Very true, although there is crossover between them. The same goes for movie buffs not caring about HD. Some do, but many watch the movie, not the pixels.
I think as better technology becomes more pervasive, things are starting to change though. Take for example Dub step. Unless you have a decent subwoofer you simply can't hear the bass line in dub step. Also, CGI is becoming an art form in itself.
Our ID card is our driver's license. We essentially have that system, the only hard part is that driver's licensing is done on a state by state basis, so there is no national ID card or number, only a state one. The only real unique national ID number we have is the social security number.
I signed up for a PayPal account when I was 12 (before they asked for a date of birth on sign up, let alone an SSN. I know, the wild wild west days of the internet were crazy!). Not being able to have a bank account until I was 18 would have driven me insane.
America is obsessed with protecting the kids so much, all we are doing is making kids stay immature for longer. You need to have responsibilities to become responsible, like work, managing a bank account, etc. And don't even get me started on the drinking age being 21.
Absolutely, I said this earlier in response to someone else. But basically what DRM has succeeded at doing is keeping casual users from being able to pirate games (on consoles at least), copy blue-rays, etc.
A perfect example of DRM being a necessary evil is streaming (i.e. netflix). If you could easily download every movie in their library without DRM and play it forever you can't legitimately expect users to abide by their 5 devices per account limit and to stop watching the movies after canceling their account.
And it stops pirates. The fact of the matter is that DRM on consoles does work. Sure there are jailbreak procedures available but they are made obsolete with every (required by the way) firmware update. And you run the risk of getting banned from online play (essentially bricking your console in this online gaming age).
HDCP? Fail. Blue-ray (AACS?) fail. Sure DRM sucks most places. But it really has succeeded at its intent on consoles, whether I'd like to admit it or not.
It would take a very specific kind of business model to do this. Sure some companies may succeed, but overall I think it is very naive to expect all businesses change their model giving away their content for free.
I hate DRM on purchased music/video downloads. But for streaming services it is absolutely necessary, and not to keep dedicated pirates from stealing content. For streaming services such as netflix it keeps honest users honest. Netflix allows 5 devices per account and you can only stream when you are paying the subscription fee. If there was no DRM, then there would be easily available programs that would let you download movies to your computer to be watched after canceling. And remove the 5 devices per account limit.
Honest users would do this, but with DRM they would not. It is in some ways similar to anti-shoplifing measures at retail stores. Sure a professional shoplifter can avoid this, but it provides enough security to keep the honest shoppers honest.
I think this is how the problem will be resolved. You can get the same subscription you always got on the website but it is not compatible with iOS devices. You can buy, for 30% more a subscription that is compatible with iOS (and of course that 30% goes right to apple). That way you are still charging the same on your website as you are using Apple's subscription service, because the product is "iOS compatible subscription."
In any case, this is horrible for iPhone users. Either companies pull out of iOS or they charge 30% more. Clearly these start-up music streaming services don't have the kind of profit margins to give away 30% to apple. 5-10% I can see (considering Apple is footing the bill for App download bandwidth, store space, etc.). But 30%? Thats insane.
Using that logic one should creep along at 2mph everywhere. My point is that on most roadways pedestrians are NOT expected to be suddenly crossing (even at marked crosswalks). Yet "dedicated pedestrians" probably do not realize this as they do not drive, so they are only in tune to what they see as a pedestrian.
A perfect example is a left turn on a busy 5+ lane road. A pedestrian crossing technically has the right of way. But on a busy road with sparse pedestrian traffic, that is not on a drivers mind because a driver may only see a pedestrian in this sort of situation once out of every 500 left turns, so the driver waits for an opening and turns. There is no such thing as a driver who can see anything and there are plenty of dangers that a good driver has to worry about that happen far more often than a pedestrian popping out of nowhere (i.e. speeding driver running a red light)
Point being when a pedestrian is walking in a driver's world they need to watch out and respect that cars are not going to be thinking about them.
Now on the flip side when a driver is in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic, such as a residential neighborhood, they do need to slow the fuck down and pay extra attention to the side of the road for kids jumping out etc.
My opinion as a dedicated driver? All pedestrians suck, just to different degrees.
My car can kill you while barely slowing down. And if it does my life is over as I know it. So don't step out in the middle of the street when I am coming at you at 50mph and hope I have the reaction time to avoid you.
The bottom line is America gets around in cars. If your walking on a college campus or something then yea, pedestrians should be expected and drivers need to watch out for them. But on the other hand if you are walking to work along Hawthorne Blvd in LA, then you need to realize that drivers are not expecting to see pedestrians (even if there is a crosswalk) and that you are the exception so you need to watch the hell out, even if you technically are crossing at the legal time.
The way I see this system functioning is that it doesn't actually stop you from driving but just alerts you to your drunkenness. The same way the seatbelt alarms don't stop you from driving without a seatbelt but constantly beep at you if you are not wearing it.
Now I'm sure MADD would want it implemented as an interlock device.
Now what I would 100% be against is this feature being illegal to tamper with (like emissions control devices are today in many states). If I buy a car I damn well want to be able to swap steering wheels if I want to, regardless of whether this disables the system.
I think the goal with this is to stop responsible drivers who had more to drink than they should have but don't really realize it. Most people who are thinking to themselves yea I'm OK to drive really think that. If the car says YOU ARE LEGALLY DRUNK then a huge segment of those people would 1) be embarrassed in front of anyone else in the car and 2) not drive.
Similar to the systems that detect when you are falling asleep. Responsible drivers don't drive when they are tired and it is not hard to tell when you are getting tired. But again its one of those things where even responsible drivers can have tiredness sneak up on them and be thinking "yea I'm OK to drive" when they really aren't
Honestly this is smart... well as long as the power user still *CAN* change things if they want (i.e. using the jailbreak switch).
Obligatory (probably poor) car analogy: To fill up gas you don't open the hood and take apart the engine. Sure you can get under the hood and if your a mechanic you should be able to mess around as much as you want. But its better for the user (driver) to not have to worry about anything besides the interface (steering wheel and gas and brake).
Its silly that users who have no idea how the system works should be expected to decide what applications to trust. The default should be zero trust of the user and that shouldn't need to be changed for 90%+ of users out there. And thats what Chrome does.
For one multitasking. I get annoyed when I get a voicemail because I have to check out of whatever conversation I am in, or if I am in class leave to get it. With a text message, I can glance down and see if its important, and if not ignore it until later or if it is then respond.
Another thing is the idea of your landline. (I know VOIP but still its tied to your house). Why would anyone call that number first and then call my cell phone when they could just call my cell phone and immediately reach me? Then there is the separate voicemail box. Oh and what number do you give to people who aren't interested in having 2 numbers? Your cell phone would be the most versatile, but since you say you are on a prepaid plan then that poses issues.
For me sure I pay a pretty good sum to AT&T for my iPhone with a good amount of minutes and a data plan, but its well worth the ability to have a single point of contact for my life, no matter where in the country I am. Last summer I worked in California, but I go to school in Ohio, and often go home to my parents house in a different city in Ohio. When I give out my phone number to companies I need to be able to be reached no matter where I am.
This definitely is a generation gap. The fact that you GET and not send text messages shows you are from the pre-texting generation. I have no idea how I could adequately communicate with friends taking text messages out of my life. And whats interesting is that I even am close enough to the cutoff where I remember days when it used to be "hey do you get text messages?" or, god forbid, "hey do you have a cell phone?". Now were in a world where everyone has a cell phone from age 10 up. Some a smart phone. And everyone is on facebook since the day they learn what the internet is.
In any case, I think you are right that this SHOULD go both ways, and hopefully it does as it will make their service more useful for people like you. But I am not sure that is really the intent of this, I feel its targeted at people like me, so who knows.
Except this is for going the other direction. I'm not looking to get my social messages onto a device. I'm now saying my social messages are my primary way of communicating in this inherently social world and I want to get my other messages into this service. When this allows.
As a college student, I already find Facebook private messages to be the most reliable way to communicate with other college students and younger. The reason? Everyone is on Facebook multiple times a day and many of my friends have Facebook messages set to be sent to their phones or receive a notification on their smartphone when they receive one. Email? Well its really only used for "boring" communication like stuff from teachers and classmates for group projects.
Plus I only know a handful of my Friends email addresses anyways, whereas I can message anyone on Facebook by their name. I really do believe that is the future of social communication. Sure email will always exist for business communication, getting bills, etc. but as a way to say "hey, want to do such and such tomorrow?" definitely not. All this Facebook messages thing is doing is recognizing how people already use the messages feature and expand its capabilities to better serve that use.
Oh, and the combination of different mediums of messaging is long overdue. I always feel silly every time I'm sitting in front of my laptop and yet typing way on my 3.5 inch touch screen to send a text message. Or the awkwardness (awkward really isn't the right word, but weirdness of some sort) when I start talking to someone on Facebook chat and realize that I missed a text from them on my cell phone and completely ignored it. Or had an instant message from them on iChat. Or the usual "hey did you get my email" when I'm talking to someone on instant messenger. Really that is just silly we need a cohesive messaging system.
I can't believe no one has commented on this yet: I know when they fubared the signal strenghth meter! Right after the 3G came out! Right when the 3g came out everyone was complaining that as soon as the phone switched to 3g mode their bars would drop from full to like 2 or 3. This was because at the time AT&T's 3G network sucked. And a lot of time it was on the 1900mhz band which has trouble penetrating walls whereas EDGE was on the better 800mhz band. So what did apple do? They came out with an update that "fixed" the issue by just changing the scale that bars use for 3G service. This was also the same update that changed the look of the "3g" logo.
Although they CAN go hand in hand. My love of driving cars has led me to fixing them up as a hobby. And, opposite of what the OP is asking, my love of programming has led me to like video games.
Many non-technical users get confused by the file concept so why not look for a way to store information in a way that works well for more people.
And for good reason too. It really is confusing that your itunes library is just a database that points to the actual files. Oh but the default action in itunes is to copy to the itunes music directory, so now theres 2 files.
Same confusion with iPhoto, etc.
The file concept really does not need to be exposed to most end users today. Sure it will still exist but the primary mode of access these days is through applications that index the files.
NeoOffice is unusably slow, or sat least it was last time I used it. When I got my Intel MacBook Pro before MS released an intel version, I had to use Word 2004 though Apple's emulator environment (Rosetta). Absurdly slow. NeoOffice was SLOWER and they had a NATIVE BINARY!
is becoming more and more stock standard, e.g. their move over to Intel, etc.
Ok, I'll bite. What else? They moved to intel almost 5 years ago. Since then they have gone in the other direction and have made their hardware move away from "stock standard" PC. What have they done since their move to intel that has made them more stock standard? I can think of quite a few thing they have done to move away from it: -custom LiPo battery tech (their smart charging or whatever) which supposedly provides 1,000 recharge cycles by monitoring each individual cell. -If you want to count Unibody as a technology then count that. -Their trackpad-is-a-button amazing multitouch glass trackpads. -The Geforce 320M integrated graphics in the new 13" MacBook Pro's is custom designed by NVidia to Apple's specs. -The graphics switching tech in the 15 and 17" macbook pro's is custom designed by apple (its not optimus or whatever NVidia's tech is, contrary to misconceptions).
And the iPhone and iPad are clearly not "stock standard" anything so I assume you are not referring to those
Its the Mac OS X API. There is Cocoa which is the "native" API and Carbon which is designed for cross-platform compatibility. This argument is especially funny because Apple's own Final Cut Pro uses Carbon. In one of Apple's stupid cross-platform killing motivated moves Apple only made Cocoa 64-bit aware.
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Very true, although there is crossover between them. The same goes for movie buffs not caring about HD. Some do, but many watch the movie, not the pixels.
I think as better technology becomes more pervasive, things are starting to change though. Take for example Dub step. Unless you have a decent subwoofer you simply can't hear the bass line in dub step. Also, CGI is becoming an art form in itself.
Our ID card is our driver's license. We essentially have that system, the only hard part is that driver's licensing is done on a state by state basis, so there is no national ID card or number, only a state one. The only real unique national ID number we have is the social security number.
You need an SSN to get a driver's license. Or get a bank account for that matter.
I signed up for a PayPal account when I was 12 (before they asked for a date of birth on sign up, let alone an SSN. I know, the wild wild west days of the internet were crazy!). Not being able to have a bank account until I was 18 would have driven me insane.
America is obsessed with protecting the kids so much, all we are doing is making kids stay immature for longer. You need to have responsibilities to become responsible, like work, managing a bank account, etc. And don't even get me started on the drinking age being 21.
Absolutely, I said this earlier in response to someone else. But basically what DRM has succeeded at doing is keeping casual users from being able to pirate games (on consoles at least), copy blue-rays, etc.
A perfect example of DRM being a necessary evil is streaming (i.e. netflix). If you could easily download every movie in their library without DRM and play it forever you can't legitimately expect users to abide by their 5 devices per account limit and to stop watching the movies after canceling their account.
And it stops pirates. The fact of the matter is that DRM on consoles does work. Sure there are jailbreak procedures available but they are made obsolete with every (required by the way) firmware update. And you run the risk of getting banned from online play (essentially bricking your console in this online gaming age).
HDCP? Fail. Blue-ray (AACS?) fail. Sure DRM sucks most places. But it really has succeeded at its intent on consoles, whether I'd like to admit it or not.
It would take a very specific kind of business model to do this. Sure some companies may succeed, but overall I think it is very naive to expect all businesses change their model giving away their content for free.
I hate DRM on purchased music/video downloads. But for streaming services it is absolutely necessary, and not to keep dedicated pirates from stealing content. For streaming services such as netflix it keeps honest users honest. Netflix allows 5 devices per account and you can only stream when you are paying the subscription fee. If there was no DRM, then there would be easily available programs that would let you download movies to your computer to be watched after canceling. And remove the 5 devices per account limit.
Honest users would do this, but with DRM they would not. It is in some ways similar to anti-shoplifing measures at retail stores. Sure a professional shoplifter can avoid this, but it provides enough security to keep the honest shoppers honest.
I think this is how the problem will be resolved. You can get the same subscription you always got on the website but it is not compatible with iOS devices. You can buy, for 30% more a subscription that is compatible with iOS (and of course that 30% goes right to apple). That way you are still charging the same on your website as you are using Apple's subscription service, because the product is "iOS compatible subscription."
In any case, this is horrible for iPhone users. Either companies pull out of iOS or they charge 30% more. Clearly these start-up music streaming services don't have the kind of profit margins to give away 30% to apple. 5-10% I can see (considering Apple is footing the bill for App download bandwidth, store space, etc.). But 30%? Thats insane.
Using that logic one should creep along at 2mph everywhere. My point is that on most roadways pedestrians are NOT expected to be suddenly crossing (even at marked crosswalks). Yet "dedicated pedestrians" probably do not realize this as they do not drive, so they are only in tune to what they see as a pedestrian.
A perfect example is a left turn on a busy 5+ lane road. A pedestrian crossing technically has the right of way. But on a busy road with sparse pedestrian traffic, that is not on a drivers mind because a driver may only see a pedestrian in this sort of situation once out of every 500 left turns, so the driver waits for an opening and turns. There is no such thing as a driver who can see anything and there are plenty of dangers that a good driver has to worry about that happen far more often than a pedestrian popping out of nowhere (i.e. speeding driver running a red light)
Point being when a pedestrian is walking in a driver's world they need to watch out and respect that cars are not going to be thinking about them.
Now on the flip side when a driver is in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic, such as a residential neighborhood, they do need to slow the fuck down and pay extra attention to the side of the road for kids jumping out etc.
My opinion as a dedicated driver? All pedestrians suck, just to different degrees.
My car can kill you while barely slowing down. And if it does my life is over as I know it. So don't step out in the middle of the street when I am coming at you at 50mph and hope I have the reaction time to avoid you.
The bottom line is America gets around in cars. If your walking on a college campus or something then yea, pedestrians should be expected and drivers need to watch out for them. But on the other hand if you are walking to work along Hawthorne Blvd in LA, then you need to realize that drivers are not expecting to see pedestrians (even if there is a crosswalk) and that you are the exception so you need to watch the hell out, even if you technically are crossing at the legal time.
The way I see this system functioning is that it doesn't actually stop you from driving but just alerts you to your drunkenness. The same way the seatbelt alarms don't stop you from driving without a seatbelt but constantly beep at you if you are not wearing it.
Now I'm sure MADD would want it implemented as an interlock device.
Now what I would 100% be against is this feature being illegal to tamper with (like emissions control devices are today in many states). If I buy a car I damn well want to be able to swap steering wheels if I want to, regardless of whether this disables the system.
I think the goal with this is to stop responsible drivers who had more to drink than they should have but don't really realize it. Most people who are thinking to themselves yea I'm OK to drive really think that. If the car says YOU ARE LEGALLY DRUNK then a huge segment of those people would 1) be embarrassed in front of anyone else in the car and 2) not drive.
Similar to the systems that detect when you are falling asleep. Responsible drivers don't drive when they are tired and it is not hard to tell when you are getting tired. But again its one of those things where even responsible drivers can have tiredness sneak up on them and be thinking "yea I'm OK to drive" when they really aren't
Honestly this is smart... well as long as the power user still *CAN* change things if they want (i.e. using the jailbreak switch).
Obligatory (probably poor) car analogy:
To fill up gas you don't open the hood and take apart the engine. Sure you can get under the hood and if your a mechanic you should be able to mess around as much as you want. But its better for the user (driver) to not have to worry about anything besides the interface (steering wheel and gas and brake).
Its silly that users who have no idea how the system works should be expected to decide what applications to trust. The default should be zero trust of the user and that shouldn't need to be changed for 90%+ of users out there. And thats what Chrome does.
For one multitasking. I get annoyed when I get a voicemail because I have to check out of whatever conversation I am in, or if I am in class leave to get it. With a text message, I can glance down and see if its important, and if not ignore it until later or if it is then respond.
Another thing is the idea of your landline. (I know VOIP but still its tied to your house). Why would anyone call that number first and then call my cell phone when they could just call my cell phone and immediately reach me? Then there is the separate voicemail box. Oh and what number do you give to people who aren't interested in having 2 numbers? Your cell phone would be the most versatile, but since you say you are on a prepaid plan then that poses issues.
For me sure I pay a pretty good sum to AT&T for my iPhone with a good amount of minutes and a data plan, but its well worth the ability to have a single point of contact for my life, no matter where in the country I am. Last summer I worked in California, but I go to school in Ohio, and often go home to my parents house in a different city in Ohio. When I give out my phone number to companies I need to be able to be reached no matter where I am.
This definitely is a generation gap. The fact that you GET and not send text messages shows you are from the pre-texting generation. I have no idea how I could adequately communicate with friends taking text messages out of my life. And whats interesting is that I even am close enough to the cutoff where I remember days when it used to be "hey do you get text messages?" or, god forbid, "hey do you have a cell phone?". Now were in a world where everyone has a cell phone from age 10 up. Some a smart phone. And everyone is on facebook since the day they learn what the internet is.
In any case, I think you are right that this SHOULD go both ways, and hopefully it does as it will make their service more useful for people like you. But I am not sure that is really the intent of this, I feel its targeted at people like me, so who knows.
Except this is for going the other direction. I'm not looking to get my social messages onto a device. I'm now saying my social messages are my primary way of communicating in this inherently social world and I want to get my other messages into this service. When this allows.
If you don't see this then either your too old and senile to understand or just plain have no friends.
As a college student, I already find Facebook private messages to be the most reliable way to communicate with other college students and younger. The reason? Everyone is on Facebook multiple times a day and many of my friends have Facebook messages set to be sent to their phones or receive a notification on their smartphone when they receive one. Email? Well its really only used for "boring" communication like stuff from teachers and classmates for group projects.
Plus I only know a handful of my Friends email addresses anyways, whereas I can message anyone on Facebook by their name. I really do believe that is the future of social communication. Sure email will always exist for business communication, getting bills, etc. but as a way to say "hey, want to do such and such tomorrow?" definitely not. All this Facebook messages thing is doing is recognizing how people already use the messages feature and expand its capabilities to better serve that use.
Oh, and the combination of different mediums of messaging is long overdue. I always feel silly every time I'm sitting in front of my laptop and yet typing way on my 3.5 inch touch screen to send a text message. Or the awkwardness (awkward really isn't the right word, but weirdness of some sort) when I start talking to someone on Facebook chat and realize that I missed a text from them on my cell phone and completely ignored it. Or had an instant message from them on iChat. Or the usual "hey did you get my email" when I'm talking to someone on instant messenger. Really that is just silly we need a cohesive messaging system.
I can't believe no one has commented on this yet: I know when they fubared the signal strenghth meter! Right after the 3G came out! Right when the 3g came out everyone was complaining that as soon as the phone switched to 3g mode their bars would drop from full to like 2 or 3. This was because at the time AT&T's 3G network sucked. And a lot of time it was on the 1900mhz band which has trouble penetrating walls whereas EDGE was on the better 800mhz band. So what did apple do? They came out with an update that "fixed" the issue by just changing the scale that bars use for 3G service. This was also the same update that changed the look of the "3g" logo.
Although they CAN go hand in hand. My love of driving cars has led me to fixing them up as a hobby. And, opposite of what the OP is asking, my love of programming has led me to like video games.
Many non-technical users get confused by the file concept so why not look for a way to store information in a way that works well for more people.
And for good reason too. It really is confusing that your itunes library is just a database that points to the actual files. Oh but the default action in itunes is to copy to the itunes music directory, so now theres 2 files.
Same confusion with iPhoto, etc.
The file concept really does not need to be exposed to most end users today. Sure it will still exist but the primary mode of access these days is through applications that index the files.
NeoOffice is unusably slow, or sat least it was last time I used it. When I got my Intel MacBook Pro before MS released an intel version, I had to use Word 2004 though Apple's emulator environment (Rosetta). Absurdly slow. NeoOffice was SLOWER and they had a NATIVE BINARY!
is becoming more and more stock standard, e.g. their move over to Intel, etc.
Ok, I'll bite. What else? They moved to intel almost 5 years ago. Since then they have gone in the other direction and have made their hardware move away from "stock standard" PC. What have they done since their move to intel that has made them more stock standard? I can think of quite a few thing they have done to move away from it:
-custom LiPo battery tech (their smart charging or whatever) which supposedly provides 1,000 recharge cycles by monitoring each individual cell.
-If you want to count Unibody as a technology then count that.
-Their trackpad-is-a-button amazing multitouch glass trackpads.
-The Geforce 320M integrated graphics in the new 13" MacBook Pro's is custom designed by NVidia to Apple's specs.
-The graphics switching tech in the 15 and 17" macbook pro's is custom designed by apple (its not optimus or whatever NVidia's tech is, contrary to misconceptions).
And the iPhone and iPad are clearly not "stock standard" anything so I assume you are not referring to those
Its the Mac OS X API. There is Cocoa which is the "native" API and Carbon which is designed for cross-platform compatibility. This argument is especially funny because Apple's own Final Cut Pro uses Carbon. In one of Apple's stupid cross-platform killing motivated moves Apple only made Cocoa 64-bit aware.