...if there's one thing that the history of technology teaches us, it's that successful devices do work by slavishly imitating the way a human being would do it.
In early SF, humanoid robots washed dishes. Automatic dishwashers are common, but they do not have robotic hands that pick up plates and scrub brushes over them and then wipe them with cloths.
We spend less time cooking, but not because we have robotic cooks. Or, at least, not in our homes. What we have instead is a distribution system for meals (or major components thereof--entrees, frozen vegetable mixtures) that are prepared and cooked factories, shipped frozen or refrigerated, and heated in microwaves.
We do not have humanoid robots that play pianos or violins. We do not even have player pianos or "orchestrions" in the home. Instead, we have CD players and iPods.
A humanoid robot may evoke a pleasant retro nostalgia, but it makes about as much sense as an ornithopter.
At least, that's what every photography book and physiology text says.
And, of course, the eyes of some animals (cats, alligators) are strong and precise retroreflectors. It's probably OK if they blind some stray alligator, but someone's beloved pet cat could be a problem.
It's very simple. eBooks will become mainstream when they are more like books. In particular:
--It's about availability of titles. eBooks won't take off until any book that you read a review of in the mainstream press, and could buy at Borders or Barnes and Noble, can be bought as an eBook. Last time I checked, of about forty books on Oprah's list, more than thirty were available as audio books. But only six were available as eBooks. And of those, only three were available in the GEMStar format my eBook readers requires.
Several of my favorite authors, including Barbara Kingsolver and J. K. Rowling, to name two off the top of my head, are simply not available in eBooks in any format.
--It's about usability. Half the pleasure of reading a book comes from sharing it with others. An eBook that's locked to one specific serial-numbered device isn't a book. I can't even share it with my wife. Not even if she had her own identical eBook device.
--It's about durability. A hardbound book lasts easily fifty to a hundred years. A paperback lasts easily ten to twenty years. The $300 worth of books I bought for my Rocket eBook are less than five years old. They will die when the device dies (and battery life is now down from an original 20 hours to about three hours, so that won't be long now). eBooks that are in a nonportable format, and rely on DRM authorization that can be obtained only from a company that may not stay in business, don't hack it.
None of this has anything to do with hardware. Hardware is not the issue. The first-generation hardware like the Rocket eBook and the Softbook were more than good enough. The Franklin eBookman was more than good enough and cheap enough.
I don't care whether you define that "this decade" as starting in the year 2000 or the year 2005......if NASA could do it within a decade in the 1960s, why can't they do it within a decade now?
Wasn't that very capability one of the features promised for Windows NT 4.0?
"I don't think anybody anticipated..."
on
Bill Gates Speaks Out
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not."
So, what was IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture)? Chopped liver?
That's right up there with "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
The most insidious thing about DRM-enabled devices is their ability to change the deal long after you've made your purchase decision.
No doubt there is a legal fiction that you agreed to some fine print somewhere that says, in effect, "I know I'm buying a pig in a poke."
We need a "truth-in-DRM" law. If there were a conspicuous sticker saying "Warning: this device may not actually record the programs you want to record. There is no way for you to know in advance which programs you can or can't record. The fact that you can record your favorite programs now does not mean you will be able to record them in the future," then purchasers would know what they were buying and the free marker could operate.
The ROKR is stupid, that's all. I once worked in a Fortune 500 company which did stupid stuff. Lots of it. All the time.
From the outside, journalists and fans were simply unwilling to accept the simple explanation and kept concocting explanations of how these moves could be the result of some brilliant strategy.
And, of course, inside the company, stuff would happen and people would say, Wow! That was boneheaded... what are we going to say?
And wordsmiths and spin doctors would get busy with plausible-sounding explanations that "studies show that our business customers want" some dumb thing that nobody in their right mind would ever want and nobody ever bought.
The ROKR is just stupid, that's all. Like IBM's 4" floppy or Microsoft Bob or New Coke. Someone had a bad idea and internal politicians, for whatever reasons, deadline pressure or ego or what, mutually convinced themselves that it was a good idea.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Well, bye for now. I'm off to Velcro my iPod Mini to the back of my cell phone.
I thought the U.S.'s official position was that Iraq was granted "limited" sovereignty by the U.S.
Of course, given that "sovereign" means "One that exercises supreme, permanent authority," it seems to me that "limited sovereignty" is a contradiction in terms, like "almost infinite" or "nearly a virgin..."
It's very important to have the ability to have executable content in documents,...in order to create security holes...in order to create public consent for Trusted Computing...in order to enable Microsoft and its customers (not you, Microsoft's customers are media and computer companies) to put "your" computer under their control.
I haven't followed all the various changes in PayPal's offering, but when it was originally introduced, one of the scenarios they explicitly mentioned in their FAQ was one in which you sent a nickel to each of a hundred friends.
When you sent the nickel, they would hit your credit card for $5, your friend would get a nickel "in" their PayPal account, and you'd end up with $4.95 "in" your PayPal account. The next 99 nickels would all come out of your PayPal account.
But, but but... It says right in the article that there are no greenhouse gases, no generation of long-lived nuclear waste......no downside, no safety issues, no problems, that it will produce a limitless supply of clean energy too cheap to meter, that neutrons are good for you, that the isotopes it produces will cure cancer and that people living near the plant will probably live to be 150......and that you can double your money in 45 days by arbitraging postal reply coupons.
The comments about how he just means "seamless" and "transparent" are nonsense. DRM is always seamy and murky. It becomes seamy and murky at the exact point when you try to lend your friend a recording and it won't play on their machine.
Or when you buy a new computer, copy all your stuff over, sell your old one, and find that you can't play your stuff because your new computer isn't authorized, and you can't authorize your computer because your old computer hasn't been deauthorized, and you can't deauthorize your old computer because you haven't got it.
What "transparent, seamless" DRM does is to conceal the real nature of the bargain from the customer until it is too late for it to affect their buying decision.
A friend of mine recently saw a really good deal on a Dell PC. He bought one for his uncle and is thinking about buying another for himself.
The funny thing was that although they were priced about $300 lower than other roughly equivalent home PC's, these were bundled with WIndows XP Media Center instead of Windows XP Home.
They had no video-relevant hardware other than a DVD-burner.
It took my friend an extra half-hour to make his purchasing decision because he was going crazy on the Dell and Microsoft websites trying to find out exactly what Windows XP Media Center was and to convince himself that it was not ''missing'' anything in Windows XP Home Edition.
Oh, yes, the bundle included a 15" flat-screen monitor. So, the bundle contents were put together by someone who does not expect the PC to be connected to an existing TV. And with a 15" monitor, I don't think they expect it to be used in place of an ordinary television receiver, either.
These PCs are definitely not going into living rooms.
Keep this in mind the next time Microsoft starts trumpeting the great sales results it is having with WIndows XP Media Center.
It's very likely that Lessig is right. Meanwhile, personal casual copying will continue--on a reduced level. Average consumers will have DRMed gear.
Only about one in twenty or one in a hundred will go to the effort of buying the illegally chipped merchandise that will become available in flea markets, on the Internet, and via other black-market channels. This gear will be sold like the pressed-grape-concentrate bricks of the Prohibition era, which came with detailed instructions explaining that it was totally illegal to use them to make wine and giving careful step-by-step directions on what you must not do to stay legal.
It will create more social unrest, injustice, and disrespect for the law. As with prohibition, and with current marijuana laws, a huge fraction of the population will be felons according to the law. Enforcement will be inconsistent and selective. Most people breaking the law will not be deterred because they will feel that getting caught is unlikely and totally a matter of bad luck.
My analog cassette player died last year. My old CD player is starting to become unreliable. I'm not sure what the useful life of a solid-state laser is, but I'm beginning to suspect it's less than ten years. The next one I buy will probably have DRM.
Prohibition eventually ended, the "war on drugs" will eventually end, and the war on the public domain will eventually end. Probably not in my lifetime, though, and not until a lot of damage and misery has occurred.
It say it's a proposal and it's open for public comment. But neither TFA nor the Financial Times article gives the address to which the public can send comments.
I grew up on Chesley Bonestell, and movies like "Destination: Moon" and "The Conquest of Space" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
All these special effects simulations, no matter how brilliantly done, are ultimately unsatisfying because they never have any surprises. They always represent _exactly_ what everyone _expects_ space to be like.
The first time the astronauts walked on the moon, and kicked up those little puffs of dust that fell _instantly_ down into place--I knew it was real. Because nobody had ever thought to mention that, or tried to simulate it in a sci-fi film.
I loved the IMAX film "Space Station 3D" because it was real, and you could tell it was real. Though I'm not sure whether I was more thrilled by "being there" on the space station, or "being there" at the Soviet Cosmodrome.
It's like all the privacy notice boilerplate. There are stories almost every day about companies disclosing information they promised not to disclose.
It all reminds me of the scene in Dr. Strangelove where the President asks how a rogue SAC commander could have launched a nuclear strike, when only the President is supposed to have that authority. And an air force spokesperson clears his throat and says "It appears that General Ripper may have exceeded his authority."
Why wouldn't Microsoft just bull ahead? And when anyone complains, Buck Turgidson will say "It appears that Microsoft may not have followed best practices" and everyone will shrug it off, the way they always do.
I could have sworn Bill Dana was the name of acomedian who appeared from time to time on the Ed Sullivan show in the late 1950s/early 1960s, in sketches about "the reluctant astronaut." The catchphrase was him bawling out "I want my crayons!"
"People are, by and large, lazy and ungrateful shits." Right, that's Theory X. Fortunately, there is also a Theory Y
Carl Sandburg once wrote:
Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.' And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.'"
Slashdot Mirror
...if there's one thing that the history of technology teaches us, it's that successful devices do work by slavishly imitating the way a human being would do it.
In early SF, humanoid robots washed dishes. Automatic dishwashers are common, but they do not have robotic hands that pick up plates and scrub brushes over them and then wipe them with cloths.
We spend less time cooking, but not because we have robotic cooks. Or, at least, not in our homes. What we have instead is a distribution system for meals (or major components thereof--entrees, frozen vegetable mixtures) that are prepared and cooked factories, shipped frozen or refrigerated, and heated in microwaves.
We do not have humanoid robots that play pianos or violins. We do not even have player pianos or "orchestrions" in the home. Instead, we have CD players and iPods.
A humanoid robot may evoke a pleasant retro nostalgia, but it makes about as much sense as an ornithopter.
At least, that's what every photography book and physiology text says.
And, of course, the eyes of some animals (cats, alligators) are strong and precise retroreflectors. It's probably OK if they blind some stray alligator, but someone's beloved pet cat could be a problem.
It's very simple. eBooks will become mainstream when they are more like books. In particular:
--It's about availability of titles. eBooks won't take off until any book that you read a review of in the mainstream press, and could buy at Borders or Barnes and Noble, can be bought as an eBook. Last time I checked, of about forty books on Oprah's list, more than thirty were available as audio books. But only six were available as eBooks. And of those, only three were available in the GEMStar format my eBook readers requires.
Several of my favorite authors, including Barbara Kingsolver and J. K. Rowling, to name two off the top of my head, are simply not available in eBooks in any format.
--It's about usability. Half the pleasure of reading a book comes from sharing it with others. An eBook that's locked to one specific serial-numbered device isn't a book. I can't even share it with my wife. Not even if she had her own identical eBook device.
--It's about durability. A hardbound book lasts easily fifty to a hundred years. A paperback lasts easily ten to twenty years. The $300 worth of books I bought for my Rocket eBook are less than five years old. They will die when the device dies (and battery life is now down from an original 20 hours to about three hours, so that won't be long now). eBooks that are in a nonportable format, and rely on DRM authorization that can be obtained only from a company that may not stay in business, don't hack it.
None of this has anything to do with hardware. Hardware is not the issue. The first-generation hardware like the Rocket eBook and the Softbook were more than good enough. The Franklin eBookman was more than good enough and cheap enough.
I don't care whether you define that "this decade" as starting in the year 2000 or the year 2005... ...if NASA could do it within a decade in the 1960s, why can't they do it within a decade now?
Wasn't that very capability one of the features promised for Windows NT 4.0?
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not."
So, what was IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture)? Chopped liver?
That's right up there with "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
...if you have no way of knowing what you bought.
The most insidious thing about DRM-enabled devices is their ability to change the deal long after you've made your purchase decision.
No doubt there is a legal fiction that you agreed to some fine print somewhere that says, in effect, "I know I'm buying a pig in a poke."
We need a "truth-in-DRM" law. If there were a conspicuous sticker saying "Warning: this device may not actually record the programs you want to record. There is no way for you to know in advance which programs you can or can't record. The fact that you can record your favorite programs now does not mean you will be able to record them in the future," then purchasers would know what they were buying and the free marker could operate.
...by presenting to be Onstar?
Naaah, the signals Onstar uses to do that are top secret.
Don't be a nervous nellie, your Onstar-equipped car is locked up as tight as a region-coded DVD.
Oh, Onstar keeps your information private using state-of-the-art procedures used by top credit-card companies like CardSystems Solutions.
...what can be explained by stupidity.
The ROKR is stupid, that's all. I once worked in a Fortune 500 company which did stupid stuff. Lots of it. All the time.
From the outside, journalists and fans were simply unwilling to accept the simple explanation and kept concocting explanations of how these moves could be the result of some brilliant strategy.
And, of course, inside the company, stuff would happen and people would say, Wow! That was boneheaded... what are we going to say?
And wordsmiths and spin doctors would get busy with plausible-sounding explanations that "studies show that our business customers want" some dumb thing that nobody in their right mind would ever want and nobody ever bought.
The ROKR is just stupid, that's all. Like IBM's 4" floppy or Microsoft Bob or New Coke. Someone had a bad idea and internal politicians, for whatever reasons, deadline pressure or ego or what, mutually convinced themselves that it was a good idea.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Well, bye for now. I'm off to Velcro my iPod Mini to the back of my cell phone.
I thought the U.S.'s official position was that Iraq was granted "limited" sovereignty by the U.S.
Of course, given that "sovereign" means "One that exercises supreme, permanent authority," it seems to me that "limited sovereignty" is a contradiction in terms, like "almost infinite" or "nearly a virgin..."
[ducking]
It's very important to have the ability to have executable content in documents, ...in order to create security holes ...in order to create public consent for Trusted Computing ...in order to enable Microsoft and its customers (not you, Microsoft's customers are media and computer companies) to put "your" computer under their control.
I haven't followed all the various changes in PayPal's offering, but when it was originally introduced, one of the scenarios they explicitly mentioned in their FAQ was one in which you sent a nickel to each of a hundred friends.
When you sent the nickel, they would hit your credit card for $5, your friend would get a nickel "in" their PayPal account, and you'd end up with $4.95 "in" your PayPal account. The next 99 nickels would all come out of your PayPal account.
Haven't you been able to do this all along?
But, but but... It says right in the article that there are no greenhouse gases, no generation of long-lived nuclear waste... ...no downside, no safety issues, no problems, that it will produce a limitless supply of clean energy too cheap to meter, that neutrons are good for you, that the isotopes it produces will cure cancer and that people living near the plant will probably live to be 150... ...and that you can double your money in 45 days by arbitraging postal reply coupons.
The comments about how he just means "seamless" and "transparent" are nonsense. DRM is always seamy and murky. It becomes seamy and murky at the exact point when you try to lend your friend a recording and it won't play on their machine.
Or when you buy a new computer, copy all your stuff over, sell your old one, and find that you can't play your stuff because your new computer isn't authorized, and you can't authorize your computer because your old computer hasn't been deauthorized, and you can't deauthorize your old computer because you haven't got it.
What "transparent, seamless" DRM does is to conceal the real nature of the bargain from the customer until it is too late for it to affect their buying decision.
A friend of mine recently saw a really good deal on a Dell PC. He bought one for his uncle and is thinking about buying another for himself.
The funny thing was that although they were priced about $300 lower than other roughly equivalent home PC's, these were bundled with WIndows XP Media Center instead of Windows XP Home.
They had no video-relevant hardware other than a DVD-burner.
It took my friend an extra half-hour to make his purchasing decision because he was going crazy on the Dell and Microsoft websites trying to find out exactly what Windows XP Media Center was and to convince himself that it was not ''missing'' anything in Windows XP Home Edition.
Oh, yes, the bundle included a 15" flat-screen monitor. So, the bundle contents were put together by someone who does not expect the PC to be connected to an existing TV. And with a 15" monitor, I don't think they expect it to be used in place of an ordinary television receiver, either.
These PCs are definitely not going into living rooms.
Keep this in mind the next time Microsoft starts trumpeting the great sales results it is having with WIndows XP Media Center.
Genesis 1:21: God created "winged fowls." Nothing about dinosaurs.
Microsoft says "Your potential... our passion..."
It seems Ballmer really is passionate about other companies reaching their potential.
Of course what they don't explain is that it's "passion" in the sense of "scourging with barbed hooks," as in "Passion of the Christ."
It's very likely that Lessig is right. Meanwhile, personal casual copying will continue--on a reduced level. Average consumers will have DRMed gear.
Only about one in twenty or one in a hundred will go to the effort of buying the illegally chipped merchandise that will become available in flea markets, on the Internet, and via other black-market channels. This gear will be sold like the pressed-grape-concentrate bricks of the Prohibition era, which came with detailed instructions explaining that it was totally illegal to use them to make wine and giving careful step-by-step directions on what you must not do to stay legal.
It will create more social unrest, injustice, and disrespect for the law. As with prohibition, and with current marijuana laws, a huge fraction of the population will be felons according to the law. Enforcement will be inconsistent and selective. Most people breaking the law will not be deterred because they will feel that getting caught is unlikely and totally a matter of bad luck.
My analog cassette player died last year. My old CD player is starting to become unreliable. I'm not sure what the useful life of a solid-state laser is, but I'm beginning to suspect it's less than ten years. The next one I buy will probably have DRM.
Prohibition eventually ended, the "war on drugs" will eventually end, and the war on the public domain will eventually end. Probably not in my lifetime, though, and not until a lot of damage and misery has occurred.
It say it's a proposal and it's open for public comment. But neither TFA nor the Financial Times article gives the address to which the public can send comments.
Anyone have it?
I grew up on Chesley Bonestell, and movies like "Destination: Moon" and "The Conquest of Space" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
All these special effects simulations, no matter how brilliantly done, are ultimately unsatisfying because they never have any surprises. They always represent _exactly_ what everyone _expects_ space to be like.
The first time the astronauts walked on the moon, and kicked up those little puffs of dust that fell _instantly_ down into place--I knew it was real. Because nobody had ever thought to mention that, or tried to simulate it in a sci-fi film.
I loved the IMAX film "Space Station 3D" because it was real, and you could tell it was real. Though I'm not sure whether I was more thrilled by "being there" on the space station, or "being there" at the Soviet Cosmodrome.
I don't get it.
It's like all the privacy notice boilerplate. There are stories almost every day about companies disclosing information they promised not to disclose.
It all reminds me of the scene in Dr. Strangelove where the President asks how a rogue SAC commander could have launched a nuclear strike, when only the President is supposed to have that authority. And an air force spokesperson clears his throat and says "It appears that General Ripper may have exceeded his authority."
Why wouldn't Microsoft just bull ahead? And when anyone complains, Buck Turgidson will say "It appears that Microsoft may not have followed best practices" and everyone will shrug it off, the way they always do.
Theatre attendance declining because U.S. studios don't make good movies? What other shocking revelations await?
Next, they'll be saying that U.S. auto manufacturers are declining because they don't make good cars.
Thanks heavens there's at least one area in which the U.S. still leads. Thanks heavens Microsoft still makes the world's best software.
I could have sworn Bill Dana was the name of acomedian who appeared from time to time on the Ed Sullivan show in the late 1950s/early 1960s, in sketches about "the reluctant astronaut." The catchphrase was him bawling out "I want my crayons!"
Evidently my mind has turned to middle-aged mush.
What was that comedian's name?
"People are, by and large, lazy and ungrateful shits." Right, that's Theory X. Fortunately, there is also a Theory Y
Carl Sandburg once wrote:
Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.' And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.'"