Sadly after their ridiculous always broken DRM in CS3 I stopped buying Adobe products. The only unfortunate thing is that I've still yet to find a replacement for Illustrator since Freehand was killed. Ahh well...
The thing with all these studies is that they don't take into account whether these people in the studies can drive -safely- in the first place. I don't know about everywhere else, but here in Florida I see plenty of drivers every day who can't manage to signal, stay in their lane, merge properly, change lanes properly, stop for lights or other traffic, manage to stop and go properly at four way stops, and every other disaster you can think of... and most of those people are alone in their car and don't have cell phones against their ears. The ones who ARE talking on cell phones are just as bad as the rest but with fewer hands on the wheel. But with as bad as the norm is in most places I'd be highly curious if any of these studies bothered to check if the people could drive a vehicle at all, or just assumed because they were licensed drivers (Here in Florida the drivers test is performed on a closed course, wasn't that way back where I come from that's for sure!) that they were capable of driving a car.
Now personally, I don't take calls in the car. Because if at all possible I prefer to let calls go to voice mail anyway, in the car or not, stop bugging me, and get off my lawn!;)
Because you're just proving the point that pirates will come up with any excuse to -not- pay for something. If you disagree with a product, then don't buy it, don't steal it, don't advertise it, don't use it only at your friends house, just don't. There is NO entitlement to owning/renting/licensing/whatever the hard work of others without providing what they request in exchange. The only right everyone is justifiably entitled to is to NOT use any product they don't want to use.
But there is no political statement made by using something that you feel you're too good to pay for.
If someone does work, whether they make you a car, or a house, or a game, or some food, or whatever else. They have the right to ask for payment in return for your receipt of the product. If you don't desire to pay them their price, then the -only- justifiable response is to simply not use their product. Restaurant too expensive? Don't eat there. You have no right to wander into the kitchen and just take the food. House too expensive? Don't like the HOA rules? Don't live there, but you don't get to move in anyway and just ignore the price. Game has DRM you don't like? Spend your hard earned money on another companies game that you -do- support. But you don't have the right to still play the game anyway.
As for second hand game sales, you want to see that change? Again, don't spend any money on any product you can't resell afterwords. Enough companies go under from the boycotts and they'll stop pulling that crap. But simply pirating it instead? Then you're just a statistic, someone who they will always convince themselves that if they make it annoying enough, you will eventually be forced into purchasing.
After all, you can also just go over and click through the signup to become a developer, and.. big shock here, you're presented with the agreement.
And as others have said, if you don't like it, then you just don't agree to it. You can -still- develop for jailbroken phones without agreeing to this contract. What you can't do is get into the App Store. Which Apple, like any business is welcome to decide what products they would, or would not like to carry.
What the EFF needs to spend their time doing instead of this stupid waste of time, is be getting whoever needs to (FCC I guess, probably Congress themselves) to pass a rule or law requiring "smartphones" to be considered what they are, small computers connected to the celular data network, and that because they are -our- property we -must- be allowed to install whatever we desire on them. The idea that any company can decide how their product is used -after- it's been sold is the issue. Instead they're wasting taxpayer dollars with FOIA requests to get license agreements that are posted on Apple's bloody website.
Not entirely true. Economic damage can directly cause jobs to be lost. That can easily lead to lack of healthcare, or even shelter and food for those previously employed individuals. Which can lead directly to lost lives.
But honestly, these apps -were- getting annoying. I have nothing against them, but it was annoying to see them taking up slots in the Top 25 lists and such when I really want "interesting" apps to be there, not run of the mill photo collections. Now mind you, I honestly believe Apple should simply create a Adult category, only show it if the parental controls on the phone aren't turned on, and let parents decide to block it if they like. Then allow whatever in there, I don't care. Hell I'll even check it out and see what's there occasionally, but then it also isn't flooding out the other apps.
On that note I won't be surprised if Apple -does- add a category for it and start letting these apps back in at some point. The catch being, if Apple has shown one thing in the life of the App store, is that such updates are unlikely to come without a major iPhoneOS update and the changes that come with that to iTunes Connect. I'm sure if these apps are making money, then they're also making money for Apple, and Steve Jobs or not, the stockholders interests then show that it's probably a good idea to keep selling them in a fashion that isn't -costing- the company money from other angles. But those changes would take yet more changes to the parental control systems on both iTunes and the iPhone OS, so it'll be awhile. No big shock there either. Now to all those complaining, please have fun, keep complaining, nothing gets done without someone complaining about it. But do realize there's an entire distribution architecture there that is affected by changes and nothing is ever likely to happen overnight.
See, I used to think this. And while it's true, there's also a flip side to physical books.
Here's a story for you from my own life. My family were avid book collectors. Around about the time I was 18 we easily had two thousand books in the house if not more, collected over my life, and the life of my Mom, and Grandmother. The problem was, around about then we sold my grandmothers house so she could have some more money in her retirement to live on. The place we moved was smaller and we simply no longer had room for all those books. Obviously we kept our favorite authors and such, but the rest we donated to the local library. Now while this was grand for them, I to this day STILL miss always being able to just reach out and grab a book to read. Now I'm grown, have my own house, and my collection has begun to grow again, but nonetheless, if a e-book reader and store would come out that managed DRM in a more acceptable way, and priced more closely to the price of dead tree books, then I would quite happily purchase that way. Simply for the sake, of never having to leave books behind again, if my family has to move.
You know I keep seeing all this about about production costs, such as editors. I don't buy it honestly. The last few "new release" books I bought to read had horrible editing and I can't imagine they were proofread either. The quality of what's considered top notch writing has tanked considerably over the years, and the editing process for most fiction publishers at least doesn't seem to catch even the most glaring errors. No, I think the old publishers are just afraid that they're going to get cut out. After all, what marketing do you think matters more for sales? A little ad someplace? Or top spot front page of something like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or soon Apple's book stores?
Now I know a couple authors personally. The ones I know are also bullish about e-books in general. There are -issues- to be overcome, such as formats. Epub isn't as nice a layout engine as it could be, kindle does their own thing. The unfortunate DRM controls, made worse by the rights granted varying between one publisher and another. And pricing. No one I know minds paying for e-books. But no one I know will pay MORE for an e-book than the lowest price they can get the book for printed. Nor should they. Over Christmas I was checking into e-book readers myself and the prices involved. I found that in the worst cases I was able to get the new release hardback at -half- the price of the e-book. Now even accounting for any middle men the publisher's try to charge for, the hardback is going to require those same ones PLUS physical printing costs. There is no way it costs double to produce the electronic version. The e-book version prices should at the very least track the lowest price for the SAME work at a given retailer. After all, has been pointed out many times here at/. the dead tree editions come with MORE rights. Such as being lendable or resellable.
If you're a company and you're putting out a product, which of these two product markets would you rather be? The Wii (iPhone according to the Ovi Orion article), or the XBox (their supposedly spiffy idea). Hmm... Massively huge gigantic market selling at a profit or Middling market that started out selling as a loss leader. Choices, choices, choices.
Perhaps that simple market comparison itself right there is why no one has bothered again with a "gaming" phone. Heck, even comparing portable gaming units. Which would you want to sell, the DS with it's again, gigantic huge massive casual market? Or the PSP with it's middling "hardcore" market? Now the true gamers most likely have both, I know my household does. But the casual gamer, of which there are a great many more? They've got the DS if they've got one at all.
This just tells me, and no big surprise here, when trying to harm groups that have huge amounts of money you're perhaps best off doing it in more legal ways. Personally I'd think this sounds petty obvious. I also know if the site that had been hacked was say, linux.org, or wikipedia, or say, your own personal web sites? Then everyone would be calling for the guy's head.
Now CoS is certainly not a good entity on the face of this planet, but breaking laws just to hassle them doesn't do much to prove it. As many above call them terrorists, which is quite possibly accurate. But one can not deal with terrorists with acts of terrorism, even minor ones. As time has shown, that kind of response just simply creates more on the other side.
Honestly, I have to say between all the various filters I have or have written, I don't get a whole lot of spam. What I -want- though, is a way to identify it more reliably before my mail server even has to accept the message. With the current protocols, you can simply only block so much based on IP ranges or whatnot. There's a point where you have to accept the message to analyze. Sadly the only way we're likely to increase the chance of dropping the connection before receiving the message now is for the protocols themselves to change from the ground up. And as everyone here knows, that's highly unlikely to ever happen.
Actually I think I'd be fine with that. It shows a fairly good amount of effort was put in. On that note though, your mail server would have to have had all the effort required put in to make sure your mail wasn't getting dropped by every spam filter in the world in the first place.
Now from dealing with a service, if you are the entire business, then that'd be fine. If you instead are under a umbrella of a company (Real Estate firm, Law Firm, whatever), then your e-mail should STILL come from that banner, not be a personal e-mail. At least not for business related e-mails.
I'd say it definitely matters. Though unlike some here, I wouldn't specifically toss your resume out because it comes from aol.com (msn & hotmail though, I'd probably assume it's a spam mail and toss it.) Free e-mail addresses are fine if you're out of work looking for a job. Gmail is possibly always okay right now, though that's likely to change over the years if people start getting too much crap from such addresses. And as many have said it's quite cheap to get your own domain to send e-mail, using any provider you actually want for the e-mail hosting.
Now, far more importantly though, if I'm a customer looking for someone to provide a professional service for me, then damn have your own domain. Nothing will turn me away from a business faster than if they don't have a real e-mail address to reach them at. Real estate agent? Should have e-mail through your umbrella corp. Lawyer? Why isn't your e-mail from your law firms address. Even little self employed groups, selling hand made soaps at the farmers market? Get homemadesoaps.com or something and use it! But a aol.com or hotmail.com address just screams scam when you're trying to buy something or get a service performed.
My wife and I are a good example of what the studios are missing I think. If we -really- want to see a movie, we see it opening night in the theater. Anything not seen opening night that we want to see just ends up stuck on our Netflix queue. At that point it's already months before Netflix will have it to send out anyway, another month, or even three isn't going to be noticed at all. It shows up when it shows up. If we love a movie in the theater, or even get something from Netflix and like it, then we tend to buy a copy. But even if we're going to buy it from having seen it in the theater, then it's a movie we would never have gotten from Netflix anyway as we already decided we liked it enough to own. If we buy it after seeing it from Netflix, well we wouldn't have bought it before seeing it in the first place. So either way our Netflix queueing, and viewing of movies hasn't changed a lick, no matter how much the studios would want to delay them from getting movies.
And a developer that would make those choices when installing software on his machine, is -also- a developer that will leave wide open holes in the software he's developing for you. After all, he's obviously straight up lazy. So all I'm getting from this is that while he put out more LoC than your other developers, they were most likely buggy insecure junk.
While the sales have apparently ended, most of December the -hardbound- of Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel at either Amazon or B&N was cheaper than the respective eBook versions. Granted without the sales going on the eBook is now cheaper, but one does wonder why the digital copy would -ever- be prices higher than any other version.
They can want the option all they want. But even the music industry basically went to selling DRM free tracks everywhere. Because if people complain loud and often enough even companies like these will eventually realize they're fighting a loosing battle and losing customers in the process. And far more than DRM, they want your money! If the people keep speaking up and saying they won't buy it with DRM, then their greed will eventually take over.
The catch to this, given how popular the kindle and nook are this holiday season as gifts, is that I see little proof that the DRM is bothering anyone outside the/. crowd. Unlike music where everyone expected to be able to share music a little bit. Hell, even for myself I've looked into both the Kindle and Nook, and either would let me attach multiple devices within my family without any DRM issues at all. And to be honest, if I really like a book and think a friend would too, I'm far more likely to just buy them their own damned copy, because if I like it that much, I tend to -keep- my copy. After all, books I like enough to recommend that highly, I might want to read again at any time.
... "Fluoride in the water is a Mind Control Drug" warnings..
You know, I'd almost buy into this one. Have you gone outside and actually talked to other people in the past few years? I'd say the number of people per "decade" age range that are dumb as bricks increases astronomically once you reach age ranges that have always drank fluoridated water. Perhaps making people stupid is really a secret mind control plot.
Of course, correlation != causation, they could just be dumb as bricks.;)
Oh, my all time favorite annoyance from the console version... middle of a battle, hit the button, and I'm... talking to one of my party members. There's a list of things I'm not allowed to do during battle, like level up, but casual conversation, sure!
Okay, this is driving me NUTS. I've seen so many posts in this thread arguing about how Apple would have to "approve" the app if you write it yourself. They -don't-, you can get the SDK, pay your $99 (or whatever, for your developer keys) and then upload -anything- you write to your own devices. The approval process only comes into play if you want to sell it. Since you're writing this particular piece of software for yourself, then wether you can sell it or not shouldn't be an issue. Or is the reality, that if you put that effort into writing it, then suddenly -you- think you deserve to be paid by others for it, while you didn't feel you should have to pay others for it before?
Recently we disconnected our cable (Well, satellite but same diff). We simply realized that no one in the house was watching it, oh we turned it on in the background all the time. But there was a grand total of 3 shows we actually -watched-, and those we were dvr'ing and watching at different times, so we realized we could just grab them on hulu if we really even cared.
I do have a Mac Mini plugged into our tv with Plex installed. Which has actually led to us finding some very cool things that we'd never see on regular TV anyway, so no loss to any but the MPAA really. We've stopped going to theaters for movies because the theaters these days just suck, even if you could find a movie that -was- good. The viewing entertainment experience the MPAA tries to push would pretty much make you think they just don't want customers at all anymore.
Our local megaplex has been going all out with a even more efficient way of preventing piracy. They simply drive the customer away at the door. See out of 24 screens they only actually clean theaters 1 and 2, and even in those 2 they keep the movie out of focus, and start it late. Add in extra high and rising ticket prices and a rude staff. There's never anyone there for any movie except the occasional tourists. After all my wife and I are avid movie goers... or were, but the local theaters got so bad we basically never bother anymore.
The exception is if something shows up in the local very very small theater... For some odd reason they've escaped (which is why I won't name them;). Clean theaters, movie buff staff, everything on time. They even let people bring in coffee and ice cream from the nearby shops. So what used to be a weekly thing of going to the movies is now only when a movie we want to see is playing at our little theater.
Seriously... something like that would probably work fine for say, my grandmother. Who tended to only have her e-mail app open, or her card game of the day, or whatever. But god, I can't begin to imagine the suffering of trying to write code on an interface like that. I'm all for multi-touch, but sheesh. Why is it every 2-bit designer who comes along thinks that to progress UI's they have to toss out everything that's managed to stick over the past 30 years.
I have a lovely 30" screen... plus another smaller screen. When I'm coding it's not uncommon to have the project open, multiple source and header files, plus other windows open for reference, testing, source control, server connections, and others. This is hardly cluttered either, I -want- absolute control over where each of these windows is on the screen and what size they are. I don't want some OS trying to organize them for me off the screen. Because especially with client/server coding, when I say, run the app on one screen, I don't -want- it hiding all the windows that are tracking log files on the server too. I'm watching those for immediate feedback.
So while I think multi-touch is great and certainly has a place on the desktop of the future, please won't someone come up with a way of using it effectively amongst the UI's we already have!
Would I continue to code? Of course, but I'd be quite happy to be back to more like my teenage years where I coded things because I simply had an idea, whether I felt the idea could pay bills or not.
But then they should be going after the -studios- for their share of the profits from iTunes/Amazon/what have you sales. Going after Apple/Amazon/whoever would be like asking Walmart for a share of each DVD they sell, right at the register, before they've even paid the distribution company, who actually has the rights to distribute the product to, oh wait.. stores, for sale...
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Sadly after their ridiculous always broken DRM in CS3 I stopped buying Adobe products. The only unfortunate thing is that I've still yet to find a replacement for Illustrator since Freehand was killed. Ahh well...
The thing with all these studies is that they don't take into account whether these people in the studies can drive -safely- in the first place. I don't know about everywhere else, but here in Florida I see plenty of drivers every day who can't manage to signal, stay in their lane, merge properly, change lanes properly, stop for lights or other traffic, manage to stop and go properly at four way stops, and every other disaster you can think of... and most of those people are alone in their car and don't have cell phones against their ears. The ones who ARE talking on cell phones are just as bad as the rest but with fewer hands on the wheel. But with as bad as the norm is in most places I'd be highly curious if any of these studies bothered to check if the people could drive a vehicle at all, or just assumed because they were licensed drivers (Here in Florida the drivers test is performed on a closed course, wasn't that way back where I come from that's for sure!) that they were capable of driving a car.
Now personally, I don't take calls in the car. Because if at all possible I prefer to let calls go to voice mail anyway, in the car or not, stop bugging me, and get off my lawn! ;)
Because you're just proving the point that pirates will come up with any excuse to -not- pay for something. If you disagree with a product, then don't buy it, don't steal it, don't advertise it, don't use it only at your friends house, just don't. There is NO entitlement to owning/renting/licensing/whatever the hard work of others without providing what they request in exchange. The only right everyone is justifiably entitled to is to NOT use any product they don't want to use.
But there is no political statement made by using something that you feel you're too good to pay for.
If someone does work, whether they make you a car, or a house, or a game, or some food, or whatever else. They have the right to ask for payment in return for your receipt of the product. If you don't desire to pay them their price, then the -only- justifiable response is to simply not use their product. Restaurant too expensive? Don't eat there. You have no right to wander into the kitchen and just take the food. House too expensive? Don't like the HOA rules? Don't live there, but you don't get to move in anyway and just ignore the price. Game has DRM you don't like? Spend your hard earned money on another companies game that you -do- support. But you don't have the right to still play the game anyway.
As for second hand game sales, you want to see that change? Again, don't spend any money on any product you can't resell afterwords. Enough companies go under from the boycotts and they'll stop pulling that crap. But simply pirating it instead? Then you're just a statistic, someone who they will always convince themselves that if they make it annoying enough, you will eventually be forced into purchasing.
After all, you can also just go over and click through the signup to become a developer, and.. big shock here, you're presented with the agreement.
And as others have said, if you don't like it, then you just don't agree to it. You can -still- develop for jailbroken phones without agreeing to this contract. What you can't do is get into the App Store. Which Apple, like any business is welcome to decide what products they would, or would not like to carry.
What the EFF needs to spend their time doing instead of this stupid waste of time, is be getting whoever needs to (FCC I guess, probably Congress themselves) to pass a rule or law requiring "smartphones" to be considered what they are, small computers connected to the celular data network, and that because they are -our- property we -must- be allowed to install whatever we desire on them. The idea that any company can decide how their product is used -after- it's been sold is the issue.
Instead they're wasting taxpayer dollars with FOIA requests to get license agreements that are posted on Apple's bloody website.
Not entirely true. Economic damage can directly cause jobs to be lost. That can easily lead to lack of healthcare, or even shelter and food for those previously employed individuals. Which can lead directly to lost lives.
But honestly, these apps -were- getting annoying. I have nothing against them, but it was annoying to see them taking up slots in the Top 25 lists and such when I really want "interesting" apps to be there, not run of the mill photo collections. Now mind you, I honestly believe Apple should simply create a Adult category, only show it if the parental controls on the phone aren't turned on, and let parents decide to block it if they like. Then allow whatever in there, I don't care. Hell I'll even check it out and see what's there occasionally, but then it also isn't flooding out the other apps.
On that note I won't be surprised if Apple -does- add a category for it and start letting these apps back in at some point. The catch being, if Apple has shown one thing in the life of the App store, is that such updates are unlikely to come without a major iPhoneOS update and the changes that come with that to iTunes Connect. I'm sure if these apps are making money, then they're also making money for Apple, and Steve Jobs or not, the stockholders interests then show that it's probably a good idea to keep selling them in a fashion that isn't -costing- the company money from other angles. But those changes would take yet more changes to the parental control systems on both iTunes and the iPhone OS, so it'll be awhile. No big shock there either. Now to all those complaining, please have fun, keep complaining, nothing gets done without someone complaining about it. But do realize there's an entire distribution architecture there that is affected by changes and nothing is ever likely to happen overnight.
See, I used to think this. And while it's true, there's also a flip side to physical books.
Here's a story for you from my own life. My family were avid book collectors. Around about the time I was 18 we easily had two thousand books in the house if not more, collected over my life, and the life of my Mom, and Grandmother. The problem was, around about then we sold my grandmothers house so she could have some more money in her retirement to live on. The place we moved was smaller and we simply no longer had room for all those books. Obviously we kept our favorite authors and such, but the rest we donated to the local library. Now while this was grand for them, I to this day STILL miss always being able to just reach out and grab a book to read. Now I'm grown, have my own house, and my collection has begun to grow again, but nonetheless, if a e-book reader and store would come out that managed DRM in a more acceptable way, and priced more closely to the price of dead tree books, then I would quite happily purchase that way. Simply for the sake, of never having to leave books behind again, if my family has to move.
You know I keep seeing all this about about production costs, such as editors. I don't buy it honestly. The last few "new release" books I bought to read had horrible editing and I can't imagine they were proofread either. The quality of what's considered top notch writing has tanked considerably over the years, and the editing process for most fiction publishers at least doesn't seem to catch even the most glaring errors. No, I think the old publishers are just afraid that they're going to get cut out. After all, what marketing do you think matters more for sales? A little ad someplace? Or top spot front page of something like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or soon Apple's book stores?
Now I know a couple authors personally. The ones I know are also bullish about e-books in general. There are -issues- to be overcome, such as formats. Epub isn't as nice a layout engine as it could be, kindle does their own thing. The unfortunate DRM controls, made worse by the rights granted varying between one publisher and another. And pricing. No one I know minds paying for e-books. But no one I know will pay MORE for an e-book than the lowest price they can get the book for printed. Nor should they. Over Christmas I was checking into e-book readers myself and the prices involved. I found that in the worst cases I was able to get the new release hardback at -half- the price of the e-book. Now even accounting for any middle men the publisher's try to charge for, the hardback is going to require those same ones PLUS physical printing costs. There is no way it costs double to produce the electronic version. The e-book version prices should at the very least track the lowest price for the SAME work at a given retailer. After all, has been pointed out many times here at /. the dead tree editions come with MORE rights. Such as being lendable or resellable.
If you're a company and you're putting out a product, which of these two product markets would you rather be? The Wii (iPhone according to the Ovi Orion article), or the XBox (their supposedly spiffy idea). Hmm... Massively huge gigantic market selling at a profit or Middling market that started out selling as a loss leader. Choices, choices, choices.
Perhaps that simple market comparison itself right there is why no one has bothered again with a "gaming" phone. Heck, even comparing portable gaming units. Which would you want to sell, the DS with it's again, gigantic huge massive casual market? Or the PSP with it's middling "hardcore" market? Now the true gamers most likely have both, I know my household does. But the casual gamer, of which there are a great many more? They've got the DS if they've got one at all.
This just tells me, and no big surprise here, when trying to harm groups that have huge amounts of money you're perhaps best off doing it in more legal ways. Personally I'd think this sounds petty obvious. I also know if the site that had been hacked was say, linux.org, or wikipedia, or say, your own personal web sites? Then everyone would be calling for the guy's head.
Now CoS is certainly not a good entity on the face of this planet, but breaking laws just to hassle them doesn't do much to prove it. As many above call them terrorists, which is quite possibly accurate. But one can not deal with terrorists with acts of terrorism, even minor ones. As time has shown, that kind of response just simply creates more on the other side.
Honestly, I have to say between all the various filters I have or have written, I don't get a whole lot of spam. What I -want- though, is a way to identify it more reliably before my mail server even has to accept the message. With the current protocols, you can simply only block so much based on IP ranges or whatnot. There's a point where you have to accept the message to analyze. Sadly the only way we're likely to increase the chance of dropping the connection before receiving the message now is for the protocols themselves to change from the ground up. And as everyone here knows, that's highly unlikely to ever happen.
Ahh well...
Actually I think I'd be fine with that. It shows a fairly good amount of effort was put in. On that note though, your mail server would have to have had all the effort required put in to make sure your mail wasn't getting dropped by every spam filter in the world in the first place.
Now from dealing with a service, if you are the entire business, then that'd be fine. If you instead are under a umbrella of a company (Real Estate firm, Law Firm, whatever), then your e-mail should STILL come from that banner, not be a personal e-mail. At least not for business related e-mails.
I'd say it definitely matters. Though unlike some here, I wouldn't specifically toss your resume out because it comes from aol.com (msn & hotmail though, I'd probably assume it's a spam mail and toss it.) Free e-mail addresses are fine if you're out of work looking for a job. Gmail is possibly always okay right now, though that's likely to change over the years if people start getting too much crap from such addresses. And as many have said it's quite cheap to get your own domain to send e-mail, using any provider you actually want for the e-mail hosting.
Now, far more importantly though, if I'm a customer looking for someone to provide a professional service for me, then damn have your own domain. Nothing will turn me away from a business faster than if they don't have a real e-mail address to reach them at. Real estate agent? Should have e-mail through your umbrella corp. Lawyer? Why isn't your e-mail from your law firms address. Even little self employed groups, selling hand made soaps at the farmers market? Get homemadesoaps.com or something and use it! But a aol.com or hotmail.com address just screams scam when you're trying to buy something or get a service performed.
My wife and I are a good example of what the studios are missing I think. If we -really- want to see a movie, we see it opening night in the theater. Anything not seen opening night that we want to see just ends up stuck on our Netflix queue. At that point it's already months before Netflix will have it to send out anyway, another month, or even three isn't going to be noticed at all. It shows up when it shows up. If we love a movie in the theater, or even get something from Netflix and like it, then we tend to buy a copy. But even if we're going to buy it from having seen it in the theater, then it's a movie we would never have gotten from Netflix anyway as we already decided we liked it enough to own. If we buy it after seeing it from Netflix, well we wouldn't have bought it before seeing it in the first place. So either way our Netflix queueing, and viewing of movies hasn't changed a lick, no matter how much the studios would want to delay them from getting movies.
And a developer that would make those choices when installing software on his machine, is -also- a developer that will leave wide open holes in the software he's developing for you. After all, he's obviously straight up lazy. So all I'm getting from this is that while he put out more LoC than your other developers, they were most likely buggy insecure junk.
While the sales have apparently ended, most of December the -hardbound- of Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel at either Amazon or B&N was cheaper than the respective eBook versions. Granted without the sales going on the eBook is now cheaper, but one does wonder why the digital copy would -ever- be prices higher than any
other version.
They can want the option all they want. But even the music industry basically went to selling DRM free tracks everywhere. Because if people complain loud and often enough even companies like these will eventually realize they're fighting a loosing battle and losing customers in the process. And far more than DRM, they want your money! If the people keep speaking up and saying they won't buy it with DRM, then their greed will eventually take over.
The catch to this, given how popular the kindle and nook are this holiday season as gifts, is that I see little proof that the DRM is bothering anyone outside the /. crowd. Unlike music where everyone expected to be able to share music a little bit. Hell, even for myself I've looked into both the Kindle and Nook, and either would let me attach multiple devices within my family without any DRM issues at all. And to be honest, if I really like a book and think a friend would too, I'm far more likely to just buy them their own damned copy, because if I like it that much, I tend to -keep- my copy. After all, books I like enough to recommend that highly, I might want to read again at any time.
... "Fluoride in the water is a Mind Control Drug" warnings. .
You know, I'd almost buy into this one. Have you gone outside and actually talked to other people in the past few years? I'd say the number of people per "decade" age range that are dumb as bricks increases astronomically once you reach age ranges that have always drank fluoridated water. Perhaps making people stupid is really a secret mind control plot.
Of course, correlation != causation, they could just be dumb as bricks. ;)
Oh, my all time favorite annoyance from the console version... middle of a battle, hit the button, and I'm... talking to one of my party members. There's a list of things I'm not allowed to do during battle, like level up, but casual conversation, sure!
Okay, this is driving me NUTS. I've seen so many posts in this thread arguing about how Apple would have to "approve" the app if you write it yourself. They -don't-, you can get the SDK, pay your $99 (or whatever, for your developer keys) and then upload -anything- you write to your own devices. The approval process only comes into play if you want to sell it. Since you're writing this particular piece of software for yourself, then wether you can sell it or not shouldn't be an issue. Or is the reality, that if you put that effort into writing it, then suddenly -you- think you deserve to be paid by others for it, while you didn't feel you should have to pay others for it before?
Recently we disconnected our cable (Well, satellite but same diff). We simply realized that no one in the house was watching it, oh we turned it on in the background all the time. But there was a grand total of 3 shows we actually -watched-, and those we were dvr'ing and watching at different times, so we realized we could just grab them on hulu if we really even cared.
I do have a Mac Mini plugged into our tv with Plex installed. Which has actually led to us finding some very cool things that we'd never see on regular TV anyway, so no loss to any but the MPAA really. We've stopped going to theaters for movies because the theaters these days just suck, even if you could find a movie that -was- good. The viewing entertainment experience the MPAA tries to push would pretty much make you think they just don't want customers at all anymore.
Our local megaplex has been going all out with a even more efficient way of preventing piracy. They simply drive the customer away at the door. See out of 24 screens they only actually clean theaters 1 and 2, and even in those 2 they keep the movie out of focus, and start it late. Add in extra high and rising ticket prices and a rude staff. There's never anyone there for any movie except the occasional tourists. After all my wife and I are avid movie goers... or were, but the local theaters got so bad we basically never bother anymore.
The exception is if something shows up in the local very very small theater... For some odd reason they've escaped (which is why I won't name them;). Clean theaters, movie buff staff, everything on time. They even let people bring in coffee and ice cream from the nearby shops. So what used to be a weekly thing of going to the movies is now only when a movie we want to see is playing at our little theater.
Seriously... something like that would probably work fine for say, my grandmother. Who tended to only have her e-mail app open, or her card game of the day, or whatever.
But god, I can't begin to imagine the suffering of trying to write code on an interface like that. I'm all for multi-touch, but sheesh. Why is it every 2-bit designer who comes along thinks that to progress UI's they have to toss out everything that's managed to stick over the past 30 years.
I have a lovely 30" screen... plus another smaller screen. When I'm coding it's not uncommon to have the project open, multiple source and header files, plus other windows open for reference, testing, source control, server connections, and others. This is hardly cluttered either, I -want- absolute control over where each of these windows is on the screen and what size they are. I don't want some OS trying to organize them for me off the screen. Because especially with client/server coding, when I say, run the app on one screen, I don't -want- it hiding all the windows that are tracking log files on the server too. I'm watching those for immediate feedback.
So while I think multi-touch is great and certainly has a place on the desktop of the future, please won't someone come up with a way of using it effectively amongst the UI's we already have!
Would I continue to code? Of course, but I'd be quite happy to be back to more like my teenage years where I coded things because I simply had an idea, whether I felt the idea could pay bills or not.
But then they should be going after the -studios- for their share of the profits from iTunes/Amazon/what have you sales. Going after Apple/Amazon/whoever would be like asking Walmart for a share of each DVD they sell, right at the register, before they've even paid the distribution company, who actually has the rights to distribute the product to, oh wait.. stores, for sale...