Why did the BBC article not include a link to a valid non-latin URL so we could see how our browsers cope? Even if the page is not understandable, it would be nice to know that the pages load.
For many of AAISP's customers, there is a much simpler way that the rights holders could contact the potential infringer directly. AAISP only supply fixed static IP (both IPv4 & IPv6) addresses to customers and a whois on these addresses identify the customer. Of course, if the customer is a private individual, the privacy laws allow him to suppress much of the personal details from the whois record. So rather than needing a court order, all the rights holder has to do is issue a whois query on the alleged offending IP address.
It's something akin to power companies demanding a cut of TV ad revenue, since if it wasn't for them, there'd be no TV at all!
Or more like the power companies demanding payment from the TV companies because of the peaks in power demand which come during the TV ad breaks as lots of people turn on the kettle at the same time. Or the water/sewerage companies because of peaks in demand as lots of people run water to fill the kettles and flush their toilets during the ad breaks. It does not help with this that, at least in the UK, most stations co-ordinate their ad breaks to discourage channel hopping.
But the opposite is not true either. One reason for the success of the PC architecture is its openness. Just look at how well the IBM PS/2 with non-open MCA fared compared with system using ISA and PCI (in all their variants).
No, only desktop users need a browser. Many (probably most) servers have no need of a browser and many will be headless. Neither do most (things like PDAs and phones being exceptions) embedded systems (some of which run Windows) need a browser. However all of these need an operating system.
Which immediately disqualifies any tracks released under Creative Commons.
Personally, I think a fairer system would be for the charts (at least the online ones) to use a system like last.fm's audioscrobber and record what tracks people play rather than the ones they buy. Now that many music playing systems are internet connected, this should not be beyond the realms of possibility.
Anyway, I'm still confused about this 'right to encryption' so dearly defended by lots of people here. => if the authorities have a search-warrant, they are allowed to take pretty much any paper that has something incriminating on it with them. When they ask, you're supposed to open the doors, lockers, safes, etc... so they can get to whatever is behind it. IMHO, same goes for digital encryption. (Sure you could choose not to comply and let them use force to get at it... but if you're 'innocent' I fail to see how that would be beneficial for you !?)
I do not think it is the same for encryption. With papers, if the writing on them is in code then they have the physical paper but not access to the information written on it. Similarly with digital encryption, they have the physical zeros and ones but cannot understand the meaning. Forcing you to decrypt the digital data is more like forcing you to decode written documents than forcing you to open a locked filing cabinet or safe.
When I open the boot (trunk for those in the USA) of the car and the policeman finds a handwritten journal which is in code, does the warrant allow him (or can he get a warrant) to force me to decode the contents of the journal? Forcing you to decode the contents of the journal could (depending on the actual plaintext) be self-incrimination. To my mind, the only difference between paper documents written in code and encrypted files on a computer is the medium on which the documents are stored.
And 'If the DRM requires a central server, and you shut it down, you have to provide a version that works without the server or refund everyone's money'.
And force the companies to put a non-DRM version in escrow so that if the company goes out of business the purchasers can be supplied with a working version.
Deceptive? As long as it is 'DRM'ed, it is 'owned' by the company, plain and simple.
DRM = Digital Rights Management. One of the rights (in fact the major right) when purchasing a music recording is the right to play the media and listen to the music. If this is not in perpetuity (or at least as long as the purchases has possession of the physical media) then the music has not be purchased, it has been hired.
What we need is something completely different. But it's already been pretty much proven that nothing that's not compatible has a chance because of Microsoft's monopoly-driven stranglehold. Catch-22. Either you die (or eke out your life in a small niche, as many do), or you mutate and grow into an enormous ugly bug that can never have quite the same properties as the monster it strives to exceed.
I suspect that much the same thing was said about compatibility with WordPerfect before it lost out, almost overnight, to Microsoft Word.
Different owners of copyrights in the given region.
In the modern 'wired' world, this does not make sense at all. The copyright owner might license various companies to create and distribute copies in different parts of the world, but how can they sell the copyright more than once? Once they have sold it once, it is no longer theirs to sell again.
But there is a rather big connection -- creating good art requires a lot of time, talent, effort and money. If art does not pay, then the artist cannot devote time to this endeavor. For example, "Star Trek, the TV series" is of lower production quality than "Star Trek, the Movie" because revenue from TV advertising is tiny compared to revenue from ticket and DVD sales of movies.
But production quality is not the same as the artistic quality of the 'product'.
So you put the back of the ATM in a secure, alarmed, location (eg a bank's vault) so that the technician or filler has to lock themselves in the room which gives access to the back of the ATM before opening it and working on it. That way the only thing the public see is either a blank screen or one displaying 'out of service'.
Why are they done with sales? So what is the share of Windows-3.x or MS/PC-DOS? If you just count sales then you must also take account of systems being scrapped, replaced or upgraded and not count the same computer twice (or more times).
What should be important is share of usage, measured in hours sat in front of the system. Though this is even harder to measure than number of installations.
BT, and other telecos and ISPs, have never had 'common carrier' status. AFAIK the only organisations which have are those such as the Railways who transport physical goods.
I can remember when cash on delivery was common in the UK. Now you cannot even pay the postman if the sender has underpayed the postage or there are customs charges to pay - the postman just leaves a card and you have to go to the delivery office, pay and collect.
I think that most of the comments so far have missed the point. The problem is not caused by delayed flushing of buffers, but in delaying allocating the space for the new (or the data in a truncated) file. ext4 still flushes with a (default) 5s delay, the same as ext3, but it only does so for blocks which have been allocated disk space.
There are a number of reasons for having delayed allocation. First it (together with ext4's use of extents) helps to lower file fragmentation where data is being written 'slowly' (eg when downloading from the internet). Secondly, in situations where files are being used as temporary scratchpads, it can remove the requirement to write the data to disk at all in cases where the file is unlinked before it is committed to disk.
Or have KDE not keep rewriting these configuration files. If the user has not changed the application's configuration, why do the files have to be re-written? Surely, configuration files should be opened read-only when the application starts, closed and only opened for write (or create temp file, write, rename) when the configuration is changed.
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Why did the BBC article not include a link to a valid non-latin URL so we could see how our browsers cope? Even if the page is not understandable, it would be nice to know that the pages load.
For many of AAISP's customers, there is a much simpler way that the rights holders could contact the potential infringer directly. AAISP only supply fixed static IP (both IPv4 & IPv6) addresses to customers and a whois on these addresses identify the customer. Of course, if the customer is a private individual, the privacy laws allow him to suppress much of the personal details from the whois record. So rather than needing a court order, all the rights holder has to do is issue a whois query on the alleged offending IP address.
It's something akin to power companies demanding a cut of TV ad revenue, since if it wasn't for them, there'd be no TV at all!
Or more like the power companies demanding payment from the TV companies because of the peaks in power demand which come during the TV ad breaks as lots of people turn on the kettle at the same time. Or the water/sewerage companies because of peaks in demand as lots of people run water to fill the kettles and flush their toilets during the ad breaks. It does not help with this that, at least in the UK, most stations co-ordinate their ad breaks to discourage channel hopping.
And so do the customers by the way, who can instantly cancel their ISP if they start blocking traffic.
Not when the customer is locked into the contract with the ISP for a 12 or 18 month term.
But the opposite is not true either. One reason for the success of the PC architecture is its openness. Just look at how well the IBM PS/2 with non-open MCA fared compared with system using ISA and PCI (in all their variants).
No, only desktop users need a browser. Many (probably most) servers have no need of a browser and many will be headless. Neither do most (things like PDAs and phones being exceptions) embedded systems (some of which run Windows) need a browser. However all of these need an operating system.
Why do computer keyboards have a CAPS lock rather than a SHIFT Lock as on manual typewriters?
Which immediately disqualifies any tracks released under Creative Commons.
Personally, I think a fairer system would be for the charts (at least the online ones) to use a system like last.fm's audioscrobber and record what tracks people play rather than the ones they buy. Now that many music playing systems are internet connected, this should not be beyond the realms of possibility.
Or more like demanding money with menaces.
If it is an extortion racket, should the perpetrators not be charged under RICO?
Why are the EU re-inventing the wheel? What is wrong with using existing digital signature specifications such as those defined in RFCs 3851 and 4880?
Anyway, I'm still confused about this 'right to encryption' so dearly defended by lots of people here.
=> if the authorities have a search-warrant, they are allowed to take pretty much any paper that has something incriminating on it with them. When they ask, you're supposed to open the doors, lockers, safes, etc... so they can get to whatever is behind it. IMHO, same goes for digital encryption. (Sure you could choose not to comply and let them use force to get at it... but if you're 'innocent' I fail to see how that would be beneficial for you !?)
I do not think it is the same for encryption. With papers, if the writing on them is in code then they have the physical paper but not access to the information written on it. Similarly with digital encryption, they have the physical zeros and ones but cannot understand the meaning. Forcing you to decrypt the digital data is more like forcing you to decode written documents than forcing you to open a locked filing cabinet or safe.
When I open the boot (trunk for those in the USA) of the car and the policeman finds a handwritten journal which is in code, does the warrant allow him (or can he get a warrant) to force me to decode the contents of the journal? Forcing you to decode the contents of the journal could (depending on the actual plaintext) be self-incrimination. To my mind, the only difference between paper documents written in code and encrypted files on a computer is the medium on which the documents are stored.
And 'If the DRM requires a central server, and you shut it down, you have to provide a version that works without the server or refund everyone's money'.
And force the companies to put a non-DRM version in escrow so that if the company goes out of business the purchasers can be supplied with a working version.
Deceptive? As long as it is 'DRM'ed, it is 'owned' by the company, plain and simple.
DRM = Digital Rights Management. One of the rights (in fact the major right) when purchasing a music recording is the right to play the media and listen to the music. If this is not in perpetuity (or at least as long as the purchases has possession of the physical media) then the music has not be purchased, it has been hired.
What we need is something completely different. But it's already been pretty much proven that nothing that's not compatible has a chance because of Microsoft's monopoly-driven stranglehold. Catch-22. Either you die (or eke out your life in a small niche, as many do), or you mutate and grow into an enormous ugly bug that can never have quite the same properties as the monster it strives to exceed.
I suspect that much the same thing was said about compatibility with WordPerfect before it lost out, almost overnight, to Microsoft Word.
Different owners of copyrights in the given region.
In the modern 'wired' world, this does not make sense at all. The copyright owner might license various companies to create and distribute copies in different parts of the world, but how can they sell the copyright more than once? Once they have sold it once, it is no longer theirs to sell again.
But there is a rather big connection -- creating good art requires a lot of time, talent, effort and money. If art does not pay, then the artist cannot devote time to this endeavor. For example, "Star Trek, the TV series" is of lower production quality than "Star Trek, the Movie" because revenue from TV advertising is tiny compared to revenue from ticket and DVD sales of movies.
But production quality is not the same as the artistic quality of the 'product'.
Don't most artists start off giving concerts (in small venues), and only later record and sell CDs and DVDs?
So you put the back of the ATM in a secure, alarmed, location (eg a bank's vault) so that the technician or filler has to lock themselves in the room which gives access to the back of the ATM before opening it and working on it. That way the only thing the public see is either a blank screen or one displaying 'out of service'.
Why are they done with sales? So what is the share of Windows-3.x or MS/PC-DOS? If you just count sales then you must also take account of systems being scrapped, replaced or upgraded and not count the same computer twice (or more times).
What should be important is share of usage, measured in hours sat in front of the system. Though this is even harder to measure than number of installations.
BT, and other telecos and ISPs, have never had 'common carrier' status. AFAIK the only organisations which have are those such as the Railways who transport physical goods.
I can remember when cash on delivery was common in the UK. Now you cannot even pay the postman if the sender has underpayed the postage or there are customs charges to pay - the postman just leaves a card and you have to go to the delivery office, pay and collect.
I think that most of the comments so far have missed the point. The problem is not caused by delayed flushing of buffers, but in delaying allocating the space for the new (or the data in a truncated) file. ext4 still flushes with a (default) 5s delay, the same as ext3, but it only does so for blocks which have been allocated disk space.
There are a number of reasons for having delayed allocation. First it (together with ext4's use of extents) helps to lower file fragmentation where data is being written 'slowly' (eg when downloading from the internet). Secondly, in situations where files are being used as temporary scratchpads, it can remove the requirement to write the data to disk at all in cases where the file is unlinked before it is committed to disk.
Or have KDE not keep rewriting these configuration files. If the user has not changed the application's configuration, why do the files have to be re-written? Surely, configuration files should be opened read-only when the application starts, closed and only opened for write (or create temp file, write, rename) when the configuration is changed.