WinZip is only ever used for legal things, so there's no reason to ban it yet (though we should jail users who use it for more than 20 days without paying). WinRar, on the other hand, is used exclusively for piracy, and its authors should be summarily executed. Same for 7zip, just in case. GZip and BZip2 users are mostly communists, but in today's tolerant society, we can only deport them.
You're one of at least two people asking this as though it would be the end of the world or something. If it turns out that the DNA is equivalent to some species we have now, then we would learn that that skeleton is the same species as some species we have now. Duh. It's not a forgone conclusion that the skeleton is a different species, as one of the questions is, could whatever it is have mated with humans, and thus be the same species? This would teach us a great deal about the events that led to humanity, why our species (or perhaps only race) won out over others, etc. If the results were sufficiently surprising, it would lead to many other attempts to sequence fossilized genomes, and even more information would be gained.
In response to other posters, no the results will not be buried. If the project produces results, it will be in the media. You may have forgotten to check up on it; you may not happen to see the headline - that would be your own fault, so don't let it feed your conspiracy theory about how scientists know they're wrong but won't admit it. If it overturns some widely-held theory, then that theory will be modifed or replaced. Such is science, in contrast to religions like intelligent design.
I doubt it will be perceptible, but I think this will have if anything a positive effect on the market. Who buys DVD-Audio? My guess is mostly audiophiles, and mostly people with tons of their own CDs ripped to their PC. Once you rip stuff to your PC, you will realize how much a format that doesn't let you do that sucks. So to a large portion of the market, DVD-Audio discs just got a bunch more useful.
I'm not saying the effect will be huge, or even noticeable. For one, as mentioned, the industry can revoke the player's keys, which would prevent ripping new releases. (As well as screw anybody who owns WinDVD. Class action lawsuit anyone?) And as you say, they have only to take it off the market slowly, thus killing it while being able to say that piracy killed it (even if said piracy never occurs). But if there ever were a non-monopolized, non-overpowerful market, you would see a noticeable rise in sales.
"There would be asolutely no point in small businesses or individuals ever inventing anything if [they] couldn't patent it."? Are you out of your mind!? Thomas Edison, one of the biggest individual patent-holders, said it himself: "Necessity is the mother of invention." To scratch an itch. I don't think you could point to one innovation in the field of software that would not have been invented without patents. (Actually, in the field of software, most discoveries were made before it even occurred to anybody to try to patent them.)
In the pharmaceutical industry, genetics industry, and even perhaps the semiconductor industry, I'll agree that many new advances require a great deal of capital to implement effectively. However, I would see that only as an argument for the patentability of those advances that are difficult to implement and only in those industries. It certainly is not an argument for the patentability of simple processes, and furthermore, it does not apply to the software industry. You can no longer revolutionize the medical industry with some crap you found in a dumpster, you can no longer start a hardware company soldering by hand. But there are extremly few aspects of software that can't be advanced by one or a few people and a few thousand dollars of equipment they already own. It's pretty obvious that software companies will bring their new ideas to market simply for the 6-month lead they will have, whether or not they can patent those ideas. No further incentive is needed, and considering the numerous harmful effects of patents, they aren't worth it in this industry.
Random speculation - if the density of the bubbles was not regular over the hull of the ship, the hull would be subjected to forces it would not normally encounter. The Titanic broke in half when upended - it wasn't designed to withstand that kind of torque. Possibly related, torpedoes are more effective when the detonate near and under their target, because the bubble they create somehow does enough damage to offset the less-direct shockwave.
And of course the loser's liability can be limited to the lesser of the amounts the two sides paid - so if you sue a company with a cheap lawyer because that's all you can afford, you're not liable for millions when the company sandblasts your saltine with expensive lawyers. I bet this is the unfairness the OP refers to, and it's easily solved.
It seems to me that non-lawyers such as myself, who certainly don't have as much in-depth knowledge of the situation as lawyers, also don't have an implicit conflict of interest, an incentive to sustain the status quo. And we non-lawyers are affected just as much, if not more, by the constant threat of frivolous lawsuits that our current system, IMHO, fosters. Our opinions should not be discounted offhand, any more than we programmers should scoff at users demanding better interfaces because they don't understand the technology as well.
Seems to me if someone can't distinguish between a video game and real life, it would be much more productive for the parents to educate him about the difference than to stop him from playing the game. It's the whole "give a man a fish" thing - you can only shield a kid for so long, and even then only with limited effectiveness, and after this period, you must throw him out on his own. It's much better to educate him. (Sorry, can't resist this...) I'm not saying he'll be able to dodge bullets. I'm saying he won't have to.
This is almost completly off-topic (and old news), but on the subject of TV programs programming kids... A year or two ago a show called Cyberchase premiered on PBS. It teaches arithmetic and logical thinking skills. But the plot? A bunch of kids run around in cyberspace, saving the godlike Motherboard from her arch-nemesis, the nefarious Hacker, one of whose early schemes was to destroy Motherboard by stealing her encryption chips. (Which the kids eventually restored thanks to their heroic pattern recognition skills, or something.) Now you can't tell me that wasn't somehow bought by the DRM industry.
Now for the masterful tie-in...
I sure hope that kids are more resistant to the various negative social programming thrown at them then they get credit for. But if they aren't, then at least maybe we could have some heroes with cajohnes. I think there are already enough barriers against kids driving around at 110 mph running over pedestrians and gunning down cops. At least Tommy Vercetti and Carl Johnson aren't a bunch of consumerist wimps.
Well, it seems to me that "feature" is in the eye of the beholder - I don't really care whether Google wants something, if I don't think it's a "good property or behavior" then I don't consider it a feature. Your definition specifically says (Google's) intent is immaterial. Now, I'll agree that it's not a bug, because it's as the designers intended. (Well, as the modifiers intended; obviously Google didn't design VLC.) But you'll note I never called it a bug; I said it was broken. There's no such thing as an intentional bug, but something can be intentionally broken, again in my view, not Google's, as is the case here.
America is the worlds largest Superpower. We'll do what we want. You can keep your damn metric system. We'll keep doing just fine running things our way.
I was proud to be an American, until reading that from a compatriot...
The Imperial system blows chuncks.
Your attitute, not "our freedom," is why everyone hates us.
The Mars Climate Orbiter mixup was not between miles and kilometers but between pound-seconds and Newton-seconds, which are units of impulse, which you probably have never even heard of, you retard.
Actually, "feature" usually implies an added positive capability, whereas "broken" refers to software that is unable to do something that it should. "Intentionally broken" is not a contradiction, and I think it applies here. One can intentionally break software's ability to play video from certain domains, just as you can intentionally break a DVD player's ability to respond to certain user input or a browser's ability to not run viruses. In all cases, the solution is more appropriately called a "fix" than a "hack."
You'll have to forgive my naive optimism, but there really ought to be a law (or rather, the lack of one). Penalties ought to correspond roughly to harm. In this case, the school let students borrow ~$1000 pieces of hardware. If a student drops his computer in a toilet, he should at worst be liable for $1000. If he scratches his name on the screen, at most $1000. If he fiddles the wrong bits on the hard drive, at the very most, $1000. Certainly jail time isn't called for, especially since it isn't in the other completely equivalent cases. I'm not saying nothing he does on the computer should be worthy of jail time (theft, fraud, kiddy porn, hacking CIA, launching nukes at Russia, etc.), but just installing software is simply causing inconvenience, and possibly breaking a contract, both of which ought to be civil offenses with liabilities limited to the cost of a new computer.
I'll spare you the poem people usually post in response to "this injustice doesn't affect me, so I don't mind." It's ironic that you call "the people" shallow so soon after exposing your own lack of depth. Not that they aren't shallow, sadly.
As for utilizing the analog hole, yes, that remains possible, but there are serious drawbacks - remember that we're talking about HDTV here - I'm pretty sure all the ways that that actually gets transmitted over the wire transmits the flag.
Now, obviously from a technological standpoint, this means nothing - there will be firmware hacks, instructions on how to assemble a flag stripper from $0.47's worth of parts from Radio Shack, and of course eBay. It will end up being slightly easier than disabling Macrovision, slightly harder than making your DVD-player region free. But the important thing is, it will be illegal!
Call me old-fashioned, but I'm fucking tired of everything I do being made technically illegal, even if it has no tangible effect. I'm not ripping anybody off, I'm not sharing with millions of my closest friends, I'm just trying to record telvision shows when I'm not home, and sometimes watch my DVDs or store my CDs on my computer. I'm not harming anybody, I'm not not paying someone when I should, and so it should. not. be. illegal.
Actually, I've always been bothered by an even bigger paradox - the origin of ideas. Back to the Future showcases it quite well - Marty plays "Go Johnny Go," a song from the mysterious future, and presumably it's then copied by musicians of the time. So who wrote it?
It's obviously way to late for this to be implemented, but it would be interesting if CDs (or perhaps DVDs and their replacements) had a thin ring of magnetic tape, like on credit cards. The idea would be just to store a few hundred bytes of transient data - the position on the cd, for example. Players could just have one fixed head that reads the ring when loading the disc and updates it continuously. Besides position, you could also store things like audio and video settings (bass, contrast), maybe play mode (random, in order), and anything else you can think of.
The difference between copyrighted works, copyrighted works that you don't have license to copy, and copy-protected works is absolutely huge, and it's obvious grandparent was refering only to the latter. BTW, you forgot DVDs - if grandparent has bought any of those, he's probably failed in his noble quest.
We live in a capitalistic society, and that system can already solve your problem - if you want censorship for your kids, pay for filtering software, or choose an ISP that will filter you on request. The way this law forces your values on others is by making the taxpayers and all of the ISP's customers pay for filtering infrastructure, a cost which should instead be bourne only by people who want the filtering.
I don't think the PC will die, but it really has nothing to do with performance or ease-of use. It has to do with the fact that a PC is a general purpose computing machine, while consoles are only about games. Face it, you can't live without a PC. But you can live, and even play games, without a console. When people can convienently surf the web, check email, play, rip, burn, buy, and share music, chat, play solitare, program, word process, do finances and taxes, make presentations, edit videos, do everything else that is done today, and download more software to do stuff that hasn't been created yet, all on their console, then and only then will consoles kill PCs. But of course at that point they will have become them.
What I think is likely is that consoles will try to do all of these things. But since they will be implemented by companies that want tight control, it will be very limited. Joe Sixpack may use a console to rent tons of DRM music or videos, pay for time in online game playing, and related things, while having a computer for real work. Us nerds will also use the PC for entertainment, ripping our music and damn the torpedoes, as gaming systems, and to program, regarding consoles as mere toys. And I think this is preferable to the worse but harder to envision future, where general purpose computing dies and computers morph into consoles, into toys.
This is certainly true, however, I think that this means that any one, or a group, of the tens or hundreds of developers who have significant portions of their work distributed under the GPL as part of the Linux kernel could take action against a copyright or GPL infringer or violator.
Even regular batteries alkaline batteries warn against disposing in fire. And I'd imagine that a pacemaker could explode just by virtue of having material that could vaporize under high temperatures sealed in an airtight metal container.
If you actually read the post where he said this, it's pretty clear that he's talking about refusing to run unsigned binaries for security reasons, which of course can be assisted by TCPA hardware. In the same post he pointed out that the GPL requires the distribution of everything necessary to make a functional binary - this would include the keys.
This essentially means no remote attestation can be implemented in GPL code, because if you can argue that the binary isn't functional unless remote attestation works (i.e, a modified music player isn't functional unless it can play all the music the unmodified one can, even Disney music that requires remote attestation), then it is being distributed in violation of the GPL.
Also, isn't one of the main goals of open source to free the user? Another driving factor is scratching an itch - and when was the last time you heard someone say, "Man, if only I wasn't able to copy this..."
No, we won't be right back where we started - we may be doing the same thing we are now (recording TV), but we will be doing it illegally. For some people this is an important consideration.
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WinZip is only ever used for legal things, so there's no reason to ban it yet (though we should jail users who use it for more than 20 days without paying). WinRar, on the other hand, is used exclusively for piracy, and its authors should be summarily executed. Same for 7zip, just in case. GZip and BZip2 users are mostly communists, but in today's tolerant society, we can only deport them.
In response to other posters, no the results will not be buried. If the project produces results, it will be in the media. You may have forgotten to check up on it; you may not happen to see the headline - that would be your own fault, so don't let it feed your conspiracy theory about how scientists know they're wrong but won't admit it. If it overturns some widely-held theory, then that theory will be modifed or replaced. Such is science, in contrast to religions like intelligent design.
I'm not saying the effect will be huge, or even noticeable. For one, as mentioned, the industry can revoke the player's keys, which would prevent ripping new releases. (As well as screw anybody who owns WinDVD. Class action lawsuit anyone?) And as you say, they have only to take it off the market slowly, thus killing it while being able to say that piracy killed it (even if said piracy never occurs). But if there ever were a non-monopolized, non-overpowerful market, you would see a noticeable rise in sales.
"There would be asolutely no point in small businesses or individuals ever inventing anything if [they] couldn't patent it."? Are you out of your mind!? Thomas Edison, one of the biggest individual patent-holders, said it himself: "Necessity is the mother of invention." To scratch an itch. I don't think you could point to one innovation in the field of software that would not have been invented without patents. (Actually, in the field of software, most discoveries were made before it even occurred to anybody to try to patent them.)
In the pharmaceutical industry, genetics industry, and even perhaps the semiconductor industry, I'll agree that many new advances require a great deal of capital to implement effectively. However, I would see that only as an argument for the patentability of those advances that are difficult to implement and only in those industries. It certainly is not an argument for the patentability of simple processes, and furthermore, it does not apply to the software industry. You can no longer revolutionize the medical industry with some crap you found in a dumpster, you can no longer start a hardware company soldering by hand. But there are extremly few aspects of software that can't be advanced by one or a few people and a few thousand dollars of equipment they already own. It's pretty obvious that software companies will bring their new ideas to market simply for the 6-month lead they will have, whether or not they can patent those ideas. No further incentive is needed, and considering the numerous harmful effects of patents, they aren't worth it in this industry.
Random speculation - if the density of the bubbles was not regular over the hull of the ship, the hull would be subjected to forces it would not normally encounter. The Titanic broke in half when upended - it wasn't designed to withstand that kind of torque. Possibly related, torpedoes are more effective when the detonate near and under their target, because the bubble they create somehow does enough damage to offset the less-direct shockwave.
It seems to me that non-lawyers such as myself, who certainly don't have as much in-depth knowledge of the situation as lawyers, also don't have an implicit conflict of interest, an incentive to sustain the status quo. And we non-lawyers are affected just as much, if not more, by the constant threat of frivolous lawsuits that our current system, IMHO, fosters. Our opinions should not be discounted offhand, any more than we programmers should scoff at users demanding better interfaces because they don't understand the technology as well.
Seems to me if someone can't distinguish between a video game and real life, it would be much more productive for the parents to educate him about the difference than to stop him from playing the game. It's the whole "give a man a fish" thing - you can only shield a kid for so long, and even then only with limited effectiveness, and after this period, you must throw him out on his own. It's much better to educate him. (Sorry, can't resist this...) I'm not saying he'll be able to dodge bullets. I'm saying he won't have to.
Now for the masterful tie-in...
I sure hope that kids are more resistant to the various negative social programming thrown at them then they get credit for. But if they aren't, then at least maybe we could have some heroes with cajohnes. I think there are already enough barriers against kids driving around at 110 mph running over pedestrians and gunning down cops. At least Tommy Vercetti and Carl Johnson aren't a bunch of consumerist wimps.
Wait, you mean copyright used to expire?!1
At the risk of being "that guy," I would have prefered oggenc -q5.
Well, it seems to me that "feature" is in the eye of the beholder - I don't really care whether Google wants something, if I don't think it's a "good property or behavior" then I don't consider it a feature. Your definition specifically says (Google's) intent is immaterial. Now, I'll agree that it's not a bug, because it's as the designers intended. (Well, as the modifiers intended; obviously Google didn't design VLC.) But you'll note I never called it a bug; I said it was broken. There's no such thing as an intentional bug, but something can be intentionally broken, again in my view, not Google's, as is the case here.
I was proud to be an American, until reading that from a compatriot...
Wow, I sound like RMS.
You'll have to forgive my naive optimism, but there really ought to be a law (or rather, the lack of one). Penalties ought to correspond roughly to harm. In this case, the school let students borrow ~$1000 pieces of hardware. If a student drops his computer in a toilet, he should at worst be liable for $1000. If he scratches his name on the screen, at most $1000. If he fiddles the wrong bits on the hard drive, at the very most, $1000. Certainly jail time isn't called for, especially since it isn't in the other completely equivalent cases. I'm not saying nothing he does on the computer should be worthy of jail time (theft, fraud, kiddy porn, hacking CIA, launching nukes at Russia, etc.), but just installing software is simply causing inconvenience, and possibly breaking a contract, both of which ought to be civil offenses with liabilities limited to the cost of a new computer.
As for utilizing the analog hole, yes, that remains possible, but there are serious drawbacks - remember that we're talking about HDTV here - I'm pretty sure all the ways that that actually gets transmitted over the wire transmits the flag.
Now, obviously from a technological standpoint, this means nothing - there will be firmware hacks, instructions on how to assemble a flag stripper from $0.47's worth of parts from Radio Shack, and of course eBay. It will end up being slightly easier than disabling Macrovision, slightly harder than making your DVD-player region free. But the important thing is, it will be illegal!
Call me old-fashioned, but I'm fucking tired of everything I do being made technically illegal, even if it has no tangible effect. I'm not ripping anybody off, I'm not sharing with millions of my closest friends, I'm just trying to record telvision shows when I'm not home, and sometimes watch my DVDs or store my CDs on my computer. I'm not harming anybody, I'm not not paying someone when I should, and so it should. not. be. illegal.
Actually, I've always been bothered by an even bigger paradox - the origin of ideas. Back to the Future showcases it quite well - Marty plays "Go Johnny Go," a song from the mysterious future, and presumably it's then copied by musicians of the time. So who wrote it?
It's obviously way to late for this to be implemented, but it would be interesting if CDs (or perhaps DVDs and their replacements) had a thin ring of magnetic tape, like on credit cards. The idea would be just to store a few hundred bytes of transient data - the position on the cd, for example. Players could just have one fixed head that reads the ring when loading the disc and updates it continuously. Besides position, you could also store things like audio and video settings (bass, contrast), maybe play mode (random, in order), and anything else you can think of.
The difference between copyrighted works, copyrighted works that you don't have license to copy, and copy-protected works is absolutely huge, and it's obvious grandparent was refering only to the latter. BTW, you forgot DVDs - if grandparent has bought any of those, he's probably failed in his noble quest.
We live in a capitalistic society, and that system can already solve your problem - if you want censorship for your kids, pay for filtering software, or choose an ISP that will filter you on request. The way this law forces your values on others is by making the taxpayers and all of the ISP's customers pay for filtering infrastructure, a cost which should instead be bourne only by people who want the filtering.
What I think is likely is that consoles will try to do all of these things. But since they will be implemented by companies that want tight control, it will be very limited. Joe Sixpack may use a console to rent tons of DRM music or videos, pay for time in online game playing, and related things, while having a computer for real work. Us nerds will also use the PC for entertainment, ripping our music and damn the torpedoes, as gaming systems, and to program, regarding consoles as mere toys. And I think this is preferable to the worse but harder to envision future, where general purpose computing dies and computers morph into consoles, into toys.
This is certainly true, however, I think that this means that any one, or a group, of the tens or hundreds of developers who have significant portions of their work distributed under the GPL as part of the Linux kernel could take action against a copyright or GPL infringer or violator.
Even regular batteries alkaline batteries warn against disposing in fire. And I'd imagine that a pacemaker could explode just by virtue of having material that could vaporize under high temperatures sealed in an airtight metal container.
This essentially means no remote attestation can be implemented in GPL code, because if you can argue that the binary isn't functional unless remote attestation works (i.e, a modified music player isn't functional unless it can play all the music the unmodified one can, even Disney music that requires remote attestation), then it is being distributed in violation of the GPL.
Also, isn't one of the main goals of open source to free the user? Another driving factor is scratching an itch - and when was the last time you heard someone say, "Man, if only I wasn't able to copy this..."
No, we won't be right back where we started - we may be doing the same thing we are now (recording TV), but we will be doing it illegally. For some people this is an important consideration.