What you are stealing is the usage of these ideas without the manufacturers agreement.
Then why are they selling in a retail environment?
I go to Sears. I buy a Craftsman hammer. Sears absolutely does not have the right to constrain my use of the hammer once I have purchased it. I can build a cabinet, build a house, tear apart an old crate, or use it as art. Whatever I want.
Once I have purchased it, Adobe has as much right to constrain my use of Photoshop as Sears does on that hammer. Which is to say, none at all.
You have described precisely the scenario that exists in the memories of our computers, in which the economics are fundamentally different from the market economy of the "real world".
I wrote an essay on this subject some time back, Digital Sculptures, which attempts to explain the true nature of The New Economy awaiting us, foretold by our computers.
Let's assume this statistic is true (which it probably isn't; the SPA has a vested interest in demonizing "piracy").
So what?
No. Seriously. Think about it: So what?
The computer industry is growing at a monsterous rate. Like they said in that PBS special Nerds 2.0.1, "Outside of a petri dish, I've never seen anything grow that fast."
Clearly, the computer industry can support a 40% "piracy" rate. Clearly, illicit copying of software is not a serious detriment to the success of the industry, its workers, or its executive staffs who are rushing to the IPO bar like it's 1999...
No company has ever gone out of business as a result of software "piracy". The industry should stop flogging this dead horse. It's not a problem, and never has been. Fuggeddabouddit.
While their PowerPC compiler is still very good, MetroWerks' x86 compiler is utter rubbish. Those of you in the Mac community thinking of jumping over to Linux may be gravely disappointed at MetroWerks' offerings on the Intel platform. gcc beats it to hell, both in terms of code generation and reliability. mwcc's command line arguments are also totally wacked out. It also has default behaviors that non-Mac users will find surprising (to put it nicely), like recursively searching subdirectories for #include files.
So from where I'm sitting, MetroWerks' choice to restrict themselves to a single Linux distribution is no big deal. gcc will still be the compiler of choice.
Now if MetroWerks were really clever, they'd design their IDE (which isn't bad) to allow users to specify any compiler in place of mwcc, which would allow them to add value to existing Linux installations. Always a good thing...
In a moment of weakness, I decided to get DSL, since I was sick of the 150+ pings I was getting in QuakeWorld.
I chose to remain with my ISP, Best Internet, which was recently acquired by Verio. The Common Wisdom is that Best, under Verio's ownership, will start to blow chunks, but since Matt Dillon (not the actor) designed and built the infrastructure, I figure it will take about a year for that to happen. I also wasn't yet ready to change my Web and email address again.
Verio's Website on DSL is badly designed and ridiculously unhelpful. You have to have JavaScript turned on in order to use it (dumbasses). Once you clear that hurdle, it will tell you everything except who the DSL provider is and how much it will cost, which makes shopping inconvenient.
Anyway, I called up, got a quote, had an argument with my checkbook, and decided to go for it. I signed a one year contract with them. In that time, I plan to change my email and Web address one last time, and transition to my own domain, hosting my Web and email locally. (O'Reilly security books, here I come...)
Fax 'n Figgers
Phone company:Pacific Bell DSL provider:Northpoint ISP:Best Internet Distance to CO: ~2000 feet Maximum possible data rate: 1.5Mbits (heh heh) Selected DSL plan: 416K SDSL, "Workgroup" plan, 16 IP addresses (14 usable) Highest observed download rate: 47K bytes/sec. Lowest observed QuakeWorld ping: 30ms DSL equipment: Netopia SDSL router Monthly cost: More than I care to admit (> $200/month) Usage restrictions: None. I can run a server if I wish.
The DSL signup contract I got from Best/Verio had a little clause in it saying effectively, "You agree not to reverse-engineer any of the software or hardware we provide." I crossed it out and initialed it. Didn't hear a peep out of them about it. (Heh heh)
It took about four weeks from the phone call until the Northpoint techs showed up and did the inside wiring. Alas, they didn't bring the Netopia router with them; that got sent to me the next day via overnight shipping.
I plugged in the router, turned it on, got a Green Light, and... Nothing. I could talk to the router, but I couldn't ping anything beyond that. I called up Best, and whined, "It doesn't work." They called Northpoint, who evidently threw some magic switches, and suddenly the Internet opened up before me. Yay!
I've successfully configured DSL for Windoze-98, Linux (Slackware, kernel 2.0.35), and BeOS R4. All three are happy as clams.
QuakeWorld pings have been as low as 30ms; Quake2 pings a bit higher. I don't have a 3D card (yet), so I can't report on Quake 3 Arena.
One weird thing I had to get used to was the "always on" nature of DSL. I'm paranoid about accidentally leaving the phone line connected (I only have one phone line), so when I'm "done" using the net, my instinct is to hang up the modem. Well, I don't have to do that now, and it feels weird.
Apart from the waiting to receive it and getting it to work, it has been overall a successful and pleasant experience.
It becomes an issue when all major labels release songs in the SDMI format [...]
Even if all major labels started releasing SDMI, they are not about to stop pressing CDs. There are simply too many players out there. Despite any fantasies the RIAA may have about watermarking technologies, you will still be able to convert CD tracks into MP3 files.
Now, let's say you're Panasonic. You can either make a player for SDMI files, of which there are a very small number, and which will require you to pay ridiculous licensing fees for the crypto, watermarking, and audio compression technologies... Or, you can make an Open MP3 player, which will play the hundreds of thousands of MP3 files already out there, and to which more are being added every day, and pay a considerably smaller licensing fee for the compression stuff.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Consumer electronics companies make a lot of noise about "creating" a market, but in actual practice, they spend their dollars where the market is, right now, and where they think it will be one year from now. (Trust me on this. Having been inside the debacle that was 3DO, I'm better versed in these things than most.)
And, I would also point out that, for SDMI to succeed, RIAA needs devices out there that will play SDMI files. Which puts them at the mercy of -- ta da! -- the hardware companies.
So, if you're a hardware company, the solution is simple: Ignore the RIAA. They are of no consequence.
They can yell, they can threaten, they can even file suit. But eventually, they have to convince a Judge to agree with them.
The probability of that happening in this case is very very close to nil.
The only argument they have to stand on is contributory infringement, and that is shaky ground at best. The Sony Betamax case of years ago pretty much slam-dunked that one in favor of the hardware manufacturers.
Basically, RIAA will need to argue that the substantial purpose of MP3 players is to "steal" (to use their inaccurate terminology) music. This argument simply will not stand scrutiny, just as arguing that the purpose of consumer cassette tape decks is to "steal" albums.
The vendors of MP3 players should simply take courage from the fact that they're right, and just ignore the RIAA. In the final analysis, they are inconsequential.
What's this "allow" stuff, as in, "We will allow MP3s to exist?"
Does the RIAA have governmental powers? Can they actually compel anyone to do anything? No, I didn't think so.
This is the whole part of the thing I don't understand. RIAA is not an arm of any government, so there is no reason why a hardware manufacturer can't tell them to fsck off.
Not only is what RIAA wants technically impossible, but it's also contrary to the spirit and intent of digital media, which was designed into it from day one: Costless, limitless, perfect copies. This is the reality of digital media, and no amount of whining is going to change that.
As for "lost revenue," if the profit margins on your wares are 1800% (one thousand eight hundred percent), and you're still losing money, then I think you're more likely to find your real problems staring back at you in the mirror, rather than on the Internet.
Call to Hardware Vendors
The RIAA is not a governmental agency. They do not have the power to draft and enact policy. As such, they are relying on your cooperation to further their ends. If their goals don't match yours, ignore them.
In the late 80's Atari made a number of carts under the tengen name. NOA took them to court on the basis that in order to play on their system (the NESat that time) the carts had to validate via some secret code and that code was copyright or patented by Nintendo. The court upheld and Atari was on the slippery slope to hell.
Not quite correct.
In order to run on the Nintendo platform, you need to have some code that identifies the cartridge as "Nintendo-approved." Atari chose a rather nefarious way of discovering this code sequence: They wrote to the US Copyright office, claimed they were in litigation with Nintendo and, as part of their discovery process, requested a copy of the "code in dispute". The copyright office sent them a listing of Nintendo's authentication code. Atari incorporated into their cart and published it.
Nintendo sues, claiming infringement of "intellectual property" rights. The court ruled against Atari. However, the court went to great lengths to state that its decision was based on Atari's fraudulent behavior, not because of reverse-engineering. Indeed, the court went on to explain that reverse engineering is fair use. This decision is outlined here.
There is also another detailed paper on the subject of reverse engineering, and "lock-out" processes in particular. I haven't read through it completely yet, but it does point out that many of the questions surrounding the legitimacy of reverse-engineering remain unanswered by the courts.
In short, Nintendo is throwing its weight around, trying to bully people into submission. I wouldn't buy into it. A polite note should also be sent to the ISP in question, informing them that Nintendo's legal claims are dubious, at best.
So what's to prevent an enterprising soul from coming in, yanking the blue cable from the PC and plugging it in to their Ethernet-capable laptop, and side-stepping all the ads and other bullsh*t that's sure to be on the BK-PC? (It wouldn't be hard to discover the IP address of the PC and reconfigure the laptop accordingly.)
Real R&D costs big time, and companies will not pay for it if they cannot have some sort of assurance that it will benefit thier bottom line.
This argument is born more out of selfishness than out of logic. Just because you spend a zillion dollars digging a hole in the ground does not confer upon you the right to find gold at the bottom of it.
Actually, it didn't have a DVD drive, but there's no reason it couldn't have been retrofitted. The MPEG core also needed some minor tweaks to get it to support DVD-level MPEG streams (and those tweaks would have been made ages ago if that miserable prima donna on the chip team hadn't refused to get out of the way).
Otherwise, yes, it sure looks like 3DO's old M2 may have found a home.
I have no objection to "porn" in a generic sense, as long as it's in good taste, or shows at least an attempt at cleverness or elegance. The Lara Croft photomosaic didn't meet these tests, IMHO.
I thought up this idea some time ago (though I've yet to actually put it into practice). The idea is to add a custom header to all my outgoing messages citing the license, so that spammers "stripmining" the net for email addresses are on notice that my email addresses are not to be spammed.
I figure, if shrinkwrap "agreements" are supposed to be enforceable for big corporations, then why can't us lowly peons use the same mechanic to our advantage?
You are correct; there are plenty of existing precedents to indicate that "digital signatures" are as good as pen-and-ink.
While electronic manifestation of assent would have some positive attributes, it is also currently (mis)used to get you to agree to shrinkwrap or clickwrap license "agreements." These are ususally onerous, extremely imbalanced instruments that basically abscond with your money and your liberty, and leave you holding a piece of buggy software. I wrote an essay on this subject some time ago.
Finally, it would be interesting to see how this proposed legislation would affect Uniform Commercial Code 2B (a sweeping re-write of contract law to effectively legalize all shrinkwrap "agreements"). It's beginning to look like UCC-2B may not fly because of myriad legal and ethical flaws; I wonder if this legislation is in response to that.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email is one of the leading organizations fighting the battle to get spam off the Net. You may wish to give them your money. At the very least, you should give them some of your attention.
First, it should be observed that there have not been any problems with the nuclear industry in the US despite well over 50 years of nuclear power generation. Yes, Three Mile Island had a partial meltdown, but the total radiation exposure for the residents of the surrounding area as a result of the meltdown was far less than the total radiation exposure of the residents of Colorado during the same period of time. [... ] I've studied this issue up and down, and the only reasonable conclusion is that with proper safeguards, nuclear power is completely harmless and totally efficient. Note that I said proper safeguard. [... ]
Technically, you would be violating copyright law if you did this, yes. It's important to remember there is no license involved in such a case, though the entertainment and software industries would desperately like you to believe otherwise.
The record, movie, and software industries are screaming like banshees about the incredible "economic loss" represented by piracy (a term used more for its emotional overtones than its accuracy). But the fact of the matter is that piracy is really no problem at all.
Example: Name one software company that has gone out of business due to illicit copying of its software. You can't, because no such case exists. Micros~1, who is arguably the largest "victim" of piracy, consistently turns in quarter after quarter of record profits. So it's abundantly clear that illicit copying has negligible affect on the software industry's bottom line.
Same deal with the music industry. They're charging $18.00 for a product that costs less than $1.00 to stamp out. There's no way you're going to convince me they are somehow failing to make money with such usurious margins. The movie industry is a shade different, since the capital costs are so much higher, but then so are the storage requirements. Until a gigabyte of storage drops below $5.00 or so, no one's going to burn hard disk space on a movie they can pick up legitimately for $25.00.
And as for all the statistics detailing those multi-billion dollar losses to piracy? Complete and utter fabrications. They are making the highly flawed assumption that every illicit copy represents what would have been a sale, so they just add them all up. Even the most casual observer will realize that such an assumption is disingenuous at best. There is no way to predict what a person would have done had free copying been impossible (most likely they wouldn't have bothered, or moved on to truly free software).
China is presented as an example of what can happen if piracy is allowed to run rampant. "Informed" sources claim that up to 95% of the software running in China is from illicit copies. China's cultural heritage (which spans some five thousand years, so don't expect it to change any time soon) sees such copying as perfectly acceptable. However, they're also discovering that, when Micros~1 Word/Excel/Windoze craps out, they have no one to turn to. So they are learning that there is an economic cost to freely copying software. While this could lead to more legitimate sales to obtain support, it could also paradoxically lead to a mushrooming of the installed base of Free Software, where copying is encouraged, and support is just one NNTP connection away.
So, no, I don't see "piracy" as any significant problem. The statistics they hand us are heavily cooked, and the extreme case of China can't be sustained over the long term (unless the whole country goes Open Source).
As earlier posters have observed, this will be about as "successful" as DIVX.
What I find annoying is that Diamond is caving on this issue. Diamond has plenty of legal precedents on which to stand (the Sony Betamax case being but one), so I can't understand why they don't just tell the RIAA what they can do with themselves.
Personally, I'd like to get a dozen or so friends, make some trips down to southern California, visit some Hollywood restaurants posing as record company executives, and start "jamming" them.
Jamming is trick whereby you go to a well-known hangout where you are sure to be overheard, and start talking about untrue things for the purposes of spreading rumors and FUD. Skillfully executed, I imagine the Secure Digital Music Initiative will completely crumble if they can be made to believe their solidarity doesn't really exist.
Schwab
Welcome to Hell; Here's Your Homeroom Assignment
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 1
If I complained to authorities, I was told to work on my social skills and not to be a tattletale.
If this kind of willful blindness isn't the sort of thing that makes you want to throttle someone, I don't know what is.
What other experiences did you have?...No, wait, let me describe them for you, because I probably had them, too.
Not a day went by without fear; that someone would be around the next corner to give you shit.
You learned to walk quickly from place to place, minimizing your vulnerability out in the open.
You walked into rooms filled with kids you never met before, and heard voices say, "Ewww, it's $(YOUR_NAME)."
The school counselor, if your school had one, was a feckless loser (straight out of South Park), who offered bland platitudes, who didn't know (and wasn't interested in) the full narrative of your experiences.
The school bullies more or less ran free; the faculty only gave them token admonishment. (Oooo. Detention. That'll change their ways forever.)
If you defended yourself, you got dragged into the office to explain yourself, because you were smart enough to know better.
You loved any class taught by a strict teacher, because you knew absolutely no shit was going to go down in that room.
Even though adminstrators said, "I understand," you knew they were simply oozing crap. Nobody understood. Nobody had your experience, nobody knew your feelings, nobody knew the depths of the pain, how it consumed every waking moment.
You wanted to make them regret the things they did to you. You wanted to make them sorry they ever treated you poorly. You wanted to make them want to never do it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why are they selling in a retail environment?
I go to Sears. I buy a Craftsman hammer. Sears absolutely does not have the right to constrain my use of the hammer once I have purchased it. I can build a cabinet, build a house, tear apart an old crate, or use it as art. Whatever I want.
Once I have purchased it, Adobe has as much right to constrain my use of Photoshop as Sears does on that hammer. Which is to say, none at all.
Schwab
You have described precisely the scenario that exists in the memories of our computers, in which the economics are fundamentally different from the market economy of the "real world".
I wrote an essay on this subject some time back, Digital Sculptures, which attempts to explain the true nature of The New Economy awaiting us, foretold by our computers.
Schwab
Oh, so now we're expected to conflate purloining physical objects (the box, manual, and disks) with copying bits.
Obviously this ad is intended for people who don't think very clearly...
Schwab
Let's assume this statistic is true (which it probably isn't; the SPA has a vested interest in demonizing "piracy").
So what?
No. Seriously. Think about it: So what?
The computer industry is growing at a monsterous rate. Like they said in that PBS special Nerds 2.0.1, "Outside of a petri dish, I've never seen anything grow that fast."
Clearly, the computer industry can support a 40% "piracy" rate. Clearly, illicit copying of software is not a serious detriment to the success of the industry, its workers, or its executive staffs who are rushing to the IPO bar like it's 1999...
No company has ever gone out of business as a result of software "piracy". The industry should stop flogging this dead horse. It's not a problem, and never has been. Fuggeddabouddit.
Schwab
While their PowerPC compiler is still very good, MetroWerks' x86 compiler is utter rubbish. Those of you in the Mac community thinking of jumping over to Linux may be gravely disappointed at MetroWerks' offerings on the Intel platform. gcc beats it to hell, both in terms of code generation and reliability. mwcc's command line arguments are also totally wacked out. It also has default behaviors that non-Mac users will find surprising (to put it nicely), like recursively searching subdirectories for #include files.
So from where I'm sitting, MetroWerks' choice to restrict themselves to a single Linux distribution is no big deal. gcc will still be the compiler of choice.
Now if MetroWerks were really clever, they'd design their IDE (which isn't bad) to allow users to specify any compiler in place of mwcc, which would allow them to add value to existing Linux installations. Always a good thing...
Schwab
In a moment of weakness, I decided to get DSL, since I was sick of the 150+ pings I was getting in QuakeWorld.
I chose to remain with my ISP, Best Internet, which was recently acquired by Verio. The Common Wisdom is that Best, under Verio's ownership, will start to blow chunks, but since Matt Dillon (not the actor) designed and built the infrastructure, I figure it will take about a year for that to happen. I also wasn't yet ready to change my Web and email address again.
Verio's Website on DSL is badly designed and ridiculously unhelpful. You have to have JavaScript turned on in order to use it (dumbasses). Once you clear that hurdle, it will tell you everything except who the DSL provider is and how much it will cost, which makes shopping inconvenient.
Anyway, I called up, got a quote, had an argument with my checkbook, and decided to go for it. I signed a one year contract with them. In that time, I plan to change my email and Web address one last time, and transition to my own domain, hosting my Web and email locally. (O'Reilly security books, here I come...)
Fax 'n Figgers
Phone company: Pacific Bell
DSL provider: Northpoint
ISP: Best Internet
Distance to CO: ~2000 feet
Maximum possible data rate: 1.5Mbits (heh heh)
Selected DSL plan: 416K SDSL, "Workgroup" plan, 16 IP addresses (14 usable)
Highest observed download rate: 47K bytes/sec.
Lowest observed QuakeWorld ping: 30ms
DSL equipment: Netopia SDSL router
Monthly cost: More than I care to admit (> $200/month)
Usage restrictions: None. I can run a server if I wish.
The DSL signup contract I got from Best/Verio had a little clause in it saying effectively, "You agree not to reverse-engineer any of the software or hardware we provide." I crossed it out and initialed it. Didn't hear a peep out of them about it. (Heh heh)
It took about four weeks from the phone call until the Northpoint techs showed up and did the inside wiring. Alas, they didn't bring the Netopia router with them; that got sent to me the next day via overnight shipping.
I plugged in the router, turned it on, got a Green Light, and... Nothing. I could talk to the router, but I couldn't ping anything beyond that. I called up Best, and whined, "It doesn't work." They called Northpoint, who evidently threw some magic switches, and suddenly the Internet opened up before me. Yay!
I've successfully configured DSL for Windoze-98, Linux (Slackware, kernel 2.0.35), and BeOS R4. All three are happy as clams.
QuakeWorld pings have been as low as 30ms; Quake2 pings a bit higher. I don't have a 3D card (yet), so I can't report on Quake 3 Arena.
One weird thing I had to get used to was the "always on" nature of DSL. I'm paranoid about accidentally leaving the phone line connected (I only have one phone line), so when I'm "done" using the net, my instinct is to hang up the modem. Well, I don't have to do that now, and it feels weird.
Apart from the waiting to receive it and getting it to work, it has been overall a successful and pleasant experience.
Schwab
Even if all major labels started releasing SDMI, they are not about to stop pressing CDs. There are simply too many players out there. Despite any fantasies the RIAA may have about watermarking technologies, you will still be able to convert CD tracks into MP3 files.
Now, let's say you're Panasonic. You can either make a player for SDMI files, of which there are a very small number, and which will require you to pay ridiculous licensing fees for the crypto, watermarking, and audio compression technologies... Or, you can make an Open MP3 player, which will play the hundreds of thousands of MP3 files already out there, and to which more are being added every day, and pay a considerably smaller licensing fee for the compression stuff.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Consumer electronics companies make a lot of noise about "creating" a market, but in actual practice, they spend their dollars where the market is, right now, and where they think it will be one year from now. (Trust me on this. Having been inside the debacle that was 3DO, I'm better versed in these things than most.)
And, I would also point out that, for SDMI to succeed, RIAA needs devices out there that will play SDMI files. Which puts them at the mercy of -- ta da! -- the hardware companies.
So, if you're a hardware company, the solution is simple: Ignore the RIAA. They are of no consequence.
Schwab
They can yell, they can threaten, they can even file suit. But eventually, they have to convince a Judge to agree with them.
The probability of that happening in this case is very very close to nil.
The only argument they have to stand on is contributory infringement, and that is shaky ground at best. The Sony Betamax case of years ago pretty much slam-dunked that one in favor of the hardware manufacturers.
Basically, RIAA will need to argue that the substantial purpose of MP3 players is to "steal" (to use their inaccurate terminology) music. This argument simply will not stand scrutiny, just as arguing that the purpose of consumer cassette tape decks is to "steal" albums.
The vendors of MP3 players should simply take courage from the fact that they're right, and just ignore the RIAA. In the final analysis, they are inconsequential.
Schwab
What's this "allow" stuff, as in, "We will allow MP3s to exist?"
Does the RIAA have governmental powers? Can they actually compel anyone to do anything? No, I didn't think so.
This is the whole part of the thing I don't understand. RIAA is not an arm of any government, so there is no reason why a hardware manufacturer can't tell them to fsck off.
Not only is what RIAA wants technically impossible, but it's also contrary to the spirit and intent of digital media, which was designed into it from day one: Costless, limitless, perfect copies. This is the reality of digital media, and no amount of whining is going to change that.
As for "lost revenue," if the profit margins on your wares are 1800% (one thousand eight hundred percent), and you're still losing money, then I think you're more likely to find your real problems staring back at you in the mirror, rather than on the Internet.
Call to Hardware Vendors
The RIAA is not a governmental agency. They do not have the power to draft and enact policy. As such, they are relying on your cooperation to further their ends. If their goals don't match yours, ignore them.
Schwab
Not quite correct.
In order to run on the Nintendo platform, you need to have some code that identifies the cartridge as "Nintendo-approved." Atari chose a rather nefarious way of discovering this code sequence: They wrote to the US Copyright office, claimed they were in litigation with Nintendo and, as part of their discovery process, requested a copy of the "code in dispute". The copyright office sent them a listing of Nintendo's authentication code. Atari incorporated into their cart and published it.
Nintendo sues, claiming infringement of "intellectual property" rights. The court ruled against Atari. However, the court went to great lengths to state that its decision was based on Atari's fraudulent behavior, not because of reverse-engineering. Indeed, the court went on to explain that reverse engineering is fair use. This decision is outlined here.
There is also another detailed paper on the subject of reverse engineering, and "lock-out" processes in particular. I haven't read through it completely yet, but it does point out that many of the questions surrounding the legitimacy of reverse-engineering remain unanswered by the courts.
In short, Nintendo is throwing its weight around, trying to bully people into submission. I wouldn't buy into it. A polite note should also be sent to the ISP in question, informing them that Nintendo's legal claims are dubious, at best.
Schwab
So what's to prevent an enterprising soul from coming in, yanking the blue cable from the PC and plugging it in to their Ethernet-capable laptop, and side-stepping all the ads and other bullsh*t that's sure to be on the BK-PC? (It wouldn't be hard to discover the IP address of the PC and reconfigure the laptop accordingly.)
Schwab
This argument is born more out of selfishness than out of logic. Just because you spend a zillion dollars digging a hole in the ground does not confer upon you the right to find gold at the bottom of it.
Schwab
Actually, it didn't have a DVD drive, but there's no reason it couldn't have been retrofitted. The MPEG core also needed some minor tweaks to get it to support DVD-level MPEG streams (and those tweaks would have been made ages ago if that miserable prima donna on the chip team hadn't refused to get out of the way).
Otherwise, yes, it sure looks like 3DO's old M2 may have found a home.
Schwab
Former 3DO Guy
I have no objection to "porn" in a generic sense, as long as it's in good taste, or shows at least an attempt at cleverness or elegance. The Lara Croft photomosaic didn't meet these tests, IMHO.
Maybe I'm just incredibly picky...
Schwab
I thought up this idea some time ago (though I've yet to actually put it into practice). The idea is to add a custom header to all my outgoing messages citing the license, so that spammers "stripmining" the net for email addresses are on notice that my email addresses are not to be spammed.
I figure, if shrinkwrap "agreements" are supposed to be enforceable for big corporations, then why can't us lowly peons use the same mechanic to our advantage?
Schwab
You are correct; there are plenty of existing precedents to indicate that "digital signatures" are as good as pen-and-ink.
While electronic manifestation of assent would have some positive attributes, it is also currently (mis)used to get you to agree to shrinkwrap or clickwrap license "agreements." These are ususally onerous, extremely imbalanced instruments that basically abscond with your money and your liberty, and leave you holding a piece of buggy software. I wrote an essay on this subject some time ago.
Finally, it would be interesting to see how this proposed legislation would affect Uniform Commercial Code 2B (a sweeping re-write of contract law to effectively legalize all shrinkwrap "agreements"). It's beginning to look like UCC-2B may not fly because of myriad legal and ethical flaws; I wonder if this legislation is in response to that.
Schwab
Schwab
Any comment on the Brown's Ferry incident?
Schwab
Don't forget that Steven Levy wrote one of the definitive works on the subject, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution . An excellent book, even fifteen years later.
Schwab
Technically, you would be violating copyright law if you did this, yes. It's important to remember there is no license involved in such a case, though the entertainment and software industries would desperately like you to believe otherwise.
Schwab
The record, movie, and software industries are screaming like banshees about the incredible "economic loss" represented by piracy (a term used more for its emotional overtones than its accuracy). But the fact of the matter is that piracy is really no problem at all.
Example: Name one software company that has gone out of business due to illicit copying of its software. You can't, because no such case exists. Micros~1, who is arguably the largest "victim" of piracy, consistently turns in quarter after quarter of record profits. So it's abundantly clear that illicit copying has negligible affect on the software industry's bottom line.
Same deal with the music industry. They're charging $18.00 for a product that costs less than $1.00 to stamp out. There's no way you're going to convince me they are somehow failing to make money with such usurious margins. The movie industry is a shade different, since the capital costs are so much higher, but then so are the storage requirements. Until a gigabyte of storage drops below $5.00 or so, no one's going to burn hard disk space on a movie they can pick up legitimately for $25.00.
And as for all the statistics detailing those multi-billion dollar losses to piracy? Complete and utter fabrications. They are making the highly flawed assumption that every illicit copy represents what would have been a sale, so they just add them all up. Even the most casual observer will realize that such an assumption is disingenuous at best. There is no way to predict what a person would have done had free copying been impossible (most likely they wouldn't have bothered, or moved on to truly free software).
China is presented as an example of what can happen if piracy is allowed to run rampant. "Informed" sources claim that up to 95% of the software running in China is from illicit copies. China's cultural heritage (which spans some five thousand years, so don't expect it to change any time soon) sees such copying as perfectly acceptable. However, they're also discovering that, when Micros~1 Word/Excel/Windoze craps out, they have no one to turn to. So they are learning that there is an economic cost to freely copying software. While this could lead to more legitimate sales to obtain support, it could also paradoxically lead to a mushrooming of the installed base of Free Software, where copying is encouraged, and support is just one NNTP connection away.
So, no, I don't see "piracy" as any significant problem. The statistics they hand us are heavily cooked, and the extreme case of China can't be sustained over the long term (unless the whole country goes Open Source).
Schwab
That copy of the bits on the CD is your property, and cannot be taken from you without due process.
Provided you remain within the confines of copyright law, you are free to do anything you want with your copy of the bits.
Period.
Anyone who says different is selling something.
This whole "license, not sale" thing is absolute bullshit, and is worthy of nothing but ridicule.
Schwab
As earlier posters have observed, this will be about as "successful" as DIVX.
What I find annoying is that Diamond is caving on this issue. Diamond has plenty of legal precedents on which to stand (the Sony Betamax case being but one), so I can't understand why they don't just tell the RIAA what they can do with themselves.
Personally, I'd like to get a dozen or so friends, make some trips down to southern California, visit some Hollywood restaurants posing as record company executives, and start "jamming" them.
Jamming is trick whereby you go to a well-known hangout where you are sure to be overheard, and start talking about untrue things for the purposes of spreading rumors and FUD. Skillfully executed, I imagine the Secure Digital Music Initiative will completely crumble if they can be made to believe their solidarity doesn't really exist.
Schwab
If this kind of willful blindness isn't the sort of thing that makes you want to throttle someone, I don't know what is.
What other experiences did you have? ...No, wait, let me describe them for you, because I probably had them, too.
How close was I?
Schwab
A friend of mine would also like a new top-level domain: .wombat
Frankly, I wouldn't mind having a .wombat vanity domain...
Schwab