Now I am not a Samba member, but I watch several of the development lists. Here is my take of the situation.
As far as I can tell, Samba TNG's goal was an attempt to fake being an NT server at the expense of everything else. The sole reason for TNG's existence (at least while I monitored the lists) was to provide a reference implementation of the NT server calls that could be backported into the main Samba development branch. And indeed, many things were broken (password changing, good file sharing with 95/98 machines, etc.) in the attempt to get the NT calls working. This was fine, since it was not intended to be widely used.
Unfortunately, many people on the Samba lists implemented Samba TNG as if it were finalized code. They wanted the Win2k domain controller support *before* Samba was ready to provide a stable implementation of it, often complaining (loudly) about this as if it was Samba's sole goal. But the core Samba team was taking its time working on this subject. The Samba TNG staff also had a different working style than the main Samba team. These and other facts (Samba TNG uses about seven daemons, while the current stable samba uses two, etc.) helped lead to this code fork.
In other news (as those of us watching samba-cvs already know), enough support so win2k can join an NT 4 style samba-controlled domain was just put in the CVS tree for samba 2.2 this past week. If you're looking for that, checkout a copy of that, but note it is *alpha* (not even beta) software right now.
Now IANAL, but I suspect that *ue*at just didn't invoke the DMCA properly, or did so poorly:
Sec 1201 (i) Protection of Personally Identifying Information. -
(1) Circumvention permitted. - Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection
for a person to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title, if -
(A) the technological measure, or the work it protects, contains the capability of collecting or disseminating personally identifying information reflecting the online
activities of a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected;
(B) in the normal course of its operation, the technological measure, or the work it protects, collects or disseminates personally identifying information about the person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, without providing conspicuous notice of such collection or dissemination to such person, and without providing such person with the capability
to prevent or restrict such collection or issemination;
(C) the act of circumvention has the sole effect of identifying and disabling the capability described in subparagraph (A), and has no other effect on the ability of any person to gain access to any work; and
(D) the act of circumvention is carried out solely for the purpose of preventing the collection or dissemination of personally identifying information about a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, and is not in violation of any other law.
(i)(1)(B) Likely is a killer -- too many "ands" in there, and a EULA might be considered "conspicuous" even if no one reads it. But conspicuous sounds like a nice word that lawyers can around play with.
Note that this *only* means that one *single* company just hasn't used the DMCA properly -- yet. One minor change to their software, and the lawsuit floodgates can open against their new(er) users. Don't expect anyone else to make this mistake.
I just wish the DMCA let people other than just the Librarian of Congress decide what "classes of works" didn't fall under it. To me, DVDs from other regions fall under the area of items were are "severerly restricted" from using -- I prefer European and Asian content over most American works.
Actually, this does make perfect sense
on
High-Speed Greed
·
· Score: 1
While I have to agree with the logic that the newswire likely screwed something up here, this does make sense. Before you go flaming me, let me explain why.
As long as anyone is allowed to run whatever protocol they want over the Internet, the pirates and warez groups (as the RIAA/MPAA/SPA call them) will be able to survive. However, if content is only allowed on the Internet via accepted protocols to "approved" content that "approved" users have access to, it becomes much harder to illegally acquire works. While this does impose a burdern on the Internet since these rules will have to be enforced on several levels, the technology to do this likely exists today.
Think of today's firewalls that are "protocol aware;" these won't let you run telnet over a web connection because they know what a web connection looks like. By the same reasoning, an "approved" protocol could allow your ISP to collect money on your purchases.
Sure, it would require a large number of sites on the Internet to follow new rules and install new equipment in order to this, as well as likely government legislation, but I believe we are witnessing the commercialization of the Internet. As companies take control of the backbones, they will control what you say and do on *their* network. Desperate companies worried that their works may be in jeporady likely will speed up this process.
Don't like what the Internet may be coming to? Start your BBSes again, and pray they don't tap your phone line. I wish I had better advice, but that's it.
I should note that the scheme I can thought of to proxy https:// pages so an employer can read them in real-time does give the fact that it is there away in most cases. This is because all https:// traffic would be routed through a server (say spyonssl.mycomp.123) that would then establish its own secure connection to yourbank.456 or whatever. URLs and referrers would be rewritten to keep everything working. This would be required without your employer becoming their own certificate certifying authority, because most web browsers will complain bitterly if the certificate does not match the site. Most users would likely spot this, unless the secure page was quickly switched away from.
Of course, no one is stopping them from installing their own certifying certificate on your PC, generating fake SSL certificates in near real-time on a fast computer, and playing a "man-in the middle" attack that few people would know how to spot. But now, we are *really* getting paranoid... and so are many employers nowadays. It is likely that at least a few companies out there have systems that try to decode your secure web pages out there, even if it means taking a year or two with a Cray...
One should realize that most web-email services do use secure https:// for the login, but send your mail as insecure http:// . So they likely can't get your password too easily, but they can get everything else. As we speak, companies are likely working on the former, considering it a "trivial issue" that needs to be overcome. Given that most people only use one password for everything, I would not be surprised if many employers can guess your web mail password anyway.
If you can monitor what web page URLs employees visit from the office, it is trivial to monitor the HTML content of those pages as well. Other protocols likewise can be easily decoded. I do not see what the big deal is here. Employers likely could pick up your password from many of these web-mail systems with ease at their Internet gateway.
Even if a page is https:// encrypted, I can think of a proxy game good enough that most "secure pages" could likely be made readable by your employer as well.
On the other hand, at my university of all places, the administration has set up keyboard, screen, and local disk drive file monitoring in many of the computer labs. I do not know if the monitor network traffic (yet). Talking about taking "usage implies consent to monitoring" to an extreme. But I have yet to see anyone be discouraged from using the systems, or stop from installing personal programs on them, despite the risk of losing their network account.
This will be like animals born in a zoo; while they are really the species that you see, they will not behave like they would in the wild. They will behave artificially in an artificial environment. While it might be possible to fake being a real mother to a few species (such as some types of birds), all we are likely creating are animals for zoos that wouldn't know how to find food, water, etc. if they had to. If we raised a Dodo, it wouldn't act like one would have tens of thousands of years ago.
Before you go saying you can change your region, realize that most players that allow this only allow you to do it a *limited* number of times. The way this is supposed to work is that you, the consumer, are only allowed to change the region of a DVD player five (5) times on your own. If you need to change the region again, you have to send your DVD drive back to the manufacturer to have this count reset. They only can reset the counter five times as well. This gives you a grand total of 25 times you are allowed to change the region of any given DVD player.
Many manufacturers simply don't tell the public how to change their region code. These allow 25 region changes using whatever key sequence/method is required to do it, since it is assumed that only the manufacturer knows the sequence.
So before you go saying you can just change your player's region, relize that most of us can't keep switching our players from region to region. Many of us are not technically literate enough to do the work required to bypass a counter. Future designs likely will not let you bypass these counters, and do encryption & Macrovision(tm) on the same chip.
My concern with region codes is for works that are not released in a particular region. I already import Music CDs from other countries I can not get in my own. If DVD-Audio discs have the region code system that DVDs presently have, I will need to have a player for *each region* I import music from, as well as my own.
Sorry. While you many not inconvinience 99% of your purchasers, there are the 1% of us that are MAJORLY inconvienced by region codes.
Viruses would be much worse, especially those M$ ones that end in "95," "98" and "2000" with the words "Windows" and "Office" in front. If you are
wondering why the space budget is so high, I would suspect that much of your taxpayer dollars are hard at work going to Redmond.
This is especially important given that one of these viruses may have brought a naval carrier to its knees. Imagine what kind of damage a M$ virus would do
in space, especially if it mutated due to the radiation.
Unfortunately, it would seem that restricting the right to post might be going a bit far. In fact, I would call this censorship. While someone may have unpopular viewpoints, they may actually contribute to other discussions better than the one they are losing points over. Systems such as this would quiet those that cry "Wolf!" when there was none, but it would also quiet them when there really was one.
On one hand, this might eliminate trolls who can not bulk generate email accounts, on the other hand, this is censorship. I do not know which is the lesser of the two evils. If one managed to get in the thick of a discussion and moderated down, yet contributed well to a discussion but too late for moderators to pay much attention, do they stand the risk of losing their right to post?
<Example>
We all flame those who say DeCSS is bad. One has to look at the logic behind someones view before wildly handing out moderation. Such logic might be hard to deterimine from a single post. Jumpy logic like this makes poor posts, but fun examples. I would be never published this like. Do not moderate up this, it would be too kind if you did.:)
</Example>
From their online form, which gets your name, mailing address, and email: "This information will not be used for any purpose other than to identify you to the recipient and so we may update you with information regarding MP3.com."
Congradulations. By sending email to your congressperson(s) through their system, you're showing them you have a weak heart towards their view. Expect to get their ads and propoganda in the near future.
Overall, it sounds like they're making a "million email suckers" database to me, with the side affect of emailing congresspeople.
So if I write a script that looks through my code for potential buffer overflows due to stupidly called subroutines, that would seem illegal due to the fact it could also be used to hack my code and exploit it. I even could use the "find" and "grep" tools to do this - are they now illegal?
At first glance, this sounds like it will force security through obscurity, and of course the criminals will find a way around it. It's just another charge to bring against someone when they are caught, if they are caught. This sounds almos as good as the US electronic signatures act, where almost any web browser and any link could be a contract.
Note it says $10 million to the company that first makes a reusable vehicle, not the first one that makes a safe, reusable, reliable vehicle. One can cut corners to make it reusable and/or for cost that sacrifice safety.
I'd prefer if the second group that made such a vehicle got a reward instead of the first should the first one neglect any safety issues. One could make a reusable vehicle that works fine via remote control, but has poor airlocks around the people inside of it.
If I am relying on a computer to help decide what code is need in my application, isn't it going to try and error on the safe side, and give me more than I need? Sounds like a fast way to make bloated code again.
Pardon me for griping. At least one used to be able to play Frogger(tm) in 64 KB of RAM in full color and sound on a C64, or even 16 KB in Black & White without sound on a Timex Sinclair 1000.
Now if I'm hearing or looking at any "unlicensed" content, I simply will not be able to interact with it. If I don't agree to be implanted with their robots, all I will see of their works is gibberish.
Crap. I forgot to renew my subscription to "The Outside World(tm)." I stepped outside to enter my car and suddenly went blind. Guess I'll have to call in sick to work today...
Where does that leave other manufacturers? If all games, movies, etc., are put into a Sony format for the fiber-linked PS2, then what about Hitachi, Magnavox, Sega, etc.'s products?
Also, are we going to see another war here like we saw for cable and DSL? Internet Service Providers are still fighting for the right to share cable networks in many areas. Who will have the right to be a provider for the fiber line that runs to my house? Likewise, who will have the right to develop programming for this PS2-based entertainment network?
My first instinct is that I don't like this idea. Centralizing content into five or so conglomerates is bad; only having one main source of information is worse.
This sounds like it would be a really hot game, doesn't it? I'm just boiling in anticpation of getting it. My neighbor got his copy already, and I'm red with envy.
Is the RIAA or MPAA one of the bidders? Will we be forced to use Digital Rights Management protocols if they win? Or, will they shut the Internet down just because it has potential legal *and* illegal uses?
I sure hope the RIAA wins the Internet - this "Napster" traffic is really starting to get on my nerves.
Dareth I say this (I'm not a censorship fan by any means, and not a security expert), but if you want to use a tagging solution to this, tag all files (I'm assuming you're using a custom format) with a known signature, and use something like Snort to find that signature in any outgoing traffic. Of course, this isn't 100% perfect (TCP fragments, etc., can confuse many firewalls and detection systems). If put towards the start of the file, it can attempt to reset the connection, as well as log the event.
Of course, if the secure data is in something like a standard Word(tm) document, you can't tag it with a phrase without forcing all documents to have a keyword, etc., in them that you know to look for, and even then newer editions use compression, which might obscure your mark.
Once again, I'm not an expert on this, and I may be 100% incorrect, so tread lightly.
By "rights" I meant the right to use the player you want, and *not* just those chosen by some group. I also mean the right to make a backup copy (do NOT read pirating, thank you). I have an MS Office 95 disk that is no longer readable in spots, and I forgot to back it up. As a result, I do not have a copy of Office to use. I likely will *never* be able to backup Office 2025 should it ever come out. I will not be able to make mix CDs out of CDs I own by that time either.
From what I've seen, the average person does not care enough to act. If the media makes it sound great (and all news media boils down to about five companies in the US), people will jump on it. Slashdot is a prime example; people complain, but how many letters to legislatures have been written by the users here? If even ten percent of Slashdot's readership actually took action, changes to society likely would happen. But only one-thousandth of Slashdot's population likely does anything on any issue posted here one way or another. The rest just write here, and take no action in the real world. Remember there is a *real* world out there, and not just the virtual one of the Internet.
It used to be anyone could build a piece of hardware, including stereos and televisions. Heathkit used to be in this business. However, hardware quickly got too complicated for the average user to build. Now, we are moving to the point that the average engineer can't build a compatible product without paying $$$ in license fees and agreeing to non-disclosure agreements with restrictions on what the resulting product can and can not do. This is where the line has to drawn.
If no one breaks SDMI during the three week period, then they will just have ammunition to say that SDMI works. End of story. Move along.
For those who think that the industry will not get their way, I have a simple answer for you: System on a Chip (SoC). Custom integrated circuits that do all the decrypting, audio decoding, D/A, etc., will be made. Once its all on a single IC chip (and this can likely be done with a bit of work right now), your rights are gone.
I doubt anyone on Slashdot has access to clean room that they could an take apart an Integrated Circuit, figure out how to disable the protections, checksumming of code, etc., and then a fabrication plant than can make enough modified ICs that they could distribute them around. Consumers have lost their rights one by one; they just have not realized it yet, nor cared.
The problem with putting music into formats/generes is subjectiveness. The categories any particular system has also helps determine what "format" a song belongs to.
For example, I could have a "vocal," "choral," "madrigal," "classical," "baroque," "religious," song, depending on what service I looked for information about it. Likewise, metal fans would be hard pressed to mark many albums or artists as "light rock" or "heavy metal." In the end, the individual reviewer is the sole judge of if a song matches a format. Often I find myself disagreeing with them.
I knew someone who coached a not-so-popular track & field sport in the 1996 Olympics. His book on his sport was a standard used to teach people the sport all over the world. However, I never saw him *once* on mainstream TV. His sport was considered too "unpopular" to be covered by the US media.
In the United States, the opening ceremony television coverage showed general views of all of the other Olympic delegations *but* that of the United States. When they got to the US, they went from star athlete to star athlete to star athlete, and when they ran out of star athletes they went back to the first. I do not recall even a single person involved with a track & field sport (discuss, javalin, etc.) being shown. Without the ability for an independant media source to cover the event, these "minor" competetions might as well not even be run. That would save money and time for everyone.
In the United States, prior publishing and/or discussion does NOT keep you from getting a patent. In most other countries, it does. Likewise, you can patent an algorithm (such as for encryption) here, and not anywhere else in the world. Both of these facts were taken advantage of by the people who patented LZW, the compression algorthim behind many ZIP utilities. It already was published, and was an idea, not a physical product.
If you go to almost any major commercial Internet site, they have (likely in very fine print at the bottom of the page) a link to "terms of service" that you supposively agree to simply by visiting the site.
Combine that with the recently passed US legislation which defines even a simple click of the mouse as legally binding, and you can't link to many sites no matter what.
Slashdot Mirror
So we get to see all new episodes! Great!
I'm not dead yet!
(Sorry, couldn't resist....)
Now I am not a Samba member, but I watch several of the development lists. Here is my take of the situation.
As far as I can tell, Samba TNG's goal was an attempt to fake being an NT server at the expense of everything else. The sole reason for TNG's existence (at least while I monitored the lists) was to provide a reference implementation of the NT server calls that could be backported into the main Samba development branch. And indeed, many things were broken (password changing, good file sharing with 95/98 machines, etc.) in the attempt to get the NT calls working. This was fine, since it was not intended to be widely used.
Unfortunately, many people on the Samba lists implemented Samba TNG as if it were finalized code. They wanted the Win2k domain controller support *before* Samba was ready to provide a stable implementation of it, often complaining (loudly) about this as if it was Samba's sole goal. But the core Samba team was taking its time working on this subject. The Samba TNG staff also had a different working style than the main Samba team. These and other facts (Samba TNG uses about seven daemons, while the current stable samba uses two, etc.) helped lead to this code fork.
In other news (as those of us watching samba-cvs already know), enough support so win2k can join an NT 4 style samba-controlled domain was just put in the CVS tree for samba 2.2 this past week. If you're looking for that, checkout a copy of that, but note it is *alpha* (not even beta) software right now.
Now IANAL, but I suspect that *ue*at just didn't invoke the DMCA properly, or did so poorly:
Sec 1201 (i) Protection of Personally Identifying Information. -
(1) Circumvention permitted. - Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection for a person to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title, if -
(A) the technological measure, or the work it protects, contains the capability of collecting or disseminating personally identifying information reflecting the online activities of a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected;
(B) in the normal course of its operation, the technological measure, or the work it protects, collects or disseminates personally identifying information about the person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, without providing conspicuous notice of such collection or dissemination to such person, and without providing such person with the capability to prevent or restrict such collection or issemination;
(C) the act of circumvention has the sole effect of identifying and disabling the capability described in subparagraph (A), and has no other effect on the ability of any person to gain access to any work; and
(D) the act of circumvention is carried out solely for the purpose of preventing the collection or dissemination of personally identifying information about a natural person who seeks to gain access to the work protected, and is not in violation of any other law.
(i)(1)(B) Likely is a killer -- too many "ands" in there, and a EULA might be considered "conspicuous" even if no one reads it. But conspicuous sounds like a nice word that lawyers can around play with.
Note that this *only* means that one *single* company just hasn't used the DMCA properly -- yet. One minor change to their software, and the lawsuit floodgates can open against their new(er) users. Don't expect anyone else to make this mistake.
I just wish the DMCA let people other than just the Librarian of Congress decide what "classes of works" didn't fall under it. To me, DVDs from other regions fall under the area of items were are "severerly restricted" from using -- I prefer European and Asian content over most American works.
While I have to agree with the logic that the newswire likely screwed something up here, this does make sense. Before you go flaming me, let me explain why.
As long as anyone is allowed to run whatever protocol they want over the Internet, the pirates and warez groups (as the RIAA/MPAA/SPA call them) will be able to survive. However, if content is only allowed on the Internet via accepted protocols to "approved" content that "approved" users have access to, it becomes much harder to illegally acquire works. While this does impose a burdern on the Internet since these rules will have to be enforced on several levels, the technology to do this likely exists today.
Think of today's firewalls that are "protocol aware;" these won't let you run telnet over a web connection because they know what a web connection looks like. By the same reasoning, an "approved" protocol could allow your ISP to collect money on your purchases.
Sure, it would require a large number of sites on the Internet to follow new rules and install new equipment in order to this, as well as likely government legislation, but I believe we are witnessing the commercialization of the Internet. As companies take control of the backbones, they will control what you say and do on *their* network. Desperate companies worried that their works may be in jeporady likely will speed up this process.
Don't like what the Internet may be coming to? Start your BBSes again, and pray they don't tap your phone line. I wish I had better advice, but that's it.
I should note that the scheme I can thought of to proxy https:// pages so an employer can read them in real-time does give the fact that it is there away in most cases. This is because all https:// traffic would be routed through a server (say spyonssl.mycomp.123) that would then establish its own secure connection to yourbank.456 or whatever. URLs and referrers would be rewritten to keep everything working. This would be required without your employer becoming their own certificate certifying authority, because most web browsers will complain bitterly if the certificate does not match the site. Most users would likely spot this, unless the secure page was quickly switched away from.
Of course, no one is stopping them from installing their own certifying certificate on your PC, generating fake SSL certificates in near real-time on a fast computer, and playing a "man-in the middle" attack that few people would know how to spot. But now, we are *really* getting paranoid... and so are many employers nowadays. It is likely that at least a few companies out there have systems that try to decode your secure web pages out there, even if it means taking a year or two with a Cray...
One should realize that most web-email services do use secure https:// for the login, but send your mail as insecure http:// . So they likely can't get your password too easily, but they can get everything else. As we speak, companies are likely working on the former, considering it a "trivial issue" that needs to be overcome. Given that most people only use one password for everything, I would not be surprised if many employers can guess your web mail password anyway.
If you can monitor what web page URLs employees visit from the office, it is trivial to monitor the HTML content of those pages as well. Other protocols likewise can be easily decoded. I do not see what the big deal is here. Employers likely could pick up your password from many of these web-mail systems with ease at their Internet gateway.
Even if a page is https:// encrypted, I can think of a proxy game good enough that most "secure pages" could likely be made readable by your employer as well.
On the other hand, at my university of all places, the administration has set up keyboard, screen, and local disk drive file monitoring in many of the computer labs. I do not know if the monitor network traffic (yet). Talking about taking "usage implies consent to monitoring" to an extreme. But I have yet to see anyone be discouraged from using the systems, or stop from installing personal programs on them, despite the risk of losing their network account.
This will be like animals born in a zoo; while they are really the species that you see, they will not behave like they would in the wild. They will behave artificially in an artificial environment. While it might be possible to fake being a real mother to a few species (such as some types of birds), all we are likely creating are animals for zoos that wouldn't know how to find food, water, etc. if they had to. If we raised a Dodo, it wouldn't act like one would have tens of thousands of years ago.
Before you go saying you can change your region, realize that most players that allow this only allow you to do it a *limited* number of times. The way this is supposed to work is that you, the consumer, are only allowed to change the region of a DVD player five (5) times on your own. If you need to change the region again, you have to send your DVD drive back to the manufacturer to have this count reset. They only can reset the counter five times as well. This gives you a grand total of 25 times you are allowed to change the region of any given DVD player.
Many manufacturers simply don't tell the public how to change their region code. These allow 25 region changes using whatever key sequence/method is required to do it, since it is assumed that only the manufacturer knows the sequence.
So before you go saying you can just change your player's region, relize that most of us can't keep switching our players from region to region. Many of us are not technically literate enough to do the work required to bypass a counter. Future designs likely will not let you bypass these counters, and do encryption & Macrovision(tm) on the same chip.
My concern with region codes is for works that are not released in a particular region. I already import Music CDs from other countries I can not get in my own. If DVD-Audio discs have the region code system that DVDs presently have, I will need to have a player for *each region* I import music from, as well as my own.
Sorry. While you many not inconvinience 99% of your purchasers, there are the 1% of us that are MAJORLY inconvienced by region codes.
Viruses would be much worse, especially those M$ ones that end in "95," "98" and "2000" with the words "Windows" and "Office" in front. If you are wondering why the space budget is so high, I would suspect that much of your taxpayer dollars are hard at work going to Redmond.
This is especially important given that one of these viruses may have brought a naval carrier to its knees. Imagine what kind of damage a M$ virus would do in space, especially if it mutated due to the radiation.
Unfortunately, it would seem that restricting the right to post might be going a bit far. In fact, I would call this censorship. While someone may have unpopular viewpoints, they may actually contribute to other discussions better than the one they are losing points over. Systems such as this would quiet those that cry "Wolf!" when there was none, but it would also quiet them when there really was one.
On one hand, this might eliminate trolls who can not bulk generate email accounts, on the other hand, this is censorship. I do not know which is the lesser of the two evils. If one managed to get in the thick of a discussion and moderated down, yet contributed well to a discussion but too late for moderators to pay much attention, do they stand the risk of losing their right to post?
<Example> :)
We all flame those who say DeCSS is bad. One has to look at the logic behind someones view before wildly handing out moderation. Such logic might be hard to deterimine from a single post. Jumpy logic like this makes poor posts, but fun examples. I would be never published this like. Do not moderate up this, it would be too kind if you did.
</Example>
From their online form, which gets your name, mailing address, and email: "This information will not be used for any purpose other than to identify you to the recipient and so we may update you with information regarding MP3.com."
Congradulations. By sending email to your congressperson(s) through their system, you're showing them you have a weak heart towards their view. Expect to get their ads and propoganda in the near future.
Overall, it sounds like they're making a "million email suckers" database to me, with the side affect of emailing congresspeople.
So if I write a script that looks through my code for potential buffer overflows due to stupidly called subroutines, that would seem illegal due to the fact it could also be used to hack my code and exploit it. I even could use the "find" and "grep" tools to do this - are they now illegal?
At first glance, this sounds like it will force security through obscurity, and of course the criminals will find a way around it. It's just another charge to bring against someone when they are caught, if they are caught. This sounds almos as good as the US electronic signatures act, where almost any web browser and any link could be a contract.
Note it says $10 million to the company that first makes a reusable vehicle, not the first one that makes a safe, reusable, reliable vehicle. One can cut corners to make it reusable and/or for cost that sacrifice safety.
I'd prefer if the second group that made such a vehicle got a reward instead of the first should the first one neglect any safety issues. One could make a reusable vehicle that works fine via remote control, but has poor airlocks around the people inside of it.
If I am relying on a computer to help decide what code is need in my application, isn't it going to try and error on the safe side, and give me more than I need? Sounds like a fast way to make bloated code again.
Pardon me for griping. At least one used to be able to play Frogger(tm) in 64 KB of RAM in full color and sound on a C64, or even 16 KB in Black & White without sound on a Timex Sinclair 1000.
Now if I'm hearing or looking at any "unlicensed" content, I simply will not be able to interact with it. If I don't agree to be implanted with their robots, all I will see of their works is gibberish.
Crap. I forgot to renew my subscription to "The Outside World(tm)." I stepped outside to enter my car and suddenly went blind. Guess I'll have to call in sick to work today...
Where does that leave other manufacturers? If all games, movies, etc., are put into a Sony format for the fiber-linked PS2, then what about Hitachi, Magnavox, Sega, etc.'s products?
Also, are we going to see another war here like we saw for cable and DSL? Internet Service Providers are still fighting for the right to share cable networks in many areas. Who will have the right to be a provider for the fiber line that runs to my house? Likewise, who will have the right to develop programming for this PS2-based entertainment network?
My first instinct is that I don't like this idea. Centralizing content into five or so conglomerates is bad; only having one main source of information is worse.
This sounds like it would be a really hot game, doesn't it? I'm just boiling in anticpation of getting it. My neighbor got his copy already, and I'm red with envy.
I sure hope the RIAA wins the Internet - this "Napster" traffic is really starting to get on my nerves.
Of course, if the secure data is in something like a standard Word(tm) document, you can't tag it with a phrase without forcing all documents to have a keyword, etc., in them that you know to look for, and even then newer editions use compression, which might obscure your mark.
Once again, I'm not an expert on this, and I may be 100% incorrect, so tread lightly.
By "rights" I meant the right to use the player you want, and *not* just those chosen by some group. I also mean the right to make a backup copy (do NOT read pirating, thank you). I have an MS Office 95 disk that is no longer readable in spots, and I forgot to back it up. As a result, I do not have a copy of Office to use. I likely will *never* be able to backup Office 2025 should it ever come out. I will not be able to make mix CDs out of CDs I own by that time either.
From what I've seen, the average person does not care enough to act. If the media makes it sound great (and all news media boils down to about five companies in the US), people will jump on it. Slashdot is a prime example; people complain, but how many letters to legislatures have been written by the users here? If even ten percent of Slashdot's readership actually took action, changes to society likely would happen. But only one-thousandth of Slashdot's population likely does anything on any issue posted here one way or another. The rest just write here, and take no action in the real world. Remember there is a *real* world out there, and not just the virtual one of the Internet.
It used to be anyone could build a piece of hardware, including stereos and televisions. Heathkit used to be in this business. However, hardware quickly got too complicated for the average user to build. Now, we are moving to the point that the average engineer can't build a compatible product without paying $$$ in license fees and agreeing to non-disclosure agreements with restrictions on what the resulting product can and can not do. This is where the line has to drawn.
If no one breaks SDMI during the three week period, then they will just have ammunition to say that SDMI works. End of story. Move along.
For those who think that the industry will not get their way, I have a simple answer for you: System on a Chip (SoC). Custom integrated circuits that do all the decrypting, audio decoding, D/A, etc., will be made. Once its all on a single IC chip (and this can likely be done with a bit of work right now), your rights are gone.
I doubt anyone on Slashdot has access to clean room that they could an take apart an Integrated Circuit, figure out how to disable the protections, checksumming of code, etc., and then a fabrication plant than can make enough modified ICs that they could distribute them around. Consumers have lost their rights one by one; they just have not realized it yet, nor cared.
Sorry, but the gig is up.
For example, I could have a "vocal," "choral," "madrigal," "classical," "baroque," "religious," song, depending on what service I looked for information about it. Likewise, metal fans would be hard pressed to mark many albums or artists as "light rock" or "heavy metal." In the end, the individual reviewer is the sole judge of if a song matches a format. Often I find myself disagreeing with them.
In the United States, the opening ceremony television coverage showed general views of all of the other Olympic delegations *but* that of the United States. When they got to the US, they went from star athlete to star athlete to star athlete, and when they ran out of star athletes they went back to the first. I do not recall even a single person involved with a track & field sport (discuss, javalin, etc.) being shown. Without the ability for an independant media source to cover the event, these "minor" competetions might as well not even be run. That would save money and time for everyone.
In the United States, prior publishing and/or discussion does NOT keep you from getting a patent. In most other countries, it does. Likewise, you can patent an algorithm (such as for encryption) here, and not anywhere else in the world. Both of these facts were taken advantage of by the people who patented LZW, the compression algorthim behind many ZIP utilities. It already was published, and was an idea, not a physical product.
If you go to almost any major commercial Internet site, they have (likely in very fine print at the bottom of the page) a link to "terms of service" that you supposively agree to simply by visiting the site.
Combine that with the recently passed US legislation which defines even a simple click of the mouse as legally binding, and you can't link to many sites no matter what.