(Fun with subst, or, "my, but we're selective about our support of copyrights")
No, Kazaa has seriously damaged RIAA's business, taking money out of their pockets. RIAA needs to make an example out of them, preferably getting the Courts involved. You DON'T want to send the signal that "playing the download lottery" has no downside; that would only encourage other slimey types with no respect for copyrights to attempt simular tactics. Oh, and if RIAA is anything like Intel, their lawyers get paid the same regardless of whether or not they crush Kazaa into greasy pink pancakes, so letting Kazaa off easy won't save RIAA any money.
Disclaimer: I hate the RIAA and haven't bought a CD in years, and their current legal strategy smacks of Pure Evil, but I just had to say this. Call me a troll, brand me as flamebait, but the Slashdot crowd sure wants to have its cake and eat it, too.
...because of their return policy on software and DVDs. Now I get my games at EBX, even though it's a longer drive, because all I need is a receipt to return games, for any reason, *even after I've opened them.*
Comes in realy handy after a stinker like Master of Orion 3.
People can and do "switch" when there's a reason and an alternative, even if there's some extra effort involded.
It's evil in this particular case because there were reports from many customers being told when they called in to re-activate software after an upgrade that they were thieves, and should go buy another copy.
It's evil in general, because by the time every software manufacturer is doing it, I'll have to make ~20 phone calls when I install that magic new video card that tweaks my hardware hash just enough...
and what happens when competing forms of activation schemes over-write each other's Secret Hard Drive Boot Sector Bit? Or when I go to install a dual boot with one of them 'Open' operating systems that makes use of that sector?
It's just not a good solution to the problem of casual copying.
Jesus agrees to replace Charlton Heston as president of the NRA...
seriously, given Microsoft's stance toward the GPL and Linux (one's a cancer, one's a threat), in what universe would they possibly agree to digitally sign an alternative OS for their precious XBox?
And why doesn't MS have to pay real ca$h damages? What kind of hardship is this settlement? $1.1 billion in software is like $100K in media, boxes and shrink wrap. This is punishment in what way?
At a previous company, management had one of our full time engineers spend several days going through our code looking for those Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On Television. Did he remove them? Not exactly... every single one of them became the word 'puff'.
you could still suggest that the he replace all his 2K/XP boxes with Linux, or that he simply take the $565 it costs to get SSH server software for windows and instead get an entry level Dell Poweredge server and install your fav. Linux distro for free!:-)
I think in your case, you've got a slick setup that works, so why change it?
Some of us are a little more nuts, and don't mind re-ripping a couple hundred CDs when the Next Best Format comes along. Maybe it's cool, maybe it's a little bit better quality, maybe there's a certain satisfaction in disassociating yourself from a format that's not open (MP3, Real, Windows Media). When you get down to nuts and bolts, they're all pretty darn impressive compression schemes with a host of bitrate options and quality settings.
Once upon a time, I had my entire CD collection encoded as RealMedia, because I was going for space-saving over quality and Real was perceptibly better at low bitrates at that time. But I got so tired of the way their software takes over your desktop, keeps processes running in the background that you can't easily disable, and especially the constant bickering between Real and Microsoft about who broke whose compatibility. So I switched to MP3 because the hassle of re-encoding my collection was easier to bear than using products from annoying companies.
So, I'm like you... I think Ogg's great, and in fact I'm using it in a side project of mine for playback, but my entire CD collection is now MP3 and I don't intend to re-rip it unless there's a compelling ease-of-use reason.
To each his or her own. Don't let it bake your noodle.
Even at HDTV resolution, each pixel will be several feet across, no? Won't this look kinda bad? People weren't real thrilled with AOTC in digital theaters because they could see the pixels. This will be worse.
Aside from the geek "because I can" aspect (which I totally respect, BTW;-) why would you do this?
and see if they have the fortitude to disagree with you, or if they just tell you what they think you want to hear. (Of course, they might truly agree with you, but that's what the polygraph strapped to their arm is for...)
Over the last year I have read post after post where you all say "If only they'd offer unencrypted music downloads in a standard format for a reasonable price, where I could pick your songs one at a time instead of having to buy the a mostly bad album. I'd do that in a minute!"
Well, ladies and gentlement, Maverick and Vivendi appear, at least, to be offering an olive branch, and is giving us exactly what we've been clamoring for.
A few of you, like me, are going to go download this song and pony up a buck no matter who the hell the singer is, just to add credence to our point of view, but as I look through the responses to this story, what are the most prominent responses I've seen? (I am quoting you here:)
"MP3 is a good start but I won't pay for lossy music."
"I still won't pay for shitty music."
"Great idea, but at 1 buck per song, a whole album would cost plus than 10 dollars, I think it is a little expensive." (NOTE: $10 per album is still half fucking price!)
"Can you hop on gnutella and drop me an email with your IP?"
Jiminy Christmas, people! Here's your chance to make a difference. Put your damn money where your mouths have been for the last year. After this, I can almost see things from the RIAA's point of view. Thanks a lot.
(I apologise for generalising and lumping all Slashdot readers into a collective "you." I'm just really annoyed at some.)
well, that, or perhaps Microsoft threatened to bump them up to a higher tier of the corporate pricing structure unless they divest themselves of GPL projects...
Description of Diaspora From The Publisher: Behold the Orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knotting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the Solar System forever in fusion drive starships. And there are the holdouts. The fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth - some devolved into dream-apes; others cavorting in the seas or the air; while the statics and bridgers try to shape out a roughly human destiny. But the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. The Orphan joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety...
KUOW, my local NPR affiliate, did a call-in show last Friday about digital copyright, DRM, the SSSCA, and such matters. The guests were Cary Sherman, Senior Executive Vice-President of the Recording Industry Association of America, and
Fred Von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
the callers as a whole seemed pretty well current on the issues, knowledgeable about the technology, and anti-SSSCA.
"One lib to rule them all" would be terribly convenient, but how how do you get everybody to use just one GUI lib?
I mean, look how many window managers there are. One of the double-edged swords in open source development is that everybody is free to do pretty much anything they want. Everybody bitches about how Linus keeps such tight control over changelists, but how fragmented would Linux be if he didn't? Am I saying that a zillion slightly different linux kernels would be bad? Well... no. Is it bad to have a zillion different window managers? Again, no.
But getting everybody to use the same GUI lib would be an awfully hard task. You've got to write the end-all be-all toolkit and then convince everybody to use it. And UIs are just so darn subjective, and everybody wants to do it their own way, 'cause everybody's got a better idea (or just wants to play with something new), and a GUI lib that tried to be all things to all users might be just as slow as running those GNOME apps under KDE.
With open source, I can go look at the code, satisfy myself that it's secure, and assume responsibility for running it.
With closed-source, I have no access to the code, and I have to take someone else's word for it that the software is secure. In that case, they should be liable since they've left me no way to assume the responsibility myself.
Is it good to have eating contests where people send themselves to the hospital? Is it good to have contests like the World's Strongest Man? Or how about Mr. Puni-verse? Is it good to have contests like the Olympics?
I'm just poking fun here, but my point is: Competition is part of human nature. No matter how worthwhile, odd, unhealthy, or just plain crazy. I can't think of anything we don't compete for or about, somewhere in some culture.
I see your point, that when bad behavior is glorified, more people will behave badly, but intellect will never fully triumph over human nature (i.e., we'll never become Vulcans. But that's a good thing).
For Christmas, I built my mom the following PC from all brand new parts:
ATX mid tower case 850 MHz Celeron (overclocked to 1130) ASUS CUSI-FX motherboard (onboard video, audio, lan) 256 MB PC 133 RAM 40 GB 5400 RPM hard drive DVD-ROM drive
I got all this for $353 including tax and/or shipping.
It certainly wasn't top of the line, and it suxors for 3D games, but it surfs, emails, word processes and plays DVDs and 'The SIMS' just fine. I wouldn't call it bargain rack, and it does everything she needs with good performance.
(Incidentally, except for the video card, it's better than the machine I develop with at work. Sad, but true...)
As the previous reply said, most corporate XP installs don't need keys.
WPA was designed to prevent "casual copying" where you buy one copy of the OS and install it on 2 or 3 PCs in your house.
One of the reasons that Microsoft has such enormous market share is because of this very feature of previous versions of Windows. They figure now that once everybody's had their first few "hits" for free... they'll pay through the nose for more.
I seriously doubt this will happen. I have a network of 4 PCs a home, and while maybe on the large-ish side, this is not uncommon for a middle class family with kids in school (or your average software engineering geek;-). It'd be great if all the PCs were running the same OS for ease of networking and software compatability, but until someone can explain to me why I should fork over $150 for each PC, when most of what they do is check email and write the occasional english paper, there won't be any XP running at my place.
Microsoft has realized that there just aren't any new must-have features in their products and they have to resort to watchdog tactics (WPA) and business "discount" pricing models (where you're forced to upgrade every so often or you lose the discount) to keep the money coming in.
It's a shame really. There's a lot of good talent working at MS. Too bad they squander so much of it.
Re:Apparently crackers already had half a year
on
Security Hole In SNMP
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
you know, for a while I was with most of you, ready to take up the chant at the slightest hint of security through obscurity:
"Release information about security flaws immediately, you corporate hoodlums!"
But then came the sshd exploit. I run a small-time server on a DSL connection, and before the announcement I got zero exploit attempts. Since the announcement, I get 4 to 5 attempts per day.
What does this tell me? Keeping vulnerabilities secret for a while, while not the final answer, can save headaches, money & time by not having to clean up after every last idiot with a root kit. The serious crackers are always going to have the latest exploits, but keeping them out of the hands of script monkeys might just be worthwhile.
I don't mean this to sound as confrontational as it will, but before y'all get up on your soapboxes, take a look at your server logs and see what's really going on.
...it'd be illegal to watch shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description. There would be only one channel. Advertisements 24 hours a day, except, if we're all good little sheep, we might get a half hour of news & traffic reports at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm.
Slashdot Mirror
(Fun with subst, or, "my, but we're selective about our support of copyrights")
No, Kazaa has seriously damaged RIAA's business, taking money out of their pockets. RIAA needs to make an example out of them, preferably getting the Courts involved. You DON'T want to send the signal that "playing the download lottery" has no downside; that would only encourage other slimey types with no respect for copyrights to attempt simular tactics. Oh, and if RIAA is anything like Intel, their lawyers get paid the same regardless of whether or not they crush Kazaa into greasy pink pancakes, so letting Kazaa off easy won't save RIAA any money.
Disclaimer: I hate the RIAA and haven't bought a CD in years, and their current legal strategy smacks of Pure Evil, but I just had to say this. Call me a troll, brand me as flamebait, but the Slashdot crowd sure wants to have its cake and eat it, too.
...because of their return policy on software and DVDs. Now I get my games at EBX, even though it's a longer drive, because all I need is a receipt to return games, for any reason, *even after I've opened them.*
Comes in realy handy after a stinker like Master of Orion 3.
People can and do "switch" when there's a reason and an alternative, even if there's some extra effort involded.
It's evil in this particular case because there were reports from many customers being told when they called in to re-activate software after an upgrade that they were thieves, and should go buy another copy.
It's evil in general, because by the time every software manufacturer is doing it, I'll have to make ~20 phone calls when I install that magic new video card that tweaks my hardware hash just enough...
and what happens when competing forms of activation schemes over-write each other's Secret Hard Drive Boot Sector Bit? Or when I go to install a dual boot with one of them 'Open' operating systems that makes use of that sector?
It's just not a good solution to the problem of casual copying.
Jesus agrees to replace Charlton Heston as president of the NRA...
seriously, given Microsoft's stance toward the GPL and Linux (one's a cancer, one's a threat), in what universe would they possibly agree to digitally sign an alternative OS for their precious XBox?
And why doesn't MS have to pay real ca$h damages? What kind of hardship is this settlement? $1.1 billion in software is like $100K in media, boxes and shrink wrap. This is punishment in what way?
At a previous company, management had one of our full time engineers spend several days going through our code looking for those Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On Television. Did he remove them? Not exactly... every single one of them became the word 'puff'.
This led to some interesting comments.
they haven't forgotten at all... that's what the SSSCA and CBDTPA are all about: plugging confounding analog hole.
If they could silently slip copy protection into all the hardware don't you think they'd do that, too?
There's always time for beer.
I keep my tripwire database on a floppy. It's much easier to flip the read-only tab than to burn it on a CDRW every time I update it.
but wait!
:-)
you could still suggest that the he replace all his 2K/XP boxes with Linux, or that he simply take the $565 it costs to get SSH server software for windows and instead get an entry level Dell Poweredge server and install your fav. Linux distro for free!
I think in your case, you've got a slick setup that works, so why change it?
Some of us are a little more nuts, and don't mind re-ripping a couple hundred CDs when the Next Best Format comes along. Maybe it's cool, maybe it's a little bit better quality, maybe there's a certain satisfaction in disassociating yourself from a format that's not open (MP3, Real, Windows Media). When you get down to nuts and bolts, they're all pretty darn impressive compression schemes with a host of bitrate options and quality settings.
Once upon a time, I had my entire CD collection encoded as RealMedia, because I was going for space-saving over quality and Real was perceptibly better at low bitrates at that time. But I got so tired of the way their software takes over your desktop, keeps processes running in the background that you can't easily disable, and especially the constant bickering between Real and Microsoft about who broke whose compatibility. So I switched to MP3 because the hassle of re-encoding my collection was easier to bear than using products from annoying companies.
So, I'm like you... I think Ogg's great, and in fact I'm using it in a side project of mine for playback, but my entire CD collection is now MP3 and I don't intend to re-rip it unless there's a compelling ease-of-use reason.
To each his or her own. Don't let it bake your noodle.
s.
Even at HDTV resolution, each pixel will be several feet across, no? Won't this look kinda bad? People weren't real thrilled with AOTC in digital theaters because they could see the pixels. This will be worse.
;-) why would you do this?
Aside from the geek "because I can" aspect (which I totally respect, BTW
such as "Why is C++ better than C?"
and see if they have the fortitude to disagree with you, or if they just tell you what they think you want to hear. (Of course, they might truly agree with you, but that's what the polygraph strapped to their arm is for...)
You people!
Over the last year I have read post after post where you all say "If only they'd offer unencrypted music downloads in a standard format for a reasonable price, where I could pick your songs one at a time instead of having to buy the a mostly bad album. I'd do that in a minute!"
Well, ladies and gentlement, Maverick and Vivendi appear, at least, to be offering an olive branch, and is giving us exactly what we've been clamoring for.
A few of you, like me, are going to go download this song and pony up a buck no matter who the hell the singer is, just to add credence to our point of view, but as I look through the responses to this story, what are the most prominent responses I've seen? (I am quoting you here:)
"MP3 is a good start but I won't pay for lossy music."
"I still won't pay for shitty music."
"Great idea, but at 1 buck per song, a whole album would cost plus than 10 dollars, I think it is a little expensive." (NOTE: $10 per album is still half fucking price!)
"Can you hop on gnutella and drop me an email with your IP?"
Jiminy Christmas, people! Here's your chance to make a difference. Put your damn money where your mouths have been for the last year. After this, I can almost see things from the RIAA's point of view. Thanks a lot.
(I apologise for generalising and lumping all Slashdot readers into a collective "you." I'm just really annoyed at some.)
well, that, or perhaps Microsoft threatened to bump them up to a higher tier of the corporate pricing structure unless they divest themselves of GPL projects...
that's what I get for being flippant.
Description of Diaspora From The Publisher:
Behold the Orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knotting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the Solar System forever in fusion drive starships. And there are the holdouts. The fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth - some devolved into dream-apes; others cavorting in the seas or the air; while the statics and bridgers try to shape out a roughly human destiny. But the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. The Orphan joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety...
sure: Diaspora
ISBN: 0061057983
the callers as a whole seemed pretty well current on the issues, knowledgeable about the technology, and anti-SSSCA.
I mean, look how many window managers there are. One of the double-edged swords in open source development is that everybody is free to do pretty much anything they want. Everybody bitches about how Linus keeps such tight control over changelists, but how fragmented would Linux be if he didn't? Am I saying that a zillion slightly different linux kernels would be bad? Well... no. Is it bad to have a zillion different window managers? Again, no.
But getting everybody to use the same GUI lib would be an awfully hard task. You've got to write the end-all be-all toolkit and then convince everybody to use it. And UIs are just so darn subjective, and everybody wants to do it their own way, 'cause everybody's got a better idea (or just wants to play with something new), and a GUI lib that tried to be all things to all users might be just as slow as running those GNOME apps under KDE.
With open source, I can go look at the code, satisfy myself that it's secure, and assume responsibility for running it.
With closed-source, I have no access to the code, and I have to take someone else's word for it that the software is secure. In that case, they should be liable since they've left me no way to assume the responsibility myself.
Is it good to have eating contests where people send themselves to the hospital? Is it good to have contests like the World's Strongest Man? Or how about Mr. Puni-verse? Is it good to have contests like the Olympics?
I'm just poking fun here, but my point is: Competition is part of human nature. No matter how worthwhile, odd, unhealthy, or just plain crazy. I can't think of anything we don't compete for or about, somewhere in some culture.
I see your point, that when bad behavior is glorified, more people will behave badly, but intellect will never fully triumph over human nature (i.e., we'll never become Vulcans. But that's a good thing).
For Christmas, I built my mom the following PC from all brand new parts:
ATX mid tower case
850 MHz Celeron (overclocked to 1130)
ASUS CUSI-FX motherboard (onboard video, audio, lan)
256 MB PC 133 RAM
40 GB 5400 RPM hard drive
DVD-ROM drive
I got all this for $353 including tax and/or shipping.
It certainly wasn't top of the line, and it suxors for 3D games, but it surfs, emails, word processes and plays DVDs and 'The SIMS' just fine. I wouldn't call it bargain rack, and it does everything she needs with good performance.
(Incidentally, except for the video card, it's better than the machine I develop with at work. Sad, but true...)
As the previous reply said, most corporate XP installs don't need keys.
;-). It'd be great if all the PCs were running the same OS for ease of networking and software compatability, but until someone can explain to me why I should fork over $150 for each PC, when most of what they do is check email and write the occasional english paper, there won't be any XP running at my place.
WPA was designed to prevent "casual copying" where you buy one copy of the OS and install it on 2 or 3 PCs in your house.
One of the reasons that Microsoft has such enormous market share is because of this very feature of previous versions of Windows. They figure now that once everybody's had their first few "hits" for free... they'll pay through the nose for more.
I seriously doubt this will happen. I have a network of 4 PCs a home, and while maybe on the large-ish side, this is not uncommon for a middle class family with kids in school (or your average software engineering geek
Microsoft has realized that there just aren't any new must-have features in their products and they have to resort to watchdog tactics (WPA) and business "discount" pricing models (where you're forced to upgrade every so often or you lose the discount) to keep the money coming in.
It's a shame really. There's a lot of good talent working at MS. Too bad they squander so much of it.
you know, for a while I was with most of you, ready to take up the chant at the slightest hint of security through obscurity:
"Release information about security flaws immediately, you corporate hoodlums!"
But then came the sshd exploit. I run a small-time server on a DSL connection, and before the announcement I got zero exploit attempts. Since the announcement, I get 4 to 5 attempts per day.
What does this tell me? Keeping vulnerabilities secret for a while, while not the final answer, can save headaches, money & time by not having to clean up after every last idiot with a root kit. The serious crackers are always going to have the latest exploits, but keeping them out of the hands of script monkeys might just be worthwhile.
I don't mean this to sound as confrontational as it will, but before y'all get up on your soapboxes, take a look at your server logs and see what's really going on.
...it'd be illegal to watch shows based on the genre, actors or other words in the program description. There would be only one channel. Advertisements 24 hours a day, except, if we're all good little sheep, we might get a half hour of news & traffic reports at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm.