On a slightly tangential note, in my younger, naive years I downloaded some Tool music and I liked it. Music CDs, concert tickets, and T-Shirts were all bought, and if not for the music I downloaded through Napster, I may never have been exposed to it. I may never have met the friends I found through the common interest in it. I could have turned out differently and my life may not have been the same. I might have died through the butterfly effect of changes.
I like to cook good, and have a good bottle of wine...especially if I have a date.
So can we assume you don't have kids? Children change everything. They are expensive and your priorities in choosing where to live usually shift towards their benefit. Most people will do anything to make sure their kids have the best chances for success in life, even if that means having reduced job opportunities for yourself.
Of course we can't have that, that would be useful.
See, this is why I want to see low cost parts fabbing. A few engineers could design, and more importantly, prototype one of these with a little fabber, and then submit a final design for real production.
One of the biggest barriers is getting past that crucial part to the first prototype. Venture capital can flow a lot easier after that. Perhaps then a few of those lower cost, yet lower volume devices might get produced.
Yet I see clients demanding that someone offer paid support for anything - even if we all know the support is worthless.
Without support, the buck stops there. With support, there is another link higher up in the chain of blame.
A company's software support may leave you high and dry, but then you can blame them when the boss asks why something doesn't work. Without it, it's just you.
I'd say it's pretty difficult to make a Slashdot post that elucidates a complex concept not have a few generalizations slip in there. A least if you want to write something that people will actually read to the end.;)
I wasn't being that serious, but perhaps the Slashdot community acts as some sort of psychological furnace for technology related things, particularly tech companies. With many different points of view and various ideologies, if something or someone can initially travel the gauntlet that is the Slashdot community and emerge with the majority of the users' respect intact, it becomes something special and is elevated afterwards.
Many/most/.ers are engineers or like-wired people.
Are they? I've never seen any sort of demographics breakdown, only assumptions the community makes about itself along with jokes about living in the parents' basement.
Granted, my original post was rather tongue-in-cheek, (as are my replies), but I could be considered a pessimist myself, so my view of Slashdot readers would probably be affected as such. I can see your point of view with the modified terms, though; they are more accurate. And I know that it's pretty much what I think when I start reading something. Though on the Skeptical part I add: "Who are they writing this for?" since target audience can make a difference as well.
Really, I was just trying to shoehorn a wiseass (yet kinda valid) view into three words with the same first letter, and then tried to describe the community to fit.;) I never really expected many responses. Hmm. Have I been subconsciously trolling?
Hooray! Here comes the stubborn inanity; I'm prepared to defend it.
Slashdot readers are mostly optimists about technological progress in general and IT in particular. We like companies that are actually driving innovation, like Google, Apple and Mozilla.
There's a difference between being an optimist about technological progress (and IT) and "liking" a subjective subset of IT companies based on an emotional response to them. We can like or dislike whatever company or technology we want, for whatever reason, but pessimism and optimism deals with our expectations.
For example, we may ask the average Slashdot reader what they think of DRM, and you'll get a range of responses. Most Slashdot readers consider it a Bad Thing, but we can't apply the label of pessimist because of this. We would need to ask if and how they think DRM will be used in the future to measure their expectations. The overwhelming majority would likely come up with all sorts of ways that DRM would inhibit and control our actions. If people were truly optimists, they might hope that DRM would be phased out.
Now, you could say that it isn't quite relevant, because the majority of Slashdot readers think that DRM is a bad idea in the first place, so, of course, they will expect bad things to come of it. So perhaps we talk about the topic at hand. A quick scan of this article discussion with a threshold at 0 and I can see (by my point of view) that there's pessimism everywhere. Mind you, I don't consider pessimism to be bad. Sometimes you need someone to talk about the worst cases, so you can be prepared for the bleak consequences that occur in reality. Here are a few of them:
Pojut: "That said, I wish the US would switch over to more diesel engines...of course, what with the way American car manufacturers design their shit to die in 3-5 years, I don't think they want engines that last three to four times that sitting in their cars..."
goodmanj: "Nice press release. Could this be low-pressure sodium vaporware?"
drinkypoo: "You could make a turd smell only half like poop and I still wouldn't be interested in setting it on my mantelpiece. Their color spectrum is still craptacular compared to a good broad-spectrum incandescent. Which in turn is still a crap substitute for sunlight, but it's as good as it gets right now."
There are others as well. I found many posts "accusing" GE of releasing the technology at this particular time to their own advantage, like to curb certain legislation or otherwise screw the consumer, all in the glorious quest to line the shareholders' pockets with dirty, dirty money. They vastly outnumbered the posts which give GE the benefit of the doubt that they are making a product which is actually better.
Now, we come to your second part:
We are deeply cynical about entrenched monopolies and oligopolies like the old IBM, Microsoft, the oil and auto industries, whale oil, buggy whips and incandescent lightbulbs. Especially when they pretend to be innovators, at a convenient time for their lobbyists' endeavors.
I'm almost thinking that you're making a joke here, but I've invested too many minutes to go back now. Anyone can say that those companies innovate just like the aforementioned Google, Apple, and Mozilla do. Microsoft has made some (perhaps small) innovations with respect to the GUI in the newest Office. Crude oil prices are at a high, so the oil companies are going to places that were never cost-effective before now, and are developing new technologies to extract that oil. Most large corporations use lobbyists, and no organization is pure, so
Why does nearly everyone on/. assume that every company is out to deceive them? or that every press release (unless it's from Google or Apple) is a marketing lie?
I think it's because nearly everyone on Slashdot can be described by what I call the 3P Syndrome. Specifically:
Pissy. More often than not, Slashdot readers seem to be pissy. They are easily goaded into responding to trolls and participating in flamewars. They will stubbornly support an illogical and inane position simply for the shred of joy they coax from a heated argument. In short, they are easily irritated.
Pessimistic. Many Slashdot readers are pessimists. They look for the worst-case scenarios and will dismiss any possible silver lining of any act or concept.
Paranoid. Slashdot readers may also be naturally paranoid. This is perhaps the biggest reason for apparent distrust of others' motives. Serious paranoia makes it very difficult to trust others, and it is only exacerbated by the first two factors.
Even before mind altering drugs are considered, all Slashdot readers seem to contain these three qualities in varying amounts (some appear to be "normal"). But collectively, they sum up to a critical mass that gives Slashdot that unique community feel.
I haven't thought up a satisfactory answer for Google and Apple, though. Maybe Slashdot users identify with them on some level.
No, I don't expect them to offer their shows with skippable ads. They will not change fast enough; they are too entrenched and set in their ways. Eventually, they will be replaced with other companies, just as the horse-and-buggy companies were replaced by the automobile companies. Internet-based broadcasting with bittorrent? Uploaded video on the YouTubes of the future? New media companies with new ideas in any case. Those that stubbornly cling to the old ways of doing business in the face of a changing market will fail. Circumstances being what they are, it may take a while (maybe even beyond our lifetimes), but it will come.
And I don't connect any sort of traditional computer setup to my TVs. It's all XBMC, so if it has any sort of DRM, it won't fly. I suppose if I had a setup that had a web browser it would work, but then I have to control the video from within the browser. I can't use the fast forward, rewind, pause, etc controls defined in XBMC with that. So now I have a different site to navigate for every TV network? And I have to do it on a TV? With a keyboard or mouse? Please. Why would I do that when I can just connect to some tracker, download the file to a central place with all the others, and then watch it at my leisure?
I know they probably won't change. I'm just saying that if they offered a TV episode with commercials for download, real download, I would forego the version on piratebay in favor of it, and probably wouldn't end up downloading entire seasons of the show.
Free, but with advertising, television downloads would be a big hit, I imagine.
I agree. Why don't the networks just set up their own bittorrent trackers and supply TV shows with ads in them? I'd be happy to fill out a (quite intrusive, but non-identifying) survey about my habits/details in exchange for a single use torrent URL. As it is now, if I miss an episode of a TV show that I watch, the crippled version on the network web site is the last place I go because I don't want to watch it on my computer. Instead, I get it through a torrent, and I might end up downloading the entire season because they are all there. Initially, all I'd probably do is watch the single episode, delete it, and move on. If it had commercials that's probably what I'd do. And I would watch the commercials, because I know that I'm getting something in exchange. Not everyone would watch them, but people get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen during commercials as well.
Thanks to their tremendous lack of foresight, they lose ad revenue, lose a potential future DVD sale of the TV show, and downloading TV episodes without commercials becomes a bit more accepted by society. Maybe they are just stupid, but I think it's more likely they're just too slow to adapt and lack creative people in positions of power. These companies are still grappling with the concept of DVRs, when they should be looking ahead to the evolution of them into home media servers.
If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead?
I understand that it would probably make more sense, so I'll explain my reasons.
Yes, there's some small part that still wants to compensate the artists in some way, but it's quite minor. Really, it's about quality and convenience. Much like I make sure my music (ripped from CDs) is encoded at a decent quality, I'd like my video to be an acceptable quality as well. (As an aside, I buy my music CDs, not borrow from friends or get them from another source. No DRM on a CD is a Good Thing for me, so I continue to buy.)
While I could just go on torrentspy or piratebay or wherever and download the movies (as I have before), the video files are of varying quality, different resolutions, and usually only two channels of sound. Certain ripping groups are known for decent quality, but still they sometimes lack. It comes from the need to cram the entire video into a 700 MB CD so they can be played on a portable DivX player. Also, it seems that only new movies seem to be out there in any decent number. I'd rather be able to rip the video at the native resolution, have more than two channels of sound, and encode it all at a decent quality. Of course, it will take up more space, but I'm willing to build a ridiculously large array of drives on my media server to accommodate it. I can just have a list of my wanted movies and I know they'll be decent quality because I'm the one doing the ripping. As added bonuses, I'm insulating myself from MPAA lackeys and their agents by not exposing my IP address while downloading, and I can use my bandwidth for something else.
If there was a legitimate downloading service that had decent quality, no DRM "protection", and reasonable pricing, I'd probably switch instantly. But the love affair with DRM by the industry is stopping what could be wildly successful. Personally, I created a concept system that would work (based on bittorrent). But I'm discouraged by the likelihood that it would never be accepted by the industry because it relies on the good-will and honesty of their customers (and is probably too "cheap" in their eyes).
What I am, is overjoyed to see yet another nation joining the space club.
I'm happy we've (maybe) got another space faring country too, I just wish that it was in the spirit of peaceful cooperation, not pseudo-military competition and politicking. Guess I'm just naive.:(
But then, I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't, like copying it when the purchase agreement clearly says I'm not suppose to...
What purchase agreement? I agreed to nothing when I bought it. And I'll do whatever the hell I want with the property that I own. Much like I don't use CDs anymore when playing audio content, I don't want to use DVDs when playing movies. So I rip and watch on a HTPC. The process is much more complex than ripping an audio CD, mostly because of the DRM.
The physical media that we buy can become scratched and broken, even when we take care of it. And thanks to the convenient duplicity of ideology that is held by the content companies, we are said to be buying only a license to the content, which happens to have a copy along with it on the media. Good luck getting replacement media so you can exercise that license if a disc happens to get scratched. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so we get, "You should take better care of your discs." and DRM protecting the content.
This is BULLSHIT. There's really no way to get the message across to them, so no more. I won't buy another movie on DRM-protected media. Until they change, or offer a (paid for) download of the video without DRM, I won't be buying another movie. I'll rent from an online source and rip to a media server. Yeah, I'll still watch them and get the content, but I won't purchase the discs anymore.
Illegal? Probably. Unethical? I don't think so, and really, I don't care.
As long as people still buy your product, there's no incentive to actually fix it before it launches.
With respect to the car comment in the summary (though not exclusive), I've got one word:
Liability
Re:Isn't that what they want?
on
DRM Causes Piracy
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's the fact that no one who pushes a button on a remote control wants to see a red X or Ø appear. They want action.
So true. So very true. Whenever I see that, I feel this icky, semi-irrational anger at the device that dares defy me, when I know that it is an artificial block to keep me watching a preview or whatever. My anger is partly directed at the device, partly at the manufacturer, and partly at the movie studio that made the movie.
It's frustrating because I can't actually do anything about it to effect a change. If I stop buying movies made by that particular studio, they'll have no idea why. They may figure that people dislike their movies, they may figure that piracy is hurting sales, or they may come up with with some other reason except the real one, because my reason is beyond what they think will cause consumers grief enough to stop buying.
Instead, they market the "removal" of the irritant as a "feature" of a new format and continue to keep me from convenient device shifting. This is BULLSHIT. I'm done with it, so take note, movie industry players, hardware and content alike. I will never buy one of the new format discs. I'll rent and rip, from Blockbuster or Netflix or whatever. My home media server is the end of the line for them. A post-DVD format disc will never be bought, let alone a dedicated player for the TV. They lose. I'll build a petabyte RAID array to dump ripped movies before I pay them another dime.
They give me an non-DRM alternative that I can download, and I'll return to being a paying customer.
Novell were well and truly bent over the table, despite the fact that they so innocently claim that they have not admitted any IP issues with Linux or the software they use.
Would this be any surprise? It's estimated that the majority of rapes do go unreported...
Never mind that Obama "dismissively" referred--in a "tone laced with contempt"--to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as "something of a gadfly."
Well, as a Minnesotan, I can tell you that he kinda was. We're a fairly liberal state as it is, but Wellstone was pretty left-leaning even for us. Nothing against him personally, though.
Increasing gravity would really only be a short-term solution for a few years. Assuming the average American's metabolism stays constant, we'd just adapt to eat more food to compensate for the additional energy required in a higher gravity environment. The real issue is our generally lethargic lifestyles and the fact that we don't stop stuffing excess food into our fucking pie-holes.
You think the Government is going to let you install a hard drive in your brain? I dont see the FDA letting that happen. Hope you know a good street doc.
The biotech advances coming this century are anticipated to be on the order of the 20th century computer revolution or larger. If such technology existed, I'd bet I could find a neuro-mechanic (or ten) that would be willing, if compensated, to bend a few rules to install an import part that found its way through customs. "The Government" would have to try pretty hard to keep them from getting into the populace, especially if they conferred any sort of competitive advantage to a person compared to a non-implanted person, and were priced cheaply enough.
Perhaps we'll just need to bring the papers and effects closer to our "person" in the interim. How many people might get a little bio-engineered implant that holds a relatively large amount of data? Access it over bluetooth, direct via your mind, or something else.
Of course, there are a lot of steps between that technology and reality, but I think forcing a person into surgery to get at some data which may or may not be hidden away inside of them would rub a lot of people the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
On a slightly tangential note, in my younger, naive years I downloaded some Tool music and I liked it. Music CDs, concert tickets, and T-Shirts were all bought, and if not for the music I downloaded through Napster, I may never have been exposed to it. I may never have met the friends I found through the common interest in it. I could have turned out differently and my life may not have been the same. I might have died through the butterfly effect of changes.
In short, P2P may have saved my life.
Your children really will grow up in the same world you did, populated with the same idiots. So will your grandkids.
The Singularity can't come soon enough.
I like to cook good, and have a good bottle of wine...especially if I have a date.
So can we assume you don't have kids? Children change everything. They are expensive and your priorities in choosing where to live usually shift towards their benefit. Most people will do anything to make sure their kids have the best chances for success in life, even if that means having reduced job opportunities for yourself.
Of course we can't have that, that would be useful.
See, this is why I want to see low cost parts fabbing. A few engineers could design, and more importantly, prototype one of these with a little fabber, and then submit a final design for real production.
One of the biggest barriers is getting past that crucial part to the first prototype. Venture capital can flow a lot easier after that. Perhaps then a few of those lower cost, yet lower volume devices might get produced.
Yet I see clients demanding that someone offer paid support for anything - even if we all know the support is worthless.
Without support, the buck stops there. With support, there is another link higher up in the chain of blame.
A company's software support may leave you high and dry, but then you can blame them when the boss asks why something doesn't work. Without it, it's just you.
Steal the CDs from a college student...Steal the CD burner from a college student.
But how will that starving college student make his illegal CD mixes now? Think of the consequences! Do the ends justify the means?
Yeah, we'll see progress when a standard DRM method is implemented across the vast majority of digital media the world over.
Just imagine the leaps and bounds in advancement our society will make when that one is cracked!
I'd say it's pretty difficult to make a Slashdot post that elucidates a complex concept not have a few generalizations slip in there. A least if you want to write something that people will actually read to the end. ;)
I wasn't being that serious, but perhaps the Slashdot community acts as some sort of psychological furnace for technology related things, particularly tech companies. With many different points of view and various ideologies, if something or someone can initially travel the gauntlet that is the Slashdot community and emerge with the majority of the users' respect intact, it becomes something special and is elevated afterwards.
Many/most /.ers are engineers or like-wired people.
Are they? I've never seen any sort of demographics breakdown, only assumptions the community makes about itself along with jokes about living in the parents' basement.
Granted, my original post was rather tongue-in-cheek, (as are my replies), but I could be considered a pessimist myself, so my view of Slashdot readers would probably be affected as such. I can see your point of view with the modified terms, though; they are more accurate. And I know that it's pretty much what I think when I start reading something. Though on the Skeptical part I add: "Who are they writing this for?" since target audience can make a difference as well.
Really, I was just trying to shoehorn a wiseass (yet kinda valid) view into three words with the same first letter, and then tried to describe the community to fit. ;) I never really expected many responses. Hmm. Have I been subconsciously trolling?
Hooray! Here comes the stubborn inanity; I'm prepared to defend it.
There's a difference between being an optimist about technological progress (and IT) and "liking" a subjective subset of IT companies based on an emotional response to them. We can like or dislike whatever company or technology we want, for whatever reason, but pessimism and optimism deals with our expectations.
For example, we may ask the average Slashdot reader what they think of DRM, and you'll get a range of responses. Most Slashdot readers consider it a Bad Thing, but we can't apply the label of pessimist because of this. We would need to ask if and how they think DRM will be used in the future to measure their expectations. The overwhelming majority would likely come up with all sorts of ways that DRM would inhibit and control our actions. If people were truly optimists, they might hope that DRM would be phased out.
Now, you could say that it isn't quite relevant, because the majority of Slashdot readers think that DRM is a bad idea in the first place, so, of course, they will expect bad things to come of it. So perhaps we talk about the topic at hand. A quick scan of this article discussion with a threshold at 0 and I can see (by my point of view) that there's pessimism everywhere. Mind you, I don't consider pessimism to be bad. Sometimes you need someone to talk about the worst cases, so you can be prepared for the bleak consequences that occur in reality. Here are a few of them:
Pojut: "That said, I wish the US would switch over to more diesel engines...of course, what with the way American car manufacturers design their shit to die in 3-5 years, I don't think they want engines that last three to four times that sitting in their cars..."
goodmanj: "Nice press release. Could this be low-pressure sodium vaporware?"
drinkypoo: "You could make a turd smell only half like poop and I still wouldn't be interested in setting it on my mantelpiece. Their color spectrum is still craptacular compared to a good broad-spectrum incandescent. Which in turn is still a crap substitute for sunlight, but it's as good as it gets right now."
There are others as well. I found many posts "accusing" GE of releasing the technology at this particular time to their own advantage, like to curb certain legislation or otherwise screw the consumer, all in the glorious quest to line the shareholders' pockets with dirty, dirty money. They vastly outnumbered the posts which give GE the benefit of the doubt that they are making a product which is actually better.
Now, we come to your second part:
I'm almost thinking that you're making a joke here, but I've invested too many minutes to go back now. Anyone can say that those companies innovate just like the aforementioned Google, Apple, and Mozilla do. Microsoft has made some (perhaps small) innovations with respect to the GUI in the newest Office. Crude oil prices are at a high, so the oil companies are going to places that were never cost-effective before now, and are developing new technologies to extract that oil. Most large corporations use lobbyists, and no organization is pure, so
Why does nearly everyone on /. assume that every company is out to deceive them? or that every press release (unless it's from Google or Apple) is a marketing lie?
I think it's because nearly everyone on Slashdot can be described by what I call the 3P Syndrome. Specifically:
Pissy. More often than not, Slashdot readers seem to be pissy. They are easily goaded into responding to trolls and participating in flamewars. They will stubbornly support an illogical and inane position simply for the shred of joy they coax from a heated argument. In short, they are easily irritated.
Pessimistic. Many Slashdot readers are pessimists. They look for the worst-case scenarios and will dismiss any possible silver lining of any act or concept.
Paranoid. Slashdot readers may also be naturally paranoid. This is perhaps the biggest reason for apparent distrust of others' motives. Serious paranoia makes it very difficult to trust others, and it is only exacerbated by the first two factors.
Even before mind altering drugs are considered, all Slashdot readers seem to contain these three qualities in varying amounts (some appear to be "normal"). But collectively, they sum up to a critical mass that gives Slashdot that unique community feel.
I haven't thought up a satisfactory answer for Google and Apple, though. Maybe Slashdot users identify with them on some level.
No, I don't expect them to offer their shows with skippable ads. They will not change fast enough; they are too entrenched and set in their ways. Eventually, they will be replaced with other companies, just as the horse-and-buggy companies were replaced by the automobile companies. Internet-based broadcasting with bittorrent? Uploaded video on the YouTubes of the future? New media companies with new ideas in any case. Those that stubbornly cling to the old ways of doing business in the face of a changing market will fail. Circumstances being what they are, it may take a while (maybe even beyond our lifetimes), but it will come.
And I don't connect any sort of traditional computer setup to my TVs. It's all XBMC, so if it has any sort of DRM, it won't fly. I suppose if I had a setup that had a web browser it would work, but then I have to control the video from within the browser. I can't use the fast forward, rewind, pause, etc controls defined in XBMC with that. So now I have a different site to navigate for every TV network? And I have to do it on a TV? With a keyboard or mouse? Please. Why would I do that when I can just connect to some tracker, download the file to a central place with all the others, and then watch it at my leisure?
I know they probably won't change. I'm just saying that if they offered a TV episode with commercials for download, real download, I would forego the version on piratebay in favor of it, and probably wouldn't end up downloading entire seasons of the show.
Free, but with advertising, television downloads would be a big hit, I imagine.
I agree. Why don't the networks just set up their own bittorrent trackers and supply TV shows with ads in them? I'd be happy to fill out a (quite intrusive, but non-identifying) survey about my habits/details in exchange for a single use torrent URL. As it is now, if I miss an episode of a TV show that I watch, the crippled version on the network web site is the last place I go because I don't want to watch it on my computer. Instead, I get it through a torrent, and I might end up downloading the entire season because they are all there. Initially, all I'd probably do is watch the single episode, delete it, and move on. If it had commercials that's probably what I'd do. And I would watch the commercials, because I know that I'm getting something in exchange. Not everyone would watch them, but people get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen during commercials as well.
Thanks to their tremendous lack of foresight, they lose ad revenue, lose a potential future DVD sale of the TV show, and downloading TV episodes without commercials becomes a bit more accepted by society. Maybe they are just stupid, but I think it's more likely they're just too slow to adapt and lack creative people in positions of power. These companies are still grappling with the concept of DVRs, when they should be looking ahead to the evolution of them into home media servers.
If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead?
I understand that it would probably make more sense, so I'll explain my reasons.
Yes, there's some small part that still wants to compensate the artists in some way, but it's quite minor. Really, it's about quality and convenience. Much like I make sure my music (ripped from CDs) is encoded at a decent quality, I'd like my video to be an acceptable quality as well. (As an aside, I buy my music CDs, not borrow from friends or get them from another source. No DRM on a CD is a Good Thing for me, so I continue to buy.)
While I could just go on torrentspy or piratebay or wherever and download the movies (as I have before), the video files are of varying quality, different resolutions, and usually only two channels of sound. Certain ripping groups are known for decent quality, but still they sometimes lack. It comes from the need to cram the entire video into a 700 MB CD so they can be played on a portable DivX player. Also, it seems that only new movies seem to be out there in any decent number. I'd rather be able to rip the video at the native resolution, have more than two channels of sound, and encode it all at a decent quality. Of course, it will take up more space, but I'm willing to build a ridiculously large array of drives on my media server to accommodate it. I can just have a list of my wanted movies and I know they'll be decent quality because I'm the one doing the ripping. As added bonuses, I'm insulating myself from MPAA lackeys and their agents by not exposing my IP address while downloading, and I can use my bandwidth for something else.
If there was a legitimate downloading service that had decent quality, no DRM "protection", and reasonable pricing, I'd probably switch instantly. But the love affair with DRM by the industry is stopping what could be wildly successful. Personally, I created a concept system that would work (based on bittorrent). But I'm discouraged by the likelihood that it would never be accepted by the industry because it relies on the good-will and honesty of their customers (and is probably too "cheap" in their eyes).
What I am, is overjoyed to see yet another nation joining the space club.
I'm happy we've (maybe) got another space faring country too, I just wish that it was in the spirit of peaceful cooperation, not pseudo-military competition and politicking. Guess I'm just naive. :(
Get off your ass and write them a letter. A real, honest-to-Godzilla ink-on-paper letter
A-ha! A challenge is cast! I accept, sir!
But then, I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't, like copying it when the purchase agreement clearly says I'm not suppose to...
What purchase agreement? I agreed to nothing when I bought it. And I'll do whatever the hell I want with the property that I own. Much like I don't use CDs anymore when playing audio content, I don't want to use DVDs when playing movies. So I rip and watch on a HTPC. The process is much more complex than ripping an audio CD, mostly because of the DRM.
The physical media that we buy can become scratched and broken, even when we take care of it. And thanks to the convenient duplicity of ideology that is held by the content companies, we are said to be buying only a license to the content, which happens to have a copy along with it on the media. Good luck getting replacement media so you can exercise that license if a disc happens to get scratched. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so we get, "You should take better care of your discs." and DRM protecting the content.
This is BULLSHIT. There's really no way to get the message across to them, so no more. I won't buy another movie on DRM-protected media. Until they change, or offer a (paid for) download of the video without DRM, I won't be buying another movie. I'll rent from an online source and rip to a media server. Yeah, I'll still watch them and get the content, but I won't purchase the discs anymore.
Illegal? Probably. Unethical? I don't think so, and really, I don't care.
But the question we really want to know the answer to is: Socks on or off?
As long as people still buy your product, there's no incentive to actually fix it before it launches.
With respect to the car comment in the summary (though not exclusive), I've got one word:
Liability
It's the fact that no one who pushes a button on a remote control wants to see a red X or Ø appear. They want action.
So true. So very true. Whenever I see that, I feel this icky, semi-irrational anger at the device that dares defy me, when I know that it is an artificial block to keep me watching a preview or whatever. My anger is partly directed at the device, partly at the manufacturer, and partly at the movie studio that made the movie.
It's frustrating because I can't actually do anything about it to effect a change. If I stop buying movies made by that particular studio, they'll have no idea why. They may figure that people dislike their movies, they may figure that piracy is hurting sales, or they may come up with with some other reason except the real one, because my reason is beyond what they think will cause consumers grief enough to stop buying.
Instead, they market the "removal" of the irritant as a "feature" of a new format and continue to keep me from convenient device shifting. This is BULLSHIT. I'm done with it, so take note, movie industry players, hardware and content alike. I will never buy one of the new format discs. I'll rent and rip, from Blockbuster or Netflix or whatever. My home media server is the end of the line for them. A post-DVD format disc will never be bought, let alone a dedicated player for the TV. They lose. I'll build a petabyte RAID array to dump ripped movies before I pay them another dime.
They give me an non-DRM alternative that I can download, and I'll return to being a paying customer.
Novell were well and truly bent over the table, despite the fact that they so innocently claim that they have not admitted any IP issues with Linux or the software they use.
Would this be any surprise? It's estimated that the majority of rapes do go unreported...
Never mind that Obama "dismissively" referred--in a "tone laced with contempt"--to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as "something of a gadfly."
Well, as a Minnesotan, I can tell you that he kinda was. We're a fairly liberal state as it is, but Wellstone was pretty left-leaning even for us. Nothing against him personally, though.
Increasing gravity would really only be a short-term solution for a few years. Assuming the average American's metabolism stays constant, we'd just adapt to eat more food to compensate for the additional energy required in a higher gravity environment. The real issue is our generally lethargic lifestyles and the fact that we don't stop stuffing excess food into our fucking pie-holes.
You think the Government is going to let you install a hard drive in your brain? I dont see the FDA letting that happen. Hope you know a good street doc.
The biotech advances coming this century are anticipated to be on the order of the 20th century computer revolution or larger. If such technology existed, I'd bet I could find a neuro-mechanic (or ten) that would be willing, if compensated, to bend a few rules to install an import part that found its way through customs. "The Government" would have to try pretty hard to keep them from getting into the populace, especially if they conferred any sort of competitive advantage to a person compared to a non-implanted person, and were priced cheaply enough.
Perhaps we'll just need to bring the papers and effects closer to our "person" in the interim. How many people might get a little bio-engineered implant that holds a relatively large amount of data? Access it over bluetooth, direct via your mind, or something else.
Of course, there are a lot of steps between that technology and reality, but I think forcing a person into surgery to get at some data which may or may not be hidden away inside of them would rub a lot of people the wrong way.