do you really think it's worth it for a neighbor to snarf whatever you're watching out of the air? Is it really worth breaking your WEP key to get access to whatever show you're watching? If he's smart enough to intercept your transmissions, he's smart enough to steal cable/satellite service himself and bypass the middleman.
And let's face it - the common, honest person doesn't know how to program their VCR because there's no economic incentive to learn. But give CD ripping software and/or DeCSS to a bunch of average kiddies, and the result is the current state of PtP networks - anything you want is free for the taking. And that is why the content holders are going broke today.
The responses from many members of our community to this sort of
development is as predictable as it is passionate: "how can they
dare to take away our rights to the content we pay for?"
Well, the truth of the matter is a little bit more complicated. Let's take
a look at what Phillips and the IP holders are trying to do here before we
jump to any conclusions.
Basically, the large media companies want control over their content
because they want to "keep the honest people honest." Though this sounds
very Big Brotherish in nature, keep in mind the fact that if 80%, 90%, or
100% of the population could make unlimited, perfect copies of digital
media to share with their friends, it would likely put the entire industry
out of business.
The part of DRM that many people here miss is that it is always
breakable. And we geeks are the ones who will always have access to
the knowledge, technology, and software that allows us to circumvent these
schemes. And you may be surprised to hear it, but the media companies
really don't care whether or not a few of us slashdot geeks, living
in our parents' basements, can copy a DVD or decrypt a wireless feed from
our satellite system. They care about tools, like DeCSS, that could
potentially be used by millions of Windows-using lusers to rip them off,
and that is the only reason why they cared enough to sue 2600 into
oblivion.
So, this is yet another area in which we can enjoy our superiority to
average non-geeks. While they "pay per play" on their new HDTV sets and
are forced to pay for content, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our
labor. We've worked hard for this right, and there's nothing "they" can do
to take it away from us. We deserve it.
My last job was as a high-level manager at a well-known game company, and I can tell
you that there are a few simple economic forces that keep most of the old,
discontinued games in closed source format forever. Consider the
following:
The manufacturers have a nonexistent economic incentive to give
away their work for free. If you look at it from their viewpoint, you will
see that the best they can do is to not lose money from the
proposition.
Most software houses have licensed proprietary pieces of code or business processes from other companies,
and they did not pay for the right of unlimited distribution. A vendor
notorious for continuing this practice, then blaming the fact that its main
product is still completely closed source, is Sun.
Companies know that they can quickly gain popularity amongst open
source supporters by releasing their code, so this often provides an
impetus as it could lead to better sales for newer products from the
resultant goodwill.
Giving old products away to the general public has certain
specific and often harmful tax consequences. Effectively the companies are
declaring the value of their goods to be zero, which keeps them from using
the standard 20-year depreciation chart to deal with unsold inventory. In
a nutshell, this means that there are huge tax benefits to not releasing
old software as open source.
And lastly, code reuse is rampant because of the short development
cycle of most games. I have seen code from Apple II games from 1987 show
up in brand new product releases in 2001. Giving your code away gives your
competitors an edge, and nobody wants to do that.
As futile as it may sound, it is important for us all to contact our
federal representatives and urge them to provide tax credits to companies
when they release open source software. That would be a very good way to
swing the economic incentives in our favor, and possibly even help out
struggling OSS companies like Caldera and SGI.
My Slackware box isn't the least bit bloated. Maybe if you're running Red Hat or Mandrake, Linux could seem a bit more bloated.
Pray tell how a UNIX port would give you LESS freedom?
Because Office docs would become a de-facto UNIX standard, just as they are in the Windows world. Thus, more UNIX users would need to rely on MS software.
Who'd bother to hack a hack?
Anybody who wants to get the software for free. (a.k.a. just about every user on slashdot)
Well, let's just take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of seeing
an MS Office port to UNIX. First, the cons:
Bloat. MS Office defies the basic principles of UNIX. It will
probably need to run as root and make our systems unstable. Do we need
this?
No freedom. This is a step in the wrong direction for those of us who
prefer to use 'cvs update' instead of service packs to update our systems.
Monopoly leveraging. Microsoft will undoubtedly engineer their.Net
"features" into new versions of Office. Don't be surprised if you, as a
UNIX user, will need a Passport account just to run Word.
Monopoly extension. Why would anyone work on improving Koffice,
StarOffice, or LaTeX if MS Office exists on the UNIX platform? The
competitors would start out at a huge disadvantage and know there's no
place in the market for them.
Now, on the plus side:
User friendliness. MS Office provides a seamless transition for
lusers who have grown up with Windows and don't know anything else.
Hackability. UNIX is a far superior platform for hackers because of
the wide array of debugging tools available, so it will make reverse
engineers' jobs easier.
It is obvious that the cons outweigh the pros here by sheer numbers. But
given the recent strides made by the Koffice team, it will only be a matter
of time before their product is superior to MS Office in every respect.
Thermal compound is optional and isn?t required. If you?re
going to use thermal compound, I suggest you scrape off the thermal pad on
the bottom of the Volcano 7. We suggest the use of Artic Silver II which is
one of the best thermal compound solutions available. This can be found for
$8.50 from our friends at Heatsink Factory as well.
A few weeks ago, I finished putting together a shiny new Athlon XP 1900+
for my son, and was very disappointed to see that heatsink grease is indeed
necessary on the newer processors. The CPU and power supply fan worked
just fine, the heatsink was in very close contact with the CPU, but there
was no grease. What happened when I turned it on nearly made me cry: the
CPU overheated within minutes of seeing the KDE desktop on this new system,
and I was out $200 for a new CPU.
I learned my lesson the hard way: don't try to skimp on thermal grease,
especially on the new Athlons. They run hotter than ever now and you're
risking your system's life if you don't take the proper precautions.
Slashdot Mirror
And let's face it - the common, honest person doesn't know how to program their VCR because there's no economic incentive to learn. But give CD ripping software and/or DeCSS to a bunch of average kiddies, and the result is the current state of PtP networks - anything you want is free for the taking. And that is why the content holders are going broke today.
-Uncle
Basically, the large media companies want control over their content because they want to "keep the honest people honest." Though this sounds very Big Brotherish in nature, keep in mind the fact that if 80%, 90%, or 100% of the population could make unlimited, perfect copies of digital media to share with their friends, it would likely put the entire industry out of business.
The part of DRM that many people here miss is that it is always breakable. And we geeks are the ones who will always have access to the knowledge, technology, and software that allows us to circumvent these schemes. And you may be surprised to hear it, but the media companies really don't care whether or not a few of us slashdot geeks, living in our parents' basements, can copy a DVD or decrypt a wireless feed from our satellite system. They care about tools, like DeCSS, that could potentially be used by millions of Windows-using lusers to rip them off, and that is the only reason why they cared enough to sue 2600 into oblivion.
So, this is yet another area in which we can enjoy our superiority to average non-geeks. While they "pay per play" on their new HDTV sets and are forced to pay for content, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor. We've worked hard for this right, and there's nothing "they" can do to take it away from us. We deserve it.
-Isaac
As futile as it may sound, it is important for us all to contact our federal representatives and urge them to provide tax credits to companies when they release open source software. That would be a very good way to swing the economic incentives in our favor, and possibly even help out struggling OSS companies like Caldera and SGI.
uncle isaac
My Slackware box isn't the least bit bloated. Maybe if you're running Red Hat or Mandrake, Linux could seem a bit more bloated.
Pray tell how a UNIX port would give you LESS freedom?
Because Office docs would become a de-facto UNIX standard, just as they are in the Windows world. Thus, more UNIX users would need to rely on MS software.
Who'd bother to hack a hack?
Anybody who wants to get the software for free. (a.k.a. just about every user on slashdot)
-Uncle
- Bloat. MS Office defies the basic principles of UNIX. It will
probably need to run as root and make our systems unstable. Do we need
this?
- No freedom. This is a step in the wrong direction for those of us who
prefer to use 'cvs update' instead of service packs to update our systems.
- Monopoly leveraging. Microsoft will undoubtedly engineer their
.Net
"features" into new versions of Office. Don't be surprised if you, as a
UNIX user, will need a Passport account just to run Word.
- Monopoly extension. Why would anyone work on improving Koffice,
StarOffice, or LaTeX if MS Office exists on the UNIX platform? The
competitors would start out at a huge disadvantage and know there's no
place in the market for them.
Now, on the plus side:- User friendliness. MS Office provides a seamless transition for
lusers who have grown up with Windows and don't know anything else.
- World domination. Anything that helps us replace inferior desktop OSs is a good thing,
evolution-wise and principle-wise.
- Hackability. UNIX is a far superior platform for hackers because of
the wide array of debugging tools available, so it will make reverse
engineers' jobs easier.
It is obvious that the cons outweigh the pros here by sheer numbers. But given the recent strides made by the Koffice team, it will only be a matter of time before their product is superior to MS Office in every respect.-Uncle
A few weeks ago, I finished putting together a shiny new Athlon XP 1900+ for my son, and was very disappointed to see that heatsink grease is indeed necessary on the newer processors. The CPU and power supply fan worked just fine, the heatsink was in very close contact with the CPU, but there was no grease. What happened when I turned it on nearly made me cry: the CPU overheated within minutes of seeing the KDE desktop on this new system, and I was out $200 for a new CPU.
I learned my lesson the hard way: don't try to skimp on thermal grease, especially on the new Athlons. They run hotter than ever now and you're risking your system's life if you don't take the proper precautions.
-Isaac