Also, the if price differentials are severe enough, it can create a black market. In the US, criminals buy cigarettes where cigarette taxes are low and resell them where taxes are high.
In this instance, you can buy DVDs at $2, and if you can ship them for about $5 a piece or so, you can resell them on the black market for cheaper than they can be bought here, and still turn a nice profit. The coding was designed to make it so that that couldn't happen.
I've been to dozens of aquariums all over the world and that one is nearly the worst. Well, that explains the "robotic fish" They don't die if they aren't fed. Clearly they became the main attraction as a result of natural selection - all the other exhibits went belly-up.
Does anyone think that having two standards will cause piracy or online movies to sky-rocket?
I mean, consumers aren't really going to buy two same-generation movie players, are they? It seems to me that this makes it more practical to download, to avoid what'll be several hundred dollars (at least initially) to get both players (I see the opening prices, for the first 6 months, as $100-$150, falling over time). This could either be a boon to Apple, if they are really doing some sort of Media Store in the vein of iTunes, or a new motive for people to pirate movies. I mean, it'd harder, as there would be more restrictive DRM, and the downloads are more significant than music downloads, but I feel that the principal force will be increased demand.
Blueray drives or disks will not work smoothly in Windows Wait, stuff is supposed to work smoothly on Windows? I thought that was an urban legend.
But really, this seems sort of backwards to me. I thought the software was designed around the hardware? I mean, wouldn't it be more efficient to design the best hardware first, then work the software around it? Software strikes me as less restricted by design limitations.
Another thing that strikes me as backwards is Microsoft having any say at all. The two designs should compete for content, then Microsoft should pick. If Microsoft commits to one before they know what the content (film studios) looks like, then couldn't they wind up with a compatible design with virtually no movies? It seems to me that what M$ wants is irrelevant, as Blu-Ray or HD DVD will rise and fall on the movie studio support.
This should suprise noone. Most companies are about money rather than principles. They'll claim to be big on patents as a principle until it isn't profitable to them. Then watch how quickly they backpedal.
I've had bad experiences with Virtual PC 7 for Mac OS X, I think it is a pain in the butt, and it has sort of turned me off to emulators. Obviously they're different situations, but I think the general idea that emulators aren't always the best solution applies here. I'd suggest OpenOffice.org or just wait around for whatever online Office thing Google seems to be planning. Either of those would probably piss Bill Gates off more.
What!? You don't have wireless in your bathroom!? What kind of crappy college is that? For starters, it's UVA, 2nd best public college in the country. And for security reasons, they decided to just go with Ethernet ports in the dorms (and since they're tearing them down eventually to replace them, they didn't want to upgrade to wireless to have to remove it a few years later). So we have a suite style dorm, with 2 Ethernet ports in each room, and I think there's one in the common room. There is a lounge with wireless in each of the dorms next to me, so it isn't a big deal.
I think that giving limited control to other nations isn't a bad idea. We aren't discussing the US having no say, but rather other nations getting a say. If we can keep enough power in our hands, we can work out some system where we can easily organize coaltions to get whatever we want. It seems like the article is talking about the EU setting up discussions on a better way to run the gov't control of the internet, not directly taking 100% control. If we can take these arguments to the table, maybe we can get a large bloc of votes, like 20%-30%? That way, we can block anything by getting a few decent sized allies. We can make the other nations happy, while not ceding much in the way of power in reality.
Not to mention, now we can go after international problems with some measure of success, hopefully. Simply being outside of US borders might be less of a protection if the world has more of a vested governmental interest.
How in the world do they think they will "forcibly" do this without full US support? I'd like to see them try to land UN troops on US soil. Well, there are always sanctions or other non-military actions. Really, we Americans seem to have the opinion that the world is like 85% US. We are a big part of the world militarily and economically, but the rest of the world could survive without us. I don't know if we could survive without the rest of the world.
You are better off, in the long run, with an education. Really, it's sort of a "bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" thing. Sure, you can take a shot without college at the big bucks, but with college, you have a near gaurentee of starting out with a decent job. It used to be an absolute gaurantee, and probably will be again. In an increasing complex world, education is not going to hurt you in your job search.
But the real answer to "Why TF did I go to school?" is, of course, THE PARTIES!!
It seems to me that Google's future business plans all entail the idea that within 5-10 years, all computers will be online almost all the time. I mean, I can get online at my college campus everywhere except my bathroom. That's the only place that doesn't have an Ethernet port in the wall or wireless access. And if we can do it at most college campuses, and knowing that we've got commerically viable wireless at distances of several miles (article yesterday), we will probably have wireless or high-speed everywhere in the US, or at least covering the majority of the population.
I agree that people should be fined a few hundred dollars or 3 or 4 times the retail cost of what they downloaded, whichever is (get this) higher, but no more. See, but that makes sense. I mean, that's how you do things everywhere else. Actual theft by a 14 year old would entail a possible fine from the parents of a few hundred dollars, and maybe community service or something. If I broke someone's CD, I'd have to pay for it, any maybe a little extra. The idea of completely ruining someone and their parents because they made one (relatively) minor mistake as a 14 year old is not any sort of legal concept I'm familar with.
What I want to know is how the courts can even pretend to dream that downloading even a few hundred songs is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to the RIAA. I mean, my math is like this: 1000 songs x $1/song (Lost income from legal MP3 sale) x 5 (punitive factor). That's $5000 if you assume that each song download is a damage to the RIAA. Personally, I'd say it is more likely that about a 75% of the downloads at max are damaging. What strikes me as a reasonable formuliac and fair solution would result in far lower fines. Somehow, I don't think fair comes into play here, as the RIAA has no qualms about playing dirty.
I may the only person worried about this, but is there some sort of risk with having radiation exposure? I assume if 5-20 km (judging from other posts) range wireless is practical at reasonable prices and speeds, we're gonna have wireless companies competing much as cell phone companies do now. Is there are risk with 2-3 cell company towers and 1-2 wireless Wi-Fi towers blasting radiation at me? 24-7, 365? I mean, it sounds like that's where we're headed in some cities or even select suburban areas.
It is about querying and interacting I know about Bugzilla. My point was that you can't query and interact offline, no matter in what format. Therefore, if you're going to have an offline portion, why not just have a downloadable list of bugs that you update daily, and leave the querying and interacting online, where it pretty much has to be. I mean, the only reason to do it offline is as some sort of delayed-send thing.
The marketers promise things, then the programmers laugh, and go back to fixing the beta version that was XP. Then the bosses read their progress reports, which basically say "Hell is gonna freeze first". They put in a maintenence request on the air conditioning, and tell the marketing people to knock the release date back a few months and cut a few features. The marketing people vent steam by reaming out the programmers. The vented steam condenses on the AC machine, breaking it, and the cycle repeats.
They say they will be online by the end of the year, but that is less than 3 months away. There are so many problems with actually distributing original content online that I highly doubt any movie company will be able to successfully make the jump.
Unless they started buying the servers a few months ago, and noone noticed. I mean, it wouldn't have been a big deal back then. I don't think they'd make this sort of announcement if they hadn't already thought it mostly through. I assume they've been prepping for months, possibly pre-prepping (as I call it), where they don't have the actual approval/decision yet, but they do non-specific stuff, like a webserver upgrade, to get ready in case it goes.
they should make more films that rely on plot and qualities other than expensive special effects. Something cheaper that would appease more people? Wait, increasing revenue and decreasing expenses? That doesn't sound like too sound of a business plan. Why don't they sue their customers instead?
But we have to hit it sometimes... It must have happened a few times when American Idol was super-popular, and they did the text-voting. They got so many text-votes, there must have been enough to overload at least a few places at least once.
And if you are a terrorist, you only need to do it for like 20-30 minutes to cause all sorts of trouble. Of course, it requires either a script, or like 500 different cell phones, all of which must be relatively untraceable in ownership
And, again, I see nothing in these proposed laws that are ensuring protection for the artists. All references seem to indicate protection of music labels , something quite different than artists
Yes, this is a problem with me too. We all say "DRM", and it's all "pro-DRM" or "anti-DRM". But according to Wikipedia, "DRM" is "Digital Rights Management". I so, I have to ask, why do only the fat cats get their rights managed?
As I see it, publishers in particular, and the RIAA in general, have too much of a role in everything. They seem to be more important than the artists. that strikes me as art is supposed to be about the creativity, which is the artists, not the record label. I feel that the record label gets the money and copyright by virtue of being the middleman. I think we should "Digital Rights Management" to include the digital rights of consumers and artists.
This app is all about being able to view the data in ways that would be hard to do in a browser. wouldn't it be easier to download an excel or PDF or something? Rather than make a whole new desktop application?
Corporations = Money = Ads = Getting (re)elected See, the logical answer to your question is: but don't we vote? And if all the money in the world didn't change our minds, wouldn't the money then be worthless? The only problem is that no one is going to vote on DRM alone. Unfortunately, the issues are what the media says they are. The media is swayed by that money, and also by the fact that they sort of naturally line right up with the MPAA and RIAA, just by nature of their industry. So, the real problem is that we can't get heard, and we can't get people to make this THE issue in their minds. No politician is going to win on something like this, because it is dwarfed by abortion, and healthcare and prayer in schools and so forth. It may be more important, but people don't realize it. More than the anti-DRM fight belongs in the courtrooms, it belongs in the court of Public Opinion.
I wasn't saying Nano wasn't a big step forward, I'm saying it was. But GB Micro can't do the same thing, as Nano doesn't suffer from being small, and the Micro can. I was saying that just because smaller (size) iPods are better doesn't mean that smaller GameBoys will be better.
It helps bridge the gap and pull people along until the average person realizes, "Hey, why I can't I just do this on my computer?"
Again, with all due respect, won't people come to this conclusion a lot faster here? I mean, the iPod has an advantage over music on the computer - portability. An iPod screen isn't going to be good for movies. When you figure in a non-foldable screen of any size and some sort of a control panel (even the lovely clickwheel), you're far bigger than any pockets I usually wear.
And I don't know movie sizes, but 60 Gigs can't be more than 20 of them, right? And when we figure in the more powerful processor needed, I could almost buy an older iBook 12 inch or whatever to do the same thing (and take notes if I wanted to).
I mean, I agree that the consumer is, relative to/.ers, ignorant. But I think that ignorance will fade quickly when they try to watch LotR and discover that Frodo is about the size of a fingernail.
This seems backward to me. We seem to be moving towards a more internet focused life, with web based apps which are scaring MS. We're trying to do things that used to be desktop based (encyclopedias, games) on the internet (Wikipedia, flash games & MMORPGS) And then we're taking something that really should be online to the desktop?
Task tray icon #147! Yeah, that's life for packrats. And aren't we all like this? I mean, do I really need 4 web browsers? Yes, dang it, I do. What if AOL decides to hate Safari, Opera, and IE? Wouldn't I be glad I grabbed Firefox? What if they all die? Now I can report the bugs, thank you very much.
If all 4 of my browsers get screwed up at the same time, I freaking quit the Internet forever. The hackers will have won.
Damn that RIAA, marching you to the record store, forcing a CD you don't want into your hands and making you take the money out your wallet against your will!
I didn't phrase it right then. I meant that I don't like CDs because they come bundled. I don't like bundled stuff, unless there is a major price break. I'm not saying that the RIAA is forcing me to buy CDs, in fact I'm saying don't buy CDs.
I suppose the best and most explicit way to say it is "I don't like CDs because buying a CD causes me to pay for things I don't want in order to get what I want"
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Also, the if price differentials are severe enough, it can create a black market. In the US, criminals buy cigarettes where cigarette taxes are low and resell them where taxes are high.
In this instance, you can buy DVDs at $2, and if you can ship them for about $5 a piece or so, you can resell them on the black market for cheaper than they can be bought here, and still turn a nice profit. The coding was designed to make it so that that couldn't happen.
I've been to dozens of aquariums all over the world and that one is nearly the worst.
Well, that explains the "robotic fish" They don't die if they aren't fed. Clearly they became the main attraction as a result of natural selection - all the other exhibits went belly-up.
Does anyone think that having two standards will cause piracy or online movies to sky-rocket?
I mean, consumers aren't really going to buy two same-generation movie players, are they? It seems to me that this makes it more practical to download, to avoid what'll be several hundred dollars (at least initially) to get both players (I see the opening prices, for the first 6 months, as $100-$150, falling over time). This could either be a boon to Apple, if they are really doing some sort of Media Store in the vein of iTunes, or a new motive for people to pirate movies. I mean, it'd harder, as there would be more restrictive DRM, and the downloads are more significant than music downloads, but I feel that the principal force will be increased demand.
What do you think?
Blueray drives or disks will not work smoothly in Windows
Wait, stuff is supposed to work smoothly on Windows? I thought that was an urban legend.
But really, this seems sort of backwards to me. I thought the software was designed around the hardware? I mean, wouldn't it be more efficient to design the best hardware first, then work the software around it? Software strikes me as less restricted by design limitations.
Another thing that strikes me as backwards is Microsoft having any say at all. The two designs should compete for content, then Microsoft should pick. If Microsoft commits to one before they know what the content (film studios) looks like, then couldn't they wind up with a compatible design with virtually no movies? It seems to me that what M$ wants is irrelevant, as Blu-Ray or HD DVD will rise and fall on the movie studio support.
This should suprise noone. Most companies are about money rather than principles. They'll claim to be big on patents as a principle until it isn't profitable to them. Then watch how quickly they backpedal.
I've had bad experiences with Virtual PC 7 for Mac OS X, I think it is a pain in the butt, and it has sort of turned me off to emulators. Obviously they're different situations, but I think the general idea that emulators aren't always the best solution applies here. I'd suggest OpenOffice.org or just wait around for whatever online Office thing Google seems to be planning. Either of those would probably piss Bill Gates off more.
What!? You don't have wireless in your bathroom!? What kind of crappy college is that?
For starters, it's UVA, 2nd best public college in the country. And for security reasons, they decided to just go with Ethernet ports in the dorms (and since they're tearing them down eventually to replace them, they didn't want to upgrade to wireless to have to remove it a few years later). So we have a suite style dorm, with 2 Ethernet ports in each room, and I think there's one in the common room. There is a lounge with wireless in each of the dorms next to me, so it isn't a big deal.
I think that giving limited control to other nations isn't a bad idea. We aren't discussing the US having no say, but rather other nations getting a say. If we can keep enough power in our hands, we can work out some system where we can easily organize coaltions to get whatever we want. It seems like the article is talking about the EU setting up discussions on a better way to run the gov't control of the internet, not directly taking 100% control. If we can take these arguments to the table, maybe we can get a large bloc of votes, like 20%-30%? That way, we can block anything by getting a few decent sized allies. We can make the other nations happy, while not ceding much in the way of power in reality.
Not to mention, now we can go after international problems with some measure of success, hopefully. Simply being outside of US borders might be less of a protection if the world has more of a vested governmental interest.
How in the world do they think they will "forcibly" do this without full US support? I'd like to see them try to land UN troops on US soil.
Well, there are always sanctions or other non-military actions. Really, we Americans seem to have the opinion that the world is like 85% US. We are a big part of the world militarily and economically, but the rest of the world could survive without us. I don't know if we could survive without the rest of the world.
You are better off, in the long run, with an education.
Really, it's sort of a "bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" thing. Sure, you can take a shot without college at the big bucks, but with college, you have a near gaurentee of starting out with a decent job. It used to be an absolute gaurantee, and probably will be again. In an increasing complex world, education is not going to hurt you in your job search.
But the real answer to "Why TF did I go to school?" is, of course, THE PARTIES!!
It seems to me that Google's future business plans all entail the idea that within 5-10 years, all computers will be online almost all the time. I mean, I can get online at my college campus everywhere except my bathroom. That's the only place that doesn't have an Ethernet port in the wall or wireless access. And if we can do it at most college campuses, and knowing that we've got commerically viable wireless at distances of several miles (article yesterday), we will probably have wireless or high-speed everywhere in the US, or at least covering the majority of the population.
I agree that people should be fined a few hundred dollars or 3 or 4 times the retail cost of what they downloaded, whichever is (get this) higher, but no more.
See, but that makes sense. I mean, that's how you do things everywhere else. Actual theft by a 14 year old would entail a possible fine from the parents of a few hundred dollars, and maybe community service or something. If I broke someone's CD, I'd have to pay for it, any maybe a little extra. The idea of completely ruining someone and their parents because they made one (relatively) minor mistake as a 14 year old is not any sort of legal concept I'm familar with.
What I want to know is how the courts can even pretend to dream that downloading even a few hundred songs is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to the RIAA. I mean, my math is like this: 1000 songs x $1/song (Lost income from legal MP3 sale) x 5 (punitive factor). That's $5000 if you assume that each song download is a damage to the RIAA. Personally, I'd say it is more likely that about a 75% of the downloads at max are damaging. What strikes me as a reasonable formuliac and fair solution would result in far lower fines. Somehow, I don't think fair comes into play here, as the RIAA has no qualms about playing dirty.
I may the only person worried about this, but is there some sort of risk with having radiation exposure? I assume if 5-20 km (judging from other posts) range wireless is practical at reasonable prices and speeds, we're gonna have wireless companies competing much as cell phone companies do now. Is there are risk with 2-3 cell company towers and 1-2 wireless Wi-Fi towers blasting radiation at me? 24-7, 365? I mean, it sounds like that's where we're headed in some cities or even select suburban areas.
It is about querying and interacting
I know about Bugzilla. My point was that you can't query and interact offline, no matter in what format. Therefore, if you're going to have an offline portion, why not just have a downloadable list of bugs that you update daily, and leave the querying and interacting online, where it pretty much has to be. I mean, the only reason to do it offline is as some sort of delayed-send thing.
I think it is more of an inside joke.
The marketers promise things, then the programmers laugh, and go back to fixing the beta version that was XP. Then the bosses read their progress reports, which basically say "Hell is gonna freeze first". They put in a maintenence request on the air conditioning, and tell the marketing people to knock the release date back a few months and cut a few features. The marketing people vent steam by reaming out the programmers. The vented steam condenses on the AC machine, breaking it, and the cycle repeats.
They say they will be online by the end of the year, but that is less than 3 months away. There are so many problems with actually distributing original content online that I highly doubt any movie company will be able to successfully make the jump. Unless they started buying the servers a few months ago, and noone noticed. I mean, it wouldn't have been a big deal back then. I don't think they'd make this sort of announcement if they hadn't already thought it mostly through. I assume they've been prepping for months, possibly pre-prepping (as I call it), where they don't have the actual approval/decision yet, but they do non-specific stuff, like a webserver upgrade, to get ready in case it goes.
they should make more films that rely on plot and qualities other than expensive special effects.
Something cheaper that would appease more people? Wait, increasing revenue and decreasing expenses? That doesn't sound like too sound of a business plan. Why don't they sue their customers instead?
But we have to hit it sometimes... It must have happened a few times when American Idol was super-popular, and they did the text-voting. They got so many text-votes, there must have been enough to overload at least a few places at least once.
And if you are a terrorist, you only need to do it for like 20-30 minutes to cause all sorts of trouble. Of course, it requires either a script, or like 500 different cell phones, all of which must be relatively untraceable in ownership
And, again, I see nothing in these proposed laws that are ensuring protection for the artists. All references seem to indicate protection of music labels , something quite different than artists
Yes, this is a problem with me too. We all say "DRM", and it's all "pro-DRM" or "anti-DRM". But according to Wikipedia, "DRM" is "Digital Rights Management". I so, I have to ask, why do only the fat cats get their rights managed?
As I see it, publishers in particular, and the RIAA in general, have too much of a role in everything. They seem to be more important than the artists. that strikes me as art is supposed to be about the creativity, which is the artists, not the record label. I feel that the record label gets the money and copyright by virtue of being the middleman. I think we should "Digital Rights Management" to include the digital rights of consumers and artists.
This app is all about being able to view the data in ways that would be hard to do in a browser. wouldn't it be easier to download an excel or PDF or something? Rather than make a whole new desktop application?
Corporations = Money = Ads = Getting (re)elected
See, the logical answer to your question is: but don't we vote? And if all the money in the world didn't change our minds, wouldn't the money then be worthless? The only problem is that no one is going to vote on DRM alone. Unfortunately, the issues are what the media says they are. The media is swayed by that money, and also by the fact that they sort of naturally line right up with the MPAA and RIAA, just by nature of their industry. So, the real problem is that we can't get heard, and we can't get people to make this THE issue in their minds. No politician is going to win on something like this, because it is dwarfed by abortion, and healthcare and prayer in schools and so forth. It may be more important, but people don't realize it. More than the anti-DRM fight belongs in the courtrooms, it belongs in the court of Public Opinion.
I wasn't saying Nano wasn't a big step forward, I'm saying it was. But GB Micro can't do the same thing, as Nano doesn't suffer from being small, and the Micro can. I was saying that just because smaller (size) iPods are better doesn't mean that smaller GameBoys will be better.
It helps bridge the gap and pull people along until the average person realizes, "Hey, why I can't I just do this on my computer?"
/.ers, ignorant. But I think that ignorance will fade quickly when they try to watch LotR and discover that Frodo is about the size of a fingernail.
Again, with all due respect, won't people come to this conclusion a lot faster here? I mean, the iPod has an advantage over music on the computer - portability. An iPod screen isn't going to be good for movies. When you figure in a non-foldable screen of any size and some sort of a control panel (even the lovely clickwheel), you're far bigger than any pockets I usually wear.
And I don't know movie sizes, but 60 Gigs can't be more than 20 of them, right? And when we figure in the more powerful processor needed, I could almost buy an older iBook 12 inch or whatever to do the same thing (and take notes if I wanted to).
I mean, I agree that the consumer is, relative to
This seems backward to me. We seem to be moving towards a more internet focused life, with web based apps which are scaring MS. We're trying to do things that used to be desktop based (encyclopedias, games) on the internet (Wikipedia, flash games & MMORPGS) And then we're taking something that really should be online to the desktop?
Task tray icon #147!
Yeah, that's life for packrats. And aren't we all like this? I mean, do I really need 4 web browsers? Yes, dang it, I do. What if AOL decides to hate Safari, Opera, and IE? Wouldn't I be glad I grabbed Firefox? What if they all die? Now I can report the bugs, thank you very much.
If all 4 of my browsers get screwed up at the same time, I freaking quit the Internet forever. The hackers will have won.
Damn that RIAA, marching you to the record store, forcing a CD you don't want into your hands and making you take the money out your wallet against your will!
I didn't phrase it right then. I meant that I don't like CDs because they come bundled. I don't like bundled stuff, unless there is a major price break. I'm not saying that the RIAA is forcing me to buy CDs, in fact I'm saying don't buy CDs.
I suppose the best and most explicit way to say it is "I don't like CDs because buying a CD causes me to pay for things I don't want in order to get what I want"