Your privacy is vanishing as fast as Al Gore's 2004 presidential hopes.... lawsuits brought by the Justice Department against Dmitry Sklyarov, and the big movie studios against 2600 magazine, Congress simply doesn't care. and People can sit around saying, 'Is it a good idea to have anonymity or not?'" Cottrell said. "But if you actually implement it, you can say, 'How do you want to deal with this reality?' It's not that my writing the code created the reality. The possibility was always there. But my writing the code made it impossible to ignore."
So he is saying Your rights are vanishing, you can't even build new technology and also Go ahead and make new technology so they will have to change. Sure, if you really wanted to push it to the extreme we could try to get every programmer in trouble with the law, but that's not what I want.
Things aren't getting better. The House of Representatives voted 385-3 last month to approve life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers. The Senate approved the USA Patriot Act, which expanded police ability to perform Internet surveillance without a court order, by a 98-1 vote last fall. and Put another way, who made a bigger difference: Yet another letter-scribbling activist or Phil Zimmermann, who wrote the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software? How about Shawn Fanning, the man who created Napster? Or the veterans of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which oversees the fundamental protocols of the Internet?
Note that Phil Zimmerman was almost jailed for PGP for writing a potential criminal tool. Look at what happened to Napster, and all the negative fallout and political garbage from it, and note what the IETF has become.
While the columnist is right that our congresscritters don't seem to care about us, IGNORING THE PROBLEM WON'T MAKE IT GO AWAY.
So run for congress and local government, make frends with your congresscritter, and continue to make the apethtic public aware of the erosion that is going on.
... I can tell you that for the forseable future, realtime movie-quality 3D is out of the question. PERIOD
While it isn't addressed in the article, there are a LOT of things that need to be handled in the hardware that just isn't there.
Orders of magnitude more polygons. Artists want more polys. I personally would want at least four polys per pixel at any view, just to make sure that the rendering would be correct.
Raytracing and Radiosity. Both of these have been proposed in realtime, there is a realtime ratracer (RTRT, google on it) and Realtime Radiosity is a siggraph paper (look it up, too.). BUT they only work with limited numbers of objects. They need to work with the number of polygons given above, and they can't.
Lights and light maps. Current video cards are limited to just a few lights. The latest generation can only do 8 lights. That works for games, Quake uses just a few and artists hate being limited to them. The video cards would need to handle thousands of light sources, and be able to process light maps (for shadows) in realtime.
Textures. Currently we use textures to hide the fact that we don't have detail. But as long as that detail is missing, things will look bad up close. The 'ideal image' is not a wireframe with a texture draped over it. The 'ideal image' is based completely on the vertex lists. To build a model at the right detail, each pixel in the texture would need to be replaced with a vertex, including color and other material properties, normals, edges, etc. So each value goes from a 32-bit RGBA color entry to a fairly big (about 1000-bit) structure.
RAM and BUS speed, and model size. Once we have these massive scenes, we have the bottlenecks of RAM and the system bus. We have always fought these in graphics, which is why the push from ISA to PCI to AGP. Trying to make the graphics better will just compound the problem.
The facts are that these won't go away. We will continue making texture mapped wireframe models for the near future. By the time the graphics card industry can do realtime what movie studios do in months today, the movie studios will be playing with the ideas above.
A perfect rendering system is almost near-infinite recursive, requires infinitely detailed models, and takes a long time to render. We can't do the infinite perfect system, but we can tell our artists to let it run for about an hour per frame. That means 'no realtime top of the line movies', no matter what.
From the article: consumers will enjoy more entertaining and exciting content, which will enlarge and vitalize the entire digital content distribution market.
This implies that they have been capable of putting out better trash than they have now (probably true, most films aren't worth $7 per person right now) but that somehow, adding DRM to boxes will magically make movies better.
I'd be damn pissed off if I took the time to create A Clockwork Orange, Se7en, or Fight Club, or Pulp Fiction, only to have people stipping it's essense out and changing the experience.
They are shows with only a few scenes that many people find offensive, and where editing DOESN'T change the experience. They have a listing of the shows they edit, including things like Air Force One, Cast Away, The Mummy, Point Break, and Scream 3. They DON'T have on their list Pulp Fiction or Fight Club.
Continue reading the section 107. The list says it includes, but it is not all-inclusive. Personal copies have historically been allowed as fair use, and two of the four criteria in 107 are:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
So for non-digital media, backups are simply personal copies for nonprofit, potentially educational purposes with either no effect or a positive effect on the market or value of the work. The other factors would probably not be a problem either.
As for CD's and DVD's, they must be interpreted by electronics. While not true in CD's, DVD's included programmed menus and scripted programs. It therefore follows that you COULD make copies of DVD's under the computer programs exception, because they contain computer programs.
Tactile cannot replace visual. It can augment it, sure, but not replace. Here's why:
Your eyes have millions of receptors. When you see something like a screen, most of them are actively processing the screen. That is HUGE bandwidth. You are used to using it because your brain is processing vision constantly, so is very accurate.
A tactile interface would rely on a few hundred receptors on a handful of fingers. (pun intended) Unless you read braile, your fingers aren't that sensitive. Your fingers aren't used to being used as a primary interface, and is therefore not that accurate.
Aural (sound) interfaces are much better because they have a significant bandwidth (not as high as vision, but better than touch) and we are used to using them. That's part of why the two most-required output interfaces are a monitor and speakers.
Input interfaces are the same. The best way we have for output is our tongue (seriously), second is our hands. So our two preferred input interfaces should logially be voice and hand. We are used to typing, and always dream of the ultimate speech-control interface. Or you could go to a tongue interface, but I wouldn't want my co-developers to share it.
So as far as User Interfaces go, I think we should strive for better GUIs that can be augmented with sound and tactile feedback.
I understand that businesses are supposed to perform a check for previous work, but that is often not done, leaving that particular search up to the patent office or the legal system when the patent is eventually overturned. This is my primary complaint against technical patants: they are often granted even though prior work exists or they are obvious to others in the field.
With the millions of technical papers, conference proceedings, theses, dissertations, textbooks, previous patents, and other publications, how does the patent office verify that technical content is acutally patentable (novel and non-obvious) and owned by the submitter? Further, is there a way that the technical communities could assist in preventing these troublesome patents?
Almost every time political boundaries need to be altered (for representatives), these people don't move the border around a few houses, they rewrite the entire map to best suit their own agenda. Legislative Redistricting causes this problem (known as Gerrymandering) in elections again and again and again ALL OVER THE USA.
You are right about no rational people wanting it. There are many rational people who have offered ways to restructure boundaries that offer the biggest human benefit and lowest government cost. These ideal solutions segment the groups by physical boundaries and population density. But government is not a rational entity.
There are countless smart was to divide it up. Clusters of people should rationally be served by the same set of government. People between clusters should be separated by distance to the clusters and other boundaries (hills, rivers, roads). In dense population areas, map the location of a current road, or a side of the road, as the boundary -- not the line between where two rivers meet and where another river enters a lake bed.
And of course after two counties or states go to court fighting it out -- costing millions of taxpayer dollers -- They will put out big press releases saying either "We saved tax money by moving these buildings outside of our county!" or "We increased tax revenue without increasing taxes!", overlooking the fact that they wasted millions in the process.
Hmm...
Microsoft's New Business Plan 1. Buy VeriSign. If consumers protest, tell them we are doing it to incorporate encryption and security software into products. 2. When domain renewal comes up, notify them that to incorporate new Security Features, they must switch to MS servers. If that doesn't work, offer them free domain registration if they switch to MS servers. 3. Alter protocol to allow RIAA to broadcast network commands that peroform self-DoS attacks for music theft. 4. ???? 5. MONEY!
This sounds like a corporate greed issue. It sounds like it needs some satire...
----
Enter VeriSign, a corporate giant, and ICANN, a nonprofit service that thinks it is a private -- and profitable -- corporation.
VeriSign (shouting offstage): Hey government, ICANN is taking our business! ICANN: But you are just trying to racketeer and price gouge. VeriSign: That's not the point. You are racketeering and we want more of the pie. Er, you are outside your jurisdiction on those matters, and are avoiding the issue. ICANN: But we filter our money through IANA and other profitable corporations, I mean, nonprofit public benefit groups.
Two small groups, Nominet and DENIC, enter stage right.
Nominet and DENIC: But what about us? We want to work closely with VeriSign because then we can get all the names that aren't taken with.com,.net, and.org. If VeriSign can price gouge, we should be able to also. VeriSign: You guys all wanna step into another room and we can discuss this rationally?
all step into dimly-light back room, talking. Also in the room is a demonic figure in red, with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. All of them laugh, join hands, and become a New Entity.
New Entity: We have reached an agreement. We are now VeriSign-Nominet-ICANN-DENIC, or VeriSNIDE for short. Our new registration fee is $15000 per domain, or highest bid. Because we are Internet based, we will no longer report to any government or public entity. We will do all business from our fleet of personal yachts around the world. Please see our Lawyers and Accountants on the way out.
exit stage left.
----
Okay, so it won't be a blockbuster play, but it sure seems like the entire corporate world is following this model.
Those are all good, but there are even more than those.
They are co-workers second, and people first. While it may be a work-related problem, it may be a people-problem as well.
People have needs. You or a friendly co-worker should find out about their non-work needs as well. Work is an abstract thing, if there are concrete needs that need to be taken care of, help them with those first.
Family. Are they having problems there?
Friends. Do they have people they can talk to and do things with?
Money/Debt. Are they okay?
People need success, and like to feel important.
Do they have low self-esteem or had problems with code recently?
Do they feel like they are able to do thier job?
Do they feel comfortable with others in the team?
Do they feel like they can make a difference?
People need to feel safe. Do they have emotional safety at work and at home?
... Or the stock market day-traders for encouraging this type of announcement? Or politicians for accepting so much in bribes and donations from the companies to let them abuse the markets? Or the managers who assume that big company == good products? Or (your favorite pet-peeve here).
I think just greed generally.
-=Sigh=-
Call me communistic, but I would love a world where everyone can have everything they need and what they want, within reason. Peer reviews let people have the things that are beyond reason. The world has more than enough of everything. Get rid of greed, set up proper distribution systems, and allow everyone to have all that they want.
This isn't an issue of visa's being a bad thing. It is an issue of who the companies can hire and keep for the lowest amount of money. People with H1B visas (I work with two) have some minor additional costs to the company, but they admit (and my coworkers agree) that they could make more outside the US. But that's not the main issue.
Before the Y2K problem, if you were a COBOL programmer you would be let go in favor of younger people who knew the newer languages (C++). Companies could let their older (higher paid) people go and hire younger (low pay) people with current skills.
Before that, you were let go if you didn't know COBOL or a higher level language, rather than staying with machine code. Again, this is the lowest corporate money.
It's just a money issue -- how can companies make the most cash at the least cost? It has nothing to do with peoeple with visas.
One of the complaints often heard from fighter pilots is that their computers or screens crash. They have to reboot them all the time. I have heard of pilots quip about rebooting a dozen times on a mission.
I would gladly pay for all content that I am exposed to, as long as I could be guarenteed that I would never have another ad pitched at me again.
I remember not too long ago buying a cable reciever with a hundred or so little push buttons. I couldn't get local channels on the box, but there were no commercials on any cable channel. It was great. Not to long after that, commercials appeared on some of them, then all of them, then it was just as bad, or worse, than broadcast TV. So we got rid of cable -- it wasn't worth it. Satellite offered movies without the commercial breaks (there were always some between movies, but it was about as bad as the cinema). About a year of that, and it too was flooded with commercials. It's gone.
I loved the 'net back in the 80's and ninties. I LOVED the ability to call into campus and get the 'good modem rack', with 1200 bps modems. Surfing the net meant ftp, archie and veronica, irc, eventually gopher and lynx. There was no such thing as an online ad, except for people asking newsgroups for jobs and workers. The early groups like Prodigy also started out fairly-clean (with high-speed 2400 modems!), but it wasn't long before the bottom 1/4 of your screen had a little updating ads eating up the bandwidth.
Now you can hardly go to an FTP site without the MOTD showing you an ad of some type. Ad free newsgroups? Get real. HTTP? Nearly all commercial sites are just that -- giant commercials, and good subscription sites are slowly finding that they can put ads in without too much of a complaint. Even online stores and business pages are starting to put up banner ads.
Right now I'm proud to say that I've been commercial TV-Free for a year. I will watch DVD's on computer, sometimes watch a show on a VCR, and I always go to movies 15 minutes late and STILL am early enough to get ads from Coke, Pepsi, and Nike.
I have a TV but it is plugged into the playstation; the TV is always set to channel 'INPUT'. I have coworkers who sometimes suggest shows, and if I feel like it I'll watch it, but usually I don't. (I made an exception for Dilbert, when it was on.) I am able to block most ads online with a simple DNS filter, but even that doesn't work all the time. (my.hosts file is huge, almost a half-meg!)
I'll say it again. I would gladly pay for all content that I am exposed to, as long as I could be guarenteed that I would never have another ad pitched at me again.
Everything in the patant is based on the first point. That first point was obviously not new, it is what router and switch debuggers have always done. Any router which logs a particular port could then be considered prior art. So perhaps look for a debugging tool that caputres a port? What about older *nix kernels with IPTrace or other programs running?
Let them try. If it is successful, then great. I don't think it would be successful.
I disagree with the article where it questions the ethics of removing the ads. It sounds like the ethics of TiVo and changing the channel during comercials -- most of us think it is ethical, only the greedy^H^H^H^H^H^H sponsers complain. But with electronic ads, it is generally per-hit, so they couldn't complain, only request changes aren't made.
Historically you don't get a whole lot of funding from ads, especially when people have the freedom to remove them. We have seen stories about lawsuits when people block ads, and kickback when Slashdot started subscriptions with responses including many new sites using slash code that take stories directly from/. in addition to their own.
It would be annoying and painful if large corps flodded the sources with ads (more than just the corporate credits in there now) but that would be quickly resolved by cutting those people out of the source trees. On the other hand, if high quality packages are produced with ads (like the current AOL's Instant Messenger) and become successful while remaining Free or Open (why would people subject themselves to ads? could we do self-targeting?) then let them do it.
If a new distro wants to put ads in, let them try. If they are just looking for funding, they should instead put out a good product and sell CDs, manuals, and support. If they need to occasionally ask customers for financial support let them put it out in their mailing list -- these are the people who use the products and care about its survival the most.
That was examined once upon a time, and discarded.
People think it is too dangerous on trains for terrorists and accidents. Just imagine one rocket exploding. Further, put the rocket at the worst place in the atmosphere and you will have high-level radiation airborne around the world.
Not according to the DMCA. A mod chip has the potential to circumvent the security systems in the box, which is forbidden. While the DMCA is a stupid law, the companies that purchaced it (er, sponsored it) are now using it.
It's interesting how the timing of this, the BSA's 'grace period' ending dates, and other 'bad' announcements have come after the closing arguments of the MS antitrust penalty phase's final arguments.
Also interesting to note was their big announcements "We're stopping new development to fix bugs", "We want to be a trusted system", "We will share source" and other 'good' announcements came at a time of relative media hype.
Looking over the history of the trial for the past few years, there were a lot of 'good' news from Redmond when the case was hot, and lots of 'bad' news to counter it when it was not in the spotlight.
I sure hope that the Judge will consider this in her remedy.... "In spite of being found guilty AND being offered a favorable agreement, they continued their predatory, abusive, and illigal behaviour. Their behaviour was carefully formulated to ride on consumer fears and trust, changing marketing to match the winds but remaining focused on their goal: exploit the consumers.":)
Let's just pray she will be harder then judge Jackson. She is so careful that I the ruling shouldn't be overturned. I wonder if she would read/. in considering her solution?
Slashdot Mirror
So he is saying Your rights are vanishing, you can't even build new technology and also Go ahead and make new technology so they will have to change. Sure, if you really wanted to push it to the extreme we could try to get every programmer in trouble with the law, but that's not what I want.
Note that Phil Zimmerman was almost jailed for PGP for writing a potential criminal tool. Look at what happened to Napster, and all the negative fallout and political garbage from it, and note what the IETF has become.
While the columnist is right that our congresscritters don't seem to care about us, IGNORING THE PROBLEM WON'T MAKE IT GO AWAY.
So run for congress and local government, make frends with your congresscritter, and continue to make the apethtic public aware of the erosion that is going on.
frob.
While it isn't addressed in the article, there are a LOT of things that need to be handled in the hardware that just isn't there.
- Orders of magnitude more polygons. Artists want more polys. I personally would want at least four polys per pixel at any view, just to make sure that the rendering would be correct.
- Raytracing and Radiosity. Both of these have been proposed in realtime, there is a realtime ratracer (RTRT, google on it) and Realtime Radiosity is a siggraph paper (look it up, too.). BUT they only work with limited numbers of objects. They need to work with the number of polygons given above, and they can't.
- Lights and light maps. Current video cards are limited to just a few lights. The latest generation can only do 8 lights. That works for games, Quake uses just a few and artists hate being limited to them. The video cards would need to handle thousands of light sources, and be able to process light maps (for shadows) in realtime.
- Textures. Currently we use textures to hide the fact that we don't have detail. But as long as that detail is missing, things will look bad up close. The 'ideal image' is not a wireframe with a texture draped over it. The 'ideal image' is based completely on the vertex lists. To build a model at the right detail, each pixel in the texture would need to be replaced with a vertex, including color and other material properties, normals, edges, etc. So each value goes from a 32-bit RGBA color entry to a fairly big (about 1000-bit) structure.
- RAM and BUS speed, and model size. Once we have these massive scenes, we have the bottlenecks of RAM and the system bus. We have always fought these in graphics, which is why the push from ISA to PCI to AGP. Trying to make the graphics better will just compound the problem.
The facts are that these won't go away. We will continue making texture mapped wireframe models for the near future. By the time the graphics card industry can do realtime what movie studios do in months today, the movie studios will be playing with the ideas above.A perfect rendering system is almost near-infinite recursive, requires infinitely detailed models, and takes a long time to render. We can't do the infinite perfect system, but we can tell our artists to let it run for about an hour per frame. That means 'no realtime top of the line movies', no matter what.
frob.
Let them do it! I would LOVE to see a successful alternate DNS system!!!
This implies that they have been capable of putting out better trash than they have now (probably true, most films aren't worth $7 per person right now) but that somehow, adding DRM to boxes will magically make movies better.
HA!
See the CIA World Factbook
As for CD's and DVD's, they must be interpreted by electronics. While not true in CD's, DVD's included programmed menus and scripted programs. It therefore follows that you COULD make copies of DVD's under the computer programs exception, because they contain computer programs.
Your eyes have millions of receptors. When you see something like a screen, most of them are actively processing the screen. That is HUGE bandwidth. You are used to using it because your brain is processing vision constantly, so is very accurate.
A tactile interface would rely on a few hundred receptors on a handful of fingers. (pun intended) Unless you read braile, your fingers aren't that sensitive. Your fingers aren't used to being used as a primary interface, and is therefore not that accurate.
Aural (sound) interfaces are much better because they have a significant bandwidth (not as high as vision, but better than touch) and we are used to using them. That's part of why the two most-required output interfaces are a monitor and speakers.
Input interfaces are the same. The best way we have for output is our tongue (seriously), second is our hands. So our two preferred input interfaces should logially be voice and hand. We are used to typing, and always dream of the ultimate speech-control interface. Or you could go to a tongue interface, but I wouldn't want my co-developers to share it.
So as far as User Interfaces go, I think we should strive for better GUIs that can be augmented with sound and tactile feedback.
Just some thoughts.
With the millions of technical papers, conference proceedings, theses, dissertations, textbooks, previous patents, and other publications, how does the patent office verify that technical content is acutally patentable (novel and non-obvious) and owned by the submitter? Further, is there a way that the technical communities could assist in preventing these troublesome patents?
Almost every time political boundaries need to be altered (for representatives), these people don't move the border around a few houses, they rewrite the entire map to best suit their own agenda. Legislative Redistricting causes this problem (known as Gerrymandering) in elections again and again and again ALL OVER THE USA.
You are right about no rational people wanting it. There are many rational people who have offered ways to restructure boundaries that offer the biggest human benefit and lowest government cost. These ideal solutions segment the groups by physical boundaries and population density. But government is not a rational entity.
There are countless smart was to divide it up. Clusters of people should rationally be served by the same set of government. People between clusters should be separated by distance to the clusters and other boundaries (hills, rivers, roads). In dense population areas, map the location of a current road, or a side of the road, as the boundary -- not the line between where two rivers meet and where another river enters a lake bed.
And of course after two counties or states go to court fighting it out -- costing millions of taxpayer dollers -- They will put out big press releases saying either "We saved tax money by moving these buildings outside of our county!" or "We increased tax revenue without increasing taxes!", overlooking the fact that they wasted millions in the process.
frob.
1. Buy VeriSign. If consumers protest, tell them we are doing it to incorporate encryption and security software into products.
2. When domain renewal comes up, notify them that to incorporate new Security Features, they must switch to MS servers. If that doesn't work, offer them free domain registration if they switch to MS servers.
3. Alter protocol to allow RIAA to broadcast network commands that peroform self-DoS attacks for music theft.
4. ????
5. MONEY!
(Sorry about the last two, I could't resist.)
frob.
----
Enter VeriSign, a corporate giant, and ICANN, a nonprofit service that thinks it is a private -- and profitable -- corporation.
VeriSign (shouting offstage): Hey government, ICANN is taking our business!
ICANN: But you are just trying to racketeer and price gouge.
VeriSign: That's not the point. You are racketeering and we want more of the pie. Er, you are outside your jurisdiction on those matters, and are avoiding the issue.
ICANN: But we filter our money through IANA and other profitable corporations, I mean, nonprofit public benefit groups.
Two small groups, Nominet and DENIC, enter stage right.
Nominet and DENIC: But what about us? We want to work closely with VeriSign because then we can get all the names that aren't taken with .com, .net, and .org. If VeriSign can price gouge, we should be able to also.
VeriSign: You guys all wanna step into another room and we can discuss this rationally?
all step into dimly-light back room, talking. Also in the room is a demonic figure in red, with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. All of them laugh, join hands, and become a New Entity.
New Entity: We have reached an agreement. We are now VeriSign-Nominet-ICANN-DENIC, or VeriSNIDE for short. Our new registration fee is $15000 per domain, or highest bid. Because we are Internet based, we will no longer report to any government or public entity. We will do all business from our fleet of personal yachts around the world. Please see our Lawyers and Accountants on the way out.
exit stage left.
----
Okay, so it won't be a blockbuster play, but it sure seems like the entire corporate world is following this model.
frob.
They are co-workers second, and people first. While it may be a work-related problem, it may be a people-problem as well.
Just some thoughts.
I think just greed generally.
-=Sigh=- Call me communistic, but I would love a world where everyone can have everything they need and what they want, within reason. Peer reviews let people have the things that are beyond reason. The world has more than enough of everything. Get rid of greed, set up proper distribution systems, and allow everyone to have all that they want.
Well, back to the world in which we live.
I thought the systems were supposed to be useful, not just purchased. The headline shows corporate greed, once again.
I would like to see a headline like "Microsoft is concerned IBM and Linux may offer more consumer benefits".
Before the Y2K problem, if you were a COBOL programmer you would be let go in favor of younger people who knew the newer languages (C++). Companies could let their older (higher paid) people go and hire younger (low pay) people with current skills.
Before that, you were let go if you didn't know COBOL or a higher level language, rather than staying with machine code. Again, this is the lowest corporate money.
It's just a money issue -- how can companies make the most cash at the least cost? It has nothing to do with peoeple with visas.
Frob.
One of the complaints often heard from fighter pilots is that their computers or screens crash. They have to reboot them all the time. I have heard of pilots quip about rebooting a dozen times on a mission.
I would gladly pay for all content that I am exposed to, as long as I could be guarenteed that I would never have another ad pitched at me again.
I remember not too long ago buying a cable reciever with a hundred or so little push buttons. I couldn't get local channels on the box, but there were no commercials on any cable channel. It was great. Not to long after that, commercials appeared on some of them, then all of them, then it was just as bad, or worse, than broadcast TV. So we got rid of cable -- it wasn't worth it. Satellite offered movies without the commercial breaks (there were always some between movies, but it was about as bad as the cinema). About a year of that, and it too was flooded with commercials. It's gone.
I loved the 'net back in the 80's and ninties. I LOVED the ability to call into campus and get the 'good modem rack', with 1200 bps modems. Surfing the net meant ftp, archie and veronica, irc, eventually gopher and lynx. There was no such thing as an online ad, except for people asking newsgroups for jobs and workers. The early groups like Prodigy also started out fairly-clean (with high-speed 2400 modems!), but it wasn't long before the bottom 1/4 of your screen had a little updating ads eating up the bandwidth.
Now you can hardly go to an FTP site without the MOTD showing you an ad of some type. Ad free newsgroups? Get real. HTTP? Nearly all commercial sites are just that -- giant commercials, and good subscription sites are slowly finding that they can put ads in without too much of a complaint. Even online stores and business pages are starting to put up banner ads.
Right now I'm proud to say that I've been commercial TV-Free for a year. I will watch DVD's on computer, sometimes watch a show on a VCR, and I always go to movies 15 minutes late and STILL am early enough to get ads from Coke, Pepsi, and Nike. I have a TV but it is plugged into the playstation; the TV is always set to channel 'INPUT'. I have coworkers who sometimes suggest shows, and if I feel like it I'll watch it, but usually I don't. (I made an exception for Dilbert, when it was on.) I am able to block most ads online with a simple DNS filter, but even that doesn't work all the time. (my .hosts file is huge, almost a half-meg!)
I'll say it again. I would gladly pay for all content that I am exposed to, as long as I could be guarenteed that I would never have another ad pitched at me again.
Frob.
Just some thoughts
I disagree with the article where it questions the ethics of removing the ads. It sounds like the ethics of TiVo and changing the channel during comercials -- most of us think it is ethical, only the greedy^H^H^H^H^H^H sponsers complain. But with electronic ads, it is generally per-hit, so they couldn't complain, only request changes aren't made.
Historically you don't get a whole lot of funding from ads, especially when people have the freedom to remove them. We have seen stories about lawsuits when people block ads, and kickback when Slashdot started subscriptions with responses including many new sites using slash code that take stories directly from /. in addition to their own.
It would be annoying and painful if large corps flodded the sources with ads (more than just the corporate credits in there now) but that would be quickly resolved by cutting those people out of the source trees. On the other hand, if high quality packages are produced with ads (like the current AOL's Instant Messenger) and become successful while remaining Free or Open (why would people subject themselves to ads? could we do self-targeting?) then let them do it.
If a new distro wants to put ads in, let them try. If they are just looking for funding, they should instead put out a good product and sell CDs, manuals, and support. If they need to occasionally ask customers for financial support let them put it out in their mailing list -- these are the people who use the products and care about its survival the most.
People think it is too dangerous on trains for terrorists and accidents. Just imagine one rocket exploding. Further, put the rocket at the worst place in the atmosphere and you will have high-level radiation airborne around the world.
Not according to the DMCA. A mod chip has the potential to circumvent the security systems in the box, which is forbidden. While the DMCA is a stupid law, the companies that purchaced it (er, sponsored it) are now using it.
The reign of terror has begun.
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
The system has security systems built in, such as a CSS DVD player. The mod chip can be considered a circumvention device which is banned by the law.
That's how Sony was able to fight, too.
Also interesting to note was their big announcements "We're stopping new development to fix bugs", "We want to be a trusted system", "We will share source" and other 'good' announcements came at a time of relative media hype.
Looking over the history of the trial for the past few years, there were a lot of 'good' news from Redmond when the case was hot, and lots of 'bad' news to counter it when it was not in the spotlight.
I sure hope that the Judge will consider this in her remedy.... "In spite of being found guilty AND being offered a favorable agreement, they continued their predatory, abusive, and illigal behaviour. Their behaviour was carefully formulated to ride on consumer fears and trust, changing marketing to match the winds but remaining focused on their goal: exploit the consumers." :)
Let's just pray she will be harder then judge Jackson. She is so careful that I the ruling shouldn't be overturned. I wonder if she would read /. in considering her solution?