This is clearly mentioned on Real's website and in their press releases, and I've personally found it to be the case.
Once again the majority of Slashdot posters are ill informed, but in this case, it is understandable: Rhapsody did use Windows Media until recently, and it may still use it for streamed (not downloaded) content, as well as for content which is "downloaded" as part of Rhapsody's all-you-can-eat subscription option and not "purchased" outright.
I'm thinking mainly about movies widely available on DVD. I don't think that the movie industry is losing many sales to people who would rather forgo the (IMHO impressive) technical and social theatre experience to watch the free version on their PCs, alone.
DVD rips, on the other hand, will still kill them even if a high quality source is not available.
It's not correct to assume that because many files stolen via P2P are leaked by insiders, movie stealing will go away if these leaks stop.
It's likely that the best quality movies propagate very quickly over P2P while poorer ones do not - which only means that once these leaks are plugged, the next highest quality version will become the most popular.
The author's flawed logic assumes there's a 1:1 correspondence between a song offered online and a CD bought. I highly doubt this is true.
A very likely scenario is that RIAA scared away many casual users -- those interested in merely browsing and who weren't ready to buy CDs -- but did not scare away those who were sufficiently motivated; for example, someone who was willing to risk legal troubles to save $50 or $100 by stealing music he or she was ready to buy if it couldn't be found online. In fact, such hardcore users would be tempted to steal more while they still can.
The ratio of songs stolen to CDs purchased depends on the number of tracks taken online from each CD. If users typically want an entire album, the moral and legal consequences of stealing it online might tempt them to buy the CD instead; however, if most users only want one song from each CD, they may just go without rather than fork over $15.
Hence, it's easy to imagine a 22% drop in music stealing occuring simultaneously with a decrease in CD sales caused by music stealing.
I imagine this drive would be a useful workaround for the ~1.5->2GB RAM limit which exists on some 32 bit machines. A swap file on a drive like this would let a process use up to its available virtual memory.
http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/copyrightlaw.shtm l
Would-Be Intellectual Vandals Get Their Day in the Supreme Court
Those who are spearheading the current legal challenge to the copyright law favor intellectual cannibalism masquerading as creativity and free speech.
Ah yes, another Slashdot poster-wanker. Here again we find a sophomore who, driven by the delusion of his intelligence and his ostracism by normal people (and no doubt the opposite sex), adopts his wankerdom as an ideology and an identity--and so hacks together some code to further The Cause and be admitted to the circle jerk of his fellow sufferers.
A tool to track a spanning tree across network backbones would not be hard to write; the broadcaster is simply the root of the tree. Even if more care is taken to disguise a broadcast's origins, the leaves of the trees are vulnerable to infiltration, backtrace, and closure (as are the destination nodes and matchmakers of any P2P mesh). Tools to analyze virtual networks do exist and I'm sure many prudent people, organizations, and ISPs (who have the right to know how you're using their property) are writing more.
These tools (and others) *will* be used to stop the theft of intellectual property. Any protests will fall on deaf ears, not because Big Brother has finally arrived, but because the ideology of the protesters is morally bankrupt.
On a related note: communications have never been untraceable since the dawn of civilization and we've done just fine, thanks--not because of dumb luck, or by the efforts of holier-than-thou vigilantes, but because fundamentally sound societies have strong processes to ensure their values are respected across all aspects of life - including the proper use of new technologies. These processes are only getting better as civilization marches on - so focus your energy on helping define the optimal set of ethical, societal controls on technology, not undermining them.
How can you claim 281 KB/s and 193 KB/s are comparable bitrates? One is 50% greater than the other!
Other factors: did you encode these episodes yourself, or did you steal them off Morpheus? At what native source resolution are they encoded at? Were they encoded in real-time? If so, how powerful was the encoding machine (encoding is a very CPU hungry process, and Tivo uses hardware accleration to avoid frame loss). What version of the encoder was used, and with what settings? Are the clips even variable bit rate?
Do tell,
Kaya
In addition to making sure your voice is heard among the public Tunney Act comments sent to the Court, and voiced to your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm [usdoj.gov]:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov [mailto]
Impress them with your eloquence; you might help convince the DoJ to withdraw their settlement or at least be a little bit smarter the next time 'round - IMHO, future federal antitrust action against Microsoft is almost certain; it's just a matter of when.
In addition to contacting your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
In addition to contacting your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
I was initialy skeptical, but further analysis has convinced me that all is not well in Palm Beach. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties. The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all, as shown in the graph at the bottom of my analysis page
I was initialy skeptical myself, but further analysis has convinced me that all is not well in Palm Beach.
I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties.
The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all, as shown in the graph at the bottom of my analysis page
Actually, I take that back. There does exist evidence of an irregularity. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties.
The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all. See http://64.6.194.14/Florida%20Scatte rpl ot.htm for the added graph at the bottom of the page.
The MIT study is flawed - they restricted the study to the largest Florida counties for no good reason. Looking at all the counties in my analysis (http://64.6.194.14/Florida%20Scatte rpl ot.xls) it is clear that although the largest *absolute* vote for Buchanan was in Palm Beach, percentage wise there is no irregular bias for Buchanan. It is possible the MIT study selected only counties which supported a pre-existing bias.
Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets - by John S. Lewis - is a well researched book into the economics and technologies of space based mining (both for fuel and for raw materials). What makes it relevant to this discussion is the book's claim that Near Earth Asteriods (NEOs) are much cheaper to harvest for helium-3 than the moon, due to their low gravity and eccentric orbits. It also points out that, in sheer abundance of helium-3, Neptune beats the moon by orders of magnitude - if only we could reach it.
... slow as a dog and a memory pig. It's wonderful for students, teenagers, and other idle hands, but not much of a solution for doing real work. As such, I'm glad to see it's influence leave RedHat.
Slashdot Mirror
This is clearly mentioned on Real's website and in their press releases, and I've personally found it to be the case. Once again the majority of Slashdot posters are ill informed, but in this case, it is understandable: Rhapsody did use Windows Media until recently, and it may still use it for streamed (not downloaded) content, as well as for content which is "downloaded" as part of Rhapsody's all-you-can-eat subscription option and not "purchased" outright.
Any thoughts on how these tag jammers will affect anti-shoplifting technology? Will shoplifters gain an edge?
I'm thinking mainly about movies widely available on DVD. I don't think that the movie industry is losing many sales to people who would rather forgo the (IMHO impressive) technical and social theatre experience to watch the free version on their PCs, alone. DVD rips, on the other hand, will still kill them even if a high quality source is not available.
It's not correct to assume that because many files stolen via P2P are leaked by insiders, movie stealing will go away if these leaks stop. It's likely that the best quality movies propagate very quickly over P2P while poorer ones do not - which only means that once these leaks are plugged, the next highest quality version will become the most popular.
The author's flawed logic assumes there's a 1:1 correspondence between a song offered online and a CD bought. I highly doubt this is true.
A very likely scenario is that RIAA scared away many casual users -- those interested in merely browsing and who weren't ready to buy CDs -- but did not scare away those who were sufficiently motivated; for example, someone who was willing to risk legal troubles to save $50 or $100 by stealing music he or she was ready to buy if it couldn't be found online. In fact, such hardcore users would be tempted to steal more while they still can.
The ratio of songs stolen to CDs purchased depends on the number of tracks taken online from each CD. If users typically want an entire album, the moral and legal consequences of stealing it online might tempt them to buy the CD instead; however, if most users only want one song from each CD, they may just go without rather than fork over $15.
Hence, it's easy to imagine a 22% drop in music stealing occuring simultaneously with a decrease in CD sales caused by music stealing.
www.iriver.com
Fantastic. I just bought an iFP-395 and love it; rumor has it that iRiver will soon support Ogg, too!
I imagine this drive would be a useful workaround for the ~1.5->2GB RAM limit which exists on some 32 bit machines. A swap file on a drive like this would let a process use up to its available virtual memory.
http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/copyrightlaw.shtm l
Would-Be Intellectual Vandals Get Their Day in the Supreme Court
Those who are spearheading the current legal challenge to the copyright law favor intellectual cannibalism masquerading as creativity and free speech.
See section 11 of the RPSL at http://www.helixcommunity.org/content/rpsl.htm
This is *not* true - see section 11 of the RPSL at http://www.helixcommunity.org/content/rpsl.html
Ah yes, another Slashdot poster-wanker. Here again we find a sophomore who, driven by the delusion of his intelligence and his ostracism by normal people (and no doubt the opposite sex), adopts his wankerdom as an ideology and an identity--and so hacks together some code to further The Cause and be admitted to the circle jerk of his fellow sufferers.
A tool to track a spanning tree across network backbones would not be hard to write; the broadcaster is simply the root of the tree. Even if more care is taken to disguise a broadcast's origins, the leaves of the trees are vulnerable to infiltration, backtrace, and closure (as are the destination nodes and matchmakers of any P2P mesh). Tools to analyze virtual networks do exist and I'm sure many prudent people, organizations, and ISPs (who have the right to know how you're using their property) are writing more.
These tools (and others) *will* be used to stop the theft of intellectual property. Any protests will fall on deaf ears, not because Big Brother has finally arrived, but because the ideology of the protesters is morally bankrupt.
On a related note: communications have never been untraceable since the dawn of civilization and we've done just fine, thanks--not because of dumb luck, or by the efforts of holier-than-thou vigilantes, but because fundamentally sound societies have strong processes to ensure their values are respected across all aspects of life - including the proper use of new technologies. These processes are only getting better as civilization marches on - so focus your energy on helping define the optimal set of ethical, societal controls on technology, not undermining them.
CodeWright is nice (for a Windows only editor), but Visual SlickEdit and Source Insight are superior when it comes to code navigation and analysis.
How can you claim 281 KB/s and 193 KB/s are comparable bitrates? One is 50% greater than the other! Other factors: did you encode these episodes yourself, or did you steal them off Morpheus? At what native source resolution are they encoded at? Were they encoded in real-time? If so, how powerful was the encoding machine (encoding is a very CPU hungry process, and Tivo uses hardware accleration to avoid frame loss). What version of the encoder was used, and with what settings? Are the clips even variable bit rate? Do tell, Kaya
by John S. Lewis - it's an excellent introduction this fascinating opportunity:
3 28194/qid=1005767931/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_3_4/102-76494 17-0636122
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201
by John S. Lewis - it's an excellent introduction this fascinating opportunity:
9 4/ qid=1005767931/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_3_4/102-7649417-063 6122
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02013281
In addition to making sure your voice is heard among the public Tunney Act comments sent to the Court, and voiced to your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm [usdoj.gov]:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov [mailto]
Impress them with your eloquence; you might help convince the DoJ to withdraw their settlement or at least be a little bit smarter the next time 'round - IMHO, future federal antitrust action against Microsoft is almost certain; it's just a matter of when.
In addition to contacting your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
In addition to contacting your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
In addition to contacting your state's Attorney General, I recommend sharing your thoughts directly with the DoJ's Antitrust Division:
From http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm:
If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov
Impress them with your eloquence. That's how democracy works.
I was initialy skeptical, but further analysis has convinced me that all is not well in Palm Beach. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties. The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all, as shown in the graph at the bottom of my analysis page
I was initialy skeptical myself, but further analysis has convinced me that all is not well in Palm Beach. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties. The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all, as shown in the graph at the bottom of my analysis page
Actually, I take that back. There does exist evidence of an irregularity. I have since ranked each county by political persuasion (that is, the ratio of Gore and Nader voters over Bush and Buchanan voters). One would expect Buchanan's percentage of the vote to be greatest in Republican counties and least in Democratic counties. The graph should be linear or at least 1/x. Palm Beach country, however (heavily Democratic as evidenced by the 1.75 ratio), does not fit a 1/x curve at all. See http://64.6.194.14/Florida%20Scatte rpl ot.htm for the added graph at the bottom of the page.
The MIT study is flawed - they restricted the study to the largest Florida counties for no good reason. Looking at all the counties in my analysis (http://64.6.194.14/Florida%20Scatte rpl ot.xls) it is clear that although the largest *absolute* vote for Buchanan was in Palm Beach, percentage wise there is no irregular bias for Buchanan. It is possible the MIT study selected only counties which supported a pre-existing bias.
Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets - by John S. Lewis - is a well researched book into the economics and technologies of space based mining (both for fuel and for raw materials). What makes it relevant to this discussion is the book's claim that Near Earth Asteriods (NEOs) are much cheaper to harvest for helium-3 than the moon, due to their low gravity and eccentric orbits. It also points out that, in sheer abundance of helium-3, Neptune beats the moon by orders of magnitude - if only we could reach it.
... slow as a dog and a memory pig. It's wonderful for students, teenagers, and other idle hands, but not much of a solution for doing real work. As such, I'm glad to see it's influence leave RedHat.