Let's try and develop nearly indestructible media.
There will always be people complaining. Even if we somehow manage to carve the data on diamond (which is practically unscratchable), people will say it's not reliable enough.
And what about RAID and distributed servers and having a whole lot of redundancy all over the world to make sure you personal data is never ever lost forever? Then the media-reliability paranoid will probably shut up, but listen those privacy-invasion paranoids shout...
Give it up people, media that is 100% reliable, 100% secure and 100% private will simply never exist. Learn to live with it, or don't use it.
Well, if in 10 years time everyone has DSL (or any other fast data carrier medium), DVDs will be obsolete: why should average Joe go out to physically carry the media to his/her home, when he/she can just push a few buttons and watch whatever he/she likes ?
For some reason, I doubt that every ISP out there will allow unlimited bandwidth usage, knowing that millions of people will legally download super-high quality movies that are several gigabytes in size...
Let's see the current standard... I rent about 5 DVD movies a month... each movie, with sound, exclusive interview, extra stuff, whatever, is an average of over 5 Gigabytes in size (that includes the several movies that have 2 discs). That would be over 25 Gigabytes of download only for my movies. Well... too bad my current ISP limits my download at 20 GB a month. And when the blue laser 50GB DVD becomes popular... we can only guess that movie makers will use that whole 50 GB (they'll probably even manage to have 2 and 3 discs sets for the extra features). I doubt ISPs will let you download hundreds of gigabytes of data every month without charging a little (lot) more, even in 10 years...
I have a number of CD's which the oils from my hands have caused the foil backing to come off.
I'd say that you're not handling your discs properly... you should always hold a CD/DVD by the edges (or the hole in the middle), there's no reason for you to put your dirty fingers on either side of the disc.
Any physical media is bound to failure when not handled properly. Whining that your disc doesn't play after you've been putting your finger directly where the data is written is just as bad as whining because your hard drive fails after you've run a hammer through it.
That is not bound to happen, or it's not a "capitalist incentive"... Billy himself said that hardware will be free pretty soon. However, since Microsoft don't produce (much) hardware, they couldn't care less...
I cant wait untill the media comes out where I can buy all my television box sets (all seasons ) onto one single disc
I wouldn't want that... at least not right now... Considering the rate at which Fox is releasing the season sets of The Simpsons (roughtly one every 8 months), I'd have to wait for years before I could even see the whole 15+ seasons on a single disc, and by then, whatever new media it is will be obsolete, so they'll have to delay it even further till they transfer it to the new media...
I still occasionally use mine and know very few people who don't have one.
I, for one, don't have one anymore, and I got pretty much screwed the day I decided to dual-boot my computer and reinstall Windows98 to regain compatibility with some older games (the Myst trilogy mostly), and I had install the drivers to my ethernet card which were on a floppy disc. I guess I could just go out and download them but.... oh wait... d'oh!
It may not be in 10 years or less but scratchable media needs to go away
Personally, I have well over a hundred CD's and about half that many DVD's (commercial that is, I'm not counting all the stuff I burn myself), and over the past 10 years, I've had more hard drive failures than scratched CDs/DVDs.
So knowing that everything will be on my computer in 10 years kinda scares me, since a hard drive is no more reliable than silver discs.
I, for one, am guilty of using that situation to generate FUD. I made a nice little website where I 'gently' abuse the shell vulnerability, and I send everyone I know on it so they can actually see what security issues IE has (it's a simple exercise where I make them create a folder, then copy a bunch of stuff in it, then clicking on a link on a certain website deletes that folder).
For once, I have a real weapon against IE, and I'm not afraid to use it.
P.S. There's no way in hell I'm posting a link to my test page here, it just couldn't survive a slashdotting... but if you want to do it to, the script is pretty similar to the one posted on Malware, it's pretty easy to edit.
If the scammer decides to sue the scambait, he'd have to do it on US (or Europe) territory, therefore exposing himself to a counter-sue (probably for attempted fraud). Both for the original suit defense and for the counter-suit, the scambait's party could require some financial records of the scammer to be examined. Those examinations could reveal the actual fraud on thousands of victims, thus enabling a major class-action suit from all the victims against the original scammer...
I doubt the scammer will expose himself to that kind of risk...
especially for a high-tech product that is financially out of the reach of a majority of the worlds population
A hacked copy of windows basically costs nothing to run, all you need is the hardware. And Billy Boy said that hardware will be free soon, so everybody in Africa will be running a Windoze machine by 2010!!!
That's fine for older versions of M$'s software. But current versions require activation, and after the second install, you're shutout and need to call them.
Most of my family members and friends have OfficeXP, so until Office2003 appeared lately, the "current" version didn't require activation either (dunno about Office2003 yet, I have a legit copy at work and didn't try a crack). What I mean is, people are pretty much happy with having Word XP for free, and they won't bother upgrade to Word 2003 for at least 5 years (or as long as MS supports XP).
That is pretty weird though, cause I've reinstalled my copy of WinXP Home on a totally different computer, that is no single piece of hardware was the same, and I could activate it on installation without any problems.
I even reinstalled WinXP on the original machine yesterday and it activated just fine, so now I have two totally different computers (most parts aren't even the same brand) which both activate their legit copy of WinXP Home, with the same CD and serial number, without any problem.
"Why it doesn't come with as many of these as Windows"
Word processors:
Windows - MS Word - $$$
Windows - Open Office - free
Windows - Word Perfect - $$$
Try and do the same exercise I did... I asked everybody I knew who were using MS Word at home (office work doesn't count), and then I asked them all how much they paid for the software. Guess what, 100% of them simply copied it from a friend, making it free. Microsoft knows about that, Microsoft doesn't care, because they prefer keeping their monopoly rather than pissing of people by suing them.
"why it doesn't have this"
Viruses: (cheep shot:)
Well linux does have vunerablilities found. The biggest difference is when they are found, fixes are released quickly by the maintainers. Then, shortly after that fixes for specific distros are released by the distro maintainers.
Most of the times, those fixes require you to recompile something, sometimes, it's the kernel... try and get your grandma to recompile her kernel...
It just can't... I've been trying to play Myst on Windows XP, it keeps telling me that the program can't be executed on Windows XP and that I need Windows 95 to run it. I even tried to use the "compatibility mode", but it just doesn't work.
Any program released before Win98 is far from guaranteed to work on WinXP today (although it might)
Companies should invent things and give them away to the public domain for free, like open source programmers do.
Welcome in a world where you actually have to buy the food you eat... Open Source and Proprietary can happily coexist only if both agree to it, and Open Source zealots can be just as bad as proprietary defenders.
Trying to earn a living is not a bad thing. Where do you get your money from?
If whoever invented a relational database file system is anything more than a simple hobby programmer (and hobby programmers don't come up with relational database file systems every day...), he'll have documented and published stuff concerning all that, so it would be pretty easy to demonstrate "prior art" in order to invalidate a MS patent (we all know anyway that 75% of MS patents are pretty easy to invalidate if we put our hearts to it).
No, it means the rest of the tech world will go on innovating, and Microsoft will go on copying, and make money -- not insane shit-tons of money, maybe, but plenty of it -- just like always.
In that case, why don't the 'real' inventors play the Microsoft game, and patent whatever they invent to sue Microsoft and make shitloads of money on their own?
Just how can seeing Janet's bare breast screw your kids? I mean, a breast is part of a normal woman's anatomy. Showing a bare breast is truly so far away from pornography, but Americans somehow don't know the difference.
I do agree that there's way too much violence on american television, but for some reason that seems more acceptable that simply showing a breast. What is indecent is not the showing of the breast, it's what is being done with the breast. Britney Spears' video clips *technically* don't show any bare breasts, but they are far more indecent than Janet's half time show.
What is so wrong with the woman's anatomy that creates a panic into Americans when they see it?
No, broadcasting something doesn't put it in the public domain.
That is right... unless one got prior express written consent from the NFL, nobody was allowed to record Janet's boobs on the halftime show...
<sarcasm>
If none of the broadcasters had kept recordings, nobody would have been able to claim "Oh my god... they showed a boobie on TV!!!"
It's a good thing they kept a record so people could complain, cause showing a boobie on TV is so totally gonna destroy our kids' minds. It's not like they showed all kind of violence instead, with people shooting at each other and blood flowing all around, that would have been apropriate according to american standards...
</sarcasm>
Members of PTC really should get a life sometimes...
however IMO after 18 years or so, the copyright should end and that specific work becomes public domain, then both sides win.
We're talking about a guy who brought a camcorder to record a multi-million dollars movie that came out last week, not something that was done 18 years ago!
Since basically, the makers of the movie "own" the movie, they have a right to do what they want with it. Just because it is an intangible good doesn't mean ownership and rights don't apply.
The job of moviemakers is to entertain you. My job is to program software. Both movies and software are intangible goods. If my boss told me "Write this software for me but I don't want to have to pay you", I'd reply "Go f*** yourself".
Why should it be any different for movies? Basically, you're asking moviemakers "Ok, I paid you to entertain me once, now entertain me again, but this time do it for free, and tomorrow too, and next week too...". Since the moviemakers own the movie, they have the right to decide when and how they'll entertain you. The usual cycle is:
1- For early view on a huge screen, charge about $10 in a movie theater. Anyone that wants to be entertained "right now" will pay $10 to see the movie.
2- A couple of months later, the movie goes on pay-per-view TV. For about $5, you can be entertained at home once.
3- A couple of weeks/months later, the movie is available for rental in about any video-renting store. For about $3, you can rent the movie and be entertained hundreds of times, just as long as you bring it back.
4- About at the same time as 3, the movie is available for sale in a whole lot of stores. For about $20, you can buy a copy of the movie and then be entertained as many times as you want until the media on which the movie is dies (which can me way over 10 years).
5- After a couple of years, when weather cancels a sporting event, the movie gets displayed for free on public TV. You can then put a tape in the VCR and get your own copy to be entertained any time you want.
So you see, it's all about demand and supply, which is the very basis of our capitalist economy. A lot of people want to see the movie early, so they charge more, when people aren't willing to go to the theater anymore, they charge less to let you see the movie in your living room. However, in every scenario except the last, you're asking the moviemakers to entertain you, and you have to pay for the entertainment they're providing you with.
It's not all about laws, it's about common-sense. Would you like people to benefit from your work without having to give you anything back ever? That's the same for movies. And it's the very basis of capitalism: You want something from me? They pay me.
Slashdot Mirror
There will always be people complaining. Even if we somehow manage to carve the data on diamond (which is practically unscratchable), people will say it's not reliable enough.
And what about RAID and distributed servers and having a whole lot of redundancy all over the world to make sure you personal data is never ever lost forever? Then the media-reliability paranoid will probably shut up, but listen those privacy-invasion paranoids shout...
Give it up people, media that is 100% reliable, 100% secure and 100% private will simply never exist. Learn to live with it, or don't use it.
For some reason, I doubt that every ISP out there will allow unlimited bandwidth usage, knowing that millions of people will legally download super-high quality movies that are several gigabytes in size...
Let's see the current standard... I rent about 5 DVD movies a month... each movie, with sound, exclusive interview, extra stuff, whatever, is an average of over 5 Gigabytes in size (that includes the several movies that have 2 discs). That would be over 25 Gigabytes of download only for my movies. Well... too bad my current ISP limits my download at 20 GB a month. And when the blue laser 50GB DVD becomes popular... we can only guess that movie makers will use that whole 50 GB (they'll probably even manage to have 2 and 3 discs sets for the extra features). I doubt ISPs will let you download hundreds of gigabytes of data every month without charging a little (lot) more, even in 10 years...
I'd say that you're not handling your discs properly... you should always hold a CD/DVD by the edges (or the hole in the middle), there's no reason for you to put your dirty fingers on either side of the disc.
Any physical media is bound to failure when not handled properly. Whining that your disc doesn't play after you've been putting your finger directly where the data is written is just as bad as whining because your hard drive fails after you've run a hammer through it.
That is not bound to happen, or it's not a "capitalist incentive"... Billy himself said that hardware will be free pretty soon. However, since Microsoft don't produce (much) hardware, they couldn't care less...
I wouldn't want that... at least not right now... Considering the rate at which Fox is releasing the season sets of The Simpsons (roughtly one every 8 months), I'd have to wait for years before I could even see the whole 15+ seasons on a single disc, and by then, whatever new media it is will be obsolete, so they'll have to delay it even further till they transfer it to the new media...
I, for one, don't have one anymore, and I got pretty much screwed the day I decided to dual-boot my computer and reinstall Windows98 to regain compatibility with some older games (the Myst trilogy mostly), and I had install the drivers to my ethernet card which were on a floppy disc. I guess I could just go out and download them but.... oh wait... d'oh!
Personally, I have well over a hundred CD's and about half that many DVD's (commercial that is, I'm not counting all the stuff I burn myself), and over the past 10 years, I've had more hard drive failures than scratched CDs/DVDs.
So knowing that everything will be on my computer in 10 years kinda scares me, since a hard drive is no more reliable than silver discs.
Ok... I'll try to remember that, but it's kinda hard with me being in Canada and all... a lot of people seem to not be happy when I keep left...
Their problem I guess... I can't make everybody happy
For once, I have a real weapon against IE, and I'm not afraid to use it.
P.S. There's no way in hell I'm posting a link to my test page here, it just couldn't survive a slashdotting... but if you want to do it to, the script is pretty similar to the one posted on Malware, it's pretty easy to edit.
If the scammer decides to sue the scambait, he'd have to do it on US (or Europe) territory, therefore exposing himself to a counter-sue (probably for attempted fraud). Both for the original suit defense and for the counter-suit, the scambait's party could require some financial records of the scammer to be examined. Those examinations could reveal the actual fraud on thousands of victims, thus enabling a major class-action suit from all the victims against the original scammer...
I doubt the scammer will expose himself to that kind of risk...
But then again... IANAL...
A hacked copy of windows basically costs nothing to run, all you need is the hardware. And Billy Boy said that hardware will be free soon, so everybody in Africa will be running a Windoze machine by 2010!!!
Most of my family members and friends have OfficeXP, so until Office2003 appeared lately, the "current" version didn't require activation either (dunno about Office2003 yet, I have a legit copy at work and didn't try a crack). What I mean is, people are pretty much happy with having Word XP for free, and they won't bother upgrade to Word 2003 for at least 5 years (or as long as MS supports XP).
depending on where you live, you gotta add some taxes to that price...
That is pretty weird though, cause I've reinstalled my copy of WinXP Home on a totally different computer, that is no single piece of hardware was the same, and I could activate it on installation without any problems.
I even reinstalled WinXP on the original machine yesterday and it activated just fine, so now I have two totally different computers (most parts aren't even the same brand) which both activate their legit copy of WinXP Home, with the same CD and serial number, without any problem.
Word processors:
Windows - MS Word - $$$
Windows - Open Office - free
Windows - Word Perfect - $$$
Try and do the same exercise I did... I asked everybody I knew who were using MS Word at home (office work doesn't count), and then I asked them all how much they paid for the software. Guess what, 100% of them simply copied it from a friend, making it free. Microsoft knows about that, Microsoft doesn't care, because they prefer keeping their monopoly rather than pissing of people by suing them.
"why it doesn't have this"
Viruses: (cheep shot:)
Well linux does have vunerablilities found. The biggest difference is when they are found, fixes are released quickly by the maintainers. Then, shortly after that fixes for specific distros are released by the distro maintainers.
Most of the times, those fixes require you to recompile something, sometimes, it's the kernel... try and get your grandma to recompile her kernel...
It just can't... I've been trying to play Myst on Windows XP, it keeps telling me that the program can't be executed on Windows XP and that I need Windows 95 to run it. I even tried to use the "compatibility mode", but it just doesn't work.
Any program released before Win98 is far from guaranteed to work on WinXP today (although it might)
Nah... all he has to do is pay up $50 and he'll be out of there in no time. Unless he had a Get Out Of Jail Free card up his sleeve...
Welcome in a world where you actually have to buy the food you eat... Open Source and Proprietary can happily coexist only if both agree to it, and Open Source zealots can be just as bad as proprietary defenders.
Trying to earn a living is not a bad thing. Where do you get your money from?
If whoever invented a relational database file system is anything more than a simple hobby programmer (and hobby programmers don't come up with relational database file systems every day...), he'll have documented and published stuff concerning all that, so it would be pretty easy to demonstrate "prior art" in order to invalidate a MS patent (we all know anyway that 75% of MS patents are pretty easy to invalidate if we put our hearts to it).
In that case, why don't the 'real' inventors play the Microsoft game, and patent whatever they invent to sue Microsoft and make shitloads of money on their own?
By then, the BSOD will be the "Blue screen of doom"...
Just how can seeing Janet's bare breast screw your kids? I mean, a breast is part of a normal woman's anatomy. Showing a bare breast is truly so far away from pornography, but Americans somehow don't know the difference.
I do agree that there's way too much violence on american television, but for some reason that seems more acceptable that simply showing a breast. What is indecent is not the showing of the breast, it's what is being done with the breast. Britney Spears' video clips *technically* don't show any bare breasts, but they are far more indecent than Janet's half time show.
What is so wrong with the woman's anatomy that creates a panic into Americans when they see it?
That is right... unless one got prior express written consent from the NFL, nobody was allowed to record Janet's boobs on the halftime show...
<sarcasm>
If none of the broadcasters had kept recordings, nobody would have been able to claim "Oh my god... they showed a boobie on TV!!!" It's a good thing they kept a record so people could complain, cause showing a boobie on TV is so totally gonna destroy our kids' minds. It's not like they showed all kind of violence instead, with people shooting at each other and blood flowing all around, that would have been apropriate according to american standards...
</sarcasm>
Members of PTC really should get a life sometimes...
We're talking about a guy who brought a camcorder to record a multi-million dollars movie that came out last week, not something that was done 18 years ago!
Since basically, the makers of the movie "own" the movie, they have a right to do what they want with it. Just because it is an intangible good doesn't mean ownership and rights don't apply.
The job of moviemakers is to entertain you. My job is to program software. Both movies and software are intangible goods. If my boss told me "Write this software for me but I don't want to have to pay you", I'd reply "Go f*** yourself".
Why should it be any different for movies? Basically, you're asking moviemakers "Ok, I paid you to entertain me once, now entertain me again, but this time do it for free, and tomorrow too, and next week too...". Since the moviemakers own the movie, they have the right to decide when and how they'll entertain you. The usual cycle is:
1- For early view on a huge screen, charge about $10 in a movie theater. Anyone that wants to be entertained "right now" will pay $10 to see the movie.
2- A couple of months later, the movie goes on pay-per-view TV. For about $5, you can be entertained at home once.
3- A couple of weeks/months later, the movie is available for rental in about any video-renting store. For about $3, you can rent the movie and be entertained hundreds of times, just as long as you bring it back.
4- About at the same time as 3, the movie is available for sale in a whole lot of stores. For about $20, you can buy a copy of the movie and then be entertained as many times as you want until the media on which the movie is dies (which can me way over 10 years).
5- After a couple of years, when weather cancels a sporting event, the movie gets displayed for free on public TV. You can then put a tape in the VCR and get your own copy to be entertained any time you want.
So you see, it's all about demand and supply, which is the very basis of our capitalist economy. A lot of people want to see the movie early, so they charge more, when people aren't willing to go to the theater anymore, they charge less to let you see the movie in your living room. However, in every scenario except the last, you're asking the moviemakers to entertain you, and you have to pay for the entertainment they're providing you with.
It's not all about laws, it's about common-sense. Would you like people to benefit from your work without having to give you anything back ever? That's the same for movies. And it's the very basis of capitalism: You want something from me? They pay me.