really? you think people would switch to robots from prostitutes? I mean, isn't part of the appeal to straight men for straight sex that the other person be a female person. Would a plastic and metal animatronic doll with a vibrating functions and pelvic thrusts really satisfy that need?
I see sex robots as appealing to people with a blow up sex doll and too much money.
I won't be surprised to see them arrive, but I'm skeptical they are going to be received as much more than ridiculously expensive sex toys. And sure a lot of people use sex toys, but I'm skeptical how big the market for a multi-thousand dollar sex robot is really going to be.
You've taken sec 1008 out of context. I doubt a PC can meet the definition (in sec. 1001) of a "digital audio recording device" (or in any event that it's acting in that capacity when being used to download a music file), nor that downloading a copy over a p2p network would qualify as "making [a] digital musical recording".
I disagree. Consider iPods, iTunes, and the iTunes music store... I don't think anyone reasonable is going to dispute that the computer, the hard drive they are stored on, and the files themselves aren't going to qualify as:
Digital audio playback devices, digital audio recording devices, and digital audio recordings respectively. Sure they aren't -strictly- within the definitions, but then, take medium:
A "digital audio recording medium" is any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device."
(Emphasis mine.) Even Recordable CD's aren't strictly within that definition as they are not primarily marketed nor most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings. Today they are primarily used for data, consumers are most commonly using flash based devices. (ipods, zunes, sansas, etc, etc...) CD's are mostly for other data these days.
In the mordern world hard drives, flash drives, and networks are how the consumer makes 'digital audio recordings'; and in the case of things like itunes, its how the device and media use to sell and distribute them too.
There is no meaningful difference between making a "digital audio recording" of a music track and "copying a file". When I rip a CD I'm copying a file. When I buy an itunes song, I'm copying a file.
The point of sec 1008 is that I can record music off the radio, etc., for my own personal use.
Excellent point about radio. I can record music off radio for personal use legally. My cable company delivers FM stations via the coax wire and I can record music off that too for personal use. And then there's this thing called "internet radio" and clearly I should be able to record music off of that for personal use too. Its just another medium on which to deliver digital audio.
Now if I record internet radio using a computer, and saving the stream to disk. Well... that's pretty much identical to copying a file. No, scratch that, not 'pretty much'. That's simply copying the file.
And that was my point earlier... the RIAA is essentially treating p2p sharers like unauthorized radio stations -- as BROADCASTERS, not as 'file copiers'. The distiction on the internet seems to be semantics, since broadcasting on the internet *is* done by making copies... but that's the hair they are splitting.
And charging us for being an unauthorized broadcaster is on par with charging someone sharing a joint with drug trafficking... which we agree on.
It is not intended to suggest that digital music files aren't subject to copy restrictions.
What exactly -is- it intended to suggest? I can use consumer equipment to make personal use copies. As long as I don't step outside that, any personal use copies I make are legal.
It just so happens consumer grade equipment has reached the point that it can make hundreds of perfect copies an hour from an original 10,000 miles away with half a dozen mouse clicks. The stuff of science fiction when this law was written.
I agree the law never anticipated that consumer equipement would reach a level of sophistication that making copies would be trivial, effortless, and cost practically nothing, so that an average consumer can actually run a non-profit digital recording distribution center for non-commercial purposes at virtually no cost -- and thereby render the entire music replication/distribution industry entirely redundant. But it has. And copyright must be rewritten so that artist compensation do
You may believe that making one or two copies is fair use; I disagree, and I'm pretty sure both the written law and the case law disagree with you as well. Fair use is a complicated topic, though, so I don't expect either of us to commit the resources to "prove" our point of view to the other.
Section 1008 of the Copyright Statute:
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
You aren't supposed to be able to charge someone based on noncommercial use of a device or medium (e.g. computer/hard disk/internet) to make digital musical recordings.
This is why the RIAA doesn't even try to go after people downloading copies for personal use. And their leg to even go after someone uploading non-commercial copies is pretty weak.
From what I understand, they usually try to mix in that a sharer is in violation of their -broadcast- rights, not -copy- rights. (Copyright of course is more is more than just 'copying' its also broadcasting, public performance & display rights, derivative works, the right to assign licensees, etc.) One reason the RIAA has gotten away without having to even prove copies were actually made when charging people, is because in their legal theory their case is more about broadcasting and and public display them about actually making non-commercial copies.
Making the non-commercial copies is outright legal, nevermind a 'fair use'.
If I let a few people in an online community make a copy for non-commercial purposes is that fair use? I think its at the very least a very grey area. If I make 100's or 1000's of copies I think it becomes less grey but 5 or 6?
A person who passes a joint at a concert isn't a trafficker, but he is breaking drug laws (if he's in the US, at least). A person who makes a few copies of a copyrighted work and propagates them isn't a kingpin of a piracy ring, but he is a copyright infringer.
Fair comment. But the point is that he's not a drug trafficker. He shouldn't be charged as one. Which brings me back to this:
You can go the "civil disobediance" route, but a key element of civil disobediance is that you accept the legal and social consequences of your action... so are you prepared to pay civil fines for your beliefs on this?
Just as when I jaywalk, Yes. Absolutely. I am willing to take responsibility for making 5 or 6 unauthorized copies of a given track for non-commercial purposes, provided the RIAA can identity the track and prove those 5-6 copies were actually made and that I am personal responsible for it. (I'm not going to do their job for them, any more than I am going to self-report myself to the police when I jaywalk when there aren't any cars in sight.)
That said, am I willing to be charged as a 'kingpin of a piracy ring'? Of course not. If I smoke dope at a concernt, something that is known to be illegal I would be prepared to accept the punishment for the crime I committed, having the drugs confiscated and a misdemeaner of carrying less than 1oz of a controlled substance without a permit... or whatever it is... but I'm not willing to be tried and/or imprisoned for life for corrupt enterprise and drug trafficking.
The RIAA lawsuits are improper; they have no business even charging someone like me for millions in damages. The damages are in the 10s of dollars, not the 10's of millions.
Ultimately I think the way people look at the music, video, and literature markets is going to have to change. Enforced scarcity is becoming an impossibility. For now, though, copyright is a key component that helps those markets tick. The first objective is to restore balance to copyright law (whic
" Or to save people from having to tediously rip their own CD's? "
You can certainly try to be coy, and that's why we have juries. If you can fool 12 people into believing you're just helping people legally format-shift songs they purchased, more power to you. If I'm on that jury, good luck convincing me that the preponderance of evidence suggests such when you have neither the motive nor the means to ensure that's how the share is being accessed.
What is your theory of motive? That I want to anonymously and illegally distribute copy protected music to random strangers on the internet at no benefit whatsoever to myself 1000s of times? Their isn't even a thrill. So why exactly would I be motivated to do that?
For most people the reason music ends up in their shared folder is that its the path of least resistance. They might not really be aware they are sharing; they might not really care. They might even think of it as a 'pay it forward' karma thing.
Me, I fall into category c. Someone was nice enough share their copy with me, so I return the favor to network and share it back a few times over before pulling it out of the shared folder. To me that's akin to going to a music forum with my ipod and displaying the list of songs I listened to in the last month. If someone asks for a copy of one of the songs I'll make it. And I feel that qualifies as fair use. I'm only making a small number of copies.
Sure I concede in aggregate that the p2p scene results in massive infringement. But that's still an important distinction. One guy sharing a joint at a concert with the strangers around him is not a drug trafficker. And if growing and sharing weed was as effortless as sharing music the DEA would be in the same position as the RIAA. Personal use growers who give it away for free to the people around them are still just people, not 'drug lords', even if there are 300 million of them and they're moving more weed in aggregate than organized traffickers ever could have.
That aside, I agree you've poked some valid holes in my library analagy. However I don't think hypothesizing about a future library is not useful. What happens to libraries when books become as easy to copy as music? Whether our cell phone camera's will be able to make a perfect scan of each page just by flipping the pages in front of it... or books will make the transition to electronic form.
In fact, good luck convincing me that downloading the song is "less tedious" than ripping it.
I have a number of CDs that were a pain to rip because of the 'copy protection features'. For them, downloading a version was less hassle than overcoming the encryption. I have a large number of records and tapes, which ripping is much more of a hassle. I also have a number of scratched CDs. I know of one person who has a whole stack of CDs that have 'deteriorated'...
I understand what your saying, but I fail to see the relevance. To photocopy a book is a time consuming process, true, but what is the relevance. Are you asserting a device is non-infringing if its clumsy and inconvenient to use? If I build a p2p system that requires the user to manually specify which 30 second clip of a CD they want to sample, so that if they want the entire Cd they have to create 300 separate manual requests, would that really change anything?
(Given that it would be trivial for someone to write a script to automate sending those 300 requests and stringing the result back together.)
As to your 2nd and 3rd points...
In a world where almost everyone has a digital camera, almost every cellphone has a camera, and most of them do video too... and page scanners the size of a pen exist... how much longer will it be before one can ASSUME the average person walking into a library will have a servicable video/camera/scanner on their person. Within a decade will we have something that we can place on a stand, turn pages, and have it record video, scan pages, and possibly even OCR the pages in realtime? At which point copying a book is little more than the time it takes to flip through it.
Will one be accused of 'making available for copy' copy protected works, merely by leaving them in plain sight, where someone can pick them up, knowing that they probably will have the means on them to make a copy?
Even then books are still clumsier to work with... but for how long? if we ever get to the point where we own just a few book devices, that have say high resolution flexible displays perhaps 'printed' on actual paper so that it looks and feels just like a book. And files are copied and stored onto it for reading... what then?
We've already reached that point with music and pictures. And we're virtually there with video. The book *will* fall soon. (And already the p2p trade in books is incredibly high... I have a collections of hundreds of books. I still prefer to read them on paper; but the ability to search an entire library for a term, phrase, quote, etc is extremely handy. If they can get an ebook reader out that's enough like a real book, the era of the printed word will see the beginning of its end. That beginning of the end is already within sight.... technical manuals haven't been printed for years. Software ships with electronic manuals. ebooks are readily available. Amazon is fooling around with its Kindle...
Soon enough it will be easier to copy an entire book, than a selection of its pages. What happens then?
Interesting analogy, but a more appropriate one would be if the library set up numerous photocopiers, placed copies of each of the current best-selling novels upon each photocopier, then put a big sign above each saying "Press the green button to get a copy of novel: ZZZ"
Why would the best sellers be on top them. My Kazaa library gives equal accessibility to everything in the folder. So the books will be in the stacks, and the copiers will be conveniently close.
And my p2p app doesn't send someone the complete song. It sends them only the specific blocks they request. For most users I only provide a few blocks, which is legal. Of course I don't stand there and decide when someone has had too many kilobytes worth and cut them off... but I could. So anyone who wanted to steal the song would have to get different pieces from different people... if only there were a p2p system that worked like this!;)
And would kazaa be any more legit if any one user could only share 30 seconds of any given song in any given day?
In your analogy, if the library had a vending machine that distributed crack cocaine as well as numerous legal substances, would NOT be liable for drug trafficking? After all, they just provided the option...you were the one who had to click the buttons.
Bad analagy. The differences between physical product and copying IP are way too numerous. There is no way I as a crack dealer can escape that fact that I've transferred physical product to you. Unless I'm going to argue that I put the crack in a vending machine, and the service I'm selling you is the enjoymet of just putting money in to see the machine hum and clunk. And then when you went and took the crack... dammit that was never part of the deal! I didn't sell you crack... you stole it from me!! Which would be absurd.
And there are lots of scenarios where you using my copy to make your own copy, or your own partial copy don't result in infringement. None of these apply to crack in a vending machine.
1) I don't really buy the "user doesn't know" argument; it doesn't take a 4-year degree to know what kazaa is doing with the files you put in its share folders, and at some level a user is responsible for knowing something about the tools he or she employs.
I agree. The OP was arguing that putting files in a shared folder is a deliberate action on par with drawing a sign saying "get CDs here for $5", and I disagree with that. Most people get kazaa to download music, not to share music. That limewire etc share music by default, is almost incidental. People should be responsible for knowing what their tools do... but now were talking a case of the "the user was too lazy to figure out that they were sharing" instead of "the user took a conscious deliberate action to share".
2) The library analogy is seriously flawed. Let's say you decide to copy an entire book using library photocopiers, at $0.10 per page. You'll typically pay more than a new copy would cost, and the copy you get will be pretty low quality; so I don't really see how the library has given you "everything you need" to get illegal copies of their books.
Lets break that up point by point:
Let's say you decide to copy an entire book using library photocopiers, at $0.10 per page. You'll typically pay more than a new copy would cost,
True in some cases, not in others. Kids books like "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!" is some $12.00. Probably cost under $2.00 to copy at.10c/page.
and the copy you get will be pretty low quality
That doesn't make them somehow legal.
You'll also need quite a bit of time for this project, and may be told to stop and/or kicked out of the library before you can complete it
Only if i were to attempt to copy the entire library. I typically only download one or two songs from any given person, not their entire library. Besides, scale is not important. It only takes one book to infringe copyright.
(You might also notice signs around the copier that put you on notice that you're supposed to obey copyright law, though that detail depends on the library.)
It wouldn't be hard to add to the kazaa protocal a message that says 'please respect copyright' when someone connects. Would that some change anything?
See, unlike kazaa shares, the purpose of library photocopiers isn't copyright violation.
Can you really say the 'purpose' of kazaa shares is copyright violation? What if I put copywritten files in there so that someone who stepped on their copy of the CD can download a new copy from me? Or to save people from having to tediously rip their own CD's? What if I don't put copyprotected files in my Kazaa share?
A lot of people use bitorrent, ftp, and usenet to violate copyright too... but that's hardly their 'purpose'.
For example, copying a few pages of a reference book for academic purposes is legal.
So is downloading a sample of a song for academic purposes.
The copiers are well suited to this purpose (in much the way that they are not well suited to wholesale copyright violation).
So if copiers become more efficient, full colour, hi-resolution scanners, that can save the output to a flash drive instead of paper -then- libraries couldn't install them because they'd be liable for copyright infringement? The fair use doctrine only applies to clumsy 70's technolgy that's slow, expensive, and inefficient to use and results in poor quality output? That would be a rather odd interpretation of the law.
As it stands, I often use my digital camera instead of photocopiers because it captures in colour, and to files, instead of in b/w to paper, and its cheaper too. At least one library I've visited had a colour scanner instead of a photocopier, and I think the reason we don't see more is that libraries are woefully underfunded and can't afford better copiers.
1) You don't 'index and share your songs via Kazaa', Kazaa et al, do tha all by themselves, without user intervention, in their default course of action. Many users aren't even aware 'they did it'.
2) I've always liked the library analagy. Its a public building, open to the public, and full of books. Photocopiers are placed conveniently often even marked with signs --> photocopiers this way. The books are carefully organized to make them easy to find. And there are computers scattered around so you can look them up that way too.
They've set everything up they possibly could to let you make copies. Yet if you do so, YOU are liable for infringement, not them.
By analagy, if I set up a computer, put it in a public place (like the internet), with songs available on it, and also set it up with tools that will make copies of those songs for you if you send it the right commands.
Now if you send my computer a command to transmit you a copy of the song... shouldn't YOU be liable for infringement? My computer isn't making copies and sending them out... YOU asked my computer to do it. All I did was set it up to listen to requests.
How is that fundamentally different from a library? If I could somehow operate the library photocopier by remote from my computer, would that suddenly shift the blame for making copies to them? I should think not. Its still YOU who have (remotely) operated the copier to make an infringing copy.
Finally, as a side note... if YOU own the CD in question, and feel its easier to download a copy using my publicly available computer to send you one, rather than ripping your own CD. Shouldn't that be legal. I as the computer owner have done nothing illegal by making it available. You have done nothing illegal because you have the right to make personal use copies of that song by virtue of the fact that you own a copy.
Why or Why not does this 'theory' work?
Finally if I charge you for access to my system that allows you to make copies am I a pirate then? Good question... interestingly, I still think not. If a library charges you.10c page to use their photocopier and makes you use some sort of 'printer card' that you prepay to fill... would that make them infringe? I doubt it...most libraries -do- charge for photocopies.
So its only infringement if they start making the actual copies themselves. Setting up the equipment and letting you operate it, even if they charge you for access, doesn't make them liable for infringement.
Although at some point you might argue that their is a conspiracy to commit infringement...
But mickey mouse is a trademark so I'm not sure how that's ever going to end up in the public domain. And most of harry potters characters are individually trademarked as well... to prevent confusion right?;)
How, exactly, does a 15 minute trip to the video store (or a 30 second trip to the mailbox) compare to the 12-14 hours it would take to download a full quality BD file?
The 30 second trip to the mail box presumes you ordered the movie a couple days ago if not MUCH longer ago. A D/L service beats the likes of netflix hands down. Its faster, AND its not going to delay your selection for weeks on end due to supply issues.
As for vs a video store... its a tradeoff... D/L service can win on selection and availability. Video store currently wins on speed... but really... if I can get a D/L in 2 hrs, and start watching it after 15 minutes buffering D/L is good to go. And for that we only need to improve speeds around 6x. That's not far fetched at all.
And see my other post about the issues with assuming that by the time the network catches up, we'll have an even fatter format on disc...
Re:Online distribution of HD content take too much
on
Microsoft To Drop HD DVD
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
Will anybody care? The HD formats (blueray/HDDVD) already really aren't overwhelmingly compelling vs an upconverting dvd to a lot of people. Yes you can see the difference but its not 'omg that's amazing am I'm going to rush out to buy Zoolander and Disney's Cars *again* just to see it like this...
Now, how much better is the *next* thing going to be?? 2160p? with 11.2 audio? Is the public going to care? Or is it going to be like DVD-audio, a format that only the 'philes masturbate about in there perfectly constructed home theatres.
Consider music. CD is good enough; DVD audio is getting almost nowhere after 10 years. At some point this happens to video... I think HD is already pushing it as far as mainstream adoption. HD^2? I'm not sure I would bet on that horse.
Most of these people got burned because they bought their Vista capable computer with XP pre-installed 3-6 months before Vista was available. They can't return it 3-6 months after purchase anywhere. Few if any merchants would honor that for any product, but especially on now obsolete computers.
I agree. I did a project for a company some ten years back, a small database app integrated in a barcode printer. They used a standard barcode scanner, it sent the scanned code as a standard ascii string on a serial port. Just read from the serial port where you attach the scanner, using your standard stdio routines, and you're all set in that part of your solution.
RS232 is still available, but I'd say for small installations, and especially when simplicity is desired, go USB.
1) Nearly all barcode scanners today worth buying are available in USB.
2) These USB ones all have standard Human-Interface-Device drivers, and appear, as far as the application or operating system is concerned: as keyboards. So you can use them trivially. Provide the user a place to type in a code, and he can either type it manually or scan it. Your application doesn't know or care that the inputs coming in from a scanner. So it works trivially with web forms based apps, excel spreadsheets, MS access, filemaker pro, whatever you need.
3) Nearly all barcode scanners worth buying are highly programmable so you can have them insert custom prefixes and suffixes around the barcode. So if you want to scan multiple codes in sequence separated by a CR/LF you just tell the scanner to append a CR/LF to each code it sends.
You can also get keyboard wedge versions that go between your computer and keyboard on the PS/2 port, but I don't recommend those. They're flaky. PS/2 doesn't seem to be designed for this, and some motherboards and keyboards just aren't reliable. USB is far smoother. And PS/2 should be dead anyway.
I've had personal experience with a number of scanners and at the entry level I'd recommend a USB Symbol LS2208, for around 150.00. I've also heard decent things about the Metrologic MS9520 around the same price. You can get cheaper scanners... like the idtech econoscan for half that price, but they're junk. The next step up would be a laser scanner, or wireless, or more ruggedized, or have support for 2D barcodes etc, none of which you probably need in a small Point-of-sale environment.
Judge granted a class action status to a lawsuit of customers against a company selling an "under a thousand dollars" TV for $999.95
It would be a more apt analagy if said TVs were could only average 10 frames per second, american idol was too taxing on the set for it even to start. This line of TVs was also heavily advertised as having 5.1 surround sound playback, a remote and very shiny sexy digital knobs going to 300 channels but when you got it hom and set it up there was no remote, and you had to change channels by turning a 13 channel knob. Oh, and there was no sound either. none. not 5.1, not even mono.
Such a unit may meet the barest qualifications of being a TV, but any reasonable consumer who got such a thing home would feel justifiably ripped off and return it immediately.
But the insidious part of Vista capable, was that they bought it on the promise that it would run vista when it came out, and when Vista came out, they found out that their reasonable expection of 'run vista' was not met, but they were now entirely unable to return the computer, and even downgrading is a 'reformat from scratch' procedure.
They feel ripped off, justifiably, in my opinon, and they want their money back.
If bought a computer that "ran Vista", and ended up with a computer that could only run Vista Home Basic... and did even that poorly, then I'd take it back. These people can't. And hence there is a lawsuit.
Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.
You say my analysis is flawed, because it assumes that your either A, B, or C. You are asserting then, that there is this 4th group that of people who are:
informed customers, who are considering a game machine for playback, and NOT in one HD camp or the other
Am I reading that right?
So what would those customers above buy? A PS3, of course.
But that's my point, and we agree... these people are buying the PS3 because its a great value proposition for an HD format player, NOT because its a great value proposition for a bluray player. If the PS3 had been HDDVD, it would be the same value proposition to them.
So these people cannot be said to be 'selecting bluray' for any perceived merit of bluray over hddvd. They are simply selecting the best HD format player value propisition (in terms of price, features, and aesthetics), and incidentally it the HD format it happens to support is bluray.
I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market.
And you would be the exception. The sort that really only wanted a blu-ray player and chose a ps3 to get it. But seriously, most people bought a ps3 for the games alone. A chunk bought it for the games and because it was a hidef player (but not because it was specifically a blu-ray player), and a few like you bought it as a bluray player, that happens to play games.
The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box.
If you were that informed a customer and in the hddvd camp, then an xbox+accessory was an easy equivalent alternative at an equivalent price. I doubt the 'sleekness' of the ps3 would have played into the equation much for someone who was in one camp or the other.
So how long are they going to continue to patch xp?
MS has published their guidelines on life cycle policy. The date the last license will be sold along with the end of the patch services is all readily available information. Look it up. Perhaps they'll extend the dates for XP as result of this stunt, perhaps not. But anyone in IT has known for a LONG time about this.
How long will the WGA servers continue to tell the customer's computers that it is okay to run xp?
Good question. I expect MS would be dragged through the courts and handed their asses if they even tried to shut down the servers within the next decade or two without first releasing an official fool-WGA-so-it-thinks-it-got-valid-response-from-the-server patch.
That said, IT people have known about WGA, activation, and so forth since it was first unveiled, and they chose to buy into the system. They had plenty of opportunity to reject it then. Again, they KNEW this was a risk when they bought in.
It certainly occurred to me the first time I heard about the planned Windows activation feature of XP that this could be a problem if MS ever got bought out, shut down, or something like that happened. I despise systems like this. Most really big enterprises, governments, militaries, etc have 'escrow' deals, that can be triggered in an event like the above; so that if a vendor can't live up to their obligations, source code, or pathces, signing keys, or whatever are released.
The general public unfortunately doesn't have this protection. Maybe we should demand it from government? That proprietary source code be placed in escrow, for example. To be released when the vendor vanishes from the face of the earth, copyright on it expires, and/or other circumstances in which it would be in the publics best interest to get the source.
How long will vendors continue to support multiple code forks for their apps as the APIs drift?
That would be up to the vendors. If your going to draw a line in the sand and say, "I am sticking with this platform", you better hope you make up enough of the market for them not to leave you behind. Even linux users have that issue...things only ever get backported so far. Sure its FOSS so you can backport it yourself if you want... but most IT shops really aren't prepared to go to that effort, even though it is an option.
Well, I do happen to need access to regional and language settings, unless I wanna be typing all my essays at home. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, so in order for me to be able to actually type things in school, I need to be able to change that.
1) While I applaud your motivation to learn dvorak I'm stunned you didn't bother to learn/retain qwerty as well. It would come in handy, you know, when your working on computers that you adjust the settings on.
Luckily your school doesn't seem to care, but that's hardly going to be true in every case. And not every system is going to be something you can hack to let you use it. Really... you should retain qwerty, even if you prefer dvorak.
2) If you purchased a hard-wired dvorak keyboard, you can just plug it in and use it, without changing any settings. You only need to change the settings to have a regular wired keyword work as a dvorak layout. Not that I think plugging your own hardware into school property is necessarily a good solution either... its just an FYI.
Sometimes you just have to use the computer in front of you, configured the way its configured. As a left handed person who uses the mouse on the left side of the keyboard with my left hand, I've become pretty ambidextrous at mousing, because all too often moving the mouse is more hassle than its worth.
, but to say that PS3 purchasers, particularly those who were likely to be significantly interested in using it as a movie player, were totally insulated from concern over the format war whereas purchasers of standalone players were not is simply wrong.
I disagree. People buying a PS3 with an eye towards using it as a hidef player knew there was risk bluray wouldn't win, and that weighed into their decision whether or not a PS3 was worth buying at all. But its not like they really had a choice... if they wanted a PS3 but thought HDDVD would win, they still went home with a PS3.
More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched - many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change."
Nobody is forcing them to make a change. They can run windows xp for as long as they like. People out there are still running windows 95.
Oh... you meant you want to force microsoft not to release a new edition while discontinuing their old ones? Tough shit. Might as well cry to ford that you don't want them to update their models every year. See how far you get with that.
Or perhaps you mean, Infoworld thinks if Microsoft sees enough demand for continued XP support they'll continue to support it, and that's what this stunt is all about. Of course its a nice theory. They're a company after all. They aren't going to leave a big pile of money on the table.
If MS thinks people WON'T buy Vista, and will migrate away from windows if they can't buy XP then they'll support XP.
But they aren't really in that predicament at all. Not many of these so-called respected IT people are going to switch to linux or OSX if they can't buy XP, switching to linux doesn't get their activeX/iis/active directory/whatever infrastrucure going seamlessly without any retraining or re-implementation, etc. Its not that they don't want vista, its that they don't want to change at all.
So they're fucked. They can bitch and throw a tantrum all they want, MS can move forward and they'll come kicking and screaming because they bought into an OS that they don't have any control over, and Vista is still the easiest upgrade path they have. They made their bed when they signed up for proprietary software. Microsoft has released how many versions of windows? And how many versions of DOS before that?? If they didn't think that sooner or later MS would drag them forward they haven't been paying attention.
Apple users went through the same thing when they switched from OS9 to OSX and from PPC to intel... its just that apple isn't 90+ percent of the business desktop operating system market so "Infoworld" and IT people in general never got up in arms over it.
OS9 -> OSX is a lot like XP to Vista... OSX ran like a DOG compared to OS9 on the same hardware, tons of incompatible software, missing drivers for tons of hardware, completely redone interface with a lot of controversial issues -- like the dock, unix and security added in... good thing OS9 was so different it had to be run completely virtualized because NOT a single OS9 program would have gotten off the ground in OSX. And then just a couple years later they switched to intel and OS9 was dead as a doornail, and couldn't even be virtualized.
That is the price of progress and the nature of vender lockin. I feel sorry for end users when they get caught with their pants down during a transition... but IT people? They should fucking know better and should have seen this coming miles away and planned for it.
As if PS3 buyers were shelling out the high price of the console without realizing that it was a Blu-ray player, and just started purchasing Blu-ray discs without any consciousness of their actions. To the extent that PS3 owners embraced Blu-ray at all, they didn't do it "unwittingly".
Yes, they supported blu-ray over hddvd incidentally. Ie if the PS3 had been hddvd they would have bought it all the same. The market skew toward blu-ray by way of ps3 sales was NOT on blu-ray's merits over HDDVD, it was simply by virtue of the fact that that is what the PS3 came with.
Everyone picking a stand alone player had to agonize over whether to go bluray or hddvd.
If the PS3 had somehow been available in two flavors... one blu-ray and one HDDVD and customers were actually selecting the hi-def format they were going to gamble on you could argue they were 'wittingly' involved in the choice, but as it stands, no, they were not.
It came with hidef (which they wanted or at least saw value in), it happened to be bluray which they mostly didn't care about, so that's what they got. People buying a ps3 wanted a ps3 and took whatever hidef player it came with.
Well for one thing...I don't own the router, I don't pay for the internet service, so yes, what I do on the internet sure is my parent's business. But what I do locally is not.
Bullshit. You inject heroine in your bedroom and its your parents business. You plot a school massacre in your garage... maybe your parents should have been paying attention... not just to what you were doing in your room, but along your whole developmenet process.
I don't see the news of young kids being stupid as the parents fault,
Kids being stupid isn't the parents faults. That's part of being a kid. Parents not keeping track of their kids being stupid IS the parents fault. That's part of being a parent. You aren't supposed to, and can't, prevent a kid from being stupid, but you can head off their stupid actions so that they are merely learning experiences instead of tragedies, victims, and crimes. You can't do that if your kid is in a locked room with a locked computer. And its ok to trust your kid to be alone in his room, and trust him enough to not snoop in his computer... but that doesnt mean the kid needs to have locks and encryption. Trust should be enough.
And that's for a 17 year old. A seven year old... the parents should be teaching the kid trust and privacy, but putting them in a locked room with an encrypted computer and not keeping tabs is just irresponsible. If the kid starts doing somethign stupid the parent will have no way to, well, parent.
And I love how you equate trying to read techdirt to hotwiring cars.
They are equivalent. You are claiming you learned to hack computers to get past internet controls, but for some reason never learned to hotwire a car or pick locks to get past their controls. Clearly the mere presence of controls isn't what motivated you to learn hacking. Interest in computers did. The challenge presented by the controls may have served as an outlet for that interest... but I'm sure there were locks in your house, and cars in your garage you could could have learned to pick and hotwire... so had you been interested in those pursuits... the challenges were there.
And even if there hadn't been controls, had you been interested in computers, you still would have learned about them. As I did.
Also, I never said hotwiring cars or picking locks was illegal. Although you seem to have interpreted that.
My school has control panel locked out, and I every time I get on one of those computers I have to go through and unlock it so I can get to the 'regional and language settings'.
You don't need to adjust 'regional and language settings'. You might want to, and you might be able to, but you don't need to, and the school doesn't want you to... ergo... you have no business doing so.
Did that ever occur to you? That maybe they locked you out because you didn't need to and they didn't want you to do that? Sure they might have been primarily intending to lock you out of the networking control panel, and blocking regional and language settings was mostly a side effect... but so what? It didn't bug them enough to unlock language and settings. They locked control panels. Stay out.
Had you learned to pick locks you could go into the janitors closet and electrical rooms too... would that be any more or less wrong than what you are doing in control panels? What if you just needed to mop up a spill? Surely they only lock those doors to keep you out of the toxic chemicals and high voltage stuff... not to prevent you from accessing the mop? (After all, if you wanted to hurt someone there is plenty of equipment in the gym, shop, etc... all far more deadly than the locked up mop.)
See what i'm saying? Its the same thing.
I'm not saying your an awful person... I used to install and play Wolfenstein 3D on the graphics labs cad workstations during the lunch break despite the admins best efforts to prevent us, but I don't defend my actions as being somehow right.
So I guess you're saying I, as a 16 year old, have no right to my 47 character password... (yes, I do actually have a 47 character random password for rare use.)
You can have a 47 character password. Your parents should either have it, or an alternative route it.
I do agree that 7 years old is a bit young for that, but in my case, it's my computer, I paid for it, I can do what I want with it...as is the case here.
Ah, so if your using it harrass people, stalk an exgirlfriend, commit ebay fraud... your parents should just mind their own damned business? Fuck that. They have a duty as your parents, not to mention a legal responsibility to monitor and teach you. If my kids were 7 I'd want to be involved whenever they were on the internet, not to 'lock them down', but to monitor and teach. If they are 16, I'd certainly be less involved as I'd assume the kids could take more responsibility for themselves and deserved to exercise some privacy and trust... but I'd still be involved, not locked out completely. How can I parent if I'm locked out?
And whenever some kid does something stupid, the meme around here is "well why weren't the parents doing their job"? How exactly are the parents supposed to do their job when their kids are in locked rooms on encrypted computers over encrupted network connections?
How is she gonna learn anything if the whole system is locked down
Why does it have to be locked down for the parents to be involved? My kid can have root access to their computer for all I care, but will ALSO have root access should I need it.
The main reason I know as much as I do about computers (enough to let me take and easily pass 300 level college courses while still in high school)
That's a sad tale. What's else did you learn? Did you learn how to hotwire cars when dad wouldn't give you the keys? Did you learn how to pick locks because mom had a lock on the liquor cabinet? In my house dad left the keys on the table and trusted us not to take them, and our computers either didn't have passwords or we all knew them.
Seriously, I excelled in computing classes too in high school. I finished the grade 10, 11, and 12 computer courses in a single month in grade 10 and then rounded out the semester with 11th grade chemistry. First and 2nd year university computer languages, theory, and programming courses were a joke to me too. I'd learned it all growing up because I liked computers, tinkered with them and programmed them... my parents gave me ample access. I read books, self taught myself basic, then assembler, then pascal, then c/c++...
Privacy and control were not a factor. I had no formal privacy on the computer and needed none, they had no formal controls in place for me to break and they needed none.
That's how it should be. A 7 year old should only want, need, and have a bit of privacy. A 17 year old should want, need, and have a LOT more... but even at 17 it shouldn't be absolute.
Even a 17 year old shouldn't have anything on his computer that he absolutely must hide from his parents. If he does, then its a strong indication that he's got something he shouldn't have at all. That's not saying parents should be rummaging around a 17 year olds computer opening all the files... their should be good basis of respect and trust at that point, after all the 17 year old is almost an adult.
There, fixed that for you. Remember, the girl died believing she had been dealing with a boy her age from MySpace.
That fixes NOTHING.
If I'm a -minor- and convinced another -minor- to commit suicide its tragic, but both parties are minors and at the end of the day it may be that the person who did the convincing, being a minor, just made an immature and bad decision... as minors are apt to do, and perhaps shouldn't be held responsible. I'm not saying he's off the hook, but that we should look at the case closer.
But if I'm an -adult- who convinces a minor to commit suicide. That -adult- should take responsibilty for their actions. The adult is expected to make better decisions, and is held responsible when they do not.
It doesn't matter if the minor *thought* the adult was another minor. If anything that just aggravates the issue, because it demonstrates just how fucking twisted the adult was being.
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really? you think people would switch to robots from prostitutes? I mean, isn't part of the appeal to straight men for straight sex that the other person be a female person. Would a plastic and metal animatronic doll with a vibrating functions and pelvic thrusts really satisfy that need?
I see sex robots as appealing to people with a blow up sex doll and too much money.
I won't be surprised to see them arrive, but I'm skeptical they are going to be received as much more than ridiculously expensive sex toys. And sure a lot of people use sex toys, but I'm skeptical how big the market for a multi-thousand dollar sex robot is really going to be.
You've taken sec 1008 out of context. I doubt a PC can meet the definition (in sec. 1001) of a "digital audio recording device" (or in any event that it's acting in that capacity when being used to download a music file), nor that downloading a copy over a p2p network would qualify as "making [a] digital musical recording".
I disagree. Consider iPods, iTunes, and the iTunes music store... I don't think anyone reasonable is going to dispute that the computer, the hard drive they are stored on, and the files themselves aren't going to qualify as:
Digital audio playback devices, digital audio recording devices, and digital audio recordings respectively. Sure they aren't -strictly- within the definitions, but then, take medium:
A "digital audio recording medium" is any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device."
(Emphasis mine.) Even Recordable CD's aren't strictly within that definition as they are not primarily marketed nor most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings. Today they are primarily used for data, consumers are most commonly using flash based devices. (ipods, zunes, sansas, etc, etc...) CD's are mostly for other data these days.
In the mordern world hard drives, flash drives, and networks are how the consumer makes 'digital audio recordings'; and in the case of things like itunes, its how the device and media use to sell and distribute them too.
There is no meaningful difference between making a "digital audio recording" of a music track and "copying a file".
When I rip a CD I'm copying a file. When I buy an itunes song, I'm copying a file.
The point of sec 1008 is that I can record music off the radio, etc., for my own personal use.
Excellent point about radio. I can record music off radio for personal use legally. My cable company delivers FM stations via the coax wire and I can record music off that too for personal use. And then there's this thing called "internet radio" and clearly I should be able to record music off of that for personal use too. Its just another medium on which to deliver digital audio.
Now if I record internet radio using a computer, and saving the stream to disk. Well... that's pretty much identical to copying a file. No, scratch that, not 'pretty much'. That's simply copying the file.
And that was my point earlier... the RIAA is essentially treating p2p sharers like unauthorized radio stations -- as BROADCASTERS, not as 'file copiers'. The distiction on the internet seems to be semantics, since broadcasting on the internet *is* done by making copies... but that's the hair they are splitting.
And charging us for being an unauthorized broadcaster is on par with charging someone sharing a joint with drug trafficking... which we agree on.
It is not intended to suggest that digital music files aren't subject to copy restrictions.
What exactly -is- it intended to suggest? I can use consumer equipment to make personal use copies. As long as I don't step outside that, any personal use copies I make are legal.
It just so happens consumer grade equipment has reached the point that it can make hundreds of perfect copies an hour from an original 10,000 miles away with half a dozen mouse clicks. The stuff of science fiction when this law was written.
I agree the law never anticipated that consumer equipement would reach a level of sophistication that making copies would be trivial, effortless, and cost practically nothing, so that an average consumer can actually run a non-profit digital recording distribution center for non-commercial purposes at virtually no cost -- and thereby render the entire music replication/distribution industry entirely redundant. But it has. And copyright must be rewritten so that artist compensation do
You may believe that making one or two copies is fair use; I disagree, and I'm pretty sure both the written law and the case law disagree with you as well. Fair use is a complicated topic, though, so I don't expect either of us to commit the resources to "prove" our point of view to the other.
... so are you prepared to pay civil fines for your beliefs on this?
Section 1008 of the Copyright Statute:
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
You aren't supposed to be able to charge someone based on noncommercial use of a device or medium (e.g. computer/hard disk/internet) to make digital musical recordings.
This is why the RIAA doesn't even try to go after people downloading copies for personal use. And their leg to even go after someone uploading non-commercial copies is pretty weak.
From what I understand, they usually try to mix in that a sharer is in violation of their -broadcast- rights, not -copy- rights. (Copyright of course is more is more than just 'copying' its also broadcasting, public performance & display rights, derivative works, the right to assign licensees, etc.) One reason the RIAA has gotten away without having to even prove copies were actually made when charging people, is because in their legal theory their case is more about broadcasting and and public display them about actually making non-commercial copies.
Making the non-commercial copies is outright legal, nevermind a 'fair use'.
If I let a few people in an online community make a copy for non-commercial purposes is that fair use? I think its at the very least a very grey area. If I make 100's or 1000's of copies I think it becomes less grey but 5 or 6?
A person who passes a joint at a concert isn't a trafficker, but he is breaking drug laws (if he's in the US, at least). A person who makes a few copies of a copyrighted work and propagates them isn't a kingpin of a piracy ring, but he is a copyright infringer.
Fair comment. But the point is that he's not a drug trafficker. He shouldn't be charged as one. Which brings me back to this:
You can go the "civil disobediance" route, but a key element of civil disobediance is that you accept the legal and social consequences of your action
Just as when I jaywalk, Yes. Absolutely. I am willing to take responsibility for making 5 or 6 unauthorized copies of a given track for non-commercial purposes, provided the RIAA can identity the track and prove those 5-6 copies were actually made and that I am personal responsible for it. (I'm not going to do their job for them, any more than I am going to self-report myself to the police when I jaywalk when there aren't any cars in sight.)
That said, am I willing to be charged as a 'kingpin of a piracy ring'? Of course not. If I smoke dope at a concernt, something that is known to be illegal I would be prepared to accept the punishment for the crime I committed, having the drugs confiscated and a misdemeaner of carrying less than 1oz of a controlled substance without a permit... or whatever it is... but I'm not willing to be tried and/or imprisoned for life for corrupt enterprise and drug trafficking.
The RIAA lawsuits are improper; they have no business even charging someone like me for millions in damages. The damages are in the 10s of dollars, not the 10's of millions.
Ultimately I think the way people look at the music, video, and literature markets is going to have to change. Enforced scarcity is becoming an impossibility. For now, though, copyright is a key component that helps those markets tick. The first objective is to restore balance to copyright law (whic
" Or to save people from having to tediously rip their own CD's? "
You can certainly try to be coy, and that's why we have juries. If you can fool 12 people into believing you're just helping people legally format-shift songs they purchased, more power to you. If I'm on that jury, good luck convincing me that the preponderance of evidence suggests such when you have neither the motive nor the means to ensure that's how the share is being accessed.
What is your theory of motive? That I want to anonymously and illegally distribute copy protected music to random strangers on the internet at no benefit whatsoever to myself 1000s of times? Their isn't even a thrill. So why exactly would I be motivated to do that?
For most people the reason music ends up in their shared folder is that its the path of least resistance. They might not really be aware they are sharing; they might not really care. They might even think of it as a 'pay it forward' karma thing.
Me, I fall into category c. Someone was nice enough share their copy with me, so I return the favor to network and share it back a few times over before pulling it out of the shared folder. To me that's akin to going to a music forum with my ipod and displaying the list of songs I listened to in the last month. If someone asks for a copy of one of the songs I'll make it. And I feel that qualifies as fair use. I'm only making a small number of copies.
Sure I concede in aggregate that the p2p scene results in massive infringement. But that's still an important distinction. One guy sharing a joint at a concert with the strangers around him is not a drug trafficker. And if growing and sharing weed was as effortless as sharing music the DEA would be in the same position as the RIAA. Personal use growers who give it away for free to the people around them are still just people, not 'drug lords', even if there are 300 million of them and they're moving more weed in aggregate than organized traffickers ever could have.
That aside, I agree you've poked some valid holes in my library analagy. However I don't think hypothesizing about a future library is not useful. What happens to libraries when books become as easy to copy as music? Whether our cell phone camera's will be able to make a perfect scan of each page just by flipping the pages in front of it... or books will make the transition to electronic form.
In fact, good luck convincing me that downloading the song is "less tedious" than ripping it.
I have a number of CDs that were a pain to rip because of the 'copy protection features'. For them, downloading a version was less hassle than overcoming the encryption. I have a large number of records and tapes, which ripping is much more of a hassle. I also have a number of scratched CDs. I know of one person who has a whole stack of CDs that have 'deteriorated'...
1. It is easier to make fair use (i.e.
I understand what your saying, but I fail to see the relevance. To photocopy a book is a time consuming process, true, but what is the relevance. Are you asserting a device is non-infringing if its clumsy and inconvenient to use? If I build a p2p system that requires the user to manually specify which 30 second clip of a CD they want to sample, so that if they want the entire Cd they have to create 300 separate manual requests, would that really change anything?
(Given that it would be trivial for someone to write a script to automate sending those 300 requests and stringing the result back together.)
As to your 2nd and 3rd points...
In a world where almost everyone has a digital camera, almost every cellphone has a camera, and most of them do video too... and page scanners the size of a pen exist... how much longer will it be before one can ASSUME the average person walking into a library will have a servicable video/camera/scanner on their person. Within a decade will we have something that we can place on a stand, turn pages, and have it record video, scan pages, and possibly even OCR the pages in realtime? At which point copying a book is little more than the time it takes to flip through it.
Will one be accused of 'making available for copy' copy protected works, merely by leaving them in plain sight, where someone can pick them up, knowing that they probably will have the means on them to make a copy?
Even then books are still clumsier to work with... but for how long? if we ever get to the point where we own just a few book devices, that have say high resolution flexible displays perhaps 'printed' on actual paper so that it looks and feels just like a book. And files are copied and stored onto it for reading... what then?
We've already reached that point with music and pictures. And we're virtually there with video. The book *will* fall soon. (And already the p2p trade in books is incredibly high... I have a collections of hundreds of books. I still prefer to read them on paper; but the ability to search an entire library for a term, phrase, quote, etc is extremely handy. If they can get an ebook reader out that's enough like a real book, the era of the printed word will see the beginning of its end. That beginning of the end is already within sight.... technical manuals haven't been printed for years. Software ships with electronic manuals. ebooks are readily available. Amazon is fooling around with its Kindle...
Soon enough it will be easier to copy an entire book, than a selection of its pages. What happens then?
Interesting analogy, but a more appropriate one would be if the library set up numerous photocopiers, placed copies of each of the current best-selling novels upon each photocopier, then put a big sign above each saying "Press the green button to get a copy of novel: ZZZ"
;)
Why would the best sellers be on top them. My Kazaa library gives equal accessibility to everything in the folder. So the books will be in the stacks, and the copiers will be conveniently close.
And my p2p app doesn't send someone the complete song. It sends them only the specific blocks they request. For most users I only provide a few blocks, which is legal. Of course I don't stand there and decide when someone has had too many kilobytes worth and cut them off... but I could. So anyone who wanted to steal the song would have to get different pieces from different people... if only there were a p2p system that worked like this!
And would kazaa be any more legit if any one user could only share 30 seconds of any given song in any given day?
In your analogy, if the library had a vending machine that distributed crack cocaine as well as numerous legal substances, would NOT be liable for drug trafficking? After all, they just provided the option...you were the one who had to click the buttons.
Bad analagy. The differences between physical product and copying IP are way too numerous. There is no way I as a crack dealer can escape that fact that I've transferred physical product to you. Unless I'm going to argue that I put the crack in a vending machine, and the service I'm selling you is the enjoymet of just putting money in to see the machine hum and clunk. And then when you went and took the crack... dammit that was never part of the deal! I didn't sell you crack... you stole it from me!! Which would be absurd.
And there are lots of scenarios where you using my copy to make your own copy, or your own partial copy don't result in infringement. None of these apply to crack in a vending machine.
1) I don't really buy the "user doesn't know" argument; it doesn't take a 4-year degree to know what kazaa is doing with the files you put in its share folders, and at some level a user is responsible for knowing something about the tools he or she employs.
.10c/page.
I agree. The OP was arguing that putting files in a shared folder is a deliberate action on par with drawing a sign saying "get CDs here for $5", and I disagree with that. Most people get kazaa to download music, not to share music. That limewire etc share music by default, is almost incidental. People should be responsible for knowing what their tools do... but now were talking a case of the "the user was too lazy to figure out that they were sharing" instead of "the user took a conscious deliberate action to share".
2) The library analogy is seriously flawed. Let's say you decide to copy an entire book using library photocopiers, at $0.10 per page. You'll typically pay more than a new copy would cost, and the copy you get will be pretty low quality; so I don't really see how the library has given you "everything you need" to get illegal copies of their books.
Lets break that up point by point:
Let's say you decide to copy an entire book using library photocopiers, at $0.10 per page. You'll typically pay more than a new copy would cost,
True in some cases, not in others. Kids books like "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!" is some $12.00. Probably cost under $2.00 to copy at
and the copy you get will be pretty low quality
That doesn't make them somehow legal.
You'll also need quite a bit of time for this project, and may be told to stop and/or kicked out of the library before you can complete it
Only if i were to attempt to copy the entire library. I typically only download one or two songs from any given person, not their entire library. Besides, scale is not important. It only takes one book to infringe copyright.
(You might also notice signs around the copier that put you on notice that you're supposed to obey copyright law, though that detail depends on the library.)
It wouldn't be hard to add to the kazaa protocal a message that says 'please respect copyright' when someone connects. Would that some change anything?
See, unlike kazaa shares, the purpose of library photocopiers isn't copyright violation.
Can you really say the 'purpose' of kazaa shares is copyright violation? What if I put copywritten files in there so that someone who stepped on their copy of the CD can download a new copy from me? Or to save people from having to tediously rip their own CD's? What if I don't put copyprotected files in my Kazaa share?
A lot of people use bitorrent, ftp, and usenet to violate copyright too... but that's hardly their 'purpose'.
For example, copying a few pages of a reference book for academic purposes is legal.
So is downloading a sample of a song for academic purposes.
The copiers are well suited to this purpose (in much the way that they are not well suited to wholesale copyright violation).
So if copiers become more efficient, full colour, hi-resolution scanners, that can save the output to a flash drive instead of paper -then- libraries couldn't install them because they'd be liable for copyright infringement? The fair use doctrine only applies to clumsy 70's technolgy that's slow, expensive, and inefficient to use and results in poor quality output? That would be a rather odd interpretation of the law.
As it stands, I often use my digital camera instead of photocopiers because it captures in colour, and to files, instead of in b/w to paper, and its cheaper too. At least one library I've visited had a colour scanner instead of a photocopier, and I think the reason we don't see more is that libraries are woefully underfunded and can't afford better copiers.
Its neither.
.10c page to use their photocopier and makes you use some sort of 'printer card' that you prepay to fill... would that make them infringe? I doubt it...most libraries -do- charge for photocopies.
1) You don't 'index and share your songs via Kazaa', Kazaa et al, do tha all by themselves, without user intervention, in their default course of action. Many users aren't even aware 'they did it'.
2) I've always liked the library analagy. Its a public building, open to the public, and full of books. Photocopiers are placed conveniently often even marked with signs --> photocopiers this way. The books are carefully organized to make them easy to find. And there are computers scattered around so you can look them up that way too.
They've set everything up they possibly could to let you make copies. Yet if you do so, YOU are liable for infringement, not them.
By analagy, if I set up a computer, put it in a public place (like the internet), with songs available on it, and also set it up with tools that will make copies of those songs for you if you send it the right commands.
Now if you send my computer a command to transmit you a copy of the song... shouldn't YOU be liable for infringement? My computer isn't making copies and sending them out... YOU asked my computer to do it. All I did was set it up to listen to requests.
How is that fundamentally different from a library? If I could somehow operate the library photocopier by remote from my computer, would that suddenly shift the blame for making copies to them? I should think not. Its still YOU who have (remotely) operated the copier to make an infringing copy.
Finally, as a side note... if YOU own the CD in question, and feel its easier to download a copy using my publicly available computer to send you one, rather than ripping your own CD. Shouldn't that be legal. I as the computer owner have done nothing illegal by making it available. You have done nothing illegal because you have the right to make personal use copies of that song by virtue of the fact that you own a copy.
Why or Why not does this 'theory' work?
Finally if I charge you for access to my system that allows you to make copies am I a pirate then? Good question... interestingly, I still think not. If a library charges you
So its only infringement if they start making the actual copies themselves. Setting up the equipment and letting you operate it, even if they charge you for access, doesn't make them liable for infringement.
Although at some point you might argue that their is a conspiracy to commit infringement...
But mickey mouse is a trademark so I'm not sure how that's ever going to end up in the public domain. And most of harry potters characters are individually trademarked as well... to prevent confusion right? ;)
How, exactly, does a 15 minute trip to the video store (or a 30 second trip to the mailbox) compare to the 12-14 hours it would take to download a full quality BD file?
The 30 second trip to the mail box presumes you ordered the movie a couple days ago if not MUCH longer ago. A D/L service beats the likes of netflix hands down. Its faster, AND its not going to delay your selection for weeks on end due to supply issues.
As for vs a video store... its a tradeoff... D/L service can win on selection and availability. Video store currently wins on speed... but really... if I can get a D/L in 2 hrs, and start watching it after 15 minutes buffering D/L is good to go. And for that we only need to improve speeds around 6x. That's not far fetched at all.
And see my other post about the issues with assuming that by the time the network catches up, we'll have an even fatter format on disc...
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
Will anybody care? The HD formats (blueray/HDDVD) already really aren't overwhelmingly compelling vs an upconverting dvd to a lot of people. Yes you can see the difference but its not 'omg that's amazing am I'm going to rush out to buy Zoolander and Disney's Cars *again* just to see it like this...
Now, how much better is the *next* thing going to be?? 2160p? with 11.2 audio? Is the public going to care? Or is it going to be like DVD-audio, a format that only the 'philes masturbate about in there perfectly constructed home theatres.
Consider music. CD is good enough; DVD audio is getting almost nowhere after 10 years. At some point this happens to video... I think HD is already pushing it as far as mainstream adoption. HD^2? I'm not sure I would bet on that horse.
They could if they just bought it.
Most of these people got burned because they bought their Vista capable computer with XP pre-installed 3-6 months before Vista was available. They can't return it 3-6 months after purchase anywhere. Few if any merchants would honor that for any product, but especially on now obsolete computers.
I agree. I did a project for a company some ten years back, a small database app integrated in a barcode printer. They used a standard barcode scanner, it sent the scanned code as a standard ascii string on a serial port. Just read from the serial port where you attach the scanner, using your standard stdio routines, and you're all set in that part of your solution.
RS232 is still available, but I'd say for small installations, and especially when simplicity is desired, go USB.
1) Nearly all barcode scanners today worth buying are available in USB.
2) These USB ones all have standard Human-Interface-Device drivers, and appear, as far as the application or operating system is concerned: as keyboards. So you can use them trivially. Provide the user a place to type in a code, and he can either type it manually or scan it. Your application doesn't know or care that the inputs coming in from a scanner. So it works trivially with web forms based apps, excel spreadsheets, MS access, filemaker pro, whatever you need.
3) Nearly all barcode scanners worth buying are highly programmable so you can have them insert custom prefixes and suffixes around the barcode. So if you want to scan multiple codes in sequence separated by a CR/LF you just tell the scanner to append a CR/LF to each code it sends.
You can also get keyboard wedge versions that go between your computer and keyboard on the PS/2 port, but I don't recommend those. They're flaky. PS/2 doesn't seem to be designed for this, and some motherboards and keyboards just aren't reliable. USB is far smoother. And PS/2 should be dead anyway.
I've had personal experience with a number of scanners and at the entry level I'd recommend a USB Symbol LS2208, for around 150.00. I've also heard decent things about the Metrologic MS9520 around the same price. You can get cheaper scanners... like the idtech econoscan for half that price, but they're junk. The next step up would be a laser scanner, or wireless, or more ruggedized, or have support for 2D barcodes etc, none of which you probably need in a small Point-of-sale environment.
In the case of 'vista capable' computers, it will have been multiple months. So returning to the merchant is not really feasible.
Judge granted a class action status to a lawsuit of customers against a company selling an "under a thousand dollars" TV for $999.95
It would be a more apt analagy if said TVs were could only average 10 frames per second, american idol was too taxing on the set for it even to start. This line of TVs was also heavily advertised as having 5.1 surround sound playback, a remote and very shiny sexy digital knobs going to 300 channels but when you got it hom and set it up there was no remote, and you had to change channels by turning a 13 channel knob. Oh, and there was no sound either. none. not 5.1, not even mono.
Such a unit may meet the barest qualifications of being a TV, but any reasonable consumer who got such a thing home would feel justifiably ripped off and return it immediately.
But the insidious part of Vista capable, was that they bought it on the promise that it would run vista when it came out, and when Vista came out, they found out that their reasonable expection of 'run vista' was not met, but they were now entirely unable to return the computer, and even downgrading is a 'reformat from scratch' procedure.
They feel ripped off, justifiably, in my opinon, and they want their money back.
If bought a computer that "ran Vista", and ended up with a computer that could only run Vista Home Basic... and did even that poorly, then I'd take it back. These people can't. And hence there is a lawsuit.
Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.
You say my analysis is flawed, because it assumes that your either A, B, or C. You are asserting then, that there is this 4th group that of people who are:
informed customers, who are considering a game machine for playback, and NOT in one HD camp or the other
Am I reading that right?
So what would those customers above buy? A PS3, of course.
But that's my point, and we agree... these people are buying the PS3 because its a great value proposition for an HD format player, NOT because its a great value proposition for a bluray player. If the PS3 had been HDDVD, it would be the same value proposition to them.
So these people cannot be said to be 'selecting bluray' for any perceived merit of bluray over hddvd. They are simply selecting the best HD format player value propisition (in terms of price, features, and aesthetics), and incidentally it the HD format it happens to support is bluray.
I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market.
And you would be the exception. The sort that really only wanted a blu-ray player and chose a ps3 to get it. But seriously, most people bought a ps3 for the games alone. A chunk bought it for the games and because it was a hidef player (but not because it was specifically a blu-ray player), and a few like you bought it as a bluray player, that happens to play games.
The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box.
If you were that informed a customer and in the hddvd camp, then an xbox+accessory was an easy equivalent alternative at an equivalent price. I doubt the 'sleekness' of the ps3 would have played into the equation much for someone who was in one camp or the other.
So how long are they going to continue to patch xp?
MS has published their guidelines on life cycle policy. The date the last license will be sold along with the end of the patch services is all readily available information. Look it up. Perhaps they'll extend the dates for XP as result of this stunt, perhaps not. But anyone in IT has known for a LONG time about this.
How long will the WGA servers continue to tell the customer's computers that it is okay to run xp?
Good question. I expect MS would be dragged through the courts and handed their asses if they even tried to shut down the servers within the next decade or two without first releasing an official fool-WGA-so-it-thinks-it-got-valid-response-from-the-server patch.
That said, IT people have known about WGA, activation, and so forth since it was first unveiled, and they chose to buy into the system. They had plenty of opportunity to reject it then. Again, they KNEW this was a risk when they bought in.
It certainly occurred to me the first time I heard about the planned Windows activation feature of XP that this could be a problem if MS ever got bought out, shut down, or something like that happened. I despise systems like this. Most really big enterprises, governments, militaries, etc have 'escrow' deals, that can be triggered in an event like the above; so that if a vendor can't live up to their obligations, source code, or pathces, signing keys, or whatever are released.
The general public unfortunately doesn't have this protection. Maybe we should demand it from government? That proprietary source code be placed in escrow, for example. To be released when the vendor vanishes from the face of the earth, copyright on it expires, and/or other circumstances in which it would be in the publics best interest to get the source.
How long will vendors continue to support multiple code forks for their apps as the APIs drift?
That would be up to the vendors. If your going to draw a line in the sand and say, "I am sticking with this platform", you better hope you make up enough of the market for them not to leave you behind. Even linux users have that issue...things only ever get backported so far. Sure its FOSS so you can backport it yourself if you want... but most IT shops really aren't prepared to go to that effort, even though it is an option.
Well, I do happen to need access to regional and language settings, unless I wanna be typing all my essays at home. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, so in order for me to be able to actually type things in school, I need to be able to change that.
1) While I applaud your motivation to learn dvorak I'm stunned you didn't bother to learn/retain qwerty as well. It would come in handy, you know, when your working on computers that you adjust the settings on.
Luckily your school doesn't seem to care, but that's hardly going to be true in every case. And not every system is going to be something you can hack to let you use it. Really... you should retain qwerty, even if you prefer dvorak.
2) If you purchased a hard-wired dvorak keyboard, you can just plug it in and use it, without changing any settings. You only need to change the settings to have a regular wired keyword work as a dvorak layout. Not that I think plugging your own hardware into school property is necessarily a good solution either... its just an FYI.
Sometimes you just have to use the computer in front of you, configured the way its configured. As a left handed person who uses the mouse on the left side of the keyboard with my left hand, I've become pretty ambidextrous at mousing, because all too often moving the mouse is more hassle than its worth.
, but to say that PS3 purchasers, particularly those who were likely to be significantly interested in using it as a movie player, were totally insulated from concern over the format war whereas purchasers of standalone players were not is simply wrong.
I disagree. People buying a PS3 with an eye towards using it as a hidef player knew there was risk bluray wouldn't win, and that weighed into their decision whether or not a PS3 was worth buying at all. But its not like they really had a choice... if they wanted a PS3 but thought HDDVD would win, they still went home with a PS3.
More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched - many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change."
Nobody is forcing them to make a change. They can run windows xp for as long as they like. People out there are still running windows 95.
Oh... you meant you want to force microsoft not to release a new edition while discontinuing their old ones? Tough shit. Might as well cry to ford that you don't want them to update their models every year. See how far you get with that.
Or perhaps you mean, Infoworld thinks if Microsoft sees enough demand for continued XP support they'll continue to support it, and that's what this stunt is all about. Of course its a nice theory. They're a company after all. They aren't going to leave a big pile of money on the table.
If MS thinks people WON'T buy Vista, and will migrate away from windows if they can't buy XP then they'll support XP.
But they aren't really in that predicament at all. Not many of these so-called respected IT people are going to switch to linux or OSX if they can't buy XP, switching to linux doesn't get their activeX/iis/active directory/whatever infrastrucure going seamlessly without any retraining or re-implementation, etc. Its not that they don't want vista, its that they don't want to change at all.
So they're fucked. They can bitch and throw a tantrum all they want, MS can move forward and they'll come kicking and screaming because they bought into an OS that they don't have any control over, and Vista is still the easiest upgrade path they have. They made their bed when they signed up for proprietary software. Microsoft has released how many versions of windows? And how many versions of DOS before that?? If they didn't think that sooner or later MS would drag them forward they haven't been paying attention.
Apple users went through the same thing when they switched from OS9 to OSX and from PPC to intel... its just that apple isn't 90+ percent of the business desktop operating system market so "Infoworld" and IT people in general never got up in arms over it.
OS9 -> OSX is a lot like XP to Vista... OSX ran like a DOG compared to OS9 on the same hardware, tons of incompatible software, missing drivers for tons of hardware, completely redone interface with a lot of controversial issues -- like the dock, unix and security added in... good thing OS9 was so different it had to be run completely virtualized because NOT a single OS9 program would have gotten off the ground in OSX. And then just a couple years later they switched to intel and OS9 was dead as a doornail, and couldn't even be virtualized.
That is the price of progress and the nature of vender lockin. I feel sorry for end users when they get caught with their pants down during a transition... but IT people? They should fucking know better and should have seen this coming miles away and planned for it.
As if PS3 buyers were shelling out the high price of the console without realizing that it was a Blu-ray player, and just started purchasing Blu-ray discs without any consciousness of their actions. To the extent that PS3 owners embraced Blu-ray at all, they didn't do it "unwittingly".
... one blu-ray and one HDDVD and customers were actually selecting the hi-def format they were going to gamble on you could argue they were 'wittingly' involved in the choice, but as it stands, no, they were not.
Yes, they supported blu-ray over hddvd incidentally. Ie if the PS3 had been hddvd they would have bought it all the same. The market skew toward blu-ray by way of ps3 sales was NOT on blu-ray's merits over HDDVD, it was simply by virtue of the fact that that is what the PS3 came with.
Everyone picking a stand alone player had to agonize over whether to go bluray or hddvd.
If the PS3 had somehow been available in two flavors
It came with hidef (which they wanted or at least saw value in), it happened to be bluray which they mostly didn't care about, so that's what they got. People buying a ps3 wanted a ps3 and took whatever hidef player it came with.
Well for one thing...I don't own the router, I don't pay for the internet service, so yes, what I do on the internet sure is my parent's business. But what I do locally is not.
Bullshit. You inject heroine in your bedroom and its your parents business. You plot a school massacre in your garage... maybe your parents should have been paying attention... not just to what you were doing in your room, but along your whole developmenet process.
I don't see the news of young kids being stupid as the parents fault,
Kids being stupid isn't the parents faults. That's part of being a kid. Parents not keeping track of their kids being stupid IS the parents fault. That's part of being a parent. You aren't supposed to, and can't, prevent a kid from being stupid, but you can head off their stupid actions so that they are merely learning experiences instead of tragedies, victims, and crimes. You can't do that if your kid is in a locked room with a locked computer. And its ok to trust your kid to be alone in his room, and trust him enough to not snoop in his computer... but that doesnt mean the kid needs to have locks and encryption. Trust should be enough.
And that's for a 17 year old. A seven year old... the parents should be teaching the kid trust and privacy, but putting them in a locked room with an encrypted computer and not keeping tabs is just irresponsible. If the kid starts doing somethign stupid the parent will have no way to, well, parent.
And I love how you equate trying to read techdirt to hotwiring cars.
They are equivalent. You are claiming you learned to hack computers to get past internet controls, but for some reason never learned to hotwire a car or pick locks to get past their controls. Clearly the mere presence of controls isn't what motivated you to learn hacking. Interest in computers did. The challenge presented by the controls may have served as an outlet for that interest... but I'm sure there were locks in your house, and cars in your garage you could could have learned to pick and hotwire... so had you been interested in those pursuits... the challenges were there.
And even if there hadn't been controls, had you been interested in computers, you still would have learned about them. As I did.
Also, I never said hotwiring cars or picking locks was illegal. Although you seem to have interpreted that.
My school has control panel locked out, and I every time I get on one of those computers I have to go through and unlock it so I can get to the 'regional and language settings'.
You don't need to adjust 'regional and language settings'. You might want to, and you might be able to, but you don't need to, and the school doesn't want you to... ergo... you have no business doing so.
Did that ever occur to you? That maybe they locked you out because you didn't need to and they didn't want you to do that? Sure they might have been primarily intending to lock you out of the networking control panel, and blocking regional and language settings was mostly a side effect... but so what? It didn't bug them enough to unlock language and settings. They locked control panels. Stay out.
Had you learned to pick locks you could go into the janitors closet and electrical rooms too... would that be any more or less wrong than what you are doing in control panels? What if you just needed to mop up a spill? Surely they only lock those doors to keep you out of the toxic chemicals and high voltage stuff... not to prevent you from accessing the mop? (After all, if you wanted to hurt someone there is plenty of equipment in the gym, shop, etc... all far more deadly than the locked up mop.)
See what i'm saying? Its the same thing.
I'm not saying your an awful person... I used to install and play Wolfenstein 3D on the graphics labs cad workstations during the lunch break despite the admins best efforts to prevent us, but I don't defend my actions as being somehow right.
So I guess you're saying I, as a 16 year old, have no right to my 47 character password... (yes, I do actually have a 47 character random password for rare use.)
You can have a 47 character password. Your parents should either have it, or an alternative route it.
I do agree that 7 years old is a bit young for that, but in my case, it's my computer, I paid for it, I can do what I want with it...as is the case here.
Ah, so if your using it harrass people, stalk an exgirlfriend, commit ebay fraud... your parents should just mind their own damned business? Fuck that. They have a duty as your parents, not to mention a legal responsibility to monitor and teach you. If my kids were 7 I'd want to be involved whenever they were on the internet, not to 'lock them down', but to monitor and teach. If they are 16, I'd certainly be less involved as I'd assume the kids could take more responsibility for themselves and deserved to exercise some privacy and trust... but I'd still be involved, not locked out completely. How can I parent if I'm locked out?
And whenever some kid does something stupid, the meme around here is "well why weren't the parents doing their job"? How exactly are the parents supposed to do their job when their kids are in locked rooms on encrypted computers over encrupted network connections?
How is she gonna learn anything if the whole system is locked down
Why does it have to be locked down for the parents to be involved? My kid can have root access to their computer for all I care, but will ALSO have root access should I need it.
The main reason I know as much as I do about computers (enough to let me take and easily pass 300 level college courses while still in high school)
That's a sad tale. What's else did you learn? Did you learn how to hotwire cars when dad wouldn't give you the keys? Did you learn how to pick locks because mom had a lock on the liquor cabinet? In my house dad left the keys on the table and trusted us not to take them, and our computers either didn't have passwords or we all knew them.
Seriously, I excelled in computing classes too in high school. I finished the grade 10, 11, and 12 computer courses in a single month in grade 10 and then rounded out the semester with 11th grade chemistry. First and 2nd year university computer languages, theory, and programming courses were a joke to me too. I'd learned it all growing up because I liked computers, tinkered with them and programmed them... my parents gave me ample access. I read books, self taught myself basic, then assembler, then pascal, then c/c++...
Privacy and control were not a factor. I had no formal privacy on the computer and needed none, they had no formal controls in place for me to break and they needed none.
That's how it should be. A 7 year old should only want, need, and have a bit of privacy. A 17 year old should want, need, and have a LOT more... but even at 17 it shouldn't be absolute.
Even a 17 year old shouldn't have anything on his computer that he absolutely must hide from his parents. If he does, then its a strong indication that he's got something he shouldn't have at all. That's not saying parents should be rummaging around a 17 year olds computer opening all the files... their should be good basis of respect and trust at that point, after all the 17 year old is almost an adult.
There, fixed that for you. Remember, the girl died believing she had been dealing with a boy her age from MySpace.
That fixes NOTHING.
If I'm a -minor- and convinced another -minor- to commit suicide its tragic, but both parties are minors and at the end of the day it may be that the person who did the convincing, being a minor, just made an immature and bad decision... as minors are apt to do, and perhaps shouldn't be held responsible. I'm not saying he's off the hook, but that we should look at the case closer.
But if I'm an -adult- who convinces a minor to commit suicide. That -adult- should take responsibilty for their actions. The adult is expected to make better decisions, and is held responsible when they do not.
It doesn't matter if the minor *thought* the adult was another minor. If anything that just aggravates the issue, because it demonstrates just how fucking twisted the adult was being.