This sounds like an early 80s copy-protection scheme that depended on the bad-sector map of the installed hard drive to identify it. It was reliable because only a low-level format would change the pattern, and very few people ever did a low-level format to their drives. The scheme failed when production improved and most drives could be manufactured error-free.
The review is interesting, but there are even more keyboard alternatives that have a plausible shot at market acceptance.
One that got a fair amount of press attention at Comdex (Yes, there were people there to see it) is the
FrogPad keyboard which manages to generate a full keyboard's worth of scan codes
from 15 keys and four shifts.
The benefit: You get a keyboard with full-sized keys that fits in the space of a 3x5 index card, or
you can reduce the key size by a bit and end up with a PDA-sized keyboard that's still manageable.
The downside: You have to learn
a whole new way of typing, albeit one that is designed to make common letter sequences easy to enter. Try it -
print the picture of the FrogPad
keyboard and pretend you're typing on it. It's not built for 120 words per minute, but I can see how it could be a true QWERTY replacement for the average typist.
Another thought - if the FrogPad or some other device of the kind discussed here are accepted by the market (and that's a BIG if), what kind of new form factors could we see in keyboard-based devices? Current PDAs and laptops suddenly look sooo last century!
Not exactly. The effect of the last two Congressional extensions of the copyright law has been to postpone the expiration of any copyrights. The reason for the rush last time was that the oldest of the US copyrights still in effect was about to expire. The new law bought the copyright owners another 25 years, at which point they probably hope they'll be able to squeeze a perpetual copyright law out of whoever they've paid to put in Congress at that point.
One of the cool things about TOPS-10 was that it allowed the programmer to define the bytesize for each program. There was nothing sacred about 8 bits. You used whatever size fit your datatypes best, even if it wasn't a factor of 36. Even 36 bit bytes were possible, although kind of pointless.
Tying byte size to datatype made byte instructions much more versatile, and made for much more efficient use of memory at a time when people spent as much time making their programs fit as they did making them work.
Another cool feature of the 36-bit instruction set was that every instruction was one word long. Made for very elegant programs. It was RISC back in 1964 - maybe there'd be a place for a 36-bit RISC system today?
Our DEC-10, s/n 2393, regularly supported 70 to 100 simultaneous users, with half of them running database searches most of the time, and with response times below one second most of the time. That's from a processor that would be rated at 1 MIP by today's metrics, and 4 megawords - about 18 megabytes - of memory. Imagine what could be done with that kind of efficiency on today's machines.
Portable devices are a whole 'nother thing. You can use them a number of times "set by the music company", as you point out. After that, what? Pay another $20 to freshen your secure key? Move on to the next artist Sony wants you to love for six months, then forget?
Instead of treating technology companies as an adversary, the media companies should learn from them. Software faced exactly the same copy problems in the 80s. The media was smaller, but so were the files. Microsoft, Lotus and all the rest tried every kind of copy protection that was possible then, including physical lock-out keys and dial-in software authorization. Thanks to very negative consumer response, everyone but very high-end software vendors ended up deciding open was better.
As far as I can tell MS and Lotus didn't waste away, and smaller companies didn't complain about having their creativity stifled by rampant software piracy - at least not unless they were having their clock cleaned by some competitor's product (or unfair trade practice - but that's a whole different kind of crime.)
Of course, they didn't have the DMCA, so they couldn't threaten to put seventh graders in jail for copying 1-2-3.
I read the article. Like all the DRM schemes I've seen to date, it still doesn't deal with my biggest question: What happens when my computer gets old?
A computer, over its useful life, can accumulate thousands of dollars worth of digital rights. Bought at $1 or even $20 apiece they don't seem like much, but it all adds up. When my computer gets old (or eats its hard drive), and I buy a new one, how do I transfer those rights which are specifically designed to be non-transferable? Am I violating the DMCA by even trying?
Do DRM keys survive a backup/restore? How about a disk-to-disk sector copy?
Think of it in today's terms: You go out tomorrow and buy a new computer. Before you can boot it for the first time, you must call the RIAA. They send a truck around that picks up your entire CD collection and takes it away to be crushed.
And if the stuff you like isn't popular enough, and the record companies haven't decided to keep it in print, forget about ever getting your hands on it again. Oh well, you'll always have your memories.
DRM is new now, but we should be discussing what happens when it matures. Until someone invents a key ring technology for digital rights, I'm buying nothing with copy protection.
According to the article, the encoded tracks cannot be played until the PC connects to the Internet and downloads an electronic key. So forget about buying a CD in an airport store to listen to on the plane, unless you happen to have an 802.11b card and the time to boot your computer on the ground and validate the tracks.
About that $1.64 per song: read more carefully. The first time you decode a song, it's free. But after that, you have to pay. And you can't decode just one song - you have to buy the keys for the entire CD. On a 12-song CD that's $19.68 - and don't forget you already paid for the physical CD!
Nothing in the article mentions why you'd have to download two electronic keys, but since the keys are bound to be tied to a specific PC the obvious need is for playing the CD on multiple computers. You have two kids who each have their own PC and want to play the latest Nelly CD? That'll be $20, please. A computer at home and one in the office? $20 more, thank you. Desktop and laptop? You get the idea. Plus, you pay the full $20 even if there's only one song worth listening to (although I guess that's not a problem with Sony artists - they release nothing but quality).
If Label Gate doesn't violate fair use, Congress might as well just repeal the copyright laws. The music industry certainly got their money's worth out of the last couple of elections.
Do you consider 1984 to be 20th century science fiction? Look what it predicted:
A world divided into regional coalitions that combine in shifting alliances. The portrayal of other cultures in simplistic black-and-white terms. Government efforts to downplay our previous relations with our current "friends" and "enemies".
Perpetual war, mostly in far-away places, to divert attention from domestic problems. Lotteries and content-free televised entertainment to do the same.
An anti-knowledge, anti-scientific mindset in popular culture and government, where knowledge and understanding are replaced by doctrinal belief systems.
Increasing economic stratification in society, with institutions of power cooperating to place their inter-related self-interest over the common good.
Popular music based entirely on rhythmic patterns, with no melody. Yes, in 1948 Orwell predicted rap.
Given current trends, maybe the only thing Ol' George got wrong was the title.
Slashdot Mirror
This sounds like an early 80s copy-protection scheme that depended on the bad-sector map of the installed hard drive to identify it. It was reliable because only a low-level format would change the pattern, and very few people ever did a low-level format to their drives. The scheme failed when production improved and most drives could be manufactured error-free.
The review is interesting, but there are even more keyboard alternatives that have a plausible shot at market acceptance. One that got a fair amount of press attention at Comdex (Yes, there were people there to see it) is the FrogPad keyboard which manages to generate a full keyboard's worth of scan codes from 15 keys and four shifts.
The benefit: You get a keyboard with full-sized keys that fits in the space of a 3x5 index card, or you can reduce the key size by a bit and end up with a PDA-sized keyboard that's still manageable.
The downside: You have to learn a whole new way of typing, albeit one that is designed to make common letter sequences easy to enter. Try it - print the picture of the FrogPad keyboard and pretend you're typing on it. It's not built for 120 words per minute, but I can see how it could be a true QWERTY replacement for the average typist.
Another thought - if the FrogPad or some other device of the kind discussed here are accepted by the market (and that's a BIG if), what kind of new form factors could we see in keyboard-based devices? Current PDAs and laptops suddenly look sooo last century!
Posting copyrighted lyrics in a public forum? That knock on the door is the RIAA coming to get you.
"Fair use" is very important to people. That's why the RIAA is harping on "piracy": to redefine the public's perception of what's "fair".
Not exactly. The effect of the last two Congressional extensions of the copyright law has been to postpone the expiration of any copyrights. The reason for the rush last time was that the oldest of the US copyrights still in effect was about to expire. The new law bought the copyright owners another 25 years, at which point they probably hope they'll be able to squeeze a perpetual copyright law out of whoever they've paid to put in Congress at that point.
One of the cool things about TOPS-10 was that it allowed the programmer to define the bytesize for each program. There was nothing sacred about 8 bits. You used whatever size fit your datatypes best, even if it wasn't a factor of 36. Even 36 bit bytes were possible, although kind of pointless.
Tying byte size to datatype made byte instructions much more versatile, and made for much more efficient use of memory at a time when people spent as much time making their programs fit as they did making them work.
Another cool feature of the 36-bit instruction set was that every instruction was one word long. Made for very elegant programs. It was RISC back in 1964 - maybe there'd be a place for a 36-bit RISC system today?
Our DEC-10, s/n 2393, regularly supported 70 to 100 simultaneous users, with half of them running database searches most of the time, and with response times below one second most of the time. That's from a processor that would be rated at 1 MIP by today's metrics, and 4 megawords - about 18 megabytes - of memory. Imagine what could be done with that kind of efficiency on today's machines.
Portable devices are a whole 'nother thing. You can use them a number of times "set by the music company", as you point out. After that, what? Pay another $20 to freshen your secure key? Move on to the next artist Sony wants you to love for six months, then forget?
Instead of treating technology companies as an adversary, the media companies should learn from them. Software faced exactly the same copy problems in the 80s. The media was smaller, but so were the files. Microsoft, Lotus and all the rest tried every kind of copy protection that was possible then, including physical lock-out keys and dial-in software authorization. Thanks to very negative consumer response, everyone but very high-end software vendors ended up deciding open was better.
As far as I can tell MS and Lotus didn't waste away, and smaller companies didn't complain about having their creativity stifled by rampant software piracy - at least not unless they were having their clock cleaned by some competitor's product (or unfair trade practice - but that's a whole different kind of crime.)
Of course, they didn't have the DMCA, so they couldn't threaten to put seventh graders in jail for copying 1-2-3.
I read the article. Like all the DRM schemes I've seen to date, it still doesn't deal with my biggest question: What happens when my computer gets old?
A computer, over its useful life, can accumulate thousands of dollars worth of digital rights. Bought at $1 or even $20 apiece they don't seem like much, but it all adds up. When my computer gets old (or eats its hard drive), and I buy a new one, how do I transfer those rights which are specifically designed to be non-transferable? Am I violating the DMCA by even trying?
Do DRM keys survive a backup/restore? How about a disk-to-disk sector copy?
Think of it in today's terms: You go out tomorrow and buy a new computer. Before you can boot it for the first time, you must call the RIAA. They send a truck around that picks up your entire CD collection and takes it away to be crushed.
And if the stuff you like isn't popular enough, and the record companies haven't decided to keep it in print, forget about ever getting your hands on it again. Oh well, you'll always have your memories.
DRM is new now, but we should be discussing what happens when it matures. Until someone invents a key ring technology for digital rights, I'm buying nothing with copy protection.
According to the article, the encoded tracks cannot be played until the PC connects to the Internet and downloads an electronic key. So forget about buying a CD in an airport store to listen to on the plane, unless you happen to have an 802.11b card and the time to boot your computer on the ground and validate the tracks.
About that $1.64 per song: read more carefully. The first time you decode a song, it's free. But after that, you have to pay. And you can't decode just one song - you have to buy the keys for the entire CD. On a 12-song CD that's $19.68 - and don't forget you already paid for the physical CD!
Nothing in the article mentions why you'd have to download two electronic keys, but since the keys are bound to be tied to a specific PC the obvious need is for playing the CD on multiple computers. You have two kids who each have their own PC and want to play the latest Nelly CD? That'll be $20, please. A computer at home and one in the office? $20 more, thank you. Desktop and laptop? You get the idea. Plus, you pay the full $20 even if there's only one song worth listening to (although I guess that's not a problem with Sony artists - they release nothing but quality).
If Label Gate doesn't violate fair use, Congress might as well just repeal the copyright laws. The music industry certainly got their money's worth out of the last couple of elections.
- A world divided into regional coalitions that combine in shifting alliances. The portrayal of other cultures in simplistic black-and-white terms. Government efforts to downplay our previous relations with our current "friends" and "enemies".
- Perpetual war, mostly in far-away places, to divert attention from domestic problems. Lotteries and content-free televised entertainment to do the same.
- An anti-knowledge, anti-scientific mindset in popular culture and government, where knowledge and understanding are replaced by doctrinal belief systems.
- Increasing economic stratification in society, with institutions of power cooperating to place their inter-related self-interest over the common good.
- Popular music based entirely on rhythmic patterns, with no melody. Yes, in 1948 Orwell predicted rap.
Given current trends, maybe the only thing Ol' George got wrong was the title.