IT is novel and new, but the distribution channels obviously need to change. I can see a time ( soon ) when popular shows will release to DVD very quickly. If iTunes isnt willing to play, maybe NBC has some other thoughts on how to get the shows out there. Like in a crappy little Flash player on the web? Or on Vista-only, DRM'd to the gills? That's a winning strategy! I get all my TV content from iTunes now and watch it on my AppleTV (I can't get over-the-air, cable or satellite where I just moved to, only crappy 1Mb/s DSL). I subscript to mostly podcasts for news and tech shows, the rest I get from iTunes. I'm only one, lowly customer, but I'm one more customer that will pirate their shows instead of buying them. This move is pure greed. Nothing more.
You mean like offering the shows for viewing on their website? Oh wait, they do that already. But people like Zonk have decided that that's not good enough for him, so instead he'll resort to pirating it. I seriously doubt Zonk was purchasing the show from iTMS when it was available anyways.
I can not get television, cable or satellite TV where my house is situated in Alaska. I can barely get 1 Mb/s DSL. I have chosen to go the route of purchasing my shows off iTunes and watching them on my AppleTV. I do NOT want to watch the shows in a fucking browser window, in Flash or stutter-streamed, on my laptop! Those shows that I am interested in that I can't get legally from iTunes, I choose to get "illegally" from Bittorrent or from friends/coworkers who are able to record the shows. I put illegally in quotes because in this case it's truly a victimless crime. I want to pay for it, but they won't let me so I'm not taking revenue away from them. I am also not re-sharing it (any more than I can help since I don't seed with bittorrent) so I'm not keeping anyone else from buying it.
If the greedy fucks at NBC don't want my $2 per episode for Heroes and the Office, etc., I'll be glad to pirate them and won't feel the least bit guilty about it. I know that I don't have a "right" to watch the show, but if it's a show that interests me and everyone else is talking about it at work, I want to watch it - close to the time they watch it, not a season later when it comes out on DVD. The only reason I won't be able to watch it now is that they want to charge me more for content that is more restricted/broken than before and Apple is rightfully calling bullshit. Since I only download the shows to my iPod and AppleTV, restrictions aren't a big deal for me (it's the principal of the thing!), but I am not willing/can't afford to pay more than $2 for an episode and if they bundle crap I don't want, I won't buy it at all - I *will* pirate it. Sue me!
They are just proving over and over again that pirated goods are far superior to their DRM'd crap anyway. It's cheaper, often available sooner, in better quality and gives me the freedom to use it as I see fit. They are driving *me*, a grown adult and professional, their paying customer, away to piracy. I say good riddance to them. Stick to your guns Apple! I want to buy shows a-la-cart if I want and I am not willing to pay more! I will reward those studios that see the light. The rest can take their chances with draconian DRM, end-to-end Vista-like content controlled crap and the like. The deserve what they will get!
The paradox is that if they have a few thousand or hundred of thousand year ahead of us, then they should have at least by probe or similarly conquered or explored this galaxy, or send a lot of radio signal. But we see nothing.
I was talking about this with a coworker a few weeks back and realized something. Back when radio was first discovered they used *huge* transmitters to transmit a small amount of data a short distance because their receivers were so crude. Later receivers were vastly improved and you could use much lower power to send much more data. Soon we had over the air TV that had a phenomenal amount of data flowing through the air, but, to not encroach on competing channels in adjacent areas, the signal strength was reduced again.
Skip forward to today and we are using cable (very little "signal" escapes) and fiber-optics (no signal escapes) to send even more data back and forth. So, in a few years time we've gone from a very noisy planet with out much to say, to a much less noisy planet with much more to say.
I think it is inevitable, simply from an efficiency perspective, that we will be using more and more "tight-band" communication methods in the future (quantum entanglement?). It seems intuitive that the more advanced a civilization gets the more efficient it will strive to be. The more efficient it is, the less noise will be wasted into space (especially compared to the natural noises of the planet, like lightning, aurora, etc.)
Look how much more efficient we've become in just a hundred years. If this is indicative of other civilizations, then the window of opportunity for eavesdropping on them is extremely small. And that's assuming that they are remotely like us and not building their civilization at the bottom of their ocean or are just so different from us that we wouldn't even recognize them as life.
As far as colonizing the stars goes, barring some way of FTL (or instant) travel and communication, I think we will never move beyond our own solar system in our current physical form. I think we will have figured out how to lose our bodies and move our consciousness into "the machine" before then. Once that happens, there will be no need for maintaining the human race in a biological form at all since "reproduction" can occur in solid-state. Once we've reached that stage, being effectively immortal, we might be willing to entertain the thought of physically traveling to other stars, but there will be no need to colonize them, they can be virtualized. But then again, we could virtualize the whole trip anyway.
Either way, that step in technology would almost guarantee a very efficient system that would need to produce almost no waste products. With no need for maintaining and supporting physical bodies, all of the energy required to sustain physical life will not be needed. No more growing and shipping crops. No more energy wasted in physical travel. In fact, very little need for ever physically moving anything, from then on. This would make most of our civilization a "static" construct. At that point, unless we were purposely broadcasting for neighbors, who'd ever hear us?
Make me a cell phone that is reliable and almost as cheap as POTS. No contracts, no roaming and no other hidden charges. Dammit! I just sprayed diet coke out of my nose.
Apple gives you a no-DRM file, and slaps a watermark on it so that, if you're so inclined to share it with wild abandon, they can ID you.
Except there IS NO watermark. There is only your name and email address, unencrypted, in a part of the file that's supposed to contain meta-information. This is no different than Canon deciding to put my name and email address in the EXIF data when I take a picture. Watermarking would mean modifying the actual photo (or music) portion of the file so that the identifying data was intrinsic to the media itself. Apple has done none of this.
All this hand-waving is people showing their true colors. They are pirates at heart and simply want to complain. Most of the music on my iPod is ripped from my CDs. A lot of the music on my iPod is purchased (w/DRM) from iTMS. Some of the tracks on my iPod are from P2P networks, downloaded illegally. Do I feel guilty? No. Should I? Probably. But at the time I acquired those tracks they weren't available on iTMS. I've also discovered new bands through P2P and have since purchased their albums from either their web sites (if they had CDs for sale there) or iTMS when I found them there.
I have no intention of sharing my purchases publicly. I like the fact that music I purchase has my name on it. I put stickers on my CD and DVD cases too, specifically so that when I DO lend them out to friends or co-workers, they know whose it is and can get it back to me. I lend quite a lot of my music and movies to friends and use Delicious Library to track who has it and when it is due back. If they like what they borrow, they know they should purchase it for themselves. My tastes are somewhat esoteric, but I've gotten a lot of people hooked on some under-the-radar, good shows and bands this way. Did some of the borrowers rip my CDs when they got them? Undoubtedly. Did they then share those tracks on P2P? Maybe. But now, when I lend a friend a copy of an iTMS file I can tell them not to share it because it has my name on it and I purchased it legally. The people I lend to won't have a problem with that and neither do I.
The rest of the whiners need to STFU. They are just proving the RIAA right to think that all we want to do is pirate music and so we must be controlled like little children. I don't pirate music unless I'm not given an acceptable alternative. I've found my acceptable alternative and I'm glad it has my name on it. After all, I paid for it. It belongs to me. If I decide to sell it, I suppose I'll have to change the name, but then, If I decided to sell my engraved bracelet, my engraved wedding ring or my headstone, I have to have the name changed as well. Good thing I'm not planning on selling off my music collection any time soon...
Here I was, thinking that giving someone with a Grade 3 reading level, a Grade 2 writing level, and an ego regarding their abilities which can only be attained by someone who has learned nothing of substance in the past 5 or so years, a laptop which requires excellent reading ability and desire to learn from, and excellent writing ability and desire to communicate with the outside world with...
You know what? It's just too ludicrous. You've got to have fundamentals before a laptop and the ensuing internet access is of any use, and even then, they won't help with anything they'd be teaching in any sort of school where you're not expected to buy your own laptop if you need one.
We started a one-to-one laptop program at a pilot middle school for our 7th graders. The biggest problem is the driving force(s) behind the program are only focused on the laptops. These people are not educators or technicians, they are politicians of one stripe or another. They don't realize that the price of the laptop itself is the *least* expensive item.
The teachers that were thrown into the program were like "Cool, I get a new laptop...", and that's about where it ended. They were worse than clueless when it came to using computers for even the simplest things, let alone how to properly integrate a laptop into their teaching environment and curriculum. Of course, they "budgeted" training into the project, but it amounted to about 3 hours of general computer familiarization. This is just enough time to make the computers the "focus" of the classroom (a distraction from learning) instead of an integrated learning tool. Giving every student a computer makes sense only when you change your teaching methods at a fundamental level. This requires a deep understanding of many facets of computers and computing; something today's teachers just don't have and colleges don't teach yet.
This is still ignoring the infrastructure aspect. There are the obvious things like having enough wireless access points to handle 100 computers within a close cluster of 3-4 classrooms (non-trivial - especially when the plan calls for "two airport extremes to provide wireless coverage" - yeah, what are you going to do with the other 80 laptops?). Then there are the racks of spare batteries and battery chargers that will be needed. Students will *not* show up to class with their laptops charged and you *cannot* have power cables stretching across the aisles. These high-speed chargers are expensive and so are the batteries.
Students now *require* their computers for every class - not just for "computer lab". This means that they *have to have* a computer with *their* data on it. If something breaks or gets corrupted they can't wait for several weeks to have their computer repaired (we have a 1,000-to-1 computer to technician ratio). This means that OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) work orders get priority and everything must be dropped to get a replacement to them (with their data on it). Expecting students to properly back up their data is a lot to ask. Making this a priority part of the educational process is apparently impossible (since the teachers don't even really understand it). Making sure that all the important data, settings, etc. are backed up in such a way so that transferring them to the stand-in replacement is quick and seamless is not impossible. It just becomes difficult deciding what to backup. How important are the 10 Gigabytes of iMovie projects? What about the 20 Gig of MP3s in iTunes or the Garageband projects? Assuming that some of these are legitimate and must be backed up, how do you do that over (totally saturated) wireless? Then where do you put that data? You can't put it in an accessible part of the file server - kids will be messing up their backups... Now you pretty much need a dedicated backup server with a huge amount of storage (which also needs to be backed up) to constantly be online.
Now we have to deal with damage and loss. It gets up to -70F in t
a look at the javascript code shows that the site uses ActiveX
Making the decision to use ActiveX is a conscious decision to say "We don't care about the tens of millions of people that use OS X or Linux". I know that it's easy to tell your boss "It works for 95% of the world" and have it be OK, but somehow, changing that around to say "I've purposely chosen to block out tens of millions of potential customers by going this route. And by the way, they just happen to be the ones who tend to A) be the most technically savvy or B) have the most disposable income to spend (or both)".
If that's OK with their bosses, fine, but somehow I don't think that particular message is getting through. As for me, I'll gladly take my business elsewhere.
I'm not just part of that five percent. I'm part of the top five percent!
the only race-conscious person you can think of is black
Uhmm. What I said was "We only have one person (out of about 120 at my building) that immediately springs to mind as "black"". I said nothing about them being the only "race-concious" person. We've got several people who spring to mind as "redneck", they flaunt their southern roots from their drawls, pickups and union jacks to their belt-buckles. If you had asked me if I worked with any rednecks, I'd be able to count them easily. We have 2 people who spring to mind as "Polish" (they're great people and I consider one of them my friend, but her polish accent is so thick you could cut it with a knife). If you had asked if I work with any Poles, I'd think of them. We have a *very* Puerto-Rican guy that who is iconic for playing the "Hey, I'm just a dumb Puerto-Rican..." and "What do joo know, white-boy...?" routine. That's what he's known for. It's his "shtick" (No offense intended to any Jews out there). If you had asked if I work with any Puerto-Ricans, I'd have said yes - but in this case if you asked how many, only one springs easily to mind, I'd have to really think about the others.
These are the people who draw obvious attention to their race, gender, orientation, or "subgroup". This is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a fact. It's like that scene in City Slickers where the black dentists are talking to the other tourists and the younger dentist says "Yes, we're black AND we're dentists - don't make a issue out of it." and his father turns to him as says "Son, they're not making an issue of it. The only one making an issue of it here, is you."
I've been working for my company for more than 10 years and I swear, every time I have to go through the same, tired, "Race and Healing" seminar it drives me nuts. It seems we have an entire department who's only job is to point out how "different" we all are and how we (white people) can never fully understand just how oppressed everyone else is. Fuck! I never kept slaves. None of my ancestors did either. I dated a "person of color" when I was in college, english is my second language, I grew up in a non-American country and culture, and I'm married to a Polack. This doesn't make me a better person than anyone else. It just makes me who I am.
I'm tired of the insinuation by you ("...anyone who thinks that racism problem is a problem with blacks is... well, pretty obviously white") that I must be racist because I'm white (or even that I am "white", as if my Dutch ancestry has no validity except to make me "white"). I'm tired of my employer making me sit through the same stupid seminar every year. Why do we have to go out of our way to point out how different we all are. And by different, they mean how "white people" are different from specific non-whites. Somehow they don't seem to include the Asians, Mexicans or Puerto-Ricans. I must be a total racist asshole, because I lose more and more respect for "minorities" every time I have to sit though that. The guy in the next office over does the same job I do, has the same education and certifications I do, gets paid the same amount I do, brings his dishes to the same office potlucks I do. How am I supposed to treat him? We get along great until that fucking class every year and then shit gets all uncomfortable for a while before we settle back to just being "friends, coworkers and competent professional who were hired to do a job". I know he hates it, even more so since he's not required to go.
It would almost make everything much easier to just fucking BE a racist. It seems to be what they want and expect from me.
Your statement implies that some thigs are only racist depending on the color of the speaker's skin.
Uh, yep. That's about the size of it. If a black man walked up to me and said "Yo, honkey, what up?" No one would think anything of it. Remember: Only white people can be racist. Only men can be sexist. Only straight people can be narrow-minded ("homophobic"). Did you not get the memo?
As a straight, white, male I'm fucked. All my beliefs, feeling and motives are suspect and to be derided. I'm guilty of all of these offenses before I even open my mouth. I have to come up with lame justifications every day that "my best friends are crippled, black lesbians", just to "defend" myself.
The saddest part is, simply by posting this sarcastic rant, I've already convinced everyone that I'm all of these things, and worse. Add to that the fact that I'm a Christian that believes in evolution and I've pretty much hated by everyone.
...it just so happens that outside forces "convinced" his employers that his services were no longer needed.
Now if we can just get "outside forces" to get Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton fired (oh, that's right, they don't actually "work", per se). The incredible double-standard in this country is just mind-boggling. I never payed attention to Imus before now, but after seeing (repeatedly) his remark and apologies played on the news I'd say that the suspension would have been a good reminder that free speech is not just a right, it's also a responsibility. Firing him, though, pissed me off for reasons that I can't say (because I'm of "Northern European" descent and not entitled to "those feelings")
I'm actually considering listening to whatever show he comes up with next, if for no other reason than spite. I've heard the Rev. Jackson and Sharpton say much more "racially insensitive" things than Imus did, but I suppose that, since it's only insensitive to "white" people, it's acceptable (or to be expected).
From my perspective, firing Imus is going to cause more racial tensions, not less. I know it doesn't suddenly make me all warm and fuzzy, that's for sure. It got me thinking about the people I work with. We only have one person (out of about 120 at my building) that immediately springs to mind as "black". I had to stop and think for a while before I could come up with who some of the rest were (Once I got to thinking about it, I started realizing just how racially diverse my coworkers are. Huh.). I guess I never really considered their race before - they were just co-workers and competent professionals doing their jobs. Like I said, only one person immediately sprang to mind as someone who seems to define themselves by their race....Sad.
It's quite simple why Apple's on the bottom of the list. All the other companies have done something to green up.
Have you ever received an Apple product in the mail? The efficient packaging alone must save a ton on the amount of shipping space (and thereby the number of ships, planes, trucks, etc. to ship their products world-wide) and raw materials required. Add to that the fact that, in general my Apple products stay useful almost twice as long as the Dells I have and I'd say that if you take the whole package, Apple is far "greener", FWIW, than many other computer companies. Also, I still have all of the packaging for my Apple's (up to and including my old dual-G4 500MHz tower) because they are small, durable and easily stored. On top of that, I know that when I eBay my older Macs, I'll need them. My Dell packaging hits the landfill the next day. I've never even considered trying to keep them for repackaging. People will accept an old PC backed in newspaper and packing-peanuts without thinking twice.
So from my limited experience, Apple's products, if not Apple themselves, would seem to be pretty green when taken as a whole. Also, in my opinion, Green Peace has no credibility. They are a hype and marketing machine, plain and simple. Right about now I think they know that by putting Apple dead-last they get the most hype and attention. I wonder if they put their money where their mouth is and only buy products from Lenovo. I think they all have their Birkenstocks on too tight and their roaches wrapped too loosely.
The 30 cents not only buys you a DRM free version, but also a higher quality version. So you pay 30 cents for twice the bit rate and no DRM. I, personally, think it's a decent deal.
You are forgetting something here. Most of the "iTMS suxorz" and "DRM suxorz" crowd that say "sell me high quality, DRM-free music, and I will pay for it" have now had their bluff called and now they're pissed. They never intended to pay for content in the first place. They will still pirate their music.
If Apple would have just come out and said "We are now offering 'audiophiles' higher quality AAC encoding for a small premium" and kept the DRM you'd still have the same crowd saying "What? It should be loss-less for $0.30!", or "I'd buy it if it wasn't for the shitty DRM!". But now they are showing their true colors. They will whine about anything if it means they have to pay for it. Look at some of the comments: "OMFG, it should be in.mp3 format! AAC suxorz! MP3 roxorz!"
Give me a break. Personally, the audio equipment I usually play my content on is not of sufficient quality and not in an acoustically-correct enough environment (my iPod, my car, my living-room) to be likely to tell any difference in the higher-quality format. At this point it will come down to "Am I willing to pay $.30 extra for DRM-free content?". I have to say that, even though my music collection is end-to-end Apple-compatible (iTMS->iTunes->AppleTV-or-iPod) I still prefer to make a statement about DRM-free music and will choose to put my $$ where my mouth is. As a "bonus" I get a higher bit-rate encoding, which, who knows, may sound better. Do I wish I could get all of this for $0.00 or the whole ball-of-wax for only $.49? Yes. But, oh well.
I don't like DRM any more than the next guy, but I've moved out of my parent's basement and have discovered that, in the real world, you actually have to pay for things. Even thought the restrictions should never have been there in the first place, I am willing to pay for that "added benefit" of no restrictions. The "yeah, but my 'XYZ MP3 player' won't play the superior AAC encoded content" argument doesn't affect me because my "MP3 player" can. I feel sorry for you. Call the company up and tell them you want a version that plays AAC content. I think more of them will now. All of Apple's content is already in AAC format, why should they change and sell it in MP3 format which would have to be larger to keep the same quality? Besides, isn't Apple already in a lawsuit about MP3s?
Um, I don't recalled Blackboard working in FF at all.
This is from the front blackboard page (in big red letters) at Cincinnati State:
Attention students using the Vista operating system:
Some major Blackboard functions do not work properly when using an Internet Explorer browser on a Vista operating system. Using the Firefox browser will allow you to use all Blackboard functions.
If you have further questions you can call the helpdesk 513.569.1234
I guess that's what mislead me into thinking that it worked on FF.
[sarcasm]Of course, it's not even remotely possible that the problems are because IE 7 on Vista doesn't properly implement web standards.[/sarcasm]
Remember, It works on FF and Vista...
MS has fscked over developers and standards for decades. If I had a well-established web application that worked on browsers that properly implemented web standards and MS came along, changed things in their browser and arrogantly expected companies to join the circle-jerk and waste time writing *more* custom work-arounds for their broken software, I'd be very likely to say "Fuck-'em. Have users run it in a real browser."
That being said, I'm not a fan of blackboard. If the reason things are broken is because they are still detecting IE7 as "generic IE" and trying the old IE hacks on it, then they should change it or not do browser detection at all. However, I'm more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a company whose product works on a standards-compliant browser than Miscrosoft.
If you read the article it states that there are *NO* ports open on a default OS X client install. They manually enabled *EVERY* remote service after boot and then scanned it. So, my Mom is safe. She'll never go to System Preferences and enable all those things. My brother, OTOH, is probably not. He pokes around everywhere:-) However, I feel more confident having him poke around with OS X than I would with Windows.
Now any idiot with the right cantenna can bring any highway to a crawl by inserting bogus messages into the mesh. "Look out! Slippery road. Warning, stopped traffic ahead. Pull over, emergency vehicle approaching from behind. Look, Elvis!"
We replaced all our computers in our training labs with iMacs running both Windows and OS X. It has worked wonderfully and it takes up much less space and the lab is a lot quieter. We can now train twice as many people at a time because they can all be on the same OS, whereas, before we had half Macs and Half PCs. The biggest problems was with the Windows users not able to manage with the Mac keyboards and Mice so we replaced them with Microsoft keyboards and mice. I found it interesting that the Windows users (and management) just assumed that the "Mac people" could make due with the clunky windows keyboards and MS mice when the PC people couldn't. It really screwed up the clean look of the lab too. But maybe that's what makes the PC folks feel more at home:-). I do know that it sure made management of the lab easier.
With the release of Leopard, OS X will be fully "UNIX" certified. That means it won't be UNIX-Like it will be UNIX at the core with the OS X interface over it.
Really people, how does using a Mac makes you more 'artistic'?
It is a lot easier to focus on the creative process when you don't have your computer interrupting you every 5 minutes with annoying little pop-up bubbles and all the other intrusive, distracting habits of Windows. I use All 3 platforms on a daily basis (Windows, Linux, OSX) and I have to say that Windows seems to be like the attention-seeking child always butting in to an adult conversation. Linux is much better about that but the over-all flow and cohesion of the interface and applications isn't quite there yet. I don't know what it is about OS X, but, right out of the box it just seems to get out of your way and let you do your job. When working with a lot of graphic files (or files in general) exposé is so intuitive and seamless, it makes those large tasks a true pleasure. Contrast that to having 20 or 30 images or windows open on Windows... Try selecting the right 2 to compare or cut and past against. It's a pain. Even with Vista it's not as intuitive. Instead of all the windows simply shrinking and moving apart (which seems, to me, more like spreading your papers out on a large desk and then stepping back to look at them) they come together in a stack that you then have to rifle through. Now, some people may actually work that way. When they need to see a bunch of items they are working on they pile them up and go through them one-by-one, but I don't. I like to spread the project out. BTW, Beryl does a nice job of that too.
I don't know, it's hard to explain to someone who a) has never really used a Mac, or b) hasn't ever really taken the time to get used to NOT doing things the "Windows way". Because one thing is definitely true: people tend to prefer what they are used to and are more productive on what they are used to. Its just that I use all three platforms every day (and have for years) and I find Windows to be the *least enjoyable* experience, Linux (w/beryl) the most fun and OS X the one I *notice using the least* and the one in which the most actual work gets done with the least heartburn.
The pilots could just have a switch to "knock out" all the passengers...
Or, they could have a switch that turns on the new Military Puke Ray to incapacitate the terrorists (and passengers). After all, a plane-load of puking people has a certain zen quality about it.
I agree. As a dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft loather, I have to give Bill and Melinda some props for their charitable causes. I wish I had resources like theirs to give, but we all must do what we can with what we've got. I'm just glad they're doing as much as they are.
Drive what you want - just buy *used*. It costs more in terms of energy consumption, resource depletion, and environmental pollution to produce even a fuel-efficient new car than the *already produced* used car could ever do to the environment through emissions. I will not be made to feel guilty about my choice of vehicles. I save up, buy quality and drive it for years. I drove a 22-year-old car for almost 15 years before trading it in for a used car almost 10 years ago that will last me another 10-15 years. I have holier-than-thou co-workers that get the latest, brand new, shoe-box-sized "green-car" every-other year and look down their noses at people like me. While they are rattling around in their brand-new toy, I'll be cruising comfortably along in my 'benz (which gets > 30 mpg btw).
Slashdot Mirror
Just outside North Pole, Alaska
I can not get television, cable or satellite TV where my house is situated in Alaska. I can barely get 1 Mb/s DSL. I have chosen to go the route of purchasing my shows off iTunes and watching them on my AppleTV. I do NOT want to watch the shows in a fucking browser window, in Flash or stutter-streamed, on my laptop! Those shows that I am interested in that I can't get legally from iTunes, I choose to get "illegally" from Bittorrent or from friends/coworkers who are able to record the shows. I put illegally in quotes because in this case it's truly a victimless crime. I want to pay for it, but they won't let me so I'm not taking revenue away from them. I am also not re-sharing it (any more than I can help since I don't seed with bittorrent) so I'm not keeping anyone else from buying it.
If the greedy fucks at NBC don't want my $2 per episode for Heroes and the Office, etc., I'll be glad to pirate them and won't feel the least bit guilty about it. I know that I don't have a "right" to watch the show, but if it's a show that interests me and everyone else is talking about it at work, I want to watch it - close to the time they watch it, not a season later when it comes out on DVD. The only reason I won't be able to watch it now is that they want to charge me more for content that is more restricted/broken than before and Apple is rightfully calling bullshit. Since I only download the shows to my iPod and AppleTV, restrictions aren't a big deal for me (it's the principal of the thing!), but I am not willing/can't afford to pay more than $2 for an episode and if they bundle crap I don't want, I won't buy it at all - I *will* pirate it. Sue me!
They are just proving over and over again that pirated goods are far superior to their DRM'd crap anyway. It's cheaper, often available sooner, in better quality and gives me the freedom to use it as I see fit. They are driving *me*, a grown adult and professional, their paying customer, away to piracy. I say good riddance to them. Stick to your guns Apple! I want to buy shows a-la-cart if I want and I am not willing to pay more! I will reward those studios that see the light. The rest can take their chances with draconian DRM, end-to-end Vista-like content controlled crap and the like. The deserve what they will get!
Any one have a contact email for these pricks?
I was talking about this with a coworker a few weeks back and realized something. Back when radio was first discovered they used *huge* transmitters to transmit a small amount of data a short distance because their receivers were so crude. Later receivers were vastly improved and you could use much lower power to send much more data. Soon we had over the air TV that had a phenomenal amount of data flowing through the air, but, to not encroach on competing channels in adjacent areas, the signal strength was reduced again.
Skip forward to today and we are using cable (very little "signal" escapes) and fiber-optics (no signal escapes) to send even more data back and forth. So, in a few years time we've gone from a very noisy planet with out much to say, to a much less noisy planet with much more to say.
I think it is inevitable, simply from an efficiency perspective, that we will be using more and more "tight-band" communication methods in the future (quantum entanglement?). It seems intuitive that the more advanced a civilization gets the more efficient it will strive to be. The more efficient it is, the less noise will be wasted into space (especially compared to the natural noises of the planet, like lightning, aurora, etc.)
Look how much more efficient we've become in just a hundred years. If this is indicative of other civilizations, then the window of opportunity for eavesdropping on them is extremely small. And that's assuming that they are remotely like us and not building their civilization at the bottom of their ocean or are just so different from us that we wouldn't even recognize them as life.
As far as colonizing the stars goes, barring some way of FTL (or instant) travel and communication, I think we will never move beyond our own solar system in our current physical form. I think we will have figured out how to lose our bodies and move our consciousness into "the machine" before then. Once that happens, there will be no need for maintaining the human race in a biological form at all since "reproduction" can occur in solid-state. Once we've reached that stage, being effectively immortal, we might be willing to entertain the thought of physically traveling to other stars, but there will be no need to colonize them, they can be virtualized. But then again, we could virtualize the whole trip anyway.
Either way, that step in technology would almost guarantee a very efficient system that would need to produce almost no waste products. With no need for maintaining and supporting physical bodies, all of the energy required to sustain physical life will not be needed. No more growing and shipping crops. No more energy wasted in physical travel. In fact, very little need for ever physically moving anything, from then on. This would make most of our civilization a "static" construct. At that point, unless we were purposely broadcasting for neighbors, who'd ever hear us?
You owe me a new shirt and keyboard!!!
Except there IS NO watermark. There is only your name and email address, unencrypted, in a part of the file that's supposed to contain meta-information. This is no different than Canon deciding to put my name and email address in the EXIF data when I take a picture. Watermarking would mean modifying the actual photo (or music) portion of the file so that the identifying data was intrinsic to the media itself. Apple has done none of this.
All this hand-waving is people showing their true colors. They are pirates at heart and simply want to complain. Most of the music on my iPod is ripped from my CDs. A lot of the music on my iPod is purchased (w/DRM) from iTMS. Some of the tracks on my iPod are from P2P networks, downloaded illegally. Do I feel guilty? No. Should I? Probably. But at the time I acquired those tracks they weren't available on iTMS. I've also discovered new bands through P2P and have since purchased their albums from either their web sites (if they had CDs for sale there) or iTMS when I found them there.
I have no intention of sharing my purchases publicly. I like the fact that music I purchase has my name on it. I put stickers on my CD and DVD cases too, specifically so that when I DO lend them out to friends or co-workers, they know whose it is and can get it back to me. I lend quite a lot of my music and movies to friends and use Delicious Library to track who has it and when it is due back. If they like what they borrow, they know they should purchase it for themselves. My tastes are somewhat esoteric, but I've gotten a lot of people hooked on some under-the-radar, good shows and bands this way. Did some of the borrowers rip my CDs when they got them? Undoubtedly. Did they then share those tracks on P2P? Maybe. But now, when I lend a friend a copy of an iTMS file I can tell them not to share it because it has my name on it and I purchased it legally. The people I lend to won't have a problem with that and neither do I.
The rest of the whiners need to STFU. They are just proving the RIAA right to think that all we want to do is pirate music and so we must be controlled like little children. I don't pirate music unless I'm not given an acceptable alternative. I've found my acceptable alternative and I'm glad it has my name on it. After all, I paid for it. It belongs to me. If I decide to sell it, I suppose I'll have to change the name, but then, If I decided to sell my engraved bracelet, my engraved wedding ring or my headstone, I have to have the name changed as well. Good thing I'm not planning on selling off my music collection any time soon...
Here I was, thinking that giving someone with a Grade 3 reading level, a Grade 2 writing level, and an ego regarding their abilities which can only be attained by someone who has learned nothing of substance in the past 5 or so years, a laptop which requires excellent reading ability and desire to learn from, and excellent writing ability and desire to communicate with the outside world with...
You know what? It's just too ludicrous. You've got to have fundamentals before a laptop and the ensuing internet access is of any use, and even then, they won't help with anything they'd be teaching in any sort of school where you're not expected to buy your own laptop if you need one.
We started a one-to-one laptop program at a pilot middle school for our 7th graders. The biggest problem is the driving force(s) behind the program are only focused on the laptops. These people are not educators or technicians, they are politicians of one stripe or another. They don't realize that the price of the laptop itself is the *least* expensive item.
The teachers that were thrown into the program were like "Cool, I get a new laptop...", and that's about where it ended. They were worse than clueless when it came to using computers for even the simplest things, let alone how to properly integrate a laptop into their teaching environment and curriculum. Of course, they "budgeted" training into the project, but it amounted to about 3 hours of general computer familiarization. This is just enough time to make the computers the "focus" of the classroom (a distraction from learning) instead of an integrated learning tool. Giving every student a computer makes sense only when you change your teaching methods at a fundamental level. This requires a deep understanding of many facets of computers and computing; something today's teachers just don't have and colleges don't teach yet.
This is still ignoring the infrastructure aspect. There are the obvious things like having enough wireless access points to handle 100 computers within a close cluster of 3-4 classrooms (non-trivial - especially when the plan calls for "two airport extremes to provide wireless coverage" - yeah, what are you going to do with the other 80 laptops?). Then there are the racks of spare batteries and battery chargers that will be needed. Students will *not* show up to class with their laptops charged and you *cannot* have power cables stretching across the aisles. These high-speed chargers are expensive and so are the batteries.
Students now *require* their computers for every class - not just for "computer lab". This means that they *have to have* a computer with *their* data on it. If something breaks or gets corrupted they can't wait for several weeks to have their computer repaired (we have a 1,000-to-1 computer to technician ratio). This means that OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) work orders get priority and everything must be dropped to get a replacement to them (with their data on it). Expecting students to properly back up their data is a lot to ask. Making this a priority part of the educational process is apparently impossible (since the teachers don't even really understand it). Making sure that all the important data, settings, etc. are backed up in such a way so that transferring them to the stand-in replacement is quick and seamless is not impossible. It just becomes difficult deciding what to backup. How important are the 10 Gigabytes of iMovie projects? What about the 20 Gig of MP3s in iTunes or the Garageband projects? Assuming that some of these are legitimate and must be backed up, how do you do that over (totally saturated) wireless? Then where do you put that data? You can't put it in an accessible part of the file server - kids will be messing up their backups... Now you pretty much need a dedicated backup server with a huge amount of storage (which also needs to be backed up) to constantly be online.
Now we have to deal with damage and loss. It gets up to -70F in t
Making the decision to use ActiveX is a conscious decision to say "We don't care about the tens of millions of people that use OS X or Linux". I know that it's easy to tell your boss "It works for 95% of the world" and have it be OK, but somehow, changing that around to say "I've purposely chosen to block out tens of millions of potential customers by going this route. And by the way, they just happen to be the ones who tend to A) be the most technically savvy or B) have the most disposable income to spend (or both)".
If that's OK with their bosses, fine, but somehow I don't think that particular message is getting through. As for me, I'll gladly take my business elsewhere.
I'm not just part of that five percent. I'm part of the top five percent!
Uhmm. What I said was "We only have one person (out of about 120 at my building) that immediately springs to mind as "black"". I said nothing about them being the only "race-concious" person. We've got several people who spring to mind as "redneck", they flaunt their southern roots from their drawls, pickups and union jacks to their belt-buckles. If you had asked me if I worked with any rednecks, I'd be able to count them easily. We have 2 people who spring to mind as "Polish" (they're great people and I consider one of them my friend, but her polish accent is so thick you could cut it with a knife). If you had asked if I work with any Poles, I'd think of them. We have a *very* Puerto-Rican guy that who is iconic for playing the "Hey, I'm just a dumb Puerto-Rican..." and "What do joo know, white-boy...?" routine. That's what he's known for. It's his "shtick" (No offense intended to any Jews out there). If you had asked if I work with any Puerto-Ricans, I'd have said yes - but in this case if you asked how many, only one springs easily to mind, I'd have to really think about the others.
These are the people who draw obvious attention to their race, gender, orientation, or "subgroup". This is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a fact. It's like that scene in City Slickers where the black dentists are talking to the other tourists and the younger dentist says "Yes, we're black AND we're dentists - don't make a issue out of it." and his father turns to him as says "Son, they're not making an issue of it. The only one making an issue of it here, is you."
I've been working for my company for more than 10 years and I swear, every time I have to go through the same, tired, "Race and Healing" seminar it drives me nuts. It seems we have an entire department who's only job is to point out how "different" we all are and how we (white people) can never fully understand just how oppressed everyone else is. Fuck! I never kept slaves. None of my ancestors did either. I dated a "person of color" when I was in college, english is my second language, I grew up in a non-American country and culture, and I'm married to a Polack. This doesn't make me a better person than anyone else. It just makes me who I am.
I'm tired of the insinuation by you ("...anyone who thinks that racism problem is a problem with blacks is ... well, pretty obviously white") that I must be racist because I'm white (or even that I am "white", as if my Dutch ancestry has no validity except to make me "white"). I'm tired of my employer making me sit through the same stupid seminar every year. Why do we have to go out of our way to point out how different we all are. And by different, they mean how "white people" are different from specific non-whites. Somehow they don't seem to include the Asians, Mexicans or Puerto-Ricans. I must be a total racist asshole, because I lose more and more respect for "minorities" every time I have to sit though that. The guy in the next office over does the same job I do, has the same education and certifications I do, gets paid the same amount I do, brings his dishes to the same office potlucks I do. How am I supposed to treat him? We get along great until that fucking class every year and then shit gets all uncomfortable for a while before we settle back to just being "friends, coworkers and competent professional who were hired to do a job". I know he hates it, even more so since he's not required to go.
It would almost make everything much easier to just fucking BE a racist. It seems to be what they want and expect from me.
Uh, yep. That's about the size of it. If a black man walked up to me and said "Yo, honkey, what up?" No one would think anything of it. Remember: Only white people can be racist. Only men can be sexist. Only straight people can be narrow-minded ("homophobic"). Did you not get the memo?
As a straight, white, male I'm fucked. All my beliefs, feeling and motives are suspect and to be derided. I'm guilty of all of these offenses before I even open my mouth. I have to come up with lame justifications every day that "my best friends are crippled, black lesbians", just to "defend" myself.
The saddest part is, simply by posting this sarcastic rant, I've already convinced everyone that I'm all of these things, and worse. Add to that the fact that I'm a Christian that believes in evolution and I've pretty much hated by everyone.
On the plus side, I don't use Windows.
...it just so happens that outside forces "convinced" his employers that his services were no longer needed.Now if we can just get "outside forces" to get Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton fired (oh, that's right, they don't actually "work", per se). The incredible double-standard in this country is just mind-boggling. I never payed attention to Imus before now, but after seeing (repeatedly) his remark and apologies played on the news I'd say that the suspension would have been a good reminder that free speech is not just a right, it's also a responsibility. Firing him, though, pissed me off for reasons that I can't say (because I'm of "Northern European" descent and not entitled to "those feelings")
I'm actually considering listening to whatever show he comes up with next, if for no other reason than spite. I've heard the Rev. Jackson and Sharpton say much more "racially insensitive" things than Imus did, but I suppose that, since it's only insensitive to "white" people, it's acceptable (or to be expected).
From my perspective, firing Imus is going to cause more racial tensions, not less. I know it doesn't suddenly make me all warm and fuzzy, that's for sure. It got me thinking about the people I work with. We only have one person (out of about 120 at my building) that immediately springs to mind as "black". I had to stop and think for a while before I could come up with who some of the rest were (Once I got to thinking about it, I started realizing just how racially diverse my coworkers are. Huh.). I guess I never really considered their race before - they were just co-workers and competent professionals doing their jobs. Like I said, only one person immediately sprang to mind as someone who seems to define themselves by their race. ...Sad.
Have you ever received an Apple product in the mail? The efficient packaging alone must save a ton on the amount of shipping space (and thereby the number of ships, planes, trucks, etc. to ship their products world-wide) and raw materials required. Add to that the fact that, in general my Apple products stay useful almost twice as long as the Dells I have and I'd say that if you take the whole package, Apple is far "greener", FWIW, than many other computer companies. Also, I still have all of the packaging for my Apple's (up to and including my old dual-G4 500MHz tower) because they are small, durable and easily stored. On top of that, I know that when I eBay my older Macs, I'll need them. My Dell packaging hits the landfill the next day. I've never even considered trying to keep them for repackaging. People will accept an old PC backed in newspaper and packing-peanuts without thinking twice.
So from my limited experience, Apple's products, if not Apple themselves, would seem to be pretty green when taken as a whole. Also, in my opinion, Green Peace has no credibility. They are a hype and marketing machine, plain and simple. Right about now I think they know that by putting Apple dead-last they get the most hype and attention. I wonder if they put their money where their mouth is and only buy products from Lenovo. I think they all have their Birkenstocks on too tight and their roaches wrapped too loosely .
You are forgetting something here. Most of the "iTMS suxorz" and "DRM suxorz" crowd that say "sell me high quality, DRM-free music, and I will pay for it" have now had their bluff called and now they're pissed. They never intended to pay for content in the first place. They will still pirate their music.
If Apple would have just come out and said "We are now offering 'audiophiles' higher quality AAC encoding for a small premium" and kept the DRM you'd still have the same crowd saying "What? It should be loss-less for $0.30!", or "I'd buy it if it wasn't for the shitty DRM!". But now they are showing their true colors. They will whine about anything if it means they have to pay for it. Look at some of the comments: "OMFG, it should be in .mp3 format! AAC suxorz! MP3 roxorz!"
Give me a break. Personally, the audio equipment I usually play my content on is not of sufficient quality and not in an acoustically-correct enough environment (my iPod, my car, my living-room) to be likely to tell any difference in the higher-quality format. At this point it will come down to "Am I willing to pay $.30 extra for DRM-free content?". I have to say that, even though my music collection is end-to-end Apple-compatible (iTMS->iTunes->AppleTV-or-iPod) I still prefer to make a statement about DRM-free music and will choose to put my $$ where my mouth is. As a "bonus" I get a higher bit-rate encoding, which, who knows, may sound better. Do I wish I could get all of this for $0.00 or the whole ball-of-wax for only $.49? Yes. But, oh well.
I don't like DRM any more than the next guy, but I've moved out of my parent's basement and have discovered that, in the real world, you actually have to pay for things. Even thought the restrictions should never have been there in the first place, I am willing to pay for that "added benefit" of no restrictions. The "yeah, but my 'XYZ MP3 player' won't play the superior AAC encoded content" argument doesn't affect me because my "MP3 player" can. I feel sorry for you. Call the company up and tell them you want a version that plays AAC content. I think more of them will now. All of Apple's content is already in AAC format, why should they change and sell it in MP3 format which would have to be larger to keep the same quality? Besides, isn't Apple already in a lawsuit about MP3s?
[sarcasm]Of course, it's not even remotely possible that the problems are because IE 7 on Vista doesn't properly implement web standards.[/sarcasm]
Remember, It works on FF and Vista...
MS has fscked over developers and standards for decades. If I had a well-established web application that worked on browsers that properly implemented web standards and MS came along, changed things in their browser and arrogantly expected companies to join the circle-jerk and waste time writing *more* custom work-arounds for their broken software, I'd be very likely to say "Fuck-'em. Have users run it in a real browser."
That being said, I'm not a fan of blackboard. If the reason things are broken is because they are still detecting IE7 as "generic IE" and trying the old IE hacks on it, then they should change it or not do browser detection at all. However, I'm more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a company whose product works on a standards-compliant browser than Miscrosoft.
If you read the article it states that there are *NO* ports open on a default OS X client install. They manually enabled *EVERY* remote service after boot and then scanned it. So, my Mom is safe. She'll never go to System Preferences and enable all those things. My brother, OTOH, is probably not. He pokes around everywhere :-) However, I feel more confident having him poke around with OS X than I would with Windows.
Now any idiot with the right cantenna can bring any highway to a crawl by inserting bogus messages into the mesh. "Look out! Slippery road. Warning, stopped traffic ahead. Pull over, emergency vehicle approaching from behind. Look, Elvis!"
We replaced all our computers in our training labs with iMacs running both Windows and OS X. It has worked wonderfully and it takes up much less space and the lab is a lot quieter. We can now train twice as many people at a time because they can all be on the same OS, whereas, before we had half Macs and Half PCs. The biggest problems was with the Windows users not able to manage with the Mac keyboards and Mice so we replaced them with Microsoft keyboards and mice. I found it interesting that the Windows users (and management) just assumed that the "Mac people" could make due with the clunky windows keyboards and MS mice when the PC people couldn't. It really screwed up the clean look of the lab too. But maybe that's what makes the PC folks feel more at home :-). I do know that it sure made management of the lab easier.
With the release of Leopard, OS X will be fully "UNIX" certified. That means it won't be UNIX-Like it will be UNIX at the core with the OS X interface over it.
It is a lot easier to focus on the creative process when you don't have your computer interrupting you every 5 minutes with annoying little pop-up bubbles and all the other intrusive, distracting habits of Windows. I use All 3 platforms on a daily basis (Windows, Linux, OSX) and I have to say that Windows seems to be like the attention-seeking child always butting in to an adult conversation. Linux is much better about that but the over-all flow and cohesion of the interface and applications isn't quite there yet. I don't know what it is about OS X, but, right out of the box it just seems to get out of your way and let you do your job. When working with a lot of graphic files (or files in general) exposé is so intuitive and seamless, it makes those large tasks a true pleasure. Contrast that to having 20 or 30 images or windows open on Windows... Try selecting the right 2 to compare or cut and past against. It's a pain. Even with Vista it's not as intuitive. Instead of all the windows simply shrinking and moving apart (which seems, to me, more like spreading your papers out on a large desk and then stepping back to look at them) they come together in a stack that you then have to rifle through. Now, some people may actually work that way. When they need to see a bunch of items they are working on they pile them up and go through them one-by-one, but I don't. I like to spread the project out. BTW, Beryl does a nice job of that too.
I don't know, it's hard to explain to someone who a) has never really used a Mac, or b) hasn't ever really taken the time to get used to NOT doing things the "Windows way". Because one thing is definitely true: people tend to prefer what they are used to and are more productive on what they are used to. Its just that I use all three platforms every day (and have for years) and I find Windows to be the *least enjoyable* experience, Linux (w/beryl) the most fun and OS X the one I *notice using the least* and the one in which the most actual work gets done with the least heartburn.
YMMVI agree. As a dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft loather, I have to give Bill and Melinda some props for their charitable causes. I wish I had resources like theirs to give, but we all must do what we can with what we've got. I'm just glad they're doing as much as they are.
Drive what you want - just buy *used*. It costs more in terms of energy consumption, resource depletion, and environmental pollution to produce even a fuel-efficient new car than the *already produced* used car could ever do to the environment through emissions. I will not be made to feel guilty about my choice of vehicles. I save up, buy quality and drive it for years. I drove a 22-year-old car for almost 15 years before trading it in for a used car almost 10 years ago that will last me another 10-15 years. I have holier-than-thou co-workers that get the latest, brand new, shoe-box-sized "green-car" every-other year and look down their noses at people like me. While they are rattling around in their brand-new toy, I'll be cruising comfortably along in my 'benz (which gets > 30 mpg btw).