Isn't it a little early in the morning to be playing god?
Not really, for two reasons:
1) Playing god is always funny.
2) Due to some critical rules of playing god, you can only play if you have some sort of meaningfull power over the outcome. Right now they have little to no power. They are attempting to gain some by making a slightly outlandish claim that they actually hope will come true (as strange as it sounds). Once they have some power, then they can play god.
Right now, the only thing they can play is the media.
I think you can, to a certain extent. It would seem utterly plausible to monitor TCP negotiation on outbound port 25. Its not like you need permanent records, just keep a running record of how many times per hour you try to build a new connection, and how much data you transmit after said connection. One need not keep track of content at all in order to detect spamming. The instance where you build an SMTP connection 40 times in an hour, might be a spammer. The one that builds 200+ connections in an hour and transmits 20k of junk per connection should be flagged as a spammer or a company trying to get by on home use cable. I hardly see this as an invasion of privacy if the only way to get flagged is by violating the TOS. Assuming of course, they were to follow a sensible plan for the filter. Think of it as a responibility. The Cop cannot pull you over if you are driving within the law, and following reasonable guidlines. The ISP cannot look at what your doing willynilly (why would they care?) unless your weaving and an obvious hazard. It has ALWAYS been the network administrators duty(yes, duty) to make sure that his/hers users were not abusing local or (especially) other systems. And to take corrective action when someone was abusing said system. Anyway, thats about how I would have it if I were King. And I do not see how you can directly equate less spam to less privacy. Sending spam will have its own signature, finding pron will have an entirely different signature. So assume for now that you are safe from the pron police. That is, unless your a porn spammer...
Its about social atmosphere surrounding the motivation to crack/hack the serivice to begin with. Most of the time (but not always) it would seem more an advantage to get thanks from the Apache maintaner than from your Haxor friends. Or maybe you can do both. Hell I dunno. Anyway, there is an open avenue to get your recognition from the developers in an open way, say in a Changelog, than with closed source. In the event of closed source, you get a brick wall( I mean BRICK), denial, in the event they say 'thank you' no one will ever know but you. Hardly motivation for those seeking recognition. To me, this is why Linux and GNU are more secure than redmond (besides redmond being one of the bricks). Its all due to the social suroundings, and people have choices on where to get their supply of kudos.
Is becouse I havent written them yet. J/K It is an interesting point that the author inadvertently brings up: As Linux becomes more talerable to the masses, security is likely to suffer. Or, as security suffers, Linux will become more tolerable to the masses. Most users will point to the new shiny things on their desktop and go 'Looky at what I can do!!'. Security takes a far second even if they are aware of the problem. Making things hard to do is not the answer. Making things easy to accomplish while maintaining some semblance of security would seem the desirable path. I understand this can be a difficult proposition but trying to leverage the users ignorance to form some sort of security model is just plain counterproductive. I think this article points out a shortcoming in the Ease Of Use dept. The rest wouldnt appear all that insightfull.
I said something similar in a response to an earlier post. Only mine was much more wordy and less to the point. I like mine better, I am selfish that way. (nope not a repeate, this is all new) People pass laws for god knows what reasons. But I am sure they have them, reasons that is. I observe that when the government in question mandates that an industry must pay to clean up its mess, inexplicably, the industry in question coalesces into a semi-solid state and demands that that goverment subsidises the endevour. This is direct fundage out of the government pocket.I wonder who funds that government? Eventually, the industry as a whole increases price tags to compensate for the added expense, while temporarily accruing cash from the government. Its a publicity and politcal game and it works. In the end, the industry actually increases its proffit margin from the consumer based on this supposed problem and will fight to sustain the increased price tag(wouldnt you?). The consumer tax method is a way to curcumvent the money going into the industries hands and possibly (but usually not) get some additional cash flow into the government. But none of this matters, for there is one garantee: You still pay. The money comes from somewhere, and its you. There is no invisible Grand Uncle paying for everything, its all you.The companies in question did not get rich(or just get by) by covering all of humanities little falicies. Get over it and pay your dues.
Yep, more wordy, less to the point, I still like mine better. Yours is good too though.Dont sell yourself short.
Are you nutz or just insane? Sorry, I am in a contrary mood this evening and you have targeted yourself. Of course this all depends on what you are doing with your hardware, but old computers generally are a waste of time and money. There is a reason that they were excised in the first place, and its usually done long after its due. A reasonably new computer is capable getting four times the workload done compaired to those just a few years ago. Maybe 2.5 years ago. One might argue that the average workstation is sitting idle most of the time just waiting for user input, and compaired to being behind state of the art by 2.5 years isnt so bad. But how much value do you put on your time or that of your employies? Granted, if they spend 99% of their time playing solitare, then non of this really matters and you have other problems. But if you are trying to get work done, think about how much time you spend waiting for your machine to catch up to you compared with what a newer machine will deliver... and how much it would cost. To be plain, you can purchase a reasonably fast machine for 500$ from any decently equiped supplier. And again, how much is your time worth to you? Like I said, contrary. Its the beer. Oh, no wait, its me. The beer is inocent.
Given the state of garbage disposal in japan, it might seem plausable to offer free postage on returned computer equipment. The distributor could defray some of the cost by sending the components off to reclaimers en mass, and by offering some minor bonusses on the next purchase (sort of like returning an engine core) thusly making a mild attempt at locking in repeat customers. But I have never been to Japan so I can only offer these as uninformed thoughts. In general, I believe that people are just human. There needs to be real percieved value to deliver incentive or they will just find ways to curcumvent the hastle.
Though I agree with the sentiment, I disagree with your logic. So I break it down. Sorry.
Recycling is sort of a pet-peeve of mine, though. It's not that I'm against recycling. I think it's very sensible. The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
No matter what you purchase, you will get saddled with the cost of the producer doing business. If you pay this recycle fee by form of a tax to the consumer, you would be indignant. But if it is applied to the producer by form of some regulated requirement, you would think your getting a good deal.But in the end, you still pay.
I am unsure what you are getting at with the next one, it could be your right, so I will not detract from it.
But I will cover this one: If a manufacturer chooses to build products that can cause problems if they aren't recycled, it seems like it should be part of THEIR responsibility to cover the costs.
Again, if the product is something you will purchase,YOU will cover the cost. It doesnt matter what form this charge comes in. In the event that the company in question covers the cost then they didnt do the math very well and they will have deep pockets, good lawyers, or go out of bussiness. The only choice you can hope to have is what you purchase. The stupid ass laws that you are complaining about are designed to cover those people who cannot make the hard decisions for themselves. People like me. I havent decided if I give a shit, I just understand the logic(or so I think).
Japan used to use garbage and other waste products to assist in the creation of landfill to extend their usable land at the parimiter of the country. That is, is they used to dump crap in the water and cap it off with pavement/rock. I suspect they have curbed this habit in recent times due to envirenmental concerns, but they DO have a place to dump garbage. But hell, the US used to do the same thing but eventually ceased. I am not sure why;)
You get drunk with your 'walk out' buddies. Then in the light of day, you wake up and have dinner. You basically do every you would normally do when you quit a job, including wish they had fired you instead so you collect unemployment.
Will you teach them a lesson? Yes; you will teach them that they can find cheaper people that are silly enough to work the long hours without complaint (for a while). You will help them fix their financial problem and/or help them to an ealier demise. But the chances of them begging you to come back like your were an abused spouse is probably pretty low.
Instead, I would opt for the 'fsck the bank I work for' mentality and go home when your tired, and live a happy life. When something better comes along, take it.
... I just want to mention, for those who have asked, that absolutely nothing what so ever happened today in sector 83x9x12. I repeat, nothing happened....
I doubt thats the right answer for efficiency
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
Of the stores that might worry about this efficiency problem, they could more easily just charge more roundish numbers in most cases, if that were a concern. But it is not of primary concern to them, on the grounds that it is all about customer perception. Prices are carefully calculated in order to achieve the greatest irritation. Dont ask me why. Its just what they do.
I didnt read all of the comments because I am too drunk (as usual) so I may be redundant. I assume that your works are copywritten... regardless of license. Unless you wish to test DMCA law then your best bet might be to take the tact that he violated copyright law which has been in place for soooo long and has been proven to stand in obvious cases. Then he will need to settle with you or face other state penalties. If you did not claim copyright on your works then he may or may not have legal ground ( it gets grey to me here as I Am Not A Lawyer). Point is, unless your trying to prove something about the DMCA laws then you are being silly. We have preexisting laws to handle this case. The licenses you mention extend rights, so in this case it seems to me that they extend them from the starting point of generic copyright. Since he did not obey the extended license agreement then you have copyright to fall back on. But you should want to consult a lawyer you trust as you should definatly not trust me. To sum up: your association of this event to the DMCA is probably grasping at water, get a lawyers advise (one you trust, if you can find one) and dont confuse the issue if you can help it. He reproduced your works in ways that you think you did not allow for. On a personal note, if you do try for the DMCA win, I hope you are successfull. It would be quite the boon for those of us against such legislature. i.e. Teachers should be brought up on the same charges, for photocopying textbooks for which they have no money but still must teach the content, as the person who figures out how to crack encryption in software product 'B'.
Look, I just wanted you all to know that I loaned him the $800 in vintage cash, before he went to traveling and he has yet to pay me back. I wouldnt believe a thing he says.
...a part of electronic circuitry is separately designed from the body of the HDD for shared use with a memory and microcomputer of a host device.
So its like MFM or RLL or any number of other grand designs, before people figured out that interoperability is a good thing? And yes, size and price were a driving force then as well. The CF you can buy at your local grocer for 10 bucks has an IDE interface, could it be that this home grown interface is a round about method of incurring license fees?
Still, its always good to see things get smaller 'n cheaper.
In fact, dont expect them to work more than about 1/2 the time, in that way you might be pleasantly suprised. I base this claim on the observation that no one has been able to block spam to a severe degree. It would seem that most of the filtering for both spam and the netnanny type filtering would work on the same princibles.( except for that skin tone filtering, but thats just pure evil, though cool). When I can block 90% of the spam in my mailbox then I will become concerened for the ausies. On a serious note: I will become concerned for everyone the day that a governing entity becomes satisfied with its censorship practices.
Correct me if I am wrong ( I am confident you will ) but isnt Lexmark fully owned by IBM? This is the inpression I was left with when I was doing service work direct to IBM some years ago. Assuming this is thrueth, should this not reflect on IBM in general?
Unanswered questions of the univers
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why was the kid so pissed at earth anyway? It would seem he should be pissed at Romulus for sending him to work in the mines and such... What the hell did Earth ever do to him? What was his hangup at being touched by a female? Why did the green guys follow him when he was a prickly scrawny human and they were big and bad? They were bred for war. Why were they such bad shots? Why couldnt warf hit the barn? That seemed to be some pretty decent method for tracking andriod parts from pretty far away. Why couldnt have that been used before to track Data? Why was Warf whinging like a little girl at his hange over? Why wasnt he busy being pissed at Riker for taking his woman? What the hell is it to Picard if his officers dont want to get publicly naked, at what could only be described as a personal event? (maybe he has some other issues....) Why all the anoying closup shots? When Troy tells Picard she has 'been violated' why didnt he look with suspision to Riker like anyone else would have reacted? Picard tried to kill everyone with self destruct becouse the situation just got really bad, they all live. Instead of having a party and celebrating life, they go on about a peice of hardware(Data) that was lost. These people just are not normal damnit! They all need help.
This is the third try at this post. It is hard to get my point across without being pendantic. So instead I will say it strait:
LucasFilms has always been the reluctant adopter of new distribution methods. I think it is because they fear it but thats hearsay as I could not know myself. I further believe ( all this being heresay) that this is a symptom that all the major content providers share, LucasFilms just being the more vocal/self rightous of the bunch. Right along with Metallica on the mp3 thing. It is a common premiss of the music industry, broadcast television providers, cable TV networks, and others that consumer targeted devices effectively defeat their bussiness model. It is all permeating, from the mediocre sitcom actor to the head of a given major network, to the media distribution companies. mp3, tivo, p2p, DVD recorders. They think that if werent for them damned hackers (it used to be the damned pirates) they would be somehow richer.
They are tripping over themselves to be the one to speak out against content replication mechanisms and those entities that develop them. They have always hade the ear ( at least in my lifetime ) of the government through money. The poor person who figures out how to crack the next obscuring mechanism of mass media will get 20 years hard time, out in 10... if he agrees to speak against doing wrong in regards to said media distribution methods.
Or, I could be wrong. The courts once ruled that the consumer had the right to record for home use, granted this dealt with Betamax/VHS type recordings, maybe they will eventually do so again, but I think not. Things move to fast these days for a real verdict to be forthcomming. Its going to be a bunch of non-commital rulings against the individual, eroding the rights of the individual.
What a wonderfull world it could/should be if everyone saw it the way I do. But then again, it could suck, so ignore me.
heh who am I kidding, its about proffit proffit, and then only after, proffit.
The rules of godship are pretty clear on this.
Isn't it a little early in the morning to be playing god?
Not really, for two reasons:
1) Playing god is always funny.
2) Due to some critical rules of playing god, you can only play if you have some sort of meaningfull power over the outcome. Right now they have little to no power. They are attempting to gain some by making a slightly outlandish claim that they actually hope will come true (as strange as it sounds). Once they have some power, then they can play god.
Right now, the only thing they can play is the media.
For instance, what quality is the porno out there and can we get close enough to make it R rated?
Doubt it.
Great Sott! What was I thinking?!
I think you can, to a certain extent. It would seem utterly plausible to monitor TCP negotiation on outbound port 25. Its not like you need permanent records, just keep a running record of how many times per hour you try to build a new connection, and how much data you transmit after said connection. One need not keep track of content at all in order to detect spamming.
The instance where you build an SMTP connection 40 times in an hour, might be a spammer. The one that builds 200+ connections in an hour and transmits 20k of junk per connection should be flagged as a spammer or a company trying to get by on home use cable. I hardly see this as an invasion of privacy if the only way to get flagged is by violating the TOS. Assuming of course, they were to follow a sensible plan for the filter.
Think of it as a responibility. The Cop cannot pull you over if you are driving within the law, and following reasonable guidlines. The ISP cannot look at what your doing willynilly (why would they care?) unless your weaving and an obvious hazard. It has ALWAYS been the network administrators duty(yes, duty) to make sure that his/hers users were not abusing local or (especially) other systems. And to take corrective action when someone was abusing said system.
Anyway, thats about how I would have it if I were King. And I do not see how you can directly equate less spam to less privacy. Sending spam will have its own signature, finding pron will have an entirely different signature. So assume for now that you are safe from the pron police. That is, unless your a porn spammer...
Its about social atmosphere surrounding the motivation to crack/hack the serivice to begin with. Most of the time (but not always) it would seem more an advantage to get thanks from the Apache maintaner than from your Haxor friends. Or maybe you can do both. Hell I dunno.
Anyway, there is an open avenue to get your recognition from the developers in an open way, say in a Changelog, than with closed source.
In the event of closed source, you get a brick wall( I mean BRICK), denial, in the event they say 'thank you' no one will ever know but you. Hardly motivation for those seeking recognition.
To me, this is why Linux and GNU are more secure than redmond (besides redmond being one of the bricks). Its all due to the social suroundings, and people have choices on where to get their supply of kudos.
Is becouse I havent written them yet.
J/K
It is an interesting point that the author inadvertently brings up: As Linux becomes more talerable to the masses, security is likely to suffer. Or, as security suffers, Linux will become more tolerable to the masses.
Most users will point to the new shiny things on their desktop and go 'Looky at what I can do!!'. Security takes a far second even if they are aware of the problem.
Making things hard to do is not the answer. Making things easy to accomplish while maintaining some semblance of security would seem the desirable path. I understand this can be a difficult proposition but trying to leverage the users ignorance to form some sort of security model is just plain counterproductive.
I think this article points out a shortcoming in the Ease Of Use dept. The rest wouldnt appear all that insightfull.
Just like in Starship Troopers. I knew it.
I said something similar in a response to an earlier post. Only mine was much more wordy and less to the point. I like mine better, I am selfish that way. (nope not a repeate, this is all new)
People pass laws for god knows what reasons. But I am sure they have them, reasons that is.
I observe that when the government in question mandates that an industry must pay to clean up its mess, inexplicably, the industry in question coalesces into a semi-solid state and demands that that goverment subsidises the endevour. This is direct fundage out of the government pocket.I wonder who funds that government? Eventually, the industry as a whole increases price tags to compensate for the added expense, while temporarily accruing cash from the government. Its a publicity and politcal game and it works. In the end, the industry actually increases its proffit margin from the consumer based on this supposed problem and will fight to sustain the increased price tag(wouldnt you?). The consumer tax method is a way to curcumvent the money going into the industries hands and possibly (but usually not) get some additional cash flow into the government.
But none of this matters, for there is one garantee: You still pay. The money comes from somewhere, and its you. There is no invisible Grand Uncle paying for everything, its all you.The companies in question did not get rich(or just get by) by covering all of humanities little falicies. Get over it and pay your dues.
Yep, more wordy, less to the point, I still like mine better. Yours is good too though.Dont sell yourself short.
Are you nutz or just insane?
Sorry, I am in a contrary mood this evening and you have targeted yourself.
Of course this all depends on what you are doing with your hardware, but old computers generally are a waste of time and money. There is a reason that they were excised in the first place, and its usually done long after its due.
A reasonably new computer is capable getting four times the workload done compaired to those just a few years ago. Maybe 2.5 years ago.
One might argue that the average workstation is sitting idle most of the time just waiting for user input, and compaired to being behind state of the art by 2.5 years isnt so bad. But how much value do you put on your time or that of your employies?
Granted, if they spend 99% of their time playing solitare, then non of this really matters and you have other problems. But if you are trying to get work done, think about how much time you spend waiting for your machine to catch up to you compared with what a newer machine will deliver... and how much it would cost.
To be plain, you can purchase a reasonably fast machine for 500$ from any decently equiped supplier. And again, how much is your time worth to you?
Like I said, contrary.
Its the beer. Oh, no wait, its me. The beer is inocent.
Given the state of garbage disposal in japan, it might seem plausable to offer free postage on returned computer equipment. The distributor could defray some of the cost by sending the components off to reclaimers en mass, and by offering some minor bonusses on the next purchase (sort of like returning an engine core) thusly making a mild attempt at locking in repeat customers. But I have never been to Japan so I can only offer these as uninformed thoughts.
In general, I believe that people are just human. There needs to be real percieved value to deliver incentive or they will just find ways to curcumvent the hastle.
Though I agree with the sentiment, I disagree with your logic. So I break it down. Sorry.
Recycling is sort of a pet-peeve of mine, though. It's not that I'm against recycling. I think it's very sensible. The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
No matter what you purchase, you will get saddled with the cost of the producer doing business. If you pay this recycle fee by form of a tax to the consumer, you would be indignant. But if it is applied to the producer by form of some regulated requirement, you would think your getting a good deal.But in the end, you still pay.
I am unsure what you are getting at with the next one, it could be your right, so I will not detract from it.
But I will cover this one:
If a manufacturer chooses to build products that can cause problems if they aren't recycled, it seems like it should be part of THEIR responsibility to cover the costs.
Again, if the product is something you will purchase,YOU will cover the cost. It doesnt matter what form this charge comes in. In the event that the company in question covers the cost then they didnt do the math very well and they will have deep pockets, good lawyers, or go out of bussiness.
The only choice you can hope to have is what you purchase. The stupid ass laws that you are complaining about are designed to cover those people who cannot make the hard decisions for themselves.
People like me. I havent decided if I give a shit, I just understand the logic(or so I think).
Japan used to use garbage and other waste products to assist in the creation of landfill to extend their usable land at the parimiter of the country. That is, is they used to dump crap in the water and cap it off with pavement/rock. I suspect they have curbed this habit in recent times due to envirenmental concerns, but they DO have a place to dump garbage. ;)
But hell, the US used to do the same thing but eventually ceased. I am not sure why
You get drunk with your 'walk out' buddies. Then in the light of day, you wake up and have dinner. You basically do every you would normally do when you quit a job, including wish they had fired you instead so you collect unemployment.
Will you teach them a lesson? Yes; you will teach them that they can find cheaper people that are silly enough to work the long hours without complaint (for a while). You will help them fix their financial problem and/or help them to an ealier demise. But the chances of them begging you to come back like your were an abused spouse is probably pretty low.
Instead, I would opt for the 'fsck the bank I work for' mentality and go home when your tired, and live a happy life. When something better comes along, take it.
... I just want to mention, for those who have asked, that absolutely nothing what ...
so ever happened today in sector 83x9x12. I repeat, nothing happened.
Of the stores that might worry about this efficiency problem, they could more easily just charge more roundish numbers in most cases, if that were a concern. But it is not of primary concern to them, on the grounds that it is all about customer perception. Prices are carefully calculated in order to achieve the greatest irritation.
Dont ask me why. Its just what they do.
For instance, does it have a clock?
Will this be an Elvis stamp or a Dimitry stamp?
Just curious about the consumer group they are trying to target.
I didnt read all of the comments because I am too drunk (as usual) so I may be redundant.
I assume that your works are copywritten... regardless of license.
Unless you wish to test DMCA law then your best bet might be to take the tact that he violated copyright law which has been in place for soooo long and has been proven to stand in obvious cases. Then he will need to settle with you or face other state penalties. If you did not claim copyright on your works then he may or may not have legal ground ( it gets grey to me here as I Am Not A Lawyer).
Point is, unless your trying to prove something about the DMCA laws then you are being silly. We have preexisting laws to handle this case.
The licenses you mention extend rights, so in this case it seems to me that they extend them from the starting point of generic copyright. Since he did not obey the extended license agreement then you have copyright to fall back on.
But you should want to consult a lawyer you trust as you should definatly not trust me.
To sum up: your association of this event to the DMCA is probably grasping at water, get a lawyers advise (one you trust, if you can find one) and dont confuse the issue if you can help it. He reproduced your works in ways that you think you did not allow for.
On a personal note, if you do try for the DMCA win, I hope you are successfull. It would be quite the boon for those of us against such legislature.
i.e. Teachers should be brought up on the same charges, for photocopying textbooks for which they have no money but still must teach the content, as the person who figures out how to crack encryption in software product 'B'.
Look, I just wanted you all to know that I loaned him the $800 in vintage cash, before he went to traveling and he has yet to pay me back.
I wouldnt believe a thing he says.
...a part of electronic circuitry is separately designed from the body of the HDD for shared use with a memory and microcomputer of a host device.
So its like MFM or RLL or any number of other grand designs, before people figured out that interoperability is a good thing? And yes, size and price were a driving force then as well. The CF you can buy at your local grocer for 10 bucks has an IDE interface, could it be that this home grown interface is a round about method of incurring license fees?
Still, its always good to see things get smaller 'n cheaper.
In fact, dont expect them to work more than about 1/2 the time, in that way you might be pleasantly suprised.
I base this claim on the observation that no one has been able to block spam to a severe degree. It would seem that most of the filtering for both spam and the netnanny type filtering would work on the same princibles.( except for that skin tone filtering, but thats just pure evil, though cool).
When I can block 90% of the spam in my mailbox then I will become concerened for the ausies.
On a serious note: I will become concerned for everyone the day that a governing entity becomes satisfied with its censorship practices.
Correct me if I am wrong ( I am confident you will ) but isnt Lexmark fully owned by IBM?
This is the inpression I was left with when I was doing service work direct to IBM some years ago.
Assuming this is thrueth, should this not reflect on IBM in general?
Why was the kid so pissed at earth anyway? It would seem he should be pissed at Romulus for sending him to work in the mines and such... What the hell did Earth ever do to him?
What was his hangup at being touched by a female?
Why did the green guys follow him when he was a prickly scrawny human and they were big and bad?
They were bred for war. Why were they such bad shots?
Why couldnt warf hit the barn?
That seemed to be some pretty decent method for tracking andriod parts from pretty far away. Why couldnt have that been used before to track Data?
Why was Warf whinging like a little girl at his hange over? Why wasnt he busy being pissed at Riker for taking his woman?
What the hell is it to Picard if his officers dont want to get publicly naked, at what could only be described as a personal event? (maybe he has some other issues....)
Why all the anoying closup shots?
When Troy tells Picard she has 'been violated' why didnt he look with suspision to Riker like anyone else would have reacted?
Picard tried to kill everyone with self destruct becouse the situation just got really bad, they all live. Instead of having a party and celebrating life, they go on about a peice of hardware(Data) that was lost.
These people just are not normal damnit! They all need help.
This is the third try at this post. It is hard to get my point across without being pendantic. So instead I will say it strait:
LucasFilms has always been the reluctant adopter of new distribution methods. I think it is because they fear it but thats hearsay as I could not know myself.
I further believe ( all this being heresay) that this is a symptom that all the major content providers share, LucasFilms just being the more vocal/self rightous of the bunch. Right along with Metallica on the mp3 thing. It is a common premiss of the music industry, broadcast television providers, cable TV networks, and others that consumer targeted devices effectively defeat their bussiness model. It is all permeating, from the mediocre sitcom actor to the head of a given major network, to the media distribution companies. mp3, tivo, p2p, DVD recorders. They think that if werent for them damned hackers (it used to be the damned pirates) they would be somehow richer.
They are tripping over themselves to be the one to speak out against content replication mechanisms and those entities that develop them. They have always hade the ear ( at least in my lifetime ) of the government through money. The poor person who figures out how to crack the next obscuring mechanism of mass media will get 20 years hard time, out in 10... if he agrees to speak against doing wrong in regards to said media distribution methods.
Or, I could be wrong. The courts once ruled that the consumer had the right to record for home use, granted this dealt with Betamax/VHS type recordings, maybe they will eventually do so again, but I think not. Things move to fast these days for a real verdict to be forthcomming. Its going to be a bunch of non-commital rulings against the individual, eroding the rights of the individual.
What a wonderfull world it could/should be if everyone saw it the way I do. But then again, it could suck, so ignore me.
heh who am I kidding, its about proffit proffit, and then only after, proffit.
Maybe more correctly designated: parasite