> Actually, I think that more than a few do, but the current programming tools are actually more or less for those who do it for a living.
This is it right here. As systems have gotten more complex, so have the APIs and languages. Things that used to be relatively simple to do even in assembler are far more complicated to the point of driving way all but the most stubborn.
Programming doesn't have to be purely the domain of the specialist.
Stuff like Hypercard is all about lowering barriers and allowing users to do for themselves.
Sometimes what you want is not wrapped up in a nice bow.
If that is really the case then you don't need some platform tyrant because "The Invisible Hand" will do that work for you.
They tyrant is simply unnecessary.
In truth, a more accessible approach to programming harms no one. It does not really alter the "aesthetic" and it doesn't "bother" the end users that ignore it anyways.
The scarier interfaces in MacOS are a great demonstration of this.
"Ordinary" people take enough photos and video and have enough MP3 files and games that your typically sized SSD just doesn't cut it. This isn't a "geek thing". Its' a "using your PC for anything but a dumb terminal" thing.
Just Windows 7 by itself will eat up a good chunk of a reasonably priced SSD drive.
You don't need to be a video pack rat to blow through the storage you get on current SSD drives.
Amazon DRM is everywhere because they support their app on multiple platforms. Music DRM was alway limited to the single vendor that supported it (mainly Apple). The same is true of other Apple formats including books.
Amazon DRM may suck, but it sucks less than others.
DRM is not a problem with a hard drive. In fact, that's yet another advantage that a hard drive has over other solutions that try to retain some sort of connection to the original media.
With a hard drive, you strip the DRM once and never worry about it again. It never bothers you or gets in your way again.
A hard drive nicely avoids all of the pitfalls of an obscure bit of speciality hardware including the quality of bundled software and the limited number of available physical slots.
$150 buys a lot of hard drive capacity even with todays post-flood prices.
Plus a smaller disk won't waste as much as your total storage capacity.
That's not even getting into the potential of transcoding.
You will need as many as 10 of these things to replicate what you can do with a single disk.
>> These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*. >> > >Wouldn't a software pirate have said the same exact thing, even 20 years ago?
A software pirate would have been right then too.
Some of us did that very thing: downloading pirated copies of games we already owned to avoid the intrusive copy protection.
Ubuntu "just worked" and was able to fully exploit all of the hardware on the first laptop I ever installed it on. It was a random bit of hardware that just happened to be available. I did not choose it and I don't think it was bought with Linux compatability in mind.
THAT is when I started using Ubuntu and that was about 5 years ago.
OTOH, sorting out drivers on a fresh copy of Windows can be quite a chore.
Quite simply YMMV and using monpolyware is no gaurantee.
Even Win7 still manages to screw up simple things.
> Untrained people manage their own Windows installations fairly easily
That's really funny.
In reality, untrained people can't fend for themselves a all. This is despite of all of the propaganda about Windows being "easy" or "manageable". Meanwhile, they get their machines infected and are generally burdensome for those of us that have to play the roll of unpaid tech support.
Your options are a lot of manual work, some scripting, or a solution that's along the lines of "if you have to ask the price, then you can't afford it".
The markup on their gear is more like 400% rather than 25%.
Products in this area tend to run afoul of the DMCA the MPAA or both. Even companies that try keep content locked away still get smacked down (Real).
Some stuff I might watch over again at varying levels of frequency depending on the level of interest. If it's all in one big giant iPod, then it's always at my fingertips whenever the mood strikes.
This could be today, tomorrow, next year, or 5 years from now. It doesn't really matter.
Once the "horrendous bother" of ripping something has occured, that's the last I have to think about it.
If the disc isn't defective, AnyDVD will handle it.
I have ripped a lot of stuff. If the disc is a problem, then it's likely defective rather than being encoded with some special extra attempt at copy protection. Movies are far more likely to have extra special copy protection on them.
Typically, there is a single bit of content per title on a DVD.
One title might be the main feature or all of the episodes looped together. The rest may be different things including special features or individual episodes.
Once you have a list of the titles, it's pretty easy to guess what is what and automatically pull the appropriate bits off.
You still have to sort out that "track 3 is episode 7 of season 6" and whatnot. THAT is the part where a CDDB equivalent is needed.
RAID can be done in software. So it doesn't have to be inherently expensive. You aren't trying to be Pixar. You're just (maybe) trying to make multiple disks look like one disk.
The disks rip themselves. It's not like you've got to sit there and ferry the bits across the SATA cable. All you have to do is wait for it to finish. If you have multiple disks, just check your PC every once and awhile.
The same goes for transcoding. You start it. It handles itself until it is finished. You are not scribbling numbers by hand on paper or other similar nonsense.
It takes 5 minutes to type in the titles for an entire season of something so names can be properly sorted out. That is the extent of the "manual futzing time".
The rest is just letting the computer do what it's supposed to do: automate things and crunch numbers.
It's nice to have tons of uncut commercial free stuff at your fingertips. It's cheaper than iTunes, more complete than Netflix, and potentially cheaper than cable in the long run.
It's highly proprietary. You can't just use any playback client. You must use THEIR playback client. The same goes for jukeboxes and disk packs for their RAID arrays.
What you rip isn't portable. It can't be taken "out of the system".
You can't load your rips onto your phone or tablet.
Anything that Handbrake can't handle, AnyDVD will.
There are really very few DVDs that you will need to use AnyDVD for. There have been a few failed attempts at extra copy protection on DVDs. However, for the most part it's mainly Disney disks that will give you trouble.
The vast majority of DVDs won't give you trouble.
However, since you're going to need AnyDVD for BluRays anyways you've got that as a backup option.
+...yeah. It's easier to pirate than use modern video media to it's full potential.
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> Actually, I think that more than a few do, but the current programming tools are actually more or less for those who do it for a living.
This is it right here. As systems have gotten more complex, so have the APIs and languages. Things that used to be relatively simple to do even in assembler are far more complicated to the point of driving way all but the most stubborn.
Programming doesn't have to be purely the domain of the specialist.
Stuff like Hypercard is all about lowering barriers and allowing users to do for themselves.
Sometimes what you want is not wrapped up in a nice bow.
If that is really the case then you don't need some platform tyrant because "The Invisible Hand" will do that work for you.
They tyrant is simply unnecessary.
In truth, a more accessible approach to programming harms no one. It does not really alter the "aesthetic" and it doesn't "bother" the end users that ignore it anyways.
The scarier interfaces in MacOS are a great demonstration of this.
Whether or not this is true, I don't think this will be helped by taking an even smaller group of people and then propagating that bias.
I am not sure that "permission inheritance" is patent worthy either but that's an entirely different argument.
"Ordinary" people take enough photos and video and have enough MP3 files and games that your typically sized SSD just doesn't cut it. This isn't a "geek thing". Its' a "using your PC for anything but a dumb terminal" thing.
Just Windows 7 by itself will eat up a good chunk of a reasonably priced SSD drive.
You don't need to be a video pack rat to blow through the storage you get on current SSD drives.
The OP had it exactly backwards.
Amazon DRM is everywhere because they support their app on multiple platforms. Music DRM was alway limited to the single vendor that supported it (mainly Apple). The same is true of other Apple formats including books.
Amazon DRM may suck, but it sucks less than others.
DRM is not a problem with a hard drive. In fact, that's yet another advantage that a hard drive has over other solutions that try to retain some sort of connection to the original media.
With a hard drive, you strip the DRM once and never worry about it again. It never bothers you or gets in your way again.
Even beats iTunes in this respect.
MakeMKV doesn't leave you with a decrypted copy of the original.
A hard drive nicely avoids all of the pitfalls of an obscure bit of speciality hardware including the quality of bundled software and the limited number of available physical slots.
$150 buys a lot of hard drive capacity even with todays post-flood prices.
Plus a smaller disk won't waste as much as your total storage capacity.
That's not even getting into the potential of transcoding.
You will need as many as 10 of these things to replicate what you can do with a single disk.
>> These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.
>>
>
>Wouldn't a software pirate have said the same exact thing, even 20 years ago?
A software pirate would have been right then too.
Some of us did that very thing: downloading pirated copies of games we already owned to avoid the intrusive copy protection.
Ubuntu "just worked" and was able to fully exploit all of the hardware on the first laptop I ever installed it on. It was a random bit of hardware that just happened to be available. I did not choose it and I don't think it was bought with Linux compatability in mind.
THAT is when I started using Ubuntu and that was about 5 years ago.
OTOH, sorting out drivers on a fresh copy of Windows can be quite a chore.
Quite simply YMMV and using monpolyware is no gaurantee.
Even Win7 still manages to screw up simple things.
You must be still clinging onto XP.
You are in for a shock and a half one of these days when you finally move up to Vista or Windows 7.
> Untrained people manage their own Windows installations fairly easily
That's really funny.
In reality, untrained people can't fend for themselves a all. This is despite of all of the propaganda about Windows being "easy" or "manageable". Meanwhile, they get their machines infected and are generally burdensome for those of us that have to play the roll of unpaid tech support.
Neither is the most expensive payware stuff.
At least with the Libre stuff, I don't have to needlessly waste money and I can be as much in control of things as I want to be.
I don't care about "fair".
I am the customer and if I am paying $50,000 for the thing then I want it to be able to do anything and everything.
I should only ever have to touch an optical disk once. It should integrate with everything else including my mobile devices.
Otherwise, I am far better off in the long run with "cobble-ware".
> Also known as the guy that makes twice as much as you.
I wouldn't be too certain of that really.
Been there. Done that. Was ribbed about my suit for months.
The suit was not the problem.
Your options are a lot of manual work, some scripting, or a solution that's along the lines of "if you have to ask the price, then you can't afford it".
The markup on their gear is more like 400% rather than 25%.
Products in this area tend to run afoul of the DMCA the MPAA or both. Even companies that try keep content locked away still get smacked down (Real).
Some stuff I might watch over again at varying levels of frequency depending on the level of interest. If it's all in one big giant iPod, then it's always at my fingertips whenever the mood strikes.
This could be today, tomorrow, next year, or 5 years from now. It doesn't really matter.
Once the "horrendous bother" of ripping something has occured, that's the last I have to think about it.
It's rather like music CDs really.
If the disc isn't defective, AnyDVD will handle it.
I have ripped a lot of stuff. If the disc is a problem, then it's likely defective rather than being encoded with some special extra attempt at copy protection. Movies are far more likely to have extra special copy protection on them.
Typically, there is a single bit of content per title on a DVD.
One title might be the main feature or all of the episodes looped together. The rest may be different things including special features or individual episodes.
Once you have a list of the titles, it's pretty easy to guess what is what and automatically pull the appropriate bits off.
You still have to sort out that "track 3 is episode 7 of season 6" and whatnot. THAT is the part where a CDDB equivalent is needed.
RAID can be done in software. So it doesn't have to be inherently expensive. You aren't trying to be Pixar. You're just (maybe) trying to make multiple disks look like one disk.
The disks rip themselves. It's not like you've got to sit there and ferry the bits across the SATA cable. All you have to do is wait for it to finish. If you have multiple disks, just check your PC every once and awhile.
The same goes for transcoding. You start it. It handles itself until it is finished. You are not scribbling numbers by hand on paper or other similar nonsense.
It takes 5 minutes to type in the titles for an entire season of something so names can be properly sorted out. That is the extent of the "manual futzing time".
The rest is just letting the computer do what it's supposed to do: automate things and crunch numbers.
It's nice to have tons of uncut commercial free stuff at your fingertips. It's cheaper than iTunes, more complete than Netflix, and potentially cheaper than cable in the long run.
It costs more than any other available option.
It's highly proprietary. You can't just use any playback client. You must use THEIR playback client. The same goes for jukeboxes and disk packs for their RAID arrays.
What you rip isn't portable. It can't be taken "out of the system".
You can't load your rips onto your phone or tablet.
Anything that Handbrake can't handle, AnyDVD will.
There are really very few DVDs that you will need to use AnyDVD for. There have been a few failed attempts at extra copy protection on DVDs. However, for the most part it's mainly Disney disks that will give you trouble.
The vast majority of DVDs won't give you trouble.
However, since you're going to need AnyDVD for BluRays anyways you've got that as a backup option.
+...yeah. It's easier to pirate than use modern video media to it's full potential.
I'm glad more 18th century Bostonians didn't think like you.