It is very easy to back up your songs, as they exist both on your computer and on your ipod. It's data. Copy it to backup media.
There is no reason that consumers should have to make a 3d copy of their music when the iPod serves as a perfect up-to-date mirror the iTunes library. Apple's official policy is that they do not support anyway to recover your legally purchased music from your iPod back to your computer. Yes, Slashdot posters can figure out a way, but most people's parents and non-techie friends will have problems. Plus, Apple may slam the back door shut at any time. Then what?
I think one important aspect to Apple's constant user downgrades of the iPod/iTMs is that they stop customers from doing what Apple tells them to do: Back up their songs.
Oddly, Apple's iTMS wants it both ways. They say they are selling you a license for the song, not the physical song. But when you lose a song, they treat it like you lost physical property, even though you paid an apparently perpetual license fee that allows you to have the song and play it.
If something happens to your iTunes library, Apple will not let you re-download those songs again even though the "Fair Play" DRM insures that their could be no piracy involved, since the songs would be locked to the same computers as the original. Tough luck, says Apple, it's your fault for not backing up. Naturally, one would think that the iPod's large disk drive and auto synch would be the perfect way to back up songs, but the schizophrenic Apple won't let you copy your songs off iPod. (Yes, there are ways, but Apple may close that back door at any time.) iPod owners are constantly having to ask on Forums how to recover their accidentally erased iTMS library from their iPod because Apple doesn't officially allow anyway to copy their songs from your iPod to restore their music. Ridiculous.
Their is literally no customer advantage to the Apple downgrades. And copying your legal songs is not illegal. I'm glad that Corry is staying on this.
Troll?
While I didn't necisarily think the parent post would be moded up, I certainly don't think it deserved a -1! Sigh, out of my hands...I certainly didn't mean to be a troll. I do think that it is legitimate to point out that email is plaintext and that GMail accounts are, in certain ways, already compromised.
Seems people are very protective about their GMail...
Well, now, since everyone who uses GMail already lets Google read their mail, what's the difference if a few Hackers get a hold of your account?
Oh sure, they could read your spam and your Slashdot subscription notices, but email is plaintext anyway! Anybody with a packet sniffer can read your email.
As for sending e-mail in your name, spamers already do that now and few duffers can tell the difference.
Can't say as I'm new here or to iPods. I agree that Windows Media DRM doesn't excite me, but if I am to have a DRM enabled device I want it to support a wide range of formats.
I'd prefer that the iPod also support Ogg. In any case my complaint about the new iPod is that it doesn't' really have any really useful features that excite me. How the hell many pictures am I going to want to stare at on my tiny iPod screen? Give me something I can use...
Yeah, too bad you still aren't officially allowed to store your music collection on your iPod instead of your laptop.
That is to say, Apple does not support you copying the music you own off your laptop onto your iPod and then let you copy it back on your laptop at a later time. (Yes, Slashdot types know how to copy the hidden files, but that backdoor doesn't help the typical user and could be closed at any time.)
This new feature is a lot of money for not a lot of feature. The lack of a card reader makes it sort of silly. Granted, there may be an adaptor but that sort of ruins the elegance.
Why, by the way, do you need a 60GB photo collection on an HD with a low res screen???? So you can subject your relatives to the worlds smallest marathon slide show. That would be really convenient...Sure, you can copy the photos back to a laptop, but you can do that with current iPods. So what?
The difference with PayPal is their attempt to pretend it has the moral right to "fine" users $500 and PayPal goes so far as to censor the sale erotic literature via PayPal. If someone violates this fuzzy policy, PayPal plans to fine the person $500 and freeze all of the money in their account! This is outrageous and would not be allowed if PayPal were properly regulated as a bank.
There is another very significant problem with Pay Pal. Pay Pal censors what you can buy and sell and has stated a policy that they will "fine" buyers or purchasers of "adult" items $500. The definition of whether an item meets PayPal's standards is decided solely by PayPal and its official censors, who will even go so far as to read through romance novels/erotic fiction to see whether they pass muster.
While PayPal may not yet be a monopoly, it could be. Right now PayPal is the 800 pound Gorilla of online payments. They have millions of dollars of float from customer accounts, issue a PayPal bank card and yet aren't regulated as a bank. They also will freeze a customer's account, including the funds, at the drop of a hat.
If PayPal is left unchecked as on line commerce continues to grow, it will threaten our ability to buy products without censorship and it will put our finances at risk in an un-regulated bank.
Rather than getting your ass kicked by irate tv watchers, you'd be better off with a remote that could mute the sound and turn on the captions. That is really the best way for TV to be shown in public places so people can still watch tv but it doesn't disturb others.
In India they also use specially simplified systems that use pictures to represent the party affiliations and the political ads all use the pictures so people can graphically associate the two.
Don't confuse the Indian voting system with the Win XP base Dibold system.
I think it is important to remember that even if the web access is secure anyone can intercept RF link warless cameras. Rather than supplying extra security, you may be letting thieves case your home or business. They'll be able to see what you have, if you are home, and where your security cameras are pointed.
Plus, the privacy implications are also bad, you are letting anyone with a receiver to spy on you 24 hours a day.
Yes, you can use pens and pencils, but if you want to reproduce those documents on a copier that has an embedded sig then you still have the same problem.
Keep in mind that it was the printing press, with its ability to cheaply mass produce content that helped spread the kind of dissent that led to the American Revolution. These days, Thomas Paine, who printed patriotic tracts like Common Sense, might be tracked down as a possible terrorist.
The ability to truly speak freely is fading, if it ever existed. There is no absolute right to free speech, but in anonymity we can say the things that a repressive government doesn't want us to say. The INDUCE Act could have made it illegal to even write about how to copy a book with a photocopier--really--because that could constitute "inducement of infringement," so free speech really can be in danger, thus anything that clamps down on our ability to speak anonymously is also an issue.
Pardon me for doubting you, but doubt is usually my first reaction. Microprint is a common security feature for documents but it does require special techniques.
Perhaps if you were to post more details on this alleged process?
Wow! A plan to have traceable embedded signatures in all printers and resulting documents. Finally, a proposal for a government mandated way to trace all documents back to their creator. Remember it is for homeland security, so don't dare oppose this on the idea that it would chill free speech and decent. Besides, think of the children....Boy I feel safer already.
Really, I have to say this is a bad idea. The article goes beyond a forensic technique of trying to match documents to the printer that made it. They conclude that that is not possible in cases like ink jet printers with print heads on the replaceable ink cartridge so they propose embedding an "extrinsic signature" in all printers and printed documents. This would mean that every document printed would have a traceable signature; the protest letter you sent to congress, the art project you made with your kids, the protest flyer you posted on campus--everything.
The excuse for this new proposal is that it is for homeland security and preventing counterfeiting. But the broader truth of the matter is that this would be another nail in the coffin for free speech. Already, new police powers through the Patriot Act help make every posting on the Internet traceable. With the internet you have to connect from somewhere and almost all of the connections are logged.* Printed material was a way around this. Nobody could look at the paper and trace it back to you without some luck. You could write letters, post flyers and what not, and say what you liked. This proposed system would alter that landscape significantly.
Considering that there has not yet been a single conviction from the thousands of post 9/11 secret roundups, I'm reluctant to give our new found police state the benefit of the doubt.
It is a good point, but I think that should be more to a "Hall of Fame" than just voting in the most recent candidates. If mere fame were enough, then a Hall of Fame would be redundant since only the most obviously famous would be there...but perhaps that is the point, to pander to people.
What an appalling sense of science fiction history these people have. They have "SIMO...ASTRO BOY...C-3PO...Robby, the Robot...Shakey" but the ground-breaking robot from Metropolis, Maria, isn't there. This sexy robot was years ahead of its time and it wasn't until Star Wars that the boxy water heaters with flexible duct arms finally gave way back to this original design.
The idea that they would have C3P0 without first inducting Maria, who C3P0 is derivative of, shows a poor acknowledgment of the foundation laid for the future by Fritz Lang.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a fundamental human right. Human rights are only what we as a society decide they are. Rights are made by man and they don't exist in nature without man. Ask a gazelle what its rights are and whether it thinks it's fair that it should be considered a "prey" animal... There is no fairness or justice for individuals or even for species in nature. Things are as they are.
As humans, if you are lucky, you live in a society that is generous in deciding how we would like to be treated and how we should treat others but there is no inherent right to exist, to be well fed and sheltered, or even to be happy. If their was, the planet and all governments would be in contempt of that right.
Some will argue that only god can provide a moral framework, but since the world cannot agree on who god is and what god's will is, god's will as we know it is decided by men just as if god did not exist, only with more blind certainty.
So, there is no fundamental right to porn and no fundamental right for governments to ban it. But most of us on the forum live in the US where we get to decide what our rights are and that we should mostly be left to our own devices, but only if we don't let the secretive, moralistic, blind-faith inspired Bush administration back into office.
Just because a society is different, don't necessarily mean that its peoples are oppressed (and need 'liberating'). It's a big planet, there's nothing wrong with a little diversity
It also doesn't mean that that societie's people are free. Just because the planet is big and the oppressed people are far away doesn't mean that we shouldn't want them to have human rights as we see them. Unfortunately, there is just no getting around the fact that societies have to judge one another based on a provincial moral relativism. We can only judge them on what we think is right.
As for myself, I think that living in a police state is bad for individuals. Just imagine living in an oppressive contry where people can be secretly arrested and held secretly in jail indefinitely without being charged or be tried in a secret trial. That would be awful. I can't imagine how horrible that would be...Oh, wait, never mind...
This is partly where the notions of liberal and conservative come from. Where do you draw the line on what is direct (read: the government should have control over) and indirect (what the government should not)?
I'd say that that is no longer true. The term "conservative" used to be applied to people who thought the government should be as small as possible and interfere as little as possible with our personal lives. Those conservatives claimed it was liberals who sought to enforce a social morality such as state sponsored healthcare and welfare through "big government." Increasingly, it is the so-called neo-conservatives who seek to regulate morality through legal means, including superceding states rights with a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Such an amendment clearly falls into the definition of an attempt to regulate a behavior (getting married) based on a religious view of morality. Thus, I would say that vague terms like "conservative" and "liberal" are of little use in discussions about government attempts to regulate morality, rather the discussion should be viewed in a larger, better defined context.
I'd have to say that that seems like a clear view. I admit that murder as an example of an immoral act that is also a crime lends itself to a critique of comparing crimes that affect the rights of others versus crimes that are "victimless." And yet the line is not so clear.
Adultery is a moral offence that is a crime in some countries, but not in the US. The fact that it is not a crime in the US is part of the proof that US law is not, in fact, based on the Ten Commandments. So, the question would be if committing adultery is a "victimless" crime of the type you characterized as a "self-regarding action" or is it an offence that harms the person being cheated on? Clearly adultery affects more than the person who commits it. My point is not to argue that adultery should be illegal, but that there isn't a sharp line drawn that can demark all offences that one might call moral transgressions that should not be codified into law.
PS, John Ashcroft is an example of someone who believes that his personal morality should literally be the law of the land.
I should point out a typo: I don't "hope that hope that John Ashcroft is currently prosecuting people."
That should read, "I hope that John Ashcroft,**who is** currently prosecuting people...doesn't get any ideas..."
Yes, you can legislate morality. The question is how effective is that legislation? Murder is immoral, and we have laws against it. Yet murder still occurs. That doesn't mean that laws against murder are wrong or completely useless. So, just because a law doesn't stop all occurrences of an offence doesn't mean we should get rid of the law.
So, what does you can't legislate morality mean? It would seem that it means you shouldn't pass laws that are designed to suppress behaviors that should be personal choices or are part of an individual religious doctrine and don't rise to the level that should be considered a crime
However, we are supposed to be the people in a free society so I hope that John Ashcroft is currently prosecuting people for distributing sexually explicit adult only material and has promised that nobody is safe from prosecution, not even cable companies, I hope Ashcroft doesn't get any ideas...
One thing is clear, because Apple's iTunes Music Store has been successful, Apple has a great deal of clout during negotiations. If the music industry can make on line music a commodity with uniform standards, the music industry would be back in complete control.
Already, the music industry is getting full of itself with the success of iTMS. $.99 per track is no longer enough money for them. Rather than looking at the success of $.99 tracks, the music industry sees the success as a chance to raise prices, but Apple managed to stave them off. They don't want that to happen again.
Slashdot Mirror
I think one important aspect to Apple's constant user downgrades of the iPod/iTMs is that they stop customers from doing what Apple tells them to do: Back up their songs.
Oddly, Apple's iTMS wants it both ways. They say they are selling you a license for the song, not the physical song. But when you lose a song, they treat it like you lost physical property, even though you paid an apparently perpetual license fee that allows you to have the song and play it.
If something happens to your iTunes library, Apple will not let you re-download those songs again even though the "Fair Play" DRM insures that their could be no piracy involved, since the songs would be locked to the same computers as the original. Tough luck, says Apple, it's your fault for not backing up. Naturally, one would think that the iPod's large disk drive and auto synch would be the perfect way to back up songs, but the schizophrenic Apple won't let you copy your songs off iPod. (Yes, there are ways, but Apple may close that back door at any time.) iPod owners are constantly having to ask on Forums how to recover their accidentally erased iTMS library from their iPod because Apple doesn't officially allow anyway to copy their songs from your iPod to restore their music. Ridiculous.
Their is literally no customer advantage to the Apple downgrades. And copying your legal songs is not illegal. I'm glad that Corry is staying on this.
Troll? While I didn't necisarily think the parent post would be moded up, I certainly don't think it deserved a -1! Sigh, out of my hands...I certainly didn't mean to be a troll. I do think that it is legitimate to point out that email is plaintext and that GMail accounts are, in certain ways, already compromised. Seems people are very protective about their GMail...
Well, now, since everyone who uses GMail already lets Google read their mail, what's the difference if a few Hackers get a hold of your account? Oh sure, they could read your spam and your Slashdot subscription notices, but email is plaintext anyway! Anybody with a packet sniffer can read your email. As for sending e-mail in your name, spamers already do that now and few duffers can tell the difference.
Can't say as I'm new here or to iPods. I agree that Windows Media DRM doesn't excite me, but if I am to have a DRM enabled device I want it to support a wide range of formats.
I'd prefer that the iPod also support Ogg. In any case my complaint about the new iPod is that it doesn't' really have any really useful features that excite me. How the hell many pictures am I going to want to stare at on my tiny iPod screen? Give me something I can use...
Yeah, too bad you still aren't officially allowed to store your music collection on your iPod instead of your laptop.
That is to say, Apple does not support you copying the music you own off your laptop onto your iPod and then let you copy it back on your laptop at a later time. (Yes, Slashdot types know how to copy the hidden files, but that backdoor doesn't help the typical user and could be closed at any time.)
This new feature is a lot of money for not a lot of feature. The lack of a card reader makes it sort of silly. Granted, there may be an adaptor but that sort of ruins the elegance.
Why, by the way, do you need a 60GB photo collection on an HD with a low res screen???? So you can subject your relatives to the worlds smallest marathon slide show. That would be really convenient...Sure, you can copy the photos back to a laptop, but you can do that with current iPods. So what?
Wow! More features that I'm not clamoring for!
It has a low resolution color screen that can display photos? So what. So does my PDA, and my digital camera...and they have card readers!
While the 15hour battery is an improvement, what people want is useful stuff, like video playback, audio recording, protected Windows Media support...
The difference with PayPal is their attempt to pretend it has the moral right to "fine" users $500 and PayPal goes so far as to censor the sale erotic literature via PayPal. If someone violates this fuzzy policy, PayPal plans to fine the person $500 and freeze all of the money in their account! This is outrageous and would not be allowed if PayPal were properly regulated as a bank.
There is another very significant problem with Pay Pal. Pay Pal censors what you can buy and sell and has stated a policy that they will "fine" buyers or purchasers of "adult" items $500. The definition of whether an item meets PayPal's standards is decided solely by PayPal and its official censors, who will even go so far as to read through romance novels/erotic fiction to see whether they pass muster.
While PayPal may not yet be a monopoly, it could be. Right now PayPal is the 800 pound Gorilla of online payments. They have millions of dollars of float from customer accounts, issue a PayPal bank card and yet aren't regulated as a bank. They also will freeze a customer's account, including the funds, at the drop of a hat.
If PayPal is left unchecked as on line commerce continues to grow, it will threaten our ability to buy products without censorship and it will put our finances at risk in an un-regulated bank.
Rather than getting your ass kicked by irate tv watchers, you'd be better off with a remote that could mute the sound and turn on the captions. That is really the best way for TV to be shown in public places so people can still watch tv but it doesn't disturb others.
Don't confuse the Indian voting system with the Win XP base Dibold system.
Remember that the X-10s are transmitting an analog signal so trying to encrypt the signal would probably be too much of a hack.
I think it is important to remember that even if the web access is secure anyone can intercept RF link warless cameras. Rather than supplying extra security, you may be letting thieves case your home or business. They'll be able to see what you have, if you are home, and where your security cameras are pointed.
Plus, the privacy implications are also bad, you are letting anyone with a receiver to spy on you 24 hours a day.
Yes, you can use pens and pencils, but if you want to reproduce those documents on a copier that has an embedded sig then you still have the same problem.
Keep in mind that it was the printing press, with its ability to cheaply mass produce content that helped spread the kind of dissent that led to the American Revolution. These days, Thomas Paine, who printed patriotic tracts like Common Sense, might be tracked down as a possible terrorist.
The ability to truly speak freely is fading, if it ever existed. There is no absolute right to free speech, but in anonymity we can say the things that a repressive government doesn't want us to say. The INDUCE Act could have made it illegal to even write about how to copy a book with a photocopier--really--because that could constitute "inducement of infringement," so free speech really can be in danger, thus anything that clamps down on our ability to speak anonymously is also an issue.
Except that each high volume copier will embed its serial number, making each step possilby traceable to you at that copy center.
Pardon me for doubting you, but doubt is usually my first reaction. Microprint is a common security feature for documents but it does require special techniques. Perhaps if you were to post more details on this alleged process?
Wow! A plan to have traceable embedded signatures in all printers and resulting documents. Finally, a proposal for a government mandated way to trace all documents back to their creator. Remember it is for homeland security, so don't dare oppose this on the idea that it would chill free speech and decent. Besides, think of the children....Boy I feel safer already.
Really, I have to say this is a bad idea. The article goes beyond a forensic technique of trying to match documents to the printer that made it. They conclude that that is not possible in cases like ink jet printers with print heads on the replaceable ink cartridge so they propose embedding an "extrinsic signature" in all printers and printed documents. This would mean that every document printed would have a traceable signature; the protest letter you sent to congress, the art project you made with your kids, the protest flyer you posted on campus--everything.
The excuse for this new proposal is that it is for homeland security and preventing counterfeiting. But the broader truth of the matter is that this would be another nail in the coffin for free speech. Already, new police powers through the Patriot Act help make every posting on the Internet traceable. With the internet you have to connect from somewhere and almost all of the connections are logged.* Printed material was a way around this. Nobody could look at the paper and trace it back to you without some luck. You could write letters, post flyers and what not, and say what you liked. This proposed system would alter that landscape significantly.
Considering that there has not yet been a single conviction from the thousands of post 9/11 secret roundups, I'm reluctant to give our new found police state the benefit of the doubt.
*Yes, I know this is an over simplification.
It is a good point, but I think that should be more to a "Hall of Fame" than just voting in the most recent candidates. If mere fame were enough, then a Hall of Fame would be redundant since only the most obviously famous would be there...but perhaps that is the point, to pander to people.
The idea that they would have C3P0 without first inducting Maria, who C3P0 is derivative of, shows a poor acknowledgment of the foundation laid for the future by Fritz Lang.
Check out: http://www.jeffbots.com/maria.html
As humans, if you are lucky, you live in a society that is generous in deciding how we would like to be treated and how we should treat others but there is no inherent right to exist, to be well fed and sheltered, or even to be happy. If their was, the planet and all governments would be in contempt of that right.
Some will argue that only god can provide a moral framework, but since the world cannot agree on who god is and what god's will is, god's will as we know it is decided by men just as if god did not exist, only with more blind certainty.
So, there is no fundamental right to porn and no fundamental right for governments to ban it. But most of us on the forum live in the US where we get to decide what our rights are and that we should mostly be left to our own devices, but only if we don't let the secretive, moralistic, blind-faith inspired Bush administration back into office.
It also doesn't mean that that societie's people are free. Just because the planet is big and the oppressed people are far away doesn't mean that we shouldn't want them to have human rights as we see them. Unfortunately, there is just no getting around the fact that societies have to judge one another based on a provincial moral relativism. We can only judge them on what we think is right.
As for myself, I think that living in a police state is bad for individuals. Just imagine living in an oppressive contry where people can be secretly arrested and held secretly in jail indefinitely without being charged or be tried in a secret trial. That would be awful. I can't imagine how horrible that would be...Oh, wait, never mind...
I'd say that that is no longer true. The term "conservative" used to be applied to people who thought the government should be as small as possible and interfere as little as possible with our personal lives. Those conservatives claimed it was liberals who sought to enforce a social morality such as state sponsored healthcare and welfare through "big government." Increasingly, it is the so-called neo-conservatives who seek to regulate morality through legal means, including superceding states rights with a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Such an amendment clearly falls into the definition of an attempt to regulate a behavior (getting married) based on a religious view of morality. Thus, I would say that vague terms like "conservative" and "liberal" are of little use in discussions about government attempts to regulate morality, rather the discussion should be viewed in a larger, better defined context.
I'd have to say that that seems like a clear view. I admit that murder as an example of an immoral act that is also a crime lends itself to a critique of comparing crimes that affect the rights of others versus crimes that are "victimless." And yet the line is not so clear.
Adultery is a moral offence that is a crime in some countries, but not in the US. The fact that it is not a crime in the US is part of the proof that US law is not, in fact, based on the Ten Commandments. So, the question would be if committing adultery is a "victimless" crime of the type you characterized as a "self-regarding action" or is it an offence that harms the person being cheated on? Clearly adultery affects more than the person who commits it. My point is not to argue that adultery should be illegal, but that there isn't a sharp line drawn that can demark all offences that one might call moral transgressions that should not be codified into law.
PS,
John Ashcroft is an example of someone who believes that his personal morality should literally be the law of the land.
I should point out a typo: I don't "hope that hope that John Ashcroft is currently prosecuting people." That should read, "I hope that John Ashcroft,**who is** currently prosecuting people...doesn't get any ideas..."
Yes, you can legislate morality. The question is how effective is that legislation? Murder is immoral, and we have laws against it. Yet murder still occurs. That doesn't mean that laws against murder are wrong or completely useless. So, just because a law doesn't stop all occurrences of an offence doesn't mean we should get rid of the law.
So, what does you can't legislate morality mean? It would seem that it means you shouldn't pass laws that are designed to suppress behaviors that should be personal choices or are part of an individual religious doctrine and don't rise to the level that should be considered a crime
However, we are supposed to be the people in a free society so I hope that John Ashcroft is currently prosecuting people for distributing sexually explicit adult only material and has promised that nobody is safe from prosecution, not even cable companies, I hope Ashcroft doesn't get any ideas...
One thing is clear, because Apple's iTunes Music Store has been successful, Apple has a great deal of clout during negotiations. If the music industry can make on line music a commodity with uniform standards, the music industry would be back in complete control.
Already, the music industry is getting full of itself with the success of iTMS. $.99 per track is no longer enough money for them. Rather than looking at the success of $.99 tracks, the music industry sees the success as a chance to raise prices, but Apple managed to stave them off. They don't want that to happen again.