I've never been a fan of purchasing music that had DRM, but it seemed to be worth the trade off in some cases. iTunes provided a way to get all those songs where I wanted one or two songs from an artist or particular CD but didn't want to pay $10 to $20 for a whole CD just to get those songs. The trade off was lower sound quality and the loss of freedom when it comes to player choice/burn rights (I make a LOT of mix discs for my work commute, and like to update frequently due to a very wide range of musical tastes.) At $0.99 this seemed to be a fair trade off, but now I worry that most of the prices will increase.
While I do like a lot of obscure or less popular music (certainly not much that ever shows up on charts) I agree with others who have said that lower prices seem highly unlikely. As others have already posted, I also agree that this will likely cause some increase in piracy and (in my case) fewer music purchases.
While my new CD purchases will likely remain stable at a low 5 or 6 a year, the $100 to $200 a year I have been spending on digital music each year will probably drop to almost nothing. Alas, just more money for O'Reilly purchases I guess...
I hear this from people all the time. Part of it's your own fault. Live closer to where you work or where good tranist exists.
That's a lovely theory, but it doesn't help a real world situation where the housing market has been so explosive that even finding available housing (let alone something affordable) is extremely difficult. I live where I do because it's what I can afford, and I don't work "in the city" so there are no other transit options available. As for accepting less money to work near where I live, there are no jobs that pay anywhere close to enough to my already expensive, far from the city home. Time and money saved on not driving isn't going to cut it in this case, but thanks for the promise of a better life.
I am not trying to be a dick, but many who have big vehicles think they need one, but no one else does
Point taken, and I'm sure that many of the "empty" SUVs that I see had kids that have since been dropped off at school, etc. I do, however, have a number of coworkers and at least one neighbor who are childless and drive to office jobs in giant vehicles. My point about minivans wasn't that they get a free pass on gas consumption/polution, but in fact that they are no better and that I've fallen into the cycle of big vehicles beget more big vehicles. As I said, in my original post, I don't need the room and I'd much rather have a smaller car, but since having kids I care a great deal more about safety and for the time being at least that means having a bigger vehicle.
If they really want to push more efficient automobiles, perhaps we could wean the American preference for the large SUV?
Boy am I all for smaller cars and getting people to give up their SUVs (although I'm certainly not holding my breath). It's frustrating to see so many of these (ahem) "sport" vehicles that will never go off a city street and almost always have one person driving sans any passengers. What's the point? My wife and I finally gave in and bought a minivan recently, not because we needed that much space or wanted a large vehicle, but because we have two young children and it seems like half of the state of California is in Pick-ups and SUVs. In the event of an accident, if we were in a normal car, the other guy's bumper is likely right at head level (add to that the "flow" speed on the freeways here, when not congested, is about 75 miles an hour).
I wish I could go the public transportation route, but thanks to the pitiful bus system in greater San Diego, I'd have to take 3 busses for approximately 2hours each way to get to work (to cover 20 miles) and with a slim margin for connections if any of the busses were late.
"There's no way those huge-ass programs are going to be hosted and downloaded/run on demand."
While I agree that bandwidth will likely prevent this happening in earnest for a while yet, I doubt that the "huge-ass" programs you mention will be much of a deterent. Thing is, most people don't use those programs. (Full disclosure, I too am a web developer and do use some of them.) I think all a great many people need are a web browser, a word processor, a spread sheet, a presentation program and a front end to have access to databases, all of which could easily be run and accessed as web services.
There will continue to be "desk top" operating systems for quite some time for sure (think of 3D rendering or autocad for example) but they will likely become quite the minority.
As a San Diego home owner, I can tell you that getting earthquake insurance here is virtually impossible. Even if you can find a company that is willing to cover you, it's very expensive, the premiums are insanely high and the coverage is nowhere near the property value.
It's fairly telling that mortgage lenders which require home owner's insurance which includes fire coverage (and in many cases require mortgage insurance as well) do not typically require earthquake coverage. I don't work for a lending company, but I'm fairly certain that the reason it's not required is that it's so difficult to obtain. It would probably hold up or prevent the majority of loans being successfully processed.
Today the part of Arthur will be played by Linus and the Black Knight by Mr. Gates:
Arthur: You are indeed brave Sir knight, but the fight is mine. Black Knight: Had enough? Arthur: You stupid bastard. You havn't got any arms left. Black Knight: Course I have. Arthur: Look! Black Knight: What! Just a flesh wound.
Since I have several small children I have ended up purchasing a number of Disney DVDs, all of which I've ripped back up copies to use. Why? Because Disney likes to limit their release schedules and take movies out of print so they can aritificially drive up the collector market. It only took one time of an unhappy four year old who couldn't watch a DVD that had gotten scratched, that couldn't be replaced and I started backing up all the Disney DVDs. Let's face it, 4 year old whining is almost as grating as MPAA whining.
...deeper security mechanisms such as "suspicion engines" has problems too. Any hidden filter meant to compare traffic on your account against profile of "normal" usage strikes me as both an invasion of privacy and a sure fire way to multiply calls to the help desks when a false alarm tosses out a legitimate user."
This would need to be something akin to AI wouldn't it? I mean what happens if I suddenly need remote access to my secured machine/account. There might be any number of movements, protocols, etc that acted/looked different enough to throw the suspicion engine and suddenly my data is locked from me. Add to this that the idea of a suspicion engine learning about me means that somehow it must contain data about my habits/behaviors that then become a whole other data set that is now a different/new level of security risk.
I'll get modded down as off topic for this no doubt, but I just had to give kudos to k4 pacific, the original poster. The hands free joke would have been funny either way, but crashing into the Big Boy statue was a stroke of genius. Thanks for making me laugh so hard I almost snarfed my coffee.
With all due respect, can we mod the parent obtuse? I'm honestly not trying to troll or flame, but the self-righteousness of the parent post is a bit much considering the whole point was how quickly and easily a p2p app could be created (and by extension then discarded when need be). Whether or not the code is elegant is entirely beside the point. It could even be argued, given that something of this nature is potentially being created to circumvent certain rules or regulations, that the whole point is to make it such that only the interpreter/compiler can decipher it.
I think I would go with a big old wad of duct tape, since the microscopic piece of plastic that made my jump drive "key chainable" broke almost immediately.
Now my thumb drive is like so many other "conveniently small" items in my life, I'm forever looking around trying to figure out where I put it. Yep, sure glad I saved that data!
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft shares the spotlight this year with Symantec Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corp. and others
Thank goodness I'm protecting my well-patched XP system with Norton and a Linksys router, so I'm safe!
This levee is rock-solid baby!
The snakes have found a way to keep the rats in a coral, or so they think.
Oh dear god, now they've got scuba diving rats?! F**king Snakes!
I've never been a fan of purchasing music that had DRM, but it seemed to be worth the trade off in some cases. iTunes provided a way to get all those songs where I wanted one or two songs from an artist or particular CD but didn't want to pay $10 to $20 for a whole CD just to get those songs. The trade off was lower sound quality and the loss of freedom when it comes to player choice/burn rights (I make a LOT of mix discs for my work commute, and like to update frequently due to a very wide range of musical tastes.) At $0.99 this seemed to be a fair trade off, but now I worry that most of the prices will increase.
While I do like a lot of obscure or less popular music (certainly not much that ever shows up on charts) I agree with others who have said that lower prices seem highly unlikely. As others have already posted, I also agree that this will likely cause some increase in piracy and (in my case) fewer music purchases.
While my new CD purchases will likely remain stable at a low 5 or 6 a year, the $100 to $200 a year I have been spending on digital music each year will probably drop to almost nothing. Alas, just more money for O'Reilly purchases I guess...
i think, when you broadcast it over radio waves its no longer called podcasting.....but rather, "radio". ;)
Unfortunately where I live if it's broadcast over radio waves it's called "Infinity".
I hear this from people all the time. Part of it's your own fault. Live closer to where you work or where good tranist exists.
That's a lovely theory, but it doesn't help a real world situation where the housing market has been so explosive that even finding available housing (let alone something affordable) is extremely difficult. I live where I do because it's what I can afford, and I don't work "in the city" so there are no other transit options available. As for accepting less money to work near where I live, there are no jobs that pay anywhere close to enough to my already expensive, far from the city home. Time and money saved on not driving isn't going to cut it in this case, but thanks for the promise of a better life.
I am not trying to be a dick, but many who have big vehicles think they need one, but no one else does
Point taken, and I'm sure that many of the "empty" SUVs that I see had kids that have since been dropped off at school, etc. I do, however, have a number of coworkers and at least one neighbor who are childless and drive to office jobs in giant vehicles. My point about minivans wasn't that they get a free pass on gas consumption/polution, but in fact that they are no better and that I've fallen into the cycle of big vehicles beget more big vehicles. As I said, in my original post, I don't need the room and I'd much rather have a smaller car, but since having kids I care a great deal more about safety and for the time being at least that means having a bigger vehicle.
If they really want to push more efficient automobiles, perhaps we could wean the American preference for the large SUV?
Boy am I all for smaller cars and getting people to give up their SUVs (although I'm certainly not holding my breath). It's frustrating to see so many of these (ahem) "sport" vehicles that will never go off a city street and almost always have one person driving sans any passengers. What's the point? My wife and I finally gave in and bought a minivan recently, not because we needed that much space or wanted a large vehicle, but because we have two young children and it seems like half of the state of California is in Pick-ups and SUVs. In the event of an accident, if we were in a normal car, the other guy's bumper is likely right at head level (add to that the "flow" speed on the freeways here, when not congested, is about 75 miles an hour).
I wish I could go the public transportation route, but thanks to the pitiful bus system in greater San Diego, I'd have to take 3 busses for approximately 2hours each way to get to work (to cover 20 miles) and with a slim margin for connections if any of the busses were late.
I didnt know you could just sue people for releasing a crappy product. I guess Microsoft and ATI both owe me a few bucks.
That's a good idea, I'm going to do the same! I'll just save this legal letter I've written to my handy Iomega Zip Drive and then I'll
"There's no way those huge-ass programs are going to be hosted and downloaded/run on demand." While I agree that bandwidth will likely prevent this happening in earnest for a while yet, I doubt that the "huge-ass" programs you mention will be much of a deterent. Thing is, most people don't use those programs. (Full disclosure, I too am a web developer and do use some of them.) I think all a great many people need are a web browser, a word processor, a spread sheet, a presentation program and a front end to have access to databases, all of which could easily be run and accessed as web services. There will continue to be "desk top" operating systems for quite some time for sure (think of 3D rendering or autocad for example) but they will likely become quite the minority.
I don't think I could recreate another human life with Luther Vandross no matter how many beers I had...
Duke Nukem Forever will be web based.
As a San Diego home owner, I can tell you that getting earthquake insurance here is virtually impossible. Even if you can find a company that is willing to cover you, it's very expensive, the premiums are insanely high and the coverage is nowhere near the property value.
It's fairly telling that mortgage lenders which require home owner's insurance which includes fire coverage (and in many cases require mortgage insurance as well) do not typically require earthquake coverage. I don't work for a lending company, but I'm fairly certain that the reason it's not required is that it's so difficult to obtain. It would probably hold up or prevent the majority of loans being successfully processed.
How will that go over in prison?
Convict: What are you in for?
Jeremy Jaynes: um... spam.
He's somebody's bitch for sure...
Today the part of Arthur will be played by Linus and the Black Knight by Mr. Gates:
Arthur: You are indeed brave Sir knight, but the fight is mine.
Black Knight: Had enough?
Arthur: You stupid bastard. You havn't got any arms left.
Black Knight: Course I have.
Arthur: Look!
Black Knight: What! Just a flesh wound.
"Help! I'm using WebTV!"
"You've got Jail!"
Since I have several small children I have ended up purchasing a number of Disney DVDs, all of which I've ripped back up copies to use. Why? Because Disney likes to limit their release schedules and take movies out of print so they can aritificially drive up the collector market. It only took one time of an unhappy four year old who couldn't watch a DVD that had gotten scratched, that couldn't be replaced and I started backing up all the Disney DVDs. Let's face it, 4 year old whining is almost as grating as MPAA whining.
Playboy
When it comes to women at playboy, I don't think it's the CEO that most Slashdotters care about...
...deeper security mechanisms such as "suspicion engines" has problems too. Any hidden filter meant to compare traffic on your account against profile of "normal" usage strikes me as both an invasion of privacy and a sure fire way to multiply calls to the help desks when a false alarm tosses out a legitimate user."
This would need to be something akin to AI wouldn't it? I mean what happens if I suddenly need remote access to my secured machine/account. There might be any number of movements, protocols, etc that acted/looked different enough to throw the suspicion engine and suddenly my data is locked from me. Add to this that the idea of a suspicion engine learning about me means that somehow it must contain data about my habits/behaviors that then become a whole other data set that is now a different/new level of security risk.
I'll get modded down as off topic for this no doubt, but I just had to give kudos to k4 pacific, the original poster. The hands free joke would have been funny either way, but crashing into the Big Boy statue was a stroke of genius. Thanks for making me laugh so hard I almost snarfed my coffee.
With all due respect, can we mod the parent obtuse? I'm honestly not trying to troll or flame, but the self-righteousness of the parent post is a bit much considering the whole point was how quickly and easily a p2p app could be created (and by extension then discarded when need be). Whether or not the code is elegant is entirely beside the point. It could even be argued, given that something of this nature is potentially being created to circumvent certain rules or regulations, that the whole point is to make it such that only the interpreter/compiler can decipher it.
Sounds double plus good to me!
The entire system will crumble to bits as the sheer bulk of rubbish circling around in the net exceeds the public pain threshold
the public pain threshold?! Clearly this guy has never seen American TV.
I think I would go with a big old wad of duct tape, since the microscopic piece of plastic that made my jump drive "key chainable" broke almost immediately.
Now my thumb drive is like so many other "conveniently small" items in my life, I'm forever looking around trying to figure out where I put it. Yep, sure glad I saved that data!
'We were very surprised one drink of beer or stout contributed an equal amount of antioxidant benefit as wine"
Further, after about 4 or 5 more beers, who cares!