The whole licencing thing for this product has been discussed at length on the Myth-Users list (have a look at the whole thread). Most of the developers are reasonably happy with the state of affairs with the exception that most commented it'd be nice if they made more of a mention of MythTV in their documentation and publicity.
The company in question have also said that they will be contributing back (some of) their code shortly.
I would've thought it obvious that the non-standard feature should never have been implemented to start with.
Besides, MS have shown in the past that they're happy to completely remove completely standard features that have completely legitimate uses rather than just fixing the bug that makes them dangerous, so why should they find removing a nonstandard feature any more of a problem?
Microsoft have cornered the market with a bugridden browser that they have no motivation to improve by bundling it with standard windows - no web developer wants to alienate 95% of their visitors by refusing to support such a broken piece of software, so web developers are stuck in the continual situation of having to work around the bugs in IE rather than using all those cool features that every other browser supports (and have supported for a long time).
While it's true that this is a filtering bug in Hotmail and Yahoo, the reason it's a problem is because "It so happens that Internet Explorer provides one other mechanism to declare a namespace, via the non-standard <?xml:namespace> processing instruction.
So once again, the web designers have to work around IE's non-standards compliance.
Every so often someone mails me from their AOL account. AOL insist on binning my mail, and frankly I don't have time to chase them about it so people mailing me from AOL don't get replies. Wonder if AOL lose a significant number of customers because they're silently binning a significant chunk of legit mail.
Remember that Microsoft has far less internet-facing servers than all the different projects that make up a Linux distribution put together. Less internet facing servers means it is inherently less likely to get compromised.
You are underestimating the stupidity of users... It would be interesting to release a email virus that comes in an email saying "I am a virus - do not open the attachment" in the body, attached under the name "virus.exe" and just see how far it spreads - it'd put money on it spreading fairly widely and rapidly.
Unfortunately if MS continues like it has done, the web will stagnate with no cool new features appearing. MS has made it clear they're not interested in making IE standards complient or adding any new enhancements. Since 95% of people use IE (and probably have no clue that there is anything other than IE available), if IE is never enhanced then web developers will forever be stuck in the trap of never being able to use any cool new features that IE doesn't currently support. Very few web developers will be happy adding features to their website that make it unusable for 95% of their visitors (although it seems that professional web developers have no problem with making their sites only work with IE).
What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website.:)
CD players and older, slow CDROM drives use constant linear velocity - i.e. the disk spins slower when reading the outside tracks so you get the same data rate.
For fast CDROM drives, doing CLV impacts on seek times because at high speeds you have to change the speed of the disk more between the inside and outside tracks - accellerating the disk as you seek from the outside to the inside just takes too long. So faster CDROM drives either do CAV (Constant angular velocity - i.e. spinning the disk at the same speed nomatter what track you're reading), or do CAV for the inside part of the disk but CLV for the outside (e.g. the disk speed would remain constant up to a certain distance from the inside and then fall off towards the edge of the disk). Doing CAV obviously results in higher data rates on the outside tracks.
As for hard drives, I'm fairly certain that the number of sectors per cylinder is actually greater on the outside tracks so you get a (more) constant data density. Probably around 10 or so years ago I can remember advice being banded around that you should try to make sure your swap space is on the outside cylinders of the disk because you could get a higher data rate and more data per cylinder (so you wouldn't have to seek as much).
When they talk about the volume of a "black hole", are they talking about everything inside the event horizon? Because I was under the impression that the singularity itself has no volume.
You are not allowed to distribute a piece of software if you break the licence that gives you the right to do so - since SCO are breaking all the GPL licences, they have no rights to distribute the software. Essentially, their own actions have automatically banned then from legally distributing the software.
As far as I understand it, the "SCO cannot distribute" clause in the nmap licence does nothing since SCO is technically already banned from distributing GPL'd software by their breaches of (several hundred) GPL licences. All this does is makes the illegality of SCO distributing it more obvious. Either way, all the authors of GPL software that SCO is distributing could sue SCO for breach of licence.
SCO's defense is that they believe the GPL is void, however even if this is the case it doesn't help them since if GPL is void then noone has any rights to distribute the software - the copyright still belongs to the author. So they're basically damned if it's valid and damned if it's invalid.
IMHO, ICANN should withdraw Verisign's status as the top level domain administrators - they have shown they're not trustworthy enough to hold the position and I'm sure a more trustworthy company will step into the position (afterall, it is quite a profitable position),
On TV I watch stuff like Enterprise, FireFly, etc... none of which were produced by the BBC. I used to watch a lot of BBC science shows like Tomorrow's World, but guess what - they cancelled them all or dumbed them down to be completely non-informational so I don't bother anymore.
It is _my_ opinion that the BBC produce mostly crap these days. Everyone is entitled to their opinion though, which is why I think the subscription to the bbc should be optional. That way everyone gets what they want. I don't want to pay for something I'm not going to use - isn't that a completely valid opinion?.
Wrong. I have the familly pack from Sky - if you think that this list has only 3 channels on it you need to go back to school.
The point is that I watch about 1 show on BBC1 - if I had a choice about paying the licence fee I wouldn't pay any of it and would miss that show because it isn't worth 114 quid a year. I watch none of the other BBC channels and having seen the schedules for BBC3 and BBC4 I wonder who _would_ watch that crap. I don't listen to the radio channels, and whilest I do use the news section of the BBC website, I would be happy to pay a small subscription for that privalidge (or look at other commercial sites that are free anyway).
Shouldn't I have the choice about what I want to subscribe to? Wouldn't you complain if you were required to pay BT for a phone line because you had a phone, even though the phone was connected directly to some other company, never touched the BT network and you never used BT?
Wrong - a lot of people are in areas which _cannot_ get terrestrial TV, and if the trees behind my house were about a metre taller I wouldn't be able to get satellite either. People should be able to pay for what they want instead of being forced to pay for something they don't want.
You're right that Sky's model is similar - except that if I want to watch _no_ channels in the package I am not forced to pay. And if sky can give me so many channels for that price, why do the BBC give me so few channels?
Why should I pay the BBC 114ukp per year to make shows that I don't want to watch (most of what I watch is on Sky One because the BBC show nothing but crap) just so someone in another country can see them for free?
The BBC is not part of the British government. Yes, there are stupid laws that tax everyone who wants to use a TV (even if that TV won't be used to receive a broadcast signal) and give the money to the BBC, but that doesn't make them part of the government.
IMHO all DRM is ultimately flawed and can't seriously come to much - at some point the data has to be decrypted, and this has to happen in the user's home equipment. So long as the user has the equipment they can hack it to shreads to see how it works. And of course, where personal computers things are even worse since releasing the decoder as open source would render it useless so it suddenly becomes illegal to play the media under Linux or include the ability to play the media in free opensource software such as mplayer.
AFAIK, a UK citizen cannot rip/mix/burn BBC progs. The UK law allows for time shifting recordings, but not for storing them for repeated viewing. ISTR you're not allowed to keep a recording for over 28 days (or is it a week?). Of course noone pays any attention to the law, but it is still there.
About 4 years ago, after just moving house, I didn't have a TV for about 2 months - the TV Licencing Authority took to sending me letters with "YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW" in bold red letters across the front of the envelope because I didn't have a TV licence (since I had no TV). I'd love to see what would've happened if I had taken them to court for libel.
I miss Tomorrow's World (specifically from the 1990 era).
I agree entirely about the serious science programs like Horizon being very dumbed down and non-informational. I think the only good science series I've seen on the beeb in recent years is Rough Science (and that isn't really a serious science show)
I do wonder why I have to pay 114ukp a year for 2 channels, when I pay Sky about 215ukp per year for over 60 subscription channels. Yes, I know those subscription channels are also supported by adverts, but I don't really mind that since the BBC has almost as many adverts (advertising themselves) and have much poorer content.
And before you start saying there are more than 2 BBC channels, you are indeed right, but they presumably can't be paid for by the licence fee since a lot of people can't receive the extra channels but are still forced to pay the full fee.
I think the BBC's problem is that they're not really answerable to anyonw since everyone is force to pay them whether they want to watch or not. If a subscription channel plays crap then noone will bother subscribing. If a advertisment-supported channel plays crap then noone watches and the advertisers won't pay. If the BBC play crap then everyone's still forced to pay them.
IMHO the ideal subscription model for TV would be to have 2 methods for paying for subscription channels (including BBC channels): Either pay a monthly subscription if you watch quite a lot on that channel, or if you only watch 1 or 2 progs a week on that channel then do pay per view for just those shows. With CATV and satellite the technology is already there to allow this.
I think there is probably something to be said for splitting TV production and TV broadcasting into separate companies...
Of course, the US Patent Office doesn't care about prior art - they will grant this patent and it'll be up to whoever is affected by the patent to pay the huge legal costs to get it thrown out.:(
Slashdot Mirror
The whole licencing thing for this product has been discussed at length on the Myth-Users list (have a look at the whole thread). Most of the developers are reasonably happy with the state of affairs with the exception that most commented it'd be nice if they made more of a mention of MythTV in their documentation and publicity.
The company in question have also said that they will be contributing back (some of) their code shortly.
I would've thought it obvious that the non-standard feature should never have been implemented to start with.
Besides, MS have shown in the past that they're happy to completely remove completely standard features that have completely legitimate uses rather than just fixing the bug that makes them dangerous, so why should they find removing a nonstandard feature any more of a problem?
Microsoft have cornered the market with a bugridden browser that they have no motivation to improve by bundling it with standard windows - no web developer wants to alienate 95% of their visitors by refusing to support such a broken piece of software, so web developers are stuck in the continual situation of having to work around the bugs in IE rather than using all those cool features that every other browser supports (and have supported for a long time).
Wrong!
(mostly).
While it's true that this is a filtering bug in Hotmail and Yahoo, the reason it's a problem is because "It so happens that Internet Explorer provides one other mechanism to declare a namespace, via the non-standard <?xml:namespace> processing instruction.
So once again, the web designers have to work around IE's non-standards compliance.
Every so often someone mails me from their AOL account. AOL insist on binning my mail, and frankly I don't have time to chase them about it so people mailing me from AOL don't get replies. Wonder if AOL lose a significant number of customers because they're silently binning a significant chunk of legit mail.
Remember that Microsoft has far less internet-facing servers than all the different projects that make up a Linux distribution put together. Less internet facing servers means it is inherently less likely to get compromised.
I understand that MythTV is being demonstrated at CeBIT by Axel Thimm (the AT-RPMS guy). Good to see these projects getting some publicity.
You are underestimating the stupidity of users... It would be interesting to release a email virus that comes in an email saying "I am a virus - do not open the attachment" in the body, attached under the name "virus.exe" and just see how far it spreads - it'd put money on it spreading fairly widely and rapidly.
Unfortunately if MS continues like it has done, the web will stagnate with no cool new features appearing. MS has made it clear they're not interested in making IE standards complient or adding any new enhancements. Since 95% of people use IE (and probably have no clue that there is anything other than IE available), if IE is never enhanced then web developers will forever be stuck in the trap of never being able to use any cool new features that IE doesn't currently support. Very few web developers will be happy adding features to their website that make it unusable for 95% of their visitors (although it seems that professional web developers have no problem with making their sites only work with IE).
:)
What I'd love to see someone do at some point is re-skin FireFox to look like IE and then abuse one of IE's many security holes to replace IE with the reskinned FireFox on any machine that visits the website.
CD players and older, slow CDROM drives use constant linear velocity - i.e. the disk spins slower when reading the outside tracks so you get the same data rate.
For fast CDROM drives, doing CLV impacts on seek times because at high speeds you have to change the speed of the disk more between the inside and outside tracks - accellerating the disk as you seek from the outside to the inside just takes too long. So faster CDROM drives either do CAV (Constant angular velocity - i.e. spinning the disk at the same speed nomatter what track you're reading), or do CAV for the inside part of the disk but CLV for the outside (e.g. the disk speed would remain constant up to a certain distance from the inside and then fall off towards the edge of the disk). Doing CAV obviously results in higher data rates on the outside tracks.
As for hard drives, I'm fairly certain that the number of sectors per cylinder is actually greater on the outside tracks so you get a (more) constant data density. Probably around 10 or so years ago I can remember advice being banded around that you should try to make sure your swap space is on the outside cylinders of the disk because you could get a higher data rate and more data per cylinder (so you wouldn't have to seek as much).
...violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system...
The implication is they're suing for the use of the Linux OS, not some ported applications.
When they talk about the volume of a "black hole", are they talking about everything inside the event horizon? Because I was under the impression that the singularity itself has no volume.
You are not allowed to distribute a piece of software if you break the licence that gives you the right to do so - since SCO are breaking all the GPL licences, they have no rights to distribute the software. Essentially, their own actions have automatically banned then from legally distributing the software.
As far as I understand it, the "SCO cannot distribute" clause in the nmap licence does nothing since SCO is technically already banned from distributing GPL'd software by their breaches of (several hundred) GPL licences. All this does is makes the illegality of SCO distributing it more obvious. Either way, all the authors of GPL software that SCO is distributing could sue SCO for breach of licence.
SCO's defense is that they believe the GPL is void, however even if this is the case it doesn't help them since if GPL is void then noone has any rights to distribute the software - the copyright still belongs to the author. So they're basically damned if it's valid and damned if it's invalid.
IMHO, ICANN should withdraw Verisign's status as the top level domain administrators - they have shown they're not trustworthy enough to hold the position and I'm sure a more trustworthy company will step into the position (afterall, it is quite a profitable position),
On TV I watch stuff like Enterprise, FireFly, etc... none of which were produced by the BBC. I used to watch a lot of BBC science shows like Tomorrow's World, but guess what - they cancelled them all or dumbed them down to be completely non-informational so I don't bother anymore.
It is _my_ opinion that the BBC produce mostly crap these days. Everyone is entitled to their opinion though, which is why I think the subscription to the bbc should be optional. That way everyone gets what they want. I don't want to pay for something I'm not going to use - isn't that a completely valid opinion?.
Wrong. I have the familly pack from Sky - if you think that
this list has only 3 channels on it you need to go back to school.
The point is that I watch about 1 show on BBC1 - if I had a choice about paying the licence fee I wouldn't pay any of it and would miss that show because it isn't worth 114 quid a year. I watch none of the other BBC channels and having seen the schedules for BBC3 and BBC4 I wonder who _would_ watch that crap. I don't listen to the radio channels, and whilest I do use the news section of the BBC website, I would be happy to pay a small subscription for that privalidge (or look at other commercial sites that are free anyway).
Shouldn't I have the choice about what I want to subscribe to? Wouldn't you complain if you were required to pay BT for a phone line because you had a phone, even though the phone was connected directly to some other company, never touched the BT network and you never used BT?
Buy a digital receiver, and you can.
Wrong - a lot of people are in areas which _cannot_ get terrestrial TV, and if the trees behind my house were about a metre taller I wouldn't be able to get satellite either. People should be able to pay for what they want instead of being forced to pay for something they don't want.
You're right that Sky's model is similar - except that if I want to watch _no_ channels in the package I am not forced to pay. And if sky can give me so many channels for that price, why do the BBC give me so few channels?
Why should I pay the BBC 114ukp per year to make shows that I don't want to watch (most of what I watch is on Sky One because the BBC show nothing but crap) just so someone in another country can see them for free?
The BBC is not part of the British government. Yes, there are stupid laws that tax everyone who wants to use a TV (even if that TV won't be used to receive a broadcast signal) and give the money to the BBC, but that doesn't make them part of the government.
IMHO all DRM is ultimately flawed and can't seriously come to much - at some point the data has to be decrypted, and this has to happen in the user's home equipment. So long as the user has the equipment they can hack it to shreads to see how it works. And of course, where personal computers things are even worse since releasing the decoder as open source would render it useless so it suddenly becomes illegal to play the media under Linux or include the ability to play the media in free opensource software such as mplayer.
AFAIK, a UK citizen cannot rip/mix/burn BBC progs. The UK law allows for time shifting recordings, but not for storing them for repeated viewing. ISTR you're not allowed to keep a recording for over 28 days (or is it a week?). Of course noone pays any attention to the law, but it is still there.
About 4 years ago, after just moving house, I didn't have a TV for about 2 months - the TV Licencing Authority took to sending me letters with "YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW" in bold red letters across the front of the envelope because I didn't have a TV licence (since I had no TV). I'd love to see what would've happened if I had taken them to court for libel.
I miss Tomorrow's World (specifically from the 1990 era).
I agree entirely about the serious science programs like Horizon being very dumbed down and non-informational. I think the only good science series I've seen on the beeb in recent years is Rough Science (and that isn't really a serious science show)
I do wonder why I have to pay 114ukp a year for 2 channels, when I pay Sky about 215ukp per year for over 60 subscription channels. Yes, I know those subscription channels are also supported by adverts, but I don't really mind that since the BBC has almost as many adverts (advertising themselves) and have much poorer content.
And before you start saying there are more than 2 BBC channels, you are indeed right, but they presumably can't be paid for by the licence fee since a lot of people can't receive the extra channels but are still forced to pay the full fee.
I think the BBC's problem is that they're not really answerable to anyonw since everyone is force to pay them whether they want to watch or not. If a subscription channel plays crap then noone will bother subscribing. If a advertisment-supported channel plays crap then noone watches and the advertisers won't pay. If the BBC play crap then everyone's still forced to pay them.
IMHO the ideal subscription model for TV would be to have 2 methods for paying for subscription channels (including BBC channels): Either pay a monthly subscription if you watch quite a lot on that channel, or if you only watch 1 or 2 progs a week on that channel then do pay per view for just those shows. With CATV and satellite the technology is already there to allow this.
I think there is probably something to be said for splitting TV production and TV broadcasting into separate companies...
</rant>
Of course, the US Patent Office doesn't care about prior art - they will grant this patent and it'll be up to whoever is affected by the patent to pay the huge legal costs to get it thrown out. :(