There are a lot more windows programmers than OSX programmers. If AAC is crackable and the likelihood of it being cracked is proportional to the number of people trying to do so, I wonder if we could conclude that the windows release of iTunes moves that day closer.
(1) I can't play the music on one computer when I'm miles away from the other... and (2) I can't hand the files to everyone in the world
Another implication: if you move outside the US, Apple will not re-authorize the playing of your songs. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but to people who want to have the option of moving someday and are serious music fans I think it is a big deal.
But I do like the fact that Apple is offering this as an alternative. It's miles ahead of anything else.
My crystal ball says that free recorded music will eventually become legit... or that the US will become a police state, one or the other.
They're showing that companies can actually listen to their customers. Support them and maybe other companies will take notice.
They do not listen to customers, they listen to revenue. They put in DRM believing it would increase their revenue; as the article says, "[Intuit] predicted that revenue would increase, since customers who had previously purchased only one TurboTax program would have to buy a separate copy for each computer in the house". No part of that plan serves the customer. Similarly, the only reason they changed it is because they lost a ton of money.
It just so happened in this case that customers were able to weild enough power to hurt their revenues. Thinking that they "listened to customers" is to miss the fact that they would have continued to screw customers as long as they could have squeezed more revenue out of them by doing so. That they changed course here is not to their credit in any sense other than that they're not pathologically oblivious to the failure of their plan to screw customers.
The article begins with the line: "A California man who's an apparent white supremacist...". I don't mean to condone white supremacists, but what relevance does this have to his use of spam? The white supremacist angle is never mentioned again in the article. If the spam he'd sent had contained white supremacist views, that would be relevant, but the article doesn't bring up any such thing. I'm therefore struck by the notion that its inclusion is an attempt to predispose the reader to disliking the subject of the article, and that seems unacceptible. Why not start out the article with a list of everything he's ever done wrong, like speeding tickets, smoking dope, or reeking of BO? Perhaps because it'd make the irrelevancy obvious even to the less astute. It doesn't matter if I dislike white supremacists; if we let this kind of journalistic tack go unnoticed, we will be on the end of the same pitchfork sooner or later (words like "hacker", "unpatriotic", "anti-corporate"). Don't let it happen... take notice.
Another one: A disgruntled man recently approached us stating his wife had been having, let's say, extra marital activities. Worse yet, he found out because she accidentally left a file open on their computer showing her, let's say, doing those extra marital activities. His lawyer asked us to search for specific key words on the media that might unveil any more pictures. Sure enough, Media Tools Professional 2003 found thousands more.
What an uplifting aspect of the business, lyrically portrayed with loving craftsmanship by a true humantiarian. It's all about helping people, helping them be dignified.
Article says:
Charter's move Friday suggested that Charter had undergone a change of heart on the issue. On
Sept. 23, after the association issued its first subpoenas to Charter in St. Louis, a Charter
spokesman said the company would "fully cooperate." However, Hearity said that
statement meant only that the company would "cooperate in the sense that we're going to
operate within the legal process."
As opposed to not operating within the legal process? Of *course* they're going to operate within the legal process. I guess their PR person couldn't bear to admit that at first they folded faster than superman on laundry day. But bless 'em for eventually deciding to have more than a knee-jerk PC reaction, even if it's profit-driven.
Asscroft: I demand that you take immediate steps to prevent terrorists from distributing kiddie porn in the Amazonian rainforest! MoneyCo: Obviously we'll comply in every way possible. (examines books, does spreadsheet) MoneyCo: Hmm, what we meant was, we'd comply by saying something you wanted to hear at the time.
OK, it's been said a million times before, but Apple is a hardware company. Mac OS X is a great product, but its sole purpose is to sell Macs.
That would be an easier statement to support if they distributed their OS for free... but they don't, it costs $100+. Likewise if they distributed their hardware for free and only charged for their OS, it'd be entirely supportable to say they were solely a software company. They are both a hardware and a software company. Apple's purpose is not to sell macs, it's to make money and remain in existence. That's why the measure of whether they're a hw or sw outfit must be defined via money, instead of how many employees work on hw vs sw, or how gratifying the hw or sw is to polled users. And by this measure they are now also a media company.
They may make much more money on hardware than on software (I don't know), but that would not answer the question of whether they could profit by porting their software on other platforms. It would be too simplistic to say that their profits would go down due to fewer people buying their hardware. They could, for example, realize greater profits from disproportionately greater software sales. They could get into x86 hardware themselves. They could see increased migration to PPC hardware by x86 users who appreciated their software and wanted to go fully "apple native" and see the benefits of controlled hardware integration.
The fact that they haven't ported OSX to another platform shouldn't be thought of as logical proof that they never will or shouldn't. If the only reason their OS sells now is because they have a monopoly on their hardware, they are guaranteed to have their lunch eaten by competition in the not too distant future; their advantage in ease of use could be erased by advances in KDE/Gnome, and on the hardware side Dell could decide to foray into something competetive and lower priced. Apple will have to adapt.
How does mplayer play proprietary divx?
on
Mplayer Revisited
·
· Score: 1
Given that the divx algorithm is proprietary (it is, right?), how does mplayer play divx files? Does it invoke a binary supplied by divx.com, or does it include source from divx.com, or does it reverse engineer it? I ask because I'm concerned that someday soon I won't be able to play my divx files, or at least not without pay per view fees headed to divx.com...
Control has its benefits, but I'll say no thanks to Palladium. I'm willing to have mangled versions of resumes floating around if the alternative is a police state controlled by Microsoft and chained irrevocably to their OS. What I'd prefer would be an increase in general usage of digital signatures.
I definitely think Dean's use of the internet is more deft than that of previous candidates, but he has a ways to go.
Hi blog page is a hyper exclamation mark festival which has compared him to a "rock star" of politics. I don't want to vote for a rock star, as that image does not connote accountability (or even talent, given todays RIAA-manufactured boy bands).
To participate in his meetups, you have to click through an agreement that binds you into arbitration and robs you of your right to a jury trial in the event of a related dispute. To me, this makes Dean sound more like a giant corporation out to squish hapless citizens than a man who is trying to elevate dialog.
I have written more than one email to the address listed as the official input for the campaign. Brief, easily digested, thoughtful messages that invite responses. I've heard nothing back. I don't take it personally, but it certainly raises the question: is Dean fundamentally using the internet as anything more than a broadcast medium? I am only one person so I can't state the aggregate, but it's all I have to base a judgement on regarding what Dean is doing with the net. I grant him major points for so clearly being aware of the internet; now I'd like some indication that he can use it as a two way medium and not just as a louder bullhorn.
I have seriously considered adding a copyright notice to the copy of my resume [to prevent headhunters from modifying it]
If you sent (or posted) a jpeg of your resume instead of a word or ascii doc, then only the guys real handy with photoshop would be able to mess around with it. You could even watermark an instance of a resume by putting a large, faded gray, block-lettered indication of who it was being distributed to, slanted across the background.
I love the imagery involved in this..
*VROOM* *VROOM* *put* *put* *put* *creeeeek* *thump* OW!
I was, like, riding my segway, when suddenly it was like, beep beep boop beep bup beep... and then, like, my ride was over. And I was like, huh? It killed my ride. It was a really good ride. And then I had to walk, and I had to do it fast, and it wasn't as good. It was kind of a...... bummer.
The creators says: "I have this music. I am offering you the ability to enjoy it, and here is what it will cost you." When someone copies it without paying for it, they're basically doing an end-run around the creator's offer. They're "taking" the benefit they derive from the creator's talent, skill, and creativity, and the creator gets nothing.
Suppose that before automobiles came along someone builds a rocket sled on a rail track that can take an occupant from point A to point B at speeds of 50mph. This person then puts up a sign advertising a 50mph ride in return for a certain amount of money, and various people become customers. Then, automobiles that go 50mph become commonly available. The owner of the rocket sled litigates to prevent people from infringing on his idea to his financial detriment.
What was the rocket sled person selling? Ideas that occur to me include:
the experience of going fast
the experience of going 50mph (no more no less)
the experience of riding on a rocket sled
the experience of riding on THAT rocket sled
etc...
Interesting to try to figure whether such a person has a case, and if so what the best way for him to position it is.
I see strong parallels between the above scenario and what has happened with music and the internet: technology enabled the common person to duplicate an experience which formerly cost them money... leaving the former distributor of the experience understandably upset about the change.
With respect to IP, this definition [of theft as removing property with intent to deprive the owner of it] can and probably should be logically extended to include, "...the rightful owner of it, or its value."
This seems a bit awkward. There's the difference between "removing" and "duplicating"; one leaves a vaccuum in its wake, the other does not. Then there's the distinction between the motivations of "intent to deprive owner of its value" vs "desire to share item with the public".
How would we categorize the act of spreading, say, product fault information with the intent (or at least effect) of deflating a company's stock price? Is such an act theft? What if doing so could have deflated stock prices but in fact the stock price remained unaffected... theft, potential theft, something else?
Since when is taking something you don't own not theft?
Does it really matter if the owner still has its own copy?
webster.com says that "theft" is: "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it". This suggests that it does matter that the owner still has their own copy.
I'm a little torn... do I download the ripped track to prove I can do it, or completely ignore it because Anthony WhatHisFace is somebody I've never heard of and don't care to listen to?
They're doing their job, because their happiness is tied up in their success/wealth, same as you and me. When you go to work as a sysadmin/programmer/telemarketer/burger flipper, do you think you're doing the "right" thing?
I think the parent post was asking whether Darl McBride (et al) even knows the difference between truth and untruth. If he doesn't, then asking whether he believes he's doing "the right thing" loses its relevance.
Who needs a microwave when you can just stick the burrito in the access point's line-of-sight?
I suppose that could possibly affect throughput as well...
Burritos always increase throughput in OUR house...
Java has a lot of inherent faults that render it useless for large scope projects.
I work on a project that has five thousand classes and executes on windows, linux, aix, and solaris. The project has stringent security and performance requirements, and meets all of them. I've worked on large projects in C++, consider myself an expert in C++, and even have a deep appreciation for C++ and acknowledge its superiority in various realms, but I am confident in saying that if my current project had been written in C++ then it would have taken at least twice as long and would still have many more bugs.
ATMs are designed to go balls-up at the first sign of trouble and shut themselves down after sending detailed error messages to their owners via leased lines. Out of paper? Error message, shut down. Out of money? Error message, shut down. OS Crash? Error message, shut down. Damage to the ATM Case? Error message, shut down.
They'd just stuff all their net worth into offshore holding companies.
Definitely an interesting problem which I haven't thought through, though I'm not yet willing to concede that it's impossible to solve.
And why 10 million? That's not very much in terms of "wealthy".
I'm open to other numbers. I picked that number based on a gut feel of what I'd be happy with. My aspirations are perhaps very different from those of some other people; I'd simply like a nice, roomy house in a location of my choosing, enough money to retire on without working, and enough left over to put my kids though college and give them a leg up on housing of their own. I'm thinking that ten million would handle this well enough. Other people may want things like yachts, multiple mansions, learjets... perhaps implicit in my chosen number is a value judgement that such extravagancies for a few is not worth the ongoing impoverishment of the many. I admit that such a judgement is emminently debatable, and I accordingly present it here as simply my off-the-cuff opinion.
Whatever number is chosen would need to be high enough to provide room for incentive, and low enough to prevent the inordinate skewing of distribution that I believe we have today.
Does this mean that all lottery pots will be capped a $10M too?
Yes. Your wealth after winning a lottery would be capped to ten million. If you were worth five before winning and you won a ten million pot, you'd be worth ten million after the whole thing was over.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot more windows programmers than OSX programmers. If AAC is crackable and the likelihood of it being cracked is proportional to the number of people trying to do so, I wonder if we could conclude that the windows release of iTunes moves that day closer.
Another implication: if you move outside the US, Apple will not re-authorize the playing of your songs. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but to people who want to have the option of moving someday and are serious music fans I think it is a big deal.
But I do like the fact that Apple is offering this as an alternative. It's miles ahead of anything else.
My crystal ball says that free recorded music will eventually become legit... or that the US will become a police state, one or the other.
They do not listen to customers, they listen to revenue. They put in DRM believing it would increase their revenue; as the article says, "[Intuit] predicted that revenue would increase, since customers who had previously purchased only one TurboTax program would have to buy a separate copy for each computer in the house". No part of that plan serves the customer. Similarly, the only reason they changed it is because they lost a ton of money.
It just so happened in this case that customers were able to weild enough power to hurt their revenues. Thinking that they "listened to customers" is to miss the fact that they would have continued to screw customers as long as they could have squeezed more revenue out of them by doing so. That they changed course here is not to their credit in any sense other than that they're not pathologically oblivious to the failure of their plan to screw customers.
The article begins with the line: "A California man who's an apparent white supremacist...". I don't mean to condone white supremacists, but what relevance does this have to his use of spam? The white supremacist angle is never mentioned again in the article. If the spam he'd sent had contained white supremacist views, that would be relevant, but the article doesn't bring up any such thing. I'm therefore struck by the notion that its inclusion is an attempt to predispose the reader to disliking the subject of the article, and that seems unacceptible. Why not start out the article with a list of everything he's ever done wrong, like speeding tickets, smoking dope, or reeking of BO? Perhaps because it'd make the irrelevancy obvious even to the less astute. It doesn't matter if I dislike white supremacists; if we let this kind of journalistic tack go unnoticed, we will be on the end of the same pitchfork sooner or later (words like "hacker", "unpatriotic", "anti-corporate"). Don't let it happen... take notice.
I absolutely loved him in Silence Of The Lambs... but can he really sing?
Well, the going concensus used to hold that the ultimate status symbol was the H on the hood of your Honda. That's how everyone knows it's a Honda.
But it looks like we have a new champion!
I've been having no luck with the combination "finkle" and "einhorn". In either order. Anybody have any clues?
What an uplifting aspect of the business, lyrically portrayed with loving craftsmanship by a true humantiarian. It's all about helping people, helping them be dignified.
Article says:
Charter's move Friday suggested that Charter had undergone a change of heart on the issue. On
Sept. 23, after the association issued its first subpoenas to Charter in St. Louis, a Charter
spokesman said the company would "fully cooperate." However, Hearity said that
statement meant only that the company would "cooperate in the sense that we're going to
operate within the legal process."
As opposed to not operating within the legal process? Of *course* they're going to operate within the legal process. I guess their PR person couldn't bear to admit that at first they folded faster than superman on laundry day. But bless 'em for eventually deciding to have more than a knee-jerk PC reaction, even if it's profit-driven.
Asscroft: I demand that you take immediate steps to prevent terrorists from distributing kiddie porn in the Amazonian rainforest!
MoneyCo: Obviously we'll comply in every way possible.
(examines books, does spreadsheet)
MoneyCo: Hmm, what we meant was, we'd comply by saying something you wanted to hear at the time.
That would be an easier statement to support if they distributed their OS for free... but they don't, it costs $100+. Likewise if they distributed their hardware for free and only charged for their OS, it'd be entirely supportable to say they were solely a software company. They are both a hardware and a software company. Apple's purpose is not to sell macs, it's to make money and remain in existence. That's why the measure of whether they're a hw or sw outfit must be defined via money, instead of how many employees work on hw vs sw, or how gratifying the hw or sw is to polled users. And by this measure they are now also a media company.
They may make much more money on hardware than on software (I don't know), but that would not answer the question of whether they could profit by porting their software on other platforms. It would be too simplistic to say that their profits would go down due to fewer people buying their hardware. They could, for example, realize greater profits from disproportionately greater software sales. They could get into x86 hardware themselves. They could see increased migration to PPC hardware by x86 users who appreciated their software and wanted to go fully "apple native" and see the benefits of controlled hardware integration.
The fact that they haven't ported OSX to another platform shouldn't be thought of as logical proof that they never will or shouldn't. If the only reason their OS sells now is because they have a monopoly on their hardware, they are guaranteed to have their lunch eaten by competition in the not too distant future; their advantage in ease of use could be erased by advances in KDE/Gnome, and on the hardware side Dell could decide to foray into something competetive and lower priced. Apple will have to adapt.
Given that the divx algorithm is proprietary (it is, right?), how does mplayer play divx files? Does it invoke a binary supplied by divx.com, or does it include source from divx.com, or does it reverse engineer it? I ask because I'm concerned that someday soon I won't be able to play my divx files, or at least not without pay per view fees headed to divx.com...
Control has its benefits, but I'll say no thanks to Palladium. I'm willing to have mangled versions of resumes floating around if the alternative is a police state controlled by Microsoft and chained irrevocably to their OS. What I'd prefer would be an increase in general usage of digital signatures.
Hi blog page is a hyper exclamation mark festival which has compared him to a "rock star" of politics. I don't want to vote for a rock star, as that image does not connote accountability (or even talent, given todays RIAA-manufactured boy bands).
To participate in his meetups, you have to click through an agreement that binds you into arbitration and robs you of your right to a jury trial in the event of a related dispute. To me, this makes Dean sound more like a giant corporation out to squish hapless citizens than a man who is trying to elevate dialog.
I have written more than one email to the address listed as the official input for the campaign. Brief, easily digested, thoughtful messages that invite responses. I've heard nothing back. I don't take it personally, but it certainly raises the question: is Dean fundamentally using the internet as anything more than a broadcast medium? I am only one person so I can't state the aggregate, but it's all I have to base a judgement on regarding what Dean is doing with the net. I grant him major points for so clearly being aware of the internet; now I'd like some indication that he can use it as a two way medium and not just as a louder bullhorn.
If you sent (or posted) a jpeg of your resume instead of a word or ascii doc, then only the guys real handy with photoshop would be able to mess around with it. You could even watermark an instance of a resume by putting a large, faded gray, block-lettered indication of who it was being distributed to, slanted across the background.
I was, like, riding my segway, when suddenly it was like, beep beep boop beep bup beep... and then, like, my ride was over. And I was like, huh? It killed my ride. It was a really good ride. And then I had to walk, and I had to do it fast, and it wasn't as good. It was kind of a... ... bummer.
Suppose that before automobiles came along someone builds a rocket sled on a rail track that can take an occupant from point A to point B at speeds of 50mph. This person then puts up a sign advertising a 50mph ride in return for a certain amount of money, and various people become customers. Then, automobiles that go 50mph become commonly available. The owner of the rocket sled litigates to prevent people from infringing on his idea to his financial detriment.
What was the rocket sled person selling? Ideas that occur to me include:
- the experience of going fast
- the experience of going 50mph (no more no less)
- the experience of riding on a rocket sled
- the experience of riding on THAT rocket sled
- etc...
Interesting to try to figure whether such a person has a case, and if so what the best way for him to position it is.I see strong parallels between the above scenario and what has happened with music and the internet: technology enabled the common person to duplicate an experience which formerly cost them money... leaving the former distributor of the experience understandably upset about the change.
This seems a bit awkward. There's the difference between "removing" and "duplicating"; one leaves a vaccuum in its wake, the other does not. Then there's the distinction between the motivations of "intent to deprive owner of its value" vs "desire to share item with the public".
How would we categorize the act of spreading, say, product fault information with the intent (or at least effect) of deflating a company's stock price? Is such an act theft? What if doing so could have deflated stock prices but in fact the stock price remained unaffected... theft, potential theft, something else?
webster.com says that "theft" is: "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it". This suggests that it does matter that the owner still has their own copy.
I'm a little torn... do I download the ripped track to prove I can do it, or completely ignore it because Anthony WhatHisFace is somebody I've never heard of and don't care to listen to?
That's right, there is no defense against our clams! Go forth, unholy army of shellfish, and do our bidding!
(sorry)
I think the parent post was asking whether Darl McBride (et al) even knows the difference between truth and untruth. If he doesn't, then asking whether he believes he's doing "the right thing" loses its relevance.
Burritos always increase throughput in OUR house...
I work on a project that has five thousand classes and executes on windows, linux, aix, and solaris. The project has stringent security and performance requirements, and meets all of them. I've worked on large projects in C++, consider myself an expert in C++, and even have a deep appreciation for C++ and acknowledge its superiority in various realms, but I am confident in saying that if my current project had been written in C++ then it would have taken at least twice as long and would still have many more bugs.
Running windows? Explode.
Definitely an interesting problem which I haven't thought through, though I'm not yet willing to concede that it's impossible to solve.
And why 10 million? That's not very much in terms of "wealthy".
I'm open to other numbers. I picked that number based on a gut feel of what I'd be happy with. My aspirations are perhaps very different from those of some other people; I'd simply like a nice, roomy house in a location of my choosing, enough money to retire on without working, and enough left over to put my kids though college and give them a leg up on housing of their own. I'm thinking that ten million would handle this well enough. Other people may want things like yachts, multiple mansions, learjets... perhaps implicit in my chosen number is a value judgement that such extravagancies for a few is not worth the ongoing impoverishment of the many. I admit that such a judgement is emminently debatable, and I accordingly present it here as simply my off-the-cuff opinion.
Whatever number is chosen would need to be high enough to provide room for incentive, and low enough to prevent the inordinate skewing of distribution that I believe we have today.
Does this mean that all lottery pots will be capped a $10M too?
Yes. Your wealth after winning a lottery would be capped to ten million. If you were worth five before winning and you won a ten million pot, you'd be worth ten million after the whole thing was over.