$500 gaming rigs do just fine, really. And you can use them for so much more than just games.
Yes, but how many people really do anything more with their PCs? If I had a Facebook account, I could access it from my blu-ray player now.
With consoles doing what WebTV could back in the 90's, and HDTVs making it not an eye-straining experience to do so, for lots of people a smartphone + console is all the "computer" they really need.
They can spend $500 and get more kick-ass graphics, but then they'd have to make additional purchases of gaming controllers and deal with the usual virus/spyware issues a desktop PC has, where a console covers the main functions they want out of the box and is cheaper, too.
I can't speak to the customer owned routers, but for the modems, given how often my cablemodem dies on the RF side from lightning or "whatever" and how very long its been illegal to install anything but docsis 3.0 ipv6 compatible modems, I'm unimpressed.
"Illegal"? Citation for that, please.
Last time I was in a retail store there were still DOCSIS 2.0 modems for sale. More likely a ISP business decision that new installs must be DOCSIS 3 modems.
This was my favorite "hands-on" post. Four pictures of a Panasonic 4K OLED TV. Not only is it not a "hands on" photo shoot showing actual interface features, there are no hands whatsoever in any of the photos. It's the TV sitting in its display area completely unattended. No Panasonic marketing men or booth candy even.
Why would the Canadian government appeal the case when their country suddenly took a step up in the list of best places to incorporate your business? Still a long way from Ireland, but an improvement that might bring in more investors.
Well your could if you ran your own mail server, couldn't you?
Just institute a whitelist of your "friends" and have an automatic bounceback for everyone else that links to a shopping cart that allows them to paste their email into a form. Charge them to complete checkout, which then forwards the contents of the form like the "special instructions" area of any e-commerce site's checkout page.
I think the problem here is what you really want is a system that automatically charges them just for sending to your address without them having to agree to the fee first.
I get the point, but I live in Belgium, where the "private copy" law allows me to rip my rentals (and even to go to the library and copy-with my own hardware only-any books/CD/DVD I want) - as long as it is to be used in a "familly environment".
I think lots of things about U.S. Copyright Law are really crazy now, but I kinda agree with the whole "ripping rentals is illegal thing" -- at least in as far as I feel it makes sense and isn't just some plan to screw consumers. When someone can rent a DVD and rip it to keep, what is the incentive to actually buying home video discs now?
I know the entertainment industry in the U.S. realizes this to some degree. For years now they've been sending video stores movies with box art with a very obvious "Rental" tag on it since it will reduce the likelihood of someone wanting to purchase the previously viewed copy when the rental store sells off old films. But they've also started to master a separate version on movies on DVD for the rental market. I rented X-Men: First Class once, and the disc contained the movie... and little else. To see any bonus features you had to buy a retail copy. I also rented Underworld: Awakening and while the DVD was a dual-layer disc, inspection on my computer revealed that the movie itself took up less space than a single layer disc would have been. The video bitrate had been reduced to lower picture quality on the rental for the film and fully half the DVD space was used for advertising content instead.
Pardon my french, but, you're actually not legally allowed to rip a rental for your personnal use ? no "private copy" rules where you live ?
No.
A rental is a rental. You get it for as long as your rent it. If you kept a copy of it for personal use afterwards you'd have use of it after the rental timeframe, which would kinda defeat the purpose of rentals being a time limited usage business, right?
This really wasn't about which method is and is not illegal (they're both assumed to be illegal where the poster is). It's about one you would conceivably never get caught doing short of someone ratting you out or law enforcement coming and searching your home for them, verses the other method that is easier and cheaper (per movie), but lower quality result and much higher chance of prosecution by the law.
He's got you beat. Netflix and the movie studios don't know he's ripping the rentals.
You're far more likely to be caught taking the movies in a way that can be seen by other parties. And, unless you're downloading BD rips, he's getting better quality since he's duplicating the original disc.
LOL. Boycotts only work when a critical mass of consumers are participating. You'll never get that many people to do it at once. Even if you get close to that the entertainment industry is good about putting blinders on and factoring the lost sales to "filthy pirates" stealing the movie and watching it instead of folks actively doing without and trying to send a message.
A more likely result of a boycott will probably be new laws railroaded through Congress of blank media taxes or harsher fines for copyright and more lax evidence needed to convict. Anything to funnel some money the studios' way to help prop up their balance books when their sales are falling.
Funny point about the Big Mac: Lots of the movies I've bought on blu-ray I've purchased at sales or in collections where I end up spending $5-8 a film. That's getting down there to the price of a Big Mac the way McDonalds has been raising their prices the last few years.
No, they might still come after you for illegal downloading. There was some rich guy who did this on purpose to take them to court (he pirated a movie he literally had on his shelf) and what happened was once the MPAA figured out he had enough spare time and money that he actually was going to go to trial they dropped the whole thing. I guess they didn't want to set a precedent where they had to start proving a person didn't already own a movie they had been caught downloading.
Meanwhile rip-yourself is all done in the privacy of you own home and you can be as anal (or not) as you want to be about quality and the end-product. So many Hollywood movies are only available in crappy 700 MB AVI files on TPB, why accept that as the version you'll be watching?
I cannot help but feeling pissed of each time I buy one film and am forced to endure minutes of ads against pirating (But I even paid the bloody thing!) or for films I will not see or for violent films when the DVD contains a cartoon for the kids.
The obvious solution is to rip the DVD and reburn it to a blank DL disc. DVDFabDecrypter even has a preset specifically to rip just the movie portion, removing all previews and piracy warnings. Replace the original clamshell case for the DVD with a two-disc one and stick your original on one side for safe-keeping (and to prove you actually paid for the content if the MPAA ever gets those gestapo search squads they've always wanted), and put the new disc on the other side. Play only the burned disc.
Bonus: If your DVD gets scratched up by frequent use/kids you still have the original disc to make new copies from.
Alternatively, build an HTPC and rip the movie portion of the DVD to computer files and play as-is. You can retain the original VOBs for 100% DVD quality or encode to an MKV file and save lots of hard drive space by using a more efficient codec like XviD or h264. An MKV would allow you to keep all the audio tracks, subtitle tracks, and even the chapter markings from the original DVD.
Third-party suppliers don't have access to original design information generally. To use the car analogy (or not really analogy, since this is about a car), I can get aftermarket parts for the Batmobile, but the creators of those parts either have obtained IP from the original automaker on how to make those parts, or have reverse engineered the parts, or simply make a part that is functionally and appearance-wise similar, but it's not really an exact replica of the part.
The Batmobile replica-makers are part of the third group. They can exist even with the original Batmoile-maker (Warner) being protected. Warner wants to say "if it looks kinda like a car we made then it's the same thing as making our car without our permission."
Copyright law is about the promotion of the arts and sciences, is it not? I think looking at the Batmobile, how the design of the Batmobile influences the creative endeavors of individuals, and considering what is and is not art is at the very heart of the matter.
Vehicles from the 1940s through 1970s, and into the 80s? Sure they are - or can be, at least.
But pretty much every automobile today is just a stylized wind tunnel tested form. They're somewhat more unique than the crap from about a decade ago and have unique bumpers, grills, etc. but for the most part there's little to distinguish them from each other, with rare exception.
This is why the automobile shouldn't be copyrightable based on it's "look and feel". Aerodynamics has nothing to do with which automaker produced the car. Can you imagine what would happen if someone was able to copyright the general form of the car in the late 90's? Automotive design would come to a screeching halt because everyone making a halfway aerodynamic car would be in violation of of a copyright on a very vague three dimensional form.
Warner wants to sue custom car builders who are making cars that look like Batmobiles. So now you can't make cars that are wide, black, and have bat-like fins or other decorations that remind people of Batman, either.
I was just thinking. You mention how not-distinctive the 1960's Batmobile was. If Warner actually gets the court to recognize cars as a copyrightable form of IP, wouldn't this mean Warner has no grounds to sue? They aren't the designer of the automobile, the automaker would own the copyright. In fact, Warner themselves could be made a defendant if their Batmobile is considered a "derivative work" of the original car and no agreements were in place to cover this issue with the maker of the original base car.
Most art students have to learn something about the law at some point because America is such a lawsuit-happy society, and there's always someone out there trying to make a buck for doing nothing. Either by saying your art if copying his idea, or trying to copy your art and sell it as his own.
What is music? The art of sound. What is literature? Artistic expression in prose.
Do we have trademarks and copyright issues with books and music?
I would argue the automobile is a sculpture, and therefore protect-able from exact replication using blueprints/tooling. However, like any work of art, it is an interpretation by the artist. If I make a Batmobile-looking car I am making what my interpretation of the Batmobile is, it's not the same as making a Batmobile. As long as I do not sell the item claiming it is, in fact, a real Batmobile or use trademarked brands on the car or in it's promotion then I should be okay.
In the USA, millions and millions of people have guns that could easily be used to murder anybody. In Western countries in general, almost everybody has kitchen knifes that could easily be used to murder someone. I have a spade and a pitchfork that could be used for murder. Why would I worry that about "Murder by Internet-Connected Devices"?
You're naming a bunch of ways of physically attacking someone. That requires physical access.
With an Internet-enabled method this isn't required. All the locks on the door and guards in the world wont stop the perpetrator in this scenario unless you stop your Facebook addiction. Hey, you could murder them from outside the legal jurisdiction. Even from a country with internet access and no extradition agreements with the place where the murder took place. Assuming the authorities are able to figure out who the culprit is they've preemptively escaped.
It really doesn't matter what you're actually doing in many jurisdictions. They may say they're Drunk Driving laws but the "driving" part is optional. Around here just sitting in the driver's seat of your car drunk can get you ticketed. Even if the car isn't in motion or even running. The only way to avoid the ticket is to have the keys out of the ignition and not reachable. So if you decide you're too drunk to drive and want to just spend the night sleeping it off in your car you have to toss the keys in the back seat so they're out of reach.
Slashdot Mirror
$500 gaming rigs do just fine, really. And you can use them for so much more than just games.
Yes, but how many people really do anything more with their PCs? If I had a Facebook account, I could access it from my blu-ray player now.
With consoles doing what WebTV could back in the 90's, and HDTVs making it not an eye-straining experience to do so, for lots of people a smartphone + console is all the "computer" they really need.
They can spend $500 and get more kick-ass graphics, but then they'd have to make additional purchases of gaming controllers and deal with the usual virus/spyware issues a desktop PC has, where a console covers the main functions they want out of the box and is cheaper, too.
Mega's availability remains spotty as of this articles' writing."
So it's only partly Cloudy.
I can't speak to the customer owned routers, but for the modems, given how often my cablemodem dies on the RF side from lightning or "whatever" and how very long its been illegal to install anything but docsis 3.0 ipv6 compatible modems, I'm unimpressed.
"Illegal"? Citation for that, please.
Last time I was in a retail store there were still DOCSIS 2.0 modems for sale.
More likely a ISP business decision that new installs must be DOCSIS 3 modems.
This was my favorite "hands-on" post. Four pictures of a Panasonic 4K OLED TV. Not only is it not a "hands on" photo shoot showing actual interface features, there are no hands whatsoever in any of the photos. It's the TV sitting in its display area completely unattended. No Panasonic marketing men or booth candy even.
Why would the Canadian government appeal the case when their country suddenly took a step up in the list of best places to incorporate your business? Still a long way from Ireland, but an improvement that might bring in more investors.
Well your could if you ran your own mail server, couldn't you?
Just institute a whitelist of your "friends" and have an automatic bounceback for everyone else that links to a shopping cart that allows them to paste their email into a form. Charge them to complete checkout, which then forwards the contents of the form like the "special instructions" area of any e-commerce site's checkout page.
I think the problem here is what you really want is a system that automatically charges them just for sending to your address without them having to agree to the fee first.
Ah, but with Amazon's service you can get the mp3's legally without having to use the disc. So you can sell the CD as "new/sealed" for a higher price.
I get the point, but I live in Belgium, where the "private copy" law allows me to rip my rentals (and even to go to the library and copy-with my own hardware only-any books/CD/DVD I want) - as long as it is to be used in a "familly environment".
I think lots of things about U.S. Copyright Law are really crazy now, but I kinda agree with the whole "ripping rentals is illegal thing" -- at least in as far as I feel it makes sense and isn't just some plan to screw consumers. When someone can rent a DVD and rip it to keep, what is the incentive to actually buying home video discs now?
I know the entertainment industry in the U.S. realizes this to some degree. For years now they've been sending video stores movies with box art with a very obvious "Rental" tag on it since it will reduce the likelihood of someone wanting to purchase the previously viewed copy when the rental store sells off old films. But they've also started to master a separate version on movies on DVD for the rental market. I rented X-Men: First Class once, and the disc contained the movie... and little else. To see any bonus features you had to buy a retail copy. I also rented Underworld: Awakening and while the DVD was a dual-layer disc, inspection on my computer revealed that the movie itself took up less space than a single layer disc would have been. The video bitrate had been reduced to lower picture quality on the rental for the film and fully half the DVD space was used for advertising content instead.
Pardon my french, but, you're actually not legally allowed to rip a rental for your personnal use ? no "private copy" rules where you live ?
No.
A rental is a rental. You get it for as long as your rent it.
If you kept a copy of it for personal use afterwards you'd have use of it after the rental timeframe, which would kinda defeat the purpose of rentals being a time limited usage business, right?
This really wasn't about which method is and is not illegal (they're both assumed to be illegal where the poster is). It's about one you would conceivably never get caught doing short of someone ratting you out or law enforcement coming and searching your home for them, verses the other method that is easier and cheaper (per movie), but lower quality result and much higher chance of prosecution by the law.
He's got you beat. Netflix and the movie studios don't know he's ripping the rentals.
You're far more likely to be caught taking the movies in a way that can be seen by other parties.
And, unless you're downloading BD rips, he's getting better quality since he's duplicating the original disc.
LOL. Boycotts only work when a critical mass of consumers are participating. You'll never get that many people to do it at once. Even if you get close to that the entertainment industry is good about putting blinders on and factoring the lost sales to "filthy pirates" stealing the movie and watching it instead of folks actively doing without and trying to send a message.
A more likely result of a boycott will probably be new laws railroaded through Congress of blank media taxes or harsher fines for copyright and more lax evidence needed to convict. Anything to funnel some money the studios' way to help prop up their balance books when their sales are falling.
Funny point about the Big Mac: Lots of the movies I've bought on blu-ray I've purchased at sales or in collections where I end up spending $5-8 a film. That's getting down there to the price of a Big Mac the way McDonalds has been raising their prices the last few years.
No, they might still come after you for illegal downloading. There was some rich guy who did this on purpose to take them to court (he pirated a movie he literally had on his shelf) and what happened was once the MPAA figured out he had enough spare time and money that he actually was going to go to trial they dropped the whole thing. I guess they didn't want to set a precedent where they had to start proving a person didn't already own a movie they had been caught downloading.
Meanwhile rip-yourself is all done in the privacy of you own home and you can be as anal (or not) as you want to be about quality and the end-product. So many Hollywood movies are only available in crappy 700 MB AVI files on TPB, why accept that as the version you'll be watching?
Maybe we should start a petition for them to tell us why they don't give meaningful responses to our petitions when it was their idea to start with?
I cannot help but feeling pissed of each time I buy one film and am forced to endure minutes of ads against pirating (But I even paid the bloody thing!) or for films I will not see or for violent films when the DVD contains a cartoon for the kids.
The obvious solution is to rip the DVD and reburn it to a blank DL disc. DVDFabDecrypter even has a preset specifically to rip just the movie portion, removing all previews and piracy warnings. Replace the original clamshell case for the DVD with a two-disc one and stick your original on one side for safe-keeping (and to prove you actually paid for the content if the MPAA ever gets those gestapo search squads they've always wanted), and put the new disc on the other side. Play only the burned disc.
Bonus: If your DVD gets scratched up by frequent use/kids you still have the original disc to make new copies from.
Alternatively, build an HTPC and rip the movie portion of the DVD to computer files and play as-is. You can retain the original VOBs for 100% DVD quality or encode to an MKV file and save lots of hard drive space by using a more efficient codec like XviD or h264. An MKV would allow you to keep all the audio tracks, subtitle tracks, and even the chapter markings from the original DVD.
Of course it did terrible in theaters. Consider how stupid you'd have to be to pay current ticket prices and what this movie was about.
What's the catch? Nothing really is free...
It's Facebook.
Hmmm, free phone service combined with Facebook privacy protections... what could possibly go wrong?
Third-party suppliers don't have access to original design information generally. To use the car analogy (or not really analogy, since this is about a car), I can get aftermarket parts for the Batmobile, but the creators of those parts either have obtained IP from the original automaker on how to make those parts, or have reverse engineered the parts, or simply make a part that is functionally and appearance-wise similar, but it's not really an exact replica of the part.
The Batmobile replica-makers are part of the third group. They can exist even with the original Batmoile-maker (Warner) being protected. Warner wants to say "if it looks kinda like a car we made then it's the same thing as making our car without our permission."
As an art student, your opinion is irrelevant.
Copyright law is about the promotion of the arts and sciences, is it not?
I think looking at the Batmobile, how the design of the Batmobile influences the creative endeavors of individuals, and considering what is and is not art is at the very heart of the matter.
Vehicles from the 1940s through 1970s, and into the 80s? Sure they are - or can be, at least.
But pretty much every automobile today is just a stylized wind tunnel tested form. They're somewhat more unique than the crap from about a decade ago and have unique bumpers, grills, etc. but for the most part there's little to distinguish them from each other, with rare exception.
This is why the automobile shouldn't be copyrightable based on it's "look and feel". Aerodynamics has nothing to do with which automaker produced the car. Can you imagine what would happen if someone was able to copyright the general form of the car in the late 90's? Automotive design would come to a screeching halt because everyone making a halfway aerodynamic car would be in violation of of a copyright on a very vague three dimensional form.
Warner wants to sue custom car builders who are making cars that look like Batmobiles. So now you can't make cars that are wide, black, and have bat-like fins or other decorations that remind people of Batman, either.
I was just thinking. You mention how not-distinctive the 1960's Batmobile was. If Warner actually gets the court to recognize cars as a copyrightable form of IP, wouldn't this mean Warner has no grounds to sue? They aren't the designer of the automobile, the automaker would own the copyright. In fact, Warner themselves could be made a defendant if their Batmobile is considered a "derivative work" of the original car and no agreements were in place to cover this issue with the maker of the original base car.
Most art students have to learn something about the law at some point because America is such a lawsuit-happy society, and there's always someone out there trying to make a buck for doing nothing. Either by saying your art if copying his idea, or trying to copy your art and sell it as his own.
What is music? The art of sound.
What is literature? Artistic expression in prose.
Do we have trademarks and copyright issues with books and music?
I would argue the automobile is a sculpture, and therefore protect-able from exact replication using blueprints/tooling. However, like any work of art, it is an interpretation by the artist. If I make a Batmobile-looking car I am making what my interpretation of the Batmobile is, it's not the same as making a Batmobile. As long as I do not sell the item claiming it is, in fact, a real Batmobile or use trademarked brands on the car or in it's promotion then I should be okay.
In the USA, millions and millions of people have guns that could easily be used to murder anybody. In Western countries in general, almost everybody has kitchen knifes that could easily be used to murder someone. I have a spade and a pitchfork that could be used for murder. Why would I worry that about "Murder by Internet-Connected Devices"?
You're naming a bunch of ways of physically attacking someone. That requires physical access.
With an Internet-enabled method this isn't required. All the locks on the door and guards in the world wont stop the perpetrator in this scenario unless you stop your Facebook addiction. Hey, you could murder them from outside the legal jurisdiction. Even from a country with internet access and no extradition agreements with the place where the murder took place. Assuming the authorities are able to figure out who the culprit is they've preemptively escaped.
Why would your boss care what some G.E.D.-wielding sandwich shop manager thinks?
Seriously.
Folks lambaste the "Court of Public Opinion" for subverting the justice system, but that seems to be the only one that works sometimes.
It really doesn't matter what you're actually doing in many jurisdictions. They may say they're Drunk Driving laws but the "driving" part is optional. Around here just sitting in the driver's seat of your car drunk can get you ticketed. Even if the car isn't in motion or even running. The only way to avoid the ticket is to have the keys out of the ignition and not reachable. So if you decide you're too drunk to drive and want to just spend the night sleeping it off in your car you have to toss the keys in the back seat so they're out of reach.