How do you promote any software when Adobe Photoshop is the default image editor? When a software developer can choose any tool he wants with zero licensing and distribution costs, guess which platform wins out.
People want the best software and want access to the latest music and movies. It's been very low priced since forever. I can't imagine how would anyone go about asking them to change their consumption habits.
In which case you need to make something which is better in some way.
If, by a magic way, no Microsoft product could be pirated tomorrow morning, by the end of the day usage of Linux would be at around 50% on the desktop.
More likely you'd see a mixture of OSS, reverse engineered and cracked (by governments) Microsoft software by the end of the week. If would probably take a bit longer than a day, the task is a bit different from cryptoanalysis of intercepted messages.
I'm working a lot of overtime here providing Linux training to the people who run the government's IT infrastructure. Their intention is to reduce their dependance on Microsoft specifically because of licensing and support issues.
There's also the matter of being pushed around by a bunch of foreigners, something that dosn't tend to go down too well with most national goverments. Especially where there has been some kind of "occupation" in the recent past. (That these foreigners are from what is most likely the least popular country on the planet right now dosn't help either.)
I'm not sure this reasoning makes sense; There is no material difference to Microsoft between one pirate user and one non-user. This isn't like a retail store that sells goods, where stores raise prices to cover a certain percentage of shoplifting.
Much the same applies to music and video piracy".
Anyway, the so-called "economics of open source" obviously won't apply in a region where none of the "economics" of software apply; as someone else mentioned it's really Microsoft's business model that falls apart here.
Microsoft's business model is one of a secondary industry, they sell a "product". Where OSS works rather better than proprietary software is within a tertiary business model. Where software needs to be modified to work better in a specific environment...
Microsoft's supposed high prices aside, Microsoft isn't making any sales in regions with very high piracy; but one day they will convince the powers that be to crack down on it, and the users will suddenly realize the trap of Microsoft software;
This might well be an alternative business model for Microsoft, so long as they wait long enough that an effective "lock in" of Microsoft software exists.
just look at what happened recently in Russia: Schools are switching away from all non-Free software because they can't afford the costs, and their governments are making them stop pirating software.
The interesting thing here is that Russia is one of the few countries actually able to tell Microsoft where to get off. Indeed one basic drawback of such an approach is that Microsoft can only apply it to a country with widespread piracy and enough spare cash to actually pay Microsoft. If any such country were to instead spend the money on reverse engineering Microsoft's software (first having revoked any applicable copyrights and patents) and ensuring that they are safe from any military threat from the US then Microsoft would be completly stuffed. It would be impossible for them to keep their software out of any country and it's very unlikely that any DRM/Validation/etc would stand up for long against the likes of The NSA/GCHQ/etc.
That's the real issue here, and one that's not easily solved; the first copy of any major software application costs an incredible amount of money to produce. You either have to find people willing to work for free (and supply most of their own tools, etc), or work out a way to recoup the initial investment.
Or you have whoever wants the software written or altered pay the full cost. Something which works with a tertiary business model and dosn't work with a secondary business model.
What happens? Grandpa mutters something, we look like idiots/liars, the alternative browser never gets used again, and Internet Explorer's market share creeps back up. Grandpa tells his buddies at the VFW that his "rocket scientist" grandson installed some "Flame squirrel" browser that didn't *even* work with *Walmart's* website. Etc.
Wonder what would happen if Grandpa's version of IE dosn't work at all (quite easy to do) or dosn't work on a random selection of websites, including Walmart's (a little harder)...
I mean come on, doesn't everyone know that the internet is run on Windows software and IE is the only REAL web browser! Anyone who uses anything else MUST be a hacker trying to break their site.
Anyone know what webserver software under what OS the site in question is running? Extra laughter points if it turns out to be Apache on Red Hat...
The only windows system i have access to, has had IE ripped out and rendered inaccessible for security reasons.
Not actually too difficult to do with Windows file permissions, especially since XP (and presumably Vista) includes a "deny" permission.
If you think some of the things microsoft does now are bad (drm, self disabling software etc) just think what would happen if they had zero fear of losing sales?
Isn't the "drm" on the files you download, rather than anything to do with the website. Thus why not let anyone download them, but warn at the point of downloading. Isn't the real restriction that you need (allegedly) some from of Microsoft Media Player to play the files. An analogy would be a physical store selling a "CD" which would only play in certain CD players, whilst making a fuss about how you got it home. Imagine how silly it would be for them to have a guard insisting that their customers must take their purchases home in a private car, how dare they walk or take a bus.
The point is that they are being prosecuted in a manner that is inconsistent with the intent of the law (and, while IANAL, the minority opinion supports this).
Though the "intent" of the law may be rather complex. One thing which isn't clear from the original article is if the original court case involved a jury...
These are laws that are designed to prosecute people that prey on children. When we move into post-pubescence, though we often encounter a host of different problems (and part of the problem behind failing to legally distinguish between pedophilia and ephebophilia
Someone who does not fit the definition of "ephebophilia" might well be attracted to someone young. Especially in a culture youthfull looks are considered attractive.
is this a relationship between a teen and an adult and generally considered to be the case that the teen knows what they're doing
Maybe the teen's orientation is towards people older than (usually) herself.
This would be tantamount to prosecuting a 17 year-old for owning a naked picture of himself. If he looks at himself naked in the mirror is he getting a hot one-on-one live sex show?
There are plenty of places, even those where the age of consent is 17 or lower, where according to the letter of the law such a person would be "making child pornography" were they to create a photograph of themselves naked.
The GP's point was not that they were making good decisions, it was that their bad decision was inconsequential (it was that great line about dropping a can of fruit on your foot). Seriously, you need to analyze this. Should kids get a criminal record for every dumb thing they do?
Especially considering that similar aged people who have done much more harmful "dumb things", e.g. caused serious (even fatal) injuries to innocent bystanders through incompetent operation of motor vehicles, encountering less serious consequences from the criminal justice system.
The teenage pregnancy problem is because of lack of sex education.
Or the lack of a comprehensive and accurate sex education. As with "drugs education" most children are able to spot when they are fed propaganda, thus doing so is the easiest way to ensure they will ignore whatever is being said...
You'd need to talk plain text to these kids at an appropriate age (12 or so),
12 is probaby "too old" to start (especially with girls) since some of the students may be physically mature.
about what sex is, what can happen, and how to prevent problems which might arise when having sex, like pregnancy, STDs, etc.
The really difficult thing is how do you do this without pushing an adgenda. Especially politically correct ones such as "monogamy is best", "heterosexuality is best", "fewer partners are best", etc.
In fact, i don't see teenage pregnancy as a big risk.
There's every reason to think that were countries such as the US and UK to adopt an approach of good (factual, for all students, without political and religious adgendas, etc) sex education (starting at primary school level) possibly combined with a lowering of age of consent (which has the effect of making having sex no longer a statement of "teenage rebellion") rates of teenage pregnancy would actually be lowered. From the ideal of teenagers rebelling against authority the "abstinence-only" meme currently being pushed in the US is probably about the stupidest thing it is possible to do.
Unfortunately, that legal cut-off age is 18. Not 17, not 16, not 15. Yes, it is an arbitrary age,As is the age of consent. Looking at these would imply that US teens are judged to very much less mature than those in either Canada or Mexico.
Parents can be held liable for the actions of their underage children. Should some precocious 15 year old girl be allowed to legally decide that she wants to get into porn, just because SHE thinks she is old enough?
Are there no cases of 15 year old Americans being legaly emancipated? It isn't exactly that long ago that 15 year olds would have been considered legal adults. If you really want to open a can of worms, what if she is Jewish (or from some other ethnic group with it's own established rules on what makes someone "adult")?
So what happens if teens are allowed to make their own decisions? Why shouldn't parents be allowed to kick them out of the house to go and make their own way in the world at that time? Why should parent's have to pay for the teens mistakes, if the teens are allowed to just do whatever pops into their little undeveloped minds?
The whole "teens" issue is due to having a population of people who are physically adults (which includes having sexual desires) whilst being legally children. Whilst the age of physical maturity has been going down, due to the virtual elimination of malnutrition, the legal concept of "age of majority" has been going up. Less than a century ago a 15 year old might well be consider "adult" even if he or she was not physically mature. There is no way that modern people of that age have "little undeveloped minds" as a matter of biology.
Just how many grandparents are raising their grandchildren, because the moms and dads are not remotely mature or old enough to raise their own kids?
Possibly they didn't know about contraceptives or sexual activities unlikely to result in pregnancy (which include sending "Racy Photos").
This is what allowing unfettered exploration of sexuality leads to. it isn;t about keeping kids down and not allowing them to do fun things. It is an attempt to teach them some measure of being responsbile.
Thing is that high teen pregnancy rates appear to corrolate more with repression of sexuality and its exploration.
Utterly stupid. 18 year is way too high. Where I come from it's 15. When I was that age in the early 70's we fucked like rabbits.
You appear to be arguing for an age of consent of 15. Which wouldn't really help here. The basic problem is that the age were someone may become a porn model/actor not aligned with the age of consent. (Not helped in this case by Florida having a complex age of consent law.) As long as this age is greater than the effective age of consent this kind of thing will continue to happen.
Let's look at the numbers of teen pregnancies right now, shall we? It is the other side of the equasion you are presenting, after all. In 2002, for example, the teen birth rate was 43 out of every 1000 women aged 15-19.
This is presumably the figure for the USA. Thing is that this rate varies greatly between countries. So it might be very instructive to examine how things differ between countries with a high rate and a low rate. IIRC "First World" countries with low rates of teenage pregancy tend to have comprehensive sex education (including sex education for prepubescent children) and fairly low ages of consent. Whereas those with high rates tend to have poor (or even non existant) sex education and fairly high ages of consent.
Speaking as a parent of 7 and 5 year olds, when they are 15 and want to send naked pictures of themselves to their 'friends', it will be MY business. Especially since law enforcement has decided (wrongly) that it is their business as well.
How exactly did this end up in court. It's hardly unknown for parents to decide that it is law enforcement's business. Especially if they disapprove of the child's friends (or even the parents of their friends).
But you see, here in The Land Of The Free (TM)*, the majority of the population see boobies and even sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their lives. Then they aren't allowed to see them again for 18 years.
For added irony said "Land of the Free" has the highest proportion of its population in jail of any country on the planet.
You mean something where the manufacturer has total control over the hardware such as the Xbox and Xbox 360 ?
Even if someone were to build a video player which was entirely self contained (only connector being an IEC to supply power) which could not be examined in any way it still wouldn't stop people being able to pirate content played on it. Were anyone to build such a device it would probably be more useful for screening EM radiation...
Security by obscurity hasn't worked that well through out history. for instance germany didn't fair so hot in WWII with their enigma encryption. When releasing any type of encryption you must assume yoru enemies will be aware of the method and to ensure the method is hard to crack despite this. DVD encryption made the assuption they wouldn't and it was cracked easily.
There is also another problem. Enigma (and Lorenz) only had to protect information for a period of time measured in hours or days. Even if cryptoanalysis was the only threat to DVDs any encryption would have to be good for nearly a century.
Why is DRM a flawed concept? Why can't it work in the long run? Why would any breach be irreparable? What is the fundamental problem with the concept?
Because at some point you need to turn "sound" into something a human ear can hear. And "video" into something a human eye can see. It is close to impossible to do this in a way no machine can record. Even if someone needs to build custom microphones and cameras which closely match the characteristics of human sense organs.
People are already working on open standards for DRM and DRM interoperability, it's only a matter of time for these standards to become mainstream.
People have been working on making computers do all sorts of things, for over half a century. Which, outside of science fiction, do not (yet) exist. About the only way to get DRM to actually work would be magic or an AI complex enough to claim rights as a "legal person".
Encryption is only any good if it can withstand it's algorithm being revealed.
Which is one reason proprietary encryption tends to be not very good. However actual security depends on a complete system. A good algorithm implimented badly can be worst than a poor one implimented well. There's also the problem that security is only as good as that of the weakest component. Usually when you use encryption you trust the recipient with the plaintext. Whereas with DRM this just dosn't hold. Instead you rely on a ciphermachine to control how it produces the plaintext. Hence all the complication to try and control what is actually a general purpose machine. At some point you come up against the problem that you need to be able to produce sound a human ear can hear, but no microphone can and vision that only a human eye (no camera) can see. Even most "hard" engineering problems are easier...
My understanding is that this thing is supposed to run off of Hydrogen. It'd almost have, to as many consumer electronics are run indoors and most other fuels I know about give off toxic fumes when used in combustion engines.
Steam is quite nasty when hot. Also if you are burning in air you need to be careful about nitrogen and oxygen reacting...
As somebody put it - if you want 10 watts of power, that means 100 watts of waste heat to dispose of. Go put your fingers on a 100-watt lightbulb to get an idea of how much heat we're talking about...
Some laptops can be bad enough when it comes to heat output just on conventional battery power. So who's going to be the first to make one with an EGT guage?
The proposal to "kickstart" the hydrogen economy consists of bizzare stuff like getting the hydrogen from methane - bizzare because methane is easier to ship, store and use and could come from biological sources (not just kittens) or from coalbeds.
There is also a perfectly good methane distribution system in many parts of the world. Which even supplys the fuel direct to buildings. The only thing apparently lacking is bottled methane for easy use in vehicles. Though no doubt many existing fuel stations could be fairly easily outfitted to bottle methane. Whereas hydrogen requires massive changes of infrastructure and dealing with a fuel with some very inconvenient physical properties in the environment we'd actually want to use it.
There are rather easier fuels to obtain e.g. methane. Gas turbines don't tend to be too fussed about their fuel. Especially when not subject to the rather extreme environment of aircraft in flight.
May as well say In the more distant future huge arrays of kitten engines could even be the basis for clean, quiet and cost effective power plants."
Or even one based on "hamster engines". Maybe a hamster/kitten "hybrid" would be better. At least until the kittens got bored with chasing the hamsters.
I also see no problem with said same 12 year old partaking in a champaign toast, a sip of wine, or with an 18 year old drinking anything they like. Got a problem with that? Raise the age of service to 21 and I'll raise my "no problem age" commensurately.
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How do you promote any software when Adobe Photoshop is the default image editor? When a software developer can choose any tool he wants with zero licensing and distribution costs, guess which platform wins out. People want the best software and want access to the latest music and movies. It's been very low priced since forever. I can't imagine how would anyone go about asking them to change their consumption habits.
In which case you need to make something which is better in some way.
If, by a magic way, no Microsoft product could be pirated tomorrow morning, by the end of the day usage of Linux would be at around 50% on the desktop.
More likely you'd see a mixture of OSS, reverse engineered and cracked (by governments) Microsoft software by the end of the week. If would probably take a bit longer than a day, the task is a bit different from cryptoanalysis of intercepted messages.
I'm working a lot of overtime here providing Linux training to the people who run the government's IT infrastructure. Their intention is to reduce their dependance on Microsoft specifically because of licensing and support issues.
There's also the matter of being pushed around by a bunch of foreigners, something that dosn't tend to go down too well with most national goverments. Especially where there has been some kind of "occupation" in the recent past. (That these foreigners are from what is most likely the least popular country on the planet right now dosn't help either.)
I'm not sure this reasoning makes sense; There is no material difference to Microsoft between one pirate user and one non-user. This isn't like a retail store that sells goods, where stores raise prices to cover a certain percentage of shoplifting.
Much the same applies to music and video piracy".
Anyway, the so-called "economics of open source" obviously won't apply in a region where none of the "economics" of software apply; as someone else mentioned it's really Microsoft's business model that falls apart here.
Microsoft's business model is one of a secondary industry, they sell a "product". Where OSS works rather better than proprietary software is within a tertiary business model. Where software needs to be modified to work better in a specific environment...
Microsoft's supposed high prices aside, Microsoft isn't making any sales in regions with very high piracy; but one day they will convince the powers that be to crack down on it, and the users will suddenly realize the trap of Microsoft software;
This might well be an alternative business model for Microsoft, so long as they wait long enough that an effective "lock in" of Microsoft software exists.
just look at what happened recently in Russia: Schools are switching away from all non-Free software because they can't afford the costs, and their governments are making them stop pirating software.
The interesting thing here is that Russia is one of the few countries actually able to tell Microsoft where to get off.
Indeed one basic drawback of such an approach is that Microsoft can only apply it to a country with widespread piracy and enough spare cash to actually pay Microsoft. If any such country were to instead spend the money on reverse engineering Microsoft's software (first having revoked any applicable copyrights and patents) and ensuring that they are safe from any military threat from the US then Microsoft would be completly stuffed. It would be impossible for them to keep their software out of any country and it's very unlikely that any DRM/Validation/etc would stand up for long against the likes of The NSA/GCHQ/etc.
That's the real issue here, and one that's not easily solved; the first copy of any major software application costs an incredible amount of money to produce. You either have to find people willing to work for free (and supply most of their own tools, etc), or work out a way to recoup the initial investment.
Or you have whoever wants the software written or altered pay the full cost.
Something which works with a tertiary business model and dosn't work with a secondary business model.
What happens? Grandpa mutters something, we look like idiots/liars, the alternative browser never gets used again, and Internet Explorer's market share creeps back up. Grandpa tells his buddies at the VFW that his "rocket scientist" grandson installed some "Flame squirrel" browser that didn't *even* work with *Walmart's* website. Etc.
Wonder what would happen if Grandpa's version of IE dosn't work at all (quite easy to do) or dosn't work on a random selection of websites, including Walmart's (a little harder)...
I mean come on, doesn't everyone know that the internet is run on Windows software and IE is the only REAL web browser! Anyone who uses anything else MUST be a hacker trying to break their site.
Anyone know what webserver software under what OS the site in question is running? Extra laughter points if it turns out to be Apache on Red Hat...
The only windows system i have access to, has had IE ripped out and rendered inaccessible for security reasons.
Not actually too difficult to do with Windows file permissions, especially since XP (and presumably Vista) includes a "deny" permission.
If you think some of the things microsoft does now are bad (drm, self disabling software etc) just think what would happen if they had zero fear of losing sales?
Isn't the "drm" on the files you download, rather than anything to do with the website. Thus why not let anyone download them, but warn at the point of downloading. Isn't the real restriction that you need (allegedly) some from of Microsoft Media Player to play the files.
An analogy would be a physical store selling a "CD" which would only play in certain CD players, whilst making a fuss about how you got it home. Imagine how silly it would be for them to have a guard insisting that their customers must take their purchases home in a private car, how dare they walk or take a bus.
The point is that they are being prosecuted in a manner that is inconsistent with the intent of the law (and, while IANAL, the minority opinion supports this).
Though the "intent" of the law may be rather complex. One thing which isn't clear from the original article is if the original court case involved a jury...
These are laws that are designed to prosecute people that prey on children. When we move into post-pubescence, though we often encounter a host of different problems (and part of the problem behind failing to legally distinguish between pedophilia and ephebophilia
Someone who does not fit the definition of "ephebophilia" might well be attracted to someone young. Especially in a culture youthfull looks are considered attractive.
is this a relationship between a teen and an adult and generally considered to be the case that the teen knows what they're doing
Maybe the teen's orientation is towards people older than (usually) herself.
This would be tantamount to prosecuting a 17 year-old for owning a naked picture of himself. If he looks at himself naked in the mirror is he getting a hot one-on-one live sex show?
There are plenty of places, even those where the age of consent is 17 or lower, where according to the letter of the law such a person would be "making child pornography" were they to create a photograph of themselves naked.
The GP's point was not that they were making good decisions, it was that their bad decision was inconsequential (it was that great line about dropping a can of fruit on your foot). Seriously, you need to analyze this. Should kids get a criminal record for every dumb thing they do?
Especially considering that similar aged people who have done much more harmful "dumb things", e.g. caused serious (even fatal) injuries to innocent bystanders through incompetent operation of motor vehicles, encountering less serious consequences from the criminal justice system.
The teenage pregnancy problem is because of lack of sex education.
Or the lack of a comprehensive and accurate sex education. As with "drugs education" most children are able to spot when they are fed propaganda, thus doing so is the easiest way to ensure they will ignore whatever is being said...
You'd need to talk plain text to these kids at an appropriate age (12 or so),
12 is probaby "too old" to start (especially with girls) since some of the students may be physically mature.
about what sex is, what can happen, and how to prevent problems which might arise when having sex, like pregnancy, STDs, etc.
The really difficult thing is how do you do this without pushing an adgenda. Especially politically correct ones such as "monogamy is best", "heterosexuality is best", "fewer partners are best", etc.
In fact, i don't see teenage pregnancy as a big risk.
There's every reason to think that were countries such as the US and UK to adopt an approach of good (factual, for all students, without political and religious adgendas, etc) sex education (starting at primary school level) possibly combined with a lowering of age of consent (which has the effect of making having sex no longer a statement of "teenage rebellion") rates of teenage pregnancy would actually be lowered.
From the ideal of teenagers rebelling against authority the "abstinence-only" meme currently being pushed in the US is probably about the stupidest thing it is possible to do.
Unfortunately, that legal cut-off age is 18. Not 17, not 16, not 15. Yes, it is an arbitrary age,As is the age of consent. Looking at these would imply that US teens are judged to very much less mature than those in either Canada or Mexico.
Parents can be held liable for the actions of their underage children. Should some precocious 15 year old girl be allowed to legally decide that she wants to get into porn, just because SHE thinks she is old enough?
Are there no cases of 15 year old Americans being legaly emancipated? It isn't exactly that long ago that 15 year olds would have been considered legal adults.
If you really want to open a can of worms, what if she is Jewish (or from some other ethnic group with it's own established rules on what makes someone "adult")?
So what happens if teens are allowed to make their own decisions? Why shouldn't parents be allowed to kick them out of the house to go and make their own way in the world at that time? Why should parent's have to pay for the teens mistakes, if the teens are allowed to just do whatever pops into their little undeveloped minds?
The whole "teens" issue is due to having a population of people who are physically adults (which includes having sexual desires) whilst being legally children. Whilst the age of physical maturity has been going down, due to the virtual elimination of malnutrition, the legal concept of "age of majority" has been going up. Less than a century ago a 15 year old might well be consider "adult" even if he or she was not physically mature.
There is no way that modern people of that age have "little undeveloped minds" as a matter of biology.
Just how many grandparents are raising their grandchildren, because the moms and dads are not remotely mature or old enough to raise their own kids?
Possibly they didn't know about contraceptives or sexual activities unlikely to result in pregnancy (which include sending "Racy Photos").
This is what allowing unfettered exploration of sexuality leads to. it isn;t about keeping kids down and not allowing them to do fun things. It is an attempt to teach them some measure of being responsbile.
Thing is that high teen pregnancy rates appear to corrolate more with repression of sexuality and its exploration.
Utterly stupid. 18 year is way too high. Where I come from it's 15. When I was that age in the early 70's we fucked like rabbits.
You appear to be arguing for an age of consent of 15. Which wouldn't really help here. The basic problem is that the age were someone may become a porn model/actor not aligned with the age of consent. (Not helped in this case by Florida having a complex age of consent law.) As long as this age is greater than the effective age of consent this kind of thing will continue to happen.
Let's look at the numbers of teen pregnancies right now, shall we? It is the other side of the equasion you are presenting, after all. In 2002, for example, the teen birth rate was 43 out of every 1000 women aged 15-19.
This is presumably the figure for the USA. Thing is that this rate varies greatly between countries. So it might be very instructive to examine how things differ between countries with a high rate and a low rate. IIRC "First World" countries with low rates of teenage pregancy tend to have comprehensive sex education (including sex education for prepubescent children) and fairly low ages of consent. Whereas those with high rates tend to have poor (or even non existant) sex education and fairly high ages of consent.
Speaking as a parent of 7 and 5 year olds, when they are 15 and want to send naked pictures of themselves to their 'friends', it will be MY business. Especially since law enforcement has decided (wrongly) that it is their business as well.
How exactly did this end up in court. It's hardly unknown for parents to decide that it is law enforcement's business. Especially if they disapprove of the child's friends (or even the parents of their friends).
But you see, here in The Land Of The Free (TM)*, the majority of the population see boobies and even sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their lives. Then they aren't allowed to see them again for 18 years.
For added irony said "Land of the Free" has the highest proportion of its population in jail of any country on the planet.
You mean something where the manufacturer has total control over the hardware such as the Xbox and Xbox 360 ?
Even if someone were to build a video player which was entirely self contained (only connector being an IEC to supply power) which could not be examined in any way it still wouldn't stop people being able to pirate content played on it.
Were anyone to build such a device it would probably be more useful for screening EM radiation...
Security by obscurity hasn't worked that well through out history. for instance germany didn't fair so hot in WWII with their enigma encryption. When releasing any type of encryption you must assume yoru enemies will be aware of the method and to ensure the method is hard to crack despite this. DVD encryption made the assuption they wouldn't and it was cracked easily.
There is also another problem. Enigma (and Lorenz) only had to protect information for a period of time measured in hours or days. Even if cryptoanalysis was the only threat to DVDs any encryption would have to be good for nearly a century.
Why is DRM a flawed concept? Why can't it work in the long run? Why would any breach be irreparable? What is the fundamental problem with the concept?
Because at some point you need to turn "sound" into something a human ear can hear. And "video" into something a human eye can see.
It is close to impossible to do this in a way no machine can record. Even if someone needs to build custom microphones and cameras which closely match the characteristics of human sense organs.
People are already working on open standards for DRM and DRM interoperability, it's only a matter of time for these standards to become mainstream.
People have been working on making computers do all sorts of things, for over half a century. Which, outside of science fiction, do not (yet) exist. About the only way to get DRM to actually work would be magic or an AI complex enough to claim rights as a "legal person".
Encryption is only any good if it can withstand it's algorithm being revealed.
Which is one reason proprietary encryption tends to be not very good.
However actual security depends on a complete system. A good algorithm implimented badly can be worst than a poor one implimented well. There's also the problem that security is only as good as that of the weakest component.
Usually when you use encryption you trust the recipient with the plaintext. Whereas with DRM this just dosn't hold. Instead you rely on a ciphermachine to control how it produces the plaintext. Hence all the complication to try and control what is actually a general purpose machine.
At some point you come up against the problem that you need to be able to produce sound a human ear can hear, but no microphone can and vision that only a human eye (no camera) can see. Even most "hard" engineering problems are easier...
My understanding is that this thing is supposed to run off of Hydrogen. It'd almost have, to as many consumer electronics are run indoors and most other fuels I know about give off toxic fumes when used in combustion engines.
Steam is quite nasty when hot. Also if you are burning in air you need to be careful about nitrogen and oxygen reacting...
As somebody put it - if you want 10 watts of power, that means 100 watts of waste heat to dispose of. Go put your fingers on a 100-watt lightbulb to get an idea of how much heat we're talking about...
Some laptops can be bad enough when it comes to heat output just on conventional battery power. So who's going to be the first to make one with an EGT guage?
The proposal to "kickstart" the hydrogen economy consists of bizzare stuff like getting the hydrogen from methane - bizzare because methane is easier to ship, store and use and could come from biological sources (not just kittens) or from coalbeds.
There is also a perfectly good methane distribution system in many parts of the world. Which even supplys the fuel direct to buildings. The only thing apparently lacking is bottled methane for easy use in vehicles. Though no doubt many existing fuel stations could be fairly easily outfitted to bottle methane.
Whereas hydrogen requires massive changes of infrastructure and dealing with a fuel with some very inconvenient physical properties in the environment we'd actually want to use it.
Where's the hydrogen coming from?
There are rather easier fuels to obtain e.g. methane.
Gas turbines don't tend to be too fussed about their fuel. Especially when not subject to the rather extreme environment of aircraft in flight.
May as well say In the more distant future huge arrays of kitten engines could even be the basis for clean, quiet and cost effective power plants."
Or even one based on "hamster engines". Maybe a hamster/kitten "hybrid" would be better. At least until the kittens got bored with chasing the hamsters.
I also see no problem with said same 12 year old partaking in a champaign toast, a sip of wine, or with an 18 year old drinking anything they like. Got a problem with that? Raise the age of service to 21 and I'll raise my "no problem age" commensurately.
Alternativly raise the minimum age of driving...