Which might be because the Apple Remote/Mac pairing system is not quite robust. I don't know how the it works n a technical level, but I know at least one other user who's Remote can't be distinguished from mine, so when we're in the same room and he starts iTunes to play a song, my MBP also starts blaring. We had to settle on both keeping the IR port deactivated unless actually needed.
By the way, the Remote is nice when you have the device hooked up to a projector. But apart from that, it does rarely see any use at all.
It's essentially a NAS'd external hard drive that supports Time Machine autoconfiguration. With WLAN.
Actually, the thing starts to become attractive to me, although I'm going to stick to my rather new MyBook Studio. A) FireWire S800 still beats 802.11n and B) well, I just plonked down 280 Eurobucks for an external hard drive. Also, C) I know Apple to well to think that the 500 USD will translate to 340 EUR. The thing will cost 500 USD in the States and 500 EUR in Europe.
Still the feature set is kinda nice.
Compare a AA to an iPod... there's no way you're going to get it into that form factor.
Some Chinese manufacturers had an idea on how to solve the "regular batteries are too large for small players" problem with commodity parts: They just use cellphone batteries (mostly Nokia, as it seems). The form factor is just right and the capacity is tolerable. The downside is that the players get delivered with cheap Chinese clone batteries which tend to do all kinds of bad things like swelling up.
Actually, that's more or less the same kind of battery found in the iPod. The big difference is that the Chinese players can be opened and the battery exchanged.
I don't know why Apple doesn't allow that. Maybe so that people don't buy cheap third-party batteries that set their iPods on fire and then sue Apple for making an unsafe product. Maybe because the iPod looks sleeker if there aren't any sliders or flaps you can open. Maybe because it's cheaper.
Where exactly will the external battery go? On the USB port, the mini-DVI port or the sound jack? MagSafe is not neccessarily desirable for an external battery if you're really low on juice and the battery suddenly coming off would be bad.
That and very easy interface generation (which is a big part of RAD, of course). I'm planning* to write an app that uses a generic library to do all the work and platform-specific frontends to wrap everything in a user interface. Using VB for the Windows UI seems reasonable as the VB part wouldn't have to do any actual work, I don't know anything about the Windows API/GDI+, I have a copy of VB6 lying around somewhere and the Windows port isn't of a high enough priority to go with a cleaner approach.
* Whether or not I'm actually going to write it depends on whether someone else opens up some source code.
Actually, I expect Apple to get one on the nose for iTunes, just not now. However, there's a big diference: While they try to abuse the iPod to push iTunes on everyone, they don't quite have the portable music player market in their pocket. While the iPod is very strong, you can get by just fine with any device that takes MP3 files. Sure, you don't get iTMS, but then again iTMS wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't easy to convert your AAC files into MP3s for use on your generic player.
Yeah, they try to use the same practices Microsoft used to kill off competitors like Netscape, only they don't have an actual monopoly to leverage, which is why the whole iPod+iTunes+iTMS stack is only inconvenient, not illegal. Once they start to utterly dominate anywhere, this might rapidly change.
As for MS being less evil than other monopolies: Yup, there are much more blatant cases. But then again, Microsoft did some pretty shameless stuff, as well (like forcing OEMs to load only Windows on PCs or lose their OEM status). Just because they aren't breaking all rules doesn't mean they don't hurt the market by leveraging their ubiquity.
Well, how many people choose Windows because it comes preinstalled with virtually all PCs? How many choose it because works only with Windows (which is because most people use Windows)? Windows' popularity is a self-reinforcing system that leaves the customer little choice.
Warning: Car analogy.
How many people use gasoline cars, compared to ethanol cars? Not many. The fact that ethanol stations are few and far in between and that ethanol cars are somewhat rare is an important factor. There are not many stations because it doesn't make sense to cater to a very small market. Likewise, designing an ethanol engine will make you less money than designing a gasoline engine.
The factors keep reinforcing each other: It doesn't make sense to use a fuel that isn't provided by most suppliers and it doesn't make sense to supply fuel that most people don't use. The benefits of each kind of fuel are irrelevant because gasoline's sheer market dominance ensures that it stays that way.
Of course, now this situation is slowly breaking up. Not because people suddenly want ethanol, but because of external forces - gasoline is becoming ever more expensive due to the oil price and tight eco-laws make ethanol more attractive. Without those laws and the rising oil price, however, gasoline would always stay more popular, simply because it's more popular.
Note that the mere fact that Windows dominates the market is no problem. It's not pretty, but it's not illegal. It's when Microsoft uses its OS dominance to take over other markets when it's time to brandish the antitrust club, because that hurts the market by reducing competition in formerly healthy areas.
Unfortunately, "Apple is eating Microsoft's cake" still means: "Woo hoo! Apple now has a SIX PERCENT market share! World domination, here we come!"
Yeah, once Macs and/ox *nix boxen are seen as a real alternative to Windows Microsoft can't be accused of having an OS monopoly anymore. But that's still not the case so we can have phenomenal growth of the alternatives' market share (going from 5% to 6% global market share is 20% growth, after all) and near-total Microsoft domination at the same time.
I'd love to see the day when things like these no longer neccessary, but breaking an encrusted monopoly takes a long time and the process has only just begun. If Microsoft keeps up alienating people left and right, Apple keeps being perceived as the cool and stable alternative and Linux keeps soaking up the "smart kid with limited funds" demographic I think we might see real progress in the next five years, but I don't think that the downfall of Windows will preclude the end of this investigation.
Actually, that might make sense. If I remember correctly, the NT kernel used to be a rather elegant design with some very useful capabilities. Similarly, NTFS is one of the better file systems out there, with outstanding ACL support.
Just imagine if they released a variant of the NT kernel, sans Internet Explorer, Vista DRM bullshit and in-kernel GUI. Maybe return the POSIX layer to it and you start to have something a decent operating system might be built around. (It doesn't even have to be a 'nix clone, although having a ready-made userland certainly would get it on its feet faster.)
Most of the crap we get from Windows comes from parts that either are or should be in the userspace. The kernel alone with a decent userland on top of it could become something geeks actually like to work with.
It appears to me that they have proven that they will give out excellence awards to just about anyone, no matter how utterly stupid their claims are. I mean, that company has been showing off their vaporware since what, 2005? Virtually unchanged, too. Letting them in is a bit of an embarassment, but giving them an award?
They couldn't have made bigger clowns of themselves by coming to CES wearing clown noses, red wigs, very large shoes and nothing else.
Their "gold-plated audio connector" form factor for RAM is very nice, too. And the storage devices with built-in LCD display that shows how much space they have left. I sure hope that display can interpret file systems besides FAR32 and NTFS... I also very much like the USB card reader that has a similar display and doesn't look badly photoshopped at all. Nooo, sir, it looks entirely real!
Truly one of the most outstanding companies ever! I mean, it certainly does stand out...
I didn't talk about the watermark being reported, I talked about the OS's DRM being kept from interfering with playback - and about that fact that getting right said DRM would be a challenge in itself, as internet response times are orders of magnitudes above adequate audio response times. If you have no idea where the DRM suddenly comes from, consider the fact that my OP might be a reply to asomeone else's post.
By the way, seeing how incredibly robust copy-protection schemes tend to be, I'd expect even legitimate users to flock to a DRM circumvention method, as without a doubt the system is going to horribly fail for some.
Staying out of debt is the tricky part, though. You have to put your money where it's safe from outside influence - any saving scheme that involves the stock market will likely crash and burn along with said market.
Also, you need to be attractive to potential employers; someone who just made his MA and suddenly finds himself on the job market without the money to continue studying will have a hard time competing with a lot of people with actual job experience who became unemployed when their companies cratered.
Even if you're smart and know your stuff, the market is likely to be full of smart people who know their stuff.
The more flexible you are, the better. In fact, depending on the country you're in, you might be forced to be flexible; for example in Germany the job centers like to give you jobs that don't fit your skillset at all because they're paid on a per-attempt basis - and even if they try to be honest, you'll have no control over what kind of position you'll end up in. You better hope that your degree in computer science (specializing in natural language processing) will help you at your new job developing ICs for a television manufacturer. Because hey, they're looking for an IT Specialist for Application Development* and you can program, right? Did we mention that refusing this offer would mean that you don't receive any unemployment support next month? And another placement done.
So, yes, you need maximum flexibility. Be prepared to move three states over and work in an entirely differend field and you have good chances of making it through any recession.
Oh exploitable! Of course replacing words makes everything better, even if there's drama involved. And nobody will ever know what was originally posted and it will certainly not evolve into a special kind of slang.
From the article:
Taylor said. "It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it and we hope we can make it,
Also Hammond organs?
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
With a capitalistic society, if I am talented enough I can make enough to afford good enough health care and end up being OK.
Still ain't much of a difference, though. I don't think there are many more people who just happen to be business-savvy enough to build up a multi million dollar fortune from zero than there are people who are charismatic enough to make connections with VIPs. In the end, both systems mostly reward people who just got lucky.
It's just a different kind of unfairness. If you want actual fairness, you have to go with one of those good-on-paper-but-nonfunctional-in-reality systems where everyone has everything.
And this is relevant.. how? I mentioned Linux as one way of sidestepping the playback restrictions. Another way would be open source codecs that don't implement them (most likely ones that are also available/initially developed for Linux). As I also wrote.
Wait a second... That means that if one uses an OS that doesn't implement this DRM scheme (Linux certainly qualifies), one of the following applies:
1. The file plays normally, as it is standard audio, just with a watermark added
In this case, all Linux users can rejoice. All users of Windows and probably OS X can look below.
2. The file doesn't play because it's in some kind of proprietary format
In this case, Linux users will need to use a reverse-engineered codec that will be written to ignore the watermark. Or they use audio that was already re-encoded and that avoids the scheme by not being in the right format. Unlikely.
So, using Linux will probably be a good way around the DRM part as the open source nature of the whole software stack ensures that there's a DRM-less implementation. Hiding everything inside a proprietary format doesn't help because it's vulnerable to simple re-encoding - you need to scan plain MP3s anyway.
We still have one open question, though: How do the DRM-ful OSes scan for the watermark?
1. The audio player/codec looks for it during playback
In this case all that is needed to defeat the scheme is DRM-less playback software. VLC should suffice to completely break it; regular software can be used, too, if the user can get it to use an open source audio codec.
2. The audio framework (DirectX/Core Audio) continuously scans all played audio for watermarks
In this case the codec will have to actively mask the watermark. That might be accomplished - for example - by either detecting and stripping it, mixing another watermark into the audio stream to confuse the audio framework or splitting up the audio stream and playing it back using multiple processes.
Of course that last method only works if the OS checks every process individually. If it just scans whatever is sent to the sound card and turs off sound playback altogether in case of a bad watermark, stripping is the way to go.
Come to think of it - real-time checking should be useless; the OS can't possibly query a server on the internet about the licensing status of a watermark without severely delaying playback. People would notice all sounds coming several hundred milliseconds later, not to mention delays of multiple seconds if the net/server/local pipe is severely congested. Of course the OS could play the sound and only stop it once the server has given a clear "NO", but then all that is needed to defy the scheme is a router that blocks all outbound traffic to the licensing server.
I don't want to fall in with the "this will be broken in five minutes"-crowd, but I do think that the DRM aspect of this scheme does pose some quite significant challenges.
The problem is that tFA talks about a DRM system that checks for the presence of a watermark and refuses to play if you don't have a license for the watermark. So if you only change the watermark without completely destroying it, you'll just end up with a file that nobody can play.
The trick here is to find out how to counter those spread-spectrum/time-shifting/phase-shifting etc. techniques and any combination thereof without severely butchering the file. I think that simply averaging several copies or adding random noise won't defeat all of the schemes.
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Yes, we did pair and re-pair the remotes. Our remotes just appear to match.
But you are right, the Apple Remote is not quite the most useful addition to a new Mac notebook.
Which might be because the Apple Remote/Mac pairing system is not quite robust. I don't know how the it works n a technical level, but I know at least one other user who's Remote can't be distinguished from mine, so when we're in the same room and he starts iTunes to play a song, my MBP also starts blaring. We had to settle on both keeping the IR port deactivated unless actually needed.
By the way, the Remote is nice when you have the device hooked up to a projector. But apart from that, it does rarely see any use at all.
It's essentially a NAS'd external hard drive that supports Time Machine autoconfiguration. With WLAN.
Actually, the thing starts to become attractive to me, although I'm going to stick to my rather new MyBook Studio. A) FireWire S800 still beats 802.11n and B) well, I just plonked down 280 Eurobucks for an external hard drive. Also, C) I know Apple to well to think that the 500 USD will translate to 340 EUR. The thing will cost 500 USD in the States and 500 EUR in Europe.
Still the feature set is kinda nice.
Actually, that's more or less the same kind of battery found in the iPod. The big difference is that the Chinese players can be opened and the battery exchanged.
I don't know why Apple doesn't allow that. Maybe so that people don't buy cheap third-party batteries that set their iPods on fire and then sue Apple for making an unsafe product. Maybe because the iPod looks sleeker if there aren't any sliders or flaps you can open. Maybe because it's cheaper.
Where exactly will the external battery go? On the USB port, the mini-DVI port or the sound jack? MagSafe is not neccessarily desirable for an external battery if you're really low on juice and the battery suddenly coming off would be bad.
That and very easy interface generation (which is a big part of RAD, of course). I'm planning* to write an app that uses a generic library to do all the work and platform-specific frontends to wrap everything in a user interface. Using VB for the Windows UI seems reasonable as the VB part wouldn't have to do any actual work, I don't know anything about the Windows API/GDI+, I have a copy of VB6 lying around somewhere and the Windows port isn't of a high enough priority to go with a cleaner approach.
* Whether or not I'm actually going to write it depends on whether someone else opens up some source code.
Actually, I expect Apple to get one on the nose for iTunes, just not now. However, there's a big diference: While they try to abuse the iPod to push iTunes on everyone, they don't quite have the portable music player market in their pocket. While the iPod is very strong, you can get by just fine with any device that takes MP3 files. Sure, you don't get iTMS, but then again iTMS wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't easy to convert your AAC files into MP3s for use on your generic player.
Yeah, they try to use the same practices Microsoft used to kill off competitors like Netscape, only they don't have an actual monopoly to leverage, which is why the whole iPod+iTunes+iTMS stack is only inconvenient, not illegal. Once they start to utterly dominate anywhere, this might rapidly change.
As for MS being less evil than other monopolies: Yup, there are much more blatant cases. But then again, Microsoft did some pretty shameless stuff, as well (like forcing OEMs to load only Windows on PCs or lose their OEM status). Just because they aren't breaking all rules doesn't mean they don't hurt the market by leveraging their ubiquity.
Well, how many people choose Windows because it comes preinstalled with virtually all PCs? How many choose it because works only with Windows (which is because most people use Windows)? Windows' popularity is a self-reinforcing system that leaves the customer little choice.
Warning: Car analogy.
How many people use gasoline cars, compared to ethanol cars? Not many. The fact that ethanol stations are few and far in between and that ethanol cars are somewhat rare is an important factor. There are not many stations because it doesn't make sense to cater to a very small market. Likewise, designing an ethanol engine will make you less money than designing a gasoline engine.
The factors keep reinforcing each other: It doesn't make sense to use a fuel that isn't provided by most suppliers and it doesn't make sense to supply fuel that most people don't use. The benefits of each kind of fuel are irrelevant because gasoline's sheer market dominance ensures that it stays that way.
Of course, now this situation is slowly breaking up. Not because people suddenly want ethanol, but because of external forces - gasoline is becoming ever more expensive due to the oil price and tight eco-laws make ethanol more attractive. Without those laws and the rising oil price, however, gasoline would always stay more popular, simply because it's more popular.
Note that the mere fact that Windows dominates the market is no problem. It's not pretty, but it's not illegal. It's when Microsoft uses its OS dominance to take over other markets when it's time to brandish the antitrust club, because that hurts the market by reducing competition in formerly healthy areas.
Unfortunately, "Apple is eating Microsoft's cake" still means: "Woo hoo! Apple now has a SIX PERCENT market share! World domination, here we come!"
Yeah, once Macs and/ox *nix boxen are seen as a real alternative to Windows Microsoft can't be accused of having an OS monopoly anymore. But that's still not the case so we can have phenomenal growth of the alternatives' market share (going from 5% to 6% global market share is 20% growth, after all) and near-total Microsoft domination at the same time.
I'd love to see the day when things like these no longer neccessary, but breaking an encrusted monopoly takes a long time and the process has only just begun. If Microsoft keeps up alienating people left and right, Apple keeps being perceived as the cool and stable alternative and Linux keeps soaking up the "smart kid with limited funds" demographic I think we might see real progress in the next five years, but I don't think that the downfall of Windows will preclude the end of this investigation.
Actually, that might make sense. If I remember correctly, the NT kernel used to be a rather elegant design with some very useful capabilities. Similarly, NTFS is one of the better file systems out there, with outstanding ACL support.
Just imagine if they released a variant of the NT kernel, sans Internet Explorer, Vista DRM bullshit and in-kernel GUI. Maybe return the POSIX layer to it and you start to have something a decent operating system might be built around. (It doesn't even have to be a 'nix clone, although having a ready-made userland certainly would get it on its feet faster.)
Most of the crap we get from Windows comes from parts that either are or should be in the userspace. The kernel alone with a decent userland on top of it could become something geeks actually like to work with.
It appears to me that they have proven that they will give out excellence awards to just about anyone, no matter how utterly stupid their claims are. I mean, that company has been showing off their vaporware since what, 2005? Virtually unchanged, too. Letting them in is a bit of an embarassment, but giving them an award?
They couldn't have made bigger clowns of themselves by coming to CES wearing clown noses, red wigs, very large shoes and nothing else.
Their "gold-plated audio connector" form factor for RAM is very nice, too. And the storage devices with built-in LCD display that shows how much space they have left. I sure hope that display can interpret file systems besides FAR32 and NTFS... I also very much like the USB card reader that has a similar display and doesn't look badly photoshopped at all. Nooo, sir, it looks entirely real!
Truly one of the most outstanding companies ever! I mean, it certainly does stand out...
I didn't talk about the watermark being reported, I talked about the OS's DRM being kept from interfering with playback - and about that fact that getting right said DRM would be a challenge in itself, as internet response times are orders of magnitudes above adequate audio response times. If you have no idea where the DRM suddenly comes from, consider the fact that my OP might be a reply to asomeone else's post.
By the way, seeing how incredibly robust copy-protection schemes tend to be, I'd expect even legitimate users to flock to a DRM circumvention method, as without a doubt the system is going to horribly fail for some.
Staying out of debt is the tricky part, though. You have to put your money where it's safe from outside influence - any saving scheme that involves the stock market will likely crash and burn along with said market.
Also, you need to be attractive to potential employers; someone who just made his MA and suddenly finds himself on the job market without the money to continue studying will have a hard time competing with a lot of people with actual job experience who became unemployed when their companies cratered.
Even if you're smart and know your stuff, the market is likely to be full of smart people who know their stuff.
The more flexible you are, the better. In fact, depending on the country you're in, you might be forced to be flexible; for example in Germany the job centers like to give you jobs that don't fit your skillset at all because they're paid on a per-attempt basis - and even if they try to be honest, you'll have no control over what kind of position you'll end up in. You better hope that your degree in computer science (specializing in natural language processing) will help you at your new job developing ICs for a television manufacturer. Because hey, they're looking for an IT Specialist for Application Development* and you can program, right? Did we mention that refusing this offer would mean that you don't receive any unemployment support next month? And another placement done.
So, yes, you need maximum flexibility. Be prepared to move three states over and work in an entirely differend field and you have good chances of making it through any recession.
* German job center jargon for "programmer"
Oh exploitable! Of course replacing words makes everything better, even if there's drama involved. And nobody will ever know what was originally posted and it will certainly not evolve into a special kind of slang.
Try acheiving the same form factor, though.
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
It's just a different kind of unfairness. If you want actual fairness, you have to go with one of those good-on-paper-but-nonfunctional-in-reality systems where everyone has everything.
Doesn't quite work for the brain, though. And brain degradation is hardly unheard of in older people.
And that also has its weaknesses. Please actually read my original post.
And this is relevant.. how? I mentioned Linux as one way of sidestepping the playback restrictions. Another way would be open source codecs that don't implement them (most likely ones that are also available/initially developed for Linux). As I also wrote.
Wait a second... That means that if one uses an OS that doesn't implement this DRM scheme (Linux certainly qualifies), one of the following applies:
1. The file plays normally, as it is standard audio, just with a watermark added
In this case, all Linux users can rejoice. All users of Windows and probably OS X can look below.
2. The file doesn't play because it's in some kind of proprietary format
In this case, Linux users will need to use a reverse-engineered codec that will be written to ignore the watermark. Or they use audio that was already re-encoded and that avoids the scheme by not being in the right format. Unlikely.
So, using Linux will probably be a good way around the DRM part as the open source nature of the whole software stack ensures that there's a DRM-less implementation. Hiding everything inside a proprietary format doesn't help because it's vulnerable to simple re-encoding - you need to scan plain MP3s anyway.
We still have one open question, though: How do the DRM-ful OSes scan for the watermark?
1. The audio player/codec looks for it during playback
In this case all that is needed to defeat the scheme is DRM-less playback software. VLC should suffice to completely break it; regular software can be used, too, if the user can get it to use an open source audio codec.
2. The audio framework (DirectX/Core Audio) continuously scans all played audio for watermarks
In this case the codec will have to actively mask the watermark. That might be accomplished - for example - by either detecting and stripping it, mixing another watermark into the audio stream to confuse the audio framework or splitting up the audio stream and playing it back using multiple processes.
Of course that last method only works if the OS checks every process individually. If it just scans whatever is sent to the sound card and turs off sound playback altogether in case of a bad watermark, stripping is the way to go.
Come to think of it - real-time checking should be useless; the OS can't possibly query a server on the internet about the licensing status of a watermark without severely delaying playback. People would notice all sounds coming several hundred milliseconds later, not to mention delays of multiple seconds if the net/server/local pipe is severely congested. Of course the OS could play the sound and only stop it once the server has given a clear "NO", but then all that is needed to defy the scheme is a router that blocks all outbound traffic to the licensing server.
I don't want to fall in with the "this will be broken in five minutes"-crowd, but I do think that the DRM aspect of this scheme does pose some quite significant challenges.
The problem is that tFA talks about a DRM system that checks for the presence of a watermark and refuses to play if you don't have a license for the watermark. So if you only change the watermark without completely destroying it, you'll just end up with a file that nobody can play.
The trick here is to find out how to counter those spread-spectrum/time-shifting/phase-shifting etc. techniques and any combination thereof without severely butchering the file. I think that simply averaging several copies or adding random noise won't defeat all of the schemes.