Huh? My last knowledge was, that CSS can be licensed freely. But the CSS-NDA will prohibit a opensource CSS decoder, and it is very unlikely, that a CSS license will be granted to individuals or a group.
I know about these URLs (i have in fact written the linux audio output driver for AC3), but that does not mean, we may use this software freely. MPEG is covered by patents owned by mpegla.com, and the MPEG2 player is only a reference player.
Remember: The fact, that there is software available will not change the licensing issues. There are opensource mp3 encoders available too, but mp3 encoding is still subject to license fees.
Don't expect Linux Software for DVD Playback. It is very very unlikely that their will ever be software playback under Linux (maybe as a commercial product).
MPEG2 (the video) and AC3 (the audio), as well as CSS (the scrambling) are subject to licensing issues, which are rather expensive, for example AC3 licensing will range at about 20000 US-$, and MPEG licensing is based on a per-player-fee.
As you may have noticed, he copied unencryptedB DVDs. There are some unencrypted DVDs out there, mainly from new or small companies. Currently the Scrambling System of DVD - CSS = Content Scrambling System - appears to be still unhacked. CSS works by transmitting the data encrypted over the system bus to the decoder chip. But with the success of software decoders for Windows i think, its only a matter of time.
>That'd be nice -- problem is, as long as you're >using a modem and a normal phone line (or indeed >ISDN... ) you're being given a dedicated, >switched connection to the remote modem, which >is yours for the duration of the call, whether >you're sending data or not. If you're only using >it for IRC, that does not mean the rest of that >bandwidth is available for someone else.
Bandwith != Ports, and n given as the Number of Ports: Total-Bandwith != n * Single-Port-Maximum-Bandwith.
Yes, you are using your own dedicated port, but usually have not your own dedicated bandwidth, but the total bandwidth is shared between the ports, and is in total not the sum of all possible bandwiths on all ports. It is not unusual to have, say 90 ISDN-Ports with each 64 kBit, which sum up to 6 MegaBit fed by a single 2 MegaBit or even lesser Bandwith Line. At least here in Germany this is normal, as Bandwith is still quite expensive.
If the phone calls to the ISP are free, the number of ports are expected to get a problem, as you need more ports. But there is one difference to the bandwidth problem: Adding a port is a onetime cost, which may possible be charged to the consumer.
And this is the reason why a said, that merging the ISP and the telco in one company might solve the problem. Using a dedicated port in your local phone exchange should be much less cost than using a dedicated line from your home, over the exchange till the ISP...
But i still believe, that ISP and Telco in one company is a very bad idea, as this will destroy the other not telco-owned ISPs.
The technology in Europe is often far more superiour than in US, because it is usually much newer and because this on a higher technical standard.
But on the other hand technology is often more expensive in Europe, and sometimes not so feature-rich or user friendly, or the good features are much more expensive.
This may sound like a miracle to US citizens, maybe you must be an European to understand this:-)
I live in Germany, where i have quite expensive internet costs. The problem with internet is, that the current billing model is not exactly covering the costs i create.
I think the phone call to the ISP should be free, and instead the traffic should be billed. The problem is, if im online for hours and do only low-traffic irc, im paying for these people who are online over a short period but are downloading Megs and Gigs of Data. And this is definitively unfair. I have to pay for all these persons who think that they need to download Episode 1 or other big files. For your knowledge: Episode 1 is worth about $40 to $100 of internet traffic, at least at the current prices in germany.
But the big problem in billing the traffic and giving the connection for free, is that the ISP and the telco are usually not the same company, and the telco wants the money for the actual connection i make.
If the telco and the isp would be the same company, i would only need a connection just to my local phone exchange, and the data would be flow as ip - and billed as traffic - beginning there.
So the only way to free internet phone calls would be to merge the isp and the telco in one company, but im afraid this would also be the worst move, because in Europe and specially in Germany we have only very few telcos, and most telcos dominate their local area, so this way they would monopolize the internet access, which may be bad regarding the prices.
DVD drives are basically ATAPI-compatible, so Linux can handle them just fine. Normal Linux-Kernel can only read ISO9660-formatted DVDs, but all DVDs i own are both in ISO9660 and UDF-format. There is a experimental UDF-Driver available which would allow to read UDF-only DVDs too.
If you try to read out DVDs under Linux you may get error messages, but this is because of the Content-Scrambling-System (CSS) which encodes the data on the way between the Drive and the Decoder.
I have already copied the Data-Files of unencrypted DVDs to my hard disk, and was able to play them from the disk - but the decoder software recognized the data not as DVD but as MPEG2, and so i couldnt change subtitling, language etc.
The big problem is, that there is no decoder software for linux, neither for the existing hardware decoders (i own the Creative Encore, but because of Creatives Ignorance can not use it under Linux), nor any software decoder.
It should be possible to write a software-decoder, there are some MPEG2-Decoders in Source in the net and todays hardware should be fast enough (you will need approx. Pentium 350+), but noone has done it right now. Ive played a bit with mpeg2play (dated 1994 !!), but couldnt get it to display anything.
>Most products out today perform the AC-3 decoding >in software.
You are completely wrong. All the products out today can not decode AC3. The decode the "standard" stereo track - in hardware - and provide the AC3 digital signal on a connector, so you can connect it to a external decoder.
With the creative kit just as with the others nothing is done in software, except for feeding the -css encrypted- data from the cddrive to the card. all css decoding is done in hardware, for example at the creative board by the C-Cube ZivaDS MPEG/DVD Decoder Chip.
The decoded stereo sound is fed into your soundcard analog over the CD-Audio leed.
But - to add for being complete - there is today many software decoding DVD software, which does CSS completely in software and should be vulnerable to reverse engineering, so i think it will only be a matter of time when CSS will be rendered unusable. CSS is now the only reason, why DVDs cant be copied, but btw. not all DVDs are protected by CSS.
This is not fully right. All DVDs i have are readably by ISO9660 complient standard drivers. Additional there is a UDF driver available for linux. Both drivers have the problem that they can not readout the data of some of the DVDs. I'm afraid that the problem in this DVDs is the Content Scrambling System (CSS). But as there are software only DVD players for Windows this can not be a real problem.
Not only for the audio hardware, but for all of their hardware. I own there Encore DVD kit, and i like it very much, but i have to boot Windows to watch DVDs, and can't do anything usefull while having the DVD running (sometimes i want the DVD only running in the background while i'm working...). Creative Labs didn't even answered my email asking for help.
Maybe you should try some good quality encoders instead of fast ones... I've made mp3's where 90%+ of people don't hear any difference to a cd. And if you want to really ensure quality, encode with 160 kbit/s instead of 128 kbit/s or even 112 kbit/s.
For many years DeadHeads have been taking direct mixing desk feed into portable DAT machines, and burning CDs from them - producing better quality "live" albums than many commercial offerings.
Ok, but even if they allowed people to do this high quality recordings, this was not a very big risk to lower their profits. To get a copy of one of this recordings, one had to:
know the person which made the record
get this person to invest some time for making the copy
invest some money for the medium
And that are the points where the internet makes the difference.
I don't need to know anyone who made a record, i will simply do a search in altavista or another search engine, and will find the music. Without the internet i would have had finally gone to the record shop and bought the cd...
Second, i don't need to keep begging the person for making the copy. The number of copies these person would made is naturally limited by their spare time. In the internet they once invested some time to make the files and put them online. After this all the work is on my own. It would make no difference for this people if at all 5 copies are made or 50000.
To summarize: Internet and MP3 allows the people to make mass copies of the music with out the hassle. And i'm sure thats something the record companies dislike.
I think the problem the recording industry find in mp3 is the high quality of it. I would bet they said some time ago 'ok, lets record these people the shows, this would not do any great harm, as the quality would be bad, and it would not spread to more than a few people'. This way the could do as if they were consumer-friendly without many loss of $$$.
But the rules have changed with mp3. mp3 has good quality, the quality will not decrease regardless how often you copy the music, and it is too easy distributable over the internet. And so they are afraid that we don't give them our money anymore.
thats the problem why the recording industry does this big fight against mp3. as long as we recorded there music on low-quality tapes, all were ok, but now its going to lower there profits, and so they are taking action against it.
so it seems this is another record company giving a shit on what they said yesterday. bad enough.
You may be right about the free speech in EU, but the real problem is, that most people wouldn't have enough money to go through the legal system to the heighest courts, and additional, if the case is not "important" enough, you may be unable to go higher than a specific court.
I was at the HIP and found it to be a great time. I didn't followed many of the speakings and workshops, but met friendly people and had many fun. So i will not miss the CCC camp, and you shouldn't miss it too, if at all possible. And whats about the weather (risk of rain): Its true, the weather can be a problem in our nice germany:-), but heh, its august, and we will all hope, that it will be hot (maybe not as hot as at hip:-)) and not rainy. bring a plastic bag for your computer, and all will be ok. germany has very high standard electricity rules and normally all is properly earthed, so the risk of a electric shock will be very little to my assumption even when it rains. And i hope it will not rain.
I hate to say this, but he is right in some points.
Netscape was a very good browser some time ago, but nowadays microsoft internet explorer is already better in some parts (and i HATE internet explorer).
Netscape does not even complete CSS 1 completely, let alone CSS 2. The CSS support of IE is far superiour, and i would like to see the same CSS support Netscape really soon. All the interesting parts of CSS are not supported by Netscape. Take a look for example on freshmeat.net. The boxes with border effect had to be done by putting one table into another. With full CSS support, one table would be enough, as you can specify all the needed parameters. I have this o'reilly book DHTML - the definitive reference, and at least on every second CSS tag i can read NN (netscape navigator): n/a. I like Netscape very much for it very good scripting support (Javascript and IE? forget it), but it will sooner or later loose my support, if they will not followup the development soon.
In the good old days Netscape was the first to support new technologies, nowadays is the last, if ever. I'm not happy about this.
Some people are wondering if this story is true. I think it is. I heard it on german radio on December 26th, 1998 in the news. Ok, sometimes they report false stories in the radio news, but it is very likely that this story is in fact true.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? My last knowledge was, that CSS can be licensed freely. But the CSS-NDA will prohibit a opensource CSS decoder, and it is very unlikely, that a CSS license will be granted to individuals or a group.
I know about these URLs (i have in fact written the linux audio output driver for AC3), but that does not mean, we may use this software freely. MPEG is covered by patents owned by mpegla.com, and the MPEG2 player is only a reference player.
Remember: The fact, that there is software available will not change the licensing issues. There are opensource mp3 encoders available too, but mp3 encoding is still subject to license fees.
Don't expect Linux Software for DVD Playback. It is very very unlikely that their will ever be software playback under Linux (maybe as a commercial product).
MPEG2 (the video) and AC3 (the audio), as well as CSS (the scrambling) are subject to licensing issues, which are rather expensive, for example AC3 licensing will range at about 20000 US-$,
and MPEG licensing is based on a per-player-fee.
As you may have noticed, he copied unencryptedB DVDs. There are some unencrypted DVDs out there, mainly from new or small companies. Currently the Scrambling System of DVD - CSS = Content Scrambling System - appears to be still unhacked. CSS works by transmitting the data encrypted over the system bus to the decoder chip. But with the success of software decoders for Windows i think, its only a matter of time.
>That'd be nice -- problem is, as long as you're
>using a modem and a normal phone line (or indeed
>ISDN... ) you're being given a dedicated,
>switched connection to the remote modem, which
>is yours for the duration of the call, whether
>you're sending data or not. If you're only using
>it for IRC, that does not mean the rest of that
>bandwidth is available for someone else.
Bandwith != Ports, and n given as the Number of Ports: Total-Bandwith != n * Single-Port-Maximum-Bandwith.
Yes, you are using your own dedicated port, but usually have not your own dedicated bandwidth, but the total bandwidth is shared between the ports, and is in total not the sum of all possible bandwiths on all ports. It is not unusual to have, say 90 ISDN-Ports with each 64 kBit, which sum up to 6 MegaBit fed by a single 2 MegaBit or even lesser Bandwith Line. At least here in Germany this is normal, as Bandwith is still quite expensive.
If the phone calls to the ISP are free, the number of ports are expected to get a problem, as you need more ports. But there is one difference to the bandwidth problem: Adding a port is a onetime cost, which may possible be charged to the consumer.
And this is the reason why a said, that merging the ISP and the telco in one company might solve the problem. Using a dedicated port in your local phone exchange should be much less cost than using a dedicated line from your home, over the exchange till the ISP...
But i still believe, that ISP and Telco in one company is a very bad idea, as this will destroy the other not telco-owned ISPs.
The technology in Europe is often far more superiour than in US, because it is usually much newer and because this on a higher technical standard.
:-)
But on the other hand technology is often more expensive in Europe, and sometimes not so feature-rich or user friendly, or the good features are much more expensive.
This may sound like a miracle to US citizens, maybe you must be an European to understand this
I live in Germany, where i have quite expensive internet costs. The problem with internet is, that the current billing model is not exactly covering the costs i create.
I think the phone call to the ISP should be free, and instead the traffic should be billed. The problem is, if im online for hours and do only low-traffic irc, im paying for these people who are online over a short period but are downloading Megs and Gigs of Data. And this is definitively unfair. I have to pay for all these persons who think that they need to download Episode 1 or other big files. For your knowledge: Episode 1 is worth about $40 to $100 of internet traffic, at least at the current prices in germany.
But the big problem in billing the traffic and giving the connection for free, is that the ISP and the telco are usually not the same company, and the telco wants the money for the actual connection i make.
If the telco and the isp would be the same company, i would only need a connection just to my local phone exchange, and the data would be flow as ip - and billed as traffic - beginning there.
So the only way to free internet phone calls would be to merge the isp and the telco in one company, but im afraid this would also be the worst move, because in Europe and specially in Germany we have only very few telcos, and most telcos dominate their local area, so this way they would monopolize the internet access, which may be bad regarding the prices.
BT is proud of the fact that it is the only national telecoms carrier in the world with 100% digital exchanges'
...which is by the way wrong. Germany is 100% digital since end of 1997.
DVD drives are basically ATAPI-compatible, so Linux can handle them just fine. Normal Linux-Kernel can only read ISO9660-formatted DVDs, but all DVDs i own are both in ISO9660 and UDF-format. There is a experimental UDF-Driver available which would allow to read UDF-only DVDs too.
If you try to read out DVDs under Linux you may get error messages, but this is because of the Content-Scrambling-System (CSS) which encodes the data on the way between the Drive and the Decoder.
I have already copied the Data-Files of unencrypted DVDs to my hard disk, and was able to play them from the disk - but the decoder software recognized the data not as DVD but as MPEG2, and so i couldnt change subtitling, language etc.
The big problem is, that there is no decoder software for linux, neither for the existing hardware decoders (i own the Creative Encore, but because of Creatives Ignorance can not use it under Linux), nor any software decoder.
It should be possible to write a software-decoder, there are some MPEG2-Decoders in Source in the net and todays hardware should be fast enough (you will need approx. Pentium 350+), but noone has done it right now. Ive played a bit with mpeg2play (dated 1994 !!), but couldnt get it to display anything.
>Most products out today perform the AC-3 decoding >in software.
You are completely wrong. All the products out
today can not decode AC3. The decode the "standard" stereo track - in hardware - and
provide the AC3 digital signal on a connector,
so you can connect it to a external decoder.
With the creative kit just as with the others
nothing is done in software, except for feeding
the -css encrypted- data from the cddrive to the card. all css decoding is done in hardware, for example at the creative board by the C-Cube ZivaDS
MPEG/DVD Decoder Chip.
The decoded stereo sound is fed into your soundcard analog over the CD-Audio leed.
But - to add for being complete - there is today many software decoding DVD software, which does CSS completely in software and should be vulnerable to reverse engineering, so i think it will only be a matter of time when CSS will be rendered unusable. CSS is now the only reason, why DVDs cant be copied, but btw. not all DVDs are protected by CSS.
This is not fully right. All DVDs i have are readably by ISO9660 complient standard drivers. Additional there is a UDF driver available for linux. Both drivers have the problem that they can not readout the data of some of the DVDs. I'm afraid that the problem in this DVDs is the Content Scrambling System (CSS). But as there are software only DVD players for Windows this can not be a real problem.
Not only for the audio hardware, but for all of their hardware. I own there Encore DVD kit, and i like it very much, but i have to boot Windows to watch DVDs, and can't do anything usefull while having the DVD running (sometimes i want the DVD only running in the background while i'm working...). Creative Labs didn't even answered my email asking for help.
Maybe you should try some good quality encoders instead of fast ones... I've made mp3's where 90%+ of people don't hear any difference to a cd. And if you want to really ensure quality, encode with 160 kbit/s instead of 128 kbit/s or even 112 kbit/s.
Ok, but even if they allowed people to do this high quality recordings, this was not a very big risk to lower their profits. To get a copy of one of this recordings, one had to:
And that are the points where the internet makes the difference.
I don't need to know anyone who made a record, i will simply do a search in altavista or another search engine, and will find the music. Without the internet i would have had finally gone to the record shop and bought the cd...
Second, i don't need to keep begging the person for making the copy. The number of copies these person would made is naturally limited by their spare time. In the internet they once invested some time to make the files and put them online. After this all the work is on my own. It would make no difference for this people if at all 5 copies are made or 50000.
To summarize: Internet and MP3 allows the people to make mass copies of the music with out the hassle. And i'm sure thats something the record companies dislike.
I think the problem the recording industry find in mp3 is the high quality of it. I would bet they said some time ago 'ok, lets record these people the shows, this would not do any great harm, as the quality would be bad, and it would not spread to more than a few people'. This way the could do as if they were consumer-friendly without many loss of $$$.
But the rules have changed with mp3. mp3 has good quality, the quality will not decrease regardless how often you copy the music, and it is too easy distributable over the internet. And so they are afraid that we don't give them our money anymore.
thats the problem why the recording industry does this big fight against mp3. as long as we recorded there music on low-quality tapes, all were ok, but now its going to lower there profits, and so they are taking action against it.
so it seems this is another record company giving a shit on what they said yesterday. bad enough.
You may be right about the free speech in EU, but the real problem is, that most people wouldn't have enough money to go through the legal system to the heighest courts, and additional, if the case is not "important" enough, you may be unable to go higher than a specific court.
I was at the HIP and found it to be a great time. I didn't followed many of the speakings and workshops, but met friendly people and had many fun. So i will not miss the CCC camp, and you shouldn't miss it too, if at all possible. And whats about the weather (risk of rain): Its true, the weather can be a problem in our nice germany :-), but heh, its august, and we will all hope, that it will be hot (maybe not as hot as at hip :-)) and not rainy. bring a plastic bag for your computer, and all will be ok. germany has very high standard electricity rules and normally all is properly earthed, so the risk of a electric shock will be very little to my assumption even when it rains. And i hope it will not rain.
I hate to say this, but he is right in some
points.
Netscape was a very good browser some time ago,
but nowadays microsoft internet explorer is
already better in some parts (and i HATE
internet explorer).
Netscape does not even complete CSS 1 completely,
let alone CSS 2. The CSS support of IE is
far superiour, and i would like to see the
same CSS support Netscape really soon. All
the interesting parts of CSS are not supported
by Netscape. Take a look for example on
freshmeat.net. The boxes with border effect
had to be done by putting one table into
another. With full CSS support, one table
would be enough, as you can specify all the
needed parameters. I have this o'reilly book
DHTML - the definitive reference, and at
least on every second CSS tag i can read
NN (netscape navigator): n/a. I like Netscape
very much for it very good scripting support
(Javascript and IE? forget it), but it will
sooner or later loose my support, if they will
not followup the development soon.
In the good old days Netscape was the first to support new technologies, nowadays is the last, if ever. I'm not happy about this.
Some people are wondering if this story is
true. I think it is. I heard it on german
radio on December 26th, 1998 in the news.
Ok, sometimes they report false stories in
the radio news, but it is very likely that
this story is in fact true.