How the hell can opening from a save dialog be useful? Did you think you were going to save, then realize that you wanted to open something? How much time elapsed there? Does the save dialog go away once you open something? If so, why didn't you just use the open dialog? If not, why didn't you just save first?
It's an excellent time waster. Rather than being productive, I find myself opening a QuickTime movie and compiling PHP over and over and auto-reloading web pages while hitting F9 over and over because it's just so freaking cool!:-)
Actually, at my school, one of the database professors has her students do service learning projects for non-profit agencies. The one I did last year turned out pretty well, was a phenomenal success for the agency, and I continued working on it for the non-profit in question as part of my co-op.
With your book example, you could say that, but I doubt anyone would buy it. Any argument against DRM or current media is more or less nullified by the counter-argument that a non-DRM version is almost always available (in CD form).
DRM does sort of exist in book form; you're not allowed to photocopy it. Of course, people "break" the DRM by doing it anyway. (This is DRM in a very loose sense; it's not forced by technology.)
If something like Apple's store succeeded on a grand scale, people *would* be forced into certain formats. That's why it is important that these services fail miserably -- so that nobody can monopolize their own proprietary media standard.
That's the thing, though. If Apple's store and others succeed, it means that the patrons have chosen and accepted the store's format.
"I made this. You can have this, but don't give it to anyone else." "You're unethical. If you give this to me, I can do whatever I want with it." Who's right?
DRM is not inherently unethical. Especially using your argument, that it's "man-made" and therefore somehow outside the realm of ethics.
Almost _all_ security (outside of computer source code) is through obscurity. People can't use my credit card number because they don't know it. They can't enter my house without setting off an alarm, unless they know the passcode. Public key cryptography works because no one else knows the private key. (There's a reason it's called a private key, BTW.) Oftentimes, obscurity is a very good method of security.
As for not using Mac or Windows, well, there's a reason most of the open source stuff still isn't considered "consumer-grade" on the desktop. There's a lot of software that simply isn't there. Granted, there's also a lot that is. But is there even one online music site that supports Linux?
If you can't afford an iPod, you can still buy CD's, rip them, and put the resulting MP3s on a CD MP3 unit. (What happened to FLAC, anyway?) No one's forcing you to use AAC if you don't want to.
If you don't want to burn and re-rip, just burn. Play the resulting audio CD wherever you want.
If I've lost this argument on every point, what happened to the other five?
1) That the RIAA should cease to exist is not really something for an online music service to decide. By exclusively using non-RIAA artists, that would significantly limit said service's offerings.
2) DRM is not somehow unethical. The people who don't follow copyright law are unethical. In this sense, the RIAA is ethical to the extreme. Forcing a lack of DRM still implicitly condones piracy. The number of people who will buy something they can get for free "because it's the right thing to do" is a very small percentage of the total poplation. You can't really expect to make a lot of money selling what's available for free.
3) 2:1 isn't as good as 10:1. I generally rip at VBR, highest quality. The result is perfectly acceptable, if not perfect. As for AAC, what I've bought so far amount to oldies (where the source is bad enough), and a techno album that sounded just fine. If you're only compressing at 2:1, you might as well just keep the CD's handy and save yourself the trouble of what is it, 5MB/min for CD-quality at 2:1?
3b) Yes, I can say that I haven't found the DRM in iTMS files restrictive in the least. I can play them on both of my comptuers, and I can put them on my iPod. I can use them how I want for my personal use, as allowed by law..
4)...what happened to 4? You're not going to explain a creative commons license or how it benefits the artist?
5) Well, if you want to have a "freebies" section, I suppose there's little harm in that. If the service wants to spend storage and bandwidth on it, which I can't see a music service wanting to do.
6) Actually, I think I remember hearing that AAC uses less CPU than MP3. Also, iTunes supports more than just the iPod as a portable player. It should be up to the player manufacturer to include protected-AAC support. Apple's cooperation is probably needed, but Apple should help with that. (Whether they will or not is outside the scope of this thread, I'd say.)
7) Well, the tracks could stay at 99 cents. You can always mess with album price, but lower than that per track seems almost cheapish.
If you want to buy one of these, it might be a good idea to go to the unleashing of Panther this Friday at an Apple Store! When Jaguar came out, it was what, 10% off everything in the store?
1) Nevertheless, some artists are with the RIAA. Many of these are popular. To not include them in a service's offering is simply not a good business decision.
2) To the RIAA, yes.
3) Is the compression ratio as good as MP3/AAC? Does it support DRM? You're not going to get a legal music service that distributes files without DRM. What's the point?
4) Your original comment was just too much legalese for me to parse.:)
5) Yes, but you still put the BitTorrent file on a website! If you want publicity and to allow free downloads, you don't need a music distro system for it.
6) Well, it obviously depends on how you do the encrypting. But no, public key encryption is not my area of expertise. I know how it works in theory, though. Doesn't it involve a decent amount of processor overhead? Don't people complain that iTunes uses too much CPU as it is? I don't know how exactly that's encrypted, though.
7) It may be good for the musicians, but it woulldn't be good for the distro site. With few exceptions (album-only tracks), every track is 99 cents on iTMS. This makes the prices for every track appealing, not just some of them.
Not to slam you, but I'm going to have to slam your comment.
1.) What? You want who? Nah, they're too popular and well-known. 2.) Yes, this music distro condones illegal file sharing. 3.) FLAC? What's that? Uh, yeah.... you can play that with any player you want. 4.) You're an artist? Quick, get your lawyer! (What would this mean for the customers?) 5.) Because BitTorrents on websites just don't work. 6.) Especially the part that encrypts/decrypts your credit card information. See also: packet sniffer. 7.) 99 cents a track? Come on! We just pick random numbers!
You're welcome to create such a service (even a mock up), but I doubt it would receive rave reviews.
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How the hell can opening from a save dialog be useful? Did you think you were going to save, then realize that you wanted to open something? How much time elapsed there? Does the save dialog go away once you open something? If so, why didn't you just use the open dialog? If not, why didn't you just save first?
It's an excellent time waster. Rather than being productive, I find myself opening a QuickTime movie and compiling PHP over and over and auto-reloading web pages while hitting F9 over and over because it's just so freaking cool! :-)
Macintosh File System? LOL! What was the file limit on that thing, 256 files or something? Some small number like that.
Which is funny, because most of the PC users I talk to don't like iTunes, and most of the Mac users love it.
If Apple suddenly up and changed the interface to somehting totally different, the users would riot.
They did. We did. 10.1 helped. By 10.2, we were over it, because it rocked.
Okay, if that (sans gunshot) is really the startup sound for Longhorn, I need to set that one up to play at login.
...is that they only quote one doctor.
That quote is at the end of the article.
The doctor tells us, "But we don't generally use urine as a social signal."
They didn't get anything else they could print?
I think Expose alone is worth the $70 I paid for it.
There were ads? Oops, I didn't notice them.
Tell me where you are getting your master's so I can not go there.
Actually, at my school, one of the database professors has her students do service learning projects for non-profit agencies. The one I did last year turned out pretty well, was a phenomenal success for the agency, and I continued working on it for the non-profit in question as part of my co-op.
Dude, every state has the worst roads in the country.
Come on, somebody tell me where I can drive without potholes in city streets.
but the music in them has always been beautiful.
Chrono Trigger MIDI's, anyone?
Damn. Wish I had mod points.
Yeah, kinda funny how proteron wants it both ways, hmm?
Oh and I see they still have "Mpegger" for sale. Yeah, just in case anyone's still using System 7. Sheesh.
With your book example, you could say that, but I doubt anyone would buy it. Any argument against DRM or current media is more or less nullified by the counter-argument that a non-DRM version is almost always available (in CD form).
DRM does sort of exist in book form; you're not allowed to photocopy it. Of course, people "break" the DRM by doing it anyway. (This is DRM in a very loose sense; it's not forced by technology.)
If something like Apple's store succeeded on a grand scale, people *would* be forced into certain formats. That's why it is important that these services fail miserably -- so that nobody can monopolize their own proprietary media standard.
That's the thing, though. If Apple's store and others succeed, it means that the patrons have chosen and accepted the store's format.
Looking at the link in the story, I see those things have a battery life of 30 - 110 hours. Damn. That's pretty sweet.
:)
How much music do they hold, anyway? (Just gimme a rough estimate.)
And no, I'm not giving up my iPod.
"I made this. You can have this, but don't give it to anyone else."
"You're unethical. If you give this to me, I can do whatever I want with it."
Who's right?
DRM is not inherently unethical. Especially using your argument, that it's "man-made" and therefore somehow outside the realm of ethics.
Almost _all_ security (outside of computer source code) is through obscurity. People can't use my credit card number because they don't know it. They can't enter my house without setting off an alarm, unless they know the passcode. Public key cryptography works because no one else knows the private key. (There's a reason it's called a private key, BTW.) Oftentimes, obscurity is a very good method of security.
As for not using Mac or Windows, well, there's a reason most of the open source stuff still isn't considered "consumer-grade" on the desktop. There's a lot of software that simply isn't there. Granted, there's also a lot that is. But is there even one online music site that supports Linux?
If you can't afford an iPod, you can still buy CD's, rip them, and put the resulting MP3s on a CD MP3 unit. (What happened to FLAC, anyway?) No one's forcing you to use AAC if you don't want to.
If you don't want to burn and re-rip, just burn. Play the resulting audio CD wherever you want.
If I've lost this argument on every point, what happened to the other five?
1) That the RIAA should cease to exist is not really something for an online music service to decide. By exclusively using non-RIAA artists, that would significantly limit said service's offerings.
...what happened to 4? You're not going to explain a creative commons license or how it benefits the artist?
2) DRM is not somehow unethical. The people who don't follow copyright law are unethical. In this sense, the RIAA is ethical to the extreme. Forcing a lack of DRM still implicitly condones piracy. The number of people who will buy something they can get for free "because it's the right thing to do" is a very small percentage of the total poplation. You can't really expect to make a lot of money selling what's available for free.
3) 2:1 isn't as good as 10:1. I generally rip at VBR, highest quality. The result is perfectly acceptable, if not perfect. As for AAC, what I've bought so far amount to oldies (where the source is bad enough), and a techno album that sounded just fine. If you're only compressing at 2:1, you might as well just keep the CD's handy and save yourself the trouble of what is it, 5MB/min for CD-quality at 2:1?
3b) Yes, I can say that I haven't found the DRM in iTMS files restrictive in the least. I can play them on both of my comptuers, and I can put them on my iPod. I can use them how I want for my personal use, as allowed by law..
4)
5) Well, if you want to have a "freebies" section, I suppose there's little harm in that. If the service wants to spend storage and bandwidth on it, which I can't see a music service wanting to do.
6) Actually, I think I remember hearing that AAC uses less CPU than MP3. Also, iTunes supports more than just the iPod as a portable player. It should be up to the player manufacturer to include protected-AAC support. Apple's cooperation is probably needed, but Apple should help with that. (Whether they will or not is outside the scope of this thread, I'd say.)
7) Well, the tracks could stay at 99 cents. You can always mess with album price, but lower than that per track seems almost cheapish.
Well, Jaguar's decent on a 466MHz iBook. I still have my sights set on one of these, though.
If you want to buy one of these, it might be a good idea to go to the unleashing of Panther this Friday at an Apple Store! When Jaguar came out, it was what, 10% off everything in the store?
Still, there's no question that a G4 of any type beats a G3 under OS X. And now even the cheapest Apple laptop boasts a G4. Dat's da bomb.
You meant twice an iPod. I hope.
Hoo boy. Here we go.
:)
1) Nevertheless, some artists are with the RIAA. Many of these are popular. To not include them in a service's offering is simply not a good business decision.
2) To the RIAA, yes.
3) Is the compression ratio as good as MP3/AAC? Does it support DRM? You're not going to get a legal music service that distributes files without DRM. What's the point?
4) Your original comment was just too much legalese for me to parse.
5) Yes, but you still put the BitTorrent file on a website! If you want publicity and to allow free downloads, you don't need a music distro system for it.
6) Well, it obviously depends on how you do the encrypting. But no, public key encryption is not my area of expertise. I know how it works in theory, though. Doesn't it involve a decent amount of processor overhead? Don't people complain that iTunes uses too much CPU as it is? I don't know how exactly that's encrypted, though.
7) It may be good for the musicians, but it woulldn't be good for the distro site. With few exceptions (album-only tracks), every track is 99 cents on iTMS. This makes the prices for every track appealing, not just some of them.
Not to slam you, but I'm going to have to slam your comment.
1.) What? You want who? Nah, they're too popular and well-known.
2.) Yes, this music distro condones illegal file sharing.
3.) FLAC? What's that? Uh, yeah.... you can play that with any player you want.
4.) You're an artist? Quick, get your lawyer! (What would this mean for the customers?)
5.) Because BitTorrents on websites just don't work.
6.) Especially the part that encrypts/decrypts your credit card information. See also: packet sniffer.
7.) 99 cents a track? Come on! We just pick random numbers!
You're welcome to create such a service (even a mock up), but I doubt it would receive rave reviews.
Please tell me why I need to a closed service with its closed file formats, closed protocols, and DRM advertised to me on Slashdot?
Because it was done legally and done well.