Thanks for the link, as I have no life, I read the submitted testimony (both panels). I think the best part involved Jack Valenti and Disney. The first is the "horrified they couldn't control the number of people watching" quote referring to Disney and video tape. The second thing was ressurecting Valenti's tape-worm comment, again, implying VCRs were going to ruin Hollywood.
Let's say the entire technology industry agrees that intel and motorola have a DRM package and it's what they're going to roll out. For the sake of argument, let's say Motorola and Intel will make the chipsets and open driver information so the DRM can be easily integrated into any OS.
Who gets to say the protection is good enough?
Would the require a connection to the internet while you're using the media?
How much device to computer or computer to device copying would be allowed?
Would the studio have the ability to step in and say it's not strong enough?
What if it requires HDTV, CD's and DVD's to be encoded differently? Thereby making 'protected' CD's/DVD's useless in existing players?
Would all the studios, HDTV broadcasters, and other content producers switch? Would they replace serveral million dollars worth of broadcasting, encoding and production equipment?
What if it made the process of creating the protected media more expensive? Would media companies still want it?
Would Sony really buy in and make DVD players and television sets that supported the intel/motorola chipset? Would they really adopt it into their product line?
What if Intel charges a stiff license for the encoding technology but free decoding technology? Would the studios fork up the dough?
What if, after spending millions of dollars on the whole thing some pesky mathemetician figures out how to break the encryption in a matter of a few hours?
Would Sony be allowed to sue intel and motorola?
Would we have to start again, making the 'protected' DVD's I bought useless?
Who's to blame when a pesky consumer advocate raises a law suit and shows the device/technology violates their fair use rights?
I just don't see the upside for the computer manufacturers to figure this one out. If the do it they'll be blamed for creating poor protection, or blamed for raising the cost of movies, or blamed for making your new home theater useless.
It's the studio's content -they should figure out how to lock it up. After all, I don't make my neighbors wear GPS tracking devices just because I refuse to lock my door.
Every time I open a window to go the the common caue site to lookup the amount of money Fritz (Adolph? - I get names mixed up) Hollings received in contributions from whome (who?), Internet Exploder - well - explodes. There must be a conspiracy afoot.
Since IE seems to not want to go to common cause's website, I can only assume that Adolph (Fritz?) Hollings has long and gratifyingly suckled from the teat of the MPAA/RIAA. (BTW www.commoncause.org and click on the soft money laundry - very informative).
"If you do not put ze kopy protektion in de device vee vill put it in for you."--Fritz Hitler (or is it Hollings?)
Anyway, Intel's right. I don' t want my PC turned into a VCR. I also don't want to live in a world where my O/S crashes because the DRM built into the CD player doesn't play with the DRM built into the motherboard. However, the crash confuses the DRM on the hard disk to notify the BSA that I was running a pirated copy of Linux and gcc. In turn it notifies Microsoft that I was dual booting, which generates a revocation of my EULA and a nasty letter. Using the magic of.Net web services, Microsoft also notifies the BSA, BATF, FBI, and the Boy Scouts, who all raid my home, looking for pirated software and Elian Gonzales.
To some degree yes. We use SSH clients with 6 support. Intalling DNS has been a little problematic (mostly because I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on it) the docs say you can but I've never been good at following directions. Telnet, FTP have IPV6 support in both the Linux and Solaris environments we use.
Actually YOU don't know what you're talking about. I'm in the process of implementing IPV6 (part of Solaris 8) on a group of servers as a testbed. IPV6 can be tunnelled over IPV4, also IPV6 can co-exist on the same network. Some routers can also handle routing both IPV6 and IPV4 traffic. In fact, it's a simple translation between 6 and 4 addresses (If you assume the unused portion of the address are zeros.) In fact it's easy to distinguish 4/6 traffic becaue the protocol version number is in the ip packet header.
There was supposed to be an IPV5 but it got skipped. Given the investment in IPV4 and the time it will take to upgrade networks, educate network administrators, and for the hardware to become affordable even on low end routers/switches, we might never see IPV6 deployed. We might see the generation after that deployed, call it 6A, 7, or (as a little joke about the fact 5 was skipped) 8.
One area where we may see 6 deployed is for addressable devices, such as phones. In this case the wireless company controlls the network. My Verizon account offers a limitted and filterred version of WAP, for example.
If you're going to call me a moron, at least be right about it
IPV6 is better. Autoconfiguration, neighbor discovery, big address space, compatability with IPV4, etc. However, the more hacks we put in to make IPV4 work the harder it is to change. For the most part we're educating people to do "Stupid IPV4 Tricks" rather than moving to IPV6. The more of that we do the harder it is to change. Also, the more ominous the prospect of change, the more people will dread it.
Frankly, I'm thinking we might see another round, like IPV7 (or IPV8 if they make a habit of skipping odd numbers), or it might come very late. Maybe we'll see it on phones and wireless devices before we see wide-spread adoption of IPV6 or general purpose networking.
You have to remember that to an attourney it's not an outrageous statement. They always spew pointless crap from their mouths to suit their purpose. I have come to believe that they will say things they don't even believe to make their point. In fact they aren't supposed to let their concept of reality interfear with their professional requirement to represent their client. (Mr. Dahlmer isn't a cannibal, your honor, he has a gastric defect that requires he periodically eat human flesh).
This is why we can't defeat lawyers with the truth. They have to be purchased or defeated. Microsoft is going around and purchasing (by retaining the firm) any lawyers they can. Many of these DOJ lawyers might feel that they will have a bright future at one of these firms some day. Perhaps that's why they don't want to push this too much. Or maybe their political strings are getting pulled by politicians that have been legally purchased by Microsoft through "contributions". Or maybe both.
No, this thing has to be beaten politically an economically.
I could commit the same crime against 50 states AND against the feds, and get off with a slap on the wrist from the US, having all charges from the states disappear, if I lined some federal election funds?
Apparently yes. With enough money your a contributor and not a criminal.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the crime of bribery is a question of amount and how you give it? After all, isn't the purpose of bribery to get something you want from a public official by giving them money? It's no wonder Microsoft doesn't want to disclose their congressional conversations. In addition, expect the executive conversations to be full of 'memory gaps.'
If you had $50 bucks to a cop to forget a speeding ticket it's bribery. Hand a politician $25,000 for their campaign (helping to secure their office) it's a 'contribution.' Hand a fire marshall $100 to ignore a firecode violation is a criminal offence. Change a congressman's mind with soft money and it's 'convincing.'
This whole thing stinks. The one time when you need the government to be the government and police a monopoly, they get bought. What will happen is that the desktop will become (and will be made to become) irrelevant. It's getting to services and content on the internet that will make a computer usefull. If Microsoft controls those keys (by controlling the desktop) then we've lost as consumers. They will only further consolidate their monopoly and they will destroy everyone and everything else. (Except a few large companies like Oracle and IBM).
You're absolutely right that the business model is the key. In fact, that's probably what's more dangerous to the open source community than anything else. It's a world where Micrsoft "gives away" the O/S and charges a subscription fee. It then locks out other O/S from the proprietary world of authentication, payment processing, and services. (Which by the way, they will get the lion's share of by leveraging their desktop monopoly). So yes, Linux is free, yes it is better, but it won't be able to do anything on line because Linux doesn't have access to MS's proprietary protocols.
I remember when I first got a 40 meg drive. How could I ever hope to fill it. I did. (I wasn't a geek at that point, just lots of WordPerfect documents and Lotus spreadsheets).
Then I got a 100 meg drive. How could I ever hope to fill it? I did.
Then I got a 400 meg drive. Yep, I filled it.
Holy Cow! Two gigs! Yep, filled that, too.
My laptop has a 20 gig drive. I have almost filled it. Most of the crap I fill it with are games, video, pictures, applications software. I think the JDK and development environment I use might be a gig and a half. The other 17 or so gigs I use are just games, apps, and assorted crap, work documents, etc. Hell, I don't even know what's really in there.
When I do purchase hardware the geeky stuff rarely pushes me over the edge. Normally, compilers, text editors and such are not bandwidth hogs. Unreal was a CPU/GPU hog. Let's not forget Quake. Wolfenstein runs a tad slow on my Mac, so does that nifty little MP3 player's visualization. Nope, it's the games, media players and applications software that pushes me over the edge.
The best solution from my end of the debate is that nothing happens. Of course that would hurt the entertainment industry (not that it will keep me up at night). Maybe ticket prices do go up to $10 a movie, but I don't go to theater much. And maybe my favorite genres, Sci Fi and Fantasy have fewer films produced. Again, it won't keep me up at night. Might be a little better for the hardware/software people. I probably spend more on computers than I do on movie rentals and going to the movies.
The worst solution is the SSSCA gets passed and Linux becomes illegal because the copy protection has a stiff licensing fee. You can only use a Media Company A's media player (which gleefully reports what you watched and at what points you jerked off), and the player only works on Windows. Your PC's CD/DVD rom is useless as the new CDs have different formats and you can't even connect to your ISP because your computer doesn't have DRM software built into that version of Windows. Your performance goes out the door because your hard disk, IDE controller, CPU and RAM all have to examine bit streams to enforce the proprietary Company A DRM.
Something in between would be some sort of DRM software built into CD/DVD rom drives and open CODECs for streaming media. That way I could use the industry accepted CODECs without violating someone's prescious patent. The important thing is to keep the DRM stuff on devices that are cheap, mass-market, directly related to playing a CD/DVD and not in the CPU, RAM, Hard Disk, or Hard Disk controller. Any DRM additions to the O/S or applications program should be open licensed under LGPL or similar license.
The thing to keep in mind is that some kind of DRM is coming. What we MUST avoid is a legally mandated world where Media Company A sells you the DVD, gets a licensing fee from the CDROM maker to use it's software, and you have to use M$ because it's the only legal O/S, who also pays a licensing fee to Media Company A. On top of all that Media Company A sells the info accumulated by the player it licensed (which is the government approved media player).
First off the $350 PC won't be a very interesting machine. The cutting edge new video card to play games with... A bigger hard drive because the cheapo ones are too small... Monitor pricess... No, the $350 PC won't be a very popular box. I don't see many people interested in marginal systems.
Second companies don't really care how much they pay. Talk to a large, fortune 500 purchasing department and they are paying twice what you and I pay - even from the local superstore. They will happily continue to order PCs with Windows.
Only Microsoft is arrogant enough to believe that the survival of Micrsoft is in the national public interest. It's going to hurt M$ if you do bad things to us, like strip down our OS or open-source IE and that would be bad for the country? When is enforcing free and fair markets a bad thing for the country?
That's exactly right. If they came out and said, we're all going to use XYZ copy protection on our CDs/DVDs which only works with XYZ certified hardware - they would piss people off. In addition they would have to spend money to come up with a tested, working encryption/protection system. But they would rather get the big brave government to pass a tough law so those nasty hackers. Then it's the big, tough government law that makes your DVD drive in your $1,999 Dell Workstation useless. Then they don't look so bad. And they get Intel/Microsoft/Apple and other device manufacturers to spend money to develop the system.
At the very least go to http://www.senate.gov and find your senator. Then drop them an e-mail. Calling on the phone, however, is better. Even though this hearing is in the Senate, feel free to let your house rep (http://www.house.gov) know how you feel about this issue as well.
The way to squealch this is to write your senator and congressman every time this comes up for a hearing or vote. When you hear about this coming up, make sure it's posted on/., LinuxToday. LWN, or wherever you feel is useful. Make sure people know about it and make sure they understand why this is a bad thing. Get your friends to write their congressman [Participation in the political process is fun and educational]
Also, be ready for some sort of compromise. Understand that if it's between the SSSCA and no copy protection we're going to get the SSSCA. There are just too many monied interests. We should ask for voluntary copy protection measures. We should also ask for open copy protection measures, so that other operating systems besides Microsoft can participate. We should put the burden of figuring out a good copy protection scheme on the producers and then make them try to sell it to the general population. (The don't want to do that because that would make them seem like greedy, money-grubbing louses).
You're missing the point. How many times did you download a song from Gnutella because you didn't want to buy a suck-ass album for 1 song? The point is we have the technology to make limitless perfect copies of whole works, not just part of a work or a less perfect copy of the work. A tape copied from a CD had less quality. A tape copied from that sounded crappier still. My point with the Brittney Spears thing is it's the whole album, in its entireity, copied perfectly and at virtually no cost. When CD burners were SCSI only and $1,500 a piece and hard disks in the 500 Meg range no one cared. Now most computers ship with CDRs and fast 40 gig disks.
We get high quality content not because Miramax, WB, or Disney are nice people. They're not. We get high quality (your opinion might vary) content because they can make money doing it. I like big production films. They're fun as hell to watch. I also like them violent and with lots of eye-candy. Movie studios didn't care about people copying movies when it was a few people with high-end computers and extremely fast (and rare) broadband connections. Now most of the people I know have downloaded a movie or two or more. If the content producers waited until everyone did it routinely then they'd be idiots to try to do something about it.
They make money not just when the film is in the studio, but on the back end when it's released on DVD/VHS and cable. If you put their ability to recoup their costs at risk, they will react by investing less in films. And frankly, my favorite genre of Sci Fi and Fantasy are at risk because they tend not to do so well in the theater. Some smaller films don't really expect to make money in production release, but in the rental/cable afterwards. (Although touchy-feely indie films are not likely to be pirated much).
I really feel the content producers are doing the wrong thing by making it a legislative requirement. We have a long tradition in this country of choice. We should have a regime where the content producers are free to encrypt content as long as they tell consumers the content is encrypted prior to purchase. They can also be free to release unencrypted content. Consumers are free to buy, or not buy, devices that can play back the content. But not everyone is required to comply just because they're using a digital device.
Davis is a moron. Without the standards he seems to feel technology companies don't like you wouldn't be reading this post. That being said, and the obligatory SSSCA is a bad thing statement, we can move on to a real issues.
One problem is that it is so easy to make perfect digital copies of stuff. So I can go out and make 100 copies of a Brittney Spears CD and hand them out at about $0.50 a copy. You can't argue that this isn't bad for the current way content providers market content. Movie investors need to make money for their shareholders. Publishers need to make money for their shareholders. Otherwise we wouldn't have movies like The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. We'd have cheap crap like Plan 9 from Outer Space.
However, making CDs that I have to register, or discover I can't rip to MP3 only after I purchase it, will piss me off. In fact I now feel a slight sense of revulsion every time I walk past the music section at Best Buys. In addition artists make their money off touring - not CD sales. Recording companies make money off CD sales. They tell us one reason CD's cost $17.00 a pop is because of piracy - but don't look for a price drop if the SSSCA gets passed.
The real problem is that content providers haven't figured out a new way to make money off the new technology. So, rather than embracing it, they're rejecting it or trying to control it. Trying to legislate it out of existence is at best going to fail. At worst it will probably make free software illegal and add costs to every electronic gizmo we buy.
The content providers need to agree - among themselves - a standard for real encryption. They need to work out a system that isn't easily breakable (like DVD encryption). They need to put out content that plays only on players that use that encryption. That will cause people to buy players in order to view the content.
Those of us who want to be left alone won't have to worry about it - we just won't be able to listen to music on our laptops because our CD rom drive doesn't have the 'chip' or whatever in it to unlock the content. If I really want to listen to music on my PC I'll buy the upgrade. I'll know if a CD is copy protected because it plays in one of the new fan-dangled players. This would naturally be phased in gradually as content providers release content with the encryption standard and as devices become avaialable. Instead - those lazy bastards want everyone else to figure it out for them and to pay for it.
As much as it pains me to say this, no employer has ever asked for a proof of a piece of code. All they care about are test. Did the code test okay? Does it work? They never ask "Is there some fundamental flaw in this algorithm that will cause it to fail if there exists a particular interleaving of instructions on a multi-processor system?" Unfortunately unless you do games, graphics, or scientific software coding for money at most companies is a math-free environment.
Unfortunately employers don't care that you can code. Without some test that can predict your success in their company, they look for reasonable proxies:
1) You worked summers and on/off campus. You can show up when you're expected to and you can be relied on.
Unfotunately these adds aren't written by rocket scientists. Someone in HR writes up an add and runs it by a manager in IT. The manager says, Java's good, SQL is good,.Net is good (manager doesn't really know what it is but it's on the cover of Infoweek), and probably should have some Windows, Solaris, Unix, VB. So, the final add comes out "Java, SQL, Oracle, VB.Net,.Net, Windows, Solaris, Unix, VB". What they actually needed was a guy to install Windows, install Office, write some VBA, and handle their exchange server.
The real problem with languages today are that they aren't created to solve a problem, they're created to make money. Languages used to be developed to make systems programming easier than doing it in assembler (C), or make logic programming easier for first order predicates (Prolog). VB.Net and Java are there to make money for their creators (Sun and Microsoft). They have a kitchen sink attitude with features and are targetted at applications developers with sometimes no formal training in Math or CS. They're not efficient, different or revolutionary. They're designed for what Sun and Microsoft think the IT market wants.
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Thanks for the link, as I have no life, I read the submitted testimony (both panels). I think the best part involved Jack Valenti and Disney. The first is the "horrified they couldn't control the number of people watching" quote referring to Disney and video tape. The second thing was ressurecting Valenti's tape-worm comment, again, implying VCRs were going to ruin Hollywood.
Luddites are alive and well.
Let's say the entire technology industry agrees that intel and motorola have a DRM package and it's what they're going to roll out. For the sake of argument, let's say Motorola and Intel will make the chipsets and open driver information so the DRM can be easily integrated into any OS.
I just don't see the upside for the computer manufacturers to figure this one out. If the do it they'll be blamed for creating poor protection, or blamed for raising the cost of movies, or blamed for making your new home theater useless.
It's the studio's content -they should figure out how to lock it up. After all, I don't make my neighbors wear GPS tracking devices just because I refuse to lock my door.
Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?
Amen, brother.
Every time I open a window to go the the common caue site to lookup the amount of money Fritz (Adolph? - I get names mixed up) Hollings received in contributions from whome (who?), Internet Exploder - well - explodes. There must be a conspiracy afoot.
Since IE seems to not want to go to common cause's website, I can only assume that Adolph (Fritz?) Hollings has long and gratifyingly suckled from the teat of the MPAA/RIAA. (BTW www.commoncause.org and click on the soft money laundry - very informative).
"If you do not put ze kopy protektion in de device vee vill put it in for you."--Fritz Hitler (or is it Hollings?)
Anyway, Intel's right. I don' t want my PC turned into a VCR. I also don't want to live in a world where my O/S crashes because the DRM built into the CD player doesn't play with the DRM built into the motherboard. However, the crash confuses the DRM on the hard disk to notify the BSA that I was running a pirated copy of Linux and gcc. In turn it notifies Microsoft that I was dual booting, which generates a revocation of my EULA and a nasty letter. Using the magic of .Net web services, Microsoft also notifies the BSA, BATF, FBI, and the Boy Scouts, who all raid my home, looking for pirated software and Elian Gonzales.
To some degree yes. We use SSH clients with 6 support. Intalling DNS has been a little problematic (mostly because I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on it) the docs say you can but I've never been good at following directions. Telnet, FTP have IPV6 support in both the Linux and Solaris environments we use.
Actually YOU don't know what you're talking about. I'm in the process of implementing IPV6 (part of Solaris 8) on a group of servers as a testbed. IPV6 can be tunnelled over IPV4, also IPV6 can co-exist on the same network. Some routers can also handle routing both IPV6 and IPV4 traffic. In fact, it's a simple translation between 6 and 4 addresses (If you assume the unused portion of the address are zeros.) In fact it's easy to distinguish 4/6 traffic becaue the protocol version number is in the ip packet header.
There was supposed to be an IPV5 but it got skipped. Given the investment in IPV4 and the time it will take to upgrade networks, educate network administrators, and for the hardware to become affordable even on low end routers/switches, we might never see IPV6 deployed. We might see the generation after that deployed, call it 6A, 7, or (as a little joke about the fact 5 was skipped) 8.
One area where we may see 6 deployed is for addressable devices, such as phones. In this case the wireless company controlls the network. My Verizon account offers a limitted and filterred version of WAP, for example.
If you're going to call me a moron, at least be right about it
IPV6 is better. Autoconfiguration, neighbor discovery, big address space, compatability with IPV4, etc. However, the more hacks we put in to make IPV4 work the harder it is to change. For the most part we're educating people to do "Stupid IPV4 Tricks" rather than moving to IPV6. The more of that we do the harder it is to change. Also, the more ominous the prospect of change, the more people will dread it.
Frankly, I'm thinking we might see another round, like IPV7 (or IPV8 if they make a habit of skipping odd numbers), or it might come very late. Maybe we'll see it on phones and wireless devices before we see wide-spread adoption of IPV6 or general purpose networking.
Makes me (almost) wish I'd voted for Gore, even though he did make that "I invented the internet" comment.
You have to remember that to an attourney it's not an outrageous statement. They always spew pointless crap from their mouths to suit their purpose. I have come to believe that they will say things they don't even believe to make their point. In fact they aren't supposed to let their concept of reality interfear with their professional requirement to represent their client. (Mr. Dahlmer isn't a cannibal, your honor, he has a gastric defect that requires he periodically eat human flesh).
This is why we can't defeat lawyers with the truth. They have to be purchased or defeated. Microsoft is going around and purchasing (by retaining the firm) any lawyers they can. Many of these DOJ lawyers might feel that they will have a bright future at one of these firms some day. Perhaps that's why they don't want to push this too much. Or maybe their political strings are getting pulled by politicians that have been legally purchased by Microsoft through "contributions". Or maybe both.
No, this thing has to be beaten politically an economically.
I could commit the same crime against 50 states AND against the feds, and get off with a slap on the wrist from the US, having all charges from the states disappear, if I lined some federal election funds?
Apparently yes. With enough money your a contributor and not a criminal.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the crime of bribery is a question of amount and how you give it? After all, isn't the purpose of bribery to get something you want from a public official by giving them money? It's no wonder Microsoft doesn't want to disclose their congressional conversations. In addition, expect the executive conversations to be full of 'memory gaps.'
If you had $50 bucks to a cop to forget a speeding ticket it's bribery. Hand a politician $25,000 for their campaign (helping to secure their office) it's a 'contribution.' Hand a fire marshall $100 to ignore a firecode violation is a criminal offence. Change a congressman's mind with soft money and it's 'convincing.'
This whole thing stinks. The one time when you need the government to be the government and police a monopoly, they get bought. What will happen is that the desktop will become (and will be made to become) irrelevant. It's getting to services and content on the internet that will make a computer usefull. If Microsoft controls those keys (by controlling the desktop) then we've lost as consumers. They will only further consolidate their monopoly and they will destroy everyone and everything else. (Except a few large companies like Oracle and IBM).
You're absolutely right that the business model is the key. In fact, that's probably what's more dangerous to the open source community than anything else. It's a world where Micrsoft "gives away" the O/S and charges a subscription fee. It then locks out other O/S from the proprietary world of authentication, payment processing, and services. (Which by the way, they will get the lion's share of by leveraging their desktop monopoly). So yes, Linux is free, yes it is better, but it won't be able to do anything on line because Linux doesn't have access to MS's proprietary protocols.
I remember when I first got a 40 meg drive. How could I ever hope to fill it. I did. (I wasn't a geek at that point, just lots of WordPerfect documents and Lotus spreadsheets).
Then I got a 100 meg drive. How could I ever hope to fill it? I did.
Then I got a 400 meg drive. Yep, I filled it.
Holy Cow! Two gigs! Yep, filled that, too.
My laptop has a 20 gig drive. I have almost filled it. Most of the crap I fill it with are games, video, pictures, applications software. I think the JDK and development environment I use might be a gig and a half. The other 17 or so gigs I use are just games, apps, and assorted crap, work documents, etc. Hell, I don't even know what's really in there.
When I do purchase hardware the geeky stuff rarely pushes me over the edge. Normally, compilers, text editors and such are not bandwidth hogs. Unreal was a CPU/GPU hog. Let's not forget Quake. Wolfenstein runs a tad slow on my Mac, so does that nifty little MP3 player's visualization. Nope, it's the games, media players and applications software that pushes me over the edge.
The best solution from my end of the debate is that nothing happens. Of course that would hurt the entertainment industry (not that it will keep me up at night). Maybe ticket prices do go up to $10 a movie, but I don't go to theater much. And maybe my favorite genres, Sci Fi and Fantasy have fewer films produced. Again, it won't keep me up at night. Might be a little better for the hardware/software people. I probably spend more on computers than I do on movie rentals and going to the movies.
The worst solution is the SSSCA gets passed and Linux becomes illegal because the copy protection has a stiff licensing fee. You can only use a Media Company A's media player (which gleefully reports what you watched and at what points you jerked off), and the player only works on Windows. Your PC's CD/DVD rom is useless as the new CDs have different formats and you can't even connect to your ISP because your computer doesn't have DRM software built into that version of Windows. Your performance goes out the door because your hard disk, IDE controller, CPU and RAM all have to examine bit streams to enforce the proprietary Company A DRM.
Something in between would be some sort of DRM software built into CD/DVD rom drives and open CODECs for streaming media. That way I could use the industry accepted CODECs without violating someone's prescious patent. The important thing is to keep the DRM stuff on devices that are cheap, mass-market, directly related to playing a CD/DVD and not in the CPU, RAM, Hard Disk, or Hard Disk controller. Any DRM additions to the O/S or applications program should be open licensed under LGPL or similar license.
The thing to keep in mind is that some kind of DRM is coming. What we MUST avoid is a legally mandated world where Media Company A sells you the DVD, gets a licensing fee from the CDROM maker to use it's software, and you have to use M$ because it's the only legal O/S, who also pays a licensing fee to Media Company A. On top of all that Media Company A sells the info accumulated by the player it licensed (which is the government approved media player).
First off the $350 PC won't be a very interesting machine. The cutting edge new video card to play games with... A bigger hard drive because the cheapo ones are too small... Monitor pricess... No, the $350 PC won't be a very popular box. I don't see many people interested in marginal systems.
Second companies don't really care how much they pay. Talk to a large, fortune 500 purchasing department and they are paying twice what you and I pay - even from the local superstore. They will happily continue to order PCs with Windows.
Only Microsoft is arrogant enough to believe that the survival of Micrsoft is in the national public interest. It's going to hurt M$ if you do bad things to us, like strip down our OS or open-source IE and that would be bad for the country? When is enforcing free and fair markets a bad thing for the country?
That's exactly right. If they came out and said, we're all going to use XYZ copy protection on our CDs/DVDs which only works with XYZ certified hardware - they would piss people off. In addition they would have to spend money to come up with a tested, working encryption/protection system. But they would rather get the big brave government to pass a tough law so those nasty hackers. Then it's the big, tough government law that makes your DVD drive in your $1,999 Dell Workstation useless. Then they don't look so bad. And they get Intel/Microsoft/Apple and other device manufacturers to spend money to develop the system.
At the very least go to http://www.senate.gov and find your senator. Then drop them an e-mail. Calling on the phone, however, is better. Even though this hearing is in the Senate, feel free to let your house rep (http://www.house.gov) know how you feel about this issue as well.
The way to squealch this is to write your senator and congressman every time this comes up for a hearing or vote. When you hear about this coming up, make sure it's posted on /., LinuxToday. LWN, or wherever you feel is useful. Make sure people know about it and make sure they understand why this is a bad thing. Get your friends to write their congressman [Participation in the political process is fun and educational]
Also, be ready for some sort of compromise. Understand that if it's between the SSSCA and no copy protection we're going to get the SSSCA. There are just too many monied interests. We should ask for voluntary copy protection measures. We should also ask for open copy protection measures, so that other operating systems besides Microsoft can participate. We should put the burden of figuring out a good copy protection scheme on the producers and then make them try to sell it to the general population. (The don't want to do that because that would make them seem like greedy, money-grubbing louses).
You're missing the point. How many times did you download a song from Gnutella because you didn't want to buy a suck-ass album for 1 song? The point is we have the technology to make limitless perfect copies of whole works, not just part of a work or a less perfect copy of the work. A tape copied from a CD had less quality. A tape copied from that sounded crappier still. My point with the Brittney Spears thing is it's the whole album, in its entireity, copied perfectly and at virtually no cost. When CD burners were SCSI only and $1,500 a piece and hard disks in the 500 Meg range no one cared. Now most computers ship with CDRs and fast 40 gig disks.
We get high quality content not because Miramax, WB, or Disney are nice people. They're not. We get high quality (your opinion might vary) content because they can make money doing it. I like big production films. They're fun as hell to watch. I also like them violent and with lots of eye-candy. Movie studios didn't care about people copying movies when it was a few people with high-end computers and extremely fast (and rare) broadband connections. Now most of the people I know have downloaded a movie or two or more. If the content producers waited until everyone did it routinely then they'd be idiots to try to do something about it.
They make money not just when the film is in the studio, but on the back end when it's released on DVD/VHS and cable. If you put their ability to recoup their costs at risk, they will react by investing less in films. And frankly, my favorite genre of Sci Fi and Fantasy are at risk because they tend not to do so well in the theater. Some smaller films don't really expect to make money in production release, but in the rental/cable afterwards. (Although touchy-feely indie films are not likely to be pirated much).
I really feel the content producers are doing the wrong thing by making it a legislative requirement. We have a long tradition in this country of choice. We should have a regime where the content producers are free to encrypt content as long as they tell consumers the content is encrypted prior to purchase. They can also be free to release unencrypted content. Consumers are free to buy, or not buy, devices that can play back the content. But not everyone is required to comply just because they're using a digital device.
Davis is a moron. Without the standards he seems to feel technology companies don't like you wouldn't be reading this post. That being said, and the obligatory SSSCA is a bad thing statement, we can move on to a real issues.
One problem is that it is so easy to make perfect digital copies of stuff. So I can go out and make 100 copies of a Brittney Spears CD and hand them out at about $0.50 a copy. You can't argue that this isn't bad for the current way content providers market content. Movie investors need to make money for their shareholders. Publishers need to make money for their shareholders. Otherwise we wouldn't have movies like The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. We'd have cheap crap like Plan 9 from Outer Space.
However, making CDs that I have to register, or discover I can't rip to MP3 only after I purchase it, will piss me off. In fact I now feel a slight sense of revulsion every time I walk past the music section at Best Buys. In addition artists make their money off touring - not CD sales. Recording companies make money off CD sales. They tell us one reason CD's cost $17.00 a pop is because of piracy - but don't look for a price drop if the SSSCA gets passed.
The real problem is that content providers haven't figured out a new way to make money off the new technology. So, rather than embracing it, they're rejecting it or trying to control it. Trying to legislate it out of existence is at best going to fail. At worst it will probably make free software illegal and add costs to every electronic gizmo we buy.
The content providers need to agree - among themselves - a standard for real encryption. They need to work out a system that isn't easily breakable (like DVD encryption). They need to put out content that plays only on players that use that encryption. That will cause people to buy players in order to view the content.
Those of us who want to be left alone won't have to worry about it - we just won't be able to listen to music on our laptops because our CD rom drive doesn't have the 'chip' or whatever in it to unlock the content. If I really want to listen to music on my PC I'll buy the upgrade. I'll know if a CD is copy protected because it plays in one of the new fan-dangled players. This would naturally be phased in gradually as content providers release content with the encryption standard and as devices become avaialable. Instead - those lazy bastards want everyone else to figure it out for them and to pay for it.
As much as it pains me to say this, no employer has ever asked for a proof of a piece of code. All they care about are test. Did the code test okay? Does it work? They never ask "Is there some fundamental flaw in this algorithm that will cause it to fail if there exists a particular interleaving of instructions on a multi-processor system?" Unfortunately unless you do games, graphics, or scientific software coding for money at most companies is a math-free environment.
Unfotunately these adds aren't written by rocket scientists. Someone in HR writes up an add and runs it by a manager in IT. The manager says, Java's good, SQL is good, .Net is good (manager doesn't really know what it is but it's on the cover of Infoweek), and probably should have some Windows, Solaris, Unix, VB. So, the final add comes out "Java, SQL, Oracle, VB.Net, .Net, Windows, Solaris, Unix, VB". What they actually needed was a guy to install Windows, install Office, write some VBA, and handle their exchange server.
The real problem with languages today are that they aren't created to solve a problem, they're created to make money. Languages used to be developed to make systems programming easier than doing it in assembler (C), or make logic programming easier for first order predicates (Prolog). VB.Net and Java are there to make money for their creators (Sun and Microsoft). They have a kitchen sink attitude with features and are targetted at applications developers with sometimes no formal training in Math or CS. They're not efficient, different or revolutionary. They're designed for what Sun and Microsoft think the IT market wants.