By then, maybe we'll be able to print things in 3D, real things, that work. Or have them build themselves out of nanobots, like in Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". Maybe we can program our own flies and cockroaches, by manipulating DNA, in our bedrooms. Who knows? The time we save by not having to write scripts to turn our wifi on and off without crashing and stuff, we can put into the new technologies that might arrive in the future.
I was basically thinking about services such as Amazon EC2 et al, and the possibility of outsourcing computing power from inside an organization into the cloud, and my observation that such an organization cannot really escape having to trust the administrators of the cloud facility, since there is no way of securing a cloud server's memory against the cloud organization's administrators.
Yes, Lastpass does not fall into this category at all, and seems potentially secure.
Given that the admins in a cloud company have access to the guest os's memory, there's no way of fundamentally making the infrastructure secure enough that you don't have to trust the admins.
You can encrypt stuff all you like, but things will be in the guest os's memory in an unencrypted state, at least some of the time.
You know, it's possible that DRM is a sort of viral marketing campaign in a way. I mean, now everyone knows Ubisoft has just released a new game, and everyone's basically implying that, if it wasn't for the DRM, it'd be a really awesome game, that everyone wants to play, and if no-one wants to play it, why is everyone talking about it?
Maybe DRM is a little bit like a girl playing "hard to get"? Everyone likes to get something they need to work for a bit. That's what levelling is all about.
It's not that hard for a company to do a study of the extent to which DRM encourages sales or not, eg by releasing one language version with DRM, and one without, and comparing sales between languages (I'm sure you can iteratively come up with tweaks and improvements to this experimental design).
It'd made a great project for some phD students in sociology or similar.
Except that the jury are told that they're not there to judge the ethics of the case, merely to decide whether the defendant did commit a crime or not, according to the defined law as it currently stands.
Also, it's not like the RIAA doesn't have a point: it's much harder to charge higher prices if there are easy ways to obtain the music without paying them. Sure, someone can claim the prices are too high, but no-one's obliging one to buy the songs at that price, and the RIAA does not have a monopoly on the ability to distribute music, especially not now. By which I mean: there are lots of bands out there trying to make a name for themselves; it's quite possible to obtain somewhat-acceptable music without buying from the RIAA, and without downloading the RIAA's music against their will.
If one feels the RIAA prices are too high, from an ethical point of view I feel the only ethical action is simply to buy music from other bands whose prices are more competitive. Or look at it another way: downloading the RIAA's music for free is providing them with publicity which arguably helps promote their music. If you're against the RIAA is that really what you want to do?;-)
Ok, so, as an English person, I've wondered my whole life: what is the purpose of the fifth amendment? What is unethical about getting people to testify against themselves? I mean, to me, it sounds as arbitrary a rule as, let's say, 'You don't have to testify on a Tuesday, or when it's a full moon'. Does someone want to fill me in? (I'm sure I'm not the only person who's wondered about this)
You think the older version is likely to support my newer hardware?
I guess I also feel that Ubuntu seems not only to have fewer bugs (eg wifi and my mousepad support), but also to be using newer versions of the software.
I also liked that it automatically moves me to what it feels to be the cutting edge software - eg grub 2 - without my having to do the research myself to figure out what the latest software is. It just appears, and then I do the research to figure out how to use it.
There are some more controversial decisions occasionally - pulseaudio I'm looking at you - but on the whole, I'm quite happy with Ubuntu forging ahead and pushing the latest and greatest softwares onto my desktop.
I felt that Squeeze was actually older than Ubuntu and more buggy...
The good thing about Squeeze was it made me feel somehow 'clean' and that felt good, but it didn't quite make up for the ease of use for Ubuntu. Not for me. Not quite.
Now there is a new kernel out for Squeeze, and it does support my mousepad, and I'm in the middle of investigating whether it supports my wifi, so who knows? I'm actually typing this from Squeeze whilst I download the latest updates, so who knows?
I feel Google works significantly better for Ubuntu than for Debian: there's just a much bigger community out there it seems, to me.
Google does kind of work though for Debian I think.
For the installation process, I used debootstrap from my Ubuntu into a new partition, since I don't have a dvd or cd drive... so I can't tell you how well the 'official' installer works.
I think debootstrap was fairly painless for me. These were the instructions I followed:
Generally, I feel if you have a cd player and lack masochistic tendencies that using the official installer is most likely going to be an order of magnitude easier than using debootstrap:-P
But it's very 'raw' I feel, at least, I dabble in using Squeeze (Debian Testing), and there are plenty of bugs that are fixed in Ubuntu, that are still open in Squeeze, at least for me, for example turning off the wifi causes a kernel panic, and it took a while for a kernel to come out that recognized my touchpad.
I'd like to like Squeeze, and when I'm studying for linux exams and stuff, it's exactly what I use, but as soon as I want a system that "just works" I switch back to Ubuntu.
In some ways, it's like Ubuntu is the new Windows for me, in that it's the option that "just works":-P
Yes because it's so much better to get people to use Windows, rather than to get them to use Ubuntu, and spend a couple of clicks changing their browser to... well... some search engine that you prefer. I was going to say Google, but their founders seem to be selling out, so who knows what will become of Google?
I think I know what you're saying though: I guess you've been putting lots of effort into advocating Ubuntu, and now you feel betrayed? I guess I can understand that.
Still Ubuntu is I feel pretty cool, but I guess you could be right that accepting sponsorship indirectly Microsoft seems a little.... unwise...
I concur with your analysis. I was thinking of exactly the same methodology.
I suppose the issue with DRM, the reason it gets included anyway is some combination of: - there are no obvious figures for or against DRM - in the absence of doubt, probably 'no-one ever got fired for adding DRM to their product'
From the point of view of the product manager, probably it's not his/her money being spent on the DRM, and if he/she doesn't do it and then there's lots of piracy, it's difficult to justify to management. If they implement DRM, and there's lots of piracy, they can just say 'See! If we hadn't added drm there'd be *even more* piracy!'
Ultimately it does seem a bit of a gun meets foot exercise though. A little like those annoying trailers on purchased videos telling you why you shouldn't view pirated videos...
Perhaps the only way to solve the problem would be to do some controlled experiments on this. Maybe a project for some phd sociologists?
Maybe one could study the release of two games, one in English and one in French, for example: - in the first game, one releases it with DRM in English, and without DRM in French - the other game is released without DRM in the English version, and with DRM in the French version... then compare sales, between games, and between languages.
If one did this experiment enough times, the results might start to be statistically significant.
Well, initially I thought that sucked, and then it occurred to me that 10% of all downloads being remunerated downloads is actually pretty decent I feel.
World of Goo got excellent marketing exposure I feel, it's very well known. The total number of downloads must be massive, so 10% of that is probably pretty decent.
Would World of Goo have got so much exposure if it hadn't been downloaded by many for free? Difficult to quantify...
To reiterate my original point: 10% of all World of Goo downloads being remunerated is I feel probably quite decent numbers. Are there many people on Slashdot who have *not* played World of Goo?
I think maybe piracy is perhaps one of the reasons for the huge quantity of web-based flash games around. It's probably just so much easier to generate a revenue stream, not to mention it's easy to wing adverts on to flash game sites.
It's unfortunate I feel since flash games are not so bad but I'd rather play a decent highly graphical game that takes full advantage of my hardware, rather than running in javascript in a browser window...
Someone somewhere else in this page suggests that anyone who feels that a game is overpriced, the ethical stance is simply to not play it, rather than download it, and in theory I agree with that. There again, I feel such a position is a little like espousing communism. The 'tragedy of the commons' tends to win out I feel. If you're the only person not downloading, only you are missing out, and it's not like your money, on its own, is going to be the difference between a games company living and dying.
So the end result is lots of flash games, Facebook games, and MMOGs. Which are cool, but still, I really enjoyed for example "The World Ends with You", admittedly not a PC game, but nevertheless a standalone game; and I feel it would be a shame if such games are not created in the future.
If there is some way to make it possible for companies to make money from non-mmog, non-flash games, I feel that is good for the variety of games.
There again, as someone in this story has pointed out, Ubisoft has committed to provide a patch if and when they shut down the online servers for a game. If Ubisoft can create such a patch, surely pirates can create a very similar patch rather more pre-emptively?
Well, the result could be that people who previously seeded lots of songs now think twice about this, maybe just seed one or two, or just become leachers.
If everyone is only a leacher, then downloading songs from p2p becomes harder, and therefore services that provide them legally for a fee can charge more money, because the differential between the time effort and risk to use p2p, and to just pay some money and download it, becomes a lot less.
I can't say I think this is a bad thing. I think that if those that argue that the price-point is too high for songs and videos are somewhat correct, then it could be possible for new distributors, or forms of distribution, to rise up, and have a competitive advantage over the too expensive distribution.
At the moment though, even what could be argued to be reasonable price-points for alternative forms of distribution could be out-competed by people who talk about how evil the RIAA are, and then download mainstream songs for free using piracy, instead of downloading some entirely different set of songs from other sources.
There are I feel lots and lots of bands out there trying to "make it". I dont think the only source of "good bands" is from RIAA-sponsored bands...
Haha, this is so true! I mean, not for me of course. Except for the being married bit. And errr... hmmm.... Hey! Look! A grue!
On a more serious note, feelings on: did we all become older as a block, and younger nerds hang out somewhere else? Or, it's more a case of the breadth of ages has broadened? If it's the former, where do younger nerds hang out these days? I mean, apart from on my lawn:-P
Well, leaving cleaning to government employees with a job for life is not a guarantee of cleanliness either of course;-) but perhaps there needs to be some more thorough auditing being done to make sure things really are clean?
Slashdot Mirror
Probably time for you to change your password now ;-)
... or go exploring in his back-garden shed.
By then, maybe we'll be able to print things in 3D, real things, that work. Or have them build themselves out of nanobots, like in Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". Maybe we can program our own flies and cockroaches, by manipulating DNA, in our bedrooms. Who knows? The time we save by not having to write scripts to turn our wifi on and off without crashing and stuff, we can put into the new technologies that might arrive in the future.
I was basically thinking about services such as Amazon EC2 et al, and the possibility of outsourcing computing power from inside an organization into the cloud, and my observation that such an organization cannot really escape having to trust the administrators of the cloud facility, since there is no way of securing a cloud server's memory against the cloud organization's administrators.
Yes, Lastpass does not fall into this category at all, and seems potentially secure.
Given that the admins in a cloud company have access to the guest os's memory, there's no way of fundamentally making the infrastructure secure enough that you don't have to trust the admins.
You can encrypt stuff all you like, but things will be in the guest os's memory in an unencrypted state, at least some of the time.
You know, it's possible that DRM is a sort of viral marketing campaign in a way. I mean, now everyone knows Ubisoft has just released a new game, and everyone's basically implying that, if it wasn't for the DRM, it'd be a really awesome game, that everyone wants to play, and if no-one wants to play it, why is everyone talking about it?
Maybe DRM is a little bit like a girl playing "hard to get"? Everyone likes to get something they need to work for a bit. That's what levelling is all about.
You're forgetting the Tragedy of the Commons.
It's not that hard for a company to do a study of the extent to which DRM encourages sales or not, eg by releasing one language version with DRM, and one without, and comparing sales between languages (I'm sure you can iteratively come up with tweaks and improvements to this experimental design).
It'd made a great project for some phD students in sociology or similar.
Except that the jury are told that they're not there to judge the ethics of the case, merely to decide whether the defendant did commit a crime or not, according to the defined law as it currently stands.
Also, it's not like the RIAA doesn't have a point: it's much harder to charge higher prices if there are easy ways to obtain the music without paying them. Sure, someone can claim the prices are too high, but no-one's obliging one to buy the songs at that price, and the RIAA does not have a monopoly on the ability to distribute music, especially not now. By which I mean: there are lots of bands out there trying to make a name for themselves; it's quite possible to obtain somewhat-acceptable music without buying from the RIAA, and without downloading the RIAA's music against their will.
If one feels the RIAA prices are too high, from an ethical point of view I feel the only ethical action is simply to buy music from other bands whose prices are more competitive. Or look at it another way: downloading the RIAA's music for free is providing them with publicity which arguably helps promote their music. If you're against the RIAA is that really what you want to do? ;-)
Ok, so, as an English person, I've wondered my whole life: what is the purpose of the fifth amendment? What is unethical about getting people to testify against themselves? I mean, to me, it sounds as arbitrary a rule as, let's say, 'You don't have to testify on a Tuesday, or when it's a full moon'. Does someone want to fill me in? (I'm sure I'm not the only person who's wondered about this)
Some specific things I like about Ubuntu Karmic compared to Debian Squeeze:
- supports AppArmor (I feel naked surfing without it... and I haven't had time to learn selinux yet)
- python is 2.6, instead of 2.5 (might have changed now; I was dabbling a month or two ago)
- touchpad works, (fixed in latest 2.6.32 kernel, but didn't work a month or two ago; maybe the backported kernel would have worked, it's possible)
You think the older version is likely to support my newer hardware?
I guess I also feel that Ubuntu seems not only to have fewer bugs (eg wifi and my mousepad support), but also to be using newer versions of the software.
I also liked that it automatically moves me to what it feels to be the cutting edge software - eg grub 2 - without my having to do the research myself to figure out what the latest software is. It just appears, and then I do the research to figure out how to use it.
There are some more controversial decisions occasionally - pulseaudio I'm looking at you - but on the whole, I'm quite happy with Ubuntu forging ahead and pushing the latest and greatest softwares onto my desktop.
I felt that Squeeze was actually older than Ubuntu and more buggy...
The good thing about Squeeze was it made me feel somehow 'clean' and that felt good, but it didn't quite make up for the ease of use for Ubuntu. Not for me. Not quite.
Now there is a new kernel out for Squeeze, and it does support my mousepad, and I'm in the middle of investigating whether it supports my wifi, so who knows? I'm actually typing this from Squeeze whilst I download the latest updates, so who knows?
I feel Google works significantly better for Ubuntu than for Debian: there's just a much bigger community out there it seems, to me.
Google does kind of work though for Debian I think.
For the installation process, I used debootstrap from my Ubuntu into a new partition, since I don't have a dvd or cd drive... so I can't tell you how well the 'official' installer works.
I think debootstrap was fairly painless for me. These were the instructions I followed:
installing debian using debootstrap.
Generally, I feel if you have a cd player and lack masochistic tendencies that using the official installer is most likely going to be an order of magnitude easier than using debootstrap :-P
debian?
But it's very 'raw' I feel, at least, I dabble in using Squeeze (Debian Testing), and there are plenty of bugs that are fixed in Ubuntu, that are still open in Squeeze, at least for me, for example turning off the wifi causes a kernel panic, and it took a while for a kernel to come out that recognized my touchpad.
I'd like to like Squeeze, and when I'm studying for linux exams and stuff, it's exactly what I use, but as soon as I want a system that "just works" I switch back to Ubuntu.
In some ways, it's like Ubuntu is the new Windows for me, in that it's the option that "just works" :-P
Yes because it's so much better to get people to use Windows, rather than to get them to use Ubuntu, and spend a couple of clicks changing their browser to ... well... some search engine that you prefer. I was going to say Google, but their founders seem to be selling out, so who knows what will become of Google?
I think I know what you're saying though: I guess you've been putting lots of effort into advocating Ubuntu, and now you feel betrayed? I guess I can understand that.
Still Ubuntu is I feel pretty cool, but I guess you could be right that accepting sponsorship indirectly Microsoft seems a little .... unwise...
I concur with your analysis. I was thinking of exactly the same methodology.
I suppose the issue with DRM, the reason it gets included anyway is some combination of:
- there are no obvious figures for or against DRM
- in the absence of doubt, probably 'no-one ever got fired for adding DRM to their product'
From the point of view of the product manager, probably it's not his/her money being spent on the DRM, and if he/she doesn't do it and then there's lots of piracy, it's difficult to justify to management. If they implement DRM, and there's lots of piracy, they can just say 'See! If we hadn't added drm there'd be *even more* piracy!'
Ultimately it does seem a bit of a gun meets foot exercise though. A little like those annoying trailers on purchased videos telling you why you shouldn't view pirated videos...
Perhaps the only way to solve the problem would be to do some controlled experiments on this. Maybe a project for some phd sociologists?
Maybe one could study the release of two games, one in English and one in French, for example: ... then compare sales, between games, and between languages.
- in the first game, one releases it with DRM in English, and without DRM in French
- the other game is released without DRM in the English version, and with DRM in the French version
If one did this experiment enough times, the results might start to be statistically significant.
Well, initially I thought that sucked, and then it occurred to me that 10% of all downloads being remunerated downloads is actually pretty decent I feel.
World of Goo got excellent marketing exposure I feel, it's very well known. The total number of downloads must be massive, so 10% of that is probably pretty decent.
Would World of Goo have got so much exposure if it hadn't been downloaded by many for free? Difficult to quantify...
To reiterate my original point: 10% of all World of Goo downloads being remunerated is I feel probably quite decent numbers. Are there many people on Slashdot who have *not* played World of Goo?
I think maybe piracy is perhaps one of the reasons for the huge quantity of web-based flash games around. It's probably just so much easier to generate a revenue stream, not to mention it's easy to wing adverts on to flash game sites.
It's unfortunate I feel since flash games are not so bad but I'd rather play a decent highly graphical game that takes full advantage of my hardware, rather than running in javascript in a browser window...
Someone somewhere else in this page suggests that anyone who feels that a game is overpriced, the ethical stance is simply to not play it, rather than download it, and in theory I agree with that. There again, I feel such a position is a little like espousing communism. The 'tragedy of the commons' tends to win out I feel. If you're the only person not downloading, only you are missing out, and it's not like your money, on its own, is going to be the difference between a games company living and dying.
So the end result is lots of flash games, Facebook games, and MMOGs. Which are cool, but still, I really enjoyed for example "The World Ends with You", admittedly not a PC game, but nevertheless a standalone game; and I feel it would be a shame if such games are not created in the future.
If there is some way to make it possible for companies to make money from non-mmog, non-flash games, I feel that is good for the variety of games.
There again, as someone in this story has pointed out, Ubisoft has committed to provide a patch if and when they shut down the online servers for a game. If Ubisoft can create such a patch, surely pirates can create a very similar patch rather more pre-emptively?
Well, the result could be that people who previously seeded lots of songs now think twice about this, maybe just seed one or two, or just become leachers.
If everyone is only a leacher, then downloading songs from p2p becomes harder, and therefore services that provide them legally for a fee can charge more money, because the differential between the time effort and risk to use p2p, and to just pay some money and download it, becomes a lot less.
I can't say I think this is a bad thing. I think that if those that argue that the price-point is too high for songs and videos are somewhat correct, then it could be possible for new distributors, or forms of distribution, to rise up, and have a competitive advantage over the too expensive distribution.
At the moment though, even what could be argued to be reasonable price-points for alternative forms of distribution could be out-competed by people who talk about how evil the RIAA are, and then download mainstream songs for free using piracy, instead of downloading some entirely different set of songs from other sources.
There are I feel lots and lots of bands out there trying to "make it". I dont think the only source of "good bands" is from RIAA-sponsored bands...
Haha, this is so true! I mean, not for me of course. Except for the being married bit. And errr... hmmm.... Hey! Look! A grue!
On a more serious note, feelings on: did we all become older as a block, and younger nerds hang out somewhere else? Or, it's more a case of the breadth of ages has broadened? If it's the former, where do younger nerds hang out these days? I mean, apart from on my lawn :-P
Or human DNA. What could possibly go wrong? :-P
You have experience throwing people?
Funnily enough, it sounds like just the sort of thing that Google would do really well!
> cease all property
> what do they have to loose?
If only spelling checkers were context-sensitive :-P
'Britney Spears, or freedom.'
Well, leaving cleaning to government employees with a job for life is not a guarantee of cleanliness either of course ;-) but perhaps there needs to be some more thorough auditing being done to make sure things really are clean?