So many people are arguing that Apple ships a one button mouse by default because their user's are too incompetent to use multiple buttons. In some cases this is true, user's can be very dumb. There is, however, a much more important reason. Developer's are incompetent. The day Apple ships a multi-button mouse by default is the day a million and one developers decide to require two buttons to use their applications, and build a context menu full of largely useless crap. Look at Notepad on Windows. It has a completely unnecessary context menu full of junk. If not for that menu, you could assign that mouse button to do something useful. It is one of the most annoying things about Windows. I don't care about novice user's. I use a multi button mouse. I just like being able to define what the buttons do. Including multiple buttons by default results in bad software that puts features only in that location, which sucks for anyone using a special interface for the disabled, or voice recognition, or an IR remote, or who just wants it to work well with scripts. One button mice as the default makes things easier and more customizable for power users as well as novices.
Most decent references on authentication stick to something you have
Not really. Something you know can be extracted via extreme methods like torture, or with "truth serum" type drugs. They can be grabbed from a database and brute forced. They are information. Biometrics, on the other hand, are physical characteristics of your body. They are very, very hard to change, can't really be left behind, and are constantly exposed. Once captured, they are often easily faked. They are very dangerous to use as an authentication mechanism and are only really valid when carefully verified by a human observer. There is a trend towards biometrics right now, in the consumer space that will likely result in a net decrease in security. This is why they are rarely mentioned in a positive light by experts. They are cool and high-tech, however, so doubtless marketers will use them as a tool to separate you from both your security and your cash. They fit perfectly into MS modus operandi. They are ineffective, and a liability, but easy to use, whiz-bang, and easy to make proprietary and lock out competitors.
The "Something you are" factor is meant to authenticate that the person presenting the credentials is really who they say they are and that they are present during the login process.
Except that they are easily stolen and faked unless their is a human element to the security to verify the process. Of course that is expensive, and unrealistic for computer use (imagine having a person help you log in every time). If there is no human I can cut off your thumb, or lift your fingerprints from a glass, or record your voice, or steal your retinal pattern from a database. At which point it is easy to build a fake "something you are."
This is why the whole premise of using "something you are" as a security method for pc's is crap. At least with a card you can change it when it is stolen from you. When someone has your fingerprints, they have them, and that biometric becomes a liability forever.
And before you bring it up, no they don't have to go lift your fingerprints off a glass. They just have to hack one authentication database that has them stored therein. Since credit card databases seem to be been compromised on a weekly basis right about now, I have little trust in the security of biometric databases. It's like have a credit card that can't be cancelled and can't have the number changed.
This is just something you have, that you cannot easily change, and that is occasionally very painful when taken from you, and that you cannot leave at home. It is, according to most criteria, a very poorly chosen "something you have." Most decent references on authentication stick to something you have and something you know.
... then his judgement for them to reveal the sources really wouldn't have a whole lot of force behind it. They could just blow it off, more or less.
That is my understanding, but I don't think it keeps him from levying monetary damages as part of the suit and garnishing their wages or seizing funds, should he be so inclined. As I said, in this particular case, I believe it does not apply anyway.
If Apple was hurt because another vendor beat them to to a release because an employee leaked information (to the competitor), yes, I would feel differently.
These rumors were subsequently reported in a number of national newspapers and magazines, with attribution to Think Secret. The Wall Street journal reported Apple stock losing several points as a result of the premature release.
I would be pissed too if I were Apple but I think that this is misuse of the law.
The law says it is illegal to publish what you know, or would reasonably be expected to know, is a trade secret. How do you expect it to be used?
Apple could sue for some serious money here. They are only suing for the name of the person who lied to and betrayed them. I'd say they are trying to be nice about this.
Your simplification of the case is wrong because California has a specific law protecting journalists from revealing their source.
Your simplification of the judge's ruling is wrong because the CA shield law only protects a limited subset of journalists, which the judge tentatively ruled these journalists do not meet because they are electronic media and do not own or work on behalf of a TV station, channel, satellite company, etc.
Good thing this is being tried in California, where there is the "Shield Law"
It is my understanding that CA's shield law only protects a defined subset of journalists, that "operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier" or some other less applicable criteria.
The judge has tentatively ruled that these online journalists do not meet this definition. Further, should this apply, I believe this protection only keeps the judge from holding them in contempt, not from issuing any judgement. Please note IANAL. This is just my take.
DirecTV and Dish Network are competing against cable companies just fine.
Railroads and bus lines are competing against the airlines just fine as well. That does not mean people who try to sell in-flight meals will not be screwed if the airlines start manufacturing their own meals.
The problem is that TiVo has no content to package along with their device.
...because the content manufacturers/distributers have decided to move into TiVo's market, which is a hell of a lot easier than TiVo trying to start making and distributing TV shows (although we all know it would be nice if someone did).
One does not have to have a printing press, or a press pass to be journalist.
True.
These three publishers have no agreement with apple computers, and are not bound by any promise by others who have made promises to apple.
True.
If a judge said to you, "change your vote, or go to jail." Would you?
What the hell are you talking about?
This case is simple. The law says it is illegal to publish information you have reason to suspect is a trade secret. These journalists did. Apple sued them for the name of the person who gave them the info. There is no federal law to protect sources. Applicable state laws only protect sources if the story exposes government corruption, organized crime, or public health issues. This is a very good thing. The journalists are guilty and Apple deserves to know the source so they can fire him or her.
Let me present a hypothetical situation. I have a great deal of stock in a company and I'm a journalist. I find a source at a company that competes with the company I own stock in. I pay them to give me all their computer passwords and bank account numbers, then publish them on the front page. Their stock tanks, the company I invested in goes up, I make a bundle. If there was a blanket protection for journalists and sources I'd not only be free from prosecution, but there would be no way to stop me from doing it again and again.
I'm all in favor of protecting whistle blowers who expose corruption, crime, and public health issues, but this is a case of none of the above. This was publishing trade secrets for profit. Apple is being nice and only asking for a name instead of damages.
What is the advantage of a separate browser? Why not make an AOL theme for firefox, drape it with AOL extentions/plugins and just use firefox?
Supposedly the netscape version has built in the IE rendering engine for compatibility, while still maintaining the security of Firefox. We shall see. This may mean a browser that is vulnerable to every exploit. If done properly, however, it could be a very nice feature.
Waht you propose is a technical band-aid to a legal issue that needs to be solved. What happens when they use some deep-packet inspection tools to filter out the traffic based upon content or merely rate limit encrypted traffic to increase its latency? There is no point waging a technology war over an issue that should be government regulated.
If they want to discriminate, then make them share the lines the government has granted them exclusive rights to.
There is a small body of precedent from a number of cases involving copy-written materials and child pornography (in the U.S.) Note, many of the big ISPs are phone companies.
But this is in no way censorship. This is a big business protecting it's own interests
It is censorship, just censorship based upon the technology you use, not upon the content of your speech. If your school burned all books written on off-white colored paper, that would still be censorship, just not based on criteria that make any sense to the average person.
When I sign up with an ISP, they are a common carrier, with special immunities and responsibilities. If they want to restrict spam coming through their mail server, it is no different qualitatively than restricting all calls from overseas. It is fine, so long as the user agrees to it and is informed. If they decide no one can get calls from china, and just stop delivering those calls, that is censorship.
To make a third, and final point; ISPs are in many cases government enforced local monopolies. If the government makes it illegal for anyone else to run data lines across town and to my home, then they also have a responsibility to insure that communications across those lines are not censored, otherwise that is censorship by an organization appointed by the government as the only option. Given our corrupt and broken system, I have little doubt that it would take fifty years to get such a case through the court system, but it does not change the fact that it is censorship.
...is not quite the same thing, due mostly in part to your ability to choose to go to another provider, (from cable to DSL, etc.)
See my above comments about local monopolies. Allow me to provide a slight alteration of your above assertion, "...is not quite the same thing, due mostly in part to your ability to choose to go to another method, (from written to sign language, etc.)"
Would you agree that restricting actually speaking in public is not censorship, since you can always write your comments down or use sign language? I know I don't.
Unless that ISP is named "Congress" or someone to whom Congress has delegated a monopoly position, I don't see the connection to Free Speech.
Free speech has limitations in the form of a number of laws. Certain organizations are granted exceptions to laws restricting free speech by being granted "common carrier" status. These companies do not have to worry about prosecution for transmitting or publishing child porn, copyrighted works, or libelous materials. In order to maintain their status as common carriers guess what they are required to do, or refrain from doing? Guess what someone just did? This is a free speech issue, just not from the angle most people normally view it. The problem now is getting the laws enforced by our big business loving, easily bribable executive branch.
Only governments censor. This would be anti-competitive. Semantics, yes, but an important distiction nonetheless.
You are incorrect. First anyone can censor, not just governments. Second, these corporations are given special legal protections by acting on behalf of the government as "common carriers" of communication, and as such are required to maintain impartiality in order to retain that status. An ISP is immune from prosecution for carrying child porn, only so long as it impartially transmits data, regardless of what it is, and does not attempt to police the content of its network. Whichever ISP this is just opened themselves up to prosecution for child porn, copyright infringement, libel, false advertising, etc., etc.
Sadly, TiVo will not be able to compete against this much longer, they need to come up with some things the cable companies cannot match, and QUICKLY.
It is really hard to compete against a monopoly. I mean do you really think the cable company can provide the hardware, service, support, software development, etc. for $5-$10 a month? Most likely they just roll most of their costs into everyone's cable bill (since they are a monopoly they don't have to worry about underselling the competition) and Tivo user's and people without PVRs end up subsidizing their service.
TiVo has, IMHO, taken the wrong course. They can't compete with the cable companies so they have tried partnering with them and playing nice. It is killing them. The cable companies have all the power. I wouldn't buy a quit smoking program from Phillip-Morris. I wouldn't buy a car manufactured by an oil company. I won't buy a PVR made by a cable company (or one of their close partners).
The PVR market will move in one of two directions. It will either be dominated by the cable companies and become their outlet for getting you DRM'ed video, that you can't avoid the commercials for, and does whatever it is they feel like implementing; or, it will be taken over by companies dedicated to post processing content to suit the needs of the watcher by skipping commercials, archiving, and allowing easy transfer of files. Option two has my vote, and my money. My PVR is great, it archives to DVD, skips commercials, and has no DRM or broadcast flag restrictions. It is what the TiVo should have been.
It's better because it's built to be a PVR, and that's all it does.
As per my previous post, I disagree. I think it is worse because that's all it does. My computer with a tuner gives me options and features a Tivo never will. MP3 storage, easy upgrades, DVD and VCD playing and burning, games, etc. etc. Also, there is no monthly fee. My girlfriend figured out how to record shows, burn DVDs of those shows, watch shows (including fast forward, rewind, skip, pause, etc.), delete shows, search listings, and permanently edit out commercials on recorded shows without ever touching a manual or asking for help. It's not like it is rocket science. There are a few things that are more slick about TiVo's interface, but it is limited to those few features. My setup can do a great deal more, simply and easily. It is running on OS X with a few useful applications in the dock, and that is it. Is it more complex than a Tivo or ReplayTV? Yes. It is also more functional, and easy enough for the average person to figure out in about 5 minutes.
My old tower is now my media center. I bought an external TV tuner that connects via firewire and has it's own remote control. The UI is not quite as nice as a TiVo, but it has a great many more features. There is no monthly fee, I can archive to DVD or VCD and shows or movies I wish to keep, it has a completely configurable set of controls including skipping ahead and back, adding more space is as easy as sticking another hard drive on it, it can do double duty by acting as my DVD player, mp3 player/server, CD player, video game machine, low-bandwidth web server, and a guest machine for people to browse the web, or check their mail. All of this was out of the box with basically no configuration. I pity the poor bastards stuck with TiVos.
Note, this is in no way an endorsement of MythTV or WinMediaCenter. I have used neither. My system is running on an old Mac with OS X and EyeTV.
I've always heard that TiVo can fast forward through adverts, but I don't see how - unless you pre-record everything.
That is pretty much what you do. I don't have a Tivo. I use another PVR. I don't have time to watch the shows I schedule it to record, let alone something else that is on. If I do, however, I just tune in 10-20 minutes after the show starts and watch it from the buffer. I start at the beginning, skip all the commercials, and it ends the same time as it normally would.
but InDesign already does everything Pagemaker can do (plus a good bit more), and it's slowly but surely encroaching on Frameworker territory.
An Adobe employee told me the same thing, but had no answers as to when InDesign would actually become useable. It still lacks all the numbering, cross-referencing, and fluid graphic layout capabilities. The XML support is nice, but is unstable, and full of bugs. I know of 3 ways to consistently crash it (cross-platform). Anyone who uses it can tell it is designed for making magazines, and is very suited to that task. It is a pain in the arse to use for manuals.
Strange, I always used Pagemaker, and its[sic] still available on mac
Pagemaker and InDesign are both still supported by Adobe and are solutions used by some authors (myself included), but they are certainly lacking many of the features that make Framemaker the most popular solution. The long document support, automatic referencing and indexing, conditional text, and the unique and customizable numbering system have never been ported to either Pagemaker or InDesign. In fact in a recent presentation an Adobe presenter said that Pagemaker became "unsuitably slow" for documents longer than 50 pages. I know InDesign can really be a pain on longer documents as well. Framemaker easily handles 500 pages with a fair number of graphics.
For good or ill, Pagemaker is aimed at brochures, and short instructions. InDesign is designed for magazines and news and Framemaker is aimed at technical books and manuals. The moral of this story is, you can't count on Adobe to support anything but Windows, even if the customers want it, because their management is full of pointy-haired twits. Pagemaker could cease development on the Mac at any time.
wider field of view and binocular vision thing are just fringe benefits
Actually, they are. Most creatures can survive just fine with one eye. Most die with no eyes. This is not to say that a wider field of vision, more quickly processed depth perception, etc. are not very useful, they are just probably not the evolutionary cause of multiple eyes. Just look at all the other symmetry in the body, two lungs, two kidneys, etc. Two lungs provide redundancy more than volume. Eyes most likely follow the same pattern.
In my experience Adobe views everything that isn't Windows as a tier-2 platform, and would like nothing more than for them to go away. They have killed or frozen many products for Linux, Mac OS, and Solaris in the last few years. One particularly galling example is Framemaker. It is the single most popular application for writing manuals and technical publications, due to it's unique feature-set (developed before adobe bought it). Adobe killed the Linux version completely, and never released an OS X native version. Mac OS 9 users made up 65% of their customers, but for some reason when OS X came out, everyone stopped buying the Mac version. (everyone was waiting for an OS X version). It never came. Now it is a Window's only product. I know a number of people who run it in the Classic OS 9 emulation environment and a number who have switched to alternate products. Other users just switched to Windows. This is typical Adobe's attitude in recent years. Even with their flagship, Photoshop, Mac versions have sometimes lagged behind, or been missing features of the windows release. It is all just symptomatic of a company that has bought into Windows development, and only supports other platforms when there is just too much money coming in. Adobe has lost my trust, and I think lost it's way. I'm just waiting for a real competitor to appear.
Having multiple processors or multiple processor cores provides more of an advantage in a number of ways, than just having a single processor that is twice as fast. You may notice most animals have two eyes. The reason is that when one eye gets poked out by a sharp stick, the animal can still see. Similarly, when a thread loops and tries to monopolize your entire processor, having a second one means your machine is still responsive. There are performance hits involved in multithreading, but the advantages of more scalable code, more redundancy and reliability, and more ability for parallel operations make moving to multiple processors and cores a more significant improvement, IMHO, than doubling the speed of a processor.
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So many people are arguing that Apple ships a one button mouse by default because their user's are too incompetent to use multiple buttons. In some cases this is true, user's can be very dumb. There is, however, a much more important reason. Developer's are incompetent. The day Apple ships a multi-button mouse by default is the day a million and one developers decide to require two buttons to use their applications, and build a context menu full of largely useless crap. Look at Notepad on Windows. It has a completely unnecessary context menu full of junk. If not for that menu, you could assign that mouse button to do something useful. It is one of the most annoying things about Windows. I don't care about novice user's. I use a multi button mouse. I just like being able to define what the buttons do. Including multiple buttons by default results in bad software that puts features only in that location, which sucks for anyone using a special interface for the disabled, or voice recognition, or an IR remote, or who just wants it to work well with scripts. One button mice as the default makes things easier and more customizable for power users as well as novices.
Most decent references on authentication stick to something you have
Not really. Something you know can be extracted via extreme methods like torture, or with "truth serum" type drugs. They can be grabbed from a database and brute forced. They are information. Biometrics, on the other hand, are physical characteristics of your body. They are very, very hard to change, can't really be left behind, and are constantly exposed. Once captured, they are often easily faked. They are very dangerous to use as an authentication mechanism and are only really valid when carefully verified by a human observer. There is a trend towards biometrics right now, in the consumer space that will likely result in a net decrease in security. This is why they are rarely mentioned in a positive light by experts. They are cool and high-tech, however, so doubtless marketers will use them as a tool to separate you from both your security and your cash. They fit perfectly into MS modus operandi. They are ineffective, and a liability, but easy to use, whiz-bang, and easy to make proprietary and lock out competitors.
The "Something you are" factor is meant to authenticate that the person presenting the credentials is really who they say they are and that they are present during the login process.
Except that they are easily stolen and faked unless their is a human element to the security to verify the process. Of course that is expensive, and unrealistic for computer use (imagine having a person help you log in every time). If there is no human I can cut off your thumb, or lift your fingerprints from a glass, or record your voice, or steal your retinal pattern from a database. At which point it is easy to build a fake "something you are."
This is why the whole premise of using "something you are" as a security method for pc's is crap. At least with a card you can change it when it is stolen from you. When someone has your fingerprints, they have them, and that biometric becomes a liability forever.
And before you bring it up, no they don't have to go lift your fingerprints off a glass. They just have to hack one authentication database that has them stored therein. Since credit card databases seem to be been compromised on a weekly basis right about now, I have little trust in the security of biometric databases. It's like have a credit card that can't be cancelled and can't have the number changed.
Something you are (a fingerprint, a voiceprint)
This is just something you have, that you cannot easily change, and that is occasionally very painful when taken from you, and that you cannot leave at home. It is, according to most criteria, a very poorly chosen "something you have." Most decent references on authentication stick to something you have and something you know.
That is my understanding, but I don't think it keeps him from levying monetary damages as part of the suit and garnishing their wages or seizing funds, should he be so inclined. As I said, in this particular case, I believe it does not apply anyway.
If Apple was hurt because another vendor beat them to to a release because an employee leaked information (to the competitor), yes, I would feel differently.
These rumors were subsequently reported in a number of national newspapers and magazines, with attribution to Think Secret. The Wall Street journal reported Apple stock losing several points as a result of the premature release.
I would be pissed too if I were Apple but I think that this is misuse of the law.
The law says it is illegal to publish what you know, or would reasonably be expected to know, is a trade secret. How do you expect it to be used?
Apple could sue for some serious money here. They are only suing for the name of the person who lied to and betrayed them. I'd say they are trying to be nice about this.
Your simplification of the case is wrong because California has a specific law protecting journalists from revealing their source.
Your simplification of the judge's ruling is wrong because the CA shield law only protects a limited subset of journalists, which the judge tentatively ruled these journalists do not meet because they are electronic media and do not own or work on behalf of a TV station, channel, satellite company, etc.
Good thing this is being tried in California, where there is the "Shield Law"
It is my understanding that CA's shield law only protects a defined subset of journalists, that "operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier" or some other less applicable criteria.
The judge has tentatively ruled that these online journalists do not meet this definition. Further, should this apply, I believe this protection only keeps the judge from holding them in contempt, not from issuing any judgement. Please note IANAL. This is just my take.
DirecTV and Dish Network are competing against cable companies just fine.
Railroads and bus lines are competing against the airlines just fine as well. That does not mean people who try to sell in-flight meals will not be screwed if the airlines start manufacturing their own meals.
The problem is that TiVo has no content to package along with their device.
...because the content manufacturers/distributers have decided to move into TiVo's market, which is a hell of a lot easier than TiVo trying to start making and distributing TV shows (although we all know it would be nice if someone did).
One does not have to have a printing press, or a press pass to be journalist.
True.
These three publishers have no agreement with apple computers, and are not bound by any promise by others who have made promises to apple.
True.
If a judge said to you, "change your vote, or go to jail." Would you?
What the hell are you talking about?
This case is simple. The law says it is illegal to publish information you have reason to suspect is a trade secret. These journalists did. Apple sued them for the name of the person who gave them the info. There is no federal law to protect sources. Applicable state laws only protect sources if the story exposes government corruption, organized crime, or public health issues. This is a very good thing. The journalists are guilty and Apple deserves to know the source so they can fire him or her.
Let me present a hypothetical situation. I have a great deal of stock in a company and I'm a journalist. I find a source at a company that competes with the company I own stock in. I pay them to give me all their computer passwords and bank account numbers, then publish them on the front page. Their stock tanks, the company I invested in goes up, I make a bundle. If there was a blanket protection for journalists and sources I'd not only be free from prosecution, but there would be no way to stop me from doing it again and again.
I'm all in favor of protecting whistle blowers who expose corruption, crime, and public health issues, but this is a case of none of the above. This was publishing trade secrets for profit. Apple is being nice and only asking for a name instead of damages.
What is the advantage of a separate browser? Why not make an AOL theme for firefox, drape it with AOL extentions/plugins and just use firefox?
Supposedly the netscape version has built in the IE rendering engine for compatibility, while still maintaining the security of Firefox. We shall see. This may mean a browser that is vulnerable to every exploit. If done properly, however, it could be a very nice feature.
Waht you propose is a technical band-aid to a legal issue that needs to be solved. What happens when they use some deep-packet inspection tools to filter out the traffic based upon content or merely rate limit encrypted traffic to increase its latency? There is no point waging a technology war over an issue that should be government regulated.
If they want to discriminate, then make them share the lines the government has granted them exclusive rights to.
Most ISPs are NOT common carriers
There is a small body of precedent from a number of cases involving copy-written materials and child pornography (in the U.S.) Note, many of the big ISPs are phone companies.
But this is in no way censorship. This is a big business protecting it's own interests
It is censorship, just censorship based upon the technology you use, not upon the content of your speech. If your school burned all books written on off-white colored paper, that would still be censorship, just not based on criteria that make any sense to the average person.
When I sign up with an ISP, they are a common carrier, with special immunities and responsibilities. If they want to restrict spam coming through their mail server, it is no different qualitatively than restricting all calls from overseas. It is fine, so long as the user agrees to it and is informed. If they decide no one can get calls from china, and just stop delivering those calls, that is censorship.
To make a third, and final point; ISPs are in many cases government enforced local monopolies. If the government makes it illegal for anyone else to run data lines across town and to my home, then they also have a responsibility to insure that communications across those lines are not censored, otherwise that is censorship by an organization appointed by the government as the only option. Given our corrupt and broken system, I have little doubt that it would take fifty years to get such a case through the court system, but it does not change the fact that it is censorship.
See my above comments about local monopolies. Allow me to provide a slight alteration of your above assertion, "...is not quite the same thing, due mostly in part to your ability to choose to go to another method, (from written to sign language, etc.)"
Would you agree that restricting actually speaking in public is not censorship, since you can always write your comments down or use sign language? I know I don't.
Unless that ISP is named "Congress" or someone to whom Congress has delegated a monopoly position, I don't see the connection to Free Speech.
Free speech has limitations in the form of a number of laws. Certain organizations are granted exceptions to laws restricting free speech by being granted "common carrier" status. These companies do not have to worry about prosecution for transmitting or publishing child porn, copyrighted works, or libelous materials. In order to maintain their status as common carriers guess what they are required to do, or refrain from doing? Guess what someone just did? This is a free speech issue, just not from the angle most people normally view it. The problem now is getting the laws enforced by our big business loving, easily bribable executive branch.
Only governments censor. This would be anti-competitive. Semantics, yes, but an important distiction nonetheless.
You are incorrect. First anyone can censor, not just governments. Second, these corporations are given special legal protections by acting on behalf of the government as "common carriers" of communication, and as such are required to maintain impartiality in order to retain that status. An ISP is immune from prosecution for carrying child porn, only so long as it impartially transmits data, regardless of what it is, and does not attempt to police the content of its network. Whichever ISP this is just opened themselves up to prosecution for child porn, copyright infringement, libel, false advertising, etc., etc.
Sadly, TiVo will not be able to compete against this much longer, they need to come up with some things the cable companies cannot match, and QUICKLY.
It is really hard to compete against a monopoly. I mean do you really think the cable company can provide the hardware, service, support, software development, etc. for $5-$10 a month? Most likely they just roll most of their costs into everyone's cable bill (since they are a monopoly they don't have to worry about underselling the competition) and Tivo user's and people without PVRs end up subsidizing their service.
TiVo has, IMHO, taken the wrong course. They can't compete with the cable companies so they have tried partnering with them and playing nice. It is killing them. The cable companies have all the power. I wouldn't buy a quit smoking program from Phillip-Morris. I wouldn't buy a car manufactured by an oil company. I won't buy a PVR made by a cable company (or one of their close partners).
The PVR market will move in one of two directions. It will either be dominated by the cable companies and become their outlet for getting you DRM'ed video, that you can't avoid the commercials for, and does whatever it is they feel like implementing; or, it will be taken over by companies dedicated to post processing content to suit the needs of the watcher by skipping commercials, archiving, and allowing easy transfer of files. Option two has my vote, and my money. My PVR is great, it archives to DVD, skips commercials, and has no DRM or broadcast flag restrictions. It is what the TiVo should have been.
It's better because it's built to be a PVR, and that's all it does.
As per my previous post, I disagree. I think it is worse because that's all it does. My computer with a tuner gives me options and features a Tivo never will. MP3 storage, easy upgrades, DVD and VCD playing and burning, games, etc. etc. Also, there is no monthly fee. My girlfriend figured out how to record shows, burn DVDs of those shows, watch shows (including fast forward, rewind, skip, pause, etc.), delete shows, search listings, and permanently edit out commercials on recorded shows without ever touching a manual or asking for help. It's not like it is rocket science. There are a few things that are more slick about TiVo's interface, but it is limited to those few features. My setup can do a great deal more, simply and easily. It is running on OS X with a few useful applications in the dock, and that is it. Is it more complex than a Tivo or ReplayTV? Yes. It is also more functional, and easy enough for the average person to figure out in about 5 minutes.
Amen.
My old tower is now my media center. I bought an external TV tuner that connects via firewire and has it's own remote control. The UI is not quite as nice as a TiVo, but it has a great many more features. There is no monthly fee, I can archive to DVD or VCD and shows or movies I wish to keep, it has a completely configurable set of controls including skipping ahead and back, adding more space is as easy as sticking another hard drive on it, it can do double duty by acting as my DVD player, mp3 player/server, CD player, video game machine, low-bandwidth web server, and a guest machine for people to browse the web, or check their mail. All of this was out of the box with basically no configuration. I pity the poor bastards stuck with TiVos.
Note, this is in no way an endorsement of MythTV or WinMediaCenter. I have used neither. My system is running on an old Mac with OS X and EyeTV.
I've always heard that TiVo can fast forward through adverts, but I don't see how - unless you pre-record everything.
That is pretty much what you do. I don't have a Tivo. I use another PVR. I don't have time to watch the shows I schedule it to record, let alone something else that is on. If I do, however, I just tune in 10-20 minutes after the show starts and watch it from the buffer. I start at the beginning, skip all the commercials, and it ends the same time as it normally would.
but InDesign already does everything Pagemaker can do (plus a good bit more), and it's slowly but surely encroaching on Frameworker territory.
An Adobe employee told me the same thing, but had no answers as to when InDesign would actually become useable. It still lacks all the numbering, cross-referencing, and fluid graphic layout capabilities. The XML support is nice, but is unstable, and full of bugs. I know of 3 ways to consistently crash it (cross-platform). Anyone who uses it can tell it is designed for making magazines, and is very suited to that task. It is a pain in the arse to use for manuals.
Strange, I always used Pagemaker, and its[sic] still available on mac
Pagemaker and InDesign are both still supported by Adobe and are solutions used by some authors (myself included), but they are certainly lacking many of the features that make Framemaker the most popular solution. The long document support, automatic referencing and indexing, conditional text, and the unique and customizable numbering system have never been ported to either Pagemaker or InDesign. In fact in a recent presentation an Adobe presenter said that Pagemaker became "unsuitably slow" for documents longer than 50 pages. I know InDesign can really be a pain on longer documents as well. Framemaker easily handles 500 pages with a fair number of graphics.
For good or ill, Pagemaker is aimed at brochures, and short instructions. InDesign is designed for magazines and news and Framemaker is aimed at technical books and manuals. The moral of this story is, you can't count on Adobe to support anything but Windows, even if the customers want it, because their management is full of pointy-haired twits. Pagemaker could cease development on the Mac at any time.
wider field of view and binocular vision thing are just fringe benefits
Actually, they are. Most creatures can survive just fine with one eye. Most die with no eyes. This is not to say that a wider field of vision, more quickly processed depth perception, etc. are not very useful, they are just probably not the evolutionary cause of multiple eyes. Just look at all the other symmetry in the body, two lungs, two kidneys, etc. Two lungs provide redundancy more than volume. Eyes most likely follow the same pattern.
they see Linux as a tier-2, unimportant platform
In my experience Adobe views everything that isn't Windows as a tier-2 platform, and would like nothing more than for them to go away. They have killed or frozen many products for Linux, Mac OS, and Solaris in the last few years. One particularly galling example is Framemaker. It is the single most popular application for writing manuals and technical publications, due to it's unique feature-set (developed before adobe bought it). Adobe killed the Linux version completely, and never released an OS X native version. Mac OS 9 users made up 65% of their customers, but for some reason when OS X came out, everyone stopped buying the Mac version. (everyone was waiting for an OS X version). It never came. Now it is a Window's only product. I know a number of people who run it in the Classic OS 9 emulation environment and a number who have switched to alternate products. Other users just switched to Windows. This is typical Adobe's attitude in recent years. Even with their flagship, Photoshop, Mac versions have sometimes lagged behind, or been missing features of the windows release. It is all just symptomatic of a company that has bought into Windows development, and only supports other platforms when there is just too much money coming in. Adobe has lost my trust, and I think lost it's way. I'm just waiting for a real competitor to appear.
Having multiple processors or multiple processor cores provides more of an advantage in a number of ways, than just having a single processor that is twice as fast. You may notice most animals have two eyes. The reason is that when one eye gets poked out by a sharp stick, the animal can still see. Similarly, when a thread loops and tries to monopolize your entire processor, having a second one means your machine is still responsive. There are performance hits involved in multithreading, but the advantages of more scalable code, more redundancy and reliability, and more ability for parallel operations make moving to multiple processors and cores a more significant improvement, IMHO, than doubling the speed of a processor.