"
1) there is a huge financial incentive to preserve the huge price difference between consumer gear and production gear.
"
In my experience there is a huge quality difference between pro and consumer gear. Pro stuff is designed to be taken apart and fixed, not chucked and replaced. It comes with big size circuit boards, screws with standard heads, steel cases and rack mountable. They also often come with controls that can be read in the dark and don't break when dropped on the floor.
The build quality between pro and consumer gear is substantial.
Also, pro gear never ever has a big logo on the front labelling it a pro version:)
"
Consolidate any boxes that have that light of load so light that they may frequently go to sleep.
"
What if there is only one box - e.g. the router / server machine in my house does nothing for 95% of the day and only has stuff to do when I'm actively using it - I'm fine with it going to sleep / powering off hard disks etc. since it's a couple of seconds wakeup time. I can't power it off since it requires me to have physical access to bring it up again [I can't be bothered to try wake on lan], plus everytime it boots it seems to force a disk check on me taking about an hour.
This is a valid point for server farms though - the main servers I use have an obvious 24hour periodic cycle [loaded while US + Europe is awake - empty at other times] and it would be great to bring up additional machines as required.
"
Pro #2: Employee benefits. How about state of the art office spaces with closed-door-offices, lots of daylight, really nice functional furniture and high-end computers? Or how about 50% more bank holidays and 5 weeks of vacation?
"
In my experience, daylight is something Sweden does not have in January - try June for an eternal sun experience.
I think there a substantial differences between DirecTV and DeCSS.
With DeCSS I paid for the signal and it is illegal for me to decode it myself.
With DirecTV the hackers have not paid for the signal and they have been techincally outsmarted by the company.
With DeCSS, the company have attempted to encrypt their signals from people who have the right to view them, technically they failed and now they are suing all who know how to decrypt them.
With DirecTV the company is attempting to enrypt their signals from those who haven't paid for them, and they've come up with a technical solution and won [for the time being].
DirecTV are not attempting to run over the legal rights of consumers, they are attempting to prevent piracy. CSS attempts to destroy legal rights under the guise of preventing piracy.
'If you know how to steal my car then you go to prison'
Possessing a device that can do an illegal thing become a crime in itself, even if the device may have a legal and useful purpose - e.g. a cracked DVD player that allows you to fast forward through the copyright notice - IANAL but I believe that's still legal.
The goal of cracking encryption technologies is to demonstrate that content control will not and can not work, all the control mechanisms will do is irritate people.
It's also a fight against the content providers who wish to dictate when, where and on what their content can be playered.
It's a fight to preserve fair use rights -
the right to quote from the work,
the right to resell the work,
the right to review the content,
the right to fast forward through the adverts, the right to buy a film from a different country,
the right not to have to purchase one copy per player,
the right to build your own player,
the right to play and duplicate your own content,
the right to watch without informing the company.
"
Out of wedlock births are stil all too common, but I'd be interested to see some proof that they're actually on the rise (these were also frequent 100 years ago)
"
My suspicion is the number of out of wedlock births has gone up but the number of out of wedlock conceptions is the same. We no longer have the same 'you got her pregnant - you marry her' pressure that we used to.
"
I spend between 2 and 3 hours a day sitting in my car when my workplace is only 7 miles from my house.
"
Buy a bicycle, you can travel 7 miles in half an hour [less if you're fit], you produce no noise pollution, no CO2 and you don't need to do any additional exercise to keep fit.
Oh, you can also sell you car and have minimal running costs [my last bike ended up costing less than 0.1p per mile - I spent about 300 pounds on it and travelled nearly 5000 miles before I gave up and bought a new one]
"
This is just my point. Why the hell shouldn't companies be allowed to protect their property?
"
Why shouldn't I be allowed to protect my intellecual property. If the means exist to prevent me copying the material of a movie studio, and the movie studio is allowed to prevent me copying it's materials, why I am not allowed to choose what protection my original material has.
"
If you can show me one person who has not been able to pursue legitimate recording activites because of copy protection I will eat my words. Otherwise I stand by what I say.
"
I have a minidisc of a live Concert that *I* recorded of two friends of mine performing songs that they wrote. I am not allowed to copy it because the minidisc player has decided that I am not the copyright holder. As a result, of the three people involved, the other two are not allowed identical copies to the original. We were not able to distribute perfect promotional copies to pubs and clubs to get gigs since according to Sony we don't own the copyright.
"
Next thing the free software guys will be trying to tell me that I can't put a chain on my bike!
"
I think the problem is the Cycle companies have said, here, have the bike you paid for. You aren't allowed to give it away, resell it to someone else, photograph it without an approved photography device, ride it without an approved helmet or without paying the Cycle Company Road fee. If you wish to ride in a different country you must purchase a new bike because this European bike has been prevented from working in America. If this bike breaks and you attempt to fix it with a non Cycle company approved part you may be sent to jail. If you wish to lend your bike to a friend, you must write to the Cycle company and ask for permission first. Please note that attempting to make your own bicycle is in contravention of international law.
The free software people are saying, here is a bike, ride it, give it away, resell it, if you want you can even set up your own bicycle manufacturing company based on this bikes design. The only thing you can't do is restrict the rights of anyone you give / sell a bike to.
"
The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families too
"
So do executioners. Does this mean we should encourage murderers or the executioners would be out of a job?
"
Actually, most modern microwaves are 900-1500 watts, all of which is directed toward the contents of the oven. Compare
with your average digital phone, which transmits with 1-2 watts, dispersed in all directions.
"
I've seen people make 1-2 hour cellphone calls. Dividing by 1000 [power ratio of microwave to cellphone] that gives up to 7 seconds of your head in the microwave on a regular basis.
"
Almost all data in the world around us is compressed, and not losslessly, like CDs, TV, films, you name it.
"
Er, I might be mistaken but CD's are not compressed. Similarly analogue media is not compressed either, it may be noisy and/or have a lower resolution than you would like.
Lossy compression trades quality for space/bandwidth. It's entirely separate to the question of capture and display quality.
People who moan about lossy compression usually do so because they have an excess of bandwidth / space and would rather have more quality than more free bandwidth. The also complain because it's possible to convert a lossless compression into a lossy compression but not the other way around.
"
Just DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE STUFF.
"
Why shouldn't people who write and use free software be allowed to voice their opinion on what quality / bitrates it should use just because it is free?
I belive that Windows installs the hard disk drivers into the kernel at install time, it is impossible to change these later without a complete wipe / restore cycle.
The Microsoft Knowledge Base recommends the best way of upgrading your motherboard is to buy an identical one to previously.
[can't remember reference]
Suppose, joe user wishes to copy his email from outlook express on his computer to his laptop/ back it up. Where is the default store for him under Win2k?
Education is the process of learning stuff that you didn't know already. Sometimes it's reading a book, sometimes it's asking someone who knows stuff to tell it too you.
I'm just suggesting that we [as a society] might have the occasional noble ideal that people should be allowed to learn stuff becuase we believe that people knowing stuff is a good thing.
Certainly, I have free schooling to teach me stuff if I want to learn, I have free libraries so I can find out stuff if I want to, I have free internet access to discover stuff if I want to, why shouldn't I have free lectures to attend if I want to know stuff?
"
>Why is the third not publishing if the first two are?
This is law, not science. You can't start from general principles and extrapolate specifics in law the same way you can in science. It's a common mistake made by scientists/engineers/etc. when trying to understand law.
"
Scientists generally believe everything should work in a logical fashion without self-contradiction and tend to search out and test borderline / interesting cases. The also tend to believe that similar situations should behave the same way.
Maybe if lawyers asked scientists questions more often then the laws would make more sense and all work in the same way.
Anyway, your answer was "because it's not" which frankly is a dumb way to decide what the law should be.
"
To get to my servers in our London datacenter from a UUNet connection, it covers about 15 hops that include a trans-contenental hop to DC up to New York, back over AboveNet fiber to London again and response does the same path.
"
You think that's bad. We have two net connections, UUNet and INSnet. To get from UUNet's own traceroute tool to us they recommend the shortest route as down INSnet. This means we get asymmetric routing and we are virtually unable to use any of our incoming UUNet bandwidth.
"
This has been the norm for at least ten years on *nix software. Most high-value stuff has been licensed by a scheme like FlexLM on Solaris, HP-UX and so on. The license server is tied to a server and can dish out up to n floating licenses to whatever workstations request them. When a workstation stops using a license, it can be used by any other on the local network. You can use as many as you've paid for, but no more.
"
So therefore the way the New Microsoft licence works is I can install 2 copies on my network server and then any two PCs in my house can boot a copy over the network.
Is that not different to the way it actually works which is:
You buy two copies of Microsoft for your home network. You may only install each copy on to one nominated machine, irrespective of the number of copies in use at any one time and the number of machines you have. You must use a matching CD to restore a faulty machine and it may stop working at random due to hardware upgrades.
Yah, and paying for food sucks too, but you gotta eat.
"
That's a bad analogy, with food you pay a production cost, with software you pay a development cost. I think it's more like
I own a garden and seeds, I want to grow my own food. I can buy a shiny book with full glossy instructions, which I am not allowed to tell anyone else about on pain of death [Microsoft] or I can simply pay the reproduction cost of the instructions from my local gardeners group and pass them on to anyone I like [Linux].
"
You use encryption to prevent copying, not enormous files! Put some good RSA encryption on a DVD and it would be much harder to crack.
"
You don't work for the RIAA / MPAA do you?
Sure encrypt the file as much as you like. However, if you are going to allow me to play it then you also have to give me a black box to decrypt it too which knows a decryption key.
Now you have to prevent me obtaining a decryption key / unencrypted stream from a box which contains a decryption key and the ability to generate unencrypted streams. The problem changes from
"How do I decrypt a syper well encrypted source"
to
"How do I convince my decrypter to give me an unencrypted stream" / "How do I find out what the algorithm and keys are from my decrypter"
Slashdot Mirror
"
:)
1) there is a huge financial incentive to preserve the huge price difference between consumer gear and production gear.
"
In my experience there is a huge quality difference between pro and consumer gear. Pro stuff is designed to be taken apart and fixed, not chucked and replaced. It comes with big size circuit boards, screws with standard heads, steel cases and rack mountable. They also often come with controls that can be read in the dark and don't break when dropped on the floor.
The build quality between pro and consumer gear is substantial.
Also, pro gear never ever has a big logo on the front labelling it a pro version
"
Consolidate any boxes that have that light of load so light that they may frequently go to sleep.
"
What if there is only one box - e.g. the router / server machine in my house does nothing for 95% of the day and only has stuff to do when I'm actively using it - I'm fine with it going to sleep / powering off hard disks etc. since it's a couple of seconds wakeup time. I can't power it off since it requires me to have physical access to bring it up again [I can't be bothered to try wake on lan], plus everytime it boots it seems to force a disk check on me taking about an hour.
This is a valid point for server farms though - the main servers I use have an obvious 24hour periodic cycle [loaded while US + Europe is awake - empty at other times] and it would be great to bring up additional machines as required.
" Pro #2: Employee benefits. How about state of the art office spaces with closed-door-offices, lots of daylight, really nice functional furniture and high-end computers? Or how about 50% more bank holidays and 5 weeks of vacation? "
In my experience, daylight is something Sweden does not have in January - try June for an eternal sun experience.
I think there a substantial differences between DirecTV and DeCSS.
With DeCSS I paid for the signal and it is illegal for me to decode it myself.
With DirecTV the hackers have not paid for the signal and they have been techincally outsmarted by the company.
With DeCSS, the company have attempted to encrypt their signals from people who have the right to view them, technically they failed and now they are suing all who know how to decrypt them.
With DirecTV the company is attempting to enrypt their signals from those who haven't paid for them, and they've come up with a technical solution and won [for the time being].
DirecTV are not attempting to run over the legal rights of consumers, they are attempting to prevent piracy. CSS attempts to destroy legal rights under the guise of preventing piracy.
99.999% uptime ?
:)
For a single server that equates to about 300 seconds of downtime assuming you've been running constantly since Win2K was released.
Since you made this easily we can assume that you've had a maximum of 1 or maybe 2 reboots in the whole time you've had your server.
Guess you don't install many security patches / service packs then
I think the point is, the DMCA says not that
'If you steal my car then you go to prison'
but
'If you know how to steal my car then you go to prison'
Possessing a device that can do an illegal thing become a crime in itself, even if the device may have a legal and useful purpose - e.g. a cracked DVD player that allows you to fast forward through the copyright notice - IANAL but I believe that's still legal.
The goal of cracking encryption technologies is to demonstrate that content control will not and can not work, all the control mechanisms will do is irritate people.
It's also a fight against the content providers who wish to dictate when, where and on what their content can be playered.
It's a fight to preserve fair use rights -
the right to quote from the work,
the right to resell the work,
the right to review the content,
the right to fast forward through the adverts, the right to buy a film from a different country,
the right not to have to purchase one copy per player,
the right to build your own player,
the right to play and duplicate your own content,
the right to watch without informing the company.
"
Out of wedlock births are stil all too common, but I'd be interested to see some proof that they're actually on the rise (these were also frequent 100 years ago)
"
My suspicion is the number of out of wedlock births has gone up but the number of out of wedlock conceptions is the same. We no longer have the same 'you got her pregnant - you marry her' pressure that we used to.
IANAL
Is it because posessing an image of a murder is not illegal but a picture of a child in a sexual act is?
"
I spend between 2 and 3 hours a day sitting in my car when my workplace is only 7 miles from my house.
"
Buy a bicycle, you can travel 7 miles in half an hour [less if you're fit], you produce no noise pollution, no CO2 and you don't need to do any additional exercise to keep fit.
Oh, you can also sell you car and have minimal running costs [my last bike ended up costing less than 0.1p per mile - I spent about 300 pounds on it and travelled nearly 5000 miles before I gave up and bought a new one]
"
This is just my point. Why the hell shouldn't companies be allowed to protect their property?
"
Why shouldn't I be allowed to protect my intellecual property. If the means exist to prevent me copying the material of a movie studio, and the movie studio is allowed to prevent me copying it's materials, why I am not allowed to choose what protection my original material has.
"
If you can show me one person who has not been able to pursue legitimate recording activites because of copy protection I will eat my words. Otherwise I stand by what I say.
"
I have a minidisc of a live Concert that *I* recorded of two friends of mine performing songs that they wrote. I am not allowed to copy it because the minidisc player has decided that I am not the copyright holder. As a result, of the three people involved, the other two are not allowed identical copies to the original. We were not able to distribute perfect promotional copies to pubs and clubs to get gigs since according to Sony we don't own the copyright.
"
Next thing the free software guys will be trying to tell me that I can't put a chain on my bike!
"
I think the problem is the Cycle companies have said, here, have the bike you paid for. You aren't allowed to give it away, resell it to someone else, photograph it without an approved photography device, ride it without an approved helmet or without paying the Cycle Company Road fee. If you wish to ride in a different country you must purchase a new bike because this European bike has been prevented from working in America. If this bike breaks and you attempt to fix it with a non Cycle company approved part you may be sent to jail. If you wish to lend your bike to a friend, you must write to the Cycle company and ask for permission first. Please note that attempting to make your own bicycle is in contravention of international law.
The free software people are saying, here is a bike, ride it, give it away, resell it, if you want you can even set up your own bicycle manufacturing company based on this bikes design. The only thing you can't do is restrict the rights of anyone you give / sell a bike to.
"
The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families too
"
So do executioners. Does this mean we should encourage murderers or the executioners would be out of a job?
"
The claim against the effectiveness of CCTV was that it didn't reduce crime, it merely moved it to areas that don't have CCTV.
"
It was also that extensive surveying of people demonstrated it didn't make people feel more safe when walking through CCTV areas.
"
Actually, most modern microwaves are 900-1500 watts, all of which is directed toward the contents of the oven. Compare
with your average digital phone, which transmits with 1-2 watts, dispersed in all directions.
"
I've seen people make 1-2 hour cellphone calls. Dividing by 1000 [power ratio of microwave to cellphone] that gives up to 7 seconds of your head in the microwave on a regular basis.
Volunteers to test this?
"
Almost all data in the world around us is compressed, and not losslessly, like CDs, TV, films, you name it.
"
Er, I might be mistaken but CD's are not compressed. Similarly analogue media is not compressed either, it may be noisy and/or have a lower resolution than you would like.
Lossy compression trades quality for space/bandwidth. It's entirely separate to the question of capture and display quality.
People who moan about lossy compression usually do so because they have an excess of bandwidth / space and would rather have more quality than more free bandwidth. The also complain because it's possible to convert a lossless compression into a lossy compression but not the other way around.
"
Just DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE STUFF.
"
Why shouldn't people who write and use free software be allowed to voice their opinion on what quality / bitrates it should use just because it is free?
I belive that Windows installs the hard disk drivers into the kernel at install time, it is impossible to change these later without a complete wipe / restore cycle.
The Microsoft Knowledge Base recommends the best way of upgrading your motherboard is to buy an identical one to previously.
[can't remember reference]
"
2) Stupid directory structure
"
And Win2K has an obvious directory structure?
Suppose, joe user wishes to copy his email from outlook express on his computer to his laptop/ back it up. Where is the default store for him under Win2k?
c:\docs + settings\$name\local settings\application data\{$manic string -e.g. 9A84C3FB-1A8F-4FDC-AA54-7A366144B33A }\microsoft\outlook express\
Oh yes, thats a hidden folder by default and won't be shown.
This does not give Win2K an obvious directory structure by any means.
[What's this about high memory use? My linux machine boots to about 30Mb in use, my Win2K machine is nearly 100Mb]
Education is the process of learning stuff that you didn't know already. Sometimes it's reading a book, sometimes it's asking someone who knows stuff to tell it too you.
I'm just suggesting that we [as a society] might have the occasional noble ideal that people should be allowed to learn stuff becuase we believe that people knowing stuff is a good thing.
Certainly, I have free schooling to teach me stuff if I want to learn, I have free libraries so I can find out stuff if I want to, I have free internet access to discover stuff if I want to, why shouldn't I have free lectures to attend if I want to know stuff?
"
>Why is the third not publishing if the first two are?
This is law, not science. You can't start from general principles and extrapolate specifics in law the same way you can in science. It's a common mistake made by scientists/engineers/etc. when trying to understand law.
"
Scientists generally believe everything should work in a logical fashion without self-contradiction and tend to search out and test borderline / interesting cases. The also tend to believe that similar situations should behave the same way.
Maybe if lawyers asked scientists questions more often then the laws would make more sense and all work in the same way.
Anyway, your answer was "because it's not" which frankly is a dumb way to decide what the law should be.
"
To get to my servers in our London datacenter from a UUNet connection, it covers about 15 hops that include a trans-contenental hop to DC up to New York, back over AboveNet fiber to London again and response does the same path.
"
You think that's bad. We have two net connections, UUNet and INSnet. To get from UUNet's own traceroute tool to us they recommend the shortest route as down INSnet. This means we get asymmetric routing and we are virtually unable to use any of our incoming UUNet bandwidth.
"
This has been the norm for at least ten years on *nix software. Most high-value stuff has been licensed by a scheme like FlexLM on Solaris, HP-UX and so on. The license server is tied to a server and can dish out up to n floating licenses to whatever workstations request them. When a workstation stops using a license, it can be used by any other on the local network. You can use as many as you've paid for, but no more.
"
So therefore the way the New Microsoft licence works is I can install 2 copies on my network server and then any two PCs in my house can boot a copy over the network.
Is that not different to the way it actually works which is:
You buy two copies of Microsoft for your home network. You may only install each copy on to one nominated machine, irrespective of the number of copies in use at any one time and the number of machines you have. You must use a matching CD to restore a faulty machine and it may stop working at random due to hardware upgrades.
"
>Paying for software sucks.
Yah, and paying for food sucks too, but you gotta eat.
"
That's a bad analogy, with food you pay a production cost, with software you pay a development cost. I think it's more like
I own a garden and seeds, I want to grow my own food. I can buy a shiny book with full glossy instructions, which I am not allowed to tell anyone else about on pain of death [Microsoft] or I can simply pay the reproduction cost of the instructions from my local gardeners group and pass them on to anyone I like [Linux].
You can also circumvent them easily. Map quake3arena.com to 127.0.0.1 / and run a quake3 fake keyserver which always answers "You're legit".
Of course, Microsoft will probably be bright enough to insist on digitally signed and dated responses if they really want to stop piracy.
"
You use encryption to prevent copying, not enormous files! Put some good RSA encryption on a DVD and it would be much harder to crack.
"
You don't work for the RIAA / MPAA do you?
Sure encrypt the file as much as you like. However, if you are going to allow me to play it then you also have to give me a black box to decrypt it too which knows a decryption key.
Now you have to prevent me obtaining a decryption key / unencrypted stream from a box which contains a decryption key and the ability to generate unencrypted streams. The problem changes from
"How do I decrypt a syper well encrypted source"
to
"How do I convince my decrypter to give me an unencrypted stream" / "How do I find out what the algorithm and keys are from my decrypter"
Or possibly, tomorrows middle men will get paid less than todays and that's why they're pissed off about it.
"
Ahh, I see. The government should pay for your higher education so that you can get a higher-paying job than a grade-school graduate...
"
Ahh, I see, The govenment should pay for you to go to school so that you can get a higher-paying job that an illiterate person.
Maybe, we should allow people to become educated because we regard education as an end in itself?