Unfortunately, from reading the paper, it seems like they've failed to measure the real effectiveness of their system -- they only measured the false negative rate and used just that for their "effectiveness". They never even bothered to check for or measure false positives.
With such useless measures its easy to get a 100% effective system -- simply categorize everything as dangerous. Then your false negattive rate is 0% and your "effectiveness" is 100%.
Laptops and lithium batteries are already banned from checked baggage in all flight originating from Japan (and probably other places as well) -- I ran into this a couple of months ago flying back from Japan. There are prominent signs reminding you to ensure that all laptops be in carryon bags only, and all checked baggage is screened (via xray machine) for laptops and spare batteries before being checked.
In what way does this break the deadlock? It does not allow ISPs to charge content providers extra for access to their captive user base, so no extra revenue there. Worse, it allows users to deprioritize the spam content they don't really want where the ISPs are currently getting their extra profits.
It seems like this is just good for users at the expense of ISPs, so the ISPs will never go for it.
Its obvious you have little real experience with unicode, because saying 'just convert to utf-32' just papers over the problems without solving them. UTF-32 units are code points, not characters, and there are many multi-code-point (variable length) characters in utf-32. So you still have all the length and normalization problems you have with utf-8 (and even with ASCII, though people often ignore it there -- are 'a' and 'A' the same character? How do they sort?)
The real 'length' problem is that people insist on using the term ambiguously -- you have string storage space and string rendering size, and the two are completely independent.
Your "non-obvious" answer flows directly from the obvious answer that you say is wrong (and is the real answer) -- the first sale doctrine.
The only reason Netflix has cooperative agreements with the studios is because they have the "threat" of simply going out and buying the DVDs. Without that, the studios would not deal with them, preferring to sell directly to customers. The cooperative agreements only come into play when the studios think they can gain a little bit by economies of scale vs forcing Netflix to go buy the discs (as happened in the Disney case you note).
By doing everything they can to make Netflix as annoying for customers as possible, they try to force those customers to pay them directly rather than going through Netflix (which would make them more money -- attempted market segmentation), but as you note, it mostly just forces people to pirate instead.
> So what could be their reason for allowing users to check out physical DVDs but not to "check out" virtual DVDs in exactly the same way?
The answer is that they DON'T allow users to check out physical DVDs -- they would stop the the rental of DVDs if they could to force people to use their own distribution channels (and generate more profit). But the courts have said that if they sell DVDs, they can't prevent others from buying those DVDs and renting them out. So if they want to sell DVDs, they have to allow rental of DVDs.
Why do I think they ordered those parts from the most expensive sources possible?
Well, if you read the fine article (the original, not the bgr rehash), you'd see that all the proces come from NewEgg -- not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive...
The basic premise of your whole argument "The Fifth amendment means that person need not answer 'Yes' or 'No' when asked the question 'Did you commit the crime'" is simple wrong and untrue. IF someone is charged with a crime and arraigned, they must THEN enter a plea of "guilty" or "not guilty" and cannot at that time "refuse to answer". The context is key -- this questioning happens in a courtroom in front of a judge, with a lawyer present, and not in a back room somewhere.
The same protections apply to a 3rd party being questioned -- they DON'T have to answer unless they are subpoenaed and in that case can have a lawyer present. Of course, insisting on these full legal protections might make the police suspicious that they are involved, but that is kind of tough to avoid.
Well, I've subjectively seen one effect -- a huge spike in the number of telemarker calls I've received in the past week, apparently due to no longer being able to report them to the DO NOT CALL registry (which is shutdown due to the gov't shutdown).
The innovation here is that that nobody can make a copy of the piece of glass.
Or is it...? If Bob can create a OTP using the glass then so can Eve. All she does is sneak into his hotel room when he's asleep, generate his pad using his crystal and make a copy of it.
The point is that its a READ ONCE device -- Eve can't make a copy of the data in Bob's key without destroying the physical device containing the key...
There's nothing here about using others works without compensation -- this is about manadatory licensing of works, with rates set by the state licensing board. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are.
The most interesting thing I thought was that the device uses an IP multicast address for the backdoor reply. This makes it possible to search for all Microcell devices across the network, as long as its not behind a router that blocks IP multicast.
He's basically just trying to deflect criticism about whether things that he's done (or his company has done) are bad for the Open Source community. Anyone who is ciritical must obviously think that profits are immoral and so be an ignorable nut-job.
Slashdot Mirror
Did they also ban charging a surcharge for cash? If not, then it would seem to be an obvious way around the problem.
Unfortunately, from reading the paper, it seems like they've failed to measure the real effectiveness of their system -- they only measured the false negative rate and used just that for their "effectiveness". They never even bothered to check for or measure false positives. With such useless measures its easy to get a 100% effective system -- simply categorize everything as dangerous. Then your false negattive rate is 0% and your "effectiveness" is 100%.
Laptops and lithium batteries are already banned from checked baggage in all flight originating from Japan (and probably other places as well) -- I ran into this a couple of months ago flying back from Japan. There are prominent signs reminding you to ensure that all laptops be in carryon bags only, and all checked baggage is screened (via xray machine) for laptops and spare batteries before being checked.
In what way does this break the deadlock? It does not allow ISPs to charge content providers extra for access to their captive user base, so no extra revenue there. Worse, it allows users to deprioritize the spam content they don't really want where the ISPs are currently getting their extra profits. It seems like this is just good for users at the expense of ISPs, so the ISPs will never go for it.
Its obvious you have little real experience with unicode, because saying 'just convert to utf-32' just papers over the problems without solving them. UTF-32 units are code points, not characters, and there are many multi-code-point (variable length) characters in utf-32. So you still have all the length and normalization problems you have with utf-8 (and even with ASCII, though people often ignore it there -- are 'a' and 'A' the same character? How do they sort?) The real 'length' problem is that people insist on using the term ambiguously -- you have string storage space and string rendering size, and the two are completely independent.
Not to mention that the "dumped to console" was ALSO fixed many, many years ago (8.04?) as part of their bulletproof-X initiative.
Yup. Now its just dumps you back to the gdm screen and you have to manually get your way to a text console to fix it.
Your "non-obvious" answer flows directly from the obvious answer that you say is wrong (and is the real answer) -- the first sale doctrine. The only reason Netflix has cooperative agreements with the studios is because they have the "threat" of simply going out and buying the DVDs. Without that, the studios would not deal with them, preferring to sell directly to customers. The cooperative agreements only come into play when the studios think they can gain a little bit by economies of scale vs forcing Netflix to go buy the discs (as happened in the Disney case you note). By doing everything they can to make Netflix as annoying for customers as possible, they try to force those customers to pay them directly rather than going through Netflix (which would make them more money -- attempted market segmentation), but as you note, it mostly just forces people to pirate instead.
> So what could be their reason for allowing users to check out physical DVDs but not to "check out" virtual DVDs in exactly the same way?
The answer is that they DON'T allow users to check out physical DVDs -- they would stop the the rental of DVDs if they could to force people to use their own distribution channels (and generate more profit). But the courts have said that if they sell DVDs, they can't prevent others from buying those DVDs and renting them out. So if they want to sell DVDs, they have to allow rental of DVDs.
Why do I think they ordered those parts from the most expensive sources possible?
Well, if you read the fine article (the original, not the bgr rehash), you'd see that all the proces come from NewEgg -- not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive...
The basic premise of your whole argument "The Fifth amendment means that person need not answer 'Yes' or 'No' when asked the question 'Did you commit the crime'" is simple wrong and untrue. IF someone is charged with a crime and arraigned, they must THEN enter a plea of "guilty" or "not guilty" and cannot at that time "refuse to answer". The context is key -- this questioning happens in a courtroom in front of a judge, with a lawyer present, and not in a back room somewhere. The same protections apply to a 3rd party being questioned -- they DON'T have to answer unless they are subpoenaed and in that case can have a lawyer present. Of course, insisting on these full legal protections might make the police suspicious that they are involved, but that is kind of tough to avoid.
Well, I've subjectively seen one effect -- a huge spike in the number of telemarker calls I've received in the past week, apparently due to no longer being able to report them to the DO NOT CALL registry (which is shutdown due to the gov't shutdown).
>
The innovation here is that that nobody can make a copy of the piece of glass.
Or is it...? If Bob can create a OTP using the glass then so can Eve. All she does is sneak into his hotel room when he's asleep, generate his pad using his crystal and make a copy of it.
The point is that its a READ ONCE device -- Eve can't make a copy of the data in Bob's key without destroying the physical device containing the key...
Which is why they're sueing for TRADEMARK infringement. The fact that slashdot gets things totally wrong in the headline is besides the point
There's nothing here about using others works without compensation -- this is about manadatory licensing of works, with rates set by the state licensing board. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are.
The most interesting thing I thought was that the device uses an IP multicast address for the backdoor reply. This makes it possible to search for all Microcell devices across the network, as long as its not behind a router that blocks IP multicast.
He's basically just trying to deflect criticism about whether things that he's done (or his company has done) are bad for the Open Source community. Anyone who is ciritical must obviously think that profits are immoral and so be an ignorable nut-job.