I wonder how true that really is. Maybe if you add the word "cheap" at the end? There are other sources of combustibles, and other sources of energy besides combustion. Would civilization really fail if we stopped using oil? Nah, we'd just start having to pay more for the alternatives, then the alternatives would get cheaper (though probably not as cheap as oil), and everyone would keep chugging along.
But beyond that, oil drilling is hardly a philanthropic venture. You could have a dozen companies making sewer pipes. Maybe 8 take every reasonably safety precaution, but 4 of them cut corners and 1 of them has a huge accident. That 1 needs to be held responsible, even if it means bankrupting or severely hampering profits for that 1 company. After all, if you bail out that 1 company, why would the other 3 cutting corners start doing things right?
(going off-topic, but the bank industry had the problem that there were no "other 8" doing things right, just the 4 companies who all cut corners and all had huge accidents)
Agreed, the intellectual property is still owned by the studio, and they're trying to enforce copyright law (actually, much more restrictive than copyright law) by physical/electronically locking the media.
So I guess it's like if Honda installed a lojack in every Honda vehicle, reserving the right (by brute force) to disable your vehicle any time they feel like it.
I bet there are examples where this is already being done on physical devices? Kind of like Lexmark's printer cartridges, although the DMCA was the only think blocking reverse engineering of that, and I believe they got overturned in that case.
This is the core problem with your auto analogy. DRM isn't something people use to protect their stuff. It's something they use to protect other people's stuff.
I was going to compare it to lojack, but that's still something the owner of the car is still ostensibly in control of. Nor can you compare it to lojack on a rental car because DVDs aren't rentals, you bought and own the content. But you aren't the one with the keys to the lock.
There exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State. In fact to the contrary, in instances that have been focused upon by some as indicating falsification of data, for example in the use of a “trick” to manipulate the data, this is explained as a discussion among Dr. Jones and others including Dr. Mann about how best to put together a graph for a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report. They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.
That hardly sounds like "proven to be a hoax" to me. More like found to be 100% innocent.
Haven't seen an explanation in TFS or the posts so far - but Jobs is making no claim that Apple holds patents that Theora is violating, is he?
I thought from TFS that this was his explanation why Apple isn't risking Theora over H.264 - because Apple has heard claims that Theora is going to be sued. That's a long way from Apple threatening Theora, although obviously *someone* is threatening Theora if there's a lawsuit being planned.
I've always wondered that about "undercover" underage alcohol buyers. How is it not entrapment to go up to someone and offer to pay them for goods illegally? Is it OK because the kid isn't a law enforcement officer?
It's a bit cynical to say that's the reason they're trying that format. I haven't bought any of this generation's $400+ consoles. I would love to play a handful of the games I've missed out on due to not spending hundreds on a 2nd "pc" that has slightly different software compatibility than the $400+ PC I already own.
If the price is right, these services could be a great gap-filler for people without consoles, while still allowing you to "upgrade" to the full console experience and up-front expense with no ongoing "rental/usage" fees.
I'm cynical enough to believe the more usage fees they charge the more they'll try to force people into a "pay us forever" paradigm. But I also believe that thin client services have genuine advantages. If they didn't, we'd all still be using Thunderbird instead of Gmail, and buying DVDs instead of subscribing to Netflix.
I couldn't tell from TFS, but I read this as "Moore's law becoming increasingly irrelevant for home users". Does dad really need a 128-core processor to click around the web where all the real processing is done on a server? (oops, I mean "on a cloud")
They're even trying to move video games, one of the few remaining reasons for power-hungry PCs, to run on the back end and stream to your TV. I'm still not convinced this will work for all game types, but it does demonstrate the push towards irrelevancy of high-powered home computers.
There's no contradiction from Apple blocking Flash because it's proprietary. Apple is NOT making a philosphical statement here. They're making a practical one. "If Flash on the iPhone (or heck, on the whole internet) breaks or has security flaws, there's nothing we can do about it."
The issue with proprietary software is not that it's proprietary, it's that Apple has no control over it. They have control over the App store for the same reason that they block Flash: control.
It's no different than many development shops that use open source. We want to be able to crack the hood and fix something if it has us dead in the water. But that doesn't mean we open source all the code we write for our clients.
WOW is 6 or more years old, Counter-strike is going on 10+ years old. Both are still hugely popular multiplayer games.
WOW has continued being updated so thats a bit less of a fair comparison, but I think the point remains. Multiplayer games have a lot more longevity than single player games.
The market started with PC online play where anyone can run a server. I don't think anyone really expected to have the primary gameplay of their console games to be turned off indefinitely.
Look at Diablo, Diablo2, and Starcraft - you can't run a server for either, yet Blizzard continues to support online play for these Very Old games. I'd like to think they'll release a way to run internet servers (other than a Kali-like internet-LAN) before they ever shutdown battle.net access for these games. But then, only time will tell how (and if!) they'll go about shutting these games down.
I find it philosophically unappealing to be running on Testing and/or Unstable (which, effectively, is what Ubuntu is)
In what way is Ubuntu effectively running on Testing or Unstable? Since you capitalized Testing and Unstable, does that refer to Debian Testing and Unstable releases?
(I use Ubuntu, but am not that familiar with Debian or in what way exactly Ubuntu is built on top of Debian)
I have Opera on my Wii, and can look at porn in it just as easily as I could on an iPhone or iPad in Safari.
Internet capable has nothing to do with being a closed application market.
I totally agree with taking offense that it's *illegal* (due to the DMCA) for us to reverse engineer our way onto these devices. But that story goes back to DVD players, game consoles (wish I remembered the Sega case), bnetd, and Lexmark ink cartridges. Apple is quite late to the party on all of this.
You're missing the point. It's OK when Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and many other companies do it. It's only an assault on our basic human freedoms when Apple does it decades later on ONE class of devices they sell. (IE: not their PCs, where people actually expect full control)
Microsoft regularly rejects apps from running on their systems.
Xbox Live marketplace.
Thank goodness Microsoft didn't win the PC Wars! We wouldn't be able to run anything on our desktops without their permission! What a horrible dystopia that would be!
Niche device closed marketplaces are the same thing as PCs, huh? Quick, someone call bad analogy guy!
That sounds like a keylogger would be the only (client-side) way to have compromised your password. Do you happen to use flashblock or similar to prevent flash running in the background? AFAIK flash advertisements are the main way flash keyloggers work, so I assume flashblock is a pretty effective way to remove that risk.
I totally disagree, but probably not for the reason you expect. Multiplayer games have a ton of replay value and a big social draw. Those of us who get sucked into them have been sucked into them before MMOs really existed.
Before WOW I played TF2 for 6 months to a year, to the exclusion of all other games.
Before TF2 it was Counter-strike for probably 4 years, maybe even more.
Before that it was Diablo2, which had great replay value even in single player.
Before Diablo2 it was Weapons Factory for Quake2 for at least 2 years. Q2 CTF before that. Quake1 speed runs before that.
Games with high replay value have always been played to the exclusion of bad games, or good games with low replay value. In fact, you may as well forget "replay" value, and just call it "value".
I long ago stopped buying $60 games that only get a single 10 to 12 hour play through (or less if its not even worth finishing).
And its utter b.s. for them to simply claim 'its their faulty implementation. we followed the spec perfectly
It can be a lame excuse, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it utter BS. Both parties (router and Apple) have arguably made a faulty device, and I do think the one not meeting standards is responsible for updating. (if thats really the case, versus ambiguity in the standards)
But yeah, if the spec is ambiguous or if every other device under the sun seems to work with a router, I'd file that under "Apple should make itself compatible" pretty much regardless. Odds are that incompatibility exists in a lot of other routers too, if no other device have problems with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Oil drilling is keeping our civilization going
I wonder how true that really is. Maybe if you add the word "cheap" at the end? There are other sources of combustibles, and other sources of energy besides combustion. Would civilization really fail if we stopped using oil? Nah, we'd just start having to pay more for the alternatives, then the alternatives would get cheaper (though probably not as cheap as oil), and everyone would keep chugging along.
But beyond that, oil drilling is hardly a philanthropic venture. You could have a dozen companies making sewer pipes. Maybe 8 take every reasonably safety precaution, but 4 of them cut corners and 1 of them has a huge accident. That 1 needs to be held responsible, even if it means bankrupting or severely hampering profits for that 1 company. After all, if you bail out that 1 company, why would the other 3 cutting corners start doing things right?
(going off-topic, but the bank industry had the problem that there were no "other 8" doing things right, just the 4 companies who all cut corners and all had huge accidents)
Agreed, the intellectual property is still owned by the studio, and they're trying to enforce copyright law (actually, much more restrictive than copyright law) by physical/electronically locking the media.
So I guess it's like if Honda installed a lojack in every Honda vehicle, reserving the right (by brute force) to disable your vehicle any time they feel like it.
I bet there are examples where this is already being done on physical devices? Kind of like Lexmark's printer cartridges, although the DMCA was the only think blocking reverse engineering of that, and I believe they got overturned in that case.
People use it to protect their stuff
This is the core problem with your auto analogy. DRM isn't something people use to protect their stuff. It's something they use to protect other people's stuff.
I was going to compare it to lojack, but that's still something the owner of the car is still ostensibly in control of. Nor can you compare it to lojack on a rental car because DVDs aren't rentals, you bought and own the content. But you aren't the one with the keys to the lock.
Sad but true. I wish I could remember the article where someone used a $30 wiimote (or something) in place of a $1000+ specialized device.
You just claimed the guy perpetuated a hoax and a crime? Seriously?
That doesn't quite line up with the links higher in the comments, such as:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1638430&cid=32068018
There exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State. In fact to the contrary, in instances that have been focused upon by some as indicating falsification of data, for example in the use of a “trick” to manipulate the data, this is explained as a discussion among Dr. Jones and others including Dr. Mann about how best to put together a graph for a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report. They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.
That hardly sounds like "proven to be a hoax" to me. More like found to be 100% innocent.
Haven't seen an explanation in TFS or the posts so far - but Jobs is making no claim that Apple holds patents that Theora is violating, is he?
I thought from TFS that this was his explanation why Apple isn't risking Theora over H.264 - because Apple has heard claims that Theora is going to be sued. That's a long way from Apple threatening Theora, although obviously *someone* is threatening Theora if there's a lawsuit being planned.
I've always wondered that about "undercover" underage alcohol buyers. How is it not entrapment to go up to someone and offer to pay them for goods illegally? Is it OK because the kid isn't a law enforcement officer?
It's a bit cynical to say that's the reason they're trying that format. I haven't bought any of this generation's $400+ consoles. I would love to play a handful of the games I've missed out on due to not spending hundreds on a 2nd "pc" that has slightly different software compatibility than the $400+ PC I already own.
If the price is right, these services could be a great gap-filler for people without consoles, while still allowing you to "upgrade" to the full console experience and up-front expense with no ongoing "rental/usage" fees.
I'm cynical enough to believe the more usage fees they charge the more they'll try to force people into a "pay us forever" paradigm. But I also believe that thin client services have genuine advantages. If they didn't, we'd all still be using Thunderbird instead of Gmail, and buying DVDs instead of subscribing to Netflix.
I couldn't tell from TFS, but I read this as "Moore's law becoming increasingly irrelevant for home users". Does dad really need a 128-core processor to click around the web where all the real processing is done on a server? (oops, I mean "on a cloud")
They're even trying to move video games, one of the few remaining reasons for power-hungry PCs, to run on the back end and stream to your TV. I'm still not convinced this will work for all game types, but it does demonstrate the push towards irrelevancy of high-powered home computers.
about:config ...we can only hope.
There's no contradiction from Apple blocking Flash because it's proprietary. Apple is NOT making a philosphical statement here. They're making a practical one. "If Flash on the iPhone (or heck, on the whole internet) breaks or has security flaws, there's nothing we can do about it."
The issue with proprietary software is not that it's proprietary, it's that Apple has no control over it. They have control over the App store for the same reason that they block Flash: control.
It's no different than many development shops that use open source. We want to be able to crack the hood and fix something if it has us dead in the water. But that doesn't mean we open source all the code we write for our clients.
WOW is 6 or more years old, Counter-strike is going on 10+ years old. Both are still hugely popular multiplayer games.
WOW has continued being updated so thats a bit less of a fair comparison, but I think the point remains. Multiplayer games have a lot more longevity than single player games.
The market started with PC online play where anyone can run a server. I don't think anyone really expected to have the primary gameplay of their console games to be turned off indefinitely.
Look at Diablo, Diablo2, and Starcraft - you can't run a server for either, yet Blizzard continues to support online play for these Very Old games. I'd like to think they'll release a way to run internet servers (other than a Kali-like internet-LAN) before they ever shutdown battle.net access for these games. But then, only time will tell how (and if!) they'll go about shutting these games down.
Absolutely correct. Lieberman and Clinton are the worst of the bunch.
I find it philosophically unappealing to be running on Testing and/or Unstable (which, effectively, is what Ubuntu is)
In what way is Ubuntu effectively running on Testing or Unstable? Since you capitalized Testing and Unstable, does that refer to Debian Testing and Unstable releases?
(I use Ubuntu, but am not that familiar with Debian or in what way exactly Ubuntu is built on top of Debian)
I have Opera on my Wii, and can look at porn in it just as easily as I could on an iPhone or iPad in Safari.
Internet capable has nothing to do with being a closed application market.
I totally agree with taking offense that it's *illegal* (due to the DMCA) for us to reverse engineer our way onto these devices. But that story goes back to DVD players, game consoles (wish I remembered the Sega case), bnetd, and Lexmark ink cartridges. Apple is quite late to the party on all of this.
Do you also find it self-righteous and sanctimonious that you can't buy porn games for your Nintendo Wii? Or Xbox 360?
Why are you making a special exception to whine about Apple doing the same thing thats been done on closed devices loved by geeks for 25+ years?
You're missing the point. It's OK when Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and many other companies do it. It's only an assault on our basic human freedoms when Apple does it decades later on ONE class of devices they sell. (IE: not their PCs, where people actually expect full control)
Microsoft regularly rejects apps from running on their systems.
Xbox Live marketplace.
Thank goodness Microsoft didn't win the PC Wars! We wouldn't be able to run anything on our desktops without their permission! What a horrible dystopia that would be!
Niche device closed marketplaces are the same thing as PCs, huh? Quick, someone call bad analogy guy!
Do all smartphones have to use ARM processors? Is there no reasonably competitive processor alternatives?
I haven't a clue outside of x86, so thats a serious question about how hard it would be to make a phone without an ARM processor.
That sounds like a keylogger would be the only (client-side) way to have compromised your password. Do you happen to use flashblock or similar to prevent flash running in the background? AFAIK flash advertisements are the main way flash keyloggers work, so I assume flashblock is a pretty effective way to remove that risk.
I'm going to guess it's mainly for displaying to a projector. But they certainly try to show people using it to create content in their TV ad.
Can Microsoft do that as well? It's their platform right? Oh, wait, it's Apple so it's fine now.
Microsoft is free to make their OS a closed system. Just as soon as they don't have a monopoly on desktop computing.
Or did you think the Xbox and Xbox360 were open systems?
I totally disagree, but probably not for the reason you expect. Multiplayer games have a ton of replay value and a big social draw. Those of us who get sucked into them have been sucked into them before MMOs really existed.
Before WOW I played TF2 for 6 months to a year, to the exclusion of all other games.
Before TF2 it was Counter-strike for probably 4 years, maybe even more.
Before that it was Diablo2, which had great replay value even in single player.
Before Diablo2 it was Weapons Factory for Quake2 for at least 2 years. Q2 CTF before that. Quake1 speed runs before that.
Games with high replay value have always been played to the exclusion of bad games, or good games with low replay value. In fact, you may as well forget "replay" value, and just call it "value".
I long ago stopped buying $60 games that only get a single 10 to 12 hour play through (or less if its not even worth finishing).
And its utter b.s. for them to simply claim 'its their faulty implementation. we followed the spec perfectly
It can be a lame excuse, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it utter BS. Both parties (router and Apple) have arguably made a faulty device, and I do think the one not meeting standards is responsible for updating. (if thats really the case, versus ambiguity in the standards)
But yeah, if the spec is ambiguous or if every other device under the sun seems to work with a router, I'd file that under "Apple should make itself compatible" pretty much regardless. Odds are that incompatibility exists in a lot of other routers too, if no other device have problems with it.
Do you have clients who don't demand IE6 compatibility??!! :(
Where can I submit my resume!