If there is no DRM what incentive is there for a content provider to create content? Are people going to pay for something when they can just get it off a friend? One of the reasons that Windows Media is being used as a format to deliver streamed content is to do with DRM.
Like it or not DRM is here and will appear as a standard feature on new technologies. From an end user point of view is DRM a good thing? In some circumstances yes. DRM can be used to allow only authorized people to view my images/video that I upload to a web site. Is how DRM is used not that it is available that causes issues.
It would be an interesting gamble if this was to be the case. I can't see it happening though, this is possibly a tester to see how the public would react.
I would guess that in the long run MS will just copy Apple (again) and provide an emulation mode to manage both the hardware (MC68xxx to PowerPC) and software (classic to OS X).
If it is already there, if it is already connected to the computer through an extremely fast interface, and if it is so easy to backup data, then what is the problem with backing up your data? That they have a high mechanical failure rate? And what is your proof? 8mm backup tapes?
I don't see an issue with using your camera for occasional backups, it's your camera:) I was pointing out there are cheap solutions to this issue that may be more suitable.
WRT mechanical failure. I have no proof for miniDV. Apply a little bit of logic though. The mech in a consumer level device is primarily designed for record and playback on a streaming basis. Backup tends to be like this, restore less so. If you are using your device for regular backups you are likely to use it more than just as a video device. This will wear everything more. The more you use it the more chance of it failing.
Back in the early 90s video 8 was released. At the same time this was seen as a more cost effective medium for backups than QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) tapes and so a modified version of this mech was used for data backup. The problem was that the tolerances for data and video are different and the drives had problems with alignment. This led to problems reading tapes written on one drive not being readable on other drives. It could be the same model from the same manufacturer but it just wouldn't read. Once DAT became more widely available 8mm lingered on a while (it had higher capacity) but was gradually replaced.
You can pick up a DDS-3/4 DAT drive on eBay for under $300. Tapes come in at similar costs to MiniDV (or cheaper). These will backup more than the DV tape and are designed for this sort of use. MiniDV cameras however cost more than this and aren't designed for this sort of use.
The only reason that I can see for looking at this at all is if people have a MiniDV tape and want to make occasional backups. It could be a risky business for though for two reasons:
You have to explain to your SO can't video the first steps/words of your child because a backup is in progress.
Your SO, searching for a tape, overwrites your only backup with video of the family.
I remember using the first 8mm backup systems, derived from 8mm video mechs. They were notorious for only being able to restore on the same mech. This would have been fine if the failure rate of the mechs wasn't so high.
Given that the authorizations for publication are fairly easy to find on WoS doesn't it behoove the IDSA to check before sending the cease and desist? It would also save them time in the long run to give a list of specific infringements.
This would of course take time and effort and a general scare letter may work in the majority of cases.
As an edu admin myself, I have a repsonsibility for the content of my networks, which includes those nodes attached to them.
This doesn't make sense. If your institution allows students to connect personal equipment to provided networks they must have made them agree to some sort of acceptable use policy which places the legal burden of the contents of the system on student. In a similar way students will have to agree to rules when using institutional systems. If someone steps outside those rules then they are responsible not the institution. As an employee of the institution you don't have that responsibility.
Illegal activity performed by an individual is the responsibility of the individual unless it is being carried out on behalf of an institution in which case they share liability. The only way that you could be made liable would be if you knowingly ignored such illegal acts.
If you have been told that you are responsible then you need to press the institution to either a) issue a ban on connecting equipment to your network, or b) get the students to sign a document absolving the institution and thereby yourself for the contents of their system and their use of the network.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on the use the information is being put to.
In order to work out what needs updating a check has to be made between what is on your system and the available versions. This can be done either by sending all of the available version information down to your machine all of the time, or by sending information to the update server. The former is less intrusive but more costly in terms of bandwidth, the latter is more efficient.
Sending information about third-party products allows for MS to act as a single source of updates, which is quite good from a usability point of view.
If the information is used solely for the advertised use, checking for updates, then there is no issue here. If they use it for license checking then it's not a problem unless you've illegal software. If they use it for profiling/marketing then's it's an invasion of privacy.
BTW. Apple recently announced that they were considering opening up the OS X software update feature to third-parties. Expect complaints from the recent Apple switches as soon as this happens.
This is a great addition to my hotel room automation kit. Now as well as being able to use my Palm to control the TV I can use my T68i to control my computer. I never need to leave my bed again:)
On a serious note it's saved me having to buy a remote from Keyspan.
The Segway is the 2000's equivalent of the Sinclair C5 (a 1980's electic personal transport vehicle). No doubt a good technical achievement it can't compete with the tried and tested designs of bicycles, motorcycles and cars. The road systems are designed for particular modes of transport unless you have something that can move through a different medium, floating the air perhaps, failure is assured.
The difference is that PayPal still has a minimum fee. This is attempting to remove the fee.
My understanding is that the appeal here is for a system with no minimum fee. The business can bill them straight away when they get a loaded token, helping cash flow, and the money is always deducted from the buyer's account. Presumably the buyer's account must have either be in credit or there is a minimum pull from the buyers card ($10) so as to minimise the charges incurred by peppercoin.
I don't see this as anything revolutionary though. The idea of running an online account with aggregated payments has been done before. The key is getting acceptance from a public that knows how credit cards work. It would be quite possible for someone like PayPal to implement an aggregated scheme for micropayments and take the peppercoin business away.
Not all peoples expertise is in solving famine/disease etc. These sorts of projects help with the funding of a lot of basic research, that basic research can lead onto advances in other unrelated fields.Whilst these are no doubt worthy causes deserving of much support and commitment who decides what's worth working on?
This years scientific focus is eliminating bad jokes on late night TV.
I figured if I was going to put up with a device with a screen the size of a postage stamp, I'd go with a t68i, which will at least fit easily in my pocket, and have a separate handheld computer linked via Bluetooth.
I already do this. I've looked at PDA phones for a while but I've never really been taken with them. I've used various Palm devices to make SSH connection to servers using phones over the past few years. I used to use IR but with bluetooth this is even simpler.
The only neat PDA/phone is still the Nokia 9210i. I mean Doom and you can use a serial cable to connect to switches/servers, what more could a geek want?
Whaa? Ultima Online is a game. Let me say that again so that passing AOLers can understand, ULTIMA ONLINE IS A GAME. It's not real, it doesn't control access to bank accounts, credit cards, or any other sensitive information. For a game it's okay to have visible plain text passwords. It's an appropriate level of security.
Waiting for the obvious responses from people that UO^WEverquest^Wother MMPORPG is more than just a game. I have a filter installed to redirect such to/dev/null.
The real driving force for small, portable, removable media is not the computer industry but the photographic one. Do I care if I can carry around a credit card sized disk if all I can use it in is a computer? Compact flash storage prices are coming down and capacities are going up. How long will it be before they reach the multiple GB mark?
I don't see this as being a major player unless it gets adopted my a photo manufacturer. That's only going to happen if they can demonstrate write speeds to match solid state devices.
Good idea! Let's combine that with ubiquitous voice-over-IP and lose this old-skool point-to-point telephony network altogether.
In most European countries at least it is a legal requirement for primary phone lines to work in the case of a power outage. A POTS phone is powered over the line so regardless of power failure in the building it will work. A VoIP phone requires that there is network connectivity and power in order to function. VoIP services are being sold as additional phones rather than primary phones over here.
Simple enough question. Who, especially/.ers, actually keys in numbers these days?
I have all of my more common numbers saved in the memory of my house phone. I speed dial or page through the memory rather than dialing.
The cell-phone is even better. I now have all of my numbers sync'd to the phone from my laptop and are searchable. If I get really lazy I can use bluetooth and do the phone number lookup on my phone or PDA.
The only numbers I actually dial are ones that I'm not going to dial often. It's really not much of an issue to me.
[disclaimer] I live in Europe where 10+ digit dialing from cell phones is the norm. [/disclaimer]
IE compatibility isn't important. You may not realize this, but the W3C defines web compatibility. As long as Apple implements for the W3C, it doesn't matter who uses their browser.
In the current web environment this is naive to say the least. Whatever people on/. think the majority of the rest of net users browse with IE on Windows. Anyone working to short timescales will go for IE first and standard compliance later. In addition if they think that a specific feature in IE on Windows will improve the site for their visitors they will go with that.
Before people complain about this I've seen it happen in more than one dotcom. They look at the web stats, check the heavy users, and go with what will give them the best hit for the lowest cost. Standards compliance may come later but often they are chasing the next feature rather than bothering about tidying up to allow the remaining 5% of the audience to use the site.
PHP will compress pages on the fly as well.
On a site I'm involved with this reduced our hosting costs as we needed a smaller pipe but also increased the apparent speed of the web site, especially on dial up connections.
Slashdot Mirror
Like it or not DRM is here and will appear as a standard feature on new technologies. From an end user point of view is DRM a good thing? In some circumstances yes. DRM can be used to allow only authorized people to view my images/video that I upload to a web site. Is how DRM is used not that it is available that causes issues.
Google will only be top of the pile until someone else can come along with a better search engine.
I would guess that in the long run MS will just copy Apple (again) and provide an emulation mode to manage both the hardware (MC68xxx to PowerPC) and software (classic to OS X).
I don't see an issue with using your camera for occasional backups, it's your camera :) I was pointing out there are cheap solutions to this issue that may be more suitable.
WRT mechanical failure. I have no proof for miniDV. Apply a little bit of logic though. The mech in a consumer level device is primarily designed for record and playback on a streaming basis. Backup tends to be like this, restore less so. If you are using your device for regular backups you are likely to use it more than just as a video device. This will wear everything more. The more you use it the more chance of it failing.
Back in the early 90s video 8 was released. At the same time this was seen as a more cost effective medium for backups than QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) tapes and so a modified version of this mech was used for data backup. The problem was that the tolerances for data and video are different and the drives had problems with alignment. This led to problems reading tapes written on one drive not being readable on other drives. It could be the same model from the same manufacturer but it just wouldn't read. Once DAT became more widely available 8mm lingered on a while (it had higher capacity) but was gradually replaced.
You can pick up a DDS-3/4 DAT drive on eBay for under $300. Tapes come in at similar costs to MiniDV (or cheaper). These will backup more than the DV tape and are designed for this sort of use. MiniDV cameras however cost more than this and aren't designed for this sort of use.
The only reason that I can see for looking at this at all is if people have a MiniDV tape and want to make occasional backups. It could be a risky business for though for two reasons:
I remember using the first 8mm backup systems, derived from 8mm video mechs. They were notorious for only being able to restore on the same mech. This would have been fine if the failure rate of the mechs wasn't so high.
This would of course take time and effort and a general scare letter may work in the majority of cases.
This doesn't make sense. If your institution allows students to connect personal equipment to provided networks they must have made them agree to some sort of acceptable use policy which places the legal burden of the contents of the system on student. In a similar way students will have to agree to rules when using institutional systems. If someone steps outside those rules then they are responsible not the institution. As an employee of the institution you don't have that responsibility.
Illegal activity performed by an individual is the responsibility of the individual unless it is being carried out on behalf of an institution in which case they share liability. The only way that you could be made liable would be if you knowingly ignored such illegal acts.
If you have been told that you are responsible then you need to press the institution to either a) issue a ban on connecting equipment to your network, or b) get the students to sign a document absolving the institution and thereby yourself for the contents of their system and their use of the network.
They should be able to find out the version of VPC additions installed though and from that infer VPC version.
In order to work out what needs updating a check has to be made between what is on your system and the available versions. This can be done either by sending all of the available version information down to your machine all of the time, or by sending information to the update server. The former is less intrusive but more costly in terms of bandwidth, the latter is more efficient.
Sending information about third-party products allows for MS to act as a single source of updates, which is quite good from a usability point of view.
If the information is used solely for the advertised use, checking for updates, then there is no issue here. If they use it for license checking then it's not a problem unless you've illegal software. If they use it for profiling/marketing then's it's an invasion of privacy.
BTW. Apple recently announced that they were considering opening up the OS X software update feature to third-parties. Expect complaints from the recent Apple switches as soon as this happens.
On a serious note it's saved me having to buy a remote from Keyspan.
The Segway is the 2000's equivalent of the Sinclair C5 (a 1980's electic personal transport vehicle). No doubt a good technical achievement it can't compete with the tried and tested designs of bicycles, motorcycles and cars. The road systems are designed for particular modes of transport unless you have something that can move through a different medium, floating the air perhaps, failure is assured.
My understanding is that the appeal here is for a system with no minimum fee. The business can bill them straight away when they get a loaded token, helping cash flow, and the money is always deducted from the buyer's account. Presumably the buyer's account must have either be in credit or there is a minimum pull from the buyers card ($10) so as to minimise the charges incurred by peppercoin.
I don't see this as anything revolutionary though. The idea of running an online account with aggregated payments has been done before. The key is getting acceptance from a public that knows how credit cards work. It would be quite possible for someone like PayPal to implement an aggregated scheme for micropayments and take the peppercoin business away.
This years scientific focus is eliminating bad jokes on late night TV.
I already do this. I've looked at PDA phones for a while but I've never really been taken with them. I've used various Palm devices to make SSH connection to servers using phones over the past few years. I used to use IR but with bluetooth this is even simpler.
The only neat PDA/phone is still the Nokia 9210i. I mean Doom and you can use a serial cable to connect to switches/servers, what more could a geek want?
Waiting for the obvious responses from people that UO^WEverquest^Wother MMPORPG is more than just a game. I have a filter installed to redirect such to /dev/null.
NTL in the UK have now implemented 1GB/day download limits (here). This would seem to put a block on this in the UK :(
Only the current 10GB and 20GB iPods have non-moving "wheels". The 5GB and the original 10GB have a moving wheel.
The BBC has a story about an earlier chinese fake here or here for text browsers.
The real driving force for small, portable, removable media is not the computer industry but the photographic one. Do I care if I can carry around a credit card sized disk if all I can use it in is a computer? Compact flash storage prices are coming down and capacities are going up. How long will it be before they reach the multiple GB mark?
I don't see this as being a major player unless it gets adopted my a photo manufacturer. That's only going to happen if they can demonstrate write speeds to match solid state devices.
In most European countries at least it is a legal requirement for primary phone lines to work in the case of a power outage. A POTS phone is powered over the line so regardless of power failure in the building it will work. A VoIP phone requires that there is network connectivity and power in order to function. VoIP services are being sold as additional phones rather than primary phones over here.
Simple enough question. Who, especially /.ers, actually keys in numbers these days?
I have all of my more common numbers saved in the memory of my house phone. I speed dial or page through the memory rather than dialing.
The cell-phone is even better. I now have all of my numbers sync'd to the phone from my laptop and are searchable. If I get really lazy I can use bluetooth and do the phone number lookup on my phone or PDA.
The only numbers I actually dial are ones that I'm not going to dial often. It's really not much of an issue to me.
[disclaimer] I live in Europe where 10+ digit dialing from cell phones is the norm. [/disclaimer]
In the current web environment this is naive to say the least. Whatever people on /. think the majority of the rest of net users browse with IE on Windows. Anyone working to short timescales will go for IE first and standard compliance later. In addition if they think that a specific feature in IE on Windows will improve the site for their visitors they will go with that.
Before people complain about this I've seen it happen in more than one dotcom. They look at the web stats, check the heavy users, and go with what will give them the best hit for the lowest cost. Standards compliance may come later but often they are chasing the next feature rather than bothering about tidying up to allow the remaining 5% of the audience to use the site.
PHP will compress pages on the fly as well. On a site I'm involved with this reduced our hosting costs as we needed a smaller pipe but also increased the apparent speed of the web site, especially on dial up connections.
Will this be multi platform from release (Myst was a Mac game, the last version was a joint PC/Mac CD) or will it be like NWN?
There doesn't seem to be any certificate authority management either :(
Oh well, bug report sent to Apple. There needs to be a way to override this.