No, we still would have. The JDBC provider from the problem database company uses the same stupid provider.
I wrote the installer in Java. It was no easier.
Keep up the marketting, though.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Refactoring???
You're complaining that VS.NET isn't as good an IDE because it doesn't offer a way to rewrite your code for you?
There's a lot of really nice ways to organize your.NET code -- the #region tag is a prime example, as well as outlining -- so many that refactoring becomes unnecessary. Or at least, it becomes a waste of time.
Secondly, if one were desinging a complete workflow system, one might think one would want to work in a system for designing such things, and not in ones' IDE. I mean, I don't want my mechanic designing my new car. Microsoft has an awesome tool for laying out workflow, database diagrams, etc, in Visio. Why do you want to integrate that with the tool you use for managing data, writing stored procedures and othewise doing grunt work? The tasks should remain separate, less you get so worked up in a particular design you start coding it prematurely...something I have DEFINITELY seen happen...
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 4, Informative
Um, define bloated.
The.NET 2003 IDE takes up 17 meg of disc space. With 20 projects open, and debugging it's eating 80 meg of memory. It uses 0 processor time in idle mode, less than 1% when typing, less than 20% when searching with regular expressions. It doesn't peg the CPU when compiling. Starting it up, and reading all of my files, takes 20 seconds. Starting a brand new project takes 3 or 4.
On this same machine, NetBeans takes over 70 meg of space, 180 meg of memory for only 10 classes, pegs the cpu if you stare at it hard enough, and it just slow as hell. Starting it can take close to a minute.
Please don't compare Studio 6, a piece of crap, and VB3, which is so old that it shits doilies, with a modern on-demand IDE liek Studio.NET. When I did Java, I used to use textpad for the bredth of my typing and editing because the IDE was so slow. Now I do it all in Studio. It's just better.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 2, Insightful
We have the server side of our client-server application running on the 1.1 Framework on XP Home using Sybase. Yeah, it would be "cheaper" under Linux, but then our clients would have to buy a new server. They already have windows for all their other apps, and buying new hardware comes from a different budget. No, I can't ask them make their own server out of tinfoil and LEDs.
We do have a solution for single machines that uses Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine. That's up to 5 machines for no cash at all. That's pretty good in my book.
In the end, unless you WANT it to,.NET doesn't lock you in to anything other than the most basic OS that the Framework will run on, which is Windows 98. The whole bit about NEEDING a copy of Windows Server isn't even remotely true. Just more OSS FUD about how everything Microsoft is more expensive. Sure, it can be. So can a Ford Focus once you start bolting on turbochargers and sexy paintjobs.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This is stupid. I make money writing software that is for sale. Openness does NOT sell software to our clients. Good software, and fair prices, sell software. Openness would actually be a major setback to writing good software.
Why? Because we would need to massively increase our testing staff, to test on a good number of different machines to ensure compatibility. Because we would have to train them. Because even among VIRTUAL machines, and systems that obey standards or even run the same exact code, there are differences which can easily become dealbreakers.
As an example: we designed our application from the ground up to allow the use of multiple database systems. Heavy abstraction, only SQL-97 compatible statements, no system specific datatypes, etc. We closely followed standards to ensure compatibility. Still, when it came time to test the first database, it didn't work. The compatibility layer was never fully implemented by the new server, as a result of a feud with the first server. We had to rework the database layer completely, and it set us back at least three months.
If we had just said "fuck agility," and designed for one system (and rigidly sold THAT system) we would have saved a lot of time and money -- enough money to discount our software for those people who needed to invest in the more costly database. We could have spent that time making great new features. That's what matters to our clients, none of whom have ever not will ever use Linux or any machine not running an x86 chip. There's too much investment in legacy software requiring archaic things like DOS, floppy diskettes, and daisy wheel parellel port printers.
Openness and portability are at best liberal afterthoughts, and are by no means "the most important things" outside of your junior year Operating Systems class. What matters is cost effectiveness. If your market is not already locked in to wintel, then by all means use Java, chances are you'll recoup the extra testing effort with your first big mainframe sale. Ours was so locked. Writing in Java would have been a foolish waste of effort.
Re:VS sucks
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 4, Interesting
What the fuck are you smoking?
There are some good Java IDEs, no doubt, but none of them can touch Visual Studio for, well, any single thing you could possibly want to do with an IDE. From designing interfaces, to writing code, to generating code, to debugging code, to remote debugging, it's just awesome and completely customizable.
Maybe you just picked it up, said "Oh Microsoft, must be junk." You were wrong to do so; it's way better than VS 6. Maybe you saw the animated docking and said "Too pretty, must be junk." You're wrong again...that's the first thing I take out, but by and large it's not a whistles and bells IDE. Maybe you saw all the icons and thought, "Too visual, must be junk." You'd be wrong...everything you want to do in Studio.Net can be done without ever touching the designer, and in fact I don't have a single icon bar turned on in my IDE.
Compared to Sun's IDE, the awesome in its own right open source Netbeans, VS is much faster for compilation, has more accurate and immediate response from controls and object generation is more reliable. The tools are for the most part simpler while at the same time being more complete. They are easier to use and you can mess with the generated code without destroying the associated resources (for the most part). VS.NET doesn't have as robust a feature set as some Java IDEs, but it's got plenty and it all works.
Well, I do have a slightly higher playlist than most people. I listen to music an average of 12-14 hours per day -- an hour before work, 8 to 9 hours while at work, 2 hours on the way to and at the gym, an hour to and from work, and over dinner.
I guess you could say I like music, but it'd be more accurate to say I loathe silence. I crave a soundtrack...
A lot of people scoffed when I bought my iPod, they complained about the price being too high. Within a month I'd clocked nearly 400 hours on the thing (estimate. the iPod doesn't have an "odometer," though I think it should.). That makes it more cost effective than anything else I know, save my VW Beetle (which I bought for free and fixed up for under $100).
How many networks announce their Neilsons durign commercials? How many networks show the executive's digital photographs during breaks along with hot jazz breakbeats? How many networks put Fooly Cooly on TV and won't shut up about how goddamn cool it is?
Hey no problem. Thanks for not pointing out that I appended a post accusing someone of being a geek with annotated quotations I typed from my leatherbound Mirriam Webster's dictionary. The one I had signed by all my English Profs?
Man, if you consider everything to be data, you are a MAJOR geek.
To most people, data is data when it's touched by a computer...eg, when it's in transit, in processing, or in storage. Source code is data when it's on a disc, running through a compiler, or otherwise touching the "black box" most people computers to be. Data is pretty much worthless to humans...shit, we can't even understand it.
Once it comes to the screen (printer, speakers, etc), it becomes information. Source code becomes information when it turns into a program, starts spitting output.
And once it comes into the brain, it becomes that esoteric organic concept: knowledge. And it's knowledge, and information, that can be gleamed from Linux that makes it useful. The data itself is crap. It's all 1s and 0s, waiting to be manipulated, mined, and turned into knowledge.
This is all backed up by the standard (read: non-geek) definitions of these terms. Quoth Mirriam-Webster:
Data: 1 : factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation 2 : information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful 3 : information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed
Information: 1 : the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence 2 a : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
b : the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something that produce specific effects
Knowledge: (omitting crap definitions)
1: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom, but sharing data is the first step toward community.
Nice slogan. Makes me want to put my hand over my heart and stare knowingly toward the horizon.
What's it got to do with Linux though? Data sharing seems to have more to do with databases and web services, neither of which are explicitly Linux oriented traits. It seems to me it's not data, but functionality that's shared in the Linux community.
It's something like this: we both need to build a house. I'm going to need a ladder and a saw, you're going to need a ladder and a saw. If you build the ladder, and share it with me, I'll build the saw and share it with you. It doesn't mean we're going to tell each other what's inside the house, what's going on with the house, etc. No data is shared, just the tools for organizing and arranging it. Sharing the TOOLS makes a community. Sharing data makes, I dunno, an RIAA lawsuit?
I know, I know. The slogan is meant to strike at executives who make snap decisions and watch golf on the weekends. After all, they're the only ones not using OSS already;). Doesn't foregive IBM from coming up with a slogan that muddys the already murky question of "What is up with the GNU community?"
I would like to point out that, as I see it, the only network on the planet that is properly marketting itself to an audience of nerds is Cartoon Network. Adult Swim is such a great idea, and it's run in such a refreshingly honest manner that I sometimes catch myself watching stuff I don't even like *cough* Inuyasha *cough* *cough*.
Realize to a lot of people, we're just people with money. They couldn't care less about our culture or lifestyle, so long as we watch their dumb tv shows. They come up with an idea for a market segment, one they aren't a part of, and appeal to the stereotype, not real people. This is how you can have a channel like G4, and have it be a colossal failure. Earth to MBA: gamers already know the Konami code. They don't need a team of fresh faced multiethnic twentysomethings on a stage somewhere screaming it at them. But they might watch a show with in depth strategies from experts, interviews with developers and reviews that weren't paid off...
Of course, this is nothing new. Lifetime, MTV, VH1, even BET, have all made their niche appealing to the LCD of their particular market. Which makes me wonder what Williams' Street has done to be given the freedom to do something new and interesting...
Yeah, but why should they? Why should Apple have to go through all this work just so people can resell THEIR services?
Just so somebody can screw over the artists and make a statement about digital property rights that doesn't need to be made?
That would be really smart. Alienate your suppliers to make a tiny fraction of a decimal percent of your clients happy.
Unless some paranoid legislation gets passed that would require it, Apple would be fools to do so, admin charge or not. It's only $.99. You don't need to resell it!
Please don't mess with analogies. They're meant to simplify a situation, so of course if you make it more complex, they're never going to be exact.
Anyway, what you're talking about -- the factor presenting a person from cracking Apple's DRM -- is the DMCA, and yes, it is bullshit designed to prevent the necesity of good encryption. After all, look at DVDs -- cracked on a whim. Or WEP.
I'd love to see the DMCA die a slow death of stupid challenges and what-if litigation. But the fact remains that SMART DRM works, DMCA or not, because the time it will take you to crack the encryption is worth more to you than the $.99 cost. And unless you're a cheap fuck, ANY amount of time is worth more than $.99 spent rewarding artists YOU enjoy.
Yeah, it looks fucking awesome. Superpaint from Sherwin Williams; basic coat is Sporty Blue, trim is Vanllin (that's a yellowy cream). Garage is a deep gray something. Peeking three stories above the red maples of Whiteview road, it's very recognizable, not at all boring, and not so shocking that our neighbours show up at the door with pitchforks. They reserve that for the second week of our extended lawn mowing schedule.
No. But neither do my iTunes files. iTunes downloads a license file to my computers/iPod when I first login and download the songs I've bought. It's good, as far as i know, forever. It will only work with my copy of iTunes, or on my iPod, but it will work even if i'm not near the internet. Much better than some DRM.
And even if it didn't, I can chuck it all on a Audio CD. And how long do CDs last? Practically forever, since I can then backup the audio CD any time I feel like it.
Which is more than I can say for some of my physical CDs. It is no longer possible to buy a copy of "Son of Skarmageddon," as Moon records is out of business. My copy's scratched to hell. That music is gone. *sigh* if only i'd mp3d it!
iTunes doesn't REPLACE CDs, it's an ALTERNATIVE to CDs. They still sell tapes, too. Some artists even press to records, and there's also DVD Audio, SACD, and even DAT around. You still have choices. If one of them "frightens you," use another one.
Personally, I'm frightened by the prospect of paying $18+ for a CD when only a dollar or so goes to the artist. I do it anyway, because I like music, and know over the life of the CD it'll amount to hours of listening per penney paid on music. But if my music budget (I used to have one, $200+ per month) stretches further with artists still getting $1+ per album, that's good. I'm still paying the artist to make art -- something that does not happen with used CDs, and that's fucking reprehensible even if it is (and should be) legal.
In the end, more artists get money out of my pocket. I get more music. I smile more. Do I care if I can't IM the song to my friend or sell it on ebay or return it if I don't like it? Nope.
iTunes service being "shoved down your throat" is saving me between 3 and 8 dollars per CD. That's less then what I'd make by selling the CD anyhow. Furthermore, it's not crippling my right to listen to music...I can burn it to a CD yourself, thus preserving my music even if iTunes screws the pooch next week and never comes back.
Apple's DRM is very simple, it's built into the player and the service in a way that anybody can understand. I'm not worried about them dropping support for my old iPod any time soon. And Apple has not to my knowledge ever tried to sneak in something sneaky into a newer TOS...in fact, I seem to remember a clause in the iTunes signup that said they can't.
It's not "we either purchase it and it's ours or we didn't" anymore. Welcome to the 21st century. Content is on-demand now -- they don't give you as many rights, and they charge accordingly. If you want to own music, go buy a damn tuba.
Just because something is useless without the service doesn't mean it isn't legally yours.
My dad works in the cable industry. A lot of people have been known to keep cable boxes they paid for LONG after disconnecting from cable. Now, these boxes are addressable...totally useless without a cable service and nobody else in the area would use them. Worthless. But people kept them anyway -- most of them due to some half hearted dream of "stickign it to the man" and using the internals to descramble cable.
You can't descramble an adressable signal because unless you pay for it, you don't get the signal. There's nothing to descramble. So the box really is useless outside of its intended purpose with the intended service provider. Which is why most cable companies rent boxes now (though some people STILL buy them, try to use them, and call my buddies in customer service trying to con them into sending the $50 prize fight).
This is EXACTLY what DRM is. They're selling you the right to use the music, NOT the right to distribute it. If you're not okay with that, well then buy a damn CD. It's only $5-8 more expensive. If your right to resell is worth that much (hint: it isn't. most used cd shops will only give you 3-5$ per disc, and half.com isn't a whole lot better all things considered), don't use iTunes. But don't try and cry foul -- it's that same DRM license that convinced the record company assholes to let you buy the cheap music in the first place. And since I have an iPod, listen to most of my CD music on mix CDs I burn from iTunes, and I've never sold a CD in my life (yes, I still have the Damn Yankees s/t somewhere, along with Kris Kross), I think iTunes is awesome.
I would have to say that, thanks to DRM, Apple doesn't give a shit what this guy does with the SONG FILE. They'll let him sell it for a penny or $400, or whatever he wants.
Because the file iteself is useless without the iTunes account that set it up. That's how this DRM works. The account is what unlocks the file and makes it play music. And I'm sure that accounts are non-transferrable, except among computers you yourself own -- and you wouldn't want them to be otherwise, since the account is connected with your credit card, and can be used to purchase more songs. That's the real protection, the thing really preventing people from spreading their iTunes files all over the net...the threat of misuse of their account. Shit, I don't even leave my iTunes sessions open anymore, because my wife once bought a bunch of Nick Drake CDs on my account(It's the same credit card, I know...I just don't want anybody thinking I listen to that crap).
So there's an issue here most people aren't seeing. There's a good and a service involved in this sale. The good is the file itself. The service is Apple's unlocking of the DRM.
When I got my house painted, I paid for two things: the paint (a good), and the painter's work (a service). When he was done, i got to keep the leftover paint. I didn't get to keep him, I don't have any control over what he does from now on. I can sell you the extra paint, but if you want to get it on your house you'll have to pay the painter. You can try and convince him that I paid for his unlimited service based on the paint he sold me, but he will probably just laugh at you...even if I promise to scrap all the blue off the house myself, and transfer it to you.
Isn't that what's going on here? The only confusion is over what the consumer's rights are, and what the medium is. Apple gave him a file and promised their services to unlock it an unlimited number of times to play it on his computers. If he gives it to somebody else, that's his own accord. The file is his to give. But the buyer shouldn't expect Apple to do anything for them. After all, they don't have a contract with Apple. Apple doesn't know the buyer from Adam, and if they don't want to perform a service for the buyer, they shouldn't have to.
Problem with your post is it's way too speculative.
First off, with OSX Apple isn't appealing to geeks...they're adjusting the geek's tools to a more public audience. Finally having a CLI does not change my graphic design friends' lives at all. Having a stable OS does.
Apple's marketting hasn't changed much. They're still focusing on artists and home users. Front page of Apple.com routinely shows the box a computer comes in, or some software for making movies or music. Whereas Dell usually shows a multiethnic office with some guy pointing at a flat screen. Artful simplicity vs. complacent productivity. No change there.
All Apple is doing is trying to rise up from being the whipping boy of the hardware industry. To show that they can compete where "normal" computers compete. To show that they're still making computers, and that those computers can crunch numbers that don't apply to photoshop filters. It's not a paradigm shift. It's cleanup PR. Apple knows damn well that the prospect of switching a whole office to a proprietary platform is scary, no matter how good it is. They'll make it easy, they'll reassure the switchers...but they're not going to break the bank marketting on the lost cause of the corporate IT department.
And the market? It's not about numbers. It's about GREED. It's about executives getting million dollar raises for saving $500k. That math will only work so long. Apple's way has always been effective, it's still just as effective, the numbers are just much larger. The x86 PC market will see its margin slip to the point that new PCs will have to be nearly unusable to be cost effective. And that's when Apple will shine.
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No, we still would have. The JDBC provider from the problem database company uses the same stupid provider.
I wrote the installer in Java. It was no easier.
Keep up the marketting, though.
Refactoring???
.NET code -- the #region tag is a prime example, as well as outlining -- so many that refactoring becomes unnecessary. Or at least, it becomes a waste of time.
You're complaining that VS.NET isn't as good an IDE because it doesn't offer a way to rewrite your code for you?
There's a lot of really nice ways to organize your
Secondly, if one were desinging a complete workflow system, one might think one would want to work in a system for designing such things, and not in ones' IDE. I mean, I don't want my mechanic designing my new car. Microsoft has an awesome tool for laying out workflow, database diagrams, etc, in Visio. Why do you want to integrate that with the tool you use for managing data, writing stored procedures and othewise doing grunt work? The tasks should remain separate, less you get so worked up in a particular design you start coding it prematurely...something I have DEFINITELY seen happen...
Um, define bloated.
.NET 2003 IDE takes up 17 meg of disc space. With 20 projects open, and debugging it's eating 80 meg of memory. It uses 0 processor time in idle mode, less than 1% when typing, less than 20% when searching with regular expressions. It doesn't peg the CPU when compiling. Starting it up, and reading all of my files, takes 20 seconds. Starting a brand new project takes 3 or 4.
The
On this same machine, NetBeans takes over 70 meg of space, 180 meg of memory for only 10 classes, pegs the cpu if you stare at it hard enough, and it just slow as hell. Starting it can take close to a minute.
Please don't compare Studio 6, a piece of crap, and VB3, which is so old that it shits doilies, with a modern on-demand IDE liek Studio.NET. When I did Java, I used to use textpad for the bredth of my typing and editing because the IDE was so slow. Now I do it all in Studio. It's just better.
We have the server side of our client-server application running on the 1.1 Framework on XP Home using Sybase. Yeah, it would be "cheaper" under Linux, but then our clients would have to buy a new server. They already have windows for all their other apps, and buying new hardware comes from a different budget. No, I can't ask them make their own server out of tinfoil and LEDs.
.NET doesn't lock you in to anything other than the most basic OS that the Framework will run on, which is Windows 98. The whole bit about NEEDING a copy of Windows Server isn't even remotely true. Just more OSS FUD about how everything Microsoft is more expensive. Sure, it can be. So can a Ford Focus once you start bolting on turbochargers and sexy paintjobs.
We do have a solution for single machines that uses Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine. That's up to 5 machines for no cash at all. That's pretty good in my book.
In the end, unless you WANT it to,
This is stupid. I make money writing software that is for sale. Openness does NOT sell software to our clients. Good software, and fair prices, sell software. Openness would actually be a major setback to writing good software.
Why? Because we would need to massively increase our testing staff, to test on a good number of different machines to ensure compatibility. Because we would have to train them. Because even among VIRTUAL machines, and systems that obey standards or even run the same exact code, there are differences which can easily become dealbreakers.
As an example: we designed our application from the ground up to allow the use of multiple database systems. Heavy abstraction, only SQL-97 compatible statements, no system specific datatypes, etc. We closely followed standards to ensure compatibility. Still, when it came time to test the first database, it didn't work. The compatibility layer was never fully implemented by the new server, as a result of a feud with the first server. We had to rework the database layer completely, and it set us back at least three months.
If we had just said "fuck agility," and designed for one system (and rigidly sold THAT system) we would have saved a lot of time and money -- enough money to discount our software for those people who needed to invest in the more costly database. We could have spent that time making great new features. That's what matters to our clients, none of whom have ever not will ever use Linux or any machine not running an x86 chip. There's too much investment in legacy software requiring archaic things like DOS, floppy diskettes, and daisy wheel parellel port printers.
Openness and portability are at best liberal afterthoughts, and are by no means "the most important things" outside of your junior year Operating Systems class. What matters is cost effectiveness. If your market is not already locked in to wintel, then by all means use Java, chances are you'll recoup the extra testing effort with your first big mainframe sale. Ours was so locked. Writing in Java would have been a foolish waste of effort.
What the fuck are you smoking?
There are some good Java IDEs, no doubt, but none of them can touch Visual Studio for, well, any single thing you could possibly want to do with an IDE. From designing interfaces, to writing code, to generating code, to debugging code, to remote debugging, it's just awesome and completely customizable.
Maybe you just picked it up, said "Oh Microsoft, must be junk." You were wrong to do so; it's way better than VS 6. Maybe you saw the animated docking and said "Too pretty, must be junk." You're wrong again...that's the first thing I take out, but by and large it's not a whistles and bells IDE. Maybe you saw all the icons and thought, "Too visual, must be junk." You'd be wrong...everything you want to do in Studio.Net can be done without ever touching the designer, and in fact I don't have a single icon bar turned on in my IDE.
Compared to Sun's IDE, the awesome in its own right open source Netbeans, VS is much faster for compilation, has more accurate and immediate response from controls and object generation is more reliable. The tools are for the most part simpler while at the same time being more complete. They are easier to use and you can mess with the generated code without destroying the associated resources (for the most part). VS.NET doesn't have as robust a feature set as some Java IDEs, but it's got plenty and it all works.
Well, I do have a slightly higher playlist than most people. I listen to music an average of 12-14 hours per day -- an hour before work, 8 to 9 hours while at work, 2 hours on the way to and at the gym, an hour to and from work, and over dinner.
I guess you could say I like music, but it'd be more accurate to say I loathe silence. I crave a soundtrack...
A lot of people scoffed when I bought my iPod, they complained about the price being too high. Within a month I'd clocked nearly 400 hours on the thing (estimate. the iPod doesn't have an "odometer," though I think it should.). That makes it more cost effective than anything else I know, save my VW Beetle (which I bought for free and fixed up for under $100).
How many networks announce their Neilsons durign commercials? How many networks show the executive's digital photographs during breaks along with hot jazz breakbeats? How many networks put Fooly Cooly on TV and won't shut up about how goddamn cool it is?
Just one, baby. And it ain't (shudder) TechTV.
Hey no problem. Thanks for not pointing out that I appended a post accusing someone of being a geek with annotated quotations I typed from my leatherbound Mirriam Webster's dictionary. The one I had signed by all my English Profs?
Man, if you consider everything to be data, you are a MAJOR geek.
To most people, data is data when it's touched by a computer...eg, when it's in transit, in processing, or in storage. Source code is data when it's on a disc, running through a compiler, or otherwise touching the "black box" most people computers to be. Data is pretty much worthless to humans...shit, we can't even understand it.
Once it comes to the screen (printer, speakers, etc), it becomes information. Source code becomes information when it turns into a program, starts spitting output.
And once it comes into the brain, it becomes that esoteric organic concept: knowledge. And it's knowledge, and information, that can be gleamed from Linux that makes it useful. The data itself is crap. It's all 1s and 0s, waiting to be manipulated, mined, and turned into knowledge.
This is all backed up by the standard (read: non-geek) definitions of these terms. Quoth Mirriam-Webster:
Data:
1 : factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation
2 : information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful
3 : information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed
Information:
1 : the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
2 a : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
b : the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something that produce specific effects
Knowledge: (omitting crap definitions)
1: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
Well, you are their market, I guess. Not your type of viewer: I mean JUST you.
You might want to call them up and let them know what kind of ads you like see. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom, but sharing data is the first step toward community.
;). Doesn't foregive IBM from coming up with a slogan that muddys the already murky question of "What is up with the GNU community?"
Nice slogan. Makes me want to put my hand over my heart and stare knowingly toward the horizon.
What's it got to do with Linux though? Data sharing seems to have more to do with databases and web services, neither of which are explicitly Linux oriented traits. It seems to me it's not data, but functionality that's shared in the Linux community.
It's something like this: we both need to build a house. I'm going to need a ladder and a saw, you're going to need a ladder and a saw. If you build the ladder, and share it with me, I'll build the saw and share it with you. It doesn't mean we're going to tell each other what's inside the house, what's going on with the house, etc. No data is shared, just the tools for organizing and arranging it. Sharing the TOOLS makes a community. Sharing data makes, I dunno, an RIAA lawsuit?
I know, I know. The slogan is meant to strike at executives who make snap decisions and watch golf on the weekends. After all, they're the only ones not using OSS already
I dunno, but whereever it is, it's probably trite, derivative, ugly, boring and poorly dubbed. Hope you find it.
I would like to point out that, as I see it, the only network on the planet that is properly marketting itself to an audience of nerds is Cartoon Network. Adult Swim is such a great idea, and it's run in such a refreshingly honest manner that I sometimes catch myself watching stuff I don't even like *cough* Inuyasha *cough* *cough*.
Realize to a lot of people, we're just people with money. They couldn't care less about our culture or lifestyle, so long as we watch their dumb tv shows. They come up with an idea for a market segment, one they aren't a part of, and appeal to the stereotype, not real people. This is how you can have a channel like G4, and have it be a colossal failure. Earth to MBA: gamers already know the Konami code. They don't need a team of fresh faced multiethnic twentysomethings on a stage somewhere screaming it at them. But they might watch a show with in depth strategies from experts, interviews with developers and reviews that weren't paid off...
Of course, this is nothing new. Lifetime, MTV, VH1, even BET, have all made their niche appealing to the LCD of their particular market. Which makes me wonder what Williams' Street has done to be given the freedom to do something new and interesting...
Yeah, but why should they? Why should Apple have to go through all this work just so people can resell THEIR services?
Just so somebody can screw over the artists and make a statement about digital property rights that doesn't need to be made?
That would be really smart. Alienate your suppliers to make a tiny fraction of a decimal percent of your clients happy.
Unless some paranoid legislation gets passed that would require it, Apple would be fools to do so, admin charge or not. It's only $.99. You don't need to resell it!
Please don't mess with analogies. They're meant to simplify a situation, so of course if you make it more complex, they're never going to be exact.
Anyway, what you're talking about -- the factor presenting a person from cracking Apple's DRM -- is the DMCA, and yes, it is bullshit designed to prevent the necesity of good encryption. After all, look at DVDs -- cracked on a whim. Or WEP.
I'd love to see the DMCA die a slow death of stupid challenges and what-if litigation. But the fact remains that SMART DRM works, DMCA or not, because the time it will take you to crack the encryption is worth more to you than the $.99 cost. And unless you're a cheap fuck, ANY amount of time is worth more than $.99 spent rewarding artists YOU enjoy.
Yeah, it looks fucking awesome. Superpaint from Sherwin Williams; basic coat is Sporty Blue, trim is Vanllin (that's a yellowy cream). Garage is a deep gray something. Peeking three stories above the red maples of Whiteview road, it's very recognizable, not at all boring, and not so shocking that our neighbours show up at the door with pitchforks. They reserve that for the second week of our extended lawn mowing schedule.
No thanks. It's an ugly black and white video player which uses a stupid format. Besides, I already have this LAPTOP.
No. But neither do my iTunes files. iTunes downloads a license file to my computers/iPod when I first login and download the songs I've bought. It's good, as far as i know, forever. It will only work with my copy of iTunes, or on my iPod, but it will work even if i'm not near the internet. Much better than some DRM.
And even if it didn't, I can chuck it all on a Audio CD. And how long do CDs last? Practically forever, since I can then backup the audio CD any time I feel like it.
Which is more than I can say for some of my physical CDs. It is no longer possible to buy a copy of "Son of Skarmageddon," as Moon records is out of business. My copy's scratched to hell. That music is gone. *sigh* if only i'd mp3d it!
Probably. You're too busy painting to use a computer. I mean, you didn't even have enough time to log in before posting!
Why does it frighten you?
iTunes doesn't REPLACE CDs, it's an ALTERNATIVE to CDs. They still sell tapes, too. Some artists even press to records, and there's also DVD Audio, SACD, and even DAT around. You still have choices. If one of them "frightens you," use another one.
Personally, I'm frightened by the prospect of paying $18+ for a CD when only a dollar or so goes to the artist. I do it anyway, because I like music, and know over the life of the CD it'll amount to hours of listening per penney paid on music. But if my music budget (I used to have one, $200+ per month) stretches further with artists still getting $1+ per album, that's good. I'm still paying the artist to make art -- something that does not happen with used CDs, and that's fucking reprehensible even if it is (and should be) legal.
In the end, more artists get money out of my pocket. I get more music. I smile more. Do I care if I can't IM the song to my friend or sell it on ebay or return it if I don't like it? Nope.
iTunes service being "shoved down your throat" is saving me between 3 and 8 dollars per CD. That's less then what I'd make by selling the CD anyhow. Furthermore, it's not crippling my right to listen to music...I can burn it to a CD yourself, thus preserving my music even if iTunes screws the pooch next week and never comes back.
Apple's DRM is very simple, it's built into the player and the service in a way that anybody can understand. I'm not worried about them dropping support for my old iPod any time soon. And Apple has not to my knowledge ever tried to sneak in something sneaky into a newer TOS...in fact, I seem to remember a clause in the iTunes signup that said they can't.
It's not "we either purchase it and it's ours or we didn't" anymore. Welcome to the 21st century. Content is on-demand now -- they don't give you as many rights, and they charge accordingly. If you want to own music, go buy a damn tuba.
Just because something is useless without the service doesn't mean it isn't legally yours.
My dad works in the cable industry. A lot of people have been known to keep cable boxes they paid for LONG after disconnecting from cable. Now, these boxes are addressable...totally useless without a cable service and nobody else in the area would use them. Worthless. But people kept them anyway -- most of them due to some half hearted dream of "stickign it to the man" and using the internals to descramble cable.
You can't descramble an adressable signal because unless you pay for it, you don't get the signal. There's nothing to descramble. So the box really is useless outside of its intended purpose with the intended service provider. Which is why most cable companies rent boxes now (though some people STILL buy them, try to use them, and call my buddies in customer service trying to con them into sending the $50 prize fight).
This is EXACTLY what DRM is. They're selling you the right to use the music, NOT the right to distribute it. If you're not okay with that, well then buy a damn CD. It's only $5-8 more expensive. If your right to resell is worth that much (hint: it isn't. most used cd shops will only give you 3-5$ per disc, and half.com isn't a whole lot better all things considered), don't use iTunes. But don't try and cry foul -- it's that same DRM license that convinced the record company assholes to let you buy the cheap music in the first place. And since I have an iPod, listen to most of my CD music on mix CDs I burn from iTunes, and I've never sold a CD in my life (yes, I still have the Damn Yankees s/t somewhere, along with Kris Kross), I think iTunes is awesome.
Noooooooooo...because the buyer still hasn't received a contract from Apple for the service of playing the music.
If you were Apple, would you give it to them? Even if the seller "gave you his word" it was deleted?
I would have to say that, thanks to DRM, Apple doesn't give a shit what this guy does with the SONG FILE. They'll let him sell it for a penny or $400, or whatever he wants.
Because the file iteself is useless without the iTunes account that set it up. That's how this DRM works. The account is what unlocks the file and makes it play music. And I'm sure that accounts are non-transferrable, except among computers you yourself own -- and you wouldn't want them to be otherwise, since the account is connected with your credit card, and can be used to purchase more songs. That's the real protection, the thing really preventing people from spreading their iTunes files all over the net...the threat of misuse of their account. Shit, I don't even leave my iTunes sessions open anymore, because my wife once bought a bunch of Nick Drake CDs on my account(It's the same credit card, I know...I just don't want anybody thinking I listen to that crap).
So there's an issue here most people aren't seeing. There's a good and a service involved in this sale. The good is the file itself. The service is Apple's unlocking of the DRM.
When I got my house painted, I paid for two things: the paint (a good), and the painter's work (a service). When he was done, i got to keep the leftover paint. I didn't get to keep him, I don't have any control over what he does from now on. I can sell you the extra paint, but if you want to get it on your house you'll have to pay the painter. You can try and convince him that I paid for his unlimited service based on the paint he sold me, but he will probably just laugh at you...even if I promise to scrap all the blue off the house myself, and transfer it to you.
Isn't that what's going on here? The only confusion is over what the consumer's rights are, and what the medium is. Apple gave him a file and promised their services to unlock it an unlimited number of times to play it on his computers. If he gives it to somebody else, that's his own accord. The file is his to give. But the buyer shouldn't expect Apple to do anything for them. After all, they don't have a contract with Apple. Apple doesn't know the buyer from Adam, and if they don't want to perform a service for the buyer, they shouldn't have to.
Problem with your post is it's way too speculative.
First off, with OSX Apple isn't appealing to geeks...they're adjusting the geek's tools to a more public audience. Finally having a CLI does not change my graphic design friends' lives at all. Having a stable OS does.
Apple's marketting hasn't changed much. They're still focusing on artists and home users. Front page of Apple.com routinely shows the box a computer comes in, or some software for making movies or music. Whereas Dell usually shows a multiethnic office with some guy pointing at a flat screen. Artful simplicity vs. complacent productivity. No change there.
All Apple is doing is trying to rise up from being the whipping boy of the hardware industry. To show that they can compete where "normal" computers compete. To show that they're still making computers, and that those computers can crunch numbers that don't apply to photoshop filters. It's not a paradigm shift. It's cleanup PR. Apple knows damn well that the prospect of switching a whole office to a proprietary platform is scary, no matter how good it is. They'll make it easy, they'll reassure the switchers...but they're not going to break the bank marketting on the lost cause of the corporate IT department.
And the market? It's not about numbers. It's about GREED. It's about executives getting million dollar raises for saving $500k. That math will only work so long. Apple's way has always been effective, it's still just as effective, the numbers are just much larger. The x86 PC market will see its margin slip to the point that new PCs will have to be nearly unusable to be cost effective. And that's when Apple will shine.