You have a good point there, but I would go further. DRMed WMA files are only playable on Windows and certain portable devices. M4P is playable on MacOS X and Windows using Quicktime (and its API), plus there's implementations available for Linux, not to mention a certain 10K C# program to decrypt them for you;)
non-deterministic != slow, just unpredictable. The use of garbage collectors in real-time systems isn't typically considered. Having said that, I guess you could consider RTJ's scoped memory a form of GC.
Err...he said real-time applications. Because the behaviour of a garbage collector is often approaching non-deterministic (You don't know when it will run or how long for), it's not acceptable for real-time systems. Real-Time Java gets around this by having other memory models which don't involve using the heap, along with providing types of threads that can run in parallel with the garbage collector.
I have no idea of the figures in Asia, but I know that in the UK, casual piracy (Judging from people I know) is way up. However, it's barely affected peoples' spending. Indeed, I've bought a number of CDs because of songs I've heard from my friends, who happened to download it.
As for whether it would be higher had the "enforcement" not taken place, I don't directly know anyone who's been affected by it or has changed their habits because of it.
All in all, you've still skirted the issue. You haven't provided any hard evidence that the MPAA's profits are up because piracy is down.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how the enforcement has lead to record profits. Piracy is up, so are profits. Suppose they hadn't done any "enforecement." Well, who knows what the end result would be? I don't recall any hard evidence or past experiences which could be used to say either way.
What the music and movie industry are currently doing is breeding annoyance. I'm a member of YSC and when I turned up to the advance preview of The Girl Next Door, I was stopped by one of the print's body guards, who proceeded to give me the 3rd degree about my iRiver. He seemed to get really pissy about the fact that it had a microphone built in. I'm amazed he let people with camera-phones in. They essentially thought the worst of us, they wouldn't trust us not to pirate the film. When people think the worst of you and you can't convince them otherwise, you're more likely to just drop to that level.
When you piss off your customers, you lose respect. When your customers don't respect you, they'll not feel bad about fucking you over.
That's complete bollocks. Illegal high quality copies of movies are more available than ever. For example, there are DVD-quality rips of Return of the King available for download ages before the actual DVD release. The same was true of The Two Towers. 5 years ago, broadband was very rare and films were copied by copying VHS videos and passing them to friends.
And yet, the movie industry has been making more money than ever, if you're to be believed.
When York Student Cinema did their advance screening of The Girl Next Door last month, one of the the terms of us getting the film was that they be allowed to have their staff present to ensure no "dodgy dealings" went on with the film print. There was also a guy there with night-visions who was constantly looking for people trying to record the film.
Sorry for making assumptions, but you do seem to be the *only* person who has this problem. I've been using MPlayer for years (All the way from a K6-III to a Duron 800MHz to an Athlon XP 2000+) and I simply do not have this problem. Neither does anybody I know who uses Linux. After all, if this were a common problem, then the MPlayer or Xine folk would have noticed and fixed it a long time ago.
As for the mplayer manual being huge, all it took was "man mplayer" and pressing page-down once to get to that control.
"I didn't say it was fair, I said it happened all the time." Calling something a "nasty easter egg" is rather akin to saying it's not very nice, or that it's not particularly fair. Whether it happens all the time or not really isn't the point, since every time someone jacks up the price of something whilst adding nothing of value, you'll get a negative response.
Let's see: CD with lossless audio, case and probably a little sleeve-book inside: $12-15 Album download with lossy audio and an album cover picture: getting on for $30 under the proposed price. You'd have a hard time convincing more than a handful of people that those prices are fair.
Have you tried Rhythmbox? Or Muine? You certainly didn't mention them.
As for movie playback, MPlayer will play everything I've thrown at it and the only sound lag I've ever seen is when the movie file itself has sound sync issues. Of course, had you read MPlayer's documentation, you would have seen this: + and - : adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 second
It's considered a "nasty easter egg" because they're looking at more than doubling the price of online music. You'll be paying more for less than what you get with a CD.
Transgaming have said time and time again they will not work on HL2 until they can get hold of a legal copy, which could mean retail or Valve sending official pre-release versions. Right now, they aren't working on it specifically.
"Are you suggesting that Linux is perfectly secure out of the box? You obviously have not studied computer science or software engineering, otherwise you would know that there is no way to prevent this kind of stuff for any OS, your blessed Linux crap included." Funny, seeing as my computer science degree taught me the opposite.
Would you care to tell me just *how* the usher will find you in a dark cinema? With 300 people to choose from, it becomes quite difficult, especially if you happen to forget who is who.
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Many of the stylesheets on the Zen Garden's site break when using a non-standard font size, yet alone if you change the document.
There's OpenAL for sound.
AMD chips have implemented the HLT opcode for many years.
Perhaps Computer Shopper is different in the US to the UK, but I most certainly bought it for the articles.
XUL has been around since 1998.
Per year, not per month.
"there are hacks that let you strip the DRM and leave music in AAC"
Not if Apple have their wicked way.
You have a good point there, but I would go further. DRMed WMA files are only playable on Windows and certain portable devices. M4P is playable on MacOS X and Windows using Quicktime (and its API), plus there's implementations available for Linux, not to mention a certain 10K C# program to decrypt them for you ;)
non-deterministic != slow, just unpredictable. The use of garbage collectors in real-time systems isn't typically considered. Having said that, I guess you could consider RTJ's scoped memory a form of GC.
Err...he said real-time applications. Because the behaviour of a garbage collector is often approaching non-deterministic (You don't know when it will run or how long for), it's not acceptable for real-time systems. Real-Time Java gets around this by having other memory models which don't involve using the heap, along with providing types of threads that can run in parallel with the garbage collector.
I have no idea of the figures in Asia, but I know that in the UK, casual piracy (Judging from people I know) is way up. However, it's barely affected peoples' spending. Indeed, I've bought a number of CDs because of songs I've heard from my friends, who happened to download it.
As for whether it would be higher had the "enforcement" not taken place, I don't directly know anyone who's been affected by it or has changed their habits because of it.
All in all, you've still skirted the issue. You haven't provided any hard evidence that the MPAA's profits are up because piracy is down.
And what if you determine your performance bottleneck is an architectural flaw made very early on in the design process? Oops, redesign time.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how the enforcement has lead to record profits. Piracy is up, so are profits. Suppose they hadn't done any "enforecement." Well, who knows what the end result would be? I don't recall any hard evidence or past experiences which could be used to say either way.
What the music and movie industry are currently doing is breeding annoyance. I'm a member of YSC and when I turned up to the advance preview of The Girl Next Door, I was stopped by one of the print's body guards, who proceeded to give me the 3rd degree about my iRiver. He seemed to get really pissy about the fact that it had a microphone built in. I'm amazed he let people with camera-phones in. They essentially thought the worst of us, they wouldn't trust us not to pirate the film. When people think the worst of you and you can't convince them otherwise, you're more likely to just drop to that level.
When you piss off your customers, you lose respect. When your customers don't respect you, they'll not feel bad about fucking you over.
That's complete bollocks. Illegal high quality copies of movies are more available than ever. For example, there are DVD-quality rips of Return of the King available for download ages before the actual DVD release. The same was true of The Two Towers. 5 years ago, broadband was very rare and films were copied by copying VHS videos and passing them to friends.
And yet, the movie industry has been making more money than ever, if you're to be believed.
When York Student Cinema did their advance screening of The Girl Next Door last month, one of the the terms of us getting the film was that they be allowed to have their staff present to ensure no "dodgy dealings" went on with the film print. There was also a guy there with night-visions who was constantly looking for people trying to record the film.
It's worth noting that many Microsoft applications, such as Office and Visual Studio, use non-standard Widgets too.
Sorry for making assumptions, but you do seem to be the *only* person who has this problem. I've been using MPlayer for years (All the way from a K6-III to a Duron 800MHz to an Athlon XP 2000+) and I simply do not have this problem. Neither does anybody I know who uses Linux. After all, if this were a common problem, then the MPlayer or Xine folk would have noticed and fixed it a long time ago.
As for the mplayer manual being huge, all it took was "man mplayer" and pressing page-down once to get to that control.
"I didn't say it was fair, I said it happened all the time."
Calling something a "nasty easter egg" is rather akin to saying it's not very nice, or that it's not particularly fair. Whether it happens all the time or not really isn't the point, since every time someone jacks up the price of something whilst adding nothing of value, you'll get a negative response.
Let's see:
CD with lossless audio, case and probably a little sleeve-book inside: $12-15
Album download with lossy audio and an album cover picture: getting on for $30 under the proposed price.
You'd have a hard time convincing more than a handful of people that those prices are fair.
Have you tried Rhythmbox? Or Muine? You certainly didn't mention them.
As for movie playback, MPlayer will play everything I've thrown at it and the only sound lag I've ever seen is when the movie file itself has sound sync issues. Of course, had you read MPlayer's documentation, you would have seen this:
+ and - : adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 second
It's considered a "nasty easter egg" because they're looking at more than doubling the price of online music. You'll be paying more for less than what you get with a CD.
Transgaming have said time and time again they will not work on HL2 until they can get hold of a legal copy, which could mean retail or Valve sending official pre-release versions. Right now, they aren't working on it specifically.
"Are you suggesting that Linux is perfectly secure out of the box? You obviously have not studied computer science or software engineering, otherwise you would know that there is no way to prevent this kind of stuff for any OS, your blessed Linux crap included."
Funny, seeing as my computer science degree taught me the opposite.
I've been in exactly 1 building in the past year where there's no mobile phone reception.
Would you care to tell me just *how* the usher will find you in a dark cinema? With 300 people to choose from, it becomes quite difficult, especially if you happen to forget who is who.