DVDs cost the industry less than a buck a pop. For the ammount of storage it's dirt cheap. They like it that way, it's like printing money, they're not gonna go for a small electronic gizmo that costs more to manufacture no matter how nifty it is. Ramp up time is important too, as is the time to burn during manufacturing. Have you seen a DVD getting made? It's *fast*, a system to make flashes then write to it would have to be way more parallel to make them in the volumes optical media are. Maybe it's doable but I've got a hunch that it's just more expensive than a stamped plastic sandwitch.
This has to be one of the most short sighted solutions I've heard. Firstly compression would always yield some content at current formats even if the source was larger. Even more predictably, after a few years the larger formats would easily fit on emerging media and devices as data density increases and costs continue to decline. Most obviously any larger format would require a media for public distribution, say HD-DVD and that format would almost immediately be adopted by the PC industry as a denser data format allowing unencrypted content of the equivalent size & quality to be ripped and burned after a quick visit to Fry's.
I don't see how you can guarantee this kind of thing won't happen in a global company without spending even more millions and restricting creative freedom. Stuff like changing the contents of encyclopedias to accomodate local political doctrine is a nightmare (wikipedia ain't gonna erase disputed Kashmir borders, eliminate reference to Falun Gong or erase Israel from the maps for example), and typos happen in translation, it's just that most of them don't get as serious as woman = bitch, internationalization is already expensive to the point where often English is the default and translation is not done. Most computer games offend someone somewhere, heck in the USA some folks want to ban games for their content never mind Saudi Arabia, are you going to just not distribute or change the content to the lowest common denominator? We'd all be back to playing pong.
I got scammed by Best Buy on a TV warranty so I know that these guys promise the earth and don't give a shit when your product breaks.
It was open box, so I bought the warranty (something I usually don't do), the bulb went but I saw online that the bulb circuitry was faulty and my TV had all the symptoms, this make & model was infamous for it and the manufacturer was fixing the units. I called Best Buy and they said the bulb wasn't covered, I pointed out it was a design flaw (the bulb was only used for maybe a hundred hours at this point). I got no luck at Best Buy, they scammed me.
Fortunately I called the manufacturer and because I had the receipt (no warranty card) they fixed it. Good job Sony, but I'll never buy a warranty from Best Buy again and may never buy another major item there. I always check alternatives, this news just confirms my view of their warranties.
It's pretty difficult to argue clusters over supercomputers on anything except price so it's pretty reasonable to say supercomputers are better as a matter of informed opinion, even on the stuff clusters are built for supercomputers win, but they're just not cost effective. Cray seems to claim this new system is more cost effective but they would say that. There are maybe a couple of things like modularity but even supercomputers allow this now, creating multiple virtual systems or even physically splitting them.
It's a but depressing to watch everyone jump on Cray here despite having no clue about the key differences between supercomputers and clusters are. All this cheerleading for clusters in various posts here illustrates how thoughtless some of these posts are. Why the heck should you care if someone makes a supercomputer or a cluster. Both clusters and supercomputers lose value fast over time.
Yes clusters are good for some stuff but we should be rooting for Cray if they're creating interesting products that fill a need, and that's exactly what they do.
It is a fact that supercomputers have an architecture that clusters cannot compete with for some classes of problem. Get over it, live with it and enjoy the fact that supercomputers are running Linux too.
It's pretty darned cool that Cray survived until now and that they still have a market for large single image systems.
Clusters are nice for some problems but message passing and memory copying over a network is not ideal even when you have what *you* think is a lot of bandwidth. Latency and cache coherency and having a single image system can be critical factors in some classes of supercomputing problem, not to mention ease of use and specialized fp vector instructions that are often supported. The topology in large systems is often built (flexibly) into the memory controller hardware, the CPU writes to memory and it finds the right node, page migration and process affinity along with other advanced features like hardware level cache coherency helps these systems outperform clusters with ease given the right problems.
The coolest thing about this IMHO is that Cray are using Linux for their single image systems.
Yep the performance of computers is always on the increase but there will always be demand for more compute, the question is where do you want to be on the performance curve, not the absolute performance. People solve increasingly difficult problems with increasing detail and there looks to be no slowdown. They buy what suits their budget and solve as rigorously as they can for their hardware, and as hardware improves they redefine the types of problem they want to solve.
Yup clusters are cheap and they're on the top 500 but nobody actually buys a supercomputer to run LINPACK. They use them to solve real problems, the list is just for bragging rights.
The camera is actually recycled. They'd lose a fortune if it were genuinely disposable, however you return the camera to get the processing done. It's really a rented digital camera.
There is a serious issue here. If the developers say anyone can have this work for free without contribution then attach conditions, have they attached value to the work. Can they then turn around and say the other GPL clauses are enforceable? Or does the GPL place it in the public domain with other terms unenforceable? This is at the heart of any challenge to the GPL.
It's not SCO bullshit, it's exactly why people have wanted a legal test of the GPL. Everyone thinks they know the answer but this GPL enforceability crap has been floating around for years and they want a test case.
FWIW this case is NOT a test of the GPL because of SCO's earlier arguments in court they are estopped from licensing using the GPL. OTOH they could still argue that the work is in the public domain, not because the GPL is invalid but because it places the work in the public domain by attaching no material value to it (it is free as in beer) but then seeks to impose restictions on certain classes of users. Specifically people who seek to modify it.
One central issue of course is the question of whether the viral nature of the GPL enforceable. I don't think anything in this case will get a rulling on that.
Yes but the real issue is value. The old 'they're giving it away to everyone but saying I can't use it' argument. It's an interesting point but Linus did point out that exchange of mutual copyrights is legal. OTOH when I download and use Linux for free without contributing, can you then stop anyone else from doing what they like with that free thing haviong attached no value. I know what I want the courts to conclude but IANAL or a judge.
This is almost the classic GPL test but it misses the mark because SCO is estopped from plenty of arguments that might be made because it waived the GPL earlier. Any section of a copyright may be found to be unenforceable for example restrictions on conduct such as those in the GPL.
Legitimate users will have to live with this crap on their disk but crackers will circumvent it and it won't exist on cracked versions. It won't change a darned thing as most users don't know anything about copying a game with even simpler non intrusive countermeasures. Pirates download cracked iso images online and this stuff will get cracked reguardless of the countermeasures.
As a legitimate PC gamer this infuriates me. I guess I'll steer clear of games using this where possible or maybe just get a console and be done with gaming on my PC. It's just blowing smoke to say that PC games will diminish due to piracy. The games industry conveniently assumes that every pirated copy is a lost sale which is totally bogus.
Except early experimenters were not witches but alchemists who explored chemical reactions famously in pursuit of converting lead to gold, while jealously guarding their secrets. Witches simply practiced a pagan religion that had nothing much to do with any kind of research, witchcraft only works on TV. Alchemists could actually make chemicals that smelled strange, burned brightly produced strange smoke make liquids turn change color etc. There was a some methodology to what some of them did, but they didn't share or poblish so the research went nowhere for centuries.
You're pretty hot & bothered about what other people might choose to do with their iPods. Look, it's not an option to purchase music for mp3 playback, sure you can rip & burn your own, all this offers people with iPods is another option for buying music online. It's also illegal to crack them in the US (DMCA).
You're very egocentric in this. It's not about *your* iPod, it's about freedom of choice for all iPod owners.
As for the '[legality] remains to be seen', I could do the same finger wagging about anything, but it doesn't make it so, we can exercise reasonable judgement in the face of the facts. Real's actions are legal just as cracking a song's encryption is illegal in the US barring DMCA being declared unconstitutional (I can hope & pray).
Eh?!! DVD Jon absolutely thinks he can and should be allowed to do this [are you serious?], moreover he won in court, primarily because it wasn't a US court. He would certainly have been convicted in a US court. DVD Jon is a crusader for your freedoms and absolutely with 100% conviction belives that his activities are legitimate. I happen to think the should be legal in the US too but that's a separate issue w.r.t. what Real has done.
Clearly offering people a choice of download points of sale for a device that is perfectly capable of handling it should be allowed.
You talk about this as if it is technology and not contrived lockin. This is entirely artificial. It can play it so it should. You may be eager to jump into intellectual chains but I'm not. If your mindset prevailed we'd all be buying proprietary gasoline from Ford & watching TV programming from GE, and buying VHS tapes exclusively from JVC, all with no competition and at a huge premium.
You've got it the wrong way round, DeCSS circumvents the DVD format encryption and is illegal under the DMCA. Not that I agree but it's the law. And yes downloads in a format of your choice would be nice but it's impossible, however a choice of downloads after you buy an iPod is a perfectly reasonable. Real has fulfilled this request in a *legal* manner, good for them.
As for cracking iPod or other songs, the labels won't let them do it and it would unfortunately violate the DMCA, however since you know about DeCSS and pretend to follow these issues then you should know what it's author has been up to lately on that front.
Maybe you think playing Real downloads on an iPod is the equivalent of playing DVDs on a VHS but that pretty much illustrates how clueless you are here.
Anyway, it's done, it's legal and thankfully neither you nor the other fanboys get any say in the matter.
Free ride on the iPod gravy train?!! All Real wants is the ability to sell content to an installed base of people with playing devices.
The iPod is a popular hardware device, Apple got their bucks for the sale, and you said it; Apple wants it to be a gravy train for them by vendor lockin. The iPod should be able to play Real's tunes because the platform should be open it can and should be since we're talking about file formats here. DRM is a necessary evil to placate the idiot record labels (despite anyone being able to create non DRM content with better quality from CD at any time). However we're not talking about Betamax vs VHS here, any platform can play the content of any other through software or format changes, so this is entirely artificial lockin to monopolize a user base. It is entirely appropriate that Real can sell content to the biggest installed base of players, to refuse them is like saying only Sony can sell TV programming on people's televisions.
And FWIW the labels won't allow the sale or sharing of non DRM'd content and CDs have a whole album not the songs you want, and they're more expensive paying for the physical media, packaging, distribution and bricks & mortar overheads. That's the whole point of music downloads or have you missed what is really going on here?
Sounds like Apple fanboys tearing into Real for no good reason. Letting you play other sources of music on a device *you own* is a good thing. Attacking Real for this is downright irrational. I guess some people just love vendor lockin. In this case vendor lockin is quite intentional and insidious, there is no good technical reason that an iPod cannot play music from other vendors. Real is only offering competition for music sales and that is a good thing for iPod owners even if the fanboys are too dumb to see it.
Automated distributed tools that do this is an attack. Is't a distributed DoS. It's one thing to have someone sit & click on a page, quite another to have a distributed tool request pages repeatedly that are never used or read. Besides the intent is explicitly stated, i.e. denial of service. No it's not clever and it's not a crack, but it is an attack.
Do these guys have no shame. This is supposed to be a democracy, and they're talking about attacking a public communications channel of one of the main parties during the runup to the election. Deliberately targetting their ability to campaign during that election.
My powers of mind reading are failing me, are you the same AC who can't read English? Must be given the similarities of your posts. If you're going to shill for Unisys at least feign credibility with an invented handle mainstead of posting AC.
Slashdot Mirror
DVDs cost the industry less than a buck a pop. For the ammount of storage it's dirt cheap. They like it that way, it's like printing money, they're not gonna go for a small electronic gizmo that costs more to manufacture no matter how nifty it is. Ramp up time is important too, as is the time to burn during manufacturing. Have you seen a DVD getting made? It's *fast*, a system to make flashes then write to it would have to be way more parallel to make them in the volumes optical media are. Maybe it's doable but I've got a hunch that it's just more expensive than a stamped plastic sandwitch.
This has to be one of the most short sighted solutions I've heard. Firstly compression would always yield some content at current formats even if the source was larger. Even more predictably, after a few years the larger formats would easily fit on emerging media and devices as data density increases and costs continue to decline. Most obviously any larger format would require a media for public distribution, say HD-DVD and that format would almost immediately be adopted by the PC industry as a denser data format allowing unencrypted content of the equivalent size & quality to be ripped and burned after a quick visit to Fry's.
I don't see how you can guarantee this kind of thing won't happen in a global company without spending even more millions and restricting creative freedom. Stuff like changing the contents of encyclopedias to accomodate local political doctrine is a nightmare (wikipedia ain't gonna erase disputed Kashmir borders, eliminate reference to Falun Gong or erase Israel from the maps for example), and typos happen in translation, it's just that most of them don't get as serious as woman = bitch, internationalization is already expensive to the point where often English is the default and translation is not done. Most computer games offend someone somewhere, heck in the USA some folks want to ban games for their content never mind Saudi Arabia, are you going to just not distribute or change the content to the lowest common denominator? We'd all be back to playing pong.
That has to be the most flawed analogy ever.
P.S. I hope the AJ nails their hide to the wall, I'll be watching this case with glee. At $25k a pop that'll even cover them scamming me.
I got scammed by Best Buy on a TV warranty so I know that these guys promise the earth and don't give a shit when your product breaks.
It was open box, so I bought the warranty (something I usually don't do), the bulb went but I saw online that the bulb circuitry was faulty and my TV had all the symptoms, this make & model was infamous for it and the manufacturer was fixing the units. I called Best Buy and they said the bulb wasn't covered, I pointed out it was a design flaw (the bulb was only used for maybe a hundred hours at this point). I got no luck at Best Buy, they scammed me.
Fortunately I called the manufacturer and because I had the receipt (no warranty card) they fixed it. Good job Sony, but I'll never buy a warranty from Best Buy again and may never buy another major item there. I always check alternatives, this news just confirms my view of their warranties.
It's pretty difficult to argue clusters over supercomputers on anything except price so it's pretty reasonable to say supercomputers are better as a matter of informed opinion, even on the stuff clusters are built for supercomputers win, but they're just not cost effective. Cray seems to claim this new system is more cost effective but they would say that. There are maybe a couple of things like modularity but even supercomputers allow this now, creating multiple virtual systems or even physically splitting them.
It's a but depressing to watch everyone jump on Cray here despite having no clue about the key differences between supercomputers and clusters are. All this cheerleading for clusters in various posts here illustrates how thoughtless some of these posts are. Why the heck should you care if someone makes a supercomputer or a cluster. Both clusters and supercomputers lose value fast over time.
Yes clusters are good for some stuff but we should be rooting for Cray if they're creating interesting products that fill a need, and that's exactly what they do.
It is a fact that supercomputers have an architecture that clusters cannot compete with for some classes of problem. Get over it, live with it and enjoy the fact that supercomputers are running Linux too.
It's pretty darned cool that Cray survived until now and that they still have a market for large single image systems.
Clusters are nice for some problems but message passing and memory copying over a network is not ideal even when you have what *you* think is a lot of bandwidth. Latency and cache coherency and having a single image system can be critical factors in some classes of supercomputing problem, not to mention ease of use and specialized fp vector instructions that are often supported. The topology in large systems is often built (flexibly) into the memory controller hardware, the CPU writes to memory and it finds the right node, page migration and process affinity along with other advanced features like hardware level cache coherency helps these systems outperform clusters with ease given the right problems.
The coolest thing about this IMHO is that Cray are using Linux for their single image systems.
Yep the performance of computers is always on the increase but there will always be demand for more compute, the question is where do you want to be on the performance curve, not the absolute performance. People solve increasingly difficult problems with increasing detail and there looks to be no slowdown. They buy what suits their budget and solve as rigorously as they can for their hardware, and as hardware improves they redefine the types of problem they want to solve.
Yup clusters are cheap and they're on the top 500 but nobody actually buys a supercomputer to run LINPACK. They use them to solve real problems, the list is just for bragging rights.
The camera is actually recycled. They'd lose a fortune if it were genuinely disposable, however you return the camera to get the processing done. It's really a rented digital camera.
There is a serious issue here. If the developers say anyone can have this work for free without contribution then attach conditions, have they attached value to the work. Can they then turn around and say the other GPL clauses are enforceable? Or does the GPL place it in the public domain with other terms unenforceable? This is at the heart of any challenge to the GPL.
It's not SCO bullshit, it's exactly why people have wanted a legal test of the GPL. Everyone thinks they know the answer but this GPL enforceability crap has been floating around for years and they want a test case.
FWIW this case is NOT a test of the GPL because of SCO's earlier arguments in court they are estopped from licensing using the GPL. OTOH they could still argue that the work is in the public domain, not because the GPL is invalid but because it places the work in the public domain by attaching no material value to it (it is free as in beer) but then seeks to impose restictions on certain classes of users. Specifically people who seek to modify it.
One central issue of course is the question of whether the viral nature of the GPL enforceable. I don't think anything in this case will get a rulling on that.
Yes but the real issue is value. The old 'they're giving it away to everyone but saying I can't use it' argument. It's an interesting point but Linus did point out that exchange of mutual copyrights is legal. OTOH when I download and use Linux for free without contributing, can you then stop anyone else from doing what they like with that free thing haviong attached no value. I know what I want the courts to conclude but IANAL or a judge.
This is almost the classic GPL test but it misses the mark because SCO is estopped from plenty of arguments that might be made because it waived the GPL earlier. Any section of a copyright may be found to be unenforceable for example restrictions on conduct such as those in the GPL.
Legitimate users will have to live with this crap on their disk but crackers will circumvent it and it won't exist on cracked versions. It won't change a darned thing as most users don't know anything about copying a game with even simpler non intrusive countermeasures. Pirates download cracked iso images online and this stuff will get cracked reguardless of the countermeasures.
As a legitimate PC gamer this infuriates me. I guess I'll steer clear of games using this where possible or maybe just get a console and be done with gaming on my PC. It's just blowing smoke to say that PC games will diminish due to piracy. The games industry conveniently assumes that every pirated copy is a lost sale which is totally bogus.
Except early experimenters were not witches but alchemists who explored chemical reactions famously in pursuit of converting lead to gold, while jealously guarding their secrets. Witches simply practiced a pagan religion that had nothing much to do with any kind of research, witchcraft only works on TV. Alchemists could actually make chemicals that smelled strange, burned brightly produced strange smoke make liquids turn change color etc. There was a some methodology to what some of them did, but they didn't share or poblish so the research went nowhere for centuries.
There is if you want to buy content online because the content providers insist on DRM on all content.
You're pretty hot & bothered about what other people might choose to do with their iPods. Look, it's not an option to purchase music for mp3 playback, sure you can rip & burn your own, all this offers people with iPods is another option for buying music online. It's also illegal to crack them in the US (DMCA).
You're very egocentric in this. It's not about *your* iPod, it's about freedom of choice for all iPod owners.
As for the '[legality] remains to be seen', I could do the same finger wagging about anything, but it doesn't make it so, we can exercise reasonable judgement in the face of the facts. Real's actions are legal just as cracking a song's encryption is illegal in the US barring DMCA being declared unconstitutional (I can hope & pray).
Eh?!! DVD Jon absolutely thinks he can and should be allowed to do this [are you serious?], moreover he won in court, primarily because it wasn't a US court. He would certainly have been convicted in a US court. DVD Jon is a crusader for your freedoms and absolutely with 100% conviction belives that his activities are legitimate. I happen to think the should be legal in the US too but that's a separate issue w.r.t. what Real has done.
Clearly offering people a choice of download points of sale for a device that is perfectly capable of handling it should be allowed.
You talk about this as if it is technology and not contrived lockin. This is entirely artificial. It can play it so it should. You may be eager to jump into intellectual chains but I'm not. If your mindset prevailed we'd all be buying proprietary gasoline from Ford & watching TV programming from GE, and buying VHS tapes exclusively from JVC, all with no competition and at a huge premium.
You've got it the wrong way round, DeCSS circumvents the DVD format encryption and is illegal under the DMCA. Not that I agree but it's the law. And yes downloads in a format of your choice would be nice but it's impossible, however a choice of downloads after you buy an iPod is a perfectly reasonable. Real has fulfilled this request in a *legal* manner, good for them.
As for cracking iPod or other songs, the labels won't let them do it and it would unfortunately violate the DMCA, however since you know about DeCSS and pretend to follow these issues then you should know what it's author has been up to lately on that front.
Maybe you think playing Real downloads on an iPod is the equivalent of playing DVDs on a VHS but that pretty much illustrates how clueless you are here.
Anyway, it's done, it's legal and thankfully neither you nor the other fanboys get any say in the matter.
Free ride on the iPod gravy train?!! All Real wants is the ability to sell content to an installed base of people with playing devices.
The iPod is a popular hardware device, Apple got their bucks for the sale, and you said it; Apple wants it to be a gravy train for them by vendor lockin. The iPod should be able to play Real's tunes because the platform should be open it can and should be since we're talking about file formats here. DRM is a necessary evil to placate the idiot record labels (despite anyone being able to create non DRM content with better quality from CD at any time). However we're not talking about Betamax vs VHS here, any platform can play the content of any other through software or format changes, so this is entirely artificial lockin to monopolize a user base. It is entirely appropriate that Real can sell content to the biggest installed base of players, to refuse them is like saying only Sony can sell TV programming on people's televisions.
And FWIW the labels won't allow the sale or sharing of non DRM'd content and CDs have a whole album not the songs you want, and they're more expensive paying for the physical media, packaging, distribution and bricks & mortar overheads. That's the whole point of music downloads or have you missed what is really going on here?
Exactly, Apple selling their iTunes on teh PC stepped into Real's territory and they're competing. Competition is good.
Sounds like Apple fanboys tearing into Real for no good reason. Letting you play other sources of music on a device *you own* is a good thing. Attacking Real for this is downright irrational. I guess some people just love vendor lockin. In this case vendor lockin is quite intentional and insidious, there is no good technical reason that an iPod cannot play music from other vendors. Real is only offering competition for music sales and that is a good thing for iPod owners even if the fanboys are too dumb to see it.
I hope Real continues to do what it is doing.
I wish Torvalds had used the word Alchemy instead of witchcraft, it is probably closer to what he was trying to say (in English at least).
Automated distributed tools that do this is an attack. Is't a distributed DoS. It's one thing to have someone sit & click on a page, quite another to have a distributed tool request pages repeatedly that are never used or read. Besides the intent is explicitly stated, i.e. denial of service. No it's not clever and it's not a crack, but it is an attack.
Do these guys have no shame. This is supposed to be a democracy, and they're talking about attacking a public communications channel of one of the main parties during the runup to the election. Deliberately targetting their ability to campaign during that election.
My powers of mind reading are failing me, are you the same AC who can't read English? Must be given the similarities of your posts. If you're going to shill for Unisys at least feign credibility with an invented handle mainstead of posting AC.
Perhaps I should have inserted a comma in there to help the mentally impaired like you interpret English correctly.