I agree with most of your post, except for this part:
But, come on, how much encryption and "security layers" can you hide in a 300 KB windows executable ?
You can fit a lot of encryption into 300KB of code, especially if the executable is subsequently compressed. Most encryption algorithms are a few hundred lines of code. That is a really silly statement to make.
IANAL, but it is my understanding that unless you've signed the NDA, they really can't do much about it, unless they can prove that you took active effort to illegally acquire the code. In other words, you can't "ruin" an OSS developer by shoving a printout of Windows code in his face. Anyone who is in the know, feel free to confirm or disprove.
Every article like this has a lot of comments like the one above. "No matter what they try, we'll just crack it," they say. That may be true for now, but it is a bad way of thinking.
That kind of stance makes any kind of anti-RIAA thinking seem criminal to an onlooker.
Sooner or later, they will find a way to catch the people doing the "illegal" copying.
If the law is on their side, the government will also be on their side
While cracking code is an effective measure, we also need to fight to lessen the friendliness of current laws towards the RIAA, or at least explain to the legislators our point of view. If the RIAA lobbyists are the only ones talking to the legislators, then this is a fight that we will gradually lose.
Yep, you guessed it. This is another one of those write-your-congressman posts. Write your congressman! If you're not in the U.S., write to whoever is responsible for making laws where you live.
What is the substantive difference between tipping a waiter and paying for music - that makes tipping work so well, but voluntary payment for music fail?
There is a major difference. First of all, you have to look the waiter in the eye before you leave. Since it is customary to tip, a person will generally be thought of as either an asshole, cheap-skate, or both when he doesn't tip. Most people don't like to be thought of that way -- they want to appear rich and generous.
The second difference is that, provided that you visit the restaurant/hotel/etc more than once, you will most likely get great service every time if you're a good tipper.
there is still an enourmous body of knowledge and resources that has been built up around programming things like x86 processors and all the programming languages everyone has learned to hate.
You've hit the nail on the head. Everyone would want to just go back to the way things were so that they could get their nice warm spot back.
Remember the old joke? If Cray had built a personal computer that would run at 1THz, have 512GB of RAM, etc, what would be the first thing people would ask? "Can it run Windows?" (In other words, is it x86?)
You can simply record the sound made by your Windows DVD player by conventional means and add it to your fair use work. You don't need a digital-perfect copy for scholarship, satire or parody.
Sorry, buddy. Circumventing copy protection is illegal under the DMCA.
Your comment is a bit trollish, but I agree with most of what you say. However:
Besides, if you don't like a law, breaking it is NOT going to change it.
That is called civil disobedience, and it has been shown to change law. However, civil disobedience also implies that you face the consequences of breaking the law -- otherwise, you're just using it as an excuse to break the law.
patent (ptnt)
1. a. A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention
for a set period of time.
Show me where the definition says it increses freedom.
You don't know me. I'm just curious about something (it's really silly). Please e-mail me. I promise that I won't harrass you. Use your throwaway Hotmail/Yahoo/etc. address if you have one and are paranoid.:-)
The plan is to embed chips into TVs and cellphones that are either linked to the network of Global Positioning System satellites or are programmed to identify the signal transmitted by national broadcasters. If the chip detects that it is somewhere outside a pre-programmed region, then the equipment will stop working and be "rendered useless", says the company's patent.
Since it has already been mentioned in this discussion that a GPS reciever is pretty expensive, I'm pretty sure that they will go with the other possibility. So what happens when someone drives around the neighborhood broadcasting the signal from China?
Actually, Internet Exploiter can handle gzip, as long as the web server specifies the MIME type correctly. This is how mod_gzip works. (Yes, they are slightly different things on the server side, but the same stuff happens on the client side.
Have you tried talking to the CEO and explaining your point of view to him? Maybe he's been so caught up talking to the investors and isolating himself from the little people below that he forgot some basic ideas.
Funny thing is that every web site I run can be viewed and looks decent in every browser except a few very old ones like NCSA Mosaic. Why do designers have such problems?
Because, for them, making the website is a job, and not an art or even an enjoyable experience. They don't care if the code is ugly. They just want the client to pay them. The main problem is that HTML is not as strict of a language as, let's say C. If you write absolutely horrid C code, it will not compile. If you write absolutely horrid HTML, then IE will try to guess what you meant, while other browsers will puke.
If, say, Star Wars weren't under copyright, then other companies could churn out Star Wars merchandise, movies, and tie-in novels. Because Star Wars is under copyright, they cannot do this. They have to expend the effort to create their own space opera plots, settings, and characters.
You're thinking trademarks, not copyright. Copyright Law, at least for now, allows parodies, quoting, etc. Trademarks is what prevents other companies from churning out Star Wars merchandise.
Slashdot Mirror
This is version 6.5.2. This text is here to get rid of that stupid and useless lameness filter.
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You can fit a lot of encryption into 300KB of code, especially if the executable is subsequently compressed. Most encryption algorithms are a few hundred lines of code. That is a really silly statement to make.
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While cracking code is an effective measure, we also need to fight to lessen the friendliness of current laws towards the RIAA, or at least explain to the legislators our point of view. If the RIAA lobbyists are the only ones talking to the legislators, then this is a fight that we will gradually lose.
Yep, you guessed it. This is another one of those write-your-congressman posts. Write your congressman! If you're not in the U.S., write to whoever is responsible for making laws where you live.
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There is a major difference. First of all, you have to look the waiter in the eye before you leave. Since it is customary to tip, a person will generally be thought of as either an asshole, cheap-skate, or both when he doesn't tip. Most people don't like to be thought of that way -- they want to appear rich and generous.
The second difference is that, provided that you visit the restaurant/hotel/etc more than once, you will most likely get great service every time if you're a good tipper.
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You've hit the nail on the head. Everyone would want to just go back to the way things were so that they could get their nice warm spot back.
Remember the old joke? If Cray had built a personal computer that would run at 1THz, have 512GB of RAM, etc, what would be the first thing people would ask? "Can it run Windows?" (In other words, is it x86?)
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Sorry, buddy. Circumventing copy protection is illegal under the DMCA.
That is called civil disobedience, and it has been shown to change law. However, civil disobedience also implies that you face the consequences of breaking the law -- otherwise, you're just using it as an excuse to break the law.
You don't know me. I'm just curious about something (it's really silly). Please e-mail me. I promise that I won't harrass you. Use your throwaway Hotmail/Yahoo/etc. address if you have one and are paranoid. :-)
Please drop me an email; I haven't been able to find yours.
What do you mean by feeding it locally? If you just opened the file with it, there was noone there to give it a MIME type.
Since it has already been mentioned in this discussion that a GPS reciever is pretty expensive, I'm pretty sure that they will go with the other possibility. So what happens when someone drives around the neighborhood broadcasting the signal from China?
Actually, Internet Exploiter can handle gzip, as long as the web server specifies the MIME type correctly. This is how mod_gzip works. (Yes, they are slightly different things on the server side, but the same stuff happens on the client side.
http://geekissues.org/quotes/?426
Ack, sorry. Came up with an idea, and immediately tried to post it -- alas, into the wrong thread. Sorry again.
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COME IN, I'M LONELY
Because, for them, making the website is a job, and not an art or even an enjoyable experience. They don't care if the code is ugly. They just want the client to pay them. The main problem is that HTML is not as strict of a language as, let's say C. If you write absolutely horrid C code, it will not compile. If you write absolutely horrid HTML, then IE will try to guess what you meant, while other browsers will puke.
You're thinking trademarks, not copyright. Copyright Law, at least for now, allows parodies, quoting, etc. Trademarks is what prevents other companies from churning out Star Wars merchandise.
lynx and links also have this feature. the options for accepting a cookie from a particular domain are yes, no, always, and never.