Look at the server stats. I noticed that Apachie is the biggest server,followed by Netscape, followed by Unknown. The Unknown server is growing in size. I think this is deliberate!
Just cut and pasted from the Copyright.net Website.
Users who have their Napster accounts blocked receive a message when they log on to the service that refers them to.Copyright.net's Web site. There, they are told specifically why they were kicked off Napster and offered copyright-protected versions of the Orbison songs, which cost less than a dollar. These specially encrypted versions can be sent to other users, but they can be played just twice, at which point a message invites them to buy a copy.
It sure looks they would love to use a drive specific encryption on their 2 plays for a buck scheme! Notice how they didn't call a Napster MP3 copyrighted, but called the encrypted file copyright - protected. I thought all copyright stuff was copyright protected. I think they should have used the proper term here, Copy Protected! This is the future unless we refuse to buy it. I don't want a dongle hard drive! I want to use my RIO.
Get used to it. You will have to buy the CD to rip the MP3's for your RIO and indash MP3 Player.
I prefer the manufactures to have a web site properly listed with a search engine. If I want Ink Jet refill ink or Toner, I'll search for the best deal including shipping, bulk pricing, tools & supplies. Make sure the prices are listed. If the web site is only a brand impression site, I move on to products I can compare. Without prices, the product is not considered. What could better for advertisers than shoppers that are actualy looking for the product? Be there when I search! People who have to take the risk of entering a credit card online are not likely to impulse buy products. Banner adds are not the same as a Point Of Sale display ad in a store designed to generate an impulse purchase.
Net savy shoppers who do shop online rarely take the first product offered. It's seldom the best deal. Excessive advertising usualy indicates cheap goods with high markup and low value. Common examples are the flashy bouncing credit cards and of course the punch the monkey, mouse etc.
Did you notice it acts like a normal drive with the "Generic" feature turned off? It can be turned back on by the software! The media application software (MS RIAA blessed) will work only when the feature is turned on and can get the proper non-zero values that was used to encode the stuff on the hard drive. If the file is copied (as encrypted) to another hard drive, the software will get the wrong values from the new drive or no values (from an open drive) at all and will then be unable to decode and play the file. That's how the copy will be broken. It can only play from the drive the software wrote it onto. The RIAA blessed software will not write a file to an open drive. It will turn on the "generic" feature on a drive before saving a file using the unique drive ID to add the security wrapper to the file. An open drive can't play the file as it was encrypted without the same unique ID hard drive installed.
Notice how they word the "feature" as Generic when enabled implying the drive is non-standard when it is off or open?
If DC Sold un-encrypted scanners for say $15.00 and told people they could use them for anything, they might have gotten a user base of them installed and in constant use (like Napster). Then they could have sold Special Barcodes to advertisers that would turn on the tracking stuff and trigger their web link feature (or trigger it manually by pressing a button for your soup can). This way they could sell it to advertisers as having an active installed base of XXXXX users to target. Giving the scanners away put them in the hands of hackers of free stuff, not people who would use a bar code reader on a regular basis.
The marketing goof was requiring everything scanned to check into DC to be redirected to a webpage of the advertiser. This meant it could not be used (without hacking) for inventory of CD's and other non web applications. If a free mouse could only be used in a browser and noplace else, you would be much less likely to use the mouse for anything. But a free mouse that worked all your applications and tracked you on the web in a free browser & internet access (Juno, Freenet Etc.) then it might get a user base.
Think, How much does a banner ad cost CD-now to be on the Napster Client? They can charge for the space because of the installed user base.
It also says "new format". This means they will no longer be MP3's. This also means they can't be played on your RIO or in dash CD/MP3 deck. This is a Death Blow to Napster. It is the end of the consumer base. I'll bet Napster is less than one tenth the size it is now in less than 6 months. Once the usability is gone, so are the clients which is just what the RIAA wanted.
I just tried to do a cut and paste from the DataPlay website describing the encoder that takes a friendly MP3 file and encodes it (uncopyable) so it can be played on the device. Unfortunately when attempting to copy text off the webpage, it's Hello Dr Watson, Goodby IE. (those stuck with NT at work are familiar with him)
It looks like DataPlay and Microsoft already have the anti-copy stuff working;-)
Actualy, I think users will soon find that only Napster type files are tradable. Files will be traded and downloaded into SDMI RIO type devices and becomming SDMI encoded for playback because the players will be cheap. However the original MP3 will be kept on the HD and CDR. Lets face it, how many Liquid Audio protected files do you have? I don't even have a capible player for it, so the files are useless to me. The industry will have a hard sell selling Pay for Play content as it can't be played on your in dash MP3 player or on your RIO. The only way the RIAA can get this to market is to subsidize the SDMI players like the Radio Shack Cue Cat thing was given away and payed for by Digital Convergence. That way the SDMI stuff will be lots cheaper than the other stuff. (Where can you get a 500 Meg compact flash card for less than 100.00?) 500 Meg for less than a dollar is proof it's got bucks poured into pushing it from somewhere. Try to buy an unencripted one for your camera and it will have Compact Flash prices on it! It it really could be made this cheaply, it would be put into compact flash and PCMCIA memory cards. MS is working to import MP3's and place a "Security wrapper" on them so they later can't be copied off and played elsewhere. That way you will have to buy the music from MS in a MS Media Player format as blessed by the RIAA. It will only play in HI FI if you have USB Speakers and all hardware handles the encrypted music. It'll be encrypted all the way out your speaker wires to the speakers. (it's an easy sell. Everyone will have a player with their new computer pre loaded with the latest MS Pay Per View TV Box software. You don't have to download a Liquid Audio or Real player. I won't buy that OS even for free! They know it'll sell. They tested it on DVD's.
Wait till everyone finaly gets it. Replacing PC hardware requires replacing the MS OS with a new copy. The old copy dies with the old machine. It may not be put on a new machine.
The MS EULA on anything post DOS/WIN3.1 clearly states the software may not be deinstalled then reinstalled on another machine. The wording is along the lines of licensed for the machine it was originaly installed on. I have no idea when my old machine becomes a new machine and may violate the EULA as it has been incrementaly upgraded over the years. It started as a Laser 386-25 but is now a Pentium class machine. At one point even the case/power supply was changed as a new case was cheaper than an OEM power supply. Only the 5-1/4 floppy is original. It still has some use but will be lost in the next rebuild.
Where would the EULA become violated? When the motherboard was replaced?, When the 2nd hard drive was added? When the case and power supply was changed? When the 2x CD ROM was upgraded? When the original HD died and was upgraded and replaced both drives? Anybody know where the legal line is and if it was crossed?
They don't show the non profit I am networking that can only afford 3 PC's for the staff of 20. I can get used donated PC's but due to the lack of the right of first sale in the software from Redmond, and missing CD's and Certificates, I am installing Linex and Star Office 5.2 on the entire office to avoide legal problems.
It's the poor that their prices were keeping on one side of the digital divide. OSS is enabeling lots of people that were left out. They don't have $200 per machine for the OS + $500.00 to get MS Office Pro, + several grand for a server to dump on used 486's and Pentiums. Instead of Access, it's going to be My SQL for the database. A couple machines will be MS as some applications require it.
I think this has the same chance as other encumbering software. Not everyone has a high speed connection which makes the delivery of bloatware slow. Unless they package a TV/Music download (like cable) with it, I don't see a subscription service going far. Even though much of the open source stuff is free for the download, I still buy the retail distributions to get the CD and Manuals.
I just bought Star Office and was pleased to find it runs on Windows, Solaris, Unix and Linux. It will read and write MS Office files. It comes with a relational database. It will install on a network without legal troubles. It was less than 100.00 US. I think the competiton will show the value that the bean counters and the legal department can see. How can Microsoft compare with that. (besides trying to declare OSS illegal)
Cost and coverage area are biggies! A US coast guard type receiver is more than US $400 and must be connected to a GPS reciever that will accept the differential signal. The signal is in the 300Khz band. You may need to shield the ignition on the lawn mower to prevent ignition noise interferance with the receiver. The USCG signals do not cover all 50 states. Unless you live near a large navigable waterway you are out of luck on this cheap solution. The other solutions are satelite based. While they are more precise, they are by subscription only. (expensive)
By using a twin pickup coil on the bot, it should be able to follow a buried wire with an AC signal. it works like a line following bot by comparison of the recieved signal strengths. Have it shutdown with the loss of a signal. This may help some of the liability issues if it trys to mow the garden next door. Wires with a signal between 3k and 30Khz provide good coupling for a well defined null position for the pick up coils. For an effecient way to drive the buried line, tune it and drive it at resonance. It helps lighten the load on your driver while providing high current in the buried line for the bot to sense.
If you really want to go cheap, just tie the lawn mower to the tree in the yard. As it circles the tree, it cuts smaller circles. If it does run over the cat, it was already dead.
Umm, Have you priced the "high Power" stuff lately. Silicone has it's limits. Anythig over about 100 KW gets pricey fast. It's also harder to protect from the overcurrent/overvoltage effects of lightning. BPA has been doing this stuff for years on a long line. (DC 1,200,000 volts) The North end of the line is at The Dalles Oregon on the Columbia River and the South end of the line is 60 Miles North of Los Angeles California. This line has no substations in between due to the high cost of the DC/AC converters. The line is a long running experiment. The converters are two kinds. One is all solid state, the other is Mecury Thyritron. I don't know if BPA has any public website with details on the DC line. I know about it because my father was a Substation Operator for BPA before he retired. I have had a full tour. The line was built in the '60's if I remember right. The California substation yard is fully enclosed in a farady cage for RFI with chokes on the lines to the yard, while The Dalles one does not. The reason for the experiment was to find a cheap way to transport power over long distance without the usual transmission losses. (inductive, capacitive, & coupling to parallel lines like ranchers fences) They were testing the ability to protect it from lightning and see the advantages of DC over AC for the long haul and see if it made good business sense. Anybody in the LA area may want to look up the Sylmar Converter East Station. It was dammaged in an earthquake 1994, and they had a fire in 1993. This has not been a low cost maitenance project.
Ah, a Darwin Award Applicant! Somehow I don't think these things will be 120 volts. A warm spot in the cable could be interesting when the resistance goes up and it isn't superconducting anymore. Third strike is Liquid Nitrogen does not contain Oxygen. I wonder which is first, the Arc, the Explosion, or the Asphyxiation:-)
The point is not to reverse engineer the hardware and mass produce it to compete with the manufacture, the point is the ability to alter it to make it more useful. It's like buying a 1 ton pickup truck but it ships with a 2.3 liter 4 cyl engine. If you have a machine shop, you can engineer some mounts for a Detroit Diesel engine and transmission. Now the truck can be used to haul stuff instead of just look pretty. This fitting useful more powerful software to the player is not going to put Creative out of business. It makes the player more valuable, not less. People are dissapointed this software is so lame as shipped from Creative. The desire is to improve the weak spots of someting almost useful to make it usable.
The core of the earth is very hot. These gems are at 1200 feet. Things start to get warm at that depth. Just a fact of geology. This is way below the water table in most places which is a hard depth limit to many coal mines. When a coal mine gets too deep the water pumps can't keep up which limits their depth.
Retailers are wary of dropping prices too fast. They could be trying to sell inventory bought at a higher price, or afraid of having sold too cheap at the next shortage. Retailers have better things to do than reprice daily for the spot market. They don't always have the luxery of following the market to buy in the dips. They buy when inventory is low.
I agree deeply. If you think the PC market is in a downturn now, wait for the prices to be jacked up because of this. This is no good for the economy. All the newer stuff needs more memory. I forsee hardware and software sales being stalled for a while because of this as pepole extend the life of their current systems and forget upgrading for a while.
The short of it is any conductor carrying current procuces a magnetic field arround it. (conductive slug gets one from the large current) The copper rails do the same thing. They have large currents up to but not past the slug (it goes thru the slug from one rail to the other) Like magnetic fields repel. The slugs field repells the field on the rails behind it. Result, slug moves forward. High current = high magnetic field = high force. Note the rails also repell each other and must be solidly held in place, otherwise the rails as well as the slug will try to depart at high speed from each other. One very real demonstration that the power companies see all the time is lightning dammaged transformers. Not only is the insulation dammaged and the oil set on fire, but the windings in the transformer move violently making a birds nest of the wire in the transformer. (ask your local power company to see a sample)
It still can be killed by making the format too expensive for them to carry. Best bet is have a few hard drives crash and computers upgraded. People with storm the complaint department that their goodies don't work anymore that they paid for and will stop buying it as they discover it and spread the word in the media this is seriously flawed and the suppliers are seriously crooked.
My newest receiver is from 1993. My better stuff is from the 70's when high RMS watts with low THD, and S/N ratio counted. Older Phase Linear, Kenwood and Pioneer stuff was great. Anything fully DC coupled with THD below 0.005% with a high damping factor and low noise was a pleasure to listen to. I don't listen to music on a PC. It just doesn't meet HI-FI requirements. The sound card has to live in an electricaly noisy environment and very few soundcards are DC coupled for true flat extended frequency range. Anybody got a sound card good down to 5 Hz with S/N ratio above 120 DB, with THD below 0.01% over the entire range?
Will Total Recorder work with a DRM Windows Media file? I suspect that Windows will refuse to play the DRM enabled file with any software running that sniffs the data to the audio card. This windows player goes to the OS level in checking the audio path. Anybody out there tried any of this protection? I have refused to buy the technology the same way I refused to buy a video DIVIX player. I do not plan on doing any testing myself. I don't have the hardware or software to test it. (they must sell me media content compatible with my hardware and software or it's NO SALE!) I hope this DRM is as sucessfull as the DIVIX disks.
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Look at the server stats. I noticed that Apachie is the biggest server,followed by Netscape, followed by Unknown. The Unknown server is growing in size. I think this is deliberate!
Users who have their Napster accounts blocked receive a message when they log on to the service that refers them to .Copyright.net's Web site. There, they are told specifically why they were kicked off Napster and offered copyright-protected versions of the Orbison songs, which cost less than a dollar. These specially encrypted versions can be sent to other users, but they can be played just twice, at which point a message invites them to buy a copy.
It sure looks they would love to use a drive specific encryption on their 2 plays for a buck scheme! Notice how they didn't call a Napster MP3 copyrighted, but called the encrypted file copyright - protected. I thought all copyright stuff was copyright protected. I think they should have used the proper term here, Copy Protected! This is the future unless we refuse to buy it. I don't want a dongle hard drive! I want to use my RIO.
Get used to it. You will have to buy the CD to rip the MP3's for your RIO and indash MP3 Player.
Net savy shoppers who do shop online rarely take the first product offered. It's seldom the best deal. Excessive advertising usualy indicates cheap goods with high markup and low value. Common examples are the flashy bouncing credit cards and of course the punch the monkey, mouse etc.
Notice how they word the "feature" as Generic when enabled implying the drive is non-standard when it is off or open?
The marketing goof was requiring everything scanned to check into DC to be redirected to a webpage of the advertiser. This meant it could not be used (without hacking) for inventory of CD's and other non web applications. If a free mouse could only be used in a browser and noplace else, you would be much less likely to use the mouse for anything. But a free mouse that worked all your applications and tracked you on the web in a free browser & internet access (Juno, Freenet Etc.) then it might get a user base.
Think, How much does a banner ad cost CD-now to be on the Napster Client? They can charge for the space because of the installed user base.
FYI, Fiber Optic has less attenuation than air and can be bent around corners. Attenuation in a bent pipe is pretty high ;-)
It also says "new format". This means they will no longer be MP3's. This also means they can't be played on your RIO or in dash CD/MP3 deck. This is a Death Blow to Napster. It is the end of the consumer base. I'll bet Napster is less than one tenth the size it is now in less than 6 months. Once the usability is gone, so are the clients which is just what the RIAA wanted.
It looks like DataPlay and Microsoft already have the anti-copy stuff working ;-)
Actualy, I think users will soon find that only Napster type files are tradable. Files will be traded and downloaded into SDMI RIO type devices and becomming SDMI encoded for playback because the players will be cheap. However the original MP3 will be kept on the HD and CDR. Lets face it, how many Liquid Audio protected files do you have? I don't even have a capible player for it, so the files are useless to me. The industry will have a hard sell selling Pay for Play content as it can't be played on your in dash MP3 player or on your RIO. The only way the RIAA can get this to market is to subsidize the SDMI players like the Radio Shack Cue Cat thing was given away and payed for by Digital Convergence. That way the SDMI stuff will be lots cheaper than the other stuff. (Where can you get a 500 Meg compact flash card for less than 100.00?) 500 Meg for less than a dollar is proof it's got bucks poured into pushing it from somewhere. Try to buy an unencripted one for your camera and it will have Compact Flash prices on it! It it really could be made this cheaply, it would be put into compact flash and PCMCIA memory cards. MS is working to import MP3's and place a "Security wrapper" on them so they later can't be copied off and played elsewhere. That way you will have to buy the music from MS in a MS Media Player format as blessed by the RIAA. It will only play in HI FI if you have USB Speakers and all hardware handles the encrypted music. It'll be encrypted all the way out your speaker wires to the speakers. (it's an easy sell. Everyone will have a player with their new computer pre loaded with the latest MS Pay Per View TV Box software. You don't have to download a Liquid Audio or Real player. I won't buy that OS even for free! They know it'll sell. They tested it on DVD's.
The MS EULA on anything post DOS/WIN3.1 clearly states the software may not be deinstalled then reinstalled on another machine. The wording is along the lines of licensed for the machine it was originaly installed on. I have no idea when my old machine becomes a new machine and may violate the EULA as it has been incrementaly upgraded over the years. It started as a Laser 386-25 but is now a Pentium class machine. At one point even the case/power supply was changed as a new case was cheaper than an OEM power supply. Only the 5-1/4 floppy is original. It still has some use but will be lost in the next rebuild.
Where would the EULA become violated? When the motherboard was replaced?, When the 2nd hard drive was added? When the case and power supply was changed? When the 2x CD ROM was upgraded? When the original HD died and was upgraded and replaced both drives? Anybody know where the legal line is and if it was crossed?
It's the poor that their prices were keeping on one side of the digital divide. OSS is enabeling lots of people that were left out. They don't have $200 per machine for the OS + $500.00 to get MS Office Pro, + several grand for a server to dump on used 486's and Pentiums. Instead of Access, it's going to be My SQL for the database. A couple machines will be MS as some applications require it.
I just bought Star Office and was pleased to find it runs on Windows, Solaris, Unix and Linux. It will read and write MS Office files. It comes with a relational database. It will install on a network without legal troubles. It was less than 100.00 US. I think the competiton will show the value that the bean counters and the legal department can see. How can Microsoft compare with that. (besides trying to declare OSS illegal)
Cost and coverage area are biggies! A US coast guard type receiver is more than US $400 and must be connected to a GPS reciever that will accept the differential signal. The signal is in the 300Khz band. You may need to shield the ignition on the lawn mower to prevent ignition noise interferance with the receiver. The USCG signals do not cover all 50 states. Unless you live near a large navigable waterway you are out of luck on this cheap solution. The other solutions are satelite based. While they are more precise, they are by subscription only. (expensive)
If you really want to go cheap, just tie the lawn mower to the tree in the yard. As it circles the tree, it cuts smaller circles. If it does run over the cat, it was already dead.
Umm, Have you priced the "high Power" stuff lately. Silicone has it's limits. Anythig over about 100 KW gets pricey fast. It's also harder to protect from the overcurrent/overvoltage effects of lightning. BPA has been doing this stuff for years on a long line. (DC 1,200,000 volts) The North end of the line is at The Dalles Oregon on the Columbia River and the South end of the line is 60 Miles North of Los Angeles California. This line has no substations in between due to the high cost of the DC/AC converters. The line is a long running experiment. The converters are two kinds. One is all solid state, the other is Mecury Thyritron. I don't know if BPA has any public website with details on the DC line. I know about it because my father was a Substation Operator for BPA before he retired. I have had a full tour. The line was built in the '60's if I remember right. The California substation yard is fully enclosed in a farady cage for RFI with chokes on the lines to the yard, while The Dalles one does not. The reason for the experiment was to find a cheap way to transport power over long distance without the usual transmission losses. (inductive, capacitive, & coupling to parallel lines like ranchers fences) They were testing the ability to protect it from lightning and see the advantages of DC over AC for the long haul and see if it made good business sense. Anybody in the LA area may want to look up the Sylmar Converter East Station. It was dammaged in an earthquake 1994, and they had a fire in 1993. This has not been a low cost maitenance project.
Ah, a Darwin Award Applicant! Somehow I don't think these things will be 120 volts. A warm spot in the cable could be interesting when the resistance goes up and it isn't superconducting anymore. Third strike is Liquid Nitrogen does not contain Oxygen. I wonder which is first, the Arc, the Explosion, or the Asphyxiation :-)
The point is not to reverse engineer the hardware and mass produce it to compete with the manufacture, the point is the ability to alter it to make it more useful. It's like buying a 1 ton pickup truck but it ships with a 2.3 liter 4 cyl engine. If you have a machine shop, you can engineer some mounts for a Detroit Diesel engine and transmission. Now the truck can be used to haul stuff instead of just look pretty. This fitting useful more powerful software to the player is not going to put Creative out of business. It makes the player more valuable, not less. People are dissapointed this software is so lame as shipped from Creative. The desire is to improve the weak spots of someting almost useful to make it usable.
The core of the earth is very hot. These gems are at 1200 feet. Things start to get warm at that depth. Just a fact of geology. This is way below the water table in most places which is a hard depth limit to many coal mines. When a coal mine gets too deep the water pumps can't keep up which limits their depth.
Retailers are wary of dropping prices too fast. They could be trying to sell inventory bought at a higher price, or afraid of having sold too cheap at the next shortage. Retailers have better things to do than reprice daily for the spot market. They don't always have the luxery of following the market to buy in the dips. They buy when inventory is low.
I agree deeply. If you think the PC market is in a downturn now, wait for the prices to be jacked up because of this. This is no good for the economy. All the newer stuff needs more memory. I forsee hardware and software sales being stalled for a while because of this as pepole extend the life of their current systems and forget upgrading for a while.
Maybe they could call it the .net box. Does anyone know it it will connect to the .net to work online?
The short of it is any conductor carrying current procuces a magnetic field arround it. (conductive slug gets one from the large current) The copper rails do the same thing. They have large currents up to but not past the slug (it goes thru the slug from one rail to the other) Like magnetic fields repel. The slugs field repells the field on the rails behind it. Result, slug moves forward. High current = high magnetic field = high force. Note the rails also repell each other and must be solidly held in place, otherwise the rails as well as the slug will try to depart at high speed from each other. One very real demonstration that the power companies see all the time is lightning dammaged transformers. Not only is the insulation dammaged and the oil set on fire, but the windings in the transformer move violently making a birds nest of the wire in the transformer. (ask your local power company to see a sample)
It still can be killed by making the format too expensive for them to carry. Best bet is have a few hard drives crash and computers upgraded. People with storm the complaint department that their goodies don't work anymore that they paid for and will stop buying it as they discover it and spread the word in the media this is seriously flawed and the suppliers are seriously crooked.
My newest receiver is from 1993. My better stuff is from the 70's when high RMS watts with low THD, and S/N ratio counted. Older Phase Linear, Kenwood and Pioneer stuff was great. Anything fully DC coupled with THD below 0.005% with a high damping factor and low noise was a pleasure to listen to. I don't listen to music on a PC. It just doesn't meet HI-FI requirements. The sound card has to live in an electricaly noisy environment and very few soundcards are DC coupled for true flat extended frequency range. Anybody got a sound card good down to 5 Hz with S/N ratio above 120 DB, with THD below 0.01% over the entire range?
I do have a vote with my checkbook.