OTOH, if I were allowed to swap and burn music all I wanted I'd happily pay up.
Ah, the key distinction. not only do consumers have to pay the tax, they still aren't exempt from being sued. They're being raped with a rusty pitchwork from both sides.
Sadly, you'd probably get just as sued as anyone who bought a drive without the tax.
Just like burning music onto the taxed "music CDs" wouldn't make you exempt from piracy laws.
Which makes the entire "tax the drive they're stored on" law utterly stupid. Buy the damn music. Like, oh I don't know, on the iTunes store to play on your iPod?
As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate France already...
If Apple loses that means that EVERY hard drive that could potentially hold and play illegal music files - which by my calculations is all of them - is fair game for such a tax.
Not only that, but the iPod is probably the stupidest player to start on - AFAIK it's almost the only player capable of playing LEGAL songs. (via iTMS) ("Almost", because I'm not sure of the status of the iPod clones like the Napster player)
Why not start with something that is physically unable to play legally downloaded files?
I'm a Mac fanatic. I like Linux. Obviously not as much as I like OSX, but if I had to I could live on Linux.
In fact, most of the Macheads I know would be interested in using Linux if OS X wasn't an option. Especially if the alternative was Windoze.
It changes the number of spams you can see. Thunderbird, for example, has built-in Bayesian spam filtering. Apple's Mail.app has the same thing, and it works wonders. I get maybe two spams a week that squeeze past the filter - before the filter was trained, I'd get at least 5-10 a day.
....voluntarily sharing my wi-fi broadband as an act of good will to passersby?
At one of the stoplights the bus I ride stops at, there is a wifi network somewhere within range, and we generally stop long enough for me to get a connection, check my email, click the 'post' button, before we move on. There's no way I'd be able to click 'Pay', enter all my info, etc, while I was there - even if I wanted to. I prefer to leave my wifi unprotected and make sure my computer itself is secure... the worst anyone can do is put files into my Guest shared folder, and I may be helping some geek nearby look up something on the internet in a hurry.
A lot of software (particularly Mac software) does this. " has detected that there is a new version, would you like to download and install it?"
Sometimes it gives a brief description of what's new, and it can almost always be disabled.
Ummm.... was the parent trying to be sarcastic? I sure as hell hope so. "Drunken violence"?
Besides, if you watch the right channels, and (actively) critique and consider what you're watching, it can be very intellectual indeed. Not as good as reading a book or something like that.... but certainly better than drunken violence.
I also install any apps and all the freeware/OSS I can find (Firefox, Thunderbird, AVG antivirus, Spybot, AbiWord or OO, Irvanview, Winamp, Dixv codecs, WinVNC (not as a service but they know how to manually start it if I need access)
Yes it does, but even more significantly: You can enable a menu that will make Safari tell the website you're trying to access that it's IE, and sometimes the page will come through fine anyway. AFAIK you can't do that on Firefox... even if a page *would* render just fine, the server says "You're not IE BLAAAAA".
Don't ask me... I think he had his homepage set somewhere else, got one virus, and that one let in a flood of others. He had to backup his registry and reinstall windows.
You still get a lot of virii on windows even without those apps. Plus, you still need IE for some things, like Windows Update and updating some virus scanners.
My friend uses Windows and Firefox, etc, but he had to run IE once - ONCE - to go to windows update. In his words, he got "more viruses than a vietnamese whore."
That's not solving the problem, though.
1) Bye bye emails, documents....
2) The poster wanted to *eliminate* the support calls, not make it so he comes over and reinstalls. (These types of parents don't have the knowhow to reformat/reinstall/restore from a ghost.)
You can give them "kiddy wheels" like they put on public computers... but then they'll probably be like "Why can't I install this" and you'll have to think of an answer other than "You're too stupid to have that kind of power so I took it away from you."
I think this will have the opposite effect of what many people think. PPC owners can check this out, realize it's a damn good interface, and then they might decide that the iPod is worth the dough.
Or, they go look for a CF hard drive for more space, learn about the iPod mini being much cheaper than the drives by themselve, and wind up buying a mini instead.
However, I don't see many people using this *as* an iPod... it's just not cost-effective. I bet some people who only need a few songs will use it, but more than likely those people would not be in the market for a real iPod no matter what.
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Oh don't you worry. I hate most of the USA as well. Particularly the software patents and psychopath-owning-a-gun parts.
Sorry, I hadn't considered ripping CDs... What I should've said was DRM-protected songs.
I think?
Maybe?
*shuts up now*
OTOH, if I were allowed to swap and burn music all I wanted I'd happily pay up.
Ah, the key distinction. not only do consumers have to pay the tax, they still aren't exempt from being sued. They're being raped with a rusty pitchwork from both sides.
Sadly, you'd probably get just as sued as anyone who bought a drive without the tax.
Just like burning music onto the taxed "music CDs" wouldn't make you exempt from piracy laws.
Which makes the entire "tax the drive they're stored on" law utterly stupid. Buy the damn music. Like, oh I don't know, on the iTunes store to play on your iPod?
As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate France already...
Are you serious?
If Apple loses that means that EVERY hard drive that could potentially hold and play illegal music files - which by my calculations is all of them - is fair game for such a tax.
Not only that, but the iPod is probably the stupidest player to start on - AFAIK it's almost the only player capable of playing LEGAL songs. (via iTMS) ("Almost", because I'm not sure of the status of the iPod clones like the Napster player)
Why not start with something that is physically unable to play legally downloaded files?
Good point....
*makes a note to read posts more carefully*
I'm a Mac fanatic. I like Linux. Obviously not as much as I like OSX, but if I had to I could live on Linux.
In fact, most of the Macheads I know would be interested in using Linux if OS X wasn't an option. Especially if the alternative was Windoze.
It changes the number of spams you can see. Thunderbird, for example, has built-in Bayesian spam filtering. Apple's Mail.app has the same thing, and it works wonders. I get maybe two spams a week that squeeze past the filter - before the filter was trained, I'd get at least 5-10 a day.
Although.... firefox DOES give you a choice of butt-ugly skins ;)
....voluntarily sharing my wi-fi broadband as an act of good will to passersby?
At one of the stoplights the bus I ride stops at, there is a wifi network somewhere within range, and we generally stop long enough for me to get a connection, check my email, click the 'post' button, before we move on. There's no way I'd be able to click 'Pay', enter all my info, etc, while I was there - even if I wanted to.
I prefer to leave my wifi unprotected and make sure my computer itself is secure... the worst anyone can do is put files into my Guest shared folder, and I may be helping some geek nearby look up something on the internet in a hurry.
A lot of software (particularly Mac software) does this. " has detected that there is a new version, would you like to download and install it?"
Sometimes it gives a brief description of what's new, and it can almost always be disabled.
Steal the only admin password. ;)
Ummm.... was the parent trying to be sarcastic? I sure as hell hope so. "Drunken violence"?
Besides, if you watch the right channels, and (actively) critique and consider what you're watching, it can be very intellectual indeed. Not as good as reading a book or something like that.... but certainly better than drunken violence.
I also install any apps and all the freeware/OSS I can find (Firefox, Thunderbird, AVG antivirus, Spybot, AbiWord or OO, Irvanview, Winamp, Dixv codecs, WinVNC (not as a service but they know how to manually start it if I need access)
You forgot VLC. (videolan)
I recall being commanded not to tell people that the MacOS had a handy "Encrypt..." command in the File menu.
Wait...what? Is this still around on Panther, or was it completely replaced by filevault?
VLC is available for Linux, OS X, and (I think) Windows and plays WMV files. And MOV. Pretty much everything really.
As for spending money, an older Mac (which is all they need probably) can be found for less than $400, easy.
More importantly, shouldn't that read "doesn't need"? Or maybe "doesn't need but thinks he does"?
If so, that means it had been infected WITHOUT running IE/Outlook etc.
Which makes this discussion moot anyway.
Yes it does, but even more significantly: You can enable a menu that will make Safari tell the website you're trying to access that it's IE, and sometimes the page will come through fine anyway. AFAIK you can't do that on Firefox... even if a page *would* render just fine, the server says "You're not IE BLAAAAA".
Don't ask me... I think he had his homepage set somewhere else, got one virus, and that one let in a flood of others. He had to backup his registry and reinstall windows.
You still get a lot of virii on windows even without those apps. Plus, you still need IE for some things, like Windows Update and updating some virus scanners.
My friend uses Windows and Firefox, etc, but he had to run IE once - ONCE - to go to windows update. In his words, he got "more viruses than a vietnamese whore."
That's not solving the problem, though. 1) Bye bye emails, documents.... 2) The poster wanted to *eliminate* the support calls, not make it so he comes over and reinstalls. (These types of parents don't have the knowhow to reformat/reinstall/restore from a ghost.)
You can give them "kiddy wheels" like they put on public computers... but then they'll probably be like "Why can't I install this" and you'll have to think of an answer other than "You're too stupid to have that kind of power so I took it away from you."
Is that reading the MP3 off the hard drive though? HD's suck power more than I suck at coming up with analogies.
I think this will have the opposite effect of what many people think. PPC owners can check this out, realize it's a damn good interface, and then they might decide that the iPod is worth the dough.
Or, they go look for a CF hard drive for more space, learn about the iPod mini being much cheaper than the drives by themselve, and wind up buying a mini instead.
However, I don't see many people using this *as* an iPod... it's just not cost-effective. I bet some people who only need a few songs will use it, but more than likely those people would not be in the market for a real iPod no matter what.
I think pPod will actually increase iPod sales.