Apart from which, many probably do what I do. When the new TV is purchased, the old tube one (especially if it was a good one) becomes the second TV in the spare room, games room, bedroom or whatever. This is probably then the TV to which the kids are banished with their console, while the good one is used by the parents as an actual TV in the living room. No need to pension off a good large tube set that still goes, if you have the room to redeploy it.
We are still testing too, as our workplace has circa 10,000 seats and a lot of custom software that has to integrate. Personally, I hate, detest and loathe the ribbon. However, I too am screaming at IT to upgrade us. This isn't from any great love of the new version. Unlike most of the business which is self-contained and oriented around internal processes to do what we do, my team is in head office and deals with a number of external agencies. They have moved to Office 2007, and are sending us spreadsheets that we can't open. And before anyone cries "compatibility tool", which IT has tried to foist on us a number of times, if spreadsheets have more than 256 columns, or 65536 rows, or contain any of the new new formulae (which these do), the tool barfs. The process is viral. That's the main reason IT don't want to upgrade us - they are terrified that we will then email out stuff others in the shop can't open, then *poof* we are up for 10,000 new licences!
Their DRM and rootkits provide ample grounds to passionatley hate Sony, and I do. However, these aren't the entirety of the story, and its more than just this that we hate them for. It's also the fact that they seem to hate their paying customers and operate in their own parallel universe. Proprietary connectors, feature lockouts, unfriendliness to people modding the equipment that they have bought, radio station payola, and an incessant drive to establish their own standards rather than use an industry standard unless it's so entrenched they have no point.
Case in point, work gave me a SE phone recently (not one that I would have picked myself - I buy *nothing* with the Sony name on it, and haven't since I inadvertently brought one of their DRM-crippled non-CDs in 2003 and couldn't transfer it to y media player). Anyway, superficially it's a nice bit of kit. However, when I go to upgrade the memory it won't take any of the industry standard cards that I already have - oh no, I need a Sony brand "pro duo" stick that no one else uses, can't be used in anything else, and mysteriously costs about 2.5x normal on a $/GB basis. Then I go to plug headphones in so I can listen to music, the phone has a headphone connector, but instead of using a standard 3.5mm jack Sony have gone with 2.5mm, which you can't get in this country - not even the damn Sony store has them.
Then their is the gross hypocrisy a few years ago when the head of Sony music in this country was also serving as the head of the RIANZ (our equivalent of the RIAA) and issuing hysterical media statements about how anyone who format a CD that they purchased to an ipod or music jukebox was "stealing" and should and would be prosecuted. Funnily, at the same time, Sony was selling a hard drive based jukebox that let you do just that - and even had pictures of the shelves of CDs you could transfer hand have available at a push of the button in the window of the Sony dealer in the CBD as advertising. Presumably, Sony didn't then prosecute themselves......
Personally, I think that Sony is over large, arrogant, and severely ethically challenged. I go out of my way to avoid them, ensure that tender bids featuring Sony equipment (eg laptops) don't succeed when I am charged with evaluating them, and dissuade friends from buying their kit. Also, other than for their top line gear, the manufacturing has been moved to China anyway, and quality is no better that kit selling for half the price. I took great pleasure in refusing to support short-listing a bid to supply a fair number of Sony laptops in response to a tender last year, so at least I get some satisfaction along the way.....
Don't think you can get thaqt in this country. It ought, however, to design a phone that does this. If a call has a number revealed then the phone rings and goes to voicemail etc as normal. If the number is blocked then the phone just disconnects the call and doesn't ring at all. Or perhaps plays a short "I'm sorry, this phone does not accept calls from blocked numbers, goodbye" message before hanging up. Should not be that hard to do at the phone end.
What I would quite like is a phone or phone service where calls from a "withheld" number don't go through to me and the phone simply doesn't ring(or to voicemail). That would deal to a lot of these.
That logic is whacky. So does that mean that you won't buy a house or a car second-hand (or sell your own after you have bought it) because this would mean that neither GM or the Architect got paid again? If so, I assume that you want to make sales of used cars illegal, and require that people raze their houses sell when they move so that architects and construction firms get paid again by the new person who buys the land? If not, please explain why you think that the first sale doctrine apply to everyone except game makers?
I don't agree with your analysis and (by implication) slurs on many of our characters. Personally, I own over a large number (4-500 of them: haven't counted exactly) of DVDs. In this country (region 4) we get a much worse deal than the US, in terms of pricing, release window, and the trouble they take to do a proper encoding for a much smaller (PAL not NTSC) regional market. I want to plunk down dollars to by real (not pirated) discs from Amazon et al. DRM is all about stopping - segmenting the market so they can gouge consumers. I'm not a pirate, I just want to BUY the genuine article and play it. Personally, I can't see how they get away with all the regionalisation under the Tword Trade Organisation rules - it looks like a non-tariff trade barrier to me. Personally, I don't see why bypassing the DRM (I have a region selectable DVD player) makes me evil, a pirate or a thief. If the good folks at Doom9 mean that I can once again by legit discs in the knowledge that I can actually play them, kudos to them.
Worked for a place that effectively tried to thin-client us (although they didn't call it that). It was horrible. It was one of the main reasons I left. Most of the guys who did the work and had earned the place stellar reputation (and earned well into six figures) did as well. Most of the team left in a 3 month period, and their reputation (and revenue) cratered. Even if they had been able to replace the team (they tried, failed) I doubt the system cost saving would have covered half the recruitment cost. Still, I guess they saved a couple of hundred per seat on hardware and support costs! Guess what guys - I studied hard for my quals, my market value is starting to get pretty good with experience, and I know how to do my job. I do it the way that works best for me, and I set up my tools to work for me. If some pimply IT support guy thinks they know better than me what is needed to do my job, they are welcome to try and do it. If they can't, they should just piss off. Their job is to give me what I need to do my job and bring in revenue, it ain't my job to work around them. I want a nice powerful machine, that is fully customisable by me for my needs. If I want non-standard software, or a bit of non-standard hardware, the correct response is (1) purchase; and (2) install - it isn't to try and standardise me on what works for someone else.
I used to buy a fair number of games. It was an impulse thing mostly, browse the shop, "wow that looks cool", buy and play. However, was burnt by some annoying DRM, started to read up on the topic, and now I don't do this. Not for any conscious decison to boycott. However, before I plunk down cold hard cash I want to google to see how obnoxious the DRM is. Howevver, by the time I have done this I don't tend to buy even if there is no DRM - the impulse to buy has passed. I am staring at a shelf of 40-50 legit games as I type, but I can't think of a single game I have bought since last Christmas. Same response for music, I got burned by a DRM-poisoned faux CD (which they refunded after I got *very* upset with the manager in the shop the next day) - CD buying is now down from 1-2 per week fo 6-7 per year. Ultimately, they either provide me with a quality product at a fair price, or I don't buy. The discussion about whether this means the "artists" will prosper as a consequence is irrelevant to me - whether or not they and their business model survive is their problem, not mine.
"What happens 10 years down the line when I try to play a game or watch a Movie that has some funky DRM on it, but I can't because the company is out of business or has shutdown the DRM server"
Nothing happens. Just like the poor saps who bought DRMed music from Microsoft, where the same situation prevails with the recent shutdown of their DRM server. You try to run the product that you have paid for and own and..... nothing happens!
I have a modest collection of purchased DVDs (circa 120-150 discs). I have a big collection of recorded DVDs (circa 1,000+)- mainly movies off pay-tv that I haven't had time to watch over the years and have movbed to cheapo blanks to manage drive space on my PVR. This is most of what I use DVDs for. Call me when Blu Ray can record HD content consistently and reliably - onto disc without obnoxious DRM. Until then, DVD remains the best option.
I have a USB Hard Drive that has all my music (among other things) on it. Not only does the IT group mknow about it, they bought it for me when I asked. No problem as far as I can see, I *paid* for all the music, I listen to it, it's locked down so only I can get to it (literally, as in unplugged and in a locked drawer at night) so who cares? Trusting users is easier, and ultimately more rewarding than having half your time and half of employees time in a pointless arms race of restrictions and circumvention. The music industry has finally woken up to this, some IT shops are starting to wake up to it, and the movie industry will hopefully wake up eventually.
I have been buying creative products back since I had to make the original Soundblaster run under dos 3.1 on a 4.7 Mhz 8086 clone with not enough ram to swing a cat, right through the SB16 and the SB Live! etc, and I have had creative MP3 players etc as well. At least I can choose not to give these asshats any money. I am buying the new MP3 player tomorrow (the 512MB Creative Rhomba has had its day) and am upgrading the PC in the next few weeks/months. I assure you that there will be no Creative products purchased. Creative's financial position is not great. Maybe if a consumner backlash bankrupts these pricks then their patents can get acquired by a firm that cares about releasing great products, with drivers that actually work, and realises the value of having a good customer experience.
Does someone have a file of the Eurion Constellation that can be downloaded. I have always fancied putting this on a t-shirt or a tie so that people mysteriously suddenly can't scan or print out photos with me in them. It would be a hoot to wear one of these to a school or work function where photos are being taken.
The locks analogy does not work. The lock on my house is to keep burglars out, but I have bought the house and the lock on my front door does not restrict me. If I lose my keys then even if the builder of my house has gone out of business I can simply pay for a "circumvention device" in the form of a locksmith. DRM is more about control - going through my front door into the house I own does not require me to watch 2 minutes of adds from the housebuilding company first - but my legal copy of the Simpsons Movie does (or did, before I made a copy that does not insist on this).
As the purchasers of some digital content have discovered, when the vendor closes the business and they cant "authenticate" online they become unable to view the content that they have bought and paid for. However, if Toyota went bankrupt tomorrow, my key would still start my car.
"but they can't just hand out free copies of every movie no strings attached...."
Of course they can, they essentially already do! I can't get Netflix (wrong country) but I understand that they have a postal DVD rental business as well. The DRM on DVDs is so broken as to be irrelevant to anyone with five spare minutes and the ability to conduct a couple of searches on Google. Anyone who wants to pirate could just rent the DVD. So who are they "protecting" by making the downloadable product so user-unfriendly? It looks like the music biz is finally seeing the light on DRM-less downloads, how long before the film biz does as well?
Yes, I have lived in a house (also in New Zealand - Wellington actually) where they had that as well - it's called "ripple control" in NZ. It is not a bad idea. Also, it's not mandatory, if you don't like it then you can connect your hot water to the supply normally and the power co can't do this. However, if you do connect using ripple control, the quid pro quo for letting them "ripple" to manage your usage at peak times is that it's metered separately and you get the power at a cheaper rate. Mostly, people had it, and it has been an unremarkable feature of the system for 30+ years.
That you are travelling on business with your laptop, and have US firms as either suppliers, customers and/or competitors. You have commercially secret information on your laptop. The US Government accesses this, returns the laptop, and lets you in. But, they also pass a copy of this information to some US firms to "help them compete" - possibly costing you millions. This is not far-fetched. In the past the French have been notorious for this - to the extent of bugging business class seats on Air France, and having the French intelligance services pass on key commercial information (eg bid strategies/prices) to french firms. If you have naughty pix of little children then I have no sympathy - you deserve what you get. But, if you have legitimate commercially sensitive information (eg we will bid $52 a share for a share in a Russian Oilfield), you don't deserve to lose contracts and possibly your livelihood because Exxon was tipped off and raised its competing bid to $53.
Still Sony got it right with its laptop batteries. We should all run out and buy those. Apparently they're HOT HOT HOT!
Sorry, pinning it on BMG dosen't work. This is vintage Sony, and their contempt for their customer. In this country Sony DVD players were the only ones that wern't reliably region free (big deal if you want discs from other regions, which are legal and sold openly). Or then there's the noxious DRM on Minidisc - can't pull a digital copy of something you recorded onto your PC even if you own it, they lied and said minidisc played MP3 when it transcoded instead, the are a key bankroller of the RIAA's standover extortion from kids and grandmothers, they took DRM to a whole new level with Bluray, and of course there's ARCOSS. If you want to go back even further, goofle the underhand way they used misinformation to kill off the Dreamcast.
Sony is the vermin of the consumer electronics industry. You should boycott them not just to make a stand, but because the products they peddle are often no better than the alternatives - they just cost more and always seem to have hidden strings attached. They are underhand, arrogant, dishonest people. Why woould you give them your hard earned money?
The arrogant types who lose sight of the fact that "their" system's sole reason for existence is to meet and support the needs of those of us who deal with the clients and bring in the dollars that pay all of our wages
I worked for an outfit that made the mistake of signing a loosely worded multi year fixed price contract with an IT provider (we weren't very large) to maintain and administer our systems. Their incentives to make money were to lock down the system totally (the less that could change, the less that could go wrong) to the point where we couldn't even change the default dictionary settings in work, let alone access a USB drive, a c:\ drive, or install software. Our CEO was a moron - we were just "whiners" and the outside contractor was right because "they were the experts". I am not a systems expert, but I knew enough to maintain my own system (prior to this contractor, my use of IT support was pretty close to zero), but I knew how to do my job and I was good at it. With the new system nothing non-standard could be done - including me building the financial models etc that I was good at, and that our customers loved the results of. I stuck it for longer than I should have, because I loved the job itself and the people I worked with.
After six months of battering my head against a brick wall and having endless flame wars and shouting matches with the IT morons, I let it be known I had had enough in the market place. Within a couple of weeks I had two good job offers, and now have a great job paying 35% more, where the IT support is great and I can just get on with the stuff I am good at. If I want something non-standard for me or for the staff I now have working for me then, providing my reasons are sound, it just arrives and is installed. In fact, rather than the protracted justifications I used to have to try and argue before, they normally don't even want to hear a reason now "You are paid well to get the job done, and if you say you need something, then you need it". I don't abuse the trust my new employer shows. As for the place I used to work, most of the good staff have walked, and they have had to restructure and have lost about 2/3 of the headcount they had when I was there. The CEO is still there though, and as far as I am aware the same IT firm still has the support contract.
Postscript - I found out by chance that the same IT provider was one of two preferred bidders for a large contract with my new employer. Took great pleasure in exacting payback by recounting my "war stories" about them to the head of our IT. I doubt they have any idea why their expensively prepared pitch meant that they got all the way to being a preferred bidder, then suddenly fell out of the process for no apparent reason.
I have been screwed by Sony before, and won't buy their craptastic overpriced proprietary junk again. This is the Sony that is pushing ARCOSS, BD+ and every other DRM-poisoned abomination known to man on us. Does anyone think they are doing this bec1ause they want to - its a desperation move because their multiple attempts to fall back on their tried and true strategy of ass-raping their paying customers has failed them in this market. Even if this worked, as soon as the got c1ritic1al mass they would c1ome up with a way to screw the people who had been taken in.
Personally I pretty much stopped buying CDs in 2003 - when a Norah Jones CD I bought started trying to install software without permission when I put it in the drive. Up until that point I would buy 30-40 CDs a year. Now I am down around 3 - and I get the record store to guarantee that they have no DRM on them and I can return for a cash refund if they turn out to have this. Surprisingly, the record store I use has been willing to give me an exchange token with that written on and signed, as a condition of sale, when I have asked. If the music customers won't treat me with respect as a customer when I plonk down mu hard-earned cash, I am happy to stop being a customer.
Sony are obviously worried that there are some potential customers left after CD protection, rootkit, incendiary battery, and DRM debacles to date - just to be safe they need this to drive them away too! Personally, I have been off Sony since circa 2003, and this just reinforces my view on this
I don't pirate DVDs (or CDs) - I know how to, but to date I have only copied CDs I own to play at work (after some original discs were stolen after hours) and in the car, and the odd DVD I own to play in the laptop when I am away for work (don't want to lug/lose the original). I am not that fussed that other people do, but my basic ethics mean I don't. Here we have a Fair Trading Act that means that product that is not of merchantable quality can be returned. Were I interested in Casino Royale (I am not) I would officially now have no moral qualms about purchasing it, copying it, and returning for a refund.
Sony, you have just changed the rules - you dont respect my rights, I won't respect yours, GAME ON!
I can remember whan Dad got his first computer for his business. A mighty 64K of Ram and one 140K disk drive. One of the first decent machines on the block so to speak. It was all greek to him. Me, as pimply kid of around 12 did all of the setup, showed him how to use it, did any problem resolution, and wrote some custom bits of code in Applesoft to help automate some of the calculations he had to do. He is long retired now, and I still admin his home machine, and show him how to do things like email and web searches when he does them for the first time. If we could rewind so that I was still 12 now, then this software might well allow one of us to monitor the other if we wanted to (hint: it wouldn't be him monitoring me).
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Apart from which, many probably do what I do. When the new TV is purchased, the old tube one (especially if it was a good one) becomes the second TV in the spare room, games room, bedroom or whatever. This is probably then the TV to which the kids are banished with their console, while the good one is used by the parents as an actual TV in the living room. No need to pension off a good large tube set that still goes, if you have the room to redeploy it.
We are still testing too, as our workplace has circa 10,000 seats and a lot of custom software that has to integrate. Personally, I hate, detest and loathe the ribbon. However, I too am screaming at IT to upgrade us. This isn't from any great love of the new version. Unlike most of the business which is self-contained and oriented around internal processes to do what we do, my team is in head office and deals with a number of external agencies. They have moved to Office 2007, and are sending us spreadsheets that we can't open. And before anyone cries "compatibility tool", which IT has tried to foist on us a number of times, if spreadsheets have more than 256 columns, or 65536 rows, or contain any of the new new formulae (which these do), the tool barfs. The process is viral. That's the main reason IT don't want to upgrade us - they are terrified that we will then email out stuff others in the shop can't open, then *poof* we are up for 10,000 new licences!
Mine is from chinese DVD players, which simply ignore the cruft, and legit discs. Do people actually still sit through the trailers?
Their DRM and rootkits provide ample grounds to passionatley hate Sony, and I do. However, these aren't the entirety of the story, and its more than just this that we hate them for. It's also the fact that they seem to hate their paying customers and operate in their own parallel universe. Proprietary connectors, feature lockouts, unfriendliness to people modding the equipment that they have bought, radio station payola, and an incessant drive to establish their own standards rather than use an industry standard unless it's so entrenched they have no point. Case in point, work gave me a SE phone recently (not one that I would have picked myself - I buy *nothing* with the Sony name on it, and haven't since I inadvertently brought one of their DRM-crippled non-CDs in 2003 and couldn't transfer it to y media player). Anyway, superficially it's a nice bit of kit. However, when I go to upgrade the memory it won't take any of the industry standard cards that I already have - oh no, I need a Sony brand "pro duo" stick that no one else uses, can't be used in anything else, and mysteriously costs about 2.5x normal on a $/GB basis. Then I go to plug headphones in so I can listen to music, the phone has a headphone connector, but instead of using a standard 3.5mm jack Sony have gone with 2.5mm, which you can't get in this country - not even the damn Sony store has them. Then their is the gross hypocrisy a few years ago when the head of Sony music in this country was also serving as the head of the RIANZ (our equivalent of the RIAA) and issuing hysterical media statements about how anyone who format a CD that they purchased to an ipod or music jukebox was "stealing" and should and would be prosecuted. Funnily, at the same time, Sony was selling a hard drive based jukebox that let you do just that - and even had pictures of the shelves of CDs you could transfer hand have available at a push of the button in the window of the Sony dealer in the CBD as advertising. Presumably, Sony didn't then prosecute themselves...... Personally, I think that Sony is over large, arrogant, and severely ethically challenged. I go out of my way to avoid them, ensure that tender bids featuring Sony equipment (eg laptops) don't succeed when I am charged with evaluating them, and dissuade friends from buying their kit. Also, other than for their top line gear, the manufacturing has been moved to China anyway, and quality is no better that kit selling for half the price. I took great pleasure in refusing to support short-listing a bid to supply a fair number of Sony laptops in response to a tender last year, so at least I get some satisfaction along the way .....
Don't think you can get thaqt in this country. It ought, however, to design a phone that does this. If a call has a number revealed then the phone rings and goes to voicemail etc as normal. If the number is blocked then the phone just disconnects the call and doesn't ring at all. Or perhaps plays a short "I'm sorry, this phone does not accept calls from blocked numbers, goodbye" message before hanging up. Should not be that hard to do at the phone end.
What I would quite like is a phone or phone service where calls from a "withheld" number don't go through to me and the phone simply doesn't ring(or to voicemail). That would deal to a lot of these.
That logic is whacky. So does that mean that you won't buy a house or a car second-hand (or sell your own after you have bought it) because this would mean that neither GM or the Architect got paid again? If so, I assume that you want to make sales of used cars illegal, and require that people raze their houses sell when they move so that architects and construction firms get paid again by the new person who buys the land? If not, please explain why you think that the first sale doctrine apply to everyone except game makers?
I don't agree with your analysis and (by implication) slurs on many of our characters. Personally, I own over a large number (4-500 of them: haven't counted exactly) of DVDs. In this country (region 4) we get a much worse deal than the US, in terms of pricing, release window, and the trouble they take to do a proper encoding for a much smaller (PAL not NTSC) regional market. I want to plunk down dollars to by real (not pirated) discs from Amazon et al. DRM is all about stopping - segmenting the market so they can gouge consumers. I'm not a pirate, I just want to BUY the genuine article and play it. Personally, I can't see how they get away with all the regionalisation under the Tword Trade Organisation rules - it looks like a non-tariff trade barrier to me. Personally, I don't see why bypassing the DRM (I have a region selectable DVD player) makes me evil, a pirate or a thief. If the good folks at Doom9 mean that I can once again by legit discs in the knowledge that I can actually play them, kudos to them.
Worked for a place that effectively tried to thin-client us (although they didn't call it that). It was horrible. It was one of the main reasons I left. Most of the guys who did the work and had earned the place stellar reputation (and earned well into six figures) did as well. Most of the team left in a 3 month period, and their reputation (and revenue) cratered. Even if they had been able to replace the team (they tried, failed) I doubt the system cost saving would have covered half the recruitment cost. Still, I guess they saved a couple of hundred per seat on hardware and support costs! Guess what guys - I studied hard for my quals, my market value is starting to get pretty good with experience, and I know how to do my job. I do it the way that works best for me, and I set up my tools to work for me. If some pimply IT support guy thinks they know better than me what is needed to do my job, they are welcome to try and do it. If they can't, they should just piss off. Their job is to give me what I need to do my job and bring in revenue, it ain't my job to work around them. I want a nice powerful machine, that is fully customisable by me for my needs. If I want non-standard software, or a bit of non-standard hardware, the correct response is (1) purchase; and (2) install - it isn't to try and standardise me on what works for someone else.
I used to buy a fair number of games. It was an impulse thing mostly, browse the shop, "wow that looks cool", buy and play. However, was burnt by some annoying DRM, started to read up on the topic, and now I don't do this. Not for any conscious decison to boycott. However, before I plunk down cold hard cash I want to google to see how obnoxious the DRM is. Howevver, by the time I have done this I don't tend to buy even if there is no DRM - the impulse to buy has passed. I am staring at a shelf of 40-50 legit games as I type, but I can't think of a single game I have bought since last Christmas. Same response for music, I got burned by a DRM-poisoned faux CD (which they refunded after I got *very* upset with the manager in the shop the next day) - CD buying is now down from 1-2 per week fo 6-7 per year. Ultimately, they either provide me with a quality product at a fair price, or I don't buy. The discussion about whether this means the "artists" will prosper as a consequence is irrelevant to me - whether or not they and their business model survive is their problem, not mine.
Nothing happens. Just like the poor saps who bought DRMed music from Microsoft, where the same situation prevails with the recent shutdown of their DRM server. You try to run the product that you have paid for and own and
I have a modest collection of purchased DVDs (circa 120-150 discs). I have a big collection of recorded DVDs (circa 1,000+)- mainly movies off pay-tv that I haven't had time to watch over the years and have movbed to cheapo blanks to manage drive space on my PVR. This is most of what I use DVDs for. Call me when Blu Ray can record HD content consistently and reliably - onto disc without obnoxious DRM. Until then, DVD remains the best option.
I have a USB Hard Drive that has all my music (among other things) on it. Not only does the IT group mknow about it, they bought it for me when I asked. No problem as far as I can see, I *paid* for all the music, I listen to it, it's locked down so only I can get to it (literally, as in unplugged and in a locked drawer at night) so who cares? Trusting users is easier, and ultimately more rewarding than having half your time and half of employees time in a pointless arms race of restrictions and circumvention. The music industry has finally woken up to this, some IT shops are starting to wake up to it, and the movie industry will hopefully wake up eventually.
I have been buying creative products back since I had to make the original Soundblaster run under dos 3.1 on a 4.7 Mhz 8086 clone with not enough ram to swing a cat, right through the SB16 and the SB Live! etc, and I have had creative MP3 players etc as well. At least I can choose not to give these asshats any money. I am buying the new MP3 player tomorrow (the 512MB Creative Rhomba has had its day) and am upgrading the PC in the next few weeks/months. I assure you that there will be no Creative products purchased. Creative's financial position is not great. Maybe if a consumner backlash bankrupts these pricks then their patents can get acquired by a firm that cares about releasing great products, with drivers that actually work, and realises the value of having a good customer experience.
Does someone have a file of the Eurion Constellation that can be downloaded. I have always fancied putting this on a t-shirt or a tie so that people mysteriously suddenly can't scan or print out photos with me in them. It would be a hoot to wear one of these to a school or work function where photos are being taken.
As the purchasers of some digital content have discovered, when the vendor closes the business and they cant "authenticate" online they become unable to view the content that they have bought and paid for. However, if Toyota went bankrupt tomorrow, my key would still start my car.
"but they can't just hand out free copies of every movie no strings attached...." Of course they can, they essentially already do! I can't get Netflix (wrong country) but I understand that they have a postal DVD rental business as well. The DRM on DVDs is so broken as to be irrelevant to anyone with five spare minutes and the ability to conduct a couple of searches on Google. Anyone who wants to pirate could just rent the DVD. So who are they "protecting" by making the downloadable product so user-unfriendly? It looks like the music biz is finally seeing the light on DRM-less downloads, how long before the film biz does as well?
Yes, I have lived in a house (also in New Zealand - Wellington actually) where they had that as well - it's called "ripple control" in NZ. It is not a bad idea. Also, it's not mandatory, if you don't like it then you can connect your hot water to the supply normally and the power co can't do this. However, if you do connect using ripple control, the quid pro quo for letting them "ripple" to manage your usage at peak times is that it's metered separately and you get the power at a cheaper rate. Mostly, people had it, and it has been an unremarkable feature of the system for 30+ years.
That you are travelling on business with your laptop, and have US firms as either suppliers, customers and/or competitors. You have commercially secret information on your laptop. The US Government accesses this, returns the laptop, and lets you in. But, they also pass a copy of this information to some US firms to "help them compete" - possibly costing you millions. This is not far-fetched. In the past the French have been notorious for this - to the extent of bugging business class seats on Air France, and having the French intelligance services pass on key commercial information (eg bid strategies/prices) to french firms. If you have naughty pix of little children then I have no sympathy - you deserve what you get. But, if you have legitimate commercially sensitive information (eg we will bid $52 a share for a share in a Russian Oilfield), you don't deserve to lose contracts and possibly your livelihood because Exxon was tipped off and raised its competing bid to $53.
Sorry, pinning it on BMG dosen't work. This is vintage Sony, and their contempt for their customer. In this country Sony DVD players were the only ones that wern't reliably region free (big deal if you want discs from other regions, which are legal and sold openly). Or then there's the noxious DRM on Minidisc - can't pull a digital copy of something you recorded onto your PC even if you own it, they lied and said minidisc played MP3 when it transcoded instead, the are a key bankroller of the RIAA's standover extortion from kids and grandmothers, they took DRM to a whole new level with Bluray, and of course there's ARCOSS. If you want to go back even further, goofle the underhand way they used misinformation to kill off the Dreamcast.
Sony is the vermin of the consumer electronics industry. You should boycott them not just to make a stand, but because the products they peddle are often no better than the alternatives - they just cost more and always seem to have hidden strings attached. They are underhand, arrogant, dishonest people. Why woould you give them your hard earned money?
I worked for an outfit that made the mistake of signing a loosely worded multi year fixed price contract with an IT provider (we weren't very large) to maintain and administer our systems. Their incentives to make money were to lock down the system totally (the less that could change, the less that could go wrong) to the point where we couldn't even change the default dictionary settings in work, let alone access a USB drive, a c:\ drive, or install software. Our CEO was a moron - we were just "whiners" and the outside contractor was right because "they were the experts". I am not a systems expert, but I knew enough to maintain my own system (prior to this contractor, my use of IT support was pretty close to zero), but I knew how to do my job and I was good at it. With the new system nothing non-standard could be done - including me building the financial models etc that I was good at, and that our customers loved the results of. I stuck it for longer than I should have, because I loved the job itself and the people I worked with.
After six months of battering my head against a brick wall and having endless flame wars and shouting matches with the IT morons, I let it be known I had had enough in the market place. Within a couple of weeks I had two good job offers, and now have a great job paying 35% more, where the IT support is great and I can just get on with the stuff I am good at. If I want something non-standard for me or for the staff I now have working for me then, providing my reasons are sound, it just arrives and is installed. In fact, rather than the protracted justifications I used to have to try and argue before, they normally don't even want to hear a reason now "You are paid well to get the job done, and if you say you need something, then you need it". I don't abuse the trust my new employer shows. As for the place I used to work, most of the good staff have walked, and they have had to restructure and have lost about 2/3 of the headcount they had when I was there. The CEO is still there though, and as far as I am aware the same IT firm still has the support contract.
Postscript - I found out by chance that the same IT provider was one of two preferred bidders for a large contract with my new employer. Took great pleasure in exacting payback by recounting my "war stories" about them to the head of our IT. I doubt they have any idea why their expensively prepared pitch meant that they got all the way to being a preferred bidder, then suddenly fell out of the process for no apparent reason.
I have been screwed by Sony before, and won't buy their craptastic overpriced proprietary junk again. This is the Sony that is pushing ARCOSS, BD+ and every other DRM-poisoned abomination known to man on us. Does anyone think they are doing this bec1ause they want to - its a desperation move because their multiple attempts to fall back on their tried and true strategy of ass-raping their paying customers has failed them in this market. Even if this worked, as soon as the got c1ritic1al mass they would c1ome up with a way to screw the people who had been taken in.
Personally I pretty much stopped buying CDs in 2003 - when a Norah Jones CD I bought started trying to install software without permission when I put it in the drive. Up until that point I would buy 30-40 CDs a year. Now I am down around 3 - and I get the record store to guarantee that they have no DRM on them and I can return for a cash refund if they turn out to have this. Surprisingly, the record store I use has been willing to give me an exchange token with that written on and signed, as a condition of sale, when I have asked. If the music customers won't treat me with respect as a customer when I plonk down mu hard-earned cash, I am happy to stop being a customer.
I don't pirate DVDs (or CDs) - I know how to, but to date I have only copied CDs I own to play at work (after some original discs were stolen after hours) and in the car, and the odd DVD I own to play in the laptop when I am away for work (don't want to lug/lose the original). I am not that fussed that other people do, but my basic ethics mean I don't. Here we have a Fair Trading Act that means that product that is not of merchantable quality can be returned. Were I interested in Casino Royale (I am not) I would officially now have no moral qualms about purchasing it, copying it, and returning for a refund.
Sony, you have just changed the rules - you dont respect my rights, I won't respect yours, GAME ON!
I can remember whan Dad got his first computer for his business. A mighty 64K of Ram and one 140K disk drive. One of the first decent machines on the block so to speak. It was all greek to him. Me, as pimply kid of around 12 did all of the setup, showed him how to use it, did any problem resolution, and wrote some custom bits of code in Applesoft to help automate some of the calculations he had to do. He is long retired now, and I still admin his home machine, and show him how to do things like email and web searches when he does them for the first time. If we could rewind so that I was still 12 now, then this software might well allow one of us to monitor the other if we wanted to (hint: it wouldn't be him monitoring me).