So I could sell off the iPod with digital files and "unregister" my credit card info (I actually use gift cards). Then I could pass my account over to the new owner. The new owner could then authorize the songs and add them to his existing collection....and change the password, presumably, so you don't download songs from that account which end up on the new owner's credit card.
But yes, this would be a legal and acceptable way to exercise your right of First Sale in a digital domain. I don't think Apple (or the RIAA) could do anything about it, since there is no mention of the practice in the iTMS terms of service (linked in grandparent post).
However, that is most certainly not happening on eBay. People are paying for illegally distributed material, and that is most certainly an infringement, whether the buyer owns the media or not.
When someone discards something, they give up the rights to it. Unless he went through their garbage on private property (i.e. not on the street corner) then there is no possible charge there.
You're right, of course, but even if there WERE charges that could be brought against the filmmaker, that still doesn't exempt the MPAA from copyright violation. The MPAA is trying to say that because their own illegal actions are in response to Kirby's (allegedly) illegal actions, they were justified in doing it. This is false and would not hold up if Kirby were to bring suit against the MPAA, which I feel he should.
With all the MPAA's braying about the evil, filthy pirates who are taking money from the mouths of helpless orphans, they sure are wanton about other peoples' intellectual property.
I have just as many rights to sell resell my only copy of the digital form as I do to sell my only copy of the physical copy. The RIAA has no room to bitch.
That may be true, but the technical limitations placed on songs downloaded from iTMS currently prevent this. The iTMS Terms of Service do not explicitly forbid resale of your songs, but the store provides no obvious mechanism for doing this, aside from giving them your iTMS login and password so they can register their device with FairPlay. iTMS currently does not allow for a secondary market, presumably because of fear that people would just abuse it.
That being said, in all likelihood the people selling fully-loaded iPods on eBay are not selling the only copy of the song they own, and therefore they are doing so illegally.
A [lawyer] for the MPAA justified the organization's apparent hypocrisy by saying that Dick had invaded the privacy of some MPAA staffers, which justified the MPAA's actions.
"We made a copy of Kirby's movie because it had implications for our employees," said Kori Bernards, the MPAA's vice president for corporate communications. She said Dick spied on the members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school.
A classic straw man argument. These are two totally separate issues, but the MPAA is trying to make it sound like they are linked.
Kirby followed MPAA employees and went through their trash during the filming of his movie. This is a possible stalking charge, and perhaps invasion of privacy. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the exact charges that would be listed, but his actions are clearly on the edge of legality.
The MPAA made unauthorized copies of the movie. Who these copies were distributed to is totally irrelevant; the point is that the copies were made and distributed, even after the MPAA was asked in an email from Kirby *not* to make copies of the film. (Against the wishes of the copyright holder.)
Possibly, the MPAA ripped the film from a DVD. If this DVD is protected with CSS, then the MPAA is also guilty of a DMCA violation. (The article does not say why.) Who did the ripping, and why, is irrelevant in the eyes of the DMCA.
If this goes to trial, these issues will be dealt with separately. Kirby's actions do not automatically exempt the MPAA from copyright infringement and copyright protection circumvention charges, nor does the fact that the MPAA ignored his wishes as copyright holder exempt him from having to answer for his actions during filming.
The only way to combat MS on this front is to keep innovating, staying a step in front of it. Netscape made the mistake of not updating their browser soon enough, and they paid dearly. I hope Opera, Firefox and Safari have learned that lesson.
But it won't happen that way this time. When Netscape died (the first time), there really were only two browsers in the market. When one didn't keep up, the other took over.
This time around, there are lots of different browsers all working independently. Even if one browser does not innovate fast enough, there are many others that will. Microsoft is now fighting a multi-front battle, and they will never dominate the battlefield again like they did when the defeated Netscape. There are simply too many contenders.
Very true - which is why simultaneous theatrical and DVD release SHOULD recoup these costs quicker and bring in larger profits.
Hey, I kind of like that idea.
You have to remember, though, that theater owners are scared to death of home theater systems. Why would anyone go out to the movies if they can just stay at home and watch it on a plasma screen tv with surround sound?
I've been saying for a while now that theater owners need to start charging MORE for movies, but upgrade the theater-going experience. Make it worth my while to go see a movie. I will gladly pay more money to see a movie in a sparkling clean stadium-style theater, with no screaming kids, a cell phone jammer, ushers willing to get popcorn/drink refills for you, a board-certified projectionist, a truly enormous screen, a clean movie print with no advertising, and trailers AFTER the movie. Hell, I'd probably be willing to shell out $30 a ticket for that, plus concessions. They could even offer a dinner theater. That would be sweet.
Unfortunately, lowest-common-denominator is thought of as the only way to make a ton of money anymore.
Those people with children or very important cell phone calls from their drunk friends that JUST CAN'T WAIT can buy the DVD and watch it at home on their 42" screen. Those of us who want a pleasant night out can have it.
And, like you said, if I walk out of a movie I really liked and there is a booth selling the DVD for $15 right there in the lobby, I might pick up a copy. That's a double sale! Cha-ching!
Part of this is on the consumer; how many of us buy games we know nothing about except the back of the box? Innovation is dying; partially because companies aren't taking the risk... and partially because the consumers aren't, either.
Obligatory:
"I'd be more willing to buy a game I knew nothing about if I didn't have to shell out $60 to do it."
By pricing their games so high, the game industry has basically guaranteed that there is no such thing as an impulse game purchase. Therefore, every game must be heavily marketed, and therefore must not be as much of a risk for the game company, since they're spending $X million on marketing on top of the money they spent developing the game. It's kind of a downward spiral.
The consumer risk you talk about is simply too large. The majority of the market is not going to toss down $60 on a product they've never even heard of, just as an impulse buy.
They've likely recouped costs from the theatre before a single DVD is ever made.
Not true. Only the heavily marketed blockbuster movies recoup their costs at the box office, and they're really only a small fraction of the total number of movies made.
Here are some interesting numbers for you: A Business Week article on why theater sales are losing to DVD, and an article in The Age on the economics of the current movie industry.
Some excerpts from the article in The Age:
The average movie costs $64 million to make and $39 million to market, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Movies with budgets over $100 million commonly just break even at the box office.
"In the last five years maybe six pictures out of 1000 recouped their cost in the theatrical marketplace," says Nick Counter, president of the studio alliance. "Today the hits have to make up for all the losses."
Of course, all the movie industry's blustering about piracy being a "grave concern" is mostly unfounded, but the numbers don't lie. Most movies, if they are profitable, are only profitable because of the DVD release.
Yes, I could skin it now, but that would require feeding the pages through a proxy that adds other stylesheets or having a browser that supports restyling on the fly. I meant having it as an option in a user's preferences page, right there next to the homepage customization, so the style I set would be the same every time I logged in, from anywhere.
Re:Leaks? I'll show you LEAKS!
on
IE7 Leaked
·
· Score: 1
Right now on my system Firefox is using 77MB of RAM, which is a pretty huge amount of memory! However, I'm not sure that's it's "leaking" as I am guessing that it is happily using all of it.
You're right. Firefox keeps pages in your history in RAM so that clicking the "back" button is very fast. If a page has not expired, that page is not rerendered... it's right there in the RAM. Certain server-generated pages require redownloads every time (immediate expire) and Firefox respects that.
AFAIK, there is an option somewhere in Firefox that controls this behavior. The option to disable might only be available in 1.5 (I'm running 1.0.7 right now because that's the only version my workplace has available on my locked-down PC - I'm running 1.5 at home, of course, but don't have the preferences memorized). So if you feel that you want that RAM back, you can adjust the option.
This is a nice option to have, however, because it means that Firefox does not rerun any JavaScripts on a page if it's pulling it from the cache. IE rerenders the page from disk everytime you click "back", which tends to slow things down.
Opera pioneered this behavior (it's what made it one of the fastest feeling browsers around), but pretty much all the non-IE browsers can handle this now.
Of course all of this is irrelevant since we hope to redesign the whole schebang soon too...
You had also mentioned that the new Slashcode is now reliant on CSS for styling (I realize the CSS thing happened a while ago, but I first read it today). When you redesign, what are the chances that you will build a certain "skinnability" into the code? In other words, I'd love to be able to choose my own stylesheet to be applied to the site when I am logged in. People could even submit their own skins, too, if the HTML layout was properly documented.
Ok. Although, luckily, not everything you said is wrong.
GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit a couple earth radii (radiuses?) out.
Well, no. The current United States GPS system consists of 24 satellites (plus spares) orbiting in 6 equally-spaced orbital planes at an inclination of 55 degrees and an altitude of 20,200 km, which is right in the region of space between low Earth orbit (LEO - generally between 100km and 1000km altitude) and geosyncronous Earth orbit (GEO - 35,786km altitude). The Earth's radius is 6,378km at the equator. Getting a GPS coordinate reading requires receiving signals from at least 4 satellites in the constellation. There is very little space debris in this band of space.
Yes, "radii" is a correct plural.:-)
That makes a sphere with one heck of a huge "surface", and I am sure there is a heck of a lot of room for oodles more junk out at that range before it ever becomes a problem.
Yes, the sphere has much more area, but when we talk about geosynchronous or geostationary orbits, we're really only talking about a small band of that sphere, centered on the equator. The physical space available to satellites out there in the GEO band is quite large, it's true, and the danger of collision from debris is very small. However, GEO is still rather crowded, from an angular perspective. Satellites that are 75km apart in the GEO band (which is plenty of buffer; lots of LEO satellites are closer than that) are only 0.1 degrees apart when viewed from the Earth. With a finite amount of angular space and radio bandwidth available and lots of different satellite systems competing, this is something that will have to be addressed in the near future.
Sound quality is still my main objection to purchasing music on the Web... after DRM protection of course. Jobs got everything right once again: after getting people to pay for software to produce content, and refusing people to modify the software to suit their needs, tech companies managed to get us to pay for crappily digitised content that we can't even copy onto the hardware we choose. To me this is pure evil genius, but I will try not to fall into the trap as long as I can find CDs for a decent price.
It's not pure evil genious... it's just plain genious.
The DRM in iTunes (FairPlay) is, I think, the best compromise that could be made in the current climate of RIAA control. If Steve had made the restrictions any looser, the record companies would have probably walked out of the contract negotiations. According to the Mac philosophy, you should be able to do anything you want with that music, as long as you do it on a Mac. Import it into iMovie as a soundtrack, listen to it on your iPod, chop it up into sounds for your desktop, render the bits as an image and use it as desktop wallpaper, whatever. Unfortunately, the recording industry won't have any of that, so Steve was forced to add restrictions. I'm sure he fought hard for us lowly consumers, since FairPlay is much more permissive than other forms of DRM available.
As to the question of quality: the vast, vast majority of people who download tracks from iTunes listen to them on their iPods. And guess what? On those tiny little white-cord earbud headphones that make you look "trendy", 128kbps sounds fantastic. In order to get the best sound quality out of a higher bitrate file, one would have to use fairly high-end speakers. Most people just use the earbuds that came with their iPod, and for them, the sound quality is fine.
If you're truly worried about sound quality, then you shouldn't be buying CDs, either. Most music is recorded at a higher sample rate than 44.1 kHz and a higher gain resolution than 16 bit (I'm not sure of the specific numbers, and it may vary by recording device-- audiophiles, help me out here); then it's downsampled to 44.1 kHz Red Book standard. Most music that falls in the "popular" genre (as opposed to "classical") is also heavily equalized with the gain cranked way up. As a result, the whole song falls within the top 4 bits or so of gain resolution, and tends to blare. Classical recordings are usually a bit better in the dynamic range category.
Of course, to have fantastic sound quality you also need fantastic speakers, since they are actually creating the sound. High end speakers are not cheap.
Unfortunately, CDs are the highest quality format that is currently available. I suppose a brand-new LP straight out of the package might sound slightly better than a CD, but that quality lasts about one play, until the needle has microscopically altered the tracks merely by scraping across them. Not to mention that in order to preserve that quality, one would be forced to record that LP (on its first play, mind you) on recording equipment with higher sample rates and gain resolutions that what's available in the consumer electronics market, which usually use 44.1 kHz, 16-bit. You would also have to find the music you like in LP format, and unless you are a DJ, that can be very difficult, if not impossible.
I buy CDs and rip to FLAC, which is about the best quality I can hope for.
It's more like the police come to your door and demand that they be allowed to search your house, since they think someone somewhere might be commiting a crime (but they don't actually have any evidence of specific crimes)
No, it's more like the police come to your door to write down the titles of all the books and magazines in your house as an attempt to prove that the law they wrote saying that "children under the age of 18 must not be reading anything pornographic" is constitutional. After all, if there is any porno hidden in your house, even if the children have never looked at it, then the law is needed, because of all that awful porn sitting around.
For the record, the COPA has nothing to do with child pornography (which is a crime, and should be treated as such), and everything to do with preventing children from seeing pornography (which is a thinly veiled attempt to curb the legal porn industry and completely unenforceable).
This just in: Microsoft Windows XP SP3 is now renamed Microsoft Windows Vista, and will ship sometime in early 2009. Possible new features include an updated icon, a completely new marketing campaign, one driver for an HP scanner written in a drunken coding blitz at 3am, and a new desktop wallpaper prominently featuring the Microsoft Logo.
The proposed restriction would affect software for the content encryption only, i.e. the server side of the DRM.
Well, yes and no. Digital Rights Management, in its true definition (not the perverted definition given to it by media company PR departments), could include things like encrypting email containing private, classified, or proprietary data with a key pair, and only allowing a certain person to view the contents. Technically, this is DRM, and using open/free software does not nullify its usefulness.
In order to read the DRMed content it must be decripted [sic]. That means a secret key has to be given to the user, and passed to the reader. The source for the reader is available and can be modified to save the key or the decrypted copy. Consequently, GPL2 is sufficient to make client-side DRM ineffective.
You're absolutely right. The fundamental openness of free software renders any hidden-key system useless. In fact, the GPL v3 draft says so, right here:
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent.
What the GPL v3 is protecting against is DRM that the user has no control over, such as the recent Sony rootkit. One of the basic tenets of the Free Software Foundation's philosophy is that the user has ultimate control over his/her computer, and the software that runs on it. Once a third party starts making decisions about the software I run without my knowledge or consent, that abridges the user's rights. This is stated here:
Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
Basically, that means "don't hide code." If the software uses encryption software to protect data, the code used to encrypt and decrypt must not be obfuscated with the intent of hiding it from the user.
Additionally, the methods for encrypting and decrypting must be open. I should be able to write my own software that is able to encrypt and decrypt in the same manner as the software you wrote:
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data.
I take some issue with the first statement about an "effective technological protection measure". Is PGP encryption not an "effective technological protection measure"? What about SSH?
However, the statement after that is very valuable. It allows room for legitimate data encryption (that would count as accessing certain data), but prevents anyone from using GPL v3 licensed software to abridge user's rights. If other companies or individuals are allowed, legally, to write software to read the encrypted data through another method, then there is no vendor lock-in for decrypting the data, and the user has ultimate control over how that data is accessed. This is right in line with the Free Software Foundation's aims.
Overall, I think this is a good clause. There is a nice balance between keeping control of the computer and software squarely in the hands of the user, where it belongs, and the need for data privacy through encryption. The more libraries that use this new version of the GPL, the better; if a company wants to write a bunch of software to take away their customer's rights, we should make them reinvent the wheel to do it. Then it might not be worth the trouble.
We had copy protection on software 20 years ago until everybody took a firm stand against it. Then it went away. Maybe its time to do the same for DRM.
While I agree that we have to take a firm stand against DRM, I don't think copy protection on software has "gone away." What about CD keys, password dongles, mandatory registrations, and online activiations? If anything, software is *more* copy protected today than it was 20 years ago. And isn't the whole point of the Treacherous^WTrusted Computing Initiative to prevent people from running software that isn't paid for?
Maybe your games no longer ask you to type in the 14th word on the 133rd page of version 1.43.7 of the user's manual, but software is more protected now than ever before.
I just built my own 1TB server, so here are my thoughts on the process.
You could probably find an out-of-the box solution that will work really well for $800-$1000. However, it will likely not be as configurable as you would like.
My server is 4 320GB Western Digital 7200 ATA drives, a Duron 2800+ processor, 1GB RAM, and a Promise IDE controller. There is also a gigabit ethernet card in the PCI slot. All four disks are set as master in their IDE channel. I have an extra fan on the hard drives to keep the whole thing cool, and it runs at about 95 degrees F. I built the whole thing for about $750 from NewEgg, including case and power supply.
The system is running Gentoo Linux and software RAID (1 and 5), sharing over NFS to all my other boxes. Setting up SMB would not be a big deal.
SATA or SCSI drives would be faster, but they will also be more expensive, and honestly, there is not much I can't do in realtime with ATA.
Processor and memory are not a big deal if the majority of data transfer is from read operations on the disks. It's only when writing data (or reading data from a RAID system with a broken disk) that the processor/RAM is utilized heavily, due to all the XOR operations that have to be performed.
Putting more than one disk on a single IDE channel (master and slave) will cause a HUGE performance hit. Also make sure that DMA is enabled on all the drives.
I RAIDed all the system and data partitions (except swap, of course -- that would be a speed hit), so that the loss of any one drive would not be enough to take down the system.
Data throughput is all a matter of priorities: will you be copying large files back and forth all the time, or will you be mostly streaming data by playing/recording music and video? If you're just streaming, a plain ol' ATA100 over PCI and gigEthernet is plenty wide for sending 12Mbps MPEG-2 video realtime, with bandwidth left over for playing music. If that's not fast enough, start upgrading at the bottleneck (PCI->PCI-X, ATA->SCSI, Ethernet->GigEthernet, etc.)
The people who thought this up don't have much of a clue.
They mention that they want to create this new search engine "to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google." I assume that means that they want this search engine to make as much money as Yahoo and Google.
News Flash: the "search" part of Yahoo and Google really doesn't make a lot of money. It's just a vehicle for all their other projects.
Yahoo makes a ton of money because they have their hand in a lot of different pies, as evidenced by their homepage.
Google makes almost all their money from AdSense, which is possibly the most profitable advertising technique ever created.
Both companies found new and novel ways to use existing technology.
So what I would like to know is, in order to "rival" the other major players in search, what is Quaero going offer other than search that will make them money? If they charge for their basic service, then people will just use other free alternatives, such as *gasp* Yahoo and Google.
If they want to rival these companies technologically, then they are sinking a ton of money into a "me, too" service.
What's the point, again? To stand up and say, "Listen to us, we're the EU!"?
Hardly. This judge is in the UK, and is clearly in violation of U.S. Patent #15648663245877954-5468, "Method for Citizens of Foreign Countries to Criticize the United States on Matters of Intellectual Property," filed by my company, Litigious Bastards, Inc., on November 3, 2002. He will be hearing from our lawyers shortly.
I'm not sure I understand what all the paranoia about RFID identification cards is all about. Honestly, are we getting up in arms because our security through obscurity is no longer obscure?
RFID only contains a number, like a barcode. Anyone stealing that number would have to have access to the database that links those numbers to an identity in order to obtain that information, which of course, needs to be secured. But I'm already linked to databases of information through numbers.
All that information is already out there, in many databases, linked to numbers that are ridiculously easy to obtain. This is no different; it's just another medium.
So, would someone please explain to me (I'm not being sarcastic here; I'm really curious) why obtaining this number through RFID means is any different than rifling through people's trash or sniffing wireless packets? My name, address, phone number, drivers license number, social security number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. are all numbers that link me to an "identity." I don't understand how adding a couple more numbers to the mix will make things so much worse.
"People could steal your identity by simply walking past you on the street!", the Slashdotters claim. Yeah, they could pick your pocket, too, and get all your credit cards, your driver's license, and a picture of your mother. What's the difference?
These numbers cannot be hidden. They are everywhere, if you know where to look. I think the idea of RFID being bad comes from the fact that it shatters our illusion that security through obscurity works. It simply exposes the flaws already inherent in the system.
If I am missing something here, please let me know. I want to know if all this is "new tech is teh bad" paranoia, or genuine concern.
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."
So, he's saying we need to set up a Foundation to start work on the Encyclopedia Galactica?
Perhaps he's a psychohistorian. Perhaps just an historical psycho.
Ever noticed the slightly sour A flat note that comes from the intercom when the stewardess is giving the pre-flight "use your seat cushion for floatation" speech?
Oh, God I hate that. Why, WHY couldn't Boeing have gone with a power system that operated at 440Hz?!
I kid, I kid. But seriously, one tiny little cell phone is likely not going to interfere with the avionics, because of all the EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) certification that goes on. However, since the FAA can't possibly certify every cell phone that flies (and they are a little twitchy about flying any piece of equipment that isn't certified) they simply make blanket statements like "all cell phones must be turned off."
Better safe than sorry, I say. And if a little fib about how electronics can affect the avionics keeps people from yakking while I'm trying to take a very reasonable nap at 35,000 ft., then so be it.
Slashdot Mirror
So I could sell off the iPod with digital files and "unregister" my credit card info (I actually use gift cards). Then I could pass my account over to the new owner. The new owner could then authorize the songs and add them to his existing collection. ...and change the password, presumably, so you don't download songs from that account which end up on the new owner's credit card.
But yes, this would be a legal and acceptable way to exercise your right of First Sale in a digital domain. I don't think Apple (or the RIAA) could do anything about it, since there is no mention of the practice in the iTMS terms of service (linked in grandparent post).
However, that is most certainly not happening on eBay. People are paying for illegally distributed material, and that is most certainly an infringement, whether the buyer owns the media or not.
When someone discards something, they give up the rights to it. Unless he went through their garbage on private property (i.e. not on the street corner) then there is no possible charge there.
You're right, of course, but even if there WERE charges that could be brought against the filmmaker, that still doesn't exempt the MPAA from copyright violation. The MPAA is trying to say that because their own illegal actions are in response to Kirby's (allegedly) illegal actions, they were justified in doing it. This is false and would not hold up if Kirby were to bring suit against the MPAA, which I feel he should.
With all the MPAA's braying about the evil, filthy pirates who are taking money from the mouths of helpless orphans, they sure are wanton about other peoples' intellectual property.
I have just as many rights to sell resell my only copy of the digital form as I do to sell my only copy of the physical copy. The RIAA has no room to bitch.
That may be true, but the technical limitations placed on songs downloaded from iTMS currently prevent this. The iTMS Terms of Service do not explicitly forbid resale of your songs, but the store provides no obvious mechanism for doing this, aside from giving them your iTMS login and password so they can register their device with FairPlay. iTMS currently does not allow for a secondary market, presumably because of fear that people would just abuse it.
That being said, in all likelihood the people selling fully-loaded iPods on eBay are not selling the only copy of the song they own, and therefore they are doing so illegally.
A classic straw man argument. These are two totally separate issues, but the MPAA is trying to make it sound like they are linked.
Kirby followed MPAA employees and went through their trash during the filming of his movie. This is a possible stalking charge, and perhaps invasion of privacy. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the exact charges that would be listed, but his actions are clearly on the edge of legality.
The MPAA made unauthorized copies of the movie. Who these copies were distributed to is totally irrelevant; the point is that the copies were made and distributed, even after the MPAA was asked in an email from Kirby *not* to make copies of the film. (Against the wishes of the copyright holder.)
Possibly, the MPAA ripped the film from a DVD. If this DVD is protected with CSS, then the MPAA is also guilty of a DMCA violation. (The article does not say why.) Who did the ripping, and why, is irrelevant in the eyes of the DMCA.
If this goes to trial, these issues will be dealt with separately. Kirby's actions do not automatically exempt the MPAA from copyright infringement and copyright protection circumvention charges, nor does the fact that the MPAA ignored his wishes as copyright holder exempt him from having to answer for his actions during filming.
The only way to combat MS on this front is to keep innovating, staying a step in front of it. Netscape made the mistake of not updating their browser soon enough, and they paid dearly. I hope Opera, Firefox and Safari have learned that lesson.
But it won't happen that way this time. When Netscape died (the first time), there really were only two browsers in the market. When one didn't keep up, the other took over.
This time around, there are lots of different browsers all working independently. Even if one browser does not innovate fast enough, there are many others that will. Microsoft is now fighting a multi-front battle, and they will never dominate the battlefield again like they did when the defeated Netscape. There are simply too many contenders.
Quoth myself, in the grandparent post:
That's what Greasemonkey is. It's a fantastic extension, but it has to be installed on every browser you use. It's a client-side workaround.
If it's done server-side, it's portable.
Very true - which is why simultaneous theatrical and DVD release SHOULD recoup these costs quicker and bring in larger profits.
Hey, I kind of like that idea.
You have to remember, though, that theater owners are scared to death of home theater systems. Why would anyone go out to the movies if they can just stay at home and watch it on a plasma screen tv with surround sound?
I've been saying for a while now that theater owners need to start charging MORE for movies, but upgrade the theater-going experience. Make it worth my while to go see a movie. I will gladly pay more money to see a movie in a sparkling clean stadium-style theater, with no screaming kids, a cell phone jammer, ushers willing to get popcorn/drink refills for you, a board-certified projectionist, a truly enormous screen, a clean movie print with no advertising, and trailers AFTER the movie. Hell, I'd probably be willing to shell out $30 a ticket for that, plus concessions. They could even offer a dinner theater. That would be sweet.
Unfortunately, lowest-common-denominator is thought of as the only way to make a ton of money anymore.
Those people with children or very important cell phone calls from their drunk friends that JUST CAN'T WAIT can buy the DVD and watch it at home on their 42" screen. Those of us who want a pleasant night out can have it.
And, like you said, if I walk out of a movie I really liked and there is a booth selling the DVD for $15 right there in the lobby, I might pick up a copy. That's a double sale! Cha-ching!
Part of this is on the consumer; how many of us buy games we know nothing about except the back of the box? Innovation is dying; partially because companies aren't taking the risk... and partially because the consumers aren't, either.
Obligatory:
"I'd be more willing to buy a game I knew nothing about if I didn't have to shell out $60 to do it."
By pricing their games so high, the game industry has basically guaranteed that there is no such thing as an impulse game purchase. Therefore, every game must be heavily marketed, and therefore must not be as much of a risk for the game company, since they're spending $X million on marketing on top of the money they spent developing the game. It's kind of a downward spiral.
The consumer risk you talk about is simply too large. The majority of the market is not going to toss down $60 on a product they've never even heard of, just as an impulse buy.
Not true. Only the heavily marketed blockbuster movies recoup their costs at the box office, and they're really only a small fraction of the total number of movies made.
Here are some interesting numbers for you:
A Business Week article on why theater sales are losing to DVD, and an article in The Age on the economics of the current movie industry.
Some excerpts from the article in The Age:
Of course, all the movie industry's blustering about piracy being a "grave concern" is mostly unfounded, but the numbers don't lie. Most movies, if they are profitable, are only profitable because of the DVD release.
Yes, I could skin it now, but that would require feeding the pages through a proxy that adds other stylesheets or having a browser that supports restyling on the fly. I meant having it as an option in a user's preferences page, right there next to the homepage customization, so the style I set would be the same every time I logged in, from anywhere.
Right now on my system Firefox is using 77MB of RAM, which is a pretty huge amount of memory! However, I'm not sure that's it's "leaking" as I am guessing that it is happily using all of it.
You're right. Firefox keeps pages in your history in RAM so that clicking the "back" button is very fast. If a page has not expired, that page is not rerendered... it's right there in the RAM. Certain server-generated pages require redownloads every time (immediate expire) and Firefox respects that.
AFAIK, there is an option somewhere in Firefox that controls this behavior. The option to disable might only be available in 1.5 (I'm running 1.0.7 right now because that's the only version my workplace has available on my locked-down PC - I'm running 1.5 at home, of course, but don't have the preferences memorized). So if you feel that you want that RAM back, you can adjust the option.
This is a nice option to have, however, because it means that Firefox does not rerun any JavaScripts on a page if it's pulling it from the cache. IE rerenders the page from disk everytime you click "back", which tends to slow things down.
Opera pioneered this behavior (it's what made it one of the fastest feeling browsers around), but pretty much all the non-IE browsers can handle this now.
Of course all of this is irrelevant since we hope to redesign the whole schebang soon too...
You had also mentioned that the new Slashcode is now reliant on CSS for styling (I realize the CSS thing happened a while ago, but I first read it today). When you redesign, what are the chances that you will build a certain "skinnability" into the code? In other words, I'd love to be able to choose my own stylesheet to be applied to the site when I am logged in. People could even submit their own skins, too, if the HTML layout was properly documented.
Thoughts?
Correct me if I am wrong,
:-)
Ok. Although, luckily, not everything you said is wrong.
GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit a couple earth radii (radiuses?) out.
Well, no. The current United States GPS system consists of 24 satellites (plus spares) orbiting in 6 equally-spaced orbital planes at an inclination of 55 degrees and an altitude of 20,200 km, which is right in the region of space between low Earth orbit (LEO - generally between 100km and 1000km altitude) and geosyncronous Earth orbit (GEO - 35,786km altitude). The Earth's radius is 6,378km at the equator. Getting a GPS coordinate reading requires receiving signals from at least 4 satellites in the constellation. There is very little space debris in this band of space.
Yes, "radii" is a correct plural.
That makes a sphere with one heck of a huge "surface", and I am sure there is a heck of a lot of room for oodles more junk out at that range before it ever becomes a problem.
Yes, the sphere has much more area, but when we talk about geosynchronous or geostationary orbits, we're really only talking about a small band of that sphere, centered on the equator. The physical space available to satellites out there in the GEO band is quite large, it's true, and the danger of collision from debris is very small. However, GEO is still rather crowded, from an angular perspective. Satellites that are 75km apart in the GEO band (which is plenty of buffer; lots of LEO satellites are closer than that) are only 0.1 degrees apart when viewed from the Earth. With a finite amount of angular space and radio bandwidth available and lots of different satellite systems competing, this is something that will have to be addressed in the near future.
Sound quality is still my main objection to purchasing music on the Web... after DRM protection of course. Jobs got everything right once again: after getting people to pay for software to produce content, and refusing people to modify the software to suit their needs, tech companies managed to get us to pay for crappily digitised content that we can't even copy onto the hardware we choose. To me this is pure evil genius, but I will try not to fall into the trap as long as I can find CDs for a decent price.
It's not pure evil genious... it's just plain genious.
The DRM in iTunes (FairPlay) is, I think, the best compromise that could be made in the current climate of RIAA control. If Steve had made the restrictions any looser, the record companies would have probably walked out of the contract negotiations. According to the Mac philosophy, you should be able to do anything you want with that music, as long as you do it on a Mac. Import it into iMovie as a soundtrack, listen to it on your iPod, chop it up into sounds for your desktop, render the bits as an image and use it as desktop wallpaper, whatever. Unfortunately, the recording industry won't have any of that, so Steve was forced to add restrictions. I'm sure he fought hard for us lowly consumers, since FairPlay is much more permissive than other forms of DRM available.
As to the question of quality: the vast, vast majority of people who download tracks from iTunes listen to them on their iPods. And guess what? On those tiny little white-cord earbud headphones that make you look "trendy", 128kbps sounds fantastic. In order to get the best sound quality out of a higher bitrate file, one would have to use fairly high-end speakers. Most people just use the earbuds that came with their iPod, and for them, the sound quality is fine.
If you're truly worried about sound quality, then you shouldn't be buying CDs, either. Most music is recorded at a higher sample rate than 44.1 kHz and a higher gain resolution than 16 bit (I'm not sure of the specific numbers, and it may vary by recording device-- audiophiles, help me out here); then it's downsampled to 44.1 kHz Red Book standard. Most music that falls in the "popular" genre (as opposed to "classical") is also heavily equalized with the gain cranked way up. As a result, the whole song falls within the top 4 bits or so of gain resolution, and tends to blare. Classical recordings are usually a bit better in the dynamic range category.
Of course, to have fantastic sound quality you also need fantastic speakers, since they are actually creating the sound. High end speakers are not cheap.
Unfortunately, CDs are the highest quality format that is currently available. I suppose a brand-new LP straight out of the package might sound slightly better than a CD, but that quality lasts about one play, until the needle has microscopically altered the tracks merely by scraping across them. Not to mention that in order to preserve that quality, one would be forced to record that LP (on its first play, mind you) on recording equipment with higher sample rates and gain resolutions that what's available in the consumer electronics market, which usually use 44.1 kHz, 16-bit. You would also have to find the music you like in LP format, and unless you are a DJ, that can be very difficult, if not impossible.
I buy CDs and rip to FLAC, which is about the best quality I can hope for.
It's more like the police come to your door and demand that they be allowed to search your house, since they think someone somewhere might be commiting a crime (but they don't actually have any evidence of specific crimes)
No, it's more like the police come to your door to write down the titles of all the books and magazines in your house as an attempt to prove that the law they wrote saying that "children under the age of 18 must not be reading anything pornographic" is constitutional. After all, if there is any porno hidden in your house, even if the children have never looked at it, then the law is needed, because of all that awful porn sitting around.
For the record, the COPA has nothing to do with child pornography (which is a crime, and should be treated as such), and everything to do with preventing children from seeing pornography (which is a thinly veiled attempt to curb the legal porn industry and completely unenforceable).
This just in: Microsoft Windows XP SP3 is now renamed Microsoft Windows Vista, and will ship sometime in early 2009. Possible new features include an updated icon, a completely new marketing campaign, one driver for an HP scanner written in a drunken coding blitz at 3am, and a new desktop wallpaper prominently featuring the Microsoft Logo.
Well, yes and no. Digital Rights Management, in its true definition (not the perverted definition given to it by media company PR departments), could include things like encrypting email containing private, classified, or proprietary data with a key pair, and only allowing a certain person to view the contents. Technically, this is DRM, and using open/free software does not nullify its usefulness.
In order to read the DRMed content it must be decripted [sic]. That means a secret key has to be given to the user, and passed to the reader. The source for the reader is available and can be modified to save the key or the decrypted copy. Consequently, GPL2 is sufficient to make client-side DRM ineffective.
You're absolutely right. The fundamental openness of free software renders any hidden-key system useless. In fact, the GPL v3 draft says so, right here:
What the GPL v3 is protecting against is DRM that the user has no control over, such as the recent Sony rootkit. One of the basic tenets of the Free Software Foundation's philosophy is that the user has ultimate control over his/her computer, and the software that runs on it. Once a third party starts making decisions about the software I run without my knowledge or consent, that abridges the user's rights. This is stated here:
Basically, that means "don't hide code." If the software uses encryption software to protect data, the code used to encrypt and decrypt must not be obfuscated with the intent of hiding it from the user.
Additionally, the methods for encrypting and decrypting must be open. I should be able to write my own software that is able to encrypt and decrypt in the same manner as the software you wrote:
I take some issue with the first statement about an "effective technological protection measure". Is PGP encryption not an "effective technological protection measure"? What about SSH?
However, the statement after that is very valuable. It allows room for legitimate data encryption (that would count as accessing certain data), but prevents anyone from using GPL v3 licensed software to abridge user's rights. If other companies or individuals are allowed, legally, to write software to read the encrypted data through another method, then there is no vendor lock-in for decrypting the data, and the user has ultimate control over how that data is accessed. This is right in line with the Free Software Foundation's aims.
Overall, I think this is a good clause. There is a nice balance between keeping control of the computer and software squarely in the hands of the user, where it belongs, and the need for data privacy through encryption. The more libraries that use this new version of the GPL, the better; if a company wants to write a bunch of software to take away their customer's rights, we should make them reinvent the wheel to do it. Then it might not be worth the trouble.
We had copy protection on software 20 years ago until everybody took a firm stand against it. Then it went away. Maybe its time to do the same for DRM.
While I agree that we have to take a firm stand against DRM, I don't think copy protection on software has "gone away." What about CD keys, password dongles, mandatory registrations, and online activiations? If anything, software is *more* copy protected today than it was 20 years ago. And isn't the whole point of the Treacherous^WTrusted Computing Initiative to prevent people from running software that isn't paid for?
Maybe your games no longer ask you to type in the 14th word on the 133rd page of version 1.43.7 of the user's manual, but software is more protected now than ever before.
I just built my own 1TB server, so here are my thoughts on the process.
You could probably find an out-of-the box solution that will work really well for $800-$1000. However, it will likely not be as configurable as you would like.
My server is 4 320GB Western Digital 7200 ATA drives, a Duron 2800+ processor, 1GB RAM, and a Promise IDE controller. There is also a gigabit ethernet card in the PCI slot. All four disks are set as master in their IDE channel. I have an extra fan on the hard drives to keep the whole thing cool, and it runs at about 95 degrees F. I built the whole thing for about $750 from NewEgg, including case and power supply.
The system is running Gentoo Linux and software RAID (1 and 5), sharing over NFS to all my other boxes. Setting up SMB would not be a big deal.
SATA or SCSI drives would be faster, but they will also be more expensive, and honestly, there is not much I can't do in realtime with ATA.
Processor and memory are not a big deal if the majority of data transfer is from read operations on the disks. It's only when writing data (or reading data from a RAID system with a broken disk) that the processor/RAM is utilized heavily, due to all the XOR operations that have to be performed.
Putting more than one disk on a single IDE channel (master and slave) will cause a HUGE performance hit. Also make sure that DMA is enabled on all the drives.
I RAIDed all the system and data partitions (except swap, of course -- that would be a speed hit), so that the loss of any one drive would not be enough to take down the system.
Data throughput is all a matter of priorities: will you be copying large files back and forth all the time, or will you be mostly streaming data by playing/recording music and video? If you're just streaming, a plain ol' ATA100 over PCI and gigEthernet is plenty wide for sending 12Mbps MPEG-2 video realtime, with bandwidth left over for playing music. If that's not fast enough, start upgrading at the bottleneck (PCI->PCI-X, ATA->SCSI, Ethernet->GigEthernet, etc.)
Good luck to you.
The people who thought this up don't have much of a clue.
They mention that they want to create this new search engine "to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google." I assume that means that they want this search engine to make as much money as Yahoo and Google.
News Flash: the "search" part of Yahoo and Google really doesn't make a lot of money. It's just a vehicle for all their other projects.
Yahoo makes a ton of money because they have their hand in a lot of different pies, as evidenced by their homepage.
Google makes almost all their money from AdSense, which is possibly the most profitable advertising technique ever created.
Both companies found new and novel ways to use existing technology.
So what I would like to know is, in order to "rival" the other major players in search, what is Quaero going offer other than search that will make them money? If they charge for their basic service, then people will just use other free alternatives, such as *gasp* Yahoo and Google.
If they want to rival these companies technologically, then they are sinking a ton of money into a "me, too" service.
What's the point, again? To stand up and say, "Listen to us, we're the EU!"?
Methinks someone is feeling left out.
Nitpick: You're thinking of Asimov's Foundation Series.
Thanks for the correction. My mistake.
Both fine authors, in my opinion.
"Is the tide turning?"
Hardly. This judge is in the UK, and is clearly in violation of U.S. Patent #15648663245877954-5468, "Method for Citizens of Foreign Countries to Criticize the United States on Matters of Intellectual Property," filed by my company, Litigious Bastards, Inc., on November 3, 2002. He will be hearing from our lawyers shortly.
I'm not sure I understand what all the paranoia about RFID identification cards is all about. Honestly, are we getting up in arms because our security through obscurity is no longer obscure?
RFID only contains a number, like a barcode. Anyone stealing that number would have to have access to the database that links those numbers to an identity in order to obtain that information, which of course, needs to be secured. But I'm already linked to databases of information through numbers.
All that information is already out there, in many databases, linked to numbers that are ridiculously easy to obtain. This is no different; it's just another medium.
So, would someone please explain to me (I'm not being sarcastic here; I'm really curious) why obtaining this number through RFID means is any different than rifling through people's trash or sniffing wireless packets? My name, address, phone number, drivers license number, social security number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. are all numbers that link me to an "identity." I don't understand how adding a couple more numbers to the mix will make things so much worse.
"People could steal your identity by simply walking past you on the street!", the Slashdotters claim. Yeah, they could pick your pocket, too, and get all your credit cards, your driver's license, and a picture of your mother. What's the difference?
These numbers cannot be hidden. They are everywhere, if you know where to look. I think the idea of RFID being bad comes from the fact that it shatters our illusion that security through obscurity works. It simply exposes the flaws already inherent in the system.
If I am missing something here, please let me know. I want to know if all this is "new tech is teh bad" paranoia, or genuine concern.
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."
So, he's saying we need to set up a Foundation to start work on the Encyclopedia Galactica?
Perhaps he's a psychohistorian. Perhaps just an historical psycho.
Either way, he reads too much Clarke.
Ever noticed the slightly sour A flat note that comes from the intercom when the stewardess is giving the pre-flight "use your seat cushion for floatation" speech?
Oh, God I hate that. Why, WHY couldn't Boeing have gone with a power system that operated at 440Hz?!
I kid, I kid. But seriously, one tiny little cell phone is likely not going to interfere with the avionics, because of all the EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) certification that goes on. However, since the FAA can't possibly certify every cell phone that flies (and they are a little twitchy about flying any piece of equipment that isn't certified) they simply make blanket statements like "all cell phones must be turned off."
Better safe than sorry, I say. And if a little fib about how electronics can affect the avionics keeps people from yakking while I'm trying to take a very reasonable nap at 35,000 ft., then so be it.