From what I've seen, The Core[whatever] frameworks in Tiger will finally put this issue to bed, and provide all the APIs a developer could want...
Right. Unfortunately Tiger will probably not be released before the broadcast flag deadline, so any updates from Elgato to take advantage of it will likely cripple the EyeTV's functionality.
It seems bizarre to me (and the 350 million other Europeans) that all you American folk still have to fill in your own tax returns; surely our way is better?
Well, I prefer that taxes are visible so people have some idea of what they're paying to the government, and can better decide whether the benefits are worth it. (On the other hand that doesn't really work in practice here because there are still so many hidden taxes).
In current capitalist countries, the Rich get richer and the poor a whole hell of a lot poorer.
At worst you can cherry-pick statistics and argue that over time certain intervals the income of the "poor" stays fairly constant. "A hell of a lot poorer" is ludicrously false.
People are sane and morally decent and break the speed limit every day...does that mean we should not have a speed limit?
No. It means that current speed limits are unreasonable and should be revised.
So when you invest your time and money in creating some work - if you want give it out or sell it, restrict it or don't restrict it...but YOU should have the choice.
And I mostly agree. But I strongly oppose attempts by the creators to limit my access to technology because I could conceivably use it to copy material against their wishes. That's where all the debate is taking place today.
just wanting to be able to watch my discs on the equipment of choice, including open source players
Forget it. If there were an open source player, you could modify it to to dump the content to a file and re-encode in an open format. In fact, you won't be (legally) able to watch them on any open source OS, because then you could grab the pixels in the display buffer and do the same thing. DRM is fundamentally incompatible with fair use.
It was called OpenDoc. Apple killed after it flopped because software developers apparently don't like the idea of creating totally interoperable software components.
It was more that it was *very* unstable on System 7, and the API was almost impossible to use. A Cocoa-based version on Mac OS X today could do much better.
Anything that requires awareness or discipline on the part of the bulk of users is doomed to fail.
100% correct. Spyware doesn't *need* insecure-by-design features like ActiveX to spread, that just makes it easier. Social engineering is always going to be available, and if Linux or Mac OS X became sufficiently mainstream then will be problems there as well (probably not to the same extent, but they will exist). The only solution I can see is sandboxing with fine-grained access permissions. The spiffy cursor pack you downloaded has no business looking at your address book or opening any network connections.
Political descisions, at least, are (supposed to be) made in the interests of the people. The same can't be said for corporate decisions.
Sure it can. In order to profit a corporation has to sell goods and services that people want. Of course that's in theory and it doesn't always work that way, but as you correctly note neither are political decisions always made for the good of the people.
If people are forced pay this hefty tax on blank media and even on computers, then private copying should become a right rather than a privilege. That means that publishers should be forbidden to add any DRM, region codes, Macrovision and whatnot to their content.
Exactly. And it's not even necessary to prohibit DRM schemes, it should just *not* be illegal to defeat them.
If that percentage were not small, then they cannot be "rich". But your attitude is common among most Americans, and maybe even most humans. We seem to throw logic out the window when it comes to our personal chances.
Perhaps most humans are not as fixated as you are with comparing themselves to their neighbors. Having a comfortable life is one of my goals. Being one of the top x% of the "rich" is not, and I don't lie awake at night concerned that somebody else has more than me. As you and the left continually fail to realize, the economy is not a zero sum game.
Considering this problem is caused by file formats that are insecure by design and not "P2P clients", much better advice would be to avoid Windows Media files from *any* source.
When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping.NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of.NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.
But that's the key; if Firefox achieves that level of popularity, not many developers will write IE-only apps.
This will cause a lot of bad "word of mouth" advertising for macs, unless Apple is ready for it. Adding a software link to the default home page of Safari would be a very good start.
Already done: Apple menu->"Get Mac OS X Software" goes here.
It would make sense that the rumored machine would be "not marketed to the traditional market" if it was for the Thais.
Apple tried that sort of thing before; the eMac was originally supposed to be only for education, but popular demand forced them to sell to everyone. If they try to limit this Mac to specific countries, we'll see a huge gray market spring up in record time.
Ideally all confi files would follow the same format and syntax (god no please don't say XML)
Why not? It works fine in OS X: your preferences are XML files stored in ~/Library/Preferences. Usually neither you nor the developer needs to know the exact format (although it is documented and human readable), because the preferences APIs handle reading and writing them transparently.
In most cases you don't. The most common shared libraries are built in and always available. If you need others, just put them in the application package. Yes this can result in duplication, but disk space is cheap and it removes the problem of different apps wanting different versions of libFoo.
I think the ARM processor would make that a complicated affair.
I doubt it. If the ARM in the iPod can play MP3s in software, it's at least as fast as first-generation PowerPCs, which were emulating 68040s with decent performance.
Until they do "version 2.0" of the iPod that has unhackable firmware or some other crap that prevents this project from working.
That's a possibility, of course you can always just not upgrade. Also unlike the Xbox it's not clear that Apple will be violently opposed to this, since they make far more profit on the iPod hardware than from iTMS downloads.
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From what I've seen, The Core[whatever] frameworks in Tiger will finally put this issue to bed, and provide all the APIs a developer could want...
Right. Unfortunately Tiger will probably not be released before the broadcast flag deadline, so any updates from Elgato to take advantage of it will likely cripple the EyeTV's functionality.
It seems bizarre to me (and the 350 million other Europeans) that all you American folk still have to fill in your own tax returns; surely our way is better?
Well, I prefer that taxes are visible so people have some idea of what they're paying to the government, and can better decide whether the benefits are worth it. (On the other hand that doesn't really work in practice here because there are still so many hidden taxes).
I didn't think there was a reason to actually burn to CD anymore.
Er, to play in CD players?
In current capitalist countries, the Rich get richer and the poor a whole hell of a lot poorer.
At worst you can cherry-pick statistics and argue that over time certain intervals the income of the "poor" stays fairly constant. "A hell of a lot poorer" is ludicrously false.
People are sane and morally decent and break the speed limit every day...does that mean we should not have a speed limit?
No. It means that current speed limits are unreasonable and should be revised.
So when you invest your time and money in creating some work - if you want give it out or sell it, restrict it or don't restrict it...but YOU should have the choice.
And I mostly agree. But I strongly oppose attempts by the creators to limit my access to technology because I could conceivably use it to copy material against their wishes. That's where all the debate is taking place today.
Why do you call it an artificial market?
Because as my current sig notes, the marginal cost is zero and thus government intervention is required in order to create artificial scarcity.
often afforded by a comfortable day job writing commercial software protected by copyright
The large majority of professional developers write software for internal use, for which copyright is mostly irrelevant.
just wanting to be able to watch my discs on the equipment of choice, including open source players
Forget it. If there were an open source player, you could modify it to to dump the content to a file and re-encode in an open format. In fact, you won't be (legally) able to watch them on any open source OS, because then you could grab the pixels in the display buffer and do the same thing. DRM is fundamentally incompatible with fair use.
It was called OpenDoc. Apple killed after it flopped because software developers apparently don't like the idea of creating totally interoperable software components.
It was more that it was *very* unstable on System 7, and the API was almost impossible to use. A Cocoa-based version on Mac OS X today could do much better.
Anything that requires awareness or discipline on the part of the bulk of users is doomed to fail.
100% correct. Spyware doesn't *need* insecure-by-design features like ActiveX to spread, that just makes it easier. Social engineering is always going to be available, and if Linux or Mac OS X became sufficiently mainstream then will be problems there as well (probably not to the same extent, but they will exist). The only solution I can see is sandboxing with fine-grained access permissions. The spiffy cursor pack you downloaded has no business looking at your address book or opening any network connections.
Political descisions, at least, are (supposed to be) made in the interests of the people. The same can't be said for corporate decisions.
Sure it can. In order to profit a corporation has to sell goods and services that people want. Of course that's in theory and it doesn't always work that way, but as you correctly note neither are political decisions always made for the good of the people.
If people are forced pay this hefty tax on blank media and even on computers, then private copying should become a right rather than a privilege. That means that publishers should be forbidden to add any DRM, region codes, Macrovision and whatnot to their content.
Exactly. And it's not even necessary to prohibit DRM schemes, it should just *not* be illegal to defeat them.
If that percentage were not small, then they cannot be "rich". But your attitude is common among most Americans, and maybe even most humans. We seem to throw logic out the window when it comes to our personal chances.
Perhaps most humans are not as fixated as you are with comparing themselves to their neighbors. Having a comfortable life is one of my goals. Being one of the top x% of the "rich" is not, and I don't lie awake at night concerned that somebody else has more than me. As you and the left continually fail to realize, the economy is not a zero sum game.
The story had all the facts right. Dubya did get preferential treatment to get in the Guard to get out of Vietnam.
Oh, so it's ok to make up evidence as long as you're sure the guy is guilty. I hear the LAPD is hiring.
Considering this problem is caused by file formats that are insecure by design and not "P2P clients", much better advice would be to avoid Windows Media files from *any* source.
When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping .NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of .NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.
But that's the key; if Firefox achieves that level of popularity, not many developers will write IE-only apps.
wtf is actually a very handy unix utility that spells out acronyms
I thought you were joking, but tried "apt-get install wtf" (on OS X with Fink), and you weren't. Nifty.
You're not _meant_ to upgrade a Mac.
Sure you are. Almost every Mac needs a RAM upgrade to run well. (Which Apple will happily sell you at a ludicrously inflated price).
Tech support. I work in this area, and if this computer is as crappy as they describe, I don't want to support it.
Huh? It sounds like the guts of the eMac minus the display, and while the eMac isn't a great machine I certainly wouldn't call it crappy.
This will cause a lot of bad "word of mouth" advertising for macs, unless Apple is ready for it. Adding a software link to the default home page of Safari would be a very good start.
Already done: Apple menu->"Get Mac OS X Software" goes here.
It would make sense that the rumored machine would be "not marketed to the traditional market" if it was for the Thais.
Apple tried that sort of thing before; the eMac was originally supposed to be only for education, but popular demand forced them to sell to everyone. If they try to limit this Mac to specific countries, we'll see a huge gray market spring up in record time.
I think it's important that there be a user with the ability to do anything.
Agreed, but there's no reason I should have to become that user if all I want to do is listen on port 80.
Ideally all confi files would follow the same format and syntax (god no please don't say XML)
Why not? It works fine in OS X: your preferences are XML files stored in ~/Library/Preferences. Usually neither you nor the developer needs to know the exact format (although it is documented and human readable), because the preferences APIs handle reading and writing them transparently.
How do you handle dependencies?
In most cases you don't. The most common shared libraries are built in and always available. If you need others, just put them in the application package. Yes this can result in duplication, but disk space is cheap and it removes the problem of different apps wanting different versions of libFoo.
I think the ARM processor would make that a complicated affair.
I doubt it. If the ARM in the iPod can play MP3s in software, it's at least as fast as first-generation PowerPCs, which were emulating 68040s with decent performance.
Until they do "version 2.0" of the iPod that has unhackable firmware or some other crap that prevents this project from working.
That's a possibility, of course you can always just not upgrade. Also unlike the Xbox it's not clear that Apple will be violently opposed to this, since they make far more profit on the iPod hardware than from iTMS downloads.