Seriously, whats wrong with deriving self-esteem from brand identity?
Self esteem is only "good" to the extent that it is accurate, and "bad" to the extent that it is inaccurate.
Deriving your self-image from what advertisers tell you you will be when you buy their products is almost always "bad." They have a vested interest in not portraying reality accurately and reality is messy and nuanced. Apple commercials are simplistic blurbs about one, maybe two, things.
I meant "working on Windows" as in "being in a position where we can fix Windows' suckiness, i.e. working on Windows' code," not "sitting in front of a Windows box all day long."
I think that's actually what the Mac ads are asking people to do: fix what's wrong with their computer experience by getting a Mac in stead of a PC. Getting a new computer is what most people do to fix their Windows problems anyway. Hard drive fragmented? Get a new computer. You installed annoying spyware? Get a new computer and install it on that one.
Hitting Ctrl+Enter in stead of just Enter after typing the main domain name into the address bar is much faster than loading the page. It will turn "yahoo" into "http://www.yahoo.com/" and "google" into "http://www.google.com/".
I believe Shift+Enter will do the same thing, but with.org in stead of.com.
Personally, I almost never go to a search engine's main site anymore. Firefox has this feature where you can right-click on a text box and "Add a Keyword for this Search". The search keyword is stored as a bookmark, and the way I use it looks like this (supposing I was searching for the term 'slashdot'):
So, can I not sell used books, cd's, artwork or games?
No, you can't sell the text in a book, the sound on a CD, the picture on a painting, or the data on game media. These are all the intellectual property of the content creators, and they have "copy" rights granted to them by congress in accordance with the constitution, which are also internationally recognized.
There is also an internationally recognized principle of first sale: if you buy the aforementioned content on media, you can transfer ownership of that media.
They should do it like TV: "We're gonna switch from analog to digital in 2010. Do what you need to change. If you want something else, buy it, but it's you're problem.". There needs to be standard format for media, and someone needs to put practicalty above profits for that to happen.
Sony: "We're gonna switch from DVD to Blu-Ray in 2007. Buy a PS3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Now as soon as someone figures out how to permanently save those digitally delivered
HD movie 'rentals' onto external drives -- then things are really going to get crazy.
So rip the music to cd, convert that to mp3 and do exactly what you want with the music you bought....
iTunes allows that without difficulty.
This is true, and I applaud Apple for allowing that to the customer. The problem with this scheme is the inevitable quality loss, which I know that you consider to be acceptable, but I and these EU countries do not.
The fact is, if you want to move your DRM'd AAC files to any other device besides the iPod, you are faced with a choice of (1) degrading the quality by re-encoding them, or (2) greatly increasing the filesize due to lossless encoding, thus cutting into the storage capacity of your music player.
There is not, or at least there should not be one single market for the combined product of (1) media content and (2) media players. It is not in the best interest of the consumer that the market be thus restricted by DRM, and everyone knows this.
If Apple can hold their own in both markets simultaniously based on the quality of their players and the quality of their music store, then good for them, they deserve to dominate both markets, but there is still much to be gained from the pressure of competition. Competition independently in both markets will drive prices down and quality up, both for Apple's products and competitors.
1. ISPs maintain the same level of service they do now, and allow some sites to pay more for a faster pipe to you.
2. ISPs cut your default service to squat, and make sites pay for anything resembling decent bandwidth.
These both amount to the same thing when you take into account that as time goes on, bandwidth for a given price should increase: the definition of "decent bandwidth" will change over time. Net Neutrality seeks to prevent ISPs from freezing the quality of their infrastructure and forcing you to pay through the nose for anything better. Do you remember when a 14.4 was decent bandwidth? What if sites today had to pay a premimum in order to deliver content at anything above that?
I think the point is that if you stop expecting your customers to do illegal things, they'll rise to the occasion. No longer will the reason for not distributing/downloading files be that you can't; it will be because you despise those who do.
Yes, people will get files with their unique IDs posted on the Internet when they are stolen. No, it won't be an epidemic problem. Are you seriously picturing pirates going around mugging people just to get the media files off of their digital devices?
Then it's a law enforcement problem, and I think we can all get on the same side against such pirates without the need for a discussion about copyright as a social contract (unless you're a Pastafarian).
Why don't you just subtract the watermark from itself? If you have a watermark that tints a pixel in a certain direction, just apply the reverse operation.
Before I just had to worry that I couldn't play my song the way I wanted to but now I have to worry that someone will steal MY copy without my knowledge and the **AA will come pounding on my door with "proof" that I violated their copyright.
What, do you run Windows?
Seriously though, I'm not too worried about this. I applaud this company for doing the right thing, and I plan on supporting this business model when they start distributing content.
You didn't take anything related to thermodynamics, you were barely required to take physics. How many labs do software engineers take in their department (Not physics; not chemistry, etc)?
Apparently the Computer Science department at your university was in the College of Engineering in stead of the College of Science. My condolences.
I graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the College of Science of CSUPomona.
Having said that, my current job title is Software Engineer, and it correctly describes the function I perform.
"Scientist" applies to the focus of my training. Some universities place Computer Science in their College of Engineering, often calling it Computer and Electrical Engineering (my sister's degree, incidentally). The result is that the programmers who train there have more of an engineering outlook. I was able to pick up a minor in Physics with just a few extra courses. This illustrates the scientific focus of my education.
"Engineer" is a term that describes what I do in my current job. The Romans were very good engineers, but not very good scientists at all compared to the Greeks. Scientists are after knowledge, engineers are after results based on that knowledge.
"Programmer" is a more general term, which would apply (in addition to Computer Scientists and Engineers) to those who dabble in programming. You wouldn't call someone a carpenter just because they swing a hammer.
Calling a "Scientist" or "Engineer" a "Programmer" is like calling a human a primate. It's technically true, but it has negative connotations, and robs them of the dignity that is rightly attributed to the more specific term.
Some of it is, but not most of it. A thousand years ago, everyone thought that all celestial objects were perfect spheres. This comes from Plato's Ideals, and the idea that the heavens were more perfect than the earth. For centuries, scientists and theologans struggled with the fact that their models for the heavens needed to be increasingly complicated in order to remain accurate.
This all stemmed from their aesthetic assumptions that their idea of how it should be actually was the way the world works. They were wrong.
It is simply incorrect to assume that there are no fundamental differences in the psychological makeup of males and females. The feminist movement tried to create equality by telling men that being manly was bad, but all this accomplished was men who had been taught to be unhappy about how unwomanly they were.
Men, on average are poorer at some things that women are better at, and vice versa. It makes perfect sense that men are on average more prone to technological skills and desires than women are. It is a demonstrable fact that the female physilogy is made for having babies and taking care of them, and that the male physiology uses its resources to more efficiently design and use complex tools. The most basic principles of economics tell us that labor specialization is more efficient than homogeneity. Almost every other species behaves this way, why not humans?
This is not a value judgement that men are better than women. That's simply not true, and anyone who thinks it is implied by the above has their priorities out of whack.
It's a well-known fact that people in general are idiots. Exploiting idiots, while both fun and profitable, still qualifies one as a dirty little bastard. The problem here is that the rest of us are getting caught in the cross-fire. Its the marketers, not their victims who are the ones directly annoying us, and it is they who initiate the exploitation. The blame rightly rests on their shoulders: they are not a force of nature that we should accept their existence as a fact of life.
You used the Zune as an example, I just showed you that your example was invalid.
Then you obviously misunderstood the point of my example. The fact that the Zune supports DRM has nothing to do with the fact that it is incompatible with iTMS. Any media player would have done, but I chose Zune specifically for the *because* it is associated with Zune Marketplace. Not only is DRM restrictive in one direction (iTMS->Zune), but the other direction as well (ZM->iPod). This illustrates the problem as a whole: there is currently no acceptable DRM scheme for music. You were arguing that iTMS was acceptable: demonstrating that ZM is *also* unacceptable does nothing for your argument, but it does demonstrate that you didn't understand what I was saying.
The existence of Zune Marketplace does not effect the Zune's ability to play MP3 and AAC files. The Zune and iPod are perfectly good devices. I was objecting specifically to iTMS for not allowing you to play the files elsewhere, but the same goes for ZM.
The DRM prevents me from doing nothing *that I would wish to do*. That's my point.
I understand that this is what you are saying. I don't dispute this fact. What I have suggested is that this fact (the state of your wishes) is *caused* by the restrictions of DRM. I am suggesting that if DRM had never restricted you from playing your files on anything you wanted, the world would look different: Other players would be more common, given that they would be able to compete on a level playing field with iPod, it would be much easier and therefore much more common to play iTMS files on a Linux box. A reasonable person would want this, as the files are (presumably) of better quality than recorded broadcasts.
I just accept that the world is changing and I have to adapt with it.
I was not trying to "call names;" I was trying to be descriptive. The reason I assigned the label "fool" to you is that you are deceived about your own thinking: you *insist* that your desires are not affected by DRM restrictions, and that you have no desire to do anything that DRM prevents you from doing, yet you admit that you are "adapting" to the "world."
Hmm... strangely enough I don't have a Zune either. If I were a hipocrite, I could have made that argument after paying for downloads on the Zune Marketplace and your "turned around" argument would be valid, but I'm not.
The fact that you have a MythTV box and claim that DRM doesn't prevent you from watching makes you either a liar or a fool. Take your pick.
As I said: you have accepted iTMS DRM as a fact of life, and derived what you think is (or should be) possible from that constrained system. This is backwards, and it has muddled your mind. That is what I mean by fool.
Seriously. Why in the hell isn't PirateBay already located in the Grand Caymans, or Switzerland, or Thailand, or wherever?
Unless you're in cahoots with the government, and they know that they depend on you, chances are that the US and others can put "diplomatic pressure" on said government until they comply. It's better to go to Sealand, where the government is explicitly offering to protect you from such pressure based on money that you pay it.
Besides, all you need to do is host the servers with the sensitive information on Sealand. Just pay someone to live there and manage it from offsite, where you already are.
The only solution I see is that people should be able to be paid at the production step, not at the distribution step.
Congratulations, you have just stumbled onto the economic model of Midaeval paintings. Kings and really rich merchants people pay an artist to create for their private collections.
Don't get me wrong, still life and portraits are nice, but I don't think we'll get much variety that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Self esteem is only "good" to the extent that it is accurate, and "bad" to the extent that it is inaccurate.
Deriving your self-image from what advertisers tell you you will be when you buy their products is almost always "bad." They have a vested interest in not portraying reality accurately and reality is messy and nuanced. Apple commercials are simplistic blurbs about one, maybe two, things.
I think that's actually what the Mac ads are asking people to do: fix what's wrong with their computer experience by getting a Mac in stead of a PC. Getting a new computer is what most people do to fix their Windows problems anyway. Hard drive fragmented? Get a new computer. You installed annoying spyware? Get a new computer and install it on that one.
Hitting Ctrl+Enter in stead of just Enter after typing the main domain name into the address bar is much faster than loading the page. It will turn "yahoo" into "http://www.yahoo.com/" and "google" into "http://www.google.com/".
.org in stead of .com.
I believe Shift+Enter will do the same thing, but with
Personally, I almost never go to a search engine's main site anymore. Firefox has this feature where you can right-click on a text box and "Add a Keyword for this Search". The search keyword is stored as a bookmark, and the way I use it looks like this (supposing I was searching for the term 'slashdot'):
On Google:
g slashdot
At Wikipedia:
wk slashdot
At BibleGateway, using KJV:
kjv slashdot
At BibleGateway, using NASB:
nasb slashdot
etc.
No, you can't sell the text in a book, the sound on a CD, the picture on a painting, or the data on game media. These are all the intellectual property of the content creators, and they have "copy" rights granted to them by congress in accordance with the constitution, which are also internationally recognized.
There is also an internationally recognized principle of first sale: if you buy the aforementioned content on media, you can transfer ownership of that media.
Which is why they don't have a problem with the device itself: just the store that sells content that locks you in to getting one.
Sony: "We're gonna switch from DVD to Blu-Ray in 2007. Buy a PS3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Burn them to HD-DVD-Rs!
This is true, and I applaud Apple for allowing that to the customer. The problem with this scheme is the inevitable quality loss, which I know that you consider to be acceptable, but I and these EU countries do not.
The fact is, if you want to move your DRM'd AAC files to any other device besides the iPod, you are faced with a choice of (1) degrading the quality by re-encoding them, or (2) greatly increasing the filesize due to lossless encoding, thus cutting into the storage capacity of your music player.
There is not, or at least there should not be one single market for the combined product of (1) media content and (2) media players. It is not in the best interest of the consumer that the market be thus restricted by DRM, and everyone knows this.
If Apple can hold their own in both markets simultaniously based on the quality of their players and the quality of their music store, then good for them, they deserve to dominate both markets, but there is still much to be gained from the pressure of competition. Competition independently in both markets will drive prices down and quality up, both for Apple's products and competitors.
These both amount to the same thing when you take into account that as time goes on, bandwidth for a given price should increase: the definition of "decent bandwidth" will change over time. Net Neutrality seeks to prevent ISPs from freezing the quality of their infrastructure and forcing you to pay through the nose for anything better. Do you remember when a 14.4 was decent bandwidth? What if sites today had to pay a premimum in order to deliver content at anything above that?
Yes, people will get files with their unique IDs posted on the Internet when they are stolen. No, it won't be an epidemic problem. Are you seriously picturing pirates going around mugging people just to get the media files off of their digital devices?
Then it's a law enforcement problem, and I think we can all get on the same side against such pirates without the need for a discussion about copyright as a social contract (unless you're a Pastafarian).
Why don't you just subtract the watermark from itself? If you have a watermark that tints a pixel in a certain direction, just apply the reverse operation.
What, do you run Windows?
Seriously though, I'm not too worried about this. I applaud this company for doing the right thing, and I plan on supporting this business model when they start distributing content.
It's called Flashblock.
Apparently the Computer Science department at your university was in the College of Engineering in stead of the College of Science. My condolences.
Please don't assume this is universally the case.
I hope it's because they've finally, *finally* given up on trying to get men to think and do things more like women.
I graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the College of Science of CSUPomona.
Having said that, my current job title is Software Engineer, and it correctly describes the function I perform.
"Scientist" applies to the focus of my training. Some universities place Computer Science in their College of Engineering, often calling it Computer and Electrical Engineering (my sister's degree, incidentally). The result is that the programmers who train there have more of an engineering outlook. I was able to pick up a minor in Physics with just a few extra courses. This illustrates the scientific focus of my education.
"Engineer" is a term that describes what I do in my current job. The Romans were very good engineers, but not very good scientists at all compared to the Greeks. Scientists are after knowledge, engineers are after results based on that knowledge.
"Programmer" is a more general term, which would apply (in addition to Computer Scientists and Engineers) to those who dabble in programming. You wouldn't call someone a carpenter just because they swing a hammer.
Calling a "Scientist" or "Engineer" a "Programmer" is like calling a human a primate. It's technically true, but it has negative connotations, and robs them of the dignity that is rightly attributed to the more specific term.
Also, it made me laugh out loud.
No. Gay men aren't women either.
Some of it is, but not most of it. A thousand years ago, everyone thought that all celestial objects were perfect spheres. This comes from Plato's Ideals, and the idea that the heavens were more perfect than the earth. For centuries, scientists and theologans struggled with the fact that their models for the heavens needed to be increasingly complicated in order to remain accurate.
This all stemmed from their aesthetic assumptions that their idea of how it should be actually was the way the world works. They were wrong.
It is simply incorrect to assume that there are no fundamental differences in the psychological makeup of males and females. The feminist movement tried to create equality by telling men that being manly was bad, but all this accomplished was men who had been taught to be unhappy about how unwomanly they were.
Men, on average are poorer at some things that women are better at, and vice versa. It makes perfect sense that men are on average more prone to technological skills and desires than women are. It is a demonstrable fact that the female physilogy is made for having babies and taking care of them, and that the male physiology uses its resources to more efficiently design and use complex tools. The most basic principles of economics tell us that labor specialization is more efficient than homogeneity. Almost every other species behaves this way, why not humans?
This is not a value judgement that men are better than women. That's simply not true, and anyone who thinks it is implied by the above has their priorities out of whack.
It's a well-known fact that people in general are idiots. Exploiting idiots, while both fun and profitable, still qualifies one as a dirty little bastard. The problem here is that the rest of us are getting caught in the cross-fire. Its the marketers, not their victims who are the ones directly annoying us, and it is they who initiate the exploitation. The blame rightly rests on their shoulders: they are not a force of nature that we should accept their existence as a fact of life.
Then you obviously misunderstood the point of my example. The fact that the Zune supports DRM has nothing to do with the fact that it is incompatible with iTMS. Any media player would have done, but I chose Zune specifically for the *because* it is associated with Zune Marketplace. Not only is DRM restrictive in one direction (iTMS->Zune), but the other direction as well (ZM->iPod). This illustrates the problem as a whole: there is currently no acceptable DRM scheme for music. You were arguing that iTMS was acceptable: demonstrating that ZM is *also* unacceptable does nothing for your argument, but it does demonstrate that you didn't understand what I was saying.
The existence of Zune Marketplace does not effect the Zune's ability to play MP3 and AAC files. The Zune and iPod are perfectly good devices. I was objecting specifically to iTMS for not allowing you to play the files elsewhere, but the same goes for ZM.
I understand that this is what you are saying. I don't dispute this fact. What I have suggested is that this fact (the state of your wishes) is *caused* by the restrictions of DRM. I am suggesting that if DRM had never restricted you from playing your files on anything you wanted, the world would look different: Other players would be more common, given that they would be able to compete on a level playing field with iPod, it would be much easier and therefore much more common to play iTMS files on a Linux box. A reasonable person would want this, as the files are (presumably) of better quality than recorded broadcasts.
I was not trying to "call names;" I was trying to be descriptive. The reason I assigned the label "fool" to you is that you are deceived about your own thinking: you *insist* that your desires are not affected by DRM restrictions, and that you have no desire to do anything that DRM prevents you from doing, yet you admit that you are "adapting" to the "world."
Do you not see how this still effectively locks the user to the iPod?
The fact that you have a MythTV box and claim that DRM doesn't prevent you from watching makes you either a liar or a fool. Take your pick.
As I said: you have accepted iTMS DRM as a fact of life, and derived what you think is (or should be) possible from that constrained system. This is backwards, and it has muddled your mind. That is what I mean by fool.
Unless you're in cahoots with the government, and they know that they depend on you, chances are that the US and others can put "diplomatic pressure" on said government until they comply. It's better to go to Sealand, where the government is explicitly offering to protect you from such pressure based on money that you pay it.
Besides, all you need to do is host the servers with the sensitive information on Sealand. Just pay someone to live there and manage it from offsite, where you already are.
Congratulations, you have just stumbled onto the economic model of Midaeval paintings. Kings and really rich merchants people pay an artist to create for their private collections.
Don't get me wrong, still life and portraits are nice, but I don't think we'll get much variety that way.