which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the worryingly-addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft
After two years of badgering by friends already playing it, I finally relented and tried the game out for a month on one of the role-playing realms.
It wasn't a bad game but one thing that killed any immersion for me was the lack of cohesive realism - for example, being given a mission to kill an NPC then having to stand in line waiting for someone else to kill the NPC first, the NPC standing up again and then you killing him again.
Furthermore, for an MMORPG I actually felt quite alone playing it. My friends were invariably off doing their own missions and there seemed to be lots of people shouting abuse or racial hatred but when I actually tried role-playing with other people I bumped into, they pretty much ignored me and went on their way.
I didn't buy a second month's subscription and have gone back to exploring the worlds of Fallout 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on my own because they feel far more immersive than WoW to me.
Get your facts straight. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s until September 2007. The iTunes Music Store opened in April 2003. Apple started selling DRM-free tracks in April 2007.
What other inference is to be taken from your statement other than Apple fully supported DRM until such time as popular opinion and Amazon's entry into downloadable music *FORCED* them to move to a non-DRM format.
As for the "much smaller download sites," how many of them were selling tracks from the major labels DRM-free? Oh, that's right, none of them were.
Irrelevant statement - they were selling DRM-free music, it doesn't matter what label it came from.
Except they only did it after Apple's appeal to the music industry to remove DRM.
Crap. People hate DRM. Amazon started selling DRM-free music. If Apple hadn't removed DRM and *pleaded* with the music industry to let them sell DRM-free music, they would have lost out to Amazon. Purely a financial decision on Apple's part.
Yet you have no evidence for this. Not only do you have no evidence, but no rational argument for it.
I don't need to provide evidence for informed opinion. Deal with it.
That might be what they prefer to think, but it's total bullshit.
Yet you have no evidence for this. Not only do you have no evidence, but no rational argument for it. It works both ways.
And all of those changes are mostly for the better.
In your opinion, yet I'm supposed to provide you with evidence when I express an opinion. So how does that work?
Nope, plenty of people said that - because CDs sound to "clinical" and not "warm" enough, and they don't have great album cover artwork.
Where's your evidence? And if CDs sound clinical then so do digital downloads, possibly even more so due to lossy compression. So your point is what precisely?
I think you'll find that there are a lot more of them on iTunes than Amazon.
I have never found them. Therefore you need to provide evidence that I can. Otherwise I refute your statement.
No, get your facts right. The music labels required Apple to implement DRM as a condition of selling music in the first place. Apple did not want it to begin with. But they had no choice, as without DRM, the labels would not give them a license to sell music online.
Oh, I see. So Amazon and much smaller download sites were able to avoid selling DRM music in the first place but *BIG BAD APPLE* was coerced...
Once Apple had gained enough marketshare and power, Jobs asked the labels to sell the music without DRM. It had nothing to do with public outcry.
But Amazon started out selling non-DRM music when they started with zero market share. Sorry, your explanation doesn't wash.
Good for you. You have consumer choice, yay! This goes directly against your argument that somehow Apple has destroyed albums and good music.
I didn't say "destroyed", I said "destroying"...
But AC/DC is one of the few bands big and successful enough to be able to do that and survive financially. In any case, it doesn't bolster your argument about albums, because AC/DC songs stand alone very well, and their albums aren't generally "concept" albums in the vein of Pink Floyd, The Beatles or David Bowie. Plenty of radio stations play single AC/DC tracks without playing the whole album.
But I've heard individual Pink Floyd, Beatles and Bowie songs played on the radio also.
it's not like AC/DC are starving for money, but if they released on iTunes, they would probably make even more money.
The explanation given by AC/DC is that they prefer to be thought of as an "album" band and believe that's what their fans want also. Yes, they are probably big enough to have that much control over their music.
This is the same bogus argument we've seen for hundreds of years. The printing press is destroying the manuscript. The typewriter is destroying handwriting. Photography is destroying painting. The VCR is destroying TV. The CD is killing music. DVD is killing the cinema.
But some of that is true to a degree! The legibility of handwriting has decreased as people do everything on keyboards now... people who couldn't paint a picture are able to pick up a camera and take great photos... Traditional TV has been changed by the advent of being able to record and watch programs when you want to... Cinema attendances have stayed roughly constant but haven't grown as much as they would have done without DVD...
The only one I disagree with is "CD is killing music" because I don't think anyone ever said that - they said "Home taping is killing music".
You haven't looked very far, obviously.
I have checked quite a few indie albums actually because I use Amazon's preview service to listen to bits of a CD before I buy it - but that's only there some of the time and I think Apple and iTunes have around the same availability for downloadable music. But I accept I'm no expert because I don't (and won't) buy download music.
After I use the camera to edit...because NOTHING beats editing a photo on a 3" camera screen...
and post the pictures to the web
Huh! Would you credit it? And there's boring old me storing my photos safe in my home on hard disks and USB memory sticks...
the picture frame takes the little memory thingie right out of the camera
Ah, okay, so in order to successfully edit and transfer photos in your world, you also need to purchase a picture frame. Okay, do carry on...
the printer lets me copy them to another memory thingie
Okay, gotcha. So you need *TWO* memory thingies whereas I only need the one of them in the camera that stays in the camera because I have a USB port and cable for use by the camera...
the IPad plays music while I do the other 3 things
Yep, my £99 mini CD hifi sat on my desk also plays music, as do any of my laptops, desktops or netbooks in my immediate vicinity...
the big screen TV is hooked up to an Apple TV it plays music through my stereo and puts the movies on the TV the XBOX takes care of the games.
My Shuttle PC beneath my TV that has a £40 TV card in it acts as a MythTV PVR on FreeSat, but it also plays games, runs an Office suite, acts as a media player, lets me surf the Internet and write emails, etc. etc. But is this relevant?
The PS3 plays the rest of the high end games and plays Blue Ray and the Wii is the exercise unit and also streams Netflix
Like I said, is this really relevant? If it is, then let me tell you about my fridge...
With this arrangement at my house and an IPad at the parents (they hardly ever play games or stream movies) I don't have to go over the their house and fix their stupid Windows piece of crap that always falls off the network, gets a virus/malware or is being crashed by Flash!
WHOOSH!! That's the sound of your anti-Windows comments going straight over the head of a *primarily Linux user* like me. But I do use XP and never had it fall off a network (unless the network or an IP address was maybe configured wrongly) and Flash never appears to have crashed it - made it chug a little occasionally but that's better than not being able to play any Flash... whoops, sorry, a bit below the belt, that one...
Yes, the very infrequent piece of malware that I need to fix but not enough to make me such an unhappy person that I wouldn't help friends or relatives fixing their PCs.
Microsoft bought $150M worth of non-voting shares.
There's your answer.
The reason wasn't altruism, either. Microsoft did it to settle a court-case (along with granting Apple access to a broad base of MS patents) because they were about to be taken to the cleaners by Apple. MS also had to promise to keep developing MS Office for 5 years. Back when Office was important to Apple, that was a big deal.
Yeah, blah blah blah blah... sorry, I'm a techie simpleton with as much business acumen as a potato. Microsoft pumped $150M into Apple at a time when they really needed it. End of.
It's always best to use facts to win arguments, rather than wishful thinking, I find.
Wow! I've used YOUR facts against YOU and won the argument. How cool is that?
Oh, and congratulations on figuring out the play on words in my signature.
Thanks, it IS rather cool, isn't it.
Since you clearly are a Microsoft fanboi, though, I'm surprised at your direct and honest approach. Kudos to you and your hard-on, sir.
Actually, I thank you very much for that comment, and let me explain why... I work as a technical security consultant for a telecoms company with a portfolio of products of which about 90% run on Linux. I test and secure those products and a major part of my role is (and here's your clue) writing SHELL, PERL and PYTHON scripts to do data analysis on those servers. And when I get home of an evening, I have my dinner then sit in front of my *GENTOO LINUX* desktop machine and occasionally stream music or videos from my *GENTOO LINUX* server. Sometimes, I sit with my missus in front of the TV and talk to her but because I don't watch much TV, I sit there surfing the Internet and getting up fanbois noses on my *GENTOO LINUX* netbook.
Have you got the message yet???
Actually, I do use a bit of Windows XP also (and I actually quite like it if I'm honest) but the reason I'm so grateful for your comment is because I have achieved my goal of not being a rabid Linux fanboi as your incorrect assumption clearly shows.
So well done and I'm off to bed now to revel not only in my victorious argument over you but also to pat myself on the back for not being the Linux equivalent of what you are.
when the vast majority of them can surf the web/IM/email with an iPad.
Yes, because of course web/IM/email are the *ONLY THREE THINGS* done on any PC in an average home... absolutely no-one writes or prints out any documents, plays any 3D accelerated games, uses their home PC to stream movies to a media player, uploads and edits photos from their camera, rip movies and music for convenient storage, etc. etc.
And *OF COURSE* nobody ever has more than one application running at once on a home PC, laptop or netbook.
You mean, the DRM that Apple actively campaigned against? That's an odd definition of "fully back."
So they campaigned against themselves then? Because originally the only stuff you could buy from them was DRMed music, until the public outcry was so great they were *FORCED* to drop it. Get your facts right.
Fuck the hell off.
Well that's an intelligent response.
You can easily buy full albums from iTunes.
Why would I want to do that? I can buy CDs for the same price or cheaper, have nice lossless music and rip them myself to whatever format I want - and have an automatic backup in a nice plastic case I can store on a shelf.
How is Apple stopping artists from releasing good, coherent albums?
It's contributing to the demise of proper music by allowing music to be treated like "pick & mix sweeties". Yes, I'm a complete and utter music snob, it's my prime hobby and if you don't have the patience to sit down, relax and enjoy a really good piece of music then stay away from it and go find something else to do with your time.
And contrary to your belief, there are plenty of artists who you wouldn't want to buy the full album, but might like to buy just a track or two. I thought consumer choice was good?
And one of my favourite bands and probably the biggest rock band in the world currently, AC/DC, does not allow their music to be sold on iTunes.
Plus I don't consider £10 to be an unreasonable price to pay for a music CD I may have been enjoying know for 3 or more decades. It follows from that logic that I don't mind paying £5 for a CD on which only half the tracks are good. But most of my CD albums are great because I do my research well and only buy music from artists who are generally creative enough to be able to put together a good album.
Sounds more like you are describing the 1990s MTV music video scene, when people had less choice in their music distribution, and were spoon-fed music by the TV and Clear Channel radio stations. Good thing that era is over.
Agree totally with you. I've probably seen a total of about 5 minutes of MTV in my entire lifespan - as far as I'm concerned, the only justification for music video is the filming of live concerts for later viewing. Otherwise, it's a mechanism to distract the viewer from the music itself being utterly manufactured plasticized tripe.
However, that era is not over because there are now more channels pumping out trashy music videos.
Apple is destroying good music?
Contributing to the destruction, yes.
This is the most ludicrous argument I've ever heard, particularly because we have never before had such a wide choice in great music and albums. Your argument just doesn't hold water.
Agreed, there's a huge wealth of great music CDs out there, a lot of stuff being remastered and a lot of old forgotten classics being re-released. I could not be happier with the job the record companies are doing bringing some great music to me at really good prices.
Perhaps you just haven't gotten over your nostalgia for the 60s and 70s, and haven't opened your eyes to all the good music that is around?
I find it astounding that you're able to make that incorrect assumption of my listening habits based on what I've said so far. For your information, I listen mainly to rock & blues music from the 50s to the present day - I also enjoy electronic music and some classical stuff as well, my tastes are quite wide.
If anything distribution models like iTunes make it much easier for smaller/indie more creative artists to find an audience and sell their songs.
I own an iPod Touch my wife gave to me when she upgraded to an iPhone but I've only ever put on it the stuff I rip from my own CDs. I have glanced in the iTune
If I go to a supplier and say "I want you to supply me with 100 £5 widgets for £4 each and I want you to supply me with them first", that's competition.
If I go to a supplier and say "I don't want you to supply Fred Bloggs with £5 widgets for anything less than £4.50 and make sure he gets them late", that's monopolistic.
Like I said, wipe away the spittle and go back and *READ* the article more carefully, thanks.
The Music industry is probably still mad that Apple fought their 0.30 $ increase in prices and has the leverage to do so.
Even at the cheaper price per track, it is still perfectly possible to buy the *LOSSLESS* CD cheaper than the download tracks if you do a little research and shopping around.
And get one thing clear in your head - if Steve Jobs and his board made this decision for purely altruistic reasons, Apple shareholders would have their butts kicked out the door without a moment's notice. No, it was done to *SELL MORE MUSIC* to make Apple more *PROFITS* so the shareholders got bigger *PREMIUMS*.
Jobs is a businessman, not your friendly old uncle - get used to it.
It affects me because despite being an honest, CD-buying music lover who laughs at the fools who pay good money for lossy downloads, I still suffer the ramifications of DRM which companies like Apple fully back.
And on a wider issue, it supports the distribution of "pick and mix sweety" music because a minority of people who call themselves music fans haven't got the patience or enough time in their day to research their music properly and *SIT DOWN AND LISTEN TO A GOOD ALBUM* (of which, despite opinions to the contrary, there are many thousands if you look beyond the cheap plasticized music thrown at you in marketing and over-hype).
This in turn ultimately means that proper musicians who *DO* have the capability of putting together albums that are good from start to finish will be forced out of making music because it will be much cheaper for record companies to catapult some talentless moistened bint to the public's attention, despite her only skill being the ability to wiggle her backside at a video camera.
Consequently the music I love so dearly will be destroyed and that's why it affects me.
You can buy MP3 tracks from Amazon and put them on your App£e device, or if your old and boring like me and determined not to be ripped off by paying more for lossy music, just go buy the CD.
The issue is not about either Amazon or Apple trying vying to sell stuff first but Apple trying to persuade the labels *not* to sell to Amazon - a big difference.
It has to be "made available", it does not have to be in the physical box. It can be made available on a web site somewhere.
Also, there is absolutely no problem with running proprietary apps or drivers on an Open Source system, as long as those apps or drivers do not make any direct use of Open Source code. Parts of Android are, I believe, proprietary, and that's fine.
Yes, pretty much so. Once you realise the iPad's actual capabilities compared to a netbook that's half the price, it's useless - except for pumping up the egos of people who want to be seen posing in public with one.
Like I said in other replies, it's a status symbol designed to make fanbois feel part of an exclusive little club.
Do you understand the actual inner device workings of the electronics in your HDTV set?
You're doing the typical fanboi thing of sidestepping the issue... but I'll bite anyway.
If I took it apart I could start to work out what bit did which and with an oscilloscope and good enough recall from my electronics and microprocessor days (as well as enough time) I could find out a lot more about which component did what. Even without that I'm knowledgeable enough in the technology to know what I am looking for when it comes to HDTV, to the point where I have help friends and relatives make decisions about computers, TVs, DVD players, etc. etc.
I can also pretty much build a Linux machine from source code and would have no problems building the PC to run it on from a pile of bits on the floor - again, I'm the local techie that always has somebody else's PC in my hallway which they've dropped around for me to fix or rebuild Windows on.
So, yes, I consider myself knowledgeable enough in consumer electronics to know what I'm looking for and anything I don't know, I know what questions to ask & where to find the answers.
Why would an altruistic person stop to quantify their contribution to the overall effort? And if such a person did that, could it not serve as a deterrent to making a contribution in the first place?
Imagine that £50,000,000 needs to be raised for, say, famine relief in an African country. Altruistic people making charitable donations or doing sponsored Fun Runs don't sit there and work out who needs to generate what proportion of that money before they do any fund-raising, they just go out there and get what they can.
I do accept that this "well meaning anarchy" can mean disorganisation in some Open Source projects, which is precisely why you need the Mozilla Foundation and others to control things and bring the project into focus - but when there is a reliance on altruism, you simply cannot quantify everyone's contribution.
Hang on a second here... I'm no great Microsoft lover by any means but this is a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't".
The Windows bloat and "strange architectural decision that is The Registry" is down to trying to maintain compatibility with older software, and when they strip the bloat out of Windows so it's small enough to go on a mobile device, then naturally compatibility is out the window.
This is precisely why an Open Source OS is so good at running on anything from the biggest servers to smallest embedded devices - if you have access to the source code then you can compile it against only the libraries that you need rather than having to provide countless compatibility and emulation layers.
Open Source is primarily about creating something, giving it away freely and letting someone else improve it if they want to - you *can* make money from it but that's just because many people, particularly business types, need someone to blame when something goes wrong before they will start using it; companies like Red Hat therefore make their money from support, consultancy and training.
Also, the big Open Source projects are run by foundations, organisations and large groups of people that have some money to put into development. Many of these projects have small contributions from hobbyist programmers, not to mention computer science students who have papers and dissertations to write as course work - after all, as a student it's probably far better for your CV to show an accepted code contribution into an Open Source project rather than a rejection by a commercial software company.
All respect to Bill Joy but he's left the computer geek phase of his life and his now into venture capitalism - as such, he's become like the countless other financial high-flyers who fail to grasp why someone would do something unless it was for monetary gain. There are lots of generous altruistic people out there who do stuff just "because it's there" or they truly want to leave a mark on this world by doing something for the benefit of others.
Open Source isn't perfect, just look at some of the times it takes get new releases out or even get to version 1.0. But making money is a potential *consequence* of Open Source, not the *cause*.
Slashdot Mirror
iPad supports direct USB connections to digital cameras. Just FYI.
Yes, via some kind of USB adapter that you need to pay extra for. And that's assuming the software in the iPad recognises the camera of course.
which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the worryingly-addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft
After two years of badgering by friends already playing it, I finally relented and tried the game out for a month on one of the role-playing realms.
It wasn't a bad game but one thing that killed any immersion for me was the lack of cohesive realism - for example, being given a mission to kill an NPC then having to stand in line waiting for someone else to kill the NPC first, the NPC standing up again and then you killing him again.
Furthermore, for an MMORPG I actually felt quite alone playing it. My friends were invariably off doing their own missions and there seemed to be lots of people shouting abuse or racial hatred but when I actually tried role-playing with other people I bumped into, they pretty much ignored me and went on their way.
I didn't buy a second month's subscription and have gone back to exploring the worlds of Fallout 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on my own because they feel far more immersive than WoW to me.
Microsoft ***did*** bail out Apple.
There, corrected that for you.
Get your facts straight. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s until September 2007. The iTunes Music Store opened in April 2003. Apple started selling DRM-free tracks in April 2007.
What other inference is to be taken from your statement other than Apple fully supported DRM until such time as popular opinion and Amazon's entry into downloadable music *FORCED* them to move to a non-DRM format.
As for the "much smaller download sites," how many of them were selling tracks from the major labels DRM-free? Oh, that's right, none of them were.
Irrelevant statement - they were selling DRM-free music, it doesn't matter what label it came from.
Except they only did it after Apple's appeal to the music industry to remove DRM.
Crap. People hate DRM. Amazon started selling DRM-free music. If Apple hadn't removed DRM and *pleaded* with the music industry to let them sell DRM-free music, they would have lost out to Amazon. Purely a financial decision on Apple's part.
Yet you have no evidence for this. Not only do you have no evidence, but no rational argument for it.
I don't need to provide evidence for informed opinion. Deal with it.
That might be what they prefer to think, but it's total bullshit.
Yet you have no evidence for this. Not only do you have no evidence, but no rational argument for it. It works both ways.
And all of those changes are mostly for the better.
In your opinion, yet I'm supposed to provide you with evidence when I express an opinion. So how does that work?
Nope, plenty of people said that - because CDs sound to "clinical" and not "warm" enough, and they don't have great album cover artwork.
Where's your evidence? And if CDs sound clinical then so do digital downloads, possibly even more so due to lossy compression. So your point is what precisely?
I think you'll find that there are a lot more of them on iTunes than Amazon.
I have never found them. Therefore you need to provide evidence that I can. Otherwise I refute your statement.
No, get your facts right. The music labels required Apple to implement DRM as a condition of selling music in the first place. Apple did not want it to begin with. But they had no choice, as without DRM, the labels would not give them a license to sell music online.
Oh, I see. So Amazon and much smaller download sites were able to avoid selling DRM music in the first place but *BIG BAD APPLE* was coerced...
Once Apple had gained enough marketshare and power, Jobs asked the labels to sell the music without DRM. It had nothing to do with public outcry.
But Amazon started out selling non-DRM music when they started with zero market share. Sorry, your explanation doesn't wash.
Good for you. You have consumer choice, yay! This goes directly against your argument that somehow Apple has destroyed albums and good music.
I didn't say "destroyed", I said "destroying"...
But AC/DC is one of the few bands big and successful enough to be able to do that and survive financially. In any case, it doesn't bolster your argument about albums, because AC/DC songs stand alone very well, and their albums aren't generally "concept" albums in the vein of Pink Floyd, The Beatles or David Bowie. Plenty of radio stations play single AC/DC tracks without playing the whole album.
But I've heard individual Pink Floyd, Beatles and Bowie songs played on the radio also.
it's not like AC/DC are starving for money, but if they released on iTunes, they would probably make even more money.
The explanation given by AC/DC is that they prefer to be thought of as an "album" band and believe that's what their fans want also. Yes, they are probably big enough to have that much control over their music.
This is the same bogus argument we've seen for hundreds of years. The printing press is destroying the manuscript. The typewriter is destroying handwriting. Photography is destroying painting. The VCR is destroying TV. The CD is killing music. DVD is killing the cinema.
But some of that is true to a degree! The legibility of handwriting has decreased as people do everything on keyboards now... people who couldn't paint a picture are able to pick up a camera and take great photos... Traditional TV has been changed by the advent of being able to record and watch programs when you want to... Cinema attendances have stayed roughly constant but haven't grown as much as they would have done without DVD...
The only one I disagree with is "CD is killing music" because I don't think anyone ever said that - they said "Home taping is killing music".
You haven't looked very far, obviously.
I have checked quite a few indie albums actually because I use Amazon's preview service to listen to bits of a CD before I buy it - but that's only there some of the time and I think Apple and iTunes have around the same availability for downloadable music. But I accept I'm no expert because I don't (and won't) buy download music.
After I use the camera to edit ...because NOTHING beats editing a photo on a 3" camera screen...
and post the pictures to the web
Huh! Would you credit it? And there's boring old me storing my photos safe in my home on hard disks and USB memory sticks...
the picture frame takes the little memory thingie right out of the camera
Ah, okay, so in order to successfully edit and transfer photos in your world, you also need to purchase a picture frame. Okay, do carry on...
the printer lets me copy them to another memory thingie
Okay, gotcha. So you need *TWO* memory thingies whereas I only need the one of them in the camera that stays in the camera because I have a USB port and cable for use by the camera...
the IPad plays music while I do the other 3 things
Yep, my £99 mini CD hifi sat on my desk also plays music, as do any of my laptops, desktops or netbooks in my immediate vicinity...
the big screen TV is hooked up to an Apple TV it plays music through my stereo and puts the movies on the TV the XBOX takes care of the games.
My Shuttle PC beneath my TV that has a £40 TV card in it acts as a MythTV PVR on FreeSat, but it also plays games, runs an Office suite, acts as a media player, lets me surf the Internet and write emails, etc. etc. But is this relevant?
The PS3 plays the rest of the high end games and plays Blue Ray and the Wii is the exercise unit and also streams Netflix
Like I said, is this really relevant? If it is, then let me tell you about my fridge...
With this arrangement at my house and an IPad at the parents (they hardly ever play games or stream movies) I don't have to go over the their house and fix their stupid Windows piece of crap that always falls off the network, gets a virus/malware or is being crashed by Flash!
WHOOSH!! That's the sound of your anti-Windows comments going straight over the head of a *primarily Linux user* like me. But I do use XP and never had it fall off a network (unless the network or an IP address was maybe configured wrongly) and Flash never appears to have crashed it - made it chug a little occasionally but that's better than not being able to play any Flash... whoops, sorry, a bit below the belt, that one...
Yes, the very infrequent piece of malware that I need to fix but not enough to make me such an unhappy person that I wouldn't help friends or relatives fixing their PCs.
Yes, and my Android phone syncs with my PC but that does not mean my Android phone replaces my PC.
Let me emphasise that for you:
Microsoft bought $150M worth of non-voting shares.
There's your answer.
The reason wasn't altruism, either. Microsoft did it to settle a court-case (along with granting Apple access to a broad base of MS patents) because they were about to be taken to the cleaners by Apple. MS also had to promise to keep developing MS Office for 5 years. Back when Office was important to Apple, that was a big deal.
Yeah, blah blah blah blah... sorry, I'm a techie simpleton with as much business acumen as a potato. Microsoft pumped $150M into Apple at a time when they really needed it. End of.
It's always best to use facts to win arguments, rather than wishful thinking, I find.
Wow! I've used YOUR facts against YOU and won the argument. How cool is that?
Oh, and congratulations on figuring out the play on words in my signature.
Thanks, it IS rather cool, isn't it.
Since you clearly are a Microsoft fanboi, though, I'm surprised at your direct and honest approach. Kudos to you and your hard-on, sir.
Actually, I thank you very much for that comment, and let me explain why... I work as a technical security consultant for a telecoms company with a portfolio of products of which about 90% run on Linux. I test and secure those products and a major part of my role is (and here's your clue) writing SHELL, PERL and PYTHON scripts to do data analysis on those servers. And when I get home of an evening, I have my dinner then sit in front of my *GENTOO LINUX* desktop machine and occasionally stream music or videos from my *GENTOO LINUX* server. Sometimes, I sit with my missus in front of the TV and talk to her but because I don't watch much TV, I sit there surfing the Internet and getting up fanbois noses on my *GENTOO LINUX* netbook.
Have you got the message yet???
Actually, I do use a bit of Windows XP also (and I actually quite like it if I'm honest) but the reason I'm so grateful for your comment is because I have achieved my goal of not being a rabid Linux fanboi as your incorrect assumption clearly shows.
So well done and I'm off to bed now to revel not only in my victorious argument over you but also to pat myself on the back for not being the Linux equivalent of what you are.
Nighty night!
...imagine a whole Beowulf cluster of Apple companies!
when the vast majority of them can surf the web/IM/email with an iPad.
Yes, because of course web/IM/email are the *ONLY THREE THINGS* done on any PC in an average home... absolutely no-one writes or prints out any documents, plays any 3D accelerated games, uses their home PC to stream movies to a media player, uploads and edits photos from their camera, rip movies and music for convenient storage, etc. etc.
And *OF COURSE* nobody ever has more than one application running at once on a home PC, laptop or netbook.
So an iPad is a *PERFECT* replacement for them.
You mean, the DRM that Apple actively campaigned against? That's an odd definition of "fully back."
So they campaigned against themselves then? Because originally the only stuff you could buy from them was DRMed music, until the public outcry was so great they were *FORCED* to drop it. Get your facts right.
Fuck the hell off.
Well that's an intelligent response.
You can easily buy full albums from iTunes.
Why would I want to do that? I can buy CDs for the same price or cheaper, have nice lossless music and rip them myself to whatever format I want - and have an automatic backup in a nice plastic case I can store on a shelf.
How is Apple stopping artists from releasing good, coherent albums?
It's contributing to the demise of proper music by allowing music to be treated like "pick & mix sweeties". Yes, I'm a complete and utter music snob, it's my prime hobby and if you don't have the patience to sit down, relax and enjoy a really good piece of music then stay away from it and go find something else to do with your time.
And contrary to your belief, there are plenty of artists who you wouldn't want to buy the full album, but might like to buy just a track or two. I thought consumer choice was good?
And one of my favourite bands and probably the biggest rock band in the world currently, AC/DC, does not allow their music to be sold on iTunes.
Plus I don't consider £10 to be an unreasonable price to pay for a music CD I may have been enjoying know for 3 or more decades. It follows from that logic that I don't mind paying £5 for a CD on which only half the tracks are good. But most of my CD albums are great because I do my research well and only buy music from artists who are generally creative enough to be able to put together a good album.
Sounds more like you are describing the 1990s MTV music video scene, when people had less choice in their music distribution, and were spoon-fed music by the TV and Clear Channel radio stations. Good thing that era is over.
Agree totally with you. I've probably seen a total of about 5 minutes of MTV in my entire lifespan - as far as I'm concerned, the only justification for music video is the filming of live concerts for later viewing. Otherwise, it's a mechanism to distract the viewer from the music itself being utterly manufactured plasticized tripe.
However, that era is not over because there are now more channels pumping out trashy music videos.
Apple is destroying good music?
Contributing to the destruction, yes.
This is the most ludicrous argument I've ever heard, particularly because we have never before had such a wide choice in great music and albums. Your argument just doesn't hold water.
Agreed, there's a huge wealth of great music CDs out there, a lot of stuff being remastered and a lot of old forgotten classics being re-released. I could not be happier with the job the record companies are doing bringing some great music to me at really good prices.
Perhaps you just haven't gotten over your nostalgia for the 60s and 70s, and haven't opened your eyes to all the good music that is around?
I find it astounding that you're able to make that incorrect assumption of my listening habits based on what I've said so far. For your information, I listen mainly to rock & blues music from the 50s to the present day - I also enjoy electronic music and some classical stuff as well, my tastes are quite wide.
If anything distribution models like iTunes make it much easier for smaller/indie more creative artists to find an audience and sell their songs.
I own an iPod Touch my wife gave to me when she upgraded to an iPhone but I've only ever put on it the stuff I rip from my own CDs. I have glanced in the iTune
...and I know how to draw an aeroplane on a piece of paper, but that doesn't automatically imply I know how to build, repair or fly one.
If I go to a supplier and say "I want you to supply me with 100 £5 widgets for £4 each and I want you to supply me with them first", that's competition.
If I go to a supplier and say "I don't want you to supply Fred Bloggs with £5 widgets for anything less than £4.50 and make sure he gets them late", that's monopolistic.
Like I said, wipe away the spittle and go back and *READ* the article more carefully, thanks.
Funny that, because their share price wasn't doing so well when Microsoft pumped money into Apple to keep them solvent just a few years ago.
The Music industry is probably still mad that Apple fought their 0.30 $ increase in prices and has the leverage to do so.
Even at the cheaper price per track, it is still perfectly possible to buy the *LOSSLESS* CD cheaper than the download tracks if you do a little research and shopping around.
And get one thing clear in your head - if Steve Jobs and his board made this decision for purely altruistic reasons, Apple shareholders would have their butts kicked out the door without a moment's notice. No, it was done to *SELL MORE MUSIC* to make Apple more *PROFITS* so the shareholders got bigger *PREMIUMS*.
Jobs is a businessman, not your friendly old uncle - get used to it.
It affects me because despite being an honest, CD-buying music lover who laughs at the fools who pay good money for lossy downloads, I still suffer the ramifications of DRM which companies like Apple fully back.
And on a wider issue, it supports the distribution of "pick and mix sweety" music because a minority of people who call themselves music fans haven't got the patience or enough time in their day to research their music properly and *SIT DOWN AND LISTEN TO A GOOD ALBUM* (of which, despite opinions to the contrary, there are many thousands if you look beyond the cheap plasticized music thrown at you in marketing and over-hype).
This in turn ultimately means that proper musicians who *DO* have the capability of putting together albums that are good from start to finish will be forced out of making music because it will be much cheaper for record companies to catapult some talentless moistened bint to the public's attention, despite her only skill being the ability to wiggle her backside at a video camera.
Consequently the music I love so dearly will be destroyed and that's why it affects me.
Why does it force wider access to the works?
You can buy MP3 tracks from Amazon and put them on your App£e device, or if your old and boring like me and determined not to be ripped off by paying more for lossy music, just go buy the CD.
Read the article more carefully.
The issue is not about either Amazon or Apple trying vying to sell stuff first but Apple trying to persuade the labels *not* to sell to Amazon - a big difference.
Please try to stay on topic, thanks.
It has to be "made available", it does not have to be in the physical box. It can be made available on a web site somewhere.
Also, there is absolutely no problem with running proprietary apps or drivers on an Open Source system, as long as those apps or drivers do not make any direct use of Open Source code. Parts of Android are, I believe, proprietary, and that's fine.
...as this is an anti-trust investigation against App£e and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
Please try to stay on topic, thanks.
And therefore, useless to anyone else as well?
Yes, pretty much so. Once you realise the iPad's actual capabilities compared to a netbook that's half the price, it's useless - except for pumping up the egos of people who want to be seen posing in public with one.
Like I said in other replies, it's a status symbol designed to make fanbois feel part of an exclusive little club.
Do you understand the actual inner device workings of the electronics in your HDTV set?
You're doing the typical fanboi thing of sidestepping the issue... but I'll bite anyway.
If I took it apart I could start to work out what bit did which and with an oscilloscope and good enough recall from my electronics and microprocessor days (as well as enough time) I could find out a lot more about which component did what. Even without that I'm knowledgeable enough in the technology to know what I am looking for when it comes to HDTV, to the point where I have help friends and relatives make decisions about computers, TVs, DVD players, etc. etc.
I can also pretty much build a Linux machine from source code and would have no problems building the PC to run it on from a pile of bits on the floor - again, I'm the local techie that always has somebody else's PC in my hallway which they've dropped around for me to fix or rebuild Windows on.
So, yes, I consider myself knowledgeable enough in consumer electronics to know what I'm looking for and anything I don't know, I know what questions to ask & where to find the answers.
But again, the point is being missed here...
Why would an altruistic person stop to quantify their contribution to the overall effort? And if such a person did that, could it not serve as a deterrent to making a contribution in the first place?
Imagine that £50,000,000 needs to be raised for, say, famine relief in an African country. Altruistic people making charitable donations or doing sponsored Fun Runs don't sit there and work out who needs to generate what proportion of that money before they do any fund-raising, they just go out there and get what they can.
I do accept that this "well meaning anarchy" can mean disorganisation in some Open Source projects, which is precisely why you need the Mozilla Foundation and others to control things and bring the project into focus - but when there is a reliance on altruism, you simply cannot quantify everyone's contribution.
Hang on a second here... I'm no great Microsoft lover by any means but this is a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't".
The Windows bloat and "strange architectural decision that is The Registry" is down to trying to maintain compatibility with older software, and when they strip the bloat out of Windows so it's small enough to go on a mobile device, then naturally compatibility is out the window.
This is precisely why an Open Source OS is so good at running on anything from the biggest servers to smallest embedded devices - if you have access to the source code then you can compile it against only the libraries that you need rather than having to provide countless compatibility and emulation layers.
Open Source is primarily about creating something, giving it away freely and letting someone else improve it if they want to - you *can* make money from it but that's just because many people, particularly business types, need someone to blame when something goes wrong before they will start using it; companies like Red Hat therefore make their money from support, consultancy and training.
Also, the big Open Source projects are run by foundations, organisations and large groups of people that have some money to put into development. Many of these projects have small contributions from hobbyist programmers, not to mention computer science students who have papers and dissertations to write as course work - after all, as a student it's probably far better for your CV to show an accepted code contribution into an Open Source project rather than a rejection by a commercial software company.
All respect to Bill Joy but he's left the computer geek phase of his life and his now into venture capitalism - as such, he's become like the countless other financial high-flyers who fail to grasp why someone would do something unless it was for monetary gain. There are lots of generous altruistic people out there who do stuff just "because it's there" or they truly want to leave a mark on this world by doing something for the benefit of others.
Open Source isn't perfect, just look at some of the times it takes get new releases out or even get to version 1.0. But making money is a potential *consequence* of Open Source, not the *cause*.