If all it takes for a company to sue to obtain another company's customer data, then I can imagine other competitors in other markets doing the same to crush the competition. Make up a plausible but legally flimsy claim and you too can access your competition's customer base! If your sales men can't get them to switch, find a way to sue them for not buying.
I love it. Hey Lotus.. Have you got a beef with MS for taking your e-mail consumers and the loss of sales of Notes? Sue them and do a discovery. It'l be great for your next promotion of secure e-mail clients. Look! No VBS exploits! What a campaign with all the MSN and Hotmail accounts. The real goldmine however is everybodys E-mail that downloaded a patch for Outlook! Somebody return the Discovery favor and put the shoe on the other foot for size!
If the multiple PC's are identical, Let someone reverse engineer a power supply. Most have a timer on the Power Good line. It times out after the supply is stable. A selection of delay caps for the various supplies should delay the startup of the machines. This way when the mains for the rack is turned on, the machines would boot up after various delays.
Similarly, if some guy named MCDonald named a single resturaunt after himself beforeThis happened. There was a McDonalds Restraunt and Bar in the Cayman Islands. (it's gone now)I never ate there as the place looked like a dump. I guess that is why they folded. However that is why the island had a Wendys, and a couple Burger Kings, but no golden arches. They refused to change their name to open a place on the island. The name was already taken in that country. They couldn't intimidate the local government to force a change of the other restruant. The golden arches company still hasn't built a restraunt there. You can check for your self in the phone book here. http://www.candw.ky/ C and W stands for Cable and Wireless, the phone company on the island. Search the business listings of the phone book. There is no McDonalds. There is two Wendys and two Burger Kings.
As long as "normal" software and protocols work, there's probably not going to be a compelling reason to switch to the new protected ones. They are betting people will still want the latest and greatest content. It will requiere a decoder box and subscription, just like cable TV. New content will Pay Per View, just like cable TV is now. It will be a closed format and limited on what will decode it, just like cable or Direct TV is now. You can throw a box on the TV cable line or LNB cable from the dish and make a perfect copy of the datastream now (with the right equipment) and take it to a friends house and play it back unmodified, but his equipment still will not decode and play it. That's how it will work. Your decoder will have an address. So will his. The same datastream fed to both boxes will not be treated the same. No subscription = no playback.
People will get the new hardware to get the new content. Using the excuse my TV and antenna on the roof is perfectly fine is the same reason you gave nobody will get the new system.
By the same logic, nobody would get Cable or Direct TV and use some copy protected format requiring a decoder and subscription.
Too bad the industry didn't keep the promise it made. When laser disks came out, they promised they would become cheaper than videotapes. (when tapes were in the $50 range) Tapes bacame cheaper and the disks started sporting premium content at higher prices. I was a fool and bought a good laser disk player (partly because is was real NTSC). While waiting for the promise to be kept, I kept buying videotapes. In 20 years my laser disk collection is still less than one dozen. I dust it off once a year near Christmas and enjoy a good copy of Disney's Fantasia. It is a fantastic experiance on a good system. I haven't bothered with a DVD (other than the one that came in my latest computer) because of the promise not kept. I bought a DVD to test the player (2nd hand in rebellion). On the computer, the video has short video freezes between chapters (Fiddler on the Roof), so my experiance so far is Laser Disk is much better quality than DVD. Maybe I have a poorly put together DVD or cheap player for comparison. The Laser Disk does not stutter the playback.
Recently RIAA lowered their prices to US$10 for a regular CD. If I'm really interested in an artist I would buy a ten-buck-cd, I would pay for audio quality, and even for graphical quality (and of course know the real music name:o) and for a nice case.
They did? How come my local retailers haven't noticed? Most stuff is still 12.99 and up.
Oh! you are talking wholsale to the retailers.. Sorry.
I have excellent dialup service. Maybe once a week I fail to connect on the first try. The bad service of dialup is a non issue here.
I have yet to find any broadband service in my area anywhere near only $20 over the $12 I pay for dialup.
Paying an additional $20 would almost double my cost and provide 0% increase in content or reliability.
There is no high speed connection in my area that cheap.
Any soultion I have found is more than 4X the cost. I'll wait for it to come down. I'll let the bandwidth hogs pay the all you can eat rate. I don't need it.
I do not use bandwidth intensive applications. I'm not into piracy, grabbing everything in sight.
I read Slashdot, E-mail, News and weather, Linux Gazette, Geocaching.com, and some other things.
Quite often While I am still reading a long thread, I'll drop the line, so the phone can ring or I can place a call.
Using zero bandwidth at this time is not a loss of any kind.
Nothing stops me from reading the thread or article because I have no connection. Reconnecting is quick and reliable. I have heard the horror stories, but they do not apply here.
I do buffer stuff for reading. I open many links to queue up stuff to read.
This takes care of any latency problems. Stuff is already open when I get to reading it.
As I mentioned earlier, if I need a big download, I do it at work.
I'm hanging on an OC38 at work with connection speeds in the 60 MEG range at my desk. This makes ISDN and DSL look like dialup.
Connections drop at home only when I press disconnect.
I think many people went to broadband, because they got garbage dialup service. I learned to rate any ISP before signing up.
The test includes calling the POP number servral times during prime time to see if it's ever busy. More than one busy in a week is a rejection.
Number of hops from my job.
An ISP with poor upstream bandwidth is rejected.
Visiting anything.edu is like going back to dialup! If I don't get the ISP's home page instantly at work, it indicates a latency or bandwidth problem. Anything more than 3 hops away is rejected.
Low price. Enough said.
Use standard dialer. No addware/spyware here. Raw connectons only.
Hosting and multiple mailboxes are pluses, but not essentials.
From a list of a dozen canidates, it didn't take long to find 3 acceptible services. The best part is the best services were in the lower half of the price range. The cheapest was trash and the most expensive was average. It seems the best hyped ISP got the power users and bogged it down. A smaller local ISP had the best test results and my business.
I am not using a free service. That has proved to be a non-service long ago. Connect on first try was very rare and dropped connections were the norm, not the exception. That level of service is unacceptable except for the really cheap leaches.
I knew that. I posted that so people know that it could lead to legal action and consider the choices carefully. Then make an informed decision. Not being a laywer, I have no idea how bad the law can be used to slap you. With cable TV in the USA, theft of service no matter how little opens you up to being billed for many years of all the permium services on the system including pay per view regardless if you were able to swipe them all. Full access for several years of theft is assumed and need not be proven. The arm of the law is harsh to discourage theft of service. That is why I dropped cable service entirely. The temptation was great (I hack hardware) and the risk was way too much. Not having the service at all closed the huge liability hole. It was too dangerous to keep cable. I could not afford to get caught dinking with a cable box. I do not know if broadband has the same stiff penaltys. Check with your provider. Know the risk.
I could find nothing in the spec or features list regarding any kind of internal MIDI synth. It does not claim to have a hardware wavetable or soft synth. It seems to have external only. It does not even state it has the junky OLP3 Yamaha cheap synth. If you want to have MIDI, I guess you will have to lug along your keyboard or find a used Roland Sound Canvas 55 module to plug in.
Having real DIN MIDI connections is nice however for the MIDI musicians.
I wonder how many people missed the information in the Pop-Up on the MacWorld website.
I almost closed it as another X10 or other spam. It actualy had something to do with the convention.
I wonder if it was a mistake putting real information in the pop-up as most people are contidioned to kill pop-ups on the spot without even looking at them.
It's amazing how non-internet guru's can use the net to spot a hoax. If he names attorneys, he should use real ones. Maybe he didn't use real attorneys because he might get sued by them for mis-representation.
Could this be considered theft of service? Is it in violation of the TOS? Could legal action be taken for this. IANAL You may want to consult with legal councel to see if this opens any legal issues. This may be nothing more that stealing bandwidth from other users by screwing up the load balancing the ISP is using. Too many leaches may kill the host.
MS will be sure to tie up content to require a passport account and.net. Not using a MS standard will keep you on the sidelines in the future. For examples, check any office for MS formats vs Wordperfect documents. I rest my case...
Maybe I'm cheap, but I don't mind dialup at home. I don't need a fat pipe to post on slashdot, fetch e-mail, or search for modem drivers on the net. I do like cutting off the telemarketers with a busy signal while I'm searching or reading a good article. My pager and cell still works for friends and family. The extra $40/month saved on a fat pipe is what buys all my hardware upgrades. In the saved money, I can get a decent new machine every 3 years. For fat pipe stuff (major software DL) I use the connection at work. It makes DSL look like dialup. I'm on the end of and OC38. I hit the DSL reports page at 60 MEG, not 120K. The last Netscape DL took less than 300 seconds.
You do realize that you're paying royalties twice for the same music, don't you? Yes. I pay the huge royalty for the original which I keep locked up at home and less than a dollar for the other copies. If I could just pay the lower royalty and take my blanks (Audio with royalty paid) into the music store with my laptop and legaly borrow the originals for a few minutes... Of course I am paying an additional royalty. I am expanding the lisence of the original product. Public performance also requires an additional royalty. Space & time shifting is worth the royalty for the privilage of not carying the originals in my car.
Which OSS philanthropist wants that job? More important, how can you sell the OSS format to the media company when they require something with content protection?
Not long. Think downloadable movies/ encrypted data/ hardware & OS that only works with MS certified drivers/ Media companies that want to limit copies/ Draw your own conclusions. They are right. I'm thinking DL'ing a movie for a fee about the price of a DVD on the shelf, Encrypeted to only work on the machine that DL'ed it. The DL would only allow one DVD to be made per purchase. You can't copy / rip this and give it to your friends and have it work! Thats my theory because it locks in MS (they like that) and it makes the media companies happy (the only way they will allow a DL and burn copy) If you want a copy for the guy next door, you will have to buy each and every copy to get it coded for each player. My hope is it's too much hassle and cost to make it worth the effort so it dies on the vine.
Re:copy protection only hurts legitimate users.
on
Future of Music Summit
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It also hurts the not so legitmate users. Now instead of a simple copyright violation, it becomes a DMCA violation. The act opens the door to some nasty legal action under the DMCA. You think Business Software Aliance raids were ugly with MS EULA opening doors for raids. The DMCA is worse. I am working on the EULA thing. New machines only run the bundled software that came with it and nothing else, and home built machines run OSS. CD's will be viewed the same way. If there is a major legal liabilaty with fair use due to the DMCA, that software will not be owned by me. I will only buy CD's that do not require violation of the DMCA to use.
The royalty payments are on Digital Audio Tape, Blank Music Compact Discs, and Mini Discs. There are not any music royaltys on DATA CD's. Using a data CD for music is wrong. The royalty is not paid. Using a music CD for data backup is stupid. I agree, why pay music royaltys on your data backups? (unless it's your Napster directory)
I keep stock of both kinds of CD blanks for these reasons. I do have copies of some of my cd's to use at work and in the car. That's what the mucic CD blanks are legaly for. Any CD that won't work with the music blanks gets returned as defective. I refuse to buy/own defective CD's.
Hopefully all the major console manufactures will provide ethernet connections and make the software multi platform. Then you could join a lan party with whatever box you had.
It won't happen right away. Can you say product lock-in with propritory protocols? This ides of speaking a common language will take a while to catch on. It will only happen after sticking to a closed protocol proves to be much more detrimental to your sales more than it does the competition.
MS is of going to require.net and passport trying for the lock-in, while everyone else goes high speed lan protocols not needing a remote server on the internet. Expect something propritory first. (like they already do with memory cards. Why couldn't they use a smart media or compact flash card?) They will have to join forces and use an open standard (TCP/IP or IPX maybe?) to pull an end run past the 800 Lb gorilla. Not everyone is going to buy a console and set of games from each manufacture just to have the correct software/hardware for the lan parties. Hopefully games on consoles will start to be compatible with PC platforms and they can sell the consoles because they are optimised for game play and start to clean up at lan parties with a mix of PC's and consoles. Then we should start to see the adoption common connections and protocols
A geosync orbit on the earth gets the force averaged out as the moon orbits the earth.. The moon does not have that advantage.
A syncronus orbit on the moon would have a additive one direction pull on the satelite steadly pulling it out of position. Check the path of the orbit of anything placed in a stationary orbit over anyplace on the moon except directly between the moon and earth, or directly over the far side of the moon. A handy spot "beside" the moon where the earth and farside of the moon can communicate in a stationary orbit will not stay put for long.
The accelerating force is in one direction for a very long period of time. Earth satelites do not have this problem as the lunar gravity pulls for a relatively short period of time in one direction and shifts in the other direction for the same period of time as the moon orbits. The satelites wobble a little just like the ocean tides come and go. A moon satelite will get pulled and keep going... it won't wobble just a little. It will move until it reached the other side (East to West) and then it will come back (West to East). True it will take years to get a cycle complete, but the thing will not stay stationary.
I paid the royalty to the music industry to buy that variety (blank music media) of blank. Royalty paid = OK to use for music. It's the same thing when I register my auto. I also think I then have a right to drive it on a public road.
Nothing is illegal at this point as long as you pay the tax. With the tax, copying music is assumed. Without the tax, it is piracy. Be sure you use Music CD's or Music Mini Disks and not your hard drive or data CD's for your music. That would be a crime.
It could be that the CD prices (blanks not the other kind) have fallen so much I don't bother with RW disks anymore for my perodic backups. Re formatting them takes too long. This has nothing to do with music of any kind and has everyting to do with keeping the family photo ablums up to date and the tax records, E-Mail and school homework projects archived. I quit using streaming tape. A 250 Meg backup on a tape takes a lot of time and isn't reliable. It's also a waste of time retensioning and reformatting them. I don't buy audio blank CD's because there is no reason to pay a tax to the music industry to back up my server.
Sometimes all it would take to mess up a satelite requires very little knowledge of the command structure. All that is needed is someone to capture station keeping packets and retransmit them at a later time. This hack has been used by thieves to shut off car alarms and open garrage doors. That is why rolling codes are now used on most car alarms and door openers. Overcorrection may put the satelite out of orbit and deplete the station keeping fuel.
Maybe as part of the obscurity is security protection, a jamming signal should be broadcast at the time commands are sent. The jammer would use a vertical dipole to provide bogus packets to sniffers while the high gain antenna reaches the satelite with the valid signal. The dish sidelobes could be easly hidden from sniffers. Has anyone thought of implimenting the jamming the sidelobes?? Any command should have a time code and rolling code included so any record and rebroadcast attack will not be accepted. For as much money that goes into the birds, innexpensive security could save a lot of insurance money.
Slashdot Mirror
I love it. Hey Lotus.. Have you got a beef with MS for taking your e-mail consumers and the loss of sales of Notes? Sue them and do a discovery. It'l be great for your next promotion of secure e-mail clients. Look! No VBS exploits! What a campaign with all the MSN and Hotmail accounts. The real goldmine however is everybodys E-mail that downloaded a patch for Outlook! Somebody return the Discovery favor and put the shoe on the other foot for size!
If the multiple PC's are identical, Let someone reverse engineer a power supply. Most have a timer on the Power Good line. It times out after the supply is stable. A selection of delay caps for the various supplies should delay the startup of the machines. This way when the mains for the rack is turned on, the machines would boot up after various delays.
Similarly, if some guy named MCDonald named a single resturaunt after himself beforeThis happened. There was a McDonalds Restraunt and Bar in the Cayman Islands. (it's gone now)I never ate there as the place looked like a dump. I guess that is why they folded. However that is why the island had a Wendys, and a couple Burger Kings, but no golden arches. They refused to change their name to open a place on the island. The name was already taken in that country. They couldn't intimidate the local government to force a change of the other restruant. The golden arches company still hasn't built a restraunt there. You can check for your self in the phone book here. http://www.candw.ky/ C and W stands for Cable and Wireless, the phone company on the island. Search the business listings of the phone book. There is no McDonalds. There is two Wendys and two Burger Kings.
As long as "normal" software and protocols work, there's probably not going to be a compelling reason to switch to the new protected ones.
They are betting people will still want the latest and greatest content. It will requiere a decoder box and subscription, just like cable TV. New content will Pay Per View, just like cable TV is now. It will be a closed format and limited on what will decode it, just like cable or Direct TV is now. You can throw a box on the TV cable line or LNB cable from the dish and make a perfect copy of the datastream now (with the right equipment) and take it to a friends house and play it back unmodified, but his equipment still will not decode and play it. That's how it will work. Your decoder will have an address. So will his. The same datastream fed to both boxes will not be treated the same. No subscription = no playback.
People will get the new hardware to get the new content.
Using the excuse my TV and antenna on the roof is perfectly fine is the same reason you gave nobody will get the new system.
By the same logic, nobody would get Cable or Direct TV and use some copy protected format requiring a decoder and subscription.
Too bad the industry didn't keep the promise it made. When laser disks came out, they promised they would become cheaper than videotapes. (when tapes were in the $50 range) Tapes bacame cheaper and the disks started sporting premium content at higher prices. I was a fool and bought a good laser disk player (partly because is was real NTSC). While waiting for the promise to be kept, I kept buying videotapes. In 20 years my laser disk collection is still less than one dozen. I dust it off once a year near Christmas and enjoy a good copy of Disney's Fantasia. It is a fantastic experiance on a good system. I haven't bothered with a DVD (other than the one that came in my latest computer) because of the promise not kept. I bought a DVD to test the player (2nd hand in rebellion). On the computer, the video has short video freezes between chapters (Fiddler on the Roof), so my experiance so far is Laser Disk is much better quality than DVD. Maybe I have a poorly put together DVD or cheap player for comparison. The Laser Disk does not stutter the playback.
Recently RIAA lowered their prices to US$10 for a regular CD. If I'm really interested in an artist I would buy a ten-buck-cd, I would pay for audio quality, and even for graphical quality (and of course know the real music name :o) and for a nice case.
They did? How come my local retailers haven't noticed? Most stuff is still 12.99 and up.
Oh! you are talking wholsale to the retailers.. Sorry.
I have excellent dialup service. Maybe once a week I fail to connect on the first try. The bad service of dialup is a non issue here.
.edu is like going back to dialup! If I don't get the ISP's home page instantly at work, it indicates a latency or bandwidth problem. Anything more than 3 hops away is rejected.
I have yet to find any broadband service in my area anywhere near only $20 over the $12 I pay for dialup.
Paying an additional $20 would almost double my cost and provide 0% increase in content or reliability.
There is no high speed connection in my area that cheap.
Any soultion I have found is more than 4X the cost. I'll wait for it to come down. I'll let the bandwidth hogs pay the all you can eat rate. I don't need it.
I do not use bandwidth intensive applications. I'm not into piracy, grabbing everything in sight.
I read Slashdot, E-mail, News and weather, Linux Gazette, Geocaching.com, and some other things.
Quite often While I am still reading a long thread, I'll drop the line, so the phone can ring or I can place a call.
Using zero bandwidth at this time is not a loss of any kind.
Nothing stops me from reading the thread or article because I have no connection. Reconnecting is quick and reliable. I have heard the horror stories, but they do not apply here.
I do buffer stuff for reading. I open many links to queue up stuff to read.
This takes care of any latency problems. Stuff is already open when I get to reading it.
As I mentioned earlier, if I need a big download, I do it at work.
I'm hanging on an OC38 at work with connection speeds in the 60 MEG range at my desk. This makes ISDN and DSL look like dialup.
Connections drop at home only when I press disconnect.
I think many people went to broadband, because they got garbage dialup service. I learned to rate any ISP before signing up.
The test includes calling the POP number servral times during prime time to see if it's ever busy. More than one busy in a week is a rejection.
Number of hops from my job.
An ISP with poor upstream bandwidth is rejected.
Visiting anything
Low price. Enough said.
Use standard dialer. No addware/spyware here. Raw connectons only.
Hosting and multiple mailboxes are pluses, but not essentials.
From a list of a dozen canidates, it didn't take long to find 3 acceptible services. The best part is the best services were in the lower half of the price range. The cheapest was trash and the most expensive was average. It seems the best hyped ISP got the power users and bogged it down. A smaller local ISP had the best test results and my business.
I am not using a free service. That has proved to be a non-service long ago. Connect on first try was very rare and dropped connections were the norm, not the exception. That level of service is unacceptable except for the really cheap leaches.
I knew that. I posted that so people know that it could lead to legal action and consider the choices carefully. Then make an informed decision. Not being a laywer, I have no idea how bad the law can be used to slap you. With cable TV in the USA, theft of service no matter how little opens you up to being billed for many years of all the permium services on the system including pay per view regardless if you were able to swipe them all. Full access for several years of theft is assumed and need not be proven. The arm of the law is harsh to discourage theft of service. That is why I dropped cable service entirely. The temptation was great (I hack hardware) and the risk was way too much. Not having the service at all closed the huge liability hole. It was too dangerous to keep cable. I could not afford to get caught dinking with a cable box. I do not know if broadband has the same stiff penaltys. Check with your provider. Know the risk.
I could find nothing in the spec or features list regarding any kind of internal MIDI synth. It does not claim to have a hardware wavetable or soft synth. It seems to have external only. It does not even state it has the junky OLP3 Yamaha cheap synth. If you want to have MIDI, I guess you will have to lug along your keyboard or find a used Roland Sound Canvas 55 module to plug in.
Having real DIN MIDI connections is nice however for the MIDI musicians.
I wonder how many people missed the information in the Pop-Up on the MacWorld website.
I almost closed it as another X10 or other spam. It actualy had something to do with the convention.
I wonder if it was a mistake putting real information in the pop-up as most people are contidioned to kill pop-ups on the spot without even looking at them.
Just to confirm the obvious, I checked the online phone book. The result is here.
= basic&inreg_flag=N&dir=91600&metro=1&heading_id=22 2&heading=Attorneys&state=IL&city=CHICAGO&alpha=Ts &alphaend=Tz
http://www.qwestdex.com/cgi/search.fcg?resultform
It's amazing how non-internet guru's can use the net to spot a hoax. If he names attorneys, he should use real ones. Maybe he didn't use real attorneys because he might get sued by them for mis-representation.
Could this be considered theft of service? Is it in violation of the TOS? Could legal action be taken for this. IANAL You may want to consult with legal councel to see if this opens any legal issues. This may be nothing more that stealing bandwidth from other users by screwing up the load balancing the ISP is using. Too many leaches may kill the host.
MS will be sure to tie up content to require a passport account and .net. Not using a MS standard will keep you on the sidelines in the future. For examples, check any office for MS formats vs Wordperfect documents. I rest my case...
Maybe I'm cheap, but I don't mind dialup at home. I don't need a fat pipe to post on slashdot, fetch e-mail, or search for modem drivers on the net. I do like cutting off the telemarketers with a busy signal while I'm searching or reading a good article. My pager and cell still works for friends and family. The extra $40/month saved on a fat pipe is what buys all my hardware upgrades. In the saved money, I can get a decent new machine every 3 years. For fat pipe stuff (major software DL) I use the connection at work. It makes DSL look like dialup. I'm on the end of and OC38. I hit the DSL reports page at 60 MEG, not 120K. The last Netscape DL took less than 300 seconds.
You do realize that you're paying royalties twice for the same music, don't you?
Yes. I pay the huge royalty for the original which I keep locked up at home and less than a dollar for the other copies. If I could just pay the lower royalty and take my blanks (Audio with royalty paid) into the music store with my laptop and legaly borrow the originals for a few minutes... Of course I am paying an additional royalty. I am expanding the lisence of the original product. Public performance also requires an additional royalty. Space & time shifting is worth the royalty for the privilage of not carying the originals in my car.
Which OSS philanthropist wants that job?
More important, how can you sell the OSS format to the media company when they require something with content protection?
Not long. Think downloadable movies/ encrypted data/ hardware & OS that only works with MS certified drivers/ Media companies that want to limit copies/ Draw your own conclusions. They are right. I'm thinking DL'ing a movie for a fee about the price of a DVD on the shelf, Encrypeted to only work on the machine that DL'ed it. The DL would only allow one DVD to be made per purchase. You can't copy / rip this and give it to your friends and have it work! Thats my theory because it locks in MS (they like that) and it makes the media companies happy (the only way they will allow a DL and burn copy) If you want a copy for the guy next door, you will have to buy each and every copy to get it coded for each player. My hope is it's too much hassle and cost to make it worth the effort so it dies on the vine.
It also hurts the not so legitmate users. Now instead of a simple copyright violation, it becomes a DMCA violation. The act opens the door to some nasty legal action under the DMCA. You think Business Software Aliance raids were ugly with MS EULA opening doors for raids. The DMCA is worse. I am working on the EULA thing. New machines only run the bundled software that came with it and nothing else, and home built machines run OSS. CD's will be viewed the same way.
If there is a major legal liabilaty with fair use due to the DMCA, that software will not be owned by me. I will only buy CD's that do not require violation of the DMCA to use.
The royalty payments are on Digital Audio Tape, Blank Music Compact Discs, and Mini Discs. There are not any music royaltys on DATA CD's. Using a data CD for music is wrong. The royalty is not paid. Using a music CD for data backup is stupid. I agree, why pay music royaltys on your data backups? (unless it's your Napster directory)
I keep stock of both kinds of CD blanks for these reasons. I do have copies of some of my cd's to use at work and in the car. That's what the mucic CD blanks are legaly for. Any CD that won't work with the music blanks gets returned as defective. I refuse to buy/own defective CD's.
It won't happen right away. Can you say product lock-in with propritory protocols? This ides of speaking a common language will take a while to catch on. It will only happen after sticking to a closed protocol proves to be much more detrimental to your sales more than it does the competition.
MS is of going to require .net and passport trying for the lock-in, while everyone else goes high speed lan protocols not needing a remote server on the internet. Expect something propritory first. (like they already do with memory cards. Why couldn't they use a smart media or compact flash card?) They will have to join forces and use an open standard (TCP/IP or IPX maybe?) to pull an end run past the 800 Lb gorilla. Not everyone is going to buy a console and set of games from each manufacture just to have the correct software/hardware for the lan parties. Hopefully games on consoles will start to be compatible with PC platforms and they can sell the consoles because they are optimised for game play and start to clean up at lan parties with a mix of PC's and consoles. Then we should start to see the adoption common connections and protocols
A syncronus orbit on the moon would have a additive one direction pull on the satelite steadly pulling it out of position. Check the path of the orbit of anything placed in a stationary orbit over anyplace on the moon except directly between the moon and earth, or directly over the far side of the moon. A handy spot "beside" the moon where the earth and farside of the moon can communicate in a stationary orbit will not stay put for long.
The accelerating force is in one direction for a very long period of time. Earth satelites do not have this problem as the lunar gravity pulls for a relatively short period of time in one direction and shifts in the other direction for the same period of time as the moon orbits. The satelites wobble a little just like the ocean tides come and go. A moon satelite will get pulled and keep going... it won't wobble just a little. It will move until it reached the other side (East to West) and then it will come back (West to East). True it will take years to get a cycle complete, but the thing will not stay stationary.
I paid the royalty to the music industry to buy that variety (blank music media) of blank. Royalty paid = OK to use for music. It's the same thing when I register my auto. I also think I then have a right to drive it on a public road.
Nothing is illegal at this point as long as you pay the tax. With the tax, copying music is assumed. Without the tax, it is piracy. Be sure you use Music CD's or Music Mini Disks and not your hard drive or data CD's for your music. That would be a crime.
It could be that the CD prices (blanks not the other kind) have fallen so much I don't bother with RW disks anymore for my perodic backups. Re formatting them takes too long. This has nothing to do with music of any kind and has everyting to do with keeping the family photo ablums up to date and the tax records, E-Mail and school homework projects archived. I quit using streaming tape. A 250 Meg backup on a tape takes a lot of time and isn't reliable. It's also a waste of time retensioning and reformatting them. I don't buy audio blank CD's because there is no reason to pay a tax to the music industry to back up my server.
Maybe as part of the obscurity is security protection, a jamming signal should be broadcast at the time commands are sent. The jammer would use a vertical dipole to provide bogus packets to sniffers while the high gain antenna reaches the satelite with the valid signal. The dish sidelobes could be easly hidden from sniffers. Has anyone thought of implimenting the jamming the sidelobes?? Any command should have a time code and rolling code included so any record and rebroadcast attack will not be accepted. For as much money that goes into the birds, innexpensive security could save a lot of insurance money.