I suppose the thing that makes HTML not a "worthy" successor to HyperCard is JavaScript opposed to HyperTalk. It's not that JavaScript is a worse language, but for beginners HyperTalk's syntax is easer to understand. Consider the comparision of "page(x).element(x).attrubute = foo" versus "put foo into the attribute of Element (x) of Page (x)". The former is easier to write, but the latter is easier for a beginner to read and comprehend. In fact, it almost makes comments unnecessary.
As a finished product, HTML and its various scripting components do everything HyperCard did and more, true, but that's not my point. My point was that HyperCard was a good candidate to introducing kids to the concept of programming. It was simple, it was cheap, and it rewarded the beginner with results at an early stage.
You managed to get David Brin's point terribly, horribly wrong. It's not that BASIC provided a good basis for future programming, but that BASIC awoke a desire to learn more programming. It was good for non-programers to grasp the concepts behind programming.
I think the best candidate for a BASIC replacement was HyperCard, but alas, that too is a dead project. It was cool, and its scripting language - HyperTalk - was revolutionary in that it was geared to resemble "natural English". Sure, it was limited in many ways, but the original Myst was made with HyperCard, and those of us that fiddled with it were ready when the Web hit prime time, already armed with the concepts of event-oriented design. HyperTalk scripts were easy to read, so easy that commenting became scarcer.
I can't find a worthy successor to HyperCard, though. IMHO Apple should release it under some open source agreement, so that it can be ported
Myst redefined the adventure series by not stating the goal, by creating the idea of simply exploring the world and eventually getting a goal. It was as nonlinear as possible. In many ways it was more of a successor to Zork than any LucasArts or Sierra Online title was. By the time it was ported to the PC (it was originally a Macintosh-only title), there were copycats already in the market (Sliver, Obsidian, etc.).
Of all the LucasArts/Sierra Online titles, though, I think Full Throttle was the best game of that style. The storyline, action and humor were all dosed just right, and the puzzles made sense (well, more sense than in most games).
Oh, if you're wondering why I'm grouping Sierra Online and LucasArts together, it's because both used a similar interface of an on-screen protagonist and a command window. Both had linear plots, with little branching.
I dunno, mate. Piracy is still thriving off of the Horn of Africa and off the coast of Indochina. Granted, pirates nowadays wear t-shirts and carry machine guns, but they still exist.
Piracy in the Caribbean was eliminated by the lack of profitable targets as much as by Spanish or English naval patrols. After all, most of the famous pirates started off as privateers, state-sponsored pirates who eventually turned against their backers. IIRC there are still cases of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico to this day, but on a miniscule scale.
Although certain pirate nests have been successfully defeated with naval forces, those were concentrated actions. Nowhere was there an attempt to elimate piracy once and for all.
If you'll re-read his post, you'll see that you just made his point for him. It's a dirty little truth that gets ignored that we webmonkeys don't get to choose which server script langueages are available to us. I prefer PHP, as do 80% of my clients, but there are a few out there who want ASP because their host supports that, and one lone fellow demands JSP.
So, by sticking to Microsoft-only, you are crippling yourself. You may find your new employer wants somebody with PHP or JSP know-how. If you're applying for a job at amarketing firm, you'd better be able to use Mac OS X tools as well, and know enough to test them on a Windows before putting them online.
I wasn't considering the newer Apple computers, as they now take the environment into account. I do remember plugging a headset adapter into a PowerBook 100 as a kludge workaround. My thoughts were on the original 128k Macs.
Like another replyer to my post said, the beep was also there on other computers. I remember it on the Apple II and on some Wang desktop models, but not on the Ataris and Commodore 64's my friends and I owned at home. I also remember using a terminal that only printed to paper and had no monitor back in 1978 or so, just before my school got its first Apple II+ computers. It also rang its carriage return bell to indicate that it was working. Still, it was only the mac that I could authoritively say that it was a sign that the ROM/PRAM had loaded.
Well, in the Mac side of life, it was a sign that the ROM had loaded properly, that the RAM test was successful, all that wonderful stuff that appears as text on BIOS-based computers. If one of the tests failed, then a different noise was heard.
Historically, the startup sound is due to the legacy of a bell or beeper being more reliable than a monitor. The beep was available as soon as power was turned on, but monitors had a few seconds until the tube warmed up, et cetera. The bell and later the speaker were more robust, so you knew the computer was running even if you didn't get a picture on the CRT screen.
I think if the startup sound in Vista is non-deactivatable, then the most likely cause is due to programmers capitulating at getting the sound controls activated before the sound starts, or because somebody insisted that since Microsoft payed some bigname composer to make this one sound, they want to make sure everybody hears it (maybe Jim Composer insisted upon it in his contract).
I think you've made the classic mistake of confusing a medium with the content. Granted with rules and programming, the medium (the rules/programming) can be influenced by the content (the setting of the game).
Take for example your argument about GURPS lacking nifty skills. They are there, but on a more specialised level. In many GURPS games, a lot depends upon the resolution chosen by the GM: karate, for example, can be expanded into separate skills and sub-skills (called maneuvers)- there's even an expansion book that does this called GURPS Martial Arts. Other skills have prerequisites, making them parts of trees themselves. Skill systems have a lot more depth, but the packages of a class system appeal due to the lack of work involved.
Skill systems aren't for the lazy gamer, as it requires more narrative from the player. You can't say who you are simply by your class and level. In this way, it appeals more to realism-oriented players, those who enter a game with a backstory that explains why his backwoods scout is a brilliant botanist but a mediocre marksman.
From a programming point of view, skill trees tied to class are more cumbersome. Skills have to be duplicated in the lookup tables for each class instead of in a single database. The progression trees have to be maintained, and later modding or adapting the engine to a new setting is more work. With templates, you can even imitate a class-based system on the front and have a skill-based system under the hood. The only thing that goes bye-bye is levels, but even those can be faked by counting total character points. Since the player never sees the rules, he never notices. All the player really cares about is if the feat was successful, if the monster went splat.
Oh, and I don't think it was the class system that made World of Warcraft such a runaway hit, but Blizzard's past reputation. The setting was already known through the RTS games, the price hit the sweet spot, and Blizzard has one of the better reputations for customer support. With a wide enough choice of classes, they could satisfy the desire to be different but still have labels that let you typecast.
Oookay, this is just one big piece of antipathic Mac hate, here. I'm not sure which processors the final XServes will be using, but I doubt it will be the Pentiums normally used in the examples of Dell's low price often held up here.
But hey, y'know what? The processor ain't the whole ball of wax, Bunky. How about the memory chips? How about the mainboard components? The hot-swappable hard drives? The fan and power supply? All those add up in cost.
Apple's argument about maintenance was due to the overall quality of the design and the components. By myopically concentrating on just the processor you betray a mentality that is all too common: you are emotionally against Apple, kiddo.
And of course Apple's not going to support you if you use different hardware. Would you call Dell to get support for your HP server? How about to support the homebrew server your IT boffins built? But swapping an Apple server with a different flavour of Unix is a lot easier than swapping out a Windows server, that I can tell you from experience. The client computer hardly notices the difference.
What I can see rendering the mouse less relevant is improvements in touch screens, in better tablets. Apple applied recently for a strange patent where the screen is a big camera, and a lot of people think this could mean that Apple is going to introduce a "touch" screen that actually uses optical sensors. Wacom had a solution with display and a graphic tablet integrated into one unit, but that was too expensive and never caught on.
Ah well, my guess is that even if touch-sensitive monitors take off, the mouse will still be around for another decade, at least. Mice are cheap.
Shorter argument: DRM is necessary because it exists. And since DRM exists, you can't support media without DRM.
This is, to put it mildy, bullshit. It's like arguing that you can't use MP3 any more, just WMA or AAC with Fairplay. The response ignores the question of whether an artist can recoup production costs or turn a profit in a world where copying media is trivial and uncontrollable.
As to my thoughts, I think the artist can still survive (by artists I also include moviemakers). The studio cut may shrink, and some artists may have to find new ways to finance their works other than studio contracts, but pay-per-download can still survive as a promotion tool, and also if quality is guaranteed. Fans will still buy the merchandise, attend concerts, visit the theater for the Big Screen Feeling, have the hardbound edition in the bookcase. The biggest change will come in that media will have a freshness factor: early downloaders will pay more than later downloaders, but for the higher price they get the "see it first" warm fuzzy.
Most of my experience has been with GURPS and AD&D, less with online games (the only one I play is Kingdom of Loathing, and I only play that for the clan chat). In the past few years and especially when the 4th edition came out, GURPS has also gone to a sort of hybrid. The thing is, GURPS doesn't call them classes, but templates.
I think the template method actually holds the most promise from a programming point of view. A possible implementation in a computer RPG would be for the player to choose the template (say, a woodland scout), and the character generator then sets the minimum stats, the beginning skills and the list of recommended options. If the players clicks "advanced", he can access the larger list. This may sound like a lot of work for the programming team in the beginning, but it pays off later.
You see, once the skills are chosen, the program doesn't have to treat each class differently. The chance to hit or not comes straight from the weapons skills, not from the class list. It's all stored in the character. It seems to me that the skill method means less info to look up, less databases that have to be added to the game. It also makes the game engine more universal, easier to adapt to different genres or even to allow transporting characters between game worlds (one of the things the makers of GURPS like to claim about their system).
It's also easier for the players to change professions, as class systems are biased to "once a [CLASS], always a [CLASS]" manner of thinking. This prevents the classic backstory of so many tales, like the priest who once was a bloodthirsty warrior until he found remorse and devoted himself to his god, or the thief who was an apprentice wizard. With the earlier versions of AD&D, this was clumsily handled, with (for example) a warrior-turned-wizard being demoted to 1st level again, and unable to use his old to-hits in combat (if he did, then he didn't get any XP).
...isn't property of Apple. It belongs to the Fraunhofer Institute, the makers of the MPEG standard. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Compression. In theory anybody could license the format from Fraunhofer and add their own DRM key.
There are some games where I use the caps lock. IN Escape Velocity Nova, it's useful for toggling accelerated screen speed, and in Marathon I use it for running. There are a couple of other games where a persistant toggle is useful.
I'm surprised actually that more programs don't use the caps lock to toggle between modes. Dreamweaver, for example, could use it to toggle between code typing and WYSISYG typing. The fact that it lights up (or has an indicator light elsewhere on the keyboard) does make it useful.
Otherwise, yes, it is a minimal-usefulness holdover from the mechanical typewriter days, when holding the shift key meant REALLY mashing down that round button. I have one of those buggers at home, where the whole carriage would be lifted by the shift key. And yes, I have jammed the keys by wedging the hammers...
Actually, breaking hymn fits in well with the concept of "doing the minimum of what the studios request", as they first reacted after the music publishers started throwing fits. Steve Jobs himself has made at least one speech where he has said that DRM is not the answer, the famous "bottled water" metaphor.
I think Apple itself sees DRM as a concession, not as a selling feature. They are smart enough to know that all DRM measures are doomed to be cracked. Instead, I think they believe that it is the content itself that should encourage people to pay, not because it's the only way to get music for your iPod. You shouldn't buy from because it's the only legal way, but because it's quality you can trust.
If I do not lock my door that does not give you the right to enter my house. Neither do I want to live in a world where the goverment is behind closed doors.
That is a bad, bad analogy. Instead, imagine you have an idiot savant who keeps your records for you. If you don't tell him not to, he's happily blurt out the info to anybody who will talk to him. Who is at fault if he answers a request for imformation you were supposed to keep secret?
"Only tell me this," you'll tell your records keeper, but he's an idiot. How will he recognise you? How can you make sure he doesn't fall for a disguise?
This is also an imperfect metaphor, but closer to the case of tricking servers into delivering content they shouldn't. And that is what hacking is all about: tricking machines into doing doing things they shouldn't.
So yes, I want an entity that I entrust with my data to not simply blurt it out to any and all. Far too many people are out there who would love to use that info to pretend to be me or to defraud me. If I am to trust them with my info, I have every right to expect them to act responsible with it. Your conflating security from outside attempts to gain access with whistle-blowers and leakers (insiders divulging information) is misguided and possibly dishonest.
The interesting thing here is that patents were intended to protect the individual inventor from larger competitors stealing their ideas. All to do with plows at one time, according to the dusty, unused portions of my memory that once cared. The concept was that without patents, inventors would be discouraged from working on new innovations if everybody was just going to steal their ideas and they would get no compensation. In an ideal world, the patent wouldn't forbid anybody from implementing the idea as long as they compensated the inventor.
Copyrights were supposed to do a similar function when the printing press came out. Publishers would pay authors to write new content, and other movable-type publishers would just copy their text, undercutting their price since they had no author fees to recoup. By giving the author the right to declare who was allowed to make copies of his work, this was supposed to encourage more artists to publish.
The irony nowadays is that both systems have been so modified that they actually stifle the innovation and creation that they were supposed to foster. Patents are wielded to suppress competition. Copyrights are extended and abused to prevent derivative works. Companies like Cleanflix, which respected the spirit of the law, are clubbed with the letter of the law.
We need both patent laws and copyright laws, but in their current state they no longer fulfil their purpose. As we move into an age where the act of publishing becomes less important, as the cost of copying media becomes trivial, we need to rethink how authors and inventors are compensated.
That's the point right there. Why all the bullshit about rights? Why not just say that you're buying a copy of a copyrighted work?
You are buying a copy.
Not the original, nor are you buying any rights.
Now this is the reason why the copyright rule breaks down: in theory, the company should be able to manipulate their own copy, as long as they don't make copies of it. If they want to backen out certain words or scenes, fine. As long as they're manipulating the original copy, no problem. In reality, what they are selling is technically a copy, because manipulation of the purchased media is unfeasable. Thus a copy is made (hard disk), edited and then a copy of the revised copy is made (the finished DVD). Now the end result is the same as if (for example) a VHS cassette was spliced, the spirit of the law is upheld. But since two copies were made, the letter of the law was broken even if the end result is still only one existing copy.
Actually, once you leave the English language the UK version of "billion" is the more common form. For example, in French, the US form of "billion" is "milliard", and in German it's "Milliarde". I think the use of "milliard" is even growing in Great Britain and Ireland.
Well, sidestepping the question of computer licenses, it ought to be obvious from the past that things like this tend to hit honest customers more than the less honest ones. do you think that's right or fair?
If you ask me, it should have been rated as "funny" (if at all) for being a Judge Dredd reference. The poster didn't make this clear, though, so there is a high chance of me being wrong. On the other hand, all too often people here just assume that since we're geeks, we all have the same cultural references and will grok any and all inside jokes.
Er.
I think I'd best quit now, and state that the comment was too vague to have deserved a rating (even if it made me snigger).
I'm sorry, but you're misremembering the whole clone brouhaha. It was intended for the clone manufacturers to expand the base of Mac system owners, but in reality their sales came solely from existing Mac OS owners. Since Apple made almost all of its revenue through hardware sales, it was disastrous financially for Apple. Umax and Power Computing were selling to mid-level clients for a marginally better price than the equivalent Power Mac 8600. If you bought a clone, you were already in the market for a Mac OS machine. I know, as one of my former employers bought all clones as part of his upgrade cycle during that period.
The clone episode was a short phase that started long after Apple was establshed in every print shop and graphics studio. It was too short, ill-conceived and didn't expand the installed base at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose the thing that makes HTML not a "worthy" successor to HyperCard is JavaScript opposed to HyperTalk. It's not that JavaScript is a worse language, but for beginners HyperTalk's syntax is easer to understand. Consider the comparision of "page(x).element(x).attrubute = foo" versus "put foo into the attribute of Element (x) of Page (x)". The former is easier to write, but the latter is easier for a beginner to read and comprehend. In fact, it almost makes comments unnecessary.
As a finished product, HTML and its various scripting components do everything HyperCard did and more, true, but that's not my point. My point was that HyperCard was a good candidate to introducing kids to the concept of programming. It was simple, it was cheap, and it rewarded the beginner with results at an early stage.
You managed to get David Brin's point terribly, horribly wrong. It's not that BASIC provided a good basis for future programming, but that BASIC awoke a desire to learn more programming. It was good for non-programers to grasp the concepts behind programming.
I think the best candidate for a BASIC replacement was HyperCard, but alas, that too is a dead project. It was cool, and its scripting language - HyperTalk - was revolutionary in that it was geared to resemble "natural English". Sure, it was limited in many ways, but the original Myst was made with HyperCard, and those of us that fiddled with it were ready when the Web hit prime time, already armed with the concepts of event-oriented design. HyperTalk scripts were easy to read, so easy that commenting became scarcer.
I can't find a worthy successor to HyperCard, though. IMHO Apple should release it under some open source agreement, so that it can be ported
Myst redefined the adventure series by not stating the goal, by creating the idea of simply exploring the world and eventually getting a goal. It was as nonlinear as possible. In many ways it was more of a successor to Zork than any LucasArts or Sierra Online title was. By the time it was ported to the PC (it was originally a Macintosh-only title), there were copycats already in the market (Sliver, Obsidian, etc.).
Of all the LucasArts/Sierra Online titles, though, I think Full Throttle was the best game of that style. The storyline, action and humor were all dosed just right, and the puzzles made sense (well, more sense than in most games).
Oh, if you're wondering why I'm grouping Sierra Online and LucasArts together, it's because both used a similar interface of an on-screen protagonist and a command window. Both had linear plots, with little branching.
I (ahem) think that was his intention.
I dunno, mate. Piracy is still thriving off of the Horn of Africa and off the coast of Indochina. Granted, pirates nowadays wear t-shirts and carry machine guns, but they still exist.
Piracy in the Caribbean was eliminated by the lack of profitable targets as much as by Spanish or English naval patrols. After all, most of the famous pirates started off as privateers, state-sponsored pirates who eventually turned against their backers. IIRC there are still cases of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico to this day, but on a miniscule scale.
Although certain pirate nests have been successfully defeated with naval forces, those were concentrated actions. Nowhere was there an attempt to elimate piracy once and for all.
If you'll re-read his post, you'll see that you just made his point for him. It's a dirty little truth that gets ignored that we webmonkeys don't get to choose which server script langueages are available to us. I prefer PHP, as do 80% of my clients, but there are a few out there who want ASP because their host supports that, and one lone fellow demands JSP.
So, by sticking to Microsoft-only, you are crippling yourself. You may find your new employer wants somebody with PHP or JSP know-how. If you're applying for a job at amarketing firm, you'd better be able to use Mac OS X tools as well, and know enough to test them on a Windows before putting them online.
I wasn't considering the newer Apple computers, as they now take the environment into account. I do remember plugging a headset adapter into a PowerBook 100 as a kludge workaround. My thoughts were on the original 128k Macs.
Like another replyer to my post said, the beep was also there on other computers. I remember it on the Apple II and on some Wang desktop models, but not on the Ataris and Commodore 64's my friends and I owned at home. I also remember using a terminal that only printed to paper and had no monitor back in 1978 or so, just before my school got its first Apple II+ computers. It also rang its carriage return bell to indicate that it was working. Still, it was only the mac that I could authoritively say that it was a sign that the ROM/PRAM had loaded.
Well, in the Mac side of life, it was a sign that the ROM had loaded properly, that the RAM test was successful, all that wonderful stuff that appears as text on BIOS-based computers. If one of the tests failed, then a different noise was heard.
Historically, the startup sound is due to the legacy of a bell or beeper being more reliable than a monitor. The beep was available as soon as power was turned on, but monitors had a few seconds until the tube warmed up, et cetera. The bell and later the speaker were more robust, so you knew the computer was running even if you didn't get a picture on the CRT screen.
I think if the startup sound in Vista is non-deactivatable, then the most likely cause is due to programmers capitulating at getting the sound controls activated before the sound starts, or because somebody insisted that since Microsoft payed some bigname composer to make this one sound, they want to make sure everybody hears it (maybe Jim Composer insisted upon it in his contract).
I think you've made the classic mistake of confusing a medium with the content. Granted with rules and programming, the medium (the rules/programming) can be influenced by the content (the setting of the game).
Take for example your argument about GURPS lacking nifty skills. They are there, but on a more specialised level. In many GURPS games, a lot depends upon the resolution chosen by the GM: karate, for example, can be expanded into separate skills and sub-skills (called maneuvers)- there's even an expansion book that does this called GURPS Martial Arts. Other skills have prerequisites, making them parts of trees themselves. Skill systems have a lot more depth, but the packages of a class system appeal due to the lack of work involved.
Skill systems aren't for the lazy gamer, as it requires more narrative from the player. You can't say who you are simply by your class and level. In this way, it appeals more to realism-oriented players, those who enter a game with a backstory that explains why his backwoods scout is a brilliant botanist but a mediocre marksman.
From a programming point of view, skill trees tied to class are more cumbersome. Skills have to be duplicated in the lookup tables for each class instead of in a single database. The progression trees have to be maintained, and later modding or adapting the engine to a new setting is more work. With templates, you can even imitate a class-based system on the front and have a skill-based system under the hood. The only thing that goes bye-bye is levels, but even those can be faked by counting total character points. Since the player never sees the rules, he never notices. All the player really cares about is if the feat was successful, if the monster went splat.
Oh, and I don't think it was the class system that made World of Warcraft such a runaway hit, but Blizzard's past reputation. The setting was already known through the RTS games, the price hit the sweet spot, and Blizzard has one of the better reputations for customer support. With a wide enough choice of classes, they could satisfy the desire to be different but still have labels that let you typecast.
Oookay, this is just one big piece of antipathic Mac hate, here. I'm not sure which processors the final XServes will be using, but I doubt it will be the Pentiums normally used in the examples of Dell's low price often held up here.
But hey, y'know what? The processor ain't the whole ball of wax, Bunky. How about the memory chips? How about the mainboard components? The hot-swappable hard drives? The fan and power supply? All those add up in cost.
Apple's argument about maintenance was due to the overall quality of the design and the components. By myopically concentrating on just the processor you betray a mentality that is all too common: you are emotionally against Apple, kiddo.
And of course Apple's not going to support you if you use different hardware. Would you call Dell to get support for your HP server? How about to support the homebrew server your IT boffins built? But swapping an Apple server with a different flavour of Unix is a lot easier than swapping out a Windows server, that I can tell you from experience. The client computer hardly notices the difference.
What I can see rendering the mouse less relevant is improvements in touch screens, in better tablets. Apple applied recently for a strange patent where the screen is a big camera, and a lot of people think this could mean that Apple is going to introduce a "touch" screen that actually uses optical sensors. Wacom had a solution with display and a graphic tablet integrated into one unit, but that was too expensive and never caught on.
Ah well, my guess is that even if touch-sensitive monitors take off, the mouse will still be around for another decade, at least. Mice are cheap.
Shorter argument: DRM is necessary because it exists. And since DRM exists, you can't support media without DRM.
This is, to put it mildy, bullshit. It's like arguing that you can't use MP3 any more, just WMA or AAC with Fairplay. The response ignores the question of whether an artist can recoup production costs or turn a profit in a world where copying media is trivial and uncontrollable.
As to my thoughts, I think the artist can still survive (by artists I also include moviemakers). The studio cut may shrink, and some artists may have to find new ways to finance their works other than studio contracts, but pay-per-download can still survive as a promotion tool, and also if quality is guaranteed. Fans will still buy the merchandise, attend concerts, visit the theater for the Big Screen Feeling, have the hardbound edition in the bookcase. The biggest change will come in that media will have a freshness factor: early downloaders will pay more than later downloaders, but for the higher price they get the "see it first" warm fuzzy.
Most of my experience has been with GURPS and AD&D, less with online games (the only one I play is Kingdom of Loathing, and I only play that for the clan chat). In the past few years and especially when the 4th edition came out, GURPS has also gone to a sort of hybrid. The thing is, GURPS doesn't call them classes, but templates.
I think the template method actually holds the most promise from a programming point of view. A possible implementation in a computer RPG would be for the player to choose the template (say, a woodland scout), and the character generator then sets the minimum stats, the beginning skills and the list of recommended options. If the players clicks "advanced", he can access the larger list. This may sound like a lot of work for the programming team in the beginning, but it pays off later.
You see, once the skills are chosen, the program doesn't have to treat each class differently. The chance to hit or not comes straight from the weapons skills, not from the class list. It's all stored in the character. It seems to me that the skill method means less info to look up, less databases that have to be added to the game. It also makes the game engine more universal, easier to adapt to different genres or even to allow transporting characters between game worlds (one of the things the makers of GURPS like to claim about their system).
It's also easier for the players to change professions, as class systems are biased to "once a [CLASS], always a [CLASS]" manner of thinking. This prevents the classic backstory of so many tales, like the priest who once was a bloodthirsty warrior until he found remorse and devoted himself to his god, or the thief who was an apprentice wizard. With the earlier versions of AD&D, this was clumsily handled, with (for example) a warrior-turned-wizard being demoted to 1st level again, and unable to use his old to-hits in combat (if he did, then he didn't get any XP).
...isn't property of Apple. It belongs to the Fraunhofer Institute, the makers of the MPEG standard. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Compression. In theory anybody could license the format from Fraunhofer and add their own DRM key.
There are some games where I use the caps lock. IN Escape Velocity Nova, it's useful for toggling accelerated screen speed, and in Marathon I use it for running. There are a couple of other games where a persistant toggle is useful.
I'm surprised actually that more programs don't use the caps lock to toggle between modes. Dreamweaver, for example, could use it to toggle between code typing and WYSISYG typing. The fact that it lights up (or has an indicator light elsewhere on the keyboard) does make it useful.
Otherwise, yes, it is a minimal-usefulness holdover from the mechanical typewriter days, when holding the shift key meant REALLY mashing down that round button. I have one of those buggers at home, where the whole carriage would be lifted by the shift key. And yes, I have jammed the keys by wedging the hammers...
In other words, the silver bullet is only useful if you have the right calibre gun.
Actually, breaking hymn fits in well with the concept of "doing the minimum of what the studios request", as they first reacted after the music publishers started throwing fits. Steve Jobs himself has made at least one speech where he has said that DRM is not the answer, the famous "bottled water" metaphor.
I think Apple itself sees DRM as a concession, not as a selling feature. They are smart enough to know that all DRM measures are doomed to be cracked. Instead, I think they believe that it is the content itself that should encourage people to pay, not because it's the only way to get music for your iPod. You shouldn't buy from because it's the only legal way, but because it's quality you can trust.
If I do not lock my door that does not give you the right to enter my house. Neither do I want to live in a world where the goverment is behind closed doors.
That is a bad, bad analogy. Instead, imagine you have an idiot savant who keeps your records for you. If you don't tell him not to, he's happily blurt out the info to anybody who will talk to him. Who is at fault if he answers a request for imformation you were supposed to keep secret?
"Only tell me this," you'll tell your records keeper, but he's an idiot. How will he recognise you? How can you make sure he doesn't fall for a disguise?
This is also an imperfect metaphor, but closer to the case of tricking servers into delivering content they shouldn't. And that is what hacking is all about: tricking machines into doing doing things they shouldn't.
So yes, I want an entity that I entrust with my data to not simply blurt it out to any and all. Far too many people are out there who would love to use that info to pretend to be me or to defraud me. If I am to trust them with my info, I have every right to expect them to act responsible with it. Your conflating security from outside attempts to gain access with whistle-blowers and leakers (insiders divulging information) is misguided and possibly dishonest.
The interesting thing here is that patents were intended to protect the individual inventor from larger competitors stealing their ideas. All to do with plows at one time, according to the dusty, unused portions of my memory that once cared. The concept was that without patents, inventors would be discouraged from working on new innovations if everybody was just going to steal their ideas and they would get no compensation. In an ideal world, the patent wouldn't forbid anybody from implementing the idea as long as they compensated the inventor.
Copyrights were supposed to do a similar function when the printing press came out. Publishers would pay authors to write new content, and other movable-type publishers would just copy their text, undercutting their price since they had no author fees to recoup. By giving the author the right to declare who was allowed to make copies of his work, this was supposed to encourage more artists to publish.
The irony nowadays is that both systems have been so modified that they actually stifle the innovation and creation that they were supposed to foster. Patents are wielded to suppress competition. Copyrights are extended and abused to prevent derivative works. Companies like Cleanflix, which respected the spirit of the law, are clubbed with the letter of the law.
We need both patent laws and copyright laws, but in their current state they no longer fulfil their purpose. As we move into an age where the act of publishing becomes less important, as the cost of copying media becomes trivial, we need to rethink how authors and inventors are compensated.
That's the point right there. Why all the bullshit about rights? Why not just say that you're buying a copy of a copyrighted work?
You are buying a copy.
Not the original, nor are you buying any rights.
Now this is the reason why the copyright rule breaks down: in theory, the company should be able to manipulate their own copy, as long as they don't make copies of it. If they want to backen out certain words or scenes, fine. As long as they're manipulating the original copy, no problem. In reality, what they are selling is technically a copy, because manipulation of the purchased media is unfeasable. Thus a copy is made (hard disk), edited and then a copy of the revised copy is made (the finished DVD). Now the end result is the same as if (for example) a VHS cassette was spliced, the spirit of the law is upheld. But since two copies were made, the letter of the law was broken even if the end result is still only one existing copy.
Superman actually has a...a...reality distortion field?
Steve Jobs is Superman!
Actually, once you leave the English language the UK version of "billion" is the more common form. For example, in French, the US form of "billion" is "milliard", and in German it's "Milliarde". I think the use of "milliard" is even growing in Great Britain and Ireland.
Well, sidestepping the question of computer licenses, it ought to be obvious from the past that things like this tend to hit honest customers more than the less honest ones. do you think that's right or fair?
If you ask me, it should have been rated as "funny" (if at all) for being a Judge Dredd reference. The poster didn't make this clear, though, so there is a high chance of me being wrong. On the other hand, all too often people here just assume that since we're geeks, we all have the same cultural references and will grok any and all inside jokes.
Er.
I think I'd best quit now, and state that the comment was too vague to have deserved a rating (even if it made me snigger).
I'm sorry, but you're misremembering the whole clone brouhaha. It was intended for the clone manufacturers to expand the base of Mac system owners, but in reality their sales came solely from existing Mac OS owners. Since Apple made almost all of its revenue through hardware sales, it was disastrous financially for Apple. Umax and Power Computing were selling to mid-level clients for a marginally better price than the equivalent Power Mac 8600. If you bought a clone, you were already in the market for a Mac OS machine. I know, as one of my former employers bought all clones as part of his upgrade cycle during that period.
The clone episode was a short phase that started long after Apple was establshed in every print shop and graphics studio. It was too short, ill-conceived and didn't expand the installed base at all.