This isn't really supposed to be a troll, so I'll try and provide rational arguments, but... who cares about the number of Linux servers being higher than anything else?
The number of Linux servers compared to Solaris servers is largely meaningless because a Sparc can handle more of a load than a simple x86. Yes, Linux is available on a Sparc. But why bother? If you're going to get a UltraSparc 10, why get another OS when you can get Solaris 8 supported as part of the package? If you can afford $8000 for the machine, Solaris is a viable and usually more useful option than Linux. (Mostly because you can also get a support contract.)
A useful comparison might be to compare what the majority of Linux servers are used for compared to Solaris and Windows servers. Are the Linux servers running e-commerce sites? Or are they running the standard Apache home page because httpd was in the default init script?
Linux is used by many hobbyists - how many of those boxes where just boxes set up for personal use? I dunno how cheap broadband is in Germany, but it's a possibility.
Like all statistics, take these with a grain of salt - the fact that the cheapest method of serving a web server is the most widely used really doesn't mean anything. I'd expect a survey of college students who run their own web pages to come up with a large collection of Linux, followed by Windows, and then maybe the free-as-in-beer Solaris offerings.
Thus I'm almost positive that any study would find that Napster users buy more music than they will if Napster is shut down, while library-goers buy fewer books than they would if all the libraries were suddenly shut down.
One last point: when libraries were started, it was prohibitively expensive to buy books in large quantities, because it was expensive to produce mass quantities of books. You can note the reduce in the cost of printing stuff by noting the increase in both size and frequency of newspaper additions - they've gotten larger as time goes on. (This is also due to an increase in ads.)
However, when I'm at a book store, I find myself much less likely to buy a book that I don't know if I like, where as at a library, I'm much more likely to pick something up and read it. I may later decide that I hate the book, but it doesn't matter to me. This effect does apply to Napster - people use it similarly to a library. I'll accept that part of the argument.
What you're forgetting is that Napster gets new material faster than libraries, and has a larger selection. The other thing is that the music industry doesn't care that the music quality on MP3 is inferiour to CD quality - they're afraid of what MP4 and MP5 might sound like! As technology gets better, tradable music will start sounding better and better. It will probably get larger and larger, but disk drive tech will probably keep up with them. Just a few years ago, a 100MB file would have taken up about 10% of my harddrive. Now it takes up about 0.5% of my harddrive - and I've got another one of the same size, so it's more like 0.25% (one for Linux, one for Windows - basically (each OS has it's own main drive and the other gets to be "swap")). Right now, it's feasable for me to store several 100MB files on my drive - that's about the size a CD quality, uncompressed track takes up. They aren't worried about today's technology - they're scared of tomorrow's.
If anything, libraries pose a much greater danger to the publishing industry than Napster does to the RIAA, because once you have checked a book out of the library and read it, you are almost certain never to purchase it.
I've got to disagree with that - you actually hurt the companies less. Let's say you take out a book by some unknown author. In this case, let's say I take out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I like it, so later I take out Speaker for the Dead. So far, they've missed on two sales. I (unlike a lot of other/.ers) like Speaker and then go out and buyXenocide. (And my/. username is a direct reference to that book - long story.) Like wise, I buy both Children of the Mind and Ender's Shadow. Now they're one ahead, because I read two books from the library.
The thing that they're afraid of on Napster is the same thing publishers were afraid of and wrong about here - that I'd never buy any more books because I could just get them from my library. Well, my library has an imperfect selection, and authors are generally less likely to sign books from a library than your own copy. (Although they'll gladly sell you a new copy:)). Many people claim that they "discover" bands that they wouldn't have otherwise found on Napster and that makes them later buy the CDs - and I agree. But the RIAA is afraid, and probably rightly so, that MP3 technology and Internet bandwidth will improve, so that eventually everyone will be using Napster to download digitally-perfect copies of songs. Just because they aren't doesn't mean that they won't be later!
When you have the ability to go to your library, and then select a book out of thousands and have a new copy be instantly created in your hands, then a library will be like Napster. Until then, "meatspace" and "cyberspace" are two very different places.
Except that the legal difference is a functional difference. In a library, the copyright owner has been compensated, and his work is not then copied and handed out to a million people. On Napster, that is the basic effect. The function Napster fulfills, although similar to that of a library, is still different, and the differences are very important.
Your local library has paid for the books there, in some fassion. Whether they paid for it or TuLu the Happy Furby (hehe, that's a funny name) paid for it and donated it, it was still paid for. So far, Napster and Library are identical - before a song can get onto Napster, it needs to be purchased. (By someone, somewhere - the person who initally "seeds" Napster with it may have gotten it through less than legal means, but that complicates everything.)
Next, you go to the library, and take out a book (say, The Uptake of Furbies). You have the book for two weeks (more if you renew it). No one else has access to it (except maybe your friends), and it's prohibitively difficult/expensive to copy it. (Although possible, but most people don't have photocopiers, and most places where they can get free access don't like people photocopying books.) Napster's functionally different here - and this difference is very important.
This is the difference that makes Napster not the same as your local library. This is the major difference where all the trouble comes from, where all the lawyers attack, where all the problems are. Napster doesn't loan material, Napster copies it. So instead of loaning The Happy Furby Song, you copy it. And that is a functional difference - one that's better for the users. Try reading a book with someone else at the same time - you'll run into problems, although you'll also find out who reads faster!
Libraries are not in trouble for loaning books because the publisher really doesn't lose out all that much - libraries are usually a few weeks behind the latest releases, they can't give out copies, etc. It's called copyright, not usageright. Libraries allow people access to IP for a limited amount of time. Napster allows users to obtain a copy of IP for as long as they like, while at the same time allowing others to get copies.
That's the functional difference. You can't read the book I took out from the library at the same time. We can both listen to an MP3 we downloaded off Napster at the same time, across the globe. (Or, since you're going to Harvard, and I go to WPI, across MA, but that's another story:) )
If Napster, instead of copying files, deleted them from the computer it was downloaded off of, it would be functionally like a library. Try to obtain an exact copy of a book, with all the photos in it perfectly maintained, and you'll see why Napster isn't like a library. You get perfect copies from Napster. You only get the original copy from your library, and you can't create a perfect copy.
I challenge anyone to show me a relevant difference between Napster (in its current form) and your local public library.
Easy.
Library. I take out Book A. You come in, but find that Book A is currently unavailable until I return it. You cannot read Book A while I read Book A. There is only one copy of Book A from the library at any given time. (There may be other copies, but the library only has one, and cannot easily create another.)
Napster. I download Song A. You download Song A. We both listen to it at the same time. While listening to it, someone else downloads it again. There are now four copies (the original, my copy, your copy, and the random other person). Anyone can create a copy, and there is no reason to destroy the copy once you have it.
The difference can be summed up quite simply:
Napster makes copies. Libraries don't. And that's really all this trouble comes from.
I believe you are thinking of RFC #1217, "Memo from the Consortium for Slow Commotion Research (CSCR)." From the RFC:
The basic unit is the M1A1 tank. Each tank is labelled with the number 0 or 1 painted four feet high on the tank turret in yellow, day-glo luminescent paint.
If you find that one to hard to use, you may wish to instead attempt to use RFC #1149 which has been updated by RFC #2549 to send IP information using little scrolls and swallows. (Actually, the bird type is unspecified and is left to the implementation.) Unfortunately, the latter types do not work under Linux implementations, since they have had troubles getting the penguins to fly.
But I use Linux, not Windows. So I'm effectively unable to use DVD's in any manner, without DeCSS.
That's your problem. Linux is still and will continue to be until the desktop improves substantially a niche market. (I can bitch about the state of Linux desktops for another hour or so, but it's improving (quickly, too!), so I won't.)
Before it can become a viable DVD platform period (with or without DeCSS) it needs to get support from hardware vendors. Until it gets support from major hardware vendors, it'll always be a niche. In other words, you not being able to play DVDs is insignifigant. (This is based on the facts given by the previous poster.)
You being able to copy DVDs is very signifigant. (To the MPAA.) Being able to copy DVDs directly hurts the MPAAs bottom line. Just because less than 5% (probably much less)* of the market can't play DVDs is commerically unimportant.
Saying that DVDs is an important consumer market just proves the MPAAs point. People in your position are few, and are really unimportant to the determining if DeCSS if "fair use" or not. The millions of Windows users now being able to copy DVDs is much, much, more important than the hundreds of Linux users with nice, high capacity coasters. It's sad, in a way, but I don't think it'll change. The most probable outcome is a loss for 2600 and a commerically available Linux DVD player.
* The basis for this remark is that "pure" Linux users (those who use Linux and nothing else) is less than the total percent of Linux users, which I'll optimistically call 5% of all computer users. Of those, the number that purchase home theater systems or just enough to watch DVDs on their TVs brings that number down further.
It's too bad most of the moderators here are for DeCSS, that's definately Score 5: Insightful. People here need to realize that you can't copy DVDs bit-for-bit. If you want to prove me wrong, write a program that does it. I'd love to see someone write something that makes a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD and then allows it to be read back in and played. Until someone does so, I can't believe that DeCSS has any ground to stand on.
Basically, you've presented a good argument showing that licenced commerical DVD players are a commerically signifigant segment. You also suggest that there is a large market for DVDs themselves. Putting two and two together, I'd then assume there is a "black" market for obtaining DVD content without compensating the owner.
Enter DeCSS. What does it do? At the most basic level, it circumvents CSS protection and allows the disc to be read. What's done with data read that way? It's copied. Into memory. On the most basic level, DeCSS copies protected data by circumventing a protection device. What's done with that data is anyone's guess, does it get used to display content, and then get flushed? Does it get copied to a file and passed around those with giga-bit connections? Who knows - DeCSS does one thing: It circumvents a protection mechanism. That's all it does.
Moving back to your argument. What does it say? It says that there is a large market for authorized DVD players. Well, if there were a small market, or people weren't willing to pay $200 to get a decent DVD player, I'd be more willing to agree that DeCSS was fair use. But according to your facts, DeCSS is just a method to cause commerical harm to people selling DVD players and DVD content!
I think that your argument is fairly good at disproving the idea that DeCSS is for "watching DVDs on your operating system of choice." It suggests that people are willing to obtain licenced DVD players. Kinda puts DeCSS on shakey ground - if it's needed for playing DVDs, why not use one of the preexisting DVD players? Seems to me to suggest that DeCSS is not meeting an ignored market.
Honestly, how many of you own DVDs? How many of you watch your DVDs on licenced players? Why are people still complaining about no Linux player? The only possible argument is fair use, which your "facts" do nothing to help. Fair use is the real question, and that's what the appeal will focus on. Fair use is not protected in the constitution; I wouldn't expect a rosey outcome for DeCSS.
Yeah, I could actually be doing some of my personal open-source projects while at work (none of them are released, don't bother even asking) except that I'd then have to sign the copyright over to the company I work for. When I come home from work, I'm tired, and usually don't feel like coding anyway. So very little gets done on my pet projects. Plus I have a short attention span (but I read Slashdot, so that's to be expected, right?:-) ) and don't often do long stretches of coding.
Hey, I love DirectDraw and DirectSound - they're nice APIs. I can't stand Direct3D. Plus for all of these you really need to go out and buy a book on them.
Just because Direct3D sucks doesn't mean that the rest of DirectX does - I'd like to see something like DirectX done for Linux, but it's not going to happen. But seriously, look into Direct3D, and you'll see why most games support OpenGL also. It's much easier to write for.
S3 does. I guess they bought out Diamond which is where I got my FireGL card from. I must say, I really liked my FireGL 1000 Pro when I got it - still a good card for 2D applications, although its usefulness for current 3D is starting to wane... They also seem to have dropped the "FireGL" line of things.
Microsoft did us all a disservice by creating a lame new 3D api
What else did you expect? Microsoft has a huge Not Made Here (NMH) problem - if they didn't make it, they need to either:
Reinvent it so that it only works through MS sponsered methods, or
Are you just creating the keywords, or are you doing the blocking software yourself? If you're doing it yourself, you may want to consider a "point" system where certain words get certain positive/negative points, and for a page to view, it must have a certain number of points.
For example, say that the word "breast" is a -1 word, being rather mild and usable in ok ways ("There goes a robin red-breast!") while "worse" words such as "penis" are -5. Some phrases ("hot bitch") would be -10, and so on.
Some words would activate "positive" words, so that finding "breast" might allow "cancer" to be a +1, so "breast cancer" is a 0, not a -1.
Once the page has been scanned and a score has been figured, determine a score needed to allow viewing, adjusted for number of words (so that someone looking at "-1" on Slashdot doesn't find it blocked because some troll posted "Jon Katz is a cunt" 30 times in a row).
I dunno how well this would really work, but it's an idea. It still runs into some problems - the optimal solution would be to have someone watching people online. And of course, go over the proxy logs and see where people have gone - block sites that shouldn't have been allowed that way.
There's nothing better than sitting there with an open Emacs window, watching as some newbie comes by, looks at the mess, and says "That's computer code?" Ah, scaring the uninitiated... that's what Perl code is all about...
(Well, actually, it was the regex that put him off... Any language where while ($line=<>) {
foreach ($line=~/\"((?:(?:[^\"\\]*)|(?:(?:\\\")*))*)\"\s?| ([^\s]+)\s?|\s/g) {
print "$_\n";
}
} is legal is enough to scare anyone...)
(One faux karma point to anyone who can tell me what that does:))
The article links (through a redirect script) to http://www.abandonwarering.com/ as the main web page for the abandonware thing. It's got links to many warez sites, use at your own risk. Doesn't seem too legal to me, seems like they're making money off other people's work - it's got banner adverts.
I'm not worried about the installer installing wrong things, I'd rather that RedHat's installer would actually install LILO and then write the configuration file somewhere - I'm getting tired of having to boot off a floppy every time I attempt to install RedHat, since it never seems to get to the point where the installer actually installs LILO. It *always* crashes before then, both boxes I've tried and many different methods of running the installer (text only, from CD-ROM, from local storage, graphical, etc.).
I was trying to install RedHat onto a machine, and I ended up having to bring it back to it's original Windows 98 configuration because the installer kept on crashing! I couldn't create a boot disk, because the floppy was/dev/hdcnot/dev/fd0 (LS120 drive). I had a boot disk lying around from another install, but the root fs for that drive was/dev/hda1 whereas the new box's root fs (should have) been/dev/hda3. So I was stuck with an unbootable system after attempting to install RedHat. And now my brother won't allow me to touch his box - he remembers the flood of "01 " that RedHat caused when I attempted to boot it before giving up. Plus the installer managed to slowly destroy the partition table entries for the root fs and the swap parition. (They were slowly becoming smaller, and smaller... Started with a 128MB root fs (/usr and/home were mounted on different partions, in theory) which became 72MB when I gave up.) Not the easiest of installs...
Has anyone else seen the Phillip Morris commercials? They're very gutsy!
Actually, it's more like they're scared shitless about what might happen to them, and so they're backpeddling as fast as they possibly can in the hope that those passing judgement will believe that they've changed and won't be quite as harsh. As I recall, Phillip Morris attempted to suggest that they shouldn't have as big a settlement against them because they had "reformed." You'll also notice that Phillip Morris is diversifying like mad; they know that tobacco isn't going to be profitable much longer, so they're getting themselves into other markets.
Their motives aside, I rather like the fact that Big Tabacco is dying and that they seem to know it.
Secondly, this is a flaw in the Java Virtual Machine based on Sun's implimentation and if I remember, Java is not Open Source though there are OS clones.
Wrong and kinda wrong. First of all, the vulnerabilities were in the netscape.* packages - all of Sun's stuff is in the (not surprisingly) sun.* packages. As for Java not being Open Source, you can obtain the source code for Sun's implementation of Java free of charge - but there's an NDA and rather restrictive licence involved. The information is available at
http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/index. html.
As far as I know, Netscape's implementation is completely closed.
This was mentioned in the previous article, but at All Linux Devices, they have a story that amoung other things explains how to use the watch. It's a combination of the touch-sensitive screen, and a little dial next to it. It also has an X server built in to the default install. The picture of the watch shows it running some shell (prob. just sh, but I can't tell - not enough shown), so it IS possible to enter data. It sounds like they really expect it to be used by typing data at your desktop and downloading it to the watch. Actually, the real use of this was just to show that you could run Linux on a watch, they aren't planning on anything else with it.
They may also have thought that the watch could have an overly simplified menu system, and display data as requested. Since it is just a prototype demonstrating that it's possible to run Linux on a wrist-watch, it makes sense that the user interface isn't well thought out yet. If they ever planned on marketting it, they'd probably need to add some more buttons. Plus the battery only lasts two to three days, making it not the most useful of watches.
For the love of God, you should always download a whole installation program, and store it for possible future use. Why would anyone want to risk getting disconnected during install, or getting a slow connection to the server during install, or having to download the whole thing over again later for a re-install?
Given that this is/., this might not go over well, but... MS's IE5 net installer is actually quite nice. It's nicer than downloading the entire installer because when I say I don't want Outlook Express, I don't have to download Outlook Express anyway. Anything it does download, it saves locally, and the installer can then use instead the next time you install. (It also checks the components version numbers the next install, downloading any new versions.) You only have to download components once, and you needn't download Greek and Russian Language Support if you don't speak the languages. Since this is MS, some of the options are rather large, and being able to pick and choose the packages that are downloaded actually saves time than having to download them all at once.
According to All Linux Devices, the interface is a combination of a touch-sensitive screen and the rolling wheel. It apparently runs Linux 2.2 as the kernel (although the sheet says "OS"), along with some form of X server (X11 R6). Apparently they hope to up the resolution of the device, allowing it to be used to surf the internet. It has 8 MB of flash memory, and 8 MB ram. This is actually fairly impressive for a watch.
Although I think that using "a combination of the rolling wheel and touch sensitive screen" to interface with the watch is just a little too annoying. Can you imaging writing anything with that? It's already annoying enough to set normal watchs, can you imaging rotating in the new date after the battery dies?
Slashdot Mirror
The number of Linux servers compared to Solaris servers is largely meaningless because a Sparc can handle more of a load than a simple x86. Yes, Linux is available on a Sparc. But why bother? If you're going to get a UltraSparc 10, why get another OS when you can get Solaris 8 supported as part of the package? If you can afford $8000 for the machine, Solaris is a viable and usually more useful option than Linux. (Mostly because you can also get a support contract.)
A useful comparison might be to compare what the majority of Linux servers are used for compared to Solaris and Windows servers. Are the Linux servers running e-commerce sites? Or are they running the standard Apache home page because httpd was in the default init script?
Linux is used by many hobbyists - how many of those boxes where just boxes set up for personal use? I dunno how cheap broadband is in Germany, but it's a possibility.
Like all statistics, take these with a grain of salt - the fact that the cheapest method of serving a web server is the most widely used really doesn't mean anything. I'd expect a survey of college students who run their own web pages to come up with a large collection of Linux, followed by Windows, and then maybe the free-as-in-beer Solaris offerings.
One last point: when libraries were started, it was prohibitively expensive to buy books in large quantities, because it was expensive to produce mass quantities of books. You can note the reduce in the cost of printing stuff by noting the increase in both size and frequency of newspaper additions - they've gotten larger as time goes on. (This is also due to an increase in ads.)
However, when I'm at a book store, I find myself much less likely to buy a book that I don't know if I like, where as at a library, I'm much more likely to pick something up and read it. I may later decide that I hate the book, but it doesn't matter to me. This effect does apply to Napster - people use it similarly to a library. I'll accept that part of the argument.
What you're forgetting is that Napster gets new material faster than libraries, and has a larger selection. The other thing is that the music industry doesn't care that the music quality on MP3 is inferiour to CD quality - they're afraid of what MP4 and MP5 might sound like! As technology gets better, tradable music will start sounding better and better. It will probably get larger and larger, but disk drive tech will probably keep up with them. Just a few years ago, a 100MB file would have taken up about 10% of my harddrive. Now it takes up about 0.5% of my harddrive - and I've got another one of the same size, so it's more like 0.25% (one for Linux, one for Windows - basically (each OS has it's own main drive and the other gets to be "swap")). Right now, it's feasable for me to store several 100MB files on my drive - that's about the size a CD quality, uncompressed track takes up. They aren't worried about today's technology - they're scared of tomorrow's.
I've got to disagree with that - you actually hurt the companies less. Let's say you take out a book by some unknown author. In this case, let's say I take out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I like it, so later I take out Speaker for the Dead. So far, they've missed on two sales. I (unlike a lot of other /.ers) like Speaker and then go out and buy Xenocide. (And my /. username is a direct reference to that book - long story.) Like wise, I buy both Children of the Mind and Ender's Shadow. Now they're one ahead, because I read two books from the library.
The thing that they're afraid of on Napster is the same thing publishers were afraid of and wrong about here - that I'd never buy any more books because I could just get them from my library. Well, my library has an imperfect selection, and authors are generally less likely to sign books from a library than your own copy. (Although they'll gladly sell you a new copy :)). Many people claim that they "discover" bands that they wouldn't have otherwise found on Napster and that makes them later buy the CDs - and I agree. But the RIAA is afraid, and probably rightly so, that MP3 technology and Internet bandwidth will improve, so that eventually everyone will be using Napster to download digitally-perfect copies of songs. Just because they aren't doesn't mean that they won't be later!
When you have the ability to go to your library, and then select a book out of thousands and have a new copy be instantly created in your hands, then a library will be like Napster. Until then, "meatspace" and "cyberspace" are two very different places.
Your local library has paid for the books there, in some fassion. Whether they paid for it or TuLu the Happy Furby (hehe, that's a funny name) paid for it and donated it, it was still paid for. So far, Napster and Library are identical - before a song can get onto Napster, it needs to be purchased. (By someone, somewhere - the person who initally "seeds" Napster with it may have gotten it through less than legal means, but that complicates everything.)
Next, you go to the library, and take out a book (say, The Uptake of Furbies). You have the book for two weeks (more if you renew it). No one else has access to it (except maybe your friends), and it's prohibitively difficult/expensive to copy it. (Although possible, but most people don't have photocopiers, and most places where they can get free access don't like people photocopying books.) Napster's functionally different here - and this difference is very important.
This is the difference that makes Napster not the same as your local library. This is the major difference where all the trouble comes from, where all the lawyers attack, where all the problems are. Napster doesn't loan material, Napster copies it. So instead of loaning The Happy Furby Song, you copy it. And that is a functional difference - one that's better for the users. Try reading a book with someone else at the same time - you'll run into problems, although you'll also find out who reads faster!
Libraries are not in trouble for loaning books because the publisher really doesn't lose out all that much - libraries are usually a few weeks behind the latest releases, they can't give out copies, etc. It's called copyright, not usageright. Libraries allow people access to IP for a limited amount of time. Napster allows users to obtain a copy of IP for as long as they like, while at the same time allowing others to get copies.
That's the functional difference. You can't read the book I took out from the library at the same time. We can both listen to an MP3 we downloaded off Napster at the same time, across the globe. (Or, since you're going to Harvard, and I go to WPI, across MA, but that's another story :) )
If Napster, instead of copying files, deleted them from the computer it was downloaded off of, it would be functionally like a library. Try to obtain an exact copy of a book, with all the photos in it perfectly maintained, and you'll see why Napster isn't like a library. You get perfect copies from Napster. You only get the original copy from your library, and you can't create a perfect copy.
Easy.
Library. I take out Book A. You come in, but find that Book A is currently unavailable until I return it. You cannot read Book A while I read Book A. There is only one copy of Book A from the library at any given time. (There may be other copies, but the library only has one, and cannot easily create another.)
Napster. I download Song A. You download Song A. We both listen to it at the same time. While listening to it, someone else downloads it again. There are now four copies (the original, my copy, your copy, and the random other person). Anyone can create a copy, and there is no reason to destroy the copy once you have it.
The difference can be summed up quite simply: Napster makes copies. Libraries don't. And that's really all this trouble comes from.
I believe you are thinking of RFC #1217, "Memo from the Consortium for Slow Commotion Research (CSCR)." From the RFC:
If you find that one to hard to use, you may wish to instead attempt to use RFC #1149 which has been updated by RFC #2549 to send IP information using little scrolls and swallows. (Actually, the bird type is unspecified and is left to the implementation.) Unfortunately, the latter types do not work under Linux implementations, since they have had troubles getting the penguins to fly.
That's your problem. Linux is still and will continue to be until the desktop improves substantially a niche market. (I can bitch about the state of Linux desktops for another hour or so, but it's improving (quickly, too!), so I won't.)
Before it can become a viable DVD platform period (with or without DeCSS) it needs to get support from hardware vendors. Until it gets support from major hardware vendors, it'll always be a niche. In other words, you not being able to play DVDs is insignifigant. (This is based on the facts given by the previous poster.)
You being able to copy DVDs is very signifigant. (To the MPAA.) Being able to copy DVDs directly hurts the MPAAs bottom line. Just because less than 5% (probably much less)* of the market can't play DVDs is commerically unimportant.
Saying that DVDs is an important consumer market just proves the MPAAs point. People in your position are few, and are really unimportant to the determining if DeCSS if "fair use" or not. The millions of Windows users now being able to copy DVDs is much, much, more important than the hundreds of Linux users with nice, high capacity coasters. It's sad, in a way, but I don't think it'll change. The most probable outcome is a loss for 2600 and a commerically available Linux DVD player.
* The basis for this remark is that "pure" Linux users (those who use Linux and nothing else) is less than the total percent of Linux users, which I'll optimistically call 5% of all computer users. Of those, the number that purchase home theater systems or just enough to watch DVDs on their TVs brings that number down further.
It's too bad most of the moderators here are for DeCSS, that's definately Score 5: Insightful. People here need to realize that you can't copy DVDs bit-for-bit. If you want to prove me wrong, write a program that does it. I'd love to see someone write something that makes a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD and then allows it to be read back in and played. Until someone does so, I can't believe that DeCSS has any ground to stand on.
Basically, you've presented a good argument showing that licenced commerical DVD players are a commerically signifigant segment. You also suggest that there is a large market for DVDs themselves. Putting two and two together, I'd then assume there is a "black" market for obtaining DVD content without compensating the owner.
Enter DeCSS. What does it do? At the most basic level, it circumvents CSS protection and allows the disc to be read. What's done with data read that way? It's copied. Into memory. On the most basic level, DeCSS copies protected data by circumventing a protection device. What's done with that data is anyone's guess, does it get used to display content, and then get flushed? Does it get copied to a file and passed around those with giga-bit connections? Who knows - DeCSS does one thing: It circumvents a protection mechanism. That's all it does.
Moving back to your argument. What does it say? It says that there is a large market for authorized DVD players. Well, if there were a small market, or people weren't willing to pay $200 to get a decent DVD player, I'd be more willing to agree that DeCSS was fair use. But according to your facts, DeCSS is just a method to cause commerical harm to people selling DVD players and DVD content!
I think that your argument is fairly good at disproving the idea that DeCSS is for "watching DVDs on your operating system of choice." It suggests that people are willing to obtain licenced DVD players. Kinda puts DeCSS on shakey ground - if it's needed for playing DVDs, why not use one of the preexisting DVD players? Seems to me to suggest that DeCSS is not meeting an ignored market.
Honestly, how many of you own DVDs? How many of you watch your DVDs on licenced players? Why are people still complaining about no Linux player? The only possible argument is fair use, which your "facts" do nothing to help. Fair use is the real question, and that's what the appeal will focus on. Fair use is not protected in the constitution; I wouldn't expect a rosey outcome for DeCSS.
http://www.wpi.edu/~dpotter/decssruling .txt.
This is just the ruling gotten from http://www.nysd.usco urts.gov/courtweb/pdf/D02NYSC/00-08118.PDF in text form. (As much spacing as possible is maintained.)
Yeah, I could actually be doing some of my personal open-source projects while at work (none of them are released, don't bother even asking) except that I'd then have to sign the copyright over to the company I work for. When I come home from work, I'm tired, and usually don't feel like coding anyway. So very little gets done on my pet projects. Plus I have a short attention span (but I read Slashdot, so that's to be expected, right? :-) ) and don't often do long stretches of coding.
Just because Direct3D sucks doesn't mean that the rest of DirectX does - I'd like to see something like DirectX done for Linux, but it's not going to happen. But seriously, look into Direct3D, and you'll see why most games support OpenGL also. It's much easier to write for.
S3 does. I guess they bought out Diamond which is where I got my FireGL card from. I must say, I really liked my FireGL 1000 Pro when I got it - still a good card for 2D applications, although its usefulness for current 3D is starting to wane... They also seem to have dropped the "FireGL" line of things.
Microsoft did us all a disservice by creating a lame new 3D api
What else did you expect? Microsoft has a huge Not Made Here (NMH) problem - if they didn't make it, they need to either:
Wouldn't that violate your NDA? :)
Given past Geeks in Space episodes, get a log of all the sites Pater has visited and block those :)
For example, say that the word "breast" is a -1 word, being rather mild and usable in ok ways ("There goes a robin red-breast!") while "worse" words such as "penis" are -5. Some phrases ("hot bitch") would be -10, and so on.
Some words would activate "positive" words, so that finding "breast" might allow "cancer" to be a +1, so "breast cancer" is a 0, not a -1.
Once the page has been scanned and a score has been figured, determine a score needed to allow viewing, adjusted for number of words (so that someone looking at "-1" on Slashdot doesn't find it blocked because some troll posted "Jon Katz is a cunt" 30 times in a row).
I dunno how well this would really work, but it's an idea. It still runs into some problems - the optimal solution would be to have someone watching people online. And of course, go over the proxy logs and see where people have gone - block sites that shouldn't have been allowed that way.
(Well, actually, it was the regex that put him off... Any language where| ([^\s]+)\s?|\s/g) {
while ($line=<>) {
foreach ($line=~/\"((?:(?:[^\"\\]*)|(?:(?:\\\")*))*)\"\s?
print "$_\n";
}
} is legal is enough to scare anyone...)
(One faux karma point to anyone who can tell me what that does :))
The article links (through a redirect script) to http://www.abandonwarering.com/ as the main web page for the abandonware thing. It's got links to many warez sites, use at your own risk. Doesn't seem too legal to me, seems like they're making money off other people's work - it's got banner adverts.
I was trying to install RedHat onto a machine, and I ended up having to bring it back to it's original Windows 98 configuration because the installer kept on crashing! I couldn't create a boot disk, because the floppy was /dev/hdc not /dev/fd0 (LS120 drive). I had a boot disk lying around from another install, but the root fs for that drive was /dev/hda1 whereas the new box's root fs (should have) been /dev/hda3. So I was stuck with an unbootable system after attempting to install RedHat. And now my brother won't allow me to touch his box - he remembers the flood of "01 " that RedHat caused when I attempted to boot it before giving up. Plus the installer managed to slowly destroy the partition table entries for the root fs and the swap parition. (They were slowly becoming smaller, and smaller... Started with a 128MB root fs (/usr and /home were mounted on different partions, in theory) which became 72MB when I gave up.) Not the easiest of installs...
Actually, it's more like they're scared shitless about what might happen to them, and so they're backpeddling as fast as they possibly can in the hope that those passing judgement will believe that they've changed and won't be quite as harsh. As I recall, Phillip Morris attempted to suggest that they shouldn't have as big a settlement against them because they had "reformed." You'll also notice that Phillip Morris is diversifying like mad; they know that tobacco isn't going to be profitable much longer, so they're getting themselves into other markets.
Their motives aside, I rather like the fact that Big Tabacco is dying and that they seem to know it.
Wrong and kinda wrong. First of all, the vulnerabilities were in the netscape.* packages - all of Sun's stuff is in the (not surprisingly) sun.* packages. As for Java not being Open Source, you can obtain the source code for Sun's implementation of Java free of charge - but there's an NDA and rather restrictive licence involved. The information is available at http://www.sun.com/software/communitysource/index. html.
As far as I know, Netscape's implementation is completely closed.
They may also have thought that the watch could have an overly simplified menu system, and display data as requested. Since it is just a prototype demonstrating that it's possible to run Linux on a wrist-watch, it makes sense that the user interface isn't well thought out yet. If they ever planned on marketting it, they'd probably need to add some more buttons. Plus the battery only lasts two to three days, making it not the most useful of watches.
Given that this is /., this might not go over well, but... MS's IE5 net installer is actually quite nice. It's nicer than downloading the entire installer because when I say I don't want Outlook Express, I don't have to download Outlook Express anyway. Anything it does download, it saves locally, and the installer can then use instead the next time you install. (It also checks the components version numbers the next install, downloading any new versions.) You only have to download components once, and you needn't download Greek and Russian Language Support if you don't speak the languages. Since this is MS, some of the options are rather large, and being able to pick and choose the packages that are downloaded actually saves time than having to download them all at once.
Aw crap, and I'm 2 points away from the freeze point... 2 points and I could troll all I like... d'oh :-)
Although I think that using "a combination of the rolling wheel and touch sensitive screen" to interface with the watch is just a little too annoying. Can you imaging writing anything with that? It's already annoying enough to set normal watchs, can you imaging rotating in the new date after the battery dies?