Well, that depends on if their controlling nature keeps the majority of users from doing what they want with the device. I'm a geek, but I just bought an iPhone when my old phone died. That's because while other OSes allow more tweaking by the user, I've found overall that with Apple's products I have to do much less tweaking to get the device to a place where it does everything I want it to do. A week into owning my new iPhone, it already does everything I want better than my old phone, where I upgraded the OS several times to get things to work right. An Android phone would also probably have served me well, but I've reached a point where I'll happily spend the extra money to not have to spend a lot of my time customizing my new toy before I can play with it. The point where Apple's mistakes will turn me off to their products is if those mistakes result in a device that *doesn't* do everything I want without extensive tweaking, or when I find that their controls keep me from customizing my device to do what I want to do with it. So far, that hasn't happened.
I can't speak to most of your points, but the one on lack of sub-accounts is pure BS. My wife's been playing single-player happily for several days on a guest account on my copy, and I've had a friend playing on another one even while I was playing logged into my account. They've got three guest accounts built in for just that purpose. Sure, they disable achievements and multiplayer play, but they're quite playable for those of us who don't care much about either of those things.
Meh, I just went and did this with the dimmers in the house my wife & I just bought. If you know what you're doing, it's a half-hour job, tops. And i discovered that whoever'd wired two of the three I replaced had forgotten to connect the grounding wire when they did.
Overall, I like your argument, but it doesn't really work in some cases, where there's specialized work that has to be done. For example, in the previous lab I worked in, one of the assays we were using required a windows-only piece of software - in fact, one that wasn't even compatible with the latest versions, so it was stuck on a non-internet connected system to avoid viruses and the like. But to do the experiment any other way would likely have increased the time for us to do our research by a matter of months or years, the choice wasn't between free and non-free, but really between doing our work and not - as we're geneticists, not programmers, rolling our own wasn't really an option. For that matter, in my home business doing freelance photography, my wife & I use Adobe Lightroom because it speeds up our workflow by many hours compared to any of the open-source tools I'm aware of. So while it's a matter of choice, certainly, it's not always a simple choice between free and non-free software. While I'd frequently like to look at switching to free software, in many cases, there isn't a program that will work as well (or at all) for the job as the proprietary alternative.
I would add that voting with your wallet means giving the game a pass and telling the company that produced it WHY you're not buying it. People often don't bother with this part, but if you don't tell them what it is that made you not make the purchase, they'll probably assume that it's for completely different reasons.
Same here on the musicians getting paid, and on preferring to buy CDs than download. I like having a physical copy. I buy nearly all my music from smaller bands/artists at their performances, none of whom are affiliated with the RIAA, and all of whom are happy for me to rip the CDs to MP3 or whatever else, as long as it's for personal use. I think most people are in favor of supporting the actual musicians - Heck, my wife and I just *gave* $48 to one of our favorite artists because he's in danger of foreclosure on his house, and other fans put the word out that we should buy any of his stuff we don't already have. Since we have all his current CDs, we just tossed what we could spare his way. Last I heard enough of us have done that in the span of about a week and a half to bring him halfway to the money he needs to save his house.
Heh, reading your hydrogen story reminds me of the talk my dad gave me when I went off for college about the difference between good and bad college pranks, using his own ones as examples. The good one involved filling balloons with hydrogen, putting a firecracker underneath, then lighting said firecracker and floating it up to outside the balcony of some annoying neighbors at night, leaving them puzzled about the noisy fireballs that resulted. The example of a bad prank was masterminding the tear-gassing of some particularly disliked people in the dorm. To quote my dad "And it would have all turned out just fine if they'd opened their sliding glass door before running through it."
When I was last pirating games, it was because I had learned the hard way that even though my computer met or exceeded all the listed specs for a game, that was no guarantee that it would actually run. In fact, the most recent game I purchased made me regret stopping pirating games first to test them, as while I meet the system requirements, it only technically works - the game's so slow as to be unplayable.
For me it's entirely about quality and comfort. A six-month to a year old, visibly worn out pair of the $100 shoes I wear is still much more comfortable on my feet than a brand-new pair of cheap shoes.
Heck, my wife & I work this way when we're hired to do photography, weddings mostly, but some other stuff. Since all our camera equipment is digital, it's easier for us to just give the customer copies of the original files and give them full reproduction rights as part of the package. For us it's really more of a philosophical than a business decision - the photographers I know tend to charge based on the idea that they'll make what they consider a good wage off the initial sale (usually a package including a given number of prints), and any extra photos ordered are a bonus. Since we decided that we don't really like the idea of making people come to us for new prints, and don't want to get into the business of printing photos, we don't do things that way, and just charge a reasonable amount up front based on how much of our time the shoot will take.
UC Davis has the Bargain Barn, with an online list of everything they're selling here. The hook and ladder fire truck has dropped to $4000 because they haven't had any takers. If only I wasn't a poor student....
I love that plac, especially at their annual big sale. I'm still kicking myself occasionally for not getting the M1 tank laser rangefinder they had a few years back..... Not that I know what I'd do with it.:)
According to ageofconsent.com, the legal age of consent for women is 16 in approximately 27 states in the US (I may have miscounted by one or two), and internationally legal age varies widely, but the majority of countries seem to have it around 14-16 years of age. Fnord, Garath
Not at all - this is Campus Cinema at UC Davis, the theater doubles as the largest of the Chemistry lecture rooms, and the price of a ticket is $3-4. Oh, and they don't sell refreshments - the building is primarily a lecture hall, so there's no place to sell them from. Try your math again, please.
What I've found that works well for ergonomics is the Naturalpoint TrackIR (http://www.naturalpoint.com) It tracks a reflective dot on your forehead. With that and an external switch I made out of a joystick handle, my arm feels much better. Unforunately, there are no linux drivers - there was a project to write them, but it seems to have stalled. The company is willing to provide any documentation needed, but they're too busy with the windows and mac drivers. That's actually one of the things that's keeping windows as my primary OS at the moment. I'd try writing the drivers, but I don't have nearly the needed skills - I'm just a genetics geek who dabbles in programming occasionally when I have to.:)
Fnord,
Garath
I have to agree with you on that one. While I'd defintily draw the line at pre-pubescent children, finding post-pubescent males or females (depending on your orientation) attractive has a lot of biological hard-wiring involved, which I find it laughable that people try to legislate against. Also why I find a lot of the age of consent stuff to be rediculous, especially when it concerns two people of the same age. As long as ther is no coercion involved (Which can be hard to make sure of, I know) I think that sex between two consenting individuals should be OK. OK, I'll stop ranting now.
Fnord,
Brian
On the other hand, for scratches, there are some really good repair kits out there - I use DiscRx - it works as long as the label side is not scratched. Though in that case, a backup copy would still be good.
Fnord,
Garath
Analog - analog video can be preventable or at least made difficult enough that way, but audio, you can always just grab the signal at the speakers (and if they add special speaker stuff, at the voice coil) At that point it HAS to be readable by any speaker mechanism, thus copyable. I suspect that one could bypass macrovision in TV sets by putting outputs from the CRT and speakers, but I don't know enough to try.
Fnord,
Garath
I have to agree fully here. I am currently majoring in genetics, so I do know a fair bit about this stuff. Most people posting don't seem to understand that a genetic predisposition to something like cancer does not mean that you are certain to get cancer later in life. It simply means that you may be more likely to do so if you do not take precautions. Even then, we really do not understand all the factors well enough yet to say that with any certainty. I also would recommend the movie GATTACA for an example of the logical conclusion of such testing.
As for the Email address, I found this on the official web page.:
"SENDING MAIL TO DAVID BRIN. Like many public figures, I am forced to be a bit circumspect about opening myself to approach by members of the public. Yet, I'm known for trying hard to answer all mail and staying - as much as possible - accessible to those who feel they have something to share. My compromise is to be reticent about my regular email address, but to share the following address for public use: mail@davidbrin.com. But be patient, please! I don't have secretaries and such. I'll try to check this box as often as my hectic schedule allows."
Fnord,
Garath
It's not going to be a problem. I work in a fly lab (genetics of fruit flies) and we use CO2 to keep the flies unconscious. We have tanks that are releasing CO2 into the lab all day via the plates on the microscopes, and there has never been any problem. As long as you have decent ventilation, there's no problem. Just make sure that you're not in an airtight room.
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That would be a legitimate answer only if there was an actual license agreement that came with the disk. As it is, there's no such thing.
Well, that depends on if their controlling nature keeps the majority of users from doing what they want with the device. I'm a geek, but I just bought an iPhone when my old phone died. That's because while other OSes allow more tweaking by the user, I've found overall that with Apple's products I have to do much less tweaking to get the device to a place where it does everything I want it to do. A week into owning my new iPhone, it already does everything I want better than my old phone, where I upgraded the OS several times to get things to work right. An Android phone would also probably have served me well, but I've reached a point where I'll happily spend the extra money to not have to spend a lot of my time customizing my new toy before I can play with it. The point where Apple's mistakes will turn me off to their products is if those mistakes result in a device that *doesn't* do everything I want without extensive tweaking, or when I find that their controls keep me from customizing my device to do what I want to do with it. So far, that hasn't happened.
I can't speak to most of your points, but the one on lack of sub-accounts is pure BS. My wife's been playing single-player happily for several days on a guest account on my copy, and I've had a friend playing on another one even while I was playing logged into my account. They've got three guest accounts built in for just that purpose. Sure, they disable achievements and multiplayer play, but they're quite playable for those of us who don't care much about either of those things.
Meh, I just went and did this with the dimmers in the house my wife & I just bought. If you know what you're doing, it's a half-hour job, tops. And i discovered that whoever'd wired two of the three I replaced had forgotten to connect the grounding wire when they did.
Overall, I like your argument, but it doesn't really work in some cases, where there's specialized work that has to be done. For example, in the previous lab I worked in, one of the assays we were using required a windows-only piece of software - in fact, one that wasn't even compatible with the latest versions, so it was stuck on a non-internet connected system to avoid viruses and the like. But to do the experiment any other way would likely have increased the time for us to do our research by a matter of months or years, the choice wasn't between free and non-free, but really between doing our work and not - as we're geneticists, not programmers, rolling our own wasn't really an option.
For that matter, in my home business doing freelance photography, my wife & I use Adobe Lightroom because it speeds up our workflow by many hours compared to any of the open-source tools I'm aware of. So while it's a matter of choice, certainly, it's not always a simple choice between free and non-free software. While I'd frequently like to look at switching to free software, in many cases, there isn't a program that will work as well (or at all) for the job as the proprietary alternative.
I would add that voting with your wallet means giving the game a pass and telling the company that produced it WHY you're not buying it. People often don't bother with this part, but if you don't tell them what it is that made you not make the purchase, they'll probably assume that it's for completely different reasons.
Same here on the musicians getting paid, and on preferring to buy CDs than download. I like having a physical copy. I buy nearly all my music from smaller bands/artists at their performances, none of whom are affiliated with the RIAA, and all of whom are happy for me to rip the CDs to MP3 or whatever else, as long as it's for personal use.
I think most people are in favor of supporting the actual musicians - Heck, my wife and I just *gave* $48 to one of our favorite artists because he's in danger of foreclosure on his house, and other fans put the word out that we should buy any of his stuff we don't already have. Since we have all his current CDs, we just tossed what we could spare his way. Last I heard enough of us have done that in the span of about a week and a half to bring him halfway to the money he needs to save his house.
Heh, reading your hydrogen story reminds me of the talk my dad gave me when I went off for college about the difference between good and bad college pranks, using his own ones as examples. The good one involved filling balloons with hydrogen, putting a firecracker underneath, then lighting said firecracker and floating it up to outside the balcony of some annoying neighbors at night, leaving them puzzled about the noisy fireballs that resulted.
The example of a bad prank was masterminding the tear-gassing of some particularly disliked people in the dorm. To quote my dad "And it would have all turned out just fine if they'd opened their sliding glass door before running through it."
When I was last pirating games, it was because I had learned the hard way that even though my computer met or exceeded all the listed specs for a game, that was no guarantee that it would actually run. In fact, the most recent game I purchased made me regret stopping pirating games first to test them, as while I meet the system requirements, it only technically works - the game's so slow as to be unplayable.
For me it's entirely about quality and comfort. A six-month to a year old, visibly worn out pair of the $100 shoes I wear is still much more comfortable on my feet than a brand-new pair of cheap shoes.
Heck, my wife & I work this way when we're hired to do photography, weddings mostly, but some other stuff. Since all our camera equipment is digital, it's easier for us to just give the customer copies of the original files and give them full reproduction rights as part of the package. For us it's really more of a philosophical than a business decision - the photographers I know tend to charge based on the idea that they'll make what they consider a good wage off the initial sale (usually a package including a given number of prints), and any extra photos ordered are a bonus. Since we decided that we don't really like the idea of making people come to us for new prints, and don't want to get into the business of printing photos, we don't do things that way, and just charge a reasonable amount up front based on how much of our time the shoot will take.
If I'm remembering correctly, my old Aptiva I got in 1998 came with one of those mice. It worked great for both up/down and side/side scrolling.
UC Davis has the Bargain Barn, with an online list of everything they're selling here. The hook and ladder fire truck has dropped to $4000 because they haven't had any takers. If only I wasn't a poor student....
I love that plac, especially at their annual big sale. I'm still kicking myself occasionally for not getting the M1 tank laser rangefinder they had a few years back..... Not that I know what I'd do with it. :)
I used to feel the same way, then I tried reading on my new laptop - the LCD screen is much nicer.
According to ageofconsent.com, the legal age of consent for women is 16 in approximately 27 states in the US (I may have miscounted by one or two), and internationally legal age varies widely, but the majority of countries seem to have it around 14-16 years of age.
Fnord,
Garath
Not at all - this is Campus Cinema at UC Davis, the theater doubles as the largest of the Chemistry lecture rooms, and the price of a ticket is $3-4. Oh, and they don't sell refreshments - the building is primarily a lecture hall, so there's no place to sell them from. Try your math again, please.
What I've found that works well for ergonomics is the Naturalpoint TrackIR (http://www.naturalpoint.com) It tracks a reflective dot on your forehead. With that and an external switch I made out of a joystick handle, my arm feels much better. Unforunately, there are no linux drivers - there was a project to write them, but it seems to have stalled. The company is willing to provide any documentation needed, but they're too busy with the windows and mac drivers. That's actually one of the things that's keeping windows as my primary OS at the moment. I'd try writing the drivers, but I don't have nearly the needed skills - I'm just a genetics geek who dabbles in programming occasionally when I have to. :)
Fnord,
Garath
I have to agree with you on that one. While I'd defintily draw the line at pre-pubescent children, finding post-pubescent males or females (depending on your orientation) attractive has a lot of biological hard-wiring involved, which I find it laughable that people try to legislate against. Also why I find a lot of the age of consent stuff to be rediculous, especially when it concerns two people of the same age. As long as ther is no coercion involved (Which can be hard to make sure of, I know) I think that sex between two consenting individuals should be OK. OK, I'll stop ranting now. Fnord, Brian
On the other hand, for scratches, there are some really good repair kits out there - I use DiscRx - it works as long as the label side is not scratched. Though in that case, a backup copy would still be good.
Fnord,
Garath
Analog - analog video can be preventable or at least made difficult enough that way, but audio, you can always just grab the signal at the speakers (and if they add special speaker stuff, at the voice coil) At that point it HAS to be readable by any speaker mechanism, thus copyable. I suspect that one could bypass macrovision in TV sets by putting outputs from the CRT and speakers, but I don't know enough to try. Fnord, Garath
And don't forget to send them a letter telling them why you returned their software. Otherwise it won't do nearly as much good.
I have to agree fully here. I am currently majoring in genetics, so I do know a fair bit about this stuff. Most people posting don't seem to understand that a genetic predisposition to something like cancer does not mean that you are certain to get cancer later in life. It simply means that you may be more likely to do so if you do not take precautions. Even then, we really do not understand all the factors well enough yet to say that with any certainty. I also would recommend the movie GATTACA for an example of the logical conclusion of such testing.
As for the Email address, I found this on the official web page.: "SENDING MAIL TO DAVID BRIN. Like many public figures, I am forced to be a bit circumspect about opening myself to approach by members of the public. Yet, I'm known for trying hard to answer all mail and staying - as much as possible - accessible to those who feel they have something to share. My compromise is to be reticent about my regular email address, but to share the following address for public use: mail@davidbrin.com. But be patient, please! I don't have secretaries and such. I'll try to check this box as often as my hectic schedule allows." Fnord, Garath
It's not going to be a problem. I work in a fly lab (genetics of fruit flies) and we use CO2 to keep the flies unconscious. We have tanks that are releasing CO2 into the lab all day via the plates on the microscopes, and there has never been any problem. As long as you have decent ventilation, there's no problem. Just make sure that you're not in an airtight room.