The newbie effect -- only the web exists
on
Is Usenet Dying?
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· Score: 3
Aren't you forgetting that *every* Internet app category except the web is following the same trend of proportionally less use among newbies than among the old guard? The web *is* the Internet for them, sad to say.
The other main services are not in decline (not by a long shot as their usage statistics make extremely clear), so who cares if newbies are slow to find them useful? If network news were any *more* popular we'd be utterly overwhelmed -- isn't a doubling every nine months growth enough?
And of course news is the main bastion of freedom on the Internet, being the only service that is largely immune to control, so it's good to see it growing so massively. I can't see much of a story here.
If it runs Linux, "what it syncs with" out of the box is almost immaterial, since we'll be able to make it do whatever we want without too much effort.
As for price, allegedly it'll be 10% less than the competition, whatever that means.:-)
Check out the GMATE site for more details of the PDA.
"Samsung's" Multimedia PDA is actually GMATE's product.
It's not clear from the info on Gmate's site whether the CHOPIN PDA and the Multimedia PDA are one and the same or whether Multimedia PDA is a more recent model, but it looks real enough. A lot of the questions raised by folk on this thread are answered on their site if you look around.
I love my Palm, but it'll be quite impossible *not* to buy the Gmate/Samsung PDA if it performs as described and does eventually reach these shores.
It seems odd that the law in this area is moving in a direction that is going to make it impossible for people to obey it in the normal course of their lives, if they wish to play their legally purchased DVDs on their Linux or *BSD systems.
In effect, by creating rules that do not follow commonsense, they are making the law appear out of touch with reality and hence irrelevant.
There's an analogy in the motorway speed limit legislation in the UK, where the law ends up being seen as irrelevant to people's needs. (The average free cruising speed on the southern motorways is 85-90mph, but the legal limit is 70; barely 5-10% of drivers drive that slow.)
At the end of the day, the law requires consensus to operate, so stupid laws become unenforceable. So be it.
These days, a lot of graphics cards come with software DVD players that contain valid decryption keys. If DeCSS allowed us to use these keys instead of the key that was cracked in Norway then there would be a ready legal avenue for use of the code.
We've purchased the right to use these keys when we purchased our graphics cards, and I can't see how the judge could claim that said keys can be used only with their original players, given that there is no such restriction mentioned in the shrink-wrapped licenses accompanying the cards so the keys are under no specific additional protection.
Note that copying keys within a given computer has to be legal otherwise the software DVDs wouldn't be able to access them for decrypting the DVD content. In the absence of restrictions to the contrary tying the keys to the software-DVD players, DeCSS could use these keys in exactly the same way for playing our legally purchased movies, as long as the keys stay on the owner's machinery.
Re:Multi-binding API needed for wide acceptance
on
China and the MPA
·
· Score: 2
That sounds excellent. Thanks.
Multi-binding API needed for wide acceptance
on
China and the MPA
·
· Score: 2
This could be very interesting, but not if it stays exclusively within the world of Java. Could Sanity or one of the other developers perhaps comment on the issue of opening this up to the larger non-Java world?
This isn't intended as an anti-Java comment (quite the opposite), but merely a reflection on the fact that we'll be needing C, C++, Perl, Tcl and Python language bindings if this is to take the world by storm and fulfil its promise. Many top-class developers in languages other than Java would like to contibute to the effort I'm sure, but they can't do that unless they are given either existing bindings or an interoperability API in the lingua franca of C so that they can create them themselves.
One of the strongest things in Katz's piece is the almost throwaway phrase "DVD viewing software" when referring to DeCSS.
It's important that we refer to it in that way to make the point that it is control over their viewing monopoly that the MPAA are in fact trying to enforce, and not what they actually claim in court.
Perhaps a few might defend the morality of their primary directive "make film once, suck the public dry forever", but nobody sane would argue in favor of their control of DVD viewing software on computers --- that just smells too much of multi-sector monopoly. No doubt this is why the MPAA lawyers never mention any reason beyond the ficticious "piracy" and equally imaginary "keys to the store" -- they know that if they made the MPAA's real goal explicit then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
The papers and other media need to be made aware of the MPAA's real target, and the term "DVD viewing software" should be used whenever possible to drive the real issue home, repeatedly.
Actually, if you internationalize computing and the Internet, one of the things you're doing is playing into the hands of nationalists. The Internet is a superb melting pot for all nationalities, but the reason for its success in this role is that the use of English removes the primary barriers separating people. You can see it daily on the national-language forums: they're nowhere near as free from nationalist tension as the ones that use English, which are truly international. (Try IRC.)
I love languages and I'm a great advocate of multi-linguism for everyone. Sharing a language brings people together so that the more languages people are taught in school or learn later on, the better they tend to get on with each other (unless politics has got to them first). Furthermore, the use of English on the Internet is a strong lever in the same direction of broad social understanding and cohesion.
In contrast, the "internationalization" of computing systems is a complete misnomer: it's really nationalizing them, in the original sense of the term, ie. giving them a national orientation. Of course one might argue that it helps those that know only the national language and no other, but that's precisely the point: they no longer need to gain an international viewpoint once that has been done. And that's not to mention the dark side, namely the benefit to those that seek advantage from nationalism, ie. the politicians and puppet masters.
This "internationalization" bandwagon is unstoppable, but alas it has disadvantages as well as the more obvious advantages. And don't believe that the promoters (I'm talking about politicians here) are all altruistic. Pigs don't fly, not even abroad.
Jack Valenti is President and Chief Executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America
Oddly, I read the "Assn." as "Assasins"... quite apt, really!:-)
Unfortunately this interpretation doesn't hold water, as assasins aren't likely to last long if they're as dumb as Valenti, inasmuch as he can't even get his facts straight about the role of encryption in DVDs.
On the other hand, perhaps this means that he won't last long, but that would be a pity. It's always much easier to fight the clueless.
No, you've got that wrong: DVDs played on the computer monitor do NOT look better than on video or TV monitors. At best, the picture might have better geometry, but the experience will almost always be worse than on any half-decent lounge TV.
DVDs are encoded for presentation on an ordinary video display, so it's not surprising that that's what they display best on.
However, you can have your cake and eat it too by using a display card with a TV out, such as for example some of the MPEG decoder cards, and they often have S-video output as well, which yields even clearer pictures on the telly. Hook up your computer to an infrared remote sensor (like the IRman) positioned next to the TV and watching DVDs becomes a far more enjoyable experience than you can have watching it directly on your computer.
Actually the message "We don't buy any more videotape" must be resonating quite loudly in studio land, ie. as a significant drop in video sales to accompany the rise in DVD sales.
I wonder how long it'll be before they realize that tape is well on the way to becoming a legacy medium for film distribution (as distinct from TV time-shifting)? Nobody that I know buys films on video anymore, even if they don't (yet) have DVD players -- they know it's money wasted. I give it 3 years max.
Open systems and the open Internet don't have anything to fear from commercial products, in my opinion, but only from commercially imposed lock-ins of various types, like patent restrictions and trade secrets.
The most dangerous thing that's been happening in recent years is probably the development of proprietary "standards" which are then imposed on the world by the power of cartel. We've seen lots of examples of this highlighted here right from the earliest days of Slashdot, but of course it's been happening forever. The difference is that before there wasn't really a single world for most people, whereas now there is, and it's a world that's held together by open communication and open information. Tie it up in the red tape of proprietary restrictions and we've got problems.
Some might call for enforcement to ensure that world-adopted standards are never proprietary, but that is easier said than done. The main problem is that the world's most obvious enforcers (governments) are in the hands and pockets of the big corporations that are of course creating the standards to their own advantage. I doubt if the IETF, EFF and others could get themselves onto the relevant forums even if they wanted to. In any event, they wouldn't be welcome even if the show weren't effectively invite-only, because corporations focus on control and profits, not openness.
Where does this leave us? Probably in a perpetual war against oppression by the corporate machine, but that isn't as bad as it sounds. Remember that they need us since we're the source of their profits, so there is a limit to how nasty they can be without losing money. To put it in other terms (control theory?), their success is dampened by negative feedback, whereas the growth and chaotic direction of the Internet is very much in the exponential grip of positive feedback as everyone builds on the work of everyone else. It'll be a bumpy ride, but I reckon we'll come out on top.
I second that. A.so is far preferable to a full client.
To give Apple some recognition for their work, all they need to do is add creditsText() and creditsImage() to the API and _recommend_ that client developers invoke these in response to selection of About or Help in their clients.
I second that. People that are interested in this kind of thing should definitely take a look at Cosm. It has great potential to be everything that folks have wanted in d.com but couldn't get because of the closed nature of their client-server interface (though the d.com cracking cores are open).
Check out the Cosm license first though as it's not the GPL.
Perhaps the poster would contend that, by posting an article on the web, the NYT had implicitly given copyright on it to the public. After all, it is *IMPOSSIBLE* to read an item from a webserver without taking a copy first.
The issue isn't one of copying but one of republication, and copyright law doesn't necessarily cover that as it's a separate issue. Even more income for lawyers in that direction, I bet.
If your line of reasoning were valid, all manufacturers of kitchen knives would have to be put behind bars since their product can be used for murder.
No dear AC, just because DeCSS *can* be used for bad purposes doesn't mean that it is bad in itself. Owners of Linux, *BSD and other free O/Ss need DeCSS in order to play the DVDs which they have purchased, and that's all there is to it. If other people want to use the same product for other questionable purposes then go and molest them, not those who merely want to watch their own DVDs on their own computers.
There's local overhead in the instrumentation code, but not a net overhead in the combined instrumentation code plus controlled loop code: the loss due to extra code prior to a loop is far less than the gain resulting from the more efficient loop code produced by introducing that extra instrumentation.
We'll be needing all the carbon dioxide in the air we can get our hands on soon, so that nanotech can built all our gadgets and mansions and personal trans-continental pipelines for us.
Leave all that automotive carbon alone --- it's our future feedstock!
That's a very good suggestion, not only because it's a major point (at least in the USA), but also because the idea of "fair use" is something that everyone relates to, and every use of the term will in effect pose a leading question about the unfairness of the MPAA position.
However, we shouldn't pose it as a question. That would require the reporters to think, which is always a bad idea. State it directly: playing your own DVD is fair use, which the MPAA are trying to prevent.
You're quite right to have misgivings about how the programme is going to portray Jon. The media cares only about sensationalism, never about truth (unless it's sensational).
So, let's give them something at least slightly sensational: the fact that thousands of respected people around the globe are up in arms about the action of the MPAA and the consequent unfair treatment of Jon. Signing up to the PETITION will help there immensely, because even the old TV media types are aware of the power of the Internet as a competing medium, and you can bet your life that they'll be looking at the signature count to add a factoid to their piece.
Reporters and journalists for the popular media can't handle long sentences, nor anything technical, so Jon and the EFF lawyers really need to nail down two or three simple quotable statements otherwise the facts will not survive the editorial process. They need to say:
DVD piracy already existed in the far east long before DeCSS. DeCSS has nothing to do with that.
DeCSS was developed to allow the rightful owners of DVDs to play them on their Linux and BSD systems. Look, here is my Linux computer: it has a DVD drive built in, and here is a DVD that I bought, yet the MPAA deny me the right to play my DVD in my computer. That's wrong, and DeCSS overcomes that wrong.
There's a key point being misssed here: the uploaded "you" might still be in your one and only physical body, so all issues of whether it's really "you" or not become irrelevant.
In fact, this seems far more likely to be the case during the initial decades of such development, because mankind is already used to body enhancements and will become ever more so. Furthermore, self-preservation will tend to promote this approach, in part for the obvious self-centred reasons, and in part for global preservation of the antiquated notion of "the human species", because without keeping our intellects in step with machine evolution we would rapidly lose our position as the dominent intelligence on the planet. And that would be terminal.
You're entirely mistaken. Your emotions stem from a particular configuration of internal triggers that both control and are affected by the operation of the complex biochemical machine that is you. If that configuration changes, your emotions can change.
For example, take something that you consider fundamental, say sex, love, desire for sunlight, craving for creamcakes, or whatever. There is no particular reason why any of the feelings, senses or emotions associated with these things should not be triggered by something else altogether, if your biochemistry is reprogrammed: eg. you might be aroused sexually (massively and irresistably) by the sight of the letter Q, the colour purple, by solving a quadratic equation, or by touching palms with another being (real or virtual) as in Barbarella, say. There are absolutely no preconditions or limits in this direction, and it's false to assume that your current biological makeup says anything at all about your future desires as a living being.
Slashdot Mirror
Aren't you forgetting that *every* Internet app category except the web is following the same trend of proportionally less use among newbies than among the old guard? The web *is* the Internet for them, sad to say.
The other main services are not in decline (not by a long shot as their usage statistics make extremely clear), so who cares if newbies are slow to find them useful? If network news were any *more* popular we'd be utterly overwhelmed -- isn't a doubling every nine months growth enough?
And of course news is the main bastion of freedom on the Internet, being the only service that is largely immune to control, so it's good to see it growing so massively. I can't see much of a story here.
If it runs Linux, "what it syncs with" out of the box is almost immaterial, since we'll be able to make it do whatever we want without too much effort.
:-)
As for price, allegedly it'll be 10% less than the competition, whatever that means.
Check out the GMATE site for more details of the PDA.
"Samsung's" Multimedia PDA is actually GMATE's product.
It's not clear from the info on Gmate's site whether the CHOPIN PDA and the Multimedia PDA are one and the same or whether Multimedia PDA is a more recent model, but it looks real enough. A lot of the questions raised by folk on this thread are answered on their site if you look around.
I love my Palm, but it'll be quite impossible *not* to buy the Gmate/Samsung PDA if it performs as described and does eventually reach these shores.
It seems odd that the law in this area is moving in a direction that is going to make it impossible for people to obey it in the normal course of their lives, if they wish to play their legally purchased DVDs on their Linux or *BSD systems.
In effect, by creating rules that do not follow commonsense, they are making the law appear out of touch with reality and hence irrelevant.
There's an analogy in the motorway speed limit legislation in the UK, where the law ends up being seen as irrelevant to people's needs. (The average free cruising speed on the southern motorways is 85-90mph, but the legal limit is 70; barely 5-10% of drivers drive that slow.)
At the end of the day, the law requires consensus to operate, so stupid laws become unenforceable. So be it.
These days, a lot of graphics cards come with software DVD players that contain valid decryption keys. If DeCSS allowed us to use these keys instead of the key that was cracked in Norway then there would be a ready legal avenue for use of the code.
We've purchased the right to use these keys when we purchased our graphics cards, and I can't see how the judge could claim that said keys can be used only with their original players, given that there is no such restriction mentioned in the shrink-wrapped licenses accompanying the cards so the keys are under no specific additional protection.
Note that copying keys within a given computer has to be legal otherwise the software DVDs wouldn't be able to access them for decrypting the DVD content. In the absence of restrictions to the contrary tying the keys to the software-DVD players, DeCSS could use these keys in exactly the same way for playing our legally purchased movies, as long as the keys stay on the owner's machinery.
That sounds excellent. Thanks.
This could be very interesting, but not if it stays exclusively within the world of Java. Could Sanity or one of the other developers perhaps comment on the issue of opening this up to the larger non-Java world?
This isn't intended as an anti-Java comment (quite the opposite), but merely a reflection on the fact that we'll be needing C, C++, Perl, Tcl and Python language bindings if this is to take the world by storm and fulfil its promise. Many top-class developers in languages other than Java would like to contibute to the effort I'm sure, but they can't do that unless they are given either existing bindings or an interoperability API in the lingua franca of C so that they can create them themselves.
One of the strongest things in Katz's piece is the almost throwaway phrase "DVD viewing software" when referring to DeCSS.
It's important that we refer to it in that way to make the point that it is control over their viewing monopoly that the MPAA are in fact trying to enforce, and not what they actually claim in court.
Perhaps a few might defend the morality of their primary directive "make film once, suck the public dry forever", but nobody sane would argue in favor of their control of DVD viewing software on computers --- that just smells too much of multi-sector monopoly. No doubt this is why the MPAA lawyers never mention any reason beyond the ficticious "piracy" and equally imaginary "keys to the store" -- they know that if they made the MPAA's real goal explicit then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
The papers and other media need to be made aware of the MPAA's real target, and the term "DVD viewing software" should be used whenever possible to drive the real issue home, repeatedly.
Actually, if you internationalize computing and the Internet, one of the things you're doing is playing into the hands of nationalists. The Internet is a superb melting pot for all nationalities, but the reason for its success in this role is that the use of English removes the primary barriers separating people. You can see it daily on the national-language forums: they're nowhere near as free from nationalist tension as the ones that use English, which are truly international. (Try IRC.)
I love languages and I'm a great advocate of multi-linguism for everyone. Sharing a language brings people together so that the more languages people are taught in school or learn later on, the better they tend to get on with each other (unless politics has got to them first). Furthermore, the use of English on the Internet is a strong lever in the same direction of broad social understanding and cohesion.
In contrast, the "internationalization" of computing systems is a complete misnomer: it's really nationalizing them, in the original sense of the term, ie. giving them a national orientation. Of course one might argue that it helps those that know only the national language and no other, but that's precisely the point: they no longer need to gain an international viewpoint once that has been done. And that's not to mention the dark side, namely the benefit to those that seek advantage from nationalism, ie. the politicians and puppet masters.
This "internationalization" bandwagon is unstoppable, but alas it has disadvantages as well as the more obvious advantages. And don't believe that the promoters (I'm talking about politicians here) are all altruistic. Pigs don't fly, not even abroad.
At the end of his article it said:-
... quite apt, really! :-)
Jack Valenti is President and Chief Executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America
Oddly, I read the "Assn." as "Assasins"
Unfortunately this interpretation doesn't hold water, as assasins aren't likely to last long if they're as dumb as Valenti, inasmuch as he can't even get his facts straight about the role of encryption in DVDs.
On the other hand, perhaps this means that he won't last long, but that would be a pity. It's always much easier to fight the clueless.
No, you've got that wrong: DVDs played on the computer monitor do NOT look better than on video or TV monitors. At best, the picture might have better geometry, but the experience will almost always be worse than on any half-decent lounge TV.
DVDs are encoded for presentation on an ordinary video display, so it's not surprising that that's what they display best on.
However, you can have your cake and eat it too by using a display card with a TV out, such as for example some of the MPEG decoder cards, and they often have S-video output as well, which yields even clearer pictures on the telly. Hook up your computer to an infrared remote sensor (like the IRman) positioned next to the TV and watching DVDs becomes a far more enjoyable experience than you can have watching it directly on your computer.
Actually the message "We don't buy any more videotape" must be resonating quite loudly in studio land, ie. as a significant drop in video sales to accompany the rise in DVD sales.
I wonder how long it'll be before they realize that tape is well on the way to becoming a legacy medium for film distribution (as distinct from TV time-shifting)? Nobody that I know buys films on video anymore, even if they don't (yet) have DVD players -- they know it's money wasted. I give it 3 years max.
Open systems and the open Internet don't have anything to fear from commercial products, in my opinion, but only from commercially imposed lock-ins of various types, like patent restrictions and trade secrets.
The most dangerous thing that's been happening in recent years is probably the development of proprietary "standards" which are then imposed on the world by the power of cartel. We've seen lots of examples of this highlighted here right from the earliest days of Slashdot, but of course it's been happening forever. The difference is that before there wasn't really a single world for most people, whereas now there is, and it's a world that's held together by open communication and open information. Tie it up in the red tape of proprietary restrictions and we've got problems.
Some might call for enforcement to ensure that world-adopted standards are never proprietary, but that is easier said than done. The main problem is that the world's most obvious enforcers (governments) are in the hands and pockets of the big corporations that are of course creating the standards to their own advantage. I doubt if the IETF, EFF and others could get themselves onto the relevant forums even if they wanted to. In any event, they wouldn't be welcome even if the show weren't effectively invite-only, because corporations focus on control and profits, not openness.
Where does this leave us? Probably in a perpetual war against oppression by the corporate machine, but that isn't as bad as it sounds. Remember that they need us since we're the source of their profits, so there is a limit to how nasty they can be without losing money. To put it in other terms (control theory?), their success is dampened by negative feedback, whereas the growth and chaotic direction of the Internet is very much in the exponential grip of positive feedback as everyone builds on the work of everyone else. It'll be a bumpy ride, but I reckon we'll come out on top.
I second that. A .so is far preferable to a full client.
To give Apple some recognition for their work, all they need to do is add creditsText() and creditsImage() to the API and _recommend_ that client developers invoke these in response to selection of About or Help in their clients.
I second that. People that are interested in this kind of thing should definitely take a look at Cosm. It has great potential to be everything that folks have wanted in d.com but couldn't get because of the closed nature of their client-server interface (though the d.com cracking cores are open).
Check out the Cosm license first though as it's not the GPL.
That was the point the poster was making.
Perhaps the poster would contend that, by posting an article on the web, the NYT had implicitly given copyright on it to the public. After all, it is *IMPOSSIBLE* to read an item from a webserver without taking a copy first.
The issue isn't one of copying but one of republication, and copyright law doesn't necessarily cover that as it's a separate issue. Even more income for lawyers in that direction, I bet.
If your line of reasoning were valid, all manufacturers of kitchen knives would have to be put behind bars since their product can be used for murder.
No dear AC, just because DeCSS *can* be used for bad purposes doesn't mean that it is bad in itself. Owners of Linux, *BSD and other free O/Ss need DeCSS in order to play the DVDs which they have purchased, and that's all there is to it. If other people want to use the same product for other questionable purposes then go and molest them, not those who merely want to watch their own DVDs on their own computers.
There's local overhead in the instrumentation code, but not a net overhead in the combined instrumentation code plus controlled loop code: the loss due to extra code prior to a loop is far less than the gain resulting from the more efficient loop code produced by introducing that extra instrumentation.
We'll be needing all the carbon dioxide in the air we can get our hands on soon, so that nanotech can built all our gadgets and mansions and personal trans-continental pipelines for us.
Leave all that automotive carbon alone --- it's our future feedstock!
That's a very good suggestion, not only because it's a major point (at least in the USA), but also because the idea of "fair use" is something that everyone relates to, and every use of the term will in effect pose a leading question about the unfairness of the MPAA position.
However, we shouldn't pose it as a question. That would require the reporters to think, which is always a bad idea. State it directly: playing your own DVD is fair use, which the MPAA are trying to prevent.
You're quite right to have misgivings about how the programme is going to portray Jon. The media cares only about sensationalism, never about truth (unless it's sensational).
So, let's give them something at least slightly sensational: the fact that thousands of respected people around the globe are up in arms about the action of the MPAA and the consequent unfair treatment of Jon. Signing up to the PETITION will help there immensely, because even the old TV media types are aware of the power of the Internet as a competing medium, and you can bet your life that they'll be looking at the signature count to add a factoid to their piece.
Reporters and journalists for the popular media can't handle long sentences, nor anything technical, so Jon and the EFF lawyers really need to nail down two or three simple quotable statements otherwise the facts will not survive the editorial process. They need to say:
DVD piracy already existed in the far east long before DeCSS. DeCSS has nothing to do with that.
DeCSS was developed to allow the rightful owners of DVDs to play them on their Linux and BSD systems. Look, here is my Linux computer: it has a DVD drive built in, and here is a DVD that I bought, yet the MPAA deny me the right to play my DVD in my computer. That's wrong, and DeCSS overcomes that wrong.
There's a key point being misssed here: the uploaded "you" might still be in your one and only physical body, so all issues of whether it's really "you" or not become irrelevant.
In fact, this seems far more likely to be the case during the initial decades of such development, because mankind is already used to body enhancements and will become ever more so. Furthermore, self-preservation will tend to promote this approach, in part for the obvious self-centred reasons, and in part for global preservation of the antiquated notion of "the human species", because without keeping our intellects in step with machine evolution we would rapidly lose our position as the dominent intelligence on the planet. And that would be terminal.
You're entirely mistaken. Your emotions stem from a particular configuration of internal triggers that both control and are affected by the operation of the complex biochemical machine that is you. If that configuration changes, your emotions can change.
For example, take something that you consider fundamental, say sex, love, desire for sunlight, craving for creamcakes, or whatever. There is no particular reason why any of the feelings, senses or emotions associated with these things should not be triggered by something else altogether, if your biochemistry is reprogrammed: eg. you might be aroused sexually (massively and irresistably) by the sight of the letter Q, the colour purple, by solving a quadratic equation, or by touching palms with another being (real or virtual) as in Barbarella, say. There are absolutely no preconditions or limits in this direction, and it's false to assume that your current biological makeup says anything at all about your future desires as a living being.