Not gonna happen for most users, and that's the way Apple like it I'm sure - every time they replace their machine they need to buy all their music again. Hurray for DRM.
Every time I think that the completely uninformed Apple-bashing posts have gone away, someone like this pops up like an annoying ad.
Macs come with neat software that lets you hook old and new machines together via FireWire and migrate all your old stuff over with a couple of clicks.
Macs have done this for a long time, actually. It's called FireWire disk mode. The migration software is pretty new - I think it was introduced quietly a couple of years ago - but Apple knows that most of their customers are upgrading from one Mac to another and designed this feature to make that task easier.
What's more, every time you purchase music from iTunes, you get a reminder to Back Your Shit Up(TM). Unfortunately, Apple can't do this for you yet - people do still need to take the initiative and be responsible for preserving the stuff they paid money for.
Living here in a 'red' state I hereby volunteer to surrender all that swag. As soon as the 'blue' states will do the same.
Sounds great to me. We'll shut off all Fed money to you and keep that which is raised here?
high density nightmare cities
Sounds like what happens when a bunch of red-staters run out of room. See also: Atlanta traffic, Houston traffic, etc. That's what happens when you don't teach sex-ed and pretend that an Great Invisible Guy(TM) invented everything.
Big cities are not necessarily blue; but I'd sure as hell rather sit in traffic for two hours to get to a job in San Francisco that one in Houston.
You remind me of the smallminded, bigted people I went to high school with! Of course, many of them are driving forklifts.
And they bitch the loudest about how Uncle Sam is picking their pocket, while those of us in California, New York, and other "blue states" pay for their roads, schools, and other federally-funded or subsidized programs.
New Orleans spent more effort at having fun they did at building levies.
As a former resident, I can assure you that the city's "party" reputation came about largely from out-of-towners who visited once or twice for Mardi Gras, or who came to town after 1984 fora convention and got drunk in the French Quarter. Most people in New Orleans and its suburbs are hardworking middle and lower middle class people with kids. They don't have time or inclination to "party" in deference to building levees.
In short, most of the people who "party" in New Orleans are from out of town or in college - and there are large populations of both demographics in New Orleans at all times. The Crescent City was once one of the top five convention cities in the nation; thank the1984 World's fair and its exhibit halls for that. There are also several mid-to-large sized schools in New Orleans; UNO, Xavier, Loyola, Tulane, Southern, LSU Health Sciences Center, Notre Dame....
I'm tempted to call you nasty names, but it's obvious you're just trolling, relying on bullshit you heard somewhere to malign a city you know nothing about. Maybe you don't like the south. Maybe you don't like blacks, who have born the service side of the city's economy for over two hundred years. Maybe you just like to make uninformed comments on Slashdot, but they shouldn't go unaunswered by those of us who know better.
If anything, endemic corruption caused by a centuries old power structure in the city were more responsible for the under-specced and under-built levees that failed. No one double-checked the contractor's work; instead of the 16 foot bsl concrete t-wall that the Army Corps specced, a 10 foot bsl steel curtain wall was built instead. Was the contractor responsible dancing around on the levee with a go-cup or something that I don't know about?
Oh, and you misspelled levee. Big clue that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
There are probably others, but Apple has a long history of this.
The problem is that those were not the code names of the ultimate products.
As to the name "Kaleidoscope":
All Apple products developed since Steve came back have very different code names from what you hear in the computing press. The code names are actually "code names" and wouldn't mean anything to you if you overheard them. Quite boring.
"Kaleidoscope" is probably either an intentional leak through a contractor or the usual unfounded code name made up by someone at Stink Secret.
The vast majority of California winderies are in Central California, just north of San Francisco, where the temperature rarely approaches freezing.
I think you meant Northern California, which is most certainly where anything north of San Francisco lies.
Unfortunately, your statement is georgraphically half-right but factually all wrong. Many of best California wines were once made north of San Francisco in the Napa and Sonoma valleys. Coincidentally, it will probably reach freezing in both valleys tonight, though the impact will be minimal, since we're past crush.
There are many wineries in Napa and Sonoma, but I think your statement could be more correct if it were rewritten thusly: "The vast majority of well-known wineries..."
The VAST majority of California wine grapes are grown in crush districts 7 and 8 and in the San Joaquin Valley - all of which are in the central part of the state, a 220-mile long, 50 mile-wide expanse. These areas are also home to most of California's wineries.
Sure my old library was there but it was drmed and grayed out. I tried to remerge and set myself as teh new owner of the ipod since I tried all options. Itunes deleted about $400 worth of music and wiped my whole collection clean.:-(
Here's an article that details the several options on each platform for solving exactly the problem you found yourself with.
You could argue that Apple should provide a "Restore from iPod" provision in iTunes, or a low-cost "Redownload all my shit" option, but wouldn't have just been easier to Google the answer to your $400.00 problem or to back up your system in the first place?
Complaining on Slashdot is easier that using Google, I guess.
Another article from NASA emphasizes the dust's toxicity: 'In some ways, lunar dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a serious disease.'"
Yeah, it's a good thing they had those breathers, or they'd have been looking at some serious OSHA violations.
No doubt they would be exposed to it at some point during the mission...
Seriously, the samples were placed into sealed containers to avoid contamination of the moon material with earth material. The moon material was quarantined, then samples were studied in sealed chambers (in Houston, I believe).
Now, if you read my original comment, I was stating that if you hear a song in the car and wanted to download it, iTMS faces obstacles in being the venue that you download from. Your first objection doesn't apply to my argument, since I was assuming most people wouldn't download music while at their computer at work.
If I hear a song in the car and I want to download it, I'm going to download it at home instead of trying to buy a freakin' song while I'm driving...but onto your next paragraph:
Your second statement assumes that you don't get distracted while on-line. IMs, e-mails and other errands might push music to the back of the list.
??? Maybe you're still using Windows 3.1 or Mac OS 9, but I multitask well, as does my operating system. I don't think I'm in the minority. If anything the target market for a service like this multitasks as well or better than average.
Granted, less of an obstacle for the "always on" crowd (you've ignored dial-ups, which do still exist),
Am I wrong in thinking that there's not exactly a huge pool of people who have dial up, but will buy one of these $200.00 phones, live in a high-speed wireless coverage area, and pay $2.50 a song all for the convenience of only being able to listen to a low quality song file on their phone?
but at the same time, everyone I've ever met has had times where they've gone to a computer with the intent of doing something, got distracted and forgot about it.
I still don't understand how this is an argument that iTunes is inherently less convenient than cellphones for downloading music.
I'm quite familiar with the tiered structure of iTunes. However, assuming that everyone chooses one-click is a bit over-simplistic.
I didn't make that assumption in my post, and you're trying to change the argument. I personally set iTunes to ask me if I'm sure and to prompt for a password.
I don't think most people set iTunes up to one-click, either - but I'll bet that number is higher than the people who insist on entering their credit card number every time they buy a song - which is what you tried to argue in your first post.
Some don't have their own computers (share with siblings, etc). Some don't want to accidentally click and download music they were just browsing. Some are just paranoid.
Yes, those people exist. That's why iTunes has different ways of setting up permissions for buying.
Congratulations. You just discovered the teenage market.
You sure like to oversimplify.
So...you're arguing that teenagers will use $200.00 phones to buy $2.50 songs they just heard in the car instead of using iTunes to but 2.5x as many songs for the same money to load onto the iPods they already have...because the cell phone is more convenient. And because it will "just go to their bill". Un-hunh.
There's a big difference between ringtones that have social value ("Dude, call my phone...check out the ringtone I just got...it just came out!") and songs that can only be enjoyed by one person at a time. And I think even the most status-concious "regular teenager" is smart enough to figure it out.
Put another way: the teenage market buys lots of ringtones at ridiculous prices because they can show off ringtones to their friends - and ringtones are an ideal product for teenagers - a transitionary pop product that can be passively observed.
Until the Sprint music service phones come with loudspeakers, a car connection kit, or music sharing, I doubt the teenage market will be extremely interested in ponying up the $2.50 per song, "convenient" or not.
With iTMS, you have to go to your computer (obstacle 1), remember that you went on-line to buy the song (obstacle 2), find the song (obstacle 3), enter your credit card number (obstacle 4) and then download the song (obstacle 5).
OK, I think you are wrong about the obstacles here. iTunes actually makes it pretty easy to save your CC# and other info. Let's go point-by-point.
you have to go to your computer (obstacle 1)
Well, you got me there. I only spend most of the day in front of my computer. If I hear something on today's corporate radio I want to buy, I'd likely be looking up the name and artist online anyway...
remember that you went on-line to buy the song (obstacle 2)
But...you scenario involves buying songs online. Of course I'm going to have to go online to buy a song online.
My computer is alsways connected to it's high speed network, as is my phone. This isn't a valid argument.
find the song (obstacle 3)
This takes only a few seconds with iTunes. Given cell-phone text interfaces, I'll bet that a full keyboard is an inherent and very significant advantage for finding music - and that using a cell-phone, no matter how good the interface, is going to be more difficult than using a computer for anyone trying to find a song title or artist.
The new search interface in iTunes 6 is a little different than previous versions, but after a couple-three weeks, I've found it makes finding exact songs a bit easier than previous versions. The screen real estate also makes managing long lists of songs far easier than a cell phone's display.
enter your credit card number (obstacle 4)
Have you ever used iTunes? You are familiar that it has a tiered buying structure, right? You can make it progressively more or less difficult to buy a song, from entering your CC# every time and stepping through the resultant dialogs to simply clicking "buy" and starting the dialog without any further intervention.
iTunes stores your credit card number after the first use. What appears to be your main argument is also the most specious.
download the song (obstacle 5)
This doesn't require user intervention. Clicking "Buy" starts the download process, which as I explained above can be set up to consist of simply waiting a few seconds for the download to complete, or can consist of entering information and answering dialogs.
I get the feeling you haven't used iTunes.
With the phone, that barrier to entry might be lower (ringtones analogy).
I don't buy ringtones on iTunes. Do you? Of course they're more convenient to buy from a phone - it's a product that can be used only with the phone. Music, on the other hand, can be enjoyed on a variety of devices unless you pay $2.50 a song and use Sprint's music store.
eliminated barriers 1, 2 and 4 since you're immediately connecting to the service and it gets charged to your cell phone tab regardless.
I explained above why those "barriers" don't exist with iTunes.
Is it worth it? For the companies, of course. For the consumer, of course not. It's the same as all impulse buys.
iTunes is far simpler to use for finding, managing, and purchasing music, has a larger library, and costs less. No, it doesn't work on a cell phone (yet), but given the relatively immature state of broadband on cell phone networks, I'd argue that downloading large files (and batches of large files, as with buying whole albums - a task that is far simpler on iTunes) works better on wired networks anyway.
I don't think your arguments hold up; buying a single song on a cell phone might be a little easier in some cases for the extremely impatient people with lots of disposable income, but if one has any common sense at all, buying music through iTunes is simpler and cheaper.
It doesn't matter if you are fast-twitching, snorting, drinking, praying...
Addictions can be managed in some cases. In some types of addiction, the physical need can be destructive.
TFA seems to indicate that the addictive tendency alluded to here is behavioral, unlike the chemical cravings that nicotine, alcohol*, and heroin produce.
I think the article's lead paragraphs should have been more clear on the difference between these types of addiction. I know people who are self-described as "addicted" to Marijuana. Clinically, there is no such thing.
*Based on the theory that alcohol is a disease; see also Jellinek's disease.
We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes,
Because the real reason anyone reads Shakespeare is for the plot. For fuck's sake.
and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,
As opposed to "raise down educational standards"*. This fellow's command of English was clearly enhanced by his close call with Shakepeare's work.
How nice that these works are being rewritten for the attention deficit set.
*Hint: When you write or say "raise" you don't need to include the word "up". Nor does anyone truly need to "utilise"anything that can simply be used. That's superfluous language, and it makes communication more difficult, not less.
From reading it, I think it has more to do with TPM....
In one embodiment the system comprises a processor and a memory unit coupled with the processor. In the system, the memory unit includes a translator unit to translate at runtime blocks of a first object code program into a blocks of a second object code program, wherein the blocks of the second object code program are to be obfuscated as a result of the translation, and wherein the blocks of the second object code program include system calls.
TPM contains flash. and can obfuscate code at runtime. I'm not in the know, except that I have worked on some publicly available TPM spec stuff.
And a license to run a lot of commercial software in Windows (such as Photoshop, Acrobat, MS Office) is not the same as a license to run this software in OS X. Which means you have to buy it all over again, which is exactly the parent poster's point.
No.
Adobe and Microsoft both have "crossgrade" programs in place that facilitate upgrading versions when changing platforms or a straight crossgrade - simply receiving a license and software for another platform after returning your original media.
Actually, it will be trivial to pull the check out. The underground community has literally decades of experience removing that stuff. The hardware isn't going to do anything to prevent a cracked version of MacOS from running. After all, we aren't even talking about Apple hardware, remember?
Part of what the TPM does is encrypt data that goes on in and out. If the OS send the TPM a value and expects an encrypted value in return, what then? If the OS is looking for a returned value that matches a checksum, is it that easy to trap and emulate an encrypted value that matches the checksum?
If my Mac Computer dies, what are the chances I could take the chip out and sell it on Ebay?
I dunno there, sparky. How good are you with a soldering iron?
I have a 68040 I took out of a Quadra 700 if you want to buy it - it'll probably do as much to get OS X x86 running on a PC as a de-soldered TPM from a Mac.
I urge everyone to boycott Apple and OSx86 because of the draconian copy protection and spyware features
Spyware? Draconian copy protection? Wha?
Does the bag of bullshit you're carrying around ever get too heavy? In five years, every single PC and PC motherboard will have a TPM. You might as well boycott sand.
Just like to say.. if I buy the computer, I AM the owner. and I still won't be able to change TPM_Owner. Only the manufacturer can change TPM_Owner.
Well, until the first set of mod chips start hitting the market...
TPM_Owner is a value set by the manufacturer. You, the computer owner/operator, cannot change this value.
If you think a modchip will get around TPM's internal permissions structure...well, good luck there, sparky. I urge you to go download the freely-accessible TPM spec that is used to design these chips and see if you can figure out a way to get around it.
Let me know when you've got that modchip ready to go, so we can all enjoy Mac OS X on our cobbled-together boxen.
Then people like myself could build a white box, run out and buy OS X and support it myself from the Internet, etc.
Apple isn't interested in setting up the support infrastructure to field the burden that a move like this would produce.
Whether or not you feel it would be a "self-supporting" move, Apple's entire business is set up around products that support themselves, either through ease-of-use, or through Apple itself. Self-support just isn't in their business plan.
Chances are the TPM check will be part of the Install program and not the OSx86 itself.
No, it's part of the kernel - and has been since the first developer versions were sent into the wild. Fooling the installer would be easier, but still far from trivial if it's relying on the TPM to authenticate the machine's origin.
Look, I'm not saying it can't or won't ever be hacked, but from what I've learned about TPM, it's going to be a LOT tougher than anyone here is thinking.
Put another way: how much is your time worth? If you want to crack TPM protection on OS X x86 for the glory, then it doesn't matter; if you want to avoid paying another two hundred bucks for an x86 Mac, it'll never be worth it - I think that at least in the near term, getting around this is going to involve some soldering.
Slashdot Mirror
Not gonna happen for most users, and that's the way Apple like it I'm sure - every time they replace their machine they need to buy all their music again. Hurray for DRM.
Every time I think that the completely uninformed Apple-bashing posts have gone away, someone like this pops up like an annoying ad.
Macs come with neat software that lets you hook old and new machines together via FireWire and migrate all your old stuff over with a couple of clicks.
Macs have done this for a long time, actually. It's called FireWire disk mode. The migration software is pretty new - I think it was introduced quietly a couple of years ago - but Apple knows that most of their customers are upgrading from one Mac to another and designed this feature to make that task easier.
What's more, every time you purchase music from iTunes, you get a reminder to Back Your Shit Up(TM). Unfortunately, Apple can't do this for you yet - people do still need to take the initiative and be responsible for preserving the stuff they paid money for.
That is pretty limited functionality. So, why would you hook this up to your TV?
Um, to watch DVDs? The iMac does S-Video and composite out via a nifty adapter.
iTunes visualizations at parties...
iPhoto slideshow...
There are a few reasons to hook this up to a TV.
I appreciate your stab at a sharply humorous post, but unfortunately, irony on slashdot was pronounced dead seven minutes ago.
Is this Martian water anything like the ice holes found near Uranus?
Living here in a 'red' state I hereby volunteer to surrender all that swag. As soon as the 'blue' states will do the same.
Sounds great to me. We'll shut off all Fed money to you and keep that which is raised here?
high density nightmare cities
Sounds like what happens when a bunch of red-staters run out of room. See also: Atlanta traffic, Houston traffic, etc. That's what happens when you don't teach sex-ed and pretend that an Great Invisible Guy(TM) invented everything.
Big cities are not necessarily blue; but I'd sure as hell rather sit in traffic for two hours to get to a job in San Francisco that one in Houston.
You remind me of the smallminded, bigted people I went to high school with! Of course, many of them are driving forklifts.
That is pretty interesting rant as Louisiana, along with several other SE states, have taken back FAR MORE from the government than average.
Yeah, most red states do take in more Federal Revenue than they pay in taxes.
And they bitch the loudest about how Uncle Sam is picking their pocket, while those of us in California, New York, and other "blue states" pay for their roads, schools, and other federally-funded or subsidized programs.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Now, if we could just get them and Blackwell out of Ohio.
New Orleans spent more effort at having fun they did at building levies.
As a former resident, I can assure you that the city's "party" reputation came about largely from out-of-towners who visited once or twice for Mardi Gras, or who came to town after 1984 fora convention and got drunk in the French Quarter. Most people in New Orleans and its suburbs are hardworking middle and lower middle class people with kids. They don't have time or inclination to "party" in deference to building levees.
In short, most of the people who "party" in New Orleans are from out of town or in college - and there are large populations of both demographics in New Orleans at all times. The Crescent City was once one of the top five convention cities in the nation; thank the1984 World's fair and its exhibit halls for that. There are also several mid-to-large sized schools in New Orleans; UNO, Xavier, Loyola, Tulane, Southern, LSU Health Sciences Center, Notre Dame....
I'm tempted to call you nasty names, but it's obvious you're just trolling, relying on bullshit you heard somewhere to malign a city you know nothing about. Maybe you don't like the south. Maybe you don't like blacks, who have born the service side of the city's economy for over two hundred years. Maybe you just like to make uninformed comments on Slashdot, but they shouldn't go unaunswered by those of us who know better.
If anything, endemic corruption caused by a centuries old power structure in the city were more responsible for the under-specced and under-built levees that failed. No one double-checked the contractor's work; instead of the 16 foot bsl concrete t-wall that the Army Corps specced, a 10 foot bsl steel curtain wall was built instead. Was the contractor responsible dancing around on the levee with a go-cup or something that I don't know about?
Oh, and you misspelled levee. Big clue that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
Macintosh
Newton
Jaguar
Panther
Tiger
There are probably others, but Apple has a long history of this.
The problem is that those were not the code names of the ultimate products.
As to the name "Kaleidoscope":
All Apple products developed since Steve came back have very different code names from what you hear in the computing press. The code names are actually "code names" and wouldn't mean anything to you if you overheard them. Quite boring.
"Kaleidoscope" is probably either an intentional leak through a contractor or the usual unfounded code name made up by someone at Stink Secret.
The vast majority of California winderies are in Central California, just north of San Francisco, where the temperature rarely approaches freezing.
I think you meant Northern California, which is most certainly where anything north of San Francisco lies.
Unfortunately, your statement is georgraphically half-right but factually all wrong. Many of best California wines were once made north of San Francisco in the Napa and Sonoma valleys. Coincidentally, it will probably reach freezing in both valleys tonight, though the impact will be minimal, since we're past crush.
There are many wineries in Napa and Sonoma, but I think your statement could be more correct if it were rewritten thusly: "The vast majority of well-known wineries..."
The VAST majority of California wine grapes are grown in crush districts 7 and 8 and in the San Joaquin Valley - all of which are in the central part of the state, a 220-mile long, 50 mile-wide expanse. These areas are also home to most of California's wineries.
Read more here.
See a map of crush districts here.
Here's an article that details the several options on each platform for solving exactly the problem you found yourself with.
You could argue that Apple should provide a "Restore from iPod" provision in iTunes, or a low-cost "Redownload all my shit" option, but wouldn't have just been easier to Google the answer to your $400.00 problem or to back up your system in the first place?
Complaining on Slashdot is easier that using Google, I guess.
Another article from NASA emphasizes the dust's toxicity: 'In some ways, lunar dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a serious disease.'"
Yeah, it's a good thing they had those breathers, or they'd have been looking at some serious OSHA violations.
No doubt they would be exposed to it at some point during the mission...
Seriously, the samples were placed into sealed containers to avoid contamination of the moon material with earth material. The moon material was quarantined, then samples were studied in sealed chambers (in Houston, I believe).
Now, if you read my original comment, I was stating that if you hear a song in the car and wanted to download it, iTMS faces obstacles in being the venue that you download from. Your first objection doesn't apply to my argument, since I was assuming most people wouldn't download music while at their computer at work.
If I hear a song in the car and I want to download it, I'm going to download it at home instead of trying to buy a freakin' song while I'm driving...but onto your next paragraph:
Your second statement assumes that you don't get distracted while on-line. IMs, e-mails and other errands might push music to the back of the list.
??? Maybe you're still using Windows 3.1 or Mac OS 9, but I multitask well, as does my operating system. I don't think I'm in the minority. If anything the target market for a service like this multitasks as well or better than average.
Granted, less of an obstacle for the "always on" crowd (you've ignored dial-ups, which do still exist),
Am I wrong in thinking that there's not exactly a huge pool of people who have dial up, but will buy one of these $200.00 phones, live in a high-speed wireless coverage area, and pay $2.50 a song all for the convenience of only being able to listen to a low quality song file on their phone?
but at the same time, everyone I've ever met has had times where they've gone to a computer with the intent of doing something, got distracted and forgot about it.
I still don't understand how this is an argument that iTunes is inherently less convenient than cellphones for downloading music.
I'm quite familiar with the tiered structure of iTunes. However, assuming that everyone chooses one-click is a bit over-simplistic.
I didn't make that assumption in my post, and you're trying to change the argument. I personally set iTunes to ask me if I'm sure and to prompt for a password.
I don't think most people set iTunes up to one-click, either - but I'll bet that number is higher than the people who insist on entering their credit card number every time they buy a song - which is what you tried to argue in your first post.
Some don't have their own computers (share with siblings, etc). Some don't want to accidentally click and download music they were just browsing. Some are just paranoid.
Yes, those people exist. That's why iTunes has different ways of setting up permissions for buying.
Congratulations. You just discovered the teenage market.
You sure like to oversimplify.
So...you're arguing that teenagers will use $200.00 phones to buy $2.50 songs they just heard in the car instead of using iTunes to but 2.5x as many songs for the same money to load onto the iPods they already have...because the cell phone is more convenient. And because it will "just go to their bill". Un-hunh.
There's a big difference between ringtones that have social value ("Dude, call my phone...check out the ringtone I just got...it just came out!") and songs that can only be enjoyed by one person at a time. And I think even the most status-concious "regular teenager" is smart enough to figure it out.
Put another way: the teenage market buys lots of ringtones at ridiculous prices because they can show off ringtones to their friends - and ringtones are an ideal product for teenagers - a transitionary pop product that can be passively observed.
Until the Sprint music service phones come with loudspeakers, a car connection kit, or music sharing, I doubt the teenage market will be extremely interested in ponying up the $2.50 per song, "convenient" or not.
With iTMS, you have to go to your computer (obstacle 1), remember that you went on-line to buy the song (obstacle 2), find the song (obstacle 3), enter your credit card number (obstacle 4) and then download the song (obstacle 5).
OK, I think you are wrong about the obstacles here. iTunes actually makes it pretty easy to save your CC# and other info. Let's go point-by-point.
you have to go to your computer (obstacle 1)
Well, you got me there. I only spend most of the day in front of my computer. If I hear something on today's corporate radio I want to buy, I'd likely be looking up the name and artist online anyway...
remember that you went on-line to buy the song (obstacle 2)
But...you scenario involves buying songs online. Of course I'm going to have to go online to buy a song online.
My computer is alsways connected to it's high speed network, as is my phone. This isn't a valid argument.
find the song (obstacle 3)
This takes only a few seconds with iTunes. Given cell-phone text interfaces, I'll bet that a full keyboard is an inherent and very significant advantage for finding music - and that using a cell-phone, no matter how good the interface, is going to be more difficult than using a computer for anyone trying to find a song title or artist.
The new search interface in iTunes 6 is a little different than previous versions, but after a couple-three weeks, I've found it makes finding exact songs a bit easier than previous versions. The screen real estate also makes managing long lists of songs far easier than a cell phone's display.
enter your credit card number (obstacle 4)
Have you ever used iTunes? You are familiar that it has a tiered buying structure, right? You can make it progressively more or less difficult to buy a song, from entering your CC# every time and stepping through the resultant dialogs to simply clicking "buy" and starting the dialog without any further intervention.
iTunes stores your credit card number after the first use. What appears to be your main argument is also the most specious.
download the song (obstacle 5)
This doesn't require user intervention. Clicking "Buy" starts the download process, which as I explained above can be set up to consist of simply waiting a few seconds for the download to complete, or can consist of entering information and answering dialogs.
I get the feeling you haven't used iTunes.
With the phone, that barrier to entry might be lower (ringtones analogy).
I don't buy ringtones on iTunes. Do you? Of course they're more convenient to buy from a phone - it's a product that can be used only with the phone. Music, on the other hand, can be enjoyed on a variety of devices unless you pay $2.50 a song and use Sprint's music store.
eliminated barriers 1, 2 and 4 since you're immediately connecting to the service and it gets charged to your cell phone tab regardless.
I explained above why those "barriers" don't exist with iTunes.
Is it worth it? For the companies, of course. For the consumer, of course not. It's the same as all impulse buys.
iTunes is far simpler to use for finding, managing, and purchasing music, has a larger library, and costs less. No, it doesn't work on a cell phone (yet), but given the relatively immature state of broadband on cell phone networks, I'd argue that downloading large files (and batches of large files, as with buying whole albums - a task that is far simpler on iTunes) works better on wired networks anyway.
I don't think your arguments hold up; buying a single song on a cell phone might be a little easier in some cases for the extremely impatient people with lots of disposable income, but if one has any common sense at all, buying music through iTunes is simpler and cheaper.
Worms, mice. Feh!
All I know is that all these stories about "breakthroughs" in aging are getting old.
Addiction is addiction is addiction.
It doesn't matter if you are fast-twitching, snorting, drinking, praying...
Addictions can be managed in some cases. In some types of addiction, the physical need can be destructive.
TFA seems to indicate that the addictive tendency alluded to here is behavioral, unlike the chemical cravings that nicotine, alcohol*, and heroin produce.
I think the article's lead paragraphs should have been more clear on the difference between these types of addiction. I know people who are self-described as "addicted" to Marijuana. Clinically, there is no such thing.
*Based on the theory that alcohol is a disease; see also Jellinek's disease.
We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes,
Because the real reason anyone reads Shakespeare is for the plot. For fuck's sake.
and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,
As opposed to "raise down educational standards"*. This fellow's command of English was clearly enhanced by his close call with Shakepeare's work.
How nice that these works are being rewritten for the attention deficit set.
*Hint: When you write or say "raise" you don't need to include the word "up". Nor does anyone truly need to "utilise"anything that can simply be used. That's superfluous language, and it makes communication more difficult, not less.
From reading it, I think it has more to do with TPM....
In one embodiment the system comprises a processor and a memory unit coupled with the processor. In the system, the memory unit includes a translator unit to translate at runtime blocks of a first object code program into a blocks of a second object code program, wherein the blocks of the second object code program are to be obfuscated as a result of the translation, and wherein the blocks of the second object code program include system calls.
TPM contains flash. and can obfuscate code at runtime. I'm not in the know, except that I have worked on some publicly available TPM spec stuff.
And a license to run a lot of commercial software in Windows (such as Photoshop, Acrobat, MS Office) is not the same as a license to run this software in OS X. Which means you have to buy it all over again, which is exactly the parent poster's point.
No.
Adobe and Microsoft both have "crossgrade" programs in place that facilitate upgrading versions when changing platforms or a straight crossgrade - simply receiving a license and software for another platform after returning your original media.
Actually, it will be trivial to pull the check out. The underground community has literally decades of experience removing that stuff. The hardware isn't going to do anything to prevent a cracked version of MacOS from running. After all, we aren't even talking about Apple hardware, remember?
Part of what the TPM does is encrypt data that goes on in and out. If the OS send the TPM a value and expects an encrypted value in return, what then? If the OS is looking for a returned value that matches a checksum, is it that easy to trap and emulate an encrypted value that matches the checksum?
If my Mac Computer dies, what are the chances I could take the chip out and sell it on Ebay?
I dunno there, sparky. How good are you with a soldering iron?
I have a 68040 I took out of a Quadra 700 if you want to buy it - it'll probably do as much to get OS X x86 running on a PC as a de-soldered TPM from a Mac.
I urge everyone to boycott Apple and OSx86 because of the draconian copy protection and spyware features
Spyware? Draconian copy protection? Wha?
Does the bag of bullshit you're carrying around ever get too heavy? In five years, every single PC and PC motherboard will have a TPM. You might as well boycott sand.
Just like to say.. if I buy the computer, I AM the owner. and I still won't be able to change TPM_Owner. Only the manufacturer can change TPM_Owner.
Well, until the first set of mod chips start hitting the market...
TPM_Owner is a value set by the manufacturer. You, the computer owner/operator, cannot change this value.
If you think a modchip will get around TPM's internal permissions structure...well, good luck there, sparky. I urge you to go download the freely-accessible TPM spec that is used to design these chips and see if you can figure out a way to get around it.
Let me know when you've got that modchip ready to go, so we can all enjoy Mac OS X on our cobbled-together boxen.
Then people like myself could build a white box, run out and buy OS X and support it myself from the Internet, etc.
Apple isn't interested in setting up the support infrastructure to field the burden that a move like this would produce.
Whether or not you feel it would be a "self-supporting" move, Apple's entire business is set up around products that support themselves, either through ease-of-use, or through Apple itself. Self-support just isn't in their business plan.
Chances are the TPM check will be part of the Install program and not the OSx86 itself.
No, it's part of the kernel - and has been since the first developer versions were sent into the wild. Fooling the installer would be easier, but still far from trivial if it's relying on the TPM to authenticate the machine's origin.
Look, I'm not saying it can't or won't ever be hacked, but from what I've learned about TPM, it's going to be a LOT tougher than anyone here is thinking.
Put another way: how much is your time worth? If you want to crack TPM protection on OS X x86 for the glory, then it doesn't matter; if you want to avoid paying another two hundred bucks for an x86 Mac, it'll never be worth it - I think that at least in the near term, getting around this is going to involve some soldering.