On my windows system, I use something called Avant Browser (www.avantbrowser.com). It's just a wrapper for IE (cue everyone to scream about IE security), but includes nice things like tabbed browsing. It also includes popup blockers and flash blockers. I keep flash blocked until I come to a page that actually needs it. Works wonderfully.
Every time I use my Fedora system at home (Firefox) I sorely miss that feature. I'm glad to know that it will soon be available.
There are a lot of inaccuracies in various posts I've seen. Instead of replying to each one, I just thought I'd write a single one. Which will get modded into oblivion, but oh well...
MSN Messenger uses the same codecs that comes with Windows Messenger. Windows Messenger ships with Windows XP. I'm not aware of any downlevel support for video on any OS other than XP/2003.
The DLLs used are DXMRTP.DLL and RTCDLL.DLL. DXMRTP contains the video codecs and RTCDLL is a signaling stack that does SDP negotiations. MSN Messenger (last I knew) used this for its video, as did AIM. AOL was prohibited from making its own audio/video components as per the special provisions put forth by the FTC during the AOL/Time Warner merger. So they used the audio/video that comes with XP.
DXMRTP.DLL contains two video codecs: H.263 and H.261. Of course, there is no reason to use H.261 if H.263 is available, which it is.
In brief, MSN and AIM both use H.263 for video. This is not "embracing and extending" -- this is pure H.263, just like NetMeeting uses H.263 for its video support.
I have no idea if this will be of any help to you or not. I recently installed Fedora Core 3 on my PC (new hard drive -- left my other hard drive alone with XP on it). I noticed my boot time took a LONG time. It seemed to "hang" for a minute or so before KDE or Gnome even started.
A friend told me about Ubuntu, I grabbed the ISO and installed it. Instantly much faster. Boot time was definitely faster than XP. I then did something kinda stupid -- I upgraded to the latest "unstable" build for the next release of Ubuntu. And my boot time was suddenly very similar to Fedora.
The original Ubuntu release was running 2.6.8 of the kernel. Fedora and the latest Ubuntu release are using 2.6.10. And now I have DMA timeout issues that happen during boot. You should check the logs in/var/log/dmesg and search for "dma_timer_expiry". If you find that, it could be because of that.
I also lost sound after upgrading to the latest Ubuntu, but hey... We can't have everything we want, can we?:)
Standard disclaimer: IANAL, and this is my intepretation from reading patent law.
That said, patents have an interesting way of working. The patent holder can prevent the USE of his/her patent, even if it's non-commercial (aka private) use. This means that if the patent holder (Microsoft) gives a patent license that says you can READ them, then it doesn't matter who created the original Word document to begin with -- Microsoft has patented the format of that document, and any use of the propritary format falls under patent law. And patent law explicitely states that even USE of such a patent can enforced by the patent holder.
The magic "EULA" that you accepted is US patent law, which applies to anyone in the United States. Just living here is the EULA.
So, in a nutshell, the creator of that document owns a copyright on that document, but the format used to create that document is patented by Microsoft, so they get to enforce that patent and anyone who did not agree to their EULA can be sued.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't really care about an individual user, but anyone writing a tool to write a file into their patented document type falls under the "distribution" clause of patents, and that company is fair game.
Simply adding samples lowers the pitch (and stretches the sound) and simply removing samples increases the pitch (and shrinks the sound). Maybe if you take the two surrounding samples plus the one you're removing and average them together in some meaningful way, you can alleviate the problem, but simply removing/doubling samples does absolutely nothing other than decreasing/increasing the length of time for playback.
On the other hand, radio has been using the technology for years. They have a 7-second delay (usually), but ever notice what happens when they use the 7-second delay? They don't just put a BEEEEEEEEEP or just pause for 7 seconds. Instead, they cut out a couple seconds of time, and lose a part of their buffer. Now they have to build that buffer back up, otherwise only a few incidents would cause them to lose the entire buffer. So they slowly stretch playback over time, but you can't tell. Whether they do it with just a 1% stretch or much faster, I don't know, but I've never heard any audible distortion after them using the buffer.
Someone else indicated you can go to Edit...Paste Special...Unformatted text. I don't know when it was introduced, but when I copy/paste from one document to another, there's a little icon (looks like a clipboard) that pops up near the text I just pasted. If I click on it, I get these options:
Keep source formatting
Use destination styles
Match destination formatting
Keep text formatting
Apply style or formatting
Sometimes you want it to keep the formatting, and sometimes you don't. It's pretty easy to do whatever you want.
True, not everything has to be open source. If you're aware of a system that has live TV and timeshifting, dual-tuner support (or more), DVD playing, music playing, and also has a plugin system that gives me access to all the information I could possibly want, then please post a link.
XLobby seems to have an active development community, but it does not support basic requirements such as live TV and timeshifting. Maybe people will eventually do that, but I'm not going to develope my own plugin for that when there are existing solutions that do far more than what XLobby does, MythTV and Media Portal being two of them. They also have the added benefit of being open source, which means I don't have to worry about limitations of SDKs.
OK, thanks. Live TV and Timeshifting are priority-0 requirements for me. If Xlobby has liveTV and timeshifting by the time I finally trade in my TiVo, then I'll evaluate it. Otherwise, it won't suffice for my needs. Thanks for the information about it though.
Where are the docs regarding plugins? I've searched all over the site. There are no docs that I found in the pre-release ZIP file, I saw no docs in the "plugins" section, and in the forum, under "Documentation", I found only people commenting about various things that need documented or questions about existing documentation, which I can't find!
BTW, Xlobby does not appear to do Live TV/Time Shifting. The choices on the main menu (screenshot) have nothing to do with live TV at all. Everything that I see appears that it just plays already recorded movies and music, and can check the weather and do a few other things. Am I missing something? Even the "features" list does not list recording as a feature...
There is nothing illegal about owning your own cable descrambler. My understanding is that it is actually a requirement (from the FCC) that cable companies allow for consumers to purchase their own cable boxes.
What's illegal is using said device without notifying your cable company what channels you are watching with this device. They still have a right to bill you for content viewed, but they cannot force you to rent their box.
If they really want, they can actually install frequency monitors to determine what channels you are actually watching so they can bill for those...
Interesting. I went to the site. It says that Xlobby is freeware, but does not say that it's opensource. I didn't download to verify... I have a requirement for it to be open source, because there are some things I'd love to add (or at least ATTEMPT to add).:)
Has anyone tried Media Portal? It's an open source Windows MCE look-alike/replacement. Written completely in C#, no less (I believe). I'm thinking about replacing my TiVo with an open-source PVR, and I'm not sure which one to go with, MythTV or MediaPortal. Has anyone tried both? If so, any recommendations? (And please, no "Linux vs Microsoft" as for the operating system -- it's just the user-land software that I care about.)
A couple in the Hamptons has asked the same group of scientists to determine why socks dissapear in the dryer. Film at eleven.
This is a common misconception. The socks actually get lost in the WASHER, in the tiny groove underneath the spinner (I don't know what to call it) and the bottom of the washer. You dry your clothes, and you come out with an odd number of socks. At some other time (next load of laundry perhaps), the sock becomes dislodged, and you toss it into the dryer. Again, you have an odd number of socks, so you assume you lost another one. However, you've really just added one back.
Yeah. It's a federal law about age requirements for buying certain kinds of ammunition. 21 or over for handguns and handgun ammunition, 18 or older for rifles/shotguns and the associated ammunition. The problem comes with dual-purpose ammunition..22 and.45 are the two rifles that we sold that also had handgun uses. There was never a question about.22 shells, since.22 rifles are far more popular than.22 handguns, but there was always a dispute about.45 shells, since it's much more common as a handgun. But yeah, every purchase for ammunition that had dual-purpose asked if it was for handgun or rifle, and then the age required changed after the answer.
The law is really stupid, just as the drinking age of 21 is stupid. These 18 year olds can join our military (or be drafted, if a draft were imposed) and are legally held responsible as an adult for all their actions, but they can't drink or own a handgun until they're older, cause the magic age of 21 is automatically so much more mature.
(Of course, drinking AND guns should not mix, but age doesn't matter for that!) Just make 21 the legal age to vote, join the military, own guns, etc... or make 18 the legal age for everything.
It's not that there's a federal law against returning ammunition, it's that there's a federal law against reselling it. Minor difference. I had to tell the front desk many times that they should call a Sporting Goods "Associate" immediately upon receiving any returned ammunition so that we could handle it -- otherwise it's easy to just shove all the returned merchandise into a shopping cart and have a cashier restock the merchandise. Of course, all the ammunition was locked away, so they wouldn't be able to return it to the proper place, but during certain times, shotgun shells were out on the open shelf (like before the start of a hunting season).
It's possible that the return policy on ammunition has changed in the store I worked at (store #1629 in Brazil, IN -- god, I still remember the store number!!!!), and maybe management from "above" made certain changes to the return policy. That was 5 years ago that I worked there...
Since you don't pay until the end, nothing is "technically purchased". All you have to do is store the barcodes from the scanned items in memory, then once the credit card/cash/check transaction is approved, you commit those barcodes as a transaction, subtract one from the in-store inventory tracker for each item in that list, and there you go. Cancel the transaction halfway through, just delete the list you were storing and forget about it. It's up to the clerks/loss prevention people to keep people from walking out with it.
I worked at Wal-mart during college. I worked in the Sporting Goods department -- so I sold ammunition and guns. Ammunition is something that you are NOT allowed to resell once it has been returned -- it's an explosive, after all. Well, wouldn't you know it, but we would accept returned ammunition with a smile on our face. Luckily we never restocked it... instead we donated it to the local police department. It was a tax write-off, and the local PD got plenty of ammo for target practice and stuff. But it was plain stupid to accept a return on an item that we knew we would not be able to sell again and that we couldn't return to the manufacturer (defective items are returned with usually no problems). But we did it to keep people happy...
Shouldn't it be _at least 3_ crewmembers per flight? Pilot, copilot, and at least one steward/stewardess. Unless stewards/stewardesses are counted differently for some reason... Or unless I'm missing something, which is all too likely.
If the monies paid to the maintenance crew are public monies (i.e. from the government) then that may qualify for "publicly maintained". However, if the owner of the highway is a private company and taxes are not used for maintenance, then it would not be publicly maintained. The public would pay for it via tolls, but not via taxes.
Very few people downloading songs, movies, and software actually follow through and purchase what they're copying. Maybe they purchase SOME, but most will just burn it and call it good enough. After all, it's identical. There's no benefit to purchasing the actual product since you already have it. The only thing is a "feel-good" feeling, and most people would rather just pay for the cost of a CD or DVD to burn it on than pay the price that's asked. After all, when you have 200 DVD titles, each at $20, that's $4k. People don't like to shell out that kind of money.
Regarding Half-Life 2/Vivendi/Valve. Congratulations, you found a way WITHIN THE LAW to stick it to the company you hate but still legally get your copy of the game from the makers. This is a non-issue.
As far as Alien vs Predator -- you can watch it in the theater, read reviews, or talk to friends who've seen it to get feedback before you make a DVD purchase. Downloading it and watching the movie and then going "Nah, that's not worth the money" is just not right. You know, you CAN rent it from a movie rental place and watch it with your friends. You pay $4 to rent it, watch it with three other friends, and you each paid $1. Hardly a risky endeavor. Who knows, maybe it's even cheaper to rent. I don't know, I don't rent.
If there's a way to make private property into a jurisdiction by itself, then that may work. The laws in my state define the term "highway" (which is how all traffic laws are written, at least at the state level) to be a road that is open to the public for vehicular use _and_ is publicly maintained. Which means that state traffic laws are not enforceable, since it would not be publicly maintained. Now if there's a way to set private property up as it's own jurisdiction, then as long as those laws do not conflict with state laws, they could be enforcable. They certainly would not conflict with my state's laws.
I'll just link to my other post regarding the wording of the laws in my state.
Re:Question to people who donate
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You didn't disprove anything. My statement was about COPYRIGHTED WORKS. "The Time Machine" is no longer copyrighted. Why? Cause HG Wells is dead.
I fail to see how it is acceptable for you to take the works of someone who is still alive and use it as you see fit without giving that creator the compensation that he desires. Maybe the laws that say a copyright exists beyond a person's life (life +20 years?) don't make sense. Maybe copyrights should be transferable but when the original author dies, all bets are off. I don't know about that. But when people are spending millions of dollars to produce a work, and you just go off and copy it without paying them, that's just wrong.
Regarding the Tolkien estate issues... Peter Jackson filmed LOTR with the permission of the Tolkien estate, correct? So then why shouldn't he be bound by their wishes? All things he wanted to do should be spelled out in the contract that he signed with them in order to make the movie. As I said earlier, maybe the copyright law that extends the copyright to the estate of the deceased for some years after death should be modified, but most piracy that's happening happens with music, movies, etc... that's currently being produced, where the authors are still alive.
Regarding Stargate: Atlantis, you said that you are not able to access it any other way, but then you say that you will buy the DVD. Apparently, you DO have a way to view it, you just chose to take a "free" way of downloading it before you buy it.
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On my windows system, I use something called Avant Browser (www.avantbrowser.com). It's just a wrapper for IE (cue everyone to scream about IE security), but includes nice things like tabbed browsing. It also includes popup blockers and flash blockers. I keep flash blocked until I come to a page that actually needs it. Works wonderfully.
Every time I use my Fedora system at home (Firefox) I sorely miss that feature. I'm glad to know that it will soon be available.
There are a lot of inaccuracies in various posts I've seen. Instead of replying to each one, I just thought I'd write a single one. Which will get modded into oblivion, but oh well...
MSN Messenger uses the same codecs that comes with Windows Messenger. Windows Messenger ships with Windows XP. I'm not aware of any downlevel support for video on any OS other than XP/2003.
The DLLs used are DXMRTP.DLL and RTCDLL.DLL. DXMRTP contains the video codecs and RTCDLL is a signaling stack that does SDP negotiations. MSN Messenger (last I knew) used this for its video, as did AIM. AOL was prohibited from making its own audio/video components as per the special provisions put forth by the FTC during the AOL/Time Warner merger. So they used the audio/video that comes with XP.
DXMRTP.DLL contains two video codecs: H.263 and H.261. Of course, there is no reason to use H.261 if H.263 is available, which it is.
In brief, MSN and AIM both use H.263 for video. This is not "embracing and extending" -- this is pure H.263, just like NetMeeting uses H.263 for its video support.
I have no idea if this will be of any help to you or not. I recently installed Fedora Core 3 on my PC (new hard drive -- left my other hard drive alone with XP on it). I noticed my boot time took a LONG time. It seemed to "hang" for a minute or so before KDE or Gnome even started.
/var/log/dmesg and search for "dma_timer_expiry". If you find that, it could be because of that.
:)
A friend told me about Ubuntu, I grabbed the ISO and installed it. Instantly much faster. Boot time was definitely faster than XP. I then did something kinda stupid -- I upgraded to the latest "unstable" build for the next release of Ubuntu. And my boot time was suddenly very similar to Fedora.
The original Ubuntu release was running 2.6.8 of the kernel. Fedora and the latest Ubuntu release are using 2.6.10. And now I have DMA timeout issues that happen during boot. You should check the logs in
I also lost sound after upgrading to the latest Ubuntu, but hey... We can't have everything we want, can we?
Standard disclaimer: IANAL, and this is my intepretation from reading patent law.
That said, patents have an interesting way of working. The patent holder can prevent the USE of his/her patent, even if it's non-commercial (aka private) use. This means that if the patent holder (Microsoft) gives a patent license that says you can READ them, then it doesn't matter who created the original Word document to begin with -- Microsoft has patented the format of that document, and any use of the propritary format falls under patent law. And patent law explicitely states that even USE of such a patent can enforced by the patent holder.
The magic "EULA" that you accepted is US patent law, which applies to anyone in the United States. Just living here is the EULA.
So, in a nutshell, the creator of that document owns a copyright on that document, but the format used to create that document is patented by Microsoft, so they get to enforce that patent and anyone who did not agree to their EULA can be sued.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't really care about an individual user, but anyone writing a tool to write a file into their patented document type falls under the "distribution" clause of patents, and that company is fair game.
Simply adding samples lowers the pitch (and stretches the sound) and simply removing samples increases the pitch (and shrinks the sound). Maybe if you take the two surrounding samples plus the one you're removing and average them together in some meaningful way, you can alleviate the problem, but simply removing/doubling samples does absolutely nothing other than decreasing/increasing the length of time for playback.
On the other hand, radio has been using the technology for years. They have a 7-second delay (usually), but ever notice what happens when they use the 7-second delay? They don't just put a BEEEEEEEEEP or just pause for 7 seconds. Instead, they cut out a couple seconds of time, and lose a part of their buffer. Now they have to build that buffer back up, otherwise only a few incidents would cause them to lose the entire buffer. So they slowly stretch playback over time, but you can't tell. Whether they do it with just a 1% stretch or much faster, I don't know, but I've never heard any audible distortion after them using the buffer.
Someone else indicated you can go to Edit...Paste Special...Unformatted text. I don't know when it was introduced, but when I copy/paste from one document to another, there's a little icon (looks like a clipboard) that pops up near the text I just pasted. If I click on it, I get these options:
Keep source formatting
Use destination styles
Match destination formatting
Keep text formatting
Apply style or formatting
Sometimes you want it to keep the formatting, and sometimes you don't. It's pretty easy to do whatever you want.
True, not everything has to be open source. If you're aware of a system that has live TV and timeshifting, dual-tuner support (or more), DVD playing, music playing, and also has a plugin system that gives me access to all the information I could possibly want, then please post a link.
XLobby seems to have an active development community, but it does not support basic requirements such as live TV and timeshifting. Maybe people will eventually do that, but I'm not going to develope my own plugin for that when there are existing solutions that do far more than what XLobby does, MythTV and Media Portal being two of them. They also have the added benefit of being open source, which means I don't have to worry about limitations of SDKs.
OK, thanks. Live TV and Timeshifting are priority-0 requirements for me. If Xlobby has liveTV and timeshifting by the time I finally trade in my TiVo, then I'll evaluate it. Otherwise, it won't suffice for my needs. Thanks for the information about it though.
Where are the docs regarding plugins? I've searched all over the site. There are no docs that I found in the pre-release ZIP file, I saw no docs in the "plugins" section, and in the forum, under "Documentation", I found only people commenting about various things that need documented or questions about existing documentation, which I can't find!
BTW, Xlobby does not appear to do Live TV/Time Shifting. The choices on the main menu (screenshot) have nothing to do with live TV at all. Everything that I see appears that it just plays already recorded movies and music, and can check the weather and do a few other things. Am I missing something? Even the "features" list does not list recording as a feature...
There is nothing illegal about owning your own cable descrambler. My understanding is that it is actually a requirement (from the FCC) that cable companies allow for consumers to purchase their own cable boxes.
What's illegal is using said device without notifying your cable company what channels you are watching with this device. They still have a right to bill you for content viewed, but they cannot force you to rent their box.
If they really want, they can actually install frequency monitors to determine what channels you are actually watching so they can bill for those...
Interesting. I went to the site. It says that Xlobby is freeware, but does not say that it's opensource. I didn't download to verify... I have a requirement for it to be open source, because there are some things I'd love to add (or at least ATTEMPT to add). :)
Has anyone tried Media Portal? It's an open source Windows MCE look-alike/replacement. Written completely in C#, no less (I believe). I'm thinking about replacing my TiVo with an open-source PVR, and I'm not sure which one to go with, MythTV or MediaPortal. Has anyone tried both? If so, any recommendations? (And please, no "Linux vs Microsoft" as for the operating system -- it's just the user-land software that I care about.)
Yeah. It's a federal law about age requirements for buying certain kinds of ammunition. 21 or over for handguns and handgun ammunition, 18 or older for rifles/shotguns and the associated ammunition. The problem comes with dual-purpose ammunition. .22 and .45 are the two rifles that we sold that also had handgun uses. There was never a question about .22 shells, since .22 rifles are far more popular than .22 handguns, but there was always a dispute about .45 shells, since it's much more common as a handgun. But yeah, every purchase for ammunition that had dual-purpose asked if it was for handgun or rifle, and then the age required changed after the answer.
The law is really stupid, just as the drinking age of 21 is stupid. These 18 year olds can join our military (or be drafted, if a draft were imposed) and are legally held responsible as an adult for all their actions, but they can't drink or own a handgun until they're older, cause the magic age of 21 is automatically so much more mature. (Of course, drinking AND guns should not mix, but age doesn't matter for that!) Just make 21 the legal age to vote, join the military, own guns, etc... or make 18 the legal age for everything.
It's not that there's a federal law against returning ammunition, it's that there's a federal law against reselling it. Minor difference. I had to tell the front desk many times that they should call a Sporting Goods "Associate" immediately upon receiving any returned ammunition so that we could handle it -- otherwise it's easy to just shove all the returned merchandise into a shopping cart and have a cashier restock the merchandise. Of course, all the ammunition was locked away, so they wouldn't be able to return it to the proper place, but during certain times, shotgun shells were out on the open shelf (like before the start of a hunting season).
It's possible that the return policy on ammunition has changed in the store I worked at (store #1629 in Brazil, IN -- god, I still remember the store number!!!!), and maybe management from "above" made certain changes to the return policy. That was 5 years ago that I worked there...
fraud
n.
A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
Last I knew, fraud was illegal...
Since you don't pay until the end, nothing is "technically purchased". All you have to do is store the barcodes from the scanned items in memory, then once the credit card/cash/check transaction is approved, you commit those barcodes as a transaction, subtract one from the in-store inventory tracker for each item in that list, and there you go. Cancel the transaction halfway through, just delete the list you were storing and forget about it. It's up to the clerks/loss prevention people to keep people from walking out with it.
I worked at Wal-mart during college. I worked in the Sporting Goods department -- so I sold ammunition and guns. Ammunition is something that you are NOT allowed to resell once it has been returned -- it's an explosive, after all. Well, wouldn't you know it, but we would accept returned ammunition with a smile on our face. Luckily we never restocked it... instead we donated it to the local police department. It was a tax write-off, and the local PD got plenty of ammo for target practice and stuff. But it was plain stupid to accept a return on an item that we knew we would not be able to sell again and that we couldn't return to the manufacturer (defective items are returned with usually no problems). But we did it to keep people happy...
Shouldn't it be _at least 3_ crewmembers per flight? Pilot, copilot, and at least one steward/stewardess. Unless stewards/stewardesses are counted differently for some reason... Or unless I'm missing something, which is all too likely.
If the monies paid to the maintenance crew are public monies (i.e. from the government) then that may qualify for "publicly maintained". However, if the owner of the highway is a private company and taxes are not used for maintenance, then it would not be publicly maintained. The public would pay for it via tolls, but not via taxes.
Very few people downloading songs, movies, and software actually follow through and purchase what they're copying. Maybe they purchase SOME, but most will just burn it and call it good enough. After all, it's identical. There's no benefit to purchasing the actual product since you already have it. The only thing is a "feel-good" feeling, and most people would rather just pay for the cost of a CD or DVD to burn it on than pay the price that's asked. After all, when you have 200 DVD titles, each at $20, that's $4k. People don't like to shell out that kind of money.
Regarding Half-Life 2/Vivendi/Valve. Congratulations, you found a way WITHIN THE LAW to stick it to the company you hate but still legally get your copy of the game from the makers. This is a non-issue.
As far as Alien vs Predator -- you can watch it in the theater, read reviews, or talk to friends who've seen it to get feedback before you make a DVD purchase. Downloading it and watching the movie and then going "Nah, that's not worth the money" is just not right. You know, you CAN rent it from a movie rental place and watch it with your friends. You pay $4 to rent it, watch it with three other friends, and you each paid $1. Hardly a risky endeavor. Who knows, maybe it's even cheaper to rent. I don't know, I don't rent.
If there's a way to make private property into a jurisdiction by itself, then that may work. The laws in my state define the term "highway" (which is how all traffic laws are written, at least at the state level) to be a road that is open to the public for vehicular use _and_ is publicly maintained. Which means that state traffic laws are not enforceable, since it would not be publicly maintained. Now if there's a way to set private property up as it's own jurisdiction, then as long as those laws do not conflict with state laws, they could be enforcable. They certainly would not conflict with my state's laws.
I'll just link to my other post regarding the wording of the laws in my state.
You didn't disprove anything. My statement was about COPYRIGHTED WORKS. "The Time Machine" is no longer copyrighted. Why? Cause HG Wells is dead.
I fail to see how it is acceptable for you to take the works of someone who is still alive and use it as you see fit without giving that creator the compensation that he desires. Maybe the laws that say a copyright exists beyond a person's life (life +20 years?) don't make sense. Maybe copyrights should be transferable but when the original author dies, all bets are off. I don't know about that. But when people are spending millions of dollars to produce a work, and you just go off and copy it without paying them, that's just wrong.
Regarding the Tolkien estate issues... Peter Jackson filmed LOTR with the permission of the Tolkien estate, correct? So then why shouldn't he be bound by their wishes? All things he wanted to do should be spelled out in the contract that he signed with them in order to make the movie. As I said earlier, maybe the copyright law that extends the copyright to the estate of the deceased for some years after death should be modified, but most piracy that's happening happens with music, movies, etc... that's currently being produced, where the authors are still alive.
Regarding Stargate: Atlantis, you said that you are not able to access it any other way, but then you say that you will buy the DVD. Apparently, you DO have a way to view it, you just chose to take a "free" way of downloading it before you buy it.