If they didn't switch to higher quality encoding, there would be no ability to charge for "removing" the DRM--something many of us feel THEY should pay for. I don't agree with that. And I'm not sure you do either.:-) I assume you're saying that we think they should pay for the DRM, not us. I agree, and that is exactly what they're demonstrating here. By charging less for the DRM version of a song (ignoring the quality issue for now) they're effectively paying for that DRM by accepting less money for it. Looking at it from the consumer's perspective, there's nobody who actually wants DRM. Either they don't know about it or they don't want it. For those who don't want it, a product with no DRM is more desirable. Why should it not have a higher price? We've been saying all along that we would rather have music without DRM, so now it's time to put our money where our mouths are. If you're not willing to pay more for it, that means you didn't really want it more. And I'm not picking on you particularly, just saying that there should be a correlation between asking for something in the market and being willing to pay for it.
The lower price that people were not paying (whether because of piracy or just not consuming music) is the crux of this entire issue. Where do you get this idea that people (generally) were "not paying" that price? Or do you mean there were particular people not paying it?
If you increase the price on something, people complain. If you look at this from an economic perspective, it doesn't matter whether they complain. But raise the price and they will buy less of it.
But if you just throw them a bone, even something that costs you nothing, they will pay more. If by "a bone" you mean something they value, then yes of course they will pay more for something they value more. Normally supplier costs would come into play because a competitor could offer the same product for a lower price, but in this case the record labels have a monopoly on the particular product in question and there are no close substitutes. So in this case the costs to the supplier are pretty much irrelevant, and it's just a question of price vs. how much the buyer values the product.
If they had just gone to $1.30 per track in the first place, nobody would have bitten, because they would have seen it as a massive ripoff since we all know that their costs are practically zero compared to CD. Again, supplier costs don't matter. People might be irritated if they think the seller is making a big profit, but almost nobody will decide not to buy for that reason (and it would be irrational to decide on that basis). If there is no adequate substitute good, the decision comes down to the perceived value of the product compared to its price, whether the seller is making 1% profit or 50%. In this case Apple believes that the perceived value has gone up, so they would be pretty stupid not to charge more. The market will decide whether their price is appropriate or not.
Right of first sale is now theft? Wow. How is a CD different from any other product in this regard? Or do you think I'm stealing from the car company (or stealing a tiny bit from every dealership maybe?) when I sell my car used? After all, I'm getting that money that "should have" gone to the manufacturer, right? I understand your desire and recommendation to support artists, but really if the artist doesn't want to compete with their own used recordings, they should make recordings that people want to keep.
I don't think they suspected Canada. And they could have asked about the parts they were suspicious about - the multilayer clear coating designed to protect the red color. The mint I'm sure would have been happy to send them a description of it, which they would see perfectly matches what they're seeing and would mean either a) there's no reason to suspect anything or b) Canada is spying on us. And if we're worried about B, then that also does not comfort me.
Um... nothing? RSI comes from making very fine repetitive motions. Waving your arms around wouldn't have that same effect. I've never heard of people getting RSI from sweeping floors all day, or pulling weeds, or working an assembly line, or other large-scale repetitive motions. Somebody could come along and prove me wrong, though.
We're not laughing at them for being suspicious and checking out something they weren't familiar with. We're laughing at them for being suspicious and not checking it out. They knew it was a Canadian coin. A quick Google search on "canadian quarter red flower" probably would have cleared it all up. Confirm that with a phone call to the Canadian embassy. The whole thing could have been over in ten minutes, and then if it becomes public, they say yep, we wondered about those coins but we quickly discovered they're harmless. Now, they've demonstrated that not only are they paranoid about anything looking slightly strange, but they also don't have any idea how to investigate it. So we'll have the aforementioned sea of false positives, and if there are any real positives we don't have any reason to think the government is capable of doing anything about it. I don't find this situation reassuring, because we're being asked to give up some liberties without any evidence that our security is improved anyway. And no, that doesn't mean I necessarily approve of giving up liberty for security.
I didn't miss your point, I disagree with it. The movie (etc) is the message. Everything else is put there to satisfy the publisher's requirements and is not part of the message. If the purchaser is not the intended recipient of the message, then who is?
Most of us, in that senario, to paraphrase Nancy Reagan, would "Just Say, Hell, No!" What if there is nobody making a chipset that doesn't enforce Trusted Computing? What do we do then? Say "hell no" to ever owning a new computer again? I'm not arguing with you and these are not rhetorical questions. I really want to know, because I'm concerned about it. What is the future for people who want to actually control what their computers do?
To put into the context of this discussion: you buy an HD-DVD, you insert it into your player, and you watch the movie. The disc constitutes the totality of the message, the sender is the manufacturer, and the recipient is your player. Within the larger message is contained the movie, and the message itself instructs your player to show you the movie if, and only if, certain conditions are met. The inaccurate part of your.sig is not that we are not a recipient, it's that we aren't the recipient of the message we think we're receiving. I think you're just redefining terms to alter the argument. It's clear that the message is the movie (and special features, etc). That is what the consumer wants, and the disc is the way it's being delivered. It's also clear that the message is intended for the purchaser, not the device. If the movie studio were trying to deliver this content to DVD players, they wouldn't bother selling the players to end-users, they would just plug in thousands or millions of them in warehouses (no need to even connect a TV if the DVD player is the intended recipient) and play the discs in them. That obviously makes no sense. The studio is giving you the encrypted content, and together with your device you have the means to decrypt it. This is by design, since if you couldn't decrypt it you would never buy it in the first place. What they're trying to do is not prevent you from decrypting it, but control how you can decrypt it and what you can do with it once it's decrypted. Not only is there no cryptographic solution, you could argue that it's not even a cryptographic problem.
You're right that DRM is doomed if there is enough interest in breaking it, but what's different about DRM compared to normal Alice-to-Bob encrypted messages is that with DRM, it doesn't matter how strong the encryption is, because the attacker is guaranteed to have all the decryption keys. All they can do is try to make it hard to find them, without making it so much of a PITA for normal use that people stop buying.
If there's a double-blind, randomized experiment with a sufficient sample size that got a statistically significant result, then I would agree it looks like there is something science cannot explain. Otherwise, I would say there is something that the two of us cannot explain, which is frankly not very interesting or significant.
If 14 year old girls that you have apparently freed from the oppression of a ruthless dictator are your enemy, then something has already gone very, very wrong I don't know if there are any 14-year-old Iraqi girls who are our enemies, but in case you haven't been paying attention, yes - something has definitely gone very, very wrong. A great many things in fact.:-) or should I say:-(
Calling a bunch of tools an "operating system" without a kernel doesn't quite cut it in my book, but you're more than welcome to call it whatever you want. Then why did you correct him?
they'll pander to the whims of any company willing to subsidize this cost
I didn't see anything about Visa subsidizing the costs in the article. It said the UK govt is paying a billion dollars for security, but I don't remember any mention of Visa chipping in. Did I miss it?
Slashdot is read by people outside the USA. Firstly, Slashdot is intentionally US-centric. If people from France or Japan or wherever don't like that, they should look for other news websites, because this one is apparently not for them. Secondly, the GP's point is that Google and Wikipedia are also read by people outside the USA, and in this case should have been. Here are the results from a Google search on HMO, the first of which is the Wikipedia page on it, with "Health Maintenance Organization" spelled out right on the search results page.
Well, maybe I'm wrong. But you could try an experiment. Next time you're in a hospital, whoever comes in to see you ask for the opposite sex instead. See what they say. I would guess that they would 1) not accommodate your request and 2) not mind if you take your business elsewhere. I don't think most hospitals have the time or resources to worry about switching staff around based on patients' whims. But again, maybe I'm wrong.
If you need to move a patient, you don't find somebody with big muscles. If they're conscious, the patient moves themselves. If not, you get a bunch of people to lift them at the same time. As far as modesty, hospitals and clinics do not care if you are uncomfortable with a female touching your giblets or a man poking your bajingo (yes I watch Scrubs). The patient has to just get over it. The interest in male nurses is IMO all about the general nursing shortage.
My wife is an RN and certified nurse midwife, so I sort of know what I'm talking about.
Listing it in Article I specifies that it applies to Congress, which the Supreme Court ruled in Merryman.
Right. My point was it doesn't say "nobody can suspend HC except Congress" it says "nobody can suspend HC except in case of rebellion or invasion". So the President can never suspend it (I hope), and Congress can only do so in certain circumstances.
Depending on the size of different interest groups (say, environmentalists) you may be able to pull more votes by taking a strong stance on a limited scope issue, but another candidate might still beat you by taking a position halfway between the extreme and the middle.
But that would be OK, because all it would mean is that they would get more seats than you. With our winner-take-all approach, the two dominant parties always win everything, with very few exceptions, and other parties don't get heard at all. I'm not saying the other system (parliamentary I guess it's called) would solve all our problems, but it seems to me it would be nice to have the House of Representatives elected in that fashion (nationwide proportional voting) and the Senate keep representing individual states. Maybe with the state legislatures electing Senators like it used to be. But this is just blowing smoke since such a Constitutional amendment is next to impossible.
I've said this for years and no one ever believes it. They believe the liberal claptrap that only Republicans ever violate our rights and the principles of this nation. NO SUCH THING IS TRUE. ALL politicians seek to conserve power to themselves, to attract power to themselves, to serve themselves. It is simply that the liberals have a better sounding pile of claptrap to sell.
The liberals are also less effective, so the consolidation of power moves in fits and starts rather than with the frightening rapidity we've seen in the past few years. Only partly kidding about liberals (and I identify more as a liberal than a conservative, so no need to flame me).
Article 1, section 9 reads in part "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." It doesn't specify that Congress can suspend it, only that it cannot be suspended except in rebellion or invasion. I don't really know enough to argue about Lincoln, but the Civil War sure seems like a rebellion to me.:-) All we have to worry about now is an Attorney General who believes that "the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended" doesn't mean that US citizens have any right to the writ of Habeas Corpus. Hard to believe, but it's true.
Hey, AMD guys! People are not going to buy cripleware. Build the good stuff, or prepare to go out of business.
If nobody is selling anything but crippleware, guess what people are gonna buy? Intel will be just as DRMed as AMD. Maybe not both at the same time, but it's going to happen. Cost of entry to this market is so steep that we cannot count on another player entering it with uncrippled chipsets either. So what do we do? Seriously. The only options I see are to grit teeth and buy crippled hardware, or keep your old stuff and hope it lasts longer than this DRM insanity. And the likelihood of the latter happening this century is obviously up for debate.
I must have misplaced my 7.1 surround sound and 50" TV. Or maybe some people don't have a home theater system, that could be possible. Maybe there's somebody on this planet with a computer, nice LCD monitor, decent headphones, and a DVD drive, and they have a crappy TV and no external speakers. Or no TV at all. Or then again maybe everybody is just like you.
Until that time, the utilities will have plenty of opportunity to buy electricity low and sell it high.
Sure, but that isn't what they're doing now. Some of them will adapt, but I predict many if not most will fail to adapt from a we-make-all-the-power model to a mixed business of making a little power, and moving and storing power to supplement and fill in where their customers cannot make their own. Business that fail to adapt to a changing market generally either go bankrupt and reorganize, go out of business, or try to interfere with the new market conditions with new laws. I would guess we'll see some of all three.
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Right of first sale is now theft? Wow. How is a CD different from any other product in this regard? Or do you think I'm stealing from the car company (or stealing a tiny bit from every dealership maybe?) when I sell my car used? After all, I'm getting that money that "should have" gone to the manufacturer, right? I understand your desire and recommendation to support artists, but really if the artist doesn't want to compete with their own used recordings, they should make recordings that people want to keep.
I don't think they suspected Canada. And they could have asked about the parts they were suspicious about - the multilayer clear coating designed to protect the red color. The mint I'm sure would have been happy to send them a description of it, which they would see perfectly matches what they're seeing and would mean either a) there's no reason to suspect anything or b) Canada is spying on us. And if we're worried about B, then that also does not comfort me.
Um... nothing? RSI comes from making very fine repetitive motions. Waving your arms around wouldn't have that same effect. I've never heard of people getting RSI from sweeping floors all day, or pulling weeds, or working an assembly line, or other large-scale repetitive motions. Somebody could come along and prove me wrong, though.
P.S. whoever "they" are
I didn't miss your point, I disagree with it. The movie (etc) is the message. Everything else is put there to satisfy the publisher's requirements and is not part of the message. If the purchaser is not the intended recipient of the message, then who is?
You're right that DRM is doomed if there is enough interest in breaking it, but what's different about DRM compared to normal Alice-to-Bob encrypted messages is that with DRM, it doesn't matter how strong the encryption is, because the attacker is guaranteed to have all the decryption keys. All they can do is try to make it hard to find them, without making it so much of a PITA for normal use that people stop buying.
If there's a double-blind, randomized experiment with a sufficient sample size that got a statistically significant result, then I would agree it looks like there is something science cannot explain. Otherwise, I would say there is something that the two of us cannot explain, which is frankly not very interesting or significant.
Which is actually much funnier than someone who did get the joke. :-)
Well, maybe I'm wrong. But you could try an experiment. Next time you're in a hospital, whoever comes in to see you ask for the opposite sex instead. See what they say. I would guess that they would 1) not accommodate your request and 2) not mind if you take your business elsewhere. I don't think most hospitals have the time or resources to worry about switching staff around based on patients' whims. But again, maybe I'm wrong.
If you need to move a patient, you don't find somebody with big muscles. If they're conscious, the patient moves themselves. If not, you get a bunch of people to lift them at the same time. As far as modesty, hospitals and clinics do not care if you are uncomfortable with a female touching your giblets or a man poking your bajingo (yes I watch Scrubs). The patient has to just get over it. The interest in male nurses is IMO all about the general nursing shortage.
My wife is an RN and certified nurse midwife, so I sort of know what I'm talking about.
Article 1, section 9 reads in part "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." It doesn't specify that Congress can suspend it, only that it cannot be suspended except in rebellion or invasion. I don't really know enough to argue about Lincoln, but the Civil War sure seems like a rebellion to me. :-) All we have to worry about now is an Attorney General who believes that "the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended" doesn't mean that US citizens have any right to the writ of Habeas Corpus. Hard to believe, but it's true.
I must have misplaced my 7.1 surround sound and 50" TV. Or maybe some people don't have a home theater system, that could be possible. Maybe there's somebody on this planet with a computer, nice LCD monitor, decent headphones, and a DVD drive, and they have a crappy TV and no external speakers. Or no TV at all. Or then again maybe everybody is just like you.