I personally don't care how much they milk it. I won't buy the toys and glasses and "collectors edition statues" or whatever else; as long as they give me a great movie that's fairly loyal to the original content (which they did three times with LOTR, and even moreso with the re-produced extended versions), I don't care. Ian McKellen is the most important to keep!!
100 million??? Come on, get real, I doubt it. News flash: nobody cares. Most sane people will wait until there's a clear winner - if there is ever such a thing - or (like me) wait until there's an economically viable (read me: CHEAP) player that does both formats. I have a 52" LCD display just waiting for that day.
News flash 2: both formats have extremely high quality results. Great! Here's hoping they both continue to drive each other's prices down so we can all afford it.
Ahhh Jakob, lol. Web usability evangelist is more like it. "I'm feeling lucky" (as some have mentioned) is sometimes actually a pretty nice shortcut, it's also a fun way to spend an evening. I never would have discovered there was a band called "Johnny Uterus and the Philopean Tubes" without it.
Electric cars are not really efficient requiring coal or natural gas in many places to generate it.
Another comment is correcting you on the finance stuff, but I'm glad you've observed this. Lots of "green" people seem to lose sight of that fact, especially being an activist in Alberta where most of our energy comes from coal burning in the first place. Would plugging your car in be worse or better for the environment?? Gah.
The 'bubble' I see has nothing to do with companies and investors and such like the craziness that happened to.com, it has everything to do with businesses and paradigms. A couple of examples:
The paradigm of audio / video content industries is changing in a way that the current industries can't control or predict, or they're unwilling to explore the direction it's taking via their users and try to create something that matches their consumers' desires. There's room for a massive technological 'boom' there (as long as there's good product, which I'd argue against now; bloody Nickelback my eye!). iTunes is a good start, but it will evolve.
The paradigm of the online 'superpower' will change too. For the last few years it's been 'search', where Googles and Yahoos and MSNs have risen up being 'teh best search'. Searching on one is like searching on another, but of course advertising sneaks in and they can pay to be searched out!! Well, not being able to get real content will piss your users off. How long before:
a critical mass is reached where users are fed up that they only get advertised links when they search, so they move on to some unknown 'search engine' (like Google used to be)
advertisement agencies realize they're not making any money off the links / priority they're buying because people (including them) are ticked with them and they stop buying
Then what happens to Google (for example)? They make a lot of money and a lot of cool free and hip products, but most of it is paid for by horrible advertising. If that money no longer flows, there's a bust there.
My point (maybe poorly made) is that there are plenty of opportunities for boom and for bust. Yes, the company's business plan is something and I hope someone like Google has a plan, but following the trends and paradigms of what people want to do is ultimately important to stay on top. Right now in "web 2.0" (gah, I feel dirty), the paradigm is that everyone wants to create and get to their own content. They're much less interested in advertising and stuff like that, unless they put up Google ads on their own site to bring in tiny amounts of cash. What's next? That's the challenge. There won't be anything like the.bomb again, because people and investors are no longer near as stupid (or at least I'd hope that's the case). Now it's much more "what do we do with what we know" than "hey, let's make a tech company and raise money."
On the other hand, if you are going to advocate socialism, please be consistent. There are a lot of software developers here. How do you expect to make money if everyone copies your work? Are you going to make money on product support? Tell me, how much money have you spent on product support in the last few years?
You're missing the point I think. What you're seeing is the AAs trying to affect Canadian federal policy, and that's dangerous. You know how people keep talking about corrupt governments all over the world? Well guess what, a lot of that is because they get corporate donations in exchange for favorable policy on doing business in that country, and the governments will bend over backwards for the benefactors at the expense of their own citizens. As a Canadian, I don't really want a corporate entity to dictate our laws. This "You need to change or else" attitude should be replied to with a nice moon and a wave.
You also forget (in your post) that we actually already are a socialist nation (note to commie bashers: that doesn't mean we're communist!). You even see Canadian artists talking out against our government listening to the AAs, it's just plain ridiculous. As for your flogging of the software developers, there are two distinct views:
Consumer software - higher risk of piracy. Why? It's easier for the individual to hide. 90% of the people with Windows machines on here have free Windows.
Corporate software - lower risk of piracy, because businesses are much more inclined to follow the letter of the law, and are much more likely to spend the money (and have it in the first place), or the software in question is not something that will really be useful to the general public.
If you make consumer software, you just have to accept that it's part of doing business, sorry to burst your idealistic bubble. You can go some distance to combat it (e.g., online games where each numbered client talks back to the server and needs to be granted access), but in the end lots of them get hacked. As for corporate software, a big part of corporate licensing includes support. At my old company, selling the RIS/PACS systems we built was just the start of the business; and anyways, it wasn't like the general public was going to be interested in a scalable RIS/PACS system. At my current company, we give the software away 'free' with our hardware, even though we know that one of our biggest differentiators to our competitors is that software; people choose us based on it.
I don't want a corporation to dictate the laws of my country. "It's a crime though!" Well, nobody ever died from a mp3 (unless you were unfortunate enough to use an iPod in a thunderstorm) or software piracy (unless you count Die Hard 4... which I saw in the THEATRE in CANANDA with NO CAMCORDERS, *gasp*). I'm going to see Sloan at the Stampede and get some food on a stick, and that'll cheer me right up.
You guys are crazy, what a bargain! I'm totally in now! Or, I could make an extra mortgage payment instead...
Seriously Sony, just brutal. It's been said before, but Nintendo's turning a profit per machine selling it for still over $200 less than Sony's price drop, who loses cash on each sale.
Meh, attention-whore or not, you have to appreciate the comedy behind the intent of the letter, as well as the not-so-subtle socio-political statement. "Dear world, we protect sociopathic businesses over here, sweet!"
I've always thought it comedic that these companies charge money per MESSAGE for what was initially developed to the best of my knowledge as a troubleshooting feature. BALLS. Hurray for accidental free revenue!!
I'm not even reading this. This is pointless. 90% of the journals I've ever submitted to have been PDF or bust. What a bollocks statement. Of course they're rejecting the Office 2007 format, they rejected every single other format before that too! "PDF, please." Now, rejecting PDFs that were created in Office 2007, that would be funny.
Go ahead, flame me, but this is ridiculous and not even news. Guess what? ODF will be rejected too and they'll say "GAH! PDF!!" On the other side of the composition fence, while powerful for its features, TeX-based stuff has lost out to the much more powerful WYSIWYG editors now available out there (includes both free and pay-office varieties). It is still great though, for whoever is still a TeX junky (and I get the picture that once you are one you always are).
Initially I thought this was April Fools because it's actually snowing here in Calgary today, but I digress.
You have to admire his tenacity, but his target is questionable. They create SAW movies with far greater frequency than Halo games, and SAW movies are I think just as (if not more-so just because more people sell them) accessible as Halo games. The violence in the SAW movies is also I'd argue far worse than anything you'd see in a video game just because it's real actors portraying it. (Yes, I'm ignoring the interactivity argument, but still...)
Three words: James freaking Brown. Rocking the joint until the day he died and loving it. (I'd assume, at least).
On a funny side note, I worked at a Blockbuster Video waaaay back in the day when they tried doing this "Blockbuster Music" thing for a time. We had an acceptable list of music that we could play: basically we had trailer tapes that included, selections from the stuff we had on the shelf. We decided to be rebels one day with the manager away and played Daft Punk's Homework (whoops, I need to pay a royalty for saying that) after rewiring the system so you could see the trailers but we could play a CD. Anyways, we sold the store out of Homework. The manager came in and got REALLY pissed at us. So much so that we got written up for it (ooo, written up at the BBV, there goes my career). But we still sold it out. There's something to be said for free publicity, and we just played what we wanted to hear instead of the horrible pop mashup included in the repetitive trailers they required us to play. "I will rent Braveheart... I will obey..."
totally agree. Powerpoint (or the equivalent) should be used as an accessory to a presentation, not the focus. I try to involve my presentation in what I'm saying, instead of presenting the powerpoint slide deck. I also try to minimize text, and maximize visuals that illustrate or exemplify what I'm saying.
I also find stating up front the message you want people to take away from it and then telling how you're going to deliver that message to be far more effective than the horrible practice people seem to have of creating an outline. What's the point in making a presentation if you can't figure out what the clear and concise message you're going to present is? If you can't figure out a message, then don't bother making the rest of the slides.
outline: "I'm going to talk about this, then this, then this, then this..."
message: "here's what I want you to take away from this, here's how I'll explain that."
powerpoint and its contemporaries make it so easy to make a slide show that they also make it really appealing and easy to get lazy about what you're going to show.
Re:Because it didn't affect him?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
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Kudos the parent's observations, this doesn't affect me or my collection either. And if you want to watch a blu-ray disc down the road, I hope you bought a nice $1000 disc player. Oh wait! They got cheaper! Hope you bought a $600 player.
If the studios (recording and movies) stop crapping on their customers, then the manufacturers of such technology can have permission stop crapping on us too. They are selling higher resolution / greater quality at the expense of freedom to use; and it's not just MS. That hardware he didn't buy that will support playing full resolution because of the built-in hooks has a manufacturer who's just as enabling as MS.
The (at the same time) frightening and heartwarming thing about all these current discussions and debates is that at least the RIAA doesn't own the iPod; that's about the only thing we've got going for us at the moment.
If an organization like the RIAA had managed to corner digital music the way they've cornered many other mediums, we'd really be up the creek. An RIAA-branded iPod would play all the content you could download from any digital music store, because each digital music store would all be using that same universal DRM some folks have been talking about here. No other manufacturer could make a digital player unless it conformed to that digital medium. The downside? None of these players would play any content except RIAA-DRM-stamped-sealed-approved content. I wouldn't be laming my CD collection because it wouldn't play, and I wouldn't have been able to purchase the MP3 player in my car that plays 10CDs on one Disc.
Things could be worse, and from everything I see right now we all definitely need to be cheering for Captain Steve of the starship iPod. Also, thank goodness the recording monkeys spent more money on law than on engineering (so they're good at semantics but not good at foresight), and thank goodness for bands like the Barenaked Ladies.
Kids, kids, kids; this commercial, while cute and benign in nature should be taken as a warning. I saw that Monkey (I know it's an ape) drving the Jeep in 'Grandma's boy' and let me tell you, before too long you'll all be looking at this ad with a more reflective mind. Babies and monkeys are silently gonna take the roadways...
The same argument applies to me and using Windows Vista. I'm not interested in the HD content, DVDs are fine in my system, and I am continuing to encode my own CDs with my own encoder at a bitrate I want to a format that plays in my car, without any DRM that a commercial 'ripper' would put on it. So in effect, I am also choosing to not use those features. That's the same reason I don't own an iPod or download from iTunes: I'm not anti-Apple (I love my buddy's Mac Book Pro), it's just that the usage model doesn't fit what I want and need.
I am not using the HDCP feature in my monitor, the same way I am not using it in Windows. So to repeat / restate my argument, singling out Microsoft as the enabler rather than just one of the enablers is incorrect. They've had the same requirements placed on them as has my monitor manufacturer. In this respect, Microsoft is no more 'evil' than Samsung in enabling the technology. I really feel that this argument focused again and again on what I see as the wrong organization and / or target.
Note that I'm not saying Microsoft is 'bad' or 'good', I'm only focusing in on this one particular aspect of a very large product, as I see it. Like it or not, it is here, and it will more than likely stay. It will also change: there was no such thing as the Security Center when XP was released.
one: People criticize MS more because they are agressive in pushing DRM. Other aggressive are also flamed. Remember Sony? Apple, on the other hand, allows their iPod to play non-iTunes stuff, thereby appears to be less annoying to the customers. Steve Jobs even spoke against the DRM philosophy in public recently. Why should people see Apple in the same league as MS?
two: HDMI and HDCP are features. They allow you to view DRM'd HD content at full resolution. Sceens that lack HDCP can't do this.
I agree with everything you're saying here, just for what it's worth. The point I was trying to make was that if people are going to complain about software pushing DRM-related technologies (Vista or otherwise), they should also be complaining about hardware that enables DRM-related technology. I recognize HDMI and HDCP as features (heck, my new monitor supports HDCP), but it's still an enabler, a link in the chain that lets the DRM get "crammed down our throats", as it were. Samsung has had to make the same decision to support those technologies in their monitors, as will any video card manufacturer supporting the data stream. However, Samsung, NVidia and ATi (as examples) are not quite portrayed as evil here in that respect.
This is a separate point from whether or not the movie studios are right to force DRM or yet unknown use-related technologies onto their consumers. Yeah it's their choice, and I also choose not to subscribe for the moment. I'm also with you that DVD is just fine for me and I also think that if it gets to a point where being able to view the content requires more hoop-jumping than the entertainment the content provides, people will just say "gah, no thanks." (e.g., if they stopped manufacturing DVDs today and only offered their modern HD 'replacements', I don't think the two replacements' sales would go up as high as DVDs currently sell... everyone's starting from scratch again and I can't watch it on my computer with a $30 drive).
This argument has been used by Microsoft for years in defending their abyssmal security record. It sounds plausible, but unfortunately, there's no truth in it.
MS Bashing threads are so funny.
The first time I installed Linux for myself many years ago, it was hacked in a half-hour as I took a break and went to get some freaking lunch downstairs. I was lucky I knew enough at the time (although not that much) to know that someone was in the machine and uploading some crap when I got back and continued work on setting it up. Did I stop using Linux because its security is teh suxx0rz and I got a lot of flak about being dumb from 'the community' as I asked questions about how to secure the thing? No.
Will hackers attack anything they can find? Yes. My Windows box has never been attacked because I know enough to keep it secure. The better / worse design discussion is pointless and in a lot of cases incorrect anyways, as others have pointed out on here.
I agree with a lot of other stuff I've been reading, MS has themselves a bit of a pickle. They want to make an accessible product (i.e., your 10-year-old sister can sit down and start using it without apt-getting), and at the same time they have to try to protect those people from themselves to some extent. To add more problems, because their product is sold, they get all the critical press, because the press loves doing that.
Then there's the DRM issue. Why does everyone on here just complain about Vista and DRM? Newsflash folks, it's not just Vista!! What about all the hardware manufacturers building the same sort of capabilities into their products? Computer components, stereo components, even bloody cables now... how about complaining about them? Nah, it's just Microsoft. In fact, they invented DRM. BALLS.
For once, I'd like to see a thread on Slashdot complaining about the other enablers; they're not making their products only "because Vista says so". Products advertise HDMI and HDCP as features now.
This is because, unlike you, they know how to properly set the white balance on their camera (hint: you need a grey card.)
A gray card is more useful in terms of getting correct and consistent exposure. They were the tool of choice in film photography (although I still bracketed all my B/W). They are of limited use in colour correction however, it's much better if you know what kind of lights are there and can just adjust for that in the first place (e.g., I know the lights under the tradeshow roof for the auto-show I attend anually are pretty much Tungsten temperature: set it and forget it). Also, what works for the eye may not always match the data (e.g., how you remember the scene vs. how the scene actually appeared), so adjusting one image to 'look right' on a calibrated monitor and then adjusting the other images in a set accordingly may be more appropriate.
as for CFLs, the entire exterior of my house is CFL-lit and they look just fine. I also replaced all the lights in my garage with CFLs and it's actually brighter than the incandescents, with no flicker. I'll be moving inside with them soon with no complaint.
Couldn't agree more. In commerce, it definitely falls on the vendors to provide the products they promised, especially if they've already sold them. Here though, "free" upgrade implies you didn't actually pay for it, so really they can say "sorry, it's going to take a little while." This is the same reason your mail-in rebates on RAM take an aeon to process.
You definitely feel for the vendors here though. They're dealing with a lot of lay-people, and upgrading them to Vista remotely is a whole lot more tedious than just doing it in the lab before you ship the computer.
Yeah, this is a case of "do you sue the auto manufacturer for damages becuase the dolt behind me decided to not brake on an icy streen and rear-end me" sort of thing. For one, parents these days seem to expect the system to raise their children for them. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. My parents were nosey, but within reason. And they certainly didnt' sue the school when I dug a hole in my leg falling off the playground. And guess what? The leg still works 20-odd years later.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally don't care how much they milk it. I won't buy the toys and glasses and "collectors edition statues" or whatever else; as long as they give me a great movie that's fairly loyal to the original content (which they did three times with LOTR, and even moreso with the re-produced extended versions), I don't care. Ian McKellen is the most important to keep!!
100 million??? Come on, get real, I doubt it. News flash: nobody cares. Most sane people will wait until there's a clear winner - if there is ever such a thing - or (like me) wait until there's an economically viable (read me: CHEAP) player that does both formats. I have a 52" LCD display just waiting for that day.
News flash 2: both formats have extremely high quality results. Great! Here's hoping they both continue to drive each other's prices down so we can all afford it.
Ahhh Jakob, lol. Web usability evangelist is more like it. "I'm feeling lucky" (as some have mentioned) is sometimes actually a pretty nice shortcut, it's also a fun way to spend an evening. I never would have discovered there was a band called "Johnny Uterus and the Philopean Tubes" without it.
Another comment is correcting you on the finance stuff, but I'm glad you've observed this. Lots of "green" people seem to lose sight of that fact, especially being an activist in Alberta where most of our energy comes from coal burning in the first place. Would plugging your car in be worse or better for the environment?? Gah.
The 'bubble' I see has nothing to do with companies and investors and such like the craziness that happened to .com, it has everything to do with businesses and paradigms. A couple of examples:
The paradigm of audio / video content industries is changing in a way that the current industries can't control or predict, or they're unwilling to explore the direction it's taking via their users and try to create something that matches their consumers' desires. There's room for a massive technological 'boom' there (as long as there's good product, which I'd argue against now; bloody Nickelback my eye!). iTunes is a good start, but it will evolve.
The paradigm of the online 'superpower' will change too. For the last few years it's been 'search', where Googles and Yahoos and MSNs have risen up being 'teh best search'. Searching on one is like searching on another, but of course advertising sneaks in and they can pay to be searched out!! Well, not being able to get real content will piss your users off. How long before:
Then what happens to Google (for example)? They make a lot of money and a lot of cool free and hip products, but most of it is paid for by horrible advertising. If that money no longer flows, there's a bust there.
My point (maybe poorly made) is that there are plenty of opportunities for boom and for bust. Yes, the company's business plan is something and I hope someone like Google has a plan, but following the trends and paradigms of what people want to do is ultimately important to stay on top. Right now in "web 2.0" (gah, I feel dirty), the paradigm is that everyone wants to create and get to their own content. They're much less interested in advertising and stuff like that, unless they put up Google ads on their own site to bring in tiny amounts of cash. What's next? That's the challenge. There won't be anything like the .bomb again, because people and investors are no longer near as stupid (or at least I'd hope that's the case). Now it's much more "what do we do with what we know" than "hey, let's make a tech company and raise money."
You're missing the point I think. What you're seeing is the AAs trying to affect Canadian federal policy, and that's dangerous. You know how people keep talking about corrupt governments all over the world? Well guess what, a lot of that is because they get corporate donations in exchange for favorable policy on doing business in that country, and the governments will bend over backwards for the benefactors at the expense of their own citizens. As a Canadian, I don't really want a corporate entity to dictate our laws. This "You need to change or else" attitude should be replied to with a nice moon and a wave.
You also forget (in your post) that we actually already are a socialist nation (note to commie bashers: that doesn't mean we're communist!). You even see Canadian artists talking out against our government listening to the AAs, it's just plain ridiculous. As for your flogging of the software developers, there are two distinct views:
If you make consumer software, you just have to accept that it's part of doing business, sorry to burst your idealistic bubble. You can go some distance to combat it (e.g., online games where each numbered client talks back to the server and needs to be granted access), but in the end lots of them get hacked. As for corporate software, a big part of corporate licensing includes support. At my old company, selling the RIS/PACS systems we built was just the start of the business; and anyways, it wasn't like the general public was going to be interested in a scalable RIS/PACS system. At my current company, we give the software away 'free' with our hardware, even though we know that one of our biggest differentiators to our competitors is that software; people choose us based on it.
I don't want a corporation to dictate the laws of my country. "It's a crime though!" Well, nobody ever died from a mp3 (unless you were unfortunate enough to use an iPod in a thunderstorm) or software piracy (unless you count Die Hard 4You guys are crazy, what a bargain! I'm totally in now! Or, I could make an extra mortgage payment instead...
Seriously Sony, just brutal. It's been said before, but Nintendo's turning a profit per machine selling it for still over $200 less than Sony's price drop, who loses cash on each sale.
The attention-whore Florida attorney
Meh, attention-whore or not, you have to appreciate the comedy behind the intent of the letter, as well as the not-so-subtle socio-political statement. "Dear world, we protect sociopathic businesses over here, sweet!"
I've always thought it comedic that these companies charge money per MESSAGE for what was initially developed to the best of my knowledge as a troubleshooting feature. BALLS. Hurray for accidental free revenue!!
I'm not even reading this. This is pointless. 90% of the journals I've ever submitted to have been PDF or bust. What a bollocks statement. Of course they're rejecting the Office 2007 format, they rejected every single other format before that too! "PDF, please." Now, rejecting PDFs that were created in Office 2007, that would be funny.
Go ahead, flame me, but this is ridiculous and not even news. Guess what? ODF will be rejected too and they'll say "GAH! PDF!!" On the other side of the composition fence, while powerful for its features, TeX-based stuff has lost out to the much more powerful WYSIWYG editors now available out there (includes both free and pay-office varieties). It is still great though, for whoever is still a TeX junky (and I get the picture that once you are one you always are).
It's not easy being green... Sue me.
Initially I thought this was April Fools because it's actually snowing here in Calgary today, but I digress.
You have to admire his tenacity, but his target is questionable. They create SAW movies with far greater frequency than Halo games, and SAW movies are I think just as (if not more-so just because more people sell them) accessible as Halo games. The violence in the SAW movies is also I'd argue far worse than anything you'd see in a video game just because it's real actors portraying it. (Yes, I'm ignoring the interactivity argument, but still...)
Three words: James freaking Brown. Rocking the joint until the day he died and loving it. (I'd assume, at least).
On a funny side note, I worked at a Blockbuster Video waaaay back in the day when they tried doing this "Blockbuster Music" thing for a time. We had an acceptable list of music that we could play: basically we had trailer tapes that included, selections from the stuff we had on the shelf. We decided to be rebels one day with the manager away and played Daft Punk's Homework (whoops, I need to pay a royalty for saying that) after rewiring the system so you could see the trailers but we could play a CD. Anyways, we sold the store out of Homework. The manager came in and got REALLY pissed at us. So much so that we got written up for it (ooo, written up at the BBV, there goes my career). But we still sold it out. There's something to be said for free publicity, and we just played what we wanted to hear instead of the horrible pop mashup included in the repetitive trailers they required us to play. "I will rent Braveheart ... I will obey ..."
totally agree. Powerpoint (or the equivalent) should be used as an accessory to a presentation, not the focus. I try to involve my presentation in what I'm saying, instead of presenting the powerpoint slide deck. I also try to minimize text, and maximize visuals that illustrate or exemplify what I'm saying.
I also find stating up front the message you want people to take away from it and then telling how you're going to deliver that message to be far more effective than the horrible practice people seem to have of creating an outline. What's the point in making a presentation if you can't figure out what the clear and concise message you're going to present is? If you can't figure out a message, then don't bother making the rest of the slides.
powerpoint and its contemporaries make it so easy to make a slide show that they also make it really appealing and easy to get lazy about what you're going to show.
Kudos the parent's observations, this doesn't affect me or my collection either. And if you want to watch a blu-ray disc down the road, I hope you bought a nice $1000 disc player. Oh wait! They got cheaper! Hope you bought a $600 player.
If the studios (recording and movies) stop crapping on their customers, then the manufacturers of such technology can have permission stop crapping on us too. They are selling higher resolution / greater quality at the expense of freedom to use; and it's not just MS. That hardware he didn't buy that will support playing full resolution because of the built-in hooks has a manufacturer who's just as enabling as MS.
The (at the same time) frightening and heartwarming thing about all these current discussions and debates is that at least the RIAA doesn't own the iPod; that's about the only thing we've got going for us at the moment.
If an organization like the RIAA had managed to corner digital music the way they've cornered many other mediums, we'd really be up the creek. An RIAA-branded iPod would play all the content you could download from any digital music store, because each digital music store would all be using that same universal DRM some folks have been talking about here. No other manufacturer could make a digital player unless it conformed to that digital medium. The downside? None of these players would play any content except RIAA-DRM-stamped-sealed-approved content. I wouldn't be laming my CD collection because it wouldn't play, and I wouldn't have been able to purchase the MP3 player in my car that plays 10CDs on one Disc.
Things could be worse, and from everything I see right now we all definitely need to be cheering for Captain Steve of the starship iPod. Also, thank goodness the recording monkeys spent more money on law than on engineering (so they're good at semantics but not good at foresight), and thank goodness for bands like the Barenaked Ladies.
you just wait until the fabled "digital enhancement" feature is completed, then they'll know who's lightin' off those black cats!!
Kids, kids, kids; this commercial, while cute and benign in nature should be taken as a warning. I saw that Monkey (I know it's an ape) drving the Jeep in 'Grandma's boy' and let me tell you, before too long you'll all be looking at this ad with a more reflective mind. Babies and monkeys are silently gonna take the roadways...
Translated: "Please help us to maintain our litigation business model."
I can feel what I hope is the collective "oh crap" eminating from the RIAA's 'new revenue' dept.
The same argument applies to me and using Windows Vista. I'm not interested in the HD content, DVDs are fine in my system, and I am continuing to encode my own CDs with my own encoder at a bitrate I want to a format that plays in my car, without any DRM that a commercial 'ripper' would put on it. So in effect, I am also choosing to not use those features. That's the same reason I don't own an iPod or download from iTunes: I'm not anti-Apple (I love my buddy's Mac Book Pro), it's just that the usage model doesn't fit what I want and need.
I am not using the HDCP feature in my monitor, the same way I am not using it in Windows. So to repeat / restate my argument, singling out Microsoft as the enabler rather than just one of the enablers is incorrect. They've had the same requirements placed on them as has my monitor manufacturer. In this respect, Microsoft is no more 'evil' than Samsung in enabling the technology. I really feel that this argument focused again and again on what I see as the wrong organization and / or target.
Note that I'm not saying Microsoft is 'bad' or 'good', I'm only focusing in on this one particular aspect of a very large product, as I see it. Like it or not, it is here, and it will more than likely stay. It will also change: there was no such thing as the Security Center when XP was released.
one: People criticize MS more because they are agressive in pushing DRM. Other aggressive are also flamed. Remember Sony? Apple, on the other hand, allows their iPod to play non-iTunes stuff, thereby appears to be less annoying to the customers. Steve Jobs even spoke against the DRM philosophy in public recently. Why should people see Apple in the same league as MS?
two: HDMI and HDCP are features. They allow you to view DRM'd HD content at full resolution. Sceens that lack HDCP can't do this.
I agree with everything you're saying here, just for what it's worth. The point I was trying to make was that if people are going to complain about software pushing DRM-related technologies (Vista or otherwise), they should also be complaining about hardware that enables DRM-related technology. I recognize HDMI and HDCP as features (heck, my new monitor supports HDCP), but it's still an enabler, a link in the chain that lets the DRM get "crammed down our throats", as it were. Samsung has had to make the same decision to support those technologies in their monitors, as will any video card manufacturer supporting the data stream. However, Samsung, NVidia and ATi (as examples) are not quite portrayed as evil here in that respect.
This is a separate point from whether or not the movie studios are right to force DRM or yet unknown use-related technologies onto their consumers. Yeah it's their choice, and I also choose not to subscribe for the moment. I'm also with you that DVD is just fine for me and I also think that if it gets to a point where being able to view the content requires more hoop-jumping than the entertainment the content provides, people will just say "gah, no thanks." (e.g., if they stopped manufacturing DVDs today and only offered their modern HD 'replacements', I don't think the two replacements' sales would go up as high as DVDs currently sell... everyone's starting from scratch again and I can't watch it on my computer with a $30 drive).
Vista security to DRM, talk about tangents :D
This argument has been used by Microsoft for years in defending their abyssmal security record. It sounds plausible, but unfortunately, there's no truth in it.
MS Bashing threads are so funny.
The first time I installed Linux for myself many years ago, it was hacked in a half-hour as I took a break and went to get some freaking lunch downstairs. I was lucky I knew enough at the time (although not that much) to know that someone was in the machine and uploading some crap when I got back and continued work on setting it up. Did I stop using Linux because its security is teh suxx0rz and I got a lot of flak about being dumb from 'the community' as I asked questions about how to secure the thing? No.
Will hackers attack anything they can find? Yes. My Windows box has never been attacked because I know enough to keep it secure. The better / worse design discussion is pointless and in a lot of cases incorrect anyways, as others have pointed out on here.
I agree with a lot of other stuff I've been reading, MS has themselves a bit of a pickle. They want to make an accessible product (i.e., your 10-year-old sister can sit down and start using it without apt-getting), and at the same time they have to try to protect those people from themselves to some extent. To add more problems, because their product is sold, they get all the critical press, because the press loves doing that.
Then there's the DRM issue. Why does everyone on here just complain about Vista and DRM? Newsflash folks, it's not just Vista!! What about all the hardware manufacturers building the same sort of capabilities into their products? Computer components, stereo components, even bloody cables now... how about complaining about them? Nah, it's just Microsoft. In fact, they invented DRM. BALLS.
For once, I'd like to see a thread on Slashdot complaining about the other enablers; they're not making their products only "because Vista says so". Products advertise HDMI and HDCP as features now.
This is because, unlike you, they know how to properly set the white balance on their camera (hint: you need a grey card.)
A gray card is more useful in terms of getting correct and consistent exposure. They were the tool of choice in film photography (although I still bracketed all my B/W). They are of limited use in colour correction however, it's much better if you know what kind of lights are there and can just adjust for that in the first place (e.g., I know the lights under the tradeshow roof for the auto-show I attend anually are pretty much Tungsten temperature: set it and forget it). Also, what works for the eye may not always match the data (e.g., how you remember the scene vs. how the scene actually appeared), so adjusting one image to 'look right' on a calibrated monitor and then adjusting the other images in a set accordingly may be more appropriate.
as for CFLs, the entire exterior of my house is CFL-lit and they look just fine. I also replaced all the lights in my garage with CFLs and it's actually brighter than the incandescents, with no flicker. I'll be moving inside with them soon with no complaint.
Couldn't agree more. In commerce, it definitely falls on the vendors to provide the products they promised, especially if they've already sold them. Here though, "free" upgrade implies you didn't actually pay for it, so really they can say "sorry, it's going to take a little while." This is the same reason your mail-in rebates on RAM take an aeon to process.
You definitely feel for the vendors here though. They're dealing with a lot of lay-people, and upgrading them to Vista remotely is a whole lot more tedious than just doing it in the lab before you ship the computer.
thanks for the all-caps, that's great. :)
Yeah, this is a case of "do you sue the auto manufacturer for damages becuase the dolt behind me decided to not brake on an icy streen and rear-end me" sort of thing. For one, parents these days seem to expect the system to raise their children for them. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. My parents were nosey, but within reason. And they certainly didnt' sue the school when I dug a hole in my leg falling off the playground. And guess what? The leg still works 20-odd years later.