That is utter bullshit. Civil liberties have been going downhill for a long long time. His prediction on civil liberties was already true before 9/11.
Really? To go downhill, they'd have to have somewhere to go down from. When was this golden age of civil liberties? The 70s? The 80s? The 90s? Things were pretty much as bad back then as they were in 2001. If anything, the 90s were probably the high point (steps toward eliminating police brutality, gay rights, even talk of drug decriminalization, etc.), and that wasn't very long ago.
But bottom line........why would anyone not want to get the bast quality available?
Because it's cheaper and more convenient to buy online, and you get tracks already pre-populated with good metadata. Seeing as the music sounds basically identical to a CD - why bother with the additional hassle and expense? It also reduces environmental impact. I don't think that a personal desire for virtually unnoticeable increase in quality is worth the additional impact of make more plastic rubbish and releasing more toxic chemicals into the environment.
I'm merely wanting to be able to basically by CD content online like I can in the store? Why is everyone so willing to settle for less?
That was kind of the point of the SACD argument - you have "settled for less" but it's good enough for you. You could get slightly better quality than CD, but for unnecessary expense and difficulty.
Fud? There is no FUD here. The simple fact is that you will have to pay 1.39 or (30% of album cost) TOTAL per current DRM'd song (or album) that you currently own to remove the DRM.
That's pure FUD. you made no mention that you were talking about the price of upgrading pr re-purchasing. You said it as if that was the new price of all songs on the store.
It still doesn't add up. 99c (original price) plus 30c per track to upgrade equals $1.29 per track. It's specious reasoning though, as you have already bought the track, and you are not forced to upgrade. If you didn't want the DRM, why did you buy the DRMed track in the first place?
It's just irritating to have to pay more for something that has already been paid for.
But you're not. You didn't pay for a 256kbps DRM-free version when you bought the first time. You paid for a 128kbps DRM-restricted version. It's a different product. Do you also believe that you should get free Blu-Ray copies of all the movies you bought on DVD?
It also proves that Steve really doesn't "believe" that music should not have DRM, if he did then they wouldn't charge us to remove it.
It proves nothing of the sort. How do you know that it isn't the record labels that made it a requirement to pay for upgrades? They are the ones in control of licensing their songs. And it makes no sense. If Steve doesn't believe that music should be DRM-free, then why would he switch the entire store over to DRM-free music? Why did he encourage the labels to do that in the first place?
You talk about Amazon, but if it wasn't for Jobs putting pressure on the labels, then Amazon wouldn't be selling DRM-free tracks either.
Which kind of proves my point - look at the awful user interface on Magnatune. iTunes is nicer.
When only their preferences are supported, yes, it's a problem.
What the hell are you talking about? You youself said that you can use Magnatune and Amazon and others. So how is it that only my preferences are supported? You have plenty of outlets supporting your preference, so what's the problem?
Yeah, use IE if you really want to, so long as your site is designed to some reasonable approximation of standards, so I don't have to. If you slap on a "best viewed in IE6" disclaimer and ignore Firefox, well, 1995 called...
What the hell? When did I mention IE, and what does this have to do with anything?
I've done tests....and friends and I could tell the differences....
Really? You've done double-blind tests? You've already tested against Apple's 256kbps AACs? I kind of doubt it.
I'd just rather by my music in the best form possible..to play on the good systems I have...and then let ME degrade them to mp3 or whatever, for the poorer listening environments I have like the iPod in the car or gym.
But you mentioned buy audio CDs. If you really only buy the "best form possible", wouldn't you be using SACD or studio master tapes or something? Why is CD good enough for your golden ears?
Some of us do appreciate good sound, and I've been building my home stereo since I was about 12 and heard my first McIntosh tube amp on a pair of Klipschorns.
As do I. I've even designed and built my own speaker systems. But that doesn't mean I kid myself about hearing differences that have no noticeable affect on the listening experience.
Well, it's like a unitard... no, it means that the case and chassis of the machine is milled from a solid block of aluminium. So, it's not screwed together with different parts - it's a single, solid body. Makes it rigid, strong and light.
Every cell-phone from entry-level to smart phone has a removable battery,
No, they don't. Not all of them. And there are valid design and engineering reasons why that decision was made.
The thing that really miffs me about tech companies and Apple seems excessively guilty of this: they seem to be following the model of the fashion industry with rolling out new products with incremental changes, feature dribbles that could have all been brought out in one unit, etc.
I'm not sure what you're saying here - Apple shouldn't release improved products until they have a massive breakthrough or radically different design? I don't think many users would be happy with that.
Funny how amazon can sell DRM free music for 99 but for apple it costs 1.39.
Did you not follow the announcement? There are three prices - 69c, 99c and $1.29. I'm not sure why you quote a figure higher than Apple says they will sell the tracks for. Is that an attempt at FUD or something?
The space is right there for the full numberpad. Basically every other 17" laptop has them, because they have the space for it.
Are you sure? It may look like it externally, but most of the space taken up by a keyboard/keypad is internal space. Not only the space for the keys, but also any wiring, and any reinforcement or mounts in the chassis.
The problem with the suggestions of "why can't they add this" is that everybody has their own thing they want added. So, they add a numberpad for you, a card reader slot for someone else, removable battery, thumbprint reader. Something has to give, so you end up with something bulky like the typical 17" notebook from other manufacturers. And it's easy to lose focus trying to be everything to everybody, and you end up with a situation like the annoying myriad of variations on the Performa product line.
Doing something because "everybody else does it" is not always good reasoning.
External X is not the same as built-in X. It's one more piece of kit to cart around, it's one more piece of kit to buy, and it's one more ugly piece of kit hanging off the side of your computer.
Conversely, built-in X is also something that every user has to put up with, whether they use it or not. It also means that every user has to pay for X, even if they don't use it. I doubt the demand for number pads on laptops is significant.
No, you don't. The laptop itself is the enclosure for the naked cells. A removable battery needs to be encased in plastic for safety reasons. It's astounding the amount of ignorance being displayed on slashdot about basic engineering.
If Dell said they were going to non-removable batteries, there would be s hit storm.
In case you haven't noticed, there has been something of a "shit storm" when Apple announced it too. There tends to be some sort of shit storm whenever Apple announces anything. Dell's announcements tend to be greeted with a "meh," not the extreme reactions people have to Apple.
Being non-removable does not increase the capacity of a battery, nor should it give you an increased volume in any competent design.
Absolute nonsense. Tell me, what is this "competent design" that doesn't result in increased volume? Is the casing made of some miracle plastic that doesn't actually have any physical volume?
Apple is selling bullshit pie and the fans are eating it up yet again.
Where is the bullshit? You seem to be claiming that Apple is lying about their product's design. Do you have any proof of this, or any reason they would lie about it?
A) you only save it on one side (the laptop case does not generally extend below the battery case - the bottom of the battery case is part of the laptop case.
Arrrgh, such nonsense! When have you ever seen a laptop battery that is only cased on one side, and the naked cells are exposed on the top?
My cell phone's battery is about 3mm
Yes, and much of that thickness is due to the protective casing! If it weren't encased, it would be significantly smaller.
In summary, eliminating those parts of the case that make the battery removable (the chemicals still need to be separated from the computer components, of course) probably saves you at most 20% (on a 17" desktop replacement, probably closer to 10%).
I think the calculations of Apple's engineers, who actually built the thing, would be more reliable than some random internet guy who apparently doesn't understand much about battery construction or laptop engineering.
Removable batteries don't have to be sturdier anywhere other than the connector and one side of the outer casing. The material for any lithium-based battery pack is going to have to be resilient anyway to withstand the heat and pressure the battery will be subjected to in u
You clearly have no clue. Naked lithium batteries are very easily punctured. So, no, you don't just need sturdiness on "one side" of the battery casing. You need protection all around. It sounds as if you've never actually seen a removable laptop battery. They are well armored - they'd be getting sued for all kinds of accidents if they weren't. And that casing, and the connector, takes up a lot of space. I'm not sure what bizarro world you are living in where sturdy casing and connectors don't take up space.
...I've been hearing some quality differences in mp3's that I've ripped over the years at different qualities and different encoders...when I get time, I may rerip some of the poorer quality ones I'm hearing now.
Did you miss the part about them being 256kbps AAC files? You get better reproduction than MP3 at the same bitrates, and at 256kbps, it's basically indistinguishable from lossless - unless you're being a wanky "audiophile" who claims to hear things that really aren't there.
Do a blind A/B between a CD and well-encoded 256k AAC, and I bet you wouldn't be able to pick the encoded one.
Average price will. Average price of anything you would actually want to download don't.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know what you want to download. Different people have different tastes. Anyway, rather than whining about a hypothetical, why don't you just go and look for yourself, and see if the price of what you want to download has gone up, down, or stayed the same?
There's a lot of crap on there I wouldn't pay for.
Wow, who would have thought that in a music store with millions of songs, some people don't want to buy all of them? That's nothing like... every other music store in existence.
You really think that Apple are going to announce very specific pricing, and then turn around and set completely different prices? That would be a PR nightmare. If they were going to do something like charge $2.50, they would simply not announce specific pricing in the press release.
What the hell? Where's your evidence for this accusation? The DRM-free songs were all the songs in the EMI stable, as EMI was the only major label to agree to go DRM-free at that time.
Time. And it is a lot harder to screw up plugging a laptop to a dock then all the connections everyday.
How in the world could one "screw up" plugging in power, monitor and USB? That's a real head scratcher. If you've seen some of the docks on the market, they are much more laborious to connect, and much easier to screw up with.
Dock suck. They are overpriced, add crappy ports to your laptop, and have to be bought for specific models. And they wear out and break really easily. The only people I've seen using docks are moronic executives. As you say - "business class" laptops have them. And those machines are for suckers who want to feel important.
It's an acronym, an abbreviation and a contraction. Words often have more than one meaning, you know. Some grammar Nazis would correct you saying it's an initialism rather than an acronym. But I'm not that much of a dick.
But you claimed that the word "tag" did not exist on the internet prior to 2000. That is clearly false. You didn't say anything about it being related to picture uploading.
Either way, you're wrong - people have been tagging and sending pics over USENET for a very long time.
I get that - but what happens when they use some other computer that isn't locked down? They'll search for the friendly puppy site - and who knows where they will end up?
But why does it have to be either? Just reconfigure the OS to your needs. What's so hard to understand, unless you want to milk customers for more money?
Slashdot Mirror
That is utter bullshit. Civil liberties have been going downhill for a long long time. His prediction on civil liberties was already true before 9/11.
Really? To go downhill, they'd have to have somewhere to go down from. When was this golden age of civil liberties? The 70s? The 80s? The 90s? Things were pretty much as bad back then as they were in 2001. If anything, the 90s were probably the high point (steps toward eliminating police brutality, gay rights, even talk of drug decriminalization, etc.), and that wasn't very long ago.
But bottom line........why would anyone not want to get the bast quality available?
Because it's cheaper and more convenient to buy online, and you get tracks already pre-populated with good metadata. Seeing as the music sounds basically identical to a CD - why bother with the additional hassle and expense? It also reduces environmental impact. I don't think that a personal desire for virtually unnoticeable increase in quality is worth the additional impact of make more plastic rubbish and releasing more toxic chemicals into the environment.
I'm merely wanting to be able to basically by CD content online like I can in the store? Why is everyone so willing to settle for less?
That was kind of the point of the SACD argument - you have "settled for less" but it's good enough for you. You could get slightly better quality than CD, but for unnecessary expense and difficulty.
Fud? There is no FUD here. The simple fact is that you will have to pay 1.39 or (30% of album cost) TOTAL per current DRM'd song (or album) that you currently own to remove the DRM.
That's pure FUD. you made no mention that you were talking about the price of upgrading pr re-purchasing. You said it as if that was the new price of all songs on the store.
It still doesn't add up. 99c (original price) plus 30c per track to upgrade equals $1.29 per track. It's specious reasoning though, as you have already bought the track, and you are not forced to upgrade. If you didn't want the DRM, why did you buy the DRMed track in the first place?
It's just irritating to have to pay more for something that has already been paid for.
But you're not. You didn't pay for a 256kbps DRM-free version when you bought the first time. You paid for a 128kbps DRM-restricted version. It's a different product. Do you also believe that you should get free Blu-Ray copies of all the movies you bought on DVD?
It also proves that Steve really doesn't "believe" that music should not have DRM, if he did then they wouldn't charge us to remove it.
It proves nothing of the sort. How do you know that it isn't the record labels that made it a requirement to pay for upgrades? They are the ones in control of licensing their songs. And it makes no sense. If Steve doesn't believe that music should be DRM-free, then why would he switch the entire store over to DRM-free music? Why did he encourage the labels to do that in the first place?
You talk about Amazon, but if it wasn't for Jobs putting pressure on the labels, then Amazon wouldn't be selling DRM-free tracks either.
Exhibit A: Magnatune support directly in Amarok.
Which kind of proves my point - look at the awful user interface on Magnatune. iTunes is nicer.
When only their preferences are supported, yes, it's a problem.
What the hell are you talking about? You youself said that you can use Magnatune and Amazon and others. So how is it that only my preferences are supported? You have plenty of outlets supporting your preference, so what's the problem?
Yeah, use IE if you really want to, so long as your site is designed to some reasonable approximation of standards, so I don't have to. If you slap on a "best viewed in IE6" disclaimer and ignore Firefox, well, 1995 called...
What the hell? When did I mention IE, and what does this have to do with anything?
I've done tests....and friends and I could tell the differences....
Really? You've done double-blind tests? You've already tested against Apple's 256kbps AACs? I kind of doubt it.
I'd just rather by my music in the best form possible..to play on the good systems I have...and then let ME degrade them to mp3 or whatever, for the poorer listening environments I have like the iPod in the car or gym.
But you mentioned buy audio CDs. If you really only buy the "best form possible", wouldn't you be using SACD or studio master tapes or something? Why is CD good enough for your golden ears?
Some of us do appreciate good sound, and I've been building my home stereo since I was about 12 and heard my first McIntosh tube amp on a pair of Klipschorns.
As do I. I've even designed and built my own speaker systems. But that doesn't mean I kid myself about hearing differences that have no noticeable affect on the listening experience.
Well, it's like a unitard... no, it means that the case and chassis of the machine is milled from a solid block of aluminium. So, it's not screwed together with different parts - it's a single, solid body. Makes it rigid, strong and light.
Every cell-phone from entry-level to smart phone has a removable battery,
No, they don't. Not all of them. And there are valid design and engineering reasons why that decision was made.
The thing that really miffs me about tech companies and Apple seems excessively guilty of this: they seem to be following the model of the fashion industry with rolling out new products with incremental changes, feature dribbles that could have all been brought out in one unit, etc.
I'm not sure what you're saying here - Apple shouldn't release improved products until they have a massive breakthrough or radically different design? I don't think many users would be happy with that.
Funny how amazon can sell DRM free music for 99 but for apple it costs 1.39.
Did you not follow the announcement? There are three prices - 69c, 99c and $1.29. I'm not sure why you quote a figure higher than Apple says they will sell the tracks for. Is that an attempt at FUD or something?
The space is right there for the full numberpad. Basically every other 17" laptop has them, because they have the space for it.
Are you sure? It may look like it externally, but most of the space taken up by a keyboard/keypad is internal space. Not only the space for the keys, but also any wiring, and any reinforcement or mounts in the chassis.
The problem with the suggestions of "why can't they add this" is that everybody has their own thing they want added. So, they add a numberpad for you, a card reader slot for someone else, removable battery, thumbprint reader. Something has to give, so you end up with something bulky like the typical 17" notebook from other manufacturers. And it's easy to lose focus trying to be everything to everybody, and you end up with a situation like the annoying myriad of variations on the Performa product line.
Doing something because "everybody else does it" is not always good reasoning.
External X is not the same as built-in X. It's one more piece of kit to cart around, it's one more piece of kit to buy, and it's one more ugly piece of kit hanging off the side of your computer.
Conversely, built-in X is also something that every user has to put up with, whether they use it or not. It also means that every user has to pay for X, even if they don't use it. I doubt the demand for number pads on laptops is significant.
You have to "package" the battery just the same.
No, you don't. The laptop itself is the enclosure for the naked cells. A removable battery needs to be encased in plastic for safety reasons. It's astounding the amount of ignorance being displayed on slashdot about basic engineering.
If Dell said they were going to non-removable batteries, there would be s hit storm.
In case you haven't noticed, there has been something of a "shit storm" when Apple announced it too. There tends to be some sort of shit storm whenever Apple announces anything. Dell's announcements tend to be greeted with a "meh," not the extreme reactions people have to Apple.
Being non-removable does not increase the capacity of a battery, nor should it give you an increased volume in any competent design.
Absolute nonsense. Tell me, what is this "competent design" that doesn't result in increased volume? Is the casing made of some miracle plastic that doesn't actually have any physical volume?
Apple is selling bullshit pie and the fans are eating it up yet again.
Where is the bullshit? You seem to be claiming that Apple is lying about their product's design. Do you have any proof of this, or any reason they would lie about it?
A) you only save it on one side (the laptop case does not generally extend below the battery case - the bottom of the battery case is part of the laptop case.
Arrrgh, such nonsense! When have you ever seen a laptop battery that is only cased on one side, and the naked cells are exposed on the top?
My cell phone's battery is about 3mm
Yes, and much of that thickness is due to the protective casing! If it weren't encased, it would be significantly smaller.
In summary, eliminating those parts of the case that make the battery removable (the chemicals still need to be separated from the computer components, of course) probably saves you at most 20% (on a 17" desktop replacement, probably closer to 10%).
I think the calculations of Apple's engineers, who actually built the thing, would be more reliable than some random internet guy who apparently doesn't understand much about battery construction or laptop engineering.
What "obvious B.S" are talking about?
Removable batteries don't have to be sturdier anywhere other than the connector and one side of the outer casing. The material for any lithium-based battery pack is going to have to be resilient anyway to withstand the heat and pressure the battery will be subjected to in u
You clearly have no clue. Naked lithium batteries are very easily punctured. So, no, you don't just need sturdiness on "one side" of the battery casing. You need protection all around. It sounds as if you've never actually seen a removable laptop battery. They are well armored - they'd be getting sued for all kinds of accidents if they weren't. And that casing, and the connector, takes up a lot of space. I'm not sure what bizarro world you are living in where sturdy casing and connectors don't take up space.
You should not have to install a piece of software to use a fucking music store.
And you don't have to. As you said yourself, you can use Amazon (although they require you to install software to download full albums) or mp3.com.
But many people prefer to use iTunes. The browsing and purchasing experience is much nicer than web browser based stores.
Do you have some sort of problem with people having different preferences than yourself?
...I've been hearing some quality differences in mp3's that I've ripped over the years at different qualities and different encoders...when I get time, I may rerip some of the poorer quality ones I'm hearing now.
Did you miss the part about them being 256kbps AAC files? You get better reproduction than MP3 at the same bitrates, and at 256kbps, it's basically indistinguishable from lossless - unless you're being a wanky "audiophile" who claims to hear things that really aren't there.
Do a blind A/B between a CD and well-encoded 256k AAC, and I bet you wouldn't be able to pick the encoded one.
Average price will. Average price of anything you would actually want to download don't.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know what you want to download. Different people have different tastes. Anyway, rather than whining about a hypothetical, why don't you just go and look for yourself, and see if the price of what you want to download has gone up, down, or stayed the same?
There's a lot of crap on there I wouldn't pay for.
Wow, who would have thought that in a music store with millions of songs, some people don't want to buy all of them? That's nothing like... every other music store in existence.
You really think that Apple are going to announce very specific pricing, and then turn around and set completely different prices? That would be a PR nightmare. If they were going to do something like charge $2.50, they would simply not announce specific pricing in the press release.
What the hell? Where's your evidence for this accusation? The DRM-free songs were all the songs in the EMI stable, as EMI was the only major label to agree to go DRM-free at that time.
Time. And it is a lot harder to screw up plugging a laptop to a dock then all the connections everyday.
How in the world could one "screw up" plugging in power, monitor and USB? That's a real head scratcher. If you've seen some of the docks on the market, they are much more laborious to connect, and much easier to screw up with.
Dock suck. They are overpriced, add crappy ports to your laptop, and have to be bought for specific models. And they wear out and break really easily. The only people I've seen using docks are moronic executives. As you say - "business class" laptops have them. And those machines are for suckers who want to feel important.
It's an acronym, an abbreviation and a contraction. Words often have more than one meaning, you know. Some grammar Nazis would correct you saying it's an initialism rather than an acronym. But I'm not that much of a dick.
But you claimed that the word "tag" did not exist on the internet prior to 2000. That is clearly false. You didn't say anything about it being related to picture uploading.
Either way, you're wrong - people have been tagging and sending pics over USENET for a very long time.
I get that - but what happens when they use some other computer that isn't locked down? They'll search for the friendly puppy site - and who knows where they will end up?
But why does it have to be either? Just reconfigure the OS to your needs. What's so hard to understand, unless you want to milk customers for more money?