You're right, I forgot all about that. The point was the optical out may conceivably give one a way to make a perfect digital copy of an iTunes Music Store purchase.
I'm complaining because (assuming the story is accurate) it isn't Apple's decision.
The story is not accurate, at least in the sense that Apple's excuse is a valid one. The only way this could be considered "a feature of the product that was not delivered until a later time" would be if the laptops were advertised as having this feature to begin with, which they weren't. Nobody was sold these by Apple with the idea that 802.11n support would be forthcoming. Apple is just trying to deflect complainers.
Given that all 802.11n setups are draft and proprietary at this time, the only way this card is going to be officially supported by Apple is if you're using one of the soon-to-be-released new Apple Airport Extreme base stations, which comes with the patch. So this paid update will only be useful to people who plan to get onto an Apple router but didn't buy it. And if you're in the position to get onto the router, you probably know the owner and can just get the patch from them. I somehow doubt they are going to be tracking these like Excel licenses.
Yes it is, Apple took Microsoft to court over copying its "look and feel". They lost, but not becuae their grounds for had no merit, but because an idiot CEO (Scully) had signed an agreement with Microsoft saying MS could copy it.
Also, have you looked at the iPhone skin on TFA? The "internet" icon is a cropped version of the Safari icon (trademarked art). And there is an icon labeled "iPod" (major Apple trademark). They have no choice but to sue to protect their trademarks.
btw. I bought minidisc equipment shortly before the MP3 revolution and have always regretted my short-sightedness.
I still occasionally think of buying one of the last generation Hi-MD recorders. I'd like to have one for taping. They can play MP3 natively and you can export recordings to your PC (and to unprotected WAV, too). And they can record at quality as high as full PCM.
I actually used my Minidisc for covert recording for a school project recently. I couldn't use my mini cassette recorder as it had no external mic input. But I use a 1GB iPod Shuffle (1st gen) for playing music now. In device recording abilities is something I am still waiting to see in iPods.
No, it doesn't happen on the plain line out. Thanks for the heads up. I'm sure the fact both the minidisc player and the DVD player were Sony didn't make this any better.
It isn't a problem any longer as that DVD is no longer working. The model is actually part of a class action lawsuit against Sony, but I wont be able to get in on the settlement since I have little proof of purchase (it's was bought 5 years ago after all).
Apple backs security patches to the previous OS generation. They are releasing security patches for OS 10.4 and 10.3.9 at the moment. So you only have to buy every other release to keep getting patches. It's true Apple was releasing a new version of OSX every year for awhile there, but they have publicly stated they intend to stop doing this, which is why 10.5 has been more than a year coming.
Hey, I remember flashing my Supra Fax Modem every few months with better connections, new modulations, more stability, even a 28.8 to 33.6 upgrade. USR Courier modems had similar support.
Well, but the Supras were actual hardware modems with DSP's. You had a ROM to flash after all. I was referring to those cheap controllerless modems ("WinModems") that came with lots of cheap OEM PC's. Lots of the marketing ideas behind those was that they were less expensive (from fewer chips) and easily upgradeable since they were mostly software emulating the missing chips. But in reality they offered a lower quality connections, slowed down lower power processors, and never really lived up to their upgrade claims (the 33.6 to 56kbps jump).
Apple is about to license its Fairplay DRM to Made for iPod accessory manufacturers [C. It's reported that Apple will also allow streaming of protected AAC content via USB.
That should be interesting considering there are USB to Optical adapters.
Could this signal a move to allowing other music players to access and play ITMS content?"
Only if these other players have the ability to record the content. When I tried to record a song from a DVD (music video playing) to my Minidisc via optical, all I got was "NO COPY" flashing on my player's display.
Anyone noticed the draw of the Microsoft Zune becoming stronger?
Uh, No. I haven't heard crap about the Zune since last Christmas. I don't know why it would have anything to do with this summary to begin with. The Zune has no less restrictive DRM than iTunes. Looks like someone was just looking for a reason to mention the Zune to me. [rolleyes]
And the demons climbing over them, pushing their way through your makeshift barricades. In fact, that could've been damn fine with tables, chairs, etc, let alone corpses.
They would have had to rethink the character health rules. The might have to make the player self-healing (your health would increase slowly with no user action), otherwise you could have a situation where a player cannot access a room with an important item (color key, switch, ect) because a large demon corpse is blocking the passage and the player has insufficient strength (health) to remove it themselves. They could wait for a demon to come along and tear through the corpse while trying to attack the player, but that would be a long shot.
but you don't see anyone complaining that users have to pay a license fee to unlock the Quicktime Pro bundle of features that already exist on your Mac in a disabled state.
Sure you do. Any time there's a major upgrade to QuickTime (like new version number, I also think the 6.0.X to 6.5 upgrade did this) the Pro keys get reset. So if you pay for QuickTime Pro's abilities, then later download and install a free QuickTime upgrade (even as part of a new version of iTunes), you have to buy a new Pro key. And whenever this happens there's a bunch of people on the Mac forums who complain about it. Many ask as soon as the upgrade is announced before they install anything.
It seems a little silly that you have to pay for the patch, but what room does anyone have to complain about this?
Q. Were you sold a notebook from Apple promising 802.11n capability?
A. No. You bought a laptop that was sold as being 802.11g compatable, that happened to contain 802.11n capable hardware.
Q. Were you promised the update would be free?
A. No, you were not even promised there would be an "upgrade" patch. You assumed it would be a free software patch based solely on the fact the hardware was 802.11n capable.
I'm reminded of all those people who bought "software-based" modems for their PCs under the marketed idea upgrading the modem would be as simple as downloading new software. Then the software-based upgrades for higher connection speeds never materialized, and to get a higher speed modem the consumer ended up having to buy a new modem, just like the people how bought modems with their own hardware controllers.
The lesson: If you don't get it when you buy it, expect that it may not appear at all.
I wish corpses remained solid. It would add a whole new element to gameplay, making it a priority to get your butt through a hallway before the corpses pile up to the ceiling.
Think what this could have done for Doom. Demons with variable mass! A demon in the hall that is too large to push past at 20% health, but you can at 60% (or if you have a Bezerker Pack). Demon corpses blocking the path of new demons. How about being able to pick up demon corpses and throw them at oncoming attackers?
Yes, but it uses a series of waves. many small waves from other users combine to become a tsunami of information washing over you.
This is an entirely different type of software. It uses a series of tubes coming from other users. The more tubes you have pointing to you, the more internets you can get at once!
As for why IT staff don't always respect their customers, try working in support. Customers threaten you, provide you with no information, blame you for everything.
They're also very manipulative. Like the customers that are rude and uncooperative with the front line staff, and when their case gets escalated up to supervisors and senior techs, suddenly get very polite and accepting of what they are told.
Or the ones that complain to the support staff's supervisors that the staff was rude and refused to help them, when the staff were actually polite but the customer's issue was one the staff cannot support (like another vendor's equipment).
IT staff sometimes have trouble respecting users because it can be hard to trust them not to "shoot the messenger".
Especially when traveling long distances and the cord gets damaged. But I do have and idea how to get it when it falls into the Grand Canyon while on vacation.
How is this rolling back fair use? You act like cable companies planned to release digital cable just so you can't record with your vcr.
Maybe that wasn't so much what the cablecos were thinking, but I'm sure content providers were.
As is is you could just get a dvr which does have that ability and record the shows.
Remember that digital cable predates DVRs. So at the time it came out, no, you couldn't just get a DVR. Also, Most third party DVRs do not have the ability to control a cable box. TiVos do, but their ability to use the serial port is dependent on the cableco keeping the port active.
Has the availability of DVRs progressed entirely on its own? Or has the lack of flexibility in digital cable usage had any influence on it? To me this progression to DVR and calling VCRs "obsolete" is really a version of consumer TV usage working to compensate for new DRM methods, but nobody is noticing it for being that.
The only DVR that is always going to be able to record off of/control a digital box is the cableco's own DVR, which you have to pay them a monthly fee for. Here's something to try: Take the premium you pay over a regular digital converter to have a cableco DVR each month and multiply it by 12. Now compare that cost to the price of a good VCR. This will give you an idea why I consider it "rolling back fair use rights".
Yes digital cable makes the vcr recording method obsolete for digital channels but honestly at this point vcrs themselves are obsolete.
You're still looking at just the immediate. Keep in mind digital cable has been around for years now. How long have VCR's been obsolete? One year? Maybe two. To say it doesn't matter because "this device is considered passé" is making excuses and ignoring the bigger picture.
The recordings on a DVR stay on the DVR. If I cancel my cable subscription, COX will take back their DVR and I'll lose all the recordings I had on it. Same if the box becomes "deauthorized" because I didn't pay my bill. The recordings on the box are stored in their encrypted format, so pulling the drive is also useless. What just happened was the consumer lost their ability to own their recordings. They now rent the right to see them, or a better term might be "license". That's not progress to me.
Sad thing I just realized, even with cable cards and people being able to buy their own boxes and use them between providers, the recordings will still be stored in their encrypted format. So if you change providers, you might as well erase the old recordings because you wont be able to view them, your box no longer as a security authorization to decrypt the old provider's signal.
It's too early to really say how this is going to work when non-TiVo CableCard DVRs are commonplace (DVRs you buy and don't have to play a monthly service fee for), but I don't ever expect to see a Myth box that can take a cable card, unless you add a bunch of DRM to the file format. Content providers will not want boxes that record unencrypted video streams having Cable Card access.
Also you are a bit misguided on the whole cant record multiple channels thing on the vcr. You can still record any of your basic channels just not any of the digital ones.
As cable companies renegotiate and shuffle their channel listings, you'll find that more and more of the more popular stations are becoming part of that digital tier. Time Warner recently bought out an L.A.-area market from the collapse of Adelphia, and one of the first things they did was move Animal Planet, National Geographic Channel, and a few other stations that for years have been analog channels on almost all providers up to Time-Warner's digital-only region.
I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating.
Just because the country as a whole has not converted doesn't mean the submitter as an individual can't. I personally consider Monday the first day of the week (for a variety of reasons). But I can't get a normal calendar with this setup in the U.S. it seems. Apparently there are a lot of other countries where Monday is the beginning of the week. But I don't let an obviously religious-influenced standard stop me personally. I can set my Yahoo Calendar to Monday as first of week, and I think I may skip a regular wall calendar.
If they weren't required to give out cablecards already, then all the people with Tivo S3's would be getting stonewalled more often, since many in the first round were told they couldn't have them until they cited FCC regulations, when the cable companies relented.
That's funny. That's exactly what brought this about at our company a few months ago. Someone called for a CableCard, we said we didn't offer them, they called back after having spoke to TiVo (citing FCC Plug and Play laws), the issue was escalated up to corporate, and corporate replied back that the law does not take effect till July.
I think we would actually do some research into the matter before making a statement like that.
It does include GPS, which is nice, but the iPhone doesn't.
Yes it does. Remember the keynote part where Steve used Google maps to locate the closest Starbucks to the convention center? Guess how Google Maps knew where the iPhone was.
Rubbish. The trademark suit occurred after they launched it.
That's true. But at the time they introduced the iPhone they did not have a signed agreement in place and were using Cisco's trademarked name for its own VoIP phone. They knew the was a very real possibility of getting sued, so why help Cisco's case by putting the iPhone name on a device that can do exactly the same thing as the existing Cisco device?
Apple could have revolutionized the mobile phone industry by making a mobile phone that was a true general purpose device, what a terrible missed opportunity.
What opportunity has Apple missed? To miss an opportunity one would have to have already done something with no chance of reversing it. What's to stop Apple from coming out with a statement tomorrow morning saying "Oh, we changed our minds, there will be a SDK in a month." They could do it after the iPhone is released if they wanted to. We're talking about what amounts to a small computer, not a primitive cell phone who's entire feature list is set in stone as soon as the ROM is burned.
Here's a novel idea, lets not declare the iPhone a success or a failure until its actually been released.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to see it as:
Everyone's all for spying, until they're the ones being spied on.
You're right, I forgot all about that. The point was the optical out may conceivably give one a way to make a perfect digital copy of an iTunes Music Store purchase.
The story is not accurate, at least in the sense that Apple's excuse is a valid one. The only way this could be considered "a feature of the product that was not delivered until a later time" would be if the laptops were advertised as having this feature to begin with, which they weren't. Nobody was sold these by Apple with the idea that 802.11n support would be forthcoming. Apple is just trying to deflect complainers.
Given that all 802.11n setups are draft and proprietary at this time, the only way this card is going to be officially supported by Apple is if you're using one of the soon-to-be-released new Apple Airport Extreme base stations, which comes with the patch. So this paid update will only be useful to people who plan to get onto an Apple router but didn't buy it. And if you're in the position to get onto the router, you probably know the owner and can just get the patch from them. I somehow doubt they are going to be tracking these like Excel licenses.
Yes it is, Apple took Microsoft to court over copying its "look and feel". They lost, but not becuae their grounds for had no merit, but because an idiot CEO (Scully) had signed an agreement with Microsoft saying MS could copy it.
Also, have you looked at the iPhone skin on TFA?
The "internet" icon is a cropped version of the Safari icon (trademarked art). And there is an icon labeled "iPod" (major Apple trademark). They have no choice but to sue to protect their trademarks.
That modem upgrading stuff and the 56K standards war was a long time ago. Even the most recent version of the V.90 spec was approved Nov 2000.
;-)
Wasn't SOX something that got passed in response to Enron?
I still occasionally think of buying one of the last generation Hi-MD recorders. I'd like to have one for taping. They can play MP3 natively and you can export recordings to your PC (and to unprotected WAV, too). And they can record at quality as high as full PCM.
I actually used my Minidisc for covert recording for a school project recently. I couldn't use my mini cassette recorder as it had no external mic input. But I use a 1GB iPod Shuffle (1st gen) for playing music now. In device recording abilities is something I am still waiting to see in iPods.
No, it doesn't happen on the plain line out. Thanks for the heads up. I'm sure the fact both the minidisc player and the DVD player were Sony didn't make this any better.
It isn't a problem any longer as that DVD is no longer working. The model is actually part of a class action lawsuit against Sony, but I wont be able to get in on the settlement since I have little proof of purchase (it's was bought 5 years ago after all).
Apple backs security patches to the previous OS generation. They are releasing security patches for OS 10.4 and 10.3.9 at the moment. So you only have to buy every other release to keep getting patches. It's true Apple was releasing a new version of OSX every year for awhile there, but they have publicly stated they intend to stop doing this, which is why 10.5 has been more than a year coming.
Well, but the Supras were actual hardware modems with DSP's. You had a ROM to flash after all. I was referring to those cheap controllerless modems ("WinModems") that came with lots of cheap OEM PC's. Lots of the marketing ideas behind those was that they were less expensive (from fewer chips) and easily upgradeable since they were mostly software emulating the missing chips. But in reality they offered a lower quality connections, slowed down lower power processors, and never really lived up to their upgrade claims (the 33.6 to 56kbps jump).
That should be interesting considering there are USB to Optical adapters.
Only if these other players have the ability to record the content. When I tried to record a song from a DVD (music video playing) to my Minidisc via optical, all I got was "NO COPY" flashing on my player's display.
Uh, No. I haven't heard crap about the Zune since last Christmas. I don't know why it would have anything to do with this summary to begin with. The Zune has no less restrictive DRM than iTunes. Looks like someone was just looking for a reason to mention the Zune to me. [rolleyes]
They would have had to rethink the character health rules. The might have to make the player self-healing (your health would increase slowly with no user action), otherwise you could have a situation where a player cannot access a room with an important item (color key, switch, ect) because a large demon corpse is blocking the passage and the player has insufficient strength (health) to remove it themselves. They could wait for a demon to come along and tear through the corpse while trying to attack the player, but that would be a long shot.
Sure you do. Any time there's a major upgrade to QuickTime (like new version number, I also think the 6.0.X to 6.5 upgrade did this) the Pro keys get reset. So if you pay for QuickTime Pro's abilities, then later download and install a free QuickTime upgrade (even as part of a new version of iTunes), you have to buy a new Pro key. And whenever this happens there's a bunch of people on the Mac forums who complain about it. Many ask as soon as the upgrade is announced before they install anything.
I'm reminded of all those people who bought "software-based" modems for their PCs under the marketed idea upgrading the modem would be as simple as downloading new software. Then the software-based upgrades for higher connection speeds never materialized, and to get a higher speed modem the consumer ended up having to buy a new modem, just like the people how bought modems with their own hardware controllers.
The lesson: If you don't get it when you buy it, expect that it may not appear at all.
Think what this could have done for Doom. Demons with variable mass! A demon in the hall that is too large to push past at 20% health, but you can at 60% (or if you have a Bezerker Pack). Demon corpses blocking the path of new demons. How about being able to pick up demon corpses and throw them at oncoming attackers?
I'm actually rather disappointed they didn't pick a title with some irony, like a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Yes, but it uses a series of waves. many small waves from other users combine to become a tsunami of information washing over you.
This is an entirely different type of software. It uses a series of tubes coming from other users. The more tubes you have pointing to you, the more internets you can get at once!
*Don't worry. (Stupid spell-checker)
Don't work, that will change soon enough. I'm sure this wont be the last time we read the "last word".
They're also very manipulative. Like the customers that are rude and uncooperative with the front line staff, and when their case gets escalated up to supervisors and senior techs, suddenly get very polite and accepting of what they are told.
Or the ones that complain to the support staff's supervisors that the staff was rude and refused to help them, when the staff were actually polite but the customer's issue was one the staff cannot support (like another vendor's equipment).
IT staff sometimes have trouble respecting users because it can be hard to trust them not to "shoot the messenger".
Especially when traveling long distances and the cord gets damaged. But I do have and idea how to get it when it falls into the Grand Canyon while on vacation.
Maybe that wasn't so much what the cablecos were thinking, but I'm sure content providers were.
Remember that digital cable predates DVRs. So at the time it came out, no, you couldn't just get a DVR. Also, Most third party DVRs do not have the ability to control a cable box. TiVos do, but their ability to use the serial port is dependent on the cableco keeping the port active.
Has the availability of DVRs progressed entirely on its own? Or has the lack of flexibility in digital cable usage had any influence on it? To me this progression to DVR and calling VCRs "obsolete" is really a version of consumer TV usage working to compensate for new DRM methods, but nobody is noticing it for being that.
The only DVR that is always going to be able to record off of/control a digital box is the cableco's own DVR, which you have to pay them a monthly fee for. Here's something to try: Take the premium you pay over a regular digital converter to have a cableco DVR each month and multiply it by 12. Now compare that cost to the price of a good VCR. This will give you an idea why I consider it "rolling back fair use rights".
You're still looking at just the immediate. Keep in mind digital cable has been around for years now. How long have VCR's been obsolete? One year? Maybe two. To say it doesn't matter because "this device is considered passé" is making excuses and ignoring the bigger picture.
The recordings on a DVR stay on the DVR. If I cancel my cable subscription, COX will take back their DVR and I'll lose all the recordings I had on it. Same if the box becomes "deauthorized" because I didn't pay my bill. The recordings on the box are stored in their encrypted format, so pulling the drive is also useless. What just happened was the consumer lost their ability to own their recordings. They now rent the right to see them, or a better term might be "license". That's not progress to me.
Sad thing I just realized, even with cable cards and people being able to buy their own boxes and use them between providers, the recordings will still be stored in their encrypted format. So if you change providers, you might as well erase the old recordings because you wont be able to view them, your box no longer as a security authorization to decrypt the old provider's signal.
It's too early to really say how this is going to work when non-TiVo CableCard DVRs are commonplace (DVRs you buy and don't have to play a monthly service fee for), but I don't ever expect to see a Myth box that can take a cable card, unless you add a bunch of DRM to the file format. Content providers will not want boxes that record unencrypted video streams having Cable Card access.
As cable companies renegotiate and shuffle their channel listings, you'll find that more and more of the more popular stations are becoming part of that digital tier. Time Warner recently bought out an L.A.-area market from the collapse of Adelphia, and one of the first things they did was move Animal Planet, National Geographic Channel, and a few other stations that for years have been analog channels on almost all providers up to Time-Warner's digital-only region.
Just because the country as a whole has not converted doesn't mean the submitter as an individual can't. I personally consider Monday the first day of the week (for a variety of reasons). But I can't get a normal calendar with this setup in the U.S. it seems. Apparently there are a lot of other countries where Monday is the beginning of the week. But I don't let an obviously religious-influenced standard stop me personally. I can set my Yahoo Calendar to Monday as first of week, and I think I may skip a regular wall calendar.
If they weren't required to give out cablecards already, then all the people with Tivo S3's would be getting stonewalled more often, since many in the first round were told they couldn't have them until they cited FCC regulations, when the cable companies relented.
That's funny. That's exactly what brought this about at our company a few months ago. Someone called for a CableCard, we said we didn't offer them, they called back after having spoke to TiVo (citing FCC Plug and Play laws), the issue was escalated up to corporate, and corporate replied back that the law does not take effect till July.
I think we would actually do some research into the matter before making a statement like that.
Yes it does. Remember the keynote part where Steve used Google maps to locate the closest Starbucks to the convention center? Guess how Google Maps knew where the iPhone was.
That's true. But at the time they introduced the iPhone they did not have a signed agreement in place and were using Cisco's trademarked name for its own VoIP phone. They knew the was a very real possibility of getting sued, so why help Cisco's case by putting the iPhone name on a device that can do exactly the same thing as the existing Cisco device?
What opportunity has Apple missed? To miss an opportunity one would have to have already done something with no chance of reversing it. What's to stop Apple from coming out with a statement tomorrow morning saying "Oh, we changed our minds, there will be a SDK in a month." They could do it after the iPhone is released if they wanted to. We're talking about what amounts to a small computer, not a primitive cell phone who's entire feature list is set in stone as soon as the ROM is burned.
Here's a novel idea, lets not declare the iPhone a success or a failure until its actually been released.