"We've noticed that you've been running your furnace a lot recently. Here's a list of insulation installers in your area that you might be interested in."
Personally, while I see it as a good thing from different angles (customer: music can be played on any software/player, reseller: Apple makes more money because people will come to them to buy DRM-free tunes, supplier: EMI makes more money from the higher per-song price, artists: still get screwed) I don't see it as jumping for joy news. I'm not much of an audiophile, so the higher quality would probably be lost on me, and I drank the Apple kool-ade years ago, so I'll be using iTunes/iPods forever so the presence of the DRM doesn't really impact me..
Question(s):
1: If you buy music through iTMS, will you spend the extra $$$ for the higher-quality DRM-free versions?
2: Will you spend the $$$ to take up the offer to "upgrade" any existing music you have previously downloaded?
3: How long will it be until major label #2 makes a similar announcement?
Once upon a time there were two farmers, Farmer Steve and Farmer Sim, who produced grapes in a beautiful silicon valley.
Farmer Steve was a dogged worker, putting in long hours enriching his soil, carefully watering his vines, and employing advanced viticulture techniques to engineer the valley's finest grapes. As a result, Farmer Steve produced fruit that was the envy of agriculture; plump, sweet, and delicious.
Farmer Sim's grapes were sour, bitter little nuggets that routinely died on the vine due to the little effort Farmer Sim put into their care.
Yet Farmer Sim was dogged as well. He erected a large fruit stand in front of his farm, with a sign proclaiming:
Great Grapes Here!
Passersby attracted by the sign were not pleased with Farmer Sim;s fruit and did not return.
"Hmm" mused Farmer Sim, "perhaps I need a bigger sign."
And with that, Farmer Sim erected a billboard twice the size of the original. It read:
Silicon Valley's Finest Grapes! (Much better than Farmer Steve's!)
Yet customers remained scarce and those who did purchase Farmer Sim's grapes left with a rancid taste in their mouths.
"Perhaps the sign is still too small," considered Farmer Sim.
And he erected yet another sign, twice as big as the last, that read:
Only Sour People Prefer Sweet Grapes!
To help ensure the success of his sign, he asked the comeliest of the valley's milk maids to drape themselves over the sign dressed in their most fetching dirndls.
And still customers continued to make a beeline for Farmer Steve's establishment.
"I have the finest signs and comeliest maids in the valley, yet Farmer Steve continues to sell every grape he grows," fumed Farmer Sim as he glared across the fence at Farmer Steve's vineyard, "he must be cheating me!"
And as Farmer Sim glared he noticed something he hadn't considered before.
"Wait a minute. The dirt in which Farmer Steve's grapes are grown looks suspiciously like my dirt! I'll wager that Farmer Steve waits until I go to bed, sneaks over here, takes my dirt (which provides his grapes with their succulence), and scatters it about his land! I must put a stop to this!!"
And with that he shouted to anyone who would listen, "Farmer Steve is a dirt stealing cheater! Farmer Steve is a dirt stealing cheater!"
Farmer Sim's ruckus eventually attracted the attention of the valley's weary sheriff, who called the two farmers together in an attempt to sort out their differences.
"Let me get this straight," said the sheriff. "Farmer Sim, you are suggesting that the toothsomeness of Farmer Steve's grapes is due solely to the dirt you allege he stole from your farm."
"That's right."
"And what have you to say for yourself, Farmer Steve?" inquired the sheriff.
"Of course I deny taking Farmer Sim's dirt. I have plenty of dirt of my own that, I might add, I've carefully enriched to my specifications," said Farmer Steve. "Besides, dirt has been with us forever and no one may claim it as their invention. But putting that aside for the moment, I'd like to offer this simple test."
"Sheriff, please close your eyes. I will give you two grapes. One from my farm and the other from Farmer Sim's. If Farmer Sim's dirt is so wonderful, wouldn't our grapes be equally delectable? You be the judge."
"No! No! No!" screamed Farmer Sim, but to no avail.
The sheriff ate the first grape; a fat purple grape from Farmer Steve's vineyard.
"Wonderful!" smacked the sheriff.
"And now this," said Farmer Steve, placing a specimen of Farmer Sim's shriveled fruit in the sheriff's open mouth.
"Ptoooey!" spat the sheriff as he messily expelled the purported fruit from his mouth. "Get me something to wash out this god-awful taste!"
If I want access faster that 56k, I have exactly one choice for (reasonably priced) connectivity, cable, as I cannot get DSL in my area. Time Warner is also the only cable provider here, so I don't even have a choice that way.
Intellectual monopolies are a hinderance to the free market, damaging to the economy, disasterous for the flow of information and the evolution of culture and science, and are rapidly proving themselves to be dangerous to democracy and they need to go. Now.
Let me guess... you'd buy poo in a white box if it had the Apple logo on it, right?
Okay, moving on...
Apple reduced the number of times a playlist can be burnt to a CD from 10 down to 7.
They also increased the number of computer you could authorize from three to five.
The videos will undoubtedly play via iTunes and be purchasable from the iTunes store. People who buy songs from iTunes will obviously be the first people to use this new service.
Obviously. So?
I know that Apple's music store sells encrypted files that can only be played with crippled software...
I've got a feeling that Apple wouldn't be able to sell anything without DRM attached; it's the record companies that require this. Last I checked, pretty much every "legitimate" online music seller has some sort of DRM attached and requires being played with "crippled" software.
...but most users do not realise this and Apple does not make it clear to them.
I suspect that if the NSA has some interest in your credit card number, they'd be able to quickly figure it out whether you had it registered on Google or not...
True, the argument over whether downloading music is "stealing" is tired. My personal belief is that you're still in posession of a pile of bits and bytes which you technically have no right to have.
My point is that if he doesn't have the funds to pay for something, or if he has the funds but doesn't want to spend them via a "trackable" method, then he's SOL.
It's kind of like overexpansion in baseball. There's too many teams right now and there are over a hundred players on major league rosters who would have been only good enough for the minors before.
You could suddenly fund a hundred new schools, but the staff you'd get for them would have to come from a pool that was never good enough to teach at the current schools, lowering the quality of education.
I'm sure that over time, quality professors could be developed, but "build more schools!" won't work as well.
I can see a flat fee for new releases, but I can't see myself paying $9.99 for an older movie that I can find in the discount bin at Best Buy for the same price or cheaper. Just like music albums, given the choice of a digital download or a CD for the same price or even a couple of bucks more, I'd much rather have the CD and be able to rip it the way I want.
Ditto with movies; I rather have the DVD, plus all the extras, (*looks around*) and the ability to rip it to a laptop ot iPod appropriately-sized video file.
Slashdot Mirror
http://i.imgur.com/xmBV4n0.jpg
"We've noticed that you've been running your furnace a lot recently. Here's a list of insulation installers in your area that you might be interested in."
So, about 5 minutes of income then.
It says that you have to run a terminal command to enable AirDisk mode.
After you install two blank drives and remove the optical drive, how do you get the OS installed in the first place?
According to the video, they started out by milling two silicon hemispheres. How did they bond them together?
Personally, while I see it as a good thing from different angles (customer: music can be played on any software/player, reseller: Apple makes more money because people will come to them to buy DRM-free tunes, supplier: EMI makes more money from the higher per-song price, artists: still get screwed) I don't see it as jumping for joy news. I'm not much of an audiophile, so the higher quality would probably be lost on me, and I drank the Apple kool-ade years ago, so I'll be using iTunes/iPods forever so the presence of the DRM doesn't really impact me..
Question(s):
1: If you buy music through iTMS, will you spend the extra $$$ for the higher-quality DRM-free versions?
2: Will you spend the $$$ to take up the offer to "upgrade" any existing music you have previously downloaded?
3: How long will it be until major label #2 makes a similar announcement?
Erm... If you bought a copy of Vista, you'd also have to buy all the peripherals, as well as a CPU...
If you were doing an upgrade of your current system, you'd already have everything you need. You would just swap out the PC box for the Mini.
I'm not sure about lifespan, but search for "coconutbattery" for a handy app to tell you how much life you've used up.
Once upon a time there were two farmers, Farmer Steve and Farmer Sim, who produced grapes in a beautiful silicon valley.
Farmer Steve was a dogged worker, putting in long hours enriching his soil, carefully watering his vines, and employing advanced viticulture techniques to engineer the valley's finest grapes. As a result, Farmer Steve produced fruit that was the envy of agriculture; plump, sweet, and delicious.
Farmer Sim's grapes were sour, bitter little nuggets that routinely died on the vine due to the little effort Farmer Sim put into their care.
Yet Farmer Sim was dogged as well. He erected a large fruit stand in front of his farm, with a sign proclaiming:
Great Grapes Here!
Passersby attracted by the sign were not pleased with Farmer Sim;s fruit and did not return.
"Hmm" mused Farmer Sim, "perhaps I need a bigger sign."
And with that, Farmer Sim erected a billboard twice the size of the original. It read:
Silicon Valley's Finest Grapes! (Much better than Farmer Steve's!)
Yet customers remained scarce and those who did purchase Farmer Sim's grapes left with a rancid taste in their mouths.
"Perhaps the sign is still too small," considered Farmer Sim.
And he erected yet another sign, twice as big as the last, that read:
Only Sour People Prefer Sweet Grapes!
To help ensure the success of his sign, he asked the comeliest of the valley's milk maids to drape themselves over the sign dressed in their most fetching dirndls.
And still customers continued to make a beeline for Farmer Steve's establishment.
"I have the finest signs and comeliest maids in the valley, yet Farmer Steve continues to sell every grape he grows," fumed Farmer Sim as he glared across the fence at Farmer Steve's vineyard, "he must be cheating me!"
And as Farmer Sim glared he noticed something he hadn't considered before.
"Wait a minute. The dirt in which Farmer Steve's grapes are grown looks suspiciously like my dirt! I'll wager that Farmer Steve waits until I go to bed, sneaks over here, takes my dirt (which provides his grapes with their succulence), and scatters it about his land! I must put a stop to this!!"
And with that he shouted to anyone who would listen, "Farmer Steve is a dirt stealing cheater! Farmer Steve is a dirt stealing cheater!"
Farmer Sim's ruckus eventually attracted the attention of the valley's weary sheriff, who called the two farmers together in an attempt to sort out their differences.
"Let me get this straight," said the sheriff. "Farmer Sim, you are suggesting that the toothsomeness of Farmer Steve's grapes is due solely to the dirt you allege he stole from your farm."
"That's right."
"And what have you to say for yourself, Farmer Steve?" inquired the sheriff.
"Of course I deny taking Farmer Sim's dirt. I have plenty of dirt of my own that, I might add, I've carefully enriched to my specifications," said Farmer Steve. "Besides, dirt has been with us forever and no one may claim it as their invention. But putting that aside for the moment, I'd like to offer this simple test."
"Sheriff, please close your eyes. I will give you two grapes. One from my farm and the other from Farmer Sim's. If Farmer Sim's dirt is so wonderful, wouldn't our grapes be equally delectable? You be the judge."
"No! No! No!" screamed Farmer Sim, but to no avail.
The sheriff ate the first grape; a fat purple grape from Farmer Steve's vineyard.
"Wonderful!" smacked the sheriff.
"And now this," said Farmer Steve, placing a specimen of Farmer Sim's shriveled fruit in the sheriff's open mouth.
"Ptoooey!" spat the sheriff as he messily expelled the purported fruit from his mouth. "Get me something to wash out this god-awful taste!"
"I apologize for putting you th
If I want access faster that 56k, I have exactly one choice for (reasonably priced) connectivity, cable, as I cannot get DSL in my area. Time Warner is also the only cable provider here, so I don't even have a choice that way.
"You shore got a purdy mouth!"
Why isn't it okay to sell DRMed music?
Okay, moving on...
They also increased the number of computer you could authorize from three to five.
Obviously. So?
I've got a feeling that Apple wouldn't be able to sell anything without DRM attached; it's the record companies that require this. Last I checked, pretty much every "legitimate" online music seller has some sort of DRM attached and requires being played with "crippled" software.
Really? You asked them?
I suspect that if the NSA has some interest in your credit card number, they'd be able to quickly figure it out whether you had it registered on Google or not...
But if the trees had eyes, would you still cut them down?
Where in my post did I say he didn't have enough money?
Because he doesn't want to use credit cards, he's unable to pay, unless his PC has a coin slot.
True, the argument over whether downloading music is "stealing" is tired. My personal belief is that you're still in posession of a pile of bits and bytes which you technically have no right to have.
My point is that if he doesn't have the funds to pay for something, or if he has the funds but doesn't want to spend them via a "trackable" method, then he's SOL.
Then, like other things in life that you are unable to pay for, you do without and move on with your life.
I'll have to remember that one...
"I want that new car, but I didn't have enough money, so I had no option but to take it."
"Those shoes look cool, but I don't have a credit card, so I had no option but to slip them under my jacket and walk out of the store."
It's kind of like overexpansion in baseball. There's too many teams right now and there are over a hundred players on major league rosters who would have been only good enough for the minors before.
You could suddenly fund a hundred new schools, but the staff you'd get for them would have to come from a pool that was never good enough to teach at the current schools, lowering the quality of education.
I'm sure that over time, quality professors could be developed, but "build more schools!" won't work as well.
I can see a flat fee for new releases, but I can't see myself paying $9.99 for an older movie that I can find in the discount bin at Best Buy for the same price or cheaper. Just like music albums, given the choice of a digital download or a CD for the same price or even a couple of bucks more, I'd much rather have the CD and be able to rip it the way I want.
Ditto with movies; I rather have the DVD, plus all the extras, (*looks around*) and the ability to rip it to a laptop ot iPod appropriately-sized video file.
Thanks to Google, Alpha is the new Beta...
Forgot Centipede, too.
And Missile Comand...
Here's the page to which you probably were referring.
Microsoft has a tutorial on their MSDN site which discusses this as well.
I've seen this trick done before, but never on such a grand scale! I hope those were waterproof lab coats...