http://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm#chap11
"Professor," said Captain Nemo, "my electricity is not everybody's. You know what sea-water is composed of. In a thousand grammes are found 96 1/2 per cent. of water, and about 2 2/3 per cent. of chloride of sodium; then, in a smaller quantity, chlorides of magnesium and of potassium, bromide of magnesium, sulphate of magnesia, sulphate and carbonate of lime. You see, then, that chloride of sodium forms a large part of it. So it is this sodium that I extract from the sea-water, and of which I compose my ingredients. I owe all to the ocean; it produces electricity, and electricity gives heat, light, motion, and, in a word, life to the Nautilus."
It's actually going to be a time machine, not a spaceship.
Musk: "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits.88 C... you're gonna see some serious shit."
Right now, Verizon and that was conversation I had with them about 2 years ago when I last renewed my contract. I had to go through several of their phones before I found one that I was comfortable with (app wise). I ended up with an LG G7 that I could at least disable all the unwanted apps. But I made it clear that I was not very happy about that.
I would have moved, but other pressures kept me with Verizon at that time.
They will be bugging me to renew again soon and I will be looking at alternatives if they can't provide me with a "clean" phone.
I've made it clear to my phone vendor that "selling" me a phone where I can't remove the spy-ware is a dealbreaker. If they won't sell me the phone I want without the built-in spy-ware, I will take my business elsewhere.
Far future. Civilization has collapsed. A small band of likable people are fending off bad people. One of the good people stumbles upon Sir Terry's home and discovers a magic sword allowing him to fend off the bad people, get the girl, live happily ever after.
OK. Let's assume we have this set up:
1. Everyone creates a key pair.
2. You upload your public key to the eBook vendor which encrypts your eBook so that only your public key can unlock it.
3. The eBook reader has your private key, since it, obviously, needs to unlock the eBook so that you can read it.
Now, let's also say that the locking mechanism is well documented.
You now have documentation showing you how the lock works. You have the key.
But the eBook reader still has to know the key in order to display the content.
So to create a reader, you have to know the secret. The reader has to know the secret to display the content.
You're mistaken if you think this is about securing the algorithm. Inter-operable DRM is like having the diagram to your locks, plus knowing where you hide the key.
The only problem is that standardized DRM is a pipe dream.
DRM relies on a secret in order to work. If the DRM is standardized, that secret it out and the DRM is broken.
This, of course, presumes that the purpose of DRM is to "protect" content. We all know that the only purpose of DRM is to lock consumers into a product and restrict consumer choice. So standardizing DRM is something that companies want to avoid at all costs.
I use openoffice all of the time - and the answer to your question is "open office is only an acceptable replacement for basic users of office applications" - have you tried opening a complex spreadsheet in openoffice? it'll take ages. On my 3 year old windows laptop similar spreadsheets open in 20% of the time in Excel.
Yup. Just did it. Opened quicker than Excel for me.
Openoffice is very good - but for a small % of users it is a very poor replacement, 75$ is also a bargain for MS Office.
I would agree that for a small percentage of users OO is probably a poor replacement.
But I would argue that those people are using the wrong tool for the job and that the only reason they are using MS Office is because it's the only tool they know about (or the only one that their IT dept will let them have).
And we are back again to letting the wrong people make technical decisions.
The main reason is the lack of knowledge. Period. (At least for the companies that I've worked for.)
The people who makes these decisions are frequently ex-techies who don't realize that they have no useful knowledge anymore, simply because they've been living in management-land for so long. So they make decision based on simple rules. Back in the '80's, the rule was "no one got fired for going with IBM." Now, it's "no one got fired for going Microsoft."
Time and time again, they choose to pay for overpriced Microsoft products instead of going with an open source alternative. For example: when we "upgraded" to Windows XP, we also "upgraded" to Office XP. No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.
The only time non-Microsoft products enter the enterprise is when these people aren't part of the decision process. For example: our new PBX system runs Asterix and the "print servers" that we put in the remote locations are all appliances that run Red Hat.
Surely that's what anyone would do? No point paying money for nothing.
My point is that Disney made good use of the public domain - as every artist does. But then Disney-the-Company paid good money to make sure that no one could make use of their works by keeping them (and everything else) out of the public domain.
Anyway, Peter Pan isn't in public domain, so your point is moot.
It is in the United States and has been for quite some time.
Most of the best films made are not taken from things gone into public domain, they're either original plots or from books which are not public domain.
Um... You don't seem to get it. Movies don't come only from novels.
Disney wasn't the first to create cartoons. He wasn't the first to add sound to motion pictures. He wasn't the first to create animated animals. He tapped into the public domain for ideas as well as stories.
Also there are as many things going into public domain as there ever have been.
Darn few things have gone into the public domain for the last 50 years because our purchased congress-critters keep extending the length of copyright retroactively.
Unless you want to define "ever have been" as "the last 70 years". Then yes. But before that, works went into the public domain 28 years after they were created - and that's only if the copyright holder applied to extend the copyright.
Your post is a logical fallacy. You decry Hollywood having no new ideas, and then saying that it's because they're not allowed to use public domain old ideas.
Artists have always relied on works of the past to build on. That's where "new" ideas come from. Using the Disney example again, Walt didn't really do anything new. Everything he did had already been done - seperately. He put the old ideas together in a different way and came up with something "new".
Then why, when they were pulling stuff out of the public domain like mad, did Disney make plenty of good movies (ex. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, etc.) and now they are just rehashing their old movies?
There's still buckets of stuff in the public domain.
Most of which has been already used in something "new" that is still under copyright, making it a risk to use.
Last estimate showed that 80% of the currently available works are still under copyright but have no known owners.
I think Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky would make a killer film
Agreed. But who owns the copyright? Heinlein's been dead for nearly 20 years.
Also, Hollywood doesn't want to pay for writing. Disney, for example, timed their version of Peter Pan so that it wouldn't come out until the story passed into the public domain.
Because I've seen it all before, now they're re-doing it all and nothing surprises me.
The reason for that is that they have choked off the supply of works going in to the public domain. Historically, Hollywood has dipped into the public domain for ideas. Nothing new into the public domain = nothing new in Hollywood.
Little wonder that Anime and Manga are getting more popular.
Welcome to the wonderful world of salary employment.
If you are salary, you aren't paid by the hour. You are paid to perform a job. To protect themselves, companies have always defined jobs rather "fuzzily." In my company, every job description has something like "and misc. tasks as assigned." (Which means that your boss can change your job description anytime he wants - for a short term.)
Historically, management knew what this meant: if they need you to do something outside your job description once in a while, this was a way to make you do that without a big fight. But too many managers today seem to think this means that you are at their beck and call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
In my case, I made my management clearloy say what they expected from me (i.e. on call after hours, but not to put my life on hold for it). So...
1. My cell phone number is not given to anyone at work. If the company wants my cell phone number, they have to provide a cell phone (and pay the monthly charges). My company is too cheap to do that. 2. My pager stays at home after hours and on the weekend. If I am not at home, I am not available (i.e. I have to put my life on hold to answer it) and I will return the call when I get home. 3. I keep my expectations realitic. I know that I will need to provide off-hours support once in a while. If I get more than 3 after hour calls in a week, I will hit my management up for some sort of one-shot compensation (like an extra day off). If I get calls consistently over a month, I will renegotiate my compensation with my management.
If management doesn't want to compensate, then it's time to seriously think about leaving Dilbert's Company.
Re:Unplayable here (was: Re:dont wanna stream?)
on
IT Crowd On-line
·
· Score: 1
Where did you get the codec? I have Mandriva 2006 and both xine and mplayer reports that it uses an unknown codec.
Apple, for example, has a system which allows considerable, but not complete, flexibility in the way you use the music you buy.
Excuse me. Are you talking about iTunes?
If so, you are mistaken. You do not buy music at iTunes. You rent it. Apple can change (and has changed) the rules by which you can enjoy "your" music at any time for any reason without any compensation to you whatsoever.
Apple has a system. But as a system to "sell" music, it fails. The only reason it's popular right now is because of a phrase P.T. Barnum used to use: There's a sucker born every minute.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be from all the Leftest Tears since Trump took office.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm#chap11 "Professor," said Captain Nemo, "my electricity is not everybody's. You know what sea-water is composed of. In a thousand grammes are found 96 1/2 per cent. of water, and about 2 2/3 per cent. of chloride of sodium; then, in a smaller quantity, chlorides of magnesium and of potassium, bromide of magnesium, sulphate of magnesia, sulphate and carbonate of lime. You see, then, that chloride of sodium forms a large part of it. So it is this sodium that I extract from the sea-water, and of which I compose my ingredients. I owe all to the ocean; it produces electricity, and electricity gives heat, light, motion, and, in a word, life to the Nautilus."
Sorry. Wrong "C". I should have used "c" - for the speed of light. Not Celsius.
It's actually going to be a time machine, not a spaceship. Musk: "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits .88 C... you're gonna see some serious shit."
Right now, Verizon and that was conversation I had with them about 2 years ago when I last renewed my contract. I had to go through several of their phones before I found one that I was comfortable with (app wise). I ended up with an LG G7 that I could at least disable all the unwanted apps. But I made it clear that I was not very happy about that. I would have moved, but other pressures kept me with Verizon at that time. They will be bugging me to renew again soon and I will be looking at alternatives if they can't provide me with a "clean" phone.
Lower wealth people tend to smoke more (which is part of why they have lower wealth - tobacco products aren't cheap).
I've made it clear to my phone vendor that "selling" me a phone where I can't remove the spy-ware is a dealbreaker. If they won't sell me the phone I want without the built-in spy-ware, I will take my business elsewhere.
Far future. Civilization has collapsed. A small band of likable people are fending off bad people.
One of the good people stumbles upon Sir Terry's home and discovers a magic sword allowing him to fend off the bad people, get the girl, live happily ever after.
It's a lie! The guy with the beard has to be running Linux.
I wonder how much money I could make building MythTV systems for people after they implement this....
OK. Let's assume we have this set up:
1. Everyone creates a key pair.
2. You upload your public key to the eBook vendor which encrypts your eBook so that only your public key can unlock it.
3. The eBook reader has your private key, since it, obviously, needs to unlock the eBook so that you can read it.
Now, let's also say that the locking mechanism is well documented.
You now have documentation showing you how the lock works. You have the key.
I fail to see how this can "secure" the content.
But the eBook reader still has to know the key in order to display the content.
So to create a reader, you have to know the secret. The reader has to know the secret to display the content.
You're mistaken if you think this is about securing the algorithm. Inter-operable DRM is like having the diagram to your locks, plus knowing where you hide the key.
The only problem is that standardized DRM is a pipe dream.
DRM relies on a secret in order to work. If the DRM is standardized, that secret it out and the DRM is broken.
This, of course, presumes that the purpose of DRM is to "protect" content. We all know that the only purpose of DRM is to lock consumers into a product and restrict consumer choice. So standardizing DRM is something that companies want to avoid at all costs.
Same here. I got my AeroPress a while back and I've had great success with it.
The only coffees that don't come out well are heavily flavored ones - but I'm willing to bet that they use lower quality coffee for those.
I use openoffice all of the time - and the answer to your question is "open office is only an acceptable replacement for basic users of office applications" - have you tried opening a complex spreadsheet in openoffice? it'll take ages. On my 3 year old windows laptop similar spreadsheets open in 20% of the time in Excel.
Yup. Just did it. Opened quicker than Excel for me.
Openoffice is very good - but for a small % of users it is a very poor replacement, 75$ is also a bargain for MS Office.
I would agree that for a small percentage of users OO is probably a poor replacement.
But I would argue that those people are using the wrong tool for the job and that the only reason they are using MS Office is because it's the only tool they know about (or the only one that their IT dept will let them have).
And we are back again to letting the wrong people make technical decisions.
The main reason is the lack of knowledge. Period. (At least for the companies that I've worked for.)
The people who makes these decisions are frequently ex-techies who don't realize that they have no useful knowledge anymore, simply because they've been living in management-land for so long. So they make decision based on simple rules. Back in the '80's, the rule was "no one got fired for going with IBM." Now, it's "no one got fired for going Microsoft."
Time and time again, they choose to pay for overpriced Microsoft products instead of going with an open source alternative. For example: when we "upgraded" to Windows XP, we also "upgraded" to Office XP. No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.
The only time non-Microsoft products enter the enterprise is when these people aren't part of the decision process. For example: our new PBX system runs Asterix and the "print servers" that we put in the remote locations are all appliances that run Red Hat.
Surely that's what anyone would do? No point paying money for nothing.
My point is that Disney made good use of the public domain - as every artist does. But then Disney-the-Company paid good money to make sure that no one could make use of their works by keeping them (and everything else) out of the public domain.
Anyway, Peter Pan isn't in public domain, so your point is moot.
It is in the United States and has been for quite some time.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan#Copyright_s tatus
Most of the best films made are not taken from things gone into public domain, they're either original plots or from books which are not public domain.
Um... You don't seem to get it. Movies don't come only from novels.
Disney wasn't the first to create cartoons. He wasn't the first to add sound to motion pictures. He wasn't the first to create animated animals. He tapped into the public domain for ideas as well as stories.
Also there are as many things going into public domain as there ever have been.
Darn few things have gone into the public domain for the last 50 years because our purchased congress-critters keep extending the length of copyright retroactively.
Unless you want to define "ever have been" as "the last 70 years". Then yes. But before that, works went into the public domain 28 years after they were created - and that's only if the copyright holder applied to extend the copyright.
Your post is a logical fallacy. You decry Hollywood having no new ideas, and then saying that it's because they're not allowed to use public domain old ideas.
Artists have always relied on works of the past to build on. That's where "new" ideas come from. Using the Disney example again, Walt didn't really do anything new. Everything he did had already been done - seperately. He put the old ideas together in a different way and came up with something "new".
I salute your mastery of karma-whoring.
Uh.. ya...
Then why, when they were pulling stuff out of the public domain like mad, did Disney make plenty of good movies (ex. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, etc.) and now they are just rehashing their old movies?
Only in the U.K. It's in the public domain here in the U.S.
Most of which has been already used in something "new" that is still under copyright, making it a risk to use.
Last estimate showed that 80% of the currently available works are still under copyright but have no known owners.
I think Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky would make a killer film
Agreed. But who owns the copyright? Heinlein's been dead for nearly 20 years.
Also, Hollywood doesn't want to pay for writing. Disney, for example, timed their version of Peter Pan so that it wouldn't come out until the story passed into the public domain.
The reason for that is that they have choked off the supply of works going in to the public domain. Historically, Hollywood has dipped into the public domain for ideas. Nothing new into the public domain = nothing new in Hollywood.
Little wonder that Anime and Manga are getting more popular.
Welcome to the wonderful world of salary employment.
If you are salary, you aren't paid by the hour. You are paid to perform a job. To protect themselves, companies have always defined jobs rather "fuzzily." In my company, every job description has something like "and misc. tasks as assigned." (Which means that your boss can change your job description anytime he wants - for a short term.)
Historically, management knew what this meant: if they need you to do something outside your job description once in a while, this was a way to make you do that without a big fight. But too many managers today seem to think this means that you are at their beck and call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
In my case, I made my management clearloy say what they expected from me (i.e. on call after hours, but not to put my life on hold for it). So...
1. My cell phone number is not given to anyone at work. If the company wants my cell phone number, they have to provide a cell phone (and pay the monthly charges). My company is too cheap to do that.
2. My pager stays at home after hours and on the weekend. If I am not at home, I am not available (i.e. I have to put my life on hold to answer it) and I will return the call when I get home.
3. I keep my expectations realitic. I know that I will need to provide off-hours support once in a while. If I get more than 3 after hour calls in a week, I will hit my management up for some sort of one-shot compensation (like an extra day off). If I get calls consistently over a month, I will renegotiate my compensation with my management.
If management doesn't want to compensate, then it's time to seriously think about leaving Dilbert's Company.
Where did you get the codec? I have Mandriva 2006 and both xine and mplayer reports that it uses an unknown codec.
Yes, I have installed the Win32 codecs from PLF.
Excuse me. Are you talking about iTunes?
If so, you are mistaken. You do not buy music at iTunes. You rent it. Apple can change (and has changed) the rules by which you can enjoy "your" music at any time for any reason without any compensation to you whatsoever.
Apple has a system. But as a system to "sell" music, it fails. The only reason it's popular right now is because of a phrase P.T. Barnum used to use: There's a sucker born every minute.