Sooner or later, that "somewhere" where the unencrypted content will be is the monitor itself.
Yes? That's exactly what HDMI/HDCP does. Now. Today. Or would do, if those hardware vendors would just do what the entertainment industry tells them to do. Luckily for us, the whole thing is massively unpopular.:-)
Yes, and if you have the full source of "the lock", you know when and how it retrieves the key, when and how it uses the key. With the source, you are free to modify "the lock" so that it does something else when it uses the key. A copy of the content, for example.
AV software and web servers are not defective by design, they do not require that their internal workings be kept a secret for them to work. The more open they are, the easier it is to find flaws and bugs and fix them. DRM software is defective by design. They "work" by hiding the method of decryption from the user. Open sourcing such a program would expose the method of decryption, thereby rendering the entire system useless.
Open Source DRM: You get the lock and the key, and the blueprints ~ but the extract the information in any meaningful way would require so much effort and computation as to render it impractical.
You're not thinking this through.
For a DRM system to work, it has to be able to take encrypted content and display it (decrypt it) under specific circumstances. To simply view my content, the system cannot use an unreasonable amount of resources, i.e. it must be able to decrypt my movie (for example) in at least realtime when it is allowed to do so.
Then you say that this open source DRM system should work such that even though I have the encrypted content, the key, and the source to the system, I should not be able to extract the decrypted content....but we already established that the source, that I have, is of a system that CAN decrypt the content, that I have, with the key, that I also have, in a reasonable time.
Also, I see your point about having software that calls home and updates keys and blah blah blah, but those systems also do not escape the fact that at some point in time, in my own home, the DRMed content must exist in unencrypted form somewhere for it to reach my eyes and ears. It doesn't matter where any sort of key is kept, and it doesn't matter where the content is decrypted, at some place at some time, it is unencrypted. At that place, at that time, I can copy it. No exceptions.
The whole HDMI/HDCP thing is just about moving that point away from your computer (which is easily hackable) into your TV (which is less easily hackable), but it doesn't change the fact that DRM is fundamentally broken. If I can view it, I can copy it.
...and another one who also fails to see the difference between DRM and encrypted messages. Come on people!
With PGP (and GPG or whatever) your encrypted messages can be freely decrypted by the intended recipients, and outsiders can not because they do not have access to the key, and getting the key is a computationally burdening task.
With DRM, you have both the encrypted content and the key. It works by hiding the key from you so that you cannot decrypt the content at will, and instead only under whatever circumstances the software requires for it to get the key from its hiding place to decrypt the content. At some point in time the DRM software will handle the decrypted content. If it is open source, you can find this place and insert your own code there, thereby circumventing the whole scheme.
A popular tag for DRM articles on Slashdot is "defectivebydesign". This is not a buzzword or slogan or empty groupthink, it's actually true.
Repeated real life examples, studies and common sense determine that the best security is achieved by letting people know what you are doing and designing it to be computationally difficult or near impossible.
Yes, that is generally true, but we are talking about DRM here, a technology that is fundamentally flawed. It works not by keeping secrets from outsiders, it works by keeping secrets from you, the end user. If you open source it, everyone can see exactly how it does this, and circumvent it.
Ordinary DRM: You get the lock and the key, but in a black box.
Open source DRM: You get the lock, the key, and the blueprints to the entire thing.
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
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· Score: 1
Freedom means being able to do what you want with a particular piece of code. Stallman wants us to believe that restricting our rights somehow enhances our freedom.
You are restricted from locking up code, you are restricted from giving others less freedom than you received. This way the original freedoms are always preserved. This is the fundamental difference between BSD-style and GPL-style. BSD is totally free, but GPL has one single restriction that aims for a better end result with more freedom for everyone. Or, in other words:
BSD: "Do what thou wilst shall be the whole of the law."
GPL: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Now stop being a devil-worshipping BSD fanatic and join the winning team!:-D
I actually thought about that, but realized that the GP probably only would be able to program a mediocre DRM system, and as such, he would be better off keeping it closed source.:-)
Also, I don't think even the open source movement could build a truly secure DRM system. I know you're thinking of PGP, but that builds on mutually shared secrets and prevents an outsider to get access. DRM is flawed by design, since the "user" gets both the DRM system and the keys to it. If I can view it, I can copy it. End of story.:-)
You are free to code whatever you want, including a new DRM system.
You are free to license your code with whatever license you want, including the GPL.
If you release your shiny new DRM system under the GPL, you need to release the source-code for it. Releasing the source-code for a DRM system is a pretty stupid thing to do since it will make your DRM system a lot easier to circumvent. Why would you even consider releasing a DRM system under some sort of open source license?
In the previous article about this, I posted the following:
The difference between EVE and other MMORPGS is that almost all content is player-generated. It's a hardcore PvP game with heavy penalties for dying, unlike a certain other slightly more popular MMORPG, which is a casual-friendly PvE game with almost no penalties for dying. That it's PvP means that all end-game content is player-generated. The official forums are really important, because it's where the leaders and members of various alliances slag each other, and it has repercussions in the game. Basically, the game is an ongoing forum-war with battleships in space.
So, with their forums being important for the game, it attracts the kind of player that actually thinks that what's written on the internets at large is important. That's why the game constantly get top ranks at all general MMORPG forums, not because it's actually awesome or very popular, it's because its players are playing the forum war all over the internet.
And that's why you get posts like the grandparent, someone who thinks that what he writes here, on Slashdot, somehow carries over into EVE the game, and that's why you have the original article, because the players are also doing the forum war AGAINST CCP. This article is just one more way of doing that, one more way of influencing the game makers into changing the game in a way that whatever satisifes the agenda of the poster.
However, since most of the internet population does NOT play EVE, noone cares about shit like this.
It is with some satisfaction that I notice I was right.:-)
Yes and no, there are different end goals for them, but many of the building blocks are the same. You have a character, you advance him/her through levels/skills/gear, and you interact with the world to get quests that provide mini-goals and mini-rewards for you along the way.
I play a lot of World of Warcraft, and I also played a lot of Oblivion and Gothic 3, and almost every single-player RPG before that. The single-player ones have the advantage of being able to tell a story, to put you in the shoes of the ultimate hero, to allow you to change the world and finish the game, which is very satisfying. WoW, and any other MMORPG, cannot do that, but they can compete on the fundamentals.
And, after playing the above mentioned games, I have to say that WoW beats the shit out of both Gothic and Oblivion when it comes to questing and immersion and actual game mechanics and balance. There are large parts of WoW which can be played solo, and those parts are better than most single-player RPGs out there. It's just incredibly well crafted, from the interface and how you receive quests and keep track of objectives, to how the quests are designed to move you through areas and push you to explore, to the balancing of monsters and difficulty, and to the rewards you get for completing it. You can play any class, and you'll be able to move through the quest chains and get meaningful rewards.
The corresponding mechanics of Oblivion and Gothic 3 are just not as polished. Yes, there's a quest tracker of sorts, and it's non-linear, and you get rewards, and maybe you can do things in different ways, but the overall experience is not as great as WoW. Single-player games don't need the MMO-part of MMORPGs, but I really wish they would all be as great at the fundamentals as WoW actually is. That is something for them to learn.
The difference between EVE and other MMORPGS is that almost all content is player-generated. It's a hardcore PvP game with heavy penalties for dying, unlike a certain other slightly more popular MMORPG, which is a casual-friendly PvE game with almost no penalties for dying. That it's PvP means that all end-game content is player-generated. The official forums are really important, because it's where the leaders and members of various alliances slag each other, and it has repercussions in the game. Basically, the game is an ongoing forum-war with battleships in space.
So, with their forums being important for the game, it attracts the kind of player that actually thinks that what's written on the internets at large is important. That's why the game constantly get top ranks at all general MMORPG forums, not because it's actually awesome or very popular, it's because its players are playing the forum war all over the internet.
And that's why you get posts like the grandparent, someone who thinks that what he writes here, on Slashdot, somehow carries over into EVE the game, and that's why you have the original article, because the players are also doing the forum war AGAINST CCP. This article is just one more way of doing that, one more way of influencing the game makers into changing the game in a way that whatever satisifes the agenda of the poster.
However, since most of the internet population does NOT play EVE, noone cares about shit like this.
I'm sorry, but that would be a pretty stupid system.
There are problems with our representative democracies, but effectively going back to a direct democracy won't solve anything. Representative democracy is a direct cause of the division of labour which is the main reason our civilization is as advanced as it is. Instead of everyone farming their own food, building their own tools, writing their own programs, performing their own surgery, being their own lawyers and making their own political decisions, we divide the labour. I farm, you code, Johnny performs surgery and Karen sues people and everyone is happy doing what they're best at.
The important thing to remember about representatives is not that they should vote AS their constituents, but that they should make INFORMED DECISIONS in the interest of their contituents. That's the labour we divide to our representatives, to inform themselves of what a political decision means or leads to in the future, to inform themselves of the political landscape and the compromises needed to get a certain policy accepted, to see the big picture, to enact long-term policies for the benefit of their constituents, even though it might be bad in the short term. And, most importantly, to take personal responsibility for the votes cast as an elected official.
You forget some things about political decisions that would get totally lost in your suggested system.
1) Most decisions are incredibly boring regarding concerns that are interesting only to a small minority of the population. With direct democracy, everyone would have to spend time informing themselves of the impact of the fishing quotas of the North Atlantic to make the best decision. But seriously, people won't, they'll just press a little vote button on your webpage and not care what was enacted as a result. Ooops, we bankrupted an entire industry, oh well, noone *I* knew...
2) There's a lot of decisions like the one above, with direct democracy, so everyone would have to check your webpage every day, vote on the issues in a sensible manner, taking time away from whatever else they were doing. Why should people do this every day for the rest of their lives? If everyone does not participate every day, then it's no longer the will of the people, but the will of the people who can be bothered to do this every day, or have time to do this every day. Your average working parent who make up the bulk of the taxpayers will not have time for this, making the "decisions" pretty skewed.
3) Everyone does not have access to the internet every day. Seriously, get some perspectives.
4) You may think that the representatives are biased or lobbied into submission or corrupt, but why would ordinary people be any better? If people believe in ads, what's to stop them from believing in every political ad on their TV, comfortably telling them what to vote for tomorrow?
5) Voter turnout here is about 80%. That means that 20% of the eligible population can't be bothered to make ONE decision every FOURTH YEAR. That's not a lot of work. And you want these people to make decisions every day or at least every week? About things they care even less for than high-level general political ideology?
6) Referendums always lack personal responsibility. "It is the will of the people" is a great way to not have to stand for your actions. Part of the job of being an elected official is to make decisions and take personal responsibility for them. If an official makes decisions that the constituents really dislike, he/she will be voted out of office and someone who makes decisions that are better in line with the voters will take his/her place. But if everyone is voting on every issue, who is responsible for the bad ones? What's stopping people from only making badly-informed, short-sighted decisions that benefit themselves financially in the short run, but are devastating to the country in the long run? You can't vote the voters out of office. You could never have a regime-change in your system, with all the benefits that follow those.
Most of the other requirements are at least in some sort of feasible realm, they deal with which DSL modem at what address had what IP at what time, and which cellphone called which other. It's intrusive and bad, but at least tied to hardware and physical location. However, I missed this part:
(2) concerning Internet e-mail and Internet telephony: (i) the user ID or telephone number of the intended recipient(s) of an Internet telephony call; (ii) the name(s) and address(es) of the subscriber(s) or registered user(s) and user ID of the intended recipient of the communication;
Given a wide interpretation of "internet e-mail", say that we include forum posts, that would require everyone who has a PhpBB or equivalent to store the headers of all posts the required time. This is insane. Also, say that we include Skype in "internet telephony call", just who is supposed to store the call details if it's done peer-to-peer? If only the peers know that a call has taken place, why would they store it somewhere if they don't want to?
It's pretty clear that this directive is written by people who think of the internet in the same terms as plain old telephony, which is highly centralized and under the control of a few corporate entities with business interests in the member states. Luckily, we're moving away from that model faster and faster.
The data retention directive only applies to ISPs, and only deals with who you "communicate" with. It does not explicitly say that a record of which websites you visit should be retained, and it explicitly says that the content of the communication must not be retained.
However, as for all EU directives, it only contains the baseline of regulation. Directives are never law themselves, but have to be implemented in each respective member state by each respective legislative body. These, in turn, are free to implement whatever they want ABOVE the baseline, so some member states may have longer retention periods for this data, some member states may require ISPs to retain additional data.
The deadline for this directive is September this year, but if you read it, a few member states have reserved the option to postpone parts of the directive, typically of the internet-related traffic. This basically means that they recognize the difficulties in implementing it, and want more time to think about on how to do it, or possibly obstruct it.
What all of this boils down to is that maybe, sometime in the future, if you have an European ISP, they may be required to store all the URLs that you access. Google search data is transmitted as querystring parameters that are part of the URL, which means that your search data may be stored by your ISP, in a non-anonymized way. There's nothing in this possible future that Google has to comply with, as long as they are not an European ISP.
The Kuiper belt has a lot of stuff in it. If Pluto is a planet, what is Eris, Ceres, Varuna, Ixion, Quaoar, and Orcus? All of those are definitely in the same ballpark as Pluto, should we upgrade all of those to planet status as well? Or should we only keep Pluto classified as a planet, since that's the object we discovered first?
The discovery of Pluto isn't lessened because we since have discovered objects with the same characteristics, We know now that it was premature to call it a planet, but it was still a remarkable achievement.
You're just jealous because our stuff actually is used by a lot of people, whereas your toaster-controller, written in C, with a user-interface noone understands only got five downloads from Tucows. And one of them was your cat jumping up on your keyboard.
Although please note that they're not finished counting yet, they've done 4626 out of 6177 districts, so check back regularly for updates and the final result.
Legal actions are intensifying against resellers involved in defrauding consumers and businesses with counterfeit and pirated software. Microsoft has filed over 70 lawsuits in the last year alone.
This is a good thing. A lot of people have no problems with downloading software or other copyrighted materials illegaly, as long as it is for free. But a lot of people are against selling such items, or making a profit off of it. Unfortunately, the copyright lobby views both groups as filthy stinking pirates, but the public don't really care about the first group, and only view the second group as the real pirates that actually ought to be punished for it.
What Microsoft is doing here, is targeting the second group only. And that is a good thing.
When your system lacks HDCP compatibility, it will not be possible to play the content in full HD resolution.
No, the DRM technologies are required for you to be ALLOWED to play back the content you purchased in full HD resolution. It's not like the DRM is somehow technically necessary for the playback of HD video, although the article sure makes it sound like it.
I've been using them for more than ten years here. I have a dim memory of them being kinda slow to turn on when they first came, but for the past five years the ones I've been using have turned on almost-instantly, and produced light that is identical to ordinary lightbulbs.
So what happened in the US to make them fail so miserably at their introduction? The only bad press we've gotten over here is that they're a bit trickier to dispose of since they (used to?) contain a small amount of quicksilver.
Apple's version of Windows Search will now search other Mac clients and workgroup servers, functionality that Microsoft will add to Windows Vista with the release of Vista SP1 and Longhorn Server in late 2007. It will also support advanced search features, like better search syntax, just like Windows Search. And, as with Windows Vista, you'll be able to launch applications and find recent items with Spotlight. Gee, Spotlight still seems an awful lot like Windows Search.
He's actually saying that Spotlight is a ripoff of something that won't even be released in the first version of Vista, but something that will only come in the first service pack, more than a year from now. I can see how this could be true... If time flowed backwards.
What kind of a loopy, loopy world does Paul Thurott live in?
The funniest thing is that a lot of websites are hardcoded to only accept IE5 and IE6, and will tell the user to upgrade to IE6 if it doesn't detect it. Poor IE7 users are gonna be so annoyed.:-)
May I suggest you don't major in law, considering that you seem unable to grasp the difference between copyright infringement and theft?
Too bad the article doesn't mention how common iTunes or other online music stores are, that sell their music so the buyer can own it and move it to any portable device. It has been said before, but pirated music in mp3 format without DRM is a completely superior product to the downloadable crap the industry has been trying to sell. That it's legal is not a good enough selling point, and it doesn't tip anyone over if you can't own it, move it, or share it.
The Recording Industry Association of America says it has been happy with the progress the program has made so far. "Universities tend to move not all that quick to do things like this, so it's really quite an achievement," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like Costa Rica?
d -factbook/geos/cs.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worl
(Ok, they're not completely without a military, but getting pretty close to it)
Yes? That's exactly what HDMI/HDCP does. Now. Today. Or would do, if those hardware vendors would just do what the entertainment industry tells them to do. Luckily for us, the whole thing is massively unpopular.
Yes, and if you have the full source of "the lock", you know when and how it retrieves the key, when and how it uses the key. With the source, you are free to modify "the lock" so that it does something else when it uses the key. A copy of the content, for example.
AV software and web servers are not defective by design, they do not require that their internal workings be kept a secret for them to work. The more open they are, the easier it is to find flaws and bugs and fix them. DRM software is defective by design. They "work" by hiding the method of decryption from the user. Open sourcing such a program would expose the method of decryption, thereby rendering the entire system useless.
You're not thinking this through.
For a DRM system to work, it has to be able to take encrypted content and display it (decrypt it) under specific circumstances. To simply view my content, the system cannot use an unreasonable amount of resources, i.e. it must be able to decrypt my movie (for example) in at least realtime when it is allowed to do so.
Then you say that this open source DRM system should work such that even though I have the encrypted content, the key, and the source to the system, I should not be able to extract the decrypted content.
Also, I see your point about having software that calls home and updates keys and blah blah blah, but those systems also do not escape the fact that at some point in time, in my own home, the DRMed content must exist in unencrypted form somewhere for it to reach my eyes and ears. It doesn't matter where any sort of key is kept, and it doesn't matter where the content is decrypted, at some place at some time, it is unencrypted. At that place, at that time, I can copy it. No exceptions.
The whole HDMI/HDCP thing is just about moving that point away from your computer (which is easily hackable) into your TV (which is less easily hackable), but it doesn't change the fact that DRM is fundamentally broken. If I can view it, I can copy it.
...and another one who also fails to see the difference between DRM and encrypted messages. Come on people!
With PGP (and GPG or whatever) your encrypted messages can be freely decrypted by the intended recipients, and outsiders can not because they do not have access to the key, and getting the key is a computationally burdening task.
With DRM, you have both the encrypted content and the key. It works by hiding the key from you so that you cannot decrypt the content at will, and instead only under whatever circumstances the software requires for it to get the key from its hiding place to decrypt the content. At some point in time the DRM software will handle the decrypted content. If it is open source, you can find this place and insert your own code there, thereby circumventing the whole scheme.
A popular tag for DRM articles on Slashdot is "defectivebydesign". This is not a buzzword or slogan or empty groupthink, it's actually true.
Yes, that is generally true, but we are talking about DRM here, a technology that is fundamentally flawed. It works not by keeping secrets from outsiders, it works by keeping secrets from you, the end user. If you open source it, everyone can see exactly how it does this, and circumvent it.
Ordinary DRM: You get the lock and the key, but in a black box.
Open source DRM: You get the lock, the key, and the blueprints to the entire thing.
You are restricted from locking up code, you are restricted from giving others less freedom than you received. This way the original freedoms are always preserved. This is the fundamental difference between BSD-style and GPL-style. BSD is totally free, but GPL has one single restriction that aims for a better end result with more freedom for everyone. Or, in other words:
BSD: "Do what thou wilst shall be the whole of the law."
GPL: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Now stop being a devil-worshipping BSD fanatic and join the winning team!
I actually thought about that, but realized that the GP probably only would be able to program a mediocre DRM system, and as such, he would be better off keeping it closed source. :-)
:-)
Also, I don't think even the open source movement could build a truly secure DRM system. I know you're thinking of PGP, but that builds on mutually shared secrets and prevents an outsider to get access. DRM is flawed by design, since the "user" gets both the DRM system and the keys to it. If I can view it, I can copy it. End of story.
Uh, what?
You are free to code whatever you want, including a new DRM system.
You are free to license your code with whatever license you want, including the GPL.
If you release your shiny new DRM system under the GPL, you need to release the source-code for it. Releasing the source-code for a DRM system is a pretty stupid thing to do since it will make your DRM system a lot easier to circumvent. Why would you even consider releasing a DRM system under some sort of open source license?
It is with some satisfaction that I notice I was right.
Yes and no, there are different end goals for them, but many of the building blocks are the same. You have a character, you advance him/her through levels/skills/gear, and you interact with the world to get quests that provide mini-goals and mini-rewards for you along the way.
I play a lot of World of Warcraft, and I also played a lot of Oblivion and Gothic 3, and almost every single-player RPG before that. The single-player ones have the advantage of being able to tell a story, to put you in the shoes of the ultimate hero, to allow you to change the world and finish the game, which is very satisfying. WoW, and any other MMORPG, cannot do that, but they can compete on the fundamentals.
And, after playing the above mentioned games, I have to say that WoW beats the shit out of both Gothic and Oblivion when it comes to questing and immersion and actual game mechanics and balance. There are large parts of WoW which can be played solo, and those parts are better than most single-player RPGs out there. It's just incredibly well crafted, from the interface and how you receive quests and keep track of objectives, to how the quests are designed to move you through areas and push you to explore, to the balancing of monsters and difficulty, and to the rewards you get for completing it. You can play any class, and you'll be able to move through the quest chains and get meaningful rewards.
The corresponding mechanics of Oblivion and Gothic 3 are just not as polished. Yes, there's a quest tracker of sorts, and it's non-linear, and you get rewards, and maybe you can do things in different ways, but the overall experience is not as great as WoW. Single-player games don't need the MMO-part of MMORPGs, but I really wish they would all be as great at the fundamentals as WoW actually is. That is something for them to learn.
The difference between EVE and other MMORPGS is that almost all content is player-generated. It's a hardcore PvP game with heavy penalties for dying, unlike a certain other slightly more popular MMORPG, which is a casual-friendly PvE game with almost no penalties for dying. That it's PvP means that all end-game content is player-generated. The official forums are really important, because it's where the leaders and members of various alliances slag each other, and it has repercussions in the game. Basically, the game is an ongoing forum-war with battleships in space.
So, with their forums being important for the game, it attracts the kind of player that actually thinks that what's written on the internets at large is important. That's why the game constantly get top ranks at all general MMORPG forums, not because it's actually awesome or very popular, it's because its players are playing the forum war all over the internet.
And that's why you get posts like the grandparent, someone who thinks that what he writes here, on Slashdot, somehow carries over into EVE the game, and that's why you have the original article, because the players are also doing the forum war AGAINST CCP. This article is just one more way of doing that, one more way of influencing the game makers into changing the game in a way that whatever satisifes the agenda of the poster.
However, since most of the internet population does NOT play EVE, noone cares about shit like this.
I'm sorry, but that would be a pretty stupid system.
There are problems with our representative democracies, but effectively going back to a direct democracy won't solve anything. Representative democracy is a direct cause of the division of labour which is the main reason our civilization is as advanced as it is. Instead of everyone farming their own food, building their own tools, writing their own programs, performing their own surgery, being their own lawyers and making their own political decisions, we divide the labour. I farm, you code, Johnny performs surgery and Karen sues people and everyone is happy doing what they're best at.
The important thing to remember about representatives is not that they should vote AS their constituents, but that they should make INFORMED DECISIONS in the interest of their contituents. That's the labour we divide to our representatives, to inform themselves of what a political decision means or leads to in the future, to inform themselves of the political landscape and the compromises needed to get a certain policy accepted, to see the big picture, to enact long-term policies for the benefit of their constituents, even though it might be bad in the short term. And, most importantly, to take personal responsibility for the votes cast as an elected official.
You forget some things about political decisions that would get totally lost in your suggested system.
1) Most decisions are incredibly boring regarding concerns that are interesting only to a small minority of the population. With direct democracy, everyone would have to spend time informing themselves of the impact of the fishing quotas of the North Atlantic to make the best decision. But seriously, people won't, they'll just press a little vote button on your webpage and not care what was enacted as a result. Ooops, we bankrupted an entire industry, oh well, noone *I* knew...
2) There's a lot of decisions like the one above, with direct democracy, so everyone would have to check your webpage every day, vote on the issues in a sensible manner, taking time away from whatever else they were doing. Why should people do this every day for the rest of their lives? If everyone does not participate every day, then it's no longer the will of the people, but the will of the people who can be bothered to do this every day, or have time to do this every day. Your average working parent who make up the bulk of the taxpayers will not have time for this, making the "decisions" pretty skewed.
3) Everyone does not have access to the internet every day. Seriously, get some perspectives.
4) You may think that the representatives are biased or lobbied into submission or corrupt, but why would ordinary people be any better? If people believe in ads, what's to stop them from believing in every political ad on their TV, comfortably telling them what to vote for tomorrow?
5) Voter turnout here is about 80%. That means that 20% of the eligible population can't be bothered to make ONE decision every FOURTH YEAR. That's not a lot of work. And you want these people to make decisions every day or at least every week? About things they care even less for than high-level general political ideology?
6) Referendums always lack personal responsibility. "It is the will of the people" is a great way to not have to stand for your actions. Part of the job of being an elected official is to make decisions and take personal responsibility for them. If an official makes decisions that the constituents really dislike, he/she will be voted out of office and someone who makes decisions that are better in line with the voters will take his/her place. But if everyone is voting on every issue, who is responsible for the bad ones? What's stopping people from only making badly-informed, short-sighted decisions that benefit themselves financially in the short run, but are devastating to the country in the long run? You can't vote the voters out of office. You could never have a regime-change in your system, with all the benefits that follow those.
Most of the other requirements are at least in some sort of feasible realm, they deal with which DSL modem at what address had what IP at what time, and which cellphone called which other. It's intrusive and bad, but at least tied to hardware and physical location. However, I missed this part:
Given a wide interpretation of "internet e-mail", say that we include forum posts, that would require everyone who has a PhpBB or equivalent to store the headers of all posts the required time. This is insane. Also, say that we include Skype in "internet telephony call", just who is supposed to store the call details if it's done peer-to-peer? If only the peers know that a call has taken place, why would they store it somewhere if they don't want to?
It's pretty clear that this directive is written by people who think of the internet in the same terms as plain old telephony, which is highly centralized and under the control of a few corporate entities with business interests in the member states. Luckily, we're moving away from that model faster and faster.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=CELEX:32006L0024:EN:NOT
The data retention directive only applies to ISPs, and only deals with who you "communicate" with. It does not explicitly say that a record of which websites you visit should be retained, and it explicitly says that the content of the communication must not be retained.
However, as for all EU directives, it only contains the baseline of regulation. Directives are never law themselves, but have to be implemented in each respective member state by each respective legislative body. These, in turn, are free to implement whatever they want ABOVE the baseline, so some member states may have longer retention periods for this data, some member states may require ISPs to retain additional data.
The deadline for this directive is September this year, but if you read it, a few member states have reserved the option to postpone parts of the directive, typically of the internet-related traffic. This basically means that they recognize the difficulties in implementing it, and want more time to think about on how to do it, or possibly obstruct it.
What all of this boils down to is that maybe, sometime in the future, if you have an European ISP, they may be required to store all the URLs that you access. Google search data is transmitted as querystring parameters that are part of the URL, which means that your search data may be stored by your ISP, in a non-anonymized way. There's nothing in this possible future that Google has to comply with, as long as they are not an European ISP.
The Kuiper belt has a lot of stuff in it. If Pluto is a planet, what is Eris, Ceres, Varuna, Ixion, Quaoar, and Orcus? All of those are definitely in the same ballpark as Pluto, should we upgrade all of those to planet status as well? Or should we only keep Pluto classified as a planet, since that's the object we discovered first? The discovery of Pluto isn't lessened because we since have discovered objects with the same characteristics, We know now that it was premature to call it a planet, but it was still a remarkable achievement.
You're just jealous because our stuff actually is used by a lot of people, whereas your toaster-controller, written in C, with a user-interface noone understands only got five downloads from Tucows. And one of them was your cat jumping up on your keyboard.
So slashdot reports that Wired reports that the leader of the Pirate Party said that the results were...
g a.html
u ltat_00R.xml
Uhm, people, you can check this for yourselves:
http://www.val.se/val/val2006/slutlig/R/rike/ovri
If you prefer the full election result in XML format, you can find it here:
http://www.val.se/val/val2006/slutlig/xml/slutres
Although please note that they're not finished counting yet, they've done 4626 out of 6177 districts, so check back regularly for updates and the final result.
This is a good thing. A lot of people have no problems with downloading software or other copyrighted materials illegaly, as long as it is for free. But a lot of people are against selling such items, or making a profit off of it. Unfortunately, the copyright lobby views both groups as filthy stinking pirates, but the public don't really care about the first group, and only view the second group as the real pirates that actually ought to be punished for it.
What Microsoft is doing here, is targeting the second group only. And that is a good thing.
No, the DRM technologies are required for you to be ALLOWED to play back the content you purchased in full HD resolution. It's not like the DRM is somehow technically necessary for the playback of HD video, although the article sure makes it sound like it.
I've been using them for more than ten years here. I have a dim memory of them being kinda slow to turn on when they first came, but for the past five years the ones I've been using have turned on almost-instantly, and produced light that is identical to ordinary lightbulbs.
So what happened in the US to make them fail so miserably at their introduction? The only bad press we've gotten over here is that they're a bit trickier to dispose of since they (used to?) contain a small amount of quicksilver.
The funniest thing is that a lot of websites are hardcoded to only accept IE5 and IE6, and will tell the user to upgrade to IE6 if it doesn't detect it. Poor IE7 users are gonna be so annoyed. :-)
May I suggest you don't major in law, considering that you seem unable to grasp the difference between copyright infringement and theft?
Too bad the article doesn't mention how common iTunes or other online music stores are, that sell their music so the buyer can own it and move it to any portable device. It has been said before, but pirated music in mp3 format without DRM is a completely superior product to the downloadable crap the industry has been trying to sell. That it's legal is not a good enough selling point, and it doesn't tip anyone over if you can't own it, move it, or share it.
Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.