If I commmit a crime and it nets me billions of dollars, and I get caught and sentenced to pay a fine that amounts to a tiny percentage of what I've made as a result of my illegal endeavors, how exactly does that serve as a deterrent to future crime?
Bad analogy. Print Shop and Photoshop aren't developed by the same company. Adobe makes plenty of low-end photoshop or image editor apps, but why? The added costs of developing and supporting yet another product have got to be tremendous.
If they just lowered the cost of Photoshop full to ~$75-150, they could get get tremendous boosts in their market without spending ANY more money on development.
Why do companies develop TWO versions of a program (one lite/crappy, a la MS Works and one high end/professional version a la MS Office) and then sell the high end for several hundred dollars and the lite version for under $100?
You'd think that the cost of developing two separate versions would outweigh the benefits of having the "professional" version available to everyone, at reduced price to reflect the economies of scale that come in to selling to a broader market.
Spending EXTRA money to develop a crappy version of your software that you can sell to millions of people for cheap, just to protect the giant inflated prices of the high end stuff that you might only sell a few thousand licenses of, just doesn't make any sense.
Why not just sell the full version to EVERYONE and reap the benefits of economies of scale? Customers get better product, cheaper, you get more customers and more revenue. Everyone wins.
1) Availability. Duh. Make it available in my area.
2) Quality. Another "duh". Make my connection really be always-on, and when it does go down, commit to bringing it back up within as short a time as possible. No days or weeks on end of sub-dialup performance with no explanation.
3) Allow me to actually use my bandwidth. No bullshit ToS that says I can't do jack with my connection. What exactly am I paying for? If I want a server, I should be allowed to set it up. If I want to re-sell my excess bandwidth, I should be able to do that. Don't cap my speed. Don't cap the amount of bits I can download in a day.
4) Affordability. If the above conditions are all met, I'd gladly pay the ~$50 you're asking for each month. If the value's there, it's worth it for me to pay for it. But when you can't even provide decent customer service and tech support, forget it. It's not worth the headache.
if it's for private viewing. But if, say, network television were to decide it needed to launch a moral crusade to clean up the airwaves, and started showing heavily edited movies like this, it'd be a very clear-cut case of censorship, and that is wrong.
And the thing is, it's been done in the past, and probably still does go on to some extent (I don't know since I no longer watch TV).
...and when they breach the contract, what can you do? Sue? Nope. Maybe you could put a contract out on the heads of the high level executives, but that'd hardly be legal either.
So refuse to sign. Demand severance pay. When they don't give it to you, sue them. Encourage everyone else who got laid off to do the same. If they're hemmoraging money as it is and laying off people to try to stay afloat financially, they're not going to want to spend a lot of money on lawyers.
Now all I need is a way to have 1000 hours to watch the shows I've recorded. Anyone developing a time machine that'll be ready for consumers this holiday season?
In order to be able to do that, I need to know what formats people can read, right? If *I* can write in many formats, but my contacts can only read in one or perhaps two, and they're not necessarily the *same* one or two, then it's a problem. I have to track what formats each contact can read data in. It's a pain once the number goes higher than maybe a half dozen.
Compatibility isn't just about what I can read on my device(s), it's about what other people can read on their devices.
Sure, maybe I can write a DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, etc. etc. etc. but if I don't know what my contacts can read, it won't help me any unless I want to send them redundant copies in every format I can think of.
It'd be nice if they could just come up with one standard and make it universal, or at least compatible with other standards.
After seeing the headline, I thought that I was going to get to read about how I can hail a cab when I need to go somewhere, only now I'll have the choice between a big yellow car and a cool electric plane. The reality is far less pleasing.
Any compromise is a defeat for the consumer
on
"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The RIAA comes out and demands outrageous things. They get maybe 10% of what they ask for, but once they get that, those rights will be gone forever.
Next time Congress meets, or next time industry works out a new spec for standardizations, they'll demand outrageous things once again. Maybe they'll get another 10%, maybe 1%, maybe nothing. But they'll just keep coming back, again and again, until they've whittled away free use rights down to nothing. Eventually they get what they want, it just takes them a while.
Don't give them anything. They're not entitled to anything, so don't give them anything. Appeasement is a slippery slope to defeat.
Considering that Mac OS will only run on Apple hardware, and only *recent* Apple hardware at that? By contrast, Linux runs on just about anything you can think of.
People who want to ditch Windows can run Linux on the same machine they were running windows on. If they want to ditch Windows and switch to Mac, they have to buy a pricey new box, plus now they have a viable machine just sitting around that they don't have a use for anymore. Not too economical, unless your present machine is so old you can't really use it for much anyway.
The way I interpret this, its is all the more reason to port OS X to x86 architecture. It's a lot easier to switch if you don't have to buy all-new hardware to do so.
Someone wake up Steve Jobs and clue him in to the fact that offering customers *their* choice of what hardware platform to run on is a Good Thing.
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I thought the advantage that Linux brought was that it crashed LESS than the "other" brand software...
Just wait till they hold the air cooling part of the contest on Neptune. Liquid Nitrogen won't be so smug then, I can tell you!
So that it will be illegal to explain to someone why it's illegal to explain to someone why it's illegal to...
Why pay $500,000 for my genetic code on CD when I can just get it off of kazaa or gnutella for the cost of bandwidth? I mean really.
Set your Star Trek references to "groan"!
If I commmit a crime and it nets me billions of dollars, and I get caught and sentenced to pay a fine that amounts to a tiny percentage of what I've made as a result of my illegal endeavors, how exactly does that serve as a deterrent to future crime?
Bad analogy. Print Shop and Photoshop aren't developed by the same company. Adobe makes plenty of low-end photoshop or image editor apps, but why? The added costs of developing and supporting yet another product have got to be tremendous.
If they just lowered the cost of Photoshop full to ~$75-150, they could get get tremendous boosts in their market without spending ANY more money on development.
Why do companies develop TWO versions of a program (one lite/crappy, a la MS Works and one high end/professional version a la MS Office) and then sell the high end for several hundred dollars and the lite version for under $100?
You'd think that the cost of developing two separate versions would outweigh the benefits of having the "professional" version available to everyone, at reduced price to reflect the economies of scale that come in to selling to a broader market.
Spending EXTRA money to develop a crappy version of your software that you can sell to millions of people for cheap, just to protect the giant inflated prices of the high end stuff that you might only sell a few thousand licenses of, just doesn't make any sense.
Why not just sell the full version to EVERYONE and reap the benefits of economies of scale? Customers get better product, cheaper, you get more customers and more revenue. Everyone wins.
without actually running Windows, you really need to have AOL.
It had to be said.
It's really quite simple:
1) Availability. Duh. Make it available in my area.
2) Quality. Another "duh". Make my connection really be always-on, and when it does go down, commit to bringing it back up within as short a time as possible. No days or weeks on end of sub-dialup performance with no explanation.
3) Allow me to actually use my bandwidth. No bullshit ToS that says I can't do jack with my connection. What exactly am I paying for? If I want a server, I should be allowed to set it up. If I want to re-sell my excess bandwidth, I should be able to do that. Don't cap my speed. Don't cap the amount of bits I can download in a day.
4) Affordability. If the above conditions are all met, I'd gladly pay the ~$50 you're asking for each month. If the value's there, it's worth it for me to pay for it. But when you can't even provide decent customer service and tech support, forget it. It's not worth the headache.
if it's for private viewing. But if, say, network television were to decide it needed to launch a moral crusade to clean up the airwaves, and started showing heavily edited movies like this, it'd be a very clear-cut case of censorship, and that is wrong.
And the thing is, it's been done in the past, and probably still does go on to some extent (I don't know since I no longer watch TV).
...and when they breach the contract, what can you do? Sue? Nope. Maybe you could put a contract out on the heads of the high level executives, but that'd hardly be legal either.
So refuse to sign. Demand severance pay. When they don't give it to you, sue them. Encourage everyone else who got laid off to do the same. If they're hemmoraging money as it is and laying off people to try to stay afloat financially, they're not going to want to spend a lot of money on lawyers.
Now all I need is a way to have 1000 hours to watch the shows I've recorded. Anyone developing a time machine that'll be ready for consumers this holiday season?
In order to be able to do that, I need to know what formats people can read, right? If *I* can write in many formats, but my contacts can only read in one or perhaps two, and they're not necessarily the *same* one or two, then it's a problem. I have to track what formats each contact can read data in. It's a pain once the number goes higher than maybe a half dozen.
Compatibility isn't just about what I can read on my device(s), it's about what other people can read on their devices.
Sure, maybe I can write a DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, etc. etc. etc. but if I don't know what my contacts can read, it won't help me any unless I want to send them redundant copies in every format I can think of.
It'd be nice if they could just come up with one standard and make it universal, or at least compatible with other standards.
But wait, I thought Britney already proved that. I guess this is just confirmation.
It's just an old abandoned set from the TV show "Get Smart".
Should keep them busy for a while, anyway.
It's called "hot rodding" and it's been around for a while now. Maybe you've heard of it.
After seeing the headline, I thought that I was going to get to read about how I can hail a cab when I need to go somewhere, only now I'll have the choice between a big yellow car and a cool electric plane. The reality is far less pleasing.
The RIAA comes out and demands outrageous things. They get maybe 10% of what they ask for, but once they get that, those rights will be gone forever.
Next time Congress meets, or next time industry works out a new spec for standardizations, they'll demand outrageous things once again. Maybe they'll get another 10%, maybe 1%, maybe nothing. But they'll just keep coming back, again and again, until they've whittled away free use rights down to nothing. Eventually they get what they want, it just takes them a while.
Don't give them anything. They're not entitled to anything, so don't give them anything. Appeasement is a slippery slope to defeat.
Huh huh
Considering that Mac OS will only run on Apple hardware, and only *recent* Apple hardware at that? By contrast, Linux runs on just about anything you can think of.
People who want to ditch Windows can run Linux on the same machine they were running windows on. If they want to ditch Windows and switch to Mac, they have to buy a pricey new box, plus now they have a viable machine just sitting around that they don't have a use for anymore. Not too economical, unless your present machine is so old you can't really use it for much anyway.
The way I interpret this, its is all the more reason to port OS X to x86 architecture. It's a lot easier to switch if you don't have to buy all-new hardware to do so.
Someone wake up Steve Jobs and clue him in to the fact that offering customers *their* choice of what hardware platform to run on is a Good Thing.
Who modded me "funny"? I'm serious. The geek community desperately needs someone who "gets it" in Washington.
Hey Bruce, why not run for congress?