Forgive me for stifling a snigger. It's a sad day when your flagship multimedia viewer is actually prettier than any content you can get to run using its horrible, proprietary movie format from hell. I think the majority of people purchasing Quicktime Pro are doing so for the 'Export' feature now, which enables them to get all the bloody.movs off their machine and into a sensible, compact, free format.
Of course the fact that Apple insists you do this via translation to horrid old formats like Cinepak is a bit annoying. Far less annoying than a media player which won't even render its interface properly on my machine, continues to fail to support easy fullscreen switching, and takes longer to load than Windows MP. Arrrrg.
Ah, but they don't recall EVERYTHING they've seen. No-one has a photographic memory of every contour of ever wall in their house, or every house they pass on the way to work, not even in a single day. Multiply by five senses and forty years and you're going over the 'grains of sand on a beach' level.
Having said that, he does have 'video download 10x faster over network' down for earliest 2003. We've had that for, what, three years now since the release of DivX;) 3?
I think some of these were deliberate jokes. The Matrix obviously, and the idea of a "Politcal correctness creating a new dark age: 2050" has echoes in the book 'Harrison Bergeron' (although the date there would be 2081). I think it's more the current ones (i.e the next ten years) that BT are paying him for.
It would presumably be impractical and unnecessary for an AI being to retain EVERY shred of information it ever collected. The assumptions about computers becoming superior to human brains are all very well, but even a day's worth of human sensory stimulii would take up an unimaginable amount of storage space.
I believe competition in academic circles leads to an awful lot more innovation than state-funded and -directed research. This would appear to favour capitalism.
That, and of course the terrible, terrible fear that once China has more than four literate citizens they'll be building nuclear space robots. That certainly seems to goad _some_ people into action.
Goddamn right it's flamebait. Two years ago the idea of getting credit on PC parts was completely ludicrous, which meant that the only way I was getting a new PC was in one big Packard Bell-shaped chunk.
On top of that, have you ever TRIED installing XP? AOL is more difficult to use!
The idea isn't really 'copy-protection', it's 'rip-protection'.
Imagine you have a sheet of paper containing English sentences. You can both copy this by hand to another sheet and read it out (i.e. understand the content).
Now imagine that there are no spaces or puntuation marks included. Or that there are random extra characters inserted every five letters. You'll still be able to transcribe the letters one-by-one onto another sheet of paper, but whether you can make sense of it or not depends on how smart you are.
It should still always be possible though, assuming that there is a solution (which, in the case of copy-protected CDs, there must be, because SOMETHING has to be able to play them).
Actually, I think this is a Good Thing, as does miss Courtney Love, apparently.
The difference between an mp3 encoded using lame -vbr -q9 and an mp3 encoded using fscking AudioCatalyst / RealJukeBox (spit) isn't GALLING, so to speak, but it's enough that you know fine that it isn't a CD track. Which, when you have a whole album encoded like this, gives one a bit more motivation to get off one's arse and actually buy the album.
Admittedly there are some people who are just criminally poor at encoding mp3s, but they don't tend to be listening to the same bands as myself, so it doesn't matter that much:)
Plenty of software distributed under the GPL is still sold, even though it can be freely obtained without paying for it.
The fact that licensing agreements are essentially a way for manufacturers and vendors to create new ownership laws at will is most people's bug with them. The fact that I can't sell my PC without formatting the hard disk, for instance.
Not installing it has helped me. I'm rather irritated by the idea that Office wants to take over my PC when installed, so at install time I unchecked everything I didn't want, or didn't understand. Clippy can't bother me if he isn't on my HD.
It only takes half an hour or so to transfer the data to your HD and remove the CSS protection. The actual encoding takes hours, but by then you've got the data anyway, and you can take the disc out.
I'm 100% opposed to this idea, because not only is it another useless technology invented purely for the rapage of the consumer, but it removes the idea of having an archive. You can still rent old movies. If you buy these 'several-use-only' discs, watch them and then decide a few years later that you want to wacth it again, you need to locate a new copy.
It's a fine idea for a nation which doesn't actually CARE what it's watching, and allows Hollywood to churn out mindless action films one after another, but I don't think encouraging the production of films you'll only want to watch one is a good thing.
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Forgive me for stifling a snigger. It's a sad day when your flagship multimedia viewer is actually prettier than any content you can get to run using its horrible, proprietary movie format from hell. I think the majority of people purchasing Quicktime Pro are doing so for the 'Export' feature now, which enables them to get all the bloody .movs off their machine and into a sensible, compact, free format.
Of course the fact that Apple insists you do this via translation to horrid old formats like Cinepak is a bit annoying. Far less annoying than a media player which won't even render its interface properly on my machine, continues to fail to support easy fullscreen switching, and takes longer to load than Windows MP. Arrrrg.
- Chris
:D
I can, actually - Simian.
- Chris
Ah, but they don't recall EVERYTHING they've seen. No-one has a photographic memory of every contour of ever wall in their house, or every house they pass on the way to work, not even in a single day. Multiply by five senses and forty years and you're going over the 'grains of sand on a beach' level.
- Chris
Yes, but it can't BLOCK html mail, which is why Outlook is a piece of malware crap.
- Chris
Having said that, he does have 'video download 10x faster over network' down for earliest 2003. We've had that for, what, three years now since the release of DivX ;) 3?
It's still a bit nostradamus though.
- Chris
I think some of these were deliberate jokes. The Matrix obviously, and the idea of a "Politcal correctness creating a new dark age: 2050" has echoes in the book 'Harrison Bergeron' (although the date there would be 2081). I think it's more the current ones (i.e the next ten years) that BT are paying him for.
- Chris
It would presumably be impractical and unnecessary for an AI being to retain EVERY shred of information it ever collected. The assumptions about computers becoming superior to human brains are all very well, but even a day's worth of human sensory stimulii would take up an unimaginable amount of storage space.
- Chris
I believe competition in academic circles leads to an awful lot more innovation than state-funded and -directed research. This would appear to favour capitalism.
That, and of course the terrible, terrible fear that once China has more than four literate citizens they'll be building nuclear space robots. That certainly seems to goad _some_ people into action.
- Chris
I do, however, think that you'll be getting AI priests doing weddings by 2004 :)
- Chris
Goddamn right it's flamebait. Two years ago the idea of getting credit on PC parts was completely ludicrous, which meant that the only way I was getting a new PC was in one big Packard Bell-shaped chunk.
On top of that, have you ever TRIED installing XP? AOL is more difficult to use!
- Chris
In a word: Yes.
- Chris
'valid' implies that the keys passed Product Actication and thus online checking. As Homer would say, D'oh.
- Chris
-"seriously underestimate the intelligence of most Windows users"-
:)
Heh. I'm a Windows user, but 'most' is a tad strong, especially round these parts
- Chris
That's not the point.
The idea isn't really 'copy-protection', it's 'rip-protection'.
Imagine you have a sheet of paper containing English sentences. You can both copy this by hand to another sheet and read it out (i.e. understand the content).
Now imagine that there are no spaces or puntuation marks included. Or that there are random extra characters inserted every five letters. You'll still be able to transcribe the letters one-by-one onto another sheet of paper, but whether you can make sense of it or not depends on how smart you are.
It should still always be possible though, assuming that there is a solution (which, in the case of copy-protected CDs, there must be, because SOMETHING has to be able to play them).
- Chris
Actually, I think this is a Good Thing, as does miss Courtney Love, apparently.
:)
The difference between an mp3 encoded using lame -vbr -q9 and an mp3 encoded using fscking AudioCatalyst / RealJukeBox (spit) isn't GALLING, so to speak, but it's enough that you know fine that it isn't a CD track. Which, when you have a whole album encoded like this, gives one a bit more motivation to get off one's arse and actually buy the album.
Admittedly there are some people who are just criminally poor at encoding mp3s, but they don't tend to be listening to the same bands as myself, so it doesn't matter that much
- Chris
Plenty of software distributed under the GPL is still sold, even though it can be freely obtained without paying for it.
The fact that licensing agreements are essentially a way for manufacturers and vendors to create new ownership laws at will is most people's bug with them. The fact that I can't sell my PC without formatting the hard disk, for instance.
- Chris
Not installing it has helped me. I'm rather irritated by the idea that Office wants to take over my PC when installed, so at install time I unchecked everything I didn't want, or didn't understand. Clippy can't bother me if he isn't on my HD.
np: Lard - Forkboy
It only takes half an hour or so to transfer the data to your HD and remove the CSS protection. The actual encoding takes hours, but by then you've got the data anyway, and you can take the disc out.
I'm 100% opposed to this idea, because not only is it another useless technology invented purely for the rapage of the consumer, but it removes the idea of having an archive. You can still rent old movies. If you buy these 'several-use-only' discs, watch them and then decide a few years later that you want to wacth it again, you need to locate a new copy.
It's a fine idea for a nation which doesn't actually CARE what it's watching, and allows Hollywood to churn out mindless action films one after another, but I don't think encouraging the production of films you'll only want to watch one is a good thing.
np: Godflesh - Nail
- Chris