I don't know if I saw it in a movie or it was the aforementioned Eddie Murphy bit or both, or I just came up with it myself long ago, but I have two related scenes in my head about this:
Someone parked just opened his car door into traffic whereupon another car struck the door and ripped it off its hinges. Perhaps a car chase as the other car does not stop. The computer is saying calmly, "The door is ajar. The door is ajar," to the shocked driver.
A later scene has him driving the car without the door and the car continuing to incessantly repeat, "The door is ajar. The door is ajar," to which the now-enraged driver screams back, "It's not ajar, it's fucking gone!"
Strangely, only just now have I thought up the guy complaining, "This car is driving me maaaaad!"
("The steering wheel is a donut. The steering wheel is a donut.")
OK, say a TiVo records video at an average of 4500 Kib/s and audio at 224 Kib/s. (Just a couple figures from a website about converting DVD video to TiVo.)
4724 Kib/s * 31,556,952 seconds/year = 149,275,041,248 Kib/year. Assuming a 128 GB flash drive is actually 128 GiB (as you would assume for a storage medium that is always sold in capacities that are powers of 2 before the units)
128 GiB == 134,217,728 KiB == 1,073,741,824 Kib and assuming perfect distribution of the rewrites and no recording had any retention rules, then over the course of one year each bit will be rewritten:
149,275,041,248 Kib/year / 1,073,741,824 Kib == 139.8 rewrites per year Assuming NAND figures of 1,000,000 rewrites before a failure:
1,000,000 writes/bitfailure / 139.8 writes/year = 7153 years/bitfailure that's 7,153 years of continuous recording before failure of a bit.
That sounds extremely good, but realize that that is an ideal utilization case that doesn't occur in reality. Writes get distributed, but data that isn't erased stays put, putting more wear on the rest of the space.
So let's assume a worst case is if all but 30 minutes of storage is KUID on the TiVo, leaving only enough space for the 30-minute buffer to rerecord over and over again. This would be the same as a TiVo with only enough space for 30 minutes:
1,000,000 writes/bitfailure / 1,755.5 writes/year = 570 years/bitfailure which is still very good. And that's just a 1 GiB stick under a TiVo's load.
So I'd consider installing two 128 GiB SSDs with ATA interface in a Series1 TiVo to max out its capacity without a patched kernel. And with the right card-edge device (comparing to SiliconDust's CacheCard ability to use extra RAM as a database cache), it might be possible to not even require an ATA drive at all. Maybe even lose the fan.
I've gotten blue screen with no login prompt before under Tiger on my machines several times. Usually it means that one of the drives failed to spin up. Pressing the reset button or equivalent procedure usually clears it up.
I don't have Leopard yet, and can only run it on one of my machines. Others will be staying with Tiger.
Now if only I can get Software Associates' ReadDVD! UDF 2.5 drivers to work on those Tiger installs. (Can anyone confirm UDF 2.5 and 2.6 support on release version of Leopard, needed for reading HD-DVD and BluRay disks? Apple's Tech Specs were silent on this.)
(The pants man claimed a "satisfaction guaranteed" sign meant they had to give him anything he wanted. Literally.) That's not what "satisfaction guaranteed" literally means. It literally means he has a right to demand satisfaction, i.e. firearms at twenty paces.
I would be hard pressed to think of a less frightening scenario than pissing off a bunch of gamers. Congratulations! You have passed the "Not Jack Thompson" Turing Test.
(He thinks we want to kill him and that games have trained us in the skills to do so. <vox name="Dirk Ruddy">But that's only mostly true.</vox>)
What about "compelling experience"?
Learn how to combine media with technologies such as PHP and Ajax to create a compelling experience. The Power of PHP and Ajax compels you!
The "you need a license to run it" crap is a lie told so many times most people have started believing it. Exactly. It's only "you need to agree to a license before you can run it" that's true, in that they put the agreement up as a barrier to running to software. If you can bypass that barrier without running afoul of the DMCA, you're not bound by the license.
BTW, you can break encryption and not run afoul of the DMCA. You just can't be a party in trafficking in tools to break encryption. If you create your own, or can use tools not intended for that purpose to break encryption, that isn't against the DMCA.
IANAL. This is my understanding when I read through the DMCA and noting you're free to circumvent CSS on DVDs as long as you invent the tools to do so yourself. DeCSS is illegal to distribute; creating your own DeCSS yourself from scratch and using it isn't.
1. EULAs have yet to pass muster in court. Are you certain of that? I seem to recall how some terms of EULAs have been ruled unconscionable (no class actions, preferred venue), but did not involve throwing out the entire EULA. Some would take that as an implicit upholding of the principle of having a(n) EULA.
Oh, and that's a non-issue for the XBOX Live EULA for me as it is already invalid on its face (I managed to get through it without clicking the "Accept button below").
3. Regardless of EULA, the DMCA (as unconstitutional as it is) has made reverse engineering to bypass encryption (DRM) illegal, so no, you can't just reverse engineer or decompile it legally unless you qualify as an exception under this corrupt, but still current law. Only if it is encrypted. And if I can induce it to decrypt itself (which it needs to be able to do anyway in order to function), I'm not in violation either.
I am within my rights to charge back everything I've paid them in the last two years, and there's nothing they can do about it. Actually you can generally only get refunds within sixty days. He lives on the Moon you insensitive clod! Its orbital period is only 27.321582 days!
if you try to enter another serial after you've been locked out, Steam won't accept it because you "already own the game." That's crazy. What's so wrong with owning two licenses for a game with an on-line multi-player component? What if I have two PCs in my home and want to run two legal copies of the game, one on each machine? I should need two Steam accounts to do that, keep track of two IDs and two passwords, and juggle which account runs on which machine when I want to play something else? What if I want to play two different games under the same account on different machines simultaneously? Is letting someone else play my game a violation?
I've already had Steam refuse to let me play games (a 5-pack) I purchased because they outsourced packaging to another company that put the same license code in every box. I waited too long before installing to qualify for amnesty. To get new keys I'd have to pay more than what I paid the first time! (Even getting them installed was a pain because Steam didn't exist when I bought the pack and attempting to use the old registration method didn't even direct me to install Steam. I had to Google for the solution to the failure to update.)
It's their right to do whatever they want with their game. How easily they convince us that, even though we paid for them, they aren't our games.
Thing is, until you agree to the EULA, it is your game. You can do whatever you want to it, including disassemble and reverse engineer it. It is the EULA that reassigns your first-sale rights back to the vendor and takes away your freedom to do whatever the hell you want with it.
I personally like the EULA for XBOX Live on the XBOX 360. It told me I agreed only when I hit the Accept button "below". The button was to the upper left of the EULA, not below it. So I'm not bound by it, not even if they update the agreement to restate correctly where the Accept button is. I'd only be bound by updates to the agreement if I had agreed to the original agreement saying that I would be! By the terms of the agreement presented me, I'm not!
However, I expect that they currently still have enough control over the box to force me to go through a revised agreement before continuing to allow me to use XBOX Live.
I'm saying it looks like it would also affect those who travel and play abroad, with the added injury that upon returning home your license (or worse, your entire Steam account) is still gonna be disabled (the license, tainted by foreign use, is permanently associated to your account and you can't have two licenses for the same product).
So with Steam, one of its ballyhooed features is that I can get on someone else's Internet-connected computer, install and sign into Steam, and have it download my games and let me play them there... but now they say I can only do that so long as I haven't left my home country?
"In Russia, we don't have American Express. We have Russian Express: `Don't Leave Home'." -- Yakov Smirnov
There, matey, I know a dead space station when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now! 'I's not pinin'! 'I's passed on! This space station is no more! It has ceased to be! 'It's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'I's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'I rests in peace! 'I's off the twig! 'I's kicked the bucket, 'I's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SPACE STATION!! Well, I'd better replace it, then. [Quick glances at console.] Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the planet, and uh, we're right out of space stations.
I see. I see, I get the picture.
I got a shuttle.
[pause] Pray, does it shoot planet-destroying death rays?
Nnnnot really.
WELL IT'S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?
ICANN has opened an investigation into a suspected practice by registrars it calls "domain name front running." I prefer "squatspecting" myself, as it is the cybersquatting upon others' domain prospecting, possibly to ransom the domain to the person who intended to register it.
There was a.com domain I wanted, but it is currently held by a law firm with named partners sharing the same initials, and they could easily hold onto it indefinitely even if there's a change in partnership to maintain communication with former clients of the old firm. When I finally decided to get the.tv version which had been free, it too was taken.
I now keep my ideas to myself until I'm sure I want to run with them. Though I fear these people may grab it even within the few minutes it will take me to search and register.
Howie Mandel related this story in a stand-up routine on HBO in the 1980s (while he was still on St. Elsewhere). Searches didn't produce the bit, so here it is from my memory. Historical note: apparently at the time, Canadian driver's license weren't photo-bearing ID, or at least his wasn't:
I needed a US bank to apply for an account or else I wouldn't get paid in the US. The lady behind the bank counter said, "I need to see your ID," so I give her my Canadian driver's license. She gives it back to me saying, "No, I need something with a picture on it," so I took it back and drew a little picture on it. No, no, wait, wait! Then she said, "I'm sorry, sir, but that's not good enough," and I said, "What, do I need to be a fucking artist to get an account here?"
Great. Not only are whois queries bugged by domain prospectors, a.k.a. squatspecting (don't check for the availability of a domain unless you intend to buy it immediately, because someone else is watching and will do so instead), but now just trying them in your browser will tip off others who will buy your ideas for domains out from under you.
Now after you try a URL in your browser and get an error saying the domain doesn't exist, you can just wait one minute and try again and someone will have it up and ready to serve you porn.
When I first got my DVD-burning TiVo, I thought I'd give archiving every episode of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to DVD a try, just for fun (and to use up a bulk purchase of blank DVDs). I stopped after I discovered I hadn't kept up and some episodes had expired and deleted before I could save them. Too much work.
I gotta remember to pull up the clip where Rob Corddry was "exit-polling Covenant aliens". Or was that one released on DVD? Do they include clips from episodes released on the Indecision 2004 DVD?
Beethoven's gone but his music lives on, And Mozart don't go shoppin' no more, You'll never meet Liszt or Brahms again, And Elgar doesn't answer the door.
Schübert and Chopin used to chuckle and laugh, Whilst composing a long symphony, But one hundred and fifty years later, There's very little of them left to see.
They're decomposing composers,
There's nothing much anyone can do,
You can still hear Beethoven,
But Beethoven cannot hear you.
Händel and Haydn and Rachmaninov, Enjoyed a nice drink with their meal, But nowadays no-one will serve them, And their gravy is left to congeal.
Verdi and Wagner delighted the crowds, With their highly original sound, The pianos they played, they're still working, But they're both six feet underground.
They're decomposing composers,
There's less of them every year,
You can say what you like to Debussy,
But there's not much of him left to hear.
Claude Achille Debussy, died 1918. Christoph Willibald Gluck, died 1787. Carl Maria von Weber, not at all well 1825, died 1826. Giacomo Meyerbeer: still alive 1863, not still alive 1864. Modeste Mussorgsky. 1880, going to parties; no fun anymore, 1881. Johan Nepomuk Hummel. Chattin' away nineteen to the dozen with his mates down the pub every evening, 1836. 1837 nothing.
Not the typical patent question, but rather relating to consequences of invention: will this device make scents patentable? Currently you cannot patent a particular scent (e.g. perfume, cologne, bouquet of wine), but what if the uniqueness of a scent was quantifiable through the use of just such a device?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if I saw it in a movie or it was the aforementioned Eddie Murphy bit or both, or I just came up with it myself long ago, but I have two related scenes in my head about this:
Someone parked just opened his car door into traffic whereupon another car struck the door and ripped it off its hinges. Perhaps a car chase as the other car does not stop. The computer is saying calmly, "The door is ajar. The door is ajar," to the shocked driver.
A later scene has him driving the car without the door and the car continuing to incessantly repeat, "The door is ajar. The door is ajar," to which the now-enraged driver screams back, "It's not ajar, it's fucking gone!"
Strangely, only just now have I thought up the guy complaining, "This car is driving me maaaaad!"
("The steering wheel is a donut. The steering wheel is a donut.")
OK, say a TiVo records video at an average of 4500 Kib/s and audio at 224 Kib/s. (Just a couple figures from a website about converting DVD video to TiVo.)
4724 Kib/s * 31,556,952 seconds/year = 149,275,041,248 Kib/year.
Assuming a 128 GB flash drive is actually 128 GiB (as you would assume for a storage medium that is always sold in capacities that are powers of 2 before the units)
128 GiB == 134,217,728 KiB == 1,073,741,824 Kib
and assuming perfect distribution of the rewrites and no recording had any retention rules, then over the course of one year each bit will be rewritten:
149,275,041,248 Kib/year / 1,073,741,824 Kib == 139.8 rewrites per year
Assuming NAND figures of 1,000,000 rewrites before a failure:
1,000,000 writes/bitfailure / 139.8 writes/year = 7153 years/bitfailure
that's 7,153 years of continuous recording before failure of a bit.
That sounds extremely good, but realize that that is an ideal utilization case that doesn't occur in reality. Writes get distributed, but data that isn't erased stays put, putting more wear on the rest of the space.
So let's assume a worst case is if all but 30 minutes of storage is KUID on the TiVo, leaving only enough space for the 30-minute buffer to rerecord over and over again. This would be the same as a TiVo with only enough space for 30 minutes:
4724 kb/s * 30 min. * 60 s/min. == 8,503,200 Kib
149,275,041,248 Kib/year / 8,503,200 Kib = 1,755.5 rewrites/year
1,000,000 writes/bitfailure / 1,755.5 writes/year = 570 years/bitfailure
which is still very good. And that's just a 1 GiB stick under a TiVo's load.
So I'd consider installing two 128 GiB SSDs with ATA interface in a Series1 TiVo to max out its capacity without a patched kernel. And with the right card-edge device (comparing to SiliconDust's CacheCard ability to use extra RAM as a database cache), it might be possible to not even require an ATA drive at all. Maybe even lose the fan.
I've gotten blue screen with no login prompt before under Tiger on my machines several times. Usually it means that one of the drives failed to spin up. Pressing the reset button or equivalent procedure usually clears it up.
I don't have Leopard yet, and can only run it on one of my machines. Others will be staying with Tiger.
Now if only I can get Software Associates' ReadDVD! UDF 2.5 drivers to work on those Tiger installs. (Can anyone confirm UDF 2.5 and 2.6 support on release version of Leopard, needed for reading HD-DVD and BluRay disks? Apple's Tech Specs were silent on this.)
Dr. Claw vs Cobra Commander, hmm?
I just can't picture him as Soundwave, but Starscream, sure.
(He thinks we want to kill him and that games have trained us in the skills to do so. <vox name="Dirk Ruddy">But that's only mostly true.</vox>)
The government removing a tax? You must be new here.
We aren't paying taxes on long distance phone service to pay for the Spanish-American War anymore. That's one down.
Speaking of which, is there any update on repealing that same "federal excise tax" for local service yet?
BTW, you can break encryption and not run afoul of the DMCA. You just can't be a party in trafficking in tools to break encryption. If you create your own, or can use tools not intended for that purpose to break encryption, that isn't against the DMCA.
IANAL. This is my understanding when I read through the DMCA and noting you're free to circumvent CSS on DVDs as long as you invent the tools to do so yourself. DeCSS is illegal to distribute; creating your own DeCSS yourself from scratch and using it isn't.
Oh, and that's a non-issue for the XBOX Live EULA for me as it is already invalid on its face (I managed to get through it without clicking the "Accept button below").
IANAL.
I've already had Steam refuse to let me play games (a 5-pack) I purchased because they outsourced packaging to another company that put the same license code in every box. I waited too long before installing to qualify for amnesty. To get new keys I'd have to pay more than what I paid the first time! (Even getting them installed was a pain because Steam didn't exist when I bought the pack and attempting to use the old registration method didn't even direct me to install Steam. I had to Google for the solution to the failure to update.)
Thing is, until you agree to the EULA, it is your game. You can do whatever you want to it, including disassemble and reverse engineer it. It is the EULA that reassigns your first-sale rights back to the vendor and takes away your freedom to do whatever the hell you want with it.
I personally like the EULA for XBOX Live on the XBOX 360. It told me I agreed only when I hit the Accept button "below". The button was to the upper left of the EULA, not below it. So I'm not bound by it, not even if they update the agreement to restate correctly where the Accept button is. I'd only be bound by updates to the agreement if I had agreed to the original agreement saying that I would be! By the terms of the agreement presented me, I'm not!
However, I expect that they currently still have enough control over the box to force me to go through a revised agreement before continuing to allow me to use XBOX Live.
I'm saying it looks like it would also affect those who travel and play abroad, with the added injury that upon returning home your license (or worse, your entire Steam account) is still gonna be disabled (the license, tainted by foreign use, is permanently associated to your account and you can't have two licenses for the same product).
So, "Don't Leave Home!"
So with Steam, one of its ballyhooed features is that I can get on someone else's Internet-connected computer, install and sign into Steam, and have it download my games and let me play them there... but now they say I can only do that so long as I haven't left my home country?
"In Russia, we don't have American Express. We have Russian Express: `Don't Leave Home'." -- Yakov Smirnov
I see. I see, I get the picture.
I got a shuttle.
[pause]
Pray, does it shoot planet-destroying death rays?
Nnnnot really.
WELL IT'S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?
There was a
I now keep my ideas to myself until I'm sure I want to run with them. Though I fear these people may grab it even within the few minutes it will take me to search and register.
Great. Not only are whois queries bugged by domain prospectors, a.k.a. squatspecting (don't check for the availability of a domain unless you intend to buy it immediately, because someone else is watching and will do so instead), but now just trying them in your browser will tip off others who will buy your ideas for domains out from under you.
Now after you try a URL in your browser and get an error saying the domain doesn't exist, you can just wait one minute and try again and someone will have it up and ready to serve you porn.
This is "Do More Evil".
When I first got my DVD-burning TiVo, I thought I'd give archiving every episode of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to DVD a try, just for fun (and to use up a bulk purchase of blank DVDs). I stopped after I discovered I hadn't kept up and some episodes had expired and deleted before I could save them. Too much work.
I gotta remember to pull up the clip where Rob Corddry was "exit-polling Covenant aliens". Or was that one released on DVD? Do they include clips from episodes released on the Indecision 2004 DVD?
Enough said in the Subject.
Beethoven's gone but his music lives on,
And Mozart don't go shoppin' no more,
You'll never meet Liszt or Brahms again,
And Elgar doesn't answer the door.
Schübert and Chopin used to chuckle and laugh,
Whilst composing a long symphony,
But one hundred and fifty years later,
There's very little of them left to see.
They're decomposing composers,
There's nothing much anyone can do,
You can still hear Beethoven,
But Beethoven cannot hear you.
Händel and Haydn and Rachmaninov,
Enjoyed a nice drink with their meal,
But nowadays no-one will serve them,
And their gravy is left to congeal.
Verdi and Wagner delighted the crowds,
With their highly original sound,
The pianos they played, they're still working,
But they're both six feet underground.
They're decomposing composers,
There's less of them every year,
You can say what you like to Debussy,
But there's not much of him left to hear.
Claude Achille Debussy, died 1918.
Christoph Willibald Gluck, died 1787.
Carl Maria von Weber, not at all well 1825, died 1826.
Giacomo Meyerbeer: still alive 1863, not still alive 1864.
Modeste Mussorgsky. 1880, going to parties; no fun anymore, 1881.
Johan Nepomuk Hummel. Chattin' away nineteen to the dozen with his mates down the pub every evening, 1836. 1837 nothing.
Not the typical patent question, but rather relating to consequences of invention: will this device make scents patentable? Currently you cannot patent a particular scent (e.g. perfume, cologne, bouquet of wine), but what if the uniqueness of a scent was quantifiable through the use of just such a device?