You're a business owner in a niche market. Hence, your primary revenue comes from your website. You're not well off, but you're surviving doing what you enjoy. Some kid takes your site down for no other reason than he's bored. You can't do business for days (it took Steve 18 hours the first time, and he knew who to call). And that's just the first attack, who knows if it will be sustained. It could go on for weeks. You lose thousands of dollars, maybe more. You can't pay your suppliers. You're forced to declare bankruptcy. Your credit is destroyed, your finances are destroyed. You lose your home, you can't provide for your family. It's entirely possibly you're forced to move to a shelter if you don't have friends or relatives who can take you in. That's right, you're literally starving on the street because some 13 year old found a cool bot on IRC. You don't think that's hurting someone? You don't think that's terror?
Here 100% of all DVD players and movies are Region 1 (U.S.), and yet since we're a spanish-speaking country we're supposed to be in Region 2.
A few nitpicks. First, languages have no bearing on region codes. Even if they did, it wouldn't be Region 2, which has only one Spanish speaking country (Spain).
You'll find the same language scattered amongst multiple regions. Spanish, to use your example, is found in half of the 6 regions. Region 1 (Puerto Rico), Region 2 (Spain), Region 4 (most of the South American countries).
Second, the Dominican Republic is not in Region 2. It's a Region 4 country, the same as South America and Australia. A list of most countries in each region can be found here.
Region 1 DVDs with no spanish subtitles,
Most "mainstream" Region 1 discs are either Spanish dubbed or subtitled. French is also very common, those being the most common languages after English in Region 1. My girlfriend is Spanish speaking and we notice these things.
Actually, from what I've heard, there is no such directive at Microsoft. Employees can use whatever they like, as long as they don't sacrifice the ability to work with their teammates.
Well, you didn't hear that from the article, which you apparently failed to read.
It says:
Microsoft has its own technology preferences. Andrea Jenkins, formerly creative director at Microsoft's Sidewalk San Francisco Web guide, said when she showed up for her first day at work, she was surprised to learn that she would have to use a computer running Microsoft Windows, as opposed to a Macintosh computer
So apparently MS employees do have to use Windows.
The layout of a DC disc is broken up into two tracks. The first track consists solely of a four second audio snip - any kind, even silence. The second track is simply a CD/XA data track using a standard ISO9660 file system with the first 16 sectors of the track used as a bootstrap.
Incorrect. The first area is a low density, standard CD format of about 35 megs/4 mins. Then there's a space containing no data, and then the high density area begins (1Gig/112mins).
The low density area must contain two tracks, a Mode 1 and a CDDA, both containing at least 4 seconds of data. The high density area must also contain two tracks, both Mode 1. The first of which must contain at least 4 seconds of data. The second high density Mode 1 track contains the bulk of the data.
So basically, if you had a Gigabyte CD, you could make Dreamcast discs. GDROM discs are perfectly readable in standard CDROM drives; you need no special hardware to read them.
Incorrect. When you insert a GD-ROM into a standard CD drive, what you see is the 35meg low density area only. You cannot read the high density area in a standard CD drive.
Why doesn't someone just convert all those more proprietary image formats to something like a.iso format that'll work with linux and toast?
Why don't you do it yourself? Go to www.dccopyworld.com and grab the converters. There's Linux and Mac software to convert CDIs to ISOs, and you'll also have to get a Toast version of the boot disc, since you can't make bootable discs from ISOs.
For technical questions (such as "can I use widget foo with attachment bar and do I need qux for it?") the salespeople at the small shop are about as useful as the Home Depot droids, which is to say not at all.
In the case of Home Depot, I find you get both low prices and good service. Home Depot is one of those companies that go out of their way to hire good people. They direct their advertising towards them and pay enough to make it an option. Sure they hire plenty kids to stock shelves and ring the registers, but the odds are also very good that if you have a question there's someone in the store with real, working experience in the area you're asking about.
Interesting, but please cite your source for this.
The dictionary.:)
Seriously, go somewhere like dictionary.com or m-w.com and look it up
billion adj : (U.S.) denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units; (Britain) denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units [syn: a billion] n 1: (in Britain) the number that is represented as a one followed by 12 zeros [syn: one million million, 1000000000000] 2: (in the United States) the number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros [syn: one thousand million, 1000000000]
I guess it's not all the Commonwealth than, if you don't do it. Usually things that are "chiefly British" apply across the Commonwealth. I know it's definitely British and Australian though.
No one would ever use a measurement of length that varied with what country you were in?
I'll bet someone did. After all, we have the gallon, which measures 4.545 liters in the Commonwealth countries and 3.785 liters in the US. Or how about counting? You know how much a billion is? Well, maybe not. It's 10^12 in the Commonwealth countries and 10^9 in the US. (They call 10^9 a milliard).
Every system of measurement everywhere is arbitrary to some extent. Even the metric system (a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second? Umm, ok) has changed a few times in the past few centuries or so.
the SR-71 achieved mach 3 and used the same "scooping enough oxygen to power the craft at those speeds on its own". They called it a ramjet.
And if you'd read the article you would see that this is a scramjet, an improvement that is directly based on, yet overcomes some limitations of, ramjet technology.
Reinventing the wheel
Only if you consider the 8008 processor (or 8086, 8088, 80186, 286, etc)to be "reinventing the wheel." After all, once we had the 4004, who needed a better microprocessor?
They do have some real security features - password protection - but, as far as I can see (I have Reader open right now) not a word about digital signatures.
They most certainly do have digital signatures. If you only have the Reader, it's on page 51 of the help.
So you want a quiet, isolated room where you have a network connection and the ability to choose your own entertainment at whim? Why would you leave your house? You apparently don't want to socialize with anyone new, hence the sound proofed rooms and people wandering around wearing headphones. What would even be the point of going out? You basically want to transplant your house downtown. Invite your friends to your house, you'll have more fun.
In order to defend based on "No direct infringer," you don't need to prove that every user falls within statutory exception. You just need to prevent the prosecutors from proving that there is someone in violation. (Innocent until proven guilty.)
Innocent until proven guilty is a concept of criminal law. Civil law is based on a preponderance of evidence. The side that is the most convincing wins, there's no requirement for either side prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
So the fact that it's easy to flout a law means the law shouldn't exist?
No, the fact that the vast majority of people flout the law and don't see anything wrong with that means that the law shouldn't exist.
but the law works to say "This is what is right".
That's how laws are supposed to work, yes. Laws are based in a large part on community standards. Murder, for example, is illegal because most people find it reprehensible. People don't find Napster morally wrong, which is why it flourishes. It's like Prohibition. No one felt drinking was wrong, so everyone continued to flout the law and drink. This is one case in which the legislative system let the people down. Without community support, laws will either fail or need to be enforced with draconian measures. We're nearing a point where the US needs to decide which path it will take.
The simple fact of the matter is, that if anyone wanted to spend the few hours it would take per book
The "simple fact" is that that's a wildly inaccurate assumption on your part. People are doing exactly that right now. To scan, OCR, and proof an average novel takes days for "professionals" and even longer for an amateur who doesn't want to destroy his book. Weeks for a quality job. It's often a distributed effort. A couple people scan the book, usually by cutting the spine and scanning it with an ADF. Then it's distributed amongst other volunteers who proofread and correct it.
The reason E-Book technology will stay unhacked for as long as it does is lack of incentive for anyone to spend the effort of hacking it.
There'll be plenty of incentive eventually. The "book warez" groups are picking up steam. The lack of incentive at the moment is that most books are available in hard copy already so the encryption isn't making anything unavailable. Once regular, exclusively electronic publishing becomes a reality, expect a concerted effort to break the schemes.
The incentive to hack will also be reduced by the fact that most people still seem to prefer to have a real-live book in front of them when they read, than be staring at a computer screen, even if it's a TFT screen on an electronic book.
The exact opposite provides a lot of the incentive right now. Very popular right now are reference manuals. Especially large, expensive programming/technical manuals. You're right that people prefer to read novels in hard copy, but they also would rather have their references electronically for ease of use (indexing/searching, availability anywhere they do work, etc).
Poignant? I'd be embarassed to be that old guy. "The tobacco companies say everything has changed. Everything but their deadly and addictive product." So DON'T SMOKE it! Seriously, is there anyone who started smoking in the past 10, or even 20 years, who is ignorant of the health risks? Is it SO hard to quit that nearly anyone older who wanted to couldn't have done so? No. It's the ultimate example of today's prevalent victim mentality. "I'm not responsible for my health problem, those evil tobacco companies made me smoke!" The tobacco company offered a product YOU chose to buy. No one made you smoke, and it's no one's fault but your own if you die of smoking related illnesses.
Are you telling me that they would be sued for distributing THEIR content?
Yes, I am. Content is irrelevant. If you encode something using Divx it's entirely possible you're violating someone else's patent. You may not be, no one seems to know. But do you want to risk getting sued? GIF is a similar, but not perfect, analogy. Unisys decided to start charging people to create GIF compressors. If it turns out that someone else's patents are in Divx, then you can be sued if you've compressed with it, as those files use patented algorithms.
In their "license overview" page, they state "if you want to sell the
content itself commercially, you have to get permission from Project
Mayo first".
I'm sure it was written by a group of non-lawyers trying to sound all legal and official. Since there's already questions on who owns the IP they've used they're not exactly on solid ground trying to license it out. Of course, anyone attempting to sell Divx encoded content would probably be committing financial suicide anyway unless they had deep pockets and wanted to be the test case.
Keep in mind that copyright and patent violations are not theft, at least not in any legal sense,
Sorry, I probably used the wrong term with "theft" as it would be a civil, not criminal matter. The point is that no one else can use their code without getting sued, so any "opening" of the source they did is useless for anything other than study, private use, and underground use. No one can actually build on and improve their code, since it "belongs" to someone else.
DivX, the Circuit City version, failed for many reasons. The discs were bare, movie-only Pan&Scan versions. You needed to plug your credit card info into the player, the player needed a phone line and had to phone home every time you wanted to watch a moive. You had to pay $5 for every 72 hour period you wanted to view wthe movie. In other words, you didn't actually own anything.
I've never actually seen a Divx cd before so it couldn't have gained too much popularity
They look basically like regular DVDs. CC was dumping them for pennies at the very end there. YOu can still find them on eBay for a few dollars (since they're useless to everyone now, even those with Divx players). Here, for example.
I always kept an eye out for them too, since my playstation was able to play them:-/
No it couldn't. But I think you're seriously confusing DivX the codec, and Divx the Circuit City movie "rental" scheme. It might be possible for a PS2 (not a PS1) to play DivX codec movies, but I don't think so. It certainly can't play Divx from CC, only licensed Divx players can do that and those were long gone before the PS2 even existed.
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You're a business owner in a niche market. Hence, your primary revenue comes from your website. You're not well off, but you're surviving doing what you enjoy. Some kid takes your site down for no other reason than he's bored. You can't do business for days (it took Steve 18 hours the first time, and he knew who to call). And that's just the first attack, who knows if it will be sustained. It could go on for weeks. You lose thousands of dollars, maybe more. You can't pay your suppliers. You're forced to declare bankruptcy. Your credit is destroyed, your finances are destroyed. You lose your home, you can't provide for your family. It's entirely possibly you're forced to move to a shelter if you don't have friends or relatives who can take you in. That's right, you're literally starving on the street because some 13 year old found a cool bot on IRC. You don't think that's hurting someone? You don't think that's terror?
Would you be making said graduates write the reviews then?
A few nitpicks. First, languages have no bearing on region codes. Even if they did, it wouldn't be Region 2, which has only one Spanish speaking country (Spain).
You'll find the same language scattered amongst multiple regions. Spanish, to use your example, is found in half of the 6 regions. Region 1 (Puerto Rico), Region 2 (Spain), Region 4 (most of the South American countries).
Second, the Dominican Republic is not in Region 2. It's a Region 4 country, the same as South America and Australia. A list of most countries in each region can be found here.
Region 1 DVDs with no spanish subtitles,
Most "mainstream" Region 1 discs are either Spanish dubbed or subtitled. French is also very common, those being the most common languages after English in Region 1. My girlfriend is Spanish speaking and we notice these things.
Well, you didn't hear that from the article, which you apparently failed to read.
It says:
So apparently MS employees do have to use Windows.
And you're basing this opinion off the stellar job WIPO has done so far?
Incorrect. The first area is a low density, standard CD format of about 35 megs/4 mins. Then there's a space containing no data, and then the high density area begins (1Gig/112mins).
The low density area must contain two tracks, a Mode 1 and a CDDA, both containing at least 4 seconds of data. The high density area must also contain two tracks, both Mode 1. The first of which must contain at least 4 seconds of data. The second high density Mode 1 track contains the bulk of the data.
So basically, if you had a Gigabyte CD, you could make Dreamcast discs. GDROM discs are perfectly readable in standard CDROM drives; you need no special hardware to read them.
Incorrect. When you insert a GD-ROM into a standard CD drive, what you see is the 35meg low density area only. You cannot read the high density area in a standard CD drive.
Why don't you do it yourself? Go to www.dccopyworld.com and grab the converters. There's Linux and Mac software to convert CDIs to ISOs, and you'll also have to get a Toast version of the boot disc, since you can't make bootable discs from ISOs.
In the case of Home Depot, I find you get both low prices and good service. Home Depot is one of those companies that go out of their way to hire good people. They direct their advertising towards them and pay enough to make it an option. Sure they hire plenty kids to stock shelves and ring the registers, but the odds are also very good that if you have a question there's someone in the store with real, working experience in the area you're asking about.
The dictionary. :)
Seriously, go somewhere like dictionary.com or m-w.com and look it up
billion adj : (U.S.) denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units; (Britain) denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units [syn: a billion] n 1: (in Britain) the number that is represented as a one followed by 12 zeros [syn: one million million, 1000000000000] 2: (in the United States) the number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros [syn: one thousand million, 1000000000]
I guess it's not all the Commonwealth than, if you don't do it. Usually things that are "chiefly British" apply across the Commonwealth. I know it's definitely British and Australian though.
I'll bet someone did. After all, we have the gallon, which measures 4.545 liters in the Commonwealth countries and 3.785 liters in the US. Or how about counting? You know how much a billion is? Well, maybe not. It's 10^12 in the Commonwealth countries and 10^9 in the US. (They call 10^9 a milliard).
Every system of measurement everywhere is arbitrary to some extent. Even the metric system (a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second? Umm, ok) has changed a few times in the past few centuries or so.
And if you'd read the article you would see that this is a scramjet, an improvement that is directly based on, yet overcomes some limitations of, ramjet technology.
Reinventing the wheel
Only if you consider the 8008 processor (or 8086, 8088, 80186, 286, etc)to be "reinventing the wheel." After all, once we had the 4004, who needed a better microprocessor?
They most certainly do have digital signatures. If you only have the Reader, it's on page 51 of the help.
So you want a quiet, isolated room where you have a network connection and the ability to choose your own entertainment at whim? Why would you leave your house? You apparently don't want to socialize with anyone new, hence the sound proofed rooms and people wandering around wearing headphones. What would even be the point of going out? You basically want to transplant your house downtown. Invite your friends to your house, you'll have more fun.
Innocent until proven guilty is a concept of criminal law. Civil law is based on a preponderance of evidence. The side that is the most convincing wins, there's no requirement for either side prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
No, the fact that the vast majority of people flout the law and don't see anything wrong with that means that the law shouldn't exist.
but the law works to say "This is what is right".
That's how laws are supposed to work, yes. Laws are based in a large part on community standards. Murder, for example, is illegal because most people find it reprehensible. People don't find Napster morally wrong, which is why it flourishes. It's like Prohibition. No one felt drinking was wrong, so everyone continued to flout the law and drink. This is one case in which the legislative system let the people down. Without community support, laws will either fail or need to be enforced with draconian measures. We're nearing a point where the US needs to decide which path it will take.
The "simple fact" is that that's a wildly inaccurate assumption on your part. People are doing exactly that right now. To scan, OCR, and proof an average novel takes days for "professionals" and even longer for an amateur who doesn't want to destroy his book. Weeks for a quality job. It's often a distributed effort. A couple people scan the book, usually by cutting the spine and scanning it with an ADF. Then it's distributed amongst other volunteers who proofread and correct it.
The reason E-Book technology will stay unhacked for as long as it does is lack of incentive for anyone to spend the effort of hacking it.
There'll be plenty of incentive eventually. The "book warez" groups are picking up steam. The lack of incentive at the moment is that most books are available in hard copy already so the encryption isn't making anything unavailable. Once regular, exclusively electronic publishing becomes a reality, expect a concerted effort to break the schemes.
The incentive to hack will also be reduced by the fact that most people still seem to prefer to have a real-live book in front of them when they read, than be staring at a computer screen, even if it's a TFT screen on an electronic book.
The exact opposite provides a lot of the incentive right now. Very popular right now are reference manuals. Especially large, expensive programming/technical manuals. You're right that people prefer to read novels in hard copy, but they also would rather have their references electronically for ease of use (indexing/searching, availability anywhere they do work, etc).
Poignant? I'd be embarassed to be that old guy. "The tobacco companies say everything has changed. Everything but their deadly and addictive product." So DON'T SMOKE it! Seriously, is there anyone who started smoking in the past 10, or even 20 years, who is ignorant of the health risks? Is it SO hard to quit that nearly anyone older who wanted to couldn't have done so? No. It's the ultimate example of today's prevalent victim mentality. "I'm not responsible for my health problem, those evil tobacco companies made me smoke!" The tobacco company offered a product YOU chose to buy. No one made you smoke, and it's no one's fault but your own if you die of smoking related illnesses.
Yes, I am. Content is irrelevant. If you encode something using Divx it's entirely possible you're violating someone else's patent. You may not be, no one seems to know. But do you want to risk getting sued? GIF is a similar, but not perfect, analogy. Unisys decided to start charging people to create GIF compressors. If it turns out that someone else's patents are in Divx, then you can be sued if you've compressed with it, as those files use patented algorithms.
Nope. Once Divx died there was no interest.
How, exactly, is software defined? I think what's been patented here is compression algorithms. Can those be patented in Europe?
I'm sure it was written by a group of non-lawyers trying to sound all legal and official. Since there's already questions on who owns the IP they've used they're not exactly on solid ground trying to license it out. Of course, anyone attempting to sell Divx encoded content would probably be committing financial suicide anyway unless they had deep pockets and wanted to be the test case.
Hmm, why is that? I was under the impression that if you could "prove" (however this is done legally) a clean room implementation you could do it.
MPEG-4 is a format, DivX is a codec.
Is this an open standard?
MPEG-4 is, yes. The standards docment can be found here.
Does this mean that file that is MPG4 playable on something that supports MPG4 or do you still need access to a proprietary codec?
You need a codec, I don't know if there are any non-proprietary ones, there may be.
Sorry, I probably used the wrong term with "theft" as it would be a civil, not criminal matter. The point is that no one else can use their code without getting sued, so any "opening" of the source they did is useless for anything other than study, private use, and underground use. No one can actually build on and improve their code, since it "belongs" to someone else.
DivX, the Circuit City version, failed for many reasons. The discs were bare, movie-only Pan&Scan versions. You needed to plug your credit card info into the player, the player needed a phone line and had to phone home every time you wanted to watch a moive. You had to pay $5 for every 72 hour period you wanted to view wthe movie. In other words, you didn't actually own anything.
I've never actually seen a Divx cd before so it couldn't have gained too much popularity
They look basically like regular DVDs. CC was dumping them for pennies at the very end there. YOu can still find them on eBay for a few dollars (since they're useless to everyone now, even those with Divx players). Here, for example.
I always kept an eye out for them too, since my playstation was able to play them :-/
No it couldn't. But I think you're seriously confusing DivX the codec, and Divx the Circuit City movie "rental" scheme. It might be possible for a PS2 (not a PS1) to play DivX codec movies, but I don't think so. It certainly can't play Divx from CC, only licensed Divx players can do that and those were long gone before the PS2 even existed.