Watermarking is a form of DRM.. but it doesn't turn the product into a rental.
I have dozens of watermarked documents on my home computer and tablet. I can copy watermarked documents to any device I want... as often as I want, and the watermark doesn't interfere with usage... the only purpose that it serves is that if I were to distribute a watermarked document, it could be traced to my purchase, and I might be held accountable for that.
Sue for what, exactly? The only thing you would be eligible for is financial compensation, and that would not exceed whatever you paid for the material.
And guess what, they are refunding that.... so, I'm not sure you'd have anything to sue for.
It seems to have escaped your attention that I was talking about using digital formats that nobody else controls what devices you install the books on, and nobody can decide you no longer have a right to read it.
I'm not making excuses for what Microsoft is doing here... I'm saying that digital books are not necessarily inherently bad in that respect because digital formats exist where neither the publisher nor the operating system provider has any control over what devices you might copy the content to.
I never said I have nothing to hide... everybody does.
But to be frank, no... it wouldn't really bother me if something like this were installed in the apartment I lived in.
Like I said though.. people who don't like it should be entirely free to leave, and not be in violation of any lease that did not explicitly and prominently include mention of this sort of monitoring provision.
Wouldn't do squat if there's a quarter inch of iron between you and the mechanism that unlocks... Iron won't really block a magnetic field, but it can certainly redirect it, and can substantially weaken what actually gets through.
The only way to interfere with the interior of a mechanism surrounded by a highly permeable material using magnetic fields would be from the side where the door meets the door jam, which means the door would have to be open already for you to do anything like that.
So you prefer human judgment because it is imperfect, and therefore someone else who might be lying can always plausibly present that the other person who may have relayed a sufficiently accurate recollection is actually making something up?
But I don't see a single thing wrong with this... people who don't like it can move to another building.
The landlord would, however, be voiding any leases currently in place since these facilities would not be in the lease's terms, and people should be free to find another place without violating any lease.
It may be the smallest, as you say, but it is noteworthy that a quantum leap also represents being in an entirely new state where aspects of the previous state are not necessarily applicable.
... is there any practical benefit to building this today?
Not trying to troll anyone or make fun of what is very clearly someone's passion to get this thing done, but I'm curious: could the building of this somehow make any difference to computing today?
I can't tell.... were you just pretending to sound like a xenophobic asshole to troll me, or are you truly as ignorant as you just made yourself sound?
... But in the end, they are still forced to comply or cease operations in that country, wiping their servers and ceasing all physical server presence in Russia. Presumably, they will go through the steps of leaving Russia rather than comply, but they have very little time to do so. That's going to matter at least somewhat to some of them.
These companies have servers in Russia, and each will individually either have to comply or cease operations in Russia. It's worth noting that after receiving the notice, TorGuard, one of the ten companies mentioned in the article, has already responded to this,and left Russia of its own accord, since they consider the compliance terms unacceptable for their use case.
It's granular to the second, but they are still being billed for every second they are connected to a live number. The more numbers they connect to, the more they have to pay. It scales linearly with the number of people that they actually call... and to call a billion people is going to cost a *LOT* of money, even if each of those calls was just 1 second long.
3.5 cents per minute would only be relevant for the calls that actually connect either to a person or answering machine, but my understanding would be that all it takes to get billed that amount is calling a live number, and then one is still billed for at least that first second. Assuming only 10% of the calls that you make actually get through (depending on the population density within an area code, it could be much higher), with that many lines, it still ends up costing an average of $14 per minute for 4000 lines, and if you paying for this to run non-stop all day every day, let's say for 10 hours each day, that's still $8.4k per day to run.
Still think it's cheap?
Again, I think that the companies that have enough money to afford this would not need to resort to spam robocalling to generate revenue.
But my original point stands. A billion calls is a *LOT* of calls... and given that each line can only make so many calls per hour because of how long it takes to simply *connect* a call, in practice, you'll still end up making no more than a few hundred calls per day to a live number per outgoing line.... Even *with* 4000 lines going at once, it would still take over three years of non-stop calling just to reach the first billion, let alone multiple billions, and as I said above, I am skeptical that the companies that would be making the most use out of robocalling have setups of the scale required to do it in such a short time span simply because it would probably not be affordable.
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Watermarking is a form of DRM.. but it doesn't turn the product into a rental.
I have dozens of watermarked documents on my home computer and tablet. I can copy watermarked documents to any device I want... as often as I want, and the watermark doesn't interfere with usage... the only purpose that it serves is that if I were to distribute a watermarked document, it could be traced to my purchase, and I might be held accountable for that.
Sue for what, exactly? The only thing you would be eligible for is financial compensation, and that would not exceed whatever you paid for the material.
And guess what, they are refunding that.... so, I'm not sure you'd have anything to sue for.
It seems to have escaped your attention that I was talking about using digital formats that nobody else controls what devices you install the books on, and nobody can decide you no longer have a right to read it.
Then why are you allowed to print it?
Sure, except that MS *IS* refunding purchases
It's probably still annoying as fuck for people that depended on the content, but at least they are getting their money back.
I'm not making excuses for what Microsoft is doing here... I'm saying that digital books are not necessarily inherently bad in that respect because digital formats exist where neither the publisher nor the operating system provider has any control over what devices you might copy the content to.
How does a watermark on a PDF allow a company to delete content that you've paid for when they don't control what devices you copy the PDF to?
That is the general idea... and depending on the types of content that one reads, that can be easily preferred.
Or... print it to a PDF printer, and have the portability of the PDF with none of the DRM.
So what's your problem with digital books that are in PDF?
There's nothing wrong with digital books, as long as they in a format that you can take with you and put on whatever device is convenient.
How will a remote company delete my pdfs when they don't control what devices they are installed on?
Those plates could already be part of the door frame.... a quarter inch isn't very thick.
... that I could use on a lot of websites, but that's about it.
I never said I have nothing to hide... everybody does.
But to be frank, no... it wouldn't really bother me if something like this were installed in the apartment I lived in.
Like I said though.. people who don't like it should be entirely free to leave, and not be in violation of any lease that did not explicitly and prominently include mention of this sort of monitoring provision.
The only way to interfere with the interior of a mechanism surrounded by a highly permeable material using magnetic fields would be from the side where the door meets the door jam, which means the door would have to be open already for you to do anything like that.
So you prefer human judgment because it is imperfect, and therefore someone else who might be lying can always plausibly present that the other person who may have relayed a sufficiently accurate recollection is actually making something up?
But I don't see a single thing wrong with this... people who don't like it can move to another building.
The landlord would, however, be voiding any leases currently in place since these facilities would not be in the lease's terms, and people should be free to find another place without violating any lease.
It may be the smallest, as you say, but it is noteworthy that a quantum leap also represents being in an entirely new state where aspects of the previous state are not necessarily applicable.
Not trying to troll anyone or make fun of what is very clearly someone's passion to get this thing done, but I'm curious: could the building of this somehow make any difference to computing today?
I can't tell.... were you just pretending to sound like a xenophobic asshole to troll me, or are you truly as ignorant as you just made yourself sound?
These companies have servers in Russia, and each will individually either have to comply or cease operations in Russia. It's worth noting that after receiving the notice, TorGuard, one of the ten companies mentioned in the article, has already responded to this,and left Russia of its own accord, since they consider the compliance terms unacceptable for their use case.
And how are they supposed to do that, when the services are within Russia, and under Russian jurisdiction?
It's granular to the second, but they are still being billed for every second they are connected to a live number. The more numbers they connect to, the more they have to pay. It scales linearly with the number of people that they actually call... and to call a billion people is going to cost a *LOT* of money, even if each of those calls was just 1 second long.
Sure, but with phone lines, parallel isn't free. one phone line is cheap. 2000 of them? Not so much... especially after you factor in usage time.
3.5 cents per minute would only be relevant for the calls that actually connect either to a person or answering machine, but my understanding would be that all it takes to get billed that amount is calling a live number, and then one is still billed for at least that first second. Assuming only 10% of the calls that you make actually get through (depending on the population density within an area code, it could be much higher), with that many lines, it still ends up costing an average of $14 per minute for 4000 lines, and if you paying for this to run non-stop all day every day, let's say for 10 hours each day, that's still $8.4k per day to run.
Still think it's cheap?
Again, I think that the companies that have enough money to afford this would not need to resort to spam robocalling to generate revenue.
But my original point stands. A billion calls is a *LOT* of calls... and given that each line can only make so many calls per hour because of how long it takes to simply *connect* a call, in practice, you'll still end up making no more than a few hundred calls per day to a live number per outgoing line.... Even *with* 4000 lines going at once, it would still take over three years of non-stop calling just to reach the first billion, let alone multiple billions, and as I said above, I am skeptical that the companies that would be making the most use out of robocalling have setups of the scale required to do it in such a short time span simply because it would probably not be affordable.