If you are working with MSDN and XP in a corporate lab environment, you would use the Corporate version of XP which does not require activation.
There is no Corporate version. What's referred to as the "Corporate" version is actually just Professional Edition using a volume-license key. If you're in a small business, activation is still the rule (and it's a royal PITA when you create and destroy virtual machines left and right for testing purposes--that's why we use Windows 2000 for those at our company).
As for more basic CD player compatibility issues, Gilliat-Smith says the discs are compliant with Sony Philips CD specifications and should therefore play in all conventional CD players.
If the discs are compliant with the red book specification, then you can rip the tracks to an unencumbered WAV or MP3 with the software of your choice (cdex, EAC, cdparanoia, WMP10, etc. etc.). If the discs are broken so that these programs won't work, then they're not redbook compliant and Sony is lying.
Or maybe that's why they're saying the "Sony Philips" specification rather than the "Philips" specification--maybe that's their bastardized version of the official spec that explicitly allows attempting to break computer recorders.
I guess it could be a valid CD if they just take the SunComm approach--install malware with an autorun program--but that's easily defeated, at least until the RIAA buys a law that forces computers to ignore the Shift key...
Has Google's web search been accused of copyright infringement? How is it fundamentally different from news or book searches?
I suspect that web search engines don't typically get sued for copyright infringement only because they've been around for as long as the Web has been popular. But whether Google indexes a web site or a book, it doesn't (okay, if you overlook the web cache) deliver the content; it only references it and makes it more accessible.
If Google made it as easy to find information in books as it has done for the Web, publishers should be PAYING Google to index their works, not fretting and threatening to sue over it. Think about it. What better way to tell people about books they might be interested in buying? Traditional advertising and shelf-browsing are hit-and-miss at best. Content searches over books would be a phenomenal way to attract customers (IMHO etc).
I'm always surprised that articles about DRM seldom if ever mention the fact that all DRM'd content is in effect printed on disappearing ink.
If you remember to back up your licenses (provided your DRM lets you do that in the first place), you can take your music and ebooks with you to your new computer. But you can't do that indefinitely. Microsoft, for example, only lets you do it twice. After that, all your paid-for content is simply gone.
I wrote about this in some detail on my blog last week.
If Napster wanted to, they could sell music that would play practically anywhere--Windows, MuVo, iPod, iRiver, Mac, Linux, you name it, and they could do it today, without Apple's cooperation.
Just sell MP3s.
You'd save a bunch on support costs too, for when people's music disappears because they upgraded their computers. And you'd get more business from people like me to don't like to shell out real money for disappearing products.
But alas, they couldn't do that, because then people could share the music they bought online. Never mind the fact that the music they bought is already being shared online. You should just pay to download the inferior disappearing version instead, because then the RIAA won't sue you.
I don't know why he didn't just call it e-xwords or something like that.
If you look at the bark letter from Hasbro, you'll see that the board layout itself is copyrighted. I suppose if e-xwords used a different board layout, it might be okay--but only if Hasbro's laywers don't claim to have a copyright on methods and concepts a la SCO. (Patents can cover methods and concepts, but any patent on Scrabble would have expired decades ago.)
The EU should just mandate that government-owned systems must use protocols and file formats whose specifications are publicly available royalty-free. Any other arrangement allows a vendor (be it Microsoft or anybody) to hold your data hostage.
Also, the bug that causes the user to lose the entire contents of their hard disk drive while uninstalling Firefox 1.0 is worrysome. But I've warned all my coworkers, relatives and friends (who run Firefox 1.0) to not upgrade by uninstalling and installing Firefox 1.01.
Eh? Are you trying to be funny?
I've done a dozen Google and Bugzilla searches and I can't find any reference to such a bug. Have you personally seen the Firefox uninstaller destroy somebody's hard drive, or read a first-hand account? Maybe somebody experienced a coincidental failure at the time they were uninstalling Firefox--hard drives do fail occasionally. But I'd have a hard time believing that Firefox itself can accidentally destroy all your data while you uninstall it, and I'd have an even harder time believing that that bug exists and the Microsoft trolls aren't shouting it from the rooftops.
Dr. Berger describes the letter of the president of the Commission (José Manuel Barroso) to the president of the EP (Josep Borrell), in which a restart of the process is declined, as "yet another provocation of the parliament". She concludes that Barroso "apparently loves to play high-stakes poker with the EP", and recalls that he already suffered his first defeat with that approach last year when he had to withdraw his list of proposed commissioners because the EP would otherwise have withheld its approval. The way she sees the present situation, Barroso may now face another defeat. Dr. Berger concludes saying that Bill Gates, who recently traveled Europe to pressure politicians toward a directive to his liking, "is at the moment making himself ever more enemies in the EP".
Another interesting tidbit from the article:
Microsoft's push for EU software patents drew major attention last month after a leading Danish financial newspaper quoted Microsoft Denmark's chief lobbyist who said that Bill Gates had threatened the Danish government with killing 800 jobs unless the EU were to legalize software patents. The Danish social democrats responded with a press release that "blackmail shall not dictate Danish policy". Microsoft subsequently denied that Gates made the respective statement but did admit that intellectual property rights and their connection with the location of jobs were discussed in the respective meeting.
Instead of raising prices, the RIAA suits ought to make online music a better value than P2P. If users could legally download a lage selection of consistently high quality VBR MP3 tracks for a fair price--not having to worry about bad rips, mistagged files, P2P app spyware, etc.--online music sales would explode.
Instead, the RIAA suits are intent on providing an inferior product to that available freely via P2P--low bitrate, DRM-encrusted, incompatible-with-your-player garbage, and now as a bonus, it's not expensive enough yet.
Q: What is DRM and why does MP3tunes not use it? A: DRM is an acronym for "Digital Rights Management," or as we like to refer to it around here at MP3tunes, "Digital Restriction Management." DRM is basically a form of copy protection from the record labels. MP3tunes believes in respecting musicians copyrights, but we also feel that DRM comes with restrictions that make it a less than ideal solution for music fans who legally purchase music. For example, song files encoded with DRM usually limit how many times you can make a copy of a song, even for your own personal use. They often limit how many times you can burn a song to a CD, making it impossible to make several different mixes with some of the same music that you've purchased. Perhaps the biggest problem with DRM, is that it usually locks you into using one particular computer, brand of software and music player.
Q: But if a song is available in the MP3 format, won't people just share it over the Internet without paying? A: People who want to be dishonest, not respect a musicians copyright, and illegally trade music files over the Internet are ALREADY doing that. Even the best DRM systems are converted to MP3 files withing minutes of the music being released.
Q: So, what's the answer for record labels and artists to protect their music from illegal file sharing? A: We think the best way to solve this problem, is by simply making it EASY to LEGALLY obtain those same song files, but at a fair price and in a convenient, non-cumbersome file format, such as MP3. We actually believe if everyone had the ability to conveniently purchase music in the popular, friendly MP3 format, THAT would INCREASE music sales. Many people use illegal file sharing, simply because they don't like the hassle and restrictions that they get when they purchase music. If they steal the music, it comes in the convenient MP3 format, and will work on any player. If they legally purchase it, it comes with a pair of handcuffs which restrict how they can use the music. Is it any wonder many HONEST people turn to file sharing sites to get their music?
The RIAA labels should sign on with mp3tunes.com--maybe just a few artists' worth as a pilot program. I know if I could legally get popular music online without the handcuffs, I'd be all over that.
I'll get a simple cable and connect the sound card output to it's input. Then I'll record the songs. Of course I'll loose some quality if it's an analog output, but is it really that significant? I don't know, I haven't tried...
There will be a loss of quality from the D/A->A/D->recompress process, but it might not be noticeable if you have a good sound card and you have the volume levels set appropriately so as to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio without clipping.
Don't think the RIAA doesn't have their eyes on that method too, though. They'd like to see mandatory watermark detection in all analog-to-digital converters in order to plug the so-called "analog hole". See the EFF's Endangered Gizmos list for more info.
Re:Specialist Subject: the Bleeding Obvious
on
Napster Has Been Cracked
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The upshot of all which is, it's trivially easy to capture data meant for the sound card; and there is no place for any kind of security through obscurity, because everyone needs to know at some level how to send data to a sound card.
Not so fast. Microsoft is already a step ahead of you with Secure Audio Path. Essentially, Windows Media DRM can require a digitally signed audio driver which accepts encrypted input. It simply won't talk to an "untrusted" driver (such as TotalRecorder).
That said, the Napster representative in TFA is incorrect about the type of exploit this is. The audio isn't being captured by a "rogue" sound driver (or an analog loopback, which is what she makes it sound like). It's being redirected to disk via a Winamp output plugin. Ordinarily, Winamp will refuse to write to a disk writer plugin given a DRM'd input file, but the Output Stacker plugin sends audio to *both* the DirectSound driver (the "primary" one, which is kosher for DRM'd audio and is the one Winamp sees), _and_ the secondary driver, which is a disk writer plugin.
The upshot is, if you want a means to remove encumbrances from legally acquired media, download Winamp and Output Stacker now before Nullsoft "fixes" this "exploit". But don't share anything you decrypt online, or you'll only vindicate the suits who press for DRM to prevent file sharing.
Perhaps the reason GPS is being discussed (rather than just checking the odometer... duh...) is so that they can attempt to distinguish how many miles are driven on city, state, and interstate highways, and divide up the taxes accordingly. Either that, or they're getting nice kickbacks from the companies who will implement all this technology.
These use a scheme called ARccOS from Sony. I don't know how similar it is to Macrovision's technology, but I am comfortable speculating that both will cause problems on a few DVD players and drive up disc return rates, and neither will be effective against piracy. I wouldn't be surprised if some folks will have to use a ripping program that circumvents the corruption du jour just to play it on their set top DVD players...
The DVD at some point puts out a stream of video and audio that goes to the display device.
Simply plug that into a Video/Audio input on the computer - and you can copy the darn thing, regardless of copy protection.
Macrovision has that covered pretty well, actually. They not only corrupt the signal in a calculated attempt to throw off an analog recorder's timing and AGC circuits, but they also throw in a watermark that nearly all digital recorders sold today will detect and refuse to record.
Macrovision is not the first company to come up with additional copy protection (read: corruption) of DVDs. Some other companies have done so, and it typically involves putting unreadable sectors on the disk. Really, really unreadable areas, that make DVD-ROM drives churn for awhile before failing to read. The menu VM code skips over the unreadable sections, so the disc can be watched just fine in a DVD player or software player. But ripping software, which attempts to copy the entire disc, runs into the unreadable spots and grinds to a halt.
Ripping programs such as AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter are already starting to work around this type of protection. It probably won't be long before they'll analyze the menu VM code and only copy sections of the disc that a set-top player could read, rendering this protection effectively useless. Or, looking from Macrovision's perspective, ripening the market for RipLock 2.0.
After all, Macrovision is not in the business of preventing copying. They're in the business of selling copy-restriction technology to **AA fatheads who think they will improve their sales by crippling their products.
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If you are working with MSDN and XP in a corporate lab environment, you would use the Corporate version of XP which does not require activation.
There is no Corporate version. What's referred to as the "Corporate" version is actually just Professional Edition using a volume-license key. If you're in a small business, activation is still the rule (and it's a royal PITA when you create and destroy virtual machines left and right for testing purposes--that's why we use Windows 2000 for those at our company).
Slight nitpick: Windows 2000 (and Me, and 98SE for that matter) support Internet Connection Sharing as well...
Uhm ... try reading the license.
Looks kinda like a BSD license, don't it?
Yeah, especially the part that says "You are not licensed to sublicense or transfer your rights."
If the discs are compliant with the red book specification, then you can rip the tracks to an unencumbered WAV or MP3 with the software of your choice (cdex, EAC, cdparanoia, WMP10, etc. etc.). If the discs are broken so that these programs won't work, then they're not redbook compliant and Sony is lying.
Or maybe that's why they're saying the "Sony Philips" specification rather than the "Philips" specification--maybe that's their bastardized version of the official spec that explicitly allows attempting to break computer recorders.
I guess it could be a valid CD if they just take the SunComm approach--install malware with an autorun program--but that's easily defeated, at least until the RIAA buys a law that forces computers to ignore the Shift key...
Has Google's web search been accused of copyright infringement? How is it fundamentally different from news or book searches?
I suspect that web search engines don't typically get sued for copyright infringement only because they've been around for as long as the Web has been popular. But whether Google indexes a web site or a book, it doesn't (okay, if you overlook the web cache) deliver the content; it only references it and makes it more accessible.
If Google made it as easy to find information in books as it has done for the Web, publishers should be PAYING Google to index their works, not fretting and threatening to sue over it. Think about it. What better way to tell people about books they might be interested in buying? Traditional advertising and shelf-browsing are hit-and-miss at best. Content searches over books would be a phenomenal way to attract customers (IMHO etc).
This page still says it comes with Panther. Where are you looking?
I'd consider a Mini if Apple would include gigabit Ethernet and at least 64MB of video memory (preferably 128MB)...
I'm always surprised that articles about DRM seldom if ever mention the fact that all DRM'd content is in effect printed on disappearing ink.
If you remember to back up your licenses (provided your DRM lets you do that in the first place), you can take your music and ebooks with you to your new computer. But you can't do that indefinitely. Microsoft, for example, only lets you do it twice. After that, all your paid-for content is simply gone.
I wrote about this in some detail on my blog last week.
If Napster wanted to, they could sell music that would play practically anywhere--Windows, MuVo, iPod, iRiver, Mac, Linux, you name it, and they could do it today, without Apple's cooperation.
Just sell MP3s.
You'd save a bunch on support costs too, for when people's music disappears because they upgraded their computers. And you'd get more business from people like me to don't like to shell out real money for disappearing products.
But alas, they couldn't do that, because then people could share the music they bought online. Never mind the fact that the music they bought is already being shared online. You should just pay to download the inferior disappearing version instead, because then the RIAA won't sue you.
I don't know why he didn't just call it e-xwords or something like that.
If you look at the bark letter from Hasbro, you'll see that the board layout itself is copyrighted. I suppose if e-xwords used a different board layout, it might be okay--but only if Hasbro's laywers don't claim to have a copyright on methods and concepts a la SCO. (Patents can cover methods and concepts, but any patent on Scrabble would have expired decades ago.)
The EU should just mandate that government-owned systems must use protocols and file formats whose specifications are publicly available royalty-free. Any other arrangement allows a vendor (be it Microsoft or anybody) to hold your data hostage.
Eh? Are you trying to be funny?
I've done a dozen Google and Bugzilla searches and I can't find any reference to such a bug. Have you personally seen the Firefox uninstaller destroy somebody's hard drive, or read a first-hand account? Maybe somebody experienced a coincidental failure at the time they were uninstalling Firefox--hard drives do fail occasionally. But I'd have a hard time believing that Firefox itself can accidentally destroy all your data while you uninstall it, and I'd have an even harder time believing that that bug exists and the Microsoft trolls aren't shouting it from the rooftops.
The sun's magnetic field actually inverts its polarity every 22 years. See here for more info.
So some company pops up waving a spurious patent and demanding a "reasonable" fee of 12% of gross iPod and iTunes sales.
Forget the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA. This is the real piracy that's going on in the world today.
Another interesting tidbit from the article:
In contrast, if we do not have patents, we will likely stifle creativity since no one can claim ownership to their idea and profit accordingly.
I have to disagree with you here. I don't think anyone should be allowed to "own" an idea. And apparently I'm in good company.
Instead, the RIAA suits are intent on providing an inferior product to that available freely via P2P--low bitrate, DRM-encrusted, incompatible-with-your-player garbage, and now as a bonus, it's not expensive enough yet.
Michael Robertson (of mp3.com and Linspire fame) has the right idea about DRM:
The RIAA labels should sign on with mp3tunes.com--maybe just a few artists' worth as a pilot program. I know if I could legally get popular music online without the handcuffs, I'd be all over that.
...but what about VNC? Doesn't Microsoft have VNC-server-like functionality built in to XP? Where is that in their list?
...don't stick the product key to the side of the computer where it can be easily stolen! Sheesh!
I'll get a simple cable and connect the sound card output to it's input. Then I'll record the songs. Of course I'll loose some quality if it's an analog output, but is it really that significant? I don't know, I haven't tried...
There will be a loss of quality from the D/A->A/D->recompress process, but it might not be noticeable if you have a good sound card and you have the volume levels set appropriately so as to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio without clipping.
Don't think the RIAA doesn't have their eyes on that method too, though. They'd like to see mandatory watermark detection in all analog-to-digital converters in order to plug the so-called "analog hole". See the EFF's Endangered Gizmos list for more info.
The upshot of all which is, it's trivially easy to capture data meant for the sound card; and there is no place for any kind of security through obscurity, because everyone needs to know at some level how to send data to a sound card.
Not so fast. Microsoft is already a step ahead of you with Secure Audio Path. Essentially, Windows Media DRM can require a digitally signed audio driver which accepts encrypted input. It simply won't talk to an "untrusted" driver (such as TotalRecorder).
That said, the Napster representative in TFA is incorrect about the type of exploit this is. The audio isn't being captured by a "rogue" sound driver (or an analog loopback, which is what she makes it sound like). It's being redirected to disk via a Winamp output plugin. Ordinarily, Winamp will refuse to write to a disk writer plugin given a DRM'd input file, but the Output Stacker plugin sends audio to *both* the DirectSound driver (the "primary" one, which is kosher for DRM'd audio and is the one Winamp sees), _and_ the secondary driver, which is a disk writer plugin.
The upshot is, if you want a means to remove encumbrances from legally acquired media, download Winamp and Output Stacker now before Nullsoft "fixes" this "exploit". But don't share anything you decrypt online, or you'll only vindicate the suits who press for DRM to prevent file sharing.
Perhaps the reason GPS is being discussed (rather than just checking the odometer... duh...) is so that they can attempt to distinguish how many miles are driven on city, state, and interstate highways, and divide up the taxes accordingly. Either that, or they're getting nice kickbacks from the companies who will implement all this technology.
There is a list of problematic discs here: http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?thr eadid=46190
These use a scheme called ARccOS from Sony. I don't know how similar it is to Macrovision's technology, but I am comfortable speculating that both will cause problems on a few DVD players and drive up disc return rates, and neither will be effective against piracy. I wouldn't be surprised if some folks will have to use a ripping program that circumvents the corruption du jour just to play it on their set top DVD players...
The DVD at some point puts out a stream of video and audio that goes to the display device.
Simply plug that into a Video/Audio input on the computer - and you can copy the darn thing, regardless of copy protection.
Macrovision has that covered pretty well, actually. They not only corrupt the signal in a calculated attempt to throw off an analog recorder's timing and AGC circuits, but they also throw in a watermark that nearly all digital recorders sold today will detect and refuse to record.
Macrovision is not the first company to come up with additional copy protection (read: corruption) of DVDs. Some other companies have done so, and it typically involves putting unreadable sectors on the disk. Really, really unreadable areas, that make DVD-ROM drives churn for awhile before failing to read. The menu VM code skips over the unreadable sections, so the disc can be watched just fine in a DVD player or software player. But ripping software, which attempts to copy the entire disc, runs into the unreadable spots and grinds to a halt.
Ripping programs such as AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter are already starting to work around this type of protection. It probably won't be long before they'll analyze the menu VM code and only copy sections of the disc that a set-top player could read, rendering this protection effectively useless. Or, looking from Macrovision's perspective, ripening the market for RipLock 2.0.
After all, Macrovision is not in the business of preventing copying. They're in the business of selling copy-restriction technology to **AA fatheads who think they will improve their sales by crippling their products.
... Which is why the companies like Macrovision want to install malware on your computer to prevent you from ripping CDs.