SO FUCKING WHAT!? You're talking as if there's something WRONG with a company trying to make money! THAT'S WHAT THEY FRIGGIN' EXIST FOR! If companies didn't make money, our entire economy would be totally fucked. Apple makes a service. They make it so it only works with the iPod. They never advertise that it works for other mp3 players, and they aren't the only vendor out there. They are doing nothing but adding freedoms, not removing them, because if iTunes didn't exist you would have one less provider of online music, and therefore one less choice. You like the iRiver, therefore you don't buy songs from the iTunes music store. I never claimed there was anything wrong with that, you have the choice. Nobody's forcing you to buy from Apple. Personally, I like iTunes, I like the iPod (although mine's busted right now), and I'm not particularly bothered by the restrictions placed on the songs, so iTunes is the best store for me. If it was banned, I would be forced to go with a less ideal service, thus REDUCING my freedoms.
"Those that sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty or security",
That's one of my favorite quotes, and because of that I think that DRM should remain legal. Doesn't Apple have the right to produce whatever product it wants? Nobody's forcing us to buy it, so I don't see how anyone, especially in the US, could justify banning DRM. Obviously enough people are okay with it that the iTunes store is turning plenty of profit, so there's no basis by which Apple's liberties can be restricted. It just isn't within the government's power.
Pennies haven't been 100% copper since 1982. They're currently made of Zinc, with only a thin copper plating. 97.5% Zinc, 2.5% copper. Even still, the zinc in a penny is, according to Wikipedia, worth 1.1 cents now, so the penny is still worth more than a penny. If you find a pure copper penny laying around, that's worth quite a bit more, at 2.224 cents a pop. So the new law makes sense, but what would make even more sense would be getting rid of pennies altogether.
Ok... so the reason you're against DRM is because it's restrictive, right? It takes away options. So the solution is to... take away more options? Restrict even further? Personally, I don't see how taking away the users' right to use iTunes is any less restrictive than FairPlay itself.
Also, this simulation was about colonization. It's a lot easier to find something than to colonize it, especially in places that aren't very conducive to supporting life.
Well I agree with you there. I'm not a fan of DRM at all. I think it's walking a very fine line to legally restrict it, but I certainly don't think the RIAA should be able to get the government to further enable it. When it comes to something like Sony's rootkit though, I think the government has every right to get involved, because Sony (or whoever they hired to do their DRM, if you prefer) went completely outside the rules and essentially installed a virus on peoples' computers. The point of my original post was not that DRM isn't important or that we shouldn't bother with fighting injustice within our own system, it was simply that there is just no reasonable comparison between DRM and slavery, as some previous posters seemed to think.
Are you seriously comparing the plight of Brazilian charcoal slaves to iTunes restricting the number of computers purchased songs can be played on!? That's not only ridiculous, it's despicable! We're talking about DRM here. DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT!!! It's not a flipping crime against humanity, and claiming that it is completely disrespects everyone in a situation of real need or injustice. I think this is a lot of what Torvalds was trying to say -- talking about DRM is fine, but keep it in perspective! There are much more pressing injustices out there.
Yup, I understand that some people think OLPC will make for a better world. But this is geek thinking. However for the poor in rural villages, there's much more need for more basic things like clean water and other non-geeky needs.
In the short term, this is true, and those sorts of needs can't be ignored, but things like the OLPC project are aimed more at the long term. If we don't give these countries the intellectual resources to become self-sufficient and use their natural resources well, then the western world will have to keep on supplying clean water and vaccinations for the next couple centuries. Of course, you need to strike a balance in order to make sure there are people left in these countries by the time the long-term charities take effect, but you certainly can't claim that long-term projects don't do any good.
See, this is where Apple is innovative. They may not come up with brand new ideas (like widgets, spaces, and a good number of other features) but they're great at taking old ideas and implementing them extremely well. That's why OSX is largely the one that's popularized these ideas, and that's why it gets all the credit for them.
Google's beta products are almost universally better and more refined than any other company's final releases. I applaud Google for not pulling products out of beta until they're truly thoroughly tested.
I think by "doing their own PC troubleshooting" they mean "rebooting, reinstalling the offending program, and calling the friendly neighborhood geek if it still doesn't work."
you're never going to convince them that your arguments are purely logical or objective and aren't simply you rationalizing your own, um, experimentation. fyi.
Well, actually, I can, and my parents do realize that I'm not just rationalizing (though it took them long enough). The main proof of this is that I don't actually do drugs. I support their legalization, not their usage, and that probably adds to my credibility a little bit. But you are right, a good portion of their resistance to the idea of legalizing drugs is that they don't want to make me think that they're okay to do, and that's understandable.
As an average high school graduate (College sophomore now) I have to disagree. Obviously this will vary from school to school and area to area, but my personal experience tells me that my generation is, on an aggregate level, more aware of their rights and more willing to exercise them than most others. My friends and I almost universally know more about what we (and the police) can and cannot do according to the constitution than our parents. A large number of my friends support drug (or at least marijuana) legalization, and the ones who don't at least acknowledge the arguments against prohibition, whereas my parents (and from what I can tell, most of their generation) don't bother finding the facts, but instead believe what the government tells them - that drugs are 100% bad. My friends who oppose drug legalization acknowledge the fact that it isn't possible to overdose on marijuana, even if they oppose its deregulation for other reasons. I told that established fact to my parents and they refused to believe me. Of course, this isn't universal - there are plenty of ignorant members of my generation, and there are plenty of knowledgeable members of the previous ones - but I can at least say that I have hope for the future of civil liberties in America.
labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!)
You hit the nail right on the head. The problem is not that Indians (and Mexicans, for that matter) are "stealing" our jobs, it's that they are willing to do it for a lot less money. Honestly, you can't blame the companies for going with cheaper labor that can do the job just as well, or close to it (though forcing the American workers to train their replacement is a different story). If Americans were willing to work for lower wages, then labor wouldn't NEED to be outsourced. Of course, the problem isn't only that Americans aren't willing to work for lower wages, it's that we often aren't able to, so what you're saying, or something similar to it, would be the way to go. If Americans started to work for less, basic (and slightly simplistic, but still mostly valid for an approximation) economics says we would pretty much maintain the current standard of living, but only in the long term. In the short term, it just wouldn't work, because it only works if EVERYONE is working for the lower wages. The "early adopters" would be screwed until everyone else's wages went down by the same amount, at which point prices would also come down to meet demand. So the way to do it, as you say, is to start out by lowering prices a bit (revamping copyright/patent/monopoly law would be a reasonable start, though some would argue monopolies would help with this transition) and let that naturally be followed up with a lowering of wages, then rinse and repeat until we're competetive on a global scale.
Another way to ease the trasition would, of course, be to cut taxes like whoah. Americans pay, on average, a net of about 40% of their income to the government (not only income tax obviously, but including basic economic principles such as "corporate taxes raise prices," etc.). If we were to cut down on pork-barrel spending alone, that could probably be reduced to 35%, maybe even as low as 30%. That means the average American can take a pay cut of 5-10% without changing his net income at all. Then if you're willing to cut government programs that don't quite count as pork-barreling but still provide less benefit than what they cost, you could potentially bring total taxes down to 20%. That means we could bring wages down even lower (20% lower) without hurting the average American household's standard of living, with the exception of those who rely on whatever social programs are cut. Even still, losing a program is preferable to losing your job to someone overseas.
I think there are far more egregious wastes of energy out there than life support for a "piece of flesh." Powering a computer in order to read and post on Slashdot, for example?
I think you've uncovered a large piece of Sony's strategy for including Blu-Ray in the PS3. Right now, there's competition going on between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and Sony's on the Blu-Ray side of things. Right now, almost nobody would be willing to buy a stand-alone player for either one of these formats, but people ARE willing to buy the PS3, whether it includes Blu-Ray or not. This way Sony gets thousands of Blu-Ray players in households across America before any standard has caught on, and when movies start getting released in the new formats PS3 owners aren't going to go out and buy a new HD-DVD player when they already have a fully functional Blu-Ray player in their home. All they have to do is buy the movies, not the player. This eliminates the biggest barrier to entry for thousands of households and will give Blu-Ray a huge leg up on the HD-DVD competition when they start coming out. Sony isn't including Blu-Ray as a feature in the PS3, because Ars Technica is right - it doesn't really add too much to the gaming experience. Basically what Sony's doing is the same as offering a "buy one PS3, get this Blu-Ray player FREE" sort of promotional deal. It's to hasten adoption of their preferred format.
Microsoft is going to offer an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, but at this point the rush to buy a 360 is over and people aren't going to dish out another $200 for something they really won't use. Given the choice, people would buy a $200 cheaper version of the PS3 without the Blu-Ray, but Sony isn't giving them that choice for the very reason that they want Blu-Ray adoption in all PS3 households. People want the Xbox 360 and the PS3, they don't give two craps about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (not yet anyway). People will buy the Xbox 360 without HD-DVD if they can, but if Sony forces people to get Blu-Ray with the PS3 people will still buy it because they don't see themselves paying that extra $200 for a feature they don't want, they see it has paying an extra $200 for the PS3 as a whole. Of course, Microsoft doesn't have nearly as much invested in HD-DVD as Sony does in Blu-Ray, so they probably made the right decision for themselves when they chose not to require consumers to buy an HD-DVD drive if they wanted a 360. They would have ended up taking losses had they made that decision. Sony will take losses from the decision to include Blu-Ray, both because of the delays and because they're eating a bigger loss on each PS3 sold (yes, they are selling them below cost, and the Ars article said the BR drive is costing Sony at least $200 a pop). Sony, however, can make that up that loss in their other departments - remember, Sony owns one of the bigger film production/distribution units around, and Sony Pictures Entertainment has already committed to releasing their movies in Blu-Ray format, so every PS3 owner is not only a potential customer for games (where system maker typically make up their losses) but also for Sony's movies. Because of this, Sony is able to eat a bigger loss because they have more products with which they can make it up. It is a gamble, but Sony seems certain that it will turn out well for them in the long run, and I can't really argue with that.
Liberal == grown-up == intelligent == understands nuance
Michael Moore proves otherwise.
Not saying that conservatives are necessarily better *coughAnnCoultercough* but it's pretty ridiculous to equate any particular political belief with intelligence and maturity.
and RIAA against music customers, don't forget that one. Extortion at its finest. Even if you're innocent, it's cheaper to settle than to pay for defense. Hell, I bet the RIAA could stop making music and just keep up the revenue stream from lawsuit settlements!
though somehow I think they've already thought of that...
one problem with that statement... it's, umm, untrue. I'm on an Asus laptop right now, I know many other people who would recommend (and have recommended to me) Asus as the highest quality laptop manufacturer on the market, or close to it. Even the best manufacturers make mistakes, so it's absolutely ridiculous to make a judgement about an entire company based on a single minor (yes, it is minor) problem in one of their products.
What about Apple's right to make whatever they want? I don't know if it's just me, but something seems wrong about the government forcing a company to tailor a product to a specific need. It's not quite communism, but it's based on the same principles. If software interoperability was such a big need, enough people would clamor for it that Apple would put it in without any need for government interference.
This is beyond true. In fact, the teacher doesn't even need to actively encourage them, all they need to do is provide an environment in which the kids CAN program if they want to. Of course, I'm not telling teachers that they shouldn't encourage kids to program, but even just giving them easy access to netbeans will get them working on stuff. I took both Programming in Java and AP Computer Science in high school and really all our teacher did, especially in AP after we'd learned the basic syntax in the first class, was give us assignments and a link to the API and let us figure them out as a class. It was awesome, most of us did great on the AP exam and they actually ended up having to bring a professor in this year from University of Delaware (where I'm currently a student) in order to teach the next level of compsci to a lot of the then-juniors who had taken AP (I was a senior when I took it). If you have kids with brains and an inclination towards compsci, just give them a computer and a problem to solve and they'll do it, often at a level that exceeds expectations (adding cool GUIs and such). One friend of mine in the class held a summer job (and still works a little bit) as a database scripter/porter for a small car dealership, and he hasn't even graduated high school yet.
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SO FUCKING WHAT!? You're talking as if there's something WRONG with a company trying to make money! THAT'S WHAT THEY FRIGGIN' EXIST FOR! If companies didn't make money, our entire economy would be totally fucked. Apple makes a service. They make it so it only works with the iPod. They never advertise that it works for other mp3 players, and they aren't the only vendor out there. They are doing nothing but adding freedoms, not removing them, because if iTunes didn't exist you would have one less provider of online music, and therefore one less choice. You like the iRiver, therefore you don't buy songs from the iTunes music store. I never claimed there was anything wrong with that, you have the choice. Nobody's forcing you to buy from Apple. Personally, I like iTunes, I like the iPod (although mine's busted right now), and I'm not particularly bothered by the restrictions placed on the songs, so iTunes is the best store for me. If it was banned, I would be forced to go with a less ideal service, thus REDUCING my freedoms.
Goddamn hippies...
"Those that sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty or security",
That's one of my favorite quotes, and because of that I think that DRM should remain legal. Doesn't Apple have the right to produce whatever product it wants? Nobody's forcing us to buy it, so I don't see how anyone, especially in the US, could justify banning DRM. Obviously enough people are okay with it that the iTunes store is turning plenty of profit, so there's no basis by which Apple's liberties can be restricted. It just isn't within the government's power.
Pennies haven't been 100% copper since 1982. They're currently made of Zinc, with only a thin copper plating. 97.5% Zinc, 2.5% copper. Even still, the zinc in a penny is, according to Wikipedia, worth 1.1 cents now, so the penny is still worth more than a penny. If you find a pure copper penny laying around, that's worth quite a bit more, at 2.224 cents a pop. So the new law makes sense, but what would make even more sense would be getting rid of pennies altogether.
Ok... so the reason you're against DRM is because it's restrictive, right? It takes away options. So the solution is to... take away more options? Restrict even further? Personally, I don't see how taking away the users' right to use iTunes is any less restrictive than FairPlay itself.
Also, this simulation was about colonization. It's a lot easier to find something than to colonize it, especially in places that aren't very conducive to supporting life.
Well I agree with you there. I'm not a fan of DRM at all. I think it's walking a very fine line to legally restrict it, but I certainly don't think the RIAA should be able to get the government to further enable it. When it comes to something like Sony's rootkit though, I think the government has every right to get involved, because Sony (or whoever they hired to do their DRM, if you prefer) went completely outside the rules and essentially installed a virus on peoples' computers. The point of my original post was not that DRM isn't important or that we shouldn't bother with fighting injustice within our own system, it was simply that there is just no reasonable comparison between DRM and slavery, as some previous posters seemed to think.
Are you seriously comparing the plight of Brazilian charcoal slaves to iTunes restricting the number of computers purchased songs can be played on!? That's not only ridiculous, it's despicable! We're talking about DRM here. DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT!!! It's not a flipping crime against humanity, and claiming that it is completely disrespects everyone in a situation of real need or injustice. I think this is a lot of what Torvalds was trying to say -- talking about DRM is fine, but keep it in perspective! There are much more pressing injustices out there.
Yup, I understand that some people think OLPC will make for a better world. But this is geek thinking. However for the poor in rural villages, there's much more need for more basic things like clean water and other non-geeky needs.
In the short term, this is true, and those sorts of needs can't be ignored, but things like the OLPC project are aimed more at the long term. If we don't give these countries the intellectual resources to become self-sufficient and use their natural resources well, then the western world will have to keep on supplying clean water and vaccinations for the next couple centuries. Of course, you need to strike a balance in order to make sure there are people left in these countries by the time the long-term charities take effect, but you certainly can't claim that long-term projects don't do any good.
more to the point, the U.S. Constitution is the one that governs Google HQ, and thus this information.
See, this is where Apple is innovative. They may not come up with brand new ideas (like widgets, spaces, and a good number of other features) but they're great at taking old ideas and implementing them extremely well. That's why OSX is largely the one that's popularized these ideas, and that's why it gets all the credit for them.
Google's beta products are almost universally better and more refined than any other company's final releases. I applaud Google for not pulling products out of beta until they're truly thoroughly tested.
Well, it brought down the twin towers, so that says something.
To their credit, that means that about 90% of girls can solve 90% of problems, because 90% of all problems are solved by rebooting.
I think by "doing their own PC troubleshooting" they mean "rebooting, reinstalling the offending program, and calling the friendly neighborhood geek if it still doesn't work."
you're never going to convince them that your arguments are purely logical or objective and aren't simply you rationalizing your own, um, experimentation. fyi.
Well, actually, I can, and my parents do realize that I'm not just rationalizing (though it took them long enough). The main proof of this is that I don't actually do drugs. I support their legalization, not their usage, and that probably adds to my credibility a little bit. But you are right, a good portion of their resistance to the idea of legalizing drugs is that they don't want to make me think that they're okay to do, and that's understandable.
That's off topic though...
As an average high school graduate (College sophomore now) I have to disagree. Obviously this will vary from school to school and area to area, but my personal experience tells me that my generation is, on an aggregate level, more aware of their rights and more willing to exercise them than most others. My friends and I almost universally know more about what we (and the police) can and cannot do according to the constitution than our parents. A large number of my friends support drug (or at least marijuana) legalization, and the ones who don't at least acknowledge the arguments against prohibition, whereas my parents (and from what I can tell, most of their generation) don't bother finding the facts, but instead believe what the government tells them - that drugs are 100% bad. My friends who oppose drug legalization acknowledge the fact that it isn't possible to overdose on marijuana, even if they oppose its deregulation for other reasons. I told that established fact to my parents and they refused to believe me. Of course, this isn't universal - there are plenty of ignorant members of my generation, and there are plenty of knowledgeable members of the previous ones - but I can at least say that I have hope for the future of civil liberties in America.
labour would get a whole lot more competetive (maybe even maintain the current standard of living at half the pay!)
You hit the nail right on the head. The problem is not that Indians (and Mexicans, for that matter) are "stealing" our jobs, it's that they are willing to do it for a lot less money. Honestly, you can't blame the companies for going with cheaper labor that can do the job just as well, or close to it (though forcing the American workers to train their replacement is a different story). If Americans were willing to work for lower wages, then labor wouldn't NEED to be outsourced. Of course, the problem isn't only that Americans aren't willing to work for lower wages, it's that we often aren't able to, so what you're saying, or something similar to it, would be the way to go. If Americans started to work for less, basic (and slightly simplistic, but still mostly valid for an approximation) economics says we would pretty much maintain the current standard of living, but only in the long term. In the short term, it just wouldn't work, because it only works if EVERYONE is working for the lower wages. The "early adopters" would be screwed until everyone else's wages went down by the same amount, at which point prices would also come down to meet demand. So the way to do it, as you say, is to start out by lowering prices a bit (revamping copyright/patent/monopoly law would be a reasonable start, though some would argue monopolies would help with this transition) and let that naturally be followed up with a lowering of wages, then rinse and repeat until we're competetive on a global scale.
Another way to ease the trasition would, of course, be to cut taxes like whoah. Americans pay, on average, a net of about 40% of their income to the government (not only income tax obviously, but including basic economic principles such as "corporate taxes raise prices," etc.). If we were to cut down on pork-barrel spending alone, that could probably be reduced to 35%, maybe even as low as 30%. That means the average American can take a pay cut of 5-10% without changing his net income at all. Then if you're willing to cut government programs that don't quite count as pork-barreling but still provide less benefit than what they cost, you could potentially bring total taxes down to 20%. That means we could bring wages down even lower (20% lower) without hurting the average American household's standard of living, with the exception of those who rely on whatever social programs are cut. Even still, losing a program is preferable to losing your job to someone overseas.
I think there are far more egregious wastes of energy out there than life support for a "piece of flesh." Powering a computer in order to read and post on Slashdot, for example?
I think you've uncovered a large piece of Sony's strategy for including Blu-Ray in the PS3. Right now, there's competition going on between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and Sony's on the Blu-Ray side of things. Right now, almost nobody would be willing to buy a stand-alone player for either one of these formats, but people ARE willing to buy the PS3, whether it includes Blu-Ray or not. This way Sony gets thousands of Blu-Ray players in households across America before any standard has caught on, and when movies start getting released in the new formats PS3 owners aren't going to go out and buy a new HD-DVD player when they already have a fully functional Blu-Ray player in their home. All they have to do is buy the movies, not the player. This eliminates the biggest barrier to entry for thousands of households and will give Blu-Ray a huge leg up on the HD-DVD competition when they start coming out. Sony isn't including Blu-Ray as a feature in the PS3, because Ars Technica is right - it doesn't really add too much to the gaming experience. Basically what Sony's doing is the same as offering a "buy one PS3, get this Blu-Ray player FREE" sort of promotional deal. It's to hasten adoption of their preferred format.
Microsoft is going to offer an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, but at this point the rush to buy a 360 is over and people aren't going to dish out another $200 for something they really won't use. Given the choice, people would buy a $200 cheaper version of the PS3 without the Blu-Ray, but Sony isn't giving them that choice for the very reason that they want Blu-Ray adoption in all PS3 households. People want the Xbox 360 and the PS3, they don't give two craps about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (not yet anyway). People will buy the Xbox 360 without HD-DVD if they can, but if Sony forces people to get Blu-Ray with the PS3 people will still buy it because they don't see themselves paying that extra $200 for a feature they don't want, they see it has paying an extra $200 for the PS3 as a whole. Of course, Microsoft doesn't have nearly as much invested in HD-DVD as Sony does in Blu-Ray, so they probably made the right decision for themselves when they chose not to require consumers to buy an HD-DVD drive if they wanted a 360. They would have ended up taking losses had they made that decision. Sony will take losses from the decision to include Blu-Ray, both because of the delays and because they're eating a bigger loss on each PS3 sold (yes, they are selling them below cost, and the Ars article said the BR drive is costing Sony at least $200 a pop). Sony, however, can make that up that loss in their other departments - remember, Sony owns one of the bigger film production/distribution units around, and Sony Pictures Entertainment has already committed to releasing their movies in Blu-Ray format, so every PS3 owner is not only a potential customer for games (where system maker typically make up their losses) but also for Sony's movies. Because of this, Sony is able to eat a bigger loss because they have more products with which they can make it up. It is a gamble, but Sony seems certain that it will turn out well for them in the long run, and I can't really argue with that.
Liberal == grown-up == intelligent == understands nuance
Michael Moore proves otherwise.
Not saying that conservatives are necessarily better *coughAnnCoultercough* but it's pretty ridiculous to equate any particular political belief with intelligence and maturity.
and RIAA against music customers, don't forget that one. Extortion at its finest. Even if you're innocent, it's cheaper to settle than to pay for defense. Hell, I bet the RIAA could stop making music and just keep up the revenue stream from lawsuit settlements!
though somehow I think they've already thought of that...
You're right, people don't care about freedom anymore, and that's an unfortunate fact. But good ol' Ben put it best:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
one problem with that statement... it's, umm, untrue. I'm on an Asus laptop right now, I know many other people who would recommend (and have recommended to me) Asus as the highest quality laptop manufacturer on the market, or close to it. Even the best manufacturers make mistakes, so it's absolutely ridiculous to make a judgement about an entire company based on a single minor (yes, it is minor) problem in one of their products.
What about Apple's right to make whatever they want? I don't know if it's just me, but something seems wrong about the government forcing a company to tailor a product to a specific need. It's not quite communism, but it's based on the same principles. If software interoperability was such a big need, enough people would clamor for it that Apple would put it in without any need for government interference.
Liberty FTW.
This is beyond true. In fact, the teacher doesn't even need to actively encourage them, all they need to do is provide an environment in which the kids CAN program if they want to. Of course, I'm not telling teachers that they shouldn't encourage kids to program, but even just giving them easy access to netbeans will get them working on stuff. I took both Programming in Java and AP Computer Science in high school and really all our teacher did, especially in AP after we'd learned the basic syntax in the first class, was give us assignments and a link to the API and let us figure them out as a class. It was awesome, most of us did great on the AP exam and they actually ended up having to bring a professor in this year from University of Delaware (where I'm currently a student) in order to teach the next level of compsci to a lot of the then-juniors who had taken AP (I was a senior when I took it). If you have kids with brains and an inclination towards compsci, just give them a computer and a problem to solve and they'll do it, often at a level that exceeds expectations (adding cool GUIs and such). One friend of mine in the class held a summer job (and still works a little bit) as a database scripter/porter for a small car dealership, and he hasn't even graduated high school yet.