Not to cheat on a test, no. I guess using practice questions to test their own understanding of the material prior to the actual test is too much to hope for, though if someone's willing to engage in boring rote memorization of an answer key, why not make the job even easier and actually try to understand enough of the subject to do well on a test without trying to recall, under pressure, which letter is the correct one?
I get the impression that the idea of what is and isn't cheating is a lot greyer than most people seem to think. I agree that memorising answers by rote is stupid, but then so is producing a test from canned questions. Because the questions might turn up on the test verbatim, the issue of whether the student should see them at all arises, when logically the student should be positively encouraged to work out sample questions for revision. Moving over to the less morally defensible but still entirely logical side of things: if the student does know that the test will be drawn from a publicly available pool of questions, and that therefore many other students will be looking at it beforehand, it only makes sense to even out the playing field by looking for oneself. I don't like cheaters, they just devalue my degree, but I don't begrudge them their perfectly logical reasons for cheating.
Goodness, if you're not in school to learn, get out. If employers demand a university degree without actually being concerned about the quality of that credential, that just means our educational and labour assignment structures need serious improvement, not that it's OK to cheat on a test for the sake of getting a degree demanded by employers, whether it means a damn thing or not.
Again, I agree with you, but we don't live in an ideal world. The pragmatist in me says that those students who have a relaxed few years, learn the odd bits and pieces that they think are of value, and come out with a ticket into a high-end job at the end of it, are just following a sensible course of action within the system as it stands. Sure, the system is broken, but when it's a person's future prospects we're talking about, can we really blame them for not being the one to stand up and try to fix it when they know they have a near 100% chance of failure?
Didn't mean to imply that trade schools were a better place for cheaters, although I see how it sounded that way. I meant that if you care more about the career prospects than the knowledge gained (thus leading you to cheat on a university degree) then you should probably be getting a more practical education, but unfortunately the qualifications from a university are still considered more valuable than those from a trade school.
You've missed a very significant third option: those who are there with the (sole) hope of furthering their future career choices. At the end of the day it's perfectly possible that the A grade on their record is worth more to them than the material they may have learned. It may not be 'right' but it's perfectly logical. To that end, they may have a good grasp of the material (or they may not, it's true) but consider cheating a worthwhile risk since the final grade is really what matters to them. Sure, they should probably be at trade schools if that's their attitude, but the system doesn't work properly and a degree will serve them much better. I'm not saying they can get away without learning anything, and I doubt most of them would want to, just that the exceptional grades could help their CV percolate to the top of the heap, giving them a better chance to display the useful knowledge and skills that they did pick up.
Sure, you might get to a higher position faster if you spend those four years gaining experience rather than a degree, but you have less choice, and if you want/need to move career paths significantly in the future you're starting again from zero, whereas a widely applicable degree will gain you points in many industries.
There's a resource out there, readily available, consisting of practice questions suited to the material and level of the course, and they expect students not to use it?
I guess I misinterpreted your post - I thought the focus was on the 'functional' part of the sentence (based on your criticisms of the one in the story), with some reasonable leeway for basic ancillary functions.
Out of interest, do you really think there's a market (or a reason) for phones even more basic than something like the 1100 (even the 8110 you liked had more features, for that matter...)? If you just want to use it to make calls, you can quite easily do so without even knowing the other features are there.
Now, can someone please make a functional phone that's just a phone?
They already did, it's called a Nokia 1100, they've sold quarter of a billion of the things (mostly in poorer countries, but they're available worldwide), and they do indeed cost less than $30 unlocked and unsubsidised.
As I've said a few times, they got basic phones right years ago. Just because you don't hear about them doesn't mean they ceased to exist.
And as much as I'd like to dismiss it all as theater I honestly don't think the TSA really cares deeply about keeping sharp objects off the plane, because they are simply too easy to come by or even make, too hard to detect, and unlikely to be effective against the security of the plane itself anymore.
Surely making a big song and dance about confiscating items that they know are a minimal danger and thus (quite rightly) don't particularly care about is the definition of theatre?
It's probably getting to the point that I've said this enough times for Nokia to owe me some of their marketing budget, but anyway: the 1100 is the perfect basic phone. Better (monochrome) screen than the Motorola F3, better battery than the older Nokias on which it's based, dirt cheap & near indestructible. There's a damn good reason that it's sold quarter of a billion units.
Re:What's the deal with the rush of TSA stories re
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Does anybody really think that an old ladies sewing needles are a threat to the airplane?
As I've said before, the fact that they still allow glass on planes negates pretty much all of their "no vaguely sharp objects" rules.
Not that I actually consider glass to be a risk, mind - worst case scenario someone gets a few cuts before the hijacker is jumped by 150 other passengers - but it's more of a risk than most of what they're confiscating.
Re:What's the deal with the rush of TSA stories re
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The 'enhanced' search also takes a lot longer than a quick scan, and can only work if the majority consent to the latter. If you're flying this time next week, take the opportunity to protest by joining the mass refusal of scanning.
That's actually exactly how it does work! If you look at the images in the article, you'll see that each has a line of natural language, followed by a line showing how it was parsed into Mathematica syntax, and then the output below that.
I don't know, I'd imagine that an awful lot of universities have site licenses for Mathematica. As I said below, I think it's a genuinely useful feature, and thus a selling point - it may not be strictly necessary, but it basically serves as fuzzy matching for syntax that I can't quite remember, which makes my use of the program that much easier and more efficient. If I need to do something particularly complex and/or precise, I can still fall back to the documentation for the rigidly ordered standard syntax, but for general day to day use it'll make my life easier (and/or stop me putting such a load on the Wolfram Alpha servers when I have the odd bit of calculus to double check).
I disagree, in this case at least. I was actually thinking about this a week or so ago - I noticed that I more often than not use Wolfram Alpha even though I've got a (site licensed) copy of Mathematica on my machine.
What it comes down to is that while Alpha might not be 'natural language input', it does use something probably best described as 'fuzzy syntax'. If I'm not doing industrial strength quantities of calculation, it's quicker to use Alpha, where I know I can just type "integrate foo from bar to infinity" than it is to check the Mathematica documentation to remind myself if the syntax is Integrate[function, variable, {upper, lower}], or whatever (I have no idea if that's right or not, and that's kind of my point!).
DRM harms the legitimate consumer to some extent, (restricting fair use, reducing platform compatibility, preventing resale, and so forth) thus there should be a good argument for its implementation.
Just because you have one content delivery mechanism that's easy to pirate, you should just give up on securing your content and allow the pirates to fuck you over?
The content is on the torrent sites already, taken from the DVDs or blu-rays. If there's already at least one bit-perfect DRM free copy circulating, what possible difference can it make how many more are made?
I get the impression that we'll never agree on this one. Despite what you may think, I don't support copyright infringement (although I do support reform, with limited terms of 15-20 years), I just vehemently oppose what the industry is doing to harm me, a legitimate consumer, in the name of preventing copyright infringement. What makes it all the worse is firstly that it doesn't even work, and secondly that, while some measures are intended to protect against infringement, others can only be intended to extract a greater profit by technologically preventing legitimate uses. That these measures are sold as 'anti piracy' when that is quite clearly not the case only feeds the mistrust.
I can't even tell if you're serious. Are you honestly suggesting that someone who pays to go to college, diligently spends their day in classes, finishes off their homework in the evening and then wants to spend an hour or two relaxing with a game should be banned from doing so on the network that they have paid (a significant amount, if my experience is anything to go on) for?
Saying that students have no right to play games/party/read books/whatever else on their off time because they're there to learn is like saying workers have no right to do so because they should be making money for the company. If it starts interfering with your day to day workload then it's an issue, but there's a reason we don't have 16 hour workdays.
Even looking at it from a pure efficiency point of view: people are more productive with time to relax and enjoy themselves. Burned out students will learn far less than those who are both relaxed and motivated.
As far as I can see your argument is totally and utterly invalid.
Your logic is also rather tenuous. In short, you assume that DRM prevents copying without any real evidence.
If one want a game, film or TV show for free, there is a near 100% chance that there's a torrent available. Not only that, the torrented version is often less restricted than the paid version. Why, then, does anyone pay for content? It's because they feel a legal and/or moral obligation to do so. Of course, not everyone pays, but many do.
Even with DRM, there's nearly 100% availability of infringing content. Why do you think removing DRM would increase the instances of this content being downloaded freely rather than paid for? The paid content would become more attractive by virtue of being unrestricted. The infringing content would be identical to how it is now.
As you say, opposition to DRM has to make sense to be taken seriously, so if there are any holes in my logic I'm happy to be told!
It isn't a low-quality stream -- all wp7 / android / iphones are now 800x480 resolution or higher, i.e. they are 480p (dvd-quality) or higher. If the stream isn't 480p now, it will be soon enough. Besides, people will pirate lower resolutions streams often enough.. they're not that picky.
I assumed that it was low quality on the basis that it's streaming over 3G, not just on the basis of the small screen. Even if it is DVD quality, my point still stands: I have yet to see a convincing argument (or any argument at all, for that matter) for why anybody would rip a Netflix stream from their paid subscription rather than renting & ripping a DVD/BD or (far more likely) downloading a torrent from someone who's already done so. If you think that there will be more copies made from Netflix streams than there already are from physical media I'd be interested to hear why.
I also don't buy the logic that no-DRM gets more customers -- Netflix has never had a no-DRM streaming option but they keep setting all kinds of insane records with their streaming option, in terms of numbers of customers, titles streamed per unit time, percentage of US internet bandwidth (as high as 40%!), etc. etc. They are literally on fire. A huge reason for that is that their DRM Just Works (tm). i.e. you as a customer never have to worry about what devices you've enabled, where you've transferred your content to, how many times you've viewed it, if your download failed did you still get charged for it, etc -- none of that crap happens on Netflix, so people simply don't care.
The DRM just works on supported platforms. The only reason for the lack of Android support is DRM problems. Thus DRM has lost them potential customers for whom viewing content on their mobile device is a key feature. It's not a matter of those few geeks who are irritated by DRM (or object to it philosophically), it's a matter of entire platforms being removed from the market because the DRM is causing problems at the development end.
The studios are willing to let Netflix stream their titles because they know they'll get paid.
If you're streaming on Netflix, you've already paid. If you don't want to pay, there are literally millions of torrents out there. If, for some reason, you really want to freely share content that you've already paid for, you can buy a DVD (or have Netflix mail one to you) and rip that. I don't see how DRM on the Netflix stream would change any of this. Again, if you think differently, I'd be interested to hear your side.
It's rare to see a business/pricing model as simple and fair as Netflix's, a delivery mechanism that's as easy/hassle-free, and for it to be combined with compelling content. DRM is one of the enablers in this case. The solution to the lack of a DRM option on Android is not to convince world+dog that their business model needs to change, and that their partners are living in the dark ages by insisting on DRM -- nope -- the solution, is quite simply to provide a DRM framework that can be used in creating a Netflix app on Android.
You've yet to suggest why DRM on Netflix streams will have any impact on the amount of infringing content copied and shared. The whole point of my original post was that if you don't want to pay there are plenty of options for you. Netflix is for those who, for legal or moral reasons, do choose to pay. Why would DRM change any of that?
I accept that the easier option (compared to convincing the movie studios otherwise) is probably to implement the DRM on Android. What I was saying is that I don't understand the vehement insistence on DRM from the studios when the cat is well and truly out of the bag. It will have precisely zero effect on the number of movies available on torrent sites.
I did think that initially, but according to TFA it's a streaming service, not a download with an expiry date. Sure, someone could put together a stream ripper much more easily if there were no DRM, but if they're going to pirate anyway, why would they bother doing so by saving reduced quality streams onto their phone from their paid Netflix subscription (presumably so they can watch them after the subscription lapses) rather than just torrenting a DVD rip?
Firstly, it's an awful lot harder to install malware from a video file than it is to bundle it in with the installation of already cracked software.
If it was easy to copy video files you bet there would be many times more as it seems only the malware writers are the only ones defeating the DRM and packaging the infected movies and filez.
This line makes me think you might be shilling or trolling. If not, you're severely misinformed. It's as easy as one person getting the DVD and firing up handbrake, then throwing a torrent on the pirate bay. Video DRM specifications and keys are published in the wild and implemented in open source software. I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that the studios are severely misled if they think more DRM is going to do anything to change it.
Long(ish) journeys seem to be the most sensible reason. I probably wouldn't pay money specifically for something to watch while I'm stuck on the train for a few hours, but if it's part of a subscription service that I'm already paying for then it seems like a rather pleasant added benefit to be able to access it from anywhere (albeit on a small screen). As a somewhat niche secondary benefit, there are also smartphones with TV/monitor outputs (I believe the iPhone supports it, for example) - if I wanted to take a movie (which I don't have a physical copy of) around to a friend's house tonight, hooking up a phone to their TV seems like a reasonable way of doing so.
Give me one good reason to believe that: (a) there would be any more copyright infringement due to Netflix stream rips than there already is from DVD and TV rips of the same content. (b) the DRM will remain unbroken, in contrast to almost every other widespread DRM scheme ever implemented.
If you think DRM would actually have any impact in this particular case I'd be genuinely interested to hear why.
I genuinely wonder what the execs have against that solution, in this case. They aren't morons, they know there are fifty different ways to get a movie up onto the torrent sites, and that grabbing a low quality stream from a phone handset wouldn't be the top of the list, so it seems a little odd that they'd be this bothered about it.
Put aside the "Lolz the MPAA are evil bastards" mindset (which, I must admit, I do often agree with) for a minute and try to work out the business logic behind this. The only thing I can think of is that they don't believe that allowing Netflix on Android will motivate enough new subscribers to be worth setting a "no DRM" or "lax DRM" precedent in one of their contracts. That's still working on the logic that DRM stops copying, though, which really doesn't appear to be the case.
We've already gotten to the point where college degrees are so common that they're essentially worthless - making them "free" by fleecing taxpayers would only exacerbate the problem.
Alternatively, reduced total funding would lead to far fewer degrees offered (a good thing - as others have said, trade schools are far more appropriate for many, and should not carry any negative stigma), leading to intense competition among applicants and the awarding of places to only the most academically capable.
Kind of like the UK used to do it, basically, before it all started going to shit.
The current system of students self-funding through tuition fees allows near-infinite expansion (which we seem to agree is a very bad thing) if credit is easily available, or restricts degrees to the wealthy rather than the academically capable if credit is not readily available.
Obviously if everyone came out of university well educated and with improved critical thinking abilities then I might consider the situation differently, but that's just not the way things are working in the real world, and we should accept that rather than making decisions based on hope.
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Not to cheat on a test, no. I guess using practice questions to test their own understanding of the material prior to the actual test is too much to hope for, though if someone's willing to engage in boring rote memorization of an answer key, why not make the job even easier and actually try to understand enough of the subject to do well on a test without trying to recall, under pressure, which letter is the correct one?
I get the impression that the idea of what is and isn't cheating is a lot greyer than most people seem to think. I agree that memorising answers by rote is stupid, but then so is producing a test from canned questions. Because the questions might turn up on the test verbatim, the issue of whether the student should see them at all arises, when logically the student should be positively encouraged to work out sample questions for revision. Moving over to the less morally defensible but still entirely logical side of things: if the student does know that the test will be drawn from a publicly available pool of questions, and that therefore many other students will be looking at it beforehand, it only makes sense to even out the playing field by looking for oneself. I don't like cheaters, they just devalue my degree, but I don't begrudge them their perfectly logical reasons for cheating.
Goodness, if you're not in school to learn, get out. If employers demand a university degree without actually being concerned about the quality of that credential, that just means our educational and labour assignment structures need serious improvement, not that it's OK to cheat on a test for the sake of getting a degree demanded by employers, whether it means a damn thing or not.
Again, I agree with you, but we don't live in an ideal world. The pragmatist in me says that those students who have a relaxed few years, learn the odd bits and pieces that they think are of value, and come out with a ticket into a high-end job at the end of it, are just following a sensible course of action within the system as it stands. Sure, the system is broken, but when it's a person's future prospects we're talking about, can we really blame them for not being the one to stand up and try to fix it when they know they have a near 100% chance of failure?
Didn't mean to imply that trade schools were a better place for cheaters, although I see how it sounded that way. I meant that if you care more about the career prospects than the knowledge gained (thus leading you to cheat on a university degree) then you should probably be getting a more practical education, but unfortunately the qualifications from a university are still considered more valuable than those from a trade school.
You've missed a very significant third option: those who are there with the (sole) hope of furthering their future career choices. At the end of the day it's perfectly possible that the A grade on their record is worth more to them than the material they may have learned. It may not be 'right' but it's perfectly logical. To that end, they may have a good grasp of the material (or they may not, it's true) but consider cheating a worthwhile risk since the final grade is really what matters to them. Sure, they should probably be at trade schools if that's their attitude, but the system doesn't work properly and a degree will serve them much better. I'm not saying they can get away without learning anything, and I doubt most of them would want to, just that the exceptional grades could help their CV percolate to the top of the heap, giving them a better chance to display the useful knowledge and skills that they did pick up.
Sure, you might get to a higher position faster if you spend those four years gaining experience rather than a degree, but you have less choice, and if you want/need to move career paths significantly in the future you're starting again from zero, whereas a widely applicable degree will gain you points in many industries.
There's a resource out there, readily available, consisting of practice questions suited to the material and level of the course, and they expect students not to use it?
I guess I misinterpreted your post - I thought the focus was on the 'functional' part of the sentence (based on your criticisms of the one in the story), with some reasonable leeway for basic ancillary functions.
Out of interest, do you really think there's a market (or a reason) for phones even more basic than something like the 1100 (even the 8110 you liked had more features, for that matter...)? If you just want to use it to make calls, you can quite easily do so without even knowing the other features are there.
Now, can someone please make a functional phone that's just a phone?
They already did, it's called a Nokia 1100, they've sold quarter of a billion of the things (mostly in poorer countries, but they're available worldwide), and they do indeed cost less than $30 unlocked and unsubsidised.
As I've said a few times, they got basic phones right years ago. Just because you don't hear about them doesn't mean they ceased to exist.
And as much as I'd like to dismiss it all as theater I honestly don't think the TSA really cares deeply about keeping sharp objects off the plane, because they are simply too easy to come by or even make, too hard to detect, and unlikely to be effective against the security of the plane itself anymore.
Surely making a big song and dance about confiscating items that they know are a minimal danger and thus (quite rightly) don't particularly care about is the definition of theatre?
It's probably getting to the point that I've said this enough times for Nokia to owe me some of their marketing budget, but anyway: the 1100 is the perfect basic phone. Better (monochrome) screen than the Motorola F3, better battery than the older Nokias on which it's based, dirt cheap & near indestructible. There's a damn good reason that it's sold quarter of a billion units.
Does anybody really think that an old ladies sewing needles are a threat to the airplane?
As I've said before, the fact that they still allow glass on planes negates pretty much all of their "no vaguely sharp objects" rules.
Not that I actually consider glass to be a risk, mind - worst case scenario someone gets a few cuts before the hijacker is jumped by 150 other passengers - but it's more of a risk than most of what they're confiscating.
The 'enhanced' search also takes a lot longer than a quick scan, and can only work if the majority consent to the latter. If you're flying this time next week, take the opportunity to protest by joining the mass refusal of scanning.
Which is why "The directories will be available ... printed ... upon request".
That's actually exactly how it does work! If you look at the images in the article, you'll see that each has a line of natural language, followed by a line showing how it was parsed into Mathematica syntax, and then the output below that.
I don't know, I'd imagine that an awful lot of universities have site licenses for Mathematica. As I said below, I think it's a genuinely useful feature, and thus a selling point - it may not be strictly necessary, but it basically serves as fuzzy matching for syntax that I can't quite remember, which makes my use of the program that much easier and more efficient. If I need to do something particularly complex and/or precise, I can still fall back to the documentation for the rigidly ordered standard syntax, but for general day to day use it'll make my life easier (and/or stop me putting such a load on the Wolfram Alpha servers when I have the odd bit of calculus to double check).
I disagree, in this case at least. I was actually thinking about this a week or so ago - I noticed that I more often than not use Wolfram Alpha even though I've got a (site licensed) copy of Mathematica on my machine.
What it comes down to is that while Alpha might not be 'natural language input', it does use something probably best described as 'fuzzy syntax'. If I'm not doing industrial strength quantities of calculation, it's quicker to use Alpha, where I know I can just type "integrate foo from bar to infinity" than it is to check the Mathematica documentation to remind myself if the syntax is Integrate[function, variable, {upper, lower}], or whatever (I have no idea if that's right or not, and that's kind of my point!).
Why do you even need an argument for that?
DRM harms the legitimate consumer to some extent, (restricting fair use, reducing platform compatibility, preventing resale, and so forth) thus there should be a good argument for its implementation.
Just because you have one content delivery mechanism that's easy to pirate, you should just give up on securing your content and allow the pirates to fuck you over?
The content is on the torrent sites already, taken from the DVDs or blu-rays. If there's already at least one bit-perfect DRM free copy circulating, what possible difference can it make how many more are made?
I get the impression that we'll never agree on this one. Despite what you may think, I don't support copyright infringement (although I do support reform, with limited terms of 15-20 years), I just vehemently oppose what the industry is doing to harm me, a legitimate consumer, in the name of preventing copyright infringement. What makes it all the worse is firstly that it doesn't even work, and secondly that, while some measures are intended to protect against infringement, others can only be intended to extract a greater profit by technologically preventing legitimate uses. That these measures are sold as 'anti piracy' when that is quite clearly not the case only feeds the mistrust.
I can't even tell if you're serious. Are you honestly suggesting that someone who pays to go to college, diligently spends their day in classes, finishes off their homework in the evening and then wants to spend an hour or two relaxing with a game should be banned from doing so on the network that they have paid (a significant amount, if my experience is anything to go on) for?
Saying that students have no right to play games/party/read books/whatever else on their off time because they're there to learn is like saying workers have no right to do so because they should be making money for the company. If it starts interfering with your day to day workload then it's an issue, but there's a reason we don't have 16 hour workdays.
Even looking at it from a pure efficiency point of view: people are more productive with time to relax and enjoy themselves. Burned out students will learn far less than those who are both relaxed and motivated.
As far as I can see your argument is totally and utterly invalid.
Your logic is also rather tenuous. In short, you assume that DRM prevents copying without any real evidence.
If one want a game, film or TV show for free, there is a near 100% chance that there's a torrent available. Not only that, the torrented version is often less restricted than the paid version. Why, then, does anyone pay for content? It's because they feel a legal and/or moral obligation to do so. Of course, not everyone pays, but many do.
Even with DRM, there's nearly 100% availability of infringing content. Why do you think removing DRM would increase the instances of this content being downloaded freely rather than paid for? The paid content would become more attractive by virtue of being unrestricted. The infringing content would be identical to how it is now.
As you say, opposition to DRM has to make sense to be taken seriously, so if there are any holes in my logic I'm happy to be told!
It isn't a low-quality stream -- all wp7 / android / iphones are now 800x480 resolution or higher, i.e. they are 480p (dvd-quality) or higher. If the stream isn't 480p now, it will be soon enough. Besides, people will pirate lower resolutions streams often enough.. they're not that picky.
I assumed that it was low quality on the basis that it's streaming over 3G, not just on the basis of the small screen. Even if it is DVD quality, my point still stands: I have yet to see a convincing argument (or any argument at all, for that matter) for why anybody would rip a Netflix stream from their paid subscription rather than renting & ripping a DVD/BD or (far more likely) downloading a torrent from someone who's already done so. If you think that there will be more copies made from Netflix streams than there already are from physical media I'd be interested to hear why.
I also don't buy the logic that no-DRM gets more customers -- Netflix has never had a no-DRM streaming option but they keep setting all kinds of insane records with their streaming option, in terms of numbers of customers, titles streamed per unit time, percentage of US internet bandwidth (as high as 40%!), etc. etc. They are literally on fire. A huge reason for that is that their DRM Just Works (tm). i.e. you as a customer never have to worry about what devices you've enabled, where you've transferred your content to, how many times you've viewed it, if your download failed did you still get charged for it, etc -- none of that crap happens on Netflix, so people simply don't care.
The DRM just works on supported platforms. The only reason for the lack of Android support is DRM problems. Thus DRM has lost them potential customers for whom viewing content on their mobile device is a key feature. It's not a matter of those few geeks who are irritated by DRM (or object to it philosophically), it's a matter of entire platforms being removed from the market because the DRM is causing problems at the development end.
The studios are willing to let Netflix stream their titles because they know they'll get paid.
If you're streaming on Netflix, you've already paid. If you don't want to pay, there are literally millions of torrents out there. If, for some reason, you really want to freely share content that you've already paid for, you can buy a DVD (or have Netflix mail one to you) and rip that. I don't see how DRM on the Netflix stream would change any of this. Again, if you think differently, I'd be interested to hear your side.
It's rare to see a business/pricing model as simple and fair as Netflix's, a delivery mechanism that's as easy/hassle-free, and for it to be combined with compelling content. DRM is one of the enablers in this case. The solution to the lack of a DRM option on Android is not to convince world+dog that their business model needs to change, and that their partners are living in the dark ages by insisting on DRM -- nope -- the solution, is quite simply to provide a DRM framework that can be used in creating a Netflix app on Android.
You've yet to suggest why DRM on Netflix streams will have any impact on the amount of infringing content copied and shared. The whole point of my original post was that if you don't want to pay there are plenty of options for you. Netflix is for those who, for legal or moral reasons, do choose to pay. Why would DRM change any of that?
I accept that the easier option (compared to convincing the movie studios otherwise) is probably to implement the DRM on Android. What I was saying is that I don't understand the vehement insistence on DRM from the studios when the cat is well and truly out of the bag. It will have precisely zero effect on the number of movies available on torrent sites.
I did think that initially, but according to TFA it's a streaming service, not a download with an expiry date. Sure, someone could put together a stream ripper much more easily if there were no DRM, but if they're going to pirate anyway, why would they bother doing so by saving reduced quality streams onto their phone from their paid Netflix subscription (presumably so they can watch them after the subscription lapses) rather than just torrenting a DVD rip?
Firstly, it's an awful lot harder to install malware from a video file than it is to bundle it in with the installation of already cracked software.
If it was easy to copy video files you bet there would be many times more as it seems only the malware writers are the only ones defeating the DRM and packaging the infected movies and filez.
This line makes me think you might be shilling or trolling. If not, you're severely misinformed. It's as easy as one person getting the DVD and firing up handbrake, then throwing a torrent on the pirate bay. Video DRM specifications and keys are published in the wild and implemented in open source software. I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that the studios are severely misled if they think more DRM is going to do anything to change it.
Long(ish) journeys seem to be the most sensible reason. I probably wouldn't pay money specifically for something to watch while I'm stuck on the train for a few hours, but if it's part of a subscription service that I'm already paying for then it seems like a rather pleasant added benefit to be able to access it from anywhere (albeit on a small screen). As a somewhat niche secondary benefit, there are also smartphones with TV/monitor outputs (I believe the iPhone supports it, for example) - if I wanted to take a movie (which I don't have a physical copy of) around to a friend's house tonight, hooking up a phone to their TV seems like a reasonable way of doing so.
Give me one good reason to believe that:
(a) there would be any more copyright infringement due to Netflix stream rips than there already is from DVD and TV rips of the same content.
(b) the DRM will remain unbroken, in contrast to almost every other widespread DRM scheme ever implemented.
If you think DRM would actually have any impact in this particular case I'd be genuinely interested to hear why.
If it's on Netflix, there's already a DVD/TV rip on the torrent sites. Why would they bother?
I genuinely wonder what the execs have against that solution, in this case. They aren't morons, they know there are fifty different ways to get a movie up onto the torrent sites, and that grabbing a low quality stream from a phone handset wouldn't be the top of the list, so it seems a little odd that they'd be this bothered about it.
Put aside the "Lolz the MPAA are evil bastards" mindset (which, I must admit, I do often agree with) for a minute and try to work out the business logic behind this. The only thing I can think of is that they don't believe that allowing Netflix on Android will motivate enough new subscribers to be worth setting a "no DRM" or "lax DRM" precedent in one of their contracts. That's still working on the logic that DRM stops copying, though, which really doesn't appear to be the case.
We've already gotten to the point where college degrees are so common that they're essentially worthless - making them "free" by fleecing taxpayers would only exacerbate the problem.
Alternatively, reduced total funding would lead to far fewer degrees offered (a good thing - as others have said, trade schools are far more appropriate for many, and should not carry any negative stigma), leading to intense competition among applicants and the awarding of places to only the most academically capable.
Kind of like the UK used to do it, basically, before it all started going to shit.
The current system of students self-funding through tuition fees allows near-infinite expansion (which we seem to agree is a very bad thing) if credit is easily available, or restricts degrees to the wealthy rather than the academically capable if credit is not readily available.
Obviously if everyone came out of university well educated and with improved critical thinking abilities then I might consider the situation differently, but that's just not the way things are working in the real world, and we should accept that rather than making decisions based on hope.