Why, oh, why did ReplayTV have to bend over for the TV stations and disable/remove the firewire ports on the back of their competing device?
Here's what I want...someone make this, dammit!
JoeShmoe's Modular Digital TV system:
1) The heart of the system would be a hub or switch. Gigabit ethernet or fiber.
2) To this hub, connect "Input Units". These input units would come in a variety of flavors. They would each have one analog input (RCA or coaxial or SVHS or composite), the hardware to do real-time video compression (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) and a gigabit or fiber NIC to broadcast the stream over the the hub or switch from #1.
3) To this hub, connect "Storage Units". These storage units would come in a variety of flavors. Different size hard drives, removable media, etc. They would also have a gigabit or fiber NIC so that they could receive a stream from the input unit in #2 via the hub from #1
4) To this hub, connect "Output Units". These output units would come in a variety of flavors. They would each have one analog output (RCA or coaxial or SVHS or composite), the hardware to do real-time video decompression (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) and a gigabit or fiber NIC to receive the stream from the input unit in #2 or the storage unit in #3.
5) Some kind of control unit that would allow you to route streams from one unit to another, either with an LCD interface or a connection to a computer via USB or serial.
~~~~~
So...how would this work? I buy the starter kit with one hub, one input unit (coaxial/MPEG-1), one storage unit (6GB hard drive), one output unit (RCA/MPEG-1) and the control unit.
I tell the control unit that at 5PM on Friday I want it to tune the input unit to channel 40 and send the stream for one hour to the storage unit. Repeat weekly.
Then, when I come home at 7PM...I tell the control unit to send the stream from the storage unit to the output unit which is connected to my television.
Oh! But what if there are two shows I want to watch and they are both at 5PM on Friday?
No problem! I buy another input unit (coaxial/MPEG-1) and tell the control unit that at 5PM on Friday, tune the new input unit to channel 13 and send the stream for one hour to the storage unit.
Oh! I'm running out of space! What do I do if I want to record a lot of shows?
No problem! I buy another storage unit and tell the control unit to store streams on whichever has the most space available.
Oh! My kid sister wants to watch Buffy while I watch Star Trek! How do I watch more than one show at a time?
No problem! I buy another output unit (RCA/MPEG-1), run CAT-5 or fiber to kid sister's room and tell control unit to send stream from storage unit to new output unit.
Now...do you get how absolutely wonderful a modular system like this would be? If you like to record lots of things, buy more input units. If you are a packrat who never wants to delete anything, buy more storage units or one with removable media. If you share a house with many roommates, give everyone their own control unit and output so you can all watch whatever you want at the same time.
This is the system that puts the consumer first, and television companies second! This is the ultimate evolution in personal media management! Cheapos can stick to MPEG-1 quality, videophiles can move to MPEG-2 and power users can try MPEG-4. People can add more storage anytime as they find they need it. Fancier control units with GUIs running on Linux can take over for the simple LCD models, and maybe add more scheduling and TiVoish features.
Now...please...please...please...can someone start a company before all the venture capital dries up and start pumping out high volumes of these specialized devices? Nothing I have said can't already be done with existing technology (except maybe realtime MPEG-4) if you are willing to spend a boatload of money and buy individual computers to act as "input", "storage", "output", and "control" units.
I don't want to buy a dozen G4 cubes just to get this type of functionality. But as long as companies like TiVo and ReplayTV keep selling out the the television studios...that looks like the only way I'm going to be able too.
See though, that's my point. An Indeo compressed AVI file should have had a.INO or similar extension. I can't tell you how many support calls I got because people would get sent some Indeo-compressed dancing baby AVI...which they would recognize from the extension as a video file. Thinking they could view it, they would open it, get an error and call me. Repeat ad nauseum for i263 and Cinepak and all the other ones.
Now, if the file had been.INO then File Manager or Explorer would not have labeled it so casually as a "Video File" and they would understand that they were missing some piece of software (an "Indeo viewer"). It's a lot easier to teach users that Program X opens filetype Y since this is information they happily pass along to each other.
Each version of Windows (and with it, Media Player) seems to support more an more codecs, and now that the most recent versions can go query the server for unknown codecs the problem has pretty much gone away...except for DivX files. Two things are working against DivX:
1) MS hates DivX. Therefore it will never show up in that happy little list of codecs available for download from Microsoft. This means when a user gets an DivX-AVI file, and is used to having the codec already available or within easy reach...new errors come up and the file won't open without a call to me.
2) DivX is remarkably fragile. You chop so much as a few KB from the end of the file and the entire thing won't play. So when a user has an AVI file that won't open, if they could recognize it was a DivX file, they would know they are missing part of it, whereas if it isn't, then they are missing some other codec or the file is corrupt.
Going back to my Microsoft rant, how many times (talking to Windows users here) have you gotten a text file with a.DOC extension and had to first rename it to.TXT or load that pig of an app Word just to function as a text viewer?
I honestly don't see why the computer industry is so hesitant to create new extensions. We aren't even limited to the 8.3 naming system, so the floodgates should really be coming open. It's a lot easier to search for information when you can specify a file type. Searching on ".DVX" would get you DivX-AVI instead of information on those crappy pay-per-view players.
What if all images had a.IMG extension regardless of encoding...RLE, GIF, PNG? Brrr.
As we enter the era of file sharing, let's take a moment to make life easier for our fellow man:
My suggestions?
1) Create a new extension for Variable Bit Rate compress audio, since most programs RARELY read this information correctly (I see everything from 24 to 300 in Napster and WinAmp)
.vm3 or.vmp3
2) Create a new extension for DivX encoded AVI files (and nAVI and pAVI just to be fair to the other competition in the MPEG-4 scene)
.dvx or.divx
.nvi or.navi
.pvi or.pavi
3) The next time you invent a cool new form of compressiong or encoding...be vain! Make a new extension just for it.
Seriously...speaking of DivX encoding (or MPEG-4 or whatever you want to call it) will all you people out there stop leaving these files with the.AVI extension? Is it that hard to put use a new extension like.divx or.dvx? Are Windows users that lazy that they can't be bothered to register a new extension to Media Player? Maybe we need to get some of those DivX warez groups on IRC to change the name of the file before they release them. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue if people started releasing.WAV files encoded with using the MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3 codec instead of.MP3 versions.
PS - I'm looking at you Microsoft. Quit naming a billion files ".DOC" when not single version is intercompatible.
Bleah! The one thing I miss from the Macintosh is the fact that every file had a four byte header that identified the type of file so that this whole extension mess was unnecessary.
I have always wanted a solution to the RealMedia crisis. I hate the player, but some clips that get sent around are only in RM formats. On a rare occasion, I'll want to watch a RM stream, but if I do I want it to be the highest-quality stream. That wouldn't be a problem if the player would just buffer the entire clip (even in an encrypted form) somewhere before they play it.
No...they have to try to play it live, and so it ends up skipping and looking awful.
Well, what about this solution:
I saw a driver a long time ago that emulated a sound card, but really just dumped the content to the hard drive. Can't the same approach be applied to video?
Imagine a Windows 98 driver that emulates a standard VGA screen (640x480x8bit). All this driver does it take in the information from the OS, compose it into a bitmap of the screen and then save it to disk. Maybe throw in MPEG compression and output a stream.
The real trick is how to work this since it wouldn't be viewable. That's where 98 comes in, with it's multiple monitor support. You add this driver as a second monitor and put it to the right of your current workspace. On your primary (actual) monitor, load up the RM content. Then drag the window off the screen to the right onto the "virtual" monitor. Then hit the hotkey that plays the content and let it all be captured to disk. From there, just use a video editor to crop every frame to remove the desktop and Real player window.
What about it? Could this be done? It doesn't have to be a Windows solution, but that's all I know so I'm sure someone else could figure out a *nix solution.
This solution would also work for Windows Media and QuickTime...it would get them all in one fell swoop! "If I can view it, I can record it..."
There's also a the tiny flaw that Sega is a privately held company. There is no stock for them to offer. Follow the "Investor Info" link on their main page and see for yourself.
The truth is that Kalisto spent months getting everything just right. They were the first group to do PAL/NTSC conversions. They were the first group to get CDDA audio to function. They were the first group to create self-booting CD-ROM games (something that Sega continues to say is impossible to their game developers). Just recently the first games came out with new "copy-protection" which is basically a single dummy file so large that the game won't fit on a CD-R (well, until Sony releases their new 99 minute CD-R). Kalisto was the first group to apply standard PC ripped skills (removing CD and file checks) to a DC game.
All in all, Kalisto ends up with a product that is pretty much as good as it could possibly get. So, they want a clean slate. Bye Kalisto, hello Echelon. This new group releases only ripped, self-booting, full-converted games. So all their releases are guaranteed winners and they will become, without a doubt, the biggest thorn in Sega's side until the release of the PS2, X-box and GameCube.
I myself considered submitting this story but I didn't because even a cursory check of the facts turned up this theory as baloney. Is Tim the only one who calls a company to confirm a story or get a comment?
I agree with the statment that this story should have never been posted because any Slashdot readers who follow the warez scene already knew this and any Slashdot readers who don't follow the warez scene probably make it a point to go out of their way NOT to follow the warez scene.
What would have been TRULY fantastic...
on
The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 3
Seeing what the guy did with the desk border (a repeating pattern of 1x1 bricks in red, blue, yellow, and white) something occured to me...
With such a large surface and so many 1x1 bricks the guy could have actually made an image. All someone would have to do is open a nice desktop image (like some wallpaper of a nature scene or a space scene or hell, render something cool) and then convert it to a 2-bit (4 color) image. Scale to the size of your LEGO desktop.
For example, if the total desktop is 640 x 480 LEGO units in size, that's more than enough resolution for a very impressive image.
Damn, if I ever built my own lego desk, I definitely think that's the way to go. Maybe this is the next step in LEGO? Lego dithered art?
DNS should return to what it was meant to be: a way to remember how to find something on the web.
Let's look at apple.com for example. Who should have control of that website? Well, who uses the trademark of Apple? There is Apple Computers, of course. But also Apple Music, and let's pretend Apple Plumbing.
So who gets apple.com? The answer is the first person to register it. Let's say Joe Apple got it. Along comes Apple Computers and [bam] they say that Apple is a registered trademark...yada yada yada...they want apple.com. What happens?
Simple. The domain is transfered into escrow and held by some disinterested third party. The homepage for apple.com is split into two horizontal pieces. The top half is a link to joeapple.com and the bottom half is a link to applecomputers.com. Now we wait a month and see who gets the most hits. Not surpisingly, it's applecomputers.com. This means that applecomputers.com now gets bumped up to the top half of the apple.com homepage and applecomputers gets sent the bill for apple.com's registration, which is then refunded to Joe Apple.
Joe Apple gets a free ride and gets to keep some part of his apple.com homepage...but because the web was meant to be a public service he has to recognize that people who type in "apple.com" are more likely to be looking for Apple Computers than the story of his life.
Along comes Apple music. They want in on this. They send in proof of their trademark and a new section is added to the bottom of the homepage with a link to applemusic.com. The stats are reset and after a month, Apple Computers comes out on top, followed by Apple Music and Joe Apple. Apple Computer is still paying all the bills to host the apple.com site but benefits by having the top slot.
And so on for Apple Plumbing, Apple Tractors and Apple Organically Produced Produce. Each gets a identically sized portion of the website with enough room to put a logo, a company blurb and a link to a separate UNIQUE website.
Unique websites will not be a problem because trademarks are not allows for them. There cannot be two "Apple Computer". They would have to add something to be allowed the trademark, like "Apple Computer Fish Aquariums". To decide if a name is common or unique, you simply look at the trademarks. If there is more than one company using that mark, it's becomes common and follows the above plan. Anyone who registered applecomputers.com is obviously cybersquatting so it's very easy to address those situations.
Oh, and the DNS should be divided up alphabetically to allow for any possible top-level domain. apple.computers or apple.music or apple.plumbing.
Summary: web names are supposed to help you find stuff. Let's turn these stupid silly common names that everyone is fighting over into a giant global yellow pages. If a million people expect to find ATI the video card makers at ati.com then they should be able to find it, and not Artificial Turd Industries. At the same time, Artificual Turd Industries has just as much right to be found on the web by its acronym as any other company, and if people have to do a little scrolling to find it...it it certainly no worse than any search engine.
Seriously...if these hydrogen peroxide rockets work so well, can we launch our own satellite and use it to broadcast controversial information like DeCSS or whatever happens to be under fire?
The only way to stop it would be to shoot it down...and I can't seriously believe that ANY government would sanction such an action. The moment you open the door to intra-satellite warfare then you'll never close it. Russia will shoot down US spycams, China will shoot down "Western" media satellites...the list is ended.
Oh yeah...while we are at it...let's throw in a few changes to the Patent system.
1) Any patent on a business model or involving computers should be limited to 5 years only.
2) All patents submissions must include documentation listing prior art. This list must be posted by the USPTO on a public website for a month. Should anyone have evidence of additional prior art, it can be added to the same website and all of the evidence must be considered by the patent office prior to awarding the patent.
Following in the cherished tradition of naming laws in a manner that completely falsifies their content, I would like to propose that Slashdot create a thread to help author a law called the Digital Copyright Protection Act.
Basically...everyone should submit ideas and the ones that get the highest moderation should be put in some kind of legal language by a legal language expert and then submitted to a website for a public vote (via digital signatures). Once enough votes collected, the law and signatures should be forwarded to the various legislative bodies.
Speaking for myself, I would suggest the following:
1) Restore the original copyright term of 14 years given by Congress when copyrights were first introduced. This law would apply retroactively, which means Mickey Mouse and all his other friends would finally become public domain.
2) Explicitely legalize reverse engineering as a necessary tool for promoting competition in the marketplace. Credit must always be given to the original creator (example Bleem must declare their work was reverse engineered from Sony, not an original creation).
3) Implement an abitration system for all copyright-related lawsuits. Industry trade groups like RIAA and MPAA have an unholy advantage (much like the undead) in that they have infinite legal budgets. An abitration panel comprised of respected educators should decide and defend the concept of fair use and declare when it has been violated. It will be run like the small claims court system, one representative of the industry versus the alleged infringer, both sides give their case and a panel of professors, libraries, etc. decide if it is fair use or copyright violation.
4) Courtney Love addendum: No contract may ask an artist to give up the copyright to his or her music and/or lyrics or the ownership of any artist-related domain names. The artist may sell or give away such resources if desired, however this action must be first initiated by the artist or his or her heirs.
Well, my mind has gone numb with the possibilities...anyone else?
Seriously people...Congress in their haste to bless "all things e-business" may have accidentally handed us the greatest tool we have to steal control from the lobbiests and trade groups! I realize that the legal validity has not yet been challenged but I expect the debate to be over what legally constitutes a "valid" signature (i suggest real name + telephone number + PGP signature + e-mail address = one signature).
There is no denying that this is a powerful idea. Let's not sit on our asses and let this pass us by!
Actually, this brings up a good point. This law-journal is mainly just commentary on issues that, for the most part, are old news. How about a website that keeps track of the court status of all the pending legal matters that we read about here on Slashdot?
Example...when CT or someone posts an article about a Internet-related legal matter, an entry is created that say something like "ABC vs XYZ, trial to begin 7/8/2000". Then on 7/8/2000 someone could make a point to find out if the trial was going or had been postposed, submit that information, and have the entry updated.
I think it would be most useful because generally speaking there is a lot of posting when cases are filed and then you really never heard about them again. Or at least, that's just my general impression.
Short of an area on Slashdot, could someone else create a site to help keep us all up-to-date on these kinds of issues? I actually looked up "Streambox AND trial" in several search engines and was surprised that the most recent information I could find was dated January 17th. How does one go about finding trial information if you only know the name of a plantiff or a defendant?
How 'bout a Slashback update on the whole "using DCMA to censor Slashdot posts" issue?
I just checked and the posts are still up (very good Slashdot) but I for one am curious on whether the lawyers are still mulling over this or if Microsoft has just decided to ignore it?
Is there any kind of upcoming date like "must be removed by _____ that we can watch for?
Why is it that all the reviewers seem to heap glowing praise on Diakatana for it's "unique time-travel aspects"? They seem to think that if it wasn't for the crappy execution, the idea would have been original and worthwhile.
Doesn't anyone remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game? Turtles in Time? (Also release on SNES as TMNT4) Sure it was back in the early 90's but c'mon...to the best of my knowledge it was the first game not about time travel to incorporate time travel.
It was also a damn good game. From 2500000 BC up to 2030 back to (then) present 1992. A fun filled romp through time.
Bah. I understand that reviewers may be desperate for SOMETHING good to say but...please...time travel is old hat for movies AND video games...so enough already.
I live in CA, and after reading newsgroups for a few weeks, I decided to go ahead and sign up for PacBell DSL service. Since they would provide everything from my fingertips to the backbone provider, I figured that if there was ever a problem, I would only have to deal with one entity to get a solution, right?
WRONG!!!
See PacBell (and I'm willing to bet any other phone company) doesn't just have one department that does DSL. In fact, it involves a total of four groups. There's actually six if you count the quality assurance and legal departments.
Here's an example of what this so-called "unified" services is like:
A month ago I started getting this problem where all of my downloads were timing out. I would get download speeds from 40-50KBps (from smaller sites) to upwards of 150KBps (from PacBell sites or major providers like download.com). The problem is that after a random amount of time, the transfer would abruptly stop and time out. This happened with all protocols. If I tried to download a file with a web browser, it would get maybe 10% then stop. If I tried FTP, it would get around 10% then stop. Same with IRC and ICQ. Small files had the same problem. If I loaded a web page with a large number of small images (like a menu or whatever), I could count on a few "X's" from failed image loads.
So I called PacBell Interent (company #1). They provide my ISP services. They pinged me and verified I had a connection. End of service, please call the PCO and have them check your line. So I called the PCO (company #2). They manage the line from my house to the DSL modem on their board. They telnet or something to my modem and verify the upload/download settings are correct. They ask me to download a file from a specific website. Of course, it works. I immediately try from download.com and it fails. They explain that they aren't responsible for problems off their network. Please call the network center (company #3) to report poor service. So I call the network center and then ask me to run tracert a bunch of times and then ping the slower hops with increasing packet sizes. I relay the information and they tell me there's nothing wrong. Please call the order center and have them verify a line test was done. So I call the order center and they tell me that my line qualified for high-speed access (which means I should not only be able to get the speeds I am getting, but actually much faster if I was willing to pay more).
At that point they referred me back to the ISP group to see if maybe I didn't understand what the problem was. After enough ranting, I got put in touch with some quality assurance group to see if they could resolve it. Eventually I told them that if it wasn't fixed, I was going to small claims court to file for a refund of the $200 modem and $50 DSL fee. That put me in touch with the legal department who basically said "fine, whatever, we'll believe it when we see the subpoena".
Anyway...the point to all this is that don't think you are saving anything by going with a single company. DSL right now is a mess any way you look at it. If I could do it all over again, I would have stuck with my cable modem. Sure the speed was sometimes deplorable and there were outages practically every week...but at least with enough bitching you could get transferred up the tree to people who actually know something about the problem...instead of getting transferred to people whose only skill is giving me a phone number and passing the buck.
As far as I know, renting equipment is a perfectly legal business model. There are hundreds of for-profit companies that do it.
Remember, this is a service, not content. Whatever the customer does with his or her rented VCR is personal, non-profit, and fair use.
Please see my reply to the previous post for a more detailed response to this argument.
I do not believe I have to have a copy of the program for each person on a separate cassette. Again, this is a minor quibble over symantecs. There exists VCRs with more than one playback mechanism (GO brand, for example) not to mention commercial tape servers that can access and sort through hundreds of cassettes. For any conceivable input/output scenario, it is possible to construct a physical device to imitate that. Also, I eventually plan to move to renting TiVo devices which already break the digital barrier. I will leave it to my lawyers and the courts to iron out the exact makeup of the backstage hardware...but if I have to buy a giant tape server with a robot to swap tapes around on demand and rent that to the users...so be it.
This is not rebroadcasting in any sense of the term. Broadcasting means "casting" to a "broad" audience. This is specifically targetted.
There is no difference between running a coaxial cable from a VCR in CA to a customer in NY or running a fiber cable and then using coaxial-to-fiber coverters on each end (at least there is no court decision to say there is such a legal distinction). That's what the computers are doing. They are converting the coaxial (RF) signal into a form that can travel much faster and much further. It is still a point-to-point transaction. It is renting a VCR that happens to be a lot farther away than traditional tecnology would allow.
The problem with MP3 was they were making the copies onto digital media (hard drives). I strongly believe that if they had put the copies on standard audio cassettes (or purchased audio cassettes) and then described it as a "rental" service, they would have had a stronger argument for fair use.
MP3 also got into trouble because they made copies of everything...even stuff that perhaps hadn't been requested by users. If no one requested a copy of a really bad show and I still had a copy of it...I could buy a possible argument that the copy is infringment. But I would be sure to wait for a customer to indicate they wanted a show before it was actually captured and thus eliminate this issue.
This is about renting physical devices. The customer is free to use them for personal, fair use purposes. My companies, and companies like it, would be profitting from the rental of such devices (no different than Rent-To-Own or most video stores who allow VCR rentals).
The only difference is that my VCR has an additional output port that allows the customer to watch the content on his or her computer without having to buy a TV capture card.
And, it is a service that people really, really want. I am always forgetting or messing up my personal fair-use recordings. TiVo et. al. have the right idea but are horribly expensive and do not allow consumers to upgrade capacity. A service like this gives them a limitless TiVo that they can rent instead of buying.
In fact...if I succeeded with the tape approached, renting TiVo over the Internet was going to be my next plan. That way I could stop buying blank VHS tapes and offer video in full MPEG-2 (not VHS) quality.
Believe it or not, I was actually in the process of starting up a service like this in the near future. I leased a server with RackSpace.Com and I had paid enough premiums to have my legal insurance kick in. Buuuuut...it looks like someone beat me to the punch, so I guess they get to test the legal waters and not me.
I had a couple consultations with lawyers to review the various legal attacks that might be made on this "Internet VCR" issue. According to the 1984 Betamax decision, the courts have ruled that personal, time-shifted content is legal. So to all those bitching "this is theft": shut up, you don't know what you are talking about. We consumers can tape any shows that we are legally entitled to view. If we live in a region serviced by over-the-air broadcasts, we can record and time-shift over-the-air broadcasts. If we subscribe to cable, the same goes for cable broadcasts. If we subscribe to premium services, etc.
But even though the courts declared time shifting to be legal, it was understood that there was going to be some amount of infrigement going on. Person A would record a show that Person B could watch even though Person B wasn't entitled to view the show. Also, Person A could watch and re-watch a show and thus get sick of it and not watch it the next time it was available, thus hurting ad revenue and premium services (recording a pay-per-view movie to watch many times, for example).
My lawyers are still looking for this exact law/ruling but my understanding is that shortly after the Betamax decisio,n the studios and production companies had a tax or tariff established on all video media sold in the US (or expanded a previous one to cover video cassettes not just audio). This means that for every blank VHS (or Beta or whatever) tape sold, a portion of the price goes to a fund that compensates all of the various studios and companies that produce content for television.
Now, as I said, the lawyers haven't gotten back to me on the exact language, but the theory goes that this type of Internet VCR venture would be perfectly legal if:
A) You are able to restrict content based on right to view...this means both geographically and by service. Someone without cable in the 12345 area code should only be able to "record" and "playback" shows that you can get with an antenna in the 12345 area code. I had toyed around with the idea of having customers fax a copy of their current cable bill to allow/disallow access to cable channels and premium channels. If they did not want to fax in their most recent bill, they would be restricted to over the air content pulled from that area by an agent of the company in that area.
B) For every "two" (assuming SP quality) hours of video recorded, the company would have to purchase and sit on a blank video tape. In this manner, the media companies are being compensated. Cable companies have to pay to rebroadcast over-the-air broadcasts because they are not using the existing mechanism (purchasing recordable media with built in compensation). No one is compensated if you use digital media, hence the studio's resistance to allowing this.
But if one uses the existing compensation mechanisms by buying blank media, the only legal cases would be issues of symantics (is commanding a machine to push a button the same as pushing the button yourself, can VCR be in next room, next house, next state, and so on). Any such arguments would be a waste of court time and dismissed or very short, to the point legal events. I don't see how it should make an ounce of difference where the physical VCR is as long as tapes are being purchased and content is being properly restricted.
Once again, I Am Not A Lawyer, but I have been consulting with several and based on some preliminary discussions, this seems like a valid model for this type of Internet VCR service.
Regarding advertisements... How many people record stuff just so they can fast forward through commercials? On the other hand, how many times have you seen or been sent copies of really good commercials? (the farting SmartBeep commercial comes to mind) If commercials are good, people WILL watch them. But if it is crap like current Pepsi commercial (ugh, did anyone catch that absolute insult to Einstein?) then they WILL and should be able to fast forward or skip them. I don't see any problem with allowing this skip-commercial mechanism. There is no guarantee that just because an ad is airing eyeballs are staring at it. If the ad industry wants to turn this into that scene from A Clockwock Orange and FORCE us to watch commericials against our will...I say to them, good luck trying.
To all those people bitching about extra ads being adding: grow up. It called VAR...value added retail. I provide a service, I charge extra for that service. No one is making money by putting ads on someone else's copyrighted content. They are making money by putting ads on the mechanism that delivers that content. If someone wants to give me a free TV set with ads all over the bezel then, by golly, I'll take it. ABC shouldn't be able to take away that TV set because I'm watching ABC on it the manufacturer didn't compensate them for the ads I'm seeing. Content and delievry are two separate and distinct things and you are a fool if you think otherwise.
BRIEF SUBMITTED BY MEDIA DEFENDANT 2600 ENTERPRISES, INC. AND ERIC CORLEY a/k/a "EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN" IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO MODIFY THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION AND IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS' CROSS-MOTION TO VACATE THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO MODIFY THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION AND IN SUPPORT OF EFENDANTS' CROSS-MOTION TO VACATE THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION
Huh??? And companies wonder why consumers are so opposed to reading EULA click-thru licenses...
1) If I only own an audio CD player, they save me the cost of having to buy a CD-ROM drive to play my music on my computer or portable system.
2) MP3.Com saves me the time it would take me having to extract all the digital audio from my CDs. Also, they are saving me the cost of having to buy a CDDA program.
3) MP3.COM is saving me the time and possibly bandwidth charges that I would incur by uploading my 200 CD collection. Nealy every high bandwidth connection is capped on the upload, which means it would be impossible for me to stream my audio to my computer at work from my computer at home. It would take me three months of solid uploading to get my entire collection online somewhere that I can download at the full 128/160/192 bitrate.
4) MP3.Com is saving me the time it would take to encode all my music to MP3 files, which are most definitely more versitile. They are also saving me from having to buy an encoding program.
5) This may not be a feature yet, but certainly MP3.Com could store multiple bitrates of my songs, so that I could custom tailor it for the device...64kbps mono for my Rio, 128kbps for my home DSL...192 for my fat connection at work.
6) MP3.Com is saving me hundred of dollars in media costs. I would need 12 GB of space to store my collection...and since this is 12GB of data that is READ-ONLY, that is a real waste of hard drive space. WORM media is a better choice, but you can't store 12GB on anything currently available.
It looks to me that an obviously technophobic judge has made a very, very narrow ruling that make very, very broad use of the word "repackaging". When you are talking about adding value, this "repackagin" is adding a lot of value. For him to dismiss all the above as just mere "repacking" is almost like say "I had a bunch of music I could only listen to at home on my stereo...yada yada yada...now I can listen to it any time, any where." That's a pretty big yada.
Oh, one other thing...how many companies out there keep separate copies of files for each user when they are the same file? Of course not, that's what links are for. It seems like MP3 could get around this problem by giving users the tools...having them encode all their music...then uploading it back up to MP3 (essentially doing the fair use part themselves). The end result would be no different than what you have now.
If I was MP3.com I would wave a magic wand and then tell the courts and RIAA "We didn't make that music. It was uploaded by hundreds of users who own the albums". Of course, they would have to "delete" any albums that no one had (yet) registered but assuming someone does, it wouldn't be too hard to suddenly "recover" it.
An excellent point and something I'd never even considered. +1+1+1, Interesting, Informative, and Insightful.
Perhaps this sounds silly but, we should all campaign for life of author + 400 years. Then when Disney throws their support behind it, use DNA testing to dig up some decendant of Hans Christian Anderson and sue Disney for mega-mega-infringment.
Okay, so I know that wouldn't work but it makes you think. If someday in the future, one of my descendants wants to make a 3D Holographic BrainTV production of an "original" Disney work (ummm...I'm trying to think of one...Fantasia, maybe? Well, at least the animation part...) I seriously doubt the copyright laws of that century would even allow it! And yet Disney owes most of their fortune to building on the works of others.
I am truly, truly sickened by the blatent hypocracy that I only just now realized existed. I see a bleak, bleak future when the only people that have the right to make a derrivative work are the people whose only goal is to exploit it.
Having never owned one, I don't know what kind of seals or tamper switches they might contain, but the tech I spoke to seemed pretty adamant that you should "reaaaaally not open the box". For all I know, once you open the box it narcs on you to the server or refuses to operate. Philips head screws are not a security device, and if they intent was to prevent users from upgrading or enhancing their existing system, who knows what the did.
It all goes to attitude. It would have cost mere dollars to put the drive in some kind of plastic, removable cage. But they wanted to milk profits by tempting consumers into a very profitable upgrade every 6-12 months when drive storage has doubled. That's just plain anti-consumer. The FireWire was the best thing going for the ReplayTV and they took it out, not for legal reasons like they would suggest (since there is hardware everywhere capable of capturing shows just like ReplayTV does) but because they saw the profit potential and decided it was worth screwing the customer.
The first generation units had a FireWire port on the back...which would have made ReplayTV the perfect FireWire capture device (to this day, I still cannot find a external FireWire-to-TV device, even though there are a crapload of USB ones).
But guess what? Networks were concerned that someone would record show and then upload them onto the Internet. Guess what anyone under the sun can already do with existing capture cards? Duh. So one of the best features gets thrown out the window.
Not to mention that the main reason TiVo et. al. suck is that they are not user-upgradeable. Do I really need to pay some company $300 to put in a freakin IDE hard drive for me? Do I really need to pay $300 for a hard drive that would cost me maybe $150? This is blatently ripping off the consumer. With an external port OF ANY KIND it should be possible to store an infinite amount of video to CD-R/RW, DVD-RAM, hard disk, ZIP, whatever. But no...by removing the port, you force the consumer to follow your official pricing schedule. True, you can crack it open and Ghost the image to a bigger drive, but there goes the warantee.
ReplayTV almost had my business, but by choosing to be slave to the network interests, they have forever lost power users as their audience. I strongly encourage that anyone thinking about buying a replay TV go out and shop for a really high quality capture card instead.
Okay, I don't watch a lot of Voyager, so I probably missed that one but...I don't think your reasoning is exactly a show-stopper.
First of all, the Maquis that were fighting with Cardassia were all in the Alpha quadrant. That doesn't meant there aren't other battles on other fronts that are being fought by the Maquis. As near as I can understand it, it's patterned after the Bjorn's during The Occupation in that there is no central authority, just a bunch of independant cells. So how could it ever be really killed off? It may go into hiding, but as long as there is some Federation Officer pissed off at the crap he gets handed, there will always be Maquis.
Second, okay so let's say after the Dominion takeover they wiped out the Maquis. That could be talking about whatever cell it was that Chakotay and B'lana and whoever belongs to. So their friends are sad, boo hoo, all dead but meanwhile back in the Alpha quadrant, there is a growing number of Federations officers who aren't buying this "we give up" attitude the founders are handing them...they are seeing evidence to the contrary but the Federation leaders, anxious to rebuild in peace, refuse to accept/believe it. This causes several to go rebel, renue the Maquis name in the Alpha quadrant and in general raise hell about anything or everything.
So yes, the Maquis as we know it from DS9 and VOY maybe be dead, but it's not a hard leap to see that any Federation officer of sufficient rank will know about them and their cause and could be pursuaded to defect at any moment. Like that one security guy that Sisko spent years chasing...Mr. Val Jean...and Tom Riker, tho if Voyager said he was dead, it would be a bummer because he is their best bet to "tie in" to the previous series. But really, the producers could take any Star Trek character and find some convincing reason to get him/her to quit and join the Maquis, openly if it was to be permanent or secretly if they wanted to maintain continuity with future TNG/DS9 movies...
Plus, think how cool AND realistic it would be to have tens even hundreds of small Maquis ships fighting instead of this one big, vulnerable starship. Maquis would work like a swarm (possibly with distributed networks that make their many ships function collectively as a massive ship, if the head gets shot off, another is automatically promoted and fight continues) and be enough of a threat that both sides are working to stop them, Federation through "peaceful" means and the other side (Cardassian, Romulan, etc.) with not-so-peaceful means. And, because the Maquis would be working with hand-me-down scraps, there wouldn't be any of this BS "let's do X to the main deflector and solve everything" since more than likely, even if they could see a solution, they wouldn't have the time/resources to implement it and oh crap they die, time for the show to jump to the next cell and continue the storyline with them angrily vowing to avenge the deaths of the previous cell.
I truly believe the only way you are going to get people to care about Star Trek is to force them to care about what happens on a show-by-show basis. As it currently stands, you know exactly when characters are going to enter/exit and so I think that it becomes that much harder to suspend disbelief. If the Maquis had no standing cast (just an interwoven series of appearances) and suddenly there is no magic save at the last possible second...characters actually die not just in some heroic "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" way but just plain die because they were outgunned, outnumbered, tricked and trapped...then I think people would actually find Star Trek to be something they watch and care about. Not just "ho hum, I haven't watched the last X episodes but I know exactly what's going on and what's going to happen anyway."
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some real interesting questions...
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1) If I sign up for the challenge, and I find a way of defeating it...can I post the results?
2) If I sign up for the challenge, and I find a way of defeating it...can I post the results AFTER the challenge has ended?
3) If I sign up for the challenge, and I fail to find a way of defeating it until AFTER the challenge has ended...can I post the results?
This might be your only chance to get a "license to crack". Imagine how the DeCSS project would have turned out if the DVD-CCA made such an offer.
I guess we won't know until we review the terms on the website (hello? It is Sept 15th guys). But if I see the letters "NDA" then forget it.
- JoeShmoe
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Why, oh, why did ReplayTV have to bend over for the TV stations and disable/remove the firewire ports on the back of their competing device?
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Here's what I want...someone make this, dammit!
JoeShmoe's Modular Digital TV system:
1) The heart of the system would be a hub or switch. Gigabit ethernet or fiber.
2) To this hub, connect "Input Units". These input units would come in a variety of flavors. They would each have one analog input (RCA or coaxial or SVHS or composite), the hardware to do real-time video compression (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) and a gigabit or fiber NIC to broadcast the stream over the the hub or switch from #1.
3) To this hub, connect "Storage Units". These storage units would come in a variety of flavors. Different size hard drives, removable media, etc. They would also have a gigabit or fiber NIC so that they could receive a stream from the input unit in #2 via the hub from #1
4) To this hub, connect "Output Units". These output units would come in a variety of flavors. They would each have one analog output (RCA or coaxial or SVHS or composite), the hardware to do real-time video decompression (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) and a gigabit or fiber NIC to receive the stream from the input unit in #2 or the storage unit in #3.
5) Some kind of control unit that would allow you to route streams from one unit to another, either with an LCD interface or a connection to a computer via USB or serial.
~~~~~
So...how would this work? I buy the starter kit with one hub, one input unit (coaxial/MPEG-1), one storage unit (6GB hard drive), one output unit (RCA/MPEG-1) and the control unit.
I tell the control unit that at 5PM on Friday I want it to tune the input unit to channel 40 and send the stream for one hour to the storage unit. Repeat weekly.
Then, when I come home at 7PM...I tell the control unit to send the stream from the storage unit to the output unit which is connected to my television.
Oh! But what if there are two shows I want to watch and they are both at 5PM on Friday?
No problem! I buy another input unit (coaxial/MPEG-1) and tell the control unit that at 5PM on Friday, tune the new input unit to channel 13 and send the stream for one hour to the storage unit.
Oh! I'm running out of space! What do I do if I want to record a lot of shows?
No problem! I buy another storage unit and tell the control unit to store streams on whichever has the most space available.
Oh! My kid sister wants to watch Buffy while I watch Star Trek! How do I watch more than one show at a time?
No problem! I buy another output unit (RCA/MPEG-1), run CAT-5 or fiber to kid sister's room and tell control unit to send stream from storage unit to new output unit.
Now...do you get how absolutely wonderful a modular system like this would be? If you like to record lots of things, buy more input units. If you are a packrat who never wants to delete anything, buy more storage units or one with removable media. If you share a house with many roommates, give everyone their own control unit and output so you can all watch whatever you want at the same time.
This is the system that puts the consumer first, and television companies second! This is the ultimate evolution in personal media management! Cheapos can stick to MPEG-1 quality, videophiles can move to MPEG-2 and power users can try MPEG-4. People can add more storage anytime as they find they need it. Fancier control units with GUIs running on Linux can take over for the simple LCD models, and maybe add more scheduling and TiVoish features.
Now...please...please...please...can someone start a company before all the venture capital dries up and start pumping out high volumes of these specialized devices? Nothing I have said can't already be done with existing technology (except maybe realtime MPEG-4) if you are willing to spend a boatload of money and buy individual computers to act as "input", "storage", "output", and "control" units.
I don't want to buy a dozen G4 cubes just to get this type of functionality. But as long as companies like TiVo and ReplayTV keep selling out the the television studios...that looks like the only way I'm going to be able too.
- JoeShmoe
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See though, that's my point. An Indeo compressed AVI file should have had a .INO or similar extension. I can't tell you how many support calls I got because people would get sent some Indeo-compressed dancing baby AVI...which they would recognize from the extension as a video file. Thinking they could view it, they would open it, get an error and call me. Repeat ad nauseum for i263 and Cinepak and all the other ones.
.INO then File Manager or Explorer would not have labeled it so casually as a "Video File" and they would understand that they were missing some piece of software (an "Indeo viewer"). It's a lot easier to teach users that Program X opens filetype Y since this is information they happily pass along to each other.
.DOC extension and had to first rename it to .TXT or load that pig of an app Word just to function as a text viewer?
.IMG extension regardless of encoding...RLE, GIF, PNG? Brrr.
.vmp3
.divx
.navi
.pavi
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Now, if the file had been
Each version of Windows (and with it, Media Player) seems to support more an more codecs, and now that the most recent versions can go query the server for unknown codecs the problem has pretty much gone away...except for DivX files. Two things are working against DivX:
1) MS hates DivX. Therefore it will never show up in that happy little list of codecs available for download from Microsoft. This means when a user gets an DivX-AVI file, and is used to having the codec already available or within easy reach...new errors come up and the file won't open without a call to me.
2) DivX is remarkably fragile. You chop so much as a few KB from the end of the file and the entire thing won't play. So when a user has an AVI file that won't open, if they could recognize it was a DivX file, they would know they are missing part of it, whereas if it isn't, then they are missing some other codec or the file is corrupt.
Going back to my Microsoft rant, how many times (talking to Windows users here) have you gotten a text file with a
I honestly don't see why the computer industry is so hesitant to create new extensions. We aren't even limited to the 8.3 naming system, so the floodgates should really be coming open. It's a lot easier to search for information when you can specify a file type. Searching on ".DVX" would get you DivX-AVI instead of information on those crappy pay-per-view players.
What if all images had a
As we enter the era of file sharing, let's take a moment to make life easier for our fellow man:
My suggestions?
1) Create a new extension for Variable Bit Rate compress audio, since most programs RARELY read this information correctly (I see everything from 24 to 300 in Napster and WinAmp)
.vm3 or
2) Create a new extension for DivX encoded AVI files (and nAVI and pAVI just to be fair to the other competition in the MPEG-4 scene)
.dvx or
.nvi or
.pvi or
3) The next time you invent a cool new form of compressiong or encoding...be vain! Make a new extension just for it.
- JoeShmoe
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Seriously...speaking of DivX encoding (or MPEG-4 or whatever you want to call it) will all you people out there stop leaving these files with the .AVI extension? Is it that hard to put use a new extension like .divx or .dvx? Are Windows users that lazy that they can't be bothered to register a new extension to Media Player? Maybe we need to get some of those DivX warez groups on IRC to change the name of the file before they release them. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue if people started releasing .WAV files encoded with using the MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3 codec instead of .MP3 versions.
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PS - I'm looking at you Microsoft. Quit naming a billion files ".DOC" when not single version is intercompatible.
Bleah! The one thing I miss from the Macintosh is the fact that every file had a four byte header that identified the type of file so that this whole extension mess was unnecessary.
- JoeShmoe
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I have always wanted a solution to the RealMedia crisis. I hate the player, but some clips that get sent around are only in RM formats. On a rare occasion, I'll want to watch a RM stream, but if I do I want it to be the highest-quality stream. That wouldn't be a problem if the player would just buffer the entire clip (even in an encrypted form) somewhere before they play it.
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No...they have to try to play it live, and so it ends up skipping and looking awful.
Well, what about this solution:
I saw a driver a long time ago that emulated a sound card, but really just dumped the content to the hard drive. Can't the same approach be applied to video?
Imagine a Windows 98 driver that emulates a standard VGA screen (640x480x8bit). All this driver does it take in the information from the OS, compose it into a bitmap of the screen and then save it to disk. Maybe throw in MPEG compression and output a stream.
The real trick is how to work this since it wouldn't be viewable. That's where 98 comes in, with it's multiple monitor support. You add this driver as a second monitor and put it to the right of your current workspace. On your primary (actual) monitor, load up the RM content. Then drag the window off the screen to the right onto the "virtual" monitor. Then hit the hotkey that plays the content and let it all be captured to disk. From there, just use a video editor to crop every frame to remove the desktop and Real player window.
What about it? Could this be done? It doesn't have to be a Windows solution, but that's all I know so I'm sure someone else could figure out a *nix solution.
This solution would also work for Windows Media and QuickTime...it would get them all in one fell swoop! "If I can view it, I can record it..."
- JoeShmoe
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There's also a the tiny flaw that Sega is a privately held company. There is no stock for them to offer. Follow the "Investor Info" link on their main page and see for yourself.
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The truth is that Kalisto spent months getting everything just right. They were the first group to do PAL/NTSC conversions. They were the first group to get CDDA audio to function. They were the first group to create self-booting CD-ROM games (something that Sega continues to say is impossible to their game developers). Just recently the first games came out with new "copy-protection" which is basically a single dummy file so large that the game won't fit on a CD-R (well, until Sony releases their new 99 minute CD-R). Kalisto was the first group to apply standard PC ripped skills (removing CD and file checks) to a DC game.
All in all, Kalisto ends up with a product that is pretty much as good as it could possibly get. So, they want a clean slate. Bye Kalisto, hello Echelon. This new group releases only ripped, self-booting, full-converted games. So all their releases are guaranteed winners and they will become, without a doubt, the biggest thorn in Sega's side until the release of the PS2, X-box and GameCube.
I myself considered submitting this story but I didn't because even a cursory check of the facts turned up this theory as baloney. Is Tim the only one who calls a company to confirm a story or get a comment?
I agree with the statment that this story should have never been posted because any Slashdot readers who follow the warez scene already knew this and any Slashdot readers who don't follow the warez scene probably make it a point to go out of their way NOT to follow the warez scene.
- JoeShmoe
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Uh, Tim...if anything Liv Tyler did some suiting down in that movie.
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- JoeShmoe
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Seeing what the guy did with the desk border (a repeating pattern of 1x1 bricks in red, blue, yellow, and white) something occured to me...
With such a large surface and so many 1x1 bricks the guy could have actually made an image. All someone would have to do is open a nice desktop image (like some wallpaper of a nature scene or a space scene or hell, render something cool) and then convert it to a 2-bit (4 color) image. Scale to the size of your LEGO desktop.
For example, if the total desktop is 640 x 480 LEGO units in size, that's more than enough resolution for a very impressive image.
Damn, if I ever built my own lego desk, I definitely think that's the way to go. Maybe this is the next step in LEGO? Lego dithered art?
Here's my pitch:
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DNS should return to what it was meant to be: a way to remember how to find something on the web.
Let's look at apple.com for example. Who should have control of that website? Well, who uses the trademark of Apple? There is Apple Computers, of course. But also Apple Music, and let's pretend Apple Plumbing.
So who gets apple.com? The answer is the first person to register it. Let's say Joe Apple got it. Along comes Apple Computers and [bam] they say that Apple is a registered trademark...yada yada yada...they want apple.com. What happens?
Simple. The domain is transfered into escrow and held by some disinterested third party. The homepage for apple.com is split into two horizontal pieces. The top half is a link to joeapple.com and the bottom half is a link to applecomputers.com. Now we wait a month and see who gets the most hits. Not surpisingly, it's applecomputers.com. This means that applecomputers.com now gets bumped up to the top half of the apple.com homepage and applecomputers gets sent the bill for apple.com's registration, which is then refunded to Joe Apple.
Joe Apple gets a free ride and gets to keep some part of his apple.com homepage...but because the web was meant to be a public service he has to recognize that people who type in "apple.com" are more likely to be looking for Apple Computers than the story of his life.
Along comes Apple music. They want in on this. They send in proof of their trademark and a new section is added to the bottom of the homepage with a link to applemusic.com. The stats are reset and after a month, Apple Computers comes out on top, followed by Apple Music and Joe Apple. Apple Computer is still paying all the bills to host the apple.com site but benefits by having the top slot.
And so on for Apple Plumbing, Apple Tractors and Apple Organically Produced Produce. Each gets a identically sized portion of the website with enough room to put a logo, a company blurb and a link to a separate UNIQUE website.
Unique websites will not be a problem because trademarks are not allows for them. There cannot be two "Apple Computer". They would have to add something to be allowed the trademark, like "Apple Computer Fish Aquariums". To decide if a name is common or unique, you simply look at the trademarks. If there is more than one company using that mark, it's becomes common and follows the above plan. Anyone who registered applecomputers.com is obviously cybersquatting so it's very easy to address those situations.
Oh, and the DNS should be divided up alphabetically to allow for any possible top-level domain. apple.computers or apple.music or apple.plumbing.
Summary: web names are supposed to help you find stuff. Let's turn these stupid silly common names that everyone is fighting over into a giant global yellow pages. If a million people expect to find ATI the video card makers at ati.com then they should be able to find it, and not Artificial Turd Industries. At the same time, Artificual Turd Industries has just as much right to be found on the web by its acronym as any other company, and if people have to do a little scrolling to find it...it it certainly no worse than any search engine.
The End.
How 'bout an endorsement, anyone?
- JoeShmoe
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Seriously...if these hydrogen peroxide rockets work so well, can we launch our own satellite and use it to broadcast controversial information like DeCSS or whatever happens to be under fire?
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The only way to stop it would be to shoot it down...and I can't seriously believe that ANY government would sanction such an action. The moment you open the door to intra-satellite warfare then you'll never close it. Russia will shoot down US spycams, China will shoot down "Western" media satellites...the list is ended.
Space really is the final frontier, no?
- JoeShmoe
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Oh yeah...while we are at it...let's throw in a few changes to the Patent system.
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1) Any patent on a business model or involving computers should be limited to 5 years only.
2) All patents submissions must include documentation listing prior art. This list must be posted by the USPTO on a public website for a month. Should anyone have evidence of additional prior art, it can be added to the same website and all of the evidence must be considered by the patent office prior to awarding the patent.
Sound good?
- JoeShmoe
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Following in the cherished tradition of naming laws in a manner that completely falsifies their content, I would like to propose that Slashdot create a thread to help author a law called the Digital Copyright Protection Act.
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Basically...everyone should submit ideas and the ones that get the highest moderation should be put in some kind of legal language by a legal language expert and then submitted to a website for a public vote (via digital signatures). Once enough votes collected, the law and signatures should be forwarded to the various legislative bodies.
Speaking for myself, I would suggest the following:
1) Restore the original copyright term of 14 years given by Congress when copyrights were first introduced. This law would apply retroactively, which means Mickey Mouse and all his other friends would finally become public domain.
2) Explicitely legalize reverse engineering as a necessary tool for promoting competition in the marketplace. Credit must always be given to the original creator (example Bleem must declare their work was reverse engineered from Sony, not an original creation).
3) Implement an abitration system for all copyright-related lawsuits. Industry trade groups like RIAA and MPAA have an unholy advantage (much like the undead) in that they have infinite legal budgets. An abitration panel comprised of respected educators should decide and defend the concept of fair use and declare when it has been violated. It will be run like the small claims court system, one representative of the industry versus the alleged infringer, both sides give their case and a panel of professors, libraries, etc. decide if it is fair use or copyright violation.
4) Courtney Love addendum: No contract may ask an artist to give up the copyright to his or her music and/or lyrics or the ownership of any artist-related domain names. The artist may sell or give away such resources if desired, however this action must be first initiated by the artist or his or her heirs.
Well, my mind has gone numb with the possibilities...anyone else?
Seriously people...Congress in their haste to bless "all things e-business" may have accidentally handed us the greatest tool we have to steal control from the lobbiests and trade groups! I realize that the legal validity has not yet been challenged but I expect the debate to be over what legally constitutes a "valid" signature (i suggest real name + telephone number + PGP signature + e-mail address = one signature).
There is no denying that this is a powerful idea. Let's not sit on our asses and let this pass us by!
- JoeShmoe
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Actually, this brings up a good point. This law-journal is mainly just commentary on issues that, for the most part, are old news. How about a website that keeps track of the court status of all the pending legal matters that we read about here on Slashdot?
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Example...when CT or someone posts an article about a Internet-related legal matter, an entry is created that say something like "ABC vs XYZ, trial to begin 7/8/2000". Then on 7/8/2000 someone could make a point to find out if the trial was going or had been postposed, submit that information, and have the entry updated.
I think it would be most useful because generally speaking there is a lot of posting when cases are filed and then you really never heard about them again. Or at least, that's just my general impression.
Short of an area on Slashdot, could someone else create a site to help keep us all up-to-date on these kinds of issues? I actually looked up "Streambox AND trial" in several search engines and was surprised that the most recent information I could find was dated January 17th. How does one go about finding trial information if you only know the name of a plantiff or a defendant?
- JoeShmoe
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How 'bout a Slashback update on the whole "using DCMA to censor Slashdot posts" issue?
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I just checked and the posts are still up (very good Slashdot) but I for one am curious on whether the lawyers are still mulling over this or if Microsoft has just decided to ignore it?
Is there any kind of upcoming date like "must be removed by _____ that we can watch for?
- JoeShmoe
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Why is it that all the reviewers seem to heap glowing praise on Diakatana for it's "unique time-travel aspects"? They seem to think that if it wasn't for the crappy execution, the idea would have been original and worthwhile.
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Doesn't anyone remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game? Turtles in Time? (Also release on SNES as TMNT4) Sure it was back in the early 90's but c'mon...to the best of my knowledge it was the first game not about time travel to incorporate time travel.
It was also a damn good game. From 2500000 BC up to 2030 back to (then) present 1992. A fun filled romp through time.
Bah. I understand that reviewers may be desperate for SOMETHING good to say but...please...time travel is old hat for movies AND video games...so enough already.
- JoeShmoe
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I live in CA, and after reading newsgroups for a few weeks, I decided to go ahead and sign up for PacBell DSL service. Since they would provide everything from my fingertips to the backbone provider, I figured that if there was ever a problem, I would only have to deal with one entity to get a solution, right?
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WRONG!!!
See PacBell (and I'm willing to bet any other phone company) doesn't just have one department that does DSL. In fact, it involves a total of four groups. There's actually six if you count the quality assurance and legal departments.
Here's an example of what this so-called "unified" services is like:
A month ago I started getting this problem where all of my downloads were timing out. I would get download speeds from 40-50KBps (from smaller sites) to upwards of 150KBps (from PacBell sites or major providers like download.com). The problem is that after a random amount of time, the transfer would abruptly stop and time out. This happened with all protocols. If I tried to download a file with a web browser, it would get maybe 10% then stop. If I tried FTP, it would get around 10% then stop. Same with IRC and ICQ. Small files had the same problem. If I loaded a web page with a large number of small images (like a menu or whatever), I could count on a few "X's" from failed image loads.
So I called PacBell Interent (company #1). They provide my ISP services. They pinged me and verified I had a connection. End of service, please call the PCO and have them check your line. So I called the PCO (company #2). They manage the line from my house to the DSL modem on their board. They telnet or something to my modem and verify the upload/download settings are correct. They ask me to download a file from a specific website. Of course, it works. I immediately try from download.com and it fails. They explain that they aren't responsible for problems off their network. Please call the network center (company #3) to report poor service. So I call the network center and then ask me to run tracert a bunch of times and then ping the slower hops with increasing packet sizes. I relay the information and they tell me there's nothing wrong. Please call the order center and have them verify a line test was done. So I call the order center and they tell me that my line qualified for high-speed access (which means I should not only be able to get the speeds I am getting, but actually much faster if I was willing to pay more).
At that point they referred me back to the ISP group to see if maybe I didn't understand what the problem was. After enough ranting, I got put in touch with some quality assurance group to see if they could resolve it. Eventually I told them that if it wasn't fixed, I was going to small claims court to file for a refund of the $200 modem and $50 DSL fee. That put me in touch with the legal department who basically said "fine, whatever, we'll believe it when we see the subpoena".
Anyway...the point to all this is that don't think you are saving anything by going with a single company. DSL right now is a mess any way you look at it. If I could do it all over again, I would have stuck with my cable modem. Sure the speed was sometimes deplorable and there were outages practically every week...but at least with enough bitching you could get transferred up the tree to people who actually know something about the problem...instead of getting transferred to people whose only skill is giving me a phone number and passing the buck.
- JoeShmoe
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As far as I know, renting equipment is a perfectly legal business model. There are hundreds of for-profit companies that do it.
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Remember, this is a service, not content. Whatever the customer does with his or her rented VCR is personal, non-profit, and fair use.
Please see my reply to the previous post for a more detailed response to this argument.
I do not believe I have to have a copy of the program for each person on a separate cassette. Again, this is a minor quibble over symantecs. There exists VCRs with more than one playback mechanism (GO brand, for example) not to mention commercial tape servers that can access and sort through hundreds of cassettes. For any conceivable input/output scenario, it is possible to construct a physical device to imitate that. Also, I eventually plan to move to renting TiVo devices which already break the digital barrier. I will leave it to my lawyers and the courts to iron out the exact makeup of the backstage hardware...but if I have to buy a giant tape server with a robot to swap tapes around on demand and rent that to the users...so be it.
- JoeShmoe
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This is not rebroadcasting in any sense of the term. Broadcasting means "casting" to a "broad" audience. This is specifically targetted.
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There is no difference between running a coaxial cable from a VCR in CA to a customer in NY or running a fiber cable and then using coaxial-to-fiber coverters on each end (at least there is no court decision to say there is such a legal distinction). That's what the computers are doing. They are converting the coaxial (RF) signal into a form that can travel much faster and much further. It is still a point-to-point transaction. It is renting a VCR that happens to be a lot farther away than traditional tecnology would allow.
The problem with MP3 was they were making the copies onto digital media (hard drives). I strongly believe that if they had put the copies on standard audio cassettes (or purchased audio cassettes) and then described it as a "rental" service, they would have had a stronger argument for fair use.
MP3 also got into trouble because they made copies of everything...even stuff that perhaps hadn't been requested by users. If no one requested a copy of a really bad show and I still had a copy of it...I could buy a possible argument that the copy is infringment. But I would be sure to wait for a customer to indicate they wanted a show before it was actually captured and thus eliminate this issue.
This is about renting physical devices. The customer is free to use them for personal, fair use purposes. My companies, and companies like it, would be profitting from the rental of such devices (no different than Rent-To-Own or most video stores who allow VCR rentals).
The only difference is that my VCR has an additional output port that allows the customer to watch the content on his or her computer without having to buy a TV capture card.
And, it is a service that people really, really want. I am always forgetting or messing up my personal fair-use recordings. TiVo et. al. have the right idea but are horribly expensive and do not allow consumers to upgrade capacity. A service like this gives them a limitless TiVo that they can rent instead of buying.
In fact...if I succeeded with the tape approached, renting TiVo over the Internet was going to be my next plan. That way I could stop buying blank VHS tapes and offer video in full MPEG-2 (not VHS) quality.
- JoeShmoe
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Believe it or not, I was actually in the process of starting up a service like this in the near future. I leased a server with RackSpace.Com and I had paid enough premiums to have my legal insurance kick in. Buuuuut...it looks like someone beat me to the punch, so I guess they get to test the legal waters and not me.
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I had a couple consultations with lawyers to review the various legal attacks that might be made on this "Internet VCR" issue. According to the 1984 Betamax decision, the courts have ruled that personal, time-shifted content is legal. So to all those bitching "this is theft": shut up, you don't know what you are talking about. We consumers can tape any shows that we are legally entitled to view. If we live in a region serviced by over-the-air broadcasts, we can record and time-shift over-the-air broadcasts. If we subscribe to cable, the same goes for cable broadcasts. If we subscribe to premium services, etc.
But even though the courts declared time shifting to be legal, it was understood that there was going to be some amount of infrigement going on. Person A would record a show that Person B could watch even though Person B wasn't entitled to view the show. Also, Person A could watch and re-watch a show and thus get sick of it and not watch it the next time it was available, thus hurting ad revenue and premium services (recording a pay-per-view movie to watch many times, for example).
My lawyers are still looking for this exact law/ruling but my understanding is that shortly after the Betamax decisio,n the studios and production companies had a tax or tariff established on all video media sold in the US (or expanded a previous one to cover video cassettes not just audio). This means that for every blank VHS (or Beta or whatever) tape sold, a portion of the price goes to a fund that compensates all of the various studios and companies that produce content for television.
Now, as I said, the lawyers haven't gotten back to me on the exact language, but the theory goes that this type of Internet VCR venture would be perfectly legal if:
A) You are able to restrict content based on right to view...this means both geographically and by service. Someone without cable in the 12345 area code should only be able to "record" and "playback" shows that you can get with an antenna in the 12345 area code. I had toyed around with the idea of having customers fax a copy of their current cable bill to allow/disallow access to cable channels and premium channels. If they did not want to fax in their most recent bill, they would be restricted to over the air content pulled from that area by an agent of the company in that area.
B) For every "two" (assuming SP quality) hours of video recorded, the company would have to purchase and sit on a blank video tape. In this manner, the media companies are being compensated. Cable companies have to pay to rebroadcast over-the-air broadcasts because they are not using the existing mechanism (purchasing recordable media with built in compensation). No one is compensated if you use digital media, hence the studio's resistance to allowing this.
But if one uses the existing compensation mechanisms by buying blank media, the only legal cases would be issues of symantics (is commanding a machine to push a button the same as pushing the button yourself, can VCR be in next room, next house, next state, and so on). Any such arguments would be a waste of court time and dismissed or very short, to the point legal events. I don't see how it should make an ounce of difference where the physical VCR is as long as tapes are being purchased and content is being properly restricted.
Once again, I Am Not A Lawyer, but I have been consulting with several and based on some preliminary discussions, this seems like a valid model for this type of Internet VCR service.
Regarding advertisements... How many people record stuff just so they can fast forward through commercials? On the other hand, how many times have you seen or been sent copies of really good commercials? (the farting SmartBeep commercial comes to mind) If commercials are good, people WILL watch them. But if it is crap like current Pepsi commercial (ugh, did anyone catch that absolute insult to Einstein?) then they WILL and should be able to fast forward or skip them. I don't see any problem with allowing this skip-commercial mechanism. There is no guarantee that just because an ad is airing eyeballs are staring at it. If the ad industry wants to turn this into that scene from A Clockwock Orange and FORCE us to watch commericials against our will...I say to them, good luck trying.
To all those people bitching about extra ads being adding: grow up. It called VAR...value added retail. I provide a service, I charge extra for that service. No one is making money by putting ads on someone else's copyrighted content. They are making money by putting ads on the mechanism that delivers that content. If someone wants to give me a free TV set with ads all over the bezel then, by golly, I'll take it. ABC shouldn't be able to take away that TV set because I'm watching ABC on it the manufacturer didn't compensate them for the ads I'm seeing. Content and delievry are two separate and distinct things and you are a fool if you think otherwise.
- JoeShmoe
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BRIEF SUBMITTED BY MEDIA DEFENDANT 2600 ENTERPRISES, INC. AND ERIC CORLEY a/k/a
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"EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN" IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO MODIFY THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION AND IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS' CROSS-MOTION TO VACATE THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO MODIFY THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION AND IN SUPPORT OF EFENDANTS' CROSS-MOTION TO VACATE THE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION
Huh??? And companies wonder why consumers are so opposed to reading EULA click-thru licenses...
- JoeShmoe
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1) If I only own an audio CD player, they save me the cost of having to buy a CD-ROM drive to play my music on my computer or portable system.
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2) MP3.Com saves me the time it would take me having to extract all the digital audio from my CDs. Also, they are saving me the cost of having to buy a CDDA program.
3) MP3.COM is saving me the time and possibly bandwidth charges that I would incur by uploading my 200 CD collection. Nealy every high bandwidth connection is capped on the upload, which means it would be impossible for me to stream my audio to my computer at work from my computer at home. It would take me three months of solid uploading to get my entire collection online somewhere that I can download at the full 128/160/192 bitrate.
4) MP3.Com is saving me the time it would take to encode all my music to MP3 files, which are most definitely more versitile. They are also saving me from having to buy an encoding program.
5) This may not be a feature yet, but certainly MP3.Com could store multiple bitrates of my songs, so that I could custom tailor it for the device...64kbps mono for my Rio, 128kbps for my home DSL...192 for my fat connection at work.
6) MP3.Com is saving me hundred of dollars in media costs. I would need 12 GB of space to store my collection...and since this is 12GB of data that is READ-ONLY, that is a real waste of hard drive space. WORM media is a better choice, but you can't store 12GB on anything currently available.
It looks to me that an obviously technophobic judge has made a very, very narrow ruling that make very, very broad use of the word "repackaging". When you are talking about adding value, this "repackagin" is adding a lot of value. For him to dismiss all the above as just mere "repacking" is almost like say "I had a bunch of music I could only listen to at home on my stereo...yada yada yada...now I can listen to it any time, any where." That's a pretty big yada.
Oh, one other thing...how many companies out there keep separate copies of files for each user when they are the same file? Of course not, that's what links are for. It seems like MP3 could get around this problem by giving users the tools...having them encode all their music...then uploading it back up to MP3 (essentially doing the fair use part themselves). The end result would be no different than what you have now.
If I was MP3.com I would wave a magic wand and then tell the courts and RIAA "We didn't make that music. It was uploaded by hundreds of users who own the albums". Of course, they would have to "delete" any albums that no one had (yet) registered but assuming someone does, it wouldn't be too hard to suddenly "recover" it.
- JoeShmoe
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An excellent point and something I'd never even considered. +1+1+1, Interesting, Informative, and Insightful.
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Perhaps this sounds silly but, we should all campaign for life of author + 400 years. Then when Disney throws their support behind it, use DNA testing to dig up some decendant of Hans Christian Anderson and sue Disney for mega-mega-infringment.
Okay, so I know that wouldn't work but it makes you think. If someday in the future, one of my descendants wants to make a 3D Holographic BrainTV production of an "original" Disney work (ummm...I'm trying to think of one...Fantasia, maybe? Well, at least the animation part...) I seriously doubt the copyright laws of that century would even allow it! And yet Disney owes most of their fortune to building on the works of others.
I am truly, truly sickened by the blatent hypocracy that I only just now realized existed. I see a bleak, bleak future when the only people that have the right to make a derrivative work are the people whose only goal is to exploit it.
- JoeShmoe
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Having never owned one, I don't know what kind of seals or tamper switches they might contain, but the tech I spoke to seemed pretty adamant that you should "reaaaaally not open the box". For all I know, once you open the box it narcs on you to the server or refuses to operate. Philips head screws are not a security device, and if they intent was to prevent users from upgrading or enhancing their existing system, who knows what the did.
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It all goes to attitude. It would have cost mere dollars to put the drive in some kind of plastic, removable cage. But they wanted to milk profits by tempting consumers into a very profitable upgrade every 6-12 months when drive storage has doubled. That's just plain anti-consumer. The FireWire was the best thing going for the ReplayTV and they took it out, not for legal reasons like they would suggest (since there is hardware everywhere capable of capturing shows just like ReplayTV does) but because they saw the profit potential and decided it was worth screwing the customer.
- JoeShmoe
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The first generation units had a FireWire port on the back...which would have made ReplayTV the perfect FireWire capture device (to this day, I still cannot find a external FireWire-to-TV device, even though there are a crapload of USB ones).
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But guess what? Networks were concerned that someone would record show and then upload them onto the Internet. Guess what anyone under the sun can already do with existing capture cards? Duh. So one of the best features gets thrown out the window.
Not to mention that the main reason TiVo et. al. suck is that they are not user-upgradeable. Do I really need to pay some company $300 to put in a freakin IDE hard drive for me? Do I really need to pay $300 for a hard drive that would cost me maybe $150? This is blatently ripping off the consumer. With an external port OF ANY KIND it should be possible to store an infinite amount of video to CD-R/RW, DVD-RAM, hard disk, ZIP, whatever. But no...by removing the port, you force the consumer to follow your official pricing schedule. True, you can crack it open and Ghost the image to a bigger drive, but there goes the warantee.
ReplayTV almost had my business, but by choosing to be slave to the network interests, they have forever lost power users as their audience. I strongly encourage that anyone thinking about buying a replay TV go out and shop for a really high quality capture card instead.
- JoeShmoe
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Okay, I don't watch a lot of Voyager, so I probably missed that one but...I don't think your reasoning is exactly a show-stopper.
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First of all, the Maquis that were fighting with Cardassia were all in the Alpha quadrant. That doesn't meant there aren't other battles on other fronts that are being fought by the Maquis. As near as I can understand it, it's patterned after the Bjorn's during The Occupation in that there is no central authority, just a bunch of independant cells. So how could it ever be really killed off? It may go into hiding, but as long as there is some Federation Officer pissed off at the crap he gets handed, there will always be Maquis.
Second, okay so let's say after the Dominion takeover they wiped out the Maquis. That could be talking about whatever cell it was that Chakotay and B'lana and whoever belongs to. So their friends are sad, boo hoo, all dead but meanwhile back in the Alpha quadrant, there is a growing number of Federations officers who aren't buying this "we give up" attitude the founders are handing them...they are seeing evidence to the contrary but the Federation leaders, anxious to rebuild in peace, refuse to accept/believe it. This causes several to go rebel, renue the Maquis name in the Alpha quadrant and in general raise hell about anything or everything.
So yes, the Maquis as we know it from DS9 and VOY maybe be dead, but it's not a hard leap to see that any Federation officer of sufficient rank will know about them and their cause and could be pursuaded to defect at any moment. Like that one security guy that Sisko spent years chasing...Mr. Val Jean...and Tom Riker, tho if Voyager said he was dead, it would be a bummer because he is their best bet to "tie in" to the previous series. But really, the producers could take any Star Trek character and find some convincing reason to get him/her to quit and join the Maquis, openly if it was to be permanent or secretly if they wanted to maintain continuity with future TNG/DS9 movies...
Plus, think how cool AND realistic it would be to have tens even hundreds of small Maquis ships fighting instead of this one big, vulnerable starship. Maquis would work like a swarm (possibly with distributed networks that make their many ships function collectively as a massive ship, if the head gets shot off, another is automatically promoted and fight continues) and be enough of a threat that both sides are working to stop them, Federation through "peaceful" means and the other side (Cardassian, Romulan, etc.) with not-so-peaceful means. And, because the Maquis would be working with hand-me-down scraps, there wouldn't be any of this BS "let's do X to the main deflector and solve everything" since more than likely, even if they could see a solution, they wouldn't have the time/resources to implement it and oh crap they die, time for the show to jump to the next cell and continue the storyline with them angrily vowing to avenge the deaths of the previous cell.
I truly believe the only way you are going to get people to care about Star Trek is to force them to care about what happens on a show-by-show basis. As it currently stands, you know exactly when characters are going to enter/exit and so I think that it becomes that much harder to suspend disbelief. If the Maquis had no standing cast (just an interwoven series of appearances) and suddenly there is no magic save at the last possible second...characters actually die not just in some heroic "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" way but just plain die because they were outgunned, outnumbered, tricked and trapped...then I think people would actually find Star Trek to be something they watch and care about. Not just "ho hum, I haven't watched the last X episodes but I know exactly what's going on and what's going to happen anyway."
- JoeShmoe
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