If you want perfect copies of DVD, you buy an expensive DVD writer and expensive media and make bit-for-bit copies of the disk.
Sure, DeCSS allows people to copy the information (video output) itself (and transfer it to another video medium). But you can do that with some coaxial cable and a VHS recoder too. Properly set up, you can copy from a dedicated DVD player to your computer (to a digital medium).
DeCSS doesn't allow a person to do something that isn't already doable with other current technologies.
They're not a FUD site, or at least this writer isn't attempting to FUD.
Avatar is Cobey Schmidt, a guy I used to know in the Army. He's an employee at VisionTek (a hardware company up in Gurnee, IL). He did the review on his own machines, on his own time and submitted it to Linuxnewbie just to help.
*Ballmer* We've succeeded in grinding the competition into the ground again today sir. We've even added a half-dozen brand new annoyances to Windows 2000!
Another tool for the Big Brother and his Revenue Collection Gestapo^H^H^H^H^LAW ENFORCEMENT officers to use against us!
I'll just remain out of touch thank you. That way I can actually pay attention to what's going on down the roadway here. And I can avoid all those morons who are cruising at 80mph in their little SUVs and yakking away.
What? Me? Prejudiced against cellular-totin', SUV drivin' fools? DAMN STRAIGHT!
Would be a kernel configurator that notes to you what hardware modules are actively used by the system (like SCSI modules). Though you would still need to know your hardware fairly well, the kernel configurator would give you little heads up before you exclude modules you REALLY need to keep active.
Dear Mr. God, please grant these idiots in "authority" the vision to understand the stupidity of the MPAA's position, the sense of the EFF's case, and the rights of the populace to foster inter-platform compatibility.
Oh yeah. Please kick those idiots in DVD Consortium and the MPAA in the nads with spiky shit-kicker boots.
We had so much fun with our hatchling. The guy who was playing him, characterized him as "Baby Huey"*1*
Whenever something would happen, there'd be this big, bediapered dragon, sitting in the middle of it all with a claw stuck in it's mouth. Looking absoloutely innocent.
*1* Baby Huey was an old cartoon. A young duck who was of massive proportions, and not entirely bright, nor in control of himself. He'd trounce his father, and any enemies (usually a wolf), completely by accident.
Actually, I think I'd pay to see a RIFTS movie based in the original millue (around post-apocalyptic Chicago).
The visuals of the "Glitter Boy" power armor digging in it's stabilizers and popping off a couple "Boom Gun" rounds (incidentally deafening his cohorts) would be worth the price of admission alone.
RIFTS is an EXTREMELY fleshed out world. My only issues are with the underlying Palladium game system.
Oh yeah. I want to see a depiction of Mega-Damage capacity (like someone taking a bat to a baby dragon character, busting the bat over the character's head, and the character going "that tickled!".
I just found it at BestBuy as a DVD game. All the original animated frames, you play by manipulating your remote (or the buttons on the software DVD-player screen if you play on the computer).
Haven't picked it up yet. Probably will though. I burned through a couple zillion quarters trying to beat that game (came close once).
True, but think about it. We're not talking JUST one machine here. Every couple months, the Distributed.net distributed machine gets more powerful.
Partially due to more machines being added.
Partially due to some of those machines being faster than their predecessors.
And partially because some of those machines are being upgraded and getting faster.
Notice that it took about 18 months to get to the 10% mark in RC5-64. Now, less than eight months later, we're pushing close to the 18% mark.
True, that's probably not of any interest to anyone but a stat freak, but hey. Stat freaks are people too! I'm living proof (at least from the neck down, from the neck up, I'm not so sure about). =)
Also note that we've succeeded in finishing two other projects as well (A DES contest and the now-completed CSC contest). We've also participated in another DES contest that was won by an entity outside the Distributed.net machine.
Most excellent! Congrats to the guys at Distributed.net, the guy who submitted the winning key, and his team (if he was on a team).
Now we can get back to that darn RC5-64 contest. I really wanna see what some of these new systems hitting the market will do (1Ghz Kryotech Athlon system?).
Anyone else built a big-arsed cluster to work on this yet?
Somebody sneak a client on a disk into the Fermi-Lab cluster! =)
That doesn't mean you cannot copy the contents of a VCR to a digital video file and move it that way. I mean, look at the bootleg situation of "The Phantom Menace" this last summer. I mean, the day the film was released, Warez sites were awash with copies of it in just about every feasible form.
Sure, the quality was bad, but that's because they were shooting the screen from a bad angle in bad lighting, instead of copying the signal directly from the reel.
The Anime fansubs (Japanese Animation that has been translated and subtitled by one of the anime fanbase, usually a non-commercial venture) do this with anime tapes that are imported but not commercially available in the US in a translated/subtitled form.
Nothing can stop one from turning something like this into a full digital video file (numerous formats). While large, they are distributable (look at the ISO situation with Linux now). All that's needed is sufficient bandwidth and/or a little time.
That doesn't mean you cannot copy the contents of a VCR to a digital video file and move it that way. I mean, look at the bootleg situation of "The Phantom Menace" this last summer. I mean, the day the film was released, Warez sites were awash with copies of it in just about every feasible form. Sure, the quality was bad, but that's because they were shooting the screen from a bad angle in bad lighting, instead of copying the signal directly from the reel. The Anime fansubs (Japanese Animation that has been translated and subtitled by one of the anime fanbase, usually a non-commercial venture) do this with anime tapes that are imported but not commercially available in the US in a translated/subtitled form. Nothing can stop one from turning something like this into a full digital video file (numerous formats). While large, they are distributable (look at the ISO situation with Linux now). All that's needed is sufficient bandwidth and/or a little time.
You're making illegal copies of music and distributing it
No. Copying is not illegal. It falls under fair copying. For backup purposes. You've already bought the music. Technically, if you want, you can make a half-billion copies of the music, once you've bought it.
Distributing it is what's illegal. Transferring a copy of a work to another person who hasn't paid for it is against the law. It's theft.
You claim to have not bought music because it was available on the net or from friends. This doesn't mean that everyone else exists on the same level of moral turpitude. Personally, I own several MP3 compilation CD's. ALL of the music on them comes from my CD collection, or was bought, legally, from an online distributor.
Simply because one person might (or is proven to) be doing something isn't a reason to remove the rights of those who follow the rules/laws.
Merely tacking more laws into the books does not help the problem. Nor do exotic encoding/protection schemes. They were created, they can be cracked *COUGHDeCSSCOUGH*.
You're removing choice from people who abide by the laws, and you're not affecting the actual thieves at all. Just one more rule they ignore. Just a little extra effort to break another copy protection scheme.
Look at the fansub anime market. Lots of them are buying tapes and or laser disks. With video-input cards, they turn the material into a digital video file. Copying back out to tape, or distributing as a digital video file can be accomplished without any further loss.
Copy protection merely supresses legitemate uses of copying procedures (fair copy). True pirates merely find a way around it. Why do you think there's warez sites devoted to software cracks and key generators?
Giving up a freedom may seem easy. Gaining that freedom back, after it's gone is a complete bitch.
Howsabout when everything is regulated to the point that you cannot do something you want or need to do without buckling down and submitting to such claptrap as UCITAS or something similar?
Sure, YOU have the luxury of saying "I ain't gonna us it", but what about others who don't have the same luxury?
I understand the sentiment. I'd dearly love to see these bastards stewing in their own juices. Unfortunately, the damage they'd do on the way down is unacceptable.
Something like this needs to be FOUGHT. Not avoided.
What's really bad is when they start pronouncing the acronyms like they were words.
Like the ISA bus. I've been hearing people, even people who work in the industry, referring to it as "eye-sah". How lazy is that? First you're too lazy to pronounce the term, so you shorten it. Then you get too lazy to even just pronounced the letters of the acronym, so you phoneticize it.
Now, instead of one large company to oversee, we have three, slightly smaller companies. Each with a dominance in certain market. The government will have to work three times as hard simply to prevent collusion between the three companies, if such prevention is possible.
Failing in this, you've just given the Microsoft Companies (the baby bills) another weapon/smoke screen to fight lawsuits and anti-trust hearings. Basically each of the three baby bills can sit there and say, we have an exclusive licensing agreement to do such and such with this other baby bill. The only thing that'll change are some accounting practices. Departmental budgeting will simply be replaced by contracts, agreements, licensing, etc.
Microsoft OS corporation will simply produce the OS (and possibly the browser, as the product now seems pretty irrevocably tied into file management for the system). Now they'll have a good reason to charge more for their OS (we don't get subsidies from the other departments we used to have). Plus they'll be getting subsidies from the other baby bills for licensing agreements relevant to the OS API hooks, etc.
Microsoft Applications corporation will continue to produce the dominant apps for the Windows platform, as they have had access to the Windows API from Day 1. And can continue to have access to the API through licensing. Apps will become more expensive due to the "we're not subsidized by the other divisions" excuse as well.
Microsoft Online Business corporation will, possibly, be hurt by the breakup, though the lucrative contracts from MSN, MSNBC, and their various other online initiatives will probably keep them easily in the black, since a meatspace presence isn't required for them to stay profitable. Their main competition would be Time-Warner-AOL. Even still, with their close ties to the other baby bills, they can easily leverage themselves in the market.
Simply splitting the markets up doesn't necessarily change public perception. Microsoft will still be Microsoft.
Take a look at phone service. Many people still look at it as "from THE phone company", even though their bills are separate and itemized.
Personally, I'm in favor of them opening up their API's to review, even if it comes with a license barring duplication. Companies would be able to build better products, and Microsoft would benefit from people reviewing their code and possibly improving it. The customers would benefit from better products and a wider range of highly optimized products.
Slashdot Mirror
By the time this was published, it was probably over already. Cape Town being several hours ahead of it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Head over to http://www.boardwatch.com/isp/ac/index. html
Right at the top of the page are links for toll free access numbers (800, 877, 888).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you want perfect copies of DVD, you buy an expensive DVD writer and expensive media and make bit-for-bit copies of the disk.
Sure, DeCSS allows people to copy the information (video output) itself (and transfer it to another video medium). But you can do that with some coaxial cable and a VHS recoder too. Properly set up, you can copy from a dedicated DVD player to your computer (to a digital medium).
DeCSS doesn't allow a person to do something that isn't already doable with other current technologies.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They're not a FUD site, or at least this writer isn't attempting to FUD.
Avatar is Cobey Schmidt, a guy I used to know in the Army. He's an employee at VisionTek (a hardware company up in Gurnee, IL). He did the review on his own machines, on his own time and submitted it to Linuxnewbie just to help.
As to others on the site? I dunno.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Mine arrived as well.
Let's see the courts ban an article of clothing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's called terrorism through litigation. Basically they're going to try to scare everybody by slapping lawsuits on everything and everyone in sight.
Absoloutely disgusting is what it is.....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Steve Ballmer walks into Bill Gates' office.
*Ballmer* We've succeeded in grinding the competition into the ground again today sir. We've even added a half-dozen brand new annoyances to Windows 2000!
*Gates* Excellent Smithers^H^H^H^Good job Steve.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Another tool for the Big Brother and his Revenue Collection Gestapo^H^H^H^H^LAW ENFORCEMENT officers to use against us!
I'll just remain out of touch thank you. That way I can actually pay attention to what's going on down the roadway here. And I can avoid all those morons who are cruising at 80mph in their little SUVs and yakking away.
What? Me? Prejudiced against cellular-totin', SUV drivin' fools? DAMN STRAIGHT!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Would be a kernel configurator that notes to you what hardware modules are actively used by the system (like SCSI modules). Though you would still need to know your hardware fairly well, the kernel configurator would give you little heads up before you exclude modules you REALLY need to keep active.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Dear Mr. God, please grant these idiots in "authority" the vision to understand the stupidity of the MPAA's position, the sense of the EFF's case, and the rights of the populace to foster inter-platform compatibility.
Oh yeah. Please kick those idiots in DVD Consortium and the MPAA in the nads with spiky shit-kicker boots.
Amen.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
9:30 A.M. CDT
Poll: Do you trust Microsoft's Security?
GAHH! Looks like all 835 of Microsoft's directors and managers weren't at work in the last couple days. (Blatant UserFriendly reference)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You forget, Linux, by his own admission, doesn't care about games.
He only cares about compiling his kernels.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We had so much fun with our hatchling. The guy who was playing him, characterized him as "Baby Huey"*1*
Whenever something would happen, there'd be this big, bediapered dragon, sitting in the middle of it all with a claw stuck in it's mouth. Looking absoloutely innocent.
*1* Baby Huey was an old cartoon. A young duck who was of massive proportions, and not entirely bright, nor in control of himself. He'd trounce his father, and any enemies (usually a wolf), completely by accident.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually, I think I'd pay to see a RIFTS movie based in the original millue (around post-apocalyptic Chicago).
The visuals of the "Glitter Boy" power armor digging in it's stabilizers and popping off a couple "Boom Gun" rounds (incidentally deafening his cohorts) would be worth the price of admission alone.
RIFTS is an EXTREMELY fleshed out world. My only issues are with the underlying Palladium game system.
Oh yeah. I want to see a depiction of Mega-Damage capacity (like someone taking a bat to a baby dragon character, busting the bat over the character's head, and the character going "that tickled!".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually, they sorta did this already.
Remember the old "Dragon's Lair" game?
I just found it at BestBuy as a DVD game. All the original animated frames, you play by manipulating your remote (or the buttons on the software DVD-player screen if you play on the computer).
Haven't picked it up yet. Probably will though. I burned through a couple zillion quarters trying to beat that game (came close once).
Then I'll have to try "Space Ace".
GIMME THAT INFANTO RAY!!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
True, but think about it. We're not talking JUST one machine here. Every couple months, the Distributed.net distributed machine gets more powerful.
Partially due to more machines being added.
Partially due to some of those machines being faster than their predecessors.
And partially because some of those machines are being upgraded and getting faster.
Notice that it took about 18 months to get to the 10% mark in RC5-64. Now, less than eight months later, we're pushing close to the 18% mark.
True, that's probably not of any interest to anyone but a stat freak, but hey. Stat freaks are people too! I'm living proof (at least from the neck down, from the neck up, I'm not so sure about). =)
Also note that we've succeeded in finishing two other projects as well (A DES contest and the now-completed CSC contest). We've also participated in another DES contest that was won by an entity outside the Distributed.net machine.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Most excellent!
Congrats to the guys at Distributed.net, the guy who submitted the winning key, and his team (if he was on a team).
Now we can get back to that darn RC5-64 contest.
I really wanna see what some of these new systems hitting the market will do (1Ghz Kryotech Athlon system?).
Anyone else built a big-arsed cluster to work on this yet?
Somebody sneak a client on a disk into the Fermi-Lab cluster! =)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That doesn't mean you cannot copy the contents of a VCR to a digital video file and move it that way. I mean, look at the bootleg situation of "The Phantom Menace" this last summer. I mean, the day the film was released, Warez sites were awash with copies of it in just about every feasible form.
Sure, the quality was bad, but that's because they were shooting the screen from a bad angle in bad lighting, instead of copying the signal directly from the reel.
The Anime fansubs (Japanese Animation that has been translated and subtitled by one of the anime fanbase, usually a non-commercial venture) do this with anime tapes that are imported but not commercially available in the US in a translated/subtitled form.
Nothing can stop one from turning something like this into a full digital video file (numerous formats). While large, they are distributable (look at the ISO situation with Linux now). All that's needed is sufficient bandwidth and/or a little time.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That doesn't mean you cannot copy the contents of a VCR to a digital video file and move it that way. I mean, look at the bootleg situation of "The Phantom Menace" this last summer. I mean, the day the film was released, Warez sites were awash with copies of it in just about every feasible form. Sure, the quality was bad, but that's because they were shooting the screen from a bad angle in bad lighting, instead of copying the signal directly from the reel. The Anime fansubs (Japanese Animation that has been translated and subtitled by one of the anime fanbase, usually a non-commercial venture) do this with anime tapes that are imported but not commercially available in the US in a translated/subtitled form. Nothing can stop one from turning something like this into a full digital video file (numerous formats). While large, they are distributable (look at the ISO situation with Linux now). All that's needed is sufficient bandwidth and/or a little time.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You're making illegal copies of music and distributing it
No. Copying is not illegal. It falls under fair copying. For backup purposes. You've already bought the music. Technically, if you want, you can make a half-billion copies of the music, once you've bought it.
Distributing it is what's illegal. Transferring a copy of a work to another person who hasn't paid for it is against the law. It's theft.
You claim to have not bought music because it was available on the net or from friends. This doesn't mean that everyone else exists on the same level of moral turpitude. Personally, I own several MP3 compilation CD's. ALL of the music on them comes from my CD collection, or was bought, legally, from an online distributor.
Simply because one person might (or is proven to) be doing something isn't a reason to remove the rights of those who follow the rules/laws.
Merely tacking more laws into the books does not help the problem. Nor do exotic encoding/protection schemes. They were created, they can be cracked *COUGHDeCSSCOUGH*.
You're removing choice from people who abide by the laws, and you're not affecting the actual thieves at all. Just one more rule they ignore. Just a little extra effort to break another copy protection scheme.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Look at the fansub anime market. Lots of them are buying tapes and or laser disks. With video-input cards, they turn the material into a digital video file. Copying back out to tape, or distributing as a digital video file can be accomplished without any further loss.
Copy protection merely supresses legitemate uses of copying procedures (fair copy). True pirates merely find a way around it. Why do you think there's warez sites devoted to software cracks and key generators?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Doing nothing about it isn't an option.
Giving up a freedom may seem easy. Gaining that freedom back, after it's gone is a complete bitch.
Howsabout when everything is regulated to the point that you cannot do something you want or need to do without buckling down and submitting to such claptrap as UCITAS or something similar?
Sure, YOU have the luxury of saying "I ain't gonna us it", but what about others who don't have the same luxury?
I understand the sentiment. I'd dearly love to see these bastards stewing in their own juices. Unfortunately, the damage they'd do on the way down is unacceptable.
Something like this needs to be FOUGHT. Not avoided.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What's really bad is when they start pronouncing the acronyms like they were words.
Like the ISA bus. I've been hearing people, even people who work in the industry, referring to it as "eye-sah". How lazy is that? First you're too lazy to pronounce the term, so you shorten it. Then you get too lazy to even just pronounced the letters of the acronym, so you phoneticize it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How will a baby bill be unable to distribute IE for free?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Now, instead of one large company to oversee, we have three, slightly smaller companies. Each with a dominance in certain market. The government will have to work three times as hard simply to prevent collusion between the three companies, if such prevention is possible.
Failing in this, you've just given the Microsoft Companies (the baby bills) another weapon/smoke screen to fight lawsuits and anti-trust hearings. Basically each of the three baby bills can sit there and say, we have an exclusive licensing agreement to do such and such with this other baby bill. The only thing that'll change are some accounting practices. Departmental budgeting will simply be replaced by contracts, agreements, licensing, etc.
Microsoft OS corporation will simply produce the OS (and possibly the browser, as the product now seems pretty irrevocably tied into file management for the system). Now they'll have a good reason to charge more for their OS (we don't get subsidies from the other departments we used to have). Plus they'll be getting subsidies from the other baby bills for licensing agreements relevant to the OS API hooks, etc.
Microsoft Applications corporation will continue to produce the dominant apps for the Windows platform, as they have had access to the Windows API from Day 1. And can continue to have access to the API through licensing. Apps will become more expensive due to the "we're not subsidized by the other divisions" excuse as well.
Microsoft Online Business corporation will, possibly, be hurt by the breakup, though the lucrative contracts from MSN, MSNBC, and their various other online initiatives will probably keep them easily in the black, since a meatspace presence isn't required for them to stay profitable. Their main competition would be Time-Warner-AOL. Even still, with their close ties to the other baby bills, they can easily leverage themselves in the market.
Simply splitting the markets up doesn't necessarily change public perception. Microsoft will still be Microsoft.
Take a look at phone service. Many people still look at it as "from THE phone company", even though their bills are separate and itemized.
Personally, I'm in favor of them opening up their API's to review, even if it comes with a license barring duplication. Companies would be able to build better products, and Microsoft would benefit from people reviewing their code and possibly improving it. The customers would benefit from better products and a wider range of highly optimized products.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!