....If someone freely gives me something, then it is mine....
Do you know the meaning of error? They made an error, which of they had not, means you would not have gotten the money. Taking anything that is not honestly yours, either by gift or earned is in EFFECT the same as stealing it. It doesn't matter WHAT you choose to call it. They did NOT knowingly give you that money and you did not earn it by providing a good or service to them, therefore it is not yours to keep.
....They gave me more than I wanted, but, that is not theft. I just accepted what they gave me......
Taking or accepting something that is not yours, that the giver gives you in error, is theft at worst or at least dishonest, which is a form of lie, also on the 10 commandment list. It is not a gift from them to you. If you lose your wallet on the street you'd be glad to get it back with everything still in it. So then you also make the people happy by giving back whatever you KNOW is not really yours. Do to others as you would like it done to you.
.......My vehicle of choice is powered by pasta and Clif Bars. It gets me around town quite well......
Try to go 5 miles shopping for a family into a town nearby. We live in the country and a pasta powered vehicle works well for our teenager only. When he takes the bus in the morning he often runs home, since he is on the cross country and track teams.
Did you take road and other taxes into account which cars now pay? That might raise the price some. Solar and wind power could and will play an increasing role in energy production. Our electricity here is particularly cheap since we are plugged into the Columbia River. Other than our wood stove, electricity is the cheapest means of heating our house.
Another battery problem we have not even touched is safety. The lithium laptop fiasco comes to mind. Is the likelihood of a 300kw battery burning up due to a short or defect higher than a gas tank igniting? We know about gas tanks, but such powerful batteries are yet future unknowns.
Letting plants convert sunlight, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other elements into clean fuel, will be the best way go. Best of all, no untried technology and infrastructure and their unknown costs and side effects are needed.
.....electricity is certainly the lowest cost way of moving energy around....
Most things can be done if enough money are thrown at them. Even so, getting around the law of physics is not easy. A big oil pipeline carrying say diesel fuel can transmit several orders of magnitude more energy than even the biggest high voltage power line ever even dreamed of, let alone built. Transmitting truly large amounts of energy by wires only works if the basic energy is nearly free. One of the biggest electricity transmission lines in the USA is a 1.5 million volt DC line called the Pacific Intertie. It runs from to Columbia River to Sylmar in Southern California. Hydro Power is so MUCH cheaper, so that even with the losses, it is cost effective to transmit this cheap power, rather than generate it locally with expensive fuels, where it is used.
An electric stove uses up to 11kw. A 5kw battery charger running in every garage over night would not overload the existing grid or generators. This would be enough power for most commuters the next day. You obviously do not understand much about how electric transmission works. The daily load curve would be much flatter, making the whole electric system more efficient.
Even today, if a power company wants to build a big, ugly high voltage line, just to meet CURRENT demand, there is all sorts of opposition from the nimby crowd and environmentalists. Pipelines go underground and are soon forgotten, unless someone accidentally digs in the wrong place. My bet is that some sort of liquid fuel (hydrogen) combined with fuel cells or bio-diesel-electric hybrids will power the cars of the future. This will allow much of the present infrastructure to be used. The batteries alone will run such cars within 50-100 miles of home base.
If I wanted to, right now, TODAY, I could get a larger battery and charger for our Toyota Prius and run it all over town, without the gas engine running at all. However, gasoline would have to cost about $10/gallon to make the needed investment make sense economically.
I have had to honk the horn in the parking lots to warn pedestrians to get out of the way of our silent Prius. Actually, some girls I know really LIKE our whisper quiet hybrid, so you might impress them also if you get one!
......If an ATM gave me $100 instead of $10, I'd take it.........
You think since the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" along with nine others is not allowed to be posted in or on public property it is now OK to be a thief?
Nevertheless, the One who gave these rules still sees you and in the last Judgment you WILL hear from Him. Then it won't matter what any human court had to say on the subject.
Here are a few: Who owns the batteries? Whoever does, would eventually have to replace them at great cost. Does a new car come with a battery? If so, does the owner get a battery that is as good as the one that came with the car when it is exchanged at the energy station? Since battery exchanges are really only needed for long trips, getting a second rate battery that doesn't hold charge as well as the one that came with the car would really suck because most of the time batteries could be charged at home and even at work or a public garage or other parking spot. Different size cars would need different capacity batteries. How many different batteries would an energy station have to keep in stock? Batteries that can hold enough power to drive a car 300 miles are HEAVY. This means special handling equipment. Who would run this special lifting machinery? No more self service stations? How big a power supply would an energy station need in order to supply the equivalent energy in the amount of fuel a gas station along a busy interstate sells today? Shipping tons of batteries from central large power plants is inefficient compared to a tanker truck filled with diesel fuel.
It is simply hard to get around the fact, that aside from nuclear energy, hydrocarbons are still, by far, the densest way to store energy, whether by weight or volume or any combination of the two. I think that agriculturally produced hydrocarbons (bio-diesel?) is the way to go. A closed carbon cycle using established infrastructure would not increase the overall carbon content of the atmosphere. Hybrid cars with good batteries for around town (about 100mi), with an engine fueled with bio-diesel for longer trips may not be too far away.
.....Actually, I think that a lawsuit can be a market solution.....
BS. By the time these lawsuits are adjudicated, with all the appeals and such the market will have moved on. Lawsuits ONLY benefit lawyers and their friends. The CA taxpayer should sue their AG for wasting taxpayer money.
.....And solving the battery problem is only one problem......
Batteries are THE problem. One pound of gasoline stores more energy than 1000 pounds of lead acid battery. Even a battery with 10 times lead acid energy density means it STILL takes 100 pounds of such a battery to contain the same energy. Even IF there were a good battery, what happens when you want to take a 500 mile trip and the battery runs only for 300 miles. How do you charge such a 300 mile battery in any where near a comparable amount of time that it now takes to fill a gas tank? Even a one hour charge to fully charge such a hypothetical battery would take one hell of a powerful battery charger! Some sort of fuel cell might eventually be the solution, but that means building a whole new fuel distributing infrastructure. In the near term, clean bio-diesel can reduce smog and recycle the carbon.
.....I already own the said PCI TV tuner card.....
That's good and works for you. We have a 1993 Mac Classic with a special hardware/software setup which makes it into a nice phone answering/fax machine that STILL sits in the corner, quietly doing its job, 24/7. Anytime a technology works for you, leave it alone. Don't fix what is not broken.
I looked (longingly) at the new HD TVs at Costco the other day, but the beautiful picture doesn't make up for the crappy programming and the price is way too high. The DIY channel doesn't gain much from a bigger screen. Our $200 Walmart 27" TV is good enough to see the evening news on. You likely spent a good fraction of that to be able to watch TV on an even smaller display on your computer. I like specialized devices that do a given job well, rather than the 'Jack of all trades, master of none" approach.
Easy! Why should Apple want to support x-zillion different hardware designs and take 3 or more years to come up with a new OS for them all? The biggest uniqueness of Apple is the simple fact that they are the ONLY personal computer maker that makes the WHOLE computer -- hardware and the software, complete with some very cool apps, (iLife) as a SYSTEM that "just works"(tm) They would be a total fool to give up that singular advantage.
.....You can't add a PCI device to it, etc........
Why would you need or want to? The USB or firewire will allow just about any peripheral device to be connected that has been invented by the mind of man. What sort of PCI device functionality could be connected to a low end type computer such as a mini or its much bigger non-Apple equivalents?
....Or, at least not as long as greed, power, corruption, and money are in the equation......
Behind these however, is the almost universal fear of death, or more correctly what lies beyond. The terrorists are persuaded that they will get a great reward if they take as many 'infidels' with them to the grave. In our western culture there are many, if not most these days, who believe that death is the end of existence. Therefore, in view of that belief, and it is only belief, not sure knowledge, many strive to grab as much of this world in goods and pleasure they can, before the inevitable grave ends it all. How that striving affects those around them does no matter very much if at all to many.
Someone who has faith that an eternal good future awaits them after they leave this mortal state, will not fear death, but will endeavor to work to "gather up treasures in Heaven" as Jesus exhorts to do, rather than strive for that which will remain behind after death. Someone who takes Jesus seriously, and has trust in Him, will not fear terrorism or anything else. It is the combination of the disregarding of death by the terrorists and the general fear of death that pervades our secular society, which makes terrorists successful. Atheists bravely may assert that they are not afraid of death, but the reality is that they too don't KNOW what lies beyond death and therefore fear that uncertainty.
.....I believe the airwaves should belong to the public, and that the corporate/advertising model is fundamentally flawed......
Maybe you would like the European Model (Germany) where everyone who owns a TV set (and next year a PC) must pay a monthly fee (tax). In the beginning of this fee system, that paid for the programming and there were NO commercials. Now they have commercials and you STILL pay the fee. I'd just as soon have the commercials and watch TV for "free". Besides, some of the commercials are more entertaining than the programs.
.....Apples don't crash, or BSOD. It's corporate policy, dintchaknow. They merely need restarting periodically.......
It might as well be corporate policy as far as I am concerned. My G5 has crashed ONCE in two years and that was my fault. I unplugged an external drive without putting it away. After I got the warning not to do such a foolish thing, I plugged the drive back in and that's when that reboot screen came up. In OSX, such a screen or a dead freeze is most often associated with a hardware problem which the system doesn't "know" how to handle. Since Apple is the only computer you can buy that makes BOTH harware and software together as a SYSTEM, it stands to reason that their computers should have better reliability than in the Windows or Linux camps. In the latter two, human communication of specifications, subject to misinterpretation by either the hardware builders or the software writers leaves a much larger chance for an untested error to occur. Apple can and does test their hardware TOGETHER with their software, a luxury NONE of the other PC makers enjoy. Because of this greater reliability, Apple doesn't really need to inform their users of the gory details of why the system froze or crashed.
......Buy everything except cars, homes, and educations with cash......
That one my not be such a good point on your otherwise excellent advice. Many credit card give discounts or airline miles. Might as well get those, as long as the balance is paid off before the expensive finance charges bite.
.....the ability to rent a copy which can be put on a portable device....
Do you really want to watch a two hour movie holding an iPod like player with a postage stamp screen? Your hands will likely get rather tired holding any portable gadget for that long.
....One wonders had DVD Jon not cracked this how well DVDs would be doing now.......
Not much different than it is. Outside of/. most people just buy or rent a DVD and pop it into their player or computer and hit the "Play" button. Watching a 2 hr or longer movie in a tiny screen is not very satisfying for most people.
If Apple comes up with a video iPod which shows a good picture on a 27" or larger screen, at least on par with present DVDs, they will have a hit. That requires either a lot of storage or a really fancy compression scheme. Also, the battery should last through a feature length film at this quality. Video data requires a lot of power to run the storage device (HD) and/or to decode and display at a decent quality.
..... that's happened is that content producers have got more uptight.....
My point is that it's the content DISTRIBUTORS that will go the way of the dinosaurs. Right now they are trying to prevent the tide from coming in. Technology is enabling the the content PRODUCERS also to easily distribute their art. That is how it was before technology came along. Artists performed before live audiences, in effect distributing their work. We will eventually come full circle, when once again artists will distribute their own work, cutting out all the greedy middle men, now getting the lions share of the money due the performer. People who appreciate skilled work, will generally pay for it. I use or have used a number of shareware programs and have always paid for them, even though there are many who don't. I might download some music I like, to check it out, but then if I do, I'll go and buy the CD if it's available. The same with DVD, I'll go rent it or watch it in the cinema and if I like it, I'll buy the DVD.
......but it doesn't do squat about circumventing the DRM, which is what we were talking about.......
The problem I pointed out is that DRM doesn't stop commercial "pirates", who are the only ones that actually do REAL damage to the bottom line of the **AA people. All DRM does make it hard or impossible for a legal user to use the contents they have bought in any other previously undreamed of ways. Ten years ago nobody even DREAMED of iPods and multi-gigabyte key-ring data storage. In another 10-20 years we may carry 100TB of storage in a thing of that size. Using a mechanism that stores data as dense as the DNA molecule would allow storage of orders of magnitude more than we can today. Every bit of content that was ever expressed by all humans on the planet since history began can then be carried in a device much smaller than any iPod today. DRM for any particular microscopic fragment of data would no longer make sense.
DRM will exist until the content distributors are completely unimportant to the existence of human creativity. As bandwidth increases any creative person can make their talent available directly to anyone, without any middle distributors. Humans have always mirrored their Creator by being driven to creativity themselves, long before it was possible to widely share their works. This will continue to be, but the business of sharing creativity will no longer be a source of income for middlemen. It is these middlemen that are pushing for DRM.
Google at this moment is making available to everyone with an Internet connection, some of the greatest literary works ever written in the English language. DRM will be a distant memory in 10-20 years. Copyright itself, an artificial monopoly, will die before the presently granted copyrights expire.
...n the future, movie pirates will probably have to create custom lcd panel electronics....
Why so much trouble? Just grab the bit stream at the play head and send it to the record head. Makes a perfect, still encrypted COPY, which the pirates can then sell cheap. A simple box with a player, some elementary electronics in between it and the recorder is all it takes. DRM is never decoded, so there is no violation of DMCA. All bits are inherently copyable. A whole motherboard encased in epoxy nor other technical acrobatics will EVER get around that simple fact.
.....how about embedding a watermark in the movie that uniquely identifies you......
Do you REALLY think Walmart will go to the trouble of registering every buyer of the $5.95 DVD's from their bargain bins?
Any digital data boils down to a stream of bits transmitted over time. Take a stream of bits from the receiver to the transmitter or recorder and you get a perfect copy, DRM included, EVERY time. Marketing such a device should not even be against the law, since it is not CIRCUMVENTING any coding or encryption. A simple box with a player and recorder, where the stream of bits goes directly from the playback head to the record head would allow copying *any* recorded data stream, no matter how much DRM it has. It could be marketed as a universal media backup device.
....What we need to work towards is a DRM model.....
The problem is that binary bits are all alike and can be inherently copied flawlessly. That in fact is the biggest advantage of going digital. In the digital domain it is possible to transmit information perfectly for as many times as desired, without the slightest loss. A perfect image copy of any DRM file can be made, DRM and all and there is NO way any human or digital device can tell the difference between the original and the copy. That is basically what some of the wholesale "pirates" who copy for commercial gain do. DRM only stymies and frustrates the ordinary users. Only one perfect, DRM free copy on the internet breaks the business model. DRM is basically security by obscurity and we all know how secure that is.
......You could use runas to run the few that require admin access as admin. Under Vista, I believe.......
For users who don't know how or want to use typed commands to operate their system that is a no go. The solution of course is for MS developers to write their programs correctly. As for the promise of Vista vapor ware --well, lets just wait.
Firefox like other apps, and its plugins ONLY have write access to any place the user has such access to. This means that if there is a bug or hole in Firefox, malware can damage any file the user can write to. If a program saves code in user space, that code will still cause a dialog to come up the first time it is run as an independent program. If it is called up under an already running app, then that would not happen. If the extension wants to use a port or address that is not yet on the always allow list of Little Snitch, then there would be a warning. Under the test account, the user might allow once and then see if the net access is asked for multiple times after that.
I don't run *any* non Apple programs under the admin account. It is hardly ever needed, except to actually change system settings or temporarily enable root. Any possible malware would have to *know* that it was running under my real account. If it did nothing in the test account it would do nothing on my regular account since that is not admin either.
Access control lists don't have rules as such, but you can set up some pretty fine grained permissions for users and their directories.
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....If someone freely gives me something, then it is mine....
Do you know the meaning of error? They made an error, which of they had not, means you would not have gotten the money. Taking anything that is not honestly yours, either by gift or earned is in EFFECT the same as stealing it. It doesn't matter WHAT you choose to call it. They did NOT knowingly give you that money and you did not earn it by providing a good or service to them, therefore it is not yours to keep.
....They gave me more than I wanted, but, that is not theft. I just accepted what they gave me......
Taking or accepting something that is not yours, that the giver gives you in error, is theft at worst or at least dishonest, which is a form of lie, also on the 10 commandment list. It is not a gift from them to you. If you lose your wallet on the street you'd be glad to get it back with everything still in it. So then you also make the people happy by giving back whatever you KNOW is not really yours. Do to others as you would like it done to you.
......This is the reason why the Ten Commandments don't belong in public places.....
OK, lets then post the other nine and more importantly OBEY them.
.......My vehicle of choice is powered by pasta and Clif Bars. It gets me around town quite well......
Try to go 5 miles shopping for a family into a town nearby. We live in the country and a pasta powered vehicle works well for our teenager only. When he takes the bus in the morning he often runs home, since he is on the cross country and track teams.
Did you take road and other taxes into account which cars now pay? That might raise the price some. Solar and wind power could and will play an increasing role in energy production. Our electricity here is particularly cheap since we are plugged into the Columbia River. Other than our wood stove, electricity is the cheapest means of heating our house.
Another battery problem we have not even touched is safety. The lithium laptop fiasco comes to mind. Is the likelihood of a 300kw battery burning up due to a short or defect higher than a gas tank igniting? We know about gas tanks, but such powerful batteries are yet future unknowns.
Letting plants convert sunlight, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other elements into clean fuel, will be the best way go. Best of all, no untried technology and infrastructure and their unknown costs and side effects are needed.
....Banks aren't public property.....
Of course not. So then it's OK to steal from them?
.....electricity is certainly the lowest cost way of moving energy around....
Most things can be done if enough money are thrown at them. Even so, getting around the law of physics is not easy. A big oil pipeline carrying say diesel fuel can transmit several orders of magnitude more energy than even the biggest high voltage power line ever even dreamed of, let alone built. Transmitting truly large amounts of energy by wires only works if the basic energy is nearly free. One of the biggest electricity transmission lines in the USA is a 1.5 million volt DC line called the Pacific Intertie. It runs from to Columbia River to Sylmar in Southern California. Hydro Power is so MUCH cheaper, so that even with the losses, it is cost effective to transmit this cheap power, rather than generate it locally with expensive fuels, where it is used.
An electric stove uses up to 11kw. A 5kw battery charger running in every garage over night would not overload the existing grid or generators. This would be enough power for most commuters the next day. You obviously do not understand much about how electric transmission works. The daily load curve would be much flatter, making the whole electric system more efficient.
Even today, if a power company wants to build a big, ugly high voltage line, just to meet CURRENT demand, there is all sorts of opposition from the nimby crowd and environmentalists. Pipelines go underground and are soon forgotten, unless someone accidentally digs in the wrong place. My bet is that some sort of liquid fuel (hydrogen) combined with fuel cells or bio-diesel-electric hybrids will power the cars of the future. This will allow much of the present infrastructure to be used. The batteries alone will run such cars within 50-100 miles of home base.
If I wanted to, right now, TODAY, I could get a larger battery and charger for our Toyota Prius and run it all over town, without the gas engine running at all. However, gasoline would have to cost about $10/gallon to make the needed investment make sense economically.
I have had to honk the horn in the parking lots to warn pedestrians to get out of the way of our silent Prius. Actually, some girls I know really LIKE our whisper quiet hybrid, so you might impress them also if you get one!
......If an ATM gave me $100 instead of $10, I'd take it.........
You think since the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" along with nine others is not allowed to be posted in or on public property it is now OK to be a thief?
Nevertheless, the One who gave these rules still sees you and in the last Judgment you WILL hear from Him. Then it won't matter what any human court had to say on the subject.
....Now ask a tough question!.....
Here are a few: Who owns the batteries? Whoever does, would eventually have to replace them at great cost. Does a new car come with a battery? If so, does the owner get a battery that is as good as the one that came with the car when it is exchanged at the energy station? Since battery exchanges are really only needed for long trips, getting a second rate battery that doesn't hold charge as well as the one that came with the car would really suck because most of the time batteries could be charged at home and even at work or a public garage or other parking spot. Different size cars would need different capacity batteries. How many different batteries would an energy station have to keep in stock? Batteries that can hold enough power to drive a car 300 miles are HEAVY. This means special handling equipment. Who would run this special lifting machinery? No more self service stations? How big a power supply would an energy station need in order to supply the equivalent energy in the amount of fuel a gas station along a busy interstate sells today? Shipping tons of batteries from central large power plants is inefficient compared to a tanker truck filled with diesel fuel.
It is simply hard to get around the fact, that aside from nuclear energy, hydrocarbons are still, by far, the densest way to store energy, whether by weight or volume or any combination of the two. I think that agriculturally produced hydrocarbons (bio-diesel?) is the way to go. A closed carbon cycle using established infrastructure would not increase the overall carbon content of the atmosphere. Hybrid cars with good batteries for around town (about 100mi), with an engine fueled with bio-diesel for longer trips may not be too far away.
.....Actually, I think that a lawsuit can be a market solution.....
BS. By the time these lawsuits are adjudicated, with all the appeals and such the market will have moved on. Lawsuits ONLY benefit lawyers and their friends. The CA taxpayer should sue their AG for wasting taxpayer money.
.....And solving the battery problem is only one problem......
Batteries are THE problem. One pound of gasoline stores more energy than 1000 pounds of lead acid battery. Even a battery with 10 times lead acid energy density means it STILL takes 100 pounds of such a battery to contain the same energy. Even IF there were a good battery, what happens when you want to take a 500 mile trip and the battery runs only for 300 miles. How do you charge such a 300 mile battery in any where near a comparable amount of time that it now takes to fill a gas tank? Even a one hour charge to fully charge such a hypothetical battery would take one hell of a powerful battery charger! Some sort of fuel cell might eventually be the solution, but that means building a whole new fuel distributing infrastructure. In the near term, clean bio-diesel can reduce smog and recycle the carbon.
.....I already own the said PCI TV tuner card.....
That's good and works for you. We have a 1993 Mac Classic with a special hardware/software setup which makes it into a nice phone answering/fax machine that STILL sits in the corner, quietly doing its job, 24/7. Anytime a technology works for you, leave it alone. Don't fix what is not broken.
I looked (longingly) at the new HD TVs at Costco the other day, but the beautiful picture doesn't make up for the crappy programming and the price is way too high. The DIY channel doesn't gain much from a bigger screen. Our $200 Walmart 27" TV is good enough to see the evening news on. You likely spent a good fraction of that to be able to watch TV on an even smaller display on your computer. I like specialized devices that do a given job well, rather than the 'Jack of all trades, master of none" approach.
.....Whats stopping them?.....
Easy! Why should Apple want to support x-zillion different hardware designs and take 3 or more years to come up with a new OS for them all? The biggest uniqueness of Apple is the simple fact that they are the ONLY personal computer maker that makes the WHOLE computer -- hardware and the software, complete with some very cool apps, (iLife) as a SYSTEM that "just works"(tm) They would be a total fool to give up that singular advantage.
.....You can't add a PCI device to it, etc........
Why would you need or want to? The USB or firewire will allow just about any peripheral device to be connected that has been invented by the mind of man. What sort of PCI device functionality could be connected to a low end type computer such as a mini or its much bigger non-Apple equivalents?
....Or, at least not as long as greed, power, corruption, and money are in the equation......
Behind these however, is the almost universal fear of death, or more correctly what lies beyond. The terrorists are persuaded that they will get a great reward if they take as many 'infidels' with them to the grave. In our western culture there are many, if not most these days, who believe that death is the end of existence. Therefore, in view of that belief, and it is only belief, not sure knowledge, many strive to grab as much of this world in goods and pleasure they can, before the inevitable grave ends it all. How that striving affects those around them does no matter very much if at all to many.
Someone who has faith that an eternal good future awaits them after they leave this mortal state, will not fear death, but will endeavor to work to "gather up treasures in Heaven" as Jesus exhorts to do, rather than strive for that which will remain behind after death. Someone who takes Jesus seriously, and has trust in Him, will not fear terrorism or anything else. It is the combination of the disregarding of death by the terrorists and the general fear of death that pervades our secular society, which makes terrorists successful. Atheists bravely may assert that they are not afraid of death, but the reality is that they too don't KNOW what lies beyond death and therefore fear that uncertainty.
.....I believe the airwaves should belong to the public, and that the corporate/advertising model is fundamentally flawed......
Maybe you would like the European Model (Germany) where everyone who owns a TV set (and next year a PC) must pay a monthly fee (tax). In the beginning of this fee system, that paid for the programming and there were NO commercials. Now they have commercials and you STILL pay the fee. I'd just as soon have the commercials and watch TV for "free". Besides, some of the commercials are more entertaining than the programs.
.....Apples don't crash, or BSOD. It's corporate policy, dintchaknow. They merely need restarting periodically.......
It might as well be corporate policy as far as I am concerned. My G5 has crashed ONCE in two years and that was my fault. I unplugged an external drive without putting it away. After I got the warning not to do such a foolish thing, I plugged the drive back in and that's when that reboot screen came up. In OSX, such a screen or a dead freeze is most often associated with a hardware problem which the system doesn't "know" how to handle. Since Apple is the only computer you can buy that makes BOTH harware and software together as a SYSTEM, it stands to reason that their computers should have better reliability than in the Windows or Linux camps. In the latter two, human communication of specifications, subject to misinterpretation by either the hardware builders or the software writers leaves a much larger chance for an untested error to occur. Apple can and does test their hardware TOGETHER with their software, a luxury NONE of the other PC makers enjoy. Because of this greater reliability, Apple doesn't really need to inform their users of the gory details of why the system froze or crashed.
......Buy everything except cars, homes, and educations with cash......
That one my not be such a good point on your otherwise excellent advice. Many credit card give discounts or airline miles. Might as well get those, as long as the balance is paid off before the expensive finance charges bite.
.....the ability to rent a copy which can be put on a portable device....
Do you really want to watch a two hour movie holding an iPod like player with a postage stamp screen? Your hands will likely get rather tired holding any portable gadget for that long.
....One wonders had DVD Jon not cracked this how well DVDs would be doing now.......
/. most people just buy or rent a DVD and pop it into their player or computer and hit the "Play" button. Watching a 2 hr or longer movie in a tiny screen is not very satisfying for most people.
Not much different than it is. Outside of
If Apple comes up with a video iPod which shows a good picture on a 27" or larger screen, at least on par with present DVDs, they will have a hit. That requires either a lot of storage or a really fancy compression scheme. Also, the battery should last through a feature length film at this quality. Video data requires a lot of power to run the storage device (HD) and/or to decode and display at a decent quality.
..... that's happened is that content producers have got more uptight.....
My point is that it's the content DISTRIBUTORS that will go the way of the dinosaurs. Right now they are trying to prevent the tide from coming in. Technology is enabling the the content PRODUCERS also to easily distribute their art. That is how it was before technology came along. Artists performed before live audiences, in effect distributing their work. We will eventually come full circle, when once again artists will distribute their own work, cutting out all the greedy middle men, now getting the lions share of the money due the performer. People who appreciate skilled work, will generally pay for it. I use or have used a number of shareware programs and have always paid for them, even though there are many who don't. I might download some music I like, to check it out, but then if I do, I'll go and buy the CD if it's available. The same with DVD, I'll go rent it or watch it in the cinema and if I like it, I'll buy the DVD.
......but it doesn't do squat about circumventing the DRM, which is what we were talking about.......
The problem I pointed out is that DRM doesn't stop commercial "pirates", who are the only ones that actually do REAL damage to the bottom line of the **AA people. All DRM does make it hard or impossible for a legal user to use the contents they have bought in any other previously undreamed of ways. Ten years ago nobody even DREAMED of iPods and multi-gigabyte key-ring data storage. In another 10-20 years we may carry 100TB of storage in a thing of that size. Using a mechanism that stores data as dense as the DNA molecule would allow storage of orders of magnitude more than we can today. Every bit of content that was ever expressed by all humans on the planet since history began can then be carried in a device much smaller than any iPod today. DRM for any particular microscopic fragment of data would no longer make sense.
DRM will exist until the content distributors are completely unimportant to the existence of human creativity. As bandwidth increases any creative person can make their talent available directly to anyone, without any middle distributors. Humans have always mirrored their Creator by being driven to creativity themselves, long before it was possible to widely share their works. This will continue to be, but the business of sharing creativity will no longer be a source of income for middlemen. It is these middlemen that are pushing for DRM.
Google at this moment is making available to everyone with an Internet connection, some of the greatest literary works ever written in the English language. DRM will be a distant memory in 10-20 years. Copyright itself, an artificial monopoly, will die before the presently granted copyrights expire.
...n the future, movie pirates will probably have to create custom lcd panel electronics ....
Why so much trouble? Just grab the bit stream at the play head and send it to the record head. Makes a perfect, still encrypted COPY, which the pirates can then sell cheap. A simple box with a player, some elementary electronics in between it and the recorder is all it takes. DRM is never decoded, so there is no violation of DMCA. All bits are inherently copyable. A whole motherboard encased in epoxy nor other technical acrobatics will EVER get around that simple fact.
.....how about embedding a watermark in the movie that uniquely identifies you......
Do you REALLY think Walmart will go to the trouble of registering every buyer of the $5.95 DVD's from their bargain bins?
Any digital data boils down to a stream of bits transmitted over time. Take a stream of bits from the receiver to the transmitter or recorder and you get a perfect copy, DRM included, EVERY time. Marketing such a device should not even be against the law, since it is not CIRCUMVENTING any coding or encryption. A simple box with a player and recorder, where the stream of bits goes directly from the playback head to the record head would allow copying *any* recorded data stream, no matter how much DRM it has. It could be marketed as a universal media backup device.
....What we need to work towards is a DRM model .....
The problem is that binary bits are all alike and can be inherently copied flawlessly. That in fact is the biggest advantage of going digital. In the digital domain it is possible to transmit information perfectly for as many times as desired, without the slightest loss. A perfect image copy of any DRM file can be made, DRM and all and there is NO way any human or digital device can tell the difference between the original and the copy. That is basically what some of the wholesale "pirates" who copy for commercial gain do. DRM only stymies and frustrates the ordinary users. Only one perfect, DRM free copy on the internet breaks the business model. DRM is basically security by obscurity and we all know how secure that is.
......You could use runas to run the few that require admin access as admin. Under Vista, I believe.......
For users who don't know how or want to use typed commands to operate their system that is a no go. The solution of course is for MS developers to write their programs correctly. As for the promise of Vista vapor ware --well, lets just wait.
Firefox like other apps, and its plugins ONLY have write access to any place the user has such access to. This means that if there is a bug or hole in Firefox, malware can damage any file the user can write to. If a program saves code in user space, that code will still cause a dialog to come up the first time it is run as an independent program. If it is called up under an already running app, then that would not happen. If the extension wants to use a port or address that is not yet on the always allow list of Little Snitch, then there would be a warning. Under the test account, the user might allow once and then see if the net access is asked for multiple times after that.
I don't run *any* non Apple programs under the admin account. It is hardly ever needed, except to actually change system settings or temporarily enable root. Any possible malware would have to *know* that it was running under my real account. If it did nothing in the test account it would do nothing on my regular account since that is not admin either.
Access control lists don't have rules as such, but you can set up some pretty fine grained permissions for users and their directories.