There is always plain old copyright law though. Without DRM, it's still illegal to distribute copies without permission.
As for finding a a great to make money off of creating information that is far better than using copyright to artificially make it behave like a physical product, if you answer that you'll go down in history. If I download 1 song, it might make sense to pay $1. If I download 10000 songs, it does not make sense to pay $10,000. The cost of information should never exceed the consumer's willingness to pay. If it does, the producer has failed to sell their zero cost product.
Subscription models lead to laziness. Donation and ransom models create a free-rider problem. The open source model requires that something be personally worthwhile for someone to create it, so many things aren't created, even if they're worthwhile to the whole, just not any single individual. The copyright model works so long as the price is right, which it never is if the price is the same for everyone. Companies try to solve this by creating several editions of their products, or giving volume discounts. The DRM model is a form of snake-oil security, abused to create vendor lockin, and misunderstood by content producers who are used to selling physical media. DRM sucks because the implementation sucks, and the motivations are all wrong, but in theory it can be rather useful in creating a more efficient information market.
If DRM worked, and was not abused, it could be used in such a way that does a good job at judging what information is worth to the consumer and charging a fair price appropriately for it. If the consumer decides "Oh, I won't be using it for much, and so I won't buy it without a significant discount", DRM will keep them honest to enable the vendor to give them a price they're willing to pay. I won't pay $10000 for 10000 songs, but I'm unlikely to listen to those songs more than 10 times each, so I might (given my dislike of DRM, probably not) buy 10000 songs that could be listened to 10 times each at a significantly reduced price. If you know how someone is going to use something, you can guess what they'd be willing to pay, and tailor a limited product where they'd pay only that much, and they'd be happy if the limitations were an honest representation of how they planned to use it. Microsoft is really working hard at this using DRM and simple EULA restrictions. People are willing to pay $1000 or more for Windows Server, but they wouldn't buy it if XP Home wasn't capped/throttled in many ways, nor would a home user spend $1000 on a desktop OS. So companies have several versions of their products, with the cheaper editions artificially limited in ways that users that can't afford the better editions are unlikely to miss. Visual Studio is too expensive for pre-college students, who have roughly $0 to their name, so Microsoft makes free editions for non-commercial use. Microsoft sells MSDN subscriptions to professional developers, giving them every piece of software Microsoft makes for a fixed yearly rate (or free to anyone they wish to convert via MVP invites), but for development and testing use only, and each product key can be used 10 times. DRM today is poorly applied, creating overpriced inferior products with no variation, and being misused to create lockin rather than to solve the "information price" vs "value to the consumer" problem.
Whether or not to actually use DRM is up to the vendors, and consumers don't have to buy it. I want something I can do anything with, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
With half the ram, it'll just take twice as long, etc. It'll take up to (2^64)*(number of blocks + 1) encryptions. You can probably pull it off in 2^96 encryptions (checking 2^64 keys against 2^32 blocks of 32gb), which is a lot better than 2^128, but just as impractical today.
I'd pay double if all the money went to Weird Al. He probably makes 50 cents of the $12-$15 we spend on one of his CD's.
Unfortunately, the copyrights are owned by his record label, now Sony, which bought the record label that bought the record label that Weird Al started with, or something.
He might as well have said, "I'd like to give credit to that asshole, but there are a lot of assholes out there and we are just listening to our assh^H^H^H^H customers."
My own prediction was that Wii will kick ass, at least in terms of units and games sold. But I suppose if a PS3 costs the same as 3-5 Wii's, Nintendo would have to sell 3-5 for every 1 PS3 to match their market share by the Yankee group's measure. Sort of like how Linux has a very low market share when measured by operating system license revenue.
He's like a lone warrior in the battle against video game violence. Why does it seem like he's the only person out there working to censor our video games?
Until you get that POS replaced or moved to a real database, you can automate repair with a tool called jetcomp. It can repair many databases that Access's Compact and Repair and DAO's CompactDatabase method can't, and can be automated from the command line.
I went so far as to write a script to detect when the database has been corrupted by attempting to open it and checking the error message if it can't, and automatically backup and repair it using jetcomp. Our corruption problem finally went away when I found a system that had a slightly bad network connection and fixed it. Network problems become more apparent if you specify a larger packet size when pinging, like 400 bytes or so. We went from almost daily corruption to no corruption in over a month.
If the string is on the stack, then overflowing it could easuly and predictably overwrite the return address to the calling function. By overwriting it it an address within the overflowed string on the stack, they could cause it to execute code in the string when the current function returns.
According to Thunderbird, I have 30750 emails, going back to the end of March 2000. About 5000 of them are in Junk or Spam folders. Looking back, I even have a folder full of email viruses I received from 2002-2004. I never did anything with them. I just created a folder called "Viruses" and started moving them there.
When I install a new Linux distro at home, I back up my home directory to two other systems, even though 80-90% of what's in there is just backups from previous installs/migrations.
I have a folder on my work desktop (XP) called "old", which contains something like 70000 files consuming 10gb. Every once in a while I back it up to a server. My "My Documents" points to a private share on a samba file server with a mirrored raid, which is backed up nightly to two other servers.
I can recover files deleted from our servers years ago if I wanted. Our ERP database makes its way onto 3 servers, my desktop, and a tape with each nightly backup, and I wrote a script to compare each snapshot and produce a sort of diff-style log of exactly what's changed in each table. I have another script which maintains a full backup of our Exchange server using mbsync, storing one text file per email, because I don't trust Exchange whatsoever, especially with the standard edition's "single proprietary Access-like data file for the entire company's email" limitation.
I've seen plenty of people who delete stuff the moment they decide to move on to something else, and empty their recycle bin or email trash folder immediately after. It bugs the hell out of me. I'm occasionally asked to recover something they've "lost".
Many sites, such as Google Video and YouTube, continue to target Flash 7, despite supposed video compression improvements in 8 and 9. Flash 7 was the last version released for Linux, which may have something to do with it. If that's the reason, then Adobe/Macromedia's years of foot-dragging on Linux support has already hurt them in measurable ways, slowing adoption of their newer releases.
We had a POS (point of sale) / inventory system that would occasionally freeze for everyone for exactly 3 minutes. There were also times where it'd slow to about 1/20th of it's normal speed (3 second report might take a minute) until the database server (just the service) was restarted. I never could find any network problems to explain it, and the server was pretty idle almost all the time. Maybe the author believed us, but it was never resolved. Eventually we just made the costly switch to something else.
Though I'm sure you encounter many customers who expect the software to be infinitely intelligent and psychic. If they're sincere, there's not much you can do about them, except sever your relationship with them and feel secure in the knowledge that their life will be full of disappointment. But I suspect a number of customers will just exaggerate the problems of the software in an attempt to end their service agreement with a refund, like this person.
Slashdot Mirror
There is always plain old copyright law though. Without DRM, it's still illegal to distribute copies without permission.
As for finding a a great to make money off of creating information that is far better than using copyright to artificially make it behave like a physical product, if you answer that you'll go down in history. If I download 1 song, it might make sense to pay $1. If I download 10000 songs, it does not make sense to pay $10,000. The cost of information should never exceed the consumer's willingness to pay. If it does, the producer has failed to sell their zero cost product.
Subscription models lead to laziness. Donation and ransom models create a free-rider problem. The open source model requires that something be personally worthwhile for someone to create it, so many things aren't created, even if they're worthwhile to the whole, just not any single individual. The copyright model works so long as the price is right, which it never is if the price is the same for everyone. Companies try to solve this by creating several editions of their products, or giving volume discounts. The DRM model is a form of snake-oil security, abused to create vendor lockin, and misunderstood by content producers who are used to selling physical media. DRM sucks because the implementation sucks, and the motivations are all wrong, but in theory it can be rather useful in creating a more efficient information market.
If DRM worked, and was not abused, it could be used in such a way that does a good job at judging what information is worth to the consumer and charging a fair price appropriately for it. If the consumer decides "Oh, I won't be using it for much, and so I won't buy it without a significant discount", DRM will keep them honest to enable the vendor to give them a price they're willing to pay. I won't pay $10000 for 10000 songs, but I'm unlikely to listen to those songs more than 10 times each, so I might (given my dislike of DRM, probably not) buy 10000 songs that could be listened to 10 times each at a significantly reduced price. If you know how someone is going to use something, you can guess what they'd be willing to pay, and tailor a limited product where they'd pay only that much, and they'd be happy if the limitations were an honest representation of how they planned to use it. Microsoft is really working hard at this using DRM and simple EULA restrictions. People are willing to pay $1000 or more for Windows Server, but they wouldn't buy it if XP Home wasn't capped/throttled in many ways, nor would a home user spend $1000 on a desktop OS. So companies have several versions of their products, with the cheaper editions artificially limited in ways that users that can't afford the better editions are unlikely to miss. Visual Studio is too expensive for pre-college students, who have roughly $0 to their name, so Microsoft makes free editions for non-commercial use. Microsoft sells MSDN subscriptions to professional developers, giving them every piece of software Microsoft makes for a fixed yearly rate (or free to anyone they wish to convert via MVP invites), but for development and testing use only, and each product key can be used 10 times. DRM today is poorly applied, creating overpriced inferior products with no variation, and being misused to create lockin rather than to solve the "information price" vs "value to the consumer" problem.
Whether or not to actually use DRM is up to the vendors, and consumers don't have to buy it. I want something I can do anything with, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
We keep the new definitions, but still call Pluto a planet, just as an honorary title.
Once we're dead, we won't care so much about the fate of Linux.
With half the ram, it'll just take twice as long, etc. It'll take up to (2^64)*(number of blocks + 1) encryptions. You can probably pull it off in 2^96 encryptions (checking 2^64 keys against 2^32 blocks of 32gb), which is a lot better than 2^128, but just as impractical today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet-in-the-middle_at tack
That's why we have triple-DES instead of double-DES.
Wget only needed 18 tries, with resuming enabled.
I'd pay double if all the money went to Weird Al. He probably makes 50 cents of the $12-$15 we spend on one of his CD's.
Unfortunately, the copyrights are owned by his record label, now Sony, which bought the record label that bought the record label that Weird Al started with, or something.
A mirror would be neat. We've wiped Weird Al off the internet. Even the lower quality mp3 link on myspace failed the first few times I tried it.
There are 50000 nerds hammering that link with wget by now.
Nobody is confused when someone says "begs" instead of "raises".
He might as well have said, "I'd like to give credit to that asshole, but there are a lot of assholes out there and we are just listening to our assh^H^H^H^H customers."
People usually install their own distro anyways. So long as there is a number of distros that are officially supported, all is well.
My own prediction was that Wii will kick ass, at least in terms of units and games sold. But I suppose if a PS3 costs the same as 3-5 Wii's, Nintendo would have to sell 3-5 for every 1 PS3 to match their market share by the Yankee group's measure. Sort of like how Linux has a very low market share when measured by operating system license revenue.
He's like a lone warrior in the battle against video game violence. Why does it seem like he's the only person out there working to censor our video games?
Until you get that POS replaced or moved to a real database, you can automate repair with a tool called jetcomp. It can repair many databases that Access's Compact and Repair and DAO's CompactDatabase method can't, and can be automated from the command line.
I went so far as to write a script to detect when the database has been corrupted by attempting to open it and checking the error message if it can't, and automatically backup and repair it using jetcomp. Our corruption problem finally went away when I found a system that had a slightly bad network connection and fixed it. Network problems become more apparent if you specify a larger packet size when pinging, like 400 bytes or so. We went from almost daily corruption to no corruption in over a month.
I've used ADO's OpenSchema method in the past to get raw lists of table schemas and relationships, including field descriptions.
If the string is on the stack, then overflowing it could easuly and predictably overwrite the return address to the calling function. By overwriting it it an address within the overflowed string on the stack, they could cause it to execute code in the string when the current function returns.
My mom got a CS degree in her mid 40's, and found a good job soon after.
According to Thunderbird, I have 30750 emails, going back to the end of March 2000. About 5000 of them are in Junk or Spam folders. Looking back, I even have a folder full of email viruses I received from 2002-2004. I never did anything with them. I just created a folder called "Viruses" and started moving them there.
When I install a new Linux distro at home, I back up my home directory to two other systems, even though 80-90% of what's in there is just backups from previous installs/migrations.
I have a folder on my work desktop (XP) called "old", which contains something like 70000 files consuming 10gb. Every once in a while I back it up to a server. My "My Documents" points to a private share on a samba file server with a mirrored raid, which is backed up nightly to two other servers.
I can recover files deleted from our servers years ago if I wanted. Our ERP database makes its way onto 3 servers, my desktop, and a tape with each nightly backup, and I wrote a script to compare each snapshot and produce a sort of diff-style log of exactly what's changed in each table. I have another script which maintains a full backup of our Exchange server using mbsync, storing one text file per email, because I don't trust Exchange whatsoever, especially with the standard edition's "single proprietary Access-like data file for the entire company's email" limitation.
I've seen plenty of people who delete stuff the moment they decide to move on to something else, and empty their recycle bin or email trash folder immediately after. It bugs the hell out of me. I'm occasionally asked to recover something they've "lost".
Make a lot of noise. Seems to work.
The majority of the users WGA identifies as pirate are using corporate volume license keys.
So long as the game's published date begins with a 19, I'm ok.
I posted about it in my journal about a month ago, figuring it wasn't really front-page material at the time.
http://slashdot.org/~dtfinch/journal/139571
Many sites, such as Google Video and YouTube, continue to target Flash 7, despite supposed video compression improvements in 8 and 9. Flash 7 was the last version released for Linux, which may have something to do with it. If that's the reason, then Adobe/Macromedia's years of foot-dragging on Linux support has already hurt them in measurable ways, slowing adoption of their newer releases.
We had a POS (point of sale) / inventory system that would occasionally freeze for everyone for exactly 3 minutes. There were also times where it'd slow to about 1/20th of it's normal speed (3 second report might take a minute) until the database server (just the service) was restarted. I never could find any network problems to explain it, and the server was pretty idle almost all the time. Maybe the author believed us, but it was never resolved. Eventually we just made the costly switch to something else.
Though I'm sure you encounter many customers who expect the software to be infinitely intelligent and psychic. If they're sincere, there's not much you can do about them, except sever your relationship with them and feel secure in the knowledge that their life will be full of disappointment. But I suspect a number of customers will just exaggerate the problems of the software in an attempt to end their service agreement with a refund, like this person.
I think they were at 60 cents before this all started.