I've never once seen any clarification of the legal status of libdvdcss in the United States. As far as I can tell, hosting the source, using it to watch or copy DVDs, linking to it, or printing it on a t-shirt are all still officially illegal. And... whatever happened to LinDVD? It was the only MPAA sanctioned software based DVD software for Linux and it was only for sale to OEMs. Why haven't they made a commercial version for those of us who are not interested in breaking the (unfair) laws just to watch a DVD on a computer? I'd happily pay $40 for a software DVD player that I knew was "kosher".
1. Don't you think Adobe would sue the pants off of anyone who did this? 2. For those of us used to GIMP, redoing the look and feel to be like Photoshop won't do much good.
I was thinking more along the lines of the typical full color photo they use for passports. To get a decent printout that is indistinguishable from a photo, you'd need at least 300 dpi resolution (which only non-photographer types would think looked like a photo) which won't fit in 64K. But... I don't know about JPEG 2000. Maybe you can get a print quality image in a smaller memory footprint with it.
More importantly, how are they going to fit a decent image for counterfeiting in 64K? Sure, it might be viewable, but it damn sure won't be printable. Monitors have terribly low resolution compared to printers. Now... if the customs folks in all countries are willing to let someone through with a "passport photo" that looks like a character from Donkey Kong, I think we all have a bigger problem.:p
In the "Trial of a Timelord" series (Colin Baker 6th Doctor), the Valyard was supposed to be the Doctor himself BEYOND his 13th regeneration. Sounds like the Doctor changed from a more liberal mindest to a conservative mindset and started thinking selfishly in his old age...;P Of course, I could be wrong. but you'd never know it.
No. But home computers and most office computers aren't a matter of life and death. If they are, then I damn sure don't want them running Windows. When my wife was going in for ultrasounds during her pregnancy I noticed that the ultrasound machines don't run Windows. They were done by GE and appeared to be running a black box OS, which is fine by me because it means that GE is taking full accountability for the use of their equipment. I wouldn't be surprised to find that their OS might be based off of Unix though... Most mission critical systems are. So... stop trolling.
IT/IS should be part of engineering. It has no business being in a business college. Most of the business folks haven't a clue about how to manage PCs. If anything, the person working on a PC should have an engineering background. When I was in college and considered going into IT/IS, I was shocked at how business centric it was. There was more concentration on the basics of using the OS and the applications than there was on circuit design and electronics. Knowing how to point and click is not something that should be taught to people who are going to be working on your computer. They should almost instinctually know that. But that is what is being taught in many IT/IS courses. Knowing how to edit the Windows registry and various config files, filesystem structure and layout, and the way all electronic components of your system operate are what should be taught. None of these things are taught in business colleges. That's why support folks suck so bad.
I've met plenty of people with qualifications (computer science degrees, various certifications, etc..) who couldn't fix the simplest problems or don't even have an understanding of the most basic aspects of the systems. On the other hand, I've met other people who are more than capable and don't even have a college degree or a certification. The bottom line is this: If a person can fix the problem and provide you with an exact description of what caused the problem, and they can reproduce their results, they have the only qualification they need. (ie. they know what they're doing)
The biggest mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that computers are a business. They aren't. They are a technology and therefore you need technologically savvy people to work with them. I have no formal training at all, but most people I know always come to me for help because they know I can figure out and solve any software or hardware issue on a PC. I think it helps that I have a non-formal background in electronics first. I, generally, know how the circuitry works at the hardware level. So it's very easy for me to rule out hardware problems before I explore the software itself. Many times, I find that the culprit is too many apps that are stomping over each other.
When I was a Windows guy, it didn't take me long to discover that most of the instability in my system was caused by all the extras I loaded on for convenience. This was an alien experience to me as it wasn't that way in the Atari ST world I migrated from. I didn't like it, but I wound up finding that the best way to run Windows was to keep it lean and pretty plain vanilla. If I wanted extra apps, I always went for Microsoft products because they usually worked the best with Windows. Norton stuff was very cool, but resulted in a lot of instability (this was Windows 3.1). Then I got sick of having only one place to go shopping and moved to Linux. All problems solved...
The Windows tree is not the Linux tree. The Windows tree is akin to an entire mainstream Linux distribution, except with a tightly integrated code base.
This is a sticking point that people in the Windows camp don't seem to be able to get around.
1. "Linux" is just the kernel. I think that's what this guy was trying to say when he said that the Windows tree is not the Linux tree.
2. A mainstream "GNU/Linux distribution" like Mandrake, RedHat, Fedora, Novell or Debian is more akin to Microsoft Windows Professional + Microsoft Office + Microsoft Plus Pack + Window Blinds + Norton Internet Security + Roxio + [insert any brand of CD/DVD ripping software here] + Development tools + IIS + Microsoft SQL + Abobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro + Outlook. At least for a start.
So, if you are going to compare Microsoft Windows to a mainstream GNU/Linux distribution, you quickly see that the GNU/Linux tree is not the Windows tree as there is a whole lot more source code that does into your average distro and a lot of it is very tightly integrated. This is why it is pretty amazing that all the distros are really good about not just updating the basic "OS" code, but all the bundled apps as well. If Microsoft really released a Windows distribution with all the same functionality as a typical GNU/Linux distro, I have a feeling they'd have an even harder time keeping up security wise. It's interesting to note that the supposed independent studies of Linux vs. Windows always harp on how many more security updates that GNU/Linux distros put out than Microsoft does for Windows. They attack that claiming that there are far more security holes in the OS but still equate Windows as offering the same services with fewer patches needed. However, it quickly becomes obvious that since Windows provides such a small amount of functionality when compared to a GNU/Linux distro, they do not offer the same services. It's highly likely that if they did, their patchlist would rival all GNU/Linux distro's patch lists combined.:)
Take a look at the link to my JE in my SIG. Last week I complained about Wired magazine jumping on this retarded new trend. Why all the Google bashing all of the sudden? It's certainly not coming from people who actually know anything about how to design decent free web services that mean anything. Yahoo has had nothing but a useless search engine, crappy web mail and a useless bunch of junk on their portal for as long as I can see. Google, on the other hand has begun offering much better services and they do it by spending less money and having a smaller staff than Yahoo. They make extensive use of mostly standards compliant protocols/web design tools. And they use a Linux cluster to do it all. How much better can you get than that? In my view, all Yahoo had during their boom was a bunch of venture capital that they squandered foolishly. All they are trying to do right now is get more venture capital. Witness the STUPID notion that by upping their Yahoo mail quota to 1 gig, that they somehow compete with GMail. Bzzt! Wrong. They don't "get it". It's not the storage space stupid. It's the archiving, mail search and threading features that make GMail a cut above the rest. GMail almost makes mail as quick and easy as IM, but with the permanence of e-mail. Yahoo messenger blows chunks. Yahoo search engine is completely useless unless you're in the first grade and can't do a proper search. Sorry... Yahoo is nothing but a bunch of losers who focus more on money than technology. Technology is what this is all about, leave the money grubbing to the suits.
...a friend of mine and I agreed that eventually the language would evolve into a series of grunts with music following suit by being only one or two notes at a time. The music thing has happened (see electronica). The language is getting there.
I am reminded of Libermann Computers (the scammers who sold rebranded PC hardware as their own with faked designs on their website). Plenty of promises and mockups of what could be, but probably won't. It's nice to dream because that is one place that "great things (tm)" come from. But it's also important to have your head firmly grounded in what is possible with today's technology. Many of these things aren't possible in a cost effective way yet. Maybe in two to five years, but not yet. Just as a sidenote, when I first saw L Computers, I was very excited about the possibilities. But after seeing them disintegrate, I am not too keen on vapor.
Typical clueless troll. The kernel has nothing to do with this. The person grousing about the video formats should be up on the latest codecs. Theora and MPEG4 are where things are at these days. Would you also attack someone who told a Windows user to install RealPlayer to watch RealMedia format files on their PC by saying, "The typical Windows Power-user response."I don't know what your problem is... Everything works fine on my particular installation. You must be doing something wrong. Try rewriting the Windows kernal so that it's exactly like mine and then it should work for you"? Didn't think so. Go fuck yourself.
So your proposal is to stop allowing people to profit from their creations?
Copyright law today rarely protects the financial interests of the people who created the work. It mostly protects the financial interests of the distributor who do not fairly compensate the artists. The artists themselves do not have the right to copy their own works. This is why all media publishing industries are so screwed right now. I remember when I was back in audio production school, I was told that most employers in the music business consider all work that you do (even at home on your own equipment) to be their property. This is written into the employment contract. Doesn't sound like a way to protect the interests of the people who are actually creating the works. If the creators of a work want to profit from their creation, they are far better going it alone and utilizing the power of today's technology for distribution. At worst, they could gain some notoriety if their work is any good. But as soon as they sign up with a label, they are going to get screwed. The statement you made hat I am nit-picking should be phrased:
So your proposal is to stop allowing the major labels/motion picture distributors to profit from their acquisitions?
If you were an artist, you'd "get it". Sound to me like you're a "suit" or a wannabe business person.
Wow that's a loaded question. (Donning the asbestos suit and vowing to not respond to any replies)
DRM is the result of people trying to find a way to contain the powers that digital media afford the end-user (note that these are not rights granted, only abilities):
1. Copying 2. Widespread Distribution 3. Alteration 4. Inclusion within other works (think the Gray Album)
These abilities that were once "protected" from end-users by factors such as cost and level of difficulty have become extremely easy to acquire.
Copying: In the past, if you wanted to make multiple copies of an album, you had to purchase a reel-to-reel or cassette deck, purchase tape, and then sit down and actually make individual copies of the album that would take the full length of playing the album. If you were a "big time" pirate who sold bootlegs, you could invest in duplication hardware which would cost a lot. Both of these approaches presented significant barriers to the average person from easily copying an album. Today, it's as simple as ripping a CD to some lossy format and then dragging and dropping those files to your shared P2P folder. At most, you might spend an hour on a slow machine waiting for your CD to finish ripping. In most cases on modern PCs it's more like five minutes per CD. The financial and time expenses have disappeared.
Widespread Distribution: In the past, you needed to be able to make each individual copy yourself or sink a lot of money into a duplicator. This was again a set of financial and time expenses that most people with the exception of real pirates weren't willing to deal with. In the digital realm, the time spent is minimal (ie. dragging your ripped files to your P2P client's shared folder) and the expense is justifiable since the "duplicator" is also your word processor, game system, entertainment unit, personal information manager, etc... Where you wouldn't have spent $5000 or more on a tape duplicator and the recurring cost of blank cassettes to distribute, You'll happily spend $1000-2000 on a system that will do a whole lot of other stuff too.
Alteration: Not only has it become easy to copy music, but to alter it as well. Again, in the past, if you wanted to edit a recording, your only option was a reel-to-reel deck, splicing block and splicing tape and a LOT of patience. Having a four or eight track reel-to-reel deck helped as well. But the cost for investing in these tools and the time required, not to mention the possible errors made audio manipulation something that the average person wouldn't be interested in doing. Today, you have many options. There are commercial audio editing programs, some of which have multitrack capabilties. The average PC is more than enough to do eight or 16 track work. There are also free audio editing programs (Audacity, Rezound, Ardour, Protux) that can do far more than the old reel-to-reel decks. Again, the cost is lifted and the only investment a person needs to make is time to learn to edit. This means that producing programming is no longer the exclusive realm of radio. This is why internet radio took off in the early 90s. Now... we have podcasting as well.
Inclusion: Combine the abilities to alter and copy and you now have the third ability for more enterprising people to include previous works in their own work. Most people aren't aware of the intricacies of copyright law, so the potential for copyright violation is extremely great. Considering that copyright law has been perverted to protect the interests of the large distributors rather than those of the creator of the work, it's easy to see why DRM is so desirable to them. It allows them to limit or take away the abilties that comptuers give them. Sadly, in the case of inclusion, this prevents new and interesting works from being built upon older work.
I am not a proponent of piracy or DRM. Personally, if DRM is going to keep me from being able to build my own devices, then I have a problem with it. Just as I should be
Hmmmm... also not trolling here, but I'm not sure what to make of your response. I really find GMail's interface to be much more responsive, convenient and full featured than any of the webmail interfaces I've used. (Hotmail, Yahoo mail, iMail, iPlanet Messenger Express, Squirrelmail) Even better is the threded conversations feature. It's more akin to IM in that way and my friends and I use it that way. It seems to offer more conveniences overall and it responds quickly. Every other web mail system I've tried is slow to respond and offers to many useless features. For example, iPlanet Messenger Express has a button in it's compose window that only shows up in IE. This button allows you to select either HTML or Plain Text compose formats. I don't know too many people who use HTML mail other than the AOL crowd. Why even offer it? HTML mail is a scourge and should be removed from all mail clients and web mail interfaces. It doesn't offer any useful functionality that can't be accomplished by attaching a document (Word, OpenOffice, etc...) and creates nothing but headaches for mail admins everywhere. How many times a day do you want to handle calls from people asking why their friend who uses "X" mail client can't read their e-mail? If it was all plain text with only MIME attachments, this wouldn't be a problem. Either way... I find GMail to be the best web mail interface I've ever used. Of course, I also think Dasher is the best alternative text entry interface and a friend of mine told me that he finds it confusing and my wife gets motion sickness looking at it. So don't take my opinions too seriously.;P
In my ongoing rail against the glossy waste of paperWired Magazine I get miffed about their anti-Google piece in last month's edition. This is just further proof to me that Yahoo! doesn't have much to offer other than a goofy logo, lackluster services and that stupid yodle. Here's a tip Yahoo!: It's not just the 1 Gig mail capacity that has people excited about GMail. It's the ultralight and very powerful UI design and feature set of their webmail application. Back when Yahoo! was riding high, the only other thing they had going for them was lots of venture capital. Always remember this rule: lots of venture capital does not guarantee success, a decent product, or sensible use of that capital. Always put your money on people who have actually produced something valuable.
That's my point though... It was CHEAPER for me to put the money into the backend system back in 1997 ($2000) and then over time buy the two $150 laptops as terminals. For a total cost of about $2300 over eight years, I have a system that has been perfectly usable over that entire time. Granted, when I first bought it, I did use it as a PC an then I got wise and moved to the thin client model. That average family plunks down about $800-1000 on a mid-range PC every two to three years when they find out that the latest app they want won't run on their current system.
I will admit that I'm not a typical example of the average user, but there is no reason this stuff can't be prepackaged and managed by a service provider on an upgrade basis. But I do agree with one thing that the poster I originally replied to said. If you are into serious computer power, thin client computing probably won't work. I will also say that those who need a lot of power are rare...
Down near the end of that JE is a link to an old account of mine that explains how to use VNC and GDM together for session management. It's all pretty straightforward. I'll admit that one problem with my 'vncconnect' script is that if the remote desktop was left connected on one laptop, it will get disconnected by your new connection. This, in and of itself isn't a problem. What is a problem is that the OpenSSH tunnel (and esd server if used) will still be running on the other system. Occasionally I have to go back in and clean up the left over processes. I need to write a little more logic into the script to check for those orphaned processes. Not really a showstopper though...
There are three laptops in total (one supplied by work and the other two are mine).
1. Two of the laptops (mine) are old Toshibas that cost about $150 each 2. The work laptop is an HP Compaq nx9010
All of them run a stripped down version of RedHat 9 with just enough support for X window, Gnome Panel, VNC4, ESD, and OpenSSH. Of course there's more stuff in there and I havent' worked hard to lighten it that much, but it's just enough to fit on those small HDs. The Toshibas are using D-Link 802.11b NICs and the Compaq has a built in Broadcom Wireless NIC that isn't supoprted in Linux. To get the Broadcom to work, I needed to use NDISWrapper which loads the Windows driver into the Linux kernel.
Well... I moved my family to a thin client system based on RedHat 9 a few years back. So far it's worked out great. There is very little functionality that most users need that require a fullblown PC sitting in front of them. The current list of apps we use in thin client model are:
VNC +GDM - Remote Desktop Functionality GNOME - Desktop Environment Firefox - Web Thunderbird - Mail Sunbird - Calendaring OpenOffice.org - Office Apps GIMP - Image editing Xine - Media player XMMS - MP3/OGG player WINE - For those "must have" Windows apps/games GAIM - IM DOSBox - For old DOS games OpenVPN - To remotely access our VNC desktops
Printing is handled by the centrally attached Epson Photo printer and the "thin clients" are laptops with wireless NICs, custom scripts and VNC clients.
It works very well for our needs. I would say that the only needs not met by this set up are things like scanning photos (since the server is headless in the basement, putting a scanner down there would be inconvenient) and 3D games that need fast screen performance. This would be better if I moved to 802.11G probably. (hehehe.. I've played Quake 3 using VNC over an SSH tunnel viw a DSL line. Too slow to be playable, but it works) My point with all of this? It's possible to do this sort of thing. The fact that a non-geek like me can set it up indicates that it can certainly be done by experienced developers. It's just that no one has tried hard enough or had a decent plan to do it. Realistically, if the bandwidth was available on a wireless device and it was no more than a display, kb, mouse and audio terminal for a really powerful backend box, this WOULD take off for the home user. Why should our desktops be married to one location? That's just stupid. Your desktop should be accesible everywhere with all functionality available. The only thing that needs to catch up is bandwidth.
HAHAHA!!! Cheers ackthpt! You almost made me spit my drink out all over my keyboard with this comment. But yes, I concur. Your example is much more accurate than the parent poster.
This is about as stupid as the folks who are claiming that TV causes ADD. It all comes down to how the computer is used by the student. If it's used to watch streaming media, listen to internet radio, IM all their friends and play the latest cool games, then yeah... I would ave to say it won't do much to help these kids academically. However, if it's used as a reference tool for the student to look up information online which they then have to vet against print references at their local library... Or, if they use it to write their papers, learn a programming language, or create original artwork/music, then I would have to say it probably increases their chances of being smarter.
Get over it. The computer is not going to take a lazy kid and turn them into a genius. Only really attentive parents who actually spend time with their kids and teach them the correct way to use a computer deserve to have the kids with some chance of being a little smarter. The folks who want a "compuparent" or "videositter" deserve what they get.
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I've never once seen any clarification of the legal status of libdvdcss in the United States. As far as I can tell, hosting the source, using it to watch or copy DVDs, linking to it, or printing it on a t-shirt are all still officially illegal. And... whatever happened to LinDVD? It was the only MPAA sanctioned software based DVD software for Linux and it was only for sale to OEMs. Why haven't they made a commercial version for those of us who are not interested in breaking the (unfair) laws just to watch a DVD on a computer? I'd happily pay $40 for a software DVD player that I knew was "kosher".
Collision imminent! Collision imminent!
Methinks this is an April Fool's Day joke.
1. Don't you think Adobe would sue the pants off of anyone who did this?
2. For those of us used to GIMP, redoing the look and feel to be like Photoshop won't do much good.
I was thinking more along the lines of the typical full color photo they use for passports. To get a decent printout that is indistinguishable from a photo, you'd need at least 300 dpi resolution (which only non-photographer types would think looked like a photo) which won't fit in 64K. But... I don't know about JPEG 2000. Maybe you can get a print quality image in a smaller memory footprint with it.
More importantly, how are they going to fit a decent image for counterfeiting in 64K? Sure, it might be viewable, but it damn sure won't be printable. Monitors have terribly low resolution compared to printers. Now... if the customs folks in all countries are willing to let someone through with a "passport photo" that looks like a character from Donkey Kong, I think we all have a bigger problem. :p
In the "Trial of a Timelord" series (Colin Baker 6th Doctor), the Valyard was supposed to be the Doctor himself BEYOND his 13th regeneration. Sounds like the Doctor changed from a more liberal mindest to a conservative mindset and started thinking selfishly in his old age... ;P Of course, I could be wrong. but you'd never know it.
No. But home computers and most office computers aren't a matter of life and death. If they are, then I damn sure don't want them running Windows. When my wife was going in for ultrasounds during her pregnancy I noticed that the ultrasound machines don't run Windows. They were done by GE and appeared to be running a black box OS, which is fine by me because it means that GE is taking full accountability for the use of their equipment. I wouldn't be surprised to find that their OS might be based off of Unix though... Most mission critical systems are. So... stop trolling.
IT/IS should be part of engineering. It has no business being in a business college. Most of the business folks haven't a clue about how to manage PCs. If anything, the person working on a PC should have an engineering background. When I was in college and considered going into IT/IS, I was shocked at how business centric it was. There was more concentration on the basics of using the OS and the applications than there was on circuit design and electronics. Knowing how to point and click is not something that should be taught to people who are going to be working on your computer. They should almost instinctually know that. But that is what is being taught in many IT/IS courses. Knowing how to edit the Windows registry and various config files, filesystem structure and layout, and the way all electronic components of your system operate are what should be taught. None of these things are taught in business colleges. That's why support folks suck so bad.
I've met plenty of people with qualifications (computer science degrees, various certifications, etc..) who couldn't fix the simplest problems or don't even have an understanding of the most basic aspects of the systems. On the other hand, I've met other people who are more than capable and don't even have a college degree or a certification. The bottom line is this: If a person can fix the problem and provide you with an exact description of what caused the problem, and they can reproduce their results, they have the only qualification they need. (ie. they know what they're doing)
The biggest mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that computers are a business. They aren't. They are a technology and therefore you need technologically savvy people to work with them. I have no formal training at all, but most people I know always come to me for help because they know I can figure out and solve any software or hardware issue on a PC. I think it helps that I have a non-formal background in electronics first. I, generally, know how the circuitry works at the hardware level. So it's very easy for me to rule out hardware problems before I explore the software itself. Many times, I find that the culprit is too many apps that are stomping over each other.
When I was a Windows guy, it didn't take me long to discover that most of the instability in my system was caused by all the extras I loaded on for convenience. This was an alien experience to me as it wasn't that way in the Atari ST world I migrated from. I didn't like it, but I wound up finding that the best way to run Windows was to keep it lean and pretty plain vanilla. If I wanted extra apps, I always went for Microsoft products because they usually worked the best with Windows. Norton stuff was very cool, but resulted in a lot of instability (this was Windows 3.1). Then I got sick of having only one place to go shopping and moved to Linux. All problems solved...
This is a sticking point that people in the Windows camp don't seem to be able to get around.
1. "Linux" is just the kernel. I think that's what this guy was trying to say when he said that the Windows tree is not the Linux tree.
2. A mainstream "GNU/Linux distribution" like Mandrake, RedHat, Fedora, Novell or Debian is more akin to Microsoft Windows Professional + Microsoft Office + Microsoft Plus Pack + Window Blinds + Norton Internet Security + Roxio + [insert any brand of CD/DVD ripping software here] + Development tools + IIS + Microsoft SQL + Abobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro + Outlook. At least for a start.
So, if you are going to compare Microsoft Windows to a mainstream GNU/Linux distribution, you quickly see that the GNU/Linux tree is not the Windows tree as there is a whole lot more source code that does into your average distro and a lot of it is very tightly integrated. This is why it is pretty amazing that all the distros are really good about not just updating the basic "OS" code, but all the bundled apps as well. If Microsoft really released a Windows distribution with all the same functionality as a typical GNU/Linux distro, I have a feeling they'd have an even harder time keeping up security wise. It's interesting to note that the supposed independent studies of Linux vs. Windows always harp on how many more security updates that GNU/Linux distros put out than Microsoft does for Windows. They attack that claiming that there are far more security holes in the OS but still equate Windows as offering the same services with fewer patches needed. However, it quickly becomes obvious that since Windows provides such a small amount of functionality when compared to a GNU/Linux distro, they do not offer the same services. It's highly likely that if they did, their patchlist would rival all GNU/Linux distro's patch lists combined. :)
Take a look at the link to my JE in my SIG. Last week I complained about Wired magazine jumping on this retarded new trend. Why all the Google bashing all of the sudden? It's certainly not coming from people who actually know anything about how to design decent free web services that mean anything. Yahoo has had nothing but a useless search engine, crappy web mail and a useless bunch of junk on their portal for as long as I can see. Google, on the other hand has begun offering much better services and they do it by spending less money and having a smaller staff than Yahoo. They make extensive use of mostly standards compliant protocols/web design tools. And they use a Linux cluster to do it all. How much better can you get than that? In my view, all Yahoo had during their boom was a bunch of venture capital that they squandered foolishly. All they are trying to do right now is get more venture capital. Witness the STUPID notion that by upping their Yahoo mail quota to 1 gig, that they somehow compete with GMail. Bzzt! Wrong. They don't "get it". It's not the storage space stupid. It's the archiving, mail search and threading features that make GMail a cut above the rest. GMail almost makes mail as quick and easy as IM, but with the permanence of e-mail. Yahoo messenger blows chunks. Yahoo search engine is completely useless unless you're in the first grade and can't do a proper search. Sorry... Yahoo is nothing but a bunch of losers who focus more on money than technology. Technology is what this is all about, leave the money grubbing to the suits.
...a friend of mine and I agreed that eventually the language would evolve into a series of grunts with music following suit by being only one or two notes at a time. The music thing has happened (see electronica). The language is getting there.
I am reminded of Libermann Computers (the scammers who sold rebranded PC hardware as their own with faked designs on their website). Plenty of promises and mockups of what could be, but probably won't. It's nice to dream because that is one place that "great things (tm)" come from. But it's also important to have your head firmly grounded in what is possible with today's technology. Many of these things aren't possible in a cost effective way yet. Maybe in two to five years, but not yet. Just as a sidenote, when I first saw L Computers, I was very excited about the possibilities. But after seeing them disintegrate, I am not too keen on vapor.
Typical clueless troll. The kernel has nothing to do with this. The person grousing about the video formats should be up on the latest codecs. Theora and MPEG4 are where things are at these days. Would you also attack someone who told a Windows user to install RealPlayer to watch RealMedia format files on their PC by saying, "The typical Windows Power-user response."I don't know what your problem is... Everything works fine on my particular installation. You must be doing something wrong. Try rewriting the Windows kernal so that it's exactly like mine and then it should work for you"? Didn't think so. Go fuck yourself.
Copyright law today rarely protects the financial interests of the people who created the work. It mostly protects the financial interests of the distributor who do not fairly compensate the artists. The artists themselves do not have the right to copy their own works. This is why all media publishing industries are so screwed right now. I remember when I was back in audio production school, I was told that most employers in the music business consider all work that you do (even at home on your own equipment) to be their property. This is written into the employment contract. Doesn't sound like a way to protect the interests of the people who are actually creating the works. If the creators of a work want to profit from their creation, they are far better going it alone and utilizing the power of today's technology for distribution. At worst, they could gain some notoriety if their work is any good. But as soon as they sign up with a label, they are going to get screwed. The statement you made hat I am nit-picking should be phrased:
So your proposal is to stop allowing the major labels/motion picture distributors to profit from their acquisitions?
If you were an artist, you'd "get it". Sound to me like you're a "suit" or a wannabe business person.
Wow that's a loaded question. (Donning the asbestos suit and vowing to not respond to any replies)
DRM is the result of people trying to find a way to contain the powers that digital media afford the end-user (note that these are not rights granted, only abilities):
1. Copying
2. Widespread Distribution
3. Alteration
4. Inclusion within other works (think the Gray Album)
These abilities that were once "protected" from end-users by factors such as cost and level of difficulty have become extremely easy to acquire.
Copying: In the past, if you wanted to make multiple copies of an album, you had to purchase a reel-to-reel or cassette deck, purchase tape, and then sit down and actually make individual copies of the album that would take the full length of playing the album. If you were a "big time" pirate who sold bootlegs, you could invest in duplication hardware which would cost a lot. Both of these approaches presented significant barriers to the average person from easily copying an album. Today, it's as simple as ripping a CD to some lossy format and then dragging and dropping those files to your shared P2P folder. At most, you might spend an hour on a slow machine waiting for your CD to finish ripping. In most cases on modern PCs it's more like five minutes per CD. The financial and time expenses have disappeared.
Widespread Distribution: In the past, you needed to be able to make each individual copy yourself or sink a lot of money into a duplicator. This was again a set of financial and time expenses that most people with the exception of real pirates weren't willing to deal with. In the digital realm, the time spent is minimal (ie. dragging your ripped files to your P2P client's shared folder) and the expense is justifiable since the "duplicator" is also your word processor, game system, entertainment unit, personal information manager, etc... Where you wouldn't have spent $5000 or more on a tape duplicator and the recurring cost of blank cassettes to distribute, You'll happily spend $1000-2000 on a system that will do a whole lot of other stuff too.
Alteration: Not only has it become easy to copy music, but to alter it as well. Again, in the past, if you wanted to edit a recording, your only option was a reel-to-reel deck, splicing block and splicing tape and a LOT of patience. Having a four or eight track reel-to-reel deck helped as well. But the cost for investing in these tools and the time required, not to mention the possible errors made audio manipulation something that the average person wouldn't be interested in doing. Today, you have many options. There are commercial audio editing programs, some of which have multitrack capabilties. The average PC is more than enough to do eight or 16 track work. There are also free audio editing programs (Audacity, Rezound, Ardour, Protux) that can do far more than the old reel-to-reel decks. Again, the cost is lifted and the only investment a person needs to make is time to learn to edit. This means that producing programming is no longer the exclusive realm of radio. This is why internet radio took off in the early 90s. Now... we have podcasting as well.
Inclusion: Combine the abilities to alter and copy and you now have the third ability for more enterprising people to include previous works in their own work. Most people aren't aware of the intricacies of copyright law, so the potential for copyright violation is extremely great. Considering that copyright law has been perverted to protect the interests of the large distributors rather than those of the creator of the work, it's easy to see why DRM is so desirable to them. It allows them to limit or take away the abilties that comptuers give them. Sadly, in the case of inclusion, this prevents new and interesting works from being built upon older work.
I am not a proponent of piracy or DRM. Personally, if DRM is going to keep me from being able to build my own devices, then I have a problem with it. Just as I should be
Hmmmm... also not trolling here, but I'm not sure what to make of your response. I really find GMail's interface to be much more responsive, convenient and full featured than any of the webmail interfaces I've used. (Hotmail, Yahoo mail, iMail, iPlanet Messenger Express, Squirrelmail) Even better is the threded conversations feature. It's more akin to IM in that way and my friends and I use it that way. It seems to offer more conveniences overall and it responds quickly. Every other web mail system I've tried is slow to respond and offers to many useless features. For example, iPlanet Messenger Express has a button in it's compose window that only shows up in IE. This button allows you to select either HTML or Plain Text compose formats. I don't know too many people who use HTML mail other than the AOL crowd. Why even offer it? HTML mail is a scourge and should be removed from all mail clients and web mail interfaces. It doesn't offer any useful functionality that can't be accomplished by attaching a document (Word, OpenOffice, etc...) and creates nothing but headaches for mail admins everywhere. How many times a day do you want to handle calls from people asking why their friend who uses "X" mail client can't read their e-mail? If it was all plain text with only MIME attachments, this wouldn't be a problem. Either way... I find GMail to be the best web mail interface I've ever used. Of course, I also think Dasher is the best alternative text entry interface and a friend of mine told me that he finds it confusing and my wife gets motion sickness looking at it. So don't take my opinions too seriously. ;P
In my ongoing rail against the glossy waste of paperWired Magazine I get miffed about their anti-Google piece in last month's edition. This is just further proof to me that Yahoo! doesn't have much to offer other than a goofy logo, lackluster services and that stupid yodle. Here's a tip Yahoo!: It's not just the 1 Gig mail capacity that has people excited about GMail. It's the ultralight and very powerful UI design and feature set of their webmail application. Back when Yahoo! was riding high, the only other thing they had going for them was lots of venture capital. Always remember this rule: lots of venture capital does not guarantee success, a decent product, or sensible use of that capital. Always put your money on people who have actually produced something valuable.
That's my point though... It was CHEAPER for me to put the money into the backend system back in 1997 ($2000) and then over time buy the two $150 laptops as terminals. For a total cost of about $2300 over eight years, I have a system that has been perfectly usable over that entire time. Granted, when I first bought it, I did use it as a PC an then I got wise and moved to the thin client model. That average family plunks down about $800-1000 on a mid-range PC every two to three years when they find out that the latest app they want won't run on their current system.
I will admit that I'm not a typical example of the average user, but there is no reason this stuff can't be prepackaged and managed by a service provider on an upgrade basis. But I do agree with one thing that the poster I originally replied to said. If you are into serious computer power, thin client computing probably won't work. I will also say that those who need a lot of power are rare...
Down near the end of that JE is a link to an old account of mine that explains how to use VNC and GDM together for session management. It's all pretty straightforward. I'll admit that one problem with my 'vncconnect' script is that if the remote desktop was left connected on one laptop, it will get disconnected by your new connection. This, in and of itself isn't a problem. What is a problem is that the OpenSSH tunnel (and esd server if used) will still be running on the other system. Occasionally I have to go back in and clean up the left over processes. I need to write a little more logic into the script to check for those orphaned processes. Not really a showstopper though...
There are three laptops in total (one supplied by work and the other two are mine).
1. Two of the laptops (mine) are old Toshibas that cost about $150 each
2. The work laptop is an HP Compaq nx9010
All of them run a stripped down version of RedHat 9 with just enough support for X window, Gnome Panel, VNC4, ESD, and OpenSSH. Of course there's more stuff in there and I havent' worked hard to lighten it that much, but it's just enough to fit on those small HDs. The Toshibas are using D-Link 802.11b NICs and the Compaq has a built in Broadcom Wireless NIC that isn't supoprted in Linux. To get the Broadcom to work, I needed to use NDISWrapper which loads the Windows driver into the Linux kernel.
Well... I moved my family to a thin client system based on RedHat 9 a few years back. So far it's worked out great. There is very little functionality that most users need that require a fullblown PC sitting in front of them. The current list of apps we use in thin client model are:
VNC +GDM - Remote Desktop Functionality
GNOME - Desktop Environment
Firefox - Web
Thunderbird - Mail
Sunbird - Calendaring
OpenOffice.org - Office Apps
GIMP - Image editing
Xine - Media player
XMMS - MP3/OGG player
WINE - For those "must have" Windows apps/games
GAIM - IM
DOSBox - For old DOS games
OpenVPN - To remotely access our VNC desktops
Printing is handled by the centrally attached Epson Photo printer and the "thin clients" are laptops with wireless NICs, custom scripts and VNC clients.
It works very well for our needs. I would say that the only needs not met by this set up are things like scanning photos (since the server is headless in the basement, putting a scanner down there would be inconvenient) and 3D games that need fast screen performance. This would be better if I moved to 802.11G probably. (hehehe.. I've played Quake 3 using VNC over an SSH tunnel viw a DSL line. Too slow to be playable, but it works) My point with all of this? It's possible to do this sort of thing. The fact that a non-geek like me can set it up indicates that it can certainly be done by experienced developers. It's just that no one has tried hard enough or had a decent plan to do it. Realistically, if the bandwidth was available on a wireless device and it was no more than a display, kb, mouse and audio terminal for a really powerful backend box, this WOULD take off for the home user. Why should our desktops be married to one location? That's just stupid. Your desktop should be accesible everywhere with all functionality available. The only thing that needs to catch up is bandwidth.
What is it I have wrong? Was it my estimation of the size of a Shuffle vs. the size of Bob Goatse's... um... "cavity"? ;P
Why yes. Because all "secret societies" have "secret underpants" dontcha know? ;P
HAHAHA!!! Cheers ackthpt! You almost made me spit my drink out all over my keyboard with this comment. But yes, I concur. Your example is much more accurate than the parent poster.
Get over it. The computer is not going to take a lazy kid and turn them into a genius. Only really attentive parents who actually spend time with their kids and teach them the correct way to use a computer deserve to have the kids with some chance of being a little smarter. The folks who want a "compuparent" or "videositter" deserve what they get.