Seriously though, the concept of free downloads, but not writing to CD or transferring to portable players? That will cause the motivation to crack the encryption it's laced with...
And, of course, there's nothing to stop you from taking your newly cracked music file and opening it up in say, Audacity and then subsequently editing out the adverts.
From there, you'll start to see them appear on various P2P file sharing networks, and the cycle continues...
I don't think you have the legal right to copy material no matter what, but I do think that you have a right to use legally purchased copyrighted material on any device you own. You're right in that there is no significant legislation that says "yes, you have a right to rip your CDs into MP3s to listen to them on your MP3 player." But Betamax and other rulings do still seem to imply that, changes in legislation aside.
Copyright is intended, according to the U.S. Constitution, to give authors an incentive to produce material by allowing them a monopoly on their material for a limited time. It's not intended to force you buy music as a CD, an MP3 and in every other format in which you want to listen to it. It's not intended to be used as a weapon by some music cartel (read: RIAA), either.
Please go and read your copyright law, and the relevant fair use details. I bet you'll find that you don't have any legal rights granted in the way you think you do. Perhaps you think you should. Perhaps you really should. But right now you don't, and writing sound-bites in bold doesn't change that.
Well, if you do a bit more research, I think you'll find that there are a number of cases, including Supreme Court precedents such the famous Sony Betamax case, which do state very clearly that the recording of copyrighted material for purposes of timeshifting or converting copyrighted material from one media format to another for the purposes of viewing the material on a different player are considered to be protected by fair use.
Some of us don't have this fixation on the thought that software and music should be free. Regardless of what you think, its currently not, right or wrong. Piracy of software and music is still piracy and still illegal.
This has nothing to do with privacy. It has to do with being usable under the rights granted by fair use under the United States Copyright Act and similar laws in other countries.
Under fair use, it is my right to be able to take copyrighted music that I have legally purchased and be able to play that on any device I own. That would include being able to burn music to CDs, listen to it on an MP3 player, convert it from one format to another (say, WMA -> OGG or MP3, listen to it on my PC regardless of underlying OS (i.e., under Linux or *BSD), sample it into my music synthesizer/audio sequencer, etc. DRM prevents me from excercising my legal rights.
Or maybe you don't care about your legal rights... but one day, you will get a right taken from you that you care about. We'll see who's complaining then.
As someone who has followed Microsoft and Bill Gates intensively since before the release of Windows 3.0, I can tell you that's exactly what's going on. Microsoft is having a temporary truce with OSS while they fight Google....it's a tactical move that eases tension with the OSS community, while at the same time lulling them into a false sense of security.
MSFT knows that their tactical onslaught via the SCO trial is all but over and that the poor release timing of Vista is killing them on the desktop OS front. Not to worry. There's still Get the FUD on the server front.
Microsoft will sweet talk the Mozilla developers for now, but once they've either defeated or admitted defeat for themselves on the Google front, they'll be trying to bury Firefox. Perhaps Vista Service Pack 1 or 2 will break Firefox in nasty ways. Perhaps IIS 7.0 will detect that Firefox is running and start doing things to slow down the connection or break the page rendering. Who knows?
Remember: for Microsoft to win, everyone else has to lose. Especially Mozilla.org.
Right. But they aren't effective in that measure. Joe Sixpack gets a dialog box that says "Application IEXPLORE.exe is attempting to access the Internet" a few thousand times and he just checks "Allow" or, worse "Always Allow" enough times, he doesn't notice when the box says "Application I_pwn_j00.exe is attempting to access the Internet" so, again, he clicks "Always Allow" just like he's always done. Or, he doesn't know what I_pwn_j00.exe is, but that's what he needs to click in order to continue, so that's what he does.
Plus, as the article states, most of these software firewalls allow stuff to get through without popping anything up, and some malware can even bypass the software firewall, as shown in the PoC.
IOW, personal firewalls are not only bad because stuff can get through, either through ignorance, buggy firewall software, or through crafty malware that gets past it, but they're also dangerous in that they create a false sense of security.
The best ways to truly avoid malware are to not download untrusted/unknown software, to use alternatives that are more secure (Firefox vs. IE, gaim vs AIM, Thunderbird vs. Outlook, etc.), to disable macros Microsoft Office, and to run good antivirus and anti-malware applications. Alternatively, one could use a platform that is less susceptible to malware, such as Mac OS X, Linux, or *BSD.
WTF. You serious? Why? If they can't open a freaking doorknob, what else can't they do? I mean, I'm all for ramps, hanicap parking and stuff, but there is a point where you just gotta say "look, you are going to need someone to do that for you".
Yep. If you haven't noticed, doorknobs are more and more being replaced by doors that push open, open automatically, or, nominally, by door handles that do not require grasping in order to turn them.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes it very clear that you have to make accommodations for anyone with any sort of disability to get around. This includes replacing or augmenting doorknobs with other ways of opening doors because some people with severe arthritis, Parkinson's, mental handicaps, spinal cord injuries and some other disorders simply cannot turn a doorknob.
Did somebody happen to warn these folks what Slashdot can do to a server?? any odds on how many comments it will take to bring the server to its knees??
IBM bought Internet Security Systems out of Atlanta, GA. They're a sizeable IDS solution provider and probably one of the biggest companies in the network security biz. A friend of mine works for them. I guess he'll be sporting a new big blue shirt...:)
IBM is represented by Swaine, Cravath and Moore, LLP. Todd Shaughnessy just happens to be the lead attorney assigned to the SCO v IBM case, and he also was the guy that was representing Otis Wilson in North Carolina.
I think what it probably boiled down to was the Wilson didn't want to go to Utah to file the motion to quash, so Shaughnessy filed in NC, thinking that when the judge in N.C. came across the motion, he'd call Shaughnessy to find out what it was all about. Except Shaughnessy was on vacation when that happened, and well, the rest is history.
Yep. Reliance on a very large central database. What if the database goes down? What if the database gets hacked? With the very large number of people you would have to have entering data into the system, chances are one or more those people will allow unauthorized access into the system, either intentionally or unintentionally.
What if the person checking ID loses connectivity to the database?
Example: I want to steal $25,000 out of your account. I forge your passport, complete with chip and everything. Then, my accomplice uses a DoS attack to knock out the bank's connection to the passport database.
Teller cannot verify against the database, assuming the database is down in some way. The bank, of course, has to be able to do business with or without the database, so it has a policy of visually verifying the passport against some other form of ID. I have such an ID already forged, no electronic verification takes place, ka'ching! I have your $25,000.
So you're basically telling the public that since Microsoft LOVES BSD licensed material. The majority of their products are constructed around that code-base? You're going to have a hell of a time proving that. Let alone the not so obvious to you possability that a lot of GPL code could be used, and you'd be non the wiser.
Oh, stop it. It's well-known and well-settled that the Windows TCP/IP stack is based on the BSD TCP/IP stack. It's also well-known and well-settled that several major MS packages, such as Services For Unix (SFU) use BSD and L/GPL code. Microsoft didn't exactly go out of their way to hide those facts. Besides, I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that the majority of your^H^H^H^HMicrosoft's products are BSD or GPL code of any sort. I am saying that MSFT has stated several times that they believe that there is only room for one style of open source license -- BSD. Because it is the only style of license that fits with their business model.
I don't know about VMWare or Cedega, but Nero Linux doesn't link any GPLed stuff. It would have to link glibc, but that library has a special exception for linking commercial programs against it, as does the Linux kernel. From what I can see from the Screenshots, NeroLinux is linked against GTK+ 1.2, which is licensed under LGPL. It may also use WxGTK (the dialogs seem reminiscent of some standard WxGTK dialogs), but that's also not GPL.
Most of the developers, the people who actually develop the open source software we use on a daily basis, have considered the situation and made a decision. Instead of dealing with the GPLv3, they realize that they can get just as much freedom and benefit by switching to another license. Some will just stick with the GPLv2. Many have wisely chosen to go the BSD or MIT license route. Many have actually gone the BSD or MIT route after seeing how it opens up their project for commercial development, which is often hampered by the GPL.
Name three major open source projects that have moved to BSD or MIT this year. Personally, I think you are an MSFT astroturfer. MSFT loves open source -- as long as it's BSD, they can throw it into Windows.
Speaking of which, I'm curious about how many incidents of battery fires have actually been reported. I'm aware of the famous one obviously, but how many others have been reported? Is this actually a case where dozens/hundreds of batteries are bursting into flame, or merely a case of one hugely publiscized incident? I wouldn't be surprised if Dell was issuing the recall to save face after the huge publicity of that one fire, even if the incidences dont merit it.
According to the original CNN story that was broadcast/published when the story broke, Sony's Rick Clancy had told the AP that about "a half-dozen or so fires in the United States" had occurred, causing Dell and Sony to study the problem for "more than a month." That's on top of the highly-publicised fire in Japan. Of course, 10 months is more than a month, right?
But the manufacturing defect that's causing the problem would obviously cause such problems. In TFA, a Dan Doughty from Sandia National Labratories describes the condition that occured -- metal flakes causing a short between the anode and cathode -- as causing the battery to discharge ALL of it's energy at once. Now, if you have a laptop manual handy, read the part about where it says how many Watt hours (WHr) the battery holds. A Dell Inspiron 8500 has a 72 WHr battery.
We know that by definition a Watt is the amount of joules/second. So, a 1 Watt hr = 3600 Joules per energy. Now doing the math (3600 * 72) we get 259,200 joules of energy in that Inspiron battery. Keep in mind that there is other heat around the battery as well. Now discharge those 259,200 joules all at once with all that heat around it. Putting that in perspective, a firecracker only discharges about 3900 joules of energy, while a 100g stick of dynamite discharges about 400,000 joules.
<sarcasm> But no, I'm sure they had no idea. </sarcasm>
Actually, I personaly doubt they will release it using GPL, in whatever incarnation of the license. They are more likely to get OSI approval for an open source license of their own, just like SUN and IBM did. And considering the stakes here, the approval (or not) should be handled by the OSI board as high priority.
It's going into Helix Player, which is multilicensed. The two open source licenses it currently supports are the GPL and RPSL, their own OSI-approved license. You can also license it under a commercial license.
The question is will they continue licensing Helix in this manner? Will they stop support for GPL? Or will they make the Windows Media Support a separate plugin that's not part of Helix and available under RPSL? I agree with you in that I think the last scenario is the most likely, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
And, of course, there's nothing to stop you from taking your newly cracked music file and opening it up in say, Audacity and then subsequently editing out the adverts.
From there, you'll start to see them appear on various P2P file sharing networks, and the cycle continues...
You don't like Godsmack? 3 Doors Down?
And Elton John is arguably one of the most popular recording artists ever.
Man, what do you listen to? Barry Manilow?
I don't think you have the legal right to copy material no matter what, but I do think that you have a right to use legally purchased copyrighted material on any device you own. You're right in that there is no significant legislation that says "yes, you have a right to rip your CDs into MP3s to listen to them on your MP3 player." But Betamax and other rulings do still seem to imply that, changes in legislation aside.
Copyright is intended, according to the U.S. Constitution, to give authors an incentive to produce material by allowing them a monopoly on their material for a limited time. It's not intended to force you buy music as a CD, an MP3 and in every other format in which you want to listen to it. It's not intended to be used as a weapon by some music cartel (read: RIAA), either.
Well, if you do a bit more research, I think you'll find that there are a number of cases, including Supreme Court precedents such the famous Sony Betamax case, which do state very clearly that the recording of copyrighted material for purposes of timeshifting or converting copyrighted material from one media format to another for the purposes of viewing the material on a different player are considered to be protected by fair use.
Count me in!
s/privacy/piracy
This has nothing to do with privacy. It has to do with being usable under the rights granted by fair use under the United States Copyright Act and similar laws in other countries.
Under fair use, it is my right to be able to take copyrighted music that I have legally purchased and be able to play that on any device I own. That would include being able to burn music to CDs, listen to it on an MP3 player, convert it from one format to another (say, WMA -> OGG or MP3, listen to it on my PC regardless of underlying OS (i.e., under Linux or *BSD), sample it into my music synthesizer/audio sequencer, etc. DRM prevents me from excercising my legal rights.
Or maybe you don't care about your legal rights... but one day, you will get a right taken from you that you care about. We'll see who's complaining then.
Mod parent up to +5 Insightful!
As someone who has followed Microsoft and Bill Gates intensively since before the release of Windows 3.0, I can tell you that's exactly what's going on. Microsoft is having a temporary truce with OSS while they fight Google....it's a tactical move that eases tension with the OSS community, while at the same time lulling them into a false sense of security.
MSFT knows that their tactical onslaught via the SCO trial is all but over and that the poor release timing of Vista is killing them on the desktop OS front. Not to worry. There's still Get the FUD on the server front.
Microsoft will sweet talk the Mozilla developers for now, but once they've either defeated or admitted defeat for themselves on the Google front, they'll be trying to bury Firefox. Perhaps Vista Service Pack 1 or 2 will break Firefox in nasty ways. Perhaps IIS 7.0 will detect that Firefox is running and start doing things to slow down the connection or break the page rendering. Who knows?
Remember: for Microsoft to win, everyone else has to lose. Especially Mozilla.org.
Right. But they aren't effective in that measure. Joe Sixpack gets a dialog box that says "Application IEXPLORE.exe is attempting to access the Internet" a few thousand times and he just checks "Allow" or, worse "Always Allow" enough times, he doesn't notice when the box says "Application I_pwn_j00.exe is attempting to access the Internet" so, again, he clicks "Always Allow" just like he's always done. Or, he doesn't know what I_pwn_j00.exe is, but that's what he needs to click in order to continue, so that's what he does.
Plus, as the article states, most of these software firewalls allow stuff to get through without popping anything up, and some malware can even bypass the software firewall, as shown in the PoC.
IOW, personal firewalls are not only bad because stuff can get through, either through ignorance, buggy firewall software, or through crafty malware that gets past it, but they're also dangerous in that they create a false sense of security.
The best ways to truly avoid malware are to not download untrusted/unknown software, to use alternatives that are more secure (Firefox vs. IE, gaim vs AIM, Thunderbird vs. Outlook, etc.), to disable macros Microsoft Office, and to run good antivirus and anti-malware applications. Alternatively, one could use a platform that is less susceptible to malware, such as Mac OS X, Linux, or *BSD.
Yep. If you haven't noticed, doorknobs are more and more being replaced by doors that push open, open automatically, or, nominally, by door handles that do not require grasping in order to turn them.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes it very clear that you have to make accommodations for anyone with any sort of disability to get around. This includes replacing or augmenting doorknobs with other ways of opening doors because some people with severe arthritis, Parkinson's, mental handicaps, spinal cord injuries and some other disorders simply cannot turn a doorknob.
The answer: 10.
Not to single you out, but did anyone RTFA?
... :)
IBM bought Internet Security Systems out of Atlanta, GA. They're a sizeable IDS solution provider and probably one of the biggest companies in the network security biz. A friend of mine works for them. I guess he'll be sporting a new big blue shirt
That would be like the Don worrying about the wiseguys knocking him off
IBM is represented by Swaine, Cravath and Moore, LLP. Todd Shaughnessy just happens to be the lead attorney assigned to the SCO v IBM case, and he also was the guy that was representing Otis Wilson in North Carolina.
I think what it probably boiled down to was the Wilson didn't want to go to Utah to file the motion to quash, so Shaughnessy filed in NC, thinking that when the judge in N.C. came across the motion, he'd call Shaughnessy to find out what it was all about. Except Shaughnessy was on vacation when that happened, and well, the rest is history.
Yep. Reliance on a very large central database. What if the database goes down? What if the database gets hacked? With the very large number of people you would have to have entering data into the system, chances are one or more those people will allow unauthorized access into the system, either intentionally or unintentionally.
What if the person checking ID loses connectivity to the database?
Example: I want to steal $25,000 out of your account. I forge your passport, complete with chip and everything. Then, my accomplice uses a DoS attack to knock out the bank's connection to the passport database.
Teller cannot verify against the database, assuming the database is down in some way. The bank, of course, has to be able to do business with or without the database, so it has a policy of visually verifying the passport against some other form of ID. I have such an ID already forged, no electronic verification takes place, ka'ching! I have your $25,000.
I, for one, welcome our new McDonald's-cramming, identity-stealing, drive-by-shooting North American overlo......
oh, never mind.
Oh, stop it. It's well-known and well-settled that the Windows TCP/IP stack is based on the BSD TCP/IP stack. It's also well-known and well-settled that several major MS packages, such as Services For Unix (SFU) use BSD and L/GPL code. Microsoft didn't exactly go out of their way to hide those facts. Besides, I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that the majority of your^H^H^H^HMicrosoft's products are BSD or GPL code of any sort. I am saying that MSFT has stated several times that they believe that there is only room for one style of open source license -- BSD. Because it is the only style of license that fits with their business model.
I don't know about VMWare or Cedega, but Nero Linux doesn't link any GPLed stuff. It would have to link glibc, but that library has a special exception for linking commercial programs against it, as does the Linux kernel. From what I can see from the Screenshots, NeroLinux is linked against GTK+ 1.2, which is licensed under LGPL. It may also use WxGTK (the dialogs seem reminiscent of some standard WxGTK dialogs), but that's also not GPL.
Name three major open source projects that have moved to BSD or MIT this year. Personally, I think you are an MSFT astroturfer. MSFT loves open source -- as long as it's BSD, they can throw it into Windows.
s/joules per energy/joules per second
According to the original CNN story that was broadcast/published when the story broke, Sony's Rick Clancy had told the AP that about "a half-dozen or so fires in the United States" had occurred, causing Dell and Sony to study the problem for "more than a month." That's on top of the highly-publicised fire in Japan. Of course, 10 months is more than a month, right?
But the manufacturing defect that's causing the problem would obviously cause such problems. In TFA, a Dan Doughty from Sandia National Labratories describes the condition that occured -- metal flakes causing a short between the anode and cathode -- as causing the battery to discharge ALL of it's energy at once. Now, if you have a laptop manual handy, read the part about where it says how many Watt hours (WHr) the battery holds. A Dell Inspiron 8500 has a 72 WHr battery.
We know that by definition a Watt is the amount of joules/second. So, a 1 Watt hr = 3600 Joules per energy. Now doing the math (3600 * 72) we get 259,200 joules of energy in that Inspiron battery. Keep in mind that there is other heat around the battery as well. Now discharge those 259,200 joules all at once with all that heat around it. Putting that in perspective, a firecracker only discharges about 3900 joules of energy, while a 100g stick of dynamite discharges about 400,000 joules.
<sarcasm> But no, I'm sure they had no idea. </sarcasm>
"Tunes". Duh.
Vi users probably want one of these keyboards. No dedicated caps lock key.
No, those were the Christians.
Please do not confuse the terms 'religion' and 'Christianity'. Contrary to popular belief, these terms are not synonymous.