To be fair, they had one other point - legal dowloads, but no DRM. They're keeping that part.
That said, since each track are now $0.16 or more, nobody's going to download something they haven't heard before to see if they like it. This means that unless they quickly get music people already know they like (RIAA music), they'll quickly die. And even if they do, it'll be choppy - I'd estimate they'll lose at least half of their loyal customers.
A further optimization is that when you get to a number that's known to go to 1, you don't need to go the rest of the way. So you can prove the conjecture by crossing out each number which goes to 1, and continuing until there are no numbers left.
Nope, a joule is a newton meter, a watt second, or.239 calories.
And since we're being pedantic, everyone else in this thread has neglected that the energy to raise 1 cc of water 1 deg C varies based on the water's initial temperature, and is only 1 calorie at 15 deg C, or 4 deg C, or the average between 0 and 100 deg C. It's not that big a difference, though.
Am I the only one amazed that a 5-line C fragment (granted, written by AC) has what could be a critical flaws? If mainapp.py fails, app.c still returns zero, so the higher context won't ever see the error. Also, the command line isn't passed to python. Picture this: "nukecontrol --disarm && launchcontrol --fire". Nukecontrol returns -1 because it needs arguments, but the missile is launched anyway.
I specifically said that I wasn't saying they would. I personally think it would be unlikely, because the installed base of free non-MS IM apps is so large that such a lawsuit would be a PR nightmere and would significantly hurt public opinion towards software patents. On the other hand, I don't want to be banking on MS's benevolence. I'd much prefer they not have that power in the first place. If corporations want to juggle money amongst themselves, they should trade baseball cards, not patents.
Microsoft has patents on Bayesian filters? I was under the impression that Paul Graham came up with the idea of applying them to email filtering, and that Bayesian math itself was pioneered by Rev. Thomas Bayes in the mid 1700's.
This sounds exactly like the nuclear arms race - no, we don't nuke each other anymore, but that doesn't mean nuclear weapons aren't bad things. They're bad primarily because although "civilized" countries don't launch nukes, they could.
Mutually Assured Destruction may be necessary in the real world, because it's impossible to destroy all knowledge of nuclear weapons. In contrast, in the legal world, we can destroy software patents for once and for all.
Well, it's obvious to us that the delay could be implemented on the talker (who waits 5 seconds after the typing stops and says "never mind"), or the typee (who waits 10 seconds after the typing message, which is sent once per five seconds, stops, and turns off the icon). It's a tradeoff which involves network bandwidth, flexibility, and whether the protocol is reliable or not, but it's still an obvious implementation detail.
Perhaps, as a Slashdot user, and in point of fact, not a lawyer, you are not so acutely aware, as people in the legal field are, of the importance, necessesity, and advantages of making a document, filing, or other communication of any kind as bloated, wordy, verbose, stuffed with verbiage, and otherwise unwieldy as humanly, or even inhumanly, possible. Sometimes one mere person, or even a lawyer, acting by himself in a non-collaberative manner, such as typing in front of a computer, is not sufficient to produce such a convoluted and long-winded document. In these commonplace instances, it is seldom not imprudent to deny the expansion of the document commitee. The commitee should include, but not be limited to, every lawyer in the company, and at least fifty percent, or whoever doesn't want to participate, whichever is more at the time of choosing, of the people in the company, organization, or group. They should all be brought into a meeting room, they should brainstorm random ideas, adjectives, phrases, writs, legal principles, and bodily noises, and they should be forced to put their ramblings down on paper for no less than 6 hours. This example, which I hope has been informative to all, has now taken five precious minutes of my irreplacable time, so I must bring it to a long and drawn out close, in the hope that you will be thusly enlightened, and therefore more able to understand the legal system which increasingly dominates our industry, as well it should, because of the many benefits it brings, including creating demand for larger computer storage devices such as hard drives and backup media.
Yes, that would work, and it would probably circumvent the patent. But it's hopelessly convoluted, and an absolutely braindead design - it still has the extra overhead, and the other users could change their clients and sex^He your Fuck^H^H^Hreudian sex^H^Hlips.
If you let software patents change your design, you've already lost. The industry can't move foreward when it's forced to reinvent the wheel, with the stipulation that the axle can't attach in the center.
As I understand it, they do check for prior art, but only the prior art which has been patented.
One reason why software patents are so bad is that for the first 50 years or so of software development, nobody got patents. Then, the industry lawyerified, so the big companies are grabbing up all the patents for things which have been done before, but never patented. This new patent is a perfect example: obvious, as old as the hills (you can see someone's lips move before you hear their yell), but never patented. Microsoft could now (I'm not saying they would for sure) sue Gaim or AOL for that little green icon.
And well-rounded is important, too -- do you want to hire some "genius" with a 4.0 GPA that can't even communicate effictively with other human beings?
Why do you feel that a good GPA and good communication skills are mutually exclusive?
Um, no. In both Win32 and X11, writing pixel-by-pixel is horribly slow. This isn't because of context switching, but because of bandwidth - an individual request to write a pixel of a given color to a given location is more than 3 bytes. In both Win32 and X11, if you do choose to write pixel-by-pixel, there won't be many context switches, because the requests are buffered and asynchronous. I would argue that using sockets instead of designing an entirely new system-call scheme to pass these messages is more elegant, but that's another rant.
The messages are more like "You got uncovered, please redraw here," "Draw a rectangle here, and a line from here to here." Multiple messages are queued (no context switch between each one). And for images, the data is transferred in a large block, is often kept server-side, and for a local system, uses shared memory (so only a pointer need be passed.)
IMHO, the problem with X isn't that it's client-server or not in the kernel (those parts are good!), but that widgets must be handled by the clients. Server-side widget handling would allow a more consistent and easily changed UI, less communication overhead, and less wasted code (multiple toolkits), but would probably require a rewrite of X. Check out PicoGUI and Fresco.
Um, the point is that you wouldn't have to reboot, because the OSs are running simultaneously. The effect would be similar to 2 PCs and a KVM switch. Or VmWare or Bochs, only faster.
It seems that in America, we have some law whereby insider trading is OK, as long as you've planned it well in advance and all the transactions are automatic.
Windows and MacOS X autorun software. When you insert the CD, it installs a driver which cripples CDDA extraction with most Windows or Mac. Presumably, this driver is removed when the CD is ejected. Predictably, you can bypass this by holding down shift when inserting the CD, doing the equivalent Mac thing, or using an OS that doesn't autorun Windows or Mac binaries when disks are inserted. The audio portion follows the spec, and the data portion includes heavily restricted WMA files.
Obviously, the protection is completely ineffective; anyone who thinks this will stop the music from hitting P2P is delusional. More importantly, this installs (unless you carefully read the package, without your consent) a driver to cripple your CD-ROM. Do you trust their software to uninstall the driver when it's done, and leave the system exactly the same way it was before? CD-ROMS are finicky enough in Windows with all cd-recording software shipping with their own drivers. I've seen systems with extremely broken CD drives, and I wouldn't let this software within twenty furlongs of any PC I own. Also, what about work computers where you don't have admin access?
John goes to the store, buys his Comin' from Where I'm From CD, gets home, opens it, listens to it on his old stereo. He finally gets around to ripping it to put it on his portable player (older, so no WMA), and it doesn't work. He tries the audio player again, it's fine. Computer again, it doesn't work. By now it's been thirty days, and besides, the CD's open; there's no hope of returning it. What does he do?
P2P. He asks his friends, they set him up with a client. He has some respect for copyright, but his practical interest takes over, and he grabs the album off P2P. But now he has a client installed, so he's only three clicks and a sacrifice of morals (against a company that just screwed him) away from further downloading.
The moral of the story? DRM limitations fuel P2P. This story depends on a portable player that doesn't do WMA, but there are many other inconveniences. What if he doesn't use Windows or Mac (that's me)? What if he's an audiophile who can hear the difference between WMA and FLAC?
Besides, the article says you can burn the tracks a limited number of times. That's right, without any circumvention at all, the DRM is totally ineffective! I haven't checked, but I'm willing to bet the music is all over the P2P networks. DRM is completely worthless: if there were any competition (there isn't), the idea would have died years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, since each track are now $0.16 or more, nobody's going to download something they haven't heard before to see if they like it. This means that unless they quickly get music people already know they like (RIAA music), they'll quickly die. And even if they do, it'll be choppy - I'd estimate they'll lose at least half of their loyal customers.
RIAA execs need to get "DRM is good" out of their heads - it's not.
ChessBrain.
A further optimization is that when you get to a number that's known to go to 1, you don't need to go the rest of the way. So you can prove the conjecture by crossing out each number which goes to 1, and continuing until there are no numbers left.
And since we're being pedantic, everyone else in this thread has neglected that the energy to raise 1 cc of water 1 deg C varies based on the water's initial temperature, and is only 1 calorie at 15 deg C, or 4 deg C, or the average between 0 and 100 deg C. It's not that big a difference, though.
Am I the only one amazed that a 5-line C fragment (granted, written by AC) has what could be a critical flaws? If mainapp.py fails, app.c still returns zero, so the higher context won't ever see the error. Also, the command line isn't passed to python. Picture this: "nukecontrol --disarm && launchcontrol --fire". Nukecontrol returns -1 because it needs arguments, but the missile is launched anyway.
Three for the price of one!
I specifically said that I wasn't saying they would. I personally think it would be unlikely, because the installed base of free non-MS IM apps is so large that such a lawsuit would be a PR nightmere and would significantly hurt public opinion towards software patents. On the other hand, I don't want to be banking on MS's benevolence. I'd much prefer they not have that power in the first place. If corporations want to juggle money amongst themselves, they should trade baseball cards, not patents.
Microsoft has patents on Bayesian filters? I was under the impression that Paul Graham came up with the idea of applying them to email filtering, and that Bayesian math itself was pioneered by Rev. Thomas Bayes in the mid 1700's.
Mutually Assured Destruction may be necessary in the real world, because it's impossible to destroy all knowledge of nuclear weapons. In contrast, in the legal world, we can destroy software patents for once and for all.
Well, it's obvious to us that the delay could be implemented on the talker (who waits 5 seconds after the typing stops and says "never mind"), or the typee (who waits 10 seconds after the typing message, which is sent once per five seconds, stops, and turns off the icon). It's a tradeoff which involves network bandwidth, flexibility, and whether the protocol is reliable or not, but it's still an obvious implementation detail.
Perhaps, as a Slashdot user, and in point of fact, not a lawyer, you are not so acutely aware, as people in the legal field are, of the importance, necessesity, and advantages of making a document, filing, or other communication of any kind as bloated, wordy, verbose, stuffed with verbiage, and otherwise unwieldy as humanly, or even inhumanly, possible. Sometimes one mere person, or even a lawyer, acting by himself in a non-collaberative manner, such as typing in front of a computer, is not sufficient to produce such a convoluted and long-winded document. In these commonplace instances, it is seldom not imprudent to deny the expansion of the document commitee. The commitee should include, but not be limited to, every lawyer in the company, and at least fifty percent, or whoever doesn't want to participate, whichever is more at the time of choosing, of the people in the company, organization, or group. They should all be brought into a meeting room, they should brainstorm random ideas, adjectives, phrases, writs, legal principles, and bodily noises, and they should be forced to put their ramblings down on paper for no less than 6 hours. This example, which I hope has been informative to all, has now taken five precious minutes of my irreplacable time, so I must bring it to a long and drawn out close, in the hope that you will be thusly enlightened, and therefore more able to understand the legal system which increasingly dominates our industry, as well it should, because of the many benefits it brings, including creating demand for larger computer storage devices such as hard drives and backup media.
If you let software patents change your design, you've already lost. The industry can't move foreward when it's forced to reinvent the wheel, with the stipulation that the axle can't attach in the center.
One reason why software patents are so bad is that for the first 50 years or so of software development, nobody got patents. Then, the industry lawyerified, so the big companies are grabbing up all the patents for things which have been done before, but never patented. This new patent is a perfect example: obvious, as old as the hills (you can see someone's lips move before you hear their yell), but never patented. Microsoft could now (I'm not saying they would for sure) sue Gaim or AOL for that little green icon.
Why do you feel that a good GPA and good communication skills are mutually exclusive?
I think it's pretty clear that the sellers aren't happy about this. (Though they don't particularly like Linux either.) Check out comp.unix.sco.misc.
VNC, anyone?
The messages are more like "You got uncovered, please redraw here," "Draw a rectangle here, and a line from here to here." Multiple messages are queued (no context switch between each one). And for images, the data is transferred in a large block, is often kept server-side, and for a local system, uses shared memory (so only a pointer need be passed.)
IMHO, the problem with X isn't that it's client-server or not in the kernel (those parts are good!), but that widgets must be handled by the clients. Server-side widget handling would allow a more consistent and easily changed UI, less communication overhead, and less wasted code (multiple toolkits), but would probably require a rewrite of X. Check out PicoGUI and Fresco.
Um, the point is that you wouldn't have to reboot, because the OSs are running simultaneously. The effect would be similar to 2 PCs and a KVM switch. Or VmWare or Bochs, only faster.
It seems that in America, we have some law whereby insider trading is OK, as long as you've planned it well in advance and all the transactions are automatic.
Obviously, the protection is completely ineffective; anyone who thinks this will stop the music from hitting P2P is delusional. More importantly, this installs (unless you carefully read the package, without your consent) a driver to cripple your CD-ROM. Do you trust their software to uninstall the driver when it's done, and leave the system exactly the same way it was before? CD-ROMS are finicky enough in Windows with all cd-recording software shipping with their own drivers. I've seen systems with extremely broken CD drives, and I wouldn't let this software within twenty furlongs of any PC I own. Also, what about work computers where you don't have admin access?
Risk that you might lose and be stuck with those CDs, that is.
P2P. He asks his friends, they set him up with a client. He has some respect for copyright, but his practical interest takes over, and he grabs the album off P2P. But now he has a client installed, so he's only three clicks and a sacrifice of morals (against a company that just screwed him) away from further downloading.
The moral of the story? DRM limitations fuel P2P. This story depends on a portable player that doesn't do WMA, but there are many other inconveniences. What if he doesn't use Windows or Mac (that's me)? What if he's an audiophile who can hear the difference between WMA and FLAC?
Besides, the article says you can burn the tracks a limited number of times. That's right, without any circumvention at all, the DRM is totally ineffective! I haven't checked, but I'm willing to bet the music is all over the P2P networks. DRM is completely worthless: if there were any competition (there isn't), the idea would have died years ago.