You have not "bought" something you haven't paid for. If you saw this game available for free and downloaded it that's not buying it.
With that being said, this demonstrates the danger of using a platform where a vendor can revoke content and have it removed or otherwise rendered useless after you've downloaded it at any time afterward for any reason.
If this weren't software, but instead, was a physical product that was given away in a store and you accepted the free product, took it home and then the merchant decided the giveaway was a mistake and broke into your home to take it back that would be theft on the merchant's part.
This is why I refuse to "buy" digital content with DRM. If content has DRM you're not buying it. The vendor can remove the content you've paid for or change the terms of your fair use of that content anytime they want to after you've "bought" it. Any vendor offering up digital content that can be revoked or have the usage terms changed after the "purchase" should be prosecuted for fraud. You're aren't buying anything. In fact, you're not even renting it. At least with a rental the terms are agreed to up front by both parties.
Instead you're handing over your hard earned cash under the guise of "buying" something while in fact all you're getting is something temporarily on loan under terms that can be changed anytime the seller feels like it. That's all well and good if the vendor is up front about what's taking place but if they try and portray it as a "purchase" or even a "rental" they are engaging in outright fraud and its long passed time that we started calling these companies out on it!
So the Android platform's open nature makes the overall user experience inferior for exactly the reasons Steve Jobs said a completely open platform such as Android's would? Shocking.
As a geek I love Android's open nature. As somebody whose friends call them anytime a PC or gadget has trouble, I can't recommend Apple strongly enough.
Lucas actually had people to answer to when he created the original trilogy. His original script for Star Wars under went massive re-writes. He only directed the first movie and during his first time out he had both a set budget and studio executives to reign him in. If Lucas would have been given free reign to do to the originals what he did to the prequel trilogy the original films would have been just as bad or worse than the prequels. Lucas best work was done under tight constraints with major input from others. Pure Lucas = Howard the Duck. Lucas with constraints and forced to work with others = Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the list goes on. Lucas has some great ideas mixed with a majority of horrible ideas and if you give him free reign without a filter to sort the brilliance from the crap the results are the The Phantom Menace.
It's like everyone clammoring to bail out GM and save a bunch of low skill jobs that are going nowhere but overseas in the future anyway. It's a losing battle with the wrong objective.
Those greedy thousandaire GM auto workers are ruining this country. Millionaire bankers who created the great recession by purchasing bad mortgages and repackaging them with other bad mortgages via a formula not even the CEO's of their companies could comprehend, not a problem... their mentally deficient counterparts at AIG who made millions selling insurance against those horrific bets... not a problem... those greedy thousandaire retirees from those evil socialist union loving auto companies... clearly the problem here. Something must be done about these greedy thousandaires.... they are ruining this great country!!!!
I would object on the grounds that BluRay will never be as accepted as either DVD or VHS because on-demand/streaming media is clearly the wave of the future. Why? It's more convenient...
My friend, if you don't think the Internet is now a technology primarily dominated by consumers then you and I will have to agree to disagree. Smart phones are driving this and the smart phone market is now driven by consumers.
Since when have "hack" solutions to extending the life and usefulness of outdated but widely implemented technology been a roadblock? The ideal solution to broadband access would have been fiber optic lines for all here in the US, somehow more broadband is delivered through existing telephone lines and via cable lines than direct fiber optic lines to consumers. Purely electric cars or cars that run on biodiesel, hydrogen or natural gas would be much better solutions to our addiction to oil, yet they get outsold in the consumer market by hack "hybrid" cars like the Prius by a rather large margin. Convenience, cost effectiveness, existing familiarity and entrenchment play a much larger role in which succeeding technology gets adopted on a widespread basis than you are banking on. It doesn't matter which technology is superior. It matters which technology gets the basics of the job done with the least cost and hassle. In this case, the job is getting more and more devices online and in this case the technology that can meet that goal with the least cost and hassle is some kind of modification of the technology behind IPv4 plus NAT.
When you can design a system from scratch, of course you go with the best technology available. When you have to extend the life and usefulness of a preexisting system with widespread adoption and you don't have a monopoly that allows you to force change, you go with the solution that is the easiest, most convenient, most cost effective and most familiar to those involved. The easiest and most convenient technology generally always wins over the better but more troublesome to implement technology. Just ask Sony....
Address shortages are a very, very, very tiny, miniscule fraction of IPv6. If IPv6 was about address shortages, the IPng working group would have adopted TUBA.
You seem unwilling to even recognize any of the other features of IPv6:
Built-in security
Built-in device mobility
Built-in network mobility
Built-in multimedia support
Extensible headers for dynamic protocol upgrades
Auto-configuration
Reduced latency
Improved router reliability (partly due to simpler routing protocols)
Native multicasting
Native anycasting
Superior QoS support
Don't even think of coming back with "but nobody uses these" - nobody was driving until the car was adopted either. Things have a habit of not being used when they're not available. When they are available, they are used. It's as simple as that.
You've made some very important points however I would submit to you that when you look at the advancement of technology, specifically that which has widespread adoption, one clear pattern emerges. Better rarely beats more convenient. VHS versus Betamax, Laser Disc versus VHS, low quality MP3's versus CD's in the early days of Napster and the list goes on and on. IPv6 is superior in every way shape and form yet moving to IPv6 is a giant pain compared to keeping and in some way expanding on IPv4 and NAT in some fashion. Moving from IPv4 and NAT to IPv6 is a giant undertaking while continuing with IPv4 and NAT plus piecemeal advancement in technology as need arises is much easier. Remember that necessity is the mother of invention. I'm not saying it's the best path and I'm not saying widespread IPv6 won't be the eventual outcome, I'm simply saying due to the widespread adoption of IPv4 and NAT and the inconvenience of moving to IPv6 the trend will be to stick with IPv4 and NAT for as long as it's humanely possible and just when we get to the point when we think it's no longer possible there's a very good chance somebody somewhere will figure out a way to prolong it and as long as that road is easier and more convenient than moving to IPv6 then that's the road where history teaches us we'll eventually end up walking down... better technology be damned...
I think it's great. I will have my iPhone as a mobile device, the normal big and classy iPad for coffee shops and to impress girls, and the medium size iPhone/iPad variant for things while iPhone isn't enough, but when iPad is too big. I can already think hundreds of different situations where it will fit perfectly.
I remember the same softballs being tossed at the iPod and again at the iPhone when they were released. There were just overpriced, overhyped pieces of hardware that would only appeal to Apple fanboys. Only people who got caught in the Jobs reality distortion field would ever be interested in buying them.
How did that work out for you? I heard the same arguments against the iPad as well. They are still selling like hot cakes meanwhile the predictions of it's demise are looking just as laughable as that of the iPod and iPhone.
You may be too stupid to get the appeal of a smaller, less expensive iPad because it doesn't smell like Richard Stallman and run Linux. The rest of us, however, who are intrigued about the device but put off by it's price point just might be willing to try a smaller version of it at a less expensive price point to see if we like the concept before committing a larger sum to buy the bigger model. You know, just like the Mac Mini, low end iPods and the entry level $99 dollar iPhone.
1997 called. They want their functionality over ease of use mentality back. What is so hard to grasp about the concept that consumers want convenience first, functionality second? Time and time again in the tech industry we've seen superior technology beaten by convenience.
That's great that your $150.00 tablet can run 7 Linux distros and just about every piece of open source software that has ever been written. The $400.00 tablet from Apple that doesn't require a CS degree to run out of the box will outsell it 100 to 1.
Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.
I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.
If the government or any other employer provides you with a device, such as a PC or cellphone, you should assume that anything and everything you do on that device can be and is being monitored. It's their property not yours.
The idea that competition between Microsoft and Google in both the OS and search engine markets will end up hurting consumers in the end is completely and utterly laughable. It's the exact opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, when there is no competition, there is no incentive for a company to improve things for the consumer and that is what will hurt the consumer in the end. If the consumer wants what the company has got there aren't any real alternatives.
Now along comes another company who wants to compete with them and suddenly there is an incentive to either improve the quality of the product, lower the price of the product, or both. If one company doesn't, and both companies are genuinely battling for market share, then the other company eventually will and that forces a cycle of response and counter response that is ultimately very good for the consumer.
So when someone leans against your door and they happen to find it open then they're free to do whatever they like? Post your address. I'm sure there are some takers.
Instead of blaming the policy makers, let's blame the semi-retarded population. They can't name the vice president, but they can name the tot mom. Fucking worthless.
Dear Mr. Kaspersky,
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
Word isn't just used to print documents, it's used to create, format and revise them. The author is correct that now instead of printing documents users tend to e-mail them or transfer them to their recipient by some other electronic means, but that doesn't negate the need for a program like Word that allows you to put the document together, format it and revise it later as necessary.
I use Word at the office to put documents together every day. Ultimately they go to clients as protected PDF files so their contents can't be easily modified, but we do use Word to initially create them or to go back and edit them if we need to send a revised PDF to the client.
OpenOffice has progressed to the point where we could probably phase out Microsoft Office internally, but since we send and receive files in other Microsoft Office formats frequently with both clients and vendors and since we're a small technology company with a Microsoft Action Pack subscription the software and licenses costs us next to nothing.
That's complete crap. Mac's aren't for everyone, but I can tell you that every single person that I've convinced to buy one since I made the switch in 2006 raves about them. I'm typing this on the first Mac I purchased, a $400 Mac mini with a G4 processor and 512 MB of RAM. I don't have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software installed and I've never had a single virus or a single piece of malware or spyware. I've never had a single piece of hardware fail, I've never had to reinstall the OS or any program on this system and I've only ever had to do a hard reboot twice in the entire time I've owned it. With the exception of a hardware failure I can not say any of the above about my shiny new Dell PC at work that I got in January of this year.
I've convinced 6 friends and family members to switch to Mac's over the years. I've received a total of 3 calls to help them with things since they got off the ground with a good understanding of how to use the Mac. In the last two weeks I've had to help 3 of my Windows using friends with things (one was hardware related and the other two were malware infections and they both did have name brand anti-virus / anti-malware software installed).
I can't rave about Mac's enough. The extra few hundred dollars you'll spend on a Mac is completely and totally worth it if you value your time at all. I used to be one of the biggest Apple hating flame throwers around. My buddy in high school had one and it was POS. Not anymore. It's worth every penny plus some. Get yourself a 6 month old Mac mini and try it for a while. You'll be happily shelling out over a $1,000 to get a better model within 6 months and 5 years down the road you'll still be using both.
Apple's are for people that are too busy getting actual work done to want to waste time updating AV software, reinstalling the OS, defragging their hard drive, re-installing screwed up software, removing malware, and installing hundred of OS updates.
And thanks to brilliant open source software like NeoOffice (an Aqua port of Open Office) that exists for the Mac, outside of the OS and the apps that came with it, I haven't spent a single additional penny on software. I spend all day at work fixing fubar'ed Windows PC's. The last thing I want to do when I come home is do the same thing.
And should I come up against some situation on the Mac that's too much for me to handle I can make an appoint at the Genuis Bar at the nearest Apple store and get help with it for free from a real live American citizen making a decent wage and not some dude pretending to be named "Phil" who I can barely understand located in a call center in India making $2 bucks a day. Again, worth every penny plus some.
Copyrights and non-software patents aren't a bad thing. In fact as originally intended they are a very good thing because they allow artists and inventors to turn a profit on their ideas. They originally gave a limited windows upon which those who created the work or came up with the idea could turn a profit before it entered the public domain.
I'd love for a party to appear that wanted to bring copyright and patent laws back in line with what they were originally intended to be. Namely a reasonable, limited amount of time in which a work or idea was protected. Reasonable and limited being the operative words.
Comcast is another company whose commercials strike me as pure lies and misinformation based on a grain of truth
As a general rule of thumb never trust claims made in an advertisement. One of the great things about the Internet is that there are a plethora of sites out there that you can turn to get a better idea of how products and services really work. I rarely buy an expensive product or service these days without checking it out first.
Apple's netbook / tablet PC will be out sometime in 2010 and, as usual, it will rewrite the rules and Microsoft will then change these silly specifications in an attempt to try and catch up to Apple. I've seen this movie before.
Slashdot Mirror
You have not "bought" something you haven't paid for. If you saw this game available for free and downloaded it that's not buying it. With that being said, this demonstrates the danger of using a platform where a vendor can revoke content and have it removed or otherwise rendered useless after you've downloaded it at any time afterward for any reason. If this weren't software, but instead, was a physical product that was given away in a store and you accepted the free product, took it home and then the merchant decided the giveaway was a mistake and broke into your home to take it back that would be theft on the merchant's part. This is why I refuse to "buy" digital content with DRM. If content has DRM you're not buying it. The vendor can remove the content you've paid for or change the terms of your fair use of that content anytime they want to after you've "bought" it. Any vendor offering up digital content that can be revoked or have the usage terms changed after the "purchase" should be prosecuted for fraud. You're aren't buying anything. In fact, you're not even renting it. At least with a rental the terms are agreed to up front by both parties. Instead you're handing over your hard earned cash under the guise of "buying" something while in fact all you're getting is something temporarily on loan under terms that can be changed anytime the seller feels like it. That's all well and good if the vendor is up front about what's taking place but if they try and portray it as a "purchase" or even a "rental" they are engaging in outright fraud and its long passed time that we started calling these companies out on it!
So the Android platform's open nature makes the overall user experience inferior for exactly the reasons Steve Jobs said a completely open platform such as Android's would? Shocking. As a geek I love Android's open nature. As somebody whose friends call them anytime a PC or gadget has trouble, I can't recommend Apple strongly enough.
Lucas actually had people to answer to when he created the original trilogy. His original script for Star Wars under went massive re-writes. He only directed the first movie and during his first time out he had both a set budget and studio executives to reign him in. If Lucas would have been given free reign to do to the originals what he did to the prequel trilogy the original films would have been just as bad or worse than the prequels. Lucas best work was done under tight constraints with major input from others. Pure Lucas = Howard the Duck. Lucas with constraints and forced to work with others = Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the list goes on. Lucas has some great ideas mixed with a majority of horrible ideas and if you give him free reign without a filter to sort the brilliance from the crap the results are the The Phantom Menace.
Racism = bad. Nepotism = good. It's one "ism" crusading against another. Anybody else had enough of both?
I would object on the grounds that BluRay will never be as accepted as either DVD or VHS because on-demand/streaming media is clearly the wave of the future. Why? It's more convenient ...
This conversation, enabled by IPv4+NAT, would indicate otherwise....
My friend, if you don't think the Internet is now a technology primarily dominated by consumers then you and I will have to agree to disagree. Smart phones are driving this and the smart phone market is now driven by consumers.
Since when have "hack" solutions to extending the life and usefulness of outdated but widely implemented technology been a roadblock? The ideal solution to broadband access would have been fiber optic lines for all here in the US, somehow more broadband is delivered through existing telephone lines and via cable lines than direct fiber optic lines to consumers. Purely electric cars or cars that run on biodiesel, hydrogen or natural gas would be much better solutions to our addiction to oil, yet they get outsold in the consumer market by hack "hybrid" cars like the Prius by a rather large margin. Convenience, cost effectiveness, existing familiarity and entrenchment play a much larger role in which succeeding technology gets adopted on a widespread basis than you are banking on. It doesn't matter which technology is superior. It matters which technology gets the basics of the job done with the least cost and hassle. In this case, the job is getting more and more devices online and in this case the technology that can meet that goal with the least cost and hassle is some kind of modification of the technology behind IPv4 plus NAT. When you can design a system from scratch, of course you go with the best technology available. When you have to extend the life and usefulness of a preexisting system with widespread adoption and you don't have a monopoly that allows you to force change, you go with the solution that is the easiest, most convenient, most cost effective and most familiar to those involved. The easiest and most convenient technology generally always wins over the better but more troublesome to implement technology. Just ask Sony ....
You've made some very important points however I would submit to you that when you look at the advancement of technology, specifically that which has widespread adoption, one clear pattern emerges. Better rarely beats more convenient. VHS versus Betamax, Laser Disc versus VHS, low quality MP3's versus CD's in the early days of Napster and the list goes on and on. IPv6 is superior in every way shape and form yet moving to IPv6 is a giant pain compared to keeping and in some way expanding on IPv4 and NAT in some fashion. Moving from IPv4 and NAT to IPv6 is a giant undertaking while continuing with IPv4 and NAT plus piecemeal advancement in technology as need arises is much easier. Remember that necessity is the mother of invention. I'm not saying it's the best path and I'm not saying widespread IPv6 won't be the eventual outcome, I'm simply saying due to the widespread adoption of IPv4 and NAT and the inconvenience of moving to IPv6 the trend will be to stick with IPv4 and NAT for as long as it's humanely possible and just when we get to the point when we think it's no longer possible there's a very good chance somebody somewhere will figure out a way to prolong it and as long as that road is easier and more convenient than moving to IPv6 then that's the road where history teaches us we'll eventually end up walking down ... better technology be damned ...
I remember the same softballs being tossed at the iPod and again at the iPhone when they were released. There were just overpriced, overhyped pieces of hardware that would only appeal to Apple fanboys. Only people who got caught in the Jobs reality distortion field would ever be interested in buying them.
How did that work out for you? I heard the same arguments against the iPad as well. They are still selling like hot cakes meanwhile the predictions of it's demise are looking just as laughable as that of the iPod and iPhone.
You may be too stupid to get the appeal of a smaller, less expensive iPad because it doesn't smell like Richard Stallman and run Linux. The rest of us, however, who are intrigued about the device but put off by it's price point just might be willing to try a smaller version of it at a less expensive price point to see if we like the concept before committing a larger sum to buy the bigger model. You know, just like the Mac Mini, low end iPods and the entry level $99 dollar iPhone.
1997 called. They want their functionality over ease of use mentality back. What is so hard to grasp about the concept that consumers want convenience first, functionality second? Time and time again in the tech industry we've seen superior technology beaten by convenience.
That's great that your $150.00 tablet can run 7 Linux distros and just about every piece of open source software that has ever been written. The $400.00 tablet from Apple that doesn't require a CS degree to run out of the box will outsell it 100 to 1.
I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.
If the government or any other employer provides you with a device, such as a PC or cellphone, you should assume that anything and everything you do on that device can be and is being monitored. It's their property not yours.
Which is why, if you want a real smart phone that you can actually upgrade without trouble, you do the smart thing and get an iPhone.
The idea that competition between Microsoft and Google in both the OS and search engine markets will end up hurting consumers in the end is completely and utterly laughable. It's the exact opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, when there is no competition, there is no incentive for a company to improve things for the consumer and that is what will hurt the consumer in the end. If the consumer wants what the company has got there aren't any real alternatives.
Now along comes another company who wants to compete with them and suddenly there is an incentive to either improve the quality of the product, lower the price of the product, or both. If one company doesn't, and both companies are genuinely battling for market share, then the other company eventually will and that forces a cycle of response and counter response that is ultimately very good for the consumer.
So when someone leans against your door and they happen to find it open then they're free to do whatever they like? Post your address. I'm sure there are some takers.
Instead of blaming the policy makers, let's blame the semi-retarded population. They can't name the vice president, but they can name the tot mom. Fucking worthless.
Dear Mr. Kaspersky, What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
Word isn't just used to print documents, it's used to create, format and revise them. The author is correct that now instead of printing documents users tend to e-mail them or transfer them to their recipient by some other electronic means, but that doesn't negate the need for a program like Word that allows you to put the document together, format it and revise it later as necessary.
I use Word at the office to put documents together every day. Ultimately they go to clients as protected PDF files so their contents can't be easily modified, but we do use Word to initially create them or to go back and edit them if we need to send a revised PDF to the client.
OpenOffice has progressed to the point where we could probably phase out Microsoft Office internally, but since we send and receive files in other Microsoft Office formats frequently with both clients and vendors and since we're a small technology company with a Microsoft Action Pack subscription the software and licenses costs us next to nothing.
That's complete crap. Mac's aren't for everyone, but I can tell you that every single person that I've convinced to buy one since I made the switch in 2006 raves about them. I'm typing this on the first Mac I purchased, a $400 Mac mini with a G4 processor and 512 MB of RAM. I don't have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software installed and I've never had a single virus or a single piece of malware or spyware. I've never had a single piece of hardware fail, I've never had to reinstall the OS or any program on this system and I've only ever had to do a hard reboot twice in the entire time I've owned it. With the exception of a hardware failure I can not say any of the above about my shiny new Dell PC at work that I got in January of this year.
I've convinced 6 friends and family members to switch to Mac's over the years. I've received a total of 3 calls to help them with things since they got off the ground with a good understanding of how to use the Mac. In the last two weeks I've had to help 3 of my Windows using friends with things (one was hardware related and the other two were malware infections and they both did have name brand anti-virus / anti-malware software installed).
I can't rave about Mac's enough. The extra few hundred dollars you'll spend on a Mac is completely and totally worth it if you value your time at all. I used to be one of the biggest Apple hating flame throwers around. My buddy in high school had one and it was POS. Not anymore. It's worth every penny plus some. Get yourself a 6 month old Mac mini and try it for a while. You'll be happily shelling out over a $1,000 to get a better model within 6 months and 5 years down the road you'll still be using both.
Apple's are for people that are too busy getting actual work done to want to waste time updating AV software, reinstalling the OS, defragging their hard drive, re-installing screwed up software, removing malware, and installing hundred of OS updates.
And thanks to brilliant open source software like NeoOffice (an Aqua port of Open Office) that exists for the Mac, outside of the OS and the apps that came with it, I haven't spent a single additional penny on software. I spend all day at work fixing fubar'ed Windows PC's. The last thing I want to do when I come home is do the same thing.
And should I come up against some situation on the Mac that's too much for me to handle I can make an appoint at the Genuis Bar at the nearest Apple store and get help with it for free from a real live American citizen making a decent wage and not some dude pretending to be named "Phil" who I can barely understand located in a call center in India making $2 bucks a day. Again, worth every penny plus some.
Copyrights and non-software patents aren't a bad thing. In fact as originally intended they are a very good thing because they allow artists and inventors to turn a profit on their ideas. They originally gave a limited windows upon which those who created the work or came up with the idea could turn a profit before it entered the public domain.
I'd love for a party to appear that wanted to bring copyright and patent laws back in line with what they were originally intended to be. Namely a reasonable, limited amount of time in which a work or idea was protected. Reasonable and limited being the operative words.
As a general rule of thumb never trust claims made in an advertisement. One of the great things about the Internet is that there are a plethora of sites out there that you can turn to get a better idea of how products and services really work. I rarely buy an expensive product or service these days without checking it out first.
Your right. The west blows. So move to North Korea and then post to your hearts content. Oh wait ...
Thank you for reminding me why abortion should remain free, safe and legal.