You can have X programs on a headless machine without running X on it. The X program displays on the machine that connects to it. I'll grant that having X clients on a server is questionable.
What's sad about this is that Linspire could EASILY do this the way OS X does it. When you install something in OS X, a box pops up asking for the admininstrator password. It's easy and maintains security for the system level stuff. It wouldn't be that big a deal to prettify and simplify something like Kpackage.
When this puppy comes out, the original Xbox is going to turn up in garage sales and thrifts. I never believed the blather about "hurting" MS by buying an XBox and putting Linux on it. I wouldn't mind snagging one for 20 bucks and putting Linux on it though.
DVR functionality could come in a kit form that includes the hard drive and encoder/decoder boards. I imagine the neatest way to accomplish this would be an expansion port on the bottom of the machine. The kit itself would just low flat box the main console clips onto.
Having console games depend on that being present is a bad idea IMHO.
Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, all of the console manufacturers at least prototyped addons for their consoles that would turn them into general purpose machines. The ADAM was availiable both as an addon for the ColecoVision and as a Colecovision compatible computer. One of the reasons it bombed (apart from some engineering gaffs and QC problems) was that there wasn't as much overlap between console and computer users as you might think. Then as now computers had a keyboard that consoles didn't as well as styles of games consoles didn't. You just didn't lay in the floor playing Temple of Aphsai. Something like Astroblast was more fun on the family room TV.
Faced with the '84 crash, everybody else canned their console/computer hybrids. I suspect that once again the console/computer will be a solution looking for a problem.
You have to break the DMCA to remove the DRM. Most people here won't let that stop them. I occaisionally watch DVDs in Linux and Jack Valenti can kiss my rosy red ass. I paid for the DVDs; I don't his permission to watch them on whatever device I want. That's my moral right and he can take the text of the DMCA he helped get paid for and cram it up his caboose.
The DRM removal projects in question have already been harrassed clear to India at this point. They certainly won't go out of their way to point customers or their upstream licensees at it. That leaves the burn-rip-re-encode cycle which I've said is a PITA.
Granted I came off angry at Apple in the previous post but I don't think Apple has a nefarious conditioning scheme in mind. They need content to sell iPods and their DRM scheme was the least the industry would tolerate. For now. Don't be surprised if the RIAA wants to go back to Apple at some point and alter the deal.
Those particulars weren't the main point. Even if it isn't Apple's specific intent, Fairplay IS striking some people as a reasonable compromise. Intransigence over DRM in the market was one of the things that killed the Divx disposable DVDs. I doubt Fairplay will do anything to lighten up the content industry. They've been hit with the cluebat many times over it; and have opposed every consumer technological innovation since the 30s out of pure fear. Radio, vinyl, TV, Phillips cassettes, VCRs, and computers have ALL evoked fear from them. They will NEVER learn anything.
Consumers on the other hand will accept many onerous things if they are eased into it.
I guess it isn't funny but it sort of works too. Its not as though what they're up to with funding SCO, buying Linux user groups pizza parties, shnozzling politicos, and keeping a stable of pet "journalists" isn't obvious.
The thing you have to ask yourself is if MS were a buggy whip manufacturer facing competition from cheap automobiles, do your pro arguments make sense? For my part, closed-up jack-booted-thugs-may-ensure-EULA-compliance software is already unacceptable to me. MS' marketing machine likes to talk about OSS liability and promote themselves as the "safe" choice. A PHP coding site I was looking at today had one of those SPA pitches to disgruntled employees.
Even one SPA audit kills any number of the "advantages" they're touting; they always find something and they always extort something from you. The time your business is effectively shut down is costly too.
For many categories of software, MS' methods are outmoded. Now the buggy whip manufacturers need to buy and cajole their way out of the jam they're going to be in.
All that and well, MS complaining that FOSS is anticompetitive is pretty rich. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses.....
The flag serves as enough of a political figleaf that they won't have to continually outspend and outflank the entertainment industry. Politicians sometimes get and stay bought by wrong side. What's more politicians love "compromise" when opposing monied groups want things. The equipment manufacturers know full well that a simple flag can be easily bypassed by clueful customers. The clueful customers are the early adopters who recommend things to the casual buyers that come later. After all, how many times have you seen somebody want something after seeing it at the neightbor's house?
Full-on DRM that takes a soldering iron and the ability to follow instructions to circumvent will royally piss the non-technerd early adopters off. It will also get them telling their buddies the wrong things: "You can't record shows anymore. I recorded something last week and it deleted it for no reason......" They have a sales job with high-def TV on their hands as it is. They don't need prospective customers getting the idea that something is being taken away from them. Yet.
*This is not a flame, this is the truth. I can't think of one slashdot post pre-iTunes (that was modded up anyway) that said that DRM would suffer anything but a crippling death because people would refuse to buy restricted products, then they would HAVE to come back with unencumbered goods. Now we see people falling over themselves to offer a misguided company congratulations because they fuck you over SLIGHTLY LESS THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Wonderful.
It isn't just congratulations. You're absolutely right. The consumers are being conditioned to what is planned for them. When enterprising souls do what it takes to reasonably use their PURCHASED music (I never saw a EULA that wouldn't look better up a CEO's ass.) on something other than an iPod or iTunes we get "But you're screwing the only reasonable DRM. They'll have to come out with something even worse if you don't quit." Oh and burning a CD just so I can rip it again is a PITA and just stupid.
If I bought (Apple uses the terminology themselves.) the music why is there is a list of crap a mile long what I can and can't do with it? Here's a hint. Nothing has been bought; it's deceptive marketing. You have extended rental on a license. And it's a license to an inferior product. It's lossily encoded, costs about as much as a CD and is less versitile. If you take the "ethical" route and make a CD out of it so you can I don't know...use it as digital data the lossage gets worse.
I've got some news for those people, you've been thrown a bone. Well maybe thrown isn't the right word. It's a bone alright and it's been lubed. Once that lube has well distributed in the intended orifice, you'll be ready for an even bigger bone. That one won't be lubed.
Now I suppose I'll get moderated down for a comment that would have been perfectly reasonable here before Apple made DRM cool. I'm afraid to wonder what else Apple can make "cool". I guess those people who were talking about a Reality Distortion Field weren't bullshitting us.
Even regular blimps use multiple gas cells so that a problem with one doesn't bring the whole thing down. Granted, debris is a concern but it needn't be a deal breaker.
Gee, you don't think the enemy could figure out how to supply a rated voltage at a rated amperage and hmm I don't know crack open a dead battery and put more cells in it. I hope our military has better means than that!
There is also lkml and that pretty much existed from day one. What Linus was complaining about is that searching and correlating lkml, the changelogs, and the comments is tedious. Everything can be accounted for, it's just hard. What Linus whats now is to have machine readable assertions of who contributed what and the rights they had to do it.
Stories like this bring us closer to universal, homicidal rage against spammers. Blacklists don't look so fascist now, do they?
Preach on brother. Normally I'm against the death penalty. In the case of spammers, not only am I for the death penalty I'd replace the switch with a dial so it would last longer.
It will all be revealed in the final episode when the Empire is formed on a platform of goatees, vulcan women in catsuits and... EVIL!!!
That sounds like a better show than the one thats on now. Trip and the Doctor (don't care what his name is...) can collaborate on the prototype Agony Booth and then test it on a writhing T'Pol.
Stewart seems to be far more comfortable with the small stage though. He can always reprise Picard to get a paycheck then go back to one-man plays to do Real Acting. Its a common pattern. Frank Zappa did rock-n-roll to pay the bills but it seemed like he really wanted to be a modern classical composer.
What keeps Star Trek going is all the brainless Trekkies who gleefully swallow all the crap Paramount dishes out to them. Finally beginning to die off, thank God!
My absolute favorite trekkies are the ones who get offended if you call them trekkies. "I'm not a trekkie. I'm a trekker". Of all the groups to wrap themselves in Political Correctness, this are easily the most rediculous.
I don't think they ever got over Shatner telling them to Get A Life.
but something that looked more like a mirror. It would probably be a mistake to aim a large lense at one of these.
No biggie. Just make some big spots on the platter with a Sharpie. Once a spot gets white hot, the shininess of surrounding material won't matter much.
If you are trying to focus an assload of sunlight on something, why bother with lenses at all? A huge parabolic mirror could be built about as cheaply as a fresnel. We're talking about some curved plastic and a shiny coating. If you want to get fancy, cut a hole in the center and mount a secondary mirror for convienient aiming, sensing, and easy mounting for sun tracking.
All that said, I'm not so sure about starting fusion with a sunlight.
DRM is a farcical use of encryption. Until a bunch of corporate lame-brains decided they were smarter than Alan Turing, the accepted use of encryption was to secure comm channels. An alternative use is to limit access to data to whoever possesses the keys. Specifically, it was intended to allow Alice to talk and share info with Bob without Eve listening in.
Even that well defined chunk of functionality is rife with botchable details. Anyone with half a clue also knew that even if the channel was secured correctly that incorrect or malicious behaivor on either side of the link could compromise it.
Now we have DRM. In DRM, Bob wants to communicate something to Alice but at the same time he wants to prevent Alice from communicating it to Eve. All of the data and necessary keys are in Alice's possession. Granted, the data and keys are obfuscated but she in still in physical possession of everything needed to decrypt the data.
From a strictly information theoretic point of view, why should anyone take that scenario seriously? Bob can make it varying degrees of PITA for Alice to blab to Eve but there is no inherent security here.
With a factory box in hand and a paid-up receipt, most of us would tell ole Steve just exactly where he could cram his EULA. I know the software and entertainment magnates are doing to their damndest to dispell this erroneous impression of ownership some of us can't shake. But how can I take it seriously when the commercial for the DVD of the week tells me I can own it today!?
Slashdot Mirror
You can have X programs on a headless machine without running X on it. The X program displays on the machine that connects to it. I'll grant that having X clients on a server is questionable.
What's sad about this is that Linspire could EASILY do this the way OS X does it. When you install something in OS X, a box pops up asking for the admininstrator password. It's easy and maintains security for the system level stuff. It wouldn't be that big a deal to prettify and simplify something like Kpackage.
When this puppy comes out, the original Xbox is going to turn up in garage sales and thrifts. I never believed the blather about "hurting" MS by buying an XBox and putting Linux on it. I wouldn't mind snagging one for 20 bucks and putting Linux on it though.
DVR functionality could come in a kit form that includes the hard drive and encoder/decoder boards. I imagine the neatest way to accomplish this would be an expansion port on the bottom of the machine. The kit itself would just low flat box the main console clips onto.
Having console games depend on that being present is a bad idea IMHO.
I wonder why I'm getting Coleco deja vu....
Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, all of the console manufacturers at least prototyped addons for their consoles that would turn them into general purpose machines. The ADAM was availiable both as an addon for the ColecoVision and as a Colecovision compatible computer. One of the reasons it bombed (apart from some engineering gaffs and QC problems) was that there wasn't as much overlap between console and computer users as you might think. Then as now computers had a keyboard that consoles didn't as well as styles of games consoles didn't. You just didn't lay in the floor playing Temple of Aphsai. Something like Astroblast was more fun on the family room TV.
Faced with the '84 crash, everybody else canned their console/computer hybrids. I suspect that once again the console/computer will be a solution looking for a problem.
That something Really Big hit the Yucatan is beyond dispute. Whether or not is was a mass extinction event may well be debatable.
You have to break the DMCA to remove the DRM. Most people here won't let that stop them. I occaisionally watch DVDs in Linux and Jack Valenti can kiss my rosy red ass. I paid for the DVDs; I don't his permission to watch them on whatever device I want. That's my moral right and he can take the text of the DMCA he helped get paid for and cram it up his caboose.
The DRM removal projects in question have already been harrassed clear to India at this point. They certainly won't go out of their way to point customers or their upstream licensees at it. That leaves the burn-rip-re-encode cycle which I've said is a PITA.
Granted I came off angry at Apple in the previous post but I don't think Apple has a nefarious conditioning scheme in mind. They need content to sell iPods and their DRM scheme was the least the industry would tolerate. For now. Don't be surprised if the RIAA wants to go back to Apple at some point and alter the deal.
Those particulars weren't the main point. Even if it isn't Apple's specific intent, Fairplay IS striking some people as a reasonable compromise. Intransigence over DRM in the market was one of the things that killed the Divx disposable DVDs. I doubt Fairplay will do anything to lighten up the content industry. They've been hit with the cluebat many times over it; and have opposed every consumer technological innovation since the 30s out of pure fear. Radio, vinyl, TV, Phillips cassettes, VCRs, and computers have ALL evoked fear from them. They will NEVER learn anything.
Consumers on the other hand will accept many onerous things if they are eased into it.
I guess it isn't funny but it sort of works too. Its not as though what they're up to with funding SCO, buying Linux user groups pizza parties, shnozzling politicos, and keeping a stable of pet "journalists" isn't obvious.
The thing you have to ask yourself is if MS were a buggy whip manufacturer facing competition from cheap automobiles, do your pro arguments make sense? For my part, closed-up jack-booted-thugs-may-ensure-EULA-compliance software is already unacceptable to me. MS' marketing machine likes to talk about OSS liability and promote themselves as the "safe" choice. A PHP coding site I was looking at today had one of those SPA pitches to disgruntled employees.
Even one SPA audit kills any number of the "advantages" they're touting; they always find something and they always extort something from you. The time your business is effectively shut down is costly too.
For many categories of software, MS' methods are outmoded. Now the buggy whip manufacturers need to buy and cajole their way out of the jam they're going to be in.
All that and well, MS complaining that FOSS is anticompetitive is pretty rich. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses.....
The flag serves as enough of a political figleaf that they won't have to continually outspend and outflank the entertainment industry. Politicians sometimes get and stay bought by wrong side. What's more politicians love "compromise" when opposing monied groups want things. The equipment manufacturers know full well that a simple flag can be easily bypassed by clueful customers. The clueful customers are the early adopters who recommend things to the casual buyers that come later. After all, how many times have you seen somebody want something after seeing it at the neightbor's house?
Full-on DRM that takes a soldering iron and the ability to follow instructions to circumvent will royally piss the non-technerd early adopters off. It will also get them telling their buddies the wrong things: "You can't record shows anymore. I recorded something last week and it deleted it for no reason......" They have a sales job with high-def TV on their hands as it is. They don't need prospective customers getting the idea that something is being taken away from them. Yet.
*This is not a flame, this is the truth. I can't think of one slashdot post pre-iTunes (that was modded up anyway) that said that DRM would suffer anything but a crippling death because people would refuse to buy restricted products, then they would HAVE to come back with unencumbered goods. Now we see people falling over themselves to offer a misguided company congratulations because they fuck you over SLIGHTLY LESS THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Wonderful.
It isn't just congratulations. You're absolutely right. The consumers are being conditioned to what is planned for them. When enterprising souls do what it takes to reasonably use their PURCHASED music (I never saw a EULA that wouldn't look better up a CEO's ass.) on something other than an iPod or iTunes we get "But you're screwing the only reasonable DRM. They'll have to come out with something even worse if you don't quit." Oh and burning a CD just so I can rip it again is a PITA and just stupid.
If I bought (Apple uses the terminology themselves.) the music why is there is a list of crap a mile long what I can and can't do with it? Here's a hint. Nothing has been bought; it's deceptive marketing. You have extended rental on a license. And it's a license to an inferior product. It's lossily encoded, costs about as much as a CD and is less versitile. If you take the "ethical" route and make a CD out of it so you can I don't know...use it as digital data the lossage gets worse.
I've got some news for those people, you've been thrown a bone. Well maybe thrown isn't the right word. It's a bone alright and it's been lubed. Once that lube has well distributed in the intended orifice, you'll be ready for an even bigger bone. That one won't be lubed.
Now I suppose I'll get moderated down for a comment that would have been perfectly reasonable here before Apple made DRM cool. I'm afraid to wonder what else Apple can make "cool". I guess those people who were talking about a Reality Distortion Field weren't bullshitting us.
If it involves large doses of laxative and a firehose GO FOR IT!!!!
Even regular blimps use multiple gas cells so that a problem with one doesn't bring the whole thing down. Granted, debris is a concern but it needn't be a deal breaker.
Gee, you don't think the enemy could figure out how to supply a rated voltage at a rated amperage and hmm I don't know crack open a dead battery and put more cells in it. I hope our military has better means than that!
There is also lkml and that pretty much existed from day one. What Linus was complaining about is that searching and correlating lkml, the changelogs, and the comments is tedious. Everything can be accounted for, it's just hard. What Linus whats now is to have machine readable assertions of who contributed what and the rights they had to do it.
Stories like this bring us closer to universal, homicidal rage against spammers. Blacklists don't look so fascist now, do they?
Preach on brother. Normally I'm against the death penalty. In the case of spammers, not only am I for the death penalty I'd replace the switch with a dial so it would last longer.
It will all be revealed in the final episode when the Empire is formed on a platform of goatees, vulcan women in catsuits and ... EVIL!!!
That sounds like a better show than the one thats on now. Trip and the Doctor (don't care what his name is...) can collaborate on the prototype Agony Booth and then test it on a writhing T'Pol.
Stewart seems to be far more comfortable with the small stage though. He can always reprise Picard to get a paycheck then go back to one-man plays to do Real Acting. Its a common pattern. Frank Zappa did rock-n-roll to pay the bills but it seemed like he really wanted to be a modern classical composer.
What keeps Star Trek going is all the brainless Trekkies who gleefully swallow all the crap Paramount dishes out to them. Finally beginning to die off, thank God!
My absolute favorite trekkies are the ones who get offended if you call them trekkies. "I'm not a trekkie. I'm a trekker". Of all the groups to wrap themselves in Political Correctness, this are easily the most rediculous.
I don't think they ever got over Shatner telling them to Get A Life.
Of course, he must always wear a red shirt.
but something that looked more like a mirror. It would probably be a mistake to aim a large lense at one of these.
No biggie. Just make some big spots on the platter with a Sharpie. Once a spot gets white hot, the shininess of surrounding material won't matter much.
If you are trying to focus an assload of sunlight on something, why bother with lenses at all? A huge parabolic mirror could be built about as cheaply as a fresnel. We're talking about some curved plastic and a shiny coating. If you want to get fancy, cut a hole in the center and mount a secondary mirror for convienient aiming, sensing, and easy mounting for sun tracking.
All that said, I'm not so sure about starting fusion with a sunlight.
you're probably rather stupid anyway
Q.E.D.
DRM is a farcical use of encryption. Until a bunch of corporate lame-brains decided they were smarter than Alan Turing, the accepted use of encryption was to secure comm channels. An alternative use is to limit access to data to whoever possesses the keys. Specifically, it was intended to allow Alice to talk and share info with Bob without Eve listening in.
Even that well defined chunk of functionality is rife with botchable details. Anyone with half a clue also knew that even if the channel was secured correctly that incorrect or malicious behaivor on either side of the link could compromise it.
Now we have DRM. In DRM, Bob wants to communicate something to Alice but at the same time he wants to prevent Alice from communicating it to Eve. All of the data and necessary keys are in Alice's possession. Granted, the data and keys are obfuscated but she in still in physical possession of everything needed to decrypt the data.
From a strictly information theoretic point of view, why should anyone take that scenario seriously? Bob can make it varying degrees of PITA for Alice to blab to Eve but there is no inherent security here.
With a factory box in hand and a paid-up receipt, most of us would tell ole Steve just exactly where he could cram his EULA. I know the software and entertainment magnates are doing to their damndest to dispell this erroneous impression of ownership some of us can't shake. But how can I take it seriously when the commercial for the DVD of the week tells me I can own it today!?