I haven't used the Apple software at all (either on the iPod or iTunes) after the first day using Rockbox on my Nano so I can't say whether it causes any conflicts, but I doubt it. You make a backup of all your original firmware files, and I've never heard of anybody bricking their player. I suppose it's possible, though. The folks over at the forum are really helpful if you have any questions.
There are some great features other than playing alternate formats. It comes with a ton of free games (I'm addicted to sodoku). You can drag files onto the iPod and it will play them without having to use iTunes. As you would expect there's also a ton of different themes available so you don't have to have the simple black/white Apple theme. I switched almost immediately after getting my Nano and haven't looked back. They have a great tutorial and the forums are helpful and newb friendly so it was a painless process getting it set up.
First off, there aren't any redwoods in Colorado. Second, the beetle problem has more to do with drought combined with poor forest management (logging restrictions and fire supression). Global warming has nothing to do with it, other than the possibility that changing climate has produced more droughts over the last few years in the West, which is unlikely.
There seems to be a myth that he was an illiterate peasant who happened to stumble on a maths book came from, but I don't know where it came from.
Ramanujan is mentioned in the movie Good Will Hunting and that is how he is presented. That's the first time I heard of him. I'm sure people just use that myth because it's not too far from the truth and makes a much better story.
BTW, it occcurs to me that if Clovis points were a technology that spread amongst an existing people (rather than the spread of the people with the technology) then neighbouring tribes/families/whatever would have to have been on good terms for it to spread. Anecdotally at least it would seem from what is known of tribes who were recently in this sort of situation that they tend not to be particularly friendly with their neighbours.
Not necessarily. If you look at the spread of bronze-making technology in the Old World it was just as often spread by making war as it was by trade. Even cultures that are aggressive still tend to trade with other cultures. Besides, the Clovis tech wasn't particularly complex. Even after simply seeing a spear with a rock spearhead an intelligent person could probably figure out how to craft one fairly quickly. I was taught how to make one in a few hours using only tools found in the environment. It wasn't particularly good, but it was still sharp and pointy.
There will always be piracy
on
DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 1, Insightful
2) The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them.
No matter how low you price a movie or CD, it will always be too expensive for somebody. You can save money on anything by stealing it.
There are two reasons why people pirate media: 1) It's easy. 2) It's free. 3) There are no repercussions (for the vast majority of people who do it). That's it, that's all. It's not a big secret. People want stuff for free. If people could get away with copying TV's or cars for the cost of materials, most would do that also, regardless of legality.
DRM doesn't promote piracy. Piracy was around before computers. Piracy was prevalent before there was any sort of DRM on CD's (and there still isn't DRM on most CD's). The reason DRM sucks is because it's a huge pain in the ass and does absolutely nothing to prevent large scale piracy. That's reason enough to dislike it without making shit up about how it causes piracy. Piracy has been around much longer than DRM.
It's a shame this part of the article was quoted, because it's really his weakest point. The rest of his article basically says, "Selling unrestricted, open media creates more revenue than piracy takes away" which is a much stronger argument.
I'm presuming that if a student contacted the administration with a compelling reason to unblock a site, that it would be (certainly if this is not the case, it should be), but I still trust the school to consistently make better decisions on this front.
Sounds like someone that never had to deal with your average high school administrators. At my school we were pretty much treated like criminals (somewhat justified but it still sucked). Our computer teachers just taught us how to use proxies because: 1) it was easier than attempting to convince idiot principals that the website we were visiting was ok and 2) we actually learned something useful.
Second, I believe that when school kids are on school property using school equipment, the school should get to decide what they're allowed to do. My employer sure has this right, and it's also certainly a firing offense for me to bypass it.
If it's a public school where a child's attendance is mandatory, it's a massive difference between that and you working for a private corporation. If all they're blocking is myspace, porn, etc. then they're probably doing ok. Public schools have in the past shown that they will censor anything even remotely objectionable. For many kids, school is the only place that they have access to a computer. So in general, helping kids get around the blocks isn't really that bad. I don't know what the hell I would've done in school if I wasn't able to use proxies. They had a ridiculous amount of websites banned, even ones that contained legitimately useful information. Besides, it's a joke to say that kids are learning all the time when they're in school. 95% of your time in public school is spent talking or playing around anyway.
Wow. In only six weeks they've managed to estabilish exactly what Apple already said and, in a sensationalist bid, are framing exactly what was predicted as a terrible failure.
The entire market for smart phones is about 1% of the larger cell phone market. So for Apple to succeed in its 1% estimate it will have to grow the market significantly or take nearly all of the existing customers. This just shows that 1% of the sample survey says they would buy it at that price point, which does not mean that they would actually buy it or that the others surveyed wouldn't buy it. It also doesn't take into account the fact that the price will likely drop and features will be added before Apple's 1% target date (end of 2008). So technically it's not what Apple said.
I agree that it's a stupid article, though. The sample size is way too small to forecast accurately, and even if it were accurate these types of surveys are notorious for being misleading because people themselves aren't too certain about what they'd actually pay. $500 may seem too much until they get their hands on the thing and see how cool it is. Conversely, $500 may sound like a deal but they may find that it's not that much better than a regular phone.
If anybody says they know what's ultimately going to happen with the iPhone, they are lying, but saying "we'll wait and see what happens" gets a lot fewer hits than "the iPhone is too expensive."
1. "Nigger" is an insult no matter who says it. Differentiating between different races like you're doing and assigning them different levels of free speech based on their color is extremely racist.
That's not entirely true. When most black people use "nigga" as a greeting/casual term, it doesn't have the same connotation that it does when a white person says "nigger," or to a lesser extent if a white person says "nigga." It's a case of a group of people re-appropriating an offensive term and trying to make it harmless. For example, "queer" has pretty much been successfully taken back and isn't viewed as an insult by many people. The context matters more than the actual word used.
Also, racism is one of the few truly taboo subjects we have in the US. Because of the history of our society, whether correct or not, it actually is more offensive to make racist comments than other insulting comments. Calling someone fat, ugly, or an idiot is much less offensive than using racist terms.
We don't come into a perfectly free and clear society. There is a history here, and words have meaning based on that history. People are and have been bigots, and because of that different words have different associations based on the context of who says it and in what situation.
Welcome to the real world. Idealism doesn't work here.
Even if al-Ghazali ideas were extremely influential in the Muslim world, he certainly can't be the only reason for what amounts to a complete collapse of one of the great scientific civilizations in world history. For example, if you look at the writings/teachings of Martin Luther and the spread of Protestant thought in Germany, the US, and the UK you would assume that we would completely reject science and reason. That is hardly the case though, as a huge proportion of major scientific breakthroughs in the last few centuries have come from those three countries. I would say that attributing it all to al-Ghazali is probably a very simplistic analysis.
Disclaimer: I don't know anything whatsoever about al-Ghazali other than a quick look at the wikipedia page.
I'm reasonably doubtful that the PS3 can actually make a format successful on its own... As was demonstrated with the PSP (which, at this point in its life, sold better than the PS3) is that people buy gaming systems to play videogames and movie-playback is a secondary feature.
Well, that's not really a fair comparison as the PSP wasn't hooked up to a TV (usually) and UMD didn't offer any additional benefits whatsoever over DVD other than being smaller. For many people the PS2 was their only DVD player. It worked just fine in that capacity, although it certainly isn't comparable to the PS3 because it wasn't pushing a new format.
The argument he is making is that because the PS3 is already in many homes, Blu-Ray will have a larger customer base than HD-DVD. It's a legitimate point. I'm also skeptical whether this will ultimately have that large of an effect or not, but it does give Blu-Ray a slight advantage over HD-DVD right now. In the future, if the PS3's sales pick up, it may become much more significant.
One is the correlation between the exposure to nudity/sex and increased promiscuity. That of course can lead to issues such as increased spread of STD's (which can of course be somewhat mitigated through education) and increased unintended teen pregnancies (ditto about education). So part of the question isn't necessarily "what's so harmful about watching people have sex", it's, "to mitigate the issues raised above, what age is appropriate for viewing of such material".
AFAIK there is no reason to believe that increased access to porn and/or sex in the media makes people want to have sex more. Teenagers of every society ever in existence have been having sex, whether society was open about it or not. That's what people do. There is, however, extremely strong evidence that providing sex education lowers both the rate of STD's and teen pregnancies. I would even posit that it is possible for a teenager watching porn to have less of a chance of having sex, because he/she is satisfying their curiosity and sexual desire by watching sex as opposed to actually engaging in it.
The graph groups Australia with Japan and other Pacific countries. When you take that into account it's actually much less per capita than the US/Canada.
Not necessarily. If there are a bunch of Wii's sitting on shelves it doesn't mean that there isn't still an excitement for them (if most Wii owners are still buying games). On the flip side, though, if the only games a lot of people have are Wii Sports and Zelda then there may definitely be a drop-off in excitement level even if there is enough demand to sell systems. The 360 still has pretty good sales but I'd say that most people aren't that excited about it as there are still relatively few great games for it. If the novelty of the wiimote has worn off and there aren't any really good games out, then Nintendo *may* have a problem.
I know I really have no interest in getting one until people actually start making some good games for it. All the supposed good games for the Wii are irritating collections of minigames. It's still far too early to tell, though. I could definitely see myself getting one after Metroid, Mario, and the gang start showing up.
You're forgetting the actual large companies. Other than EA companies like Activision, Ubisoft, Sega, THQ, SCi/Eidos, LucasArts, Atari, Midway, and Vivendi Universal (not just Blizzard) all produce a majority of their stuff cross-platform. So yes, the majority of large gaming companies do make games that are cross platform. Huge blockbuster titles with exclusivity are usually ported around a year later anyway (Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, GTA).
Think about all Microsoft's first/second party games (Bungie, Rare, etc), all the Nintendo first/second party games, now add the fact that Square-Enix, though not exclusive as a company, is exclusive on a game by game basis. That's 3 out of 4 of the largest game developers in the world (excluding EA).
Well, first of all, excluding EA doesn't work. They are by far the largest developer in the world. They have somewhere around 20% of the market. Second, Square-Enix is nowhere near the top of the video game world as far as sales go (they're probably around 10 or lower). The big developers and the majority of games are not necessarily the developers you like and the games that you like.
I have two very close friends, both of whom are Lutheran and very religious. My one friend's father is a preacher and is very much into biblical literalism. My other friend is extremely liberal and her church also seems to be extremely liberal. She is a biologist, and definitely does not believe in taking the bible literally. I'm not sure about the different "churches" within Lutheranism, but apparently they disagree on a lot of issues and generally dislike each other.
Well, from their viewpoint, they actually are interested in the future of their children. They're just stupid. They don't want all the godless liberals teaching their children about something that "isn't true."
I've never met or heard of a christian who knows ancient hebrew well enough to study the bible like a jewish scholar.
You've got your head in the sand. Ever heard of a theologian? Ever been to a school with a religious studies department? Most theologians in the West are Christian, and a whole lot of them read and understand classical Hebrew.
I've never seen anything similar in translations of the "Old Testament" of the Christian bible.
There are more "academic" translations of the Old Testament available with footnotes and the like. Just because most people read the KJ or other version and take it at face value doesn't mean other options aren't out there. Note that I agree with you that the parent poster was being highly idealized. Even if he/she does act that way, the majority of Christians do not.
2) Silent operation? Not sure about that. But, have you seen the insides of a PS3? It's 50% heatsink.
This was true for the PS2 also, at least when it first came out. My PS2 has a heat sink over the entire area not covered by the DVD drive. I can't speak for overheating as I've never played a PS3.
The problem with second life is that for many people there is no reason to "play" it. There is no real objective to the game, eg. you don't get to slay dragons and rescue the princess, you don't get the rarest of rarest of items that increases your stats so you can brag in your guild about your latest armor or sword, you don't have that rare drop to fit on your brand new spaceship you use to pirate.
I think that's one of the real problems with Second Life. Overall it's basically just a large, detailed chat room. This attracts other people that chat rooms attract, largely alternative-lifestyle folks that have a hard time finding like-minded social groups in real life. That community is the only thing that holds people together, and for most people there isn't enough of a reason to hang out in Second Life making friends as opposed to hanging out in real life and making friends.
How much work would Apple have to do to begin providing different protection levels via iTunes? (Hint: it's not "2-3 days" work, as someone suggested in a previous submission on this topic to slashdot. Anyone who thinks it is is seriously deluding themselves in terms of how much work is required to make reliable and consistent changes to such a large service.)
They already store unprotected files on the server that are accessible from certain clients. I'm sure they probably thought of the eventuality that they could sell unprotected music someday, and if they have any sense they already have something designed and implemented. It is definitely a business decision and not technical limitations that are holding them back.
This whole conspiracy theory that Jobs floated this out for PR but he's really in love with DRM is bogus. Jobs, as the CEO of the company that runs the largest online music store and a board member of Disney, concisely shredded DRM and scathingly explained why DRM will never work and will always fail, and soundly trounced any argument in favor of DRM. The fact that people think Apple still secretly wants DRM or only released this statement to deflect complaints in Europe is astounding to me.
I never said he was in love with DRM. The simple fact is that Apple does not sell songs without DRM, even though they have the ability and many independent labels have requested to have their music sold unshackled. If Steve was anti-DRM, then why does iTunes not have the ability to sell unrestricted music from those labels that want it? The answer is that they can make a whole shitload of money while still appearing to be fighting the good fight. They can strengthen their market share slightly by continuing to sell songs that are locked into the iPod and claim it was the big bad record companies that made them do it.
I have no doubt, if the majors agreed to it, that within a few weeks iTunes would be selling unprotected AAC or MP3 files. But the fact of the matter is that Apple already has the opportunity to sell unrestricted songs and they don't. Actions speak louder than words.
In any case, if you answer all of the above questions, it's seriously doubtful that it's anywhere near "30%" (or even 3%) if you consider people who actually have standing to ask Apple to remove DRM. Individual artists can't ask. It would have to be their labels or CDbaby.
I never said it was the artists. I said it was the labels. And for indie labels, there is a much closer relationship between artist and label. They often have very similar opinions. It's pretty obvious by the amount of artists listed on emusic that there are plenty of labels out there willing to sell unprotected music.
I understand why Apple doesn't want to go through the process of arranging contracts with each small label that puts music on iTunes. It's a perfectly valid reason. That doesn't mean that they couldn't do it if they wanted to. But then the argument from Apple is "DRM is easier and more convenient for us". That's a far cry from "we would do it if the big, bad record labels would let us." Which one sounds better in a press release?
The bottom line is that Jobs' statement on DRM is the most massive shot across the bow of DRM in history, from anyone at any level, and some people just can't accept that.
Please, he is not some goddamn crusader for your rights. He's selling you a music player. If he wanted to do something to actually change the situation, he would let Apple sell unrestricted files. Like I said earlier, actions speak louder than words. Until he actually does something this is just empty rhetoric.
Steve Jobs does not care about you. He isn't interested in fighting for consumer rights against the evil record companies. He wants to sell you things
Well, I probably phrased that a little poorly. I didn't mean to imply that socialism always equals communism. It's just that socialists believe the workers should share in the control of production (either through government control, trade unions, etc.). Obviously there is a wide range in this, from US style socialism (not much) all the way to communism.
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I haven't used the Apple software at all (either on the iPod or iTunes) after the first day using Rockbox on my Nano so I can't say whether it causes any conflicts, but I doubt it. You make a backup of all your original firmware files, and I've never heard of anybody bricking their player. I suppose it's possible, though. The folks over at the forum are really helpful if you have any questions.
There are some great features other than playing alternate formats. It comes with a ton of free games (I'm addicted to sodoku). You can drag files onto the iPod and it will play them without having to use iTunes. As you would expect there's also a ton of different themes available so you don't have to have the simple black/white Apple theme. I switched almost immediately after getting my Nano and haven't looked back. They have a great tutorial and the forums are helpful and newb friendly so it was a painless process getting it set up.
First off, there aren't any redwoods in Colorado. Second, the beetle problem has more to do with drought combined with poor forest management (logging restrictions and fire supression). Global warming has nothing to do with it, other than the possibility that changing climate has produced more droughts over the last few years in the West, which is unlikely.
Ramanujan is mentioned in the movie Good Will Hunting and that is how he is presented. That's the first time I heard of him. I'm sure people just use that myth because it's not too far from the truth and makes a much better story.
Seems plausible, but do you have a source?
Not necessarily. If you look at the spread of bronze-making technology in the Old World it was just as often spread by making war as it was by trade. Even cultures that are aggressive still tend to trade with other cultures. Besides, the Clovis tech wasn't particularly complex. Even after simply seeing a spear with a rock spearhead an intelligent person could probably figure out how to craft one fairly quickly. I was taught how to make one in a few hours using only tools found in the environment. It wasn't particularly good, but it was still sharp and pointy.
No matter how low you price a movie or CD, it will always be too expensive for somebody. You can save money on anything by stealing it.
There are two reasons why people pirate media: 1) It's easy. 2) It's free. 3) There are no repercussions (for the vast majority of people who do it). That's it, that's all. It's not a big secret. People want stuff for free. If people could get away with copying TV's or cars for the cost of materials, most would do that also, regardless of legality.
DRM doesn't promote piracy. Piracy was around before computers. Piracy was prevalent before there was any sort of DRM on CD's (and there still isn't DRM on most CD's). The reason DRM sucks is because it's a huge pain in the ass and does absolutely nothing to prevent large scale piracy. That's reason enough to dislike it without making shit up about how it causes piracy. Piracy has been around much longer than DRM.
It's a shame this part of the article was quoted, because it's really his weakest point. The rest of his article basically says, "Selling unrestricted, open media creates more revenue than piracy takes away" which is a much stronger argument.
Sounds like someone that never had to deal with your average high school administrators. At my school we were pretty much treated like criminals (somewhat justified but it still sucked). Our computer teachers just taught us how to use proxies because: 1) it was easier than attempting to convince idiot principals that the website we were visiting was ok and 2) we actually learned something useful.
If it's a public school where a child's attendance is mandatory, it's a massive difference between that and you working for a private corporation. If all they're blocking is myspace, porn, etc. then they're probably doing ok. Public schools have in the past shown that they will censor anything even remotely objectionable. For many kids, school is the only place that they have access to a computer. So in general, helping kids get around the blocks isn't really that bad. I don't know what the hell I would've done in school if I wasn't able to use proxies. They had a ridiculous amount of websites banned, even ones that contained legitimately useful information. Besides, it's a joke to say that kids are learning all the time when they're in school. 95% of your time in public school is spent talking or playing around anyway.
The entire market for smart phones is about 1% of the larger cell phone market. So for Apple to succeed in its 1% estimate it will have to grow the market significantly or take nearly all of the existing customers. This just shows that 1% of the sample survey says they would buy it at that price point, which does not mean that they would actually buy it or that the others surveyed wouldn't buy it. It also doesn't take into account the fact that the price will likely drop and features will be added before Apple's 1% target date (end of 2008). So technically it's not what Apple said.
I agree that it's a stupid article, though. The sample size is way too small to forecast accurately, and even if it were accurate these types of surveys are notorious for being misleading because people themselves aren't too certain about what they'd actually pay. $500 may seem too much until they get their hands on the thing and see how cool it is. Conversely, $500 may sound like a deal but they may find that it's not that much better than a regular phone.
If anybody says they know what's ultimately going to happen with the iPhone, they are lying, but saying "we'll wait and see what happens" gets a lot fewer hits than "the iPhone is too expensive."
That's not entirely true. When most black people use "nigga" as a greeting/casual term, it doesn't have the same connotation that it does when a white person says "nigger," or to a lesser extent if a white person says "nigga." It's a case of a group of people re-appropriating an offensive term and trying to make it harmless. For example, "queer" has pretty much been successfully taken back and isn't viewed as an insult by many people. The context matters more than the actual word used.
Also, racism is one of the few truly taboo subjects we have in the US. Because of the history of our society, whether correct or not, it actually is more offensive to make racist comments than other insulting comments. Calling someone fat, ugly, or an idiot is much less offensive than using racist terms.
We don't come into a perfectly free and clear society. There is a history here, and words have meaning based on that history. People are and have been bigots, and because of that different words have different associations based on the context of who says it and in what situation.
Welcome to the real world. Idealism doesn't work here.
Even if al-Ghazali ideas were extremely influential in the Muslim world, he certainly can't be the only reason for what amounts to a complete collapse of one of the great scientific civilizations in world history. For example, if you look at the writings/teachings of Martin Luther and the spread of Protestant thought in Germany, the US, and the UK you would assume that we would completely reject science and reason. That is hardly the case though, as a huge proportion of major scientific breakthroughs in the last few centuries have come from those three countries. I would say that attributing it all to al-Ghazali is probably a very simplistic analysis.
Disclaimer: I don't know anything whatsoever about al-Ghazali other than a quick look at the wikipedia page.
Well, that's not really a fair comparison as the PSP wasn't hooked up to a TV (usually) and UMD didn't offer any additional benefits whatsoever over DVD other than being smaller. For many people the PS2 was their only DVD player. It worked just fine in that capacity, although it certainly isn't comparable to the PS3 because it wasn't pushing a new format.
The argument he is making is that because the PS3 is already in many homes, Blu-Ray will have a larger customer base than HD-DVD. It's a legitimate point. I'm also skeptical whether this will ultimately have that large of an effect or not, but it does give Blu-Ray a slight advantage over HD-DVD right now. In the future, if the PS3's sales pick up, it may become much more significant.
AFAIK there is no reason to believe that increased access to porn and/or sex in the media makes people want to have sex more. Teenagers of every society ever in existence have been having sex, whether society was open about it or not. That's what people do. There is, however, extremely strong evidence that providing sex education lowers both the rate of STD's and teen pregnancies. I would even posit that it is possible for a teenager watching porn to have less of a chance of having sex, because he/she is satisfying their curiosity and sexual desire by watching sex as opposed to actually engaging in it.
The difference is that this is presented as legitimate news. The Intel page and banner ads are obviously advertisements. Guerilla marketing sucks.
The graph groups Australia with Japan and other Pacific countries. When you take that into account it's actually much less per capita than the US/Canada.
Not necessarily. If there are a bunch of Wii's sitting on shelves it doesn't mean that there isn't still an excitement for them (if most Wii owners are still buying games). On the flip side, though, if the only games a lot of people have are Wii Sports and Zelda then there may definitely be a drop-off in excitement level even if there is enough demand to sell systems. The 360 still has pretty good sales but I'd say that most people aren't that excited about it as there are still relatively few great games for it. If the novelty of the wiimote has worn off and there aren't any really good games out, then Nintendo *may* have a problem.
I know I really have no interest in getting one until people actually start making some good games for it. All the supposed good games for the Wii are irritating collections of minigames. It's still far too early to tell, though. I could definitely see myself getting one after Metroid, Mario, and the gang start showing up.
You're forgetting the actual large companies. Other than EA companies like Activision, Ubisoft, Sega, THQ, SCi/Eidos, LucasArts, Atari, Midway, and Vivendi Universal (not just Blizzard) all produce a majority of their stuff cross-platform. So yes, the majority of large gaming companies do make games that are cross platform. Huge blockbuster titles with exclusivity are usually ported around a year later anyway (Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, GTA).
Think about all Microsoft's first/second party games (Bungie, Rare, etc), all the Nintendo first/second party games, now add the fact that Square-Enix, though not exclusive as a company, is exclusive on a game by game basis. That's 3 out of 4 of the largest game developers in the world (excluding EA).
Well, first of all, excluding EA doesn't work. They are by far the largest developer in the world. They have somewhere around 20% of the market. Second, Square-Enix is nowhere near the top of the video game world as far as sales go (they're probably around 10 or lower). The big developers and the majority of games are not necessarily the developers you like and the games that you like.
I have two very close friends, both of whom are Lutheran and very religious. My one friend's father is a preacher and is very much into biblical literalism. My other friend is extremely liberal and her church also seems to be extremely liberal. She is a biologist, and definitely does not believe in taking the bible literally. I'm not sure about the different "churches" within Lutheranism, but apparently they disagree on a lot of issues and generally dislike each other.
Well, from their viewpoint, they actually are interested in the future of their children. They're just stupid. They don't want all the godless liberals teaching their children about something that "isn't true."
You've got your head in the sand. Ever heard of a theologian? Ever been to a school with a religious studies department? Most theologians in the West are Christian, and a whole lot of them read and understand classical Hebrew.
There are more "academic" translations of the Old Testament available with footnotes and the like. Just because most people read the KJ or other version and take it at face value doesn't mean other options aren't out there. Note that I agree with you that the parent poster was being highly idealized. Even if he/she does act that way, the majority of Christians do not.
This was true for the PS2 also, at least when it first came out. My PS2 has a heat sink over the entire area not covered by the DVD drive. I can't speak for overheating as I've never played a PS3.
Oh yeah, YHBT.
I think that's one of the real problems with Second Life. Overall it's basically just a large, detailed chat room. This attracts other people that chat rooms attract, largely alternative-lifestyle folks that have a hard time finding like-minded social groups in real life. That community is the only thing that holds people together, and for most people there isn't enough of a reason to hang out in Second Life making friends as opposed to hanging out in real life and making friends.
Looks like you might want to read up on a couple subjects.
They already store unprotected files on the server that are accessible from certain clients. I'm sure they probably thought of the eventuality that they could sell unprotected music someday, and if they have any sense they already have something designed and implemented. It is definitely a business decision and not technical limitations that are holding them back.
I never said he was in love with DRM. The simple fact is that Apple does not sell songs without DRM, even though they have the ability and many independent labels have requested to have their music sold unshackled. If Steve was anti-DRM, then why does iTunes not have the ability to sell unrestricted music from those labels that want it? The answer is that they can make a whole shitload of money while still appearing to be fighting the good fight. They can strengthen their market share slightly by continuing to sell songs that are locked into the iPod and claim it was the big bad record companies that made them do it.
I have no doubt, if the majors agreed to it, that within a few weeks iTunes would be selling unprotected AAC or MP3 files. But the fact of the matter is that Apple already has the opportunity to sell unrestricted songs and they don't. Actions speak louder than words.
I never said it was the artists. I said it was the labels. And for indie labels, there is a much closer relationship between artist and label. They often have very similar opinions. It's pretty obvious by the amount of artists listed on emusic that there are plenty of labels out there willing to sell unprotected music.
I understand why Apple doesn't want to go through the process of arranging contracts with each small label that puts music on iTunes. It's a perfectly valid reason. That doesn't mean that they couldn't do it if they wanted to. But then the argument from Apple is "DRM is easier and more convenient for us". That's a far cry from "we would do it if the big, bad record labels would let us." Which one sounds better in a press release?
Please, he is not some goddamn crusader for your rights. He's selling you a music player. If he wanted to do something to actually change the situation, he would let Apple sell unrestricted files. Like I said earlier, actions speak louder than words. Until he actually does something this is just empty rhetoric.
Steve Jobs does not care about you. He isn't interested in fighting for consumer rights against the evil record companies. He wants to sell you things
Well, I probably phrased that a little poorly. I didn't mean to imply that socialism always equals communism. It's just that socialists believe the workers should share in the control of production (either through government control, trade unions, etc.). Obviously there is a wide range in this, from US style socialism (not much) all the way to communism.