I don't know. It seems to me that I can root for whoever I want to. I don't want the judge to be rooting for anyone for any reason other than the strength of their respective arguments. That would be dangerous. But me? My rooting has no real effect.
On the other hand, me personally? I like Apple as a company and I like their products, but I'm slightly rooting against them. Not because I like Psystar or because I think what they're doing is actually legal according to current law or precedent, but I'm always a little uncomfortable with the idea that "copying to RAM" is a real "copy" in the sense that it could be infringement on copyright. That's the argument that leads to the RIAA and MPAA being able to decide whether or not I'm allowed to listen to music or watch a movie, even after I've bought it.
When "copying to RAM" can be copyright infringement, you can never actually buy or own a copy of music or a movie or a piece of software in a usable form. You can only "license" it. I think copyright infringement should be reserved for cases of people distributing unauthorized copies.
My landlord has keys to my apartment. Does that mean I have no expectation of privacy in my own apartment, just because a third party theoretically has access to it? Even if I haven't given permission for my landlord to enter my apartment?
I was just saying that I wouldn't be surprised if some email providers had EULAs that said something to the extent of "we can do whatever the hell we feel like, and you have no recourse."
It seems like that's just in every contract and agreement these days. There's always some kind of clause which, when translated from legalese to English, reads, "We're not responsible for anything and you can't sue us for anything. Everything that we have agreed to provide you with, we can withdraw at any moment and you can go screw yourself." I've seen it in ISP service agreements, online music/movie retailers, and software EULAs. Hell, I've even seen it in standard residential leases. It doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to screw you, and in many cases I think it's just a CYA move, but it's still pretty disconcerting.
Those problems aren't unsolvable. You've just laid out part of a design spec for a device which isn't impossible with today's technology. First, cell signals might not be good, so you need the option to download maps ahead of time and save them to the phone. Second, battery life is limited, and when you're far away from any power source, the cell phone eats too much power. Well you just solved part of the problem with your definition of the problem. Locations where you're far from power sources tends to overlap with the locations where there isn't good cell reception. Make a device so you can turn off all wireless/cell capabilities and conserve power for the GPS.
Ok, so that still might not be good enough for a few specialized purposes. Maybe if you're a police officer or a hard-core outdoorsman you'll still want a separate device, in the same way that some people still want a PDA separate from their phone. But for mainstream users? The GPS on the phone will probably be plenty good enough.
I've found that really is the best way to take notes. When you're taking notes in the first place, it's best for them to be as quick and free-form as possible, allowing you to put down your understanding of what you're hearing very quickly and accurately. Nothing beats pencil and paper for that yet. You can draw little diagrams, draw symbols, circle things, write more important things bigger, drag big arrows from one note to another, or whatever else you like. It's very intuitive and easy.
Then later go back the same day (while you can still remember why you wrote your notes the way you did) and transcribe those notes into a formal digital form. Not only will the repetition of writing it all out again help your memory, but having to put things in the more constricted form will help you sort the ideas out. You draw a big funky diagram to help you understand how ideas were connected. Great. Now write that out in a word processor so that you'll be sure to understand it later. That process itself will help deepen your understanding of what you've learned.
The funny thing about this is that I found that if I went through this process pretty thoroughly, I hardly needed the notes later. Sure, they were useful to have and I would refer to them for minor details, but I would understand and remember things so much better without the notes after I had hand-written them free-form and then transcribed them into a formal format.
Yeah, that was my thought. If I rent an apartment from a private company, can my landlord give permission for the police to search my house? I rent storage space in a building for my private belongings, can the police search it without a warrant?
My understanding is that no, they can't (though IANAL). However, if I rent electronic storage space for my email, suddenly that's fair game? I don't understand that.
Maybe this is the difference:
but an ISP-hosted email account, currently, does have full access to the content, with your tacit approval.
I don't know where that "tacit approval" is supposed to have come from. They have approval because they technically have the capability to view my email? Landlords often have keys to the apartment, but that doesn't mean they have approval to enter. Is there something in the EULAs for most of these businesses that says, "We can read your email for any reason?" That wouldn't surprise me.
I guess I still think it's debatable where the "normal software" ends and where the "foistware" begins. Unless your hard drive comes completely clean, it came with some software that someone wouldn't want. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of people who would want their computer to come with at least Windows, all drivers, a browser, and Adobe Reader and Flash installed.
In fairness, I'm not sure Adobe Reader and Flash should be considered "crapware". I personally am not too fond of them, but they're common freeware that a healthy percentage of people want, and lots of people will even be annoyed if they sit down at a computer and those programs aren't there.
Similarly, I'm not sure I'd call Chrome or Skype "crapware". They're pretty decent programs, and I wouldn't consider them any more nefarious (actually, I think of them as less nefarious) then IE or MSN messenger.
As for the OEM "gadgets" and "panels", I think it really depends on the function and quality. When an OEM installs very simple, functional, low resource, high quality control software, then I think it's fairly justifiable. Like some vendors have included WiFi configuration utilities that are better than what comes in Windows, and though I prefer to go with a standard Windows config as much as possible (for the sake of imaging and such), those don't bother me too much. However, some vendors include software that uses a bunch of software resources, put several icons in your system tray, and pop up to advertise additional services or software. I would call that sort of thing "crapware".
But I recognize it's debatable how we want to define "crapware". When I get my hands on a new computer, I want nothing but Windows and drivers, and I appreciate it when it's standard enough hardware that the drivers are included in Windows. Then I want to make my own decisions. However, I'm sure that there are lots of people who want their computer to be fully functional (by their own terms) when they receive it, which may well include AV software and Adobe Reader/Flash.
Does anyone honestly think we would have an interstate system today (or even standardized road signs) if we had followed that model?
I think it would be roughly the same, except the roads would be essentially run by the Automobile Industry Association of America, and you'd only be allowed to drive cars from a handful of major car companies on them. Driving a car manufactured by Tesla Motors would get you a $10 million fine. The AIAA would be able to write you their own tickets arbitrarily, with the force of law, but without any ability to challenge them in court.
And when you complained, people would say, "Well what do you expect? Car companies can't just provide the roads for free! They have to make their money somewhere."
It's tenacity probably owes something to shortcomings in human nature and the inability of society to self-correct in those areas.
Well at least part of the problem is that all kinds of power tend to entrench themselves. A person or corporation that has made a substantial profit for a number of years has more wealth and influence than your average person, and will use that power and influence to keep himself/herself/itself powerful and influential. Wealth and power tend to have a sort of gravity to them. Once it starts to collect, its force increases pulling in more, which in turn increases the force with which more is pulled in.
Of course the ease with which people confound "the way things are" with "the way things should be" and "the way things have to be" probably shares some responsibility for the problem. I know people who think that having post offices and public highways is completely fine and normal, but having public data infrastructure is scary and communist. When asked what the difference is beyond how advanced the technology in question is, the only answer seems to be, "Having public highways and post offices is normal. You're supposed to have those."
No, I think $5-$10 is what an HD movie is worth (roughly). $40 is the suggested retail price, and I've seen them sold for as much. $25? You're still getting ripped off.
I don't shop at WalMart, but what's wrong with raiding the discount bins? I guess you're one of those guys who buys the most expensive things he can find, whether they're good or not, whether they're worth it or not.
And yes, I have an HDTV that was pretty close to top of the line when I bought it (a couple years ago). I'm not averse to spending money. I'm averse to spending absurd amounts of money for a shitty product.
No, they are sentenced to a life term for being a habitual criminal who won't reform.
Ummm... not technically. Not legally. You can't sentence someone for "being a bad person". You have to charge a specific crime. Someone gets tried and convicted of one crime, they go to jail, pay their time, and are released. They get convicted of another crime, go to jail, and get released. Those two crimes are done. You can't punish them again.
They then go to jail for shoplifting. For life. That's retarded.
Well for one, my only bluray is my PS3. Second, I mostly use OSX. Third, Handbrake is pretty darn easy.
Even so, I feel like ripping movies isn't as far along as ripping CDs was 10 years ago. These programs should automatically connect to a central DB that gets all metadata (title, director, actors, summary, chapter headings, etc.), rip it, drop it into iTunes, and eject the disk. For TV show DVDs, it should know to split of episodes automatically.
This stuff should be much easier. Or just let me download a high-quality DRM-free digital version for chrissake. I'll pay something more for it than the movie studios are getting from me right now.
Not really. You just need to be somewhat close to a big HDTV.
Or let me put it this way: I've compared DVDs and 720 iTunes movies to Bluray from a normal viewing distance, and Bluray looks noticeably better. I'm not one of those "I can hear the difference between a 320 kbps VBR MP3 and a WAVE file" people either. DVD and iTunes are watchable, but if I'm going to amass a movie collection, I want it to be the highest quality version available.
I can see why the studios would view the public as the same witless drug addled types as they star in these movies and therefore think them incapable of making the simple choice of not buying a poor product.
The real problem is that, to a large extent, they're right. There are a lot companies that exist and profit while selling a poor product and harming their own customers. The movie industry is just one example.
What you do own is a a very specific license that grants you the ability to play the content of the disc that you bought in ways that have been determined by the content's owners.
That's when you "own" a digital copy, since you aren't buying a physical copy but rather a license. However, when you buy a physical medium, you own that copy. You can loan it, resell it, or do anything you want except for copying it and distributing those copies.
I don't know if these movie studios are stupid or just playing dumb because they think it will make them more money. Sales are flagging for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that there is no good standard for buying movies these days. DVDs are cheap and available and you can easily play them on tons of devices and even rip them to computers. But they're not HD.
Bluray gives the best quality, but computer Bluray drives are expensive, consumer bluray players are expensive, the XBox doesn't have Bluray, most computers don't have Bluray, and they're significantly harder to rip. "Harder to rip" isn't just a downside for pirates, either. I have a PS3, but I won't buy Bluray disks because then I can *only* play it on my PS3. I can't play it on my computers or my iPod. I can't stream it over my network (at least not in a supported way).
Then you have digital downloads (iTunes, Amazon). No one is offering high-bitrate 1080p, which leaves you with the idea that you're just going to have to re-buy the same movie again in a couple years. Plus, they have DRM that hasn't been broken yet, which means all of your devices need to support that DRM or you can't play them. Oh, and on top of all that, the selection is random and unreliable. Go into iTunes some time and check out how many movies are available for rental but not purchase, and how many are available for purchase but not rental. Check out how many movies are available in HD and how many aren't, and then explain why a movie available for HD rental isn't available for HD purchase. It's confusing, there's no clear pattern (so you don't know what to expect), and it's frustrating. It's a bad experience.
Personally, even in cases where I'd like to own a movie, I'm waiting it out until the dust clears. I'm not the only one. I've talked to people who aren't techies, and on top of all the problems I've noted, you have confusion. They know that nothing they buy can be trusted to play everywhere without any complications, but beyond that they don't really know what the hell is going on. People only want to buy a movie when they can have that copy be the definitive version that they can keep for years in a collection that they're proud of. This is what these media companies don't seem to understand. Their customers are collectors who want to enjoy collecting things and take pride in the collection. They don't want to re-buy the same movie every 5 years for $20 a pop. Beyond the expense, that cheapens the experience of "collecting".
When I can get DRM-free 1080p digital copies (either by downloading or ripping) that are supported everywhere, you might see me back in the market. Of course, they need to get away from this idea of charging $40 for a Bluray disk. Sorry, but are they out of their god damn minds? $5 or maybe $10. Maybe as high as $15 for a blockbuster new-release movie. But $400 for a Bluray player and $40 for each movie, and they're trying to figure out why people aren't buying movies?
Yes, the big idea of "three strikes" laws was that you were dealing with a repeat offender who wasn't at all rehabilitatable, and so the solution was to lock them up for an extended period of time. It was never completely clear if the extended period of time was to give them greater time to rehabilitate, if people were hoping that great prison sentences would serve as an increased deterrent (i.e. "I can't do anything bad because I already have 2 strikes!"), or if the idea was to get dangerous criminals off the street.
However, three-strikes laws have generally been considered failures, largely because they remove the possibility of judges using any discretion for sentencing. Arguably that was the point-- to prevent judges from being too soft on crime-- but really we have judges so that they can use their judgement on some of these very issues. You ended up with cases where a person could be sentenced to a life term in prison for a relatively minor crime, e.g. shoplifting.
Without a recoup period, there is no incentive to develop new treatments.
That's not entirely true. There are incentives to develop new treatments... like, you know, curing people. There might even be business models which fund developments of new treatments. It's just that there might not be business models which provide enough funding to find these treatments quickly, and what business models there are might include trying to keep trade secrets, which means that the treatments might not be widely available, and people wouldn't be able to do significant research based on those discoveries.
It's worth keeping in mind that the purpose of patents wasn't originally to guarantee inventors a return on their investment in research. The idea was that it was an exchange: the government guarantees you a limited period of exclusive rights to the invention, and in return you publicly disclose how your invention works, and the public gets to use it once your exclusivity ends.
Personally, I don't really have a problem with copyrights or patents, just so long as we keep in mind that the purpose is to enrich the public's store of IP rather than to enrich the originators of the IP. We just give the originators something in trade for their contributions: limited control over their ideas for a limited time.
I'm not a corporation, so I have to claim the income as being earned right here in the US.
And there's the problem. You hear the claim that a corporation is legally a "person" and therefore needs all the rights and privileges we guarantee to people, but really they're not treated like people. They're not bound by the same rules as people. They don't have the responsibilities people have. They have more rights and more freedoms than people have. And if a corporation gets itself into enough trouble, the people running it can essentially close up shop and walk away without consequences.
At some point---probably within a couple of years---the price of a SSD will drop to the point where you can get a 256 GB drive for $100. At that point, it doesn't matter how big the hard drive vendors make their drive capacity; they're through.
Agreed. It doesn't really matter if the price per TB for magnetic hard drives is much lower than for flash. The question will be, can I get enough storage in my computer without breaking the bank?
Of course it depends on what amount is "enough". Honestly, on my laptop, I'm only using 25 GB. It's not that I'm trying to keep my storage requirements down. I have 160GB to work with, I just don't store anything except my OS, a few applications, and some documents. My desktop is in about the same state, except add about 20 GB of music. I think the next time I buy a new drive (which may still be a couple years off) it will be SSD.
On the other hand, I would probably still want something very high capacity for archiving/backup, and hard drives might still be suitable there. Also, it's possible that I could be prodded into collecting movies and TV shows at 1080p like I have MP3s right now, in which cases I might want several hundred gigabytes of video storage. That might be another suitable use for hard drives. So maybe you'll see more of a tiered approach, with smaller/faster SSDs used internally to store the OS and apps, and then bigger external HD for video, backup, and archives.
I could imagine them using it in a very sensible place: the AppleTV. It could allow them to offer a Hulu-like service with free downloads of TV shows, provided you're willing to watch ads during normal commercial breaks. Of course, the media companies would only agree to such a deal if Apple could offer strong assurances that users would actually be forced to watch the ads and not bypass them somehow.
And how would that really be different or worse than Hulu or cable TV?
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I don't know. It seems to me that I can root for whoever I want to. I don't want the judge to be rooting for anyone for any reason other than the strength of their respective arguments. That would be dangerous. But me? My rooting has no real effect.
On the other hand, me personally? I like Apple as a company and I like their products, but I'm slightly rooting against them. Not because I like Psystar or because I think what they're doing is actually legal according to current law or precedent, but I'm always a little uncomfortable with the idea that "copying to RAM" is a real "copy" in the sense that it could be infringement on copyright. That's the argument that leads to the RIAA and MPAA being able to decide whether or not I'm allowed to listen to music or watch a movie, even after I've bought it.
When "copying to RAM" can be copyright infringement, you can never actually buy or own a copy of music or a movie or a piece of software in a usable form. You can only "license" it. I think copyright infringement should be reserved for cases of people distributing unauthorized copies.
My landlord has keys to my apartment. Does that mean I have no expectation of privacy in my own apartment, just because a third party theoretically has access to it? Even if I haven't given permission for my landlord to enter my apartment?
I was just saying that I wouldn't be surprised if some email providers had EULAs that said something to the extent of "we can do whatever the hell we feel like, and you have no recourse."
It seems like that's just in every contract and agreement these days. There's always some kind of clause which, when translated from legalese to English, reads, "We're not responsible for anything and you can't sue us for anything. Everything that we have agreed to provide you with, we can withdraw at any moment and you can go screw yourself." I've seen it in ISP service agreements, online music/movie retailers, and software EULAs. Hell, I've even seen it in standard residential leases. It doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to screw you, and in many cases I think it's just a CYA move, but it's still pretty disconcerting.
Those problems aren't unsolvable. You've just laid out part of a design spec for a device which isn't impossible with today's technology. First, cell signals might not be good, so you need the option to download maps ahead of time and save them to the phone. Second, battery life is limited, and when you're far away from any power source, the cell phone eats too much power. Well you just solved part of the problem with your definition of the problem. Locations where you're far from power sources tends to overlap with the locations where there isn't good cell reception. Make a device so you can turn off all wireless/cell capabilities and conserve power for the GPS.
Ok, so that still might not be good enough for a few specialized purposes. Maybe if you're a police officer or a hard-core outdoorsman you'll still want a separate device, in the same way that some people still want a PDA separate from their phone. But for mainstream users? The GPS on the phone will probably be plenty good enough.
I've found that really is the best way to take notes. When you're taking notes in the first place, it's best for them to be as quick and free-form as possible, allowing you to put down your understanding of what you're hearing very quickly and accurately. Nothing beats pencil and paper for that yet. You can draw little diagrams, draw symbols, circle things, write more important things bigger, drag big arrows from one note to another, or whatever else you like. It's very intuitive and easy.
Then later go back the same day (while you can still remember why you wrote your notes the way you did) and transcribe those notes into a formal digital form. Not only will the repetition of writing it all out again help your memory, but having to put things in the more constricted form will help you sort the ideas out. You draw a big funky diagram to help you understand how ideas were connected. Great. Now write that out in a word processor so that you'll be sure to understand it later. That process itself will help deepen your understanding of what you've learned.
The funny thing about this is that I found that if I went through this process pretty thoroughly, I hardly needed the notes later. Sure, they were useful to have and I would refer to them for minor details, but I would understand and remember things so much better without the notes after I had hand-written them free-form and then transcribed them into a formal format.
Yeah, that was my thought. If I rent an apartment from a private company, can my landlord give permission for the police to search my house? I rent storage space in a building for my private belongings, can the police search it without a warrant?
My understanding is that no, they can't (though IANAL). However, if I rent electronic storage space for my email, suddenly that's fair game? I don't understand that.
Maybe this is the difference:
but an ISP-hosted email account, currently, does have full access to the content, with your tacit approval.
I don't know where that "tacit approval" is supposed to have come from. They have approval because they technically have the capability to view my email? Landlords often have keys to the apartment, but that doesn't mean they have approval to enter. Is there something in the EULAs for most of these businesses that says, "We can read your email for any reason?" That wouldn't surprise me.
I guess I still think it's debatable where the "normal software" ends and where the "foistware" begins. Unless your hard drive comes completely clean, it came with some software that someone wouldn't want. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of people who would want their computer to come with at least Windows, all drivers, a browser, and Adobe Reader and Flash installed.
In fairness, I'm not sure Adobe Reader and Flash should be considered "crapware". I personally am not too fond of them, but they're common freeware that a healthy percentage of people want, and lots of people will even be annoyed if they sit down at a computer and those programs aren't there.
Similarly, I'm not sure I'd call Chrome or Skype "crapware". They're pretty decent programs, and I wouldn't consider them any more nefarious (actually, I think of them as less nefarious) then IE or MSN messenger.
As for the OEM "gadgets" and "panels", I think it really depends on the function and quality. When an OEM installs very simple, functional, low resource, high quality control software, then I think it's fairly justifiable. Like some vendors have included WiFi configuration utilities that are better than what comes in Windows, and though I prefer to go with a standard Windows config as much as possible (for the sake of imaging and such), those don't bother me too much. However, some vendors include software that uses a bunch of software resources, put several icons in your system tray, and pop up to advertise additional services or software. I would call that sort of thing "crapware".
But I recognize it's debatable how we want to define "crapware". When I get my hands on a new computer, I want nothing but Windows and drivers, and I appreciate it when it's standard enough hardware that the drivers are included in Windows. Then I want to make my own decisions. However, I'm sure that there are lots of people who want their computer to be fully functional (by their own terms) when they receive it, which may well include AV software and Adobe Reader/Flash.
Geeze, a 50Mb connection for $50/month? How can I get my city sued by TDS telecommunications?
Does anyone honestly think we would have an interstate system today (or even standardized road signs) if we had followed that model?
I think it would be roughly the same, except the roads would be essentially run by the Automobile Industry Association of America, and you'd only be allowed to drive cars from a handful of major car companies on them. Driving a car manufactured by Tesla Motors would get you a $10 million fine. The AIAA would be able to write you their own tickets arbitrarily, with the force of law, but without any ability to challenge them in court.
And when you complained, people would say, "Well what do you expect? Car companies can't just provide the roads for free! They have to make their money somewhere."
It's tenacity probably owes something to shortcomings in human nature and the inability of society to self-correct in those areas.
Well at least part of the problem is that all kinds of power tend to entrench themselves. A person or corporation that has made a substantial profit for a number of years has more wealth and influence than your average person, and will use that power and influence to keep himself/herself/itself powerful and influential. Wealth and power tend to have a sort of gravity to them. Once it starts to collect, its force increases pulling in more, which in turn increases the force with which more is pulled in.
Of course the ease with which people confound "the way things are" with "the way things should be" and "the way things have to be" probably shares some responsibility for the problem. I know people who think that having post offices and public highways is completely fine and normal, but having public data infrastructure is scary and communist. When asked what the difference is beyond how advanced the technology in question is, the only answer seems to be, "Having public highways and post offices is normal. You're supposed to have those."
If you think $5-$10 for a movie is a normal price
No, I think $5-$10 is what an HD movie is worth (roughly). $40 is the suggested retail price, and I've seen them sold for as much. $25? You're still getting ripped off.
I don't shop at WalMart, but what's wrong with raiding the discount bins? I guess you're one of those guys who buys the most expensive things he can find, whether they're good or not, whether they're worth it or not.
And yes, I have an HDTV that was pretty close to top of the line when I bought it (a couple years ago). I'm not averse to spending money. I'm averse to spending absurd amounts of money for a shitty product.
No, they are sentenced to a life term for being a habitual criminal who won't reform.
Ummm... not technically. Not legally. You can't sentence someone for "being a bad person". You have to charge a specific crime. Someone gets tried and convicted of one crime, they go to jail, pay their time, and are released. They get convicted of another crime, go to jail, and get released. Those two crimes are done. You can't punish them again.
They then go to jail for shoplifting. For life. That's retarded.
Well for one, my only bluray is my PS3. Second, I mostly use OSX. Third, Handbrake is pretty darn easy.
Even so, I feel like ripping movies isn't as far along as ripping CDs was 10 years ago. These programs should automatically connect to a central DB that gets all metadata (title, director, actors, summary, chapter headings, etc.), rip it, drop it into iTunes, and eject the disk. For TV show DVDs, it should know to split of episodes automatically.
This stuff should be much easier. Or just let me download a high-quality DRM-free digital version for chrissake. I'll pay something more for it than the movie studios are getting from me right now.
Not really. You just need to be somewhat close to a big HDTV.
Or let me put it this way: I've compared DVDs and 720 iTunes movies to Bluray from a normal viewing distance, and Bluray looks noticeably better. I'm not one of those "I can hear the difference between a 320 kbps VBR MP3 and a WAVE file" people either. DVD and iTunes are watchable, but if I'm going to amass a movie collection, I want it to be the highest quality version available.
I can see why the studios would view the public as the same witless drug addled types as they star in these movies and therefore think them incapable of making the simple choice of not buying a poor product.
The real problem is that, to a large extent, they're right. There are a lot companies that exist and profit while selling a poor product and harming their own customers. The movie industry is just one example.
What you do own is a a very specific license that grants you the ability to play the content of the disc that you bought in ways that have been determined by the content's owners.
That's when you "own" a digital copy, since you aren't buying a physical copy but rather a license. However, when you buy a physical medium, you own that copy. You can loan it, resell it, or do anything you want except for copying it and distributing those copies.
Not to insult you, but duh!
I don't know if these movie studios are stupid or just playing dumb because they think it will make them more money. Sales are flagging for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that there is no good standard for buying movies these days. DVDs are cheap and available and you can easily play them on tons of devices and even rip them to computers. But they're not HD.
Bluray gives the best quality, but computer Bluray drives are expensive, consumer bluray players are expensive, the XBox doesn't have Bluray, most computers don't have Bluray, and they're significantly harder to rip. "Harder to rip" isn't just a downside for pirates, either. I have a PS3, but I won't buy Bluray disks because then I can *only* play it on my PS3. I can't play it on my computers or my iPod. I can't stream it over my network (at least not in a supported way).
Then you have digital downloads (iTunes, Amazon). No one is offering high-bitrate 1080p, which leaves you with the idea that you're just going to have to re-buy the same movie again in a couple years. Plus, they have DRM that hasn't been broken yet, which means all of your devices need to support that DRM or you can't play them. Oh, and on top of all that, the selection is random and unreliable. Go into iTunes some time and check out how many movies are available for rental but not purchase, and how many are available for purchase but not rental. Check out how many movies are available in HD and how many aren't, and then explain why a movie available for HD rental isn't available for HD purchase. It's confusing, there's no clear pattern (so you don't know what to expect), and it's frustrating. It's a bad experience.
Personally, even in cases where I'd like to own a movie, I'm waiting it out until the dust clears. I'm not the only one. I've talked to people who aren't techies, and on top of all the problems I've noted, you have confusion. They know that nothing they buy can be trusted to play everywhere without any complications, but beyond that they don't really know what the hell is going on. People only want to buy a movie when they can have that copy be the definitive version that they can keep for years in a collection that they're proud of. This is what these media companies don't seem to understand. Their customers are collectors who want to enjoy collecting things and take pride in the collection. They don't want to re-buy the same movie every 5 years for $20 a pop. Beyond the expense, that cheapens the experience of "collecting".
When I can get DRM-free 1080p digital copies (either by downloading or ripping) that are supported everywhere, you might see me back in the market. Of course, they need to get away from this idea of charging $40 for a Bluray disk. Sorry, but are they out of their god damn minds? $5 or maybe $10. Maybe as high as $15 for a blockbuster new-release movie. But $400 for a Bluray player and $40 for each movie, and they're trying to figure out why people aren't buying movies?
Yes, the big idea of "three strikes" laws was that you were dealing with a repeat offender who wasn't at all rehabilitatable, and so the solution was to lock them up for an extended period of time. It was never completely clear if the extended period of time was to give them greater time to rehabilitate, if people were hoping that great prison sentences would serve as an increased deterrent (i.e. "I can't do anything bad because I already have 2 strikes!"), or if the idea was to get dangerous criminals off the street.
However, three-strikes laws have generally been considered failures, largely because they remove the possibility of judges using any discretion for sentencing. Arguably that was the point-- to prevent judges from being too soft on crime-- but really we have judges so that they can use their judgement on some of these very issues. You ended up with cases where a person could be sentenced to a life term in prison for a relatively minor crime, e.g. shoplifting.
You can also get more than one meal out of a fishing pole.
I guess so, if it's a big fishing pole. But it won't taste as good as a hamburger.
1) All R&D needs to be logged (in terms of cost).
... and they'll pad those costs more than lawyers pad their time. Or haven't you heard that the Star Wars movies still haven't made a profit?
(Even if the Star Wars story is fake or exaggerated, the movie and music business do these sorts of "creative accounting" all the time.)
Without a recoup period, there is no incentive to develop new treatments.
That's not entirely true. There are incentives to develop new treatments... like, you know, curing people. There might even be business models which fund developments of new treatments. It's just that there might not be business models which provide enough funding to find these treatments quickly, and what business models there are might include trying to keep trade secrets, which means that the treatments might not be widely available, and people wouldn't be able to do significant research based on those discoveries.
It's worth keeping in mind that the purpose of patents wasn't originally to guarantee inventors a return on their investment in research. The idea was that it was an exchange: the government guarantees you a limited period of exclusive rights to the invention, and in return you publicly disclose how your invention works, and the public gets to use it once your exclusivity ends.
Personally, I don't really have a problem with copyrights or patents, just so long as we keep in mind that the purpose is to enrich the public's store of IP rather than to enrich the originators of the IP. We just give the originators something in trade for their contributions: limited control over their ideas for a limited time.
I'm not a corporation, so I have to claim the income as being earned right here in the US.
And there's the problem. You hear the claim that a corporation is legally a "person" and therefore needs all the rights and privileges we guarantee to people, but really they're not treated like people. They're not bound by the same rules as people. They don't have the responsibilities people have. They have more rights and more freedoms than people have. And if a corporation gets itself into enough trouble, the people running it can essentially close up shop and walk away without consequences.
At some point---probably within a couple of years---the price of a SSD will drop to the point where you can get a 256 GB drive for $100. At that point, it doesn't matter how big the hard drive vendors make their drive capacity; they're through.
Agreed. It doesn't really matter if the price per TB for magnetic hard drives is much lower than for flash. The question will be, can I get enough storage in my computer without breaking the bank?
Of course it depends on what amount is "enough". Honestly, on my laptop, I'm only using 25 GB. It's not that I'm trying to keep my storage requirements down. I have 160GB to work with, I just don't store anything except my OS, a few applications, and some documents. My desktop is in about the same state, except add about 20 GB of music. I think the next time I buy a new drive (which may still be a couple years off) it will be SSD.
On the other hand, I would probably still want something very high capacity for archiving/backup, and hard drives might still be suitable there. Also, it's possible that I could be prodded into collecting movies and TV shows at 1080p like I have MP3s right now, in which cases I might want several hundred gigabytes of video storage. That might be another suitable use for hard drives. So maybe you'll see more of a tiered approach, with smaller/faster SSDs used internally to store the OS and apps, and then bigger external HD for video, backup, and archives.
I could imagine them using it in a very sensible place: the AppleTV. It could allow them to offer a Hulu-like service with free downloads of TV shows, provided you're willing to watch ads during normal commercial breaks. Of course, the media companies would only agree to such a deal if Apple could offer strong assurances that users would actually be forced to watch the ads and not bypass them somehow.
And how would that really be different or worse than Hulu or cable TV?