This big license deal spree came out this week, but the recently released earnings only reflects the 3 months that ended with the end of January. Therefore, that $20k statistic likely doesn't include any of the recently announced deals, that'll be in next quarter's release.
The question that's really in dispute is not whether the code SCO is bringing forward looks like a duplicate of the code in Linux, but where the code that SCO is bringing forward has come from... is it in fact code SCO really owns, or is it code that SCO hacked up after looking at the GPL-available Linux code.
And I wouldn't recommend anybody study the Win2K code that was leaked... Microsoft has threatened to sue anybody who so much as downloads it. Why bring that headache on to yourself when FreeBSD is there?
Actually, once you pass through an analog video out, the Broadcast Flag is gone... and you're free to reencode as you wish. The analog hole will always be the geek's friend.
So you can have great quality with small files. And with the proper hardware it's no more complicated than re-encoding a DVD.
That's still a process reserved for geeks and not consumer devices. It's also a questionable legal process... both can be said about evading the Broadcast Flag too.
What it means is that your HD-TiVo will only have analog video outputs, as any digital video out would be unavailable too often too be bothered with. It can still save the digital bitstream and replay from it, it just can't pass it outside of its box without converting it to analog first.
The other option would be for the TiVo to be to pass the incoming stream through the analog hole inside the box upon request, which will either result in bitrate bloat or quality loss. Suffice it to say they'll stick with the first option.
Nothing TiVo's doing at the moment will be affected by the rules set to go into effect.
The "broadcast flag" exists only in the digital domain. Since your standard VHS videotape is an analog medium, it's pointless for your VCR to have a digital input. Therefore, some device before your existing VCR is going to have to downconvert the signal to analog before outputting it.
Now, let's talk about DVD-R players. They could record digital TV bit-for-bit to the disc, but when it decodes the bitstream it'll be required to honor the broadcast flag and not output to digital outputs while doing so.
Basically, HDTV timeshifting will still be possible, but it'll have to use analog connections to go from the timeshifting device to your TV.
When ReplayTV's show-sharing accross the Internet came out, it took about a day to move a 30-minute show over a consumer grade Internet connection, even though it just had standard resolution and no more than two channels of audio, and had already gone through the Replay unit's MPEG compression. We're talking about a gigabyte an per hour of content, and that's a lot of data to move. Besides being killed by the courts, the feature just wasn't that useful because it took just so long.
A digital TV station has an effective throughput of about 6 mbps, which is faster than the typical consumer download connection, and much faster than the typical consumer upload speed. The advantage is that the 6 mbps can be fully compressed before they send it out, so the uncompressed version is something like 18 to 24 mbps of data depending on the exact standard being used.
What the so called "Broadcast Flag" (a term I don't like either, it's really an Anti-digital-copy Flag) does is it orders the decyrpting device to shutdown its digital outputs, but it's still allowed to use analog outs to its heart's content...
Now, here's the catch, MPEG is designed to be a process that's easy on the decode side, and puts as much of the processor load as possible on the encoding side. So, your MPEG will never be as good as one the studios can afford to make, which means your 6 mbps file is going to look worse than the one on TV... and you might even end up with a bigger file with less quality than the one that was broadcast.
When it comes down to it, TiVo has always honored that rule as best they could, trying to make digital extraction out of its machines as hard as they could. That was always the "forbidden hack" on the TiVo-sponsored forums. Now, that hack's going to become illegal.
So really, they're doing nothing to close the analog hole, except for the fact that they realize that passing through the analog hole will always result in either quality loss or bandwidth bloat or both.
It seems like there are a lot of script-kiddie level virus writers who can't find their own security hole, but are glad to copy Virus.A's homework to release Virus.B through Virus.Z...
TechTV's The Screen Savers last night suggested that one of the motivations of competitive virus writers is because the anti-virus companies put out rank-order lists such as the one shown on SARC's homepage. Maybe those lists should be discontinued to at least knock down some of the motivation?
If you're trying to completely throw away an identity, you have to leave behind your old accounts. Otherwise, there's a nice clear link that can be traced...
Once the threshhold for an arrest warrent is met, such a person shouldn't be allowed to do much of anything without being arrested. They've already have been accused of some sort of crime, so the only thing left for the police to do is figure out where the person is and slap some cuffs on the person so they can hand them over to the courts.
The article stated that Al Queda has already figured out that their move-the-SIM-card idea wasn't as smart as they first thought it was, so this is revealing a tool that has already lost its effectiveness.
When you get a subscription-based cell phone, they have to run a credit check on you since they're essentially going to have to extend a credit line to you if you ever go over on your allotted minutes. Therefore, if you give a wrong SSN# or address to the sales geek, your credit check will fail and you'll find your phone deactivated about 48 hours after you got it.
For prepaid phones, since they already have your money they don't care about your credit... if you run out of prepaid minutes they just cut you off.
TDMA is just as trackable as GSM. The only difference is that the identity of a GSM phone is stored on the chip... move it to new hardware and you still ID to the network the same way. They confused GSM with TDMA...
I think the implication is that they were already tracking one of the two sides of that call, and for that individual to be calling somebody in Pakistan would be very interesting and worth following up on.
Before anybody thinks the spooks were monitoring the "anonymous" prepaid cell phones randomly... RTFA. What got the investigation started was that they found a list of phone numbers when arresting another terrorist, and they all turned out to lead into the hands of high-value targets and the people who spoke to them.
The terrorists were lulled into a false sense of security when they kept changing phones, but took their SIM cards from one phone to the next to keep their number and minutes. Therefore, while the hardware changed, the identity didn't. That's what did them in...
Such a bit shuffle would more likely than not result in an unplayable file, which the scanner software will not know what to do with, other than reject it.
1: A swap-every-other-byte file would likely result in an unplayable file, which therefore would fail the "audible" inspection.
2: The header would either do the same, or result in a file that audibly matched.
3 and 4: Software exists that can recognize a.zip or.tar file, decompress it, and then the normal process can analyze its contents.
Of course, such a service would have to resemble the original Napster, which was intentionally limited to MP3 files, so everything had to be audio and not data files.
If we remember our history from way back in Y2K, the original Napster was ordered to install a technology that would block copyrighted songs or shut down. Simply doing filename-based blocking didn't fly, users simply used phonetic spellings. Napster did actually come up with a blocking system that's much like what's being proposed by Audible Magic, but it was too little, too late. See, with good blocking employed on the network, the Napster network lost all of its value. The users fled, and it was game over.
So, you could say such technology, or at least some way to stop users from sharing illegal-to-share songs is already required for any service that operates in the USA. It was found out that nearly 100% of Napster's traffic was illegal, because once they actually blocked the illegal stuff there wasn't much if any traffic left.
Of course, the Kazza's of the world are never going to comply with that, but they already exist in a semi-outlawed state by being forced to incorperate in outside-of-US-reach locations just like online gambling sites do. They're already doing their best to avoid US laws of any kind. Since the barn door's already open on this type of program, I'm not sure there's anything US law can do to truely stop illegal music sharing.
So, this piece of technology might be a great technical discovery, but it's got no use in the real world. It's been tried before. The people who want their copyrighted music for free will just go to systems US laws have a hard time controling... and this system is no solution to that problem.
They didn't escalate, they just called Infinium's bluff. If I'm reading the news right, the legal action here concerns solely the matters that Infinium's original threats of legal action were based on. There is no escalation here at all, they've just moved the venue of discussion.
To call the bluff would just be responding to the threat of a lawsuit with a challenge to sue. This is a little further, HardOCP filed the lawsuit for them...
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The tuner box most definitely can output in high-def, it just has to be analog high-def.
This big license deal spree came out this week, but the recently released earnings only reflects the 3 months that ended with the end of January. Therefore, that $20k statistic likely doesn't include any of the recently announced deals, that'll be in next quarter's release.
The question that's really in dispute is not whether the code SCO is bringing forward looks like a duplicate of the code in Linux, but where the code that SCO is bringing forward has come from... is it in fact code SCO really owns, or is it code that SCO hacked up after looking at the GPL-available Linux code.
And I wouldn't recommend anybody study the Win2K code that was leaked... Microsoft has threatened to sue anybody who so much as downloads it. Why bring that headache on to yourself when FreeBSD is there?
Actually, once you pass through an analog video out, the Broadcast Flag is gone... and you're free to reencode as you wish. The analog hole will always be the geek's friend.
So you can have great quality with small files. And with the proper hardware it's no more complicated than re-encoding a DVD. That's still a process reserved for geeks and not consumer devices. It's also a questionable legal process... both can be said about evading the Broadcast Flag too.
What it means is that your HD-TiVo will only have analog video outputs, as any digital video out would be unavailable too often too be bothered with. It can still save the digital bitstream and replay from it, it just can't pass it outside of its box without converting it to analog first.
The other option would be for the TiVo to be to pass the incoming stream through the analog hole inside the box upon request, which will either result in bitrate bloat or quality loss. Suffice it to say they'll stick with the first option.
Nothing TiVo's doing at the moment will be affected by the rules set to go into effect.
The "broadcast flag" exists only in the digital domain. Since your standard VHS videotape is an analog medium, it's pointless for your VCR to have a digital input. Therefore, some device before your existing VCR is going to have to downconvert the signal to analog before outputting it.
Now, let's talk about DVD-R players. They could record digital TV bit-for-bit to the disc, but when it decodes the bitstream it'll be required to honor the broadcast flag and not output to digital outputs while doing so.
Basically, HDTV timeshifting will still be possible, but it'll have to use analog connections to go from the timeshifting device to your TV.
It's not the TV that's the key piece of equipment... it's the ditigal TV tuner, which many cheaper "HDTV monitor units" don't come with.
It's really not the TV that needs to be imported, just the tuner box.
When ReplayTV's show-sharing accross the Internet came out, it took about a day to move a 30-minute show over a consumer grade Internet connection, even though it just had standard resolution and no more than two channels of audio, and had already gone through the Replay unit's MPEG compression. We're talking about a gigabyte an per hour of content, and that's a lot of data to move. Besides being killed by the courts, the feature just wasn't that useful because it took just so long.
A digital TV station has an effective throughput of about 6 mbps, which is faster than the typical consumer download connection, and much faster than the typical consumer upload speed. The advantage is that the 6 mbps can be fully compressed before they send it out, so the uncompressed version is something like 18 to 24 mbps of data depending on the exact standard being used.
What the so called "Broadcast Flag" (a term I don't like either, it's really an Anti-digital-copy Flag) does is it orders the decyrpting device to shutdown its digital outputs, but it's still allowed to use analog outs to its heart's content...
Now, here's the catch, MPEG is designed to be a process that's easy on the decode side, and puts as much of the processor load as possible on the encoding side. So, your MPEG will never be as good as one the studios can afford to make, which means your 6 mbps file is going to look worse than the one on TV... and you might even end up with a bigger file with less quality than the one that was broadcast.
When it comes down to it, TiVo has always honored that rule as best they could, trying to make digital extraction out of its machines as hard as they could. That was always the "forbidden hack" on the TiVo-sponsored forums. Now, that hack's going to become illegal.
So really, they're doing nothing to close the analog hole, except for the fact that they realize that passing through the analog hole will always result in either quality loss or bandwidth bloat or both.
It seems like there are a lot of script-kiddie level virus writers who can't find their own security hole, but are glad to copy Virus.A's homework to release Virus.B through Virus.Z...
TechTV's The Screen Savers last night suggested that one of the motivations of competitive virus writers is because the anti-virus companies put out rank-order lists such as the one shown on SARC's homepage. Maybe those lists should be discontinued to at least knock down some of the motivation?
Worst yet are the ones who plead guilty by saying "I'm not that innocent!"
If you're trying to completely throw away an identity, you have to leave behind your old accounts. Otherwise, there's a nice clear link that can be traced...
Once the threshhold for an arrest warrent is met, such a person shouldn't be allowed to do much of anything without being arrested. They've already have been accused of some sort of crime, so the only thing left for the police to do is figure out where the person is and slap some cuffs on the person so they can hand them over to the courts.
The article stated that Al Queda has already figured out that their move-the-SIM-card idea wasn't as smart as they first thought it was, so this is revealing a tool that has already lost its effectiveness.
When you get a subscription-based cell phone, they have to run a credit check on you since they're essentially going to have to extend a credit line to you if you ever go over on your allotted minutes. Therefore, if you give a wrong SSN# or address to the sales geek, your credit check will fail and you'll find your phone deactivated about 48 hours after you got it.
For prepaid phones, since they already have your money they don't care about your credit... if you run out of prepaid minutes they just cut you off.
TDMA is just as trackable as GSM. The only difference is that the identity of a GSM phone is stored on the chip... move it to new hardware and you still ID to the network the same way. They confused GSM with TDMA...
I think the implication is that they were already tracking one of the two sides of that call, and for that individual to be calling somebody in Pakistan would be very interesting and worth following up on.
Before anybody thinks the spooks were monitoring the "anonymous" prepaid cell phones randomly... RTFA. What got the investigation started was that they found a list of phone numbers when arresting another terrorist, and they all turned out to lead into the hands of high-value targets and the people who spoke to them.
The terrorists were lulled into a false sense of security when they kept changing phones, but took their SIM cards from one phone to the next to keep their number and minutes. Therefore, while the hardware changed, the identity didn't. That's what did them in...
Such a bit shuffle would more likely than not result in an unplayable file, which the scanner software will not know what to do with, other than reject it.
1: A swap-every-other-byte file would likely result in an unplayable file, which therefore would fail the "audible" inspection.
.zip or .tar file, decompress it, and then the normal process can analyze its contents.
2: The header would either do the same, or result in a file that audibly matched.
3 and 4: Software exists that can recognize a
Of course, such a service would have to resemble the original Napster, which was intentionally limited to MP3 files, so everything had to be audio and not data files.
If we remember our history from way back in Y2K, the original Napster was ordered to install a technology that would block copyrighted songs or shut down. Simply doing filename-based blocking didn't fly, users simply used phonetic spellings. Napster did actually come up with a blocking system that's much like what's being proposed by Audible Magic, but it was too little, too late. See, with good blocking employed on the network, the Napster network lost all of its value. The users fled, and it was game over.
So, you could say such technology, or at least some way to stop users from sharing illegal-to-share songs is already required for any service that operates in the USA. It was found out that nearly 100% of Napster's traffic was illegal, because once they actually blocked the illegal stuff there wasn't much if any traffic left.
Of course, the Kazza's of the world are never going to comply with that, but they already exist in a semi-outlawed state by being forced to incorperate in outside-of-US-reach locations just like online gambling sites do. They're already doing their best to avoid US laws of any kind. Since the barn door's already open on this type of program, I'm not sure there's anything US law can do to truely stop illegal music sharing.
So, this piece of technology might be a great technical discovery, but it's got no use in the real world. It's been tried before. The people who want their copyrighted music for free will just go to systems US laws have a hard time controling... and this system is no solution to that problem.
Well-researched? HardOCP admitted that there were a few mistakes in their first article.
They didn't escalate, they just called Infinium's bluff. If I'm reading the news right, the legal action here concerns solely the matters that Infinium's original threats of legal action were based on. There is no escalation here at all, they've just moved the venue of discussion.
To call the bluff would just be responding to the threat of a lawsuit with a challenge to sue. This is a little further, HardOCP filed the lawsuit for them...