If you fail to see the need for DRM, you can't be taken very seriously.
Record lables make billions selling completely unprotected CDs, and Hollywood makes billions selling DVDs with trivially defeatable CSS. When they say they won't release content without "unbreakable" DRM, they're lying. And even if they weren't, Cory is absolutely right in that *if* we have to choose between computing freedom and the entertainment industry's business models, it should be a no-brainer.
VMs and jails have come a long way in the last few years and are beginning to enter the mainstream. What is still needed is the integration, good defaults, and good GUI.
I agree completely.
My money is on Apple to do it right first, but I could be wrong. MS may beat them to the punch, and OpenBSD or one of the secure Linux's is not out of the running.
Unfortunately Microsoft prefers to "solve" the problem by removing our control over our computers via Palladium/NGSCB/whatever it's called today. It's too early to tell, but I fear Apple may be tempted to go down the same path. The problem is that "trading freedom for security" may seem like a good deal to millions of users sick of viruses and spyware. Hopefully Linux or BSD can demonstrate that it's possible to protect against malware while putting the user's interests above Hollywood's.
How can you quantify security. I would consider it to be a binary measure, either you are secure or you aren't.
That's just wrong. My apartment is "not secure"; even a marginally motivated burglar could break in and abscond with my belongings. But I'm still going to lock the door when I leave.
Neither of those are a reform, they're a gift to the wealthy disguised as fairness.
The FairTax is progressive, because of the universal rebate. Most flat tax plans also have a large standard deduction so that those with low incomes pay zero or negative net taxes. And both could get rid of FICA which is the most regressive tax we have.
For some reason computing platforms create a LOT passion. However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms.
You see it on any minority platform, because on them most of the users have made a conscious choice rather than accepting the default, and are therefore more inclined to defend their decision. There are Windows fans who are just as fanatical as Mac zealots, but they aren't as visible because they're surrounded by millions of Windows users who just wanted a computer. And Linux users have occasionally been known to strongly defend their platform...
However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms. We saw it on the Amiga, OS/2, Be and for a decade or more among the Mac faithful.
This should be your clue that the operative condition is "minority" and not "doomed". Well, that and your hypothesis's requirement of precognitive powers.
And be honest for a minute. The day before Steve handed out the x86 Kool-Aid you would probably have been among the most rabid defenders of the inherent superiority of PPC.
Highly doubtful. Mac users had been fed up with lousy G4 performance and the inability to get the G5 in a laptop for years.
No, my argument is that it will creep up on folks when they start dual booting.
What percentage of Mac users will dual boot? I'd bet it's quite a bit lower than you think. Slashdot readers are not a remotely representative sample. Similarly, the percentage of Mac users trying to attach wacky Windows-only peripherals is also much lower than you think.
And then factor in that a WinMac ends the game and other 3rd party app problem.
While creating the problem of "why should anybody write Mac apps anymore". Ask IBM how that worked out for them with OS/2.
Please learn to read. I was disputing the implication that Clinton should be credited with the "strong" economy of the 90s by noting that it was propped up by fraudulent earnings and the dot-com bubble. And no, that's not Clinton's fault; the larger point is that the president does not run the economy.
The problem there isn't the Republican party, which I, in theory, agree with more often than not. The problem there is the Cult of the Neocon that's risen in the past six years, and the fact the GOP leadership got all the GOP Senators rowing in whatever direction they want, which is fine when they are actually doing something useful, but is not a good thing right now.
I can't say everything was all roses and buttercups under Democratic rule, but at least then we had a good economy
Led by Enron and pets.com. The bubble was going to burst regardless of which party was in the White House.
weren't continually at war with faraway places
Thanks to Clinton ignoring multiple terrorist attacks.
and had reasonable expectations of privay.
Perhaps you've forgotten the Gore's Clipper chip, and the bans on encryption software. (Fun fact: John Ashcroft opposed them). And then there's the CDA and DMCA and "Know your Customer". I'll freely acknowledge that most Republicans suck on civil liberties, but am mystified as to why Democrats get a pass.
Evidently, you still have quite way to go if your first reaction is to damn an entire religion based on the actions a few.
The term "Islamist" generally refers to radical Muslims who seek to impose their religious views by force. I damn them just as I damn would-be Christian theocrats.
At least in the physical world, there are a lot of physical mechanisms in place to prevent being [too] taken by the house. Can the same truely be said of the online casinos?
Yes, perhaps even more so. For example, in online poker you can save the history of every hand you've played, and slice the statistics any way you want. There are players with databases of millions of hands who constantly analyze them; if there was something fishy going on they'd find it.
I understand why a government might illegalize casinos, lotteries, and betting, since it is a pernicious vice that many men are drawn into, wasting incalculable amounts of their personal savings in a futile effort to beat the house advantage.
The recent growth in online gambling is primarily driven by poker, where it really is possible to win consistently because you play against the other players rather than against the house. But you're absolutely right about the hypocrisy: government should STFU about gambling until they stop targeting lottery ads at poor people.
TPM isn't any more or less inherently evil than any other technology.
Yeah, it pretty much is.
And we've always had elements of control in societies based on rule of law and respect for property.
And with TPM, my own property acts against my wishes, and I'm a criminal if I find a way to make it obey me. At least when TPM is used for DRM enforcement, which seems to be its main reason for existence.
This is of course another answer to the "why run Linux when you have OS X" question: if Apple does cripple OS X by giving in to Hollywood's demands, Linux will be a good escape hatch.
OS X drains a lot of money from the company without much in the way of tangible revenue.
OS X is the primary reason Apple can sell hardware for hundreds of dollars more than Wintel thralls. Take that away and they become Alienware at best, Gateway at worst.
Apple can now compete directly.
In a commodity, low-margin market. Why on earth would they want to?
I am not saying that Dvorak's analysis is correct, but it is worth seriously considering, especially for Apple shareholders.
True enough, in the sense that if I thought Apple was going to implement this idiocy I would short AAPL as much as possible.
I'm not saying that Apple would do this, but if Apple were going to switch to Windows, they would switch to Windows in the same way that they switched to BSD.
Sure, they could swap out Mach for the NT kernel, but why? The only significant advantage would be making it easier to run Windows apps natively by including the Win32 subsystem, and Apple seems quite content to deliberately ignore Windows.
Almost certainly not, but they COULD, and they are partly owned by MS
No they aren't. MS at one point owned non-voting Apple stock, but they sold it many years ago.
I think you lack imagination. Some of us (me, for example) can bicycle most of the places we need to go. Grandma, with her oxygen, tank cannot.
Right. So as gas becomes more scarce and expensive, those who can conserve will be more inclined to do so, thereby insuring that there's enough for Grandma.
Think of Katrina. Yes, the markets there "cleared"--it just so happened that at the clearing point a lot of people died.
Non sequitur. It wasn't expensive gas that caused those deaths.
It's NOT necessarily SUV ownership - it depends on how they are used.
Exactly correct. That's why a higher gas tax is a much better policy than CAFE standards. The first tells the market to solve the real problem; the second tells the market to find loopholes in the regulations.
Like I have been saying, there is no fundamental difference in the end result whether you walk out of the store with a CD or if you download it off of the internet.
Except there is. In the first case the store has one less CD and in the second case it doesn't.
Please give me an example of something else under the sun that could be called stealing based on my definition?
Going to a friend's place and watching a DVD they bought.
What scares me the most though is that if ever a device is invented that actually COULD copy a car, at will, with the possibility of eliminating hunger, poverty, etc.. that it will be banned because FORD cannot make a profit anymore...
Not if, when. Nanotech will make current copyright disputes look like trifles. That's one of many reasons it's vital that we don't set the precedent that copyright equals absolute control.
Slashdot Mirror
If you fail to see the need for DRM, you can't be taken very seriously.
Record lables make billions selling completely unprotected CDs, and Hollywood makes billions selling DVDs with trivially defeatable CSS. When they say they won't release content without "unbreakable" DRM, they're lying. And even if they weren't, Cory is absolutely right in that *if* we have to choose between computing freedom and the entertainment industry's business models, it should be a no-brainer.
VMs and jails have come a long way in the last few years and are beginning to enter the mainstream. What is still needed is the integration, good defaults, and good GUI.
I agree completely.
My money is on Apple to do it right first, but I could be wrong. MS may beat them to the punch, and OpenBSD or one of the secure Linux's is not out of the running.
Unfortunately Microsoft prefers to "solve" the problem by removing our control over our computers via Palladium/NGSCB/whatever it's called today. It's too early to tell, but I fear Apple may be tempted to go down the same path. The problem is that "trading freedom for security" may seem like a good deal to millions of users sick of viruses and spyware. Hopefully Linux or BSD can demonstrate that it's possible to protect against malware while putting the user's interests above Hollywood's.
How can you quantify security. I would consider it to be a binary measure, either you are secure or you aren't.
That's just wrong. My apartment is "not secure"; even a marginally motivated burglar could break in and abscond with my belongings. But I'm still going to lock the door when I leave.
Neither of those are a reform, they're a gift to the wealthy disguised as fairness.
The FairTax is progressive, because of the universal rebate. Most flat tax plans also have a large standard deduction so that those with low incomes pay zero or negative net taxes. And both could get rid of FICA which is the most regressive tax we have.
Compare the advances in technology, one would expect that with the advances in technology, we'd be working less and have more free time.
And in fact we do.
If I pop open CPU and bandwidth monitors on my dual G5 while playing WoW (windowed), the CPUs are only hitting 50-65%
Is WoW multithreaded? Most games aren't, and that would indicate that it's effectively taking 100% of 1 CPU.
For some reason computing platforms create a LOT passion. However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms.
You see it on any minority platform, because on them most of the users have made a conscious choice rather than accepting the default, and are therefore more inclined to defend their decision. There are Windows fans who are just as fanatical as Mac zealots, but they aren't as visible because they're surrounded by millions of Windows users who just wanted a computer. And Linux users have occasionally been known to strongly defend their platform...
However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms. We saw it on the Amiga, OS/2, Be and for a decade or more among the Mac faithful.
This should be your clue that the operative condition is "minority" and not "doomed". Well, that and your hypothesis's requirement of precognitive powers.
And be honest for a minute. The day before Steve handed out the x86 Kool-Aid you would probably have been among the most rabid defenders of the inherent superiority of PPC.
Highly doubtful. Mac users had been fed up with lousy G4 performance and the inability to get the G5 in a laptop for years.
No, my argument is that it will creep up on folks when they start dual booting.
What percentage of Mac users will dual boot? I'd bet it's quite a bit lower than you think. Slashdot readers are not a remotely representative sample. Similarly, the percentage of Mac users trying to attach wacky Windows-only peripherals is also much lower than you think.
And then factor in that a WinMac ends the game and other 3rd party app problem.
While creating the problem of "why should anybody write Mac apps anymore". Ask IBM how that worked out for them with OS/2.
At last we see the purpose of the is_computer_on() function.
You're blaming Enron on Democrats?
Please learn to read. I was disputing the implication that Clinton should be credited with the "strong" economy of the 90s by noting that it was propped up by fraudulent earnings and the dot-com bubble. And no, that's not Clinton's fault; the larger point is that the president does not run the economy.
The problem there isn't the Republican party, which I, in theory, agree with more often than not. The problem there is the Cult of the Neocon that's risen in the past six years, and the fact the GOP leadership got all the GOP Senators rowing in whatever direction they want, which is fine when they are actually doing something useful, but is not a good thing right now.
Exactly. I'm hoping the Republican Liberty Caucus will actually achieve something.
I can't say everything was all roses and buttercups under Democratic rule, but at least then we had a good economy
Led by Enron and pets.com. The bubble was going to burst regardless of which party was in the White House.
weren't continually at war with faraway places
Thanks to Clinton ignoring multiple terrorist attacks.
and had reasonable expectations of privay.
Perhaps you've forgotten the Gore's Clipper chip, and the bans on encryption software. (Fun fact: John Ashcroft opposed them). And then there's the CDA and DMCA and "Know your Customer". I'll freely acknowledge that most Republicans suck on civil liberties, but am mystified as to why Democrats get a pass.
Evidently, you still have quite way to go if your first reaction is to damn an entire religion based on the actions a few.
The term "Islamist" generally refers to radical Muslims who seek to impose their religious views by force. I damn them just as I damn would-be Christian theocrats.
Likewise, the Republicans need to learn that the constitution is there to protect speech, not one's personal religious beliefs.
Last time I checked the 1st Amendment it covered both...
At least in the physical world, there are a lot of physical mechanisms in place to prevent being [too] taken by the house. Can the same truely be said of the online casinos?
Yes, perhaps even more so. For example, in online poker you can save the history of every hand you've played, and slice the statistics any way you want. There are players with databases of millions of hands who constantly analyze them; if there was something fishy going on they'd find it.
I understand why a government might illegalize casinos, lotteries, and betting, since it is a pernicious vice that many men are drawn into, wasting incalculable amounts of their personal savings in a futile effort to beat the house advantage.
The recent growth in online gambling is primarily driven by poker, where it really is possible to win consistently because you play against the other players rather than against the house. But you're absolutely right about the hypocrisy: government should STFU about gambling until they stop targeting lottery ads at poor people.
TPM isn't any more or less inherently evil than any other technology.
Yeah, it pretty much is.
And we've always had elements of control in societies based on rule of law and respect for property.
And with TPM, my own property acts against my wishes, and I'm a criminal if I find a way to make it obey me. At least when TPM is used for DRM enforcement, which seems to be its main reason for existence.
This is of course another answer to the "why run Linux when you have OS X" question: if Apple does cripple OS X by giving in to Hollywood's demands, Linux will be a good escape hatch.
This reallly makes you wonder about what sort of product they really have left.
OS X and consumer and professional applications optimized for it.
Apple lost their identity after they dumped the Power architecture.
The number of people buying Macs because of the PPC architecture is/was vanishingly close to zero.
Now you can build their product on your own by order a Dell and installing openBSD.
Not remotely accurate. OS X is much more than a skin over BSD.
OSX is simply Free BSD skinned by Apple.
Absolutely wrong.
but Apple has to do something dramatic to get PC users to switch
Why? They're consistently profitable with current Mac sales, and their market share *is* increasing even if not as quickly as you'd like.
Its the old "If you can't beat em, join em!" adage.
Apple is beating them. How many PC cloners came and went over the last 20 years while Apple consistently defied the prophecies of their imminent doom?
OS X drains a lot of money from the company without much in the way of tangible revenue.
OS X is the primary reason Apple can sell hardware for hundreds of dollars more than Wintel thralls. Take that away and they become Alienware at best, Gateway at worst.
Apple can now compete directly.
In a commodity, low-margin market. Why on earth would they want to?
I am not saying that Dvorak's analysis is correct, but it is worth seriously considering, especially for Apple shareholders.
True enough, in the sense that if I thought Apple was going to implement this idiocy I would short AAPL as much as possible.
I'm not saying that Apple would do this, but if Apple were going to switch to Windows, they would switch to Windows in the same way that they switched to BSD.
Sure, they could swap out Mach for the NT kernel, but why? The only significant advantage would be making it easier to run Windows apps natively by including the Win32 subsystem, and Apple seems quite content to deliberately ignore Windows.
Almost certainly not, but they COULD, and they are partly owned by MS
No they aren't. MS at one point owned non-voting Apple stock, but they sold it many years ago.
The majority of the right wing isn't racist?
Correct. And random anecdotes about rednecks don't invalidate this.
I'm not even going to get into the Vietnam issue
I can see why you wouldn't, considering it was a Democratic President that got us into the war and the leftist media that made sure we lost.
And yes, 30+ years of legal precedent makes abortion an "I fucking told you so" point, just like civil rights!
And just like slavery in 1860. I'm pro-choice, but "30 years of precedent" is a really bad argument.
I think you lack imagination. Some of us (me, for example) can bicycle most of the places we need to go. Grandma, with her oxygen, tank cannot.
Right. So as gas becomes more scarce and expensive, those who can conserve will be more inclined to do so, thereby insuring that there's enough for Grandma.
Think of Katrina. Yes, the markets there "cleared"--it just so happened that at the clearing point a lot of people died.
Non sequitur. It wasn't expensive gas that caused those deaths.
It's NOT necessarily SUV ownership - it depends on how they are used.
Exactly correct. That's why a higher gas tax is a much better policy than CAFE standards. The first tells the market to solve the real problem; the second tells the market to find loopholes in the regulations.
Like I have been saying, there is no fundamental difference in the end result whether you walk out of the store with a CD or if you download it off of the internet.
Except there is. In the first case the store has one less CD and in the second case it doesn't.
Please give me an example of something else under the sun that could be called stealing based on my definition?
Going to a friend's place and watching a DVD they bought.
What scares me the most though is that if ever a device is invented that actually COULD copy a car, at will, with the possibility of eliminating hunger, poverty, etc.. that it will be banned because FORD cannot make a profit anymore...
Not if, when. Nanotech will make current copyright disputes look like trifles. That's one of many reasons it's vital that we don't set the precedent that copyright equals absolute control.