To summarize: 54% of music execs think that current DRM is too restrictive and 62% think selling unencumbered music would be a way to boost sales. Even limiting the survey to the record labels themselves, 48% believe this. Yet, many also believe it's not going to happen without significant governmental intervention....
The bottom line is that a critical mass of the MAFIAA has figured out that their omerta is no longer viable, but nobody wants to be the first to break it.
If there's a problem with the net being choked by excess traffic in a "bird flu" emergency, it would do more good to grab the top 100 spammers and send them to Gitmo. Heck, they could send them to Fort Dietrick instead and use them as human subjects for experimental treatments, thus killing two flu-ridden birds with one stone.
I buy blank CDRs buy the 1000 at the moment. I have a duplicator for CDs.. but I'm not a pirate. We distribute original recorded material on CDs we burn and print on to ourselves. Yet they want to hit us with piracy taxes because apparently the only use for that many CDRs is for piracy.
Well, duh. The real objective of the MAFIAA is not to suppress bootlegging. The real objective of the MAFIAA is to suppress competition by impeding the development and use of technologies that lower the barriers to production of professional-quality sound engineering and recording.
I'll be overjoyed when flash "hard drives" for desktop PCs are available.
The limitation on how many writes flash memory will take before crapping out are acceptable for applications like an iPod, but deadly for a computer's main storage.
In October, they brought 67 Bank of America customers in the Boston area into a controlled environment and asked them to conduct routine online banking activities, like looking up account balances. But the researchers had secretly withdrawn the images. Of 60 participants who got that far into the study and whose results could be verified, 58 entered passwords anyway. Only two chose not to log on, citing security concerns.
Based on that description, the researchers did not prove that SiteKey is flawed. The researchers proved that most people are idiots. I don't think that qualifies as a ground-breaking discovery....
There is a substantial difference between habeas corpus and most of the other rights enumerated; habeas corpus is a right to have the state do something on your behalf (i.e., get a judge to examine a case of imprisonment to determine whether it is legal or not), not a right to not have the state interfere with something you could do for yourself (which all the other quoted examples are).
Imprisonment is the state interfering with something you could do for yourself (travel freely). Ergo, imprisonment without legitimate cause (which is tested by habeas corpus) falls into the same category as the rest.
First of all, what we really want to avoid is any law that inhibits our right to freedom of speech. It's very easy to write a definition of spam that is overly broad, and applies to legitimate messages as well.
The proper approach is to focus on methodology (e.g. treating any spam features that can be clearly identified as an attempt to evade filtering as a form of computer trespass, and applying the existing anti-cracking laws).
That said, you are correct that the key to making real-world progress is for the Feds to actually put resources into enforcement.
If the initial deadline was 2005, the rule must be at least a year or two older than that. So obviously consumer electronics companies had plenty of time to get their hardware ready in anticipation.
Yes, but how much effort would they put into it until they had good reason to believe that the cable companies wouldn't succeed in lining up enough coin-operated politicians to stop it altogether?
Um, no. That's not "camera causing an accident". That's "idiot behind the wheel causing an accident".
Nope -- the changed factor was the camera (BEFORE: no camera, same number of idiots, fewer accidents; AFTER: camera, same number of idiots, more accidents).
If one killer stopped by cameras is a sufficient argument for cameras, then one killer stopped by an armed citizen is a sufficient argument for repealing all gun control laws. I'm sure the Philadelphia city government will get right on that....
If a person keeps filing lawsuits demanding that the CIA and the Pope turn off the mind control beams focused on his apartment, a judge will eventually tell him "Go away and NEVER COME BACK with this nonsense".
If corporations are "legal persons", why aren't they bound by the same standard?
The existing laws are strong enough (once it is officially recognized that "spam tactics that reduce the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters" are simply another version of computer cracking), if the government simply enforced them often enough to make spamming risky.
Great, where exactly am I supposed to plug in my USB-powered powered USB hub so that I can recharge my USB-powered phone?
You can get a USB power adapter that plugs directly into the wall and provides power to a USB port, or a portable unit that powers a USB port from 4 AA batteries (one version called the "JAVOBooster" has a built-in flashlight as a bonus). Both are likely to be cheaper than the outrageously marked-up proprietary power bricks (even before taking into account the fact that you need one total, not one for each device).
One important point is that spam is about the perfect method of communicating "go-codes" to terrorist cells -- it's trivial to encode a message in the anti-filtering gibberish attached to most spam, and the indiscriminate broadcast completely negates traffic analysis.
Do you have a problem with having to get a license for it?
In an abstract theoretical sense, it makes sense to require someone to prove that they have a clue about firearms handling before they get to have a gun.
In an abstract theoretical sense, it makes sense to require someone to prove that they have a clue about civics and current events before they get to vote.
In the real world, historical baggage has made both notions unacceptable in the US.
That sounds pretty implausible. Microsoft needs the music labels to make Zune a success. The music labels do not need Microsoft.
Er, yes they do, unless they can find somebody else who offers the slightest hope of breaking Apple's dominant market position in the paid and legal music downloading business. Otherwise, they're just going to have to get used to being bitch-slapped and told to piss off when they try to manipulate that market (e.g. their attempts to impose variable pricing).
From that point of view, the Edsel-level failure of the Zune after Microsoft agreed to give the cartel a cut of hardware sales is a good thing, because the latter is tainted by the stench of the former. The only way it could get better is if Microsoft agrees to do variable pricing in the Zune store before it closes for lack of patronage.
One thing that stuck out about this review is that it didn't even have room for something nice to say about the Zune. Not one thing.
Sometimes there really is only one side to the story, and pretending that there are two in the name of "fairness" is simply bad journalism (e.g. the usual media treatment of the "controversy" between the theory of evolution and "intelligent design").
Here's a simple question I didn't see answered anywhere, "Did it work?"
From the review:
The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal....
I am reminded of the following proposed test for ability to understand a snippet of text (as opposed to engage in sophisticated parsing and extraction of the correct words):
Story: A man walks into a restaurant and orders a hamburger. When it arrives a half hour later, it is burned to a crisp. The man leaves without paying or leaving a tip. Question: Did the man eat the hamburger?
If you can't answer the question "Did the man eat the hamburger" from this story, or answer the question "Did the Zune work?" from the snippet of review I quoted, sorry, you just flunked the Turing Test.
Face facts- the reason why Islamic terrorism is so popular is precisely because atheists have become common.
You're offering this nonsense as "facts"?
Ultimately, Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism is an explosion of resentful rage against the success of Western civilization (e.g. the prosperity of Israel built out of a small non-oil-bearing corner of the desert).
Slashdot Mirror
To summarize: 54% of music execs think that current DRM is too restrictive and 62% think selling unencumbered music would be a way to boost sales. Even limiting the survey to the record labels themselves, 48% believe this. Yet, many also believe it's not going to happen without significant governmental intervention....
The bottom line is that a critical mass of the MAFIAA has figured out that their omerta is no longer viable, but nobody wants to be the first to break it.
If there's a problem with the net being choked by excess traffic in a "bird flu" emergency, it would do more good to grab the top 100 spammers and send them to Gitmo. Heck, they could send them to Fort Dietrick instead and use them as human subjects for experimental treatments, thus killing two flu-ridden birds with one stone.
I buy blank CDRs buy the 1000 at the moment. I have a duplicator for CDs.. but I'm not a pirate. We distribute original recorded material on CDs we burn and print on to ourselves. Yet they want to hit us with piracy taxes because apparently the only use for that many CDRs is for piracy.
Well, duh. The real objective of the MAFIAA is not to suppress bootlegging. The real objective of the MAFIAA is to suppress competition by impeding the development and use of technologies that lower the barriers to production of professional-quality sound engineering and recording.
I'll be overjoyed when flash "hard drives" for desktop PCs are available.
The limitation on how many writes flash memory will take before crapping out are acceptable for applications like an iPod, but deadly for a computer's main storage.
In October, they brought 67 Bank of America customers in the Boston area into a controlled environment and asked them to conduct routine online banking activities, like looking up account balances. But the researchers had secretly withdrawn the images. Of 60 participants who got that far into the study and whose results could be verified, 58 entered passwords anyway. Only two chose not to log on, citing security concerns.
Based on that description, the researchers did not prove that SiteKey is flawed. The researchers proved that most people are idiots. I don't think that qualifies as a ground-breaking discovery....
The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C.
Oh, well, it's not so bad when you're used to it....
14. Paragraph divisions are our friends.
There is a substantial difference between habeas corpus and most of the other rights enumerated; habeas corpus is a right to have the state do something on your behalf (i.e., get a judge to examine a case of imprisonment to determine whether it is legal or not), not a right to not have the state interfere with something you could do for yourself (which all the other quoted examples are).
Imprisonment is the state interfering with something you could do for yourself (travel freely). Ergo, imprisonment without legitimate cause (which is tested by habeas corpus) falls into the same category as the rest.
First of all, what we really want to avoid is any law that inhibits our right to freedom of speech. It's very easy to write a definition of spam that is overly broad, and applies to legitimate messages as well.
The proper approach is to focus on methodology (e.g. treating any spam features that can be clearly identified as an attempt to evade filtering as a form of computer trespass, and applying the existing anti-cracking laws).
That said, you are correct that the key to making real-world progress is for the Feds to actually put resources into enforcement.
If the initial deadline was 2005, the rule must be at least a year or two older than that. So obviously consumer electronics companies had plenty of time to get their hardware ready in anticipation.
Yes, but how much effort would they put into it until they had good reason to believe that the cable companies wouldn't succeed in lining up enough coin-operated politicians to stop it altogether?
And to a lesser extent the Betamax / VHS war.
That war was already pretty much over by the time DVD recorders got anywhere near competitive with VCRs.
Um, no. That's not "camera causing an accident". That's "idiot behind the wheel causing an accident".
Nope -- the changed factor was the camera (BEFORE: no camera, same number of idiots, fewer accidents; AFTER: camera, same number of idiots, more accidents).
If one killer stopped by cameras is a sufficient argument for cameras, then one killer stopped by an armed citizen is a sufficient argument for repealing all gun control laws. I'm sure the Philadelphia city government will get right on that....
If a person keeps filing lawsuits demanding that the CIA and the Pope turn off the mind control beams focused on his apartment, a judge will eventually tell him "Go away and NEVER COME BACK with this nonsense".
If corporations are "legal persons", why aren't they bound by the same standard?
So now my cow orkers will find ways to convey 2 KB worth of information in a 20 MB audiovisual presentation instead of a mere 200 KB PowerPoint slide.
The existing laws are strong enough (once it is officially recognized that "spam tactics that reduce the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters" are simply another version of computer cracking), if the government simply enforced them often enough to make spamming risky.
Great, where exactly am I supposed to plug in my USB-powered powered USB hub so that I can recharge my USB-powered phone?
You can get a USB power adapter that plugs directly into the wall and provides power to a USB port, or a portable unit that powers a USB port from 4 AA batteries (one version called the "JAVOBooster" has a built-in flashlight as a bonus). Both are likely to be cheaper than the outrageously marked-up proprietary power bricks (even before taking into account the fact that you need one total, not one for each device).
Somebody should take away his deck of cards or at least remove the queen of diamonds.
One important point is that spam is about the perfect method of communicating "go-codes" to terrorist cells -- it's trivial to encode a message in the anti-filtering gibberish attached to most spam, and the indiscriminate broadcast completely negates traffic analysis.
Do you have a problem with having to get a license for it?
In an abstract theoretical sense, it makes sense to require someone to prove that they have a clue about firearms handling before they get to have a gun.
In an abstract theoretical sense, it makes sense to require someone to prove that they have a clue about civics and current events before they get to vote.
In the real world, historical baggage has made both notions unacceptable in the US.
statistically, you are in more danger of getting shot if you own a gun than if you don't
Statistically, you are in more danger of drowning if you own a life jacket than if you don't.
Statistically, you are in more danger of death from an allergic reaction if you own an Epipen than if you don't.
The common mechanism behind all three of these facts is left as an exercise for the student.
That sounds pretty implausible. Microsoft needs the music labels to make Zune a success. The music labels do not need Microsoft.
Er, yes they do, unless they can find somebody else who offers the slightest hope of breaking Apple's dominant market position in the paid and legal music downloading business. Otherwise, they're just going to have to get used to being bitch-slapped and told to piss off when they try to manipulate that market (e.g. their attempts to impose variable pricing).
From that point of view, the Edsel-level failure of the Zune after Microsoft agreed to give the cartel a cut of hardware sales is a good thing, because the latter is tainted by the stench of the former. The only way it could get better is if Microsoft agrees to do variable pricing in the Zune store before it closes for lack of patronage.
Sometimes there really is only one side to the story, and pretending that there are two in the name of "fairness" is simply bad journalism (e.g. the usual media treatment of the "controversy" between the theory of evolution and "intelligent design").
Here's a simple question I didn't see answered anywhere, "Did it work?"
From the review:
I am reminded of the following proposed test for ability to understand a snippet of text (as opposed to engage in sophisticated parsing and extraction of the correct words):
Yes- and what exemplifies Western Civilization above all else?
Success. That, as I said, is why the envious hate us.
Face facts- the reason why Islamic terrorism is so popular is precisely because atheists have become common.
You're offering this nonsense as "facts"?
Ultimately, Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism is an explosion of resentful rage against the success of Western civilization (e.g. the prosperity of Israel built out of a small non-oil-bearing corner of the desert).