It's nice to see the French using Linux here, though I guess it may seem in a clearer decision in light of current Microsoft/EU tensions. The best part is probably the way French people say "Leenoox" which we'll now hear more often than ever.
This is a really cool innovation for French people too leftist to run Microsoft but too poor to own a Mac, following in the proud tradition of Minitel -- which, humble as it may seem in retrospect, was pretty cool if you happened to be a Canadian teenager who'd never heard of the Internet before when he first saw the network in action. Ahem.
It is only when you buy music from the iTunes Music Store that you get DRM...
This is true, and I should have been more specific. I should have said "the iPod system" meaning how it is envisioned by its champions in Cupertino -- a "music solution" that in their minds encompasses the iTunes store and the iPod hardware.
I myself keep a fat library of non-DRM music to play through iTunes. Yesterday, I ordered my first iPod. I can't imagine I will ever buy music through the iTunes store. I rip and encode my own, for purposes including but not limited to making legal* private back-up copies of media I have licensed by purchasing a physical CD.
However, I'm posting on Slashdot. I am by some metrics a geek. The hurdles I'm willing to surmount to have non-DRM music are not those the great unwashed would necessarily follow.
_____
* Legal: NB: I am writing from Canada, a small, unknown country in the north populated by a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski.
This comment should in no way be taken as an overall endorsement of an Apple-boner worldview but, let's face it, there is something fundamental about music and people that the Jobsian camp "gets" that the Redmonites don't.
One significant reason why the iPod -- crippled as it is under its own DRM and Applephilic burdens -- was/is such a success is because it makes the experience of selecting and playing back popular music comparatively easy, even for people with shrunken frontal lobes and/or other severe cognitive challenges (retardation, ADHDADDADHD, neoconservatism, etc.). Even my grandma knows how to rip CDs into her library and stick them on her iPod.
The relative transparency of the process means that my grandma doesn't have to call a geek to help her. This means the obstacles between her and what she wants to listen to are minimal. Basically, it's easy. The rights management is sufficiently flexible that she doesn't know or care that it is there.
This Microsoft DRM scheme, in contrast, sounds very visible.
No matter how smoothly or non-smoothly it works, the visibility in and of itself will intimidate/frustrate/frighten much of the herd. Anything that requires an explanation -- even a simple one -- cuts scads off of the numbers of potential customers.
The perception of simplicity sells Apple products, for good or for ill. Until Microsoft understands this, they'll be playing catch up forever.
Canada, if you'll recall, declined to contribute to the invasion of Iraq, so I can't see why Allah would punish Canada with catastrophic global warming.
The obvious solution for the poor Siberians? Prayer.
Wow, if Vista's release is delayed any further I will be very interested to see what depths of invention the technopundits will sink to in order to keep generating words about Microsoft.
I mean, c'mon -- this fluff makes about as many cogent points as a ball of wet wool.
XP a "fine Operating System"? Well, sure, if your into malware. Some people are turned on by all kinds of crazy jazz. But, realistically, the rest of us would be more impressed with Windows-based PCs that weren't compromised thirty seconds after grandma gets it out of the cardboard box.
Also, does this walking rimjob understand that if Microsoft doesn't keep up with the Joneses the Joneses will eventually start eroding their Borg-like marketshare? With the rise of things like YouTube more people than ever want to be able to manipulate video and audio on their PCs as easily as on Macintoshes -- if Microsoft doesn't deliver, Jobs wins by default.
Microsoft does have to move forward. Microsoft does have to improve. A boycott nobody but Linux zealots will even pay attention to is, in a word, retarded.
Just one more reason to support the colonization of Mars -- it is obviously that we shouldn't be keeping all our eggs in one basket...especially when the people steering the basket are pretty sure the world is only 6,000 years old and everything that happens upon it is the will of Xenu.
The question is: Does this mean that wireless networks set up after that date, and open, can be used freely under the assumption that the owner meant for them to be open, and permission is implied?
My esteemed colleague makes quite a brilliant point.
Indeed, from henceforth we should be able to assume that open wireless networks are s'poseda be that way, because we can rest safe in our faith that everybody has read the sticker.
The sticker shall free us! The sticker shall be a symbol carried at the forefront of our armies!
"I'm telling your mom on you because this open wireless access point is by no means s'poseda be open!"
"Ah-ha: check, you foul neurotypical! If it wasn't supposed to be open you should've closed it."
"But I didn't know."
"Ah-ha: yes you did. You peeled off the sticker."
"I'm illiterate."
"That's not true. I saw you reading Maxim and overheard you telling your mom you buy it just for the articles. So which is it?"
This is a good thing. This law is not intended to protect the consumer -- it is intended to arm mild-mannered nerds such has ourselves when confronting people who claim nobody ever told them open meant open.
It is, in short, a reasonable excuse to handle oopsy-daisy! security victims with a socially acceptible level of contempt. "You say you just tore the sticker off without even reading it, ha? Well. Well, well, well."
This empowers geeks. It is a license to be snooty.
So what exactly is the practical difference between malware and badware? Is it a level of instrusiveness metric? Or a measure of the alleged malevolence on the part of those responsible for the coding?
Hypothetically, what would have to happen to have an example of software classified as evilware? Brimstone?
I've toyed around the idea with buying a Mac as my next computer, however ads like this make me reconsider.
And here we have an example of why the stuffed-dicks on Madison Avenue have the influence they do: willies like the parent poster who will gladly let their own judgement be subsumed by their opinion on the style of a television commercial.
...Obviously a "think outside the box" kind of fellow!
Preaching to the Choir
on
Steal This Film
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is this going to get a wider release or is their market targeting pretty squarely focused on people soft on piracy? It's a little bit like making an anti-STD video for people who never get laid.
For the record (since this sort of thing often comes up in these discussions) I am a content creator who thinks copyright should expire after a decade, period. I give most of my works away for free, but figure on revenue-generating works that if you can't make money off it in ten years it either sucks, or you do.
I had a similar experience with a bank some years ago. When I came in to explain to my personal banking unit that my browser kept crashing when I tried to access their online offerings, she immediately said, "You're using an Apple PC, right?"
"Yes," I admit quietly, just in case some hicks are listening and might want to drag me behind their pick-up truck or otherwise hassle me for my alternative lifestyle choice.
"The thing is," the personal banking unit explained, "the Apple computers have such a small share of the market that it costs too much for us to develop a secure website in parallel."
"That's too bad," I sigh.
"Yeah," she agrees, "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking has an Apple."
I pause and scratch my head. "I thought you said there weren't enough of us to make it worth your while."
"Well yeah," she nods, "but I think it must be easier to get on the Internet with Apple or something, because it seems like almost everybody who's comfortable doing online banking wants to use an Apple for it."
"So doesn't that mean there's a demand for a Mac-compatible service?"
"Well no," she shakes her head, "you see Apple has less than a billionth of percent of marketshare. So...you know -- that's that. Sorry!"
So, to make a long story short, that's when I entered a special Scientology-run programme designed to cure me using non-psychiatric means of my penchant for using the wrong computer. And I feel much better now.
Endeavours to challenge the hiding place of the lost city of Atlantis predate even Columbus' discovery.
The mercury is rising for those still dedicated to Atlantis' existence, because results to date indicate it the whole thing is mere legend. Rumours of ancient conspiracies have appalled certain academics. Iss there any credible basis for continuing to believe?
...this hasn't been my experience. I live rurally and I have a fairly honkin' broadband connection.
Part of the difference may be that here in Freedomland the government spend lots of Canadian Tire money over a couple of decades wiring us up from stem to stern with fibre-optics and phat cable. When broadband Internet became a market the infrastructure was already there.
In Canada's case, centralized regulation forced the telephone/data/media companies to co-operate to achieve this goal.
You don't have to turn it off if it is plugged in and the battery model number is, surprisingly, listed right after the text string "Model No.:" on the back of the battery.
So, either I'm functionally illiterate or your knowledge in this matter may be more patchy than solid.
Hint: functionally illiterate people tend not to use terms like "functionally illiterate", and when they do they spell it incorrectly.
See, now you've gone too far. It's one thing to suggest that Clippy might want to help us with common browser tasks like popping a bone, and it's another thing altogether to suggest that we might pop a bone for Clippy.
I'm sicing the DMCA on you for reverse-engineering my nausea.
Obviously it needed to be funnier, but I suffer from a lack of experience with Clippy. I use NeoOffice, which is kind of like OpenOffice for pretentious people. As far as I know, there is no NeoOffice open-source equivalent of Clippy.
I've seen Microsoft's Clippy, though. He popped up on my screen and I scrambled to stuff him back away again because of the aggressive way he diffused my dignity as a computer literate human being into a little puff of pink smoke.
Next time I will endeavour to make my comment either more clearly funny or more clearly a troll. Given the hair splitting, however, I think we should have two moderation options for the troll flag: negative troll (for bunk and games) and positive troll (for inspired mindfuckery).
"I would like to introduce into the evidence, your honour, this wooden ducky. Let the wooden ducky be known as Exhibit FUD. See the ducky dance? Dance ducky, dance."
I've been a self-employed freelancer for eight years who took a full-time job six months ago. In this time I've been able to observe that the single biggest drain on employee productivity is farting around on the Web.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating corporate firewall fascism. However, it seems to me that for employees with poor self-management skills unfettered Web access is an enema for provoking ass-blasting levels of laziness. It is a procrastination enabler for those who are poor are organizing their time.
What's the solution? Obviously we should all be graded upon hiring to determine whether we're elite enough to control our own net access, or whether we need net nannies. Okay, that may be less obvious and more simplistic and stupid but still -- you see what I'm getting at: painting employees with too broad a brush is tricky here, but abuse of net privileges is personality dependent.
(/me looks around, checks for managers.)
Well, I'm off to read MeFi and fuck around with my blog. Give me a heads-up if anybody important is coming.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to see the French using Linux here, though I guess it may seem in a clearer decision in light of current Microsoft/EU tensions. The best part is probably the way French people say "Leenoox" which we'll now hear more often than ever.
This is a really cool innovation for French people too leftist to run Microsoft but too poor to own a Mac, following in the proud tradition of Minitel -- which, humble as it may seem in retrospect, was pretty cool if you happened to be a Canadian teenager who'd never heard of the Internet before when he first saw the network in action. Ahem.
My question: does it have an integrated bidet?
It is only when you buy music from the iTunes Music Store that you get DRM...
This is true, and I should have been more specific. I should have said "the iPod system" meaning how it is envisioned by its champions in Cupertino -- a "music solution" that in their minds encompasses the iTunes store and the iPod hardware.
I myself keep a fat library of non-DRM music to play through iTunes. Yesterday, I ordered my first iPod. I can't imagine I will ever buy music through the iTunes store. I rip and encode my own, for purposes including but not limited to making legal* private back-up copies of media I have licensed by purchasing a physical CD.
However, I'm posting on Slashdot. I am by some metrics a geek. The hurdles I'm willing to surmount to have non-DRM music are not those the great unwashed would necessarily follow.
_____
* Legal: NB: I am writing from Canada, a small, unknown country in the north populated by a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski.
This comment should in no way be taken as an overall endorsement of an Apple-boner worldview but, let's face it, there is something fundamental about music and people that the Jobsian camp "gets" that the Redmonites don't.
One significant reason why the iPod -- crippled as it is under its own DRM and Applephilic burdens -- was/is such a success is because it makes the experience of selecting and playing back popular music comparatively easy, even for people with shrunken frontal lobes and/or other severe cognitive challenges (retardation, ADHDADDADHD, neoconservatism, etc.). Even my grandma knows how to rip CDs into her library and stick them on her iPod.
The relative transparency of the process means that my grandma doesn't have to call a geek to help her. This means the obstacles between her and what she wants to listen to are minimal. Basically, it's easy. The rights management is sufficiently flexible that she doesn't know or care that it is there.
This Microsoft DRM scheme, in contrast, sounds very visible.
No matter how smoothly or non-smoothly it works, the visibility in and of itself will intimidate/frustrate/frighten much of the herd. Anything that requires an explanation -- even a simple one -- cuts scads off of the numbers of potential customers.
The perception of simplicity sells Apple products, for good or for ill. Until Microsoft understands this, they'll be playing catch up forever.
Marketshare does not equal mindshare. Evidently.
This is such a fine, fine passage of baiting I wish I could mod it +1 Troll Art.
Maybe, maybe not.
Canada, if you'll recall, declined to contribute to the invasion of Iraq, so I can't see why Allah would punish Canada with catastrophic global warming.
The obvious solution for the poor Siberians? Prayer.
Living in a George W. Bush world is awesome.
Wow, if Vista's release is delayed any further I will be very interested to see what depths of invention the technopundits will sink to in order to keep generating words about Microsoft.
I mean, c'mon -- this fluff makes about as many cogent points as a ball of wet wool.
XP a "fine Operating System"? Well, sure, if your into malware. Some people are turned on by all kinds of crazy jazz. But, realistically, the rest of us would be more impressed with Windows-based PCs that weren't compromised thirty seconds after grandma gets it out of the cardboard box.
Also, does this walking rimjob understand that if Microsoft doesn't keep up with the Joneses the Joneses will eventually start eroding their Borg-like marketshare? With the rise of things like YouTube more people than ever want to be able to manipulate video and audio on their PCs as easily as on Macintoshes -- if Microsoft doesn't deliver, Jobs wins by default.
Microsoft does have to move forward. Microsoft does have to improve. A boycott nobody but Linux zealots will even pay attention to is, in a word, retarded.
1. Go to Mars.
2. Detonate some atomics to release subsurface gases.
3. Heat to taste.
All it requires is a little gumption and several trillion dollars. Easy as 1-2-3.
Just one more reason to support the colonization of Mars -- it is obviously that we shouldn't be keeping all our eggs in one basket...especially when the people steering the basket are pretty sure the world is only 6,000 years old and everything that happens upon it is the will of Xenu.
Mars ho!
The question is: Does this mean that wireless networks set up after that date, and open, can be used freely under the assumption that the owner meant for them to be open, and permission is implied?
My esteemed colleague makes quite a brilliant point.
Indeed, from henceforth we should be able to assume that open wireless networks are s'poseda be that way, because we can rest safe in our faith that everybody has read the sticker.
The sticker shall free us! The sticker shall be a symbol carried at the forefront of our armies!
"I'm telling your mom on you because this open wireless access point is by no means s'poseda be open!"
"Ah-ha: check, you foul neurotypical! If it wasn't supposed to be open you should've closed it."
"But I didn't know."
"Ah-ha: yes you did. You peeled off the sticker."
"I'm illiterate."
"That's not true. I saw you reading Maxim and overheard you telling your mom you buy it just for the articles. So which is it?"
"Uh -- er, well..."
"Ah-ha: check mate!"
"Curses! Foiled again."
This is a good thing. This law is not intended to protect the consumer -- it is intended to arm mild-mannered nerds such has ourselves when confronting people who claim nobody ever told them open meant open.
It is, in short, a reasonable excuse to handle oopsy-daisy! security victims with a socially acceptible level of contempt. "You say you just tore the sticker off without even reading it, ha? Well. Well, well, well."
This empowers geeks. It is a license to be snooty.
What would God need with an Operating System?
/me cringes as I absorb lightning bolts from RMS' eyes. ]
/me turned into a pillar of salt. ]
[
No, seriously: what would God need with an Operating System?
[
Salt, anyone?
Poppycock!
/me wipes tear away. ]
I will never, ever forget the way I felt when I first heard Lincoln's immortal words: "Be excellent to one another, and party ON, dudes!"
[
Can I have a moment, please?
Given the imminent new nature of the beast, I'd like to suggest some new names for the project (since we're diminishing the wiki part of Wikipedia).
- Webcyclopedia
- Nixipedia
- Wikipedian't
- Quasiwikipedia
- Wonkipedia
- Analpedia
- AllYourBaseAreBelongToPedia
- Alternapedia
- Hippipedia
- GrainOfSaltipedia
- 'Pedia
- Wikipedia II: The Electric Bugaloo
- Stickipedia
- Nazipedia
- Pedia Pedia
- The Resource Formerly Known As Wikipedia
- Disney's Mickipedia
So what exactly is the practical difference between malware and badware? Is it a level of instrusiveness metric? Or a measure of the alleged malevolence on the part of those responsible for the coding?
Hypothetically, what would have to happen to have an example of software classified as evilware? Brimstone?
I've toyed around the idea with buying a Mac as my next computer, however ads like this make me reconsider.
...Obviously a "think outside the box" kind of fellow!
And here we have an example of why the stuffed-dicks on Madison Avenue have the influence they do: willies like the parent poster who will gladly let their own judgement be subsumed by their opinion on the style of a television commercial.
Is this going to get a wider release or is their market targeting pretty squarely focused on people soft on piracy? It's a little bit like making an anti-STD video for people who never get laid.
For the record (since this sort of thing often comes up in these discussions) I am a content creator who thinks copyright should expire after a decade, period. I give most of my works away for free, but figure on revenue-generating works that if you can't make money off it in ten years it either sucks, or you do.
I had a similar experience with a bank some years ago. When I came in to explain to my personal banking unit that my browser kept crashing when I tried to access their online offerings, she immediately said, "You're using an Apple PC, right?"
"Yes," I admit quietly, just in case some hicks are listening and might want to drag me behind their pick-up truck or otherwise hassle me for my alternative lifestyle choice.
"The thing is," the personal banking unit explained, "the Apple computers have such a small share of the market that it costs too much for us to develop a secure website in parallel."
"That's too bad," I sigh.
"Yeah," she agrees, "it seems like every third person who wants to do online banking has an Apple."
I pause and scratch my head. "I thought you said there weren't enough of us to make it worth your while."
"Well yeah," she nods, "but I think it must be easier to get on the Internet with Apple or something, because it seems like almost everybody who's comfortable doing online banking wants to use an Apple for it."
"So doesn't that mean there's a demand for a Mac-compatible service?"
"Well no," she shakes her head, "you see Apple has less than a billionth of percent of marketshare. So...you know -- that's that. Sorry!"
So, to make a long story short, that's when I entered a special Scientology-run programme designed to cure me using non-psychiatric means of my penchant for using the wrong computer. And I feel much better now.
Endeavours to challenge the hiding place of the lost city of Atlantis predate even Columbus' discovery.
The mercury is rising for those still dedicated to Atlantis' existence, because results to date indicate it the whole thing is mere legend. Rumours of ancient conspiracies have appalled certain academics. Iss there any credible basis for continuing to believe?
Okay, soyuz all later.
...this hasn't been my experience. I live rurally and I have a fairly honkin' broadband connection.
Part of the difference may be that here in Freedomland the government spend lots of Canadian Tire money over a couple of decades wiring us up from stem to stern with fibre-optics and phat cable. When broadband Internet became a market the infrastructure was already there.
In Canada's case, centralized regulation forced the telephone/data/media companies to co-operate to achieve this goal.
You don't have to turn it off if it is plugged in and the battery model number is, surprisingly, listed right after the text string "Model No.:" on the back of the battery.
...Dumbass.
So, either I'm functionally illiterate or your knowledge in this matter may be more patchy than solid.
Hint: functionally illiterate people tend not to use terms like "functionally illiterate", and when they do they spell it incorrectly.
See, now you've gone too far. It's one thing to suggest that Clippy might want to help us with common browser tasks like popping a bone, and it's another thing altogether to suggest that we might pop a bone for Clippy.
I'm sicing the DMCA on you for reverse-engineering my nausea.
Obviously it needed to be funnier, but I suffer from a lack of experience with Clippy. I use NeoOffice, which is kind of like OpenOffice for pretentious people. As far as I know, there is no NeoOffice open-source equivalent of Clippy.
I've seen Microsoft's Clippy, though. He popped up on my screen and I scrambled to stuff him back away again because of the aggressive way he diffused my dignity as a computer literate human being into a little puff of pink smoke.
Next time I will endeavour to make my comment either more clearly funny or more clearly a troll. Given the hair splitting, however, I think we should have two moderation options for the troll flag: negative troll (for bunk and games) and positive troll (for inspired mindfuckery).
Please re-issue the comment on paper at your earliest convenience.
"I would like to introduce into the evidence, your honour, this wooden ducky. Let the wooden ducky be known as Exhibit FUD. See the ducky dance? Dance ducky, dance."
I've been a self-employed freelancer for eight years who took a full-time job six months ago. In this time I've been able to observe that the single biggest drain on employee productivity is farting around on the Web.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating corporate firewall fascism. However, it seems to me that for employees with poor self-management skills unfettered Web access is an enema for provoking ass-blasting levels of laziness. It is a procrastination enabler for those who are poor are organizing their time.
What's the solution? Obviously we should all be graded upon hiring to determine whether we're elite enough to control our own net access, or whether we need net nannies. Okay, that may be less obvious and more simplistic and stupid but still -- you see what I'm getting at: painting employees with too broad a brush is tricky here, but abuse of net privileges is personality dependent.
(/me looks around, checks for managers.)
Well, I'm off to read MeFi and fuck around with my blog. Give me a heads-up if anybody important is coming.