Actually we aren't licensing music. There is no contract on or inside the CD package. As such CDs and most music are point of sale goods, which are covered by the Universal Consumer Code (I think that's what it is called). Which gives us rights to it functioning properly etc.
Software on the other hand has not been terribly clarified. It's been in the courts and has been treated both as a POS good and as a contract. It's still being worked out, mostly because the software companies want to be able to disclaim liability, but courts aren't quite comfortable with shrink wrap licenses. AKA how can you agree to something if you can't read what you're signing?
Re:SerialATA doesn't seem very advanced
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2
Note that it is software compatible, not hardware compatible. The two devices per channel was a hardware IDE thing. What is likely now is that they will show up as independant ATAPI devices. I am curious how the host card will register, but most likely you will get six independant ATAPI devices (assuming you use all six) and a single controller card. Again I urge you to read the various documentation as it does address most of this.
And yes it is sad.;) Hell it's sad that they haven't found a way to phase out the BIOS yet.
Re:SerialATA doesn't seem very advanced
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 3, Informative
As much as I hate to say it, obviously you didn't read any of the background material. You are right about the hot swap and backplanes.
However the Maxtor presentation talks about using SATA as a replacement for SCSI, or at a minimum breaking into NAS and low end servers.
Also for the number of devices, since it's now PTP connections, it's relatively agnostic as to the number of devices since it no longer fits into the old model of channels. I still haven't found specific references for the number of devices, but the Maxtor presentation has a picture of a SATA drop-in PCI card with 6 SATA connectors.
"By Contrast Serial ATA is a point to point interface where each device is directly connected to the host via a dedicated link. Each device, therefore, has the entire interface bandwidth dedicated to it, and there is no interaction between devices. This means that software can be streamlined, eliminating the overhead associated with coordinating accesses between the master and slave device sharing the same cable."
So this makes me wonder what the typical number of Serial ATA devices per mobo will be?
Guess I should read the bio. However I wouldn't knock a Connery Bond film. They were the best of them thus far.
Robocop 2 OTOH...
Empire was good enough that I would, at a minimum, be interested in his vision for Star Wars. It was certainly a lot darker and more gritty and real then the rest of Star Wars. The ones from Lucas have seemed very... um... child-like happy, good, oh my! I can do without it.
Copyright is guaranteed to authors, however read the most recent post on the contracts that authors have to sign to get their books published. Until they no longer have to sign away their copyright (which they can do) to get published, things will not get better.
I particularly like the reference to anti-trust violations. If you can't get published without signing away your copyright, I would certainly consider that illegal.
So what you're saying is that we need to get Kershner to redo all of the Star Wars movies and go lock Lucas in a cell and then show him the finished movies, which most likely not suck as much as his currently do.
You did also forget to mention the work of Joseph Campbell on the first two and not on ROTJ.
This of course assumes that we want to perpetuate the current contract litigation that essentially forces authors to sign away their copyrights to get a book published.
If we truly want to return the power of copyright to the creators and authors copyright should be guaranteed to them and not to publishers etc.
I know this is unlikely to happen, but I can hope.
Ah the times when you need moderator points. I think that the last paragraph of this post has it all.
To encourage new works, copyright has to expire before the author dies. Thus they are "encouraged" to create something new, rather then sit on their laurels and suck in profits off of a single good work. Retirement shouldn't necessarily cause a loss of copyright, but certainly they shouldn't get a death+50 or more copyright.
Lessig's idea of keeping the current system for private works (read unpublished) is a decent one. For published works you would have a 5 year renewable copyright up to current laws. AKA you have to specifically renew your copyright and have increasing fees so that the authors could retain copyright on particularly profitable works, but eventually they would be compelled to release material into the public domain because it would be too costly to renew the copyright.
Personally I think it would be simpler to return to 20 years with a 20 year possible renewal.
I've been relatively confused this whole time how the DoJ can be taking such a blind eye to all of Microsoft's various business practices. It seems like they can't see some of the worst offenses even on the heels of a guilty verdict. In particular the contract re-negotiations with the OEMs. It also doesn't seem to help that most of the people that can afford to be the most vocal are competing companies rather then the public. Though I do think the public comment period showed that citizens are concerned. I do find it minorly displeasing that they threw out some of the comments that didn't have a lot of substance. Seriously even a comment of I don't think the settlement reaches far enough is good...
x86-64, which is what AMD is shipping with Hammer *IS* a hybrid. It is a x86 processor with 64 bit instructions added on top of the 32 bit ones. Like Intel's extension of x86 from 8 bit to 16 and later 32 bitness. It allows backwards functionality, and forward extensibility through 64 bit applications that might need it. I think it's a much more intelligent solution as there are a lot of applications that don't need 64-bitness...
You want 64-bits on the desktop for extended memory. As the memory makers push memory sizes higher and higher the reality of having GBs of memory for your machine is quickly becoming a reality. I was scared recently when I found an ad for a Best-Buy machine for $1000 with 512MB of RAM. Since traditional 32-bit computing only does up to 4 GB of memory without extensions that's where 64-bitness comes into play. It also helps for file size issues as well as addressable partition size issues, all can now be done natively rather then as hacks.
Check out a different comment that I posted. This is actually exactly what I was advocating. Use winamp (you can turn off the monitoring) and other programs. And for the most part I don't use their products, I just find it terribly annoying that a lot of their products keep trying to steal preference for opening things. The OS's despite all their flaws work (most of the time) and let me play games.
Ultimately because when you get stuff straight from the source with Microsoft, you often get even more spin then you would get from independant news agencies. I would love to believe everything that everyone tells me, but try asking Microsoft about their latest security flaw or their new policies about dealing with vulnerabilities. You get a lot of denial and marketing babble.
As for why I have a/. account, some things I don't mind being a known quantity. The SSN is something entirely different and is explicitly being used for a purpose that it wasn't meant to be used for. SSN's also are not required (except with major financial transactions), if someone asks for it say no.
Ultimately the issue (for me) is about the choice. I want to be able to choose where my info goes and who gets it. I usually don't have problems with companies collecting information on me for their own use (and assuming that it's fairly limited or anonymous). I do mind when they sell my name and address to telemarketers and other businesses. I also mind when they try and create "total profiles" like Doubleclick was trying to do...
"As part of downloading the information about songs and movies from the Web site, the program also transmits an identifier number unique to each user on the computer. That creates the possibility that user habits could be tracked and sold for marketing purposes."
"Microsoft said the program creates the log file so a user does not have to download repeatedly the same track, album or movie information. The company said the ID number was created simply to allow Media Players users to have a personal account on the Web site dealing with the software."
Now what if you don't want a personal account from the website? What if you want a nice anonymous login?
I did note that it is currently just a cache for ease of use, what I didn't like (besides auto updates with XP) is the following quote.
"Jonathan Usher, another Windows Media executive, said Microsoft has no plans to market aggregate information about its customers' viewing habits, but would not rule it out."
They have no plans, but couldn't be spared the effort to say that they have no intent in collecting our information (without allowing us to turn it off) and sell it... Please.
Install Winamp and/or some other program that will pre-empt WMP and force it to preserve file associations. I would hope that one of the commericial DVD player programs would do the same thing.
Does Microsoft not learn? Do they not remember the stink over the tracking in Office documents? The stink over the UID with Intel Processors? Why would they think that collecting a list of CDs and DVDs that we've watched/listened to and then transmitting it back to Microsoft is a good idea? I mean seriously the OS has enough problems without having to worry about the damn thing spying on me.
What do we have to do to communicate to companies that we don't want to give them our information, unless we specifically opt-in. How hard is that? I haven't met many people that don't think it's a good idea to do it that way. Privacy is preserved, but you can choose to give away your privacy if they offer you a good enough deal. I always fill out the various opt out policies, but it's scary how often I have to go hunting in legalese to find out exactly where I need to send it.
I'm sure Disney would disagree. Some of Disney's staple movies were made quite a while ago. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Pinnochio, Mickey and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, The Tortoise and the Hare, and a ton of other stuff....
Note that the program only lets you rip into Windows Media Format. You are then essentially stuck watching it on your PC (and windows), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I would much rather watch things on my TV (which is much larger then my monitor).
It would be a much more interesting product if it would let you rip to a more open format, perhaps letting you burn VCDs. However then it really would be Napster-like. Though when all of those Windows Media DVD players come out, it might be a almost acceptable solution (assuming you're willing to buy a product that supports microsoft).
If I had to guess I would say plug-ins is probably the problem. A lot of the custom work that Dreamworks does no doubt involves specific plug-ins for Photoshop. No Photoshop on Linux, no custom plug-ins for them to work with. It would be interesting to see them port them to the GIMP, but I seriously doubt that they're going to do that anytime soon.
It all depends. I find that it is worth renting movies if I'm not sure I'll like it. I do tend to buy anything that I'm sure I'll watch at least twice. It also doesn't hurt that Hollywood video keeps sending out promotions where you can rent any three movies (DVD or VHS) for $1 per. Tends to make you rent a ton of movies, even the ones that you expected to be crap, but made you curious enough to see what the twist was (if there was one).
I followed the link and the "news" stories are clearly marked as an advertisement. Perhaps not blazingly marked, but the section that they're all in has the word Advertisement over it. It is also on the right side of the page where there is typically a advertisement banner, so if you have decent location memory (read: consistent page design)for ad placements, it should be noticeable as such.
It looks like all of the things in the "Technoscout" section are simply advertisements/product offerings displayed as news-like articles or press releases.
None of the articles in the main sections had any advertisements mixed in with them.
The simplest solution that no one seems to have mentioned is to buy used. If you want music and don't want to support the MPAA (more) then buy from your local used CD store. It lets you get your hands on pretty much all of the music made up to today for cheaper than new. As you're a computer freak you can rip it and copy it if you feel like it to keep a "pristine" copy and your purchase price isn't supporting the MPAA (like if you tried to buy it new). It also isn't copyprotected.
Best of all worlds (if you like music and want to be able to buy it without supporting the copy-protection "conspiracy").
Similarly there is no "right to copyright". Copyright is a government granted monopoly. Industry constantly disregards this fact. We could easily wipe copyright and intellectual property laws off of the books. Then we could see how happy they are...
Fair use is the counterpoint to copyright. Without fair use copyright becomes yet another fascist censorship power.
"I copyrighted / patented that... you must pay me" arguements make me ill. The sad thing is I believe that the creators do deserve payment, I do not believe that corporations peddling in "intellectual property" have any real right to perpetual monopolies. I would love to see copyright return to something mor along the line of the life of the artist or 50 years, whichever is longer. That way artists are allowed control their work while they are alive and potential proceeds. Otherwise it quickly passes into public domain, while people can still remember why it's relevant and use it. Unlike the current 150 years or so. Somehow I doubt that much of our current culture will survive due to our legislation...
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Actually we aren't licensing music. There is no contract on or inside the CD package. As such CDs and most music are point of sale goods, which are covered by the Universal Consumer Code (I think that's what it is called). Which gives us rights to it functioning properly etc.
Software on the other hand has not been terribly clarified. It's been in the courts and has been treated both as a POS good and as a contract. It's still being worked out, mostly because the software companies want to be able to disclaim liability, but courts aren't quite comfortable with shrink wrap licenses. AKA how can you agree to something if you can't read what you're signing?
Note that it is software compatible, not hardware compatible. The two devices per channel was a hardware IDE thing. What is likely now is that they will show up as independant ATAPI devices. I am curious how the host card will register, but most likely you will get six independant ATAPI devices (assuming you use all six) and a single controller card. Again I urge you to read the various documentation as it does address most of this.
;) Hell it's sad that they haven't found a way to phase out the BIOS yet.
And yes it is sad.
However the Maxtor presentation talks about using SATA as a replacement for SCSI, or at a minimum breaking into NAS and low end servers.
Cable length is up to 3M from the Intel presentation.
Also for the number of devices, since it's now PTP connections, it's relatively agnostic as to the number of devices since it no longer fits into the old model of channels. I still haven't found specific references for the number of devices, but the Maxtor presentation has a picture of a SATA drop-in PCI card with 6 SATA connectors.
From the Intel pdf from http://developer.intel.com/update/departments/init ech/it03012.pdf.
So this makes me wonder what the typical number of Serial ATA devices per mobo will be?
Or not.
Guess I should read the bio. However I wouldn't knock a Connery Bond film. They were the best of them thus far.
Robocop 2 OTOH...
Empire was good enough that I would, at a minimum, be interested in his vision for Star Wars. It was certainly a lot darker and more gritty and real then the rest of Star Wars. The ones from Lucas have seemed very... um... child-like happy, good, oh my! I can do without it.
I particularly like the reference to anti-trust violations. If you can't get published without signing away your copyright, I would certainly consider that illegal.
So what you're saying is that we need to get Kershner to redo all of the Star Wars movies and go lock Lucas in a cell and then show him the finished movies, which most likely not suck as much as his currently do.
You did also forget to mention the work of Joseph Campbell on the first two and not on ROTJ.
This of course assumes that we want to perpetuate the current contract litigation that essentially forces authors to sign away their copyrights to get a book published.
If we truly want to return the power of copyright to the creators and authors copyright should be guaranteed to them and not to publishers etc.
I know this is unlikely to happen, but I can hope.
Ah the times when you need moderator points. I think that the last paragraph of this post has it all.
To encourage new works, copyright has to expire before the author dies. Thus they are "encouraged" to create something new, rather then sit on their laurels and suck in profits off of a single good work. Retirement shouldn't necessarily cause a loss of copyright, but certainly they shouldn't get a death+50 or more copyright.
Lessig's idea of keeping the current system for private works (read unpublished) is a decent one. For published works you would have a 5 year renewable copyright up to current laws. AKA you have to specifically renew your copyright and have increasing fees so that the authors could retain copyright on particularly profitable works, but eventually they would be compelled to release material into the public domain because it would be too costly to renew the copyright.
Personally I think it would be simpler to return to 20 years with a 20 year possible renewal.
I've been relatively confused this whole time how the DoJ can be taking such a blind eye to all of Microsoft's various business practices. It seems like they can't see some of the worst offenses even on the heels of a guilty verdict. In particular the contract re-negotiations with the OEMs. It also doesn't seem to help that most of the people that can afford to be the most vocal are competing companies rather then the public. Though I do think the public comment period showed that citizens are concerned. I do find it minorly displeasing that they threw out some of the comments that didn't have a lot of substance. Seriously even a comment of I don't think the settlement reaches far enough is good...
Sigh.
x86-64, which is what AMD is shipping with Hammer *IS* a hybrid. It is a x86 processor with 64 bit instructions added on top of the 32 bit ones. Like Intel's extension of x86 from 8 bit to 16 and later 32 bitness. It allows backwards functionality, and forward extensibility through 64 bit applications that might need it. I think it's a much more intelligent solution as there are a lot of applications that don't need 64-bitness...
You want 64-bits on the desktop for extended memory. As the memory makers push memory sizes higher and higher the reality of having GBs of memory for your machine is quickly becoming a reality. I was scared recently when I found an ad for a Best-Buy machine for $1000 with 512MB of RAM. Since traditional 32-bit computing only does up to 4 GB of memory without extensions that's where 64-bitness comes into play.
It also helps for file size issues as well as addressable partition size issues, all can now be done natively rather then as hacks.
Check out a different comment that I posted. This is actually exactly what I was advocating. Use winamp (you can turn off the monitoring) and other programs. And for the most part I don't use their products, I just find it terribly annoying that a lot of their products keep trying to steal preference for opening things. The OS's despite all their flaws work (most of the time) and let me play games.
Ultimately because when you get stuff straight from the source with Microsoft, you often get even more spin then you would get from independant news agencies. I would love to believe everything that everyone tells me, but try asking Microsoft about their latest security flaw or their new policies about dealing with vulnerabilities. You get a lot of denial and marketing babble.
/. account, some things I don't mind being a known quantity. The SSN is something entirely different and is explicitly being used for a purpose that it wasn't meant to be used for. SSN's also are not required (except with major financial transactions), if someone asks for it say no.
As for why I have a
Ultimately the issue (for me) is about the choice. I want to be able to choose where my info goes and who gets it. I usually don't have problems with companies collecting information on me for their own use (and assuming that it's fairly limited or anonymous). I do mind when they sell my name and address to telemarketers and other businesses. I also mind when they try and create "total profiles" like Doubleclick was trying to do...
Right did you also ignore the following parts?
"As part of downloading the information about songs and movies from the Web site, the program also transmits an identifier number unique to each user on the computer. That creates the possibility that user habits could be tracked and sold for marketing purposes."
"Microsoft said the program creates the log file so a user does not have to download repeatedly the same track, album or movie information. The company said the ID number was created simply to allow Media Players users to have a personal account on the Web site dealing with the software."
Now what if you don't want a personal account from the website? What if you want a nice anonymous login?
I did note that it is currently just a cache for ease of use, what I didn't like (besides auto updates with XP) is the following quote.
"Jonathan Usher, another Windows Media executive, said Microsoft has no plans to market aggregate information about its customers' viewing habits, but would not rule it out."
They have no plans, but couldn't be spared the effort to say that they have no intent in collecting our information (without allowing us to turn it off) and sell it... Please.
It's a feature if it only caches it.
It's spyware when it sends the data back to Microsoft.
Install Winamp and/or some other program that will pre-empt WMP and force it to preserve file associations. I would hope that one of the commericial DVD player programs would do the same thing.
Does Microsoft not learn? Do they not remember the stink over the tracking in Office documents? The stink over the UID with Intel Processors? Why would they think that collecting a list of CDs and DVDs that we've watched/listened to and then transmitting it back to Microsoft is a good idea? I mean seriously the OS has enough problems without having to worry about the damn thing spying on me.
What do we have to do to communicate to companies that we don't want to give them our information, unless we specifically opt-in. How hard is that? I haven't met many people that don't think it's a good idea to do it that way. Privacy is preserved, but you can choose to give away your privacy if they offer you a good enough deal. I always fill out the various opt out policies, but it's scary how often I have to go hunting in legalese to find out exactly where I need to send it.
Check out IMDB http://us.imdb.com/Name?Disney,+Walt
I remember watching a lot of this stuff and I know that Disney still makes a ton of money when it re-releases stuff from it's vaults.
Note that the program only lets you rip into Windows Media Format. You are then essentially stuck watching it on your PC (and windows), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I would much rather watch things on my TV (which is much larger then my monitor).
It would be a much more interesting product if it would let you rip to a more open format, perhaps letting you burn VCDs. However then it really would be Napster-like. Though when all of those Windows Media DVD players come out, it might be a almost acceptable solution (assuming you're willing to buy a product that supports microsoft).
If I had to guess I would say plug-ins is probably the problem. A lot of the custom work that Dreamworks does no doubt involves specific plug-ins for Photoshop. No Photoshop on Linux, no custom plug-ins for them to work with. It would be interesting to see them port them to the GIMP, but I seriously doubt that they're going to do that anytime soon.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-825823.html
As well as Dreamworks switching over to HP and Linux.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-826047.html
It all depends. I find that it is worth renting movies if I'm not sure I'll like it. I do tend to buy anything that I'm sure I'll watch at least twice. It also doesn't hurt that Hollywood video keeps sending out promotions where you can rent any three movies (DVD or VHS) for $1 per. Tends to make you rent a ton of movies, even the ones that you expected to be crap, but made you curious enough to see what the twist was (if there was one).
I followed the link and the "news" stories are clearly marked as an advertisement. Perhaps not blazingly marked, but the section that they're all in has the word Advertisement over it. It is also on the right side of the page where there is typically a advertisement banner, so if you have decent location memory (read: consistent page design)for ad placements, it should be noticeable as such.
It looks like all of the things in the "Technoscout" section are simply advertisements/product offerings displayed as news-like articles or press releases.
None of the articles in the main sections had any advertisements mixed in with them.
The simplest solution that no one seems to have mentioned is to buy used. If you want music and don't want to support the MPAA (more) then buy from your local used CD store. It lets you get your hands on pretty much all of the music made up to today for cheaper than new. As you're a computer freak you can rip it and copy it if you feel like it to keep a "pristine" copy and your purchase price isn't supporting the MPAA (like if you tried to buy it new). It also isn't copyprotected.
Best of all worlds (if you like music and want to be able to buy it without supporting the copy-protection "conspiracy").
Similarly there is no "right to copyright". Copyright is a government granted monopoly. Industry constantly disregards this fact. We could easily wipe copyright and intellectual property laws off of the books. Then we could see how happy they are...
Fair use is the counterpoint to copyright. Without fair use copyright becomes yet another fascist censorship power.
"I copyrighted / patented that... you must pay me" arguements make me ill. The sad thing is I believe that the creators do deserve payment, I do not believe that corporations peddling in "intellectual property" have any real right to perpetual monopolies. I would love to see copyright return to something mor along the line of the life of the artist or 50 years, whichever is longer. That way artists are allowed control their work while they are alive and potential proceeds. Otherwise it quickly passes into public domain, while people can still remember why it's relevant and use it. Unlike the current 150 years or so. Somehow I doubt that much of our current culture will survive due to our legislation...