Re:Believe it or not, Apple's DRM doesn't bother m
on
iTunes DRM Hole Closed
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What I'd love is a way to download songs from Apple in a non-lossy format!
What I'd like to see is iTunes to have a 'compress when copying to portable' option, and then have Apple sell lossless.
I don't mind wasting the gigs for lossless on my desktop, but I would object to wasting them on my 1st generation 5Gig iPod. Allowing this option would let me store the master copies at home, but still carry a fair amount of them around portably.
Face it, that time you're SMSing your wife and doing crossword puzzles is time you're stealing from your employer.
I am my employer. I run a one-man contracting business. And whilst my current client requires me to put in x hours it's true, they aren't really paying for that. They're paying me for results.
And I provide them. Yes, including Slashdot and SMS, all fully known about by my client. If I dropped the web browsing or stopped sending the odd SMS my productivity wouldn't go up - I'd just have to find something else to distract me when needed. When programming, you can't just stare at a computer screen for 8 hours a day and expect to just keep typing (or drawing UML diagrams or whatever else). It's utterly unrealistic - humans just don't work that way.
no one can really go a straight 8 hours, but the breaks you're taking should be trips to the WC or the like, not something trivial and pointless like reading webpages or doing crossword puzzles.
It's a very long time since I was a schoolboy asking permission to use the WC - I use it as and when I choose. Similarly, it is my decision whether to continue banging my head against a brick wall on a particular problem, or whether to just take a quick distraction by maybe reading a web page or nipping off to fetch some coffee from outside before returning to the task with a fresher mind. It is my client's decision as to whether they find my approach acceptable, and for that only the results count.
I'm not advocating lazing your life away at work, but I am rejecting the notion that only work-related things can happen at work. For some jobs that's true - as a summer job when I was still at University I used to work as a kitchen helper, loading vast amounts of cutlery and dishes into an industrial dishwasher as quickly as possible, then getting the servings ready for the waitresses to send out again. I enjoyed that job as it happens, and not a crossword to be seen. But then it wasn't necessary - it was mindless work and you could just get on with it. Programming, and many other jobs, simply aren't like that.
That is, if an employee is not meeting expectations because he is spending too much time trolling the net, that's his fault, not the Internet's. The same problem would exist if he spent too much time doing crossword puzzles are talking to his girlfriend on the phone. The core problem is the employee not meeting expectations, not what he's doing to divert his attention.
Agreed, but I'd like to introduce a slight cautionary note. For some jobs I simply disbelieve that it is possible to be productive 100% of the day for 100% of all working days. I always love these productivity studies which say "600,000 man days of work are lost to <daft activity x> every year, employers say <daft activity x> must be banned from the workplace to ensure productivity rises."
Which, of course, it doesn't because 600,000 man days of work are now being 'lost' by the employees switching to <daft activity y> instead. That 600,000 days was an illusion - the productivity was never there to be had, in some jobs it's impossible for people to work as if they were machines. I including programming in this by the way.
I don't play games at work, but I certainly browse the web and spend some time talking to my wife over SMS messages. In days when desktop internet access wasn't common, I'd do crosswords at lunchtime or go for coffee breaks. Granted some of the figures mentioned sound extreme, but still - 100% of everybody's time isn't always a realistic target.
Yeah, and? The point of the question was, "Why didn't you go ahead and do what you wanted to do, rather than file a bug and wait for permission?".
Fundamentally misunderstood. I'm not asking for permission, I'm trying to do the work within the existing framework. Saves everyone time, guarantees consistency in vCard import.
As for the remainder, yes - the defect tracking system is absolutely the correct place to keep discussions about the defect. IRC? Who logs that, and what if I'm hit by a bus and someone wants to finish what I'd stared? Nope, that's the entire point of bugzilla and similar systems - to keep information most local to where it's needed. A fine programming principle...
In short, that you didn't try to find the information you need elsewhere (assuming you didn't, from your posts here and in the bug) makes one question whether your commmitment to code the feature was genuine.
Well, I wasn't about to buy it an engagement ring that's for sure. How 'genuine' would be enough for you? A tattoo on my forearm? A declaration of undying commitment before a gathering of my peers? A nice romantic dinner, just me and the bug?
Or perhaps I should stick to talking about code enhancements in the enhancement/defect tracking system.
Enjoy the remainder of your aggression. Remember the point of this Slashdot thread? About how Mozilla was failing to build a community...?
Duplication. Check the bug report I mentioned - it seems to me as if vCard handling is actually pretty much there in Thunderbird but simply has no UI, so I wanted to re-use the existing code rather than create my own vCard library which would be out of sync with the rest of the code and probably would be rejected as duplicated work anyway.
OK, so it's Thunderbird not Firefox. But I since I was an OS X user on a laptop and Windows user on a desktop, and since I could find no way to synchronise my address book, I decided I'd do the coding and write the vCard import module for Thunderbird which many people have been crying out for.
I downloaded the code, posted up onto the relevant bugzilla entry, and waited for a response.
And waited.
And waited.
Still no response.
Seven months later, the bug flickers into life again and people start asking why this isn't here. Again, I post up reminding people that I offered to write the code, and still would. Again, utter silence. Tumbleweed drifts across the face of the bugzilla page...
Have a look, entry 79709 if you're interested (Mozilla's bugzilla set-up disallows direct linking from Slashdot). My main motivation for writing this has now gone, as I bought an OS X-based desktop too and can synchronise contacts fine now. I might still have a crack at it just for interest's sake though, but I wouldn't count on getting any contact from Mozilla people.
If I am to be taxed for ownership of a PC, with the grounds being that I can use this to access BBC-produced broadcasts, then I better actually had be able to access that content.
In other words, that content has to be accessible on a Mac, on Linux (any distro, my choice), on a PC, on some wondeful-but-yet-to-be-conceived-of OS that gets written in 2009...anything. If they're taxing me for it, then I must be able to receive the benefit the tax is actually on.
Incidently, I'm not opposed to the license fee (I'm in the UK). I believe my money to be well spent on the Beeb, though not necesasrily on television so much as radio and the internet.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Capability Maturity Model
on
QA != Testing
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
the SEI was approached by the military a couple decades ago. The military had a problem; when it contracted out software development work, it would sometimes get back what it was looking for, it would sometimes get it on time...The SEI went about polling a large number of contractors, trying to see what was common amongst the ones who delivered. They found there was actually a very strong correllation between a number of processes and practices and high-quality under-budget software. The result is the Capability Maturity Model or CMM for short, which divides companies up into 5 "levels".
Yeah, I use it and am in a certified team. It's vastly overrated, and no substitue at all for people who know what they're doing. It might complement people who know what they're doing, but then such people would have come up with their own valid processes anyway, hence your initial correlation.
And it's hardly helped the US military come in on time and under-budget, now has it?
...but my dad has a good web site that deals with quality issues (IE only, unfortunately).
Hmm? How can this be, and me an OS X user as well? Yet I'll still put the ST's GEM/TOS combination down as the most productive OSes I've used, but limit it to just one function.
For that it was superb. The crisp mono monitor, the fact the OS was single tasking so I didn't get distracted by anything else...excellent. Yes, single-tasking is being proffered as an advantage here.
For general use it has to be OS X, for server use it's Debian, but in this one area alone I'm going to hold out for the old school.
Theme integration will be the default for desktop environments that support it (listed above). Systems (for example, Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) that do not support it will see no visual change in OpenOffice.org. On supported systems OpenOffice.org will always adopt the theme of the system and cannot choose not to do so.
Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?
I'm the author of StartupFrills, a now-ancient Mac utility to do various things at boot time. Amongst other things, it shows a random startup screen.
I noticed that screens towards the top end of the scale seemed to show up more than screens towards the bottom (ie. if you had twenty images, images one to ten would should up more than eleven to twenty). I did some sort of multipass algorithm to stop this happening - I forget exactly what I did now and the source is lost, but I definitely had to change things to make it acceptable.
I'm no great fan of many bloggers' sense of self-importance, but this attack seems a little off to me. I give you the top blog of the 17th century, the diary of Samuel Pepys, in defence:
"17th. This morning bade adieu in bed to the company of my wife. We rose
and I gave my wife some money to serve her for a time, and what papers of
consequence I had. Then I left her to get her ready and went to my Lord's
with my boy Eliezer to my Lord's lodging at Mr. Crew's. Here I had much
business with my Lord, and papers, great store, given me by my Lord to
dispose of as of the rest. After that, with Mr. Moore home to my house
and took my wife by coach to the Chequer in Holborn, where, after we had
drank, &c., she took coach and so farewell. I staid behind with Tom
Alcock and Mr. Anderson, my old chamber fellow at Cambridge his brother,
and drank with them there, who were come to me thither about one that
would have a place at sea. Thence with Mr. Hawly to dinner at Mr. Crew's.
After dinner to my own house, where all things were put up into the
dining-room and locked up, and my wife took the keys along with her."
Wow. What a momentous day, he did some paperwork then had a drink and dinner with some friends. And yet I'll bet the ALA have a copy of this diary, and respect Pepys as a great writer.
It's horses for courses. Blogs aren't intended to produce Literature, they're just an informal comments trail or perhaps a progress report on something (development blogs).
Ah, so you'll be enjoying the recent failures with 10.3.8 instead then? Just as I'm 'enjoying' my dual G5's vastly increased fan activity after installing the update? I particularly appreciate Apple's lack of ability to automatically roll the update back...
I much prefer the OS X environment, but I don't really blame Microsoft for the XP 2 failtures. A big OS patch is a big OS patch, problems can occur on any system and it's extremely likely that patches to various apps will be needed along the way.
C&VG occassionally came with a vinyl record containing software. The one that sticks in my mind was a dual music/software record containing a Thompson Twins' single (Doctor Doctor?) and a Thompson Twins adventure game for the Spectrum.
People like big things. Big TVs, big SUVs, big houses... big computers. Size still matters. I bet if they started selling room-size computers again, people would be buying them.
Looked at cell phones recently? Or the 'super slimline' DVD players?
A tangential question - what's the status of MP4 in various OSs? I can play it fine in OS X by default, I'm assuming various Linux players cope, but what about Windows?
Last I checked WMP could't do it, but that was some time ago. Oh, and I mean an ISO.mp4 file, not just the codec.
Fittingly, the asteroid carried the provisional designation 2001 DA42, thus commemorating the year of his untimely death, containing his initials, and incorporating the famous answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
they still have access to Usenet....just use Google....DUH
We're going through a plague of Google Groups posting in one of my regular groups at the moment. It seems that Google make it relatively difficult to quote context, so most people just don't. Consequently you end up with a swathe of posts replying to someone's point, but unless you've been carefully following every post in the thread you'll never know what that point actually was.
It's caused an outbreak of killfiling on a normally quite relaxed group, and Google really need to make quoting, and bottom-posting, the default. Apparently it is possible, you have to go into Options and reply from there, instead of just hitting reply. Don't know for sure as I don't use the service other than once in a blue moon.
I don't want to sit around for a few hours while my laptop downloads a movie, only to have to burn it to a DVD to watch it on my TV
Funnily enough, I was looking at something to solve this a few hours ago. Depends on the format they send of course, but have a look at the Elgato EyeHome. Sounds like a good product to me - stored films (in DiVX or various MPEGs), iPhoto access, iTunes access, wireless access...not bad.
The MythTV lot will be jumping up and down here too I imagine, and quiet rightly so. Copy your film to the MythTV and you don't have to worry about burning to DVD.
That would be me then. But to be honest, I find download speeds fine for what I do. What I'd love to see is an increase un uplink speed - any idea if they're doing anything about that?
I remember trying out an Atari ST for the first time. Up until then, I'd been dealing with 8 bits that mostly had their 'interfaces' as BASIC statements.
I had no idea what to do with the mouse. I could get a cursor to move, but which button to click? And I have to what, do...err 'double-click'? What's that? And although this cursor (well, picture - cursors to me at that time meant flashing squares at the bottom of the screen) was obviously moving, I had no idea where to move it too or why. I kept on wondering how to quit this program and get to the 'real' computer (ie. the CLI that accepted BASIC, in my mind that was what real computer interfaces looked like).
I can stream the speech, but is there a download available anywhere? It's the kind of thing I might put on the laptop whilst on the train, but am unlikely to sit through during the evening at home.
Slashdot Mirror
What I'd like to see is iTunes to have a 'compress when copying to portable' option, and then have Apple sell lossless.
I don't mind wasting the gigs for lossless on my desktop, but I would object to wasting them on my 1st generation 5Gig iPod. Allowing this option would let me store the master copies at home, but still carry a fair amount of them around portably.
Cheers,
Ian
It shouldn't. But of course there are two ways to resolve this inconsistency:
Option 2 please.
Cheers,
Ian
I am my employer. I run a one-man contracting business. And whilst my current client requires me to put in x hours it's true, they aren't really paying for that. They're paying me for results.
And I provide them. Yes, including Slashdot and SMS, all fully known about by my client. If I dropped the web browsing or stopped sending the odd SMS my productivity wouldn't go up - I'd just have to find something else to distract me when needed. When programming, you can't just stare at a computer screen for 8 hours a day and expect to just keep typing (or drawing UML diagrams or whatever else). It's utterly unrealistic - humans just don't work that way.
no one can really go a straight 8 hours, but the breaks you're taking should be trips to the WC or the like, not something trivial and pointless like reading webpages or doing crossword puzzles.
It's a very long time since I was a schoolboy asking permission to use the WC - I use it as and when I choose. Similarly, it is my decision whether to continue banging my head against a brick wall on a particular problem, or whether to just take a quick distraction by maybe reading a web page or nipping off to fetch some coffee from outside before returning to the task with a fresher mind. It is my client's decision as to whether they find my approach acceptable, and for that only the results count.
I'm not advocating lazing your life away at work, but I am rejecting the notion that only work-related things can happen at work. For some jobs that's true - as a summer job when I was still at University I used to work as a kitchen helper, loading vast amounts of cutlery and dishes into an industrial dishwasher as quickly as possible, then getting the servings ready for the waitresses to send out again. I enjoyed that job as it happens, and not a crossword to be seen. But then it wasn't necessary - it was mindless work and you could just get on with it. Programming, and many other jobs, simply aren't like that.
Cheers,
Ian
Agreed, but I'd like to introduce a slight cautionary note. For some jobs I simply disbelieve that it is possible to be productive 100% of the day for 100% of all working days. I always love these productivity studies which say "600,000 man days of work are lost to <daft activity x> every year, employers say <daft activity x> must be banned from the workplace to ensure productivity rises."
Which, of course, it doesn't because 600,000 man days of work are now being 'lost' by the employees switching to <daft activity y> instead. That 600,000 days was an illusion - the productivity was never there to be had, in some jobs it's impossible for people to work as if they were machines. I including programming in this by the way.
I don't play games at work, but I certainly browse the web and spend some time talking to my wife over SMS messages. In days when desktop internet access wasn't common, I'd do crosswords at lunchtime or go for coffee breaks. Granted some of the figures mentioned sound extreme, but still - 100% of everybody's time isn't always a realistic target.
Cheers,
Ian
Fundamentally misunderstood. I'm not asking for permission, I'm trying to do the work within the existing framework. Saves everyone time, guarantees consistency in vCard import.
As for the remainder, yes - the defect tracking system is absolutely the correct place to keep discussions about the defect. IRC? Who logs that, and what if I'm hit by a bus and someone wants to finish what I'd stared? Nope, that's the entire point of bugzilla and similar systems - to keep information most local to where it's needed. A fine programming principle...
In short, that you didn't try to find the information you need elsewhere (assuming you didn't, from your posts here and in the bug) makes one question whether your commmitment to code the feature was genuine.
Well, I wasn't about to buy it an engagement ring that's for sure. How 'genuine' would be enough for you? A tattoo on my forearm? A declaration of undying commitment before a gathering of my peers? A nice romantic dinner, just me and the bug?
Or perhaps I should stick to talking about code enhancements in the enhancement/defect tracking system.
Enjoy the remainder of your aggression. Remember the point of this Slashdot thread? About how Mozilla was failing to build a community...?
Cheers,
Ian
Duplication. Check the bug report I mentioned - it seems to me as if vCard handling is actually pretty much there in Thunderbird but simply has no UI, so I wanted to re-use the existing code rather than create my own vCard library which would be out of sync with the rest of the code and probably would be rejected as duplicated work anyway.
Cheers,
Ian
I downloaded the code, posted up onto the relevant bugzilla entry, and waited for a response.
And waited.
And waited.
Still no response.
Seven months later, the bug flickers into life again and people start asking why this isn't here. Again, I post up reminding people that I offered to write the code, and still would. Again, utter silence. Tumbleweed drifts across the face of the bugzilla page...
Have a look, entry 79709 if you're interested (Mozilla's bugzilla set-up disallows direct linking from Slashdot). My main motivation for writing this has now gone, as I bought an OS X-based desktop too and can synchronise contacts fine now. I might still have a crack at it just for interest's sake though, but I wouldn't count on getting any contact from Mozilla people.
Cheers,
Ian
If I am to be taxed for ownership of a PC, with the grounds being that I can use this to access BBC-produced broadcasts, then I better actually had be able to access that content.
In other words, that content has to be accessible on a Mac, on Linux (any distro, my choice), on a PC, on some wondeful-but-yet-to-be-conceived-of OS that gets written in 2009...anything. If they're taxing me for it, then I must be able to receive the benefit the tax is actually on.
Incidently, I'm not opposed to the license fee (I'm in the UK). I believe my money to be well spent on the Beeb, though not necesasrily on television so much as radio and the internet.
Cheers,
Ian
Yeah, I use it and am in a certified team. It's vastly overrated, and no substitue at all for people who know what they're doing. It might complement people who know what they're doing, but then such people would have come up with their own valid processes anyway, hence your initial correlation.
And it's hardly helped the US military come in on time and under-budget, now has it?
!
Cheers,
Ian
Writing music. Specifically, doing MIDI sequencing.
For that it was superb. The crisp mono monitor, the fact the OS was single tasking so I didn't get distracted by anything else...excellent. Yes, single-tasking is being proffered as an advantage here.
For general use it has to be OS X, for server use it's Debian, but in this one area alone I'm going to hold out for the old school.
Cheers,
Ian
Fair enough, but would that same programmer have produced a decent design anyway? UML, pseudo-code, anything?
In my opinion if their code is disorganised, their design would be too.
Cheers,
Ian
Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?
Cheers,
Ian
I noticed that screens towards the top end of the scale seemed to show up more than screens towards the bottom (ie. if you had twenty images, images one to ten would should up more than eleven to twenty). I did some sort of multipass algorithm to stop this happening - I forget exactly what I did now and the source is lost, but I definitely had to change things to make it acceptable.
Cheers,
Ian
"17th. This morning bade adieu in bed to the company of my wife. We rose and I gave my wife some money to serve her for a time, and what papers of consequence I had. Then I left her to get her ready and went to my Lord's with my boy Eliezer to my Lord's lodging at Mr. Crew's. Here I had much business with my Lord, and papers, great store, given me by my Lord to dispose of as of the rest. After that, with Mr. Moore home to my house and took my wife by coach to the Chequer in Holborn, where, after we had drank, &c., she took coach and so farewell. I staid behind with Tom Alcock and Mr. Anderson, my old chamber fellow at Cambridge his brother, and drank with them there, who were come to me thither about one that would have a place at sea. Thence with Mr. Hawly to dinner at Mr. Crew's. After dinner to my own house, where all things were put up into the dining-room and locked up, and my wife took the keys along with her."
Wow. What a momentous day, he did some paperwork then had a drink and dinner with some friends. And yet I'll bet the ALA have a copy of this diary, and respect Pepys as a great writer.
It's horses for courses. Blogs aren't intended to produce Literature, they're just an informal comments trail or perhaps a progress report on something (development blogs).
Cheers,
Ian
Ah, so you'll be enjoying the recent failures with 10.3.8 instead then? Just as I'm 'enjoying' my dual G5's vastly increased fan activity after installing the update? I particularly appreciate Apple's lack of ability to automatically roll the update back...
I much prefer the OS X environment, but I don't really blame Microsoft for the XP 2 failtures. A big OS patch is a big OS patch, problems can occur on any system and it's extremely likely that patches to various apps will be needed along the way.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
They do indeed. I drive a Jaguar and an original Mini. So what do they say about that combination...?
Cheres,
Ian
Looked at cell phones recently? Or the 'super slimline' DVD players?
Cheers,
Ian
Last I checked WMP could't do it, but that was some time ago. Oh, and I mean an ISO .mp4 file, not just the codec.
Cheers,
Ian
Why not call it a rock?
Cheers,
Ian
We're going through a plague of Google Groups posting in one of my regular groups at the moment. It seems that Google make it relatively difficult to quote context, so most people just don't. Consequently you end up with a swathe of posts replying to someone's point, but unless you've been carefully following every post in the thread you'll never know what that point actually was.
It's caused an outbreak of killfiling on a normally quite relaxed group, and Google really need to make quoting, and bottom-posting, the default. Apparently it is possible, you have to go into Options and reply from there, instead of just hitting reply. Don't know for sure as I don't use the service other than once in a blue moon.
Cheers,
Ian
Funnily enough, I was looking at something to solve this a few hours ago. Depends on the format they send of course, but have a look at the Elgato EyeHome. Sounds like a good product to me - stored films (in DiVX or various MPEGs), iPhoto access, iTunes access, wireless access...not bad.
The MythTV lot will be jumping up and down here too I imagine, and quiet rightly so. Copy your film to the MythTV and you don't have to worry about burning to DVD.
Cheers,
Ian
That would be me then. But to be honest, I find download speeds fine for what I do. What I'd love to see is an increase un uplink speed - any idea if they're doing anything about that?
Cheers,
Ian
I remember trying out an Atari ST for the first time. Up until then, I'd been dealing with 8 bits that mostly had their 'interfaces' as BASIC statements.
I had no idea what to do with the mouse. I could get a cursor to move, but which button to click? And I have to what, do...err 'double-click'? What's that? And although this cursor (well, picture - cursors to me at that time meant flashing squares at the bottom of the screen) was obviously moving, I had no idea where to move it too or why. I kept on wondering how to quit this program and get to the 'real' computer (ie. the CLI that accepted BASIC, in my mind that was what real computer interfaces looked like).
Don't sniff at needing to learn to use a mouse.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian