Yes, degradation will occur in any analog capture of a digital presentation. This degradation will not be a sufficient motive to stop most people from making copies. Once the analog capture is itself digititized, it will not degrade further.
If care is taken to get a quality analog capture, the degradation may not even be apparent. I believe acceptable rips can be made by filming LCD screens. Darken the room. Toy with the settings on a large quality monitor and quality camera until the result looks as good as you can get it. It wouldn't look that bad at all.
Even if the result is somewhat degraded, it will be traded anyway. Many of us use lame presets to make the best quality VBR mp3s possible while not wasting disk unecessarily. Most people aren't that careful. The most common type of file on the p2p networks are 128kb MP3s. The quality of those isn't much better than the songs I used to tape off the radio when I was a kid. And the RIAA gets excited about that? Sheesh!
The ??AAs are smoking crack again. Slight degradation from analog ripping isn't stopping anybody.
Most decent clients anymore will let you set simple filters on subject and from. Just make a bunch of filters on From: and only let messages that pass them into the inbox. Everything else can be dumped straight to the trash or at least another mailbox. There's your white "bud list". Mozilla 1.1 has this sort of simple filter although I use KMail myself.
It's still a good idea to quickly skim the subject lines of the remaining messages and most decent clients will let you quickly reassign a message back to your inbox. The subject lines alone usually suffice to quickly id spam. You can whack em en masse without ever opening them.
"Only one person has to type the contents of the book keyboard-to-monitor-encrypted appliance's monitor into an unencumbered machine and share it."
That's a little brutal isn't it? Take pictures of the screen with a digital camera and OCR the snaps. It's still labor intensive but far more practical.
"Only in Linux Land. Since when did apt become easier than Windows Update? "
It really can be. It is very easy to hit Windows Update watch it download and install a few things and think you're OK. At least, this is true for nontechnical users. For a new install of Windows 2000 or 98, it will be necessary to hit Update several times. Once to get the current service pack (reboot) then it's time to get the Critical security patches. Ooops, one of them has a run-time dependency so we have reboot again to get the last critical update. Now we have to get IE's service pack (reboot) and the fixes since the update came out (reboot). One can count on at least four reboots for 98 and probably three for 2000. I wouldn't be surprised if XP takes at least two visit Update and reboot cycles. What's so fricken easy about that? On Debian machines it apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, answer some easy questions, and done. Only kernel updates necessitate rebooting. Any admin who thinks that is difficult is too dangerous to expose machines to the net.
"Please, not everything in the world that takes place is related to Linux. Give it a rest."
Agreed, but admit Windows ease-of-use isn't what it's cracked up to be. Many Windows cheerleaders trumpet how "easy" Windows is but when issues are pointed out say "but that doesn't happen if you know what you're doing" thus kicking the legs out from under their "easy" argument. A properly adminned Windows no easier or harder to deal than Linux or one of the BSDs. It IS much easier to mismange Windows since it papers over necessary details with pretty buttons and wizards.
I have an i810 machine at work. I have gotten mplayer to work fullscreen with it. Some of Branden's 4.2 packages have just hit testing and those work. The i810 X driver is a little flakey and you may have to reboot to get the video chipset into a sane enough state for Xv to work. The OS is stable and otherwise usable; it's just that the video can go partially into lala land (DRI and Xv give up, X sometimes crashes when switching to and from virtual consoles..will restart minus DRI and Xv working). You may also have to get Intel's latest firmware for the i810.
Also, my machine is using 16bit color depth...may make a difference. You'll have to disable a bitmap caching option to avoid some gui corruption issues at 16 bit depth. Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" in the i810 Device section takes care of it. It doesn't hit performance too badly.
Also, DRI got much faster with the i810 xserver in testing's 4.2 debs. GLTron is playable with all of the texture eyecandy turned on.
The mplayer page has a tarball of codec libraries that you can download from their site. Just unpack it into/usr/lib/win32 and you're good to go with most formats mplayer supports. Just install Realplayer 8 and snarf up the dlls from Quicktime for Windows (once they put the support into a release) and you'll have nice Linux player. It isn't like you have to go download 20 different things to make it work. With Debian Sarge it's been dead easy (they provide the Debian package build stuff right in the tarball) to get mplayer working nice gui and all.
As for thumbnails, I've been watching movies fullscreen with mplayer for months now. Also, they mplayer sources also build a tool called mencoder that will encode or translate movies into different formats. I haven't used it myself but I'm told it's pretty nice.
I would guess that Microsoft is OK on the XBox for now. Selling consoles at a loss and making money on titles is an established practice in the console arena. I don't see them getting in trouble for that. If they dumped games for less than it cost to make them then I think they would be in trouble. I don't see any evidence they're doing that though.
The other way they could get in trouble is by somehow leveraging the Windows desktop monopoly to bootstrap the XBox. It is not at all clear this is the case. Yes, they are using technology from the NT codebase like the kernel and DirectX but mere use of technology from the desktop won't do it. Where this gets interesting is if Microsoft goes out of their way to make it easy to port games between Windows and the XBox. It would be up to Nintendo or Sony to make something of it.
Ed Muth admitted that "No. These documents do not represent an official Microsoft position or road map. They are technical analyses written by a staff engineer that represent the thoughts of one individual at one point in time. They were intended to encourage an informed internal discussion of issues by marketing and engineering middle managers." Of course they tried to make it sound as though it didn't really mean anything.
They have since pulled the press release from their site but Microsoft did admit it was authentic document. I've read it myself from the horse's mouth on Microsoft's site.
Here is the Wayback Machine's archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/19990117031504/http:/ /w ww.microsoft.com/ntserver/highlights/editorletter. asp
Your premise only makes sense if the only work programmers do is cranking out code that is sold as product. If a web hosting company finds a bug in Apache then it makes sense to send in the patch so the next version of Apache has their fix. Note well that the service delivered is web hosting not an http server. A large web hosting company will have a few programmers gluing things together with software. They are not working for free and Open Source facilites their work.
Most firms do not make software for money. Most make money WITH software. You are correct in that OS will compete with those who produce closed proprietary software. Open Source has advantages that closed source simply cannot provide espcially if someone has a need for a customized solution. If closed source firms want to compete then they will have to deliver exceptional value. Open Source forces closed companies to make better software to stay alive. The customer wins whether he goes with closed or open. The customer is not obligated to only be able to use closed source solutions with no competition so you can have a job.
Lastly, I'll note that most major Open Source projects like Apache and the Linux kernel have paid programmers contributing to them. OSS is often part of an overall solution that is sold for money. The OSS provides core functionality so that wheels need not be continually reinvented. Again, you are not owed a job constantly recoding solutions for problems that were solved a long time ago. Most code that is truly written for free is probably not worth that much on it's own. Think minesweeper and tetris clones. OSS programmers can get paid just like closed programmers.
Sue the fuckin' piss out of them for wasting your time. Seriously, since a BSA audit shuts down your company while their thugs go crawling through your machines bill 'em. Creatively.
The GPL makes no restrictions whatsover on the use or "running" of a program. As Theo de Raadt so artfully put it, even if the program was used to automate a baby threshing machine the GPL has nothing to say about it. The GPL even explicitly states that "You don't have to agree to this license to run the Program." Hardly a EULA.
The ONLY activity the GPL restricts is redistribution whether it has been modified or not. Remember, the "default" in copyright law allows no redistribution whatsoever. All the GPL does is lift that restriction under carefully defined circumstances.
Now EULAs on the other hand:
Prohibit use of the Product to criticize the software maker.
Prohibit publishing benchmarks. How nice! It is almost impossible to objectively evaluate a purchase!
Allow revocation of software keys on a user's machine.
or even: Allow the replacement of software components for any purpose whatsover.
Any number of nasty things I didn't think of.
In many cases, Microsoft's software is the ONLY means to communicate with other people. Their stuff is insinuated in much of data interchange. It often not a matter of choice whether or not to accept a coercive EULA.
EULAs usually entail significant restrictions on the USE of a program as their greedy writers want more than even today's vastly expanded copyright laws allow. The GPL does not do this. EULAs and the GPL aren't even Apples and Oranges. Hell, one of them isn't even any sort of food whatsoever.
That's nothing that piece of filter film placed in front of the camcorder lens wouldn't take care off. Such filters are used to keep from oversaturating regular photos in some applications and would work for this as well.
Thus, WHY would consumer-grade "hardware" be found in professional-grade medical hardware?
Because Fritzie-boy is all hot and bothered to close up the "Analog Hole". That means that NO commodity DSP or processor chips can fail to support DRM. One consequence is that embedded device makers will have to get special exceptions for un-screwed up processors and memory (vastly increasing costs and development time due to red tape). If embedded and real-time manufacturers use commodity parts anyway to control their costs then they'll have to contend with DRM just like anybody else. This is where the defib machine letting someone die on account of a licensing issue comes in.
Remember "professional-grade medical hardware" uses many of the same components as consumer grade hardware. The difference is in how it is configured and even more importantly certified to operate correctly. Mandatory DRM basically means that the well EVERYONE is drinking out of is going to be pissed in by Rosen, Eisner and Fritzie-Boy.
Like the guy said, McDonalds didn't get nailed for ONLY burning this lady. McDonalds had a history of burned people and elected not to address the issue after doing a cost/benefit analysis. They wanted to use cheaper coffee and making the water hotter than usual helped them get away with it. One woman burning herself is a fluke. Several hundred people burning themselves means you have a problem. If it were say, an inexpensive kitchen appliance and lots of people got hurt during normal use then there will probably be a recall. Companies that knowingly avoid a recall on a product they know has issues get in trouble. The McDonalds coffee isn't any different. You see, where is the dumb old lady suing Wendy's or Denny's? Their coffee had a problem their competitions' didn't. They KNOWINGLY stonewalled on it. That is what got them put through the wringer. Intent and knowledge intensify the seriousness of a legal charge. It it really was just one simple accident then McDonald's wouldn't have been hit nearly as hard.
It's just like what happened to the tobacco industry. The first lawsuits were by people with health problems like cancer and emphysema. Juries were unsympathetic because everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last 50 years knows that smoking is bad for you. Later lawsuits concentrated on what the tobacco companies knew when and what they were saying publicly at the time. The tobacco companies had internal studies going back to the sixties that laid out the health risks. They also shied away from developing safer cigarettes because they did not want to admit to selling something unsafe. To cap it off, the top execs of the tobacco companies testified to Congress that they did not believe smoking causes cancer.
Basically, they didn't get busted for selling cancerous cigarettes. If they were up front about that from the start they would have been alright legally. It would have been hell on their corporate image and sales but it would have been much harder to sue them. They got nailed for misrepresenting their product. Check out cigarette ads from twenty or thirty years ago. Vibrant successful healthy people with active outdoor lifestyles all smoke! Just like the Marlboro Man! (who himself died of lung cancer..oops)
The fat guy suing the fast food companies won't get anywhere at all unless one of the companies made the mistake of representing the fatty cholesterol laden parts of their menu as healthy.
This assumes that only "Good" people like the Government, contractors, and university lackeys can do the basic science and engineering. The problems with this strike me as difficult but not garageproof. They most certainly are not Saddamproof. That's not to say secrecy in moderation is valueless. The "Good" people could take advantage of a short monopoly on such technology but shouldn't get used to it.
There are two big problems with this. I don't curl up in bed with my laptop to read something and I have yet to see a a bookreader device thats as easy on the eyes as a well typeset book. The other problem is that CD-Rs are more perishable that books and for several reasons. They won't give us a CDR unless it is encrusted with DRM. Hard drive crash? No license for you; buy the book again. Format change? No license for you. Microsoft exercises their infamous EULA terms? No license for you. If that wasn't bad enough, the physical lifetime of CDRs is bad as well. They don't seem to age as well pressed CDRs and there are doubts about those as well. Backup copy? DRM! Forget it
Yeah there's ways around it if you don't mind risking pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison but employing them for an entire library would be tedious. If I did buy a DRMed book, I'd probably look for a crack for all the same reasons we do it to games we have paid for. At the end of the day, DRM will be a PITA even for those who think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
If someone fairly reasonable like Piers Anthony is gung ho for it then other authors will be well. Just check his newsletter. An email exchange pretty demonstrated to me that he thinks this stuff will Get Him Paid and nevermind the negative consequences.
Screw CDRs. I'll take the printed book thank you very much.
Online applications were not common when the GPL was written. The emergence of applications that are only executed online is a hole in the intent of the GPL. At least, it is a hole in the eyes of the FSF. The fear is that someone could take GPL code, privately modify the hell out of it and then use it to deploy an online application. If the majority of software were to move in this direction then the old style GPL would become exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. I suppose the idea is that even if software becomes something that is mostly executed remotely that the ability to deploy and modify it independently still be preserved.
I'm not sure if that will fly or not. I'm not terribly worried about it in any case. I'm far more worried about the rumors that the FSF intends to un-LGPL major libraries like glibc and GPL them. That would make it necessary for the distros to fork the last LGPLed versions. It would be chaos while a whole slew of new maintainerships is sorted out. Note well that would NOT "make commercial software on Linux impossible!!". It WILL, however, definitely give the Linux marketplace additional uncertainly that it does not need right now.
That is still planned but the release of the vp3 codec and the existance of vorbis means they can get something out NOW. I understand they still intend to develop their own video codec. THAT is what will be Tarkin and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Making a video codec from scratch with out patent entanglement is going to be super hard.
The keys are in the box aren't they? It decrypts content doesn't it? To a sufficiently motivated attacker, tamperproof devices aren't. Once one is in possession of a "Judas Box", the DRM can be removed from any content desired. It only takes one and there won't be just one.
For that matter, bribery and social engineering work as well as they ever did. Have your Judas box built to spec while-u-wait.
...And let's everybody sit on the inevitable hacks until after they've deployed this crap sixteen ways from Sunday. DON'T publically test the security of any such system while it's on the drawing board. Let's keep things niiiiiice and zero-day. 'Kay?
Step 1: Photograph screen with hi-res mode of digital camera.
Step 2: OCR the photo
Step 3: Mail it back to the tech illiterate fuckstick who thinks this crap really can work...in plain broadcast it to the world if I fuckin' feel like it ASCII.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat until it gets beat into people's head that what one bright spark can make another can break.
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Yes, degradation will occur in any analog capture of a digital presentation. This degradation will not be a sufficient motive to stop most people from making copies. Once the analog capture is itself digititized, it will not degrade further.
If care is taken to get a quality analog capture, the degradation may not even be apparent. I believe acceptable rips can be made by filming LCD screens. Darken the room. Toy with the settings on a large quality monitor and quality camera until the result looks as good as you can get it. It wouldn't look that bad at all.
Even if the result is somewhat degraded, it will be traded anyway. Many of us use lame presets to make the best quality VBR mp3s possible while not wasting disk unecessarily. Most people aren't that careful. The most common type of file on the p2p networks are 128kb MP3s. The quality of those isn't much better than the songs I used to tape off the radio when I was a kid. And the RIAA gets excited about that? Sheesh!
The ??AAs are smoking crack again. Slight degradation from analog ripping isn't stopping anybody.
Most decent clients anymore will let you set simple filters on subject and from. Just make a bunch of filters on From: and only let messages that pass them into the inbox. Everything else can be dumped straight to the trash or at least another mailbox. There's your white "bud list". Mozilla 1.1 has this sort of simple filter although I use KMail myself.
It's still a good idea to quickly skim the subject lines of the remaining messages and most decent clients will let you quickly reassign a message back to your inbox. The subject lines alone usually suffice to quickly id spam. You can whack em en masse without ever opening them.
"Only one person has to type the contents of the book keyboard-to-monitor-encrypted appliance's monitor into an unencumbered machine and share it."
That's a little brutal isn't it? Take pictures of the screen with a digital camera and OCR the snaps. It's still labor intensive but far more practical.
There was an episode where whatever the main characters imagined popping into reality.....
Quark: "Odo, Your problem is that you have no imagination."
several scenes later:
Odo is sitting in his office when his viewscreen turns on. It shows Quark locked up in the brig.
Odo: "Quark! What are you doing in there?!"
Quark: "You should know! You're the one who put me in here!."
Odo: "No imagination indeed!"
I wonder what Steve and Bill are going to do with all of those frequent flyer miles? They sure have been racking them up lately haven't they?
I heard that Walmart will give you a really neat Microtel PC for a quarter million miles.
"Only in Linux Land. Since when did apt become easier than Windows Update? "
It really can be. It is very easy to hit Windows Update watch it download and install a few things and think you're OK. At least, this is true for nontechnical users. For a new install of Windows 2000 or 98, it will be necessary to hit Update several times. Once to get the current service pack (reboot) then it's time to get the Critical security patches. Ooops, one of them has a run-time dependency so we have reboot again to get the last critical update. Now we have to get IE's service pack (reboot) and the fixes since the update came out (reboot). One can count on at least four reboots for 98 and probably three for 2000. I wouldn't be surprised if XP takes at least two visit Update and reboot cycles. What's so fricken easy about that? On Debian machines it apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, answer some easy questions, and done. Only kernel updates necessitate rebooting. Any admin who thinks that is difficult is too dangerous to expose machines to the net.
"Please, not everything in the world that takes place is related to Linux. Give it a rest."
Agreed, but admit Windows ease-of-use isn't what it's cracked up to be. Many Windows cheerleaders trumpet how "easy" Windows is but when issues are pointed out say "but that doesn't happen if you know what you're doing" thus kicking the legs out from under their "easy" argument. A properly adminned Windows no easier or harder to deal than Linux or one of the BSDs. It IS much easier to mismange Windows since it papers over necessary details with pretty buttons and wizards.
I have an i810 machine at work. I have gotten mplayer to work fullscreen with it. Some of Branden's 4.2 packages have just hit testing and those work. The i810 X driver is a little flakey and you may have to reboot to get the video chipset into a sane enough state for Xv to work.
The OS is stable and otherwise usable; it's just that the video can go partially into lala land (DRI and Xv give up, X sometimes crashes when switching to and from virtual consoles..will restart minus DRI and Xv working). You may also have to get Intel's latest firmware for the i810.
Also, my machine is using 16bit color depth...may make a difference. You'll have to disable a bitmap caching option to avoid some gui corruption issues at 16 bit depth. Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" in the i810 Device section takes care of it. It doesn't hit performance too badly.
Also, DRI got much faster with the i810 xserver in testing's 4.2 debs. GLTron is playable with all of the texture eyecandy turned on.
The mplayer page has a tarball of codec libraries that you can download from their site. Just unpack it into /usr/lib/win32 and you're good to go with most formats mplayer supports. Just install Realplayer 8 and snarf up the dlls from Quicktime for Windows (once they put the support into a release) and you'll have nice Linux player. It isn't like you have to go download 20 different things to make it work. With Debian Sarge it's been dead easy (they provide the Debian package build stuff right in the tarball) to get mplayer working nice gui and all.
As for thumbnails, I've been watching movies fullscreen with mplayer for months now. Also, they mplayer sources also build a tool called mencoder that will encode or translate movies into different formats. I haven't used it myself but I'm told it's pretty nice.
I would guess that Microsoft is OK on the XBox for now. Selling consoles at a loss and making money on titles is an established practice in the console arena. I don't see them getting in trouble for that. If they dumped games for less than it cost to make them then I think they would be in trouble. I don't see any evidence they're doing that though.
The other way they could get in trouble is by somehow leveraging the Windows desktop monopoly to bootstrap the XBox. It is not at all clear this is the case. Yes, they are using technology from the NT codebase like the kernel and DirectX but mere use of technology from the desktop won't do it. Where this gets interesting is if Microsoft goes out of their way to make it easy to port games between Windows and the XBox. It would be up to Nintendo or Sony to make something of it.
I was able to access it fine with Galeon. I'm also using Privoxy which may nullify whatever lame Javascript trick kept you from getting through.
Ed Muth admitted that "No. These documents do not represent an official Microsoft position or road map. They are technical analyses written by a staff engineer that represent the thoughts of one individual at one point in time. They were intended to encourage an informed internal discussion of issues by marketing and engineering middle managers." Of course they tried to make it sound as though it didn't really mean anything.
/ /w ww.microsoft.com/ntserver/highlights/editorletter. asp
They have since pulled the press release from their site but Microsoft did admit it was authentic document. I've read it myself from the horse's mouth on Microsoft's site.
Here is the Wayback Machine's archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/19990117031504/http:
Is this proof enough?
Your premise only makes sense if the only work programmers do is cranking out code that is sold as product. If a web hosting company finds a bug in Apache then it makes sense to send in the patch so the next version of Apache has their fix. Note well that the service delivered is web hosting not an http server. A large web hosting company will have a few programmers gluing things together with software. They are not working for free and Open Source facilites their work.
Most firms do not make software for money. Most make money WITH software. You are correct in that OS will compete with those who produce closed proprietary software. Open Source has advantages that closed source simply cannot provide espcially if someone has a need for a customized solution. If closed source firms want to compete then they will have to deliver exceptional value. Open Source forces closed companies to make better software to stay alive. The customer wins whether he goes with closed or open. The customer is not obligated to only be able to use closed source solutions with no competition so you can have a job.
Lastly, I'll note that most major Open Source projects like Apache and the Linux kernel have paid programmers contributing to them. OSS is often part of an overall solution that is sold for money. The OSS provides core functionality so that wheels need not be continually reinvented. Again, you are not owed a job constantly recoding solutions for problems that were solved a long time ago. Most code that is truly written for free is probably not worth that much on it's own. Think minesweeper and tetris clones. OSS programmers can get paid just like closed programmers.
Sue the fuckin' piss out of them for wasting your time. Seriously, since a BSA audit shuts down your company while their thugs go crawling through your machines bill 'em. Creatively.
The GPL makes no restrictions whatsover on the use or "running" of a program. As Theo de Raadt so artfully put it, even if the program was used to automate a baby threshing machine the GPL has nothing to say about it. The GPL even explicitly states that "You don't have to agree to this license to run the Program." Hardly a EULA.
The ONLY activity the GPL restricts is redistribution whether it has been modified or not. Remember, the "default" in copyright law allows no redistribution whatsoever. All the GPL does is lift that restriction under carefully defined circumstances.
Now EULAs on the other hand:
Prohibit use of the Product to criticize the software maker.
Prohibit publishing benchmarks. How nice! It is almost impossible to objectively evaluate a purchase!
Allow revocation of software keys on a user's machine.
or even: Allow the replacement of software components for any purpose whatsover.
Any number of nasty things I didn't think of.
In many cases, Microsoft's software is the ONLY means to communicate with other people. Their stuff is insinuated in much of data interchange. It often not a matter of choice whether or not to accept a coercive EULA.
EULAs usually entail significant restrictions on the USE of a program as their greedy writers want more than even today's vastly expanded copyright laws allow. The GPL does not do this. EULAs and the GPL aren't even Apples and Oranges. Hell, one of them isn't even any sort of food whatsoever.
That's nothing that piece of filter film placed in front of the camcorder lens wouldn't take care off. Such filters are used to keep from oversaturating regular photos in some applications and would work for this as well.
Thus, WHY would consumer-grade "hardware" be found in professional-grade medical hardware?
Because Fritzie-boy is all hot and bothered to close up the "Analog Hole". That means that NO commodity DSP or processor chips can fail to support DRM. One consequence is that embedded device makers will have to get special exceptions for un-screwed up processors and memory (vastly increasing costs and development time due to red tape). If embedded and real-time manufacturers use commodity parts anyway to control their costs then they'll have to contend with DRM just like anybody else. This is where the defib machine letting someone die on account of a licensing issue comes in.
Remember "professional-grade medical hardware" uses many of the same components as consumer grade hardware. The difference is in how it is configured and even more importantly certified to operate correctly. Mandatory DRM basically means that the well EVERYONE is drinking out of is going to be pissed in by Rosen, Eisner and Fritzie-Boy.
Like the guy said, McDonalds didn't get nailed for ONLY burning this lady. McDonalds had a history of burned people and elected not to address the issue after doing a cost/benefit analysis. They wanted to use cheaper coffee and making the water hotter than usual helped them get away with it. One woman burning herself is a fluke. Several hundred people burning themselves means you have a problem. If it were say, an inexpensive kitchen appliance and lots of people got hurt during normal use then there will probably be a recall. Companies that knowingly avoid a recall on a product they know has issues get in trouble. The McDonalds coffee isn't any different. You see, where is the dumb old lady suing Wendy's or Denny's? Their coffee had a problem their competitions' didn't. They KNOWINGLY stonewalled on it. That is what got them put through the wringer. Intent and knowledge intensify the seriousness of a legal charge. It it really was just one simple accident then McDonald's wouldn't have been hit nearly as hard.
It's just like what happened to the tobacco industry. The first lawsuits were by people with health problems like cancer and emphysema. Juries were unsympathetic because everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last 50 years knows that smoking is bad for you. Later lawsuits concentrated on what the tobacco companies knew when and what they were saying publicly at the time. The tobacco companies had internal studies going back to the sixties that laid out the health risks. They also shied away from developing safer cigarettes because they did not want to admit to selling something unsafe. To cap it off, the top execs of the tobacco companies testified to Congress that they did not believe smoking causes cancer.
Basically, they didn't get busted for selling cancerous cigarettes. If they were up front about that from the start they would have been alright legally. It would have been hell on their corporate image and sales but it would have been much harder to sue them. They got nailed for misrepresenting their product. Check out cigarette ads from twenty or thirty years ago. Vibrant successful healthy people with active outdoor lifestyles all smoke! Just like the Marlboro Man! (who himself died of lung cancer..oops)
The fat guy suing the fast food companies won't get anywhere at all unless one of the companies made the mistake of representing the fatty cholesterol laden parts of their menu as healthy.
This assumes that only "Good" people like the Government, contractors, and university lackeys can do the basic science and engineering. The problems with this strike me as difficult but not garageproof. They most certainly are not Saddamproof. That's not to say secrecy in moderation is valueless. The "Good" people could take advantage of a short monopoly on such technology but shouldn't get used to it.
There are two big problems with this. I don't curl up in bed with my laptop to read something and I have yet to see a a bookreader device thats as easy on the eyes as a well typeset book. The other problem is that CD-Rs are more perishable that books and for several reasons. They won't give us a CDR unless it is encrusted with DRM. Hard drive crash? No license for you; buy the book again. Format change? No license for you. Microsoft exercises their infamous EULA terms? No license for you. If that wasn't bad enough, the physical lifetime of CDRs is bad as well. They don't seem to age as well pressed CDRs and there are doubts about those as well. Backup copy? DRM! Forget it
Yeah there's ways around it if you don't mind risking pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison but employing them for an entire library would be tedious. If I did buy a DRMed book, I'd probably look for a crack for all the same reasons we do it to games we have paid for. At the end of the day, DRM will be a PITA even for those who think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
If someone fairly reasonable like Piers Anthony is gung ho for it then other authors will be well. Just check his newsletter. An email exchange pretty demonstrated to me that he thinks this stuff will Get Him Paid and nevermind the negative consequences.
Screw CDRs. I'll take the printed book thank you very much.
Actually those are the testing distros which in time became stables except for Sarge that is. unstable is ALWAY sid, the kid who breaks things.
Online applications were not common when the GPL was written. The emergence of applications that are only executed online is a hole in the intent of the GPL. At least, it is a hole in the eyes of the FSF. The fear is that someone could take GPL code, privately modify the hell out of it and then use it to deploy an online application. If the majority of software were to move in this direction then the old style GPL would become exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. I suppose the idea is that even if software becomes something that is mostly executed remotely that the ability to deploy and modify it independently still be preserved.
I'm not sure if that will fly or not. I'm not terribly worried about it in any case. I'm far more worried about the rumors that the FSF intends to un-LGPL major libraries like glibc and GPL them. That would make it necessary for the distros to fork the last LGPLed versions. It would be chaos while a whole slew of new maintainerships is sorted out. Note well that would NOT "make commercial software on Linux impossible!!". It WILL, however, definitely give the Linux marketplace additional uncertainly that it does not need right now.
That is still planned but the release of the vp3 codec and the existance of vorbis means they can get something out NOW. I understand they still intend to develop their own video codec. THAT is what will be Tarkin and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Making a video codec from scratch with out patent entanglement is going to be super hard.
The keys are in the box aren't they? It decrypts content doesn't it? To a sufficiently motivated attacker, tamperproof devices aren't. Once one is in possession of a "Judas Box", the DRM can be removed from any content desired. It only takes one and there won't be just one.
For that matter, bribery and social engineering work as well as they ever did. Have your Judas box built to spec while-u-wait.
...And let's everybody sit on the inevitable hacks until after they've deployed this crap sixteen ways from Sunday. DON'T publically test the security of any such system while it's on the drawing board. Let's keep things niiiiiice and zero-day. 'Kay?
Step 1: Photograph screen with hi-res mode of digital camera.
Step 2: OCR the photo
Step 3: Mail it back to the tech illiterate fuckstick who thinks this crap really can work...in plain broadcast it to the world if I fuckin' feel like it ASCII.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat until it gets beat into people's head that what one bright spark can make another can break.