This is a shame as the PDA is in my opinion a far better interface and could easily accommodate gps, bluetooth phone, media player, and simple camera functions.
The new (uh-oh) Microsoft phones do pretty much that. They are binary compatible with their PDAs and provided the application developer has considered the UI differences (no stylus etc), the mobile version works just as well. I've even got a couple of apps that'll run on the PC as well, but they are dotnet and not exactly speedy.
Simple solution is to get a PDA that takes SD cards, and carry around the USB reader. That's what I do. My PDA also has some third-party usb replacement drivers that turn the PDA into a keychain. Switch them on, connect to USB and your PDAs storage areas appear as mapped drives without any need for drivers in the OS.
Or you could try this amazing little SD card that has a built in USB connector. One of the cleverest ideas of 2005 IMHO.
At the same time, it is absolutely retarded that PDAs are commonly USB clients, but not USB hosts.
Agreed. There are many devices that would be awesome hooked up to a PDA. Bluetooth will take on this function in the future I reckon.
Click here for a page with some interesting arc videos. Be sure to watch the third one, "NEW MPEG of a 500 kV disconnect switch, one phase opens hot". Notice the scale of the arc from the guy in the bottom left of the video.
You can't? Seriously? I never knew that, iTunes now sucks more IMHO. So, what do you do if your harddrive crashes? I usually allow each HD three years of life before failure is expected. iTunes policy will change here, because this is going to start happening to Joe Sixpack in a year or two. They will not be impressed.
I buy software over the web a lot. EVERYTHING I've bought was either a demo installer with a registration key, or a private area of the site. In every case you could redownload what you have bought should you need to. Never before have I heard of anyone not allowing you access to what you've paid for.
Most consumers don't think so. So far, nobody has even come close to offering a completely integrated product like Apple. And, they likely won't.
That's because they don't know any better. When apple is no longer number one (it WILL happen), they will not be impressed with that "integrated" product.
FFS, the only reason it needs to be "integrated" is to restrict what you do with it. If it was open, none of this would be an issue.
According to the RIAA, 'lending' is also against your rights. Says so right on the label. Your point?
There is no law regarding lending, except when done commercially. They could print "purchase of this CD indicates your approval of us dining on your first-born" on the CD, but it wouldn't mean a thing legally. However, burning a copy for someone else IS illegal.*
(* not that it personally bothers me but I'm arguing for Joe Sixpack here)
People like buying things and "owning" them. I, personally, have purchased a ton of music after getting copies from friends.
Then why are you disagreeing with me? My point is that DRM will restrict the passing of music suggestions on a human-to-human level. The onlys with the ability to let us hear new stuff would be the music labels. Thanks, but no thanks.
The vast majority of the music recorded before the 1950's has disappeared into the sands of time. What remains requires specialized equipment to play, and even more specialized equipment to re-record into something passable by modern tastes and recording methods.
Have you tried eMule Plus?;-) The people with that specialized equiptment have upgraded the content onto more modern media already. In this case, they have generally choosen to pick a format that will be playable in 200 years; mp3. The is no guarantee that iTunes or Napster will be around in 200 years time. You are begining to argue my case for me here...
it will be trivial for the computers of our grandchildren to strong-arm the DRM and get access.
Not once it's in hardware chips...and iTunes is leading us down that road. I have nothing really specific to iTunes to dislike, other than the fact it's the first big cog in the DRM wheel. Do you want a society where everyone breaks yet more laws every day?
You're missing the point. The realignment is the process, the layoffs are the (potential) result.
You are missing the reality. They already know if they are going to be laying-off folk before they start the process. The term "realignment" only starts to get used when talking to those who are being "realigned". It's an attempt to keep morale up during the process, as well as to retain your best staff after the layoffs are complete. Unless you sell it as a positive thing, your best employees will be updating their CVs and looking around. Experience suggests that a "realignment" is just a speed-bump on a downward spiral. Most redundancies I know that started off small ultimately resulted in the closure of the whole office/deparment within a couple of years. It's important to sell it as a positive thing so that everyone doesn't interpret as a sinking ship and start to making alternate plans.
Calling layoffs "realignments" and difficult people as "challenging" is obviously just doubletalk nonsense designed to hide what's real.
"layoffs" implies that you think you are being brutal, "realignments" implies that think you are doing what you have to.
Exactly, and that what's meant by terms like doubletalk and doublespeak; you use words that imply a different meaning. The all time classic is "department of defense" or the Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" for the propaganda departments. Corporate speak has a lot of this, but the worst offenders are governments.
In essense you are deliberately misleading people, because the act you are describing hasn't changed, you've just sugar-coated it. It's like using Saddam in the same sentance as "terrorist" at every opertunity. Sooner or later, the association sticks.
When you find someone that uses terms like "right-sizing", never trust another thing they say ever again. You've just caught them trying to mislead you.
What might have been more Informative (moderators, note) is to do a little research and see what Macintosh products might replace these.
It's not like that in industry. There are standards and file formats required to interface with other companies. What use is VectorWorks when the rest of the building world uses Autocad? Its the same problem as Microsoft Office in the office environment; it's taken years to get an OSS package that works well with the now standard office file-formats. And that an office suite, something that's very popular. There just aren't enough CAD types working on Macs to justify a port.
Yes, exactly. It's a self-perpetuating problem. As sales decline due to DRM headaches, piracy will then be blamed and become an incentive to further lock down everything. Personally, I think iTunes could be the one that tips it, not the future HD multimedia standards. Apple won't always be at the top of the portable player market, no company in any industry has stayed number one forever. And when those people try to move their entire libraries onto another device...
I just wonder if some of the sci-fi distopia lands of tomorrow with people trading bootleg hardware behind closed doors were actually close to where we are going.:-)
Are you serious? You think your kids going to ask for your classic Cypress Hill or some other album with "negative" connotations?;-) Part of growing up and getting into music is discovering new things, and for many people their parents music is a treasure trove. Are you going to ask your parents to burn their whole collection for you, just so you can listen to different things? Which you are going to have to rencode if you want to actually listen to it, as all your media players are apple solid state / portable hd products?
Technically every "CD Player" (snip) has paid a license fee to build a player using that technology.
So what? This is completely different. iTunes controls 100% of the iPod market (and vice-versa) when it comes to buying legitimate media. With CDs, you could license then and people did. One of the reasons Betamax lost out to VHS was that the VHS consortium was more liberal in what they would allow (i.e. porn). Things are different with iTunes; it's the locked-down product that won the first round. You have no choice. If you really want to format shift to another device, you need to go via CDR and further audio compression, which is time consuming and probably beyond most iPod users as they are mostly normal people who know little of DRM, compression and so on. They'd just accept it and buy more apple devices in future.
That's piss-poor for the consumer.
I have no problem taking my entire music library to a friend's house and playing it. It's called an "iPod".
True, you are right. But would you be happy leaving it unattended? Depends on the parties you go to, but IMHO for a good party one thing needed is people you don't know.
Burn the m4p to a CD (re: loaning friends CDs)
Thats piracy, as you are making an unauthorized copy for someone else. Let's face it, would they buy it themselves? Burning someone a CD is also a lot more awkward than simply saying "yes" when they ask to borrow it.
I just fear that DRM is going to cost us a slice of our collective culture. Sharing music, trying something new, random, different is significant in enjoying music. I see an alternative world brewing where there are only Britany Spears clones running around, with smaller acts pushed to the back of the iTunes catalogue, and we can only hear what we personally have paid for or have seen advertised on TV or radio.
They bought a $3000+ HDTV set and they now got the same crappy rez because some part isn't to the DRM's liking, so they get the low-rez instead of the promised HD quality.
Hate to nitpick on a post I basically agree with, but I don't think they'll even notice the crappy resolution that the DRM fall-back might use. I've had to correctly set up pretty much everyone I know with a widescreen set. For example, cable boxes and DVD players usually default to 4x3 mode, meaning that when you do get widescreen, it's letterboxed and not anamorphic. Long story short, your (UK) 625 line has just become a 450ish line one. And get this; in UK cable it'll crop a 16:9 image to 4:3 by chopping off the sides when it's set to 4:3 mode. So, we are chopping off the sides and throwing away about a third of the resolution. They usually then use the zoom feature to streatch the 4x3 image back to 16:9, losing yet more picture, from the top and bottom this time. To top it off, most UK TVs have RGB input, but again you need to enable it to take advantage of it. It's a night and day once you get it right.
I'd say at least half even had the picture stretch/zoom feature on the completely wrong setting and it was obviously wrong, but they just don't care. One girl even wanted me to put it back the fat-people look once I set it all correctly. I didn't even bother arguing.
People just don't care, they just accept that's it. Things will need to get really bad for a DRM uprising.
ITMS means the end of searching every single store in town that sells CDs to find that one album that someone raved about, and getting it in only 30 minutes.
iTMS also means:
the end of kids listening to their parents records when they hit their teens (no authorisation)
your enslavement to a single company for the rest of your days as your music won't work on anyone elses hardware
the end of taking round a couple of CDs to a party/friends. You'd need to plan and burn in advance
the end of lending a CD to a friend to see if they like it
I'm sorry, but iTMS is just plain wrong and anyone who understands the technology yet still invests in it deserves all they get.
They've demonstrated to their government that they don't particularly care whether or not the constitution is worth the paper its written on, as long as Desperate Housewives doesn't get canceled.
And you think they'll care about DRM?
I agree with you completely and I dispair daily over this mess. However, you might have just contractited yourself there...if DRM interferes with said Desperate Housewives, then they WILL care.
Personally, I think it'll all come to a head when the iPod is no longer at the top of the mp3 player food chain and the less-tech smart people want to switch to the next big device. All of thoses iTunes purchases, wasted. What kind of business model do you have when the conterfeit goods are superiour to the offical products?
Maybe. Personally my experience with Real codecs over the years hasn't been all that great. I first used Real back in buffering...buffering...buffering...buffering...bu ffering...buffering...
I'm about to rebuild my main server firewall. I'm going to put a system like this on it, but there is a major flaw with this approach: it's unlikely that someone will BOTH a) turn on without formatting and b) connect to the net. I think I have a way to make sure this has a better than average chance. Here's what's going to happen when it boots:
boot
Boot as normal until network is up
Send a message to a internet service, which will log the IP
Continue boot as normal
OK, so far it's the same as everyone else has been suggesting. However, my change is to NOT boot up if step 2 fails. Instead I'll display the following honeypot:
In order to access the games, films, TV and music on this media server, you must first connect it to the internet. This server will power down now, please connect to the network and reboot. Press any key to continue
And once that has been displayed, do as it says and shut down. The idea is to tempt the thiefs greed into wanting more.
There are other things I'm going to add e.g. even if they do get the machine connected, it still won't boot. Not without my USB keychain containing the encryption keys to all the user data. In the case of this server I am going to get a USB extension cord and hide a USB keychain somewhere, possibly glued to something heavy. If I am broken into, they'll just unplug the box and not bother with the wires. Almost like a bee-sting, but backwards.
Wow, click-click saved, thanks, never seen that before. I didn't ask for the moderations in either direction, I just pointed out that these organisations don't care much for the law, and that "because it's illegal" is poor reasoning for assuming it doesn't happen.
Even with Carnivore, we were not allowed to directly spy on our own people because it wasn't legal to spy on our own people without a warrant.
It's not legal to flood LA with crack to fund military coops in South America. Never stopped the CIA. What makes you think this is any different? What makes you think they actually follow the law?
The popularity of intelligent design is not rising in the US. The volume and rate at which its supporters, a group which remains fairly static, are speaking are rising.
If even one person listens to those who are speaking and then takes their side, then the popularity would rise. The question is; are the sane people being put off ID propponents at a faster rate? I'd guess not;/.'ers laughing at god-bothers are in the minority if you ask me. At the very least, the people fighting for ID have won a place in many peoples minds that it is actually a valid "theory" that counters evolution, even if they don't buy it themselves. That's the dangerous thing here.
They don't think for themselves any more, they never question the almighty computer.
And you think this is somehow a new thing? People rarely question authority figures. Witness the Milgram Experiment which found that 65% of people will inflict fatal electric shocks as punishment when told to do so by an authority figure. That's right, 65% of us are Lyndie England wannabes, given the right circumstances. People are very malleable and easy to lead.
Computers take this to a new level of (misguided) trust.
TomTom shows a short-of 3d view. It's basically the flat map viewed at an angle. It's like having a chase 'copter! No building details, but that might be a good thing, less concentration deciphering the GPS display and more for driving. This style not only looks neat, it actually makes it easy to understand.
It still sends you the wrong places though. Once I was running late for something, so I decided to just trust it. In that one 5 mile journey it tried to send me down a one-way street the wrong way as well as two roads that had been permamently closed to through-traffic. The maps are at least five years out of date.
Check out those contour lines (in metres), and the chevrons on the roads, which indicate steep gradients
That's the thing with the consumer GPS systems I've seen; none of them include things like contour lines. They are simply 2 dimensional road maps. Not very detailed, but I'd imagine that would be by design, to keep the display easy to read while driving.
It's even debatable whether the narrow yellow roads on that map (which mean single-track with passing places) should be used by a GPS as through routes, let alone the white ones!
Depends who you are marketing it to...tourists drive on these roads up here in Scotland a lot. There's a few out-of-the-way places where you have no choice.
You know, I bet someone in Apple is kicking themselves over that one. Had they released this on April Fools, they would have gotten a lot more publicity and that "is it real?" factor as people discuss it on chatrooms. People would have raced each other to try it out and be the first to confirm it.
Slashdot Mirror
The new (uh-oh) Microsoft phones do pretty much that. They are binary compatible with their PDAs and provided the application developer has considered the UI differences (no stylus etc), the mobile version works just as well. I've even got a couple of apps that'll run on the PC as well, but they are dotnet and not exactly speedy.
Or you could try this amazing little SD card that has a built in USB connector. One of the cleverest ideas of 2005 IMHO.
At the same time, it is absolutely retarded that PDAs are commonly USB clients, but not USB hosts.
Agreed. There are many devices that would be awesome hooked up to a PDA. Bluetooth will take on this function in the future I reckon.
Your electrician dad will love them... ;-)
When a company is making layoff, it's not because the future is rosy. You are speaking to someone that's been through it a couple of times.
"Realignment"? STFU! ;-)
You can't? Seriously? I never knew that, iTunes now sucks more IMHO. So, what do you do if your harddrive crashes? I usually allow each HD three years of life before failure is expected. iTunes policy will change here, because this is going to start happening to Joe Sixpack in a year or two. They will not be impressed.
I buy software over the web a lot. EVERYTHING I've bought was either a demo installer with a registration key, or a private area of the site. In every case you could redownload what you have bought should you need to. Never before have I heard of anyone not allowing you access to what you've paid for.
Most consumers don't think so. So far, nobody has even come close to offering a completely integrated product like Apple. And, they likely won't.
That's because they don't know any better. When apple is no longer number one (it WILL happen), they will not be impressed with that "integrated" product.
FFS, the only reason it needs to be "integrated" is to restrict what you do with it. If it was open, none of this would be an issue.
According to the RIAA, 'lending' is also against your rights. Says so right on the label. Your point?
There is no law regarding lending, except when done commercially. They could print "purchase of this CD indicates your approval of us dining on your first-born" on the CD, but it wouldn't mean a thing legally. However, burning a copy for someone else IS illegal.*
(* not that it personally bothers me but I'm arguing for Joe Sixpack here)
People like buying things and "owning" them. I, personally, have purchased a ton of music after getting copies from friends.
Then why are you disagreeing with me? My point is that DRM will restrict the passing of music suggestions on a human-to-human level. The onlys with the ability to let us hear new stuff would be the music labels. Thanks, but no thanks.
The vast majority of the music recorded before the 1950's has disappeared into the sands of time. What remains requires specialized equipment to play, and even more specialized equipment to re-record into something passable by modern tastes and recording methods.
Have you tried eMule Plus? ;-) The people with that specialized equiptment have upgraded the content onto more modern media already. In this case, they have generally choosen to pick a format that will be playable in 200 years; mp3. The is no guarantee that iTunes or Napster will be around in 200 years time. You are begining to argue my case for me here...
it will be trivial for the computers of our grandchildren to strong-arm the DRM and get access.
Not once it's in hardware chips...and iTunes is leading us down that road. I have nothing really specific to iTunes to dislike, other than the fact it's the first big cog in the DRM wheel. Do you want a society where everyone breaks yet more laws every day?
You are missing the reality. They already know if they are going to be laying-off folk before they start the process. The term "realignment" only starts to get used when talking to those who are being "realigned". It's an attempt to keep morale up during the process, as well as to retain your best staff after the layoffs are complete. Unless you sell it as a positive thing, your best employees will be updating their CVs and looking around. Experience suggests that a "realignment" is just a speed-bump on a downward spiral. Most redundancies I know that started off small ultimately resulted in the closure of the whole office/deparment within a couple of years. It's important to sell it as a positive thing so that everyone doesn't interpret as a sinking ship and start to making alternate plans.
Exactly, and that what's meant by terms like doubletalk and doublespeak; you use words that imply a different meaning. The all time classic is "department of defense" or the Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" for the propaganda departments. Corporate speak has a lot of this, but the worst offenders are governments.
In essense you are deliberately misleading people, because the act you are describing hasn't changed, you've just sugar-coated it. It's like using Saddam in the same sentance as "terrorist" at every opertunity. Sooner or later, the association sticks.
When you find someone that uses terms like "right-sizing", never trust another thing they say ever again. You've just caught them trying to mislead you.
It's not like that in industry. There are standards and file formats required to interface with other companies. What use is VectorWorks when the rest of the building world uses Autocad? Its the same problem as Microsoft Office in the office environment; it's taken years to get an OSS package that works well with the now standard office file-formats. And that an office suite, something that's very popular. There just aren't enough CAD types working on Macs to justify a port.
I just wonder if some of the sci-fi distopia lands of tomorrow with people trading bootleg hardware behind closed doors were actually close to where we are going. :-)
Are you serious? You think your kids going to ask for your classic Cypress Hill or some other album with "negative" connotations? ;-) Part of growing up and getting into music is discovering new things, and for many people their parents music is a treasure trove. Are you going to ask your parents to burn their whole collection for you, just so you can listen to different things? Which you are going to have to rencode if you want to actually listen to it, as all your media players are apple solid state / portable hd products?
Technically every "CD Player" (snip) has paid a license fee to build a player using that technology.
So what? This is completely different. iTunes controls 100% of the iPod market (and vice-versa) when it comes to buying legitimate media. With CDs, you could license then and people did. One of the reasons Betamax lost out to VHS was that the VHS consortium was more liberal in what they would allow (i.e. porn). Things are different with iTunes; it's the locked-down product that won the first round. You have no choice. If you really want to format shift to another device, you need to go via CDR and further audio compression, which is time consuming and probably beyond most iPod users as they are mostly normal people who know little of DRM, compression and so on. They'd just accept it and buy more apple devices in future.
That's piss-poor for the consumer.
I have no problem taking my entire music library to a friend's house and playing it. It's called an "iPod".
True, you are right. But would you be happy leaving it unattended? Depends on the parties you go to, but IMHO for a good party one thing needed is people you don't know.
Burn the m4p to a CD (re: loaning friends CDs)
Thats piracy, as you are making an unauthorized copy for someone else. Let's face it, would they buy it themselves? Burning someone a CD is also a lot more awkward than simply saying "yes" when they ask to borrow it.
I just fear that DRM is going to cost us a slice of our collective culture. Sharing music, trying something new, random, different is significant in enjoying music. I see an alternative world brewing where there are only Britany Spears clones running around, with smaller acts pushed to the back of the iTunes catalogue, and we can only hear what we personally have paid for or have seen advertised on TV or radio.
Hate to nitpick on a post I basically agree with, but I don't think they'll even notice the crappy resolution that the DRM fall-back might use. I've had to correctly set up pretty much everyone I know with a widescreen set. For example, cable boxes and DVD players usually default to 4x3 mode, meaning that when you do get widescreen, it's letterboxed and not anamorphic. Long story short, your (UK) 625 line has just become a 450ish line one. And get this; in UK cable it'll crop a 16:9 image to 4:3 by chopping off the sides when it's set to 4:3 mode. So, we are chopping off the sides and throwing away about a third of the resolution. They usually then use the zoom feature to streatch the 4x3 image back to 16:9, losing yet more picture, from the top and bottom this time. To top it off, most UK TVs have RGB input, but again you need to enable it to take advantage of it. It's a night and day once you get it right.
I'd say at least half even had the picture stretch/zoom feature on the completely wrong setting and it was obviously wrong, but they just don't care. One girl even wanted me to put it back the fat-people look once I set it all correctly. I didn't even bother arguing.
People just don't care, they just accept that's it. Things will need to get really bad for a DRM uprising.
Replying to an AC, you'll probably never see this, but have you thought about just buying a new soundcard? They are very cheap.
iTMS also means:
I'm sorry, but iTMS is just plain wrong and anyone who understands the technology yet still invests in it deserves all they get.
And you think they'll care about DRM?
I agree with you completely and I dispair daily over this mess. However, you might have just contractited yourself there...if DRM interferes with said Desperate Housewives, then they WILL care.
Personally, I think it'll all come to a head when the iPod is no longer at the top of the mp3 player food chain and the less-tech smart people want to switch to the next big device. All of thoses iTunes purchases, wasted. What kind of business model do you have when the conterfeit goods are superiour to the offical products?
Maybe. Personally my experience with Real codecs over the years hasn't been all that great. I first used Real back in buffering...buffering...buffering...buffering...bu ffering...buffering...
OK, so far it's the same as everyone else has been suggesting. However, my change is to NOT boot up if step 2 fails. Instead I'll display the following honeypot:
And once that has been displayed, do as it says and shut down. The idea is to tempt the thiefs greed into wanting more.
There are other things I'm going to add e.g. even if they do get the machine connected, it still won't boot. Not without my USB keychain containing the encryption keys to all the user data. In the case of this server I am going to get a USB extension cord and hide a USB keychain somewhere, possibly glued to something heavy. If I am broken into, they'll just unplug the box and not bother with the wires. Almost like a bee-sting, but backwards.
Wow, click-click saved, thanks, never seen that before. I didn't ask for the moderations in either direction, I just pointed out that these organisations don't care much for the law, and that "because it's illegal" is poor reasoning for assuming it doesn't happen.
Anyone that thinks a two-party system is a democracy is a fucking idiot.
It's not legal to flood LA with crack to fund military coops in South America. Never stopped the CIA. What makes you think this is any different? What makes you think they actually follow the law?
Is your brain turned on today? ;-)
If even one person listens to those who are speaking and then takes their side, then the popularity would rise. The question is; are the sane people being put off ID propponents at a faster rate? I'd guess not; /.'ers laughing at god-bothers are in the minority if you ask me. At the very least, the people fighting for ID have won a place in many peoples minds that it is actually a valid "theory" that counters evolution, even if they don't buy it themselves. That's the dangerous thing here.
And you think this is somehow a new thing? People rarely question authority figures. Witness the Milgram Experiment which found that 65% of people will inflict fatal electric shocks as punishment when told to do so by an authority figure. That's right, 65% of us are Lyndie England wannabes, given the right circumstances. People are very malleable and easy to lead.
Computers take this to a new level of (misguided) trust.
It still sends you the wrong places though. Once I was running late for something, so I decided to just trust it. In that one 5 mile journey it tried to send me down a one-way street the wrong way as well as two roads that had been permamently closed to through-traffic. The maps are at least five years out of date.
That's the thing with the consumer GPS systems I've seen; none of them include things like contour lines. They are simply 2 dimensional road maps. Not very detailed, but I'd imagine that would be by design, to keep the display easy to read while driving.
It's even debatable whether the narrow yellow roads on that map (which mean single-track with passing places) should be used by a GPS as through routes, let alone the white ones!
Depends who you are marketing it to...tourists drive on these roads up here in Scotland a lot. There's a few out-of-the-way places where you have no choice.
Why not? The current generation don't seem to have a problem with it!
You know, I bet someone in Apple is kicking themselves over that one. Had they released this on April Fools, they would have gotten a lot more publicity and that "is it real?" factor as people discuss it on chatrooms. People would have raced each other to try it out and be the first to confirm it.