No, this is what you've come to believe - either through propaganda, or through independent thought influenced by propaganda - in order to reconcile events with your own world view.
It pays to remember that, no matter how nice you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how altruistic you are, there are enough different people and opinions in this world that it's almost certain that somebody, somewhere, will think you're a cunt.
And face it - America's actions throughout the word for the last 50 years or much more have, on the whole, been less than nice, good, and altruistic.
(And yes, I used the word "propaganda" most deliberately. Just because you agree with a statement doesn't mean it isn't propaganda...)
I sometimes wonder if they're not pushing DRM-protected music so hard they're trying to hurt CD sales...
Why wonder at all?
The music industry learnt something from the advent of CDs : people will pay again and again to buy something they already own!
For those of us that remember it, the music industry got a big surprise when it happened. They were all ready with big new releases to push the CD format (e.g. Dire Straits "Love Over Gold"), but what really kicked the format off? Re-releases of back catalogue material from the biggies - U2, Pink Floyd, etc - and a bit later on, The Beatles.
So they tried this formula again and again - MiniDisk, DVD-A, SACD - but it didn't quite work for them. Not different enough, y'see? Close, but no cigar. People latched on to the idea of computer audio through MP3, then transferred this over to the first portable MP3 players. People decided this was what they wanted - but because it was easier to copy and share than to buy, the music industry couldn't sell it to them.
So they worked on this problem, and came up with "looks like MP3, smells like MP3, but isn't" formats like WMA, FairTunes/AAC, etc, which they can sell - in their minds, without fear of unrestricted copying. CDs can easily be copied now, spec-breaking DRM crap or not, so they need to drop that format ASAP and sell you something new - or else the revenue stream in their business model collapses.
Don't ever underestimate the entertainment / media industries. They may not be innovative, but they are very reactive, and will change course at the drop of a hat when they sense which way the wind is blowing. People don't want CDs, they want little computer files - so they're going hell-bent to win hearts, minds, and legislation to ensure they're the ones to profit from it.
Or, in short, "yes, they are pushing DRM-protected music to try and hurt CD sales".
You're modded "+5, Funny", but that's pretty much how it goes where I work - for the 6 months or so that the employment agreement is being re-negotiated.
For the other 18 months or 2 years, the thoughts in brackets are usually the correct ones...
(Yes, it's a union-negotiated agreement. Yes, I'm aware that the/. groupthink is that unions are evil. You'll learn when you grow up...)
Hell, as a telecoms person, this is how I always thought they'd do it! And why not? It's their private network, not some hippy "public good" service. (There's a whole 'nother arguement right there...)
It ties in with the growth in non-internet "internet" services - NAT'd subnets using "transparent" proxies, and blocking everything except ports 80/443 & 119 (saves them running a news server for all the warez & pr0n leeches). Not to mention the walled garden that the phone companines are calling "mobile internet".
Mind you, from a purely technical telecoms POV, I always thought VoIP was a badly kludged-together disaster waiting to happen - the hacks involved in adding QoS & priority in order to emulate the workings of a switched network are non-trivial and flaky at best, unless lots of bandwidth is thrown at them.
The only real advantages IP networks have over circuit-switched networks are (a) cheapness - near-commodity hardware helps there - and (b) reconfigurability to suit demand. That second point is the kicker - given the choice of over-dimensioning a network to provide good QoS to everybody all of the time, or minimally-dimensioning a network to provide average QoS to most people most of the time (while saving a lot of money) and reconfiguring to follow demand, which do you think a telco is going to do?
If they do it your way, how do they cover their fixed costs? Do you know what fixed costs are?
Yes.
Do I care about their fixed costs? No. Why should I? It's their problem, not mine. They're a business; their reason d'etre is to offer me products that I want to buy. It's not my purpose to buy what's on offer just because they're selling it.
The point is, for all their claims about how good / flexible / high-quality their product is, it matters less than shit if they're not prepared to offer me what I want.
If they don't offer me what I want, I don't care about their excuses.
Note, this would be a whole different discussion if we were talking about "why is a la carte more expensive than packages?". But we're not discussing that, because they don't/won't even offer that option...
... whatever happened to the "inexpensive settop digital converter boxes" they promised...
Dunno. In Australia, they're around the AU$100~AU$150 mark. The cheapest I've seen is a no-name for AU$68.
Maybe it has something to do with Australia adopting a {bastardised version of an} international standard for DTV, rather than making up a whole new one?
They went for a Java model with no graphical layout tool instead of building in a VB-style GUI/code editor. I cannot hack a firefox extension easily, and I have a Ph.D in comp sci.
Wow. I sincerely hope you're a troll, because as a 38 y.o. technician who freely admits he can't code for nuts, I can tell you the hardest part for me was wrapping my head around the XPI installer stuff. If a comp.sci PhD can't figure out Javascript (not Java - more like "nasty 'orrible OO BASIC for dummies") and how to create an object in the existing XUL interface, then I really wonder what good a GUI/IDE would have done you...
Oh, wait - you're in America, aren't you. Well, in less prudish countries, South Park is shown on FTA, on public (government-funded) stations, in prime-time.
Why don't we just nip this in the butt now and label them what they actually are then, viruses.
I'm sure there are others out there reading this thinking (and I'm thinking it myself):
Virus != Worm != Trojan != Spyware
Actually, I was thinking "Y'know, 20 years ago people understood the common everyday phrases they used - or, at least, they knew what the words actually were, and could hazard a guess as to how they came about. What's happened since then to change that?"
You may jest - certainly, enough people think you are to mark you up "+3, Funny" - but that's exactly how shopping centres are designed. Look it up sometime. They're designed to disorient you; to make you traverse are much as possible of the mall to complete your business; and to keep you separated from your car as long as possible.
Ever wonder why, in a standard 3-armed shopping centre layout, the general layout is banks in one arm, department stores in another, and food stores in the third? Or why carparks are either dark cavernous labyrinths or blinding hot barren wastelands, when the mall itself is bright, cool, breezy, and colourful?
They use psychological cues to get/keep you inside, then once inside you're kept disoriented. Try this game : stand at the top of the escalators or stairs, and watch people as they get off. You'll see a large percentage of people who stop, look around, then continue on uncertainly.
1) Open up the case 2) Find the sound hardware 3) Locate the output D/A converter 3a) Discover this chip itself contains the DRM decryption 4) Solder wires to its input connections 5) Find any compatable sound card which allows for input 6) Find its A/D converter. 7) Solder the other ends of your wires to its output connections
Voila! (Or "Wallah!" if you've learnt everything you need to know from TV and man pages) - you have a perfect bit-for-bit digital copy. Including the DRM...
Besides, how many of you software geeks could even pick up the right end of a soldering iron on the first go?
See, I just don't fucking get this. You are basically denying the premise of capitalism with this attitude. If you don't put money into the movie/music/doughnut industry, society and capitalism fail to perpetuate, and the system crumbles. This is a "big picture" scenario, not based on your particular case alone.
Crap. He's a perfect example of modern capitalism.
He's taking value, expending nothing, and when it falls over he'll be long gone.
Or maybe, just maybe, when it falls over he'll have amassed enough ill-gotten toys that we'll all go looking to him for our needs. Which would make him, in modern parlance, an entrepreneur.
But the fact remains that while I choose to be a member of this society, and while I choose to partake in its distractions and pleasures, I respect its rules and laws. This is the pretense of a society. Take it or leave it.
Please, spare us your Great Corporate American high school civics brainwashing bullshit...
I think that it would be interesting to see to different universes put together where you have plotlines from voyager intersect with SG-1 (as an example).
Hey yeah!
And then they could... I dunno... have a baby? Yeah! Or maybe add a little green alien that only the main character can see! Yeah, that'd work too!
And then, in the season finale, one of them could jump a tankful of sharks on a motorbike!
Really, what is it with people; this twisted hope that inevitably leads to disappointment? I mean, we've got nearly 50 years of history to prove to us that 99.99% of crossovers suck - and yet that remaining.01% still causes people to think "no, this time it will be good..."
Next week : I'll let you in on the "making 2 sequels at the same time" rule.
I'll remember that today as I use the IE-based ActiveX & JS abomination that is the interface to my work - the one that crashes multiple times per day because I *click too fast*! Taking my bookable time, completed work, and ordered materials with it...
I'll also remember that as I reboot my laptop multiple times trying to get the thing to connect, though that's the fault of the IBM wireless software and not IE...
Without Nazis or some massive empire of evil to fight that can be universally seen as evil, Indy has nothing.
Yeah, where the hell are we gonna find one of those these days? I mean it's a movie for christsakes, not real-life - it's not like we can just make one up or something...
If a person is head of a multi-national company with 150,000 employees, is that person personally criminally liable for the actions of every single employee?
Of course not. But your reply is disingenuous; you're rephrasing the question to suit your answer/beliefs.
Let's rephrase it the correct way:
If a person is head of a multi-national company with 150,000 employees, is that person personally criminally liable for the actions of that company?
What do you think the answer to that question should be?
Personally, I think entities like corporations should at the very least be held to the same standards as individuals. If they were actively complicit in those deaths, that's murder. If it was due to an active act of omission, or an unintended but forseeable side effect, then that's manslaughter.
I'd just like to say this : I too was concerned about this aspect of DTV. All my knowledge and experience in the digital domain led me to believe that digital signals have a sharp knee-cutoff - that is, the effects of signal degredation are inconsequential up to a point, then the recovered signal goes dark...
But, since buying a DVB-T card (and now, a twin tuner STB w/HDD recorder), I've discovered I was wrong. DVB-T reception, at least here in Australia (where DVB-T isn't even running full power yet!), is often superior to analogue FTA.
For instance, on the weekend I was having DVB-T problems - breakups, dropouts, etc - due to a noisy antenna wall socket. While I was replacing that, with the shielded cable floating in the breeze, the TV couldn't even lock to the analogue signal. But the STB had a good 80% signal / 99% quality lock, and was putting out an error-free picture.
Other experiences lead me to believe that DVB-T (at least the system we use here) will give a near-perfect picture even when the S/N ratio is down in the dirt. However, impulse noise - noisy connectors, dodgy light switches, etc - is another matter, although it depends on the type of noise - for example, lightning doesn't seem to cause a problem.
Or, in other words, it's the same as analogue - some things affect it more than others. It's just not the same things, and in the same manner, as analogue.
Finally, DVB-T bitrates here are on the order of 6~7Mbps for a 720x576i SD stream, or 12~15Mbps for a HD stream (varying resolutions, generally 576p or 1080i). So the SD stream is basically DVD quality, or slightly better. And the cheapest SD STB I've seen retails at ~ AU$100.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe, just maybe, "The 4400" wasn't a few hours of happy-touchy-feely propaganda for the Department of Father... oops, sorry, 'Homeland' Security?
And don't get me started on that steaming pile of soap opera shite that is Battlestar Galactica...
No, this is what you've come to believe - either through propaganda, or through independent thought influenced by propaganda - in order to reconcile events with your own world view.
It pays to remember that, no matter how nice you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how altruistic you are, there are enough different people and opinions in this world that it's almost certain that somebody, somewhere, will think you're a cunt.
And face it - America's actions throughout the word for the last 50 years or much more have, on the whole, been less than nice, good, and altruistic.
(And yes, I used the word "propaganda" most deliberately. Just because you agree with a statement doesn't mean it isn't propaganda...)
The music industry learnt something from the advent of CDs : people will pay again and again to buy something they already own!
For those of us that remember it, the music industry got a big surprise when it happened. They were all ready with big new releases to push the CD format (e.g. Dire Straits "Love Over Gold"), but what really kicked the format off? Re-releases of back catalogue material from the biggies - U2, Pink Floyd, etc - and a bit later on, The Beatles.
So they tried this formula again and again - MiniDisk, DVD-A, SACD - but it didn't quite work for them. Not different enough, y'see? Close, but no cigar. People latched on to the idea of computer audio through MP3, then transferred this over to the first portable MP3 players. People decided this was what they wanted - but because it was easier to copy and share than to buy, the music industry couldn't sell it to them.
So they worked on this problem, and came up with "looks like MP3, smells like MP3, but isn't" formats like WMA, FairTunes/AAC, etc, which they can sell - in their minds, without fear of unrestricted copying. CDs can easily be copied now, spec-breaking DRM crap or not, so they need to drop that format ASAP and sell you something new - or else the revenue stream in their business model collapses.
Don't ever underestimate the entertainment / media industries. They may not be innovative, but they are very reactive, and will change course at the drop of a hat when they sense which way the wind is blowing. People don't want CDs, they want little computer files - so they're going hell-bent to win hearts, minds, and legislation to ensure they're the ones to profit from it.
Or, in short, "yes, they are pushing DRM-protected music to try and hurt CD sales".
You're modded "+5, Funny", but that's pretty much how it goes where I work - for the 6 months or so that the employment agreement is being re-negotiated.
/. groupthink is that unions are evil. You'll learn when you grow up...)
For the other 18 months or 2 years, the thoughts in brackets are usually the correct ones...
(Yes, it's a union-negotiated agreement. Yes, I'm aware that the
Hell, as a telecoms person, this is how I always thought they'd do it! And why not? It's their private network, not some hippy "public good" service. (There's a whole 'nother arguement right there...)
It ties in with the growth in non-internet "internet" services - NAT'd subnets using "transparent" proxies, and blocking everything except ports 80/443 & 119 (saves them running a news server for all the warez & pr0n leeches). Not to mention the walled garden that the phone companines are calling "mobile internet".
Mind you, from a purely technical telecoms POV, I always thought VoIP was a badly kludged-together disaster waiting to happen - the hacks involved in adding QoS & priority in order to emulate the workings of a switched network are non-trivial and flaky at best, unless lots of bandwidth is thrown at them.
The only real advantages IP networks have over circuit-switched networks are (a) cheapness - near-commodity hardware helps there - and (b) reconfigurability to suit demand. That second point is the kicker - given the choice of over-dimensioning a network to provide good QoS to everybody all of the time, or minimally-dimensioning a network to provide average QoS to most people most of the time (while saving a lot of money) and reconfiguring to follow demand, which do you think a telco is going to do?
Do I care about their fixed costs? No. Why should I? It's their problem, not mine. They're a business; their reason d'etre is to offer me products that I want to buy. It's not my purpose to buy what's on offer just because they're selling it.
The point is, for all their claims about how good / flexible / high-quality their product is, it matters less than shit if they're not prepared to offer me what I want.
If they don't offer me what I want, I don't care about their excuses.
Note, this would be a whole different discussion if we were talking about "why is a la carte more expensive than packages?". But we're not discussing that, because they don't/won't even offer that option...
Dunno. In Australia, they're around the AU$100~AU$150 mark. The cheapest I've seen is a no-name for AU$68.
Maybe it has something to do with Australia adopting a {bastardised version of an} international standard for DTV, rather than making up a whole new one?
"Sorry about the mess..."
/*
*/ Flips coin to bartender, walks out
Oh, wait - you're in America, aren't you. Well, in less prudish countries, South Park is shown on FTA, on public (government-funded) stations, in prime-time.
Like the Vendee "around the world" yacht race?
Head south, sail as close as you dare around Antarctica without freezing up and tipping over, then head home...
"Nip this in the butt" indeed...
You may jest - certainly, enough people think you are to mark you up "+3, Funny" - but that's exactly how shopping centres are designed. Look it up sometime. They're designed to disorient you; to make you traverse are much as possible of the mall to complete your business; and to keep you separated from your car as long as possible.
Ever wonder why, in a standard 3-armed shopping centre layout, the general layout is banks in one arm, department stores in another, and food stores in the third? Or why carparks are either dark cavernous labyrinths or blinding hot barren wastelands, when the mall itself is bright, cool, breezy, and colourful?
They use psychological cues to get/keep you inside, then once inside you're kept disoriented. Try this game : stand at the top of the escalators or stairs, and watch people as they get off. You'll see a large percentage of people who stop, look around, then continue on uncertainly.
Every time you go shopping, you're being gamed...
So this story is, in fact, not so much a dupe as tripe?
No, but a dupe of this story pointing to that URL will appear next Monday...
1) Open up the case
2) Find the sound hardware
3) Locate the output D/A converter
3a) Discover this chip itself contains the DRM decryption
4) Solder wires to its input connections
5) Find any compatable sound card which allows for input
6) Find its A/D converter.
7) Solder the other ends of your wires to its output connections
Voila! (Or "Wallah!" if you've learnt everything you need to know from TV and man pages) - you have a perfect bit-for-bit digital copy. Including the DRM...
Besides, how many of you software geeks could even pick up the right end of a soldering iron on the first go?
Tinned fruit and ammo won't help when the Rapture comes...
Crap. He's a perfect example of modern capitalism.
He's taking value, expending nothing, and when it falls over he'll be long gone.
Or maybe, just maybe, when it falls over he'll have amassed enough ill-gotten toys that we'll all go looking to him for our needs. Which would make him, in modern parlance, an entrepreneur.
Please, spare us your Great Corporate American high school civics brainwashing bullshit...
And then they could
And then, in the season finale, one of them could jump a tankful of sharks on a motorbike!
Really, what is it with people; this twisted hope that inevitably leads to disappointment? I mean, we've got nearly 50 years of history to prove to us that 99.99% of crossovers suck - and yet that remaining
Next week : I'll let you in on the "making 2 sequels at the same time" rule.
WHAT??!!
I'll remember that today as I use the IE-based ActiveX & JS abomination that is the interface to my work - the one that crashes multiple times per day because I *click too fast*! Taking my bookable time, completed work, and ordered materials with it...
I'll also remember that as I reboot my laptop multiple times trying to get the thing to connect, though that's the fault of the IBM wireless software and not IE...
Let's rephrase it the correct way
What do you think the answer to that question should be?
Personally, I think entities like corporations should at the very least be held to the same standards as individuals. If they were actively complicit in those deaths, that's murder. If it was due to an active act of omission, or an unintended but forseeable side effect, then that's manslaughter.
I'd just like to say this : I too was concerned about this aspect of DTV. All my knowledge and experience in the digital domain led me to believe that digital signals have a sharp knee-cutoff - that is, the effects of signal degredation are inconsequential up to a point, then the recovered signal goes dark...
But, since buying a DVB-T card (and now, a twin tuner STB w/HDD recorder), I've discovered I was wrong. DVB-T reception, at least here in Australia (where DVB-T isn't even running full power yet!), is often superior to analogue FTA.
For instance, on the weekend I was having DVB-T problems - breakups, dropouts, etc - due to a noisy antenna wall socket. While I was replacing that, with the shielded cable floating in the breeze, the TV couldn't even lock to the analogue signal. But the STB had a good 80% signal / 99% quality lock, and was putting out an error-free picture.
Other experiences lead me to believe that DVB-T (at least the system we use here) will give a near-perfect picture even when the S/N ratio is down in the dirt. However, impulse noise - noisy connectors, dodgy light switches, etc - is another matter, although it depends on the type of noise - for example, lightning doesn't seem to cause a problem.
Or, in other words, it's the same as analogue - some things affect it more than others. It's just not the same things, and in the same manner, as analogue.
Finally, DVB-T bitrates here are on the order of 6~7Mbps for a 720x576i SD stream, or 12~15Mbps for a HD stream (varying resolutions, generally 576p or 1080i). So the SD stream is basically DVD quality, or slightly better. And the cheapest SD STB I've seen retails at ~ AU$100.