I thought the Digital Milennium Copyright Act didn't go into effect until next year.
(The thing that I find intensely curious is that anti-spam legislation has been stalled left and right, but utter garbage like the DMCA flies through like greased lightning. sigh)
A friend of mine at ILM gave me a copy of this tape; she refused to say where it came from or how she got it.
Evidently George Lucas organized a formal dinner party for most of the original Star Wars cast, some time in the last five years (there's no date on the tape). Based on the tone of the conversation, I'm presuming it took place near some major holiday (probably Thanksgiving). The recording quality is rather poor, obviously a product of a single omnidirectional mic located somewhere in the room. Here is as accurate a transcript as I can render:
[General murmurs; a wine glass is rung to get attention.]
Lucas: "Thank you all very much for coming. It's really wonderful to see you again all at once. Uh, some of you expressed some confusion as to why I asked for this gathering, and to be honest I'm a little apprehensive bringing it up because I'm sure it will cause most of you, if not all of you, to recall a measure of pain.
"This is as much a confession and explanation as it is an apology... So, I better just get right to it. All of you -- or actually I should just say, most of you -- were participants in... A work that we have all tried very hard to forget... Ah, I see you know what I'm talking about, Carrie. [confused murmurs] Yes, the Star Wars Holiday Special. [loud groans, "Oh, no!", etc.] {garbled}, I know, it's... I know it's better forgotten, but... Please, I need to finish this. [silence returns] Thank you; there is a reason this happened and... It's my fault.
"Basically, a few weeks before any of you were contacted about this, I got a phone call from an executive at the network, and he said he had this fabulous idea he wanted to explore. I said, 'What is it?' He said, 'A Star Wars Holiday Special.'...As I recall, I just sat there in dumbstruck silence, and this idiot rattles on about how great it would be to see a 'slice of life' view of the Star Wars characters.
"Eventually, I found the will to speak again, and said I thought it was the absolute stupidest thing I had ever heard. It was insulting to the characters, it was insulting to the Star Wars universe, and it would be insulting to the viewers' intelligence. I mean, the idea that Thanksgiving or Christmas take place in a completely different galaxy... But this idiot says, 'Oh, no, you don't need to actually call it Thanksgiving or Christmas.' I said, 'Oh, really. So what are we supposed to call it?' He says, 'Well you could call it "Life Day," maybe. Or some holiday celebrated by Wookies.'...And I sat on the phone with this guy for what must have been an hour, trying to convince him that this was just a dreadful idea, but he absolutely just. Would. Not. Let. Up.
"By this time, I just want to get him off the phone, so I finally said, 'I'll think about it.' 'Could you send me some story treatments?' he said. 'I'll think about it.' 'We'll give you complete creative control; you don't need to worry about that.' 'I'll think about it; I gotta go.' Click. Obviously this guy was new in town, and didn't know that, 'I'll think about it,' means..."
Harrison Ford [maybe; can't really tell]: "Go away." [laughter]
Lucas: "Exactly!...So anyway, it's a couple days later... There's a message on my machine from this guy... And this is where I made my mistake. I had just gotten home from darts at the Mayflower, and... I guess I'd had one too many, I don't know, because I found my head flooding with ideas for the absolute worst holiday special imaginable. I mean, the sorts of ideas that are just so unbelievable that they're funny. And pretty soon I was giggling to myself at all the unspeakably ridiculous things I was thinking of...
"And the next thing I knew, I was at my typewriter, writing it down. I sat down and started to write the most ridiculous, the most preposterous parody of Star Wars I could possibly think of. [laughter] I gave them stupid names; I thought, 'Oh, he's named Chewie, so obviously his family's names are Crunchy and Itchy!' [laughter throughout] I threw in Art Carney, for cryin' out loud; you remember those stupid... Like, the Brady Bunch special where Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett turn up at the door for no reason, I said, 'Okay, who has absolutely no business being here? Art Carney!' I threw in porno... [titters] Hey, you know... I happened to have the TV on, and there was a re-run of 'Maude' playing, and I immediately knew I had to work Bea Arthur into this somehow. And I made her sing! Dear God, I made her sing! [loud laughter]
"Anyway, I was up until about six in the morning enjoying the hell out of myself... I mean, I thought it was absolutely hilarious... Because I knew it was a joke. So I'm still looking it over, giggling like a kid... And the phone rings. At six AM. I pick it up... And it's the idiot again, who obviously doesn't grok time zones. He says, 'Have you had time to think about it?' I said, 'Well...' 'Do you have any story treatments?'
"And there I was, at my desk, with the last page of the parody still in the Smith-Corona... And a vindictive thought crossed my mind which to this day I deeply, deeply regret. I turned back to the phone and, trying not to laugh, said, 'Why, yes I do.' [loud groans, "Oh, shit," etc.] He says... He says, 'Great! Can I see it?' I said, 'Sure! Where do I send it?'
"And I made a copy... [more groans] And I sent it off. ["No!!", etc.] And I was certain that once this moron read this piece of dross, he would finally realize this was a deadly stupid idea and drop it. And... So, anyway, I sent it off, and that was the absolute last I heard of it. I never heard from him again, and I thought, great, he figured it out; it's over.
"One day... I've got the TV on... And I see a promo for the Star Wars Holiday Special. And I looked... I can't describe the paralyzing, mortal fear I experienced at that moment. I froze... And I looked, and there was you, and Mark, and Carrie; and from the few fragments they showed, I realized what had happened, and I said, 'Holy fucking shit!'
"And that's when you got that panicked phone call from me, Mark, you remember?"
Mark Hamill: "Yeah, I remember. The thing was... The thing was that... I don't know if I spoke to the same idiot as you did... [laughter] But he tells me about this special, and I said, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. But the guy said, 'George Lucas wrote the script, and you're in it.' And I thought, well, if George thinks it's okay, then I guess..."
Lucas: "Exactly! Exactly! And that was the story you all told me: On the strength of the fact that I wrote the script, you agreed to participate in this spawn of Satan. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about control over my stories now, because I don't want anything like this to ever happen again..."
Carrie Fisher: "Why didn't you just kill it? I mean..."
Lucas: "I tried to. That was the first thing I did; I called up the network and said, 'This is not going to happen,' and they said that the ad space had already been sold, and viewers were already calling in looking forward to it, and cancelling it now was just not possible without a big embarrassing explanation... And I really wasn't sure what to do, I probably should have killed it anyway... But I thought, well, they're going to lose a lot of money, and at that time I didn't realize yet that I could have completely paid them back; and they did think I approved the whole thing since I wrote the 'script', so it's not like they were operating in bad faith...
"And so we reached an agreement where they would air it once, and then it would be destroyed for all eternity. And that's exactly what happened: They aired it, I got the master negatives, I burned them. {garbled} Yes, myself, personally.
And ever since then, I've felt absolutely dreadful that this happened to you... [laughter] That you were made to be part of this private joke gone horribly, horribly wrong... The reason I'm bothering to bring this up at all, apart from wanting to lighten my soul, to the extent that it's possible... This Internet thing seems to be taking off big time, and I have this dark fear that someone who had a Betamax in 1978 who was dumb enough to record this and save it for 20 years is going to dig out their copy, digitize it, and start handing copies around, and the agony will start all over again. So, before that happened, I wanted to get you all together and explain what really happened, and that I hope you can forgive me, and that I'm really, really sorry I did this to you. I just... [appreciative applause]
[END TRANSCRIPT]
Note: The preceding, in it's entirety, is completely, utterly, and in all ways totally fictional, and is nothing more than the product of my furtive imagination.
Also, I disagree with his opinion of Tim Conway entirely. I happen to think Tim Conway is hilarious.
I concur. I have fond memories of the sketches Tim Conway and Harvey Corman did together on the Carol Burnett Show. Conway was very talented with physical humor, and had an excellent grasp of the absurd. Their dentist sketch is a classic.
I'm probably going to lose people because of the length of this post, but I'm going to try anyway, because this issue is very important to me. There are a lot of points in a lot of different messages, which I've collected and replied to in this single post. Throughout, I will use admittedly charged terms like 'foolish', 'silly', and 'childish'. I will justify the use of these terms in due course, so hang in there.
cliffski writes:
i must fundamentally disagree on the topic of id softwares right to use copy protection. [... ]
I am not disputing id's right to do anything. As creator of Quake, they have the absolute right to do anything they wish with it, including not release it at all. They don't owe us -- and we are not "entitled" to -- a single thing.
No. What I'm objecting to is the foolishness of adding copy protection at all. Digital media is a universe of infinite abundance, so how do you justify hoarding anything? Don't answer yet; I'll come back to this issue later...
nothing is [guaranteed] in the games world, especially when someone releases Unreal Tournament just before you!
It will be very interesting to compare sales figures of Unreal Tournament versus Quake 3 in about six months. UT simply has check-for-the-CD copy protection (which is still silly, but much less silly than cryptographic authentication).
if you belive that id have the right to benefit from their work, then they MUST have the right to enforce that protection.
Again, I'm not disputing their right to impose protection; I'm arguing that copy protection is socially unredeeming, and could lead to bigger problems down the road.
Copying games is theft, [... ]
No, it isn't. Theft is when you deprive somebody of their property, such that you now have it, and they don't. Copying creates a new instance; the original owner still has his/her original object. I covered this in my essay.
MrEd writes:
But it's not foolish to try and set up artifical barriers against software copying.
I contend that it is, precisely because it's artificial. Again, I'll justify this futher in a bit...
If they want to reap the rewards of all the hard work which they've put into it, they must prevent Quake III from suffering the same fate as Quake II, [... ]
The fate of Quake 2? Quake 2 sold millions of legitimate copies, and id Software made tens of millions of well-deserved dollars, even in light of the fact there were enormous numbers of unsanctioned copies. Seems to me they would want to repeat the fate of Quake 2.
jamesbulman writes:
The fact that the digital media makes it easy to copy things does not give you the right to copy those things.
Possibly not. But in a universe where there's infinite abundance, how can you justify, in social terms, demanding people not make copies?
Anonymous Coward writes:
First: Are you sure it's *one* server? Second: If the auth servers go down, they will be back up immediately.
id are certainly competent enough to keep their servers running. But if some nincompoop with a backhoe slices the fiber to their building, then you're hosed, and we're back to a single point of failure again.
I am afraid you represent the foolishness here. [Server-side authentication] has been done already, with huge success.
Just because a thing is technically possible or available doesn't make it a good idea. There are societal consequences here which most people haven't thought about.
"software piracy [sic] has become an enormous problem," without any hard data to back it up.
Is there any doubt about this fact?
Yes. Big fat doubts with green hair growing on them.
Fact: Software publishers continually lament "losing" billions of dollars a year to unsanctioned copying. They routinely refer to these unrealized revenues inaccurately as 'theft'. Yet these 'thefts' are never reported to their shareholders. Fiduciary duty requires thefts, especially of the magnitudes claimed, to be reported to shareholders in the company's financial statements. Since the "losses" from unsanctioned copying are never so reported, we may conclude that true 'theft' is not occurring.
Fact: Despite "losing" billions of dollars a year to unsanctioned copying, software companies, on balance, continue to post rising profits. Micros~1, which portrays itself as the industry's biggest victim of unsanctioned copying, has posted record earnings quarter after quarter for years. Thus, these "losses" are not really occurring.
Fact: No software company has ever been driven out of business due to unsanctioned copying of its products. Such business failures are due to poor quality products, poor management, or lack of business acumen.
Fact: Quoted figures on industry "losses" to unsanctioned copying are completely theoretical, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. It is impossible to gauge the precise amount of unrealized sales because it requires measuring events (sales) that didn't happen. You'd have to fork() a copy of the universe where unsanctioned copying was impossible, and compare the results against the real universe. We must not take the SPA's numbers seriously; not only are their numbers, ultimately, made up, they refuse to even disclose how they made them up.
So, yes, the idea that "piracy" is a big problem is still very much open to debate.
Again you speak as if id were into charity.
Nowhere did I suggest id is into charity. Nowhere did I suggest that id should not be compensated handsomely for their work.
What I am suggesting is that, due to the infinite copyability of digital bits, the economic and social rules are different, and that copy protection is an attempt to force an old ruleset that, in the long term, cannot work. (Hang on, we're nearly there...)
The only ones who hate CD keys are warez puppies [... ]
...And people who want to keep the digital universe free and unfettered, so that its infinite abundance may be enjoyed by all.
As for being a w4r3z pUPpY, please be assured that, once Quake 3's copy protection is removed, I will be off to Fry's with my wallet so fast, you'll see a red shift on my butt.
Okay. Remember how I said I would try to justify all my weird claims up there? Here it comes:
I'd like you to indulge me for a moment, and use your imagination to picture what life might be like on the Starship Enterprise. More precisely, what would life be like where everyone had access to a matter replicator? What would society be like? What would the economy be like?
Let's take the economic consequences first. What happens to a market-based economy when you start handing out replicators? It collapses, that's what. A market-based economy relies on scarcity and inconvenience to operate. If you introduce a replicator, scarcity and inconvenience vanish, and suddenly you can't charge money for physical objects anymore, since your intended market is now simply copying them. Just ask your friend Brad to borrow his BMW for five minutes, stick it in the replicator, *ZAP*, and you get to have a BMW, too.
Okay, so what are the social consequences of this? Do we decide that copying objects is 'theft', or even unethical? Well, really, how can you make either claim? It isn't theft, because no one is deprived of anything. I also have a hard time seeing how it's unethical. If I copy your stuff, you are not diminished or deprived in any way; you still have all your stuff. It's just that now I have a copy of it, too. Why would that be a bad thing?
You may argue that such copying dilutes the value of your property. But if, on the Starship Enterprise, everyone has access to a replicator, then everyone's in the same boat (so to speak). Everything is copyable, and everyone has copies. Thus, the 'value' of your copy is not its relative scarcity (since scarcity doesn't exist), but how it enriches the quality of your life. You would select what to copy based not on what you could afford, but its utility, design, and its aesthetic qualities.
Let's say you were an artist in this future world, and you had just spent the last two years building a sculpture. Everyone you show it to thinks it's wonderful. Now, as the creator and owner of this sculpture, you have the right to demand that no one copy it. You may even be able to enforce this desire with force fields of some kind. But why would you do this? Why, with infinite abundance all around you, freely available to everyone, would you want to keep this fine creation to yourself? More importantly, how would the society around you view this behavior? Might they just possibly see it as foolish?
If a Star Trek universe is too abstract for you, let me offer a more familiar scenario: A schoolyard. There are plenty of balls for all the children to play with, all of them identical. Yet, invariably, some children will latch on to a particular ball and yell, "My ball!!" If someone tries to take it away from them, they will get upset. There they are, standing in the middle of an abundance of balls, all of which are free for them to grab, yet they will insist on a particular one being "theirs." We try to discourage this behavior in our children, because it's foolish.
The reason I bring these analogies into play is because the exact same forces are at work in the memories of our computers. Just as the crew of the Enterprise stand in the midst of infinite material riches, we stand in the midst of infinite digital riches. Therefore, the same economic and social consequences apply to digital works. Yes, you have the right to impose copy protection, and the technical means, but if, economically, it doesn't matter, and it makes you look socially foolish, why would you do it?
You're probably thinking I'm being disingenuous here. I'm not. I fully acknowledge that, as of this writing, the digital universe is a completely different thing from the physical universe. In the physical universe where we all live, we use the tool of the market-based economy to motivate people and get our basic needs met. Yet the digital universe heralds an age where this will no longer be true. The two universes are existing simultaneously side by side; how do we reconcile the two?
I haven't the faintest damned idea. We are still reacting to and building social models for this new universe. And this is why I feel that copy-protection is so wrong-headed. It's an expediency that potentially short-changes our replicator-laden future by causing the wrong social models to be built. The physical universe makes it a very compelling expediency, true, but it could have staggering consequences when the physical universe finally catches up and replicators appear (and they will appear; they're too cool not to).
So, if we were to acknowledge that copying is going to happen and that it's okay, how would we motivate people to create things in the first place, and compensate them for their work? This is the area that needs exploration, and I encourage everyone to think about it.
To be honest, I have no idea how our society would react to replicators. It may turn out that, as primates, we are biologically compelled to be territorial about things, even when it doesn't matter. We may decide that wholesale copying of physical objects is wrong. I don't know; I'm not an anthropologist. Since we have no idea what's going to happen, I personally would prefer to work toward and build the future toward which we as a species seem to have been striving for centuries: Unrestricted, infinite abundance for everyone at zero cost.
And that's why I can't support Quake 3's copy protection. It's not because Quake 3 is a poor product (it's excellent), or because id Software are evil (they're not), or even because it's too expensive. It's because copy protection is not part of the future I want to build.
Schwab
Re:Just thought this was important to say
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 3
If you thought EQ had a bad effect on TF, well you ain't seen nothing yet.
I'm not familiar with 'EQ' and its relationship to TeamFortress. Could you provide a pointer to some historical background?
What really sucks, however, is that because Quake is now GPL, we can't create a special version, controlled by a 3rd party that we can all use and know that nobody out there is hacking it.
Complete disagreement. In fact, it is now easier to do this. QuakeWorld in fact implements this to a very limited degree by transmitting checksums back and forth on the models and maps being used by the client and server. Apply these checksums or, if you prefer, an MD5 digest to the client and server binaries and you should be able to build a web of trust fairly easily.
Set up a Web server containing a known "cheat-free" version of the QuakeWorld server and client. Use GPG to sign the binaries and source archives. Allow peer review of the code, and allow reviewers to co-sign the cryptographic signatures on the archives. Over time, people will come to trust you as a source of cheat-free clients and servers.
This next step is a bit harder, but it should be possible to come up with an authentication method that a server can use to assure to a very high degree that the client is uncompromised; and that a client can use to likewise verify a server.
I'm really setting myself up as a target for massive flames here, but this latest development has made a tough personal choice even tougher.
As you all know, Quake 3 incorporates a new form of copy protection. Each copy of Quake 3 comes with a unique CD key. Basically, when you attempt to play a networked game, your CD key is sent to id Software's authentication server. If it's good, and not already in use by someone else, the server allows you to play. This scheme is to combat unsanctioned copying of their game.
I have several philosophical problems with this:
If id Software's authentication server dies, no one can play a networked game. Designing in a single point of failure is always a poor idea.
CD keys can be revoked at their sole discretion. This can theoretically be used to shake down legitimate users by claiming their key was compromised. This vulnerability to users bears consideration. (Note that this is theoretical; id Software's management would never do this. However, how far would you trust -- oh, let's say -- Microsoft with such a scheme?)
It's an attempt to impose artificial scarcity in a Universe where it doesn't exist. Digital bits are, and always have been, easily copied at zero cost, which has certain unavoidable economic consequences. Trying to build walls against these consequences is, ultimately, foolish. See my essay, Digital Sculptures, for a more detailed discussion of why this is so.
id Software published Quake and Quake 2 without onerous copy protection in place (Quake 2 would check if the CD was in the drive, but that was it), and id Software made a lot of money. Now here we are at Quake 3, and we are suddenly informed that, "software piracy [sic] has become an enormous problem," without any hard data to back it up. To combat this alleged problem, hard-core cryptographic authentication techniques have been devised and implemented, presumably at significant cost to id...
For a game.
Moreover, id has been encouraging people to treat their Quake 3 CD keys as a secret as closely held as your credit card number. This analogy is grossly flawed in that the two numbers protect two very different things. Accidental disclosure of your credit card number could compromise your account and credit rating. However, accidental disclosure of your CD key probably won't compromise your copy of Quake 3. Rather, it compromises id's ability to sell more copies. Thus, with this flawed analogy, id attempts to conflate sales projections with personal property and reputation.
Are we to presume that, if this particular form of copy protection hadn't been implemented, it would have been impossible for id to turn a healthy profit? I find this very difficult to believe.
For primarily these reasons, I have elected not to purchase a copy of Quake 3. I find copy protection, on general principles, to be an unnecessary inconvenience, and smacks of an attitude of selfishness that has very little place in a Universe where scarcity does not -- and I contend should not -- exist.
Lest you think I am some kind of W4R3Z M0NK3Y, let me, a legitimate purchaser and owner of Quake and Quake 2, state very clearly and <STRONG>ly that John Carmack and everyone at id Software deserve every last penny they receive from sales of their software, plus more besides. Carmack is an absolutely brilliant man, far above my station and ability, and deserves every Ferrari he can lay his hands on. Same with the artists. They have done an absolutely incredible job of creating compelling new worlds for us to explore. All of them have worked unbelievably hard, and earned all the rewards we might wish for ourselves, were we in their shoes.
That's why this release of the Quake source code makes it so much harder for me to stick to my decision. By doing this, Carmack, Zoid, and everyone else at id have reinforced their astonishing coolness and deservedness of my support. I have been enriched by this release, which has only strengthened my respect for them. Against all "common business sense" (which is frequently common but rarely sense), these guys dropped one of the best known jewels of gaming history into the Digital Commons and said, "Here ya go." id Software have done virtually everything right.
...Except for the Quake 3 copy protection.
The infinite copyability of digital bits at zero cost forces a new kind of economic model, one that is fundamentally incompatible with the market-based ecomony we know today (which depends on scarcity/inconvenience to survive). I prefer to acknowledge this new economic model, and try to find ways to live and survive in it. Copy protection, on the other hand, is an attempt to deny this reality and impose artificial scarcity/inconvenience. This is, to a very limited extent, necessary if we're going to continue to be able to develop and enjoy monsterously complex games like Quake 3 (I know I couldn't draw all those textures myself). But the fundamental nature of digital media makes this an extremely brittle solution, as any publisher beleaguered by "piracy" will tell you. Once your protection scheme is cracked, natural forces take over.
I don't even pretend to have a solution to this chasm between our current market-based economy and The (Real) New Economy heralded by digital media. We as a society are still coming to grips with these new capabilities, and have only just started to form new social rules about them. This process of exploration isn't anywhere close to complete yet, so now is definitely not the time to try to bend digital bits into an economically expedient pretzel. (This is true not only for id Software, but also for the RIAA, MPAA, and all the other content providers trying to impose copy protection on the entire digital stream.) If nothing else, it will only make the social shock all the worse when Star Trek-style replicators finally turn up.
id Software: Please pledge to, at some point, drop the copy protection. It is contrary to the nature of digital media, and your unique position in the industry makes me confident you don't need it, anyway.
Schwab
Re:Is the Metaverse nearing practicality?
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
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· Score: 4
Is the Metaverse nearing practicality?
I don't think so, due to what I call the Database Problem (I'm sure there's a more formal name for it).
Basically, for the Metaverse to work, you need a massive, distributed, dynamically load-balanced database. You need near-zero latency between servers to handle synchronization. You need to be able to have servers dynamically hand off clients to one another without the user being able to perceive it happening. You need to be able to support the one guy wandering off by him/herself in the "frontiers" of the metaverse. You need to be able to support the virtual stadium containing 100K independent spectators (plus the 30 or so guys playing Rocket Arena down on the field), and handle collisions and other object/object interactions between all of them ("Oh, no, Bob! A wild grenade just landed in the home field bleachers!" "That means a five point penalty, Dan...").
IMHO, this problem is insoluble with current technology. Those who point to Ultima Online et al don't realize that they're side-stepping the problem by keeping all the users and data on a given server. Users and objects cannot migrate between servers. To do even this much, you need heap big server iron, which UO has. But to do something the scale of the Metaverse, you can't get one server that's big enough; you must go to a dynamic distributed system. No one has solved this problem yet.
I suspect advancing CPU and network technologies will eventually make this practical, but I believe we're still several years off...
Okay, I don't have time to write a full treatise, so here's a quick overview of all the sTUfF involved. For the record, my job is writing graphics drivers for BeOS.
There are several constraints which need to be observed. These are:
Minimum/maximum pixel clock rate of the card,
Minimum/maximum horizontal rate of the monitor,
Minimum/maximum vertical rate of the monitor.
Typically, the graphics driver will constrain the pixel clock rate, so the only thing left to worry about is monitor scan rates. The scan rates supported by your monitor are printed in your owner's manual.
Modern monitors also support DDC (Display Data Channel), which is a funky serial protocol to get identification and configuration information out of the monitor. The original DDC spec provided only for transmitting a unique monitor ID. The ID was supposed to be looked up in a database which would contain the monitor's min/max scan frequencies and other characteristics (can you say C:\WINDOWS\INF\MONITOR*.INF?). A more recent revision of the DDC spec now supplies these frequencies directly, as well as gamma characteristics and other cool stuff. Neither XFree86 nor BeOS support DDC yet.
Trivium: Absolutely every monitor out there will support 31.5 KHz horizontal, 60 Hz vertical. Unfortunately, this is only useful for 640 x 480. That's why Windoze defaults to this when it can't identify your monitor or graphics card; it knows this will work in any case.
Once you have a mode line for a particular resolution, you can not simply tweak the pixel clock. Sync timings vary not only by resolution, but also by scan rate. This is because the horizontal sync pulse is not simply a percentage of total horizontal time; it needs to be of a fixed duration, regardless of the scan frequency. If you stray outside the sync pulse requirements, the monitor's flyback transformer can overheat, shortening the monitor's life (and possibly killing it in ugly ways).
There are three ways "The Rest of the World" generates mode lines. One is via a direct DDC probe as outlined above. Another is to use the official mode table provided by VESA. This table contains fixed sync timings from 320 x 200 all the way out to 1900-something. Monitor manufacturers are supposed to make certain that their monitors respond well to these modes. When compiling their BIOS mode tables, however, some graphics card manufacturers, however, will make minor alterations to the VESA table, usually to the HSync and HTotal parameters. I've never discovered why they do this (except that if you don't, the graphics will come out looking funny in some cases).
The third way is to use the VESA GTF (General Timing Formula). This formula takes the following parameters:
Desired display resolution,
Desired (vertical scan rate OR horizontal scan rate OR pixel clock frequency)
From this, it will compute a mode line that will work on all modern monitors, and most old ones (too old to support DDC). The formula is rather ugly, involving a square root somewhere, and I don't have it in front of me.
Copies of the VESA mode tables, GTF, and DDC specs can all be ordered from VESA. I don't know offhand what, if anything, they charge to print up and send you a copy.
XFree86 should at least use the VESA mode table as a starting point for mode lines.
Does anyone know if CDR drives contain logic to apply "watermarks" to burned discs (thus associating the disc with a particular drive)? Does anyone know if there are any plans to introduce such a "feature"? (And what kind of programmer would agree to write such software?)
So if you start putting credits in software, what happens when a new version comes out but some of the people who have worked on the software have moved on or left the company altogether?
Here at Be, we move their names to a section of the credits entitled, "Gone but Not Forgotten."
You can see the BeOS credits by bringing up the "About BeOS" box, and then clicking on the logo.
Programmers have egos, too, you know (especially at Apple). If executive staff can't or won't acknowledge that, then they're further down the path of their own demise than they suspect.
I remember back during Atari's golden years, when they were run by Warner Communications. The edict was that no credit was to be given to any programmer, ever. Individuals who incorporated easter eggs were fired and, occasionally, sued (as Mark Riley, author of AtariWriter, will attest. There were extenuating circumstances in this particular case, but the lawsuit was just gratuitous).
Hell, Electronic Arts was, in part, founded on the idea of giving programmers credit for their work. On the box. With a short bio and photo! The first products out of EA clearly demonstrated the pride these people took in their work. Programmer credit continues at EA to this day.
There is no legitimate reason for them to impose this rule, especially after all these years. It's just mean-spirited.
"But if we put the names of our programmers in the product, our competitors will know who they are and hire them away!"
I've heard this argument before, and it's impossibly lame. If you treat your people well, pay them well, offer a good work environment, and offer the opportunities to work on seriously cool sh*t, this problem does not exist.
The FBI refuses to comment on exactly what action was taken by them; only that they responded, "appropriately."
So what we're left with is an indie filmmaker with tons of free publicity; a Web administrator with embers in his mailbox; and a government agency that claims it did nothing wrong, and besides you can't prove anything, anyway.
I don't presume to suggest such a move would be easy with the Armed Men in Dark Suits at your door, but it's for reasons like this that it is absolutely crucial to insist on the proper paperwork, so that both you and your adversary have proof something happened. Otherwise, the gallery will wonder whether someone's trying to pull their leg.
Whether it's the FBI, the MPAA, the RIAA, or the Illuminati, don't do a damn thing unless and until they make a formal request in writing. Otherwise, you're just shortchanging your own credibility.
RJ Mical: Currently living with his wife and four lovely children on the San Francisco Peninsula. He's written a book (fiction), and is searching for a publisher.
Carl Sassenrath: Created and currently distributing the REBOL programming language.
Dale Luck: When not restoring his massive menagerie of vintage coin-op video games, he works for a digital PBX/telephony company in the Bay Area.
Dave Needle: Still inventing and building cool hardware hacks at his own pace, and installs $1500 bathroom faucets at the behest of his loving wife, Margo.
Still some of the coolest people I have been privileged to know.
It sounds like he's trying to assure some level of accountability with the net to combat certain evils like spam, but he's using the wrong analogy. Surfing the Internet is not like driving a car.
A better analogy would be visiting a library. You make a request for some information (either by looking it up in a card catalog, or asking the reference librarian), and you receive it. We would never suggest that a librarian demand ID before allowing access to the book racks. However, we might expect them to politely stop the six-year-old from wandering into the art section where are kept the books of human figure photography. It's easy, after all, for a human to spot a six-year-old.
I think what worries Cailliau is the fact that the medium of information exchange is now entirely mechanized; that there's no longer a human gatekeeper to make sure that neither the six-year-old nor the neighborhood Fundamentalist doesn't accidentally wander off with Mapplethorpe.
Unfortunately, such wisdom requires adult human intelligence and life experience, which we aren't about to get in machines for some time. And the alternative suggested by Cailliau of checking IDs is unworkable and ethically repugnant.
For the time being, it seems we must rely on the honesty and honor of humans to not foul the well water. Even given Talin's Third Law ("Politeness doesn't scale."), this approach has worked remarkably well on the Internet so far. As long as we keep developing honesty and honor in our children, I believe we should be, for the most part, just fine.
...is any license which comes attached to a product and unilaterally imposes onerous requirements upon someone who uses it for a particular purpose likewise "monstrously unethical?"
In the general case, yes, this is my opinion. I have yet to be shown a situation where a vendor has any ethical, moral, or even economic claim to the kinds of restrictions found in shrinkwrap "agreements."
If so, it is possible to argue that the GPL, too, is monstrously unethical. Like the shrinkwrap license, it unilaterally imposes serious (and possibly unenforceable; we don't know yet) restrictions.
As I outlined in another Slashdot post, the GPL differs significantly from all other shrinkwrap licenses. Nearly all shrinkwraps attempt to constrain use; the GPL constrains copying. The GPL in no way constrains your ability to use the code for your own purposes. If, however, you wish to make and distribute copies, then the GPL stipulates the conditions under which you will be granted a license to do so.
Since the GPL is a legal agreement, it is possible someone could circumvent the agreement and avoid any consequences, simply based on being a minor.
This is true for shrinkwrap "agreements" (which are a legal fiction, anyway), but not true for the GPL.
Normal shrinkwrap "licenses" offer an array of ludicrous restrictions and covenants to which you are expected to agree before the vendor will "allow" you to use the software.
The GPL, however, is different. It acknowledges the fact that, as a copyrighted work, the right to use software is concomitant with lawful possession and, thus, you are free to make use of the software as you will. What the GPL does is stipulate the conditions you must fulfill if you want to make copies of the software.
Note the distinction: Shrinkwraps purport to offer a license to use. The GPL offers a license to make copies.
Copyright law is criminal as well as civil law. Minors are not exempt from criminal statutes. Thus, a minor making and distributing copies of GPL'd software, but not meeting the terms of the GPL, would therefore not be granted a license to make those copies, and would be criminally liable for copyright infringement.
So, no, being a minor does not escape you from the GPL.
...you cannot sign a binding contract if you're a minor.
Which is precisely why license "agreements" of any kind are not only monsterously unethical, they are stupid. Do the clerks at EBX check your ID before selling you a copy of Unreal Tournament (which comes with a shrinkwrap "license")? Are we to suppose that such instruments should be enforceable against a minor's parents or guardian?
Please, stop deluding yourselves into believing that you're purchasing a "license." You are purchasing a copy, and enjoy all the rights and responsibilities afforded to you by copyright law. Any other responsibilities imposed by any so-called "agreement" are fictional.
If this is true, it is a career-ending move for the agents and officers involved. Period. Which is why I think it's a hoax intended to garner publicity for the artist's work. Your local yokel in B.F.E. might be this stupid; the FBI are not.
If this is a hoax, then I hereby nominate that the artist actually lose his 'net access for 90 days. In my view, we cannot afford to have people crying 'Wolf!' over issues like this, especially when the underlying motive is self-promotion. We need to discourage this kind of thing... If it's a hoax...
Not to deny or disparage the very real physical pain many people experience, but I don't understand why other people have this problem and I don't.
I have been screwing with computers for over 20 years, starting with ASR-33 teletypes and moving onward. I slouch. I do not touch-type properly (I only use the first two fingers of each hand). My wrists are supported by the hard surface of the desk in front of the keyboard. I crack the joints in my wrists and fingers several times daily. I have been known to play Quake for five hours at a stretch (mouse + keyboard player). In all, I'm a fairly good example of bad ergonomic habits.
I have no pain, and never have.
I hereby offer my wrists for non-invasive study by any well-known medical reseach facility (Stanford's just down the block from me) to help learn why I don't have this problem, and how others can not have it anymore.
The same applies to software, through and through - license or no license. You own the media, and the use of that media - you hold no rights to the information itself, unless it is EXPLICITLY given to you, in writing. Copyright law makes this automatic, by the way.
By that logic, I can possess a photograph, but I can't look at it, or show it to other people, since I haven't been given a "license" to make any use of the "representation." Try explaining that logic to people you meet on the street, and see how far you get.
...You own the media, and the use of that media...
Correct. The proper and natural use of a book is to read it. The proper and natural use of a CD is to listen to it. And the proper and natural use of computer software is to stick it in a computer and let the CPU churn on it. The ability to make use of a copyrighted work is concomitant with purchase; the "license" doesn't enter into it.
If usage rights must be explicitly granted in writing, then why don't audio CDs come with a license "agreement" stipulating listening privileges?
I'm amazed that Tim O'Reilly, of all people, would think that when you buy commercial software you are actually paying for the bits on the CD. Of course you aren't! Those bits cost next to nothing intrinsically. You are paying for the license, [... ]
God dammit, get this through your thick skulls: Shrinkwrap licenses are a legal fiction.
This lie has been repeated so often and for so long that reasonable people are starting to believe it. When selling in a retail venue, software vendors have no rights over and above what is granted to them under copyright law; you own the bits. That's why they're trying to cram the UCITA through the state legislatures, which will cement their ability to continue abusing consumers. I have never, nor shall I ever, consider myself bound by any so-called "license" unless you get me to actually sign the thing. The ethical consequences of believing otherwise are just too staggering.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the Digital Milennium Copyright Act didn't go into effect until next year.
(The thing that I find intensely curious is that anti-spam legislation has been stalled left and right, but utter garbage like the DMCA flies through like greased lightning. sigh)
Schwab
A friend of mine at ILM gave me a copy of this tape; she refused to say where it came from or how she got it.
Evidently George Lucas organized a formal dinner party for most of the original Star Wars cast, some time in the last five years (there's no date on the tape). Based on the tone of the conversation, I'm presuming it took place near some major holiday (probably Thanksgiving). The recording quality is rather poor, obviously a product of a single omnidirectional mic located somewhere in the room. Here is as accurate a transcript as I can render:
[General murmurs; a wine glass is rung to get attention.]
Lucas:
"Thank you all very much for coming. It's really wonderful to see you again all at once. Uh, some of you expressed some confusion as to why I asked for this gathering, and to be honest I'm a little apprehensive bringing it up because I'm sure it will cause most of you, if not all of you, to recall a measure of pain.
"This is as much a confession and explanation as it is an apology... So, I better just get right to it. All of you -- or actually I should just say, most of you -- were participants in... A work that we have all tried very hard to forget... Ah, I see you know what I'm talking about, Carrie. [confused murmurs] Yes, the Star Wars Holiday Special. [loud groans, "Oh, no!", etc.] {garbled}, I know, it's... I know it's better forgotten, but... Please, I need to finish this. [silence returns] Thank you; there is a reason this happened and... It's my fault.
"Basically, a few weeks before any of you were contacted about this, I got a phone call from an executive at the network, and he said he had this fabulous idea he wanted to explore. I said, 'What is it?' He said, 'A Star Wars Holiday Special.' ...As I recall, I just sat there in dumbstruck silence, and this idiot rattles on about how great it would be to see a 'slice of life' view of the Star Wars characters.
"Eventually, I found the will to speak again, and said I thought it was the absolute stupidest thing I had ever heard. It was insulting to the characters, it was insulting to the Star Wars universe, and it would be insulting to the viewers' intelligence. I mean, the idea that Thanksgiving or Christmas take place in a completely different galaxy... But this idiot says, 'Oh, no, you don't need to actually call it Thanksgiving or Christmas.' I said, 'Oh, really. So what are we supposed to call it?' He says, 'Well you could call it "Life Day," maybe. Or some holiday celebrated by Wookies.' ...And I sat on the phone with this guy for what must have been an hour, trying to convince him that this was just a dreadful idea, but he absolutely just. Would. Not. Let. Up.
"By this time, I just want to get him off the phone, so I finally said, 'I'll think about it.'
'Could you send me some story treatments?' he said.
'I'll think about it.'
'We'll give you complete creative control; you don't need to worry about that.'
'I'll think about it; I gotta go.' Click. Obviously this guy was new in town, and didn't know that, 'I'll think about it,' means..."
Harrison Ford [maybe; can't really tell]:
"Go away." [laughter]
Lucas: ...So anyway, it's a couple days later... There's a message on my machine from this guy... And this is where I made my mistake. I had just gotten home from darts at the Mayflower, and... I guess I'd had one too many, I don't know, because I found my head flooding with ideas for the absolute worst holiday special imaginable. I mean, the sorts of ideas that are just so unbelievable that they're funny. And pretty soon I was giggling to myself at all the unspeakably ridiculous things I was thinking of...
"Exactly!
"And the next thing I knew, I was at my typewriter, writing it down. I sat down and started to write the most ridiculous, the most preposterous parody of Star Wars I could possibly think of. [laughter] I gave them stupid names; I thought, 'Oh, he's named Chewie, so obviously his family's names are Crunchy and Itchy!' [laughter throughout] I threw in Art Carney, for cryin' out loud; you remember those stupid... Like, the Brady Bunch special where Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett turn up at the door for no reason, I said, 'Okay, who has absolutely no business being here? Art Carney!' I threw in porno... [titters] Hey, you know... I happened to have the TV on, and there was a re-run of 'Maude' playing, and I immediately knew I had to work Bea Arthur into this somehow. And I made her sing! Dear God, I made her sing! [loud laughter]
"Anyway, I was up until about six in the morning enjoying the hell out of myself... I mean, I thought it was absolutely hilarious... Because I knew it was a joke. So I'm still looking it over, giggling like a kid... And the phone rings. At six AM. I pick it up... And it's the idiot again, who obviously doesn't grok time zones.
He says, 'Have you had time to think about it?'
I said, 'Well...'
'Do you have any story treatments?'
"And there I was, at my desk, with the last page of the parody still in the Smith-Corona... And a vindictive thought crossed my mind which to this day I deeply, deeply regret.
I turned back to the phone and, trying not to laugh, said, 'Why, yes I do.' [loud groans, "Oh, shit," etc.]
He says... He says, 'Great! Can I see it?'
I said, 'Sure! Where do I send it?'
"And I made a copy... [more groans] And I sent it off. ["No!!", etc.] And I was certain that once this moron read this piece of dross, he would finally realize this was a deadly stupid idea and drop it. And... So, anyway, I sent it off, and that was the absolute last I heard of it. I never heard from him again, and I thought, great, he figured it out; it's over.
"One day... I've got the TV on... And I see a promo for the Star Wars Holiday Special. And I looked... I can't describe the paralyzing, mortal fear I experienced at that moment. I froze... And I looked, and there was you, and Mark, and Carrie; and from the few fragments they showed, I realized what had happened, and I said, 'Holy fucking shit!'
"And that's when you got that panicked phone call from me, Mark, you remember?"
Mark Hamill:
"Yeah, I remember. The thing was... The thing was that... I don't know if I spoke to the same idiot as you did... [laughter] But he tells me about this special, and I said, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. But the guy said, 'George Lucas wrote the script, and you're in it.' And I thought, well, if George thinks it's okay, then I guess..."
Lucas:
"Exactly! Exactly! And that was the story you all told me: On the strength of the fact that I wrote the script, you agreed to participate in this spawn of Satan. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about control over my stories now, because I don't want anything like this to ever happen again..."
Carrie Fisher:
"Why didn't you just kill it? I mean..."
Lucas:
"I tried to. That was the first thing I did; I called up the network and said, 'This is not going to happen,' and they said that the ad space had already been sold, and viewers were already calling in looking forward to it, and cancelling it now was just not possible without a big embarrassing explanation... And I really wasn't sure what to do, I probably should have killed it anyway... But I thought, well, they're going to lose a lot of money, and at that time I didn't realize yet that I could have completely paid them back; and they did think I approved the whole thing since I wrote the 'script', so it's not like they were operating in bad faith...
"And so we reached an agreement where they would air it once, and then it would be destroyed for all eternity. And that's exactly what happened: They aired it, I got the master negatives, I burned them. {garbled} Yes, myself, personally.
And ever since then, I've felt absolutely dreadful that this happened to you... [laughter] That you were made to be part of this private joke gone horribly, horribly wrong... The reason I'm bothering to bring this up at all, apart from wanting to lighten my soul, to the extent that it's possible... This Internet thing seems to be taking off big time, and I have this dark fear that someone who had a Betamax in 1978 who was dumb enough to record this and save it for 20 years is going to dig out their copy, digitize it, and start handing copies around, and the agony will start all over again. So, before that happened, I wanted to get you all together and explain what really happened, and that I hope you can forgive me, and that I'm really, really sorry I did this to you. I just... [appreciative applause]
[END TRANSCRIPT]
Note: The preceding, in it's entirety, is completely, utterly, and in all ways totally fictional, and is nothing more than the product of my furtive imagination.
Schwab
If you do, don't use the Sorenson codec!
Schwab
I concur. I have fond memories of the sketches Tim Conway and Harvey Corman did together on the Carol Burnett Show. Conway was very talented with physical humor, and had an excellent grasp of the absurd. Their dentist sketch is a classic.
Schwab
I'm probably going to lose people because of the length of this post, but I'm going to try anyway, because this issue is very important to me. There are a lot of points in a lot of different messages, which I've collected and replied to in this single post. Throughout, I will use admittedly charged terms like 'foolish', 'silly', and 'childish'. I will justify the use of these terms in due course, so hang in there.
I am not disputing id's right to do anything. As creator of Quake, they have the absolute right to do anything they wish with it, including not release it at all. They don't owe us -- and we are not "entitled" to -- a single thing.
No. What I'm objecting to is the foolishness of adding copy protection at all. Digital media is a universe of infinite abundance, so how do you justify hoarding anything? Don't answer yet; I'll come back to this issue later...
It will be very interesting to compare sales figures of Unreal Tournament versus Quake 3 in about six months. UT simply has check-for-the-CD copy protection (which is still silly, but much less silly than cryptographic authentication).
Again, I'm not disputing their right to impose protection; I'm arguing that copy protection is socially unredeeming, and could lead to bigger problems down the road.
No, it isn't. Theft is when you deprive somebody of their property, such that you now have it, and they don't. Copying creates a new instance; the original owner still has his/her original object. I covered this in my essay.
I contend that it is, precisely because it's artificial. Again, I'll justify this futher in a bit...
The fate of Quake 2? Quake 2 sold millions of legitimate copies, and id Software made tens of millions of well-deserved dollars, even in light of the fact there were enormous numbers of unsanctioned copies. Seems to me they would want to repeat the fate of Quake 2.
Possibly not. But in a universe where there's infinite abundance, how can you justify, in social terms, demanding people not make copies?
id are certainly competent enough to keep their servers running. But if some nincompoop with a backhoe slices the fiber to their building, then you're hosed, and we're back to a single point of failure again.
Just because a thing is technically possible or available doesn't make it a good idea. There are societal consequences here which most people haven't thought about.
Yes. Big fat doubts with green hair growing on them.
Fact: Software publishers continually lament "losing" billions of dollars a year to unsanctioned copying. They routinely refer to these unrealized revenues inaccurately as 'theft'. Yet these 'thefts' are never reported to their shareholders. Fiduciary duty requires thefts, especially of the magnitudes claimed, to be reported to shareholders in the company's financial statements. Since the "losses" from unsanctioned copying are never so reported, we may conclude that true 'theft' is not occurring.
Fact: Despite "losing" billions of dollars a year to unsanctioned copying, software companies, on balance, continue to post rising profits. Micros~1, which portrays itself as the industry's biggest victim of unsanctioned copying, has posted record earnings quarter after quarter for years. Thus, these "losses" are not really occurring.
Fact: No software company has ever been driven out of business due to unsanctioned copying of its products. Such business failures are due to poor quality products, poor management, or lack of business acumen.
Fact: Quoted figures on industry "losses" to unsanctioned copying are completely theoretical, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. It is impossible to gauge the precise amount of unrealized sales because it requires measuring events (sales) that didn't happen. You'd have to fork() a copy of the universe where unsanctioned copying was impossible, and compare the results against the real universe. We must not take the SPA's numbers seriously; not only are their numbers, ultimately, made up, they refuse to even disclose how they made them up.
So, yes, the idea that "piracy" is a big problem is still very much open to debate.
Nowhere did I suggest id is into charity. Nowhere did I suggest that id should not be compensated handsomely for their work.
What I am suggesting is that, due to the infinite copyability of digital bits, the economic and social rules are different, and that copy protection is an attempt to force an old ruleset that, in the long term, cannot work. (Hang on, we're nearly there...)
...And people who want to keep the digital universe free and unfettered, so that its infinite abundance may be enjoyed by all.
As for being a w4r3z pUPpY, please be assured that, once Quake 3's copy protection is removed, I will be off to Fry's with my wallet so fast, you'll see a red shift on my butt.
Okay. Remember how I said I would try to justify all my weird claims up there? Here it comes:
I'd like you to indulge me for a moment, and use your imagination to picture what life might be like on the Starship Enterprise. More precisely, what would life be like where everyone had access to a matter replicator? What would society be like? What would the economy be like?
Let's take the economic consequences first. What happens to a market-based economy when you start handing out replicators? It collapses, that's what. A market-based economy relies on scarcity and inconvenience to operate. If you introduce a replicator, scarcity and inconvenience vanish, and suddenly you can't charge money for physical objects anymore, since your intended market is now simply copying them. Just ask your friend Brad to borrow his BMW for five minutes, stick it in the replicator, *ZAP*, and you get to have a BMW, too.
Okay, so what are the social consequences of this? Do we decide that copying objects is 'theft', or even unethical? Well, really, how can you make either claim? It isn't theft, because no one is deprived of anything. I also have a hard time seeing how it's unethical. If I copy your stuff, you are not diminished or deprived in any way; you still have all your stuff. It's just that now I have a copy of it, too. Why would that be a bad thing?
You may argue that such copying dilutes the value of your property. But if, on the Starship Enterprise, everyone has access to a replicator, then everyone's in the same boat (so to speak). Everything is copyable, and everyone has copies. Thus, the 'value' of your copy is not its relative scarcity (since scarcity doesn't exist), but how it enriches the quality of your life. You would select what to copy based not on what you could afford, but its utility, design, and its aesthetic qualities.
Let's say you were an artist in this future world, and you had just spent the last two years building a sculpture. Everyone you show it to thinks it's wonderful. Now, as the creator and owner of this sculpture, you have the right to demand that no one copy it. You may even be able to enforce this desire with force fields of some kind. But why would you do this? Why, with infinite abundance all around you, freely available to everyone, would you want to keep this fine creation to yourself? More importantly, how would the society around you view this behavior? Might they just possibly see it as foolish?
If a Star Trek universe is too abstract for you, let me offer a more familiar scenario: A schoolyard. There are plenty of balls for all the children to play with, all of them identical. Yet, invariably, some children will latch on to a particular ball and yell, "My ball!!" If someone tries to take it away from them, they will get upset. There they are, standing in the middle of an abundance of balls, all of which are free for them to grab, yet they will insist on a particular one being "theirs." We try to discourage this behavior in our children, because it's foolish.
The reason I bring these analogies into play is because the exact same forces are at work in the memories of our computers. Just as the crew of the Enterprise stand in the midst of infinite material riches, we stand in the midst of infinite digital riches. Therefore, the same economic and social consequences apply to digital works. Yes, you have the right to impose copy protection, and the technical means, but if, economically, it doesn't matter, and it makes you look socially foolish, why would you do it?
You're probably thinking I'm being disingenuous here. I'm not. I fully acknowledge that, as of this writing, the digital universe is a completely different thing from the physical universe. In the physical universe where we all live, we use the tool of the market-based economy to motivate people and get our basic needs met. Yet the digital universe heralds an age where this will no longer be true. The two universes are existing simultaneously side by side; how do we reconcile the two?
I haven't the faintest damned idea. We are still reacting to and building social models for this new universe. And this is why I feel that copy-protection is so wrong-headed. It's an expediency that potentially short-changes our replicator-laden future by causing the wrong social models to be built. The physical universe makes it a very compelling expediency, true, but it could have staggering consequences when the physical universe finally catches up and replicators appear (and they will appear; they're too cool not to).
So, if we were to acknowledge that copying is going to happen and that it's okay, how would we motivate people to create things in the first place, and compensate them for their work? This is the area that needs exploration, and I encourage everyone to think about it.
To be honest, I have no idea how our society would react to replicators. It may turn out that, as primates, we are biologically compelled to be territorial about things, even when it doesn't matter. We may decide that wholesale copying of physical objects is wrong. I don't know; I'm not an anthropologist. Since we have no idea what's going to happen, I personally would prefer to work toward and build the future toward which we as a species seem to have been striving for centuries: Unrestricted, infinite abundance for everyone at zero cost.
And that's why I can't support Quake 3's copy protection. It's not because Quake 3 is a poor product (it's excellent), or because id Software are evil (they're not), or even because it's too expensive. It's because copy protection is not part of the future I want to build.
Schwab
I'm not familiar with 'EQ' and its relationship to TeamFortress. Could you provide a pointer to some historical background?
Complete disagreement. In fact, it is now easier to do this. QuakeWorld in fact implements this to a very limited degree by transmitting checksums back and forth on the models and maps being used by the client and server. Apply these checksums or, if you prefer, an MD5 digest to the client and server binaries and you should be able to build a web of trust fairly easily.
Set up a Web server containing a known "cheat-free" version of the QuakeWorld server and client. Use GPG to sign the binaries and source archives. Allow peer review of the code, and allow reviewers to co-sign the cryptographic signatures on the archives. Over time, people will come to trust you as a source of cheat-free clients and servers.
This next step is a bit harder, but it should be possible to come up with an authentication method that a server can use to assure to a very high degree that the client is uncompromised; and that a client can use to likewise verify a server.
Schwab
I'm really setting myself up as a target for massive flames here, but this latest development has made a tough personal choice even tougher.
As you all know, Quake 3 incorporates a new form of copy protection. Each copy of Quake 3 comes with a unique CD key. Basically, when you attempt to play a networked game, your CD key is sent to id Software's authentication server. If it's good, and not already in use by someone else, the server allows you to play. This scheme is to combat unsanctioned copying of their game.
I have several philosophical problems with this:
id Software published Quake and Quake 2 without onerous copy protection in place (Quake 2 would check if the CD was in the drive, but that was it), and id Software made a lot of money. Now here we are at Quake 3, and we are suddenly informed that, "software piracy [sic] has become an enormous problem," without any hard data to back it up. To combat this alleged problem, hard-core cryptographic authentication techniques have been devised and implemented, presumably at significant cost to id...
For a game.
Moreover, id has been encouraging people to treat their Quake 3 CD keys as a secret as closely held as your credit card number. This analogy is grossly flawed in that the two numbers protect two very different things. Accidental disclosure of your credit card number could compromise your account and credit rating. However, accidental disclosure of your CD key probably won't compromise your copy of Quake 3. Rather, it compromises id's ability to sell more copies. Thus, with this flawed analogy, id attempts to conflate sales projections with personal property and reputation.
Are we to presume that, if this particular form of copy protection hadn't been implemented, it would have been impossible for id to turn a healthy profit? I find this very difficult to believe.
For primarily these reasons, I have elected not to purchase a copy of Quake 3. I find copy protection, on general principles, to be an unnecessary inconvenience, and smacks of an attitude of selfishness that has very little place in a Universe where scarcity does not -- and I contend should not -- exist.
Lest you think I am some kind of W4R3Z M0NK3Y, let me, a legitimate purchaser and owner of Quake and Quake 2, state very clearly and <STRONG>ly that John Carmack and everyone at id Software deserve every last penny they receive from sales of their software, plus more besides. Carmack is an absolutely brilliant man, far above my station and ability, and deserves every Ferrari he can lay his hands on. Same with the artists. They have done an absolutely incredible job of creating compelling new worlds for us to explore. All of them have worked unbelievably hard, and earned all the rewards we might wish for ourselves, were we in their shoes.
That's why this release of the Quake source code makes it so much harder for me to stick to my decision. By doing this, Carmack, Zoid, and everyone else at id have reinforced their astonishing coolness and deservedness of my support. I have been enriched by this release, which has only strengthened my respect for them. Against all "common business sense" (which is frequently common but rarely sense), these guys dropped one of the best known jewels of gaming history into the Digital Commons and said, "Here ya go." id Software have done virtually everything right.
...Except for the Quake 3 copy protection.
The infinite copyability of digital bits at zero cost forces a new kind of economic model, one that is fundamentally incompatible with the market-based ecomony we know today (which depends on scarcity/inconvenience to survive). I prefer to acknowledge this new economic model, and try to find ways to live and survive in it. Copy protection, on the other hand, is an attempt to deny this reality and impose artificial scarcity/inconvenience. This is, to a very limited extent, necessary if we're going to continue to be able to develop and enjoy monsterously complex games like Quake 3 (I know I couldn't draw all those textures myself). But the fundamental nature of digital media makes this an extremely brittle solution, as any publisher beleaguered by "piracy" will tell you. Once your protection scheme is cracked, natural forces take over.
I don't even pretend to have a solution to this chasm between our current market-based economy and The (Real) New Economy heralded by digital media. We as a society are still coming to grips with these new capabilities, and have only just started to form new social rules about them. This process of exploration isn't anywhere close to complete yet, so now is definitely not the time to try to bend digital bits into an economically expedient pretzel. (This is true not only for id Software, but also for the RIAA, MPAA, and all the other content providers trying to impose copy protection on the entire digital stream.) If nothing else, it will only make the social shock all the worse when Star Trek-style replicators finally turn up.
id Software: Please pledge to, at some point, drop the copy protection. It is contrary to the nature of digital media, and your unique position in the industry makes me confident you don't need it, anyway.
Schwab
I don't think so, due to what I call the Database Problem (I'm sure there's a more formal name for it).
Basically, for the Metaverse to work, you need a massive, distributed, dynamically load-balanced database. You need near-zero latency between servers to handle synchronization. You need to be able to have servers dynamically hand off clients to one another without the user being able to perceive it happening. You need to be able to support the one guy wandering off by him/herself in the "frontiers" of the metaverse. You need to be able to support the virtual stadium containing 100K independent spectators (plus the 30 or so guys playing Rocket Arena down on the field), and handle collisions and other object/object interactions between all of them ("Oh, no, Bob! A wild grenade just landed in the home field bleachers!" "That means a five point penalty, Dan...").
IMHO, this problem is insoluble with current technology. Those who point to Ultima Online et al don't realize that they're side-stepping the problem by keeping all the users and data on a given server. Users and objects cannot migrate between servers. To do even this much, you need heap big server iron, which UO has. But to do something the scale of the Metaverse, you can't get one server that's big enough; you must go to a dynamic distributed system. No one has solved this problem yet.
I suspect advancing CPU and network technologies will eventually make this practical, but I believe we're still several years off...
Schwab
Okay, I don't have time to write a full treatise, so here's a quick overview of all the sTUfF involved. For the record, my job is writing graphics drivers for BeOS.
There are several constraints which need to be observed. These are:
Typically, the graphics driver will constrain the pixel clock rate, so the only thing left to worry about is monitor scan rates. The scan rates supported by your monitor are printed in your owner's manual.
Modern monitors also support DDC (Display Data Channel), which is a funky serial protocol to get identification and configuration information out of the monitor. The original DDC spec provided only for transmitting a unique monitor ID. The ID was supposed to be looked up in a database which would contain the monitor's min/max scan frequencies and other characteristics (can you say C:\WINDOWS\INF\MONITOR*.INF?). A more recent revision of the DDC spec now supplies these frequencies directly, as well as gamma characteristics and other cool stuff. Neither XFree86 nor BeOS support DDC yet.
Trivium: Absolutely every monitor out there will support 31.5 KHz horizontal, 60 Hz vertical. Unfortunately, this is only useful for 640 x 480. That's why Windoze defaults to this when it can't identify your monitor or graphics card; it knows this will work in any case.
Once you have a mode line for a particular resolution, you can not simply tweak the pixel clock. Sync timings vary not only by resolution, but also by scan rate. This is because the horizontal sync pulse is not simply a percentage of total horizontal time; it needs to be of a fixed duration, regardless of the scan frequency. If you stray outside the sync pulse requirements, the monitor's flyback transformer can overheat, shortening the monitor's life (and possibly killing it in ugly ways).
There are three ways "The Rest of the World" generates mode lines. One is via a direct DDC probe as outlined above. Another is to use the official mode table provided by VESA. This table contains fixed sync timings from 320 x 200 all the way out to 1900-something. Monitor manufacturers are supposed to make certain that their monitors respond well to these modes. When compiling their BIOS mode tables, however, some graphics card manufacturers, however, will make minor alterations to the VESA table, usually to the HSync and HTotal parameters. I've never discovered why they do this (except that if you don't, the graphics will come out looking funny in some cases).
The third way is to use the VESA GTF (General Timing Formula). This formula takes the following parameters:
From this, it will compute a mode line that will work on all modern monitors, and most old ones (too old to support DDC). The formula is rather ugly, involving a square root somewhere, and I don't have it in front of me.
Copies of the VESA mode tables, GTF, and DDC specs can all be ordered from VESA. I don't know offhand what, if anything, they charge to print up and send you a copy.
XFree86 should at least use the VESA mode table as a starting point for mode lines.
Schwab
So let me get this straight:
IPOs are typically used to obtain working capital for business development. But the Palm series is already popular and profitable.
Does this sound screwy to anyone besides me?
Schwab
Does anyone know if CDR drives contain logic to apply "watermarks" to burned discs (thus associating the disc with a particular drive)? Does anyone know if there are any plans to introduce such a "feature"? (And what kind of programmer would agree to write such software?)
Schwab
Actually, depending on the restaurant, the name of the head chef will appear on the menu (and, if they have one, on their Web site as well).
Schwab
Here at Be, we move their names to a section of the credits entitled, "Gone but Not Forgotten."
You can see the BeOS credits by bringing up the "About BeOS" box, and then clicking on the logo.
Schwab
Programmers have egos, too, you know (especially at Apple). If executive staff can't or won't acknowledge that, then they're further down the path of their own demise than they suspect.
I remember back during Atari's golden years, when they were run by Warner Communications. The edict was that no credit was to be given to any programmer, ever. Individuals who incorporated easter eggs were fired and, occasionally, sued (as Mark Riley, author of AtariWriter, will attest. There were extenuating circumstances in this particular case, but the lawsuit was just gratuitous).
Hell, Electronic Arts was, in part, founded on the idea of giving programmers credit for their work. On the box. With a short bio and photo! The first products out of EA clearly demonstrated the pride these people took in their work. Programmer credit continues at EA to this day.
There is no legitimate reason for them to impose this rule, especially after all these years. It's just mean-spirited.
"But if we put the names of our programmers in the product, our competitors will know who they are and hire them away!"
I've heard this argument before, and it's impossibly lame. If you treat your people well, pay them well, offer a good work environment, and offer the opportunities to work on seriously cool sh*t, this problem does not exist.
Schwab
The FBI refuses to comment on exactly what action was taken by them; only that they responded, "appropriately."
So what we're left with is an indie filmmaker with tons of free publicity; a Web administrator with embers in his mailbox; and a government agency that claims it did nothing wrong, and besides you can't prove anything, anyway.
I don't presume to suggest such a move would be easy with the Armed Men in Dark Suits at your door, but it's for reasons like this that it is absolutely crucial to insist on the proper paperwork, so that both you and your adversary have proof something happened. Otherwise, the gallery will wonder whether someone's trying to pull their leg.
Whether it's the FBI, the MPAA, the RIAA, or the Illuminati, don't do a damn thing unless and until they make a formal request in writing. Otherwise, you're just shortchanging your own credibility.
Schwab
I wrote this essay some years ago, mostly out of personal catharsis. Perhaps others will find it worth reading.
I also have a set of pages containing some of the stuff I did for the Amiga.
Schwab
RJ Mical: Currently living with his wife and four lovely children on the San Francisco Peninsula. He's written a book (fiction), and is searching for a publisher.
Carl Sassenrath: Created and currently distributing the REBOL programming language.
Dale Luck: When not restoring his massive menagerie of vintage coin-op video games, he works for a digital PBX/telephony company in the Bay Area.
Dave Needle: Still inventing and building cool hardware hacks at his own pace, and installs $1500 bathroom faucets at the behest of his loving wife, Margo.
Still some of the coolest people I have been privileged to know.
Schwab
It sounds like he's trying to assure some level of accountability with the net to combat certain evils like spam, but he's using the wrong analogy. Surfing the Internet is not like driving a car.
A better analogy would be visiting a library. You make a request for some information (either by looking it up in a card catalog, or asking the reference librarian), and you receive it. We would never suggest that a librarian demand ID before allowing access to the book racks. However, we might expect them to politely stop the six-year-old from wandering into the art section where are kept the books of human figure photography. It's easy, after all, for a human to spot a six-year-old.
I think what worries Cailliau is the fact that the medium of information exchange is now entirely mechanized; that there's no longer a human gatekeeper to make sure that neither the six-year-old nor the neighborhood Fundamentalist doesn't accidentally wander off with Mapplethorpe.
Unfortunately, such wisdom requires adult human intelligence and life experience, which we aren't about to get in machines for some time. And the alternative suggested by Cailliau of checking IDs is unworkable and ethically repugnant.
For the time being, it seems we must rely on the honesty and honor of humans to not foul the well water. Even given Talin's Third Law ("Politeness doesn't scale."), this approach has worked remarkably well on the Internet so far. As long as we keep developing honesty and honor in our children, I believe we should be, for the most part, just fine.
Schwab
In the general case, yes, this is my opinion. I have yet to be shown a situation where a vendor has any ethical, moral, or even economic claim to the kinds of restrictions found in shrinkwrap "agreements."
As I outlined in another Slashdot post, the GPL differs significantly from all other shrinkwrap licenses. Nearly all shrinkwraps attempt to constrain use; the GPL constrains copying. The GPL in no way constrains your ability to use the code for your own purposes. If, however, you wish to make and distribute copies, then the GPL stipulates the conditions under which you will be granted a license to do so.
Schwab
This is true for shrinkwrap "agreements" (which are a legal fiction, anyway), but not true for the GPL.
Normal shrinkwrap "licenses" offer an array of ludicrous restrictions and covenants to which you are expected to agree before the vendor will "allow" you to use the software.
The GPL, however, is different. It acknowledges the fact that, as a copyrighted work, the right to use software is concomitant with lawful possession and, thus, you are free to make use of the software as you will. What the GPL does is stipulate the conditions you must fulfill if you want to make copies of the software.
Note the distinction: Shrinkwraps purport to offer a license to use. The GPL offers a license to make copies.
Copyright law is criminal as well as civil law. Minors are not exempt from criminal statutes. Thus, a minor making and distributing copies of GPL'd software, but not meeting the terms of the GPL, would therefore not be granted a license to make those copies, and would be criminally liable for copyright infringement.
So, no, being a minor does not escape you from the GPL.
Schwab
Which is precisely why license "agreements" of any kind are not only monsterously unethical, they are stupid. Do the clerks at EBX check your ID before selling you a copy of Unreal Tournament (which comes with a shrinkwrap "license")? Are we to suppose that such instruments should be enforceable against a minor's parents or guardian?
Please, stop deluding yourselves into believing that you're purchasing a "license." You are purchasing a copy, and enjoy all the rights and responsibilities afforded to you by copyright law. Any other responsibilities imposed by any so-called "agreement" are fictional.
Gratuitous link to my editorial on shrinkwraps.
Schwab
If this is true, it is a career-ending move for the agents and officers involved. Period. Which is why I think it's a hoax intended to garner publicity for the artist's work. Your local yokel in B.F.E. might be this stupid; the FBI are not.
If this is a hoax, then I hereby nominate that the artist actually lose his 'net access for 90 days. In my view, we cannot afford to have people crying 'Wolf!' over issues like this, especially when the underlying motive is self-promotion. We need to discourage this kind of thing... If it's a hoax...
Schwab
Not to deny or disparage the very real physical pain many people experience, but I don't understand why other people have this problem and I don't.
I have been screwing with computers for over 20 years, starting with ASR-33 teletypes and moving onward. I slouch. I do not touch-type properly (I only use the first two fingers of each hand). My wrists are supported by the hard surface of the desk in front of the keyboard. I crack the joints in my wrists and fingers several times daily. I have been known to play Quake for five hours at a stretch (mouse + keyboard player). In all, I'm a fairly good example of bad ergonomic habits.
I have no pain, and never have.
I hereby offer my wrists for non-invasive study by any well-known medical reseach facility (Stanford's just down the block from me) to help learn why I don't have this problem, and how others can not have it anymore.
Schwab
By that logic, I can possess a photograph, but I can't look at it, or show it to other people, since I haven't been given a "license" to make any use of the "representation." Try explaining that logic to people you meet on the street, and see how far you get.
Correct. The proper and natural use of a book is to read it. The proper and natural use of a CD is to listen to it. And the proper and natural use of computer software is to stick it in a computer and let the CPU churn on it. The ability to make use of a copyrighted work is concomitant with purchase; the "license" doesn't enter into it.
If usage rights must be explicitly granted in writing, then why don't audio CDs come with a license "agreement" stipulating listening privileges?
Schwab
God dammit, get this through your thick skulls: Shrinkwrap licenses are a legal fiction.
This lie has been repeated so often and for so long that reasonable people are starting to believe it. When selling in a retail venue, software vendors have no rights over and above what is granted to them under copyright law; you own the bits. That's why they're trying to cram the UCITA through the state legislatures, which will cement their ability to continue abusing consumers. I have never, nor shall I ever, consider myself bound by any so-called "license" unless you get me to actually sign the thing. The ethical consequences of believing otherwise are just too staggering.
Read this editorial and this essay. The freedoms of your children may depend on it.
Schwab