Just as Apple doesn't really care about iTMS sales, the music industry doesn't care about iPod sales.
While what you said is correct, I think you missed GP's point. The music industry doesn't need to drive iTMS into the ground. They just need to wrestle control away from them. If they can sell people what they want (instant downloads usable on their iPods) through Amazon, and people learn to go to Amazon to spend their money, they could care less what happens to iTMS. As long as they're still making money and they're still the ones in control.
If Amazon gets bigger than itunes and Apple can still make a player that sells better than the others it's a win-win situation for them. Not entirely. Amazon has long advertised iRiver Clix and other portables on their site, just as Apple advertises their own hardware on iTunes. It will make more people aware of the options. Plus there's that whole nasty thing of DRM lock-in from people who actually DO have extensive iTMS collections, which will be lessened over time.
Why you would take the time write this long post defending DRM is totally beyond me. I'm not defending DRM. I'm attacking the blog post. When he wrote, "I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive", it set my BS detector off. Then I rethought about this COPP stuff, that he throws into the mix, which probably isn't relevant to the problem he was having at all, and realized it's probably all made up to make him seem more credible than he is on the subject. He doesn't seem to even begin to understand how MS's implementation of DRM works.
That error code doesn't even appear to necessarily be related to DRM. It could be a simple WMP error, for all we know about his system. There's no clearly defined connection that it is even related to the display or video card that he purchased. It sounds like an unknowledgable user discussing a problem with an unknowledgeable tech support person, then typing it all up with a few references to DRM buzzwords thrown in.
It fails to stop piracy, and it inconveniences paying customers. I agree with you there, and I generally don't buy it. I have bought a few TV shows from Unbox that may never hit DVD, and promptly removed the DRM and burned them. I only know about the way WM-DRM works because of my experience with Unbox, in fact. It's higher quality than my TV tuner records for standard definition shows. But I'd prefer not to have to deal with it, so I prefer DVD. I'm also a Netflix customer.
The steps that you outline to overcome the issue are laughably difficult to 80% of computer users. The only step I mentioned was to redownload the videos. It's easy. Right-click the cover art, delete, download. I assume anyone likely to be using these services has a good enough connection to want to use them in the first place.
So, why do you love DRM so much? I don't. I avoid it like the plague. Preference goes DVD > Unbox > iTMS, in order of least annoying DRM to most annoying. Can't even watch iTMS videos in anything but Quicktime.
But what's worse is sensationalist bloggers out to make a buck with misleading, exaggerated stories. Especially when they don't know what they're talking about. I'm fine if you want to rail on DRM, just tell the truth when doing it, without all the BS.
Did you happen to check this first Google result? At least 5 people in that thread got that error, uninstalled "Samsung PC Studio 3" and fixed their C00D11B1 error. Several others uninstalled the latest DivX. A couple others had sound card problems.
In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. First off, that's not how Windows Media DRM works. The Netflix Reset Microsoft DRM Utility, I'm guessing, just connects to this site and re-individualizes your DRM (aka: gives you a new key). All your other DRM'd videos from Amazon Unbox or elsewhere are encrypted with, and tied to, the key you already have. If you change that key, they won't work anymore. No "sniffing" necessary.
If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's (AMZN) Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue. Other than making for a good story, losing movies from Amazon Unbox is not really a problem. You can re-download videos you've purchased from Unbox as many times as you want, unlike with iTMS. If your key no longer works, download them again.
Personally, I've backed up all my Unbox purchases by stripping the DRM with FU4WM and burning the resulting files to DVD, to avoid the potential for any real DRM problems in the future. Unlike this one, which isn't a real problem. It's a software/driver conflict combined with poor tech support, and a blogger who didn't give enough details in the post to solve the problem, but who is instead blowing things way out of proportion.
I don't like DRM, and therefore don't like using Unbox or Netflix's online services frequently. But let's not exaggerate. This problem has nothing to do with "Hollywood [not being] quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix." You had a conflict of some sort on your machine. Tech support gave you the only tool they know to give everyone to fix it. You could just ignore them and solve it yourself without losing your videos. Or, as I said, just download them again, like you are allowed to do with Unbox.
I really wish there weren't patents and licensing required by the MPEG LA for H.264. H.264+AAC in an MPEG-4 container would truly be the ideal streaming web format, if it could legally be used in open source projects in the US. The MPEG-4 container is much better than AVI or MPEG-2. H.264 is good at anything from HD to very low bitrates, and has "hinting" for streaming with support for seeking. CPU usage is a small issue at the moment, but not at the low bitrates and baseline profile this would use.
As usual, patents only hold us back. And as usual, so does Microsoft by not having built-in support for MPEG-4 containers and H.264 in WMP.
Any time you copy a CD, it is an unauthorized reproduction. Fair Use allows you to create a copy anyway, for your personal use. But the second you distribute that copy, it's not for personal use and Fair Use no longer applies to you. And you're left back at square one with an unauthorized reproduction.
Simple enough. Doesn't mean Fair Use is gone. You just have to follow the terms that allow Fair Use.
He's an entertainer. He puts on an act, gets people all riled up, makes some cash, then completely reverses his position.
The question isn't really "Do you agree with him?" It's "Do you like the issues and discussion he raises, and do you think he should profit from his act?"
Do you want to know what happens? 9/10ths of them will go to the article they want, read it, change enough so that it's not a direct quote, put it in their assigment, and then put the wikipedia article in the works cited page. They should go to wikipedia, copy the text verbatim into their own research paper, then edit the wikipedia article using their 3rd grade writing level to paraphrase what they stole. Quality writing plagiarized without leaving any trace.
Unless he doesn't consider Israel a "zionist regime" he is actually saying he wants to get rid of the Israel. Course "wipe off the map" is vague, could mean kill them all, or get rid of ruling body. The actual quote: "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
The translation: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
If you say you want the Bush administration to "vanish from the page of time" (the accepted correct translation), or to bring it to the "end of an era" (for an even more Western translation), are you threatening to destroy the United States?
It's kind of silly to argue about his words anyway, considering he was quoting Imam Khomeini when he said that.
Bush just this week set a new record in Presidential approval ratings: his approval rating is the lowest Presidential approval rating in Gallup's history, lower even than Nixon's during the Watergate scandal. 50% "strongly disapprove" of President Bush. Only 31% approve.
In two separate articles, I've seen Cheney's approval rating mentioned as 9% and 11%. I could not find a good recent article citing it, surprisingly.
Congress has an approval rating of 23%. It is important to note though, that historically Congress's approval rating is usually between 20-40%.
I agree, though, that we should throw out both those who have abused their positions, as well as those that stood by and let it happen.
I hope the sensors work better than the ones in my HP printers. I hope they work better than their own product. The CPU temp depicted is actually 51 degC, according to more accurate Core Temp and Intel TAT monitors. The nForce fan speed is actually ~5000 RPMs, but registers 11000 every few seconds without getting any louder. Occasionally the CPU core and FSB are drastically off.
Even with nVidia's integrated monitor, most "enthusiasts" (overclockers) end up trusting other independent utilities like SpeedFan and CoreTemp, and disregarding nVidia's monitor. Maybe that's what they're trying to improve. If they get better standardization of the sensors, maybe they'll be able to make a more accurate utility.
So far, nVidia makes great enthusiast hardware, but really poor enthusiast software to control it.
No. If that happened, you might as well just delete it...
The point was to remove any obstacles to keeping it. Polluting the internal wikipedia search results was one of those obstacles. Searching Google, you already have to use specific search terms.
Oh, and btw, search engines won't index anything in a section of a site if you add a robots.txt for that section...
It doesn't really make any sense to do that. They should just tag trivia to not rank as high in searches, disallow linking to trivia from major articles, and provide a data dump that is free of trivia. Segregating it to a separate section would be unnecessary, as you already can remove all legitimate reasons for its deletion.
The issue with recording on a physical medium - irrespective of type or method, is that the stylus (whatever it may be) has mass. The other issue is that the music had to get on the vinyl somehow (it's not some magical true-to-original method), and that method of imprinting the grooves has its own limits. Digital recordings only need to have more accuracy than the electronic/mechanical device that imprints the records, minus the random inaccuracies caused by wear, dust, and poor playback equipment of vinyl.
However, I do believe that nVidia is going to take a few pretty big steps in regards to more powerful cards before Christmas. The only real question is how much more power, and how much will they cost? The GTS and GTX models that are out now still dominate and command a high price that's out of reach for a lot of people. Are they just going to drop both the existing models like a hot potato as soon as new ones come out, or multi-tier with them some how? nVidia's pattern is getting fairly obvious now.
1. Release early-adopter high-end x800 model with first generation process. Loud, hot, and powerful. 2. Release mainstream x600 model with second generation. Quiet and cool, but less powerful. 3. Release new high-end x900 model with second generation. Quiet, cool, and more powerful.
They changed it up this time by making the 8600 a piece of crap. Really low end stuff, unlike the 7600 GT, which was mid-range. The 8800 GT fills the mid-range role instead. It's the 8-series card I've been waiting for when 8600 flopped.
Next will be the 8900, with second generation features (usually stuff like additional HD video acceleration), plus cooler, quieter, and more powerful than the 8800 series. The x800 really ends up looking like a beast by the time they're done, by both good and bad definitions.
...is why I didn't like the idea of Steam the first time I heard of it (not this specifically, but the idea of things like this happening). Any game you play online with centralized servers can do the same thing, not just Steam.
The degradation, I'll have you know, is what causes the loss of historical context. People think that old stone churches were always gray and foreboding buildings, when historically they were colorful, but that context was lost through erosion of the pigments. That's definitely true in this case. Even more interesting than the skin tones is the vibrant blue background, painted with "Lapis lazuli, the most expensive pigment to buy, actually more than 20.000 $ the Kg !", according to this page linked earlier.
They might put up topical shows like "The Daily Show" because they are essentially worthless a week or so after air. You will never see "The Daily Show" DVDs or year old "The Daily Show" reruns on late night TV because no one would buy/watch. It's a ridiculous idea to try to regularly catch up with episodes you missed and wanted to see of the Daily Show, too. It's the Daily show, meaning almost 250 episodes a year. One season would fit on ~70 DVDs. At typical per-disc, boxed set rates, it would cost like $350, or some other exorbitant amount of money.
iTunes could work, but they only offer 15 future episodes including the current one for $10, or $2/episode for the past 8. Neither option is very appealing for a regular viewer.
That's how Apple managed the jump from OS9 to OSX (the "Classic" environment was launched on-demand), and that's how Windows 7 should be built. MS should just pull an apple, grab BSD with maybe some of NT's subsystems on top, then throw all their money into Wine. Can you imagine that? An MS supported Wine?
I was looking at Top1000 yesterday and they're actually the top provider in terms of traffic, even bigger than Giganews, which surprised me (because Giganews is the default provider for a lot of broadband ISPs, i.e. Comcast, who don't do their own news servers anymore). Isn't that just the top servers by "article flow", aka "number of posts made by subscribers"? It seems that experienced, heavy posters have their favorite service, which may or may not overlap with the preferred "leeching" news servers.
I used UNS first before trial-ing and switching to Giganews. Side-by-side comparison showed that while retention was comparable, UNS's completion was awful. PAR files became mandatory on nearly everything I downloaded vs. Giga not needing them on the same exact files. Interestingly, an hour or two after failed requests for articles, it appeared that UNS would go find them from a peer and fill them in. But that's only after a failed/incomplete attempt to download them.
Perhaps if they had hired a qualified web developer and web designer, less people would have resorted to pirating the album. You should have seen radiohead.co.uk a few years ago. It's intentional. The site used to have hundreds of pages of simple "cover art"-style images, animations, poetry, and other random stuff, with hidden links that took you in loops, to random other pages, all intertwined. I never did see the whole site, but it was definitely interesting.
It doesn't apply very well to an e-commerce store, where people have certain expectations, but it was innovative for a band's website. The uniqueness of it is the only reason I can recall it after all these years.
FTFS:
"It turns out that even mid-range cards are going to be more than capable of playing UT3 at impressive image quality levels." Actually, no. That looks like crap. The bridge, the mountain, if you can call it that. And I cherry-picked a good screenshot.
A better compromise is to have a special mode where you are permitted one save, like "Iron Man" option in Alpha Centauri (and I assume, Civilization). I haven't heard of that in years of playing Civ casually. Though most of that time was spent on Civ3 and Civ4. I guess it's against the rules to reload in the GOTM competition, but even the required "HoF" logging/competition mod doesn't directly enforce that rule. The only built-in mechanism to prevent cheating that way is the default option to keep the same random seed on reload. That makes most/all random events happen the same way no matter how many times you reload.
Personally, I reload quite a bit. There's just too much luck involved in the game, and I don't really like bad luck ruining my chances of winning early on. Like having your first worker getting eaten alive by a bear one square outside of your city. Or your first 3 warriors all get killed in one turn of random barbarian attacks. I try to learn from it and not leave myself open to random events in future games, but I'd still rather reload than start over or play a failed game where I'm too far behind.
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While what you said is correct, I think you missed GP's point. The music industry doesn't need to drive iTMS into the ground. They just need to wrestle control away from them. If they can sell people what they want (instant downloads usable on their iPods) through Amazon, and people learn to go to Amazon to spend their money, they could care less what happens to iTMS. As long as they're still making money and they're still the ones in control. If Amazon gets bigger than itunes and Apple can still make a player that sells better than the others it's a win-win situation for them. Not entirely. Amazon has long advertised iRiver Clix and other portables on their site, just as Apple advertises their own hardware on iTunes. It will make more people aware of the options. Plus there's that whole nasty thing of DRM lock-in from people who actually DO have extensive iTMS collections, which will be lessened over time.
That error code doesn't even appear to necessarily be related to DRM. It could be a simple WMP error, for all we know about his system. There's no clearly defined connection that it is even related to the display or video card that he purchased. It sounds like an unknowledgable user discussing a problem with an unknowledgeable tech support person, then typing it all up with a few references to DRM buzzwords thrown in. It fails to stop piracy, and it inconveniences paying customers. I agree with you there, and I generally don't buy it. I have bought a few TV shows from Unbox that may never hit DVD, and promptly removed the DRM and burned them. I only know about the way WM-DRM works because of my experience with Unbox, in fact. It's higher quality than my TV tuner records for standard definition shows. But I'd prefer not to have to deal with it, so I prefer DVD. I'm also a Netflix customer. The steps that you outline to overcome the issue are laughably difficult to 80% of computer users. The only step I mentioned was to redownload the videos. It's easy. Right-click the cover art, delete, download. I assume anyone likely to be using these services has a good enough connection to want to use them in the first place. So, why do you love DRM so much? I don't. I avoid it like the plague. Preference goes DVD > Unbox > iTMS, in order of least annoying DRM to most annoying. Can't even watch iTMS videos in anything but Quicktime.
But what's worse is sensationalist bloggers out to make a buck with misleading, exaggerated stories. Especially when they don't know what they're talking about. I'm fine if you want to rail on DRM, just tell the truth when doing it, without all the BS.
Personally, I've backed up all my Unbox purchases by stripping the DRM with FU4WM and burning the resulting files to DVD, to avoid the potential for any real DRM problems in the future. Unlike this one, which isn't a real problem. It's a software/driver conflict combined with poor tech support, and a blogger who didn't give enough details in the post to solve the problem, but who is instead blowing things way out of proportion.
I don't like DRM, and therefore don't like using Unbox or Netflix's online services frequently. But let's not exaggerate. This problem has nothing to do with "Hollywood [not being] quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix." You had a conflict of some sort on your machine. Tech support gave you the only tool they know to give everyone to fix it. You could just ignore them and solve it yourself without losing your videos. Or, as I said, just download them again, like you are allowed to do with Unbox.
I really wish there weren't patents and licensing required by the MPEG LA for H.264. H.264+AAC in an MPEG-4 container would truly be the ideal streaming web format, if it could legally be used in open source projects in the US. The MPEG-4 container is much better than AVI or MPEG-2. H.264 is good at anything from HD to very low bitrates, and has "hinting" for streaming with support for seeking. CPU usage is a small issue at the moment, but not at the low bitrates and baseline profile this would use.
As usual, patents only hold us back. And as usual, so does Microsoft by not having built-in support for MPEG-4 containers and H.264 in WMP.
Any time you copy a CD, it is an unauthorized reproduction. Fair Use allows you to create a copy anyway, for your personal use. But the second you distribute that copy, it's not for personal use and Fair Use no longer applies to you. And you're left back at square one with an unauthorized reproduction.
Simple enough. Doesn't mean Fair Use is gone. You just have to follow the terms that allow Fair Use.
He's an entertainer. He puts on an act, gets people all riled up, makes some cash, then completely reverses his position.
The question isn't really "Do you agree with him?" It's "Do you like the issues and discussion he raises, and do you think he should profit from his act?"
The translation: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
If you say you want the Bush administration to "vanish from the page of time" (the accepted correct translation), or to bring it to the "end of an era" (for an even more Western translation), are you threatening to destroy the United States?
It's kind of silly to argue about his words anyway, considering he was quoting Imam Khomeini when he said that.
Just to put things in perspective:
Bush just this week set a new record in Presidential approval ratings: his approval rating is the lowest Presidential approval rating in Gallup's history, lower even than Nixon's during the Watergate scandal. 50% "strongly disapprove" of President Bush. Only 31% approve.
In two separate articles, I've seen Cheney's approval rating mentioned as 9% and 11%. I could not find a good recent article citing it, surprisingly.
Congress has an approval rating of 23%. It is important to note though, that historically Congress's approval rating is usually between 20-40%.
I agree, though, that we should throw out both those who have abused their positions, as well as those that stood by and let it happen.
Even with nVidia's integrated monitor, most "enthusiasts" (overclockers) end up trusting other independent utilities like SpeedFan and CoreTemp, and disregarding nVidia's monitor. Maybe that's what they're trying to improve. If they get better standardization of the sensors, maybe they'll be able to make a more accurate utility.
So far, nVidia makes great enthusiast hardware, but really poor enthusiast software to control it.
No. If that happened, you might as well just delete it...
The point was to remove any obstacles to keeping it. Polluting the internal wikipedia search results was one of those obstacles. Searching Google, you already have to use specific search terms.
Oh, and btw, search engines won't index anything in a section of a site if you add a robots.txt for that section...
It doesn't really make any sense to do that. They should just tag trivia to not rank as high in searches, disallow linking to trivia from major articles, and provide a data dump that is free of trivia. Segregating it to a separate section would be unnecessary, as you already can remove all legitimate reasons for its deletion.
1. Release early-adopter high-end x800 model with first generation process. Loud, hot, and powerful.
2. Release mainstream x600 model with second generation. Quiet and cool, but less powerful.
3. Release new high-end x900 model with second generation. Quiet, cool, and more powerful.
They changed it up this time by making the 8600 a piece of crap. Really low end stuff, unlike the 7600 GT, which was mid-range. The 8800 GT fills the mid-range role instead. It's the 8-series card I've been waiting for when 8600 flopped.
Next will be the 8900, with second generation features (usually stuff like additional HD video acceleration), plus cooler, quieter, and more powerful than the 8800 series. The x800 really ends up looking like a beast by the time they're done, by both good and bad definitions.
Change email address to karl.rove@gmail.com
...is why I didn't like the idea of Steam the first time I heard of it (not this specifically, but the idea of things like this happening). Any game you play online with centralized servers can do the same thing, not just Steam.But you're right about single player.
People think that old stone churches were always gray and foreboding buildings, when historically they were colorful, but that context was lost through erosion of the pigments. That's definitely true in this case. Even more interesting than the skin tones is the vibrant blue background, painted with "Lapis lazuli, the most expensive pigment to buy, actually more than 20.000 $ the Kg !", according to this page linked earlier.
iTunes could work, but they only offer 15 future episodes including the current one for $10, or $2/episode for the past 8. Neither option is very appealing for a regular viewer.
Okay, I'll stop dreaming now.
Should be:
3: NT 3.51
4: NT 4.0
5: 2000 (5.1: XP)
6: Vista
7: Win7
Or just look at this. I should have google'd it first. It's all right there.
3: NT 3.51 is where we'll start
4: 2000
5: XP
6: Vista
7: Win7
95/98/ME are all a different code base with different versioning.
I used UNS first before trial-ing and switching to Giganews. Side-by-side comparison showed that while retention was comparable, UNS's completion was awful. PAR files became mandatory on nearly everything I downloaded vs. Giga not needing them on the same exact files. Interestingly, an hour or two after failed requests for articles, it appeared that UNS would go find them from a peer and fill them in. But that's only after a failed/incomplete attempt to download them.
It doesn't apply very well to an e-commerce store, where people have certain expectations, but it was innovative for a band's website. The uniqueness of it is the only reason I can recall it after all these years.
It doesn't really compare to most modern games.
Personally, I reload quite a bit. There's just too much luck involved in the game, and I don't really like bad luck ruining my chances of winning early on. Like having your first worker getting eaten alive by a bear one square outside of your city. Or your first 3 warriors all get killed in one turn of random barbarian attacks. I try to learn from it and not leave myself open to random events in future games, but I'd still rather reload than start over or play a failed game where I'm too far behind.