It'd be nice if it made the pirates think about what they are doing, but if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that software pirates don't do a lot of deep thinking.
I think you may be barking up the wrong tree here.. It's been my experience that most people who pirate a lot of software rarely even use it. Sort of like stamp collecting for the geek kids. Also, I'd like to submit that the person who invests enough time to crack, find a crack, or find a serial for a given piece of software was never going to pay for it in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me to try to consider or quantify the "losses" attributable to a demographic group you could never reach.
I believe if you produce a good product, and charge a fair price for it, people will pay for it. Treating potential customers like --potential customers instead of criminals would be a better business model in my mind..
It's not made up... It's called Macrovision®... and it's been sucking hard for decades (the company has been in the news lately, offering to "lead the way" for more DRM.
If you don't believe the poster, try it yourself. I have a cheap-o TV from years ago that works just fine -- but it has no inputs. I have to connect my DVD player through the back of a VCR (which I have), or go out and buy a separate signal combiner (which I don't). I do, however, have a copy of MacTheRipper and AnyDVD - and a severe distaste for DRM'd DVD's.
20 minutes later.. and Voilá it really does Play For Sure.
I don't think most carriers would have a problem selling unbranded phones that they can actually unload for at least what they paid for them. I used to work for a cellular carrier, and they took a loss on every phone they sold (hence the contract, cancellation fee, etc.). This was _many_ years ago -- but just for example, the Motorola Star-Tac (original version, 2 line display) COST the company over a grand per unit, and we charged accordingly for it. 5 years later, they were giving them away. Freakin' piggy-back Lithium Ion batteries were up at the $300.00 range at the time as well.....
I'm sure that since carriers are really the main purchaser of handsets, they dictate to the manufacturers exactly what features they want enabled, what the icons look like, how many corporate logos you see when the phone boots, shuts down, etc. Which I'm sure they see as only fair as they are subsidizing the cost of the phone.
I think Apple needed to pair up with a large GSM carrier to ensure the broadest customer base available to them. Cingular is huge (especially now). Even netting a small percentage of their existing customers will be a financial success for Apple -- and it won't hurt Cingular when a customer that's 1 year into their 2 year contract wants the new phone, because the customer is paying for the cost of the equipment (and re-upping for 2 more years).
As a side note, I'm sure it won't be long before someone is able to hack into the phone and muck around in there... I'm hoping for the day that there's a VOIP/Skype application for it.
It's a good business model: Allow users to upload copyrighted content (yes I know there's no way to tell if it is or not -until someone complains). Attract a gazillion "normal" users who watch said content. Profit.
OR
Allow users to upload copyrighted content, people watch it, profit --Content "owner" files suit, a zillion people read about it in the press, press precipitates another gazillion hits, profit. Drop dime on uploader, skate.
Sorry if this is getting too far off topic.. but, you can. This can generally be accomplished by editing a small text file on the disc (XML, I think..), there's ton's of places that will tell you exactly how. Once you've done that you've got a "Universal" (not necessarily in the Intel/PPC sense of the word) OS X install disc. After that you're fully functional/supported.. no WGA checks or other BS to bother you.
OK... So.. if IE can't render a standards compliant web page, then -by definition, it's broken. I understand that M$ pretty-much owns the installed base of web browsers (meaning IE), but that does not (or should not) give them license to just go their own way whenever they feel like it. I'm not a W3C expert or anything, but I'd bet there's a way to get a new feature, capability, etc. buy submitting it to the W3C and having it voted on. Microsoft didn't invent (well, really... anything) the WWW, or the web browser.
So, IMHO, they should follow the standards, whatever they are -- or at least be able to correctly deal with them.
Apple definitely yanked their customers around a bit in the 80's and 90's... and nearly paid the ultimate price. (Note that my 60 MHz PowerMac 6100 still smoked the pants of my college roomate's 100 MHz Pentium in usability and stability -even in System 7 and 8. Sure it cost more.. but I got to do work with it, as opposed to ON it) ---- That being said: I'm fairly sure the Apple store came to be because there weren't any other (major retailer type, nationwide) stores that were doing ANYTHING good for Apple or their customers.
Seriously, if you ever tried to purchase any Apple stuff at ChumpUSA or BestNotBuy you'd most-likely leave the place capable of committing crimes against humanity.
Again, the ITMS exists to support the sale of the iPod, not the other way around -- and I've seen enough M$ products that are far from feature-equal on the Mac as their PC counterparts to think that M$ did that for a reason as well (IE, I'm looking at you).
Re:Why DRM and Locks on Apple Stores are Dumb, Job
on
Apple, the New Microsoft?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This doesn't sound that bad to me:
3. Don't pirate our software.
You can permanently sell it to or transfer it to someone else if you want. (record companies have already come out against this)
If someone gave you a "Not for resale" copy (which are free), don't give it or sell it to someone.
1. Don't copy our boot ROM, or our documentation as they are not yours.
2. This is a 1 seat license (we offer family licenses at a steep discount)... don't install it on more than 1 machine (although we really would never know as it doesn't have some draconian activation scheme built in). Feel free to make a backup -- just make sure you keep the license and copyright notices on the disc. Since we designed this software to be used by our customers on Apple computers, and we give you a "free" copy with said Apple computer, and we obviously spent a lot of resources in developing it, - we don't give you permission run it on your TigerDirect POS.
Compared to the other paid OS'es out there, I again don't really think that their license is especially restrictive. But that's just my opinion.. I could be wrong.
First, alot of individuals do actually choose to run Windows because it has the software solutions necessary to function. Where is AutoCAD for OSX? I don't want another version of CAD, nor do I want to dual boot the system using Boot Camp. I would want a native version for OSX.
AutoCAD 2007 runs just fine in Parallels.
The most important is that their software is vastly inferior to most of what is out there. It looks good, but nice like ****. Even OSX on a core 2 duo is slowwww. It almost crawls.
I'd take iTunes over WMP, iPhoto over the Camera and Scanner Wizard, and iMovie over Windows Movie Maker any day. I've also used OS X on 3 recent Core Duo machines and if was very snappy, I would hardly say it crawls.
As a Linux user who has to tolerate Windows, I have no time for OSX. It just isn't open, is slow, and surrounded by what really amounts to nothing more than a cult. Why don't you just go back to worshiping Steve and leave the rest of us the **** alone. Mac users really do equate to the Jehovah Witness movement (you think your paradigm is the only one that is important, and you just won't leave people alone to actually select something that you view is inferior). Maybe, we actually like what we use and are not driven by wants and desires for manipulation.
Whatever helps you sleep at night. I work in an office that is 100% Windows based, and I bring my Powerbook with me to work everyday for my personal stuff, and inevitably wind up using it to solve some problem that our Windows machines can't fix (admittedly sometimes due to the fact that end users are locked out of everything -- which is due to XP's neato take on what a multi-user environment is).
6 out of 6 of the last personal computers purchased by employees (for personal use) were Macs. All end-users are more than happy with their purchases as most of them had gone the Windows route on their previous machines and can genuinely appreciate the Mac & OS X user experience.
Another thing... almost 100% of all purchases are emotional decisions. People just tend to make up supporting "logical facts" to help themselves deal with the fact that they bought something simply because they wanted it.
Apple also sued nearly everybody over supposedly copying their GUI -- in nearly every case, it was pretty obvious that the real source was Xerox, but Apple's motto seemed to be "it's our's; we stole it first.",
No, Apple acquired the rights to develop a GUI based on Xerox's own GUI concept as seen at PARC legally (they paid for it with Apple stock.) You can read about it at MacKiDo (yes it's a Mac site) http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html
I'm a Cingular customer, and happened to call them around the time the iPhone was announced (for another issue regarding their website). I also asked the representative some questions about the iPhone and he mentioned that they were rolling out an unlimited data package to go with that particular phone/qualifying plan.
Maybe they feel they can do that because they're not spending hundreds on the cost-to-acquire a customer for that particular piece of equipment -- seeing as they're asking for a 2 year commitment for purchasing the phone.
Apple has always been upfront in telling you that you can only play your purchased content on a limited number of computers... they also let you reset which computers they are (once a year, I think). Until the recording industry wises-up, and DRM goes away, I think iTunes is about as good as a deal as one is going to get.
Remember, in the current business model, you don't own the track, cd, etc.. You own a license to play it. While this is lame IMHO, it's not really up to Apple to change the recording industry. I'm sure (OK, I'm not... but for the purpose of this post, let's say I am) they'd be perfectly happy just selling iPods and letting you get your music whatever way you want.
I would say that figuring out you can burn CD and re-rip it isn't beyond the grasp of the novice user...
erm... Apple was required, by the recording industry, to put DRM on the ITMS content in order to get them to agree to let Apple sell the tracks. It's always been there.. in one flavor or another. The ITMS was designed to augment the sale of iPods -- as Apple is a hardware company -- to give the iPod users a place where they could buy music that would integrate seamlessly with their iPod management application (iTunes).
The success/volume of the ITMS is directly tied to the fact that the iPod is the most popular MP3 player -- not the other way around. Nobody really cared about FairPlay when they were all betting that ITMS would tank in the first place.
Saying that expecting the average computer user to be able to click the "import" button on their iPod management software (again iTunes) is not being an elitist. It's showing a realistic alternative to buying the DRM'ed tracks are available to the ITMS. Burning CD's in iTunes is pretty-much a 1-click experience as well. So we're looking at four not-so-difficult steps: Make Playlist of DRM'd files to be burned, Click "Burn", Click "Import", archive old files in case of future need (optional).
The ITMS is not entrapment... you can EASILY choose not to use it and do just fine. Now WGA on the other hand...
If Microsoft were the key player in the market... the other competing services would already be dead.
Before I get all "fanboi'd down"... I should probably mention that own both Windows and Apple systems, and even play around with Linux from time to time. I like Apple's products because they work well for me, and I'm impressed by the level of fit & finish of the hardware. Your mileage may vary.
I think you need to consider the fact that in a lot of areas the Teleco's are pretty much government-sanctioned monopolies. If I don't have a choice as to which phone company to go with, then I want exactly the same offering that every other subscriber gets. Period. The fact that they are a monopoly should allow them to subsidize the cost of the less profitable markets with the revenues of the more profitable ones.
"what you need is monster cables. Monster cables with gold plated plugs."
IMHO, Gold-plated plugs are more for marketing than sound quality... They're still connected to copper wires.
In most "casual" listening environments... for example, ones with background noise, co-workers, etc... the bitrate offered at ITMS is just fine. From there you can (or could) HYMN away your DRM woes!
(N. Gimbel - M. LeGrand)
The clock will tick away the hours one by one
And then the time will come when all the waiting's done
The time when you'll return and find me here and run
Straight to my waiting arms
If it takes forever, I will wait for you
For a thousand summers, I will wait for you
Till you're back beside me
Till I'm holding you, till I hear you sigh
Here in my arms
Anywhere you wander, anywhere you go
Every day remember how I love you so
In your heart believe what in my heart I know
That forever more I'll wait for you
If it takes forever, I will wait for you
For a thousand summers, I will wait for you
Till you're here beside me
Till I'm touching you
And forevermore I'll wait for you
I will wait for you
Yes, I will wait for you
I will wait for you
This was truly the saddest TV show I have ever seen.
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I think you may be barking up the wrong tree here.. It's been my experience that most people who pirate a lot of software rarely even use it. Sort of like stamp collecting for the geek kids.
Also, I'd like to submit that the person who invests enough time to crack, find a crack, or find a serial for a given piece of software was never going to pay for it in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me to try to consider or quantify the "losses" attributable to a demographic group you could never reach.
I believe if you produce a good product, and charge a fair price for it, people will pay for it. Treating potential customers like --potential customers instead of criminals would be a better business model in my mind..
It's not made up... It's called Macrovision®... and it's been sucking hard for decades (the company has been in the news lately, offering to "lead the way" for more DRM.
If you don't believe the poster, try it yourself. I have a cheap-o TV from years ago that works just fine -- but it has no inputs. I have to connect my DVD player through the back of a VCR (which I have), or go out and buy a separate signal combiner (which I don't). I do, however, have a copy of MacTheRipper and AnyDVD - and a severe distaste for DRM'd DVD's.
20 minutes later.. and Voilá it really does Play For Sure.
I don't think most carriers would have a problem selling unbranded phones that they can actually unload for at least what they paid for them. I used to work for a cellular carrier, and they took a loss on every phone they sold (hence the contract, cancellation fee, etc.). This was _many_ years ago -- but just for example, the Motorola Star-Tac (original version, 2 line display) COST the company over a grand per unit, and we charged accordingly for it. 5 years later, they were giving them away. Freakin' piggy-back Lithium Ion batteries were up at the $300.00 range at the time as well.....
I'm sure that since carriers are really the main purchaser of handsets, they dictate to the manufacturers exactly what features they want enabled, what the icons look like, how many corporate logos you see when the phone boots, shuts down, etc. Which I'm sure they see as only fair as they are subsidizing the cost of the phone.
I think Apple needed to pair up with a large GSM carrier to ensure the broadest customer base available to them. Cingular is huge (especially now). Even netting a small percentage of their existing customers will be a financial success for Apple -- and it won't hurt Cingular when a customer that's 1 year into their 2 year contract wants the new phone, because the customer is paying for the cost of the equipment (and re-upping for 2 more years).
As a side note, I'm sure it won't be long before someone is able to hack into the phone and muck around in there... I'm hoping for the day that there's a VOIP/Skype application for it.
It's a good business model: Allow users to upload copyrighted content (yes I know there's no way to tell if it is or not -until someone complains). Attract a gazillion "normal" users who watch said content. Profit.
OR
Allow users to upload copyrighted content, people watch it, profit --Content "owner" files suit, a zillion people read about it in the press, press precipitates another gazillion hits, profit. Drop dime on uploader, skate.
Sorry if this is getting too far off topic.. but, you can. This can generally be accomplished by editing a small text file on the disc (XML, I think..), there's ton's of places that will tell you exactly how.
Once you've done that you've got a "Universal" (not necessarily in the Intel/PPC sense of the word) OS X install disc. After that you're fully functional/supported.. no WGA checks or other BS to bother you.
OK... So.. if IE can't render a standards compliant web page, then -by definition, it's broken. I understand that M$ pretty-much owns the installed base of web browsers (meaning IE), but that does not (or should not) give them license to just go their own way whenever they feel like it. I'm not a W3C expert or anything, but I'd bet there's a way to get a new feature, capability, etc. buy submitting it to the W3C and having it voted on. Microsoft didn't invent (well, really... anything) the WWW, or the web browser.
So, IMHO, they should follow the standards, whatever they are -- or at least be able to correctly deal with them.
I don't understand how making a standards compliant web page cut the IE users out of the loop. Please explain.
Apple definitely yanked their customers around a bit in the 80's and 90's... and nearly paid the ultimate price. (Note that my 60 MHz PowerMac 6100 still smoked the pants of my college roomate's 100 MHz Pentium in usability and stability -even in System 7 and 8. Sure it cost more.. but I got to do work with it, as opposed to ON it) ---- That being said: I'm fairly sure the Apple store came to be because there weren't any other (major retailer type, nationwide) stores that were doing ANYTHING good for Apple or their customers.
Seriously, if you ever tried to purchase any Apple stuff at ChumpUSA or BestNotBuy you'd most-likely leave the place capable of committing crimes against humanity.
Again, the ITMS exists to support the sale of the iPod, not the other way around -- and I've seen enough M$ products that are far from feature-equal on the Mac as their PC counterparts to think that M$ did that for a reason as well (IE, I'm looking at you).
This doesn't sound that bad to me:
3. Don't pirate our software.
You can permanently sell it to or transfer it to someone else if you want. (record companies have already come out against this)
If someone gave you a "Not for resale" copy (which are free), don't give it or sell it to someone.
1. Don't copy our boot ROM, or our documentation as they are not yours.
2. This is a 1 seat license (we offer family licenses at a steep discount)... don't install it on more than 1 machine (although we really would never know as it doesn't have some draconian activation scheme built in). Feel free to make a backup -- just make sure you keep the license and copyright notices on the disc.
Since we designed this software to be used by our customers on Apple computers, and we give you a "free" copy with said Apple computer, and we obviously spent a lot of resources in developing it, - we don't give you permission run it on your TigerDirect POS.
Compared to the other paid OS'es out there, I again don't really think that their license is especially restrictive. But that's just my opinion.. I could be wrong.
AutoCAD 2007 runs just fine in Parallels.
I'd take iTunes over WMP, iPhoto over the Camera and Scanner Wizard, and iMovie over Windows Movie Maker any day. I've also used OS X on 3 recent Core Duo machines and if was very snappy, I would hardly say it crawls.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
I work in an office that is 100% Windows based, and I bring my Powerbook with me to work everyday for my personal stuff, and inevitably wind up using it to solve some problem that our Windows machines can't fix (admittedly sometimes due to the fact that end users are locked out of everything -- which is due to XP's neato take on what a multi-user environment is).
6 out of 6 of the last personal computers purchased by employees (for personal use) were Macs. All end-users are more than happy with their purchases as most of them had gone the Windows route on their previous machines and can genuinely appreciate the Mac & OS X user experience.
Another thing... almost 100% of all purchases are emotional decisions. People just tend to make up supporting "logical facts" to help themselves deal with the fact that they bought something simply because they wanted it.
No, Apple acquired the rights to develop a GUI based on Xerox's own GUI concept as seen at PARC legally (they paid for it with Apple stock.) You can read about it at MacKiDo (yes it's a Mac site) http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html
I'm a Cingular customer, and happened to call them around the time the iPhone was announced (for another issue regarding their website). I also asked the representative some questions about the iPhone and he mentioned that they were rolling out an unlimited data package to go with that particular phone/qualifying plan.
Maybe they feel they can do that because they're not spending hundreds on the cost-to-acquire a customer for that particular piece of equipment -- seeing as they're asking for a 2 year commitment for purchasing the phone.
Apple has always been upfront in telling you that you can only play your purchased content on a limited number of computers... they also let you reset which computers they are (once a year, I think). Until the recording industry wises-up, and DRM goes away, I think iTunes is about as good as a deal as one is going to get.
Remember, in the current business model, you don't own the track, cd, etc.. You own a license to play it. While this is lame IMHO, it's not really up to Apple to change the recording industry. I'm sure (OK, I'm not... but for the purpose of this post, let's say I am) they'd be perfectly happy just selling iPods and letting you get your music whatever way you want.
I would say that figuring out you can burn CD and re-rip it isn't beyond the grasp of the novice user...
erm... Apple was required, by the recording industry, to put DRM on the ITMS content in order to get them to agree to let Apple sell the tracks. It's always been there.. in one flavor or another. The ITMS was designed to augment the sale of iPods -- as Apple is a hardware company -- to give the iPod users a place where they could buy music that would integrate seamlessly with their iPod management application (iTunes).
The success/volume of the ITMS is directly tied to the fact that the iPod is the most popular MP3 player -- not the other way around. Nobody really cared about FairPlay when they were all betting that ITMS would tank in the first place.
Saying that expecting the average computer user to be able to click the "import" button on their iPod management software (again iTunes) is not being an elitist. It's showing a realistic alternative to buying the DRM'ed tracks are available to the ITMS. Burning CD's in iTunes is pretty-much a 1-click experience as well. So we're looking at four not-so-difficult steps: Make Playlist of DRM'd files to be burned, Click "Burn", Click "Import", archive old files in case of future need (optional).
The ITMS is not entrapment... you can EASILY choose not to use it and do just fine. Now WGA on the other hand...
If Microsoft were the key player in the market... the other competing services would already be dead.
Before I get all "fanboi'd down"... I should probably mention that own both Windows and Apple systems, and even play around with Linux from time to time. I like Apple's products because they work well for me, and I'm impressed by the level of fit & finish of the hardware. Your mileage may vary.
I think you need to consider the fact that in a lot of areas the Teleco's are pretty much government-sanctioned monopolies. If I don't have a choice as to which phone company to go with, then I want exactly the same offering that every other subscriber gets. Period. The fact that they are a monopoly should allow them to subsidize the cost of the less profitable markets with the revenues of the more profitable ones.
"what you need is monster cables. Monster cables with gold plated plugs."
IMHO, Gold-plated plugs are more for marketing than sound quality... They're still connected to copper wires.
In most "casual" listening environments... for example, ones with background noise, co-workers, etc... the bitrate offered at ITMS is just fine. From there you can (or could) HYMN away your DRM woes!
Allrighty then... here's your big chance. Please dazzle us with an example of your humor that IS intellectually stimulating, or particularly creative.
I'm thoroughly confident that it will be worth the wait.
[quote]Ariel Sharon is dying [bbc.co.uk] and you lot are here talking about Futurama?! You disgust me![/quote]
I'm going to file that under: "Who give's a Jim-Daddy fcuk?"
Now go play in traffic.
(N. Gimbel - M. LeGrand) The clock will tick away the hours one by one And then the time will come when all the waiting's done The time when you'll return and find me here and run Straight to my waiting arms If it takes forever, I will wait for you For a thousand summers, I will wait for you Till you're back beside me Till I'm holding you, till I hear you sigh Here in my arms Anywhere you wander, anywhere you go Every day remember how I love you so In your heart believe what in my heart I know That forever more I'll wait for you If it takes forever, I will wait for you For a thousand summers, I will wait for you Till you're here beside me Till I'm touching you And forevermore I'll wait for you I will wait for you Yes, I will wait for you I will wait for you This was truly the saddest TV show I have ever seen.
...To radioactive vapor!
Seriously, I really, hope FOX has the horse sense to pick Futurama back up. But I'm not betting on it. http://bringbackfuturama.com/