Right. And when they say "digital rights management" they mean THEIR rights, not yours.
And even so, it's still a bastardization of the term "rights" - they aren't really rights when you make them up yourself.
For example, "fair use" is a right, granted by the applicable laws and judicial findings. Their taking away your fair use rights is seen by them as them enforcing their "rights" but in reality it's just them changing the rules; they are not granted that right by an outside force.
Ditto. I really like stuff full of new ideas, but I also LOVE the fun romps, like Lensmen, Ringworld, Man-Kzin wars (the SF equivalent of the trashy romance novel), Heinlein juveniles, etc.
Reading is not only for mind expansion, it's also for taking your mind out on a virtual run in the park, reading stuff for no other reason than it's fun.
Re:Piers Anthony advocates DRM
on
Singularity Sky
·
· Score: 1
He seems to think that DRM is his only hope of getting paid in the future.
I guess myself and a bunch of other SF fans aren't really paying Baen Books for unprotected SF stories, and wishing that all the other publishers would release their stuff in unprotected formats, so we could give THEM money too.
I used to buy SF from Peanut Press, but I stopped because I didn't like the DRM. I now only buy books that I can get in an unprotected format.
For books that the publisher doesn't release in unprotected electronic format, I wait until I can find a pirated copy on usenet, download it to read, and go buy a copy of the book to satisfy legality. I don't really want the paper around and abhor the waste of trees, but that's the only way they give me to give them money. They'd get more of my money for less of their work if they'd release a free-format electronic version.
No, not possible. Blurry vision will make a blurry object blurrier. There's a difference between a blurry picture and a picture seen blurrily.
If what you propose were possible, it would be possible to fix the focus on an out-of-focus picture; after all, a camera with the focus set too close is exactly the same as a near-sighted person.
You could put a lens in front of the monitor to blur it optically in the right way so that the person with blurry vision would see clearly. Move same lens closer to patient, and it's their glasses. Obviously, we've had this technology for a LONG time...
It's possible that holographic displays, if they existed in the real world, could do this.
Yes, in this particular case I'd be happier with a 10 WEEK term. He still could have done plenty of damage in that time.
I'm voting for anyTHING that looks capable of defeating him. I would seriously vote for a sock puppet. I made that decision in early 2002, and I'm still sticking with it; I think we would be better off right now if the office had stood vacant since 2000.
They do not get access to the data, but they can get access to the fact that you filed, and some very minimal data. They certainly do not get enough data to complete your taxes for you. Obviously this is true or you never would have gotten that letter.
Right, but unless you do that, the state doesn't get your info. The parent was talking about the state being able to auto-generate your return based on fed data. The state doesn't GET the fed data unless you send it to them; it's not legal for the IRS to give out your info to the states, even to the state taxing agencies, though it's legal for the states to ask it of you.
The state doesn't get a copy of your federal tax return unless you electronically file, in which case it's bundled with the state return file as supporting info. State DORs don't get very much visibility to federal info.
Big talk, that. I'll believe it when I see broadband in a mountain shack in N.C. or a house in King Salmon, Alaska. Of course, by "every household" they mean "every household worth speaking of" to borrow a phrase from Tom Lehrer.
Well, as I say, I'm not a gamer so I'm not buying those cards. My wife's machine has a 3 year old Radeon VE, I just use commodity video cards. Actually I use on-board video mostly for my machines. Lately GeForce 4 but I honestly wouldn't even know if the 3D stuff didn't work. Hell, on my Linux boxes I wouldn't even know if the graphics modes didn't work; they get hooked to a monitor to run basic text-mode-only setup and then they run headless for the rest of their lives.
Absolutely. Video cards are like sand in the wind. I'm not a gamer myself, so I get to be amused as my friends pay $500 for a card, then sell it on eBay 12 months later for $200 and buy another $500 card.
I recently pulled a graphics card out of the trash box at work and we putting it into a test box. A friend laughed and said that he had paid several hundred bucks for that "top end" video card about 4 or 5 years ago, and now it wasn't even worth keeping out of the dumpster; any $30 cheapo would whip it these days.
I also don't see how this hurts buyers of the latest AGP cards. It's not like you won't buy a new card when you build a new machine, anyway; by the time you build a new machine that $500 card will be a lamer POS anyway.
I bought a Tungsten E yesterday. I looked at the Sonys, but they're too expensive. For $200 they don't have much, and what they do have uses memory sticks. I might have considered it, but I'm not going to buy into a proprietary technology. I already have devices that use SD memory. Memory sticks are purely an invention to line Sony's pockets; they do not innovate in the marketplace, they attempt to lock up.
It is true that a year or two ago, Sony Clies were tops and Palm was struggling to catch up. Many of my friends boug Clies between 1 and 3 years ago. But today the new Palms are very competitive and I like the Tungsten best for my uses.
If I were looking for a palm with a camera, or a keyboard, or a crazy flipping clown joint thing in the middle, I'd buy a Sony. But I want a functional device and love the original format, and don't need a crappy camera, I have a nice camera already and don't need to take pics of people in the shower, or whatever it is that people use those things for.
2GB will give you 133 pics... which still isn't NEARLY a full shoot. Fashion and glamour photographers often shoot 500->1000 shots per session, and stopping to reload really breaks the stride of the session. Having to stop 1/4 as much would increase their output both in quantity and quality.
I read books only on my Palm anymore. I certainly would prefer to read on paper instead of my IIIxe's greenish screen (I'm upgrading soon), but I never carry books around with me, and if I do, just in my bag so I only have them at my desk.
With 3 or 4 books in my Palm, I've got a book to read everywhere. I've read 10 times more books since using the Palm than when on paper.
Also we're way over capacity on paper books in our house; we just don't have room for what we have. We have about 300 linear feet of shelf space, much of it double-shelved, and another couple hundred pounds of books in boxes. I'm just not going to add to that by buying more paper.
Thank God for Baen books. I'd decided not to buy from Peanut Press anymore because I dislike having to remember credit card numbers from 5 years ago to unlock books, and I dislike paying as much for eBooks as for paper; I should at least get a few bucks off.
Baen publishes much of their catalog electronically, in open formats, at reasonable prices.
Single vendor; that's a BAD thing
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Backed by one vendor? And what if they go out of business, which is very likely, considering the desperate flailing legal moves they're trying?
Better to go to a solution that has MULTIPLE vendors so you're not screwed if one of them goes out of business.
You want enough card to shoot for one day, and a portable hard drive like a Digital Wallet or a Tripper to slurp the photos off at night to get ready for the next day. Buying enough CF for a long vacation is a waste of money when you can get a 60GB Tripper for ~ $300 US.
I see a lot of people expressing surprise about the price. For the target market, these are very reasonably priced. Pro photographers are out in the field shooting with $6000 bodies, sometimes multiple ones, and $2000+ lenses, maybe several in a bag besides the ones on the bodies.
They're not targetting people with a $1000 consumer point-n-shoot, and CF is not good for HD replacement in most cases due to low bandwidth and rewrite lifetime issues.
Having to stop shooting to change media half as often is WELL worth it. You don't want to have to tell your editor "There was a pulitzer-prize shot, but I missed it because I had my head down changing CF cards right at that moment."
I actually have a Canon ZR-40. It's the cheapest of their cheap line, but it's been taking a beating from me. I'm actually not only using it as a camcorder, but as a firewire streaming analog capture device, and as a transfer VCR. In the latter capacity, I put about 5+ hours a week of wear on it, recording at the satellite dish out in the living room and playing back into the computer. Been doing this for a year and so far so good. I figure this is about the amount of wear that the average camcorder gets put through in about 80 years; let's face it, most people buy a camcorder and put about 5 hours a year on it if that.
This is my 3rd camcorder, but my first digital. I like it better than my other two, which have both been Sonys. I personally am staying away from Sony now. 4 years ago when I bought my last one, nobody was beating them on features, but now many companies are, and my experience (based on only 2 camcorders, admittedly) is that Sonys will just be dead one day with no warnign and cost $300 to fix. This happened to me 3 times with 2 camcorders made 5 years apart, both Hi8.
I have now owned three Canon digicams (still own two of them, one a digital Rebel SLR), a Canon scanner and a Canon photo printer, so perhaps I'm not the most unbiased person. But in each case, I didn't buy out of brand loyalty really, I looked around and the Canon was what I liked the best at the time; I just found myself with a room full of Canon stuff at the end.
Kodak used to make a custom firmware for some of their digital cameras that applied a crypto stamp. By reading the key back out (I assume it was in the EXIF headers) you could say "this image was taken by this camera and hasn't been altered."
I haven't seen it for their newer cameras, nor by others, but I haven't been in any of the other manufacturer's software development programs either (I never did develop any software, but it was free to join and get their newsletters...)
Slashdot Mirror
Right. And when they say "digital rights management" they mean THEIR rights, not yours.
And even so, it's still a bastardization of the term "rights" - they aren't really rights when you make them up yourself.
For example, "fair use" is a right, granted by the applicable laws and judicial findings. Their taking away your fair use rights is seen by them as them enforcing their "rights" but in reality it's just them changing the rules; they are not granted that right by an outside force.
if there's any transmission across it, it blasts anyone for miles.
Hmm, packet sniffing, anyone?
If their encryption is broken, with a little RF ingenuity, you'll be able to monitor packets from/to anyone in your area.
And here we thought switched network had pretty much done away with the dangers of packet sniffing attacks; this brings them all back again!
Very true, that's a stand-out. And I have bought just about all of the Man-Kzin wars stuff, and re-read some of it; they're like candy.
Ditto. I really like stuff full of new ideas, but I also LOVE the fun romps, like Lensmen, Ringworld, Man-Kzin wars (the SF equivalent of the trashy romance novel), Heinlein juveniles, etc.
Reading is not only for mind expansion, it's also for taking your mind out on a virtual run in the park, reading stuff for no other reason than it's fun.
He seems to think that DRM is his only hope of getting paid in the future.
I guess myself and a bunch of other SF fans aren't really paying Baen Books for unprotected SF stories, and wishing that all the other publishers would release their stuff in unprotected formats, so we could give THEM money too.
I used to buy SF from Peanut Press, but I stopped because I didn't like the DRM. I now only buy books that I can get in an unprotected format.
For books that the publisher doesn't release in unprotected electronic format, I wait until I can find a pirated copy on usenet, download it to read, and go buy a copy of the book to satisfy legality. I don't really want the paper around and abhor the waste of trees, but that's the only way they give me to give them money. They'd get more of my money for less of their work if they'd release a free-format electronic version.
No, not possible. Blurry vision will make a blurry object blurrier. There's a difference between a blurry picture and a picture seen blurrily.
If what you propose were possible, it would be possible to fix the focus on an out-of-focus picture; after all, a camera with the focus set too close is exactly the same as a near-sighted person.
You could put a lens in front of the monitor to blur it optically in the right way so that the person with blurry vision would see clearly. Move same lens closer to patient, and it's their glasses. Obviously, we've had this technology for a LONG time...
It's possible that holographic displays, if they existed in the real world, could do this.
Member of the Stop Fucking Saying 'M$' army
Right, from now on, it's "micros~1" for me.
Yes, in this particular case I'd be happier with a 10 WEEK term. He still could have done plenty of damage in that time.
I'm voting for anyTHING that looks capable of defeating him. I would seriously vote for a sock puppet. I made that decision in early 2002, and I'm still sticking with it; I think we would be better off right now if the office had stood vacant since 2000.
I'm not interested... :-)
They do not get access to the data, but they can get access to the fact that you filed, and some very minimal data. They certainly do not get enough data to complete your taxes for you. Obviously this is true or you never would have gotten that letter.
Right, but unless you do that, the state doesn't get your info. The parent was talking about the state being able to auto-generate your return based on fed data. The state doesn't GET the fed data unless you send it to them; it's not legal for the IRS to give out your info to the states, even to the state taxing agencies, though it's legal for the states to ask it of you.
The state doesn't get a copy of your federal tax return unless you electronically file, in which case it's bundled with the state return file as supporting info.
State DORs don't get very much visibility to federal info.
Big talk, that. I'll believe it when I see broadband in a mountain shack in N.C. or a house in King Salmon, Alaska.
Of course, by "every household" they mean "every household worth speaking of" to borrow a phrase from Tom Lehrer.
My question is: where are the applications?
Porn. Seriously.
Well, as I say, I'm not a gamer so I'm not buying those cards. My wife's machine has a 3 year old Radeon VE, I just use commodity video cards. Actually I use on-board video mostly for my machines. Lately GeForce 4 but I honestly wouldn't even know if the 3D stuff didn't work. Hell, on my Linux boxes I wouldn't even know if the graphics modes didn't work; they get hooked to a monitor to run basic text-mode-only setup and then they run headless for the rest of their lives.
Absolutely. Video cards are like sand in the wind. I'm not a gamer myself, so I get to be amused as my friends pay $500 for a card, then sell it on eBay 12 months later for $200 and buy another $500 card.
I recently pulled a graphics card out of the trash box at work and we putting it into a test box. A friend laughed and said that he had paid several hundred bucks for that "top end" video card about 4 or 5 years ago, and now it wasn't even worth keeping out of the dumpster; any $30 cheapo would whip it these days.
I also don't see how this hurts buyers of the latest AGP cards. It's not like you won't buy a new card when you build a new machine, anyway; by the time you build a new machine that $500 card will be a lamer POS anyway.
I bought a Tungsten E yesterday. I looked at the Sonys, but they're too expensive. For $200 they don't have much, and what they do have uses memory sticks. I might have considered it, but I'm not going to buy into a proprietary technology. I already have devices that use SD memory. Memory sticks are purely an invention to line Sony's pockets; they do not innovate in the marketplace, they attempt to lock up.
It is true that a year or two ago, Sony Clies were tops and Palm was struggling to catch up. Many of my friends boug Clies between 1 and 3 years ago. But today the new Palms are very competitive and I like the Tungsten best for my uses.
If I were looking for a palm with a camera, or a keyboard, or a crazy flipping clown joint thing in the middle, I'd buy a Sony. But I want a functional device and love the original format, and don't need a crappy camera, I have a nice camera already and don't need to take pics of people in the shower, or whatever it is that people use those things for.
2GB will give you 133 pics. .. which still isn't NEARLY a full shoot. Fashion and glamour photographers often shoot 500->1000 shots per session, and stopping to reload really breaks the stride of the session. Having to stop 1/4 as much would increase their output both in quantity and quality.
I read books only on my Palm anymore. I certainly would prefer to read on paper instead of my IIIxe's greenish screen (I'm upgrading soon), but I never carry books around with me, and if I do, just in my bag so I only have them at my desk.
With 3 or 4 books in my Palm, I've got a book to read everywhere. I've read 10 times more books since using the Palm than when on paper.
Also we're way over capacity on paper books in our house; we just don't have room for what we have. We have about 300 linear feet of shelf space, much of it double-shelved, and another couple hundred pounds of books in boxes. I'm just not going to add to that by buying more paper.
Thank God for Baen books. I'd decided not to buy from Peanut Press anymore because I dislike having to remember credit card numbers from 5 years ago to unlock books, and I dislike paying as much for eBooks as for paper; I should at least get a few bucks off.
Baen publishes much of their catalog electronically, in open formats, at reasonable prices.
Backed by one vendor? And what if they go out of business, which is very likely, considering the desperate flailing legal moves they're trying?
Better to go to a solution that has MULTIPLE vendors so you're not screwed if one of them goes out of business.
You want enough card to shoot for one day, and a portable hard drive like a Digital Wallet or a Tripper to slurp the photos off at night to get ready for the next day. Buying enough CF for a long vacation is a waste of money when you can get a 60GB Tripper for ~ $300 US.
I see a lot of people expressing surprise about the price. For the target market, these are very reasonably priced. Pro photographers are out in the field shooting with $6000 bodies, sometimes multiple ones, and $2000+ lenses, maybe several in a bag besides the ones on the bodies.
They're not targetting people with a $1000 consumer point-n-shoot, and CF is not good for HD replacement in most cases due to low bandwidth and rewrite lifetime issues.
Having to stop shooting to change media half as often is WELL worth it. You don't want to have to tell your editor "There was a pulitzer-prize shot, but I missed it because I had my head down changing CF cards right at that moment."
Write speed is horribly slow compared to spinning discs, and there's a limited write life.
Sure, 500,000 writes seems like a lot, but not if that's your swap drive. The thing will be dying in 6 months.
I actually have a Canon ZR-40. It's the cheapest of their cheap line, but it's been taking a beating from me. I'm actually not only using it as a camcorder, but as a firewire streaming analog capture device, and as a transfer VCR. In the latter capacity, I put about 5+ hours a week of wear on it, recording at the satellite dish out in the living room and playing back into the computer. Been doing this for a year and so far so good. I figure this is about the amount of wear that the average camcorder gets put through in about 80 years; let's face it, most people buy a camcorder and put about 5 hours a year on it if that.
This is my 3rd camcorder, but my first digital. I like it better than my other two, which have both been Sonys. I personally am staying away from Sony now. 4 years ago when I bought my last one, nobody was beating them on features, but now many companies are, and my experience (based on only 2 camcorders, admittedly) is that Sonys will just be dead one day with no warnign and cost $300 to fix. This happened to me 3 times with 2 camcorders made 5 years apart, both Hi8.
I have now owned three Canon digicams (still own two of them, one a digital Rebel SLR), a Canon scanner and a Canon photo printer, so perhaps I'm not the most unbiased person. But in each case, I didn't buy out of brand loyalty really, I looked around and the Canon was what I liked the best at the time; I just found myself with a room full of Canon stuff at the end.
Kodak used to make a custom firmware for some of their digital cameras that applied a crypto stamp. By reading the key back out (I assume it was in the EXIF headers) you could say "this image was taken by this camera and hasn't been altered."
I haven't seen it for their newer cameras, nor by others, but I haven't been in any of the other manufacturer's software development programs either (I never did develop any software, but it was free to join and get their newsletters...)