From the company that removes photos of breastfeeding mothers...
To be 'fair' I've noticed that, since they went public, they've been a lot more permissive with the soft porn pages. You probably still can't show nipples, but labia outlines through a bikini are apparently fine. It's all a short-term grab for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
As far as I know Facebook doesn't have an 18+ category like YouTube so this move does a bit blunt.
There's a free plugin for VS2010 and on that replaces the editor with a vim-style one. It's not quite as nice as using gvim itself but really is fantastic. I don't know how developers can live with the standard editor's find tool.
It would be much more interesting to programmers, the ultra-competitive and those who enjoy sneakiness and one-upmanship. This is not the core market of WoW.
Thanks for your reply. What I meant was, are there examples of web pages that use DRM type X but don't work on all platforms where DRM type X is available? I.e. a web page using Widevine that only works on Windows and not Linux because the web devs haven't written the hooks? This would give an idea of how much (or little) EME would do to further cross-platform support.
That's hyperbole, what about finances (price of the work), what if the author makes each reader sign a non-distribution contract, what if the author decides not to publish at all?
Stallman's Right to Read is a reminder that copyright is an attempt to balance artistic transactions. In a healthy society neither the creators nor the consumers should have all the power (i.e. no restrictions).
What do we get for this DRM in HTML5? Well if "we" are web developers, we get to be slightly more browser agnostic when writing web pages that use DRM. If "we" are end-content consumers, we get a slightly better chance that a web service will work on our device. Really this strengthens the W3C politically. To remain relevant they have to appeal to both contend providers and content consumers, otherwise they'll ultimately sit there churning out ideal standards that no one follows.
That said, it wouldn't displease me if they rejected this and made it that little bit more expensive to implement DRM.
Genuine question, it seems there are currently two approaches;
1. Use a DRM package that talks to the browser for you (Flash and Silverlight). This should be write-once already.
2. Use a lower-level DRM service (PlayRead, Widevine etc.) and write some browser/platform-specific HTML
Of those web services that use the second approach, are there actually any that are not available on all of the platforms the DRM service itself is available?
How does it achieve this? The DRM will be in the form of plugins, native to the OS, that render video and audio themselves, bypassing the browser. I don't see why it's more likely that Netflix would choose to write an HTML5 DRM plugin for Linux, or your toaster, than it was that they chose Silverlight over Flash.
The standard part of this DRM is the way it communicates with the browser. Its communication with the devices is still dependent on the particular OS. That's how I understand it to work anyway, I welcome any clarification.
Or there was a coding error. After all, one single missing "=" makes its effect that of a back door, even if that had not been the intent.
Something that makes it slightly less likely to be a genuine coding error is the presence of parentheses around the erroneous clause. The difference in precedence makes them unnecesary for == and necessary for =. Of course the prior == clause has them too and some programmers follow the 'remove all ambiguity and always use them' rule.
No the parent is correct. Choosing to share your work means attaching a copyleft notice. By the social contract and laws of the land you are not actually sharing your work by selling a single copy with a (C) 2013 clearly attached. You probably mean to argue that this entitlement should be the law of the land. In that case provide arguments (there are some) as your post hints at some sort of anarchy (people are entitled to take because they can).
Out of interest, would you be happy if every CD/Bluray came with a legally-binding non-distribution contract you had to sign before taking possession?
if you aren't even practicing your material to create segments you can play back basically the same way multiple times, upon request -- aren't you conveniently skipping over a standard prerequisite of being a musician?
Late reply, but this is improvisation and in essence what jazz musicians do. It's still musicianship, being the blurring of composition and performance. You could argue it is a higher level of musicianship, rather than being a cover band for your own songs.:) Also you can practice improvisation, to better be able to respond to different moods, styles and predict (and therefore better sync with) your bandmates.
Granted, almost all improvisations are based around a pre-arranged chord structure or at least mood, but not all.
That's an interesting point, the long path of preference distribution from a minor party is like a game of Chinese whispers.
This election I was going to vote below the line but when confronted with the bizarre list of parties the choice was difficult. Who do I put last, the Patriots for Compulsory Black Sterilisation or the Free Surfboards at Wave Rock Party?
In the end I decided I couldn't do a better job of sorting them out than a more well-known party. I have no one to blame for my ignorance but myself.
Half. The system was designed such that you could preference your closest ideological partners so that, if you are defeated, your ideas still have some life. What it (probably instantly) devolved into was pure game theory where you put the party closest to you last as, being so similar, they are your biggest threat. It's prioritising the tribe over the values.
(I would say that ironically this behaviour sometimes does further your values, mostly because everyone is behaving this way.)
Many of those minor parties are also fronts for the major parties. It allows them to capture votes for issues that are highly important to certain groups of people, but which don't comfortably fit into their main policy.
Yes, and that's the issue with digital backup in general - it requires active management. Usually that applies to the storage medium but, as you point out, it also applies to the storage format.
In this case active management is paying attention to changes in technology and, for example, converting your FLAC collection to whatever is current.
Not great fun, but then throwing your old demo tapes into a box in the garage and expecting you'll have a working player later won't work forever.
people *need* to remain anonymous for fear of lawsuits or termination from their jobs, but that's about the only exception I can think of
It's more about a general sense of privacy in a globalised world. For example there are a lot of people who think it's stupid to display their address or phone number on Facebook, yet a few years ago we were all listed by name in the phone book. What drives it is a semi-rational fear of the amplifying effect of the internet.
As part of the politics of human interaction we also compartmentalise our social groups and don't necessarily want them bleeding into each other. In an earlier job I was really embarassed when a girl I worked with came across my posts in a feminist newsgroup from my uni days and brought it up at our dev meeting. That's exactly the sort of situation that makes people use pseudonyms online. Perhaps as society slowly get used to these spheres colliding this will abate.
While I don't necessarily agree with Wikileaks, the fact is that when your opponents take the 'victory at any cost' approach [...] you're going to have to make "questionable deals" at some point.
It's not even that in some cases. Politics is about brokering compromise to best achieve your goals. Because the game is so competitive it leads to the seemingly ironic situation that you can best achieve your goals by helping those whose goals are far away from yours, with the aim of cutting out those who are closest to you. This works because those closest to you in ideals are your biggest competitors.
I don't know if 'rights' thinking is the best way of framing it. These laws are about regulating the way people interact so employers don't screw over their employees and similarly employees don't screw over employers (acknowledging that often the power imbalance favours the employer).
They probably won't give you 2 weeks notice, so why give it to them?
I think the reasons are different. Employers don't give it to employees because terminating employment is more rare and almost invariably results in hard feelings. Most employers don't want a disgruntled employee working for them as it's dangerous. Employees quitting, on the other hand, is a fact of business and most managers won't try to get back at the employee for it.
You are using self-interest to justify the same behaviour that you are condemning with ethics.
Perhaps you can supply a solid argument why it is both ethical for a government to spy on other countries yet unethical to spy on itself, but using your own argument, wouldn't the U.S. government be stupid not to spy on its own citizens when they spy on it?
There are no details released but the article does mention P2P. I imagine they would spend time identifying the common torrents for, say, movies from studios that sign up with them, and then they can easily detect when one of their customers joins that swarm.
Software could automate the detection of torrents with image or audio processing (YouTube does this already). I'd have to wonder about the legality of downloading random torrents though. There's no mention that they would target web, FTP or newsgroup downloads and this would be more difficult for them to do.
Fair use is a good point. They have no way of discriminating. Maybe they plan to just put up with the complaints of the (probably vanishingly small) number of people who get a popup from fair use. On the other hand, P2P generally involves uploading as well as downloading which may still land fair users in legal trouble. Either way this is an annoying practice from Comcast.
Because they'll probably single out torrent traffic and assume that you must be pirating something.
This is not correct. Even the summary clearly states that they will detect infringing content and (somehow) present you with an offer to buy that content from a legal vendor. This monetisation is the entire point of the venture and it seems the system will only work with content from providers who sign up with Comcast's system.
You won't be seeing popups that say "You have been detected illegally downloading archlinux-bootstrap-2013.08.01-i686.tar.gz. Please cease and buy a legitimate copy from amazon.com
As usual the summary is terrible. There is no mention of snooping on internet browsing, only P2P. How would this work? Perhaps;
1. Comcast gets you to install a program or browser plugin as part of their ISP crapware.
2. Comcast detect an illegal download by passively joining P2P swarms and, since they know your IP, inject HTML popups into your next browsing request. Popups don't work with many modern browsers but even if this was in the page it would be bizarre for the user to head to their Gmail and see half the page flashing with a warning and click-to-buy links.
An overly-complex legal system is an indication that an empire has passed its peak and is in decline, nothing more, nothing less.
I disagree, and it's more simple than that. It's an indication of how long a society has remained stable.
To claim such a society is necessarily in decline means you have to argue more complicated notions of human interaction, such as that stable societies eventually become militarily complacent and weak.
We live in an age where the idea of an empire has been replaced, more or less, by that of various nation states co-existing. Whether that works out in the long run who knows, but we are unlikely to be surprised any more by a little-known society charging over the hill and overwhelming us.
That's fine but it's ironic to defend shoddy journalism (Slashdot's) just because it attacks the shoddy journalism of someone else who you don't like. It's a massive leap from;
"Two years ago press council agrees three articles on the NBN are misleading" to
"With the election looming Murdoch has ordered his newspapers to attack the NBN at every opportunity"
It's still misleading. The title implies they have released a statement arguing against net neutrality. The reality is that one division has a product restriction that an internet journalist thinks contradicts their official company position.
Slashdot Mirror
From the company that removes photos of breastfeeding mothers...
To be 'fair' I've noticed that, since they went public, they've been a lot more permissive with the soft porn pages. You probably still can't show nipples, but labia outlines through a bikini are apparently fine. It's all a short-term grab for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
As far as I know Facebook doesn't have an 18+ category like YouTube so this move does a bit blunt.
There's a free plugin for VS2010 and on that replaces the editor with a vim-style one. It's not quite as nice as using gvim itself but really is fantastic. I don't know how developers can live with the standard editor's find tool.
The author orginally wrote it to teach himself F# - http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329
It would be much more interesting to programmers, the ultra-competitive and those who enjoy sneakiness and one-upmanship. This is not the core market of WoW.
Thanks for your reply. What I meant was, are there examples of web pages that use DRM type X but don't work on all platforms where DRM type X is available? I.e. a web page using Widevine that only works on Windows and not Linux because the web devs haven't written the hooks? This would give an idea of how much (or little) EME would do to further cross-platform support.
nothing should restrict the reader
That's hyperbole, what about finances (price of the work), what if the author makes each reader sign a non-distribution contract, what if the author decides not to publish at all?
Stallman's Right to Read is a reminder that copyright is an attempt to balance artistic transactions. In a healthy society neither the creators nor the consumers should have all the power (i.e. no restrictions).
What do we get for this DRM in HTML5? Well if "we" are web developers, we get to be slightly more browser agnostic when writing web pages that use DRM. If "we" are end-content consumers, we get a slightly better chance that a web service will work on our device. Really this strengthens the W3C politically. To remain relevant they have to appeal to both contend providers and content consumers, otherwise they'll ultimately sit there churning out ideal standards that no one follows.
That said, it wouldn't displease me if they rejected this and made it that little bit more expensive to implement DRM.
Genuine question, it seems there are currently two approaches;
1. Use a DRM package that talks to the browser for you (Flash and Silverlight). This should be write-once already.
2. Use a lower-level DRM service (PlayRead, Widevine etc.) and write some browser/platform-specific HTML
Of those web services that use the second approach, are there actually any that are not available on all of the platforms the DRM service itself is available?
How does it achieve this? The DRM will be in the form of plugins, native to the OS, that render video and audio themselves, bypassing the browser. I don't see why it's more likely that Netflix would choose to write an HTML5 DRM plugin for Linux, or your toaster, than it was that they chose Silverlight over Flash.
The standard part of this DRM is the way it communicates with the browser. Its communication with the devices is still dependent on the particular OS. That's how I understand it to work anyway, I welcome any clarification.
Or there was a coding error. After all, one single missing "=" makes its effect that of a back door, even if that had not been the intent.
Something that makes it slightly less likely to be a genuine coding error is the presence of parentheses around the erroneous clause. The difference in precedence makes them unnecesary for == and necessary for =. Of course the prior == clause has them too and some programmers follow the 'remove all ambiguity and always use them' rule.
Many people disagree with your assessment of these things being wrong, it's not helpful to write arguments as if everyone agrees with you.
No the parent is correct. Choosing to share your work means attaching a copyleft notice. By the social contract and laws of the land you are not actually sharing your work by selling a single copy with a (C) 2013 clearly attached. You probably mean to argue that this entitlement should be the law of the land. In that case provide arguments (there are some) as your post hints at some sort of anarchy (people are entitled to take because they can).
Out of interest, would you be happy if every CD/Bluray came with a legally-binding non-distribution contract you had to sign before taking possession?
if you aren't even practicing your material to create segments you can play back basically the same way multiple times, upon request -- aren't you conveniently skipping over a standard prerequisite of being a musician?
Late reply, but this is improvisation and in essence what jazz musicians do. It's still musicianship, being the blurring of composition and performance. You could argue it is a higher level of musicianship, rather than being a cover band for your own songs. :) Also you can practice improvisation, to better be able to respond to different moods, styles and predict (and therefore better sync with) your bandmates.
Granted, almost all improvisations are based around a pre-arranged chord structure or at least mood, but not all.
That's an interesting point, the long path of preference distribution from a minor party is like a game of Chinese whispers.
This election I was going to vote below the line but when confronted with the bizarre list of parties the choice was difficult. Who do I put last, the Patriots for Compulsory Black Sterilisation or the Free Surfboards at Wave Rock Party?
In the end I decided I couldn't do a better job of sorting them out than a more well-known party. I have no one to blame for my ignorance but myself.
Half. The system was designed such that you could preference your closest ideological partners so that, if you are defeated, your ideas still have some life. What it (probably instantly) devolved into was pure game theory where you put the party closest to you last as, being so similar, they are your biggest threat. It's prioritising the tribe over the values.
(I would say that ironically this behaviour sometimes does further your values, mostly because everyone is behaving this way.)
Many of those minor parties are also fronts for the major parties. It allows them to capture votes for issues that are highly important to certain groups of people, but which don't comfortably fit into their main policy.
Yes, and that's the issue with digital backup in general - it requires active management. Usually that applies to the storage medium but, as you point out, it also applies to the storage format.
In this case active management is paying attention to changes in technology and, for example, converting your FLAC collection to whatever is current.
Not great fun, but then throwing your old demo tapes into a box in the garage and expecting you'll have a working player later won't work forever.
people *need* to remain anonymous for fear of lawsuits or termination from their jobs, but that's about the only exception I can think of
It's more about a general sense of privacy in a globalised world. For example there are a lot of people who think it's stupid to display their address or phone number on Facebook, yet a few years ago we were all listed by name in the phone book. What drives it is a semi-rational fear of the amplifying effect of the internet.
As part of the politics of human interaction we also compartmentalise our social groups and don't necessarily want them bleeding into each other. In an earlier job I was really embarassed when a girl I worked with came across my posts in a feminist newsgroup from my uni days and brought it up at our dev meeting. That's exactly the sort of situation that makes people use pseudonyms online. Perhaps as society slowly get used to these spheres colliding this will abate.
While I don't necessarily agree with Wikileaks, the fact is that when your opponents take the 'victory at any cost' approach [...] you're going to have to make "questionable deals" at some point.
It's not even that in some cases. Politics is about brokering compromise to best achieve your goals. Because the game is so competitive it leads to the seemingly ironic situation that you can best achieve your goals by helping those whose goals are far away from yours, with the aim of cutting out those who are closest to you. This works because those closest to you in ideals are your biggest competitors.
I don't know if 'rights' thinking is the best way of framing it. These laws are about regulating the way people interact so employers don't screw over their employees and similarly employees don't screw over employers (acknowledging that often the power imbalance favours the employer).
They probably won't give you 2 weeks notice, so why give it to them?
I think the reasons are different. Employers don't give it to employees because terminating employment is more rare and almost invariably results in hard feelings. Most employers don't want a disgruntled employee working for them as it's dangerous. Employees quitting, on the other hand, is a fact of business and most managers won't try to get back at the employee for it.
You are using self-interest to justify the same behaviour that you are condemning with ethics.
Perhaps you can supply a solid argument why it is both ethical for a government to spy on other countries yet unethical to spy on itself, but using your own argument, wouldn't the U.S. government be stupid not to spy on its own citizens when they spy on it?
There are no details released but the article does mention P2P. I imagine they would spend time identifying the common torrents for, say, movies from studios that sign up with them, and then they can easily detect when one of their customers joins that swarm.
Software could automate the detection of torrents with image or audio processing (YouTube does this already). I'd have to wonder about the legality of downloading random torrents though. There's no mention that they would target web, FTP or newsgroup downloads and this would be more difficult for them to do.
Fair use is a good point. They have no way of discriminating. Maybe they plan to just put up with the complaints of the (probably vanishingly small) number of people who get a popup from fair use. On the other hand, P2P generally involves uploading as well as downloading which may still land fair users in legal trouble. Either way this is an annoying practice from Comcast.
Because they'll probably single out torrent traffic and assume that you must be pirating something.
This is not correct. Even the summary clearly states that they will detect infringing content and (somehow) present you with an offer to buy that content from a legal vendor. This monetisation is the entire point of the venture and it seems the system will only work with content from providers who sign up with Comcast's system.
You won't be seeing popups that say "You have been detected illegally downloading archlinux-bootstrap-2013.08.01-i686.tar.gz. Please cease and buy a legitimate copy from amazon.com
As usual the summary is terrible. There is no mention of snooping on internet browsing, only P2P. How would this work? Perhaps;
1. Comcast gets you to install a program or browser plugin as part of their ISP crapware.
2. Comcast detect an illegal download by passively joining P2P swarms and, since they know your IP, inject HTML popups into your next browsing request. Popups don't work with many modern browsers but even if this was in the page it would be bizarre for the user to head to their Gmail and see half the page flashing with a warning and click-to-buy links.
An overly-complex legal system is an indication that an empire has passed its peak and is in decline, nothing more, nothing less.
I disagree, and it's more simple than that. It's an indication of how long a society has remained stable.
To claim such a society is necessarily in decline means you have to argue more complicated notions of human interaction, such as that stable societies eventually become militarily complacent and weak.
We live in an age where the idea of an empire has been replaced, more or less, by that of various nation states co-existing. Whether that works out in the long run who knows, but we are unlikely to be surprised any more by a little-known society charging over the hill and overwhelming us.
That's fine but it's ironic to defend shoddy journalism (Slashdot's) just because it attacks the shoddy journalism of someone else who you don't like. It's a massive leap from;
"Two years ago press council agrees three articles on the NBN are misleading"
to
"With the election looming Murdoch has ordered his newspapers to attack the NBN at every opportunity"
It's still misleading. The title implies they have released a statement arguing against net neutrality. The reality is that one division has a product restriction that an internet journalist thinks contradicts their official company position.
Google play store fails to remove gay-cure app. Slashdot: Google argues homosexuality is an abomination.