If this "progress" continues, what it will take to actually make a difference in this for consumers is for the masses to show how this will make a dent in the profits of someone (either someone big, or a lot of little someones) on board with it and using the law to harm consumers.
I have a modest entertainment bill because I want to watch a variety of stuff when I have the time. That time isn't a whole lot, so it would be easy for me to cancel all my subscriptions. Heck, if I needed to, I could drop the broadband and go back to dialup if my broadband probider started abusing the law. There are plenty of other things to do in life that I can get by ok with that scenario.
It would sure be some statement if the month the cable companies and ISPs started getting outrageous with this, even 10% of their subscriber base cancelled. That would send a message. Alas, I don't think the "unwashed masses" will either get it, or care. They just want to sit on the couch and have the content spoon-fed to them while they vegetate.
Don't take this in any way shape or form as support from me for any of the draconian measures the US gov't has put into place, but I wasn't aware Patriot II passed. Do you have something to back this up? Thanks.
Last I knew it is part of the Warranty Act, but it covers a car manufacturer's ability to cancel your warranty for your using aftermarket parts in the car. The only way they could legally cancel your warranty under the law is if you chose aftermarket parts to put in your car despite the manufacturer making available for free, replacement parts for your car.
I don't think it would apply to this printer situation. In fact, there are plenty of parts on a car that are pretty much only made by the manufacturer of the car because of some mechanism used to key or enable. For an example, think about the Engine Control Unit which handles keeping your engine running properly.
Tuners reverse engineer these all the time to build new throttle/air/fuel maps and the like. So far, I've not heard of the DMCA being invoked against these tuners, but who knows what will happen.
There's been plenty of responses from others, but like I mentioned, I can discern MP3 from the source. I can also discern MD (ATRAC1&3) from the source.
Can I tell you something you're playing for me was losslessly compressed? Only if I'm very familiar with it. Otherwise, I need a/b blind listening, but I can determine which is which.
I use MD in the car. I used to use MP3 in the car. I have spent considerable time listening to both on headphones at the office. Unfortunately, I can hear the imperfections in that environment. In the car I can't, so I don't mind its use there, it's appropriate given the limited ability to discern detail, but on my home audio setup and on good headphones, I really get annoyed by the artifacts.
So, I searched the discussion and didn't see anything about this.
Why in the world would they change the names of these projects to escape naming conflicts and court battles to NEW NAMES that have the same problems? I haven't done a trademark lookup, but I feel pretty safe in assuming both Ford and Pontiac own trademarks on the names of the cars they sell.
I got hit with this whole AOL blocking thing a while back. They are using the MAPS DUL to implement it. I think the blackmailing of legitimate individual mail sending users is ridiculous, but your point about the constantly changing internet is well taken.
I adapted by building some load balanced relay mechanisms to relays I am authorized to use that are not in the DUL.
The big problem I had is that all of a sudden Comcast was listed, and despite the fact that I pay for a business-class service (aimed at telecommuters), they are not willing to work with MAPS DUL, put me in a different netblock, or uncap their outgoing relay (a single message to a couple of mailing lists I run would blow their outgoing rate limit which requires you back off for 60s so you can't spam people through their outgoing relay) to help me. Time to find a new ISP? Probably, but for now I cannot afford to do it. Hopefully some day soon I can get a co-op off the ground to colocate around some high-bandwidth pipes, but until then I can't vote with my wallet on this one.
What scares me most about this whole ordeal is no one has any mechanism through the legal system to get him out. Not only is the government tight-lipped about why they have him, when they showed up in force to take him, they claim they have a warrant, which is sealed. There's not even any attempt at demonstrating legitimacy. This means that without some identified party legitimately responsible for the warrant, there can be no satisfaction it is even valid.
"We have a warrant for your arrest. Give yourself up, you're surrounded and outgunned."
"I want to see the warrant."
"Sorry, it's sealed. I can vouch for its legitimacy."
Now you know how American steel workers feel. Should they learn another skill? I think that they absolutely should.
Yes, I do know how they feel. When I realized that the same thing was happening to IT a while back I felt pretty bad about my lack of empathy. I'd always thought they should learn another skill. Now I'm in that position and I realize it's a sucky situation.
I absolutely intend to learn another skill, find ways to differentiate myself, etc.
These are the types of reasons that led me to say it seems like we should tax imported software.
I asked/. mainly because I don't really understand all the economics or longterm dynamics of it and wanted to see what some others thought.
I don't much like unions, but maybe the IT industry really needs one. What we truly need is a good industry-wide certification like engineering has. A union would help us stand up for ourselves and avoid the 80 hour week for no overtime type situations, but I think in the end the union would become corrupt like so many others.
I've not made up my mind about whether software should be taxed. I honestly don't think the government could truly levy the tax anyway, because enforcement would be hard. I mostly find it a somewhat hypocritical stance to tax one form of import but completely ignore another.
Oh, and my job did move up to Canada, but I don't really feel like the grass is greener there. I keep in touch with folks still from the Canadian office and they have it as bad or worse than a lot of people here in the US. I guess I just included that commentary because it put a context around why I had those discussions with an ex cow orker.
I've been attempting to emphasize to potential employers that I have good technical skills, great writing skills, good presentation skills, and a willingness to help management see the business value and reason behind building high quality software. This in the long run I hope will be my differentiator and keep me employed when most of the "here, hammer out the spec for me in C#" type work goes overseas.
I think my best asset is the huge problem solving base I developed (really, learned how to develop) while at university. I went to Virginia Tech, which at the time, had a reasonably known program, but the basic philosophy was to teach us by forcing us to use unix for all our coursework. I had seen it in high school CS classes and knew it was better than butter on bread, but this didn't keep me from experiencing all manners of problems with it. It helped me by showing me I must learn to recognize patterns of software failure, and how to analyze a system as a whole, rather than just the 15 lines of code above and below the bug.
Anyway, I've not had the opportunity to do a whole lot of interviewing of others, but when I've interviewed, I noticed most people just don't ask the technical questions. Maybe this had led the industry's interviewees to never expect a hard interview.
In the interview for my current position the huge technical section was to explain why Java had both interfaces and still left the ability to create an abstract base class. I think they asked me to describe MVC, as well, but come on, that's completely pervaded the industry buzz word lists.
In my opinion, one of the big barriers to having creativity and a drive for excellence is this dogged attachment to "my code." I've seen it in so many people.
I've long felt that the code I write represents how well I understand the problem it tries to solve. If I can solve it more elegantly or efficiently, I'm happy to throw away old code. Many of my peers have not been willing to do so. Once they write it they try to hang on to it forever.
I think we need a true certification in our field, along the lines that engineers have. These pop-technology certifications are way overhyped and don't usually mean much in terms of a person's capabilities. To find a good candidate, you must find out how people think about problems and what they try to do in order to solve them. Obviously there's a practical technological/CS basis that must underly it, but without a good approach to solving problems, it's often wasted.
What all the *AA's and other big companies forget is that most people only have a limited amount of income to spend for entertainment and other "extras" -- they can make all the laws they want and charge all they want, but there's only so many dollars per month in the budget. If the cost of ISDN or cable internet cannot be justified, then it will not sell. No sale, no money in the Corporate coffers, and this law will end up costing them money. Only when the bottom line suffers will the fascism stop )or at least change.)
I think I have to agree with you. The ??AA ignore the fact that more choices in entertainment also create a dwindling demand for any single choice. I'm hopeful they all get taught a lesson by hurting their own bottom lines in a big way with some of their purchased legislation.
I really don't want to be in an America that goes something like: Plop on the couch, stop thinking, enjoy the latest episode of xxxx. If you fancy something, check out any of the products you've seen tonight on this episode of xxxx.
I know I spend my entertainment dollars cautiously. If my net connections stop providing me the ability to have fun, they'll eventually go away until I can find something fun again. Heck, maybe I'll get into packet radio or something.
I hope the states where I run networks aren't next.
This allows companies to make more money off us by the threat of lawsuits or report to the authorities. If someone sells me internet access at a specific bandwidth, they should expect I can and may use up to that allotted bandwidth. They are selling me bandwidth, not individual ethernet ports.
Things like ssh-tunneling to hide IM and WWW traffic while I'm at work, as well as improving the security of my networks by hiding the endpoints of my ipsec tunnels behind nat boxes also becomes illegal.
So, in summary, we're trading utility (let's face it, a lot of these vpn/nat apps make things easier to handle - voip tunneling, smtp tunneling, very nice stuff handled with both vpns and nat), AND security (why should all my network devices sit exposed?) so that companies can make more profits, and we can be hauled to jail for making it harder to snoop our communications?
Slashdot Mirror
This is sort of off-topic, but I haven't been able to find this out anywhere else.
Does the Archos FM Jukebox play WAV files?
Thanks!
If this "progress" continues, what it will take to actually make a difference in this for consumers is for the masses to show how this will make a dent in the profits of someone (either someone big, or a lot of little someones) on board with it and using the law to harm consumers.
I have a modest entertainment bill because I want to watch a variety of stuff when I have the time. That time isn't a whole lot, so it would be easy for me to cancel all my subscriptions. Heck, if I needed to, I could drop the broadband and go back to dialup if my broadband probider started abusing the law. There are plenty of other things to do in life that I can get by ok with that scenario.
It would sure be some statement if the month the cable companies and ISPs started getting outrageous with this, even 10% of their subscriber base cancelled. That would send a message. Alas, I don't think the "unwashed masses" will either get it, or care. They just want to sit on the couch and have the content spoon-fed to them while they vegetate.
Don't take this in any way shape or form as support from me for any of the draconian measures the US gov't has put into place, but I wasn't aware Patriot II passed. Do you have something to back this up? Thanks.
Last I knew it is part of the Warranty Act, but it covers a car manufacturer's ability to cancel your warranty for your using aftermarket parts in the car. The only way they could legally cancel your warranty under the law is if you chose aftermarket parts to put in your car despite the manufacturer making available for free, replacement parts for your car.
I don't think it would apply to this printer situation. In fact, there are plenty of parts on a car that are pretty much only made by the manufacturer of the car because of some mechanism used to key or enable. For an example, think about the Engine Control Unit which handles keeping your engine running properly.
Tuners reverse engineer these all the time to build new throttle/air/fuel maps and the like. So far, I've not heard of the DMCA being invoked against these tuners, but who knows what will happen.
Great idea.
It wouldn't matter, they'd just name all of the roommates in the lawsuit. I don't think that will get around this.
There's been plenty of responses from others, but like I mentioned, I can discern MP3 from the source. I can also discern MD (ATRAC1&3) from the source.
Can I tell you something you're playing for me was losslessly compressed? Only if I'm very familiar with it. Otherwise, I need a/b blind listening, but I can determine which is which.
I use MD in the car. I used to use MP3 in the car. I have spent considerable time listening to both on headphones at the office. Unfortunately, I can hear the imperfections in that environment. In the car I can't, so I don't mind its use there, it's appropriate given the limited ability to discern detail, but on my home audio setup and on good headphones, I really get annoyed by the artifacts.
We need reasonable quality downloads. Lossless compression means big files, so watch out for the ISPs with restrictive download limits.
It would sure be nice to pick and choose what I want to download in flac.
http://davedina.apestaart.org/content/
So, I searched the discussion and didn't see anything about this.
Why in the world would they change the names of these projects to escape naming conflicts and court battles to NEW NAMES that have the same problems? I haven't done a trademark lookup, but I feel pretty safe in assuming both Ford and Pontiac own trademarks on the names of the cars they sell.
This seems like a really dumb move.
I got hit with this whole AOL blocking thing a while back. They are using the MAPS DUL to implement it. I think the blackmailing of legitimate individual mail sending users is ridiculous, but your point about the constantly changing internet is well taken.
I adapted by building some load balanced relay mechanisms to relays I am authorized to use that are not in the DUL.
The big problem I had is that all of a sudden Comcast was listed, and despite the fact that I pay for a business-class service (aimed at telecommuters), they are not willing to work with MAPS DUL, put me in a different netblock, or uncap their outgoing relay (a single message to a couple of mailing lists I run would blow their outgoing rate limit which requires you back off for 60s so you can't spam people through their outgoing relay) to help me. Time to find a new ISP? Probably, but for now I cannot afford to do it. Hopefully some day soon I can get a co-op off the ground to colocate around some high-bandwidth pipes, but until then I can't vote with my wallet on this one.
The DMCA not infinite-reaching? Time to rewrite it or get a refund - they didn't get what they paid for!
What scares me most about this whole ordeal is no one has any mechanism through the legal system to get him out. Not only is the government tight-lipped about why they have him, when they showed up in force to take him, they claim they have a warrant, which is sealed. There's not even any attempt at demonstrating legitimacy. This means that without some identified party legitimately responsible for the warrant, there can be no satisfaction it is even valid.
"We have a warrant for your arrest. Give yourself up, you're surrounded and outgunned."
"I want to see the warrant."
"Sorry, it's sealed. I can vouch for its legitimacy."
*shudder*
Yes, I do know how they feel. When I realized that the same thing was happening to IT a while back I felt pretty bad about my lack of empathy. I'd always thought they should learn another skill. Now I'm in that position and I realize it's a sucky situation.
I absolutely intend to learn another skill, find ways to differentiate myself, etc.
PS - thanks for the link... good article
These are the types of reasons that led me to say it seems like we should tax imported software.
/. mainly because I don't really understand all the economics or longterm dynamics of it and wanted to see what some others thought.
I asked
I don't much like unions, but maybe the IT industry really needs one. What we truly need is a good industry-wide certification like engineering has. A union would help us stand up for ourselves and avoid the 80 hour week for no overtime type situations, but I think in the end the union would become corrupt like so many others.
It's a tough situation.
Thanks for the well-thought out analogy.
I've not made up my mind about whether software should be taxed. I honestly don't think the government could truly levy the tax anyway, because enforcement would be hard. I mostly find it a somewhat hypocritical stance to tax one form of import but completely ignore another.
Oh, and my job did move up to Canada, but I don't really feel like the grass is greener there. I keep in touch with folks still from the Canadian office and they have it as bad or worse than a lot of people here in the US. I guess I just included that commentary because it put a context around why I had those discussions with an ex cow orker.
I've been attempting to emphasize to potential employers that I have good technical skills, great writing skills, good presentation skills, and a willingness to help management see the business value and reason behind building high quality software. This in the long run I hope will be my differentiator and keep me employed when most of the "here, hammer out the spec for me in C#" type work goes overseas.
Interesting.
I think my best asset is the huge problem solving base I developed (really, learned how to develop) while at university. I went to Virginia Tech, which at the time, had a reasonably known program, but the basic philosophy was to teach us by forcing us to use unix for all our coursework. I had seen it in high school CS classes and knew it was better than butter on bread, but this didn't keep me from experiencing all manners of problems with it. It helped me by showing me I must learn to recognize patterns of software failure, and how to analyze a system as a whole, rather than just the 15 lines of code above and below the bug.
Anyway, I've not had the opportunity to do a whole lot of interviewing of others, but when I've interviewed, I noticed most people just don't ask the technical questions. Maybe this had led the industry's interviewees to never expect a hard interview.
In the interview for my current position the huge technical section was to explain why Java had both interfaces and still left the ability to create an abstract base class. I think they asked me to describe MVC, as well, but come on, that's completely pervaded the industry buzz word lists.
In my opinion, one of the big barriers to having creativity and a drive for excellence is this dogged attachment to "my code." I've seen it in so many people.
I've long felt that the code I write represents how well I understand the problem it tries to solve. If I can solve it more elegantly or efficiently, I'm happy to throw away old code. Many of my peers have not been willing to do so. Once they write it they try to hang on to it forever.
I think we need a true certification in our field, along the lines that engineers have. These pop-technology certifications are way overhyped and don't usually mean much in terms of a person's capabilities. To find a good candidate, you must find out how people think about problems and what they try to do in order to solve them. Obviously there's a practical technological/CS basis that must underly it, but without a good approach to solving problems, it's often wasted.
I think I have to agree with you. The ??AA ignore the fact that more choices in entertainment also create a dwindling demand for any single choice. I'm hopeful they all get taught a lesson by hurting their own bottom lines in a big way with some of their purchased legislation.
I really don't want to be in an America that goes something like: Plop on the couch, stop thinking, enjoy the latest episode of xxxx. If you fancy something, check out any of the products you've seen tonight on this episode of xxxx.
I know I spend my entertainment dollars cautiously. If my net connections stop providing me the ability to have fun, they'll eventually go away until I can find something fun again. Heck, maybe I'll get into packet radio or something.
This is really bad.
I hope the states where I run networks aren't next.
This allows companies to make more money off us by the threat of lawsuits or report to the authorities. If someone sells me internet access at a specific bandwidth, they should expect I can and may use up to that allotted bandwidth. They are selling me bandwidth, not individual ethernet ports.
Things like ssh-tunneling to hide IM and WWW traffic while I'm at work, as well as improving the security of my networks by hiding the endpoints of my ipsec tunnels behind nat boxes also becomes illegal.
So, in summary, we're trading utility (let's face it, a lot of these vpn/nat apps make things easier to handle - voip tunneling, smtp tunneling, very nice stuff handled with both vpns and nat), AND security (why should all my network devices sit exposed?) so that companies can make more profits, and we can be hauled to jail for making it harder to snoop our communications?
This is ludicrous. Where will the fascism stop?
The hackers don't like a half-obscure OS (MPE/ix) running on a 48Mhz machine!
There's no r007k1t for it d00d!
You never know, it might just eventually improve their products. Look at Netscape/Mozilla!
Mod parent up.
This reminds me of The Game with Michael Douglas.
It would be unnerving to have an experience as completely in the real world as his character did in that movie.
Mailing list posts generate enough traffic to tickle it's "you're a spammer" rate limiting features.