As much as I'd like to see the charges tossed out now (I doubt that DS wants to be a pawn in this... he probably just wants to go back to Russia), going to trial could be quite helpful. Unlike the 2600 trial, this one could easily be painted in a better light.
One of the things his software is capable of doing is to allow blind people to read these e-books. Imagine THAT testimony in front of a jury!
And what would Adobe's representatives say when they take the stand? (and you can be sure that they will) They backed off once. Will they say "No, this hasn't hurt us." Or will they backtrack once again and call for him to be put in jail. Surely their calls to have him released will enter into the testimony?
No jury of "average" Americans will be able to wrap their heads around the technical issues of the DMCA. It's going to be the simple things like "this software allows blind people to read e-books" that will sway them one way or the other.
I want to see the DMCA crushed and Dimitri get to go back home, but in every other/. article I've read, it makes mention of him SELLING the software at the convention. I agree that the law is bogus and should be declared unconstitutional, but what happened didn't just happen in Russia. The moment he sold the program in the US, if in fact that's what he did, he broke (a very broken and unjust) law. Sad, but true.
Lets not that little fact escape the discussion...
Right now this dude is looking at his server logs and thinking "Awesome! I can't believe how many people are pumped about my resume! Job offers are going to be ROLLING in any second!"
Hold it a second... we want to maintain rights to do what we please with that which we own/buy, but you want to take away the rights of congress to screw/do who they please (consensual of course)?
Huh? This is a discussion about freedom and not having companies or government overly interfering in our lives. But its OK if we interfere in theirs?
Code Red is providing a convenient excuse to the feds to call for further regulation of the internet.
"Our economy DEPENDS on the internet!" they'll cry. "We can't let our country be reduced to rubble by some malicious hacker!"
And of course the press buys right into it. The DMCA, bills to punish users of school networks and computers, laws with stricter penalties for hackers than murderers... expect it to accelerate. Worms like Code Red just give the feds the ammunition they need in the court of public opinion.
Yes, that was mentioned but it was using a different technology and not the macrovision technology. Apparently the experiment failed because lots of people returned the CDs because they often would fail to play on regular CD players.
The technology we're looking for is from macrovision and discussed in this article:
Troll? Oh, come on. First we read that they've released THOUSANDS of CDs with this Macrovision technology on them... yet still not one title documented.
Then we read "Oh joy! The protection has been broken!" Broken on WHAT? Until someone can produce a title and say what was done, I don't believe that there's really any "protected" CDs out there, and I don't believe that there's any protection that has been broken. Is that so hard to figure out. I'll change my tune as soon as someone identifies a CD that this has been done to.
Every single time this has come up on/. I've asked if anyone has a title... just one. NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA what titles this was used on. The people here have an incredible ability to dig up bits of relevant data on a variety of subjects. But not this one. Not a single title verified. Without that data, I'm highly skeptical that the copy protection, if there is any, has been broken.
Has anyone considered the possibility that these news stories are just being floated to gauge public response?
I couldn't help it... it just popped in there. I was thinking I could use a good caffeine lift and suddently I was thinking of a cool, refreshing Mountain Dew Code Red.
After the whole DeCSS thing, the public opinion swayed against the DMCA...
Public opinion? What public are you talking about? 99.9% of the American public doesn't know what the DMCA is, much less care about it. Our little community of techies is a small one and completely off the radar of the American media.
Trying to explain the situation to anyone besides the most technically literate people is like talking to a wall. The press has a wider audience than techies and I suspect that even the press doesn't understand the case very well.
In an unprecedented show of force against an extremely virulent Internet attack, government and private officials will tomorrow implore worldwide organisations to protect themselves from the "Code Red" worm.
In a not-so-unprecidented show of FUD, the government is finally getting the the boogey man they so desparately need in order to swing public opinion toward the side of deepening regulation of the internet.
Block not just the advertisers but the sites that accept such advertising. When I see a pop-up (or under) ad appear, I send that site a message stating that I'm adding their domain to my hosts file pointing to 0.0.0.0 (and then that's exactly what I do). I offer them my email address and tell them that when the stop accepting pop-up and pop-under advertising to drop me a note because I'd be happy to remove them from my hosts file.
Unfortunately, I'm now blocking myself from some fairly decent sites, but that's the price they pay for using the same slimy advertising techniques as spammers, pornographers, and fortune tellers.
I found this quote from the article rather bothersome...
...they believe, the system could work faster, avoid traffic jams, distinguish between high-priority data and other material that can wait,...
I'm sorry, but I'm paying for some of that pipe too... who is anyone else to say that my email to my mom containing a picture of my son is any more or less important than some banks finanacial data or someone's pr0n download.
If companies want better reliability, build private networks... nothing is stopping them.
Why not go to trial? Because we're not talking about "some Russian guy". He's a guy, with a family, in jail, away from home.
It not up to you or anyone else to use him to test the DMCA. If he wants to, fine. But the sense I get from reading things is that he'd just like to go home and have this whole thing behind him.
Just one... a verified "using this method" CD. In the last Slashdot article about this, no one came up with a single title except for the Charlie Pride thing that seems to be something different.
They claimed to have released "thousands" of such CDs.
OK... anyone... name one. Just one. What record companies are using this?
And yes, part of the reason I'm asking this is because I want to see what I can do with one....
And then of course there's Nirvana's Nevermind. The last track (Something in the way) ends with about 10 minutes of silence... then another song starts (it has no name, but has been called "Endless Nameless" by most). All on one track. Sucks if you have that CD in the disc changer on shuffle mode. There's music... and then silence. I've heard that Kurt did this intentionally because he didn't like the idea of CDs being shuffled.
That's not what the original poster said. All he said is that it's deceptive for the record companies to implement this without telling us. Not that they don't have a right to do it, just that this is a change in the standard way that CDs are produced and we as consumers should be notified.
Snover, you're missing the point about normalizing. Recordings aren't all recorded the same. Some are compressed, and some aren't. Just normalizing to 90% WILL NOT make everything sound the same volume.
With regards to 160K vs 320K.mp3, you're right... with that encoding technology, you're past the point of diminshing returns. The higher bitrates are wasted. But it makes a big difference for uncompressed audio. 44.1 KHz is the bare minimum sampling rate.
And yes, you're using inferior equipment. It's good, but not anywhere near audiophile quality. Those speakers have incredibly limited dynamic range and the soundcard is noisy and distorted.
But no, people aren't taking things too far. The sound quality is important to some people. It's important to me. You don't care, and that's fine. I wish I could be satisfied with such a system... it would save me a lot of money. I've spent 10 times what you have on my audio system and I'm not satisfied with the sound yet...
No, not all. I have MANY CDs that are currently produced that are either a) not normalized and/or b) not compressed. Though many are.
Certainly the sound quality of CDs has increased a whole lot over the past 10 years. The recording process has a lot to do with that, as does the digital conversion process. I don't think that record companies suddently decided to normalize everything.
These days, when the music is recorded and mixed in digital, it is done so at FAR higher sampling and word-size than previously (maybe 128KHz, 32 bit). What that does is to allow fine-tuning of compression schemes that really couldn't be done well on 44.1 KHz / 16 bit recordings.
Since there's no "standard" for recording, it's hard to put together a compliation of different recordings that sound the same volume. Compression helps, but negatively impacts the sound. What I've done is to take the.wav files and look at the meatier parts of the songs. Then using Cool Edit 2000, get the RMS power over those sections. Then normalize all the songs so that they're all about the same. Unfortunatly, this ends up causing some sounds to be clipped (over 0db), but I've found that I really can't tell that much because DA converters today have an easier time dealing with that (in general, sharp edges are bad and cheap DA's have a tough time with them).
I have used compression to get around the problem, but I'm usually not happy with the resulting sound.
Slashdot Mirror
>I don't see the problem
When it's YOU the FBI may be targeting, come back and tell us if you still think it's not a problem.
-S
-S
As much as I'd like to see the charges tossed out now (I doubt that DS wants to be a pawn in this... he probably just wants to go back to Russia), going to trial could be quite helpful. Unlike the 2600 trial, this one could easily be painted in a better light.
One of the things his software is capable of doing is to allow blind people to read these e-books. Imagine THAT testimony in front of a jury!
And what would Adobe's representatives say when they take the stand? (and you can be sure that they will) They backed off once. Will they say "No, this hasn't hurt us." Or will they backtrack once again and call for him to be put in jail. Surely their calls to have him released will enter into the testimony?
No jury of "average" Americans will be able to wrap their heads around the technical issues of the DMCA. It's going to be the simple things like "this software allows blind people to read e-books" that will sway them one way or the other.
-S
Here's my mini review...
Expidant, Inc.? Never heard of it.
'nuf said.
-S
I want to see the DMCA crushed and Dimitri get to go back home, but in every other /. article I've read, it makes mention of him SELLING the software at the convention. I agree that the law is bogus and should be declared unconstitutional, but what happened didn't just happen in Russia. The moment he sold the program in the US, if in fact that's what he did, he broke (a very broken and unjust) law. Sad, but true.
Lets not that little fact escape the discussion...
-S
-S
Hold it a second... we want to maintain rights to do what we please with that which we own/buy, but you want to take away the rights of congress to screw/do who they please (consensual of course)?
Huh? This is a discussion about freedom and not having companies or government overly interfering in our lives. But its OK if we interfere in theirs?
Sorry... does not compute.
-S
Code Red is providing a convenient excuse to the feds to call for further regulation of the internet.
"Our economy DEPENDS on the internet!" they'll cry. "We can't let our country be reduced to rubble by some malicious hacker!"
And of course the press buys right into it. The DMCA, bills to punish users of school networks and computers, laws with stricter penalties for hackers than murderers... expect it to accelerate. Worms like Code Red just give the feds the ammunition they need in the court of public opinion.
-S
Yes, that was mentioned but it was using a different technology and not the macrovision technology. Apparently the experiment failed because lots of people returned the CDs because they often would fail to play on regular CD players.
The technology we're looking for is from macrovision and discussed in this article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/19/007240 &mode=nested
-S
Troll? Oh, come on. First we read that they've released THOUSANDS of CDs with this Macrovision technology on them... yet still not one title documented.
/. I've asked if anyone has a title... just one. NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA what titles this was used on. The people here have an incredible ability to dig up bits of relevant data on a variety of subjects. But not this one. Not a single title verified. Without that data, I'm highly skeptical that the copy protection, if there is any, has been broken.
Then we read "Oh joy! The protection has been broken!" Broken on WHAT? Until someone can produce a title and say what was done, I don't believe that there's really any "protected" CDs out there, and I don't believe that there's any protection that has been broken. Is that so hard to figure out. I'll change my tune as soon as someone identifies a CD that this has been done to.
Every single time this has come up on
Has anyone considered the possibility that these news stories are just being floated to gauge public response?
-S
I have yet to see any titles of these so-called protected CDs. Until I see a title, I don't believe any of it.
-S
Choose the form of the destructor!
You have chosen!
Woa woa woa, I didn't choose anything. Did you?
No.
Well I didn't chose anything
I couldn't help it... it just popped in there. I was thinking I could use a good caffeine lift and suddently I was thinking of a cool, refreshing Mountain Dew Code Red.
Public opinion? What public are you talking about? 99.9% of the American public doesn't know what the DMCA is, much less care about it. Our little community of techies is a small one and completely off the radar of the American media.
-S
Trying to explain the situation to anyone besides the most technically literate people is like talking to a wall. The press has a wider audience than techies and I suspect that even the press doesn't understand the case very well.
-S
In a not-so-unprecidented show of FUD, the government is finally getting the the boogey man they so desparately need in order to swing public opinion toward the side of deepening regulation of the internet.
-S
Block not just the advertisers but the sites that accept such advertising. When I see a pop-up (or under) ad appear, I send that site a message stating that I'm adding their domain to my hosts file pointing to 0.0.0.0 (and then that's exactly what I do). I offer them my email address and tell them that when the stop accepting pop-up and pop-under advertising to drop me a note because I'd be happy to remove them from my hosts file.
Unfortunately, I'm now blocking myself from some fairly decent sites, but that's the price they pay for using the same slimy advertising techniques as spammers, pornographers, and fortune tellers.
-S
I'm sorry, but I'm paying for some of that pipe too... who is anyone else to say that my email to my mom containing a picture of my son is any more or less important than some banks finanacial data or someone's pr0n download.
If companies want better reliability, build private networks... nothing is stopping them.
-S
Why not go to trial? Because we're not talking about "some Russian guy". He's a guy, with a family, in jail, away from home.
It not up to you or anyone else to use him to test the DMCA. If he wants to, fine. But the sense I get from reading things is that he'd just like to go home and have this whole thing behind him.
-S
Ohg jung vs V npghnyyl fcrnx va EBG13? Pna V tb gb wnvy sbe ernqvat naq jevgvat va zl bja angvir ynathntr?
-F
Which CDs....? We want titles!
-S
They claimed to have released "thousands" of such CDs.
OK... anyone... name one. Just one. What record companies are using this?
And yes, part of the reason I'm asking this is because I want to see what I can do with one....
-S
And then of course there's Nirvana's Nevermind. The last track (Something in the way) ends with about 10 minutes of silence... then another song starts (it has no name, but has been called "Endless Nameless" by most). All on one track. Sucks if you have that CD in the disc changer on shuffle mode. There's music... and then silence. I've heard that Kurt did this intentionally because he didn't like the idea of CDs being shuffled.
-S
That's not what the original poster said. All he said is that it's deceptive for the record companies to implement this without telling us. Not that they don't have a right to do it, just that this is a change in the standard way that CDs are produced and we as consumers should be notified.
-S
Snover, you're missing the point about normalizing. Recordings aren't all recorded the same. Some are compressed, and some aren't. Just normalizing to 90% WILL NOT make everything sound the same volume.
.mp3, you're right... with that encoding technology, you're past the point of diminshing returns. The higher bitrates are wasted. But it makes a big difference for uncompressed audio. 44.1 KHz is the bare minimum sampling rate.
With regards to 160K vs 320K
And yes, you're using inferior equipment. It's good, but not anywhere near audiophile quality. Those speakers have incredibly limited dynamic range and the soundcard is noisy and distorted.
But no, people aren't taking things too far. The sound quality is important to some people. It's important to me. You don't care, and that's fine. I wish I could be satisfied with such a system... it would save me a lot of money. I've spent 10 times what you have on my audio system and I'm not satisfied with the sound yet...
-S
No, not all. I have MANY CDs that are currently produced that are either a) not normalized and/or b) not compressed. Though many are.
.wav files and look at the meatier parts of the songs. Then using Cool Edit 2000, get the RMS power over those sections. Then normalize all the songs so that they're all about the same. Unfortunatly, this ends up causing some sounds to be clipped (over 0db), but I've found that I really can't tell that much because DA converters today have an easier time dealing with that (in general, sharp edges are bad and cheap DA's have a tough time with them).
Certainly the sound quality of CDs has increased a whole lot over the past 10 years. The recording process has a lot to do with that, as does the digital conversion process. I don't think that record companies suddently decided to normalize everything.
These days, when the music is recorded and mixed in digital, it is done so at FAR higher sampling and word-size than previously (maybe 128KHz, 32 bit). What that does is to allow fine-tuning of compression schemes that really couldn't be done well on 44.1 KHz / 16 bit recordings.
Since there's no "standard" for recording, it's hard to put together a compliation of different recordings that sound the same volume. Compression helps, but negatively impacts the sound. What I've done is to take the
I have used compression to get around the problem, but I'm usually not happy with the resulting sound.
-S