If there wasnt an artificial scarcity on hard to produce, easy to copy items then really how many films would we be enjoying now?... I will tell you now, not many at all. When it comes down to it... without the artificial scarcity we would have rather less entertainment.
Which, in the United States, is the reason the Constitution grants the power to establish Copyright to the Congress. It's supposed to be a trade off: a time-limited monopoly on your creation (which is easy to copy), and then it goes to the public domain. Unfortuately "time-limited" is sufficiently vague as to allow those who create Copyrightable products to lobby/bribe Congressperson into extending that limited time without apparant bound.
Next time you claim the artificial scarcity is an abuse of power, just think of the diversity and entertainment value that that scarcity has produced.
And consider the LACK of diversity caused by people holding on to "intellecutal property," preventing its re-incorporation into derivative works. Really, should you have to get Fox's permission to include a 5-second shot of an old episode of The Simpsons in the background of a shot in your documentary?
Let me get this? $500 to be a developer on an OS that is even more marginal than Linux. I guess it's part of the whole Apple mystique to pay for everything.
Apple gives away their development tools with the OS. The $500 gets you a one-year membership in the developer program, which gets you advance access to OS releases. This is similar to Microsoft's MSDN subscriptions. As compared to an MSDN subscription, I think it's a bargain. Microsoft's MSDN Operating Systems subscription (access just to Microsoft's OSs) is $699 the first year, and $499 thereafter. Want Visual Studio with that? $1,199 for the first year, $899 thereafter. (And, of course, the even higher-level subscriptions with all of Microsoft's server & desktop apps...)
Oh, and Apple lets you buy one system per year at discount when you're in the developer program. If you're looking for the high-end PowerMac G5 and a Cinema Display, you can save several hundred dollars when you buy the system.
the market decided that it did not want a multiplatform OS
As much as Windows NT was multi-platform, the application software generally wasn't. This is why I feel that non-x86 NT failed. If you needed an application, you had to find the right version -- and many applications were never available on MIPS or PowerPC.
But now that Microsoft has a PC emulator, they could let the x86 programs run on non-x86 Windows versions. Is it enough to change the decision? Probably not, but I'd certainly hope that someone at Microsoft is working on it, just in case Intel and AMD would become hostile to Microsoft.
Lag is an artifact of an poorly provisioned network. If you had end-to-end, trusted QoS, lag would never be noticable. Every important packet - voice, game, etc - would be delivered on time, and all the background "junk" - web, e-mail, BitTorrents - would fill the gaps between the important stuff that can't tolerate delay.
The trouble with VoIP is the dependence on QoS, which most third parties can't provide. I've been tempted to try Speakeasy Voice, since they should be capable of setting good QoS for the VoIP service. But I still haven't checked pricing to see if it would actually save me money over traditional phone & DSL.
1) Composite coaxial connector: Original, standard TV. Compatible with color or B&W. This make sense. The original, over-the-air, frequency-modulated signal.
2) Composite video: Same exact thing, just a different connector. No better quality AFAIK. Why was this created? This is an unmodulated, single video connection. It saves the cost of a modulator/demodulator, which is needed to put the signal on a "channel" over standard co-ax. Also, the audio signal is carried separately.
3) S-video: Supposed to fix the problems of "composite" video signals, but it doesn't look any better. Still a crappy analog interlaced YRB signal. Separates luminance and chrominance onto separate wires, eliminating the mux/demux of these two analog signals into the single "composite" signal. (Which is composite only due to the upgrade from B&W to Color, which was a very neat backwards compatibility trick.)
4) Y-Pr-Pb component output: Silly. RGB is better, and was already supported by monitors, computers, and projectors. What is the point of this? Splits the chrominance into two separate signals. Not entirely sure why. (Educated guess? The chrominance was split into Red (r) and Blue (b) components. But that's just a guess.)
5) Y-Cr-Cb component output: Digital version of Y-Pr-Pb. DVI is better. Usually mislabeled as Y-Pr-Pb anyway. I'll have to take your word for it. (I think they're just using the standard chrominance (C) label instead of the 'P' label.. for partial? Again, just a guess.)
6) VGA - Been around for >20 years, and is superior to all of the above. VGA is 640x480, no more, no less. The physical VGA link has been co-opted for higher resolutions. The physical link is pure analog, and it's better only because we've demanded better quality out of the transmitter (video card) and receiver (monitor), such as higher resolutions (1280x1024) and refresh frequency (85Hz).
7) DVI - Digital replacement for VGA. The best. As long as you have an all-digital path. But, then, any digital transmission mechanism would suffice. FireWire (IEEE 1394) makes a good digitial transmission link. With digital, it's all about the signal bitrate and the medium's maximum bitrate. FireWire has plently of room for HD signals.
Even more frustrating is that TVs are RGB, so why did the industry continue to adopt YRB signal standards when it is both inconvenient to send, and to receive? Because of backwards compatibility! The original B&W TV only used a luminance (Y) signal. This was great, but when TV's went color they wanted a backwards-compatibile system. So they used some nice signal magic and piggybacked a chrominance (C) signal over the Y. This meant a color receiver got colors, and a B&W receiver still received B&W reasonably. It's been a backwards compatibility game since the beginning.
150 watts at the wall. Part of that is due to inefficiency in the power supply. That "idle" system also contains a graphics card which is continuously flinging data out a port (VGA or DVI) to a monitor to display something. The hard drives may be spinning. DRAM requires periodic refreshes or it loses data. So that "idle" system still has a lot of internal maintenance functions to do. The CPU is the largest single chunk of system power usage, but most of the power goes to other components in the system.
This is why Energy Star settings like "Turn off Monitor" and "Turn off Hard Disks" provide real savings. These features help turn off other, unused functions within the computer. I'd be interested to see what the power usage drops to after the computer puts the display & hard drive to sleep.
"7 processors" = 1 microcontroller (M30803) ("Logical processor") @ 20MHz and 1 DSP (MSP 430) ("Analog processor"), both released in the 2001 timeframe + 5 "Automata" inside an FPGA (write protection/addressing windows, main timing control, access control, button control, and LCD processor... or touchscreen process control, graphic control/LCD clipping, memory optimation/bank switching, main timing control, and main bus interfaces, depending on whichpage you check.
Look at Palm devices: more and more games are being added to the library for this family of PDA's. A lot of games are coming out for Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. The only drawback for these systems is a lack of internal storage.
Look at iPods: a ton of local storage, a well-designed user interface, and the "cool" factor that marketing companies spend billions searching for. But other than video and some basic text notes (that you can't edit on the device), the iPods and other hard drive-based media centers can't play games or do other "computerish" tasks.
What happens when we combine these two products? Eve. It's a Pocket PC, but since it runs "XP Embedded" you can theoretically run any existing PC game. Spend a little time and effort, and you won't even need a USB keyboard. You could also just store music or video on there.
It's an RCA Lyra with a bit more processing power and an add-on controller. If they can hit the $500 point next year, there might (might) be a market, but I think more people will buy it for high quality video on a teeny screen than for any gaming options.
Ooooh, and wi-fi, so you can watch the videos on the other Eves are you...
Here's what I dug up from their horrible site. It's buried in the Terms & Conditions, http://www.sonyconnect.com/tos.html. With my observed differences to iTMS added for flavor.
Three PC's running Connect which may play your purchased files. Which is only available on PCs, no Mac version. iTMS just increased this to 5 PC's.
Each track may be "burned" 10 times: 5 times as a compressed, DRM protected file, and 5 times as an unprotected CD audio track. iTMS makes no claims on limiting the number of times you may copy the protected file. Each track can be burned from a single playlist 7 times (two more than Connect), and from different playlists over and over (no total burn limit).
Unlimited copies to devices which support OpenMG copy protection. Unless you have a file from "WMG", which can only be placed on 3 portable devices. All of the compatible devices are made by Sony. iTMS lets you make unlimited copies to iPods, made by Apple. Depends on the device you like.
Sounds likes iTMS has them blown away. I'm not sure how (or if) these are enforced by Connect. How you do keep people from backing up their purchased files to CDs?
Sorry Real, but I don't see any need for the iPod to support yet another proprietary audio format. The iPod can deal with stanard AAC and MP3, and Apple's FairPlay AAC. Ogg Vorbis would be nice, as it is an open standard that anyone can implement royalty-free, but I can live with what I have right now. Real and Windows Media? I wouldn't have bought my iPod if I needed them.
The beauty (to me, the consumer) of FairPlay DRM is that every track bought from the iTunes Store comes with the same rights. I don't have to wonder what I can do with my purchases, or read any fine print. I like that. I doubt I'll ever buy off of another online store, because it's a problem I don't need... unless someone else starts selling FairPlay AAC files or standard un-mangled files.
Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you aren't referencing "Big Mac" at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are two entirely distinct insitutions.
Sega had its second (third, if you count Sega CD for the Genesis) "optical media console" out before the PlayStation 2. Remember Saturn and then Dreamcast?
Compatibility is a bigger selling point for people who haven't owned the prior console. The weak point of any new system is the lack of games right at introduction. Compatibility lets you play some of those older games that you haven't played before (i.e., Spyro) while you wait for all the nice, shiny new "next-gen" games for your brand new console. Dreamcast might have done a lot better if it could have piggy-backed on the (pitifully small) Saturn library while its own (pitifully small) software library was being developed.
Why buy a 256MB memory module when, for just $50 more, you could buy a 512MB module? Because you don't need the extra 256MB? Because the 256MB module is higher performance, meets your needs better? So it's not just about specs, is it? No, it's about what fits your needs.
For electronics enthusiasts (read: geeks like me), the iPod is our ulitmate music player. The iPod Mini is just the bastard son of our great idol, and lots of people feel compelled to point out "for $50 more, you can..."
Yeah, you can get 15GB for $50 more. 11GB for $50. The next step, 5GB more for $100 isn't so appealing, until you realize that there's a $40 dock (if purchased separately) in that package. Hmmm, but for yet ANOTHER $100 you can go to 40GB! Wow! The biggest, the best, the maximum spec! for only $500!
Perhaps Apple is targeting people who don't check "the specs." Maybe they're targeting people who don't care for white/metal cases. I already have a 30GB iPod, and my girlfriend has a "4th gen" 20GB iPod. They're all we need, and we won't be buying any Mini's. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have gotten one, if they had been available when we bought our iPods.
If the iPod Mini had been out last Christmas, my girlfriend probably would've asked for the Mini, because she doesn't care for the white/metal appearance. Blue, I think, would have been her preference. The smaller size would also make it easier to fit into her purse.
The point wasn't to have a 20GB player, but since the 10GB and 20GB were the same size, I decided to splurge. I think she has about 5GB of music on it, and I'm sure she could trim it if she only had 4GB of space. Apple was just a few months late for me, but I doubt they'll complain since they got our business anyway.
I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1999. At that time, there were quite a few labs that used Macintosh systems, most notably the Math Emporium, a 217-computer lab for math classes. I also know that the English department labs used Mac systems when I was there, and I don't expect that has changed, either.
Personally, I don't expect any of the 1,100 G5 desktops will make their way back to Apple or be sold outside of the University. There are plenty of computer labs that could use the upgrades, and if there are any systems left over I'm sure a mini-cluster for testing out new software releases wouldn't be unreasonable use for a few.
Although I do like the idea of engraving the systems, like "This computer was node 243 of 1,100 in Big Mac v1." It would be something that you can show to alumni, because showing stuff like that to alumni results in additional contributions to the University.
DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.
Yes, that wonderful Microsoft definition of "free", which means "bundled into the price you paid for the OS, or the price the OEM paid and passed along to you." When Microsoft released the WMV code & player for Linux (even if it is binary-only), then we can talk about free beer.
There is a player for Mac, but it's out of date and not compatible with the latest WMV9 files.
DivX also has WMV beat in terms of availability to run on other systems. Heaven forbid people would actually have to find & install software!
I'm a graduate of Virginia Tech. The article you linked to, however, thinks the school is called Virginia Tech University. Every time I think there's no way for me to have a lower opinion of journalists, I discover something new. (As if ESPN's pronuniation of "VA Tech" as "vah tech" wasn't bad enough...)
See, I find this part of the law distasteful. If someone is breaking the law, you should be required to minimize your losses. In this case, minimizing the losses would require taking down "illegal" servers. If you allowed an "illegal" server to stay active but instead logged all traffic to and from it, I think that should be considered implict permission for that server to operate.
Similar things apply to the SCO "case". If their IP is valuable and is in the kernel, then they should either publish "their" code (remember, it's copyrighted, so they don't lose any rights by publishing it in a limited manner) or simply take the Linux kernel themselves, remove "their" code, and release a "cleaned" kernel. Failure to take either option should immediately cause their monetary losses to be $0. (Not that they still couldn't go after IBM or SGI et al for contributing the code.)
Maybe VT can use the new computers to beef up their web site.
May I mod that completely unneccessary stab at my alma mater as -1 Flamebait?
While I was a student at Virginia Tech ('94-'99, including a year of co-op) as a Computer Engineering student, I was always impressed by the diversity of computing resources throughout the university. Each department generally sided with a single environment (DECstations to FreeBSD PCs for CS, Windows (AutoCAD) for Engineering, Macintosh for Math & English), although all were supported. Even all the way back to the mainframe and its dumb terminals, which students used to sign up for classes. The general student at Virginia Tech learned, by necessity, how to do the basics across a variety of systems.
I'm happy to see Virginia Tech continue its push forward. "Commodity supercomputers" through clustering almost always refer to Intel-architecture systems. Why not Apples as well? It's a brilliant move forward, not only for the computational power this involves but also from a P.R. perspective... would all those high-school techies have heard about this if they chose an Intel architecture solution? And Apple will get good P.R. as the building blocks behind a supercomputer.
It's infinitely safer to control who has it in the first place.
But that requires fixing the people in an organization, usually starting at the top of the organization. Whereas the people at the top of the organization prefer to fix the software in the organization, and are more than happy to give Microsoft their company's money.
Besides, any "encryption" that Microsoft uses will surely have some form of key escrow, either for the companies who lose all the information on their server, for companies who have a rogue admin who deletes all access information, or for the government when it has to investigate a company for "national security concerns".
And I bet you each copy of Office will require activation, and receive a "token" from MS that is used as part of the authentication system. You can tell "who" made a document. You could even trace parts of documents (copied & pasted between documents) back to their original source & original "token".
So if MS can keep all copies of Office "legit" (ha!), they can trace back to the first person/entity to inject a macro virus into the world. Oh, your old document doesn't have authentication? Immediately strip all macros as part of the conversion. Immediately the world becomes "safe" from the macro virus (ha-ha-ha), without even having to set a security permission other than "Everyone Full Control w/o Authentication" on the document.
Alternatively, corporations could set better controls... only allow workstations to open files created within the company regardless of permission. Could this be used as a defense against trade-secret misappropriation? "How could we have read their design, Judge, since our corporate policy prevents our users from opening documents that are not created within the company?" It also is a double-whammy against the macro viruses, unless your employess write them.
Sure, permission caching can be self-defeating if you set the cache to hold on to an authentication token for a year. But this is a general problem with permission cacing in general, and not unique to anything Microsoft might choose to implement.
Maximum security requires frequent re-authorization. Daily. Hourly. Every 15 minutes.
A good authentication server would be able to tell you who has a cached authorization token, so then when you decide to revoke access to a file you can tell which people have a cache token on their laptops that you need to kill ASAP.
So far as leaking secrets to competitors, the DRM "solution" simply requires you to convert across an independent medium... printout, screenshot, photograph of screen. The only thing this "DRM" provides is the ability to mass-distribute a document within a company without worrying that someone might be on a mailing list that they're not supposed to be on... since everyone has to authenticate to read the attached document, they'd have to use an authenticated account to read it.
The SoMo4 (the knock-knock phone) is a great idea, though. By being able to communicate not just that I want to talk, but the importance I place on the conversation, it makes it much easier for the other person to decide if it's a good time or not. Even for me, as a call receiver.
"Caller ID" phone numbers are a bad method of determining priority. People call for multiple reasons, and people call for all sorts of devices... including devices owned by another person. Any method of letting me know that someone who I trust is there and wants to talk to me is good. The "secret knock" would be tremendously functional, so that someone could get my attention regardless of where they're calling from.
Not that we explicitly need the "knock-knock" style, but if my cell phone provider always asked the caller "Select a Priority" before ringing me, and then letting me see that priority, it could enhance the experience for me. So when I'm just sitting around I can take those Priority-5 "Hey what's up?" calls, but when I go into the theater I could set my phone to reject everything but Prioirty-0 calls (which I would leave the theater take).
There are all sorts of "permission" issues for things, but this can be handled with passcode-type answers (where anything above a certain level requires a code to be accepted) or automated system permissions (calls from hospitals would always be allowed to go to a higher level than other calls), without requiring me to identify based on phone numbers.
Sooooo...Microsoft should be forced to continue to charge a high price for its product in order to benefit consumers?
I think Microsoft should have to charge more for their products to protect consumers! Make Microsoft jack the price of Windows up to $2,500 per copy so that everyone will get a clue and switch to Linux or go buy new Macs.
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If there wasnt an artificial scarcity on hard to produce, easy to copy items then really how many films would we be enjoying now? ... I will tell you now, not many at all. When it comes down to it ... without the artificial scarcity we would have rather less entertainment.
Which, in the United States, is the reason the Constitution grants the power to establish Copyright to the Congress. It's supposed to be a trade off: a time-limited monopoly on your creation (which is easy to copy), and then it goes to the public domain. Unfortuately "time-limited" is sufficiently vague as to allow those who create Copyrightable products to lobby/bribe Congressperson into extending that limited time without apparant bound.
Next time you claim the artificial scarcity is an abuse of power, just think of the diversity and entertainment value that that scarcity has produced.
And consider the LACK of diversity caused by people holding on to "intellecutal property," preventing its re-incorporation into derivative works. Really, should you have to get Fox's permission to include a 5-second shot of an old episode of The Simpsons in the background of a shot in your documentary?
Let me get this? $500 to be a developer on an OS that is even more marginal than Linux. I guess it's part of the whole Apple mystique to pay for everything.
Apple gives away their development tools with the OS. The $500 gets you a one-year membership in the developer program, which gets you advance access to OS releases. This is similar to Microsoft's MSDN subscriptions. As compared to an MSDN subscription, I think it's a bargain. Microsoft's MSDN Operating Systems subscription (access just to Microsoft's OSs) is $699 the first year, and $499 thereafter. Want Visual Studio with that? $1,199 for the first year, $899 thereafter. (And, of course, the even higher-level subscriptions with all of Microsoft's server & desktop apps...)
Oh, and Apple lets you buy one system per year at discount when you're in the developer program. If you're looking for the high-end PowerMac G5 and a Cinema Display, you can save several hundred dollars when you buy the system.
the market decided that it did not want a multiplatform OS
As much as Windows NT was multi-platform, the application software generally wasn't. This is why I feel that non-x86 NT failed. If you needed an application, you had to find the right version -- and many applications were never available on MIPS or PowerPC.
But now that Microsoft has a PC emulator, they could let the x86 programs run on non-x86 Windows versions. Is it enough to change the decision? Probably not, but I'd certainly hope that someone at Microsoft is working on it, just in case Intel and AMD would become hostile to Microsoft.
Meesa mama say life isa like box of chocolates. Meesa no know whata comes next!
If I'm lucky, it's the cyanide chocolate...
under peak hours, the lag has got to suck...
Lag is an artifact of an poorly provisioned network. If you had end-to-end, trusted QoS, lag would never be noticable. Every important packet - voice, game, etc - would be delivered on time, and all the background "junk" - web, e-mail, BitTorrents - would fill the gaps between the important stuff that can't tolerate delay.
The trouble with VoIP is the dependence on QoS, which most third parties can't provide. I've been tempted to try Speakeasy Voice, since they should be capable of setting good QoS for the VoIP service. But I still haven't checked pricing to see if it would actually save me money over traditional phone & DSL.
1) Composite coaxial connector: Original, standard TV. Compatible with color or B&W. This make sense.
The original, over-the-air, frequency-modulated signal.
2) Composite video: Same exact thing, just a different connector. No better quality AFAIK. Why was this created?
This is an unmodulated, single video connection. It saves the cost of a modulator/demodulator, which is needed to put the signal on a "channel" over standard co-ax. Also, the audio signal is carried separately.
3) S-video: Supposed to fix the problems of "composite" video signals, but it doesn't look any better. Still a crappy analog interlaced YRB signal.
Separates luminance and chrominance onto separate wires, eliminating the mux/demux of these two analog signals into the single "composite" signal. (Which is composite only due to the upgrade from B&W to Color, which was a very neat backwards compatibility trick.)
4) Y-Pr-Pb component output: Silly. RGB is better, and was already supported by monitors, computers, and projectors. What is the point of this?
Splits the chrominance into two separate signals. Not entirely sure why. (Educated guess? The chrominance was split into Red (r) and Blue (b) components. But that's just a guess.)
5) Y-Cr-Cb component output: Digital version of Y-Pr-Pb. DVI is better. Usually mislabeled as Y-Pr-Pb anyway.
I'll have to take your word for it. (I think they're just using the standard chrominance (C) label instead of the 'P' label.. for partial? Again, just a guess.)
6) VGA - Been around for >20 years, and is superior to all of the above.
VGA is 640x480, no more, no less. The physical VGA link has been co-opted for higher resolutions. The physical link is pure analog, and it's better only because we've demanded better quality out of the transmitter (video card) and receiver (monitor), such as higher resolutions (1280x1024) and refresh frequency (85Hz).
7) DVI - Digital replacement for VGA. The best.
As long as you have an all-digital path. But, then, any digital transmission mechanism would suffice. FireWire (IEEE 1394) makes a good digitial transmission link. With digital, it's all about the signal bitrate and the medium's maximum bitrate. FireWire has plently of room for HD signals.
Even more frustrating is that TVs are RGB, so why did the industry continue to adopt YRB signal standards when it is both inconvenient to send, and to receive?
Because of backwards compatibility! The original B&W TV only used a luminance (Y) signal. This was great, but when TV's went color they wanted a backwards-compatibile system. So they used some nice signal magic and piggybacked a chrominance (C) signal over the Y. This meant a color receiver got colors, and a B&W receiver still received B&W reasonably. It's been a backwards compatibility game since the beginning.
150 watts at the wall. Part of that is due to inefficiency in the power supply. That "idle" system also contains a graphics card which is continuously flinging data out a port (VGA or DVI) to a monitor to display something. The hard drives may be spinning. DRAM requires periodic refreshes or it loses data. So that "idle" system still has a lot of internal maintenance functions to do. The CPU is the largest single chunk of system power usage, but most of the power goes to other components in the system.
This is why Energy Star settings like "Turn off Monitor" and "Turn off Hard Disks" provide real savings. These features help turn off other, unused functions within the computer. I'd be interested to see what the power usage drops to after the computer puts the display & hard drive to sleep.
"7 processors" = 1 microcontroller (M30803) ("Logical processor") @ 20MHz and 1 DSP (MSP 430) ("Analog processor"), both released in the 2001 timeframe + 5 "Automata" inside an FPGA (write protection/addressing windows, main timing control, access control, button control, and LCD processor ... or touchscreen process control, graphic control/LCD clipping, memory optimation/bank switching, main timing control, and main bus interfaces, depending on which page you check.
Pretty bad when you're not even self-consistent.
Look at Palm devices: more and more games are being added to the library for this family of PDA's. A lot of games are coming out for Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. The only drawback for these systems is a lack of internal storage.
Look at iPods: a ton of local storage, a well-designed user interface, and the "cool" factor that marketing companies spend billions searching for. But other than video and some basic text notes (that you can't edit on the device), the iPods and other hard drive-based media centers can't play games or do other "computerish" tasks.
What happens when we combine these two products? Eve. It's a Pocket PC, but since it runs "XP Embedded" you can theoretically run any existing PC game. Spend a little time and effort, and you won't even need a USB keyboard. You could also just store music or video on there.
It's an RCA Lyra with a bit more processing power and an add-on controller. If they can hit the $500 point next year, there might (might) be a market, but I think more people will buy it for high quality video on a teeny screen than for any gaming options.
Ooooh, and wi-fi, so you can watch the videos on the other Eves are you...
Here's what I dug up from their horrible site. It's buried in the Terms & Conditions, http://www.sonyconnect.com/tos.html. With my observed differences to iTMS added for flavor.
Three PC's running Connect which may play your purchased files. Which is only available on PCs, no Mac version. iTMS just increased this to 5 PC's.
Each track may be "burned" 10 times: 5 times as a compressed, DRM protected file, and 5 times as an unprotected CD audio track. iTMS makes no claims on limiting the number of times you may copy the protected file. Each track can be burned from a single playlist 7 times (two more than Connect), and from different playlists over and over (no total burn limit).
Unlimited copies to devices which support OpenMG copy protection. Unless you have a file from "WMG", which can only be placed on 3 portable devices. All of the compatible devices are made by Sony. iTMS lets you make unlimited copies to iPods, made by Apple. Depends on the device you like.
Sounds likes iTMS has them blown away. I'm not sure how (or if) these are enforced by Connect. How you do keep people from backing up their purchased files to CDs?
Sorry Real, but I don't see any need for the iPod to support yet another proprietary audio format. The iPod can deal with stanard AAC and MP3, and Apple's FairPlay AAC. Ogg Vorbis would be nice, as it is an open standard that anyone can implement royalty-free, but I can live with what I have right now. Real and Windows Media? I wouldn't have bought my iPod if I needed them.
The beauty (to me, the consumer) of FairPlay DRM is that every track bought from the iTunes Store comes with the same rights. I don't have to wonder what I can do with my purchases, or read any fine print. I like that. I doubt I'll ever buy off of another online store, because it's a problem I don't need... unless someone else starts selling FairPlay AAC files or standard un-mangled files.
Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you aren't referencing "Big Mac" at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are two entirely distinct insitutions.
Sega had its second (third, if you count Sega CD for the Genesis) "optical media console" out before the PlayStation 2. Remember Saturn and then Dreamcast?
Compatibility is a bigger selling point for people who haven't owned the prior console. The weak point of any new system is the lack of games right at introduction. Compatibility lets you play some of those older games that you haven't played before (i.e., Spyro) while you wait for all the nice, shiny new "next-gen" games for your brand new console. Dreamcast might have done a lot better if it could have piggy-backed on the (pitifully small) Saturn library while its own (pitifully small) software library was being developed.
Why buy a 256MB memory module when, for just $50 more, you could buy a 512MB module? Because you don't need the extra 256MB? Because the 256MB module is higher performance, meets your needs better? So it's not just about specs, is it? No, it's about what fits your needs.
For electronics enthusiasts (read: geeks like me), the iPod is our ulitmate music player. The iPod Mini is just the bastard son of our great idol, and lots of people feel compelled to point out "for $50 more, you can..."
Yeah, you can get 15GB for $50 more. 11GB for $50. The next step, 5GB more for $100 isn't so appealing, until you realize that there's a $40 dock (if purchased separately) in that package. Hmmm, but for yet ANOTHER $100 you can go to 40GB! Wow! The biggest, the best, the maximum spec! for only $500!
Perhaps Apple is targeting people who don't check "the specs." Maybe they're targeting people who don't care for white/metal cases. I already have a 30GB iPod, and my girlfriend has a "4th gen" 20GB iPod. They're all we need, and we won't be buying any Mini's. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have gotten one, if they had been available when we bought our iPods.
If the iPod Mini had been out last Christmas, my girlfriend probably would've asked for the Mini, because she doesn't care for the white/metal appearance. Blue, I think, would have been her preference. The smaller size would also make it easier to fit into her purse.
The point wasn't to have a 20GB player, but since the 10GB and 20GB were the same size, I decided to splurge. I think she has about 5GB of music on it, and I'm sure she could trim it if she only had 4GB of space. Apple was just a few months late for me, but I doubt they'll complain since they got our business anyway.
I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1999. At that time, there were quite a few labs that used Macintosh systems, most notably the Math Emporium, a 217-computer lab for math classes. I also know that the English department labs used Mac systems when I was there, and I don't expect that has changed, either.
Personally, I don't expect any of the 1,100 G5 desktops will make their way back to Apple or be sold outside of the University. There are plenty of computer labs that could use the upgrades, and if there are any systems left over I'm sure a mini-cluster for testing out new software releases wouldn't be unreasonable use for a few.
Although I do like the idea of engraving the systems, like "This computer was node 243 of 1,100 in Big Mac v1." It would be something that you can show to alumni, because showing stuff like that to alumni results in additional contributions to the University.
Salesman: I broke my cup holder.
IT Guy: Reboot and see if it gets better.
Sometimes, it's the clueless and the stubborn. Nobody wins in that situation, except Microsoft.
DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.
Yes, that wonderful Microsoft definition of "free", which means "bundled into the price you paid for the OS, or the price the OEM paid and passed along to you." When Microsoft released the WMV code & player for Linux (even if it is binary-only), then we can talk about free beer.
There is a player for Mac, but it's out of date and not compatible with the latest WMV9 files.
DivX also has WMV beat in terms of availability to run on other systems. Heaven forbid people would actually have to find & install software!
I'm a graduate of Virginia Tech. The article you linked to, however, thinks the school is called Virginia Tech University. Every time I think there's no way for me to have a lower opinion of journalists, I discover something new. (As if ESPN's pronuniation of "VA Tech" as "vah tech" wasn't bad enough...)
See, I find this part of the law distasteful. If someone is breaking the law, you should be required to minimize your losses. In this case, minimizing the losses would require taking down "illegal" servers. If you allowed an "illegal" server to stay active but instead logged all traffic to and from it, I think that should be considered implict permission for that server to operate.
Similar things apply to the SCO "case". If their IP is valuable and is in the kernel, then they should either publish "their" code (remember, it's copyrighted, so they don't lose any rights by publishing it in a limited manner) or simply take the Linux kernel themselves, remove "their" code, and release a "cleaned" kernel. Failure to take either option should immediately cause their monetary losses to be $0. (Not that they still couldn't go after IBM or SGI et al for contributing the code.)
(And, as always, IANAL.)
While I was a student at Virginia Tech ('94-'99, including a year of co-op) as a Computer Engineering student, I was always impressed by the diversity of computing resources throughout the university. Each department generally sided with a single environment (DECstations to FreeBSD PCs for CS, Windows (AutoCAD) for Engineering, Macintosh for Math & English), although all were supported. Even all the way back to the mainframe and its dumb terminals, which students used to sign up for classes. The general student at Virginia Tech learned, by necessity, how to do the basics across a variety of systems.
I'm happy to see Virginia Tech continue its push forward. "Commodity supercomputers" through clustering almost always refer to Intel-architecture systems. Why not Apples as well? It's a brilliant move forward, not only for the computational power this involves but also from a P.R. perspective... would all those high-school techies have heard about this if they chose an Intel architecture solution? And Apple will get good P.R. as the building blocks behind a supercomputer.
It's infinitely safer to control who has it in the first place.
But that requires fixing the people in an organization, usually starting at the top of the organization. Whereas the people at the top of the organization prefer to fix the software in the organization, and are more than happy to give Microsoft their company's money.
Besides, any "encryption" that Microsoft uses will surely have some form of key escrow, either for the companies who lose all the information on their server, for companies who have a rogue admin who deletes all access information, or for the government when it has to investigate a company for "national security concerns".
And I bet you each copy of Office will require activation, and receive a "token" from MS that is used as part of the authentication system. You can tell "who" made a document. You could even trace parts of documents (copied & pasted between documents) back to their original source & original "token".
So if MS can keep all copies of Office "legit" (ha!), they can trace back to the first person/entity to inject a macro virus into the world. Oh, your old document doesn't have authentication? Immediately strip all macros as part of the conversion. Immediately the world becomes "safe" from the macro virus (ha-ha-ha), without even having to set a security permission other than "Everyone Full Control w/o Authentication" on the document.
Alternatively, corporations could set better controls... only allow workstations to open files created within the company regardless of permission. Could this be used as a defense against trade-secret misappropriation? "How could we have read their design, Judge, since our corporate policy prevents our users from opening documents that are not created within the company?" It also is a double-whammy against the macro viruses, unless your employess write them.
Sure, permission caching can be self-defeating if you set the cache to hold on to an authentication token for a year. But this is a general problem with permission cacing in general, and not unique to anything Microsoft might choose to implement.
Maximum security requires frequent re-authorization. Daily. Hourly. Every 15 minutes.
A good authentication server would be able to tell you who has a cached authorization token, so then when you decide to revoke access to a file you can tell which people have a cache token on their laptops that you need to kill ASAP.
So far as leaking secrets to competitors, the DRM "solution" simply requires you to convert across an independent medium... printout, screenshot, photograph of screen. The only thing this "DRM" provides is the ability to mass-distribute a document within a company without worrying that someone might be on a mailing list that they're not supposed to be on... since everyone has to authenticate to read the attached document, they'd have to use an authenticated account to read it.
The SoMo4 (the knock-knock phone) is a great idea, though. By being able to communicate not just that I want to talk, but the importance I place on the conversation, it makes it much easier for the other person to decide if it's a good time or not. Even for me, as a call receiver.
"Caller ID" phone numbers are a bad method of determining priority. People call for multiple reasons, and people call for all sorts of devices... including devices owned by another person. Any method of letting me know that someone who I trust is there and wants to talk to me is good. The "secret knock" would be tremendously functional, so that someone could get my attention regardless of where they're calling from.
Not that we explicitly need the "knock-knock" style, but if my cell phone provider always asked the caller "Select a Priority" before ringing me, and then letting me see that priority, it could enhance the experience for me. So when I'm just sitting around I can take those Priority-5 "Hey what's up?" calls, but when I go into the theater I could set my phone to reject everything but Prioirty-0 calls (which I would leave the theater take).
There are all sorts of "permission" issues for things, but this can be handled with passcode-type answers (where anything above a certain level requires a code to be accepted) or automated system permissions (calls from hospitals would always be allowed to go to a higher level than other calls), without requiring me to identify based on phone numbers.
I think Microsoft should have to charge more for their products to protect consumers! Make Microsoft jack the price of Windows up to $2,500 per copy so that everyone will get a clue and switch to Linux or go buy new Macs.