The same place everyone else gets them, from a book.
I think a bigger question is not whether something is a weapon, or can something be used as a weapon, but do you have a legitimate use for the tool/weapon? Oh, and yes, self defense and/or self-preservation is a legitimate use as far as I'm concerned.
I was close to being shot at twice (by criminals). I live in Europe and I have never been shot at.
First, you weren't shot at, so apparently you have been to the US and haven't been shot at there either.
Second, you claim that this was done by 'criminals', why is it that I should give up my weapons because yo managed to meet an idiot. I've met many idiots from other countries, that doesn't mean that everyone from those countries is an idiot.
Third, Any weapon, is nothing more than a tool and any tool can be used in a manner that causes harm to someone or something else. Notice, that I'm not saying firearm, I'm saying weapon, because if I understand correctly, and I think I do, my hand is a weapon depending on how you wish to define weapon.
Assuming this is true, and they have infected all of these systems, what are the ramification where one individual downloads an MP3 on, lets say his/her work system. This starts cataloguing the system they are on and starts infecting the local network. At this point it starts catalogue all af these sytems and is reporting what it finds back to RIAA. Well that is the point of the worm at least, but now just imagine that the person that downloaded the file is on a government network, or even on a corporate network that has to worry about trade secrets. I have a feeling that if they really do have this, they are about to have their butts in a sling.
So RIAA, please, fire it up, start logging away, I would love to see the fireworks.
Imagine a web of elastic bands inside the ballon with the ends attached to various points of the surface. If you mark points on those bands, you can take your example further than just surface level.
And, Hey, as we all know, things get really interesting once you go beyond what is on the surface.
I don't use an antivirus at home. Granted, I run linux mainly, but my point is there are other ways of protecting your data rather than handing your system over to some outside entity. The threat of a virus, does not cause me to want to hand over that kind of control of my equipment to somebody else. As a matter of fact, this threat seems very reminicent of some old films I've seen where Luigi comes walking into your shop carrying a ball bat and talking about how a fire could be a bad thing, and how you might want to look into some fire insurance.
Yes, I realize that viruses and worms and all the other stuff can be pretty bad, but I like my privacy. Oh, and just inanticipation of the individuals who want to believe that because I wish to maintain my privacy, I must have something to hide, therefore, I must be doing something wrong. Get over it, and think about this for a moment, when you use snail mail, why do you use an envelope? Most everything could be done with postcards, why use an envelope, and then take it a step futher and ask yourself why, you spend the extra money on the envelope that have the printing inside that makes it more difficult to read through the paper? The 'do you have something to hide' attitude is a very old government attitude, now being applied in other areas.
remapped the right mouse button to fire off random commands such as rm -rf $HOME
Seriously though, did anyone check to make sure they got the right file from the site rather than a hacked version that was put in place of the original. You would think that these kinds of bugs are serious enough that they wouldn't even put out the program (even in beta) until they were fixed.
Ok, So now AMI is on board with many of the processor manufacturers. I have to admit that while I think I understand the basics of the palladium issues, I haven't spent a lot of time researching it. So the question now becomes, what systems are going to be left in the near future that are not getting on this bandwagon? Or are the average geeks going to have to deal with only old technology or mortgage everything we own to get the really high end equipment that doesn't use this technology?
Another small issue I see is when someone decides to write a driver which accesses a piece of hardward for an unsigned OS which bypasses the palladium crap in the BIOS. I have a feeling the legal precident is about to be set for this issue in the Lexmark case discussed earlier today. I think this could have some serious rammifications for the open source world that tends to work with the latest OS they can put their hands on.
Granted, you are correct to an extent, but the fact of the matter is, these people that are going out and buying everything in sight, and paying ungodly amounts for these things are driving the prices up for everyone else. Now we are to the point (or at least getting there) that many of the positions that are being offered to scientists aren't paying enough to live comfortably. No, I'm not talking about living single in a 5br home while having to choose between your Caddy or your Beamer every morning to drive to work. I just talking about being able to pay off your debts, and being able to drive a somewhat reliable vehicle.
Also, I have to state that while I think it sucks that the scientists are getting the short end of the stick, I feel sorry for the people that didn't get the chance at the education. Many of those people really don't have a hope in hell. Concerning the more technical problems, I think they will see the light of day, but these more technical problems don't provide an immediate solution to the currently more pressing issues of class separation in most of today's societies. Unless these more technical problems start providing income to these people. This way, we could kill two birds with one rocket.
Concerning your sig, 'Give any one species too much rope...'
I'll agree, I spent a lot of years studying science (yes, well beyond the undergrad level) without much return. I did it because I enjoyed it and I was more interested in the results than I was in the money. But after a number of years of that and putting off getting things and doing things that I wanted because I couldn't afford it, I walked away. I realized that I would never be able to afford the things that I wanted, whether it be because of a lack of money or because of a lack of time, and I decided screw this, I'm going to live my life for me, not for the current research project. Part of what brought me to this conclusion was the fact that there are very few people out there that understand/care what you are capable of doing with the various science degrees. Therefore, unless you are the cream of the crop (genius level) and get picked up by a think tank outside of the world of academia, you will never make very much. Besides that I was getting real tired of walking into offices looking for jobs, and having the secretaries look down their noses at me because I was just a lowly physicist.
I do believe anything that uses a digital chip (as opposed to analog circuitry) in it will fall under this law. I really don't think the government had a clue about the can of worM$ they were opening. And obviously M$ wasn't the only worm in the can.
Three cheers for the American government for bringing this three ring circus to town;)
From what I see this is supposed to be about M$ licensing their Windows Media Player software, etc. Why am I seeing a lot of posts about Gun control in the UK? Or is this supposed to give me an idea of what is thought of BG in the UK?
I did my grad work in Physics, and had to deal with many foreign students. Our Dept. was more than 50% foreign. While I think some of these individuals were complete scum, my attitude has nothing to do with the fact that they were not Americans; it had everything to do with the fact that they were complete scum, and yes I felt that way about some of the Americans as well. I'm also sure that some of them felt the same about me.
The fact of the matter is that MIT turned down the money. Whether they did it because they couldn't do the research without the foreign students, or because of principals, they did the right thing, as far as I'm concerned. Another fact is that there are a lot of low lives out there and if the government wants to start screening the individuals that are working on research projects in the world of academia they should by no means limit the screening to foreign students. If they are reading this and decide that I'm right, and they start screening everyone, how many people do you think they are going to have working on their pet projects? They will end up with very few foreign students working on these projects, and the American students that are working on the projects will be the ones that either don't have any better offers, or they will have the 'lamb to the slaughter' mentality that will allow them to be led anywhere. Anyway you look at it, these are generally not going to be the most innovative individuals in the world. Therefore these projects will end up with second-rate researchers giving second-rate results. Basically, the American government will end up cutting it's own throat.
That depends on the University that you are attending. What pissed me off was the fact that some of the foriegn students would fail the TOFL (I think that's right) on purpose the first time through so that they wouldn't be teaching in a classroom. They would either end up grading papers or immediately get an RA even though nobody was suposed to get an RA without being a TA first. This put their foot in the door for the long term RA positions, and those of us that spoke english well enough to teach never seemed to get the opportunity at them. And let's face it grad work in Physics is hard enough without having the added task of babysitting in addition to doing your own classwork, and your research on the side.
Yes, I'm a little pissy about this subject. And yes I do know for a fact that some of them would fail the test on purpose, since I had quite a few of them tell me that was the reason they failed.
As a few of you have already stated, I would like to know how they are using the DCMA on this. I mean yeah, I can see how DOW probably wouldn't like the parody, but if that's all it takes, the US Prison system is about to become the funniest place on earth with all the comedians that are about to be sent up. But as things are stated in this article, it sounds as if Things.net my have a case against Dow for the abuse of DCMA. The flip side of it is even if Dow is proven wrong, what are the odds that they will fix the situation, if history is any indication...
You might be surprised how much the down time would cost some companies while they reloaded the data. Then again, if the down time can cost that much, they should have had redundant systems in place, and they should have had audit/security proceedures in place. I bet they won't make this mistake again, at least not for six month or so...
This seems to be prevalent in today's society. Everyone (yes, I know that's a gross generalization, but I don't see many instances to contradict it) seems to be looking for a way out of taking responsibility for his or her actions. Companies have teams of lawyers that spend all day looking for loopholes that they can worm through or bypasses around the problems they create rather than settle for an ethical/honorable solution. I've heard a number of people tell me that 'that's just business' but I disagree. These businesses are made up of people and those people set the standards of how the company responds to these situations. Yes, there are situations where the 'higher ups' are setting the standards and the rest of the employees are forced to follow along and no matter what you or I or anyone else does to improve ourselves, we will still find these situations. But as I see it, and this opinion may come from the glasses I'm wearing, you can't regulate ethics, and honorability. All we can do is regulate ourselves, and question whether or not we would enjoy being treated the way we are treating others. These are things, that I was taught while growing up, but I fear at this point that there are very few who understand this concept, and even fewer that are teaching their offspring these lessons.
Just look at some of the things that have happened over the past few years. One example is Ford and Firestone who got into a pissing match about who was responsible for the Explorer rollover problem. Rather than solving the problem, and owning up to any mistakes, they started pointing fingers. While I will grant you that I think there was a problem with the tires, I don't generally think I should have to worry about my vehicle being so unstable that it's going to flip if I have a blowout.
So, once again, we have to regulate ourselves, and remember that the golden rule in general is 'Do unto others as the would have done to you.' NOT 'do unto others before they do unto you.' Oh, yeah, and the golden rule really does apply to everyone, not just Christians even though I find very few follow it, including Christians.
We always used IRAF for analyzing the images that we had. It would allow you to put different filters etc. on the images, and overlay them but I couldn't tell you what it is capable of at this point. IRAF runs under various UNIX flavours, but I don't think there is a version for windows at this point. You can look at this site for more information; http://iraf.noao.edu/iraf-homepage.h tml
That's kind of interesting, I have a friend in the situation where the IT staff was a separate entity as well, and in his case, it isn't management that was drawn an quartered, it was the IT staff. That happened on a regular basis because the IT staff answered to everyone, and were used by various management factions to annoy other factions. Basically it came down to everything rolling down hill, and it always landed on the IT Dept. and then they wondered why they couldn't keep IT staff. This situation is also very nasty all around. And the really sad part is that because of this, they never accomplished anything which is contributing to the reason that they (the company) is being desolved by its parent company this Dec.
I thought that one of the things you were supposed to get out of a college education was a broader understanding, as opposed to an understanding of broads. Before this can happen, you have to have an open mind and you need to be receptive to the ideas of others. Unless I'm mistaken, censorship does not accomplish this goal. Granted, according to the article, there was nothing at the website that was fact which means, I assume, that it was all propoganda, but even propoganda allows you to come to some sort of understanding about the person that is spreading it. Censoring this information doesn't make these poeple go away, it just makes it so that nobody understands why they end up doing some of the things they do. So, in the end, whether this is a 1st Amendment issue or not, it seems to go against the entire idea of Universities broadening the minds of its students.
I would think that if management hired these individuals, they might want to try showing them a little trust. Yes, I think you are right, the Techies should be able to explain things in lay terms, but that isn't always the easiest thing to do even for a tech that knows the stuff inside out. Also, lets face it, most of the true geeks that I know really are not interested in slowing down long enough to try to explain what they are doing, this does NOT mean that they don't know what they are doing. If management is dealing with someone that has screwed up a number of times, I could see the distrustful mood, but then I would ask, why is that tech still working there? If that is not the case, then I personally think management needs to back up and re-evaluate their actions and attitudes, they hired these people to do a job, let them do it. BTW, (this portion is in reference to comments made by others) that lay terms blade cuts both ways. Many of the management seem to think that they shouldn't bother explaining the bussiness end of the project to the techs, 'because they wouldn't understand it...' Here comes the utopian statement, we are supposed to be working as a team to achieve the overall goals of the team, and this doesn't work when parts of the team are being treated as mushrooms and do not know what the goals of the team are.
I agree with you about the system that overlays your own
edits, although isn't that getting into the realm of TiVo???
On the note of actually modifying the film, I must say that
if you want to do that with your copy, that is your business.
Although if you plan to distribute your end product, then
you must make it clear that what you are distributing is your version of the
full product. I'm pretty sure there is
some legal grounds for paying the originator of the material a fee for the use
of their product. So long as I don't
end up buying the edited copy while thinking it is the original, I don't have a
problem. Actually, I think you would
get your butt nailed for fraud if you tried to sell it as the original... I figure charge your fee, make sure they
market the film as something other than original, in a painfully obvious sort
of way, and laugh all the way to the bank.
SIDE NOTE Think about
watching DOGMA as an edited version 8-\
Sounds about right, Your suggestion is basically what I've been doing, I just wanted to find out if maybe I was missing something simple. I know they used to put out POST cards for Intel systems, that you could plug into the MB, and when you powered the system up, it would attempt to test most of the hardware on the MB. At this point though the hardware present on the MB is so varied, etc. that I haven't seen many of those POST cards in recent years. I thought maybe there was something similar for the other hardware bases. Thanks.
Most of the posts that I've seen so far pertain to Intel based systems, but I know I've had this question a number of times when I was looking at systems that weren't Intel based. Does anyone have suggestions concerning the rest of the hardware out there???
Slashdot Mirror
The same place everyone else gets them, from a book.
I think a bigger question is not whether something is a weapon, or can something be used as a weapon, but do you have a legitimate use for the tool/weapon? Oh, and yes, self defense and/or self-preservation is a legitimate use as far as I'm concerned.
First, you weren't shot at, so apparently you have been to the US and haven't been shot at there either.
Second, you claim that this was done by 'criminals', why is it that I should give up my weapons because yo managed to meet an idiot. I've met many idiots from other countries, that doesn't mean that everyone from those countries is an idiot.
Third, Any weapon, is nothing more than a tool and any tool can be used in a manner that causes harm to someone or something else. Notice, that I'm not saying firearm, I'm saying weapon, because if I understand correctly, and I think I do, my hand is a weapon depending on how you wish to define weapon.
"...the rest of the year she will always remember this day and you'll NEVER get the "You're not affectionate" speech again."
Really, I wish somebody had explained this one to my last girlfriend...
Also, It is generally refered to as "Singles Awareness Day" 'round here...
Assuming this is true, and they have infected all of these systems, what are the ramification where one individual downloads an MP3 on, lets say his/her work system. This starts cataloguing the system they are on and starts infecting the local network. At this point it starts catalogue all af these sytems and is reporting what it finds back to RIAA. Well that is the point of the worm at least, but now just imagine that the person that downloaded the file is on a government network, or even on a corporate network that has to worry about trade secrets. I have a feeling that if they really do have this, they are about to have their butts in a sling.
So RIAA, please, fire it up, start logging away, I would love to see the fireworks.
Imagine a web of elastic bands inside the ballon with the ends attached to various points of the surface. If you mark points on those bands, you can take your example further than just surface level.
And, Hey, as we all know, things get really interesting once you go beyond what is on the surface.
I don't use an antivirus at home. Granted, I run linux mainly, but my point is there are other ways of protecting your data rather than handing your system over to some outside entity. The threat of a virus, does not cause me to want to hand over that kind of control of my equipment to somebody else. As a matter of fact, this threat seems very reminicent of some old films I've seen where Luigi comes walking into your shop carrying a ball bat and talking about how a fire could be a bad thing, and how you might want to look into some fire insurance.
Yes, I realize that viruses and worms and all the other stuff can be pretty bad, but I like my privacy. Oh, and just inanticipation of the individuals who want to believe that because I wish to maintain my privacy, I must have something to hide, therefore, I must be doing something wrong. Get over it, and think about this for a moment, when you use snail mail, why do you use an envelope? Most everything could be done with postcards, why use an envelope, and then take it a step futher and ask yourself why, you spend the extra money on the envelope that have the printing inside that makes it more difficult to read through the paper? The 'do you have something to hide' attitude is a very old government attitude, now being applied in other areas.
remapped the right mouse button to fire off random commands such as rm -rf $HOME
Seriously though, did anyone check to make sure they got the right file from the site rather than a hacked version that was put in place of the original. You would think that these kinds of bugs are serious enough that they wouldn't even put out the program (even in beta) until they were fixed.
Ok, So now AMI is on board with many of the processor manufacturers. I have to admit that while I think I understand the basics of the palladium issues, I haven't spent a lot of time researching it. So the question now becomes, what systems are going to be left in the near future that are not getting on this bandwagon? Or are the average geeks going to have to deal with only old technology or mortgage everything we own to get the really high end equipment that doesn't use this technology?
Another small issue I see is when someone decides to write a driver which accesses a piece of hardward for an unsigned OS which bypasses the palladium crap in the BIOS. I have a feeling the legal precident is about to be set for this issue in the Lexmark case discussed earlier today. I think this could have some serious rammifications for the open source world that tends to work with the latest OS they can put their hands on.
my $.002 (inflation is a 8!7(#)
Granted, you are correct to an extent, but the fact of the matter is, these people that are going out and buying everything in sight, and paying ungodly amounts for these things are driving the prices up for everyone else. Now we are to the point (or at least getting there) that many of the positions that are being offered to scientists aren't paying enough to live comfortably. No, I'm not talking about living single in a 5br home while having to choose between your Caddy or your Beamer every morning to drive to work. I just talking about being able to pay off your debts, and being able to drive a somewhat reliable vehicle.
Also, I have to state that while I think it sucks that the scientists are getting the short end of the stick, I feel sorry for the people that didn't get the chance at the education. Many of those people really don't have a hope in hell. Concerning the more technical problems, I think they will see the light of day, but these more technical problems don't provide an immediate solution to the currently more pressing issues of class separation in most of today's societies. Unless these more technical problems start providing income to these people. This way, we could kill two birds with one rocket.
Concerning your sig, 'Give any one species too much rope...'
I'll agree, I spent a lot of years studying science (yes, well beyond the undergrad level) without much return. I did it because I enjoyed it and I was more interested in the results than I was in the money. But after a number of years of that and putting off getting things and doing things that I wanted because I couldn't afford it, I walked away. I realized that I would never be able to afford the things that I wanted, whether it be because of a lack of money or because of a lack of time, and I decided screw this, I'm going to live my life for me, not for the current research project. Part of what brought me to this conclusion was the fact that there are very few people out there that understand/care what you are capable of doing with the various science degrees. Therefore, unless you are the cream of the crop (genius level) and get picked up by a think tank outside of the world of academia, you will never make very much. Besides that I was getting real tired of walking into offices looking for jobs, and having the secretaries look down their noses at me because I was just a lowly physicist.
I do believe anything that uses a digital chip (as opposed to analog circuitry) in it will fall under this law. I really don't think the government had a clue about the can of worM$ they were opening. And obviously M$ wasn't the only worm in the can.
Three cheers for the American government for bringing this three ring circus to town;)
From what I see this is supposed to be about M$ licensing their Windows Media Player software, etc. Why am I seeing a lot of posts about Gun control in the UK? Or is this supposed to give me an idea of what is thought of BG in the UK?
I did my grad work in Physics, and had to deal with many foreign students. Our Dept. was more than 50% foreign. While I think some of these individuals were complete scum, my attitude has nothing to do with the fact that they were not Americans; it had everything to do with the fact that they were complete scum, and yes I felt that way about some of the Americans as well. I'm also sure that some of them felt the same about me.
The fact of the matter is that MIT turned down the money. Whether they did it because they couldn't do the research without the foreign students, or because of principals, they did the right thing, as far as I'm concerned. Another fact is that there are a lot of low lives out there and if the government wants to start screening the individuals that are working on research projects in the world of academia they should by no means limit the screening to foreign students. If they are reading this and decide that I'm right, and they start screening everyone, how many people do you think they are going to have working on their pet projects? They will end up with very few foreign students working on these projects, and the American students that are working on the projects will be the ones that either don't have any better offers, or they will have the 'lamb to the slaughter' mentality that will allow them to be led anywhere. Anyway you look at it, these are generally not going to be the most innovative individuals in the world. Therefore these projects will end up with second-rate researchers giving second-rate results. Basically, the American government will end up cutting it's own throat.
That depends on the University that you are attending. What pissed me off was the fact that some of the foriegn students would fail the TOFL (I think that's right) on purpose the first time through so that they wouldn't be teaching in a classroom. They would either end up grading papers or immediately get an RA even though nobody was suposed to get an RA without being a TA first. This put their foot in the door for the long term RA positions, and those of us that spoke english well enough to teach never seemed to get the opportunity at them. And let's face it grad work in Physics is hard enough without having the added task of babysitting in addition to doing your own classwork, and your research on the side.
Yes, I'm a little pissy about this subject. And yes I do know for a fact that some of them would fail the test on purpose, since I had quite a few of them tell me that was the reason they failed.
I think the terminology would be "nationalist"
As a few of you have already stated, I would like to know how they are using the DCMA on this. I mean yeah, I can see how DOW probably wouldn't like the parody, but if that's all it takes, the US Prison system is about to become the funniest place on earth with all the comedians that are about to be sent up. But as things are stated in this article, it sounds as if Things.net my have a case against Dow for the abuse of DCMA. The flip side of it is even if Dow is proven wrong, what are the odds that they will fix the situation, if history is any indication...
You might be surprised how much the down time would cost some companies while they reloaded the data. Then again, if the down time can cost that much, they should have had redundant systems in place, and they should have had audit/security proceedures in place. I bet they won't make this mistake again, at least not for six month or so...
This seems to be prevalent in today's society. Everyone (yes, I know that's a gross generalization, but I don't see many instances to contradict it) seems to be looking for a way out of taking responsibility for his or her actions. Companies have teams of lawyers that spend all day looking for loopholes that they can worm through or bypasses around the problems they create rather than settle for an ethical/honorable solution. I've heard a number of people tell me that 'that's just business' but I disagree. These businesses are made up of people and those people set the standards of how the company responds to these situations. Yes, there are situations where the 'higher ups' are setting the standards and the rest of the employees are forced to follow along and no matter what you or I or anyone else does to improve ourselves, we will still find these situations. But as I see it, and this opinion may come from the glasses I'm wearing, you can't regulate ethics, and honorability. All we can do is regulate ourselves, and question whether or not we would enjoy being treated the way we are treating others. These are things, that I was taught while growing up, but I fear at this point that there are very few who understand this concept, and even fewer that are teaching their offspring these lessons.
Just look at some of the things that have happened over the past few years. One example is Ford and Firestone who got into a pissing match about who was responsible for the Explorer rollover problem. Rather than solving the problem, and owning up to any mistakes, they started pointing fingers. While I will grant you that I think there was a problem with the tires, I don't generally think I should have to worry about my vehicle being so unstable that it's going to flip if I have a blowout.
So, once again, we have to regulate ourselves, and remember that the golden rule in general is 'Do unto others as the would have done to you.' NOT 'do unto others before they do unto you.' Oh, yeah, and the golden rule really does apply to everyone, not just Christians even though I find very few follow it, including Christians.
We always used IRAF for analyzing the images that we had. It would allow you to put different filters etc. on the images, and overlay them but I couldn't tell you what it is capable of at this point. IRAF runs under various UNIX flavours, but I don't think there is a version for windows at this point. You can look at this site for more information;h tml
http://iraf.noao.edu/iraf-homepage.
later
That's kind of interesting, I have a friend in the situation where the IT staff was a separate entity as well, and in his case, it isn't management that was drawn an quartered, it was the IT staff. That happened on a regular basis because the IT staff answered to everyone, and were used by various management factions to annoy other factions. Basically it came down to everything rolling down hill, and it always landed on the IT Dept. and then they wondered why they couldn't keep IT staff. This situation is also very nasty all around. And the really sad part is that because of this, they never accomplished anything which is contributing to the reason that they (the company) is being desolved by its parent company this Dec.
I thought that one of the things you were supposed to get out of a college education was a broader understanding, as opposed to an understanding of broads. Before this can happen, you have to have an open mind and you need to be receptive to the ideas of others. Unless I'm mistaken, censorship does not accomplish this goal. Granted, according to the article, there was nothing at the website that was fact which means, I assume, that it was all propoganda, but even propoganda allows you to come to some sort of understanding about the person that is spreading it. Censoring this information doesn't make these poeple go away, it just makes it so that nobody understands why they end up doing some of the things they do. So, in the end, whether this is a 1st Amendment issue or not, it seems to go against the entire idea of Universities broadening the minds of its students.
Just my 2c
I would think that if management hired these individuals, they might want to try showing them a little trust. Yes, I think you are right, the Techies should be able to explain things in lay terms, but that isn't always the easiest thing to do even for a tech that knows the stuff inside out. Also, lets face it, most of the true geeks that I know really are not interested in slowing down long enough to try to explain what they are doing, this does NOT mean that they don't know what they are doing. If management is dealing with someone that has screwed up a number of times, I could see the distrustful mood, but then I would ask, why is that tech still working there? If that is not the case, then I personally think management needs to back up and re-evaluate their actions and attitudes, they hired these people to do a job, let them do it. BTW, (this portion is in reference to comments made by others) that lay terms blade cuts both ways. Many of the management seem to think that they shouldn't bother explaining the bussiness end of the project to the techs, 'because they wouldn't understand it...' Here comes the utopian statement, we are supposed to be working as a team to achieve the overall goals of the team, and this doesn't work when parts of the team are being treated as mushrooms and do not know what the goals of the team are.
I agree with you about the system that overlays your own edits, although isn't that getting into the realm of TiVo???
On the note of actually modifying the film, I must say that if you want to do that with your copy, that is your business.
Although if you plan to distribute your end product, then you must make it clear that what you are distributing is your version of the full product. I'm pretty sure there is some legal grounds for paying the originator of the material a fee for the use of their product. So long as I don't end up buying the edited copy while thinking it is the original, I don't have a problem. Actually, I think you would get your butt nailed for fraud if you tried to sell it as the original... I figure charge your fee, make sure they market the film as something other than original, in a painfully obvious sort of way, and laugh all the way to the bank.
SIDE NOTE Think about watching DOGMA as an edited version 8-\
Sounds about right, Your suggestion is basically what I've been doing, I just wanted to find out if maybe I was missing something simple. I know they used to put out POST cards for Intel systems, that you could plug into the MB, and when you powered the system up, it would attempt to test most of the hardware on the MB. At this point though the hardware present on the MB is so varied, etc. that I haven't seen many of those POST cards in recent years. I thought maybe there was something similar for the other hardware bases. Thanks.
Most of the posts that I've seen so far pertain to Intel based systems, but I know I've had this question a number of times when I was looking at systems that weren't Intel based. Does anyone have suggestions concerning the rest of the hardware out there???