While I'm certainly not well educated on the people of Pompeii, it's quite well known that the ancient egyptians didn't live these long lives that you're speaking of. There are so many flaws with comparing the ancient egyptians who existed in times of 3100BC with Pompeii which occurred in 79AD. It seems there is no way to shut out the uneducated folk with an over willingness to be a loud mouth from slashdot so I suppose the best way to show this is through a series of weblinks, so here goes:
discovery.com (website for discovery channel) notes in an article "The X-rays suggest Mag died in her 30s or 40s, which would have been a fairly long human lifespan for the time" at http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050117/catm ummy.html
However I'd like to note (and probably where your uncited proof comes from is that in every era we have evidence of the occassional person living well into their 90s) The best example is the commonly held belief that Ramses lived into his 90s "In Year 67 at around 92 years of age, Ramesses was called to join the gods.", which you can read at http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ramesses_the_great .htm but again on the same site you can read about how the person buried in KV55 only lived somewhere between 23-24 years of age" so it doesn't seem that kings were particularly prone to longevity either http://www.egyptologyonline.com/kv55_further_exami nations.htm
So no I wouldn't agree that persons living in ancient egypt were living on average to the same life span as we are today. Additionally I would try to not get too confused between the difference between an outlier and the average age. (We have people today living past 100 years of age, which is considered an outlier by today's lifespan average.)
Also for the record, Even though ancient egypt was around in times of 3100BC (all the way to 395AD), it only became a province of the roman empire in 30BC. So it's pretty weak to compare ancient egyptians to romans.
I'd take point with this line: "At a moment where many people wonder if the use of nanoparticles is safe, it's good to know that nanotechnology has been widely used for a very long time."
Taking safety cues from an era where we have evidence that the average life span was about 30 years isn't giving me any additional confidence in nanotechnology, and worries me somewhat that someone would even suggest this over modern scientific method. Not to forget that we don't have nearly enough information about the ancients to satisfy any scientific enquiry into nanotechnology. What we know so far about the ancients isn't indicative of life-longevity.
While I can agree that Apple definitely has a more human aspect spin, anthropic principle I believe is the term. They do not manufacture their products and rely on the companies they employ to follow their workplace terms. Now I'd agree that Apple is definitely let down by companies that don't follow their workplace policies, at the same time, I'm pleased to see that Apple is interested in bringing companies into line which are practising outside of their workplace policies. (Even if only minorly, remember the original allegations against Apple included child labour and over crowding, both proven to be false hyperbole sensationalisms.)
I think their(apple's) investigation is a good effort from a company which ultimately only has the ability to cancel the contract with their chinese vendor(these factories are not apple run, and these factories produce products for more companies than just apple computer.)
Considering that many other products that people purchase from china are made from labour which has not be placed under the same workers-rights rigor that apple outlays in their vendor contract, this is a good case of a global company doing what they can to ensure adequet working standards in a country that is rife with human exploitation. You can almost decide with certainty that something you own has been produced as a result of human labour exploitation, occurances often go by without the knowledge of the even the staff member; There is a lot of difficulty in ensuring proper work practices in these mega factories (many staff demand excessive overtime hours to get ahead of the rat race.) Take for example that this factory assembles iPods, there is no way of knowing, without investigation, if the screens being used in the assembly of the iPods are made in another factory where labour issues are more common.
So while others may pick at Apple's summary report for leaving areas grey, I still feel this is by far a more advanced effort in ensuring factory workers rights than what many other companies do. (Particularly the fashion and small parts industries.)
The author really doesn't seem to be speaking much truth at all, I'd be inclined to think this isn't even a true story, if this actually happened he wouldn't sit and write a few paragraphs about fire safety, when he could be getting all new hardware from apple for nothing.
His "facts" are outright wrong in either the positive or negative sense. First of all the materials are fire safe, as required by construction standards, fire retardent plastic is used. Secondly if you do decide to go spark happy on the unit, it will shut down, and auto reset when unplugged for a small amount of time. On the flip side, Apple -have- had battery + fire issues, similar to Dell. The exception being that there has been no doubt at all that apple didn't jump right into a battery recall once this happened, which is in contrast to Dell where there is suspicion they left it for a little while to see if it was an isolated incident.
On the other hand 24.5V is almost nothing to worry about especially with such a low current.
A final point to be made is how is his power adapter being used such that it's close enough to burn his powerbook... while I'm not one for strict policy, they do actually tell you to unwind the cable fully before use. (no one likes a magnetic field mmkay.)
The problem in having someone like Paul talk about Mac features, is that it's like having a mac zealot talk about Windows features. Paul is too preoccupied with Windows to know the history behind many of apple's OS X features. For example things like Dashboard are not a direct rip off of Konfabulator. (A point which has been proven endlessly on/. and other forums.) Apple actually had a lot of the features they've REintroduced into OS X from prior Mac OS versions. Including what has now been transformed into Dashboard. The closest way it comes to Konfabulator is that they both use HTML+Javascript..which is hardly a stretch of the engineerings imagination to come to, it's a trivially obvious choice. I won't go into detail, but even b&w versions of Mac OS had bundles of desk tools.. and unsurprisingly these were the exact tools that were shipped in 10.3, plus a few others which were logical steps since then: weather, travel. etc.
As for other items such as the search being stolen entirely from MS. Well I'm not sure how any one can own the idea of a "quick search" using methods that we're accustomed to on the internet. The difference being that MS has rattled on that they'll have the feature for 10 years now and never delivered it. So it's hardly "copying" MS on a feature that has not only never been delivered, but cancelled for the foreseeable future.
Ideas like spaces have been around for a while, it's how it's implemented in OS X which is clever, you only need as much memory as to support the applications, the application windows move, not the desktop.
As for other features like stationery, I wouldn't rattle on too much about the use of themes on internet mediums, as the concept of templating is hardly an original one.
My point here is that a lot of the added features are obvious or a natural evolution of their existing products. It is easy to compare these to MS, but it's hardly copying. The keynote presentation held by apple which highlighted the similarities between vista and 10.3+10.4 etc took only the most blatant examples where MS has been a tad bit unoriginal and directly copied the visual interface, down to the colour scheme used and program nomenclature.
Overall I think Paul just needs to be a bit more like MS and take it on the chin, everyone gets haggled in this industry, it's pointless trying to refute points which only show his lack of research and his genuinely blinded zeal for MS products. Paul only throws in the occassional lucid counter argument merely to appear less biased than what he is, unfortunately the giant scope difference between his pro-apple and pro-ms remarks show his lack of genuineness. That and his logo & style guide are a rip-off of Microsoft graphic design circa 1998.
I had similar thoughts, I'd personally rather software that was written for the Macintosh platform directly (especially since there are lots of great technologies in OS X that developers can use, where there is no straight forward comparison to windows.)
Having an inbetween state, such as cider, no matter how efficient can lead to two problems. 1.) Developers not designing for the mac by default, instead only as an after thought. 2.) Slower performance on the same hardware.
There is one up shot of all of this. It will encourage Asypr(and similar) to make more efficient ports of games, as I've noticed that many ports aren't as fast as they could be and in many cases not as fast as they _should_ be. For example take the sims 2 on the mac, it is painfully slow despite not appearing any more visually and computationally complex than warcraft 2 which operates flawlessly on the Mac.
On a slightly different topic, many developers need to reorganise how their software internally functions, particularly Adobe with Photoshop.. why does a 3D graphics suite such as Maya Unlimited load significantly faster than Adobe Photoshop? Adobe should also embrace OS X technologies such as coreimage for their filter sets, and start using actual GUI elements instead of bitmaps.
Macs also have a few other apps such as stable window which keeps a window upright while turning the laptop around, plus a few games that work on a similar principles such as "Neverball" amongst others. There are even widgets that tap into the AMS to play small ball-in-hole games.
My particular favourite is the app that turns your powerbook into a light saber making sound effects as you swing it around. (MacSaber)
I've avoided pasting links to all of these as most are run on small sites where a direct link will/. the 'ell out of them. However just do a google search for anything you're interested in. There is a lot of fun projects happening with AMS as a HID device in the open source community.
Well it seems the end result was that Paul's computing experience got distrupted, and Microsoft gets to catch a vendor who is pirating (maybe by accident?) their Windows product...
I don't see any win here for the consumer, it's not like the price of Windows is going to come down as a result of this, the only thing we're going to see is this possibly helping Microsoft's bottom line at the expense of disrupting their users.
Wouldn't it be preferred if MS used another method to find their lost revenue? Instead of relying on end users to go through the confusion (and possible further consequences of WGA). Afterall, how many end users are going to call Microsoft to report that their vendor is selling pirate copies of windows(or even realise this, a basic user won't understand) versus just buying a new code online from MS right away.
Although this was definitely a problem for the old standards in wikipedia. These ripple effects are dampened from new administration tools being used in wikipedia, including locking articles and various levels of protection.
Wikipedia also provides disclaimers on pages which are under such influences.
I actually feel this enhances the wikipedia experience, unlike a printed reference, wiki can evolve to include new information as it becomes available. Old versions of britanica for example will always keep the errors of the day. (Including items which aren't specifically important to modern day life, such as mistaking the identities of dinosaurs, to definitions of modern vernacular.)
The number one rule of research is to use multiple sources (it also helps avoid plagarism.)
Your argument is based on the idea that a consumer does not have a choice. Consumers always have a choice. You do not require the iTMS to fill your iPod with music and you never have. There are numerous popular services that allow you to purchase music online that will work just fine in an iPod. What you're talking about is the media-hum-drum of competing music stores who encode in DRM'd WMA.
Your allofmp3(plus a few others) tracks work fine on the iPod (or any other player mind you.)
Also as for my $5000 analogy, it took the example of the music you purchased in the past, and noted the effect of time passing. Unless you intend on buying music, then waiting 20-30 years to play it, then you'll be paying more than $30. (or 30 pound as another person has pointed out, that's provided they don't raise their price over 30 years.)
Also -again- you can legally remove your iTMS DRM, in fact it's built into iTunes, there is absolutely no legal way to remove the DRM from most other online music services, which let you play your music on -less- computers and -never- burn a CD for your car for example.(a surprise to you is that there are many non-DRM music stores, those files work fine on all modern music devices including the iPod. i.e no lock in.)
You are never locked into iTMS, once you've paid for your song, it's yours, they'll never take them away from you for not paying your monthly fee.) With an iPod you are simply limited to using music stores which encode in something other than DRM'd WMA. Even if you receive non-DRM'd WMA you can still make them work on your iPod, it's built right into iTunes The iPod and iTunes both support AIFF, WAV, AAC & MP3 (plus a small host of other formats.) With iTunes you can transcode (to lossless for example) all non DRM'd WMA. (Transcoding also is available for.mov audio files which also don't play on the iPod, despite being an apple owned encapsulation format.)
So I find no salt in your argument for subscription based models over the existing iTMS, you're also demonstrating exceptional lack of knowledge of iTunes, the iPod and the iTMS. In fact you're just jumping on the bandwagon of FUD created by competing music stores. Very little of what you've listed as fact is even true! Do your research before you come to slashdot, a "lock in" is having to pay a monthly fee for eternity. A "lock in" isn't paying a small & honest fee once, with the option of removing any of the minimal restrictions that exist on the file.
Well lets see, point 1 was a change to iTunes, not the DRM found in your songs, the restriction applies to DRM music, non DRM music and videos. It's as important an argument as the change in the icon colour. Point 2 is the only legitimate point, even so it's unsatisfactory and weak. Being able to -only- burn a specific play list 7 times instead of 10 is unreasonable? (geeze is it that hard to change the playlist? and burn it another 7 times if you need to really burn that many copies...plus why not just use a CD duplication program and not deal with iTunes reconstruting each CD? If you're in the business of making mass copies?, you aren't using iTunes I'd like to know if there are any users that have even realised that this limit existed anyway.
The final point about 3rd party programs being undone is irrelevant and has more to do with upholding their licensing agreement with the music companies, than restricting the rights of any user. An external software developer who is not a partner shouldn't find it unreasonable that progress (i.e updates) render their program incompatible.. It's not like this is new, it's like suggesting that office 2003 is trying to break office 2000 because office 2000 can't open the files that 2003 create.
Your argument needs significant work, find an actual restriction that they have added to the DRM, because last time i checked reordering a playlist so i can burn another 7!!! CDs isn't any more of a restriction that having to tie my shoelaces.
My suggestion of $5000 to listen to a song in 30 years time is an accurate one. It's no more hyperbole than the adverts that read "it costs $10000(whatever large figure they used) to fill your ipod with music".
Having the ability to download increased quality at no further cost, isn't exactly a feature anymore than recognition that their old quality was insufficient.
Plus you seem overly comfortable with all your music going away if you can't afford that months payment. You can be paying them thousands of pounds for many years of musical enjoyment, but the moment you stop paying all that means nothing and you have no more music. Doesn't sound very fair to me. The problem with renting music is that for the current moment it's great, but it makes no provisions for the future. You could be paying 50 pounds in the future just to keep playing songs which you could buy DRM-free for an absolute fraction of the cost.
While you may have access to millions of songs at no extra charge, chances are you music taste won't encompass all of those anyway. The reality is that unless you're buying 2 albums a month every month (that's about a new song every day for the rest of your life.) then you will always be losing money through subscription. It's cheaper to sponsor a child in africa than it is to rent subscription music.
I'm still trying to fathom how this is better than "renting" music. It's not like apple can change my burnt CDs sitting on my desk, or start applying DRM to non-DRM files. Plus Apple have not added any further DRM restrictions to iTMS since it's inception, and have even managed to keep the price at 99c despite industry pressures. That's a pretty good effort, considering that the $14.95 per month pricing is destined to inflate over time.
In the end the music companies want DRM, apple have packaged DRM in a way that can be consumed without DRm being painful.
I'd prefer if you specifically list how apple have changed the DRM restrictions rather than state it as a generic fact, when it simply isn't.
It must be marketing spin to describe the iTMS as a lock in service. When the fact is, every single song you buy from iTMS, you can remove the copy protection just by burning the song to disc (even to a virtual disc if you're the clever type.) Apple had the majority of the music player market long before their music store was successful.
Additionally, I find the "renting" business model from other music "stores" ridiculous. Think about it: No burning cds(you can with iTMS), No sharing with others (you can share your music with up to 4 others with iTMS, just as if they paid for the song themselves), The worst point of all if you stop paying the $14.95 a month, all your music will stop working. I have music from the 80's that I still enjoy playing here and there, that was almost 30 years ago now. Without a price rise, it'd cost $5000 USD to have the luxury of playing just one song from the 80s under the 'renting' business model. Plus this isn't a bank loan where they'll let you keep your house if you stuff up your payments for a month here and there.
Plus who wants to rely on the variable that this company and service actually are around in many years time? There is a very good chance you'll still require the same old dodgey player which you had all those years ago, you might even require the same music program on the same OS and best of all the company might go bankrupt possibly invalidating all your music anyway.
Now that I have addressed the common fears of the renting business model, why do people think 99c is a lock in? When time passes, I'll still be able to find my 99c song, whether it's on a CD that I burnt and gave to my friends who copied it a million times or in my own iTunes collection and play it, invisibly knowing it has DRM. (iTunes already supports their past drm formats, as they have tinkered it quite a bit already.)
My point is that, if you want to beat apple at this game, you need to give the consumers more, and to give consumers more here, you need to be selling files without DRM. (notice that while all the other music stores and vendors have failed, only allofmp3'd business model works with apples.)
Windows users have started to become comfortable with their computer giving them demands. On Windows it seems to be software fashion for your applications to no longer work if you don't for example 'activate' them (you see purchasing them, isn't good enough at camp microsoft and other vendors e..g Adobe.)
Also the sort of person who doesn't have a legitimate copy of windows is the same person who had their PC custom built (probably by themselves.) That means they have some technical contact who'll happily hunt down and supply them the patch which will be out long before any Microsoft expiry date. Microsoft don't seem to realise their patching culture has made many users comfortable with running -any- kind of patch to keep their machine running, including those that do not come from Microsoft.
This is hardly going to force droves of users to any particular platform, the typical Mac switcher is a user who is frustrated with their store bought PC(this kind of user has a legit copy of windows and they'll just install WGA like any other patch.), home-built jobs aren't big "frustration switchers" because they assume that the bugs are issues they had developed by poorly matched hardware and drivers which aren't 100%, so they are happy to work around little quirks to pretend that they didn't fail at building a computer. If they switch they are usually a switcher due to freedom of choice or technical grounds. (E.g. they'd switch for a better security model, nicer gui, iApps, exposé and spotlight. An almost bug free experience just comes along for the ride. Vista has been in the publicity so much as to help stem the flow of this kind of switcher market, as MS is trying to promise that all these features are just around the corner, when they simply aren't. "Don't leave, look we have this Vista thing it's getting released soon, here are screen shots, don't go!")
This won't see any home adoption to linux at all. Most users are comfortable with their software choices (even if it's only word, internet explorer, msn messenger and itunes.) So they'll happily ask around to get the system fixed rather than throw out what they are comfortable with and pick up a copy of one of the trillion linux distributions. Most people see Linux as out of their technical reach and the stuff for nerds or people who like to fiddle under the bonnet.
So in short, when Vista comes out, show them what you think of WGA with your wallet.
It couldn't be too hard, most areas in my state have underground power, following this, there are currently plans to bury the rest of the overhead cables. The cost argument is a joke in itself, plumbing & gas both run underground and it's far more difficult to maintain a rigid pipe often made from aged materials, in constrast to power which is a bundle of cables that can be flexed as required.
But seriously do ML ever look at the implications outside of the USA? It might bring them closer in the USA, but for the rest of the world it's one fly for google to swat instead of two.
Small form gaming devices (as with mobile phones) is currently an incredibly booming market at the moment. It's so serious that game developers are co-developing lightweight java versions of their games as they produce major titles.
Yes it's an unusual number of cases, but no, this is over a 5 year period. It's not like all the top floor workers got it a week after moving in. Of the 7 brain tumors, 2 are malignant. Indicating that possibly different kinds of cancer are occuring. While the building could be to blame, it's probably not the towers sitting on top of it. More likely something else which they are exposed to inside of the building, hence why they shut down the building instead of lowering the tower's output. (They fail to mention that numerous other buildings have similar towers and exposure, but not the cancer rate.)
I'm curious how the open-source iTunes rip-off performs on Windows. As you know on a mac iTunes is just "the sh!t" when it comes to managing music in a quick manner. Like MS Office for the Mac, iTunes on Windows is a total dog. So it'll be interesting to see if the iTunes rip off is snappy on windows.
A feasible solution is to not add your current employer to your resume.
Then if you're current employer comes across your resume, you can dismiss it with "it's from when I was looking before this job". The obvious flaw is that if you've been in your job for a great number of years, then it's not a very solid story (or an adequet resume for that matter.)
Alternatively keep your resume on an external website, (which can always be current), it allows you to monitor and traffic who visits your resume, as well as say, block the IP range of your current employer/their chosen recruitment company.
I hear this often, but since when was more than 10 Million users not a target? It's not an -easy- target, that's certain. In any event, the over-baked windows environment would yield at least many "hackers" trying the mac platform for the untouched revenue stream that it could potentially provide.
Similar to Linux, and other Unix based OSes.. maybe there is just something about them that makes them too difficult to launch remote exploits on? Such as a well layered security system and a history that always involved the idea of being a connected system.
This is hardly windows bashing, but more to highlight that other platforms do most certainly exist in great numbers, the argument that 'too small a target' is the reason for the lack of exploits is frankly crap. There are few windows 95 users and it still gets routinely targetted. Once they figure out an exploit, writing the rest of the application is basic.
Slashdot Mirror
discovery.com (website for discovery channel) notes in an article "The X-rays suggest Mag died in her 30s or 40s, which would have been a fairly long human lifespan for the time" at http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050117/catm ummy.html
Various tourism articles also point at lifespan indicators, such as touregypt.net at http://www.touregypt.net/magazine/mag11012000/magf 1.htm which states "Egyptian life span was short (average 40 years or so)"
However I'd like to note (and probably where your uncited proof comes from is that in every era we have evidence of the occassional person living well into their 90s) The best example is the commonly held belief that Ramses lived into his 90s "In Year 67 at around 92 years of age, Ramesses was called to join the gods.", which you can read at http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ramesses_the_great .htm but again on the same site you can read about how the person buried in KV55 only lived somewhere between 23-24 years of age" so it doesn't seem that kings were particularly prone to longevity either http://www.egyptologyonline.com/kv55_further_exami nations.htm
So no I wouldn't agree that persons living in ancient egypt were living on average to the same life span as we are today. Additionally I would try to not get too confused between the difference between an outlier and the average age. (We have people today living past 100 years of age, which is considered an outlier by today's lifespan average.)
Also for the record, Even though ancient egypt was around in times of 3100BC (all the way to 395AD), it only became a province of the roman empire in 30BC. So it's pretty weak to compare ancient egyptians to romans.
Taking safety cues from an era where we have evidence that the average life span was about 30 years isn't giving me any additional confidence in nanotechnology, and worries me somewhat that someone would even suggest this over modern scientific method. Not to forget that we don't have nearly enough information about the ancients to satisfy any scientific enquiry into nanotechnology. What we know so far about the ancients isn't indicative of life-longevity.
Step 2. License offending patents to Creative for 150M.
Step 3. There is no step 3.
I suppose it's a new version of Rip. Burn. Mix.
While I can agree that Apple definitely has a more human aspect spin, anthropic principle I believe is the term. They do not manufacture their products and rely on the companies they employ to follow their workplace terms. Now I'd agree that Apple is definitely let down by companies that don't follow their workplace policies, at the same time, I'm pleased to see that Apple is interested in bringing companies into line which are practising outside of their workplace policies. (Even if only minorly, remember the original allegations against Apple included child labour and over crowding, both proven to be false hyperbole sensationalisms.)
Considering that many other products that people purchase from china are made from labour which has not be placed under the same workers-rights rigor that apple outlays in their vendor contract, this is a good case of a global company doing what they can to ensure adequet working standards in a country that is rife with human exploitation. You can almost decide with certainty that something you own has been produced as a result of human labour exploitation, occurances often go by without the knowledge of the even the staff member; There is a lot of difficulty in ensuring proper work practices in these mega factories (many staff demand excessive overtime hours to get ahead of the rat race.) Take for example that this factory assembles iPods, there is no way of knowing, without investigation, if the screens being used in the assembly of the iPods are made in another factory where labour issues are more common.
So while others may pick at Apple's summary report for leaving areas grey, I still feel this is by far a more advanced effort in ensuring factory workers rights than what many other companies do. (Particularly the fashion and small parts industries.)
His "facts" are outright wrong in either the positive or negative sense. First of all the materials are fire safe, as required by construction standards, fire retardent plastic is used. Secondly if you do decide to go spark happy on the unit, it will shut down, and auto reset when unplugged for a small amount of time. On the flip side, Apple -have- had battery + fire issues, similar to Dell. The exception being that there has been no doubt at all that apple didn't jump right into a battery recall once this happened, which is in contrast to Dell where there is suspicion they left it for a little while to see if it was an isolated incident.
On the other hand 24.5V is almost nothing to worry about especially with such a low current.
A final point to be made is how is his power adapter being used such that it's close enough to burn his powerbook... while I'm not one for strict policy, they do actually tell you to unwind the cable fully before use. (no one likes a magnetic field mmkay.)
As for other items such as the search being stolen entirely from MS. Well I'm not sure how any one can own the idea of a "quick search" using methods that we're accustomed to on the internet. The difference being that MS has rattled on that they'll have the feature for 10 years now and never delivered it. So it's hardly "copying" MS on a feature that has not only never been delivered, but cancelled for the foreseeable future.
Ideas like spaces have been around for a while, it's how it's implemented in OS X which is clever, you only need as much memory as to support the applications, the application windows move, not the desktop.
As for other features like stationery, I wouldn't rattle on too much about the use of themes on internet mediums, as the concept of templating is hardly an original one.
My point here is that a lot of the added features are obvious or a natural evolution of their existing products. It is easy to compare these to MS, but it's hardly copying. The keynote presentation held by apple which highlighted the similarities between vista and 10.3+10.4 etc took only the most blatant examples where MS has been a tad bit unoriginal and directly copied the visual interface, down to the colour scheme used and program nomenclature.
Overall I think Paul just needs to be a bit more like MS and take it on the chin, everyone gets haggled in this industry, it's pointless trying to refute points which only show his lack of research and his genuinely blinded zeal for MS products. Paul only throws in the occassional lucid counter argument merely to appear less biased than what he is, unfortunately the giant scope difference between his pro-apple and pro-ms remarks show his lack of genuineness. That and his logo & style guide are a rip-off of Microsoft graphic design circa 1998.
Having an inbetween state, such as cider, no matter how efficient can lead to two problems. 1.) Developers not designing for the mac by default, instead only as an after thought. 2.) Slower performance on the same hardware.
There is one up shot of all of this. It will encourage Asypr(and similar) to make more efficient ports of games, as I've noticed that many ports aren't as fast as they could be and in many cases not as fast as they _should_ be. For example take the sims 2 on the mac, it is painfully slow despite not appearing any more visually and computationally complex than warcraft 2 which operates flawlessly on the Mac.
On a slightly different topic, many developers need to reorganise how their software internally functions, particularly Adobe with Photoshop.. why does a 3D graphics suite such as Maya Unlimited load significantly faster than Adobe Photoshop? Adobe should also embrace OS X technologies such as coreimage for their filter sets, and start using actual GUI elements instead of bitmaps.
Macs also have a few other apps such as stable window which keeps a window upright while turning the laptop around, plus a few games that work on a similar principles such as "Neverball" amongst others. There are even widgets that tap into the AMS to play small ball-in-hole games.
My particular favourite is the app that turns your powerbook into a light saber making sound effects as you swing it around. (MacSaber)
I've avoided pasting links to all of these as most are run on small sites where a direct link will /. the 'ell out of them. However just do a google search for anything you're interested in. There is a lot of fun projects happening with AMS as a HID device in the open source community.
I don't see any win here for the consumer, it's not like the price of Windows is going to come down as a result of this, the only thing we're going to see is this possibly helping Microsoft's bottom line at the expense of disrupting their users.
Wouldn't it be preferred if MS used another method to find their lost revenue? Instead of relying on end users to go through the confusion (and possible further consequences of WGA). Afterall, how many end users are going to call Microsoft to report that their vendor is selling pirate copies of windows(or even realise this, a basic user won't understand) versus just buying a new code online from MS right away.
I for one welcome our new crab overlords.
Wikipedia also provides disclaimers on pages which are under such influences.
I actually feel this enhances the wikipedia experience, unlike a printed reference, wiki can evolve to include new information as it becomes available. Old versions of britanica for example will always keep the errors of the day. (Including items which aren't specifically important to modern day life, such as mistaking the identities of dinosaurs, to definitions of modern vernacular.)
The number one rule of research is to use multiple sources (it also helps avoid plagarism.)
Your allofmp3(plus a few others) tracks work fine on the iPod (or any other player mind you.)
Also as for my $5000 analogy, it took the example of the music you purchased in the past, and noted the effect of time passing. Unless you intend on buying music, then waiting 20-30 years to play it, then you'll be paying more than $30. (or 30 pound as another person has pointed out, that's provided they don't raise their price over 30 years.)
Also -again- you can legally remove your iTMS DRM, in fact it's built into iTunes, there is absolutely no legal way to remove the DRM from most other online music services, which let you play your music on -less- computers and -never- burn a CD for your car for example.(a surprise to you is that there are many non-DRM music stores, those files work fine on all modern music devices including the iPod. i.e no lock in.)
You are never locked into iTMS, once you've paid for your song, it's yours, they'll never take them away from you for not paying your monthly fee.) With an iPod you are simply limited to using music stores which encode in something other than DRM'd WMA. Even if you receive non-DRM'd WMA you can still make them work on your iPod, it's built right into iTunes The iPod and iTunes both support AIFF, WAV, AAC & MP3 (plus a small host of other formats.) With iTunes you can transcode (to lossless for example) all non DRM'd WMA. (Transcoding also is available for .mov audio files which also don't play on the iPod, despite being an apple owned encapsulation format.)
So I find no salt in your argument for subscription based models over the existing iTMS, you're also demonstrating exceptional lack of knowledge of iTunes, the iPod and the iTMS. In fact you're just jumping on the bandwagon of FUD created by competing music stores. Very little of what you've listed as fact is even true! Do your research before you come to slashdot, a "lock in" is having to pay a monthly fee for eternity. A "lock in" isn't paying a small & honest fee once, with the option of removing any of the minimal restrictions that exist on the file.
The final point about 3rd party programs being undone is irrelevant and has more to do with upholding their licensing agreement with the music companies, than restricting the rights of any user. An external software developer who is not a partner shouldn't find it unreasonable that progress (i.e updates) render their program incompatible.. It's not like this is new, it's like suggesting that office 2003 is trying to break office 2000 because office 2000 can't open the files that 2003 create.
Your argument needs significant work, find an actual restriction that they have added to the DRM, because last time i checked reordering a playlist so i can burn another 7!!! CDs isn't any more of a restriction that having to tie my shoelaces.
Having the ability to download increased quality at no further cost, isn't exactly a feature anymore than recognition that their old quality was insufficient.
Plus you seem overly comfortable with all your music going away if you can't afford that months payment. You can be paying them thousands of pounds for many years of musical enjoyment, but the moment you stop paying all that means nothing and you have no more music. Doesn't sound very fair to me. The problem with renting music is that for the current moment it's great, but it makes no provisions for the future. You could be paying 50 pounds in the future just to keep playing songs which you could buy DRM-free for an absolute fraction of the cost.
While you may have access to millions of songs at no extra charge, chances are you music taste won't encompass all of those anyway. The reality is that unless you're buying 2 albums a month every month (that's about a new song every day for the rest of your life.) then you will always be losing money through subscription. It's cheaper to sponsor a child in africa than it is to rent subscription music.
In the end the music companies want DRM, apple have packaged DRM in a way that can be consumed without DRm being painful.
I'd prefer if you specifically list how apple have changed the DRM restrictions rather than state it as a generic fact, when it simply isn't.
When the fact is, every single song you buy from iTMS, you can remove the copy protection just by burning the song to disc (even to a virtual disc if you're the clever type.)
Apple had the majority of the music player market long before their music store was successful.
Additionally, I find the "renting" business model from other music "stores" ridiculous.
Think about it: No burning cds(you can with iTMS),
No sharing with others (you can share your music with up to 4 others with iTMS, just as if they paid for the song themselves),
The worst point of all if you stop paying the $14.95 a month, all your music will stop working. I have music from the 80's that I still enjoy playing here and there, that was almost 30 years ago now. Without a price rise, it'd cost $5000 USD to have the luxury of playing just one song from the 80s under the 'renting' business model. Plus this isn't a bank loan where they'll let you keep your house if you stuff up your payments for a month here and there.
Plus who wants to rely on the variable that this company and service actually are around in many years time? There is a very good chance you'll still require the same old dodgey player which you had all those years ago, you might even require the same music program on the same OS and best of all the company might go bankrupt possibly invalidating all your music anyway.
Now that I have addressed the common fears of the renting business model, why do people think 99c is a lock in? When time passes, I'll still be able to find my 99c song, whether it's on a CD that I burnt and gave to my friends who copied it a million times or in my own iTunes collection and play it, invisibly knowing it has DRM. (iTunes already supports their past drm formats, as they have tinkered it quite a bit already.)
My point is that, if you want to beat apple at this game, you need to give the consumers more, and to give consumers more here, you need to be selling files without DRM. (notice that while all the other music stores and vendors have failed, only allofmp3'd business model works with apples.)
Also the sort of person who doesn't have a legitimate copy of windows is the same person who had their PC custom built (probably by themselves.) That means they have some technical contact who'll happily hunt down and supply them the patch which will be out long before any Microsoft expiry date. Microsoft don't seem to realise their patching culture has made many users comfortable with running -any- kind of patch to keep their machine running, including those that do not come from Microsoft.
This is hardly going to force droves of users to any particular platform, the typical Mac switcher is a user who is frustrated with their store bought PC(this kind of user has a legit copy of windows and they'll just install WGA like any other patch.), home-built jobs aren't big "frustration switchers" because they assume that the bugs are issues they had developed by poorly matched hardware and drivers which aren't 100%, so they are happy to work around little quirks to pretend that they didn't fail at building a computer. If they switch they are usually a switcher due to freedom of choice or technical grounds. (E.g. they'd switch for a better security model, nicer gui, iApps, exposé and spotlight. An almost bug free experience just comes along for the ride. Vista has been in the publicity so much as to help stem the flow of this kind of switcher market, as MS is trying to promise that all these features are just around the corner, when they simply aren't. "Don't leave, look we have this Vista thing it's getting released soon, here are screen shots, don't go!")
This won't see any home adoption to linux at all. Most users are comfortable with their software choices (even if it's only word, internet explorer, msn messenger and itunes.) So they'll happily ask around to get the system fixed rather than throw out what they are comfortable with and pick up a copy of one of the trillion linux distributions. Most people see Linux as out of their technical reach and the stuff for nerds or people who like to fiddle under the bonnet.
So in short, when Vista comes out, show them what you think of WGA with your wallet.
It couldn't be too hard, most areas in my state have underground power, following this, there are currently plans to bury the rest of the overhead cables. The cost argument is a joke in itself, plumbing & gas both run underground and it's far more difficult to maintain a rigid pipe often made from aged materials, in constrast to power which is a bundle of cables that can be flexed as required.
But seriously do ML ever look at the implications outside of the USA? It might bring them closer in the USA, but for the rest of the world it's one fly for google to swat instead of two.
This might just save java too.
Yes it's an unusual number of cases, but no, this is over a 5 year period. It's not like all the top floor workers got it a week after moving in.
Of the 7 brain tumors, 2 are malignant. Indicating that possibly different kinds of cancer are occuring. While the building could be to blame, it's probably not the towers sitting on top of it. More likely something else which they are exposed to inside of the building, hence why they shut down the building instead of lowering the tower's output. (They fail to mention that numerous other buildings have similar towers and exposure, but not the cancer rate.)
Also the andromeda script is handy when using a web interface to search+listen to your music.(It's at http://www.turnstyle.com/andromeda/ )
Then if you're current employer comes across your resume, you can dismiss it with "it's from when I was looking before this job". The obvious flaw is that if you've been in your job for a great number of years, then it's not a very solid story (or an adequet resume for that matter.)
Alternatively keep your resume on an external website, (which can always be current), it allows you to monitor and traffic who visits your resume, as well as say, block the IP range of your current employer/their chosen recruitment company.
Similar to Linux, and other Unix based OSes.. maybe there is just something about them that makes them too difficult to launch remote exploits on? Such as a well layered security system and a history that always involved the idea of being a connected system.
This is hardly windows bashing, but more to highlight that other platforms do most certainly exist in great numbers, the argument that 'too small a target' is the reason for the lack of exploits is frankly crap. There are few windows 95 users and it still gets routinely targetted. Once they figure out an exploit, writing the rest of the application is basic.