Don't forget some of the other unique uses of blocks, that make them very, very powerful.
They can be used in unique ways that are pretty darn useful. For instance, you can use them to create configuration blocks for objects, without cluttering the constructor.
myServer = Server.new( socket, something ) {
set_sercurity_mode 2
set_logfile_path "/var/logs/speciallogs/"
}/ECO
Yeah, you're absolutely right that there is just so much tech to know. Quite frankly, what you listed there is just a small part of what you need to know. We live in an industry where the non-industry folk don't realize the complexity of any given project (often) and expect you can "just make the computer do it."
I realized there was just so much tech that I'd never know it all without experience and motivation, things that are hard to artificially produce, as you're finding out. Unless you're a specialist that neglects many other fields to concentrate on one, there is only one solution I can see.
Learn to learn quickly and efficiently.
Maybe that seems to basic... but it's a lot harder than it sounds. You can focus on tech that is immediately useful or fun to you so long as you can learn new tech quickly. A mobile person who can learn is a better resource for a company than a specialist. He'll need less training, less supervision, and can be used on more project.
So what does it entail? Depends. You need to practice learning. One of the most important things is to have a very strong grasp of the basics and of theory. This way when you come across a fweird technology or a new language you know what to look for and how to interpret what you find. Understand math and theory so that you can interpret what an odd library does without having to learn more math every time. Knowing where to get info is important too. This can be as simple as a book, web bookmark or an experience friend in that subject, or as complex as a developer's support license. Depends on the tech and the cost.
Also, begin to customize your computing environment to make you more efficient. If any of these changes can be easily moved (special keyboard, config files, etc...) then make sure you can do so. You can do more work in less time this way, even if there may be an initial investment time for it.
Once you can learn quickly and work efficiently, then you'll find you will end up having less trouble getting the same amount of work done.
Err, if you're trying to argue that CD's are just as conveniant as using iTunes and iTMS, then you're just plainly misinformed or you find extra steps, travelling to a record store or ordering online and waiting several days (and paying more) for your music to be "conveniant."
So what if it's new and shiny. It is new. It is kinda shiny, now that you mention it. Does that make it any less conveniant? No. Does that somehow make it more expensive? Nope. It's still cheaper for me to get 2 songs off a CD that I actually like than pay for the whole thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product being conveniant and practical and at the same time looking good.
And yes, you are part of a business model. You buy stuff. By definition, you are. You're part of many of them. You go to the grocery store right? Do you realize how carefully researched many sales, products, packaging styles are? If not, you need to take a look around and wise up a little.
I mean, you BUY stuff from them and that might at some point entitle them to have the right to snoop into your life? Besides, these measures often become very technologically restrictive (try getting your music to play under free OS's or with free software).
I think it's funny we basically agree, but you're a pessimist and I'm an optimist about it.:) I might note that the reason that we see these DRM schemes being secretive is because a DRM scheme is exceedingly hard to do, from a cryptographically secure standpoint. If someone made a public DRM algorithm that really worked well, then I'm sure you'd see big companies adopt it. At best, all their measures are stopgap right now, dependent almost totally on secrecy. This is not the way it ought to be.
Maybe one day when we all have digital identities, like a public-key/private-key as ubiquitous as the American Social Security number, then we can lock something to "you" and sharing the music would require you to give away your public identity itself.
But that's the cryptographer in me thinking of a mathematically cool but realistically kinda scary society.:)
Can anyone find it reasonable, or even conceivable, that a company can mandate how and where you use something you purchase from them?
Err, you can't redistribute copyrighted works without permission? That's a perfectly reasonable, sane, and one might even argue moral example. You asked for it.
Simply put, the days of restriction-free media are going away. Just as the landscape that media distributors face is changing, so is the landscape that we consumers must accept. It may be that now that it's possible AND feasible to make sure only purchasers of copyrighted material can view it, that may be the way it becomes.
You're right that we vote with our dollars, and that the least restrictive solutions will tend to win. Which is why I am using iTMS:)
Allegedly you are being sold a license for the content.. not (technically) the actual content. Locking a file to an owner implies you have purchased the file (cd, dvd whatever). Again if there were the case then you could use that license anywhere, and if the media was lost or damaged a replacement would be provided at less than full license cost. As it is allegedly the license that is being 'sold' I used 'sold' because if you actually owned it they couldn't take it away from you.
Err, they sold a license to you, for use in the US. It's not really tied to any one machine or computer, but to one billing address. Thus, the problem comes into play. I think it's still better than authorizing to one specific machine or something like that.
And with the advent of combo discs, part burnable part pressed, you will soon be forced to authorize your dvd purchases it will be tied to your player,, you wont be able to sell it, loan it, copy it, or give it away. Its also very possible that a dvd player could sense the number of people watching (IR sensor) and not allow it to play if everyone hasn't paid their license.
I suggest you run to the pantry and get out your spare tinfoil hat to keep the (MP|RI)AA mind rays emenating from your new DVD player from convincing you that your TiVO is right, and you really are gay.
Honestly man, when things become so much of a hassle that even average consumers won't do it (like this one-player-only policy) then it'll change. Not even the **AA's can totally ignore public opinion. You're right though, they will try to make some pretty shoddy choices, we just need to be on the watch for them.
I just don't think this is really an example of one. It's probably more of an oversight than a deliberate attempt.
As a consumer, I don't take part in business models. I simply buy stuff that appeals to me.
Which is taking part in a business model. Sorry, the minute you start buying stuff, you're part of the system. "What you like" isn't just your personal preference. People devote their whole lives to statistically figuring "what you like" and marketing to that.
Its convenient. Sound is mediocre. I can't listen to it readily in my car unless I change formats. And I can't sell it if I get tired of it. Cost is roughly the same (in the US) if you consider a full CD minus the packaging.
Please spare us the audiophile's desperate plea for ridiculously high bitrates. MP4's audio is well received, the sound quality has been nothing but excellent so far in my purchases. Most cars don't have a way to play compressed digital music. If you're one of the rare people with a car-mp3 player, you're in the minority. Thus the format-change is pretty much industry standard.
So where's my benefit? That I can buy singles? Singles were plentiful up until 10 years ago. So the record companies bring back the single and you're spooging over yourself? Please. Its a worse deal for the consumer. The service has all the earmarks of something for 20-somethings with too much debt and too little common sense.
The benefit is extreme ease, reliable and flexible searching and integration with a very good and widely deployed piece of software. Singles are a BETTER deal than buying an album if you only buy a song or two, and iTMS is very flexible about how that works. We're, as you coloquially put it, "spooging ourselves", because the service selection is pretty good, the DRM is the most resonable proposed to date and the integration with what we already use to handle our media is excellent. Sounds good to me.
Your license should move with you if you paid for it. If they want to take it away because you move then you should get a refund.
I most wholeheartedly agree. Honestly, I think this is probably a bug, not an explicit decision. So long as the music was bought in the US, authorization should be allowed even in foreign countries even with foreign addresses, so long as the billing address is in the US.
This has all the same arguments as the dvd regioning crap. If you more to europe, and you already have purchased a license why doesn't the MPAA replace your media for a region 2 one? Its the *LICENSE* that is the important part right?
I really don't think this is the same issue. The reason DVD's have region coding is (ostensibly) because the DVD for a movie may come out in the US before even a theatrical release in a foreign market. Australia is a great example for this. If you could buy the widescreen, special edition DVD of the movie instead of going to the theatrical release in your country, you might be less tempted to go to the theater.
the **AA is lying to you, but you knew that. its about control of how you consume. You must consume by their will)
As I'm rapidly becoming fond of saying in this thread, you have a chance to change it. Don't get to worried about the **AA's reflexive gestures as they begin this adoption. Just smile, calmly and efficaciously tell them "No. That is not the way consumers will allow it." Do try to remember that we need to be reasonable though. The idea of locking a media file to an owner who paid for it isn't an intrinsically evil concept, and shouldn't be treated as such.
What bothers me is that this person paid for and downloaded music from Apple.
Please refer to my other post. I think that just as companies need to update their thinking, we as consumers may need to realize that "bought and paid for" isn't what it used to be. If you don't like the way it's shaping up, you're in luck! We're all at a perfect time to shape it. Just don't be too surprised if we see some hiccups along the way.
I can accept, and it makes a lot of sense, not to allow songs to be delivered to users outside of the US for various legal reasons. It would also cut down on cc fraud by not allowing US accounts to download music outside of the US. I can also accept not allowing new accounts to be created if the user is outside the US. But to disable purchased music, preventing the purchaser the ability to listen to it?
Maybe it's lame to say, but I think this is a bug on Apple's part. An existing account should be able to authorize even outside the US as long as the account owner's address is in the US. The poor fellow though probably needs to call tech support and ask what the heck he should do. With all the stink being made in apple.slashdot and its 5-minute behind gimpy cousin, MacSlash, there is no doubt that Apple is aware of the consumer outrage about this. As I've said, Apple is not a company that can afford to piss consumers off right now, and they're acting in a way that is consistant with that.
And here I've been planning to get a nice new shiny Mac, OS-X, and iPod (would have been my first Mac). I will definitely be watching this and consider the outcome here before I make any purchase. I'll probably just stick to cheaper non-Apple hardware and Windoze when necessary and Linux the rest of the time.
Being a non-apologetic and vocal linux-to-osx switcher, I'd like to say... Don'tlet this be your only criterion for making this decision. Above and beyond the complex legal dance that Apple has to dance when working with the RIAA, Apple has been a reasonably honest and straightforward company in the past decade or so. People will surely point out "horrible" things that Apple did since 1993 after I say this. My response is, "In the end, Apple is a corperation. I think they have a little bit more consideration than most, but don't forget they still have a bottom line. Expecting them to be otherwise because of their good PR and marketing is naieve on you part.
Good luck if you do decide to switch, and if you need any help there are a gaggle of people here and on other mac communities (myself included) that'll help ease the switch should you need it.
Everyone talks about how the Music Industry's business model is outdated and needs to be changed to reflect the modern technology which exists around us. I think most slashdot readers would agree that classic music licensing schemes and sales models are rapidly becoming outdated.
By the same token, then, don't we need to update our expectations and buying models, as consumers? We can't insist on totally new business models without being willing to adapt to them ourselves.
It seems strange to me that everyone is so rabidly against DRM, when quite frankly anyone thinking about it comes to the conclusion that without it, some pretty ridiculous situations can result. Just because people do not, right now, ruin a band by trading its songs on services does not mean at some future point a service will become so ubiquitous and easy that it couldn't happen. Everyone forgets that the band AND the distributor need to make money.
Not to say I agree with all DRM. Oftentimes it seems like people go too far to the restrictive edge, "You can only use your music with headphones while a RIAA exec standing over you with a shotgun wards people off." I find Apple's DRM to be very reasonable, and it's also the kind of DRM that, should Apple finally kick the bucket, could be extended by another solution, even if the authorization service changes.
The poor fellow who's message is the subject of this article changed his home address to a foreign address. iTunes has no other way to tell if you're in a foreign country. I'm surprised it didn't let him authorize, but I am not surprised that it used that data to exclude him from using the iTMS. I'm sure that the situation will be rectified shortly. Apple can't afford to rampantly piss people off, and if you look at their decisions over the last 3 years you'll see in general their model has been consistant with that.
So please, Anonymous friend, instead of ceaslessly complaining about the end of an era, why not try and help shape the face of these new business models. We're at an amazing point as our society slowly beings to adopt digital media and computing on a mass scale. We've got a responsibility to make sure things turn out in a way that's equitable to everyone.
"Using the service" means trying to use the iTunes store. It doesn't mean listening to your music outside of the US. Right now, Apple only has the legal end worked out while you're in the US. It makes sense that they don't want a repeat of the iTunes "sharing" fiasco. What they are saying here is:
IF you attempt to use the service from outside of where they can legally sell you the music, then they MIGHT be able to delete the files you obtained illegally after you download them. WHEN at some later date your country is serviced by iTMS then you can now use the service from that country.
ITunes keeps your authorization offline, and it's a seperate file that you can backup and keep (so you'll be able to play your music even if apple's serves go down). So listening to your music abroad definitely doesn't count as infringement, since no service interaction is required.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. These "tools to detect" are probably somehow worked into iTunes, so it's not like Apple somehow is sneaking spyware into your system. Relax folks. iTMS isn't suddenly evil or anything. I really doubt that even authorizing your laptop while abroad is illegal.
Sheesh, everyone in Linux clamoring that their OS can do User Switching too. It's like they're jealous or something.
C'mon now. It's plain to see that fast user switching is a better solution than just virtual consoles, or even multiple X servers. For one, security. I can safely transfer control to someone else without worry of them messing me up. This safety isn't necessarily from deliberate attempts to cause harm. I have a user account for people who don't know my computer, thus they have a nice little box they can check their email in. An accidental keypress can dump you back in the other environment.
Second, it fractures the metaphor. When you "log in" a GUI then you are identifying that machine as "you" for the duration of that session. Everything that computer does, it should do as "you." Fast User Switching is a clean extension of the metaphor to allow for multiple users at a time. The console and multiple X terminals is not.
For the people who just advocate using su or sudo to switch shells, that's fine. For advanced users, that's very possible and doable. Remember OSX has a pretty schwag terminal app built right in should power-users want it. But the average user doesn't understand it, doesn't want it, doesn't need it. However, they do need a way to switch users.
Why exactly would anyone choose to do this to EVA? There are so many more marketable and less plain old unappealing series out there. Why not Trigun? Why not Cowboy Bebop? At least those shows really were deep, as opposed to the pseudo-surrealistic claptrap that was EVA.
The effects to really do EVA in a way that isn't going to look ridiculous are years off. I cant see how or why they chose this series.
Having used both NeXT and OSX machines recently, I think this "dumbed down" statement is funny considering how much more feature-rich OSX is compared to NeXT.
I guess it's true you just can't please some people.
Actually there is a fair amount of modding going around in the Apple world. It just seldom gets mentioned. The clamshell iBook was particularly popular for very beautiful custom paint jobs, and the quicksilver G4's have had people play with them quite a bit as well.
I guess I do kinda miss the days of spraypainting my PC to give it a neat color then hand-painting the faceplates of the CDROM and whatnot. Maybe just for masochistic reasons though....
I see a lot of people here confused on what Rendezvous really is.
Rendezvous is: A) A way for machines coming onto a network to automatically obtain an IP. B) A way for machines to browse services that applications are making public on these machines in a unform, domain-qualified way (mDNS, similar to DNS).
Rendezvous is not: A) A magic elixir that will change the way we do networking on a grand scale. Rendezvous is ONLY for _one_ subnet. While any standard tcp/ip briding stuff will work, rendezvous will only play inside that subnet. However, within that subnet there is a lot of automation. B) A security hole. Rendezvous doesn't share things, it merely allows you to DISCOVER if anyone is sharing them. This doesn't mean a script kid is going to hack you. It merely means they know if you are running services, which they could have found out allready. Further, since it's only on the local network, a large variety of much more dangerous attacks already exist (TCP spoof, ARP attacks) C) A project Apple stole/A project Apple trumped up. A lot of people have been working on zeroconf for quite some time now, and Apple managed to get a few people in because they wanted something like Zeroconf. Apple has a working implementation of Zeroconf called rendezvous, but they do not have a lock on the protocol and the code is open for download and perusal.
I hope this helps people (who find this post admist the noise) who don't know what to believe.
You can find all this out yourself at http://www.zeroconf.org
Yeah, ya think. But on average it'll only take a few tries to actually get a new address from even a saturated network. Again the *snicker* birthday paradox, but this time it works for you.
It takes only the time of an ARP request to discard an address that is already taken, so it shouldn't be a big problem.
You'd be surprised how well this actually scales. That is one of the whole points. Rendezvous is a replacement to AppleTalk, and as such one of the major goals is not to saturate the network like other more chatty protocols.
For instance, each host implements an aggressive caching scheme so if one host asks for data, other hosts can learn from its request. There is also an exponentially rising delay between each request, the assumption being a host that has been around a long time will continue to be around a long time. Further, Rendezvous requests are not just like broadcast pings. They have a very well defined (and specific) domain standard in multicast DNS. You could ask only for http servers running over TCP, or only iPhoto sharing servers. This cuts down on the traffic.
Of course, the other problem is the dynamic IP address assignment. It chooses an IP out of a/16 subnet. In short, in order for there to be a high probability of collision there need to be more than 32768 hosts, and even then it'll converge quickly. The Zeroconf spec gives upper bounds on how many hosts should be in a zeroconf network.
The whole idea of this system is to allow small isolated subnets (like a wireless zone) to auto-configure. After the first 20,000 devices, sure you might see some degredation in performance. Of course, imagine an admintaking care of a 20,000 device subnet. They end up like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Christopher Lloyd. If you need more subnets then you link them via a configured host. A proxy-gateway with rendezvous, forwarding only things that matter for this subnet, would be a pretty cool app too.
Zeroconf, especially in the home or small office setting, is really, really useful.
I mean, if the licenses were to the Bluelight.com entity, then just reselling them shouldn't be a violation of the agreement, should it? On the other hand, if the licenses are marked as Kmart's, then it would be.
The idea of taking an OTP and turning it into a "many-time pad" is fundamentally flawed. You can't do it. OTP is essentially XOR encryption. XOR encryption itself is very weak with a key that repeats. Of course you can perform various OTP-permutations, maybe a alphabetic shift or numeric addition or somethiong. However at it's core it can be viewed as a binary operation in which it is perfectly random which bit will come next. Thus it's impossible to show any one result for a decryption is valid.
The idea of permuting the pad, or changing it, or anything in a way that's reproducible starts to ruin this. There are lots of things people have tried, but they all end up making the system imperfect, without really removing any of the weaknesses of it.
Of course, if you want an easy way to keep getting new OTP's of a fixed length, just use the newly encrypted message as your new OTP. As long as the original vector remains secret, the new OTP is just as secure (since the 0/1 randomness is preserved).
Not that this is especially usefull but.. neither is a OTP.
I'm surprised to hear people complain at all about Cocoa, since it's probably the best C-derivative development environment currently in existance. You list some problems, namely:
Resource Management
Err, release-retain-autorelease is the best implementation of reference counting you can find that will not break with existant C libraries and not place very specialized rules on how you can handle pointers and casting.
Error Handling
Excuse me? Cocoa exceptions are just as good as Java exceptions. Way better than C++ exceptions.
Type Safety
This is more of an ideological argument... people used to C++ seem mystified that it is not an error in Objective C to call a method on an object when that method does not exist! In fact, some people deliberatly do this, making that object handle failed messages in a specail way. It's a really flexible system. The only disadvantage is you may not get all your errors at compile-time (although if you write your code the way apple suggests you will get most of them).
Cocoa is the best thing since sliced bread for programmers that want real OO projects with real OO flexibility but still need to play nice with C libraries and have some form of garbage collection. I will say, with quite a bit of assurance, that there is no API better suited to rapid, scalable application development than cocoa.
As for your many other points, hopefully they will be discarded as OS 9 sloughs off like so much discarded cocoon. Aqua is a hefty player in the window-manager world, but that's because it does more than any other window manager. It makes Enlightenment look like a kid's toy. It makes WinXP's explorer look like vomit. 10.2 is quite speedy, all but 2 operations on QuartzGL are faster than I can comprehend. The slow ones (namely resize on apps that need to redraw their whole view based on window size) and scrolling (which is quite snappy but depending on the app isn't perfectly slickly smooth) are the only operations to show any signs of the massive amount of work QGL goes through to make your desktop look pleasant and handle lighting fast.
So please, don't criticize cocoa until you play with it for some time. The API s a little tough to learn at first (mostly because of the methodology behind its design being so alien to C++ coders) but rapidly makes more sense than any other library out there.
Emacs and VI are quite powerful, both offer a rich variety of features. However, while they are suitable for IDE's they are not really ideal in this area without a lot of customization, tinkering, knoweldge of eLisp, and time.
Time isn't cheap. Time is expensive and precious. It's the one resource you or I can't replenish. I'd rather use an expensive IDE that saves me time rather than a potentially better editor that requires weeks to learn (yes, I already know them both quite well, but that's because I've used them for about 4 years now).
This is the reason I use Apple's IDE. It's easy to set up, it's very professional, has a nice debugging feature and class browser, and gives you lots of useful feedback. Sure, I can't program an MP3 encoder in LISP and have it run from my text editor, and sure, I might have to use the mouse periodically with it. So what? It saves time compared to the slow process of getting emacs set up just the way I like it or setting up a series of scripts to automate tasks I'd run from VI.
Interoperability isn't really an excuse. Source is saved as ascii text. The only area you could possibly have trouble is line breaks. They're all interoperable.
In a real dev environment, time saving dev tools such as an IDE are essential.
Maybe that's why the MS libs are so abysmally annoying. I had no idea we had Taligent to thank for the evils that have lead to MFC.
Taligent's general philosophy of OO design was not really all that great. It worked and it was very OO, but (maybe just because of language limitations) it had a very static feel (much like MFC coding does).
I'm not sure how many people here actually got to see the Taligent way of doing things. Several developers who saw it didn't like it very much, in fact they thought it was not a very successful approach. NeXT's OPENSTEP library was a much more powerful, flexible approach to app design (which has stood the test of time, as opposed to Taligent that died.
Of course, don't take my word for it. Many other prominent mac people express dislike towards Taligent's way of doing things.
We lucked out, fellow mac developers. OpenSTEP is our home now.:)
Every penny's worth? Again, read. Macs are worth almost every penny. There are fewer "hidden" costs in a mac environmnet. As JWZ so rightly said, Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Likewise, Windows has a lot of setup pain lurking around it. OS X saves you time by just working, period.
OS X seldom crashes, and only from things that really should make machines crash. For instance, I had a bad powersupply on some USB speakers that began to "flutter" in and out. That caused the 10.1 USB drivers to die. The only other OS crash I've had I caused on purpose.
The Graphic Designers you speak of aren't using OS X. They can do so as well. PS7 is a fabulous product on OS X. It's fast, stable and very useable.
The idea that your AMD is worth every penny depends on your measure of computer value. Trust me, I do some pretty heavy computational work and my dual 800 really moves me through it quickly (dual 800's run for about $1400 used now, by the way). I just count my computer's value in units other than clock speed, like how much time it saves me.
Slashdot Mirror
They can be used in unique ways that are pretty darn useful. For instance, you can use them to create configuration blocks for objects, without cluttering the constructor. myServer = Server.new( socket, something ) { set_sercurity_mode 2 set_logfile_path "/var/logs/speciallogs/" } /ECO
I realized there was just so much tech that I'd never know it all without experience and motivation, things that are hard to artificially produce, as you're finding out. Unless you're a specialist that neglects many other fields to concentrate on one, there is only one solution I can see.
Learn to learn quickly and efficiently.
Maybe that seems to basic... but it's a lot harder than it sounds. You can focus on tech that is immediately useful or fun to you so long as you can learn new tech quickly. A mobile person who can learn is a better resource for a company than a specialist. He'll need less training, less supervision, and can be used on more project.
So what does it entail? Depends. You need to practice learning. One of the most important things is to have a very strong grasp of the basics and of theory. This way when you come across a fweird technology or a new language you know what to look for and how to interpret what you find. Understand math and theory so that you can interpret what an odd library does without having to learn more math every time. Knowing where to get info is important too. This can be as simple as a book, web bookmark or an experience friend in that subject, or as complex as a developer's support license. Depends on the tech and the cost.
Also, begin to customize your computing environment to make you more efficient. If any of these changes can be easily moved (special keyboard, config files, etc...) then make sure you can do so. You can do more work in less time this way, even if there may be an initial investment time for it.
Once you can learn quickly and work efficiently, then you'll find you will end up having less trouble getting the same amount of work done.
Err, if you're trying to argue that CD's are just as conveniant as using iTunes and iTMS, then you're just plainly misinformed or you find extra steps, travelling to a record store or ordering online and waiting several days (and paying more) for your music to be "conveniant."
So what if it's new and shiny. It is new. It is kinda shiny, now that you mention it. Does that make it any less conveniant? No. Does that somehow make it more expensive? Nope. It's still cheaper for me to get 2 songs off a CD that I actually like than pay for the whole thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product being conveniant and practical and at the same time looking good.
And yes, you are part of a business model. You buy stuff. By definition, you are. You're part of many of them. You go to the grocery store right? Do you realize how carefully researched many sales, products, packaging styles are? If not, you need to take a look around and wise up a little.
Maybe one day when we all have digital identities, like a public-key/private-key as ubiquitous as the American Social Security number, then we can lock something to "you" and sharing the music would require you to give away your public identity itself. But that's the cryptographer in me thinking of a mathematically cool but realistically kinda scary society. :)
Simply put, the days of restriction-free media are going away. Just as the landscape that media distributors face is changing, so is the landscape that we consumers must accept. It may be that now that it's possible AND feasible to make sure only purchasers of copyrighted material can view it, that may be the way it becomes.
You're right that we vote with our dollars, and that the least restrictive solutions will tend to win. Which is why I am using iTMS :)
Honestly man, when things become so much of a hassle that even average consumers won't do it (like this one-player-only policy) then it'll change. Not even the **AA's can totally ignore public opinion. You're right though, they will try to make some pretty shoddy choices, we just need to be on the watch for them.
I just don't think this is really an example of one. It's probably more of an oversight than a deliberate attempt.
Which is taking part in a business model. Sorry, the minute you start buying stuff, you're part of the system. "What you like" isn't just your personal preference. People devote their whole lives to statistically figuring "what you like" and marketing to that.
Please spare us the audiophile's desperate plea for ridiculously high bitrates. MP4's audio is well received, the sound quality has been nothing but excellent so far in my purchases. Most cars don't have a way to play compressed digital music. If you're one of the rare people with a car-mp3 player, you're in the minority. Thus the format-change is pretty much industry standard.
The benefit is extreme ease, reliable and flexible searching and integration with a very good and widely deployed piece of software. Singles are a BETTER deal than buying an album if you only buy a song or two, and iTMS is very flexible about how that works. We're, as you coloquially put it, "spooging ourselves", because the service selection is pretty good, the DRM is the most resonable proposed to date and the integration with what we already use to handle our media is excellent.
Sounds good to me.
I most wholeheartedly agree. Honestly, I think this is probably a bug, not an explicit decision. So long as the music was bought in the US, authorization should be allowed even in foreign countries even with foreign addresses, so long as the billing address is in the US.
I really don't think this is the same issue. The reason DVD's have region coding is (ostensibly) because the DVD for a movie may come out in the US before even a theatrical release in a foreign market. Australia is a great example for this. If you could buy the widescreen, special edition DVD of the movie instead of going to the theatrical release in your country, you might be less tempted to go to the theater.
As I'm rapidly becoming fond of saying in this thread, you have a chance to change it. Don't get to worried about the **AA's reflexive gestures as they begin this adoption. Just smile, calmly and efficaciously tell them "No. That is not the way consumers will allow it." Do try to remember that we need to be reasonable though. The idea of locking a media file to an owner who paid for it isn't an intrinsically evil concept, and shouldn't be treated as such.
Please refer to my other post. I think that just as companies need to update their thinking, we as consumers may need to realize that "bought and paid for" isn't what it used to be. If you don't like the way it's shaping up, you're in luck! We're all at a perfect time to shape it. Just don't be too surprised if we see some hiccups along the way.
Maybe it's lame to say, but I think this is a bug on Apple's part. An existing account should be able to authorize even outside the US as long as the account owner's address is in the US. The poor fellow though probably needs to call tech support and ask what the heck he should do. With all the stink being made in apple.slashdot and its 5-minute behind gimpy cousin, MacSlash, there is no doubt that Apple is aware of the consumer outrage about this. As I've said, Apple is not a company that can afford to piss consumers off right now, and they're acting in a way that is consistant with that.
Being a non-apologetic and vocal linux-to-osx switcher, I'd like to say... Don'tlet this be your only criterion for making this decision. Above and beyond the complex legal dance that Apple has to dance when working with the RIAA, Apple has been a reasonably honest and straightforward company in the past decade or so. People will surely point out "horrible" things that Apple did since 1993 after I say this. My response is, "In the end, Apple is a corperation. I think they have a little bit more consideration than most, but don't forget they still have a bottom line. Expecting them to be otherwise because of their good PR and marketing is naieve on you part.
Good luck if you do decide to switch, and if you need any help there are a gaggle of people here and on other mac communities (myself included) that'll help ease the switch should you need it.
Everyone talks about how the Music Industry's business model is outdated and needs to be changed to reflect the modern technology which exists around us. I think most slashdot readers would agree that classic music licensing schemes and sales models are rapidly becoming outdated.
By the same token, then, don't we need to update our expectations and buying models, as consumers? We can't insist on totally new business models without being willing to adapt to them ourselves.
It seems strange to me that everyone is so rabidly against DRM, when quite frankly anyone thinking about it comes to the conclusion that without it, some pretty ridiculous situations can result. Just because people do not, right now, ruin a band by trading its songs on services does not mean at some future point a service will become so ubiquitous and easy that it couldn't happen. Everyone forgets that the band AND the distributor need to make money.
Not to say I agree with all DRM. Oftentimes it seems like people go too far to the restrictive edge, "You can only use your music with headphones while a RIAA exec standing over you with a shotgun wards people off." I find Apple's DRM to be very reasonable, and it's also the kind of DRM that, should Apple finally kick the bucket, could be extended by another solution, even if the authorization service changes.
The poor fellow who's message is the subject of this article changed his home address to a foreign address. iTunes has no other way to tell if you're in a foreign country. I'm surprised it didn't let him authorize, but I am not surprised that it used that data to exclude him from using the iTMS. I'm sure that the situation will be rectified shortly. Apple can't afford to rampantly piss people off, and if you look at their decisions over the last 3 years you'll see in general their model has been consistant with that.
So please, Anonymous friend, instead of ceaslessly complaining about the end of an era, why not try and help shape the face of these new business models. We're at an amazing point as our society slowly beings to adopt digital media and computing on a mass scale. We've got a responsibility to make sure things turn out in a way that's equitable to everyone.
"Using the service" means trying to use the iTunes store. It doesn't mean listening to your music outside of the US. Right now, Apple only has the legal end worked out while you're in the US. It makes sense that they don't want a repeat of the iTunes "sharing" fiasco. What they are saying here is:
IF you attempt to use the service from outside of where they can legally sell you the music, then they MIGHT be able to delete the files you obtained illegally after you download them. WHEN at some later date your country is serviced by iTMS then you can now use the service from that country.
ITunes keeps your authorization offline, and it's a seperate file that you can backup and keep (so you'll be able to play your music even if apple's serves go down). So listening to your music abroad definitely doesn't count as infringement, since no service interaction is required.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. These "tools to detect" are probably somehow worked into iTunes, so it's not like Apple somehow is sneaking spyware into your system. Relax folks. iTMS isn't suddenly evil or anything. I really doubt that even authorizing your laptop while abroad is illegal.
Sheesh, everyone in Linux clamoring that their OS can do User Switching too. It's like they're jealous or something.
C'mon now. It's plain to see that fast user switching is a better solution than just virtual consoles, or even multiple X servers. For one, security. I can safely transfer control to someone else without worry of them messing me up. This safety isn't necessarily from deliberate attempts to cause harm. I have a user account for people who don't know my computer, thus they have a nice little box they can check their email in. An accidental keypress can dump you back in the other environment.
Second, it fractures the metaphor. When you "log in" a GUI then you are identifying that machine as "you" for the duration of that session. Everything that computer does, it should do as "you." Fast User Switching is a clean extension of the metaphor to allow for multiple users at a time. The console and multiple X terminals is not.
For the people who just advocate using su or sudo to switch shells, that's fine. For advanced users, that's very possible and doable. Remember OSX has a pretty schwag terminal app built right in should power-users want it. But the average user doesn't understand it, doesn't want it, doesn't need it. However, they do need a way to switch users.
Why exactly would anyone choose to do this to EVA? There are so many more marketable and less plain old unappealing series out there. Why not Trigun? Why not Cowboy Bebop? At least those shows really were deep, as opposed to the pseudo-surrealistic claptrap that was EVA.
The effects to really do EVA in a way that isn't going to look ridiculous are years off. I cant see how or why they chose this series.
Having used both NeXT and OSX machines recently, I think this "dumbed down" statement is funny considering how much more feature-rich OSX is compared to NeXT.
I guess it's true you just can't please some people.
Actually there is a fair amount of modding going around in the Apple world. It just seldom gets mentioned. The clamshell iBook was particularly popular for very beautiful custom paint jobs, and the quicksilver G4's have had people play with them quite a bit as well.
I guess I do kinda miss the days of spraypainting my PC to give it a neat color then hand-painting the faceplates of the CDROM and whatnot. Maybe just for masochistic reasons though....
I see a lot of people here confused on what Rendezvous really is.
Rendezvous is:
A) A way for machines coming onto a network to automatically obtain an IP.
B) A way for machines to browse services that applications are making public on these machines in a unform, domain-qualified way (mDNS, similar to DNS).
Rendezvous is not:
A) A magic elixir that will change the way we do networking on a grand scale. Rendezvous is ONLY for _one_ subnet. While any standard tcp/ip briding stuff will work, rendezvous will only play inside that subnet. However, within that subnet there is a lot of automation.
B) A security hole. Rendezvous doesn't share things, it merely allows you to DISCOVER if anyone is sharing them. This doesn't mean a script kid is going to hack you. It merely means they know if you are running services, which they could have found out allready. Further, since it's only on the local network, a large variety of much more dangerous attacks already exist (TCP spoof, ARP attacks)
C) A project Apple stole/A project Apple trumped up. A lot of people have been working on zeroconf for quite some time now, and Apple managed to get a few people in because they wanted something like Zeroconf. Apple has a working implementation of Zeroconf called rendezvous, but they do not have a lock on the protocol and the code is open for download and perusal.
I hope this helps people (who find this post admist the noise) who don't know what to believe.
You can find all this out yourself at
http://www.zeroconf.org
Yeah, ya think. But on average it'll only take a few tries to actually get a new address from even a saturated network. Again the *snicker* birthday paradox, but this time it works for you.
It takes only the time of an ARP request to discard an address that is already taken, so it shouldn't be a big problem.
You'd be surprised how well this actually scales. That is one of the whole points. Rendezvous is a replacement to AppleTalk, and as such one of the major goals is not to saturate the network like other more chatty protocols.
For instance, each host implements an aggressive caching scheme so if one host asks for data, other hosts can learn from its request. There is also an exponentially rising delay between each request, the assumption being a host that has been around a long time will continue to be around a long time. Further, Rendezvous requests are not just like broadcast pings. They have a very well defined (and specific) domain standard in multicast DNS. You could ask only for http servers running over TCP, or only iPhoto sharing servers. This cuts down on the traffic.
Of course, the other problem is the dynamic IP address assignment. It chooses an IP out of a /16 subnet. In short, in order for there to be a high probability of collision there need to be more than 32768 hosts, and even then it'll converge quickly. The Zeroconf spec gives upper bounds on how many hosts should be in a zeroconf network.
The whole idea of this system is to allow small isolated subnets (like a wireless zone) to auto-configure. After the first 20,000 devices, sure you might see some degredation in performance. Of course, imagine an admintaking care of a 20,000 device subnet. They end up like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Christopher Lloyd. If you need more subnets then you link them via a configured host. A proxy-gateway with rendezvous, forwarding only things that matter for this subnet, would be a pretty cool app too.
Zeroconf, especially in the home or small office setting, is really, really useful.
I mean, if the licenses were to the Bluelight.com entity, then just reselling them shouldn't be a violation of the agreement, should it? On the other hand, if the licenses are marked as Kmart's, then it would be.
A big bottle of semantic joy.
The idea of taking an OTP and turning it into a "many-time pad" is fundamentally flawed. You can't do it. OTP is essentially XOR encryption. XOR encryption itself is very weak with a key that repeats. Of course you can perform various OTP-permutations, maybe a alphabetic shift or numeric addition or somethiong. However at it's core it can be viewed as a binary operation in which it is perfectly random which bit will come next. Thus it's impossible to show any one result for a decryption is valid.
The idea of permuting the pad, or changing it, or anything in a way that's reproducible starts to ruin this. There are lots of things people have tried, but they all end up making the system imperfect, without really removing any of the weaknesses of it.
Of course, if you want an easy way to keep getting new OTP's of a fixed length, just use the newly encrypted message as your new OTP. As long as the original vector remains secret, the new OTP is just as secure (since the 0/1 randomness is preserved).
Not that this is especially usefull but.. neither is a OTP.
I'm surprised to hear people complain at all about Cocoa, since it's probably the best C-derivative development environment currently in existance. You list some problems, namely:
Err, release-retain-autorelease is the best implementation of reference counting you can find that will not break with existant C libraries and not place very specialized rules on how you can handle pointers and casting.
Excuse me? Cocoa exceptions are just as good as Java exceptions. Way better than C++ exceptions.
This is more of an ideological argument... people used to C++ seem mystified that it is not an error in Objective C to call a method on an object when that method does not exist! In fact, some people deliberatly do this, making that object handle failed messages in a specail way. It's a really flexible system. The only disadvantage is you may not get all your errors at compile-time (although if you write your code the way apple suggests you will get most of them).
Cocoa is the best thing since sliced bread for programmers that want real OO projects with real OO flexibility but still need to play nice with C libraries and have some form of garbage collection. I will say, with quite a bit of assurance, that there is no API better suited to rapid, scalable application development than cocoa.
As for your many other points, hopefully they will be discarded as OS 9 sloughs off like so much discarded cocoon. Aqua is a hefty player in the window-manager world, but that's because it does more than any other window manager. It makes Enlightenment look like a kid's toy. It makes WinXP's explorer look like vomit. 10.2 is quite speedy, all but 2 operations on QuartzGL are faster than I can comprehend. The slow ones (namely resize on apps that need to redraw their whole view based on window size) and scrolling (which is quite snappy but depending on the app isn't perfectly slickly smooth) are the only operations to show any signs of the massive amount of work QGL goes through to make your desktop look pleasant and handle lighting fast.
So please, don't criticize cocoa until you play with it for some time. The API s a little tough to learn at first (mostly because of the methodology behind its design being so alien to C++ coders) but rapidly makes more sense than any other library out there.
Emacs and VI are quite powerful, both offer a rich variety of features. However, while they are suitable for IDE's they are not really ideal in this area without a lot of customization, tinkering, knoweldge of eLisp, and time.
Time isn't cheap. Time is expensive and precious. It's the one resource you or I can't replenish. I'd rather use an expensive IDE that saves me time rather than a potentially better editor that requires weeks to learn (yes, I already know them both quite well, but that's because I've used them for about 4 years now).
This is the reason I use Apple's IDE. It's easy to set up, it's very professional, has a nice debugging feature and class browser, and gives you lots of useful feedback. Sure, I can't program an MP3 encoder in LISP and have it run from my text editor, and sure, I might have to use the mouse periodically with it. So what? It saves time compared to the slow process of getting emacs set up just the way I like it or setting up a series of scripts to automate tasks I'd run from VI.
Interoperability isn't really an excuse. Source is saved as ascii text. The only area you could possibly have trouble is line breaks. They're all interoperable.
In a real dev environment, time saving dev tools such as an IDE are essential.
Maybe that's why the MS libs are so abysmally annoying. I had no idea we had Taligent to thank for the evils that have lead to MFC.
Taligent's general philosophy of OO design was not really all that great. It worked and it was very OO, but (maybe just because of language limitations) it had a very static feel (much like MFC coding does).
I'm not sure how many people here actually got to see the Taligent way of doing things. Several developers who saw it didn't like it very much, in fact they thought it was not a very successful approach. NeXT's OPENSTEP library was a much more powerful, flexible approach to app design (which has stood the test of time, as opposed to Taligent that died.
:)
Of course, don't take my word for it. Many other prominent mac people express dislike towards Taligent's way of doing things.
We lucked out, fellow mac developers. OpenSTEP is our home now.
Every penny's worth?
Again, read. Macs are worth almost every penny. There are fewer "hidden" costs in a mac environmnet. As JWZ so rightly said, Linux is only free if your time is worthless. Likewise, Windows has a lot of setup pain lurking around it. OS X saves you time by just working, period.
OS X seldom crashes, and only from things that really should make machines crash. For instance, I had a bad powersupply on some USB speakers that began to "flutter" in and out. That caused the 10.1 USB drivers to die. The only other OS crash I've had I caused on purpose.
The Graphic Designers you speak of aren't using OS X. They can do so as well. PS7 is a fabulous product on OS X. It's fast, stable and very useable.
The idea that your AMD is worth every penny depends on your measure of computer value. Trust me, I do some pretty heavy computational work and my dual 800 really moves me through it quickly (dual 800's run for about $1400 used now, by the way). I just count my computer's value in units other than clock speed, like how much time it saves me.