The reason that "hate crimes" exist in law is because they have a worse effect on society.
If someone kills a white guy *because he is white*, then not ONLY have they broken the ordinary murder law, but they have ALSO terrorised all the other white people. Now ALL the white people worry that they might be killed "just because they are white".
It's this extra terrorising effect that attracts the extra punishment for hate crimes.
This is sheer sophistry. You're conflating two separate rights - the right to marry a man, and the right to marry a woman. In the same way, you could reintroduce public transport segregation with the argument "All citizens have the legal right to sit in that part of the bus that's assigned to them." Separate but equal.
From the article: "I also doubt that there is going to be any process that is going to ‘listen to’ the music to see if it sounds like a recognized song."
Why not? This technology exists and is available in projects like MusicBrainz Picard, used for a very similar purpose. There's every chance that iCloud could work this way.
My understanding is that what's been reported as "encryption" is in fact compression, obfuscated by withholding the Huffman tables. The BBC can then say to STB manufacturers "You must restrict copying of HD content, or we will not give you the Huffman decoding table". The BBC need this so that they can say to (American) studios "Give us your HD content to broadcast, it will be protected".
In the mean time, Linux devs have reverse-engineered the Huffman tables anyway.
Is the TiVo guide data format understood? The BBC offer free XML listings data for all UK channels (not just BBC channels) - it seems like it should be possible for motivated developers to convert this into usable TiVo format data.
Well, an awful lot of work by a great many people went into MythTV. I didn't do any of that work, but I still get to use MythTV for free. So, it has a lot of credit with me, just to start with!
I agree that it's hard to set up. I don't agree that it's hard to keep it running.
You talk about problems when you rebuild the machine, or switch distributions, or upgrade to a new version of MythTV. It's true, those are troublesome. Try to avoid doing those things!
If you want a MythTV system that works reliably, then build a Myth box, get it into a working state, and then *stop tinkering with it*.
Obviously as geeks this is hard for us to do - the temptation to upgrade everything to the latest version is great! But, if you want it to behave like an appliance, I think you need to treat it like an appliance, and leave it alone.
Of course, it would be nice if all the upgrades worked perfectly, but my main point is that I don't think it's fair to say "the overhead of keeping it running is high", if you want to include regular software, OS, and hardware upgrades as part of "keeping it running".
It's a shame that you had a bad experience with MythTV. For the record, to provide some balance:
I have been using MythTV continually since 0.14, back in 2004. It's always been hard to get it set up in the first place, but this has improved over the years. Anyway, once it *is* set up, it's just fantastic, and I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.
With power, comes complexity, but I think it's worth it. I love that I can tell it, e.g. "Record this show at any time, on any channel, as long as it's not an episode I've recorded before, and try to prioritise the shows that do NOT have a sign-language interpreter (but record those if it's absolutely necessary due to conflicts with other things I want to record)".
He wasn't a comedian, though. As he said himself - "A wit says something funny on the spot. A comedy writer says something very funny two minutes later."
You matched "over 60%"? My top OKCupid matches were in the high eighties to low nineties, and I got on scarily well with the ones that I met... didn't get too far through the list though, I'm marrying the second lady I went out with.
My sister works in Second Life. She has a job, paying real money (UK pounds, not Linden dollars) with a real, bricks and mortar design agency, and every day she goes to work in their real office, sits at her desk, logs in to SL, takes her avatar to work inside their virtual office, and gets to work.
Her company is paid by e.g. bands or designer clothing brands to create a "Second Life Presence" for them inside "the grid". It's a lot like hiring a web designer to build a web site - you hire a Second Life design company to build you a virtual tropical island, or whatever. People come to your virtual island, maybe you have virtual examples of your virtual products there, they like them, they buy them in real life... profit!
This seems like an entirely legitimate and mutually beneficial arrangement for all concerned; Second Life definitely can be used to make real money without scamming anyone. That's not to say it's not ALSO scamming people, of course.
Like MOVING the recording of a first-run show (the Dead Zone) from Sunday night to tonight in order to accomodate something else I asked it to record. All without needing to bother me with the details. I doubt MythTV does that.
Guess again! MythTV does exactly that.
When I set up my Myth box, one thing I was worried about was the fact I wouldn't be able to record more than one thing at a time. As it turns out, UK cable channels repeat *everything* several times, including strange hours in the early morning and so on.
This means that I can always trust Myth not to miss any episodes of the shows I want to watch - if two of them clash, it will always pick one of them up at 4am the next day or whenever. It also compares the descriptions to make sure it doesn't record all six copies of the same episode.
Even if you buy stuff second-hand, you're still contributing to the RIAA and MPAA, albeit indirectly. Those CDs or DVDs that you buy second-hand were bought by people who knew they could flog them to a second-hand shop when they were done with them. If there weren't people like you prepared to buy them second-hand, less people would be prepared to buy them new, knowing they couldn't get rid of them.
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The reason that "hate crimes" exist in law is because they have a worse effect on society.
If someone kills a white guy *because he is white*, then not ONLY have they broken the ordinary murder law, but they have ALSO terrorised all the other white people. Now ALL the white people worry that they might be killed "just because they are white".
It's this extra terrorising effect that attracts the extra punishment for hate crimes.
This is sheer sophistry. You're conflating two separate rights - the right to marry a man, and the right to marry a woman. In the same way, you could reintroduce public transport segregation with the argument "All citizens have the legal right to sit in that part of the bus that's assigned to them." Separate but equal.
From the article: "I also doubt that there is going to be any process that is going to ‘listen to’ the music to see if it sounds like a recognized song."
Why not? This technology exists and is available in projects like MusicBrainz Picard, used for a very similar purpose. There's every chance that iCloud could work this way.
The contract actually says that they can cancel the service with 30 days' notice "for any reason or no reason".
My understanding is that what's been reported as "encryption" is in fact compression, obfuscated by withholding the Huffman tables. The BBC can then say to STB manufacturers "You must restrict copying of HD content, or we will not give you the Huffman decoding table". The BBC need this so that they can say to (American) studios "Give us your HD content to broadcast, it will be protected".
In the mean time, Linux devs have reverse-engineered the Huffman tables anyway.
Is the TiVo guide data format understood? The BBC offer free XML listings data for all UK channels (not just BBC channels) - it seems like it should be possible for motivated developers to convert this into usable TiVo format data.
Well, an awful lot of work by a great many people went into MythTV. I didn't do any of that work, but I still get to use MythTV for free. So, it has a lot of credit with me, just to start with!
Essentially I think we agree - MythTV is the best thing available, but ideally it would be even better.
I agree that it's hard to set up. I don't agree that it's hard to keep it running.
You talk about problems when you rebuild the machine, or switch distributions, or upgrade to a new version of MythTV. It's true, those are troublesome. Try to avoid doing those things!
If you want a MythTV system that works reliably, then build a Myth box, get it into a working state, and then *stop tinkering with it*.
Obviously as geeks this is hard for us to do - the temptation to upgrade everything to the latest version is great! But, if you want it to behave like an appliance, I think you need to treat it like an appliance, and leave it alone.
Of course, it would be nice if all the upgrades worked perfectly, but my main point is that I don't think it's fair to say "the overhead of keeping it running is high", if you want to include regular software, OS, and hardware upgrades as part of "keeping it running".
It's a shame that you had a bad experience with MythTV. For the record, to provide some balance:
I have been using MythTV continually since 0.14, back in 2004. It's always been hard to get it set up in the first place, but this has improved over the years. Anyway, once it *is* set up, it's just fantastic, and I'd never settle for a lesser system (e.g. retail set-top-box) now that I'm used to the power of MythTV.
With power, comes complexity, but I think it's worth it. I love that I can tell it, e.g. "Record this show at any time, on any channel, as long as it's not an episode I've recorded before, and try to prioritise the shows that do NOT have a sign-language interpreter (but record those if it's absolutely necessary due to conflicts with other things I want to record)".
He wasn't a comedian, though. As he said himself - "A wit says something funny on the spot. A comedy writer says something very funny two minutes later."
You matched "over 60%"? My top OKCupid matches were in the high eighties to low nineties, and I got on scarily well with the ones that I met... didn't get too far through the list though, I'm marrying the second lady I went out with.
I can't parse that at all - who's requesting, who's retiring... what? Can someone make sense of that?
My sister works in Second Life. She has a job, paying real money (UK pounds, not Linden dollars) with a real, bricks and mortar design agency, and every day she goes to work in their real office, sits at her desk, logs in to SL, takes her avatar to work inside their virtual office, and gets to work.
Her company is paid by e.g. bands or designer clothing brands to create a "Second Life Presence" for them inside "the grid". It's a lot like hiring a web designer to build a web site - you hire a Second Life design company to build you a virtual tropical island, or whatever. People come to your virtual island, maybe you have virtual examples of your virtual products there, they like them, they buy them in real life... profit!
This seems like an entirely legitimate and mutually beneficial arrangement for all concerned; Second Life definitely can be used to make real money without scamming anyone. That's not to say it's not ALSO scamming people, of course.
I'll see your gold-plated USB cable and raise you a gold-plated OPTICAL cable. Because gold stops... the light... falling out. Or something.
Guess again! MythTV does exactly that.
When I set up my Myth box, one thing I was worried about was the fact I wouldn't be able to record more than one thing at a time. As it turns out, UK cable channels repeat *everything* several times, including strange hours in the early morning and so on.
This means that I can always trust Myth not to miss any episodes of the shows I want to watch - if two of them clash, it will always pick one of them up at 4am the next day or whenever. It also compares the descriptions to make sure it doesn't record all six copies of the same episode.
Even if you buy stuff second-hand, you're still contributing to the RIAA and MPAA, albeit indirectly. Those CDs or DVDs that you buy second-hand were bought by people who knew they could flog them to a second-hand shop when they were done with them. If there weren't people like you prepared to buy them second-hand, less people would be prepared to buy them new, knowing they couldn't get rid of them.