And unless Microsoft ditches all that internal DRM crap, who is to believe that the next Windows will be any better than Vista? Heck, based on MS's record, expect worse still all around, since I don't think they've learned anything from their failures with Vista yet!
I'm not yet convinced that paying a premium price for a hard drive using a more expensive technology with a very (compared to rotating storage) limited lifetime in terms of write cycles is a wise idea. There are parts of my hard drive (swap areas) that get beat-up pretty badly at times. Don't want to wear this thing out in a year or two.
That's also why I don't have a plasma big screen yet. I'm using an alternative technology there as well.
"Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has publicly framed the music industry's failure to accommodate file-sharing as an 'inadvertent' war on consumers.
Well yeah!
And you actually get paid more in a year than I'll see in my entire lifetime to run a major record company???
That's the problem with every video fingerprinting system. It first has to be able to see the content. So while you have to upload unencrypted video to YouTube where it can be checked, I hardly expect that this will have a chance against the next round of encrypted P2P transfers. Even now, share an encrypted ZIP file with the decryption key as part of the filename.
In the end, a whole lot of money on fingerprinting software will be spent. Only the rawest newbie users will be blocked. The ISP's will point out how they're "Doing everything possible." Your rates will go up. And only the filtering software makers will be making money. So what else is new? News at 11.
Hey, who announces this business strategy ahead of time anyway? Does Google really think that the reserve price won't be met, and that the incumbent telcos will try to steal the publicly owned airwaves at fire sale prices once the reserve isn't bid in the first round? Is Google only doing this to protect the taxpayer's pocketbooks?
I'd like to see Google win this. They are the only hope for some serious competition in this consolidating business of access to the InfoBahn (remember that term that once captured the world's imagination?), but I doubt what's openly announced is their entire strategy.
I've often referred to the Charlie Brown - Lucy tension as the perfect metaphor... Lucy promises to placehold the football so Charlie can kick it. He falls for it every time and she never fails to pull it away at the last second (I keep hoping there's one strip where she doesn't pull it away, but I never saw it.... anyone?). We, the public are Microsoft's Charlie Brown. Sigh.
I had long hoped to speak to Charles Schultz about this very item. It was my fond hope that in the very last Peanuts strip that Lucy wouldn't pull the ball away, and Charlie Brown finally kicks it...
Until they get rid of that ridiculous limit on playback of WiFi shared files -- especially non-copyrighted files -- Zune is just an annoyance with potential.
What makes it all doubly stupid is that Microsoft is able to identify copyrighted files that aren't allowed to be shared (e.g. Frank Sinatra) through WiFi.
Copyright terms of life of the creator plus 75 additional years do not benefit me in the least. In fact, they have stolen the Public Domain right out from underneath me, which is one of the things our Founding Fathers specifically tried to prohibit when they said secure for a limited period of time in the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, even the Supreme Court let this awful decision by a bought-off Congress and a weak President (Clinton) get through. We have been robbed by all three branches of our government!
Ex parte means that only one side of a case is heard by the judge -- in this case, the RIAA's view of things -- before he makes a decision such as issuing a subpoena to a college, university, or commercial ISP. This goes against the grain of courts hearing from both sides of an issue before making a decision, and is normally used only under exceptional circumstances. The RIAA claims that these are such exceptional circumstances due to the following reasons:
1: The RIAA claims that because they don't know who their Doe defendants are until after they have conducted discovery (meaning that they get the ISP under court order to reveal which subscriber was assigned a specified TCP/IP address at a given time), that they cannot serve them with papers and allow them to participate in the court proceedings.
2: The RIAA claims a need for Expedited Discovery (they get it right away, rather than waiting through hearings of whether they're actually entitiled to it, or not) on the claim that ISP server logs are only kept for limited periods of time, and if they don't get it immediately -- rather than waiting for a proper judicial process that protects both the Plaintiffs', and the Defendants', rights -- that it will be lost to them forever.
Both these claims are bogus garbage. Litigation documents sent to an ISP can be passed along to the subscriber of the service that the ISP intends to identify if forced by the courts. This can be done without telling the RIAA who this person is yet. And as for preserving evidence, once it becomes a matter of a lawsuit, ISP's can and do preserve the access logs forever, again not turning them over to the RIAA hounds until all proper procedures are followed.
However, when the only person the judge hears from are the RIAA lawyers, there is no one present to argue the opposite side. As such, the RIAA has been able so far to run roughshod over the rights of the Defendants, dismiss that case before their use of the evidence gathered in the method above can be challenged in that case, and then take what they illegally got away with there and use in individual cases where, to my knowledge (IANAL), how they got your subscriber information cannot be challenged.
So ex parte basically means in secret, or without the other party present, which is a lousy way to conduct justice!
Is the RIAA now only suing students? I haven't heard of other barrages of litigation from them lately.
And is it just KaZaA, and a bit of Limewire that gets their attention? I've not seen any list of how many lawsuits/discovery requests have been filed so far sorted by P2P system used.
I thought Google was highly secret in what they did and how they did it. The way I've read this, it seems like a pishing expedition of Google needing to prove that they don't violate the patent, and not that there is yet any proof that they do violate it.
And then there's always the specter of Prior Art raising its unwanted head.
Have these guys ever built such a database system themselves for sale?
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to see the ACLU and the EFF on the same side of the same suit, given how much I hate one of them, and adore the other.
Yeah, right!
And unless Microsoft ditches all that internal DRM crap, who is to believe that the next Windows will be any better than Vista? Heck, based on MS's record, expect worse still all around, since I don't think they've learned anything from their failures with Vista yet!
That's also why I don't have a plasma big screen yet. I'm using an alternative technology there as well.
Well, yeah! Being a German he obviously had a head start on all of this.
Well yeah!
And you actually get paid more in a year than I'll see in my entire lifetime to run a major record company???
It does, end of discussion. Everything else is simply about applications.
That's the problem with every video fingerprinting system. It first has to be able to see the content. So while you have to upload unencrypted video to YouTube where it can be checked, I hardly expect that this will have a chance against the next round of encrypted P2P transfers. Even now, share an encrypted ZIP file with the decryption key as part of the filename.
In the end, a whole lot of money on fingerprinting software will be spent. Only the rawest newbie users will be blocked. The ISP's will point out how they're "Doing everything possible." Your rates will go up. And only the filtering software makers will be making money. So what else is new? News at 11.
Gene Simmons, Kiss-Off!
I'd like to see Google win this. They are the only hope for some serious competition in this consolidating business of access to the InfoBahn (remember that term that once captured the world's imagination?), but I doubt what's openly announced is their entire strategy.
And then there were three.
I had long hoped to speak to Charles Schultz about this very item. It was my fond hope that in the very last Peanuts strip that Lucy wouldn't pull the ball away, and Charlie Brown finally kicks it...
What makes it all doubly stupid is that Microsoft is able to identify copyrighted files that aren't allowed to be shared (e.g. Frank Sinatra) through WiFi.
They want to know how much they can get away with. Stopping them now will be much better than fighting with them later!
Copyright terms of life of the creator plus 75 additional years do not benefit me in the least. In fact, they have stolen the Public Domain right out from underneath me, which is one of the things our Founding Fathers specifically tried to prohibit when they said secure for a limited period of time in the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, even the Supreme Court let this awful decision by a bought-off Congress and a weak President (Clinton) get through. We have been robbed by all three branches of our government!
1: The RIAA claims that because they don't know who their Doe defendants are until after they have conducted discovery (meaning that they get the ISP under court order to reveal which subscriber was assigned a specified TCP/IP address at a given time), that they cannot serve them with papers and allow them to participate in the court proceedings.
2: The RIAA claims a need for Expedited Discovery (they get it right away, rather than waiting through hearings of whether they're actually entitiled to it, or not) on the claim that ISP server logs are only kept for limited periods of time, and if they don't get it immediately -- rather than waiting for a proper judicial process that protects both the Plaintiffs', and the Defendants', rights -- that it will be lost to them forever.
Both these claims are bogus garbage. Litigation documents sent to an ISP can be passed along to the subscriber of the service that the ISP intends to identify if forced by the courts. This can be done without telling the RIAA who this person is yet. And as for preserving evidence, once it becomes a matter of a lawsuit, ISP's can and do preserve the access logs forever, again not turning them over to the RIAA hounds until all proper procedures are followed.
However, when the only person the judge hears from are the RIAA lawyers, there is no one present to argue the opposite side. As such, the RIAA has been able so far to run roughshod over the rights of the Defendants, dismiss that case before their use of the evidence gathered in the method above can be challenged in that case, and then take what they illegally got away with there and use in individual cases where, to my knowledge (IANAL), how they got your subscriber information cannot be challenged.
So ex parte basically means in secret, or without the other party present, which is a lousy way to conduct justice!
And is it just KaZaA, and a bit of Limewire that gets their attention? I've not seen any list of how many lawsuits/discovery requests have been filed so far sorted by P2P system used.
This is one element of the fascinating SF book, Lady of Mazes.
Why a firewall anyway? Why not just have computers that don't respond to ports where authorized programs aren't listening?
Do it once, and they'll expect it from you every time afterwards!
Now all we need is some hardware...
But can I use it for filesharing, and just disappear when the RIAA comes sniffing around?
Isn't it obvious. Venus is Global Warming run amuck. And we're next!
And then there's always the specter of Prior Art raising its unwanted head.
Have these guys ever built such a database system themselves for sale?
Just how much Hafnium is there in the world, and has Intel cornered the supply before AMD could get their hands on any of if?
Are they willing to pay you for those 6 months when you can't work in your field otherwise?