If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.
But:
They might decide to fly or take a train.
They could rent a car for that once-a-year trip.
It can handle a 12 hour trip. You'll just have to take a few 45 minute breaks along the way.
If you're really that strapped for cash, you're not going to spend $50k on a car anyway.
People's needs are really more fluid than they like to admit. I don't think a 45 minute break every 4 hours is going to be a deal breaker for most people. If it is, it might be more psychological than based on real need. There may be some people who really drive around all day and need a better distance per charge ratio, just like there are people who genuinely need a pickup truck, but it's really not that common.
Some of it due to our car oriented culture (which no product will fix, but an infrastructure issue - go by a European high school vs American suburban high school and check out ratio of cars to bicycles in the parking lot). Another is just poor construction practices like inadequate insulation or outdated heaters. Etc.
I'm with you there. Part of the reason I said, "If I were going to buy a car..." was that I don't own a car and ride a bike to work. But if I were going to buy a car, I'd like to be able to buy as efficient and environmentally friendly of a car as I can without breaking the bank, so I'm happy to see someone working on the problem.
As far as the Aptera, sure I'd like to see something like that be successful. Hell, I'd like to see even more radical solutions proposed, e.g. single-person transports for cities, but then you still have to address all the technical and economic problems like cost and recharge time. Then on top of that you have to convince people to accept these new things as "normal". If not "normal", than "cool". It's a tough sell for most people.
It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.
Still, that's not too typical for most people's day-to-day routine. And like the previous poster said, I would expect that most people can live with a 45 minute break every 4 hours on long car trips. You stretch your legs and maybe get something to eat, and then you're ready to go.
Actually, the funny thing in my mind is that, given your examples, I would probably be much more frustrated with the 5 hour trip than the 12 hour trip. If you're already taking a 12 hour trip, adding an extra hour or two of rest time doesn't seem that extreme to me. Hell, you might even think of it as a safety feature to help prevent road-hypnosis.
But imagine your battery lasts for 300 miles and you regularly make a trip that's 320 miles long. To have to stop 20 miles short of your destination and recharge for 45 minutes then would be pretty annoying. On the other hand, I would suppose you could just charge for 10 minutes and keep going. If it's like most batteries, it recharges most of the way pretty quickly, and then takes a long time to get that last 10% of charge.
True, but at this point, there's just no way of knowing how the TCO compares with a conventional car. As you said, there might be lower maintenance costs in general. On the other hand, with a new product that includes a new design, it takes a few years to know how well that design holds up under real use. Battery replacement costs are sure to be expensive, but you'll probably save some money on fuel costs on a day-to-day level. And how will it keep its value if you decide to resell it? It's hard to say ahead of time.
Still, I'm glad to see that there is a US car manufacturer who is trying to do something innovative.
It's great to see an electric car this cool for so cheap. I mean, $50k isn't cheap, but it's cheap in comparison to their other car, an it seems generally more practical. If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.
I'm wondering, though, does anyone know what kind of profit margin Tesla is getting on these? Is the government subsidizing these at all (for environmental reasons)? Are they in the sort of situation where, as they start selling, Tesla will enjoy economy of scale and prices will go down substantially? Or is this price pretty firm?
There is no such thing as "independent groups" in the way that the author implies
Well of course. You don't put the time/effort/money into forming a group like that unless you have some kind of agenda. That agenda isn't necessarily nefarious or evil, but there has to be something that you're trying to investigate or achieve, and so you're probably going to favor ideas that help you toward your agenda. It's not strange to think that someone looking at the issues with a different agenda in mind will favor different ideas.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that a a given group's agenda isn't nefarious or evil, or at the very least self-serving to the detriment of others. I personally have little doubt that the RIAA and MPAA are focussed on their own profits and aren't very concerned with the consumers' welfare or even artists' welfare. Maybe a pro-consumer group wouldn't be too interested in the RIAA's welfare either, but given that I'm a consumer and not the RIAA, I'm ok with that.
I think it happens sometimes that, when you have a market that most of the consumers don't understand how to compare quality of different vendors, any vendor that seems common and "normal" also seems like a safe bet. Back in the DOS days, Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities were very good products, and they gained a good reputation. They've sort of been riding off of that reputation ever since.
So someone's grandma gets told by someone or other that she needs and antivirus. She doesn't even really understand what an antivirus is, let alone what would make one antivirus better than another. She goes to Best Buy and finds the shelf where all the AV products are. The only name she recognizes is "Norton", so she buys it.
What went wrong? Why does this industry suck so badly? Anyone have any insight?
Disclaimer: I'm not any particular expert.
My guess is that at least part of the problem is that the only thing that AV software seems to do well is basically signature-based detection, which they had down pat a couple decades ago. So for the past few decades, mostly AV software only needed updates to work with new operating systems, bug fixes, and new signatures.
Now the only real problem with that is that these companies all want to release a new version of their software every year and have everyone re-buy it, because (for psychological reasons) people will pay more for that (or a subscription to receive "free" updates) than they'll pay for signature updates. This puts the companies in a position where it makes sense to throw some new bells and whistles into their product every year, whether or not they're sensible or effective. That leads to bloat.
Geeze, you're so full of shit I'm not going to even read all of this. I stopped when I hit, "The evidence is in any study on diet and exercise." What the hells does that even mean? Any study? Have you done any study? Have you read any study? Do you know anything on the topic?
Give me one study. Give me a single study with a diverse sample of people that shows that people with the same caloric intake and same exercise routine will all weigh the same, even as a general trend. Hell, give me a single article or website. I'd almost settle for any single person other than you, but there probably is at least one other kook in the world.
On second thought, don't bother. I know you're wrong, and by now, you probably know you're wrong. If you don't... well, I'm not going to try to sort through your posts for meaning anymore. Instead, go read something on the topic. Or even talk to your family doctor. Or look on the web for any number of websites for more information.
I may as well have been arguing with the Time Cube guy.
It would help if that question were a little more grammatical enough to be actually asking something. My points don't really need defending from arguments as ironclad as, "Nuh-uh. Are you claiming that studies control disagree or agree on purpose? That be unpossible!"
Look, it's well documented that different people have different bacteria in their digestive tract. That's not "mysterious". But the whole point of taking large sample sets for scientific studies is to try to control for other unknown and uncontrolled factors.
Do you actually have scientific support *at all* for your claim that the number of calories consumed and number of calories burned through exercise are, all by themselves, the only factors in weight gain? Across the entire human race, not another factor comes into play?
Fine, you bring up BMR (as thought that means you know something). Let's see what the wikipedia has to say:
Illness, previously consumed food and beverages, environmental temperature, and stress levels can affect one's overall energy expenditure as well as one's BMR.
And later on:
Each person's metabolism is unique due to his unique physical makeup and physical behavior. For some, this makes weight management a very difficult undertaking requiring sophisticated expertise. There are a number of medical adjustments to natural human processes that can affect one's metabolism.
Sure, the wikipedia isn't an authoritative source, but the point is you're so far from the common understanding of things that you may as well be denying the existence of the sun. Go ahead and Google something like "BMR factors" and see what information you can find. The fact is, we don't know what all the factors are, but a lot of the unknowns usually get lumped in with "it's probably genetic."
Can you support your claims with anything other than, "but I say so!"?
Yeah, I don't really see why the creator of Batman should be able to prevent other people from writing other Batman stories. I mean, I can understand why the creator would want that level of control, but I don't particularly see why we should agree to give it to him. If you write a story, it makes some sense to me to grant you a certain level of ownership over that particular story. However, it doesn't make sense to grant you ownership of the ideas and concepts that are present in your story, to give ownership of plot devices or characters.
Where it gets a little tricky with derivative works, though, is the question of "how much do you need to change it before it's legal again?"
My general advice to them has been to focus on having a higher total value than pirated content, including higher quality, better features, extras, etcetera.
I disagree. If you want it, you can find pirated content that's great quality, and any "extras" of significant value will probably end up being pirated anyway. I know sometimes they try to bundle things like "You can get early access to buy tickets!" but that only addresses the portion of your market who's feeling really eager to buy tickets and plan ahead. I don't think that portion is close to the whole market.
I think the winning strategy, in the end, is one that these companies aren't eager to consider: they're going to have to focus on making content cheap and convenient. If it's safer and more convenient than pirating and not much more expensive, then people will go for that.
I think that's one of the lessons from Hulu, since you bring it up. Watching stuff on Hulu is very easy and convenient, and it's cost (watching ads) isn't that much more than "free" in most people's minds. However, ask yourself why people haven't cancelled their cable and started relying only on Hulu, and you'll start to see the ways in which Hulu falls short.
In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally.
AFAICT, the real point of talking about "derivative works" with copyright is just to close a loophole where someone might say, "Oh, I don't have the right to distribute your work? Well no problem, this isn't your work. I changed 5 words in the novel, which makes it a different work. This new work is mine."
Since then, some people have taken it to mean that all new copyrighted works should be 100% original, not inspired by anything, and not borrowing from anyone's past work. But that's impossible.
Since your whole argument for why I'm wrong comes down to "nuh uh! you're a stupid doo-doo head!" I'll just go ahead and take it that you've forfeited the argument and just decided you don't want to carry on this discussion. Maybe one of these days you'll actually have interest in science and understanding how things work, and maybe we'll talk again then.
In the mean time, I'll listen to scientists who study this stuff and know what they're talking about.
Actually plenty of Blu-ray and other devices support WMDRM via DLNA or Media Extender protocols.
Yeah, they might, but that doesn't mean the WMDRM scheme would be workable for Bluray discs themselves.
Well, the studios could also have said "analog only!" and designed technologies that don't interoperate well with the PC ecosystem.
Again, so what? People would have ripped the analog signal, encoded it, and we'd be in the same boat. They can try to make things more painful for consumers, which is what DRM already does, but that will only continue to hurt their business. People will go on finding ways to do what they want anyway, they'll avoid legitimate products more the more painful they are, and their business model will fall apart.
As far as asking whether Napoleon was good for the world, I don't see what's wrong with that question. Even today, it could be an interesting historical question, but it certainly would have been a sensible question to ask if you were living in Napoleonic France.
if evolution is a completely unintelligent process, then if we misuse intelligence and end up wiping ourselves (and whatever else) off the face of the earth, then it seems to me that would simply mean we weren't "fit" for survival. I don't see, from the perspective of that worldview, what loss there would be in losing the world we can't recreate if we destroy it. There's no inherent value in it, is there?
It seems worth noting that this logic only works if you assume that value is something placed on our lives by an intelligent creator, and not something that we place on our own lives. Since you're starting from the assumption of no intelligent creator, there's a potential conflict there.
I'm not sure if that's clear enough, but let me ask this: if there is no creator and no intelligence to the process, then what basis could there ever be for any value judgement other than our own human value judgements?
Or do you believe that there isn't such a thing as valid value judgements at all? In that case, why are you asking about "inherent value"? In fact, why are you trying to convince people here of anything, if the opinion you're espousing has no value?
My best guess from your post is that you have an implied value judgement that "survival of the fittest" is a natural process, and therefore good or at least appropriate. However, at the same time you're arguing a contrary position that there is no such thing as a contradiction between "natural" and "unnatural", and that no value can be placed on natural processes.
Both Apple and AACS are reliant on support from platforms that Microsoft can't get their hands on. You wouldn't have FairPlay without Macs/iPods, and you wouldn't have AACS without stand-alone bluray players.
Or really, more to the point, WMA DRM isn't suitable for stand-alone players (being able to move media between non-internet-connected devices), and Apple could make their own DRM because they kicked Microsoft's ass. Microsoft was trying to establish control of online media distribution (not so much physical media distribution), and that plan didn't anticipate the ascension of the iPod.
Hollywood wasn't inclined to allow content to play in PCs at all unless they were comfortable with available security.
I'm kind of inclined to say "so what?" I mean, I understand what you're saying, and you're not wrong there, but that doesn't mean DRM was generally a positive development. As far as I'm concerned, its main effect has been to delay the development of rational business models by preserving the illusory view that media companies have that they're in a position to set their own terms.
Well, it's not like Microsoft was the only company working on DRM or with the potential to do so.
No, they were only in the unique position to push support for their DRM scheme to >90% of desktop systems without overt consumer action. Further they had greater access to their own OS security layers, meaning they could easily push DRM features into the kernel itself to make it harder to break. Why would anyone put serious effort into competing with them on Windows?
And WMDRM has always had RAND licensing; Apple could have licensed it and implemented it themselves if they were so inclined.
And why should they? "Reasonable" is in they eye of the beholder, and I can't see why a smart company would want their business model to be dependent on another company's DRM scheme. In fact, I can't see a anyone reasonably thinking that it's a good idea to leave your company's future dependent on Microsoft not screwing around with standards which they control. If you want an example, I have one relating to the very topic we're discussing: Microsoft not supporting "PlaysForSure" content on the Zune.
DRM was more about liberating the bits from the discs and the fixed-function CE devices
I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can even claim that in good faith. The bits can be liberated just fine without DRM. There's no way to argue that DRM isn't about trying to control distribution and use.
I don't know if it's possible to make significant, sustained revenue from DRM.
Like I said, I don't believe Microsoft intended on making a profit directly from licensing fees on the DRM. I think the intention was to put themselves in a position of power in the media industry, and to reenforce the vendor lock-in they enjoy with Windows.
Yeah, but my whole point is: it depends on what your requirements are. Since the OP brings up HTML, I would guess being directly viewable in a web browser is a plus, and being viewable in an image viewer isn't desired.
Is part of your aim to be that you can have common users edit the file in an office suite, dump documents to a website as-is, set up an index page with a link to each document, and allow the general public to view the articles just by visiting the website (without any additional software or plugins installed) and print them if they want (while controlling the print layout)? Because if that's the sort of thing that the OP is hoping for, then LaTex might be a horrible solution.
You have to know what the OP is trying to accomplish and who will be using this system.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when the OP is saying things like "no CSS"... s/he is actually giving specifications in a very obfuscated way
Definitely. The problem with this question is that the OP is suggesting an idea for solving a problem, but then not giving a complete description of the problem being solved. A complete description would also give the restrictions on how you can solve the problem so that you can really analyze what the problem is.
Just to add to your list, another thing that popped into my head (which may be on the 'unlikely' side): the aversion to CSS may be that the poster wants people to be able to edit in an office suite, but might have some inkling that WYSIWYG editors don't handle style sheets very well at all. But really, there's no proper way to handle this sort of formatting in HTML itself. It would have to be done with styles, even if they were inline.
On the other hand,.tex files don't render so well if you drop them into web browsers. I mean, which format you choose really should depend on what your needs are. If you want to be able to store a single copy that can be opened in a web browser or an office suite, HTML isn't necessarily a bad choice, but at this point you wont get great layout control. I really think it's reasonable to hope that as new versions of HTML and CSS come out, they should be aiming towards enabling people to have a good "print" media type CSS that gives professional layout results, but we aren't there yet. We aren't even really close.
If you want people who know what they're doing to be making/editing these documents, then LaTex may be a good choice. If you want people to have normal everyday people to be able to open the file in an office suite they're comfortable with, then ODF is worth considering. If you want a widely supported format only for display/printing purposes (no editing) and you want tight layout control, then you won't do better than PDF.
At this point, there is no format that does it all without any downsides. You have to pick the best tool for the job.
Yeah, I don't know if it's worth explaining the whole thought process behind this, but basically my theory that I'm putting forward is that Microsoft had plans to dominate digital content and media distribution by pushing their formats on people.
The key to this plan was DRM and a tight little circle of vendor lock-in. Owning the OS positioned them better to guarantee support and security for the DRM. It gave them leverage to get device manufacturers to implement their standards, and it opened the possibility of the OS itself protecting the DRM scheme. Meanwhile the DRMed content would only work on Windows, which would reenforce their position as the dominant desktop OS.
You say, "the stuff Windows Media gets used for exclusively is stuff where there's not a viable alternative," but insofar as there's no alternative, it's because Microsoft has a lock on the market. You can't really have a workable open source DRM scheme, and Apple has their own. So anyone trying to compete with Microsoft to be the DRM provider has to compete against Microsoft on their own platform.
So anyway, what rarely gets talked about is how much Apple screwed Microsoft over on this whole thing. By managing to catch such a big lead in the portable media device market and refusing to support WMA, they made made Microsoft's DRM scheme nearly irrelevant. When Apple finally got its way and the labels started dropping DRM, WMAs were made functionally inferior to both MP3s and AACs (both of which are much more widely supported).;
Though Apple hasn't done a good job at pushing for royalty-free media standards, they've had a huge effect in pushing the market towards open media standards (AAC and H264). Now that those standards are becoming so widely supported by everything else, Microsoft is practically forced to support them.
Microsoft really isn't "pushing" Windows Media that much anymore. Zune and Xbox already support MPEG-4 and H.264, as will Silverlight 3 and Windows 7.
Well they're not pushing it too hard anymore, but that's really because they already lost on the audio side. Their hopes for locking up online music sales died when the major labels agreed to sell without DRM. Video may not be all that far behind.
Anyway, the point was never to have high licensing costs, but to build relationships with media companies while strengthening their vendor lock-in.
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If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.
But:
People's needs are really more fluid than they like to admit. I don't think a 45 minute break every 4 hours is going to be a deal breaker for most people. If it is, it might be more psychological than based on real need. There may be some people who really drive around all day and need a better distance per charge ratio, just like there are people who genuinely need a pickup truck, but it's really not that common.
Some of it due to our car oriented culture (which no product will fix, but an infrastructure issue - go by a European high school vs American suburban high school and check out ratio of cars to bicycles in the parking lot). Another is just poor construction practices like inadequate insulation or outdated heaters. Etc.
I'm with you there. Part of the reason I said, "If I were going to buy a car..." was that I don't own a car and ride a bike to work. But if I were going to buy a car, I'd like to be able to buy as efficient and environmentally friendly of a car as I can without breaking the bank, so I'm happy to see someone working on the problem.
As far as the Aptera, sure I'd like to see something like that be successful. Hell, I'd like to see even more radical solutions proposed, e.g. single-person transports for cities, but then you still have to address all the technical and economic problems like cost and recharge time. Then on top of that you have to convince people to accept these new things as "normal". If not "normal", than "cool". It's a tough sell for most people.
It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.
Still, that's not too typical for most people's day-to-day routine. And like the previous poster said, I would expect that most people can live with a 45 minute break every 4 hours on long car trips. You stretch your legs and maybe get something to eat, and then you're ready to go.
Actually, the funny thing in my mind is that, given your examples, I would probably be much more frustrated with the 5 hour trip than the 12 hour trip. If you're already taking a 12 hour trip, adding an extra hour or two of rest time doesn't seem that extreme to me. Hell, you might even think of it as a safety feature to help prevent road-hypnosis.
But imagine your battery lasts for 300 miles and you regularly make a trip that's 320 miles long. To have to stop 20 miles short of your destination and recharge for 45 minutes then would be pretty annoying. On the other hand, I would suppose you could just charge for 10 minutes and keep going. If it's like most batteries, it recharges most of the way pretty quickly, and then takes a long time to get that last 10% of charge.
True, but at this point, there's just no way of knowing how the TCO compares with a conventional car. As you said, there might be lower maintenance costs in general. On the other hand, with a new product that includes a new design, it takes a few years to know how well that design holds up under real use. Battery replacement costs are sure to be expensive, but you'll probably save some money on fuel costs on a day-to-day level. And how will it keep its value if you decide to resell it? It's hard to say ahead of time.
Still, I'm glad to see that there is a US car manufacturer who is trying to do something innovative.
It's great to see an electric car this cool for so cheap. I mean, $50k isn't cheap, but it's cheap in comparison to their other car, an it seems generally more practical. If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.
I'm wondering, though, does anyone know what kind of profit margin Tesla is getting on these? Is the government subsidizing these at all (for environmental reasons)? Are they in the sort of situation where, as they start selling, Tesla will enjoy economy of scale and prices will go down substantially? Or is this price pretty firm?
There is no such thing as "independent groups" in the way that the author implies
Well of course. You don't put the time/effort/money into forming a group like that unless you have some kind of agenda. That agenda isn't necessarily nefarious or evil, but there has to be something that you're trying to investigate or achieve, and so you're probably going to favor ideas that help you toward your agenda. It's not strange to think that someone looking at the issues with a different agenda in mind will favor different ideas.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that a a given group's agenda isn't nefarious or evil, or at the very least self-serving to the detriment of others. I personally have little doubt that the RIAA and MPAA are focussed on their own profits and aren't very concerned with the consumers' welfare or even artists' welfare. Maybe a pro-consumer group wouldn't be too interested in the RIAA's welfare either, but given that I'm a consumer and not the RIAA, I'm ok with that.
I think it happens sometimes that, when you have a market that most of the consumers don't understand how to compare quality of different vendors, any vendor that seems common and "normal" also seems like a safe bet. Back in the DOS days, Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities were very good products, and they gained a good reputation. They've sort of been riding off of that reputation ever since.
So someone's grandma gets told by someone or other that she needs and antivirus. She doesn't even really understand what an antivirus is, let alone what would make one antivirus better than another. She goes to Best Buy and finds the shelf where all the AV products are. The only name she recognizes is "Norton", so she buys it.
What went wrong? Why does this industry suck so badly? Anyone have any insight?
Disclaimer: I'm not any particular expert.
My guess is that at least part of the problem is that the only thing that AV software seems to do well is basically signature-based detection, which they had down pat a couple decades ago. So for the past few decades, mostly AV software only needed updates to work with new operating systems, bug fixes, and new signatures.
Now the only real problem with that is that these companies all want to release a new version of their software every year and have everyone re-buy it, because (for psychological reasons) people will pay more for that (or a subscription to receive "free" updates) than they'll pay for signature updates. This puts the companies in a position where it makes sense to throw some new bells and whistles into their product every year, whether or not they're sensible or effective. That leads to bloat.
Geeze, you're so full of shit I'm not going to even read all of this. I stopped when I hit, "The evidence is in any study on diet and exercise." What the hells does that even mean? Any study? Have you done any study? Have you read any study? Do you know anything on the topic?
Give me one study. Give me a single study with a diverse sample of people that shows that people with the same caloric intake and same exercise routine will all weigh the same, even as a general trend. Hell, give me a single article or website. I'd almost settle for any single person other than you, but there probably is at least one other kook in the world.
On second thought, don't bother. I know you're wrong, and by now, you probably know you're wrong. If you don't... well, I'm not going to try to sort through your posts for meaning anymore. Instead, go read something on the topic. Or even talk to your family doctor. Or look on the web for any number of websites for more information.
I may as well have been arguing with the Time Cube guy.
It would help if that question were a little more grammatical enough to be actually asking something. My points don't really need defending from arguments as ironclad as, "Nuh-uh. Are you claiming that studies control disagree or agree on purpose? That be unpossible!"
Look, it's well documented that different people have different bacteria in their digestive tract. That's not "mysterious". But the whole point of taking large sample sets for scientific studies is to try to control for other unknown and uncontrolled factors.
Do you actually have scientific support *at all* for your claim that the number of calories consumed and number of calories burned through exercise are, all by themselves, the only factors in weight gain? Across the entire human race, not another factor comes into play?
Fine, you bring up BMR (as thought that means you know something). Let's see what the wikipedia has to say:
Illness, previously consumed food and beverages, environmental temperature, and stress levels can affect one's overall energy expenditure as well as one's BMR.
And later on:
Each person's metabolism is unique due to his unique physical makeup and physical behavior. For some, this makes weight management a very difficult undertaking requiring sophisticated expertise. There are a number of medical adjustments to natural human processes that can affect one's metabolism.
Sure, the wikipedia isn't an authoritative source, but the point is you're so far from the common understanding of things that you may as well be denying the existence of the sun. Go ahead and Google something like "BMR factors" and see what information you can find. The fact is, we don't know what all the factors are, but a lot of the unknowns usually get lumped in with "it's probably genetic."
Can you support your claims with anything other than, "but I say so!"?
Yeah, I don't really see why the creator of Batman should be able to prevent other people from writing other Batman stories. I mean, I can understand why the creator would want that level of control, but I don't particularly see why we should agree to give it to him. If you write a story, it makes some sense to me to grant you a certain level of ownership over that particular story. However, it doesn't make sense to grant you ownership of the ideas and concepts that are present in your story, to give ownership of plot devices or characters.
Where it gets a little tricky with derivative works, though, is the question of "how much do you need to change it before it's legal again?"
Typically when a song is remixed or sampled, the copyright holders have given permission and are getting royalties.
My general advice to them has been to focus on having a higher total value than pirated content, including higher quality, better features, extras, etcetera.
I disagree. If you want it, you can find pirated content that's great quality, and any "extras" of significant value will probably end up being pirated anyway. I know sometimes they try to bundle things like "You can get early access to buy tickets!" but that only addresses the portion of your market who's feeling really eager to buy tickets and plan ahead. I don't think that portion is close to the whole market.
I think the winning strategy, in the end, is one that these companies aren't eager to consider: they're going to have to focus on making content cheap and convenient. If it's safer and more convenient than pirating and not much more expensive, then people will go for that.
I think that's one of the lessons from Hulu, since you bring it up. Watching stuff on Hulu is very easy and convenient, and it's cost (watching ads) isn't that much more than "free" in most people's minds. However, ask yourself why people haven't cancelled their cable and started relying only on Hulu, and you'll start to see the ways in which Hulu falls short.
In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally.
AFAICT, the real point of talking about "derivative works" with copyright is just to close a loophole where someone might say, "Oh, I don't have the right to distribute your work? Well no problem, this isn't your work. I changed 5 words in the novel, which makes it a different work. This new work is mine."
Since then, some people have taken it to mean that all new copyrighted works should be 100% original, not inspired by anything, and not borrowing from anyone's past work. But that's impossible.
Since your whole argument for why I'm wrong comes down to "nuh uh! you're a stupid doo-doo head!" I'll just go ahead and take it that you've forfeited the argument and just decided you don't want to carry on this discussion. Maybe one of these days you'll actually have interest in science and understanding how things work, and maybe we'll talk again then.
In the mean time, I'll listen to scientists who study this stuff and know what they're talking about.
Actually plenty of Blu-ray and other devices support WMDRM via DLNA or Media Extender protocols.
Yeah, they might, but that doesn't mean the WMDRM scheme would be workable for Bluray discs themselves.
Well, the studios could also have said "analog only!" and designed technologies that don't interoperate well with the PC ecosystem.
Again, so what? People would have ripped the analog signal, encoded it, and we'd be in the same boat. They can try to make things more painful for consumers, which is what DRM already does, but that will only continue to hurt their business. People will go on finding ways to do what they want anyway, they'll avoid legitimate products more the more painful they are, and their business model will fall apart.
As far as asking whether Napoleon was good for the world, I don't see what's wrong with that question. Even today, it could be an interesting historical question, but it certainly would have been a sensible question to ask if you were living in Napoleonic France.
if evolution is a completely unintelligent process, then if we misuse intelligence and end up wiping ourselves (and whatever else) off the face of the earth, then it seems to me that would simply mean we weren't "fit" for survival. I don't see, from the perspective of that worldview, what loss there would be in losing the world we can't recreate if we destroy it. There's no inherent value in it, is there?
It seems worth noting that this logic only works if you assume that value is something placed on our lives by an intelligent creator, and not something that we place on our own lives. Since you're starting from the assumption of no intelligent creator, there's a potential conflict there.
I'm not sure if that's clear enough, but let me ask this: if there is no creator and no intelligence to the process, then what basis could there ever be for any value judgement other than our own human value judgements?
Or do you believe that there isn't such a thing as valid value judgements at all? In that case, why are you asking about "inherent value"? In fact, why are you trying to convince people here of anything, if the opinion you're espousing has no value?
My best guess from your post is that you have an implied value judgement that "survival of the fittest" is a natural process, and therefore good or at least appropriate. However, at the same time you're arguing a contrary position that there is no such thing as a contradiction between "natural" and "unnatural", and that no value can be placed on natural processes.
Both Apple and AACS are reliant on support from platforms that Microsoft can't get their hands on. You wouldn't have FairPlay without Macs/iPods, and you wouldn't have AACS without stand-alone bluray players.
Or really, more to the point, WMA DRM isn't suitable for stand-alone players (being able to move media between non-internet-connected devices), and Apple could make their own DRM because they kicked Microsoft's ass. Microsoft was trying to establish control of online media distribution (not so much physical media distribution), and that plan didn't anticipate the ascension of the iPod.
Hollywood wasn't inclined to allow content to play in PCs at all unless they were comfortable with available security.
I'm kind of inclined to say "so what?" I mean, I understand what you're saying, and you're not wrong there, but that doesn't mean DRM was generally a positive development. As far as I'm concerned, its main effect has been to delay the development of rational business models by preserving the illusory view that media companies have that they're in a position to set their own terms.
Funny how "geeks" here accept such crappy evidence as proof of any wrong doing.
Are you assuming people RTFA thoroughly enough to know that the evidence was crappy?
Well, it's not like Microsoft was the only company working on DRM or with the potential to do so.
No, they were only in the unique position to push support for their DRM scheme to >90% of desktop systems without overt consumer action. Further they had greater access to their own OS security layers, meaning they could easily push DRM features into the kernel itself to make it harder to break. Why would anyone put serious effort into competing with them on Windows?
And WMDRM has always had RAND licensing; Apple could have licensed it and implemented it themselves if they were so inclined.
And why should they? "Reasonable" is in they eye of the beholder, and I can't see why a smart company would want their business model to be dependent on another company's DRM scheme. In fact, I can't see a anyone reasonably thinking that it's a good idea to leave your company's future dependent on Microsoft not screwing around with standards which they control. If you want an example, I have one relating to the very topic we're discussing: Microsoft not supporting "PlaysForSure" content on the Zune.
DRM was more about liberating the bits from the discs and the fixed-function CE devices
I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can even claim that in good faith. The bits can be liberated just fine without DRM. There's no way to argue that DRM isn't about trying to control distribution and use.
I don't know if it's possible to make significant, sustained revenue from DRM.
Like I said, I don't believe Microsoft intended on making a profit directly from licensing fees on the DRM. I think the intention was to put themselves in a position of power in the media industry, and to reenforce the vendor lock-in they enjoy with Windows.
Yeah, but my whole point is: it depends on what your requirements are. Since the OP brings up HTML, I would guess being directly viewable in a web browser is a plus, and being viewable in an image viewer isn't desired.
Is part of your aim to be that you can have common users edit the file in an office suite, dump documents to a website as-is, set up an index page with a link to each document, and allow the general public to view the articles just by visiting the website (without any additional software or plugins installed) and print them if they want (while controlling the print layout)? Because if that's the sort of thing that the OP is hoping for, then LaTex might be a horrible solution.
You have to know what the OP is trying to accomplish and who will be using this system.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when the OP is saying things like "no CSS" ... s/he is actually giving specifications in a very obfuscated way
Definitely. The problem with this question is that the OP is suggesting an idea for solving a problem, but then not giving a complete description of the problem being solved. A complete description would also give the restrictions on how you can solve the problem so that you can really analyze what the problem is.
Just to add to your list, another thing that popped into my head (which may be on the 'unlikely' side): the aversion to CSS may be that the poster wants people to be able to edit in an office suite, but might have some inkling that WYSIWYG editors don't handle style sheets very well at all. But really, there's no proper way to handle this sort of formatting in HTML itself. It would have to be done with styles, even if they were inline.
On the other hand, .tex files don't render so well if you drop them into web browsers. I mean, which format you choose really should depend on what your needs are. If you want to be able to store a single copy that can be opened in a web browser or an office suite, HTML isn't necessarily a bad choice, but at this point you wont get great layout control. I really think it's reasonable to hope that as new versions of HTML and CSS come out, they should be aiming towards enabling people to have a good "print" media type CSS that gives professional layout results, but we aren't there yet. We aren't even really close.
If you want people who know what they're doing to be making/editing these documents, then LaTex may be a good choice. If you want people to have normal everyday people to be able to open the file in an office suite they're comfortable with, then ODF is worth considering. If you want a widely supported format only for display/printing purposes (no editing) and you want tight layout control, then you won't do better than PDF.
At this point, there is no format that does it all without any downsides. You have to pick the best tool for the job.
Yeah, I don't know if it's worth explaining the whole thought process behind this, but basically my theory that I'm putting forward is that Microsoft had plans to dominate digital content and media distribution by pushing their formats on people.
The key to this plan was DRM and a tight little circle of vendor lock-in. Owning the OS positioned them better to guarantee support and security for the DRM. It gave them leverage to get device manufacturers to implement their standards, and it opened the possibility of the OS itself protecting the DRM scheme. Meanwhile the DRMed content would only work on Windows, which would reenforce their position as the dominant desktop OS.
You say, "the stuff Windows Media gets used for exclusively is stuff where there's not a viable alternative," but insofar as there's no alternative, it's because Microsoft has a lock on the market. You can't really have a workable open source DRM scheme, and Apple has their own. So anyone trying to compete with Microsoft to be the DRM provider has to compete against Microsoft on their own platform.
So anyway, what rarely gets talked about is how much Apple screwed Microsoft over on this whole thing. By managing to catch such a big lead in the portable media device market and refusing to support WMA, they made made Microsoft's DRM scheme nearly irrelevant. When Apple finally got its way and the labels started dropping DRM, WMAs were made functionally inferior to both MP3s and AACs (both of which are much more widely supported).;
Though Apple hasn't done a good job at pushing for royalty-free media standards, they've had a huge effect in pushing the market towards open media standards (AAC and H264). Now that those standards are becoming so widely supported by everything else, Microsoft is practically forced to support them.
Microsoft really isn't "pushing" Windows Media that much anymore. Zune and Xbox already support MPEG-4 and H.264, as will Silverlight 3 and Windows 7.
Well they're not pushing it too hard anymore, but that's really because they already lost on the audio side. Their hopes for locking up online music sales died when the major labels agreed to sell without DRM. Video may not be all that far behind.
Anyway, the point was never to have high licensing costs, but to build relationships with media companies while strengthening their vendor lock-in.