I doubt Apple would ever switch to MP3s. They've got too much invested in their format to abandon it now.
On a side note, it's not "their format". AAC was made by many of the same groups that put together MP3, and it's just as standard as MP3, but actually less patent-encumbered than MP3 (though still not patent-free), and with generally superior quality at the same bitrate. Apple's DRM is proprietary, but the AAC format is not.
And no, they won't switch. There's no compelling reason for Apple to move to MP3, and technically Apple would have to pay patent-holders to distribute MP3s. According to the wikipedia article, AAC doesn't require licensing fees to be paid to patent-holders for content distribution.
No, I'm familiar with tools for Windows, Linux, and OSX. In fact, I'm probably most familiar with Windows, but having seen how things work on the other operating systems, I suddenly realized how unnecessarily difficult and complicated it is to do simple imaging with Windows.
In these other operating systems, you don't even really need special imaging software if you know your way around the command prompt. You can basically copy all the files from one disk to another, even if the source disk is running the OS your copying live while you're copying. Once the copying is done, you mark the drive as bootable, and you're pretty much done. With OSX, you can take that image to a different computer with completely different hardware, and the image will have absolutely no problem running on that other hardware without dealing with any drivers. No tweaking needed, no activation work-arounds. Even if you bother making image files, the image files are standard disk-image files that are readable by OSX without any special software.
Believe me, it's not an issue of "familiarity"-- I've been supporting Windows professionally since WFW 3.11, I've never owned/supported Macintoshes until OSX 10.2, and I only started using Linux around 3 years ago. However, when I started dealing with OSX, there were multiple instances of me figuring something out and thinking, "Wait, it's really that easy? I don't have to do all sorts of other crap, just to get a simple working solution? Holy crap, it is-- it's really that easy. Now wait, if it can be that easy, why the hell is it such a PITA on Windows?"
Of course, the question is still out as to whether the **AA is looking to stop piracy or trying to restrict fair use so they can get you to buy it back later.
But yes, iTunes has been successful on the basis of making purchasing music more convenient than trying to pirate it. DRM is kind of OK with me, so long as it is breakable and generally just inconvenient to break. Same idea as with the watermarks-- don't pretend it will stop real pirates, but just that it will discourage casual sharing online.
To be honest, I don't care very much about the operating system. Ultimately, I can switch between OSX and Windows without any problems or confusion, and pretty much everything I need to do, I can do on either. Whether it's the same for you, of course, depends on what you're using the computer for.
However, from an IT standpoint, I would much rather support OSX. I know, this runs contrary to what most of you might think, but there are a couple simple things that make me favor it so much.
It's Unix-y. I can use bash scripts, rsync, ssh, etc. I don't have to install anything to get that functionality.
Apple remote desktop. It's really good, and very simple. I've tried various things, and I haven't found anything all-in-one remote administration application for Windows that is even as close to being as simple and useful. Sure, you can cobble together various things in Windows to achieve the same functionality, but it isn't as utterly simple to deal with.
Imaging. Seriously. I've tried various imaging solutions for Windows, and they're all a PITA. In the best case scenario, you'll have to buy a corporate license to avoid activation, and still need to deal with driver issues, unless you're imaging a bunch of identical machines. Meanwhile, you easily install OSX to an external hard drive and use that as an imagining/diagnostic tool. There's freeware for imaging. The same image can be used for *any* Apple computer using the same architecture (Intel/PPC). The resulting disk images can be opened by OSX, and in many cases you can install/upgrade software on those images directly in the image file, without applying it to a machine first.
Really, I've been administering Windows networks for years, and after administering a Mac network for a year and a half, I find it ridiculous how many headaches Windows still presents. After all these years, and with Vista requiring activation even in the corporate licensing, it's only gotten harder. Maybe there are issues across extremely large domains that are easier to manage with Windows, but I haven't run into those yet. But for a small/medium network, given the choice, OSX is much easier to admin.
I actually think this is just about right in terms of copy protection. You're right, really professional pirates won't be stopped, but they never will be. However, it discourages individuals from posting their purchased copy online.
So long as you don't have any moral issues with piracy, anyone can buy a CD, rip it, and put it online. It's easy, doesn't require any expertise, and loads of people do it. That's part of the reason why there's an absolute flood of music online. However, if you knew that every copy online could be traced back to the first guy who purchased it, far fewer people would do it.
So, if you accept that hard-core professional pirates just can't be stopped, and your goal is to discourage casual piracy without preventing people from doing valid things, watermarking is a good solution.
In web browsers? How about throughout the entire operating system? Considering how unobtrusive that little red underline is, it seems to me you should have spell-checking available in every text box that appears on your computer, regardless of the application. And from the same dictionary, too.
That might explain why you might want to place it behind some sort of firewall, but not why you'd want to put it live on the internet. Anyway, the security risk of a printer placed on an otherwise secure network doesn't sound sufficiently scary. If someone has access to your printer over the network, then they already have network access, which means they could put a device of their own design on the network. What additional risk is really posed by a printer?
Yes, you know, this really frustrates me when people misuse statistics like this. It's an interesting little analysis, but let's not pretend it actually tells us anything. Ok, so given certain assumptions that may well be wrong, it's unlikely that aliens are aware of us. Of course, first, his assumptions may be wrong. More importantly, even if we assume that such an event is *extremely* unlikely, that still doesn't give us the slightest indication that it hasn't happened. Unlikely things happen *all the time*. Every day. Of all the things that are unlikely to happen, it is in fact very likely that one of those unlikely things will happen today. We don't know which unlikely thing, we don't know where it will happen or to whom, but something unlikely will very likely happen today.
So, in fact, there could be a.00001% chance that I will be struck by lightning today, but that does not, in any way, indicate logically that I won't be struck by lightning today. All the statistical improbability of being struck by lightning means is, if I have to make decisions where I assume either that I will be struck by lightning or that I won't, it's probably better to assume that I won't. Still, don't forget that it could happen!
If I have 1000 boxes and 999 are empty while 1 is full of money, it might take me a very long time to find the money. Searching 1 box at a time, I might have to go through 999 empties before I find the right one. Or-- it's also entirely possible that I'll find the correct box within the first couple tries. You can calculate the statistical probability, and tell me I have a.1% chance of finding it on the first try, and a 50% chance of finding it within the first 500, but you can not, using statistics, tell me with any kind of certainty how many boxes I'll have to open before I find the money.
Yeah, and it was true, then, too. Windows 2000 was a great release. Windows XP offered practically no improvement, but at least most Windows 2000 software ran on XP.
Honestly, I have software assurance, and therefore free upgrades to Vista, but I'm not budging from Windows XP. And I'm not just saying that I need time to test it, or I'll wait for SP1. I'm saying I don't fricken want the thing. I've tried it out on a couple systems, in some cases having a harder time getting it to work that I've had with XP. It won't run some old Windows software, or at least not properly, so I'd have to buy a whole bunch of new software. The new interface is annoying. UAC is annoying. The whole thing is just maddening to use.
It doesn't seem to me that I'll be missing out on anything if I choose not to upgrade, either. None of the new features are particularly helpful. Not one. I'm just not going to run Vista until Windows XP won't run on new hardware being manufactured.
There still have been many cases where the majority of "experts" were wrong. The problem with scientific topics is that they aren't as accessible via general ideas and common sense. Therefore, you aren't in a position to judge the expert viewpoint unless you, too, are an expert.
I know, I know... they're "scientists", and therefore not as stupid as you and me. But I could be the worlds foremost expert in molecular biology and still have only a layman's understanding of quantum mechanics. Or, being an expert in climatology still doesn't necessarily enable me to immediatly judge a given study on global warming unless I've actually reviewed the data and analyzed whether the methods might have introduced error.
Individually, scientists are wrong all the time. It's entirely possible for the majority of scientists to be wrong about something. Also, it's very important to note that it's not always an issue of "right" and "wrong", but even in science there are different ways of looking at things. Sometimes, even when the majority of people are right, they can still be missing things, failing to take things into account, or ignoring an interesting and valuable viewpoint.
So, indeed, we need experts to help us guage whether a technical viewpoint has validity, but we still cannot take something as 'true' because "the majority of scientists agree" or 'false' because "very few scientists believe it."
Yes, thank you for citing illustrations of what I was saying. Alternatively, in Slashdot terms, the majority of people use Windows and IE. The majority of people have no problem with the iTunes DRM. The majority of people don't care about FOSS.
In short, he majority of people can easily be stupid and wrong. So let's not argue that something is true/correct based on the fact that there's a consensus, or that it's what the majority of people believe.
When presented as opposing sides it may give the impression that people are evenly divided.
... unless you make sure to present that the minority opinion isn't widely held to be true. Honestly, I know what you're talking about, but I also want to object to this notion that we should judge viewpoints based on the number of poll participants that agree with it. Being in the minority doesn't make your viewpoint wrong or groundless. Very often, minority viewpoints have some value; even when they're no more correct than the minority viewpoint, they might still offer something to add.
So I would say that there are some instances where a belief held by 5% of people might be worth giving equal time. Sometimes it might be far more useful than presenting the majority viewpoint, given that we've all already heard the majority viewpoint. We just can't turn a blind eye towards the stupidity of a given viewpoint out of political correctness, nor should we misrepresent the popularity of any viewpoint.
Instead, the problem seems more related to a tendency to present extremely complex issues in a simplistic binary manner (e.g. that the USA will either "succeed" or "fail" in Iraq).
I agree that there are a lot of problems in the US associated with people believing all issues are binary. The Republican and Democratic parties maintain their duopoly that way. Either you think we should act completely unilaterally in all foreigh policy, or you want to surrender. Either you believe abortion should be outlawed, or you want to encourage people to kill all babies. Either you hate black people and are against affirmative action, or you hate white people so much that you don't think they should be hired for any job, even if they're far more qualified than minority applicants. Either you're in favor of a particular piece of environmental legislation, or you don't care about the environment at all.
I could go on all day with these. This is a problem, and I believe it's caused by people within the media and with political organizations who paint all of these problems as binary. These people have political agendas that they're pushing, and I believe they're stretching the truth in some places, oversimplifying in others, in order to push it. I don't think they feel like they're doing the wrong thing, but rather that they believe the ends justify the means.
However, i believe a bigger problem is the pure sensationalism. Really, news is all about ratings and circulation. The news outlets don't have a vested interest in being accurate or educational, but instead in being flashy or scary. We get stories about Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise's baby. We get stories about big corporate scandles. We get stories about natural disasters. We get stories about how the world is coming to an end... any.... minute..... now.
We get very few stories in the way of news about our own communities, or anything going on around us that we might be in a position to do anything about. We don't really hear about the good and bad things going on around the world until it invovles the US directly. People being slaughtered in another country doesn't scare us enough, it just makes us sad, so there's no ratings boost. Stories about success in Iraq makes people happy, stories of defeat scare people. Those get reported on. Stories about things that are going OK in Iraq, those won't catch people's attention, so nobody reports on it. The only foreign affairs stories you'll hear are either that we've killed evil and the world loves us, or that our soldiers are dead and we'll be hit with nuclear weapons soon. We don't seem to care about anything else.
From what I'm reading, it seems more like if you provided a link to the Pirate Bay page for OSX or to the tracker itself, you would get a letter from an Apple lawyer asking you to stop.
... and that would be just about what I would expect to happen.
Consumers should have a choice to either own a copy of a movie for multiple viewing, or to just view it one time for a much lower price. And movie companies want to provide that choice, and many more
You know what? If DRM were only being used this way, I'd be fine with it. Let's say, for example, I could buy a movie off of iTunes for $15 and have full rights to use it, copy it, and convert it to be viewed however, I want -or- I could spend $3 and have a "rental" that I could view a couple times, or within a set time span. I would have no problem with that, and I would probably go with the rental model most of the time.
But that's with the mindset that I'm not *buying* anything. Under this way of thinking about it, I have a price and a service comparable to Blockbuster, but delivered over the Internet. Fine.
But I think the problem I have, and it seems to be the problem lots of us have, is that they're still trying to control our usage when we've "bought" the movie. We pay the "sale price", and then we're told we've "bought" nothing. We've instead "licensed" a very limited right to possess/view a specific copy of the movie which can't only be possessed or viewed under very limited circumstances, depending on where we bought it and from whom.
Just look at iTunes; you can burn the music to CDs and rip to mp3. This is no copy protection - only a mild barrier to make it more likely that the average customer does _not_ buy another brand of mp3 player.
Well I'm not sure I agree with that. If I really wanted a given album, would I rather spend little bit of money on a CD, spend the time burning and ripping, and suffer with the loss of quality? Or would I rather spend my $10 and buy the album?
I'd choose the second option. If I were intent on pirating, I'd sooner look online for someone who ripped directly from the CD at a decent bitrate.
Huh... that seems very obvious, but I've never thought of that before. When you first said the problem originated with CDs, I assumed you meant because it was the first digital medium available to consumers, and therefore the first to allow duplication without degradation of sound quality, which allowed better "piracy".
But, if I can try to sum up your post, you're suggesting that CDs were the first new medium that offered significant improvement to cause consumers to re-buy the music they already owned. Therefore, the copyright owners grew dependant on the revenue stream of people re-buying their works, in spite of the fact that they already owned copies. Now that people are done replacing their records with CDs, record companies are trying to devise a new way to force consumers to continually re-buy a product in order to maintain that revenue stream.
That sounds right to me. It seems like the intention is to get you to buy a new copy of each song for every new device you buy. One works with iPods, a different one with your Zune, yet another for your PlayForSure device, and a fourth for your cell phone. This also seems to be the intention with HD DVD media. People have finally replaced their VHS tapes with DVDs, and now they expect you to replace your DVDs with HD.
To me, it seems worth noting the obvious: this is not what copyright law was meant for.
The problem with your argument is that, though things tend to get icier below the freezing point, it doesn't necessarily impact human activity. It's not like I'm completely comfortable at 2 degress Celsius but I freeze at -2 degrees. In fact, it's hard to tell the difference, especially since water doesn't necessarily freeze at 0 degrees. Regardless, the freezing point doesn't have a direct difference unless there is also precipitation.
However, like I said, the scale of 0-100 degrees Fahrenheit roughly reflects the habitable temperatures for humans. Sure, you have to bundle up a bit in 20 degree weather, but assuming the right clothing, a person can be outside for a while in 10 degree weather with relative safety.
Sorry, but I'm going to respond again to add something else on. I was talking about how some units make sense because of some correlation to human lengths or temperatures. I'll go ahead and point something out because no one picked up on my first line about base-16 number systems. My fundamental argument was that imperial units are often more relevant to people themselves. Imperial units are related to our own bodies, which is usually counted as a negative aspect by proponents of the metric system.
The argument for the metric system tends to center around two things:
That basing measurements on matters of our own lives and bodies make them arbitrary, and therefore not as valid as more "scientifically" chosen units
By making the units multiples of 10, mathematical calculations are easier
However, it's entirely worth noting that the utility of making units larger in multiples of 10 lies in the fact that we've chosen to use a base-10 numbering system. It's also worth noting that our base-10 numbering system was probably arbitrarily chosen because of the relation to our own bodies (10 fingers, 10 toes), and therefore "arbitrary". These days, many "scientific" (i.e. computer-related) activities are made easier by operating in base-2, or sometimes base-16 systems. Therefore, following many of these pro-metric arguments, the logical conclusion would be that we should stop using the metric system in favor of units similarly devised, but using either a base-2 or base-16 system.
Yes... I suppose there are often many justifications for stubbornness. But... then... doesn't that mean the stubbornness is justified?
I guess you missed my point, though, with the stepping example. The foot, as a measurement, was derived by the length of a person's foot (obviously, we all know that already). It's a human measurement derived from a familiar human length, and because of that fact, the unit presents itself as useful for certain sorts of measuring activities in a human's life. Your foot might happen to be a third of a meter long, but the meter is not defined by being 3 foot-lengths. A foot is defined as being (roughly) a foot length.
By affirming that measuring your own footfalls is a useful means of measuring, you've also affirmed my point-- Imperial units aren't simply arbitrary, but rather reflect sensible measurement techniques. Therefore, continuing to use those units is not mere stubbornness.
While you are going feet after feet, I take a 1m step.
Sure, but really that relies on your ability to already judge the length of a meter. We all take steps of varying lengths, and though I know my foot is always 1 foot long, my stride varies somewhere between 1.5 feet and 4 feet, depending on how long a stride I'm trying to take.
Slashdot Mirror
On a side note, it's not "their format". AAC was made by many of the same groups that put together MP3, and it's just as standard as MP3, but actually less patent-encumbered than MP3 (though still not patent-free), and with generally superior quality at the same bitrate. Apple's DRM is proprietary, but the AAC format is not.
And no, they won't switch. There's no compelling reason for Apple to move to MP3, and technically Apple would have to pay patent-holders to distribute MP3s. According to the wikipedia article, AAC doesn't require licensing fees to be paid to patent-holders for content distribution.
No, I'm familiar with tools for Windows, Linux, and OSX. In fact, I'm probably most familiar with Windows, but having seen how things work on the other operating systems, I suddenly realized how unnecessarily difficult and complicated it is to do simple imaging with Windows.
In these other operating systems, you don't even really need special imaging software if you know your way around the command prompt. You can basically copy all the files from one disk to another, even if the source disk is running the OS your copying live while you're copying. Once the copying is done, you mark the drive as bootable, and you're pretty much done. With OSX, you can take that image to a different computer with completely different hardware, and the image will have absolutely no problem running on that other hardware without dealing with any drivers. No tweaking needed, no activation work-arounds. Even if you bother making image files, the image files are standard disk-image files that are readable by OSX without any special software.
Believe me, it's not an issue of "familiarity"-- I've been supporting Windows professionally since WFW 3.11, I've never owned/supported Macintoshes until OSX 10.2, and I only started using Linux around 3 years ago. However, when I started dealing with OSX, there were multiple instances of me figuring something out and thinking, "Wait, it's really that easy? I don't have to do all sorts of other crap, just to get a simple working solution? Holy crap, it is-- it's really that easy. Now wait, if it can be that easy, why the hell is it such a PITA on Windows?"
Of course, the question is still out as to whether the **AA is looking to stop piracy or trying to restrict fair use so they can get you to buy it back later.
But yes, iTunes has been successful on the basis of making purchasing music more convenient than trying to pirate it. DRM is kind of OK with me, so long as it is breakable and generally just inconvenient to break. Same idea as with the watermarks-- don't pretend it will stop real pirates, but just that it will discourage casual sharing online.
To be honest, I don't care very much about the operating system. Ultimately, I can switch between OSX and Windows without any problems or confusion, and pretty much everything I need to do, I can do on either. Whether it's the same for you, of course, depends on what you're using the computer for.
However, from an IT standpoint, I would much rather support OSX. I know, this runs contrary to what most of you might think, but there are a couple simple things that make me favor it so much.
Really, I've been administering Windows networks for years, and after administering a Mac network for a year and a half, I find it ridiculous how many headaches Windows still presents. After all these years, and with Vista requiring activation even in the corporate licensing, it's only gotten harder. Maybe there are issues across extremely large domains that are easier to manage with Windows, but I haven't run into those yet. But for a small/medium network, given the choice, OSX is much easier to admin.
I actually think this is just about right in terms of copy protection. You're right, really professional pirates won't be stopped, but they never will be. However, it discourages individuals from posting their purchased copy online.
So long as you don't have any moral issues with piracy, anyone can buy a CD, rip it, and put it online. It's easy, doesn't require any expertise, and loads of people do it. That's part of the reason why there's an absolute flood of music online. However, if you knew that every copy online could be traced back to the first guy who purchased it, far fewer people would do it.
So, if you accept that hard-core professional pirates just can't be stopped, and your goal is to discourage casual piracy without preventing people from doing valid things, watermarking is a good solution.
I like Seamonkey except for its out-dated UI and the fact that it bundles a bunch of applications together when I really only want a web browser. ;-)
In web browsers? How about throughout the entire operating system? Considering how unobtrusive that little red underline is, it seems to me you should have spell-checking available in every text box that appears on your computer, regardless of the application. And from the same dictionary, too.
That might explain why you might want to place it behind some sort of firewall, but not why you'd want to put it live on the internet. Anyway, the security risk of a printer placed on an otherwise secure network doesn't sound sufficiently scary. If someone has access to your printer over the network, then they already have network access, which means they could put a device of their own design on the network. What additional risk is really posed by a printer?
Yes, you know, this really frustrates me when people misuse statistics like this. It's an interesting little analysis, but let's not pretend it actually tells us anything. Ok, so given certain assumptions that may well be wrong, it's unlikely that aliens are aware of us. Of course, first, his assumptions may be wrong. More importantly, even if we assume that such an event is *extremely* unlikely, that still doesn't give us the slightest indication that it hasn't happened. Unlikely things happen *all the time*. Every day. Of all the things that are unlikely to happen, it is in fact very likely that one of those unlikely things will happen today. We don't know which unlikely thing, we don't know where it will happen or to whom, but something unlikely will very likely happen today.
So, in fact, there could be a .00001% chance that I will be struck by lightning today, but that does not, in any way, indicate logically that I won't be struck by lightning today. All the statistical improbability of being struck by lightning means is, if I have to make decisions where I assume either that I will be struck by lightning or that I won't, it's probably better to assume that I won't. Still, don't forget that it could happen!
If I have 1000 boxes and 999 are empty while 1 is full of money, it might take me a very long time to find the money. Searching 1 box at a time, I might have to go through 999 empties before I find the right one. Or-- it's also entirely possible that I'll find the correct box within the first couple tries. You can calculate the statistical probability, and tell me I have a .1% chance of finding it on the first try, and a 50% chance of finding it within the first 500, but you can not, using statistics, tell me with any kind of certainty how many boxes I'll have to open before I find the money.
Yeah, and it was true, then, too. Windows 2000 was a great release. Windows XP offered practically no improvement, but at least most Windows 2000 software ran on XP.
Honestly, I have software assurance, and therefore free upgrades to Vista, but I'm not budging from Windows XP. And I'm not just saying that I need time to test it, or I'll wait for SP1. I'm saying I don't fricken want the thing. I've tried it out on a couple systems, in some cases having a harder time getting it to work that I've had with XP. It won't run some old Windows software, or at least not properly, so I'd have to buy a whole bunch of new software. The new interface is annoying. UAC is annoying. The whole thing is just maddening to use.
It doesn't seem to me that I'll be missing out on anything if I choose not to upgrade, either. None of the new features are particularly helpful. Not one. I'm just not going to run Vista until Windows XP won't run on new hardware being manufactured.
I really don't get this-- why? Why would you put your printer outside your firewall? So you can print from the internet? What's the point?
oh, and the 8-track. Let's not forget that.
There still have been many cases where the majority of "experts" were wrong. The problem with scientific topics is that they aren't as accessible via general ideas and common sense. Therefore, you aren't in a position to judge the expert viewpoint unless you, too, are an expert.
I know, I know... they're "scientists", and therefore not as stupid as you and me. But I could be the worlds foremost expert in molecular biology and still have only a layman's understanding of quantum mechanics. Or, being an expert in climatology still doesn't necessarily enable me to immediatly judge a given study on global warming unless I've actually reviewed the data and analyzed whether the methods might have introduced error.
Individually, scientists are wrong all the time. It's entirely possible for the majority of scientists to be wrong about something. Also, it's very important to note that it's not always an issue of "right" and "wrong", but even in science there are different ways of looking at things. Sometimes, even when the majority of people are right, they can still be missing things, failing to take things into account, or ignoring an interesting and valuable viewpoint.
So, indeed, we need experts to help us guage whether a technical viewpoint has validity, but we still cannot take something as 'true' because "the majority of scientists agree" or 'false' because "very few scientists believe it."
Yes, thank you for citing illustrations of what I was saying. Alternatively, in Slashdot terms, the majority of people use Windows and IE. The majority of people have no problem with the iTunes DRM. The majority of people don't care about FOSS.
In short, he majority of people can easily be stupid and wrong. So let's not argue that something is true/correct based on the fact that there's a consensus, or that it's what the majority of people believe.
When presented as opposing sides it may give the impression that people are evenly divided.
... unless you make sure to present that the minority opinion isn't widely held to be true. Honestly, I know what you're talking about, but I also want to object to this notion that we should judge viewpoints based on the number of poll participants that agree with it. Being in the minority doesn't make your viewpoint wrong or groundless. Very often, minority viewpoints have some value; even when they're no more correct than the minority viewpoint, they might still offer something to add.
So I would say that there are some instances where a belief held by 5% of people might be worth giving equal time. Sometimes it might be far more useful than presenting the majority viewpoint, given that we've all already heard the majority viewpoint. We just can't turn a blind eye towards the stupidity of a given viewpoint out of political correctness, nor should we misrepresent the popularity of any viewpoint.
Instead, the problem seems more related to a tendency to present extremely complex issues in a simplistic binary manner (e.g. that the USA will either "succeed" or "fail" in Iraq).
I agree that there are a lot of problems in the US associated with people believing all issues are binary. The Republican and Democratic parties maintain their duopoly that way. Either you think we should act completely unilaterally in all foreigh policy, or you want to surrender. Either you believe abortion should be outlawed, or you want to encourage people to kill all babies. Either you hate black people and are against affirmative action, or you hate white people so much that you don't think they should be hired for any job, even if they're far more qualified than minority applicants. Either you're in favor of a particular piece of environmental legislation, or you don't care about the environment at all.
I could go on all day with these. This is a problem, and I believe it's caused by people within the media and with political organizations who paint all of these problems as binary. These people have political agendas that they're pushing, and I believe they're stretching the truth in some places, oversimplifying in others, in order to push it. I don't think they feel like they're doing the wrong thing, but rather that they believe the ends justify the means.
However, i believe a bigger problem is the pure sensationalism. Really, news is all about ratings and circulation. The news outlets don't have a vested interest in being accurate or educational, but instead in being flashy or scary. We get stories about Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise's baby. We get stories about big corporate scandles. We get stories about natural disasters. We get stories about how the world is coming to an end... any.... minute..... now.
We get very few stories in the way of news about our own communities, or anything going on around us that we might be in a position to do anything about. We don't really hear about the good and bad things going on around the world until it invovles the US directly. People being slaughtered in another country doesn't scare us enough, it just makes us sad, so there's no ratings boost. Stories about success in Iraq makes people happy, stories of defeat scare people. Those get reported on. Stories about things that are going OK in Iraq, those won't catch people's attention, so nobody reports on it. The only foreign affairs stories you'll hear are either that we've killed evil and the world loves us, or that our soldiers are dead and we'll be hit with nuclear weapons soon. We don't seem to care about anything else.
From what I'm reading, it seems more like if you provided a link to the Pirate Bay page for OSX or to the tracker itself, you would get a letter from an Apple lawyer asking you to stop.
... and that would be just about what I would expect to happen.
You know what? If DRM were only being used this way, I'd be fine with it. Let's say, for example, I could buy a movie off of iTunes for $15 and have full rights to use it, copy it, and convert it to be viewed however, I want -or- I could spend $3 and have a "rental" that I could view a couple times, or within a set time span. I would have no problem with that, and I would probably go with the rental model most of the time.
But that's with the mindset that I'm not *buying* anything. Under this way of thinking about it, I have a price and a service comparable to Blockbuster, but delivered over the Internet. Fine.
But I think the problem I have, and it seems to be the problem lots of us have, is that they're still trying to control our usage when we've "bought" the movie. We pay the "sale price", and then we're told we've "bought" nothing. We've instead "licensed" a very limited right to possess/view a specific copy of the movie which can't only be possessed or viewed under very limited circumstances, depending on where we bought it and from whom.
Just look at iTunes; you can burn the music to CDs and rip to mp3. This is no copy protection - only a mild barrier to make it more likely that the average customer does _not_ buy another brand of mp3 player.
Well I'm not sure I agree with that. If I really wanted a given album, would I rather spend little bit of money on a CD, spend the time burning and ripping, and suffer with the loss of quality? Or would I rather spend my $10 and buy the album?
I'd choose the second option. If I were intent on pirating, I'd sooner look online for someone who ripped directly from the CD at a decent bitrate.
Huh... that seems very obvious, but I've never thought of that before. When you first said the problem originated with CDs, I assumed you meant because it was the first digital medium available to consumers, and therefore the first to allow duplication without degradation of sound quality, which allowed better "piracy".
But, if I can try to sum up your post, you're suggesting that CDs were the first new medium that offered significant improvement to cause consumers to re-buy the music they already owned. Therefore, the copyright owners grew dependant on the revenue stream of people re-buying their works, in spite of the fact that they already owned copies. Now that people are done replacing their records with CDs, record companies are trying to devise a new way to force consumers to continually re-buy a product in order to maintain that revenue stream.
That sounds right to me. It seems like the intention is to get you to buy a new copy of each song for every new device you buy. One works with iPods, a different one with your Zune, yet another for your PlayForSure device, and a fourth for your cell phone. This also seems to be the intention with HD DVD media. People have finally replaced their VHS tapes with DVDs, and now they expect you to replace your DVDs with HD.
To me, it seems worth noting the obvious: this is not what copyright law was meant for.
The problem with your argument is that, though things tend to get icier below the freezing point, it doesn't necessarily impact human activity. It's not like I'm completely comfortable at 2 degress Celsius but I freeze at -2 degrees. In fact, it's hard to tell the difference, especially since water doesn't necessarily freeze at 0 degrees. Regardless, the freezing point doesn't have a direct difference unless there is also precipitation.
However, like I said, the scale of 0-100 degrees Fahrenheit roughly reflects the habitable temperatures for humans. Sure, you have to bundle up a bit in 20 degree weather, but assuming the right clothing, a person can be outside for a while in 10 degree weather with relative safety.
Sorry, but I'm going to respond again to add something else on. I was talking about how some units make sense because of some correlation to human lengths or temperatures. I'll go ahead and point something out because no one picked up on my first line about base-16 number systems. My fundamental argument was that imperial units are often more relevant to people themselves. Imperial units are related to our own bodies, which is usually counted as a negative aspect by proponents of the metric system.
The argument for the metric system tends to center around two things:
However, it's entirely worth noting that the utility of making units larger in multiples of 10 lies in the fact that we've chosen to use a base-10 numbering system. It's also worth noting that our base-10 numbering system was probably arbitrarily chosen because of the relation to our own bodies (10 fingers, 10 toes), and therefore "arbitrary". These days, many "scientific" (i.e. computer-related) activities are made easier by operating in base-2, or sometimes base-16 systems. Therefore, following many of these pro-metric arguments, the logical conclusion would be that we should stop using the metric system in favor of units similarly devised, but using either a base-2 or base-16 system.
Yes... I suppose there are often many justifications for stubbornness. But... then... doesn't that mean the stubbornness is justified?
I guess you missed my point, though, with the stepping example. The foot, as a measurement, was derived by the length of a person's foot (obviously, we all know that already). It's a human measurement derived from a familiar human length, and because of that fact, the unit presents itself as useful for certain sorts of measuring activities in a human's life. Your foot might happen to be a third of a meter long, but the meter is not defined by being 3 foot-lengths. A foot is defined as being (roughly) a foot length.
By affirming that measuring your own footfalls is a useful means of measuring, you've also affirmed my point-- Imperial units aren't simply arbitrary, but rather reflect sensible measurement techniques. Therefore, continuing to use those units is not mere stubbornness.
While you are going feet after feet, I take a 1m step.
Sure, but really that relies on your ability to already judge the length of a meter. We all take steps of varying lengths, and though I know my foot is always 1 foot long, my stride varies somewhere between 1.5 feet and 4 feet, depending on how long a stride I'm trying to take.