Surely you can just keep sending them on their way when they turn up at your door. Just keep on refusing them entrance (they do need a warrant without your express permission).
You can also fail to fill in any declaration, stating that you do not have a colour receiver. And as I see it, the ball is in their court.
Either they have to monitor you and see if you are secretly watching a TV with their little vans (easily evaded with a Faraday Cage in the living room!), or get a warrent to search the premises.
Should be hilarious if they get a warrent and then fail to find anything. I Wonder what your legal recourse would be then, given their spurious assertion that you had a TV, with no facts to back them up?
I had this problem several years ago, I bought a small TV as a Christmas present for use at a friend's house (with their kid's N64). Of course I gave my details at the shop as they where required for a warranty, What I didn't realise is that the shop is legally required to inform the Licensing Authority of your purchase (Something which I might add was not made clear, and something I had words with the shop about).
Shortly after Xmas I started receiving the letters, telling me I wasn't licensed and I may have to pay a fine of £1000, or I could just fill in the declaration.
I'm afraid I just ignored the letters, it was their assumption that was wrong, and I wasn't going to waste my time correcting them.
A few months later, a guy turned up on my doorstep and we had the following (paraphrased) conversation:
Him: "Hello, I'm MR X from the Licensing Authority, Can I see your TV license please?" Me: "No" Him: "Do you have a license?" Me: "You know I don't or we wouldn't be stood on my doorstep having this conversation." Him: "Can I inspect your property to prove you don't have a TV?" Me: "No" Him: "I can have a warrent issued, and we can come back and inspect then. Or you can just let me look around the property now, and this whole problem goes away. Can I come in please?" Me: "No" Him: "I'll have to go and get a warrant then." Me: "Yes you will won't you"
That was the last I heard of it...
Although It should be said that I did dismantle my Faraday Cage that evening and sold the TV on e-bay:)
I think the reference was to the TV Licensing Fee. Everyone in the UK has to pay the fee if they have a receiver. There is one fee for black and white TVs and another for colour TVs.
You only need one license per property, and if you have one B&W TV and one colour TV obviously you pay the higher colour license fee. The same applies to video recorders (since you have to license the receiver not the TV). So there are stories of people with VCRs and B&W TVs who have ended up in trouble because they have a B&W license but a colour recediver in their VCR.
This money is used to fund the BBC, the UKs national TV and radio broadcaster, which is why we have TV channels that have no advert breaks, and supposedly some of the best TV broadcasted anywhere in the world(1).
AFAIK, the license fee has absolutely nothing to do with copyright, it is just funding for the national broadcaster.
(1) Although IMHO the BBC has really "dumbed down" over the past decade. For evidence of this please see next Wednesday's prime time viewing on BBC1, our great nation's permiere TV channel.
"Games like Serious Sam and others show that small, independant teams can still produce a good game that sells well."
Look at what has happened to Serious Sam, what was an independant's development, has now moved into the realm of the big budget, proven product, follow-up.
My brother has been working on the sequel for months now, there are still many months to go, and he is just a part of the whole machine, there are several people who have been working all those months on just the artwork for the next edition, who knows how many people have been working on the project in total? (OK, the producers probably do). That certainly was not the case for the first game in the series.
Which all goes to prove your point about the maturation of the industry. lets face it, if you had to bankroll 20 artists/developers/directors/producers/whatever for 18 months - 2 years, then pay for the product advertising, you would want to be pretty certain that the money wuold be comming back in the end.
The industry certainly isn't fscked, it has just moved from the bedroom to the boardroom.
If people still bought games like 'Elite', it would still be possible to have two guys in a bedroom making the games. But consumers these days have sophisticated tastes, that require a team of artists to produce a look and feel, people to do level design, people to write graphics engines, and physics models, designers to do the design, testers to test, etc., etc. And the consumers expect more the next time, so the next job requires more effort, or the reviews are bad and the game does not sell and the MD has to sell his Ferrari:(
I'm not knocking the idea, I'm sure it is possible to do something like this out in the world of open source, I know there are people already out there developing platforms and engines for this kind of stuff, I guess we need more members of the Free Art Federation and the Free Level Designers Federation and so on.
I considered buying a Sky+ box a while ago, and it ocurred to me that:
1. You have to buy the box. 2. You have to pay to get it installed.
but,
3. You have to pay an extra monthly subscription for the Sky+ feature set. No "lifetime" subscription option is available
So, you have already bought the hardware and software what are you paying the subscription for?
Perhaps this would be for the listings, like in the TiVo model... But you already get the listings with your existing Sky package anyway, so what is the deal?
My guess, is that you get charged more "because they can".
Hence, I bought a TiVo and kept my Sky subscription (soon to be reduced because frankly I watch very few films). No Sky+ for me, no recurring subscription!
Your comment about listsings is on the mark, without listings the TiVo is just a glorified VCR.
Regarding the ad skipping arm race you mentioned, I don't know about TiVos in the US, but TiVos in the UK don't take any note of the ads. The ads get recorded as usual.
If you want to skip the ads, you skip them not the TiVo. There is a hidden facility to skip forward 30 seconds each time you press a button on your remote, but there is certainly no automated facility available out of the box.
There are costs involved, there is the processing overhead of analysing the frames as they arrive, rather than just encoding them as usual and dumping them to hard disk. All that extra processing would probably require beefier a processor, and hence a higher cost to you.
It makes sense from TiVo corp's point of view not to try and skip ad recording, if they don't add the facility to skip ads, they don't end up in court explaining the lie in "ad skipping is theft", they may be right, but they would probably still end up going bankrupt in the process.
From a realist's point of view, why waste time and money getting into an arms race and a court case, when the best software for the job is at hand, preloaded into the wetware of the user?
Oh, and as for that Windows speaker driver. It was a pain in the arse: the whole system would pause for playback of even the most simple sounds.
I vaguely remember this driver. I remember that moving the mouse around caused the sounds to slow down in proportion to mouse movement, I used to have hours* of fun wiggling the mouse around whilst sounds were playing.
* OK maybe I hade a whole minute of fun, but memories are so subjective. Just call me goldfish boy from now on:)
Company that stands to make millions from a technology is sells, promotes concept with skewed statistics indicating overwelmingly that the public wants the product and they want it now in spades.
Somewhat surpisingly, the public also declared that the product should cost four times what it can be offered for now.
Etc, etc, etc...
PS. Now we get to wait for it to be made law, and then watch the MPs/ministers involved become well paid non-executive directors of the self-same company. Cynic moi?
For those (Brits) wishing to state their opinion on the subject click here
translate some patented software to base 2 (A,C,G,T)
Surely ACGT is four bases, hence base 4. Base 2 is binary, your basic 0 and 1.
Of course you could encode two bits of binary information to create a base four digit.
BTW, I am prepared to consider that I have dropped though a hole in the space-time fabric into a parallel universe with differing number theory (I have been playing with chroniton particles and theta-band radiation today):)
Anything over TCP/IP is Digital... there is no frequency beside on and off.
Er... This would be the same on/off (pit/no pit or pit state change) that you would get on CDs and DVDs? And as we all know CDs and DVDs can only be on or off:) Have you ever wondered what digital encoding is? Lookup sampling and A-D conversion on google or something, I'm sure with a little reading you will understand sampling and simple forms of digtal encoding. I'll give you an apple as a prize if you can describe Nyquist's theorem to me:)
Each student rented house would try to get the other houses receiving as much junk mail as possible with obsure or plain offensive names on the address label.
A particularly memorable one was registering for a clothing catalogue with the name "Dr. David Irtbox" all the mail arrived addressed to "Dr. D Irtbox"
Of course it all got out of hand when people started having skips full of horse-shit delivered as manure to other residences... (Sheesh, students.. they never know when to stop!)
WTF would you want a battery with a half-life of 100 years when the avarage laptop have a "full-life" of maybe 3-5 years????
Er... Just because the laptop is useless doesn't mean the power source is too, you just buy your next laptop from a manufacturer who's laptops take the same size battery. If the battery is going to potentially last several decades it seems reasonable to expect manufacturers to standardise on dimensions and connections, in much the same way we have AAA, AA, C and so on in the current cell market.
Had you bothered to read the original article, you would have known that this information was freely available courtesy of WSJ, not the post you attacked.
They're big and friendly, and they bounce up and down the main street of any major city here in Australia. If you give them a carrot, you can ride in their pouch.
Of course the downside is that you then have to clean the mucus off your shoes:)
Assuming a system which supports PAM, eg Linux, Solaris or others, then pam_smb may be what you want. Pam really is rather nice for allowing the administer to setup the authentication she wants.
I'm off to the Urban Myths web site, this is so obviously a tall story... You can tell by the fact that you imply that there are women working in this industry:)
The subsription is for the channel listings, you need them so that you can set the box to record the programs you want and for the DVR to change to the correct channel on the STB. This data also contains the details about series of shows and repeat details so that a season ticket can be set up to make sure you never miss an episode.
I personally use a Tivo in the UK, the cost is £10/month or £200 for life.
I'm sorry I have no idea what the costs are for Replay
Slashdot Mirror
Er... I think you'll find it proves the subjective nature of book enjoyment.
Surely you can just keep sending them on their way when they turn up at your door. Just keep on refusing them entrance (they do need a warrant without your express permission).
:)
You can also fail to fill in any declaration, stating that you do not have a colour receiver. And as I see it, the ball is in their court.
Either they have to monitor you and see if you are secretly watching a TV with their little vans (easily evaded with a Faraday Cage in the living room!), or get a warrent to search the premises.
Should be hilarious if they get a warrent and then fail to find anything. I Wonder what your legal recourse would be then, given their spurious assertion that you had a TV, with no facts to back them up?
I had this problem several years ago, I bought a small TV as a Christmas present for use at a friend's house (with their kid's N64). Of course I gave my details at the shop as they where required for a warranty, What I didn't realise is that the shop is legally required to inform the Licensing Authority of your purchase (Something which I might add was not made clear, and something I had words with the shop about).
Shortly after Xmas I started receiving the letters, telling me I wasn't licensed and I may have to pay a fine of £1000, or I could just fill in the declaration.
I'm afraid I just ignored the letters, it was their assumption that was wrong, and I wasn't going to waste my time correcting them.
A few months later, a guy turned up on my doorstep and we had the following (paraphrased) conversation:
Him: "Hello, I'm MR X from the Licensing Authority, Can I see your TV license please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "Do you have a license?"
Me: "You know I don't or we wouldn't be stood on my doorstep having this conversation."
Him: "Can I inspect your property to prove you don't have a TV?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I can have a warrent issued, and we can come back and inspect then. Or you can just let me look around the property now, and this whole problem goes away. Can I come in please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I'll have to go and get a warrant then."
Me: "Yes you will won't you"
That was the last I heard of it...
Although It should be said that I did dismantle my Faraday Cage that evening and sold the TV on e-bay
Agreed!
One of the many advantages of separating from my ex-wife, was never having to see Eastenders (or Coronation Street, or Brookside) ever again.
And thanks to my TiVo, I haven't seen a glimps of any of that tosh in many months. Long live TiVo!
I think the reference was to the TV Licensing Fee. Everyone in the UK has to pay the fee if they have a receiver. There is one fee for black and white TVs and another for colour TVs.
You only need one license per property, and if you have one B&W TV and one colour TV obviously you pay the higher colour license fee. The same applies to video recorders (since you have to license the receiver not the TV). So there are stories of people with VCRs and B&W TVs who have ended up in trouble because they have a B&W license but a colour recediver in their VCR.
This money is used to fund the BBC, the UKs national TV and radio broadcaster, which is why we have TV channels that have no advert breaks, and supposedly some of the best TV broadcasted anywhere in the world(1).
AFAIK, the license fee has absolutely nothing to do with copyright, it is just funding for the national broadcaster.
For more info go here.
(1) Although IMHO the BBC has really "dumbed down" over the past decade. For evidence of this please see next Wednesday's prime time viewing on BBC1, our great nation's permiere TV channel.
Ah... So that's who the Goatse guy is
Look at what has happened to Serious Sam, what was an independant's development, has now moved into the realm of the big budget, proven product, follow-up.
My brother has been working on the sequel for months now, there are still many months to go, and he is just a part of the whole machine, there are several people who have been working all those months on just the artwork for the next edition, who knows how many people have been working on the project in total? (OK, the producers probably do). That certainly was not the case for the first game in the series.
Which all goes to prove your point about the maturation of the industry. lets face it, if you had to bankroll 20 artists/developers/directors/producers/whatever for 18 months - 2 years, then pay for the product advertising, you would want to be pretty certain that the money wuold be comming back in the end.
The industry certainly isn't fscked, it has just moved from the bedroom to the boardroom.
If people still bought games like 'Elite', it would still be possible to have two guys in a bedroom making the games. But consumers these days have sophisticated tastes, that require a team of artists to produce a look and feel, people to do level design, people to write graphics engines, and physics models, designers to do the design, testers to test, etc., etc. And the consumers expect more the next time, so the next job requires more effort, or the reviews are bad and the game does not sell and the MD has to sell his Ferrari
I'm not knocking the idea, I'm sure it is possible to do something like this out in the world of open source, I know there are people already out there developing platforms and engines for this kind of stuff, I guess we need more members of the Free Art Federation and the Free Level Designers Federation and so on.
I considered buying a Sky+ box a while ago, and it ocurred to me that:
1. You have to buy the box.
2. You have to pay to get it installed.
but,
3. You have to pay an extra monthly subscription for the Sky+ feature set. No "lifetime" subscription option is available
So, you have already bought the hardware and software what are you paying the subscription for?
Perhaps this would be for the listings, like in the TiVo model... But you already get the listings with your existing Sky package anyway, so what is the deal?
My guess, is that you get charged more "because they can".
Hence, I bought a TiVo and kept my Sky subscription (soon to be reduced because frankly I watch very few films). No Sky+ for me, no recurring subscription!
Your comment about listsings is on the mark, without listings the TiVo is just a glorified VCR.
Regarding the ad skipping arm race you mentioned, I don't know about TiVos in the US, but TiVos in the UK don't take any note of the ads. The ads get recorded as usual.
If you want to skip the ads, you skip them not the TiVo. There is a hidden facility to skip forward 30 seconds each time you press a button on your remote, but there is certainly no automated facility available out of the box.
There are costs involved, there is the processing overhead of analysing the frames as they arrive, rather than just encoding them as usual and dumping them to hard disk. All that extra processing would probably require beefier a processor, and hence a higher cost to you.
It makes sense from TiVo corp's point of view not to try and skip ad recording, if they don't add the facility to skip ads, they don't end up in court explaining the lie in "ad skipping is theft", they may be right, but they would probably still end up going bankrupt in the process.
From a realist's point of view, why waste time and money getting into an arms race and a court case, when the best software for the job is at hand, preloaded into the wetware of the user?
I'm guessing, you are not going to allow the Chinese the option to vote?
:)
Because if you do, it aint going to be English we all speak, we'll all be speaking Mandarin this time next year
I vaguely remember this driver. I remember that moving the mouse around caused the sounds to slow down in proportion to mouse movement, I used to have hours* of fun wiggling the mouse around whilst sounds were playing.
* OK maybe I hade a whole minute of fun, but memories are so subjective. Just call me goldfish boy from now on
And this new just in...
Company that stands to make millions from a technology is sells, promotes concept with skewed statistics indicating overwelmingly that the public wants the product and they want it now in spades.
Somewhat surpisingly, the public also declared that the product should cost four times what it can be offered for now.
Etc, etc, etc...
PS. Now we get to wait for it to be made law, and then watch the MPs/ministers involved become well paid non-executive directors of the self-same company. Cynic moi?
For those (Brits) wishing to state their opinion on the subject click here
Surely ACGT is four bases, hence base 4. Base 2 is binary, your basic 0 and 1.
Of course you could encode two bits of binary information to create a base four digit.
BTW, I am prepared to consider that I have dropped though a hole in the space-time fabric into a parallel universe with differing number theory (I have been playing with chroniton particles and theta-band radiation today)
Remember kids, 1 + 1 = -17 (On a complex plane)
Er... This would be the same on/off (pit/no pit or pit state change) that you would get on CDs and DVDs?
And as we all know CDs and DVDs can only be on or off
Have you ever wondered what digital encoding is?
Lookup sampling and A-D conversion on google or something, I'm sure with a little reading you will understand sampling and simple forms of digtal encoding.
I'll give you an apple as a prize if you can describe Nyquist's theorem to me
Oh the fun I and my friends had at university.
Each student rented house would try to get the other houses receiving as much junk mail as possible with obsure or plain offensive names on the address label.
A particularly memorable one was registering for a clothing catalogue with the name "Dr. David Irtbox" all the mail arrived addressed to "Dr. D Irtbox"
Of course it all got out of hand when people started having skips full of horse-shit delivered as manure to other residences... (Sheesh, students.. they never know when to stop!)
(Where X was the last thing I would ever say/admit/believe.)
Be warned, women in high places will never alow this technology to be used by men, there is a potential for blokes in arguments to be proven right!
So: One acre hole in Nevada, or 1 million tons of pollution. Your choice.
:)
And what magical, polution free, method are you going to use to get the DVDs from the consumer to your hole in the desert?
I think you may have missed something here!
Er... Just because the laptop is useless doesn't mean the power source is too, you just buy your next laptop from a manufacturer who's laptops take the same size battery.
If the battery is going to potentially last several decades it seems reasonable to expect manufacturers to standardise on dimensions and connections, in much the same way we have AAA, AA, C and so on in the current cell market.
Had you bothered to read the original article, you would have known that this information was freely available courtesy of WSJ, not the post you attacked.
RTFA, Sheesh.
How about...
Jesus saves, but St. Paul scores on the rebound
Of course the downside is that you then have to clean the mucus off your shoes
E.g. Spelling, grammar, content, etc. etc. etc
::= pot | verb | kettle | colour :D
saying
With 192 pixels?
Do I win a prize for first correct answer?
I'm off to the Urban Myths web site, this is so obviously a tall story...
You can tell by the fact that you imply that there are women working in this industry
The subsription is for the channel listings, you need them so that you can set the box to record the programs you want and for the DVR to change to the correct channel on the STB. This data also contains the details about series of shows and repeat details so that a season ticket can be set up to make sure you never miss an episode.
I personally use a Tivo in the UK, the cost is £10/month or £200 for life.
I'm sorry I have no idea what the costs are for Replay
Hot gravel! Luxury, pure luxury... Etc...