So what? That division was a good thing for society; the loss of it is a *bad* thing for society, and the fact that nobody is stepping in to pick it up is a bad thing too.
Sorry, but these attempts at a "compromise" or "fair minded" solution are nothing more than a way to get people to shut up about the real issues that proprietary software creates. It is not "just an operating system" that is useful for some particular task; we rely on computers for more and more aspects of our lives, and when software as fundamental as an operating system is under the complete control of a large corporation, there is a problem.
Personally, I think we are about to enter an entirely new (and unfortunate) age, where newspapers adopt the same model that scientific journals adopt: demand payment from universities and large institutions, deny access to anyone not affiliated with such institutions. Most universities already pay for newspaper subscriptions and I doubt that the governing boards would see such a move as being anything other than "upgrading our newspaper subscriptions for the 21st century." Common people who are not in college would be relegated to getting their news from "independent" sources and blogs, which is not necessarily terrible in terms of accuracy, but there is an issue of extensiveness (most bloggers will not be able to get interviews or statements from top level politicians or businessmen).
All of which points to a trend that everyone has been aware of for years now: revenue from desktop software sales is becoming less important than revenue from online services; advertising is such a service. It is likely that in the years to come, we will see more of these sorts of deals, particularly on mobile devices.
Funny, the way I learned it, the "powers of 3" are numbers of this form: 3^n
Yes, you can raise 3 to an irrational power to get an even number, but when one speaks of "powers of 3," they are usually referring to the integers. Sometimes they are referring to a finite ring, but I have never heard of people referring to "powers of 3" in the real numbers (what would be the point?).
The recording industry is to modern life as Nazi Germany was to France: aggressive, invasion, and unwelcome.
Oh, wait, computer oriented website...The recording industry is to life these days as the powers of 3 are to the even numbers; they will never be in touch.
You are mistaken, actually. I know of plenty of people who love concerts and follow the lives of celebrities...and then download music from file sharing networks. The real problem here is that there are plenty of other sources for the information they are planning to embed in these files, and I doubt anyone is going to pay for it when they can get it at no cost just by watching a music marketing channel (ahem MTV).
If you were talking about Wii or Xbox hacking, I might agree. But so many PS3 orders were for high performance computing projects -- to the point where Sony removed the ability to do so in newer PS3 models -- that I have a lot of difficulty believing that this hack will primarily be used to run unauthorized copies of games. To be honest, I do not know many people who play video games on their PS3, and those who do have also installed some kind of third party OS in the hopes of making a media center...and this hack is the last piece they need for that.
Sony's idiotic business model has nothing at all to do with whether or not the PS3 is a computer.
Really, Sony has been compounding their mistakes with the PS3 from the very beginning. The Cell processor is ahead of its time, in the sense that programmings it with current software techniques is very difficult and far beyond the skill set most video game developers have; programmers just do not know how to fully take advantage of such a chip. This is a very common mistake: create excellent hardware without first consulting the people who will program it (thus, x86 has thousands and thousands of instructions that are hardly ever used because compiler writers do not know how to take advantage of them and most programmers are not going to write assembly language code).
Do not defend Sony here; they took a risk with the PS3, and they did not win. That is why it is called "risk." It would have been a lot safer to market the PS3 as a high end gaming system, sold at the market rate for such systems, or to just wait until game developers were actually demanding the kind of performance that a Cell processor delivers. Or, perhaps they could have marketed the system as a general media center computer with enhanced HD performance (which Toshiba's interest in the Cell) and more flexibility than a standard set-top box. In the end, the Cell processor wound up winning in the market IBM originally developed it for, but nobody wanted to pay IBM's prices for it, and all three companies wound up losing the bet (Toshiba never did use the Cell processor, but instead used a chip that contained only the SPEs, since the PPE is really not needed for what they were doing).
Look, I personally have no reason to complain: where I am now, I have access to a cluster of Cell blades, each of which has four 3.2GHz Cell processors that I can use without restriction (although the effort required to take advantage of multiple Cell processors is even more extreme). What I draw issue with is the practice of using technology to divide and dominate people, which is exactly what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are doing with their video game systems. I have absolutely no sympathy for any of these companies, I hope the DMCA is overturned and I hope all of their systems are cracked.
You sure give them a lot of credit, considering that they live under one of the most pervasive censorship and repression systems ever devised. Yeah, there are examples of worse regimes, but they are pretty extreme and really do not say very much.
"The have it better now than anytime in their history."
Some have it better now. There are a billion people living in China, and only a minority have access to the improved standards of living that you are referring to. This is pretty much how things were in the Soviet Union: some people were better off, but most were either in the same position they were in before the revolution or in an even worse position as a result of the government's policies.
Sorry, I know that the Reagan/Thatcher concept is popular, but increased trade does not always bring a higher standard of living to every single citizen or even to a majority of citizens.
Maybe you missed the criticism part. I do not believe that any of this is right, but really, you cannot deny the reality of the country that we live in: America's government serves corporations, not individual citizens. It would be nice if that changed, but most people do not care even after they become informed (most people will never even make it that far).
Hey, the RIAA claims that they need to deter downloaders by imposing excessive fees; this is just more of the same, but in the other direction. The EFF's demand for that much money is a deterrent to people who think that it is OK to abuse the legal system and issue unfair takedown notices. Hopefully, this will have the effect of shocking the government into action and reducing the damages in copyright cases (once they start targeting individuals, the damages should be much, much smaller), but I have a feeling that this sort of activity will continue for many more years.
Probably because, as President Coolidge put it, "The business of America is business." Fair use by individuals on the Internet is not a profitable activity in terms of dollars, even though it is great for society. On the other hand, selling an authorized copy of some work that you have a copyright on is a very profitable activity.
So, yes, in the America we live in (the one controlled by corporations), it is worse to violate a copyright than to abuse the legal system in order to deprive a person of their right to fair use.
I am not even convinced that much is true. Is there any evidence that people who use unlicensed copies of Windows would have purchased a license had there been no unlicensed copies available? Is there any evidence that a person who downloaded a song from a filesharing network would have paid for their music had there been no filesharing networks available? These are very difficult claims to prove, even if they appear to make sense.
Hi, I'm betterunixthanunix, I have worked as a programmer in the past, and I have never owned or had a desire to own a MacBook or any other Apple computer (or any other Apple product at all).
Yes, because for a computer, I would want all the things a PS3 does not have...like...a CPU, RAM, hard drive, graphics card, NIC...oh, wait, that is exactly what a PS3 has. Hm, perhaps you are maintaining a false dichotomy in believing that a "gaming console" is functionally different from a "desktop."
I cannot think of a single person, even from my hardcore gamer friends, who is interested in pirating games with this hack. I know a lot of people, both online and offline, who have wanted to break the hyperviser and get better performance for their computation on the PS3 since the PS3 first debuted. Honestly, I do not know where you got the idea that this is about piracy, or that there is a strong push for piracy, or anything to that effect...
Re:I rarely get to say this...
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PS3 Hacked?
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· Score: 1
You also lose 256MB (of 512) of the system's RAM to the hyperviser. That SPE matters. And the graphics card might matter too, depending on what you are doing. This hack is a godsend for some of us, who have been pissed about the ridiculous, unnecessary hyperviser for a long time now.
You obviously know nothing
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PS3 Hacked?
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· Score: 1, Informative
Not to come off as too aggressive, but games have nothing to do with it. I want to run Fedora on my PS3, and I want to have uninhibited access to the hardware when I do that -- I want the graphics card, I want all the RAM, I want all the SPEs. I do not want to deal with the hyperviser; it gets in the way and slows things down. Yes, the PS3 is powerful even with the hyperviser, but I want more.
If you think games are the most important aspect to breaking the PS3 hyperviser, you are dead wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? That division was a good thing for society; the loss of it is a *bad* thing for society, and the fact that nobody is stepping in to pick it up is a bad thing too.
How can you possibly "own content?" I believe you mean, "hold a copyright on the media."
Sorry, but these attempts at a "compromise" or "fair minded" solution are nothing more than a way to get people to shut up about the real issues that proprietary software creates. It is not "just an operating system" that is useful for some particular task; we rely on computers for more and more aspects of our lives, and when software as fundamental as an operating system is under the complete control of a large corporation, there is a problem.
I would guess that advertising dollars were factored in (did you think they would remove advertising just because you are paying them?).
Personally, I think we are about to enter an entirely new (and unfortunate) age, where newspapers adopt the same model that scientific journals adopt: demand payment from universities and large institutions, deny access to anyone not affiliated with such institutions. Most universities already pay for newspaper subscriptions and I doubt that the governing boards would see such a move as being anything other than "upgrading our newspaper subscriptions for the 21st century." Common people who are not in college would be relegated to getting their news from "independent" sources and blogs, which is not necessarily terrible in terms of accuracy, but there is an issue of extensiveness (most bloggers will not be able to get interviews or statements from top level politicians or businessmen).
Well, Microsoft is a proprietary software kingpin, so that comes as no surprise. Same old problems, just with different technologies.
All of which points to a trend that everyone has been aware of for years now: revenue from desktop software sales is becoming less important than revenue from online services; advertising is such a service. It is likely that in the years to come, we will see more of these sorts of deals, particularly on mobile devices.
Funny, the way I learned it, the "powers of 3" are numbers of this form: 3^n
Yes, you can raise 3 to an irrational power to get an even number, but when one speaks of "powers of 3," they are usually referring to the integers. Sometimes they are referring to a finite ring, but I have never heard of people referring to "powers of 3" in the real numbers (what would be the point?).
The recording industry is to modern life as Nazi Germany was to France: aggressive, invasion, and unwelcome.
Oh, wait, computer oriented website...The recording industry is to life these days as the powers of 3 are to the even numbers; they will never be in touch.
You are mistaken, actually. I know of plenty of people who love concerts and follow the lives of celebrities...and then download music from file sharing networks. The real problem here is that there are plenty of other sources for the information they are planning to embed in these files, and I doubt anyone is going to pay for it when they can get it at no cost just by watching a music marketing channel (ahem MTV).
Or if you want lossless encoding for some reason; it is pretty rare to find FLAC files on file sharing networks.
If you were talking about Wii or Xbox hacking, I might agree. But so many PS3 orders were for high performance computing projects -- to the point where Sony removed the ability to do so in newer PS3 models -- that I have a lot of difficulty believing that this hack will primarily be used to run unauthorized copies of games. To be honest, I do not know many people who play video games on their PS3, and those who do have also installed some kind of third party OS in the hopes of making a media center...and this hack is the last piece they need for that.
Sony's idiotic business model has nothing at all to do with whether or not the PS3 is a computer.
Really, Sony has been compounding their mistakes with the PS3 from the very beginning. The Cell processor is ahead of its time, in the sense that programmings it with current software techniques is very difficult and far beyond the skill set most video game developers have; programmers just do not know how to fully take advantage of such a chip. This is a very common mistake: create excellent hardware without first consulting the people who will program it (thus, x86 has thousands and thousands of instructions that are hardly ever used because compiler writers do not know how to take advantage of them and most programmers are not going to write assembly language code).
Do not defend Sony here; they took a risk with the PS3, and they did not win. That is why it is called "risk." It would have been a lot safer to market the PS3 as a high end gaming system, sold at the market rate for such systems, or to just wait until game developers were actually demanding the kind of performance that a Cell processor delivers. Or, perhaps they could have marketed the system as a general media center computer with enhanced HD performance (which Toshiba's interest in the Cell) and more flexibility than a standard set-top box. In the end, the Cell processor wound up winning in the market IBM originally developed it for, but nobody wanted to pay IBM's prices for it, and all three companies wound up losing the bet (Toshiba never did use the Cell processor, but instead used a chip that contained only the SPEs, since the PPE is really not needed for what they were doing).
Look, I personally have no reason to complain: where I am now, I have access to a cluster of Cell blades, each of which has four 3.2GHz Cell processors that I can use without restriction (although the effort required to take advantage of multiple Cell processors is even more extreme). What I draw issue with is the practice of using technology to divide and dominate people, which is exactly what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are doing with their video game systems. I have absolutely no sympathy for any of these companies, I hope the DMCA is overturned and I hope all of their systems are cracked.
"I think the citizens also understand that"
You sure give them a lot of credit, considering that they live under one of the most pervasive censorship and repression systems ever devised. Yeah, there are examples of worse regimes, but they are pretty extreme and really do not say very much.
"The have it better now than anytime in their history."
Some have it better now. There are a billion people living in China, and only a minority have access to the improved standards of living that you are referring to. This is pretty much how things were in the Soviet Union: some people were better off, but most were either in the same position they were in before the revolution or in an even worse position as a result of the government's policies.
Sorry, I know that the Reagan/Thatcher concept is popular, but increased trade does not always bring a higher standard of living to every single citizen or even to a majority of citizens.
Maybe you missed the criticism part. I do not believe that any of this is right, but really, you cannot deny the reality of the country that we live in: America's government serves corporations, not individual citizens. It would be nice if that changed, but most people do not care even after they become informed (most people will never even make it that far).
Well that much is certainly true, although my point was more about the claims the various copyright lobbyists make about "lost sales" and "piracy."
Hey, the RIAA claims that they need to deter downloaders by imposing excessive fees; this is just more of the same, but in the other direction. The EFF's demand for that much money is a deterrent to people who think that it is OK to abuse the legal system and issue unfair takedown notices. Hopefully, this will have the effect of shocking the government into action and reducing the damages in copyright cases (once they start targeting individuals, the damages should be much, much smaller), but I have a feeling that this sort of activity will continue for many more years.
Probably because, as President Coolidge put it, "The business of America is business." Fair use by individuals on the Internet is not a profitable activity in terms of dollars, even though it is great for society. On the other hand, selling an authorized copy of some work that you have a copyright on is a very profitable activity.
So, yes, in the America we live in (the one controlled by corporations), it is worse to violate a copyright than to abuse the legal system in order to deprive a person of their right to fair use.
"Yes, Microsoft may lose business"
I am not even convinced that much is true. Is there any evidence that people who use unlicensed copies of Windows would have purchased a license had there been no unlicensed copies available? Is there any evidence that a person who downloaded a song from a filesharing network would have paid for their music had there been no filesharing networks available? These are very difficult claims to prove, even if they appear to make sense.
Hi, I'm betterunixthanunix, I have worked as a programmer in the past, and I have never owned or had a desire to own a MacBook or any other Apple computer (or any other Apple product at all).
Yes, because for a computer, I would want all the things a PS3 does not have...like...a CPU, RAM, hard drive, graphics card, NIC...oh, wait, that is exactly what a PS3 has. Hm, perhaps you are maintaining a false dichotomy in believing that a "gaming console" is functionally different from a "desktop."
I cannot think of a single person, even from my hardcore gamer friends, who is interested in pirating games with this hack. I know a lot of people, both online and offline, who have wanted to break the hyperviser and get better performance for their computation on the PS3 since the PS3 first debuted. Honestly, I do not know where you got the idea that this is about piracy, or that there is a strong push for piracy, or anything to that effect...
You also lose 256MB (of 512) of the system's RAM to the hyperviser. That SPE matters. And the graphics card might matter too, depending on what you are doing. This hack is a godsend for some of us, who have been pissed about the ridiculous, unnecessary hyperviser for a long time now.
Not to come off as too aggressive, but games have nothing to do with it. I want to run Fedora on my PS3, and I want to have uninhibited access to the hardware when I do that -- I want the graphics card, I want all the RAM, I want all the SPEs. I do not want to deal with the hyperviser; it gets in the way and slows things down. Yes, the PS3 is powerful even with the hyperviser, but I want more.
If you think games are the most important aspect to breaking the PS3 hyperviser, you are dead wrong.