"Firstly, it was poorly worded; it certainly implied to me that you thought IE was the better option for 99.9999% of the web, and I think the responses to your original comment demonstrate that I'm not the only one who misinterpreted you."
Bullshit. I didn't use the word 'better' anywhere in my post. What I literally said was that it views 99.999% of the web pages out there. Meaning it can actually download and properly display them. Though I'll happily concede that I could have written it more clearly, it's ludicrous to think I was saying IE was a better browser in lieu of saying that it correctly views more pages out there. Who in their right mind would say that IE is superior to Mozilla UI wise?
"Secondly, you were responding to a comment which was essentially correct as if it was wrong; for any serious use (yes, other than sites that won't work outside of IE) "
No, his comment was not essentially correct. It was far too broad. He shouldn't have used the word 'anything'. IE has one very strong use, and I pointed that out. It gets pointed every so often here on Slashdot, it's not just me 'making it up'.
"If you come off as a troll, you're going to be modded as one. We can't read your mind over the internet; perhaps you should work on your demeanour."
I agree with you. I should communicate more clearly. No problem, I accept that. However, you could have given me more credit. If I say anything that even remotely sounds like I have something not-so-nice to say about Mozilla etc, I get attacked and modded into oblivion. You as well as a lot of other people here are way too sensitive to criticisms of this app. I mean, seriously, you read my comment as "IE is superior to Mozilla". WTF? Setting me as foe? Double WTF? I'll take some responsibility for that, but not all of it. I didn't dance by myself here.
"Video content? With proper plugins, Firefox can play Quicktime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player files. I'm pretty sure Opera can too."
You're right. However there was recently an article about a streaming movie site. I didn't go to the site, but I did see a lot of +5 "It doesn't work in Firefox! Screw them I'm pirating the movie!" comments.
"If what you really meant was that you have to use IE for the vast minority of sites, then you misspoke."
Close, but no. What I meant was that IE gets you to more places than the other browsers. In other words, it's still useful despite the claim (that I was replying to) that IE is not serious for anything.
"implies that IE is superior to FF for most of the web, which is just plain wrong."
No. It doesn't say anything about the browser's superiority. Superioritiy is a term too broad to measure that way. You would have a difficult time making the statement that Firebird can successfully navigate more sites than IE. Equally, you'd have a hard time saying the IE has a superior end-user interface to Firebird. So spare me the implication that I deserved it.
"I'm not actually convinced that you meant what you claim to have meant; I have you marked as a foe because you're prone to making these kind of trollish statements (and then getting huffy and defensive)."
Uh ok. Yes I do sometimes get defensive. You would too if you were trying to make a point that nobody wanted to hear. As for being 'trollish', well I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. My intentions are not to rile people up. If you read my posts that way, fine, have a good life.
"That 1/1000th of a percent makes a huge differemce doesn't it?"
Well it certainly comes up quite a bit whenever Slashdot links to a site with video in it.
I've seen "It doesn't work in Firefox!" at least twice in the last week or so when Slashdot pointed to an article. That's not really Firefox's fault, though, it's MS's stupid web implementation of Media Player.
I think my point has been misinterpreted. It wasn't a poke at alternative browsers, it was a statement that IE still has to be used once in a while. You can look at it from the "well that's just 1 of millions of pages" point of view, or you can look at it from the "DOH!!! Dammit!!!" point of view when the one time you can't visit a site you do end up firing up IE. Anybody not using Windows is completely left out in the cold.
Be dismissive all you like, but the mere fact that you can write a page that is inoperable in anything but IE is a problem. I'm not talking about looking at the browser via scripting, I'm talking about broken web standards. That shit happens all the time because too many peeps test only with IE, and it's just a leetle too forgiving when it comes to malformed HTML. (And we all know about their standards adherence.)
I'm really annoyed that my previous post was modded as troll. Give me an f'in break. I don't see how Slashdot can cook up a number of "It doesn't work in Firefox!! @#$#@$@#$" comments and not recognize the validity of what I said.
"Funny. I use Firefox at all times. I have no problems with viewing 99.999% of all sites I visit. And I'm dead serious all the time."
I use both Firefox and Opera, and I still can't quite 100% dump IE. The truth of the matter is that it's still not so easy to get rid of, especially when one visits sites with video content.
Thank Microsoft, thank crappy web developers, I don't care. There's still more that needs to be done. On a side note, I just ran into this problem a couple of minutes before this article materialized. Doesn't happen often.
"How about research them...as an energy source. But destructe research wins over constructive alternatives hands down."
Um, yeah, so? Desctructive research is cheaper, and gee, that's also the job of the airforce. What do they need an anti-matter power source for? That's like complaining that cheetahs eat animals when they could be protecting them from other predators.
"Ok, so the news here is that gamespot has a picture of the Nintendo DS box... or am I missing something? Wow, a picture of the box. Now that DOES matter."
Well... do you remember when the 'Ultra 64' was supposed to be released in 95? Since then, everybody's been skeptical of Nintendo's ability to release a product on time. So yes, it matters when we see the packaging. That usually shows up just before release.
Okay, not the most scientific of methods to deduce whether Nintendo'll get it out on time or not, but hey, it's still good news. After seeing it, it's harder to believe that Nintendo isn't going to say "oops we're delaying it another year!"
"The UN, and everybody else (save Britain) were screaming that there was no evidence, and that going to war is wrong. Did the Americans even try to listen? Of course not. Afterall, only American voices count."
Why is it a case of Americans not listening, as opposed to the other side not providing a compelling argument? Yeesh. Americans are arrogant, so insightful.
Whatever. I'm going to give you a couple of things to think about:
1.) The country was divided on the issue. One half said invade, the other half said "No, wait." Or have we forgotten all the protests we faced?
2.) What information were they privvy to that we weren't? Why were they 'right' when nobody really knew, or were they just on the correct side?
"Admittedly I haven't played it and game reviews are pretty subjective in my mind, but it seems Atari should have spent time makin' a more grounding breaking game gameplay wise than fiddling with making it 64-bit"
Depends on how you look at it. Atari's out to make money, not a better game. It's pretty cheap to detect a 64-bit processor and put a few more game elements in. It means the peeps with Opteron processors have a reason to run out and buy it, just out of curiosity. There's a chance they'd spend only a little bit of money and get a nice little return out of it.
That chance may have been blown now, but hey, what the heck? It's all about moolah!
"Urm correct me if i am wrong - but N64 and howabout the Atari Jaguar? werent these 64bit consoles?"
Well, the 64-bitness of the Jaguar is a bit laughable. But yeah, it's not the first 64-bit game. However, niether of the links appear to say that. (Maybe I didn't read closely enough?) I think it was more a matter of error on the poster's end.
"This seems to be just as far fetched as Apples "Worlds first 64bit desktop computer""
Well.. not that I want to reopen this debate, but the operative word is 'desktop'. I believe Apple very intentionally put that word in there. 64-bit machines that aren't refigerator size have been around for years. But they were not sold as "use it at home!" machines. It really kind of depends on how you define the term 'desktop'. In Apple's defense, it's not like they'd advertise it like "It's the world's first computer that you'd buy your parents that has a 64-bit processor inside it!"
What was this, other than a 'bug-fix' upgrade? The only feature added was Internet Connection Sharing, the rest was to make it stable. Those who had the first (highly unstable and crappy) edition had to pay for an upgrade to the second edition."
Err. I was under the impression that SE was more than just 'internet connection sharing". I'm not claiming to be all that knowledgable about it, but I'm fairly sure they had something a little more signficant with it. I'm thinking something to do with USB... or how it handles a certain device. Eh. I dunno.
Though I agree that it wasn't the most exciting update in the world, don't forget that they had SP1 for 98 that was a free download.
"And what about Internet Explorer? Microsoft is now saying that it will not provide a stand-alone version of IE, but that it will be integrated within Longhorn. Those who want a bug fix for IE will therefore have to upgrade to Longhorn."
I see where you're coming from. However, I think we're only getting part of the picture here. First off, I don't think this precludes MS fixing security related issues. XP may not get new features, but that's a different scenario. Second is that Longhorn is a new beast. IE for Longhorn is very likely going to be a very different animal, at least on the software side of it, than it is for XP. Remember their vector based GUI? If the new IE supports that to any competent level, then how could they possibly make that XP compatible?
"Anyway, I'm sure that you can understand, from the above points, why I am of the opinion that it would be likely for a software engineer at Microsoft to come out with such things."
Hmm... no, not really. Frankly, I think Bill's a more likely suspect. Software engineers, at least the ones I've met, wouldn't want to buy software like that, let alone make it. I've actually heard comments like "Ever feel like we're riding in the getaway car?", quoting Dilbert.
I'm not trying to be difficult or overzealous in my point. Just a bit of a hard sell, ya know?
"How cost effective is sending movies this way? I'm pretty sure that compared to the cost of designing, building, launching then maintaining a satellite + gound station + all the specialized gear needed at each screen to do this, it might be cheaper to just UPS a high capacity HDD for each movie."
I can't give you numbers. But I can give you something to chew on: They'd only need to send the film once. Even if the number described by your terms is mind boggling, at least it isn't a multiple of anything.
"If the movie is stored on a hard disk, why send it via sattelite? Just place it on an FTP server and be done with it."
In addition to another point made in response to your comment, I just wanted to add that what you suggest is an exploit away from being looted. If they'll sue a 65 year old Mac using granny for looking like she's downloading content, they're paranoid enough to not even look in that direction.
"Or someone on the inside could get it *BEFORE* it's sent out over the link - and before any watermarks or DRM are put in."
Well, to be fair, that possibility exists in a broader proportion right now. Movies these days are edited digitally. I'm oversimplifying quite a bit here, but somebody at the movie studio could wander in, hit 'Export to AVI', and drum their fingers for a while. I can't say I've ever heard of that happening. (err.. well that rang a bell... wasn't somebody at ILM busted for something like that? Help?) It's not clear to me, and maybe I'm just naieve, that incidents like that would rise noticably in the event of satellite distribution.
"IANA satellite engineer, but apart from any encryption, would there be anything stopping someone with a reciever and the right gear grabbing, ripping and sharing this?"
Oops. Well, yeah, that's a good point. Unless they somehow focus the transmission at the particular theater that could be done. A.) they'd need a dish capable of recieving the data. I'm guessing that wouldn't be hard to build. B.) They'd need to know where to point it. C.) They'd need to know what to tune in on. and D.) They'd need some way of decoding the transmission.
Err not trying to state the obvious here, but I'm just chewing on what you said. If it were the military, I'd say fat chance. But these guys are probably using off-the-shelf, so to speak, services. I doubt they launched their own satellite or wrote their own protocols etc. If I'm even partially right, then it's possible that some smart guy out there could catch the data and do something with it.
I'd love to hear from somebody that can shed some light on this. I know virtually nothing about satellite technology.
Somehow I doubt the file being sent will run in Media Player. They'd have to take the humungoid file and get it to a computer to transcode. That may one day be possible, but there's a couple of things tricky about that:
1.) It'd have to be an inside job involving a firewire drive or something. It'd be easy enough to disable the ports necessary to do that.
2.) It wouldn't be all that hard to send unique identifiers to each theater as the file comes along. (At least from a technological point of view.) If the tools are created, it'd make catching peeps doing this a lot easier.
I am, in no way, saying it won't happen. But if I were a betting man, I'd say the traditional "bring a video camera to the theater" trick will remain popular.
"That's roughly equivalent to saying "ignoring all evidence to the contrary, the hypothesis holds valid."
Really? What evidence?
"What the fuck was your point?"
Though you are right that I haven't met enough engineers in the world to say from first hand experience that few would ever do that, I did not present it that way. Judging from the moderations my comment would recieve, I'd say others have known software engineers to be quite ethical. If you think that's a bunch of hogwash, then how do you explain the Open Source Software out there? Hate to sound like I'm making a cheap karma grab here, but if that isn't a strong demonstration of the general ethical behaviour of software engineers, I don't know what else would convince you.
"Even if you've never heard them say such things, by their actions it would seem that this is exactly how their conversations would go."
Yeah? Name a case where a software engineer suggested that MS sell a fix for a problem they've discovered. I'm genuinely curious, not setting you up for an argument.
"I'm not very familiar with the case either, and I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this case has the potential to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional on these grounds if and only if Blizzard's copy-protection scheme didn't deal with the expiration of the copyright. It strikes me as being a pretty strong case if they approached it as protecting Fair Use Rights and ensuring the game will go into the public domain as it's supposed to. They'd have still lost at this stage because it takes SCOTUS to declare the law unconstitutional, so just to get to the supreme court they have to lose the original case and then win a few appeals. "
Oh.. oh oh oh that's a good point. I'm sorry, I misread your original post. Well I certainly hope you're right. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if expiration of copyright is what will do it in. I mean, CSS doesn't do that either to the best of my knowledge. I think the line between copyright expiration and restrictions to legitimate users has been blurred. But, I'm not a lawyer as well. The bit about the EULA acceptance being so broad, well that I can see bringing that particular judgement down. I don't know if that'll have ripples with the DMCA or not... perhaps it'll make it more specific?
Eh my mind is muddy tonight.
"Hey, offtopic, but I recall you work with an animation/film studio? I ran into someone not long ago that's looking for cheap/free post-production tools for independent film makers. She's actually an independent film maker herself. Do you happen to know of any? "
Yep, that's me. Right now I'm working on an animated movie at a small studio. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have a very good answer to your question. My immediate suggestion would be to look at CinePaint. Sadly, I cannot vouch for its feature set but it is free to start with.
If she can scrounge up $1,000 to $1,500, I'd point her here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dvcoll/main.html You can get Adobe Premiere and After Effects for $1,000. This includes Encore DVD. It's a pain in the ass to use but a full featured DVD production kit, to the best of my understanding. For the full $1,500 she'd get Photoshop as well which... well my life has plenty of thank yous to go in Photoshop's direction.
I understand this is nowhere near free, but man she'd have a hell of a toolset for an indpendent filmmaker. After Effects (maybe get that seperately?) is a damn fine compositing program. I can't believe all the cool stuff it lets you do. It's very powerful and well thought out. I understand it's not the fastest kid on the block, but I can personally vouch for its robustness.
A friend of mine is 17 and an aspiring film-maker. He managed to get ahold of the production bundle + a DV camera. Now he makes short movies and burns them to DVD with menus and everything. I'm not talking about simple stuff, either. He has virtual sets created in Lightwave blue screened into the footage. Motion and everything. You wouldn't believe it. I don't! Hehe
Sorry if I sound like an Adobe shill here, but AE startled the heck out of me. I dropped about $600-$700 on AE a couple of years ago, I didn't expect it to be such a big part of my pipeline. I'm so used to spending that kind of money for one big important feature, not a whole new toolset.
I think I should have written my post more clearly. Sorry about that. I wasn't trying to say that Blizzard should be protected by laws, rather that BNetD didn't have a case to begin with. My understanding of the case has faded with time, but the basic gist as I remember it is that Blizzard was using unique identifiers so that they could ban pirated or disruptive copies of Starcraft etc from playing. BnetD allowed people to set up their own servers that disregarded whether or not the #'s were legit. This meant that #'s off the net would suddenly work. This is the type of thing that the DMCA was developed to thrwart.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I'm not supporting the DMCA here nor am I saying Blizzard was right. (Not really saying they're wrong here either... hopefully that'll be clearer in a moment.) By fighting this, BnetD made the DMCA stronger. The DMCA is so broadly written that they didn't have a strong leg to start on. They should have dropped it and let it go. Now there's a stupid judgement on the books that'll make it even easier to prevent them from trying again with Blizzard's later games.
To summarize my point: Never pick a battle when it appears that you're working to undermine the company who is feeding you.
Slashdot Mirror
"About 90% of the websites I view work just fine with Firefox. In fact, there's just one that doesn't render properly. So, nice try."
Nice try? You proved my point. You need IE to view that site that won't render properly. That means it has a use for serious users. Heh.
"Firstly, it was poorly worded; it certainly implied to me that you thought IE was the better option for 99.9999% of the web, and I think the responses to your original comment demonstrate that I'm not the only one who misinterpreted you."
Bullshit. I didn't use the word 'better' anywhere in my post. What I literally said was that it views 99.999% of the web pages out there. Meaning it can actually download and properly display them. Though I'll happily concede that I could have written it more clearly, it's ludicrous to think I was saying IE was a better browser in lieu of saying that it correctly views more pages out there. Who in their right mind would say that IE is superior to Mozilla UI wise?
"Secondly, you were responding to a comment which was essentially correct as if it was wrong; for any serious use (yes, other than sites that won't work outside of IE) "
No, his comment was not essentially correct. It was far too broad. He shouldn't have used the word 'anything'. IE has one very strong use, and I pointed that out. It gets pointed every so often here on Slashdot, it's not just me 'making it up'.
"If you come off as a troll, you're going to be modded as one. We can't read your mind over the internet; perhaps you should work on your demeanour."
I agree with you. I should communicate more clearly. No problem, I accept that. However, you could have given me more credit. If I say anything that even remotely sounds like I have something not-so-nice to say about Mozilla etc, I get attacked and modded into oblivion. You as well as a lot of other people here are way too sensitive to criticisms of this app. I mean, seriously, you read my comment as "IE is superior to Mozilla". WTF? Setting me as foe? Double WTF? I'll take some responsibility for that, but not all of it. I didn't dance by myself here.
"Video content? With proper plugins, Firefox can play Quicktime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player files. I'm pretty sure Opera can too."
You're right. However there was recently an article about a streaming movie site. I didn't go to the site, but I did see a lot of +5 "It doesn't work in Firefox! Screw them I'm pirating the movie!" comments.
"If what you really meant was that you have to use IE for the vast minority of sites, then you misspoke."
Close, but no. What I meant was that IE gets you to more places than the other browsers. In other words, it's still useful despite the claim (that I was replying to) that IE is not serious for anything.
"implies that IE is superior to FF for most of the web, which is just plain wrong."
No. It doesn't say anything about the browser's superiority. Superioritiy is a term too broad to measure that way. You would have a difficult time making the statement that Firebird can successfully navigate more sites than IE. Equally, you'd have a hard time saying the IE has a superior end-user interface to Firebird. So spare me the implication that I deserved it.
"I'm not actually convinced that you meant what you claim to have meant; I have you marked as a foe because you're prone to making these kind of trollish statements (and then getting huffy and defensive)."
Uh ok. Yes I do sometimes get defensive. You would too if you were trying to make a point that nobody wanted to hear. As for being 'trollish', well I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. My intentions are not to rile people up. If you read my posts that way, fine, have a good life.
"That 1/1000th of a percent makes a huge differemce doesn't it?"
Well it certainly comes up quite a bit whenever Slashdot links to a site with video in it.
I've seen "It doesn't work in Firefox!" at least twice in the last week or so when Slashdot pointed to an article. That's not really Firefox's fault, though, it's MS's stupid web implementation of Media Player.
I think my point has been misinterpreted. It wasn't a poke at alternative browsers, it was a statement that IE still has to be used once in a while. You can look at it from the "well that's just 1 of millions of pages" point of view, or you can look at it from the "DOH!!! Dammit!!!" point of view when the one time you can't visit a site you do end up firing up IE. Anybody not using Windows is completely left out in the cold.
Be dismissive all you like, but the mere fact that you can write a page that is inoperable in anything but IE is a problem. I'm not talking about looking at the browser via scripting, I'm talking about broken web standards. That shit happens all the time because too many peeps test only with IE, and it's just a leetle too forgiving when it comes to malformed HTML. (And we all know about their standards adherence.)
I'm really annoyed that my previous post was modded as troll. Give me an f'in break. I don't see how Slashdot can cook up a number of "It doesn't work in Firefox!! @#$#@$@#$" comments and not recognize the validity of what I said.
"Funny. I use Firefox at all times. I have no problems with viewing 99.999% of all sites I visit. And I'm dead serious all the time."
I use both Firefox and Opera, and I still can't quite 100% dump IE. The truth of the matter is that it's still not so easy to get rid of, especially when one visits sites with video content.
Thank Microsoft, thank crappy web developers, I don't care. There's still more that needs to be done. On a side note, I just ran into this problem a couple of minutes before this article materialized. Doesn't happen often.
"And besides, IE is not even an option for anyone serious about, well, serious about anything." ... except for viewing 99.999% of the sites on the web.
"How about research them...as an energy source.
But destructe research wins over constructive alternatives hands down."
Um, yeah, so? Desctructive research is cheaper, and gee, that's also the job of the airforce. What do they need an anti-matter power source for? That's like complaining that cheetahs eat animals when they could be protecting them from other predators.
"Does anyone else remember that show? I remember watching it in the mid 80's. (Sorry, I was little.)"
Swing your arms... from side to side.. come on it's time to GO do the Mario!
>:I If I get fired for humming that one too many times at work I'll come get you.
"Ok, so the news here is that gamespot has a picture of the Nintendo DS box... or am I missing something? Wow, a picture of the box. Now that DOES matter."
Well... do you remember when the 'Ultra 64' was supposed to be released in 95? Since then, everybody's been skeptical of Nintendo's ability to release a product on time. So yes, it matters when we see the packaging. That usually shows up just before release.
Okay, not the most scientific of methods to deduce whether Nintendo'll get it out on time or not, but hey, it's still good news. After seeing it, it's harder to believe that Nintendo isn't going to say "oops we're delaying it another year!"
"The UN, and everybody else (save Britain) were screaming that there was no evidence, and that going to war is wrong. Did the Americans even try to listen? Of course not. Afterall, only American voices count."
Why is it a case of Americans not listening, as opposed to the other side not providing a compelling argument? Yeesh. Americans are arrogant, so insightful.
Whatever. I'm going to give you a couple of things to think about:
1.) The country was divided on the issue. One half said invade, the other half said "No, wait." Or have we forgotten all the protests we faced?
2.) What information were they privvy to that we weren't? Why were they 'right' when nobody really knew, or were they just on the correct side?
"that would be a japanese university server. you must be american."
Look! Mozira!! RUN!!!
"Admittedly I haven't played it and game reviews are pretty subjective in my mind, but it seems Atari should have spent time makin' a more grounding breaking game gameplay wise than fiddling with making it 64-bit"
Depends on how you look at it. Atari's out to make money, not a better game. It's pretty cheap to detect a 64-bit processor and put a few more game elements in. It means the peeps with Opteron processors have a reason to run out and buy it, just out of curiosity. There's a chance they'd spend only a little bit of money and get a nice little return out of it.
That chance may have been blown now, but hey, what the heck? It's all about moolah!
"Urm correct me if i am wrong - but N64 and howabout the Atari Jaguar? werent these 64bit consoles?"
Well, the 64-bitness of the Jaguar is a bit laughable. But yeah, it's not the first 64-bit game. However, niether of the links appear to say that. (Maybe I didn't read closely enough?) I think it was more a matter of error on the poster's end.
"This seems to be just as far fetched as Apples "Worlds first 64bit desktop computer""
Well.. not that I want to reopen this debate, but the operative word is 'desktop'. I believe Apple very intentionally put that word in there. 64-bit machines that aren't refigerator size have been around for years. But they were not sold as "use it at home!" machines. It really kind of depends on how you define the term 'desktop'. In Apple's defense, it's not like they'd advertise it like "It's the world's first computer that you'd buy your parents that has a 64-bit processor inside it!"
"When are people going to stop allowing the networks to shove this filth down their throats?"
Uh, how exactly are they 'shoving', as opposed to simply providing?
"Look at Windows 98 Second Edition.
What was this, other than a 'bug-fix' upgrade? The only feature added was Internet Connection Sharing, the rest was to make it stable. Those who had the first (highly unstable and crappy) edition had to pay for an upgrade to the second edition."
Err. I was under the impression that SE was more than just 'internet connection sharing". I'm not claiming to be all that knowledgable about it, but I'm fairly sure they had something a little more signficant with it. I'm thinking something to do with USB... or how it handles a certain device. Eh. I dunno.
Though I agree that it wasn't the most exciting update in the world, don't forget that they had SP1 for 98 that was a free download.
"And what about Internet Explorer? Microsoft is now saying that it will not provide a stand-alone version of IE, but that it will be integrated within Longhorn. Those who want a bug fix for IE will therefore have to upgrade to Longhorn."
I see where you're coming from. However, I think we're only getting part of the picture here. First off, I don't think this precludes MS fixing security related issues. XP may not get new features, but that's a different scenario. Second is that Longhorn is a new beast. IE for Longhorn is very likely going to be a very different animal, at least on the software side of it, than it is for XP. Remember their vector based GUI? If the new IE supports that to any competent level, then how could they possibly make that XP compatible?
"Anyway, I'm sure that you can understand, from the above points, why I am of the opinion that it would be likely for a software engineer at Microsoft to come out with such things."
Hmm... no, not really. Frankly, I think Bill's a more likely suspect. Software engineers, at least the ones I've met, wouldn't want to buy software like that, let alone make it. I've actually heard comments like "Ever feel like we're riding in the getaway car?", quoting Dilbert.
I'm not trying to be difficult or overzealous in my point. Just a bit of a hard sell, ya know?
"How cost effective is sending movies this way? I'm pretty sure that compared to the cost of designing, building, launching then maintaining a satellite + gound station + all the specialized gear needed at each screen to do this, it might be cheaper to just UPS a high capacity HDD for each movie."
I can't give you numbers. But I can give you something to chew on: They'd only need to send the film once. Even if the number described by your terms is mind boggling, at least it isn't a multiple of anything.
"If the movie is stored on a hard disk, why send it via sattelite? Just place it on an FTP server and be done with it."
In addition to another point made in response to your comment, I just wanted to add that what you suggest is an exploit away from being looted. If they'll sue a 65 year old Mac using granny for looking like she's downloading content, they're paranoid enough to not even look in that direction.
"Or someone on the inside could get it *BEFORE* it's sent out over the link - and before any watermarks or DRM are put in."
Well, to be fair, that possibility exists in a broader proportion right now. Movies these days are edited digitally. I'm oversimplifying quite a bit here, but somebody at the movie studio could wander in, hit 'Export to AVI', and drum their fingers for a while. I can't say I've ever heard of that happening. (err.. well that rang a bell... wasn't somebody at ILM busted for something like that? Help?) It's not clear to me, and maybe I'm just naieve, that incidents like that would rise noticably in the event of satellite distribution.
"IANA satellite engineer, but apart from any encryption, would there be anything stopping someone with a reciever and the right gear grabbing, ripping and sharing this?"
Oops. Well, yeah, that's a good point. Unless they somehow focus the transmission at the particular theater that could be done. A.) they'd need a dish capable of recieving the data. I'm guessing that wouldn't be hard to build. B.) They'd need to know where to point it. C.) They'd need to know what to tune in on. and D.) They'd need some way of decoding the transmission.
Err not trying to state the obvious here, but I'm just chewing on what you said. If it were the military, I'd say fat chance. But these guys are probably using off-the-shelf, so to speak, services. I doubt they launched their own satellite or wrote their own protocols etc. If I'm even partially right, then it's possible that some smart guy out there could catch the data and do something with it.
I'd love to hear from somebody that can shed some light on this. I know virtually nothing about satellite technology.
"How long before we can download it on eMule?"
Somehow I doubt the file being sent will run in Media Player. They'd have to take the humungoid file and get it to a computer to transcode. That may one day be possible, but there's a couple of things tricky about that:
1.) It'd have to be an inside job involving a firewire drive or something. It'd be easy enough to disable the ports necessary to do that.
2.) It wouldn't be all that hard to send unique identifiers to each theater as the file comes along. (At least from a technological point of view.) If the tools are created, it'd make catching peeps doing this a lot easier.
I am, in no way, saying it won't happen. But if I were a betting man, I'd say the traditional "bring a video camera to the theater" trick will remain popular.
"That's roughly equivalent to saying "ignoring all evidence to the contrary, the hypothesis holds valid."
Really? What evidence?
"What the fuck was your point?"
Though you are right that I haven't met enough engineers in the world to say from first hand experience that few would ever do that, I did not present it that way. Judging from the moderations my comment would recieve, I'd say others have known software engineers to be quite ethical. If you think that's a bunch of hogwash, then how do you explain the Open Source Software out there? Hate to sound like I'm making a cheap karma grab here, but if that isn't a strong demonstration of the general ethical behaviour of software engineers, I don't know what else would convince you.
"Even if you've never heard them say such things, by their actions it would seem that this is exactly how their conversations would go."
Yeah? Name a case where a software engineer suggested that MS sell a fix for a problem they've discovered. I'm genuinely curious, not setting you up for an argument.
"I'm not very familiar with the case either, and I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this case has the potential to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional on these grounds if and only if Blizzard's copy-protection scheme didn't deal with the expiration of the copyright. It strikes me as being a pretty strong case if they approached it as protecting Fair Use Rights and ensuring the game will go into the public domain as it's supposed to. They'd have still lost at this stage because it takes SCOTUS to declare the law unconstitutional, so just to get to the supreme court they have to lose the original case and then win a few appeals. "
... well my life has plenty of thank yous to go in Photoshop's direction.
Oh.. oh oh oh that's a good point. I'm sorry, I misread your original post. Well I certainly hope you're right. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if expiration of copyright is what will do it in. I mean, CSS doesn't do that either to the best of my knowledge. I think the line between copyright expiration and restrictions to legitimate users has been blurred. But, I'm not a lawyer as well. The bit about the EULA acceptance being so broad, well that I can see bringing that particular judgement down. I don't know if that'll have ripples with the DMCA or not... perhaps it'll make it more specific?
Eh my mind is muddy tonight.
"Hey, offtopic, but I recall you work with an animation/film studio? I ran into someone not long ago that's looking for cheap/free post-production tools for independent film makers. She's actually an independent film maker herself. Do you happen to know of any? "
Yep, that's me. Right now I'm working on an animated movie at a small studio. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have a very good answer to your question. My immediate suggestion would be to look at CinePaint. Sadly, I cannot vouch for its feature set but it is free to start with.
If she can scrounge up $1,000 to $1,500, I'd point her here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dvcoll/main.html
You can get Adobe Premiere and After Effects for $1,000. This includes Encore DVD. It's a pain in the ass to use but a full featured DVD production kit, to the best of my understanding. For the full $1,500 she'd get Photoshop as well which
I understand this is nowhere near free, but man she'd have a hell of a toolset for an indpendent filmmaker. After Effects (maybe get that seperately?) is a damn fine compositing program. I can't believe all the cool stuff it lets you do. It's very powerful and well thought out. I understand it's not the fastest kid on the block, but I can personally vouch for its robustness.
A friend of mine is 17 and an aspiring film-maker. He managed to get ahold of the production bundle + a DV camera. Now he makes short movies and burns them to DVD with menus and everything. I'm not talking about simple stuff, either. He has virtual sets created in Lightwave blue screened into the footage. Motion and everything. You wouldn't believe it. I don't! Hehe
Sorry if I sound like an Adobe shill here, but AE startled the heck out of me. I dropped about $600-$700 on AE a couple of years ago, I didn't expect it to be such a big part of my pipeline. I'm so used to spending that kind of money for one big important feature, not a whole new toolset.
I think I should have written my post more clearly. Sorry about that. I wasn't trying to say that Blizzard should be protected by laws, rather that BNetD didn't have a case to begin with. My understanding of the case has faded with time, but the basic gist as I remember it is that Blizzard was using unique identifiers so that they could ban pirated or disruptive copies of Starcraft etc from playing. BnetD allowed people to set up their own servers that disregarded whether or not the #'s were legit. This meant that #'s off the net would suddenly work. This is the type of thing that the DMCA was developed to thrwart.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I'm not supporting the DMCA here nor am I saying Blizzard was right. (Not really saying they're wrong here either... hopefully that'll be clearer in a moment.) By fighting this, BnetD made the DMCA stronger. The DMCA is so broadly written that they didn't have a strong leg to start on. They should have dropped it and let it go. Now there's a stupid judgement on the books that'll make it even easier to prevent them from trying again with Blizzard's later games.
To summarize my point: Never pick a battle when it appears that you're working to undermine the company who is feeding you.