Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to say, but didn't take the time to write...
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornfull tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all"
Does anyone really believe that music consumers "backup" thier discs to mp3 for purely "personal" use?
Actually, I do... It's much easier to listen to a few hours of mp3's instead of having to switch cd's. And my roommates can listen to them over the LAN without borrowing and scratching my cd's.
Anyway, even if I didn't rip the cd's to mp3, I'd still want to play them in my CD-ROM-drive (which can play audio-cd's according to the specs).
Oh, and finally, this is NOT STEALING, call it illegal copying if you will (though I don't agree), but it's not stealing. I don't go around calling speeding murder, even though there's a chance you might kill someone by driving too fast.
This seems like a good way to sell more bricks. After all, if you use these bricks to make actual text, you'd have to buy more sets to get the letters you need then if they distribute them in the same frequency in wich they're used in English (or Danish, I guess, in LEGO's case). This is ofcourse the same thing WotC do with Magic.
BTW, I've got real respect for this guy... He builds LEGO for money. As a kid I always said I wanted to be a 'lego-professional' when I grew up... I guess it's time to look at that dream again:-)
"Yay, it'll be so convenient having one company control my television, internet access and phone service. I can hardly wait."
Don't forget that they also provide a lot of the contents on both TV and the Net.
One of the first things I was taught during my classes in mass-communication was to keep content-makers, content-owners, network-owners, network programmers and network-gatekeepers as separate as possible...
I think you can figure out yourself what happens if all those functions are in the hands of one MegaCorp.
A few years ago I bought the book 'Hal's Legacy; 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality'.
It's a pretty cool comparison of Clarke's vision of 2001 and how far we got in 1997.
It compares the diferent abilities of HAL with the state of AI today, writen by experts in those fields, like
Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke
Interview with Marvin Minsky by David Stork (editor of the book)
Speech recognition and understanding, by Ray Kurzweil
Computer ethics (When HAL Kills, Who's to blame?), by Daniel C. Dennet
Chapters on text-to-speech, computer-chess, supercomputer-design, reliable computing an fault-tolerance, use of language, computer 'eyes', speechreading, emotions and computing, etc...
It's a cool book to read if you're interested in AI (but not an expert, then it could be all old news I guess), but it is a bit expensive (at least here in Europe)..
'HAL's Legacy', edited by David G. Stork, MITpress, ISBN 0-262-19378-7.
Oh, I just found an online version at MIT, check it out: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/
So you haven't read LotR because of the other people who read/love it?
That sounds rather close-minded to me, especially if you liked the Hobbit.
Well, you have achance to make it up now, go see the movie (or wait for the video/DVD, to avoid the fans you hate), or are you afraid you might end up at Glastonbury yourself?
I realized the same thing yesterday. Both the new Absu and Enslaved cd's (both on Osmose) don't play in CD-ROM-players.. Osmose confirmed this for all their new CD's, see the mail they sent me, below. It's from Herve "Mr Osmose-himself", just to show this is really a small label,
From: herve.osmose
To: my-email
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: new Enslaved/Absu cd's in cd-rom drive
Dear,
Osmose productions is under a 2 years text from our factory SONY/DADC to use the audio protection systems of anti piracy. it couldn't be play on the regular computer cd desk. you have to download a player on internet, or listen it on regular hifi.
H
The Sony page tells you about all the possible protections they offer innocent record-companies to protect themselves from the evil, criminal, pirating customers... It gives less data then the average PowerPoint-presentation, boet it does give a lot of propoganada (I especially liked this one 'For quite some time the software and music industry have been suffering from the constantly increasing number of illegal CD copies. Particularly in the Business-To-Consumer sector, non-paying*) users have long since become the majority.
'. This is about the only mentioning of the word 'user' on their site.
The page then links on to here, the protection Osmose uses. I think I'll fill in their form to get some more info, even if it's just to see how much this costs the labels.
The player mentioned in the e-mail is just a vague promise that the label or artist should put the music online in a streaming format and give the user a code on the CD (no sign of either on these CD's), and guess what, it's based on 'playback license management based on the Windows Media DRM'. Damn, I knew Microsoft had to be involved somewhere...
I always thought smaller, quality labels like Osmose were closer to the bands and the fans and the scene, but it seems like I was wrong and Osmose is in the same league as the big record labels, $ony, AOL/TimeWarner/etc.., and perhaps even MS. I hope I'm wrong on this point, it would be a shame to lose a label like Osmose. Ofcourse I'm gonna let the label, the band, and my recordstore know how pissed I am, and I'm gonna try to find out if they can do this without putting a warning of some kind on the products (I doubt it).
*)non-paying users? I bought both these cd's, and I pay copyright tax on CD-R's.
Cool, I'd love to see how they found out that free music downloads help push them into bankruptcy.. I'm not saying it didn't have anything to do with it, but I'm curious if they have *any* sort of evidence to support this.
I know I've increased my spendings at record-stores since the P2P-era began, because I just discover to much cool shit online.
However, I never buy from chains, just from my local 'stand-alone' store
This sounds really cool in theory, but how will the voice sound?
I recently tried some of the shareware/freeware TTS engines I found on the web and the quality was pretty lousy. It still sounded like Operation Stealth on my Amiga.
So if my desktop PIII can't do it, how are they gonna put this into a low-power chip?
That would be about as usefull as watching one of those TV-commercials for the latest Sony 100hZ trinitron tv on your small, ancient, b/w television...
Just a thought... Wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of law that would force manufacturers of these encrypted/protected devices and media to put a sticker or some other 'warning' on them that this is an encrypted product?
That way I would at least *know* I'm being screwed...
There are already laws (here in Holland) that force manufacturers to actively warn consumers about genetically modifidied ingredients and artificial colorings/flavorings in food.
I mean, most (non-technical) people I tell DVD's are encrypted, are surprized. I even didn't know it when I first bought a DVD-rom drive.
I think it would be a Good Thing if there was some kind of sticker on these products saying 'Big Brother is watching you...'. It would give some people a (false?) sense of protection, and it would warn people like us not to buy this stuff unless we've read up on the encryption to figure out if and how we can work around it (if nescessary).
I find this somewhat fscked up, as not all CDR's are used to pirate data. Granted, in reality, that's probably the vast majority, but take my friend for instance. He runs a small side-business (linuxpusher.dk) selling homeburned Linux-distros. If the new law comes through, he's going to be sending ~$100 away in taxes each month, for something he doesn't have anything to do with.
Here in Holland we've been paying a small fee on top of the prices of disks, tapes and other recordable media for years. The sum of these fees is distributed among 'copyright-holders'.
However, if you use buy a lot of recordable media, you can pay a flat fee (around 50 euro) after which you can buy the media without paying any additional fees.
This seems like a reasonable solution to me. The customers never really complain and the 'copyright-holders' don't bitch about their copyrights being 'stolen'.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to say, but didn't take the time to write...
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornfull tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all"
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-glass
Does anyone really believe that music consumers "backup" thier discs to mp3 for purely "personal" use?
Actually, I do... It's much easier to listen to a few hours of mp3's instead of having to switch cd's. And my roommates can listen to them over the LAN without borrowing and scratching my cd's.
Anyway, even if I didn't rip the cd's to mp3, I'd still want to play them in my CD-ROM-drive (which can play audio-cd's according to the specs).
Oh, and finally, this is NOT STEALING, call it illegal copying if you will (though I don't agree), but it's not stealing. I don't go around calling speeding murder, even though there's a chance you might kill someone by driving too fast.
Well, at least M$ found a way to fix the bug.. just don't use the word begin (lower-case, followed by two spaces)...
Seems like a good solution to me.. If your product has a problem with a language, just change the language.
I'll stop using 'begin ' in e-mails as soon as M$ stops using the word 'innovate'
This seems like a good way to sell more bricks. After all, if you use these bricks to make actual text, you'd have to buy more sets to get the letters you need then if they distribute them in the same frequency in wich they're used in English (or Danish, I guess, in LEGO's case). This is ofcourse the same thing WotC do with Magic.
:-)
BTW, I've got real respect for this guy... He builds LEGO for money. As a kid I always said I wanted to be a 'lego-professional' when I grew up... I guess it's time to look at that dream again
Nah... I don't like Cradle of Filth.
Damn, they even sell 'Freedom to innovate' t-shirts and mugs there...
If there was a way to get one without paying M$, I'd get one... That way I could recognize a smart person if they start laughing at the shirt.
"Yay, it'll be so convenient having one company control my television, internet access and phone service. I can hardly wait."
Don't forget that they also provide a lot of the contents on both TV and the Net.
One of the first things I was taught during my classes in mass-communication was to keep content-makers, content-owners, network-owners, network programmers and network-gatekeepers as separate as possible...
I think you can figure out yourself what happens if all those functions are in the hands of one MegaCorp.
It's a cool book to read if you're interested in AI (but not an expert, then it could be all old news I guess), but it is a bit expensive (at least here in Europe)..
'HAL's Legacy', edited by David G. Stork, MITpress, ISBN 0-262-19378-7. Oh, I just found an online version at MIT, check it out: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/
NachtVorst
So you haven't read LotR because of the other people who read/love it?
That sounds rather close-minded to me, especially if you liked the Hobbit.
Well, you have achance to make it up now, go see the movie (or wait for the video/DVD, to avoid the fans you hate), or are you afraid you might end up at Glastonbury yourself?
NachtVorst
The Sony page tells you about all the possible protections they offer innocent record-companies to protect themselves from the evil, criminal, pirating customers... It gives less data then the average PowerPoint-presentation, boet it does give a lot of propoganada (I especially liked this one 'For quite some time the software and music industry have been suffering from the constantly increasing number of illegal CD copies. Particularly in the Business-To-Consumer sector, non-paying*) users have long since become the majority. '. This is about the only mentioning of the word 'user' on their site.
The page then links on to here, the protection Osmose uses. I think I'll fill in their form to get some more info, even if it's just to see how much this costs the labels.
The player mentioned in the e-mail is just a vague promise that the label or artist should put the music online in a streaming format and give the user a code on the CD (no sign of either on these CD's), and guess what, it's based on 'playback license management based on the Windows Media DRM'. Damn, I knew Microsoft had to be involved somewhere...
I always thought smaller, quality labels like Osmose were closer to the bands and the fans and the scene, but it seems like I was wrong and Osmose is in the same league as the big record labels, $ony, AOL/TimeWarner/etc.., and perhaps even MS. I hope I'm wrong on this point, it would be a shame to lose a label like Osmose. Ofcourse I'm gonna let the label, the band, and my recordstore know how pissed I am, and I'm gonna try to find out if they can do this without putting a warning of some kind on the products (I doubt it).
*)non-paying users? I bought both these cd's, and I pay copyright tax on CD-R's.
I know I've increased my spendings at record-stores since the P2P-era began, because I just discover to much cool shit online.
However, I never buy from chains, just from my local 'stand-alone' store
I recently tried some of the shareware/freeware TTS engines I found on the web and the quality was pretty lousy. It still sounded like Operation Stealth on my Amiga.
So if my desktop PIII can't do it, how are they gonna put this into a low-power chip?
I have a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse...
Now my question is: If people can sniff this from a hundred feet or more... Why the fsck does my reciever stop working at only a few feet?
I'm sure if it's that easy to sniff it, Logitech could have built a reciever to work with a longer range...
Does anyone know if there are any third parties that make alternate recievers with a longer range for this? NachtVorst
That would be about as usefull as watching one of those TV-commercials for the latest Sony 100hZ trinitron tv on your small, ancient, b/w television...
Just a thought... Wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of law that would force manufacturers of these encrypted/protected devices and media to put a sticker or some other 'warning' on them that this is an encrypted product?
That way I would at least *know* I'm being screwed...
There are already laws (here in Holland) that force manufacturers to actively warn consumers about genetically modifidied ingredients and artificial colorings/flavorings in food.
I mean, most (non-technical) people I tell DVD's are encrypted, are surprized. I even didn't know it when I first bought a DVD-rom drive.
I think it would be a Good Thing if there was some kind of sticker on these products saying 'Big Brother is watching you...'. It would give some people a (false?) sense of protection, and it would warn people like us not to buy this stuff unless we've read up on the encryption to figure out if and how we can work around it (if nescessary).
Just my 2 euro-cents,
NachtVorst
I'd say the biggest music export from Denmark would be Lars Ulrich, of Metallica fame (?).
Slightly ironic, isn't it?
Ofcourse I shouldn't forget about the King (Diamond) & Mercyfull Fate.
NachtVorst
However, if you use buy a lot of recordable media, you can pay a flat fee (around 50 euro) after which you can buy the media without paying any additional fees.
This seems like a reasonable solution to me. The customers never really complain and the 'copyright-holders' don't bitch about their copyrights being 'stolen'.
NachtVorst