Last election, I wanted to start the Party! party. Main mandade - anarchy and removal of the repressive government domination of our lives. Unfortunately all my mates were stoned and we didn't get the registation papers in on time. Or did we smoke them, I cant remember now.......
Copyright and patents - If they ware around thousands or year ago, the first guy to work out the complexities of the wheel, axel and bearings could have slowed progress for his tribe by hundreds of years if he didnt grant free licence for other users to also make their own wagons and carts compatible with his wheel design
I paid a little more than the average as I downloaded the bundle for all OS's and intended ot install on 4 machines, 1 Windows, a Mac Mini and 2 Linux.
I also don't want to upgrade my BD player, as then it would stop booting Linux. I hope the current suit against Sony hurts them in some way. No more Sony products for me. My next screen will be a Samsung or similar. A pity, as I have been a good Sony customer in the past, my DVR and 5.1 sysem is Sony, my TV is Sony, the Head, amp and 10 disk changer in my car is Sony, even my oldest VCR is a Sony - then they broke my PC with a root kit on CD (turned me to linux after that too), then I found the Macrovision setup on the VCR was going to stop me backing up my old tapes before they degraded, Now they are going to cripple my PS3? Bye Sony, been nice knowing you.
BD include coupon for a player?? Umm, wont you have one already if you've bought the disk? Umm, oh well, I suppose the same people thought tyring to DRM cripple the media would reduce the illigitimate copies.
And again the HD torrent was available around the same time the BD version hit our shelves here. However the DVD was cheap, only NZ$20 so I picked that up on Saturday - then ripped it to my media collection and filed the DVD away. Surprisingly though no extras or anyhting on the DVD apart from the movie. I may as well have torrented a 720p copy and saved myself a trip to the shop. Oh, well, still a pretty movie, but hey James, Pochohontas wants her story back!
Doesn't Bluray phone home now when ever you play something you think you bought? How do youknow it doesnt? The codecs are private, sealed and encrypted. If you want to protest, stop consuming their product.
And as much as you have thinking about it, Richard Stallmans way of life starts making sense. The thing I do like about stallman, is that unlike many ofther extremists, he doesnt push his ideals where they aren't wanted. If asked to speak on the topic he will, and at lenght, but he doesnt go around lobbying govertment to make sure all software development is open source and free, he just wants to make sure there is enough of it that you can create a "free" computer system if you want to. The hardest stuff to do as open source is the hardware, becasue this does cost a lot of money to develop and reproduce, but guess what, Linux juns just fine on my Mac too, and even when using OS X, based on Unix, most of the software I do use is opensource. I dont need iWork, or MS Office, Open Office does the job, Handbrake takes care of video file transcoding and ripping my own DVDs, VLC plays nearly everything, GCC and other compilers still work in Linux and OS X. Infact lots of opensource stuff works better in OS X than windows because of a smaller number of different systems that might be running it, not like with Windows, which might be XP, Vista, Win7, Server2003, 2007, etc. Most of the intel systems would have gone 10.5 altleast, and most PPC systems will be there as the last stop before 10.6. (also PPC based Macs make good linux systems too)
And yet all they have to do is make everything available world wide for a couple of bucks with no DRM and piracy of their movies would die overnight. Why does cracked cersions of iPhone exist - to remove the DRM so you can run what you want. This means an unoficial undergrond set up to distribute the pirated software too. However, I dont mind paying a couple of dollars for a game or some other software. If there was no restriction on having to get software through the app store, and wthe phones were sold unlocked, there is almost no reason for the jailbreakers to exist. They do so to liberate teh expensive computer the user paid for.
And another reason why I havn't paid to view their DRM content. And none of the DRM features seems to be stopping the TV shows making it to the torrent sites with a few hours after broadcast anyway. Just as well, it doesn't look like our local channels are going to be picking up the second season of Dollhouse or the next season of True Blood, or the DR Who specials, etc. If it's not available here, it's not stealing is it? 8)
Now this I agree with. I was in Auckland for work, and went to the iMax one night. The only thing they had for the time I had available was Harry Potter. This had the first 10 or 15 minutes in 3D, the rest was plain 2D. In that format, the 3D was spectacular. Immersive, a real feeling of being there in that tiny house or there on the train platform, then the rest of the movie was just, well, plain, but on a huge screen. No where near as stunning, but still better than my TV at home. Yes, I would pay to go see Avatar again in iMax 3D, but not Harry Potter. But I wouldn't pay to see Avatar again in 2D, I'm doubtful I'd even buy the DVD. I do hope that more 3D movies coming out will convince someone to build an iMax closer to where I live though.
3D - well, so far I have taken my son to Bolt, Monsters Vs Aliens, and Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. We also own all of these on DVD. To be honest, it really doesn't add anything at all to the story, but does make it more of an "Occasion". Something special to do with the kids. Avatar was the first "Grown-up" 3D flick I have seen, but the story was so weak (hey James, Pochohontas wants her script back), it will take a while before it makes it into DVD in my house. Maybe keep and eye out for specials or second-hand. For Avatar, the only reason to see it was the 3D. It was a 3D Special Effects Movie, just like Starwars was one of the first big successful "2D Special Effects" movies. District 9 was a better SF movie in every way, I also went to see this in the cinema (costs a lot more for me and the missus to go see a movie together than taking the kids once you pay for babysitters etc), even though I had seen a download version first. If they want bums in seats in the cinema, they should make good movies. It's like the best way to get a high google search ranking is to have a website of high value with lots of people also of high repute referring and linking to it. Gaming the system or trying to scam the punters will only work the first few times.
I just place my kindle on my scanner, hit scan, then next page. Rinse and repeat. 10 minutes later I have the book ripped. Then a little OCR work converts to text. this still takes a little time though as I'd have to proof read afterwards as well. Once I've done a few, I'll look at finding out how to re encode as a.mobi file.
Yup, it'll be really annoying - I'll have had my internet connection cut off for sharing an episode of Family Guy, and I'll have no mony after paying for my RIAA fine and legal costs, and then I won't be able to Play my legally bought AC2 because I hav eno net access... oh hang on, I just use the ripped one with the DRM disabled I got from the guy at work with the 1TB USB drive he keeps.
DRM doesn't work, never has. Offering the content at reasonable prices will be much more effective.
Now I also download book from Amazon for my kindle on iPhone (US store of course - Amazon has almost nothing of interest in the asia pacific region store) but I decrypt them so I can read them on my other readers too (DRM on mobi books is also flawed). I would still by them unencrypted, jsut like I do now with music from iTunes. Now there is no DRM on them, just like CD's, I have bought more from Apple. Still wont touch their movies though. Again The local regon means they have no TV shows I am interested in, and I am not going to pay NZ$10 or more for a movie I can ONLY watch on my PC/Mac
Or more to the point, why are they running design software on your fileserver? Also what crappy hardware are you running that chokes sharing a file? A G3 writh no RAM?
IEEE1394 is a standard IO interconnect. If you call it Firewire, you owe Apple 30c per port. If you call it iLink, it's free 8). Standards can still be licence encumbered.
Not a surprise coming form the company that also brough you failr-play - then stopped that support so all the pruchased content was instantly worthless. Thsi is the main reason I have nto even bothered wasting my Money on XB-Live - in a few years it will be gone, and so will my money. But then as MS cant seem to make XB360 console that last more than a few years, maybe this isnt really a problem afterall.
No thats on the Apple iCar. To switch gear or shut down the engine process, there is a touch sensitive panel, somewhere on the dash. This brings up the dock where --oh, nope control panels not there, Open the finder glove box, rumage around in there until you find... oh, You've crashed already? Nice simple controls though, only one pedal and a software steering wheel. Hope the computer doesn't... uh-oh, Sad Mac!
To be honest, it's not that the interface is really good, is that it is really simple. Even my 3 year old daughter can take my phone swipe through the pages and find the games she likes to play. The biggest thing that you actually dont notice until some time later, is how infrequently you have to reboot the whole phone. OS 2.x was no so hot, but I think I have only powercycled my phone about 3 times since upgradeing to OS 3 when it came out. This is compared to the almost daily reboot of my old Windows Mobile based Treo, or atleast going through and clearing out open applications. And the other is the app store really does make it easy to install apps. Under Palm OS, there were some good sites that had lots of apps, and they all tended to work well. under Windows mobile, you'd find an app that was only for WinCE (I pronounce that as wince) or for Windows Mobile5, or just crashes for some reason on the Winmobile6 platform, or is for a larger screen format, or wasn't really made for touch, as only the top end Win mobiles had touch screens. Then there is calendar synch - I could nearly get good calander and contact sync in Winmobile and Palm, but really only with Windows and outlook. Pumasoft had some good synch software I used to get my Treo to synch, which was much faster than Palms own utlity, but all were poor synch tools with Linux. You even had to run windows binary executables to even install apps on win mobile. My iPhone just synchs perfectly with GMail, calendar and contacts. I then synch everything else with GMail. The only part I dont like about iPhone, is HAVING to use iTunes for synching everything else. It is a crappy application, a huge resource hog, and is designed primarily to make Apple money, not help you organise your media. My favourite music manager is Amarok under KDE3.5 - this is just awesome, it fetches lyrics, cover art, streams radio, burns audio CDs just by picking a dozen tracks and rightclick-burn, not the whole Create playlist, add to playlist, then burn crap in iTunes. Oh and how about a better search engine for the iTunes store? I guess google makes you think that all search engines might use context to rank search results, but itunes - nope, if you search for "science fiction" in podcasts, the top hits are science or fiction 'casts, nothing to do with SyFy at all! Meanwhile Apple seems to be removing features from OS X - I used to like the tool that allowed you to summarise a selected piece of text in 10.5. Seems to be gone in 10.6 . All in the name of simplifying the interface I guess.
Yeah, in Aplpe land, Front Row will show all 500 of my movies an TV shows from my media drive, in one freeking long list, with no alphabetised quick jump, or search feature at all. the remote only has 6 buttons, and half the time thtwo of thm navigate up and down, and the other half change the volume. And how about a little feedback that frontrow is even launching?? I used ot press the menu button, wait, then press it again, then fronrow would launch-then exit, because the same button to launch it also closes it!! If you get really impatient and press and hold menu, your mac sleeps!! Grrrr!!
The onion article on the Apple click-wheel really shows you can take minmalisim too far for devices that you actually have to use. If Apple were to design a car, it would only have two doors, tha you have to use a specual $60 handle to open, and you need one for each user. There would only be one pedal - the go pedal. Press on it to go, lift off and the brakes automatically apply, based on the speed you lifted off, and the distance to an object you might impact detected by several very expensive sensors. The seats would not be adjustable, and would fit almost no one, (but they doo look nice and are an excellent minimalist fashion statement, and if like iPone earbuds, will be broken in 2 months or atlest, even more unconmfortable)
You'll be able to get the worlds smallest two seater car, that is pretty slow nad has no storage in the boot, a range of nice, expensive aluminium bodied cars, and one expensive plastic car, only one utility vehicle, but lots of powerful engines, but no large trucks. or sprots cars that can be upgraded. All will have the hoods welded shut, and there will only be one guage, the iSpeed guage, but you can use that to purchase DRMed fuel and other consumeables. After all, Apple Oil wouldnt want you running your "other" cars on the premium AppleGas - runs-for-sure fuel!
Bu there will eb a large market for thurdparties to provide neat new Garages that are specially designed to park your iCar in, as long as you dont want to retrieve any of your baggage from the iCar unless you are at home in your own iGarage dock-way.
But they will all be beautiful to look at, and people will say, "didn't Apple make cars easier to use?"
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Last election, I wanted to start the Party! party. Main mandade - anarchy and removal of the repressive government domination of our lives. Unfortunately all my mates were stoned and we didn't get the registation papers in on time. Or did we smoke them, I cant remember now .......
Copyright and patents - If they ware around thousands or year ago, the first guy to work out the complexities of the wheel, axel and bearings could have slowed progress for his tribe by hundreds of years if he didnt grant free licence for other users to also make their own wagons and carts compatible with his wheel design
I paid a little more than the average as I downloaded the bundle for all OS's and intended ot install on 4 machines, 1 Windows, a Mac Mini and 2 Linux.
I also don't want to upgrade my BD player, as then it would stop booting Linux. I hope the current suit against Sony hurts them in some way.
No more Sony products for me. My next screen will be a Samsung or similar. A pity, as I have been a good Sony customer in the past, my DVR and 5.1 sysem is Sony, my TV is Sony, the Head, amp and 10 disk changer in my car is Sony, even my oldest VCR is a Sony - then they broke my PC with a root kit on CD (turned me to linux after that too), then I found the Macrovision setup on the VCR was going to stop me backing up my old tapes before they degraded, Now they are going to cripple my PS3?
Bye Sony, been nice knowing you.
BD include coupon for a player?? Umm, wont you have one already if you've bought the disk? Umm, oh well, I suppose the same people thought tyring to DRM cripple the media would reduce the illigitimate copies.
And again the HD torrent was available around the same time the BD version hit our shelves here. However the DVD was cheap, only NZ$20 so I picked that up on Saturday - then ripped it to my media collection and filed the DVD away.
Surprisingly though no extras or anyhting on the DVD apart from the movie. I may as well have torrented a 720p copy and saved myself a trip to the shop.
Oh, well, still a pretty movie, but hey James, Pochohontas wants her story back!
Doesn't Bluray phone home now when ever you play something you think you bought? How do youknow it doesnt? The codecs are private, sealed and encrypted.
If you want to protest, stop consuming their product.
And as much as you have thinking about it, Richard Stallmans way of life starts making sense. The thing I do like about stallman, is that unlike many ofther extremists, he doesnt push his ideals where they aren't wanted. If asked to speak on the topic he will, and at lenght, but he doesnt go around lobbying govertment to make sure all software development is open source and free, he just wants to make sure there is enough of it that you can create a "free" computer system if you want to.
The hardest stuff to do as open source is the hardware, becasue this does cost a lot of money to develop and reproduce, but guess what, Linux juns just fine on my Mac too, and even when using OS X, based on Unix, most of the software I do use is opensource. I dont need iWork, or MS Office, Open Office does the job, Handbrake takes care of video file transcoding and ripping my own DVDs, VLC plays nearly everything, GCC and other compilers still work in Linux and OS X. Infact lots of opensource stuff works better in OS X than windows because of a smaller number of different systems that might be running it, not like with Windows, which might be XP, Vista, Win7, Server2003, 2007, etc. Most of the intel systems would have gone 10.5 altleast, and most PPC systems will be there as the last stop before 10.6. (also PPC based Macs make good linux systems too)
And yet all they have to do is make everything available world wide for a couple of bucks with no DRM and piracy of their movies would die overnight. Why does cracked cersions of iPhone exist - to remove the DRM so you can run what you want. This means an unoficial undergrond set up to distribute the pirated software too. However, I dont mind paying a couple of dollars for a game or some other software. If there was no restriction on having to get software through the app store, and wthe phones were sold unlocked, there is almost no reason for the jailbreakers to exist. They do so to liberate teh expensive computer the user paid for.
And another reason why I havn't paid to view their DRM content. And none of the DRM features seems to be stopping the TV shows making it to the torrent sites with a few hours after broadcast anyway.
Just as well, it doesn't look like our local channels are going to be picking up the second season of Dollhouse or the next season of True Blood, or the DR Who specials, etc.
If it's not available here, it's not stealing is it? 8)
Write a mobile app for a popular platform, or several and include free promo codes to prospecive employers.
Oh, yeah, bring on the HD 3D porn! - oh wait, I have to go to see it in a cinema - &*^*& off then.
Now this I agree with. I was in Auckland for work, and went to the iMax one night. The only thing they had for the time I had available was Harry Potter. This had the first 10 or 15 minutes in 3D, the rest was plain 2D. In that format, the 3D was spectacular. Immersive, a real feeling of being there in that tiny house or there on the train platform, then the rest of the movie was just, well, plain, but on a huge screen. No where near as stunning, but still better than my TV at home. Yes, I would pay to go see Avatar again in iMax 3D, but not Harry Potter. But I wouldn't pay to see Avatar again in 2D, I'm doubtful I'd even buy the DVD. I do hope that more 3D movies coming out will convince someone to build an iMax closer to where I live though.
3D - well, so far I have taken my son to Bolt, Monsters Vs Aliens, and Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. We also own all of these on DVD. To be honest, it really doesn't add anything at all to the story, but does make it more of an "Occasion". Something special to do with the kids. Avatar was the first "Grown-up" 3D flick I have seen, but the story was so weak (hey James, Pochohontas wants her script back), it will take a while before it makes it into DVD in my house. Maybe keep and eye out for specials or second-hand. For Avatar, the only reason to see it was the 3D. It was a 3D Special Effects Movie, just like Starwars was one of the first big successful "2D Special Effects" movies. District 9 was a better SF movie in every way, I also went to see this in the cinema (costs a lot more for me and the missus to go see a movie together than taking the kids once you pay for babysitters etc), even though I had seen a download version first.
If they want bums in seats in the cinema, they should make good movies. It's like the best way to get a high google search ranking is to have a website of high value with lots of people also of high repute referring and linking to it. Gaming the system or trying to scam the punters will only work the first few times.
I just place my kindle on my scanner, hit scan, then next page. Rinse and repeat. 10 minutes later I have the book ripped. Then a little OCR work converts to text. this still takes a little time though as I'd have to proof read afterwards as well. Once I've done a few, I'll look at finding out how to re encode as a .mobi file.
Yup, it'll be really annoying - I'll have had my internet connection cut off for sharing an episode of Family Guy, and I'll have no mony after paying for my RIAA fine and legal costs, and then I won't be able to Play my legally bought AC2 because I hav eno net access... oh hang on, I just use the ripped one with the DRM disabled I got from the guy at work with the 1TB USB drive he keeps.
DRM doesn't work, never has.
Offering the content at reasonable prices will be much more effective.
Now I also download book from Amazon for my kindle on iPhone (US store of course - Amazon has almost nothing of interest in the asia pacific region store) but I decrypt them so I can read them on my other readers too (DRM on mobi books is also flawed). I would still by them unencrypted, jsut like I do now with music from iTunes. Now there is no DRM on them, just like CD's, I have bought more from Apple. Still wont touch their movies though. Again The local regon means they have no TV shows I am interested in, and I am not going to pay NZ$10 or more for a movie I can ONLY watch on my PC/Mac
Or more to the point, why are they running design software on your fileserver? Also what crappy hardware are you running that chokes sharing a file? A G3 writh no RAM?
Sorry, meant Plays-For-Sure, the MS one.
IEEE1394 is a standard IO interconnect. If you call it Firewire, you owe Apple 30c per port. If you call it iLink, it's free 8). Standards can still be licence encumbered.
Not a surprise coming form the company that also brough you failr-play - then stopped that support so all the pruchased content was instantly worthless. Thsi is the main reason I have nto even bothered wasting my Money on XB-Live - in a few years it will be gone, and so will my money. But then as MS cant seem to make XB360 console that last more than a few years, maybe this isnt really a problem afterall.
But are you going to buy an $80K Tesla only to get to and from work?
Where this is done in aircraft, the systems are duplicated and checked by safety systems. This makes it expensive. Guess why Toyota doesn't do that?
No thats on the Apple iCar. To switch gear or shut down the engine process, there is a touch sensitive panel, somewhere on the dash. This brings up the dock where --oh, nope control panels not there, Open the finder glove box, rumage around in there until you find... oh, You've crashed already? Nice simple controls though, only one pedal and a software steering wheel. Hope the computer doesn't ... uh-oh, Sad Mac!
If you are smart enough to jailbreak your phone, but dumb enough not to change root password, you really do get what you deserve.
To be honest, it's not that the interface is really good, is that it is really simple. Even my 3 year old daughter can take my phone swipe through the pages and find the games she likes to play.
The biggest thing that you actually dont notice until some time later, is how infrequently you have to reboot the whole phone. OS 2.x was no so hot, but I think I have only powercycled my phone about 3 times since upgradeing to OS 3 when it came out. This is compared to the almost daily reboot of my old Windows Mobile based Treo, or atleast going through and clearing out open applications. And the other is the app store really does make it easy to install apps.
Under Palm OS, there were some good sites that had lots of apps, and they all tended to work well. under Windows mobile, you'd find an app that was only for WinCE (I pronounce that as wince) or for Windows Mobile5, or just crashes for some reason on the Winmobile6 platform, or is for a larger screen format, or wasn't really made for touch, as only the top end Win mobiles had touch screens.
Then there is calendar synch - I could nearly get good calander and contact sync in Winmobile and Palm, but really only with Windows and outlook. Pumasoft had some good synch software I used to get my Treo to synch, which was much faster than Palms own utlity, but all were poor synch tools with Linux. You even had to run windows binary executables to even install apps on win mobile.
My iPhone just synchs perfectly with GMail, calendar and contacts. I then synch everything else with GMail. The only part I dont like about iPhone, is HAVING to use iTunes for synching everything else. It is a crappy application, a huge resource hog, and is designed primarily to make Apple money, not help you organise your media. My favourite music manager is Amarok under KDE3.5 - this is just awesome, it fetches lyrics, cover art, streams radio, burns audio CDs just by picking a dozen tracks and rightclick-burn, not the whole Create playlist, add to playlist, then burn crap in iTunes.
Oh and how about a better search engine for the iTunes store? I guess google makes you think that all search engines might use context to rank search results, but itunes - nope, if you search for "science fiction" in podcasts, the top hits are science or fiction 'casts, nothing to do with SyFy at all!
Meanwhile Apple seems to be removing features from OS X - I used to like the tool that allowed you to summarise a selected piece of text in 10.5. Seems to be gone in 10.6 . All in the name of simplifying the interface I guess.
Yeah, in Aplpe land, Front Row will show all 500 of my movies an TV shows from my media drive, in one freeking long list, with no alphabetised quick jump, or search feature at all. the remote only has 6 buttons, and half the time thtwo of thm navigate up and down, and the other half change the volume. And how about a little feedback that frontrow is even launching?? I used ot press the menu button, wait, then press it again, then fronrow would launch-then exit, because the same button to launch it also closes it!! If you get really impatient and press and hold menu, your mac sleeps!! Grrrr!!
The onion article on the Apple click-wheel really shows you can take minmalisim too far for devices that you actually have to use.
If Apple were to design a car, it would only have two doors, tha you have to use a specual $60 handle to open, and you need one for each user. There would only be one pedal - the go pedal. Press on it to go, lift off and the brakes automatically apply, based on the speed you lifted off, and the distance to an object you might impact detected by several very expensive sensors. The seats would not be adjustable, and would fit almost no one, (but they doo look nice and are an excellent minimalist fashion statement, and if like iPone earbuds, will be broken in 2 months or atlest, even more unconmfortable)
You'll be able to get the worlds smallest two seater car, that is pretty slow nad has no storage in the boot, a range of nice, expensive aluminium bodied cars, and one expensive plastic car, only one utility vehicle, but lots of powerful engines, but no large trucks. or sprots cars that can be upgraded.
All will have the hoods welded shut, and there will only be one guage, the iSpeed guage, but you can use that to purchase DRMed fuel and other consumeables. After all, Apple Oil wouldnt want you running your "other" cars on the premium AppleGas - runs-for-sure fuel!
Bu there will eb a large market for thurdparties to provide neat new Garages that are specially designed to park your iCar in, as long as you dont want to retrieve any of your baggage from the iCar unless you are at home in your own iGarage dock-way.
But they will all be beautiful to look at, and people will say, "didn't Apple make cars easier to use?"