Well, I'm not one of those people, because I've been waiting for a long time for phone+iPod, because that's what I always wanted. And the device shown today is way better than I expected it might be, especially with the FingerWorks-based multitouch interface (I have the FW/MT keyboard). I have never owned an iPod and I was waiting until today to buy one. Also, just yesterday I canceled my cell phone contract, so I was literally a perfect waiting customer for this device.
But... today after the keynote, I went and bought a plain old iPod. Why? Not only does the iPhone not do what I want it to do, which is to store and play back my entire music library, but the small amount of music it does hold will only play for half a day. That's insufficient, for me. Furthermore, my old cell phone provider was Cingular, whose crappy network doesn't extend to where I live (Alaska). So if it's really a Cingular-only device, then Apple just excluded me as a customer.
So, I'll go back to a regular cell phone, and I'll settle for a plain old iPod. iPods finally breached the threshold of usability a few months ago when they matched the featureset of a record player, by which I mean they fixed the terrible bug of inserting silence between tracks (something no music playback device in the history of mankind had ever done). Once they did that, I was ready to buy, and I've been waiting for a big new announcement for a new iPod, but none has been forthcoming. I can't wait forever, so I'll take what they're selling now. I really wanted a 100 gig version, but shit how long would I have to wait? Who knows.
iPhone is indeed a revolutionary device, and will be great for a lot of people. Nevertheless, short battery life, minuscule hard drive, Cingular-only, those are limitations I just can't live with, similar to the limitation of a digital music player which can't play music as well as a wax cylinder player.
I'm currently having a heck of a time canceling my cell phone service contract with Cingular.
I was always happy enough with my cell service. I bought my contract plan in Boston, but eventually moved to New Hampshire, then Las Vegas, and those moves were okay, but then I moved to Alaska. Cingular doesn't own a network in Alaska, so after being here for a few months I got a letter from Cingular saying, sorry, you don't live in our coverage area, so we're going to disable your cell phone, and we'll let you out of your contract with no penalty fee.
Although I preferred to keep my service, I certainly understood why they wouldn't sell it to me anyway, and they took the reasonable step of not charging me the penalty. So, fine, I emailed their customer support a couple weeks ago and have been having a frustrating time of getting them to do anything. I've gotten responses from different agents every time I've emailed them (I reply to the emails they send me, which include tracking data, so if they wanted to they could route it to the same agent each time, but for some reason they don't).
All I want them to do is to cancel my contract, which is what they told me they wanted to do! So why is it so fricking difficult, huh? JUST DO IT ALREADY. I'm still in the middle of it all and I'm getting more and more angry each time they respond.
The best thing is that they keep telling me to call them. Hellooooo? Cingular? You disabled my fucking phone. How do you expect me to call you? With my happymagic telephonic fingerphone? All I have left is email, so that's how I'm communicating with you. Just take the action which you already said you would take, and cancel my account. It's that simple.
i don't read slashdot for unbiased news. do you? if you want unbiased news, read the new york times. wait, shit, that's not a good example. try, what, the economist maybe. no, that's not very good either. well, shit, read news from several sources then.
Right. Still, some of us think the editors have the responsibility to proofread and correct submissions with errors. These corrections should be both of the factual type as well as the grammatical type.
What you said supports the GP. If a company creates a DRM product which is bought and used by a media distributor, then the company wins because they created and sold a product. If the scheme is broken shortly thereafter, that's better yet if the company gets another chance with another scheme.
If we were to outlaw signing statements, then Bush's actions would be exactly the same, only he wouldn't tell us about them first. That would be even worse than what we have now. The President is already legally obligated to obey the law, like everybody else (obviously); it's just that, politically, we (American voters, and Congress) let him do whatever he wants without regard for the law. Think about it, what is "law" anyway? In effect, "law" is what we all agree to enforce. Is a "law" that we let people break all the time a "law"? Signing statement most definitely are NOT the law, and if anyone cared enough to call out the President for breaking the law (a few have tried), then that whole "effect" and "enforce" thing would change, so the "law" would change.
In the past, if a President politically needed to sign a law, but wanted to ignore it, then he'd just sign the law, then ignore it. Today, we have a very ballsy President who instead writes down all the parts of the law that he doesn't like and doesn't plan on enforcing or obeying.
So, in the past, if Congress wanted to compel a President to obey the law, they would sue him and the Courts would tell the President to follow the law -- and then maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. Today, with Bush, Congress still has to sue him to have the Courts decide the issue (and they have), but at least it's pretty clear what they disagree about.
On the other hand, I agree with you that it would be really nice if the President, whoever he is, would just follow the damn law in the first place. For that, it would require the political will of the American electorate to not only unelect, but to impeach officials who don't. Somewhat unfortunately, in a democracy the government is only as good as voters demand it to be. In America we make a few demands, but some of us think voters should demand more.
Well I guess it hinges on what "unreasonable search and seizure" means, doesn't it? So if we all agree that the searches in question are reasonable, then your quote shows how presciently the framers of the constitution foresaw the need to search mail.
I guess my point is, you're not a constitutional scholar, in fact you don't even seem to be an amateur, or you would already understand the debate of this issue.
If you knew how to argue this point, you would have tried to show how Bush's actions are *illegal* instead of *unconstitutional*.
I suppose I'm always a lot more worried about hard drive meltdowns then server problems
Well, yes, a server problem which chronologically follows after a hard drive meltdown would be like rubbing salt in the wound. That is what you meant, right?
You don't think that would be fair use of the copyrighted materials? I don't know what the law says, but I would say it's fair use in the colloquial sense.
Okay, to be fair, making a mix tape and giving it to a friend is *similar* to filesharing, but they are not "effectively the same". One is a lossy transfer of data on a physical medium which takes substantial time to create and passed on to an actual acquaintance; the other is a perfect digital copy of data over a network connection requiring nearly zero human effort and passed on to any anonymous person in the world. These are important differences for the scale of what can take place, despite that both of them boil down to "making a copy".
If they were "effectively the same" then they would both have the same "effect", which they do not, as we know because there is a lot more filesharing now than there ever was tape swapping.
None of that is to say I disagree with your sentiment, which is that the RIAA should beef a little less about filesharing, or maybe not beef at all.
transparency is an effective tool which can be misapplied. let me take it to a crazy extreme with the following humorous hypothetical: if there are cameras watching me in my cubicle, then i won't scratch my balls when they itch. is that freedom? i know it's funny, but no, it's not freedom, we should be free to scratch our balls....and pick our noses, and cheat on our wives with our secretaries, and eat candy off our diet, and drive 60 in a 55 zone. being watched is an encumbrance to many freedoms. being watched is also a great way to preserve other freedoms, like freedom from government corruption, freedom from getting raped in a dark alley. it's a delicate balance, one to be approached with wisdom.
Yes, I agree it's an appalling affront to liberty.
Nevertheless, the UK is a *democracy*. In a democracy, the people get whatever government they want, or at least whatever government they ask for. Apparently, for some reason, Britons *like* and *want* the surveillance, or else they would elect a government to do away with it.
So ask the reflexive question: is it appropriate for a single engineer to override the will of the majority just because he disagrees with it?
seriously? like A Clockwork Orange? senseless ultraviolence?
if so, let me proffer an American-style solution. I've heard y'all got rid of private firearms. I suggest you go back to having private ownership of guns, except now motherfucking mandate it. Arm *everyone* by law. Everyone *must* carry a gun, *except* anyone convicted of any crime. Convicted of littering? That's a ten-year loss of gun privileges in addition to the normal restitution. Convicted of any serious crime? Lifetime loss of privilege. Couple this with a strong legal protection for using your gun against "yobs" trying to beef you. Now you have a market solution to the crime problem by providing a disincentive to commit a crime (yer gonna get capped).
And even more importantly, you would have re-established the absolute most basic right in a democracy, which is the ability of the populace to maintain the forceful ability to overthrow their government. Call it Liberty Zero for democracies.
Weren't you watching the Napster case? Didn't you learn about contributory infringement? If you're part of the crime, you can expect some of the legal scrutiny, attention, and blame.
I did have a similar conversation with a Mormon friend once. He explained it a bit differently. Specifically, you do believe in the divinity of all three members of the godhead right? All three are gods, and all three are separate? Three gods? Well, you know, this seems to be a theological point which falls somewhere in between the extreme answers of Yes and No. Anyway, my friend did say they were three gods, and I then asked him if he was a monotheist. He paused and thought about it, as if considering it for the first time or something, then answered "Well, technically, no, I guess not." It was his answer to that question that has made me not consider Mormons to be monotheists, and thus, really, not part of the Christian community as typically defined.
I'm not exactly in favor of a national ID card, but this new program for implementing one makes me marginally happy. Why? Because we already have a national ID card, and it's a terrible one, trivial to abuse, trivial to forge, and used in contexts where it makes no sense: the Social Security Card. When the SSN card was first introduced, it was derided as a national ID card, but the proponents promised it wasn't. Well, it was, and we can see that by looking around us now. Do you want a driver's license? Well you better have a valid SSN card because one is required to get a license (this is a new rule as of summer 2006, so many of you might not realize this yet). Do you want a bank account? Need one. You need one for everything. My local video store demanded my actual physical SSN card before they would rent me a video. (I almost refused but I really really wanted to see Weekend At Bernie's II.)
So, shit, even though I don't want there to be a national ID card, the one coming soon is sure to be better than the one we have now.
I just really hope my new Social Conformity Number is 54601.
Slashdot Mirror
for real? dude maybe you need a new cell phone, or battery.
Well, I'm not one of those people, because I've been waiting for a long time for phone+iPod, because that's what I always wanted. And the device shown today is way better than I expected it might be, especially with the FingerWorks-based multitouch interface (I have the FW/MT keyboard). I have never owned an iPod and I was waiting until today to buy one. Also, just yesterday I canceled my cell phone contract, so I was literally a perfect waiting customer for this device.
But... today after the keynote, I went and bought a plain old iPod. Why? Not only does the iPhone not do what I want it to do, which is to store and play back my entire music library, but the small amount of music it does hold will only play for half a day. That's insufficient, for me. Furthermore, my old cell phone provider was Cingular, whose crappy network doesn't extend to where I live (Alaska). So if it's really a Cingular-only device, then Apple just excluded me as a customer.
So, I'll go back to a regular cell phone, and I'll settle for a plain old iPod. iPods finally breached the threshold of usability a few months ago when they matched the featureset of a record player, by which I mean they fixed the terrible bug of inserting silence between tracks (something no music playback device in the history of mankind had ever done). Once they did that, I was ready to buy, and I've been waiting for a big new announcement for a new iPod, but none has been forthcoming. I can't wait forever, so I'll take what they're selling now. I really wanted a 100 gig version, but shit how long would I have to wait? Who knows.
iPhone is indeed a revolutionary device, and will be great for a lot of people. Nevertheless, short battery life, minuscule hard drive, Cingular-only, those are limitations I just can't live with, similar to the limitation of a digital music player which can't play music as well as a wax cylinder player.
I'm currently having a heck of a time canceling my cell phone service contract with Cingular.
I was always happy enough with my cell service. I bought my contract plan in Boston, but eventually moved to New Hampshire, then Las Vegas, and those moves were okay, but then I moved to Alaska. Cingular doesn't own a network in Alaska, so after being here for a few months I got a letter from Cingular saying, sorry, you don't live in our coverage area, so we're going to disable your cell phone, and we'll let you out of your contract with no penalty fee.
Although I preferred to keep my service, I certainly understood why they wouldn't sell it to me anyway, and they took the reasonable step of not charging me the penalty. So, fine, I emailed their customer support a couple weeks ago and have been having a frustrating time of getting them to do anything. I've gotten responses from different agents every time I've emailed them (I reply to the emails they send me, which include tracking data, so if they wanted to they could route it to the same agent each time, but for some reason they don't).
All I want them to do is to cancel my contract, which is what they told me they wanted to do! So why is it so fricking difficult, huh? JUST DO IT ALREADY. I'm still in the middle of it all and I'm getting more and more angry each time they respond.
The best thing is that they keep telling me to call them. Hellooooo? Cingular? You disabled my fucking phone. How do you expect me to call you? With my happymagic telephonic fingerphone? All I have left is email, so that's how I'm communicating with you. Just take the action which you already said you would take, and cancel my account. It's that simple.
i don't read slashdot for unbiased news. do you? if you want unbiased news, read the new york times. wait, shit, that's not a good example. try, what, the economist maybe. no, that's not very good either. well, shit, read news from several sources then.
Right. Still, some of us think the editors have the responsibility to proofread and correct submissions with errors. These corrections should be both of the factual type as well as the grammatical type.
What you said supports the GP. If a company creates a DRM product which is bought and used by a media distributor, then the company wins because they created and sold a product. If the scheme is broken shortly thereafter, that's better yet if the company gets another chance with another scheme.
If we were to outlaw signing statements, then Bush's actions would be exactly the same, only he wouldn't tell us about them first. That would be even worse than what we have now. The President is already legally obligated to obey the law, like everybody else (obviously); it's just that, politically, we (American voters, and Congress) let him do whatever he wants without regard for the law. Think about it, what is "law" anyway? In effect, "law" is what we all agree to enforce. Is a "law" that we let people break all the time a "law"? Signing statement most definitely are NOT the law, and if anyone cared enough to call out the President for breaking the law (a few have tried), then that whole "effect" and "enforce" thing would change, so the "law" would change.
No, Bush thinks he has the right to do whatever the voters will allow him to do.
And he's right.
More than half of voters thought Bush was a good enough President to re-elect. Really, that's all that matters.
I agree with you, but more than half of American voters disagree with you. So, we lose; that's democracy; better luck next time.
I disgree with you for a specific reason.
In the past, if a President politically needed to sign a law, but wanted to ignore it, then he'd just sign the law, then ignore it. Today, we have a very ballsy President who instead writes down all the parts of the law that he doesn't like and doesn't plan on enforcing or obeying.
So, in the past, if Congress wanted to compel a President to obey the law, they would sue him and the Courts would tell the President to follow the law -- and then maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. Today, with Bush, Congress still has to sue him to have the Courts decide the issue (and they have), but at least it's pretty clear what they disagree about.
On the other hand, I agree with you that it would be really nice if the President, whoever he is, would just follow the damn law in the first place. For that, it would require the political will of the American electorate to not only unelect, but to impeach officials who don't. Somewhat unfortunately, in a democracy the government is only as good as voters demand it to be. In America we make a few demands, but some of us think voters should demand more.
Well I guess it hinges on what "unreasonable search and seizure" means, doesn't it? So if we all agree that the searches in question are reasonable, then your quote shows how presciently the framers of the constitution foresaw the need to search mail.
I guess my point is, you're not a constitutional scholar, in fact you don't even seem to be an amateur, or you would already understand the debate of this issue.
If you knew how to argue this point, you would have tried to show how Bush's actions are *illegal* instead of *unconstitutional*.
I suppose I'm always a lot more worried about hard drive meltdowns then server problems
Well, yes, a server problem which chronologically follows after a hard drive meltdown would be like rubbing salt in the wound. That is what you meant, right?
you know a CS major who runs Windows?
i call shenanigans.
You don't think that would be fair use of the copyrighted materials? I don't know what the law says, but I would say it's fair use in the colloquial sense.
Okay, to be fair, making a mix tape and giving it to a friend is *similar* to filesharing, but they are not "effectively the same". One is a lossy transfer of data on a physical medium which takes substantial time to create and passed on to an actual acquaintance; the other is a perfect digital copy of data over a network connection requiring nearly zero human effort and passed on to any anonymous person in the world. These are important differences for the scale of what can take place, despite that both of them boil down to "making a copy".
If they were "effectively the same" then they would both have the same "effect", which they do not, as we know because there is a lot more filesharing now than there ever was tape swapping.
None of that is to say I disagree with your sentiment, which is that the RIAA should beef a little less about filesharing, or maybe not beef at all.
transparency is an effective tool which can be misapplied. let me take it to a crazy extreme with the following humorous hypothetical: if there are cameras watching me in my cubicle, then i won't scratch my balls when they itch. is that freedom? i know it's funny, but no, it's not freedom, we should be free to scratch our balls. ...and pick our noses, and cheat on our wives with our secretaries, and eat candy off our diet, and drive 60 in a 55 zone. being watched is an encumbrance to many freedoms. being watched is also a great way to preserve other freedoms, like freedom from government corruption, freedom from getting raped in a dark alley. it's a delicate balance, one to be approached with wisdom.
Yes, I agree it's an appalling affront to liberty.
Nevertheless, the UK is a *democracy*. In a democracy, the people get whatever government they want, or at least whatever government they ask for. Apparently, for some reason, Britons *like* and *want* the surveillance, or else they would elect a government to do away with it.
So ask the reflexive question: is it appropriate for a single engineer to override the will of the majority just because he disagrees with it?
seriously? like A Clockwork Orange? senseless ultraviolence?
if so, let me proffer an American-style solution. I've heard y'all got rid of private firearms. I suggest you go back to having private ownership of guns, except now motherfucking mandate it. Arm *everyone* by law. Everyone *must* carry a gun, *except* anyone convicted of any crime. Convicted of littering? That's a ten-year loss of gun privileges in addition to the normal restitution. Convicted of any serious crime? Lifetime loss of privilege. Couple this with a strong legal protection for using your gun against "yobs" trying to beef you. Now you have a market solution to the crime problem by providing a disincentive to commit a crime (yer gonna get capped).
And even more importantly, you would have re-established the absolute most basic right in a democracy, which is the ability of the populace to maintain the forceful ability to overthrow their government. Call it Liberty Zero for democracies.
so that makes you feel like a jackass for working your shitting low-pay job instead of busting your ass for the big money like your bosses?
Weren't you watching the Napster case? Didn't you learn about contributory infringement? If you're part of the crime, you can expect some of the legal scrutiny, attention, and blame.
Morse code requirements are a subject that shuts down rational discussion
emacs is better than vi!
damn. yes. haven't listened to Les Mis in quite a while.
tell me more. can i sue?
I did have a similar conversation with a Mormon friend once. He explained it a bit differently. Specifically, you do believe in the divinity of all three members of the godhead right? All three are gods, and all three are separate? Three gods? Well, you know, this seems to be a theological point which falls somewhere in between the extreme answers of Yes and No. Anyway, my friend did say they were three gods, and I then asked him if he was a monotheist. He paused and thought about it, as if considering it for the first time or something, then answered "Well, technically, no, I guess not." It was his answer to that question that has made me not consider Mormons to be monotheists, and thus, really, not part of the Christian community as typically defined.
I'm not exactly in favor of a national ID card, but this new program for implementing one makes me marginally happy. Why? Because we already have a national ID card, and it's a terrible one, trivial to abuse, trivial to forge, and used in contexts where it makes no sense: the Social Security Card. When the SSN card was first introduced, it was derided as a national ID card, but the proponents promised it wasn't. Well, it was, and we can see that by looking around us now. Do you want a driver's license? Well you better have a valid SSN card because one is required to get a license (this is a new rule as of summer 2006, so many of you might not realize this yet). Do you want a bank account? Need one. You need one for everything. My local video store demanded my actual physical SSN card before they would rent me a video. (I almost refused but I really really wanted to see Weekend At Bernie's II.)
So, shit, even though I don't want there to be a national ID card, the one coming soon is sure to be better than the one we have now.
I just really hope my new Social Conformity Number is 54601.