In many cases, CTOs for production companies understand and agree on the futility of DRM. Contracts with the actors and the production crew, however, are what require that the distribution be controlled in some manner. Specifically, things like royalties for distribution become difficult to calculate when there is no DRM involved.
The technical folks in the industry -- even the ones who make the decisions -- don't particularly want DRM but are often contractually bound to deliver it. Perhaps years down the line, a better model for cast/crew compensation will present itself and these agreements will slowly start to reform themselves.
After looking through the package released through BitTorrent, not everybody's password has been compromised. Gawker does appear to store passwords in an encrypted form and only particularly weak passwords have been cracked. My username, for instance, does appear in their raw DB dump (with an encrypted form of my password) but not in a separate file which lists the passwords they were able to crack. I have a fairly strong password and I believe that's why. Real examples of passwords weak enough to be cracked include "may1404" and "122190". Nothing like, for instance, "STux_s7a" (an old password of mine) appears in unencrypted form, and that isn't even a very strong "strong" password.
Like Loop Recorder? I used to use Loop Recorder to time-shift the Jim Rome show while I was at work and have to save right to my desktop. It does handle internet audio, though.
"..an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is.."
Not so true, when you think about it. Would you really wanna travel all across town to a friend's house just so you could get in a virtual day at the links?
The minimum salary for Major League baseball players this upcoming season will be $300,000. The overwhelming majority of players make this minimum (or more, but short of $1mil in most cases). The players who do make the big bucks, a la Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, in almost all cases put up brilliant numbers that do, in fact, earn the ballclub money equal to or greater than their salaries (um, hence why they are paid that much).
In any case, A-Rod will earn in the neighborhood of $21mil this season to play 162 games of baseball (not including postseason play, of which the Yankees are almost always participants). $22,000,000.00 / 162 is $135,802.47. The average baseball game length these days is around 3 hours. So A-Rod makes $754.46 every minute, assuming he practices for free. It probably takes him 10 seconds to put the average pair of shoes on, and in 10 seconds he makes $125.74 (not $8mil).
What is striking to me, however, is that when the baseball players threaten to strike (or in 1994, do strike), everyone seems to call foul on them. To understand the situation, you must not look at relative amounts of money of average American salary and average MLB player salary; You must look at how the owners hide profits (by reporting them as expenditures for their others ventures, e.g. George Steinbrenner's new YES network) so that they can justify not paying the players more, etc. The majority of the players, in actuality, are earning the ballclubs much more than $300,000. They do deserve their piece of the pie.
See, here's the thing. I don't think that just because a game is built around a franchise necessarily makes it "unoriginal". I think that the gameplay and concept behind the game are really what give it originality. For instance, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic really tries to do new things in RPGs, like allowing the player to choose which side of the force he'll align himself with. If the game didn't have the Star Wars license, that sort of "choose your destiny" idea might not have been respected at all. Was NBA Street an unoriginal game? Of course not, but it did use the NBA license to help sell itself.
Shattered Glass, starring Hayden Christensen as former contributing writer to The New Republic Stephen Glass, chronicles Glass's fabrications of his stories and the lies he told to try to further his young career. I really enjoyed it, and although it was a very limited release, it's nice to know that the movie industry hasn't forgotten that special effects and computers haven't always around and some pretty good movies were made without them. This is easily one of the better movies of 2003.
I doubt it. I would think that for the majority of the world, the trailer is enough to make a person decide whether or not they want to see a movie. Has anyone ever actually gone to see a movie after watching a pirated version? It just seems that downloading a movie is already admission that you paying to see it is an impossibility.
Won't this have somewhat of a reverse effect on the advertising industry? Since Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, if it doesn't allow popup ads, that should motivate advertisers to look for different methods of annoying us, and the new ads would almost certainly be more intrusive than what we have now.
Look at history. First, there were simple banner ads that simply linked to a page. People didn't like the idea of being tracked, so they just copied the URL and put it in the address bar; bam, no referrer ID. Then, advertisers wised up and linked the ads to a CGI script, but the arguments were still plaintext, so people would just view the source of the page and get the URL from that. Now, advertisers once again have gotten around that by using IFRAMES for banner ads, so it's not nearly as easy to look at the source. Popup ads were immediately closed by the user, so advertisers developed popdown (or popunder, but popdown seems more antonymic) ads. Now, since popunder ads (and popup ads, as well) will be completely bypassed by anyone who uses Internet Explorer, advertisers will simply evolve as always and find the next way to pitch penis enlargement to us.
The article (the thing that you didn't read) said "The researchers used the game 'Half-Life' to create a spider-laden environment for arachnophobic people". That sounds an awful lot like they created a mod, in which case they could, in fact, have created models of spiders.
Yes, definitely. I just started college, and my roommate brought a dictionary with him. I stopped and realized that I'd never even considered bringing a dictionary or thesaurus with me because I've got M-W.com and even a second opinion with Dictionary.com, and then some non-words that should be at PseudoDictionary.com. It simply never occurred to me to bring a hard copy of a dictionary, because I've grown so dependent on those websites.
As far as encyclopedias go, Google has basically redefined the concept of an encyclopedia for me. With a little query-practice one can find a huge number of resources for just about anything imaginable. Google's almost like an encyclopedia to a library of encyclopedias.
Wouldn't this lend itself more to Linux servers being so dominant in the market? If I have a thousand Palm Pilots, and X number of them are defective, wouldn't X increase proportionately as I looked at more and more?
Slashdot Mirror
In many cases, CTOs for production companies understand and agree on the futility of DRM. Contracts with the actors and the production crew, however, are what require that the distribution be controlled in some manner. Specifically, things like royalties for distribution become difficult to calculate when there is no DRM involved.
The technical folks in the industry -- even the ones who make the decisions -- don't particularly want DRM but are often contractually bound to deliver it. Perhaps years down the line, a better model for cast/crew compensation will present itself and these agreements will slowly start to reform themselves.
After looking through the package released through BitTorrent, not everybody's password has been compromised. Gawker does appear to store passwords in an encrypted form and only particularly weak passwords have been cracked. My username, for instance, does appear in their raw DB dump (with an encrypted form of my password) but not in a separate file which lists the passwords they were able to crack. I have a fairly strong password and I believe that's why. Real examples of passwords weak enough to be cracked include "may1404" and "122190". Nothing like, for instance, "STux_s7a" (an old password of mine) appears in unencrypted form, and that isn't even a very strong "strong" password.
Like Loop Recorder? I used to use Loop Recorder to time-shift the Jim Rome show while I was at work and have to save right to my desktop. It does handle internet audio, though.
Patrick
That's one of the infinite possibilities, yes.
Later,
Patrick
Either way, what's so wrong with Best Buy saying, "if you've filed for the rebate, you forfeit your ability to return the item"?
Later,
Patrick
Actually, only 100.4.
Later,
Patrick
"..an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is.."
Not so true, when you think about it. Would you really wanna travel all across town to a friend's house just so you could get in a virtual day at the links?
Later,
Patrick
(This is not a troll.)
"Open source game servers"? What does open source have to do with the issue?
Later,
Patrick
We have a problem: grep doesn't exist on any computer that has a lot of browsing activity.
(Please go easy on me, it's a joke.)
Later,
Patrick
Incorrect.
The minimum salary for Major League baseball players this upcoming season will be $300,000. The overwhelming majority of players make this minimum (or more, but short of $1mil in most cases). The players who do make the big bucks, a la Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, in almost all cases put up brilliant numbers that do, in fact, earn the ballclub money equal to or greater than their salaries (um, hence why they are paid that much).
In any case, A-Rod will earn in the neighborhood of $21mil this season to play 162 games of baseball (not including postseason play, of which the Yankees are almost always participants). $22,000,000.00 / 162 is $135,802.47. The average baseball game length these days is around 3 hours. So A-Rod makes $754.46 every minute, assuming he practices for free. It probably takes him 10 seconds to put the average pair of shoes on, and in 10 seconds he makes $125.74 (not $8mil).
What is striking to me, however, is that when the baseball players threaten to strike (or in 1994, do strike), everyone seems to call foul on them. To understand the situation, you must not look at relative amounts of money of average American salary and average MLB player salary; You must look at how the owners hide profits (by reporting them as expenditures for their others ventures, e.g. George Steinbrenner's new YES network) so that they can justify not paying the players more, etc. The majority of the players, in actuality, are earning the ballclubs much more than $300,000. They do deserve their piece of the pie.
Later,
Patrick
See, here's the thing. I don't think that just because a game is built around a franchise necessarily makes it "unoriginal". I think that the gameplay and concept behind the game are really what give it originality. For instance, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic really tries to do new things in RPGs, like allowing the player to choose which side of the force he'll align himself with. If the game didn't have the Star Wars license, that sort of "choose your destiny" idea might not have been respected at all. Was NBA Street an unoriginal game? Of course not, but it did use the NBA license to help sell itself.
Later,
Patrick
Viewtiful Joe and Beyond Good and Evil are both excellent.
Later,
Patrick
I think this happened to the Vegas.com sports betting lines page. Only thing is that that page has been like that for several days. *shrug*
Later,
Patrick
Shattered Glass , starring Hayden Christensen as former contributing writer to The New Republic Stephen Glass, chronicles Glass's fabrications of his stories and the lies he told to try to further his young career. I really enjoyed it, and although it was a very limited release, it's nice to know that the movie industry hasn't forgotten that special effects and computers haven't always around and some pretty good movies were made without them. This is easily one of the better movies of 2003.
Later,
Patrick
I doubt it. I would think that for the majority of the world, the trailer is enough to make a person decide whether or not they want to see a movie. Has anyone ever actually gone to see a movie after watching a pirated version? It just seems that downloading a movie is already admission that you paying to see it is an impossibility.
Later,
Patrick
Moderators: Don't you think that the parent might be a pretty good one to mod up? Yes, I thought so too.
Later,
Patrick
Oh, not the same Aria I was thinking of. Bleh, mate.
Later,
Patrick
Won't this have somewhat of a reverse effect on the advertising industry? Since Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, if it doesn't allow popup ads, that should motivate advertisers to look for different methods of annoying us, and the new ads would almost certainly be more intrusive than what we have now.
Look at history. First, there were simple banner ads that simply linked to a page. People didn't like the idea of being tracked, so they just copied the URL and put it in the address bar; bam, no referrer ID. Then, advertisers wised up and linked the ads to a CGI script, but the arguments were still plaintext, so people would just view the source of the page and get the URL from that. Now, advertisers once again have gotten around that by using IFRAMES for banner ads, so it's not nearly as easy to look at the source. Popup ads were immediately closed by the user, so advertisers developed popdown (or popunder, but popdown seems more antonymic) ads. Now, since popunder ads (and popup ads, as well) will be completely bypassed by anyone who uses Internet Explorer, advertisers will simply evolve as always and find the next way to pitch penis enlargement to us.
Later,
Patrick
The article (the thing that you didn't read) said "The researchers used the game 'Half-Life' to create a spider-laden environment for arachnophobic people". That sounds an awful lot like they created a mod, in which case they could, in fact, have created models of spiders.
Later,
Patrick
Yes, definitely. I just started college, and my roommate brought a dictionary with him. I stopped and realized that I'd never even considered bringing a dictionary or thesaurus with me because I've got M-W.com and even a second opinion with Dictionary.com, and then some non-words that should be at PseudoDictionary.com. It simply never occurred to me to bring a hard copy of a dictionary, because I've grown so dependent on those websites.
As far as encyclopedias go, Google has basically redefined the concept of an encyclopedia for me. With a little query-practice one can find a huge number of resources for just about anything imaginable. Google's almost like an encyclopedia to a library of encyclopedias.
Later,
Patrick
Wouldn't this lend itself more to Linux servers being so dominant in the market? If I have a thousand Palm Pilots, and X number of them are defective, wouldn't X increase proportionately as I looked at more and more?
Later,
Patrick
What about idiots breaking the OS by ejecting the CD tray?
Later,
Patrick
Perhaps a fan of Oola living in Los Angeles? *shrug* It could happen.
Later,
Patrick
Am I the only one who hasn't heard of this show? Does anyone have a better description than "space western"?
Later,
Patrick
It's just not right without a mouse!
Neither of the first two Doom games used a mouse at all.
Later,
Patrick