Re:If anyone can do it...it's Mr. Jobs
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: 1
Hardly, when you consider the staring contest he's in right now over the expiration of the ITMS contract in 2006.
Or haven't you read/. lately? The RIAA wants to "let the market determine the price of the song" (e.g. bump new songs to $1.50 or more). Jobs called it "greedy" (shocking!). Right now, the deal may even expire in 2006.
So while he may have been the first guy to convince the recording labels about the applicability of his model...I wouldn't say he's exactly on good terms with them. I mean, Sony and EMI have made CDs that are specifically incompatible with the iPods for that reason, right?
Interesting point about the life of the hard drive...but if it is a change in form, than why release the Nano, to much fanfare, with what would soon be regarded as an antiquated form?
They already have syndication for podcasting. Why can't I download the new episodes of Family Guy, South Park, the Daily Show, or ESPN Baseball Tonight when I plug my iPod into my computer ?
Syndicate television as they've syndicated audio, and you could have a huge market--even if you forgot about iPods. Shit, I'd never leave my dorm room again (the only reason I leave now is to watch the lounge TV).
I wonder what they'll do for people who already own DVD's and want online copies of videos they own?
Maybe DVDs will come with serial numbers--that can only be entered once--into iTunes Movieworld (TM) to allow people to download, from iTunes, a digital copy of their owned DVD.
But then again, that won't help people who already own DVDs...
This poses an interesting problem. With music, it doesn't much matter, these days, if you don't have a hard copy of your song. But will people want a DVD copy of their legally, digitally obtained movies? So they can burn it and bring it to a friends house to watch? How will Apple prevent this from happening; or, if they won't prevent it, how will they handle the copyright aspect? The relatively higher value of DVDs to individual songs, fiscally speaking, is a roadblock in this fashion...
Anyone know how Arcos handles this with their products?
If we do see a player and movie store from Apple, I think it will be real interesting, legally speaking, to see how Apple sidesteps the DMCA et. al.
Apple has already proven that they can squish (relatively) HQ video into (relatively) small files, and already shown that the iTunes interface can be used to organize, if not easily play back, Quicktime compatible movie files.
Why not an iMovies download service? With streaming video from your iPod to your Airport base station, which happens to be connected to your TV on a video out port? If they can do it via the Net for special announcements, surely they can do it locally to a TV.
Travelers can bring their iPod and watch movies on the screen, PSP style--or just listen to music. But once they flop at the local hotel, they whip out the as-yet-untitled-technology and stream DVD quality video onto their TV screen from that same iPod.
The only conflict, as I see it? Needing to rename the iTunes "Music" store, or somehow separating music and movies. That is, striking the balance between the convergence of digital media in one catch all program and the beautiful specialization of a program like iTunes.
Maybe TS is right, and this is all hot air. But taking into consideration the fact that www.apple.com/movies doesn't have the same 404 message as the other Apple pages, and that the invitations have a movie theme, and the fact that a major hardware expansion seems unlikely in the face of the Intel changeover...well, I think it makes sense.
Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada's economy and values at the core of our society,'
Actually, I was impressed by how much exterior noise the in-ear headphones do block out. If you don't have the in-ear ones, try them. They act like a set of foam earplugs.
As a prospective poli sci or sociology major, I have to say it's not so much that I don't have an interest in the hard sciences as much as a complete and utter lack of ability in them.
While I don't decry the soft sciences, I do certainly wish I had more command of the hard ones. Believe me, if I had the capacity, I would work in the hard sciences, because being an engineer looks to be more interesting than being, say, a copy editor.
There certainly are people who disdain the hard sciences--and those people are idiots. But some of us are idiots, and some of us simply don't have the ability.
As tothe proper ratio of derision to pity...well, I'll leave that up to you.
The in ear headphones Apple sells are fantastic in terms of speaker quality, but altogether dangerous in terms of the blast of noise they deliver directly into your ears.
It will be interesting to see if this makes it to court. On the one hand, it is difficult to argue that hearing loss is a result of anything other than the end user playing music too loud too often. On the other hand, Apple doesn't exactly provide information on what is safe--and neither does anyone else--and it could be that listening to earphones at any discernable volume for an extended period of time is damaging.
I'm interested. I've lost a significant amount of hearing in only a couple years, attempting to drown out either boredom (while landscaping) or physical agony (while running) almost every day.
--Petey
Agreed, WP.
It should not be forgotten that, in the judiciary, "conservative" and "liberal" mean different things than in everyday politics.
For instance, conservative justices like Scalia were pissed at the eminent domain ruling more than anyone, because it wasn't strictly with the Constitution. Liberal judges are far more likely to impose restrictions or pull together Constitutional concepts to create weak legal prenumbras (which is exactly what happened in the Kelo decision).
Personally, although I'm on the liberal/libertarian side of things (sounds somewhat contradictory, I know), I'm in favor of a more conservative judge like Scalia because I know he won't deny me any of the rights the government guarantee me via the Constitution. We read it the same way.
Of course, Bush could, as Waxpaper suggested, nominate an "authoritarian conservative". If we could just find another Scalia--with constructionist intent and scathing pen--I'd be happy....which is why I like the sound of Scalito.
Hopefully, the liberal legislators can realize the importance of needing constructionists over authoritarians and will make that compromise.
--Petey
And that is that for computer users who are just beginning, Windows is probably a good choice.
Think about it. When you are a child, you are put up in a crib or a playpen. Your movement is constricted. It is not fun. There are very few toys to keep you entertained, but you are entertained anyway because your scope of knowledge is limited.
That is an analogy for most people who are starting out on computers. And keep in mind that there are quite a few people in the world who rarely, if ever, use a computer. It's hard to imagine, as slashdotting tech-nerds, but there are some people who rarely interact with these electronic hives that we call home.
Now, I've used Macs at home, *Nix at work (ISP), and Windows at school for years now. Macs are my favorite; *Nix is the most powerful; and Windows simply blows.
But we must remember how it is for the vast majority of computer users. The vast majority of computer users want to check their email, surf the web, and type things. And when you think about it, Windows does these things. Sure, it does them painfully for us, but I've seen plenty of people who surf/type at a rate that makes me cringe, and who don't care how fast their computer works as long as it does.
That is why people still use Windows. Because it is hard to learn another OS for people who aren't technologically inclined. If it were easy, we'd all be using *nix.
Sure, anything can play an MPG, but can you encode to one easily?
I've been trying to find something to convert my videos to MPEG for years now (from.dv,.mov,.avi, you name it) for my Mac, and have yet to come up with something that is functional and/or remotely user friendly (by which I mean possible to figure out).
Mike O'Conner was right in that the money would need to come from somewhere unknown, although, in fairness, 300,000,000 people paying one extra dollar each would be a $300,000,000, wouldn't it.
Furthermore--
Regardless of the general principles of democracy, it is not unhealthy for the public good to entice people to cast a vote on the basis of money. Do you really want people who are so lazy that they can't even go to election day and punch out a chad or two voting? I don't. Only people who are interested in the government really have the capability to be informed, intelligent voters.
Are we so corrupt that we'd whore out our informed, self-driven electorate in the interest of driving a few more lazy bastards to the voting booths?
And explain to me why your vote should count, in effect, several hundred times more than a Californians vote?
If you had, say, one electoral college point for Cali and one for RI, and RI had a population of 100,000 and Cali a population of 50 million (pulling figures off the top of my head here), then your vote would be worth.00001 percent of RI, whereas a Californians vote would be worth.000000002 of CA.
And how is that justified?
This way, rather than states having equal votes, people have more equal votes.
Better to err on the side of Cali having more votes. Affects more people.
--Petey
The Supreme Court issue is the most important one at hand, methinks.
Slashdot poll, anyone? What is the most important political issue at stake?
War
Draft
Taxes
Personal Liberty/Civil Rights
Supreme Court Justices
etc
p.s. sure you know of it, but the Free State Project is always fun. Go home state!
--Petey
Nader is running not as a third party candidate, but as an idealogical opponent to the "big, corporate parties" that are in power now.
Some people theorize that the Dean campaign lost steam because Dean ran on a platform of grassroots change yet, in order to prevail in the larger presidential race, had to sacrifice some of his principles in order to have a realistic chance of winning. For example, courting big labor was seen by some Deaniacs as being indistinguishable from courting big business. It was too difficult for Dean to appease both his base (who wanted a grassroots change of the political system) and the undecided majority (who wanted a good candidate).
Nader faces the same issue. He's running not against a candidate, but against an entrenched bipartisan system.
But those who choose to vote for Nader's ideals would, as a second choice, probably vote Kerry.
Nader faces an unpleasant decision: Does he compromise his principles in order to give the greater good a better chance (by giving his votes, in effect, *back* to Kerry)? Or does he continue in a (probably futile) attempt at reworking the political system for the *greatest* good?
Me? I think he should drop out. If he actually believes he has a chance at winning--and is in it for practical purposes--than he is more crazed than I thought. He's almost selfish now--he wants his vision of the future at the expense of a better and more widespread vision of the future.
This is all from the liberal standpoint, of course.
...in prank format.
Today's update (11/17/03) dealt with a lottery bank number scam, but the best one was when Lowtax attacked the Nigerian bank dude.
http://somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=411
--Petey
Slashdot Mirror
Hardly, when you consider the staring contest he's in right now over the expiration of the ITMS contract in 2006.
/. lately? The RIAA wants to "let the market determine the price of the song" (e.g. bump new songs to $1.50 or more). Jobs called it "greedy" (shocking!). Right now, the deal may even expire in 2006.
Or haven't you read
So while he may have been the first guy to convince the recording labels about the applicability of his model...I wouldn't say he's exactly on good terms with them. I mean, Sony and EMI have made CDs that are specifically incompatible with the iPods for that reason, right?
--Petey
Interesting point about the life of the hard drive...but if it is a change in form, than why release the Nano, to much fanfare, with what would soon be regarded as an antiquated form?
Definitely.
They already have syndication for podcasting. Why can't I download the new episodes of Family Guy, South Park, the Daily Show, or ESPN Baseball Tonight when I plug my iPod into my computer ?
Syndicate television as they've syndicated audio, and you could have a huge market--even if you forgot about iPods. Shit, I'd never leave my dorm room again (the only reason I leave now is to watch the lounge TV).
--Petey
Thank you. I'm not a fan of the war myself, but I'm not liberal enough to take it out on the soldiers.
Best of luck, man.
That's photoshopped. It says so on the very page you linked too. Just, uh, so you know.
I wonder what they'll do for people who already own DVD's and want online copies of videos they own?
Maybe DVDs will come with serial numbers--that can only be entered once--into iTunes Movieworld (TM) to allow people to download, from iTunes, a digital copy of their owned DVD.
But then again, that won't help people who already own DVDs...
This poses an interesting problem. With music, it doesn't much matter, these days, if you don't have a hard copy of your song. But will people want a DVD copy of their legally, digitally obtained movies? So they can burn it and bring it to a friends house to watch? How will Apple prevent this from happening; or, if they won't prevent it, how will they handle the copyright aspect? The relatively higher value of DVDs to individual songs, fiscally speaking, is a roadblock in this fashion...
Anyone know how Arcos handles this with their products?
If we do see a player and movie store from Apple, I think it will be real interesting, legally speaking, to see how Apple sidesteps the DMCA et. al.
--Petey
I agree.
Apple has already proven that they can squish (relatively) HQ video into (relatively) small files, and already shown that the iTunes interface can be used to organize, if not easily play back, Quicktime compatible movie files.
Why not an iMovies download service? With streaming video from your iPod to your Airport base station, which happens to be connected to your TV on a video out port? If they can do it via the Net for special announcements, surely they can do it locally to a TV.
Travelers can bring their iPod and watch movies on the screen, PSP style--or just listen to music. But once they flop at the local hotel, they whip out the as-yet-untitled-technology and stream DVD quality video onto their TV screen from that same iPod.
The only conflict, as I see it? Needing to rename the iTunes "Music" store, or somehow separating music and movies. That is, striking the balance between the convergence of digital media in one catch all program and the beautiful specialization of a program like iTunes.
Maybe TS is right, and this is all hot air. But taking into consideration the fact that www.apple.com/movies doesn't have the same 404 message as the other Apple pages, and that the invitations have a movie theme, and the fact that a major hardware expansion seems unlikely in the face of the Intel changeover...well, I think it makes sense.
--Petey
Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada's economy and values at the core of our society,'
Values?
Society?
Economy?
None of these terms apply to the Canada I know...
Actually, I was impressed by how much exterior noise the in-ear headphones do block out. If you don't have the in-ear ones, try them. They act like a set of foam earplugs.
--Petey
As a prospective poli sci or sociology major, I have to say it's not so much that I don't have an interest in the hard sciences as much as a complete and utter lack of ability in them.
While I don't decry the soft sciences, I do certainly wish I had more command of the hard ones. Believe me, if I had the capacity, I would work in the hard sciences, because being an engineer looks to be more interesting than being, say, a copy editor.
There certainly are people who disdain the hard sciences--and those people are idiots. But some of us are idiots, and some of us simply don't have the ability.
As tothe proper ratio of derision to pity...well, I'll leave that up to you.
The in ear headphones Apple sells are fantastic in terms of speaker quality, but altogether dangerous in terms of the blast of noise they deliver directly into your ears. It will be interesting to see if this makes it to court. On the one hand, it is difficult to argue that hearing loss is a result of anything other than the end user playing music too loud too often. On the other hand, Apple doesn't exactly provide information on what is safe--and neither does anyone else--and it could be that listening to earphones at any discernable volume for an extended period of time is damaging. I'm interested. I've lost a significant amount of hearing in only a couple years, attempting to drown out either boredom (while landscaping) or physical agony (while running) almost every day. --Petey
I'll check that out--do some more research. Thanks.
Agreed, WP. It should not be forgotten that, in the judiciary, "conservative" and "liberal" mean different things than in everyday politics. For instance, conservative justices like Scalia were pissed at the eminent domain ruling more than anyone, because it wasn't strictly with the Constitution. Liberal judges are far more likely to impose restrictions or pull together Constitutional concepts to create weak legal prenumbras (which is exactly what happened in the Kelo decision). Personally, although I'm on the liberal/libertarian side of things (sounds somewhat contradictory, I know), I'm in favor of a more conservative judge like Scalia because I know he won't deny me any of the rights the government guarantee me via the Constitution. We read it the same way. Of course, Bush could, as Waxpaper suggested, nominate an "authoritarian conservative". If we could just find another Scalia--with constructionist intent and scathing pen--I'd be happy....which is why I like the sound of Scalito. Hopefully, the liberal legislators can realize the importance of needing constructionists over authoritarians and will make that compromise. --Petey
And that is that for computer users who are just beginning, Windows is probably a good choice.
Think about it. When you are a child, you are put up in a crib or a playpen. Your movement is constricted. It is not fun. There are very few toys to keep you entertained, but you are entertained anyway because your scope of knowledge is limited.
That is an analogy for most people who are starting out on computers. And keep in mind that there are quite a few people in the world who rarely, if ever, use a computer. It's hard to imagine, as slashdotting tech-nerds, but there are some people who rarely interact with these electronic hives that we call home.
Now, I've used Macs at home, *Nix at work (ISP), and Windows at school for years now. Macs are my favorite; *Nix is the most powerful; and Windows simply blows.
But we must remember how it is for the vast majority of computer users. The vast majority of computer users want to check their email, surf the web, and type things. And when you think about it, Windows does these things. Sure, it does them painfully for us, but I've seen plenty of people who surf/type at a rate that makes me cringe, and who don't care how fast their computer works as long as it does.
That is why people still use Windows. Because it is hard to learn another OS for people who aren't technologically inclined. If it were easy, we'd all be using *nix.
--Petey
Sure, anything can play an MPG, but can you encode to one easily?
.dv, .mov, .avi, you name it) for my Mac, and have yet to come up with something that is functional and/or remotely user friendly (by which I mean possible to figure out).
I've been trying to find something to convert my videos to MPEG for years now (from
--Petey
Mike O'Conner was right in that the money would need to come from somewhere unknown, although, in fairness, 300,000,000 people paying one extra dollar each would be a $300,000,000, wouldn't it.
Furthermore--
Regardless of the general principles of democracy, it is not unhealthy for the public good to entice people to cast a vote on the basis of money. Do you really want people who are so lazy that they can't even go to election day and punch out a chad or two voting? I don't. Only people who are interested in the government really have the capability to be informed, intelligent voters.
Are we so corrupt that we'd whore out our informed, self-driven electorate in the interest of driving a few more lazy bastards to the voting booths?
--Petey
Oh, no doubt. Popular vote is the most logical, although it still has some issues with the definitive nature of the results.
The way I originally understood you, you were arguing for a revised electoral college system. My apologies.
--Petey
And explain to me why your vote should count, in effect, several hundred times more than a Californians vote?
.00001 percent of RI, whereas a Californians vote would be worth .000000002 of CA.
If you had, say, one electoral college point for Cali and one for RI, and RI had a population of 100,000 and Cali a population of 50 million (pulling figures off the top of my head here), then your vote would be worth
And how is that justified?
This way, rather than states having equal votes, people have more equal votes.
Better to err on the side of Cali having more votes. Affects more people.
--Petey
The Supreme Court issue is the most important one at hand, methinks. Slashdot poll, anyone? What is the most important political issue at stake? War
Draft
Taxes
Personal Liberty/Civil Rights
Supreme Court Justices
etc
p.s. sure you know of it, but the Free State Project is always fun. Go home state!
--Petey
Nader is running not as a third party candidate, but as an idealogical opponent to the "big, corporate parties" that are in power now.
Some people theorize that the Dean campaign lost steam because Dean ran on a platform of grassroots change yet, in order to prevail in the larger presidential race, had to sacrifice some of his principles in order to have a realistic chance of winning. For example, courting big labor was seen by some Deaniacs as being indistinguishable from courting big business. It was too difficult for Dean to appease both his base (who wanted a grassroots change of the political system) and the undecided majority (who wanted a good candidate).
Nader faces the same issue. He's running not against a candidate, but against an entrenched bipartisan system.
But those who choose to vote for Nader's ideals would, as a second choice, probably vote Kerry.
Nader faces an unpleasant decision:
Does he compromise his principles in order to give the greater good a better chance (by giving his votes, in effect, *back* to Kerry)? Or does he continue in a (probably futile) attempt at reworking the political system for the *greatest* good?
Me? I think he should drop out. If he actually believes he has a chance at winning--and is in it for practical purposes--than he is more crazed than I thought. He's almost selfish now--he wants his vision of the future at the expense of a better and more widespread vision of the future.
This is all from the liberal standpoint, of course.
--Petey
If they get enough absentee ballots that say "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS SIZE" or "FREE VIAGRA" or "K1DD1E PRON", will Bill Clinton be re-elected?
--Petey
All Hail New Hampshire, then.
--Petey
Redonkulus.
--Petey
Sure it isn't standards compliant. Sure it is buggy as hell. But I haven't gotten a pop up Ad in 2 years. Whooohoooo! --Petey
...in prank format. Today's update (11/17/03) dealt with a lottery bank number scam, but the best one was when Lowtax attacked the Nigerian bank dude. http://somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=411 --Petey