Microsoft was attempting to make their media viewing a bit easier by telling them the codec wasn't installed (rather than displaying their famous acid-trip screen saver) and that WMP could attempt to install it for them.
You are incorrect. This exploit has nothing to do with fetching codecs. It is a feature that will open a web page specified by the creator of the movie or song file, that is intended to allow the user to buy a license to use the media. Basically it is a "feature" whereby media player will see a movie, notice you don't have a DRM key for it, and open a web page so that you can buy said DRM key. Unfortunately, like usual MS was completely blinded by dollar signs and did not consider that arbitrary files could direct the user to any old web page, and since IE is full of holes, this makes it pitifully easy to use a media file as a trojan.
I have not looked at this exploit more than superficially so I am unsure if the media player will always open the page in IE, or if setting Firefox as your default browser will save you. I also do not know with what privilege level IE connects, at a guess I would think it is as you with the lowest security setting for that page, but it could be your default, or connect as "root." Someone also mentioned that there is a setting to disable this, but it does not seem to work.
It's partly the users' fault for
...expecting their computer to be reasonably secure by default, and not silently install programs from anyone who can lure you to a particular web page. Also for assuming that the computer equivalent of a stereo and VCR will not connect you to random places on the internet and randomly install programs. If Sony made it's consumer appliances like this, when you put a VCR tape in from your neighbor you would have to worry that it might make extra ads appear in the middle of your TV screen from that point on.
There are millions of people out there satisfied with their 56K modems.
I don't think anyone is satisfied with their 56K modem. They either have no choice since faster service is not available, or are not willing to pay the outrageous fees to their local monopoly. My parents, for example, always complain about how slow the internet is, but are not willing to pay the $80 a month extra to upgrade. If it was $5 or $10 or even $20 they would pay it, but at some point the gouging just gets ridiculous. Internet data/phone service should be considered a utility if the U.S. wants to be even remotely competitive educationally and economically. It should be regulated by the local government of the area and the infrastructure should be owned by that local government. Tax dollars should be allocated to make it a reality. I can't imagine how anyone justifies the granting of commercial monopolies in the U.S. They have never worked well, and always end up in massive corruption scandal and gouging of customers.
That is an interesting story. The laws vary so much from state to state and even within localities it is hard to know just when you are breaking the law. To be safe, I carry a very short (2 inch) pocket knife, that does not have an assisted open mechanism whenever I travel out of state. In my state, it is possible to get a concealed pistol permit, but you will still be prosecuted for carrying a larger knife alongside your gun.
As to whether or not you should admit to having a weapon, it is a dangerous game in some places. The law does not (as far as I know) compel you to admit anything, or any searches, but if you don't immediately present a weapon, when you have one when stopped by police, it is an additional felony in some places. In some places it will also get you a severe beating.
If you are worried about your personal safety, but want to stay on the good side of the law, there are two workarounds that are fairly popular. One is a heavy mag light. A number of cases against the police have set some pretty strong precedent that although flashlights can be used as weapons, they are not weapons by nature and thus are legal to carry in almost any situation. Similarly precedent has been set in some places to show that flare guns are not weapons. But I'll bet a mugger backs off it you shoot them with one:)
Short life cycles: Wow those G4 Powermacs didn't last long. And when their supplies run out that is the end of them other then buying them used on ebay.
Which is still better than Dell offers today. More companies buy from Dell than anyone else.They have very good prices, but if you order 200 desktops (as companies I worked for have done in the past) you have no guarantee that what is inside all the cases is the same. We had not only different hard drives, but completely different network cards show up in our order. Some had drivers for OpenBSD, some did not.
Your arguments are less than convincing. Apple is not so different from all the other hardware companies out there, except that they are both innovative enough, and successful enough that people actually pay attention to what they do. I've heard dozens of complaints that the macworld presentation is not going to be streamed live. When was the last time anyone complained that a dell presentation was not streamed live?
If I recall correctly, they were arrested for trespassing, which is both spurious given the lack of trespassing signs, and uncreative, given that they probably were breaking any number of obscure laws. No the arrests orchestrated by the Bush administration's PR commission are pretty much standard wrongful arrests under well known laws (what I referred to above as common law). The laws I was thinking of were more of the ones that say you can't swear in front of women, wear shorts, carry gasoline in a vehicle, dance on public property, have sex unless you are married, or travel to another state to buy beer.
That is an excellent resource that might come in handy for my visits across the border. I don't suppose that includes local and provincial laws though. I wish I could find something like this for Ireland. I'm planning a trip and was wondering about a number of laws. Oh well, it will most likely not be an issue. I'll just tell them I'm an American tourist and I'm sure they will let things slide (or possibly hit me with billy clubs).
They estimate that the US/EU/Japan together lose $80B/year.
I estimate that I too am losing billions a year because there are no laws forcing China, or anyone else, to pay me large sums of money. Unless this legal loophole is closed, I will be unable to employ anyone, and may have to consider postponing my multimillion dollar payments for materials to build a mansion. This in turn will cause great damage to the economy since all the jobs I would directly and indirectly cause will no longer exist, and all those theoretically people will starve. Please pass laws to force countries to give me money too. You don't want people to starve do you?
Why should China enforce IP law at all? They are doing no more than Americans did, disregarding the IP of Europe, during America's own industrial renaissance. The result was that the world surged forward technologically. Perhaps an economic boom in China will again pull the world forward. Perhaps the whole concept that intellectual property monopolies enforced by governments promote the creation of new ideas, art, and technology should be reexamined.
Everyone has done one of the following: tried drugs, infringed a copyright, exceeded the speed limit, drank alcohol underage, bought a violent video game for someone under 18, etc...
Your point is well taken but in most locations none of the things you listed will currently get you jail time. An important broken link in your criminalization chain is the police. The job of the police is to enforce the law through arrests and investigations. They only enforce a very small subset of the laws because the police don't really have much better of an idea what the laws are than the average citizen. They enforce the laws their bosses tell them to, and don't bother digging through law books for other things that are criminal.
I've always taken issue with the staggering number of incomprehensible, obscure, and contradictory laws. We certainly are all breaking laws on the books every day. Every child in our country knows that it is not fair to be punished for something that one was not informed was against the rules. If you tell any man, woman, or child that all the rules they need to follow are gathered in the three sets of legal volumes, consisting of millions of pages, stored in three different locations and written in a mishmash of english, old english, and latin, every one of them will realize the ridiculousness of being held responsible for breaking one of those rules. Instead we all follow a "common law" that is an amalgamation of rumors, common sense, and here-say. If the television show "Law and Order" were to start making up new laws and showing them being enforced, half the police officers and citizens in the country would start believing that they actually existed. Heck, some of the lawyers would buy it too. Hammurabi wrote his laws on a pillar in the center of town. We can't even find a list of ours in plain English. No one knows what all the laws are, and no one can be held morally responsible for violating them. Until the system changes drastically, ignorance is indeed an excuse.
I happen to know the legal expert on weapons in my state. He is a very successful lawyer who specializes in cases of concealed weapons and weapons violations. I asked him one day if it was legal to carry a pocket knife, and if so, how large. His answer, "No one knows." There are three contradictory laws listing legal blade lengths and one that specifically guarantees everyone the right to carry a hunting knife without specifying what that is. Other laws say that you can carry a blade so long as it is hidden, not hidden, shorter than a given length, or not for malicious purposes. His legal advice was that it is fine to carry a knife, but to be safe you should carry one shorter than 2.75 inches and keep it concealed. That violates two laws, but is in accordance with three. If it ever goes to court he claims that he will not have any problem showing that the laws contradict, and thus can't be enforced, which he has done in the past.
And that is a perfect example of why laws or more or less arbitrary and not worth looking up for a layman.
Similarly, we need a firebug to go around lighting people's houses on fire to show how having smoke detectors should be a high priority.
Agreed. There is no point in doing real harm in order to warn people about the potential for real harm. Writing a virus or worm that makes users type the word "vagina" in order to do anything, would probably provide as much warning about their insecurity, and put just as much pressure on MS to fix things, all without doing any real, intentional damage.
Of course any virus or worm potentially causes serious, unforeseen problems so the ethics are very questionable.
Could you please name me ONE job or job category on Wintel (not a particular program) that a Mac cannot do?
OK. Here is one of the thousands of tasks that cannot currently be accomplished on a mac. Grab data from a RX-320 short wave radio control system. Not many people want to do that, but for those that do, there is no option for the mac. Aside from that, there are a few hundred thousand other device control systems and monitoring systems that have no mac software for control. Due to the relative size of the Mac user base, there are plenty of tasks that no one has bothered to provide support for. Something as common as jumping in on a game of half-life 2, is pretty much impossible. That is not to say that MacOS is not superior for many tasks, nor is it to deny that the underlying system provides more options, integration, and features. It does, however, reflect a reality that in the current marketplace there is a significant barrier to change for many individuals and users.
I was talking about what 99% of CONSUMERS generally use a computer for
Then you should have said that, rather than making arbitrary declarative statements that are untrue by themselves.
The last thing I want is a cell phone that uses the iPod wheel thingy. Feel is important for a phone. That way I don't have to go fumbling around to dial a number.
I don't think anyone is suggesting a cellphone without a keypad, although you never know. I'd actually be quite happy to have a wheel for my phone. 90% of my calls are people whose numbers are stored in my phone. Push a button, quickly scroll through a list, push dial. It would be much easier than what I do right now, push the phonebook button, select the get a number option, enter a number to indicate the first letter, push the down arrow till I reach the right number, select the number, and finally push the call button. Man that sucks. Bring on the scroll wheel.
Re:Adding Ghz is probably not the best solution
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Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
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· Score: 1
If by "at some point" you mean after about (waves hands) 1935, you are incorrect...Anyway, in a feeble attempt to keep on topic, engine displacement is not a good analogy for chip clock frequency.
You are obviously not a motorcycle or snowmobile enthusiast. Think mid 90s. Think advertised still in some places. Many smaller, sport and recreation vehicles recently or still reference CCs, and use it as a selling point, just like clock speed. In most cases horsepower, acceleration, and top speed are really what consumers are interested in, but most consumers want one simple number for their simple minds. See any analogies with the computer industry yet? You can have machines with a large displacement that top out at lower speeds, and accelerate more slowly than machines with lesser displacement. This is very analogous to how some chips can perform more work, in less time while running at a lower clock speed. I think it a very apt analogy.
P.S. nice flashback, plush velour, crappy horsepower, orange 55, that was my brother's Oldsmobile all right.
So now Apple has a nice monopoly on OSX and Apple brand computers.
Congratulations someone thought this was funny enough to link to as an example of how stupid people can be. A company has a monopoly on their product and all products with their brand. Wow, that is brilliant. Can a genius like yourself tell me a company that does not have a monopoly on their own products? Do you know what a monopoly is?
but no preinstall option for their competitors software
This is true, although third parties are happy to sell machines with any software installed. Maybe it is because I can train a monkey to install software on OSX. You see you put the disc in the drive, a window opens, and you drag the program where you want it. If you can't manage it, well you're not really going to be using the computer anyway, so it really doesn't matter.
Gee, Dell offers me a choice of word processing software, MS office and even Word Perfect!
Yeah, but they have, get this, a monopoly on Dell brand computers. You can't do business with them and their monopoly.
I wouldn't see the point in developing for the Mac if Apple is just going to make a similar product anyway.
Apple includes many basic programs, and writes many more that they sell separately (not available as already installed though). But if you don't like a program Apple ships, you can just remove it and install a different one (or leave it and install a different one). If I want to uninstall Safari on OSX I, gasp, drag it to the trash. I I want to uninstall Explorer on Windows, I buy third party software that can manage to remove most of it that is not built into the core OS.
Anyway, thanks for the laughs. You should do comedy.
So, as a consumer I'm tasked to pay more and get less just to ensure that there always exists competition?
No. You as a rational being with some measure of foresight and strategy know that it is your own best interest not to pay someone to reduce your choices and gouge you on prices in the future. If you are too greedy or stupid to understand the ramifications of your (and other consumers) affect on the market, well then you will pay for it eventually.
Sun Tsu once wrote "Never provide your enemy with the means of your destruction" and from the context it was clear that he was talking about gaining a small benefit now while empowering those who will cause you harm in the future. The lowest price is not always the best deal. Would you buy your PVR service from the Klu Klux Klan if they were slightly cheaper? Would you do so if you were African American?
Cable companies are not the KKK. They are greedy monopolies that will do whatever makes them the most money. You are giving them more power over you, and giving them control of the market. You are very shortsighted. And you will not have choices, and will have inferior service in the future as a result.
Adding Ghz is probably not the best solution
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Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Ramping up clock speeds is hitting some serious limitations as far as increasing the work done by a machine is concerned. There are lots of ways to get work done faster. They are just harder to market without some good, popular, and independent benchmarking standards. At some point engine manufacturers realized that increasing the cubic centimeters of displacement in an engine was not the best way to make it faster or more powerful. Now most car reviews include horsepower. Clock speed is analogous to CCs.
The box I got from them costs me $5 a month, no additional fees.
Except whatever other costs they have that they roll into your, and everyone else's, cable bill. You get a PVR partially funded by people with regular cable, they get an expanded monopoly. In 2-5 years there is no competition, the PVR is limited in such a way as to extract the most amount of money from you, and TVs are less functional than they otherwise would have been. Thanks for contributing to destroying competition, and stifling innovation the monopoly way.
I just ordered DVR from Cox and it will be arriving at my house today. $10.95 a month instead of $12.95 for TiVo's service and now I can sell my TiVo on eBay.
Plus whatever other costs they have that they just roll into your (and everyone else's) cable subscription. You get a pvr partially funded by people who just have regular cable, the cable company gets to expand it's monopoly and screw you in 2 years by limiting the capabilities in such a way as to suck the most money out of you. Competition is destroyed, consumers are screwed, thanks genius.
Seems to me that it is very difficult to compete with this.
Yeah, it is hard to compete with a government sponsored monopoly that just rolls their costs into your cable bill. The sad thing is that while they do this, they just expand their monopoly and it ends up screwing the consumer. If Tivo and the like go away, what will happen to PVRs? Well they will exist in a crappy watered down form that allows you to record shows for a short while, severely restricts archiving shows, has special "live only" events, and basically does everything it can to suck more money out of you as often as possible. Thanks for helping to fund and support a lack of competition with your shortsightedness.
An interesting advance, but not really revolutionary. It does the same thing as magnetic media, just marginally better.
Your flash memory cards
Memory has been around for a long time, it has just gotten cheaper.
your digital cameras,
A more advanced camera, is not exactly a revolutionary new device. It is functionally the same as traditional cameras.
your LCD monitors
A thinner and lighter monitor with worse color and picture, wow yeah that is revolutionary.
your wireless internet,
It is a nice feature, but is pretty evolutionary, rather than revolutionary
your 3-D accelerators,
hmm, faster, more powerful video cards, they are nice, but again are just improving on an existing product.
your entire music collections in one device,
Like a record cabinet made smaller and more portable. This is pretty cool, and would qualify if I ever used one.
and most of all your cellphones.
telephone+walkie talkie
Transporters and cloaking devices may well be impossible, and nobody's said they're coming.
You keep using that word..I do not think it means what you think it means.:)
Laser guns are available but boring.
Yes, and cloaking devices are available from RealTree. I was speaking of a functional and practical handheld firearm that fires a laser beam to cut holes in things. I don't see any available as consumer devices.
Some of what you mention is indeed valuable tech, and convenient, but I'm not sure how much it revolutionizes the everyday persons life like cars, airplanes, firearms, or TNT. What large advances have been made?
this isn't about tying the iPod user into iTMS, it's about tying the iTMS users into iPod's.
Then perhaps you are looking at the wrong place. Apple has no monopoly on digital music, nor on music players. They can license or not license Fairplay as they choose (assuming they have those rights, which is actually an unknown). There is nothing illegal about making two products that only work together, provided you have no monopoly on either product. For example, I bought a data cable for my GPS the other day. It was stupidly expensive because it is a proprietary cable that only works with that GPS, and the interface is patented. Is this an illegal monopoly action? No, of course not. I can always buy a GPS from a manufacturer that uses a standard cable. It is tying products together. Now look at this from Apple's perspective. They wanted to sell digital music to go with their music player. What format can they use? Well they can use WMA, or hire someone to make one. Since they don't want to use an MS lock-in, they pretty much have to go with option 2, unless they are morons. After hiring someone to make a DRM format, and convincing the RIAA to let them sell music in that format (all subject to trade secrets so we don't know what restrictions their are on either license) they make it big. They are the most popular place to buy digital music downloads (70ish %). Why should they sacrifice their market lead to help subsidize the competition? If someone else wants to do the same thing, they can spend the R&D money and do it, and negotiate their own deal with the RIAA. Apple runs the ITMS as a break even proposition to help promote their ipod sales. Now why would a company run a break even music store to promote their competition's hardware sales?
No other device can play iTMS music.
And no other player can play Sony's proprietary min-disc format. I don't see how that has anything to do with being a monopoly.
please show me a music store selling MP3's.
There are quite a few overseas, including allofmp3.com, that take advantage of the Berne treaty. I have heard some argue the legality or ethics, but every lawyer I know has agreed that there is no legal problem with buying music from them currently.
So, how exactly can another company, say Real, enter the market for DRM-restricted music playable on an ipod and make money at it?
Hmm, I don't know if you are a troll or an idiot. Defining a market in terms of a subset of one manufacturer's goods is clearly ridiculous. Slightly rational people think in terms of functionally similar goods and services, like the digital music player market, or the digital music market. Not the DRM restircted music that will play on an Apple branded music player market. Or for that matter, the DRM restricted music that will play on a Sony branded music player market.
What is stopping any company from creating a music service and a digital music player that works with any open standard or given proprietary standard, and competing with Apple? There is only one huge stumbling block, it is called the RIAA, which is a convicted abusive monopoly, and which holds all the cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft was attempting to make their media viewing a bit easier by telling them the codec wasn't installed (rather than displaying their famous acid-trip screen saver) and that WMP could attempt to install it for them.
You are incorrect. This exploit has nothing to do with fetching codecs. It is a feature that will open a web page specified by the creator of the movie or song file, that is intended to allow the user to buy a license to use the media. Basically it is a "feature" whereby media player will see a movie, notice you don't have a DRM key for it, and open a web page so that you can buy said DRM key. Unfortunately, like usual MS was completely blinded by dollar signs and did not consider that arbitrary files could direct the user to any old web page, and since IE is full of holes, this makes it pitifully easy to use a media file as a trojan.
I have not looked at this exploit more than superficially so I am unsure if the media player will always open the page in IE, or if setting Firefox as your default browser will save you. I also do not know with what privilege level IE connects, at a guess I would think it is as you with the lowest security setting for that page, but it could be your default, or connect as "root." Someone also mentioned that there is a setting to disable this, but it does not seem to work.
It's partly the users' fault for
...expecting their computer to be reasonably secure by default, and not silently install programs from anyone who can lure you to a particular web page. Also for assuming that the computer equivalent of a stereo and VCR will not connect you to random places on the internet and randomly install programs. If Sony made it's consumer appliances like this, when you put a VCR tape in from your neighbor you would have to worry that it might make extra ads appear in the middle of your TV screen from that point on.
Ahhhhh, but if it was both easy to steal and about to explode, well, that problem just sort of solves itself, no?
You must work for Microsoft.
There are millions of people out there satisfied with their 56K modems.
I don't think anyone is satisfied with their 56K modem. They either have no choice since faster service is not available, or are not willing to pay the outrageous fees to their local monopoly. My parents, for example, always complain about how slow the internet is, but are not willing to pay the $80 a month extra to upgrade. If it was $5 or $10 or even $20 they would pay it, but at some point the gouging just gets ridiculous. Internet data/phone service should be considered a utility if the U.S. wants to be even remotely competitive educationally and economically. It should be regulated by the local government of the area and the infrastructure should be owned by that local government. Tax dollars should be allocated to make it a reality. I can't imagine how anyone justifies the granting of commercial monopolies in the U.S. They have never worked well, and always end up in massive corruption scandal and gouging of customers.
That is an interesting story. The laws vary so much from state to state and even within localities it is hard to know just when you are breaking the law. To be safe, I carry a very short (2 inch) pocket knife, that does not have an assisted open mechanism whenever I travel out of state. In my state, it is possible to get a concealed pistol permit, but you will still be prosecuted for carrying a larger knife alongside your gun.
As to whether or not you should admit to having a weapon, it is a dangerous game in some places. The law does not (as far as I know) compel you to admit anything, or any searches, but if you don't immediately present a weapon, when you have one when stopped by police, it is an additional felony in some places. In some places it will also get you a severe beating.
If you are worried about your personal safety, but want to stay on the good side of the law, there are two workarounds that are fairly popular. One is a heavy mag light. A number of cases against the police have set some pretty strong precedent that although flashlights can be used as weapons, they are not weapons by nature and thus are legal to carry in almost any situation. Similarly precedent has been set in some places to show that flare guns are not weapons. But I'll bet a mugger backs off it you shoot them with one :)
Short life cycles: Wow those G4 Powermacs didn't last long. And when their supplies run out that is the end of them other then buying them used on ebay.
Which is still better than Dell offers today. More companies buy from Dell than anyone else.They have very good prices, but if you order 200 desktops (as companies I worked for have done in the past) you have no guarantee that what is inside all the cases is the same. We had not only different hard drives, but completely different network cards show up in our order. Some had drivers for OpenBSD, some did not.
Your arguments are less than convincing. Apple is not so different from all the other hardware companies out there, except that they are both innovative enough, and successful enough that people actually pay attention to what they do. I've heard dozens of complaints that the macworld presentation is not going to be streamed live. When was the last time anyone complained that a dell presentation was not streamed live?
If I recall correctly, they were arrested for trespassing, which is both spurious given the lack of trespassing signs, and uncreative, given that they probably were breaking any number of obscure laws. No the arrests orchestrated by the Bush administration's PR commission are pretty much standard wrongful arrests under well known laws (what I referred to above as common law). The laws I was thinking of were more of the ones that say you can't swear in front of women, wear shorts, carry gasoline in a vehicle, dance on public property, have sex unless you are married, or travel to another state to buy beer.
That is an excellent resource that might come in handy for my visits across the border. I don't suppose that includes local and provincial laws though. I wish I could find something like this for Ireland. I'm planning a trip and was wondering about a number of laws. Oh well, it will most likely not be an issue. I'll just tell them I'm an American tourist and I'm sure they will let things slide (or possibly hit me with billy clubs).
They estimate that the US/EU/Japan together lose $80B/year.
I estimate that I too am losing billions a year because there are no laws forcing China, or anyone else, to pay me large sums of money. Unless this legal loophole is closed, I will be unable to employ anyone, and may have to consider postponing my multimillion dollar payments for materials to build a mansion. This in turn will cause great damage to the economy since all the jobs I would directly and indirectly cause will no longer exist, and all those theoretically people will starve. Please pass laws to force countries to give me money too. You don't want people to starve do you?
Why should China enforce IP law at all? They are doing no more than Americans did, disregarding the IP of Europe, during America's own industrial renaissance. The result was that the world surged forward technologically. Perhaps an economic boom in China will again pull the world forward. Perhaps the whole concept that intellectual property monopolies enforced by governments promote the creation of new ideas, art, and technology should be reexamined.
Everyone has done one of the following: tried drugs, infringed a copyright, exceeded the speed limit, drank alcohol underage, bought a violent video game for someone under 18, etc...
Your point is well taken but in most locations none of the things you listed will currently get you jail time. An important broken link in your criminalization chain is the police. The job of the police is to enforce the law through arrests and investigations. They only enforce a very small subset of the laws because the police don't really have much better of an idea what the laws are than the average citizen. They enforce the laws their bosses tell them to, and don't bother digging through law books for other things that are criminal.
I've always taken issue with the staggering number of incomprehensible, obscure, and contradictory laws. We certainly are all breaking laws on the books every day. Every child in our country knows that it is not fair to be punished for something that one was not informed was against the rules. If you tell any man, woman, or child that all the rules they need to follow are gathered in the three sets of legal volumes, consisting of millions of pages, stored in three different locations and written in a mishmash of english, old english, and latin, every one of them will realize the ridiculousness of being held responsible for breaking one of those rules. Instead we all follow a "common law" that is an amalgamation of rumors, common sense, and here-say. If the television show "Law and Order" were to start making up new laws and showing them being enforced, half the police officers and citizens in the country would start believing that they actually existed. Heck, some of the lawyers would buy it too. Hammurabi wrote his laws on a pillar in the center of town. We can't even find a list of ours in plain English. No one knows what all the laws are, and no one can be held morally responsible for violating them. Until the system changes drastically, ignorance is indeed an excuse.
I happen to know the legal expert on weapons in my state. He is a very successful lawyer who specializes in cases of concealed weapons and weapons violations. I asked him one day if it was legal to carry a pocket knife, and if so, how large. His answer, "No one knows." There are three contradictory laws listing legal blade lengths and one that specifically guarantees everyone the right to carry a hunting knife without specifying what that is. Other laws say that you can carry a blade so long as it is hidden, not hidden, shorter than a given length, or not for malicious purposes. His legal advice was that it is fine to carry a knife, but to be safe you should carry one shorter than 2.75 inches and keep it concealed. That violates two laws, but is in accordance with three. If it ever goes to court he claims that he will not have any problem showing that the laws contradict, and thus can't be enforced, which he has done in the past.
And that is a perfect example of why laws or more or less arbitrary and not worth looking up for a layman.
Similarly, we need a firebug to go around lighting people's houses on fire to show how having smoke detectors should be a high priority.
Agreed. There is no point in doing real harm in order to warn people about the potential for real harm. Writing a virus or worm that makes users type the word "vagina" in order to do anything, would probably provide as much warning about their insecurity, and put just as much pressure on MS to fix things, all without doing any real, intentional damage.
Of course any virus or worm potentially causes serious, unforeseen problems so the ethics are very questionable.
I have one of their older, non-HD tuner setups. It is much more user friendly than MythTV and is does save as standard mpeg-2, DV, etc.
Could you please name me ONE job or job category on Wintel (not a particular program) that a Mac cannot do?
OK. Here is one of the thousands of tasks that cannot currently be accomplished on a mac. Grab data from a RX-320 short wave radio control system. Not many people want to do that, but for those that do, there is no option for the mac. Aside from that, there are a few hundred thousand other device control systems and monitoring systems that have no mac software for control. Due to the relative size of the Mac user base, there are plenty of tasks that no one has bothered to provide support for. Something as common as jumping in on a game of half-life 2, is pretty much impossible. That is not to say that MacOS is not superior for many tasks, nor is it to deny that the underlying system provides more options, integration, and features. It does, however, reflect a reality that in the current marketplace there is a significant barrier to change for many individuals and users.
I was talking about what 99% of CONSUMERS generally use a computer for
Then you should have said that, rather than making arbitrary declarative statements that are untrue by themselves.
The last thing I want is a cell phone that uses the iPod wheel thingy. Feel is important for a phone. That way I don't have to go fumbling around to dial a number.
I don't think anyone is suggesting a cellphone without a keypad, although you never know. I'd actually be quite happy to have a wheel for my phone. 90% of my calls are people whose numbers are stored in my phone. Push a button, quickly scroll through a list, push dial. It would be much easier than what I do right now, push the phonebook button, select the get a number option, enter a number to indicate the first letter, push the down arrow till I reach the right number, select the number, and finally push the call button. Man that sucks. Bring on the scroll wheel.
If by "at some point" you mean after about (waves hands) 1935, you are incorrect...Anyway, in a feeble attempt to keep on topic, engine displacement is not a good analogy for chip clock frequency.
You are obviously not a motorcycle or snowmobile enthusiast. Think mid 90s. Think advertised still in some places. Many smaller, sport and recreation vehicles recently or still reference CCs, and use it as a selling point, just like clock speed. In most cases horsepower, acceleration, and top speed are really what consumers are interested in, but most consumers want one simple number for their simple minds. See any analogies with the computer industry yet? You can have machines with a large displacement that top out at lower speeds, and accelerate more slowly than machines with lesser displacement. This is very analogous to how some chips can perform more work, in less time while running at a lower clock speed. I think it a very apt analogy.
P.S. nice flashback, plush velour, crappy horsepower, orange 55, that was my brother's Oldsmobile all right.
So now Apple has a nice monopoly on OSX and Apple brand computers.
Congratulations someone thought this was funny enough to link to as an example of how stupid people can be. A company has a monopoly on their product and all products with their brand. Wow, that is brilliant. Can a genius like yourself tell me a company that does not have a monopoly on their own products? Do you know what a monopoly is?
but no preinstall option for their competitors software
This is true, although third parties are happy to sell machines with any software installed. Maybe it is because I can train a monkey to install software on OSX. You see you put the disc in the drive, a window opens, and you drag the program where you want it. If you can't manage it, well you're not really going to be using the computer anyway, so it really doesn't matter.
Gee, Dell offers me a choice of word processing software, MS office and even Word Perfect!
Yeah, but they have, get this, a monopoly on Dell brand computers. You can't do business with them and their monopoly.
I wouldn't see the point in developing for the Mac if Apple is just going to make a similar product anyway.
Apple includes many basic programs, and writes many more that they sell separately (not available as already installed though). But if you don't like a program Apple ships, you can just remove it and install a different one (or leave it and install a different one). If I want to uninstall Safari on OSX I, gasp, drag it to the trash. I I want to uninstall Explorer on Windows, I buy third party software that can manage to remove most of it that is not built into the core OS.
Anyway, thanks for the laughs. You should do comedy.
So, as a consumer I'm tasked to pay more and get less just to ensure that there always exists competition?
No. You as a rational being with some measure of foresight and strategy know that it is your own best interest not to pay someone to reduce your choices and gouge you on prices in the future. If you are too greedy or stupid to understand the ramifications of your (and other consumers) affect on the market, well then you will pay for it eventually.
Sun Tsu once wrote "Never provide your enemy with the means of your destruction" and from the context it was clear that he was talking about gaining a small benefit now while empowering those who will cause you harm in the future. The lowest price is not always the best deal. Would you buy your PVR service from the Klu Klux Klan if they were slightly cheaper? Would you do so if you were African American?
Cable companies are not the KKK. They are greedy monopolies that will do whatever makes them the most money. You are giving them more power over you, and giving them control of the market. You are very shortsighted. And you will not have choices, and will have inferior service in the future as a result.
Ramping up clock speeds is hitting some serious limitations as far as increasing the work done by a machine is concerned. There are lots of ways to get work done faster. They are just harder to market without some good, popular, and independent benchmarking standards. At some point engine manufacturers realized that increasing the cubic centimeters of displacement in an engine was not the best way to make it faster or more powerful. Now most car reviews include horsepower. Clock speed is analogous to CCs.
The box I got from them costs me $5 a month, no additional fees.
Except whatever other costs they have that they roll into your, and everyone else's, cable bill. You get a PVR partially funded by people with regular cable, they get an expanded monopoly. In 2-5 years there is no competition, the PVR is limited in such a way as to extract the most amount of money from you, and TVs are less functional than they otherwise would have been. Thanks for contributing to destroying competition, and stifling innovation the monopoly way.
I just ordered DVR from Cox and it will be arriving at my house today. $10.95 a month instead of $12.95 for TiVo's service and now I can sell my TiVo on eBay.
Plus whatever other costs they have that they just roll into your (and everyone else's) cable subscription. You get a pvr partially funded by people who just have regular cable, the cable company gets to expand it's monopoly and screw you in 2 years by limiting the capabilities in such a way as to suck the most money out of you. Competition is destroyed, consumers are screwed, thanks genius.
Seems to me that it is very difficult to compete with this.
Yeah, it is hard to compete with a government sponsored monopoly that just rolls their costs into your cable bill. The sad thing is that while they do this, they just expand their monopoly and it ends up screwing the consumer. If Tivo and the like go away, what will happen to PVRs? Well they will exist in a crappy watered down form that allows you to record shows for a short while, severely restricts archiving shows, has special "live only" events, and basically does everything it can to suck more money out of you as often as possible. Thanks for helping to fund and support a lack of competition with your shortsightedness.
EyeTV tuner: $160
RCA cloning cable: $40
Being able to burn any program and not having to worry about subscription fees: priceless.
What about your laser based optical storage?
An interesting advance, but not really revolutionary. It does the same thing as magnetic media, just marginally better.
Your flash memory cards
Memory has been around for a long time, it has just gotten cheaper.
your digital cameras,
A more advanced camera, is not exactly a revolutionary new device. It is functionally the same as traditional cameras.
your LCD monitors
A thinner and lighter monitor with worse color and picture, wow yeah that is revolutionary.
your wireless internet,
It is a nice feature, but is pretty evolutionary, rather than revolutionary
your 3-D accelerators,
hmm, faster, more powerful video cards, they are nice, but again are just improving on an existing product.
your entire music collections in one device,
Like a record cabinet made smaller and more portable. This is pretty cool, and would qualify if I ever used one.
and most of all your cellphones.
telephone+walkie talkie
Transporters and cloaking devices may well be impossible, and nobody's said they're coming.
You keep using that word..I do not think it means what you think it means. :)
Laser guns are available but boring.
Yes, and cloaking devices are available from RealTree. I was speaking of a functional and practical handheld firearm that fires a laser beam to cut holes in things. I don't see any available as consumer devices.
Some of what you mention is indeed valuable tech, and convenient, but I'm not sure how much it revolutionizes the everyday persons life like cars, airplanes, firearms, or TNT. What large advances have been made?
this isn't about tying the iPod user into iTMS, it's about tying the iTMS users into iPod's.
Then perhaps you are looking at the wrong place. Apple has no monopoly on digital music, nor on music players. They can license or not license Fairplay as they choose (assuming they have those rights, which is actually an unknown). There is nothing illegal about making two products that only work together, provided you have no monopoly on either product. For example, I bought a data cable for my GPS the other day. It was stupidly expensive because it is a proprietary cable that only works with that GPS, and the interface is patented. Is this an illegal monopoly action? No, of course not. I can always buy a GPS from a manufacturer that uses a standard cable. It is tying products together. Now look at this from Apple's perspective. They wanted to sell digital music to go with their music player. What format can they use? Well they can use WMA, or hire someone to make one. Since they don't want to use an MS lock-in, they pretty much have to go with option 2, unless they are morons. After hiring someone to make a DRM format, and convincing the RIAA to let them sell music in that format (all subject to trade secrets so we don't know what restrictions their are on either license) they make it big. They are the most popular place to buy digital music downloads (70ish %). Why should they sacrifice their market lead to help subsidize the competition? If someone else wants to do the same thing, they can spend the R&D money and do it, and negotiate their own deal with the RIAA. Apple runs the ITMS as a break even proposition to help promote their ipod sales. Now why would a company run a break even music store to promote their competition's hardware sales?
No other device can play iTMS music.
And no other player can play Sony's proprietary min-disc format. I don't see how that has anything to do with being a monopoly.
please show me a music store selling MP3's.
There are quite a few overseas, including allofmp3.com, that take advantage of the Berne treaty. I have heard some argue the legality or ethics, but every lawyer I know has agreed that there is no legal problem with buying music from them currently.
So, how exactly can another company, say Real, enter the market for DRM-restricted music playable on an ipod and make money at it?
Hmm, I don't know if you are a troll or an idiot. Defining a market in terms of a subset of one manufacturer's goods is clearly ridiculous. Slightly rational people think in terms of functionally similar goods and services, like the digital music player market, or the digital music market. Not the DRM restircted music that will play on an Apple branded music player market. Or for that matter, the DRM restricted music that will play on a Sony branded music player market.
What is stopping any company from creating a music service and a digital music player that works with any open standard or given proprietary standard, and competing with Apple? There is only one huge stumbling block, it is called the RIAA, which is a convicted abusive monopoly, and which holds all the cards.