"This is like old floppy games. Please insert the disk..." I liked the ones with the manual check. What is the 5th word in line 13 on page 42?
"This is not a buy a blank and burn your own compilation. This is buy a pre-recorded and it is tied to the card. I'll play in your future cell phone, laptop, CF music player, but only from the original card. The file without the card does not work."
That doesn't sound like anything that can't be "fixed" with a hex editor. Find out what on the card the data is looking for, serial munber? Find that info on the target card, change the line in the data to match that of target card.
"Making a custom compilation is not an option. Carying a case of cards with your phone is the new future of copyprotection. I'm voting with my wallet. It's a no vote."
Remeber back in the day before PCs had the ability to rip and burn CDs? You were required to carry around a case of CDs and the ability to make custom playlists did not yet exist, it's not that big a deal, SD cards are only about 7.5sq cm while CDs are about 113sq cm and I carry around a few cards for my PDA. I do agree with your arguement on custom compilations and combinations. If music is sold on only 128mb, 256mb for higher bitrate, cards and I have an 8GB card I'm going to want to be able consoliate them onto as few cards as possible. What I don't like this is that there is nothing new here, it's all already possible, buy CD, rip with Winamp or other to MP3, copy to SD card, use with PDA or phone. It's only going to change to buy audio SD card, rip to MP3, copy to another SD card of your choice. The only way this can work is if they are able to force compliance on all manufacturers and outlaw the MP3 format which I don't see happening since just about everything can read it. My wallet also says NO.
I've always wondered how the "secure" part of SD works, but was always too lazy to look it up. When I first heard about them I thought maybe it means there is a way to secure/encrypt MY data on My card, without the use of 3rd part software I'd have to install on everything I used the card with. It seems it's really just a way for other people to restrict their data on MY card. It makes sense for things with a small client base, there arn't that many people who would want electronic charts for a local waterway, a few dozen at most. They should hope the security is durable enough when the user/customer base is increased to the millions and there are people who are trying to break/bypass it.
I hope it won't confuse "copy" with "read" or "play" instead of being able to copy the content to five "trusted" devices you will only be able to play it five times, sounds to lot more like renting than purchasing.
By "lost" I'm guessing you mean Windows was corrupted to the point of needing to be reinstalled, not he took the drive out and forgot where me put it. That's one of my favorite DRM problems, the files get attached to the the current hardware setup or windows installation. Upgrade your hardware or reinstall/upgrade Windows and your cut off from your data. I previous poster suggested ending the use of "backup" this is data recovery, not backup. I have backups, they get made every week or two. I'm more concerned about the data I make/obtain between backups. If windows dies and I recover the unbacked up data to another windows installation on another hdd or another PC I want to be able to access it. I too have no plans on purchasing DRMed content, I'll buy DVDs and useds CDs, their copy protection is easily bypassed and I'm allowed that legal copy for use on other hardware I own. It's easier to rips CDs to 320kbps and amke a winamp playlist contaning every song I have than to swap CDs. I find it easier make a playlist of my DivX rips to tv-out to the tv in the bedroom than it is to move my dvd rack around the house. Forget Darwinism and Social Darwinism, it's time for Corporate Darwinism, corporations that can't adapt their business models to new technologies and miss new markets deserve to be killed off(RIAA). Instead of DRM maybe they should develop something that requires more resources than any home PC has, it worked with CDs for 15yrs. If only home PCs were restricted to 66MHz and 8MB RAM and 100MB hdd and 4x cd-rom drive, HAHA.
"If the sound card automatically refuses to pass any sounds that contain such artifacts, you won't be able to get them into your computer to do the required audio-post-processing to remove them in the first place."
Yes, the RIAA seems to like shooting itself in the foot, but restricting playing to only newer devices would mean taking on the entire PC industry, maybe shooting itself a little higher in the leg where a major arteries are. Mr Bronfman already said screw you to Linux and Mac and older CD players with their new ideas for DRM, you'll just have to go out and buy a new one, next will be everyone who owns a sound card, the ones before they paid off someone to produce their DRM/DMCA compliant RIAA brand sound cards and CD players. They seem to think they're more important than everyone else, it's time everyone else takes them out back for a good olde fashioned woodshed beating. As much as some people may want this "trusted computing" I don't think they're going to willingly exclude older or generic brand parts for financial reasons. Family saves movey for 2yrs to buy the cheapest PC offered by Dell, a couple months later the RIAA wants to enforce some new "brilliant" DRM scheme. That poor family's sad story isn't going to make the RIAA look good in the public eye.
l'grill...what the hell is that? TrustedFlash...what the hell is that?
Sounds a lot like "Trusted Computing" If you're tired of having your digital content "held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC" switch to our TrustedFlash so it can be held hostage by our product. I can almost see an implied "we want to relplace the CD with a SD card" which would be nice now that the 1GB cards are dropping(slowly) in price. Instead of carrying a non scratch resistant CD you could hold a few SD cards in your pocket. I wouldn't mind buying a read only SD card instead of a CD. As far as the DRM, I've never liked it and combining it with hardware is not a good thing. What happens when **AA thinks it's been overly cracked and decides it no longer meets their impossibly high standards? You have a memory card that's useless to use with newer content, they're not even big enough to be a coaster. But why do I care? All my DivX movies and MP3s are my legal copies of my movie and music collections and do not even hint at any form of copy protection. DRM makes things that should work together not work together and that's a BAD thing.
And the first exploit will be turning on the write protection so the card can't record the new count of how many times the contents were copied. Or holding shift so it can't autoplay and install RIAA/MPAA system crippling spyware. I'm assuming they're going to try this with existing forms of flash cards, or we'll all have to go out and get the newest 50-in-1 reader with copyprotection built into the drivers and firmware and will be rendered useless with v1.01 of the DRM.
Desktops are for high end games and video encoding and lots of inexpensive storage. Laptops are dropping in price. There are laptops with video cards that can rival those of desktops. Do not combine those statements. As with all other electronics it depends on the wants of the user. Most people only need something that will allow them to use a web broswer, MS Office or equivalent, watch DVDs and play some non-resource demanding flash or onlone poker games. Any new mass produced(Dude, you're gett'n a Dell) PC will do that these days, desktop or laptop. The place my father works just moved to laptops with docking stations. On their desk they have the docking port, 17" LCD, standard keyboard and mouse. But they can take it home with them at the end of the day and connect through their VPN to monitor anything running overnight while using the same PC they used all day, one less thing for them to have to know how work. With a docking station/port replicator someone's laptop can become their desktop, complete with a better monitor. For those of us who prefer a high end machine for gaming and video work the market for better parts will always be there. I don't think the CGI for future movies will be rendered using the $400 Dells you see on tv. My desktop is the working machine and when I get a laptop it's usefulness will be in its portability 12" at most, not in it's performance. For now my handheld with 3.5" display is enough. Or a tablet PC, that would be nice, just like a traditional pen and paper notebook, but saves paper. Wait, scratch that laptop part, just give me a high end desktop, a 7oz handheld and a 95c notebook with fine pt Bic pens at 97c a dozen.
"I'm already at the point where I'm beginning to fully support DRM-cracking tools and software. They're becoming the only tools consumers have to defend their legitimate rights."
I'm pleased to hear that more people are noticing that we are increasingly having to do something illegal to exercise our legal rights. When we buy something on a digital medium we are allowed a backup copy, a good thing since we know how fragile floppies and CDs/DVDs are. But thanks to the DMCA and the **AAs decision to encrypt/copy protect the items we've purchased we have to bypass that encryption violating the DMCA to use our fair use rights of the backup copy.
"I'm a believer in copyright, and the rights of the copyright owners to make a living from their works"
I think the words artists and copyright holder need to be further separated. It is increasingly the case that in an attempt to make a living off thier work they are forced to sign over the copyright to the record labels are a used as marketing tools making maybe a few thousand a year while the record company, now having ownership of the work and the artist, takes all the profits. All the "help the artists" marketing is a bunch of BS, they are the only ones who can help the artists by increasing the value of the contracts and not forcing them to forfeit their copyright ownership.
DRM is the thing that takes things that should work together and makes them not work. The DMCA encourages more anti-competition monopolistic behavior between companies than it "defends copyright".
"does anyone else find the fact that Congress is allowed to "bundle" legislation like this distasteful?"
That was allowed to save time, for the first few decades Congress didn't have that much to do, then as the number of Congressmen slowly increased to 435 it became easier to combine similar proposals, "similar" was lost over the years. Now there is the unfortunate practice of trading votes for pet projects, the pork barrel. And of course there are those owned by industries, Hatch of Utah, who will gladly attempt to sneak shady bills into a larger one that is guaranteed to pass, say the RealID into a military spending bill. Or broadcast flag inot a hurricane relief bill. It's up to the subcomm gatekeepers to keep out the trash and only allow similar useful legislation to be attached, but that doesn't always happen. The line item veto was an attempt to allow the President to strike select items in the bill before signing the rest, but that was to reduce spending, I don't know the dollar amount thet'd put on the Broadcast flag, it only lasted a year.
close enough, If someone borrows a CD or cassette from a library, assuming they can find some decent works, the RIAA believes the person should be sued because they did not get any money out of the exchange, even if it is perfectly legal to borrow something from the public library. How long until they try to exploit the Patriot Act to examine library records and sue people for obtaining copyrighted works without paying(the RIAA money)?
"The reason is that the plaintiffs' lawyers had taken the appropriate steps in trying to prosecute the mother and that the mother used tactics to obstruct the Plaintiff to efficiently prosecute her."
Enough people comaplain about "technobabble" I'm going to complain about "legalbabble". To me that means her lawyers did enough good to make sure the RIAA lost.
"It was possible that her 13 year old daughter may have had a file sharing account." I love the use of "POSSIBLE". It's POSSIBLE that the 13yr old kid didn't know what she was doing with the 'puter any more than her mother and wasn't doing any file sharing. What proof has the RIAA presented? None. It's POSSIBLE that the harvested IP did not belong to her at the time in question. It's also POSSIBLE that they are both completely innocent and the RIAA lawyers thought it POSSIBLE for them to POSSIBLY have a case if they introduced the idea that it's POSSIBLE that the kid did something without the parrent knowing. They saw the couldn't win against the mother so they blamed the kid who POSSIBLY didn't know any better claiming that she POSSIBLY may have had a file sharing account. They were losing and attempted to shift blame to the daughter. These are legal decisions and I'm yet to see any evidence that would convince me if I were a member of a jury deliberating on one the these cases, that is if the RIAA didn't back out so easily and one got to trial by jury. Amendment VII - "In Suits at common law, where the value on controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved" The suggested settment amount of $3500 more than covers the $20, which even after 214yrs of inflation is no more than $400. Then the RIAA would have to convice at least 8 people of guilt, 7 of 12 jurors to win and the judge who determines sentence, he could decide 99c for each song they had.
I wonder what's going to happen with all these probes once we can travel fast enough to catch up to them in a reasonable amount to time. Would it be better to bring them back and let the collect dust in the Air&Space museum or just keep track of them and let them be a 'side of the highway attraction' on the way to Terra Nova with an attached repeating recording giving it's launch date, time in service and when it was passed by a newer faster probe and became obsolite. Mars tourist attractions of the future, see the wreckage of Beagle 2 and have your picture taken by Spirit and Opportunity, pictures can be picked up in the gift shop, formerly NASA mission control in Houston, TX.
"...Voyager 1 is now in the interstellar DMZ. Let's hope no one starts shooting at it."
too late... Officer: Captain Klaa, we have a traget in sight. A probe of ancient origin. Capt Klaa: Difficult to hit? Officer: most difficult Capt Klaa: good
It's a good thing they didn't bring it aboard to examine it, then the Klingons would know where to find Earth.
forget about $5 rentals blockbuster.com promotion code "friends" without the quotes It's a free month of rentals and usually has a larger selection than what you'll find in their stores.
disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you do any of the things the parent suggests can be done with a rented DVD.
"This many IP addresses were involved. The transfers went to 99.5%, so we can pretty much rule out someone mistakenly clicking on it. A grand total of 56.789 terabytes, or 2000 movies"
Article: "These movie and film titles are specifically designed to report false information to trackers, thereby gaining artificially inflated popularity."
Possibly, unless the trackers/torrents for the fake/incomplete files were designed to report artifically high numbers so you have logs claiming 2000 copies of each of the ~31 titles were downloaded, 62000 copies, while it is really only 2000 total. But since they directed all the trackers to the same location they can say it was 2000 of each while it was 2000 total. It's a lot of speculation but they seem to want to inflate the stats they have on piracy and don't care how. I wouldn't put it past them to hire people to mine IPs and greatly inflate download stats.
"The average ISP folds like a cheap rug and will terminate the account with that lack of proof."
Some may threaten to cancel your account or turn over your personal info, but others will do nothing more than forward the notice they received to you and will believe any excuse you give them. Virus, spyware, someone hacked your wireless router, etc. All you'll have to do is add another entry to your router's log with an unknown MAC and a time stamp around the time of the alleged infraction in the letter your ISP received before you hit print and mail it back to them. It could work if you're living in an appartment building with dozens of people with wireless cards. We know how easy it is to break WEP or maybe when you upgraded the firmware encryption was turned off. There are plenty of "excuses" your ISP may accept, maybe only for the first or second time. For all you know there really could be someone else in your building breaking into other people's wireless networks for "free internet"
Even with all the chances of false positives and IP collecting bounty hunters possibly making lots of mistakes if you receive a take down notice or infringement reporting letter you are most likely guilty. Sure you could buy a good lawyer to get you off like OJ and the kid touching Jackson. Or you could try the "paranoid geek defence" where you walk into court or your pre-trial hearing and claim to not know anything about infringement and hand the judge a stack of papers detailing every possible way the reported IP or timestamp could be wrong, they gave the wrong timezone and at that time you did not have that IP or a list of every wireless network hacking tool know to man and since there are dozens of people living in the same building it could have been someone hacking your carefull assembled network and how it creates anough reasonable doubt that the judge throws out the case. But a not guilty verdict or dismissed case doesn't make you innocent. It doesn't take that much effort to find a used CD for $5 or a used/bootleg/imported movie on ebay, as long as when you bought it on ebay you thought "condition: new" meant the condition you'd find in BestBuy, which it should, but then you are the innocent victim and can report it to ebay and the MPAA.
"I feel an idea forming - get some data from/dev/random, give it a name a couple of gigabytes long, and share it."
That's been used to piss off the RIAA/MPAA, it was some type of modified compressed file that gave reported the stats of an average song, 3-6mb and generated random file content when downloaded. The only reference to copyrighted material was the name, but in most cases it was variation on the spelling of a popular title the **AA might want to send out a take down notice for. So your server lists moviereleasedfriday.avi 700MB but when downloaded all the client gets is random 1s and 0s. I was someone's idea of stalling the **AA with honeypots, but then it was all automated so it only stalled them for a few seconds.
Leela: 0101100101, what does it mean? Bender: It's just gibberish.
If it's random data then there is no infringement. Yes the file name sounds like it could be a copyrighted work, but I download the ipodlinux demo video, rename it as "hackers" and redistribute it. At most it could be some trademark dispute because of the word used as the title.
Let's see, dolphins are already very intellegent natural predators, fortunately they're smart enough to know not to attack members of a species that can easily whipe them out. And robots are as smart as someone programs them to be, may or may not be any more effective than an airsoft gun on a tripod with motion sensor or it could be as useful as a Cylon or Borg.
Dolphin mounted underwater dart guns, I'm thinking fake. It isn't that easy for a human to hit something with a spear gun. Yes, dolphins are natural hunters, but I don't believe they're used to using projectile weapons. Unless it's a dart strapped to their nose they ram the target with I don't see how such a device would work.
"Objection: Why not just plug the phone into a PC?" "The deeper problems with using an existing or standard PC include the following:"
"A standard PC offers multiple ways to do any given task, thus creating confusion (e.g., email can be sent from Outlook Express, Outlook, clicking right on a document, using a Web-based mail system such as Gmail or Hotmail)" It's called options, I choose to use Thunderbird while others may pick Outlook
"A standard PC needs to be told who are the users and what are their privileges." But with the "Appliance" all users will be root by default, that's a good one
"A standard PC needs to be told how to get to an Internet connection and it needs to be plugged into the Internet connection properly." That's usually the case with everything. Lets see, 50-100kbps cell phone or 10gbps wired connection?
"A standard PC always has the potential for someone to come along and install performance-hogging software or otherwise compromise the system with configuration changes." Doesn't matter if it's a PC or a phone people are going to do that anyway. Can you say cell phone virus? It doesn't matter what the OS is, when it becomes popular enough there's going to be malware written for it and users to install it, even better if they're root on their Windows-based phone.
"A standardly configured home PC running standard programs cannot have all of its software updated remotely and without the owner's intervention." It's called autoupdate and after the recent TiVo "update" I wouldn't mind having a say as to which "updates" are installed.
So they want to have a docking port for a phone. The average user doesn't need much more than 300MHz and 256MB RAM depending on the OS, XP is a resource hog and needs more, so something like Palm OS or the Zaurus OS or maybe even WinCE/Windows Mobile will require a lot less. Other than games the only other need for lots of RAM is playing media, DivX and other compressed video. Yes, it seems lots of people have cell phones these days and more than enough people loose or break them. Would you really want your PC to have a 2yr $50+ a month contract and be technically owned by your cell provieder? I wouldn't The smallest I see a PC getting anytime soon is the Mac Mini and then only because of the DVD drive. Once high density mini DVDs become common then the size can drop to that of a mini-DVD drive. And what about storage? I have many GB of TV recordings. The article lists "two big hard drives" so it's not using the phone as the home PC, it's just making the home PC more modular with the cpu, mboard and memory being contained in a phone. Without the processor and mboard and video card and all the fans that go with them, there's no need for a large tower case. The largest/fastest hdds are still 3.5" So instead of having everything contained in one location on/under/next to your desk you'll have a docking port and hdds and DVD drive scattered all around your desk. No thanks, I'll pass on that one, just make the phone be a USB device like a PDA. I wonder which cell phone company he's working for. Cell phones are already being loaded with "gadgets" to replace the PDA, the only setback is the small 4-6line display and the multi year few thousand dollar contracts. The next step is to try to replace the PC.
"Were people not putting there origional iPods in their pockets with keys, etc. or were the screens on the regular iPods made from a better material."
Someone did a test of the Nano a week or two ago and for a few min I thought it looked like it scratched rather easy, then realized I wasn't going to get one anytime soon and forgot about it. It may be that the black model shows scratches better than the mostly all while other models. My guess is that the smaller size is allowing it to fit in less friendly places and people don't understand the forces at work. The larger models took up more space in a hip pocket and restricted the movement of everything in that pocket, keys and ipod. Now reduce the size and everything is free to move around with every step. Think about the possible damage resulting from the hard metal keys rubbing against a plastic ipod with every step. The only thing I'd expect to remain mostly undamaged is something just as strong as the metal keys and whatever else is on peoples keychains is something metal. My Leatherman Micra was on my keychain for 5yrs and doesn't have a noticable scratch, but it's made of hardened tool steel. A few months ago I switched to the Leatherman Squirt P4 and the colored aluminum plating is showing the everyday wear&tear a lot more. There are several scratches and fading and rubbing off of the color. It's still metal, but softer than tool steel but still more durable than the ipod plastic and it is showing significant wear. The nano is smaller and able to go where no ipod has gone before and it seems it's going into less ipod friendly environments and people don't realize what they're subjecting their new toy to and it's turning up scratched. Or in an effort to further reduce weight Apple chose a softer material for the shell, but I don't have or have even handled a nano so I can only guess at what might be causing the damage. I do know that if I put something not metal in the same pocket as my keys it's going to take some damage. I'm not even going to try guessing at what might happen to one if stored in the purse/pocketbook/whatever by the female readers or any guys in Europe(or at least France) with one of those man-purses.
agreed, same concept I picked trust since they are somehow narrowly avoiding the aging US anti-trust laws. I'll accept Trust, Cartel, Legitimate Businessman's Club and a couple others I havn't remembered yet.
RILBAAS: Recording Industry's Legitimate Businessman's Association of Springfield, President Disco Stew
Slashdot Mirror
Valente, now why does that name sound familar?
I wonder if there's any relation to Jack?
How loud do you have to say "INSIDE JOB" for them to listen?
"This is like old floppy games. Please insert the disk..."
I liked the ones with the manual check. What is the 5th word in line 13 on page 42?
"This is not a buy a blank and burn your own compilation. This is buy a pre-recorded and it is tied to the card. I'll play in your future cell phone, laptop, CF music player, but only from the original card. The file without the card does not work."
That doesn't sound like anything that can't be "fixed" with a hex editor. Find out what on the card the data is looking for, serial munber? Find that info on the target card, change the line in the data to match that of target card.
"Making a custom compilation is not an option. Carying a case of cards with your phone is the new future of copyprotection. I'm voting with my wallet. It's a no vote."
Remeber back in the day before PCs had the ability to rip and burn CDs? You were required to carry around a case of CDs and the ability to make custom playlists did not yet exist, it's not that big a deal, SD cards are only about 7.5sq cm while CDs are about 113sq cm and I carry around a few cards for my PDA. I do agree with your arguement on custom compilations and combinations. If music is sold on only 128mb, 256mb for higher bitrate, cards and I have an 8GB card I'm going to want to be able consoliate them onto as few cards as possible. What I don't like this is that there is nothing new here, it's all already possible, buy CD, rip with Winamp or other to MP3, copy to SD card, use with PDA or phone. It's only going to change to buy audio SD card, rip to MP3, copy to another SD card of your choice. The only way this can work is if they are able to force compliance on all manufacturers and outlaw the MP3 format which I don't see happening since just about everything can read it. My wallet also says NO.
"That's how the SD feature works."
I've always wondered how the "secure" part of SD works, but was always too lazy to look it up. When I first heard about them I thought maybe it means there is a way to secure/encrypt MY data on My card, without the use of 3rd part software I'd have to install on everything I used the card with. It seems it's really just a way for other people to restrict their data on MY card. It makes sense for things with a small client base, there arn't that many people who would want electronic charts for a local waterway, a few dozen at most. They should hope the security is durable enough when the user/customer base is increased to the millions and there are people who are trying to break/bypass it.
"Step 1) Copy once"
I hope it won't confuse "copy" with "read" or "play" instead of being able to copy the content to five "trusted" devices you will only be able to play it five times, sounds to lot more like renting than purchasing.
By "lost" I'm guessing you mean Windows was corrupted to the point of needing to be reinstalled, not he took the drive out and forgot where me put it.
That's one of my favorite DRM problems, the files get attached to the the current hardware setup or windows installation. Upgrade your hardware or reinstall/upgrade Windows and your cut off from your data. I previous poster suggested ending the use of "backup" this is data recovery, not backup. I have backups, they get made every week or two. I'm more concerned about the data I make/obtain between backups. If windows dies and I recover the unbacked up data to another windows installation on another hdd or another PC I want to be able to access it. I too have no plans on purchasing DRMed content, I'll buy DVDs and useds CDs, their copy protection is easily bypassed and I'm allowed that legal copy for use on other hardware I own. It's easier to rips CDs to 320kbps and amke a winamp playlist contaning every song I have than to swap CDs. I find it easier make a playlist of my DivX rips to tv-out to the tv in the bedroom than it is to move my dvd rack around the house.
Forget Darwinism and Social Darwinism, it's time for Corporate Darwinism, corporations that can't adapt their business models to new technologies and miss new markets deserve to be killed off(RIAA).
Instead of DRM maybe they should develop something that requires more resources than any home PC has, it worked with CDs for 15yrs. If only home PCs were restricted to 66MHz and 8MB RAM and 100MB hdd and 4x cd-rom drive, HAHA.
"If the sound card automatically refuses to pass any sounds that contain such artifacts, you won't be able to get them into your computer to do the required audio-post-processing to remove them in the first place."
Yes, the RIAA seems to like shooting itself in the foot, but restricting playing to only newer devices would mean taking on the entire PC industry, maybe shooting itself a little higher in the leg where a major arteries are. Mr Bronfman already said screw you to Linux and Mac and older CD players with their new ideas for DRM, you'll just have to go out and buy a new one, next will be everyone who owns a sound card, the ones before they paid off someone to produce their DRM/DMCA compliant RIAA brand sound cards and CD players. They seem to think they're more important than everyone else, it's time everyone else takes them out back for a good olde fashioned woodshed beating. As much as some people may want this "trusted computing" I don't think they're going to willingly exclude older or generic brand parts for financial reasons. Family saves movey for 2yrs to buy the cheapest PC offered by Dell, a couple months later the RIAA wants to enforce some new "brilliant" DRM scheme. That poor family's sad story isn't going to make the RIAA look good in the public eye.
l'grill...what the hell is that?
TrustedFlash...what the hell is that?
Sounds a lot like "Trusted Computing" If you're tired of having your digital content "held hostage on a particular kind of device, such as an iPod or a PC" switch to our TrustedFlash so it can be held hostage by our product.
I can almost see an implied "we want to relplace the CD with a SD card" which would be nice now that the 1GB cards are dropping(slowly) in price. Instead of carrying a non scratch resistant CD you could hold a few SD cards in your pocket. I wouldn't mind buying a read only SD card instead of a CD. As far as the DRM, I've never liked it and combining it with hardware is not a good thing. What happens when **AA thinks it's been overly cracked and decides it no longer meets their impossibly high standards? You have a memory card that's useless to use with newer content, they're not even big enough to be a coaster. But why do I care? All my DivX movies and MP3s are my legal copies of my movie and music collections and do not even hint at any form of copy protection. DRM makes things that should work together not work together and that's a BAD thing.
And the first exploit will be turning on the write protection so the card can't record the new count of how many times the contents were copied. Or holding shift so it can't autoplay and install RIAA/MPAA system crippling spyware. I'm assuming they're going to try this with existing forms of flash cards, or we'll all have to go out and get the newest 50-in-1 reader with copyprotection built into the drivers and firmware and will be rendered useless with v1.01 of the DRM.
that one never gets old.
where are my mod points?
Desktops are for high end games and video encoding and lots of inexpensive storage. Laptops are dropping in price. There are laptops with video cards that can rival those of desktops. Do not combine those statements.
As with all other electronics it depends on the wants of the user. Most people only need something that will allow them to use a web broswer, MS Office or equivalent, watch DVDs and play some non-resource demanding flash or onlone poker games. Any new mass produced(Dude, you're gett'n a Dell) PC will do that these days, desktop or laptop. The place my father works just moved to laptops with docking stations. On their desk they have the docking port, 17" LCD, standard keyboard and mouse. But they can take it home with them at the end of the day and connect through their VPN to monitor anything running overnight while using the same PC they used all day, one less thing for them to have to know how work. With a docking station/port replicator someone's laptop can become their desktop, complete with a better monitor.
For those of us who prefer a high end machine for gaming and video work the market for better parts will always be there. I don't think the CGI for future movies will be rendered using the $400 Dells you see on tv. My desktop is the working machine and when I get a laptop it's usefulness will be in its portability 12" at most, not in it's performance. For now my handheld with 3.5" display is enough. Or a tablet PC, that would be nice, just like a traditional pen and paper notebook, but saves paper. Wait, scratch that laptop part, just give me a high end desktop, a 7oz handheld and a 95c notebook with fine pt Bic pens at 97c a dozen.
a cookie is just a cookie, but a Newton is fruit and cake
"I'm already at the point where I'm beginning to fully support DRM-cracking tools and software. They're becoming the only tools consumers have to defend their legitimate rights."
I'm pleased to hear that more people are noticing that we are increasingly having to do something illegal to exercise our legal rights. When we buy something on a digital medium we are allowed a backup copy, a good thing since we know how fragile floppies and CDs/DVDs are. But thanks to the DMCA and the **AAs decision to encrypt/copy protect the items we've purchased we have to bypass that encryption violating the DMCA to use our fair use rights of the backup copy.
"I'm a believer in copyright, and the rights of the copyright owners to make a living from their works"
I think the words artists and copyright holder need to be further separated. It is increasingly the case that in an attempt to make a living off thier work they are forced to sign over the copyright to the record labels are a used as marketing tools making maybe a few thousand a year while the record company, now having ownership of the work and the artist, takes all the profits. All the "help the artists" marketing is a bunch of BS, they are the only ones who can help the artists by increasing the value of the contracts and not forcing them to forfeit their copyright ownership.
DRM is the thing that takes things that should work together and makes them not work. The DMCA encourages more anti-competition monopolistic behavior between companies than it "defends copyright".
"does anyone else find the fact that Congress is allowed to "bundle" legislation like this distasteful?"
That was allowed to save time, for the first few decades Congress didn't have that much to do, then as the number of Congressmen slowly increased to 435 it became easier to combine similar proposals, "similar" was lost over the years. Now there is the unfortunate practice of trading votes for pet projects, the pork barrel. And of course there are those owned by industries, Hatch of Utah, who will gladly attempt to sneak shady bills into a larger one that is guaranteed to pass, say the RealID into a military spending bill. Or broadcast flag inot a hurricane relief bill. It's up to the subcomm gatekeepers to keep out the trash and only allow similar useful legislation to be attached, but that doesn't always happen. The line item veto was an attempt to allow the President to strike select items in the bill before signing the rest, but that was to reduce spending, I don't know the dollar amount thet'd put on the Broadcast flag, it only lasted a year.
close enough,
If someone borrows a CD or cassette from a library, assuming they can find some decent works, the RIAA believes the person should be sued because they did not get any money out of the exchange, even if it is perfectly legal to borrow something from the public library. How long until they try to exploit the Patriot Act to examine library records and sue people for obtaining copyrighted works without paying(the RIAA money)?
"The reason is that the plaintiffs' lawyers had taken the appropriate steps in trying to prosecute the mother and that the mother used tactics to obstruct the Plaintiff to efficiently prosecute her."
Enough people comaplain about "technobabble" I'm going to complain about "legalbabble". To me that means her lawyers did enough good to make sure the RIAA lost.
"It was possible that her 13 year old daughter may have had a file sharing account."
I love the use of "POSSIBLE". It's POSSIBLE that the 13yr old kid didn't know what she was doing with the 'puter any more than her mother and wasn't doing any file sharing. What proof has the RIAA presented? None. It's POSSIBLE that the harvested IP did not belong to her at the time in question. It's also POSSIBLE that they are both completely innocent and the RIAA lawyers thought it POSSIBLE for them to POSSIBLY have a case if they introduced the idea that it's POSSIBLE that the kid did something without the parrent knowing. They saw the couldn't win against the mother so they blamed the kid who POSSIBLY didn't know any better claiming that she POSSIBLY may have had a file sharing account. They were losing and attempted to shift blame to the daughter. These are legal decisions and I'm yet to see any evidence that would convince me if I were a member of a jury deliberating on one the these cases, that is if the RIAA didn't back out so easily and one got to trial by jury. Amendment VII - "In Suits at common law, where the value on controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved" The suggested settment amount of $3500 more than covers the $20, which even after 214yrs of inflation is no more than $400. Then the RIAA would have to convice at least 8 people of guilt, 7 of 12 jurors to win and the judge who determines sentence, he could decide 99c for each song they had.
I wonder what's going to happen with all these probes once we can travel fast enough to catch up to them in a reasonable amount to time. Would it be better to bring them back and let the collect dust in the Air&Space museum or just keep track of them and let them be a 'side of the highway attraction' on the way to Terra Nova with an attached repeating recording giving it's launch date, time in service and when it was passed by a newer faster probe and became obsolite.
Mars tourist attractions of the future, see the wreckage of Beagle 2 and have your picture taken by Spirit and Opportunity, pictures can be picked up in the gift shop, formerly NASA mission control in Houston, TX.
"...Voyager 1 is now in the interstellar DMZ. Let's hope no one starts shooting at it."
too late...
Officer: Captain Klaa, we have a traget in sight. A probe of ancient origin.
Capt Klaa: Difficult to hit?
Officer: most difficult
Capt Klaa: good
It's a good thing they didn't bring it aboard to examine it, then the Klingons would know where to find Earth.
forget about $5 rentals
blockbuster.com promotion code "friends" without the quotes
It's a free month of rentals and usually has a larger selection than what you'll find in their stores.
disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you do any of the things the parent suggests can be done with a rented DVD.
"This many IP addresses were involved. The transfers went to 99.5%, so we can pretty much rule out someone mistakenly clicking on it. A grand total of 56.789 terabytes, or 2000 movies"
Article: "These movie and film titles are specifically designed to report false information to trackers, thereby gaining artificially inflated popularity."
Possibly, unless the trackers/torrents for the fake/incomplete files were designed to report artifically high numbers so you have logs claiming 2000 copies of each of the ~31 titles were downloaded, 62000 copies, while it is really only 2000 total. But since they directed all the trackers to the same location they can say it was 2000 of each while it was 2000 total. It's a lot of speculation but they seem to want to inflate the stats they have on piracy and don't care how. I wouldn't put it past them to hire people to mine IPs and greatly inflate download stats.
"The average ISP folds like a cheap rug and will terminate the account with that lack of proof."
Some may threaten to cancel your account or turn over your personal info, but others will do nothing more than forward the notice they received to you and will believe any excuse you give them. Virus, spyware, someone hacked your wireless router, etc. All you'll have to do is add another entry to your router's log with an unknown MAC and a time stamp around the time of the alleged infraction in the letter your ISP received before you hit print and mail it back to them. It could work if you're living in an appartment building with dozens of people with wireless cards. We know how easy it is to break WEP or maybe when you upgraded the firmware encryption was turned off. There are plenty of "excuses" your ISP may accept, maybe only for the first or second time. For all you know there really could be someone else in your building breaking into other people's wireless networks for "free internet"
Even with all the chances of false positives and IP collecting bounty hunters possibly making lots of mistakes if you receive a take down notice or infringement reporting letter you are most likely guilty. Sure you could buy a good lawyer to get you off like OJ and the kid touching Jackson. Or you could try the "paranoid geek defence" where you walk into court or your pre-trial hearing and claim to not know anything about infringement and hand the judge a stack of papers detailing every possible way the reported IP or timestamp could be wrong, they gave the wrong timezone and at that time you did not have that IP or a list of every wireless network hacking tool know to man and since there are dozens of people living in the same building it could have been someone hacking your carefull assembled network and how it creates anough reasonable doubt that the judge throws out the case. But a not guilty verdict or dismissed case doesn't make you innocent.
It doesn't take that much effort to find a used CD for $5 or a used/bootleg/imported movie on ebay, as long as when you bought it on ebay you thought "condition: new" meant the condition you'd find in BestBuy, which it should, but then you are the innocent victim and can report it to ebay and the MPAA.
"I feel an idea forming - get some data from /dev/random, give it a name a couple of gigabytes long, and share it."
That's been used to piss off the RIAA/MPAA, it was some type of modified compressed file that gave reported the stats of an average song, 3-6mb and generated random file content when downloaded. The only reference to copyrighted material was the name, but in most cases it was variation on the spelling of a popular title the **AA might want to send out a take down notice for. So your server lists moviereleasedfriday.avi 700MB but when downloaded all the client gets is random 1s and 0s. I was someone's idea of stalling the **AA with honeypots, but then it was all automated so it only stalled them for a few seconds.
Leela: 0101100101, what does it mean?
Bender: It's just gibberish.
If it's random data then there is no infringement. Yes the file name sounds like it could be a copyrighted work, but I download the ipodlinux demo video, rename it as "hackers" and redistribute it. At most it could be some trademark dispute because of the word used as the title.
Let's see, dolphins are already very intellegent natural predators, fortunately they're smart enough to know not to attack members of a species that can easily whipe them out. And robots are as smart as someone programs them to be, may or may not be any more effective than an airsoft gun on a tripod with motion sensor or it could be as useful as a Cylon or Borg.
Dolphin mounted underwater dart guns, I'm thinking fake. It isn't that easy for a human to hit something with a spear gun. Yes, dolphins are natural hunters, but I don't believe they're used to using projectile weapons. Unless it's a dart strapped to their nose they ram the target with I don't see how such a device would work.
I welcome our new dolphin overloards, until we get hungry and eat them or they strangle themselves on 6pack can fasteners.
All Hail King Snorky
"Objection: Why not just plug the phone into a PC?"
"The deeper problems with using an existing or standard PC include the following:"
"A standard PC offers multiple ways to do any given task, thus creating confusion (e.g., email can be sent from Outlook Express, Outlook, clicking right on a document, using a Web-based mail system such as Gmail or Hotmail)"
It's called options, I choose to use Thunderbird while others may pick Outlook
"A standard PC needs to be told who are the users and what are their privileges."
But with the "Appliance" all users will be root by default, that's a good one
"A standard PC needs to be told how to get to an Internet connection and it needs to be plugged into the Internet connection properly."
That's usually the case with everything. Lets see, 50-100kbps cell phone or 10gbps wired connection?
"A standard PC always has the potential for someone to come along and install performance-hogging software or otherwise compromise the system with configuration changes."
Doesn't matter if it's a PC or a phone people are going to do that anyway. Can you say cell phone virus? It doesn't matter what the OS is, when it becomes popular enough there's going to be malware written for it and users to install it, even better if they're root on their Windows-based phone.
"A standardly configured home PC running standard programs cannot have all of its software updated remotely and without the owner's intervention."
It's called autoupdate and after the recent TiVo "update" I wouldn't mind having a say as to which "updates" are installed.
So they want to have a docking port for a phone. The average user doesn't need much more than 300MHz and 256MB RAM depending on the OS, XP is a resource hog and needs more, so something like Palm OS or the Zaurus OS or maybe even WinCE/Windows Mobile will require a lot less. Other than games the only other need for lots of RAM is playing media, DivX and other compressed video. Yes, it seems lots of people have cell phones these days and more than enough people loose or break them. Would you really want your PC to have a 2yr $50+ a month contract and be technically owned by your cell provieder? I wouldn't
The smallest I see a PC getting anytime soon is the Mac Mini and then only because of the DVD drive. Once high density mini DVDs become common then the size can drop to that of a mini-DVD drive. And what about storage? I have many GB of TV recordings. The article lists "two big hard drives" so it's not using the phone as the home PC, it's just making the home PC more modular with the cpu, mboard and memory being contained in a phone. Without the processor and mboard and video card and all the fans that go with them, there's no need for a large tower case. The largest/fastest hdds are still 3.5" So instead of having everything contained in one location on/under/next to your desk you'll have a docking port and hdds and DVD drive scattered all around your desk. No thanks, I'll pass on that one, just make the phone be a USB device like a PDA. I wonder which cell phone company he's working for. Cell phones are already being loaded with "gadgets" to replace the PDA, the only setback is the small 4-6line display and the multi year few thousand dollar contracts. The next step is to try to replace the PC.
"Were people not putting there origional iPods in their pockets with keys, etc. or were the screens on the regular iPods made from a better material."
Someone did a test of the Nano a week or two ago and for a few min I thought it looked like it scratched rather easy, then realized I wasn't going to get one anytime soon and forgot about it. It may be that the black model shows scratches better than the mostly all while other models. My guess is that the smaller size is allowing it to fit in less friendly places and people don't understand the forces at work. The larger models took up more space in a hip pocket and restricted the movement of everything in that pocket, keys and ipod. Now reduce the size and everything is free to move around with every step. Think about the possible damage resulting from the hard metal keys rubbing against a plastic ipod with every step. The only thing I'd expect to remain mostly undamaged is something just as strong as the metal keys and whatever else is on peoples keychains is something metal. My Leatherman Micra was on my keychain for 5yrs and doesn't have a noticable scratch, but it's made of hardened tool steel. A few months ago I switched to the Leatherman Squirt P4 and the colored aluminum plating is showing the everyday wear&tear a lot more. There are several scratches and fading and rubbing off of the color. It's still metal, but softer than tool steel but still more durable than the ipod plastic and it is showing significant wear. The nano is smaller and able to go where no ipod has gone before and it seems it's going into less ipod friendly environments and people don't realize what they're subjecting their new toy to and it's turning up scratched. Or in an effort to further reduce weight Apple chose a softer material for the shell, but I don't have or have even handled a nano so I can only guess at what might be causing the damage. I do know that if I put something not metal in the same pocket as my keys it's going to take some damage. I'm not even going to try guessing at what might happen to one if stored in the purse/pocketbook/whatever by the female readers or any guys in Europe(or at least France) with one of those man-purses.
agreed, same concept
I picked trust since they are somehow narrowly avoiding the aging US anti-trust laws. I'll accept Trust, Cartel, Legitimate Businessman's Club and a couple others I havn't remembered yet.
RILBAAS: Recording Industry's Legitimate Businessman's Association of Springfield, President Disco Stew