Depends whether voters are rational. You can spin that as your competitor spewing lies and desecrating the constitution, and you're doing your best to defend it. While it may not seem that nobody cares about the constitution anymore, all we know for sure is that the people we elect are damned liars and they don't care, and most people are getting fairly sick of that.
As a former hardware-obsessive-type now using Macs, I sort of agree. I've long since given up that approach with computers since it's too expensive, too time-consuming and too frustrating. However, I still can't justify getting the cheaper iMac as compared to a Mac Pro since having a single internal hard drive that's effectively inaccessible (any access involving suction cups, dozens of assorted weird screws and a lint-free cloth is more than I'd like to deal with for a hard drive upgrade). I have no plans to upgrade the hardware every other week like I used to, but I burn through too much space to deal with that level of pain with a hard drive upgrade and the premium for an Apple drive upgrade is insane. I know why they do it and from a business perspective it makes perfect sense, but it's one of the biggest things that's stopped me giving them two grand for a nice 24" iMac months ago.
And again with the headless Mac that's probably never going to happen. I want one and would happily pay for it... something with half the specs of a Pro, etc. But I know why Apple doesn't license OS X for PC hardware and agree with their decision. I used OSX86 on a Thinkpad for the best part of a year, and while I preferred the hardware to my MBP, the weird quirks like no wireless, audio, or standby were a huge pain in the ass - and that was for a reasonably well-supported system. I'd rather Apple focus on perfecting the OS than futzing with weird drivers for a million hardware combinations.
Maybe. I'm all for Linux and agree that it's seen a lot of improvement, but it still has a long way to go and I'd sooner go back to Windows than switch to Linux. Having said that, Linux's rate of improvement does seem higher than that of the other OSs so catching up feature-wise isn't implausible. The big issue is that most geeks favor functions over form (and fail to realize that all the great features they added in are inaccessible by most), so they've done very little to innovate on the user experience front. I'm pretty sure that, for instance, Linux was the first to implement virtual desktops, but Apple nailed the GUI wrapper that really makes them useful. Neither could really exist without the other.
In my experience, Google fares quite well with natural language queries. Granted, it seems to happen by knocking out those words that every page has so your effective query becomes "symptoms codeine histamine reactions" which seems to return the same result set. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether it's what you want, but you're getting what you've paid for here.
Peripheral vision doesn't really count though. While you're technically seeing that area, it's more of a dinosaur-esque movement detection than anything else. Have someone wave their hand around to the side of your head and you'll see it. Then try to count how many fingers they're holding up. Good luck.
While I'm not big on the idea of wireless payment (in this form anyways), the danger of an RFID tag in your wallet being randomly sniffed is almost nothing. Passive RFID tags like those in some credit cards, Mobil Speedpass, your office door key, etc, have an extremely limited range - a couple inches of the reader with most tags. They don't actively broadcast anything since their broadcasting is actually powered by the signal the reader sends out - a weird wireless inductive power of sorts. It's not until you start working with battery-powered active transmitters (highway EZ-Pass boxes for the fast toll lanes, etc) where there would be a realistic security risk. Granted it's still easier to clone an RFID tag than a mag strip without touching the card, but in both situations it would be more discreet to just pick-pocket the victim. In both cases, leaving your phone's Bluetooth or WiFi turned on is going to be a much bigger potential risk, which in itself is still fairly minimal (there was a bluetooth phone exploit a while ago that was being used to trigger phones to dial $5/min toll numbers and racking up charges, but I haven't heard of it happening recently).
Again, I agree with the general sentiment, but the threat is incredibly minimal. It's the social engineering aspect that's the actual threat, not so much the data transmission method.
The payment is by far the fastest part of the checkout process. Put the RFID tags directly on the items (and not just the shipping crates for SCM tracking) and eliminate the actually time-consuming process of scanning dozens of bar codes. Remember that old IBM commercial with the shoplifter and the security guard handing him a receipt as he walks out the door with the "stolen" goods? Yeah, kind of like that.
Right concept, wrong place. Considering the deployment cost of a POS terminal, an RFID-based, cashless system wouldn't be a large additional cost to implement provided that inventory on the shelf has the tags - and since passive tags are quite cheap when produced in sufficient bulk, it's just a matter of getting manufacturers to do it. The only thing that would go up in price is a result would be ramen noodles, from 16.6c/pack to 16.7c.
How is waving a closed wallet (holding a tagged card) over a sensor in any way whatsoever more secure or distinct than having to pull out that card and swipe it though the magnetic strip reader? Some more recent readers prompt me to punch in a ZIP code or some sort of PIN rather than scribble any random thing on a signature pad which I consider a vague improvement, but I don't find holding a card over a sensor any more convenient than swiping it through and do feel it less secure.
You're joking, right? Pick any three random houses, and at least one of them will probably have a young(er) kid in it. Most kidnappings aren't by random strangers, and aren't nearly as common in either case as you imply.
Time to start weening yourself off of the sensationalist news a bit.
Just curious, can you specify any specific scripts? I tend to write most of my stuff from scratch.
Also curious, are they issues along the lines of "INSERT INTO `people` (`name`, `email`) VALUES ('$_GET["name"]', '$_GET["email"]')" or stuff that's specific to the language rather than stupid coders? In my experience, most of the bugs and holes I've come across are due to laziness or stupidity on the coder's part, like failing to sanitize user input as above rather than someone overriding an internal variable with a querystring parameter because register_globals was turned on.
True, but making an XML-based document sort of makes sense, especially given how XML and well-formed XHTML are basically identical and simple documents generally equate to a couple h1/h2 tags and a bunch of paragraphs with a very basic stylesheet. As such, storing it in a very accessible XML format makes quite a lot of sense.
On the other hand, look at the XML version of an iTunes Library. Every track has about 22 pairs of XML nodes ([key]Node Name[/key][string]Node Value[/string] type stuff for every piece of metadata, when they could have at least used [key name="Name"]Value[/key] or just [name]Value[/name]), which is creating a TON of file size bloat (a given for any format as verbose as XML, but the [integer]1[/integer] thing gets pretty damn redundant after 5000 tracks). It would make much more sense as a basic relational database in SQLite or something, especially given the nature of the application - I don't see why I have to set the number of tracks per disc on EVERY TRACK ON THE DISC when that obviously won't change from track to track in an album, etc.
Maybe when iTunes was first conceived using XML as a data storage medium made sense, but it seems terrible the way it's being used today. To be fair, it's the binary file that's actually getting used, but it's probably just a gzipped version with the extension changed. Back to Office documents and such, it does make a reasonable amount of sense as compared to a database, but XML is (in my experience) most frequently used to transfer data in a very accessible format, and it's absolutely ideal for that but not a whole lot else.
Wouldn't it be more effective if we supported all the games without DRM, and not the ones with DRM?
No, it wouldn't. There are plenty of games without DRM out there, and a lot of them suck. I'm not drawing a conclusion or correlation between the two, but I'd rather see DRM-laded, otherwise-good games than a bunch of crap because publishers think they can get away with selling crap by simply skipping copy protection. You can't treat the lack of DRM a merit, but instead must treat the presence of DRM as a demerit.
What I'm showing is that I'm willing to pay so long as doing so doesn't impair my ability to play the game, and that their attempts to impair my ability to play when I haven't paid is ineffective (this is of course on somewhat of a leap of faith, but has historically been true and will almost certainly be the case for something that will be as targeted as Spore).
Piracy, whether it's being used as a demo that turns into a sale or not (usually not, let's be honest), still says that the product is generally desirable. It also says some of their audience are cheap-asses, some can't afford to pay, and some (like me) are clearly stating that they would buy it were it not for the invasive copy protection. Whether they use that information is their own responsibility, but they'd be remarkably ignorant at this point to not at least KNOW that a) copy protection is ineffective, b) some people will never pay no matter what, so stop wasting your damn time, and c) copy protection measures piss off customers or would-be customers.
Of course, this is my stance on it. If they want to read it as my being immature, they can go ahead and do so. But that's just ignoring my feedback rather than using it to their advantage. If I don't agree with their terms, they don't get my money. If the only point of those terms that I disagree with is the copy protection, what does it say when I'm able to copy it anyways? It's an inconvenience for people who did pay, and trivial to get around for those that won't.
Aside from the complete superscript failure, you should mention that's as the OS reports it, not as SI defines it (and how hard drive manufacturers will advertise it, and rightly so). I'd like to think that by that time we will finally convince the OS developers to start reporting hard drive capacity in accurate units, either by converting in base-10 or using the base-2 labels ("gibi", "tebi", etc)
And they've just ensured that I will NOT be purchasing a copy. Not buying and then playing a pirated copy (which I tend to do with a lot of my existing games for a similar reason), but a transfer of $0 from myself to them in exchange for a copy of the game.
You hear that, EA? You just ensured that I will not be purchasing Spore, which up until this news was at the top of my buy list.
I'll keep the money set aside for when you change your mind. In the meantime, I'll be playing a Swedish version.
I think you've nailed it, sir. As a photographer (who generally posts photos online with a CC license), I'd feel it bullshit to have to pay any amount, not to mention the hassle of the paperwork, to not have people rip me off. And by rip me off, I mean the royalty-free reproduction rights that would be inherently gained by my work automatically becoming PD. If my work is just sitting there making me no money, I really don't care if it automatically moves in to some other license after a period of time - though I'd like to see in general maybe two years of CC-BY-NC before moving to PD.
By and large, there would be no ill effects on content creators who aren't to the point of milking content for all it's worth and then some *cough*disney*cough*. Software would be completely unaffected as 5-year-old software is pretty much useless to everyone, with the exception of WinXP/WinServer2003 of all things - and in this case, this sort of copyright law revision would kick Microsoft's ass in gear to get moving with newer versions (but I won't get into that spiel right now). Likewise, the effect would be very minimal for books, movies, etc. They tend to have their biggest sales at first then quickly taper off. The first couple of Harry Potter books would be near entering PD by now with a 5 given/5 renew/2 CC/PD approach, which would probably help the series overall by exposing more people to it with the "first hit is free" approach to content.
It could get weird with derivative works - you know, movie deals and such. There would need to be something to address that IMO. Assuming it was 12 years max from creation to PD, movie studios would either need to wait until the excitement had died off a lot to get the content royalty-free (which is still quite sleazy if you ask me) or license while the excitement is there and the opportunity is hot. Is the former case really fair to the (former) copyright holder though? I guess this isn't as simple as we'd hoped.
Re:It's up to the developer and consumer
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This is a reasonable point for some software. OpenOffice is, by and large, a pretty sufficient replacement for MSOffice or iWork for most users, and back when I was frequently actually using an office suite, I was using OpenOffice rather than MSOffice. While I don't care for Linux, the huge push for increased user-friendliness makes it a valid alternative to most people (I've opted for OS X which is best for what I do, which aside from the hardware restrictions has no activation or even a serial number).
However, The Gimp is not anything remotely close to a suitable substitute for Photoshop. I wish it was and I have tried it (several times), but there's a reason Adobe can get away with charging a thousand plus bucks for CS3. For what I generally do it's not worth the money, but I'd rather pay up more than it's worth to me than to deal with Gimp. It may work for some people and that's great for them, but it's useless to me and that's all I really care about. I really hope that Pixelmator and other Do Most Of What Photoshop Does For 10% Of The Price tools continue being heavily developed, and that Alex Lindsay follows through on his threat of making a PS replacement if CS4 keeps with the insane copy protection that doesn't do a damn thing against pirates anyways.
I have to ask... can't you tell the BSA to just fuck off? As far as I can tell they're not a government organization, so why should I let them poke around in my affairs?
Well theoretically you could brute-force the reconstruction of a file of a known size with its checksum (and you can do it without a known size too, but having a starting point will speed things up a lot and should negate collision issues you may encounter on shorter checksums like md5 no matter how unlikely they are). It's not parity in any sense of the word, but it could still get you there.
Of course, it's not exactly the most time-effective way to "download" a file, but I've always wondered why I can't throw some spare cycles at a nearly-complete download whose seeds have dried up and just guess until I've got the working version. I've got 83% of a 55MB download right now, 14 or so files in said download, and I'm in that exact stalled scenario. AFAIK bit-torrent provides me checksums in some form or another... how long does it take to hash a 5MB file? I can't be bothered to do the math of how many possibilities that would be at this time of night, but it'll certainly go faster than continuing to download it from nobody.
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Depends whether voters are rational. You can spin that as your competitor spewing lies and desecrating the constitution, and you're doing your best to defend it. While it may not seem that nobody cares about the constitution anymore, all we know for sure is that the people we elect are damned liars and they don't care, and most people are getting fairly sick of that.
Is there something not ridiculous about DRM?
They probably do. Who needs ad revenue when you can sue all of your former eyeballs for $150,000 apiece?
As a former hardware-obsessive-type now using Macs, I sort of agree. I've long since given up that approach with computers since it's too expensive, too time-consuming and too frustrating. However, I still can't justify getting the cheaper iMac as compared to a Mac Pro since having a single internal hard drive that's effectively inaccessible (any access involving suction cups, dozens of assorted weird screws and a lint-free cloth is more than I'd like to deal with for a hard drive upgrade). I have no plans to upgrade the hardware every other week like I used to, but I burn through too much space to deal with that level of pain with a hard drive upgrade and the premium for an Apple drive upgrade is insane. I know why they do it and from a business perspective it makes perfect sense, but it's one of the biggest things that's stopped me giving them two grand for a nice 24" iMac months ago.
And again with the headless Mac that's probably never going to happen. I want one and would happily pay for it... something with half the specs of a Pro, etc. But I know why Apple doesn't license OS X for PC hardware and agree with their decision. I used OSX86 on a Thinkpad for the best part of a year, and while I preferred the hardware to my MBP, the weird quirks like no wireless, audio, or standby were a huge pain in the ass - and that was for a reasonably well-supported system. I'd rather Apple focus on perfecting the OS than futzing with weird drivers for a million hardware combinations.
Maybe. I'm all for Linux and agree that it's seen a lot of improvement, but it still has a long way to go and I'd sooner go back to Windows than switch to Linux. Having said that, Linux's rate of improvement does seem higher than that of the other OSs so catching up feature-wise isn't implausible. The big issue is that most geeks favor functions over form (and fail to realize that all the great features they added in are inaccessible by most), so they've done very little to innovate on the user experience front. I'm pretty sure that, for instance, Linux was the first to implement virtual desktops, but Apple nailed the GUI wrapper that really makes them useful. Neither could really exist without the other.
I've been saying the same thing for years. I've accepted that it's just not going to happen, and that I really will need to cough up for the Mac Pro.
Yes, I too think it sucks.
Nah, you're both senile at 84. He's just twice as good as you, and you're already twice as good as the average TV-watcher.
Powerset fails to confirm this.
In my experience, Google fares quite well with natural language queries. Granted, it seems to happen by knocking out those words that every page has so your effective query becomes "symptoms codeine histamine reactions" which seems to return the same result set. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether it's what you want, but you're getting what you've paid for here.
Peripheral vision doesn't really count though. While you're technically seeing that area, it's more of a dinosaur-esque movement detection than anything else. Have someone wave their hand around to the side of your head and you'll see it. Then try to count how many fingers they're holding up. Good luck.
While I'm not big on the idea of wireless payment (in this form anyways), the danger of an RFID tag in your wallet being randomly sniffed is almost nothing. Passive RFID tags like those in some credit cards, Mobil Speedpass, your office door key, etc, have an extremely limited range - a couple inches of the reader with most tags. They don't actively broadcast anything since their broadcasting is actually powered by the signal the reader sends out - a weird wireless inductive power of sorts. It's not until you start working with battery-powered active transmitters (highway EZ-Pass boxes for the fast toll lanes, etc) where there would be a realistic security risk. Granted it's still easier to clone an RFID tag than a mag strip without touching the card, but in both situations it would be more discreet to just pick-pocket the victim. In both cases, leaving your phone's Bluetooth or WiFi turned on is going to be a much bigger potential risk, which in itself is still fairly minimal (there was a bluetooth phone exploit a while ago that was being used to trigger phones to dial $5/min toll numbers and racking up charges, but I haven't heard of it happening recently).
Again, I agree with the general sentiment, but the threat is incredibly minimal. It's the social engineering aspect that's the actual threat, not so much the data transmission method.
The payment is by far the fastest part of the checkout process. Put the RFID tags directly on the items (and not just the shipping crates for SCM tracking) and eliminate the actually time-consuming process of scanning dozens of bar codes. Remember that old IBM commercial with the shoplifter and the security guard handing him a receipt as he walks out the door with the "stolen" goods? Yeah, kind of like that.
Right concept, wrong place. Considering the deployment cost of a POS terminal, an RFID-based, cashless system wouldn't be a large additional cost to implement provided that inventory on the shelf has the tags - and since passive tags are quite cheap when produced in sufficient bulk, it's just a matter of getting manufacturers to do it. The only thing that would go up in price is a result would be ramen noodles, from 16.6c/pack to 16.7c.
How is waving a closed wallet (holding a tagged card) over a sensor in any way whatsoever more secure or distinct than having to pull out that card and swipe it though the magnetic strip reader? Some more recent readers prompt me to punch in a ZIP code or some sort of PIN rather than scribble any random thing on a signature pad which I consider a vague improvement, but I don't find holding a card over a sensor any more convenient than swiping it through and do feel it less secure.
You're joking, right? Pick any three random houses, and at least one of them will probably have a young(er) kid in it. Most kidnappings aren't by random strangers, and aren't nearly as common in either case as you imply.
Time to start weening yourself off of the sensationalist news a bit.
Just curious, can you specify any specific scripts? I tend to write most of my stuff from scratch.
Also curious, are they issues along the lines of "INSERT INTO `people` (`name`, `email`) VALUES ('$_GET["name"]', '$_GET["email"]')" or stuff that's specific to the language rather than stupid coders? In my experience, most of the bugs and holes I've come across are due to laziness or stupidity on the coder's part, like failing to sanitize user input as above rather than someone overriding an internal variable with a querystring parameter because register_globals was turned on.
True, but making an XML-based document sort of makes sense, especially given how XML and well-formed XHTML are basically identical and simple documents generally equate to a couple h1/h2 tags and a bunch of paragraphs with a very basic stylesheet. As such, storing it in a very accessible XML format makes quite a lot of sense.
On the other hand, look at the XML version of an iTunes Library. Every track has about 22 pairs of XML nodes ([key]Node Name[/key][string]Node Value[/string] type stuff for every piece of metadata, when they could have at least used [key name="Name"]Value[/key] or just [name]Value[/name]), which is creating a TON of file size bloat (a given for any format as verbose as XML, but the [integer]1[/integer] thing gets pretty damn redundant after 5000 tracks). It would make much more sense as a basic relational database in SQLite or something, especially given the nature of the application - I don't see why I have to set the number of tracks per disc on EVERY TRACK ON THE DISC when that obviously won't change from track to track in an album, etc.
Maybe when iTunes was first conceived using XML as a data storage medium made sense, but it seems terrible the way it's being used today. To be fair, it's the binary file that's actually getting used, but it's probably just a gzipped version with the extension changed. Back to Office documents and such, it does make a reasonable amount of sense as compared to a database, but XML is (in my experience) most frequently used to transfer data in a very accessible format, and it's absolutely ideal for that but not a whole lot else.
I guess that's why the graphics designers all use Macs :)
No, it wouldn't. There are plenty of games without DRM out there, and a lot of them suck. I'm not drawing a conclusion or correlation between the two, but I'd rather see DRM-laded, otherwise-good games than a bunch of crap because publishers think they can get away with selling crap by simply skipping copy protection. You can't treat the lack of DRM a merit, but instead must treat the presence of DRM as a demerit.
What I'm showing is that I'm willing to pay so long as doing so doesn't impair my ability to play the game, and that their attempts to impair my ability to play when I haven't paid is ineffective (this is of course on somewhat of a leap of faith, but has historically been true and will almost certainly be the case for something that will be as targeted as Spore).
Piracy, whether it's being used as a demo that turns into a sale or not (usually not, let's be honest), still says that the product is generally desirable. It also says some of their audience are cheap-asses, some can't afford to pay, and some (like me) are clearly stating that they would buy it were it not for the invasive copy protection. Whether they use that information is their own responsibility, but they'd be remarkably ignorant at this point to not at least KNOW that a) copy protection is ineffective, b) some people will never pay no matter what, so stop wasting your damn time, and c) copy protection measures piss off customers or would-be customers.
Of course, this is my stance on it. If they want to read it as my being immature, they can go ahead and do so. But that's just ignoring my feedback rather than using it to their advantage. If I don't agree with their terms, they don't get my money. If the only point of those terms that I disagree with is the copy protection, what does it say when I'm able to copy it anyways? It's an inconvenience for people who did pay, and trivial to get around for those that won't.
Aside from the complete superscript failure, you should mention that's as the OS reports it, not as SI defines it (and how hard drive manufacturers will advertise it, and rightly so). I'd like to think that by that time we will finally convince the OS developers to start reporting hard drive capacity in accurate units, either by converting in base-10 or using the base-2 labels ("gibi", "tebi", etc)
And they've just ensured that I will NOT be purchasing a copy. Not buying and then playing a pirated copy (which I tend to do with a lot of my existing games for a similar reason), but a transfer of $0 from myself to them in exchange for a copy of the game.
You hear that, EA? You just ensured that I will not be purchasing Spore, which up until this news was at the top of my buy list.
I'll keep the money set aside for when you change your mind. In the meantime, I'll be playing a Swedish version.
I think you've nailed it, sir. As a photographer (who generally posts photos online with a CC license), I'd feel it bullshit to have to pay any amount, not to mention the hassle of the paperwork, to not have people rip me off. And by rip me off, I mean the royalty-free reproduction rights that would be inherently gained by my work automatically becoming PD. If my work is just sitting there making me no money, I really don't care if it automatically moves in to some other license after a period of time - though I'd like to see in general maybe two years of CC-BY-NC before moving to PD.
By and large, there would be no ill effects on content creators who aren't to the point of milking content for all it's worth and then some *cough*disney*cough*. Software would be completely unaffected as 5-year-old software is pretty much useless to everyone, with the exception of WinXP/WinServer2003 of all things - and in this case, this sort of copyright law revision would kick Microsoft's ass in gear to get moving with newer versions (but I won't get into that spiel right now). Likewise, the effect would be very minimal for books, movies, etc. They tend to have their biggest sales at first then quickly taper off. The first couple of Harry Potter books would be near entering PD by now with a 5 given/5 renew/2 CC/PD approach, which would probably help the series overall by exposing more people to it with the "first hit is free" approach to content.
It could get weird with derivative works - you know, movie deals and such. There would need to be something to address that IMO. Assuming it was 12 years max from creation to PD, movie studios would either need to wait until the excitement had died off a lot to get the content royalty-free (which is still quite sleazy if you ask me) or license while the excitement is there and the opportunity is hot. Is the former case really fair to the (former) copyright holder though? I guess this isn't as simple as we'd hoped.
This is a reasonable point for some software. OpenOffice is, by and large, a pretty sufficient replacement for MSOffice or iWork for most users, and back when I was frequently actually using an office suite, I was using OpenOffice rather than MSOffice. While I don't care for Linux, the huge push for increased user-friendliness makes it a valid alternative to most people (I've opted for OS X which is best for what I do, which aside from the hardware restrictions has no activation or even a serial number).
However, The Gimp is not anything remotely close to a suitable substitute for Photoshop. I wish it was and I have tried it (several times), but there's a reason Adobe can get away with charging a thousand plus bucks for CS3. For what I generally do it's not worth the money, but I'd rather pay up more than it's worth to me than to deal with Gimp. It may work for some people and that's great for them, but it's useless to me and that's all I really care about. I really hope that Pixelmator and other Do Most Of What Photoshop Does For 10% Of The Price tools continue being heavily developed, and that Alex Lindsay follows through on his threat of making a PS replacement if CS4 keeps with the insane copy protection that doesn't do a damn thing against pirates anyways.
I have to ask... can't you tell the BSA to just fuck off? As far as I can tell they're not a government organization, so why should I let them poke around in my affairs?
Well theoretically you could brute-force the reconstruction of a file of a known size with its checksum (and you can do it without a known size too, but having a starting point will speed things up a lot and should negate collision issues you may encounter on shorter checksums like md5 no matter how unlikely they are). It's not parity in any sense of the word, but it could still get you there.
Of course, it's not exactly the most time-effective way to "download" a file, but I've always wondered why I can't throw some spare cycles at a nearly-complete download whose seeds have dried up and just guess until I've got the working version. I've got 83% of a 55MB download right now, 14 or so files in said download, and I'm in that exact stalled scenario. AFAIK bit-torrent provides me checksums in some form or another... how long does it take to hash a 5MB file? I can't be bothered to do the math of how many possibilities that would be at this time of night, but it'll certainly go faster than continuing to download it from nobody.