I think that is just it. I think if they make DRM that can't be broken, people won't buy it and it will die out on its own. My guess is that most people who buy from iTunes know that they can always burn a DRM-free copy. Even if they never rip it to their hard drive, they know they can if they want to. Now, if I knew that I couldn't ever get a copy free from DRM, I wouldn't buy from that service. I think that is on the mind of probably 90% of the people who buy from iTunes.
Exactly! DRM is ok as long as you can bypass it if you want to. Sounds odd, because DRM is supposed to stop exactly that, but without the ability to remove it in some way (such as burning to a CD and re-ripping) I doubt iTunes and others would have actaully taken off as they did.
For television and video, I use MythTV. It works great, as a PVR, and it does have a music add-on module that can be used to play your MP3/OGG collection. I have not personally used that part, but I've heard it is just as great. After testing MythTV for about a month now, I may soon give up my VCR all together.
One great thing is that some developers have put together some scripts to take the shows that you record with MythTV and encode them into DivX files, so they can be archived off to a CD. I use it all the time, and my 160GB hard drive is almost full. I really have to get time to burn!:-)
Re:Why only Win XP not 2000 or 98
on
Chandler 0.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It runs fine on Win98se for me. It seems remarkably stable for a 0.1 release. Sure, the features are not complete yet, but given some time, this could be better than Evolution. If the clients communicate regardless of what platform they are running on, this could be a great help to small, mixed platform offices. Some of us haven't been able to convice our bosses to switch everyone over to Linux yet.
If and when this bahavior reaches the U.S., I simply stop buying CDs. I will download every album off the internet and send money to the artists directly.
I find this idea very intriguing. What if the artists suddenly started getting envelopes full of cash from downloads? A buck a song or something like that? I know not everyone would do it, but maybe it would start to unite the artists behind the listeners and stop the stupid "piracy is theft" campaigns. Maybe instead of a boycott, people should organize something like this. Boycott CD's, but download what you want to listen to. Then, send some cash directly to the artist, or maybe even some third party that would distribute directly to the artist. That way we could get around the problem of the studios getting the addresses of the downloaders.
Sigh, you are forgetting that most people don't care that much about quality. There are a lot of audio- and video-philes around Slashdot, but the common person just wants to watch a movie. He/she cares more about the story than about the quality of the video. I just recently bought a DVD player, and I was in the same boat with no Composite inputs on my TV. Since my VCR has composite, I tried to do the same thing as the person above, but failed when trying to play DVD's because of macrovision. It made me furious when I found out that the messed up picture was intentional. I don't care that much for quality, but the movie (StarWars Episode 1) was basically unwatchable. It kept going from light to dark and the sound was messed up too. I bought an RF modulator to solve the problem, but I should not have had to. I have warned all my friends and family about this and none had heard of such a thing and were as upset about it as I was.
My suggestion is to tell your friends and family about it, and have them tell THEIR friends. Once enough people understand these "features," maybe things will change.
If this issue was a important to mainstream America as it is to you, they'd do something about it. However, it isn't that important to them, for good reason.
But that's just the point. It should be important because the changes that are coming are going to effect everyone. I never buy CD's or movies. I just record what I want off the radio or off of the TV. But with the new digital restrictions coming in place, I will no longer be able to do that.
People have no more right to "free" music than they have a right to free books, free newspapers, free automobiles, or free whatever.
I agree that we have no right to free stuff. We just don't want to be screwed over by the RIAA and MPAA if they get thier restrictions in place.
Funny that all the other news channels do exactly the same thing. They claim to be objective yet still put obvious commentary (most left-leaning) into "news" stories. The important thing to note is that no news channel can be "fair and balanced" all the time. People will always bring their bias on the air with them. I think that Fox News does a good job of letting people know who is leaning which direction. Because of that, they are in a sense the most "fair and balanced" news channel out there, and the claim is somewhat validated. This, of course, is just my own bias showing as well. I watch FOX news and like it. The important thing is that we admit our opinions for what they are.
No, this will only be a dud until someone cracks the copy protection and makes it available on the internet. There will probably even be mod-chips. While illegal here in the US, I imagine that there are plenty of people outside "the land of the free," (hrmph!) that would be able to buy them. After the crack, I predict that these will take off faster than TiVo. I'd buy one if the interface was right. I hate the DVR software I am using now. Because of my ancient TV tuner (All-In-Wonder PRO), I am stuck with ATI Multimedia Center.
I have always wondered why a major studio doesn't do the following. Any ideas?
Why not produce a show and offer it online for download (or streaming) without commercials to anyone who wanted to subscribe? I imagine this would work best with a show like Farscape or The Dead Zone, whose targets are technically savvy in the first place. If it were a reasonable price, I would think they could get enough money at first to cover the bandwidth and storage costs. If it didn't catch on, well, no big. But if it did, I think it would actaully increase the revenue that came in. It would just be coming directly from the fans, not the advertisers.
FYI - Titanica is showing at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL. They recently opened a Titanic exhibit at the museum so they dusted off Titanica and are showing it in the OmniMAX. I know, OmniMAX is not really IMAX, but it's a damn big screen.
HDTV will not make it, but not because of Congress. Rather, it is again the bottom line. The average person looks at HDTV and says: "Wow, that looks nice, how much?" They then have a good laugh. A lot of them didn't pay that much for a car, why would they pay it for a TV?
That's not entirely accurate. I beleive that ENIAC was the first digital computer, but it used base-10 logic instead of binary. The ABC was the first binary computer, and it was built at Iowa State University. A court case later on (1973) decided that the patent for the electronic computer went to Iowa State because it was more like the computers that were being developed.
about what they sue for. It may just come back and bite them. If this were about something other than gaming, say making a personal backup, or allowing the BSA troops to come in and install spy software on your computer, I think we would see a very different ruling. I don't know if this judge is in the wrong here, but if a ruling were ever made that it was OK for a user to allow someone to install spyware on his machine just because he hit a button when installing, we would see a huge consumer uproar. The KaZaa thing is actaully a good example. People uninstalled it or patched it very quickly after they heard what was in the works.
EULA's are not contracts until they are ruled to be in a court of law (of course IANAL). Up until now, the agreements haven't infringed too much on the user's rights, and if they have, they have been ignored. When the software companies start enforcing unreasonable demands, that's when people will fight back.
Most open source software seems to be in the perpetual beta state anyway, but if a lemon-law were to pass, maybe the commercial vendors would move toward this as well. Never releasing a "finished" version, just alphas, pre betas, betas, preview editions, release candidates, etc, etc, etc.
If this were to happen, it might actaully help the public, forcing the commercial vendors into a system where they actaully have to admit that thier product is never finished. Maybe then the public would stop shelling out money every time the latest edition comes out, lining the pockets of Gates and company.
I have been interested in TiVo for a while now, but I have heard from several people that you have a life, or you have TiVo. Because it records things you might like to see, you spend most of your time trying to watch them. Is this the case for most TiVo owners, or only those with no TV willpower?
Re:The Truth! or... burning some karma....
on
XP, Phone Home
·
· Score: 1
But Microsoft set up the server to collect this information in the first place. If you are saying that Microsoft has no idea what servers it has running on its own network, then we are in more trouble than even I thought.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that is just it. I think if they make DRM that can't be broken, people won't buy it and it will die out on its own. My guess is that most people who buy from iTunes know that they can always burn a DRM-free copy. Even if they never rip it to their hard drive, they know they can if they want to. Now, if I knew that I couldn't ever get a copy free from DRM, I wouldn't buy from that service. I think that is on the mind of probably 90% of the people who buy from iTunes.
Exactly! DRM is ok as long as you can bypass it if you want to. Sounds odd, because DRM is supposed to stop exactly that, but without the ability to remove it in some way (such as burning to a CD and re-ripping) I doubt iTunes and others would have actaully taken off as they did.
One great thing is that some developers have put together some scripts to take the shows that you record with MythTV and encode them into DivX files, so they can be archived off to a CD. I use it all the time, and my 160GB hard drive is almost full. I really have to get time to burn! :-)
It runs fine on Win98se for me. It seems remarkably stable for a 0.1 release. Sure, the features are not complete yet, but given some time, this could be better than Evolution. If the clients communicate regardless of what platform they are running on, this could be a great help to small, mixed platform offices. Some of us haven't been able to convice our bosses to switch everyone over to Linux yet.
I find this idea very intriguing. What if the artists suddenly started getting envelopes full of cash from downloads? A buck a song or something like that? I know not everyone would do it, but maybe it would start to unite the artists behind the listeners and stop the stupid "piracy is theft" campaigns. Maybe instead of a boycott, people should organize something like this. Boycott CD's, but download what you want to listen to. Then, send some cash directly to the artist, or maybe even some third party that would distribute directly to the artist. That way we could get around the problem of the studios getting the addresses of the downloaders.
Sigh, you are forgetting that most people don't care that much about quality. There are a lot of audio- and video-philes around Slashdot, but the common person just wants to watch a movie. He/she cares more about the story than about the quality of the video. I just recently bought a DVD player, and I was in the same boat with no Composite inputs on my TV. Since my VCR has composite, I tried to do the same thing as the person above, but failed when trying to play DVD's because of macrovision. It made me furious when I found out that the messed up picture was intentional. I don't care that much for quality, but the movie (StarWars Episode 1) was basically unwatchable. It kept going from light to dark and the sound was messed up too. I bought an RF modulator to solve the problem, but I should not have had to. I have warned all my friends and family about this and none had heard of such a thing and were as upset about it as I was.
My suggestion is to tell your friends and family about it, and have them tell THEIR friends. Once enough people understand these "features," maybe things will change.
But that's just the point. It should be important because the changes that are coming are going to effect everyone. I never buy CD's or movies. I just record what I want off the radio or off of the TV. But with the new digital restrictions coming in place, I will no longer be able to do that.
People have no more right to "free" music than they have a right to free books, free newspapers, free automobiles, or free whatever.
I agree that we have no right to free stuff. We just don't want to be screwed over by the RIAA and MPAA if they get thier restrictions in place.
Funny that all the other news channels do exactly the same thing. They claim to be objective yet still put obvious commentary (most left-leaning) into "news" stories. The important thing to note is that no news channel can be "fair and balanced" all the time. People will always bring their bias on the air with them. I think that Fox News does a good job of letting people know who is leaning which direction. Because of that, they are in a sense the most "fair and balanced" news channel out there, and the claim is somewhat validated. This, of course, is just my own bias showing as well. I watch FOX news and like it. The important thing is that we admit our opinions for what they are.
No, this will only be a dud until someone cracks the copy protection and makes it available on the internet. There will probably even be mod-chips. While illegal here in the US, I imagine that there are plenty of people outside "the land of the free," (hrmph!) that would be able to buy them. After the crack, I predict that these will take off faster than TiVo. I'd buy one if the interface was right. I hate the DVR software I am using now. Because of my ancient TV tuner (All-In-Wonder PRO), I am stuck with ATI Multimedia Center.
I have always wondered why a major studio doesn't do the following. Any ideas?
Why not produce a show and offer it online for download (or streaming) without commercials to anyone who wanted to subscribe? I imagine this would work best with a show like Farscape or The Dead Zone, whose targets are technically savvy in the first place. If it were a reasonable price, I would think they could get enough money at first to cover the bandwidth and storage costs. If it didn't catch on, well, no big. But if it did, I think it would actaully increase the revenue that came in. It would just be coming directly from the fans, not the advertisers.
FYI - Titanica is showing at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL. They recently opened a Titanic exhibit at the museum so they dusted off Titanica and are showing it in the OmniMAX. I know, OmniMAX is not really IMAX, but it's a damn big screen.
HDTV will not make it, but not because of Congress. Rather, it is again the bottom line. The average person looks at HDTV and says: "Wow, that looks nice, how much?" They then have a good laugh. A lot of them didn't pay that much for a car, why would they pay it for a TV?
That's not entirely accurate. I beleive that ENIAC was the first digital computer, but it used base-10 logic instead of binary. The ABC was the first binary computer, and it was built at Iowa State University. A court case later on (1973) decided that the patent for the electronic computer went to Iowa State because it was more like the computers that were being developed.
about what they sue for. It may just come back and bite them. If this were about something other than gaming, say making a personal backup, or allowing the BSA troops to come in and install spy software on your computer, I think we would see a very different ruling. I don't know if this judge is in the wrong here, but if a ruling were ever made that it was OK for a user to allow someone to install spyware on his machine just because he hit a button when installing, we would see a huge consumer uproar. The KaZaa thing is actaully a good example. People uninstalled it or patched it very quickly after they heard what was in the works.
EULA's are not contracts until they are ruled to be in a court of law (of course IANAL). Up until now, the agreements haven't infringed too much on the user's rights, and if they have, they have been ignored. When the software companies start enforcing unreasonable demands, that's when people will fight back.
Most open source software seems to be in the perpetual beta state anyway, but if a lemon-law were to pass, maybe the commercial vendors would move toward this as well. Never releasing a "finished" version, just alphas, pre betas, betas, preview editions, release candidates, etc, etc, etc.
If this were to happen, it might actaully help the public, forcing the commercial vendors into a system where they actaully have to admit that thier product is never finished. Maybe then the public would stop shelling out money every time the latest edition comes out, lining the pockets of Gates and company.
I have been interested in TiVo for a while now, but I have heard from several people that you have a life, or you have TiVo. Because it records things you might like to see, you spend most of your time trying to watch them. Is this the case for most TiVo owners, or only those with no TV willpower?
But Microsoft set up the server to collect this information in the first place. If you are saying that Microsoft has no idea what servers it has running on its own network, then we are in more trouble than even I thought.