There's nothing in the OS stopping you from making unlimited personal backup copies. It is only a collection of bits, and the DRM hinders *playback*, and not access.
You want some analogies? Computers have varying levels of protection: We, administrators, play the role of t-cells, white blood cells, and macrophages.
So a computer 'ecosystem' is like a lan or a network; or even the internet. So the immune response? Train the users not to click attachments. Install firewalls. Install filters. Install anti-virus programs. Install patches.
Don't forget that systems aren't static! Windows Update, patches, new holes, etc, are 'discovered' and 'sealed' in organic, not deterministic, fashion. Likewise as new systems are brought into the network, they will/should have greater protection, according to patches, newer users with 'learned' behavior from prior attacks, and newer software.
You can't treat a computer network separate from the users, else you can't take into account trojans!
Price is *obviously* not an issue. I mean, Opteron? Radeon 9600 Pro? Noise reducing power supplies and hard drive cases?
A Mac is well suited for computational biology, scientific imaging, bioinformatics as well as music. I mean, building and supporting her PC for her is all well and good... but how about the next MSBlaster or SoBig she'll have to deal with? How about being able to ssh into her machine to 'deal' with some maintenance, patching, and updates so she won't have to, or just being able to debug odd behavior remotely while she's busy in class?
A G5 may actually be too noisy, but I doubt it; there are still powerful, quiet, and portable laptops, if she wants *truly* quiet, and they are extremely flexible to boot, being able to move from her practice sessions, to her room, to the library, to the lab, to the field, and to the lecture hall as she needs it. Not only that, but because of the way OS X is architected, with an iPod, she can boot and carry her information/data on any Mac out there, plus the odd PC that happens to have Firewire and a USB2 port...
But if you're not comfortable with this, by all means get her an Opteron or Barton...
If MHz/GHz sold CPUs, why does Intel keep dropping the prices? If MHz/GHz were truly what sold CPUs, Intel would keep ramping GHz without dropping prices... but the past 10 years of computing has seen price drops in computers, for $4,000 for a 33MHz 386 to $600 for a 3GHz P4-Celeron...
What sells computers? Evidently it's not the Hz, but the price. So if a hotter CPU is also cheaper to produce, *then* it will sell the CPU, because then manufacturers can lower the price and get people to buy something they don't really need or want ^^
There is no air in space.. but as the original poster said, the event *is* the medium.
An exploding space craft *becomes* the gas/medium which carries the 'sound' you would 'hear'.
Assuming you don't become shredded by the shrapnel, the smaller, gassier, bits would hit you first; that is what you hear. Then later the larger, slower moving bits, would hit you, and then you die.
if the explosion is big enough, before the first 'shockwave' you get a 'shockfront' that is composed of radiation. The 'excitation' produced by that energy (some variant of induction as well as absorption) might also produce sound, if it doesn't also vaporize you.
Marketing! Branding! How well do many people know (or care) that Safari == KHTML?
If you produce a product called Productivity Plus and Productivity Pro, one being a word processor/spread sheet package, and the other throwing in a few other tools + integration with the iApps, and then give it the nifty Aqua finish...
I am quite amused by the fact that a proper Mac OS X port of OpenOffice quite literally could pay for itself... buy 20 developers some nice refurbished 1.25GHz G4s and OS X 10.2/10.3, and then charge $100 a copy for OpenOffice Pro while providing a slimmed down 10mb OpenOffice Express...
If Microsoft can make a lot of money from Macs, why wouldn't/couldn't OpenOffice?
You're mixing an emotional judgement with a functional and political one.
Quicktime is crap because Apple upgraded days after you bought it; that's emotional, and has no bearing on technology, functionality, or politics.
Quicktime is available to 99% of the viewing public: Built into the Mac, and often installed on PCs. Why? Because Apple invented (or very nearly did so) the computer video industry *with* Quicktime. Old habits die hard. That's politics/legacy.
As for technology? Apple Quicktime 6 treats mpeg4 *as* a native format. *If* the industry ever supports mpeg4, why do you think it won't be played back on 99% of computers as Quicktime? IE, mpeg4 encoded, quicktime contained.
Then there's functionality. I've already mentioned mpeg4; for all you know, this trailer is *already* encoded in mpeg4. It could be Sorenson3 or any of a number of other officially supported codecs. If you want divx, there's nothing stopping Apple from adopting divx... except of course that you would still be bitching because you don't get what you want... Raw video:)
If you don't want to transcode it..? I dunno what options you have, except possibly getting an mpeg4 capable DVD player and hoping the industry adopts Apple's Quicktime Mpeg4.
You upgrade your system piecemeal; why does it matter how long Apple 'supports' the system?
An iMac 266 (G3) from 1998 can still be upgraded with a G4 and can run OS X; 5 years. A beige G3 of similar make can also be upgraded to a G4, and can run OS X; 6+ years.
But if you've got a, say, 12 year old Mac; heck, why not push it out to the oldest that Linux supports? 1987 the Mac II! see? That's nearly 16 years!
A 16 year old machine can have it's processor upgraded and running Linux, no more or less than your PC...
I have a copy of a song; I don't want you to have a copy unless you give me some money for a copy. That doesn't seem irrational.
I use technology to enforce my desire. That doesn't seem irrational either.
I don't think DRM is 'evil', I think it is a misapplication of technology.
Why is DRM any more evil than a license server to ensure no more than 10 copies of Photoshop are running on a network? Think of DRM as a massive music license server, then what is good or bad about DRM? Or a license server?
You keep using the name SCO, but I thought your first post (haven't finished reading the article) mentions that Sun licensed from AT&T *before* SCO bought the rights...
So why does SCO even matter in this arrangement, other than the enforcer of the rights that Sun bought from AT&T?
AT&T gives Sun the right to the code Sun injects said code into Linux *or* has the right to SCO buys rights to code/IP outright SCO claims SCO's newfound IP has contaminated Linux and demands reparations Sun contends that *their* Linux product is free of contamination by definition, because they have the right to 'enhance' (rather than contaminate) Linux with AT&T code, making them immune from SCO's claim
On the other hand, there *is* the possibility that Linux isn't contaminated at all.
Is there something *fundamentally* wrong with DRT and patents?
Technology is not good nor evil but dependent upon the person wielding it, yes?
The same technology that makes digital rights management is the same technology that allows for license servers (good or bad?), encryption (good or bad?), and pay per use (subscriptions, memberships, etc) (good or bad?).
Did you read the question? Did you understand that iDVD compatibility is a big requirement? Did you know that external drives aren't (yet) iDVD compatible?
I bet in terms of bang/buck, and development environment, the Mac beats both Linux and PC. You get the same libraries and tools that are available on Linux, you get the technologies and support available on the PC, and you get the rich and profitable marketbase, rather than the technical savvy of Linux or the sheer volume of Windows.
1) RIAA doesn't want DRM, but DRM is the solution that technology companies have sold them to address their problem. Their problem is distribution control.
2) Apple has sold a *different* solution to the RIAA, but includes DRM to appease the fact that they were 'conned' by other technology companies. To not include DRM would mean the RIAA got ripped off.
3) Because other companies are selling technology, not a solution. DRM is the technology, not the solution. Apple sells a solution: Akamai as the distribution network, iTunes as the storefront, the Mac faithful as the solid, reliable, high income market, iPod as the playback device, Macs as the storage medium. I don't think Apple is touting this to the RIAA as DRM music files; Apple is selling it as a supplemental system to their existing music infrastructure!
So I bet sales of iPods is only reconfirming Apple's initial sales pitch: People *want* to buy music, and people want to listen to them on iPods, not on their computers. People don't care about sharing music as long as they can *get* music, and people will pay for convenience at a reasonable cost, and we are the *masters* of convenience.
So why can't other people do that? Because it *isn't* a technical problem. Everyone else can solve technical problems. Apple is one of the few who recognizes it as a *social* problem. Any successful solution has to recognize a problem as social; piracy, privacy, word of mouth, ease of use... all of that is social, not technological:)
Not at all. Here's their scheme, which you don't seem to be familiar with.
Apple sells based on ease of use: That's their mantra.
Easier to search on iTMS than on Kazaa or Gnutella. True and getting tru-er as RIAA keeps cracking down and Apple keeps adding content. You pay $1 because you find it in less than 15 seconds, or not at all.
Easier to download from iTMS than on Kazaa or Gnutella. Connection is dependent upon Akamai and your ISP, rather than your ISP, the network to the other ISP, and the other file sharer. Dropped connections still happen of course, but the file isn't going to go away because the other sharer disconnects!
Preview functionality: 30 second clips to ensure this is exactly what you're looking for. Not useful for browsing, but definitely useful for validation and verification purposes. Kazaa or Gnutella requires you download first.
Consistently high quality encoding; encoding from master source as opposed to CD; you have to trust that the other side did a good job, in file sharing, and if there are pops, clicks, or bit errors, you're out of luck. You can, and people have, gotten refunds for the odd bad encoding at the iTMS.
Ease of use. Browsing and searching the iTMS is identical to browsing and searching your local music library. If gnutella or Kazaa wants to compete with that, they need to make it possible to search for songs by type, genre, name, artist, and album. As well as provide links so that when you find a song by one artist, you can find all the songs by that artist, or by genre, or by album, etc.
That and you also get album art, music videos, and additional discographies.
So me, as a Mac user, pays only $1 for all this. Say I strip the DRM from the AAC file I get: Three things happen: Slight quality loss from AAC -> MP3 Lose all the advantages of the iTMS on the Kazaa network Get nothing out of sharing
So the 'hole' is actually on the Kazaa side. How do you know you're going to find anything? Kazaa works fine for ultra popular stuff, but on the iTMS you find popular stuff just as easily as you find old stuff, rare stuff, exclusive stuff, new stuff, etc. It's all the same database. Kazaa doesn't have that.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing in the OS stopping you from making unlimited personal backup copies. It is only a collection of bits, and the DRM hinders *playback*, and not access.
You want some analogies?
Computers have varying levels of protection: We, administrators, play the role of t-cells, white blood cells, and macrophages.
So a computer 'ecosystem' is like a lan or a network; or even the internet. So the immune response? Train the users not to click attachments. Install firewalls. Install filters. Install anti-virus programs. Install patches.
Don't forget that systems aren't static! Windows Update, patches, new holes, etc, are 'discovered' and 'sealed' in organic, not deterministic, fashion. Likewise as new systems are brought into the network, they will/should have greater protection, according to patches, newer users with 'learned' behavior from prior attacks, and newer software.
You can't treat a computer network separate from the users, else you can't take into account trojans!
Price is *obviously* not an issue. I mean, Opteron? Radeon 9600 Pro? Noise reducing power supplies and hard drive cases?
A Mac is well suited for computational biology, scientific imaging, bioinformatics as well as music. I mean, building and supporting her PC for her is all well and good... but how about the next MSBlaster or SoBig she'll have to deal with? How about being able to ssh into her machine to 'deal' with some maintenance, patching, and updates so she won't have to, or just being able to debug odd behavior remotely while she's busy in class?
A G5 may actually be too noisy, but I doubt it; there are still powerful, quiet, and portable laptops, if she wants *truly* quiet, and they are extremely flexible to boot, being able to move from her practice sessions, to her room, to the library, to the lab, to the field, and to the lecture hall as she needs it. Not only that, but because of the way OS X is architected, with an iPod, she can boot and carry her information/data on any Mac out there, plus the odd PC that happens to have Firewire and a USB2 port...
But if you're not comfortable with this, by all means get her an Opteron or Barton...
If MHz/GHz sold CPUs, why does Intel keep dropping the prices? If MHz/GHz were truly what sold CPUs, Intel would keep ramping GHz without dropping prices... but the past 10 years of computing has seen price drops in computers, for $4,000 for a 33MHz 386 to $600 for a 3GHz P4-Celeron...
What sells computers? Evidently it's not the Hz, but the price. So if a hotter CPU is also cheaper to produce, *then* it will sell the CPU, because then manufacturers can lower the price and get people to buy something they don't really need or want ^^
There is no air in space.. but as the original poster said, the event *is* the medium.
An exploding space craft *becomes* the gas/medium which carries the 'sound' you would 'hear'.
Assuming you don't become shredded by the shrapnel, the smaller, gassier, bits would hit you first; that is what you hear. Then later the larger, slower moving bits, would hit you, and then you die.
if the explosion is big enough, before the first 'shockwave' you get a 'shockfront' that is composed of radiation. The 'excitation' produced by that energy (some variant of induction as well as absorption) might also produce sound, if it doesn't also vaporize you.
Try gigantic :)
The root is the same, after all.
Didn't realize that.
I've got them nearly everywhere... The bathroom does only stay on for a few minutes at a time, unless someone's taking a shower...
Or use a 25W fluorescent lightbulb and save... um.. 160% of the power?
You'd be using only 25% of a regular incandescent, and at only $8 now, instead of $100 in three years!
Gonna read the article now, but a brief scan of the comments brings up some strange math...
Replace a 100W lightbulb with a 60W led bulb? Or a 40W led bulb?
How about *right now* replacing a 100W lightbulb with a 25W fluorescent lightbulb...?
Marketing! Branding! How well do many people know (or care) that Safari == KHTML?
If you produce a product called Productivity Plus and Productivity Pro, one being a word processor/spread sheet package, and the other throwing in a few other tools + integration with the iApps, and then give it the nifty Aqua finish...
Why would anyone expect it to be Free?
Yes they do, that's why Id still makes money. No one else truly competes.
Oh, no, there was Serious Sam! And guess what, they made enough money for a sequel!
I am quite amused by the fact that a proper Mac OS X port of OpenOffice quite literally could pay for itself... buy 20 developers some nice refurbished 1.25GHz G4s and OS X 10.2/10.3, and then charge $100 a copy for OpenOffice Pro while providing a slimmed down 10mb OpenOffice Express...
If Microsoft can make a lot of money from Macs, why wouldn't/couldn't OpenOffice?
You're mixing an emotional judgement with a functional and political one.
:)
Quicktime is crap because Apple upgraded days after you bought it; that's emotional, and has no bearing on technology, functionality, or politics.
Quicktime is available to 99% of the viewing public: Built into the Mac, and often installed on PCs. Why? Because Apple invented (or very nearly did so) the computer video industry *with* Quicktime. Old habits die hard. That's politics/legacy.
As for technology? Apple Quicktime 6 treats mpeg4 *as* a native format. *If* the industry ever supports mpeg4, why do you think it won't be played back on 99% of computers as Quicktime? IE, mpeg4 encoded, quicktime contained.
Then there's functionality. I've already mentioned mpeg4; for all you know, this trailer is *already* encoded in mpeg4. It could be Sorenson3 or any of a number of other officially supported codecs. If you want divx, there's nothing stopping Apple from adopting divx... except of course that you would still be bitching because you don't get what you want... Raw video
If you don't want to transcode it..? I dunno what options you have, except possibly getting an mpeg4 capable DVD player and hoping the industry adopts Apple's Quicktime Mpeg4.
You upgrade your system piecemeal; why does it matter how long Apple 'supports' the system?
An iMac 266 (G3) from 1998 can still be upgraded with a G4 and can run OS X; 5 years.
A beige G3 of similar make can also be upgraded to a G4, and can run OS X; 6+ years.
But if you've got a, say, 12 year old Mac; heck, why not push it out to the oldest that Linux supports? 1987 the Mac II! see? That's nearly 16 years!
A 16 year old machine can have it's processor upgraded and running Linux, no more or less than your PC...
All I mean is, what is your point?
Pump in solar energy, extract it up to 15 years later :)
Uh, why is it irrational?
I have a copy of a song; I don't want you to have a copy unless you give me some money for a copy. That doesn't seem irrational.
I use technology to enforce my desire. That doesn't seem irrational either.
I don't think DRM is 'evil', I think it is a misapplication of technology.
Why is DRM any more evil than a license server to ensure no more than 10 copies of Photoshop are running on a network? Think of DRM as a massive music license server, then what is good or bad about DRM? Or a license server?
You keep using the name SCO, but I thought your first post (haven't finished reading the article) mentions that Sun licensed from AT&T *before* SCO bought the rights...
So why does SCO even matter in this arrangement, other than the enforcer of the rights that Sun bought from AT&T?
AT&T gives Sun the right to the code
Sun injects said code into Linux *or* has the right to
SCO buys rights to code/IP outright
SCO claims SCO's newfound IP has contaminated Linux and demands reparations
Sun contends that *their* Linux product is free of contamination by definition, because they have the right to 'enhance' (rather than contaminate) Linux with AT&T code, making them immune from SCO's claim
On the other hand, there *is* the possibility that Linux isn't contaminated at all.
Is there something *fundamentally* wrong with DRT and patents?
Technology is not good nor evil but dependent upon the person wielding it, yes?
The same technology that makes digital rights management is the same technology that allows for license servers (good or bad?), encryption (good or bad?), and pay per use (subscriptions, memberships, etc) (good or bad?).
Did you read the question? Did you understand that iDVD compatibility is a big requirement? Did you know that external drives aren't (yet) iDVD compatible?
I bet in terms of bang/buck, and development environment, the Mac beats both Linux and PC. You get the same libraries and tools that are available on Linux, you get the technologies and support available on the PC, and you get the rich and profitable marketbase, rather than the technical savvy of Linux or the sheer volume of Windows.
I see what you're asking:
:)
1) RIAA doesn't want DRM, but DRM is the solution that technology companies have sold them to address their problem. Their problem is distribution control.
2) Apple has sold a *different* solution to the RIAA, but includes DRM to appease the fact that they were 'conned' by other technology companies. To not include DRM would mean the RIAA got ripped off.
3) Because other companies are selling technology, not a solution. DRM is the technology, not the solution. Apple sells a solution: Akamai as the distribution network, iTunes as the storefront, the Mac faithful as the solid, reliable, high income market, iPod as the playback device, Macs as the storage medium. I don't think Apple is touting this to the RIAA as DRM music files; Apple is selling it as a supplemental system to their existing music infrastructure!
So I bet sales of iPods is only reconfirming Apple's initial sales pitch: People *want* to buy music, and people want to listen to them on iPods, not on their computers. People don't care about sharing music as long as they can *get* music, and people will pay for convenience at a reasonable cost, and we are the *masters* of convenience.
So why can't other people do that? Because it *isn't* a technical problem. Everyone else can solve technical problems. Apple is one of the few who recognizes it as a *social* problem. Any successful solution has to recognize a problem as social; piracy, privacy, word of mouth, ease of use... all of that is social, not technological
Not at all. Here's their scheme, which you don't seem to be familiar with.
Apple sells based on ease of use: That's their mantra.
Easier to search on iTMS than on Kazaa or Gnutella. True and getting tru-er as RIAA keeps cracking down and Apple keeps adding content. You pay $1 because you find it in less than 15 seconds, or not at all.
Easier to download from iTMS than on Kazaa or Gnutella. Connection is dependent upon Akamai and your ISP, rather than your ISP, the network to the other ISP, and the other file sharer. Dropped connections still happen of course, but the file isn't going to go away because the other sharer disconnects!
Preview functionality: 30 second clips to ensure this is exactly what you're looking for. Not useful for browsing, but definitely useful for validation and verification purposes. Kazaa or Gnutella requires you download first.
Consistently high quality encoding; encoding from master source as opposed to CD; you have to trust that the other side did a good job, in file sharing, and if there are pops, clicks, or bit errors, you're out of luck. You can, and people have, gotten refunds for the odd bad encoding at the iTMS.
Ease of use. Browsing and searching the iTMS is identical to browsing and searching your local music library. If gnutella or Kazaa wants to compete with that, they need to make it possible to search for songs by type, genre, name, artist, and album. As well as provide links so that when you find a song by one artist, you can find all the songs by that artist, or by genre, or by album, etc.
That and you also get album art, music videos, and additional discographies.
So me, as a Mac user, pays only $1 for all this. Say I strip the DRM from the AAC file I get: Three things happen:
Slight quality loss from AAC -> MP3
Lose all the advantages of the iTMS on the Kazaa network
Get nothing out of sharing
So the 'hole' is actually on the Kazaa side. How do you know you're going to find anything? Kazaa works fine for ultra popular stuff, but on the iTMS you find popular stuff just as easily as you find old stuff, rare stuff, exclusive stuff, new stuff, etc. It's all the same database. Kazaa doesn't have that.
Again, Apple sells on ease of use.
Because it's not a feature of the online store.
It's a feature of the player, iTunes, and the framework, Quicktime. I own a Mac, btw.
Microsoft's WMP and media framework, while similar is not content creator friendly. Quicktime is because, well, Macs are used to create content!
Why do you think Microsoft will allow nonDRM WMAs to flourish if they can make money off DRM WMAs?
:D
Or are you suggesting an illicit black market of coders, programs, and distributors who hijack WMA much like DivX hijacked MS-MPEG4?
Except of course the DivX folk are now trying to gain legitimacy
Turn on Zoom. Keep zooming until you can read the screen.
If you don't have a Mac...
Change the resolution. That works well too.
Or use a UI hack, change the font size. That works as well.