Wait, what? We might use human host mothers for birthing cloned woolly mammoths?
Re:It maters not what the review says
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 1
I knew the DRM was going to be bad when EA put copy protection on the free demo of Creature Creator, which caused it to fail on my Vista-running laptop.
EA can afford the cost hit on support calls. On the other hand, they won't like it if enough people do this. If we're lucky, they'll come to their senses. More likely, they'll drop (phone-based) tech support.
How does buying textbooks (directly) create new jobs? I can see how the others could (1,2: opening a training centre, 3,4: having local companies form to provide technical support on the software, 5: corporate welfare [yuck!] for job creation) but I don't see textbooks directly mapping to new jobs. Maybe if it was the government paying some locals to write or translate new textbooks, that'd be different.
Well, as far as the labels are concerned, it is "our generation's nuclear power" style issue, because we love the labels as much as hippies love uranium.
Where is it mentioned that this plan would be law? This would be business between the consumer, the artist, and the pool organizers for blanket licensing. It's just business operating under already existing law.
Well, as I see it, we'd all be paying a flat fee (or possibly sliding, hopefully at the payer's discretion although we know it probably wouldn't be) into the pool each month, right? That's not the same as paying $0.99 for every single song; depending on how much music you download (which could be one track; or could be ten albums) that which you put in gets divided amongst the artists whose music you've picked up.
I can imagine this could lead to some interesting gaming of the system, though... You want the only decent song by some crappy musician, but you don't want to support him, so you download several albums by bands you enjoy, thus giving the crappy musician with the one good song a few pennies, and your faves get several bucks each.
If they put out crappy music nobody wants to listen to, that's their own damn problem. If I'm paying into a system for my music, I'll be damned if I'm supporting artists I don't like.
Their fair share is only what they get from the people who listen to them. If this system turns into musician welfare, I'll refuse to participate.
I have to say, though, that BT isn't the answer to all our music needs. Some bands that I've really enjoyed listening to, because they're older, or have broken up years ago and weren't chart toppers, are hard to find. And even when I can find a torrent, there's usually perhaps 5 lamers and no seeds.
Not that I like iTMS. In fact, everything you said about it I agree with entirely. I avoid anything from Apple like it's the plague. (Hell, I use a cell phone as my portable music player, rather than get an iPod.)
This looks like a pretty interesting (dare I say, good?) scheme to get us consumers to actually pay for the music we get off the web. However, the problem I'm feeling from it is that this is still very label oriented. What about musicians who want to make a living off their music online but don't have a label? How do they get involved?
Another sticky wicket would be dividing up the cash in the pool for the artists. A good point had already been brought up by a poster to whom I replied earlier. How can we consumers use this system to benefit the artists we like, and avoid lining the pockets of those we don't? Is there some kind of download tracking? Registration (or other tracking) of songs? And then, do all artists get the same share of the pie, or does it vary based on number of plays, actual play time, or some other scheme?
If the questions get ironed out, and this is something which can be opted into (as opposed to being unilaterally fobbed on us) I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra each month to support my favourite acts. But only if the concerns about how it works are answered.
If it's done right, perhaps what a person puts into the pool only goes out to the artists he or she listens to. So if you just listen to Radiohead and NIN, your fee (less of course some admin portion) would get split between the two bands (perhaps based on number of listens, perhaps based on actual listening time) and trailer trash skanks won't get any of your money.
Probably not how it'd actually turn out, but this would be the best case scenario for this plan, don't you think?
You should. And don't just write, but phone and email and while the House is out, visit the constituency office even without an appointment. Get on Harper's ass about it.
It might not do much, but you'll feel better, and he might actually have second thoughts if he's planning to make it a confidence issue or otherwise gun it through Commons.
With the way that the Tories and Libs are both gearing up for fall elections, we might just end up being lucky and seeing a far more reasonable bill show up in the 40th legislature.
Don't we hear this complexity/cost nonsense every three months or so? And yet I don't see us going back to COBOL, or toggling switches, or punching holes out of cards to run through century-old Hollerith machines.
As time goes on, more and more legacy machines with custom, single-fire software get retired, and replaced with modern technology with well designed, reusable software, which lowers the total cost, even if complexity goes up.
As far as I'm concerned, this talk about going back to COBOL is silly, counter-productive, and fearmongering.
BitLocker might also be good, but I can't use it on my laptop, as it doesn't have a TPM in it. However, it appears pretty sound, and for laptops with a TPM it comes down to whether or not the user considers the T to stand for trusted or treacherous.
TrueCrypt, on the other hand, doesn't require any particular hardware to work. It does its job completely in software, which could also make for easier recovery if the laptop itself gets damaged -- simply pop the HDD into another machine, type in the same password as usual, and there you go! (Of course, that might also be seen as a security hole.)
I'm not even considering the PGP product as I've never actually encountered it.
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Are you kidding? The dumb kids that think they can sing get Macs and buy Garage Band. This is for programmers who know they CAN'T sing.
I was just trying to be witty, but it seems I've been only half. :p
Wait, what? We might use human host mothers for birthing cloned woolly mammoths?
I knew the DRM was going to be bad when EA put copy protection on the free demo of Creature Creator, which caused it to fail on my Vista-running laptop.
Epic fail, EA.
EA can afford the cost hit on support calls. On the other hand, they won't like it if enough people do this. If we're lucky, they'll come to their senses. More likely, they'll drop (phone-based) tech support.
How does buying textbooks (directly) create new jobs? I can see how the others could (1,2: opening a training centre, 3,4: having local companies form to provide technical support on the software, 5: corporate welfare [yuck!] for job creation) but I don't see textbooks directly mapping to new jobs. Maybe if it was the government paying some locals to write or translate new textbooks, that'd be different.
Well, as far as the labels are concerned, it is "our generation's nuclear power" style issue, because we love the labels as much as hippies love uranium.
That does look pretty interesting. I've just skimmed over it so far, but I'll certainly be reading it in-depth. Thanks for sharing!
Where is it mentioned that this plan would be law? This would be business between the consumer, the artist, and the pool organizers for blanket licensing. It's just business operating under already existing law.
Quite true, actually! *smacks self for not thinking of this in the first place*
Well, as I see it, we'd all be paying a flat fee (or possibly sliding, hopefully at the payer's discretion although we know it probably wouldn't be) into the pool each month, right? That's not the same as paying $0.99 for every single song; depending on how much music you download (which could be one track; or could be ten albums) that which you put in gets divided amongst the artists whose music you've picked up.
I can imagine this could lead to some interesting gaming of the system, though... You want the only decent song by some crappy musician, but you don't want to support him, so you download several albums by bands you enjoy, thus giving the crappy musician with the one good song a few pennies, and your faves get several bucks each.
If they put out crappy music nobody wants to listen to, that's their own damn problem. If I'm paying into a system for my music, I'll be damned if I'm supporting artists I don't like.
Their fair share is only what they get from the people who listen to them. If this system turns into musician welfare, I'll refuse to participate.
I have to say, though, that BT isn't the answer to all our music needs. Some bands that I've really enjoyed listening to, because they're older, or have broken up years ago and weren't chart toppers, are hard to find. And even when I can find a torrent, there's usually perhaps 5 lamers and no seeds.
Not that I like iTMS. In fact, everything you said about it I agree with entirely. I avoid anything from Apple like it's the plague. (Hell, I use a cell phone as my portable music player, rather than get an iPod.)
This looks like a pretty interesting (dare I say, good?) scheme to get us consumers to actually pay for the music we get off the web. However, the problem I'm feeling from it is that this is still very label oriented. What about musicians who want to make a living off their music online but don't have a label? How do they get involved?
Another sticky wicket would be dividing up the cash in the pool for the artists. A good point had already been brought up by a poster to whom I replied earlier. How can we consumers use this system to benefit the artists we like, and avoid lining the pockets of those we don't? Is there some kind of download tracking? Registration (or other tracking) of songs? And then, do all artists get the same share of the pie, or does it vary based on number of plays, actual play time, or some other scheme?
If the questions get ironed out, and this is something which can be opted into (as opposed to being unilaterally fobbed on us) I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra each month to support my favourite acts. But only if the concerns about how it works are answered.
Think 60s anti-nuclear protests. It's our generation's nuclear power issue because of the hell raised on both sides of the fence.
It's probably for those of us who are too cheap to go to iTMS, and instead get our music via p2p applications, Last.fm, etc.
If it's done right, perhaps what a person puts into the pool only goes out to the artists he or she listens to. So if you just listen to Radiohead and NIN, your fee (less of course some admin portion) would get split between the two bands (perhaps based on number of listens, perhaps based on actual listening time) and trailer trash skanks won't get any of your money.
Probably not how it'd actually turn out, but this would be the best case scenario for this plan, don't you think?
What, a thread started with "Goggles" in the title, and no Simpsons references?
I'm sure if samzenpus were wearing a pair while reading that tripe, he would have at least yelled out that "THEY DO NOTHING!"
You should. And don't just write, but phone and email and while the House is out, visit the constituency office even without an appointment. Get on Harper's ass about it.
It might not do much, but you'll feel better, and he might actually have second thoughts if he's planning to make it a confidence issue or otherwise gun it through Commons.
With the way that the Tories and Libs are both gearing up for fall elections, we might just end up being lucky and seeing a far more reasonable bill show up in the 40th legislature.
Where do you work? That might be understandable...
Don't we hear this complexity/cost nonsense every three months or so? And yet I don't see us going back to COBOL, or toggling switches, or punching holes out of cards to run through century-old Hollerith machines.
As time goes on, more and more legacy machines with custom, single-fire software get retired, and replaced with modern technology with well designed, reusable software, which lowers the total cost, even if complexity goes up.
As far as I'm concerned, this talk about going back to COBOL is silly, counter-productive, and fearmongering.
I'd suggest going with TrueCrypt.
BitLocker might also be good, but I can't use it on my laptop, as it doesn't have a TPM in it. However, it appears pretty sound, and for laptops with a TPM it comes down to whether or not the user considers the T to stand for trusted or treacherous.
TrueCrypt, on the other hand, doesn't require any particular hardware to work. It does its job completely in software, which could also make for easier recovery if the laptop itself gets damaged -- simply pop the HDD into another machine, type in the same password as usual, and there you go! (Of course, that might also be seen as a security hole.)
I'm not even considering the PGP product as I've never actually encountered it.
He's not wrong, you know. Java was pretty much Pascal for the nineties.
Just because Alberta likes it doesn't mean the rest of the country does...