But yet the fact remains it is currently *more* accessible to the disabled than a regular textbook. So let's not have an improvement because we should hold out for an even better improvement?
It's fine, this sort of technology's rise will coincide with the rise of technologies that drive our cars for us -- so ultimately the distraction issue won't be an issue at all. We could probably have self-driving cars now if consumers weren't so leery of the idea.
Moreover, it's not as if iphone users aren't paying more for unlimmited data already anyways. Now AT&T thinks we might pay more to get less? AT&T only thinks they can away with this shit because, when it comes to 3g data on the iphone, they have a monopoly. I can't get it from anywhere else.
AFAIK, it's a relatively new idea. I'm unaware of any line of thought along these lines until Malthus. But you are correct in the limited sense that it has been a common theme for the last couple hundred years, anyways.
They can happily refund the money of the x% who call in and make a fuss and it's no big loss to them. There's still a healthy percentage of people who won't notice the charge or who simply will take it as a life lesson and move on. They may well be acting within the limits of the law so as to avoid being shutdown (or they may not be -- I make no judgment on the matter as IANAL), but that doesn't make what they're doing right.
It is, but it doesn't have the balls to tell you up front that it is. That's hidden away on an easy to miss corner of only one part of their webpage (and on none of the subsequent pages you have to click through to complete the transaction). They're not even doing a boiler plate type EULA thing "click here if you agree that its ok if we charge you every blah blah". They just "assume" you read the entirety of their front page and if not, then tough. Well actually, they're probably assuming you didn't -- because if you did, there's no way you continued on with the transaction.
Where Video Professor really crosses the line is in the amount charged. Most of the "x of the month" club type businesses thrive on *apathy*. People know full well that they're going to be charged 10 dollars every month unless they cancel, and they fully intend to cancel, but they just never get around to it.
This, on the other hand, is set up to thrive on *ignorance*. More than likely, you aren't going to know a thing about that 290 dollar charge on your credit card until it hits you. And then, what can you do? Cancel? You've already bought them *all* in one charge.
A business model based on consumer apathy is slimy, but tolerable. People are getting screwed, but they know it and they accepted it. Ignorance, on the other hand, is just not "ok". Grandma isn't reading the fine print on this web page and there's just no way she knows she's going to get billed for 290 dollars until it happens and then its too late.
If your business model is based around the idea that "People can't know your business model, or they won't buy your product" -- then it's a scam. It might comply with the letter of the law, IANAL -- but by the strict dictionary definition it is deception and therefore it is a scam.
Google, as a brand, does have an amazing amount of trust. We should just drop the whole Health Care debate and convince Google to go into the business of selling Health Insurance.
But here's the thing, they're not just saying he trespessed. Nobody denies that. They're saying he caused 700k worth of damage, and that part is just nonsense. It's like if broke into your house, fell asleep on your bed, and left in the morning. You might figure out I was there, realize you should probably put some locks on your doors and maybe get an alarm system.
Yes, in that scenario, I certainly broke the law -- but you don't get to claim I caused 3000 dollars worth of damage because it cost you 3000 dollars to put a lock on the door and get a security system. You should have had those things anyways.
Asperger's is not a defense -- but 700k worth of damage? Give me a break.
But you could just as easily have that windmill power a turbine to generate electricity to charge the battery in your electric car and get a far higher energy density leading to more mileage per charge and per each day's wind. I think that's the point that's being made. There's lots of clean ways that can generate energy -- any of which can be used to compress air, but why add that extra unnecessary step in the middle when it's just an added inefficiency?
I don't know about that. Slashdot posts links to wikileaks all the time.
The only issue I see here is that someone decides to only leak PART of the data. That's when you know there's a clear agenda and you're not getting any clearer a picture than if you had no data at all.
The problem is this: The older data was not necessarily collected in a uniform and consistent manner. People in the 1940's did not necessarily understand that the data they were collecting might later be of great significance 60-70 years in the future. So what scientists are doing here is looking at a bunch of varied data sets that don't necessarily fit together neatly as they might have had every weather station had the *same* equipment and the same set of measurement standards and so forth. I think a good example someone else mentioned was using black equipment vs white equipment and the amount of sunlight therefore reflected/absorbed.
So yes, the scientists who study historical climate conditions are massaging the data. They have no choice. When you see an outlier in these data sets that seems statistically highly improbable, it's a pretty safe bet that the numbers are wrong and need to be adjusted. There is nothing particularly shocking or damning about this -- it's just good science. It's not ideal, but compared to simply letting bad data in, it's the best possible option.
I think they've made it pretty clear that all of those things are indeed, in their eyes, illegal. They even went as far as to file a legal brief against a legal right to jailbreak that suggests that jailbreaking facilitates terrorism. Yeah, they went there.
Godwin's law really needs to be extended to terrorists/terrorism. Terrorists are the Nazis of the new millenium in terms of the public's perception of them.
There are 2 key factors being ignored here. The average user may well be using only 400 megabytes but the "average" user hasn't had his/her iPhone for very long and quite probably hasn't discovered all the possibilities yet. Someday, he/she will. He'll start syncing his files via Dropbox, or he'll set up a Pandora station and start listening to streaming audio over long car trips. He'll pick up new podcasts, and update them over the air. The longer you have your phone, the more bandwidth you'll use as you slowly learn to do more and more things with it, get more and more apps, and so forth.
A large percentage of the so-called "heavy users" are merely early adopters, who've embraced smart phone computing to a higher degree. They aren't the norm now, but increasingly they will become it.
Moreover, the average user lives where, exactly? Some cities have ubiquitous WiFi, others, as of yet, do not. Some cities are dense and have many access points, others are spread out and suburban.
At the end of the day, tiered pricing would be a disaster. People would find their bill increasing 10 dollars every month and realistically, how long would they put up with that? I love my iPhone but I am absolutely not paying 200 dollars for data every month just because I go through about 2 gigs of data in that time frame -- nor, frankly, am I willing to cut back. I'll simply switch to another phone on another network that isn't heavily oversold and underserved.
I'm sure i could google you up some old articles about how Apple was pretty much monopolizing the supply, but you could just as easily do it yourself.
Apple has done some things right. Their accessory support is another thing. You can get a better mp3/video player from some chinese company that supports more codecs, has more eq settings, etc, etc, etc -- but you can't buy nearly as many accessories. You can't find an FM tuner that also charges that random player, for instance, or it fits into perfectly and mounts on your dash.
I mean to Apple's credit, they really understood the importance of using their market advantage to lock players into their products. iTunes and accessories both have both been huge tools to that end. Imagine if Palm had not only enabled iTunes sync support, but also cloned Apple's dock connector so that you could use any apple accessor with the Pre? That's probably not legal, but you can understand why Palm would feel the need to do something like that to compete.
It harms Apple in no way other than that it allows people to more easily switch away from their products towards one they consider better. As it stands now, however, switching away from Apple causes you to incur an actual financial penalty as all the accessories and *some* of the music you've invested in becomes useless.
1) The windows version of iTunes does NOT do this. The mac version might. You cannot get iTunes to play/transcode any codec other than whatever quicktime can play by default. It does not accept new codecs.
2) Unless I'm mistaken, there's no way to do this with the shuffle or nano or touch. In fact, only like some of the very early click-wheel models supported this. You can put music on with iTunes, but there's no way to copy music off without some sort of 3rd party software -- and even then its impractical.
This is very true. I own an iPhone because Safari is pretty much the best mobile browser in a phone out there and because the app store is fantastic. As a music/video player though? It's WAY Behind the curve. It's not even funny. Apple makes players that are low on features and high on price. Here's some glaring omissions that pretty much every competitor has in players that have half the cost:
1) No transcoding. These days, most players will just play DivX natively. Not only do you have to transcode every file for the Iphone/Ipod touch/etc --- but apple doesn't even give you the software for it. Seroiusly. iTunes does not support transcoding from any of the most common internet video codecs/formats. About all it can convert on its own is mpeg/uncompressed avi/quicktime into h.264. This is ridiculous. Not only are they lacking in key functionality, but they force you to find third party software to overcome this deficit.
2) Hard drive mode support. Almost every other player lets you just view your video/mp3 files on the device as a hard drive and copy files back and forth as you see fit without using ANY software other than your operating system. You want to sync your files? Use iTunes. Nevermind that it's one of the buggiest/bloated/unintuitive/god awful pieces of software I've ever used. You're stuck with it.
3) Audio codecs. Apple players don't even support half of the codecs that other players support. Again, this is part of their strategy to lock you into the "itunes" universe.
I could rant for days, but I won't. The iPod touch is a great device, for separate reasons. But Apple does not make good mp3 players. They make some aesthetically pleasing, but very expensive ones and that's just about the nicest thing you can say about them. While my iPhone does frustrate me as a media player, it's "good enough" that I don't bother owning another player. But believe me, if I only wanted a music player, Apple wouldn't even be considered for a second -- and yet somehow, even excluding the iPod touch, they dominate that market. It's not because of superior products.
They established any early monopoly when they bought all pretty much all the 1.5inch hard drives and were, as a direct result, the only company making a small-form factor high-storage mp3 player at the time. Nobody else could offer the same amount of storage without making the player significantly larger. Even though their player was inferior in any number of other ways, this sold ipods. It got Apple a monopoly they still enjoy today, and believe me, they aren't "playing nice" in their efforts to keep it. They're not above using anti-competitive (though perhaps still legal, IANAL) tactics in order keep that monopoly. This whole Pre/iTunes syncing affair is merely one of them.
Palm has it's own software but the iTune compatibility is merely a convenience for it's users. In short, Apple tries to lock up people into their product universe and iTunes is one of the ways they keep you. It's hard to switch over from an Apple device to any other because it's a giant pain to swap from iTunes to some other sync software. The reason why Apple goes to these lengths to stop this is simply because this whole idea of iTunes synching is not there because iTunes is such a great piece of software (it's actually, quite frankly, one of the worst pieces of software I've ever been *forced* to use) but rather it exists because it makes it easier for people to migrate from the iPhone to the Pre.
What Apple is doing here is very much anti-competitive . . .
In short, your argument is simply "I know stuff you don't, but I don't want to tell you."
You are unable (sorry, unwilling) to illuminate me as to what aspects of this story I'm ignoring. You are unwilling to explain what harm was caused by this and in what way it was not rectified, but you assure me that said harm does exist.
As for the legalities of your suggestion, well I'm still skeptical. I don't believe any old joe schmoe can start selling copies of someone elses ebooks as long as they cut them a check after the fact without the amount of said check having been agreed upon beforehand. It works with music, to some degree, because ASCAP exists and has preset rates. You can go ahead and play song X and not have to negotiate a price beforehand because you'll already know what the cost of that is.
As for the RIAA, keep in mind the payment they demand for each act of infringement borders upon ridiculous. We're talking about thousands of dollars per song.
Maybe I'm minimizing the harm suffered by the people who were "screwed" by this, but somehow I doubt it. Frankly, I find myself a little jealous not to be among them. After all, they got a pretty sweet deal. Their money was refunded, and then, a month later, they got a payout of 30x the initial cost. Sounds like a deal I'd like to get in on.
What more could Amazon have possibly done? They refunded the money initially (as in, at the same time as the book removal). They apologized pretty much immediately for the "mistake". Then they paid out, to each person, probably more money than they would have recieved as a part of any class action settlement.
What more is there? You want them to "kill" the kill switch? I don't think they even *can* do that. Understand that Amazon did not reach into user's devices and remove the book. In fact, if you had the book on your devices local storage, it *remained* there. Amazon only removed copies in the cloud (from your Amazon Library).
Is there a technical way Amazon could remove their ability to delete a file on their OWN SERVERS? It's not technically possible. If there's a court order to delete something stored on your server, it's gonna happen. Unless you come up with some sort of encrypted file system that you have no local access to . . .
At any rate, the "kill switch" were talking about here is not something that Amazon can remove without a complete redesign of the system.
So with that in mind, what does Amazon have to do to appease you? Honestly, where can they go from here? Have the people responsible for making the decision quit and/or commit ritual suicide? More $$$? Was 30 bucks not enough?
No false dichotomies here. You tell me. What should they do. Give me one good, technically feasible idea.
Begging the question a bit, aren't we? You assume that everything you laid out is the entire situation. However, just because you are satisfied with an apology and a mere statement of good intentions doesn't mean you're the arbiter of good sense. Maybe your standards are too low. "Mistakes were made" is a joke, you know...a satire on passive voice.
You say I didn't lay out the entire situation, so say what I missed or your criticism rings pretty hollow. I see no mention of the "facts" that I failed to bring to the discussion.
You give Amazon entirely too much credit and benefit of the doubt here. Some "legal department grunt?" You can't be serious.
Of course, why would i be serious about leaping to the most obvious and reasonable conclusion? Should I instead assume it was a grand conspiracy involving men sitting around a board room table puffing on cigars and plotting world domination? What exactly do you think Amazon was trying to accomplish here, if this wasn't just an honest case of bad judgment on the part of whoever made the call?
Amazon could certainly have worked this out differently, also without breaking the law: they pay the rightsholders and leave existing copies in place. For a book like 1984, I think it's just as likely that a check for $30 for each copy sold, written to the rightsholders, would be as effective as all of this was. Maybe $50, but Amazon multiplied the number of people screwed by orders of magnintude here anyway.
I'm sorry, you're a lawyer? I guess I'll take your word for it. I would have assumed that Amazon can't just decide to distribute someone else's intellectual property and then reimburse them after the fact without having reached some prior agreement on the amount of money to be reimbursed or having gained permission in the first place. Apparently, you can do whatever you want, as long as you send someone a check afterward's and it's totally legal. Good to know.
I'm satisfied because people who paid 99 cents for a book from a company specializing in public domain books were mildly inconvenienced by having said 99 cent book retracted and ultimately got a 30 dollar check for their trouble. That is the bottom line.
Also, "the number of people screwed"? Really? Who exactly got "screwed" by this? Everybody got a refund initially, this 30 dollars is on top of that. The worst I've heard is that someone who had taken notes about the book for homework was mad when the book was removed because the notes became worthless because they no longer referenced anything (notes like, "?this paragraph is important", but without the context of the paragraph).
That's as screwed as anyone got, and that's "Someone cut me off in traffic" level of screwed.
As for your weak-ass "Welp, that's just the way it is. Best we get used to it, guys!" blather, consumers are allowed to have standards and I have no idea why you would want to dissuade them from expecting better than they got. It's almost like you're arguing that people just plain shouldn't have higher standards of behavior and quality than corporations. I don't think you know what you're talking about when you assert that Amazon has been "sufficiently" humbled, because where I'm sitting it's just the same old same ol'.
Though I'm sure you'll call it a false dichotomy, you have basically two choices if you want to stand up for your rights as a consumer: Pick your battles or BE A HERMIT.
If you're picking your battles, as a reasonable person, there's just no way you pick this one. Sorry. There are far, far bigger fish to fry. Boycott *everyone* if you like, but I prefer to pick my battles.
I believe I addressed that point by pointing out that everyone and their mother has a Killswitch and nobody flips out about it. Apple being able to do it with iPhone apps was the example I used.
I realize it's a bitter pill, but you just have to swallow with the knowledge that it'll probably be fine. If you want to hold a grudge against amazon, then I suppose you'll be holding a grudge against LOTS of companies and simply not buying anything electronic. So be it. Personally, I'd rather just get over it.
Let's be a little more fair with Amazon. They realized they screwed up *right away*. They were apologizing left and right and acknowledged they made the wrong call and its a pretty safe bet it won't happen again anytime soon (unless there's a court order, for instance, forcing Amazon's hand).
Understand what lead this to this:
1) The book was listed through Amazon by someone claiming it as a public domain work, which it was, in *Canada*. 2) Amazon sells said book, only later realizing that the "rights owner" selling the book did not have said rights, at least not in the United States. 3) Amazon makes a bad call, probably on advice of some legal department grunt, and makes a lot of people mad. 4) Amazon realizes that was the wrong call, but can't undo it without breaking the law so they apologize -- a lot -- and meanwhile negotiate with the real rights holder to put themselves into a position (now) where they can offer to replace the book.
Yes, mistakes were made, but they've been pretty honest and apologetic about them. If you can still hold a grudge after this, well then you're just a bit too bitter for my tastes. A 30 dollar check is more than generous, and probably more than you'd get as a class action settlement after the lawyers took their cut. Hell, for 30 bucks I'm wiling to bet you can buy the book in the new format and still have enough left over to go buy yourself some ice cream or something.
Really, what is there to still be mad about?
Yes, amazon still has a kill switch, but I think they've been sufficiently humbled to the point where we're very unlikely to see it ever used again. And while I dont love the concept, pretty much all DRM systems have them. Apple can do the same thing to your iPhone apps. Not only can they remove them from the App store, but they can actually reach out to your phone and tell your phone to delete the app. I could give other examples, but suffice to say, MANY people have this sort of power over the "digital property" you think you own but you're really just renting. It's a bitter pill, but you're just gonna have to swallow it. Know that companies are going to be very careful about how they use that power, at least, as a result of this incident and so you probably have nothing to fear.
Slashdot Mirror
But yet the fact remains it is currently *more* accessible to the disabled than a regular textbook. So let's not have an improvement because we should hold out for an even better improvement?
It's fine, this sort of technology's rise will coincide with the rise of technologies that drive our cars for us -- so ultimately the distraction issue won't be an issue at all. We could probably have self-driving cars now if consumers weren't so leery of the idea.
Moreover, it's not as if iphone users aren't paying more for unlimmited data already anyways. Now AT&T thinks we might pay more to get less? AT&T only thinks they can away with this shit because, when it comes to 3g data on the iphone, they have a monopoly. I can't get it from anywhere else.
AFAIK, it's a relatively new idea. I'm unaware of any line of thought along these lines until Malthus. But you are correct in the limited sense that it has been a common theme for the last couple hundred years, anyways.
They can happily refund the money of the x% who call in and make a fuss and it's no big loss to them. There's still a healthy percentage of people who won't notice the charge or who simply will take it as a life lesson and move on. They may well be acting within the limits of the law so as to avoid being shutdown (or they may not be -- I make no judgment on the matter as IANAL), but that doesn't make what they're doing right.
It is, but it doesn't have the balls to tell you up front that it is. That's hidden away on an easy to miss corner of only one part of their webpage (and on none of the subsequent pages you have to click through to complete the transaction). They're not even doing a boiler plate type EULA thing "click here if you agree that its ok if we charge you every blah blah". They just "assume" you read the entirety of their front page and if not, then tough. Well actually, they're probably assuming you didn't -- because if you did, there's no way you continued on with the transaction.
Where Video Professor really crosses the line is in the amount charged. Most of the "x of the month" club type businesses thrive on *apathy*. People know full well that they're going to be charged 10 dollars every month unless they cancel, and they fully intend to cancel, but they just never get around to it.
This, on the other hand, is set up to thrive on *ignorance*. More than likely, you aren't going to know a thing about that 290 dollar charge on your credit card until it hits you. And then, what can you do? Cancel? You've already bought them *all* in one charge.
A business model based on consumer apathy is slimy, but tolerable. People are getting screwed, but they know it and they accepted it. Ignorance, on the other hand, is just not "ok". Grandma isn't reading the fine print on this web page and there's just no way she knows she's going to get billed for 290 dollars until it happens and then its too late.
If your business model is based around the idea that "People can't know your business model, or they won't buy your product" -- then it's a scam. It might comply with the letter of the law, IANAL -- but by the strict dictionary definition it is deception and therefore it is a scam.
It may or may not be legal, but even if it is, it's still a scam. We all know a scam when we see it, and sometimes they happen to be legal.
Google, as a brand, does have an amazing amount of trust. We should just drop the whole Health Care debate and convince Google to go into the business of selling Health Insurance.
Yes, it is.
But here's the thing, they're not just saying he trespessed. Nobody denies that. They're saying he caused 700k worth of damage, and that part is just nonsense. It's like if broke into your house, fell asleep on your bed, and left in the morning. You might figure out I was there, realize you should probably put some locks on your doors and maybe get an alarm system.
Yes, in that scenario, I certainly broke the law -- but you don't get to claim I caused 3000 dollars worth of damage because it cost you 3000 dollars to put a lock on the door and get a security system. You should have had those things anyways.
Asperger's is not a defense -- but 700k worth of damage? Give me a break.
But you could just as easily have that windmill power a turbine to generate electricity to charge the battery in your electric car and get a far higher energy density leading to more mileage per charge and per each day's wind. I think that's the point that's being made. There's lots of clean ways that can generate energy -- any of which can be used to compress air, but why add that extra unnecessary step in the middle when it's just an added inefficiency?
I don't know about that. Slashdot posts links to wikileaks all the time.
The only issue I see here is that someone decides to only leak PART of the data. That's when you know there's a clear agenda and you're not getting any clearer a picture than if you had no data at all.
The problem is this: The older data was not necessarily collected in a uniform and consistent manner. People in the 1940's did not necessarily understand that the data they were collecting might later be of great significance 60-70 years in the future. So what scientists are doing here is looking at a bunch of varied data sets that don't necessarily fit together neatly as they might have had every weather station had the *same* equipment and the same set of measurement standards and so forth. I think a good example someone else mentioned was using black equipment vs white equipment and the amount of sunlight therefore reflected/absorbed.
So yes, the scientists who study historical climate conditions are massaging the data. They have no choice. When you see an outlier in these data sets that seems statistically highly improbable, it's a pretty safe bet that the numbers are wrong and need to be adjusted. There is nothing particularly shocking or damning about this -- it's just good science. It's not ideal, but compared to simply letting bad data in, it's the best possible option.
I think they've made it pretty clear that all of those things are indeed, in their eyes, illegal. They even went as far as to file a legal brief against a legal right to jailbreak that suggests that jailbreaking facilitates terrorism. Yeah, they went there.
Godwin's law really needs to be extended to terrorists/terrorism. Terrorists are the Nazis of the new millenium in terms of the public's perception of them.
Everything Apple does is fine, because I like Apple products.
Your move.
Google should helpfully remove all links to newscorp owned sites. See how old Rupert likes that. He'd be crying in outrage pretty much instantly.
There are 2 key factors being ignored here. The average user may well be using only 400 megabytes but the "average" user hasn't had his/her iPhone for very long and quite probably hasn't discovered all the possibilities yet. Someday, he/she will. He'll start syncing his files via Dropbox, or he'll set up a Pandora station and start listening to streaming audio over long car trips. He'll pick up new podcasts, and update them over the air. The longer you have your phone, the more bandwidth you'll use as you slowly learn to do more and more things with it, get more and more apps, and so forth.
A large percentage of the so-called "heavy users" are merely early adopters, who've embraced smart phone computing to a higher degree. They aren't the norm now, but increasingly they will become it.
Moreover, the average user lives where, exactly? Some cities have ubiquitous WiFi, others, as of yet, do not. Some cities are dense and have many access points, others are spread out and suburban.
At the end of the day, tiered pricing would be a disaster. People would find their bill increasing 10 dollars every month and realistically, how long would they put up with that? I love my iPhone but I am absolutely not paying 200 dollars for data every month just because I go through about 2 gigs of data in that time frame -- nor, frankly, am I willing to cut back. I'll simply switch to another phone on another network that isn't heavily oversold and underserved.
I'm sure i could google you up some old articles about how Apple was pretty much monopolizing the supply, but you could just as easily do it yourself.
Apple has done some things right. Their accessory support is another thing. You can get a better mp3/video player from some chinese company that supports more codecs, has more eq settings, etc, etc, etc -- but you can't buy nearly as many accessories. You can't find an FM tuner that also charges that random player, for instance, or it fits into perfectly and mounts on your dash.
I mean to Apple's credit, they really understood the importance of using their market advantage to lock players into their products. iTunes and accessories both have both been huge tools to that end. Imagine if Palm had not only enabled iTunes sync support, but also cloned Apple's dock connector so that you could use any apple accessor with the Pre? That's probably not legal, but you can understand why Palm would feel the need to do something like that to compete.
It harms Apple in no way other than that it allows people to more easily switch away from their products towards one they consider better. As it stands now, however, switching away from Apple causes you to incur an actual financial penalty as all the accessories and *some* of the music you've invested in becomes useless.
1) The windows version of iTunes does NOT do this. The mac version might. You cannot get iTunes to play/transcode any codec other than whatever quicktime can play by default. It does not accept new codecs.
2) Unless I'm mistaken, there's no way to do this with the shuffle or nano or touch. In fact, only like some of the very early click-wheel models supported this. You can put music on with iTunes, but there's no way to copy music off without some sort of 3rd party software -- and even then its impractical.
This is very true. I own an iPhone because Safari is pretty much the best mobile browser in a phone out there and because the app store is fantastic. As a music/video player though? It's WAY Behind the curve. It's not even funny. Apple makes players that are low on features and high on price. Here's some glaring omissions that pretty much every competitor has in players that have half the cost:
1) No transcoding. These days, most players will just play DivX natively. Not only do you have to transcode every file for the Iphone/Ipod touch/etc --- but apple doesn't even give you the software for it. Seroiusly. iTunes does not support transcoding from any of the most common internet video codecs/formats. About all it can convert on its own is mpeg/uncompressed avi/quicktime into h.264. This is ridiculous. Not only are they lacking in key functionality, but they force you to find third party software to overcome this deficit.
2) Hard drive mode support. Almost every other player lets you just view your video/mp3 files on the device as a hard drive and copy files back and forth as you see fit without using ANY software other than your operating system. You want to sync your files? Use iTunes. Nevermind that it's one of the buggiest/bloated/unintuitive/god awful pieces of software I've ever used. You're stuck with it.
3) Audio codecs. Apple players don't even support half of the codecs that other players support. Again, this is part of their strategy to lock you into the "itunes" universe.
I could rant for days, but I won't. The iPod touch is a great device, for separate reasons. But Apple does not make good mp3 players. They make some aesthetically pleasing, but very expensive ones and that's just about the nicest thing you can say about them. While my iPhone does frustrate me as a media player, it's "good enough" that I don't bother owning another player. But believe me, if I only wanted a music player, Apple wouldn't even be considered for a second -- and yet somehow, even excluding the iPod touch, they dominate that market. It's not because of superior products.
They established any early monopoly when they bought all pretty much all the 1.5inch hard drives and were, as a direct result, the only company making a small-form factor high-storage mp3 player at the time. Nobody else could offer the same amount of storage without making the player significantly larger. Even though their player was inferior in any number of other ways, this sold ipods. It got Apple a monopoly they still enjoy today, and believe me, they aren't "playing nice" in their efforts to keep it. They're not above using anti-competitive (though perhaps still legal, IANAL) tactics in order keep that monopoly. This whole Pre/iTunes syncing affair is merely one of them.
Palm has it's own software but the iTune compatibility is merely a convenience for it's users. In short, Apple tries to lock up people into their product universe and iTunes is one of the ways they keep you. It's hard to switch over from an Apple device to any other because it's a giant pain to swap from iTunes to some other sync software. The reason why Apple goes to these lengths to stop this is simply because this whole idea of iTunes synching is not there because iTunes is such a great piece of software (it's actually, quite frankly, one of the worst pieces of software I've ever been *forced* to use) but rather it exists because it makes it easier for people to migrate from the iPhone to the Pre.
What Apple is doing here is very much anti-competitive . . .
We should all send him a check for 2 cents and a note saying "Here's my 2 cents, you're a douchebag."
In short, your argument is simply "I know stuff you don't, but I don't want to tell you."
You are unable (sorry, unwilling) to illuminate me as to what aspects of this story I'm ignoring. You are unwilling to explain what harm was caused by this and in what way it was not rectified, but you assure me that said harm does exist.
As for the legalities of your suggestion, well I'm still skeptical. I don't believe any old joe schmoe can start selling copies of someone elses ebooks as long as they cut them a check after the fact without the amount of said check having been agreed upon beforehand. It works with music, to some degree, because ASCAP exists and has preset rates. You can go ahead and play song X and not have to negotiate a price beforehand because you'll already know what the cost of that is.
As for the RIAA, keep in mind the payment they demand for each act of infringement borders upon ridiculous. We're talking about thousands of dollars per song.
Maybe I'm minimizing the harm suffered by the people who were "screwed" by this, but somehow I doubt it. Frankly, I find myself a little jealous not to be among them. After all, they got a pretty sweet deal. Their money was refunded, and then, a month later, they got a payout of 30x the initial cost. Sounds like a deal I'd like to get in on.
What more could Amazon have possibly done? They refunded the money initially (as in, at the same time as the book removal). They apologized pretty much immediately for the "mistake". Then they paid out, to each person, probably more money than they would have recieved as a part of any class action settlement.
What more is there? You want them to "kill" the kill switch? I don't think they even *can* do that. Understand that Amazon did not reach into user's devices and remove the book. In fact, if you had the book on your devices local storage, it *remained* there. Amazon only removed copies in the cloud (from your Amazon Library).
Is there a technical way Amazon could remove their ability to delete a file on their OWN SERVERS? It's not technically possible. If there's a court order to delete something stored on your server, it's gonna happen. Unless you come up with some sort of encrypted file system that you have no local access to . . .
At any rate, the "kill switch" were talking about here is not something that Amazon can remove without a complete redesign of the system.
So with that in mind, what does Amazon have to do to appease you? Honestly, where can they go from here? Have the people responsible for making the decision quit and/or commit ritual suicide? More $$$? Was 30 bucks not enough?
No false dichotomies here. You tell me. What should they do. Give me one good, technically feasible idea.
Begging the question a bit, aren't we? You assume that everything you laid out is the entire situation. However, just because you are satisfied with an apology and a mere statement of good intentions doesn't mean you're the arbiter of good sense. Maybe your standards are too low. "Mistakes were made" is a joke, you know...a satire on passive voice.
You say I didn't lay out the entire situation, so say what I missed or your criticism rings pretty hollow. I see no mention of the "facts" that I failed to bring to the discussion.
You give Amazon entirely too much credit and benefit of the doubt here. Some "legal department grunt?" You can't be serious.
Of course, why would i be serious about leaping to the most obvious and reasonable conclusion? Should I instead assume it was a grand conspiracy involving men sitting around a board room table puffing on cigars and plotting world domination? What exactly do you think Amazon was trying to accomplish here, if this wasn't just an honest case of bad judgment on the part of whoever made the call?
Amazon could certainly have worked this out differently, also without breaking the law: they pay the rightsholders and leave existing copies in place. For a book like 1984, I think it's just as likely that a check for $30 for each copy sold, written to the rightsholders, would be as effective as all of this was. Maybe $50, but Amazon multiplied the number of people screwed by orders of magnintude here anyway.
I'm sorry, you're a lawyer? I guess I'll take your word for it. I would have assumed that Amazon can't just decide to distribute someone else's intellectual property and then reimburse them after the fact without having reached some prior agreement on the amount of money to be reimbursed or having gained permission in the first place. Apparently, you can do whatever you want, as long as you send someone a check afterward's and it's totally legal. Good to know.
I'm satisfied because people who paid 99 cents for a book from a company specializing in public domain books were mildly inconvenienced by having said 99 cent book retracted and ultimately got a 30 dollar check for their trouble. That is the bottom line.
Also, "the number of people screwed"? Really? Who exactly got "screwed" by this? Everybody got a refund initially, this 30 dollars is on top of that. The worst I've heard is that someone who had taken notes about the book for homework was mad when the book was removed because the notes became worthless because they no longer referenced anything (notes like, "?this paragraph is important", but without the context of the paragraph).
That's as screwed as anyone got, and that's "Someone cut me off in traffic" level of screwed.
As for your weak-ass "Welp, that's just the way it is. Best we get used to it, guys!" blather, consumers are allowed to have standards and I have no idea why you would want to dissuade them from expecting better than they got. It's almost like you're arguing that people just plain shouldn't have higher standards of behavior and quality than corporations. I don't think you know what you're talking about when you assert that Amazon has been "sufficiently" humbled, because where I'm sitting it's just the same old same ol'.
Though I'm sure you'll call it a false dichotomy, you have basically two choices if you want to stand up for your rights as a consumer:
Pick your battles or BE A HERMIT.
If you're picking your battles, as a reasonable person, there's just no way you pick this one. Sorry. There are far, far bigger fish to fry. Boycott *everyone* if you like, but I prefer to pick my battles.
I believe I addressed that point by pointing out that everyone and their mother has a Killswitch and nobody flips out about it. Apple being able to do it with iPhone apps was the example I used.
I realize it's a bitter pill, but you just have to swallow with the knowledge that it'll probably be fine. If you want to hold a grudge against amazon, then I suppose you'll be holding a grudge against LOTS of companies and simply not buying anything electronic. So be it. Personally, I'd rather just get over it.
Let's be a little more fair with Amazon. They realized they screwed up *right away*. They were apologizing left and right and acknowledged they made the wrong call and its a pretty safe bet it won't happen again anytime soon (unless there's a court order, for instance, forcing Amazon's hand).
Understand what lead this to this:
1) The book was listed through Amazon by someone claiming it as a public domain work, which it was, in *Canada*.
2) Amazon sells said book, only later realizing that the "rights owner" selling the book did not have said rights, at least not in the United States.
3) Amazon makes a bad call, probably on advice of some legal department grunt, and makes a lot of people mad.
4) Amazon realizes that was the wrong call, but can't undo it without breaking the law so they apologize -- a lot -- and meanwhile negotiate with the real rights holder to put themselves into a position (now) where they can offer to replace the book.
Yes, mistakes were made, but they've been pretty honest and apologetic about them. If you can still hold a grudge after this, well then you're just a bit too bitter for my tastes. A 30 dollar check is more than generous, and probably more than you'd get as a class action settlement after the lawyers took their cut. Hell, for 30 bucks I'm wiling to bet you can buy the book in the new format and still have enough left over to go buy yourself some ice cream or something.
Really, what is there to still be mad about?
Yes, amazon still has a kill switch, but I think they've been sufficiently humbled to the point where we're very unlikely to see it ever used again. And while I dont love the concept, pretty much all DRM systems have them. Apple can do the same thing to your iPhone apps. Not only can they remove them from the App store, but they can actually reach out to your phone and tell your phone to delete the app. I could give other examples, but suffice to say, MANY people have this sort of power over the "digital property" you think you own but you're really just renting. It's a bitter pill, but you're just gonna have to swallow it. Know that companies are going to be very careful about how they use that power, at least, as a result of this incident and so you probably have nothing to fear.