The idea of Steve Jobs as the biggest single shareholder on Disney's board is certainly entertaining to think about but, on the whole, I think Pixar is better off remaining an independent animation studio (and, to a lesser extent, graphics research company).
Among people in the entertainment industry, Disney is not well thought of. They have a reputation of being the most ruthless and shameless exploiters of talent. They are one of the loudest and most shrill voices in support of pervasive media copy protection (DRM), and have been instrumental in ram-rodding regressive copyright statutes through Congress. Frankly, I can't see Jobs doing much to change that. (It's also not clear that's something he would want to change.)
The audience you're trying to reach couldn't be bothered to RTFM that came free with their machine; what makes you think they're going to buy another book? There have been no shortage of books on the subject, and people are still underinformed.
So I say forget doing a book at all (at least initially), and instead consider screenwriting a DVD video. People will be far more willing to give it a quick spin than check out a book. Also, it's much cheaper to duplicate, and you can distribute it over the Internet. (Technically, the same is also true of "books" in PDF format, but books are traditionally not thought of in that manner.)
If the DVD is a success, than you can go into more depth in a follow-on book (or just leave a PDF file on the DVD).
I have a proposal for a unified approach to media copy protection. This approach is patent- and royalty-free, only requires technology that is already available, and can be implemented in a very short timeframe for very little engineering cost. The approach has already been tried on a fairly large scale in the computer industry, with tremendous success:
None at all.
Seriously. Copy protection is completely unnecessary. While media vendors wait for the Perfect Copy Protection (which will never come), they are leaving money on the table right now.
So, you can wait for the major industry players to settle on a common framework for media copy protection which will work across computers, media centers, PDAs, cell phones, portable game systems, etc. (not bloody likely; they all are jockeying to get single-source lock-in); or you can forego the copy protection "requirement" and start making money now by selling media in common media formats now.
Better get moving; your fickle shareholders aren't going to wait forever for you to get your asses in gear.
"Joker sweet genius score on 'der de'sevens gymnastics team. I've got the bronze" threw me for a loop.
"Jericho Street Junior School, under sevens gymnastics team. I got the bronze."
Britain has some extraordinarily rich and varied vocal styles; I love listening to them all, so I have an easier time than others. Of all the British accents I've heard, possibly the Newcastle Mouse from the series Creature Comforts has been the most difficult to parse. Billie Piper, by comparison, is cake.
As a longtime Dr. Who fan, I was seriously concerned that the new production would be an embarrassment. However, after a friend of mine loaned me all his Torrented DVDs (which I still need to return), I have to say I'm quite pleased with the new series.
Eccleston lends his own interpretation to the role, as have all the performers before him, but the resulting character is unmistakably The Doctor. Further, his companion, Rose, is not a ditz (don't let the peroxided hair fool you), but a very capable and driven person in her own right.
They also bring back some old enemies, and they do it very well. You'd think after nearly 40 years, the whole Dalek thing would be worn out. You'd be wrong. With just the tiniest bit of imagination from the series creators, Daleks are damn threatening again. And they don't do it with an excess of outright brutality or graphic violence, just a single-minded, unstoppable efficiency.
About the only thing I don't like about the new series is the newly designed TARDIS. It's too unfamiliar.
Hopefully the SciFi network won't wreck the show by inserting endless commercial breaks. But if you're a Doctor Who fan and you haven't seen these shows yet, you won't be disappointed.
From my friends who work in MS's DRM department, most people are quite opposed to it, but can't open up a revenue stream without the promise of DRM to appease the MPAA.
First, I don't think the people in MS's DRM department are quite as "opposed" to the idea as you make it sound. But even given that, all you've illustrated is that MS doesn't think things through very well.
It is widely assumed that, for a new format to succeed, it must have support from Hollywood, or content for that format will not appear, and the format will die. This assumption is false. MP3 had exactly zero support from Hollywood (or at least no direct support), yet it became the defacto standard for compressed audio, both stored and streaming. Sure, there are some players that support other formats. But if your player doesn't support unencumbered MP3, it will not sell, period.
It is true that the MPAA is presenting a united front and "demanding" copy protection on any and all new media formats, and will refuse to use anything that doesn't have it. So? Go outside the RIAA/MPAA and pitch to them instead. There are tons of small studios out there.
Your pitch: "We have this new high-definition media format that is a zillion times better than anything out there. The format is open and standardized so anyone can support it for low/no royalties. We have hardware partners already going to market with players. We can provide you with authoring tools and training. If you have an especially good idea, we can talk about seed funding. Yes, it is true there is no copy protection in this format; you will discover this is a good thing.
"However -- and here's the best part -- you will have the entire market to yourselves. Disney? Universal? Columbia? Dreamworks? They have all promised to stay away from the format. No, seriously! We totally don't get it; their content could look absolutely magnificent. So you get to look magnificent in their place! You won't have to fight with them for shelf space or worry about rising above their marketing buzz, since there isn't any. The market space is all yours. You will get to define the medium, and all those high-end dollars will be yours."
Eventually, the big studios will figure out that, even without copy protection, they're leaving money on the table, and will slowly migrate to the new format. All it requires is a little forethought and patience...
There are plenty of people who will tell you I'm weird, but I would find such a drive to be a help in diagnosing disk performance problems or failures. Being able to peer inside the drive would afford a good first-order approximation as to what's wrong.
Your drive starts returning bad or no data. What's wrong with it? With the black box you have now, your options are pretty much limited to the SMART diagnostics (if any) and some blind stabbing with ATA commands. With a clear cover, you can look to see if the heads are actually moving, and whether they're moving to the correct position.
How badly fragmented is your filesystem? Launch apps, look in the drive window, and see how much the heads are flopping around.
How many sectors has the drive quietly reassigned because the platter's going bad? Run dd against the whole drive and watch to see if the heads spastically flip to a random place.
Your drive starts making a funny noise, but everything else seems fine for the moment. Have a look inside and see if the platters are vibrating unusually (bounce a laser off them), or if the heads are moving in a funny way.
Like I said, some would call me weird. But I just feel better knowing what the fsck is actually going on.
HELLO HOW ARE YOU. I HOPE THIS LETTER FINDS YOU WELL, AND I APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT SEEMS A SURPRISING INTRUSION. I AM DR. NICK RIVIERA, FOUNDER AND CEO OF CIS INTERNET SERVICES IN CLINTON, OHIO, USA, AND I HOPE I MIGHT ENABLE YOUR ASSISTANCE IN AN ENTERPRISE OF GREAT PROFIT FOR BOTH OF US.
I AM THE AWARDEE OF RECORD OF A US FEDERAL COURT JUDGMENT OF ELEVEN BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION US DOLLARS ($11,200,000,000.00). UNFORTUNATELY, MY BANK ACCOUNT AT WELLS FARGO CLAIMS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO PROCESS SO LARGE A SUM AT ONCE. I MUST ACT QUICKLY, FOR I FEAR THE DEFENDANT IN THE CASE MAY FLEE THE COUNTRY TO AVOID RIGHTFUL PAYMENT. HENCE, THIS UNUSUAL REQUEST.
WELLS FARGO INFORMS ME LARGEST DEPOSIT AMOUNT ACCEPTED IS $999,999.00, AND ONLY FROM ANOTHER REGISTERED BANK ACCOUNT. THEREFORE, IF YOU WILL ACCEPT $999,999.00 INTO YOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNT, WITH UNDERSTANDING TO TRANSFER TO MY ACCOUNT WITHIN 30 DAYS, I WILL HAPPILY AND WITH INTEGRITY PAY YOU A TEN PERCENT HANDLING FEE ($99,999.90)...
I would very, very, very much like to believe this is true.
On the other hand, I very, very, very much wanted to believe that the Department of Fatherland Security was harassing college students who were checking out copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Because if it had been true, it would have served as further evidence of the Bush Administration's mendacity, and how desperately they need to be stopped yesterday.
But, as it happened, the story wasn't true (which in no way exonerates the Bush Administration).
The RIAA are clearly a bunch of amoral, unethical assholes. But before I get worked up about a single teenager's vague accusation against a RIAA lawyer and add this event to their ever-lengthening list of misdeeds, I'm going to wait for further corroborative evidence. 'Cause if it turns out the kid is making it up, It Will Not Look Good For Us.
When you are engaged in what is fundamentally a battle of ethics, it is absolutely critical your hands remain spotlessly clean.
Actually, in practice I think that might be, "Ihre Karten, bitte," since I recall "Karten" colloquially referring to identification documents. But I got a C in high school German class, so what do I know?
ATI released v8.20.0 of their proprietary Linux driver last week. The new driver apparently now handles system suspend and resume correctly, which is good news for laptop owners.
Oh, no no no. USD$0.99 only gets you the song. If you want the lyric text as well, that's an additional USD$0.75 (available as a copy-protected Microsoft Word document. Lyrics in HTML format is "under development" and being reviewed by marketing for possible "partnering opportunities").
There was (though it wasn't a Wiki). It was called lyrics.ch (which has since been domain-squatted by one songtext.net). It was compiled by avid music enthusiasts, and it contained the most complete and most accurate repository of song lyrics available...
Until it was destroyed by the Harry Fox Agency. The Harry Fox Agency is the sole licensor of song lyrics worldwide, and saw lyrics.ch as unlicensed competition. So they had it exterminated. (lyrics.ch's mistake, if it could be called one, was that they accepted paid banner advertising to defray hosting costs. Sadly, this got creatively misinterpreted by the courts as unlawfully profiting off lyric distribution, violating Harry Fox Agency's monopoly rights.)
So, yes, there was one, but it got destroyed. Don't expect a WikiLyrics site to show up in its place; it will get destroyed the same way.
If this were a question of individual ISPs -- Speakeasy versus AOL versus Netcom versus Verio -- then your rebuttal might have validity. However, this is BellSouth talking -- the ILEC, the "natural monopoly." The guys who own the wires no matter which ISP you go to. Seen in this light, Taco's analogy is valid.
BellSouth proposes an end-run around whatever deals or features your ISP may offer by selling packet priority to the highest bidder. Your ISP will not see any of this money, neither as direct kickbacks or as reduced service costs. Moreover, your ISP will now suck more, because their packets will receive lower priority.
There's a reason Judge Green drew a very firm line between content and carriage -- to prevent precisely this kind of extortionate behavior.
...And it is petty, squabbling children like these who propose to wield absolute veto power over all technological development -- to steal control of our computers and televisions in the vague unproven hope that it will prevent "theft" of the movies they've spent ten years and $75 million not making.
No, but if you strategically locate your cisterns and capture points, you can capture a fair amount of the water before it becomes floodwater. If the system is pervasive and dense enough, the excess water could be pumped away as it falls, reducing the chances of a devastating flood.
Of course, this idea conveniently ignores the potential environmental impact of redistributing water on such a massive scale...
Your loaded question implies there's a serious problem with the current system in the U.S, and that's just not the case. Fresh water is cheap and plentiful in the majority of the U.S. and that's not about to change any time soon.
Incorrect. The situation is already changing. And it is going to get worse soon.
Redwood City, CA, -- smack in the middle of one of the most affluent areas in the nation -- currently has what amounts to a ban on all new construction because there's simply no more fresh water. They have already exceeded their allotment from available supplies. Los Angeles has been living on borrowed time for decades, damming up every fresh water supply in sight and draining it dry. Tulare Lake, once measuring roughly 30 by 60 miles across, is now essentially gone. It took government intervention to keep them from completely draining Mono Lake, but they're still slurping a monsterous percentage of the Colorado River. Other scattered communities throughout the continental US are noticing the rivers and lakes are drying up, and underground fresh water aquifers are also becoming harder to find and maintain.
There is a problem. And as long as the population increases, it's only going to get worse. As I see it, there are only two real long-term solutions:
Mandatory Conservation
I don't really give a sh*t if you have a six-figure income and can afford a $500/month water bill; the surrounding community that supports you can't sustain it. So mandatory conservation for everyone. That means 1.8 gallon or less toilets, low-flow shower heads, front-loading clothes washers, underground or drip irrigation for gardens. If you're really snazzy, you'll recapture your waste water and re-use it for the garden or the toilets -- or re-purify it yourself and take pressure off the municipal supply.
Massive Water Grid Project
We have a nationwide power grid. Why not a nationwide water grid? Some areas of the country get flooded every year, while others suffer drought. With a national network of large pipes, we can ship water from areas that have too much to areas that don't have enough -- use the flood waters from the Midwest and East to relieve water shortages in the West, and vice-versa when the need arises.
Of course, I'm just an insane computer programmer, so what do I know?
By the way, if you want to talk about the (lack of) need for water conservation and be taken seriously, then viewing this is a mandatory prerequisite.
"Let's see: I have this new movie delivery technology that plays back films with amazing clarity. But it's early days yet, so I want to show off this technology to its best effect. Hmm, I do own a movie studio...
"Hey, Ernie! Go over to Columbia/TriStar and get the crappiest, most insultingly inane film released in the last ten years so we can encode it and use it as a BluRay demo. Oh, and also get a copy of Bewitched; we'll be needing it later..."
Honestly, between this and the DRM infection, I seriously wonder who's driving the company nowadays...
I am willing to pay exactly $0.00 for this "service" you're planning on offering. Copy protection is a form of product defect, and I do not purchase products I know to be defective. You may wish to confer with Sony on this issue.
On the other hand, if you are willing to offer movies and programs in an unencumbered format (DiVX, MPEG, QuickTime, Ogg Theora, whatever) with no usage restrictions, and no special download clients required, then I'd be very willing to consider as much as $3.00 per show/program downloaded. I'd especially be interested in the old NBC Mystery Movies from the 1970's, including McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan and Wife.
There are only two reasons for wanting to release binary-only drivers for Linux:
To protect "trade secrets" used in the driver's code,
To prevent analysis, customization, and defect removal by end-users.
Both reasons are bunk. Honestly, there are virtually no drivers I can think of that merit that level of secrecy.
One of Linux's hallmarks is its customizability, by anyone, for any reason. If you release a driver that contains support for copy protecting music or video, I will decree that driver defective and fix it.
Besides, the driver API is going to need to be re-designed at least one, and possibly two, more times just to accommodate modern, effective power management. The existing API is simply inadequate to the task. If you drive a stake in the ground now, you will forever preclude future necessary improvements to the driver model.
And finally, complaints about Linux's driver API being a moving target are highly disingenuous. Microsoft has re-designed their driver API (badly) several times already, and Vista portends yet another rewrite, this time to support pervasive copy protection. Yet, strangely, the hardware vendors don't seem to have a problem with this.
So, no. Linux's openness is a key component of its value. Binary-only drivers undermine that, and should be discouraged.
Maybe the MPAA and RIAA will have to put those lawers [sic] to a good use for once.
Are you kidding? The MPAA will pee themselves with delight over this. They will support this wholeheartedly.
Analysis:
The issue of, "Who owns the story," is a thorny one in Hollywood. Professional screenwriters -- many of whom, by the way, are unionized because the studios kept abusing them way back when -- often retain the copyrights to their stories. Among other things, copyright affords the author the right to enjoin performance of their story in most media (since those are derivative works). However, copyright's scope is limited. You only have a case against a studio if the copying was direct. If the studio's work was substantially similar, then you get to sit in court for years and argue exactly how similar it was, and whether the studio's work A) constitutes plagiarism, and B) whether the degree of plagiarism is sufficient to warrant punishment by the courts. See Buchwald vs. Paramount for an example of how messy this can get.
Further, if a writer feels that s/he's being maltreated by the studios, s/he can vote with their feet and simply choose to work for someone else under different, hopefully better conditions. (In practice, this is more difficult than I'm making it sound.)
However, if plotline elements can be patented, then there will be a mad rush by the studios to acquire as many patents as possible. Once done, screenwriters will no longer be able to ply their trade without being expressly licensed by the studio to do so. The balance of power will shift massively to the studios, who will wield absolute veto power over who may write screenplays, and under what circumstances. ("I want to retain rights to the story." "I'm sorry; we don't offer plot element licenses under those conditions.")
This will also effectively kill those pesky independent screenwriters and film studios, since the large studios will simply refuse to license the plot elements. (The large studios won't have any difficulty; they'll merely cross-license with each other.) The studios could also, if they so wished, break the screenwriters' union overnight.
And, of course, you'll hear a bunch of self-serving blathering about how film production is massively expensive, and successful film plots are already hard to come by, so successful plot elements should be afforded the maximum protection possible because, darn it, it was expensive to develop. This "reasoning" is, of course, complete bullshit, but it'll play well in the trade magazines and the halls of Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
You're improving, Rimmer. Last time, you wrote that 400 times, did a silly little dance, and then fainted.
The idea of Steve Jobs as the biggest single shareholder on Disney's board is certainly entertaining to think about but, on the whole, I think Pixar is better off remaining an independent animation studio (and, to a lesser extent, graphics research company).
Among people in the entertainment industry, Disney is not well thought of. They have a reputation of being the most ruthless and shameless exploiters of talent. They are one of the loudest and most shrill voices in support of pervasive media copy protection (DRM), and have been instrumental in ram-rodding regressive copyright statutes through Congress. Frankly, I can't see Jobs doing much to change that. (It's also not clear that's something he would want to change.)
Schwab
I liked my headline better:
Google to BellSouth: Cram It 2006.01.18 14:43 Rejected
Schwab
So I say forget doing a book at all (at least initially), and instead consider screenwriting a DVD video. People will be far more willing to give it a quick spin than check out a book. Also, it's much cheaper to duplicate, and you can distribute it over the Internet. (Technically, the same is also true of "books" in PDF format, but books are traditionally not thought of in that manner.)
If the DVD is a success, than you can go into more depth in a follow-on book (or just leave a PDF file on the DVD).
Schwab
None at all.
Seriously. Copy protection is completely unnecessary. While media vendors wait for the Perfect Copy Protection (which will never come), they are leaving money on the table right now.
So, you can wait for the major industry players to settle on a common framework for media copy protection which will work across computers, media centers, PDAs, cell phones, portable game systems, etc. (not bloody likely; they all are jockeying to get single-source lock-in); or you can forego the copy protection "requirement" and start making money now by selling media in common media formats now.
Better get moving; your fickle shareholders aren't going to wait forever for you to get your asses in gear.
Schwab
"Jericho Street Junior School, under sevens gymnastics team. I got the bronze."
Britain has some extraordinarily rich and varied vocal styles; I love listening to them all, so I have an easier time than others. Of all the British accents I've heard, possibly the Newcastle Mouse from the series Creature Comforts has been the most difficult to parse. Billie Piper, by comparison, is cake.
Schwab
Eccleston lends his own interpretation to the role, as have all the performers before him, but the resulting character is unmistakably The Doctor. Further, his companion, Rose, is not a ditz (don't let the peroxided hair fool you), but a very capable and driven person in her own right.
They also bring back some old enemies, and they do it very well. You'd think after nearly 40 years, the whole Dalek thing would be worn out. You'd be wrong. With just the tiniest bit of imagination from the series creators, Daleks are damn threatening again. And they don't do it with an excess of outright brutality or graphic violence, just a single-minded, unstoppable efficiency.
About the only thing I don't like about the new series is the newly designed TARDIS. It's too unfamiliar.
Hopefully the SciFi network won't wreck the show by inserting endless commercial breaks. But if you're a Doctor Who fan and you haven't seen these shows yet, you won't be disappointed.
Schwab
First, I don't think the people in MS's DRM department are quite as "opposed" to the idea as you make it sound. But even given that, all you've illustrated is that MS doesn't think things through very well.
It is widely assumed that, for a new format to succeed, it must have support from Hollywood, or content for that format will not appear, and the format will die. This assumption is false. MP3 had exactly zero support from Hollywood (or at least no direct support), yet it became the defacto standard for compressed audio, both stored and streaming. Sure, there are some players that support other formats. But if your player doesn't support unencumbered MP3, it will not sell, period.
It is true that the MPAA is presenting a united front and "demanding" copy protection on any and all new media formats, and will refuse to use anything that doesn't have it. So? Go outside the RIAA/MPAA and pitch to them instead. There are tons of small studios out there.
Your pitch: "We have this new high-definition media format that is a zillion times better than anything out there. The format is open and standardized so anyone can support it for low/no royalties. We have hardware partners already going to market with players. We can provide you with authoring tools and training. If you have an especially good idea, we can talk about seed funding. Yes, it is true there is no copy protection in this format; you will discover this is a good thing.
"However -- and here's the best part -- you will have the entire market to yourselves. Disney? Universal? Columbia? Dreamworks? They have all promised to stay away from the format. No, seriously! We totally don't get it; their content could look absolutely magnificent. So you get to look magnificent in their place! You won't have to fight with them for shelf space or worry about rising above their marketing buzz, since there isn't any. The market space is all yours. You will get to define the medium, and all those high-end dollars will be yours."
Eventually, the big studios will figure out that, even without copy protection, they're leaving money on the table, and will slowly migrate to the new format. All it requires is a little forethought and patience...
Schwab
Schwab
There are plenty of people who will tell you I'm weird, but I would find such a drive to be a help in diagnosing disk performance problems or failures. Being able to peer inside the drive would afford a good first-order approximation as to what's wrong.
Your drive starts returning bad or no data. What's wrong with it? With the black box you have now, your options are pretty much limited to the SMART diagnostics (if any) and some blind stabbing with ATA commands. With a clear cover, you can look to see if the heads are actually moving, and whether they're moving to the correct position.
How badly fragmented is your filesystem? Launch apps, look in the drive window, and see how much the heads are flopping around.
How many sectors has the drive quietly reassigned because the platter's going bad? Run dd against the whole drive and watch to see if the heads spastically flip to a random place.
Your drive starts making a funny noise, but everything else seems fine for the moment. Have a look inside and see if the platters are vibrating unusually (bounce a laser off them), or if the heads are moving in a funny way.
Like I said, some would call me weird. But I just feel better knowing what the fsck is actually going on.
Schwab
...Actually, no. I had a brain fart.
Schwab
I AM THE AWARDEE OF RECORD OF A US FEDERAL COURT JUDGMENT OF ELEVEN BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION US DOLLARS ($11,200,000,000.00). UNFORTUNATELY, MY BANK ACCOUNT AT WELLS FARGO CLAIMS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO PROCESS SO LARGE A SUM AT ONCE. I MUST ACT QUICKLY, FOR I FEAR THE DEFENDANT IN THE CASE MAY FLEE THE COUNTRY TO AVOID RIGHTFUL PAYMENT. HENCE, THIS UNUSUAL REQUEST.
WELLS FARGO INFORMS ME LARGEST DEPOSIT AMOUNT ACCEPTED IS $999,999.00, AND ONLY FROM ANOTHER REGISTERED BANK ACCOUNT. THEREFORE, IF YOU WILL ACCEPT $999,999.00 INTO YOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNT, WITH UNDERSTANDING TO TRANSFER TO MY ACCOUNT WITHIN 30 DAYS, I WILL HAPPILY AND WITH INTEGRITY PAY YOU A TEN PERCENT HANDLING FEE ($99,999.90)...
_____
You get the idea...
Schwab
On the other hand, I very, very, very much wanted to believe that the Department of Fatherland Security was harassing college students who were checking out copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Because if it had been true, it would have served as further evidence of the Bush Administration's mendacity, and how desperately they need to be stopped yesterday.
But, as it happened, the story wasn't true (which in no way exonerates the Bush Administration).
The RIAA are clearly a bunch of amoral, unethical assholes. But before I get worked up about a single teenager's vague accusation against a RIAA lawyer and add this event to their ever-lengthening list of misdeeds, I'm going to wait for further corroborative evidence. 'Cause if it turns out the kid is making it up, It Will Not Look Good For Us.
When you are engaged in what is fundamentally a battle of ethics, it is absolutely critical your hands remain spotlessly clean.
Schwab
Actually, in practice I think that might be, "Ihre Karten, bitte," since I recall "Karten" colloquially referring to identification documents. But I got a C in high school German class, so what do I know?
Schwab
Schwab
Schwab
There was (though it wasn't a Wiki). It was called lyrics.ch (which has since been domain-squatted by one songtext.net). It was compiled by avid music enthusiasts, and it contained the most complete and most accurate repository of song lyrics available...
Until it was destroyed by the Harry Fox Agency. The Harry Fox Agency is the sole licensor of song lyrics worldwide, and saw lyrics.ch as unlicensed competition. So they had it exterminated. (lyrics.ch's mistake, if it could be called one, was that they accepted paid banner advertising to defray hosting costs. Sadly, this got creatively misinterpreted by the courts as unlawfully profiting off lyric distribution, violating Harry Fox Agency's monopoly rights.)
So, yes, there was one, but it got destroyed. Don't expect a WikiLyrics site to show up in its place; it will get destroyed the same way.
Schwab
BellSouth proposes an end-run around whatever deals or features your ISP may offer by selling packet priority to the highest bidder. Your ISP will not see any of this money, neither as direct kickbacks or as reduced service costs. Moreover, your ISP will now suck more, because their packets will receive lower priority.
There's a reason Judge Green drew a very firm line between content and carriage -- to prevent precisely this kind of extortionate behavior.
Schwab
Schwab
Of course, this idea conveniently ignores the potential environmental impact of redistributing water on such a massive scale...
Schwab
Incorrect. The situation is already changing. And it is going to get worse soon.
Redwood City, CA, -- smack in the middle of one of the most affluent areas in the nation -- currently has what amounts to a ban on all new construction because there's simply no more fresh water. They have already exceeded their allotment from available supplies. Los Angeles has been living on borrowed time for decades, damming up every fresh water supply in sight and draining it dry. Tulare Lake, once measuring roughly 30 by 60 miles across, is now essentially gone. It took government intervention to keep them from completely draining Mono Lake, but they're still slurping a monsterous percentage of the Colorado River. Other scattered communities throughout the continental US are noticing the rivers and lakes are drying up, and underground fresh water aquifers are also becoming harder to find and maintain.
There is a problem. And as long as the population increases, it's only going to get worse. As I see it, there are only two real long-term solutions:
I don't really give a sh*t if you have a six-figure income and can afford a $500/month water bill; the surrounding community that supports you can't sustain it. So mandatory conservation for everyone. That means 1.8 gallon or less toilets, low-flow shower heads, front-loading clothes washers, underground or drip irrigation for gardens. If you're really snazzy, you'll recapture your waste water and re-use it for the garden or the toilets -- or re-purify it yourself and take pressure off the municipal supply.
We have a nationwide power grid. Why not a nationwide water grid? Some areas of the country get flooded every year, while others suffer drought. With a national network of large pipes, we can ship water from areas that have too much to areas that don't have enough -- use the flood waters from the Midwest and East to relieve water shortages in the West, and vice-versa when the need arises.
Of course, I'm just an insane computer programmer, so what do I know?
By the way, if you want to talk about the (lack of) need for water conservation and be taken seriously, then viewing this is a mandatory prerequisite.
Schwab
"Hey, Ernie! Go over to Columbia/TriStar and get the crappiest, most insultingly inane film released in the last ten years so we can encode it and use it as a BluRay demo. Oh, and also get a copy of Bewitched; we'll be needing it later..."
Honestly, between this and the DRM infection, I seriously wonder who's driving the company nowadays...
Schwab
On the other hand, if you are willing to offer movies and programs in an unencumbered format (DiVX, MPEG, QuickTime, Ogg Theora, whatever) with no usage restrictions, and no special download clients required, then I'd be very willing to consider as much as $3.00 per show/program downloaded. I'd especially be interested in the old NBC Mystery Movies from the 1970's, including McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan and Wife.
Please correct your offerings accordingly.
Schwab
Both reasons are bunk. Honestly, there are virtually no drivers I can think of that merit that level of secrecy.
One of Linux's hallmarks is its customizability, by anyone, for any reason. If you release a driver that contains support for copy protecting music or video, I will decree that driver defective and fix it.
Besides, the driver API is going to need to be re-designed at least one, and possibly two, more times just to accommodate modern, effective power management. The existing API is simply inadequate to the task. If you drive a stake in the ground now, you will forever preclude future necessary improvements to the driver model.
And finally, complaints about Linux's driver API being a moving target are highly disingenuous. Microsoft has re-designed their driver API (badly) several times already, and Vista portends yet another rewrite, this time to support pervasive copy protection. Yet, strangely, the hardware vendors don't seem to have a problem with this.
So, no. Linux's openness is a key component of its value. Binary-only drivers undermine that, and should be discouraged.
Schwab
Are you kidding? The MPAA will pee themselves with delight over this. They will support this wholeheartedly.
Analysis:
The issue of, "Who owns the story," is a thorny one in Hollywood. Professional screenwriters -- many of whom, by the way, are unionized because the studios kept abusing them way back when -- often retain the copyrights to their stories. Among other things, copyright affords the author the right to enjoin performance of their story in most media (since those are derivative works). However, copyright's scope is limited. You only have a case against a studio if the copying was direct. If the studio's work was substantially similar, then you get to sit in court for years and argue exactly how similar it was, and whether the studio's work A) constitutes plagiarism, and B) whether the degree of plagiarism is sufficient to warrant punishment by the courts. See Buchwald vs. Paramount for an example of how messy this can get.
Further, if a writer feels that s/he's being maltreated by the studios, s/he can vote with their feet and simply choose to work for someone else under different, hopefully better conditions. (In practice, this is more difficult than I'm making it sound.)
However, if plotline elements can be patented, then there will be a mad rush by the studios to acquire as many patents as possible. Once done, screenwriters will no longer be able to ply their trade without being expressly licensed by the studio to do so. The balance of power will shift massively to the studios, who will wield absolute veto power over who may write screenplays, and under what circumstances. ("I want to retain rights to the story." "I'm sorry; we don't offer plot element licenses under those conditions.")
This will also effectively kill those pesky independent screenwriters and film studios, since the large studios will simply refuse to license the plot elements. (The large studios won't have any difficulty; they'll merely cross-license with each other.) The studios could also, if they so wished, break the screenwriters' union overnight.
And, of course, you'll hear a bunch of self-serving blathering about how film production is massively expensive, and successful film plots are already hard to come by, so successful plot elements should be afforded the maximum protection possible because, darn it, it was expensive to develop. This "reasoning" is, of course, complete bullshit, but it'll play well in the trade magazines and the halls of Congress.
Schwab