So... if [region coding] becomes illegal, do you think it'll be more likely that movie releases will actually occur at the same time in, say, the U.S. and the U.K.?
My understanding is that the big reason for releasing movies at different times is that the (physical) films used in the U.S. are then sent overseas after theaters there stop showing it, because the cost of creating the film reels is in the 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. Removing this expense is one goal of digital filmless distribution of films, as in Lucas's experiments with "Episode 1:TPM."
One thing that has me hesitating on buying a DVD player is those horrible "can't fast-forward through" bits on some discs, usually the FBI warning, but apparently the most egregious being Disney's "Tarzan" which forces you to watch the ads each time. Does this player also get around that abomination?
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul.
Actually, I suspect Tesco's concern is with the region-encoding disabled, people will buy DVDs cheaper from overseas sources and not from Tesco's. Tescos can't price-match because they pay a higher base price for their region 2 discs. Still, the enemy of my enemy...
Look at the numbers. A whopping *1/4* of the respondents reported fewer face or phone contacts, and all of 1/10th of respondents reported fewer out-of-home activities. *That's* the dramatic effect the web is having? These guys should get a clue, they decided the results of this study before they took it. The most dramatic effect the web is having is in reduced TV watching, not social interactions. I e-mail my parents more than I ever called them. I can keep in touch with friends cross-country who I would otherwise probably just fall out of touch with. I wish that e-mail had been comnon when I was an undergrad, maybe I'd still be in touch with people I knew in high school.
Is that if you have the CD, and you're too lazy to rip it to your hard drive and would rather drag it across the net at some arbitrary speed, with errors, and without knowing if the song is actually there, you've got issues. I have ~100 CDs. Ripped at 10:1, that's 6.5 gigabytes, or ~80% of my work machine's hard drive. Not to mention dozens of hours of ripping/encoding/editing time. Perhaps your time is of no value, mine is.
My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with.
My 61-year-old mother-in-law uses Windows, and complains about random crashes. If I was physically closer to her and had the time, I'd consider setting her up with Linux. The larger the market share for Linux and thus the more general support there is available for novice users, the easier the transition to Linux is.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy.
All the monitors I use on a regular basis go into a low-energy sleep mode when the computer is turned off.
1) Since when are defendants guilty until proven innocent.
IANAL, but presumption of innocence only applies to criminal cases, whereas this is a civil suit.
3) This one is a complete judgement call.
Not really, the DMCA actually does say "computer programs" when it refers to reverse engineering, which a DVD data file isn't. So the judge is actually legally correct on this point.
However, saying that "it runs on Windows, so that's what you Linux guys oughta use" is truly moronic and has no basis in law.
In his initial granting of the injunction, I thought he'd made a reasonable decision, that if he didn't grant the injunction, he would effectively be deciding the case in advance.
But his logic is inane. The assertion that viewing the files under Linux is not a relevant issue because Windows is more popular? That's truly moronic. The reverse engineering exception says nothing about popularity, nor should it, nor should the size of the market be relevant to whether the reverse engineering is acceptable.
Furthermore, " the record clearly demonstrates that the chief focus of those promoting the dissemination of DeCSS is to permit widespread copying and dissemination of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works." What record? That's a sham! Slashdot quotes should not be admissible in a court of law, hasn't this judge ever heard of hearsay?
There is no single entity in the software industry that provides any sort of guarantee that their software is fit for a particular purpose, even the intended purpose for which it is sold.
There are a number of companies that provide non-hassle money-back guarantees on their software, including the one I work for. And yes, we do give refunds when they are asked for.
The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the more you clutter its ability to process efficiently and security is more easily compromised.
The fundamental problem is poor software design. Properly designed software should have a generic interface that provides hooks for both scripting (including command line parameters) and GUIs, with sufficient flexibility to support internationalization. That core should then be easily portable, with mainly the GUI layer needing porting for different systems.
If you plug a printer, mouse and keyboard in, it stops looking so nice with your home entertainment setup.
Go wireless. Cordless keyboards and mice have been out for a while, and printers that speak Bluetooth (wireless RF) should be out soon, if they aren't already.
The chief obstacle, really, is television resolution. HDTV, especially 720p (720 lines of resolution, progressive rather than interlaced), may be tolerable for most computing purposes, so the slow rise in HDTV may bring convergence. Up to now, no pretender to the PC throne has been able to provide both a significant cost advantage and acceptable display quality.
Evidence? I have several (audio) CDs from the early 80s which are no longer readable.
No longer readable, or just no longer readable by your equipment? One thing that doesn't seem to have been mentioned is that our CD readers are generally designed for speed, rather than making absolutely sure every last pit is read. Given that mass-produced CDs have physical pits in the media, I think it's likely the pits themselves will remain, and be readable to some device which reads them rather more slowly than a 40x (or even a 1x) CD-ROM.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free.
Many, perhaps most of us, don't want "most" code to be open source, we want most of the code we use to be open source, and that for pragmatic reasons. (Primarily, proprietary desktop OSes tend to be less reliable and flashier, with no way for a user to repair said unreliability.) Thus articles about closed-source programs (Quake, Loki ports, etc.) are reasonably popular despite the Linux tilt of the Slashdot audience.
This is a very perceptive, succinct write up by Gartner, and Rob got it right when he said this one would make a good executive summary.
But this misses what I think is the primary reason people work on open source: they want to use the program they're working on. Making it open source means they can get help from others with the same interest.
Try using a Windows machine without being able to simultaneously hold down the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys...
Other than logging into NT, where ctrl-alt-del is used to prevent people from doing fake login screens (a protection the Mac doesn't give you), I know of no reason you have to use ctrl-alt-del on Windows.
Or Move a file when the OS wants to copy it...
Easy, right-click cut and paste, it takes one hand on the mouse. How can you use one hand to copy when Mac OS "wants" to move a file?
Or... well, you get the point.
Yeah, "ignorance triumphs over the facts."
Windows has some really silly interface things -- who really wants to drag an application's menu bar around? -- but it does actually have a good idea or two. Mac users need to realize it's not just "Mac good, Windows bad."
coral reefs are much more important as carbon sinks.
That makes sense, since coral reefs build upon themselves, so the removed carbon is accumulated in lower levels of the reef. Trees, on the other hand, have a relatively fixed level (you do build up soil, but I doubt at the same rate), and as trees die they decompose and the CO2 gets released.
My favorite alternative energy generation technique is off-shore wind generators, as there's plenty of ocean room for them (even on the shelves), and they would provide residences for waterlife. It seems like they would also provide bases for coral reefs, at least in the right water conditions, making them even better environmentally.
I'm not sure of the source (and reliability) of the numbers, private ownership of businesses has gone way, way up in China in the last few years. Another interesting tidbit was where a court decided that male prostitutes couldn't be prosecuted because the law was written assuming only female ones, so even in cases like this the Rule of Law can trump the Powers That Be in China. So I'm hopeful.
Slashdot Mirror
No getting up for food or any other bodily need.
That's one couch I'm not sitting on...
So... if [region coding] becomes illegal, do you think it'll be more likely that movie releases will actually occur at the same time in, say, the U.S. and the U.K.?
My understanding is that the big reason for releasing movies at different times is that the (physical) films used in the U.S. are then sent overseas after theaters there stop showing it, because the cost of creating the film reels is in the 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. Removing this expense is one goal of digital filmless distribution of films, as in Lucas's experiments with "Episode 1:TPM."
One thing that has me hesitating on buying a DVD player is those horrible "can't fast-forward through" bits on some discs, usually the FBI warning, but apparently the most egregious being Disney's "Tarzan" which forces you to watch the ads each time. Does this player also get around that abomination?
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul.
Actually, I suspect Tesco's concern is with the region-encoding disabled, people will buy DVDs cheaper from overseas sources and not from Tesco's. Tescos can't price-match because they pay a higher base price for their region 2 discs. Still, the enemy of my enemy...
Look at the numbers. A whopping *1/4* of the respondents reported fewer face or phone contacts, and all of 1/10th of respondents reported fewer out-of-home activities. *That's* the dramatic effect the web is having? These guys should get a clue, they decided the results of this study before they took it. The most dramatic effect the web is having is in reduced TV watching, not social interactions. I e-mail my parents more than I ever called them. I can keep in touch with friends cross-country who I would otherwise probably just fall out of touch with. I wish that e-mail had been comnon when I was an undergrad, maybe I'd still be in touch with people I knew in high school.
Is that if you have the CD, and you're too lazy to rip it to your hard drive and would rather drag it across the net at some arbitrary speed, with errors, and without knowing if the song is actually there, you've got issues. I have ~100 CDs. Ripped at 10:1, that's 6.5 gigabytes, or ~80% of my work machine's hard drive. Not to mention dozens of hours of ripping/encoding/editing time. Perhaps your time is of no value, mine is.
The whole problem with humanity having a goal: what to we do if we achieve said goal? Vanish in a puff of logic?
My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with.
My 61-year-old mother-in-law uses Windows, and complains about random crashes. If I was physically closer to her and had the time, I'd consider setting her up with Linux. The larger the market share for Linux and thus the more general support there is available for novice users, the easier the transition to Linux is.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy.
All the monitors I use on a regular basis go into a low-energy sleep mode when the computer is turned off.
Except that you'll snap your bones like dry twigs or pull of bone chips at the attachment points.
:-)
Not my titanium bone replacements!
Beam-It reliably sent my NT machine to BSODs -- and I hadn't seen one of those for about a year prior to that.
1) Since when are defendants guilty until proven innocent.
IANAL, but presumption of innocence only applies to criminal cases, whereas this is a civil suit.
3) This one is a complete judgement call.
Not really, the DMCA actually does say "computer programs" when it refers to reverse engineering, which a DVD data file isn't. So the judge is actually legally correct on this point.
However, saying that "it runs on Windows, so that's what you Linux guys oughta use" is truly moronic and has no basis in law.
Hard to argue with this ruling.
You've *got* to be kidding.
In his initial granting of the injunction, I thought he'd made a reasonable decision, that if he didn't grant the injunction, he would effectively be deciding the case in advance.
But his logic is inane. The assertion that viewing the files under Linux is not a relevant issue because Windows is more popular? That's truly moronic. The reverse engineering exception says nothing about popularity, nor should it, nor should the size of the market be relevant to whether the reverse engineering is acceptable.
Furthermore, " the record clearly
demonstrates that the chief focus of those promoting the dissemination of DeCSS is to permit widespread copying and dissemination of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works." What record? That's a sham! Slashdot quotes should not be admissible in a court of law, hasn't this judge ever heard of hearsay?
There is no single entity in the software industry that provides any sort of guarantee that their software is fit for a particular purpose, even the intended purpose for which it is sold.
There are a number of companies that provide non-hassle money-back guarantees on their software, including the one I work for. And yes, we do give refunds when they are asked for.
The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the more you clutter its ability to process efficiently and security is more easily compromised.
The fundamental problem is poor software design. Properly designed software should have a generic interface that provides hooks for both scripting (including command line parameters) and GUIs, with sufficient flexibility to support internationalization. That core should then be easily portable, with mainly the GUI layer needing porting for different systems.
--- You silly twisted boy, you. Have a gorilla.
Oh! Thanks. Oww! Oww! Ooh! Oww! Hey! These gorillas are strong. Here! Have one of my monkeys -- they're milder.
If you plug a printer, mouse and keyboard in, it stops looking so nice with your home entertainment setup.
Go wireless. Cordless keyboards and mice have been out for a while, and printers that speak Bluetooth (wireless RF) should be out soon, if they aren't already.
The chief obstacle, really, is television resolution. HDTV, especially 720p (720 lines of resolution, progressive rather than interlaced), may be tolerable for most computing purposes, so the slow rise in HDTV may bring convergence. Up to now, no pretender to the PC throne has been able to provide both a significant cost advantage and acceptable display quality.
In "Notepad", put the filename in quotes if you don't want it to append the extension. Probably works for a lot of other programs too.
I have a younger brother who was able to play with legos in the 4th grade.
4th grade? My 5 year old plays with legos, and understands symmetry (without being a slave to it), fairly complex constructions, etc.
He plays a pretty good game of pairs, too.
Evidence? I have several (audio) CDs from the early 80s which are no longer readable.
No longer readable, or just no longer readable by your equipment? One thing that doesn't seem to have been mentioned is that our CD readers are generally designed for speed, rather than making absolutely sure every last pit is read. Given that mass-produced CDs have physical pits in the media, I think it's likely the pits themselves will remain, and be readable to some device which reads them rather more slowly than a 40x (or even a 1x) CD-ROM.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free.
Many, perhaps most of us, don't want "most" code to be open source, we want most of the code we use to be open source, and that for pragmatic reasons. (Primarily, proprietary desktop OSes tend to be less reliable and flashier, with no way for a user to repair said unreliability.) Thus articles about closed-source programs (Quake, Loki ports, etc.) are reasonably popular despite the Linux tilt of the Slashdot audience.
This is a very perceptive, succinct write up by Gartner, and Rob got it right when he said this one would make a good executive summary.
But this misses what I think is the primary reason people work on open source: they want to use the program they're working on. Making it open source means they can get help from others with the same interest.
Try using a Windows machine without being able to simultaneously hold down the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys...
Other than logging into NT, where ctrl-alt-del is used to prevent people from doing fake login screens (a protection the Mac doesn't give you), I know of no reason you have to use ctrl-alt-del on Windows.
Or Move a file when the OS wants to copy it...
Easy, right-click cut and paste, it takes one hand on the mouse. How can you use one hand to copy when Mac OS "wants" to move a file?
Or... well, you get the point.
Yeah, "ignorance triumphs over the facts."
Windows has some really silly interface things -- who really wants to drag an application's menu bar around? -- but it does actually have a good idea or two. Mac users need to realize it's not just "Mac good, Windows bad."
I like that. To see the "shortcut" menu, you have to have two hands free instead of one. Great usability feature that.
Especially for the one-handed, although I suppose you could try to press the key with your nose...
coral reefs are much more important as carbon sinks.
That makes sense, since coral reefs build upon themselves, so the removed carbon is accumulated in lower levels of the reef. Trees, on the other hand, have a relatively fixed level (you do build up soil, but I doubt at the same rate), and as trees die they decompose and the CO2 gets released.
My favorite alternative energy generation technique is off-shore wind generators, as there's plenty of ocean room for them (even on the shelves), and they would provide residences for waterlife. It seems like they would also provide bases for coral reefs, at least in the right water conditions, making them even better environmentally.
I'm not sure of the source (and reliability) of the numbers, private ownership of businesses has gone way, way up in China in the last few years. Another interesting tidbit was where a court decided that male prostitutes couldn't be prosecuted because the law was written assuming only female ones, so even in cases like this the Rule of Law can trump the Powers That Be in China. So I'm hopeful.