work, but then the "extra" TVs are slaves to what the "primary" selects, and can only tune the primary LNB/polarization channel set. There are "stacked" LNB systems that take the two polarized channel banks and put them on the coax at the same time, but then you're driving the cable out to 2 GHz, and signal fades real fast -- slope compensators are almosta a must.
If a TV transmission takes 2Mbps, and you have 100Mbps, there is plenty of bandwidth.
The raw MPEG2 stream can be some 10 Mb/s, IIRC. HDTV is closer to 30 Mb/s, so you will fill a 100 Mb/s switched ethernet pretty fast. I can't see avoiding having the tuners at the headend, and just streaming the single program you want (PVRs would go at the headend too and two program PIP might be feasable).
The only problem is that this technology makes it possible to transmit pay-per-view transmissions via 802.11 wireless to your neighbors - and that's not legal.
So? Don't DO that.
I rip movies from DVDs for eventual serving to STB thin clients (over ethernet, yay!) (which, by it self probably violates the DMCA: phhhhbt), but it stays in my house behind my firewall. I don't redistribute copyright material to others.
I see no reason to have satellite receivers, decoders, PVRs etc. at the television. To me, it's much more logical to put those into the cellar and then only have ethernet in the TV or in a single set-top box. Why not be able to view your recorded TV shows anywhere in your house instead of connecting the PVR to a single TV set?
Why not indeed? Because the technology to do this can also facillitate the illegal redistribution of copyright material outside your house. So, we suffer: it is criminal, in the U.S.A., at least to offer such devices, and to describe how to make them. No "self-respecting" company is going to risk offering them. We, therefore, are left to our own morals and devices, and risk arrest for breaking stupid laws.
And, my response is, "If you leave a port open, particularly port 80 and other well-known ones, you are saying, 'Welcome! Look, but don't touch, and please don't repeatedly enter and exit the revolving door -- it gets in the way of others'".
There are ways for you to say the equivalent of "keep out". Learn how to use them! The Internet only functions as an effective information exchange medium when the presumption is that one can actively seek things out -- the whole notion of search engines would not exist if this were not possible (and even here, you have the option of controlling spiders with robots.txt).
On a more practical note, I can't keep my traffic out of your computer as I have no control how my packets get routed -- only you can chose to not be a router in the public net.
If you wish to push the idea that access to information available by the Internet should be "by invitation only", then I think a lot of those who believe the opposite would want you to live by your words and stay away from our sites (particularly mine - you are not invited and I'll be watching my access logs). How can you tell where you can and can't surf? You can't. So, just unplug your net connection and go home to your pre-networked life. We don't want your kind here. While I wish you no physical harm, it nevertheless gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that there are those who believe that preserving the open nature of the net trumps the right to life of those who would forcefully deny this to us by ultimately threatening our freedom to communicate as we chose.
Ah, but it certainly does, as far as the Internet is concerned. You are making the traditional mistake of comparing cyberspace to meatspace, where your statement would be true.
The internet may not have been intended to be designed in the spirit of an open community, but that's how it turned out: it was used as a collaborative research tool for the exchange of information. Things were made available with the implicit cultural assumption that copies were free to be taken and examined. The meatspace analogy would be a community where the norm was that people were free to wander into any house, and look around, just not damage anything. If there was a door, just jiggle the lock if it's stuck. People asking about FTP passwords weren't rebuffed, they were told about "anonymous" and were gently asked to leave their "email address at the door", as it were.
While some security was available, in terms of password-protected telnet access, the general rule was that you didn't put stuff on an internet connected computer that you'd mind becoming public.
This culture extended to the development of the WWW: it was designed as a way to facilitate the sharing of information enhanced with links to related stuff: all pages were equal. The concept of "deep-linking" didn't make sense -- it mattered more that you could get to a page of interest.
Fast forward to commercialization, constrained-navigation (so you're forced to see ads), and the desire to use the open community's communication mechanism for virtual private communication (VPN, duh, but also plain old SSL and IPSec encrypted traffic). Enhanced privacy, security, and constrained site navigation are exceptions, not the rule. There are legitimate reasons to support these, you can beef up security if you wish, but, and this is the kicker, when it comes to "old-net culture", the onus is on you to lock things down and not presume that the norm is "stay away unless invited". Rather than a community of homes, the analogy is a mall of stores, public libraries, and free art exhibits, inviting and open to all.
This is why I wrote "If you don't understand the Internet, stay the fuck away."
Here was a peaceful, cooperative community, that helped provide the means for secure communication to those that wanted it, and wound up getting culturally hijacked by people who refuse to accept that there are certain customs to follow if you really want people to not look and stay away.
We gave them an "Http-Referrer" field for <insert deity here>'s sake. How arrogant of the "thou shalt not deep link" hounds to not use it. It's like someone building a two-way road and a bunch of idiots insisting on driving on the "wrong" side because it's the "right" side where they came from. Funny, Yanks drive on the left in the U.K., Brits drive on the right in the U.S.A. Perhaps when someone whines about the curious seeing what they oughtn't in an ignorantly open site, the data should be blown to a bunch of mirror sites, like car parts thrown from an auto collision.
You know, those that designed the internet protocols should have patented them (you can patent a protocol, I think), and used the clout to take away the right to play on the net from those that refused to adapt to the lingua franca's idioms. Of course, they probably would have to assign such patents to the DoD and others, so that dream is a bit foolish, but the lesson should be learned: if you don't want others to pollute and poison what you make, you need to protect it from those that would try while making it available to all others (which is why the GPL is so brilliant a concept, though it appear we need to get some clue-clubs to help enforce it).
O.K., I'm out of breath, so this rant is over. Mod me down as you will.
I don't get it.
Someone buys a house, leaves the door open, and posts a big, honking, lights flashing sign, that says "Enter".
Again, how is subsequent entry not authorized?
If you don't understand the Internet, stay the fuck away.
RMS evokes the thought "Richard Matthew Stallman" in a more respectful way, when compared to RS. The psychological effect is subtle, but it is there.
Perhaps we should refer to Her Honor as J.KK, then (the period indicating an abbreviation of title, as opposed to an initial for a given name).
Well, yeah. But, it took a 27 page judgement to reach this conclusion? Somehow, that is not comforting: neither when it comes to the legal process, nor how absurd the case was (or wasn't).
My complete monologue on this goes something like, "Ignoring the difference between mean, mode, and median; if you're of average intelligence, half the people you meet are likely dumber than you. In a democracy, they vote. Be afraid."
While this can, and does, lead to unstable code, sometimes the coding process is part of trying to discover what reasonable requirements are, by experimenting and seeing what kind of programs best fit a desired work flow.
We've all seen applications that are clumsy and awkward to use, as well as bits and pieces of code that have to be tied together in order to do anything useful: the former may have rigid well-refined requirements, but the wrong ones and result in code that is stable but not useful. The latter can be made useful, and if not constantly tweaked, stable too, and can be of use in suggesting what reasonable requirements for an application that meets a desired subset of the possible problem solution space is.
The point is that much of the free software development mindset revolves around sharing code in order to find out what the best way to tackle the problem is in the first place: you might have an idea for reasonable requirements, but they might fail to address a very significant way in which the app might reasonably want to be used.
Architecturally, the conflicting desires to close requirements up and keep things open is addressed by punting: trying to identify areas for dynamic, and user, extensibility (viz. plugins), and providing APIs for them. Of course, even this isn't perfect.
From (a lot) of experience, I can say too that rigid requirements never are (rigid, that is). Mistakes happen, requirements change, and code changes to meet them. Yes, this introduces instability, and must be managed as any other risk. But a design process that is based on the mantra "Produce formal requirements that will never change" is a self-deceiving lie: my bullshit radar goes off whenever I hear the word "never". People make mistakes, and while an error-free requirements and design phase might lead to a pleasant, and perhaps even automated, implementation phase that results in a stable product, that just ain't gonna happen: mistakes will be made in the requirements phase, and like any other change, the risks involved in correcting those mistakes must be assessed.
So, like a skyscraper built in an earthquake zone, requirements must have a designed-in degree of flexibility, so that within certain reasonable parameters, change can be accomodated without unduly increasing the risk of resulting instability.
The whole point of free software is that we do it for US, not them, US!. The moral freedom to do this is that them can share in the fruits of our labour freely.
Be glad that there is an (absurd) movement afoot to make free softeare illegal -- that's far better than taxing it.
Yes, the "bank" was real careful when I came in asking for a certified cheque for some $45000 from one of my accounts (I was putting a down payment on a house from the proceeds of the sale of a previous one).
That said, you probably "live" where your "head meets the pillow", and work there as well. The tax residence of the LLC probably matters the most, as well as the temporary/permanent nature of your relationship with them (i.e. you're not employed in one state, temporarily working in another).
Still, I'd consult a tax advisor about this.
I TOO make copies of my DVDs (and CDs), Mr. Valenti, specifically to archive the contents and eventually serve same from a central server in my home to the thin-client connected to the TV of my choice.
Who else? Speak up!
I think the threat is quite real, and you either have to have deep pockets or great intenstinal fortitude to stomach it.
This "yet more DMCA fodder to generate ad views" comes at a conicidental time: in my efforts to serve content to thin-clients around my house from a central server, I combined the best of tstdvd and css-cat (from css-auth, sporadically mirrored in a bunch of places), so I could get the disk and title keys off a DCD and decrypt the content in one fell swoop. I have no intention of distributing decrypted copies of the movies I have, and will probably use PKI between server and thin-clients lest my firewall gets breached -- I don't want the content to escape because of my negligence. I just want to watch the movies I paid to see with the equipment infrastructure I have, or will soon have.
Obviously, as I've written before, I flout the DMCA, and do so openly: it's a bad law, and I believe quite unconsititutional.
But, what if push comes to shove? What if a police officer shows up at my door, sidearm at the ready, with a warrant for my arrest for "watching movies I paid for in an unauthorized manner?" Do I give in, hoping enough people notice my arrest (yeah, right)? Do I resist this arrest and defend what I believe to be a constitutional fair use right? Do I struggle to the point of trying to relieve the officer of his sidearm and killing him or her in my fight?
The last scenario might actually be worthwhile if the media carried the story, "Father kills police officer trying to arrest him for watching a movie he purchased".
But, of course, that wouldn't happen: the arrest warrent would be cryptic and vague -- "copyright violation", and the charge not obviously egregious on it's face. If I struggled I would clearly be taking the law into my own hands (the only real defense against bad law) in a battle where the distinction between right and wrong ("copyright violation") isn't as clear as, say, an issue of civil rights. While the noble notion of "dying on my feet" instead of "living on my knees" might be romantic, I doubt I'd be presented as anything other than a "cop-killer deserving of the chair".
Nevertheless, there is this nagging feeling that if I am not willing to take extreme measures to defend a freedom I believe in, as simple, and farcical as the right to watch a movie my way might seam, the principles that make it a crime (I might redistribute copyright materially illegally) could be extended to justify all sorts of pre-emptive arrests by the state on the basis of crimes that might be comitted. I don't think it is so preposterous to be willing to kill and die if it helps prevent such a horrible future.
The media monster might care only about rigid access control, but the legal principles that permit this, could be very horribly perverted to make everyone guilty from birth of the most heinous crimes, unless deemed innocent, for the time being. A few years ago, in Canada, a woman receiving financial support from an ex-husband fought, and won, the right to not be taxed on the income. This was stupid since she was in a lower tax bracket than the payer and it was to her benefit that she pay the tax instead of him (and clearly someone "must"). With the precedent set, the government gleefully rejoiced in it's new-found tax grab, while declaring the "victory for women".
The notion of pre-emptive criminalization that the DMCA codifies in law will surely be exploited further, if it is not nipped in the bud, and soon.
older... I was born on September 4, 1961. :-(
I too vaguely remember this. Of course, I was only 6 years old at the time.
For example, I wish to keep all my copyright media on a central server, to be distributed to authorized clients within my home. I also want to be able to make archival copies that are useless to anyone but me. PKI can be used to make this possible, however such systems are more complicated than those that lock content to one and only one playback system.
At present, the various ??AAs are proposing DRM systems that are far too crude. They need to be refined so that traditional fair use is protected as much as mitigating unauthorized redistribution. In fact, if copyright is interpreted as a means to benefit the public by encouraging the production of creative works, fair use should be more important than preventing so-called piracy.
Those that embrace this foul variety probably don't give a rat's ass about legitimate uses for DRM, yet can trot out examples of legitimate uses to justify their own heinous plans. The electorate and elected are too ignorant to tell that they are being deceived.
But, I'd hate to think that we have to discard the baby, as it were, because the bathwater is so polluted.
Why does this matter?
Because there are very legitimate reasons for providing others access to content, software, etc. without having to tie them via a remote access protocol to secured hardware (servers). Imagine any type of distributed, cooperative P2P network where the clients could not be easily hacked to abuse the network. Control over unauthorized redistribution of copyright material is but one such application of DRM.
Of course, the ??AAs don't want simple redistribution control: they want complete access control as well, turning the world into a pay-per-view-of-our-content nightmare. Deployment of oppressive DRM could certainly bring this about.
I keep thinking how Microsoft had to bend to an open Internet, not under their control, except for the few protocols they tried to keep closed -- the net was fundementally designed to be as decentralized as possible. If a non-oppressive means is not found to safely store foriegn content on one's computer with regard to unauthorized redustribution to others, but that respects, as much as possible, the computer-owner's traditional fair use rights and technical freedoms, we will have a far more oppressive one shoved down our throats.
There are problems with my attempt at "less-oppressive" (non-oppressive would not be completely correct) DRM attempt: it's deployment and required PKI trust infrastructure would involve a huge capital cost. More oppressive DRM schemes would be, sadly, cheaper to deploy. The only way that the infrastructure costs could be mitigated would be if a PKI web of trust could be built on traditional trust models rather than few certificate authorities, and grow the way roads spring up between communities desiring to engage in communication and trade.
I don't think so. I remember a doctor prescribing a cup of coffee to calm me down after overactive play as a child, saying that it has a depressive effect for some (this was before the whole ADD/ADHD hoopla) -- my parents wanted a child that was seen, but not heard.
Perhaps I have a genetic mutation that causes this protein to not be present. Researchers also said that it may play a role in enhancing the effects of cocaine and amphetemines. If coke's reputation weren't so dangerous, it might be worth snorting a small line to see if I was immune to that too (though I do not indulge in illicit drugs for recreational purposes). Of course the U.S.'s "War on Drugs" makes such research practically impossible. Perhaps people with an excess of this protein are more likely to become addicted to coke. Certainly formal research in this area might go a long way toward understanding the chemical basis for certain drug addictions.