Wow.. so they're charging for drivers, which every other hardware company on the planet provides for free? Imagine the outrage if Dell tried to pull a stunt like that.
Think of the big picture. Whether this is a feature from an upcoming OS release or not, the end result is you have to pay just to install another OS on your computer... your computer that has essentially the same hardware as a generic PC. You're paying for a boot loader and a set of Windows drivers - the kind of stuff you could get for free if your hardware didn't have pictures of apples on it.
Right, because the millions of dollars a month they spend on developing OSX should be coming out of the kindness of their hearts. No, but it should be coming out of the hundreds of dollars extra you pay when you buy Apple hardware instead of a generic PC with equivalent specs.
I sincerely doubt the lack of ability to play HD content will be the nail in the coffin for switching. It definitely won't. Despite all the hype, most people just don't care about HD. 89% of American households don't have an HDTV, but you sure can't tell from watching Best Buy ads and reading tech sites.
... until HDCP has been cracked well enough that I can connect any two HD components together with an unencrypted link. (Maybe the prices will be reasonable by then too.)
No, it is not exactly the same as bringing over a tape, because there are now multiple copies of the show, the original one, and the one(s) sent over the Internet. OK, wise guy. The guy who brings over the tape has the right to make his own personal recording (just like I do), so maybe he has two VCRs recording The Office, one for me and one for him. If he sends a copy of the AVI file to me, that's exactly the same as if he sends my tape to me and keeps his tape for himself.
The copyright owner is the only one who can say how the show is copied. But the number of copies doesn't really matter, except to people who get a hard-on from telling others which buttons they're allowed to press. Remember, I'm talking about what should be legal, not what is legal under the current set of crazy laws. All that matters is the overall effect: what impact do these actions have on me (the viewer) and the producer? Exactly the same impact whether it's done by sending files over the internet or delivering tapes by hand.
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But it obviously should be legal, at least in the case of media that's broadcast for free - that is, media that the receiver could've recorded himself.
I can record The Office and watch it later at my home, if I want to spend the time to program my VCR. But let's say I'm busy or technophobic: I can pay someone to come to my house, set up a VCR, and program it to record The Office, right? Nothing wrong with that.
Now take it one step further. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office using his VCR, and bring the tape over for me to watch? It saves him the hassle of coming over to my house just to push a few buttons on my VCR, and the end result is the same: I watch the show later, on tape, instead of live.
Now, one final step. Tapes are a dying technology. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office at home, encode it as an AVI file, and send me the file over the internet? The effect is exactly the same as bringing over a tape, which in turn is the same as recording it myself - I'm just delegating the work to someone else who's better at it, or at least more willing to do it. The fact that I'm paying is irrelevant; he might just as well decide to do it for free, and in fact that's what happens every day on the internet.
We can extend the same logic to music that's broadcast over the radio: I can record the song myself and listen to it again, so therefore I should be allowed to have someone else record it and send me a copy. It's nothing that I couldn't do myself, and there's no sensible reason to force me to do it myself when someone else is willing to do the work for me.
Seriously, though, your answer simply makes no sense. Are you arguing that slow is better, or that fast is better? Because the scroll wheel can do both. I'm arguing that discrete is better. With buttons, if you press once, the pointer moves one stop. If you press three times in rapid succession, the pointer moves three stops. If you want to move a long distance, you hold it down until typematic takes over.
The scroll wheel is either not sensitive enough (you have to move really damn slowly to get it to move just one stop at a time) or too sensitive (any average movement moves several stops at once) or again not sensitive enough (you have to move really damn fast to activate letter search mode, and it's near impossible if you're holding the iPod with one hand). It's more efficient if you want to move about 10 stops at a time, but if you just want to select another item on the current screen, it's slower and more frustrating than just moving with buttons.
Does that work if the son already has an account? And do you actually get to load the movie onto the iPod, or does he have to download it and install it himself (not an easy task, if you saw how overloaded the iTunes store was on Christmas day)?
The scroll wheel is the iPod's main flaw! The Zune has directional buttons, which you can press once to move one step at a time, or hold down to move a long way. That's more efficient than always scrolling past the item you want and then having to s-l-o-w-l-y scroll back to it.
If you bought b/g hardware expecting to get n support for free, you might want to adjust your sense of entitlement. It's not as if no one knew that hardware had 802.11n support. Even though Apple didn't advertise it, that was common knowledge, wasn't it? If you buy a piece of hardware, I'd say you're entitled to use it--even the parts that aren't advertised--without paying for it again.
Outside of slashdot (an alternate reality where grandmothers use lunix and ogg vorbis is popular), who is criticizing fairplay? People who want to transfer files that they've bought to others without handing over the keys to their account. Like, for example, a father on Christmas morning who gives his son an iPod with Pirates of the Carribean loaded - but then he realizes he bought it with his own account, and the son will lose that file as soon as he syncs it with his own computer, unless he also gives his son one of his 5 "authorization" slots.
Is there anybody that doesn't think Zune is a turd? I played with one for a few minutes in the store the other day, and the interface is at least as nice as the iPod's - perhaps a bit better. The screen is better for watching videos. The "squirting" seems too half-assed to be a valuable feature, though.
Now a question for you: is there anybody who actually likes the iPod's click wheel? At first, it seems like a cool gizmo, but then you realize how hard it is to move just one click at a time. You can move halfway across the screen with just a little flick, but you have to move s-l-o-w-l-y if you only want to move one stop. When you're searching through a long list, and you do the super-fast spin to activate letter searching mode, you're lucky if you can stop within one or two letters of the one you're looking for.
No... in most states (that is, more than half), the age of consent is 16 or lower, so neither one is guilty. Many of the remaining states have exceptions to cover the case of two minors, or a minor and an adult who are both very close to the limit.
You are correct about a few states, though - particularly California, where the AOC is 18, and two 17 year olds who have sex with each other are both "sex offenders". Kinda puts this whole outrage over sex offenders into perspective, doesn't it? Everyone wants the real child molestors to go to jail, but the language they use ends up also covering kids who really haven't done anything wrong, other than being born in the wrong state.
I realize you can put ringtones on a VZW phone by emailing them to yourself, but it costs 25 cents each time unless you have a pix messaging plan. If you want to load them for free, use a data cable.
You still can't load home-BREW apps, though. You have to buy them from Get It Now.
Interesting - the dv6000t is what I compared back in October, and it was about $1150 vs. $1999 for the nearly identical MacBook Pro... but that was when the MBP had an 80 gig drive and 2.0 GHz. I'll have to look for a newer HP model to compare it to.
Check out the HP dv6000t vs. low-end MacBook Pro. That's from October; perhaps the MBP has changed since then, but if so, there's probably a newer HP model to compare it against as well.
It appears the previous poster is uninformed, or just has plain never used a Mac Or--gasp!--maybe he just disagrees with your opinion of the Mac. I know, it's hard to imagine that someone might not fall in love with everything Apple makes, but it has been known to happen.
IIRC, the theoretical max speed for EDGE is twice that of 1xRTT... but even the theoretical difference is only about 150 kbps, and in real life it's likely to be half that. 75 kbps isn't a lot of anything.
Apparently the previous poster has bad or defective hardware. Nope. My Powerbook hardly ever crashes... but neither does my Windows PC.
Comparing a Mac to a HP laptop is comparing two different things. [...] Yes, PC clones cost $800-$1000 less, but I don't mind the premium... See, that's a good response. "Yes, it costs twice as much as a PC, but the extra cost is worth it" is fine: whether you consider the extra cost worth it is a matter of opinion.
However, the previous poster said "No, it doesn't cost more than a PC", which is simply delusional, and can easily be proven false by visiting any computer store.
can you put a price on data security and safety? I haven't had any "safety" issues with Windows, and the only "data security" problems I've had have been due to failed hard drives (thanks, Maxtor).
What the hell are you talking about? I honestly don't see how anyone on Slashdot isn't familiar with basic copyright law. Sorry if you thought I was talking about legality. I was talking about ethics and morals. I'm sure you realize the difference between what's legal and what's right, don't you?
My Apple computers have *never* locked up the whole operating system in 6 years. Congratulations on your good luck. My Powerbook locked up hard just a couple weeks ago when I removed a USB memory stick (after ejecting it properly through the Finder). The screen went dim and I got a message in a few different languages telling me to reboot. Hour for hour of use, I've had to reboot it just as often as my Windows desktop.
Apple computers are just more reliable, and they are not more expensive than comparably equipped Dell, Gateway, HP, or other branded computers. Not true. An HP Pavilion laptop comparably equipped to the low end MacBook Pro costs $800-$1000 less - about half as much. (It has a slightly lower screen resolution, more ports, and of course different software, but other than that it's the same system. If you're going to claim it's not comparable unless it's exactly the same, down to the picture of an apple on the back, then it's a dishonest challenge in the first place.)
How much profit the album made is irrelevant. The original author of the MOD did exactly the same amount of work, under exactly the same terms, no matter how many people ended up buying a copy of that album or how much it was sold for. He did the work for free; he can't turn around and demand to get paid for it later.
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Is $29 more or less than every other manufacturer charges for Windows drivers?
Is $29 more or less than every other bootloader?
Is $29 a reasonable price for the ability to install another OS on the hardware you already paid a premium for?
Wow.. so they're charging for drivers, which every other hardware company on the planet provides for free? Imagine the outrage if Dell tried to pull a stunt like that.
Think of the big picture. Whether this is a feature from an upcoming OS release or not, the end result is you have to pay just to install another OS on your computer... your computer that has essentially the same hardware as a generic PC. You're paying for a boot loader and a set of Windows drivers - the kind of stuff you could get for free if your hardware didn't have pictures of apples on it.
... until HDCP has been cracked well enough that I can connect any two HD components together with an unencrypted link. (Maybe the prices will be reasonable by then too.)
But it obviously should be legal, at least in the case of media that's broadcast for free - that is, media that the receiver could've recorded himself.
I can record The Office and watch it later at my home, if I want to spend the time to program my VCR. But let's say I'm busy or technophobic: I can pay someone to come to my house, set up a VCR, and program it to record The Office, right? Nothing wrong with that.
Now take it one step further. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office using his VCR, and bring the tape over for me to watch? It saves him the hassle of coming over to my house just to push a few buttons on my VCR, and the end result is the same: I watch the show later, on tape, instead of live.
Now, one final step. Tapes are a dying technology. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office at home, encode it as an AVI file, and send me the file over the internet? The effect is exactly the same as bringing over a tape, which in turn is the same as recording it myself - I'm just delegating the work to someone else who's better at it, or at least more willing to do it. The fact that I'm paying is irrelevant; he might just as well decide to do it for free, and in fact that's what happens every day on the internet.
We can extend the same logic to music that's broadcast over the radio: I can record the song myself and listen to it again, so therefore I should be allowed to have someone else record it and send me a copy. It's nothing that I couldn't do myself, and there's no sensible reason to force me to do it myself when someone else is willing to do the work for me.
The scroll wheel is either not sensitive enough (you have to move really damn slowly to get it to move just one stop at a time) or too sensitive (any average movement moves several stops at once) or again not sensitive enough (you have to move really damn fast to activate letter search mode, and it's near impossible if you're holding the iPod with one hand). It's more efficient if you want to move about 10 stops at a time, but if you just want to select another item on the current screen, it's slower and more frustrating than just moving with buttons.
Does that work if the son already has an account? And do you actually get to load the movie onto the iPod, or does he have to download it and install it himself (not an easy task, if you saw how overloaded the iTunes store was on Christmas day)?
The scroll wheel is the iPod's main flaw! The Zune has directional buttons, which you can press once to move one step at a time, or hold down to move a long way. That's more efficient than always scrolling past the item you want and then having to s-l-o-w-l-y scroll back to it.
Well then, I guess I and everyone I know who owns an iPod must have CP. Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Frist.
Now a question for you: is there anybody who actually likes the iPod's click wheel? At first, it seems like a cool gizmo, but then you realize how hard it is to move just one click at a time. You can move halfway across the screen with just a little flick, but you have to move s-l-o-w-l-y if you only want to move one stop. When you're searching through a long list, and you do the super-fast spin to activate letter searching mode, you're lucky if you can stop within one or two letters of the one you're looking for.
No... in most states (that is, more than half), the age of consent is 16 or lower, so neither one is guilty. Many of the remaining states have exceptions to cover the case of two minors, or a minor and an adult who are both very close to the limit.
You are correct about a few states, though - particularly California, where the AOC is 18, and two 17 year olds who have sex with each other are both "sex offenders". Kinda puts this whole outrage over sex offenders into perspective, doesn't it? Everyone wants the real child molestors to go to jail, but the language they use ends up also covering kids who really haven't done anything wrong, other than being born in the wrong state.
I realize you can put ringtones on a VZW phone by emailing them to yourself, but it costs 25 cents each time unless you have a pix messaging plan. If you want to load them for free, use a data cable.
You still can't load home-BREW apps, though. You have to buy them from Get It Now.
Interesting - the dv6000t is what I compared back in October, and it was about $1150 vs. $1999 for the nearly identical MacBook Pro... but that was when the MBP had an 80 gig drive and 2.0 GHz. I'll have to look for a newer HP model to compare it to.
Check out the HP dv6000t vs. low-end MacBook Pro. That's from October; perhaps the MBP has changed since then, but if so, there's probably a newer HP model to compare it against as well.
IIRC, the theoretical max speed for EDGE is twice that of 1xRTT... but even the theoretical difference is only about 150 kbps, and in real life it's likely to be half that. 75 kbps isn't a lot of anything.
Please explain. How is the iPhone any more "integrated" than other devices in its price range?
However, the previous poster said "No, it doesn't cost more than a PC", which is simply delusional, and can easily be proven false by visiting any computer store. can you put a price on data security and safety? I haven't had any "safety" issues with Windows, and the only "data security" problems I've had have been due to failed hard drives (thanks, Maxtor).
How much profit the album made is irrelevant. The original author of the MOD did exactly the same amount of work, under exactly the same terms, no matter how many people ended up buying a copy of that album or how much it was sold for. He did the work for free; he can't turn around and demand to get paid for it later.