Hey as a doddery old fart in Internet terms I'll bite on some of these.
2. Apple is NOT a charity and Steve Jobs is no more your friend than Bill Gates. As CEOs of their respective companies they have one remit - to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. Therefore, neither will give anything away for free if they can avoid doing so.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware. This rumoured move is seen as feasable because it counters the move from Nokia, especially with Nokia signing up EMI to their programme today. Apple would be crazy to not to be in a position to respond should Nokia start eating into Apple's iPod business. Incidentally Apple doesn't issue dividends as far as I am aware.
4. Microsoft's monopoly on desktop OSes is no different to Apple's monopoly on music distribution. Both are BAD for the consumer. Deal with it.
Erm... how does Apple have a monopoly on music distribution. I can still go down to the shops and purchase CDs. I can still rip those CDs. I can still put the resultant [music format of choice] files on to my [music player of choice]. I can even buy my music from other online retailers. I can subscribe to Rhapsody. I can.... I guess you see the point here.
5. DRM facilitates both a rental model and creation of monopolies. It too is bad.
DRM in itself does no such thing. Its perfectly possible to have a DRM scheme that maintains rights without creating a monopoly.
6. Just because someone doesn't pay for downloads doesn't make them a music pirate. You may have heard of these things called "compact disks" that old wierdos like me still buy because we like putting things on shelves in plastic cases, arranging them alphabetically and reading sleeve notes while we're sat on the toilet burping our colostomy bags. If there's an iTunes subscriber out there who has downloaded and paid for 12000 individual tracks of music, then I will happily bow to that person's superiority because that's about as many legal tracks that I've also paid for across my CD collection.
This is a fatuous statement as it misses the point that people are making. Of course, if you rip from CD you aren't a music pirate. The point made is that people that download music without going through some sort of music sort are pirating music. Yes, there are exceptions to this, but the vast majority of music obtained in this fashion is pirated.
You sound bitter. That's a shame because life is finite and wasting it on vitriol seems a waste.
No, but I can put the byproduct on lower priced, large capacity media players than anything Apple pushes.
Never mind the quality, feel the width eh? You almost had an argument but then you put 'pushes' on the end which infers that Apple is doing something dirty.
If only Nokia could deliver me a Symbian phone that did everything its supposed to do all the time.
I've recently had both an N95 and an E61. They are both incredibly frustrating at times, effectively fighting back.
Examples:
N95 - start a new text message, go to add new recipient, press down on the thumb stick before the picture has rendered for the first person on the list. Instantly back to the standby screen with no record of my text message ever having existed.
N95 - GPS joke. I can sit still with a lock on 4 satellites and the thing still can't work out where I am in less than 15 minutes.
E61 - The fscking record button on the side that has no override.
Add to this the fact that Nokia is dumbing down their smartphones, Series 90 anyone?, and the iPhone seems pretty well positioned at the moment. Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have both tried to create smartphones for the masses. My experience with them hasn't been positive.
You must be new here. This is slashdot where the majority of comments are made based entirely on a persons feelings without needing the troublesome task of having to read the articles. They know what is best so just state their ideas.
Sure it may be cool to have grey writing over a dark grey/black background, but its certainly not very user friendly. I started reading the article by highlighting each paragraph in turn so that I could see the words. After two paragraphs though I thought "What am I doing? If someone wants me to read their writing its up to them to make it easy to read". Perhaps the mistake I made was trying to read it in Firefox!
For now, I still want physical media. Most families can get interrupted watching a movie at home, or have kids that rewatch the heck out of a couple of favorites. So there.:P What's required to support this is an option to allow you to 'rent' a movie forever. This would probably come in at a price above the current short term rentals but I can see it coming once competition in this market begins to hit and bandwidth gets cheaper. If MS/Apple could offer HD movies via DD at half the price of phyiscal media on a perpetual rental I'd take that.
How is the parent insightful? You people really need to deal with ordinary people more often. The type that think that a computer is just a TV with a keyboard. That when they login they go to their 'page', that always maximise windows to fill the screen because they can't deal with multiple windows at the same time.
It's part of the arrogance of the technorati that they think that such things are problems that can be overcome by educating the users. That the users should have to learn how to use the computer better. Its the great failing of IT. Computers should be simple to use. By and large they aren't. You can argue that this interface is better than that one but they all share the same problem. They rely on people learning to use them rather too much.
Back to the original topic. The reason Linux isn't making more of an impact is primarly inertia.
Maybe they'll put in some redundant routes after this, which is probably what happened here. Erm... there are redundant routes. Two of them, 2km apart, have both been severed the result being that they are down to a single route. Given the political nature of the area it wouldn't be a surprise for the redunancy to not be as high as possible with inter-country connects.
But seriously, since when did ISP profit from content? I worked for an ISP at one point, and we didn't see a damn bit of money from content, all we got paid for was access to the Internet. Where we getting ripped off? It may only just be coming to the USA but over here in Europe we've had capped broadband access for a while. If you exceed your limit in a month then you pay for the additional capacity used. So, over here at least, ISPs can benefit from filesharing.
Do you pay royalties every time you sing happy birthday at a birthday party? Do you feel guilty for not paying the royalties, as you are required to do by law? Perhaps we should throw you in jail for your blatent criminal violations, after all violating copyright is like stealing, right? There is a distinction here between the copyright of the music itself and that of a recording of a specific performance of that music. IANAL but I don't think that there is a distinction between the two in law. Perhaps there should be?
Why is the morality irrelevant? I was talking about the difference between legal and illegal distribution. Where is the greater good of illegal p2p filesharing? Is its everyone's right to have the music? What about the rights of the artists in this?
The argument goes that the distribution is through the record companies and their trade bodies. They are manipulative, faceless bodies, that have screwed the artists out of what is rightfully theirs. Therefore downloading the music illegally hits the record companies and that's okay. It doesn't matter that the artists lose their cut as well 'cos its not a lot, comparitively, and anyway you're sticking it to the man.
As I said, weasel words. The argument is flawed. It is unlikely that the current record companies will survive in their current form due to the changes that digital distribution brings. That doesn't mean that its okay to just download stuff without paying anyone for it.
I don't give two stuffs about the constitutional this or that. I'm not a US citizen. I never said anything about having the ISPs snoop your connection for illegal filesharing, or DMCA takedown notices, or such like. These were all you trying to find an emotive way to dodge the principle. Weasel words again.
There is greed at work here. In the case of the record companies yes, but in all of the illegal p2p downloaders too. They want the music but they aren't prepared to pay for it. Its possible to purchase music electronically. Does this mean that illegal traffic will stop? No, of course not. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?
This is a non-technical person casting ideas about how to stop illegal downloads. Don't lose sight of the message by concentrating on the detail. He's right technology companies have done very well out of illegal filesharing. There is no reason for them to address it with any seriousness.
Not to mention the fact that downloading is not stealing, illegal or not. No one is deprived of their property through a download as has been pointed out many times before Weasel words. This is hiding behind a technicality and is only smart if you're immature or a lawyer. Its theft whatever the exact legal definition. The alternative to downloading illegally is to purchase by chosing to do this you deprive the nominal owner of a sale. There is no moral difference to lifting a CD from a record store.
[dons flame proof suit] The principle behind what he says is correct. There is an attitude that because people can do things that they should do them and that by downloading music etc illegally for free that they are sticking it to the man.
The techology companies have paid lip service to trying to solve the problem. They offer up solutions but their heart isn't really in it. The ISPs find illegal media downloads profitable especially on capped tariffs. The hardware makers are happy to have music etc on their systems as its another reason to buy/upgrade. They want it to be as easy as possible to get stuff onto them. They will do the minimum possible to ensure that the lawmakers don't feel compelled to legislate.
Blaming the problems on a poor, or outdated, business model might work to salve people's conscience but the weasel words still don't hide the fact that what is being done is illegal. From a ethical point of view they are taking the product of fellow human beings endeavours without paying for them. Somewhat of a moral dilemma.
I fully expect people to heap derision on my simplistic view of the world but in the end the above is the truth of the matter. Anything else is just an exercise in smoke and mirrors to justify theft.
As a final thought. Its now possible to buy music, on a track by track basis, for a reasonable amount of money, without DRM. Has this made a dint in illegal filesharing? [/removes suit][on second thoughts dons suit again, this is slashdot afterall]
Ogg has been the poster child of FOSS for what seems like ages. In all that time its not really taken off. In the main people don't care about the idealism behind a format. All people care about is does it work and is it compatible.
Take off the Glasses of Idealism for a moment and look at it from the Nokia and Apple point of view. They've spent money and effort on implementations of the MPEG-4 standard. They've spent time in committee getting the standard right. If this had gone in they would have to add a whole new format implementation to their systems. One that is inferior to MPEG-4 in many aspects.
What happens if we convert all of this wind energy into electricity? A few small wind farms here and there may have little impact, though there could be local consequences. Huge farms taking out massive amounts of wind power may have, as yet, unknown consequences. Having gambled with fossil fuels is it time to take another gamble?
The point is that each Unix flavour (note Unix not just Linux distro) has its own mechanisms for starting and stopping applications. If someone is clued up enough to me administering those servers and installing qmail then they are capable of sorting out the launching of daemons.
DJBs solution is to impose a non-native method of managing daemons, which though compatible across different systems, is not compatible with all of the other services present on the system. This is a right, royal, pain in the backside.
I stopped using qmail when I switched to exim. I didn't realise anyone was still running it in anger.
Simpler solution. Don't pirate software. They wouldn't pirate guitars, just because its possible to install the software onto more than one machine doesn't mean they should.
You miss the point. Apple knows that they only have to cater to a particular segment of the market with the initial phone offering. It doesn't have to hit all of the spots for all users, just enough of them. Its had wow reviews everywhere in the mainstream press and does what it does very well. It does enough for most people in most of the target markets. That's enough for a version 1.0 device.
WRT to releasing an SDK. Apple didn't need the SDK to be available from the off. They can sell all of the phones they make without one. In order to support the long term viability of the iPhone an SDK will help, most people will probably just use what ships with the phone though.
Leaving off 3G and only having a paltry 8GB of storage gives a nice update path for Apple. They can double the storage, add 3G, and bring in iPhone 2 at the original high end price point. This will help sustain the iPhone buzz in 6-12 months time.
I looked at the iPhone but all things considered have decided to wait until the next revision. An number of other people I know are doing the same too. The reasons?
Lack of 3G. I've got used to 3G and don't want to go back to pre-3G speeds. I don't care if the tariff is unlimited, for it to be useful I want the same access speed as my previous phones.
Memory size. I'm sorry but to replace my phone and iPod, which is what it would do, 8GB just isn't enough. I skipped the original 5GB iPod because it wasn't big enough and got a 10GB one. That was when all it handled was music. Now with music, video and photo's I need more than that for it to be useful.
Carrier tie in. This is a tricky one. We know by French law that the phone must be able to be unlocked. Furthermore due to EU legislation there is no barrier, other than price, to being able to buy an item from another country in the EU.
For now I got an iPodTouch with a very attractive WiFi contract and will see how that pans out. If Apple comes along with a higher capacity 3G iPhone in 12 months I'll consider swapping for that, despite the carrier lock-in. Until then I'll carry two devices around with me.
Yes, there are some things to be worried about webmails, as security of email services, because then someone who knows me or wants to know about my plans could extract _concrete_ info. But "reading" such emails in masses...I think that even Microsoft would agree about it as big waste of computer/personal/whatever time. And if you are in competition, with, well, Google, then using our own email server would be kinda natural, I guess. Also if you don't like that they make some coin on your emails then also don't use them. But it has nothing to do with privacy.
It has everything to do with privacy. Yes, you are a needle in the haystack, but you are there. Your mail is scanned, processes, enumerated. If it happens to flag up as important to something it might even get read by a human. I guess that I'm old an cynical instead of young and apathetic.
BTW. Running my email server takes no time at all. The current one was setup about three years ago and runs fine with minimal maintenance.
I don't understand the popularity of e-mail services like google mail, yahoo mail, hotmail etc. If you read the terms and conditions in them all you are signing away your privacy rights to the contents of your e-mail as soon as you sign up. Sadly the majority of people signing up don't understand this. They see the names Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and don't bother reading very closely.
Though I'm a little skeptical about his motives Ballmer is doing some good here. Of course it won't get past the MS is bad crowd on slashdot but, if it gets enough coverage, it may make people think about what they trust these email systems with.
I've run my own e-mail since the early '90s and see no reason to want to change now. I view these systems as similar to routing all of your snail mail through a third party that opens it, analyzes it, delivers it. They also sign you up to a bunch of mailing lists for products that relate to the things in your post and selling off any statistical information they can get.
Slashdot Mirror
2. Apple is NOT a charity and Steve Jobs is no more your friend than Bill Gates. As CEOs of their respective companies they have one remit - to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. Therefore, neither will give anything away for free if they can avoid doing so.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware. This rumoured move is seen as feasable because it counters the move from Nokia, especially with Nokia signing up EMI to their programme today. Apple would be crazy to not to be in a position to respond should Nokia start eating into Apple's iPod business. Incidentally Apple doesn't issue dividends as far as I am aware.4. Microsoft's monopoly on desktop OSes is no different to Apple's monopoly on music distribution. Both are BAD for the consumer. Deal with it.
Erm5. DRM facilitates both a rental model and creation of monopolies. It too is bad.
DRM in itself does no such thing. Its perfectly possible to have a DRM scheme that maintains rights without creating a monopoly.6. Just because someone doesn't pay for downloads doesn't make them a music pirate. You may have heard of these things called "compact disks" that old wierdos like me still buy because we like putting things on shelves in plastic cases, arranging them alphabetically and reading sleeve notes while we're sat on the toilet burping our colostomy bags. If there's an iTunes subscriber out there who has downloaded and paid for 12000 individual tracks of music, then I will happily bow to that person's superiority because that's about as many legal tracks that I've also paid for across my CD collection.
This is a fatuous statement as it misses the point that people are making. Of course, if you rip from CD you aren't a music pirate. The point made is that people that download music without going through some sort of music sort are pirating music. Yes, there are exceptions to this, but the vast majority of music obtained in this fashion is pirated.
You sound bitter. That's a shame because life is finite and wasting it on vitriol seems a waste.
Never mind the quality, feel the width eh? You almost had an argument but then you put 'pushes' on the end which infers that Apple is doing something dirty.
I got an N95 too. Pretty much proved that Nokia QC is on the downward slope.
If only Nokia could deliver me a Symbian phone that did everything its supposed to do all the time.
I've recently had both an N95 and an E61. They are both incredibly frustrating at times, effectively fighting back.
Examples:
N95 - start a new text message, go to add new recipient, press down on the thumb stick before the picture has rendered for the first person on the list. Instantly back to the standby screen with no record of my text message ever having existed.
N95 - GPS joke. I can sit still with a lock on 4 satellites and the thing still can't work out where I am in less than 15 minutes.
E61 - The fscking record button on the side that has no override.
E61 - buttons randomly disabling themselves. Message button often, power button occasionally.
Add to this the fact that Nokia is dumbing down their smartphones, Series 90 anyone?, and the iPhone seems pretty well positioned at the moment. Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have both tried to create smartphones for the masses. My experience with them hasn't been positive.
You must be new here. This is slashdot where the majority of comments are made based entirely on a persons feelings without needing the troublesome task of having to read the articles. They know what is best so just state their ideas.
roflmao ... I wish I had some mod points left
Sure it may be cool to have grey writing over a dark grey/black background, but its certainly not very user friendly. I started reading the article by highlighting each paragraph in turn so that I could see the words. After two paragraphs though I thought "What am I doing? If someone wants me to read their writing its up to them to make it easy to read". Perhaps the mistake I made was trying to read it in Firefox!
Dude a chinaman is a type of delivery bowled by a left-arm slow bowler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-arm_unorthodox_spin. How the ball looks for satellites I've no idea!
How is the parent insightful? You people really need to deal with ordinary people more often. The type that think that a computer is just a TV with a keyboard. That when they login they go to their 'page', that always maximise windows to fill the screen because they can't deal with multiple windows at the same time.
It's part of the arrogance of the technorati that they think that such things are problems that can be overcome by educating the users. That the users should have to learn how to use the computer better. Its the great failing of IT. Computers should be simple to use. By and large they aren't. You can argue that this interface is better than that one but they all share the same problem. They rely on people learning to use them rather too much.
Back to the original topic. The reason Linux isn't making more of an impact is primarly inertia.
Why is the morality irrelevant? I was talking about the difference between legal and illegal distribution. Where is the greater good of illegal p2p filesharing? Is its everyone's right to have the music? What about the rights of the artists in this?
The argument goes that the distribution is through the record companies and their trade bodies. They are manipulative, faceless bodies, that have screwed the artists out of what is rightfully theirs. Therefore downloading the music illegally hits the record companies and that's okay. It doesn't matter that the artists lose their cut as well 'cos its not a lot, comparitively, and anyway you're sticking it to the man.
As I said, weasel words. The argument is flawed. It is unlikely that the current record companies will survive in their current form due to the changes that digital distribution brings. That doesn't mean that its okay to just download stuff without paying anyone for it.
I don't give two stuffs about the constitutional this or that. I'm not a US citizen. I never said anything about having the ISPs snoop your connection for illegal filesharing, or DMCA takedown notices, or such like. These were all you trying to find an emotive way to dodge the principle. Weasel words again.
There is greed at work here. In the case of the record companies yes, but in all of the illegal p2p downloaders too. They want the music but they aren't prepared to pay for it. Its possible to purchase music electronically. Does this mean that illegal traffic will stop? No, of course not. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?
This is a non-technical person casting ideas about how to stop illegal downloads. Don't lose sight of the message by concentrating on the detail. He's right technology companies have done very well out of illegal filesharing. There is no reason for them to address it with any seriousness.
[dons flame proof suit]
The principle behind what he says is correct. There is an attitude that because people can do things that they should do them and that by downloading music etc illegally for free that they are sticking it to the man.
The techology companies have paid lip service to trying to solve the problem. They offer up solutions but their heart isn't really in it. The ISPs find illegal media downloads profitable especially on capped tariffs. The hardware makers are happy to have music etc on their systems as its another reason to buy/upgrade. They want it to be as easy as possible to get stuff onto them. They will do the minimum possible to ensure that the lawmakers don't feel compelled to legislate.
Blaming the problems on a poor, or outdated, business model might work to salve people's conscience but the weasel words still don't hide the fact that what is being done is illegal. From a ethical point of view they are taking the product of fellow human beings endeavours without paying for them. Somewhat of a moral dilemma.
I fully expect people to heap derision on my simplistic view of the world but in the end the above is the truth of the matter. Anything else is just an exercise in smoke and mirrors to justify theft.
As a final thought. Its now possible to buy music, on a track by track basis, for a reasonable amount of money, without DRM. Has this made a dint in illegal filesharing?
[/removes suit][on second thoughts dons suit again, this is slashdot afterall]
Take off the Glasses of Idealism for a moment and look at it from the Nokia and Apple point of view. They've spent money and effort on implementations of the MPEG-4 standard. They've spent time in committee getting the standard right. If this had gone in they would have to add a whole new format implementation to their systems. One that is inferior to MPEG-4 in many aspects.
This is a pragmatic real world decision.
What happens if we convert all of this wind energy into electricity? A few small wind farms here and there may have little impact, though there could be local consequences. Huge farms taking out massive amounts of wind power may have, as yet, unknown consequences. Having gambled with fossil fuels is it time to take another gamble?
The point is that each Unix flavour (note Unix not just Linux distro) has its own mechanisms for starting and stopping applications. If someone is clued up enough to me administering those servers and installing qmail then they are capable of sorting out the launching of daemons.
DJBs solution is to impose a non-native method of managing daemons, which though compatible across different systems, is not compatible with all of the other services present on the system. This is a right, royal, pain in the backside.
I stopped using qmail when I switched to exim. I didn't realise anyone was still running it in anger.
Simpler solution. Don't pirate software. They wouldn't pirate guitars, just because its possible to install the software onto more than one machine doesn't mean they should.
WRT to releasing an SDK. Apple didn't need the SDK to be available from the off. They can sell all of the phones they make without one. In order to support the long term viability of the iPhone an SDK will help, most people will probably just use what ships with the phone though.
Leaving off 3G and only having a paltry 8GB of storage gives a nice update path for Apple. They can double the storage, add 3G, and bring in iPhone 2 at the original high end price point. This will help sustain the iPhone buzz in 6-12 months time.
- Lack of 3G. I've got used to 3G and don't want to go back to pre-3G speeds. I don't care if the tariff is unlimited, for it to be useful I want the same access speed as my previous phones.
- Memory size. I'm sorry but to replace my phone and iPod, which is what it would do, 8GB just isn't enough. I skipped the original 5GB iPod because it wasn't big enough and got a 10GB one. That was when all it handled was music. Now with music, video and photo's I need more than that for it to be useful.
- Carrier tie in. This is a tricky one. We know by French law that the phone must be able to be unlocked. Furthermore due to EU legislation there is no barrier, other than price, to being able to buy an item from another country in the EU.
For now I got an iPodTouch with a very attractive WiFi contract and will see how that pans out. If Apple comes along with a higher capacity 3G iPhone in 12 months I'll consider swapping for that, despite the carrier lock-in. Until then I'll carry two devices around with me.It has everything to do with privacy. Yes, you are a needle in the haystack, but you are there. Your mail is scanned, processes, enumerated. If it happens to flag up as important to something it might even get read by a human. I guess that I'm old an cynical instead of young and apathetic.
BTW. Running my email server takes no time at all. The current one was setup about three years ago and runs fine with minimal maintenance.
Though I'm a little skeptical about his motives Ballmer is doing some good here. Of course it won't get past the MS is bad crowd on slashdot but, if it gets enough coverage, it may make people think about what they trust these email systems with.
I've run my own e-mail since the early '90s and see no reason to want to change now. I view these systems as similar to routing all of your snail mail through a third party that opens it, analyzes it, delivers it. They also sign you up to a bunch of mailing lists for products that relate to the things in your post and selling off any statistical information they can get.