You can use it for a basis of your own copyrighted work, but you can't claim a copyright on something without adding significant creative value.
The standards for whether a particular addition constitutes significant creative value are remarkably low. The already mentioned spelling modernization, for instance, is an example of a tangible modification to the Shakespeare texts over which Houghton-Mifflin can legitimately claim copyright.
You could, in theory, copy their Shakespeare book, IF you somehow removed all of their spelling and editorial changes, line numberings, page numberings, annotations, commentary, illustrations, etc. from every page of the book. In practice, this is not so easy, because it is not easy to tell what was changed and what was not changed unless you have an original copy to compare it with. And if you have an original copy of Shakespeare, then you don't need the Houghton-Mifflin published version anyway.
In this case the text is (almost) legally enforceable. They really do own the copyright. They really do have the right to prohibit almost all copying of that book, except in limited fair use circumstances.
For the reason why, I suggest you "learn up" on what public domain really means in the US. Public domain simply means that a particular work has no copyright restrictions. It does not mean that you are prohibited from adding further copyright restrictions of your own.
In other words, a work which is public domain is free for all to copy in any way they wish, including copyrighting a copy for themselves. Note that placing your own copyright on the work does not mean that the original work is copyrighted. It just means that your copy is copyrighted. Anyone is still free to access the original copy, which is still in the public domain. But they can't use your copy if your copy has your copyright.
You might ask "are there laws that prohibit you from lying about the authorship of a work?" The answer is yes. It's called fraud. It has nothing to do with copyright. Placing your own copyright on a work, and claiming authorship of a work, are two completely independent actions according to the legal system.
You are totally right that the cover text is not enforceable with regard to "fair use" copying of the text, but the parts that say "Copyright 1974 Houghton Mifflin" and "All rights reserved" are definitely valid, enforceable, and meaningful.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
if you're hosting domains then you wouldn't want to make that above change to your named.conf
You're right, you wouldn't want to block all queries, but you can do almost as good: you can block all queries except the queries for the domains that you're hosting. In fact, doing so is generally considered a very good idea, since it protects you against some forms of cache poisoning attacks.
Check out the allow-recursion command in the named.conf (5) man page, which does exactly what I describe.
there might very well be a dozen more Quaoar-sized "planets" in the Kupier belt. Even Pluto-sized planets might be out there.
I think the chance of finding additional Pluto-sized planets is much lower than you suggest.
Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930. He continued searching the sky for planets at Lowell Observatory until 1943. In his own words,
my plates recorded stars five times fainter than Pluto and I covered two-thirds of the sky, and nothing more showed up at all.
(source: Tombaugh, C.W., The Trans-Neptunian Planet Search. In "Planets and Satellites", Kuiper & Middlehurst (ed.s), University of Chicago Press, 1961.)
Integrated wireless antennas are not limited to the Mac world. There are certainly a number of non-Mac laptops which also have integrated wireless antennas. As one would expect, they cost more than the non-integrated alternatives, but Macs cost more too.
The point to be made about DVDs is that installing an all-region DVD player on linux is no harder than tracking down an all region hack for MacOS, installing it, and praying that it works. If you only play DVDs from one region, then, yes, the Mac is much easier. But if you require multi region support (like me), then MacOS is no easier than Linux with respect to DVD support.
kpager is also a little bit buggy, at least in kde 3.0.0. It only took about five minutes of use to uncover this little artifact (where the xterm in the screenshot is missing in kpager).
To be fair, I really should be using the newest version of KDE. I just started with 3.0.0 because that's what came with my distro (redhat 7.3, speaking of which).
come on, be honest here. you wouldn't consider KDE even if it did.
Technically, if you'll excuse my mathematics background for the moment, that statement is true, albeit vacuously: Since KDE does not have these features, any statement of the form "if KDE did, then..." is in fact true.
But, seriously, can you not read? The first thing I said was that I would switch immediately if KDE could do the things I listed.
They certainly can't do any worse on the desktop than they are currently doing.
If you tell me how to change the following aspects of KDE behavior to the way I have them right now in GNOME, I'll switch to KDE right away:
The GNOME pager that I use right now renders a miniature version of each virtual desktop that I have, with miniature windows, in color. I have never been able to get KDE to do the same thing.
In GNOME, panel buttons extend all the way to the edge of the screen. That means, specifically, if my mouse pointer is positioned on the edgemost possible pixel of the panel, I can still click the mouse and execute the panel button. I would like KDE to duplicate this behavior, because edge pixels are very valuable by virtue of being easy to hit.
Please do not tell me to rtfm. I have been told to rtfm about a dozen times and invariably when I press the matter the other person admits that they don't know either. I do not think it is even possible to get KDE to do what I describe. If I am wrong, I would really appreciate being told how.
For my usage habits, these two differences alone make GNOME vastly more usable than KDE and I could not even consider KDE for daily work unless KDE were to address or surpass GNOME on these points.
in the face of this smug and elitist attitude comes the fact that thousands of Linux servers are being compromised because their administrators don't apply patches in a timely fashion. Remember, too, that when the Nimda et. al. worms hit, the Slashdot discussions included many regular readers who are also Windows administrators calmly pointing out that they had had no difficulties as they were patched long ago.
The figures being bandied about here are as follows: Code red infected 400000 systems. Slapper infected probably 15000 systems. Considering that Microsoft IIS and Apache/ssl have comparable market share, I'd say the actual, practical, measured difference in vulnerability levels between Microsoft and Apache administrators is substantial.
Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.
NOT TRUE. I have rpc-2 DVD drives with original shipping firmware (two of them, in fact), and I can tell you from firsthand experience that while rpc-2 does make life more difficult, it is not by any means a roadblock to region-free playing
VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match.
In fact, the "title" method can even be used in the case where you have an encrypted.vob file on the hard disk and neither the dvd disc nor the dvd drive is available at hand.
The inner workings of the cryptographic attack on css are actually quite interesting. As I recall, the attack relies on the fact that blank black mpeg video encodes in a very predictable fashion. Most movies which start with blank black video are thus vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack and the movie's CSS key can be guessed in this manner.
What about instances when words do inflict physical harm? Someone else in this thread has already pointed out that loud enough sounds can cause ear damage. For instance, what if your neighbor decided to buy the biggest baddest sound system in the world and play loud rock music at jet engine noises with the speakers pointed at your home day and night?
What if this neighbor hated you so much that wherever you moved he would set up camp next to you and blare noise into your home?
This example is purposely farfetched. But I believe your claim is farfetched too, especially if taken so far as to include, in your own phrasing, all "sound waves".
For a professional mathematician, reading all the uninformed opining here on quantum computing and one time pads is, frankly, painful on the eyes.
I'm a Ph.D student at Harvard. I've done cryptography research in the past. So listen up people.
Quantum computing does not destroy cryptography as we know it. It is important to realize exactly what quantum computing does and does not do. For symmetric ciphers, quantum computers reduce the cost of brute force search by a square root. So AES goes down from a 2^256 cipher to a 2^128 cipher. But 2^128 is still quite safe. And even if AES were to fall, it would not be an insurmountable problem to design something better.
As for public key cryptography, most but not all public key cryptosystems are completely broken by quantum computers. Luckily we still have some public key cryptosystems that have not yet been broken using quantum algorithms. Elliptic curve discrete log is one such example.
One time pads are not the answer. Yes the security of one time pads has been proven but this proof relies on a stronger-than-you-think collection of assumptions that is almost never realized in real life. One time pads are very useful in certain situations but completely unsuitable for cryptography as most people use it.
WMA is not an MPEG standard. Heck, the.wav file format is not an international standards-body approved standard. And contrary to what you think, the mass acceptance of mp3 has nothing to do with the fact that it is a standard, and everything to do with the fact that it works well enough for people to use.
Would you be shocked to learn that the vast majority of mp3s as used by people today are not compliant to the MPEG standard? That's right, most mp3s are not standards compliant, because most mp3s include an id3 tag, and the inclusion of an id3 tag into an mpeg stream is definitely invalid according to the mpeg standard.
As a second example, I should mention the practice of packaging an mp3 file together with a.wav file format header. which also renders the mpeg stream invalid according to the standard. This practice is perpetuated by none other than Fraunhofer themselves, who at one time made an mp3 encoder that prepended.wav headers onto mp3 files by default.
Advocating standards support is fine, but from that perspective mp3 as commonly used is just as broken as ogg with regards to international standards.
I'm sick of whiny Americans who are so upset about the DMCA that they claim to be oppressed.
Even you admit that the DMCA is "unfair". So why are you so pissed off at people who are attacking it?
Look, don't get me wrong, I realize DMCA is not the greatest possible evil in the world. I realize that we're very lucky to even be in a position where we can sweat the small stuff like DMCA. But does that mean we should just throw in the towel and let the DMCA slide? No way. Wrong is wrong, and it should be fixed.
Your rights are not being violated because the MPAA won't let you download Spiderman.
I don't give two shits about downloading Spiderman. However, I would like to play DVDs on my linux system. I would like to be legally able to copy excerpts from a DVD for fair use purposes. And I would like to be able to walk into a store and buy a region 2 capable DVD player. DeCSS makes these things possible. It should not be illegal just because it can do illegal things.
For the same reason, KaZAA should not be banned just because it can do illegal things. The original poster was right. By your reasoning, CD recorders would be banned since they can be used to pirate software.
If I was only allowed to eradicate one wrong in this world, I wouldn't choose DMCA. But fortunately life is not a zero sum game. We should work to eradicate all wrongs, not just the most serious ones.
Have there been any REAL double-blind tests as well as equipment tests of quality comparisons between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis yet?
In general, your point is sound, but in this case you picked a really bad example. With mp3, it's not even close: vorbis wins in a landslide, especially at low bitrates.
Just take literally any sound file and encode it at 64 kbps vorbis vs. 64 kbps mp3, and listen to it once. The double blind concept isn't even useful here because the mp3 sounds so much worse than the vorbis that anyone can instantly tell which is which, rendering the blind useless.
Whether the same holds at high bitrates, or with other formats, is a different question, one which is well served by a blind test. Others have already pointed out some links to such tests. But in many situations the advantages of vorbis, especially over mp3, are so obvious that the concept of blind testing is not even applicable.
This has been in effect for years now, I have NO idea why/. thinks this is news
What's new is that the longstanding royalty exception for free software / freeware programs has been removed. I can't find any historical info on the exception from the mp3 licensing site (probably because Fraunhofer isn't eager to publicize the fact that there once was an exception), but if you look in other places like the Debian mailing lists, you can read what the old policy was.
These prices have always been around. It's just that they have never been enforced.
Wrong. Or, rather, right, but wrong with respect to a very technical point that has escaped notice so far.
Previously decoders which were released for free for personal use were exempt from the licensing fees. This covers winamp, xmms, mpg123, and all the other free software players you love.
That exemption has been removed. Now everything costs 75 cents, no matter whether it's free software or not. And that, my friend, is a big deal.
Athlon XP 2600 way cheaper than 2.8GHz pentium 4
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you fail to mention that the Athlon 2600 will be more expensive than the Pentium IV 2.8Ghz.
Your point about there being no Athlon XP 2600s available at retail is legitimate, but I do not see any way that you can interpret the $269 price of the Athlon XP 2600 as higher than the $499 price of the 2.8GHz Pentium 4.
I honestly don't understand why you AMD fanboys feel the need to misrepresent facts
Man, I don't know quite what to say in response to something like this... Some of your points are very good, but others of them are even more trolling than the original post (which I feel if read in the right way is a perfectly legitimate question).
First off, although I'm not big on the internet digisubbing scene and I've never encountered your (or anybody else's) work, I do appreciate the positive effects that you and other fansubbers have had on the success of the anime industry in the US. I am myself a fansubber (read my Linux fansubbing guide if you don't believe me), and although I don't distribute fansubs publicly out of concern for copyrights, I bet we must have a lot in common if we're both crazy enough to fansub;-)
if you don't BUY anime, there WILL be no anime.
I totally agree with this statement. However, in light of this statement, I don't see how you can possibly object to the original post's suggestion to buy the R2 DVD. A sale of the R2 DVD is still a sale, and still supports the studio every bit as much (and probably more so) than an R1 sale.
any SELF-RESPECTING American anime fan should buy the R1 when it comes out, and go see it in the theater, and promote it to others.
I do not agree with this statement at all. Remember the question at hand is whether to purchase the R2 DVD or the R1 DVD. Now, maybe some people like you are rich and can buy both, but most people are content with one or the other. An anime fan, whether American or otherwise, has no ethical obligation to purchase the R1 DVD preferentially over the R2 DVD. I fail to see how it could be any other way. I should have every right to purchase the R2 DVD, if I want, and not get lectured by the likes of you.
We're not talking piracy here. We're talking about the purchase of a legitimate R2 DVD which pays legitimate royalties to the producers. The anime industry is not going to die if everybody in the US decides they want to purchase R2 DVDs from now on.
What has not been explicitly mentioned so far is that R1 DVDs are often way better value than R2 DVDs. Now, it should be said, I really appreciate how cheap R1 DVDs are, and again I appreciate your efforts to bring anime to R1 if nothing else then for this reason. But your position that I am obligated to prefer R1 over R2 is, frankly, bogus. If I am feeling masochistic and I want to buy an R2 disc and pay twice the money for half as much stuff, isn't that my right? And who are you to take that away from me? Why do you "hate" people who, for whatever reason or another, genuinely prefer the R2 discs?
To put it another way: you fansub (I assume) out of your own kindness and generosity, right? I know I sure do. Fansubs are a gift, and, IMO, a gift that comes with no obligation on the recipient to repay any of the enormous effort involved in their making. Now before you say anything I am well aware that he who receives a fansub is ethically supposed to go out and buy the anime commercially when it is released. You may interpret this as an "obligation". But we do not enforce this requirement, nor could we without bringing all of internet distribution to a screeching halt. Be honest with yourself here: probably more than half the people who view your work never follow up with any commercial support at all. The people who buy R2 DVDs are not the enemy here. I would be absolutely ecstatic if anybody were motivated to go out and purchase R2 anime DVDs as a result of viewing my fansubs.
Okay, woah, that got wayyyy too long, but I hope I was able to contribute something of value.
Re:Boycott Disney
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I dislike Disney as much as you do. In fact, I've been boycotting MPAA movies in general -- I haven't watched an MPAA movie in a revenue-generating manner since Star Wars (episode I, not II).
But in this case there is a legitimate way to get the movie without lining Disney's pockets. Just buy the DVD from Japan, where it's already been released to DVD. You don't have to go to Japan either. You can order online from CD Japan or many other places. The DVD even includes English subtitles, so you'll have no problem following the movie.
Although Disney's name still appears in the credits of the Japanese DVD (if you can read Japanese...), they don't get revenue from the sale. That's because Disney bought only the worldwide distribution rights to the film. They don't get anything from sales within Japan.
Be warned that the Japanese DVD is region 2. Most DVD players in the US can't play region 2 discs (if you have to ask, then yours can't).
Re:A non-literal translation
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I haven't compared in detail - were there scenes edited from the English version?
"Edited" is a matter of opinion. Nothing was cut or substantively changed. But, if you remember, the beginning of the movie contains a paragraph of written Japanese that explains the background for the movie. This text was of course changed to English in the English version.
The title and end credits were also (understandably) changed in the English version. I'm just saying that I like how they give the option of viewing the movie with Japanese text intact, instead of forcing English text and credits upon you.
Re:A non-literal translation
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Sen To, X-Men 2
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The Mononoke dub was indeed excellent, but it still falls short of the original audio. Granted the fact that I understand Japanese may skew my opinion... but honestly, did they really have to use a female voice actor for the wolf when the original voice actor was male?
It should also be remembered that the R1 DVD was not at first supposed to have the Japanese soundtrack. It was only after a massive petition effort on this very web site that Disney opted to throw it in. They had to delay the DVD by several weeks to add it, if I recall.
I will agree that the DVD came out fantastic and was well worth the several weeks' delay. The Japanese portion used seamless branching to play back both audio and video bit-identically to the original version, a faithfulness that I would love to see adopted by other R1 DVDs.
Has anyone seen other well-done dubs from studio Ghibli on DVD?
The only other excellent dub I've seen from Ghibli is the French language dub of "Porco Rosso". Out of all the thousands (eek) of hours of anime that I've accumulated, the French "Porco" track is the only dub that I actually prefer over the original Japanese--a standard that Mononoke doesn't even match.
Slashdot Mirror
The standards for whether a particular addition constitutes significant creative value are remarkably low. The already mentioned spelling modernization, for instance, is an example of a tangible modification to the Shakespeare texts over which Houghton-Mifflin can legitimately claim copyright.
You could, in theory, copy their Shakespeare book, IF you somehow removed all of their spelling and editorial changes, line numberings, page numberings, annotations, commentary, illustrations, etc. from every page of the book. In practice, this is not so easy, because it is not easy to tell what was changed and what was not changed unless you have an original copy to compare it with. And if you have an original copy of Shakespeare, then you don't need the Houghton-Mifflin published version anyway.
For the reason why, I suggest you "learn up" on what public domain really means in the US. Public domain simply means that a particular work has no copyright restrictions. It does not mean that you are prohibited from adding further copyright restrictions of your own.
In other words, a work which is public domain is free for all to copy in any way they wish, including copyrighting a copy for themselves. Note that placing your own copyright on the work does not mean that the original work is copyrighted. It just means that your copy is copyrighted. Anyone is still free to access the original copy, which is still in the public domain. But they can't use your copy if your copy has your copyright.
You might ask "are there laws that prohibit you from lying about the authorship of a work?" The answer is yes. It's called fraud. It has nothing to do with copyright. Placing your own copyright on a work, and claiming authorship of a work, are two completely independent actions according to the legal system.
You are totally right that the cover text is not enforceable with regard to "fair use" copying of the text, but the parts that say "Copyright 1974 Houghton Mifflin" and "All rights reserved" are definitely valid, enforceable, and meaningful.
I wish there was too, but in this case you're the one who is wrong.
You must not have a very large sampling of classic books. Almost all classic books in my collection have copyright asserted by the publisher.
Please provide specific examples of this, so that I can be proved wrong. Please give the ISBN and perhaps a link to an online bookseller.
Here's one: The Riverside Shakespeare, ISBN 0-395-04402-2, which says the following on the inside title page.
You're right, you wouldn't want to block all queries, but you can do almost as good: you can block all queries except the queries for the domains that you're hosting. In fact, doing so is generally considered a very good idea, since it protects you against some forms of cache poisoning attacks.
Check out the allow-recursion command in the named.conf (5) man page, which does exactly what I describe.
I think the chance of finding additional Pluto-sized planets is much lower than you suggest.
Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930. He continued searching the sky for planets at Lowell Observatory until 1943. In his own words,
(source: Tombaugh, C.W., The Trans-Neptunian Planet Search. In "Planets and Satellites", Kuiper & Middlehurst (ed.s), University of Chicago Press, 1961.)The point to be made about DVDs is that installing an all-region DVD player on linux is no harder than tracking down an all region hack for MacOS, installing it, and praying that it works. If you only play DVDs from one region, then, yes, the Mac is much easier. But if you require multi region support (like me), then MacOS is no easier than Linux with respect to DVD support.
To be fair, I really should be using the newest version of KDE. I just started with 3.0.0 because that's what came with my distro (redhat 7.3, speaking of which).
Does kpager integrate into the KDE panel? From what I can tell so far, it does not.
You haven't used KDE for quite some time, right? KDE does exactly that for a very long time (from v2.1 on AFAIR, but maybe even from v2.0 on)
Thanks for the tip, I just tried 3.0 and it does have the buttons done right.
Technically, if you'll excuse my mathematics background for the moment, that statement is true, albeit vacuously: Since KDE does not have these features, any statement of the form "if KDE did, then ..." is in fact true.
But, seriously, can you not read? The first thing I said was that I would switch immediately if KDE could do the things I listed.
If you tell me how to change the following aspects of KDE behavior to the way I have them right now in GNOME, I'll switch to KDE right away:
- The GNOME pager that I use right now renders a miniature version of each virtual desktop that I have, with miniature windows, in color. I have never been able to get KDE to do the same thing.
- In GNOME, panel buttons extend all the way to the edge of the screen. That means, specifically, if my mouse pointer is positioned on the edgemost possible pixel of the panel, I can still click the mouse and execute the panel button. I would like KDE to duplicate this behavior, because edge pixels are very valuable by virtue of being easy to hit.
Please do not tell me to rtfm. I have been told to rtfm about a dozen times and invariably when I press the matter the other person admits that they don't know either. I do not think it is even possible to get KDE to do what I describe. If I am wrong, I would really appreciate being told how.For my usage habits, these two differences alone make GNOME vastly more usable than KDE and I could not even consider KDE for daily work unless KDE were to address or surpass GNOME on these points.
The figures being bandied about here are as follows: Code red infected 400000 systems. Slapper infected probably 15000 systems. Considering that Microsoft IIS and Apache/ssl have comparable market share, I'd say the actual, practical, measured difference in vulnerability levels between Microsoft and Apache administrators is substantial.
NOT TRUE. I have rpc-2 DVD drives with original shipping firmware (two of them, in fact), and I can tell you from firsthand experience that while rpc-2 does make life more difficult, it is not by any means a roadblock to region-free playing
VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match.
In fact, the "title" method can even be used in the case where you have an encrypted .vob file on the hard disk and neither the dvd disc nor the dvd drive is available at hand.
See the libdvdcss documentation for more details.
The inner workings of the cryptographic attack on css are actually quite interesting. As I recall, the attack relies on the fact that blank black mpeg video encodes in a very predictable fashion. Most movies which start with blank black video are thus vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack and the movie's CSS key can be guessed in this manner.
What if this neighbor hated you so much that wherever you moved he would set up camp next to you and blare noise into your home?
This example is purposely farfetched. But I believe your claim is farfetched too, especially if taken so far as to include, in your own phrasing, all "sound waves".
I'm a Ph.D student at Harvard. I've done cryptography research in the past. So listen up people.
As for public key cryptography, most but not all public key cryptosystems are completely broken by quantum computers. Luckily we still have some public key cryptosystems that have not yet been broken using quantum algorithms. Elliptic curve discrete log is one such example.
Would you be shocked to learn that the vast majority of mp3s as used by people today are not compliant to the MPEG standard? That's right, most mp3s are not standards compliant, because most mp3s include an id3 tag, and the inclusion of an id3 tag into an mpeg stream is definitely invalid according to the mpeg standard.
As a second example, I should mention the practice of packaging an mp3 file together with a .wav file format header. which also renders the mpeg stream invalid according to the standard. This practice is perpetuated by none other than Fraunhofer themselves, who at one time made an mp3 encoder that prepended .wav headers onto mp3 files by default.
Advocating standards support is fine, but from that perspective mp3 as commonly used is just as broken as ogg with regards to international standards.
Even you admit that the DMCA is "unfair". So why are you so pissed off at people who are attacking it?
Look, don't get me wrong, I realize DMCA is not the greatest possible evil in the world. I realize that we're very lucky to even be in a position where we can sweat the small stuff like DMCA. But does that mean we should just throw in the towel and let the DMCA slide? No way. Wrong is wrong, and it should be fixed.
Your rights are not being violated because the MPAA won't let you download Spiderman.
I don't give two shits about downloading Spiderman. However, I would like to play DVDs on my linux system. I would like to be legally able to copy excerpts from a DVD for fair use purposes. And I would like to be able to walk into a store and buy a region 2 capable DVD player. DeCSS makes these things possible. It should not be illegal just because it can do illegal things.
For the same reason, KaZAA should not be banned just because it can do illegal things. The original poster was right. By your reasoning, CD recorders would be banned since they can be used to pirate software.
If I was only allowed to eradicate one wrong in this world, I wouldn't choose DMCA. But fortunately life is not a zero sum game. We should work to eradicate all wrongs, not just the most serious ones.
In general, your point is sound, but in this case you picked a really bad example. With mp3, it's not even close: vorbis wins in a landslide, especially at low bitrates.
Just take literally any sound file and encode it at 64 kbps vorbis vs. 64 kbps mp3, and listen to it once. The double blind concept isn't even useful here because the mp3 sounds so much worse than the vorbis that anyone can instantly tell which is which, rendering the blind useless.
Whether the same holds at high bitrates, or with other formats, is a different question, one which is well served by a blind test. Others have already pointed out some links to such tests. But in many situations the advantages of vorbis, especially over mp3, are so obvious that the concept of blind testing is not even applicable.
What's new is that the longstanding royalty exception for free software / freeware programs has been removed. I can't find any historical info on the exception from the mp3 licensing site (probably because Fraunhofer isn't eager to publicize the fact that there once was an exception), but if you look in other places like the Debian mailing lists, you can read what the old policy was.
Wrong. Or, rather, right, but wrong with respect to a very technical point that has escaped notice so far.
Previously decoders which were released for free for personal use were exempt from the licensing fees. This covers winamp, xmms, mpg123, and all the other free software players you love.
That exemption has been removed. Now everything costs 75 cents, no matter whether it's free software or not. And that, my friend, is a big deal.
Can you read? The Athlon XP 2600 is way cheaper than the 2.8GHz Pentium 4.
Your point about there being no Athlon XP 2600s available at retail is legitimate, but I do not see any way that you can interpret the $269 price of the Athlon XP 2600 as higher than the $499 price of the 2.8GHz Pentium 4.
I honestly don't understand why you AMD fanboys feel the need to misrepresent facts
Who's misrepresenting facts here, you or me?
I am trying, though.
First off, although I'm not big on the internet digisubbing scene and I've never encountered your (or anybody else's) work, I do appreciate the positive effects that you and other fansubbers have had on the success of the anime industry in the US. I am myself a fansubber (read my Linux fansubbing guide if you don't believe me), and although I don't distribute fansubs publicly out of concern for copyrights, I bet we must have a lot in common if we're both crazy enough to fansub ;-)
if you don't BUY anime, there WILL be no anime.
I totally agree with this statement. However, in light of this statement, I don't see how you can possibly object to the original post's suggestion to buy the R2 DVD. A sale of the R2 DVD is still a sale, and still supports the studio every bit as much (and probably more so) than an R1 sale.
any SELF-RESPECTING American anime fan should buy the R1 when it comes out, and go see it in the theater, and promote it to others.
I do not agree with this statement at all. Remember the question at hand is whether to purchase the R2 DVD or the R1 DVD. Now, maybe some people like you are rich and can buy both, but most people are content with one or the other. An anime fan, whether American or otherwise, has no ethical obligation to purchase the R1 DVD preferentially over the R2 DVD. I fail to see how it could be any other way. I should have every right to purchase the R2 DVD, if I want, and not get lectured by the likes of you.
We're not talking piracy here. We're talking about the purchase of a legitimate R2 DVD which pays legitimate royalties to the producers. The anime industry is not going to die if everybody in the US decides they want to purchase R2 DVDs from now on.
What has not been explicitly mentioned so far is that R1 DVDs are often way better value than R2 DVDs. Now, it should be said, I really appreciate how cheap R1 DVDs are, and again I appreciate your efforts to bring anime to R1 if nothing else then for this reason. But your position that I am obligated to prefer R1 over R2 is, frankly, bogus. If I am feeling masochistic and I want to buy an R2 disc and pay twice the money for half as much stuff, isn't that my right? And who are you to take that away from me? Why do you "hate" people who, for whatever reason or another, genuinely prefer the R2 discs?
To put it another way: you fansub (I assume) out of your own kindness and generosity, right? I know I sure do. Fansubs are a gift, and, IMO, a gift that comes with no obligation on the recipient to repay any of the enormous effort involved in their making. Now before you say anything I am well aware that he who receives a fansub is ethically supposed to go out and buy the anime commercially when it is released. You may interpret this as an "obligation". But we do not enforce this requirement, nor could we without bringing all of internet distribution to a screeching halt. Be honest with yourself here: probably more than half the people who view your work never follow up with any commercial support at all. The people who buy R2 DVDs are not the enemy here. I would be absolutely ecstatic if anybody were motivated to go out and purchase R2 anime DVDs as a result of viewing my fansubs.
Okay, woah, that got wayyyy too long, but I hope I was able to contribute something of value.
But in this case there is a legitimate way to get the movie without lining Disney's pockets. Just buy the DVD from Japan, where it's already been released to DVD. You don't have to go to Japan either. You can order online from CD Japan or many other places. The DVD even includes English subtitles, so you'll have no problem following the movie.
Although Disney's name still appears in the credits of the Japanese DVD (if you can read Japanese...), they don't get revenue from the sale. That's because Disney bought only the worldwide distribution rights to the film. They don't get anything from sales within Japan.
Be warned that the Japanese DVD is region 2. Most DVD players in the US can't play region 2 discs (if you have to ask, then yours can't).
"Edited" is a matter of opinion. Nothing was cut or substantively changed. But, if you remember, the beginning of the movie contains a paragraph of written Japanese that explains the background for the movie. This text was of course changed to English in the English version.
The title and end credits were also (understandably) changed in the English version. I'm just saying that I like how they give the option of viewing the movie with Japanese text intact, instead of forcing English text and credits upon you.
It should also be remembered that the R1 DVD was not at first supposed to have the Japanese soundtrack. It was only after a massive petition effort on this very web site that Disney opted to throw it in. They had to delay the DVD by several weeks to add it, if I recall.
I will agree that the DVD came out fantastic and was well worth the several weeks' delay. The Japanese portion used seamless branching to play back both audio and video bit-identically to the original version, a faithfulness that I would love to see adopted by other R1 DVDs.
Has anyone seen other well-done dubs from studio Ghibli on DVD?
The only other excellent dub I've seen from Ghibli is the French language dub of "Porco Rosso". Out of all the thousands (eek) of hours of anime that I've accumulated, the French "Porco" track is the only dub that I actually prefer over the original Japanese--a standard that Mononoke doesn't even match.