Most people break SOME traffic law at some point in their lives. The point is that there aren't enough cops to catch everyone. Some people get caught, others don't. Rewarding people for not getting caught isn't good, and since there's no way to know for sure that a given person hasn't broken a traffic law, there's no way to know that you aren't rewarding the wrong person.
For some reason the initrd system makes me uncomfortable. It's nothing I can explain, it just does. So I manage my own kernel, I keep backup kernels in case something gets really screwed up. So far, Gentoo hasn't complained and I haven't had to back out of a new kernel due to my own screwup, yet.
First, I'll get a nitpick out of the way: FreeBSD is not Linux.
Second, usually you don't want to compile every driver into the kernel, so you wouldn't get that clutter. Best case scenario, you compile in only the specific driver you'll need. Worst case, you compile them as modules and load them at runtime.
But this means that every user who visits a site which uses CACert will get that warning. Might as well use a self-signed cert. Your average user will never know the difference.
And even if Firefox gets CACerts root cert installed by default, the other 8/10 users are running IE. Does IE have this cert installed by default?
the average person has no hope of understanding all the formats
I would argue that this is precisely why they did it this way.
Sure, the system they have set up offers insane flexibility. There is no questioning that. But ultimately, the mass of buzzwords, terminology, etc. is going to make a whole lot of consumers just buy the most expensive thing out there. Lots of people (particularly lots of people with lots of money) just want to keep up with the Jones'. They want to have the biggest and best, and it doesn't matter if it might not actually support everything--it was a TV that cost $15k.
It also means that there is planned obsolescence with an upgrade path. Right now, Joe Consumer buys an HDTV that looks nice. In a few years, when "super-HD-DVD discs" start coming out with 1080p resolution, there's something for Joe Consumer to upgrade to. Otherwise, he has no reason to upgrade his TV unless it fails.
Of course, they will fail. That's the single reason I don't want to get into the HDTV game just yet. In my opinion, all of the types of TVs have some fatal dealbreaker that's keeping me from adopting. Plasmas use up all the plasma. Projection types have a poor viewing angle. LCDs have been showing signs of burn-in. CRTs burn in and are pretty bulky and heavy, to boot, and have (from what I've seen) a much less sharp picture.
I wouldn't mind the burn-in problems if more TV stations were widescreen--however more than half of the stations I watch regularly would either have to be stretched or would have burn-in-black-bars on the sides. Not acceptable.
I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean. You copy the link, but not the URL portion?
Anyway, people might be stupid to click on links in e-mails, but LOTS of people do it, and spammers will continue to try this method no matter what security protocols legitimate websites develop.
That'd be great, but your average sheeperson would still click links if they were sent them. The bad guys would be under no impetus to abide by PayPal's rules, and your average person wouldn't be observant enough to know that PayPal won't send the URLs. Probably even if PayPal put up a huge banner on their site saying, "We will never send you URLS", many people would still click or copy/paste.
I addressed the escrow issue here:[url]http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1880 99&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15510 847#15511843[/url] Yes, it doesn't exist currently, but it is a way for DRM and copyright expiration to coexist.
Also note that the DMCA does not apply to non-copyrighted works. So once the copyright expires, the encryption on that DVD can be broken to your heart's content. Of course, that's probably 100+ years from now, so the DVDs will have long since deteriorated and thus, it's irrelevant.
That makes these DRM technique's illegal, as it essentially extends the copyright time period to infinity.
No, and no.
Copyright is granted by the government. That's all. What this does is make content unviewable without a key, but that content could still be in the public domain.
Let's put it this way. Do you think it is legal for me to produce a movie, release it to the public domain, and then put it on DVD with CSS encryption? What about setting a safe in Central Park and saying that the contents of the safe (but not the safe itself) may be taken by anyone who wants it?
Encryption (which, at its base, is all DRM is) is wholly separate from copyright.
As I tried to imply, this would be an unattainable utopia. Obviously there is no way for software to magically know your intent when you make a copy and prevent unlawful copies. My point was that I don't particularly have any sympathy or love for people who make illegal copies of software. I just don't want legitimate copying of copyrighted works to be restricted.
Also, as far as DRM not "magically evaporating" when copyright "expires" (thinking that any modern copyright will ever expire is being awfully optimistic)--well, there's a pretty decent solution in place to handle this. The Library of Congress could pretty easily maintain DRM keys which would allow DRM to be unlocked once copyright expired. Even if they didn't do this, once a copyright expired, the DMCA anti-circumvention clause would no longer apply to that work and cracking would be perfectly legal.
It's largely moot because copyright simply isn't going to expire anymore. The courts have upheld copyright extensions as being constitutional, and the cartels have more than enough money to buy extensions whenever they need to.
These statistics only matter, however, because of the ease of cracking this generation of DRM combined with relatively lax laws (or rather, enforcement of said laws) on the subject. Toss in a lack of a broadcast flag and watermark-respecting content creators, and you're in for a world of copies, no matter what.
This is why the cartels are turning towards buying laws from the US (and other) Government. It's otherwise going to be impossible to get the right combination of laws and technology in play to make DRM a success.
And for the record, this only bothers me because it restricts my fair use rights. If there was a perfect way to ensure that I could make backups of all my copyrighted content while ensuring that no one could distribute copyrighted content they don't hold the copyright to without a license, I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This isn't to say that I'm a big fan of the cartels. I also happen to think that copyright should be brought back down to a reasonable level and that corporations shouldn't be treated like people, but those are two completely separate battles, in my opinion.
First off, I knew very few people with "VHS collections." Mostly they had some Disney movies and maybe your odd tape that they'd gotten used from the video store. VHS didn't have nearly the "must collect" marketing push that DVD has had.
That said, DVD had some significant advantages to VHS. The promise of higher quality (and here, they mostly delivered) on standard TV sets comes to mind. The bonus features, chapter stops, etc, too. Of course, early on they marketed the durability of DVDs, but they quickly stopped doing this. I'm not sure if they realized just how fragile they actually are, or what.
Nintendo doesn't really have any of this. The games will not be remade in any way--the graphics won't be better. They likely will not have new content added to them. They aren't any more durable than cartridges--in fact, they are presumably less so (I assume that if your specific Wii dies, you lose all the roms you have purchased). As far as I can see, the only benefit they offer over playing the carts in your NES is that you don't have to play the carts in your NES. YOu can leave your NES in the closet and have one less system hooked up. That, and if you happen to not have one of the games, you can get it legally (although you can find just about any game you'd like in the secondhand market anyway.)
I don't mind justifications. I mind people complaining that Nintendo is rereleasing old content. It's not like DVDs where they add one little documentary so that true fans have to rebuy all the old content in order to get this one new thing. It's the same game. If you own it already, don't buy it. Pretty simple.
If you still have copies of them, what possible reason would you have for buying the content to play on the Wii? You act like you're somehow expected to shell out more money for this content.
YOu own the games already? Play them on your NES. You want to play them on your Wii? Pay a fee which covers the work on emulating the NES and the quality control that comes from ensuring the games work.
As far as what you get when you purchase a product which contains copyrighted material.. Well you get a physical manifestation of the material. You get a license to use that material in the standard way it would be used (play CDs in a CD player, read a book, play a video game on the console). You also get some rights under Fair Use, if you are in the US, however these are not clearly outlined.
It may be that you'd have the right to convert your old cartridges to a format the Wii can read. It may not. Only a judge would really be able to determine that.
All "level" based games are like this. Can't beat level 8-2 in Super Mario Bros? Can't see level 8-3. I don't often see people complain about this aspect of "unseen content", however.
Super Monkey Ball for the Gamecube is another great example. Some of the levels were so hard, I honestly thought I'd never get past them. I did, eventually, after hours of perfecting my game.
But the unlockable content in Super Monkey Ball is great. You earn points for playing the main game. Better play results in more points, but amount of play can count, too. Few people are bad enough at the game that they would have to play only the beginning levels over and over again to accumulate points, and for these people, I would suggest that this game is not for you.
Ultimately, though, people who don't research games ahead of time deserve what they get. If you know that the content you really want to play will take hours of play in order to see it, don't buy the game.
Americans will never wake up while they get cheap products and services. We are too concerned with the material to realize the wrongs that happen in our own country.
Terrorism will not change this. An unjust war will not change this. Tagging people with what a decent portion of America believe is "The mark of the Beast" will not change this until perhaps they, themselves, must be tagged. No, the only thing that will cause America to wake up is jump in inflation without a corresponding increase in wages.
You said it right. "As I understand them." Finn law is obviously different and seems strange since you presumably grew up in America.
From things I've read, it sounds like if people are being a nuisance on your field (note as others have that we aren't talking about back yards, here) then you can have them removed. But simply enjoying the land is a right that everyone has.
I wonder what happens in the case of a private party on a field you own, and I wonder what happens in the case of fences attempting to restrict the land. Is it acceptable to climb a fence to get to a field you don't own?
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I love 900mhz phones. They don't get interference from Wifi.
Most people break SOME traffic law at some point in their lives. The point is that there aren't enough cops to catch everyone. Some people get caught, others don't. Rewarding people for not getting caught isn't good, and since there's no way to know for sure that a given person hasn't broken a traffic law, there's no way to know that you aren't rewarding the wrong person.
I got tired of correcting people for stuff like this long ago.
"I uploaded a song to my computer from iTunes."
"I downloaded my icons to Live Journal."
*sigh*
No, if you'll read more carefully, I said that I don't use initrd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd
For some reason the initrd system makes me uncomfortable. It's nothing I can explain, it just does. So I manage my own kernel, I keep backup kernels in case something gets really screwed up. So far, Gentoo hasn't complained and I haven't had to back out of a new kernel due to my own screwup, yet.
First, I'll get a nitpick out of the way: FreeBSD is not Linux.
Second, usually you don't want to compile every driver into the kernel, so you wouldn't get that clutter. Best case scenario, you compile in only the specific driver you'll need. Worst case, you compile them as modules and load them at runtime.
But this means that every user who visits a site which uses CACert will get that warning. Might as well use a self-signed cert. Your average user will never know the difference.
And even if Firefox gets CACerts root cert installed by default, the other 8/10 users are running IE. Does IE have this cert installed by default?
Unfortunately, I was unable to verify their certificate.
I'm not joking. Don't mod me funny. That's not a good thing for a certificate provider.
the average person has no hope of understanding all the formats
I would argue that this is precisely why they did it this way.
Sure, the system they have set up offers insane flexibility. There is no questioning that. But ultimately, the mass of buzzwords, terminology, etc. is going to make a whole lot of consumers just buy the most expensive thing out there. Lots of people (particularly lots of people with lots of money) just want to keep up with the Jones'. They want to have the biggest and best, and it doesn't matter if it might not actually support everything--it was a TV that cost $15k.
It also means that there is planned obsolescence with an upgrade path. Right now, Joe Consumer buys an HDTV that looks nice. In a few years, when "super-HD-DVD discs" start coming out with 1080p resolution, there's something for Joe Consumer to upgrade to. Otherwise, he has no reason to upgrade his TV unless it fails.
Of course, they will fail. That's the single reason I don't want to get into the HDTV game just yet. In my opinion, all of the types of TVs have some fatal dealbreaker that's keeping me from adopting. Plasmas use up all the plasma. Projection types have a poor viewing angle. LCDs have been showing signs of burn-in. CRTs burn in and are pretty bulky and heavy, to boot, and have (from what I've seen) a much less sharp picture.
I wouldn't mind the burn-in problems if more TV stations were widescreen--however more than half of the stations I watch regularly would either have to be stretched or would have burn-in-black-bars on the sides. Not acceptable.
I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean. You copy the link, but not the URL portion?
Anyway, people might be stupid to click on links in e-mails, but LOTS of people do it, and spammers will continue to try this method no matter what security protocols legitimate websites develop.
That'd be great, but your average sheeperson would still click links if they were sent them. The bad guys would be under no impetus to abide by PayPal's rules, and your average person wouldn't be observant enough to know that PayPal won't send the URLs. Probably even if PayPal put up a huge banner on their site saying, "We will never send you URLS", many people would still click or copy/paste.
He didn't seem to be complaining. He merely said he didn't understand why they want to take more out when there are fewer distribution costs.
I addressed the escrow issue here:[url]http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1880 99&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15510 847#15511843[/url] Yes, it doesn't exist currently, but it is a way for DRM and copyright expiration to coexist.
Also note that the DMCA does not apply to non-copyrighted works. So once the copyright expires, the encryption on that DVD can be broken to your heart's content. Of course, that's probably 100+ years from now, so the DVDs will have long since deteriorated and thus, it's irrelevant.
That makes these DRM technique's illegal, as it essentially extends the copyright time period to infinity.
No, and no.
Copyright is granted by the government. That's all. What this does is make content unviewable without a key, but that content could still be in the public domain.
Let's put it this way. Do you think it is legal for me to produce a movie, release it to the public domain, and then put it on DVD with CSS encryption? What about setting a safe in Central Park and saying that the contents of the safe (but not the safe itself) may be taken by anyone who wants it?
Encryption (which, at its base, is all DRM is) is wholly separate from copyright.
As I tried to imply, this would be an unattainable utopia. Obviously there is no way for software to magically know your intent when you make a copy and prevent unlawful copies. My point was that I don't particularly have any sympathy or love for people who make illegal copies of software. I just don't want legitimate copying of copyrighted works to be restricted.
Also, as far as DRM not "magically evaporating" when copyright "expires" (thinking that any modern copyright will ever expire is being awfully optimistic)--well, there's a pretty decent solution in place to handle this. The Library of Congress could pretty easily maintain DRM keys which would allow DRM to be unlocked once copyright expired. Even if they didn't do this, once a copyright expired, the DMCA anti-circumvention clause would no longer apply to that work and cracking would be perfectly legal.
It's largely moot because copyright simply isn't going to expire anymore. The courts have upheld copyright extensions as being constitutional, and the cartels have more than enough money to buy extensions whenever they need to.
These statistics only matter, however, because of the ease of cracking this generation of DRM combined with relatively lax laws (or rather, enforcement of said laws) on the subject. Toss in a lack of a broadcast flag and watermark-respecting content creators, and you're in for a world of copies, no matter what.
This is why the cartels are turning towards buying laws from the US (and other) Government. It's otherwise going to be impossible to get the right combination of laws and technology in play to make DRM a success.
And for the record, this only bothers me because it restricts my fair use rights. If there was a perfect way to ensure that I could make backups of all my copyrighted content while ensuring that no one could distribute copyrighted content they don't hold the copyright to without a license, I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This isn't to say that I'm a big fan of the cartels. I also happen to think that copyright should be brought back down to a reasonable level and that corporations shouldn't be treated like people, but those are two completely separate battles, in my opinion.
First off, I knew very few people with "VHS collections." Mostly they had some Disney movies and maybe your odd tape that they'd gotten used from the video store. VHS didn't have nearly the "must collect" marketing push that DVD has had.
That said, DVD had some significant advantages to VHS. The promise of higher quality (and here, they mostly delivered) on standard TV sets comes to mind. The bonus features, chapter stops, etc, too. Of course, early on they marketed the durability of DVDs, but they quickly stopped doing this. I'm not sure if they realized just how fragile they actually are, or what.
Nintendo doesn't really have any of this. The games will not be remade in any way--the graphics won't be better. They likely will not have new content added to them. They aren't any more durable than cartridges--in fact, they are presumably less so (I assume that if your specific Wii dies, you lose all the roms you have purchased). As far as I can see, the only benefit they offer over playing the carts in your NES is that you don't have to play the carts in your NES. YOu can leave your NES in the closet and have one less system hooked up. That, and if you happen to not have one of the games, you can get it legally (although you can find just about any game you'd like in the secondhand market anyway.)
Isn't there a remote desktop client for the Mac?
You can't play the statistics card to win this one, unfortunately.
Only 3.3% of people are using Linux. Might as well drop support for them, too.
And who's maintaining a Mac build for only 3.6% of the population? WTF?
Also, newer versions of Windows have a significant increase in system requirements. For Linux, the increase is negligible.
I don't mind justifications. I mind people complaining that Nintendo is rereleasing old content. It's not like DVDs where they add one little documentary so that true fans have to rebuy all the old content in order to get this one new thing. It's the same game. If you own it already, don't buy it. Pretty simple.
If you still have copies of them, what possible reason would you have for buying the content to play on the Wii? You act like you're somehow expected to shell out more money for this content.
YOu own the games already? Play them on your NES. You want to play them on your Wii? Pay a fee which covers the work on emulating the NES and the quality control that comes from ensuring the games work.
As far as what you get when you purchase a product which contains copyrighted material.. Well you get a physical manifestation of the material. You get a license to use that material in the standard way it would be used (play CDs in a CD player, read a book, play a video game on the console). You also get some rights under Fair Use, if you are in the US, however these are not clearly outlined.
It may be that you'd have the right to convert your old cartridges to a format the Wii can read. It may not. Only a judge would really be able to determine that.
All "level" based games are like this. Can't beat level 8-2 in Super Mario Bros? Can't see level 8-3. I don't often see people complain about this aspect of "unseen content", however.
Super Monkey Ball for the Gamecube is another great example. Some of the levels were so hard, I honestly thought I'd never get past them. I did, eventually, after hours of perfecting my game.
But the unlockable content in Super Monkey Ball is great. You earn points for playing the main game. Better play results in more points, but amount of play can count, too. Few people are bad enough at the game that they would have to play only the beginning levels over and over again to accumulate points, and for these people, I would suggest that this game is not for you.
Ultimately, though, people who don't research games ahead of time deserve what they get. If you know that the content you really want to play will take hours of play in order to see it, don't buy the game.
Since we were discussing Finn law, my speculation was on the answers to my questions in Finland. Thanks, though.
Americans will never wake up while they get cheap products and services. We are too concerned with the material to realize the wrongs that happen in our own country.
Terrorism will not change this. An unjust war will not change this. Tagging people with what a decent portion of America believe is "The mark of the Beast" will not change this until perhaps they, themselves, must be tagged. No, the only thing that will cause America to wake up is jump in inflation without a corresponding increase in wages.
You said it right. "As I understand them." Finn law is obviously different and seems strange since you presumably grew up in America.
From things I've read, it sounds like if people are being a nuisance on your field (note as others have that we aren't talking about back yards, here) then you can have them removed. But simply enjoying the land is a right that everyone has.
I wonder what happens in the case of a private party on a field you own, and I wonder what happens in the case of fences attempting to restrict the land. Is it acceptable to climb a fence to get to a field you don't own?