And note that this is all despite heavy DRM on nearly every commercial DVD disc and player ever made.
As I mentioned earlier, in other parts of the world DVD ownership outstripped VCR ownership a while ago. The reason why it's taken longer in the US may actually be due to the "heavy DRM" you mention (well, the region coding anyway) - in the rest of the world region free players from the name-brand manufacturers are the norm, whilst I gather they're not quite as common in the US (and mostly Chinese/Taiwanese cheapies). In fact, where I am it's practically impossible to buy a player that isn't region-free from the factory (or at least comes with a photocopied sheet containing the unlock code provided by the manufacturer).
(Yes, I realise I'm ignoring the CSS part of the DRM. That's because for most people it's a non-issue - CSS doesn't stop them from buying discs or players from overseas, taking them with them when they move, etc. In fact, in that respect you get more trouble from voltage and standards issues with players and TVs than you do with CSS. And, in the end, it turned out to be trivial to break - a single player key got out into the wild, and *poof*!)
As for the UOPs - dunno 'bout in the US, but both my cheap Philips and my sister's considerably more expensive Pioneer players bypass most UOPs at the press of a button. In fact, as I've discovered from discs I've made, the only prohibitions they can't beat aren't actual UOPs, but tricky programming. For instance, there's a neat trick you can do where you unset the "back" link at start of play, and don't set the "next" link until right near the end - the fwd/rwd/skip buttons don't work because, as far as the player is aware, there's nothing to skip to!
Somebody willing to pay the Guardians Of The Mouse might have a look and see if they do something similar...
I'm thinking the US might actually be late to the party on this - ISTR reading that here in Australia DVD ownership outstripped VCR ownership a couple of years ago. DVD player sales were outstripping VCR sales within a year or so of launch.
USB also only allows one device per port, although that device can be a hub to which additional devices are connected.
Define "port" - because USB can enumerate 128 devices per host controller.
Strictly speaking, you're right - the only thing talking to the actual port is the host controller driver/firmware. But, from the end-user POV, port is synonymous with "hole you stick the cable in". From an API POV, port is near-synonymous with "host controller". In both cases, current limitations notwithstanding, you can connect up to 127 devices on a single "port" (0 is reserved for the controller itself).
I'm not going to trust that supposed flip side anything till I get an actuial link to see the text.
Then get thee to Weatherall's Law, the blog of Kim Weatherall, Associate Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, a senior lecturer in law at Melbourne University, and Board Member of the Australian Digital Alliance.
There you'll find she's put together a good, easy to follow summary of the whole process - from the development of the Bill, through the parliamentary discussion (ha!) and amendments, to final ratification by both Houses - along with insightful commentary, FAQs, links to the full Bill, etc.
You'll also come away with the knowledge that the final result isn't quite as rosy as that zombie arsehole Ruddock is painting...
Certain site like CNN are making thier website "less functional" if you have your pop up blocker on.
Then that's a sign - it shows you that they consider the advertising more important than the content. Others can argue about the reasons why, but that fact is inescapable - their purpose isn't to inform you, it's to advertise at you. The information they provide is just a teaser to attract you and hide their real purpose - like a worm on a fishing hook.
I feel that if I browse a site and return to it as well, I also need to give the author something in return. It's all about loyalty and morale.
Why? If someone has something they feel is so important to share with the world, let them pay for doing it.
You get something for free and should therefore give something back.
Then you haven't gotten it for free, have you?
I know, I know... you feel obligated, it's the right thing to do, an appreciation for all the time and effort someone else has gone to, etc. To which I say "You see what more than a half-century of modern advertising has done to humanity? It's conditioned everyone to see things not in terms of altruism, of sharing with no expectation of recompense, but as a business transaction! Fuckers..."
If you want to give back, give back in kind - pass them a hot tip or good story idea, start your own site with a theme or information which they or others may find informative / entertaining / worthwhile, or even just drop them a note of thanks. Ultimately, doing the little things like that is a net gain for everybody, not just the rapacious all-devouring beast of advertising.
Advertising abuses humanity's essentially good "caring and sharing" nature (the one thing which, apart from an inability to lick our own genitals, sets us apart from the harsh world of the animals). My complete and utter contempt for the advertising world knows no bounds...
It would be hard to distinguish them from the actual content becuase they don't, at first glance, appear to be ads.
Look for the watermark. For some reason it's not necessary for the viewer to be continually reminded what channel they're watching during the ad breaks...
"Broadband households have become even harder to reach: some 81% of those with high-speed Internet access employ pop-up blockers and spam filters."
Well, yes - they want to use those high speeds they're paying for.
Seriously, have you tried using the Internet without ad-blocking recently? It's not just the visual pollution, or the sheer % of bandwidth taken up by advertising (which on some high-profile mass-appeal websites actually runs higher than 50%), but the delay in actually serving up those ad requests.
I first seriously started using adblock when DoubleClick's servers became so slow The Register was taking minutes to load over broadband.
As long as you (and the parent) can accept that some people will set their thresholds for "unobtrusive, relevant, and low bandwidth" rather lower than you.
Personally, after being subjected to 39 years of unrelenting advertising, mine are : a) 0% - if it registers on my mind, I consider it obtrusive. b) 0% - if I'm looking for something in particular, I'm looking for something in particular - not "something which someone else thinks might fit my needs, if only I'll listen to their convincing spiel". c) 0% - I'm paying for my bandwidth. If someone else wants to profit from it, they can pay me.
Non-spam ads actually help pay for the media you are using. Spam ads do not.
But when are you actually using the media, as opposed to someone else using the media to access you?
Or, in other words, which end of the provider/advertiser vs viewer equation is making an overall profit from the medium in question? (P+A)-V = ??
Pick a form of media, any form. With a couple of exceptions, the equation comes out overwhelmingly in favour of the provider or advertiser.
The exceptions? Ony three come to mind : small special-interest magazines, journals, newsletters, etc; public broadcasting; and the Internet.
And I dunno if you've looked around at the average internet user and their on-line experiences lately, but that third one is rapidly disappearing. More and more, the internet is less about the "end-user" paying a nominal fee per month to communicate with friends, search out things through curiosity and/or self-education, or altruistically sharing information / experiences / goods / services/ opinions. It's being co-opted as a medium for vested interests to pump their self-serving crap at you - opinion carefully crafted to make you think the way they want you to, advertising to make you buy what they want you to, and a dash of Soma to stop you worrying about it and believe that that's the way things should be...
The internet will soon end up like cable TV - you'll be paying for it, vested interests will use it to show you what they want you to see, and you'll be brainwashed into believing that that's not only right, but that you should also accept that as the cost of catching the occasional shiny polished turd they deign to toss your way...
Many media sources have a message/theme/idea they want to get out into the general public...
Have they ever thought of advertising?
(Smartarse comment, I know. Because that's exactly what they're doing! They're advertising at you, while at the same time making you &/or other advertisers pay for it.
Think about that next time you see an ad on Fox...)
Yeah, that's nice. Chip with what? A chisel and a wooden mallet? Another stone? A bronze hammer? To a tolerance of just over 350 feet and only one quarter of an inch (along that entire length) from being a perfectly straight plane? A small amount of research will reveal to you that modern masonry equipment simply could not do that, although visually the results would certainly look really straight. I would be amazed if you could even approach that precision marking with a string (i.e. a chalk line), let alone the cutting. Also, you do understand that I am referring to a two-dimensional planar surface of a three-dimensional object? String is much less useful when you need an entirely straight plane as opposed to a mere straight line.
Maybe so, but it's easy to imagine that a team of craftsman, dedicated to perfection either by the honour of serving their god-king or the fear of the whip, could take the time to chisel and polish a plane to that accuracy using nothing more than hand tools, sand, and string.
Modern masonry equipment couldn't do it, but modern masonry equipment is designed to work quickly and good enough for the result to look right. If you want the job to be right - the mark of a true craftsman/artisan who is dedicated to perfection - you still have to hand finish.
(And why do you have so much trouble conceiving that they could achieve that sort of precision with string? A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows me that, assuming an 8' wall, it'd take less than 50 thousand string lines to check by eye for imperfections > 1/4" over a length of 350'. Dedicated, yes; doable, yes; unthinkable, no.)
The key is getting the WiFi in the Zune and working at launch - and enhancing the functionality in the future.
If that's the case, then exactly why shouldn't people just sit and wait for that enhanced functionality to be available before buying? Or are you suggesting that people should just give up their money now for a device that doesn't do what they want - in the hope that one day, "real soon now", "in a future firmware release", it will?
Will people still be bashing the WiFi a year down the line when, say, you can wirelessly sync with your PC, have your friends all grabbing your music stream on their Zunes so you're all listening to the same thing at the same time, grab songs from WiFi kiosks at a concert or a music store, etc?
No, but I predict that a year down the line people will still be bashing the Zune when it doesn't - or bitching about MS screwing them over when they have to pony up the $$$ for a 2nd-gen model to get that functionality.
I don't think even your President is that dumb. After all, didn't he once say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... well, I won't be buying a Zune"?
I've seen only one commercial for the Zune, and it was the first time I wanted a refund of my time for a commercial. All I can remember was a dog wagging its tail and the owner asking it to go outside... it just begs the question of WHY? Did the owner want to go outside to get a Zune? Did its dog see one and get excited about it, thus sparking a reaction from the owner to chase it or something?
You're over analysing it.
The Zune is the dog. The owner can't give it away, throw it away, or make it run away. He's stuck with it sitting there, stinking up the place, crapping all over everything, and paying the RIAA^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Iams just to keep it full and happy.
I have a very hard time believing that even Microsoft could have implemented the concept of sharing this poorly.
It's easy to believe, but you're hampered by MS' deliberate use of confusing terminology.
"Squirting" isn't "sharing". "Sharing" is a term the ??AA's have invested millions of dollars in, trying to convince people that it's not an altruistic expression of consideration or caring between fellow humans, but is something which is evil and wrong.
Because the term "sharing" has been poisoned by that campaign, MS came up with "squirting". Close you're eyes, and you can imagine the process - the marketing execs sitting around in a development meeting, Zune mockups in hand, pointing them at each other and going "Zap! I've just sent a song to Ellen's Zune! Whoah! Roger has just shared one with me!"
"Hang on Peter, we can't say 'shared' - sharing copyrighted songs is illegal. We need to come up with something else; a term we can sell to the RIAA that sounds good but really means 'we'll give you just enough to make you want to buy it'. Throw some ideas on the table, and we'll run them up the flagpole and see who salutes."
"You mean, like... advertising?"
"Exactly, Roger, but that's already taken. I'm thinking more like 'shooting'... no, there's negative connotations there, and we'll never be able to sell them in Littleton, Colorado or Nickle Mines, Pa. What about... squirting?"
<chorus>"Good idea, boss!</chorus>
... You get the idea...
Squirting isn't supposed to be sharing; squirting is supposed to be advertising. Keep that in mind...
Now the rest is easy to figure out. People won't do your advertising for you for nothing - there needs to be some sort of payoff. People wear logo'd shirts because they get paid off in "cool by association", drink Heineken because they're Euro-cool compared to Bud-drinking Nascar troglodytes, and wear Air Jordans because they make weedy 5' 11" white boy nerds more like the greatest basketballer to ever grace the court. But people can't see you "squirting" advertising around with your Zune - and if people can't see how cool you are, it's not worth doing.
The solution? Make them have to come and ask you to send it to them. Instant cred payoff...
The Associated Press has an article about a robot named George that plays hide-and-seek.
What was omitted from the article is that the robot has also been programmed to do this with essential script, dialogue, and plot elements from movies - both pre-existing and new.
I would prefer to see laws enacted where politicians who are shown to have gained office through deceit are put in stocks in public places and the people are charged 50c a piece of rotten fruit to throw at them.
Y'know, I think you may have just come up with a new independent funding model for the ABC...
Seriously though, you're right. Go read Family First's policies on their website. Overall, apart from one or two issues, it looks fairly progressive doesn't it? Yet, regardless of your political leaning, you know damned well their main purpose in life is to funnel preferences to the conservative Coalition.
For one example : quantifying trust - which is based on pre-existing bias, depth of knowledge of the party/candidate's history, your ability/willingness/choice to give the benefit of the doubt to various candidates/parties on dozens of different issues, and a hundred other etc's - and giving its components suitable weightings, is damn near impossible to do in a survey. Statisticians and psephologists might tell you otherwise, but really their categorisations are so broad and overlapping as to lose any chance of picking up the detail and assigning it to parties. Complicated by the fact that, as you said, parties lie about positions and details all the time...
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
WTF... so they figure all this out, and then they keep the writing secret? What's up with that.
Because the bit they have recovered and translated so far reads "Disassembly or reverse-engineering for any purpose (including, but not limited to, for the purposes of interoperability or future compatibility) is prohibited by this licence".
Basically, they've found the EULA. They're worried the BSA will sue them under the PMCA (Pre-Millenium Copyright Act)...
As far as the Apollo project is concerned, the symbolic significance is huge, but as a research project the thing was a flop.
But Apollo was, in fact, an engineering project with some research goals attached. As that, it was a huge success. ITER is the same - the existing research says it's within our current capabilities in plasma physics & materials science; all that remains to be done is the engineering exercise to build it, iron out the inevitable practical wrinkles, and fire it up. In fact, it's probably a less difficult application of our current knowledge than the Manhattan Project was back in its day...
Maybe the nutjob fringe Protests-R-Us mob carry on like that - but the sober, sensible environmentalists seem to think it's a brilliant first start. (Scroll down to "Fusion Energy and ITER"; Google +"ITER" +"<your favourite green group here>" for further examples.)
Mind you, there's also the point that it's no good to just stop producing greenhouse-causing and other toxic emissions now - we also need to either (a) do something to undo the damage of the last 200 or so years, or (b) be prepared to wait for the biosphere to do it for us. We haven't just been concentrating existing carbon compounds in our biosphere in that time - we've actively been increasing them by unleashing carbon that has been isolated for millennia. That's a challenge that will remain for environmental scientists and engineers even after Mr. Fusion Pty Ltd revives the DeLorean brand...
B5 was a defining sci fi TV series in soo many ways, technical, plot, scope, etc.
Yes, but JMS couldn't write dialogue worth shit (not that that has ever stopped anybody - look at Lucas!). Worse than that, he didn't seem able to put together a writing team that could write dialogue worth shit either.
Ultimately, I think that what makes B5 "defining" for so many people on the 'net now is that it was on TV during their nerdy teenage / young adult years.
Ponder on that for a moment - just as your parents had 'The Fugitive' as their 'defining' TV moment, so soon will we be coming into a time when '* Idol' is the defining series for many people, to be followed by a 'Lost' generation. And so on, and so on.
Thankfully, we seem to have gotten past the 'Charmed' generation rather quickly...
Slashdot Mirror
(Yes, I realise I'm ignoring the CSS part of the DRM. That's because for most people it's a non-issue - CSS doesn't stop them from buying discs or players from overseas, taking them with them when they move, etc. In fact, in that respect you get more trouble from voltage and standards issues with players and TVs than you do with CSS. And, in the end, it turned out to be trivial to break - a single player key got out into the wild, and *poof*!)
As for the UOPs - dunno 'bout in the US, but both my cheap Philips and my sister's considerably more expensive Pioneer players bypass most UOPs at the press of a button. In fact, as I've discovered from discs I've made, the only prohibitions they can't beat aren't actual UOPs, but tricky programming. For instance, there's a neat trick you can do where you unset the "back" link at start of play, and don't set the "next" link until right near the end - the fwd/rwd/skip buttons don't work because, as far as the player is aware, there's nothing to skip to!
Somebody willing to pay the Guardians Of The Mouse might have a look and see if they do something similar...
Strictly speaking, you're right - the only thing talking to the actual port is the host controller driver/firmware. But, from the end-user POV, port is synonymous with "hole you stick the cable in". From an API POV, port is near-synonymous with "host controller". In both cases, current limitations notwithstanding, you can connect up to 127 devices on a single "port" (0 is reserved for the controller itself).
Not to be outdone, Japanese scientists have discovered a three-headed monster with two legs, bat-like wings, and two tails.
Tokyo residents are fearfully awaiting the appearance of a giant moth and two tiny priestesses...
There you'll find she's put together a good, easy to follow summary of the whole process - from the development of the Bill, through the parliamentary discussion (ha!) and amendments, to final ratification by both Houses - along with insightful commentary, FAQs, links to the full Bill, etc.
You'll also come away with the knowledge that the final result isn't quite as rosy as that zombie arsehole Ruddock is painting...
Then you haven't gotten it for free, have you?
I know, I know... you feel obligated, it's the right thing to do, an appreciation for all the time and effort someone else has gone to, etc. To which I say "You see what more than a half-century of modern advertising has done to humanity? It's conditioned everyone to see things not in terms of altruism, of sharing with no expectation of recompense, but as a business transaction! Fuckers..."
If you want to give back, give back in kind - pass them a hot tip or good story idea, start your own site with a theme or information which they or others may find informative / entertaining / worthwhile, or even just drop them a note of thanks. Ultimately, doing the little things like that is a net gain for everybody, not just the rapacious all-devouring beast of advertising.
Advertising abuses humanity's essentially good "caring and sharing" nature (the one thing which, apart from an inability to lick our own genitals, sets us apart from the harsh world of the animals). My complete and utter contempt for the advertising world knows no bounds...
Seriously, have you tried using the Internet without ad-blocking recently? It's not just the visual pollution, or the sheer % of bandwidth taken up by advertising (which on some high-profile mass-appeal websites actually runs higher than 50%), but the delay in actually serving up those ad requests.
I first seriously started using adblock when DoubleClick's servers became so slow The Register was taking minutes to load over broadband.
Personally, after being subjected to 39 years of unrelenting advertising, mine are :
a) 0% - if it registers on my mind, I consider it obtrusive.
b) 0% - if I'm looking for something in particular, I'm looking for something in particular - not "something which someone else thinks might fit my needs, if only I'll listen to their convincing spiel".
c) 0% - I'm paying for my bandwidth. If someone else wants to profit from it, they can pay me.
Or, in other words, which end of the provider/advertiser vs viewer equation is making an overall profit from the medium in question? (P+A)-V = ??
Pick a form of media, any form. With a couple of exceptions, the equation comes out overwhelmingly in favour of the provider or advertiser.
The exceptions? Ony three come to mind : small special-interest magazines, journals, newsletters, etc; public broadcasting; and the Internet.
And I dunno if you've looked around at the average internet user and their on-line experiences lately, but that third one is rapidly disappearing. More and more, the internet is less about the "end-user" paying a nominal fee per month to communicate with friends, search out things through curiosity and/or self-education, or altruistically sharing information / experiences / goods / services/ opinions. It's being co-opted as a medium for vested interests to pump their self-serving crap at you - opinion carefully crafted to make you think the way they want you to, advertising to make you buy what they want you to, and a dash of Soma to stop you worrying about it and believe that that's the way things should be...
The internet will soon end up like cable TV - you'll be paying for it, vested interests will use it to show you what they want you to see, and you'll be brainwashed into believing that that's not only right, but that you should also accept that as the cost of catching the occasional shiny polished turd they deign to toss your way...
(Smartarse comment, I know. Because that's exactly what they're doing! They're advertising at you, while at the same time making you &/or other advertisers pay for it.
Think about that next time you see an ad on Fox...)
Modern masonry equipment couldn't do it, but modern masonry equipment is designed to work quickly and good enough for the result to look right. If you want the job to be right - the mark of a true craftsman/artisan who is dedicated to perfection - you still have to hand finish.
(And why do you have so much trouble conceiving that they could achieve that sort of precision with string? A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows me that, assuming an 8' wall, it'd take less than 50 thousand string lines to check by eye for imperfections > 1/4" over a length of 350'. Dedicated, yes; doable, yes; unthinkable, no.)
No, but I predict that a year down the line people will still be bashing the Zune when it doesn't - or bitching about MS screwing them over when they have to pony up the $$$ for a 2nd-gen model to get that functionality.
I don't think even your President is that dumb. After all, didn't he once say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice
The Zune is the dog. The owner can't give it away, throw it away, or make it run away. He's stuck with it sitting there, stinking up the place, crapping all over everything, and paying the RIAA^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Iams just to keep it full and happy.
"Squirting" isn't "sharing". "Sharing" is a term the ??AA's have invested millions of dollars in, trying to convince people that it's not an altruistic expression of consideration or caring between fellow humans, but is something which is evil and wrong.
Because the term "sharing" has been poisoned by that campaign, MS came up with "squirting". Close you're eyes, and you can imagine the process - the marketing execs sitting around in a development meeting, Zune mockups in hand, pointing them at each other and going "Zap! I've just sent a song to Ellen's Zune! Whoah! Roger has just shared one with me!"
"Hang on Peter, we can't say 'shared' - sharing copyrighted songs is illegal. We need to come up with something else; a term we can sell to the RIAA that sounds good but really means 'we'll give you just enough to make you want to buy it'. Throw some ideas on the table, and we'll run them up the flagpole and see who salutes."
"You mean, like
"Exactly, Roger, but that's already taken. I'm thinking more like 'shooting'
<chorus>"Good idea, boss!</chorus>
Squirting isn't supposed to be sharing; squirting is supposed to be advertising . Keep that in mind...
Now the rest is easy to figure out. People won't do your advertising for you for nothing - there needs to be some sort of payoff. People wear logo'd shirts because they get paid off in "cool by association", drink Heineken because they're Euro-cool compared to Bud-drinking Nascar troglodytes, and wear Air Jordans because they make weedy 5' 11" white boy nerds more like the greatest basketballer to ever grace the court. But people can't see you "squirting" advertising around with your Zune - and if people can't see how cool you are, it's not worth doing.
The solution? Make them have to come and ask you to send it to them. Instant cred payoff...
Oh, and his last name is "Lucas"...
Seriously though, you're right. Go read Family First's policies on their website. Overall, apart from one or two issues, it looks fairly progressive doesn't it? Yet, regardless of your political leaning, you know damned well their main purpose in life is to funnel preferences to the conservative Coalition.
For one example : quantifying trust - which is based on pre-existing bias, depth of knowledge of the party/candidate's history, your ability/willingness/choice to give the benefit of the doubt to various candidates/parties on dozens of different issues, and a hundred other etc's - and giving its components suitable weightings, is damn near impossible to do in a survey. Statisticians and psephologists might tell you otherwise, but really their categorisations are so broad and overlapping as to lose any chance of picking up the detail and assigning it to parties. Complicated by the fact that, as you said, parties lie about positions and details all the time...
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Basically, they've found the EULA. They're worried the BSA will sue them under the PMCA (Pre-Millenium Copyright Act)...
Maybe the nutjob fringe Protests-R-Us mob carry on like that - but the sober, sensible environmentalists seem to think it's a brilliant first start. (Scroll down to "Fusion Energy and ITER"; Google +"ITER" +"<your favourite green group here>" for further examples.)
Mind you, there's also the point that it's no good to just stop producing greenhouse-causing and other toxic emissions now - we also need to either (a) do something to undo the damage of the last 200 or so years, or (b) be prepared to wait for the biosphere to do it for us. We haven't just been concentrating existing carbon compounds in our biosphere in that time - we've actively been increasing them by unleashing carbon that has been isolated for millennia. That's a challenge that will remain for environmental scientists and engineers even after Mr. Fusion Pty Ltd revives the DeLorean brand...
Ultimately, I think that what makes B5 "defining" for so many people on the 'net now is that it was on TV during their nerdy teenage / young adult years.
Ponder on that for a moment - just as your parents had 'The Fugitive' as their 'defining' TV moment, so soon will we be coming into a time when '* Idol' is the defining series for many people, to be followed by a 'Lost' generation. And so on, and so on.
Thankfully, we seem to have gotten past the 'Charmed' generation rather quickly...