The real value of DRM is in implementing operating system features like 'check this machine does not have a trojan' or controlling circulation of private documents.
So why is the only DRM that we ever hear about that which 'protects' entertainment media distributed by the large corporations?
It is not quite true that no company is interested in selling their media without DRM. At least one, magnatune, sells their media in a variety of formats with no DRM.
In no jurisdiction that I am aware of is it illegal to rip and listen to a DRM-unencumbered CD (or record, or tape) that you already own. I would not be surprised if existing music collections is actually the bulk of material listened to.
It is illegal in the UK though many people do it and the authorities seem to be turning a blind eye.
Microsoft Basic is not even a particularly good BASIC. My first introduction to BASIC was in the mid 1970s on an HP2000 system at college. This was vastly superior to the MS BASIC. Even the Locomotive BASIC on the Amstrad CPC home computers (Z80) was superior to the (later) PC and GW-BASIC on PCs.
Until Windows 95 came out (and 3.11 to a lesser extent)... NO ONE HAD PC's AT HOME.
That is not true. The home market for PCs started when Amstrad introduced their range of low-cost PCs, and these shipped with MSDOS and Windows 2.x (the 'top-of-the-range Amstrad 386 which I once owned came with Windows-386)
I think that firefox is right here. Yellow = warning, which is appropriate here. The site is using SSL, so the yellow could be a warning to check that the (highlighted) URL is from the expected site.
That one is very easily countered. You encrypt the swap partition with a random key (from/dev/random or/dev/urandom) on every boot, so once the system is powered off the only way to recover the contents of the swap is by brute force attack.
Which is why you fill the drive with random data (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hdx) before creating the encrypted partition. So it is not possible to tell if any given disk sector is part of a file or is unused until the partition is decrypted.
Will the Microsoft (or most other commercial software) telephone support provide fixes for bugs? No, all they will do is help you use the software or suggest work-arounds for bugs. If you are lucky 'your' bug might be fixed in the next (or later) release of software for which you will (normally) have to pay.
Why should the 'respectable' press have more rights than any other publisher? I may be totally wrong, but I suspect that the "press" whose freedom was enshrined in the first amendment bears little resemblance to the current media conglomerates who publish most of the newspaper, own TV stations etc. I would suggest that the modern day blog, and sites such as Slashdot are much closer to the 'press' at the time when the amendment was written than are the modern day newspapers and TV news stations.
At one time almost everyone used WordPerfect and were used to its user interface. Then in a very short space of time, the majority of people moved to MS Word which had a completely different user interface. So, just because almost everyone is using a particular product and user interface does not mean another product cannot take over, sometimes very quickly, the dominant and standard position.
who would pay to see TV shows and such when they could use a TV?
1) People who cannot receive the station which airs the show and where the show will either never been shown by stations they can receive or there will be a long delay before the show is shown. This applies especially to shows from stations in countries other than that where the would be viewer lives.
2) When you miss the show and there is not an imminent repeat.
Could you not have asked them to measure the actual line characteristics from your new address? While many ISPs quote a distance restriction, what are actually important are the attenuation and signal/noise ratio. When quoting distance limits, they use 'standard' line characteristics. So it is possible that your line may work even if initial (paper) checks show that it is too far from the switch. So it is always a good idea to get someone to actually test your line for suitability.
Are you sure that fonts are code? I would have thought that the font rendering engine is the code and the representation of each character within the font is data.
How can they force you to use the land line phone? They can require a voice telephone line to be provisioned together with the DSL, and they can charge line rental on it, but how can they force you to connect a telephone instrument to it and make and receive calls on the line?
And when they are overturned, not only should the entity holding the invalid patent be made to compensate the person challenging the patent, but the patent office should also be forced to pay compensation for not being vigillent in checking the validity of the patent before issuing it.
The difference there is that you do not expect the ads in an old newspaper to be current, but you do expect those in the issue of a newspaper or magazine which you have just purchased from the news vendor to be reasonably current.
Looking on the web for a price or menu is like looking in the current issue of a newspaper or magazine.
Slashdot Mirror
The real value of DRM is in implementing operating system features like 'check this machine does not have a trojan' or controlling circulation of private documents.
So why is the only DRM that we ever hear about that which 'protects' entertainment media distributed by the large corporations?
It is not quite true that no company is interested in selling their media without DRM. At least one, magnatune, sells their media in a variety of formats with no DRM.
Add to that the fact that FAT has been around for more than ten years (if I'm not wrong)
Make that at least 25 years as the original IBM PC (released in 1981) used FAT format floppies.
In no jurisdiction that I am aware of is it illegal to rip and listen to a DRM-unencumbered CD (or record, or tape) that you already own. I would not be surprised if existing music collections is actually the bulk of material listened to.
It is illegal in the UK though many people do it and the authorities seem to be turning a blind eye.
What is the penalty for lying to congress?
Microsoft Basic is not even a particularly good BASIC. My first introduction to BASIC was in the mid 1970s on an HP2000 system at college. This was vastly superior to the MS BASIC. Even the Locomotive BASIC on the Amstrad CPC home computers (Z80) was superior to the (later) PC and GW-BASIC on PCs.
Until Windows 95 came out (and 3.11 to a lesser extent)... NO ONE HAD PC's AT HOME.
That is not true. The home market for PCs started when Amstrad introduced their range of low-cost PCs, and these shipped with MSDOS and Windows 2.x (the 'top-of-the-range Amstrad 386 which I once owned came with Windows-386)
And also the Amstrad PC clones, which were probably reponsable for moving the PC from being almost exclusively office machines into the home market.
I think that firefox is right here. Yellow = warning, which is appropriate here. The site is using SSL, so the yellow could be a warning to check that the (highlighted) URL is from the expected site.
That one is very easily countered. You encrypt the swap partition with a random key (from /dev/random or /dev/urandom) on every boot, so once the system is powered off the only way to recover the contents of the swap is by brute force attack.
Which is why you fill the drive with random data (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hdx) before creating the encrypted partition. So it is not possible to tell if any given disk sector is part of a file or is unused until the partition is decrypted.
Will the Microsoft (or most other commercial software) telephone support provide fixes for bugs? No, all they will do is help you use the software or suggest work-arounds for bugs. If you are lucky 'your' bug might be fixed in the next (or later) release of software for which you will (normally) have to pay.
Why should the 'respectable' press have more rights than any other publisher? I may be totally wrong, but I suspect that the "press" whose freedom was enshrined in the first amendment bears little resemblance to the current media conglomerates who publish most of the newspaper, own TV stations etc. I would suggest that the modern day blog, and sites such as Slashdot are much closer to the 'press' at the time when the amendment was written than are the modern day newspapers and TV news stations.
At one time almost everyone used WordPerfect and were used to its user interface. Then in a very short space of time, the majority of people moved to MS Word which had a completely different user interface. So, just because almost everyone is using a particular product and user interface does not mean another product cannot take over, sometimes very quickly, the dominant and standard position.
Surely they already have the software for doing it. So why do they need to hire more programmers for it?
Could you not have asked them to measure the actual line characteristics from your new address? While many ISPs quote a distance restriction, what are actually important are the attenuation and signal/noise ratio. When quoting distance limits, they use 'standard' line characteristics. So it is possible that your line may work even if initial (paper) checks show that it is too far from the switch. So it is always a good idea to get someone to actually test your line for suitability.
Konqueror 3.2.1 here is affected.
Plus also, the taste (and therefore the recipe) of coke-a-cola varies from country to country.
How does a negative lookup poison the cache? If the name being looked up is not valid, then the negative response is genuine and is not poisoning.
Are you sure that fonts are code? I would have thought that the font rendering engine is the code and the representation of each character within the font is data.
How can they force you to use the land line phone? They can require a voice telephone line to be provisioned together with the DSL, and they can charge line rental on it, but how can they force you to connect a telephone instrument to it and make and receive calls on the line?
And when they are overturned, not only should the entity holding the invalid patent be made to compensate the person challenging the patent, but the patent office should also be forced to pay compensation for not being vigillent in checking the validity of the patent before issuing it.
Or if it was a delivery? If the web page says your pizza will cost £10.00, would you be happy if the delivery boy wants £12.00 when he brings it?
The difference there is that you do not expect the ads in an old newspaper to be current, but you do expect those in the issue of a newspaper or magazine which you have just purchased from the news vendor to be reasonably current.
Looking on the web for a price or menu is like looking in the current issue of a newspaper or magazine.