The one good thing I see is that a trackerless bittorrent would allow the original poster to seed the network then get off.. That will make it a more efficent distribution model because you'll be able to "pass" from connection to connection... that's a really clever idea. In terms of distributing Linux and other OSS it's GREAT!!! it means one person doesn't have to get bombed hosting the tracker...
Now all we need is "required" sharing amounts... just lie and say the files not done until you share it with so many people!!! Then you can build it in tiers as it spreads... allow each part to share say 3 levels deep then get off...
I believe it's those union guys that are releasing the stuff... those same one's we're supposed to feel sorry for in the commercials!
but really, this stuff is an inside job.. the problem is that the MPAA orginazions can't be bothered to do their own leg work.. or allow things to travel in a "normal" fashion. They want to make all their money at once.. That means that a movie like SW has been in the "pipe" for several months..those reels have passed thru litterally dozens of hands.. mostly minimum wage "grunt" workers at shipping companies, movie houses, and film printers. The real trouble isn't that it gets out, but rather that the "surprise" is spoiled... and people will just wait for it to be "free" and they won't make any money.
The real problem is that Hollywood is a "pyramid" scheme... the idea is to have hundreds of "hungry" workers for any given part... actors, set builders, directors, etc.. other than "IP" the big "studios" have nothing to offer anymore but the contractual deals they already have.. and that's really easy to "steal". Frankly, I think it's wrong to happen this soon, but we're not talking about people with cameras at the theater... these releases are inside jobs... that's pretty clear... They've got to update their business model from here.
Of course it's going to cost money to do that... Lucas has it exactly right with "digital" film. That would give the studio 99% control over where and when the movie was shown... His ideas call for satillite based distribution and "camera level" caching of the film.. or even no caching at all!! Then the camera would "dial home" to get authorization for the film. It's not perfect, but it's "live" and the bandwidth is huge. They could rewrite the encryption "on the fly" if they wanted... somebody eventually will get the movie, but it won't be easy. This means fronting the money for digital theaters! of course if you're cutting out your middlemen, they won't continue to make product while you cut them out... so if they kill the channel too soon, they'll get cut off... remember the pyramid scheme. They don't actually PAY for the films to be made, the theaters do, the theater owners expect to "rent" the movies and do what they want.. if they want to show it a half day early to their pals it should be their right... so are the theaters going to pay to have their profit model taken away???
At work I have passwords for at least 7 different systems/ programs on a DAILY basis!!! The poor System engineer has upwords of 25.
Why? because every system has a different way of doing things and no good way to talk to others... unless of coruse you go for the full MS Kol-aid. The whole idea is that of being centralized to what YOU want to trust. In an enterprise setting you can point all your independant devices to one place... in an internet environment you can have "trusts" between sites... Then I could use the same screen name at many websites.. slashdot, fark, republican national convention...etc.. if they choose to trust each other that would be enough...
Think of it as "you know a guy, who knows a guy..." or "a friend of a friend..." ad hoc like in real life... not centerally controlled!!
DVD audio never took off because people don't really care that much about quality in the internet world... after all, how many people rip DVDs down to CD size just to copy them? And apple has a whole business around selling low-quality music online.
Frankly, the music companies put so many restirctions on it that the early adopters [i.e. pc people] were cut right out of it without extreme DRM.
Frankly, I'm shocked they haven't decided to break compatibility... harware is So cheap nodays that building a "compatible" device with an extra DVD/CD drive would be far more benificial to them than trying to keep the players infinitely backward compatible... I had one of those nifty play-everything drives... and I used it for anything but DVDs about 5 times in 3 years. Everybody's got DVD players that will ever get one by now... It'd be trivial to build a "changer" player with two seperate disc mechanisms and consumers would never know the difference!
frankly, readable-only formats will become the norm soon... how many people really have DVD based cameras and such? It doesn't seem to have hurt Nintendo to use crippled discs versus the rampant piracy of playstation or xbox discs? And all they do is use something simple... spin it backwards! That's the point... they have to do something about piracy at a hardware level.. the shortest & simplest version is to keep the format read only as long as possible.
I'm not a fan of breaking stuff, but with the new HD formats comming they've got a great chance to simply break compatibility. Frankly, combine with a RFID tag I think spinning the disc backwards for "protected" content would be great. I'd hate to cut off PC people, but It's a really simple thing to make HD discs work one way in players and another in PC drives... and totally incompatible from a software/hardware point... something like "backwards" is REALLY easy. It would also allow you to have writers for HD video, but let's face it.. nobody at the top wants you to have writers.. that's their dream all along!
Frankly hardware is so cheap I'd see them simply putting two drives in a machine rather than trying to keep backwards compatibility... after all DVD will still be around for years as a "hole" in the system anyway.
frankly, Nintendo seems to do very well at calling the market. The GC is dated but pretty powerful... there's not much difference between graphics... and Nintendo ususally has better game designers and graphic designers on the games than the others do. Nintendo is about FUN...not tech wizardry.
Nintendo has been at this a long time... realize that unlike Sony & Microsoft they will make a profit off the console!! from day 1!!! [Rember MS burned almost a billion $$ on the first Xbox as an "acceptable" market entry stratagy!!] Also, partners of IBM and ATI mean they'll be using laptop quality parts rather than "hacks" like everybody else.
The only thing I see is that Nintendo needs somebody else to partner with... going it alone for them just won't cut it. frankly, Nintendo +
Apple would be interesting... If devices could "play" together you'd have a really cool idea on your hand. Mostly, Apple needs Mac gaming to come back...Nintendo fits their "personallity" perfectly. Things like both make cool designed toys.. like minimacs & ipods versus GAmeCube & Gameboy..
There's not good tools for real-time stuff on iSeries though... It's geared toward being right, not always being fast. iSeries can easily handle that load of transactions with the right hardware... I'd love to see something NEW written [less than 5 years old] to really take advantage of the new hardware.
Anything above a trivial level of reporting gets nasty fast. Personally, I'd love to see an iSeries pulled into SCADA apps... the programming model fits the PLC world perfectly. But it's just not optomized for that type of purpose... and far too much of an iSeries is hardwired.
Mostly, we'd need more info to say anything "real" about this... most hardware can handle it's network bandwidth worth of transactions nowdays.. the exact particulars of type of info, devices, and purpose/usage are critical to getting the right program. Cost and complexity is entirely dependant on what you value most to monitor/report.
And I was just going to suggest he ask "homeland security" for advice... beat me too it!
of course we can see how well the Govt's spyware works... of course he could have a network of "voulanteers" allowing him to "monitor" their computing habits... that would be a lot of info too...
4) iTunes is the only store interested in building a market for all types of MUSIC versus mooching a quick buck off the top 40 hits.. most of the other stores are only interested in "pop" stuff. Apple is trying to find new markets rather than just resell what's popular!!
It would only work with the new "blue ray" players.. they could be made to only play RFID'd discs... after all, we've all got DVD players already so it's not an inconvenience. We have HDMI too, that will soon effect all HDTVs and could probably be used in computer monitors too. again, the combination is unique proving that at least consumer devices can't "cheat".
It's a genius idea frankly. something Unique is needed to be part of the the next spec...RFID is the simplest thing to use. mold it right into the disc and the content could be keyed to accept only those numbers of RFID tags as keys. Nobody but certified people could have the RFID discs.. That raises some anti-competitive concerns, but we'll still have DVD & CD for years to come.
I'm a big fan of fair use, but they've got to do something to "protect" their businesses. Sure, eventually you'd create copies from a "blue ray" computer drive, but normal players couldn't ever play them...reducing the rampant piracy... of course most pirated things on the net are DVIX anyway...so people aren't exactly stopped by it. But it would prevent "casual" copying... but again, not "downcopying" via PC to something standard like DVD after it was cracked.
The only benifit would be that harware makers could finally build "convergence" devices like TiVO for DVD & CD because they could guarantee the data couldn't be pulled off the device. Combine with technologies like apple's airport express you could really do some neat stuff.
I don't like the "phone home" requirements though, that could be a real turn off for most people. I suppose a device could track the keys for what it already authenticated, but that again limits the really interesting stuff like mobile and piping usage.. unless the device could "pass" it's key off to other lesser devices... or include multiple copies in alternate formats! like a CD player passing it's tag id off to an iPod... I Really don't like the idea of content providers having "rights" to the media after you recieve it.. that is a key part of why we have copyright in the first place.. because we need an "artifical" way to protect something that's not protectable. Allowing publishers to "edit" usage after the sale is just against the entire system we have in place... it's almost as bad as skipping commercials!!!
Actually, the idea is a good one.. the thing all DRM needs is "uniqueness" which is exactly what digital technology strips away. In the era of records there was a "barrier to entry" simply because equipment to make records was so expensive there was no "non-commercial" middle ground.
The idea of an RFID tag makes perfect sense. With the new and shiny DMCA, it could be illegal to produce copies of the RFID tags. You could put the key on the RFID tag and manufacture some "proprietary" format with the embedded tag... they players would be required to "read" the tag to decrypt the data.
Of course this means that PC users may not be able to use the discs... But that's another story about marketing. One of the problems with publishing technology is that they have to trade off cheap with reproduceable... They've gotta come up with "gimmicks" Nintendo GCs "backwards" drive was perfect... I'd put RFID tags in the same category.
Ultimately, they have to build a better multimedia center that allows "piping" of content between formats without actually copying it. I've wondered for years why component makers have shuned the idea of "remote PC control" versus making a PC "player". Apple's Airport Express is a great "convergence" device in this respect..allowing you to remote control your itunes list, but pipe it anywhere in your house...we need more of that! Things like USB or firewire remote control would allow really simple media setups without having to hack anything... after all, you can get a cheap DVD player for your TV for about the same as a DVD-rom drive. Why can't you "pipe" that easily to your PC... that's the question to really ask, because then formats become irrelevant.
They got the broadcasting right too... I never had a need to "pirate" it because they liberally rebroadcast it....something most MPAA directors/producers don't allow!!!
Therein lies the REAL problem with TV now. Most networks are 24-7 but only have 5-6 hours of interesting stuff a day tops. The MPAA is NOT related or friendly to the broadcasters.. They'd prefer money per "eyeball" that gets radiated with the stations waves... but that'll never happen. One thing that irks the MPAA is that two big media powerhouses funded BG instead of "buying" it from the producers...
look at a show like "Friends" MBC should have had current season shows on the air constantly.. but the network "buys" it from the producers and "sells" it to the broadcasters.. Your local channel can't run it anyother time than when they're contractually obligated.. if the network tells them differently, they loose out on that too! If you happen to be busy at the exact time the show ran, "they'd" rather have you miss the show than get a second chance...
IF you'll notice the successful "second" tier cable networks have all made an attempt to "own" the shows they show.. The WB in particular has made a nearly habit of showing the best shows at least twice in prime-time usually the second showing is on sunday... also note that once Smallville got popular the producers pulled the network's "right" to show it more than once a week.
If anything, the MPAA's own ranks are cutting their own throats... think of "another" powerful union whining about not getting enough in the face of technology.
could they just merge iMac & iBook lines? The only thing an iMac is missing from being a "tablet" is the touch screen.. being mounted is optional. Like people said about the miniMac, this could be an in between between MiniMac, iMac, & iBook... bonus points if it could be "just a monitor" for a miniMac...
Apple's smallness is an advantage in this case. after all, they can literally change their entire line-up in 2-3 years... without causing much software pain because they have better controls. The acceptance of tablet PCs has never been the hardware, but rather all the "old" piles of keyboard & mouse software nobody wants to fix for the tablet... right now if I want a MS tablet I still have to re-buy all my apps anyway... converting from Win to Mac is a lot cheaper proposition if the mac's software "just works". I've noticed lately, Apple's becoming very good at "forward thinking" in their technology... forcing changes needed in the low level stuff that allow the next steps to be relitively painless to the users...
don't they have software that lets you use the notebook's onboard motion sensors to "play" with the screen by tilting, tipping, the device... the greatest gag of them all would be to combine that tech with a tablet pc for the ultimate high-tech "Etch-a-Sketch"! Just flip and shake the screen to clear it... that gag alone would sell tons of units...
part of making a Mac Tablet successful will be Apple's "stubbornness" in insisting that everything works with just a 1-button mouse. The real drawback with windows tablets is that too many programs have become hooked on using odd 2nd, 3rd, and scroll buttons with poor downward support.
a tablet necessitates a "1-button" interface because generally it's similar to a "pointy finger" of the user. The main drawback to windows tablet right now is that key programs like office 2003 are still a terible usage kludge for "pure" tablet users... The key to the design so far looks to be the LACK of any keyboard attached...you gotta force the software developers to give up that crutch.
here's an opportunity for apple/netfix to make some money.. I'd pay to download/ rent things that are online only if they could be in HDTV... Thing like anime, and some of the stuff like Red Vs Blue would be the killer business if they started selling in in HDTV. I wonder how good the quaility could get from my Progressive scan DVD player.. can it decode larger formats too?
There's a new killer market for Apple to dominate... think of it as Open Source Television... Those Canadians and Brits have been telling us ours sucks for years... you think slashdotters could do better??? because right now broadcasters just might be willing[maybe even financially forced] to buck their corperate masters because most stations are owned by little guys that barely make anymoney... it's a McDonald's kind of thing...
The broadcasters are hostage to their network masters right now... they have to do what's good for the multinational media conglomerate that feeds them shows...or they won't have anything to show anymore!!!
Ever since the FCC allowed DirectTV and Dish to rebroadcast local channels, the "local" broadcast channels are a dying breed. Basically HDTV is the "savior" of broadcast because it's something even the entrenched cable companies can't pull off.. after all it's much cheaper for the broadcasters to switch 1 antena than the cable company to switch ALL the cable boxes... and because your "rabit ears" are now better that satellite or cable for a short time.
I bought a new HDTV but waited two months to try OTA broadcast because I have Dish...WOW! boy was I missing out!!! "ER" or whatever your favorite drama is, in HDTV is truely awesome. But the ability to broadcast "ER" in HD over air is what's in jeprody...
basically each "network" has their own cable channels now... if the broadcasters don't do what their told all the new shows will go to Disney [ABC], TNT/Bravo [NBC], and Viacom [CBS] [it's already happening!!]..Fox, UPN and WB already get most of their viewers from cable anyway because broadcast was so expensive and regulated to get into. bacically broadcast TV is a "loss center" for the big media companies that all have stake in cable or electronics companies. They are now expendable... just like what happened in radio..
in that respect though it's like the business that "ban" cell phones. Their right to ban cell phone use stops when they try to forcebly take it from me... if somebody tried to pass a local ordinance allowing "jammers" in the community the FCC could step in an sue a community for doing so...
It's in the FCCs interest to allow all of the public to use the frequencies and devices designated as "public" [certian things like ham radio and "big" satillite are not licensed for "public" usage... that's the difference.. kinda like commercial vs. residential zoning] A housing association is like a "government" otherwise we'd have every town with a cable company banning Dish... or they'd threaten to pull cable out of town... that's neither legal or fair in the "national" fcc veiw.
The difference would be that macrovision for VCRs and DVDs is part of a media player and not a broadcast... In those cases the FCC used it's power over regulation of device circutry to include "protection" features. In the case of HDTV though, the FCC is limiting use of the actual signal...which by their mandate for public television is supposed to be "public". Basically, the FCC is unilaterally changing the terms of the broadcasters license agreements... one of the points is that public broadcast is not "private" or the FCC should be charging a hell of a lot more money for all that bandwidth!!! [consider ALL the cell phones are jammed into the bandwith of only 2-3 tv channels!!!]
on the other hand, they should take the FCC to task for trying to regulate "decency" on cable tv too.. Cable has always been exemept from this type of "fair use" because it was a "private network"... but now the FCC is trying to restrict that... good to see the courts are being "conservitive" in their findings
trouble is in 90% of the USA you could get mothers banned from showing their nipples to "underaged" children... It would pass unanimisouly before anybody realized that babies ARE children and mothers were thrown in jail!!!! Politics has become that stupid lately!!!!
Mozilla proper is like a 25 MB download... Firefox is only 4.5 MB... and mostly does the same things as "just a browser". The memory usage is a sad but necessary thing... The devs are trying to get Firefox to true XHTML/CSS/SVG... as quickly as possible. The SVG nightly does really well with inkscape files... gotta make some demo pages to really try it out!!!
exactly, like postits the SMS is asyncronous.... it sticks around so the user can read it when convinent for them... Like if your wife wants you to pick up a gallon of milk on your way home....
SMS is much better because it's "written" and you can review it again at the store rather than relying on your memory.. and that's the BIG deal of email/postits/SMS, etc... the ability to not rely on human memory for simple but important things!!! As people we can remember the "3d-spacial" placement of an SMS message or a yellow sticky note much more quickly than the actual pseudo-random information written on said message...
I didn't say the parts HAVE to cost $$ but they do.. that's the facts. If you learn anything from the auto industry, they can make reliable parts very cheaply because they use 100K at a time!!!
You can't right now reasonably put a robot on the market without either being a "toy" and drastically under-powered or having high-end sensors like industrial bots.. with all the lawyers nowdays there's just no middle ground. To be blunt, do you want the liability for a "robot snowblower" when your neighbor's 3 year-old comes near it to play?...didn't think so... a sticker just doesn't make it right
A moderate 1 HP electric motor attached to something can break somebody's arm... I worked with electronics robots that could put a 2x4 thru a brick wall!!! and that's just to move little electronic parts a couple feet!! [and the machine is bolted to the floor!!]
even something like a robot vacuum has to be incredibly failsafe. That Rumba is a toy in the robot world, it can't be too powerful, it has to respond to being stopped, flipped over, wet, something stuck, etc... and this is just a dust-buster on wheels!!!
personally, i think the first robot attempt should be a R2D2-like PC replacement rather than something anthropormorphic. something "safe" and modular that simplifies the digital world for people... think PVR/PDA/Cellphone/PC/home alarm/ etc... in one cute package... espically until we train the public how to act around robots.
I just thought of another response to why you need to pay somebody to maintain software... regulations!!!
Let's break out the alphabit soup... HIPPA, FDA, MIL SPEC, SOX, ISO, TS, QS,... & TAXES!!! and the list goes on... if you could create a system to allow businesses to share resources for compliance with all the regulations you'd make a mint. It's something that no major software company does right now.. even the mighty MS and IBM leave you to fend for yourselves on the real "meat" of running a business. The tweaks necessary to comply with all those things are huge changes that nobody else wants to fix.. OSS is uniquely suited to comply because the regulators can even crack open the source.. and once the program works for one business case, it should be workable for all of them. The amount of cash being spent on HIPPA and SOX alone is staggering.. $100K's per company... and right now it's a crapshoot as to if the govt auditors will come in and tell you to redo it all anyway... there's nobody making gaurantees on any of this...
If Shuttleworth really want's to make some cash, steer the ubuntu client & server distros in the direction of complying with as many regs as possible... and buy stock in O'reilly too [telling us how to USE it is just as important!] Good security like OSS prefers goes hand-in-hand with many of these regulations... it's just sloppiness that people have gotten away without for so long...
There's the best business reason I can think of!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Now all we need is "required" sharing amounts... just lie and say the files not done until you share it with so many people!!! Then you can build it in tiers as it spreads... allow each part to share say 3 levels deep then get off...
but really, this stuff is an inside job.. the problem is that the MPAA orginazions can't be bothered to do their own leg work.. or allow things to travel in a "normal" fashion. They want to make all their money at once.. That means that a movie like SW has been in the "pipe" for several months..those reels have passed thru litterally dozens of hands.. mostly minimum wage "grunt" workers at shipping companies, movie houses, and film printers. The real trouble isn't that it gets out, but rather that the "surprise" is spoiled... and people will just wait for it to be "free" and they won't make any money.
The real problem is that Hollywood is a "pyramid" scheme... the idea is to have hundreds of "hungry" workers for any given part... actors, set builders, directors, etc.. other than "IP" the big "studios" have nothing to offer anymore but the contractual deals they already have.. and that's really easy to "steal". Frankly, I think it's wrong to happen this soon, but we're not talking about people with cameras at the theater... these releases are inside jobs... that's pretty clear... They've got to update their business model from here.
Of course it's going to cost money to do that... Lucas has it exactly right with "digital" film. That would give the studio 99% control over where and when the movie was shown... His ideas call for satillite based distribution and "camera level" caching of the film.. or even no caching at all!! Then the camera would "dial home" to get authorization for the film. It's not perfect, but it's "live" and the bandwidth is huge. They could rewrite the encryption "on the fly" if they wanted... somebody eventually will get the movie, but it won't be easy. This means fronting the money for digital theaters! of course if you're cutting out your middlemen, they won't continue to make product while you cut them out... so if they kill the channel too soon, they'll get cut off... remember the pyramid scheme. They don't actually PAY for the films to be made, the theaters do, the theater owners expect to "rent" the movies and do what they want.. if they want to show it a half day early to their pals it should be their right... so are the theaters going to pay to have their profit model taken away???
Why? because every system has a different way of doing things and no good way to talk to others... unless of coruse you go for the full MS Kol-aid. The whole idea is that of being centralized to what YOU want to trust. In an enterprise setting you can point all your independant devices to one place... in an internet environment you can have "trusts" between sites... Then I could use the same screen name at many websites.. slashdot, fark, republican national convention...etc.. if they choose to trust each other that would be enough...
Think of it as "you know a guy, who knows a guy..." or "a friend of a friend..." ad hoc like in real life... not centerally controlled!!
Frankly, the music companies put so many restirctions on it that the early adopters [i.e. pc people] were cut right out of it without extreme DRM.
Frankly, I'm shocked they haven't decided to break compatibility... harware is So cheap nodays that building a "compatible" device with an extra DVD/CD drive would be far more benificial to them than trying to keep the players infinitely backward compatible... I had one of those nifty play-everything drives... and I used it for anything but DVDs about 5 times in 3 years. Everybody's got DVD players that will ever get one by now... It'd be trivial to build a "changer" player with two seperate disc mechanisms and consumers would never know the difference!
I'm not a fan of breaking stuff, but with the new HD formats comming they've got a great chance to simply break compatibility. Frankly, combine with a RFID tag I think spinning the disc backwards for "protected" content would be great. I'd hate to cut off PC people, but It's a really simple thing to make HD discs work one way in players and another in PC drives... and totally incompatible from a software/hardware point... something like "backwards" is REALLY easy. It would also allow you to have writers for HD video, but let's face it.. nobody at the top wants you to have writers.. that's their dream all along!
Frankly hardware is so cheap I'd see them simply putting two drives in a machine rather than trying to keep backwards compatibility... after all DVD will still be around for years as a "hole" in the system anyway.
Nintendo has been at this a long time... realize that unlike Sony & Microsoft they will make a profit off the console!! from day 1!!! [Rember MS burned almost a billion $$ on the first Xbox as an "acceptable" market entry stratagy!!] Also, partners of IBM and ATI mean they'll be using laptop quality parts rather than "hacks" like everybody else.
The only thing I see is that Nintendo needs somebody else to partner with... going it alone for them just won't cut it. frankly, Nintendo + Apple would be interesting... If devices could "play" together you'd have a really cool idea on your hand. Mostly, Apple needs Mac gaming to come back ...Nintendo fits their "personallity" perfectly. Things like both make cool designed toys.. like minimacs & ipods versus GAmeCube & Gameboy..
Anything above a trivial level of reporting gets nasty fast. Personally, I'd love to see an iSeries pulled into SCADA apps... the programming model fits the PLC world perfectly. But it's just not optomized for that type of purpose... and far too much of an iSeries is hardwired.
Mostly, we'd need more info to say anything "real" about this... most hardware can handle it's network bandwidth worth of transactions nowdays.. the exact particulars of type of info, devices, and purpose/usage are critical to getting the right program. Cost and complexity is entirely dependant on what you value most to monitor/report.
he's probably trying to upgrade something already in Access!! Don't we all get those at work...
of course we can see how well the Govt's spyware works... of course he could have a network of "voulanteers" allowing him to "monitor" their computing habits... that would be a lot of info too...
4) iTunes is the only store interested in building a market for all types of MUSIC versus mooching a quick buck off the top 40 hits.. most of the other stores are only interested in "pop" stuff. Apple is trying to find new markets rather than just resell what's popular!!
It's a genius idea frankly. something Unique is needed to be part of the the next spec...RFID is the simplest thing to use. mold it right into the disc and the content could be keyed to accept only those numbers of RFID tags as keys. Nobody but certified people could have the RFID discs.. That raises some anti-competitive concerns, but we'll still have DVD & CD for years to come.
I'm a big fan of fair use, but they've got to do something to "protect" their businesses. Sure, eventually you'd create copies from a "blue ray" computer drive, but normal players couldn't ever play them...reducing the rampant piracy... of course most pirated things on the net are DVIX anyway...so people aren't exactly stopped by it. But it would prevent "casual" copying... but again, not "downcopying" via PC to something standard like DVD after it was cracked.
The only benifit would be that harware makers could finally build "convergence" devices like TiVO for DVD & CD because they could guarantee the data couldn't be pulled off the device. Combine with technologies like apple's airport express you could really do some neat stuff.
I don't like the "phone home" requirements though, that could be a real turn off for most people. I suppose a device could track the keys for what it already authenticated, but that again limits the really interesting stuff like mobile and piping usage.. unless the device could "pass" it's key off to other lesser devices... or include multiple copies in alternate formats! like a CD player passing it's tag id off to an iPod... I Really don't like the idea of content providers having "rights" to the media after you recieve it.. that is a key part of why we have copyright in the first place.. because we need an "artifical" way to protect something that's not protectable. Allowing publishers to "edit" usage after the sale is just against the entire system we have in place... it's almost as bad as skipping commercials!!!
The idea of an RFID tag makes perfect sense. With the new and shiny DMCA, it could be illegal to produce copies of the RFID tags. You could put the key on the RFID tag and manufacture some "proprietary" format with the embedded tag... they players would be required to "read" the tag to decrypt the data.
Of course this means that PC users may not be able to use the discs... But that's another story about marketing. One of the problems with publishing technology is that they have to trade off cheap with reproduceable... They've gotta come up with "gimmicks" Nintendo GCs "backwards" drive was perfect... I'd put RFID tags in the same category.
Ultimately, they have to build a better multimedia center that allows "piping" of content between formats without actually copying it. I've wondered for years why component makers have shuned the idea of "remote PC control" versus making a PC "player". Apple's Airport Express is a great "convergence" device in this respect..allowing you to remote control your itunes list, but pipe it anywhere in your house...we need more of that! Things like USB or firewire remote control would allow really simple media setups without having to hack anything... after all, you can get a cheap DVD player for your TV for about the same as a DVD-rom drive. Why can't you "pipe" that easily to your PC... that's the question to really ask, because then formats become irrelevant.
Therein lies the REAL problem with TV now. Most networks are 24-7 but only have 5-6 hours of interesting stuff a day tops. The MPAA is NOT related or friendly to the broadcasters.. They'd prefer money per "eyeball" that gets radiated with the stations waves... but that'll never happen. One thing that irks the MPAA is that two big media powerhouses funded BG instead of "buying" it from the producers...
look at a show like "Friends" MBC should have had current season shows on the air constantly.. but the network "buys" it from the producers and "sells" it to the broadcasters.. Your local channel can't run it anyother time than when they're contractually obligated.. if the network tells them differently, they loose out on that too! If you happen to be busy at the exact time the show ran, "they'd" rather have you miss the show than get a second chance...
IF you'll notice the successful "second" tier cable networks have all made an attempt to "own" the shows they show.. The WB in particular has made a nearly habit of showing the best shows at least twice in prime-time usually the second showing is on sunday... also note that once Smallville got popular the producers pulled the network's "right" to show it more than once a week.
If anything, the MPAA's own ranks are cutting their own throats... think of "another" powerful union whining about not getting enough in the face of technology.
Apple's smallness is an advantage in this case. after all, they can literally change their entire line-up in 2-3 years... without causing much software pain because they have better controls. The acceptance of tablet PCs has never been the hardware, but rather all the "old" piles of keyboard & mouse software nobody wants to fix for the tablet... right now if I want a MS tablet I still have to re-buy all my apps anyway... converting from Win to Mac is a lot cheaper proposition if the mac's software "just works". I've noticed lately, Apple's becoming very good at "forward thinking" in their technology... forcing changes needed in the low level stuff that allow the next steps to be relitively painless to the users...
don't they have software that lets you use the notebook's onboard motion sensors to "play" with the screen by tilting, tipping, the device... the greatest gag of them all would be to combine that tech with a tablet pc for the ultimate high-tech "Etch-a-Sketch"! Just flip and shake the screen to clear it... that gag alone would sell tons of units...
a tablet necessitates a "1-button" interface because generally it's similar to a "pointy finger" of the user. The main drawback to windows tablet right now is that key programs like office 2003 are still a terible usage kludge for "pure" tablet users... The key to the design so far looks to be the LACK of any keyboard attached...you gotta force the software developers to give up that crutch.
There's a new killer market for Apple to dominate... think of it as Open Source Television... Those Canadians and Brits have been telling us ours sucks for years... you think slashdotters could do better??? because right now broadcasters just might be willing[maybe even financially forced] to buck their corperate masters because most stations are owned by little guys that barely make anymoney... it's a McDonald's kind of thing...
Ever since the FCC allowed DirectTV and Dish to rebroadcast local channels, the "local" broadcast channels are a dying breed. Basically HDTV is the "savior" of broadcast because it's something even the entrenched cable companies can't pull off .. after all it's much cheaper for the broadcasters to switch 1 antena than the cable company to switch ALL the cable boxes... and because your "rabit ears" are now better that satellite or cable for a short time.
I bought a new HDTV but waited two months to try OTA broadcast because I have Dish...WOW! boy was I missing out!!! "ER" or whatever your favorite drama is, in HDTV is truely awesome. But the ability to broadcast "ER" in HD over air is what's in jeprody...
basically each "network" has their own cable channels now... if the broadcasters don't do what their told all the new shows will go to Disney [ABC], TNT/Bravo [NBC], and Viacom [CBS] [it's already happening!!] ..Fox, UPN and WB already get most of their viewers from cable anyway because broadcast was so expensive and regulated to get into. bacically broadcast TV is a "loss center" for the big media companies that all have stake in cable or electronics companies. They are now expendable... just like what happened in radio..
It's in the FCCs interest to allow all of the public to use the frequencies and devices designated as "public" [certian things like ham radio and "big" satillite are not licensed for "public" usage... that's the difference.. kinda like commercial vs. residential zoning] A housing association is like a "government" otherwise we'd have every town with a cable company banning Dish... or they'd threaten to pull cable out of town... that's neither legal or fair in the "national" fcc veiw.
on the other hand, they should take the FCC to task for trying to regulate "decency" on cable tv too.. Cable has always been exemept from this type of "fair use" because it was a "private network"... but now the FCC is trying to restrict that... good to see the courts are being "conservitive" in their findings
trouble is in 90% of the USA you could get mothers banned from showing their nipples to "underaged" children... It would pass unanimisouly before anybody realized that babies ARE children and mothers were thrown in jail!!!! Politics has become that stupid lately!!!!
Mozilla proper is like a 25 MB download... Firefox is only 4.5 MB... and mostly does the same things as "just a browser". The memory usage is a sad but necessary thing... The devs are trying to get Firefox to true XHTML/CSS/SVG... as quickly as possible. The SVG nightly does really well with inkscape files... gotta make some demo pages to really try it out!!!
SMS is much better because it's "written" and you can review it again at the store rather than relying on your memory.. and that's the BIG deal of email/postits/SMS, etc... the ability to not rely on human memory for simple but important things!!! As people we can remember the "3d-spacial" placement of an SMS message or a yellow sticky note much more quickly than the actual pseudo-random information written on said message...
You can't right now reasonably put a robot on the market without either being a "toy" and drastically under-powered or having high-end sensors like industrial bots.. with all the lawyers nowdays there's just no middle ground. To be blunt, do you want the liability for a "robot snowblower" when your neighbor's 3 year-old comes near it to play? ...didn't think so... a sticker just doesn't make it right
A moderate 1 HP electric motor attached to something can break somebody's arm... I worked with electronics robots that could put a 2x4 thru a brick wall!!! and that's just to move little electronic parts a couple feet!! [and the machine is bolted to the floor!!]
even something like a robot vacuum has to be incredibly failsafe. That Rumba is a toy in the robot world, it can't be too powerful, it has to respond to being stopped, flipped over, wet, something stuck, etc... and this is just a dust-buster on wheels!!!
personally, i think the first robot attempt should be a R2D2-like PC replacement rather than something anthropormorphic. something "safe" and modular that simplifies the digital world for people... think PVR/PDA/Cellphone/PC/home alarm/ etc... in one cute package... espically until we train the public how to act around robots.
Let's break out the alphabit soup... HIPPA, FDA, MIL SPEC, SOX, ISO, TS, QS, ... & TAXES!!! and the list goes on... if you could create a system to allow businesses to share resources for compliance with all the regulations you'd make a mint. It's something that no major software company does right now.. even the mighty MS and IBM leave you to fend for yourselves on the real "meat" of running a business. The tweaks necessary to comply with all those things are huge changes that nobody else wants to fix.. OSS is uniquely suited to comply because the regulators can even crack open the source.. and once the program works for one business case, it should be workable for all of them. The amount of cash being spent on HIPPA and SOX alone is staggering.. $100K's per company... and right now it's a crapshoot as to if the govt auditors will come in and tell you to redo it all anyway... there's nobody making gaurantees on any of this...
If Shuttleworth really want's to make some cash, steer the ubuntu client & server distros in the direction of complying with as many regs as possible... and buy stock in O'reilly too [telling us how to USE it is just as important!] Good security like OSS prefers goes hand-in-hand with many of these regulations... it's just sloppiness that people have gotten away without for so long...
There's the best business reason I can think of!!!