Everyone has responsibilities. Not all responsibilities can be taken care of with money. Not even the most important ones.
To spend some portion of the day avoiding thoughts of these responsibilities isn't the same as neglecting them. That would be like claiming that you've neglected your work because you've spent some time resting. However, it wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that rest is the thing you do when avoiding activity/work, or that leisure is what you do when avoiding responsibility.
And by "procrastination", I mean just that-- a putting-off of those things for which you're responsibile, for no real reason besides to put them off. Not partaking in procrastination is unhealthy in much the same way as refusing to sleep would be.
Why do you think anyone builds model boats? Because model boats are so useful?
Most hobbies are an advanced (and not necessarily bad) form of procrastination. It's a purposeful 'doing what you don't have to do' so that you don't have to think about anything that you do have to do. It's an escape. An escape from your life and your responsibilities. Playing online isn't real social interaction, even if playing multiplayer games in the same room can be.
Sorry, this is as close to "to your face" as I can get.
Rails has created quite a buzz in the Web 2.0 community, which means a lot of people jump straight into Rails without any prior knowledge of Ruby; and then when they find they can't get very far they blame that on Rails.
I'm with you on this, but the truth is, jumping into Rails without knowing Ruby isn't so bad, so long as you understand and accept that you'll need to pick up some Ruby and general programming principles as you go.
Myself, I'm not a programmer, but in the past month, I've built myself my own combination forum app/weblog app. Though it's still not "done", but it works. It took a bit of effort and reading on my part, and I still reference Rails documentation regularly, but it's getting there. It'll be usuable for its intended purposes pretty soon. (I might open-source it in the hopes of getting real programmers to fix the stupid things I've done which I don't even know are stupid)
Point is, I started with scaffolding. I knew some html, so I editing the rhtml to get it to look the way I wanted was easy. The rest, I read a lot about ruby and rails, studies a bit, experimented a bit, and through trial and error, I'm starting to understand. But scaffolding got me started.
And best of all, it keeps enough of the under-the-hood details under-the hood, where I don't have to worry about them. I can focus on getting things to-- just, in a simple way, "do what I want". What I want isn't that complicated, and a little experimentation with Rails is letting me do far more than I could do before. Maybe I'm just not as bright as the rest of you, but I tried picking up PHP and quit out of frustration/annoyance.
So a lot of people jumping into Rails without knowing Ruby ahead of time-- I think it's fine. Whether they "can't get very far" depends on how much effort they put into learning it.
... and it was probably a dumb move on Microsoft's part. Why focus right now on HD to the exclusion of regular TV? Most people have regular TVs.
Had we hit the upper limit of "how good graphics can get" on a regular TV? Well, when I play PS2 or XBox games, I'm not confusing them for live-action broadcasts. Further, when I'm watching regular TV, I'm usually not that bothered by the idea that "it doesn't look real enough".
So what's HD other than a buzzword? I don't have an HDTV, so is Microsoft sending the message that I shouldn't bother buying the XBox360 unless I'm willing to spend an additional thousand dollars or more to get a new TV?
Or, if there are so many people who want Gnome to go in a different direction than where the Gnome Foundation is pushing, there's always the option of forking. I suppose the question there is, how much support is there for "pushing Gnome back in the direction it came from"?
Still, I don't see a purpose in trying to tell people which desktop they should use. I'll completely agree that people who prefer KDE should use KDE, but I get the feeling that that is not what is being said.
So although I much prefer GTK to QT, I'm going to have to agree with Linus and suggest that people who are not big businesses but just ordinary computer geeks should probably just use KDE.
The question for me is, what is that statement supposed to be? A recommendation? As in, if you somehow managed to stumble across a random ordinary computer geek who didn't know anything about Gnome or KDE and he asked, "what should I use?" you'd say KDE?
Is it a guess that most ordinary computer geeks prefer KDE? Or is it some sort of command? An order? Have you decided for "ordinary computer geeks" that they should use KDE? What's wrong with 'use what you like'?
If it's a recommendation to those who know nothing about it, then fine, because that's your attempt to anticipate what they would like. However, I don't see any reason why anyone needs to be discouraged from running Gnome if they prefer it. Ultimately, there are a number of alternatives (which is a good thing), and I think people should be encouraged to try them out, see which one they like and which one best suits their purposes, and use that one, whichever it is. We don't need any "suggestions" that we should just use either DE against our preference.
However, every time somebody steps forward and says "look at this new feature which I've added to the web browser and all the cool things I can do with it", our first questions should be "how much code does it take?" and "how easily can it be done securely?" -- and if the answers are "lots" and "umm, I haven't thought about that", then it's probably not a worthwhile feature, regardless of the amazing tricks it can be used to perform.
Well, I'm not sure that means it isn't a worthwhile feature. If a programmer makes a major change to a browser without having any idea how much code he's written and without considering security, then I think probably that I don't want to run his code. However, that doesn't mean that he had bad ideas, or that those ideas couldn't be implemented well by others.
I'll also grant that there's a tendency towards putting lots of flashy but useless crap on the web, and if we really thought things through, we might drop some features from each of the major web browsers. On the other hand, I find an argument against embedded images and javascript a bit hard to make. Further, though the current trend towards Ajax may be found not to be the best implementation, I think web applications (in some form) are going to become very prominent in the software industry.
What a wonderful idea. We should all petition Apple to create a means of selling your used "album". If you buy something on iTunes, listen to it a hundred times, and want to sell it back to another iTMS user, you can-- and at whatever price you choose.
And really, why shouldn't you be able to sell a "used" mp3 that you've purchased?
I think this is true enough, but let's just spell it out: it doesn't really matter to the most of us exactly how they determine the price. They could make longer songs more expensive, songs with longer names more expensive, or they could determine the expense with a random number generator. It really doesn't matter to me.
If a PhD does not entitle you to 'expert' status in a particular subject, then nothing does.
You might be right... that nothing *entitles* you to the status of 'expert'. Think about, and tell me one objective factor that you've ever been able to note, before meeting someone, and feel confident that they aren't completely stupid. I'll tell you this: a PHD doesn't fit that bill for me.
I think the only thing that suggests that you should be considered 'not stupid' is for you to not-be stupid. The only thing that I might say entitles you to the status of 'expert' is that you've demonstrated your expertise.
I wanted to make this exact point. It's not about "breakage". I'd love it if these rebates relied only on breakage for cost-efficiency. That would mean I'd be reducing my purchase price by the value of the rebate off the backs of people too lazy to fill out a form. Fine by me.
What happens, on the other hand, is that they seem to throw half the rebates out the window. And what's their motivation not to? They already have your money. There's no economic incentive to actually fulfill rebates so long as customers keep falling for it.
Some of these rebates even put something in the fine print that says, more or less, "we can refuse to send a rebate for any reason without notifying you that we've refused." It's totally a scam. Now, I send in my mail-in rebates. In the past couple years I've sent out at least 5, and never heard back from a single one.
Under that train of thought, why a person should have to obscure something in order for it to be ilegal to monitor it.
I don't think you should have to show positive efforts to obscure your activity in order to make it illegal to monitor it. I suppose it depends on the circumstances, but, for example, I think installing a keylogger on someone else's machine without permission should generally be illegal. On the other hand, many employers make new hires sign something that says "I understand that the company has the right to monitor my computer and network traffic", and so that company monitoring their employees should generally be legal, I think.
am I not correct in believeing that this train of thought taken to its logical extreem would indicate that, doing any thing agnist the will of another would be deemed ilegal.
Yes, I think you are not correct. For example, it's perfectly reasonable to say that it should be illegal to break into my house, search my bedroom, and steal my wallet, while still maintaining that it's not inherently illegal to hold my wallet. It's all about the method, means, and circumstances surrounding the access to the wallet. I suppose if we insist that people make no distinctions and use no judgement, then making anything illegal would mean making everything illegal. Luckily, we do have distinctions and judgement.
The video is in an encrypted form, and circumventing/breaking the encryption in order to make a copy or rip to mpeg 4 is a violation of the DMCA (or so I've been told), even though, technically copying it is legal.
Maybe not. I don't know, but that's one interpretation that's been floated around.
Is this a reference to something? Anyway, I know you're joking, but I think part of this warrants an explicit response anyway...
Your arguement's "valid reason" can not simply be that consumers are prohibited from doing something legal in a way they want. Being unable to play music on your ipod (even though it's a legal fair use) would not be a "valid reason" if some other player is available on the market, no matter how expensive and inconvienent it may be for you.
One valid argument (I believe) is that it should only be illegal to break encryption in order to gain access to data which you otherwise weren't allowed access to. If I break the DRM on an audio file that I've purchased so that I can access it *in another way* (when access has already been granted), then I don't believe I'm gaining access to data which I otherwise weren't allowed access to. I'm giving myself access to data for which I've purchased access.
I think this should fall into the realm of "fair use". It seems a valid argument to me, and I have yet to hear a valid argument to the contrary.
Yes, that's fair, and that's why it's illegal even without the DMCA. The trick is that most laws don't make methods illegal, they make actions illegal. Accessing your personal property without permission is illegal....It bothers me -- methods should not create stiffer penalties; actions should.
I don't really claim to understand the DMCA, but I think the law should address actions, methods, intent, and circumstances (all of them). Well, I'm not sure the distinction you're aiming for between "methods" and "actions", since all action is done by a certain method. Injuring someone may be done with my fist or a knife. In either case, the crime is, in a certain way, just injuring another person, but the method certainly would become an issue at my trial. On the other hand, you might say that those are two different actions: punching vs. stabbing.
Breaking encryption is both a method for accessing data and an action. I don't know the law about this, but I think many, if not most, actions of breaking encryption should be illegal.
However, no action, method, or intention, by itself, should be illegal. It's generally illegal to kill people, but it's not necessarily illegal to kill a man, to stab a man, or to intend to kill a man. However, if I purposefully stab a man to death, outside of some circumstances that are deemed legally acceptable, it's murder.
Likewise, I think I'd say that it should be generally illegal to break encryption to access/distribute information that you've not received permission to access/distribute. The act of breaking encryption, I think, should be illegal in about the same way that picking a lock to get into someone else's property would be illegal. However, just as the law takes other circumstances into account with every other law, there should be circumstances for which breaking encryption is legal.
Picking the lock to your own house... is that legal? If so, then breaking your own encryption should be legal. Hiring a locksmith to pick your lock, isn't that legal for both you and the locksmith? Then services should be allowed to break encryption for individuals who own the data. Is it legal for a locksmith to teach someone else to pick a lock? Then it should be legal to show people how to circumvent/break encryption. Now, what if you're renting a house, do you need special permission to the landlord to pick your own lock? If not, then I think I should be able to break encryption on DVDs that I buy.
Maybe the preceding examples aren't definitive, but I mean to point out that there are analogous actions where legality is already worked out, and we can look to them for some ideas about how it should work out. I also think security experts should get an exemption for the purpose of studying spyware, but I think those issues should be clarified by law. Someone shouldn't be able to claim to be a "security expert" and assuming license to break encryption whenever and wherever they want.
The trick is that you get into copyright trouble (DeCSS) when trying to convert them to a new format playable by software not originally designed to play the DVD.
Yeah, I was assuming the conversion. Just like I rip my CDs in MP3 and not WAV, if I'm going to rip movies, I want MPEG 4 files.
Well, IANAL, but the summary that, "The DMCA currently makes it illegal to bypass digital locks almost regardless of what they protect or the user's intent," seems to match what I understand about the DMCA. Now, if we can get enough loopholes in it that it becomes legal again to bypass digital locks and break encryption *for a good reason*, then I have no problem with the DMCA. I'm perfectly fine with people being legally forbidden from bypassing digital locks without any argument as to why they have a valid reason to do so.
For example, if I encrypt my personal data on my hard drive, I think it should be generally illegal for you to break the encryption, just like it's generally illegal to break into my house. That's fair, right?
The problem I have with the DMCA is the idea that it might allow someone to lock data that I believe I should have access to, and I have no legal recourse. For example, AFAIK, it's illegal to rip DVDs to your hard drive, even if you have no intention of violating copyrights. To my mind, that's like being forbidden from creating an alternate means of entry into my own house, rather than being forbidden from breaking into someone else's house.
I guess what I'm saying is, if the US government wants to give stiffer penalties for copyright infringement if the act includes bypassing copy protection, that doesn't bother me. Insofar as the DMCA does that, I don't mind. It only starts bothering me if it's used to go after private individuals who bypass protection for the purpose of fair use.
I do agree with your comment on freehand however, it is indeed doodooo.
Isn't Freehand already a discontinued product? Last I checked, they hadn't updated Freehand in years (it's still at MX, which is 2 versions behind all their other apps), and Macromedia seemed to be pushing Fireworks as both a bitmap and vector program.
Anyway, I agree that Fireworks is a pretty decent app. It doesn't really compete directly with photoshop, but it would seem strange for Adobe to have Photoshop, Imageready, Illustrator, *and* Fireworks, considering Fireworks is sort of a mix of the others. I'm not sure what they'll do, but it might make sense to keep the Macromedia apps and further segment the design market into web apps and print apps.
IMAP? As in, "I don't use POP, I use IMAP to access my e-mail"? How does that solve those "other retarded problems"? Or haven't you ever worked with Exchange?
If the anti-trust stuff is an issue, don't integrate it into the OS, but make it a free download. I agree that it seems to be a conflict of interest to be selling an operating system with a near monopoly and selling a product which makes that OS run properly. I would think THAT would be as much of an anti-trust issue.
There's more to it than the ability to reply to invites (though invites are important to some people). It's also calendar/contact sharing, being able to view each other's mailboxes (assuming permissions are set), correct viewing of Exchange public folders. Just off the top of my head.
I'm not saying nothing but outlook can do these things, but the list is a bit short.
About the only good thing I can say about Yonah is it will run MacOS X.
But what about power consumption? I'd be happy with only a minor bump in speed for my Powerbook if it meant that the battery would last 2 hours longer.
1) I doubt this thing will be fast enough to transcode a TV show in a timeframe deemed acceptable to Apple's high QA standards.
Unless the thing has a special chipset in it that drastically improves encoding time. Word is that both ATI and Nvidia are working on hardware h264. In any case, even if you have to leave it for a couple hours, chances are that if you're recording it, you weren't going to watch it for a couple hours anyway. Plus, it'd be a way of dealing with the problem of not having enough video sources for the iPod (since they've only gotten ABC onboard).
2) Revenue sources (why would anyone buy what they can set their shiny new Apple PVR to record?)
I bet they aren't making much money from selling shows just like they aren't making much money from selling music. It's about selling hardware (mostly), and if the can sell you extra hardware to replace the content that they're providing only for the marketing gimmick to sell more hardware, all the better.
3) Fear of getting sued.
What, like Apple doesn't have lawyers? Making a DVR isn't illegal. They can get the thing thrown out. Anyway, by opening the iTMS in the first place, Apple's already shown they're willing to take a hit on a lawsuit if it improves their business model.
No doubt there are many influences, but isn't Goku supposed to be an alien, sent to earth by his scientist father, shortly before the home plant is destroyed? After reaching earth, he's raised in the country by an adopted parent and leads a simple life until destiny drags him out into the world, where he learns he has amazing powers which make him nearly invincible. Something like that?
Whatever the other influences there may be, the story was written after the creation of Superman, and certainly late enough in the historical context that we can assume Japanese culture was expressing a western influence.
You're right about Superman being overpowered, though. The series tends to suffer from occasional bouts of Dragonballitis. Oh, here comes yet another insanely powerful enemy...
Superman suffered from inflammation of the dragonballs? Ouch. Maybe he should loosen those tights.
Anyway, it's funny you should mention that, since I always thought of Dragonball as a Superman-like story, Japanified.
It seems a particularly strange way to say things after all the delays. When was it originally expected? 2004? So shouldn't the headline be more like: "After failing to come when expected, our expectations were pushed back again and again, again and again, until it was late enough to become a joke, and then it was discovered it might come out a few weeks earlier than the most cynical of estimates"?
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To spend some portion of the day avoiding thoughts of these responsibilities isn't the same as neglecting them. That would be like claiming that you've neglected your work because you've spent some time resting. However, it wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that rest is the thing you do when avoiding activity/work, or that leisure is what you do when avoiding responsibility.
And by "procrastination", I mean just that-- a putting-off of those things for which you're responsibile, for no real reason besides to put them off. Not partaking in procrastination is unhealthy in much the same way as refusing to sleep would be.
Most hobbies are an advanced (and not necessarily bad) form of procrastination. It's a purposeful 'doing what you don't have to do' so that you don't have to think about anything that you do have to do. It's an escape. An escape from your life and your responsibilities. Playing online isn't real social interaction, even if playing multiplayer games in the same room can be.
Sorry, this is as close to "to your face" as I can get.
I'm with you on this, but the truth is, jumping into Rails without knowing Ruby isn't so bad, so long as you understand and accept that you'll need to pick up some Ruby and general programming principles as you go.
Myself, I'm not a programmer, but in the past month, I've built myself my own combination forum app/weblog app. Though it's still not "done", but it works. It took a bit of effort and reading on my part, and I still reference Rails documentation regularly, but it's getting there. It'll be usuable for its intended purposes pretty soon. (I might open-source it in the hopes of getting real programmers to fix the stupid things I've done which I don't even know are stupid)
Point is, I started with scaffolding. I knew some html, so I editing the rhtml to get it to look the way I wanted was easy. The rest, I read a lot about ruby and rails, studies a bit, experimented a bit, and through trial and error, I'm starting to understand. But scaffolding got me started.
And best of all, it keeps enough of the under-the-hood details under-the hood, where I don't have to worry about them. I can focus on getting things to-- just, in a simple way, "do what I want". What I want isn't that complicated, and a little experimentation with Rails is letting me do far more than I could do before. Maybe I'm just not as bright as the rest of you, but I tried picking up PHP and quit out of frustration/annoyance.
So a lot of people jumping into Rails without knowing Ruby ahead of time-- I think it's fine. Whether they "can't get very far" depends on how much effort they put into learning it.
Had we hit the upper limit of "how good graphics can get" on a regular TV? Well, when I play PS2 or XBox games, I'm not confusing them for live-action broadcasts. Further, when I'm watching regular TV, I'm usually not that bothered by the idea that "it doesn't look real enough".
So what's HD other than a buzzword? I don't have an HDTV, so is Microsoft sending the message that I shouldn't bother buying the XBox360 unless I'm willing to spend an additional thousand dollars or more to get a new TV?
Yeah, that's dumb.
Still, I don't see a purpose in trying to tell people which desktop they should use. I'll completely agree that people who prefer KDE should use KDE, but I get the feeling that that is not what is being said.
The question for me is, what is that statement supposed to be? A recommendation? As in, if you somehow managed to stumble across a random ordinary computer geek who didn't know anything about Gnome or KDE and he asked, "what should I use?" you'd say KDE?
Is it a guess that most ordinary computer geeks prefer KDE? Or is it some sort of command? An order? Have you decided for "ordinary computer geeks" that they should use KDE? What's wrong with 'use what you like'?
If it's a recommendation to those who know nothing about it, then fine, because that's your attempt to anticipate what they would like. However, I don't see any reason why anyone needs to be discouraged from running Gnome if they prefer it. Ultimately, there are a number of alternatives (which is a good thing), and I think people should be encouraged to try them out, see which one they like and which one best suits their purposes, and use that one, whichever it is. We don't need any "suggestions" that we should just use either DE against our preference.
Well, I'm not sure that means it isn't a worthwhile feature. If a programmer makes a major change to a browser without having any idea how much code he's written and without considering security, then I think probably that I don't want to run his code. However, that doesn't mean that he had bad ideas, or that those ideas couldn't be implemented well by others.
I'll also grant that there's a tendency towards putting lots of flashy but useless crap on the web, and if we really thought things through, we might drop some features from each of the major web browsers. On the other hand, I find an argument against embedded images and javascript a bit hard to make. Further, though the current trend towards Ajax may be found not to be the best implementation, I think web applications (in some form) are going to become very prominent in the software industry.
And really, why shouldn't you be able to sell a "used" mp3 that you've purchased?
*As long as the maximum price is 99 cents*
or lower. Really, it should be lower.
You might be right... that nothing *entitles* you to the status of 'expert'. Think about, and tell me one objective factor that you've ever been able to note, before meeting someone, and feel confident that they aren't completely stupid. I'll tell you this: a PHD doesn't fit that bill for me.
I think the only thing that suggests that you should be considered 'not stupid' is for you to not-be stupid. The only thing that I might say entitles you to the status of 'expert' is that you've demonstrated your expertise.
What happens, on the other hand, is that they seem to throw half the rebates out the window. And what's their motivation not to? They already have your money. There's no economic incentive to actually fulfill rebates so long as customers keep falling for it.
Some of these rebates even put something in the fine print that says, more or less, "we can refuse to send a rebate for any reason without notifying you that we've refused." It's totally a scam. Now, I send in my mail-in rebates. In the past couple years I've sent out at least 5, and never heard back from a single one.
I don't think you should have to show positive efforts to obscure your activity in order to make it illegal to monitor it. I suppose it depends on the circumstances, but, for example, I think installing a keylogger on someone else's machine without permission should generally be illegal. On the other hand, many employers make new hires sign something that says "I understand that the company has the right to monitor my computer and network traffic", and so that company monitoring their employees should generally be legal, I think.
am I not correct in believeing that this train of thought taken to its logical extreem would indicate that, doing any thing agnist the will of another would be deemed ilegal.
Yes, I think you are not correct. For example, it's perfectly reasonable to say that it should be illegal to break into my house, search my bedroom, and steal my wallet, while still maintaining that it's not inherently illegal to hold my wallet. It's all about the method, means, and circumstances surrounding the access to the wallet. I suppose if we insist that people make no distinctions and use no judgement, then making anything illegal would mean making everything illegal. Luckily, we do have distinctions and judgement.
Maybe not. I don't know, but that's one interpretation that's been floated around.
Is this a reference to something? Anyway, I know you're joking, but I think part of this warrants an explicit response anyway...
Your arguement's "valid reason" can not simply be that consumers are prohibited from doing something legal in a way they want. Being unable to play music on your ipod (even though it's a legal fair use) would not be a "valid reason" if some other player is available on the market, no matter how expensive and inconvienent it may be for you.
One valid argument (I believe) is that it should only be illegal to break encryption in order to gain access to data which you otherwise weren't allowed access to. If I break the DRM on an audio file that I've purchased so that I can access it *in another way* (when access has already been granted), then I don't believe I'm gaining access to data which I otherwise weren't allowed access to. I'm giving myself access to data for which I've purchased access.
I think this should fall into the realm of "fair use". It seems a valid argument to me, and I have yet to hear a valid argument to the contrary.
I don't really claim to understand the DMCA, but I think the law should address actions, methods, intent, and circumstances (all of them). Well, I'm not sure the distinction you're aiming for between "methods" and "actions", since all action is done by a certain method. Injuring someone may be done with my fist or a knife. In either case, the crime is, in a certain way, just injuring another person, but the method certainly would become an issue at my trial. On the other hand, you might say that those are two different actions: punching vs. stabbing.
Breaking encryption is both a method for accessing data and an action. I don't know the law about this, but I think many, if not most, actions of breaking encryption should be illegal.
However, no action, method, or intention, by itself, should be illegal. It's generally illegal to kill people, but it's not necessarily illegal to kill a man, to stab a man, or to intend to kill a man. However, if I purposefully stab a man to death, outside of some circumstances that are deemed legally acceptable, it's murder.
Likewise, I think I'd say that it should be generally illegal to break encryption to access/distribute information that you've not received permission to access/distribute. The act of breaking encryption, I think, should be illegal in about the same way that picking a lock to get into someone else's property would be illegal. However, just as the law takes other circumstances into account with every other law, there should be circumstances for which breaking encryption is legal.
Picking the lock to your own house... is that legal? If so, then breaking your own encryption should be legal. Hiring a locksmith to pick your lock, isn't that legal for both you and the locksmith? Then services should be allowed to break encryption for individuals who own the data. Is it legal for a locksmith to teach someone else to pick a lock? Then it should be legal to show people how to circumvent/break encryption. Now, what if you're renting a house, do you need special permission to the landlord to pick your own lock? If not, then I think I should be able to break encryption on DVDs that I buy.
Maybe the preceding examples aren't definitive, but I mean to point out that there are analogous actions where legality is already worked out, and we can look to them for some ideas about how it should work out. I also think security experts should get an exemption for the purpose of studying spyware, but I think those issues should be clarified by law. Someone shouldn't be able to claim to be a "security expert" and assuming license to break encryption whenever and wherever they want.
The trick is that you get into copyright trouble (DeCSS) when trying to convert them to a new format playable by software not originally designed to play the DVD.
Yeah, I was assuming the conversion. Just like I rip my CDs in MP3 and not WAV, if I'm going to rip movies, I want MPEG 4 files.
For example, if I encrypt my personal data on my hard drive, I think it should be generally illegal for you to break the encryption, just like it's generally illegal to break into my house. That's fair, right?
The problem I have with the DMCA is the idea that it might allow someone to lock data that I believe I should have access to, and I have no legal recourse. For example, AFAIK, it's illegal to rip DVDs to your hard drive, even if you have no intention of violating copyrights. To my mind, that's like being forbidden from creating an alternate means of entry into my own house, rather than being forbidden from breaking into someone else's house.
I guess what I'm saying is, if the US government wants to give stiffer penalties for copyright infringement if the act includes bypassing copy protection, that doesn't bother me. Insofar as the DMCA does that, I don't mind. It only starts bothering me if it's used to go after private individuals who bypass protection for the purpose of fair use.
Isn't Freehand already a discontinued product? Last I checked, they hadn't updated Freehand in years (it's still at MX, which is 2 versions behind all their other apps), and Macromedia seemed to be pushing Fireworks as both a bitmap and vector program.
Anyway, I agree that Fireworks is a pretty decent app. It doesn't really compete directly with photoshop, but it would seem strange for Adobe to have Photoshop, Imageready, Illustrator, *and* Fireworks, considering Fireworks is sort of a mix of the others. I'm not sure what they'll do, but it might make sense to keep the Macromedia apps and further segment the design market into web apps and print apps.
IMAP? As in, "I don't use POP, I use IMAP to access my e-mail"? How does that solve those "other retarded problems"? Or haven't you ever worked with Exchange?
If the anti-trust stuff is an issue, don't integrate it into the OS, but make it a free download. I agree that it seems to be a conflict of interest to be selling an operating system with a near monopoly and selling a product which makes that OS run properly. I would think THAT would be as much of an anti-trust issue.
I'm not saying nothing but outlook can do these things, but the list is a bit short.
But what about power consumption? I'd be happy with only a minor bump in speed for my Powerbook if it meant that the battery would last 2 hours longer.
Unless the thing has a special chipset in it that drastically improves encoding time. Word is that both ATI and Nvidia are working on hardware h264. In any case, even if you have to leave it for a couple hours, chances are that if you're recording it, you weren't going to watch it for a couple hours anyway. Plus, it'd be a way of dealing with the problem of not having enough video sources for the iPod (since they've only gotten ABC onboard).
2) Revenue sources (why would anyone buy what they can set their shiny new Apple PVR to record?)
I bet they aren't making much money from selling shows just like they aren't making much money from selling music. It's about selling hardware (mostly), and if the can sell you extra hardware to replace the content that they're providing only for the marketing gimmick to sell more hardware, all the better.
3) Fear of getting sued.
What, like Apple doesn't have lawyers? Making a DVR isn't illegal. They can get the thing thrown out. Anyway, by opening the iTMS in the first place, Apple's already shown they're willing to take a hit on a lawsuit if it improves their business model.
Whatever the other influences there may be, the story was written after the creation of Superman, and certainly late enough in the historical context that we can assume Japanese culture was expressing a western influence.
Superman suffered from inflammation of the dragonballs? Ouch. Maybe he should loosen those tights.
Anyway, it's funny you should mention that, since I always thought of Dragonball as a Superman-like story, Japanified.
It seems a particularly strange way to say things after all the delays. When was it originally expected? 2004? So shouldn't the headline be more like: "After failing to come when expected, our expectations were pushed back again and again, again and again, until it was late enough to become a joke, and then it was discovered it might come out a few weeks earlier than the most cynical of estimates"?