Them: "Sorry. How about, the right to private exhibition? Only $5."
Movie commercials do not say "Buy the right to view this movie privately on Blu-Ray Disc today!" They say "Own it on Blu-Ray today!"
So the conversation actually goes:
Them: "Do you understand that you paid for limited ownership, and that you consented to the limits stated and known to you at the time of sale?" You: "Do you understand that you never actually said that, that you are advertising the fact that I can "own this movie", and that the fact that you're telling me otherwise now is at best false advertising, and at worst a bait-and-switch tactic?"
Movie companies want to tell us we are purchasing the privilege (NOT the "right") to watch this movie? Fine. Say that, up front and clearly, in advertisements. Otherwise, when you say "own this movie on HD-DVD or BluRay TODAY!", you are falsely representing your product, and last I heard, that's illegal too.
I like this idea of being totally up-front in the advertisements, though. And hey, think, we could rename all the "Disc Replays" to "Exclusive Privileges To Listen To But Not Copy The Music Encoded On This Particular Medium Replay". "Blockbuster Video?" Heck no! How about "Blockbuster Time-Limited Cinematic Media Consumption Licenses?" Think how happy the general populace will be when they learn what the media companies are really selling us!
The problem with your analogy is that if somebody is sold an unsafe car, they find out about it. The majority of the tech-ignorant people out there will have their system massively compromised with "legal" spyware and will never know a thing.
To use another analogy: if Comcast modifies their set-top boxes to include cameras that watch you, do you blame the government, or Comcast? Obviously, you blame Comcast... but is it still an invasion of privacy issue that the government should provide remedies against? You bet your ass it is.
True, so here's a solution: tie patents to individuals rather than corporations. Make them non-transferable, and make corporations ineligible for owning patents (and throw out the rest of the archaic, railroad-boss-purchased "corporate personhood" bullshit while we're at it).
Then perhaps the patent system can return to the way it was when it was designed.
...because it is totally correct. In a true competitive landscape where you have a half-dozen choices for broadband connectivity, lack of Net Neutrality wouldn't be a concern. However, if I want broadband, I have exactly one choice: Comcast. We're too far from the DSLAM for DSL, and FiOS won't be coming to Illinois any time soon. So if Comcast starts screwing around with traffic shaping, bandwidth limitation, and the like, I am out of luck, and so is everybody else in my area.
"Let the market sort it out" doesn't work in the case of geopolies.
If you remember back to the 1980s, the thing that allowed them to gain a foothold was their inclusion of FM synthesis at a reasonable price.
This isn't entirely true. The thing that really clinched the foothold for them was the fact that they produced a card with Adlib-compatible FM synthesis as well as an 8-bit DAC for digital sound, at a price that was half the cost of the Adlib at the time. The DAC, combined with perfect backwards compatibility with Adlib cards, is what really let them take off, since games didn't have to change their music routines one bit -- all they had to do was add the routine for pumping sound effects out through the DAC.
Here's a thought: why can't search spiders be a bit smarter, and discard any links on a page that are set to "display: none"? Or, better yet, why not flag them as potentially abusive? I realize there are legitimate reasons for hiding a link with the CSS display attribute if you're using dynamic HTML, but I'd venture to guess the majority of hidden links are used for search engine manipulation.
Of course, the scammers would just try some other tactic -- perhaps hiding links in Z-layers behind opaque graphics -- but it is always an arms race, isn't it?
Question: Is it wise or useful to upgrade earlier Fedora Core installations to FC6? Or is it more trouble than it's worth? I've got a server running FC4 at home, and a few dev machines here at work running FC4 and FC5, and want to know if I should bother.
"An anonymous source reported to Bob Woodward today that several high-ranking members of the Republican party have been involved in a break-in attempt at the Watergate Hotel."
Yeah, you're right, those anonymous sources just don't cut it.
they could also be used by a governments or other entities to 'dust' crowds or areas
No. No, they couldn't. As at least two other posters have pointed out, these need to be attached to a coil antenna to get any sort of range on them.
While the privacy implications of smaller chips are certainly distressing, claiming the government can "dust" people with a sort of "RFID powder" made up of these chips is FUD, plain and simple.
I don't have to worry about the vendor shutting me down ever. You know why? Because I live in a country that follows the rule of law, and can prove in a court that I purchased these things legally.
So your solution is that we keep receipts of every single thing we purchase because the burden is upon us, the consumers, to prove that everything we have purchased is legal?
Gee, that sounds like a wonderful solution. "Why are you so worried about the government mandating cameras in your house? Surely, if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to hide!"
What, you can't be bothered to click a single FAQ link where they clearly state that they are published by Gawker Media? And you compare this to fake blogs which actively try to deceive the reader as to who really writes them? Give me a break.
I suppose you'll now say that CNN, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, and the like are all "fronts" because they're all published by a single company.
An LED bulb replacement that works with dimmer switches is a bit complicated, but doable. Typical LED bulb replacements will be using some sort of switching power supply inside them to convert the AC line voltage into a low DC voltage -- let's say 12 volts for the purposes of this writeup.
A dimmer circuit works by varying the line voltage going to the socket. Problem is, typically this power supply isn't going to vary its output voltage in proportion to its input voltage -- it will output 12 volts regardless, until the input voltage dips below a certain threshold where the power supply simply fails to operate.
So if you wanted a dimmable LED bulb, you would first need a power supply that operates over a wide input voltage range. Then you would need some sort of circuit to measure the line voltage before it hits the power supply. That measurement would be sent to a microcontroller which would pulse the LEDs faster than your eye can see, changing the duty cycle (the ratio of "on" to "off") depending on that voltage. As you can see, not a particularly easy feat.
A better solution would be to change the way the dimmer switch operates, to a digital protocol such as INSTEON. The dimmer could then send a digital signal to the LED bulb via the power line, and the LED bulb could interpret that signal and set the right brightness accordingly. (Notice that this would give you all sorts of other cool options -- like a red/green/blue LED bulb that you could choose the color of!)
Fluorescent lights with electronic ballasts (which I'm almost positive all CFLs are) emit no flickering visible to the human eye; rather than strobing at 120Hz like cheap magnetic ballasts do, electronic ballasts typically operate in the 20kHz range.
The color spectrum is another story; as another poster pointed out, changing or tinting the tube coating can help with this.
Working in engineering as you say, your group has the ability to "accidentally" insert backdoors into the system that disable all of these restrictions. If enough people are in on it, these backdoors might, oh, I don't know, mysteriously not get caught by code reviews... curiously not be documented in QA test procedures...
I have thought about this for a few years now. In fact, I was thinking about it on the way to work today! Last year I started to come up with some sort of standard for creating robotic modules -- both a physical standard, keeping most modules to the same form factor (so they could be stacked), and an electrical standard, designing a bus capable of carrying power (+5v/+12v/GND) and signals required to all of these modules. I wasn't looking at something super powerful -- probably a robot based off an Atmel mega128 AVR, chaining the modules together via I2C, SPI, and a few extra digital signal wires.
I figured the ExpressPCB MiniBoard form factor would work out well, as any hobbyist could then download PCB files for their software and get three boards spun for about $60. If you wanted to get more complex (and expensive), you could have boards professionally made and populated... or you could go the other direction and solder a bare-wire circuit together on some protoboard.
Problem is, I'm a computer science major with definite leanings toward computer engineering, but my EE skills are pretty basic (and my ME skills practically nonexistent). So I would also be interested in some sort of open-source, collaborative standards project.
Oct 23, 2001: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
What amazes me about this is that the iPod was introduced after September 11th. It is so ubiquitous now, so ingrained into our media and culture, that I had completely forgotten it is, comparatively, such a recent product.
I think that's really a testament to how good Apple marketing and design departments are.
Where can you find it for $50? Best I've seen it for is $90...
I'd love to find it cheaper, because this sounds like the perfect thing to replace the MediaPortal machine in my living room. Don't get me wrong, I love MP, but having a whole PC there is just overkill for what I'd like to do...
Playing devils' advocate... couldn't this be a very good thing? If enough people believe this truly came from the MPAA and start screaming about it, the MPAA will have no choice but to put out a press release denying it, and it is bad press for them to even need to do such a thing.
Doesn't matter if the article is true or not; if it is believable enough, it'll still have power. Whether it is right to fight FUD with FUD is another question, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
A dozen ACs have pointed this out, but...
Them: "Sorry. How about, the right to private exhibition? Only $5."
Movie commercials do not say "Buy the right to view this movie privately on Blu-Ray Disc today!" They say "Own it on Blu-Ray today!"
So the conversation actually goes:
Them: "Do you understand that you paid for limited ownership, and that you consented to the limits stated and known to you at the time of sale?"
You: "Do you understand that you never actually said that, that you are advertising the fact that I can "own this movie", and that the fact that you're telling me otherwise now is at best false advertising, and at worst a bait-and-switch tactic?"
Movie companies want to tell us we are purchasing the privilege (NOT the "right") to watch this movie? Fine. Say that, up front and clearly, in advertisements. Otherwise, when you say "own this movie on HD-DVD or BluRay TODAY!", you are falsely representing your product, and last I heard, that's illegal too.
I like this idea of being totally up-front in the advertisements, though. And hey, think, we could rename all the "Disc Replays" to "Exclusive Privileges To Listen To But Not Copy The Music Encoded On This Particular Medium Replay". "Blockbuster Video?" Heck no! How about "Blockbuster Time-Limited Cinematic Media Consumption Licenses?" Think how happy the general populace will be when they learn what the media companies are really selling us!
The problem with your analogy is that if somebody is sold an unsafe car, they find out about it. The majority of the tech-ignorant people out there will have their system massively compromised with "legal" spyware and will never know a thing.
To use another analogy: if Comcast modifies their set-top boxes to include cameras that watch you, do you blame the government, or Comcast? Obviously, you blame Comcast... but is it still an invasion of privacy issue that the government should provide remedies against? You bet your ass it is.
If a more satisfying product is offered by another company consumers will simply migrate.
Or pirate the product that isn't for sale anymore.
Windows users will buy new machines, and get Vista "real soon now."
Not if companies like Dell buck the trend and continue to offer XP on new machines.
True, so here's a solution: tie patents to individuals rather than corporations. Make them non-transferable, and make corporations ineligible for owning patents (and throw out the rest of the archaic, railroad-boss-purchased "corporate personhood" bullshit while we're at it).
Then perhaps the patent system can return to the way it was when it was designed.
Within a year? Fry's already sells 400GB SATAs for $99, and 500GB for $139. Time to outlaw the sale of large hard drives, I guess.
...because it is totally correct. In a true competitive landscape where you have a half-dozen choices for broadband connectivity, lack of Net Neutrality wouldn't be a concern. However, if I want broadband, I have exactly one choice: Comcast. We're too far from the DSLAM for DSL, and FiOS won't be coming to Illinois any time soon. So if Comcast starts screwing around with traffic shaping, bandwidth limitation, and the like, I am out of luck, and so is everybody else in my area.
"Let the market sort it out" doesn't work in the case of geopolies.
This isn't entirely true. The thing that really clinched the foothold for them was the fact that they produced a card with Adlib-compatible FM synthesis as well as an 8-bit DAC for digital sound, at a price that was half the cost of the Adlib at the time. The DAC, combined with perfect backwards compatibility with Adlib cards, is what really let them take off, since games didn't have to change their music routines one bit -- all they had to do was add the routine for pumping sound effects out through the DAC.
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1
Here's a thought: why can't search spiders be a bit smarter, and discard any links on a page that are set to "display: none"? Or, better yet, why not flag them as potentially abusive? I realize there are legitimate reasons for hiding a link with the CSS display attribute if you're using dynamic HTML, but I'd venture to guess the majority of hidden links are used for search engine manipulation.
Of course, the scammers would just try some other tactic -- perhaps hiding links in Z-layers behind opaque graphics -- but it is always an arms race, isn't it?
Question: Is it wise or useful to upgrade earlier Fedora Core installations to FC6? Or is it more trouble than it's worth? I've got a server running FC4 at home, and a few dev machines here at work running FC4 and FC5, and want to know if I should bother.
"An anonymous source reported to Bob Woodward today that several high-ranking members of the Republican party have been involved in a break-in attempt at the Watergate Hotel."
Yeah, you're right, those anonymous sources just don't cut it.
Thereby making almost any dimmer switch entirely useless, as well as forcing people to use CFLs in dimmer circuits that could damage them.
Brilliant, guys.
No. No, they couldn't. As at least two other posters have pointed out, these need to be attached to a coil antenna to get any sort of range on them.
While the privacy implications of smaller chips are certainly distressing, claiming the government can "dust" people with a sort of "RFID powder" made up of these chips is FUD, plain and simple.
I don't have to worry about the vendor shutting me down ever. You know why? Because I live in a country that follows the rule of law, and can prove in a court that I purchased these things legally.
So your solution is that we keep receipts of every single thing we purchase because the burden is upon us, the consumers, to prove that everything we have purchased is legal?
Gee, that sounds like a wonderful solution. "Why are you so worried about the government mandating cameras in your house? Surely, if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to hide!"
What, you can't be bothered to click a single FAQ link where they clearly state that they are published by Gawker Media? And you compare this to fake blogs which actively try to deceive the reader as to who really writes them? Give me a break.
I suppose you'll now say that CNN, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, and the like are all "fronts" because they're all published by a single company.
An LED bulb replacement that works with dimmer switches is a bit complicated, but doable. Typical LED bulb replacements will be using some sort of switching power supply inside them to convert the AC line voltage into a low DC voltage -- let's say 12 volts for the purposes of this writeup.
A dimmer circuit works by varying the line voltage going to the socket. Problem is, typically this power supply isn't going to vary its output voltage in proportion to its input voltage -- it will output 12 volts regardless, until the input voltage dips below a certain threshold where the power supply simply fails to operate.
So if you wanted a dimmable LED bulb, you would first need a power supply that operates over a wide input voltage range. Then you would need some sort of circuit to measure the line voltage before it hits the power supply. That measurement would be sent to a microcontroller which would pulse the LEDs faster than your eye can see, changing the duty cycle (the ratio of "on" to "off") depending on that voltage. As you can see, not a particularly easy feat.
A better solution would be to change the way the dimmer switch operates, to a digital protocol such as INSTEON. The dimmer could then send a digital signal to the LED bulb via the power line, and the LED bulb could interpret that signal and set the right brightness accordingly. (Notice that this would give you all sorts of other cool options -- like a red/green/blue LED bulb that you could choose the color of!)
Fluorescent lights with electronic ballasts (which I'm almost positive all CFLs are) emit no flickering visible to the human eye; rather than strobing at 120Hz like cheap magnetic ballasts do, electronic ballasts typically operate in the 20kHz range.
The color spectrum is another story; as another poster pointed out, changing or tinting the tube coating can help with this.
I've never said this before, but...
MOD PARENT UP.
Working in engineering as you say, your group has the ability to "accidentally" insert backdoors into the system that disable all of these restrictions. If enough people are in on it, these backdoors might, oh, I don't know, mysteriously not get caught by code reviews... curiously not be documented in QA test procedures...
Just a thought.
I have thought about this for a few years now. In fact, I was thinking about it on the way to work today! Last year I started to come up with some sort of standard for creating robotic modules -- both a physical standard, keeping most modules to the same form factor (so they could be stacked), and an electrical standard, designing a bus capable of carrying power (+5v/+12v/GND) and signals required to all of these modules. I wasn't looking at something super powerful -- probably a robot based off an Atmel mega128 AVR, chaining the modules together via I2C, SPI, and a few extra digital signal wires.
I figured the ExpressPCB MiniBoard form factor would work out well, as any hobbyist could then download PCB files for their software and get three boards spun for about $60. If you wanted to get more complex (and expensive), you could have boards professionally made and populated... or you could go the other direction and solder a bare-wire circuit together on some protoboard.
Problem is, I'm a computer science major with definite leanings toward computer engineering, but my EE skills are pretty basic (and my ME skills practically nonexistent). So I would also be interested in some sort of open-source, collaborative standards project.
Oct 23, 2001: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
What amazes me about this is that the iPod was introduced after September 11th. It is so ubiquitous now, so ingrained into our media and culture, that I had completely forgotten it is, comparatively, such a recent product.
I think that's really a testament to how good Apple marketing and design departments are.
Where can you find it for $50? Best I've seen it for is $90...
I'd love to find it cheaper, because this sounds like the perfect thing to replace the MediaPortal machine in my living room. Don't get me wrong, I love MP, but having a whole PC there is just overkill for what I'd like to do...
This comes as no surprise. After all, it's far more difficult for criminals and scam artists to rip people off when the price is fixed.
eBay owes its existence to (a) collectors of various obscure items and (b) the criminal element.
when the money stops flowing...those "friends" go away.
So I suppose, then, money can rent friends.
Playing devils' advocate... couldn't this be a very good thing? If enough people believe this truly came from the MPAA and start screaming about it, the MPAA will have no choice but to put out a press release denying it, and it is bad press for them to even need to do such a thing.
Doesn't matter if the article is true or not; if it is believable enough, it'll still have power. Whether it is right to fight FUD with FUD is another question, of course.