If he still had his job, for example it would be a man standing up for his principles and at the same time a man who has a right to his job.
If he still had his job, his entire department, who had nothing to do with his lecture, would be audited for the slightest software or hardware licencing infraction (and who needs that?), and he still wouldn't be able to teach (as promised by the Dean). So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Why should talking about P2P networks be considered illegal...
It's not, and it was never suggested that it was. What was suggested was that his lecture was so disliked by individuals in power, because they don't want people to get the idea that P2P systems have legitimate uses, that he was coerced into resigning. The penalty for not resigning would have been a total crackdown on his entire department. He chose to resign to save the department that pain. And in return for that "favor", his 5 years of teaching is not even being recognized.
and why was he forbidden in the first place?
See above. The university administration, under coercion by the Spanish Recording Industry Association and the MPAA (I think-- I didn't quite understand that bit), didn't want the population at large to see that P2P is a valid and legal tool, as that would damage their fight against piracy.
But if you REALLY love her you'll use your own finger-print to buy the DVD, crack the DRM, burn it region and DRM free onto a DVD-R and give her FREEDOM for Christmas.
Mmmm, nothin' says lovin' like thousands of dollars in fines and a few years in jail. All your love are belong to the MPAA.;)
There is no way the public would touch this with a barge pole - I can see it being useful for oscar pre-releases etc. but if the firm that came up with the idea thought it had any mass-market potential they need their heads examining.
Let'em know about it! Email Gadh: director@wireless.ucla.edu. This is what I sent...
I believe that when addressing someone with a widely diverging opinion, tact and composure is the best strategy. But I'm going to go against that strategy for a moment and be utterly blunt: if you believe that biometric technology is the answer to DVD piracy, you're a boatload of fools.
I'm not saying that it can't be sure-- it surely can. I'm saying that doing so will be entirely against the consumers interest, to the point where DVD sales will drastically decline.
I will outline a few scenarios. Presume that you use fingerprint scans. The Wired article mentioned that the fingerprint would be initially scanned at the store. What does one do for online stores, such as Amazon.com? Do you now need to take your purchase to a "authorizing facility"? If I purchase a DVD for a friend, do I need to explain to the clerk that it's not for me, and no, I can't use my fingerprint for the purchase? Must the gift recipient then go to the store to activate their purchase before being able to enjoy it? The only system I know of that's akin to that is firearms purchase-- is that the kind of association you're interested in?
Let's presume that you have the initial fingerprint scanning issues worked out. I suffer from a slight skin condition where if my hands are exposed to hot water for extended periods of time (say, washing dishes), my hands will dry and crack, and the skin on my fingers will peal away, leaving me with little or no fingerprints. Am I just supposed to say "oh well, I guess I can't watch my DVDs for the next week while my hands heal"? Shall my mother, who has the same problem as I, bear the same problem? And should I have children, they too?
Or, as another individual noted, what of the situation where a parent is at work, and a young child wishes to watch a DVD at home. Presumably, the parent authorized the DVD with their own fingerprint, shall the child be prevented from watching "Sesame Street: Learning About Numbers", and instead flip on the TV and watch eye-candy like "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers"? When the child has called the parent at work for the tenth time saying that their DVD is "broken", the parent will be very pleased with your system.
There are, of course, other biometric devices, such as eye scans. So, do people who suffer from, say, cataracts or other diseases which cause a cloudiness in the eyes just not get to watch DVDs?
Perhaps a blood sample? A simple pin-prick, and the DVD is ready to go, right? There had better be sufficient clean needles in your authorization system to share between members of a household who have blood-born diseases such as HIV.
I'm not an expert in biometrics. Perhaps there are easy answers to all the above situations. But I can tell you that no one is interested in living in a 1984-like society, where you have to produce identification to enjoy legally purchased media. If you treat us like criminals, we will become criminals. Do with this what you will, but know that I will purchase no DVD player or DVDs with this system. I will happily take my roughly $500 annual elsewhere, and I'm certain that millions of other consumers will do the same.
Next you'll say something about "people who spill coffee shouldn't get $2 million" is FUD, because McDonalds' PR skillfully spun that story all out of proportion.
Just to straighten out the facts, the settlement was for $160k in compensatory damages plus $480k in punative damages, a large part of which must have gone to doctor's fees for skin grafts.
The gift will be in the form of a gift card, redeemable at the place of purchase for the actual item. The item cannot be picked up without a fingerprint.
Ah, the gift card. The present that says "I don't know you well enough to get you something you'd like".
Actually, in my case, gift cards make perfect presents, but I don't think I'm a "typical" consumer.
If I don't wear gloves when washing dishes or deal with very hot water for extended periods of time, my fingers dry up, and the skin starts pealing up and cracking. Some kind of genetic thing-- my mother gets the same thing. At any rate, I end up with raw and red hands for a few weeks... with little or no fingerprints.
Which means, of course, that I could not play a DVD that I legally purchased, or even make a new purchase and expect to play it again later.
And under this system, how is one supposed to purchase a DVD for a friend as a gift? "Hey, thanks for the DVD, but, er, you didn't activate it for yourself, did you? Gee, thanks..." Or are you supposed to drag your friend to the store to purchase it for him/her?
Now there was a guy who always knew where his towel was.
Apparently, you didn't R the FA. To quote the imminently quotable Neil Geiman:
There was a sudden scurrying and commotion as a Douglasy sort of noise came from upstairs, followed by the arrival downstairs of Douglas's stepmother. "He says there aren't any towels in the bathroom and he's in the bath. Where are the towels?" she asked...
It was very interesting because much of the plot, and some of the dialog for the first US episode was lifted straight from the British one. Other lines, of course, had changed.
One review I read stated that the first episode was lifted from the British version, but that the US version veered off from there. Not having seen either, I couldn't say if that was true, but you might want to check out later British episodes to get a better idea of the differences. Or, maybe not.:)
Assuming you download SP2, inavertently because you allow auto-update, will it install with the Windows firewall defaulting to On?
IIRC, the firewall is automatically on, or you get a popup stating that it's not, and would you like to turn it on. Of course, given that people ignore popups, what's that worth?
I always thought it was amusing that Apple names their OS releases after fast, nimble predators. While MS names theirs after the prey.
Actually, Longhorn cattle are pretty lethal. My wife witnessed one gut a horse with one sweep of a horn. The guy riding the horse was trying to rope the cattle, and ended up having second thoughts.
Not that this has anything to do with Microsoft...;)
iTunes could do precisely zero business without DRM, because nobody in his right mind would sell content on line without some kind of rights protection mechanism to impede the casual pirates.
You mean, like Audio Lunchbox? They sell DRM-free MP3s from a large number of indie labels, who you'd think would have a lot more to lose than the big-guys.
I don't work in the industry, but I'm certain that DVD sales are calculated into the financial balancing, no longer just cinema sales. Especially when you consider the large effort put into "bonus" features, like commentary and so forth. Then you have movies like Anchorman, for which you can get practically a whole second movie in bonus features if you buy it at the right place / time.
Does anyone else care that the submitter, DonnaMai, ripped off the article for his/her "submission"? How is it that on a website for nerds, we can't think of a way to at least paraphrase or summarize an article?
I'm choosing your post to reply to at random, just to throw my two cents in. This isn't necessarily directed at you, AC.
The two-button mouse on my home Dell machine drives my wife farking nuts. She's intelligent, but very right-brained. Not to mention that she's left-handed, so the whole mouse-on-the-right thing is ass-backwards to begin with. And should I mention that she's dyslexic?
I'm seriously considering replacing that Dell (cough, cough, moving it into my studio) with a Mac Mini. Why? Well, that one-button mouse would help a lot. I wouldn't have the "Click on the widget-- no, no, left click on the-- er, your other left click-- yeah, there you go, now select..." conversation. It would be simplified to "Click on the widget, now select...", or "Control-click on the widget, now select...". She understands keystroke helpers just fine. After all, it doesn't matter whether you select the right or left control key.
And don't bother with a "put a 'R' and 'L' on the buttons", because that's just a little insulting, don't you think? Not to mention a PITA to take your hand off the mouse every time you wanted to click on something.
Voma didn't "write" this newsblurb. He stole it. Nearly ever word was plagerised from the Bloomberg article.
What voma wrote: "Airbus, the world's largest planemaker, will unveil its A380, a $16 billion wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years. The double-decker A380 plane has a wing span of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles."
What Bloomberg wrote: "Airbus SAS, the world's largest plane maker, tomorrow will unveil its 555-seat A380, a 12 billion-euro ($16 billion) wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years.... The double-decker A380 has a wingspan of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles (14,820 kilometers) compared with 7,600 nautical miles for the Boeing 747-400."
My lord, I would think that at a newsite for nerds, we'd at least get submitters intelligent enough to write their own submission. Pathetic!
Meanwhile, the digital recording world is moving on to 128khz/48bit sampling which is way beyond anything even you could possibly need.
Eh? Who's working at 128 kHz? Typical rates are 44.1, 48, 96, and 192 kHz, with lesser common rates being 88.2 and 176.4 kHz. Are you talking about oversampling? 48 bit sampling may be used as an internal data depth on some machines, in particular in effects blocks, but the sampling itself typically occurs at 16 or 24 bits, and less commonly 18, 20, and rarely at 32.
Regarding the actual benefits of higher sampling rates, you might enjoy reading this:
http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampli ng _Theory.pdf
And yes, I have been watching the pro digital audio market lately. And no, I don't use tape.
Looking over Creative's website, I didn't see anything about creating your own playlists. They boast about the auto-shuffle features, but can you say "play this song, then this song, then this other song..."?
I left a message with the person who answered the phone, as I have in the past. She seemed to be actually taking a message, so I was satisfied. In the future, I may try writing, perhaps in addition to calling.
The way I figure it, the senator sure as heck better be too busy to take my call directly and personally, and I'm OK with that.
To compare to a situation with the company I work for, the CTO can't field calls from individual customers, even if there are only a couple hundred. That's why we have customer support.
I have the original TV series on Laser Disc. I got it long before DVDs were available.
So? Sorry, I just don't see the continuity with the rest of your comment.
Anyway, I can't say that I think the current incarnation of Marvin is bad. It looks like an Edward Gorey creation, which tend to be abysmally despondant and depressed-- perfect for Marvin.
Slashdot Mirror
If he still had his job, for example it would be a man standing up for his principles and at the same time a man who has a right to his job.
If he still had his job, his entire department, who had nothing to do with his lecture, would be audited for the slightest software or hardware licencing infraction (and who needs that?), and he still wouldn't be able to teach (as promised by the Dean). So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Why should talking about P2P networks be considered illegal...
It's not, and it was never suggested that it was. What was suggested was that his lecture was so disliked by individuals in power, because they don't want people to get the idea that P2P systems have legitimate uses, that he was coerced into resigning. The penalty for not resigning would have been a total crackdown on his entire department. He chose to resign to save the department that pain. And in return for that "favor", his 5 years of teaching is not even being recognized.
and why was he forbidden in the first place?
See above. The university administration, under coercion by the Spanish Recording Industry Association and the MPAA (I think-- I didn't quite understand that bit), didn't want the population at large to see that P2P is a valid and legal tool, as that would damage their fight against piracy.
But if you REALLY love her you'll use your own finger-print to buy the DVD, crack the DRM, burn it region and DRM free onto a DVD-R and give her FREEDOM for Christmas.
;)
Mmmm, nothin' says lovin' like thousands of dollars in fines and a few years in jail. All your love are belong to the MPAA.
There is no way the public would touch this with a barge pole - I can see it being useful for oscar pre-releases etc. but if the firm that came up with the idea thought it had any mass-market potential they need their heads examining.
Let'em know about it! Email Gadh: director@wireless.ucla.edu. This is what I sent...
I believe that when addressing someone with a widely diverging opinion, tact and composure is the best strategy. But I'm going to go against that strategy for a moment and be utterly blunt: if you believe that biometric technology is the answer to DVD piracy, you're a boatload of fools.
I'm not saying that it can't be sure-- it surely can. I'm saying that doing so will be entirely against the consumers interest, to the point where DVD sales will drastically decline.
I will outline a few scenarios. Presume that you use fingerprint scans. The Wired article mentioned that the fingerprint would be initially scanned at the store. What does one do for online stores, such as Amazon.com? Do you now need to take your purchase to a "authorizing facility"? If I purchase a DVD for a friend, do I need to explain to the clerk that it's not for me, and no, I can't use my fingerprint for the purchase? Must the gift recipient then go to the store to activate their purchase before being able to enjoy it? The only system I know of that's akin to that is firearms purchase-- is that the kind of association you're interested in?
Let's presume that you have the initial fingerprint scanning issues worked out. I suffer from a slight skin condition where if my hands are exposed to hot water for extended periods of time (say, washing dishes), my hands will dry and crack, and the skin on my fingers will peal away, leaving me with little or no fingerprints. Am I just supposed to say "oh well, I guess I can't watch my DVDs for the next week while my hands heal"? Shall my mother, who has the same problem as I, bear the same problem? And should I have children, they too?
Or, as another individual noted, what of the situation where a parent is at work, and a young child wishes to watch a DVD at home. Presumably, the parent authorized the DVD with their own fingerprint, shall the child be prevented from watching "Sesame Street: Learning About Numbers", and instead flip on the TV and watch eye-candy like "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers"? When the child has called the parent at work for the tenth time saying that their DVD is "broken", the parent will be very pleased with your system.
There are, of course, other biometric devices, such as eye scans. So, do people who suffer from, say, cataracts or other diseases which cause a cloudiness in the eyes just not get to watch DVDs?
Perhaps a blood sample? A simple pin-prick, and the DVD is ready to go, right? There had better be sufficient clean needles in your authorization system to share between members of a household who have blood-born diseases such as HIV.
I'm not an expert in biometrics. Perhaps there are easy answers to all the above situations. But I can tell you that no one is interested in living in a 1984-like society, where you have to produce identification to enjoy legally purchased media. If you treat us like criminals, we will become criminals. Do with this what you will, but know that I will purchase no DVD player or DVDs with this system. I will happily take my roughly $500 annual elsewhere, and I'm certain that millions of other consumers will do the same.
Next you'll say something about "people who spill coffee shouldn't get $2 million" is FUD, because McDonalds' PR skillfully spun that story all out of proportion.
Just to straighten out the facts, the settlement was for $160k in compensatory damages plus $480k in punative damages, a large part of which must have gone to doctor's fees for skin grafts.
The gift will be in the form of a gift card, redeemable at the place of purchase for the actual item. The item cannot be picked up without a fingerprint.
Ah, the gift card. The present that says "I don't know you well enough to get you something you'd like".
Actually, in my case, gift cards make perfect presents, but I don't think I'm a "typical" consumer.
(Silently cursing DRM)
If I don't wear gloves when washing dishes or deal with very hot water for extended periods of time, my fingers dry up, and the skin starts pealing up and cracking. Some kind of genetic thing-- my mother gets the same thing. At any rate, I end up with raw and red hands for a few weeks... with little or no fingerprints.
Which means, of course, that I could not play a DVD that I legally purchased, or even make a new purchase and expect to play it again later.
And under this system, how is one supposed to purchase a DVD for a friend as a gift? "Hey, thanks for the DVD, but, er, you didn't activate it for yourself, did you? Gee, thanks..." Or are you supposed to drag your friend to the store to purchase it for him/her?
Richard Harris missed the third movie on account of his being dead.
Another way of putting it might be: Richard Harris could not be reached in time for filming. (With all respect to Richard Harris, RIP.)
Now there was a guy who always knew where his towel was.
Apparently, you didn't R the FA. To quote the imminently quotable Neil Geiman:
There was a sudden scurrying and commotion as a Douglasy sort of noise came from upstairs, followed by the arrival downstairs of Douglas's stepmother. "He says there aren't any towels in the bathroom and he's in the bath. Where are the towels?" she asked...
The ripple effect makes my nipples hard.
Jean-Louis Gassee? Is that you?
It was very interesting because much of the plot, and some of the dialog for the first US episode was lifted straight from the British one. Other lines, of course, had changed.
:)
One review I read stated that the first episode was lifted from the British version, but that the US version veered off from there. Not having seen either, I couldn't say if that was true, but you might want to check out later British episodes to get a better idea of the differences. Or, maybe not.
Assuming you download SP2, inavertently because you allow auto-update, will it install with the Windows firewall defaulting to On?
IIRC, the firewall is automatically on, or you get a popup stating that it's not, and would you like to turn it on. Of course, given that people ignore popups, what's that worth?
I always thought it was amusing that Apple names their OS releases after fast, nimble predators. While MS names theirs after the prey.
;)
Actually, Longhorn cattle are pretty lethal. My wife witnessed one gut a horse with one sweep of a horn. The guy riding the horse was trying to rope the cattle, and ended up having second thoughts.
Not that this has anything to do with Microsoft...
Oh, if only I had mod points today. I just tried this out on my Windows box, and am very happy with the results.
iTunes could do precisely zero business without DRM, because nobody in his right mind would sell content on line without some kind of rights protection mechanism to impede the casual pirates.
You mean, like Audio Lunchbox? They sell DRM-free MP3s from a large number of indie labels, who you'd think would have a lot more to lose than the big-guys.
I don't work in the industry, but I'm certain that DVD sales are calculated into the financial balancing, no longer just cinema sales. Especially when you consider the large effort put into "bonus" features, like commentary and so forth. Then you have movies like Anchorman, for which you can get practically a whole second movie in bonus features if you buy it at the right place / time.
Does anyone else care that the submitter, DonnaMai, ripped off the article for his/her "submission"? How is it that on a website for nerds, we can't think of a way to at least paraphrase or summarize an article?
Crap, I say!
I'm choosing your post to reply to at random, just to throw my two cents in. This isn't necessarily directed at you, AC.
The two-button mouse on my home Dell machine drives my wife farking nuts. She's intelligent, but very right-brained. Not to mention that she's left-handed, so the whole mouse-on-the-right thing is ass-backwards to begin with. And should I mention that she's dyslexic?
I'm seriously considering replacing that Dell (cough, cough, moving it into my studio) with a Mac Mini. Why? Well, that one-button mouse would help a lot. I wouldn't have the "Click on the widget-- no, no, left click on the-- er, your other left click-- yeah, there you go, now select..." conversation. It would be simplified to "Click on the widget, now select...", or "Control-click on the widget, now select...". She understands keystroke helpers just fine. After all, it doesn't matter whether you select the right or left control key.
And don't bother with a "put a 'R' and 'L' on the buttons", because that's just a little insulting, don't you think? Not to mention a PITA to take your hand off the mouse every time you wanted to click on something.
Voma didn't "write" this newsblurb. He stole it. Nearly ever word was plagerised from the Bloomberg article.
... The double-decker A380 has a wingspan of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles (14,820 kilometers) compared with 7,600 nautical miles for the Boeing 747-400."
What voma wrote: "Airbus, the world's largest planemaker, will unveil its A380, a $16 billion wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years. The double-decker A380 plane has a wing span of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles."
What Bloomberg wrote: "Airbus SAS, the world's largest plane maker, tomorrow will unveil its 555-seat A380, a 12 billion-euro ($16 billion) wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years.
My lord, I would think that at a newsite for nerds, we'd at least get submitters intelligent enough to write their own submission. Pathetic!
Or would you prefer to buy some c32-coated amplifier knobs for a richer sound?
That's c37. Good try, though.
Meanwhile, the digital recording world is moving on to 128khz/48bit sampling which is way beyond anything even you could possibly need.
i ng _Theory.pdf
Eh? Who's working at 128 kHz? Typical rates are 44.1, 48, 96, and 192 kHz, with lesser common rates being 88.2 and 176.4 kHz. Are you talking about oversampling? 48 bit sampling may be used as an internal data depth on some machines, in particular in effects blocks, but the sampling itself typically occurs at 16 or 24 bits, and less commonly 18, 20, and rarely at 32.
Regarding the actual benefits of higher sampling rates, you might enjoy reading this:
http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampl
And yes, I have been watching the pro digital audio market lately. And no, I don't use tape.
Looking over Creative's website, I didn't see anything about creating your own playlists. They boast about the auto-shuffle features, but can you say "play this song, then this song, then this other song..."?
I left a message with the person who answered the phone, as I have in the past. She seemed to be actually taking a message, so I was satisfied. In the future, I may try writing, perhaps in addition to calling.
The way I figure it, the senator sure as heck better be too busy to take my call directly and personally, and I'm OK with that.
To compare to a situation with the company I work for, the CTO can't field calls from individual customers, even if there are only a couple hundred. That's why we have customer support.
ProTools isn't unique in the fact that it uses DSPs. You have systems like Creamware and (the now defunct) PARIS which follow a similar concept.
I have the original TV series on Laser Disc. I got it long before DVDs were available.
So? Sorry, I just don't see the continuity with the rest of your comment.
Anyway, I can't say that I think the current incarnation of Marvin is bad. It looks like an Edward Gorey creation, which tend to be abysmally despondant and depressed-- perfect for Marvin.