If you use *nix you can watch "protected" DVDs using any number of players such as Mplayer or Ogle, and libdvdcss for authentication.
Note that doing so, is against the law in every single state in the US. If you're caught doing it (or owning a copy of libdvdcss), you can be prosecuted for it.
So what that DVD's have protection...they're fricken 20 bucks a disk. Pretty cheap to own for what you basically get.
Have you ever purchased or rented a DVD or CD that refused to play in your "legal" player? We're talking about hardware, portable DVD players and CD walkman players here. I'm not talking about ripping or pirating movies, simply playing them in the proper hardware designed for that purpose.
I have, and guess what... you can't return them to the store for a refund, a store credit, or even another copy of the same disc. Why? Because the same disc from the same manufacturer, is crippled in exactly the same way.
I have a fairly new Panasonic portable DVD player I bring with me when I travel. I just rented "House of Flying Daggers" from Netflix the other day. When I put it in this particular player, it says "Unable to play this disc" (not a disc error, the actual DVD output on the screen says this). I put it in my Delkin DVD/RW+ player and it works fine (but most do, in that player).
So tell me what the recourse is, when you purchase legitimate property with US currency, and are given a non-working product in exchange for that currency? You can't return it, you can't complain, you can't get a refund.
So what do you do? Answer: You stop purchasing that material from that store/vendor/publisher.
You need the driver that authenticates to the display.
I just repeated this out loud several times and burst out laughing. Our monitors now have to authenticate to our operating system, before they display anything?!
Does anyone else find that absolutely hilarious? I'd rather see the OS authenticate itself before it goes and screws up how hardware operates.
Moreover, I'd love to see a hardware vendor, one of the big boys, implement a system that requires Microsoft to buy a license to "authenticate" to the motherboard, so it can run its paltry "Vista" OS on it.
"We're sorry, Microsoft neglected to keep its licensing up to date, so your operating system will not run. Please consider an alternate operating system instead."
The goal is often to collaborate with other corporations that have the same software need. That's how Linux and Apache and Eclipse and hundreds of other projects all work.
Well, except Linux and Apache in your above example, sure. Both of those projects existed LONG before there was any commercial influence or funding in their development.
Dunno what the hell sandbox you're talking about. DReaM will happen if people are paid to build it. That's how OSS usually works.
DReaM may happen, but don't expect it to be shipped with any Linux or BSD distribution. It will die on the vine like thousands of other Sourceforge-like projects of similar goals.
DReaM on, Sun. The Open Source community isn't about writing your code for you, open standards or not.
Many of us vehemently object to DRM on its face, because it goes counter to the beliefs of the Open Source community; fostering learning and growth and a strong sense of community through sharing and improving our creations.
DRM doesn't play into that, even if your "customers" demand it. Creating an Open Source initiative to try to get the Open Source community to write the code for you, so you can lock it up under the CDDL for your customers' use, doesn't play into that.
Find another sandbox to play in, this one is ours.
I'm ok with letting law enforcement monitor email, as long as they either have my private gpg key + passphrase for the gpg-encrypted emails I send, or the AES256-encrypted emails I send for those who don't support gpg/pgp.
Monitor all you like, all you'll see is the envelope... nothing more.
The closer you come to me without my permission, the more fortified I become. Simple.
As I said above, Apple isn't ever likely to lose a sale to a download. They might gain some mind share among the people clueless newbies look to for computer purchasing advice. With nothing to lose and a chance of gain, sure, why not allow this?
You truly don't get it, do you? Existing Microsoft Windows customers will pay Dell + Microsoft to run Apple's operating system. Apple gets $0.00, and (in your assertion) Apple doesn't lose any money at all... but they also don't gain any money either.
Now, lets magnify that to include the 40% of Asia running pirated Microsoft operating systems on their computers. Now they're running pirated versions of Apple's OS on those same computers. The Apple stores in Asia now simply close down, because they're no longer making sales of their hardware running their OS, because someone else can do it for $50.00 and include the computer + the pirated OS.
Why not just mandate that every person in the US wear one? I mean, Health Care companies need to protect their assets too, right?.
In fact, it would be great if it included the full biological and medical history of the wearer, and maybe even their credit history too.
It might be more fashionable if we wear these on our ankles though, I mean these barbed-wire fences are probably going to snag the watch as we try to climb over them to get outside our borders anyway, right?
For $999 you can get two Dell PCs, a keg of beer, and a night with three Welsh hookers.
Go ahead and configure a P4/3.4Ghz workstation machine with 4gb of RAM on Dell's site for less than $999 and give me the URL. I'd love to see what you come up with.
This configuration is exactly what Steve Jobs used at WWDC and essentially what he's shipping for the Developer Workstations (also $999.00 + ADC Select/Premiere membership, $500.00 or $3,500).
So Apple doesn't want people running their OS. What a surprise. Attitudes like that probably explain their current market share.
[...]
Here Apple has people wanting to run their OS so badly on Intel hardware that they're hacking apart betas to do it, and running systems with no native applications yet.
So let me get this straight:
Buy an Intel Dell PC ($999.00 from Dell)
Wipe Microsoft Windows from the machine (Microsoft gets paid, Microsoft tax)
Download this hacked-up OSX/Intel pirated image (costs nothing to download, $0.00)
Image your blank Dell machine with this image (costs nothing, $0.00)
So you think Apple should let you pay Dell and Microsoft to run their OS, all while giving Apple not a single cent? You think this is what they should allow?
Don't you understand? All of this "running-OSX-on-Intel-today" means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the end-result of running OSX-for-Intel on the customized hardware Apple is designing with Intel.
All this does is provide Apple with an exact blueprint of where to lock down the OS even tighter, to prevent 'hacking' when they release it. Besides, with Intel's LaGrande chipset, the whole OS runs in a silicon-locked sandbox, separate from anything else, and strongly keyed to the silicon itself. You literally CANNOT get inside without the proper key.
All of this hacking around with OSX today on Intel today, is going to rapidly become very irrelevant when they release their own boxes.
What the EFF is upset about is that they skipped step #3. What is so hard about getting the warrant and then searching the computer?
Two words: Patriot Act. Warrants are no longer necessary.
The Legislative Branch makes laws, and the Executive Branch enforces them, but since enforcement of the law essentially deprives the accused/convicted of Constitutional Rights, the Judicial Branch is involved in the process, both in warrants and in judging and sentencing. The Patriot Act significantly weakens the Judicial Branch's participation in the warrant process.
The Patriot Act has made it possible to do end-runs around the Judicial system, one of the core parts of our country's checks-and-balances system, a system that has been in place for 4 centuries.
I know that the Bush administration has definitely moved in a much better direction by stepping up surveillance. We haven't had one attack since 9/11 here and it's because we've given up the illusion of privacy for true personal privacy that WE control ourselves by NOT being criminals. Why is this so hard for everyone to get?
Funny, we also haven't had a terrorist attack on US soil in the last 19 presidents either, except the other Bush.
In fact, the only 2 "terrorist" attacks on US soil were both on the World Trade Center, both involving presidents named "George Bush", almost exactly 10 years apart and both resulted in a jump to a war in Iraq shortly after.
What was that again about feeling safe from terrorism?
Not if you use a one time use debit card conveniently provided by the American Government.
So who do you send into the store to purchase the WAP for you? You obviously can't walk into the store and pay for it yourself, using cash. Now your face, fingerprints, and other things are in the store for future analysis by both in-store cameras, counter-top scanners and other things.
You can pay cash, but they still know Shakrai was in the store at 4:13pm and purchased 3 electronic devices totaling $179.53 with cash (fingerprints on the money), and left in a blue Subaru with the license plate XAC-5234 (for example).
With the amount of cameras in stores, in parking lots, and on the highways, its ridiculously easy to track people to a very finite degree. Add monitoring/tracking devices in phones and in credit cards (thats already coming), and you can see where people are at all times, even if they never make a purchase at any store.
And which analog TV does send anything back through the cable...
The TV doesn't "send anything back", the tuner knows which channel you're tuned to. That signal strength can be detected on the provider's end. Call your analog cable provider and ask them (btw: there is no such thing as "analog" cable, its digital up to the point where your analog converter takes care of it, again, call your cable provider and ask).
Frankly, I'm not terribly whoop-de-doo'd about the gov't being able to track me. Let them. Afterall, it's not like they can track my credit card transactions or anything.
Does the advertising industry also "lose" money because it cannot track if I am watching their ads on TV?
It must suck being only able to get 13 basic channels. What kind of antenna are you using?
Yes, this was said with tongue-in-cheek, but if you have any sort of digital cable (or cable television at all for that matter), they know exactly what you're watching, for how long, and what channels you switch to, and at what intervals.
Sure, they might not yet be able to tell when you get up and work on your motorcycle in the garage for 2 hours while the TV is on in the house, but soon enough they'll be able to do that too.
I can't even imagine the immensity of that task. There must be millions of APs in the US, and the list would change on a day-to-day basis.
They can already track who owns one, and where it will likely be installed, at the point of purchase. Most people don't use cash anymore (our society is trying to move away from cash, so they can centralize assets, track purchases through electronic means, etc.). Just follow the money.
Jane Doe goes to Best Buy, picks up a Linksys WAP, pays with her debit card. The bank is notified, purchase is made, and the government can now find Jane Doe's home address. Starting there, they can have a good chance of knowing the WAP will be installed at her location. If not there, expand out to her friends and colleagues, her work, and so on.
Its not hard to do, and you can bet our oppressive, paranoid government is already doing it.
The two wars alone probably cost more than we spend on heart disease in a decade. It sucks that a few thousand people died back in 2001, and no one is saying that nothing should be done. But what we should do should be PROPORTIONAL to the threat, and terrorists just aren't that big a threat. Even the small threat they do pose is practically impossible to eliminate, at least by our current measures.
$200B could have solved a lot of the world's problems. We could have built a 300-mile pond in the Sahara, pumped in with water from the Mediterranean, we could have put $80B into cancer research, we could have put $100B into alternative fuel solutions.
We all know what this war is about. Its always been about oil, pure and simple. Everyone knows it. There are no WMD. There never were any WMD. Saudis attacked us on 9/11, and we're still puttering around in Iraq. We're talking about Iran next, and my bets are on Syria after that. Its about controlling the world's "bloodstream", oil.
We should be in Afghanistan, but we know we can't win there. Why? Because 20 years ago, the United States funded, armed and trained the Al Queda to help them eradicate Russia from Afghanistan. They were successful, of course.
For another interesting perspective, read these two pages. The part I find best out of that material is:
The US government has been aware of Peak Oil since at least 1977 and has been actively planning for this crisis for over 30 years.
Three decades of careful, plotting analysis has yielded a comprehensive, sophisticated, and multi-faceted plan in which military force will be used to secure and control the globe's energy resources. This plan is simplistically, but not altogether inaccurately - known as "Go to War to Get Oil."
This strategy was publicly announced in April 2001, when a report commissioned by Dick Cheney was released. According to the report, entitled Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, the US is facing the biggest energy crisis in history and that the crisis requires "a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy."
Hopefuly they will just opt for gps and then manufacturers will include a "debug mode" like on almost every dvd player to turn it off.
I was just watching a video yesterday about the new Windows Mobile 5.0-capable phones coming out, and the three Microsoft employees featured in the video were talking about how the new phones will have a gps function built into the same chip as the other functions (SOC-style). There's already an HP PDA device with this exact functionality out today.
They were touting it as a way to "find friends near you", or "find the best Starbucks near you".
Pardon me, but I call bullshit. One of them also quietly said its a way to "..transparently track company assets". This means your boss can see where you are, including using a sattelite map to pinpoint your exact location (the MS guy even mentioned "Microsoft Location Server" as a means to do exactly that).
So if you call in sick, are you really at home? Let's zoom in and see where your phone really is... oh, the race track. You're fired!
You can bet the minute this technology hits devices, carriers are already embedding tracking software in the ROM that is shipped with the devices. For employers, for "homeland security", for law enforcement, for everything. Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!
No thanks, I'll just crush my phone in an industrial press and go without, thank you very much.
Nobody but me has any business knowing where I'm going at any one time. Period.
Remember, this is the FCC. If they want to, they can make it illegal to disable the GPS function.
They might be able to try to do that, but they certainly can't make it illegal not to buy a phone. Just opt out of owning a phone that has this capability.
If you can't tell whether or not it has this backdoor capability, don't buy it. Err on the side of caution. Nobody is forcing you to have a cellphone, or to even use one. In fact, you don't have to have a telephone at all. No (current) law in the US requires it.
Well, having one button would be a good idea, but the phone should be perfectly capable of knowing whether it's just called 911, and only transmit its location when it has.
You can bet the carriers will be forced to remotely update the phones after say... 6 months of time, that transparently transmits location with any call made from the phone.
How would you, as the person making the call, know if your location was being transmitted or not? Answer: You don't.
I would disagree with that statement. We're talking about x86 emulation on an x86 system. If properly emulated it should keep between 90-99% of its speed.
Slashdot Mirror
You just might be onto something there though... a tool that "de-BlueSpams" your phone, "whitening" your Bluetooth. Get it?
Note that doing so, is against the law in every single state in the US. If you're caught doing it (or owning a copy of libdvdcss), you can be prosecuted for it.
Have you ever purchased or rented a DVD or CD that refused to play in your "legal" player? We're talking about hardware, portable DVD players and CD walkman players here. I'm not talking about ripping or pirating movies, simply playing them in the proper hardware designed for that purpose.
I have, and guess what... you can't return them to the store for a refund, a store credit, or even another copy of the same disc. Why? Because the same disc from the same manufacturer, is crippled in exactly the same way.
I have a fairly new Panasonic portable DVD player I bring with me when I travel. I just rented "House of Flying Daggers" from Netflix the other day. When I put it in this particular player, it says "Unable to play this disc" (not a disc error, the actual DVD output on the screen says this). I put it in my Delkin DVD/RW+ player and it works fine (but most do, in that player).
So tell me what the recourse is, when you purchase legitimate property with US currency, and are given a non-working product in exchange for that currency? You can't return it, you can't complain, you can't get a refund.
So what do you do? Answer: You stop purchasing that material from that store/vendor/publisher.
I just repeated this out loud several times and burst out laughing. Our monitors now have to authenticate to our operating system, before they display anything?!
Does anyone else find that absolutely hilarious? I'd rather see the OS authenticate itself before it goes and screws up how hardware operates.
Moreover, I'd love to see a hardware vendor, one of the big boys, implement a system that requires Microsoft to buy a license to "authenticate" to the motherboard, so it can run its paltry "Vista" OS on it.
"We're sorry, Microsoft neglected to keep its licensing up to date, so your operating system will not run. Please consider an alternate operating system instead."
Well, except Linux and Apache in your above example, sure. Both of those projects existed LONG before there was any commercial influence or funding in their development.
DReaM may happen, but don't expect it to be shipped with any Linux or BSD distribution. It will die on the vine like thousands of other Sourceforge-like projects of similar goals.
DReaM on, Sun. The Open Source community isn't about writing your code for you, open standards or not.
Many of us vehemently object to DRM on its face, because it goes counter to the beliefs of the Open Source community; fostering learning and growth and a strong sense of community through sharing and improving our creations.
DRM doesn't play into that, even if your "customers" demand it. Creating an Open Source initiative to try to get the Open Source community to write the code for you, so you can lock it up under the CDDL for your customers' use, doesn't play into that.
Find another sandbox to play in, this one is ours.
I'm ok with letting law enforcement monitor email, as long as they either have my private gpg key + passphrase for the gpg-encrypted emails I send, or the AES256-encrypted emails I send for those who don't support gpg/pgp.
Monitor all you like, all you'll see is the envelope... nothing more.
The closer you come to me without my permission, the more fortified I become. Simple.
You truly don't get it, do you? Existing Microsoft Windows customers will pay Dell + Microsoft to run Apple's operating system. Apple gets $0.00, and (in your assertion) Apple doesn't lose any money at all... but they also don't gain any money either.
Now, lets magnify that to include the 40% of Asia running pirated Microsoft operating systems on their computers. Now they're running pirated versions of Apple's OS on those same computers. The Apple stores in Asia now simply close down, because they're no longer making sales of their hardware running their OS, because someone else can do it for $50.00 and include the computer + the pirated OS.
Is this making any sense to you at all?
Why not just mandate that every person in the US wear one? I mean, Health Care companies need to protect their assets too, right?.
In fact, it would be great if it included the full biological and medical history of the wearer, and maybe even their credit history too.
It might be more fashionable if we wear these on our ankles though, I mean these barbed-wire fences are probably going to snag the watch as we try to climb over them to get outside our borders anyway, right?
Go ahead and configure a P4/3.4Ghz workstation machine with 4gb of RAM on Dell's site for less than $999 and give me the URL. I'd love to see what you come up with.
This configuration is exactly what Steve Jobs used at WWDC and essentially what he's shipping for the Developer Workstations (also $999.00 + ADC Select/Premiere membership, $500.00 or $3,500).
So let me get this straight:
Totals:
Dell: $999.00
Microsoft: $15.00 (or whatever)
Apple: $0.00
So you think Apple should let you pay Dell and Microsoft to run their OS, all while giving Apple not a single cent? You think this is what they should allow?
Don't you understand? All of this "running-OSX-on-Intel-today" means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the end-result of running OSX-for-Intel on the customized hardware Apple is designing with Intel.
All this does is provide Apple with an exact blueprint of where to lock down the OS even tighter, to prevent 'hacking' when they release it. Besides, with Intel's LaGrande chipset, the whole OS runs in a silicon-locked sandbox, separate from anything else, and strongly keyed to the silicon itself. You literally CANNOT get inside without the proper key.
All of this hacking around with OSX today on Intel today, is going to rapidly become very irrelevant when they release their own boxes.
Two words: Patriot Act. Warrants are no longer necessary.
The Legislative Branch makes laws, and the Executive Branch enforces them, but since enforcement of the law essentially deprives the accused/convicted of Constitutional Rights, the Judicial Branch is involved in the process, both in warrants and in judging and sentencing. The Patriot Act significantly weakens the Judicial Branch's participation in the warrant process.
The Patriot Act has made it possible to do end-runs around the Judicial system, one of the core parts of our country's checks-and-balances system, a system that has been in place for 4 centuries.
Funny, we also haven't had a terrorist attack on US soil in the last 19 presidents either, except the other Bush.
In fact, the only 2 "terrorist" attacks on US soil were both on the World Trade Center, both involving presidents named "George Bush", almost exactly 10 years apart and both resulted in a jump to a war in Iraq shortly after.
What was that again about feeling safe from terrorism?
So who do you send into the store to purchase the WAP for you? You obviously can't walk into the store and pay for it yourself, using cash. Now your face, fingerprints, and other things are in the store for future analysis by both in-store cameras, counter-top scanners and other things.
You can pay cash, but they still know Shakrai was in the store at 4:13pm and purchased 3 electronic devices totaling $179.53 with cash (fingerprints on the money), and left in a blue Subaru with the license plate XAC-5234 (for example).
With the amount of cameras in stores, in parking lots, and on the highways, its ridiculously easy to track people to a very finite degree. Add monitoring/tracking devices in phones and in credit cards (thats already coming), and you can see where people are at all times, even if they never make a purchase at any store.
The TV doesn't "send anything back", the tuner knows which channel you're tuned to. That signal strength can be detected on the provider's end. Call your analog cable provider and ask them (btw: there is no such thing as "analog" cable, its digital up to the point where your analog converter takes care of it, again, call your cable provider and ask).
Hahaah ahA HA HAhAH aha hahahaha hah AHAhAhhhahah
Thanks for the great afternoon laugh.
It must suck being only able to get 13 basic channels. What kind of antenna are you using?
Yes, this was said with tongue-in-cheek, but if you have any sort of digital cable (or cable television at all for that matter), they know exactly what you're watching, for how long, and what channels you switch to, and at what intervals.
Sure, they might not yet be able to tell when you get up and work on your motorcycle in the garage for 2 hours while the TV is on in the house, but soon enough they'll be able to do that too.
They can already track who owns one, and where it will likely be installed, at the point of purchase. Most people don't use cash anymore (our society is trying to move away from cash, so they can centralize assets, track purchases through electronic means, etc.). Just follow the money.
Jane Doe goes to Best Buy, picks up a Linksys WAP, pays with her debit card. The bank is notified, purchase is made, and the government can now find Jane Doe's home address. Starting there, they can have a good chance of knowing the WAP will be installed at her location. If not there, expand out to her friends and colleagues, her work, and so on.
Its not hard to do, and you can bet our oppressive, paranoid government is already doing it.
$200B could have solved a lot of the world's problems. We could have built a 300-mile pond in the Sahara, pumped in with water from the Mediterranean, we could have put $80B into cancer research, we could have put $100B into alternative fuel solutions.
We all know what this war is about. Its always been about oil, pure and simple. Everyone knows it. There are no WMD. There never were any WMD. Saudis attacked us on 9/11, and we're still puttering around in Iraq. We're talking about Iran next, and my bets are on Syria after that. Its about controlling the world's "bloodstream", oil.
We should be in Afghanistan, but we know we can't win there. Why? Because 20 years ago, the United States funded, armed and trained the Al Queda to help them eradicate Russia from Afghanistan. They were successful, of course.
For another interesting perspective, read these two pages. The part I find best out of that material is:
Another thing to note is that we've done this terrorist attack planning before, back in the early 60's. Anyone remember Operation Northwoods? Scary stuff, how closely it parallels 9/11.
I was just watching a video yesterday about the new Windows Mobile 5.0-capable phones coming out, and the three Microsoft employees featured in the video were talking about how the new phones will have a gps function built into the same chip as the other functions (SOC-style). There's already an HP PDA device with this exact functionality out today.
They were touting it as a way to "find friends near you", or "find the best Starbucks near you".
Pardon me, but I call bullshit. One of them also quietly said its a way to "..transparently track company assets". This means your boss can see where you are, including using a sattelite map to pinpoint your exact location (the MS guy even mentioned "Microsoft Location Server" as a means to do exactly that).
So if you call in sick, are you really at home? Let's zoom in and see where your phone really is... oh, the race track. You're fired!
You can bet the minute this technology hits devices, carriers are already embedding tracking software in the ROM that is shipped with the devices. For employers, for "homeland security", for law enforcement, for everything. Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!
No thanks, I'll just crush my phone in an industrial press and go without, thank you very much.
Nobody but me has any business knowing where I'm going at any one time. Period.
They might be able to try to do that, but they certainly can't make it illegal not to buy a phone. Just opt out of owning a phone that has this capability.
If you can't tell whether or not it has this backdoor capability, don't buy it. Err on the side of caution. Nobody is forcing you to have a cellphone, or to even use one. In fact, you don't have to have a telephone at all. No (current) law in the US requires it.
You can bet the carriers will be forced to remotely update the phones after say... 6 months of time, that transparently transmits location with any call made from the phone.
How would you, as the person making the call, know if your location was being transmitted or not? Answer: You don't.
Except that there are.
"barratry is the act or practice of bringing repeated legal actions solely to harass."
You spelled virtualization wrong.
Not yet.. I'm working on turning it out as a service of the new Plucker site, when/if we do another version launch.