We're not talking about iPods, we're talking about AirPort express...
You're saying the airport express is somehow proprietary? It is 802.11 wireless, discovery with ZeroConf, streaming audio with RSTP, and encrypted with AES. All of them are completely open standards. By proprietary did you mean, "Apple did not re-write anyone else's applications to work with it?" I suspect in Tiger the interface will be built into their CoreAudio libraries and developer tools.
Even Quicktime is invasive (why the hell do they have that load on startup???).
Quicktime is more than a video player, it is also the audio and video libraries upon which iTunes is built. Windows Media player uses a different set that is built into windows and loaded with the OS. Apple uses their own, which is ported from Mac OS.
The fact that they've locked out their hardware so that only ~their~ free music player will work with it is incentive enough for me to steer clear.
What? I'm not sure how you intended this sentence to be parsed. iPods work with other audio players that have included support. Their are several players including WinAmp and RealPlayer. Neither will decode Apple's DRM without a hack, but neither will decode MS's DRM without a hack either. Apple's DRM can be legally removed. MS's can't. (The previous two sentences apply within the U.S.) In any case, you can always just not buy DRMed files, and use an iPod, or iTunes with regular mp3, mp4, WAV, etc. You sound like you are very confused.
wonder if this push for a price increase is to put a dampner on the existing on-line players..
Dampner is not a word in the English language. Damper is a word, as is dampener. A damper reduces oscillation. A dampener makes something moist. Some router vendors have introduced a feature called route flap damping. Other router vendors have introduced the rather silly route flap dampening. I really wish large companies would hire a few editors to review their products. Just FYI.
I'll second that. I've used Gerber, Victorinox, SOG, and Leatherman tools, but SOG is the one I have come back to. I purchased one of their multitools years and years ago, and it has lasted forever. I finally stopped carrying it and bought a new one because the really old ones did not have locking blades, a feature I really wanted, for obvious reasons. Aside from being sturdy and well, made, the SOG multitools provide a slight mechanical advantage to the pliers through some robust gearing. They also have swappable blades, with a variety of SOG and third party packages. I was originally turned on to these tools by some Explosives Ordinance Disposal guys (back in day), who loved the blasting cap crimper, and tamping tool options. I was also intrigued to discover a set of lockpicks available for it. I wholly recommend SOG multitools as a great, customizable, unkillable multi-purpose tool.
I've been hoping for a while that Tiger would include a more advanced sound control panel that would allow the user to direct sound streams and adjust volumes for any combination of sound inputs, outputs, and for each application. It would also be very nice if they would include a maximum volume damping feature on an application by application basis. This is really something that should be handled by the OS. Unfortunately I have not heard of any of these features making it into any of the Tiger betas. Maybe Longhorn will have it, then Apple can copy them for a change.
All this begs the question, if the per song fee increases what happens to the all-you-listen-to sites like Rhaposdy and Napster?
Nothing.
That is the point. The record companies are very interested in renting you music, or selling you hard copies that break, degrade with each copy, or need to be repurchased to be upgraded to a new format. They have realized, however, that actually selling digital copies will mean they can't re-sell the same songs over and over again.
Are any of the services they discussed actually distributing in mp3 format, or have the Slashdot editors just become too confused by all these "technical" terms? Online music seems like a reasonable alternative description.
Between this and the Chinese push for EVD it sounds like China is tired of paying royalties on technology they manufacture to foreign technology companies. Remember with one law they can include any standard they want in 75% percent of the electronics you buy. If they really want to push EVDs or WAPI they will not have much of a problem. I mean manufacturer's will have to choose between employing two standards in all products, or going with whatever China wants. Ubiquity makes for a de-facto standard.
So your argument is that TiVo should destroy itself in order to have a feature that 99% of their customers won't even know is present?
Go ahead and re-read my post. Does it say that anywhere? Tivo will do whatever they think will make them the most money. I will trust them to do so, and I'll buy my products from someone who is interested in getting money from me by making me happy, rather than money from the cable companies through making them happy. See it is simple capitalism.
If Tivo wanted me as a customer, they would have added the features I wanted, and not removed the features I wanted. Luckily, their are companies who cater to my needs. Just don't claim that Tivo would go out of business from spurious legal fees. It is ridiculous.
The ban is in harvesting fetal stem cells only. Which is of questionable ethics and unnecessary...
No the ban is on federal funding for any labs that research fetal stem cells aside from the already established strains. As to whether or not the ethics are questionable, they are mostly questionable to uneducated morons who either think people are killing babies in their mother's womb or just parrot a bunch of uninformed tripe about how sacred life is. Life at the stage we are talking about is about as intelligent as broccoli, which few people are trying to ban the killing of.
Bush Administration is the first administration to Federally fund stem cell research, just not fetal stem cell research.
That is completely untrue. Stem cell research was conducted with federal dollars long before Bush was elected.
The key word here being think. And no I don't think conciousness is what we are talking about. I'm talking about life period. If conciousness is your defining characteristic of being worthy of living then you have to decide what level of conciousness.
If you truly want to minimize the life destroyed, please kill yourself now. This will preserve the lives of all the animals and vegetables you would normally consume, as well as the millions of microorganisms your body automatically kills each day. Stop killing life you murdering bastard!
The fingerprint sharing table displays the following columns of information:
ReplayTV provided the ability to share programs, which in and of itself is legal, but they also included software that monitored what programs were being shared, and by whom. They also, foolishly made it clear in a number of documents that they were aware that copyrighted materials were being shared. Further, they demonstrated that they were policing their network, by preventing some sharing at the request of a third party. That made them guilty of contributory copyright infringement. If they had just not tracked sharing or built in control systems they would have been in the clear.
If you know enough to care about TiVo's DRM, then you know enough to get around it.
Not all of us appreciate having to hack a system to get it to do what it should have done in the first place if the provider was not so worried about keeping their business partners happy. You are bending over backwards to make excuses for Tivo, because you like the system and feel the need to justify your choices. It is a well designed system, and a good choice for many people. That does not mean it is not also designed with the best interests of the cable companies put before the best interests of the end user. Save your excuses.
I read this gentleman's article and was a little put out. He seems like the same type of myopic literary scholar that I generally refer to as a grammar nazi. Why can't most reasonably intelligent and educated individuals understand that grammar, spelling, writing style, and careful composition are largely demonstrations of a trade skill. They have very little to do with successful communication. I work with dozens of very effective and well respected scientists. Many of them send me mail, white papers, and other communications that contain misspelled words and grammar mistakes. For some reason both I, and everyone else can still understand their meaning.
I truly wish that "professional" writers and communicators would spend a little more time on content and a little less on demonstrating their scholarly credentials. I had a professor in school who had received a PhD in communications. She sent me an e-mail message that closed with "If you don't get this message, please let me know."
In my mind, that summarizes the whole, sad debacle. Content is king on the internet, and in my personal reading. I may admire style or a clever turn of phrase, but if the content is not useful, then the reading is not useful. I read Slashdot because their are a number of very intelligent and well informed people here. I could not care less about their spelling if they have useful or interesting opinions or knowledge. I pity this librarian who seems to have the opposite view.
I would also note, that for someone who proclaims ignorance about "blogs," he certainly sounds like a skilled troll.
The writing is on the wall for Firewire. USB2 has won.
I'll make a mental note. SiliconEntity says firewire is dying (along with BSD). I think you are wrong, and I seriously doubt you work in consumer electronics or video tech. So all set top boxes are soon to be required to include firewire, and you think computer and camera makers are going to move away from it. Interesting. USB2 has taken off for hard drives it is true, but it also isn't hard to find firewire drives, especially amongst the pro gear. Now find me a USB2 drive I can plug into my digital camera (and that will work for transferring data to it.)
When TiVo was presented with the choice between DRM and getting sued into oblivion like ReplayTV, they chose DRM and thus still exist.
That's funny, because I bought a PVR from a completely different company, and it lets me record whatever I want, in whatever format I want, Burn DVDs and VCDs, and basically do anything else I feel like. They are breaking no laws and are for some crazy reason not responsible for what their user's do with the product. Tivo added DRM to cater to the Cable companies they partnered with, not to avoid legal problems. ReplayTV had problems because the built in sharing, which gets into very iffy legal ground. Tivo is under no legal requirement to add DRM and would not have any legal problems with so doing. They may remove DRM in the future if they abandon the cable company deals, but I am certainly not willing to trust that it will stay gone.
Knowing how to theorhetically[sic] build a DVR and actually doing it well are two very different things.
This is true. Of course knowing how to build a DVR and doing it well are two different things too. For example, I have no doubt Tivo could build better PVRs than they currently do, I just don't trust them to do it. They have shown too much of a tendency to cater to the media companies rather than their users.
Actually, TiVo is very much a household name. "I'm going to TiVo that show" has replaced "I'm going to tape that show" even among people who rent cable PVRs.
I'm not convinced. I know a lot of people with Tivos and other PVRs. "Record" seems to be the term I hear most often. In any case, Tivo has very little brand recognition compared to Apple. Apple is one of the most recognized brands in the U.S. and is a major one overseas. The number of people who know what a Tivo is, is trivial by comparison.
Appple[sic] has some great hardware engineers, and maybe they could come up with a TiVo Shuffle.
A tivo shuffle would actually solve a very real problem with tivo-like devices. I know you were thinking of a cheap, low-end tivo, but an intelligently shuffled set of programming that a viewer likes would fit more with the way people are used to watching TV. Many people just let it play in the background. If a tivo type device had the option to play programs that it thinks you might like along with shows that you have specifically requested, I think it could very well catch on. (The fact that most people would not bother skipping commercials is a plus when dealing with content providers as well.)
I do not think, however, that Apple would go for a subscription style service for movies and TV programs. They are more likely to copy the ITMS, but substitute movies and television shows for songs. I imagine the DRM would be similar, with one or two DVDs burnable per program. The main difference is that the legal hurdles to allow the ripping of DVDs would be significant, possibly insurmountable. Prices would have to be comparable to a DVD.
I'm not sure that a acquisition of Tivo would be ideal either. Elgato would probably be a cheaper purchase, and they already have OSX compatible hardware and software. Just sticking a mac mini into a case with a Elgato EyeTV device would make for a reasonable PVR, with a free subscription. Apple would probably want to provide their own listing and integrate a movie/TV program store. The cost for such a device would be about $700 dollars for the base unit, and maybe $900 for HD-TV. They would have to work on shaving that down if they want to be competitive. This would provide the added advantage of giving the user a fully functional mac for gaming on the TV, web surfing, e-mail, etc.
Did you actually read my comment before typing, or are you just foaming at the mouth
I certainly did. I just think you are full of crap. On my machine, software that lets me parse web pages and make associations is a feature. Software that lets publishers shove more ads into their pages using my CPU time, memory, and bandwidth is malware. Get a clue.
chances are he will never be able to pay off that kind of debt you quote and he will be ruined for life, never able to buy anything of significance.
We have no idea what the settlement will be. If it is 500K, I think a doctor will be able to pay it off. If it is more, then perhaps they will not. In any case, if I cause damage through whatever means, I'm responsible for repairing that damage. If I burn 100K of my employer's money, they are entitled to sue me, and the courts should require that I pay it. In this case damages are questionable. He will certainly have to pay court costs and some compensation. The amount is what they are going to court to determine.
With a debt like that, he might as well be in prison.
Yeah, because being locked in a small cage for a decade is so comparable to being deeply in debt, but free, with a medical degree, and the prospect of paying off the debt. That poor guy. I'm sure all the people in prison for victimless crimes will agree with you completely.
You call the comment about hijacking moronic. The exact same can be said about your "taking a crap in a resturant's food" comment.
I made an analogy. You have not demonstrated any way in which it is not applicable. Great logic there.
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing Apple like we do...Can their lawyers be far behind?
Has Apple ever sued anyone for releasing software that does something they don't like? Can you provide a link?
We're not talking about iPods, we're talking about AirPort express...
You're saying the airport express is somehow proprietary? It is 802.11 wireless, discovery with ZeroConf, streaming audio with RSTP, and encrypted with AES. All of them are completely open standards. By proprietary did you mean, "Apple did not re-write anyone else's applications to work with it?" I suspect in Tiger the interface will be built into their CoreAudio libraries and developer tools.
Even Quicktime is invasive (why the hell do they have that load on startup???).
Quicktime is more than a video player, it is also the audio and video libraries upon which iTunes is built. Windows Media player uses a different set that is built into windows and loaded with the OS. Apple uses their own, which is ported from Mac OS.
The fact that they've locked out their hardware so that only ~their~ free music player will work with it is incentive enough for me to steer clear.
What? I'm not sure how you intended this sentence to be parsed. iPods work with other audio players that have included support. Their are several players including WinAmp and RealPlayer. Neither will decode Apple's DRM without a hack, but neither will decode MS's DRM without a hack either. Apple's DRM can be legally removed. MS's can't. (The previous two sentences apply within the U.S.) In any case, you can always just not buy DRMed files, and use an iPod, or iTunes with regular mp3, mp4, WAV, etc. You sound like you are very confused.
wonder if this push for a price increase is to put a dampner on the existing on-line players..
Dampner is not a word in the English language. Damper is a word, as is dampener. A damper reduces oscillation. A dampener makes something moist. Some router vendors have introduced a feature called route flap damping. Other router vendors have introduced the rather silly route flap dampening. I really wish large companies would hire a few editors to review their products. Just FYI.
I'll second that. I've used Gerber, Victorinox, SOG, and Leatherman tools, but SOG is the one I have come back to. I purchased one of their multitools years and years ago, and it has lasted forever. I finally stopped carrying it and bought a new one because the really old ones did not have locking blades, a feature I really wanted, for obvious reasons. Aside from being sturdy and well, made, the SOG multitools provide a slight mechanical advantage to the pliers through some robust gearing. They also have swappable blades, with a variety of SOG and third party packages. I was originally turned on to these tools by some Explosives Ordinance Disposal guys (back in day), who loved the blasting cap crimper, and tamping tool options. I was also intrigued to discover a set of lockpicks available for it. I wholly recommend SOG multitools as a great, customizable, unkillable multi-purpose tool.
I've been hoping for a while that Tiger would include a more advanced sound control panel that would allow the user to direct sound streams and adjust volumes for any combination of sound inputs, outputs, and for each application. It would also be very nice if they would include a maximum volume damping feature on an application by application basis. This is really something that should be handled by the OS. Unfortunately I have not heard of any of these features making it into any of the Tiger betas. Maybe Longhorn will have it, then Apple can copy them for a change.
All this begs the question, if the per song fee increases what happens to the all-you-listen-to sites like Rhaposdy and Napster?
Nothing.
That is the point. The record companies are very interested in renting you music, or selling you hard copies that break, degrade with each copy, or need to be repurchased to be upgraded to a new format. They have realized, however, that actually selling digital copies will mean they can't re-sell the same songs over and over again.
Are any of the services they discussed actually distributing in mp3 format, or have the Slashdot editors just become too confused by all these "technical" terms? Online music seems like a reasonable alternative description.
Between this and the Chinese push for EVD it sounds like China is tired of paying royalties on technology they manufacture to foreign technology companies. Remember with one law they can include any standard they want in 75% percent of the electronics you buy. If they really want to push EVDs or WAPI they will not have much of a problem. I mean manufacturer's will have to choose between employing two standards in all products, or going with whatever China wants. Ubiquity makes for a de-facto standard.
So your argument is that TiVo should destroy itself in order to have a feature that 99% of their customers won't even know is present?
Go ahead and re-read my post. Does it say that anywhere? Tivo will do whatever they think will make them the most money. I will trust them to do so, and I'll buy my products from someone who is interested in getting money from me by making me happy, rather than money from the cable companies through making them happy. See it is simple capitalism.
If Tivo wanted me as a customer, they would have added the features I wanted, and not removed the features I wanted. Luckily, their are companies who cater to my needs. Just don't claim that Tivo would go out of business from spurious legal fees. It is ridiculous.
The ban is in harvesting fetal stem cells only. Which is of questionable ethics and unnecessary...
No the ban is on federal funding for any labs that research fetal stem cells aside from the already established strains. As to whether or not the ethics are questionable, they are mostly questionable to uneducated morons who either think people are killing babies in their mother's womb or just parrot a bunch of uninformed tripe about how sacred life is. Life at the stage we are talking about is about as intelligent as broccoli, which few people are trying to ban the killing of.
Bush Administration is the first administration to Federally fund stem cell research, just not fetal stem cell research.
That is completely untrue. Stem cell research was conducted with federal dollars long before Bush was elected.
Please go educate yourself....thank you.
Mr. Pot, please meet Mr. Kettle.
The key word here being think. And no I don't think conciousness is what we are talking about. I'm talking about life period. If conciousness is your defining characteristic of being worthy of living then you have to decide what level of conciousness.
If you truly want to minimize the life destroyed, please kill yourself now. This will preserve the lives of all the animals and vegetables you would normally consume, as well as the millions of microorganisms your body automatically kills each day. Stop killing life you murdering bastard!
The fingerprint sharing table displays the following columns of information:
ReplayTV provided the ability to share programs, which in and of itself is legal, but they also included software that monitored what programs were being shared, and by whom. They also, foolishly made it clear in a number of documents that they were aware that copyrighted materials were being shared. Further, they demonstrated that they were policing their network, by preventing some sharing at the request of a third party. That made them guilty of contributory copyright infringement. If they had just not tracked sharing or built in control systems they would have been in the clear.
If you know enough to care about TiVo's DRM, then you know enough to get around it.
Not all of us appreciate having to hack a system to get it to do what it should have done in the first place if the provider was not so worried about keeping their business partners happy. You are bending over backwards to make excuses for Tivo, because you like the system and feel the need to justify your choices. It is a well designed system, and a good choice for many people. That does not mean it is not also designed with the best interests of the cable companies put before the best interests of the end user. Save your excuses.
I read this gentleman's article and was a little put out. He seems like the same type of myopic literary scholar that I generally refer to as a grammar nazi. Why can't most reasonably intelligent and educated individuals understand that grammar, spelling, writing style, and careful composition are largely demonstrations of a trade skill. They have very little to do with successful communication. I work with dozens of very effective and well respected scientists. Many of them send me mail, white papers, and other communications that contain misspelled words and grammar mistakes. For some reason both I, and everyone else can still understand their meaning.
I truly wish that "professional" writers and communicators would spend a little more time on content and a little less on demonstrating their scholarly credentials. I had a professor in school who had received a PhD in communications. She sent me an e-mail message that closed with "If you don't get this message, please let me know."
In my mind, that summarizes the whole, sad debacle. Content is king on the internet, and in my personal reading. I may admire style or a clever turn of phrase, but if the content is not useful, then the reading is not useful. I read Slashdot because their are a number of very intelligent and well informed people here. I could not care less about their spelling if they have useful or interesting opinions or knowledge. I pity this librarian who seems to have the opposite view.
I would also note, that for someone who proclaims ignorance about "blogs," he certainly sounds like a skilled troll.
The writing is on the wall for Firewire. USB2 has won.
I'll make a mental note. SiliconEntity says firewire is dying (along with BSD). I think you are wrong, and I seriously doubt you work in consumer electronics or video tech. So all set top boxes are soon to be required to include firewire, and you think computer and camera makers are going to move away from it. Interesting. USB2 has taken off for hard drives it is true, but it also isn't hard to find firewire drives, especially amongst the pro gear. Now find me a USB2 drive I can plug into my digital camera (and that will work for transferring data to it.)
I am glad for this, as firewire is less common than USB 2. The sooner we all agree on a single standard the better.
Yeah, but why does it always have to be the one that does not work as well?
When TiVo was presented with the choice between DRM and getting sued into oblivion like ReplayTV, they chose DRM and thus still exist.
That's funny, because I bought a PVR from a completely different company, and it lets me record whatever I want, in whatever format I want, Burn DVDs and VCDs, and basically do anything else I feel like. They are breaking no laws and are for some crazy reason not responsible for what their user's do with the product. Tivo added DRM to cater to the Cable companies they partnered with, not to avoid legal problems. ReplayTV had problems because the built in sharing, which gets into very iffy legal ground. Tivo is under no legal requirement to add DRM and would not have any legal problems with so doing. They may remove DRM in the future if they abandon the cable company deals, but I am certainly not willing to trust that it will stay gone.
Knowing how to theorhetically[sic] build a DVR and actually doing it well are two very different things.
This is true. Of course knowing how to build a DVR and doing it well are two different things too. For example, I have no doubt Tivo could build better PVRs than they currently do, I just don't trust them to do it. They have shown too much of a tendency to cater to the media companies rather than their users.
Actually, TiVo is very much a household name. "I'm going to TiVo that show" has replaced "I'm going to tape that show" even among people who rent cable PVRs.
I'm not convinced. I know a lot of people with Tivos and other PVRs. "Record" seems to be the term I hear most often. In any case, Tivo has very little brand recognition compared to Apple. Apple is one of the most recognized brands in the U.S. and is a major one overseas. The number of people who know what a Tivo is, is trivial by comparison.
Appple[sic] has some great hardware engineers, and maybe they could come up with a TiVo Shuffle.
A tivo shuffle would actually solve a very real problem with tivo-like devices. I know you were thinking of a cheap, low-end tivo, but an intelligently shuffled set of programming that a viewer likes would fit more with the way people are used to watching TV. Many people just let it play in the background. If a tivo type device had the option to play programs that it thinks you might like along with shows that you have specifically requested, I think it could very well catch on. (The fact that most people would not bother skipping commercials is a plus when dealing with content providers as well.)
I do not think, however, that Apple would go for a subscription style service for movies and TV programs. They are more likely to copy the ITMS, but substitute movies and television shows for songs. I imagine the DRM would be similar, with one or two DVDs burnable per program. The main difference is that the legal hurdles to allow the ripping of DVDs would be significant, possibly insurmountable. Prices would have to be comparable to a DVD.
I'm not sure that a acquisition of Tivo would be ideal either. Elgato would probably be a cheaper purchase, and they already have OSX compatible hardware and software. Just sticking a mac mini into a case with a Elgato EyeTV device would make for a reasonable PVR, with a free subscription. Apple would probably want to provide their own listing and integrate a movie/TV program store. The cost for such a device would be about $700 dollars for the base unit, and maybe $900 for HD-TV. They would have to work on shaving that down if they want to be competitive. This would provide the added advantage of giving the user a fully functional mac for gaming on the TV, web surfing, e-mail, etc.
Cisco offers an OS X client for their VPN solutions, including IPSec. They also have some documentation buried somewhere.
Did you actually read my comment before typing, or are you just foaming at the mouth
I certainly did. I just think you are full of crap. On my machine, software that lets me parse web pages and make associations is a feature. Software that lets publishers shove more ads into their pages using my CPU time, memory, and bandwidth is malware. Get a clue.
chances are he will never be able to pay off that kind of debt you quote and he will be ruined for life, never able to buy anything of significance .
We have no idea what the settlement will be. If it is 500K, I think a doctor will be able to pay it off. If it is more, then perhaps they will not. In any case, if I cause damage through whatever means, I'm responsible for repairing that damage. If I burn 100K of my employer's money, they are entitled to sue me, and the courts should require that I pay it. In this case damages are questionable. He will certainly have to pay court costs and some compensation. The amount is what they are going to court to determine.
I'm part Welsh so it's OK, right? I hereby apologize for besmirching the names of all Welsh who may have been offended by this remark.
With a debt like that, he might as well be in prison.
Yeah, because being locked in a small cage for a decade is so comparable to being deeply in debt, but free, with a medical degree, and the prospect of paying off the debt. That poor guy. I'm sure all the people in prison for victimless crimes will agree with you completely.
You call the comment about hijacking moronic. The exact same can be said about your "taking a crap in a resturant's food" comment.
I made an analogy. You have not demonstrated any way in which it is not applicable. Great logic there.