Corbis's own page about itself admits that Bill Gates founded the company.
It's somewhat relavant here on Slashdot... that a Gates-owned company is trying to bring down the hammer on somebody who tried damage a democrat with a lie.
Moral of the story... faked photographs are art, but using a faked photograph as proof for an event that never really happened is a big no-no.
So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.
Even if the candidates promise to keep things clean, candidates can't control their supporters. And, we've seen that even though there are tight regulations on what political groups can put out in traditional paid media, it seems like the campaign reform laws have completely overlooked the Internet, and people have discovered that if you put something contraversial on the Internet, it'll get discussed on TV for free. Even the infamous "blocked by CBS" MoveOn.org Super Bowl spot, which complied with all of the campaign law rules, got more free runs on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during discussions of it than paid ones.
So, even if both candidates shake hands and promise zero negativity from their own people, there will be people on both sides of the ball who they can't stop that'll go negative in their name anyway. The media's going to have its work cut out trying to verify claims made by such groups this year...
Kerry's not even officially the nominee yet, just the most likely nominee since he holds a very large lead over the surviving competitors. Therefore, it's a bit far to assume that this came from a right-wing zealot, it just as much could have come from somebody who is overly zealous in supporting another Democrat.
It's highly unlikely that this came from anybody's official campaign, but somebody who really doesn't want Kerry to win for whatever reason makes sense to them. It'd be nice if there's a digital watermark somewhere in the picture that can unmask whomever was involved...
Hynds' statement may also anger those who believe that one of the Web's great strengths is that it accommodates such a wide range of interests, free from censorship.
That's just something that's not true. The Internet may be designed in a censorship-resistant way that makes it a whole lot easier to publish things, but the laws that regulate published material still apply. The First Amendment might limit how much censoring can go on in the USA, but other places don't have such limits.
Here in the USA, we have a big fuss over seeing one female breast exposed on national TV. Meanwhile, in London there's a newspaper that makes a point of publishing a photo of a topless model on one of the first few pages.
In parts of Europe, pro-Nazi material that we're willing to tolerate in the USA is absolutely forbiden, particularly in the places that were invaded during World War II. We can write off Nazis as political loonies, but those places feel terror when the topic is brought up since they saw it first hand.
So, what's taboo here might be fine there, and what's taboo there might be fine here. It's one of the problems that the Internet runs into as the first truely global medium.
And you know what, after 20 years prices for landlines are almost back down to inflation adjusted cost they were in 1984
And long distance is much much cheaper than it ever was in 1984...
See, long distance was the profitable service that subsidized the landlines. When the prices were adjusted to reflect the actual costs of the services, local loops were more expensive, and the competed-for long distance fell to the floor.
We never were able to sucessfully get local loop competition to happen again. The ILEC/CLEC model is trying, but most of the initial stand-alone ILECs have gone bust, and nobody's stringing additional copper networks where there already is one. Some things are just meant to be monopolies, and the only thing to do is to regulate them so they don't get abusive...
Of course, you're also paying for MS's *other* unprofitable divisions, such as the XBox. In a perfect world, the EU could somehow get MS to sell a version of Windows where, when you buy it, money doesn't go to subsidize the XBox. But I don't see that happening.
There is a solution that'd force that to happen, and it's happened several times in history... the company's divisions are forced to split into stand-alone companies that aren't allowed to collude. The division that are in competitve fields must fend for themselves, the monopoly divisions are regulated as such.
Nothing a previous version was able to do is ever impossible... it's only a question of how many revisions they have to go backwards to get themselves into compliance.:)
I don't think Microsoft can currently keep European software from being imported into the USA.
However, Microsoft's innovation to solve that problem could very well be to create some scheme to disable the software on US computers, and then say it's a DMCA violation to defeat that scheme...
This brings up an interesting question... just what is an operating system?
Linux, in a pure techical state, is nothing but a kernel. A kernel alone is pretty useless, so that's why there's there's shells to provide an interface. There are multiple choices for windowing systems, multiple choices for basic word processors, multiple choices for just about everything...
Now, replacement shells for the WinNT kernel are possible... but Microsoft doesn't sell a release of Windows that doesn't contain a shell, which is why most everybody is using Explorer and there aren't too many other shells in circulation. So, most people think that Explorer is an intrinsic part of Windows, but in reality, you can live without it if you had another.
Isn't that the atomic level of an operating system? Wouldn't that be the true level Windows should be required to strip down to if it's going to be unbundled from all other software?
DOS 6.2 contained DoubleSpace which was ruled to have infringed on patents that were held by the maker of another drive-compression software called Stacker. As a result, Microsoft was required to release MS-DOS 6.21, a version that didn't contain DoubleSpace and had no other functional changes. What's more, they were also required to put out a step-up disk that'd upgrade 6.2 users to 6.21, all it did was delete the infinging program and upgrade command.com to report as the new version number, and price it at $10.
I remember seeing the step-up disk at Staples. It was in a small cardboard box with the front torn off, and the least attractive packing for a 1-disk program ever. No manual, just a small mailer-like wrapper around the individual disk. The store had only one box of 10 out, and it was shoved off to the side.
Microsoft didn't want to put this product out, nobody sane wanted to buy it... and it all showed.
BTW, the patent issue was later resolved in the typical Microsoft way. They settled the lawsuits by buying the company. MS-DOS 6.22 quickly came out, with the new patent-worry-free DriveSpace software, that did exactly the same thing DoubleSpace did with a few interface tweaks.
It's closer to a 5 to 8 week distance. At $15 per week, that's $5 to $30 of profit per disc, plus the fact that they can recoop another $10 by selling most of the previously viewed disks when it moves out of the "new release" category and therefore demand will never be that high again.
The markup isn't for any rights on DVDs. The markup is simply so that they can release it to rental stores before any sane person would want to buy it. Wal-Mart's not going to stock an $89 DVD, but rental places will buy it at that price. Then, a few weeks later, the price plumets for everybody, and that's when retail picks it up.
So, the $89 was likely the price Kosmo paid, but not the price they could replace it with now.
The store used its "right of first sale" to assign ownership of the DVDs to him. I assume the rental rights came along with the ride, so he could open his own store if he was so insane to do so.
However, all the systems I can find for interfacing computer network to the plasma display only serve up the basic MPEG files, and not the entire ripped DVDs with their menus, etc.
I don't think any off the shelf product is ever going to recognize the possiblity that there's a full menus-including DVD on an HD somewhere, because that means you ripped it and you know how Hollywood doesn't appove of that... therefore, this project will always be stuck in homebrew land.
The DMCA stands in the way between yet another great idea and consumers...
The more I think of this situation, the more I think that the solutions are worse than the problem at this point. If he's got a plasma screen, he's not going to want to give up any video quality, so recompression really isn't an option.
Maybe the best idea is to find him a high-quality DVD player and nice storage rack so that he can organize his 1000 DVD collection and show it off.
Oh, wait, this is/. We like doing things the hard way...
The Anti-Virus makers have totally missed the entire spyware industry in their AV products, instead recommeding that you buy their whole suite that includes a pop up blocker, anti-spam filter, and firewall-for-newbies product. They then price that suite at three times the cost of the original AV program.
The truth is, it'd be much easier if we just had one program-scanner that'd alert on both viruses and trojan horses, and the better spam products are coming from suppliers who don't have AV products, and firewalls are best built into routers anyway. So... uhm, we don't need the rest of the suite.
Take the core product from the AV companies, and their other products won't have a leg to stand on anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
Corbis's own page about itself admits that Bill Gates founded the company.
It's somewhat relavant here on Slashdot... that a Gates-owned company is trying to bring down the hammer on somebody who tried damage a democrat with a lie.
Moral of the story... faked photographs are art, but using a faked photograph as proof for an event that never really happened is a big no-no.
So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.
Even if the candidates promise to keep things clean, candidates can't control their supporters. And, we've seen that even though there are tight regulations on what political groups can put out in traditional paid media, it seems like the campaign reform laws have completely overlooked the Internet, and people have discovered that if you put something contraversial on the Internet, it'll get discussed on TV for free. Even the infamous "blocked by CBS" MoveOn.org Super Bowl spot, which complied with all of the campaign law rules, got more free runs on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during discussions of it than paid ones.
So, even if both candidates shake hands and promise zero negativity from their own people, there will be people on both sides of the ball who they can't stop that'll go negative in their name anyway. The media's going to have its work cut out trying to verify claims made by such groups this year...
Kerry's not even officially the nominee yet, just the most likely nominee since he holds a very large lead over the surviving competitors. Therefore, it's a bit far to assume that this came from a right-wing zealot, it just as much could have come from somebody who is overly zealous in supporting another Democrat.
It's highly unlikely that this came from anybody's official campaign, but somebody who really doesn't want Kerry to win for whatever reason makes sense to them. It'd be nice if there's a digital watermark somewhere in the picture that can unmask whomever was involved...
Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed.
If the watermarks were removed, the DMCA won't be able to help much, they'll have a hard time figuring out who did the forgery...
Hynds' statement may also anger those who believe that one of the Web's great strengths is that it accommodates such a wide range of interests, free from censorship.
That's just something that's not true. The Internet may be designed in a censorship-resistant way that makes it a whole lot easier to publish things, but the laws that regulate published material still apply. The First Amendment might limit how much censoring can go on in the USA, but other places don't have such limits.
Here in the USA, we have a big fuss over seeing one female breast exposed on national TV. Meanwhile, in London there's a newspaper that makes a point of publishing a photo of a topless model on one of the first few pages.
In parts of Europe, pro-Nazi material that we're willing to tolerate in the USA is absolutely forbiden, particularly in the places that were invaded during World War II. We can write off Nazis as political loonies, but those places feel terror when the topic is brought up since they saw it first hand.
So, what's taboo here might be fine there, and what's taboo there might be fine here. It's one of the problems that the Internet runs into as the first truely global medium.
And you know what, after 20 years prices for landlines are almost back down to inflation adjusted cost they were in 1984
And long distance is much much cheaper than it ever was in 1984...
See, long distance was the profitable service that subsidized the landlines. When the prices were adjusted to reflect the actual costs of the services, local loops were more expensive, and the competed-for long distance fell to the floor.
We never were able to sucessfully get local loop competition to happen again. The ILEC/CLEC model is trying, but most of the initial stand-alone ILECs have gone bust, and nobody's stringing additional copper networks where there already is one. Some things are just meant to be monopolies, and the only thing to do is to regulate them so they don't get abusive...
Of course, you're also paying for MS's *other* unprofitable divisions, such as the XBox. In a perfect world, the EU could somehow get MS to sell a version of Windows where, when you buy it, money doesn't go to subsidize the XBox. But I don't see that happening.
There is a solution that'd force that to happen, and it's happened several times in history... the company's divisions are forced to split into stand-alone companies that aren't allowed to collude. The division that are in competitve fields must fend for themselves, the monopoly divisions are regulated as such.
Think AT&T breakup in 1984...
Nothing a previous version was able to do is ever impossible... it's only a question of how many revisions they have to go backwards to get themselves into compliance. :)
I don't think Microsoft can currently keep European software from being imported into the USA.
However, Microsoft's innovation to solve that problem could very well be to create some scheme to disable the software on US computers, and then say it's a DMCA violation to defeat that scheme...
This brings up an interesting question... just what is an operating system?
Linux, in a pure techical state, is nothing but a kernel. A kernel alone is pretty useless, so that's why there's there's shells to provide an interface. There are multiple choices for windowing systems, multiple choices for basic word processors, multiple choices for just about everything...
Now, replacement shells for the WinNT kernel are possible... but Microsoft doesn't sell a release of Windows that doesn't contain a shell, which is why most everybody is using Explorer and there aren't too many other shells in circulation. So, most people think that Explorer is an intrinsic part of Windows, but in reality, you can live without it if you had another.
Isn't that the atomic level of an operating system? Wouldn't that be the true level Windows should be required to strip down to if it's going to be unbundled from all other software?
It reminds me of MS-DOS 6.21...
DOS 6.2 contained DoubleSpace which was ruled to have infringed on patents that were held by the maker of another drive-compression software called Stacker. As a result, Microsoft was required to release MS-DOS 6.21, a version that didn't contain DoubleSpace and had no other functional changes. What's more, they were also required to put out a step-up disk that'd upgrade 6.2 users to 6.21, all it did was delete the infinging program and upgrade command.com to report as the new version number, and price it at $10.
I remember seeing the step-up disk at Staples. It was in a small cardboard box with the front torn off, and the least attractive packing for a 1-disk program ever. No manual, just a small mailer-like wrapper around the individual disk. The store had only one box of 10 out, and it was shoved off to the side.
Microsoft didn't want to put this product out, nobody sane wanted to buy it... and it all showed.
BTW, the patent issue was later resolved in the typical Microsoft way. They settled the lawsuits by buying the company. MS-DOS 6.22 quickly came out, with the new patent-worry-free DriveSpace software, that did exactly the same thing DoubleSpace did with a few interface tweaks.
Napster and Real would have to fold first. They have made deals with hardware partners to make tied-to-them players too.
Besides, didn't a stripped down iPod just come out?
It's closer to a 5 to 8 week distance. At $15 per week, that's $5 to $30 of profit per disc, plus the fact that they can recoop another $10 by selling most of the previously viewed disks when it moves out of the "new release" category and therefore demand will never be that high again.
The markup isn't for any rights on DVDs. The markup is simply so that they can release it to rental stores before any sane person would want to buy it. Wal-Mart's not going to stock an $89 DVD, but rental places will buy it at that price. Then, a few weeks later, the price plumets for everybody, and that's when retail picks it up.
So, the $89 was likely the price Kosmo paid, but not the price they could replace it with now.
Can you name a Hollywood title that isn't CSS protected?
The store used its "right of first sale" to assign ownership of the DVDs to him. I assume the rental rights came along with the ride, so he could open his own store if he was so insane to do so.
RTFA... uh, wait, there isn't even an article to skip here. ...I'd like to rip a couple hundred of them to a 1 TB disk array...
Hey, Darl... mind releasing the source for that project under the GPL? :)
However, all the systems I can find for interfacing computer network to the plasma display only serve up the basic MPEG files, and not the entire ripped DVDs with their menus, etc.
I don't think any off the shelf product is ever going to recognize the possiblity that there's a full menus-including DVD on an HD somewhere, because that means you ripped it and you know how Hollywood doesn't appove of that... therefore, this project will always be stuck in homebrew land.
The DMCA stands in the way between yet another great idea and consumers...
The more I think of this situation, the more I think that the solutions are worse than the problem at this point. If he's got a plasma screen, he's not going to want to give up any video quality, so recompression really isn't an option.
/. We like doing things the hard way...
Maybe the best idea is to find him a high-quality DVD player and nice storage rack so that he can organize his 1000 DVD collection and show it off.
Oh, wait, this is
The Anti-Virus makers have totally missed the entire spyware industry in their AV products, instead recommeding that you buy their whole suite that includes a pop up blocker, anti-spam filter, and firewall-for-newbies product. They then price that suite at three times the cost of the original AV program.
The truth is, it'd be much easier if we just had one program-scanner that'd alert on both viruses and trojan horses, and the better spam products are coming from suppliers who don't have AV products, and firewalls are best built into routers anyway. So... uhm, we don't need the rest of the suite.
Take the core product from the AV companies, and their other products won't have a leg to stand on anymore...
Whenever there's a disupute over what a license means, that's what the courts are for.
OCR is overrated still. It's not that accurate, and needs more processing power than your cell phone has on board. It's still not ready for primetime.
Nope. Criminals can't just hide evidence in a business and then use the business's demand of protection of profits keep the feds from looking there.
CIT should have had a way to comply with the warrant. The FBI gave them several hours. My guess is they did something that stonewalled the process...