why would I want an 'experience' when I can just copy across my mp3s with explorer
I agree with that sentiment completely... but there are a great many people with an incredibly flimsy understanding of how to operate their computer. They have problems understanding the difference between an icon on the desktop and a minimized app in the taskbar. Directory structures are a mystery to them. Documents get saved to wherever applications default to. Copying files with the explorer is pretty much an insurmountable task to them, and even those with a bit more understanding see it as a hassle. They NEED a shiny GUI that pops up when the device is connected and holds their hands. I have actually seen someone reviewing an MP3 player and calling it too complicated to use because it required you to copy files "manually".
The biggest problem facing independent distribution is NOT global corporations; they have little to fear from independent developers. The biggest problem facing independent media is not the difficulty of production/distribution; the biggest problem is that THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WILLING TO CREATE MEDIA!!
No. Lots of people are creating media. The biggest problem is that people are not willing to find and support stuff that's not shoved down their throats with millions of marketing dollars.
The herd mentality of the consumers is what keeps the media cartels in business, because only they have the promotion infrastructure to create the big hits that make big money.
I'm afraid it's you who got it wrong. More people means more overhead, more babysitting and more potential for fuckups that take time to repair. It is QUITE possible that an additional developer, especially an inexperienced one who is unfamiliar with the environment, can cause more additional work than he himself does.
In fact the one part of the book I remember most vividly is where the author writes about a decision he made which in hindsight cost IBM several millions of dollars: the decision to let the spec for a new system (System/360 I think) be written by developmers along with the analysts to avoid having the developers wait and do nothing while the analysts write it. The result was that it took longer to write and was of lower quality, and the project was two years late in the end.
First, there's a tad more than 1 million houses in the UK, let alone the USA (why would you be using $ when talking about the UK?). Second, $3000 isn't nearly enough to pay for a solar energy setup that can power a whole house.
You use 2.2kWH in what timespan? Any only at times when there's sunshine? And does that include the energy used to light the streets, your workplace, the shops and entertainment venues you use and the factories that make the stuff you buy?
I used to say that the Air Force's motto should be "Making yesterday's technology work today."
You can say that again. They haven't built a new B-52 for 2 or 3 decades, have no other system to take its place and are openly planning to keep using the existing one for decades to come.
In the UK, do they run TV commercials telling you to text "HOT HITS" to a certain number to get free ringtones?
Over on this side of the pond I frequently see television commercials for free or low priced ringtones that you can get by sending a text message. If you read the fine print, it tells you that you are actually signing up for a subscription where they send you new ringtones every day or every week, charging you each time.!
Dunno about the UK, but this used to be a problem in Germany too, though they were never allowed to (I presume, because they didn't) call it "free". They just didn't mention price and have it in the fine print which you can't even read on screen. Then, after most teenagers in the country fell victim to it and started paying attention, ringtone ads started to explicitly advertize "no subscription"; shortly afterwards legislation forced the original scammers to explicitly metion (as in say aloud) that it's a subscription or do a confirmation via text message.
So what you're saying is that the US constitution, where human rights are an afterthought tacked on as "amendements", is the best constitution there could possibly be? Have you ever actually read any other constitution?
The thing is that those $1,000,000 apps are usually custom built and sold to a small number of customers, while Microsoft's comparatively low prices are taken from MILLIONS of customers, thus yielding a much higer (potential) budget for quality control.
It's a typical false correlation. Quality is NOT inversely proportional to price, it's proportional to QA budget, which is (well, should be) proportional to total budget, which is proportional to the number of customers - and price is inversely proportional to the number of customers. Of course all of these "proportionalities" are rather vague.
This way of thinking, while reminiscent of methods used by many of History's most reviled tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, is nevertheless effective at reducing the capabilities of an ideologically motivated enemy.
Except that it isn't. Obviously you "reduce the capabilities" of the people you actually have in your camps. But you also increase the number of people willing to replace them - by a much larger amount. Guantanamo and the war in Iraq are the best aids for the terrorists' cause they could have hoped for.
it is because we are so dedicated to freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness that we are willing to fight those who would enslave us.
What a load of unmitigated piffle. Many of the actions of the US government clearly show a total lack of any respect for freedom, equality or the pursuit of happiness of anyone except themselves and their campaign contributors.
It's called "rubber hose cryptanalysis". Tends to be rather effective, that's why the US government is working so hard to have it allowed to them.
It's one of the relatively few applications where torture actually works, because you can immediately and objectively verify the answers you get. Not so with questions like "who are your accomplices?" where you tend to eventually get the answers you want to hear, whether they're true or not.
yeah, I get lots of techno and EDM from Allofmp3.com cheapest legal downloads i've seen so far.. in MP3 format too.
Um... that's because they're NOT legal. IIRC they have some blanket agreement for the Russian market that doesn't specifically exclude online distribution. Online distribution to the whole world is most certainly not covered under that.
The funny thing is, last year I had a friend from the UK over for a visit during Oktoberfest (the original one, in Munich) and we watched a wall-of-death motorcycle stunt show. He said they would never allow anything like that in the UK due to safety regulations. So it seems the British are more "Germanic" than the Germans in this regard. Actually he was wrong, and there are shows like that in the UK, so it's more of a perception thing. We Germans ourselves feel that we have the worst tendency towards bearocracy and rules, but what I've seen and heard from other countries is rarely much better and sometimes worse.
As for it doing any good, yes, it very obviously does. Do you REALLY want to allow people to drive cars without a license and potentially crash into you due to a mistake made from lack of experience or knowledge? Do you REALLY want your toaster to electrocute you because the maker cut corners with the safety checks in engineering or hired insufficiently qualified engineers? Lack of enforced safety regulations and accountability kills and ruins people - and often not those who are responsible or could have done anything to avoid the risk. Of course the beaurocracy needed to implement it all inhibits productivity and at some point the cure is worse than the illness, but it's a continuum and opinions vary on where the proper point of balance is.
It is a myth that this is about affluence or being able to choose what you eat. Quite the reverse actually.
THAT in turn is not a myth, but just obviously wrong. Getting fat is impossible without the minimum affluence of being able to afford more food than you need - something that a considerable proportion of mankind can only dream of. It is only in societies where even those considered poor can afford lots of food where other factors become decisive.
Wrong. There are differences in people's metabolisms that makes it much more difficult for some people to be slim than for others, and there are pathological cases of this that makes is nearly impossible for those so afflicted.
No. Obviously you don't get this kind of problem in places where people struggle against starvation, but it exists in pretty much all societies where people can eat what and how much they want to, if they want to. The US may on average have the biggest ratio of extremely obese people, but I see them here in Germany as well, and read stories of 8 year old kids that weigh more than a normal adult. Even in Japan, where people are still pretty slim on average, the police are complaining that their new recruits are increasingly overweight.
Of course that only reinforces your other point about it being a cultural problem - but these days, culture in industrialized nations is global, with more or less minor local variations.
You're assuming that the hurricanes are caused by the greenhouse effect. That's quite a leap of faith, in my opinion.
While they may not be caused by it, it is blindingly obvious that they are made STRONGER by it. I mean, how could a phenomenon that is fundamentally caused by evaporating hot seawater (and can only occur where water temperatures are above a certain level) NOT be boosted by an increase in temperature?
You cannot make a TV that doesn't display images. You cannot make a camcorder that doesn't make a movie of what it sees.
Just like you cannot make a VCR that doesn't playback tapes or doesn't record a signal? Or a CD that plays music but cannot be copied? Yet, Macrovision and the various CD copy protection schemes DO work (mostly). I do not find it far-fetched at all that you could make a TV that displays the image in a way that looks fine to the naked eye but confuses camera sensors, especially since filming video off a TV screen is difficult to get right in the first place (frame rate differences and synching).
The only thing DRM can do is make NEW camcorders not work on a certain type of output anymore. You CAN NOT require me to buy one of those, but I can most certainly keep using an old one that doesn't give a d*mn. You cannot detect in the TV anywhere that I'm doing as such, so you cannot stop playing it (or you wouldn't have a functional TV), and the camcorder cannot be hacked as such to make me not record anything.
You vastly underestimate the concerted effort the movie industry is making. They may not quite be able to make old "non-conforming" camcorders illegal, but they can make them less useful by e.g. making sure that all new video recorders, TVs and computers, i.e. the things you have to connect the camcorder to in order for it to be really useful, will refuse to speak to a "non-conforming" device. Of course you can still keep an "old" recorder, TV and PC around, but eventually they will break down (as will the camcorder). And before that, they in turn will be made less useful because new HD content will only play on "conforming" devices.
Sure, it's kinda silly and will probably break in half a dozen places, but the industry seems hell-bent on trying their damnedest to make it work - and make the consumer pay for it.
Actually, this is being worked on. I read that someone claims they can make TVs which will show pictures in a way that will confuse the camcorder's sensor just like Macrovison confuses a VCR's tracking mechanism - or they can just buy legislation that forces camcorder makers to have their products refuse to record or blot out a TV screen that signals "I'm displaying protected content" in some way not visible to the naked eye. Media players will refuse to work with TV sets or camcorders that do not do this, as will any PC running Windows. Any PC not running Windows and any nonconforming media player will not be able to play "protected" content at all, because you can't play it without certain patent-protected technologies.
Ah, brave new world of DRM!
My only hope is that consumers simply won't stand for all these intrusive restrictions and vote with they wallets, while at the same time content providers appear who succeed with the bold new business model of valuing paying customers' convenience above the fear of freeriders.
Slashdot Mirror
It blocks images linked to in HTML emails, but not images sent as attachments. And that behaviour doesn't seem to be configurable.
why would I want an 'experience' when I can just copy across my mp3s with explorer
I agree with that sentiment completely... but there are a great many people with an incredibly flimsy understanding of how to operate their computer. They have problems understanding the difference between an icon on the desktop and a minimized app in the taskbar. Directory structures are a mystery to them. Documents get saved to wherever applications default to. Copying files with the explorer is pretty much an insurmountable task to them, and even those with a bit more understanding see it as a hassle. They NEED a shiny GUI that pops up when the device is connected and holds their hands. I have actually seen someone reviewing an MP3 player and calling it too complicated to use because it required you to copy files "manually".
The biggest problem facing independent distribution is NOT global corporations; they have little to fear from independent developers. The biggest problem facing independent media is not the difficulty of production/distribution; the biggest problem is that THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WILLING TO CREATE MEDIA!!
No. Lots of people are creating media. The biggest problem is that people are not willing to find and support stuff that's not shoved down their throats with millions of marketing dollars.
The herd mentality of the consumers is what keeps the media cartels in business, because only they have the promotion infrastructure to create the big hits that make big money.
and for languages that don't use a latin alphabet, you can at least be sure that every DVD player can show the subtitles properly.
You can be sure of that anyway. DVD subtitles are bitmaps, not characters that need to be rendered.
Bah. Half-measures.
If you want minimal access time for your daily boobie fix, you have to go to Germany, where Bild puts the nekkid women on the lower part of PAGE ONE!
I'm afraid it's you who got it wrong. More people means more overhead, more babysitting and more potential for fuckups that take time to repair. It is QUITE possible that an additional developer, especially an inexperienced one who is unfamiliar with the environment, can cause more additional work than he himself does.
In fact the one part of the book I remember most vividly is where the author writes about a decision he made which in hindsight cost IBM several millions of dollars: the decision to let the spec for a new system (System/360 I think) be written by developmers along with the analysts to avoid having the developers wait and do nothing while the analysts write it. The result was that it took longer to write and was of lower quality, and the project was two years late in the end.
Siemens and Hitachi are both electronics companies, not makers of heavy machinery. Try MAN or Mitsubishi.
First, there's a tad more than 1 million houses in the UK, let alone the USA (why would you be using $ when talking about the UK?). Second, $3000 isn't nearly enough to pay for a solar energy setup that can power a whole house.
You use 2.2kWH in what timespan? Any only at times when there's sunshine? And does that include the energy used to light the streets, your workplace, the shops and entertainment venues you use and the factories that make the stuff you buy?
I used to say that the Air Force's motto should be "Making yesterday's technology work today."
You can say that again. They haven't built a new B-52 for 2 or 3 decades, have no other system to take its place and are openly planning to keep using the existing one for decades to come.
In the UK, do they run TV commercials telling you to text "HOT HITS" to a certain number to get free ringtones?
Over on this side of the pond I frequently see television commercials for free or low priced ringtones that you can get by sending a text message. If you read the fine print, it tells you that you are actually signing up for a subscription where they send you new ringtones every day or every week, charging you each time.!
Dunno about the UK, but this used to be a problem in Germany too, though they were never allowed to (I presume, because they didn't) call it "free". They just didn't mention price and have it in the fine print which you can't even read on screen. Then, after most teenagers in the country fell victim to it and started paying attention, ringtone ads started to explicitly advertize "no subscription"; shortly afterwards legislation forced the original scammers to explicitly metion (as in say aloud) that it's a subscription or do a confirmation via text message.
So what you're saying is that the US constitution, where human rights are an afterthought tacked on as "amendements", is the best constitution there could possibly be? Have you ever actually read any other constitution?
The thing is that those $1,000,000 apps are usually custom built and sold to a small number of customers, while Microsoft's comparatively low prices are taken from MILLIONS of customers, thus yielding a much higer (potential) budget for quality control.
It's a typical false correlation. Quality is NOT inversely proportional to price, it's proportional to QA budget, which is (well, should be) proportional to total budget, which is proportional to the number of customers - and price is inversely proportional to the number of customers. Of course all of these "proportionalities" are rather vague.
This way of thinking, while reminiscent of methods used by many of History's most reviled tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, is nevertheless effective at reducing the capabilities of an ideologically motivated enemy.
Except that it isn't. Obviously you "reduce the capabilities" of the people you actually have in your camps. But you also increase the number of people willing to replace them - by a much larger amount. Guantanamo and the war in Iraq are the best aids for the terrorists' cause they could have hoped for.
it is because we are so dedicated to freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness that we are willing to fight those who would enslave us.
What a load of unmitigated piffle. Many of the actions of the US government clearly show a total lack of any respect for freedom, equality or the pursuit of happiness of anyone except themselves and their campaign contributors.
It's called "rubber hose cryptanalysis". Tends to be rather effective, that's why the US government is working so hard to have it allowed to them.
It's one of the relatively few applications where torture actually works, because you can immediately and objectively verify the answers you get. Not so with questions like "who are your accomplices?" where you tend to eventually get the answers you want to hear, whether they're true or not.
The idiot is you, if you think there is no actual racism problem there.
yeah, I get lots of techno and EDM from Allofmp3.com cheapest legal downloads i've seen so far.. in MP3 format too.
Um... that's because they're NOT legal. IIRC they have some blanket agreement for the Russian market that doesn't specifically exclude online distribution. Online distribution to the whole world is most certainly not covered under that.
The funny thing is, last year I had a friend from the UK over for a visit during Oktoberfest (the original one, in Munich) and we watched a wall-of-death motorcycle stunt show. He said they would never allow anything like that in the UK due to safety regulations. So it seems the British are more "Germanic" than the Germans in this regard. Actually he was wrong, and there are shows like that in the UK, so it's more of a perception thing. We Germans ourselves feel that we have the worst tendency towards bearocracy and rules, but what I've seen and heard from other countries is rarely much better and sometimes worse.
As for it doing any good, yes, it very obviously does. Do you REALLY want to allow people to drive cars without a license and potentially crash into you due to a mistake made from lack of experience or knowledge? Do you REALLY want your toaster to electrocute you because the maker cut corners with the safety checks in engineering or hired insufficiently qualified engineers? Lack of enforced safety regulations and accountability kills and ruins people - and often not those who are responsible or could have done anything to avoid the risk. Of course the beaurocracy needed to implement it all inhibits productivity and at some point the cure is worse than the illness, but it's a continuum and opinions vary on where the proper point of balance is.
Which will not make any difference, since soon after some (steam) punk kid will blow it up to give his girlfriend a birthday present.
Also, nobody could see it. That's why the joke is usually done with the moon, not Mars.
It is a myth that this is about affluence or being able to choose what you eat. Quite the reverse actually.
THAT in turn is not a myth, but just obviously wrong. Getting fat is impossible without the minimum affluence of being able to afford more food than you need - something that a considerable proportion of mankind can only dream of. It is only in societies where even those considered poor can afford lots of food where other factors become decisive.
Wrong. There are differences in people's metabolisms that makes it much more difficult for some people to be slim than for others, and there are pathological cases of this that makes is nearly impossible for those so afflicted.
No. Obviously you don't get this kind of problem in places where people struggle against starvation, but it exists in pretty much all societies where people can eat what and how much they want to, if they want to. The US may on average have the biggest ratio of extremely obese people, but I see them here in Germany as well, and read stories of 8 year old kids that weigh more than a normal adult. Even in Japan, where people are still pretty slim on average, the police are complaining that their new recruits are increasingly overweight.
Of course that only reinforces your other point about it being a cultural problem - but these days, culture in industrialized nations is global, with more or less minor local variations.
You're assuming that the hurricanes are caused by the greenhouse effect. That's quite a leap of faith, in my opinion.
While they may not be caused by it, it is blindingly obvious that they are made STRONGER by it. I mean, how could a phenomenon that is fundamentally caused by evaporating hot seawater (and can only occur where water temperatures are above a certain level) NOT be boosted by an increase in temperature?
You cannot make a TV that doesn't display images. You cannot make a camcorder that doesn't make a movie of what it sees.
Just like you cannot make a VCR that doesn't playback tapes or doesn't record a signal? Or a CD that plays music but cannot be copied? Yet, Macrovision and the various CD copy protection schemes DO work (mostly). I do not find it far-fetched at all that you could make a TV that displays the image in a way that looks fine to the naked eye but confuses camera sensors, especially since filming video off a TV screen is difficult to get right in the first place (frame rate differences and synching).
The only thing DRM can do is make NEW camcorders not work on a certain type of output anymore. You CAN NOT require me to buy one of those, but I can most certainly keep using an old one that doesn't give a d*mn. You cannot detect in the TV anywhere that I'm doing as such, so you cannot stop playing it (or you wouldn't have a functional TV), and the camcorder cannot be hacked as such to make me not record anything.
You vastly underestimate the concerted effort the movie industry is making. They may not quite be able to make old "non-conforming" camcorders illegal, but they can make them less useful by e.g. making sure that all new video recorders, TVs and computers, i.e. the things you have to connect the camcorder to in order for it to be really useful, will refuse to speak to a "non-conforming" device. Of course you can still keep an "old" recorder, TV and PC around, but eventually they will break down (as will the camcorder). And before that, they in turn will be made less useful because new HD content will only play on "conforming" devices.
Sure, it's kinda silly and will probably break in half a dozen places, but the industry seems hell-bent on trying their damnedest to make it work - and make the consumer pay for it.
Actually, this is being worked on. I read that someone claims they can make TVs which will show pictures in a way that will confuse the camcorder's sensor just like Macrovison confuses a VCR's tracking mechanism - or they can just buy legislation that forces camcorder makers to have their products refuse to record or blot out a TV screen that signals "I'm displaying protected content" in some way not visible to the naked eye. Media players will refuse to work with TV sets or camcorders that do not do this, as will any PC running Windows. Any PC not running Windows and any nonconforming media player will not be able to play "protected" content at all, because you can't play it without certain patent-protected technologies.
Ah, brave new world of DRM!
My only hope is that consumers simply won't stand for all these intrusive restrictions and vote with they wallets, while at the same time content providers appear who succeed with the bold new business model of valuing paying customers' convenience above the fear of freeriders.