Whiskers

I have just had to hide almost 50 posts in this thread. Some of the behaviour in here has been completely ridiculous, and a few of you will be receiving warnings shortly. Read them carefully because if this sort of behaviour continues bans are going to start going around.

I am keeping this thread open because the discussion before this utter mess was mostly civil and I hope it can continue in such a way. But let me be clear - stick to the community standards. If anyone breaks them again in this thread the mod team will have no choice but to lock it, and you will receive a warning or suspension from the forum.

Keep it civil. If you can't keep it civil, don't participate in the thread.

36 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This is from Ian Hickson. He is the author of the HTML 5 specifications, one of the deal developers of CSS, and many other achievements. He is currently employed by Google to work with organizations such as WHATWG to develop web standards.

  Reveal hidden contents

Discussions about DRM often land on the fundamental problem with DRM: that it doesn't work, or worse, that it is in fact mathematically impossible to make it work. The argument goes as follows:

1. The purpose of DRM is to prevent people from copying content while allowing people to view that content,

2. You can't hide something from someone while showing it to them,

3. And in any case widespread copyright violations (e.g. movies on file sharing sites) often come from sources that aren't encrypted in the first place, e.g. leaks from studios.

It turns out that this argument is fundamentally flawed. Usually the arguments from pro-DRM people are that #2 and #3 are false. But no, those are true. The problem is #1 is false.

The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.

The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices.

Content providers have leverage against content distributors, because distributors can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the permission of the content's creators. But if that was the only leverage content producers had, what would happen is that users would obtain their content from those content distributors, and then use third-party content playback systems to read it, letting them do so in whatever manner they wanted.

Here are some examples:

A. Paramount make a movie. A DVD store buys the rights to distribute this movie from Paramount, and sells DVDs. You buy the DVD, and want to play it. Paramount want you to sit through some ads, so they tell the DVD store to put some ads on the DVD labeled as "unskippable".

Without DRM, you take the DVD and stick it into a DVD player that ignores "unskippable" labels, and jump straight to the movie.

With DRM, there is no licensed player that can do this, because to create the player you need to get permission from Paramount -- or rather, a licensing agent created and supported by content companies, DVD-CCA -- otherwise, you are violating some set of patents, anti-circumvention laws, or both.

B. Columbia make a movie. Netflix buys the rights to distribute this movie from Columbia, and sells access to the bits of the movie to users online. You get a Netflix subscription. Columbia want you to pay more if you want to watch it simultaneously on your TV and your phone, so they require that Netflix prevent you from doing this.

Now. You are watching the movie upstairs with your family, and you hear your cat meowing at the door downstairs.

Without DRM, you don't have to use Netflix's software, so maybe just pass the feed to some multiplexing software, which means that you can just pick up your phone, tell it to stream the same movie, continue watching it while you walk downstairs to open the door for the cat, come back upstairs, and turn your phone off, and nobody else has been inconvenienced and you haven't missed anything.

With DRM, you have to use Netflix's software, so you have to play by their rules. There is no licensed software that will let you multiplex the stream. You could watch it on your phone, but then your family misses out. They could keep watching, but then you miss out. Nobody is allowed to write software that does anything Columbia don't want you to do. Columbia want the option to charge you more when you go to let your cat in, even if they don't actually make it possible yet.

C. Fox make a movie. Apple buys the rights to sell it on iTunes. You buy it from iTunes. You want to watch it on your phone. Fox want you to buy the movie again if you use anything not made by Apple.

Without DRM, you just transfer it to your phone and watch it, since the player on any phone, whether made by Apple or anyone else, can read the video file.

With DRM, only Apple can provide a licensed player for the file. If you're using any phone other than an iPhone, you cannot watch it, because nobody else has been allowed to write software that decrypts the media files sold by Apple.

In all three cases, nobody has been stopped from violating a copyright. All three movies are probably available on file sharing sites. The only people who are stopped from doing anything are the player providers -- they are forced to provide a user experience that, rather than being optimised for the users, puts potential future revenues first (forcing people to play ads, keeping the door open to charging more for more features later, building artificial obsolescence into content so that if you change ecosystem, you have to purchase the content again).

Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity. DRM failed in the music space not because DRM is doomed, but because the content providers sold their digital content without DRM, and thus enabled all kinds of players they didn't expect (such as "MP3" players). Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it.

DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

As a corollary to this, look at the companies who are pushing for DRM. Of the ones who would have to implement the DRM, they are all companies over which the content providers already, without DRM, have leverage: the companies that both license content from the content providers and create software or hardware players. Because they license content, the content providers already have leverage against them: they can essentially require them to be pro-DRM if they want the content. The people against the DRM are the users, and the player creators who don't license content. In other words, the people over whom the content producers have no leverage.

 

That was a very interesting read, thanks for posting it. I fully agree with him.

I'd love to see a day where DRM dies entirely. Sure, some DRM implementations aren't particularly intrusive - but that's not the issue. The prevalence of DRM in general allows for the presence of DRM which is intrusive, as much of it is. And even if all DRM weren't intrusive, it's still unnecessary. As you've said before in this thread it doesn't benefit the content creators in terms of increasing the money they get, and it certainly doesn't improve the experience for consumers. It's just a hacky way of trying to retain control over the content, which I'm entirely opposed to. I'm someone who believes that if a person purchases something they should be free to use it as they see fit.

DHCP is a perfect example. It is conceptually broken, as it hasn't prevented the piracy of modern content to any extent - all it has achieved is preventing those who have legally purchased 4K media from being able to view it on the vast majority of devices out there. My computer was built in 2013 and is still a powerful machine which I feel no need to upgrade. It is easily capable of playing back high bitrate 4K video... yet I can't, because there's an arbitrary copyright protection mechanism preventing me from being able to do so.

5 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Seems to me like the idiots were the ones designing the phone, not the ones trolling people.

Intentionally abusing a flaw with the intention of crashing or breaking someone's device is malicious. There have been reports of people being unable to boot their iPhones after receiving these characters, so I don't see how anyone can consider it mere trolling.

It's pretty appalling that Apple allowed for such a bug to exist (and it's one of many such bugs to have existed on iOS in the last few years), but just because Apple screwed up doesn't make it alright for people to abuse the flaw.

6 hours ago, GabD said:

I did read the guidelines before posting.  I don't know what to do then.
The post a) starts with my own input, b) links to a relatively reputable source, c) quotes important bits but not the whole article, and d) makes use of quotation marks for all non-original text.

Is it too much of a wall of text? Should I use a full-on quote box instead of just the quotation marks?

 

Ah, fair enough. The personal opinion part came across more as a summary of the article's contents rather than an opinion. In that case, don't worry about it.

Badge icons have been updated; they should now appear a little crisper and more legible than before (thanks to @Ryan_Vickers for their work on them).

With Whaler retiring from the LTT Mod Team, I will now be the one to contact if you have reached a new tier for a Folding badge. Please send a PM to myself and I'll assign the badge to your account when I can.

Just a quick reminder for everyone - we don't allow for political discussion on LTT. I understand that this thread (and all threads revolving around Mr. Pai, the FCC and Net Neutrality) inherently has a lot of political interplay; but please, do your best to discuss the thread at hand without discussing political parties, political figures, political ideologies etc. We know from experience that political threads are inherently a no-no, as they invariably descend into personal attacks and insult-flinging.

So stay on topic and try to keep politics out of it, please. Any posts that are too politically focused will be removed, and if people can't control themselves the thread will unfortunately need to be locked.

@SFGEV I have merged both of your threads. If you ever post your topic in the wrong section, please use the report button to notify the mod team and in your report message explain that you wanted to post it elsewhere - don't post a second topic. Using the report button on your own posts or thread won't result in you receiving punishment - it just lets us see your thread and act upon what you've said in the report, allowing us to move it to the correct section for you.

Edit: I see you're new to the forum. Welcome!

@ppdragos Please update your post with a summary of your own thoughts on the article, as per the section's posting guidelines.

@GabD Please update your thread to follow the Tech News & Reviews Posting Guidelines.

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the community.

Thread moved to PC Gaming section.

6 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Other admins have access to it, mods can't add badges.

 

Sending a PM to mortis or windspeed should do the trick.

You can also send PMs to myself, I'll mostly be the one handling the badges going forward.

Alright I've cleaned out this thread.

This topic is not for arguing about fiber, duplex, ethernet or anything else; help the OP with his problem or don't bother responding. If anyone starts arguing here again or throws more insults around, your posts will be hidden and you'll receive warning points.

Keep it civil, keep it friendly and help the OP. If you can't help, don't post.

@DeaD sh0T I have split your post into its own topic. The Community Standards thread is for discussing the forum's rules, not for troubleshooting things.

I have quite a few problems with Windows 10's UI too. The first example that comes to mind is the notification popup; why does it have an arrow icon for the button to dismiss the notification instead of a traditional X like it used to have before the Creator's update? Visually the arrow would indicate an intent to act upon the notification, not to dismiss it.

12 hours ago, Drak3 said:

No, they look like cheap, tacky garbage.

 

Which is fitting, because that's what skins are.

You're stating your opinion as a fact. You might not like them personally and there's nothing wrong with that, but you shouldn't dictate that opinion to others.

Their skins are made of fairly high quality materials, certainly compared to the majority of other skin manufacturers. They also put their skins through a testing programme to ensure they don't in any way damage the device they're applied to; this is why they don't sell skins for the Nintendo Switch as the Switch's paint is damaged by the adhesive used by the skins.

2 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

I kinda dislike toad in the hole. Mainly because every time I’ve had it it’s either been ready made or school food, so my experiences so far have been shit

A proper, home-cooked toad in the hole is brilliant. You're missing out if you've not had a good one yet.

Thread moved to "New Builds and Planning" section.

Please check to see if there is a dedicated section for your topic before posting it in General Discussion; GD is an area intended for generalised tech discussions which don't currently have a dedicated section on the forum, such as discussions of abstract technologies or of the tech industry itself.

Thread moved to "Laptops and Prebuilt Systems" section.

Please check before posting a topic in the General Discussion section that your topic doesn't better belong somewhere else. General Discussion is a catch-all area for any tech threads which don't belong to a specific section; abstract tech discussions, discussions of the tech industry etc.

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Well.. millions don't have any of these issues. I plug in-out my L950 extensively. Minimum 3 times a day (in the car to go to work, in the car back home, and at home at night). My Switch is played daily in portable mode, and put back to its dock (sometimes it can be docked in and out 2-3 times in a day). I also went on long vacation with the Switch, and I didn't bring the dock, but the official owner adapter, and got plugged in directly via it many times (again, daily charged / played). The Switch was over 300h of game play time, not counting me doing other things on the system (eShop, viewing saved game pictures). In these 2 devices, the USB Type-C holds super well to this day.

 

Indeed.

I'm not trying to dismiss your experiences @Drak3, I just don't have any explanation for them I'm afraid.

23 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Theoretically, you're correct. In practice, the type C male end is just as flimsy, and the rounded corners of the type C port are harder to clean than behind micro b's male end, at least from my experience.

If you've experienced a USB C male connector being more flimsy than a Micro B male connector then my guess would be it's a result of a poor implementation of the standard or poor luck rather than the design of the standard itself. Micro B was always a very fragile standard (especially the male connector), and as far as I know one of the core principles behind USB C's design was to create a more resilient connector type than both it and USB A (which whilst featuring a very resistant PCB for its terminals always had an easily damaged / misshapen metal casing). And from my understanding and analysis of them both, USB C certainly looks like it'd be a lot stronger (rounded edges instead of square, thicker casing material, considerably thicker PCB than that of Micro B, reversible).

Thread moved to "New Builds and Planning" section.

The Off-Topic section is for posting topics which aren't directly related to technology and don't belong to another section.

11 hours ago, Drak3 said:

I've got an MBP and three phones that use it. It's not worth while on phones, the bigger port collects lint fast enough that the port needs cleaned out. I clean the ports on my S8s monthly. Things like desktops, the smaller port means fuck all because there's not really any gain from space savings. Reversibility is a solution in need of a real problem.

It might collect lint, dust and dirt more easily than MicroUSB - but on the flipside at least it can be fairly easily cleaned out. MicroUSB could also accumulate things, but was much more difficult to properly clean out. It was also much more fragile for cleaning, as the connector prongs in the middle of the port were somewhat delicate.

Design wise, USB C is better than Micro USB on every level. But as with any connector standard it can suffer from poor implementations of the standard.

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Because Microsoft isnt a hardware company. Their only real bit of hardware is the XBox, the Surface line is just a bunch of example products that get returned or break after a year. 

 

(according to consumer reports) 

I find that a little difficult to believe. Microsoft aren't known to waste money on a failing project; if the Surface line were so unreliable or undesirable it would make no sense for them to not only keep the line going but substantially grow the range of products within it. It would be tarnishing the brand they're so badly trying to establish and would lose them a lot of money. That's not to say they're free of issues altogether of course.

This post belongs in a status update. Thread locked.

Gay bars tend to have a different vibe and atmosphere to other bars. There are plenty of straight people who enjoy going to them, and there's no rule about needing to be gay or anything.