The ability to print archivally is pretty cool, but I wonder who's paper it really is. Zazzle "GOLD MATTE" isn't a paper I've seen on the shelves anywhere.
Well, there's always the substantial aftermarket for ex-government employees. Typically, they have a score of inside contacts, a government pedigree and difficult to obtain security clearances that all increase the earning power of any person on the consulting market.
So there is some incentive to working in the government.
I'd also suggest that there still exist a number of people in the federal government who are there to actually serve the country instead of simply being employed by it.
Also, while the actual work in securing the IT network of a company like Walmart may be more substantial in some ways, having a credential like DHS on your resume and the associated security clearance would greatly increase your marketability once you have left the organization for the private sector.
If you're marketing yourself towards the security field, any security consulting company would salivate to have a high-level ex-government information security officer on the payroll.
Actually, I believe that shutting down napster did have an effect. There was a good long period of time where Napster was the utopia of music. It was like the world's largest music store, and best of all, everything was freely available at the click of a mouse.
Almost everyone I knew had used napster at one time or another to download a song, and there were many people who'd amassed hard drives full of copyrighted music. Because napster was so easy to use, it had almost become a cultural thing and I think a lot of people skimmed by the fact that what they were doing was illegal. These people then started to hear reports in the news about how the RIAA was going after people, and maybe that gave a few of them pause, but file trading didn't really abate that much.
I think it wasn't until Napster shut down that it finally clicked for a lot of people out there. They finally realized that it was illegal, and in spite of any moral ambiguities about stealing from wealthy corporations, it was something that was going to be prosecuted as a crime.
There may be just as much piracy now as there was in the day of napster, but I think the majority of the casual users that tried napster then are not participating now over PtP networks anymore.
iTunes has made it just as easy to get a song or album, and they've made it just as easy to pay for it, providing a viable and legitimate alternative to piracy. The Yahoo music and "napster to go" offerings further increase the options for legitimate and easy digital music offerings.
If napster hadn't been shut down, I don't think the casual users out there would have gotten the wakeup call they did. Furthermore, if napster hadn't been such a success, I don't think software companies out there would have bothered to develop legal digital music sales solutions to the degree we see today.
It's a bit odd, but I think the legal music trade industry of today owes a lot to the illegal music trade of napster.
I expect that apple is aware that they've got a target on their asses as far as portable media is concerned. Everyone is following their lead, but they're going to get caught in Apple's dust only so often before they catch up in one way or another.
Every incremental advance Apple makes in interface or capabilities for their media devices can only stay a true advantage for 5 to 6 months before some company hacks a piss-poor mass-marketable approximation.
One way they can again leap ahead of the competition is to introduce a complete system for video instead of a gradual release of supporting products.
If apple can integrate DRM into a MythTV style family mac to satisfy content providers, produce a vPod and begin offering H.264 video content on the iTunes "Media" Store, they will have a fully integrated solution available for the public at least a year before anyone could compete directly with them.
That would mean a rise in hardware sales, a tighter grip over portable media content sales, and a glut of leverageable IP patents for future licensing.
Gross speculation? Of course, but is it possible? Certainly.
Microsoft has made a stunning leap forward in the field of bicycle locomotion technology, developing a system of operation that allows for the appearance of forward progress whilst routinely backpedaling.
This is a really interesting take on the switch that I hadn't considered before. This move to intel makes all the sense in the world if Apple is trying to cram an intel processor inside the iPod, and for pure volume discounts alone, this could really help apple's overall profit margin.
I'd worry about putting all my eggs in one basket, but I suppose as far as baskets go, intel is a relatively safe bet overall.
The greatest weapon the US has against oppressive regimes is our cultural, entertainment and information exports. It's hard to oppress a people when they know that there's something slightly cooler then living in China under a communist regime.
The Soviets could regulate so many aspects of their citizenry's daily life, but what they couldn't manage to get a hold on was what they thought was cool. It might be an overly simplistic view, but part of me thinks that it was Coca-Cola and Levi's jeans that brought communism to its knees in the soviet bloc. (and of course, coca-cola and levis is not much to base a government on, which is why so many countries have struggled with the concept of democracy)
I think something similar could easily happen in China.
I don't presume to think that the Chinese would try, or even want to be like the US, but I think there's a certain sense of freedom and independence embodied in American culture, and that freedom is alluring and infectious. The more the Chinese people have access to something as stupid as Slashdot or Wikipedia or...anything, the more they're going to crave more content. The more content they crave, the more content must be censored until something has to break.
People will eventually tire pre-processed, big production entertainment. Open source, independently produced media with alternate forms of distribution (if not made entirely illegal) and funding will arise to bring the big media conglomerates down. This isn't going to happen today, or next year, but the change is inevitable.
Actually, what's closer to the truth is that they do realize it and they are going to do everything in their power to milk the old structure and institutions for every dollar they can.
An interesting thought, and one I hear professed often, but I don't personally believe it will ever happen, and I don't see the public developing a taste for low-budget entertainment as a rule.
The problem with this idea is that people eventually realize that their ideas have some sense of value once they gain in popularity. Now, I fully accept that there are people out there who are comfortable with the idea of giving away their creativity for the good of society, but at a certain point it becomes personally impractical to do so without compensation.
Creative types, in general, enjoy being creative. Sounds simple, but think about it...if you're a creative type, you don't want to be expressing your creativity in your spare time, you want to be doing it all the time. Somehow you've got to pay your bills and dedicate the bulk of your usable daylight to being creative. If you give away the potential for compensation, you close avenues that could foster the future growth and expression of your creativity.
I think it's obvious that people don't have to make a fortune on their works, but as people get more and more involved in distributing their creativity, they're going to become more and more involved in protecting the profit potential of that creativity. The shift then comes as open-sourcey independents begin to operate closer to media conglomerates and reserve certain rights that can be exploited for financial gain of one sort or another.
The issue I have when people talk about "taking down the media conglomerates" is that no one is really identifying what industry they're specifically referring to. Film companies? Fox news? Publishing houses? Distribution arms?
There's a difference between content creators and the distributors of that content, and I think the content creators are much more akin to the open-source independent community then they are to the business-oriented distribution community. The real ones in jeopardy are the distribution arms of media, not the actual creators.
We're rapidly moving into an era where the creator can BE the distributor and thus can set their own terms for the consumption of their works.
I believe the result of that is that we're going to see many more of the so-called professional content developers and the independent open-source developers moving towards a common ground and profiting without the media distribution middle-men.
There will be no "revolution" overthrowing the media creators. They're not making buggy whips and it will be only a slightly challenging transition for the vast majority to transition their operations towards a slightly more decentralized method of distribution while protecting some element of profitability.
Big media conglomerates will not crash and burn, they'll just evolve to fit the climate like any other diversified business does. The only interests in real danger are companies that are heavily invested in the physical understructure of the old system. In my estimation, companies with equity invested in film printing and distribution, large-volume CD/DVD manufacturing, audiovisual post production houses, and certain publicity and advertising agencies will be most in danger, as those services will soon be written out of the supply chain as a mandatory expenditure.
That's somehow our fault and we should be punished for it? It is *not* the public's burden to have to support crazed, millionare actors; over-budget films with bad acting, no plot, and too many special effects; fad, cookie-cutter bands, that exhaust their appeal in two months, and expensive videos that may run for one week...
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
Perhaps if movie companies had to make sure that they recouped all their lost money in less than 10 years they would stop paying artists the exorbidant salaries they do, would stop rushing out unfinished and questionable material, and would stop wasting their money on talentless people just because their boob job is top-notch.
Of course it's not the public's burden to support millionaire Actors, over-budget films with bad acting no plot and too many special effects, cookie-cutter bands, etc...yet somehow the public appetite for all of those things isn't exactly abating.
Your logic makes my head hurt because it is as if you're implying that everything produced by the entertainment industry is crap. Yet if it is true that there is nothing of value in entertainment, why do you have any problem waiting 90+ years to take advantage of the intellectual property contained in those works???
I just don't exactly understand why there's such an intense correlation between the people who claim that all mass-produced entertainment is abominable and the people who openly express the opinion that they should be allowed to consume that mass-produced entertainment without personal cost.
Ebay certainly doesn't make it intuitive to report suspicious/fraudulent auctions. I did a recent search for Canon 1ds Mark 1 cameras and I found one listed for about 2k under it's normal price. In looking at the seller's other items, I discovered about 60 high priced tech items ranging from miniDV camcorders to plasma monitors, all listed in lots of three and ending at the same time.
Checking the seller's previous ebay activity, it contained only small purchases of seeds and gardening supplies and then lay dormant for a year until suddenly about 60 high priced items showed up.
That took about 3 minutes of work to check out, but I had to spend another 20 minutes trying to figure out how to report a fraudulent auction to ebay.
I think they really just don't want to be bothered with policing their own site and responding to complaints, and that's pretty unfortunate as their service is amazingly efficient and well-liked in nearly every other respect.
It's the quality and innovation of your competitors that keeps a company viable. As long as there are alternatives to your service, you're at least partially dedicated to improving your service and offering some semblance of better value to your customers.
Paypal has nothing encouraging the development of value for their customers right now, so I welcome the arrival of Google in an online payment market.
I don't root for them to dominate, just to compete. (and in what logical way can Google be called an "underdog" company?)
The bottom line in any sort of online payment scheme is the credit card companies. There can't be a truly revolutionary change to any sort of online payment structure until it either cuts out credit cards, or offers a viable alternative to their infrastructure.
Okay, I agree with that completely. You certainly can never program user stupidity completely out of the system, however I don't feel that we're at a point where they're doing as much as we should be in general.
That being said, even when there's what I believe to be a satisfactory level of protection for the average user, there will still be plenty of people doing stupid things to expose themselves to risk. That can't be corrected entirely.
There's no one there forcing you to keep your seatbelt on, I just would like to see the equivalent of a seatbelt supplied as standard equipment.
It's one thing to insist that people bend over backwards to work within the constraints of poorly designed systems, but I think it requires a leap in logic to insist that the fault is entirely upon the user for not interfacing properly with those poorly designed systems.
People have difficulty learning technology because there is a tiered system of knowledge in anything computer/IT based, and understanding the technology at one level does not necessarily inspire one to learn the technology at a deeper level.
To use your analogy, there are users that know how to start and drive the car, there are users that know how to drive and also that they should be changing the oil once in a while, and finally there are users that can drive/race/fix/build their cars. The vast majority of the population would fall between the first two drivers. All know how to operate the vehicle, most probably know that they should be thinking about their oil, but about ¼ of them forget to do it on a regular basis.
There is very little encouraging the average driver to learn anything more about their engine then how to start it. The same is true in computers.
As soon as someone knows how to start up their PC, log-on to the internet and install applications, there isn't much need to dive deeper in the technology. The difference between a PC and a car is that the auto industry is required to provide easy to use protection to a driver. There is nothing similar in the PC world to protect Joe Average from himself and from others.
In my mind, this would be akin to auto-manufacturers requiring that a driver turn on their airbag every time they wanted to use it. It's just stupid design.
What the computer industry needs to realize is that they've got two choices in this scenario. They can take it upon themselves to provide active and easy protection to the average user on their own terms, or they can wait for the Government to mandate a solution.
With the rash of consumer data theft recently, it's obvious that vast expanses of industry are not protecting data to a satisfactory level. It's only a matter of time before the government starts throwing its weight around.
Now, I'm not to swift, but from what I've read, the solution will only transfer files that are "signed" by the author in an effort to stem piracy. Add that to the fact that every file chunk will contain unique identifiers about every other file chunk, it would seem that there's already some serious tracking abilities built right in.
There's some sense of satisfaction I get in knowing that every time a person ogles, clicks, downloads or otherwise interfaces with that pizza-faced mess known as Brittany Spears, there's a good chance their computer will catch the clap.
I agree with you there, I think there's some internal business applications here that are being missed both in blogs and in wikis. I know at my job now, I'm constantly trying to piece together the motivations and logic that went into decisions that were made before I arrived in my position. Were I to have a better understanding of how certain decisions were made, I'd have a much better understanding of where the latitute stretches.
I think you're right on the money with regards to content protection.
As much as apple claims that they don't see a market for portable video, I believe that is exactly what they are driving themselves towards. It's obvious that iPod is their premiere device, and to keep that product fresh and desirable as a lifestyle accessory, they're going to have to eventually incorporate video.
Incorporating video will then beget the potential for an online iTunes Video Store, and thus more revenue and market share for apple.
Apple has constantly said there is no market for portable video because the content isn't there. The truth is more likely that the assurance isn't there yet to guarantee that hollywood/broadcast companies will retain some sense of control of their product. A rigid hardware/software solution to ensure the protection of content will facilitate the partnership between Apple and media at large.
Apple has to build a cop to guard the door before they can open the video store.
Slashdot Mirror
The ability to print archivally is pretty cool, but I wonder who's paper it really is. Zazzle "GOLD MATTE" isn't a paper I've seen on the shelves anywhere.
Well, there's always the substantial aftermarket for ex-government employees. Typically, they have a score of inside contacts, a government pedigree and difficult to obtain security clearances that all increase the earning power of any person on the consulting market.
So there is some incentive to working in the government.
I'd also suggest that there still exist a number of people in the federal government who are there to actually serve the country instead of simply being employed by it.
If you're really curious, the payscales are published here:
http://www.opm.gov/oca/05tables/
Also, while the actual work in securing the IT network of a company like Walmart may be more substantial in some ways, having a credential like DHS on your resume and the associated security clearance would greatly increase your marketability once you have left the organization for the private sector.
If you're marketing yourself towards the security field, any security consulting company would salivate to have a high-level ex-government information security officer on the payroll.
Actually, I believe that shutting down napster did have an effect. There was a good long period of time where Napster was the utopia of music. It was like the world's largest music store, and best of all, everything was freely available at the click of a mouse.
Almost everyone I knew had used napster at one time or another to download a song, and there were many people who'd amassed hard drives full of copyrighted music. Because napster was so easy to use, it had almost become a cultural thing and I think a lot of people skimmed by the fact that what they were doing was illegal. These people then started to hear reports in the news about how the RIAA was going after people, and maybe that gave a few of them pause, but file trading didn't really abate that much.
I think it wasn't until Napster shut down that it finally clicked for a lot of people out there. They finally realized that it was illegal, and in spite of any moral ambiguities about stealing from wealthy corporations, it was something that was going to be prosecuted as a crime.
There may be just as much piracy now as there was in the day of napster, but I think the majority of the casual users that tried napster then are not participating now over PtP networks anymore.
iTunes has made it just as easy to get a song or album, and they've made it just as easy to pay for it, providing a viable and legitimate alternative to piracy. The Yahoo music and "napster to go" offerings further increase the options for legitimate and easy digital music offerings.
If napster hadn't been shut down, I don't think the casual users out there would have gotten the wakeup call they did. Furthermore, if napster hadn't been such a success, I don't think software companies out there would have bothered to develop legal digital music sales solutions to the degree we see today.
It's a bit odd, but I think the legal music trade industry of today owes a lot to the illegal music trade of napster.
I expect that apple is aware that they've got a target on their asses as far as portable media is concerned. Everyone is following their lead, but they're going to get caught in Apple's dust only so often before they catch up in one way or another.
Every incremental advance Apple makes in interface or capabilities for their media devices can only stay a true advantage for 5 to 6 months before some company hacks a piss-poor mass-marketable approximation.
One way they can again leap ahead of the competition is to introduce a complete system for video instead of a gradual release of supporting products.
If apple can integrate DRM into a MythTV style family mac to satisfy content providers, produce a vPod and begin offering H.264 video content on the iTunes "Media" Store, they will have a fully integrated solution available for the public at least a year before anyone could compete directly with them.
That would mean a rise in hardware sales, a tighter grip over portable media content sales, and a glut of leverageable IP patents for future licensing.
Gross speculation? Of course, but is it possible? Certainly.
In related news:
Microsoft has made a stunning leap forward in the field of bicycle locomotion technology, developing a system of operation that allows for the appearance of forward progress whilst routinely backpedaling.
This is a really interesting take on the switch that I hadn't considered before. This move to intel makes all the sense in the world if Apple is trying to cram an intel processor inside the iPod, and for pure volume discounts alone, this could really help apple's overall profit margin.
I'd worry about putting all my eggs in one basket, but I suppose as far as baskets go, intel is a relatively safe bet overall.
I've always said that the one universal application for cloning research is the development of vat-grown meat.
Cruelty free, vegan-friendly. It could be engineered for the perfect protein, fat and mineral content while maintaining perfect flavor.
Imagine a sea of perfectly marbled, gristle-free beef filets.... droooool....
You can change it all you want, you just can't offer it up for public consumption and you can't expect to make a profit on it.
So where exactly does your problem remain?
The greatest weapon the US has against oppressive regimes is our cultural, entertainment and information exports. It's hard to oppress a people when they know that there's something slightly cooler then living in China under a communist regime.
The Soviets could regulate so many aspects of their citizenry's daily life, but what they couldn't manage to get a hold on was what they thought was cool. It might be an overly simplistic view, but part of me thinks that it was Coca-Cola and Levi's jeans that brought communism to its knees in the soviet bloc. (and of course, coca-cola and levis is not much to base a government on, which is why so many countries have struggled with the concept of democracy)
I think something similar could easily happen in China.
I don't presume to think that the Chinese would try, or even want to be like the US, but I think there's a certain sense of freedom and independence embodied in American culture, and that freedom is alluring and infectious. The more the Chinese people have access to something as stupid as Slashdot or Wikipedia or...anything, the more they're going to crave more content. The more content they crave, the more content must be censored until something has to break.
People will eventually tire pre-processed, big production entertainment. Open source, independently produced media with alternate forms of distribution (if not made entirely illegal) and funding will arise to bring the big media conglomerates down. This isn't going to happen today, or next year, but the change is inevitable.
Actually, what's closer to the truth is that they do realize it and they are going to do everything in their power to milk the old structure and institutions for every dollar they can.
An interesting thought, and one I hear professed often, but I don't personally believe it will ever happen, and I don't see the public developing a taste for low-budget entertainment as a rule.
The problem with this idea is that people eventually realize that their ideas have some sense of value once they gain in popularity. Now, I fully accept that there are people out there who are comfortable with the idea of giving away their creativity for the good of society, but at a certain point it becomes personally impractical to do so without compensation.
Creative types, in general, enjoy being creative. Sounds simple, but think about it...if you're a creative type, you don't want to be expressing your creativity in your spare time, you want to be doing it all the time. Somehow you've got to pay your bills and dedicate the bulk of your usable daylight to being creative. If you give away the potential for compensation, you close avenues that could foster the future growth and expression of your creativity.
I think it's obvious that people don't have to make a fortune on their works, but as people get more and more involved in distributing their creativity, they're going to become more and more involved in protecting the profit potential of that creativity. The shift then comes as open-sourcey independents begin to operate closer to media conglomerates and reserve certain rights that can be exploited for financial gain of one sort or another.
The issue I have when people talk about "taking down the media conglomerates" is that no one is really identifying what industry they're specifically referring to. Film companies? Fox news? Publishing houses? Distribution arms?
There's a difference between content creators and the distributors of that content, and I think the content creators are much more akin to the open-source independent community then they are to the business-oriented distribution community. The real ones in jeopardy are the distribution arms of media, not the actual creators.
We're rapidly moving into an era where the creator can BE the distributor and thus can set their own terms for the consumption of their works.
I believe the result of that is that we're going to see many more of the so-called professional content developers and the independent open-source developers moving towards a common ground and profiting without the media distribution middle-men.
There will be no "revolution" overthrowing the media creators. They're not making buggy whips and it will be only a slightly challenging transition for the vast majority to transition their operations towards a slightly more decentralized method of distribution while protecting some element of profitability.
Big media conglomerates will not crash and burn, they'll just evolve to fit the climate like any other diversified business does. The only interests in real danger are companies that are heavily invested in the physical understructure of the old system. In my estimation, companies with equity invested in film printing and distribution, large-volume CD/DVD manufacturing, audiovisual post production houses, and certain publicity and advertising agencies will be most in danger, as those services will soon be written out of the supply chain as a mandatory expenditure.
That's somehow our fault and we should be punished for it? It is *not* the public's burden to have to support crazed, millionare actors; over-budget films with bad acting, no plot, and too many special effects; fad, cookie-cutter bands, that exhaust their appeal in two months, and expensive videos that may run for one week...
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
Perhaps if movie companies had to make sure that they recouped all their lost money in less than 10 years they would stop paying artists the exorbidant salaries they do, would stop rushing out unfinished and questionable material, and would stop wasting their money on talentless people just because their boob job is top-notch.
Of course it's not the public's burden to support millionaire Actors, over-budget films with bad acting no plot and too many special effects, cookie-cutter bands, etc...yet somehow the public appetite for all of those things isn't exactly abating.
Your logic makes my head hurt because it is as if you're implying that everything produced by the entertainment industry is crap. Yet if it is true that there is nothing of value in entertainment, why do you have any problem waiting 90+ years to take advantage of the intellectual property contained in those works???
I just don't exactly understand why there's such an intense correlation between the people who claim that all mass-produced entertainment is abominable and the people who openly express the opinion that they should be allowed to consume that mass-produced entertainment without personal cost.
Ebay certainly doesn't make it intuitive to report suspicious/fraudulent auctions. I did a recent search for Canon 1ds Mark 1 cameras and I found one listed for about 2k under it's normal price. In looking at the seller's other items, I discovered about 60 high priced tech items ranging from miniDV camcorders to plasma monitors, all listed in lots of three and ending at the same time.
Checking the seller's previous ebay activity, it contained only small purchases of seeds and gardening supplies and then lay dormant for a year until suddenly about 60 high priced items showed up.
That took about 3 minutes of work to check out, but I had to spend another 20 minutes trying to figure out how to report a fraudulent auction to ebay.
I think they really just don't want to be bothered with policing their own site and responding to complaints, and that's pretty unfortunate as their service is amazingly efficient and well-liked in nearly every other respect.
It's the quality and innovation of your competitors that keeps a company viable. As long as there are alternatives to your service, you're at least partially dedicated to improving your service and offering some semblance of better value to your customers.
Paypal has nothing encouraging the development of value for their customers right now, so I welcome the arrival of Google in an online payment market.
I don't root for them to dominate, just to compete. (and in what logical way can Google be called an "underdog" company?)
The bottom line in any sort of online payment scheme is the credit card companies. There can't be a truly revolutionary change to any sort of online payment structure until it either cuts out credit cards, or offers a viable alternative to their infrastructure.
Okay, I agree with that completely. You certainly can never program user stupidity completely out of the system, however I don't feel that we're at a point where they're doing as much as we should be in general.
That being said, even when there's what I believe to be a satisfactory level of protection for the average user, there will still be plenty of people doing stupid things to expose themselves to risk. That can't be corrected entirely.
There's no one there forcing you to keep your seatbelt on, I just would like to see the equivalent of a seatbelt supplied as standard equipment.
Well, that didn't post as a reply to the message it concerned.
Further proof that we need to protect idiot users (like myself) from themselves.
It's one thing to insist that people bend over backwards to work within the constraints of poorly designed systems, but I think it requires a leap in logic to insist that the fault is entirely upon the user for not interfacing properly with those poorly designed systems.
People have difficulty learning technology because there is a tiered system of knowledge in anything computer/IT based, and understanding the technology at one level does not necessarily inspire one to learn the technology at a deeper level.
To use your analogy, there are users that know how to start and drive the car, there are users that know how to drive and also that they should be changing the oil once in a while, and finally there are users that can drive/race/fix/build their cars. The vast majority of the population would fall between the first two drivers. All know how to operate the vehicle, most probably know that they should be thinking about their oil, but about ¼ of them forget to do it on a regular basis.
There is very little encouraging the average driver to learn anything more about their engine then how to start it. The same is true in computers.
As soon as someone knows how to start up their PC, log-on to the internet and install applications, there isn't much need to dive deeper in the technology. The difference between a PC and a car is that the auto industry is required to provide easy to use protection to a driver. There is nothing similar in the PC world to protect Joe Average from himself and from others.
In my mind, this would be akin to auto-manufacturers requiring that a driver turn on their airbag every time they wanted to use it. It's just stupid design.
What the computer industry needs to realize is that they've got two choices in this scenario. They can take it upon themselves to provide active and easy protection to the average user on their own terms, or they can wait for the Government to mandate a solution.
With the rash of consumer data theft recently, it's obvious that vast expanses of industry are not protecting data to a satisfactory level. It's only a matter of time before the government starts throwing its weight around.
Now, I'm not to swift, but from what I've read, the solution will only transfer files that are "signed" by the author in an effort to stem piracy. Add that to the fact that every file chunk will contain unique identifiers about every other file chunk, it would seem that there's already some serious tracking abilities built right in.
ahh, finally someone gets what my blundering mind was attempting to express.
Thanks bornyesterday. I'd mod you up if I could.
Sorry, I don't use linux and I openly profess my general ignorance.
That obviously makes me a minority around here. Twice over, in fact.
but is there an obvious point where software become more patch then content?
Lately I envision all Microsoft products as lumbering stay-puff marshmallow men, ambulating labored steps inside a comical suit of band-aids.
There's some sense of satisfaction I get in knowing that every time a person ogles, clicks, downloads or otherwise interfaces with that pizza-faced mess known as Brittany Spears, there's a good chance their computer will catch the clap.
I agree with you there, I think there's some internal business applications here that are being missed both in blogs and in wikis. I know at my job now, I'm constantly trying to piece together the motivations and logic that went into decisions that were made before I arrived in my position. Were I to have a better understanding of how certain decisions were made, I'd have a much better understanding of where the latitute stretches.
I think you're right on the money with regards to content protection.
As much as apple claims that they don't see a market for portable video, I believe that is exactly what they are driving themselves towards. It's obvious that iPod is their premiere device, and to keep that product fresh and desirable as a lifestyle accessory, they're going to have to eventually incorporate video.
Incorporating video will then beget the potential for an online iTunes Video Store, and thus more revenue and market share for apple.
Apple has constantly said there is no market for portable video because the content isn't there. The truth is more likely that the assurance isn't there yet to guarantee that hollywood/broadcast companies will retain some sense of control of their product. A rigid hardware/software solution to ensure the protection of content will facilitate the partnership between Apple and media at large.
Apple has to build a cop to guard the door before they can open the video store.
And we finally arrive back at a more powerful version of the commodore 64.
Can a computer spin in its own grave?