Typically when I pick up books on how to do such-and-such, I'm not daunted by the book being 300+ pages. I also don't sit down and read it all at once.
I use how-to book as references. I use the index to find what I want to do, then I skip to that section. I probably won't read every page of the book, and if I do, it certainly won't be in order.
Also, how do you define learning linux? Personally, I have a pretty good grasp of how the operating system works. My girlfriend has no idea how the operating system works, but she can still use my computer to get online, use an instant messenger, write a paper with OpenOffice.org, almost anything she does regularly on her Windows computer. There's a huge difference between being able to use an operating system and knowing how it works, and "learning Linux" is a vague statement.
Valid point. However I'm of the belief that security should be part of the operating system, and if that means an inflated price, it still ought to be included. What I would object to would be Microsoft selling a flawed product, preventing other people from correcting it, and then making users buy an additional product to fix something that should have been included in the first place.
DRM destroys competition: Want to make an open source player to play media you've paid for? An open source player could easily be modified to ignore the DRM. So they use technology to try and stop you. Where technology fails they use laws. Want to make a commercial, closed-source player? You need to pay the controllers of a given DRM implementation. They can deny you access without cause, they can charge you whatever you like.
To me this is the biggest problem with DRM. I have no problem with companies trying to protect their investment by making it difficult to copy their content. I have a bit of a problem with locking people to a specific platform. But my biggest problem is that it is illegal for someone to reverse engineer the DRM to allow people to decrypt their music or use it on a different platform. I want to use my iTunes music on Linux. There are tools out there that would allow me to remove the DRM from my music, making this possible, but it would be illegal for me to use them. Now, if my intentions were to go out and give this music to other people, I agree that should be illegal, but no more illegal than it would be to let somebody copy a CD.
All DRM does effectively is lock people to a platform they may or may not want to use. The law then legitimizes this by not allowing people to create methods to play their music on other platforms. I have no major objection to vendors trying to lock people to their platforms, my big objection is to the laws that allow them to do so.
I've seen people list off the ways iTunes has increased restrictions, but I have to disagree.
Many of the restrictions people cite were correcting bug exploits (such as fixing FairPlay after it had been broken).
The only half-valid restriction was when they decreased the number of burnable playlists from 10 to 7, while at the same time increasing the number of authorized computers from 3 to 5. A little math here and it turns out you can actually produce 5 more CDs of an identical playlist than you could before. Now if you've only got one computer at your disposal, this may be restrictive, but most people I know could borrow a friend's computer if they need to burn more CDs that badly. Additionally, most CD burners have software that allows you to make a copy of an audio CD. I'd just use iTunes to make one copy of the playlist, and reproduce them with other software. Personally, I was thrilled when I found out I could authorize more computers, and there's only been one time I've burned as many of two copies of the same playlist.
If microsoft had made a secure system in the first place, Symantec and Mcaffee never would have had a product. Unix based systems are generally quite secure without the need for bloated firewalls / anti-viruses.
There are a lot of businesses that Microsoft doesn't have much reason to enter. I think they should have left web browsers, search engines, media players, instant messengers, etc. to third parties, but I think Microsoft ought to be able to make a secure system. That said, I'm not sure how they're securing the system. If they're charging people extra for system security and somehow blocking third party security applications, go ahead and scream anti-trust, but if it's included with the operating system, then they're finally getting with the program.
Personally, I've never liked McAffee or Symantec. I've used them both. With McAffee, my system was rendered almost useless by viruses within a month. With Symantec, I was constantly fighting with the firewall to get programs to run properly. Now I use a variant on Zonealarm, and I'm quite happy with it. But I still find it annoying that I have to pay $30 a year to keep my $200 operating system secure, and on my other computer I pay nothing (and in fact run no extra software) to keep my Free operating system secure.
Hold on a second. I don't like DRM any more than the next guy, but in some cases it makes sense.
When I buy a song that uses DRM that ultimately ties me to a platform I'd rather not be using, I feel that the DRM is restricting my fair use rights. In this case, I agree that DRM punihes the honest and does nothing about people who are going to steal.
However, Microsoft's PlaysForSure is in some cases used by rental services. Personally I don't want to rent music, but some people might, and it needs to be enforceable. If someone is paying $15 a month to rent all the music they can hold on their hard drive, some kind of DRM is needed to disable the music if they aren't paying for it. Do you expect Napster to just say "We'll trust you to delete all your music from your hard drive when you decide you don't want our service anymore?" And this DRM hack has enabled people to pay $15 for a month's subscription, download everything they want, decrypt it, and keep as much music as they want, only paying $15 once.
When you buy a door with better locks, you can see out right that you're getting better security. If it costs a little bit more to do business with a company, but the extra security is not obvious, customers will go somewhere else that charges less. If someone does a lot of research to find out that a company has a much beter track record than a cheaper competitor, they might go to the more expensive company, but this is probably a small enough percentage of people that businesses can't depend on them to make up a customer base.
That's easy to say, but it's really not so simple. Some data leaks happen because of software issues. More likely an employee figured they could make a buck selling data. Hiring more trustworthy employees requires paying more money, and that has to get passed on to the customers, who in turn take their business somewhere cheaper and less trustworthy. Customers want security, but they're not willing to pay a little extra for it.
It doesn't really look like the statistics are very accurate, but I'll go ahead and say what I was going to say when I saw the headline.
Apple has produced a great operating system. I can't tell you how many people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac." But that's just their problem. Most people aren't going to ditch a perfectly good computer just to run OSX. By limiting OSX to Apple computers, they're going to drastically slow the growth of their operating system. I'd bet 90% of the people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac" would go out and pay $200 to put OSX on their current computer a lot sooner than they'd buy a new computer just for the operating system.
I second that. I bought a Gamecube, and I have four games for it.
They are:
Super Smash Brother's Melee
Legends of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure
Legends of Zelda: Wind Waker
Legends of Zelda: Collector's Edition (which includes several Zelda games from past consoles).
Notice any trends? So long as the Zelda games keep up the adventurous play they've always had, Nintendo will always have me as a customer. That said, with Twilight Princess coming out on both Gamecube an Wii, I figure I'll just buy the GC edition and wait for the next Zelda game to grab a Wii, hopefully the price will have gone down by then.
Nintendo has always been able to create an atmosphere better than any other console I've ever seen. Microsoft and Sony go for great graphics, impressive physics, etc. but I've always been more impressed by the gameplay and ambiance of Nintendo's games than those of their competitors.
Some people must feel very smart finding those gas stations. How much gas they waste getting to them might be interesting to compute also. Oh well, as long as it makes you feel good inside.
I've seen the extremes for this. My father will sit and calculate the costs using his gas mileage, the distance between stations, and the difference in gas prices, then considers how much the farther gas station is worth the extra time to drive, and in most cases goes to the closer gas station anyway. My girlfriend, on the other hand, will drive 5 miles across town to save two cents per gallon. Personally, when I see that I'm getting low on gas(when I hit a quarter of a tank), I start keeping an eye out for gas prices. When I see one that is lower than the rest, I fill up. I don't go any farther than necessary to save a few cents, I just start looking with enough warning that I usually pass a gas station with relatively low prices while I'm looking for gas.
Also, I occasionally look up gas prices online. There is a site for my home town that lists the gas prices of several stations in the area. If I know I'm low on gas, I look up gas prices in the area that I'll be running errands and find the best station, and stop when I'm close by anyway.
There's buying the cheapest gas in town, then there's buying smarter.
People need to quit spreading FUD about collections being lost to system crashes. Yes, if you don't backup your data, and your system crashes, it's gone. That's true with any data, and has nothing to do with DRM. iTunes allows you to validate not one or two but 5 computers to play your music. If you have used up all of your computers with systems that have crashed, simply log into your account information page and click the "Deauthorize All Computers" button. Then you can authorize a new computer to play your music. You can only do this once every six months, but if you're going through a computer every 1.2 months, you've got other problems.
Fairplay DRM is not as bad as people claim. To address a few misconceptions I've seen spread on this article: 1) Audio quality is not affected by DRM, it's affected by the source from which you're downloading the music. 2) If you backup your music, you are not going to lose your music to a system crash. 3)The most valid claim I've seen is that iTunes ties you to a specific platform. But by giving you the option to burn CDs of your music, it no more ties you to a platform than CDs do. Some people will assert that you lose quality if you burn a CD and re-rip, but that's only true if you rerip to another lossy codec. You don't lose quality burning to a CD, you lose quality when you re-rip.
Fairplay DRM is not this horrible beast that keeps your music imprisoned. My girlfriend and I both use iTunes all the time (and have for years), and the other day I had to explain to her how iTunes puts some restrictions on your music. She had never noticed.
While I admit the iTunes DRM held me back from moving to Linux for a while, I've never been nearly as embitterred towards Apple for producing a convenient online music store that has a few restrictions as many people here seem to be.
If you don't like iTunes, don't buy from it. If you don't like iTunes because of quality, don't blame it on DRM. If you don't like iTunes because you lost your entire library to a system crash, blame it on yourself for not backing up, or deauthorize all your computers. If you don't like iTunes because it ties you to a specific platform, burn to CDs and rerip to a lossless codec, or check out the latest updates to the DRM removal software.
There was a time when that may have been true, but I doubt it is today. Back in the days of Napster when there was an easy way to download MP3s without getting tons of spyware, lots of people downloaded music. Then Napster was shut down, and Limewire, Kazaa, etc. popped up. I've known lots of people whose windows installations were trashed by spyware affilliated with those programs. Bit Torrent is available today, but most average users I know were scared away from file sharing because they link it to spyware.
Today I think the average iPod owner does a lot less file sharing. I don't think its uncommon for people to trade CDs and rip them, but four or five people sharing a CD is going to do a lot less damage to the music industry than people sharing their entire music libraries to anyone on the internet (and I'm not currently aware of the RIAA ever hunting down people for sharing CDs, but I certainly wouldn't be suprised to hear about it).
I would guess that most of the music bought by iPod owners came from iTunes, a CD they own, or a CD a friend owns. I'm not quite sure what your definition of "wasn't bought" is, but I think most people's music collections are a lot more legitimate than you'd expect.
I'm sure Apple would just love to get rid of DRM so people can play their music on non-apple products... Or maybe not.
The Music Industry demanded DRM in order to prevent piracy. Apple went right along with that because it means that if people want to use the biggest (legal) online music store, they have to get an iPod if they want a portable music player. Apple won't allow their music to be distributed without DRM any more than they'll license Fairplay to their competitors (which I believe is what was being demanded in European countries, not that Apple sell DRM free music).
Consumers not knowing the difference is one reason this would be nice. Last weekend my mom got an HD-DVD from blockbuster online, not realizing she was ordering a movie she can't play. If HD-DVDs could play in normal DVD players, but have higher quality in HD-DVD players, this would do two things. First, people like my mom wouldn't run into trouble because they picked up the wrong kind of DVD. Second, as someone else has said, people can start buying HD-DVDs before there are HD-DVD players in their price range, fixing a chicken or the egg type problem.
Interesting. I was pretty much a Linux noob going into the setup of my PVR, and I had no trouble setting up MythTV, with the exception of LIRC, and then only because I thought it would be fun to build my own IR receiver. I made sure I was buying a compatible tuner, and with Ubuntu setup was a breeze. After a while I decided to upgrade to a version not supported by Ubuntu, and it only took about 30 minutes, most of which was compile time. The instructions were simple and easy to follow.
It may be more trouble than most non-technical users want to go through, but I'm suprised to hear an experienced Linux user had trouble installing MythTV.
First, Xanga does have users enter a birthday when signing up, and if the birthdate shows a person is not 13, they cannot sign up.
The rest is not quite true either. If parents become aware of their kid's xanga, there is a process for having the site shut down. Xanga is huge. It would be incredibly difficult (if even possible) for Xanga to monitor all sites. However I believe they have a process for reporting underage users, and look into reports.
one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.
Interesting. I thought it was one bulb for each of 110 million Americans. It seems to me that one bulb is the equivalent to taking one hundredth of a car off the road. 110 million bulbs is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the road.
No, the real question is why don't they go back to the less fallible touch tone menus? Companies want to eliminate cost by having the fewest and cheapest people operating the phones, and if the menus take care of their customer's needs, they won't have to talk to a real person. With a touch tone system you may have to screw around with different menus, but you never have to deal with the system misunderstanding you.
Personally, I'll spend more time navigating a menu when I can't find what I want than I'll spend trying to get poorly written voice recognition software to understand what I'm saying
Uh... The point in this was what do you carry on your thumb drive for you to use when you're at another computer. The idea is that you don't go around installing things on people's computers.
Personally I keep a bunch of stuff on my iPod for whenever I may need it. I have a portable version of Firefox, and I keep PuTTy and WinSCP to get to my Linux server from any computer that's available. I was intrigued to see that there's a portable OpenOffice.org as well. That might be worth downloading if I ever find my iPod's USB cable.
I agree with most of what you're saying, except I think you're over generalizing. I've always lived in the midwest, and while I certainly see some of what you're talking about, I certainly wouldn't say it's par for the course in American culture. I've only been to Northern Virginia once, and it did seem faster paced, but I suspect the reason American culture is tainted as selfish is that people who are all about their jobs and money are the loudest among us.
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I use how-to book as references. I use the index to find what I want to do, then I skip to that section. I probably won't read every page of the book, and if I do, it certainly won't be in order.
Also, how do you define learning linux? Personally, I have a pretty good grasp of how the operating system works. My girlfriend has no idea how the operating system works, but she can still use my computer to get online, use an instant messenger, write a paper with OpenOffice.org, almost anything she does regularly on her Windows computer. There's a huge difference between being able to use an operating system and knowing how it works, and "learning Linux" is a vague statement.
Valid point. However I'm of the belief that security should be part of the operating system, and if that means an inflated price, it still ought to be included. What I would object to would be Microsoft selling a flawed product, preventing other people from correcting it, and then making users buy an additional product to fix something that should have been included in the first place.
To me this is the biggest problem with DRM. I have no problem with companies trying to protect their investment by making it difficult to copy their content. I have a bit of a problem with locking people to a specific platform. But my biggest problem is that it is illegal for someone to reverse engineer the DRM to allow people to decrypt their music or use it on a different platform. I want to use my iTunes music on Linux. There are tools out there that would allow me to remove the DRM from my music, making this possible, but it would be illegal for me to use them. Now, if my intentions were to go out and give this music to other people, I agree that should be illegal, but no more illegal than it would be to let somebody copy a CD.
All DRM does effectively is lock people to a platform they may or may not want to use. The law then legitimizes this by not allowing people to create methods to play their music on other platforms. I have no major objection to vendors trying to lock people to their platforms, my big objection is to the laws that allow them to do so.
Many of the restrictions people cite were correcting bug exploits (such as fixing FairPlay after it had been broken).
The only half-valid restriction was when they decreased the number of burnable playlists from 10 to 7, while at the same time increasing the number of authorized computers from 3 to 5. A little math here and it turns out you can actually produce 5 more CDs of an identical playlist than you could before. Now if you've only got one computer at your disposal, this may be restrictive, but most people I know could borrow a friend's computer if they need to burn more CDs that badly. Additionally, most CD burners have software that allows you to make a copy of an audio CD. I'd just use iTunes to make one copy of the playlist, and reproduce them with other software. Personally, I was thrilled when I found out I could authorize more computers, and there's only been one time I've burned as many of two copies of the same playlist.
There are a lot of businesses that Microsoft doesn't have much reason to enter. I think they should have left web browsers, search engines, media players, instant messengers, etc. to third parties, but I think Microsoft ought to be able to make a secure system. That said, I'm not sure how they're securing the system. If they're charging people extra for system security and somehow blocking third party security applications, go ahead and scream anti-trust, but if it's included with the operating system, then they're finally getting with the program.
Personally, I've never liked McAffee or Symantec. I've used them both. With McAffee, my system was rendered almost useless by viruses within a month. With Symantec, I was constantly fighting with the firewall to get programs to run properly. Now I use a variant on Zonealarm, and I'm quite happy with it. But I still find it annoying that I have to pay $30 a year to keep my $200 operating system secure, and on my other computer I pay nothing (and in fact run no extra software) to keep my Free operating system secure.
When I buy a song that uses DRM that ultimately ties me to a platform I'd rather not be using, I feel that the DRM is restricting my fair use rights. In this case, I agree that DRM punihes the honest and does nothing about people who are going to steal.
However, Microsoft's PlaysForSure is in some cases used by rental services. Personally I don't want to rent music, but some people might, and it needs to be enforceable. If someone is paying $15 a month to rent all the music they can hold on their hard drive, some kind of DRM is needed to disable the music if they aren't paying for it. Do you expect Napster to just say "We'll trust you to delete all your music from your hard drive when you decide you don't want our service anymore?" And this DRM hack has enabled people to pay $15 for a month's subscription, download everything they want, decrypt it, and keep as much music as they want, only paying $15 once.
When you buy a door with better locks, you can see out right that you're getting better security. If it costs a little bit more to do business with a company, but the extra security is not obvious, customers will go somewhere else that charges less. If someone does a lot of research to find out that a company has a much beter track record than a cheaper competitor, they might go to the more expensive company, but this is probably a small enough percentage of people that businesses can't depend on them to make up a customer base.
That's easy to say, but it's really not so simple. Some data leaks happen because of software issues. More likely an employee figured they could make a buck selling data. Hiring more trustworthy employees requires paying more money, and that has to get passed on to the customers, who in turn take their business somewhere cheaper and less trustworthy. Customers want security, but they're not willing to pay a little extra for it.
Apple has produced a great operating system. I can't tell you how many people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac." But that's just their problem. Most people aren't going to ditch a perfectly good computer just to run OSX. By limiting OSX to Apple computers, they're going to drastically slow the growth of their operating system. I'd bet 90% of the people I've met who say "my next computer is going to be a Mac" would go out and pay $200 to put OSX on their current computer a lot sooner than they'd buy a new computer just for the operating system.
They are:
Super Smash Brother's Melee
Legends of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure
Legends of Zelda: Wind Waker
Legends of Zelda: Collector's Edition (which includes several Zelda games from past consoles).
Notice any trends? So long as the Zelda games keep up the adventurous play they've always had, Nintendo will always have me as a customer. That said, with Twilight Princess coming out on both Gamecube an Wii, I figure I'll just buy the GC edition and wait for the next Zelda game to grab a Wii, hopefully the price will have gone down by then.
Nintendo has always been able to create an atmosphere better than any other console I've ever seen. Microsoft and Sony go for great graphics, impressive physics, etc. but I've always been more impressed by the gameplay and ambiance of Nintendo's games than those of their competitors.
did you even read the parent?
Also, I occasionally look up gas prices online. There is a site for my home town that lists the gas prices of several stations in the area. If I know I'm low on gas, I look up gas prices in the area that I'll be running errands and find the best station, and stop when I'm close by anyway.
There's buying the cheapest gas in town, then there's buying smarter.
Not quite. I suspect by removing some middle men, public transportation saves a relatively significant percent per gallon.
Fairplay DRM is not as bad as people claim. To address a few misconceptions I've seen spread on this article:
1) Audio quality is not affected by DRM, it's affected by the source from which you're downloading the music.
2) If you backup your music, you are not going to lose your music to a system crash.
3)The most valid claim I've seen is that iTunes ties you to a specific platform. But by giving you the option to burn CDs of your music, it no more ties you to a platform than CDs do. Some people will assert that you lose quality if you burn a CD and re-rip, but that's only true if you rerip to another lossy codec. You don't lose quality burning to a CD, you lose quality when you re-rip.
Fairplay DRM is not this horrible beast that keeps your music imprisoned. My girlfriend and I both use iTunes all the time (and have for years), and the other day I had to explain to her how iTunes puts some restrictions on your music. She had never noticed.
While I admit the iTunes DRM held me back from moving to Linux for a while, I've never been nearly as embitterred towards Apple for producing a convenient online music store that has a few restrictions as many people here seem to be.
If you don't like iTunes, don't buy from it. If you don't like iTunes because of quality, don't blame it on DRM. If you don't like iTunes because you lost your entire library to a system crash, blame it on yourself for not backing up, or deauthorize all your computers. If you don't like iTunes because it ties you to a specific platform, burn to CDs and rerip to a lossless codec, or check out the latest updates to the DRM removal software.
Today I think the average iPod owner does a lot less file sharing. I don't think its uncommon for people to trade CDs and rip them, but four or five people sharing a CD is going to do a lot less damage to the music industry than people sharing their entire music libraries to anyone on the internet (and I'm not currently aware of the RIAA ever hunting down people for sharing CDs, but I certainly wouldn't be suprised to hear about it).
I would guess that most of the music bought by iPod owners came from iTunes, a CD they own, or a CD a friend owns. I'm not quite sure what your definition of "wasn't bought" is, but I think most people's music collections are a lot more legitimate than you'd expect.
The Music Industry demanded DRM in order to prevent piracy. Apple went right along with that because it means that if people want to use the biggest (legal) online music store, they have to get an iPod if they want a portable music player. Apple won't allow their music to be distributed without DRM any more than they'll license Fairplay to their competitors (which I believe is what was being demanded in European countries, not that Apple sell DRM free music).
Consumers not knowing the difference is one reason this would be nice. Last weekend my mom got an HD-DVD from blockbuster online, not realizing she was ordering a movie she can't play. If HD-DVDs could play in normal DVD players, but have higher quality in HD-DVD players, this would do two things. First, people like my mom wouldn't run into trouble because they picked up the wrong kind of DVD. Second, as someone else has said, people can start buying HD-DVDs before there are HD-DVD players in their price range, fixing a chicken or the egg type problem.
It may be more trouble than most non-technical users want to go through, but I'm suprised to hear an experienced Linux user had trouble installing MythTV.
As for destroying the environment that's just FUD.
The rest is not quite true either. If parents become aware of their kid's xanga, there is a process for having the site shut down. Xanga is huge. It would be incredibly difficult (if even possible) for Xanga to monitor all sites. However I believe they have a process for reporting underage users, and look into reports.
Personally, I'll spend more time navigating a menu when I can't find what I want than I'll spend trying to get poorly written voice recognition software to understand what I'm saying
Personally I keep a bunch of stuff on my iPod for whenever I may need it. I have a portable version of Firefox, and I keep PuTTy and WinSCP to get to my Linux server from any computer that's available. I was intrigued to see that there's a portable OpenOffice.org as well. That might be worth downloading if I ever find my iPod's USB cable.
I agree with most of what you're saying, except I think you're over generalizing. I've always lived in the midwest, and while I certainly see some of what you're talking about, I certainly wouldn't say it's par for the course in American culture. I've only been to Northern Virginia once, and it did seem faster paced, but I suspect the reason American culture is tainted as selfish is that people who are all about their jobs and money are the loudest among us.