Instead of superseding local laws, they often just write them themselves. Observe health care reform. The people of the US support universal health care. What we got was a universal mandate, delivering millions of new customers to the insurance industry, and no competition from the public sector.
Reminds me of a Chomsky quote: "The defect of governments is that they are -- they can be influenced by the public. They're potentially democratic, and that's the unacceptable defect of government. So, you have to demonize government and shift power more and more into the hands of private tyrannies, which are totally unaccountable. "
Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.
That's exactly what they are doing. The taxpayer paid the industry 200 Billion for 45 megabit fiber networks to be deployed across the country, and got nothing.
Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.
You're not kidding. There's a story in Freakonomics about a daycare center that had problems with people not picking their kids up on time. So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.
So when you give people this new information, what's going to happen? 90% of people are not using that much bandwidth already. Comcast is giving them a chart that says "look how little bandwidth you're using, you could use a lot more and not get in trouble". Some of those people are going to start using more bandwith, and I'll bet those people will more than offset the minority of heavy users who might curtail their usage.
The real solution to this problem is for Comcast, and every other ISP to invest more into infrastructure.
Assuming I don't need any HD content, what sort of hardware would I need to run Boxee? I have an old P3 I'm currently using to view videos, play music, etc. It works great, but I'd like a more task appropriate UI than XFCE. Is Boxee likely to run OK? I can imagine the database back end might take a bit of power to run smoothly.
Nor would I want to be. Kids are a huge drain on your financial, emotional, and temporal resources. I like having time to do adult things, pursue the things that interest me, instead of changing diapers, ferrying them to soccer practise, etc. Studies show that non-parents are measurably happier than parents, no matter what the evolutionary advantageous hormone driven delusion tells them. And it makes sense, raising kids is obviously very stressful. No thanks.
Do you honestly think people are going to pay US$30-40k for a compact car that (feature-wise) compares to a US$16k Toyota Corolla?
The Corolla is effectively subsidized since Corolla owners don't pay for the cost of cleaning up the pollution they produce. Tax gasoline engines to offset this very real cost and hybrid vehicles become a lot more economical.
Yeah, that's the trouble with niche interests and torrents. Torrents are a popularity contest, niche interests are by definition unpopular. At least the folks at DAP are dedicated enough to keep it seeded, so it will finish, eventually.
I'm pretty sure the rips are available at TvTorrents too, if you have an account there.
The point is that one can construct DRM systems which are potentially tolerable.
Paying a tax, fee, surcharge, or whatever you want to call it just to view the files you purchased is not tolerable. Just because I can pay someone to fix something doesn't mean it's ok for you to break it. That's all DRM is, deliberately broken files, paying a fee to have them fixed is not tolerable.
For DRM to be tolerable, it must be no worse in any way than the unencrypted version.
Yes they are. All are intrinsically worse than unencrypted files.
For example, one could have the servers managed by government agency. One would pay a surcharge when one buys the product that would go to keeping those servers around
Why should I have to pay a surcharge? That is bad, and gives me nothing that I don't get from an unencrypted file.
The upshot is that this sort of DRM can be implemented in an acceptable fashion.
Having to pay an extra fee to be able to view content I purchased is never acceptable. Being tied to a network is never acceptable. DRM of any type is never acceptable.
Well that kind of mitigates your earlier comment. If you write to OpenGL, you'll have to port to DirectX if you want your game on the Xbox 360. If you to DirectX, you'll have to port your game to OpenGL if you want your game on the PS3/Wii. Neither really has an advantage here.
I exclusively use Windows for PC gaming. I could give two flying F's whether my game is developed in OGL or DX.
If more games were developed in OGL, they would be easier to port to other operating systems (or run under Wine)so you wouldn't need to use Windows anymore. That would save you a hundred bucks or so on a Windows license, or at the very least the need to reboot to play a game. That's got to be worth at least one flying F.
Slashdot Mirror
I always skip that anyway. Really, why would I want to see that?
I can see how Apple's marketing department would be interested in "gays tracking".
Instead of superseding local laws, they often just write them themselves. Observe health care reform. The people of the US support universal health care. What we got was a universal mandate, delivering millions of new customers to the insurance industry, and no competition from the public sector.
Reminds me of a Chomsky quote: "The defect of governments is that they are -- they can be influenced by the public. They're potentially democratic, and that's the unacceptable defect of government. So, you have to demonize government and shift power more and more into the hands of private tyrannies, which are totally unaccountable. "
Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.
That's exactly what they are doing. The taxpayer paid the industry 200 Billion for 45 megabit fiber networks to be deployed across the country, and got nothing.
Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.
You're not kidding. There's a story in Freakonomics about a daycare center that had problems with people not picking their kids up on time. So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.
So when you give people this new information, what's going to happen? 90% of people are not using that much bandwidth already. Comcast is giving them a chart that says "look how little bandwidth you're using, you could use a lot more and not get in trouble". Some of those people are going to start using more bandwith, and I'll bet those people will more than offset the minority of heavy users who might curtail their usage.
The real solution to this problem is for Comcast, and every other ISP to invest more into infrastructure.
Assuming I don't need any HD content, what sort of hardware would I need to run Boxee? I have an old P3 I'm currently using to view videos, play music, etc. It works great, but I'd like a more task appropriate UI than XFCE. Is Boxee likely to run OK? I can imagine the database back end might take a bit of power to run smoothly.
Nor would I want to be. Kids are a huge drain on your financial, emotional, and temporal resources. I like having time to do adult things, pursue the things that interest me, instead of changing diapers, ferrying them to soccer practise, etc. Studies show that non-parents are measurably happier than parents, no matter what the evolutionary advantageous hormone driven delusion tells them. And it makes sense, raising kids is obviously very stressful. No thanks.
What's useful about a newborn child is the fact that life will continue to go on.
So what? What use is it to me that life continues when I'm gone?
Easy. Declare finders keepers. First person to retrieve the half trillion from Jupiter gets to keep it.
Do you honestly think people are going to pay US$30-40k for a compact car that (feature-wise) compares to a US$16k Toyota Corolla?
The Corolla is effectively subsidized since Corolla owners don't pay for the cost of cleaning up the pollution they produce. Tax gasoline engines to offset this very real cost and hybrid vehicles become a lot more economical.
And notice how the gameplay didn't suffer a bit for it.
This is the most invasive government search
Well, the 2nd most. The most invasive search requires rubber gloves.
So what you're saying is that we should give the black hats 6 months to freely exploit these vulnerabilities?
Yeah, that's the trouble with niche interests and torrents. Torrents are a popularity contest, niche interests are by definition unpopular. At least the folks at DAP are dedicated enough to keep it seeded, so it will finish, eventually.
I'm pretty sure the rips are available at TvTorrents too, if you have an account there.
The entire run of Max Headroom is available for torrent via dapcentral.org if you're unable to wait.
The point is that one can construct DRM systems which are potentially tolerable.
Paying a tax, fee, surcharge, or whatever you want to call it just to view the files you purchased is not tolerable. Just because I can pay someone to fix something doesn't mean it's ok for you to break it. That's all DRM is, deliberately broken files, paying a fee to have them fixed is not tolerable.
For DRM to be tolerable, it must be no worse in any way than the unencrypted version.
Slaves to the server aren't intrinsically bad
Yes they are. All are intrinsically worse than unencrypted files.
For example, one could have the servers managed by government agency. One would pay a surcharge when one buys the product that would go to keeping those servers around
Why should I have to pay a surcharge? That is bad, and gives me nothing that I don't get from an unencrypted file.
The upshot is that this sort of DRM can be implemented in an acceptable fashion.
Having to pay an extra fee to be able to view content I purchased is never acceptable. Being tied to a network is never acceptable. DRM of any type is never acceptable.
I think it's more about how it didn't happen. Why is left up to philosophers, theologians and the like.
Did someone misplace their diorama?
What makes your beliefs a religion
Atheism is a lack of belief, not a belief.
Well that kind of mitigates your earlier comment. If you write to OpenGL, you'll have to port to DirectX if you want your game on the Xbox 360. If you to DirectX, you'll have to port your game to OpenGL if you want your game on the PS3/Wii. Neither really has an advantage here.
It's like HDTV or, as some have mentioned, color. If you don't notice it, it's doing its job. Sometimes its job is just subtle.
As God said to Bender, "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all".
Really? IMO, 3d was the only worthwhile thing about Avatar.
What do Nintendo and Sony do? Do they use DirectX?
I exclusively use Windows for PC gaming. I could give two flying F's whether my game is developed in OGL or DX.
If more games were developed in OGL, they would be easier to port to other operating systems (or run under Wine)so you wouldn't need to use Windows anymore. That would save you a hundred bucks or so on a Windows license, or at the very least the need to reboot to play a game. That's got to be worth at least one flying F.