"In fact, the main reason that everyone switched to CDs wasn't because of quality..."
I might argue with that one, actually. Never again hearing a vinyl recordinging's pop or scratch, or the background hiss of a tape, is a pretty powerful motivation. It was for me, at least, and I'm not an audiophile.
"Why exactly would anyone want to donate their bandwidth to movie distributors? What benefit would you get out of it? "
Because it might, for example, just make true video-on-demand, any movie or TV show anytime you want it feasible? Because people might want such a service? Because otherwise it might be too damned expensive to be economically viable? Because that bandwidth for which you're already paying a fixed monthly fee is probably sitting there unused 99% of the time anyway?
The stupid thing of it is that people don't understand the technology. Yes, if a packet came in from NY to your house in LA, and you shipped it back out to DC, it would trip twice across the country on the backbone. If, however, you're in LA watching a movie, and your neighbor down the street is watching it too, but a few minutes behind your own start time, then your retransmitted packet my only have to go up to the neighborhood router and back down again. In short, there's a lot of local bandwidth that a centralized server scheme also "wastes".
As to server horsepower, you may not be worried about it, but rest assured, the people who DO have to provide it worry about it all the time.
"What is the primary reason for the MPAA going after torrent sites? They claim it is to fight piracy..."
Check out the contents of the average torrent site. Now you tell me: Is the vast majority of the content independently produced movies and music, or is it bootleg copies of the latest in-theater releases and pop tunes?
People complain that Hollywood and the music industry make junk that's not worth watching or listening to, but apparently it's worth the time to find, download, watch and listen to... odd, don't you think?
Given the number of iPods I see on a commuter train, plugged into a car tape player, or being listened to by joggers or people on treadmills at the gym, I suspect that most just want to listen to some tunes. And most "zealots" know that when you're in environments containing a lot of ambient noise, you're not going to hear the difference anyway. Especially if it's just background music played while you're concentrating on something else.
As such, I think most of the "zealots" would laugh right back at you for spending so much time and energy completely over-engineering the situation. Unless you're an audiophile (a zealot of another stripe), there are indeed times when "good enough" actually is "good enough".
And my condolences. If laughing at the iTMS zealots is the only way you can reinforce your sense of superiority, then you have a long row to hoe, my friend...
Your timeline is a bit skewed. Back in the day, copying a comercial VHS tape for a friend was so rampant that literally dozens of electronics companies (not media companies) made dual-slot VCRs. Once MacroVision was released, such copies (and blank videoape sales) dropped like a rock. Yes, you can buy a stabilizer, but if even 1/100 of 1% of all the households out there had them I'd be extremely suprised.
VHS died not because of MV, but because it was surplanted by a superior format.
Okay, attach rope WITH HOOK to missle. Fire missle at moon. Pull moon back with rope until moon is in LEO. Now establishing a lunar base should be easy!
Ah... Now, you see, we're adding rules. He'd also object if, say, I tried to run off with his car or TV. Now we're protecting property through threat of force. He'd probably also object if I put up signs accusing him of pedophelia. Now we're protecting reputation through threat of force.
All of a sudden, that hard line is a quite a bit softer and harder to define...
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
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MacBook Pro Benchmarks
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"he has 2 lacie super capacity externals which use fw800..."
And two Lacie external drives don't qualify as hideous extensions when attached to a notebook? That combination sounds less than portable...
Plenty? I don't think so. Hydro? Most of the good locations here in the US are already damn well taken. Wind? Same issue, plus it's an inconsistent source. No wind, no power. Solar? Also not 24/7, and also has a limited number of feasible locations where you have enough sunlight and are also within transmission range of your user base. Maybe in the SW. Tidal? Unproven, and also looks to be another relatively low-density source.
The bottom line is that all of these are nothing more than supplemental sources. And if we're going to ever transfer to a hydrogen-based transportation system we're going to need a LOT of relatively cheap power.
I thnk that viewpoint also ignores the fact that while they may be greedy, they're also not stupid. One preventable accident could destroy several billion dollars worth of investment, and I think they realize that.
Funny you should mention DVD. Yes, a DVD is an item subject to resale. OTOH, a pay-per-view title of that same film is not. Same content, different distribution mechanisms and rules. The direction downloadable games go is, of course, yet to be seen.
I so love that self-indulgent capital R in that sentence. And "Right of First Sale" doesn't apply to every sale. People can't, for example, resell a movie, theater, or concert ticket after it's be used. While not strictly applicable, there is a correlation, in that you, personally, paid for that entertainment value. Once that value is "consumed", it cannot be resold.
What if, say, it's 75% cheaper? Would price savings compensate for the additonal restrictions? I buy audio books from Audible and the typical book costs me $11. It's DRM'ed, but I don't care at the moment because: a) the CD version typically costs 4X that amount; b) I don't have to RIP them; and c) I play them on my iPod anyway.
I can even loan them out, as a friend and I bought Shuffles we swap back and forth from time to time.
To quote an often used/. mantra, "Nothing requires that existing business models must be protected." In the case of Game Stop I'd start trying to figure out how to work within the new system, as opposed to the bury-my-head-in-the-sand, we'll-show-them approach.
What happens when Sony and Nintindo and MS ALL start doing downloadable games? (An inevitable progression, from my perspective.)
Going to stop selling all of them? Or is there that big a market in cheat books and plastic game figures?
"At that point function names could be standardized..."
YES!!!! Not just names, but parameter order as well. Most the functions work one way, but there are just enough that reverse target parameters that you can never be quite sure you got it right.
PHP: Over a billion functions served... and counting.
"...perhaps this will force the telecommunications industry to adopt reasonable rates."
Nah. It will just cause them to run out their tame congress-critters, who'll enact anti-VOIP legislation for the "good" of the consumer. Probably under the guise of VOIP being unable to do 911 emergency location services.
"...while recent Muslim immigrants maintain high birth rates."
Yes, they have high birth rates, as they were raised that way, in a society and economic system that rewarded such behaviour. But what will their children do? It seems that people raised in prosperous, modern, industrialized nations often find they have better things to do than spend all of their time and incomes raising a houseful of kids.
I think it likely that their kids, realizing that they no longer need a dozen unpaid "workers" to run the farm and eke out a living, will probably have fewer children themselves. And the grand-children even more so.
Which for Linux , apache, firefox , etc is obviously very high
Obviously. About 6% for Linux, right? And replacing a free web browser with another free one is deflationary in what way? Apache is a better case, but as I mentioned regarding IBM, all those Apache servers need hardware to run on, and people to set them up and maintain them. All installations which might not have existed otherwise. And so again with IBM, OSS is nothing more than a loss leader. For others, like mySQL AB, it's an income generator.
... productivity gains had already been squeesed out by proprietary software..
Well which is it? Squeezed out, or squished out? And to borrow a page from the "content is free" warez crowd, your argument first assumes that all of those people would have bought a proprietary solution in the first place. But as they say, not every "copy" is a lost sale.
As stated earlier, many OSS solutions provide smaller companies with tools and technologies and services formerly reserved for the Fortune 1000 crowd. As such, those companies weren't using proprietary software. They couldn't afford it. So any gains made by implementing, say, an OSS content management system over a $250,000 one, or a mySQL implementation over DB2 or Oracle, are in fact real.
On the flip side, there are plenty of companies who wouln't exist at all without cheap commodity software. Hosting companies for one, and others like, oh... Google. A billion dollar enterprise in its own right, and, through Google ads, a major sales enabler and revenue producer for practically every US business of any size. Yeah, being able to compete and be seen and sell into a global marketplace is biting all of those companies in the ass.
Face it, your premise is flawed.
The rest of your "argument" seems to be a biased rant against content-managing plantation owners which, once again, it appears safe to ignore.
And if the laptop is simply a target of opportunity, stolen off a table in a restarant or the airport? Somehow I doubt the average thief has the skills to crack sophisticated encryption schemes. It's much more likely that after a cursory inspection of the contents looking for unprotected credit card numbers and the like, the drive will simply be wiped and the system resold on ebay.
From my perspective, any amount of protection is better than none. From yours, it would appear that no one should ever actually use a notebook to do anything, and that one should ever bother to lock their doors in what could only be a futile attempt to keep out master criminals.
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I might argue with that one, actually. Never again hearing a vinyl recordinging's pop or scratch, or the background hiss of a tape, is a pretty powerful motivation. It was for me, at least, and I'm not an audiophile.
Because it might, for example, just make true video-on-demand, any movie or TV show anytime you want it feasible? Because people might want such a service? Because otherwise it might be too damned expensive to be economically viable? Because that bandwidth for which you're already paying a fixed monthly fee is probably sitting there unused 99% of the time anyway?
As to server horsepower, you may not be worried about it, but rest assured, the people who DO have to provide it worry about it all the time.
Check out the contents of the average torrent site. Now you tell me: Is the vast majority of the content independently produced movies and music, or is it bootleg copies of the latest in-theater releases and pop tunes?
People complain that Hollywood and the music industry make junk that's not worth watching or listening to, but apparently it's worth the time to find, download, watch and listen to... odd, don't you think?
Given the number of iPods I see on a commuter train, plugged into a car tape player, or being listened to by joggers or people on treadmills at the gym, I suspect that most just want to listen to some tunes. And most "zealots" know that when you're in environments containing a lot of ambient noise, you're not going to hear the difference anyway. Especially if it's just background music played while you're concentrating on something else.
As such, I think most of the "zealots" would laugh right back at you for spending so much time and energy completely over-engineering the situation. Unless you're an audiophile (a zealot of another stripe), there are indeed times when "good enough" actually is "good enough".
And my condolences. If laughing at the iTMS zealots is the only way you can reinforce your sense of superiority, then you have a long row to hoe, my friend...
VHS died not because of MV, but because it was surplanted by a superior format.
Okay, attach rope WITH HOOK to missle. Fire missle at moon. Pull moon back with rope until moon is in LEO. Now establishing a lunar base should be easy!
All of a sudden, that hard line is a quite a bit softer and harder to define...
And two Lacie external drives don't qualify as hideous extensions when attached to a notebook? That combination sounds less than portable...
So I can move into your house, and everything's cool as long as I don't attack you? Sounds good. What's your address again?
The bottom line is that all of these are nothing more than supplemental sources. And if we're going to ever transfer to a hydrogen-based transportation system we're going to need a LOT of relatively cheap power.
I thnk that viewpoint also ignores the fact that while they may be greedy, they're also not stupid. One preventable accident could destroy several billion dollars worth of investment, and I think they realize that.
A more accurate statement is that, like most things, they'll charge what most people are willing to pay...
Funny you should mention DVD. Yes, a DVD is an item subject to resale. OTOH, a pay-per-view title of that same film is not. Same content, different distribution mechanisms and rules. The direction downloadable games go is, of course, yet to be seen.
I so love that self-indulgent capital R in that sentence. And "Right of First Sale" doesn't apply to every sale. People can't, for example, resell a movie, theater, or concert ticket after it's be used. While not strictly applicable, there is a correlation, in that you, personally, paid for that entertainment value. Once that value is "consumed", it cannot be resold.
I can even loan them out, as a friend and I bought Shuffles we swap back and forth from time to time.
What happens when Sony and Nintindo and MS ALL start doing downloadable games? (An inevitable progression, from my perspective.)
Going to stop selling all of them? Or is there that big a market in cheat books and plastic game figures?
Yeah, can't imagine where they might have gotten that idea...
YES!!!! Not just names, but parameter order as well. Most the functions work one way, but there are just enough that reverse target parameters that you can never be quite sure you got it right.
PHP: Over a billion functions served... and counting.
And in other news, Harrison Ford had this to say: "See! All the geeks laughed at the iPod bit in Firewall, but we knew what we were doing!"
Nah. It will just cause them to run out their tame congress-critters, who'll enact anti-VOIP legislation for the "good" of the consumer. Probably under the guise of VOIP being unable to do 911 emergency location services.
Yes, they have high birth rates, as they were raised that way, in a society and economic system that rewarded such behaviour. But what will their children do? It seems that people raised in prosperous, modern, industrialized nations often find they have better things to do than spend all of their time and incomes raising a houseful of kids.
I think it likely that their kids, realizing that they no longer need a dozen unpaid "workers" to run the farm and eke out a living, will probably have fewer children themselves. And the grand-children even more so.
Ummm... if we're headed for another ice age then how do sea levels rise? Isn't all that excess water tied up in, well, snow and ice? As in ice age? ;)
Obviously. About 6% for Linux, right? And replacing a free web browser with another free one is deflationary in what way? Apache is a better case, but as I mentioned regarding IBM, all those Apache servers need hardware to run on, and people to set them up and maintain them. All installations which might not have existed otherwise. And so again with IBM, OSS is nothing more than a loss leader. For others, like mySQL AB, it's an income generator.
Well which is it? Squeezed out, or squished out? And to borrow a page from the "content is free" warez crowd, your argument first assumes that all of those people would have bought a proprietary solution in the first place. But as they say, not every "copy" is a lost sale.
As stated earlier, many OSS solutions provide smaller companies with tools and technologies and services formerly reserved for the Fortune 1000 crowd. As such, those companies weren't using proprietary software. They couldn't afford it. So any gains made by implementing, say, an OSS content management system over a $250,000 one, or a mySQL implementation over DB2 or Oracle, are in fact real.
On the flip side, there are plenty of companies who wouln't exist at all without cheap commodity software. Hosting companies for one, and others like, oh... Google. A billion dollar enterprise in its own right, and, through Google ads, a major sales enabler and revenue producer for practically every US business of any size. Yeah, being able to compete and be seen and sell into a global marketplace is biting all of those companies in the ass.
Face it, your premise is flawed.
The rest of your "argument" seems to be a biased rant against content-managing plantation owners which, once again, it appears safe to ignore.
From my perspective, any amount of protection is better than none. From yours, it would appear that no one should ever actually use a notebook to do anything, and that one should ever bother to lock their doors in what could only be a futile attempt to keep out master criminals.