What, so a novice couldn't cope with to whole buttons?
Clicking the wrong mouse button is one of the most common problems tech support people have to deal with. Many users click the wrong one, or both at once hoping to to get the right result. Many don't even realize the buttons are supposed to be for different tasks.
Apple are dumbing down their entire product range to cater to idiots who can only handlea single mouse button?
Not at all. They're leaving the default simple for the simple or novice user and letting power users enable more functionality. Are you too stupid to figure out how to enable the extra buttons on the mighty mouse?
"Street cred" is slang, short for "on the street credibility." It basically means how well regarded or how much credibility is placed in someone or something by those who actually work with something. For example, you might speak of the "street cred" of a particular brand of product as how normal people value that product compared to others.
Leopard is expected to be resoultion-independent, so Apple may go for highest DPI then.
Yesterday Apple updated their developer notes to include an overview of many Leopard features including resolution independence. I submitted it as a Slashdot article earlier, but it was rejected. The relevant excerpt reads:
Resolution Independence
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport displays with native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.
The introduction of resolution independence may mean that there is work that you'll need to do in order to make your application look as good as possible. For modern Cocoa and Carbon applications, most of the work will center around raster-based resources. For older applications that use QuickDraw, more work will be required to replace QuickDraw-based calls with Quartz ones.
Tell teachers to supervise kids in computer labs. There was one lab at my old school which kids stole drives, memory, and fans from all the time simply because the teacher in that lab was incapable of monitoring his students. It was bemusing but also expensive.
I was in a university lab with the old Powermac G3 towers shortly after they were introduced. I don't know if you've ever seen them, but there was a handle on the side to open them. No screws, no tools needed, the side just hinged down taking half the internals out with it. It was so easy to steal the RAM I once jokingly told a sys admin assistant it was hot swappable and then had to stop him from yanking some out to test it:)
You're going to hear a lot of "install Linux" comments and a lot of "linux sucks" comments in reply to them. I'm not going to go there. Assuming you're looking for some minimal security, not a whole architecture revamp, look into some good backup software, make a clean install image with everything you want on it, add a network storage server (Linux?) for persistent data, and just periodically wipe the machines and replace them with a known good image. Keep the image up to date, virus scan the network storage, and you're probably going to be fine.
Is this supposed to be something new? The small/meduim sized company where I work sent out iPods with out logo etched on the back and a podcast on them to a few dozen execs in the industry. This was a year or two ago. This sort of targeted, small scale advertising was all the rage not that long ago.
What most of us worry about is Apple being forced by the studios or simply deciding to tighten restrictions on their DRM, leaving us holding the bag.
So the studios are going to force them to hack into all my boxes and add DRM to my files after I've removed it and send someone to my house to break the CDs I burned? Apple does not have the ability to "tighten" restrictions once I've stripped the DRM off.
Or being locked into iPod/iTunes when we'd rather be using the next great music platform.
AAC is pretty standard and even supported on MS's new Zune. How will the lock me in?
The fact is, DRM ALWAYS HURTS THE LEGITIMATE USER, and almost never acheives its stated objective, preventing piracy.
Not true. DRM has the potential to hurt the legitimate user, depending upon the implementation. It does not always cause any harm.
I don't like being treated as if I were a criminal when I buy music.
Wo does, that doesn't make someone an idiot to buy it though. Sometimes it is the best deal.
Buying music with DRM is stupid and shortsighted, and will only encourage the bastards.
Sorry, but unless the laws are fixed, music with DRM will be the norm in the next decade. The masses will move towards it and a few intellectuals boycotting will do nothing. So then you have to figure out what DRM will win the upcoming war. Will it be Apple's or MS's and which would you prefer?
Fair enough. But I'd like to point out that there IS a quality difference.
Sure there is, if you're using the iTunes store. That does not address the point of my thread which is, this has nothing to do with DRM and assertions that DRM users are all idiots is idiotic in and of itself.
...then buying iTunes and converting them to mp3's (via burned CD) is a poor choice when compared to buying a REAL CD and converting it to mp3.
Sure, but why do you assume someone is doing that? You were the first person to mention MP3 or ripping from the CD. I don't do either. Or is it just that you assume I don't know this and care for some reason?
The real CD will have substantially better quality, especially if ripped to 192 or 320 mp3.
But if I rip to 192 AAC, from an audio cD that was made from 192 AAC, the quality difference between the original and the latter will not be significantly different (in my experience). The only reason to use MP3, that I know of, is if you plan to use a non-ipod portable. I don't use a portable at all. AAC (non-DRM) plays on all my machines, and has better quality for a smaller file size.
And for the record, I didn't call anyone an idiot. I was quoting the previous poster.
The previous poster is a twit. He made a factually incorrect, blanket statement I demonstrated to be false. We both were modded to +5, but I was then modded down as "overrated" for pointing out his error, which contradicts what people want to hear. Then I have to respond to a handful of posts like yours which all fail to address the point I made, but discuss tangentially related topics, arguing with me, but never about the statements I actually made and all making incorrect assumptions about my use cases.
...the price difference between my Dell E1505 Core2Duo and a similarly configured MacBook is $1000.
Weird. I think the Dell comes in at about $400 cheaper for me, with both machines having a few options the other does not. Of course I also would never buy a Dell laptop because of the reliability issues.
1) No. The CLI is as nice as Linux (I think bash is the default shell now) and the integration between the CLI and GUI is better than any Linux distro I've used. If you move a directory using the GUI, your shell instantly knows and reflects that. If you are using apps that rely heavily upon Gnome or KDE, you'll might run into one or two that takes some messing around to get it working (about the same as most Linux distros). I keep a Linux VM around for a few apps because I'm lazy and for testing purposes.
2) Running Java apps is fine. I'm not sold on Safari's java capabilities for multitasking, but Firefox is slick and as fast as anything I've used.
3) I have basically no stability issues for the OS with one exception. On the Intel processors, running PPC apps via the Rosetta emulation layer, I've had Rosetta freeze up once or twice, freezing the apps as well. I have a few poorly written apps that zombie themselves. "kill" takes care of all of the above and it is pretty rare in any case.
4) About the same amount of free software as an average Linux distro is available. Some are ports using the native UI and some are using the X11 environment. As usual, a little tweaking is required sometimes.
5) The machines are pretty solid compared to something like a Dell. The new EFI firmware is still first generation though, so you might want to hold off until the next revision if you want something rock solid. I've had issues with automatically finding or dropping external monitors when I plug them in. I expect that will be fixed on the next generation of machines.
6) It's fast. I can simultaneously run a dozen OS X applications, and a full Windows VM and a few Windows apps at very reasonable speeds.
7) Two finger scrolling rules. Two finger clicking works fine once you train yourself by using it a while, but is not needed much for native apps.
8) There wasn't a number 8, but you forgot about all the benefits of OS X/Apple that you'll find yourself addicted to. Spotlight lets me find things. No really, at nearly instantaneous speeds I can find and launch applications from the keyboard, or find a file that has something in it. Searching based upon the contents of PDFs, word, openoffice, photoshop, text, html, tex, source, etc. all right away. I hardly ever used searching until Spotlight arrived, now I don't think I can go back. Firewire upgrades rule. I no longer spend days getting my next machine in working condition. My last laptop was PPC. This one is Intel. Yet it was a single step to migrate all my applications, files, settings, certs, user accounts, shell variables, macros, etc. It was all sucked over the firewire like magic, and my next upgrade will include fully configured Windows and Linux VMs as well, in that same step. It is heaven. System services are the way all OS's should work. I am using the same spelling checker on this post as I do for my pro layout application, in vi, in my word processor, in my e-mail, and in my chat sessions. App developers don't have to do anything so long as they use the normal APIs and functionality can be global to the OS. I can also apply grammar checking, language translations, scripts, and many, many more functions. It is by far the most under-appreciated feature of OS X. Until you try it, you just don't realize what you've been missing. Using my Windows or Linux workstations or VMs now, is like stepping into the past, to a more primitive, less functional time. It will be a hard, hard task to ever switch to Windows or even Linux as a primary workstation, should I ever need to.
If Apple responded to its customers' requests, how come there are no left and right mouse buttons? It's still the single most annoying feature and you'd think it should be eliminated by now.
Apple actually has usability experts that test things. Thus, even if a bunch of people who will probably never buy Apple's claim they will if they have two buttons on the laptop, Apple holds off because it encourages both users and developers to break things. If developers are given two button mice as the standard configuration, they will develop with that in mind. Most developers will assume they know better than the user how they will use the extra mouse buttons, so they will assign functions to it, sometimes assigning function only to that control. (Just look at Windows software.) This means all the alternative interfaces break using that software (voice control, mice for the disabled, styluses, etc.). Power users, who often use a multi button mouse no longer have a button to assign to their own custom uses, since developers have taken over that button, and now need one more button on their mice, leading to three and four button mice and the situation getting worse from there.
For laptop users, they will train themselves to use the two buttons on the laptop, leading to a less efficient method. Place your hands on a laptop keyboard. Notice how whenever you're using the track pad you have a hand free, already on the key used for chording the functions of a second mouse button. It is actually less stressful on your hands to use just one button and you get things done more quickly, once you're used to it.
For these reasons Apple is unlikely to ever ship multi-button mice as the standard configuration. For desktops they will probably move to solutions like the mighty mouse, which is single button by default, but can enable multiple buttons. This is ideal for shared machines since power users can have a multi-button mouse while novice users can have a single button mouse, with no one being confused and without switching hardware. For laptop, however, I doubt Apple will enable such a solution, since it does lead to worse ergonomics and slower operation. They'd rather just have users learn the right way to do things.
To argue that because your iTMS purchase went well and you have subsequently enjoyed the song(s) you purchased, the original purchase was a good idea, is logically false. When you gave Apple your money, you made a bet. For you it turned out well. For many others it turns out poorly. The advisability of making the purchase can only be judged in light of the gamble you took, not the outcome.
You're the one falling to a logical fallacy. You're presupposing that there was some probability involved, instead of known factors. You presuppose that the purchaser was ignorant of the limitations of the format, and only by chance did not find themselves in a situation that negatively affected them. This is not necessarily the case.
I, for instance, have purchased a handful of songs from the ITunes music store. I knew exactly what the limitations were and I knew what my uses were going to be. There was no gamble any more than buying a CD is gamble because maybe it will be scratched and the store would burn down killing the owner and I'd never be able to return it for a good one.
Read the EULA. In general, if anything goes wrong, it's you that's SOL, not Apple.
What exactly could "go wrong?" Sure I could have my laptop, media server, and backup simultaneously die, while my CD backup burns in a fire. This differs from a non-DRM'd CD burning in a fire how?
When you purchase a song off iTMS, you get something that will probably play. On Apple hardware. That you specifically authorize. Burning that song to a CD probably technically violates the DMCA, but as a practical matter that's not an issue.
No you get a song in a digital format. Apple could be violating the DMCA by distributing a tool that lets me burn it to CD, but I seriously doubt it and don't really care. I can play the songs I buy in my CD player, or any of my portables. I can strip the DRM without violating the DMCA (according to a lawyer I consulted) and I do just that.
Even if you have no intention (and don't subsequently change your mind) of using the music on non-Apple-blessed hardware, there are plenty of ways to lose your music wholesale.
Umm, iTunes does not play on Dells now? No there aren't plenty of ways to lose my music wholesale that would not also effect a regular CD purchase.
You give up a lot buying DRM'd music, and if you un-DRM it, then from a legal point of view you might as well have just gotten it off limewire, or whatever the kids are using these days.
Wholly untrue. Maybe you should, you know, actually talk to a lawyer.
From my perspective, that's a foolish bet to make.
Actually, any sort of copying is not specifically allowed. There is a test for "fair use", but unfortunately it is a little bit open to interpretation.
Yes, I'm aware of the fair use laws, but I'm sure you're aware of the years and years of precedent establishing that person backups fall within that category.
It's possible that if they ever have a falling out with Apple, they could sue Apple for enabling copyright infringement via iTunes in the same way that Napster was sued.
Sure, if they're insane of have an unbelievably corrupt judge. Napster was sued for contributory copyright infringement, which requires that they are enabling distribution without permission. Apple is partnering with the RIAA companies who are directly profiting from their actions. Any suit that named Apple for the same charge would also prove the RIAA's own guilt, if such a thing is even possible.
You may have something there, but the companies you accuse of being in an illegal cartel compete with each other viciously... I doubt, they are colluding in the sense of the anti-trust laws you are referring to.
Umm, they've already been convicted of acting as a cartel with regard to price fixing.
Then so be it -- it is just entertainment for crying out loud.
It is art, the very heart of our culture. What music from our era will be regarded the same as Mozart in 200 years? What music would have been regarded the same, if not for the fact that no one has access to listen to it?
And the future generations will still be able to hear it, they just may have to pay for it...
I don't think so. 99% or more of copyrighted works are not available for sale, at all, simply because they are not regarded as likely to be profitable. Right now Motown records owns the majority of an entire genre of american music, but something like 8% is available for sale. Some of the rest still exists on a reel to reel or record somewhere, but it is illegal for the owners to provide copies to others. Some of that music will still have an existing copy if copyright ever expires on it again. If that music were DRM'd, even if the copyright expired, no one would be likely to listen to it anyway. That will be the case in another 100 years.
...that's part of the deal...
The deal was, content producers get a limited monopoly to make money, in exchange for assurance that works would be preserved and become available for free to society to the betterment of mankind. It was called copyright law. The problem is, when big companies got involved and made money off the deal, they immediately used that money to change the deal by bribing politicians to pass new laws that take away all the benefits to society. Even the supreme court ruled that in their opinion our current copyright laws are damaging society. DRM and the DMCA is just them making the deal even worse.
Right now, for some music, I can still buy it on CD with no DRM. For other music I can only get it online or in a medium that looks like a CD, but is actually DRM'd. I don't see this situation getting better. When an artist is forced to go to an RIAA member to reach his audience, and I want to listen to his music and it is only sold in DRM'd format, you suggest I just forgo that music? And you think this will fix things somehow?
Valuing my own intellectual property, I'm rather concerned about the efforts to erode somebody else's rights to theirs -- however foolishly they may be using them.
Copyright is not a natural right. It is a government granted restriction on free speech that is justified only in the benefits it brings to society. You have no inherent right to control the actions of others in regards to what you have created. If you sing a song, freedom of speech grants me the right to sing it as well. For the benefit of society, laws have restricted my right in order to encourage the creation of more songs and to insure that they are not kept secret, but are eventually given to all mankind to share. That was the idea behind copyright. Our current laws are exactly the reason several founding fathers were opposed to the idea and argued that it would be abused. History has shown us they were right.
I'm an artist. I make the vast majority of my money making copyrighted works. I don't, however, believe I have some entitlement to control my works and I believe copyright as it is currently instituted is very broken. It is used to prevent most works from reaching the public in order to limit choices and make more money, even when most of those works are not for sale.
Is the quality of your burned CD the same as the one you bought at the store? No.
That depends upon the particular CD and the equipment I'm playing it on. But that is beside the point, because the quality is not an inherent property of the DRM, merely another aspect to the given purchase. Stating that people who buy DRM'd music are idiots, because the DRM'd music for sale at most venues is lower quality is sort of like saying "people who guy olive green #7 painted cars are idiots" because only Ford makes that color paint and Ford cars have poor mechanical reliability. If for some reason you think people who buy lower fidelity music are idiots, then say that, not that people who buy something that sometimes correlates to that are idiots.
The mp3's you re-rip from your burned album are...
Did you read my post? I never once mentioned re-ripping nor using the MP3 format. I encode all my music in non-DRM'd AAC because the size/quality is better. this means should I lose the copy on my laptop, and my media server gets fried and my backup dies, then if I re-rip from my standard audio CD backup I might lose some quality, but probably not much since I'm re-encoding to the same format the file was in originally, which minimizes some of the loss.
And, as I said in a previous post, the quality difference between a download from iTunes and a CD is not a problem for me, especially given the kind of music I purchased and the conditions under which I listen to it.
Comparisons are useful if you want to buy a machine for a particular purpose. In that case, you know what you need better than anyone else so you should do your own comparison. Some people call this "shopping." In general, Apple machines will suffer in such comparisons, not because they are more expensive, but because their are fewer choices, thus you are more likely to end up paying for features you don't want to get ones you do. That, however, is completely different from the incorrect assertion that "macs are more expensive" which is what I was addressing.
there are virtually no situations where that fact could help you make a decision. All your statistic really means is that if you bought one of each model of Mac (or is it several of each in proportion to their sales volume?), you'd spend less than if you bought one of each equivalent model of PC.
Look there are two types of comparisons. You can compare a full set, assuming all features are useful, across a variety of setups. This gives you an objective comparison that is good for making general statements, but not particularly useful to someone looking to acquire a machine for a purpose. Or, you can define a set of tasks you need to do and then find the system that best fits those needs at the best price. This is useful for the individual, but no one does those comparisons on Slashdot because it takes forever to actually define all those criteria in advance and such a comparison is not useful to anyone looking for a different set of tasks. It also does not in any way speak to a general trend as it is a single data point.
"Macs are more expensive than PCs," is a statement about the first kind of comparison and it is factually incorrect.
It prevents them from doing it without their parents knowledge. When the parent sees Playboy on the kid's credit card, she/he will know that something is up, and have the opportunity to (a) cancel the charge (and thus the acces), and (b) go have a talk with the kid.
If porn companies wanted to, they could get around this by using a name that is not suspicious, like "Wal-Mort Online." Kids can get around it by using paypal or something and a random credit card name/number/date they grabbed from the internet. Credit cards are a terrible way to verify age.
Wrong. It is not exactly the same. You just bought a lower-quality version of the audio tracks compared to what you would have had with a used CD. That is the great iTunes ruse.
It is the same as far as DRM is concerned. I'm well aware of the quality but that has nothing to do with the DRM. I listen to music mostly in the truck, with lots of wind noise, or in the hot tub, via a lossy analogue wireless connection to an outdoor speaker. Neither are places I'm likely to be able to hear any difference, even if loud concerts had not destroyed my ears.
Oh. And it doesn't matter if you use your own keys to remove DRM. It's still illegal according to the DMCA unless you can show that not being able to do so "adversely affects" your playback, which is almost certainly not the case.
It is my understanding (and that of a lawyer I asked) that the DMCA criminalizes distributing tools used to bypass or break encryption used as part of a DRM control. Since I'm simply using a tool (not distributing) and since no encryption is not being bypassed (only legally decoded) I'm in the clear. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card.
You're out of date. More and more minors are getting credit cards.
Of course there's a problem - less kids registered - means less income.
If you're talking about kids and porn sites, you're way off. Do you know anyone in the porn business? Kids don't have a lot of money but do have time. Kids don't like to create records of porn viewing and don't want anyone to be able to track them. They are the least likely to pay any money of all demographics. Do you know what is really bad for a porn business? Publicity. Clients like to be anonymous because of the social stigma. One case of parents catching kids using a site can cause a huge hubbub and lose them a lot of business as their clients move elsewhere to avoid any possible publicity.
Most porn cites would be very happy to have a way to stop kids from visiting their sites. It would be good for business. Most porn cites voluntarily submit their names to parental controls lists and the major ones even help fund a consolidated database to make it easier for the industry to have good listings. They also tend to use good keywords to help search cites accurately mark them as adult. Less registered kids means more income and less liability, not less income.
Actually courts have been fairly consistent in ruling hate speech (aka fightin' words) to have the least amount of constitutional protection.
Well, hate speech that is political almost always wins when it gets to federal court, but if you're talking about speech that is directed at an individual then it can constitute assault or blackmail, or a threat and yes that speech has little protection because it conflicts very strongly with other basic rights that are also protected by the law. You make a good point.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Freedom of speech is balanced along with our other freedoms and case law has upheld political speech as the most stringently protected, while commercial speech is the least protected based upon how that speech conflicts with other rights. For example, claiming a political candidate is the best choice because they don't kill people is much more highly protected than a commercial claiming a product does not kill people. In the former case, even if the speech was factually incorrect, it would probably take a slander case from the politician himself to get it pulled, while in the latter case truth in advertising laws could easily get the speech censored.
As I mentioned, it would lock itself each time with whatever DRM happened to be on the device.
What if there is no DRM mechanism on the device?
He doesn't need to make it impossible to pirate -- just difficult enough that people will only copy files to devices they own.
Pirate? You think DRM has something to do with piracy? Are you mentally handicapped?
DRM is about restricting people who obey the laws and getting them to repurchase the same content multiple times by making it inconvenient to transfer content legally. Pirates break the law, and can just as easily crack the weak encryption or bypass it using an audio out cable. DRM does nothing at all to stop piracy and was never intended to do so. DRM is the industry's answer to perfect digital copies. They sold tapes, which were eaten and had limitations, like no instant skip to track. Then they sold CDs and people bought the same music again. CDs become scratched and break. CDs can only be heard in one place at a time. People bought replacements and extra copies for the car. Executives saw digital file distribution and thought, "wow no media we can make even more money, but a file does not really get scratched or break and nothing stops someone from listening to it in the car and at home and on their portable? How will we sell the same content to them over and over again like we have been? We'll hire some eggheads to come up with an answer." That answer is DRM and "piracy" is the name of their marketing campaign to keep people from being outraged by what they are doing.
Please stop believing their marketing nonsense.
don't know where you live, but there's mafia around here. If a gunshop is consistently selling to the family, the police raid them. If a used car salesman continually sells them black cars with tinted windows, to the family the police raid them.
Umm, the police raid car dealerships for selling cars with particular colors and are frequented by criminals making legal purchases? In the case of both the gun shop and the car dealership, how do they get the warrant? What crime are they supposedly raiding them for?
If your tools -- the "car or gun or two by four" or whatever -- are continually used to commit piracy like DVD Jon's, you're going to get fingered. Regardless if you committed the act or not.
Really? Where do you live? Please provide a single citation of this, because while I've heard of civil suits against stores who sell tools used in crimes, I've never heard of the police raiding one and I think you're full of shit.
All of these lamentations about Apple cheating and *AA "suing its customers" -- what is your problem? It is Apple's own device, and it is *AA's customers. If you don't like these companies, then stop using the darn things.
Your commentary is all well and good, but it is not practical. The problems with DRM are problems with the law and problems with the industry. People act in their own interest. That might mean a person wants a particular song from a particular band so they endure DRM to get it. That might mean a band wants to be heard, so they pay money to give away their copyrights and accept DRM restricting their songs from being heard by future generations, in the hopes that the cartel that runs the industry will allow them to reach the mainstream audience.
Sure, educated and enlightened people can boycott the mainstream, but that will not stop the problems DRM and an illegal cartel cause for society. Your argument is analogous to someone in prohibition era Chicago saying, "we all know the violence and corruption caused by booze smuggling organized crime is killing people, so why doesn't everyone just stop drinking?" People want to drink, and they want to listen to popular music and they want to get it instantly, online. Even if that means they download it from a file sharing network or they put up with DRM that prevents future generations from being able to hear the music they will. The solution is not to try to change society, but to change the laws so that they give society what it wants.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather do without.
Great, so you've removed yourself from the market. Why should anyone care? How does your choice help society?
Besides, I think that after a few greedy DRM debacles and it won't just be "intellectuals" who don't want to buy.
Yeah, that is why DVDs have completely failed in the market.
What, so a novice couldn't cope with to whole buttons?
Clicking the wrong mouse button is one of the most common problems tech support people have to deal with. Many users click the wrong one, or both at once hoping to to get the right result. Many don't even realize the buttons are supposed to be for different tasks.
Apple are dumbing down their entire product range to cater to idiots who can only handlea single mouse button?
Not at all. They're leaving the default simple for the simple or novice user and letting power users enable more functionality. Are you too stupid to figure out how to enable the extra buttons on the mighty mouse?
What does that gibberish mean anyway?
"Street cred" is slang, short for "on the street credibility." It basically means how well regarded or how much credibility is placed in someone or something by those who actually work with something. For example, you might speak of the "street cred" of a particular brand of product as how normal people value that product compared to others.
Leopard is expected to be resoultion-independent, so Apple may go for highest DPI then.
Yesterday Apple updated their developer notes to include an overview of many Leopard features including resolution independence. I submitted it as a Slashdot article earlier, but it was rejected. The relevant excerpt reads:
Resolution Independence
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport displays with native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.
The introduction of resolution independence may mean that there is work that you'll need to do in order to make your application look as good as possible. For modern Cocoa and Carbon applications, most of the work will center around raster-based resources. For older applications that use QuickDraw, more work will be required to replace QuickDraw-based calls with Quartz ones.
Tell teachers to supervise kids in computer labs. There was one lab at my old school which kids stole drives, memory, and fans from all the time simply because the teacher in that lab was incapable of monitoring his students. It was bemusing but also expensive.
I was in a university lab with the old Powermac G3 towers shortly after they were introduced. I don't know if you've ever seen them, but there was a handle on the side to open them. No screws, no tools needed, the side just hinged down taking half the internals out with it. It was so easy to steal the RAM I once jokingly told a sys admin assistant it was hot swappable and then had to stop him from yanking some out to test it :)
I would have modded this as "funny" but some days it is hard to tell, especially when the coffee is all gone.
You're going to hear a lot of "install Linux" comments and a lot of "linux sucks" comments in reply to them. I'm not going to go there. Assuming you're looking for some minimal security, not a whole architecture revamp, look into some good backup software, make a clean install image with everything you want on it, add a network storage server (Linux?) for persistent data, and just periodically wipe the machines and replace them with a known good image. Keep the image up to date, virus scan the network storage, and you're probably going to be fine.
Is this supposed to be something new? The small/meduim sized company where I work sent out iPods with out logo etched on the back and a podcast on them to a few dozen execs in the industry. This was a year or two ago. This sort of targeted, small scale advertising was all the rage not that long ago.
What most of us worry about is Apple being forced by the studios or simply deciding to tighten restrictions on their DRM, leaving us holding the bag.
So the studios are going to force them to hack into all my boxes and add DRM to my files after I've removed it and send someone to my house to break the CDs I burned? Apple does not have the ability to "tighten" restrictions once I've stripped the DRM off.
Or being locked into iPod/iTunes when we'd rather be using the next great music platform.
AAC is pretty standard and even supported on MS's new Zune. How will the lock me in?
The fact is, DRM ALWAYS HURTS THE LEGITIMATE USER, and almost never acheives its stated objective, preventing piracy.
Not true. DRM has the potential to hurt the legitimate user, depending upon the implementation. It does not always cause any harm.
I don't like being treated as if I were a criminal when I buy music.
Wo does, that doesn't make someone an idiot to buy it though. Sometimes it is the best deal.
Buying music with DRM is stupid and shortsighted, and will only encourage the bastards.
Sorry, but unless the laws are fixed, music with DRM will be the norm in the next decade. The masses will move towards it and a few intellectuals boycotting will do nothing. So then you have to figure out what DRM will win the upcoming war. Will it be Apple's or MS's and which would you prefer?
Fair enough. But I'd like to point out that there IS a quality difference.
Sure there is, if you're using the iTunes store. That does not address the point of my thread which is, this has nothing to do with DRM and assertions that DRM users are all idiots is idiotic in and of itself.
Sure, but why do you assume someone is doing that? You were the first person to mention MP3 or ripping from the CD. I don't do either. Or is it just that you assume I don't know this and care for some reason?
The real CD will have substantially better quality, especially if ripped to 192 or 320 mp3.
But if I rip to 192 AAC, from an audio cD that was made from 192 AAC, the quality difference between the original and the latter will not be significantly different (in my experience). The only reason to use MP3, that I know of, is if you plan to use a non-ipod portable. I don't use a portable at all. AAC (non-DRM) plays on all my machines, and has better quality for a smaller file size.
And for the record, I didn't call anyone an idiot. I was quoting the previous poster.
The previous poster is a twit. He made a factually incorrect, blanket statement I demonstrated to be false. We both were modded to +5, but I was then modded down as "overrated" for pointing out his error, which contradicts what people want to hear. Then I have to respond to a handful of posts like yours which all fail to address the point I made, but discuss tangentially related topics, arguing with me, but never about the statements I actually made and all making incorrect assumptions about my use cases.
Weird. I think the Dell comes in at about $400 cheaper for me, with both machines having a few options the other does not. Of course I also would never buy a Dell laptop because of the reliability issues.
1) No. The CLI is as nice as Linux (I think bash is the default shell now) and the integration between the CLI and GUI is better than any Linux distro I've used. If you move a directory using the GUI, your shell instantly knows and reflects that. If you are using apps that rely heavily upon Gnome or KDE, you'll might run into one or two that takes some messing around to get it working (about the same as most Linux distros). I keep a Linux VM around for a few apps because I'm lazy and for testing purposes.
2) Running Java apps is fine. I'm not sold on Safari's java capabilities for multitasking, but Firefox is slick and as fast as anything I've used.
3) I have basically no stability issues for the OS with one exception. On the Intel processors, running PPC apps via the Rosetta emulation layer, I've had Rosetta freeze up once or twice, freezing the apps as well. I have a few poorly written apps that zombie themselves. "kill" takes care of all of the above and it is pretty rare in any case.
4) About the same amount of free software as an average Linux distro is available. Some are ports using the native UI and some are using the X11 environment. As usual, a little tweaking is required sometimes.
5) The machines are pretty solid compared to something like a Dell. The new EFI firmware is still first generation though, so you might want to hold off until the next revision if you want something rock solid. I've had issues with automatically finding or dropping external monitors when I plug them in. I expect that will be fixed on the next generation of machines.
6) It's fast. I can simultaneously run a dozen OS X applications, and a full Windows VM and a few Windows apps at very reasonable speeds.
7) Two finger scrolling rules. Two finger clicking works fine once you train yourself by using it a while, but is not needed much for native apps.
8) There wasn't a number 8, but you forgot about all the benefits of OS X/Apple that you'll find yourself addicted to. Spotlight lets me find things. No really, at nearly instantaneous speeds I can find and launch applications from the keyboard, or find a file that has something in it. Searching based upon the contents of PDFs, word, openoffice, photoshop, text, html, tex, source, etc. all right away. I hardly ever used searching until Spotlight arrived, now I don't think I can go back. Firewire upgrades rule. I no longer spend days getting my next machine in working condition. My last laptop was PPC. This one is Intel. Yet it was a single step to migrate all my applications, files, settings, certs, user accounts, shell variables, macros, etc. It was all sucked over the firewire like magic, and my next upgrade will include fully configured Windows and Linux VMs as well, in that same step. It is heaven. System services are the way all OS's should work. I am using the same spelling checker on this post as I do for my pro layout application, in vi, in my word processor, in my e-mail, and in my chat sessions. App developers don't have to do anything so long as they use the normal APIs and functionality can be global to the OS. I can also apply grammar checking, language translations, scripts, and many, many more functions. It is by far the most under-appreciated feature of OS X. Until you try it, you just don't realize what you've been missing. Using my Windows or Linux workstations or VMs now, is like stepping into the past, to a more primitive, less functional time. It will be a hard, hard task to ever switch to Windows or even Linux as a primary workstation, should I ever need to.
It's a shame to see there isn't a 7200rpm hard disk option.
There is, just not in the largest disk sizes (since no one makes such a disk).
If Apple responded to its customers' requests, how come there are no left and right mouse buttons? It's still the single most annoying feature and you'd think it should be eliminated by now.
Apple actually has usability experts that test things. Thus, even if a bunch of people who will probably never buy Apple's claim they will if they have two buttons on the laptop, Apple holds off because it encourages both users and developers to break things. If developers are given two button mice as the standard configuration, they will develop with that in mind. Most developers will assume they know better than the user how they will use the extra mouse buttons, so they will assign functions to it, sometimes assigning function only to that control. (Just look at Windows software.) This means all the alternative interfaces break using that software (voice control, mice for the disabled, styluses, etc.). Power users, who often use a multi button mouse no longer have a button to assign to their own custom uses, since developers have taken over that button, and now need one more button on their mice, leading to three and four button mice and the situation getting worse from there.
For laptop users, they will train themselves to use the two buttons on the laptop, leading to a less efficient method. Place your hands on a laptop keyboard. Notice how whenever you're using the track pad you have a hand free, already on the key used for chording the functions of a second mouse button. It is actually less stressful on your hands to use just one button and you get things done more quickly, once you're used to it.
For these reasons Apple is unlikely to ever ship multi-button mice as the standard configuration. For desktops they will probably move to solutions like the mighty mouse, which is single button by default, but can enable multiple buttons. This is ideal for shared machines since power users can have a multi-button mouse while novice users can have a single button mouse, with no one being confused and without switching hardware. For laptop, however, I doubt Apple will enable such a solution, since it does lead to worse ergonomics and slower operation. They'd rather just have users learn the right way to do things.
To argue that because your iTMS purchase went well and you have subsequently enjoyed the song(s) you purchased, the original purchase was a good idea, is logically false. When you gave Apple your money, you made a bet. For you it turned out well. For many others it turns out poorly. The advisability of making the purchase can only be judged in light of the gamble you took, not the outcome.
You're the one falling to a logical fallacy. You're presupposing that there was some probability involved, instead of known factors. You presuppose that the purchaser was ignorant of the limitations of the format, and only by chance did not find themselves in a situation that negatively affected them. This is not necessarily the case.
I, for instance, have purchased a handful of songs from the ITunes music store. I knew exactly what the limitations were and I knew what my uses were going to be. There was no gamble any more than buying a CD is gamble because maybe it will be scratched and the store would burn down killing the owner and I'd never be able to return it for a good one.
Read the EULA. In general, if anything goes wrong, it's you that's SOL, not Apple.
What exactly could "go wrong?" Sure I could have my laptop, media server, and backup simultaneously die, while my CD backup burns in a fire. This differs from a non-DRM'd CD burning in a fire how?
When you purchase a song off iTMS, you get something that will probably play. On Apple hardware. That you specifically authorize. Burning that song to a CD probably technically violates the DMCA, but as a practical matter that's not an issue.
No you get a song in a digital format. Apple could be violating the DMCA by distributing a tool that lets me burn it to CD, but I seriously doubt it and don't really care. I can play the songs I buy in my CD player, or any of my portables. I can strip the DRM without violating the DMCA (according to a lawyer I consulted) and I do just that.
Even if you have no intention (and don't subsequently change your mind) of using the music on non-Apple-blessed hardware, there are plenty of ways to lose your music wholesale.
Umm, iTunes does not play on Dells now? No there aren't plenty of ways to lose my music wholesale that would not also effect a regular CD purchase.
You give up a lot buying DRM'd music, and if you un-DRM it, then from a legal point of view you might as well have just gotten it off limewire, or whatever the kids are using these days.
Wholly untrue. Maybe you should, you know, actually talk to a lawyer.
From my perspective, that's a foolish bet to make.
Your perspective is very skewed.
Actually, any sort of copying is not specifically allowed. There is a test for "fair use", but unfortunately it is a little bit open to interpretation.
Yes, I'm aware of the fair use laws, but I'm sure you're aware of the years and years of precedent establishing that person backups fall within that category.
It's possible that if they ever have a falling out with Apple, they could sue Apple for enabling copyright infringement via iTunes in the same way that Napster was sued.
Sure, if they're insane of have an unbelievably corrupt judge. Napster was sued for contributory copyright infringement, which requires that they are enabling distribution without permission. Apple is partnering with the RIAA companies who are directly profiting from their actions. Any suit that named Apple for the same charge would also prove the RIAA's own guilt, if such a thing is even possible.
We need copyright reform.
Agreed.
You may have something there, but the companies you accuse of being in an illegal cartel compete with each other viciously... I doubt, they are colluding in the sense of the anti-trust laws you are referring to.
Umm, they've already been convicted of acting as a cartel with regard to price fixing.
Then so be it -- it is just entertainment for crying out loud.
It is art, the very heart of our culture. What music from our era will be regarded the same as Mozart in 200 years? What music would have been regarded the same, if not for the fact that no one has access to listen to it?
And the future generations will still be able to hear it, they just may have to pay for it...
I don't think so. 99% or more of copyrighted works are not available for sale, at all, simply because they are not regarded as likely to be profitable. Right now Motown records owns the majority of an entire genre of american music, but something like 8% is available for sale. Some of the rest still exists on a reel to reel or record somewhere, but it is illegal for the owners to provide copies to others. Some of that music will still have an existing copy if copyright ever expires on it again. If that music were DRM'd, even if the copyright expired, no one would be likely to listen to it anyway. That will be the case in another 100 years.
The deal was, content producers get a limited monopoly to make money, in exchange for assurance that works would be preserved and become available for free to society to the betterment of mankind. It was called copyright law. The problem is, when big companies got involved and made money off the deal, they immediately used that money to change the deal by bribing politicians to pass new laws that take away all the benefits to society. Even the supreme court ruled that in their opinion our current copyright laws are damaging society. DRM and the DMCA is just them making the deal even worse.
Right now, for some music, I can still buy it on CD with no DRM. For other music I can only get it online or in a medium that looks like a CD, but is actually DRM'd. I don't see this situation getting better. When an artist is forced to go to an RIAA member to reach his audience, and I want to listen to his music and it is only sold in DRM'd format, you suggest I just forgo that music? And you think this will fix things somehow?
Valuing my own intellectual property, I'm rather concerned about the efforts to erode somebody else's rights to theirs -- however foolishly they may be using them.
Copyright is not a natural right. It is a government granted restriction on free speech that is justified only in the benefits it brings to society. You have no inherent right to control the actions of others in regards to what you have created. If you sing a song, freedom of speech grants me the right to sing it as well. For the benefit of society, laws have restricted my right in order to encourage the creation of more songs and to insure that they are not kept secret, but are eventually given to all mankind to share. That was the idea behind copyright. Our current laws are exactly the reason several founding fathers were opposed to the idea and argued that it would be abused. History has shown us they were right.
I'm an artist. I make the vast majority of my money making copyrighted works. I don't, however, believe I have some entitlement to control my works and I believe copyright as it is currently instituted is very broken. It is used to prevent most works from reaching the public in order to limit choices and make more money, even when most of those works are not for sale.
Is the quality of your burned CD the same as the one you bought at the store? No.
That depends upon the particular CD and the equipment I'm playing it on. But that is beside the point, because the quality is not an inherent property of the DRM, merely another aspect to the given purchase. Stating that people who buy DRM'd music are idiots, because the DRM'd music for sale at most venues is lower quality is sort of like saying "people who guy olive green #7 painted cars are idiots" because only Ford makes that color paint and Ford cars have poor mechanical reliability. If for some reason you think people who buy lower fidelity music are idiots, then say that, not that people who buy something that sometimes correlates to that are idiots.
The mp3's you re-rip from your burned album are...
Did you read my post? I never once mentioned re-ripping nor using the MP3 format. I encode all my music in non-DRM'd AAC because the size/quality is better. this means should I lose the copy on my laptop, and my media server gets fried and my backup dies, then if I re-rip from my standard audio CD backup I might lose some quality, but probably not much since I'm re-encoding to the same format the file was in originally, which minimizes some of the loss.
And, as I said in a previous post, the quality difference between a download from iTunes and a CD is not a problem for me, especially given the kind of music I purchased and the conditions under which I listen to it.
What a useless comparison!
Comparisons are useful if you want to buy a machine for a particular purpose. In that case, you know what you need better than anyone else so you should do your own comparison. Some people call this "shopping." In general, Apple machines will suffer in such comparisons, not because they are more expensive, but because their are fewer choices, thus you are more likely to end up paying for features you don't want to get ones you do. That, however, is completely different from the incorrect assertion that "macs are more expensive" which is what I was addressing.
there are virtually no situations where that fact could help you make a decision. All your statistic really means is that if you bought one of each model of Mac (or is it several of each in proportion to their sales volume?), you'd spend less than if you bought one of each equivalent model of PC.
Look there are two types of comparisons. You can compare a full set, assuming all features are useful, across a variety of setups. This gives you an objective comparison that is good for making general statements, but not particularly useful to someone looking to acquire a machine for a purpose. Or, you can define a set of tasks you need to do and then find the system that best fits those needs at the best price. This is useful for the individual, but no one does those comparisons on Slashdot because it takes forever to actually define all those criteria in advance and such a comparison is not useful to anyone looking for a different set of tasks. It also does not in any way speak to a general trend as it is a single data point.
"Macs are more expensive than PCs," is a statement about the first kind of comparison and it is factually incorrect.
It prevents them from doing it without their parents knowledge. When the parent sees Playboy on the kid's credit card, she/he will know that something is up, and have the opportunity to (a) cancel the charge (and thus the acces), and (b) go have a talk with the kid.
If porn companies wanted to, they could get around this by using a name that is not suspicious, like "Wal-Mort Online." Kids can get around it by using paypal or something and a random credit card name/number/date they grabbed from the internet. Credit cards are a terrible way to verify age.
Wrong. It is not exactly the same. You just bought a lower-quality version of the audio tracks compared to what you would have had with a used CD. That is the great iTunes ruse.
It is the same as far as DRM is concerned. I'm well aware of the quality but that has nothing to do with the DRM. I listen to music mostly in the truck, with lots of wind noise, or in the hot tub, via a lossy analogue wireless connection to an outdoor speaker. Neither are places I'm likely to be able to hear any difference, even if loud concerts had not destroyed my ears.
Oh. And it doesn't matter if you use your own keys to remove DRM. It's still illegal according to the DMCA unless you can show that not being able to do so "adversely affects" your playback, which is almost certainly not the case.
It is my understanding (and that of a lawyer I asked) that the DMCA criminalizes distributing tools used to bypass or break encryption used as part of a DRM control. Since I'm simply using a tool (not distributing) and since no encryption is not being bypassed (only legally decoded) I'm in the clear. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Let's say - if kid wants to register for this kind of page it needs to be done by adult. How? Simple. Bu using credit card.
You're out of date. More and more minors are getting credit cards.
Of course there's a problem - less kids registered - means less income.
If you're talking about kids and porn sites, you're way off. Do you know anyone in the porn business? Kids don't have a lot of money but do have time. Kids don't like to create records of porn viewing and don't want anyone to be able to track them. They are the least likely to pay any money of all demographics. Do you know what is really bad for a porn business? Publicity. Clients like to be anonymous because of the social stigma. One case of parents catching kids using a site can cause a huge hubbub and lose them a lot of business as their clients move elsewhere to avoid any possible publicity.
Most porn cites would be very happy to have a way to stop kids from visiting their sites. It would be good for business. Most porn cites voluntarily submit their names to parental controls lists and the major ones even help fund a consolidated database to make it easier for the industry to have good listings. They also tend to use good keywords to help search cites accurately mark them as adult. Less registered kids means more income and less liability, not less income.
Actually courts have been fairly consistent in ruling hate speech (aka fightin' words) to have the least amount of constitutional protection.
Well, hate speech that is political almost always wins when it gets to federal court, but if you're talking about speech that is directed at an individual then it can constitute assault or blackmail, or a threat and yes that speech has little protection because it conflicts very strongly with other basic rights that are also protected by the law. You make a good point.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Freedom of speech is balanced along with our other freedoms and case law has upheld political speech as the most stringently protected, while commercial speech is the least protected based upon how that speech conflicts with other rights. For example, claiming a political candidate is the best choice because they don't kill people is much more highly protected than a commercial claiming a product does not kill people. In the former case, even if the speech was factually incorrect, it would probably take a slander case from the politician himself to get it pulled, while in the latter case truth in advertising laws could easily get the speech censored.
As I mentioned, it would lock itself each time with whatever DRM happened to be on the device.
What if there is no DRM mechanism on the device?
He doesn't need to make it impossible to pirate -- just difficult enough that people will only copy files to devices they own.
Pirate? You think DRM has something to do with piracy? Are you mentally handicapped?
DRM is about restricting people who obey the laws and getting them to repurchase the same content multiple times by making it inconvenient to transfer content legally. Pirates break the law, and can just as easily crack the weak encryption or bypass it using an audio out cable. DRM does nothing at all to stop piracy and was never intended to do so. DRM is the industry's answer to perfect digital copies. They sold tapes, which were eaten and had limitations, like no instant skip to track. Then they sold CDs and people bought the same music again. CDs become scratched and break. CDs can only be heard in one place at a time. People bought replacements and extra copies for the car. Executives saw digital file distribution and thought, "wow no media we can make even more money, but a file does not really get scratched or break and nothing stops someone from listening to it in the car and at home and on their portable? How will we sell the same content to them over and over again like we have been? We'll hire some eggheads to come up with an answer." That answer is DRM and "piracy" is the name of their marketing campaign to keep people from being outraged by what they are doing.
Please stop believing their marketing nonsense.
don't know where you live, but there's mafia around here. If a gunshop is consistently selling to the family, the police raid them. If a used car salesman continually sells them black cars with tinted windows, to the family the police raid them.
Umm, the police raid car dealerships for selling cars with particular colors and are frequented by criminals making legal purchases? In the case of both the gun shop and the car dealership, how do they get the warrant? What crime are they supposedly raiding them for?
If your tools -- the "car or gun or two by four" or whatever -- are continually used to commit piracy like DVD Jon's, you're going to get fingered. Regardless if you committed the act or not.
Really? Where do you live? Please provide a single citation of this, because while I've heard of civil suits against stores who sell tools used in crimes, I've never heard of the police raiding one and I think you're full of shit.
All of these lamentations about Apple cheating and *AA "suing its customers" -- what is your problem? It is Apple's own device, and it is *AA's customers. If you don't like these companies, then stop using the darn things.
Your commentary is all well and good, but it is not practical. The problems with DRM are problems with the law and problems with the industry. People act in their own interest. That might mean a person wants a particular song from a particular band so they endure DRM to get it. That might mean a band wants to be heard, so they pay money to give away their copyrights and accept DRM restricting their songs from being heard by future generations, in the hopes that the cartel that runs the industry will allow them to reach the mainstream audience.
Sure, educated and enlightened people can boycott the mainstream, but that will not stop the problems DRM and an illegal cartel cause for society. Your argument is analogous to someone in prohibition era Chicago saying, "we all know the violence and corruption caused by booze smuggling organized crime is killing people, so why doesn't everyone just stop drinking?" People want to drink, and they want to listen to popular music and they want to get it instantly, online. Even if that means they download it from a file sharing network or they put up with DRM that prevents future generations from being able to hear the music they will. The solution is not to try to change society, but to change the laws so that they give society what it wants.