Of course that is true, but almost entirely because of the laws of physics, rather than any manmade rules neccessitated by them. If someone invented a simple, cheap gravity reversing device or inertial force generator, which allowed air (space) craft to operate much as cars do, without any regard to the air as such, but in three dimensions, the rules would be vastly different from present day aircraft rules and much more similar to automobile rules. The laws of physics are superior to and constrain all manmade rules.
....You are then required to file an emergency report in the next week or so explaining why you used the button. Assuming the report is reasonable and you don't do it too often, nothing else happens......
Why bother with all that hassle? Just let the government or their computers in their car ( you just get to sit in it) drive you to wherever the government thinks you are allowed to go. If you've already been in the car more than the number of miles they think you should for ecological or no reasons, all you get to use it for is to go to work, but only if there is no public transportation. Shopping trips are allowed once a week. The big brother technology makes it possible for total control of where and when you travel, unless you walk. There will also be an explosive sniffer built into the vehicle to ensure that it cannot be used as bomb. I'm sure that/. readers can think of many other ways this fabulous technology can be put to use for the "public good".
As for aircraft, the ONLY reason that the Government can get with all present regulations is because there are only a miniscule number of airplanes when compared to how many cars are in daily operation in this country.
.....If she downloaded, or failed to control children who downloaded then she is guilty both of a crime, and liable for damages.......
It seems that the only evidence in all of these cases tying a specific user to an act of copying is an IP address that was supposedly used by the alleged infringer. Why do ISPs keep records of who has what IP address when at all? Especially in a DHCP system, what is the point of keeping such information more than a day or two, if at all? If the ISPs did not keep such records, there would be no way to pin anything on anyone. It seems that ISPs are conspiring to keep the RIAA suing their own Internet customers. Perhaps some ISPs could get a lot of subscribers by loudly advertising that they do NOT keep IP assignment information.
IP addresses can be spoofed and so even with the ISP information, can it really be proved that a particular household, let alone a particular person in that household was even connected to the Internet at that time? Just because the ISP log says that IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was connected to John Doe at 4:14AM does that give enough evidence to charge someone half a million dollars? I certainly hope that the RIAA is made to prove WHO actually did the downloading is based on more than just one log entry in some ISPs records.
If someone parks their car in front of my house at night and downloads a boatload of RIAA crap into their laptop over my wireless connection, does that prove I or anyone in my house did it at 3:22AM? Is there a law that says I am responsible for who might use my Internet connection, especially without my knowledge? In some apartment houses, it is possible to wirelessly connect to several access points and download all sorts of files. How would it be possible to determine WHO used a given one of these at a certain time? I hope that lady's lawyers are able to cast serious doubt on the connction between an IP address and possible users of that at any given time.
....I can't even go a few weeks without having to purge my access logs.....
Why do you even have to KEEP or record such access logs at all. How do they help you? If you don't keep information, then you don't have to worry about getting a subpoena. You just reply' "we don't keep the requested information". Just keep collective statistical data from which there is no way to glean individual identifying information that would be of use to any lawyer.
.....It is called the subponea that is used in the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit.....
Is it a legal requirements for ISP's to keep or even make records of who used what IP address when? If not, why do they even record such information? If there is no law for an ISP to keep such records, could they not save themselves a lot of hassle by sending a form letter to a court stating the they don't keep Internet useage records on their customers. They could even use that as a selling point: "We protect your privacy and do not make *any* records of your use of our service". If there is a law, for how long are they required to keep data that can correlate the users information to a date and time?
Even if the sue happy lawyers have an IP address, is it not possible to do nefarious activity on the Internet by using someone else's IP address over one of the millions of wireless access points? In that case, they'd get the name and number of someone who has no connection whatsoever with their case. It seems that in many cases, making a connection between an IP adress and the true users of that address has no correllation.
....And unfortunately after the physical degradation that occurs with rubbing a stylus over vinyl dozens of time, what you're left with in terms of sound quality is lower than what you'd have with a CD or especially a DVD-Audio......
There are may reasons why CD and DVD have caught on in a big way. The convenience of the form factor coupled with good to excellent quality, not subject to playback wear are certainly among these.
It is deplorable that now as technology has made audio and video widely available, the copyright owners are fighting their customers through cumbersome, incompatible, useless and damaging anti-copy techniques and with an army of lawyers. Each time, when radio, reel tape recorders, audio and video cassettes came out, the copyright owners tried to use legal means to thwart or hobble the new technologies. Only when they realized that those tactics will not work in the long run, did they adjust their business models and figure out how to use the new ways to make tons of money. I am confident that this DRM thing is only a temporary knee jerk reaction by the old fogies still in control of most of the large entertainment conglomerates. When those guys finally retire or die, younger successors, who grew up with iPods, will figure out how to make money in new ways, without resorting to plagueing their customers with DRM or lawyers. Industry purchased laws, such as the DMCA will become anachronisms of the past, even if they are left on the books, such as some laws are still in place pertaining to horses and buggies.
........this has nothing to do with the human ear being more sophisticated than electronics can measure....
You are correct in stating that the sound field of a recording and that of a live performance are different. However in the process of converting air vibrations to and from an electrical signal, something other than what can be measured with any instruments is lost. If you ever suspect that the place such as a hotel room you are in is electronically bugged so that you may not wish to discuss private things with someone else, just go into the bathroom and turn on the water or generate white noise the best way available. Then carry on a conversation is a low voice with the other person. Anyone listening through an electronic channel will not be able to make out you conversation at all, whereas the person you are talking with will have no problem. Another way to test this is to record a room full of people talking to each other, such as at a party, and then try to pick out individual conversations in that recording. When you are present in the room, you have no problem, usually, to "tune in" on a particular conversation. Even though the air pressure signal arriving at your eardrums is the same as it would be with a corresponding microphone in that location, some aspect of the sound information is lost in the translations. Whatever this information is, the brain uses it to pick out the sounds it wants to hear and supresses the other sound. That is why you are able to easily carry on a conversation in a jetliner, even though the sound intensity in the aircraft is many times louder than the sound of your seat-mate's voice.
The closest anyone has ever come in exactly reproducing sound we hear is through binaural recording. A dummy human head with sensitive condenser mics in the "ears" picks up the sound, which is then later reproduced through high quality headphones worn by the listener. I had an LP recording once that was made that way and it sounded fantastic when listened to with earphones. One cut on the recording was a city street scene, at one point of which I actually jumped back because it sounded like I was about to be run over by a bus. These recordings never caught on because through speakers it sounds not much different than monaural. I wonder though today, with millions listening to iPods through headphones, whether such recordings would sell.
...If you can reliably hear the difference between two amplifiers...
The electronic parts of the audio chain have always been and still are much superior to the transducers at each end, notably the speakers. No matter how expensive and sophisticated the system, it will never equal the actual performance. If you set up the most expensive audio system available and played a recording of a Steinway 12 foot grand piano in a given environment and then had the same pianist play the piano itself, even the most tin eared person would easily be able to tell the difference. The Human ear-brain system is an extremely sophisticated sound processing system that no known audio reproducing apparatus can fool. The same can be said for the human eye-brain system far exceeding any analog or digital picture processing yet devised. Even so, I still enjoy my iPod and digital camera.
.....99.9999% of modern vinyl records are mastered with digital equipment in a recording studio before being pressed to vinyl.....
Actually, I still have a few LP recordings from the 70s-early 80s that were done with a technique called direct to master. In those days, before digital took hold, most recordings were done with wide analog reel to reel tapes. Some studios used magnetically coated 35mm film. These tapes, no matter how good, had some residual noise and distortion. After editing by cutting and splicing the tape, the signal was sent to a master cutting lathe from which the pressings were made. To circumvent the shortcomings of tape, some, relatively few, recordings were done directly to the recording lathe. These recordings were indeed audibly superior. Of course any sour notes in the performance could not be fixed since no editing was possible. One one of these recordings, done in New York, the rumble of a subway train is distinctly audible in one of the quiet passages of the music.
Apple's DRM, like css and every other scheme ever dreamed up has been broken. If it were up to Apple, there would be no DRM, (remember rip, mix, burn?) but the content creators force Apple to provide so called "protection".
If they allowed Apple to dispense with the DRM and just use the un-encrypted version of the iTunes audio format, I think the number of downloads from ITMS would not be significantly less.
After the Sony episode, downloading of free, illegal, most likely malware contaminated files, would likely go down, if consumers could download non-DRM files from a place such as ITMS, rather than from who knows where. So if Apple could convince the content providers to allow them to drop all DRM, the number of iTunes sales may actually increase. There are, I am sure, not a few people, who will not buy DRM encumbered digital goods.
However, I am not holding my breath for the content creators to see the light for a while yet. Perhaps after Sony and maybe some of the others have been sued for many millions and lost in the courts, the ossified executives in these industries will finally adapt their businesses to and take advantage of the new realities of the digital Internet age.
....In other news, Sony/BMG sues Microsoft for allowing the "autorun" feature to be turned off.....
They are also suing Apple and Linux because they don't provide an "autorun" feature, thereby cirumventing their DRM.
I wonder how much of this kind of thing it will still take before the likes of Sony will change their business model to take advantage of the modern digital age, rather than fighting the unstoppable windmill of technological progress.
....it's unlikely the css would have been cracked already were it not for software dvd players....
When the key is in the hardware, it takes more skill to extract it, but with a good logic probe capture system it can be done with not all that much trouble. The x-box has been hacked also and there are mod chips on the black market for them. Even without knowing the key, the decrypted stream of bits sent to the display can be captured and reassembled into a DRM free file. The bottom line is very simple: If it can bee seen and/or heard, a DRM free version of the content can be made which can be freely copied once or a million times.
Laws have never stopped people from getting what they want. Prohibition and the war on drugs demonstrate that fact. There are enough such skilled people with a passionate hatred of DRM that will defeat any and all of such schemes and make the decrypted copies available, regardless of any and all laws. Why should the Government protect the obsolete business models of the content creators and artifically create criminals? But then such efforts are as old as technological progress itself. When horseless carriages first appeared, the horse connected businesses pressured governments to put restrictions on the newfangled transportation.
Maybe someday the content providers will finally realize this and adjust their business models for the digital age and dispense with expensive, futile DRM and costly lawyers to sue their customers.
....This means that a user has all the permissions they need to screw themselves up really bad....
Of course, users can screw up their OWN accounts, but that is relatively easy to fix. Users can also have their own private program folders, fonts and custom settings. If a program, such as a keylogger, needs access to system space, a password is still needed. Since any and all user stuff is under their own account space, it is easy for an admin to create a new user account, transfer the needed, specifically user created files from the old to the new and then erase the old user account. Any surreptitiously installed and invisble crap will also disappear. That is considerably easier than having to deal with a Sony style rootkit type of malware buried deep in the system itself.
... I hope this thing bankrupts Sony, and that their demise becomes a cautionary tale for the rest of the industry....
A better hope is that this will teach Sony and the others that DRM is not in their best interest, since it is not in their customers best interest. I hope that this is the beginning of the end for all DRM, simply because it has made the average Joe aware of the anti consumer tactics of the big contents companies. There will always be a minimum number of cheap, dishonest persons, but most people will pay for a product if the cost is reasonable and it is easy and convenient to get. After this episode, the first major company to prominently advertise that they don't and will never offer any of their content with any kind of DRM restrictions may attract a good number of extra sales, most likely exceeding any losses from unpaid for copying. A section on the label of a CD or DVD something along these lines would certainly get my attention:
The content of this disk is brought to you without any playback or copy restrictions. You and your immediate family household may use the content and the copies herefrom on any playback device you own. Please don't violate copyright laws and our trust in your honesty by making copies available to others. ( signed by the content creators )
....What the record companies ultimately want (complete end-to-end control of a set of bits) isn't really possible with CD technology. Period. Macrovision probably told them that.....
Even theoretically, that is impossible with any known technology. When you send an encrypted message to someone, you also have to supply the key if you want them to read the message. No matter how you try to hide or cloak such a key, at some point it has to be used to unlock the message. At that point, both the key and the message can be intercepted. Basically, if the recipient can decode the message, as he/she must with all content, either the message key or both can be stored and copied. There is NO way around this. Good encryption ONLY and ALWAYS works well for the interception of the message by outsiders who have no means of gettin the key, but not for the one who is supposed to receive the message. Perhaps Macrovision has told content providers this. Providers of DRM software are leading the content creators around by the nose when they tell them there is *any* way whatsoever to protect their wares. From the 1980s on, starting with "protected" floppies, there have been uncountable copy protection schemes and I do not know of even ONE that was not defeated. It might be technologically challenging to defeat some protection schemes, but it only has to be done ONCE and then the content is open to all.
.....what happened to his PC when he was Admin. *Never Again*.....
We have a 16 year old and he likes to play games. On the Macs that works as a non-admin user, but on our PC most games don't. You might think about giving the kid admin access, but make sure there is no network connection to the system. That should be quite safe, at least from the malware over the network angle. Still have to watch out for malware CDs from the likes of Sony though.
..... make a binary which, when run, adds a line into your users bash.....
Presumeably, to make such a change, a non-admin user will be asked for a password. If they can't give that, then the malware can't install. That's why it is good if your users don't know that password. Also, most ordinary Mac users avoid the command line like the plague, if they even know about it.
.....How can I be sure I am safe from keyloggers?....
First, make sure that you do your day to day computing on OSX on a standard, non-admin account. That means that if anything wants to install in the system or in the applications folder, you will be asked for a password for an admin. If you KNOW for sure where the software comes from, trust that source and it was YOU that purposefully initiated an install, then giving the password minimizes, but doesn't completely eliminate the chance of getting hit by malicious software. Of course when a supposedly trustworthy global company, such as Sony wants to install malware, ostensibly to use their product, most people will give the admin password and get screwed. There can never be a defense against being screwed over by someone thought to be trustworthy. In school, business and even in family situations it is possible to set up most computers such that most users do not even know the administrator password. A Sony style rootkit cannot invade such a computer since the users cannot give the correct password.
In Windows, if there is even one program that users need, which will not run unless everybody is an administrator, there is NO defense against the installation of malware. Sometimes the program preferences of these programs allow it to be set up to not need admin privs. Unfortunately, the number of programs on Windows that require admin status are not few.
......Yet, the fact that it was by Sony made people keep their mouths shut......
If the existence of this rootkit cat had not escaped onto the Internet, Sony, like most other big money companies might have used the threat of legal action against the discoverer. The fact that big companies can get away with things like that is that our legal system is based on money. If you have no money, you get no justice and you better just shut up. Only if some lawyer who smells money from a big potential settlement or legal group with an agenda comes to your aid, is there ever an opportunity for average Joe to prevail against someone with a near infinite pot of money.
In the age of the Internet egregious enough actions by a large monied corporation get beyond their lawyers control too fast to shut up the whistleblowers in time. In this case, either the security companies were either afraid of the legal clout of Sony or they made a gentleman's agreement with them. The bottom line is that they, like most businesses have their own interest on a higher plane than that of their customers.
It surprises me that in the age of 60G or bigger HD someone would still be worried about a little extra storage room. You might be able to store a few less songs on the HD that contains dual programs.
....Ask yourself this: which part of ' hardware which I am permitted to hack did I fail to understand?....
You must have a very hi-tech basement or workshop to be able to do significant HARDWARE hacking on any laptop computer. What hardware do you want to hack on a cheap Dell PC that you wouldn't be able to hack on an existing G4 iBook or the new upcoming x86 iBook? Put in some extra RAM? How about a bigger HD? Now when it comes to desktops, you might have a point, but even there, unless you have goood expertise, your hardware hacking opportunities are really not all that great.
In computers, it's in the software that the action is. Apple may be incorporate features in the OS that will prevent you from running their expensive to develop software on your cheap Dell. They make their money on the hardware and wouldn't want anybody to just be able to run a pirated copy of their OS on competing hardware.
....to let kids tinker with the entire system and use it to learn about how computers work in great details instead of limiting it to what the designers happens to tink is best....
Why do you think that most kids in other countries would be interested any more than most of them are in this country in how their computer works? They want to play games, send e-mail and chat with their friends on the net, surf the and search the web for their homework assignments and plug in their iPods.
Kids in third world countries may not have ipods, but still like music and all the other things kids just universally go for. Learning how the box works will certainly interest some, but the majority couldn't care less about the difference between a ROM and a RAM. If this computer can be built for this great majority and then still satisfy the ones who are curious about the innard of the box, so much the better.
....get a chance to learn about how computers actually work.....
That seems to be the common thread for/. readers, which is of course natural for us all here. However, there is a big world out there with millions of (l)users who want to use their computers for things that have little or nothing to do with computers per se. They don't want to futz with the thing just to get it to connect to the internet, record and play music and do any of the myriad other tasks a computer can be progrmmed to do. The want their computers to "just work"tm without having to call up their friendly geek who may be able to tell them how to connect that MIDI keybard because said geek is 200 miles away. Of all OS on the market, OSX requires the least expert help. Plug in a video camera and iMovie pops up. Digital camera? Plug it in and iPhoto appears and the pictures come on the screen. Pop a CD in the drive? iTunes comes up - click play and you hear music. Most of the time, just plug it in and it works.
I hope that the smart people working on this project will be able to build a computer that is at least as friendly as an OSX Mac, but perhaps even easier and better in some respects and of course vastly cheaper.
.......and make changes to any and all of the above and contribute to their own future......
This is assuming that their future will revolve around computers and their operation. A computer is a tool, and like any tool, it should not get in the way of being a tool by requiring a lot of attention and care to the tool itself. If a person wished to use Linux to help design boats, how hard would it be to install a powerful boat designing program or CAD program? I had a pretty good drawing program on my SE30 Mac I used to design precision power electronics. Does Linux have a good CAD program that would run on a $100 computer?
OSS is made mostly by geeks for geeks and so are many of its applications. OSS developers often do not keep the computer illiterate in mind and do not design their software for the unwashed masses because they don't sell their software. There is no need to write a program for mass appeal. That is probably the main reason why Linux will never be a threat to Windows on the desktop. Now servers, that's another story. For example, GIMP is a powerful program, but it is an obtuse kluge compared to many similar commercial programs that beginners can use.
Children should be taught to read and then write with a pencil first so they can erase their mistakes. After they get the writing down fairly well, give them a pen. Learning word processor should be an optional choice.
Slashdot Mirror
....Flying is a lot more complex then driving....
Of course that is true, but almost entirely because of the laws of physics, rather than any manmade rules neccessitated by them. If someone invented a simple, cheap gravity reversing device or inertial force generator, which allowed air (space) craft to operate much as cars do, without any regard to the air as such, but in three dimensions, the rules would be vastly different from present day aircraft rules and much more similar to automobile rules. The laws of physics are superior to and constrain all manmade rules.
....You are then required to file an emergency report in the next week or so explaining why you used the button. Assuming the report is reasonable and you don't do it too often, nothing else happens......
/. readers can think of many other ways this fabulous technology can be put to use for the "public good".
Why bother with all that hassle? Just let the government or their computers in their car ( you just get to sit in it) drive you to wherever the government thinks you are allowed to go. If you've already been in the car more than the number of miles they think you should for ecological or no reasons, all you get to use it for is to go to work, but only if there is no public transportation. Shopping trips are allowed once a week. The big brother technology makes it possible for total control of where and when you travel, unless you walk. There will also be an explosive sniffer built into the vehicle to ensure that it cannot be used as bomb. I'm sure that
As for aircraft, the ONLY reason that the Government can get with all present regulations is because there are only a miniscule number of airplanes when compared to how many cars are in daily operation in this country.
.....If she downloaded, or failed to control children who downloaded then she is guilty both of a crime, and liable for damages. ......
It seems that the only evidence in all of these cases tying a specific user to an act of copying is an IP address that was supposedly used by the alleged infringer. Why do ISPs keep records of who has what IP address when at all? Especially in a DHCP system, what is the point of keeping such information more than a day or two, if at all? If the ISPs did not keep such records, there would be no way to pin anything on anyone. It seems that ISPs are conspiring to keep the RIAA suing their own Internet customers. Perhaps some ISPs could get a lot of subscribers by loudly advertising that they do NOT keep IP assignment information.
IP addresses can be spoofed and so even with the ISP information, can it really be proved that a particular household, let alone a particular person in that household was even connected to the Internet at that time? Just because the ISP log says that IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was connected to John Doe at 4:14AM does that give enough evidence to charge someone half a million dollars? I certainly hope that the RIAA is made to prove WHO actually did the downloading is based on more than just one log entry in some ISPs records.
If someone parks their car in front of my house at night and downloads a boatload of RIAA crap into their laptop over my wireless connection, does that prove I or anyone in my house did it at 3:22AM? Is there a law that says I am responsible for who might use my Internet connection, especially without my knowledge? In some apartment houses, it is possible to wirelessly connect to several access points and download all sorts of files. How would it be possible to determine WHO used a given one of these at a certain time? I hope that lady's lawyers are able to cast serious doubt on the connction between an IP address and possible users of that at any given time.
....I can't even go a few weeks without having to purge my access logs.....
Why do you even have to KEEP or record such access logs at all. How do they help you? If you don't keep information, then you don't have to worry about getting a subpoena. You just reply' "we don't keep the requested information". Just keep collective statistical data from which there is no way to glean individual identifying information that would be of use to any lawyer.
.....It is called the subponea that is used in the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit.....
Is it a legal requirements for ISP's to keep or even make records of who used what IP address when? If not, why do they even record such information? If there is no law for an ISP to keep such records, could they not save themselves a lot of hassle by sending a form letter to a court stating the they don't keep Internet useage records on their customers. They could even use that as a selling point: "We protect your privacy and do not make *any* records of your use of our service". If there is a law, for how long are they required to keep data that can correlate the users information to a date and time?
Even if the sue happy lawyers have an IP address, is it not possible to do nefarious activity on the Internet by using someone else's IP address over one of the millions of wireless access points? In that case, they'd get the name and number of someone who has no connection whatsoever with their case. It seems that in many cases, making a connection between an IP adress and the true users of that address has no correllation.
....And unfortunately after the physical degradation that occurs with rubbing a stylus over vinyl dozens of time, what you're left with in terms of sound quality is lower than what you'd have with a CD or especially a DVD-Audio......
There are may reasons why CD and DVD have caught on in a big way. The convenience of the form factor coupled with good to excellent quality, not subject to playback wear are certainly among these.
It is deplorable that now as technology has made audio and video widely available, the copyright owners are fighting their customers through cumbersome, incompatible, useless and damaging anti-copy techniques and with an army of lawyers. Each time, when radio, reel tape recorders, audio and video cassettes came out, the copyright owners tried to use legal means to thwart or hobble the new technologies. Only when they realized that those tactics will not work in the long run, did they adjust their business models and figure out how to use the new ways to make tons of money. I am confident that this DRM thing is only a temporary knee jerk reaction by the old fogies still in control of most of the large entertainment conglomerates. When those guys finally retire or die, younger successors, who grew up with iPods, will figure out how to make money in new ways, without resorting to plagueing their customers with DRM or lawyers. Industry purchased laws, such as the DMCA will become anachronisms of the past, even if they are left on the books, such as some laws are still in place pertaining to horses and buggies.
........this has nothing to do with the human ear being more sophisticated than electronics can measure....
You are correct in stating that the sound field of a recording and that of a live performance are different. However in the process of converting air vibrations to and from an electrical signal, something other than what can be measured with any instruments is lost. If you ever suspect that the place such as a hotel room you are in is electronically bugged so that you may not wish to discuss private things with someone else, just go into the bathroom and turn on the water or generate white noise the best way available. Then carry on a conversation is a low voice with the other person. Anyone listening through an electronic channel will not be able to make out you conversation at all, whereas the person you are talking with will have no problem. Another way to test this is to record a room full of people talking to each other, such as at a party, and then try to pick out individual conversations in that recording. When you are present in the room, you have no problem, usually, to "tune in" on a particular conversation. Even though the air pressure signal arriving at your eardrums is the same as it would be with a corresponding microphone in that location, some aspect of the sound information is lost in the translations. Whatever this information is, the brain uses it to pick out the sounds it wants to hear and supresses the other sound. That is why you are able to easily carry on a conversation in a jetliner, even though the sound intensity in the aircraft is many times louder than the sound of your seat-mate's voice.
The closest anyone has ever come in exactly reproducing sound we hear is through binaural recording. A dummy human head with sensitive condenser mics in the "ears" picks up the sound, which is then later reproduced through high quality headphones worn by the listener. I had an LP recording once that was made that way and it sounded fantastic when listened to with earphones. One cut on the recording was a city street scene, at one point of which I actually jumped back because it sounded like I was about to be run over by a bus. These recordings never caught on because through speakers it sounds not much different than monaural. I wonder though today, with millions listening to iPods through headphones, whether such recordings would sell.
...If you can reliably hear the difference between two amplifiers...
The electronic parts of the audio chain have always been and still are much superior to the transducers at each end, notably the speakers. No matter how expensive and sophisticated the system, it will never equal the actual performance. If you set up the most expensive audio system available and played a recording of a Steinway 12 foot grand piano in a given environment and then had the same pianist play the piano itself, even the most tin eared person would easily be able to tell the difference. The Human ear-brain system is an extremely sophisticated sound processing system that no known audio reproducing apparatus can fool. The same can be said for the human eye-brain system far exceeding any analog or digital picture processing yet devised. Even so, I still enjoy my iPod and digital camera.
.....99.9999% of modern vinyl records are mastered with digital equipment in a recording studio before being pressed to vinyl.....
Actually, I still have a few LP recordings from the 70s-early 80s that were done with a technique called direct to master. In those days, before digital took hold, most recordings were done with wide analog reel to reel tapes. Some studios used magnetically coated 35mm film. These tapes, no matter how good, had some residual noise and distortion. After editing by cutting and splicing the tape, the signal was sent to a master cutting lathe from which the pressings were made. To circumvent the shortcomings of tape, some, relatively few, recordings were done directly to the recording lathe. These recordings were indeed audibly superior. Of course any sour notes in the performance could not be fixed since no editing was possible. One one of these recordings, done in New York, the rumble of a subway train is distinctly audible in one of the quiet passages of the music.
....So will Apple kill DRM-free music?....
Apple's DRM, like css and every other scheme ever dreamed up has been broken. If it were up to Apple, there would be no DRM, (remember rip, mix, burn?) but the content creators force Apple to provide so called "protection".
If they allowed Apple to dispense with the DRM and just use the un-encrypted version of the iTunes audio format, I think the number of downloads from ITMS would not be significantly less.
After the Sony episode, downloading of free, illegal, most likely malware contaminated files, would likely go down, if consumers could download non-DRM files from a place such as ITMS, rather than from who knows where. So if Apple could convince the content providers to allow them to drop all DRM, the number of iTunes sales may actually increase. There are, I am sure, not a few people, who will not buy DRM encumbered digital goods.
However, I am not holding my breath for the content creators to see the light for a while yet. Perhaps after Sony and maybe some of the others have been sued for many millions and lost in the courts, the ossified executives in these industries will finally adapt their businesses to and take advantage of the new realities of the digital Internet age.
....In other news, Sony/BMG sues Microsoft for allowing the "autorun" feature to be turned off.....
They are also suing Apple and Linux because they don't provide an "autorun" feature, thereby cirumventing their DRM.
I wonder how much of this kind of thing it will still take before the likes of Sony will change their business model to take advantage of the modern digital age, rather than fighting the unstoppable windmill of technological progress.
....it's unlikely the css would have been cracked already were it not for software dvd players....
When the key is in the hardware, it takes more skill to extract it, but with a good logic probe capture system it can be done with not all that much trouble. The x-box has been hacked also and there are mod chips on the black market for them. Even without knowing the key, the decrypted stream of bits sent to the display can be captured and reassembled into a DRM free file. The bottom line is very simple: If it can bee seen and/or heard, a DRM free version of the content can be made which can be freely copied once or a million times.
Laws have never stopped people from getting what they want. Prohibition and the war on drugs demonstrate that fact. There are enough such skilled people with a passionate hatred of DRM that will defeat any and all of such schemes and make the decrypted copies available, regardless of any and all laws. Why should the Government protect the obsolete business models of the content creators and artifically create criminals? But then such efforts are as old as technological progress itself. When horseless carriages first appeared, the horse connected businesses pressured governments to put restrictions on the newfangled transportation.
Maybe someday the content providers will finally realize this and adjust their business models for the digital age and dispense with expensive, futile DRM and costly lawyers to sue their customers.
....This means that a user has all the permissions they need to screw themselves up really bad....
Of course, users can screw up their OWN accounts, but that is relatively easy to fix. Users can also have their own private program folders, fonts and custom settings. If a program, such as a keylogger, needs access to system space, a password is still needed. Since any and all user stuff is under their own account space, it is easy for an admin to create a new user account, transfer the needed, specifically user created files from the old to the new and then erase the old user account. Any surreptitiously installed and invisble crap will also disappear.
That is considerably easier than having to deal with a Sony style rootkit type of malware buried deep in the system itself.
... I hope this thing bankrupts Sony, and that their demise becomes a cautionary tale for the rest of the industry....
A better hope is that this will teach Sony and the others that DRM is not in their best interest, since it is not in their customers best interest. I hope that this is the beginning of the end for all DRM, simply because it has made the average Joe aware of the anti consumer tactics of the big contents companies. There will always be a minimum number of cheap, dishonest persons, but most people will pay for a product if the cost is reasonable and it is easy and convenient to get. After this episode, the first major company to prominently advertise that they don't and will never offer any of their content with any kind of DRM restrictions may attract a good number of extra sales, most likely exceeding any losses from unpaid for copying. A section on the label of a CD or DVD something along these lines would certainly get my attention:
The content of this disk is brought to you without any playback or copy restrictions. You and your immediate family household may use the content and the copies herefrom on any playback device you own. Please don't violate copyright laws and our trust in your honesty by making copies available to others. ( signed by the content creators )
....What the record companies ultimately want (complete end-to-end control of a set of bits) isn't really possible with CD technology. Period. Macrovision probably told them that.....
Even theoretically, that is impossible with any known technology. When you send an encrypted message to someone, you also have to supply the key if you want them to read the message. No matter how you try to hide or cloak such a key, at some point it has to be used to unlock the message. At that point, both the key and the message can be intercepted. Basically, if the recipient can decode the message, as he/she must with all content, either the message key or both can be stored and copied. There is NO way around this. Good encryption ONLY and ALWAYS works well for the interception of the message by outsiders who have no means of gettin the key, but not for the one who is supposed to receive the message. Perhaps Macrovision has told content providers this. Providers of DRM software are leading the content creators around by the nose when they tell them there is *any* way whatsoever to protect their wares. From the 1980s on, starting with "protected" floppies, there have been uncountable copy protection schemes and I do not know of even ONE that was not defeated. It might be technologically challenging to defeat some protection schemes, but it only has to be done ONCE and then the content is open to all.
.....what happened to his PC when he was Admin. *Never Again*.....
We have a 16 year old and he likes to play games. On the Macs that works as a non-admin user, but on our PC most games don't. You might think about giving the kid admin access, but make sure there is no network connection to the system. That should be quite safe, at least from the malware over the network angle. Still have to watch out for malware CDs from the likes of Sony though.
..... make a binary which, when run, adds a line into your users bash.....
Presumeably, to make such a change, a non-admin user will be asked for a password. If they can't give that, then the malware can't install. That's why it is good if your users don't know that password. Also, most ordinary Mac users avoid the command line like the plague, if they even know about it.
.....don't download anything from people you don't know or trust.....
It seems that you should not trust global corporations, such as Sony, any more either. In the end, who can you trust? Your own fart?
.....How can I be sure I am safe from keyloggers?....
First, make sure that you do your day to day computing on OSX on a standard, non-admin account. That means that if anything wants to install in the system or in the applications folder, you will be asked for a password for an admin. If you KNOW for sure where the software comes from, trust that source and it was YOU that purposefully initiated an install, then giving the password minimizes, but doesn't completely eliminate the chance of getting hit by malicious software. Of course when a supposedly trustworthy global company, such as Sony wants to install malware, ostensibly to use their product, most people will give the admin password and get screwed. There can never be a defense against being screwed over by someone thought to be trustworthy. In school, business and even in family situations it is possible to set up most computers such that most users do not even know the administrator password. A Sony style rootkit cannot invade such a computer since the users cannot give the correct password.
In Windows, if there is even one program that users need, which will not run unless everybody is an administrator, there is NO defense against the installation of malware. Sometimes the program preferences of these programs allow it to be set up to not need admin privs. Unfortunately, the number of programs on Windows that require admin status are not few.
......Yet, the fact that it was by Sony made people keep their mouths shut......
If the existence of this rootkit cat had not escaped onto the Internet, Sony, like most other big money companies might have used the threat of legal action against the discoverer. The fact that big companies can get away with things like that is that our legal system is based on money. If you have no money, you get no justice and you better just shut up. Only if some lawyer who smells money from a big potential settlement or legal group with an agenda comes to your aid, is there ever an opportunity for average Joe to prevail against someone with a near infinite pot of money.
In the age of the Internet egregious enough actions by a large monied corporation get beyond their lawyers control too fast to shut up the whistleblowers in time. In this case, either the security companies were either afraid of the legal clout of Sony or they made a gentleman's agreement with them. The bottom line is that they, like most businesses have their own interest on a higher plane than that of their customers.
.....Fat binaries are a waste of space....
It surprises me that in the age of 60G or bigger HD someone would still be worried about a little extra storage room. You might be able to store a few less songs on the HD that contains dual programs.
....Ask yourself this: which part of ' hardware which I am permitted to hack did I fail to understand?....
You must have a very hi-tech basement or workshop to be able to do significant HARDWARE hacking on any laptop computer. What hardware do you want to hack on a cheap Dell PC that you wouldn't be able to hack on an existing G4 iBook or the new upcoming x86 iBook? Put in some extra RAM? How about a bigger HD? Now when it comes to desktops, you might have a point, but even there, unless you have goood expertise, your hardware hacking opportunities are really not all that great.
In computers, it's in the software that the action is. Apple may be incorporate features in the OS that will prevent you from running their expensive to develop software on your cheap Dell. They make their money on the hardware and wouldn't want anybody to just be able to run a pirated copy of their OS on competing hardware.
....to let kids tinker with the entire system and use it to learn about how computers work in great details instead of limiting it to what the designers happens to tink is best....
Why do you think that most kids in other countries would be interested any more than most of them are in this country in how their computer works? They want to play games, send e-mail and chat with their friends on the net, surf the and search the web for their homework assignments and plug in their iPods.
Kids in third world countries may not have ipods, but still like music and all the other things kids just universally go for. Learning how the box works will certainly interest some, but the majority couldn't care less about the difference between a ROM and a RAM. If this computer can be built for this great majority and then still satisfy the ones who are curious about the innard of the box, so much the better.
....get a chance to learn about how computers actually work .....
/. readers, which is of course natural for us all here. However, there is a big world out there with millions of (l)users who want to use their computers for things that have little or nothing to do with computers per se. They don't want to futz with the thing just to get it to connect to the internet, record and play music and do any of the myriad other tasks a computer can be progrmmed to do. The want their computers to "just work"tm without having to call up their friendly geek who may be able to tell them how to connect that MIDI keybard because said geek is 200 miles away. Of all OS on the market, OSX requires the least expert help. Plug in a video camera and iMovie pops up. Digital camera? Plug it in and iPhoto appears and the pictures come on the screen. Pop a CD in the drive? iTunes comes up - click play and you hear music. Most of the time, just plug it in and it works.
That seems to be the common thread for
I hope that the smart people working on this project will be able to build a computer that is at least as friendly as an OSX Mac, but perhaps even easier and better in some respects and of course vastly cheaper.
.......and make changes to any and all of the above and contribute to their own future......
This is assuming that their future will revolve around computers and their operation. A computer is a tool, and like any tool, it should not get in the way of being a tool by requiring a lot of attention and care to the tool itself. If a person wished to use Linux to help design boats, how hard would it be to install a powerful boat designing program or CAD program? I had a pretty good drawing program on my SE30 Mac I used to design precision power electronics. Does Linux have a good CAD program that would run on a $100 computer?
OSS is made mostly by geeks for geeks and so are many of its applications. OSS developers often do not keep the computer illiterate in mind and do not design their software for the unwashed masses because they don't sell their software. There is no need to write a program for mass appeal. That is probably the main reason why Linux will never be a threat to Windows on the desktop. Now servers, that's another story. For example, GIMP is a powerful program, but it is an obtuse kluge compared to many similar commercial programs that beginners can use.
Children should be taught to read and then write with a pencil first so they can erase their mistakes. After they get the writing down fairly well, give them a pen. Learning word processor should be an optional choice.