The RIAA's problem began 15 years ago...
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
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· Score: 2
When they totally did NOTHING to stop people from copying their tapes. Large scale piracy, yes, but individuals copying tapes for their buddies were never addressed.
Their laziness in not addressing this issue is what spawned the current problem. They virtually CONDONED the tape copying, because they knew the quality would degrade, and people would eventually get the tape.
So now we have people who never thought twice about copying music before, because it was never "wrong" in the eyes of the RIAA.
It's always been *legally* wrong, but now it's just easier, and better, and the RIAA doesn't want to lie in the bed it has made.
I seem to remember an article posted here (I may be wrong, but if memory serves, it was at the beginning of all this mess 8-10 months ago) Microsoft and Yahoo! (among others) were willing to create an industry wide standard, but AOL refused to join in the talks, and since AOL has like 80+% of the market, those talks were pointless to hold.
Granted, it was probably a ploy by MS et al to get a piece of the action, but AOL did not want to have any part of it.
And as it stands, I'm MUCH more afraid of the AOL/TW merger than Microsoft. At least with MS, there are feasible alternatives.
I don't get it... AOL and Time Warner are trying to hook up, and realistically, they should be playing nice. I mean, couldn't this be seen as "Anticompetive"? AOL pretty much owns the IM market with IC and AIM, if they keep shutting out the community, and keep denying scoffing at standards, won't that look bad?
Of course, it's not like this will keep your friendly neighborhood hacker from releasing a patch to fix things...
What's to stop someone from plugging their output from their sound card right back into another sound card, or another computer, and record it as.wav or something, then encoding to mp3? Is there some way of encoding audio like DVD's are encoded to prevent something like this?
as far as hardwired protection... what's to stop us from keeping our machines as they are and using those? In a world where 386's can still be used fruitfully, I think all us geeks can find some use for our P2's for the next 7-10 years.
Actually, a streamed mp3 across a network doesn't take much bandwidth at all. I used to live on a university campus, and I would stream mp3's well over a mile from a machine in a computer lab to my room. There was never any slowdown that I could notice. From what I could tell from my diagnostic software, streaming an mp3 takes around 6 k/s. (This info is using Winamp, mind you) Winamp would not download the whole thing, but would actually buffer 2-3 seconds of music (tested by removing the connector from my hub), and would just take all the info from the remote computer.
I have a Creative DXR3 decoder card, and the Hollywood drivers work with it (which is ideal because some versions of the HW card allow unlimited region changes). In fact, I remember reading somewhere that the DXR3 is pretty much the same as the HW boards. Win 32 drivers available here
Re:BG ruleda criminal. So, when does he go to jail
on
A Post-Microsoft World
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· Score: 1
you're forgetting about the years of appeals and bargaining ahead... anyone hear about the old IBM antitrust case? I think it lasted something like 10 years before the case was dropped.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure that this is more of a civil case than a criminal case, and most of the penalties will be pecuniary rather than incarcerary (and I have no idea if that's a word or not... heh)
Actually, it could be that they're making a play on the word "Nutella", which is a wonderful hazelnut chocolate spread that can be found all over the globe (at least in Northern Florida and Eastern Germany). You never know, eh?
Really, though. If this kind of stuff continues to be developed, universities will be forced to do something. I have worked rather closely with some of the "bigwigs" at my university, and I've been told that Napster takes up 20%(!) of all network usage. Now that's only mp3's. If you get even 1/3 of the people here on campus using Gnuzilla, that's around 3,000-5,000 people using it, and maybe another 1/3 using it at any given time. That's a lot of bandwidth that is being sucked from faculty and research. This doesn't apply only to academia. If the president of your place of employment notices that his email is going awfully slow, he's gonna wanna know why his $15,000/month internet connection is slower than his home modem (if he uses one). So the continued abuse of programs such as Napster and Gnutilla may end up in a tightening of overall internet freedom, because decision makers just can't afford to pay Sprint the huge "phone" bill every month so a bunch of students/employees can get tunes/videos/whatever.
And I can tell you right now, I don't want no stinking firewall.
That's a good idea for the great number of/.'ers, but what about Dilbert-style managers and all those nongeeks? These people often don't check their mail every day, and if it's a weekend, forget it. There's too great a potential for your data never getting seen, not to mention abuse... What if some punk on their parent's DSL/Cable line decides to cc:all@aol.com (or something similar) a 15 meg email, set to destruct in 6 hours? All of a sudden, every server from his line on up can get nuked, and AOL is SOL (no complaints here).
Actually, it's easier to destroy a letter. All you have to do is stick a lighter under it, and you're done. With email, you have to actually destroy the binary data of the section of the hard drive it's on. That would be ALL hard drives. Which means: 1) The sender's hard drive 2) The sender's ISP's mail hard drive 3) Your ISP's mail hard drive 4) Your hard drive. and for every cc:, the number jumps up.
Most regulations are out there not because the government feels like we deserve a better, less "buggy" product, but because PUBLIC SAFETY is at stake. There was a batch of school buses with gas tanks mounted in a place where a side impact could cause that tank to explode. That's bad. The gov't is supposed to protect us from REAL threats to our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not some buggy OS that has exactly zero impact on how I live my life away from computers. That is a consumer choice to deal with. If you don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it, and don't worry about it. And next time you see any, and I mean ANY product that comes off the manufacturing line that has NO room for improvement, please let us all know.
If stuff like this happens every time a company's crunch time is around the corner, there are going to be a lot of irate little guys out there with their pet projects put on hold by corporations who don't want any confusion. feh.
I think that the outcome of this case will have repurcussions that will affect how independant domain holders battle against corporate fat cats. If only there were some way to educate the people who will be making these decisions in how things really work here in the internet world. That way fast legal talk will not be able to stand in the way of plain fact.
The popular media seems to feel that in order for a good story to exist, there needs to be something that is more than human, larger than life. This extends to most forms of media, not just the news. Look at the Mitnik situation. does anyone think that Takedown is going to be as good as Sneakers? Anyways, Technology is the only answer for the future. Think about it... In the past, high technology applied to steam engines. The traditional media is also deathly afraid of becoming obsolete. With the advent of widespread acceptance of the internet and the benefits it provides, the newspapers and magazines, and (to a lesser extent) Television news sources can see their sinking into obscurity.
I think in a lot of ways, you get out what you put into something. I'm not sure programming is something you want to tackle online if you don't know much about it to begin with. Florida State University offers a full CS degree online. It is offered with a concentration in software engineering, I believe.
What about drugs? how do they ensure that you keep looking at that red light? I know that I sometimes have a hard time keeping my eyes steady, and I really don't want that to happen with a laser aimed at my cornea. So did they give you anything to relax the muscles?
I completely agree with this. I'm in an MIS programming program here, and am taking the second of 4 computer programming courses. The first one, we were taught Borland on NT, and everyone was happy with the nice point and click environment. Now they ask us to use Unix and the g++ compilier, and 80% of the class bitched so much, the professor was forced to spend TWO WEEKS going over basic Unix commands. Something I've come to realize about all the Poseur Geeks is that they might be able to score well on book tests and memory stuff, but give them a simple logic problem, and they go to pieces. Geeks can't be replaced by people in it for money. The money is almost secondary to the enjoyment I get from solving computer problems and working with cool systems...
I've been typing heavily (at least 5-7 hours out of an average day) for close to 5 or 6 years (I'm 21) and I haven't had much of a problem, except for a brief time I tried to teach myself the "home key" typing style (fingers on asdf and jkl;) my wrists hurst constantly for the month or so I tried that. When I went back to the hunt and peck (I like to call it "seek and destroy" typing, everything worked fine... no problems since... specifically, I use my left index finger, and my right forefinger, middle finger, and thumb to type, and sometimes my little finger... This gives me only like a 10% decrease in speed (I max out at 72wpm) and zero pain... anyone have any similar experiences?
While VNC is a possibility, I get the feeling that the computers wirenut works on aren't going to be set up to boot without a video out signal. then there's the problem of network connections and the client. if you really want to, all you would need to have is a box, sitting in a corner, with power and a networking cable running to it, and you never have to leave the desk. But VNC won't run with DOS, from what I've seen. VNC is not a bad idea as far as ease of use, but it DOES leave a rather nasty security hole in your system.
So I suppose that means all of us descended from Celtic blood should get together and sue Italy? I mean, after all, they DID stomp all over our land and kill a whole bunch of us... oh, and I guess I should try and track down some Mongol's, too, so I can take their money, too, because I'm sure they messed with my ancestors, too... All this talk about restitution is pointless... The Holocaust differs from the slave trade in so many ways it's not even funny. I don't think you'll find too many stories of Jewish people turning in people of their own religion to the Nazi's. coastal African tribes contributed to the slave trade in the Americas as much as anyone else did. They sold out their own people... but no one's going over to Africa to sue a bunch of nomads... strange...
Why not put a small tax on all domestic orders placed on the internet? I would be perfectly willing to pay an extra 3% sales tax on an order, and no tax on anything else internet related. This could also be applied to same-state transactions (instead of the full sales tax charge). If 1% went to the origin state, another to the destination state, and the last to Uncle Sam, everything should be fine. This would increase revenues to the states, and I really can't see 3% being all that much of a burden... Criticisms? Agreements?
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When they totally did NOTHING to stop people from copying their tapes. Large scale piracy, yes, but individuals copying tapes for their buddies were never addressed.
Their laziness in not addressing this issue is what spawned the current problem. They virtually CONDONED the tape copying, because they knew the quality would degrade, and people would eventually get the tape.
So now we have people who never thought twice about copying music before, because it was never "wrong" in the eyes of the RIAA.
It's always been *legally* wrong, but now it's just easier, and better, and the RIAA doesn't want to lie in the bed it has made.
I seem to remember an article posted here (I may be wrong, but if memory serves, it was at the beginning of all this mess 8-10 months ago) Microsoft and Yahoo! (among others) were willing to create an industry wide standard, but AOL refused to join in the talks, and since AOL has like 80+% of the market, those talks were pointless to hold.
Granted, it was probably a ploy by MS et al to get a piece of the action, but AOL did not want to have any part of it.
And as it stands, I'm MUCH more afraid of the AOL/TW merger than Microsoft. At least with MS, there are feasible alternatives.
I don't get it... AOL and Time Warner are trying to hook up, and realistically, they should be playing nice. I mean, couldn't this be seen as "Anticompetive"? AOL pretty much owns the IM market with IC and AIM, if they keep shutting out the community, and keep denying scoffing at standards, won't that look bad?
Of course, it's not like this will keep your friendly neighborhood hacker from releasing a patch to fix things...
What's to stop someone from plugging their output from their sound card right back into another sound card, or another computer, and record it as .wav or something, then encoding to mp3?
Is there some way of encoding audio like DVD's are encoded to prevent something like this?
as far as hardwired protection... what's to stop us from keeping our machines as they are and using those?
In a world where 386's can still be used fruitfully, I think all us geeks can find some use for our P2's for the next 7-10 years.
Actually, a streamed mp3 across a network doesn't take much bandwidth at all.
I used to live on a university campus, and I would stream mp3's well over a mile from a machine in a computer lab to my room. There was never any slowdown that I could notice.
From what I could tell from my diagnostic software, streaming an mp3 takes around 6 k/s.
(This info is using Winamp, mind you)
Winamp would not download the whole thing, but would actually buffer 2-3 seconds of music (tested by removing the connector from my hub), and would just take all the info from the remote computer.
I have a Creative DXR3 decoder card, and the Hollywood drivers work with it (which is ideal because some versions of the HW card allow unlimited region changes).
In fact, I remember reading somewhere that the DXR3 is pretty much the same as the HW boards.
Win 32 drivers available here
you're forgetting about the years of appeals and bargaining ahead...
anyone hear about the old IBM antitrust case?
I think it lasted something like 10 years before the case was dropped.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure that this is more of a civil case than a criminal case, and most of the penalties will be pecuniary rather than incarcerary (and I have no idea if that's a word or not... heh)
Actually, it could be that they're making a play on the word "Nutella", which is a wonderful hazelnut chocolate spread that can be found all over the globe (at least in Northern Florida and Eastern Germany).
You never know, eh?
Really, though.
If this kind of stuff continues to be developed, universities will be forced to do something. I have worked rather closely with some of the "bigwigs" at my university, and I've been told that Napster takes up 20%(!) of all network usage.
Now that's only mp3's. If you get even 1/3 of the people here on campus using Gnuzilla, that's around 3,000-5,000 people using it, and maybe another 1/3 using it at any given time. That's a lot of bandwidth that is being sucked from faculty and research.
This doesn't apply only to academia. If the president of your place of employment notices that his email is going awfully slow, he's gonna wanna know why his $15,000/month internet connection is slower than his home modem (if he uses one).
So the continued abuse of programs such as Napster and Gnutilla may end up in a tightening of overall internet freedom, because decision makers just can't afford to pay Sprint the huge "phone" bill every month so a bunch of students/employees can get tunes/videos/whatever.
And I can tell you right now, I don't want no stinking firewall.
That's a good idea for the great number of /.'ers, but what about Dilbert-style managers and all those nongeeks?
These people often don't check their mail every day, and if it's a weekend, forget it.
There's too great a potential for your data never getting seen, not to mention abuse...
What if some punk on their parent's DSL/Cable line decides to cc:all@aol.com (or something similar) a 15 meg email, set to destruct in 6 hours?
All of a sudden, every server from his line on up can get nuked, and AOL is SOL (no complaints here).
Actually, it's easier to destroy a letter. All you have to do is stick a lighter under it, and you're done. With email, you have to actually destroy the binary data of the section of the hard drive it's on.
That would be ALL hard drives. Which means:
1) The sender's hard drive
2) The sender's ISP's mail hard drive
3) Your ISP's mail hard drive
4) Your hard drive.
and for every cc:, the number jumps up.
and don't even bother trying, if there was a bcc:
Most regulations are out there not because the government feels like we deserve a better, less "buggy" product, but because PUBLIC SAFETY is at stake. There was a batch of school buses with gas tanks mounted in a place where a side impact could cause that tank to explode. That's bad. The gov't is supposed to protect us from REAL threats to our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not some buggy OS that has exactly zero impact on how I live my life away from computers. That is a consumer choice to deal with. If you don't like it, don't buy it, don't use it, and don't worry about it.
And next time you see any, and I mean ANY product that comes off the manufacturing line that has NO room for improvement, please let us all know.
If stuff like this happens every time a company's crunch time is around the corner, there are going to be a lot of irate little guys out there with their pet projects put on hold by corporations who don't want any confusion.
feh.
I think that the outcome of this case will have repurcussions that will affect how independant domain holders battle against corporate fat cats.
If only there were some way to educate the people who will be making these decisions in how things really work here in the internet world. That way fast legal talk will not be able to stand in the way of plain fact.
I wonder if 3rd party vendors will offer upgrades where you mail in your iMac and they put it in a nice, big, monitor for you...
The popular media seems to feel that in order for
a good story to exist, there needs to be something that is more than human, larger than life. This extends to most forms of media, not just the news. Look at the Mitnik situation. does anyone think that Takedown is going to be as good as Sneakers?
Anyways, Technology is the only answer for the future. Think about it... In the past, high technology applied to steam engines.
The traditional media is also deathly afraid of becoming obsolete. With the advent of widespread acceptance of the internet and the benefits it provides, the newspapers and magazines, and (to a lesser extent) Television news sources can see their sinking into obscurity.
I think in a lot of ways, you get out what you put into something. I'm not sure programming is something you want to tackle online if you don't know much about it to begin with.
Florida State University offers a full CS degree online. It is offered with a concentration in software engineering, I believe.
What about drugs?
how do they ensure that you keep looking at that red light?
I know that I sometimes have a hard time keeping my eyes steady, and I really don't want that to happen with a laser aimed at my cornea.
So did they give you anything to relax the muscles?
Yeah!
I'll buy El Nino, and La Nina, too!
Where are the papers?
heh... I know that the Big Red Spot is an
anomoly, and I also know that it's said that our entire earth can fit inside it...
Now THAT's what I call real estate!
Yeah, man! I wanna buy the big red spot on Jupiter!
"When the Earth hits your eyes, like a big pizza pie, that's amore'" heh... cool.
I completely agree with this. I'm in an MIS programming program here, and am taking the second of 4 computer programming courses. The first one, we were taught Borland on NT, and everyone was happy with the nice point and click environment.
Now they ask us to use Unix and the g++ compilier, and 80% of the class bitched so much, the professor was forced to spend TWO WEEKS going over basic Unix commands.
Something I've come to realize about all the Poseur Geeks is that they might be able to score well on book tests and memory stuff, but give them a simple logic problem, and they go to pieces.
Geeks can't be replaced by people in it for money.
The money is almost secondary to the enjoyment I get from solving computer problems and working with cool systems...
I've been typing heavily (at least 5-7 hours out of an average day) for close to 5 or 6 years (I'm 21) and I haven't had much of a problem, except for a brief time I tried to teach myself the "home key" typing style (fingers on asdf and jkl;) my wrists hurst constantly for the month or so I tried that. When I went back to the hunt and peck (I like to call it "seek and destroy" typing, everything worked fine... no problems since... specifically, I use my left index finger, and my right forefinger, middle finger, and thumb to type, and sometimes my little finger... This gives me only like a 10% decrease in speed (I max out at 72wpm) and zero pain... anyone have any similar experiences?
While VNC is a possibility, I get the feeling that the computers wirenut works on aren't going to be set up to boot without a video out signal.
then there's the problem of network connections and the client. if you really want to, all you would need to have is a box, sitting in a corner, with power and a networking cable running to it, and you never have to leave the desk. But VNC won't run with DOS, from what I've seen.
VNC is not a bad idea as far as ease of use, but it DOES leave a rather nasty security hole in your system.
So I suppose that means all of us descended from Celtic blood should get together and sue Italy? I mean, after all, they DID stomp all over our land and kill a whole bunch of us... oh, and I guess I should try and track down some Mongol's, too, so I can take their money, too, because I'm sure they messed with my ancestors, too... All this talk about restitution is pointless... The Holocaust differs from the slave trade in so many ways it's not even funny. I don't think you'll find too many stories of Jewish people turning in people of their own religion to the Nazi's. coastal African tribes contributed to the slave trade in the Americas as much as anyone else did. They sold out their own people... but no one's going over to Africa to sue a bunch of nomads... strange...
Why not put a small tax on all domestic orders placed on the internet?
I would be perfectly willing to pay an extra 3% sales tax on an order, and no tax on anything else internet related. This could also be applied to same-state transactions (instead of the full sales tax charge). If 1% went to the origin state, another to the destination state, and the last to Uncle Sam, everything should be fine. This would increase revenues to the states, and I really can't see 3% being all that much of a burden...
Criticisms? Agreements?