I think Apple have to walk a very fine line here. Run Windows programs too badly, and Windows users won't switch. But run them too well, and no-one will write any new Mac programs; the OS/2 story*.
I expect they'll do what they've done for X11 apps: they run well enough to use if you have to, but nowhere near as well as Cocoa/Carbon ones. They look ugly, they don't fit in with the OS X look, system facilities like printing don't work well, etc.
* Actually, let's play this one out. Just suppose OS X runs Windows applications better than Windows does. What happens? Windows developers carry on writing for Windows; many Mac developers have too much invested to switch, but some do, and newer ones go for Windows too. (As a Mac user myself, I'd hate that, but let's consider it anyway.) What then? OS X still has all its current advantages: hardware integration, Expose, Spotlight, ease of use, etc. If they've let Windows apps run that well, then those will still be able to share in that. So there's still an incentive to buy a Mac, even if there's no longer an incentive to write for it (specifically).
As someone else pointed out, OS/2 didn't fail because it could run Windows applications; it failed because there weren't any compelling reasons to use it over Windows. The Windows compatibility simply made it easier to switch away. Maybe that doesn't apply to OS X?
What if it can be enforced sometimes? What about the chilling effect that a law can have even if it's never broken? What about laws that exist only so that prosecutors can add extra charges to the one they really care about, simply to make doubly sure they convict (or, in the USA, extra reason to accept a plea bargain)?
A law can have wide-ranging and undesirable effects even if it's not enforced.
some people do not. We get all of the unpleasant side effects of inebriation, but never get any sort of "buzz" or "high" or anything that could be construed as desireable at all.
You don't know how relieved I am to see you write that, after all these years thinking it was just me!
It took a good long while for me to step back and realise that I just wasn't getting anything out of it: I don't really like the taste of most alcoholic drinks, and they don't make me feel good (whether I drank a little or a lot, regularly or not) -- I was only drinking because everyone else was and because I expected to feel good.
These days I generally don't bother; it's cheaper, I can drive, and it doesn't worry me when some people think I'm TT. Very liberating, actually.
Also worth pointing out that I'd often find what I wanted on the first page if it wasn't for all those aggregators and link whores jamming up all the top links all the time. You know: Kelkoo, dealtime, PriceGrabber, shopperuk, Shopzilla, and the like. I don't mind them clogging up the sponsored links, coz I usually ignore those, but do they really need to take up all that space in the main list? I mean, is anyone really fooled into thinking that there's ever any genuine information or offers there? Who clicks on them???
The road warrior thing will flop, though. People are going to stay where there's a network or pay the $10.
I dunno about that. For example, I have a snapshot of Wikipedia on my PDA. (TomeRaider version; under 1GB.) Of course, it doesn't have all the advantages of a live Wiki: no recent updates, current events, or editability. But it's still a great information resource, and it's really handy when I'm sitting on trains (which I do for a few hours each day) or in a car, round at my parents', or anywhere else away from the net. (And even if I'm at my computer, it can still be quicker to find an article there than online!)
Yes, it's second-best; but even that's still pretty useful, and I've learnt an awful lot browsing it. I expect that a judicious selection of web sites could provide the same sort of benefit.
I have never improved faster than when I recorded myself.
Seconded! It can be very embarrassing listening to yourself (trust me, it's worse when singing than playing an instrument), but if you grit your teeth and do it, it can really help. Once you've persevered enough to be able to listen to yourself without cringing, you'll probably find other people like listening to you as well!
You don't need any high technology to do it, of course; when I was learning piano an old handheld tape recorder was plenty. (It also catches all the "Whoops!"s and "Hang on, I can get this bit..."s.) A musician's most valuable tool is his or her ears; as long as you're listening carefully to yourself, you'll improve, so use whatever helps you do that.
Cubase is probably overkill for this kind of thing; if I was doing it in software, I'd probably use a simple audio editor like Amadeus II. But I'd certainly recommend Cubase for serious recording. As other posters mentioned, Audacity is also good for basic wave editing. Another package I'd recommend is Lilypond for engraving (i.e. typesetting and printing) music; it uses its own textual language which can be a pain to learn, but it produces very clear and natural notation.
But don't forget the old joke on how you get to Carnegie Hall: practise!
I'm talking a decade and a half ago, but when it came to choosing A-Levels, I was specifically advised NOT to do Computer Science if I wanted to go on and do it at uni. So I stuck to double-maths, physics & chemistry. Thanks to a couple of excellent maths teachers, I got really hot on that, so by the time it came to choosing a degree subject, I stayed with that. And it's not done me any harm as far as finding a job.
From what I can tell, the most important things are:
A sciency/numerate subject: maths, physics, engineering, etc.
A reasonable result: 2.1 is fine, though my 2.2 doesn't seem to have hampered me.
A well-known name helps: obviously Oxford and Cambridge count for most, but also ones like Durham (where I went), Bristol, St Andrew's, Warwick, Exeter, Southampton, etc.
Those are what employers are looking for on a degree certificate; if you can also show some interest in software and some coding experience too, then you've got as good a chance as anyone. And of course, the more employment experience you have, the less your degree qualification matters anyway.
(As it happens, in hindsight I should probably have chosen to do Computer Science instead of Maths. But NOT because that subject on my degree certificate would have opened any more doors -- instead, because I wasn't really suited to maths; I suspect I'd have got a 2.1 or even a 1st in C.S., and enjoyed it a lot more!)
Of course, this is assuming you're talking about software development. Computer Science as a research field is a very different beast; most of us coders never use a tiny fraction of real computer science (in fact, most of them seem to have no knowledge of algorithms, formal methods, automata, or any of the science behind it at all).
The eternal question about Apple is if they're a software company or a hardware company...
(Er, technically it's not, coz the answer's a simple "Yes". The question is whether they're a software company or a hardware company. But anyway...)
Why must it be one or the other? Why can't it be both?
AISI, Apple is a hardware company in the sense that they make most of their money from selling hardware. But they're not just selling the hardware; otherwise they'd just be another Dell, and we know that's not it. Macs aren't just about the hardware: they have a unique selling point, which is OS X and its applications. And Apple makes OS X and some of those applications. So they're also a software company; but instead of that software being completely separate, they use it an an incentive to buy their hardware.
In other words, you can't separate the two. Apple isn't a hardware company like Dell and all the other hardware companies. Neither are they a software company like Microsoft and all the other software companies. Instead, they're linking the two. People buy Mac hardware in order to run Mac software.
Which is why Windows-on-Mac-hardware isn't a problem; it's adding an extra incentive to buy Mac hardware on top of the existing one. But (legal, supported) OS-X-on-PC-hardware would break the link, destroy that Apple synergy, and remove the main reason for buying Mac hardware. It would separate Apple's hardware and software divisions and force them both to stand on their own, each lacking their main advantage. And, in a marketplace which is extremely far from level and with huge inertia, the results would not be pretty.
Re:weird perspective for a conflict... and wrong!
on
Sun's Open Source DRM
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So how about DRM that let's YOU do whatever you want with it?
Because there's no such thing. (Except for very small values of 'whatever you want'.) Here's a post I made on another site explaning why:
There's no such thing as 'reasonable' DRM
One of the common rationales for some forms of DRM is that they're 'reasonable': they let you do most of the things you'd want to. But IMO that's just an illusion: no form of DRM is reasonable, and no form can ever be completely reasonable.
And yes, I do have a rational reason for thinking that, even though at present it seems to be an extreme position: the 'default' access to any copy-protected material will always be to prevent copying. And ultimately, it's that 'default' access which matters.
There are lots of ways you could try to access DRM-protected material: you could present it in a variety of applications on your desktop computer (media players, book readers, or whatever depending on the type of material); you could copy it to another machine; you could copy it to a handheld machine and try to present it there; you could convert it to a different format; and so on. And these access methods will always increase: people will always be coming up with new applications, devices, formats, ways of accessing the material. Therefore, any DRM scheme must not only address the current access methods, but also future ones too. So there are basically two possible types of DRM: those which allow access in specific ways and prevent everything else (the no-access default), and those which prevent access in specific ways and allow everything else (the full-access default).
Now, that second type is in practice unworkable, because it would then be possible to come up with a new access method, and use that to convert the material into another DRM-free form, effectively removing the DRM and rendering it useless. So, any practical DRM scheme must prevent all access other than that it specifically allows.
And that's what makes DRM so harmful. It's future-unproofed, blocking any cool new technologies which come along. It's inaccessible, blocking many (or all) existing technologies used by people with disabilities. It relies upon the company providing the right software and/or access codes. It's non-portable, blocking most other hardware platforms, operating systems, or devices. And it always will be so, because that's the nature of DRM: to block 'everything else'.
Take, for example, a form of DRM that's actually fairly reasonable and non-restrictive: Apple's FairPlay system, which is used for tracks bought from the iTunes Music Store. It lets you authorise up to 5 computers to play those tracks, along with all iPods synced to them. You can even burn copies to CD. Sounds pretty fair.
But it still has a no-access default (while it's working as designed, anyway). You can't use any other software to edit the tags. You can't split or join tracks. You can't play them on any other MP3 (or AAC) player. You can't convert them to lower-bitrate versions. You can't convert them to whatever cool new format comes along and offers the same sound quality at a fraction of the filesize. You can't do anything other than the few things they specifically allow, even though those other things might be completely legal and moral for you to do, or might become so at some point in the future!
This is why I think there can never be a completely 'reasonable' form of DRM. There will always be new forms of access that the creators didn't think of. And DRM will always block them. And we will all suffer. Sooner or later, people will learn this. I hope it's sooner.
Why would a porn site want it to work? Their aim is surely to be seen by as many people as possible; they could easily argue that keeping a.com address lets them be seen by people stuck unwillingly behind filters. And in their business most of them are unlikely to be concerned about 'doing the right thing', are they?
Basically, no-one other than the filterers has any incentive for this to work. That's why it couldn't.
And can we even do that without breaking half the applications out there that depend on some obscure bit of functionality or behavior?
You might be surprised.
The original Atari ST's OS (TOS) was based on GEM and fairly similar to the original Mac OS: it could only run one application (plus up to 6 desk accessories) at once, no memory protection, simple and proprietary font support, rudimentary printer support, 8.3 filenames, simple B&W GUI, etc.
Since then, projects such as MultiTOS, MiNT, MagiC, and NVDI have replaced part or all of the OS, giving full pre-emptive multi-tasking, memory protection, true colour and much higher resolutions, full scaling font support (TrueType etc.), long filenames and large drives, networking, pretty good Unix compatibility, a greyscaled 3D look along with new file selectors and proportional scrollbars etc., object linking, and many other improvements giving a much more modern system. And yet, the new system is much faster than the original; and almost all the old applications still work unchanged, in most cases better than before. It's amazing what they managed to achieve.
Now, that may not translate directly to the Mac. The ST came out a year later than the Mac, and may have taken advantage of some of the Mac's experience, resulting in a slightly cleaner system. By the time Apple were considering OS rewriting, Mac OS 8 was probably a much bigger system than the Atari's, with many more dependencies, and many more ancient apps with dirty coding that couldn't work with the new features.
But it does tend to agree with the parent message's suggestion that incremental improvements should have been possible. Maybe going for a new OS was a choice rather than a necessity (though that may not have been apparent at the time).
OTOH, despite all the setbacks and failures, the Mac now has a pretty good modern OS, so with hindsight maybe it was the right decision after all!
In a recent post about Wikipedia and the fuss over its imperfection, I wondered whether the real outcome would be to lessen people's blind faith in all apparently authoritative sources (and rightly so). From which Wikipedia would probably benefit.
Maybe something similar will eventually operate here? Once more and more personal material becomes available, and people begin to see just how much misleading, mistaken, malicious, and downright false material there is on the web, maybe they'll learn not to take any of it as read.
Meanwhile, I guess we'll all have to be careful...
You never know. My surname's relatively rare, and yet Googling turns up one other guy with the same first and last names -- and like me he's a Brit, and a keyboard player! Admittedly, he does it for a living and is known for it, whereas the various musical things I do are only in an amateur capacity. But it's still a little unnerving.
Oh, and a Grammar Nazi PS: a name can't be 'very unique'. Either it's unique, or it's not; you can't qualify uniqueness. (Arguably, you can qualify lack of uniqueness: something might be 'nearly unique', for example. But once it achieves uniqueness, that means there's nothing like it, so how can you compare degrees?)
Sony's rootkit was absolutely unacceptable, but don't think Sony didn't already know that.
Actually, I suspect it didn't. Or at least (given that a corporation is NOT a single entity, no matter how much legal fiction would wish it otherwise) I suspect that most of the people actually involved in making this rootkit didn't consider it 'absolutely unacceptable'.
What you see of the world is affected by where you're looking from, probably far more so that most of us realise. Imagine you're a techie at Sony. Imagine that you believe in the company, that you like a lot of what they're doing and want them to succeed. (Yeah, you might need to use a lot of imagination, but that's the point!) Imagine that you see directly the harm that music sharing is doing (CDs that you worked on being shared for free), but that you don't know anyone who would do such a thing.
From that perspective, trying to prevent CDs being ripped and shared is very important. It's your job, but it's also something you see as a valid goal. You're not against fair use, but maybe you see it as an unfortunate casualty in the fight against sharing.
And then you come across this method which will prevent any Windows machine from being able to rip the CD, whilst still allowing it to be used perfectly well on normal CD players. It doesn't have any of the problems with previous methods, such as being easily defeated with black markers, or extreme sensitivity to scratches. CD players get the full, unharmed audio, and everyone's happy! Users won't even know it's there! And yet it fully protects the music you put on there.
Sounds ideal. Okay, it does mean fixing the Windows CD drivers. But that's okay; it shouldn't affect any normal use of the drive; it should simply protect your audio. What's the big problem with that? Why's there all this fuss about something that's harmless, that's just protecting the music from illegal copying?
___
Now, I've never worked for Sony, or been in anything remotely like that position, and I suspect most Slashdotters haven't either. But it's a really useful exercise to try looking at things from the opposite PoV. After that, I expect that most of the people who understood the technical details of this rootkit considered it justified, a valid defence against crime. And that most of the higher-ups who should have known better didn't understand enough of the technical details to see the implications.
Mind you, we're not free from bias, either. AIUI, this isn't a 'rootkit' in the usual sense of the word; doesn't calling it so instantly bring in all sorts of nasty associations?
The way I heard it, capsaicin was shown to be a good preventative for stuff like stomach cancers. They think that's because it increases blood flow to the stomach.
Good point. In fact, I wonder if that's really the point of all the RIAA's fuss: to get people to think about the issue only in terms of 'the record industry' (i.e. the big labels) vs 'the illegal file sharers'.
But I suspect the real fight isn't between the industry and file sharers at all; it's between the big labels and the independents.
In the good old days, making records was a hugely expensive process: you needed studios, producers, mastering, pressing, distribution, advertising, and financing for it all. And the big labels had all of those sewn up. You wanted to make a record, you went to them. The system worked, and the big labels made huge profits.
But look at the situation now. You don't need big expensive studios, coz you can record straight to a reasonably capable Mac or PC, which can simulate lots of the effects and other gear. You don't need expensive producers, coz you can practise and learn what you need in your bedroom. You don't need expensive mastering facilities, coz you can do all that in software now. You don't need expensive pressing facilities, coz you can burn CDRs. You don't need expensive distribution systems, coz you can deliver over the net. You don't need expensive advertising, coz word-of-mouth can work. And without all that expensive stuff, you don't need a big company financing it.
That's not to say that those expensive facilities don't make it much easier to create a good (or popular) recording. Time, experience, good gear, good people, and/or media-saturation advertising certainly count for an awful lot. But they're no longer necessary. Bit by bit, the big labels are losing their control over the industry; bit by bit, they're having to compete with independent artists and labels; bit by bit, they're being taken out of the loop.
And I suspect that's what scares them more than anything else.
But they can't get any public sympathy for that. So they concentrate on those 'illegal file sharers'. They frame the debate only in terms of those two polar opposites, and divert people's attention from anything else. And they hope that that'll get the public (and legislators) on their side; that that'll some how justify their attempts to lock down the industry. For example, if they levy charges on blank media or on P2P music transfers, who loses? The independents. If they get legislation to enforce encryption or watermarking or whatever, who loses? The independents. Anyone else making music, from lone bedroom musicians to reasonably big non-RIAA labels. That's the RIAA's real enemy, and we shouldn't let all this fuss over P2P distract us.
If you're using a similar encoder engine (like whichever one is built into iTunes), chances are the loss is pretty much the same.
I don't believe that's the case. You might expect it to be so -- after all, with the same bitrate, it ought to be able to encode everything that was in the first MP3 -- but MP3 encoders are really complex beasts, and AIUI re-encoding is likely to reduce the quality level still further. (Any experts here who can add some detail?)
Now, how much worse you think it is, and whether you consider that reduction worth it, it of course a matter for you, your ears, and your HD size. But AIUI the results will be worse than the original MP3.
(Of course, this doesn't apply to the ->CD->MP3 case you mentioned, because iTunes sells stuff in AAC! But it would apply if you took that AAC, burned it to CD, and then re-encoded it to AAC.)
Agreed. Would anyone go to the trouble of Photoshopping it carefully enough to match the edges precisely, and subtly add glare intersected by the shadow of the other monitor, but somehow forget something very very obvious like that corner?
Okay, it's possible; but in this case I think it's far more possible that the photo itself is genuine.
That's not to say that Windows is really running on the Mac; I'll await the jury on this one, but my guts tell me that 1) I shouldn't have had that second onion bhaji, and 2) this is sounding more like a case of Mac OS X displaying a screenshot of Windows than a genuine competition winner.
The railways were privatised in the early 90s, leading to vast increases in fares, delays and cancellations.
Not everywhere. On my line, for example (c2c), fares didn't change much, and although the service was patchy for the first couple of years, since then it's been very good: there are lots of trains, they all have modern sliding-door carriages, and they're practically always there and on time.
I know that the experience of passengers elsewhere has been lamentable, but credit where it's due.
True. Even the straight language translation can be very tricky, unless you have a feeling for languages and coded the whole thing with translation in mind.
For example, I was working on some fairly complicated validation, which could result in a wide range of messages of the form "You can't [do some action] because [some field] is [too high|too low|zero|non-zero|etc.]" or "You can't [do some other action] because [some other condition]". My first attempt localised the strings for each bracketed bit separately; this was nice and neat, avoided repetition, kept the code short, and it looked like there was little to translate.
Trouble is, I was thinking in English grammar; I gather some languages simply wouldn't fit into that scheme. So we ended up translating full messages, which means we need to store each combination separately: the code is much longer, and there are many many more strings to translate; but it does mean that each language has each error message in the most natural, grammatical form.
I'm sure there are many other language gotchas, too. And of course there are the obvious issues with number formats, timezones, calendars...
Slashdot Mirror
I think Apple have to walk a very fine line here. Run Windows programs too badly, and Windows users won't switch. But run them too well, and no-one will write any new Mac programs; the OS/2 story*.
I expect they'll do what they've done for X11 apps: they run well enough to use if you have to, but nowhere near as well as Cocoa/Carbon ones. They look ugly, they don't fit in with the OS X look, system facilities like printing don't work well, etc.
* Actually, let's play this one out. Just suppose OS X runs Windows applications better than Windows does. What happens? Windows developers carry on writing for Windows; many Mac developers have too much invested to switch, but some do, and newer ones go for Windows too. (As a Mac user myself, I'd hate that, but let's consider it anyway.) What then? OS X still has all its current advantages: hardware integration, Expose, Spotlight, ease of use, etc. If they've let Windows apps run that well, then those will still be able to share in that. So there's still an incentive to buy a Mac, even if there's no longer an incentive to write for it (specifically).
As someone else pointed out, OS/2 didn't fail because it could run Windows applications; it failed because there weren't any compelling reasons to use it over Windows. The Windows compatibility simply made it easier to switch away. Maybe that doesn't apply to OS X?
A law can have wide-ranging and undesirable effects even if it's not enforced.
You don't know how relieved I am to see you write that, after all these years thinking it was just me!
It took a good long while for me to step back and realise that I just wasn't getting anything out of it: I don't really like the taste of most alcoholic drinks, and they don't make me feel good (whether I drank a little or a lot, regularly or not) -- I was only drinking because everyone else was and because I expected to feel good.
These days I generally don't bother; it's cheaper, I can drive, and it doesn't worry me when some people think I'm TT. Very liberating, actually.
Also worth pointing out that I'd often find what I wanted on the first page if it wasn't for all those aggregators and link whores jamming up all the top links all the time. You know: Kelkoo, dealtime, PriceGrabber, shopperuk, Shopzilla, and the like. I don't mind them clogging up the sponsored links, coz I usually ignore those, but do they really need to take up all that space in the main list? I mean, is anyone really fooled into thinking that there's ever any genuine information or offers there? Who clicks on them???
I dunno about that. For example, I have a snapshot of Wikipedia on my PDA. (TomeRaider version; under 1GB.) Of course, it doesn't have all the advantages of a live Wiki: no recent updates, current events, or editability. But it's still a great information resource, and it's really handy when I'm sitting on trains (which I do for a few hours each day) or in a car, round at my parents', or anywhere else away from the net. (And even if I'm at my computer, it can still be quicker to find an article there than online!)
Yes, it's second-best; but even that's still pretty useful, and I've learnt an awful lot browsing it. I expect that a judicious selection of web sites could provide the same sort of benefit.
Seconded! It can be very embarrassing listening to yourself (trust me, it's worse when singing than playing an instrument), but if you grit your teeth and do it, it can really help. Once you've persevered enough to be able to listen to yourself without cringing, you'll probably find other people like listening to you as well!
You don't need any high technology to do it, of course; when I was learning piano an old handheld tape recorder was plenty. (It also catches all the "Whoops!"s and "Hang on, I can get this bit..."s.) A musician's most valuable tool is his or her ears; as long as you're listening carefully to yourself, you'll improve, so use whatever helps you do that.
Cubase is probably overkill for this kind of thing; if I was doing it in software, I'd probably use a simple audio editor like Amadeus II. But I'd certainly recommend Cubase for serious recording. As other posters mentioned, Audacity is also good for basic wave editing. Another package I'd recommend is Lilypond for engraving (i.e. typesetting and printing) music; it uses its own textual language which can be a pain to learn, but it produces very clear and natural notation.
But don't forget the old joke on how you get to Carnegie Hall: practise!
I'm talking a decade and a half ago, but when it came to choosing A-Levels, I was specifically advised NOT to do Computer Science if I wanted to go on and do it at uni. So I stuck to double-maths, physics & chemistry. Thanks to a couple of excellent maths teachers, I got really hot on that, so by the time it came to choosing a degree subject, I stayed with that. And it's not done me any harm as far as finding a job.
From what I can tell, the most important things are:
Those are what employers are looking for on a degree certificate; if you can also show some interest in software and some coding experience too, then you've got as good a chance as anyone. And of course, the more employment experience you have, the less your degree qualification matters anyway.
(As it happens, in hindsight I should probably have chosen to do Computer Science instead of Maths. But NOT because that subject on my degree certificate would have opened any more doors -- instead, because I wasn't really suited to maths; I suspect I'd have got a 2.1 or even a 1st in C.S., and enjoyed it a lot more!)
Of course, this is assuming you're talking about software development. Computer Science as a research field is a very different beast; most of us coders never use a tiny fraction of real computer science (in fact, most of them seem to have no knowledge of algorithms, formal methods, automata, or any of the science behind it at all).
[fx: MacGeek appears as if by magic]
You rang, sir?
(Er, technically it's not, coz the answer's a simple "Yes". The question is whether they're a software company or a hardware company. But anyway...)
Why must it be one or the other? Why can't it be both?
AISI, Apple is a hardware company in the sense that they make most of their money from selling hardware. But they're not just selling the hardware; otherwise they'd just be another Dell, and we know that's not it. Macs aren't just about the hardware: they have a unique selling point, which is OS X and its applications. And Apple makes OS X and some of those applications. So they're also a software company; but instead of that software being completely separate, they use it an an incentive to buy their hardware.
In other words, you can't separate the two. Apple isn't a hardware company like Dell and all the other hardware companies. Neither are they a software company like Microsoft and all the other software companies. Instead, they're linking the two. People buy Mac hardware in order to run Mac software.
Which is why Windows-on-Mac-hardware isn't a problem; it's adding an extra incentive to buy Mac hardware on top of the existing one. But (legal, supported) OS-X-on-PC-hardware would break the link, destroy that Apple synergy, and remove the main reason for buying Mac hardware. It would separate Apple's hardware and software divisions and force them both to stand on their own, each lacking their main advantage. And, in a marketplace which is extremely far from level and with huge inertia, the results would not be pretty.
Because there's no such thing. (Except for very small values of 'whatever you want'.) Here's a post I made on another site explaning why:
There's no such thing as 'reasonable' DRM
One of the common rationales for some forms of DRM is that they're 'reasonable': they let you do most of the things you'd want to. But IMO that's just an illusion: no form of DRM is reasonable, and no form can ever be completely reasonable.
And yes, I do have a rational reason for thinking that, even though at present it seems to be an extreme position: the 'default' access to any copy-protected material will always be to prevent copying. And ultimately, it's that 'default' access which matters.
There are lots of ways you could try to access DRM-protected material: you could present it in a variety of applications on your desktop computer (media players, book readers, or whatever depending on the type of material); you could copy it to another machine; you could copy it to a handheld machine and try to present it there; you could convert it to a different format; and so on. And these access methods will always increase: people will always be coming up with new applications, devices, formats, ways of accessing the material. Therefore, any DRM scheme must not only address the current access methods, but also future ones too. So there are basically two possible types of DRM: those which allow access in specific ways and prevent everything else (the no-access default), and those which prevent access in specific ways and allow everything else (the full-access default).
Now, that second type is in practice unworkable, because it would then be possible to come up with a new access method, and use that to convert the material into another DRM-free form, effectively removing the DRM and rendering it useless. So, any practical DRM scheme must prevent all access other than that it specifically allows.
And that's what makes DRM so harmful. It's future-unproofed, blocking any cool new technologies which come along. It's inaccessible, blocking many (or all) existing technologies used by people with disabilities. It relies upon the company providing the right software and/or access codes. It's non-portable, blocking most other hardware platforms, operating systems, or devices. And it always will be so, because that's the nature of DRM: to block 'everything else'.
Take, for example, a form of DRM that's actually fairly reasonable and non-restrictive: Apple's FairPlay system, which is used for tracks bought from the iTunes Music Store. It lets you authorise up to 5 computers to play those tracks, along with all iPods synced to them. You can even burn copies to CD. Sounds pretty fair.
But it still has a no-access default (while it's working as designed, anyway). You can't use any other software to edit the tags. You can't split or join tracks. You can't play them on any other MP3 (or AAC) player. You can't convert them to lower-bitrate versions. You can't convert them to whatever cool new format comes along and offers the same sound quality at a fraction of the filesize. You can't do anything other than the few things they specifically allow, even though those other things might be completely legal and moral for you to do, or might become so at some point in the future!
This is why I think there can never be a completely 'reasonable' form of DRM. There will always be new forms of access that the creators didn't think of. And DRM will always block them. And we will all suffer. Sooner or later, people will learn this. I hope it's sooner.
Basically, no-one other than the filterers has any incentive for this to work. That's why it couldn't.
Isn't that like saying "Well, your honour, if I hadn't murdered him, he'd eventually have died anyway..."?
But concentrating on software politics is likely to ensure better software tomorrow. And the day after. And the one after that.
Which do you consider more important?
You might be surprised.
The original Atari ST's OS (TOS) was based on GEM and fairly similar to the original Mac OS: it could only run one application (plus up to 6 desk accessories) at once, no memory protection, simple and proprietary font support, rudimentary printer support, 8.3 filenames, simple B&W GUI, etc.
Since then, projects such as MultiTOS, MiNT, MagiC, and NVDI have replaced part or all of the OS, giving full pre-emptive multi-tasking, memory protection, true colour and much higher resolutions, full scaling font support (TrueType etc.), long filenames and large drives, networking, pretty good Unix compatibility, a greyscaled 3D look along with new file selectors and proportional scrollbars etc., object linking, and many other improvements giving a much more modern system. And yet, the new system is much faster than the original; and almost all the old applications still work unchanged, in most cases better than before. It's amazing what they managed to achieve.
Now, that may not translate directly to the Mac. The ST came out a year later than the Mac, and may have taken advantage of some of the Mac's experience, resulting in a slightly cleaner system. By the time Apple were considering OS rewriting, Mac OS 8 was probably a much bigger system than the Atari's, with many more dependencies, and many more ancient apps with dirty coding that couldn't work with the new features.
But it does tend to agree with the parent message's suggestion that incremental improvements should have been possible. Maybe going for a new OS was a choice rather than a necessity (though that may not have been apparent at the time).
OTOH, despite all the setbacks and failures, the Mac now has a pretty good modern OS, so with hindsight maybe it was the right decision after all!
Maybe something similar will eventually operate here? Once more and more personal material becomes available, and people begin to see just how much misleading, mistaken, malicious, and downright false material there is on the web, maybe they'll learn not to take any of it as read.
Meanwhile, I guess we'll all have to be careful...
Oh, and a Grammar Nazi PS: a name can't be 'very unique'. Either it's unique, or it's not; you can't qualify uniqueness. (Arguably, you can qualify lack of uniqueness: something might be 'nearly unique', for example. But once it achieves uniqueness, that means there's nothing like it, so how can you compare degrees?)
(But couldn't you work in a reference to the Silv'ry Tay?)
Actually, I suspect it didn't. Or at least (given that a corporation is NOT a single entity, no matter how much legal fiction would wish it otherwise) I suspect that most of the people actually involved in making this rootkit didn't consider it 'absolutely unacceptable'.
What you see of the world is affected by where you're looking from, probably far more so that most of us realise. Imagine you're a techie at Sony. Imagine that you believe in the company, that you like a lot of what they're doing and want them to succeed. (Yeah, you might need to use a lot of imagination, but that's the point!) Imagine that you see directly the harm that music sharing is doing (CDs that you worked on being shared for free), but that you don't know anyone who would do such a thing.
From that perspective, trying to prevent CDs being ripped and shared is very important. It's your job, but it's also something you see as a valid goal. You're not against fair use, but maybe you see it as an unfortunate casualty in the fight against sharing.
And then you come across this method which will prevent any Windows machine from being able to rip the CD, whilst still allowing it to be used perfectly well on normal CD players. It doesn't have any of the problems with previous methods, such as being easily defeated with black markers, or extreme sensitivity to scratches. CD players get the full, unharmed audio, and everyone's happy! Users won't even know it's there! And yet it fully protects the music you put on there.
Sounds ideal. Okay, it does mean fixing the Windows CD drivers. But that's okay; it shouldn't affect any normal use of the drive; it should simply protect your audio. What's the big problem with that? Why's there all this fuss about something that's harmless, that's just protecting the music from illegal copying?
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Now, I've never worked for Sony, or been in anything remotely like that position, and I suspect most Slashdotters haven't either. But it's a really useful exercise to try looking at things from the opposite PoV. After that, I expect that most of the people who understood the technical details of this rootkit considered it justified, a valid defence against crime. And that most of the higher-ups who should have known better didn't understand enough of the technical details to see the implications.
Mind you, we're not free from bias, either. AIUI, this isn't a 'rootkit' in the usual sense of the word; doesn't calling it so instantly bring in all sorts of nasty associations?
But I suspect the real fight isn't between the industry and file sharers at all; it's between the big labels and the independents.
In the good old days, making records was a hugely expensive process: you needed studios, producers, mastering, pressing, distribution, advertising, and financing for it all. And the big labels had all of those sewn up. You wanted to make a record, you went to them. The system worked, and the big labels made huge profits.
But look at the situation now. You don't need big expensive studios, coz you can record straight to a reasonably capable Mac or PC, which can simulate lots of the effects and other gear. You don't need expensive producers, coz you can practise and learn what you need in your bedroom. You don't need expensive mastering facilities, coz you can do all that in software now. You don't need expensive pressing facilities, coz you can burn CDRs. You don't need expensive distribution systems, coz you can deliver over the net. You don't need expensive advertising, coz word-of-mouth can work. And without all that expensive stuff, you don't need a big company financing it.
That's not to say that those expensive facilities don't make it much easier to create a good (or popular) recording. Time, experience, good gear, good people, and/or media-saturation advertising certainly count for an awful lot. But they're no longer necessary. Bit by bit, the big labels are losing their control over the industry; bit by bit, they're having to compete with independent artists and labels; bit by bit, they're being taken out of the loop.
And I suspect that's what scares them more than anything else.
But they can't get any public sympathy for that. So they concentrate on those 'illegal file sharers'. They frame the debate only in terms of those two polar opposites, and divert people's attention from anything else. And they hope that that'll get the public (and legislators) on their side; that that'll some how justify their attempts to lock down the industry. For example, if they levy charges on blank media or on P2P music transfers, who loses? The independents. If they get legislation to enforce encryption or watermarking or whatever, who loses? The independents. Anyone else making music, from lone bedroom musicians to reasonably big non-RIAA labels. That's the RIAA's real enemy, and we shouldn't let all this fuss over P2P distract us.
I don't believe that's the case. You might expect it to be so -- after all, with the same bitrate, it ought to be able to encode everything that was in the first MP3 -- but MP3 encoders are really complex beasts, and AIUI re-encoding is likely to reduce the quality level still further. (Any experts here who can add some detail?)
Now, how much worse you think it is, and whether you consider that reduction worth it, it of course a matter for you, your ears, and your HD size. But AIUI the results will be worse than the original MP3.
(Of course, this doesn't apply to the ->CD->MP3 case you mentioned, because iTunes sells stuff in AAC! But it would apply if you took that AAC, burned it to CD, and then re-encoded it to AAC.)
Okay, it's possible; but in this case I think it's far more possible that the photo itself is genuine.
That's not to say that Windows is really running on the Mac; I'll await the jury on this one, but my guts tell me that 1) I shouldn't have had that second onion bhaji, and 2) this is sounding more like a case of Mac OS X displaying a screenshot of Windows than a genuine competition winner.
Not everywhere. On my line, for example (c2c), fares didn't change much, and although the service was patchy for the first couple of years, since then it's been very good: there are lots of trains, they all have modern sliding-door carriages, and they're practically always there and on time.
I know that the experience of passengers elsewhere has been lamentable, but credit where it's due.
For example, I was working on some fairly complicated validation, which could result in a wide range of messages of the form "You can't [do some action] because [some field] is [too high|too low|zero|non-zero|etc.]" or "You can't [do some other action] because [some other condition]". My first attempt localised the strings for each bracketed bit separately; this was nice and neat, avoided repetition, kept the code short, and it looked like there was little to translate.
Trouble is, I was thinking in English grammar; I gather some languages simply wouldn't fit into that scheme. So we ended up translating full messages, which means we need to store each combination separately: the code is much longer, and there are many many more strings to translate; but it does mean that each language has each error message in the most natural, grammatical form.
I'm sure there are many other language gotchas, too. And of course there are the obvious issues with number formats, timezones, calendars...