Its not a nice screen and supports TXT, RTF and HTML books out the box, with software available for PDF, LIT and CHM. The only minor annoyance is the supplied word processor, pocketword, runs very slowly when a large file is being edited. As long as you dont alter the large file, its fine. There are no good free alternatives. Plays music too, and TV control.
Of course, its a MS operating system. You cant directly connect it to any non-windows system. Not good. But if you get a USB securedigital drive, problem solved easily. You might occasionally need a windows box because of the stupid install programs, which expect to see an installed copy of activesync before they extract the cab file you need to actually install the software via SD card. Once youve done that once, you have the CAB file you need for reinstallation.
You can put linux on this, but obviously its not an official program and I havn't tested it.
Actually, this is an end-to-end solution in a way. DTCP is part of the CPSA system. One of the license conditions to use DTCP is that protected content must never leave the device in unencrypted digital form. So your DTCP-enabled DVD recorder will record only to protected (CPRM) discs. Your DTCP-enabled video capture program will record only to a propritary, encrypted, non-convertable format. You get the idea. It goes without saying that the anti-tamper requirements of the license make legal open-source implimentations impossible. Intrestingly, a wide selection of IP systems are used to prevent people makeing a non-licenced implimentation. Bits are patented, everythings copyrighted, the names are all trademarked and the secret keys are classed as trade secrets:-)
Whats the time to break 48-bit encryption now? I cant keep track of processing speed. It is fast enough for a pirate with a few 1GHz systems to complete in a week or so?
On the plus side, CPSA has a weakness. It includes many technologies, and if only a few are broken the whole system becomes useless. CSS has been broken, thus rendering more prerecorded protection useless. If either DTCP or CPRM (idealy both) are cracked the entire CPSA is rendered pointless.
A video card doesn't need MPEG acceleration with todays processor and AGP speeds. Ive got a InHell 815, the unupgradeable embedded graphics chipset, and even through when gameing its actually slower than software rendering and has acceleration inferior to cards ive pulled from 386's I can still watch hi-res divx on it:-)
MS have a presentation on their website (in streaming ASF format) on WM9. It dates back to the day when they called it "corona". It describes the three applications of MS-DRM:
Business-to-customer: this is the usual use Intra-business: Mostly leak-prevention Business-to-business: This is the cinema system. The presentation actually cites cinemas as the main example. A studio would release its movies to all the cinemas and (assumeing the DRM is as tough as MS claims:-)) the cinemas couldn't play it before the official release date or sneak it off to another country where its not released. It would also ensure the projectionist couldn't hook up a DVD recorder and upload the film to the net.
Windows Media codecs perform fairly well at low bitrates, they were designed for streaming, but high bitrate performance is nothing spectacular. Ive seen divx films in 700M that I couldn't tell from a DVD, and im very sensitive to artifacts. WM9 at that bitrate probably couldn't do it. The same applies to their audio systems. At 32kbps WMA does sound better than MP3. At 64 the difference is smaller, and at higher bitrates MP3 wins easily.
Studios and cinemas might like the technology as an end-to-end solution. They can use the same compression at DRM at every stage from editing to distribution, includeing digital cinemas and one day internet films. On the other hand they are going to be concerned about lock in and future price hikes. One point they will like is that WM9 has support for a lot of sound channels, so no need to license all that technology from Sony. The success of MS in digital cinema wont be decided by common sense, it will be decided by things higher up. The business deals MS is lucky enough to make, which studios support WM and the ownership web that dominates the media industry.
As someone said, this is part of the MS culture. Microsoft must continue to grow, or it has no purpose. Dominate the desktop: Done. Now move on to servers. Almost done. Take every market. Security, web services and searching, mobile phones, digital media, office tools, games consoles, just keep on growing.
No real legal authority, but that doesn't mean they are usless. For example I could set up my own version control system. Then those patent holders threaten to sue me if I dont stop. I could defend it. I have a very good case. Lots of prior art. Unfortunatly the legal costs would be huge, and so I would have to stop. The patent has stoped me even through its usless.
Noones mentioned the famous australian patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" or the american patent for using a swing sideways. How about Microsofts patent on the ASF file format? Its a patent on an obvious idea, it only coveres a way to lay out bytes. The patent mostly covers the act of makeing one multimedia file holding more than one stream. Microsoft successfully threatened the programer of virtualdub with it through.
I dont know about the oil pipeline, but im sure bush is using terrorism as a way to win votes. "Vote Bush, he will blow up the evil terrorists", "Vote Bush, or you will all be killed by a terrorist bioweapon". I thought he bombed afganistan because he needed to show the public someone was responsible and being punished for the WTC crash. But afganistan is a mess now, so his going after iraq now. Once hes crashed iraq he will pick another (north korea perhaps? Its easy to get people to hate it and the only essential thing it sells to america is chips, but those nukes cant be good).
Hes hardly helped open source. Hes generally stayed out of the open vs propritary debate entirely, but if he, his administration or a political cybersecurity person have to pick a side I know who they are going to support. Microsoft, like all corporations, spends a lot of money on lobbying. They cant actually bribe polititions in the "heres a case of money, do what I say" way, but they can certinly influence them with campaign contributions, demanding their employies vote for or donate to the company-supported polititions, etc.
The bush administrations been rather pro-closed-source since it was elected, althrough its been a bit busy playing hunt-the-terrorist to realyl do much. There was a report a while ago which suggested the government and government agencys should only use software with a secure hardware componant. It didn't actually say Palladium, but it was obvious what it meant.
Now, a former-microsoftie working in the job which gives him the power to say what software is and isn't allowed on government systems? Quite quickly he will say that for security the government must standardise on the most secure software platform available, windows. He will the probably suggest all sorts of other MS protritary security standards to use. He will do his best to bias and comparisons between windows and competitors, and if any do make it through it will be his job to find a reason dismiss them. This is very bad for open source. The slim chance OSS has of making it into US government and agency systems just disappeared. Fortunatly other countries are a lot more friendly, espicially the poorer ones who dont want to spend half their taxes on software licenses and constant upgrades.
Some games wouldn't port to a cellphone very well. Games that want large screens, or controls that dont have to be pressed with a fingernail.
Anyway, there are quite a few mid-80's and earlier games companys that have gone out of business.
A bigger problem could be getting the console manufacturers to license the firmware. Nintendo and sony would never allow it because it would cost them sales of their modern consoles. Atari seems quite happy with their cell phones. Unless you want to emulate the CPC6128 theres not much that could be easily done.
Althrough the CPC6128 might not be a bad choice. Amstrad dont make it or anything remotely resembling it anymore, so they might be willing to license the firmware. Its got quite a few decent games. And one of the main games manufacturers, Firebird Software, seems to have disappeared so is probably out of business, leaveing a lot of games behind. No copyright problems on that one, and the hardware could be comfortably emulated on a 586. Only problem is it would need a full keyboard, not just a games controler.
The mame license could be sorted out. Whoever makes mame could be quite happy to make an exception for this console-emulator, providing the roms are legal, because they get publicity and probably money.
The game companys might be a little awkward. Financially its in their own intrest to release these games for the emulator. They get a little money, through not a huge ammount, and if people like the games it might encourage people to buy the modern sequals:-). But games companys might not see it like that.
Heres an intresting story about permission. Yesterday my sister desperatly wanted a playstation dance mat. Its a square mat with pressure sensors that connects to a playstation, with a game that judges your danceing. Its currently the "in thing", and no girl between 8 and 14 is cool unless they have it. The mat was £40. But just down the road was another shop with the mat for just £12. Like the sucker she is, she brought it. I knew something was wrong from the picture on the box, where I could clearly see three phono connectors on the mat. But she refused to listen. As predicted when we got home the mat was a rip off. Looked like someone had been messing about with a few video chips, a PIC and some security sensor mats. The graphics looked like something you would expect from an 8086 and the sound..well, I know a square wave when I hear it. It took two hours of screaming and sulking before she finally was given £40 to buy the real mat. So, what was the point? I know I had one earlier, I just cant remember it. Spent too long typeing the story.
Perhaps the consoles fans could write their own roms? With a nicely open console emulated someone would probably put together an SDK, and then small games would start appearing from hobby programers. Probably just several thousand variations on pacman and tetris, but im sure a few good projects would be done as well.
Costs would have to be kept low for something with niche appeal like this, so forget the DVD-ROM. Think more along the lines of CD-ROM and small hard drive. Roms dont take up that much space.
Theres a potential problem. The old games companys might not be too happy if their ROMS can be copied to a hard drive and the discs passed on. I suppose it will have to be limited to loading roms from a CD. It will still need a hard drive, save files and savestates are still too big to just put on flash, and im sure the hackers could find some way to get the roms unofficially loaded from the hard drive. This is one system where hacker power is critical. The target would be old console fans and geeks, and if those geeks are able to plug a terminal emulator and nullmodem into a service port on the back or a connector on the mainboard they will rapidly form a emulator-hacker community, a very powerful form of marketing. It worked for tivo.
On PC hardware yes, but on a custom optimised box with a specially optimised version of MAME and a linux kernal so small it hardly uses any CPU cycles or memory at all? Im not sure of the specs of the consoles being emulated so I can only make very rough estimates, but 32M of ram would probably be enough. 400MHz would be plenty, but anything below 400MHz x86 would probably be hard to get hold of. Obviously the console would be graphics accelerated. The hardware wouldn't be too impressive, but enough. Hopefully enough for hackers to write their own applications such as divx or VCD players, or to hack together their own games.
This has all the indicators of vaporware, but its certinly a good idea. Im not sure how much demand there is for a console to play old games, and the supply of legal software would be a problem, so a way of running illegal roms from p2p networks and hopefully a pirate playstation or N64 emulator (optimised for hardware, no OS and with good graphics card, just about possible) would be very good.
If making a commercial console specificly for emulation, make sure the hardware is good enough to emulate a playstation. Of course it cant be sold with a playstation emulator, and no official emulator could be made without sonys permission which noone will ever get, but sooner or later some hacker will manage to write one. That way everyone emulates the playstation, lots more sales, and because officially the emulator has nothing to do with the manufacturers of the box its all safe from lawyers:-)
But a very important economic basis. If microsoft still supported windows 95 and NT why would anyone want to upgrade to XP?
It does have some bearing on copyrights, but its not a strictly legal reason. Noone cares if you download ye olde C64 games. Noone really cares if you try to sell them on a dodgey market stall. Noone minds if you rip all your old cartridges and convert your old tapes, because noones selling them. No profit, no need for enforcement, and the games are so old they dont significently affect sales of new games. Its still illegal, but theres no enforcement at all.
Actually, even with trusted hardware ebooks wont be secure. Text is so easy, its not that difficult for a few fans to get together and just photograph the screen of their trusted hardware and OCR that, or even to retype the whole book once you have enough fans.
Actually its more complicated than that. CSS is part of the Content Protection System Arcitecture. The CSS license does require region codeing, but it also says only approved outputs can be used. In practical terms, that means you cant buy a DVD player with a digital video output, and all analog outputs must be protected with macrovision and CGMS. This is a nice trick; if one device in a system has CPSA-licensed digital input and output it will only interface properly with other CPSA-licensed equipment. In fact, the CSS spec publicly stats its aim is to become completly ubiquidous. If all goes as the CPSA people plan, one day you may be unable to buy an unprotected appliance, and if you do all your existing equipment will refuse to talk to it because its not licensed.
The same applies to recording as to outputs, so for example a CPSA-compliant DVD recorder will record discs that can only be played on CPSA-compliant equipment.
I did exactly that. Terry Pratchet, Douglas Adams, isaac asimov, arther c clarke, many others. I have quite a library. I even have a 486 laptop used only for reading. Its completly silent with its compactflash card for the books and no fan, and cool enough for me to safely fall asleep while reading in bed.
I did buy dead tree versions. My last purchase was a three-inch-thick book on cisco networking. Finished in two days. I cant afford the real thing anymore.
LIT protection never has been very good, its been broken before. This is a cleaner and easier to use break, as it doesn't need ebook reader to decrypt the books, but its hardly the new DeCSS.
Has anyone noticed the person who runs that website didn't write the program himself, and as he lives in the UK the DMCA is usless? The UK implimentation of the EUCD is still tied up in red tape.
They have a definition of GPL-like in their licenses. It says "any license which:
1. requires release of the source code
or
2. Makes the program redistributable without charge
or
3. Allows people to modify the program
They have actually used the patent once. Virtualdub (popular GNU AVI utility) managed to get ASF support without using anything licensed from microsoft. The programer managed to get the same content encoded in both ASF and AVI format, then compared the two to discover the ASF format. Microsoft threatened to sue, and ASF support was quickly removed. As its GNU some hacked ASF support versions can be found floating round the net, but they are unsupported.
Now, MS really doesn't want people converting ASF to another format. The first problem is that license needed to devlope ASF programs. It explicitly forbids converting ASF to another format. Microsofts own utilities dont do it either. The only ASF filter-decompressor ever written is part of directshow. That could be used to convert ASF by feeding its output into an AVI writer, so as an extra precaution the filter is limited to decode only at playback speed. That method works, but its slow. As an added complication the AVI muxer filter usually messes up AVI sync by a few minutes.
Similar things can be seen with the other WM formats, WMA and WMV. I have written an intresting and rather illegal Linux program which will read the headers from one of those files. Its a patent infringer, and its still only in beta. It decodes the basic headers, but doesn't yet support all header objects, and it has large chunks of code missing so its very unreliable. But its the princible that counts: Its designed to carry my anti-WM rant to the people who use these formats:-)
Home movies. In its typical anticompetative style Microsoft bundled another utility with windows ME and XP, the Home Movie Maker. This program allows anyone to edit together their home movies. IF you plug in a firewire camera it automaticially loads. ITs the default firewire capture program. It will save in only two formats, WMA and WMV. So thanks to this piece of cheating soon everyone with a firewire camera is going to start building their WMV-formatted home video collection. WMV is also infamous for the difficulty of conversion to open editable formats.
Microsoft does want.net programs to run anywhere. On the PC, on mobiles, palmtops, smartphones. Anywhere. They just plan on doing that my makeing windows run everywhere.
Take a look at this piece of pure evilness. I originally discovered this clause in the MS license for ASF devlopers, along with some other restrictions such as "no saveing data from ASF files in any format other than ASF". But this is common to many MS licenses, includeing much of.NET. For more information just google "identified software". I did attempt to submit a story about this to slashdot a few months ago, but I was new here at the time and my poorly-written post was rejected:-). I have a website complaining about the license in more detail, but I doupt a 128k upstream server will stand a slashdot crowd for long.
2(g) For a variety of reasons, including without limitation, because you do not have the right to sublicense the Necessary Claims, your license rights to the Specification are conditioned upon your (a) not distributing the Implementation in conjunction with Identified Software (as defined below); (b) not using Identified Software (e.g. tools) to develop the Implementation; and (c) not distributing the Implementation under license terms which would make the Implementation Identified Software. "Identified Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that directly or indirectly: (i) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the intellectual property in the Specification (including without limitation, any Necessary Claims) licensed to you pursuant to Section 1 (!Microsoft IP!) or (ii) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights or immunities under Microsoft IP. Identified Software includes, without limitation, any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (x) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (y) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (z) be redistributable at no charge.
But wait for the technical problems. You cant key in tones, and if piracy does start I expect the networks will lock the phones to only accept new tones from authorised ringtone sellers.
I am also surprised very few phones allow you to enter your own, but the reason seems quite obvious when you think about it. Some of the money from those sold ringtones goes to the cell phone networks, who often make the phones too. If you could key in tones who would buy one? As long as tones can only be brought, not made, there is a demand for tones. If tones could be keyed in they wouldn't sell any. As well as that all the copyrighted tones they do sell would be quickly converted into input strings and websites would start appearing listing them. There could also be some problems from the music industry as they see their 3.3 billion dollar potential market flooded with unauthorised ring tone sites, or perhaps even independant music. Some people might even start writeing their own music espicially for ringtones and letting anyone else use it.
Loophole spoted. This only covers energy sources which are subject to angular deflection. Use something like a smaller version of the temperature-compensated pendulum and you get liner deflection not covered by the patent. You can convert that o angular using a rack-and-gear if you need angular to drive the mechanism.
No, patents are important. But I think the system needs some changes. At the moment patents are very easy to get. In austraila someone managed to patent the wheel a few years back. They patented it as the "circular transportation facilitation device". In the US an anti-patent person noticed their child using a swing sideways and applied for a patent on sideways swinging. They got it. The ausie patent was done on a fast-track application, but the US swing was a normal patent subject to the same scrutiny as any other (ie zero). Other famous patents are IBMs famous patent for a computerised airplane toilet queueing system and Microsofts patent on the ASF format, which they used to bully Virtualdub because it could transcode ASF.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not a nice screen and supports TXT, RTF and HTML books out the box, with software available for PDF, LIT and CHM. The only minor annoyance is the supplied word processor, pocketword, runs very slowly when a large file is being edited. As long as you dont alter the large file, its fine. There are no good free alternatives. Plays music too, and TV control. Of course, its a MS operating system. You cant directly connect it to any non-windows system. Not good. But if you get a USB securedigital drive, problem solved easily. You might occasionally need a windows box because of the stupid install programs, which expect to see an installed copy of activesync before they extract the cab file you need to actually install the software via SD card. Once youve done that once, you have the CAB file you need for reinstallation. You can put linux on this, but obviously its not an official program and I havn't tested it.
Actually, this is an end-to-end solution in a way. DTCP is part of the CPSA system. One of the license conditions to use DTCP is that protected content must never leave the device in unencrypted digital form. So your DTCP-enabled DVD recorder will record only to protected (CPRM) discs. Your DTCP-enabled video capture program will record only to a propritary, encrypted, non-convertable format. You get the idea. It goes without saying that the anti-tamper requirements of the license make legal open-source implimentations impossible. Intrestingly, a wide selection of IP systems are used to prevent people makeing a non-licenced implimentation. Bits are patented, everythings copyrighted, the names are all trademarked and the secret keys are classed as trade secrets :-)
Whats the time to break 48-bit encryption now? I cant keep track of processing speed. It is fast enough for a pirate with a few 1GHz systems to complete in a week or so?
On the plus side, CPSA has a weakness. It includes many technologies, and if only a few are broken the whole system becomes useless. CSS has been broken, thus rendering more prerecorded protection useless. If either DTCP or CPRM (idealy both) are cracked the entire CPSA is rendered pointless.
A video card doesn't need MPEG acceleration with todays processor and AGP speeds. Ive got a InHell 815, the unupgradeable embedded graphics chipset, and even through when gameing its actually slower than software rendering and has acceleration inferior to cards ive pulled from 386's I can still watch hi-res divx on it :-)
MS have a presentation on their website (in streaming ASF format) on WM9. It dates back to the day when they called it "corona". It describes the three applications of MS-DRM:
:-)) the cinemas couldn't play it before the official release date or sneak it off to another country where its not released. It would also ensure the projectionist couldn't hook up a DVD recorder and upload the film to the net.
Business-to-customer: this is the usual use
Intra-business: Mostly leak-prevention
Business-to-business: This is the cinema system. The presentation actually cites cinemas as the main example. A studio would release its movies to all the cinemas and (assumeing the DRM is as tough as MS claims
Windows Media codecs perform fairly well at low bitrates, they were designed for streaming, but high bitrate performance is nothing spectacular. Ive seen divx films in 700M that I couldn't tell from a DVD, and im very sensitive to artifacts. WM9 at that bitrate probably couldn't do it. The same applies to their audio systems. At 32kbps WMA does sound better than MP3. At 64 the difference is smaller, and at higher bitrates MP3 wins easily.
Studios and cinemas might like the technology as an end-to-end solution. They can use the same compression at DRM at every stage from editing to distribution, includeing digital cinemas and one day internet films. On the other hand they are going to be concerned about lock in and future price hikes. One point they will like is that WM9 has support for a lot of sound channels, so no need to license all that technology from Sony. The success of MS in digital cinema wont be decided by common sense, it will be decided by things higher up. The business deals MS is lucky enough to make, which studios support WM and the ownership web that dominates the media industry.
As someone said, this is part of the MS culture. Microsoft must continue to grow, or it has no purpose. Dominate the desktop: Done. Now move on to servers. Almost done. Take every market. Security, web services and searching, mobile phones, digital media, office tools, games consoles, just keep on growing.
No real legal authority, but that doesn't mean they are usless. For example I could set up my own version control system. Then those patent holders threaten to sue me if I dont stop. I could defend it. I have a very good case. Lots of prior art. Unfortunatly the legal costs would be huge, and so I would have to stop. The patent has stoped me even through its usless.
Noones mentioned the famous australian patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" or the american patent for using a swing sideways. How about Microsofts patent on the ASF file format? Its a patent on an obvious idea, it only coveres a way to lay out bytes. The patent mostly covers the act of makeing one multimedia file holding more than one stream. Microsoft successfully threatened the programer of virtualdub with it through.
I dont know about the oil pipeline, but im sure bush is using terrorism as a way to win votes. "Vote Bush, he will blow up the evil terrorists", "Vote Bush, or you will all be killed by a terrorist bioweapon". I thought he bombed afganistan because he needed to show the public someone was responsible and being punished for the WTC crash. But afganistan is a mess now, so his going after iraq now. Once hes crashed iraq he will pick another (north korea perhaps? Its easy to get people to hate it and the only essential thing it sells to america is chips, but those nukes cant be good). Hes hardly helped open source. Hes generally stayed out of the open vs propritary debate entirely, but if he, his administration or a political cybersecurity person have to pick a side I know who they are going to support. Microsoft, like all corporations, spends a lot of money on lobbying. They cant actually bribe polititions in the "heres a case of money, do what I say" way, but they can certinly influence them with campaign contributions, demanding their employies vote for or donate to the company-supported polititions, etc.
The bush administrations been rather pro-closed-source since it was elected, althrough its been a bit busy playing hunt-the-terrorist to realyl do much. There was a report a while ago which suggested the government and government agencys should only use software with a secure hardware componant. It didn't actually say Palladium, but it was obvious what it meant.
Now, a former-microsoftie working in the job which gives him the power to say what software is and isn't allowed on government systems? Quite quickly he will say that for security the government must standardise on the most secure software platform available, windows. He will the probably suggest all sorts of other MS protritary security standards to use. He will do his best to bias and comparisons between windows and competitors, and if any do make it through it will be his job to find a reason dismiss them. This is very bad for open source. The slim chance OSS has of making it into US government and agency systems just disappeared. Fortunatly other countries are a lot more friendly, espicially the poorer ones who dont want to spend half their taxes on software licenses and constant upgrades.
Some games wouldn't port to a cellphone very well. Games that want large screens, or controls that dont have to be pressed with a fingernail. Anyway, there are quite a few mid-80's and earlier games companys that have gone out of business. A bigger problem could be getting the console manufacturers to license the firmware. Nintendo and sony would never allow it because it would cost them sales of their modern consoles. Atari seems quite happy with their cell phones. Unless you want to emulate the CPC6128 theres not much that could be easily done. Althrough the CPC6128 might not be a bad choice. Amstrad dont make it or anything remotely resembling it anymore, so they might be willing to license the firmware. Its got quite a few decent games. And one of the main games manufacturers, Firebird Software, seems to have disappeared so is probably out of business, leaveing a lot of games behind. No copyright problems on that one, and the hardware could be comfortably emulated on a 586. Only problem is it would need a full keyboard, not just a games controler.
Ive spent three hours today trying to find an easy way to chip my PS2. Ive heard the Xbox is even harder. If only I didn't have this v7 :-(
The mame license could be sorted out. Whoever makes mame could be quite happy to make an exception for this console-emulator, providing the roms are legal, because they get publicity and probably money.
:-). But games companys might not see it like that.
The game companys might be a little awkward. Financially its in their own intrest to release these games for the emulator. They get a little money, through not a huge ammount, and if people like the games it might encourage people to buy the modern sequals
Heres an intresting story about permission. Yesterday my sister desperatly wanted a playstation dance mat. Its a square mat with pressure sensors that connects to a playstation, with a game that judges your danceing. Its currently the "in thing", and no girl between 8 and 14 is cool unless they have it. The mat was £40. But just down the road was another shop with the mat for just £12. Like the sucker she is, she brought it. I knew something was wrong from the picture on the box, where I could clearly see three phono connectors on the mat. But she refused to listen. As predicted when we got home the mat was a rip off. Looked like someone had been messing about with a few video chips, a PIC and some security sensor mats. The graphics looked like something you would expect from an 8086 and the sound..well, I know a square wave when I hear it. It took two hours of screaming and sulking before she finally was given £40 to buy the real mat. So, what was the point? I know I had one earlier, I just cant remember it. Spent too long typeing the story.
Perhaps the consoles fans could write their own roms? With a nicely open console emulated someone would probably put together an SDK, and then small games would start appearing from hobby programers. Probably just several thousand variations on pacman and tetris, but im sure a few good projects would be done as well.
Costs would have to be kept low for something with niche appeal like this, so forget the DVD-ROM. Think more along the lines of CD-ROM and small hard drive. Roms dont take up that much space. Theres a potential problem. The old games companys might not be too happy if their ROMS can be copied to a hard drive and the discs passed on. I suppose it will have to be limited to loading roms from a CD. It will still need a hard drive, save files and savestates are still too big to just put on flash, and im sure the hackers could find some way to get the roms unofficially loaded from the hard drive. This is one system where hacker power is critical. The target would be old console fans and geeks, and if those geeks are able to plug a terminal emulator and nullmodem into a service port on the back or a connector on the mainboard they will rapidly form a emulator-hacker community, a very powerful form of marketing. It worked for tivo.
This has all the indicators of vaporware, but its certinly a good idea. Im not sure how much demand there is for a console to play old games, and the supply of legal software would be a problem, so a way of running illegal roms from p2p networks and hopefully a pirate playstation or N64 emulator (optimised for hardware, no OS and with good graphics card, just about possible) would be very good.
If making a commercial console specificly for emulation, make sure the hardware is good enough to emulate a playstation. Of course it cant be sold with a playstation emulator, and no official emulator could be made without sonys permission which noone will ever get, but sooner or later some hacker will manage to write one. That way everyone emulates the playstation, lots more sales, and because officially the emulator has nothing to do with the manufacturers of the box its all safe from lawyers :-)
But a very important economic basis. If microsoft still supported windows 95 and NT why would anyone want to upgrade to XP? It does have some bearing on copyrights, but its not a strictly legal reason. Noone cares if you download ye olde C64 games. Noone really cares if you try to sell them on a dodgey market stall. Noone minds if you rip all your old cartridges and convert your old tapes, because noones selling them. No profit, no need for enforcement, and the games are so old they dont significently affect sales of new games. Its still illegal, but theres no enforcement at all.
Actually, even with trusted hardware ebooks wont be secure. Text is so easy, its not that difficult for a few fans to get together and just photograph the screen of their trusted hardware and OCR that, or even to retype the whole book once you have enough fans.
Actually its more complicated than that. CSS is part of the Content Protection System Arcitecture. The CSS license does require region codeing, but it also says only approved outputs can be used. In practical terms, that means you cant buy a DVD player with a digital video output, and all analog outputs must be protected with macrovision and CGMS. This is a nice trick; if one device in a system has CPSA-licensed digital input and output it will only interface properly with other CPSA-licensed equipment. In fact, the CSS spec publicly stats its aim is to become completly ubiquidous. If all goes as the CPSA people plan, one day you may be unable to buy an unprotected appliance, and if you do all your existing equipment will refuse to talk to it because its not licensed.
The same applies to recording as to outputs, so for example a CPSA-compliant DVD recorder will record discs that can only be played on CPSA-compliant equipment.
I did exactly that. Terry Pratchet, Douglas Adams, isaac asimov, arther c clarke, many others. I have quite a library. I even have a 486 laptop used only for reading. Its completly silent with its compactflash card for the books and no fan, and cool enough for me to safely fall asleep while reading in bed. I did buy dead tree versions. My last purchase was a three-inch-thick book on cisco networking. Finished in two days. I cant afford the real thing anymore. LIT protection never has been very good, its been broken before. This is a cleaner and easier to use break, as it doesn't need ebook reader to decrypt the books, but its hardly the new DeCSS. Has anyone noticed the person who runs that website didn't write the program himself, and as he lives in the UK the DMCA is usless? The UK implimentation of the EUCD is still tied up in red tape.
They have a definition of GPL-like in their licenses. It says "any license which: 1. requires release of the source code or 2. Makes the program redistributable without charge or 3. Allows people to modify the program
They have actually used the patent once. Virtualdub (popular GNU AVI utility) managed to get ASF support without using anything licensed from microsoft. The programer managed to get the same content encoded in both ASF and AVI format, then compared the two to discover the ASF format. Microsoft threatened to sue, and ASF support was quickly removed. As its GNU some hacked ASF support versions can be found floating round the net, but they are unsupported.
:-)
Now, MS really doesn't want people converting ASF to another format. The first problem is that license needed to devlope ASF programs. It explicitly forbids converting ASF to another format. Microsofts own utilities dont do it either. The only ASF filter-decompressor ever written is part of directshow. That could be used to convert ASF by feeding its output into an AVI writer, so as an extra precaution the filter is limited to decode only at playback speed. That method works, but its slow. As an added complication the AVI muxer filter usually messes up AVI sync by a few minutes.
Similar things can be seen with the other WM formats, WMA and WMV. I have written an intresting and rather illegal Linux program which will read the headers from one of those files. Its a patent infringer, and its still only in beta. It decodes the basic headers, but doesn't yet support all header objects, and it has large chunks of code missing so its very unreliable. But its the princible that counts: Its designed to carry my anti-WM rant to the people who use these formats
Home movies. In its typical anticompetative style Microsoft bundled another utility with windows ME and XP, the Home Movie Maker. This program allows anyone to edit together their home movies. IF you plug in a firewire camera it automaticially loads. ITs the default firewire capture program. It will save in only two formats, WMA and WMV. So thanks to this piece of cheating soon everyone with a firewire camera is going to start building their WMV-formatted home video collection.
WMV is also infamous for the difficulty of conversion to open editable formats.
Microsoft does want .net programs to run anywhere. On the PC, on mobiles, palmtops, smartphones. Anywhere. They just plan on doing that my makeing windows run everywhere.
Take a look at this piece of pure evilness. I originally discovered this clause in the MS license for ASF devlopers, along with some other restrictions such as "no saveing data from ASF files in any format other than ASF". But this is common to many MS licenses, includeing much of .NET. For more information just google "identified software". I did attempt to submit a story about this to slashdot a few months ago, but I was new here at the time and my poorly-written post was rejected :-). I have a website complaining about the license in more detail, but I doupt a 128k upstream server will stand a slashdot crowd for long.
2(g) For a variety of reasons, including without limitation, because you do not have the right to sublicense the Necessary Claims, your license rights to the Specification are conditioned upon your (a) not distributing the Implementation in conjunction with Identified Software (as defined below); (b) not using Identified Software (e.g. tools) to develop the Implementation; and (c) not distributing the Implementation under license terms which would make the Implementation Identified Software. "Identified Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that directly or indirectly: (i) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the intellectual property in the Specification (including without limitation, any Necessary Claims) licensed to you pursuant to Section 1 (!Microsoft IP!) or (ii) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights or immunities under Microsoft IP. Identified Software includes, without limitation, any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (x) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (y) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (z) be redistributable at no charge.
But wait for the technical problems. You cant key in tones, and if piracy does start I expect the networks will lock the phones to only accept new tones from authorised ringtone sellers.
I am also surprised very few phones allow you to enter your own, but the reason seems quite obvious when you think about it. Some of the money from those sold ringtones goes to the cell phone networks, who often make the phones too. If you could key in tones who would buy one? As long as tones can only be brought, not made, there is a demand for tones. If tones could be keyed in they wouldn't sell any. As well as that all the copyrighted tones they do sell would be quickly converted into input strings and websites would start appearing listing them. There could also be some problems from the music industry as they see their 3.3 billion dollar potential market flooded with unauthorised ring tone sites, or perhaps even independant music. Some people might even start writeing their own music espicially for ringtones and letting anyone else use it.
Loophole spoted. This only covers energy sources which are subject to angular deflection. Use something like a smaller version of the temperature-compensated pendulum and you get liner deflection not covered by the patent. You can convert that o angular using a rack-and-gear if you need angular to drive the mechanism.
No, patents are important. But I think the system needs some changes. At the moment patents are very easy to get. In austraila someone managed to patent the wheel a few years back. They patented it as the "circular transportation facilitation device". In the US an anti-patent person noticed their child using a swing sideways and applied for a patent on sideways swinging. They got it. The ausie patent was done on a fast-track application, but the US swing was a normal patent subject to the same scrutiny as any other (ie zero). Other famous patents are IBMs famous patent for a computerised airplane toilet queueing system and Microsofts patent on the ASF format, which they used to bully Virtualdub because it could transcode ASF.