Deep? By what standards? All I saw from the sarcasm department was: "...which shurely [sic] they have never done..." and that was it. Perhaps my sarcasm sensors aren't as finely honed as yours, but I kinda doubt that.
Sir, I'll have to sue you and everyone else on Slashdot for infringing on my patent on written communication. Anyone who feels like complaining can write their own reply to my post. My patent for reading written communication, however, is licensable.
God, I've heard this so many d@mn times... let's test this, shall we?
Test song: Bohemian Rhapsody, off Queen's album "A Night at the Opera"
Buy from iTunes: done, 3 months ago - I like to know what I want the music I play to sound like, I was too lazy to go out and get the physical CD, and I had some iTunes gift cards. Burn to CD: done, 1.5 months ago Rip from burned CD: done, 5 minutes later. No noticed quality loss. Buy "A Night at the Opera" CD: done, two weeks later. No obvious difference in quality between any two versions.
YMMV, and it's entirely possible that I'm not listening hard enough, but I stand by my observations until they change.
Side note: A couple of weeks ago, the right speaker on my computer stopped functioning. My bet's on the jack being bent or inserted wrong, since the computer recognizes the left one, but not the right one. The end result is that everything comes out in mono as opposed to stereo, but I don't really care enough to move the computer and fix it.
(rereads exchange leading up to this) (hits head on nearest wall)
What I must have done was thought that the GGP you were referring to was you. Either I missed a G or I forgot how to count for a moment. Sorry about that.
You responded to a post stating that as far as the poster knew, Microsoft was the only company that volunteered DRM before the content providers thought of demanding it, and you responded by naming Apple. I assumed you meant that Apple proposed DRM before the content providers, and I was attempting to set you straight on that point. You replied to me by saying "basically exactly the same situation as DRM capabilities being put into Vista so it could be used as a platform for premium content", which is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. RTFAing didn't help any as to figuring out where you were going with that.
Now, as I've told you earlier, I can't read minds, and I won't assume you can, but I thought I made myself clear as to what I meant. And yes, I did preview.
I think cadeon means open standards. His point, then, would be that if the standard is improved, it produces higher quality content, while at the same time preventing it from being locked to a single platform/processor architecture/whatever. Of course, I could be wrong; I'm not known for my mind-reading skills.
Microsoft volunteered to implement DRM measures and led the technological way in the DRM arena. Some companies resisted but caved, some caved without a fight but microsoft is the only company I know of that actually volunteered before any content provider could even think about demanding.
Uh, hello ? Apple ?
I figured you knew what you were talking about until right there. Last I heard, the only reason Apple put DRM on stuff bought from iTunes in the first place was that without it, the RIAA wouldn't allow them to sell their songs. If it's changed since then, please let me know, but...
Well, if nothing else, they were growing outside the US by half a percentage point over three years. Also, the second article you linked says nothing about US market share. Methinks Animats needs to do a little more research.
Re:Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Mouss
on
2006's Bill of Wrongs
·
· Score: 1
Well, the problem we have with our system of justice election, IMHO, is that none of the candidates represent the viewpoint I'd really like to see in office. The Republicans are the incumbents, the Democrats don't challenge in most of the races that I'm aware of, and the Libertarians, from what I can tell, haven't been much of a useful choice. I haven't been paying too much attention to those races anyway, though I probably should for the next few elections at least.
I'm only pro-government when I see no reason to change it, which right now, as I'm sure you can tell, I do. The Republican party, especially the religious hard-right, have control over our system now, and we need that to change. I still can't do anything about it, though.:-(
Re:Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Mouss
on
2006's Bill of Wrongs
·
· Score: 1
A relative of mine once served in the Texas legislature. His position on the state Senate's filibustering rules was that he didn't like the rules that were there, but as long as they were there, he would use them. Apparently he successfully filibustered as an active member of the state Senate twice, both times on the last day of the legislative session, when everyone just wants to get things wrapped up, so the lieutenant governor had a placard made stating, "Never recognize [relative] on the last day of the session." There was one other instance, but now is not the time.
Sorry about that. What I was planning to get around to saying was that my position on the death penalty is that it's a law that we don't need and that I don't agree with, but as long as it's there, we have to accept it and try to change or remove it. Unfortunately, I live in Texas, which is a fairly conservative state, so I don't think that the death penalty where I live is going away soon without an order from on high (the preachers or the White House, it doesn't matter which). Your position seems to be that whether or not it's morally right, it's the law, and so we need to follow it. While I admit that while it's there, it needs to be applied (to the right people, of course, but our Court of Criminal Appeals is horrible at admitting when they're wrong), I also think that it's not morally right and so needs abolishment as soon as possible.
Oh, and government is (supposedly) by the consent of the governed, which one assumes that the legislators should treat as a lesser deity...;-)
I can't sync AND have it recharge at the same time.
How so? I have a 1GHz G4 iMac with FireWire 400 and USB 1.1, and an iPod nano, which didn't come with a FireWire connector. It recharges and syncs over the USB connections. Sure, it's a little slow to sync, but I don't mind... my library rarely gets over 100 songs, most of which don't have to re-copy. It recharges, but I haven't taken the time to see how long it takes when hooked up to the computer. Disclaimer: I don't know whether it'll recharge over USB on a laptop.
Re:Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Mouss
on
2006's Bill of Wrongs
·
· Score: 1
However, what was it Jesus said about turning the other cheek? My understanding of it is that it overruled the whole idea about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, regardless of however much we think the person getting the death penalty deserves it.
I'll grant that in some cases, it's entertaining to see the punishment fit the crime (who here has heard the one about the guy who cheated at billiards?), but when it's a life that's on the line...
Re:Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Mouss
on
2006's Bill of Wrongs
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So are you suggesting that such stupidity as the design of the U.S.'s death penalty should be punishable by death?;-) I agree that the death penalty's current execution, no pun intended, fails as a crime deterrent. If anything, those sentenced to death become martyrs. Life without parole, I think, would be very, very boring, dreary, and would help to instill feelings of hopelessness. Besides, if you're innocent, life without parole gives a much longer timeframe for evidence to be found to clear your name, and if you're guilty, you have more time to think about what you did. Let me see, did I leave out anything?
To the informed consumer, "viable competition" has even less restrictive DRM than FairPlay. Not, of course, that the RIAA will let that happen without a MASSIVE shift in mindset at the top... but if it happens, then there's hope for DRM-free, permanent, legally downlodable content.
...they don't get a pass because their software is bad at the feat it is trying to accomplish.
Which, last I checked, was creating a simple, user-friendly, convenient, [insert your own adjective here] method of managing your music library (or something along those lines). If it's been changed, please let me know, since I wouldn't know anything about that.
...they [the music rental services] actually attempt to give you something of value for your money. They don't pretend that the songs you download will work forever
Wait wait wait, you lost me... How is a file that doesn't work the way I want it to when I want it to valuable to me? Think of it this way: If I currently subscribe to Sports Illustrated, and then later decide I want to subscribe to The Sporting News instead, I expect to still be able to read all my issues of Sports Illustrated. Why should it be any different just because it's digital?
(And before anyone starts telling me that with CDs, all I own is the media... well, with magazines, all I really own is the media, too. The medium just happens to be sheets of paper stapled together instead of little discs of metal/plastic/whatever. And it's just as impossible to remove the content from the magazine as from the CD. Yes, you can copy it, but that's not the same as removing it.)
DRM for purchased content is still trying to control something you own. DRM for rental content is controlling something you don't own. The controls in the latter case are reasonable. The controls in the former case are not.
Which brings up another question: Why don't I own the rented content? After all, it's on my hard drive, right? To me, at least, that means I own it, and I should if I don't.
Putting aside that we're talking about laptops, not desktops, here... I think if you look in Dell's Medium and Large Business section you can find some Precision workstations with at least a choice to have Linux installed and ready. No laptops, though.
You can only burn the files a limited number of times.
I'm gonna have to call you on that, sir. My understanding is that you can only burn a specific set of files in a specific order a limited number of times, but if you rearrange the files, the counter resets itself.
Oh, and just out of curiosity, why is a subscription/rental model any better than Apple's version?
...though I'm not sure[,] I heard when burning iTunes strips metadata.
I think that depends on how you define "strips". If the only reason you're burning is to re-rip, then you won't have a problem, since iTunes remembers what you burned with it and will recognize a CD it burned. However, if the CD was burned by someone else and it wasn't submitted to, say, Gracenote or freeDB (or whatever you happen to be using), then you have to menually input all the information yourself, or get someone else to do it for you. Hope that helps.
Personally, I have never used Linux, although I'd love to try it, so it cannot factor into my experiences, and I am not egocentric enough to believe that I speak for the entirety of the computer-using world. There's my disclaimer right there.
Having said that, it has been my experience that Mac OS X 10.4 and even 10.2 have felt significantly faster and more stable than Windows XP SP2. (It has also been my experience that the Mac is more intuitive than Windows, but I grew up on Macs, so I'm probably biased in some way.) It's not like my two systems are really even comparable... the Mac has a single 1GHz G4 with a 133MHz FSB, the Windows system has 2 3GHz Pentium 4's with 800MHz FSBs. The Mac has 256 MB of DDR PC2100 SDRAM, the PC has 512 MB of DDR2 PC2-3200 SDRAM. Need I go on? So all other things being equal, any thinking human being would conclude that my PC would be noticeably faster than the Mac. My experience has shown this not to be the case. Windows feels slower to log into, slower to log out of, slower to start applications (though not by much... must be the RAM difference), and hangs in screensaver mode. My Windows system tends to hang at numerous other times, most notably after doing stuff with Flash (which runs slowly on the Mac, but at least it doesn't crash the system). On the Mac, I personally haven't had a single problem that couldn't be fixed with, at worst, Command-Option-Escape (Force Quit). There probably are things that cause restarts to be necessary, not including software updates, but I haven't encountered anything like that.
Does this mean that Windows is always worse than the Mac? No, of course not. I'm just one little fish in a vast digital ocean, and as we all know, anecdotal evidence swings both ways. However, I think that my next computer will only be a Windows computer if I simply cannot get anything else. That's just my experience, though; feel free to share your own.
If you want to maximize, do you see the little green button in the top-left corner, to the right of the red and yellow ones? Click that and watch what happens.
Starting programs with the keyboard can be done through Spotlight, as mentioned above, or by doing this: Move the Applications folder to the Dock, press Option-F3, scroll over to the Applications folder, press Return, and then scroll to the app you're looking for. (To check that or to change it, open System Preferences and go to Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts.)
Re:That's not an obvious exercise.
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
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· Score: 1
That's gotta be at least the 10th time I've seen an AC make that post... now taking bets that it's the same AC just copying-and-pasting from his hard drive or ibiblio.org (I'm much likelier to believe it's on his hard drive, but that's just me).
Slashdot Mirror
Deep? By what standards? All I saw from the sarcasm department was: "...which shurely [sic] they have never done..." and that was it. Perhaps my sarcasm sensors aren't as finely honed as yours, but I kinda doubt that.
Sir, I'll have to sue you and everyone else on Slashdot for infringing on my patent on written communication. Anyone who feels like complaining can write their own reply to my post. My patent for reading written communication, however, is licensable.
God, I've heard this so many d@mn times... let's test this, shall we?
Test song: Bohemian Rhapsody, off Queen's album "A Night at the Opera"
Buy from iTunes: done, 3 months ago - I like to know what I want the music I play to sound like, I was too lazy to go out and get the physical CD, and I had some iTunes gift cards.
Burn to CD: done, 1.5 months ago
Rip from burned CD: done, 5 minutes later. No noticed quality loss.
Buy "A Night at the Opera" CD: done, two weeks later. No obvious difference in quality between any two versions.
YMMV, and it's entirely possible that I'm not listening hard enough, but I stand by my observations until they change.
Side note: A couple of weeks ago, the right speaker on my computer stopped functioning. My bet's on the jack being bent or inserted wrong, since the computer recognizes the left one, but not the right one. The end result is that everything comes out in mono as opposed to stereo, but I don't really care enough to move the computer and fix it.
(rereads exchange leading up to this)
(hits head on nearest wall)
What I must have done was thought that the GGP you were referring to was you. Either I missed a G or I forgot how to count for a moment. Sorry about that.
You responded to a post stating that as far as the poster knew, Microsoft was the only company that volunteered DRM before the content providers thought of demanding it, and you responded by naming Apple. I assumed you meant that Apple proposed DRM before the content providers, and I was attempting to set you straight on that point. You replied to me by saying "basically exactly the same situation as DRM capabilities being put into Vista so it could be used as a platform for premium content", which is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. RTFAing didn't help any as to figuring out where you were going with that.
Now, as I've told you earlier, I can't read minds, and I won't assume you can, but I thought I made myself clear as to what I meant. And yes, I did preview.
I think cadeon means open standards. His point, then, would be that if the standard is improved, it produces higher quality content, while at the same time preventing it from being locked to a single platform/processor architecture/whatever. Of course, I could be wrong; I'm not known for my mind-reading skills.
Microsoft volunteered to implement DRM measures and led the technological way in the DRM arena. Some companies resisted but caved, some caved without a fight but microsoft is the only company I know of that actually volunteered before any content provider could even think about demanding.
Uh, hello ? Apple ?
I figured you knew what you were talking about until right there. Last I heard, the only reason Apple put DRM on stuff bought from iTunes in the first place was that without it, the RIAA wouldn't allow them to sell their songs. If it's changed since then, please let me know, but...
Satisfied customers? All 12 of them?
And the Wikipedia page even names the distance it's traveling. It will be at 5 minutes to midnight, starting Wednesday.
even Apple doesn't ship Firewire 800 anymore.
Really. Then I'd better tell Apple... it seems they think that they still do.
Well, if nothing else, they were growing outside the US by half a percentage point over three years. Also, the second article you linked says nothing about US market share. Methinks Animats needs to do a little more research.
Well, the problem we have with our system of justice election, IMHO, is that none of the candidates represent the viewpoint I'd really like to see in office. The Republicans are the incumbents, the Democrats don't challenge in most of the races that I'm aware of, and the Libertarians, from what I can tell, haven't been much of a useful choice. I haven't been paying too much attention to those races anyway, though I probably should for the next few elections at least.
:-(
I'm only pro-government when I see no reason to change it, which right now, as I'm sure you can tell, I do. The Republican party, especially the religious hard-right, have control over our system now, and we need that to change. I still can't do anything about it, though.
A relative of mine once served in the Texas legislature. His position on the state Senate's filibustering rules was that he didn't like the rules that were there, but as long as they were there, he would use them. Apparently he successfully filibustered as an active member of the state Senate twice, both times on the last day of the legislative session, when everyone just wants to get things wrapped up, so the lieutenant governor had a placard made stating, "Never recognize [relative] on the last day of the session." There was one other instance, but now is not the time.
;-)
Sorry about that. What I was planning to get around to saying was that my position on the death penalty is that it's a law that we don't need and that I don't agree with, but as long as it's there, we have to accept it and try to change or remove it. Unfortunately, I live in Texas, which is a fairly conservative state, so I don't think that the death penalty where I live is going away soon without an order from on high (the preachers or the White House, it doesn't matter which). Your position seems to be that whether or not it's morally right, it's the law, and so we need to follow it. While I admit that while it's there, it needs to be applied (to the right people, of course, but our Court of Criminal Appeals is horrible at admitting when they're wrong), I also think that it's not morally right and so needs abolishment as soon as possible.
Oh, and government is (supposedly) by the consent of the governed, which one assumes that the legislators should treat as a lesser deity...
I can't sync AND have it recharge at the same time.
How so? I have a 1GHz G4 iMac with FireWire 400 and USB 1.1, and an iPod nano, which didn't come with a FireWire connector. It recharges and syncs over the USB connections. Sure, it's a little slow to sync, but I don't mind... my library rarely gets over 100 songs, most of which don't have to re-copy. It recharges, but I haven't taken the time to see how long it takes when hooked up to the computer. Disclaimer: I don't know whether it'll recharge over USB on a laptop.
However, what was it Jesus said about turning the other cheek? My understanding of it is that it overruled the whole idea about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, regardless of however much we think the person getting the death penalty deserves it.
I'll grant that in some cases, it's entertaining to see the punishment fit the crime (who here has heard the one about the guy who cheated at billiards?), but when it's a life that's on the line...
So are you suggesting that such stupidity as the design of the U.S.'s death penalty should be punishable by death? ;-) I agree that the death penalty's current execution, no pun intended, fails as a crime deterrent. If anything, those sentenced to death become martyrs. Life without parole, I think, would be very, very boring, dreary, and would help to instill feelings of hopelessness. Besides, if you're innocent, life without parole gives a much longer timeframe for evidence to be found to clear your name, and if you're guilty, you have more time to think about what you did. Let me see, did I leave out anything?
To the informed consumer, "viable competition" has even less restrictive DRM than FairPlay. Not, of course, that the RIAA will let that happen without a MASSIVE shift in mindset at the top... but if it happens, then there's hope for DRM-free, permanent, legally downlodable content.
...they don't get a pass because their software is bad at the feat it is trying to accomplish.
...they [the music rental services] actually attempt to give you something of value for your money. They don't pretend that the songs you download will work forever
Which, last I checked, was creating a simple, user-friendly, convenient, [insert your own adjective here] method of managing your music library (or something along those lines). If it's been changed, please let me know, since I wouldn't know anything about that.
Wait wait wait, you lost me... How is a file that doesn't work the way I want it to when I want it to valuable to me? Think of it this way: If I currently subscribe to Sports Illustrated, and then later decide I want to subscribe to The Sporting News instead, I expect to still be able to read all my issues of Sports Illustrated. Why should it be any different just because it's digital?
(And before anyone starts telling me that with CDs, all I own is the media... well, with magazines, all I really own is the media, too. The medium just happens to be sheets of paper stapled together instead of little discs of metal/plastic/whatever. And it's just as impossible to remove the content from the magazine as from the CD. Yes, you can copy it, but that's not the same as removing it.)
DRM for purchased content is still trying to control something you own. DRM for rental content is controlling something you don't own. The controls in the latter case are reasonable. The controls in the former case are not.
Which brings up another question: Why don't I own the rented content? After all, it's on my hard drive, right? To me, at least, that means I own it, and I should if I don't.
Correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Putting aside that we're talking about laptops, not desktops, here... I think if you look in Dell's Medium and Large Business section you can find some Precision workstations with at least a choice to have Linux installed and ready. No laptops, though.
You can only burn the files a limited number of times.
I'm gonna have to call you on that, sir. My understanding is that you can only burn a specific set of files in a specific order a limited number of times, but if you rearrange the files, the counter resets itself.
Oh, and just out of curiosity, why is a subscription/rental model any better than Apple's version?
...though I'm not sure[,] I heard when burning iTunes strips metadata.
I think that depends on how you define "strips". If the only reason you're burning is to re-rip, then you won't have a problem, since iTunes remembers what you burned with it and will recognize a CD it burned. However, if the CD was burned by someone else and it wasn't submitted to, say, Gracenote or freeDB (or whatever you happen to be using), then you have to menually input all the information yourself, or get someone else to do it for you. Hope that helps.
Personally, I have never used Linux, although I'd love to try it, so it cannot factor into my experiences, and I am not egocentric enough to believe that I speak for the entirety of the computer-using world. There's my disclaimer right there.
Having said that, it has been my experience that Mac OS X 10.4 and even 10.2 have felt significantly faster and more stable than Windows XP SP2. (It has also been my experience that the Mac is more intuitive than Windows, but I grew up on Macs, so I'm probably biased in some way.) It's not like my two systems are really even comparable... the Mac has a single 1GHz G4 with a 133MHz FSB, the Windows system has 2 3GHz Pentium 4's with 800MHz FSBs. The Mac has 256 MB of DDR PC2100 SDRAM, the PC has 512 MB of DDR2 PC2-3200 SDRAM. Need I go on? So all other things being equal, any thinking human being would conclude that my PC would be noticeably faster than the Mac. My experience has shown this not to be the case. Windows feels slower to log into, slower to log out of, slower to start applications (though not by much... must be the RAM difference), and hangs in screensaver mode. My Windows system tends to hang at numerous other times, most notably after doing stuff with Flash (which runs slowly on the Mac, but at least it doesn't crash the system). On the Mac, I personally haven't had a single problem that couldn't be fixed with, at worst, Command-Option-Escape (Force Quit). There probably are things that cause restarts to be necessary, not including software updates, but I haven't encountered anything like that.
Does this mean that Windows is always worse than the Mac? No, of course not. I'm just one little fish in a vast digital ocean, and as we all know, anecdotal evidence swings both ways. However, I think that my next computer will only be a Windows computer if I simply cannot get anything else. That's just my experience, though; feel free to share your own.
If you want to maximize, do you see the little green button in the top-left corner, to the right of the red and yellow ones? Click that and watch what happens.
Starting programs with the keyboard can be done through Spotlight, as mentioned above, or by doing this: Move the Applications folder to the Dock, press Option-F3, scroll over to the Applications folder, press Return, and then scroll to the app you're looking for. (To check that or to change it, open System Preferences and go to Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts.)
You're all wrong! Al Gore did it first! ;-)
That's gotta be at least the 10th time I've seen an AC make that post... now taking bets that it's the same AC just copying-and-pasting from his hard drive or ibiblio.org (I'm much likelier to believe it's on his hard drive, but that's just me).