Here's a major difference between Apple's iTunes DRM and other companies:
it lets people do what they want with it.
No, not what YOU want to do with it, what the average iPod/Mac owner wants to do with it.
Most people who are buying songs through iTunes have an iPod or iPhone, many have a mac, and the songs and shows are designed to work just fine on both. They don't want to sync with anything else, so why would they care about the DRM?
Something that restricts you from putting music on your iPod, yes that's going to piss the users off, but something designed to integrate with it? Not so much.
"The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin."
The moral of the story is:
KEEP YOUR FUCKING SEATBELT FASTENED AT ALL TIMES.
Most frequent flyers I know (myself included) never ever take our seatbelts off unless it's absolutely necessary. We have all been through clear air turbulence (commonly abbreviated as CAT), unexplained plunges, and other fun things that are almost guaranteed to happen to you if you fly often enough.
People that immediately unbuckle their seatbelts as soon as the light goes off boggle me, they really do. It represents a hazard not only to the person who's unbuckled, but also the poor bastard he might happen to land on.
And parents, keep your fucking toddler buckled in. The last thing we need in the midst of sudden turbulence is little Snotleigh bouncing around the cabin.
I'm actually heading to Cuba for Christmas, though avoiding the small American part of it. Havana and Varadero are definitely destinations to get excited about.
Oh please. Women are not carbon copies of one another, and some of us could care less about being a "fairy princess". I'd sooner never get married than spend a silly amount of money on one party.
You can pry my paperbacks out of my cold, dead hands.
I buy a LOT of books, and go through on average two a week. I read them in the bathtub, before bed, while eating breakfast, on the balcony when it's warm out, while waiting for friends, on the subway, during takeoff and landing on planes every Monday and Thursday. I can throw a couple in my messenger bag and not have to worry about breaking them. If they get wet, they dry out without any issues. If I drop one, the worst that happens in a dog-eared page. I can lend them to friends, borrow from their collections, or read many books for free via the library.
I don't see any kind of ebook reader being capable of that anytime soon.
I will buy an official copy of Spore, but I can tell you right now that I'll be doing the same thing I did with NWN & NWN2: downloading the cracked version so I don't have to deal with the DRM bullshit.
Not being able to play without a net connection is fucked, especially for someone like me who travels every Monday to Thursday. This kind of DRM is basically telling me I can't play in the airport unless I pay for the connection, or on the plane in mid-flight, so the official version gets a big middle finger, and I'll play the cracked copy.
Try no effort. That kind of ID to debit card association has been going on at grocery stores for years - there's a reason many of them don't bother asking for your personal details when they hand over a rewards card, they know you'll use a debit or credit card eventually.
This entire format war is a mess, and a losing proposition for anyone who wants to upgrade their current DVD player for an HD version.
I recently went and dropped a small fortune on a top of the line 1080p HDTV, but I didn't buy an HD player, blu-ray OR HD-DVD. Why should I, when the offerings are skimpy, the players are either obsolete (hd-dvd and blu-ray profile 1.0) or overly expensive (blu-ray)? And in the case of Blu-Ray, everyone's still half-waiting for profile 2.0 players (other than the PS3) to come on the market for a decent price.
Instead, I bought a cheap upconverting DVD player, and spent $6 at Monoprice.com on a DVI to HDMI cable, and began downloading content from my favourite torrent sites. Most of this stuff I already owned in standard DVD, so I feel zero guilt about downloading it in HD format.
A year or two from now, when the prices have lowered to a reasonable level and the Blu-Ray library contains a nice selection of titles, I will look at buying a player. But for now, I'd rather spend the money on a new HDD.
I know not all were due to this, but a LOT of the downloaders at waffles paid for the album, but couldn't get through to download it. The NIN servers went into meltdown mode and were impossible to reach. I managed to download 1MB of data from the email, then it died; retrying didn't help. So I went over to waffles and grabbed the copy there instead, and I know I'm not the only one.
Except that a small hole in a plane's fuselage won't cause violent decompression. Mythbusters very effectively busted that myth quite some time back. Hell, there are documented cases of planes losing entire chunks of fuselage due to stress and corrosion and landing successfully (see Aloha Airlines Flight 243).
Of course people are sitting this one out - no one wants to be the sucker who pays twice over for their HD movies.
They briefly mention the Betamax vs. VHS format war of the 80s in the article. I was around for that particular battle, and I remember my dad coming home with a brand new, shiny, expensive betamax machine. Six months later, it was obsolete and we couldn't find videotapes for the damned thing, so we had to go buy another brand new, shiny, expensive VHS machine.
Who wants to spend a small fortune on a Blu-Ray machine and upgrade their DVDs only to have HD-DVD take over a year from now (or vice versa) and have to repeat it all over again? Screw that noise - I'll stick to plain old DVDs til they get this mess sorted out.
If you can't last more than a few hours with porn, you may have a problem.
Having said that, since when does someone need internet access to view porn? I have porn on my macbook pro right now, but when I flew out yesterday and pulled it out for a bit of in-flight entertainment, I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Basic common courtesy kept people from watching porn while they travelled without internet access; the same thing will keep them from watching porn with internet access. Those few asshats who can't restrain themselves, well, they're asshats regardless of internet access.
I've also spent a fair bit of time travelling by train, which already come with free wi-fi. I've yet to see anyone browsing hotbabesxxx.com during the trip.
I love question period. That is the single best political snipe fest around. And they all have to be so damned polite, even though there's pure vitriol in their tone.
You just can't pay for better entertainment than that. The USA needs to take a page from the parliamentary system. And for you Americans out there, the Prime Minister isn't immune from the verbal sparring either.
The price has nothing to do with it. Here's why software implementations fail:
- failure to scope the project correctly. - scope creep, as everyone rushes to get their own stamp on the project. - on the other side, scope reduction, once some pinhead in accounting realises how much the scope creep is costing. - implementing for IT instead of the end user. - allowing either IT or business sole authority in software purchase decisions. Either way it's a guaranteed disaster. - instead of improving current processes, projects attempt to replace/revamp said processes completely, with little to no impact from the people who actually use them. - lack of training. Nine times out of ten when a project runs over budget, the first area cut is the end user training. - cheaping out on the implementation. I've watched companies spend millions on software licenses, then shortchange on the implementation. - rushed implementation. Instead of planning and implementing on a schedule, the project managers fix a timeline and say "get it done in this timeframe", completely ignoring how long it SHOULD take.
I had to get three xen debian instances up and running with Mongrel and RoR a few months ago, and the only bigger headache I've ever encountered was getting trac running with svn. The number of dependencies that kept cropping up was just unbelievable. I spent about four hours working it through on the first instance. Thank god for xensource "clone server".
The quote is from Bash.org. And I fully agree with both the quote, and wishing I'd had an atomic lab.
I did have a microscope growing up, which was pretty cool; came complete with scalpels and stuff to slice off bits of myself and examine. What I really wanted was the full-on Chemistry set though. Those looked like so much fun. I got barbies instead *sigh*
I'd say my own iPod is about 50/50 purchased vs. freely downloaded tunes. Then again, I live in Canada where we already pay a levy on recordable media including hard disks, dvds, cds, blank tapes, etc so I'm damned well going to take advantage of it. Don't like it? Remove the "copy tax" and maybe you'll have a valid claim.
The CRIA has gotten their asses handed to them several times over in Canadian courts due to this law. Worked great back in the 80s when the only way we had to store and transfer music was the cassette tape; now with broadband available everywhere, they've pretty much screwed themselves. It's also perfectly legal here for anyone to copy music for personal use. I find dear old Doug's statement incredibly offensive and short-sighted, and I'm sure he'd LOVE to call me a thief. To Doug: Take Canadian fair use law and suck it.
Yep, cause Judges are known to be tolerant of intentional time wasting motions. You'd have your ass handed to you by the well-paid RIAA lawyers and the court.
Terrible sentence structure, a lack of comparison specs, the summary is seriously lacking, and what is up with those right hand nav bars all over the place?
Slashdot Mirror
Try their refurb store: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=OTY2ODY3Nw
You can get applecare for the refurbs too, which is nice.
Here's a major difference between Apple's iTunes DRM and other companies:
it lets people do what they want with it.
No, not what YOU want to do with it, what the average iPod/Mac owner wants to do with it.
Most people who are buying songs through iTunes have an iPod or iPhone, many have a mac, and the songs and shows are designed to work just fine on both. They don't want to sync with anything else, so why would they care about the DRM?
Something that restricts you from putting music on your iPod, yes that's going to piss the users off, but something designed to integrate with it? Not so much.
"The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin."
The moral of the story is:
KEEP YOUR FUCKING SEATBELT FASTENED AT ALL TIMES.
Most frequent flyers I know (myself included) never ever take our seatbelts off unless it's absolutely necessary. We have all been through clear air turbulence (commonly abbreviated as CAT), unexplained plunges, and other fun things that are almost guaranteed to happen to you if you fly often enough.
People that immediately unbuckle their seatbelts as soon as the light goes off boggle me, they really do. It represents a hazard not only to the person who's unbuckled, but also the poor bastard he might happen to land on.
And parents, keep your fucking toddler buckled in. The last thing we need in the midst of sudden turbulence is little Snotleigh bouncing around the cabin.
I'm actually heading to Cuba for Christmas, though avoiding the small American part of it. Havana and Varadero are definitely destinations to get excited about.
Oh please. Women are not carbon copies of one another, and some of us could care less about being a "fairy princess". I'd sooner never get married than spend a silly amount of money on one party.
Keep it simple - this is what screen was meant for. Install it and read the man page, it's really easy to use.
You can pry my paperbacks out of my cold, dead hands.
I buy a LOT of books, and go through on average two a week. I read them in the bathtub, before bed, while eating breakfast, on the balcony when it's warm out, while waiting for friends, on the subway, during takeoff and landing on planes every Monday and Thursday. I can throw a couple in my messenger bag and not have to worry about breaking them. If they get wet, they dry out without any issues. If I drop one, the worst that happens in a dog-eared page. I can lend them to friends, borrow from their collections, or read many books for free via the library.
I don't see any kind of ebook reader being capable of that anytime soon.
I will buy an official copy of Spore, but I can tell you right now that I'll be doing the same thing I did with NWN & NWN2: downloading the cracked version so I don't have to deal with the DRM bullshit.
Not being able to play without a net connection is fucked, especially for someone like me who travels every Monday to Thursday. This kind of DRM is basically telling me I can't play in the airport unless I pay for the connection, or on the plane in mid-flight, so the official version gets a big middle finger, and I'll play the cracked copy.
Try no effort. That kind of ID to debit card association has been going on at grocery stores for years - there's a reason many of them don't bother asking for your personal details when they hand over a rewards card, they know you'll use a debit or credit card eventually.
This entire format war is a mess, and a losing proposition for anyone who wants to upgrade their current DVD player for an HD version.
I recently went and dropped a small fortune on a top of the line 1080p HDTV, but I didn't buy an HD player, blu-ray OR HD-DVD. Why should I, when the offerings are skimpy, the players are either obsolete (hd-dvd and blu-ray profile 1.0) or overly expensive (blu-ray)? And in the case of Blu-Ray, everyone's still half-waiting for profile 2.0 players (other than the PS3) to come on the market for a decent price.
Instead, I bought a cheap upconverting DVD player, and spent $6 at Monoprice.com on a DVI to HDMI cable, and began downloading content from my favourite torrent sites. Most of this stuff I already owned in standard DVD, so I feel zero guilt about downloading it in HD format.
A year or two from now, when the prices have lowered to a reasonable level and the Blu-Ray library contains a nice selection of titles, I will look at buying a player. But for now, I'd rather spend the money on a new HDD.
I know not all were due to this, but a LOT of the downloaders at waffles paid for the album, but couldn't get through to download it. The NIN servers went into meltdown mode and were impossible to reach. I managed to download 1MB of data from the email, then it died; retrying didn't help. So I went over to waffles and grabbed the copy there instead, and I know I'm not the only one.
Except that a small hole in a plane's fuselage won't cause violent decompression. Mythbusters very effectively busted that myth quite some time back. Hell, there are documented cases of planes losing entire chunks of fuselage due to stress and corrosion and landing successfully (see Aloha Airlines Flight 243).
Of course people are sitting this one out - no one wants to be the sucker who pays twice over for their HD movies.
They briefly mention the Betamax vs. VHS format war of the 80s in the article. I was around for that particular battle, and I remember my dad coming home with a brand new, shiny, expensive betamax machine. Six months later, it was obsolete and we couldn't find videotapes for the damned thing, so we had to go buy another brand new, shiny, expensive VHS machine.
Who wants to spend a small fortune on a Blu-Ray machine and upgrade their DVDs only to have HD-DVD take over a year from now (or vice versa) and have to repeat it all over again? Screw that noise - I'll stick to plain old DVDs til they get this mess sorted out.
Really? Damn, there's an apple store about thirty minutes away from me, it's where I got my MPB.
/is a girl
*plots*
Er yeah. That should have read "without" :)
If you can't last more than a few hours with porn, you may have a problem.
Having said that, since when does someone need internet access to view porn? I have porn on my macbook pro right now, but when I flew out yesterday and pulled it out for a bit of in-flight entertainment, I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Basic common courtesy kept people from watching porn while they travelled without internet access; the same thing will keep them from watching porn with internet access. Those few asshats who can't restrain themselves, well, they're asshats regardless of internet access.
I've also spent a fair bit of time travelling by train, which already come with free wi-fi. I've yet to see anyone browsing hotbabesxxx.com during the trip.
I love question period. That is the single best political snipe fest around. And they all have to be so damned polite, even though there's pure vitriol in their tone.
You just can't pay for better entertainment than that. The USA needs to take a page from the parliamentary system. And for you Americans out there, the Prime Minister isn't immune from the verbal sparring either.
The price has nothing to do with it. Here's why software implementations fail:
- failure to scope the project correctly.
- scope creep, as everyone rushes to get their own stamp on the project.
- on the other side, scope reduction, once some pinhead in accounting realises how much the scope creep is costing.
- implementing for IT instead of the end user.
- allowing either IT or business sole authority in software purchase decisions. Either way it's a guaranteed disaster.
- instead of improving current processes, projects attempt to replace/revamp said processes completely, with little to no impact from the people who actually use them.
- lack of training. Nine times out of ten when a project runs over budget, the first area cut is the end user training.
- cheaping out on the implementation. I've watched companies spend millions on software licenses, then shortchange on the implementation.
- rushed implementation. Instead of planning and implementing on a schedule, the project managers fix a timeline and say "get it done in this timeframe", completely ignoring how long it SHOULD take.
I could add more, but this is just part of it.
If only it were that easy.
I had to get three xen debian instances up and running with Mongrel and RoR a few months ago, and the only bigger headache I've ever encountered was getting trac running with svn. The number of dependencies that kept cropping up was just unbelievable. I spent about four hours working it through on the first instance. Thank god for xensource "clone server".
Ask and ye shall receive. This is what I used to get ruby up and running on our VMs:
a stcgi_debian
http://www.howtoforge.com/ruby_on_rails_apache2_f
Not 100% accurate, but any hiccups I ran into were easily solved by installing a few libraries.
That country would be Canada. Ontario has had legislation to that effect for some time, now.
The quote is from Bash.org. And I fully agree with both the quote, and wishing I'd had an atomic lab.
I did have a microscope growing up, which was pretty cool; came complete with scalpels and stuff to slice off bits of myself and examine. What I really wanted was the full-on Chemistry set though. Those looked like so much fun. I got barbies instead *sigh*
I'd say my own iPod is about 50/50 purchased vs. freely downloaded tunes. Then again, I live in Canada where we already pay a levy on recordable media including hard disks, dvds, cds, blank tapes, etc so I'm damned well going to take advantage of it. Don't like it? Remove the "copy tax" and maybe you'll have a valid claim.
The CRIA has gotten their asses handed to them several times over in Canadian courts due to this law. Worked great back in the 80s when the only way we had to store and transfer music was the cassette tape; now with broadband available everywhere, they've pretty much screwed themselves. It's also perfectly legal here for anyone to copy music for personal use. I find dear old Doug's statement incredibly offensive and short-sighted, and I'm sure he'd LOVE to call me a thief. To Doug: Take Canadian fair use law and suck it.
Yep, cause Judges are known to be tolerant of intentional time wasting motions. You'd have your ass handed to you by the well-paid RIAA lawyers and the court.
but I couldn't get past the first paragraph.
Terrible sentence structure, a lack of comparison specs, the summary is seriously lacking, and what is up with those right hand nav bars all over the place?