> The problem with MMORPG's, no matter how good > the game play is, no matter how great it is > for the casual player - there's always going > to be groups of people that will play 10 hours > a day and advance further along in the game > then you ever could. And eventually, the game > developers tailor to this group because they > keep paying the bills.
Simple solution: lifespan.
You create your character, they have a lifespan measured in real-time hours of play (quite a high value, though). As this runs out, they get slower and slower, their stats start to drop, they get a beard and walk around with a cane, and when time runs out, they die. Irrecoverably.
Now the game is no longer about how much time you can put in. It's about using that time as productively as possible - in other words, it encourages the "fun now" design theory that working gamers want. Wanna sit on your ass camping that dragon spawn for 3 hours? See you in the pensions office, munchkin boy.
I don't think you can compare programming with music and movies. Music and movies are both entertainment products and people's demand for them is generally fairly constant.
Programming, on the other hand, can be divided into two categories: games, and just about everything else. Games are entertainment products, and thus follow a similar pattern to music and movies, with the exception that they sell less because, being interactive, they offer a greater range of entertainment experience per product.
But applications are the really nasty area. Because there, almost all of the standard applications are already written, and even if the written ones aren't ideal, the network effect is so strong that they can't be toppled. Original applications are generally frozen out of the market to begin with.
So yes, he's right to say "software can't make money". Applications software indeed can't make money anymore - because 90% of the time, it's either competing against a rock-crushing market leader, or (worse) competing against something the consumer already got for free because it was bundled with their PC. In that situation, no price higher than zero can possibly survive.
> Just because software has been commoditized > doesn't mean capitalism in software is dead. > The profit margins have gone down and will > continue to do so but that's simply market > capitalism at work.
No, the point is that the free market for software is being killed by the slow tilt towards the point where the production of any new piece of software is subject to a veto by existing companies, who can simply deny the information necessary for interoperation.
We can already have "Hmm, nice software idea. Microsoft might like to do that soon. Oh, you want to read.DOC files? Hmm, that'll be a 1 million dollar fee for the specification, please." where they deny interoperation with technologies that are market entrenched. Soon, it will be "Oh, you want a TCPA key?"
It is becoming ridiculous. The market for PC software is already so sewn-up that the University I teach at is seriously considering migrating all programming tuition onto mobile platforms, because a survey found that many students who learn programming under Windows are utterly demoralised, and believe that they have no hope of creating any software that anyone else will use.
> -You can have iron-clad digital restrictions > on your media making it absolutely impossible > for end-users to do anything other than what's > explicitly approved. If you choose this route, > your max copyright term is 8 years, then it's > completely public domain.
Obviously you would choose this, since the law can't force you to remove the protection once it enters the public domain, and if the generic type of the protection technique is used to protect current works too, others can't break it.
He's arguing that going Open Source means that the programmers working on those projects can't be employed to do so.
Problem is, many of the major Open Source projects are ones that couldn't exist at all as non-Open Source. Linux is the most obvious example. In the current climate, nobody in their right mind would pay anyone else (other than Microsoft!) to write a commercial operating system. So Linux doesn't cost jobs, because paid jobs doing that type of develop work could never have existed anyway (and MS is the reason why not!)
> They Might be Giants benefitted tremendously > from years upon years of RIAA-member sponsored > (or organized) marketing, promotion, > organization, manufacturing, access to the > right people, etc... you know.. all that > actually quite important middleman stuff that > many slashdotters routinely simply pretend > doesn't exist or isn't important.
Well, no. It's wrong to say that it's as simple as not being important. The point is, though: it's a racket - the only reason why any band needs it, is because other bands have it.
If no band had those things, there would be no need for any band to have them. Take marketing for instance: if some bands have marketing and others don't, then ones that want to survive have to get it. But if no bands have marketing, then anyone who wants to listen to any music at all has to seek out the music for themselves, which is the only truly level playing field.
> Is there any set of conditions under which > the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth" > people will just pay for the fucking > movie/book/CD/whatever?
Yes, the case where they respect the authors.
Think about it. Most people don't steal stuff. Also, they don't copy stuff done by bands or people they have a personal connection to.
The problem is that the whole industry is now geared towards giving customers a totally skewed perception. They are left with the opinion that a) creative artists have something unique called "talent", b) that this makes all of their work of creating art become easy, c) that they are special, distinct and superior from everyone else, d) that they never have to work hard, etc..
You see that everywhere. Pop Idol, tour shows, glamour shoots, synapse sequences that don't show any work being done, "fun on the set" outtake tapes.. and it's all rubbish. Talent isn't proven to exist, and even if it is, there's no way of knowing in finite time that any person doesn't have it. Even talented people work hard to create art. Artists are pretty much like everyone else, and have problems of their own.
But instead the industry is persisting in holding onto the glamour that they're super special stars. And then they're shocked when people's response is, "since they're super special, why apply conventional morality to them? Why worry about ripping off their work - they never had to work hard anyway?"
And when laws get passed, they're shocked when people think "Well, those laws don't apply to US..." After all, you've taught them for the last 10 years that all the opportunities and rewards and advancement methods and skills that apply to creative artists don't apply to Joe Soap, so why should Joe Soap rush to embrace the negative side too?
No. Enough. Start showing the truth. Nobody does anything in one take. Every piece of art has had huge amounts of pencil eraser pressure. Like your teacher used to say: show your working, it proves you're not cheating. And when your customers know you're not cheating, they won't cheat you back.
- Find the person you want to give your password to - Log in and log out over and over again until all your pictures are used up - The system then triggers a retrain, and the person you want to tell your password to can watch the retrain too
There's a system called PassFace which issues passwords consisting of sets of pictures of faces. The idea is that faces are easy to remember but hard to describe, thus preventing passing on of the password.
It was tested as part of a student project. The project found that PassFaces are *trivial* to sniff. In some cases it only took one "shoulder surfing" session for someone to sniff a password. So if a person wants to transfer their password to someone else, they might not be able to speak it aloud, but all they have to do is to allow the other person to watch them logging in once or twice and presto.
>I get nervous when posters start >spouting "there outta be a law" regarding >issues like this.
Well, sure. But I wonder how long it will be before a law is necessary to state that companies must make products to the best of their ability.
The reality of the market is that nowadays it is fast becoming more and more beneficial for companies to sell worse goods, which is the very opposite of what they should be encouraged to do. Competition doesn't level this out because the viability of competing at all is steadily going down across the entire spectrum of business, and if there is any competition the same ulterior motive usually applies to them too.
I don't think the issue here is the mechanical improvements.
The issue is that Canon didn't start with the Rebel, then do more research and produce the better model. Likewise, they didn't start with the 10D, downgrade the hardware and then remove only those functions which depended on the former hardware. They took the software that already existed, and limited it in ways that it wasn't necessary to do so.
That's bad, because, y'know, the reason why we have big business is because big business is good at making stuff and innovating stuff. If we're going to give them money for undoing things then that's eliminating the entire point.
Re:CD's are really a bargain when you put it this
on
The Way the Music Died
·
· Score: 1
> No.. I got the point, but an easier way of > putting it is that the majority will always go > to the label. And their idea is that they put > up all the money and put themselves at risk
This would be great but for one thing.. the labels CREATE the majority of the risk as well.
Why is it risky? Because advertising, payola, TV coverage, etc.. all cost money. But why do they cost so much money? Because the SAME group of big labels is prepared to pay a lot for them.
All that needs to be done is for ALL the labels to refuse to pay high rates for these, and the prices (and thus the risk) will come down. They would be perfectly capable of doing that, given that they could still compete with each other.
The only reason they don't is that the high prices on these things have another effect that's to their benefit - they freeze new competitors out of the market. That's fine, but the companies shouldn't complain about risk after that.
> promote this artist, therefore, they should > get most of the cut until the artist can sign > a more compelling contract for themselves.
Sure. But the problem is, they *don't* just "get most of the cut". They also take back their money from the ARTIST'S CUT.
Let's clarify this. I say, I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll pay me back by giving me 80% of the value of the sales. So if 80% is more than $250000, I've made my money back. Your album sells $1m worth of copies, so you get $200000 and I get $800000. Sounds fair enough? Yep, sure. But that's NOT what the labels do.
What the labels do is this: I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll give me 80% of the sales. But that 80% of the sales does *not* count towards giving me back my $250000. Even if the 80% of the sales comes to over a million dollars, I'm still not going to count it against the $250000 you owe me. No, YOU have to pay that to me, with YOUR money - which comes from the 20% you got.
So, suppose your album gets $1m of sales. I get 80%, which is $800000. You get 20%, which is $200000. But then you have to pay me back my $250000. So in spite of that $800000 you've just made me, you now *OWE* me $50000.
How is that in any way even a reasonable sensible deal?
The only problem with this is that, 90% of the time, a good chunk of the reason why these apps are written as open source in the first place is that starting a company to produce them as a business model would be instant suicide as the company would immediately be smacked down by an established firm.
I mean, come on - would YOU invest in a business whose goal was to develop an office suite, or a web browser? Bearing in mind that since they're doing it non-OpenSource, they have to start from scratch, and Office and IE are already out there? How about an art package, when there's already Photoshop/PSP? How about a database when there's already Jet/Oracle?
So unless you're going to argue that Adobe need to make Photoshop worse and less established, in order that they are not putting people who could otherwise have formed another company writing art software out of work, then there's no reason to argue that for open source.
Yes, in a capitalist system, giving stuff away free is a vicious, market-warping and ultimately unsustainable model, but right now it's the only thing that works. Even MS knew that with IE.
Yea, I keep wanting to carry this to the next logical extension.
Work out every possible combination of (say) 8 notes in, say, a 2-octave range. Create a sample that plays every possible combination, but only holds each note for a tiny fraction of a second, creating a "squawk" lasting only a second or two but containing every message.
Stick "the squawk" in MP3s on the net, take big speakers and play it in town centres, put it on PAs, send it on tapes.
Because anyone who has heard "the squawk" can never copyright music again. No matter what combination of notes they write, you can claim the heard it in the squawk and copied it. Everything is a derivative work of it.
> FLOORING IT will only significantly increase > your wear on the drivetrain and reduce your > efficency. slowly accelerating up to speed is > the correct answer.... flooring it is the > answer for a 100% electric vehicle.
No, flooring it can help on a Hybrid. I've seen it on my Civic IMA (the Euro version of the Civic Hybrid, manual only). If you accelerate slowly, sometimes it will be OK, but in some road conditions you just keep yourself inefficient for as long as possible. By flooring it, you're really inefficient while accelerating but you're done accelerating sooner.
> Making a DRM system that works with fair use > but still protects artists is really hard, > probably impossible.
Sure it's really hard. That's why we need the brains and resources of these big firms to be working on it. But because of the DeCSS decision, they aren't, and that's very bad.
I mean, some improvements to the current system are obvious. Ever used LightWave? That program, and many of its plug-ins, has activation throughout - but everything locks itself to the dongle that comes with it, not to your PC. So, activate once, and if you need to move it, take the dongle with you. Brilliant, no problems transferring between PCs, no worries about switching hardware around, almost guaranteed you'll never need to reactivate.
So why not a similar thing in general? Give everyone a "dongle" - just one per person, on which they can store the keys for everything they have a right to view. Then, they can copy it freely, but not remove the dongle dependancy. Want to copy your MP3 onto tape to play in your car? Sure, but the watermark goes with it, so stick your dongle in the slot on the front of the car stereo and there you go.
> Am I way off base with my thinking in this > matter ??
Sadly, yes.
A legal "right" basically says "you can't be prosecuted just for doing this". Note the "just" - that's important, as obviously if you committed a crime in the course of doing it you could be prosecuted for that.
It *doesn't* say that you have to be physically able to do it. Thus, right now, you have the right to drive a Rolls-Royce, because you wouldn't be prosecuted just for doing so. You cannot however demand one without paying, because the right doesn't say that you have to be physically able to do it. Likewise, you can't steal one, because then you could be prosecuted for stealing the car (which is not the same as prosecuting you for just driving it)
So the fact that copyright law doesn't give anyone the "right" to restrict usage doesn't mean they can't do it. You don't need an explicit right to do everything.
And the fact that you have the "right" to fair use, sadly, has been interpreted by a court is meaning it's OK for you not to do it. Legally, under the DMCA, you *can* break DRM to make fair use. But you *can't* distribute anti-DRM tools, so you have to work out how to do it yourself; and if you can't do that, that counts as "not doing it physically" so it doesn't legally deprive you of your right..
> Is it more important to protect your right to > make a backup of content or the content > provider's right to get paid for creating the > content?
That's perfectly true.
But a better question is, which is it better to do: to try and innovate DRM which offers fair rights to the consumer, or to carry on spending huge amounts of money and dollars technically preventing (or trying to render illegal) the consumer's natural response to being denied those rights?
As far as I'm aware, [i]no[/i] company is even attempting to work on DRM that will nonetheless permit fair use. And that fact can entirely be blamed on the DeCSS court decision - why should they try to keep fair use if it's been legally established that they can get away with denying it?
> They have a big database these days of all > people who've bought TVs but students with s/h > tellies can often get away with it.
Actually, they don't: they have a big database of all households that *don't* have TV licenses and occasionally will visit or write to make sure they don't have a TV.
> Jeff Minter WAS one of the most well-respected > programmers in the industry. It has been a > VERY long time since he did anything notable. > Now he's just a loud-mouthed boob.
Uh, no, that's not true. He is still highly respected. Gridrunner++ for the PC became one of the few Shareware games to recieve the highest possible award from PC gamer in the UK, and the very announcement of Unity (his next project) was the subject of an entire issue of EDGE.
The equivalent of "payola" in computer gaming - and in many other industries - is hype. Hyped titles get picked up by retailers because they're seen as more likely to sell. If no money is spend on hype, the producers will instead have to spend money paying retailers to carry their product.
You can then throw in the "payola" of console development kits. They're vital for access to the wider market of gamers, but not only are they astronomically expensive, you can't even buy them unless you're already an industry member - instant chicken-and-egg.
It's happened plenty before. Like, Spheres of Chaos - that was sent to a distributor to be put in stores, but because it wasn't hyped or paid for, no retailers carried it. The distributor just shrugged their shoulders and said "if they don't want to carry it there's nothing we can do". Or, Alien Flux. A guy worked on that for around a year and tried to sell it over the internet. But without paying for hype, he initially sold about 5 copies because people couldn't be bothered to shop around and find out it existed.
Um.. only problem with this theory is that you don't have to pay to carry on playing a video game you already own. In fact, it saves you money - if you bought UT2004, say, and got hooked on it, then you never need buy another game, and you won't be spending money on other entertainment to fill in the time you spend playing.
MMORPGs excepted, of course, but they're almost entirely junk anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
> The problem with MMORPG's, no matter how good
> the game play is, no matter how great it is
> for the casual player - there's always going
> to be groups of people that will play 10 hours
> a day and advance further along in the game
> then you ever could. And eventually, the game
> developers tailor to this group because they
> keep paying the bills.
Simple solution: lifespan.
You create your character, they have a lifespan measured in real-time hours of play (quite a high value, though). As this runs out, they get slower and slower, their stats start to drop, they get a beard and walk around with a cane, and when time runs out, they die. Irrecoverably.
Now the game is no longer about how much time you can put in. It's about using that time as productively as possible - in other words, it encourages the "fun now" design theory that working gamers want. Wanna sit on your ass camping that dragon spawn for 3 hours? See you in the pensions office, munchkin boy.
> If Open source keeps going that is going to be
> the only way most programmers will be able to
> get employment.
But you shouldn't blame Open source for that.
If Open Source didn't exist, it wouldn't be any easier to compete against MS Office, Photoshop, etc. Open Source just gives you a way in.
I don't think you can compare programming with music and movies. Music and movies are both entertainment products and people's demand for them is generally fairly constant.
Programming, on the other hand, can be divided into two categories: games, and just about everything else. Games are entertainment products, and thus follow a similar pattern to music and movies, with the exception that they sell less because, being interactive, they offer a greater range of entertainment experience per product.
But applications are the really nasty area. Because there, almost all of the standard applications are already written, and even if the written ones aren't ideal, the network effect is so strong that they can't be toppled. Original applications are generally frozen out of the market to begin with.
So yes, he's right to say "software can't make money". Applications software indeed can't make money anymore - because 90% of the time, it's either competing against a rock-crushing market leader, or (worse) competing against something the consumer already got for free because it was bundled with their PC. In that situation, no price higher than zero can possibly survive.
> Just because software has been commoditized
.DOC files? Hmm, that'll be a 1 million dollar fee for the specification, please." where they deny interoperation with technologies that are market entrenched. Soon, it will be "Oh, you want a TCPA key?"
> doesn't mean capitalism in software is dead.
> The profit margins have gone down and will
> continue to do so but that's simply market
> capitalism at work.
No, the point is that the free market for software is being killed by the slow tilt towards the point where the production of any new piece of software is subject to a veto by existing companies, who can simply deny the information necessary for interoperation.
We can already have "Hmm, nice software idea. Microsoft might like to do that soon. Oh, you want to read
It is becoming ridiculous. The market for PC software is already so sewn-up that the University I teach at is seriously considering migrating all programming tuition onto mobile platforms, because a survey found that many students who learn programming under Windows are utterly demoralised, and believe that they have no hope of creating any software that anyone else will use.
> -You can have iron-clad digital restrictions
> on your media making it absolutely impossible
> for end-users to do anything other than what's
> explicitly approved. If you choose this route,
> your max copyright term is 8 years, then it's
> completely public domain.
Obviously you would choose this, since the law can't force you to remove the protection once it enters the public domain, and if the generic type of the protection technique is used to protect current works too, others can't break it.
Moreover, it's a silly argument.
He's arguing that going Open Source means that the programmers working on those projects can't be employed to do so.
Problem is, many of the major Open Source projects are ones that couldn't exist at all as non-Open Source. Linux is the most obvious example. In the current climate, nobody in their right mind would pay anyone else (other than Microsoft!) to write a commercial operating system. So Linux doesn't cost jobs, because paid jobs doing that type of develop work could never have existed anyway (and MS is the reason why not!)
> They Might be Giants benefitted tremendously
> from years upon years of RIAA-member sponsored
> (or organized) marketing, promotion,
> organization, manufacturing, access to the
> right people, etc... you know.. all that
> actually quite important middleman stuff that
> many slashdotters routinely simply pretend
> doesn't exist or isn't important.
Well, no. It's wrong to say that it's as simple as not being important. The point is, though: it's a racket - the only reason why any band needs it, is because other bands have it.
If no band had those things, there would be no need for any band to have them. Take marketing for instance: if some bands have marketing and others don't, then ones that want to survive have to get it. But if no bands have marketing, then anyone who wants to listen to any music at all has to seek out the music for themselves, which is the only truly level playing field.
> Is there any set of conditions under which
> the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth"
> people will just pay for the fucking
> movie/book/CD/whatever?
Yes, the case where they respect the authors.
Think about it. Most people don't steal stuff. Also, they don't copy stuff done by bands or people they have a personal connection to.
The problem is that the whole industry is now geared towards giving customers a totally skewed perception. They are left with the opinion that a) creative artists have something unique called "talent", b) that this makes all of their work of creating art become easy, c) that they are special, distinct and superior from everyone else, d) that they never have to work hard, etc..
You see that everywhere. Pop Idol, tour shows, glamour shoots, synapse sequences that don't show any work being done, "fun on the set" outtake tapes.. and it's all rubbish. Talent isn't proven to exist, and even if it is, there's no way of knowing in finite time that any person doesn't have it. Even talented people work hard to create art. Artists are pretty much like everyone else, and have problems of their own.
But instead the industry is persisting in holding onto the glamour that they're super special stars. And then they're shocked when people's response is, "since they're super special, why apply conventional morality to them? Why worry about ripping off their work - they never had to work hard anyway?"
And when laws get passed, they're shocked when people think "Well, those laws don't apply to US..." After all, you've taught them for the last 10 years that all the opportunities and rewards and advancement methods and skills that apply to creative artists don't apply to Joe Soap, so why should Joe Soap rush to embrace the negative side too?
No. Enough. Start showing the truth. Nobody does anything in one take. Every piece of art has had huge amounts of pencil eraser pressure. Like your teacher used to say: show your working, it proves you're not cheating. And when your customers know you're not cheating, they won't cheat you back.
That's exactly what he was saying.
"If P then Q" implies nothing about "If Q then P".
"If P then Q" implies nothing about "If not-P then not-Q".
But "if P then Q" DOES imply, and is logically equivalent to, "not-Q then not-P".
The only problem with the contrapositive is the "Raven Paradox":
A statement: All ravens are black.
Some evidence for it: This raven is black.
The contrapositive of the original statement (which is logically equivalent): All things that are not black are not ravens.
Some evidence for the contrapositive: This white thing (thus, not black) is a shoe (thus, not a raven).
So the fact that this shoe is white, is evidence that all ravens are black..? Huh?
Oh yea, sorry, I missed that.
So:
- Find the person you want to give your password to
- Log in and log out over and over again until all your pictures are used up
- The system then triggers a retrain, and the person you want to tell your password to can watch the retrain too
Seems easy enough, really.
The thing is, this already exists.
There's a system called PassFace which issues passwords consisting of sets of pictures of faces. The idea is that faces are easy to remember but hard to describe, thus preventing passing on of the password.
It was tested as part of a student project. The project found that PassFaces are *trivial* to sniff. In some cases it only took one "shoulder surfing" session for someone to sniff a password. So if a person wants to transfer their password to someone else, they might not be able to speak it aloud, but all they have to do is to allow the other person to watch them logging in once or twice and presto.
>I get nervous when posters start
>spouting "there outta be a law" regarding
>issues like this.
Well, sure. But I wonder how long it will be before a law is necessary to state that companies must make products to the best of their ability.
The reality of the market is that nowadays it is fast becoming more and more beneficial for companies to sell worse goods, which is the very opposite of what they should be encouraged to do. Competition doesn't level this out because the viability of competing at all is steadily going down across the entire spectrum of business, and if there is any competition the same ulterior motive usually applies to them too.
I don't think the issue here is the mechanical improvements.
The issue is that Canon didn't start with the Rebel, then do more research and produce the better model. Likewise, they didn't start with the 10D, downgrade the hardware and then remove only those functions which depended on the former hardware. They took the software that already existed, and limited it in ways that it wasn't necessary to do so.
That's bad, because, y'know, the reason why we have big business is because big business is good at making stuff and innovating stuff. If we're going to give them money for undoing things then that's eliminating the entire point.
> No.. I got the point, but an easier way of
> putting it is that the majority will always go
> to the label. And their idea is that they put
> up all the money and put themselves at risk
This would be great but for one thing.. the labels CREATE the majority of the risk as well.
Why is it risky? Because advertising, payola, TV coverage, etc.. all cost money. But why do they cost so much money? Because the SAME group of big labels is prepared to pay a lot for them.
All that needs to be done is for ALL the labels to refuse to pay high rates for these, and the prices (and thus the risk) will come down. They would be perfectly capable of doing that, given that they could still compete with each other.
The only reason they don't is that the high prices on these things have another effect that's to their benefit - they freeze new competitors out of the market. That's fine, but the companies shouldn't complain about risk after that.
> promote this artist, therefore, they should
> get most of the cut until the artist can sign
> a more compelling contract for themselves.
Sure. But the problem is, they *don't* just "get most of the cut". They also take back their money from the ARTIST'S CUT.
Let's clarify this. I say, I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll pay me back by giving me 80% of the value of the sales. So if 80% is more than $250000, I've made my money back. Your album sells $1m worth of copies, so you get $200000 and I get $800000. Sounds fair enough? Yep, sure. But that's NOT what the labels do.
What the labels do is this: I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll give me 80% of the sales. But that 80% of the sales does *not* count towards giving me back my $250000. Even if the 80% of the sales comes to over a million dollars, I'm still not going to count it against the $250000 you owe me. No, YOU have to pay that to me, with YOUR money - which comes from the 20% you got.
So, suppose your album gets $1m of sales. I get 80%, which is $800000. You get 20%, which is $200000. But then you have to pay me back my $250000. So in spite of that $800000 you've just made me, you now *OWE* me $50000.
How is that in any way even a reasonable sensible deal?
The only problem with this is that, 90% of the time, a good chunk of the reason why these apps are written as open source in the first place is that starting a company to produce them as a business model would be instant suicide as the company would immediately be smacked down by an established firm.
I mean, come on - would YOU invest in a business whose goal was to develop an office suite, or a web browser? Bearing in mind that since they're doing it non-OpenSource, they have to start from scratch, and Office and IE are already out there? How about an art package, when there's already Photoshop/PSP? How about a database when there's already Jet/Oracle?
So unless you're going to argue that Adobe need to make Photoshop worse and less established, in order that they are not putting people who could otherwise have formed another company writing art software out of work, then there's no reason to argue that for open source.
Yes, in a capitalist system, giving stuff away free is a vicious, market-warping and ultimately unsustainable model, but right now it's the only thing that works. Even MS knew that with IE.
Yea, I keep wanting to carry this to the next logical extension.
Work out every possible combination of (say) 8 notes in, say, a 2-octave range. Create a sample that plays every possible combination, but only holds each note for a tiny fraction of a second, creating a "squawk" lasting only a second or two but containing every message.
Stick "the squawk" in MP3s on the net, take big speakers and play it in town centres, put it on PAs, send it on tapes.
Because anyone who has heard "the squawk" can never copyright music again. No matter what combination of notes they write, you can claim the heard it in the squawk and copied it. Everything is a derivative work of it.
> FLOORING IT will only significantly increase
> your wear on the drivetrain and reduce your
> efficency. slowly accelerating up to speed is
> the correct answer.... flooring it is the
> answer for a 100% electric vehicle.
No, flooring it can help on a Hybrid. I've seen it on my Civic IMA (the Euro version of the Civic Hybrid, manual only). If you accelerate slowly, sometimes it will be OK, but in some road conditions you just keep yourself inefficient for as long as possible. By flooring it, you're really inefficient while accelerating but you're done accelerating sooner.
> Making a DRM system that works with fair use
> but still protects artists is really hard,
> probably impossible.
Sure it's really hard. That's why we need the brains and resources of these big firms to be working on it. But because of the DeCSS decision, they aren't, and that's very bad.
I mean, some improvements to the current system are obvious. Ever used LightWave? That program, and many of its plug-ins, has activation throughout - but everything locks itself to the dongle that comes with it, not to your PC. So, activate once, and if you need to move it, take the dongle with you. Brilliant, no problems transferring between PCs, no worries about switching hardware around, almost guaranteed you'll never need to reactivate.
So why not a similar thing in general? Give everyone a "dongle" - just one per person, on which they can store the keys for everything they have a right to view. Then, they can copy it freely, but not remove the dongle dependancy. Want to copy your MP3 onto tape to play in your car? Sure, but the watermark goes with it, so stick your dongle in the slot on the front of the car stereo and there you go.
> Am I way off base with my thinking in this
> matter ??
Sadly, yes.
A legal "right" basically says "you can't be prosecuted just for doing this". Note the "just" - that's important, as obviously if you committed a crime in the course of doing it you could be prosecuted for that.
It *doesn't* say that you have to be physically able to do it. Thus, right now, you have the right to drive a Rolls-Royce, because you wouldn't be prosecuted just for doing so. You cannot however demand one without paying, because the right doesn't say that you have to be physically able to do it. Likewise, you can't steal one, because then you could be prosecuted for stealing the car (which is not the same as prosecuting you for just driving it)
So the fact that copyright law doesn't give anyone the "right" to restrict usage doesn't mean they can't do it. You don't need an explicit right to do everything.
And the fact that you have the "right" to fair use, sadly, has been interpreted by a court is meaning it's OK for you not to do it. Legally, under the DMCA, you *can* break DRM to make fair use. But you *can't* distribute anti-DRM tools, so you have to work out how to do it yourself; and if you can't do that, that counts as "not doing it physically" so it doesn't legally deprive you of your right..
> Is it more important to protect your right to
> make a backup of content or the content
> provider's right to get paid for creating the
> content?
That's perfectly true.
But a better question is, which is it better to do: to try and innovate DRM which offers fair rights to the consumer, or to carry on spending huge amounts of money and dollars technically preventing (or trying to render illegal) the consumer's natural response to being denied those rights?
As far as I'm aware, [i]no[/i] company is even attempting to work on DRM that will nonetheless permit fair use. And that fact can entirely be blamed on the DeCSS court decision - why should they try to keep fair use if it's been legally established that they can get away with denying it?
> They have a big database these days of all
> people who've bought TVs but students with s/h
> tellies can often get away with it.
Actually, they don't: they have a big database of all households that *don't* have TV licenses and occasionally will visit or write to make sure they don't have a TV.
> Jeff Minter WAS one of the most well-respected
> programmers in the industry. It has been a
> VERY long time since he did anything notable.
> Now he's just a loud-mouthed boob.
Uh, no, that's not true. He is still highly respected. Gridrunner++ for the PC became one of the few Shareware games to recieve the highest possible award from PC gamer in the UK, and the very announcement of Unity (his next project) was the subject of an entire issue of EDGE.
Well, yes, the business of piracy destroying industries is somewhat over the top.
I mean, can you imagine what would happen to the job market if a media industry just closed down?
Well, see, it already is.
The equivalent of "payola" in computer gaming - and in many other industries - is hype. Hyped titles get picked up by retailers because they're seen as more likely to sell. If no money is spend on hype, the producers will instead have to spend money paying retailers to carry their product.
You can then throw in the "payola" of console development kits. They're vital for access to the wider market of gamers, but not only are they astronomically expensive, you can't even buy them unless you're already an industry member - instant chicken-and-egg.
It's happened plenty before. Like, Spheres of Chaos - that was sent to a distributor to be put in stores, but because it wasn't hyped or paid for, no retailers carried it. The distributor just shrugged their shoulders and said "if they don't want to carry it there's nothing we can do". Or, Alien Flux. A guy worked on that for around a year and tried to sell it over the internet. But without paying for hype, he initially sold about 5 copies because people couldn't be bothered to shop around and find out it existed.
Um.. only problem with this theory is that you don't have to pay to carry on playing a video game you already own. In fact, it saves you money - if you bought UT2004, say, and got hooked on it, then you never need buy another game, and you won't be spending money on other entertainment to fill in the time you spend playing.
MMORPGs excepted, of course, but they're almost entirely junk anyway.