That's a good point, but I feel like we made our DRM unobtrusive enough that you never felt like you were being called a thief.
For 99% of the people, they never even saw a username & password dialog... Instead, the document simply opened right up for them every time, with their name embedded down in the bottom-right corner.
I think it fits as an analogy because essentially what we tried to do was take something that was inherently painful and difficult to use (DRM) and make it as easy, or eaiser, than car door locks are. We wanted to make it so easy to use, that cracking it didn't even cross your mind.
I think we mostly succeeded. It's too bad our principles wrapped us up before we were even near death.:(
No, actually, we were relying on people to Do The Right Thing.
We though, perhaps wrongly, but we'll never know, that if we built a DRM that was easy to use and unobtrusive, people wouldn't bother cracking it. They wouldn't have to. Why? Because we allowed a lot of things other DRMs didn't:
- They can print their book all they want.
- They can read it on their desktop, laptop, palm, etc.
- They only have to enter their username and password *once* per device, it unlocks automatically every time after that.
- No extra downloads, plugins, or anything. Just Acrobat, which tons of people (hundreds of millions, according to Adobe) already have.
- Most of the time, it was "pre-unlocked" during the download process, so the user didn't ever have to enter a username and password, unless they copied it to another device.
- If they wanted to share it in the office, just like you might want to share a magazine, all you had to do was pass along your username & password too. Causes you to pause, but you might do it for relevant business documents and such.
- You're encouraged to send it along to friends without the username & password so they can buy it directly from within the document.
I could go on and on... In short, there aren't a lot of reasons to bother breaking it. We tried to make it painless for grandmas to use.
Yep, this stuff exists in one form or another already. There's been an ethernet adapter out for TiVo for awhile (TiVoNet), using a 10Mbps NE2000 clone. TiVoNet stuff
A new one, made by the same guy who makes this new AirTivo, is now shipping called TurboNet that's a 100Mbps card. TurboNet stuff
The software to support web services and everything all exist as well. ExtractStream, a video extraction piece.
Your best bet to keep up on all this stuff is at the Underground Playground section of AVS/TiVo Community's message forums.
Hope that helps!
Don
Re:Okay, so maybe I'm being stupid but...
on
802.11b on your Tivo
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Sure, here's a quick rundown:
#1 - No more phone line needed. The TiVo can get it's next 14 days worth of programming via the 802.11b card and PPP.
#2 - You can install a web server on your TiVo and browse through the TiVo's menus over the web. This includes scheduling show recordings while you're at work, for example.
#3 - You can backup shows on your TiVo to your computer rather than to VHS. You can also stream the shows to your PC to watch them there, rather than on your TV.
I'm sure there are plenty more, but those are the biggies.
While CD players may skip, they have massive amounts of time between skips with which to re-track.
The RioVolt250, for example, has 8 minutes of anti-skip time. (I assume that's at 160kbps or something...less if you're using higher bitrates). But that's a ton of time it has to find where it was and burst another chunk of songs into it's memory.
As it turns out, a *very* succesful game developer started in exactly the same way. I wasn't personally involved, though I do have some friends who work there, so this is what I've been told was the situation:
A guy by the name of Tony Goodman had a consulting firm that was doing quite well out in Dallas. They had some strong ties to Microsoft, as I understand it, and did a lot of consulting with regards to their products for businesses. Tony and some of his guys one day decided to make games, and cooked up this great idea.
It became Ensemble Studios, and that game was Age of Empires. They've just recently (in the last month or so) been acquired by Microsoft, and each of their games were run-away million+ unit sellers.
Just like most industries, a lot of initial success is based on who you know. Ensemble had a great idea and a grea team, true, but it was also just as key that they had a strong relationship with Microsoft to begin with. That got them in the door and allowed their great team to strut their stuff.
I'm sure they, as most startup development houses do, created a quickie game concept demo and showed their buddies at Microsoft. Microsoft then decided to pony up an advance to get them to their first milestone and evaluate their progress. Obviously, it went well, so a long-term contract and milestone schedule was established, and a hit was born.
The best advice I can give you is to try to make some contacts in the industry. Game developers are very easy to get to know (and great people), but they often don't have the pull needed to get a fully-funded game off the ground. Game publishers are who you really want to get chummy with, though game developers can probably make the introductions. Coupled with a great demo (and, by extension, team) and a good introduction, you can't go wrong.
Unfortunately, I don't have M14 on this machine, but I installed it at work 2 days ago and could swear there's an option to refuse cookies that orginate from sites other than the current one.
That's really an interesting viewpoint. I can see your reasoning, and it certainly applies in some cases.
However, there are a few examples which spring to mind immediately to which this doesn't apply. Quake is a great example, since much of id's revenue stems from their ability to license the code to developers like Ritual, Valve, ION Storm, etc. If the code was open-source, id loses that revenue stream.
While my game tastes and certainly that of the game-buying public are much more broad than just first-person shooters, I'm going to use it as an easy example. There are reasons why there aren't more high-quality first-person-shooters out there -- the code is certainly a big piece. The best FPS games have great creativity and design as well as good code. Many of the failures had some interesting and innovative ideas, but for one reason or another, couldn't succeed. And as often as not, that was due to the underlying technology not being fast enough or robust enough or whatever.
Also, the code itself obviously enables the developer to be creative. Without a good codebase to work from, developer's creativity is stifled. That's exactly why it's so appealing to license Quake and Unreal's technologies - they're proven, they work, and you can start getting creative immediately without having to create and test and tweak a new codebase. And perhaps more key, and why open-source isn't currently in use in the game industry, they have been proven in the commercial marketplace.
There are a few OSS rendering engines in developement, at least one of which is very full-featured, cross-platform, and seems to be coming along nicely. However, it hasn't been proven in a commercial product, and until it does, it's very hard to justify using it when the company's survival depends on it. The game industry is a very hit-or-miss industry, and a miss can tank a company.
Hence, game companies fall back on licensing a proven commercial engine or writing their own.
I don't think this will necessarily stay the case, but it is the reality now.
I welcome public or private replies, but due to an ISP switchover problem yesterday, my DNS is broken. Here's an alternate email: donm@fatbrain.com
Is there something really so wrong with a business trying to make money? Making money and supporting OSS aren't opposite ends of the spectrum, after all.
I'm just a bit confused as to why you're latching onto the fact that they're a business. Are any of the other business making money off of or through open-source efforts also just as evil?
This sounded like a wonderful event. Loki didn't create and doesn't own Civ:CTP, so a fully open-source situation isn't available to them. They're dealing with Activision (Another money-making company, but without OSS roots), so I'm really impressed by what they were able to accomplish. A decently large group of people had a great time hacking on the code, and you're upset because it was sponsored by a company rather than a non-profit group?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flame you, I'm just trying to understand. I just don't get it when some/.ers get terribly upset when money is mentioned, as if it's necessarily detrimental to open-source.
I welcome private replies, but during an ISP switch yesterday, my DNS got hosed. No ETA for recovery yet, so here's an alternate address: donm@fatbrain.com
I'm a games developer myself, and am in the process of starting a new games technology company (which, of course, will make incredibly fun games as well as technology:) and it's really heartening to hear that a games-related OSS event went off so smoothly with such positive results.
I know that many game companies consider their code to be very proprietary and treat it like their only chest of gold. Which, of course, is common to many software companies today, and isn't necessarily an invalid reaction, but I really love what I've been seeing over the last few years in Open Source.
There are some game programmers in our field that, while not being exactly open-source, do share their views and opinions with each other, especially among the Dallas developers. I've always throught it was really great how John Carmack (id) would chat with Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dose, Jack Mathews (all three at Ritual), Gary McTaggart, Charlie Brown (both at Valve), Billy Zelsnack (late of Rebel Boat Rockers) and Corrine Yu (3DRealms) about what they were all doing. While not a totally free-flow of ideas, and certainly not source hacking together, it was nice to see things get loosened up a bit.
The idea that's popping around in my head is to do something like id does with their test versions (QTest, Q3Test, etc), but somehow combine it with a similar OSS event to the one described above. Maybe a month or so after releasing the test, host an event over a weekend where qualified folks can come and hack on the source to make any modifications they think would be cool after playing the test version for a month.
Any thoughts on this? Any other ideas? I know for a fact that going purely open-source with our new technology won't fly past my other partners, and I'd even have to stop and think really deeply about it myself even if I were alone in this venture, but I really do believe that the open source model provides some wonderful benefits that I'd love to foster.
I'd love to receive email replies, but during an ISP change yesterday, I lost DNS and have no idea when it will be back up. Here's an alternate if you're interested in discussing this privately: donm@fatbrain.com
Now we have a ready-to-target task-list. I'm certain there are groups working on some of these issues already, but those that aren't being worked on or haven't had a lot of effort put into them just got a big boost, I'm sure.
I mean, just think how great it will be to see each of these points fall, one by one?
If anything, Micro$oft just infused a lot of Linux developers with a nice burst of energy.:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good point, but I feel like we made our DRM unobtrusive enough that you never felt like you were being called a thief.
:(
For 99% of the people, they never even saw a username & password dialog... Instead, the document simply opened right up for them every time, with their name embedded down in the bottom-right corner.
I think it fits as an analogy because essentially what we tried to do was take something that was inherently painful and difficult to use (DRM) and make it as easy, or eaiser, than car door locks are. We wanted to make it so easy to use, that cracking it didn't even cross your mind.
I think we mostly succeeded. It's too bad our principles wrapped us up before we were even near death.
Don
No, actually, we were relying on people to Do The Right Thing.
We though, perhaps wrongly, but we'll never know, that if we built a DRM that was easy to use and unobtrusive, people wouldn't bother cracking it. They wouldn't have to. Why? Because we allowed a lot of things other DRMs didn't:
- They can print their book all they want.
- They can read it on their desktop, laptop, palm, etc.
- They only have to enter their username and password *once* per device, it unlocks automatically every time after that.
- No extra downloads, plugins, or anything. Just Acrobat, which tons of people (hundreds of millions, according to Adobe) already have.
- Most of the time, it was "pre-unlocked" during the download process, so the user didn't ever have to enter a username and password, unless they copied it to another device.
- If they wanted to share it in the office, just like you might want to share a magazine, all you had to do was pass along your username & password too. Causes you to pause, but you might do it for relevant business documents and such.
- You're encouraged to send it along to friends without the username & password so they can buy it directly from within the document.
I could go on and on... In short, there aren't a lot of reasons to bother breaking it. We tried to make it painless for grandmas to use.
Don
Yep, this stuff exists in one form or another already. There's been an ethernet adapter out for TiVo for awhile (TiVoNet), using a 10Mbps NE2000 clone. TiVoNet stuff
A new one, made by the same guy who makes this new AirTivo, is now shipping called TurboNet that's a 100Mbps card. TurboNet stuff
The software to support web services and everything all exist as well. ExtractStream, a video extraction piece.
Your best bet to keep up on all this stuff is at the Underground Playground section of AVS/TiVo Community's message forums.
Hope that helps!
Don
Sure, here's a quick rundown:
#1 - No more phone line needed. The TiVo can get it's next 14 days worth of programming via the 802.11b card and PPP.
#2 - You can install a web server on your TiVo and browse through the TiVo's menus over the web. This includes scheduling show recordings while you're at work, for example.
#3 - You can backup shows on your TiVo to your computer rather than to VHS. You can also stream the shows to your PC to watch them there, rather than on your TV.
I'm sure there are plenty more, but those are the biggies.
Great stuff!
Don
While CD players may skip, they have massive amounts of time between skips with which to re-track.
The RioVolt250, for example, has 8 minutes of anti-skip time. (I assume that's at 160kbps or something...less if you're using higher bitrates). But that's a ton of time it has to find where it was and burst another chunk of songs into it's memory.
Maybe it's just me, but that's plenty.
As it turns out, a *very* succesful game developer started in exactly the same way. I wasn't personally involved, though I do have some friends who work there, so this is what I've been told was the situation:
A guy by the name of Tony Goodman had a consulting firm that was doing quite well out in Dallas. They had some strong ties to Microsoft, as I understand it, and did a lot of consulting with regards to their products for businesses. Tony and some of his guys one day decided to make games, and cooked up this great idea.
It became Ensemble Studios, and that game was Age of Empires. They've just recently (in the last month or so) been acquired by Microsoft, and each of their games were run-away million+ unit sellers.
Just like most industries, a lot of initial success is based on who you know. Ensemble had a great idea and a grea team, true, but it was also just as key that they had a strong relationship with Microsoft to begin with. That got them in the door and allowed their great team to strut their stuff.
I'm sure they, as most startup development houses do, created a quickie game concept demo and showed their buddies at Microsoft. Microsoft then decided to pony up an advance to get them to their first milestone and evaluate their progress. Obviously, it went well, so a long-term contract and milestone schedule was established, and a hit was born.
The best advice I can give you is to try to make some contacts in the industry. Game developers are very easy to get to know (and great people), but they often don't have the pull needed to get a fully-funded game off the ground. Game publishers are who you really want to get chummy with, though game developers can probably make the introductions. Coupled with a great demo (and, by extension, team) and a good introduction, you can't go wrong.
Hope that helps!
Don MacAskill
My geek site
Unfortunately, I don't have M14 on this machine, but I installed it at work 2 days ago and could swear there's an option to refuse cookies that orginate from sites other than the current one.
Anyone else got M14 installed and can check?
That's really an interesting viewpoint. I can see your reasoning, and it certainly applies in some cases.
However, there are a few examples which spring to mind immediately to which this doesn't apply. Quake is a great example, since much of id's revenue stems from their ability to license the code to developers like Ritual, Valve, ION Storm, etc. If the code was open-source, id loses that revenue stream.
While my game tastes and certainly that of the game-buying public are much more broad than just first-person shooters, I'm going to use it as an easy example. There are reasons why there aren't more high-quality first-person-shooters out there -- the code is certainly a big piece. The best FPS games have great creativity and design as well as good code. Many of the failures had some interesting and innovative ideas, but for one reason or another, couldn't succeed. And as often as not, that was due to the underlying technology not being fast enough or robust enough or whatever.
Also, the code itself obviously enables the developer to be creative. Without a good codebase to work from, developer's creativity is stifled. That's exactly why it's so appealing to license Quake and Unreal's technologies - they're proven, they work, and you can start getting creative immediately without having to create and test and tweak a new codebase. And perhaps more key, and why open-source isn't currently in use in the game industry, they have been proven in the commercial marketplace.
There are a few OSS rendering engines in developement, at least one of which is very full-featured, cross-platform, and seems to be coming along nicely. However, it hasn't been proven in a commercial product, and until it does, it's very hard to justify using it when the company's survival depends on it. The game industry is a very hit-or-miss industry, and a miss can tank a company.
Hence, game companies fall back on licensing a proven commercial engine or writing their own.
I don't think this will necessarily stay the case, but it is the reality now.
I welcome public or private replies, but due to an ISP switchover problem yesterday, my DNS is broken. Here's an alternate email:
donm@fatbrain.com
Is there something really so wrong with a business trying to make money? Making money and supporting OSS aren't opposite ends of the spectrum, after all.
/.ers get terribly upset when money is mentioned, as if it's necessarily detrimental to open-source.
I'm just a bit confused as to why you're latching onto the fact that they're a business. Are any of the other business making money off of or through open-source efforts also just as evil?
This sounded like a wonderful event. Loki didn't create and doesn't own Civ:CTP, so a fully open-source situation isn't available to them. They're dealing with Activision (Another money-making company, but without OSS roots), so I'm really impressed by what they were able to accomplish. A decently large group of people had a great time hacking on the code, and you're upset because it was sponsored by a company rather than a non-profit group?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flame you, I'm just trying to understand. I just don't get it when some
I welcome private replies, but during an ISP switch yesterday, my DNS got hosed. No ETA for recovery yet, so here's an alternate address:
donm@fatbrain.com
I'm a games developer myself, and am in the process of starting a new games technology company (which, of course, will make incredibly fun games as well as technology :) and it's really heartening to hear that a games-related OSS event went off so smoothly with such positive results.
I know that many game companies consider their code to be very proprietary and treat it like their only chest of gold. Which, of course, is common to many software companies today, and isn't necessarily an invalid reaction, but I really love what I've been seeing over the last few years in Open Source.
There are some game programmers in our field that, while not being exactly open-source, do share their views and opinions with each other, especially among the Dallas developers. I've always throught it was really great how John Carmack (id) would chat with Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dose, Jack Mathews (all three at Ritual), Gary McTaggart, Charlie Brown (both at Valve), Billy Zelsnack (late of Rebel Boat Rockers) and Corrine Yu (3DRealms) about what they were all doing. While not a totally free-flow of ideas, and certainly not source hacking together, it was nice to see things get loosened up a bit.
The idea that's popping around in my head is to do something like id does with their test versions (QTest, Q3Test, etc), but somehow combine it with a similar OSS event to the one described above. Maybe a month or so after releasing the test, host an event over a weekend where qualified folks can come and hack on the source to make any modifications they think would be cool after playing the test version for a month.
Any thoughts on this? Any other ideas? I know for a fact that going purely open-source with our new technology won't fly past my other partners, and I'd even have to stop and think really deeply about it myself even if I were alone in this venture, but I really do believe that the open source model provides some wonderful benefits that I'd love to foster.
I'd love to receive email replies, but during an ISP change yesterday, I lost DNS and have no idea when it will be back up. Here's an alternate if you're interested in discussing this privately:
donm@fatbrain.com
Now we have a ready-to-target task-list. I'm certain there are groups working on some of these issues already, but those that aren't being worked on or haven't had a lot of effort put into them just got a big boost, I'm sure.
I mean, just think how great it will be to see each of these points fall, one by one?
If anything, Micro$oft just infused a lot of Linux developers with a nice burst of energy.
Now let's get to it.
What's the actual procedure? I'm assuming you simply download the new distribution and then install it over your old?
Or is there an actual upgrade method?
Lucky me, I just purchased 5.2 about 2 weeks ago. Haven't even installed it yet, but just in time to get out-dated.
*sigh*