When the UHF TV spectrum for channels 69-83 was removed in favour of fixed mobile communications over a decade ago, the bidding brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to the US government. With the burgeoning demand for wireless devices that is growing even in this fallow economy, where is the benefit to the country's coffers in unlicensing the spectrum?
I thought the reason for the FCC's existence was to manage and regulate something that already belongs to the public. When determining how best to use this spectrum, the public's interest should be the biggest thing (some would say the only thing) taken into consideration. Using the spectrum as a cash cow should not.
Spectrum was licensed for broadcast in the past because it was the most efficient use of the public resource. With the development of more wireless products that rely on the unlicensed band, as well as less dependance on analog TV channels, unlicensing spectrum may now be the most efficient use of it, from the public's perspective.
Everyone can be a broadcaster now, in their own home, with minimum effort; thirty years ago, that was not the case. (There are always hobbyists, but that still takes up effort and time...). There is little value in locking up spectrum that can be more efficiently used by small-time "broadcasters".
Sorry, but I begin to think that copyright should have a clause forcing it to expire if the material is not distributed in a reasonable and non-discriminatory fashion.
This was originally why copyrights had to be renewed -- there was a fee associated with renewing it, and since most copyrighted works make their money when they're new, there would only be a small number of works that would be profitable enough fourteen years later to justify renewing the copyright.
Personally, I think this is a good method to go back to. Make the author renew their copyright every 14 years (and make the fees associated with it increase geometrically each time). If the author doesn't generate enough in sales to pay the fee, then it's time to use it as source material for other authors.
Make copyright holders realize that their monopoly is granted by the rest of us citizens through the government, for the express purpose of stimulating more creative works. There is a social cost that we all pay for that monopoly; why shouldn't a copyright holder reimburse us for it an old copyright is still profitable?
Examples of computers that might run Office on a terminal server include Windows-based workstations, Macintoshes, and UNIX workstations.
Say what? Can someone who knows more than I do explain how Unix workstations can run Office (Aside from Sun's PCi card, which is effectively a separate PC anyway?)
DigitalConsumer.com is two dot.com millionaires claiming to represent "the people." They represent nothing more than a free website.
Now everything makes sense! In our Capitalist society, everything that's Free is Devoid of Value. DigitalConsumer.com is "nothing more than a free website", after all. People who offer something for free can't possibly have an intelligent opinion, or else they'd be using their intelligence to make more money!
I hope we all appreciate the humor in criticizing a site which claims to represent "consumers" for being free (and not offering something overpriced for consumers to spend money on...)
But I really like the idea of a standard. Because what I really want is a TiVo I can plug my TW digital cable into without having the stupid converter in the middle.
Yes, I know that TW has a PVR now, but it sucks goats. I like TiVo, and I want to be able to buy one box that can do everything I want. If this can help that happen, I'm all for it.
Of course, I'm under no delusions, and will be suspicious of anything that the cable companies do that look like it's going to benefit me, since customers are not their #1 priority...
I'm all for the Entertainment industry
cooperating with the Technology industry to combat piracy and make the world safer for Spiderman III. I'd love to see the Entertainment industry take advantage of Technology to reduce distribution costs and give people better quality stuff for less money, like the Technology industry has been doing for years.
But I fear that the Entertainment Industry's idea of "cooperation" is saying that Technology needs to be crippled to prevent the Entertainment industry from becoming irrelevant. No compromise.
As I've said here several times, (paraphrased from Steven P. Jobs himself), Piracy is a social problem, not a technological one. If content can be seen and heard, it can be copied, no matter what technological measures are put in place. If banning people from ever making any copies will never work, why not concentrate more on convincing people that they shouldn't make illegal copies, and making them want to buy legitimate versions even in the face of easy piracy?
Re:be careful out there - it's a dark world
on
Add-Ons Add Up
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· Score: 2
When I returned it, they charged me 110 dollar *per*day* of "under age fee" because I am under 25.
Yup, that's the State of New York all right. In NYS it's legal to discriminate based on age in this circumstances, since 18 to 25 year olds cause more accidents. They can do this even if said 18-25 year old has a clean driving record and insurance history!
Of course, I happen to know it's bullshit, becuase when I was under 25, I rented a few cars on the company dime on business trips and that extra charge was never there. But just try and rent a car on your own! Even Rent-a-Wreck was pulling this crap!
The solution: rent from National. They never pulled this bullshit on me. I rented from National a few times while I was under 25, and never had any surcharge. (IIRC, I think their surcharges are for 18-20. Which still sucks, but sucks less, I suppose.)
All these rentals were in Upstate NY, though. If you are going to go to NYC, I recommend taking a cab. You don't want to drive there if you don't have to, anyway.
A company charges for premium E-mail service while leaving bare-bones, restricted service free, and is still making money!
So, when is Steve going to realize he made a mistake by turning a totally free service used by many into a totally paid service used by few, with no middle ground??
Are all listeners pirates, no. Are all CDR's sold used to copy CD's that people would have bought otherwise, no. However, you show me a way to sell unprotected music and still make sure that you can make money on it, and make sure no one is stealing from you, and I'll change my mind. Until then this is the only option we have.
There is no way to sell "unprotected" music. If it can be heard, it can be copied.
You own a copyright on your music, that is legally enough protection to go after people who are illegally copying it. That's why the government gives out copyrights in the first place.
While it definitely is your music that is being sold, its their copy of your music, and they should be legally allowed to do some copying as long as it doesn't step on your rights. Or are you saying you want your fans to buy two copies of your CD if they want to listen to it in two places? Everyone has rights here, not just you.
You are trying to solve a social problem (lack of respect for copyright) through technological measures (half-assed copy-protection schemes) that are an all-or-nothing answer to a grey-area problem. It is bound to fail, and fail miserably.
What is going to start shifting many businesses to linux is seeing applications such as AutoCAD run on linux. Seeing APIs for controling PLCs on factory floors. If we are able to woo the design and engineering firms to linux.... we will have a powerful foothold on the market.
Bingo. We've got a rather serious effort here to use linux servers for our Engineering software. It all started when one of our guys got a loaner box from IBM, and figured out that our apps ran on it twice as fast as they ran on one of our Sun processors, at a fifth of the cost. Vroom!
Too bad I still need a PC on my desk to I can read all the management edicts that come out embedded in Powerpoint slides!
Oh, stop! That ridiculous-looking penguin is *NOT* cool, by any stretch of the imagination. What it represents may be cool, but it is the dorkiest symbol in the IT industry.
Yup, that's exactly why I wear a Tux hat. Because it's dorky, and I'm a dork!
Why does everyone seem to think that ANNs are the way toward "true AI?" ANNs are superb pattern matching machines. They can predict, and are resilient to link damage to some degree. But they do not think. ANNs have nothing to do with what's really going on in a biological brain, except that they are made of many interacting simple processing elements. The biological brain inspired ANN, but that's all.
I couldn't agree more. I remember reading a comparison between the current state of AI and the state of early Flight Technology. (it may have even been here, I don't recall. I make no claim to thinking this up myself. Perhaps someone can point me to a link discussing who first thought of this?)
One of the reasons that early attempts at flight did not do well is because the people designing them merely tried to imitate things that fly naturally, without really understanding why things were built that way in the first place. So, people tried to make devices with wings that flapped fast, and they didn't work. It wasn't until someone (Bernoulli?) figured out how wings work - the scientific principles behind flight - that we were able to make flying machines that actually work.
Current AI and "thinking machines" are in a similar state as the first attempts to fly were in. We can do a passable job at using our teraflops of computing power to do a brute-force imitation of thought. But until someone understands the basic scientific principles behind thought, we will never make machines that think.
Considering I have a dead power cord, let me know if you find a source for other cords like that. Apple insisted I'd have to buy a new power supply for my iBook - I wasn't allowed to replace the cord.
Depending on the model of your power supply, pbparts.com may be helpful. I purchased a few extra cords for my iBook's yo-yo adaptor from them, although I had to look in the Pismo section to find it. (Yo-Yo Type Adapter Cord (M7332))
Does McAffee still allow free access to all their software by logging with with abc:123?
Nope, not anymore. Some dumbass on Slashdot posted the backdoor, and McAfee fixed it.
Re:It might look something like this
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Wartrapping?
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· Score: 2
Or failing that a picture of a fat bear with handcuffs being lead away by the brain police. Damn you Pooh bear...
So not only are you an Evil Computer Hacker/Terrorist leaving secret coded terrorist messages to the other members of your cell, but you're commiting mass copyright infringement in the process! Maybe Bush and Ashcroft aren't going far enough, because you obviously haven't learned your lesson yet, punk!
``If this bill were to pass, it would render ineffective, worthless and useless any protection measure we would have in place to protect a $100 million movie,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the Lofgren bill. ``You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it.''
Hmmm, (1 million * 4.7GB) / (24 hrs * 60 mins * 60 secs) = 54GB/sec bandwidth! Jack's cable modem must not have the download caps in place...
Cringely's technique will not be very effective, but it has nothing to with "this kind of civil disobedience". In fact, what Cringely is advocating is civil disobedience done right -- having lots of people break a stupid law openly, and accepting the consequences. Remember, just breaking the law from the comfort of your basement is not enough -- you need to let the Police break down your door and throw you in jail just for trying to play your "copy-protected" DVD or CD on your computer, all to show the public how absurd the law is.
The problem is that the absurdity will be lost on most people. This can't be compared to the Civil Rights movement, when the dignity of human beings was at stake. This is about bits, shiny things, and noise -- i.e., things that aren't really important when compared to human dignity. We all know what can happen in the future if laws like the DMCA don't get revisited in its current form. We know that the issue is more about property rights and control of information than about piracy. But since nothing important is at stake right now, anyone who participates in "civil disobedience" will be dismissed at best as a misguided geek, and at worst as an evil pirate hacker. After all, if you can watch a DVD on a DVD player, who cares if you can't watch it on a computer running Linux? We do, but noone else thinks it's important.
Let's face it, Our percieved right to download music or use media that we "own" on any device that has the technical ability to play it is not considered that important when there is so much else going on in the world.
Who says that real engineering can only be done by soldering physical components? I do "today's engineering" professionally, and while it may be easier for a clueless engineer to bullshit his way through the job by just learning how to crank the EDA tools, I guarantee he or she won't last long.
Let's face it -- today's hardware is so complex that there's no possible way that a single person (or a group of people) could "tinker" an Athlon into existence. And yet, an engineer has to be able to visualize this design as gates and wires, and keep control of the design even as he hands it off to an EDA tool to process.
In ASIC design (the field in which I have the most knowledge), you have to know enough about how to design Logic to know when the tools are doing a good enough job putting things together. A monkey can run a script, but an Engineer must know what all the commands really mean and what needs to be run to processs the design. You have to be able to visualize how the design might end up, and figure out when the tool is lying to you.
You think Windows crashing while you're playing Warcraft is bad? Try finding a bug in synopsy^h^h^h^h^h^h^h any EDA tool during a critical time in the project! These tools are big and complex, and can't help but have bugs, and since the user base is smaller than most commercial software, when you find a bug, it's entirely possible that you're the first one to encounter it. A "real" engineer will be able to find these bugs when the gates and wires don't turn out the way they're supposed to, and someone who can't visualize the design independent of the EDA tool will be up a creek...
I want to know why a solid-state mp3 player couldn't be used?...
I imagine building a custom player with built-in earbuds and only one album on it would be cheaper than this dumb glue thing.
But that would be admitting that the MP3 format has other uses besides Piracy, which is obviously false and blasphemes the god of Media. Next thing you know, there will be other Heresies making the Internet rounds, like the Sun is the cneter of the Universe, and not Kelly from American Idol!
Slashdot Mirror
Of course not. Everryone knows that donuts work better. Mmmm, Donuts!
I thought the reason for the FCC's existence was to manage and regulate something that already belongs to the public. When determining how best to use this spectrum, the public's interest should be the biggest thing (some would say the only thing) taken into consideration. Using the spectrum as a cash cow should not.
Spectrum was licensed for broadcast in the past because it was the most efficient use of the public resource. With the development of more wireless products that rely on the unlicensed band, as well as less dependance on analog TV channels, unlicensing spectrum may now be the most efficient use of it, from the public's perspective.
Everyone can be a broadcaster now, in their own home, with minimum effort; thirty years ago, that was not the case. (There are always hobbyists, but that still takes up effort and time...). There is little value in locking up spectrum that can be more efficiently used by small-time "broadcasters".
This was originally why copyrights had to be renewed -- there was a fee associated with renewing it, and since most copyrighted works make their money when they're new, there would only be a small number of works that would be profitable enough fourteen years later to justify renewing the copyright.
Personally, I think this is a good method to go back to. Make the author renew their copyright every 14 years (and make the fees associated with it increase geometrically each time). If the author doesn't generate enough in sales to pay the fee, then it's time to use it as source material for other authors.
Make copyright holders realize that their monopoly is granted by the rest of us citizens through the government, for the express purpose of stimulating more creative works. There is a social cost that we all pay for that monopoly; why shouldn't a copyright holder reimburse us for it an old copyright is still profitable?
Say what? Can someone who knows more than I do explain how Unix workstations can run Office (Aside from Sun's PCi card, which is effectively a separate PC anyway?)
Now everything makes sense! In our Capitalist society, everything that's Free is Devoid of Value. DigitalConsumer.com is "nothing more than a free website", after all. People who offer something for free can't possibly have an intelligent opinion, or else they'd be using their intelligence to make more money!
I hope we all appreciate the humor in criticizing a site which claims to represent "consumers" for being free (and not offering something overpriced for consumers to spend money on...)
Yes, I know that TW has a PVR now, but it sucks goats. I like TiVo, and I want to be able to buy one box that can do everything I want. If this can help that happen, I'm all for it.
Of course, I'm under no delusions, and will be suspicious of anything that the cable companies do that look like it's going to benefit me, since customers are not their #1 priority...
And what, exactly, is the problem with looking like a dork?
But I fear that the Entertainment Industry's idea of "cooperation" is saying that Technology needs to be crippled to prevent the Entertainment industry from becoming irrelevant. No compromise.
As I've said here several times, (paraphrased from Steven P. Jobs himself), Piracy is a social problem, not a technological one. If content can be seen and heard, it can be copied, no matter what technological measures are put in place. If banning people from ever making any copies will never work, why not concentrate more on convincing people that they shouldn't make illegal copies, and making them want to buy legitimate versions even in the face of easy piracy?
Yup, that's the State of New York all right. In NYS it's legal to discriminate based on age in this circumstances, since 18 to 25 year olds cause more accidents. They can do this even if said 18-25 year old has a clean driving record and insurance history!
Of course, I happen to know it's bullshit, becuase when I was under 25, I rented a few cars on the company dime on business trips and that extra charge was never there. But just try and rent a car on your own! Even Rent-a-Wreck was pulling this crap!
The solution: rent from National. They never pulled this bullshit on me. I rented from National a few times while I was under 25, and never had any surcharge. (IIRC, I think their surcharges are for 18-20. Which still sucks, but sucks less, I suppose.)
All these rentals were in Upstate NY, though. If you are going to go to NYC, I recommend taking a cab. You don't want to drive there if you don't have to, anyway.
So, when is Steve going to realize he made a mistake by turning a totally free service used by many into a totally paid service used by few, with no middle ground??
Larry Rosen on the Microsoft Penalty Killing
and it still made sense!
There is no way to sell "unprotected" music. If it can be heard, it can be copied.
You own a copyright on your music, that is legally enough protection to go after people who are illegally copying it. That's why the government gives out copyrights in the first place. While it definitely is your music that is being sold, its their copy of your music, and they should be legally allowed to do some copying as long as it doesn't step on your rights. Or are you saying you want your fans to buy two copies of your CD if they want to listen to it in two places? Everyone has rights here, not just you.
You are trying to solve a social problem (lack of respect for copyright) through technological measures (half-assed copy-protection schemes) that are an all-or-nothing answer to a grey-area problem. It is bound to fail, and fail miserably.
PG Australia falls under Aussie copyright law. They have shorter copyright terms than the good ol' USA does.
Bingo. We've got a rather serious effort here to use linux servers for our Engineering software. It all started when one of our guys got a loaner box from IBM, and figured out that our apps ran on it twice as fast as they ran on one of our Sun processors, at a fifth of the cost. Vroom!
Too bad I still need a PC on my desk to I can read all the management edicts that come out embedded in Powerpoint slides!
Holy crap! and I thought this was another /. "Steven King" thing!
I thought he was one of the good guys.
Hey, I registered for the Times. It's free, and they never spam me. Why not register?
Yup, that's exactly why I wear a Tux hat. Because it's dorky, and I'm a dork!
I couldn't agree more. I remember reading a comparison between the current state of AI and the state of early Flight Technology. (it may have even been here, I don't recall. I make no claim to thinking this up myself. Perhaps someone can point me to a link discussing who first thought of this?)
One of the reasons that early attempts at flight did not do well is because the people designing them merely tried to imitate things that fly naturally, without really understanding why things were built that way in the first place. So, people tried to make devices with wings that flapped fast, and they didn't work. It wasn't until someone (Bernoulli?) figured out how wings work - the scientific principles behind flight - that we were able to make flying machines that actually work.
Current AI and "thinking machines" are in a similar state as the first attempts to fly were in. We can do a passable job at using our teraflops of computing power to do a brute-force imitation of thought. But until someone understands the basic scientific principles behind thought, we will never make machines that think.
Depending on the model of your power supply, pbparts.com may be helpful. I purchased a few extra cords for my iBook's yo-yo adaptor from them, although I had to look in the Pismo section to find it. (Yo-Yo Type Adapter Cord (M7332))
Nope, not anymore. Some dumbass on Slashdot posted the backdoor, and McAfee fixed it.
So not only are you an Evil Computer Hacker/Terrorist leaving secret coded terrorist messages to the other members of your cell, but you're commiting mass copyright infringement in the process! Maybe Bush and Ashcroft aren't going far enough, because you obviously haven't learned your lesson yet, punk!
Hmmm, (1 million * 4.7GB) / (24 hrs * 60 mins * 60 secs) = 54GB/sec bandwidth! Jack's cable modem must not have the download caps in place...
Cringely's technique will not be very effective, but it has nothing to with "this kind of civil disobedience". In fact, what Cringely is advocating is civil disobedience done right -- having lots of people break a stupid law openly, and accepting the consequences. Remember, just breaking the law from the comfort of your basement is not enough -- you need to let the Police break down your door and throw you in jail just for trying to play your "copy-protected" DVD or CD on your computer, all to show the public how absurd the law is.
The problem is that the absurdity will be lost on most people. This can't be compared to the Civil Rights movement, when the dignity of human beings was at stake. This is about bits, shiny things, and noise -- i.e., things that aren't really important when compared to human dignity. We all know what can happen in the future if laws like the DMCA don't get revisited in its current form. We know that the issue is more about property rights and control of information than about piracy. But since nothing important is at stake right now, anyone who participates in "civil disobedience" will be dismissed at best as a misguided geek, and at worst as an evil pirate hacker. After all, if you can watch a DVD on a DVD player, who cares if you can't watch it on a computer running Linux? We do, but noone else thinks it's important.
Let's face it, Our percieved right to download music or use media that we "own" on any device that has the technical ability to play it is not considered that important when there is so much else going on in the world.
Who says that real engineering can only be done by soldering physical components? I do "today's engineering" professionally, and while it may be easier for a clueless engineer to bullshit his way through the job by just learning how to crank the EDA tools, I guarantee he or she won't last long.
Let's face it -- today's hardware is so complex that there's no possible way that a single person (or a group of people) could "tinker" an Athlon into existence. And yet, an engineer has to be able to visualize this design as gates and wires, and keep control of the design even as he hands it off to an EDA tool to process.
In ASIC design (the field in which I have the most knowledge), you have to know enough about how to design Logic to know when the tools are doing a good enough job putting things together. A monkey can run a script, but an Engineer must know what all the commands really mean and what needs to be run to processs the design. You have to be able to visualize how the design might end up, and figure out when the tool is lying to you.
You think Windows crashing while you're playing Warcraft is bad? Try finding a bug in synopsy^h^h^h^h^h^h^h any EDA tool during a critical time in the project! These tools are big and complex, and can't help but have bugs, and since the user base is smaller than most commercial software, when you find a bug, it's entirely possible that you're the first one to encounter it. A "real" engineer will be able to find these bugs when the gates and wires don't turn out the way they're supposed to, and someone who can't visualize the design independent of the EDA tool will be up a creek...
I imagine building a custom player with built-in earbuds and only one album on it would be cheaper than this dumb glue thing.
But that would be admitting that the MP3 format has other uses besides Piracy, which is obviously false and blasphemes the god of Media. Next thing you know, there will be other Heresies making the Internet rounds, like the Sun is the cneter of the Universe, and not Kelly from American Idol!