Why would independent musicians need a permission from some label they are independent of?
The article is about "independent labels", which basically means "not one of the major labels". And I was also not saying that the artists need the permission of some label, but Apple needs the permission of the label to distribute the music under certain conditions (eg, without DRM). If there are also really independent artists selling their music on the iTunes Store, then Apple of course only needs the permission of the artists...
"The story as I heard it is that Apple has signed identical contracts with the big record companies, and the other to the hundreds of small companies was to accept exactly the same deal. Advantage for Apple: Much less work for the lawyers and less chance of messing up a contract."
That does not sound very convincing. Surely Apple would not want to start extensive negotiations with all the smaller labels. But having two almost identical standard contracts, one with DRM, one without, and telling all the smaller labels "We offer you these two options" would not really be that much of additional hassle.
I think you misunderstand what the major music labels are saying to Apple: "You must sell our music with effective DRM and you must sell our music on equal footing with all other music you sell." This means that were Apple to sell some music without DRM, the major music labels would not allow Apple to sell their music.
No, I did not misunderstand that. It is clear that Apple can not sell the music of the major labels without DRM without their agreement. But I don't think that there are any technical difficulties to sell AAC files including Fairplay of those songs where the labels require it, while at the same time selling the songs of other labels without DRM. With that, Apple could give their customers the best possible deal. They don't do that. Why? Because maybe by now (giving Apple's dominance of the online music market) Apple has a very strong interest to create an iTunes/iPod/iPhone eco system. You can always get out of this, by burning your music and reencoding it in another format. But having a large iTunes Store music collection with Fairplay DRM might for many people be a reason to think twice about buying an alternative player next time.
I don't say this is illegal or anything. After all people (should) know what the deal is, and nobody is forced to buy at the iTunes Store. It's just something people have to think about. And by now it seems to be wrong to say "The only reason why Apple uses DRM is because (all) the labels force them". Some apparently don't.
At least the article didn't blame Apple, but the music industry.
Well, he also blames Apple. He gives the example of eMusic, which sells a lot of music from independent labels without DRM (and that of course with the labels agreement). The same music is sold by Apple in the iTunes Store with their fairplay DRM. It seems that in theses cases Apple's assertion that "we have to use DRM, otherwise the labels would not allow us to sell the music" is not true.
So I guess he has a point, although I don't agree with everything he says. Starting with the headline: the problem is not the iPhone (or the iPod), the problem is the iTunes Store. If you decide to buy your music somewhere else (like - gasp - CDs) you are not locked in at all. But, OK, the iPhone is what all the buzz is about right now, so that's probably the reason for the choice of headline. He also says that by buying the iPhone, you have to use the iTunes Store if you want to buy music online. Then he goes on to give the example of eMusic, which sells millions of songs online in MP3 format without DRM. Obviously, these files will also work on any Apple device.
So, his arguments are at some points a bit flawed, but I think the general intention of raising the awareness for the possible pitfalls of buying DRM music has to be applauded.
I assume that's related to the institute that gave us the "proprietary" MP3?
Well, if you want to call an MPEG-Standard "lock-in". I'm sure most users don't feel very "locked-in", it is probably the most widely supported digital audio standard, I would say. Sure, it is proprietary, and you have to pay license fees, but at least anyone can use it who wants it.
"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip." Hmmm... it's also hard to see why anyone would want my credit card information, SSN, address, etc. I'm sure nobody really wants to know any personal information about me at all, and I'm sure nobody would ever want to forge any of my identifying documentation.
I guess, the point he was trying to make was: to read out the RFID chip, the guys in the article obviously used the right key. The key to read the information from the passport is basically the owner's identity: name, passport number etc. So it is relatively easy to read out the chip once you have the passport, but you don't gain any information, because you could just as well open you eyes and look at the document to get it.
UYFB (Use Your F***ing Brain): Do you want all the info on your passport's personal details page readable by absolutely everyone you walk by? Passport cloning isn't even the primary security concern here. Cloning a passport has become no harder or easier thanks to RFID. But Identity theft will become much much easier.
As far as I understood, this is not even claimed to be possible by the people who cloned the passport. To read the information from the chip, you need the key. The key is composed of some combination of data already written on your passport, eg your passport number, birthdate etc. So, if you have access to the passport, it is easy to read out the information. Of course, you don't get any additional information, because the data you read out is again the same as what is already present on the document: name, birth date, your picture etc. OK, now you have it in digital form. I might be wrong, but so far nobody has claimed to be able to read out the chip just by walking by, without basically knowing already the information.
That they are able to clone the passport by writing the same information on a new chip is perhaps is also not so surprising. What would be more interesting is how easy it is to actually change information (eg, the picture) without getting an 'invalid' data set.
I'll spare you a snide comment and instead ask politely "Are you from a country that uses PAL as its TV broadcast standard?".
Maybe he is, but then he still would be wrong. I live in a "PAL country" (Germany) and we had an old BW TV at home until the late 80s or so. It had no problem showing the color TV channels in black and white (until it finally broke).
Maybe I'm misreading something or am simply in need of some coffee, but if I'm not mistaken Germany killed all analog aerial transmissions for TV something like a year ago.
No. It's digital now in many areas, and I would guess by far the largest part of the German population now only gets digital TV over the air (of course most probably use cable or satellite...). But it has not been switched of completely.
They keep 30 days of pictures right? My guess is Thailand doesn't usually experience night for quite that long at a time.
Since the specialty of this site is not that they show pictures of the earth, but rather that the pictures are ~2 hours old when they are published (according to the submitter), I guess the use of the term "no recent pictures" rather refers to hours than to days.
Well, if They have ordered the phone company to intercept your call, why would they bother with turning off encryption anyway? IIt's not like the phone company needs to break it to intercept your call. f state authorities want to listen in to a conservation, they surely don't have to tune in on the air interface between mobile phone and base station. The call has to be routed through a phone network anyway.
Because you'd have to be off your meds to REALLY believe something THAT silly...
No, actually he is quite correct. A lot of people believed before the war even started that the war was a bad idea, based on dubious "facts" and had the potential to produce more chaos then it would solve problems - just like it turned out to be the case. Sorry for you if you still can't see that.
AAC+ (or aacPlus, or whatever) seems to be some kind of enhanced AAC (apparently additional algorithms to further reduce the bit rate while hopefully maintaining quality):
They claim "Excellent quality stereo down to 24 kbps". That may be optimistic, but I don't see anything that suggests that you are restricted with the bit rate.
Now here's the interesting bit: The entity that owns most of Telekom's shares is - the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the German gouvernment.
If by "most" you mean more than 50%, then you are wrong. The German state still owns about 30%, although only 15% directly, while the other 15% are parked at the "Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau". Most(!) (as in ~70%) of the shares are nowadays owned by private and institutional investors.
And does that count for home offices too? What about my three computers? What about my two video-capable mobile phones? What about my video iPod? Those aren't bound to any location.
You need one radio license (if you have at least one radio) and one TV license (if you have at least one TV) per household. So if you own a TV and a radio in Germany, you are already obliged to pay ~17 Euro/month in license fees. Nothing changes if you have 3 radios and 5 TVs, It does not matter if you have additional mobile radios (eg in your car). And it also does not matter if you have three computers. Once you have a license, you don't pay extra for additional hardware. The only thing that changes next year is that an internet PC counts as radio. So if you have no radio, but an internet PC, you have to start paying. At least in private households that surely affects few people, but it is nethertheless stupid.
A friend of mine went from UK to Ireland and back with no passport... in theory you can do this with any EU country although I've never heard of anyone trying this apart from this one incident.
Most EU countries have signed the Schengen treaty, which means they have basically abolished all border controls. This means that effectively you can travel around in and inbetween these countries with a very low likelihood of ever being checked. I have been at least to France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands without being checked. You are however still officially required to have an ID card with you, but I did not need to show it in the last 10 years or so.
ESA OTOH has a tendency to release only a few selected images, with lots of usage restrictions...
According to the copyright note that pops up on their site, the might not used to "state tate or imply the endorsement by ESA or any ESA employee of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead." Otherwise: "You may use ESA images or videos for educational or informational purposes. The publicly released ESA images may be reproduced without fee." OK, you have to give ESA credit for the pictures. What is so unreasonable about this?
Yes. The last time I wrote a check was probably some time in the end (or middle?) of the 80s, when I had just gotten my bank account and ATMs were not that common. Then I had to fill out a check to get money from my bank account. Since then, I never wrote a check. If I want to give money to other people, I either give it cash or transfer it from bank account to bank account electronically. The later I can do either online, by telephone, or at some ATM-like machines at the bank (I could also go to the bank during the opening hours, of course, fill out a form and give it to some employ/throw it in a letter box). But sending checks? Never, seriously. My wage is transfered to my bank account, my rent is transfered from my bank account...
If those prices are supposed to be German prices, it is clearly a couple of years that you were in Germany. I am not saying that Germany is cheap, but calling a mobile phone right now from my (standard) landline would cost me less than 11 cents. And for 25 Euros you get nowadays a contract which includes a flat rate for calls to land lines and mobile phones on the same network.
You can discuss Nazi history, yes. But you are not allowed to have the wrong opinion, ie. fly the swastika, "deny the holocaust" etc. Mind-crimes are far more dangerous than torrents being shutdown due to flagrant copyright infringement.
Well, maybe it's a bit less strict than you think. "Mind-crime" sounds to me a bit like what happenend in Eastern Europe: if you were secretly against the communist party, and somehow someone found that out and denounced you, you were into trouble. In Germany, you can think and talk about the Nazis what you want. If your neighbour tells the police that he overheard you saying "Hiler was great and the holocaust did not happen." there is nothing they can do about that. The problems start if you would decide to go really public about that: flyers, speeches, web sites... I agree that this does not meet free speech criteria. On the other hand, every society has its taboos and restrictions. In the US, you have strong restrictions on where (and what age) to consume alcohol, or the country gets upset because of some exposed female breast on TV. In Germany, the society feels that it ows the victims of the holocaust to defend the historical truth by means that some might find questionable. It probably is a consequence of the fact that democracy proved so weak in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Why would independent musicians need a permission from some label they are independent of?
The article is about "independent labels", which basically means "not one of the major labels". And I was also not saying that the artists need the permission of some label, but Apple needs the permission of the label to distribute the music under certain conditions (eg, without DRM). If there are also really independent artists selling their music on the iTunes Store, then Apple of course only needs the permission of the artists...
"The story as I heard it is that Apple has signed identical contracts with the big record companies, and the other to the hundreds of small companies was to accept exactly the same deal. Advantage for Apple: Much less work for the lawyers and less chance of messing up a contract."
That does not sound very convincing. Surely Apple would not want to start extensive negotiations with all the smaller labels. But having two almost identical standard contracts, one with DRM, one without, and telling all the smaller labels "We offer you these two options" would not really be that much of additional hassle.
I think you misunderstand what the major music labels are saying to Apple: "You must sell our music with effective DRM and you must sell our music on equal footing with all other music you sell." This means that were Apple to sell some music without DRM, the major music labels would not allow Apple to sell their music.
No, I did not misunderstand that. It is clear that Apple can not sell the music of the major labels without DRM without their agreement. But I don't think that there are any technical difficulties to sell AAC files including Fairplay of those songs where the labels require it, while at the same time selling the songs of other labels without DRM. With that, Apple could give their customers the best possible deal. They don't do that. Why? Because maybe by now (giving Apple's dominance of the online music market) Apple has a very strong interest to create an iTunes/iPod/iPhone eco system. You can always get out of this, by burning your music and reencoding it in another format. But having a large iTunes Store music collection with Fairplay DRM might for many people be a reason to think twice about buying an alternative player next time.
I don't say this is illegal or anything. After all people (should) know what the deal is, and nobody is forced to buy at the iTunes Store. It's just something people have to think about. And by now it seems to be wrong to say "The only reason why Apple uses DRM is because (all) the labels force them". Some apparently don't.
At least the article didn't blame Apple, but the music industry.
Well, he also blames Apple. He gives the example of eMusic, which sells a lot of music from independent labels without DRM (and that of course with the labels agreement). The same music is sold by Apple in the iTunes Store with their fairplay DRM. It seems that in theses cases Apple's assertion that "we have to use DRM, otherwise the labels would not allow us to sell the music" is not true.
So I guess he has a point, although I don't agree with everything he says. Starting with the headline: the problem is not the iPhone (or the iPod), the problem is the iTunes Store. If you decide to buy your music somewhere else (like - gasp - CDs) you are not locked in at all. But, OK, the iPhone is what all the buzz is about right now, so that's probably the reason for the choice of headline. He also says that by buying the iPhone, you have to use the iTunes Store if you want to buy music online. Then he goes on to give the example of eMusic, which sells millions of songs online in MP3 format without DRM. Obviously, these files will also work on any Apple device.
So, his arguments are at some points a bit flawed, but I think the general intention of raising the awareness for the possible pitfalls of buying DRM music has to be applauded.
I assume that's related to the institute that gave us the "proprietary" MP3?
p ), with widely varying research topics. More info as usual on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society).
Well, if you want to call an MPEG-Standard "lock-in". I'm sure most users don't feel very "locked-in", it is probably the most widely supported digital audio standard, I would say. Sure, it is proprietary, and you have to pay license fees, but at least anyone can use it who wants it.
Nevertheless, you are wrong. It is not the same institute that gave you MP3. That was the Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen (http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/index.html). This is the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute in Berlin (http://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/english/). There are about 60 institutes of the Fraunhofer Society in Germany (http://www.fraunhofer.de/fhg/EN/profile/index.js
"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip." Hmmm... it's also hard to see why anyone would want my credit card information, SSN, address, etc. I'm sure nobody really wants to know any personal information about me at all, and I'm sure nobody would ever want to forge any of my identifying documentation.
I guess, the point he was trying to make was: to read out the RFID chip, the guys in the article obviously used the right key. The key to read the information from the passport is basically the owner's identity: name, passport number etc. So it is relatively easy to read out the chip once you have the passport, but you don't gain any information, because you could just as well open you eyes and look at the document to get it.
UYFB (Use Your F***ing Brain): Do you want all the info on your passport's personal details page readable by absolutely everyone you walk by?
Passport cloning isn't even the primary security concern here. Cloning a passport has become no harder or easier thanks to RFID. But Identity theft will become much much easier.
As far as I understood, this is not even claimed to be possible by the people who cloned the passport. To read the information from the chip, you need the key. The key is composed of some combination of data already written on your passport, eg your passport number, birthdate etc. So, if you have access to the passport, it is easy to read out the information. Of course, you don't get any additional information, because the data you read out is again the same as what is already present on the document: name, birth date, your picture etc. OK, now you have it in digital form. I might be wrong, but so far nobody has claimed to be able to read out the chip just by walking by, without basically knowing already the information.
That they are able to clone the passport by writing the same information on a new chip is perhaps is also not so surprising. What would be more interesting is how easy it is to actually change information (eg, the picture) without getting an 'invalid' data set.
I'll spare you a snide comment and instead ask politely "Are you from a country that uses PAL as its TV broadcast standard?".
Maybe he is, but then he still would be wrong. I live in a "PAL country" (Germany) and we had an old BW TV at home until the late 80s or so. It had no problem showing the color TV channels in black and white (until it finally broke).
Maybe I'm misreading something or am simply in need of some coffee, but if I'm not mistaken Germany killed all analog aerial transmissions for TV something like a year ago.
No. It's digital now in many areas, and I would guess by far the largest part of the German population now only gets digital TV over the air (of course most probably use cable or satellite...). But it has not been switched of completely.
They keep 30 days of pictures right? My guess is Thailand doesn't usually experience night for quite that long at a time.
Since the specialty of this site is not that they show pictures of the earth, but rather that the pictures are ~2 hours old when they are published (according to the submitter), I guess the use of the term "no recent pictures" rather refers to hours than to days.
'conservation' and 'conversation' are just too similar... ;)
Well, if They have ordered the phone company to intercept your call, why would they bother with turning off encryption anyway? IIt's not like the phone company needs to break it to intercept your call. f state authorities want to listen in to a conservation, they surely don't have to tune in on the air interface between mobile phone and base station. The call has to be routed through a phone network anyway.
That was a joke, right?
Because you'd have to be off your meds to REALLY believe something THAT silly...
No, actually he is quite correct. A lot of people believed before the war even started that the war was a bad idea, based on dubious "facts" and had the potential to produce more chaos then it would solve problems - just like it turned out to be the case. Sorry for you if you still can't see that.
It is for a death from radiological causes. To kill someone in mere days requires obscenely high doses of radiation,
But as far as I understand it, it is not claimed that he died from the radiation, but from the fact that Polonium is also very toxic.
AAC+ (or aacPlus, or whatever) seems to be some kind of enhanced AAC (apparently additional algorithms to further reduce the bit rate while hopefully maintaining quality):
s .htm
http://www.codingtechnologies.com/products/aacPlu
They claim "Excellent quality stereo down to 24 kbps". That may be optimistic, but I don't see anything that suggests that you are restricted with the bit rate.
Now here's the interesting bit: The entity that owns most of Telekom's shares is - the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the German gouvernment.
If by "most" you mean more than 50%, then you are wrong. The German state still owns about 30%, although only 15% directly, while the other 15% are parked at the "Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau". Most(!) (as in ~70%) of the shares are nowadays owned by private and institutional investors.
And does that count for home offices too? What about my three computers? What about my two video-capable mobile phones? What about my video iPod? Those aren't bound to any location.
You need one radio license (if you have at least one radio) and one TV license (if you have at least one TV) per household. So if you own a TV and a radio in Germany, you are already obliged to pay ~17 Euro/month in license fees. Nothing changes if you have 3 radios and 5 TVs, It does not matter if you have additional mobile radios (eg in your car). And it also does not matter if you have three computers. Once you have a license, you don't pay extra for additional hardware. The only thing that changes next year is that an internet PC counts as radio. So if you have no radio, but an internet PC, you have to start paying. At least in private households that surely affects few people, but it is nethertheless stupid.
A friend of mine went from UK to Ireland and back with no passport... in theory you can do this with any EU country although I've never heard of anyone trying this apart from this one incident.
Most EU countries have signed the Schengen treaty, which means they have basically abolished all border controls. This means that effectively you can travel around in and inbetween these countries with a very low likelihood of ever being checked. I have been at least to France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands without being checked. You are however still officially required to have an ID card with you, but I did not need to show it in the last 10 years or so.
ESA OTOH has a tendency to release only a few selected images, with lots of usage restrictions...
According to the copyright note that pops up on their site, the might not used to "state tate or imply the endorsement by ESA or any ESA employee of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead." Otherwise: "You may use ESA images or videos for educational or informational purposes. The publicly released ESA images may be reproduced without fee." OK, you have to give ESA credit for the pictures. What is so unreasonable about this?
Are you guys serious?
Yes. The last time I wrote a check was probably some time in the end (or middle?) of the 80s, when I had just gotten my bank account and ATMs were not that common. Then I had to fill out a check to get money from my bank account. Since then, I never wrote a check. If I want to give money to other people, I either give it cash or transfer it from bank account to bank account electronically. The later I can do either online, by telephone, or at some ATM-like machines at the bank (I could also go to the bank during the opening hours, of course, fill out a form and give it to some employ/throw it in a letter box). But sending checks? Never, seriously. My wage is transfered to my bank account, my rent is transfered from my bank account...
No, it wasn't an accelerator, and the experiment wasn't similar.
He/she was talking about the K2K experiment, which involved the Super-Kamiokande detector and a neutrino beam produced at the KEK facility.
Well, since you need iTunes to play songs from the iTMS, you obviously need iTunes to burn them to an audio CD.
MPEG4 is a video compression standard.
MPEG4 is a collection of audio and video encoding standards.
But, saying that AAC is a part of the MPEG4 standard is false.
AAC is indeed part of MPEG4, Part 3. That probably does not prevent you from integrating another audio codec.
If those prices are supposed to be German prices, it is clearly a couple of years that you were in Germany. I am not saying that Germany is cheap, but calling a mobile phone right now from my (standard) landline would cost me less than 11 cents. And for 25 Euros you get nowadays a contract which includes a flat rate for calls to land lines and mobile phones on the same network.
You can discuss Nazi history, yes. But you are not allowed to have the wrong opinion, ie. fly the swastika, "deny the holocaust" etc. Mind-crimes are far more dangerous than torrents being shutdown due to flagrant copyright infringement.
Well, maybe it's a bit less strict than you think. "Mind-crime" sounds to me a bit like what happenend in Eastern Europe: if you were secretly against the communist party, and somehow someone found that out and denounced you, you were into trouble. In Germany, you can think and talk about the Nazis what you want. If your neighbour tells the police that he overheard you saying "Hiler was great and the holocaust did not happen." there is nothing they can do about that. The problems start if you would decide to go really public about that: flyers, speeches, web sites... I agree that this does not meet free speech criteria. On the other hand, every society has its taboos and restrictions. In the US, you have strong restrictions on where (and what age) to consume alcohol, or the country gets upset because of some exposed female breast on TV. In Germany, the society feels that it ows the victims of the holocaust to defend the historical truth by means that some might find questionable. It probably is a consequence of the fact that democracy proved so weak in the 1920s and 1930s.