I checked my little Garmin receiver this morning, and I am getting an accuracy estimate of 23 feet. That estimate has never been below 53 feet, and I rarely saw that level of accuracy. It has been no higher than 35 feet all morning. Hooray!
Today, I am pleased to announce that the United States will stop the intentional degradation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals available to the public beginning at midnight tonight.
The part you are referring to simply states that in 1996, they made it their *goal* to shut off SA by 2006. And for once, the government has beaten a deadline-- by more than 50%!!
The part you are referring to:
My March 1996 Presidential Decision Directive included in the goals for GPS to: encourage acceptance and integration of GPS into peaceful civil, commercial and scientific applications worldwide; and to encourage private sector investment in and use of U.S. GPS technologies and services. To meet these goals, I committed the U.S. to discontinuing the use of SA by 2006 with an annual assessment of its continued use beginning this year.
The reason that 30fps (or lower for movies) looks acceptable is that the filming process produces motion blur. The motion blurred image is much closer to what our eyes get from reality than an every-single-frame-is-crystal-clear rendering from a video card. To produce a similar effect from a typical 3D card, you need enough more frames that your eyes can't see them all and produce the blurring on their own. (Like real life) It seems obvious that you need at least 2x the frames to get a blurring effect between them, since you have to have 2 frames to blur between.
Newer video cards ARE beginning to incorporate motion blur, which will help enormously. But it is cheaper to simply up the framerate, at least up to a certain point. (Which I don't think we have really reached) Motion blurring sounds like a very computationally intensive thing to do.
So there are reasons to go to 100fps-- if the frames are clear, it will take many more of them to approximate the effect that motion-blurred TV or film produce at 30fps.
ASCII isn't going anywhere. It's a 30 (or more) year old WORLD standard. It's not likely to be forgotten. If it is forgotten, it is a simple mapping of characters to codes that could quickly be deciphered, even by an idiot like me, with a table of english character frequencies. HTML is a subset of SGML, and is also not likely to disappear. You said "as long as the language isn't dead"... well, the same defense goes for ASCII and HTML. As long as ASCII and HTML aren't dead, we're fine.
And we don't need to keep proprietary readers. All we need is to keep a quick reference outlining the format. This is the ONLY book the library of congress would really need to keep on hand-- "how to decode the stuff we've digitized".
Most books are not printed in quantity. That is the problem. Those that are will be fine-- but those are only a tiny fraction of the books written and published.
I agree with you that a diversity of formats is better. We should NOT throw out print. I like print. Keeping it digitized also improves reliability. And in the same sense that you can move the data from one machine to the next generation via a network, why not take that time to translate to the current popular format as well? For example-- if ASCII were being replaced entirely with UNICODE (and it will be) I'd simply move it all to the new server and convert it all to UNICODE. No data storage obsolescence, and no data format obsolescence.
And for the record, you Linux box probably has the tools for converting EBCDIC to ASCII already on it. Hardly an "unreadable" format, no matter how unused it has become.
Of course it will. The books should not be kept on a media like floppies. The books should be stored in a standard format (ASCII, HTML) that will be readable for years on an internet-connected server. When the system the books are on is in danger of becoming obsolete, the librarian can simply FTP the whole shebang over to the next machine. Simple, reliable, and no problem to implement. After all-- my old 386 with a 5 1/4" drive can easily ftp all of its contents to my new machine. The internet is a giant help in avoiding media obsolescence, and the ease of moving the data makes remote backups no problem too.
I agree wholeheartedly. I vastly prefer the real thing, and love wandering around in archives of old books, just to chance on something. But if those books should get damaged, we need a backup.
It doesn't seem important whether or not reading books on a computer (or via another reader) in some digital form is comfortable, normal, non-arrogant or whatever. The real issue here is the preservation of these great books! If these books are allowed to continue decaying as they are now, we will eventually lose the works of the great authors from generations before us. I know that the library takes great care of its books, preserving them carefully in a controlled environment. But NOTHING can prevent these books from eventually decaying. Digitization makes nearly instantaneous backup and transfer of these works possible, and will enable sustainable non-degrading storage of these books. I am not asking for the books to be made available online. In the case of books whose copyrights have not expired, this may present all sorts of thorny copyright issues. All I would ask is that they archive their books electronically, and make regular offsite backups to several secure locations around the country. In the event of a fire, earthquake, or the eventual sad decay of one of our nation's treaures, we would at least have a digital copy for future generations to use. I suggest that everyone write to the librarian to support this, and if you're feeling even more ambitious, support a project like Project Gutenberg that is taking this task upon itself to preserve our heritage.
From reading the article, (which is admittedly a bit skimpy on details) it seems like they are using the magnesium case as a big heat sink by moving the CPU heat to the case for dissipation via the water-cooling system. I don't know about you, but my old, slow p133 laptop gets REALLY REALLY hot even without specifically routing the heat to the external case. And I know that my desktop processor gets so hot I can't touch it until it has had a bit to cool down. Does this mean if I leave my new toshiba turned on long enough that the (metal) case will reach processor-level temperatures? I don't want to have to wear my asbestos pants just to use a laptop!
I am really, really tired of hearing about things like this. It seems like such a common-sense thing that you don't hold the provider liable! After all, libraries still shelve books containing information on explosives and guns-- should we hold them liable for acts of terrorism? When lawn darts were decided to be so dangerous they should be taken off of the market, were toy stores sued? Nope. It was the makers of the lawn darts! If you post crap on the web, it should be your behind that gets sued, not your provider's. ESPECIALLY if they torpedoed your site as soon as they knew about it!
It seems that this is occuring with such frequency that there must be some fundamental viewpoint I'm missing. If the legal systems of various countries are ruling in this fashion, there must be at least a tiny argument for their side that I am missing. If anyone could provide this (so we can ponder and rebuff it) I would be very very grateful. I simply cannot think of any reason that this sort of ruling is morally or commonsensically defensible!!
This is definitely a step in the right direction. It seems that things have moved a bit in the right direction this week, with this, source code ruled as protected free speech, verant's backdown on drive scanning, and the Microsoft ruling. There were some negative things this week, but maybe we're seeing the beginning of a positive trend in these issues. (keep your fingers crossed, and maybe the librarian of congress will do something about DMCA, too!)
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the first group to have a complete sequencing of the human genome is a private company? If anything ought to be in the public domain, all other arguments about software, music, etc... aside, it is the human genome. After all, everybody already has their very own. Celera deserves to reap the benefits of getting there first, but only until somebody else can get there as well. If another group finishes the sequencing, they have just as much right to use it as Celera. It's not like Celera has created an original work-- they've just finished reading through the genome first.
I really hope that the HGP places this information in the public domain as soon as possible, and refrains from signing any exclusionary deals with Celera that would prevent this information from being free.
This isn't a bad idea, except that the censorware still blocks legitimate sites and misses a ton of nasty ones. It really isn't any help if the software blocks 80% of a million porn sites-- there are still 200,000 left for my kids to find.
Maintaining thorough and fair block lists for censorware will prove to be the largest task undertaken by man. The internet is enormous. With the state of AI as it is, automatic rating of web sites with any sort of accuracy is years away. (Case in point-- there is a restaurant here called the XXX Steakhouse. If they had a website, I'm sure it would be blocked since most automatic censorware crawlers just pick up the keywords and mark it as bad.)
It's just too big to be reviewed by the employees of a tiny software company! They will always leave too many unchecked sites for their product to work well. If this was the only problem it might be worth buying for your kids. But I'm not interested in blocking only some bad AND some good sites as well. The tradeoff isn't worth it.
You can seperate the terminals, but the censorware still doesn't work. (A step in the right direction, though, at least preserving the rights of adults!)
The largest problem facing those of us who are aware of issues like this (Censoreware, DVDs, the DMCA in general, etc...) is that the public at large is totally unaware that their rights are being taken away. In the censoreware example, people for the most part actually think that it is beneficial for their children to have censoreware installed in public places. And like much of the everyday technology they use (toasters, cars, TVs) they expect that it will just work. It never occurs to them that it could be blocking something legitimate! In the case of the DVD issues, very few americans have any need to play a DVD from another region. After all-- our region sees *almost* all of the movies (there are quite a few Japanese imports I would love to get my hands on, but the average American isn't interested) they would want to see. And how many non-geek friends who want to play DVDs do you know that have ONLY an unusual OS and a DVD-ROM? Not many.
I'd really like to know how we can get a clear, concise, understandable explanation out to the public that will motivate them! I've tried explaining the DVD issue to people, and mostly they don't care one way or the other. When it comes to censoreware, they are a little more concerned, but it always comes back to "I'm not affected, and it's probably good for my kids."
Ideas are welcome! If you've had success getting these points across, let me know!
It's nice to see that Mattel has realized there isn't any profit in a Censorware package that doesn't really censor much, but which does block dozens of legitimate sites.
The frightening part of all this, though is this quote:
The Journal listed the prospective buyers as Vivendi SA's Havas Interactive Inc., Internet incubator Knowledge Universe LLC, Microsoft Corp., Time Warner Inc. and Infogrames Entertainment SA.
I'm more than a little concerned that Time Warner and Microsoft are listed as potential buyers. These companies aren't exactly on my list of conscientious companies, and it seems unlikely that they will put the incredible effort into CyberPatrol to keep its lists fair and up-to-date. The effort required to maintain censorware that is up-to-date and fair is nearly unattainable, due to the size of the internet. Although I'm happy Mattel has decided it is not profitable, I would be much happier if the project were just scuttled altogether in light of its inherent weaknesses and the near-impossibility of maintaining the block lists.
"Player for Linux"? Not Quite.
on
More on LinDVD
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· Score: 2
A binary-only player raises several questions-- will it work with all the distributions? Probably not. Especially foreign-language distros.
The other critical thing, as pointed out to me by a poster in the previous article about whether or not there is a DVD player for Linux, is that x86 platforms are not Linux. If this is binary only, this still leaves PPC, MIPS, Alpha, Sparc, 680x0 and whatever else you've got Linux on (Z80? 6502? Homebrew core on Xilinx FPGA?) in the dark. This is a player for a FEW distros running on x86 platforms only. It is NOT a player for "Linux" in general.
We still leave out other OSes as well-- AmigaOS, BeOS, BSD, Commercial Unixes, and whatever else. And this gains us nothing in the fight against silly region codes, price fixing, forced commercials, playback conditions, and the general loss of traditional rights associated with the format.
It was early in the morning, and I completely neglected to follow through on that part of things. Obviously, a binary-only release is only useful for the hardware platform it is built on, and leaves Linux users on PPC, MIPS, Alpha, or whatever out in the cold.
Which only makes the point further-- despite the availability of a DVD player for x86 Linux, DeCSS's credibility as a way to play DVDs on platforms (*including* Linux this time!) with no support is in no way harmed.
There was an article on Slashdot just a few days ago at this link that talked about Intervideo's release of the "LinDVD" player software. In all likelihood there WILL be a DVD player for Linux eventually, whether LinDVD turns out to be vaporware or not. The media companies are greedy-- not stupid, and are more than willing to allow "properly restricted" access to DVDs for Linux users with no other way to play them. After all-- it means they'll sell more crap!
It is important to note that this in no way affects the credibility of DeCSS as a tool for the playback of DVDs on systems that do not yet have a software DVD player. Those systems may no longer include Linux, but they DO still include AmigaOS, BeOS, several commercial Unixes, OS/2, and BSD, among others. (Please correct me if I have overlooked a player available for one of these operating systems!) And since DeCSS is open source and available for porting to these OSes, users stuck without commercial DVD support will be able to view DVDs on their own.
This has been hashed and rehashed, but there are still two valid sides to this issue. MP3.com doesn't promote or condone piracy. Lots of people use MP3 to pirate, though, and artists are naturally (and rightfully) afraid of losing their works. This doesn't make going after MP3.com any less indefensible, though! If you want to go after pirates, there are plenty of laws against it already. Sue the pirates. It is silly to sue the makers of every device that makes piracy possible-- if we do that, we'd better make sure we get the inventors of pencils, paper, carving tools, paint and canvas, and so forth. Creation and archival tools will always have the side effect of being copying tools as well. Owning them is not a crime. Pirating is.
So Mr. McCartney's company's lawsuit is quite frivolous and misguided, but it *IS* a natural human response trying to protect what he has created. It is so much easier to go after a central source than individual pirates, and until that changes, companies will always go after people in the middle like MP3.com.
If you can think of an agreeable way to fix these types of situations so both sides are happy, do it and get rich. And soon, so I can quit worrying if my right to make backups is going to disappear.
Is that the international nature of the internet is going to force countries to get their acts together, recognize technology, talk to and deal with eachother, and try to get things working. No country wants to have its carefully crafted laws broken, but the internet makes it so that breaking a law is as easy as moving your box to a country where the laws are different. Some sort of national consensus will have to be reached, and I can't imagine the more open countries letting go of their freedoms. In the end, I think that this will force international law into a more open and more freedom-friendly state. It won't be perfect, because governments never are, but it will be a hell of a lot better than it is now.
If you're american and you want to make a difference now, learn another language, and make use of the parts of the net you normally pass over. Until I'm confident Babelfish doesn't mangle my words, and until it does Japanese, I will keep studying.
Inability to play a DVD on an unsupported OS (as you said) due to the CSS licensing. The inability to connect a DVD player through a VCR for users who do not own a new television with an RCA or S-video input due to the Macrovision protection on the output of a DVD player. The inability for the owner of an american to play DVDs from another region (i.e. my girlfriend's japanese mother) due to the region restrictions imposed via the CSS licensing. And lastly, see comment #100 (not mine) for an example of a gentleman losing business in the video editing industry due to the illegality of trying to decrypt CSS encoded video. Hope these help!
What am I supposed to do with an electronic book I can't move from even from one HD to another? What if I upgrade my CPU? I have to call tech support? This is absolutely ridiculous. Especially for a free book-- why copy protect something that is being given away for free? I would happily buy all my books electronically, and anxioulsy await the day that I can get any book I want, instantly, online with my credit card. There are quite a few out-of-print vintage sci-fi books I'd love to get my hands on, if only old books would be made available electronically! If the electronic book is not AT LEAST as usable as its paper counterpart was, then I will NOT even consider buying it. This includes, loaning it to a friend, reading it at work, at home, in my car, on vacation, and in a foreign country. It also includes the ability to keep on reading the book for centuries regardless of what changes I make to my computer. (Just like a real book. My paperbacks don't seem to mind if I upgrade my processor and hard drive-- why should electronic versions of the same books care?) I am appalled.
Publishing companies, sign me up for electronic books the second you have a clue. Until then, I'll be (grudgingly) purchasing (wasteful and degradeable, but functional) paperback copies of books I want to read, because at least they will be usable to me after I (most definitely) upgrade my computer in the next 6 months.
Slashdot Mirror
I checked my little Garmin receiver this morning, and I am getting an accuracy estimate of 23 feet. That estimate has never been below 53 feet, and I rarely saw that level of accuracy. It has been no higher than 35 feet all morning. Hooray!
Actually, the article says:
Today, I am pleased to announce that the United States will stop the intentional degradation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals available to the public beginning at midnight tonight.
The part you are referring to simply states that in 1996, they made it their *goal* to shut off SA by 2006. And for once, the government has beaten a deadline-- by more than 50%!!
The part you are referring to:
My March 1996 Presidential Decision Directive included in the goals for GPS to: encourage acceptance and integration of GPS into peaceful civil, commercial and scientific applications worldwide; and to encourage private
sector investment in and use of U.S. GPS technologies and services. To
meet these goals, I committed the U.S. to discontinuing the use of SA by 2006 with an annual assessment of its continued use beginning this year.
The reason that 30fps (or lower for movies) looks acceptable is that the filming process produces motion blur. The motion blurred image is much closer to what our eyes get from reality than an every-single-frame-is-crystal-clear rendering from a video card. To produce a similar effect from a typical 3D card, you need enough more frames that your eyes can't see them all and produce the blurring on their own. (Like real life) It seems obvious that you need at least 2x the frames to get a blurring effect between them, since you have to have 2 frames to blur between.
Newer video cards ARE beginning to incorporate motion blur, which will help enormously. But it is cheaper to simply up the framerate, at least up to a certain point. (Which I don't think we have really reached) Motion blurring sounds like a very computationally intensive thing to do.
So there are reasons to go to 100fps-- if the frames are clear, it will take many more of them to approximate the effect that motion-blurred TV or film produce at 30fps.
ASCII isn't going anywhere. It's a 30 (or more) year old WORLD standard. It's not likely to be forgotten. If it is forgotten, it is a simple mapping of characters to codes that could quickly be deciphered, even by an idiot like me, with a table of english character frequencies. HTML is a subset of SGML, and is also not likely to disappear. You said "as long as the language isn't dead"... well, the same defense goes for ASCII and HTML. As long as ASCII and HTML aren't dead, we're fine.
And we don't need to keep proprietary readers. All we need is to keep a quick reference outlining the format. This is the ONLY book the library of congress would really need to keep on hand-- "how to decode the stuff we've digitized".
Most books are not printed in quantity. That is the problem. Those that are will be fine-- but those are only a tiny fraction of the books written and published.
I agree with you that a diversity of formats is better. We should NOT throw out print. I like print. Keeping it digitized also improves reliability. And in the same sense that you can move the data from one machine to the next generation via a network, why not take that time to translate to the current popular format as well? For example-- if ASCII were being replaced entirely with UNICODE (and it will be) I'd simply move it all to the new server and convert it all to UNICODE. No data storage obsolescence, and no data format obsolescence.
And for the record, you Linux box probably has the tools for converting EBCDIC to ASCII already on it. Hardly an "unreadable" format, no matter how unused it has become.
Of course it will. The books should not be kept on a media like floppies. The books should be stored in a standard format (ASCII, HTML) that will be readable for years on an internet-connected server. When the system the books are on is in danger of becoming obsolete, the librarian can simply FTP the whole shebang over to the next machine. Simple, reliable, and no problem to implement. After all-- my old 386 with a 5 1/4" drive can easily ftp all of its contents to my new machine. The internet is a giant help in avoiding media obsolescence, and the ease of moving the data makes remote backups no problem too.
I agree wholeheartedly. I vastly prefer the real thing, and love wandering around in archives of old books, just to chance on something. But if those books should get damaged, we need a backup.
It doesn't seem important whether or not reading books on a computer (or via another reader) in some digital form is comfortable, normal, non-arrogant or whatever. The real issue here is the preservation of these great books! If these books are allowed to continue decaying as they are now, we will eventually lose the works of the great authors from generations before us. I know that the library takes great care of its books, preserving them carefully in a controlled environment. But NOTHING can prevent these books from eventually decaying. Digitization makes nearly instantaneous backup and transfer of these works possible, and will enable sustainable non-degrading storage of these books. I am not asking for the books to be made available online. In the case of books whose copyrights have not expired, this may present all sorts of thorny copyright issues. All I would ask is that they archive their books electronically, and make regular offsite backups to several secure locations around the country. In the event of a fire, earthquake, or the eventual sad decay of one of our nation's treaures, we would at least have a digital copy for future generations to use. I suggest that everyone write to the librarian to support this, and if you're feeling even more ambitious, support a project like Project Gutenberg that is taking this task upon itself to preserve our heritage.
From reading the article, (which is admittedly a bit skimpy on details) it seems like they are using the magnesium case as a big heat sink by moving the CPU heat to the case for dissipation via the water-cooling system. I don't know about you, but my old, slow p133 laptop gets REALLY REALLY hot even without specifically routing the heat to the external case. And I know that my desktop processor gets so hot I can't touch it until it has had a bit to cool down. Does this mean if I leave my new toshiba turned on long enough that the (metal) case will reach processor-level temperatures? I don't want to have to wear my asbestos pants just to use a laptop!
I am really, really tired of hearing about things like this. It seems like such a common-sense thing that you don't hold the provider liable! After all, libraries still shelve books containing information on explosives and guns-- should we hold them liable for acts of terrorism?
When lawn darts were decided to be so dangerous they should be taken off of the market, were toy stores sued? Nope. It was the makers of the lawn darts! If you post crap on the web, it should be your behind that gets sued, not your provider's. ESPECIALLY if they torpedoed your site as soon as they knew about it!
It seems that this is occuring with such frequency that there must be some fundamental viewpoint I'm missing. If the legal systems of various countries are ruling in this fashion, there must be at least a tiny argument for their side that I am missing. If anyone could provide this (so we can ponder and rebuff it) I would be very very grateful. I simply cannot think of any reason that this sort of ruling is morally or commonsensically defensible!!
This is definitely a step in the right direction. It seems that things have moved a bit in the right direction this week, with this, source code ruled as protected free speech, verant's backdown on drive scanning, and the Microsoft ruling. There were some negative things this week, but maybe we're seeing the beginning of a positive trend in these issues. (keep your fingers crossed, and maybe the librarian of congress will do something about DMCA, too!)
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the first group to have a complete sequencing of the human genome is a private company? If anything ought to be in the public domain, all other arguments about software, music, etc... aside, it is the human genome. After all, everybody already has their very own. Celera deserves to reap the benefits of getting there first, but only until somebody else can get there as well. If another group finishes the sequencing, they have just as much right to use it as Celera. It's not like Celera has created an original work-- they've just finished reading through the genome first.
I really hope that the HGP places this information in the public domain as soon as possible, and refrains from signing any exclusionary deals with Celera that would prevent this information from being free.
This isn't a bad idea, except that the censorware still blocks legitimate sites and misses a ton of nasty ones. It really isn't any help if the software blocks 80% of a million porn sites-- there are still 200,000 left for my kids to find.
Maintaining thorough and fair block lists for censorware will prove to be the largest task undertaken by man. The internet is enormous. With the state of AI as it is, automatic rating of web sites with any sort of accuracy is years away. (Case in point-- there is a restaurant here called the XXX Steakhouse. If they had a website, I'm sure it would be blocked since most automatic censorware crawlers just pick up the keywords and mark it as bad.)
It's just too big to be reviewed by the employees of a tiny software company! They will always leave too many unchecked sites for their product to work well. If this was the only problem it might be worth buying for your kids. But I'm not interested in blocking only some bad AND some good sites as well. The tradeoff isn't worth it.
You can seperate the terminals, but the censorware still doesn't work. (A step in the right direction, though, at least preserving the rights of adults!)
The largest problem facing those of us who are aware of issues like this (Censoreware, DVDs, the DMCA in general, etc...) is that the public at large is totally unaware that their rights are being taken away. In the censoreware example, people for the most part actually think that it is beneficial for their children to have censoreware installed in public places. And like much of the everyday technology they use (toasters, cars, TVs) they expect that it will just work. It never occurs to them that it could be blocking something legitimate! In the case of the DVD issues, very few americans have any need to play a DVD from another region. After all-- our region sees *almost* all of the movies (there are quite a few Japanese imports I would love to get my hands on, but the average American isn't interested) they would want to see. And how many non-geek friends who want to play DVDs do you know that have ONLY an unusual OS and a DVD-ROM? Not many.
I'd really like to know how we can get a clear, concise, understandable explanation out to the public that will motivate them! I've tried explaining the DVD issue to people, and mostly they don't care one way or the other. When it comes to censoreware, they are a little more concerned, but it always comes back to "I'm not affected, and it's probably good for my kids."
Ideas are welcome! If you've had success getting these points across, let me know!
It's nice to see that Mattel has realized there isn't any profit in a Censorware package that doesn't really censor much, but which does block dozens of legitimate sites.
The frightening part of all this, though is this quote:
The Journal listed the prospective buyers as Vivendi SA's Havas Interactive
Inc., Internet incubator Knowledge Universe LLC, Microsoft Corp., Time Warner
Inc. and Infogrames Entertainment SA.
I'm more than a little concerned that Time Warner and Microsoft are listed as potential buyers. These companies aren't exactly on my list of conscientious companies, and it seems unlikely that they will put the incredible effort into CyberPatrol to keep its lists fair and up-to-date. The effort required to maintain censorware that is up-to-date and fair is nearly unattainable, due to the size of the internet. Although I'm happy Mattel has decided it is not profitable, I would be much happier if the project were just scuttled altogether in light of its inherent weaknesses and the near-impossibility of maintaining the block lists.
A binary-only player raises several questions-- will it work with all the distributions? Probably not. Especially foreign-language distros.
The other critical thing, as pointed out to me by a poster in the previous article about whether or not there is a DVD player for Linux, is that x86 platforms are not Linux. If this is binary only, this still leaves PPC, MIPS, Alpha, Sparc, 680x0 and whatever else you've got Linux on (Z80? 6502? Homebrew core on Xilinx FPGA?) in the dark. This is a player for a FEW distros running on x86 platforms only. It is NOT a player for "Linux" in general.
We still leave out other OSes as well-- AmigaOS, BeOS, BSD, Commercial Unixes, and whatever else. And this gains us nothing in the fight against silly region codes, price fixing, forced commercials, playback conditions, and the general loss of traditional rights associated with the format.
It was early in the morning, and I completely neglected to follow through on that part of things. Obviously, a binary-only release is only useful for the hardware platform it is built on, and leaves Linux users on PPC, MIPS, Alpha, or whatever out in the cold.
Which only makes the point further-- despite the availability of a DVD player for x86 Linux, DeCSS's credibility as a way to play DVDs on platforms (*including* Linux this time!) with no support is in no way harmed.
There was an article on Slashdot just a few days ago at this link that talked about Intervideo's release of the "LinDVD" player software. In all likelihood there WILL be a DVD player for Linux eventually, whether LinDVD turns out to be vaporware or not. The media companies are greedy-- not stupid, and are more than willing to allow "properly restricted" access to DVDs for Linux users with no other way to play them. After all-- it means they'll sell more crap!
It is important to note that this in no way affects the credibility of DeCSS as a tool for the playback of DVDs on systems that do not yet have a software DVD player. Those systems may no longer include Linux, but they DO still include AmigaOS, BeOS, several commercial Unixes, OS/2, and BSD, among others. (Please correct me if I have overlooked a player available for one of these operating systems!) And since DeCSS is open source and available for porting to these OSes, users stuck without commercial DVD support will be able to view DVDs on their own.
It was re-re-extended to the 31st. You can verify this at this link.
I was in my Japanese class this morning, and we saw a commercial for 7-11. They were showing some sort of seaweed-wrapped rice ball thing.
This has been hashed and rehashed, but there are still two valid sides to this issue. MP3.com doesn't promote or condone piracy. Lots of people use MP3 to pirate, though, and artists are naturally (and rightfully) afraid of losing their works. This doesn't make going after MP3.com any less indefensible, though! If you want to go after pirates, there are plenty of laws against it already. Sue the pirates. It is silly to sue the makers of every device that makes piracy possible-- if we do that, we'd better make sure we get the inventors of pencils, paper, carving tools, paint and canvas, and so forth. Creation and archival tools will always have the side effect of being copying tools as well. Owning them is not a crime. Pirating is.
So Mr. McCartney's company's lawsuit is quite frivolous and misguided, but it *IS* a natural human response trying to protect what he has created. It is so much easier to go after a central source than individual pirates, and until that changes, companies will always go after people in the middle like MP3.com.
If you can think of an agreeable way to fix these types of situations so both sides are happy, do it and get rich. And soon, so I can quit worrying if my right to make backups is going to disappear.
Is that the international nature of the internet is going to force countries to get their acts together, recognize technology, talk to and deal with eachother, and try to get things working. No country wants to have its carefully crafted laws broken, but the internet makes it so that breaking a law is as easy as moving your box to a country where the laws are different. Some sort of national consensus will have to be reached, and I can't imagine the more open countries letting go of their freedoms. In the end, I think that this will force international law into a more open and more freedom-friendly state. It won't be perfect, because governments never are, but it will be a hell of a lot better than it is now.
If you're american and you want to make a difference now, learn another language, and make use of the parts of the net you normally pass over. Until I'm confident Babelfish doesn't mangle my words, and until it does Japanese, I will keep studying.
They currently DO use OCR.
Here are the losses I listed in my comment:
Inability to play a DVD on an unsupported OS (as you said) due to the CSS licensing. The inability to connect a DVD player through a VCR for users who do not own a new television with an RCA or S-video input due to the Macrovision protection on the output of a DVD player. The inability for the owner of an american to play DVDs from another region (i.e. my girlfriend's japanese mother) due to the region restrictions imposed via the CSS licensing. And lastly, see comment #100 (not mine) for an example of a gentleman losing business in the video editing industry due to the illegality of trying to decrypt CSS encoded video. Hope these help!
What am I supposed to do with an electronic book I can't move from even from one HD to another? What if I upgrade my CPU? I have to call tech support? This is absolutely ridiculous. Especially for a free book-- why copy protect something that is being given away for free? I would happily buy all my books electronically, and anxioulsy await the day that I can get any book I want, instantly, online with my credit card. There are quite a few out-of-print vintage sci-fi books I'd love to get my hands on, if only old books would be made available electronically! If the electronic book is not AT LEAST as usable as its paper counterpart was, then I will NOT even consider buying it. This includes, loaning it to a friend, reading it at work, at home, in my car, on vacation, and in a foreign country. It also includes the ability to keep on reading the book for centuries regardless of what changes I make to my computer. (Just like a real book. My paperbacks don't seem to mind if I upgrade my processor and hard drive-- why should electronic versions of the same books care?) I am appalled.
Publishing companies, sign me up for electronic books the second you have a clue. Until then, I'll be (grudgingly) purchasing (wasteful and degradeable, but functional) paperback copies of books I want to read, because at least they will be usable to me after I (most definitely) upgrade my computer in the next 6 months.
As soon as I can afford it (maybe a year or so) I promise I will post and tell you all about it.