Telling someone how to 'remove' the DRM is, I think, illegal under the US DMCA. Given how the DMCA has been used in the past, I expect that kind of information would be close enough to get me a beating.
Thankfully, we haven't yet attempted to take over Britain.
A perfectly understandable and valid reason for the response, but that doesn't change the fact that most of those responses either dodged the question or answered something entirely different. Or in one case ("YGTBKM!" - which I had to look up), a blatant lie. You can bet your ass that the government would love to hand over a bunch of IP targets to script kiddies to piss off the Chinese government and would happily grant them immunity, if not for the fact that they couldn't sufficiently distance themselves from such a list. I just can't take seriously any answer that says "we don't condone illegal things" coming from anyone in the government, let alone a high-up in the military, even if I were to disregard that whole torture thing. Apologies if that makes you guilty by association, but you know what's going on and still choose to work there.
Depends on the sensitivity of what's being transported. With both protocols, all you need (from a user perspective anyways) is a good login and password. But if someone is eavesdropping on the connection, you really don't want your DB connection credentials or latest internal builds going over a plaintext line.
Some early Blu-Ray players are incapable of playing the latest discs because of DRM. Plenty of the first HDTVs will force your overpriced HD content to be downscaled to SD because they don't support HDCP, as soon as they start using ICT.
I'd say DRM matters, no matter whether you plan to copy discs or not. Probably more so than to the pirates, as usual.
Why not HTML? I've put some books on my hacked iPhone, and all I did was copy some PDFs into a text document, wrap things in
tags appropriately, and add a bit of spacing in some CSS. Seems simple enough to implement on pretty much any platform out there, especially since you can embed the CSS in the device itself that will optimize the output for the device.
Well certainly, but you seem to have missed the part about unused memory. The parent poster said that there is tons going unused - he's obviously aware that it's faster than the hard drive, and is curious as to why page files are being used anyways intead. I certainly wonder the same thing - I have over two gigs of physical memory listed as available in my task manager, yet I still have a 1.25GB page file. My MBP at home is a bit better that way because at least when I was running 2GB it would dwindle down to about 1% free before starting aggressive paging use (I don't think I've gotten it to max out 4GB since making the jump though it's certainly still paging). The question isn't so much with our software as it is with the OS if you ask me - why on earth are large amounts of data being cached out to the swap file with so much free RAM? Unlike a lot of ignorant enthusiasts, I didn't get lots of memory just to have more free.
A no-plugin Firefox IS Safari/Webkit, or might as well be. The only reason I'd be interested in a mobile Firefox is for AdBlock Plus - and given the availability of Webkit on the device, I don't see why a secondary browser that subscribes to and deals with the adblock lists couldn't exist.
Of course, a HOSTS file would work just as well if not better, but something tells me that's right out given the level of access you'd need.
Don't bother. I like my Mac too, but I've long since given up wasting my time explaining why to haters. People who want to hate Macs will, and I can't imagine why you or I should care if other people are moving over. Save it for people that are asking for recommendations for a new machine and will actually listen to what you have to say.
It's not as if he could have just... you know... turned the laptop on. When it didn't explode, no problems and be on your way, Sir. And on the offchance it did, I suppose it's better to happen on the ground than in the air.
The summary only mentions audiobooks, though naturally I haven't RTFA. I would love to see DRM on download service audiobooks (Audible, etc) disappear. I really have no interest in eBooks but that's beside the point - I don't want DRM on them either should I get an interest (on the odd occasion I've wanted one, I'll just search that part of the internet for some manually-transcribed copy - I already own the dead tree edition).
It's a percentage+flat fee structure - or at least was the last time I was dealing with a credit card processor. On a $5 sale, you might lose 10-15% with a fairly standard 30-cent-range flat fee before the extra 2-3%. Apple, of course, combines things out so that it charges everything at the end of the week so that each song/app doesn't lose the flat fee, but it still takes a significant chunk out of small, one-off purchases. Then figure in bandwidth, the people to maintain all of that, etc. It adds up.
You're confusing what's technically possible with how things were designed. I'm sure that with sufficient determination, you could make third-party software that impersonates iTunes and allows you to use their store in order to go out of your way to buy DRMed music. Why you would do so is beyond me, but that's irrelevant. The only support for iPods with third-party players has come from reverse-engineering; likewise for WMA/WMV formats to the best of my knowledge. You can't really consider reverse-engineered solutions as an alternative option when determining anti-trust violations - they're usually half-baked, flaky, and break any time an update to the 'real' solution is issued.
As it is, Apple still certainly doesn't have a monopoly on the music download market. They certainly have a very large market share, but that's because there's a ton of people buying their players. If people buy iPods instead of Zunes or whatever other alternatives are out there, that's their fault. Conversely, if people buy Windows because it was the only option on X machine, then you're on the line (if Ubuntu or something else was available across all systems then you're lowering the chance of a violation, but when does it go from software installed because of a monopoly versus the PC equivalent of not being able to customize the toast button on your toaster to instead turn on the air conditioner?). By and large, people get and use Windows because it's often the only option, whereas (the same) people get iPods because they want them over other players. The former is what's arguably a monopoly; the latter is market forces in action.
It's not exactly an obscure accounting rule (Sarbanes-Oxley), but certainly one that's a pain in the ass. Citing iTunes isn't quite valid, since it's a free product. They've never claimed that the upgrade to Quicktime Pro was because of this - you get limited features if you pay nothing, and get all the features if you pay $20. That's just licensing. The reason that you don't see that kind of thing in smaller devs is that it only applies to publicly held companies (per the Wiki article).
The amount of revenue that Apple sees from third-party software sales will translate into probably very little if any profit when you figure in the bandwidth and them eating the credit card fees, though that remains to be seen. In any case, third party software (free or otherwise) adds value to the iPod Touch and as such it's in Apple's best interest to make it available to as many of their customers as possible. The $20 or whatever it will be per iPod Touch would probably be outweighed by the small amount of profit they'd see. You can be certain that the negative feelings they get from charging are outweighed by the money they see - that kind of thing is certain to put off potential buyers thinking they'll get nickeled and dimed.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Apple here. But I don't think it's some conspiracy to milk a few more bucks out of people either. To my understanding of SOX combined with the grade I got in accounting, it seems to be a legitimate requirement.
Look how the iPhone handles firmware updates - plug in, download, click install. I think it's safe to assume that a Google-supported device is going to be rather heavily standards-based (I can't say I know much about Android), and as such will have a mini-USB port. Why overcomplicate things? As much as I like the idea of having my Google-centric data accessible everywhere over the air, they really need better interoperability in terms of desktop data syncing (Gmail is pretty good that way, but Gcal requires third-party tools, docs - understandably so - is limited to exporting rather than just mounting your Google account as a network drive, and contact management is pretty much worthless as it exists online, let alone syncing to Outlook or Address Book). As such, it's safe to assume that people are going to want to be able to pull that non-syncable data from their computer to their phone which means plugging in or at least WiFi proximity. Handle firmware updates that way. I'd say it's almost easier to infect a computer with a bad HOSTS file pointing androidupdates.google.com to some bad addressed with an apparently-legitimate SSL cert than to carry around a portable cell broadcasting station, but neither constitutes that much of a threat.
True. But most consumers are also mind-bogglingly stupid, so the greatest possible value can be just above zero (in this case, improved picture and audio quality wrapped with a ton more DRM at a much higher cost than the alternative) and they'll still buy it.
You don't need to have much value, just more than your competition; lazy start-ups, take note.
(also worth noting is that you just have to convince them that value exists; it doesn't have to actually be there, you just need a plausible argument and to omit any counterpoints)
There are a dozen ways to do it. I just threw out the half-implemented properties as the easiest way to do things - and how it should be done. It was generally irrelevant to my point, other than there not being an -ie-border-radius property.
Yes, exactly. I should have been a little clearer. What I meant was that after writing to standards, there's a tiny amount of hacking to iron out Firefox quriks compared to IE (and generally none in the Webkit-based browsers, such as Safari).
PHP's security isn't so much a problem compared to non-security-conscious developers working with it since it's so damn easy to pick up. If you're running stuff like $query="INSERT INTO `users` (`name`) VALUES '${_GET['name']}';";, it really doesn't matter what language you're using.
Which, in actual terms, means that people code to Firefox just as they code to IE. It just so happens that coding your page to look right in Firefox is a helluva lot closer to the standard (if not it exactly) than when you do the same in IE.
I think some people may be doing tremendously over-complicated things with CSS and page elements though. There are only two things that I generally need to implement a (rather trivial) workaround for when implementing designs - transparent.png files, and IE's utter failure at centering elements with #blockid { margin: 0 auto; }. Maybe my implementations aren't complicated enough. Maybe other people are trying to do unusual things. Maybe I'm willing to give a virtual middle finger to IE users and give them square corners and simplify my life with the -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius half-implemented properties (I think the final border-radius property set is part of CSS3, and we'll be lucky to have most of CSS2 implemented by the time IE8 comes out - in any case, this is a style issue and not specific to IE). But in all seriousness, IE seems to be giving me a lot fewer headaches than it once used to. Maybe it's just dumb luck.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a hunch, but the (lack of) pinging of tracker.thepiratebay.org might give it away.
Telling someone how to 'remove' the DRM is, I think, illegal under the US DMCA. Given how the DMCA has been used in the past, I expect that kind of information would be close enough to get me a beating.
Thankfully, we haven't yet attempted to take over Britain.
You know that Windows users can fake a user agent string and download the DRM-less movies too, right?
I hope that the UK DMCA doesn't apply to me...
I'll give you the first two, but the third remains to be seen. Smoking has been on the market for a lot longer.
*takes iPhone out of pocket and places on desk*
A perfectly understandable and valid reason for the response, but that doesn't change the fact that most of those responses either dodged the question or answered something entirely different. Or in one case ("YGTBKM!" - which I had to look up), a blatant lie. You can bet your ass that the government would love to hand over a bunch of IP targets to script kiddies to piss off the Chinese government and would happily grant them immunity, if not for the fact that they couldn't sufficiently distance themselves from such a list. I just can't take seriously any answer that says "we don't condone illegal things" coming from anyone in the government, let alone a high-up in the military, even if I were to disregard that whole torture thing. Apologies if that makes you guilty by association, but you know what's going on and still choose to work there.
Depends on the sensitivity of what's being transported. With both protocols, all you need (from a user perspective anyways) is a good login and password. But if someone is eavesdropping on the connection, you really don't want your DB connection credentials or latest internal builds going over a plaintext line.
Some early Blu-Ray players are incapable of playing the latest discs because of DRM. Plenty of the first HDTVs will force your overpriced HD content to be downscaled to SD because they don't support HDCP, as soon as they start using ICT.
I'd say DRM matters, no matter whether you plan to copy discs or not. Probably more so than to the pirates, as usual.
tags appropriately, and add a bit of spacing in some CSS. Seems simple enough to implement on pretty much any platform out there, especially since you can embed the CSS in the device itself that will optimize the output for the device.
Well certainly, but you seem to have missed the part about unused memory. The parent poster said that there is tons going unused - he's obviously aware that it's faster than the hard drive, and is curious as to why page files are being used anyways intead. I certainly wonder the same thing - I have over two gigs of physical memory listed as available in my task manager, yet I still have a 1.25GB page file. My MBP at home is a bit better that way because at least when I was running 2GB it would dwindle down to about 1% free before starting aggressive paging use (I don't think I've gotten it to max out 4GB since making the jump though it's certainly still paging). The question isn't so much with our software as it is with the OS if you ask me - why on earth are large amounts of data being cached out to the swap file with so much free RAM? Unlike a lot of ignorant enthusiasts, I didn't get lots of memory just to have more free.
A no-plugin Firefox IS Safari/Webkit, or might as well be. The only reason I'd be interested in a mobile Firefox is for AdBlock Plus - and given the availability of Webkit on the device, I don't see why a secondary browser that subscribes to and deals with the adblock lists couldn't exist.
Of course, a HOSTS file would work just as well if not better, but something tells me that's right out given the level of access you'd need.
Don't bother. I like my Mac too, but I've long since given up wasting my time explaining why to haters. People who want to hate Macs will, and I can't imagine why you or I should care if other people are moving over. Save it for people that are asking for recommendations for a new machine and will actually listen to what you have to say.
It's not as if he could have just... you know... turned the laptop on. When it didn't explode, no problems and be on your way, Sir. And on the offchance it did, I suppose it's better to happen on the ground than in the air.
The summary only mentions audiobooks, though naturally I haven't RTFA. I would love to see DRM on download service audiobooks (Audible, etc) disappear. I really have no interest in eBooks but that's beside the point - I don't want DRM on them either should I get an interest (on the odd occasion I've wanted one, I'll just search that part of the internet for some manually-transcribed copy - I already own the dead tree edition).
Note to self: preview. Oh well.
I think Sweden will beg to differ.
Oh, buy. Right. %lt;troll>Well I guess Linux is dead then?</troll>
It's a percentage+flat fee structure - or at least was the last time I was dealing with a credit card processor. On a $5 sale, you might lose 10-15% with a fairly standard 30-cent-range flat fee before the extra 2-3%. Apple, of course, combines things out so that it charges everything at the end of the week so that each song/app doesn't lose the flat fee, but it still takes a significant chunk out of small, one-off purchases. Then figure in bandwidth, the people to maintain all of that, etc. It adds up.
You're confusing what's technically possible with how things were designed. I'm sure that with sufficient determination, you could make third-party software that impersonates iTunes and allows you to use their store in order to go out of your way to buy DRMed music. Why you would do so is beyond me, but that's irrelevant. The only support for iPods with third-party players has come from reverse-engineering; likewise for WMA/WMV formats to the best of my knowledge. You can't really consider reverse-engineered solutions as an alternative option when determining anti-trust violations - they're usually half-baked, flaky, and break any time an update to the 'real' solution is issued.
As it is, Apple still certainly doesn't have a monopoly on the music download market. They certainly have a very large market share, but that's because there's a ton of people buying their players. If people buy iPods instead of Zunes or whatever other alternatives are out there, that's their fault. Conversely, if people buy Windows because it was the only option on X machine, then you're on the line (if Ubuntu or something else was available across all systems then you're lowering the chance of a violation, but when does it go from software installed because of a monopoly versus the PC equivalent of not being able to customize the toast button on your toaster to instead turn on the air conditioner?). By and large, people get and use Windows because it's often the only option, whereas (the same) people get iPods because they want them over other players. The former is what's arguably a monopoly; the latter is market forces in action.
It's not exactly an obscure accounting rule (Sarbanes-Oxley), but certainly one that's a pain in the ass. Citing iTunes isn't quite valid, since it's a free product. They've never claimed that the upgrade to Quicktime Pro was because of this - you get limited features if you pay nothing, and get all the features if you pay $20. That's just licensing. The reason that you don't see that kind of thing in smaller devs is that it only applies to publicly held companies (per the Wiki article).
The amount of revenue that Apple sees from third-party software sales will translate into probably very little if any profit when you figure in the bandwidth and them eating the credit card fees, though that remains to be seen. In any case, third party software (free or otherwise) adds value to the iPod Touch and as such it's in Apple's best interest to make it available to as many of their customers as possible. The $20 or whatever it will be per iPod Touch would probably be outweighed by the small amount of profit they'd see. You can be certain that the negative feelings they get from charging are outweighed by the money they see - that kind of thing is certain to put off potential buyers thinking they'll get nickeled and dimed.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Apple here. But I don't think it's some conspiracy to milk a few more bucks out of people either. To my understanding of SOX combined with the grade I got in accounting, it seems to be a legitimate requirement.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y66/Firehed/ronpaul.jpg
Look how the iPhone handles firmware updates - plug in, download, click install. I think it's safe to assume that a Google-supported device is going to be rather heavily standards-based (I can't say I know much about Android), and as such will have a mini-USB port. Why overcomplicate things? As much as I like the idea of having my Google-centric data accessible everywhere over the air, they really need better interoperability in terms of desktop data syncing (Gmail is pretty good that way, but Gcal requires third-party tools, docs - understandably so - is limited to exporting rather than just mounting your Google account as a network drive, and contact management is pretty much worthless as it exists online, let alone syncing to Outlook or Address Book). As such, it's safe to assume that people are going to want to be able to pull that non-syncable data from their computer to their phone which means plugging in or at least WiFi proximity. Handle firmware updates that way. I'd say it's almost easier to infect a computer with a bad HOSTS file pointing androidupdates.google.com to some bad addressed with an apparently-legitimate SSL cert than to carry around a portable cell broadcasting station, but neither constitutes that much of a threat.
True. But most consumers are also mind-bogglingly stupid, so the greatest possible value can be just above zero (in this case, improved picture and audio quality wrapped with a ton more DRM at a much higher cost than the alternative) and they'll still buy it.
You don't need to have much value, just more than your competition; lazy start-ups, take note.
(also worth noting is that you just have to convince them that value exists; it doesn't have to actually be there, you just need a plausible argument and to omit any counterpoints)
There are a dozen ways to do it. I just threw out the half-implemented properties as the easiest way to do things - and how it should be done. It was generally irrelevant to my point, other than there not being an -ie-border-radius property.
Yes, exactly. I should have been a little clearer. What I meant was that after writing to standards, there's a tiny amount of hacking to iron out Firefox quriks compared to IE (and generally none in the Webkit-based browsers, such as Safari).
PHP's security isn't so much a problem compared to non-security-conscious developers working with it since it's so damn easy to pick up. If you're running stuff like $query="INSERT INTO `users` (`name`) VALUES '${_GET['name']}';";, it really doesn't matter what language you're using.
Which, in actual terms, means that people code to Firefox just as they code to IE. It just so happens that coding your page to look right in Firefox is a helluva lot closer to the standard (if not it exactly) than when you do the same in IE.
.png files, and IE's utter failure at centering elements with #blockid { margin: 0 auto; }. Maybe my implementations aren't complicated enough. Maybe other people are trying to do unusual things. Maybe I'm willing to give a virtual middle finger to IE users and give them square corners and simplify my life with the -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius half-implemented properties (I think the final border-radius property set is part of CSS3, and we'll be lucky to have most of CSS2 implemented by the time IE8 comes out - in any case, this is a style issue and not specific to IE). But in all seriousness, IE seems to be giving me a lot fewer headaches than it once used to. Maybe it's just dumb luck.
I think some people may be doing tremendously over-complicated things with CSS and page elements though. There are only two things that I generally need to implement a (rather trivial) workaround for when implementing designs - transparent