Actually MS has all of their servers in the same location (Microsoft evidently believes that the world ends in Redmond) as their DNS servers, and therefore what good would Geographical Dispersity have helped when after resolving the IP you still have to goto Redmond for the web page?
I renewed mine 3 months ago, it was paid before the expiration date. Yet whois still shows that it expired 2 months ago. I'm not sure but it appears that their not updating that information in the whois anymore. The domain still works, and my credit card was billed. So either my domain will stop working soon, or their not fully disposing of all pertinent information.
Consumer DVD-RW drives cannot write to the "key sector" of the DVD disc, and the key sectors of blank dvds are pre-burned with zeros. Without the key that would normally exist there, the DVD player cannot decode the movie, nor can it read an already decoded movie burned onto a dvd disc.
Is this a limitation of consumer level equipment (much like the fact that consumer level audio cd-recorders require that special audio cd-r media)? Or is it that you just can't buy (without paying some huge fee to the DVD group that controls the keys) a player that can record the key sectors of the dvd disc?
So is the encryption on the disc truly there for copy protection, or are there commercial outfits somewhere duplicating DVD's just as easily as CD's in mass quantity. That's my whole point. I all along have dis-agreed with calling the encryption copy protection. It's content protection from every angle that I see.
And yeah, right now pirating DVD's isn't an option. No way I would sacrifice the quality/features/etc. But how long before I have gigabit to the home, and 100gig hard drives are the standard?
Actually looking around the net shows that you can get imported DVD-RW drives now (unfortunately most consumer level DVD players can't play these, but new ones will be able to) for about $3500+ now. Media is about 50 dollars a pop. Now I'm sure this will come down (if they even manage to sell these in the US). And the key to all this is I have never conclusively been shown that you need anything special to duplicate a DVD byte by byte. And if you duplicate it will it still play? It is still my understanding that the encryption on the DVD is about "Content Protection", not "Copy Protection."
Now in respect to you already paying a tax on that media. That is not true. Computer CD-R media is quite a bit cheaper than Audio CD-R media. Why? Because your not paying a tax on the Computer CD-R media. Nor did I pay a tax on my hard drive to store movies on. So the MPAA/RIAA isn't getting their percentage of it, and their pissed off.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for decss. I want very badly to not have to reboot to windows to watch dvd's on my laptop here. Why because I believe that after paying what I did for the DVD, I should get to choose what I view it on. Of course if you listen to the MPAA it's not because I wanna view it under linux, it's because I wanna pirate it and ship it out all over the planet. This is just as stupid as saying sue the gun maker because someone used a gun to kill someone with. Or sue GM cuz a car they build used by a drunk driver killed someone. Of course reality says that this is happening. I just think it's NUTS!
Let's get down to the true heart of this case. The DVD group is afraid of losing control. They have a monoply control over the movies and the viewers. And it's being threatened.
Plus on top of that, look around the net for movies in DivX/VCD/MPG/AVI etc. format. Last I checked 90% of them are movies that are currently in the theater, versus movies ripped from DVD. It appears that the appeal for these movies goes down once they are actually released on DVD.
Actually I do have a sofa in my computer room. I have 2 computers on an 8 foot desk. And directly behind the desk and behind the chairs I have a love seat (with recliners on both sides). So yeah I can watch it. As for watching TV. I said I have a DSS receiver, and I use it's remote to change the channels. So yeah watching TV is very doable in my house. I'm just an ultra-geek I guess.
I'm curious. Just how does Windows "protect" software from being reverse engineered or hacked? Last I checked x86 assembly language is the same on both. Am I missing something here? Or are you saying the availability of a kernel level debugger isn't as necessarily easily available on Windows? SoftIce is very nice for things like this, and it's a Windows product.
Interesting. Your saying that the linux community as a whole will not embrace ANY non-opensource software? YIKES. I hope all of these commerical companies who are porting their products to linux don't get wind of this. Because we'll have no hopes of ever getting much commercial support. I guess I need to go delete staroffice, wordperfect, and a few other BINARY only releases off my hard drive. And join the revolution! OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE!
Well that seems to be where you the miss the point. There are MULTIPLE Software Only decoders available for Win98 today. And I don't for one minute believe that these are IMPOSSIBLE to port. Actually it probably wouldn't be that hard to port these, it's just a matter of getting one of these companies to port it. That is what I am talking about. We don't have to re-invent the wheel here and start over. We just need to also push on the developers of software only decoders to create a linux version.
Well I for one have a 21" Hitachi Display. And it is plenty large enough to watch DVD's on. As a matter of fact, it looks much nicer than my Panasonic TV when watching movies. Now of course if I had my way, I would go out and buy a 36" Sony Wega television, but that's just not an option. Plus being able to watch a movie in a window (I also have a WinTV PCI card with a DSS receiver hooked to it, which does work under Linux) would be extremely nice.
Personally I have a PIII-450 with a 6x DVD-ROM drive in it. It works fine under linux, and if I'm willing to boot that evil OS win98, I can play DVD's on it. It plays DVD's through software perfectly fine, and I have noticed very little corruption at most. So I would like to see someone develop Software DVD support for linux. Even if it's a binary only release, makes no difference to me. It just prevents me from having to boot windows to watch a DVD.
This sounds fine and dandy, and it might work just fine. But personally when using a product such as SSH which I rely on for secure connections at my job. I personally don't care for the idea of commenting out random lines because the compiler quit with an error induced by glibc 2.1.
Unless someone has come up with a fix to building ssh under glibc 2.1, I won't be upgrading anytime soon. This is what caused me to scale back to redhat 5.2 after installing the 5.9.7 release of starbuck.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually MS has all of their servers in the same location (Microsoft evidently believes that the world ends in Redmond) as their DNS servers, and therefore what good would Geographical Dispersity have helped when after resolving the IP you still have to goto Redmond for the web page?
I renewed mine 3 months ago, it was paid before the expiration date. Yet whois still shows that it expired 2 months ago. I'm not sure but it appears that their not updating that information in the whois anymore. The domain still works, and my credit card was billed. So either my domain will stop working soon, or their not fully disposing of all pertinent information.
Consumer DVD-RW drives cannot write to the "key sector" of the DVD disc, and the key sectors of blank dvds are pre-burned with zeros. Without the key that would normally exist there, the DVD player cannot decode the movie, nor can it read an already decoded movie burned onto a dvd disc.
Is this a limitation of consumer level equipment (much like the fact that consumer level audio cd-recorders require that special audio cd-r media)? Or is it that you just can't buy (without paying some huge fee to the DVD group that controls the keys) a player that can record the key sectors of the dvd disc?
So is the encryption on the disc truly there for copy protection, or are there commercial outfits somewhere duplicating DVD's just as easily as CD's in mass quantity. That's my whole point. I all along have dis-agreed with calling the encryption copy protection. It's content protection from every angle that I see.
And yeah, right now pirating DVD's isn't an option. No way I would sacrifice the quality/features/etc. But how long before I have gigabit to the home, and 100gig hard drives are the standard?
Actually looking around the net shows that you can get imported DVD-RW drives now (unfortunately most consumer level DVD players can't play these, but new ones will be able to) for about $3500+ now. Media is about 50 dollars a pop. Now I'm sure this will come down (if they even manage to sell these in the US). And the key to all this is I have never conclusively been shown that you need anything special to duplicate a DVD byte by byte. And if you duplicate it will it still play? It is still my understanding that the encryption on the DVD is about "Content Protection", not "Copy Protection."
Now in respect to you already paying a tax on that media. That is not true. Computer CD-R media is quite a bit cheaper than Audio CD-R media. Why? Because your not paying a tax on the Computer CD-R media. Nor did I pay a tax on my hard drive to store movies on. So the MPAA/RIAA isn't getting their percentage of it, and their pissed off.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for decss. I want very badly to not have to reboot to windows to watch dvd's on my laptop here. Why because I believe that after paying what I did for the DVD, I should get to choose what I view it on. Of course if you listen to the MPAA it's not because I wanna view it under linux, it's because I wanna pirate it and ship it out all over the planet. This is just as stupid as saying sue the gun maker because someone used a gun to kill someone with. Or sue GM cuz a car they build used by a drunk driver killed someone. Of course reality says that this is happening. I just think it's NUTS!
Let's get down to the true heart of this case. The DVD group is afraid of losing control. They have a monoply control over the movies and the viewers. And it's being threatened.
Plus on top of that, look around the net for movies in DivX/VCD/MPG/AVI etc. format. Last I checked 90% of them are movies that are currently in the theater, versus movies ripped from DVD. It appears that the appeal for these movies goes down once they are actually released on DVD.
Actually I do have a sofa in my computer room. I have 2 computers on an 8 foot desk. And directly behind the desk and behind the chairs I have a love seat (with recliners on both sides). So yeah I can watch it. As for watching TV. I said I have a DSS receiver, and I use it's remote to change the channels. So yeah watching TV is very doable in my house. I'm just an ultra-geek I guess.
I'm curious. Just how does Windows "protect" software from being reverse engineered or hacked? Last I checked x86 assembly language is the same on both. Am I missing something here? Or are you saying the availability of a kernel level debugger isn't as necessarily easily available on Windows? SoftIce is very nice for things like this, and it's a Windows product.
Interesting. Your saying that the linux community as a whole will not embrace ANY non-opensource software? YIKES. I hope all of these commerical companies who are porting their products to linux don't get wind of this. Because we'll have no hopes of ever getting much commercial support. I guess I need to go delete staroffice, wordperfect, and a few other BINARY only releases off my hard drive. And join the revolution! OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE!
Well that seems to be where you the miss the point. There are MULTIPLE Software Only decoders available for Win98 today. And I don't for one minute believe that these are IMPOSSIBLE to port. Actually it probably wouldn't be that hard to port these, it's just a matter of getting one of these companies to port it. That is what I am talking about. We don't have to re-invent the wheel here and start over. We just need to also push on the developers of software only decoders to create a linux version.
Well I for one have a 21" Hitachi Display. And it is plenty large enough to watch DVD's on. As a matter of fact, it looks much nicer than my Panasonic TV when watching movies. Now of course if I had my way, I would go out and buy a 36" Sony Wega television, but that's just not an option. Plus being able to watch a movie in a window (I also have a WinTV PCI card with a DSS receiver hooked to it, which does work under Linux) would be extremely nice.
Personally I have a PIII-450 with a 6x DVD-ROM drive in it. It works fine under linux, and if I'm willing to boot that evil OS win98, I can play DVD's on it. It plays DVD's through software perfectly fine, and I have noticed very little corruption at most. So I would like to see someone develop Software DVD support for linux. Even if it's a binary only release, makes no difference to me. It just prevents me from having to boot windows to watch a DVD.
This sounds fine and dandy, and it might work just fine. But personally when using a product such as SSH which I rely on for secure connections at my job. I personally don't care for the idea of commenting out random lines because the compiler quit with an error induced by glibc 2.1.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Greg
Unless someone has come up with a fix to building ssh under glibc 2.1, I won't be upgrading anytime soon. This is what caused me to scale back to redhat 5.2 after installing the 5.9.7 release of starbuck.
Greg