So, going to build us a VCR, then? Sure, this thing isn't as convenient or functional as a Tivo, but to that I have three comments:
1) there is something to be said for the experience and enjoyment of building something like this yourself even if you could go out and buy something equivalent
2) this is clearly a first effort on low grade hardware. Given a little better performing hardware, or maybe just a hardware mpeg encoder, this machine would surpass a basic VCR.
3) unlike a VCR, this is all digital so he can send the recordings to friends without quality degradation. He can archive the shows conveniently in a database on his computer and search for old shows he wants to see. It gives somebody a lot of power to manage the shows that can't be had from a VCR.
The thing is that it is much easier to sit down and do a CLI quickly and get the kinks worked out than it is to develop a usable GUI. I've tried to do a similar project to this, and doing it all command line makes life much simpler in the beginning. Eventually, yes, having a nice GUI would be good, but if a hacker can throw together the box with a CLI and be happy with what he's got, isn't that okay?
If somebody wants a nice GUI, they'll write one. As somebody else pointed out, there's the freevo project which has what appears to be a very nice GUI.
It seems like the real voodoo cool trick that is unavailable on any of these systems and is available on Tivo and ReplayTV is the ability to pause live TV. Personally I think that's one of the best features of the system. Actually, pausing live TV isn't the cool part, it's letting a show queue up all the commercial time at the beginning, while you do something else, then go in and skip all the commercials. I'd love to flip a recorder on for the first 90 minutes of monday night football, then go do something else, and come back to a commercial free game.
Well, the circular could be argued to contain creative content. I mean they put pictures and descrptions in there, and there's a substantial effor to market the items to you in the circular. A receipt is factual numbers. The prices are factual numbers. The thin line Walmart's trying to walk is that numbers extracted from a creative work still maintain the copyrighted status of the creative work.
How is this different than marketing studies where they have people push buttons based on their like or dislike of a product? It's maybe a little more accurate, but really it's not some radical jump that gives them the ability to brainwash people. If they were actively scanning all people as they passed by a store, that would be one thing, but this is using focus groups of volunteers.
The fact of the matter is that all people walk through this world trying to impress images on others. We're the clever entrepeneur, the sports hero, or the trusted religious leader. In the end no matter the images that are pushed onto people, it doesn't hide the truth of what's underneath for long. The entrepeneur turns out to be a swindler, the sports hero's a thug, and the trusted religious leader is a child molester. So even with all the technology in the world, nobody's going to convince us that we should buy crap that is in fact crap.
Now, if they were pumping people with drugs, or something like that, that'd be a different story. Ultimately this will just refine their abilities a little bit more, and probably sell a few more things. They aren't telling us what to do, and we still possess free will, so I don't see the harm.
Frankly I'd rather that they had fewer more influential ads than slathering their advertising feces over any flat surface on planet earth. Maybe studies like this will help them realize that it's all becoming white noise and that we're just learning to ignore them.
What's interesting is that if you read the fax that walmart sent, they don't say that Fatwallet is violating their IP rights by publishing the prices, they instead say that he's publishing their circular. This is definitely splitting a very fine legal hair. It's probably defendable to say that the circular is copyrightable, but the prices contained therein is a serious stretch.
Well, here's hoping that fatwallet gets their wallet fattened by a nice check from walmart. I wasn't aware that there were provisions in the DMCA for getting damages and legal fees for abuse of the law. While I still think much of the DMCA is some of the worst legal authoring this country has seen, it does show that at least somebody was paying attention when it went through the legislature.
If you want an idea of how this concept could come together in the future, read "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling. It's only an underlying part of the environment that the book happens in, but there's some really cool stuff about distributed building construction.
Basically the way it works in the book is that each component of the building is labeled with little electronic tags. A computer system knows how each part needs to fit and so it instructs each person on what piece to put where. It's designed such that somebody with no construction skills can build most of a building without expert assistance.
There is one surefire way to invalidate the DMCA -- get Congress to repeal it. I know, tedious and democratic, but maybe the public will get mad enough at some point.
Until politicians believe this is the issue that will make or break their campaign, they'll ignore it. That will only happen when a lot of money or a substantial block of votes is riding on it. Given that most of us have more pressing issues like war, abortion rights, etc, issues like that get pushed to the back burner.
Okay, I agree that the bulk of the negative effect of the DMCA is it's chilling effect. I was just questioning the claim that the justice department isn't brining more cases because they are afraid they will lose. The reality is that the justice department isn't brining more cases because other people are afraid they'll win and are thus keeping a low to non-exitant profile.
I think the big difference that this illustrates is that Microsoft is targeting the consumers who want to build websites, etc. Adobe is targeting professionals, people who are willing to go out and drop a few thousand bucks on optimal tools. So though the products may do similar things, I don't know that they can really be considered competitors. Is a Lexus competing with a Kia? They are both cars, but anybody considering a Lexus is probably not interested in the Kia.
I totally agree with that analysis of the situation. But that's not what was said in the message I commented on. That post seemed to suggest the DOJ was prosecuting this case because it had a chance and that it was not prosecuting others because it would lose. No argument that people are being intimidated:)
Can you name me a few examples of cases that the DOJ isn't bringing to court for fear of setting a destructive legal precedent? I'm not denying that your statement may be accurate, but I'm not familiar with these cases.
The thing is that Microsoft really has no reason to smite Adobe. Adobe makes products that are good at what they do, have an established brand, and do not compete with any Microsoft products. Furthermore, these products do not threaten the control of the Microsoft API's. So, Adobe will continue to thrive.
It's very fast paced for a 3 hour movie. Unfortunately it's only 90 minutes long:)
code signing != panacea
on
More on Longhorn
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Microsoft recently demonstrated how flawed reliance on signed software can be. They had a bug in an Active X control, and they released a fix for it, but since both the flawed and fixed versions were signed and trusted by Microsoft, a malicious site could push the bad version back onto somebody's computer.
Code signing establishes identity of the signer, but it does not guarantee anything beyond that. It says, "we really think this was made by Microsoft, so if you trust them, you can trust this." Palladium may extend this trust into the hardware, but it's still reliant on the assumption that whoever signed the code is doing their homework.
There are four levels of security for software in my mind:
1) Code that is from an unverified source that I cannot look at
2) Code that is from a verified source that I can look at
3) Code from an unverified source that I can look at
4) Code from a verified source that I can look at
Ultimately any code falling into category 3 or 4 can be made secure presuming that I am knolwedgeable about security and the software I'm dealing with. Category four provides the same assurances as category two, but additionally I can further insure my security by looking myself.
What we've suggested is that they should use the existing laws to go after people who are legitimately stealing their products. In this case you've got an organization trying to extort money from people without any clear evidence that any of them have actually pirated a signel thing. If I shared thousands of totally legitmate files, I might still show up on their radar. Then my option becomes to either pay their fines or take the chance that I can win in court and that I won't lose more money there defending myself.
What I'd like to see is them actually going to court with a list of specific files that a person shared that are all, in fact, a violation of copyright. If they can do that, then fine, do so and enjoy. That's not what is happening here.
They may at their discretion hire others to modify the code, but would still be required to pay their maintenance contract and be prohibited from reselling it or using it to run an additional business
So, you've got the possibility that you'll be responsible for supporting the product even though other people are modifying it? How are your people going to have expertise in the work being done by these others?
You go right ahead. Go ahead and make people pay for your generic bland regurgitation of the AP news wire. And we'll keep getting that for free from a thousand other sources.
Really my commentary only applies to the TW case here. In general there's nothing wrong with the concept of charging for what you produce, but if you are going to charge, you'd better have something worth buying.
I happily pay for my Salon membership because they say a lot of things that aren't getting said other places and their articles are interesting. On the other hand, the news spit out by the likes of TW's sites is nothing original. I can go to Google news and get all of that content aggregated nicely for me so I can keep up to date. I seriously doubt anybody's going to find their content so compelling as to become AOL members to access it.
If they can get this to be cross platform (will they ever support Linux? I doubt it), and get the bugs worked out, it would be better than buying a CD from a store. But would it be better than using Kazaa?
This is the problem that these media companies need to contend with. What people want is huge repositories of music for a fixed price that's easy to use, and without stupid DRM restrictions. The advantage that this has over Kazaa is that it's easy to find exactly what you are looking for, but being charged a $1+ per track and having to go through the DRM rigamarole, why would you bother?
Most everybody I know would be willing to pay anywhere between $10-40/month to get access to a huge music repository that they could use without burdensome restrictions. I currently subscribe to emusic for this reason, it's only drawback is that they tend not to have the newest albums. Maybe do a tiered pricing system where you get the back catalog for some more modest price and then you can sign up for a premium membership that will give you the newer music.
The NYT requires free registration, and that's moderately annoying, but not a big deal. If you're a privacy freak, you just make some bogus account and you're good to go. If you don't care, you just log in once, have it store a cookie, and you are good to go.
It is stupid to have a free site link to a site that you have to pay to get access to. I can't even get a preview of the story with the WSJ. So this post is a total waste of time.
Eh, maybe its appropriate...
on
Software For Ransom
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Coming form a perspective of people believing that software should be free, the ransom name seems apt. In contrast, I suppose Microsoft would be using the slavery model:).
As for a third party, is it really that important? I mean, they develop the software, you buy it. If at some point they don't make their commitment to release it to the world, then you just stop buying it from them. If you can't afford to take the risk of changing away from it later, then don't buy into ransom software.
Any increase in technology is empowering. Empowerment does not bring with it a greater wisdom and ability to use that newly found power to benefit all humanity. Technology will simply increase the power of those who yield it to do what they want.
It is true that nanotechnology can do trememndous things to benefit us. I think it's a very good likelihood that some of these benefits will come about. At the same time, in a society driven by a lust for material wealth, power, etc, I'm going to bet that something bad will also come of it. Furthermore, with a large portion of this planet's people disenfranchised and impoverished, there's a likelihood that a few angry members of that increasing population will take the power of nanotechnolgy and do something dangerous with it.
I have no question that we will move forward on nanotechnology, hell, we already are. People always go into these things looking at the miraculous benefits, and high on their new god-like powers. Then they move a little further into the future, and realize, once again, that the god business is a difficult one, and have to deal with the total havoc they've unleashed in their blind egotism.
Will banning nanotechology work? No, and it doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen. A lot of people have serious ethical concerns about how stem cell research is done, and that's going forward in a myriad ways anyhow. With nanotech, nobody's going to make a moral stand against it until something goes horrifically wrong, and by then it may very well be too late. So, we're going to keep moving forward, we are going to screw it up, and eventually, we'll make some technology who's side effect will be our own annihilation.
In the meantime, go out and enjoy the life that you have while you've got it. Fortunately that advice works regardless of any technologically conceived apocolypse:)
A valuable addendum to the DMCA would be a provision to punish for false accusations. Essentially the way it would work is that if you sent somebody a DMCA nastygram, and then decided to take them to court, if you lost, you would owe their legal fees and other associated costs.
This would allow for small players to take on the big corporations with some comfort that if they win, they'll get their money back.
Slashdot Mirror
So, going to build us a VCR, then? Sure, this thing isn't as convenient or functional as a Tivo, but to that I have three comments:
1) there is something to be said for the experience and enjoyment of building something like this yourself even if you could go out and buy something equivalent
2) this is clearly a first effort on low grade hardware. Given a little better performing hardware, or maybe just a hardware mpeg encoder, this machine would surpass a basic VCR.
3) unlike a VCR, this is all digital so he can send the recordings to friends without quality degradation. He can archive the shows conveniently in a database on his computer and search for old shows he wants to see. It gives somebody a lot of power to manage the shows that can't be had from a VCR.
The thing is that it is much easier to sit down and do a CLI quickly and get the kinks worked out than it is to develop a usable GUI. I've tried to do a similar project to this, and doing it all command line makes life much simpler in the beginning. Eventually, yes, having a nice GUI would be good, but if a hacker can throw together the box with a CLI and be happy with what he's got, isn't that okay?
If somebody wants a nice GUI, they'll write one. As somebody else pointed out, there's the freevo project which has what appears to be a very nice GUI.
It seems like the real voodoo cool trick that is unavailable on any of these systems and is available on Tivo and ReplayTV is the ability to pause live TV. Personally I think that's one of the best features of the system. Actually, pausing live TV isn't the cool part, it's letting a show queue up all the commercial time at the beginning, while you do something else, then go in and skip all the commercials. I'd love to flip a recorder on for the first 90 minutes of monday night football, then go do something else, and come back to a commercial free game.
Well, the circular could be argued to contain creative content. I mean they put pictures and descrptions in there, and there's a substantial effor to market the items to you in the circular. A receipt is factual numbers. The prices are factual numbers. The thin line Walmart's trying to walk is that numbers extracted from a creative work still maintain the copyrighted status of the creative work.
How is this different than marketing studies where they have people push buttons based on their like or dislike of a product? It's maybe a little more accurate, but really it's not some radical jump that gives them the ability to brainwash people. If they were actively scanning all people as they passed by a store, that would be one thing, but this is using focus groups of volunteers.
The fact of the matter is that all people walk through this world trying to impress images on others. We're the clever entrepeneur, the sports hero, or the trusted religious leader. In the end no matter the images that are pushed onto people, it doesn't hide the truth of what's underneath for long. The entrepeneur turns out to be a swindler, the sports hero's a thug, and the trusted religious leader is a child molester. So even with all the technology in the world, nobody's going to convince us that we should buy crap that is in fact crap.
Now, if they were pumping people with drugs, or something like that, that'd be a different story. Ultimately this will just refine their abilities a little bit more, and probably sell a few more things. They aren't telling us what to do, and we still possess free will, so I don't see the harm.
Frankly I'd rather that they had fewer more influential ads than slathering their advertising feces over any flat surface on planet earth. Maybe studies like this will help them realize that it's all becoming white noise and that we're just learning to ignore them.
What's interesting is that if you read the fax that walmart sent, they don't say that Fatwallet is violating their IP rights by publishing the prices, they instead say that he's publishing their circular. This is definitely splitting a very fine legal hair. It's probably defendable to say that the circular is copyrightable, but the prices contained therein is a serious stretch.
Well, here's hoping that fatwallet gets their wallet fattened by a nice check from walmart. I wasn't aware that there were provisions in the DMCA for getting damages and legal fees for abuse of the law. While I still think much of the DMCA is some of the worst legal authoring this country has seen, it does show that at least somebody was paying attention when it went through the legislature.
If you want an idea of how this concept could come together in the future, read "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling. It's only an underlying part of the environment that the book happens in, but there's some really cool stuff about distributed building construction.
Basically the way it works in the book is that each component of the building is labeled with little electronic tags. A computer system knows how each part needs to fit and so it instructs each person on what piece to put where. It's designed such that somebody with no construction skills can build most of a building without expert assistance.
There is one surefire way to invalidate the DMCA -- get Congress to repeal it. I know, tedious and democratic, but maybe the public will get mad enough at some point.
Until politicians believe this is the issue that will make or break their campaign, they'll ignore it. That will only happen when a lot of money or a substantial block of votes is riding on it. Given that most of us have more pressing issues like war, abortion rights, etc, issues like that get pushed to the back burner.
Okay, I agree that the bulk of the negative effect of the DMCA is it's chilling effect. I was just questioning the claim that the justice department isn't brining more cases because they are afraid they will lose. The reality is that the justice department isn't brining more cases because other people are afraid they'll win and are thus keeping a low to non-exitant profile.
:)
So we all agree: the DMCA sucks
I think the big difference that this illustrates is that Microsoft is targeting the consumers who want to build websites, etc. Adobe is targeting professionals, people who are willing to go out and drop a few thousand bucks on optimal tools. So though the products may do similar things, I don't know that they can really be considered competitors. Is a Lexus competing with a Kia? They are both cars, but anybody considering a Lexus is probably not interested in the Kia.
I totally agree with that analysis of the situation. But that's not what was said in the message I commented on. That post seemed to suggest the DOJ was prosecuting this case because it had a chance and that it was not prosecuting others because it would lose. No argument that people are being intimidated :)
Can you name me a few examples of cases that the DOJ isn't bringing to court for fear of setting a destructive legal precedent? I'm not denying that your statement may be accurate, but I'm not familiar with these cases.
The thing is that Microsoft really has no reason to smite Adobe. Adobe makes products that are good at what they do, have an established brand, and do not compete with any Microsoft products. Furthermore, these products do not threaten the control of the Microsoft API's. So, Adobe will continue to thrive.
Wing Commander 3 plays just fine on my old P2/266 with 128MB of Ram and a Voodoo1 video card :)
It's very fast paced for a 3 hour movie. Unfortunately it's only 90 minutes long :)
Microsoft recently demonstrated how flawed reliance on signed software can be. They had a bug in an Active X control, and they released a fix for it, but since both the flawed and fixed versions were signed and trusted by Microsoft, a malicious site could push the bad version back onto somebody's computer.
Code signing establishes identity of the signer, but it does not guarantee anything beyond that. It says, "we really think this was made by Microsoft, so if you trust them, you can trust this." Palladium may extend this trust into the hardware, but it's still reliant on the assumption that whoever signed the code is doing their homework.
There are four levels of security for software in my mind:
1) Code that is from an unverified source that I cannot look at
2) Code that is from a verified source that I can look at
3) Code from an unverified source that I can look at
4) Code from a verified source that I can look at
Ultimately any code falling into category 3 or 4 can be made secure presuming that I am knolwedgeable about security and the software I'm dealing with. Category four provides the same assurances as category two, but additionally I can further insure my security by looking myself.
What we've suggested is that they should use the existing laws to go after people who are legitimately stealing their products. In this case you've got an organization trying to extort money from people without any clear evidence that any of them have actually pirated a signel thing. If I shared thousands of totally legitmate files, I might still show up on their radar. Then my option becomes to either pay their fines or take the chance that I can win in court and that I won't lose more money there defending myself.
What I'd like to see is them actually going to court with a list of specific files that a person shared that are all, in fact, a violation of copyright. If they can do that, then fine, do so and enjoy. That's not what is happening here.
They may at their discretion hire others to modify the code, but would still be required to pay their maintenance contract and be prohibited from reselling it or using it to run an additional business
So, you've got the possibility that you'll be responsible for supporting the product even though other people are modifying it? How are your people going to have expertise in the work being done by these others?
You go right ahead. Go ahead and make people pay for your generic bland regurgitation of the AP news wire. And we'll keep getting that for free from a thousand other sources.
Really my commentary only applies to the TW case here. In general there's nothing wrong with the concept of charging for what you produce, but if you are going to charge, you'd better have something worth buying.
I happily pay for my Salon membership because they say a lot of things that aren't getting said other places and their articles are interesting. On the other hand, the news spit out by the likes of TW's sites is nothing original. I can go to Google news and get all of that content aggregated nicely for me so I can keep up to date. I seriously doubt anybody's going to find their content so compelling as to become AOL members to access it.
If they can get this to be cross platform (will they ever support Linux? I doubt it), and get the bugs worked out, it would be better than buying a CD from a store. But would it be better than using Kazaa?
This is the problem that these media companies need to contend with. What people want is huge repositories of music for a fixed price that's easy to use, and without stupid DRM restrictions. The advantage that this has over Kazaa is that it's easy to find exactly what you are looking for, but being charged a $1+ per track and having to go through the DRM rigamarole, why would you bother?
Most everybody I know would be willing to pay anywhere between $10-40/month to get access to a huge music repository that they could use without burdensome restrictions. I currently subscribe to emusic for this reason, it's only drawback is that they tend not to have the newest albums. Maybe do a tiered pricing system where you get the back catalog for some more modest price and then you can sign up for a premium membership that will give you the newer music.
The NYT requires free registration, and that's moderately annoying, but not a big deal. If you're a privacy freak, you just make some bogus account and you're good to go. If you don't care, you just log in once, have it store a cookie, and you are good to go.
It is stupid to have a free site link to a site that you have to pay to get access to. I can't even get a preview of the story with the WSJ. So this post is a total waste of time.
Coming form a perspective of people believing that software should be free, the ransom name seems apt. In contrast, I suppose Microsoft would be using the slavery model :).
As for a third party, is it really that important? I mean, they develop the software, you buy it. If at some point they don't make their commitment to release it to the world, then you just stop buying it from them. If you can't afford to take the risk of changing away from it later, then don't buy into ransom software.
Any increase in technology is empowering. Empowerment does not bring with it a greater wisdom and ability to use that newly found power to benefit all humanity. Technology will simply increase the power of those who yield it to do what they want.
:)
It is true that nanotechnology can do trememndous things to benefit us. I think it's a very good likelihood that some of these benefits will come about. At the same time, in a society driven by a lust for material wealth, power, etc, I'm going to bet that something bad will also come of it. Furthermore, with a large portion of this planet's people disenfranchised and impoverished, there's a likelihood that a few angry members of that increasing population will take the power of nanotechnolgy and do something dangerous with it.
I have no question that we will move forward on nanotechnology, hell, we already are. People always go into these things looking at the miraculous benefits, and high on their new god-like powers. Then they move a little further into the future, and realize, once again, that the god business is a difficult one, and have to deal with the total havoc they've unleashed in their blind egotism.
Will banning nanotechology work? No, and it doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen. A lot of people have serious ethical concerns about how stem cell research is done, and that's going forward in a myriad ways anyhow. With nanotech, nobody's going to make a moral stand against it until something goes horrifically wrong, and by then it may very well be too late. So, we're going to keep moving forward, we are going to screw it up, and eventually, we'll make some technology who's side effect will be our own annihilation.
In the meantime, go out and enjoy the life that you have while you've got it. Fortunately that advice works regardless of any technologically conceived apocolypse
This is, at best, a trade secret. Trade secrets are protected under completely different rules from copyright. You can't copyright a price.
A valuable addendum to the DMCA would be a provision to punish for false accusations. Essentially the way it would work is that if you sent somebody a DMCA nastygram, and then decided to take them to court, if you lost, you would owe their legal fees and other associated costs.
This would allow for small players to take on the big corporations with some comfort that if they win, they'll get their money back.