They're not selling you the paper on which the book was printed.
Yes, they are.
They are selling you the entertainment/knowledge/whatever you derive from the content of the book.
No, they aren't. If I buy a book and never read it, do I not have to pay? Or conversely, if I read a book someone else bought, did I steal from them?
How pathetic must you be to waste your time downloading shit you don't value?
There are a lot of things I value which I will never buy. How pathetic of you to not understand this simple fact.
If you delete a bunch of vital information on a company's server, would you use the defense that "I didn't physically destroy anything, I just realigned some bits on a hard drive"?
1. Destroying data is different from copying data. 2. You didn't have permission to access the corporate server, while you did have permission to access some p2p server
Of course not, because the typical/. demographic understands that you can't apply laws and governance of the physical world to the virtual, technology world.
First thing you got right.
So perhaps it is not THEFT in the traditional sense, but it is THEFT in the "I'm taking something that I'm not authorized to take" sense.
It's not theft in any sense. It's copyright infringement. The problem with calling it "theft", since it does share *some* characteristics with theft, is that you end up attributing the characteristics of theft which do *not* apply.
The *only* reason the concept of "theft" exists at all is because of the limitations of physical reality--specifically that physical objects can be taken away from someone, and that a thief cannot just make a copy, but must take the actual item.
The problem with copyright, and other forms of so-called "Intellectual Property" is that they are not physical, objective absolutes, like physical property is. The idea of IP is a convenience, which provides for a mechanism to encourage people to create. Yes, there will always be artists, but sometimes artists have ideas which they cannot afford to see through to creation, and the people with actual property (cameras, props, film studios, theaters, etc) are subject to the physical reality that if they don't recoup the cost of their physical property, they will use it up and be left with nothing (let alone the fact that they have the right to make a profit as well).
That's the benefit of IP. The drawback is, as you already stated, but then backtracked on, is that it's not a natural, actual, thing. It's a concept. Once you put IP on the same footing as physical reality, you are contradicting reality, and whenever you do that *someone* has to pay. In the case of IP, it's the consumer who is unfairly forced to pay and the IP owner who unfairly benefits. That's why the only reasonable, rational, way to treat IP is as a separate concept, which grants a limited (both in time and scope) monopoly to the IP owners, giving them an incentive to create and an opportunity to profit, while still respecting the laws of reality.
Current IP laws are far-and-away out of touch with reality. Until that discrepancy is addressed, why should *any consumer whatsoever* respect the concept of IP, if it violate reality only in a way that is detrimental to them? The worst thing a law can do is violate reality. Sometimes laws must do so, but when they do, care must be taken to keep the law just and fair. The worst thing the people can do is support a law that only works against their best interests. In the case of current IP laws, both of those problems come into play. You're going to have to address those two issues before you even *think* of extolling the virtue of IP, or condemning the IP infringer.
What's reasonable about the fact that I can't play ITMS purchased songs on my 4 wonderful whole house music-players because of licensing issues?
What's unreasonable about that? Those are the terms, and you know them ahead of time. You're not talking about reasonable, you're talking about requirements. iTunes Music Store songs don't meet your requirements, but that's not unreasonable of them.
Perhaps it would be acceptable if these tracks were sold at bargain prices, but they're not. I get to pay dearly for lossy compressed copies of the original that I can't play on my iRiver & Squeezebox players.
You chose to buy iRiver and Squeezebox devices. That was a choice which prevents you from using songs off of the iTMS. Had you done it the other way around, you'd have made a choice which prevents some of your songs from playing on your devices. Either way it's a choice, and either way all parties are being reasonable.
That is completely unreasonable in my book.
I'm sure you mean "unacceptable", not "unreasonable". There are many things I find unacceptable, which I still would admit are reasonable.
Good thing there are alternatives.
I find it unacceptable to buy songs from a WMA source because a) it won't play on my computer of choice and b) it won't play on my portable device of choice. I don't, however, find it unreasonable, just unacceptable.
Why anyone would want to shop at ITMS is beyond me.
Is that true? Can you really not understand why people will buy songs through iTunes? It seems your only complaint about the iTunes music store is the DRM. Perhaps, as I stated already, most people don't find the DRM unreasonable.
If you really can't understand why people buy songs through iTunes, yet the fact is that buying songs through iTunes is as popular as it is, then the lack of understanding lies with *you*, and *you* should try to understand it before you can make any beneficial criticism, for how can your opinion be useful on a topic you don't understand? This is true *even if the action you are criticizing is irrational*.
You have every right to have an uninformed opinion, and in fact, have every right to express it. But please don't think that doing so is a good thing.
And, yes: People *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments down.
And people *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments up. But that's neither here nor there. We are talking about one specific comment, a comment that was off-topic, acerbic, ideologically extreme, and in most cases false, misleading, or even completely backwards.
Most people like Apple, like the iPod and like iTunes. If someone is going to come in an start attacking those three things as an anti-DRM fanatic, they are going to find their message is not received very well. If, on the other hand, they just point out that they don't like DRM on principle (even reasonable DRM--yes, they will have to acknowledge that some DRM *is* reasonable, since many people have found it reasonable), or that they don't buy from iTunes since they can't use it on their player, etc, they will be better received and probably modded up. But it you come frothing at the mouth about a product that just about everyone loves, you're going to be received as a nutter.
PROTIP: perpetuating idiotic marketspeak doesn't make you appear smart.
No, but not calling products by their actual names does tend to make you appear ignorant. Deliberately getting the names wrong (as you are doing) is irrational.
Anyway, let's look at what seems to be your main point: Apple knows better than me how I want to organize my music
No, Apple knows better than you how to organize the files on the iPod. You are free to organize your music however you want.
You have absolutely no understanding of good product design. Your average person doesn't want to deal with the actual song files. Why should they? Their computer is really good at organizing such things. By "your average person", I don't mean (as you probably narrated in your mind), "your average idiot". Even your highly above average person doesn't want to, nor should they have to, organize the actual song files. The song files are not what they are concerned with, the music is. With iTunes and the iPod, Apple has put the music and the listening experience to the forefront, and attempted to keep the behind-the-scenes details from getting in the way.
I wonder if you know why, exactly, you want to control the song files? Do you really care? What's more important to you, a superb listening experience, or absolute control over the filesystem? Is it rational to keep absolute control over the files when it detracts from the listening experience? These questions are for you to answer to yourself, you don't need to respond to them.
If I spill a drink on the floor, an "easy" solution would be to pay someone to demolish my house and rebuild it.
That's retarded. having your house demolished and rebuilt is not easier than cleaning up a spill.
Then we get to the "Apple could have done worse" aspect. This is pure bullshit.
What the hell are you talking about? I never said, "Apple could have done worse". I said that if Apple were intent on stopping you from accessing the files on your iPod, they could have done so directly.
The beauty of apps like iTunes and iPhoto is that they put the media (songs and photos) into the forefront, and hide all the impertinent details, but unlike you might expect from proprietary companies, they don't lock you out of your files. If ever you want to get your songs out of iTunes, or your photos out of iPhoto, you can do so very easily.
I was a bit leery at first when entrusting my data to iTunes and iPhoto. I used to meticulously organize my files, with a standard directory structure and file naming scheme. When I was satisfied that I could get my data back out of those apps, I gave them a try, and now I'd have it no other way. I'm not longer concerned about the actual data files, except to be certain that I can access them directly if I need to. That you are trying to spin this as a bad thing is absurd.
You seem to be under more than a few misconceptions.
First off, they are spelled/capitalized 'iPod' and 'iTunes'.
The iPod is a FireWire/USB hard drive and the files on it are fully accessible. This has allowed people to trivially write software to fully access and manipulate all of the data on the iPod, including copying songs off of it, and transferring songs to it (for third-party music jukeboxes and Linux compatibility (and Windows compatibility prior to Apple officially supporting Windows with the iPod).
If, for some reason, this is not open enough for you, you can install Linux on it.
As for the filename obfuscation, this is done because the songs are in a database. There are technical advantages to this. Two of which are:
1. Speed 2. To avoid filesystem/filename incompatibilities
Both of these have affected music players that have come before and come after the iPod. The iPod gives you *lots* of control over your music. In fact, much more control than your average person has ever had before. Apple is notoriously good at this sort of thing. In fact, they are far better at it than pretty much anyone else, including you. That's why they've made choices which superficially remove control from the user--a choice you clearly would not have made. These choices have made the iPod superior to your Ipod.
If Apple had been intent on denying you access to the songs on your iPod, they could have done so. That they haven't done so take a lot of the wind out of the sails of your argument.
Because his post is that of an anti-DRM troll. DRM is only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, yet he used it as an excuse to go on an ideological rant.
No one *wants* DRM, but most everyone will accept it under reasonable terms. Apple's terms are more than reasonable. Posting such an unreasonable rant about reasonable DRM is not insightful--at least, yagu's rant isn't. His post is inflammatory, and really qualifies as a troll or flamebait, even though I'm sure he truly believes in what he posted.
Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions.
What was insightful about his post? Nothing in it was relevant to the topic of the iPod. Most of it was ideological vitriol. And the only reasonable part, which you point out below, was aimed at a company that did the *exact opposite* of the "CDDB betrayal" he complains about!
How is that not a troll, or at the very least flamebait?
Insightful? Are you mad?
The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
Yes, all too often companies *don't* listen to their customers. The whole point of this slashdot story is that Apple does, and created a product that gives the customer what they really and truly want in the iPod.
The iPod's marketing is so clever, they've managed to bamboozle the author of the article evidenced by sentence one, paragraph four:
Then why the fuck are you ranting about the iTunes Music Store?
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent [burning to CD and ripping].
This is a virtual impossibility. They cannot enforce a system where you can't rip a standard CD without extreme effort, such as making a law that even *this* Congress won't pass.
And if it ever *did* happen, you'd still have be able to do it with your existing hardware and software long before it became impossible, which brings us to:
Oh, and the music you're writing to a CD to rip back to mp3s?
it started out inferior in quality... with compression.
Inferior to what? I knew when I bought it what format it was in. It's inferior to CD, superior to tape. If I really need a song in full CD quality, I won't buy a tape, or from iTunes, I'll buy a CD. As of yet, I haven't had a need to.
it will lose quality as it gets passed up the chain and back down -- you will have to make some "quality" decisions about what level mp3 you need to retain even the quality left in the track.
Or rip to lossless if you *really* care about the minimal amount of quality loss you'd get in most cases with AAC or MP3.
Oh yeah, you're going to have to re-enter the track, album, and artist info, that gets lost in the process.
No, it doesn't. When your burn a CD, iTunes remembers the track info for that CD, even if it's a mixed CD.
The burn-rip scenario you bring up is an emergency escape protocol to engage in *only* if for some reason you need to escape from iTunes DRM. Presumably, you're comfortable with the current terms if you've already bought more than a couple of songs, so this really only comes into play if Apple alters the terms of FairPlay in an unacceptable way, or you've decided to go into full-(hippie||libertarian)-mode with Linux or BSD.
In other words, *WORST CASE*, you have to burn and re-rip and decide whether to go lossless or take some most likely imperceptible quality loss, so no matter how much fear-mongering your wish to inject into the discussion, Apple has placed a bottom-limit on the "evil" you can attribute to their DRM. As an iTunes Music Store customer, I fully understand the possibility, but not the probability, what I may have to go through to 'liberate' my music, but as it stands, my music is freely usable enough as it is.
one of the most egregious betrayals by the music industry is the CDDB
Which has *what* to do with Apple? In fact, Apple corrects this so-called "betrayal" by using the CDDB to put your track names into your ripped music since the record labels have only exceptionally rarely put them on their CDs (which Apple does not create or sell, and thus has no responsibility for). Apple has gone even further, and done what the music industry has failed to do with CDs, and put the track information into the music that they actually *do* sell on the iTunes Music Store.
The music industry is pretty bad, and Apple has had to make some compromises in order to play with them (as we all must do when we deal with them, generally via buying CDs or listening to the radio), but Apple has actually done the commendable thing and given us a truly fair deal--a deal that has, built in, an emergency escape option. Do you expect the music industry would have done that on their own? Apple's not perfect, but all-in-all, they're pretty damn good.
I'm holding out hope I can continue to find unadulterated CDs, unencumbered (and high quality) mp3s and players that will play them all interchangeably and headache free.
Unadulterated CDs work just fine with iPods and iTunes. In fact, even adulterated ones (which have nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, iTunes (player or store) or the iPod) work just fine in iTunes on the Mac.
Nonsense? Are you seriously suggesting that cross-licensing with Creative wouldn't hurt Apple and help Creative?
There is no injunction, but in the currently unlikely event that there will be one, Apple would just pay Creative's license fee or change the iPod so it no longer is no longer open to injunction. No way on Earth is Apple going to simply cross-license the patents with Creative to carve up the music player market, as you suggest. If they were going to do that, they'd have just done that to begin with.
For Apple to do what you've suggested would be monumentally foolish at this point, and Apple would have to really foul up the lawsuits beyond all expectation in order for it to come to what you seem to think is the most likely outcome.
That would stifle people fighting for their rights. Yes, there are frivolous lawsuits, but they are a side-effect of our right to have legitimate lawsuits.
There's a downside to every right and freedom we have. That's one of the reasons people have supported fascist and other oppressive forms of government. Any attempt you make to curtail an abuse of a right or freedom must be weighed against the harm it will cause to non-abuses of those rights and freedoms. In most cases, it's best to just accept the bad with the good.
If you'd RTFA, you'd realize they take as many of these factors into account. They're not just using the skeleton (in fact, they *aren't* using the actual skeleton at all. This is doubly true for the Mona Lisa).
It's very clear that they are using assumptions, and assumptions can be wrong to varying degrees. That doesn't change the fact that it's possible to get a good approximation using assumptions. Whether this works here I don't know, but I do know that people's appearance seems to correlate to how their voices sound. This is demonstrated by the rare exceptions where a person's voice *doesn't* seem to match their appearance.
You are either being pedantic, or are trying to justify an offensive argument tactic.
If the latter: In practice, they are the same thing, one is just more polite-sounding. Both are, in practice, variations on "America, love it or leave it".
If you're just being pedantic, then yes, *literally*, the phrases are different, even if in actual use, in the most important ways, they are the same. Is your pedantry more important than standing up for what's good? If you reject the meaner version of the phrase, but defend the nicer version, even if they are used in the same way, aren't you promoting something you find repugnant?
I reject the notion that you are merely trying to convince those that criticize America that they still love America. It should be taken as given (unless there's strong reason to believe otherwise) that *every* American who criticizes America loves America very much.
What you are implying is that, because America is the freest nation on Earth, that America cannot be criticized, which is an absurd notion. America is not perfect, and in order to improve our great nation, it's important to identify the areas that need addressing. Trying to silence dissent is one of the surest ways to guarantee America's decline.
It should also be noted that the "America, love it or leave it" tactic is overwhelmingly used by conservatives. When a conservative complains about this ecological policy, or that social policy, liberals don't respond with "America, love it or leave it". That distinction is very telling.
My point still stands: anytime someone says, "America, love it or leave it" (or a variant of that), they are attempting to bypass rational, constructive debate.
If you're not willing to participate in Democracy then why live in one?
Just because someone doesn't vote, or they blindly trust the government, whatever, does not imply that they want to leave the country. There are still plenty of reasons to stay in America (or any other democracy), even if you never vote.
Leave if you want, stay if you want. I agree that people really should actively participate in our government. But that's a far cry from telling people to leave the country just because they disagree with you on how to live their life.
I remember looking at the US being this amazing forward-thinking state that was really influencing the world to look twice on issues like equality and fairness.
I have hope that we'll once again live up to that standard. I know it looks bad now, but there really are a lot of people fighting to put America back on the right track.
Fortunately, not everyone who's been told to leave America has done so.
If you don't feel you can live up to this obligation, you are not required to stay in this country.
An unfortunate sentence in an otherwise splendid post.
The purpose of a phrase in the category of, "America, love it or leave it," is to circumvent rational thought and discourse by asserting that anyone who disagrees with you doesn't deserve to be an American.
While this is an important issue, I'd like to see corn lose its protection as a sweetener as well. High fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar as the primary sweetener in our (American) diet, and the studies suggest that HFCS is really quite bad for us. Not only is it a sugar (with all the inherent health issues), but your body doesn't seem to count it when it comes to curbing hunger, so HFCS calories don't replace, but add to, the rest of our diet.
Not to mention cane sugar tastes better. If you'd like to compare, next time you see an old-fashioned bottle of soda, check and see if it's from Mexico. They still use sugar (check the label to be sure), and compare it with the flavor of a domestic bottle of the same brand. You might be surprised at how different sugar and corn syrup taste as a sweetener.
Just imagine, there's an action our lawmakers could take that would help curb obesity, diabetes, fuel prices, and pollution!
1. McAfee isn't a person. Most people aren't profit-oriented. Yes, most people have to work, but the pursuit of profit is not the primary focus of most people. On the other hand, most corporations seek nothing *but* profits.
2. While corporations have been known to do the right or promote honest facts, from time to time, this is not one of those times. Using fear is one of the most vulgar and appalling of manipulation techniques.
Any time a corporation tries to spread fear, and that corporation just happens to sell a product that directly addresses that fear, it's wise to become weary, because it's in that corporation's best interest to overstate the fear.
McAfee is just trying to build a market (which is a completely reasonable thing for a corporation to do), but in this specific case, they are trying to build a market which does not exist, and trying to force it into existence will have a net negative impact on the rest of us, as tends to be the case with FUD.
Kudos to them. They just proved that there is none of that so-called vendor lock-in.
Lock-in doesn't have to be absolute to be lock-in. Otherwise, all MS would have to do is support *one* other format (like.txt, or.rtf) and they could say, "see, we don't lock you in".
This plug-in actually is an attempt to break the lock-in, and I really hope it helps, but the fact that the plug-in is necessary *proves* that there is lock-in, not the other way round.
However, go and look in your mouth - see the canines there?
Yeah, they are so useful when biting into prey!
Although it's clear humans are omnivores, you really picked a silly example to use for calling the poster stupid. My finger nails make better 'claws' than my canines make, well, canines.
This is such an annoying meme--it's wrong, but it persists because it seems reasonable..
People will still want Mac apps. Want equals demand. Demand equals ports.
End-of-story (I really hate it when people post things like "end-of-story" or "period", etc, but this really is a fundamentally true thing)
The Mac user base is many times larger than OS/2's ever was. I wouldn't be surprised if the current Intel Mac user base exceeds that of the maximum consumer install base of OS/2. OS X is well established, as is its third-party commercial app market.
You'd never see another game port
*Only* if the games played well enough under whatever emulation/api-support is available. If that's the case, who cares? Games use custom GUIs, and integration with system services like printing and file dialogs isn't all that important. Even in that case, there will always be native Mac ports of Windows games, because some games are designed to be easily ported (Blizzard and Id games come to mind).
If Windows games don't run well under OS X, they will still be ported.
There are three categories of Windows-only apps:
Those that will never be ported to OS X.
Those that might be, but aren't today
Those that are ported
Category 1 is pure gravy for OS X users under any sort of built-in Windows support. Some apps under category 2 will have their ports delayed (CAD apps, for example). In this case, Mac users get the app sooner, and if the number of Mac users of the app become significant, the developer may decide a native port is worthwhile. Category 3 apps won't go Windows-only if the Mac version is selling well.
But this is just missing the forest for the trees. In the end, Mac users will prefer native Mac apps. That equates to demand, and that demand will show up as native apps. That's exactly how it works today, and there is no shortage of Mac apps. The only difference with native Windows support will be that Mac users will have access to Windows apps, and Windows-only developers will be able to sell to some Mac users without porting their app.
While this probably will mean a delay in some small number of ports, it does not mean, at all, a decrease in the actual number of Mac apps. The comparison with OS/2 is strained to the extreme. OS/2's problem is it had very few commercial apps. The Mac does not have that problem now, and it will not have that problem as a result of built-in Windows support.
And even with your statement that videogames don't produce good art.
I didn't state that. I said most games aren't very good artwork.
There are for me, as well, a few games that are up there with a good symphony or painting. They are rare, but definitely exist.
Some videogames obviously have very few elements of art.
That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying that the art that is in your average game isn't all that great. Not in the Beethoven's 9th sense. They do, usually, reach the TV and print advertisement level of artistry. They look good, perhaps even impressive. They do their job. And they may even be quite clever or well-styled. But they don't usually transcend into the realm of great art. There are (fortunately) notable exceptions.
It's my opinion that everything that people deliberately make has the potential of being a piece of art. Games are no exception.
I just don't get it. Because your average game doesn't tackle the human condition the way a great novel does, games aren't art? By his standards, most movies aren't art, either.
Games are art. Odds are, if there's a serious discussion about whether something is art or not, it's art. It might not be some sort of highbrow art, or pure art, or even particularly good art, but it's art nonetheless.
Most games aren't very good artwork. Even your average "good" game isn't all that great art-wise--perhaps on par with advertising art.
This reminds me of the heated debates over whether rap was music or not. Now it's fully accepted as a form of music. I think the problem is that rap was a new form of music and there were people who couldn't grasp the idea that the current state of music is not to be taken as the totality of what can be music. The same here with art. Video games have expanded the categories of art. Now art is what art was before games, plus games. Just like music is now what music was before rap, plus rap.
Now, if he were to argue that, in the context of art, video games aren't particularly great (although a few are quite good), he'd have a better point. Just like rap isn't really, compared to other forms of music, all that great artfully speaking, even if it is highly entertaining.
Not only is the Core Duo's performance per watt better than the rest [...]
Why then is the battery life in the MacBooks so miserly?
Your question doesn't logically follow. I've highlighted the important part.
If you're comparing it to the 15" PowerBook, the MacBook Pro has a brighter screen, is thinner (which might have resulted in a smaller battery, although I'm not certain), is around 4x faster (which is already faster, at the beginning of its roadmap, than the G4 is, which is currently at the end of (in some ways, beyond) its roadmap as a desktop cpu).
Assuming AMD can tune Turion64s to be more power friendly, they'll be able to best Intel's fancy new Core Duo. If they can't, then Intel may be the best game in town for the first time in a decade (assuming they price competitively).
Wait a minute. If AMD can't do something it isn't currently doing, then Intel will have the better chip? Doesn't that mean that, right now, Intel has the better chip?
I make no claims about the CoreDuo being the world's best x86 chip, I'm just following your logic.
I also take exception to your "first time in a decade" quip. It's wrong in two ways. Ever since AMD first overtook Intel in overall quality (price/performance/power), the lead has shifted back-and-forth (with, recently, AMD holding the lead for most of the time). But beyond that, in '96, AMD did not have the best chips on the high-end. They were quite competitive (but not clearly superior) price-wise on the low-to-mid-end, though. It wasn't until a few years later that AMD really began to take a definitive lead over Intel.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not selling you the paper on which the book was printed.
/. demographic understands that you can't apply laws and governance of the physical world to the virtual, technology world.
Yes, they are.
They are selling you the entertainment/knowledge/whatever you derive from the content of the book.
No, they aren't. If I buy a book and never read it, do I not have to pay? Or conversely, if I read a book someone else bought, did I steal from them?
How pathetic must you be to waste your time downloading shit you don't value?
There are a lot of things I value which I will never buy. How pathetic of you to not understand this simple fact.
If you delete a bunch of vital information on a company's server, would you use the defense that "I didn't physically destroy anything, I just realigned some bits on a hard drive"?
1. Destroying data is different from copying data.
2. You didn't have permission to access the corporate server, while you did have permission to access some p2p server
Of course not, because the typical
First thing you got right.
So perhaps it is not THEFT in the traditional sense, but it is THEFT in the "I'm taking something that I'm not authorized to take" sense.
It's not theft in any sense. It's copyright infringement. The problem with calling it "theft", since it does share *some* characteristics with theft, is that you end up attributing the characteristics of theft which do *not* apply.
The *only* reason the concept of "theft" exists at all is because of the limitations of physical reality--specifically that physical objects can be taken away from someone, and that a thief cannot just make a copy, but must take the actual item.
The problem with copyright, and other forms of so-called "Intellectual Property" is that they are not physical, objective absolutes, like physical property is. The idea of IP is a convenience, which provides for a mechanism to encourage people to create. Yes, there will always be artists, but sometimes artists have ideas which they cannot afford to see through to creation, and the people with actual property (cameras, props, film studios, theaters, etc) are subject to the physical reality that if they don't recoup the cost of their physical property, they will use it up and be left with nothing (let alone the fact that they have the right to make a profit as well).
That's the benefit of IP. The drawback is, as you already stated, but then backtracked on, is that it's not a natural, actual, thing. It's a concept. Once you put IP on the same footing as physical reality, you are contradicting reality, and whenever you do that *someone* has to pay. In the case of IP, it's the consumer who is unfairly forced to pay and the IP owner who unfairly benefits. That's why the only reasonable, rational, way to treat IP is as a separate concept, which grants a limited (both in time and scope) monopoly to the IP owners, giving them an incentive to create and an opportunity to profit, while still respecting the laws of reality.
Current IP laws are far-and-away out of touch with reality. Until that discrepancy is addressed, why should *any consumer whatsoever* respect the concept of IP, if it violate reality only in a way that is detrimental to them? The worst thing a law can do is violate reality. Sometimes laws must do so, but when they do, care must be taken to keep the law just and fair. The worst thing the people can do is support a law that only works against their best interests. In the case of current IP laws, both of those problems come into play. You're going to have to address those two issues before you even *think* of extolling the virtue of IP, or condemning the IP infringer.
What's reasonable about the fact that I can't play ITMS purchased songs on my 4 wonderful whole house music-players because of licensing issues?
What's unreasonable about that? Those are the terms, and you know them ahead of time. You're not talking about reasonable, you're talking about requirements. iTunes Music Store songs don't meet your requirements, but that's not unreasonable of them.
Perhaps it would be acceptable if these tracks were sold at bargain prices, but they're not. I get to pay dearly for lossy compressed copies of the original that I can't play on my iRiver & Squeezebox players.
You chose to buy iRiver and Squeezebox devices. That was a choice which prevents you from using songs off of the iTMS. Had you done it the other way around, you'd have made a choice which prevents some of your songs from playing on your devices. Either way it's a choice, and either way all parties are being reasonable.
That is completely unreasonable in my book.
I'm sure you mean "unacceptable", not "unreasonable". There are many things I find unacceptable, which I still would admit are reasonable.
Good thing there are alternatives.
I find it unacceptable to buy songs from a WMA source because a) it won't play on my computer of choice and b) it won't play on my portable device of choice. I don't, however, find it unreasonable, just unacceptable.
Why anyone would want to shop at ITMS is beyond me.
Is that true? Can you really not understand why people will buy songs through iTunes? It seems your only complaint about the iTunes music store is the DRM. Perhaps, as I stated already, most people don't find the DRM unreasonable.
If you really can't understand why people buy songs through iTunes, yet the fact is that buying songs through iTunes is as popular as it is, then the lack of understanding lies with *you*, and *you* should try to understand it before you can make any beneficial criticism, for how can your opinion be useful on a topic you don't understand? This is true *even if the action you are criticizing is irrational*.
You have every right to have an uninformed opinion, and in fact, have every right to express it. But please don't think that doing so is a good thing.
And, yes: People *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments down.
And people *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments up. But that's neither here nor there. We are talking about one specific comment, a comment that was off-topic, acerbic, ideologically extreme, and in most cases false, misleading, or even completely backwards.
Most people like Apple, like the iPod and like iTunes. If someone is going to come in an start attacking those three things as an anti-DRM fanatic, they are going to find their message is not received very well. If, on the other hand, they just point out that they don't like DRM on principle (even reasonable DRM--yes, they will have to acknowledge that some DRM *is* reasonable, since many people have found it reasonable), or that they don't buy from iTunes since they can't use it on their player, etc, they will be better received and probably modded up. But it you come frothing at the mouth about a product that just about everyone loves, you're going to be received as a nutter.
The choice is yours.
PROTIP: perpetuating idiotic marketspeak doesn't make you appear smart.
No, but not calling products by their actual names does tend to make you appear ignorant. Deliberately getting the names wrong (as you are doing) is irrational.
Anyway, let's look at what seems to be your main point: Apple knows better than me how I want to organize my music
No, Apple knows better than you how to organize the files on the iPod. You are free to organize your music however you want.
You have absolutely no understanding of good product design. Your average person doesn't want to deal with the actual song files. Why should they? Their computer is really good at organizing such things. By "your average person", I don't mean (as you probably narrated in your mind), "your average idiot". Even your highly above average person doesn't want to, nor should they have to, organize the actual song files. The song files are not what they are concerned with, the music is. With iTunes and the iPod, Apple has put the music and the listening experience to the forefront, and attempted to keep the behind-the-scenes details from getting in the way.
I wonder if you know why, exactly, you want to control the song files? Do you really care? What's more important to you, a superb listening experience, or absolute control over the filesystem? Is it rational to keep absolute control over the files when it detracts from the listening experience? These questions are for you to answer to yourself, you don't need to respond to them.
If I spill a drink on the floor, an "easy" solution would be to pay someone to demolish my house and rebuild it.
That's retarded. having your house demolished and rebuilt is not easier than cleaning up a spill.
Then we get to the "Apple could have done worse" aspect. This is pure bullshit.
What the hell are you talking about? I never said, "Apple could have done worse". I said that if Apple were intent on stopping you from accessing the files on your iPod, they could have done so directly.
The beauty of apps like iTunes and iPhoto is that they put the media (songs and photos) into the forefront, and hide all the impertinent details, but unlike you might expect from proprietary companies, they don't lock you out of your files. If ever you want to get your songs out of iTunes, or your photos out of iPhoto, you can do so very easily.
I was a bit leery at first when entrusting my data to iTunes and iPhoto. I used to meticulously organize my files, with a standard directory structure and file naming scheme. When I was satisfied that I could get my data back out of those apps, I gave them a try, and now I'd have it no other way. I'm not longer concerned about the actual data files, except to be certain that I can access them directly if I need to. That you are trying to spin this as a bad thing is absurd.
You seem to be under more than a few misconceptions.
First off, they are spelled/capitalized 'iPod' and 'iTunes'.
The iPod is a FireWire/USB hard drive and the files on it are fully accessible. This has allowed people to trivially write software to fully access and manipulate all of the data on the iPod, including copying songs off of it, and transferring songs to it (for third-party music jukeboxes and Linux compatibility (and Windows compatibility prior to Apple officially supporting Windows with the iPod).
If, for some reason, this is not open enough for you, you can install Linux on it.
As for the filename obfuscation, this is done because the songs are in a database. There are technical advantages to this. Two of which are:
1. Speed
2. To avoid filesystem/filename incompatibilities
Both of these have affected music players that have come before and come after the iPod. The iPod gives you *lots* of control over your music. In fact, much more control than your average person has ever had before. Apple is notoriously good at this sort of thing. In fact, they are far better at it than pretty much anyone else, including you. That's why they've made choices which superficially remove control from the user--a choice you clearly would not have made. These choices have made the iPod superior to your Ipod.
If Apple had been intent on denying you access to the songs on your iPod, they could have done so. That they haven't done so take a lot of the wind out of the sails of your argument.
I'm suprised this was marked as a troll.
Because his post is that of an anti-DRM troll. DRM is only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, yet he used it as an excuse to go on an ideological rant.
No one *wants* DRM, but most everyone will accept it under reasonable terms. Apple's terms are more than reasonable. Posting such an unreasonable rant about reasonable DRM is not insightful--at least, yagu's rant isn't. His post is inflammatory, and really qualifies as a troll or flamebait, even though I'm sure he truly believes in what he posted.
Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions.
What was insightful about his post? Nothing in it was relevant to the topic of the iPod. Most of it was ideological vitriol. And the only reasonable part, which you point out below, was aimed at a company that did the *exact opposite* of the "CDDB betrayal" he complains about!
How is that not a troll, or at the very least flamebait?
Insightful? Are you mad?
The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
Yes, all too often companies *don't* listen to their customers. The whole point of this slashdot story is that Apple does, and created a product that gives the customer what they really and truly want in the iPod.
The iPod's marketing is so clever, they've managed to bamboozle the author of the article evidenced by sentence one, paragraph four:
Then why the fuck are you ranting about the iTunes Music Store?
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent [burning to CD and ripping].
This is a virtual impossibility. They cannot enforce a system where you can't rip a standard CD without extreme effort, such as making a law that even *this* Congress won't pass.
And if it ever *did* happen, you'd still have be able to do it with your existing hardware and software long before it became impossible, which brings us to:
Oh, and the music you're writing to a CD to rip back to mp3s?
it started out inferior in quality... with compression.
Inferior to what? I knew when I bought it what format it was in. It's inferior to CD, superior to tape. If I really need a song in full CD quality, I won't buy a tape, or from iTunes, I'll buy a CD. As of yet, I haven't had a need to.
it will lose quality as it gets passed up the chain and back down -- you will have to make some "quality" decisions about what level mp3 you need to retain even the quality left in the track.
Or rip to lossless if you *really* care about the minimal amount of quality loss you'd get in most cases with AAC or MP3.
Oh yeah, you're going to have to re-enter the track, album, and artist info, that gets lost in the process.
No, it doesn't. When your burn a CD, iTunes remembers the track info for that CD, even if it's a mixed CD.
The burn-rip scenario you bring up is an emergency escape protocol to engage in *only* if for some reason you need to escape from iTunes DRM. Presumably, you're comfortable with the current terms if you've already bought more than a couple of songs, so this really only comes into play if Apple alters the terms of FairPlay in an unacceptable way, or you've decided to go into full-(hippie||libertarian)-mode with Linux or BSD.
In other words, *WORST CASE*, you have to burn and re-rip and decide whether to go lossless or take some most likely imperceptible quality loss, so no matter how much fear-mongering your wish to inject into the discussion, Apple has placed a bottom-limit on the "evil" you can attribute to their DRM. As an iTunes Music Store customer, I fully understand the possibility, but not the probability, what I may have to go through to 'liberate' my music, but as it stands, my music is freely usable enough as it is.
one of the most egregious betrayals by the music industry is the CDDB
Which has *what* to do with Apple? In fact, Apple corrects this so-called "betrayal" by using the CDDB to put your track names into your ripped music since the record labels have only exceptionally rarely put them on their CDs (which Apple does not create or sell, and thus has no responsibility for). Apple has gone even further, and done what the music industry has failed to do with CDs, and put the track information into the music that they actually *do* sell on the iTunes Music Store.
The music industry is pretty bad, and Apple has had to make some compromises in order to play with them (as we all must do when we deal with them, generally via buying CDs or listening to the radio), but Apple has actually done the commendable thing and given us a truly fair deal--a deal that has, built in, an emergency escape option. Do you expect the music industry would have done that on their own? Apple's not perfect, but all-in-all, they're pretty damn good.
I'm holding out hope I can continue to find unadulterated CDs, unencumbered (and high quality) mp3s and players that will play them all interchangeably and headache free.
Unadulterated CDs work just fine with iPods and iTunes. In fact, even adulterated ones (which have nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, iTunes (player or store) or the iPod) work just fine in iTunes on the Mac.
Nonsense? Are you seriously suggesting that cross-licensing with Creative wouldn't hurt Apple and help Creative?
There is no injunction, but in the currently unlikely event that there will be one, Apple would just pay Creative's license fee or change the iPod so it no longer is no longer open to injunction. No way on Earth is Apple going to simply cross-license the patents with Creative to carve up the music player market, as you suggest. If they were going to do that, they'd have just done that to begin with.
For Apple to do what you've suggested would be monumentally foolish at this point, and Apple would have to really foul up the lawsuits beyond all expectation in order for it to come to what you seem to think is the most likely outcome.
Nonsense indeed!
That would stifle people fighting for their rights. Yes, there are frivolous lawsuits, but they are a side-effect of our right to have legitimate lawsuits.
There's a downside to every right and freedom we have. That's one of the reasons people have supported fascist and other oppressive forms of government. Any attempt you make to curtail an abuse of a right or freedom must be weighed against the harm it will cause to non-abuses of those rights and freedoms. In most cases, it's best to just accept the bad with the good.
That doesn't make any sense. Such a deal would only help Creative and hurt Apple.
If you'd RTFA, you'd realize they take as many of these factors into account. They're not just using the skeleton (in fact, they *aren't* using the actual skeleton at all. This is doubly true for the Mona Lisa).
It's very clear that they are using assumptions, and assumptions can be wrong to varying degrees. That doesn't change the fact that it's possible to get a good approximation using assumptions. Whether this works here I don't know, but I do know that people's appearance seems to correlate to how their voices sound. This is demonstrated by the rare exceptions where a person's voice *doesn't* seem to match their appearance.
You are either being pedantic, or are trying to justify an offensive argument tactic.
If the latter: In practice, they are the same thing, one is just more polite-sounding. Both are, in practice, variations on "America, love it or leave it".
If you're just being pedantic, then yes, *literally*, the phrases are different, even if in actual use, in the most important ways, they are the same. Is your pedantry more important than standing up for what's good? If you reject the meaner version of the phrase, but defend the nicer version, even if they are used in the same way, aren't you promoting something you find repugnant?
I reject the notion that you are merely trying to convince those that criticize America that they still love America. It should be taken as given (unless there's strong reason to believe otherwise) that *every* American who criticizes America loves America very much.
What you are implying is that, because America is the freest nation on Earth, that America cannot be criticized, which is an absurd notion. America is not perfect, and in order to improve our great nation, it's important to identify the areas that need addressing. Trying to silence dissent is one of the surest ways to guarantee America's decline.
It should also be noted that the "America, love it or leave it" tactic is overwhelmingly used by conservatives. When a conservative complains about this ecological policy, or that social policy, liberals don't respond with "America, love it or leave it". That distinction is very telling.
My point still stands: anytime someone says, "America, love it or leave it" (or a variant of that), they are attempting to bypass rational, constructive debate.
If you're not willing to participate in Democracy then why live in one?
Just because someone doesn't vote, or they blindly trust the government, whatever, does not imply that they want to leave the country. There are still plenty of reasons to stay in America (or any other democracy), even if you never vote.
Leave if you want, stay if you want. I agree that people really should actively participate in our government. But that's a far cry from telling people to leave the country just because they disagree with you on how to live their life.
I remember looking at the US being this amazing forward-thinking state that was really influencing the world to look twice on issues like equality and fairness.
I have hope that we'll once again live up to that standard. I know it looks bad now, but there really are a lot of people fighting to put America back on the right track.
Fortunately, not everyone who's been told to leave America has done so.
If you don't feel you can live up to this obligation, you are not required to stay in this country.
An unfortunate sentence in an otherwise splendid post.
The purpose of a phrase in the category of, "America, love it or leave it," is to circumvent rational thought and discourse by asserting that anyone who disagrees with you doesn't deserve to be an American.
What is wrong with having a weekly sex column and how does having one make a paper untrustworthy?
While this is an important issue, I'd like to see corn lose its protection as a sweetener as well. High fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar as the primary sweetener in our (American) diet, and the studies suggest that HFCS is really quite bad for us. Not only is it a sugar (with all the inherent health issues), but your body doesn't seem to count it when it comes to curbing hunger, so HFCS calories don't replace, but add to, the rest of our diet.
Not to mention cane sugar tastes better. If you'd like to compare, next time you see an old-fashioned bottle of soda, check and see if it's from Mexico. They still use sugar (check the label to be sure), and compare it with the flavor of a domestic bottle of the same brand. You might be surprised at how different sugar and corn syrup taste as a sweetener.
Just imagine, there's an action our lawmakers could take that would help curb obesity, diabetes, fuel prices, and pollution!
Two problems with your argument.
1. McAfee isn't a person. Most people aren't profit-oriented. Yes, most people have to work, but the pursuit of profit is not the primary focus of most people. On the other hand, most corporations seek nothing *but* profits.
2. While corporations have been known to do the right or promote honest facts, from time to time, this is not one of those times. Using fear is one of the most vulgar and appalling of manipulation techniques.
Any time a corporation tries to spread fear, and that corporation just happens to sell a product that directly addresses that fear, it's wise to become weary, because it's in that corporation's best interest to overstate the fear.
McAfee is just trying to build a market (which is a completely reasonable thing for a corporation to do), but in this specific case, they are trying to build a market which does not exist, and trying to force it into existence will have a net negative impact on the rest of us, as tends to be the case with FUD.
Kudos to them. They just proved that there is none of that so-called vendor lock-in.
.txt, or .rtf) and they could say, "see, we don't lock you in".
Lock-in doesn't have to be absolute to be lock-in. Otherwise, all MS would have to do is support *one* other format (like
This plug-in actually is an attempt to break the lock-in, and I really hope it helps, but the fact that the plug-in is necessary *proves* that there is lock-in, not the other way round.
At this rate, Debian *Sid* will go stable first.
However, go and look in your mouth - see the canines there?
Yeah, they are so useful when biting into prey!
Although it's clear humans are omnivores, you really picked a silly example to use for calling the poster stupid. My finger nails make better 'claws' than my canines make, well, canines.
People will still want Mac apps. Want equals demand. Demand equals ports.
End-of-story
(I really hate it when people post things like "end-of-story" or "period", etc, but this really is a fundamentally true thing)
The Mac user base is many times larger than OS/2's ever was. I wouldn't be surprised if the current Intel Mac user base exceeds that of the maximum consumer install base of OS/2. OS X is well established, as is its third-party commercial app market.
You'd never see another game port
*Only* if the games played well enough under whatever emulation/api-support is available. If that's the case, who cares? Games use custom GUIs, and integration with system services like printing and file dialogs isn't all that important. Even in that case, there will always be native Mac ports of Windows games, because some games are designed to be easily ported (Blizzard and Id games come to mind).
If Windows games don't run well under OS X, they will still be ported.
There are three categories of Windows-only apps:
Category 1 is pure gravy for OS X users under any sort of built-in Windows support. Some apps under category 2 will have their ports delayed (CAD apps, for example). In this case, Mac users get the app sooner, and if the number of Mac users of the app become significant, the developer may decide a native port is worthwhile. Category 3 apps won't go Windows-only if the Mac version is selling well.
But this is just missing the forest for the trees. In the end, Mac users will prefer native Mac apps. That equates to demand, and that demand will show up as native apps. That's exactly how it works today, and there is no shortage of Mac apps. The only difference with native Windows support will be that Mac users will have access to Windows apps, and Windows-only developers will be able to sell to some Mac users without porting their app.
While this probably will mean a delay in some small number of ports, it does not mean, at all, a decrease in the actual number of Mac apps. The comparison with OS/2 is strained to the extreme. OS/2's problem is it had very few commercial apps. The Mac does not have that problem now, and it will not have that problem as a result of built-in Windows support.
And even with your statement that videogames don't produce good art.
I didn't state that. I said most games aren't very good artwork.
There are for me, as well, a few games that are up there with a good symphony or painting. They are rare, but definitely exist.
Some videogames obviously have very few elements of art.
That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying that the art that is in your average game isn't all that great. Not in the Beethoven's 9th sense. They do, usually, reach the TV and print advertisement level of artistry. They look good, perhaps even impressive. They do their job. And they may even be quite clever or well-styled. But they don't usually transcend into the realm of great art. There are (fortunately) notable exceptions.
It's my opinion that everything that people deliberately make has the potential of being a piece of art. Games are no exception.
I just don't get it. Because your average game doesn't tackle the human condition the way a great novel does, games aren't art? By his standards, most movies aren't art, either.
Games are art. Odds are, if there's a serious discussion about whether something is art or not, it's art. It might not be some sort of highbrow art, or pure art, or even particularly good art, but it's art nonetheless.
Most games aren't very good artwork. Even your average "good" game isn't all that great art-wise--perhaps on par with advertising art.
This reminds me of the heated debates over whether rap was music or not. Now it's fully accepted as a form of music. I think the problem is that rap was a new form of music and there were people who couldn't grasp the idea that the current state of music is not to be taken as the totality of what can be music. The same here with art. Video games have expanded the categories of art. Now art is what art was before games, plus games. Just like music is now what music was before rap, plus rap.
Now, if he were to argue that, in the context of art, video games aren't particularly great (although a few are quite good), he'd have a better point. Just like rap isn't really, compared to other forms of music, all that great artfully speaking, even if it is highly entertaining.
Why then is the battery life in the MacBooks so miserly?
Your question doesn't logically follow. I've highlighted the important part.
If you're comparing it to the 15" PowerBook, the MacBook Pro has a brighter screen, is thinner (which might have resulted in a smaller battery, although I'm not certain), is around 4x faster (which is already faster, at the beginning of its roadmap, than the G4 is, which is currently at the end of (in some ways, beyond) its roadmap as a desktop cpu).
Assuming AMD can tune Turion64s to be more power friendly, they'll be able to best Intel's fancy new Core Duo. If they can't, then Intel may be the best game in town for the first time in a decade (assuming they price competitively).
Wait a minute. If AMD can't do something it isn't currently doing, then Intel will have the better chip? Doesn't that mean that, right now, Intel has the better chip?
I make no claims about the CoreDuo being the world's best x86 chip, I'm just following your logic.
I also take exception to your "first time in a decade" quip. It's wrong in two ways. Ever since AMD first overtook Intel in overall quality (price/performance/power), the lead has shifted back-and-forth (with, recently, AMD holding the lead for most of the time). But beyond that, in '96, AMD did not have the best chips on the high-end. They were quite competitive (but not clearly superior) price-wise on the low-to-mid-end, though. It wasn't until a few years later that AMD really began to take a definitive lead over Intel.
Are you sure? I'm not sure there's ever been a Windows PC that hasn't bought the farm. Frequently. Sometimes spectacularly.