The move is aimed at stemming the rising tide of pirate downloads, and DRM will be in force to prevent copying the movies to DVD.
Oh man. I'm turning off my karma bonus so I can say this: Seriously, people, fuck the hell off. I can buy it and download it to my computer, but I can't even do the most basic of things like burn it to DVD and actually watch it on my own TV.
Yeah, you're saying, but who would legitimately do that??
Everyone whose TV is larger and has better sound than their computer monitor + speakers. Or who has more comfortable seating in front of their TV. Or whose office / bedroom isn't appropriate for hosting friends and company.
but don't just buy something because it's made by "Gap" or "Apple" because then you really are showing the rest of the world only how much of a corporate puppet you really are...
*Rolls eyes* Eugh. Don't be ridiculous!
I'd never be caught dead wearing anything from Gap!
Hear hear to both parent and grandparent. Parent, I'm picky because of the semantics. You and I both know grandparent was referring to lossy vs. lossless encoding alogrithms. A/D-D/A conversion isn't considered "lossless" or "lossy" in the compression sense, although certainly the fidelity of the conversion is important. As you say yourself, "we can't always [listen to bands in person, on demand, while walking to class, for example". So we do have to settle for an alternative. And while there may be massive loss of information between pristine analog original performance and high-quality digitally-sampled copy, grandparent was talking about the lack of availability of lossless-encoded digital file formats available for download.
Grandparent is right, and this is why, although I *am* an emusic.com subscriber, I also belong to a CD club, and buy used CDs fairly frequently.
This is so abysmal, as it really shows how strong a hold the "anytime you copy anything, you're stealing" redefinition of fair use by entertainment industries has.
I'm a big fan of Chili (spelled wrong, but there you go) and Russiaville (pronounced ROOSH-uh-vihl, as the story goes, so it doesn't sound Commie) and of course New Waverly. Not because of any sentimental value of Waverly, or where the hell Waverly even is, or if there even was an Old Waverly to begin with. I just think it's a funny name:)
...And I left the point out because mark sense voting is notpertinent to the discussion we're trying to have. In fact, you invited me not to get on the topic, and I obliged....
Not hardly. If you print them out and let the voter touch them, they are not verifiable. And if the voter doesn't touch them, then you have no garuntee they say what the receipt given to the voter says.
These are *not receipts*. They are not (in most implementations) to be handled by the voter. At the very least, they are not to be taken home! It is entirely possible to both produce a voter-verifiable receipt, and have it collected either machine-internally or collected in a ballot box. In either case, there is the assurance that the paper ballot has recorded the proper vote, as verified by the voter, at least at the time the polls have closed. You still don't have zero chance of tampering between collection in the ballot box and storage / counting at the elections office, but in that case, we're at least no worse off than we were with the old system. And in fact, we're better off, because we have, e.g., a) speed of electronic systems, b) assurance electronic system aren't suspect viz. by means of verified paper trails, c) better, more legible, easier to tally paper ballots in the event they are needed. It's not a perfect system, but it is actually, contrary to the in-name-only current system, helping America's votes count.
And if it is possible, it WILL be done. So, you admit that all we are getting for the paper trail is the ILLUSION of more security. So, why spend the money for the illusion.
Ipso facto, this doesn't mean that paper ballots won't make things better. Corruption is not an all-or-nothing proposition. This is a reasonable step to combat and reduce the ease with which people in power can tamper with votes. Your door lock or handgun or the chip in your key that starts your car only provides the illusion of security. The chip in the key that starts your car only provides the illusion of security, in the way you use it above, meaning still allowing a nonzero chance of something going wrong. But you make that call, and decide that that option is better than, say, not having it. Great. Now I have to say I find the assurances that people's votes are a) actually being counted and b) actually being counted properly well worth this "cost" that people assert is there WRT paper ballots (for sure, it is), but no one has ever bothered (to my knowledge) to produce some actual numbers. How much is it going to cost to ensure that, say, the leader of the US or of my city is, in fact, elected, and not some machine-appointed leader? I find it terribly difficult to believe the costs for that are going to be so repulsive that it becomes impractical to implement. Look at what Congress did to get everyone on these damnable systems in the first place.
You have solved or fixed NOTHING.
I was JOKING in grandparent. And I left the point out because mark sense voting is pertinent to the discussion we're trying to have. In fact, you invited me not to get on the topic, and I obliged.
How do you know that your paper receipt says the same thing as the electronic registers kept in the machine? Are you going to have a complete count of the paper receipts every election? And don't give me that random audit crap. If you are going to do a random audit, someone knows which precinct it is in, and just rigs the ones in other precincts.
You don't know the what's stored in the computer ever -- that's the problem! But having the paper ballot stored securely at the voting site ensures that, in the event of a contested election, officials can return to the voter-verified paper ballots which we're certain are correct, verified by each voter independently, and furthermore, unquestionably legible (and thus superior to handwritten or punch-card ballots), as the thing is printed in plain English. In so doing, we can ensure that IFF there is a contested election, the paper receipt, which the voter is certain is accurate, can be used to augment the uncertain, unverifiable digital trail. No "random" audits are truly needed, though perhaps a random sample to be determined afterwards could be used, if only to assuage concerns about the legitimacy of this new system.
Either you go to a complete paper system, with it's ability to be scammed or you go completely electronic with it's ability to be scammed. At least the electronic produces fast returns, and faster processing of people.
While it's ostensibly possible to rig an election using any one sort of ballot, I would submit that it is perhaps a bit more difficult to rig an election using two different media to document a ballot. Through verification and recounting as outlined above, the potential to truly rig an election goes back, at least, to the good old days of having dead people vote, double-registration, etc.
Oh, and don't get on mark sense ballots either. I SAW those scammed in the 2000 election by the supervisor of elections in Orange County Florida.
I don't know what you're talking about, but that's OK: I fixed the world in responding to your two earlier paragraphs:)
If Picasa runs smoothly and keeps its online photo service access then I see it becoming very popular.
If this keeps me from having to load my digital photos on my iBook to purchase prints in a slick, easy-to-use application, the hell yeah, I'd call it indispensible.
Re:$$$$ for nothing but higher res? Sure, guys. Su
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
·
· Score: 1
1. I'll buy beers for you both if you'll bring cigars.
2. I hope you're both right about this, one because I happen to agree with you, but two because I think, as we've seen before, there is a risk of backlash when the negatives of a new format outweigh the potential positives. Furthermore, my parents aren't luddites, but they've just now gotten an HDTV / home theater-type setup. They're going to laugh in the face of anyone telling them they need an upgrade. They think they're in movie-watching heaven when they sit down for movie night, and I'm inclined to agree: I only have an SDTV set, no cable, and have no intention of any sort of upgrade there in the near future*.
3. I would *not* discount fidelity in the realm of the analog -> digital transition, however. The convenience was nice, and no doubt a major driving force behind the transition. However, in the cases of both cassette tape -> CD and VHS -> DVD, there was a drastically noticeable, consumer (i.e., not just *philes noticed) observable increase in quality of playback. For most people, in most situations, next-gen-VDs aren't going to even bring that to the table, with no increase in the convenience factors -- in fact, damned inconvenient to require new componentry and Kosher, holy-watered, big-brother approved computer bits -- will (hopefully) leave this next revolution where it belongs: being shipped back to the assholes who made it.
4. Buying CDs isn't more expensive than iTunes, et al, if you order them through a club. Remember to call them for the opt-in system after fulfilling your purchasing requirements, and then they're there for you as a convenience, and you don't have to reply each month saying you don't want the crap disc they're going to send you. I've been a CD club member for years, and this system has always worked out well. And I rip what I want to whatever quality setting I want in whatever format I need. Sweet:)
-----
* - No luddite either; audio is a big hobby of mine.
Props to parent! Have any of these studies shown effects of really nice earbuds, with insulating layers of silicone (for example)? I vastly prefer to use them -- a nice Sony pair I got for maybe $25 that sits in the ear with the silicone forming something of a seal around the outside of the ear canal -- than any other pair I have, because I've discovered I run the unit consistently lower in volume. There's a professor down the hall from where I work who studies this; maybe I should corner him...
Well, someone could be reading it aloud? Like legislation-on-tape or something? They could get Garrison Keillor to do it, and it would be just like A Prairie Home Companion: President's Edition.
"For all you Bush-haters, this is not a rant about Bush, because he has zero power to pass laws. "
Sure he does, they are called executive orders.
And it is incumbent upon him to employ a veto if he finds some law passed by Congress to be way out of whack. This follows as part of the separation of powers / checks-and-balances idea which drives the ternary branching of US government. And to this day, Bush hasn't vetoed one single piece of legislation that's crossed his desk.
For what it's worth, I do apply this standard pretty universally, across party lines. One of the reasons I do not like Bill Clinton at all is the fact that he signed DOMA in 1996. He didn't make the law, but he sure as hell signed it, and that makes him complicit in the legislation.
Kenny Chesney's major-label debut on BNA was in 1994, and he did have a couple top-tens off that disc. So yeah, by all accounts, he's been around more than 10 years.
And I have a Green Day album (Kerplunk!) that has a 1991 copyright date on it, though I don't think it was originally released on Lookout. So yeah, the other commenter is right, they're actually more like 15 years old -- maybe closer to 10 years from their first major-label release.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am a linguist. I think there's quite a telltale in the subject line of parent -- not meant at all to be an attack on the poster, who makes very good points about exactly what I'm writing about.
In the American judicial system, the point is not to prove one's innocence, but rather, that the complaining party must prove the defendant's guilt. Hence why jury verdicts are read as "(not) guilty" and never "innocent". The system doesn't care if you did it or not. The system cares if it can be proved beyond a reasonable dobut that you did it. And if the complaining party falls short of that burden of proof, you are released, regardless of your innocence or lack thereof. It's part and parcel of the Founding Fathers' (and the continuance thereof by legal scholars) bit on freedoms being of paramount concern.
Furthermore, I think this whole push by RIAA / MPAA to describe filesharing as stealing is exactly the kind of metaphorical talk that's designed to prime the minds of policy makers to react to these transgressions in a certain sort of way. If it was just described as copying (which, by any account, illegal or quasi-legal duplication of these sorts of copyrighted media is), there isn't nearly the feeling of loss or mistreatement to the party that controls the source work.
If the people in the policy process are trained to think of downloading a song from Napster or whatever the P2P flavor of the week is as a form of stealing, that implies along with it the material loss of something which has fair-market valuation. By talking about it as "stealing", and introducing legal and political discourse as such, RIAA moves the focus from the monetary value of what they're actually losing -- which isn't much in the long run -- and shifts it to treating each download as though someone had actually stolen the physical CD or single from the record store. There's a huge difference, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in a court, especially if the trial reaches a damages phase.
Unlike a ham sandwich, which can only be eaten once.
Economically speaking (I'm a linguist, not an economist, damnit!), this relates to things like scarcity and COGS (cost of goods sold). The direct expenses in selling software come from the expectations of the consumer: flashy box, manuals, media. The bulk of the expenses in producing software come from time: paying people to make things (code, packaging, marketing). In the case of downloadable software, the only realy direct expense in distribution is bandwidth.
In the ham sandwich case, for example, the price is driven by the relative scarcity of the item. There is only one ham sandwich, and you can only sell it to one interested party, before you as the salesperson no longer have the sandwich and have to prepare anothher. Each incidence of an item sold increases the COGS numbers in a pretty linear fashion; for software, what expense there is comes in the form of labor. Gold code can be reproduced and distributed for far under the ham-sandwich-type model.
And furthermore, bullshit to grandparent's "you wouldn't take free stuff". Ever been to a college campus or a radio station remote broadcast? People will do freaking anything to get a free t-shirt or a can of Coke.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh man. I'm turning off my karma bonus so I can say this: Seriously, people, fuck the hell off. I can buy it and download it to my computer, but I can't even do the most basic of things like burn it to DVD and actually watch it on my own TV.
Yeah, you're saying, but who would legitimately do that??
Everyone whose TV is larger and has better sound than their computer monitor + speakers. Or who has more comfortable seating in front of their TV. Or whose office / bedroom isn't appropriate for hosting friends and company.
Goddamn.
*Rolls eyes* Eugh. Don't be ridiculous!
I'd never be caught dead wearing anything from Gap!
Hear hear to both parent and grandparent. Parent, I'm picky because of the semantics. You and I both know grandparent was referring to lossy vs. lossless encoding alogrithms. A/D-D/A conversion isn't considered "lossless" or "lossy" in the compression sense, although certainly the fidelity of the conversion is important. As you say yourself, "we can't always [listen to bands in person, on demand, while walking to class, for example". So we do have to settle for an alternative. And while there may be massive loss of information between pristine analog original performance and high-quality digitally-sampled copy, grandparent was talking about the lack of availability of lossless-encoded digital file formats available for download.
Grandparent is right, and this is why, although I *am* an emusic.com subscriber, I also belong to a CD club, and buy used CDs fairly frequently.
I think you've really exposed the weak point in OOo's system here. Clearly, they're missing the two most important steps to world domination:
-???
-Profit!
All this eating and grinding and resizing without any hope of a black box mechanism leading to profit is surely the undoing of that project.
This is so abysmal, as it really shows how strong a hold the "anytime you copy anything, you're stealing" redefinition of fair use by entertainment industries has.
I'm a big fan of Chili (spelled wrong, but there you go) and Russiaville (pronounced ROOSH-uh-vihl, as the story goes, so it doesn't sound Commie) and of course New Waverly. Not because of any sentimental value of Waverly, or where the hell Waverly even is, or if there even was an Old Waverly to begin with. I just think it's a funny name :)
I live less than an hour down Indiana 26 from this "Kokomo" place, and I assure you nobody wants to go there.
I never understood this Beach Boys song until I found out there was another, more desireable Kokomo.
...And I left the point out because mark sense voting is notpertinent to the discussion we're trying to have. In fact, you invited me not to get on the topic, and I obliged....
:)
Terribly sorry bout that
These are *not receipts*. They are not (in most implementations) to be handled by the voter. At the very least, they are not to be taken home! It is entirely possible to both produce a voter-verifiable receipt, and have it collected either machine-internally or collected in a ballot box. In either case, there is the assurance that the paper ballot has recorded the proper vote, as verified by the voter, at least at the time the polls have closed. You still don't have zero chance of tampering between collection in the ballot box and storage / counting at the elections office, but in that case, we're at least no worse off than we were with the old system. And in fact, we're better off, because we have, e.g., a) speed of electronic systems, b) assurance electronic system aren't suspect viz. by means of verified paper trails, c) better, more legible, easier to tally paper ballots in the event they are needed. It's not a perfect system, but it is actually, contrary to the in-name-only current system, helping America's votes count.
Ipso facto, this doesn't mean that paper ballots won't make things better. Corruption is not an all-or-nothing proposition. This is a reasonable step to combat and reduce the ease with which people in power can tamper with votes. Your door lock or handgun or the chip in your key that starts your car only provides the illusion of security. The chip in the key that starts your car only provides the illusion of security, in the way you use it above, meaning still allowing a nonzero chance of something going wrong. But you make that call, and decide that that option is better than, say, not having it. Great. Now I have to say I find the assurances that people's votes are a) actually being counted and b) actually being counted properly well worth this "cost" that people assert is there WRT paper ballots (for sure, it is), but no one has ever bothered (to my knowledge) to produce some actual numbers. How much is it going to cost to ensure that, say, the leader of the US or of my city is, in fact, elected, and not some machine-appointed leader? I find it terribly difficult to believe the costs for that are going to be so repulsive that it becomes impractical to implement. Look at what Congress did to get everyone on these damnable systems in the first place.
I was JOKING in grandparent. And I left the point out because mark sense voting is pertinent to the discussion we're trying to have. In fact, you invited me not to get on the topic, and I obliged.
You don't know the what's stored in the computer ever -- that's the problem! But having the paper ballot stored securely at the voting site ensures that, in the event of a contested election, officials can return to the voter-verified paper ballots which we're certain are correct, verified by each voter independently, and furthermore, unquestionably legible (and thus superior to handwritten or punch-card ballots), as the thing is printed in plain English. In so doing, we can ensure that IFF there is a contested election, the paper receipt, which the voter is certain is accurate, can be used to augment the uncertain, unverifiable digital trail. No "random" audits are truly needed, though perhaps a random sample to be determined afterwards could be used, if only to assuage concerns about the legitimacy of this new system.
While it's ostensibly possible to rig an election using any one sort of ballot, I would submit that it is perhaps a bit more difficult to rig an election using two different media to document a ballot. Through verification and recounting as outlined above, the potential to truly rig an election goes back, at least, to the good old days of having dead people vote, double-registration, etc.
I don't know what you're talking about, but that's OK: I fixed the world in responding to your two earlier paragraphs
If this keeps me from having to load my digital photos on my iBook to purchase prints in a slick, easy-to-use application, the hell yeah, I'd call it indispensible.
1. I'll buy beers for you both if you'll bring cigars.
:)
2. I hope you're both right about this, one because I happen to agree with you, but two because I think, as we've seen before, there is a risk of backlash when the negatives of a new format outweigh the potential positives. Furthermore, my parents aren't luddites, but they've just now gotten an HDTV / home theater-type setup. They're going to laugh in the face of anyone telling them they need an upgrade. They think they're in movie-watching heaven when they sit down for movie night, and I'm inclined to agree: I only have an SDTV set, no cable, and have no intention of any sort of upgrade there in the near future*.
3. I would *not* discount fidelity in the realm of the analog -> digital transition, however. The convenience was nice, and no doubt a major driving force behind the transition. However, in the cases of both cassette tape -> CD and VHS -> DVD, there was a drastically noticeable, consumer (i.e., not just *philes noticed) observable increase in quality of playback. For most people, in most situations, next-gen-VDs aren't going to even bring that to the table, with no increase in the convenience factors -- in fact, damned inconvenient to require new componentry and Kosher, holy-watered, big-brother approved computer bits -- will (hopefully) leave this next revolution where it belongs: being shipped back to the assholes who made it.
4. Buying CDs isn't more expensive than iTunes, et al, if you order them through a club. Remember to call them for the opt-in system after fulfilling your purchasing requirements, and then they're there for you as a convenience, and you don't have to reply each month saying you don't want the crap disc they're going to send you. I've been a CD club member for years, and this system has always worked out well. And I rip what I want to whatever quality setting I want in whatever format I need. Sweet
-----
* - No luddite either; audio is a big hobby of mine.
Bastard. My Zenith with an 8086 had a "color" monitor... you know: Green.
Actually, I was thinking of the GO-229 as seen here. It never entered production, but was a prototype in the Luftwaffe's final throes.
It was my favorite plane in the Lucasfilms game "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe".
Props to parent! Have any of these studies shown effects of really nice earbuds, with insulating layers of silicone (for example)? I vastly prefer to use them -- a nice Sony pair I got for maybe $25 that sits in the ear with the silicone forming something of a seal around the outside of the ear canal -- than any other pair I have, because I've discovered I run the unit consistently lower in volume. There's a professor down the hall from where I work who studies this; maybe I should corner him...
Well, someone could be reading it aloud? Like legislation-on-tape or something? They could get Garrison Keillor to do it, and it would be just like A Prairie Home Companion: President's Edition.
And it is incumbent upon him to employ a veto if he finds some law passed by Congress to be way out of whack. This follows as part of the separation of powers / checks-and-balances idea which drives the ternary branching of US government. And to this day, Bush hasn't vetoed one single piece of legislation that's crossed his desk.
For what it's worth, I do apply this standard pretty universally, across party lines. One of the reasons I do not like Bill Clinton at all is the fact that he signed DOMA in 1996. He didn't make the law, but he sure as hell signed it, and that makes him complicit in the legislation.
Kenny Chesney's major-label debut on BNA was in 1994, and he did have a couple top-tens off that disc. So yeah, by all accounts, he's been around more than 10 years.
And I have a Green Day album (Kerplunk!) that has a 1991 copyright date on it, though I don't think it was originally released on Lookout. So yeah, the other commenter is right, they're actually more like 15 years old -- maybe closer to 10 years from their first major-label release.
"Whereas denigrating something by calling it "gay" is the height of maturity."
And not even accurate! If you really wanted to have a gay naming convention, why not append LGBTQ (pronounced "k")?
LGBTQuonqueror
LGBTQuile
LGBTQuontact
LGBTQuser
and my favorite, LGBTQPDF
etc., etc.
Version 22 will reportedly also include the kitchen sink!
Clearly, these guys are MoCo hacks and Firefox fanboys. This is the insidious arm of the "Spread Firefox" campaign :)
Thanks for the clarification. I'd overlooked the fact that the charges are civil, not criminal. All your other points fall out form that.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am a linguist. I think there's quite a telltale in the subject line of parent -- not meant at all to be an attack on the poster, who makes very good points about exactly what I'm writing about.
In the American judicial system, the point is not to prove one's innocence, but rather, that the complaining party must prove the defendant's guilt. Hence why jury verdicts are read as "(not) guilty" and never "innocent". The system doesn't care if you did it or not. The system cares if it can be proved beyond a reasonable dobut that you did it. And if the complaining party falls short of that burden of proof, you are released, regardless of your innocence or lack thereof. It's part and parcel of the Founding Fathers' (and the continuance thereof by legal scholars) bit on freedoms being of paramount concern.
Furthermore, I think this whole push by RIAA / MPAA to describe filesharing as stealing is exactly the kind of metaphorical talk that's designed to prime the minds of policy makers to react to these transgressions in a certain sort of way. If it was just described as copying (which, by any account, illegal or quasi-legal duplication of these sorts of copyrighted media is), there isn't nearly the feeling of loss or mistreatement to the party that controls the source work.
If the people in the policy process are trained to think of downloading a song from Napster or whatever the P2P flavor of the week is as a form of stealing, that implies along with it the material loss of something which has fair-market valuation. By talking about it as "stealing", and introducing legal and political discourse as such, RIAA moves the focus from the monetary value of what they're actually losing -- which isn't much in the long run -- and shifts it to treating each download as though someone had actually stolen the physical CD or single from the record store. There's a huge difference, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in a court, especially if the trial reaches a damages phase.
Well, you beat me to my punch line. Cheers!
Economically speaking (I'm a linguist, not an economist, damnit!), this relates to things like scarcity and COGS (cost of goods sold). The direct expenses in selling software come from the expectations of the consumer: flashy box, manuals, media. The bulk of the expenses in producing software come from time: paying people to make things (code, packaging, marketing). In the case of downloadable software, the only realy direct expense in distribution is bandwidth.
In the ham sandwich case, for example, the price is driven by the relative scarcity of the item. There is only one ham sandwich, and you can only sell it to one interested party, before you as the salesperson no longer have the sandwich and have to prepare anothher. Each incidence of an item sold increases the COGS numbers in a pretty linear fashion; for software, what expense there is comes in the form of labor. Gold code can be reproduced and distributed for far under the ham-sandwich-type model.
And furthermore, bullshit to grandparent's "you wouldn't take free stuff". Ever been to a college campus or a radio station remote broadcast? People will do freaking anything to get a free t-shirt or a can of Coke.