Not mine of course. I am not an expert but I do work as a rigger and so spend time around real audio freaks and MP3 SUCKS. It is bad. It is very very bad, it is so bad that you cannot believe how bad it is...Proof? Hook up your iPod to a real sound system and blast it through a concert hall. YIKES!
You are correct... however...
It is worth pointing out that you could have played uncompressed WAV, AIFF or ALE. If one was so inclined.
(I wonder what an AAC would have sounded like over that big system.)
We aren't to the point of virtual citizenship, but we may be in the middle of a trend toward borderless loyalty. People are becoming less loyal to the nation-state and more loyal to ideas and movements (religions, software models, companies, professions). I hope that the trend doesn't result in a single world government before the individual borderless movements get powerful enough to keep one in check.
Boy does that ever remind me of the 'phyles' from Stephenson's Diamond Age.
In fact, here is a bullet from that wiki entry: a setting in which nation-states are obsolete (think of NYC's Chinatown sharing a government with Tokyo's Chinatown instead of with NYC's Little Italy)
Oops, I meant GameRankings [gamerankings.com] not GameFAQs.
I look at GameRankings too, but keep in mind that it typically presents a composite of all the shilled-out publications.
Also worth mentioning - an above poster mentioned the idea of 'I trust the community'. I'm not so sure if I do. For instance, typically on GameRankings the User Review score is 6-8% higher than the average published review score. That's sort of unnerving but I pin some of that on Buyer's Denial.
No kidding, huh! Why is Acrobat so damn fat and unweildy?
On the Mac I deleted it completely because the Preview app that ships with the OS just runs rings around Acrobat in terms of speed. In addition to being a nice general image viewer.
I used to be pretty good at my constellations when I was much, much younger - I had those dumb stickers that you affixed to your bedroom ceiling that would glow in the dark. Painstakingly applied in the most realistic manner I was capable of at the time (think I was around 11-12). But of course time moves on and you spend more time looking at the monitor than looking at the stars... anyways I had been hoping to find a nice 'refresh primer' and this looks like it will do that nicely.
If you want to re-learn your stars, or start for the first time, this is a high quality free guide.
And NO an MP3 player is not an option for me because I don't have any MP3s.
What, is this some sort of Zen Riddle?
I didn't have any DVDs before I had a DVD player. Oh, and one other thing:
Honestly, since I was in high school in the late 80s, I though that we should put music on chips like game cartridges of the time. No moving parts, protected from bad elements, etc. I guess that they were and still are way too expensive for mass duplication.
They cost $199 if you want the fancy version all the cool kids want. They cost less for others. And nearly all of 'em play WAV files or some other lossless codec.
Jobs also co-founded Pixar Animation Studios [pixar.com], the premier animation film company that has created such blockbusters as Toy Story and The Incredibles.
Minor point: I don't believe SJ 'co-founded' Pixar, but rather he acquired it from George Lucas, who originally started it alongside ILM. But Pixar had not even produced its first feature at that point (only Tin Toy IIRC). SJ and John Lasseter are to be credited with turning Pixar into what it is today.
Um, how? Last I checked, WMDRM10 had not been cracked for nearly a year. And, the last crack that came out didn't let you strip the DRM from any old file, you had to own a license to it first.
True. But it is worth mentioning that I have not had to 'crack' WMP10 to get the music into an uninfected format. It is easy enough to simply get around, via analog hole or other methods.
I've taken the liberty of boldfacing what that "whatever" reason is in your paragraph above: WMA is just as proprietary as AAC/Fairplay. Instead of competing with Apple on an open system, they're using another proprietary system. And that's why it's working for Apple: There is no open DRM standard.
Yes, you are totally correct; I was not clear enough... there is no open DRM format that anyone accepts readily yet. From Microsoft's point of view (and only MS's point of view, mind you) the open ecosystem is always in the hardware. They do not substitute hardware for software in their equation, which I agree is a big flaw in the analogy. Software has never been the ecosystem for MS. They figure if they achieve a high enough saturation - install WMP with every Windows install - then they become the de facto ecosystem unto themselves. Which is why it was so important for Apple to ship a Windows version of iTunes. That has kept Quicktime's popularity very high in the face of overwhelming saturation from MS's monopoly; and subsequently AAC and the other formats Apple likes to champion.
Now as to this:
Given the nature of openness and the recording industry's digital paranoia, I will be surprised if there ever is.
You would think so, but there is a strong motivation from the Big 4 labels to create an agreed-upon standard that both MS and Apple would follow. That is in their best interest and gives the RIAA/Big 4 the most leverage. They hateApple right now, because Apple doesn't really give a damn about how much the Big 4 sell. They just want to sell iPods. And for the Big 4, frightened as they already are... to have an indifferent retailer leading the charge in the digital music revolution sort of rankles.
I would like to see the Linux/OSS community 'propose' a DRM standard that is powerful and secure, but allows anyone to sign and wrap up their stuff. Because I cannot imagine a satisfactory answer from either Apple or MS as to why they wouldn't use something like that, short of trivial issues like 'we have to flash-update our music players'. And the hypocrisy would be exposed, just a little bit.
As someone who has spent consierable effort moving my music collection to MP3s, I'm now worried about the longevity of the format. Will I still be able to play MP3s 40 years from now?
Eh, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You've got the CDs, and I'm sure your Future Computer will rip them that much faster than before.:)
As long as there are least two competing formats, Apple's and everyone else's (read: Playsfersure ), then MP3 will remain the only universal song format. People will rip to it to ensure device compatability and device makers will include it to make sure people actually buy their portable music players. Having these giants fight over who gets to offer the dominant media format certainly does encourage the vendor-neutral choice.
That is an interesting point. (BTW, PlaysForSure is a specifically Janus-related thing from MS, so you can play subsciption-based music on your portable player and have it self-destruct properly like it does on the desktop. The real moniker for MS's format is just Windows Media.) The only issue here is that there really is no 'vendor-neutral vendor'; the Big 4 labels won't sell uninfected songs and that only leaves the little indies, Magnatune and such. (God bless 'em.) So it is in the Big 4's interest to force either Apple or MS to support a common format but of course neither one wants to budge. I would say 'I guess market forces will decide' but MS is one of these sides and they seem to have a lot more lobbyists these days.
In fact, I wonder who has more lobbyists lately: MS or RIAA. I'd like to see those two groups fight to the death. In an arena. With giant iguanas and such thrown in for fun.
Ah, but let's say our homes burn down. We escape but all is lost: my computer and your CD collection. I can get the tracks again by installing the software on a different computer and downloading them again (you can either stream or download with yahoo). I don't think anyone, even the Red Cross, is going to send you new CDs. Think of it as a music warranty:)
That's an excellent point. (Although I personally just backup my home stuff and leave DVDs at work to help mitigate this. Work BUs at home, home BUs at work.) Also - you don't really need to 'think' about moving your music around if you have network access, right? Can you go to another computer, call up your account and start streaming? I'm assuming you can, and that's pretty cool.
I actually quite like the subscription services myself as I want a lot of new music. I think its a music-geek's service frankly. But I doubt it'll ever beat ala cart downloads for J. Sixpack. And I hate the particular implementation of Janus.
However, even the songs you "own" aren't yours to do with as you please.
Well, no, I can't go copying them willy nilly but I most definitely do own the disc, in the case of the CD. Your point is well taken however - the difference in the end is slight at best.
I pay $30+/month for broadband, $90+/month for cable. $5/month for music isn't a big hit. It's a much better deal than satellite radio for a music listener.
Oh, completely. I don't get satellite radio. But I am not a Stern fan nor do I drive a car, so maybe that affects my viewpoint somewhat. I'm guessing soon enough that $5 will just be rolled into your ISP fee. For instance, here in Toronto its Rogers+Yahoo that provides my service...
I have a subscription to Yahoo Music Unlimited [yahoo.com] and I've found it is definitely worth the $60/year. Right now I've got 744 songs in my collection
Not to split hairs... but no, you don't.
You don't have a single song from them; you have access to those songs as long as you continue to pay. This is a great system for those who understand this (rather large) distinction, and crave constant new music. To many other people - the vast majority, according to my company's research (I work for a DSP) do not understand that distinction and are rather annoyed when they figure it out. Bottom line, if the music is on people's hard drives, they assume that they own it. If it streams, they understand that it is like 'radio'. What you have with Yahoo's service is essentially random-access radio. But you do not own those songs unless you buy them; the fact that it is only 79 per track reflects the fact that you already pay them a monthly fee on top of that.
Yeah, that's pretty much where I stopped reading. I really need to get some of the drugs they must be using down in Redmond. Delusion like that must be an incredible high.
While I do think they are on bad drugs, I don't think the philosophy is so cracked. It's just playing out differently this time.
When Apple started to have huge success with the iPod, all the naysayers came out of the woodwork and (rightly) pointed out that this very strategy - keep it proprietary and lock it down as best you can - totally backfired on Apple before, in the desktop PC area. Microsoft capitalized (to say the least) on the 'open ecosystem' of PC parts that were more-or-less interchangeable, and that came to rule the market. So for MS to say, let's let all the digital audio player manufacturers chip away at Apple until they are marginal again, and we will concentrate on being the software that powers all these music transactions... it really wasn't such a crazy thought.
Except this time, for whatever reason, it is actually working for Apple. So they are stymied. MS, Creative et. al fully believed that the iPod's market domination would surely have slipped by now. The iPod has been out for several years now. But it really hasn't.
Having said all that, I am convinced Apple is too smart to make the same bad decision (I mean books have been written about that decision!) this time around. They just haven't felt the pressure yet, so they have no motivation to do so. If iPod sales slip below a magic number of saturation, say 40%, Apple WILL open Fairplay and go from there. And everyone but MS will praise them for it.
I did like the "all you can eat" idea, though. The real question is "If I unsubsrcibe to the service, does every song in my collection just disappear?" If the answer is "yes" then my answer is "no thanks."
That is exactly what happens. You get maybe a month's worth of grace period, then... poof. Welcome to Janus, your two-faced media guardian.
Before the/. crowd puts MS down for the count to Apple---look at the sales numbers.... MS is on track to sell 3 million xboxes (about as many ipods as Apple has sold) and has sold 5 million copies of Windows Media center.
A bluetooth memory thingie on your wrist would be actually useful (for those of us who use bluetooth) but how useful is a watch/wrist memory thing that requires taking it off your wrist to use or leaving your hand chained to the machine while in use.
I would say very useful, considering that you cannot really operate the computer without sitting down in front of it...?
Besides, I wouldn't be thrilled about the idea of my data on my wrist being bluesnarfed.
Only problem is that the Dock absolutely, positively sucks. It's a nice piece of eye-candy, and it's fun to swoosh over it with the pointer (for about 5 minutes that is), but it's terrible for actually managing your apps.
Hey, to each his own; works great for my production flow. So I guess it doesn't absolutely, positively suck. (I have the zooming turned off, myself.)
Would you please quit it with throwing 1984 references everywhere?
Yes you are right - it looks suspicious.
If you haven't noticed, your cable box is two-way, so if they want they can track what you're viewing.
I did notice. I use rabbit ears, wrapped in tinfoil, and smothered in secret sauce.
And if the US wanted, they could rootkit your computer.
Not my computer. Its a Mac. And its grape. And no mouse, just a tablet! Security through obscurity! Take that NSA! I also type in Sanskrit typically.
Winston Smith's TV was worrisome because it contained a camera - an active monitoring device - as opposed to a wiretap - a passive monitoring device, which only forwards what goes through the wire. This doesn't contain a camera, and there's no logic in saying it couldn't be turned off.
Xbox 360
You should be glad you weren't around to say "zomg Big Brother!" when DARPA was proposing the Internet.
Nah - I said that when I saw Ethernet cable for the first time: No good can come of this.
Because today, you're posting on it, even though your posts are being tracked.
I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money. I strongly agree that suing the grandparents of kids for downloading is going way too far, I strongly believe in the concept of fair use and I strongly believe in limiting the time span of a copyright. But when folks are downloading songs from the Internet that they have not paid a single bit of royalties for then it doesn't seem to me that the record labels are being unreasonable by being upset about that. I know, I'm the only person on Slashdot who feels that both sides in this issue are somewhat wrong, so please feel free to flame me.
You are not alone at all; I would bet nearly everyone on here believes that a record company, providing a valuable service for which they make money, and one that supports their artists, is not an intrinsically bad thing.
However, those same record companies under the aegis of the RIAA strongly believe that suing grandparents is right and just; they strongly believe that the copyright term is still nowhere near as long as it should be; and they vehemently believe that intellectual property copying is precisely the same thing, morally and practically, as physical theft of goods (but with far higher penalties, natch).
So this is not a contradiction at all - its just that the record companies you are speaking of are vanishingly small and very unpopular. None of the Big Four subscribe to your opinion. In the end you only agree with them in the most basic sense: that artists should profit from work. After that the practicalities deviate to such a degree that it is easier for your typical Slashdotter to simply say down with the record companies, lets replace them with something better.
Are you comments always so penetrating and insightful? Do you honestly think that only people who are willing to give up a technology should be able to comment on weaknesses, inefficiencies, or bugs in that technology?
It's ok - don't take me the wrong way. My post probably sounded a lot snarkier than I meant it to.
My point was simply this: after constructing a GUI/mouse interface, and colour displays with 3D hardware acceleration, aural feedback, and all the other things we do to make computers easier to use and more accessible... it struck me as kind of funny that this is where you draw your line in the sand. Widgets? So the dozens of megs of RAM you use to manage windows is ok but hitting another 12 megs for 'executing a small script' is now over the line? So logically, at what point do you do away with icons because they are less efficient than a simple text label, for instance?...That's all I meant. I pretty much agree with you insofar that widgets are fairly inefficient for conveying the information they typically present, but really, at what point to you say its reasonable or unreasonable? I raise the question. Its just very arbitrary. Thanks for the reply.
Do you realize how inefficient even a 12 meg memory footprint for something that pulls down like 20 bytes of weather data from a URL and then displays that data along with an image to indicate whether it's sunny, raining, or snowing? Widgets are a great idea, but they ARE memory hogs and take far more processor cycles than they should to do their job. They are not the best example of software engineering to ever come out of Cupertino by any stretch of the imagination.
I see... so, tell me: when did you give up your mouse and switch to command-line chorded data entry? On your monochrome display no less?
Just like Expose is Apple's more elegant solution for not having something as basic as a taskbar?
They... have a whole other thing called the Dock for that. In fact, its the sort of thing that is completely impossible to not know about, if you've ever used OS X. Even for 30 seconds.
You go out and get a baseball and a couple of mitts, and take him to the park and have a catch.
That was a fantastic response.
However here is why I am writing:
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
I am intrigued by your sig. What you are saying is, the American Dream is not to have material things and a confortable life, but to be left alone? And if I have that right, what would your reaction be to an Iraqi hoisting the same flag?
(Please don't take this defensively, I'm not some trolling democrat, I'm not even American. I'm just curious.)
Most widgets for Dashboard, especially for those that anyone considers useful, use Applescript and/or Cocoa. So in fact, KDE will be limited to only the simplest of widgets. Not much of a feature, IMHO.
I don't know if this is generally true... for instance, I have running on my dashboard:
... and as far as I can tell not a one of those uses AppleScript or Cocoa. I only have one that uses AppleScript, the album art fetcher. I don't think I've seen one that uses Cocoa yet.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct... however...
It is worth pointing out that you could have played uncompressed WAV, AIFF or ALE. If one was so inclined.
(I wonder what an AAC would have sounded like over that big system.)
Boy does that ever remind me of the 'phyles' from Stephenson's Diamond Age.
In fact, here is a bullet from that wiki entry:
a setting in which nation-states are obsolete (think of NYC's Chinatown sharing a government with Tokyo's Chinatown instead of with NYC's Little Italy)
Good points, all.
I look at GameRankings too, but keep in mind that it typically presents a composite of all the shilled-out publications.
Also worth mentioning - an above poster mentioned the idea of 'I trust the community'. I'm not so sure if I do. For instance, typically on GameRankings the User Review score is 6-8% higher than the average published review score. That's sort of unnerving but I pin some of that on Buyer's Denial.
No kidding, huh! Why is Acrobat so damn fat and unweildy?
On the Mac I deleted it completely because the Preview app that ships with the OS just runs rings around Acrobat in terms of speed. In addition to being a nice general image viewer.
I used to be pretty good at my constellations when I was much, much younger - I had those dumb stickers that you affixed to your bedroom ceiling that would glow in the dark. Painstakingly applied in the most realistic manner I was capable of at the time (think I was around 11-12). But of course time moves on and you spend more time looking at the monitor than looking at the stars... anyways I had been hoping to find a nice 'refresh primer' and this looks like it will do that nicely.
If you want to re-learn your stars, or start for the first time, this is a high quality free guide.
It's a PDF. You know, for printing.
Do they think I go out with my laptop in the night while I could be coding in my basement?
I'm sure they are not concerned about you ever leaving your computer in your basement.
What, is this some sort of Zen Riddle?
I didn't have any DVDs before I had a DVD player. Oh, and one other thing:
Honestly, since I was in high school in the late 80s, I though that we should put music on chips like game cartridges of the time. No moving parts, protected from bad elements, etc. I guess that they were and still are way too expensive for mass duplication.
They cost $199 if you want the fancy version all the cool kids want. They cost less for others. And nearly all of 'em play WAV files or some other lossless codec.
Minor point: I don't believe SJ 'co-founded' Pixar, but rather he acquired it from George Lucas, who originally started it alongside ILM. But Pixar had not even produced its first feature at that point (only Tin Toy IIRC). SJ and John Lasseter are to be credited with turning Pixar into what it is today.
True. But it is worth mentioning that I have not had to 'crack' WMP10 to get the music into an uninfected format. It is easy enough to simply get around, via analog hole or other methods.
Yes, you are totally correct; I was not clear enough... there is no open DRM format that anyone accepts readily yet. From Microsoft's point of view (and only MS's point of view, mind you) the open ecosystem is always in the hardware. They do not substitute hardware for software in their equation, which I agree is a big flaw in the analogy. Software has never been the ecosystem for MS. They figure if they achieve a high enough saturation - install WMP with every Windows install - then they become the de facto ecosystem unto themselves. Which is why it was so important for Apple to ship a Windows version of iTunes. That has kept Quicktime's popularity very high in the face of overwhelming saturation from MS's monopoly; and subsequently AAC and the other formats Apple likes to champion.
Now as to this:
Given the nature of openness and the recording industry's digital paranoia, I will be surprised if there ever is.
You would think so, but there is a strong motivation from the Big 4 labels to create an agreed-upon standard that both MS and Apple would follow. That is in their best interest and gives the RIAA/Big 4 the most leverage. They hateApple right now, because Apple doesn't really give a damn about how much the Big 4 sell. They just want to sell iPods. And for the Big 4, frightened as they already are... to have an indifferent retailer leading the charge in the digital music revolution sort of rankles.
I would like to see the Linux/OSS community 'propose' a DRM standard that is powerful and secure, but allows anyone to sign and wrap up their stuff. Because I cannot imagine a satisfactory answer from either Apple or MS as to why they wouldn't use something like that, short of trivial issues like 'we have to flash-update our music players'. And the hypocrisy would be exposed, just a little bit.
Eh, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You've got the CDs, and I'm sure your Future Computer will rip them that much faster than before. :)
As long as there are least two competing formats, Apple's and everyone else's (read: Playsfersure ), then MP3 will remain the only universal song format. People will rip to it to ensure device compatability and device makers will include it to make sure people actually buy their portable music players. Having these giants fight over who gets to offer the dominant media format certainly does encourage the vendor-neutral choice.
That is an interesting point. (BTW, PlaysForSure is a specifically Janus-related thing from MS, so you can play subsciption-based music on your portable player and have it self-destruct properly like it does on the desktop. The real moniker for MS's format is just Windows Media.) The only issue here is that there really is no 'vendor-neutral vendor'; the Big 4 labels won't sell uninfected songs and that only leaves the little indies, Magnatune and such. (God bless 'em.) So it is in the Big 4's interest to force either Apple or MS to support a common format but of course neither one wants to budge. I would say 'I guess market forces will decide' but MS is one of these sides and they seem to have a lot more lobbyists these days.
In fact, I wonder who has more lobbyists lately: MS or RIAA. I'd like to see those two groups fight to the death. In an arena. With giant iguanas and such thrown in for fun.
That's an excellent point. (Although I personally just backup my home stuff and leave DVDs at work to help mitigate this. Work BUs at home, home BUs at work.) Also - you don't really need to 'think' about moving your music around if you have network access, right? Can you go to another computer, call up your account and start streaming? I'm assuming you can, and that's pretty cool.
I actually quite like the subscription services myself as I want a lot of new music. I think its a music-geek's service frankly. But I doubt it'll ever beat ala cart downloads for J. Sixpack. And I hate the particular implementation of Janus.
However, even the songs you "own" aren't yours to do with as you please.
Well, no, I can't go copying them willy nilly but I most definitely do own the disc, in the case of the CD. Your point is well taken however - the difference in the end is slight at best.
I pay $30+/month for broadband, $90+/month for cable. $5/month for music isn't a big hit. It's a much better deal than satellite radio for a music listener.
Oh, completely. I don't get satellite radio. But I am not a Stern fan nor do I drive a car, so maybe that affects my viewpoint somewhat. I'm guessing soon enough that $5 will just be rolled into your ISP fee. For instance, here in Toronto its Rogers+Yahoo that provides my service...
Not to split hairs... but no, you don't.
You don't have a single song from them; you have access to those songs as long as you continue to pay. This is a great system for those who understand this (rather large) distinction, and crave constant new music. To many other people - the vast majority, according to my company's research (I work for a DSP) do not understand that distinction and are rather annoyed when they figure it out. Bottom line, if the music is on people's hard drives, they assume that they own it. If it streams, they understand that it is like 'radio'. What you have with Yahoo's service is essentially random-access radio. But you do not own those songs unless you buy them; the fact that it is only 79 per track reflects the fact that you already pay them a monthly fee on top of that.
While I do think they are on bad drugs, I don't think the philosophy is so cracked. It's just playing out differently this time.
When Apple started to have huge success with the iPod, all the naysayers came out of the woodwork and (rightly) pointed out that this very strategy - keep it proprietary and lock it down as best you can - totally backfired on Apple before, in the desktop PC area. Microsoft capitalized (to say the least) on the 'open ecosystem' of PC parts that were more-or-less interchangeable, and that came to rule the market. So for MS to say, let's let all the digital audio player manufacturers chip away at Apple until they are marginal again, and we will concentrate on being the software that powers all these music transactions... it really wasn't such a crazy thought.
Except this time, for whatever reason, it is actually working for Apple. So they are stymied. MS, Creative et. al fully believed that the iPod's market domination would surely have slipped by now. The iPod has been out for several years now. But it really hasn't.
Having said all that, I am convinced Apple is too smart to make the same bad decision (I mean books have been written about that decision!) this time around. They just haven't felt the pressure yet, so they have no motivation to do so. If iPod sales slip below a magic number of saturation, say 40%, Apple WILL open Fairplay and go from there. And everyone but MS will praise them for it. I did like the "all you can eat" idea, though. The real question is "If I unsubsrcibe to the service, does every song in my collection just disappear?" If the answer is "yes" then my answer is "no thanks."
That is exactly what happens. You get maybe a month's worth of grace period, then... poof. Welcome to Janus, your two-faced media guardian.
Try 30 million iPods sold (as of Nov 2005).
It isn't even close.
I would say very useful, considering that you cannot really operate the computer without sitting down in front of it...?
Besides, I wouldn't be thrilled about the idea of my data on my wrist being bluesnarfed.
Hey, to each his own; works great for my production flow. So I guess it doesn't absolutely, positively suck. (I have the zooming turned off, myself.)
Yes you are right - it looks suspicious.
If you haven't noticed, your cable box is two-way, so if they want they can track what you're viewing.
I did notice. I use rabbit ears, wrapped in tinfoil, and smothered in secret sauce.
And if the US wanted, they could rootkit your computer.
Not my computer. Its a Mac. And its grape. And no mouse, just a tablet! Security through obscurity! Take that NSA! I also type in Sanskrit typically.
Winston Smith's TV was worrisome because it contained a camera - an active monitoring device - as opposed to a wiretap - a passive monitoring device, which only forwards what goes through the wire. This doesn't contain a camera, and there's no logic in saying it couldn't be turned off.
Xbox 360
You should be glad you weren't around to say "zomg Big Brother!" when DARPA was proposing the Internet.
Nah - I said that when I saw Ethernet cable for the first time: No good can come of this.
Because today, you're posting on it, even though your posts are being tracked.
Oh yeah?! Well....
oh.
You are not alone at all; I would bet nearly everyone on here believes that a record company, providing a valuable service for which they make money, and one that supports their artists, is not an intrinsically bad thing.
However, those same record companies under the aegis of the RIAA strongly believe that suing grandparents is right and just; they strongly believe that the copyright term is still nowhere near as long as it should be; and they vehemently believe that intellectual property copying is precisely the same thing, morally and practically, as physical theft of goods (but with far higher penalties, natch).
So this is not a contradiction at all - its just that the record companies you are speaking of are vanishingly small and very unpopular. None of the Big Four subscribe to your opinion. In the end you only agree with them in the most basic sense: that artists should profit from work. After that the practicalities deviate to such a degree that it is easier for your typical Slashdotter to simply say down with the record companies, lets replace them with something better.
It's ok - don't take me the wrong way. My post probably sounded a lot snarkier than I meant it to.
My point was simply this: after constructing a GUI/mouse interface, and colour displays with 3D hardware acceleration, aural feedback, and all the other things we do to make computers easier to use and more accessible... it struck me as kind of funny that this is where you draw your line in the sand. Widgets? So the dozens of megs of RAM you use to manage windows is ok but hitting another 12 megs for 'executing a small script' is now over the line? So logically, at what point do you do away with icons because they are less efficient than a simple text label, for instance? ...That's all I meant. I pretty much agree with you insofar that widgets are fairly inefficient for conveying the information they typically present, but really, at what point to you say its reasonable or unreasonable? I raise the question. Its just very arbitrary. Thanks for the reply.
I see... so, tell me: when did you give up your mouse and switch to command-line chorded data entry? On your monochrome display no less?
They... have a whole other thing called the Dock for that. In fact, its the sort of thing that is completely impossible to not know about, if you've ever used OS X. Even for 30 seconds.
You go out and get a baseball and a couple of mitts, and take him to the park and have a catch.
That was a fantastic response.
However here is why I am writing:
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
I am intrigued by your sig. What you are saying is, the American Dream is not to have material things and a confortable life, but to be left alone? And if I have that right, what would your reaction be to an Iraqi hoisting the same flag?
(Please don't take this defensively, I'm not some trolling democrat, I'm not even American. I'm just curious.)
I don't know if this is generally true... for instance, I have running on my dashboard:
- calculator
- calendar
- weather
- weather doppler satellite image
- 4 webcams
- Buzztracker widget
- Akamai News usage widget
- SysStat
- Google Maps widget
- Wikipedia widget
- an armillary widget
That's just your workaround for explaining Apple's more elegant solution to the problem...