1) Steve Jobs has a proven track record of actually being right and far exceeding the expectations for him that people place in him.
2) We don't really expect the media companies to put blind faith in Steve. If things start going south, by all means, they're justified in pulling their content. But that wasn't the case here. NBC was making a lot of money from their iTunes sales, and was contributing to an exciting new distribution medium. An equivalent analogy would be if the Iraquis really were greeting us with flowers and candy, and Bush decided to pull everyone out halfway through and let the place go to hell anyway.
If he can't stay in business why would he care if you use the software.
With that attitude, I hope I'm not using your software. As weird as you may think this is, whether or not your software can outlive your company is a major concern when big businesses buy software. (Fortune 100 company here.) Maybe you're used to dealing with nickel-and-dime outfits, and if that's who you want your customers to be, then more power to you. Thanks, buh-bye.
my sales would be 10x less, i'd have to charge 10x more,
Boy are you naive! Because as it is, if your software is remotely popular, pirates will crack any licensing scheme you come up with, you'll still have "10x less" sales (I'd love to see your evidence for anything remotely close to that), you'll be selling the software for the same amount of money as you do now (unless you want your competitors to undercut you in a major kind of way), and the ONLY thing you will have accomplished is that you will have spent a ton of money on a useless licensing scheme, ticked off your customers, and kept from selling software to people who care about these things.
Of course, that sounds like your goal, so congratulations, you're probably meeting it with spectacular success...
Operating temperature: From a chilly minus 40 degrees F to a balmy 120 degrees F.
That was the most impressive thing to me. I had no idea that it gets up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit at the north pole. And I thought our string of 100+ degree F days this summer was bad!
Yeah, but the headline and the ComputerWorld article make him sound kind of kooky and grossly misrepresents what he actually said. I've since gone back to read the original article, and I'm more inclined to agree with you now.
In completely unrelated news, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has been arrested as an enemy combatant who hates freedom as is currently on an airplane in transit to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he will be held indefinitely. Ironically, it is unlikely that this judge will ever see his own day in court.
President Bush has issued a signing statement declaring that the principles of checks and balances and separation of powers is unConstitutional, since "Clearly the executive branch of government is over the other two, or else they wouldn't have called it the 'executive' branch." Dick Cheney couldn't be reached for comment to see which branch of government he is part of today.
Why do people insist that one size really does fit all?
I went back and read the original article. To Michael Stonebreaker's credit, the ComputerWorld article (and the submitter) grossly misrepresents what he said.
He did not say that RDBMSes are "long in the tooth." He said that the technology underlying them hasn't changed since the 1970's, and that column stores is a better way to represent data in certain situations. In fact, the very name of his original column was "One Size Fits All - A Concept Whose Time Has Come and Gone"
Since when is a column store database and a relational database mutually exclusive concepts? I thought that both column store and row store (i.e. traditional) databases were just different means of storing data, and had nothing to do with whether a database was relational or not. I think the article misinterpreted what he said.
Also, I don't think it's news that Michael Stonebraker (a great name, by the way), co-founder and CEO of a company that (surprise!) happens to develop column store database software, thinks that column store databases are going to be the Next Big Thing. Right or wrong, his opinion can't exactly be considered unbiased...
I don't know what idiot came through and modded the posts in this thread flamebait, but I totally agree with your sentiment. I'm thinking that for Apple's long-term success, it might very well be worth their while to get into the content production business, not just content delivery.
If iTunes isnt willing to play, maybe NBC has some other thoughts on how to get the shows out there.
Of course there are, but they all revolve around NBC wanting more money and more control over how, where and when you can watch their shows.
I bought every season available of Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, and My Name is Earl on iTunes. I like the shows, but apparently, that's not good enough. Apparently, NBC wants me to be so desperate to watch the shows that I would support their outright greed.
Well I for one am not a slave to my television. Unless NBC shapes up and gives me the opportunity to pay a reasonable price for seeing their shows in a timely manner and in a fashion that I wish, I guess I won't be watching them any more. Oh well, I guess that frees up more time that I can use for other interesting things.
These networks and media companies just kill me. They act like if they only provide one expensive and inconvenient legal avenue for me to watch their shows, I'll just have to suck it up because they say so. Then you have the people like the submitter who imply that they'll just resort to illegal avenues to watch the show.
Everyone seems to be forgetting option number three, the option I'll be choosing should NBC keep this silliness up: Simply don't watch the shows. Frankly, it looks to me like that is NBC's ultimate goal, and if that's the case, I'm happy to oblige.
Crap, you can't post a headline like that! I read the article excitedly expecting Jack Thompson and someone at Take Two to have literally come to blows! I was popping the popcorn to munch on while watching the video of it on YouTube!
A HUGE win for whom? NBC? For shutting down a revenue source? Are you on drugs?
For some other provider? Maybe, if they'll be making money that Apple won't be pulling in any more. Of course, I'm failing to see how that's a "win," that some company that more heavily DRMs content and/or that charges more for the shows (which are the two things that apparently NBC has a problem with) will now be distributing them.
For the consumer? No, we're most certainly going to get screwed more than anyone in this deal.
I DESPISE the Windows client for iTunes.
So? What the hell does that have to do with anything? Personally, I don't mind iTunes so much, and it works pretty well for me. I don't give a damn whether you like it or not; all this is is a pissing match, one that will further fragment media over IP delivery and that will set back all industries a few more years.
A HUGE win, my ass. If you don't like iTunes, then what's your brilliant plan that's so much better? How are our lives going to be better because of this? How will legal content get to us in some better way? You know, better--the state of being a win kind of implies?
The answer is, there is none, because you have no better plan. As far as I can tell, you're just an anti-Apple troll. Normally, I wouldn't care, but in this case, you're actively supporting helping to kill off the budding content-over-Internet delivery industry and missing the bigger picture.
No algorithm, except maybe personally checking every single article yourself, will ever be perfect. I suspect that the stuff you talk about will be very rare exceptions, not the rule. In fact, one of the reasons that it is so rare is because people who know what the actual truth of a matter is can post it, cite it, and show it for all to see that some common misconception is, in fact, a misconception. This is much better than, say, a dead tree encyclopedia where, if something incorrect gets printed, it will likely stay that way forever in almost every copy that's out there. (And, incidentally, no such algorithm can exist, since dead tree encyclopedias generally don't include citations and/or articles' editing histories.)
The goal wasn't to create a 100% perfect algorithm, it was to create an algorithm that provides a relatively accurate model and that works in the vast majority of cases. I don't see any reason this shouldn't fit the bill just fine.
However, just because in this particular case you came out on top (replacement costs were higher than insurance costs) doesn't change the fact that, on average, you lose money when you buy small-scale insurance.
I hope someone mods this up, especially since there are a lot of folks like me that have ACs auto-modded down.
You're right on the mark. Here's the thing. If you buy warranties on everything you buy that they're offered on, at some point, you will come out ahead on some particular item. A laptop, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a television, an iPod... Something. And, as the parent post noted, good for you.
However, that thing that you came out ahead on has a nasty way of ingraining itself into your selective memory. You remember that thing that you came out ahead on, because wow, you saved hundreds of dollars. You tend to forget the thousands of dollars you lose $50 to $100 at a time by buying extended warranties that you never need or use.
It's simple psychology, and retail stores are taking advantage of it, along with people's lack of knowledge about computers and their tendency to react to fear, to make billions of dollars a year. Ask any financial expert or consumer advocate and they'll all say the same thing: The only time you should ever purchase a warranty is if you literally cannot function without whatever it is you're buying the warranty for.
Plus, that doesn't take into account the fact that most of the time, it's a lot harder to actually get companies to follow through on their warranties than the salespeople claim it will be. Keep in mind that when companies have to pay out warranties, that's taking money away from them that they had considered pure profit. It's very likely that they'll avoid fulfilling the terms based on some technicality. For example, did you keep all of the original packaging? Even the driver CD? My dad got burned on that one once. He tried to claim an extended warranty repair, and they wouldn't fulfill the warranty because he had thrown away a three-year-old driver disc.
Last, but not least, it may seem like a bargain to buy a $200 five-year extended warranty on a $2000 computer. But in five years, what will that computer really be worth? If you're lucky, maybe $100 on eBay. You can get a replacement cheaper than you can ship the durn thing.
Just don't do it. Take all money you would have spent on extended warranties and put it in a savings account. You'll earn interest on it, and in no time, you'll have enough money in the bank to replace anything like that that you would buy and you'll never need another warranty again.
I'm not going to respond to your entire post, because you're just plain wrong. However I will point out a couple of things.
Would you rely on this driver to be present for your malware to stay hidden?
Of course. Why wouldn't I? I would exploit the hell out of everything like this that I could. When Sony's original (that we know of) rootkit was put out on those audio CDs, it was not very long before malware that exploited the fact that being named $sys$stuff would make it disappear completely off of Windows's radar. Duh.
If malware could do it, so can I. Maybe I stick my important data in there.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Do an end-run around the OS API yourself. Also lose the ability to back that data up, open it from most applications, etc. It's better to simply encrypt it, but you know, if that's really what you want to do, go for it.
The intent does matter.
So if I write a nasty computer virus with the intent of studying it, and it manages to accidentally get out in the wild and infect half the world's computers, does that mean that it's not a computer virus because I didn't mean for it to cause any harm? No, as I said, what counts is what it does.
Oh look you have lock picking tools, go straight to jail.
As a matter of fact, unless you are a locksmith, you can go to jail for possessing lockpicks. For example, according to Nevada law (and I'm chopping parts out for clarity, the original is here:
Every person who has in his possession any picklock or implement commonly used for the commission of burglary, under circumstances evincing an intent to use or employ in the commission of a crime, shall be guilty of a gross misdemeanor. The possession thereof except by a mechanic, artificer or tradesman at his place of business, open to public view, shall be prima facie evidence that such possession was had with intent to be used in the commission of a crime.
Many other states have similar laws.
A "rootkit" as has been referred to for years is so named because it grants a non-authorized user "root access". In this case it's "Administrator" access, but the principle is the same... A rootkit is a piece of software that grants a non-authorized user admin level access. That's all.
If Wikipedia's description of a rootkit is inaccurate, yours is just plain laughable. The thing that distinguishes a rootkit from other malware is precisely the fact that it hides itself from users and/or the OS by altering or bypassing the API. Windows has had many security holes over the years that grant administrative access to a machine. By your definition, any malware that exploits a security hole would be a rootkit. Try telling that to any competent systems administrator and they'll probably mock you for not knowing what the hell a rootkit is.
Put 'im in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him.
Put him in the longboat till he's sober.
Heave him by the leg in a running bowline.
Put 'im in the cabin with the captain's daughter*.
It only seeks to protect sensitive biometric data which should not be visible to all programs) from the normal Windows API.
The intentions behind the software are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it does. What this software does is an end-run around the operating system, deliberately hiding things that should not and need not be hidden.
Why shouldn't it be hidden? Because as has already been pointed out, malicious software can take advantage of the rootkit—which is what this is—as an attack vector to control someone's machine without their knowledge, and with damn little they can do about it.
Please remember also that a lot of computer viruses and worms didn't start out with people saying, "I'm going to write a computer virus today!" They started out with someone saying, "Hmmm... I wonder if that would work..." and it goes from there. In fact, the guy who is credited with writing the first computer virus said, "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Maybe, but it's stupid to deny what it was, a virus, just as it is to deny what this is, a rootkit.
Actually, EULAs have been found to be unconscionable when the terms of such a EULA are grossly (and especially misleadingly) inequitable to one party. I would think that if someone wants to fight this particular EULA based on the grounds that they had no way of knowing that by playing a game they were agreeing to open up their computer to security threats, they'd have a very good case. In fact, they have a very good claim against 2K Games and Sony if their machine were hacked as a direct result of this software.
Of course, I despise the criminal element that would take advantage of such a thing, but a small, dark part of me actually hopes that someone exploits the hell out of it and costs people millions of dollars that they have to recover in a huge, messy, expensive, VERY high-profile class action lawsuit. When these shitty companies, and the shitty developers that support them, get hit with a major smackdown for these unethical activities, then you'd start seeing a change in the agressiveness of these stupid DRM/content protection systems.
I mean, you can't seriously be saying that Sony owns the product and that Sony sells the product, yet they're not responsible for the foreseeably dangerous consequences of using it, can you?
I'm not saying there was a conspiracy or men in black suits. I'm saying that Sony is writing software the compromises systems' security, and then lying about what it does, lies that have been demonstrably proven repeatedly.
2K Games in one way is a victim of Sony's ineptness. I'm sure that SecuROM was deceptively sold to them under the pretense that it was a safe means of preventing piracy, and at the top levels, that's exactly how it was presented. In another way, though, they're just as culpable for the damage done because of their overzealous desire to limit software copy infringement. You can't tell me that no one at 2K Games had any clue whatsoever how intrusive SecuROM is. The people who knew either didn't speak up, or they were silenced due to, well, the overzealous desire to limit software copy infringement. They're also complicit in the denial of what the software does, and they're trying to sweep it under the rug instead of trying to fix it.
Because of this, I don't ever want to have anything to do with 2K Games, including playing their games. And as far as Sony goes, like I said, this is a pattern. That company can go to hell, as I will never knowingly purchase any of their products again, and will encourage all of the people I know to do likewise.
You're not buying a THING, you're buying a SERVICE, with all the benefits and limitations you're pointing out.
Not exactly, you're buying a LICENSE to play their game. SecuROM is NOT required to play their game, therefore it is NOT a requirement of the license. As such, it has no place in the game.
Worse, SecuROM actually PREVENTS you from using your computer in other commonly used, non-infringing ways. So by buying the game, you're actually buying the crippling of your system along with it.
But, then, I have a separate Windows partition used for ONLY GAMES, and I'm not worried about much that might be required to facilitate this.
You need to read again what SecuROM does. Where you have it installed is irrelevant. It actually alters your operating system in a manner that allows non-privileged applications to run as an administrative user. That means that at the very least, it can affect your entire Windows installation. And before you go with your "I've used Linux..." rationale, you should realize that it can also affect your Linux installation.
Here's how it could work. I write a piece of software that uses the elevated privileges that SecuROM grants to normal users without your knowledge or consent that goes in and wipes all non-recognized partitions on your hard drive. Voila, your system has been compromised because playing a stupid game whose publishers willingly opened up a security hole on your system. That's what I mean when I keep saying that even if 2K Games didn't have evil intentions, what they're unleashing on people can most certainly be used for evil purposes.
The thought that you are paying them for the privilege of having a rootkit installed on your computer and that you're okay with it quite disconcerting to me, but by all means, if the service of having your system compromised is worth $50 to you, go ahead. (There are lots of people who would willingly compromise your system for free, incidentally.) Personally, I find it disgusting that anyone can't see the bigger picture and would support a company that engages in these practices, but it's your computer and your money.
The summary never says that Bioshock is a Sony game. In fact, Bioshock isn't even mentioned until well into the summary, and it's clear that they licensed the software from Sony. The summary makes it crystal clear that Sony is the owner of SecuROM copy protection, the copy protection that Bioshock installs.
If Sony came up with the technology, and then the other guys decided to license it and use it, does this mean Sony had much to do with it? Nope.
Are you on drugs? I mean, seriously, are you on drugs!? That's the only way I can think of to explain how stupid that sentence is. If Sony came up with the technology, and then the other guys decided to license it and use it, does this mean Sony had much to do with it? Hell yes, because they wrote it!!! Plus, there's also the little fact that they've done this exact same thing before that you're totally ignoring. Once is a lapse in judgement. Twice is a pattern. I wasn't what you call and anti-Sony-fanboy before all of this rootkit fiasco, but I sure as hell am now. If not wanting rootkits installed on my computer makes me a anti-Sony-fanboy, then I suppose I'm proud to call myself one, and for the mere sake of computer security, I highly recommend to everyone I know that they immediately become anti-Sony-fanboys too.
If I steal your credit card numbers, and then other guys decided to buy them and use them, does this mean that I had much to do with it?
Damn, there's dense, and then there's dense. You, sir, are the latter kind. By all means, feel free to riddle your computer with rootkits for the sake of playing a stupid game, and be happy that at least you know that you're selling your soul to the devil, unlike most of the non-computer-savvy users who will probably buy and play this game that are none the wiser.
A 2K Games forums administrator, "2K Elizabeth," posted this message when a brouhaha started erupting:
there is no securom on the demo.
This is patently false, as pointed out by several users' follow-up posts. One even took a nice screenshot that shows that this is at best a pretty hideous example of an administrator not knowing what the hell she's talking about, at worst another outright lie that attempts to appease people who don't know better and can't actually check the veracity of what's being said.
First of all, your link to the forums goes to a thread about achievement points on the Xbox version of the game. This thread is much more relevant; it's about the rootkit.
Second of all, I, like many other people, was looking forward to Bioshock's release. I, like I hope many other people will do, refuse to buy it now.
Whether people thing of this as FUD or not, the simple matter of the fact is that:
Bioshock installs software that allows the administrative privilege system of your computer to be subverted. They claim that it's a benefit and they have only good intentions. Maybe, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with. Just because 2K doesn't use their installed software for evil purposes doesn't mean that another hacker's software can't use it to take over a system using privileges that it shouldn't have. When Sony's rootkit distributed on CDs got out into the wild, it didn't take long for other more dangerous software to take advantage of the security hole it created.
The aforementioned software hides itself from detection and cannot be removed via normal means. This is a massive breach of trust for a software company to a user.
2K Games has A FAQ about SecuROM that is, at best, contradictory in several places. They say:
A "rootkit" can be described as software or a set of software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system and which can open ports to allow remote access to the system...
SecuROM DOES NOT USE any root kit technology in its implementation. [Their emphasis, not mine.]
However, Sysinternals' RootkitRevealer software begs to differ. Who am I going to trust, a game company that is practicing Defective by Design tactics, or Mark Russinovich, a software engineer who's proven time and again that he is the guru of this stuff, the guy who discovered the infamous Sony rootkit, the guy who knew Windows better than even the Windows people knew Windows, so well that Microsoft bought his company and hired him? I'll gladly cast my lot with Mark any day, even if he does work for Microsoft now.
2K Games also says in its FAQ:
SecuROM does not fingerprint the hardware [of the computer running Bioshock].
They then go on to say:
The only data collected is the serial being used for activation, the IP address used for activation, an identifier for the software being activated, and the hash of the machine ID...
You won't have to reactivate unless you change several pieces of hardware and this will count as one of your 5 allowed computers, if reactivation is required.
Um... If SecuROM doesn't fingerprint my hardware, what is the "machine ID" that a hash is taken of and sent to their servers? And how the hell is it possible that changing several pieces of hardware might result in a required reactivation? The simple answer is, of course, that SecuROM does fingerprint your hardware, and 2K Games lied to our faces in the hopes that computer users who aren't as savvy as us won't get bogged down with the technical details and just read the part where they say that it doesn't fingerprint the hardware.
This is totally inexcusable, and I won't have anything to do with this company. Will the game be cool? Maybe, but nothing is cool enough to install this crap on my computer for. As far as I'm concerned, 2K Games has destroyed its credibility, and they can go to hell for it.
I have never really bought into the whole "allowing piracy increases net sales" ideology.
Maybe not directly, but definitely indirectly. For example, I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. I started getting into them around 1990, which was the end of an extremely frustrating musical era with all the crap that was churned out in the 1980's. I had gotten so disgusted with music that I honestly never listened to the radio. A buddy of mine had The Wall, though, and I was hooked. He gave me a copy of his tape, and over the years since, I've bought almost every Pink Floyd album there is, except some of the crappy early ones with Syd Barrett. I've also seen them twice in concert.
Another example. When I was in college, like most college students, I was dirt poor. I've always liked Billy Joel, and another buddy of mine invested his disposable income in a CD player (still pretty new at the time) and almost all of Billy Joel's CDs. Of course, I couldn't afford all that, so I bought a bunch of blank cassettes and he made copies for me. Fast forward a few years, and I now am the proud owner of all of Billy Joel's albums, and I've seen him twice in concert, too. (If you're ever lucky enough to get the chance to see either Pink Floyd or Billy Joel in concert, incidentally, go.)
Another example. Just today, a friend of mine was listening to a Lazlo Bane CD I bought. (They're the guys who did the theme to the television show Scrubs, and their stuff is very good.) He had never even heard of the group before. At best, most people I run across are familiar with the theme to Scrubs ("I'm no Superman..."), but they'd never buy a whole Lazlo Bane CD because of that little snippet of song you hear on Thursday nights. I'll be honest, I seriously doubt he's going to rush out and buy a Lazlo Bane CD or go to a concert. But at least now he knows who they are, and if someone mentions Scrubs, he'll probably say something like, "Oh yeah, the theme was done by Lazlo Bane. I've listened to their CD and thought it was pretty good," and thus the "buzz" of the Bane has been bumped up by a bit.
I could keep going, but you get the idea. The collective effect of all of this is that CDs do sell better. Artists and bands do become more famous. Concerts do get attended that otherwise wouldn't have.
Plus, that's also neglecting the money that artists and bands make through increased exposure that have little to do with CD sales and concerts directly, such as through endorsement deals, magazine articles and interviews, non-CD merchandise, etc.
I seriously doubt it. Most people don't care about DRM, they don't care about the RIAA or labels. What they care about is the music and what is now. So long as the CD "works," meaning it doesn't prevent them from playing the CD or putting it on their iPod, they could care less about DRM.
Most people might not know the terms "RIAA" and "DRM", but you'd better believe they care about it. Ask anyone if they'd like the thought of paying for a movie, CD, or whatever just once and having access to it on any media from now on for zero or very little incremental cost to cover the media, and I guarantee that they'll say, "Yes, that sounds like a great idea!"
As long as the RIAA has their way and DRM is in effect, though, that won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Two huge differences:
1) Steve Jobs has a proven track record of actually being right and far exceeding the expectations for him that people place in him.
2) We don't really expect the media companies to put blind faith in Steve. If things start going south, by all means, they're justified in pulling their content. But that wasn't the case here. NBC was making a lot of money from their iTunes sales, and was contributing to an exciting new distribution medium. An equivalent analogy would be if the Iraquis really were greeting us with flowers and candy, and Bush decided to pull everyone out halfway through and let the place go to hell anyway.
With that attitude, I hope I'm not using your software. As weird as you may think this is, whether or not your software can outlive your company is a major concern when big businesses buy software. (Fortune 100 company here.) Maybe you're used to dealing with nickel-and-dime outfits, and if that's who you want your customers to be, then more power to you. Thanks, buh-bye.
Boy are you naive! Because as it is, if your software is remotely popular, pirates will crack any licensing scheme you come up with, you'll still have "10x less" sales (I'd love to see your evidence for anything remotely close to that), you'll be selling the software for the same amount of money as you do now (unless you want your competitors to undercut you in a major kind of way), and the ONLY thing you will have accomplished is that you will have spent a ton of money on a useless licensing scheme, ticked off your customers, and kept from selling software to people who care about these things.
Of course, that sounds like your goal, so congratulations, you're probably meeting it with spectacular success...
That was the most impressive thing to me. I had no idea that it gets up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit at the north pole. And I thought our string of 100+ degree F days this summer was bad!
Yeah, but the headline and the ComputerWorld article make him sound kind of kooky and grossly misrepresents what he actually said. I've since gone back to read the original article, and I'm more inclined to agree with you now.
In completely unrelated news, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has been arrested as an enemy combatant who hates freedom as is currently on an airplane in transit to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he will be held indefinitely. Ironically, it is unlikely that this judge will ever see his own day in court.
President Bush has issued a signing statement declaring that the principles of checks and balances and separation of powers is unConstitutional, since "Clearly the executive branch of government is over the other two, or else they wouldn't have called it the 'executive' branch." Dick Cheney couldn't be reached for comment to see which branch of government he is part of today.
If they're wearing the goggles too, this is not a problem.
I went back and read the original article. To Michael Stonebreaker's credit, the ComputerWorld article (and the submitter) grossly misrepresents what he said.
He did not say that RDBMSes are "long in the tooth." He said that the technology underlying them hasn't changed since the 1970's, and that column stores is a better way to represent data in certain situations. In fact, the very name of his original column was "One Size Fits All - A Concept Whose Time Has Come and Gone"
Okay, at the risk of sounding stupid...
Since when is a column store database and a relational database mutually exclusive concepts? I thought that both column store and row store (i.e. traditional) databases were just different means of storing data, and had nothing to do with whether a database was relational or not. I think the article misinterpreted what he said.
Also, I don't think it's news that Michael Stonebraker (a great name, by the way), co-founder and CEO of a company that (surprise!) happens to develop column store database software, thinks that column store databases are going to be the Next Big Thing. Right or wrong, his opinion can't exactly be considered unbiased...
I don't know what idiot came through and modded the posts in this thread flamebait, but I totally agree with your sentiment. I'm thinking that for Apple's long-term success, it might very well be worth their while to get into the content production business, not just content delivery.
Of course there are, but they all revolve around NBC wanting more money and more control over how, where and when you can watch their shows.
I bought every season available of Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, and My Name is Earl on iTunes. I like the shows, but apparently, that's not good enough. Apparently, NBC wants me to be so desperate to watch the shows that I would support their outright greed.
Well I for one am not a slave to my television. Unless NBC shapes up and gives me the opportunity to pay a reasonable price for seeing their shows in a timely manner and in a fashion that I wish, I guess I won't be watching them any more. Oh well, I guess that frees up more time that I can use for other interesting things.
These networks and media companies just kill me. They act like if they only provide one expensive and inconvenient legal avenue for me to watch their shows, I'll just have to suck it up because they say so. Then you have the people like the submitter who imply that they'll just resort to illegal avenues to watch the show.
Everyone seems to be forgetting option number three, the option I'll be choosing should NBC keep this silliness up: Simply don't watch the shows. Frankly, it looks to me like that is NBC's ultimate goal, and if that's the case, I'm happy to oblige.
Crap, you can't post a headline like that! I read the article excitedly expecting Jack Thompson and someone at Take Two to have literally come to blows! I was popping the popcorn to munch on while watching the video of it on YouTube!
A HUGE win for whom? NBC? For shutting down a revenue source? Are you on drugs?
For some other provider? Maybe, if they'll be making money that Apple won't be pulling in any more. Of course, I'm failing to see how that's a "win," that some company that more heavily DRMs content and/or that charges more for the shows (which are the two things that apparently NBC has a problem with) will now be distributing them.
For the consumer? No, we're most certainly going to get screwed more than anyone in this deal.
So? What the hell does that have to do with anything? Personally, I don't mind iTunes so much, and it works pretty well for me. I don't give a damn whether you like it or not; all this is is a pissing match, one that will further fragment media over IP delivery and that will set back all industries a few more years.
A HUGE win, my ass. If you don't like iTunes, then what's your brilliant plan that's so much better? How are our lives going to be better because of this? How will legal content get to us in some better way? You know, better--the state of being a win kind of implies?
The answer is, there is none, because you have no better plan. As far as I can tell, you're just an anti-Apple troll. Normally, I wouldn't care, but in this case, you're actively supporting helping to kill off the budding content-over-Internet delivery industry and missing the bigger picture.
No algorithm, except maybe personally checking every single article yourself, will ever be perfect. I suspect that the stuff you talk about will be very rare exceptions, not the rule. In fact, one of the reasons that it is so rare is because people who know what the actual truth of a matter is can post it, cite it, and show it for all to see that some common misconception is, in fact, a misconception. This is much better than, say, a dead tree encyclopedia where, if something incorrect gets printed, it will likely stay that way forever in almost every copy that's out there. (And, incidentally, no such algorithm can exist, since dead tree encyclopedias generally don't include citations and/or articles' editing histories.)
The goal wasn't to create a 100% perfect algorithm, it was to create an algorithm that provides a relatively accurate model and that works in the vast majority of cases. I don't see any reason this shouldn't fit the bill just fine.
I hope someone mods this up, especially since there are a lot of folks like me that have ACs auto-modded down.
You're right on the mark. Here's the thing. If you buy warranties on everything you buy that they're offered on, at some point, you will come out ahead on some particular item. A laptop, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a television, an iPod... Something. And, as the parent post noted, good for you.
However, that thing that you came out ahead on has a nasty way of ingraining itself into your selective memory. You remember that thing that you came out ahead on, because wow, you saved hundreds of dollars. You tend to forget the thousands of dollars you lose $50 to $100 at a time by buying extended warranties that you never need or use.
It's simple psychology, and retail stores are taking advantage of it, along with people's lack of knowledge about computers and their tendency to react to fear, to make billions of dollars a year. Ask any financial expert or consumer advocate and they'll all say the same thing: The only time you should ever purchase a warranty is if you literally cannot function without whatever it is you're buying the warranty for.
Plus, that doesn't take into account the fact that most of the time, it's a lot harder to actually get companies to follow through on their warranties than the salespeople claim it will be. Keep in mind that when companies have to pay out warranties, that's taking money away from them that they had considered pure profit. It's very likely that they'll avoid fulfilling the terms based on some technicality. For example, did you keep all of the original packaging? Even the driver CD? My dad got burned on that one once. He tried to claim an extended warranty repair, and they wouldn't fulfill the warranty because he had thrown away a three-year-old driver disc.
Last, but not least, it may seem like a bargain to buy a $200 five-year extended warranty on a $2000 computer. But in five years, what will that computer really be worth? If you're lucky, maybe $100 on eBay. You can get a replacement cheaper than you can ship the durn thing.
Just don't do it. Take all money you would have spent on extended warranties and put it in a savings account. You'll earn interest on it, and in no time, you'll have enough money in the bank to replace anything like that that you would buy and you'll never need another warranty again.
I'm not going to respond to your entire post, because you're just plain wrong. However I will point out a couple of things.
Of course. Why wouldn't I? I would exploit the hell out of everything like this that I could. When Sony's original (that we know of) rootkit was put out on those audio CDs, it was not very long before malware that exploited the fact that being named $sys$stuff would make it disappear completely off of Windows's radar. Duh.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Do an end-run around the OS API yourself. Also lose the ability to back that data up, open it from most applications, etc. It's better to simply encrypt it, but you know, if that's really what you want to do, go for it.
So if I write a nasty computer virus with the intent of studying it, and it manages to accidentally get out in the wild and infect half the world's computers, does that mean that it's not a computer virus because I didn't mean for it to cause any harm? No, as I said, what counts is what it does.
As a matter of fact, unless you are a locksmith, you can go to jail for possessing lockpicks. For example, according to Nevada law (and I'm chopping parts out for clarity, the original is here:
Many other states have similar laws.
If Wikipedia's description of a rootkit is inaccurate, yours is just plain laughable. The thing that distinguishes a rootkit from other malware is precisely the fact that it hides itself from users and/or the OS by altering or bypassing the API. Windows has had many security holes over the years that grant administrative access to a machine. By your definition, any malware that exploits a security hole would be a rootkit. Try telling that to any competent systems administrator and they'll probably mock you for not knowing what the hell a rootkit is.
Put 'im in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him.
Put him in the longboat till he's sober.
Heave him by the leg in a running bowline.
Put 'im in the cabin with the captain's daughter*.
I could go on...
*The "captain's daughter" is a cat o' nine tails.
The intentions behind the software are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it does. What this software does is an end-run around the operating system, deliberately hiding things that should not and need not be hidden.
Why shouldn't it be hidden? Because as has already been pointed out, malicious software can take advantage of the rootkit—which is what this is—as an attack vector to control someone's machine without their knowledge, and with damn little they can do about it.
Please remember also that a lot of computer viruses and worms didn't start out with people saying, "I'm going to write a computer virus today!" They started out with someone saying, "Hmmm... I wonder if that would work..." and it goes from there. In fact, the guy who is credited with writing the first computer virus said, "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Maybe, but it's stupid to deny what it was, a virus, just as it is to deny what this is, a rootkit.
Actually, EULAs have been found to be unconscionable when the terms of such a EULA are grossly (and especially misleadingly) inequitable to one party. I would think that if someone wants to fight this particular EULA based on the grounds that they had no way of knowing that by playing a game they were agreeing to open up their computer to security threats, they'd have a very good case. In fact, they have a very good claim against 2K Games and Sony if their machine were hacked as a direct result of this software.
Of course, I despise the criminal element that would take advantage of such a thing, but a small, dark part of me actually hopes that someone exploits the hell out of it and costs people millions of dollars that they have to recover in a huge, messy, expensive, VERY high-profile class action lawsuit. When these shitty companies, and the shitty developers that support them, get hit with a major smackdown for these unethical activities, then you'd start seeing a change in the agressiveness of these stupid DRM/content protection systems.
That's sarcasm, right?
I mean, you can't seriously be saying that Sony owns the product and that Sony sells the product, yet they're not responsible for the foreseeably dangerous consequences of using it, can you?
I'm not saying there was a conspiracy or men in black suits. I'm saying that Sony is writing software the compromises systems' security, and then lying about what it does, lies that have been demonstrably proven repeatedly.
2K Games in one way is a victim of Sony's ineptness. I'm sure that SecuROM was deceptively sold to them under the pretense that it was a safe means of preventing piracy, and at the top levels, that's exactly how it was presented. In another way, though, they're just as culpable for the damage done because of their overzealous desire to limit software copy infringement. You can't tell me that no one at 2K Games had any clue whatsoever how intrusive SecuROM is. The people who knew either didn't speak up, or they were silenced due to, well, the overzealous desire to limit software copy infringement. They're also complicit in the denial of what the software does, and they're trying to sweep it under the rug instead of trying to fix it.
Because of this, I don't ever want to have anything to do with 2K Games, including playing their games. And as far as Sony goes, like I said, this is a pattern. That company can go to hell, as I will never knowingly purchase any of their products again, and will encourage all of the people I know to do likewise.
Not exactly, you're buying a LICENSE to play their game. SecuROM is NOT required to play their game, therefore it is NOT a requirement of the license. As such, it has no place in the game.
Worse, SecuROM actually PREVENTS you from using your computer in other commonly used, non-infringing ways. So by buying the game, you're actually buying the crippling of your system along with it.
You need to read again what SecuROM does. Where you have it installed is irrelevant. It actually alters your operating system in a manner that allows non-privileged applications to run as an administrative user. That means that at the very least, it can affect your entire Windows installation. And before you go with your "I've used Linux..." rationale, you should realize that it can also affect your Linux installation.
Here's how it could work. I write a piece of software that uses the elevated privileges that SecuROM grants to normal users without your knowledge or consent that goes in and wipes all non-recognized partitions on your hard drive. Voila, your system has been compromised because playing a stupid game whose publishers willingly opened up a security hole on your system. That's what I mean when I keep saying that even if 2K Games didn't have evil intentions, what they're unleashing on people can most certainly be used for evil purposes.
The thought that you are paying them for the privilege of having a rootkit installed on your computer and that you're okay with it quite disconcerting to me, but by all means, if the service of having your system compromised is worth $50 to you, go ahead. (There are lots of people who would willingly compromise your system for free, incidentally.) Personally, I find it disgusting that anyone can't see the bigger picture and would support a company that engages in these practices, but it's your computer and your money.
How the HELL did this get modded informative!!?
The summary never says that Bioshock is a Sony game. In fact, Bioshock isn't even mentioned until well into the summary, and it's clear that they licensed the software from Sony. The summary makes it crystal clear that Sony is the owner of SecuROM copy protection, the copy protection that Bioshock installs.
Are you on drugs? I mean, seriously, are you on drugs!? That's the only way I can think of to explain how stupid that sentence is. If Sony came up with the technology, and then the other guys decided to license it and use it, does this mean Sony had much to do with it? Hell yes, because they wrote it!!! Plus, there's also the little fact that they've done this exact same thing before that you're totally ignoring. Once is a lapse in judgement. Twice is a pattern. I wasn't what you call and anti-Sony-fanboy before all of this rootkit fiasco, but I sure as hell am now. If not wanting rootkits installed on my computer makes me a anti-Sony-fanboy, then I suppose I'm proud to call myself one, and for the mere sake of computer security, I highly recommend to everyone I know that they immediately become anti-Sony-fanboys too.
If I steal your credit card numbers, and then other guys decided to buy them and use them, does this mean that I had much to do with it?
Damn, there's dense, and then there's dense. You, sir, are the latter kind. By all means, feel free to riddle your computer with rootkits for the sake of playing a stupid game, and be happy that at least you know that you're selling your soul to the devil, unlike most of the non-computer-savvy users who will probably buy and play this game that are none the wiser.
(from above post...)
A 2K Games forums administrator, "2K Elizabeth," posted this message when a brouhaha started erupting:
This is patently false, as pointed out by several users' follow-up posts. One even took a nice screenshot that shows that this is at best a pretty hideous example of an administrator not knowing what the hell she's talking about, at worst another outright lie that attempts to appease people who don't know better and can't actually check the veracity of what's being said.
First of all, your link to the forums goes to a thread about achievement points on the Xbox version of the game. This thread is much more relevant; it's about the rootkit.
Second of all, I, like many other people, was looking forward to Bioshock's release. I, like I hope many other people will do, refuse to buy it now.
Whether people thing of this as FUD or not, the simple matter of the fact is that:
2K Games has A FAQ about SecuROM that is, at best, contradictory in several places. They say:
However, Sysinternals' RootkitRevealer software begs to differ. Who am I going to trust, a game company that is practicing Defective by Design tactics, or Mark Russinovich, a software engineer who's proven time and again that he is the guru of this stuff, the guy who discovered the infamous Sony rootkit, the guy who knew Windows better than even the Windows people knew Windows, so well that Microsoft bought his company and hired him? I'll gladly cast my lot with Mark any day, even if he does work for Microsoft now.
2K Games also says in its FAQ:
They then go on to say:
Um... If SecuROM doesn't fingerprint my hardware, what is the "machine ID" that a hash is taken of and sent to their servers? And how the hell is it possible that changing several pieces of hardware might result in a required reactivation? The simple answer is, of course, that SecuROM does fingerprint your hardware, and 2K Games lied to our faces in the hopes that computer users who aren't as savvy as us won't get bogged down with the technical details and just read the part where they say that it doesn't fingerprint the hardware.
This is totally inexcusable, and I won't have anything to do with this company. Will the game be cool? Maybe, but nothing is cool enough to install this crap on my computer for. As far as I'm concerned, 2K Games has destroyed its credibility, and they can go to hell for it.
Maybe not directly, but definitely indirectly. For example, I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. I started getting into them around 1990, which was the end of an extremely frustrating musical era with all the crap that was churned out in the 1980's. I had gotten so disgusted with music that I honestly never listened to the radio. A buddy of mine had The Wall, though, and I was hooked. He gave me a copy of his tape, and over the years since, I've bought almost every Pink Floyd album there is, except some of the crappy early ones with Syd Barrett. I've also seen them twice in concert.
Another example. When I was in college, like most college students, I was dirt poor. I've always liked Billy Joel, and another buddy of mine invested his disposable income in a CD player (still pretty new at the time) and almost all of Billy Joel's CDs. Of course, I couldn't afford all that, so I bought a bunch of blank cassettes and he made copies for me. Fast forward a few years, and I now am the proud owner of all of Billy Joel's albums, and I've seen him twice in concert, too. (If you're ever lucky enough to get the chance to see either Pink Floyd or Billy Joel in concert, incidentally, go.)
Another example. Just today, a friend of mine was listening to a Lazlo Bane CD I bought. (They're the guys who did the theme to the television show Scrubs, and their stuff is very good.) He had never even heard of the group before. At best, most people I run across are familiar with the theme to Scrubs ("I'm no Superman..."), but they'd never buy a whole Lazlo Bane CD because of that little snippet of song you hear on Thursday nights. I'll be honest, I seriously doubt he's going to rush out and buy a Lazlo Bane CD or go to a concert. But at least now he knows who they are, and if someone mentions Scrubs, he'll probably say something like, "Oh yeah, the theme was done by Lazlo Bane. I've listened to their CD and thought it was pretty good," and thus the "buzz" of the Bane has been bumped up by a bit.
I could keep going, but you get the idea. The collective effect of all of this is that CDs do sell better. Artists and bands do become more famous. Concerts do get attended that otherwise wouldn't have.
Plus, that's also neglecting the money that artists and bands make through increased exposure that have little to do with CD sales and concerts directly, such as through endorsement deals, magazine articles and interviews, non-CD merchandise, etc.
Most people might not know the terms "RIAA" and "DRM", but you'd better believe they care about it. Ask anyone if they'd like the thought of paying for a movie, CD, or whatever just once and having access to it on any media from now on for zero or very little incremental cost to cover the media, and I guarantee that they'll say, "Yes, that sounds like a great idea!"
As long as the RIAA has their way and DRM is in effect, though, that won't happen.