In heavily regulated markets as exist in most of the western world, where authors are given copyright privileges and the government aid in the enforcement of those copyright privileges, it is often easier to wait for a book to be published in paperback than it is to copy the book without license. In fact, it would seem that publishers in the past have been quite aware that they have to compete with such copying and priced the paperbacks appropriately.
In less regulated markets, such as those that seem to exist in the east, and in places where large sums of money are not readily available, it is often easier to violate the copyright than purchase the book under 'proper' license. In some cases, it would be nearly impossible for an average person to purchase the book under proper license because the publisher chooses not to create an affordable edition. Of course, it is no more the responsibility of the publisher to create an affordable edition that it is for the consumer to pay the publisher.
So, why are publishers now worried about copyright infringement of books. The same reason music publishers are worried. The publishers are becoming less efficient at publishing books, and therefore are charging more. At the same time is it cost much less to print out your own copy, and nearly nothing to read it on the screen. Add to this that the days of the dirt cheap paperback are long gone, and you have a situation where people will choose not to buy.
The sad thing is that instead of using free market tactics like coming up with innovative ideas to add value to hardback editions, or releasing quickly cheap paperbacks, they use state controlled market tactics like heavy regulation and government enforcement. Even the idea of creating a subsciber service in which electronic editions can be downloaded for a fixed monthly fee seem to inexistant, even though such a scheme would generate cashflow with the expense of paper publishing.
I was just reading a article in Fortune on how name brand manufacturers have become so massively inefficient that they can no longer compete with the store private label quality or price. The major brands also have lost the power to force the retail stores to carry their over priced low quality products, so these brands are losing market share. I think it is the same in publishing, and the majors probably need to be more worried about Barnes and Noble than individual book sharers(and, of course, unless they steal the books off a boat on the high seas, it is not piracy).
It also depends on how the test is administered. On most mini tests, a reasonably intelligent person can fill the answers in such a way as to be whatever one wishes. I myself try to fill out such things so I am never one way or another.
I generally agree with you, but I think the problem is more general.
The original intent of agents owning stock in the company they manage, as I understand it, was to make them principles and solve this problem. However, as was shown in Enron, and is true in many other firms, stock ownership is not a form of inclusion, but a form of compensation. Stock is given as direct compensation, either through options or payment for certain activities. If an agent is to buy stock, the firm will loan the agent money to make the purchase and then forgive those loans after a certain time.
As such, there is no direct investment in the company by the agent. There is an appearance of investment, but the agents have everything to gain by pumping the stock, and nothing to gain by effective long term strategies.
I also think you have the blame the market which is much more interested i the meeting of analysts quarterly goals rather than good corporate management.
Why would you assume that the president of a company and a member of go-to-be-seen club is smarter than average? I have known and have worked for presidents of companies that are quite competent in what they do, but have quite a bit trouble when they have to deal with new situations. For instance, they join AOL and believe that the '3691' at the end of thier ID means that AOL has that many customers with the same ID.
They also have the expendable income so they can order this stuff as a joke.
This is really so much bullshit. A law firm is a business. It is often an unincorporated business. Like so many businesses, some products make a profit, some products do not. The hope is that in aggregate a profit is made.
The government does not go into a business and say that it makes too much profit. Occasionally, if the business engages in predatory business practice, the government will fine the firm and ask for changes. However, in the case of the biggest corporate criminal, the one who created a monopoly and charged excessive profits, the government has of late been totally unwilling to do anything to bring the profits into reasonable lines.
Your assertions are the exact memes that our current president wishes the US to believe. That lawyers make too much money. That lawyers file frivolous lawsuits against noble corporations. The president is a hypocrite. He owes a large part of his presidency to lawyers. His campaign was base, in part, on his ability to lowers taxes in Texas and still maintain a balanced budget. His was able to do this because of the Tobacco settlement. A settlement that was finance, fought, and won by lawyers. Did our president thank the lawyers for their help. No, he filed a lawsuit against them for excessive profits. Now who files frivolous lawsuits?
As far as frivolous lawsuits, I think you need to look at commercial sector. Entities such as the RIAA that file thousands of lawsuits, the BSA that threaten lawsuits and take protection payments, the oil companies that file lawsuits against private individuals who are only guilty of free speech. The courts are there to help us solve problems. The fact that they are backed up probably speaks more to a government that does not believe in due process rather than a populous that is excessively litigious.
This had been modded funny, but it exactly points to the problem. There was a day when email was plain text. Then MS and others got the idea to let RTF and HTML in. And then MS created a client and other web interfaces that not only defaulted to read the HTML but also, no matter how untrusted the mail, would not allow you to turn off the feature. Viruses and spam ensued. Can you imagine the mayhem when the virus writers realize all they have to do is write worm that embeds a virus into every news post? Or the script kiddies that will just to this manually?
Constitution says, as a suggestion
The reason to leave the constitution itself alone is that it has mellowed with time and all but the more radical persons accept it as a living document.
For instance, the 'life, liberty, and pursuit to happiness' clause, as originally construed, has less to do with the keeping the king out of your house and your spouse in, and more do with the unfettered right of person to make as much profit as he can. As it stands, this now means that we all enjoy freedoms to live life the best we can. I would be dimes to dollars that if it were rewritten, we would see much stronger free market language, and the explicit expansion of those rights to corporations. Many would see this a good thing, many would not. It might depend if you believe the harm caused by downloading music is equivalent to the harm done to mugging a person on the street.
I think this is largely already done, if you are willing to pay for it. Most car shoppers are very sensitive to price and will take something off the floor rather than paying list for a special order. If you are willing to pay list or above, then all sorts of this are possible.
I would also be concerned about quality. The vendors he uses will not consider him a big customer, so he may not get the best service. Likewise, since every automobile is different, he will have to instill a culture of independence and perfection in his assemblers. It will require an attention to detail and skill that is not prominent in the US mass market culture.
And who will do the warranty work. This will have to contracted out, and will not generate much business for the people doing the contract. Customer service will suffer, or the contractor will do unnecessary warranty work and profits will suffer.
Finally, I wonder if he thinks he will have cash customers. I wonder if banks are going to provide loans for such cars. And, since many cars in this price range are leased, I wonder if anyone would provide a lease for a car with unknown residual value.
Schools do cave into blackmail and sometimes it is ok. All school pays a MS tax to provide MS software to students, faculty, and staff. It solves the problem of monitoring software. I think an agreement with music distributors would be equally beneficial.
One thing I would like to see is a guarantee of protection from harassment. No gestapo style BSA raids allowed. This is protection money, so treat it as such.
In real life we have to separate the reporting of science and the working of science. In this case, we have a story about a young, apparently untrained, coming up with a seemingly obvious solution to a problem that has plagued the greatest mind for years. This is a hook that usually sells papers, books, movies, whatever. It tells the populous what they want to hear. The the egghead PhDs who spent 25 years of their life at school are not really that smart and would have been better off with a high school diploma and maybe technical degree. It allows the populous to believe that intelligence and learning is just a matter of luck and they would have been able to earn an advance degree if they would had only been given the brains and the breaks. The fact that they slept and drugged their way though high school has nothing to do with anything. The funny thing is that this is also the kind of things that eggheads like to hear as well, because they know that sometimes a person is just initiatively intelligent, and these people sometimes bring new and interesting ideas to the table. These are the reasons for the positive bias in the article
From the point of view of science, the bias in the article is quite ludicrous. It is the first paper by a person of unknown capabilities. While the paper is published in a peer review journal, all this means is that it has no blatant errors and has interesting assertions. It's validity, and the reputation of the author, will be determined in the coming years as researchers dissect and ponder the logic. Even if the assertions themselves prove invalid, it may generate a new line of thought in the community, which in itself is worthwhile.
Your criticism tend to fall in the journalistic realm. In most published papers some reviewers agree with the paper and some think it is hogwash. Criticizing a sound-byte is unwise as it puts meaning into a meaningless statement. As you mention, the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle (dx dp > hbar) applies to location and only indirectly to time. However, the fact that he is now asserting that time is smeared, and gives not explanation why, is not a big issue. The famous Planck postcard did not give a justification for quantization, it merely indicated that the black body paradox was solved if one assumed energy was quantized.
In all, the assertion that time may be 'quantized' and inherently fuzzy is compelling, and I can understand why a journal would believe that such research would be interesting to it's readers, even if some would dismiss it as hogwash. After all, Feynman's spent a long time trying to prove that one interpretation of quantum mechanics was correct, only to prove they were equivalent. And although his assertion of 'one electron' is not likely correct, it is interesting to think about.
I agree completely. Text, especially as one advances in education, assume that the learner has more back and have more outside resources, and therefore become much more dense. In earlier grads the problem is the range of material is so broad that nothing in explained in depth. This is a particular problem with Jr. High science texts. As such, taking a class in math is a very good idea, if you have the time and if it is consistent with your goal.
OTOH, it sounds like one of the big goals is to help you kid, and there may be a simpler way, assuming that you kid is not yet in college. One side effect of the No Child Left Behind Law is that most states, and most school districts, have a very precise set of objectives for students, as well as many practice and release tests. Also, due to the fact that teachers must now be well qualified in the content of their chosen subject, most states have very precise objectives along with practice tests for teachers. The later may also come with a relatively short set reference texts.
What this means is that for whatever subject your child is going to take, you can look up, usually online, the state mandated objectives. You can also probably talk to your child's teacher about getting the objectives for the district mandated curriculum. You can then use the objectives, along with the reference texts, to learn the material. If there are objectives your are unclear on, I am sure your kid's teacher can recommend a book.
As for a specific book, I would recommend Div, Grad, Curl and all that by Schey. It is an application based vector calculus text so assumes that the reader has some knowledge of calculus, vector algebra, and physics. In many ways it is exactly what you are looking for, albeit probably more advanced that what you need know, as it focuses on the application of electricity, and how the mathematics is used to describe it, and does not try to cover everything or get the reader lost in details. It looks like there is a new edition published in the 90's, as well as the original edition published in the 70's.
Also, anything in the Gonick Cartoon Guide series would be very useful.
Was it in Back to School where, during the movie they had a progrsion of students leaving tape recorders in their seat instead of attending of class, and by then end even the proffesor was replaced by a tape recorder?
It seems to me that there would be nothing more useless than a robot attending a conference. Why rent a conference room and fly in a speaker of the audience is going to be inanimate? I think the hotel and covention lobby will make quite sure that such a machine never exists.
Every competitor starts as a nuisance creating product that are generally substandard to the market leader. In time, the competitor may create some specific advantage like price, quality, or options, that makes it attractive to a small number of consumers. That limited success provides the capital and experience needed to improve the product to the point that it becomes equal to the former market leader.
MS has played this game. Intel has played this game. Chrysler lost this game.
The current power or quality of this chip is not the issue. if they manage to create a chip of reasonable quality, the captive market is huge. If they follow the model of other Asian countries, the chip will improve to the point of being a real competitor, and, with the production cost differences between the US and China, one wonders if Intel et al could compete. Like the Linux situation Intel might try to stop the competition through lawsuits, but one should not hold much hope in that.
Private password protected conversations (no more parents overhearing part if not both parts of a conversation over the phone). You have the ability to talk with others without the fear of the parents figuring out what the hell is going on.
While it is true that it is much easier to overhear a conversation on the phone than tap into, say, an IRC channel, both are possible. It is really just a matter of respect, kindness, or probably disinterest, that parent generally don't do either.
Just like at work, where the network is controlled by the company, or at school where the network is controlled by the administration, the network at a your parents house is in fact controlled by your parents. It is a simple matter for them to download a program that will record instant messaging, email, key stokes, and web use.
I just mention this because there seems to some confusion on the matter. For instance, I sometimes remind high school students that their web use and messaging are quite public, and they seem quite surprised. And while being confronted by a parent about a conversation they overheard might be traumatic enough, as I well know, I cannot imaging how traumatic it would be I were confronted with printouts of a chat session.
Of course I know that many parents would not know how to tap a child's computer, or that the child can take countermeasures. I am just saying that thinking the internet is more secure is kind of naive.
I mentioned this earlier, but I think it bears repeating.
MS is working closely with the content providers. The content providers are going to reward MS but insuring that IE and Windows is the only platform that is supported for content distribution. MS guarantees total copyright owner control and will happily implement arbitrary restrictions.
Furthermore the content providers are going to run away from anything remotely open source. OSS, in their minds, are synonymous to pirates. It would be easy to write code that intercept the data stream and copy it with perfect quality.
Finally, IE is not a web browser. It can be used as a browser, but it is really an application front end, a fancy terminal if you wish. Most web designers, especially those who come from traditional media, don't understand what web publishing is. They want to control precisely how the content is presented, exactly what ads the user will see, exactly how the user works with the content. IE provides that level of control. Sites like/. that are web publication don't need it. Other sites that can't think into the abstraction of the WWW can do nothing more that duplicate traditional media.
Why do a screen capture. Why not just feed it out the s-video port to a VCR, or, better yet, another computer so it can then be written to a DVD?
I of course am not suggesting that anyone do this, and would never do it myself, and can not imagine why anyone might want to do this, as I know we all live to respectfully pay whatever the content providers dictate as our dueful tribute.
In any case, i can't imagine anyone renting a Disney movie(with the exception of mirimax) as most of their crap goes on sale for $5 six months after release.
I agree that being an outsider is high school is hard, and being mocked is hard, but i think what this kid needs is counseling. Dropping out of school for this is a bit much.
I guess what i really feel bad about is that he has to go to a substandard school where the kids don't think the movie was cool. Any real geek knows that the clip is cool, and would respect it. In my public high school, I would have had any number of people coming up to me telling me how cool it was. I would have had teachers coming up to me telling me how impressive it was. Sure he looks stupid, but he is high school. He is supposed to look stupid.
As far as feeling sorry for him, and thinking he should get money, I just can't. If a crime has been committed, then arrest the people who did it. If he doesn't want the clip out, send cease and desist orders. Otherwise let it go. Yesterday he was just a kid, now he is a celebrity.
The fact is there are kids with real problems out there. Kids who don't get enough food. Kids who change clothes before getting on the bus to go home so they don't get beat up for looking like a dork. Kids who ride the bus for over an hour to get a good education. This incident just seems like a good lesson that if you film yourself, then it might get out. Just ask Pamela Anderson.
Although many of my profs were not quite competent at teaching, most had valuable ideas to communicate.
I do feel your pain about your fellow students. I had to deal with a lack of intelligence and creativity when I was doing a more technical degree, which is why I moved to a real University Degree Program, i.e. humanities, science, arts. I really began to enjoy hanging with people who were at University to learn rather than just get a piece of paper so they could make lots of money.
Gosh, school has changed a lot since I have been there. Our motto was "I think I will go to class, I need the sleep."
I am glad I didn't have to deal with the noise of the keyboards in my day. It was hard enough to sleep with the professor droning and the students taking notes. OTOH, it would have been fun to connect to the mainframe and get in a few round of trade wars.
I don't think the issue is security. I think it is the presence of excessive consumer level functionality.
If I understand the problem, this is bug in the MIDI interpreter that seriously jeopardizes the health of the computer. One can therefore imagine a firm that now must waste person-hours corrected a problem for which there is absolutely no business need. Why a machine, which really only need to run MS Office, a vertical market ported from Unix, and an email client, needs a MIDI subsystem would be beyond me. In fact, why Outlook needs to renders HTML is also beyond me.
Which is just to say that MS needs to be more responsive to customer needs, not the compulsive efforts to satisfy advertisers and spammers. MS can be responsive. We say this when they started shipping an OS with most services turn off.
And, of course, OSS already do this. We can add functionality as we need it, but the default system is generally bare bones.
Slashdot Mirror
In less regulated markets, such as those that seem to exist in the east, and in places where large sums of money are not readily available, it is often easier to violate the copyright than purchase the book under 'proper' license. In some cases, it would be nearly impossible for an average person to purchase the book under proper license because the publisher chooses not to create an affordable edition. Of course, it is no more the responsibility of the publisher to create an affordable edition that it is for the consumer to pay the publisher.
So, why are publishers now worried about copyright infringement of books. The same reason music publishers are worried. The publishers are becoming less efficient at publishing books, and therefore are charging more. At the same time is it cost much less to print out your own copy, and nearly nothing to read it on the screen. Add to this that the days of the dirt cheap paperback are long gone, and you have a situation where people will choose not to buy.
The sad thing is that instead of using free market tactics like coming up with innovative ideas to add value to hardback editions, or releasing quickly cheap paperbacks, they use state controlled market tactics like heavy regulation and government enforcement. Even the idea of creating a subsciber service in which electronic editions can be downloaded for a fixed monthly fee seem to inexistant, even though such a scheme would generate cashflow with the expense of paper publishing.
I was just reading a article in Fortune on how name brand manufacturers have become so massively inefficient that they can no longer compete with the store private label quality or price. The major brands also have lost the power to force the retail stores to carry their over priced low quality products, so these brands are losing market share. I think it is the same in publishing, and the majors probably need to be more worried about Barnes and Noble than individual book sharers(and, of course, unless they steal the books off a boat on the high seas, it is not piracy).
It also depends on how the test is administered. On most mini tests, a reasonably intelligent person can fill the answers in such a way as to be whatever one wishes. I myself try to fill out such things so I am never one way or another.
The original intent of agents owning stock in the company they manage, as I understand it, was to make them principles and solve this problem. However, as was shown in Enron, and is true in many other firms, stock ownership is not a form of inclusion, but a form of compensation. Stock is given as direct compensation, either through options or payment for certain activities. If an agent is to buy stock, the firm will loan the agent money to make the purchase and then forgive those loans after a certain time.
As such, there is no direct investment in the company by the agent. There is an appearance of investment, but the agents have everything to gain by pumping the stock, and nothing to gain by effective long term strategies.
I also think you have the blame the market which is much more interested i the meeting of analysts quarterly goals rather than good corporate management.
They also have the expendable income so they can order this stuff as a joke.
My bad. I was using the clause as it is interpreted in the constitution. I apologize for the misstatement
The government does not go into a business and say that it makes too much profit. Occasionally, if the business engages in predatory business practice, the government will fine the firm and ask for changes. However, in the case of the biggest corporate criminal, the one who created a monopoly and charged excessive profits, the government has of late been totally unwilling to do anything to bring the profits into reasonable lines.
Your assertions are the exact memes that our current president wishes the US to believe. That lawyers make too much money. That lawyers file frivolous lawsuits against noble corporations. The president is a hypocrite. He owes a large part of his presidency to lawyers. His campaign was base, in part, on his ability to lowers taxes in Texas and still maintain a balanced budget. His was able to do this because of the Tobacco settlement. A settlement that was finance, fought, and won by lawyers. Did our president thank the lawyers for their help. No, he filed a lawsuit against them for excessive profits. Now who files frivolous lawsuits?
As far as frivolous lawsuits, I think you need to look at commercial sector. Entities such as the RIAA that file thousands of lawsuits, the BSA that threaten lawsuits and take protection payments, the oil companies that file lawsuits against private individuals who are only guilty of free speech. The courts are there to help us solve problems. The fact that they are backed up probably speaks more to a government that does not believe in due process rather than a populous that is excessively litigious.
This had been modded funny, but it exactly points to the problem. There was a day when email was plain text. Then MS and others got the idea to let RTF and HTML in. And then MS created a client and other web interfaces that not only defaulted to read the HTML but also, no matter how untrusted the mail, would not allow you to turn off the feature. Viruses and spam ensued. Can you imagine the mayhem when the virus writers realize all they have to do is write worm that embeds a virus into every news post? Or the script kiddies that will just to this manually?
The reason to leave the constitution itself alone is that it has mellowed with time and all but the more radical persons accept it as a living document.
For instance, the 'life, liberty, and pursuit to happiness' clause, as originally construed, has less to do with the keeping the king out of your house and your spouse in, and more do with the unfettered right of person to make as much profit as he can. As it stands, this now means that we all enjoy freedoms to live life the best we can. I would be dimes to dollars that if it were rewritten, we would see much stronger free market language, and the explicit expansion of those rights to corporations. Many would see this a good thing, many would not. It might depend if you believe the harm caused by downloading music is equivalent to the harm done to mugging a person on the street.
I would also be concerned about quality. The vendors he uses will not consider him a big customer, so he may not get the best service. Likewise, since every automobile is different, he will have to instill a culture of independence and perfection in his assemblers. It will require an attention to detail and skill that is not prominent in the US mass market culture.
And who will do the warranty work. This will have to contracted out, and will not generate much business for the people doing the contract. Customer service will suffer, or the contractor will do unnecessary warranty work and profits will suffer.
Finally, I wonder if he thinks he will have cash customers. I wonder if banks are going to provide loans for such cars. And, since many cars in this price range are leased, I wonder if anyone would provide a lease for a car with unknown residual value.
One thing I would like to see is a guarantee of protection from harassment. No gestapo style BSA raids allowed. This is protection money, so treat it as such.
Can't remember which ad this came from. Probably a German breakfast beer
From the point of view of science, the bias in the article is quite ludicrous. It is the first paper by a person of unknown capabilities. While the paper is published in a peer review journal, all this means is that it has no blatant errors and has interesting assertions. It's validity, and the reputation of the author, will be determined in the coming years as researchers dissect and ponder the logic. Even if the assertions themselves prove invalid, it may generate a new line of thought in the community, which in itself is worthwhile.
Your criticism tend to fall in the journalistic realm. In most published papers some reviewers agree with the paper and some think it is hogwash. Criticizing a sound-byte is unwise as it puts meaning into a meaningless statement. As you mention, the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle (dx dp > hbar) applies to location and only indirectly to time. However, the fact that he is now asserting that time is smeared, and gives not explanation why, is not a big issue. The famous Planck postcard did not give a justification for quantization, it merely indicated that the black body paradox was solved if one assumed energy was quantized.
In all, the assertion that time may be 'quantized' and inherently fuzzy is compelling, and I can understand why a journal would believe that such research would be interesting to it's readers, even if some would dismiss it as hogwash. After all, Feynman's spent a long time trying to prove that one interpretation of quantum mechanics was correct, only to prove they were equivalent. And although his assertion of 'one electron' is not likely correct, it is interesting to think about.
OTOH, it sounds like one of the big goals is to help you kid, and there may be a simpler way, assuming that you kid is not yet in college. One side effect of the No Child Left Behind Law is that most states, and most school districts, have a very precise set of objectives for students, as well as many practice and release tests. Also, due to the fact that teachers must now be well qualified in the content of their chosen subject, most states have very precise objectives along with practice tests for teachers. The later may also come with a relatively short set reference texts.
What this means is that for whatever subject your child is going to take, you can look up, usually online, the state mandated objectives. You can also probably talk to your child's teacher about getting the objectives for the district mandated curriculum. You can then use the objectives, along with the reference texts, to learn the material. If there are objectives your are unclear on, I am sure your kid's teacher can recommend a book.
As for a specific book, I would recommend Div, Grad, Curl and all that by Schey. It is an application based vector calculus text so assumes that the reader has some knowledge of calculus, vector algebra, and physics. In many ways it is exactly what you are looking for, albeit probably more advanced that what you need know, as it focuses on the application of electricity, and how the mathematics is used to describe it, and does not try to cover everything or get the reader lost in details. It looks like there is a new edition published in the 90's, as well as the original edition published in the 70's.
Also, anything in the Gonick Cartoon Guide series would be very useful.
It seems to me that there would be nothing more useless than a robot attending a conference. Why rent a conference room and fly in a speaker of the audience is going to be inanimate? I think the hotel and covention lobby will make quite sure that such a machine never exists.
MS has played this game. Intel has played this game. Chrysler lost this game.
The current power or quality of this chip is not the issue. if they manage to create a chip of reasonable quality, the captive market is huge. If they follow the model of other Asian countries, the chip will improve to the point of being a real competitor, and, with the production cost differences between the US and China, one wonders if Intel et al could compete. Like the Linux situation Intel might try to stop the competition through lawsuits, but one should not hold much hope in that.
I thought that was only true for a wintel machine.
But the supreme court has inreasingly asserted that a right to privacy does exist.
Every authentic geek knows ed on n a line printer to is all you need to edit code. Only those lazy kids need that new-fangled vi.
While it is true that it is much easier to overhear a conversation on the phone than tap into, say, an IRC channel, both are possible. It is really just a matter of respect, kindness, or probably disinterest, that parent generally don't do either.
Just like at work, where the network is controlled by the company, or at school where the network is controlled by the administration, the network at a your parents house is in fact controlled by your parents. It is a simple matter for them to download a program that will record instant messaging, email, key stokes, and web use.
I just mention this because there seems to some confusion on the matter. For instance, I sometimes remind high school students that their web use and messaging are quite public, and they seem quite surprised. And while being confronted by a parent about a conversation they overheard might be traumatic enough, as I well know, I cannot imaging how traumatic it would be I were confronted with printouts of a chat session.
Of course I know that many parents would not know how to tap a child's computer, or that the child can take countermeasures. I am just saying that thinking the internet is more secure is kind of naive.
MS is working closely with the content providers. The content providers are going to reward MS but insuring that IE and Windows is the only platform that is supported for content distribution. MS guarantees total copyright owner control and will happily implement arbitrary restrictions.
Furthermore the content providers are going to run away from anything remotely open source. OSS, in their minds, are synonymous to pirates. It would be easy to write code that intercept the data stream and copy it with perfect quality.
Finally, IE is not a web browser. It can be used as a browser, but it is really an application front end, a fancy terminal if you wish. Most web designers, especially those who come from traditional media, don't understand what web publishing is. They want to control precisely how the content is presented, exactly what ads the user will see, exactly how the user works with the content. IE provides that level of control. Sites like /. that are web publication don't need it. Other sites that can't think into the abstraction of the WWW can do nothing more that duplicate traditional media.
I of course am not suggesting that anyone do this, and would never do it myself, and can not imagine why anyone might want to do this, as I know we all live to respectfully pay whatever the content providers dictate as our dueful tribute.
In any case, i can't imagine anyone renting a Disney movie(with the exception of mirimax) as most of their crap goes on sale for $5 six months after release.
I guess what i really feel bad about is that he has to go to a substandard school where the kids don't think the movie was cool. Any real geek knows that the clip is cool, and would respect it. In my public high school, I would have had any number of people coming up to me telling me how cool it was. I would have had teachers coming up to me telling me how impressive it was. Sure he looks stupid, but he is high school. He is supposed to look stupid.
As far as feeling sorry for him, and thinking he should get money, I just can't. If a crime has been committed, then arrest the people who did it. If he doesn't want the clip out, send cease and desist orders. Otherwise let it go. Yesterday he was just a kid, now he is a celebrity.
The fact is there are kids with real problems out there. Kids who don't get enough food. Kids who change clothes before getting on the bus to go home so they don't get beat up for looking like a dork. Kids who ride the bus for over an hour to get a good education. This incident just seems like a good lesson that if you film yourself, then it might get out. Just ask Pamela Anderson.
I do feel your pain about your fellow students. I had to deal with a lack of intelligence and creativity when I was doing a more technical degree, which is why I moved to a real University Degree Program, i.e. humanities, science, arts. I really began to enjoy hanging with people who were at University to learn rather than just get a piece of paper so they could make lots of money.
I am glad I didn't have to deal with the noise of the keyboards in my day. It was hard enough to sleep with the professor droning and the students taking notes. OTOH, it would have been fun to connect to the mainframe and get in a few round of trade wars.
If I understand the problem, this is bug in the MIDI interpreter that seriously jeopardizes the health of the computer. One can therefore imagine a firm that now must waste person-hours corrected a problem for which there is absolutely no business need. Why a machine, which really only need to run MS Office, a vertical market ported from Unix, and an email client, needs a MIDI subsystem would be beyond me. In fact, why Outlook needs to renders HTML is also beyond me.
Which is just to say that MS needs to be more responsive to customer needs, not the compulsive efforts to satisfy advertisers and spammers. MS can be responsive. We say this when they started shipping an OS with most services turn off.
And, of course, OSS already do this. We can add functionality as we need it, but the default system is generally bare bones.