I know that this is going to be deeply unpopular but what is wrong, in principle, with DRM? It is popular to be anti-DRM but in the long run some form of DRM has to be adopted.
I already have DRM on my P800. Software vendors tie their applications to the IMEI number of the phone. I've used hardware keyed DRM software on Sun boxen since the early '90s. DRM is something that's here and here to stay.
I'd rather see an open, standardized, DRM solution rather than one foisted on us by a monolopistic gatekeeper that I don't trust, but DRM is going to be an essential part of the electronic future.
They've managed to survive fairly brutal beatings before and will again. It usually ends up something like this:
"Yes I know that Microsoft have been caught doing something wrong. They have been caught though, and punished, so that just proves that the system works. In the end we need PCs and they come with Windows on and we need that to share files with everyone else."
As far as this is concerned it won't damage Microsoft. They are much more vulnerable to increases in Viruses and Worms. These impact people directly and can make them look for alternatives.
Valid point of view but not one that I subscribe to.
In an ideal world all research money would be spent on improving the lot of people on the earth. All spending would be geared towards curing disease, making sure everyone was fed etc. However we don't live in an ideal world and aren't going to anytime soon.
In the real world money is spent on large scale projects that spark the imagination. There is then a trickle down effect from the advances that are made as a result of pushing towards the big goal. The cost of putting a man on the moon (and bringing him back) was expensive, but a number of advances were made as a result of the requirements needed to do that.
[snip] after having made more money per song by not having to pay hardly anything to distribute it.
Why do/. readers continue to spread the rumor that things don't cost much to distribute over the Internet? Where did all of the millions of dotcom money go, parties? Well, some of it did but it mostly went on servers, storage and bandwidth.
There is a old adage "never underestimate the bandwidth of a van" which applies in this case. It is still more cost effective to move large volumes of data physically than over wires.
Voelker told me they COULD NOT fix my adapter, as in, it is NOT POSSIBLE in any way to fix it, but I could order a brand new one for $90, + tax and shipping of course. Also, it should be worthy of note Apple has a propritery (sp?, no, I'm not going to check it) design on their adapters where no off the shelf adapters will work properly. I never asked Apple to fix it, because I was out of warrenty and I knew they wouldn't do it anyway
So let me get this right. You are complaining that your local Apple Dealer wouldn't attempt to replace your broken power supply cable? This on an out of warranty G4 powerbook? Man, that's what AppleCare is for. I had the same thing happen to my power adapter whilst abroad. Called up AppleCare and they arranged for me to be able to pick a new one up from the local dealer.
I have had similar problems with older, out of warranty, kit and gone to my local Apple dealer. They've done me repairs free of charge, no problem. This is in the UK though and I visit there often so am known to them.
Given the apparent ease at which legal redress is taken in the US (witness the number of lawyers) is it a surprise that they wouldn't repair the power supply? Consider what would happen if they did make a repair but it failed and gave you a shock. You'd be taking them to court over that. Far simpler for them to say that the repair isn't possible.
The idea of 'off the shelf' power adapters is an interesting one. The power adapter with my new G4 is different than the one for my old G4. I guess that this is because the new one needs more power. If you could buy any power adapter what would be the chance of just picking the cheapest and then complaining that it took forever to charge?
IANAL but can't see anything in the legislation that goes as far as the article suggests. This seems a classic piece of invective by the "everything should be free", "copyright is bad" lobby. This sort of reporting diminishes rather than helps the cause.
Looking in detail the general provisions for use of copyright material have not changed. The general provisions section refers back to the 1988 copyright act. There is nothing specifically in there about preventing the public shifting media for personal use.
Wheras MacOS makes the easy things easy, the hard things hard and the impossible things not possible
The referred document was about what was possible with Linux. It said nothing about what wasn't possible with MacOS.
An example of why your statement is false has to be non-linear video editing and DVD authoring. These are both complex tasks that up until a few years ago would have been thought impossible for the majority of people. iMovie changed the former, iDVD changed the latter. Anyone can now do these things.
Apple has advertised using the stores N songs method since the launch of the iPod. This was using 128kbps MP3 and 4 minute song length, they now use 128kbps AAC as their benchmark. These settings are/were the default import settings for iTunes.
As for how many songs you can fit on at a different bit rate, find a four minute (or so) song that you've encoded at that bit rate. Divide the size of the hard disk by the size of the encoded file.
Open source is not free. The cost to your boss for running open source software is the time it takes for you to support it. He also needs you, or someone like you, to make sure that his systems keep running etc. This is why many companies shy away from open source solutions, the perceived lack of support.
I often work away from home and am absent from the area I can vote in when it comes time to cast my ballot (UK local elections etc). For the past few years I've exercised my democratic right by postal ballot. Yes, I know that there's no guarantee that it has arrived but it's my only chance of being able to take part.
My other option here in the UK is a proxy vote whereby I designate someone to place my vote for me. This sort of get's rid of the secret part of a secret ballot to me so I've never looked into.
Incidentally have been, and are going to be more, trials of all postal ballots in some areas of the UK. The percentage of people taking part in the elections was significantly higher than for traditional voting.
Re:Entire Dr Who currently on Air in Australia
on
Doctor Who Comeback
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· Score: 1
Unfortunately they don't have all of it. Some was lost, some they only have partial episodes.
I installed on my 17" PB with no problems at all. That said it was a completely fresh install so there was nothing odd for the update to deal with, no third party drivers and no chance of disk errors etc.
Don't like it, don't agree with it, but acknowledge their right to use the service they faught for and won. If you can't take it, fight the fight to give them (better) competition, instead of filing some frivolous lawsuit.
What rights did VeriSign fight for here? They *bought* Network Solutions Inc. who managed have managed the.com and.net namespaces since time began (well almost;)). They don't have a *right* to the contents of the namespace, there are many other registrars that can delegate domains into it. They only have control for historical reasons and the fact that no one could be bothered to change things.
The.uk the TLDs are run by Nominet, a not-for-profit organisation that allows anyone to register as a registrar. They manage the.uk namespace but have no commerical interest in it. Given that VeriSign have now demonstrated that they can't be trusted not to take advantage of their position for commerical gain a similar organisation to Nominet should be setup to manage the.com and..net domains.
The fact that.com,.net,.org have no wildcard entry is surely just an implementation detail. Sure, it's been this way for a long time.
But you are saying there is a rule that disallows wild-card entries? This breaks an RFC somewhere? So, the wildcard entries on many TLDs such as.nu,.to,.tv, etc. are illegal as well?
Come on, this is not a sustainable argument. Yes, Verisgn have broken something. No, it's not religious law, just a convention we all forgot about.
No there is no rule, it's not written in an RFC, yes other (smaller) TLDs do have wildcard entries. It is just a (very) long standing convention.
By making a unilateral change to something that, although they have the technical ability to do, they don't have the right to do, VeriSign have caused technical problems. The SMTP problem is a specific technical problem that has raised it's head now, others may (or may not) appear in the following days/weeks.
In your previous message you said:
Seriously, I'm not trolling: I'm trying to understand what the actual technical problem is. How can any system rely on the absence of something? How can a "not resolved" error actually be more useful than a resolution to an IP address that does nothing useful?
I tried to honestly answer your request, picking out each point in turn, and what did I get in return? A good old USENET flame. Oh well, some conventions (reply not want I wanted = flame) never die;)
Another person mentions that anti-spam checks based on domain names will fail. So, this is a valid check for spam? Oh, I thought spammers simply spoofed the originating host, which is why I get hundred of "returned" messages I never sent.
It's not as simple as that. Spammers use a wide variety of methods when sending out spam. Made up source addresses is one of them. Looking at my reject log I'd put it at around 10% of the spam I detect being caught in this way. So yes it's useful.
Someone else complains that it's an abuse of powers given to Verisign by the government. OK... but so is 75% of business. It's a tough life, yeah.
95% of statistics are made up, including this one. Just because someone else doesn't obey the rules doesn't give VeriSign the right to do this. There are now many registrars that manage the.com and.net zones this is making use of a historic position to gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
How can a "not resolved" error actually be more useful than a resolution to an IP address that does nothing useful?
Read the page and you'll find information about the SMTP 'solution' that VeriSign has implemented and the impact that is beginning to have around the world; backed up mail queues as VeriSign can't handle the load etc.
Put simply the technical problem is this: Since.com,.net etc have been around there hasn't been a wildcard DNS entry. This is the case for the majority of other TLDs and SLDs like.co.uk,.com.au etc. The software implementations of various protocols have taken this into account. A sudden change in the rules can have an unknown impact on the internet in general.
Patches to BIND aren't the answer. Verisign need to be made to stop breaking the internet.
80% of the DNS servers are BIND. The more of these that get patched the less of a problem redirected email becomes. The patch to BIND shouldn't be the only action taken but anything that helps is good. A change to BIND helps.
The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc. If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem
This assumes that the only use for DNS is to look up websites and that the DNS protocol be extended to return near matches.
For email and other automated systems it is a non-starter. As an option in a browser it could be useful (but look at the hassle MS get for the search option in IE) but leave our protocols alone.
The Cable and Wireless and Telewest DTV systems were both implemented by the same company and use the same software. When NTL bought C&W they originally had their own, in house, system and the C&W one. They moved to the C&W one as it allowed quicker rollout. The issues are to do with the software. There are other software solutions available, running on the same STB hardware, that provide much better performance. Making a switch in software isn't a trivial thing for the companies both technically and in terms of licensing etc. Don't expect to see it happen any time soon given the current financial state of the UK cable companies.
The terrible use of colour and fonts is due to the desire to use corporate colouring and fonts in the interface rather than ones that work well on TV.
It's no good just to berate the use of blacklists because it may block legitimate email. Any system that filters email may block legitimate email. Virus filters, SPAM filters, all block email and all run the risk of blocking messages that shouldn't be blocked.
A good admin would assess the merits of various systems to block SPAM, viruses and other unwanted emails, and use those that provide the best solution with the smallest risk of false positives. Combine that with intelligent messages being sent out when messages are blocked, including details on how to make contact without using email, and you have prudent management of an email system that prevents unwanted emails getting through.
Of course you can always advocate what you appear to be. Any filtering is wrong so leave it to the users to filter through the large amount of chaff to find the message that they want. If they miss it because they can't find it it's their own fault. Who cares about the extra cost to business of the fatter pipe and larger email systems needed to process this and the amount of money burnt in people time processing their email.
The GameCube is struggling badly in the US, selling well in Japan and okay elsewhere. The overall sales figures for the GameCube is similar to the XBox. Sales of both consoles are dwarfed by the Playstation 2, which has started to lose momentum.
The reality is that *the* games console is the Playstation 2. It has the best market penetration, most games, good budget titles etc. The other console makers are fighting for the scraps Sony leave at the table.
Slashdot Mirror
I already have DRM on my P800. Software vendors tie their applications to the IMEI number of the phone. I've used hardware keyed DRM software on Sun boxen since the early '90s. DRM is something that's here and here to stay.
I'd rather see an open, standardized, DRM solution rather than one foisted on us by a monolopistic gatekeeper that I don't trust, but DRM is going to be an essential part of the electronic future.
They've managed to survive fairly brutal beatings before and will again. It usually ends up something like this:
"Yes I know that Microsoft have been caught doing something wrong. They have been caught though, and punished, so that just proves that the system works. In the end we need PCs and they come with Windows on and we need that to share files with everyone else."
As far as this is concerned it won't damage Microsoft. They are much more vulnerable to increases in Viruses and Worms. These impact people directly and can make them look for alternatives.
It's not the standard browser on my P800. I have downloaded and tried out Opera on my P800 but prefer the built in browser to it.
In an ideal world all research money would be spent on improving the lot of people on the earth. All spending would be geared towards curing disease, making sure everyone was fed etc. However we don't live in an ideal world and aren't going to anytime soon.
In the real world money is spent on large scale projects that spark the imagination. There is then a trickle down effect from the advances that are made as a result of pushing towards the big goal. The cost of putting a man on the moon (and bringing him back) was expensive, but a number of advances were made as a result of the requirements needed to do that.
There is a old adage "never underestimate the bandwidth of a van" which applies in this case. It is still more cost effective to move large volumes of data physically than over wires.
Connectivity FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 through dock connector
If you are going to rant get the facts right first.
I have had similar problems with older, out of warranty, kit and gone to my local Apple dealer. They've done me repairs free of charge, no problem. This is in the UK though and I visit there often so am known to them.
Given the apparent ease at which legal redress is taken in the US (witness the number of lawyers) is it a surprise that they wouldn't repair the power supply? Consider what would happen if they did make a repair but it failed and gave you a shock. You'd be taking them to court over that. Far simpler for them to say that the repair isn't possible.
The idea of 'off the shelf' power adapters is an interesting one. The power adapter with my new G4 is different than the one for my old G4. I guess that this is because the new one needs more power. If you could buy any power adapter what would be the chance of just picking the cheapest and then complaining that it took forever to charge?
Looking in detail the general provisions for use of copyright material have not changed. The general provisions section refers back to the 1988 copyright act. There is nothing specifically in there about preventing the public shifting media for personal use.
An example of why your statement is false has to be non-linear video editing and DVD authoring. These are both complex tasks that up until a few years ago would have been thought impossible for the majority of people. iMovie changed the former, iDVD changed the latter. Anyone can now do these things.
Apple has advertised using the stores N songs method since the launch of the iPod. This was using 128kbps MP3 and 4 minute song length, they now use 128kbps AAC as their benchmark. These settings are/were the default import settings for iTunes. As for how many songs you can fit on at a different bit rate, find a four minute (or so) song that you've encoded at that bit rate. Divide the size of the hard disk by the size of the encoded file.
Open source is not free. The cost to your boss for running open source software is the time it takes for you to support it. He also needs you, or someone like you, to make sure that his systems keep running etc. This is why many companies shy away from open source solutions, the perceived lack of support.
My other option here in the UK is a proxy vote whereby I designate someone to place my vote for me. This sort of get's rid of the secret part of a secret ballot to me so I've never looked into.
Incidentally have been, and are going to be more, trials of all postal ballots in some areas of the UK. The percentage of people taking part in the elections was significantly higher than for traditional voting.
Unfortunately they don't have all of it. Some was lost, some they only have partial episodes.
I installed on my 17" PB with no problems at all. That said it was a completely fresh install so there was nothing odd for the update to deal with, no third party drivers and no chance of disk errors etc.
The .uk the TLDs are run by Nominet, a not-for-profit organisation that allows anyone to register as a registrar. They manage the .uk namespace but have no commerical interest in it. Given that VeriSign have now demonstrated that they can't be trusted not to take advantage of their position for commerical gain a similar organisation to Nominet should be setup to manage the .com and ..net domains.
By making a unilateral change to something that, although they have the technical ability to do, they don't have the right to do, VeriSign have caused technical problems. The SMTP problem is a specific technical problem that has raised it's head now, others may (or may not) appear in the following days/weeks.
In your previous message you said:
I tried to honestly answer your request, picking out each point in turn, and what did I get in return? A good old USENET flame. Oh well, some conventions (reply not want I wanted = flame) never diePut simply the technical problem is this: Since .com, .net etc have been around there hasn't been a wildcard DNS entry. This is the case for the majority of other TLDs and SLDs like .co.uk, .com.au etc. The software implementations of various protocols have taken this into account. A sudden change in the rules can have an unknown impact on the internet in general.
80% of nameservers are BIND. Changes to BIND have a bigger impact than other nameservers.
For email and other automated systems it is a non-starter. As an option in a browser it could be useful (but look at the hassle MS get for the search option in IE) but leave our protocols alone.
The terrible use of colour and fonts is due to the desire to use corporate colouring and fonts in the interface rather than ones that work well on TV.
It's no good just to berate the use of blacklists because it may block legitimate email. Any system that filters email may block legitimate email. Virus filters, SPAM filters, all block email and all run the risk of blocking messages that shouldn't be blocked.
A good admin would assess the merits of various systems to block SPAM, viruses and other unwanted emails, and use those that provide the best solution with the smallest risk of false positives. Combine that with intelligent messages being sent out when messages are blocked, including details on how to make contact without using email, and you have prudent management of an email system that prevents unwanted emails getting through.
Of course you can always advocate what you appear to be. Any filtering is wrong so leave it to the users to filter through the large amount of chaff to find the message that they want. If they miss it because they can't find it it's their own fault. Who cares about the extra cost to business of the fatter pipe and larger email systems needed to process this and the amount of money burnt in people time processing their email.
The reality is that *the* games console is the Playstation 2. It has the best market penetration, most games, good budget titles etc. The other console makers are fighting for the scraps Sony leave at the table.