I watch a fair amount of
television, but I've only used my VCR
twice in the last year.
That's exactly why a Tivo
makes sense for you. Right now you're
watching television shows when they're
on. You're scheduling your life around
what you want to watch. With a PVR, you
start arranging your television viewing
around your life.
I suspect the above sounds a bit
grandiose. I was suspicious of such
descriptions as well. My description
matched yours. I watched a fair amount
of television, but I didn't tape much.
For me, taping was a hassle. Sure, it's
cheap, but you can't quickly hunt down a
particular show you want to watch, you
have to remember to swap out tapes as
they fill, you have to manage your tape
collection ("I can't reuse this tape
because there is one show in the middle
I still haven't watched"). So I got a
Tivo viewing it as a VCR replacement.
Sure enough, my Tivo did replace my
VCR. All of the taping hassle went
away, and I'm thankful for that. But my
Tivo did so much more. I don't really
know when my favorite shows are on, or
what channel they're on. I watch what I
want to watch when I want to watch it.
It changed my viewing habits. Witohut
the need to manage a VCR or watch
television live, I've been finding all
sorts of neat shows that run at
inconvient times.
If you watch a fair amount of
television, give a Tivo a try. Many
places have a "no questions asked, 100%
refund" available. I think you'll find
it significantly improves your
television experience.
(I am not affiliated in any way with
Tivo beyond being a satisfied customer.)
Amazon does not exclusively represent online
retailing. To judge online retails based on Amazon
would be as foolish as judging discount
stores on the now bankrupt K-Mart.
Amazon was a pioneer. Sometimes pioneers
get eaten by bears while exploring. Maybe
these second generation online retailers have
learned a thing a two from the experiments of
previous businesses like Amazon and will be
successful.
Has online retail "come of age"? I
have no idea. We won't really know until we
can look back in persepective. But Amazon's
problems certainly aren't solid evidence of
online retails immaturity.
In your opinion, did they (MS)
get any exclusive rights from the
government or are they the exception of
a company which managed to get to this
position all by itself?
"Congress shall have the Power... To
promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;" (U.S.
Constitution, Article I, Section 8)
I don't think Microsoft would be in
a monopoly position without these
grants of exclusive rights in the forms
of copyright and patent protection.
Sure, widespread distribution
will help if all you want to do is read
the comics, but that's not where their
value comes from.
Bah.
The value of comics is the same value
of books, movies, or other media.
Creators want to entertain and make some
money. Readers want to be entertained
and are willing to pay for privledge.
Readers don't care about scarcity. It
doesn't matter if ten or a million
copies exist, a good comic is a good
comic.
Collectors helped overinflate the
comic book industry. Collectors can be
thanked for the gluts of special covers,
new "Issue #1"s of old series, and other
stunts that drove away readers. When
the bubble popped, many loyal readers
were gone, leaving the industry in a
shambles.
Do comic book readers want many of
those collectable comics? Sure. There
is the curiosity value and the chance to
re-read your old favorite. Scarcity
isn't important. A reader will be quite
happy with a nice reprint.
I have a comic book collection, but
I'm not a collector. I purchase comics
for the love of reading them. They are
good comics, so I want to share them
with other comic readers. As a result,
I try to keep them in good shape. But
because what is important is that you
can read them, not that's it's
"collectable," I don't stress over minor
tears, fading, folds, or wear marks.
As a citizen, do you think I
want to know what brand asphalt you're
going to use to fill the
potholes?
Actually, if some of the asphalt
vendors have "Asphalt User License
Agreements" that restrict the local
government's usage of the asphalt,
expose the government to random audits
and potentially crippling fines for
violations of the license agreement, I
would be very interested in my local
goverments choice in asphalt.
(And since I suspect that agreements
like this actually exist for some
government construction projects, I
really do want politicians discuss such
issues.)
Large overhauls are usually mistakes.
Details in the previous code are lost.
If the overhaul takes non-trivial time,
people become frustrated that two weeks
ago they had a working (if problematic)
system and today most of the system
doesn't work.
Instead, make small incremental
changes. Pick something lots of code is
replicating and attempt to unify it into
a shared code base. Spend some time
documenting key parts of the code. Pick
a particularlly hairy class or function
and untangle some of the worst bits.
These sorts of changes can reveal minor
bugs, build up to significant
improvements, and leave you satisfied at
the end of the day that you improved
things.
If a signficant overhaul is
necessary, try to overhaul portions
while maintaining the existing bits.
Your tangled mass of spaghetti
code paths are probably full of almost
incomprehensible little design decisions
and seemingly out of place declarations
and functions, but most of those were
probably added as specific fixes for
bugs encountered under real-world use.
Yes, and if they're cryptic and
uncommented, they are
worthless. Eventually one of these
incomprehensible, magical fixes will
stop working. Perhaps the bug it works
around is fixed. Perhaps how the
function is being used changes to
previously unexpected behavior. Some
poor engineer will look at the little
big of magic, scratch his head, and be
forced make a blind decision about how
to fix it. Perhaps he can change the
code while leaving the bit of magic in
working, but he can't be certain, since
he doens't understand it. If the
collection of cryptic tweaks becomes
dense enough, any attempt to fix a bug
or add a feature becomes highly risky.
On a related note, don't let this
happen to you. If you add one of these
strange little fixes, for the sake of
the programmer that follows you,
document them. Just a little
"Need to toggle the Foo because Qux 1.4
is correctly fails to do so" will bring
tears of joy to the eyes of future
programmers.
DVD's only work on the computer. The reason for this is
because even if you have a dual ouput video card, you MUST have
digital rights management equipment on your TV or other input
source to view it on the TV, otherwise, legally made DVD software
for the computer won't output the DVD image to your TV.
I don't know what video card and DVD playing combination
you're using, but I suggest you change brands. I've been
watching DVDs playing on my computer routed out my TV out for
some time. Matrox's video drivers specifically offers a DVD
Clone option to display DVD video simultaneously in a window on
your computer monitor and full screen out the video out. The
only restriction is that the TV out on my Matrox card enables
Macrovision, meaning I get nasty signal degredation when I route
the signal through my VCR. So I route the video directly to my
television. Irritating, but not a big deal. This sort of
implementation is widely available on multiple brands of video
cards.
Sure, Hollywood would like to require every piece of
hardware in your AV chain to support the misnamed "digital rights
managements," but it's not the rule yet.
I fail to see how this is a problem (and I'm not trying to troll). If
someone is capable of claiming "rights" on some physical artifact that
they created then why shouldn't someone be able to claim rights on
some non-physical artifact that they created as well?
For example, the farmer creates carrots, let's say, and has certain
rights over the carrots (they belong to him, etc.) and expects to be
compensated for expending the effort necessary to create the carrots.
The farmer's rights to his carrots don't
derive from the effort in creating them.
His rights derive from the fact that if I take
his carrots, he will no longer have carrots.
If I copy a jazz CD, the original artist still
has his original recording.
I believe copyright is a good idea and does
effectively encourage creative efforts. But
it's important to understand that copyright
has nothing to do with physical property.
They're different sets of rules and should be
treated as such.
I remember reading Flash:
99% Bad and being totally confused.
If Flash is so "bad", why does everyone
use it?
He didn't say "Flash: 99% Unpopular."
Popular and good design have nothing to
do with each other. The article gives a
healthy list of specific problems with
using Flash. He specified the usability
issues with each problem. His work
focuses on maximizing the number of
users who can successfully purchase a
product or service from a web site. He
gives clear examples of why Flash hurts
this goal. He does usability tests to
see how effectively users can accomplish
tasks and found these problems. He's
not being a visionary or a luddite, he's
being a researcher.
Re:though the suggestions might be usefull...
on
Homepage Usability
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
most of the time people who
determine what is and what is not good
for web design dont have a clue, or are
obsessed with old standards and old
browsers. (ie you shouldnt use
frames)
I don't think you've been paying
attention . Frames
have terrible usability. The
article may be 5 years old, but most of
the problems remain. This has nothing
to do with old standards or old
browsers, but fundamental problems with
be behavior of frames. Bookmarks to
framed pages don't work as users expect.
Links from search engines into frames
sites don't work as expected. Framed
sites don't print as expected. Entering
an URL from an email or newspaper
article to a site using frames doesn't
work as expected. When browsing web
pages over limited browsers link
handheld computers or cell phones,
frames make the experience extremely
painful.
That said, frames have their uses.
Even Jakob admits as much. But too many
people aren't considering the potential
problems before using them.
He notoriously overcompensates
on a strictness in useability which
typically mandates sucking all of the
fun out of your web pages. Jakob seems
to be stuck on information delivery in
its distilled form, which simply isn't
paying the bills for many sites out
there.
Notice where Jakob focuses his work:
business sites. Sites that sell
products and services. Keeping the site
usable so that customers can purchase
stuff from you is a great idea. When
I'm looking to buy a Palm Vx, or a new
computer, or toy, I don't want "fun", I
want to get information on the product
and purchase it as easily as possible.
This is at the core of his work.
Jakob's suggestions don't make alot
of sense of entertainment sites.
Perhaps he should make that more
explicit. But for businesses trying to
pay the bills by selling products and
services, his suggestions are right on
target.
Re:Same as it ever was...
on
Homepage Usability
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Do we really another book from
him telling us not build sites using any
post-1996 technology?... Should we
really keep from using current
technology in order to be backwards
compatible with the 2.3% of all users
who are incapable of upgrading their
browser? How can innovation occur if we
confine ourselves to Nielson's 256
color, 1995 view of the web?
Jakob is primarily addressing web
sites that sell products. Not
entertainment sites. Not personal
sites. Sites whose goal is to maximize
sales. This is not about Art or
Beauty. It's about business.
Maximizing the number of users who can
access your site will increase the
number of users who can buy products
from you.
Furthermore, Jakob isn't suggesting
that you should stick with the state of
the web in 1996. He suggests that you
lag the current state of the web by
several years. He suggests you create
sites that degrade gracefully. He
suggests you focus on content and
usuability. All of his suggestions stem
from the goal of creating sites that
satisfy your customer's needs and
desires. He research shows that
focusing in these areas increases
completed sales. Sounds like good
business practice to me.
Can you really trust someone who
includes the string "discount usability
engineering" in the meta keywords on his
site to give you good advice on web
design?
Most certainly. Part of his work is
trying to convince people that you can
do effective usability engineering
without spending a great deal of money.
Too many people skip usability testing
because it's perceived as being
expensive to do. More sites need to do
usability engineering, and some simple,
"discount" usability engineering is
significantly better than no usability
engineering.
Re:Cash registers, not fireproof safes
on
HDCP Break Proven
·
· Score: 1
Do you know it is against federal law to manufacture or sell a scanner
that can receive cell phone frequencies?
Yup. And I think it's a stupid law for the same reason the DMCA is a stupid law.
There are valid reasons to want a scanner
capable of scanning cell phone frequencies.
For example I might be interested in doing
some research to see if I'm really getting
the security I was promised when I bought my
cell phone. Outlawing tools is a mistake.
Open source software has been and will
continue to be profitable. It may not
be insanely profitable, it may not apply
to every problem, it may be
unconventional, but it works. It will
slowly grow, because once open source
moves into an area, it becomes very hard
to dislodge.
It's very unconvential, O'Reilly
must be happy enough with sales of books
to pay Larry Wall to keep developing
Perl.
Open Source works. Maybe not as well
as VA Linu... erm... Systems wants it
to, but it does.
Re:Cash registers, not fireproof safes
on
HDCP Break Proven
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is not a "bad" or "stupid"
encryption system; it's just an example of a
company using the laws which protect them to
cut a cost corner.
I wasn't aware of it being the
government's job to help business cut corners
and increase profits.
After all, if one could trust people
to pay for what they watched, they wouldn't
need to encrypt the signal at all.
If you're going to send a signal into my
home, be it over television airwaves or
satellite broadcast, I should be able to do
what I like to the signal. I didn't ask for
your signal to enter my home. I don't have a
contract with you promising to leave your
signal alone. By attempting to decrypt your
signal, I am not depriving you of use of the
signal.
What ethical right do you have to demand
that I don't examine that signal? Sure, there
are laws against it, but laws and ethics are
different matters.
By accessing your signal without paying, I
am receiving benefit without reimbursing you.
Boohoo. Not my problem. My local television
stations seem to survive. Adapt to the
problem, don't take rights from people to
protect existing business practice.
Perhaps you'll claim that your right to
not have your signal decrypted is similar to
my right to not have my cell phone calls
decrypted. Great argument, except I assume
my cell phone calls are being decrypted for
exactly the reasons above. I hope that cell
phone technology developers are working on
better encryption, but ultimately if my cell
phone signal is available, I encourage you to
go wild.
I should need
any sort of legal permit to research anything I own.
Doh! I mean "I should not need any
sort of legal permit to research anything I own."
Perhaps I need a permit certifying my ability
to proofread before posting.
Sheesh... what a pity you can't
clone phones and steal service anymore.
After all, if you can't talk about or
exchange about it, no one can possibly
steal service. And magically anyone who
already has the information will find
their copies destroyed and unable to be
copied.
There are already laws against
stealing phone service. Anyone
interested in breaking that law will be
perfectly willing to break laws limiting
access that that information.
Heck, maybe I'm curious how much
danger I'm in that some evildoer will
steal cell phone service using my
account number? Am I not allowed to
research that? I simply need to
blindly trust the phone company?
That was no different than saying that
it is illegal to duplicate a skeleton
key. If you've ever seen such a key, you
might notice something on the key that
says to the locksmith, effectively
"don't duplicate this key or you could
get in trouble".
I wasn't aware that it was actually a
law. The restricted keys I've had
access to simply say "DO NOT DUPLICATE",
and never referenced any particular
laws.
Illegal or just a recommendation
aside, it's easy enough to work around.
Buy a key grinding machine. Mock up a
key grinding machine (they're not that
complicated). Cut a key by hand (hard,
but possible). Get a minimum wage job
at a hardware store grinding keys and
use their key grinder. Bribe the
minimum wage kid working the key grinder
at your local hardware store to ignore
the warning. File off the warning.
break off the top bit with the warning.
Outlawing knowledge is pointless, it
spreads too easily. A photocopier, or a
scanner and the internet make it cheap
and easy. Outlawing knowledge makes it
hard to do valid research. I should
need any sort of legal permit to
research anything I own. I should be
free to pick the locks on my house or
experiment with the security of my cell
phone (as long as I don't steal
service). If I can get information on
how the lock or cell phone works, great.
The big secret of Open Source,
the one Eric Raymond doesn't want to
talk about, is that most users, even of
Linux, are not programmers. With that in
mind, most of the OSS philosophy is set
on its ear.
If only a few of your users are
willing to hack on the program a bit,
you're still getting advantages. Even
if your users aren't keen on hacking,
but are able to provide details bug
reports, that's a big advantage.
The GNOME, KDE, Apache, and Linux
projects seem to be doing well despite
most of their users not being
programmers.
That also ignores the benefits of OSS
for users. A company using OSS can hire
someone to make changes they need. Many
people can badger friend programmers
into making small changes, much like I
might badger some of friends into a bit
of automobile work.
Most users not being programmers does
not set the OSS philosphy on its ear.
If no users were programmers, you
might have something. And even then,
it doesn't change any of the Free Software
philosophy (as opposed to Open Source).
Re:What an unbiased article... not.
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
because I
don't even begin to trust the opinions of the journalist with his
obvious baggage of preconceptions.
Darn straight, I prefer my journalists preconceptions and
editorial slants to be carefully hidden,
allowing to me continue living in my fantasy
land where if I can't see the
editorial slant, it must not be there.
would you extend these arguments
to support it in non-virtual
security?
Yup.
Should the CIA and other international
organizations use full exposure? Should
they publish something titled, "This is
the vulnerability of our Nuclear Piles"?
"This is where you can cross the border
undetected", "This is how to make a Fake
ID?"
That's not quite the same. I no more
expect the CIA to use full disclosure
than Microsoft. Full disclosure is
about third parties pointing out
problems.
A better analogy would be "Should
anyone who wants be able to publish
things like, "Guide
to Lock Picking"? Sure enough, you
can find works on picking locks,
defeating car and home alarms, hotwiring
cars, making fake ids, and a host of
other real world security issues. And
these works are good things.
Individuals affected by these risks can
use this information make their own
judgements on how to protect themselves.
I can't get to the Samba statement (appears
Slashdotted), but I can see one big way in which
the Samba project is hurt.
The current settlement basically allows
Microsoft to hide implementation details in the
name of security, copyrighted material restricted use
enforcement, and virus protection. This truck
sized loophole will allow Microsoft to throw an
encryption layer over all of their protocols
and refuse to share the details. This is
exactly the sort of anti-competitive behavior
Microsoft has engaged in before. Such an
encryption layer would significantly harm Samba's
ability to work with Windows. The only thing
that could practically stop or slow down the
Samba team from providing the public, for free,
with a replacement for Windows servers is
this sort for dirty trick of Microsoft.
Allowing Microsoft the loophole to attack
Samba with would remove an option the public
already has. That sounds like harm to me.
Can you imagine what would happen if
a lot of people started to bring their
own popcorn and drinks to the show and
quit purchasing it from the concession?
The sound of a door being locked....
Save the sob story, I ain't buying
it.
I simply don't purchase food or
drink at the movie. Yet somehow the
theatres continue to operate. As a
teenager I and my friends snuck plenty
of food into movies. Yet somehow the
theatres continued to operate.
But perhaps ticket only customers are
only break-even, or even a slight loss,
but the customers buying $5 buckets of
25 cent popcorn with "golden flavoring"
pull in the real profit. What would
happen if you lost them? If for some
reason it wasn't possible to stop carry
in food. You'd go out of business? You
aren't much of a businessman. You might
try something crazy first and just raise
ticket prices.
Your competitors will have to face
the same theoretical inability to
restrict carry in food. They will either
raise prices (keeping your prices
competitive) or close their door
(increasing your market share).
Perhaps movie tickets are very
elastic. I doubt it, but if it really
is costs will need to be cut. We don't
really need stadium seating and THX
sound in every theatre. We don't really
need 100 million dollar special effect
heavy films. The industry will adjust.
Perhaps in the short term some theatres
will go out of business. That's
business. Just because you're making
money today doesn't guarantee you that
it will make money tomorrow. Ultimately
Americans like movies and we'll work out
a way to pay for and see them. If that
doesn't involve your particular theatre,
so be it.
...with Apple porting stuff to BSD-derived
MacOSX, how hard would it really be (for Apple,
presumably,) to create a "Cocoa" (or whatever)
compatibility layer and just make stuff like
quicktime work in linux? Seems like a good deal
of the hard work has already been done...
I suspect Apple can get a high quality, Linux
native port of Quicktime done relatively quickly
and inexpensively. However, what value does it
have for Apple? Will it increase sales of other
Apple software? Not likely. Will they sell alot
of copies of the Pro version for Linux? Not
likely. Will the port strategically help Apple in
any real way? Nope. In Apple's mind, Quicktime
for Linux has no value, so investing any time or
effort into it is a bad idea.
Quicktime on Windows is a different story. It
probably doesn't make Apple much money. I wouldn't
be surprised if it cost more to develop than they
make in Quicktime Pro sales. However, if
Quicktime stopped being supported on Windows the
world would move to another format (probably
Windows Media) practically instantly. The market
share of Windows is too important to miss. Apple
needs Quicktime on Windows as part of their
holding action. Linux doesn't have that leverage,
so we're going to remain second class citizens for
some time.
Slashdot Mirror
I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year.
That's exactly why a Tivo makes sense for you. Right now you're watching television shows when they're on. You're scheduling your life around what you want to watch. With a PVR, you start arranging your television viewing around your life.
I suspect the above sounds a bit grandiose. I was suspicious of such descriptions as well. My description matched yours. I watched a fair amount of television, but I didn't tape much. For me, taping was a hassle. Sure, it's cheap, but you can't quickly hunt down a particular show you want to watch, you have to remember to swap out tapes as they fill, you have to manage your tape collection ("I can't reuse this tape because there is one show in the middle I still haven't watched"). So I got a Tivo viewing it as a VCR replacement.
Sure enough, my Tivo did replace my VCR. All of the taping hassle went away, and I'm thankful for that. But my Tivo did so much more. I don't really know when my favorite shows are on, or what channel they're on. I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. It changed my viewing habits. Witohut the need to manage a VCR or watch television live, I've been finding all sorts of neat shows that run at inconvient times.
If you watch a fair amount of television, give a Tivo a try. Many places have a "no questions asked, 100% refund" available. I think you'll find it significantly improves your television experience.
(I am not affiliated in any way with Tivo beyond being a satisfied customer.)
Amazon does not exclusively represent online retailing. To judge online retails based on Amazon would be as foolish as judging discount stores on the now bankrupt K-Mart.
Amazon was a pioneer. Sometimes pioneers get eaten by bears while exploring. Maybe these second generation online retailers have learned a thing a two from the experiments of previous businesses like Amazon and will be successful.
Has online retail "come of age"? I have no idea. We won't really know until we can look back in persepective. But Amazon's problems certainly aren't solid evidence of online retails immaturity.
In your opinion, did they (MS) get any exclusive rights from the government or are they the exception of a company which managed to get to this position all by itself?
"Congress shall have the Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8)
I don't think Microsoft would be in a monopoly position without these grants of exclusive rights in the forms of copyright and patent protection.
Sure, widespread distribution will help if all you want to do is read the comics, but that's not where their value comes from.
Bah.
The value of comics is the same value of books, movies, or other media. Creators want to entertain and make some money. Readers want to be entertained and are willing to pay for privledge. Readers don't care about scarcity. It doesn't matter if ten or a million copies exist, a good comic is a good comic.
Collectors helped overinflate the comic book industry. Collectors can be thanked for the gluts of special covers, new "Issue #1"s of old series, and other stunts that drove away readers. When the bubble popped, many loyal readers were gone, leaving the industry in a shambles.
Do comic book readers want many of those collectable comics? Sure. There is the curiosity value and the chance to re-read your old favorite. Scarcity isn't important. A reader will be quite happy with a nice reprint.
I have a comic book collection, but I'm not a collector. I purchase comics for the love of reading them. They are good comics, so I want to share them with other comic readers. As a result, I try to keep them in good shape. But because what is important is that you can read them, not that's it's "collectable," I don't stress over minor tears, fading, folds, or wear marks.
As a citizen, do you think I want to know what brand asphalt you're going to use to fill the potholes?
Actually, if some of the asphalt vendors have "Asphalt User License Agreements" that restrict the local government's usage of the asphalt, expose the government to random audits and potentially crippling fines for violations of the license agreement, I would be very interested in my local goverments choice in asphalt.
(And since I suspect that agreements like this actually exist for some government construction projects, I really do want politicians discuss such issues.)
Large overhauls are usually mistakes. Details in the previous code are lost. If the overhaul takes non-trivial time, people become frustrated that two weeks ago they had a working (if problematic) system and today most of the system doesn't work.
Instead, make small incremental changes. Pick something lots of code is replicating and attempt to unify it into a shared code base. Spend some time documenting key parts of the code. Pick a particularlly hairy class or function and untangle some of the worst bits. These sorts of changes can reveal minor bugs, build up to significant improvements, and leave you satisfied at the end of the day that you improved things.
If a signficant overhaul is necessary, try to overhaul portions while maintaining the existing bits.
Your tangled mass of spaghetti code paths are probably full of almost incomprehensible little design decisions and seemingly out of place declarations and functions, but most of those were probably added as specific fixes for bugs encountered under real-world use.
Yes, and if they're cryptic and uncommented, they are worthless. Eventually one of these incomprehensible, magical fixes will stop working. Perhaps the bug it works around is fixed. Perhaps how the function is being used changes to previously unexpected behavior. Some poor engineer will look at the little big of magic, scratch his head, and be forced make a blind decision about how to fix it. Perhaps he can change the code while leaving the bit of magic in working, but he can't be certain, since he doens't understand it. If the collection of cryptic tweaks becomes dense enough, any attempt to fix a bug or add a feature becomes highly risky.
On a related note, don't let this happen to you. If you add one of these strange little fixes, for the sake of the programmer that follows you, document them. Just a little "Need to toggle the Foo because Qux 1.4 is correctly fails to do so" will bring tears of joy to the eyes of future programmers.
DVD's only work on the computer. The reason for this is because even if you have a dual ouput video card, you MUST have digital rights management equipment on your TV or other input source to view it on the TV, otherwise, legally made DVD software for the computer won't output the DVD image to your TV.
I don't know what video card and DVD playing combination you're using, but I suggest you change brands. I've been watching DVDs playing on my computer routed out my TV out for some time. Matrox's video drivers specifically offers a DVD Clone option to display DVD video simultaneously in a window on your computer monitor and full screen out the video out. The only restriction is that the TV out on my Matrox card enables Macrovision, meaning I get nasty signal degredation when I route the signal through my VCR. So I route the video directly to my television. Irritating, but not a big deal. This sort of implementation is widely available on multiple brands of video cards.
Sure, Hollywood would like to require every piece of hardware in your AV chain to support the misnamed "digital rights managements," but it's not the rule yet.
I fail to see how this is a problem (and I'm not trying to troll). If someone is capable of claiming "rights" on some physical artifact that they created then why shouldn't someone be able to claim rights on some non-physical artifact that they created as well? For example, the farmer creates carrots, let's say, and has certain rights over the carrots (they belong to him, etc.) and expects to be compensated for expending the effort necessary to create the carrots.
The farmer's rights to his carrots don't derive from the effort in creating them. His rights derive from the fact that if I take his carrots, he will no longer have carrots. If I copy a jazz CD, the original artist still has his original recording.
I believe copyright is a good idea and does effectively encourage creative efforts. But it's important to understand that copyright has nothing to do with physical property. They're different sets of rules and should be treated as such.
I remember reading Flash: 99% Bad and being totally confused. If Flash is so "bad", why does everyone use it?
He didn't say "Flash: 99% Unpopular." Popular and good design have nothing to do with each other. The article gives a healthy list of specific problems with using Flash. He specified the usability issues with each problem. His work focuses on maximizing the number of users who can successfully purchase a product or service from a web site. He gives clear examples of why Flash hurts this goal. He does usability tests to see how effectively users can accomplish tasks and found these problems. He's not being a visionary or a luddite, he's being a researcher.
most of the time people who determine what is and what is not good for web design dont have a clue, or are obsessed with old standards and old browsers. (ie you shouldnt use frames)
I don't think you've been paying attention . Frames have terrible usability. The article may be 5 years old, but most of the problems remain. This has nothing to do with old standards or old browsers, but fundamental problems with be behavior of frames. Bookmarks to framed pages don't work as users expect. Links from search engines into frames sites don't work as expected. Framed sites don't print as expected. Entering an URL from an email or newspaper article to a site using frames doesn't work as expected. When browsing web pages over limited browsers link handheld computers or cell phones, frames make the experience extremely painful.
That said, frames have their uses. Even Jakob admits as much. But too many people aren't considering the potential problems before using them.
He notoriously overcompensates on a strictness in useability which typically mandates sucking all of the fun out of your web pages. Jakob seems to be stuck on information delivery in its distilled form, which simply isn't paying the bills for many sites out there.
Notice where Jakob focuses his work: business sites. Sites that sell products and services. Keeping the site usable so that customers can purchase stuff from you is a great idea. When I'm looking to buy a Palm Vx, or a new computer, or toy, I don't want "fun", I want to get information on the product and purchase it as easily as possible. This is at the core of his work.
Jakob's suggestions don't make alot of sense of entertainment sites. Perhaps he should make that more explicit. But for businesses trying to pay the bills by selling products and services, his suggestions are right on target.
Do we really another book from him telling us not build sites using any post-1996 technology? ... Should we
really keep from using current
technology in order to be backwards
compatible with the 2.3% of all users
who are incapable of upgrading their
browser? How can innovation occur if we
confine ourselves to Nielson's 256
color, 1995 view of the web?
Jakob is primarily addressing web sites that sell products. Not entertainment sites. Not personal sites. Sites whose goal is to maximize sales. This is not about Art or Beauty. It's about business. Maximizing the number of users who can access your site will increase the number of users who can buy products from you.
Furthermore, Jakob isn't suggesting that you should stick with the state of the web in 1996. He suggests that you lag the current state of the web by several years. He suggests you create sites that degrade gracefully. He suggests you focus on content and usuability. All of his suggestions stem from the goal of creating sites that satisfy your customer's needs and desires. He research shows that focusing in these areas increases completed sales. Sounds like good business practice to me.
Can you really trust someone who includes the string "discount usability engineering" in the meta keywords on his site to give you good advice on web design?
Most certainly. Part of his work is trying to convince people that you can do effective usability engineering without spending a great deal of money. Too many people skip usability testing because it's perceived as being expensive to do. More sites need to do usability engineering, and some simple, "discount" usability engineering is significantly better than no usability engineering.
Do you know it is against federal law to manufacture or sell a scanner that can receive cell phone frequencies?
Yup. And I think it's a stupid law for the same reason the DMCA is a stupid law. There are valid reasons to want a scanner capable of scanning cell phone frequencies. For example I might be interested in doing some research to see if I'm really getting the security I was promised when I bought my cell phone. Outlawing tools is a mistake.
Has any open source company ever turned an actuall profit?
Sleepycat Software (makes of Berkeley DB) has maintained a profitable business based on open source since 1996. Cygnus Support (gcc, gdb) was profitable from its founding in 1989 through being purchased by Red Hat. Aladdin Systems (Ghostscript) made enough money for the author to retire.
Sleepcat Software's open source Berkeley DB has "been profitable since inception" in 1996
Using multiple licensing models L. Peter Deutsch is able to provide Ghostscript under the GPL and make enough money to retire.
Cygnus Support (now part of Red Hat), was founded in 1989 and was "profitable, increasingly profitable, every single year" before the Red Hat buyout.
It's very unconvential, O'Reilly must be happy enough with sales of books to pay Larry Wall to keep developing Perl.
Open Source works. Maybe not as well as VA Linu... erm... Systems wants it to, but it does.
This is not a "bad" or "stupid" encryption system; it's just an example of a company using the laws which protect them to cut a cost corner.
I wasn't aware of it being the government's job to help business cut corners and increase profits.
After all, if one could trust people to pay for what they watched, they wouldn't need to encrypt the signal at all.
If you're going to send a signal into my home, be it over television airwaves or satellite broadcast, I should be able to do what I like to the signal. I didn't ask for your signal to enter my home. I don't have a contract with you promising to leave your signal alone. By attempting to decrypt your signal, I am not depriving you of use of the signal.
What ethical right do you have to demand that I don't examine that signal? Sure, there are laws against it, but laws and ethics are different matters.
By accessing your signal without paying, I am receiving benefit without reimbursing you. Boohoo. Not my problem. My local television stations seem to survive. Adapt to the problem, don't take rights from people to protect existing business practice.
Perhaps you'll claim that your right to not have your signal decrypted is similar to my right to not have my cell phone calls decrypted. Great argument, except I assume my cell phone calls are being decrypted for exactly the reasons above. I hope that cell phone technology developers are working on better encryption, but ultimately if my cell phone signal is available, I encourage you to go wild.
I should need any sort of legal permit to research anything I own.
Doh! I mean "I should not need any sort of legal permit to research anything I own." Perhaps I need a permit certifying my ability to proofread before posting.
Sheesh... what a pity you can't clone phones and steal service anymore.
After all, if you can't talk about or exchange about it, no one can possibly steal service. And magically anyone who already has the information will find their copies destroyed and unable to be copied.
There are already laws against stealing phone service. Anyone interested in breaking that law will be perfectly willing to break laws limiting access that that information.
Heck, maybe I'm curious how much danger I'm in that some evildoer will steal cell phone service using my account number? Am I not allowed to research that? I simply need to blindly trust the phone company?
That was no different than saying that it is illegal to duplicate a skeleton key. If you've ever seen such a key, you might notice something on the key that says to the locksmith, effectively "don't duplicate this key or you could get in trouble".
I wasn't aware that it was actually a law. The restricted keys I've had access to simply say "DO NOT DUPLICATE", and never referenced any particular laws.
Illegal or just a recommendation aside, it's easy enough to work around. Buy a key grinding machine. Mock up a key grinding machine (they're not that complicated). Cut a key by hand (hard, but possible). Get a minimum wage job at a hardware store grinding keys and use their key grinder. Bribe the minimum wage kid working the key grinder at your local hardware store to ignore the warning. File off the warning. break off the top bit with the warning.
Outlawing knowledge is pointless, it spreads too easily. A photocopier, or a scanner and the internet make it cheap and easy. Outlawing knowledge makes it hard to do valid research. I should need any sort of legal permit to research anything I own. I should be free to pick the locks on my house or experiment with the security of my cell phone (as long as I don't steal service). If I can get information on how the lock or cell phone works, great.
The big secret of Open Source, the one Eric Raymond doesn't want to talk about, is that most users, even of Linux, are not programmers. With that in mind, most of the OSS philosophy is set on its ear.
If only a few of your users are willing to hack on the program a bit, you're still getting advantages. Even if your users aren't keen on hacking, but are able to provide details bug reports, that's a big advantage.
The GNOME, KDE, Apache, and Linux projects seem to be doing well despite most of their users not being programmers.
That also ignores the benefits of OSS for users. A company using OSS can hire someone to make changes they need. Many people can badger friend programmers into making small changes, much like I might badger some of friends into a bit of automobile work.
Most users not being programmers does not set the OSS philosphy on its ear. If no users were programmers, you might have something. And even then, it doesn't change any of the Free Software philosophy (as opposed to Open Source).
because I don't even begin to trust the opinions of the journalist with his obvious baggage of preconceptions.
Darn straight, I prefer my journalists preconceptions and editorial slants to be carefully hidden, allowing to me continue living in my fantasy land where if I can't see the editorial slant, it must not be there.
would you extend these arguments to support it in non-virtual security?
Yup.
Should the CIA and other international organizations use full exposure? Should they publish something titled, "This is the vulnerability of our Nuclear Piles"? "This is where you can cross the border undetected", "This is how to make a Fake ID?"
That's not quite the same. I no more expect the CIA to use full disclosure than Microsoft. Full disclosure is about third parties pointing out problems.
A better analogy would be "Should anyone who wants be able to publish things like, "Guide to Lock Picking"? Sure enough, you can find works on picking locks, defeating car and home alarms, hotwiring cars, making fake ids, and a host of other real world security issues. And these works are good things. Individuals affected by these risks can use this information make their own judgements on how to protect themselves.
I can't get to the Samba statement (appears Slashdotted), but I can see one big way in which the Samba project is hurt.
The current settlement basically allows Microsoft to hide implementation details in the name of security, copyrighted material restricted use enforcement, and virus protection. This truck sized loophole will allow Microsoft to throw an encryption layer over all of their protocols and refuse to share the details. This is exactly the sort of anti-competitive behavior Microsoft has engaged in before. Such an encryption layer would significantly harm Samba's ability to work with Windows. The only thing that could practically stop or slow down the Samba team from providing the public, for free, with a replacement for Windows servers is this sort for dirty trick of Microsoft. Allowing Microsoft the loophole to attack Samba with would remove an option the public already has. That sounds like harm to me.
Can you imagine what would happen if a lot of people started to bring their own popcorn and drinks to the show and quit purchasing it from the concession? The sound of a door being locked....
Save the sob story, I ain't buying it.
I simply don't purchase food or drink at the movie. Yet somehow the theatres continue to operate. As a teenager I and my friends snuck plenty of food into movies. Yet somehow the theatres continued to operate.
But perhaps ticket only customers are only break-even, or even a slight loss, but the customers buying $5 buckets of 25 cent popcorn with "golden flavoring" pull in the real profit. What would happen if you lost them? If for some reason it wasn't possible to stop carry in food. You'd go out of business? You aren't much of a businessman. You might try something crazy first and just raise ticket prices.
Your competitors will have to face the same theoretical inability to restrict carry in food. They will either raise prices (keeping your prices competitive) or close their door (increasing your market share).
Perhaps movie tickets are very elastic. I doubt it, but if it really is costs will need to be cut. We don't really need stadium seating and THX sound in every theatre. We don't really need 100 million dollar special effect heavy films. The industry will adjust. Perhaps in the short term some theatres will go out of business. That's business. Just because you're making money today doesn't guarantee you that it will make money tomorrow. Ultimately Americans like movies and we'll work out a way to pay for and see them. If that doesn't involve your particular theatre, so be it.
I suspect Apple can get a high quality, Linux native port of Quicktime done relatively quickly and inexpensively. However, what value does it have for Apple? Will it increase sales of other Apple software? Not likely. Will they sell alot of copies of the Pro version for Linux? Not likely. Will the port strategically help Apple in any real way? Nope. In Apple's mind, Quicktime for Linux has no value, so investing any time or effort into it is a bad idea.
Quicktime on Windows is a different story. It probably doesn't make Apple much money. I wouldn't be surprised if it cost more to develop than they make in Quicktime Pro sales. However, if Quicktime stopped being supported on Windows the world would move to another format (probably Windows Media) practically instantly. The market share of Windows is too important to miss. Apple needs Quicktime on Windows as part of their holding action. Linux doesn't have that leverage, so we're going to remain second class citizens for some time.