So they were $99 dollars upfront for a USB key containing keys to access a website serving up copyright infringing media for an additional recurring $50 a month. If I remember correctly, AUD ~ USD.
Even if you don't account for the problems of giving CC info to a shady site (say you use prepaid cards), that is still a lot of money to pay for access to copyrighted media. Isn't the whole point to not spend money? Who was their target market?
It feels exactly like MSN, which is not a compliment. There is an upper limit to the number of links I can read on a single page before it becomes a "where's Waldo" experience. At this point I usually go to a search engine.
If the sucess of Facebook and Google suggest anything, it's that clean interfaces are appealing to most people.
Any alternative internet technology relies on encryption, and as long as courts have to ability to require you to decrypt data upon request, any discussion of workarounds is pointless.
To really address the real problem, the laws themselves must be the focus.
Nearly every technology that comes to mind follows the cycle.
First, a non-consumer company or government does it as research. Second, a high end consumer company copies and sells it. Third, somebody gets around to creating an open source copy of the copy, and releases it for free.
Of course, the first two projects will be closed from public view and start to stagnate, while the third will attract attention and eventually surpass the others in usefullness.
I am sure that after 2 years in a British prison for consipiracy to commit terrorism, our friend Asim will emerge a patriotic and productive member of society.
It's a good thing we caught him before things got really bad.
1950s middle class nostalgia is an integral part of the American psyche.
For whatever reason, people who are far above what "middle class" ever meant even in the best of times, will still refer to themselves as "middle class" or "upper-middle-class".
Alongside you have those who work longer hours for less money than even lower class people in the 1950s, but will still refer to themselves as average middle-class Americans.
I truly believe it runs deeper than just an image those in power are trying to sell.
It's probably not some nefarious plot to sell certs, HTTPS is a good thing, but I agree that raising a warning for domain validated sites is a mistake. Any site that I trust enough to visit, I trust enough to use their certs.
Or, if you are going to start requiring user approval, do it for every site, instead of having a huge list of "legitamate businesses" who pay to be trusted by the browser automatically. I have never really understood why a trusted third-party is necessary.
This might be stretching the bounds of topic relevance, but since you brought up the military, I thought I would share this.
It's a video taken three days ago in California of what feels like an endless line of tanks being shipped by train. I found it very rich with symbolism, but as to exactly what, I will leave you to decide for yourself.
The education industry has certainly NOT been "waiting for a viable solution like this for some time". The students have, and maybe even some sympathetic teachers, but textbooks are outrageously expensive, even the e-book versions, and somebody is profiting off it all.
A solution to the problem of expensive textbooks exists. There is an entire world of public domain textbooks out there, but all of them are useless when the professor tells you to read p.67-123 from the official textbook for a quiz tomorrow.
But I would even argue that textbooks are an outdated mode of communication. We live in a world of instant reference. Have you ever tried to search an e-book using Ctrl-F? It is absolute hell, because you keywords either occur on every other page, or they don't occur at all in the specific string you are using.
I took it and wasn't impressed. I found his accent difficult to listen to for long periods of time, and a disliked having a lecture punctuated with short problems. I would prefer an uninterrupted lecture that deals with the theory, and then problems in a recitation section.
Not that it wasn't useful or interesting, but I would not pay $100 for it, and I think most of the people who took it did so because it was free.
Quitting his professorship at Stanford to try to monetize the concept seems like an awful big risk to me. Especially considering the abundance of free learning alternatives like Khanacademy, OCW, or simply youtube.
The major change I have seen is that games have gone from focusing on physical technique or strategy to focusing on the story. I place games like half life, mass effect, and homeworld on the same level as my favorite books or movies when it comes to an ability to move me emotionally.
While I remember older arcade games from my childhood fondly, they lacked the narrative depth of more modern games, and were basically a challenging distraction. I sometimes wonder if the video game will become the 21st century's most distinctive art form.
For digital entertainment to be sucessful, people can't pirate.
For the internet to be a open and free, piracy must be possible.
I would really like to see pre paid entertainment work, something like Kickstarter where people can raise production costs in advance with a promise to make the work public domain after it is complete.
I am not knocking grad students personally at all. I have had more than a few TA's hold office hours from the afternoon well into the night, on their own accord, because students needed extra help. I have a lot of respect for that.
But when I walk by huge campus buildings devoted entirely to research, I can't help but feel like some of my money is paying for that. Grants don't last forever.
Now I made the choice to go to my particular university so I don't want to complain, I am just trying to explain where some of the money goes. (And yes, university administration is just as corrupt as any business, yet another reason why I would have chosen a small school the second time around)
I would be interested to hear your theory on why tuition is so high.
One theory I have is that undergrads overpay to make up for grad students who underpay. Many grad students are going to school for free or nearly so, especially if they teach. They are usually there for more than four years, and at large research universities their numbers nearly match the number of undergrad students. Also, they tend to use the more expensive equipment that the school has to buy to attract them to the program.
If I had to do college over, I would have gone to a small school that only did undergrad. That way I wouldn't feel like my tuition was going straight into the graduate program, while I sat in a 300 person lecture.
Who is going to bring the charges? Who is going to pay for years of red tape in court? An individual?
Even comparatively powerful nonprofits like the EFF don't have the resources to follow through on a copyright counterattack. Even if they did, it would simpy be retaliation, no more effective than a halfhearted DDOS for bringing about any real change.
That is why the campaign against SOPA/PIPA is so important, right now represents one of the few times we the people actually have a say in the copyright matter. And if they do pass, in any form, we have lost. I would expect the Patriot Act to get repealed before SOPA would.
I agree, Microsoft and Steam are probably the most professional abou their DRM.
For instance Steam doesn't care how many scores of PCs I have my games installed on simultaneously, as long as I only play on one at a time.
Now while it does bother me that an application phones home at launch, I would much prefer a quiet check to verify that I am not logged in on another machine over the technically backward and uncaring approach that Ubisoft always takes.
I am tired of seeing this comic used as a dismissal of encryption, it is a joke. If you actually think someone is going to drug you or hit you with a wrench, then you have reached a level of paranoia far more ridiculous than the idea of using 4096 bit encryption.
I use the very user friendly disk encryption that the Fedora installer provides, and I feel much more at ease taking my laptop out in public.
As for email, no I don't encrypt them, but I might be willing to learn if the summary had more info than a wikipedia article for PGP.
I highly doubt any large website uses backup tapes. They just keep 3 or 4 copies of everything, in different physical locations. So yes, if I want something deleted, it should be just as easy to delete four copies as it is to delete one.
That's another possibility, but you still run into the problems associated with launching from the ground. So the projectile has the most energy when the air is the thickest. There is also the G forces, even if you aren't sending humans, I'm sure there are spacecraft components that won't tolerate the acceleration that would be required.
Slashdot Mirror
Hahaha, Amen. Sorry, no mod points.
So they were $99 dollars upfront for a USB key containing keys to access a website serving up copyright infringing media for an additional recurring $50 a month. If I remember correctly, AUD ~ USD.
Even if you don't account for the problems of giving CC info to a shady site (say you use prepaid cards), that is still a lot of money to pay for access to copyrighted media. Isn't the whole point to not spend money? Who was their target market?
It feels exactly like MSN, which is not a compliment. There is an upper limit to the number of links I can read on a single page before it becomes a "where's Waldo" experience. At this point I usually go to a search engine.
If the sucess of Facebook and Google suggest anything, it's that clean interfaces are appealing to most people.
Any alternative internet technology relies on encryption, and as long as courts have to ability to require you to decrypt data upon request, any discussion of workarounds is pointless.
To really address the real problem, the laws themselves must be the focus.
But if the $570 Apple device was made in America, I would choose it in a second over the $500 Dell.
Hell, I would choose a $750 device over a $500 one if I thought it would help support domestic manufacturing.
Nearly every technology that comes to mind follows the cycle.
First, a non-consumer company or government does it as research.
Second, a high end consumer company copies and sells it.
Third, somebody gets around to creating an open source copy of the copy, and releases it for free.
Of course, the first two projects will be closed from public view and start to stagnate, while the third will attract attention and eventually surpass the others in usefullness.
I am sure that after 2 years in a British prison for consipiracy to commit terrorism, our friend Asim will emerge a patriotic and productive member of society.
It's a good thing we caught him before things got really bad.
1950s middle class nostalgia is an integral part of the American psyche.
For whatever reason, people who are far above what "middle class" ever meant even in the best of times, will still refer to themselves as "middle class" or "upper-middle-class".
Alongside you have those who work longer hours for less money than even lower class people in the 1950s, but will still refer to themselves as average middle-class Americans.
I truly believe it runs deeper than just an image those in power are trying to sell.
It's probably not some nefarious plot to sell certs, HTTPS is a good thing, but I agree that raising a warning for domain validated sites is a mistake. Any site that I trust enough to visit, I trust enough to use their certs.
Or, if you are going to start requiring user approval, do it for every site, instead of having a huge list of "legitamate businesses" who pay to be trusted by the browser automatically. I have never really understood why a trusted third-party is necessary.
Haha, touche.
I really dont have a problem with going to space for the hell of it, I'd buy a ticket if I could, just don't pass it off as priority research.
Think of all Hubble has done, at barely 1/1000th of the way to the moon. Not to mention the cost difference.
Once again I will ask the tired question, "Why do actual humans need to ever go into space?"
Take your moon base money and your ISS money and give it to the roboticists, that we might finally advance from a 1940s view of space exploration.
This might be stretching the bounds of topic relevance, but since you brought up the military, I thought I would share this.
It's a video taken three days ago in California of what feels like an endless line of tanks being shipped by train. I found it very rich with symbolism, but as to exactly what, I will leave you to decide for yourself.
The education industry has certainly NOT been "waiting for a viable solution like this for some time". The students have, and maybe even some sympathetic teachers, but textbooks are outrageously expensive, even the e-book versions, and somebody is profiting off it all.
A solution to the problem of expensive textbooks exists. There is an entire world of public domain textbooks out there, but all of them are useless when the professor tells you to read p.67-123 from the official textbook for a quiz tomorrow.
But I would even argue that textbooks are an outdated mode of communication. We live in a world of instant reference. Have you ever tried to search an e-book using Ctrl-F? It is absolute hell, because you keywords either occur on every other page, or they don't occur at all in the specific string you are using.
I took it and wasn't impressed. I found his accent difficult to listen to for long periods of time, and a disliked having a lecture punctuated with short problems. I would prefer an uninterrupted lecture that deals with the theory, and then problems in a recitation section.
Not that it wasn't useful or interesting, but I would not pay $100 for it, and I think most of the people who took it did so because it was free.
Quitting his professorship at Stanford to try to monetize the concept seems like an awful big risk to me. Especially considering the abundance of free learning alternatives like Khanacademy, OCW, or simply youtube.
You just offered one of the most compelling arguments for Capitalism I have heard.
The major change I have seen is that games have gone from focusing on physical technique or strategy to focusing on the story. I place games like half life, mass effect, and homeworld on the same level as my favorite books or movies when it comes to an ability to move me emotionally.
While I remember older arcade games from my childhood fondly, they lacked the narrative depth of more modern games, and were basically a challenging distraction. I sometimes wonder if the video game will become the 21st century's most distinctive art form.
It is an unsolvable situation.
For digital entertainment to be sucessful, people can't pirate.
For the internet to be a open and free, piracy must be possible.
I would really like to see pre paid entertainment work, something like Kickstarter where people can raise production costs in advance with a promise to make the work public domain after it is complete.
I am not knocking grad students personally at all. I have had more than a few TA's hold office hours from the afternoon well into the night, on their own accord, because students needed extra help. I have a lot of respect for that.
But when I walk by huge campus buildings devoted entirely to research, I can't help but feel like some of my money is paying for that. Grants don't last forever.
Now I made the choice to go to my particular university so I don't want to complain, I am just trying to explain where some of the money goes. (And yes, university administration is just as corrupt as any business, yet another reason why I would have chosen a small school the second time around)
I would be interested to hear your theory on why tuition is so high.
One theory I have is that undergrads overpay to make up for grad students who underpay. Many grad students are going to school for free or nearly so, especially if they teach. They are usually there for more than four years, and at large research universities their numbers nearly match the number of undergrad students. Also, they tend to use the more expensive equipment that the school has to buy to attract them to the program.
If I had to do college over, I would have gone to a small school that only did undergrad. That way I wouldn't feel like my tuition was going straight into the graduate program, while I sat in a 300 person lecture.
Who is going to bring the charges? Who is going to pay for years of red tape in court? An individual?
Even comparatively powerful nonprofits like the EFF don't have the resources to follow through on a copyright counterattack. Even if they did, it would simpy be retaliation, no more effective than a halfhearted DDOS for bringing about any real change.
That is why the campaign against SOPA/PIPA is so important, right now represents one of the few times we the people actually have a say in the copyright matter. And if they do pass, in any form, we have lost. I would expect the Patriot Act to get repealed before SOPA would.
I agree, Microsoft and Steam are probably the most professional abou their DRM.
For instance Steam doesn't care how many scores of PCs I have my games installed on simultaneously, as long as I only play on one at a time.
Now while it does bother me that an application phones home at launch, I would much prefer a quiet check to verify that I am not logged in on another machine over the technically backward and uncaring approach that Ubisoft always takes.
When I want to remember a concet from Physics 1/2, I imagine Walter Lewin from MIT Opencourseware explaining it with visible enthusiasm.
I do not remember the tedious power point that my "real" teacher used to explain the same concept.
So yes, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.
I am tired of seeing this comic used as a dismissal of encryption, it is a joke. If you actually think someone is going to drug you or hit you with a wrench, then you have reached a level of paranoia far more ridiculous than the idea of using 4096 bit encryption.
I use the very user friendly disk encryption that the Fedora installer provides, and I feel much more at ease taking my laptop out in public.
As for email, no I don't encrypt them, but I might be willing to learn if the summary had more info than a wikipedia article for PGP.
I highly doubt any large website uses backup tapes. They just keep 3 or 4 copies of everything, in different physical locations. So yes, if I want something deleted, it should be just as easy to delete four copies as it is to delete one.
That's another possibility, but you still run into the problems associated with launching from the ground. So the projectile has the most energy when the air is the thickest. There is also the G forces, even if you aren't sending humans, I'm sure there are spacecraft components that won't tolerate the acceleration that would be required.