DRM only hurts the legitimate customers. The people pirating get around it. The content owners spend millions of dollars (if not more) to create better encryption that is cracked in months and is then obsolete to try and keep pirates from doing their thing (which never works) but the only thing they succeed in doing is pissing off their actual customers.
I was at home for christmas and wanted to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my laptop and output it to my parent's HDTV. Connected up an HDMI cable and PowerDVD 9 said it could only run on the primary display. I disabled the laptop display and tried again; now it said that the display connected was incompatible or some such nonsense (DRM non-compliant). If I had just pirated my movie, I wouldn't have had a problem.
The thing is, they already do this for the most part. Companies that own infrastructure (who also sell content) are required to lease their lines by the government to whomever wants access. The problem is that they have a built-in conflict of interest. They don't sell access at the same rate as they sell it to everyone else (including themselves).
Content and infrastructure should not be controlled by the same company. Be it television, internet, phone, etc. I'm not sure having the government own the infrastructure would be the best idea (they have enough of a control on our lives) but it should definitely be a company that is not allowed to sell content over said infrastructure.
I didn't say, "have the government mandate the price." I did say, "require the infrastructure company to lease access to any company who wants it at the same price regardless of who is leasing the access." This way, nobody gets a better deal than anyone else but the infrastructure company is free to set this fee at wherever they desire. (Though, maybe having the FCC verify it isn't gouging might be a good idea.)
split the content providers into two companies; one that owns the infrastructure and another that supplies the content. Then, require the infrastructure company to lease access to any company who wants it at the same price regardless of who is leasing the access.
whoever modded this funny should re-evaluate the state of affairs. Obama is no different than Bush; those of you who saw the next coming of the messiah were shortsighted and ignorant. Those of you who are now saying, "I told you my vote for McCain was right" are just as shortsighted and ignorant if not more so as he would have been just as bad, if not worse.
The only difference between Obama and McCain is that McCain is up front with his tactics; Obama just flat out lied.
Except those other jobs make their own hours. A website expects to be running 24/7 and if it goes down, they expect you to fix it ASAP. If your faucet doesn't work for 24 hours, not a HUGE deal. If it is an emergency, some places will cater but they charge you extra for 24/7 service; too.
Now, I assume from his statement that he works 40 hours plus being on call means he is their full-time IT guy but he works for himself (ie. no W-2 and no taxes withheld). If they want him available all the time, he should be paid for it. His full hourly rate (or salary equivalent)? Probably not; but he should be paid to be available.
I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Right now, TimeWarner, Comcast, etc. charge you an arm and a leg if you only get one service but give you a discount if you get 2 and basically make the third free. What if I don't need phone service because I like my cell phone and don't watch TV? The internet connection doesn't cost more in that case, I just get charged more.
Separating these entities would give them less of a chance to screw me over.
1. Separate the ISPs into separate entities. Phone service in one company, internet service in another, television in a third.
2. Separate the ownership of the infrastructure into another company
3. Make the three companies from part 1 pay company from part 2 for access
4. allow any other company access to part 2's lines for the same fee as it charges part 1 companies
5. don't EVER allow them to merge again
I would like to see all online sites adopt a universally used password system using those number-changing RSA key dongles. However, the only ones I've seen are 6-8 numbers; just pick one and try over and over and you'll get it eventually. They need to design one with 10+ using the alphanumeric, upper and lowercase, with punctuation dongle. That way, you could have one dongle for all your online accounts.
Unfortunately, one company (or the government) would have to run it and a single point of failure is never a good thing. Though, it could be done.
A professor I had in college said that the best time to code is when you have a few beers in you and that if we weren't a freshmen class he'd hold our class at the local bar.
Such a cool teacher... and the Computer Science head now...
So is that why SETI doesn't get more funding? The Navy knows there aren't any signals out there because they're getting their allies to block any new incoming transmissions...
Oh come on. If you couldn't tell Obama was full of himself you should move to Canada.
And if you vote because one guy "seems" better than the other or "He's a Dem/Rep so I'll vote for him" just don't bother voting and remove yourself from the queue so the informed don't have to deal with you. I blame most of the problems in this country on the apathetic voters. Not the ones that don't vote, but the ones that don't know why they're voting for the person they voted for (or if they voted for someone based on non-political reasoning)
However, for a public office vote, they have ways to verify people's identity (for the most part). With a petition, they have nothing. Their names have to be public record in case some group or organization wants to verify people actually signed it instead of someone making up a list of names. Unintended consequences, maybe; it doesn't negate the need for public access.
Why should we make an exception for this? We already have laws to stop assault, abuse, and slander. Why do we need to make this exception to try and stop those things from happening? If someone has a problem because of this, file a complaint with the police.
Hiding public records is how people stack votes; doing that now just because people MIGHT be annoyed with an email or a phone call goes against everything this nation is supposed to stand for. Like I said, if someone has a problem because of this, go to the police. If not, deal with it. They signed a public document, they have no right to ask for it to be protected from scrutiny.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with churches not allowing same-sex marriages. However, the state should have no such rule. It's ridiculous. There is no direct or indirect effect on the state by allowing same-sex couples to marry. I don't see how they could ever win in a court of law.
It just shows you how biased judges are. If they were unbiased, the same sex marriage ban wouldn't last 5 minutes.
Did anyone really expect their participation to be secret? It's a public vote; they should be tracked for verification. Anyone who signed should have understood that as well-informed adults. Anyone who didn't has no excuse for being upset over this. If they didn't want people to know they support gay rights they shouldn't have signed it.
Ever since I started working as a contractor for the Air Force, I've been using DDMMMYYYY for my dates(ie. 14OCT2009), and technically, it is shorter than MM/DD/YYYY by a single character. It's also less ambiguous for all parties involved as not everyone has MM and DD in the same location.
As for web addresses (to stay sort-of on topic...), most people do not use their web browser for anything other than http addresses. So the http:/// is automatically filled in for them; worrying about whether they were a good idea is useless at this point and has been for a decade or more. Now, the slash/backslash issue is another story. I blame that on Microsoft.
How about they get rid of their DRM, stop treating their customers like theives, and then they might sell some units? I love C&C but I didn't buy the last one because of the DRM (SecuROM I think?)
It wasn't anywhere close to a WinME bomb. I was at an internship interview in 2005 or 2006 and we were talking about software we liked and didn't like so I asked the guy what people at MS thought about Windows ME as I had heard people say it was horrible. Well, he said, "we don't talk about Windows ME here." I don't see Vista being the same way. I really like Vista and I haven't had any major problems with it as from random crashes attributed to a bad stick of RAM.
On the other hand, I installed my party pack Win7 Ultimate SE copy on Friday and explorer crashes quite frequently (~2 seconds for the OS to restart it) and it'll go away for a bit if you reboot; but it eventually starts happening again and once it does, it won't stop. Last night, it started crashing while I tried to right click on the recycle bin. Crashed on me 6-7 times before I rebooted. Also, firefox and Windows Mail loads noticeably slower than they did on Vista. Also, I tried to edit a config file last night and UAC, even off, wouldn't let me inside my Program Files dir; no idea why... However, I'm sure they'll work out the issues quickly.
The point is, everything has problems (that being a good or bad this is another debate altogether so I won't comment) and people not liking something just because it's different isn't a reason for it to be considered a flop. ME just sucked; Vista didn't. Vista was just different and I would say it was different in a good way for the most part. Now, if they had removed 32 bit support entirely and added winfs, it would have been a good step forward.
Slashdot Mirror
DRM only hurts the legitimate customers. The people pirating get around it. The content owners spend millions of dollars (if not more) to create better encryption that is cracked in months and is then obsolete to try and keep pirates from doing their thing (which never works) but the only thing they succeed in doing is pissing off their actual customers.
I was at home for christmas and wanted to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my laptop and output it to my parent's HDTV. Connected up an HDMI cable and PowerDVD 9 said it could only run on the primary display. I disabled the laptop display and tried again; now it said that the display connected was incompatible or some such nonsense (DRM non-compliant). If I had just pirated my movie, I wouldn't have had a problem.
I don't consider that funny; I consider that sad.
The thing is, they already do this for the most part. Companies that own infrastructure (who also sell content) are required to lease their lines by the government to whomever wants access. The problem is that they have a built-in conflict of interest. They don't sell access at the same rate as they sell it to everyone else (including themselves).
Content and infrastructure should not be controlled by the same company. Be it television, internet, phone, etc. I'm not sure having the government own the infrastructure would be the best idea (they have enough of a control on our lives) but it should definitely be a company that is not allowed to sell content over said infrastructure.
I didn't say, "have the government mandate the price." I did say, "require the infrastructure company to lease access to any company who wants it at the same price regardless of who is leasing the access." This way, nobody gets a better deal than anyone else but the infrastructure company is free to set this fee at wherever they desire. (Though, maybe having the FCC verify it isn't gouging might be a good idea.)
split the content providers into two companies; one that owns the infrastructure and another that supplies the content. Then, require the infrastructure company to lease access to any company who wants it at the same price regardless of who is leasing the access.
whoever modded this funny should re-evaluate the state of affairs. Obama is no different than Bush; those of you who saw the next coming of the messiah were shortsighted and ignorant. Those of you who are now saying, "I told you my vote for McCain was right" are just as shortsighted and ignorant if not more so as he would have been just as bad, if not worse.
The only difference between Obama and McCain is that McCain is up front with his tactics; Obama just flat out lied.
Except those other jobs make their own hours. A website expects to be running 24/7 and if it goes down, they expect you to fix it ASAP. If your faucet doesn't work for 24 hours, not a HUGE deal. If it is an emergency, some places will cater but they charge you extra for 24/7 service; too.
Now, I assume from his statement that he works 40 hours plus being on call means he is their full-time IT guy but he works for himself (ie. no W-2 and no taxes withheld). If they want him available all the time, he should be paid for it. His full hourly rate (or salary equivalent)? Probably not; but he should be paid to be available.
I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Right now, TimeWarner, Comcast, etc. charge you an arm and a leg if you only get one service but give you a discount if you get 2 and basically make the third free. What if I don't need phone service because I like my cell phone and don't watch TV? The internet connection doesn't cost more in that case, I just get charged more.
Separating these entities would give them less of a chance to screw me over.
1. Separate the ISPs into separate entities. Phone service in one company, internet service in another, television in a third.
2. Separate the ownership of the infrastructure into another company
3. Make the three companies from part 1 pay company from part 2 for access
4. allow any other company access to part 2's lines for the same fee as it charges part 1 companies
5. don't EVER allow them to merge again
I would like to see all online sites adopt a universally used password system using those number-changing RSA key dongles. However, the only ones I've seen are 6-8 numbers; just pick one and try over and over and you'll get it eventually. They need to design one with 10+ using the alphanumeric, upper and lowercase, with punctuation dongle. That way, you could have one dongle for all your online accounts.
Unfortunately, one company (or the government) would have to run it and a single point of failure is never a good thing. Though, it could be done.
A professor I had in college said that the best time to code is when you have a few beers in you and that if we weren't a freshmen class he'd hold our class at the local bar.
Such a cool teacher... and the Computer Science head now...
So is that why SETI doesn't get more funding? The Navy knows there aren't any signals out there because they're getting their allies to block any new incoming transmissions...
It all makes sense now!
Oh come on. If you couldn't tell Obama was full of himself you should move to Canada.
And if you vote because one guy "seems" better than the other or "He's a Dem/Rep so I'll vote for him" just don't bother voting and remove yourself from the queue so the informed don't have to deal with you. I blame most of the problems in this country on the apathetic voters. Not the ones that don't vote, but the ones that don't know why they're voting for the person they voted for (or if they voted for someone based on non-political reasoning)
Don't feel bad; I came here to say the exact same thing.
Actually, CD-Rs are 700MiB (well, ~702MiB) where DVD-R's are 4.7GB. Why one is set in base-2 and the other in base-10 I never understood...
Morphine
However, for a public office vote, they have ways to verify people's identity (for the most part). With a petition, they have nothing. Their names have to be public record in case some group or organization wants to verify people actually signed it instead of someone making up a list of names. Unintended consequences, maybe; it doesn't negate the need for public access.
Why should we make an exception for this? We already have laws to stop assault, abuse, and slander. Why do we need to make this exception to try and stop those things from happening? If someone has a problem because of this, file a complaint with the police.
Hiding public records is how people stack votes; doing that now just because people MIGHT be annoyed with an email or a phone call goes against everything this nation is supposed to stand for. Like I said, if someone has a problem because of this, go to the police. If not, deal with it. They signed a public document, they have no right to ask for it to be protected from scrutiny.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with churches not allowing same-sex marriages. However, the state should have no such rule. It's ridiculous. There is no direct or indirect effect on the state by allowing same-sex couples to marry. I don't see how they could ever win in a court of law.
It just shows you how biased judges are. If they were unbiased, the same sex marriage ban wouldn't last 5 minutes.
Sorry, should have stated "don't support gay rights" as this is a bill started by anti-gay rights groups.
Did anyone really expect their participation to be secret? It's a public vote; they should be tracked for verification. Anyone who signed should have understood that as well-informed adults. Anyone who didn't has no excuse for being upset over this. If they didn't want people to know they support gay rights they shouldn't have signed it.
Ever since I started working as a contractor for the Air Force, I've been using DDMMMYYYY for my dates(ie. 14OCT2009), and technically, it is shorter than MM/DD/YYYY by a single character. It's also less ambiguous for all parties involved as not everyone has MM and DD in the same location.
As for web addresses (to stay sort-of on topic...), most people do not use their web browser for anything other than http addresses. So the http:/// is automatically filled in for them; worrying about whether they were a good idea is useless at this point and has been for a decade or more. Now, the slash/backslash issue is another story. I blame that on Microsoft.
you should totally finish that and write a novel (i'd buy it). hell, i wouldn't mind you PMing me a copy of what you have if it's available...
How about they get rid of their DRM, stop treating their customers like theives, and then they might sell some units? I love C&C but I didn't buy the last one because of the DRM (SecuROM I think?)
It wasn't anywhere close to a WinME bomb. I was at an internship interview in 2005 or 2006 and we were talking about software we liked and didn't like so I asked the guy what people at MS thought about Windows ME as I had heard people say it was horrible. Well, he said, "we don't talk about Windows ME here." I don't see Vista being the same way. I really like Vista and I haven't had any major problems with it as from random crashes attributed to a bad stick of RAM.
On the other hand, I installed my party pack Win7 Ultimate SE copy on Friday and explorer crashes quite frequently (~2 seconds for the OS to restart it) and it'll go away for a bit if you reboot; but it eventually starts happening again and once it does, it won't stop. Last night, it started crashing while I tried to right click on the recycle bin. Crashed on me 6-7 times before I rebooted. Also, firefox and Windows Mail loads noticeably slower than they did on Vista. Also, I tried to edit a config file last night and UAC, even off, wouldn't let me inside my Program Files dir; no idea why... However, I'm sure they'll work out the issues quickly.
The point is, everything has problems (that being a good or bad this is another debate altogether so I won't comment) and people not liking something just because it's different isn't a reason for it to be considered a flop. ME just sucked; Vista didn't. Vista was just different and I would say it was different in a good way for the most part. Now, if they had removed 32 bit support entirely and added winfs, it would have been a good step forward.