There's a lot of discussion about "watermarking" digital content in the article so the VCR or DVD player knows it's legal and plays it, if no watermark is found it wont play it.
What is there to keep people from faking watermarks? Or hacking the DVD player to play it anyway. Is there anything anyone can do to keep "the public" from bypassing something if they're given enough time and have the patience? Doubt it. Protection on protection over the protections, doesnt matter - someone somewhere will break it and then everyone else has a piece of the cake as well. Will they release a "new" and "better" DVD player then? And force everyone to buy it, because as we all know it's illegal to bypass digital rights - even if it's not done on purpose.
"But honest to God sir! I didnt know the DVD I bought was illegal, you told everyone that the new system with watermarks would make it impossible to pirate a DVD and since it played fine I didnt think more about it."
"You've broken the law according to the DMCA, you circumvented our protection when you played that DVD, and no excuses can save you."
"UMG has authorized all retailers to accept returns. If you have experienced any of the following problems, you may return the CD (even if the package is opened) accompanied by the receipt, to the retailer that the CD was originally purchased from for a full refund: *anything*"
In other words I can buy a CD, rip it ('cos we all know it can and is being done all the time, protection or not) and return it fullprice:)
The idea is nice, but without some clear details I wont take a stand for or against any of it.
What about freeware or opensource software? If I get something for free and it's broke who am I to complain?
What will happen to people who release buggy software that's exploitable? Fines, throw 'em in jail to rot - or force them to stop making any more software to save the rest of humanity?
Man makes software, man travles to USA, software is exploited, man is arrested and left in jail for months.
I'm not against legislation for a company that forces it's software on people for the "low low price of only 199$" and then says "duh, read the EULA" when it's buggy and/or doesnt work as it should, but dont jump on this as the way the world should be. You dont have to use Microsoft software, and if you do you should know to protect yourself, not sue when something doesnt work the way you want it to.
A company that thinks this is the way to fix bugs...I have no words.
This wont take off even if Bill sells his own teeth to help with financing. Since when is Microsoft (and USA with their congress for that matter) the center of the world? Has everyone forgotten with occured in China just the other week? Sure, MS can work their asses of and produce buggy software that will communicate with my DVD2 drive, remind me to check on my tires and keep an eye on whatever's cooking. So what?
Why cant Linux do this? If you have the hardware you just have to write the software, and even if you and I wont do it someone somewhere will do it. Creating a restricted format solely for the purpose of control is an incredible shortcut. Compare it to being able to drive freely on the road with the power to stop whenever and wherever you want, and sitting in collective buses taking you where you need to go with as little input from you as possible. Taking away the control from users and giving it right back to the factory, and dont get me started on how the internet would look like. Everyone using MSN Explorer with the only websites available for viewing approved by MS, Outlook in pure HTML for every spammers delight, free speech is what MS says, unknown levels of privacy intrusion monitoring (I trust the FBI to make sure MS doesnt break the law when all their files are stored on online Windows system that no one has the sourcecode for).
If this happens MS becomes the single most powerful corporation in the world. Think about it, they run - no, they CONTROL - the future. This wont take off, even a chimp understands how good open business works in a closed enviroment.
I'm tired of seeing Microsoft taking over the world, granted, they're already a huge corporation not to be ignored this wont go on forever. Through legislation, terrorism or free software they will taste the cold hard blade. A good product sells itself... how many XP ads have you seen today?
Until now I haven't seen any non-illegal or morally questionable P2P program emerging, and when a big corporation as IBM finally sticks their head out and shows the world "hey! look at this, peer-to-peer isn't all that bad" you start to fart in their direction. This isn't about what they're doing, but HOW they are doing it. Sure sure, anyone can put up a website if they want to - and this is a completely new way of doing it, that's whats so cool. Who knows, automatic load distribution and replication might be a thing of the future but for now, just be happy that everyone arent using Apache and DynDNS for all their information-sharing-purposes or the world would definitly come to a stop (it's called evolution, if you dont like it look away).
We will always carry it with us...
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So Bill Gates typed "exit" and (wow!) the prompt closed, no more DOS, no more unreliable crappy OS's, just XP and.NET - hurray!
It all began with DOS and DOS will end it as well, or something very much like it - GUI's are overrated. Sometimes you just want a Quick and Dirty Operating System that goes well with scripting, say changing your entire folder of mp3 to use a standard name or just organizing images, perhaps you need to do something that the GUI cant handle. There's nothing a prompt cant handle!
Long boring story short -> DOS as we know it is dead, but Quick and Dirty Operating System's are the future.
It's already illegal to share copyrighted material and billions are still doing it every day, so how to fix this "serious threat to the national economy"? Simple, force people (actually, the manufactures) to use a system that has copyright protection built in it and make it illegal to bypass this. Hmm, wait a second...here's that little problem again. When you put a law that applies for a selected few (manufacturers) it will be followed, but a law that applies for the masses (us) will be extremly hard to enforce. So I guess nothing will change for us, just that manufacturers will have a hard time since they are in the dangerzone of committing a federal crime.
How carefully and realisticly can they predict all this? It must be very close to a chaos-theory if you ask me, *EVERYTHING* affects *EVERYTHING* and here they are saying what's going to happen in 4 billion years - bold.
Of course people can guess and make it a good guess at that but really, how much time and knowledge have been put into these simulations. How much do we know about the world/universe around us to accuratly predict "so and so will happen..."? Is everything just based on what we know every starsystem looks like and it's position or is there more stuff to back it up?
And besides, who cares? I'm long gone when these 3.9999999999999999 billion years has passed;)
It's just like when you spot a fly buzzing annoyingly around the room doing nothing really and you still wanna smash it just for the sake of smashing, so grabbing your trusty doublebarreled friend you blast away both room, house and fly.
Some people don't know when to stop...
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of discussion about "watermarking" digital content in the article so the VCR or DVD player knows it's legal and plays it, if no watermark is found it wont play it.
What is there to keep people from faking watermarks? Or hacking the DVD player to play it anyway. Is there anything anyone can do to keep "the public" from bypassing something if they're given enough time and have the patience? Doubt it. Protection on protection over the protections, doesnt matter - someone somewhere will break it and then everyone else has a piece of the cake as well. Will they release a "new" and "better" DVD player then? And force everyone to buy it, because as we all know it's illegal to bypass digital rights - even if it's not done on purpose.
"But honest to God sir! I didnt know the DVD I bought was illegal, you told everyone that the new system with watermarks would make it impossible to pirate a DVD and since it played fine I didnt think more about it."
"You've broken the law according to the DMCA, you circumvented our protection when you played that DVD, and no excuses can save you."
I dont like the future, at least not this future.
"UMG has authorized all retailers to accept returns. If you have experienced any of the following problems, you may return the CD (even if the package is opened) accompanied by the receipt, to the retailer that the CD was originally purchased from for a full refund: *anything*"
:)
In other words I can buy a CD, rip it ('cos we all know it can and is being done all the time, protection or not) and return it fullprice
What about freeware or opensource software? If I get something for free and it's broke who am I to complain?
What will happen to people who release buggy software that's exploitable? Fines, throw 'em in jail to rot - or force them to stop making any more software to save the rest of humanity?
Man makes software, man travles to USA, software is exploited, man is arrested and left in jail for months.
I'm not against legislation for a company that forces it's software on people for the "low low price of only 199$" and then says "duh, read the EULA" when it's buggy and/or doesnt work as it should, but dont jump on this as the way the world should be. You dont have to use Microsoft software, and if you do you should know to protect yourself, not sue when something doesnt work the way you want it to.
A company that thinks this is the way to fix bugs...I have no words.
This wont take off even if Bill sells his own teeth to help with financing. Since when is Microsoft (and USA with their congress for that matter) the center of the world? Has everyone forgotten with occured in China just the other week? Sure, MS can work their asses of and produce buggy software that will communicate with my DVD2 drive, remind me to check on my tires and keep an eye on whatever's cooking. So what?
Why cant Linux do this? If you have the hardware you just have to write the software, and even if you and I wont do it someone somewhere will do it. Creating a restricted format solely for the purpose of control is an incredible shortcut. Compare it to being able to drive freely on the road with the power to stop whenever and wherever you want, and sitting in collective buses taking you where you need to go with as little input from you as possible. Taking away the control from users and giving it right back to the factory, and dont get me started on how the internet would look like. Everyone using MSN Explorer with the only websites available for viewing approved by MS, Outlook in pure HTML for every spammers delight, free speech is what MS says, unknown levels of privacy intrusion monitoring (I trust the FBI to make sure MS doesnt break the law when all their files are stored on online Windows system that no one has the sourcecode for).
If this happens MS becomes the single most powerful corporation in the world. Think about it, they run - no, they CONTROL - the future. This wont take off, even a chimp understands how good open business works in a closed enviroment.
I'm tired of seeing Microsoft taking over the world, granted, they're already a huge corporation not to be ignored this wont go on forever. Through legislation, terrorism or free software they will taste the cold hard blade. A good product sells itself... how many XP ads have you seen today?
"For full access to our website, please complete this simple registration form..." or dont.
1 1CYBERLAW.html
http://college.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/technology/
Until now I haven't seen any non-illegal or morally questionable P2P program emerging, and when a big corporation as IBM finally sticks their head out and shows the world "hey! look at this, peer-to-peer isn't all that bad" you start to fart in their direction. This isn't about what they're doing, but HOW they are doing it. Sure sure, anyone can put up a website if they want to - and this is a completely new way of doing it, that's whats so cool. Who knows, automatic load distribution and replication might be a thing of the future but for now, just be happy that everyone arent using Apache and DynDNS for all their information-sharing-purposes or the world would definitly come to a stop (it's called evolution, if you dont like it look away).
So Bill Gates typed "exit" and (wow!) the prompt closed, no more DOS, no more unreliable crappy OS's, just XP and .NET - hurray!
It all began with DOS and DOS will end it as well, or something very much like it - GUI's are overrated. Sometimes you just want a Quick and Dirty Operating System that goes well with scripting, say changing your entire folder of mp3 to use a standard name or just organizing images, perhaps you need to do something that the GUI cant handle. There's nothing a prompt cant handle!
Long boring story short -> DOS as we know it is dead, but Quick and Dirty Operating System's are the future.
Long live DOS!
--
What did you expect?
It's already illegal to share copyrighted material and billions are still doing it every day, so how to fix this "serious threat to the national economy"? Simple, force people (actually, the manufactures) to use a system that has copyright protection built in it and make it illegal to bypass this. Hmm, wait a second...here's that little problem again. When you put a law that applies for a selected few (manufacturers) it will be followed, but a law that applies for the masses (us) will be extremly hard to enforce. So I guess nothing will change for us, just that manufacturers will have a hard time since they are in the dangerzone of committing a federal crime.
Seeing this woke my curiosity...
;)
How carefully and realisticly can they predict all this? It must be very close to a chaos-theory if you ask me, *EVERYTHING* affects *EVERYTHING* and here they are saying what's going to happen in 4 billion years - bold.
Of course people can guess and make it a good guess at that but really, how much time and knowledge have been put into these simulations. How much do we know about the world/universe around us to accuratly predict "so and so will happen..."? Is everything just based on what we know every starsystem looks like and it's position or is there more stuff to back it up?
And besides, who cares? I'm long gone when these 3.9999999999999999 billion years has passed
It's just like when you spot a fly buzzing annoyingly around the room doing nothing really and you still wanna smash it just for the sake of smashing, so grabbing your trusty doublebarreled friend you blast away both room, house and fly. Some people don't know when to stop...