And a lot more people who look at the whole "gotta buy the OS AND the hardware" thing will just say "Screw it! I'm sticking with windows".
If I could get a version of Apple's OS running on a generic whitebox PC I'd be willing to try it. Forking out a couple hundred bucks isn't such a big thing. But If I need to spend a couple thousand to buy a PC that is capable of running it (simply because of some sort of hardware recognition/locking mechanism) it just ain't gonna happen. I know that lots of other people think the same.
Maybe Apple should realise that selling an OS that runs on generic PCs is a good way to make money. They can still sell their premium packages (ie: a custom PC/Mac with OSX) and offer solid support for it, then sell a cheaper, generic package (ie: just the OS that runs on any PC) that offers bugger all support (kinda like MS).
Then instead of "If you have a choice between buying an Apple Machine at $2000, but you can build an even more powerful machine for that price or lower and stick a cracked copy of OS X on it, where will you spend your money?" It'd be "Spend less to build a similar machine AND buy the legit OS."
As for the original issue in the thread... I don't see anything wrong with Apple making changes. It's a beta under development so we should expect changes.
But ultimately they're not taking away the freedoms to play video games. Even for the kids. All they're doing is taking away the freedom to purchase them. Thereby forcing the parents to take a (slightly) more active role in what games their kids are playing. At least that's how it looks to me. The way I see the bill it looks like Mum or Dad can still go in and buy a "mature" game (like GTA or Doom3 or whatever) and then take it home for little Billy to play instead of just giving little Billy $50 to go buy whatever he likes.
Hopefully that means the parents spend at least a few minutes thinking about the game that little Billy wants.
I'd be more concerned with the complete banning of games to adults like we get in Australia - where we have no 18+ rating on video games:(
I wondered whether anyone else would pick up that comment. The immediate thing that struck me was that any game with ads would want to "dial home" to give them the ad viewing numbers. So does that mean you won't be able to play at all without an internet connection? Or will they at least have the courtesy of letting us play without a connection active?
I for one am sick of single player games wanting to connect to the internet for *any reason* (Half Life 2 anyone?) The fact they're trying to make money from advertising revenue and potentially making me connect to the net so they can get their payday is even worse.
I'd have no issues with advertising in game as long as it's not intrusive - either in game or because it wants a connection to the net.
Makes one wonder whether they're thinking about tying this sort of DRM into the proposed "smart cards" that they want to introduce over there. Weren't they proposing biometric info and RFID in the new ID cards? If they do then they could easily jump on that bandwagon.
Just imagine going to the video store... You have to use your new National ID card to get out the dvd. It's locked to your ID. You get home and have to swipe your ID card in the DVD player to then play that DVD.
Like everyone else says, if they make it too intrusive it won't work. The moment the majority of people refuse to embrace a technology (even if it's good) it's doomed. Just look at the whole Beta -v- VHS story. And that was a good technology not an awful one...
I don't believe you're correct with your statements about overnight success in the creative field being common. Frankly I believe it's not. Unless you're consdering 5+ years overnight success. I believe that the majority of authors (and musos) plug away for years basically on stuff that just "pays the bills". A single work may become a bestseller, but many authors/musos will have a considerable back catalog built up by then. So you can hardly call that overnight success.
If you go back to my example since copyright has expired on the previous books and they've moved into the public domain the author who has "just got by" for the last 20 years misses out when those books finally start reaping big rewards.
As for the copyright as a spur comment. If the author is getting bugger all on those first books there is an increased chance they will give up at some point. Cave in to the pressures of paying bills and stop creating because they can't see a reward.
You may be right that's artistic/technical is not a useful division. Or maybe it's just a matter of sitting down and nutting out how to make the division truly useful and how to cover situations where there is crossover between the two. Maybe the simplest answer is that a PC game is purely for entertainment value so it becomes classified as artistic the same as a book or a song or a movie.
Regarding the licensing/copyright with employees and companies. I still don't see that it's a bad situation. For one thing if it's legislated there can be rules on how the contracts are structured. For example, they could rule that a creator is entitled to a certain percentage of the profit as well as a salary. Or that after x number of years the license is no longer exclusive and the copyright owner gains the right to license it to other companies. It also means if a company goes belly up there is no confusion over who owns the copyright. Similarly, if the legislation were written right licenses would be non transferrable. So IBM couldn't sell the license to Microsoft. It'd rely on the creators consent to sell the license.
And considering most of us already sign some form of contract when we get a job I don't see it as being a huge additional expense. The vast majority of jobs would have very simple contracts with standard clauses straight out of the legislation. It'd only be the more (for want of a better word) important jobs where there'd be more contract wrangling involved. And frankly those sort of jobs probably already involve quite a bit of wrangling on both sides.
As for the comment about the company bearing all the risk - so you'd be advocating that the MPAA and RIAA are doing the right thing, as are sony, BMG, Warner etc? That in fact the artists are doing just fine?
I realise I'm rolling up patents and copyright. I'd also like to roll trademarks up as well. Create a single blanket IP policy rather than splitting it up the way it is.
That's exactly what I was thinking when I got a Motorola a920. It's a big phone, but it's not so big when you look at it as a PDA, music player, camera and phone. That said, it's got flaws and I wish now that I'd bought an O2 or a smartphone (same thing different brand).
I think convergence is good. Sure if your phone plays up (or is stolen) you lose your PDA, camera and music player. But the convenience of a single device makes up for that, in my mind at least. It's already a pain trying to grab everything I need on the way to work in the morning. If I had a separate MP3 player and pda that'd be just two more things I'd probably forget. When it's all in a phone I know I won't forget that. And of course a single device is smaller and easier to cart around than several smaller ones.
The battery use when playing MP3s is actually quite good on my phone. Basically because the big killer on battery life with these phones is the screen. Since the screen is not active while playing music it doesn't consume too much. We do still need better battery technology though (regardless of whether you want three devices or just one).
That's where fine tuning comes into it. Like I suggested there is no reason that you can't have a buy outright option as well as a pay per play option.
Regarding partial plays... well that raises an interesting question. Do they get billed or not? Again that's something that could be fine tuned (pardon the pun). They could potentially be billed on a time played basis. For that matter it'd probably be better to pay based on time played rather than songs played. Otherwise punk tracks that are 2 minutes long are poor value compared to 18 minute prog rock epics.
On the amount played note... I'm curious where your stats come from and what the duration is? Because that comes out about 100 days of continous music, non-stop. that's making a couple assumptions about track length and number of plays of course. I'll take a look at my audioscrobbler stats later tonight to see what sort of usage I have (simply as a point of comparison).
The whole logic behind pay as you play is that you can use it anywhere - just as long as any time you play it you pay the fee. As long as they're getting a slice they wouldn't care if you're doing that on your PC/car/home stereo/walkman/whatever.
Now just think, if the micropayment is 1c like I mentioned. How many plays does it take to hit $20? Two thousand of course. Now I suppose we should divide that up since the average CD has say 10 tracks on it. So that gives you 200 plays of each track before you hit the $20 that the CD would cost normally.
Now unless you have nothing else in your music collection it's unlikely that you'll hit 200 plays even over 10 years. Also, bear in mind that we're talking about an economic decision that will balance out over your entire music collection. So even if you do absolutely love one song and play it ten times a day, every day the net effect is that it will work out cheaper because those other CDs that you bought on a $20 CD that you listen to maybe once a month suddenly become much cheaper.
The only people who would be disadvantaged would be people who only have an extremely limited playlist. Anyone with more than a few dozen tracks is going to be better off.
eg: Buy a 10 track CD for $20 (therefore $2/song). You play 5 of those songs once a year, 3 of them once a month and 2 of them once a day. That would result in $7.71 costs for the year. Bear in mind of course that your play frequency is likely to drop of drastically as you get new tracks. Personally I can't think of any song I own that wouldn't eventually give me the sh*ts hearing it every single day.
A positive effect this has is the company (and the artist) gets rewarded for the tracks that are actually being listened to. And NOT the ones that are filler on a CD, or for that matter the crap CDs that good bands put out every now and then to meet contractual obligations. To some extent iTunes (and similar) accomplish this by allowing you to buy a single track. However, there is still no indicator of how often a track is played.
And even if that wasn't a persuasive enough argument there is still no reason they can't come up with two forms of licensing - buy outright and pay to play. The concept is no different to buying a DVD or renting it from blockbuster.
Interesting comments. I'd rather see copyrights divided into two categories technical and artistic. Preferably with different durations for each. I think artistic copyrights could be longer to allow the individual creators their due and to allow for the fact that many creative works aren't an overnight success. Taht said, I still don't know what I'd consider a reasonable duration. Creators life sounds good, but what if they die just after creating whatever.
As an example, look at an author who writes a novel a year for 20 years. The first 19 don't hit a market but the 20th sells like hotcakes. At that point there is a strong chance that his entire back catalog will start to sell in large numbers. If the copyrights have expired too early (s)he could lose out on profits from the majority of those books. Same applies to bands and to a lesser extent directors/actors.
I'd suggest a division in offenses too. I'd like to see a stronger demarcation between commercial and non-commercial infringement. If little Johnny borrows a CD off his friend and makes a copy that shouldn't be treated the same as a person actually making money from the situation by creating non-official duplicate CDs and selling them on the street.
The problems I can see with dividing into two classes of copyright (Artistic/technical) is that you get cross over in certain situations. While it seems pretty clear that a music CD is artistic and a word processing app is technical, where does a game like Myst sit? Or a book that explains how to use the aforementioned word processor?
I also see issues with copyright between individuals and companies. Although that could be resolved by legislating that all copyright (IP) remains with the individual creator and then relying on contractual law to license out the technology to the company. So effectively the Word processing app is owned by the team who wrote it, but the company has a license to produce it and profit from it.
Maybe there also needs to be some sort of "For the public good" provision as well. So inventions that improve quality of life (medicines and agricultural developments mainly) would have different copyright regulations to things like a better word processor or Britney's latest album.
Playing devil's advocate for a second, paying every time you play a song isn't necessarily a bad idea. IF (and this is a big if) the payment scheme is reasonable and easy to use. If there was a micropayment system where it cost you 1c every time you played a track would you mind? I wouldn't. I know I've paid $20 for a CD with 10 tracks that I've listened to maybe 4 or 5 times in the past ten years.
Of course the whole idea breaks down at the payment stage. How do you collect the payments and push them to the people who deserve (ahem) them? And how does a 5 year old listening to the Wiggles manage to pay without a credit card and a net connection?
I think you're right on the money there. And to take that further I think ultimately the decision over whether we get an exemption of a right is how much money certain "interested parties" throw the way of Govt. We'll see a similar situation to Harradine controlling issues from a few years back.
I think you missed the point of what this process is about (either that or I've misread something). Sure the *Current* fair dealing provisions are lousy. But they're talking about reviewing and extending those fair dealing provisions to cover other areas of fair use that benefits private individuals such as time shifting and format converson (and possibly other things too).
At that point the legislation will cover those fair use areas that it's missing so we will gain new protection that we currently lack.
In theory that sounds great. In practise it isn't. Going through the judicial system still favours the side with the most money. And who will the side be that has the most money when we're talking copyright? ARIA or the Aussie equivalent of the MPAA of course.
If I had to go to court tomorrow I'd have to sell my car and most of what I own just to be able to afford decent representation. As I see it that's the biggest flaw with the first option. If we had a free judicial system then great!
I *hate* the first option because then you're relying on the judicial system. If you're wealthy then you have a better chance of a decision in your favour than Joe Average who doesn't have the money to pay for a top solicitor and barristers. Not to forget that courts have the horrible tendency to view a single precedent as concrete and be unwilling to overturn that decision in future.
Not really sure what they're trying to say there. Are they suggesting adding a clause simply called "fair use" and then leaving it open to interpretation? How is that different to 1?
The third suggestion sounds fair but limited. ie: They'll define a few situations where it's ok but miss other upcoming possibilities. Which means in two years time we might be all screaming for copyright reform again.
Personally I like option four but I can't see that one getting through. The lobbyists from a few big media companies will never allow that. The benefits I see there are that it's clear cut what you have a right to copy and that it's not a matter for interpretation by a court. This means it's available to the common man (you can easily spend $20 to get a copy of the legislation).
I can certainly understand their concerns about how it's going to mesh with licensing and particulary DRM. We've already had a ruling that it was legal to mod a Playstation here when the purpose is to allow playing of legally purchased media from other countries. This has since been overruled (sigh). I can see the same problems if we get given a statutory license to copy a DVD or a game for private use. If the copy is protected with DRM then we have to be able to circumvent it. But that is at odds with the DMCA (or our equivalent).
You ain't the only one. I don't see why more companies can't at least take the same approach as Serious Sam. Exactly the same maps, exactly the same goals, nothing that *needs* co-op players. But hell! You want to play co-op then get some friends in there and play.
They could have done the same thing in Doom3. Just let a friend spawn within a few feet of you on the map. Set it so you can't trigger the exit points unless they're in there with you. Give the monsters some percentage more health and tadah! Basic co-op multiplayer.
I dunno. I think it'd be awesome to have *true* 3d (holographic) TV. Pausing it and looking at something from any angle would be very cool. Not to mention the feeling of immersion that you get from 3d (even crappy pseudo 3d like Jaws 3d).
I think the reason we still have 2d TV is not because 3d TV isn't a good idea. It's more because they haven't come up with a simple, foolproof, reasonably inexpensive technology to do it yet.
Actually one of the main reasons not to leave the case of (aside from dust and curious pets) is that it changes the airflow characteristics. If you have a closed case with fans in strategic locations you're directing the airflow rather than just scattering it over the whole inside of the case.
There was a little snippet I saw at Gizmag about radical new approaches to display devices and interfaces. Some of the more interesting ideas included involving other senses so you got tactile feedback not just sight/sound. Another one of the interesting ideas was projecting images onto a 3d globe so you could view and manipulate data on the globe.
Maybe... assuming that everything works properly and plugging that AGP card in doesn't automatically disable the onboard video. And of course there are the added drawbacks that a lot of onboard stuff is lowest common denominator. Sure you get network without having to buy a new NIC but it's crappy quality and the drivers use 5% CPU compared to 1% for an addon NIC. Same goes for sound and a lot of the other features.
Sometimes paying the extra for a bare bones enthusiast board is better. Less driver hassles, less components that can fail etc. *shrugs* Either way it's probably more important to buy on build quality than bells and whistles.
That's your take on what he wrote. The way I interpret it when I read his comment is that if he's willing to eat meat from a supermarket he'd be a hypocrit if he wasn't willing to kill an animal to get it. We'll have to wait and see what (if) he replies:)
As for the eating meat thing... Judging from your #2 reason I'm assuming you're vegetarian. Frankly I don't see anything wrong with eating meat, but if you don't choose to then fair enough. I don't think becoming a vegetarian because someone says so is going to convince most people. On the other hand actually seeing animals slaughtered (either in an abatoir or hunting) is more likely to promote the response that eating animals is bad. So I reckon hunting is more likely to encourage vegetarianism.
And as if you'd kill an animal just as an educational point. I already gave the reasons I see as valid for hunting and that ain't in there. Using it as a learning exercise is for want of a better description, a side benefit.
You got that right. If I'm going to buy a console I want one of two things - a standard size and shape unit that will slot nicely in with my other home entertainment components, or something that looks cool so I don't mind it sitting on my coffee table. Not something that looks like a kinda crappy small PC.
Looks like they've tried to go for some style by making it curved and standing it upright. Pity that makes it unstable. There were so many people crying about the old xbox falling on people (mainly cos it was so heavy). How much easier is it going to be to knock over if it's stood on end?
I want a console that's a nice brushed aluminium DVD player sized "box".
Not to answer for the other guy but maybe you're missing the point. Maybe what he's saying is that he hunts for the food not for the fun of it. There are quite a few people who would be really upset if you told them you shot a deer yet they'd happily buy venison in a butchers. *They're* the hypocrits.
I see nothing wrong with hunting in a few situations - Food, vermin control, herd population control and to remove dangerous animals. Hunting purely for fun strikes me as wasteful and cruel and I don't believe in the hunting of rare, endangered animals (unless it's for the last two reasons).
As a kid I went hunting with my Dad (for both vermin control and food) and it gave me a greater insight into just what I was eating. So many kids seem to think that steak they see in the supermarket just miraculously appears they don't realise it came from a live animal that had to be killed and slaughtered.
Who knows whether it's a side effect. But I must admit I use the occasional reboots required by drivers updates as a chance to flush out all the annoying memory leaks that *still* plague windows. Sadly even with all their vaunted changes after a fortnight windows really does need to be rebooted. At least if you're like me and running a whole bunch of apps/games.
I'd rather they finally do something to resolve the memory leaks first. Bugs me no end to start my PC and see 135MB ram used, run a game, close the game and see 212MB used, run Internet explorer, close IE and see 214MB used and so on. After two weeks it's not uncommon to see several hundred MB used when nothing (supposedly) is running.
Oh and I forgot... I wonder how many engineers who work(ed) for companies like ATI and nVidia would jump aboard the open source project simply to see some of their designs implemented? They've probably got ideas that the management at their current company refuse to implement that could be used in an Open Source situation.
Of course that would depend on whether they still own the IP...
What I can see is the chip being designed this way without a physical board every being produced. Then bigger companies like ATI or nVidia could buy in and use the design. (When I say buy in I don't mean pay for it). So ultimately your Open Source hardware could be made by one of the big companies anyway. Or more likely one of the middle tier companies.
If you think about it, it's a great way for a midrange company to get into the video card market. The r&d and design work is done by someone else, the drivers would most likely be done by someone else. All they'd need to do is bankroll the physical production of the card. If it's successful they can throw the crew developing the open source hardware some sponsorship and encourage further development.
Slashdot Mirror
And a lot more people who look at the whole "gotta buy the OS AND the hardware" thing will just say "Screw it! I'm sticking with windows".
If I could get a version of Apple's OS running on a generic whitebox PC I'd be willing to try it. Forking out a couple hundred bucks isn't such a big thing. But If I need to spend a couple thousand to buy a PC that is capable of running it (simply because of some sort of hardware recognition/locking mechanism) it just ain't gonna happen. I know that lots of other people think the same.
Maybe Apple should realise that selling an OS that runs on generic PCs is a good way to make money. They can still sell their premium packages (ie: a custom PC/Mac with OSX) and offer solid support for it, then sell a cheaper, generic package (ie: just the OS that runs on any PC) that offers bugger all support (kinda like MS).
Then instead of "If you have a choice between buying an Apple Machine at $2000, but you can build an even more powerful machine for that price or lower and stick a cracked copy of OS X on it, where will you spend your money?" It'd be "Spend less to build a similar machine AND buy the legit OS."
As for the original issue in the thread... I don't see anything wrong with Apple making changes. It's a beta under development so we should expect changes.
But ultimately they're not taking away the freedoms to play video games. Even for the kids. All they're doing is taking away the freedom to purchase them. Thereby forcing the parents to take a (slightly) more active role in what games their kids are playing. At least that's how it looks to me. The way I see the bill it looks like Mum or Dad can still go in and buy a "mature" game (like GTA or Doom3 or whatever) and then take it home for little Billy to play instead of just giving little Billy $50 to go buy whatever he likes. Hopefully that means the parents spend at least a few minutes thinking about the game that little Billy wants. I'd be more concerned with the complete banning of games to adults like we get in Australia - where we have no 18+ rating on video games :(
I wondered whether anyone else would pick up that comment. The immediate thing that struck me was that any game with ads would want to "dial home" to give them the ad viewing numbers. So does that mean you won't be able to play at all without an internet connection? Or will they at least have the courtesy of letting us play without a connection active?
I for one am sick of single player games wanting to connect to the internet for *any reason* (Half Life 2 anyone?) The fact they're trying to make money from advertising revenue and potentially making me connect to the net so they can get their payday is even worse.
I'd have no issues with advertising in game as long as it's not intrusive - either in game or because it wants a connection to the net.
Makes one wonder whether they're thinking about tying this sort of DRM into the proposed "smart cards" that they want to introduce over there. Weren't they proposing biometric info and RFID in the new ID cards? If they do then they could easily jump on that bandwagon.
Just imagine going to the video store... You have to use your new National ID card to get out the dvd. It's locked to your ID. You get home and have to swipe your ID card in the DVD player to then play that DVD.
Like everyone else says, if they make it too intrusive it won't work. The moment the majority of people refuse to embrace a technology (even if it's good) it's doomed. Just look at the whole Beta -v- VHS story. And that was a good technology not an awful one...
I don't believe you're correct with your statements about overnight success in the creative field being common. Frankly I believe it's not. Unless you're consdering 5+ years overnight success. I believe that the majority of authors (and musos) plug away for years basically on stuff that just "pays the bills". A single work may become a bestseller, but many authors/musos will have a considerable back catalog built up by then. So you can hardly call that overnight success.
If you go back to my example since copyright has expired on the previous books and they've moved into the public domain the author who has "just got by" for the last 20 years misses out when those books finally start reaping big rewards.
As for the copyright as a spur comment. If the author is getting bugger all on those first books there is an increased chance they will give up at some point. Cave in to the pressures of paying bills and stop creating because they can't see a reward.
You may be right that's artistic/technical is not a useful division. Or maybe it's just a matter of sitting down and nutting out how to make the division truly useful and how to cover situations where there is crossover between the two. Maybe the simplest answer is that a PC game is purely for entertainment value so it becomes classified as artistic the same as a book or a song or a movie.
Regarding the licensing/copyright with employees and companies. I still don't see that it's a bad situation. For one thing if it's legislated there can be rules on how the contracts are structured. For example, they could rule that a creator is entitled to a certain percentage of the profit as well as a salary. Or that after x number of years the license is no longer exclusive and the copyright owner gains the right to license it to other companies. It also means if a company goes belly up there is no confusion over who owns the copyright. Similarly, if the legislation were written right licenses would be non transferrable. So IBM couldn't sell the license to Microsoft. It'd rely on the creators consent to sell the license.
And considering most of us already sign some form of contract when we get a job I don't see it as being a huge additional expense. The vast majority of jobs would have very simple contracts with standard clauses straight out of the legislation. It'd only be the more (for want of a better word) important jobs where there'd be more contract wrangling involved. And frankly those sort of jobs probably already involve quite a bit of wrangling on both sides.
As for the comment about the company bearing all the risk - so you'd be advocating that the MPAA and RIAA are doing the right thing, as are sony, BMG, Warner etc? That in fact the artists are doing just fine?
I realise I'm rolling up patents and copyright. I'd also like to roll trademarks up as well. Create a single blanket IP policy rather than splitting it up the way it is.
That's exactly what I was thinking when I got a Motorola a920. It's a big phone, but it's not so big when you look at it as a PDA, music player, camera and phone. That said, it's got flaws and I wish now that I'd bought an O2 or a smartphone (same thing different brand).
I think convergence is good. Sure if your phone plays up (or is stolen) you lose your PDA, camera and music player. But the convenience of a single device makes up for that, in my mind at least. It's already a pain trying to grab everything I need on the way to work in the morning. If I had a separate MP3 player and pda that'd be just two more things I'd probably forget. When it's all in a phone I know I won't forget that. And of course a single device is smaller and easier to cart around than several smaller ones.
The battery use when playing MP3s is actually quite good on my phone. Basically because the big killer on battery life with these phones is the screen. Since the screen is not active while playing music it doesn't consume too much. We do still need better battery technology though (regardless of whether you want three devices or just one).
That's where fine tuning comes into it. Like I suggested there is no reason that you can't have a buy outright option as well as a pay per play option.
Regarding partial plays... well that raises an interesting question. Do they get billed or not? Again that's something that could be fine tuned (pardon the pun). They could potentially be billed on a time played basis. For that matter it'd probably be better to pay based on time played rather than songs played. Otherwise punk tracks that are 2 minutes long are poor value compared to 18 minute prog rock epics.
On the amount played note... I'm curious where your stats come from and what the duration is? Because that comes out about 100 days of continous music, non-stop. that's making a couple assumptions about track length and number of plays of course. I'll take a look at my audioscrobbler stats later tonight to see what sort of usage I have (simply as a point of comparison).
The whole logic behind pay as you play is that you can use it anywhere - just as long as any time you play it you pay the fee. As long as they're getting a slice they wouldn't care if you're doing that on your PC/car/home stereo/walkman/whatever.
Now just think, if the micropayment is 1c like I mentioned. How many plays does it take to hit $20? Two thousand of course. Now I suppose we should divide that up since the average CD has say 10 tracks on it. So that gives you 200 plays of each track before you hit the $20 that the CD would cost normally.
Now unless you have nothing else in your music collection it's unlikely that you'll hit 200 plays even over 10 years. Also, bear in mind that we're talking about an economic decision that will balance out over your entire music collection. So even if you do absolutely love one song and play it ten times a day, every day the net effect is that it will work out cheaper because those other CDs that you bought on a $20 CD that you listen to maybe once a month suddenly become much cheaper.
The only people who would be disadvantaged would be people who only have an extremely limited playlist. Anyone with more than a few dozen tracks is going to be better off.
eg: Buy a 10 track CD for $20 (therefore $2/song). You play 5 of those songs once a year, 3 of them once a month and 2 of them once a day. That would result in $7.71 costs for the year. Bear in mind of course that your play frequency is likely to drop of drastically as you get new tracks. Personally I can't think of any song I own that wouldn't eventually give me the sh*ts hearing it every single day.
A positive effect this has is the company (and the artist) gets rewarded for the tracks that are actually being listened to. And NOT the ones that are filler on a CD, or for that matter the crap CDs that good bands put out every now and then to meet contractual obligations. To some extent iTunes (and similar) accomplish this by allowing you to buy a single track. However, there is still no indicator of how often a track is played.
And even if that wasn't a persuasive enough argument there is still no reason they can't come up with two forms of licensing - buy outright and pay to play. The concept is no different to buying a DVD or renting it from blockbuster.
Interesting comments. I'd rather see copyrights divided into two categories technical and artistic. Preferably with different durations for each. I think artistic copyrights could be longer to allow the individual creators their due and to allow for the fact that many creative works aren't an overnight success. Taht said, I still don't know what I'd consider a reasonable duration. Creators life sounds good, but what if they die just after creating whatever.
As an example, look at an author who writes a novel a year for 20 years. The first 19 don't hit a market but the 20th sells like hotcakes. At that point there is a strong chance that his entire back catalog will start to sell in large numbers. If the copyrights have expired too early (s)he could lose out on profits from the majority of those books. Same applies to bands and to a lesser extent directors/actors.
I'd suggest a division in offenses too. I'd like to see a stronger demarcation between commercial and non-commercial infringement. If little Johnny borrows a CD off his friend and makes a copy that shouldn't be treated the same as a person actually making money from the situation by creating non-official duplicate CDs and selling them on the street.
The problems I can see with dividing into two classes of copyright (Artistic/technical) is that you get cross over in certain situations. While it seems pretty clear that a music CD is artistic and a word processing app is technical, where does a game like Myst sit? Or a book that explains how to use the aforementioned word processor?
I also see issues with copyright between individuals and companies. Although that could be resolved by legislating that all copyright (IP) remains with the individual creator and then relying on contractual law to license out the technology to the company. So effectively the Word processing app is owned by the team who wrote it, but the company has a license to produce it and profit from it.
Maybe there also needs to be some sort of "For the public good" provision as well. So inventions that improve quality of life (medicines and agricultural developments mainly) would have different copyright regulations to things like a better word processor or Britney's latest album.
Playing devil's advocate for a second, paying every time you play a song isn't necessarily a bad idea. IF (and this is a big if) the payment scheme is reasonable and easy to use. If there was a micropayment system where it cost you 1c every time you played a track would you mind? I wouldn't. I know I've paid $20 for a CD with 10 tracks that I've listened to maybe 4 or 5 times in the past ten years.
Of course the whole idea breaks down at the payment stage. How do you collect the payments and push them to the people who deserve (ahem) them? And how does a 5 year old listening to the Wiggles manage to pay without a credit card and a net connection?
I think you're right on the money there. And to take that further I think ultimately the decision over whether we get an exemption of a right is how much money certain "interested parties" throw the way of Govt. We'll see a similar situation to Harradine controlling issues from a few years back.
I think you missed the point of what this process is about (either that or I've misread something). Sure the *Current* fair dealing provisions are lousy. But they're talking about reviewing and extending those fair dealing provisions to cover other areas of fair use that benefits private individuals such as time shifting and format converson (and possibly other things too).
At that point the legislation will cover those fair use areas that it's missing so we will gain new protection that we currently lack.
In theory that sounds great. In practise it isn't. Going through the judicial system still favours the side with the most money. And who will the side be that has the most money when we're talking copyright? ARIA or the Aussie equivalent of the MPAA of course.
If I had to go to court tomorrow I'd have to sell my car and most of what I own just to be able to afford decent representation. As I see it that's the biggest flaw with the first option. If we had a free judicial system then great!
I *hate* the first option because then you're relying on the judicial system. If you're wealthy then you have a better chance of a decision in your favour than Joe Average who doesn't have the money to pay for a top solicitor and barristers. Not to forget that courts have the horrible tendency to view a single precedent as concrete and be unwilling to overturn that decision in future.
Not really sure what they're trying to say there. Are they suggesting adding a clause simply called "fair use" and then leaving it open to interpretation? How is that different to 1?
The third suggestion sounds fair but limited. ie: They'll define a few situations where it's ok but miss other upcoming possibilities. Which means in two years time we might be all screaming for copyright reform again.
Personally I like option four but I can't see that one getting through. The lobbyists from a few big media companies will never allow that. The benefits I see there are that it's clear cut what you have a right to copy and that it's not a matter for interpretation by a court. This means it's available to the common man (you can easily spend $20 to get a copy of the legislation).
I can certainly understand their concerns about how it's going to mesh with licensing and particulary DRM. We've already had a ruling that it was legal to mod a Playstation here when the purpose is to allow playing of legally purchased media from other countries. This has since been overruled (sigh). I can see the same problems if we get given a statutory license to copy a DVD or a game for private use. If the copy is protected with DRM then we have to be able to circumvent it. But that is at odds with the DMCA (or our equivalent).
You ain't the only one. I don't see why more companies can't at least take the same approach as Serious Sam. Exactly the same maps, exactly the same goals, nothing that *needs* co-op players. But hell! You want to play co-op then get some friends in there and play.
They could have done the same thing in Doom3. Just let a friend spawn within a few feet of you on the map. Set it so you can't trigger the exit points unless they're in there with you. Give the monsters some percentage more health and tadah! Basic co-op multiplayer.
I dunno. I think it'd be awesome to have *true* 3d (holographic) TV. Pausing it and looking at something from any angle would be very cool. Not to mention the feeling of immersion that you get from 3d (even crappy pseudo 3d like Jaws 3d).
I think the reason we still have 2d TV is not because 3d TV isn't a good idea. It's more because they haven't come up with a simple, foolproof, reasonably inexpensive technology to do it yet.
Actually one of the main reasons not to leave the case of (aside from dust and curious pets) is that it changes the airflow characteristics. If you have a closed case with fans in strategic locations you're directing the airflow rather than just scattering it over the whole inside of the case.
There was a little snippet I saw at Gizmag about radical new approaches to display devices and interfaces. Some of the more interesting ideas included involving other senses so you got tactile feedback not just sight/sound. Another one of the interesting ideas was projecting images onto a 3d globe so you could view and manipulate data on the globe.
Maybe... assuming that everything works properly and plugging that AGP card in doesn't automatically disable the onboard video. And of course there are the added drawbacks that a lot of onboard stuff is lowest common denominator. Sure you get network without having to buy a new NIC but it's crappy quality and the drivers use 5% CPU compared to 1% for an addon NIC. Same goes for sound and a lot of the other features.
Sometimes paying the extra for a bare bones enthusiast board is better. Less driver hassles, less components that can fail etc. *shrugs* Either way it's probably more important to buy on build quality than bells and whistles.
That's your take on what he wrote. The way I interpret it when I read his comment is that if he's willing to eat meat from a supermarket he'd be a hypocrit if he wasn't willing to kill an animal to get it. We'll have to wait and see what (if) he replies :)
As for the eating meat thing... Judging from your #2 reason I'm assuming you're vegetarian. Frankly I don't see anything wrong with eating meat, but if you don't choose to then fair enough. I don't think becoming a vegetarian because someone says so is going to convince most people. On the other hand actually seeing animals slaughtered (either in an abatoir or hunting) is more likely to promote the response that eating animals is bad. So I reckon hunting is more likely to encourage vegetarianism.
And as if you'd kill an animal just as an educational point. I already gave the reasons I see as valid for hunting and that ain't in there. Using it as a learning exercise is for want of a better description, a side benefit.
You got that right. If I'm going to buy a console I want one of two things - a standard size and shape unit that will slot nicely in with my other home entertainment components, or something that looks cool so I don't mind it sitting on my coffee table. Not something that looks like a kinda crappy small PC.
Looks like they've tried to go for some style by making it curved and standing it upright. Pity that makes it unstable. There were so many people crying about the old xbox falling on people (mainly cos it was so heavy). How much easier is it going to be to knock over if it's stood on end?
I want a console that's a nice brushed aluminium DVD player sized "box".
Not to answer for the other guy but maybe you're missing the point. Maybe what he's saying is that he hunts for the food not for the fun of it. There are quite a few people who would be really upset if you told them you shot a deer yet they'd happily buy venison in a butchers. *They're* the hypocrits.
I see nothing wrong with hunting in a few situations - Food, vermin control, herd population control and to remove dangerous animals. Hunting purely for fun strikes me as wasteful and cruel and I don't believe in the hunting of rare, endangered animals (unless it's for the last two reasons).
As a kid I went hunting with my Dad (for both vermin control and food) and it gave me a greater insight into just what I was eating. So many kids seem to think that steak they see in the supermarket just miraculously appears they don't realise it came from a live animal that had to be killed and slaughtered.
Who knows whether it's a side effect. But I must admit I use the occasional reboots required by drivers updates as a chance to flush out all the annoying memory leaks that *still* plague windows. Sadly even with all their vaunted changes after a fortnight windows really does need to be rebooted. At least if you're like me and running a whole bunch of apps/games.
I'd rather they finally do something to resolve the memory leaks first. Bugs me no end to start my PC and see 135MB ram used, run a game, close the game and see 212MB used, run Internet explorer, close IE and see 214MB used and so on. After two weeks it's not uncommon to see several hundred MB used when nothing (supposedly) is running.
Oh and I forgot... I wonder how many engineers who work(ed) for companies like ATI and nVidia would jump aboard the open source project simply to see some of their designs implemented? They've probably got ideas that the management at their current company refuse to implement that could be used in an Open Source situation.
Of course that would depend on whether they still own the IP...
What I can see is the chip being designed this way without a physical board every being produced. Then bigger companies like ATI or nVidia could buy in and use the design. (When I say buy in I don't mean pay for it). So ultimately your Open Source hardware could be made by one of the big companies anyway. Or more likely one of the middle tier companies.
If you think about it, it's a great way for a midrange company to get into the video card market. The r&d and design work is done by someone else, the drivers would most likely be done by someone else. All they'd need to do is bankroll the physical production of the card. If it's successful they can throw the crew developing the open source hardware some sponsorship and encourage further development.