This was true a few years ago, when DRM didn't actually get in the way of legitimate customers in a major way. Now even Mr WhatIfTheyGetMe (because many of those who don't pirate don't do so because they are afraid of getting caught) starts to get pissed about these extremely obtrusive DRM systems.
I know game makers, recording labels etc have lost sales from me. I did not pirate though, I am still waiting for DRM free versions of their content. I purchased a lot of shareware and some iTunes Plus music instead.
After all I can live just as well (dare I say, better?) without playing Spore.
There is nothing politic at all about purchasing a game. I don't really understand why one tries to find a justification for piracy - there is none. Not giving them the money AND not playing the game is actually way more "violent" than pirating. Sending emails complaining about the DRM is even better. They probably do not care that you don't like DRM, but they do care that not only you don't pay for the game, you also break a ring in the chain of "word-of-mouth" marketing by not playing it (and if it happens on a large scale, the game will be considered an huge flop instead that a massively pirated successful game)
I didn't bother to read TFA, so I don't know what the devs claim, but does every piece of software need to target the mass? To me it looks like an useful development/testing software for web developers and for users who regularly need to use sites that require a specific engine (assuming that the software allows tying a site to a specific engine so it is opened automatically with the correct one, otherwise is worthless for the last category I mentioned)
In Italian very few names end in consonant (I cannot recall any that is not of foreign origins). I thought it was mostly the ch cause that way it would sound like Michelle, while with 'k' is way more like Mike.
My name, Michele when read with non-italian rules (ch = k in Italian) is considered a female name and you cannot even image how many people (almost exclusively Americans I must say) at first think I am a girl, yet nobody had problems looking at my code. And yes, is an awkward situation anyways.
But they have been prosecuted. Google execs have not been judged guilty either and the news made a big story out of nothing. Because of how the legal system works here, every reported case must be investigated and prosecuted, independently from the prosecutor opinion of the matter. The judge can of course dismiss the case, which is what will likely happen.
On x86_64, running 64bit applications rarely gives any performance boost (and you usually pay an increased memory footprint due to wider pointers). You benefit from a 64bit CPU when you either computer big numbers or need to address more than 4gb of memory.
This is actually security through obscurity! You do not chose random password, but they are obscure to anybody except you.
The argument was that security through obscurity is often seen as a bad thing, while all forms of security requires some sort of secret. Bad security is when it relies on a secret shared by too many people (for example a weak but undocumented algorithm, because its implementation or output is supposed to be between the hands of many people) or worse when the obscurity is trivial, like rot13 (not that anybody would seriously use it nowdays).
Remembering a random 20 chars string (which should contain both upper, lower, digits and possibly symbols) would be impossible for me. It surely is not the same as remembering five 4-chars passwords, because the chance of swapping chars is a lot higher. After all I can remember every symbol in the latin alphabet, digits and punctuation. This does not mean I could remember any permutation of a string containing all of them.
All this "teach your brain to do X and Y" sounds weird to me. Maybe is just me, but I do not manage to control the inner workings of my brains.
Agreed. Security through obscurity is the only thing that makes passwords work for example.
Infact, when people do not care about security discovering their password would require at most a superficial knowledge of the individual.
As soon as someone is aware of the risks however, it becomes practically impossible to guess a password from what you know about him because the brain can do pretty contorted reasonings (a password is seldom random especially if you want to remember it instead of writing it down) which is obscure to other people. That's security through obscurity.
Indeed. On my Lancia Delta from '92 (which I only own from 3 years) the engine is still in good shape, but the car has a lot of rust and part of the electrics is broken (anti-theft, centralized locks). Not to mention how fragile the plastic parts are! I already broken the light lever, a door handle and one of those small handles inside the car for passengers to hold.
I wholeheartedly agree. Web applications are just abusing the browser forcing them to do what they aren't supposed to. They are very inefficient (the browser is the heaviest application I run) and they have all sort of hacks to overcome the fact that HTTP and HTML were meant for simple stuff. Instead of doing dirty hacks we could do one of the two:
1) require a separate client for every networked application (should be more a efficient from a technical point of view)
2) improve the protocols and languages to natively (and uniformly) support asynchronous requests and just drop the concept of "page" altogether as it doesn't mean too much anymore.
Yes, in EXACTLY the same way Microsoft did with Windows. So why is it that Microsoft can't say "You can only run Windows on Microsoft created computers."? Heck! There's an instant monopoly. Drive HP, Dell, Acer, and Sony right out of business!
The only difference being that Microsoft has a monopoly in the Operating System market. However even keeping this in mind, I guess it would be perfectly within their rights to do so.
It is perfectly within the rights of computer users not to further use Microsoft products or to keep using the old versions.
I think it is because it is a silly part of the license. What would you think if you pulled into a gas station and the attendant said "I'm sorry, we can't put gas into cars like yours." They aren't saying the gas won't work, it is just their choice to sell it only to certain car owners.
This sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I'll just drive to another gas station. Which is the exact reason they do not do that.
Apple however has reasons to believe they will do better not selling their stuff to certain people. Its their choice, wrong or not.
That blacklist is about using CoreLocation API, not about disabling the applications completely. Application needs to ask the user if they want to use CoreLocation for obvious reasons, and apparently there it also keep a blacklist for security purposes.
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This was true a few years ago, when DRM didn't actually get in the way of legitimate customers in a major way. Now even Mr WhatIfTheyGetMe (because many of those who don't pirate don't do so because they are afraid of getting caught) starts to get pissed about these extremely obtrusive DRM systems.
I know game makers, recording labels etc have lost sales from me. I did not pirate though, I am still waiting for DRM free versions of their content. I purchased a lot of shareware and some iTunes Plus music instead.
After all I can live just as well (dare I say, better?) without playing Spore.
There is nothing politic at all about purchasing a game. I don't really understand why one tries to find a justification for piracy - there is none. Not giving them the money AND not playing the game is actually way more "violent" than pirating. Sending emails complaining about the DRM is even better. They probably do not care that you don't like DRM, but they do care that not only you don't pay for the game, you also break a ring in the chain of "word-of-mouth" marketing by not playing it (and if it happens on a large scale, the game will be considered an huge flop instead that a massively pirated successful game)
Actually the iPhone is one of the few cell phones which doesn't do what is described in the patent, so the probably didn't even look at the iPhone.
I didn't bother to read TFA, so I don't know what the devs claim, but does every piece of software need to target the mass? To me it looks like an useful development/testing software for web developers and for users who regularly need to use sites that require a specific engine (assuming that the software allows tying a site to a specific engine so it is opened automatically with the correct one, otherwise is worthless for the last category I mentioned)
Yes probably Italian names are not very common there, although here Michele is a very common name.
In Italian very few names end in consonant (I cannot recall any that is not of foreign origins). I thought it was mostly the ch cause that way it would sound like Michelle, while with 'k' is way more like Mike.
My name, Michele when read with non-italian rules (ch = k in Italian) is considered a female name and you cannot even image how many people (almost exclusively Americans I must say) at first think I am a girl, yet nobody had problems looking at my code. And yes, is an awkward situation anyways.
But they have been prosecuted. Google execs have not been judged guilty either and the news made a big story out of nothing. Because of how the legal system works here, every reported case must be investigated and prosecuted, independently from the prosecutor opinion of the matter. The judge can of course dismiss the case, which is what will likely happen.
I guess Google Italia is an Italian company.
The boys who harred and attacked the child were already prosecuted in 2006.
On x86_64, running 64bit applications rarely gives any performance boost (and you usually pay an increased memory footprint due to wider pointers). You benefit from a 64bit CPU when you either computer big numbers or need to address more than 4gb of memory.
You should take a look at http://cappuccino.org./ Is really interesting and brings the best of both worlds.
Thank you for the joke. It made my day!
This is actually security through obscurity! You do not chose random password, but they are obscure to anybody except you.
The argument was that security through obscurity is often seen as a bad thing, while all forms of security requires some sort of secret. Bad security is when it relies on a secret shared by too many people (for example a weak but undocumented algorithm, because its implementation or output is supposed to be between the hands of many people) or worse when the obscurity is trivial, like rot13 (not that anybody would seriously use it nowdays).
Remembering a random 20 chars string (which should contain both upper, lower, digits and possibly symbols) would be impossible for me. It surely is not the same as remembering five 4-chars passwords, because the chance of swapping chars is a lot higher. After all I can remember every symbol in the latin alphabet, digits and punctuation. This does not mean I could remember any permutation of a string containing all of them.
All this "teach your brain to do X and Y" sounds weird to me. Maybe is just me, but I do not manage to control the inner workings of my brains.
Agreed. Security through obscurity is the only thing that makes passwords work for example.
Infact, when people do not care about security discovering their password would require at most a superficial knowledge of the individual.
As soon as someone is aware of the risks however, it becomes practically impossible to guess a password from what you know about him because the brain can do pretty contorted reasonings (a password is seldom random especially if you want to remember it instead of writing it down) which is obscure to other people. That's security through obscurity.
Indeed. On my Lancia Delta from '92 (which I only own from 3 years) the engine is still in good shape, but the car has a lot of rust and part of the electrics is broken (anti-theft, centralized locks). Not to mention how fragile the plastic parts are! I already broken the light lever, a door handle and one of those small handles inside the car for passengers to hold.
Second, pr0n teaches nothing about how to maintain a relationship.
Actually that's not the point of pr0n.
I wholeheartedly agree. Web applications are just abusing the browser forcing them to do what they aren't supposed to. They are very inefficient (the browser is the heaviest application I run) and they have all sort of hacks to overcome the fact that HTTP and HTML were meant for simple stuff. Instead of doing dirty hacks we could do one of the two:
1) require a separate client for every networked application (should be more a efficient from a technical point of view)
2) improve the protocols and languages to natively (and uniformly) support asynchronous requests and just drop the concept of "page" altogether as it doesn't mean too much anymore.
Yes, in EXACTLY the same way Microsoft did with Windows. So why is it that Microsoft can't say "You can only run Windows on Microsoft created computers."? Heck! There's an instant monopoly. Drive HP, Dell, Acer, and Sony right out of business!
The only difference being that Microsoft has a monopoly in the Operating System market. However even keeping this in mind, I guess it would be perfectly within their rights to do so.
It is perfectly within the rights of computer users not to further use Microsoft products or to keep using the old versions.
The license is not a signed contract.
Agreed. This needs to be changed soon. Customers should be required to actually read and sign the contract before purchasing any software.
On the other end, the wording of those contracts has to be heavily regulated and follow some common and easy to understand format.
I think it is because it is a silly part of the license. What would you think if you pulled into a gas station and the attendant said "I'm sorry, we can't put gas into cars like yours." They aren't saying the gas won't work, it is just their choice to sell it only to certain car owners.
This sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I'll just drive to another gas station. Which is the exact reason they do not do that.
Apple however has reasons to believe they will do better not selling their stuff to certain people. Its their choice, wrong or not.
I've played with a MacBook Air for a couple days, and was really unimpressed by its performance in every aspect aside from battery life and weight.
Actually, that is the point of the MacBook Air.
Did I miss the sarcasm? Because I always managed to find things in a blink with Apple documentation and struggled to find anything at all in Javadoc.
That blacklist is about using CoreLocation API, not about disabling the applications completely. Application needs to ask the user if they want to use CoreLocation for obvious reasons, and apparently there it also keep a blacklist for security purposes.