This is exactly what I was hoping would happen. With the XBOX 360 HD-DVD player cracked, what are they supposed to do? Microsoft will throw their huge weight against any suggestion of revoking the player's keys. And if those keys did get revoked, I think they would have finally gone far enough to see a serious consumer backlash.
I'm rooting against AACS for a simple reason: I want to buy hardware, software, and media that is 100% devoted to enabling me to do as much as possible as easily as possible. I don't want to pay more to include technology that's trying to tell me what NOT to do. I hope the futility and anti-consumer nature of these restrictive practices will soon become too obvious to ignore.
Well, it's certainly not going to help when it comes time to sort out how this happened and who is at fault. With two competing organizations involved, or at least two separate organizations which each have a strong desire to save face, there is bound to be a lot of finger pointing and tension which is not helpful.
At least, that's how I read it. Certainly I would agree it is unreasonable to start blaming one side or the other when noone knows the full story yet.
I think this is great news, but not because I'd ever buy one. I hope that this will inspire others to build competing devices - devices which aren't tied to Apple's store and Apple's DRM, but which instead will create a friendly little menu and play whatever content I throw at it, in divx, xvid, or whatever format.
In theory, you are correct. In practice, when I buy an OEM copy of Windows, it's up to my judgement to decide if I can rightfully transfer that copy to another PC. If at some later date, I build another PC using some parts from the old PC, the OEM license on Windows can and should be allowed to go with it. But with the Dell OEM copy, they don't really give you that option. They take that right away by not giving you a real install disk that will install on any hardware.
I also happen to think that an OEM license is about as silly as selling someone a set of dishes but telling them they can only use those dishes on one specific table. But I digress.
There's also a big advantage for those buying the OS - on the homebrew machine, you have a full installer on CD. This allows you to upgrade/replace the machine in the future without repurchasing the OS. When you buy the Dell, you don't get a real install disk, and your OS is tied to the machine.
I read a comment once on drupal.org which described Drupal as a "CMS construction kit." I've found it to be a very apt description. Drupal isn't meant to be a working CMS out of the box so much as it's meant to provide a framework for a programmer to quickly create a customized CMS.
The fact that a programming language is easy to use IS NOT A PROBLEM! I'm so tired of hearing this. The fact that bad code can be written in PHP isn't really a problem either, though it does end up hurting PHP's reputation.
The important question as a developer is this: can I easily write code which is also well-written and reasonably secure? For me, the answer is yes. I like PHP because I can get things done so efficiently. Just because others are writing horrible PHP code doesn't mean I have to follow their bad habits.
I'm not blind to PHP's weaknesses, but at the end of the day it still works well for me. Since PHP5, it's become reasonably mature and it will only get better in time. I wouldn't use it for flight control software, but for web sites it is very good.
Don't write off PHP just because some people complained about it on Slashdot. For every angry person on here complaining about PHP, there are many more talented PHP developers out there getting real work done. Now, I think it's a great idea to expose yourself to more languages and to make your own decisions about what language is best for any given project. But don't be surprised if you find that PHP, despite a few quirks, turns out to be the most efficient way to practically accomplish many projects. That's what I've often found to be the case.
Ironically, AJAX should arguably be most useful for people with slow internet connections, as it allows one to send small chunks of data without reloading an entire web page.
But often, the apps which use AJAX are also using big graphics and video, cumbersome libraries and other bling that require high bandwidth to be enjoyable.
Hey, this is a great idea... since all the open source desktop developers have yet to make one truly compelling desktop environment, let's just splinter the group and get them working on several unrelated projects. That ought to speed things up.
Linux has critical mass and is the most mature open source OS. Let's get it to the point where it's on 50% of new PC's, then maybe we can start toying with other ideas.
You may be correct, in a conservative cover-all-your-bases sort of way, but I think it's pretty sad that it's come to that. Pointing out the weaknesses in someone's skill set or experience could be very helpful to them when done tactfully. If someone has taken the time to come in and interview, and you can offer them helpful advice that doesn't cost you anything, it would be very good of you to give that advice. I hate the idea that you can't be kind and help out your fellow man because there might be a hungry lawyer around the corner.
I doubt there's much chance of a lawsuit anyway if you are just careful in your approach. For one thing, the person will be able to tell if you are offering help rather than being mean. Second, what law can there possibly be against telling someone that (for example) they don't grasp the basics of OO programming?
That's actually a pretty interesting concept. If there is truly a large methane lake, could we build a space probe boat? It could cover a lot of area quickly, and it could drop a tethered instrument to collect deep samples. It would be an interesting and unique engineering problem.
Imagine if it got swallowed by a methane breathing whale!
You've made the classic mistake of applying common sense to copyright law.:)
Using common sense, P2P networks are simply an efficient way for people to lend CDs to one another. Consider the P2P network "bob" which has one million users. Now consider the song "fun" which is shared on that network. In almost every case, there will be more people in the "bob" network who own a legal, paid-for copy of the song "fun", than there will be people in the "bob" network listening to it at a given point in time. Therefore, the P2P network is just helping people to share the music they've paid for so it doesn't sit on their shelves unappreciated.
Just because smaller flash drives exist, that doesn't mean there isn't some amazing, innovative work taking place to advance them to the point that they can compete with hard drives. This sort of advance may not have the wow factor of something like the first cell phone, but behind the scenes it may still be amazing.
And "cheaper" is an incredible sort of innovation. Making flash drives cheap enough to compete means that they can be accessible by the average person, rather than only existing as a proof of concept in a lab somewhere. Making new things cheaper is how those things are brought into our day to day lives.
Imagine if someone made a food generator that could feed a person for $1 per month. You could say, "So it's just food, but cheaper?" Or, you could say, "Great, you just cured world hunger!"
They're just pathetic and desperate now. It's kind of sad to watch.
My brother had two new toys over Christmas. The first was a PS3 which he bought so he could resell it on eBay, with a couple of rented games. The second was one of those $5 Burger King games for the original XBox. Guess which one we played all weekend? It's hard to exaggerate just how much Sony is screwed.
One, I just pointed out Dreamhost, where you could just not use the web hosting part of their service and store the 300GB for 25% of the cost.
Two, for $300 you could buy 3 300GB drives. Set two up in a RAID configuration, and put the third in a safety deposit box for two years. You're still saving about $900.
This is a fine solution for storing a gig or two of data, but let's say you need to store 300 GB. For this example, we upload the data once, download or update it an average of three times per byte, and store it for two years:
300*(.20 * 4 +.15 * 24) = $1,320
I don't see how that's a reasonable rate. A 300 GB drive goes for about $100 these days. Also, compare this to Dreamhost's web hosting plan. There you can get the "Code Monster" plan which gives you 400GB of storage, 4TB transfer per month, not to mention an entire web hosting package. If you pay for 2 years up front, it costs $382. That's much cheaper and you're getting much more bandwidth usage.
Now imagine if you used all that storage and bandwidth with S3:
4000 *.20 * 24 + 400 *.15 * 24 = $20,640
Yikes! Amazon's prices seem to have little relation to the real cost of hosting and transfering data. (Disclaimer: I'm a Dreamhost customer but I have no other interest in their company.)
A high percentage of people will have high resolution digital photos. Some users will have digital camcorders. A few will have 300 hours of their kids filmed on HD digital camcorders, which would be terabytes of data.
And practically, there is a need to back up one's CDs and DVDs, since if something happens to them, there's no other way to get them back short of repurchasing.
Data Cloud is a silly name for online file storage, but it is something that will be exceedingly useful. There are files storage services now, but many of them charge ten times what it would cost to back up your files locally. The innovation is that these services will finally become cheap and/or free, even for data in the hundreds of GB.
This gives you countless advantages: You can get away without buying extra drives and implementing RAID. You are protected against fire, theft, and (possibly) accidental deletions. You don't have to open up an FTP channel on your local router. You aren't required to have a static IP for your home machine, and you don't have to always keep it running. You can take apart your local machine, rebuild it, and move things around without worrying about your files. You can backup things which were previously impractical to back up, such as ripping your entire DVD collection and storing it without extra compression. Sounds pretty darn good to me.
There are many ways to define dominance. There are many more bacteria, they can potentially kill many of us, and they'd be more likely to survive if a massive meteor shower came today. But we have intelligence, creativity, and self awareness. We have a greater ability to shape the world around us, a will of our own, and the potential to even advance beyond this planet (though admittedly the bacteria will come along for the ride.) 1000 years from now, and 100,000 years from now, we can imagine exactly what bacteria will be like and what they'll be doing, but we can only make wild guesses about humanity.
Morality is a human construct, not a natural phenomenon.
...we have developed the constructs of morality as a collective because generally they benefit the species.
Wait, so morality is not a natural phenomenon, it's just a product of natural evolution?
I agree that we probably couldn't end life on earth, even with a nuclear war. But we could end our own species, and set the planet back a few dozen million years. Humanity is the greatest thing to come from our planet in 4.5 billion years, so I believe we're worth preserving. We should preserve as many other species as possible too, but we come first.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what I was hoping would happen. With the XBOX 360 HD-DVD player cracked, what are they supposed to do? Microsoft will throw their huge weight against any suggestion of revoking the player's keys. And if those keys did get revoked, I think they would have finally gone far enough to see a serious consumer backlash.
I'm rooting against AACS for a simple reason: I want to buy hardware, software, and media that is 100% devoted to enabling me to do as much as possible as easily as possible. I don't want to pay more to include technology that's trying to tell me what NOT to do. I hope the futility and anti-consumer nature of these restrictive practices will soon become too obvious to ignore.
Well, it's certainly not going to help when it comes time to sort out how this happened and who is at fault. With two competing organizations involved, or at least two separate organizations which each have a strong desire to save face, there is bound to be a lot of finger pointing and tension which is not helpful.
At least, that's how I read it. Certainly I would agree it is unreasonable to start blaming one side or the other when noone knows the full story yet.
I think this is great news, but not because I'd ever buy one. I hope that this will inspire others to build competing devices - devices which aren't tied to Apple's store and Apple's DRM, but which instead will create a friendly little menu and play whatever content I throw at it, in divx, xvid, or whatever format.
In theory, you are correct. In practice, when I buy an OEM copy of Windows, it's up to my judgement to decide if I can rightfully transfer that copy to another PC. If at some later date, I build another PC using some parts from the old PC, the OEM license on Windows can and should be allowed to go with it. But with the Dell OEM copy, they don't really give you that option. They take that right away by not giving you a real install disk that will install on any hardware.
I also happen to think that an OEM license is about as silly as selling someone a set of dishes but telling them they can only use those dishes on one specific table. But I digress.
There's also a big advantage for those buying the OS - on the homebrew machine, you have a full installer on CD. This allows you to upgrade/replace the machine in the future without repurchasing the OS. When you buy the Dell, you don't get a real install disk, and your OS is tied to the machine.
I read a comment once on drupal.org which described Drupal as a "CMS construction kit." I've found it to be a very apt description. Drupal isn't meant to be a working CMS out of the box so much as it's meant to provide a framework for a programmer to quickly create a customized CMS.
The fact that a programming language is easy to use IS NOT A PROBLEM! I'm so tired of hearing this. The fact that bad code can be written in PHP isn't really a problem either, though it does end up hurting PHP's reputation.
The important question as a developer is this: can I easily write code which is also well-written and reasonably secure? For me, the answer is yes. I like PHP because I can get things done so efficiently. Just because others are writing horrible PHP code doesn't mean I have to follow their bad habits.
I'm not blind to PHP's weaknesses, but at the end of the day it still works well for me. Since PHP5, it's become reasonably mature and it will only get better in time. I wouldn't use it for flight control software, but for web sites it is very good.
Don't write off PHP just because some people complained about it on Slashdot. For every angry person on here complaining about PHP, there are many more talented PHP developers out there getting real work done. Now, I think it's a great idea to expose yourself to more languages and to make your own decisions about what language is best for any given project. But don't be surprised if you find that PHP, despite a few quirks, turns out to be the most efficient way to practically accomplish many projects. That's what I've often found to be the case.
DRAM, that's fast!
Ironically, AJAX should arguably be most useful for people with slow internet connections, as it allows one to send small chunks of data without reloading an entire web page.
But often, the apps which use AJAX are also using big graphics and video, cumbersome libraries and other bling that require high bandwidth to be enjoyable.
They should choose that Anonymous Coward guy, he always has plenty to say...
Agreed... I'd love to see someone try to market "The Rabbit Diet".
Health by Hasenfeffer?
Hey, this is a great idea... since all the open source desktop developers have yet to make one truly compelling desktop environment, let's just splinter the group and get them working on several unrelated projects. That ought to speed things up.
Linux has critical mass and is the most mature open source OS. Let's get it to the point where it's on 50% of new PC's, then maybe we can start toying with other ideas.
You may be correct, in a conservative cover-all-your-bases sort of way, but I think it's pretty sad that it's come to that. Pointing out the weaknesses in someone's skill set or experience could be very helpful to them when done tactfully. If someone has taken the time to come in and interview, and you can offer them helpful advice that doesn't cost you anything, it would be very good of you to give that advice. I hate the idea that you can't be kind and help out your fellow man because there might be a hungry lawyer around the corner.
I doubt there's much chance of a lawsuit anyway if you are just careful in your approach. For one thing, the person will be able to tell if you are offering help rather than being mean. Second, what law can there possibly be against telling someone that (for example) they don't grasp the basics of OO programming?
That's actually a pretty interesting concept. If there is truly a large methane lake, could we build a space probe boat? It could cover a lot of area quickly, and it could drop a tethered instrument to collect deep samples. It would be an interesting and unique engineering problem.
Imagine if it got swallowed by a methane breathing whale!
You've made the classic mistake of applying common sense to copyright law. :)
Using common sense, P2P networks are simply an efficient way for people to lend CDs to one another. Consider the P2P network "bob" which has one million users. Now consider the song "fun" which is shared on that network. In almost every case, there will be more people in the "bob" network who own a legal, paid-for copy of the song "fun", than there will be people in the "bob" network listening to it at a given point in time. Therefore, the P2P network is just helping people to share the music they've paid for so it doesn't sit on their shelves unappreciated.
Try using that in court!
Just because smaller flash drives exist, that doesn't mean there isn't some amazing, innovative work taking place to advance them to the point that they can compete with hard drives. This sort of advance may not have the wow factor of something like the first cell phone, but behind the scenes it may still be amazing.
And "cheaper" is an incredible sort of innovation. Making flash drives cheap enough to compete means that they can be accessible by the average person, rather than only existing as a proof of concept in a lab somewhere. Making new things cheaper is how those things are brought into our day to day lives.
Imagine if someone made a food generator that could feed a person for $1 per month. You could say, "So it's just food, but cheaper?" Or, you could say, "Great, you just cured world hunger!"
They're just pathetic and desperate now. It's kind of sad to watch.
My brother had two new toys over Christmas. The first was a PS3 which he bought so he could resell it on eBay, with a couple of rented games. The second was one of those $5 Burger King games for the original XBox. Guess which one we played all weekend? It's hard to exaggerate just how much Sony is screwed.
Seriously? You think it's cheap?
One, I just pointed out Dreamhost, where you could just not use the web hosting part of their service and store the 300GB for 25% of the cost.
Two, for $300 you could buy 3 300GB drives. Set two up in a RAID configuration, and put the third in a safety deposit box for two years. You're still saving about $900.
Cheap? Ha! I hope you're a troll.
This is a fine solution for storing a gig or two of data, but let's say you need to store 300 GB. For this example, we upload the data once, download or update it an average of three times per byte, and store it for two years:
.15 * 24) = $1,320
.20 * 24 + 400 * .15 * 24 = $20,640
300*(.20 * 4 +
I don't see how that's a reasonable rate. A 300 GB drive goes for about $100 these days. Also, compare this to Dreamhost's web hosting plan. There you can get the "Code Monster" plan which gives you 400GB of storage, 4TB transfer per month, not to mention an entire web hosting package. If you pay for 2 years up front, it costs $382. That's much cheaper and you're getting much more bandwidth usage.
Now imagine if you used all that storage and bandwidth with S3:
4000 *
Yikes! Amazon's prices seem to have little relation to the real cost of hosting and transfering data. (Disclaimer: I'm a Dreamhost customer but I have no other interest in their company.)
Large user created data: photos and home movies.
A high percentage of people will have high resolution digital photos. Some users will have digital camcorders. A few will have 300 hours of their kids filmed on HD digital camcorders, which would be terabytes of data.
And practically, there is a need to back up one's CDs and DVDs, since if something happens to them, there's no other way to get them back short of repurchasing.
Data Cloud is a silly name for online file storage, but it is something that will be exceedingly useful. There are files storage services now, but many of them charge ten times what it would cost to back up your files locally. The innovation is that these services will finally become cheap and/or free, even for data in the hundreds of GB.
This gives you countless advantages: You can get away without buying extra drives and implementing RAID. You are protected against fire, theft, and (possibly) accidental deletions. You don't have to open up an FTP channel on your local router. You aren't required to have a static IP for your home machine, and you don't have to always keep it running. You can take apart your local machine, rebuild it, and move things around without worrying about your files. You can backup things which were previously impractical to back up, such as ripping your entire DVD collection and storing it without extra compression. Sounds pretty darn good to me.
Let's meet back here in 100,000 years and see who was right.
There are many ways to define dominance. There are many more bacteria, they can potentially kill many of us, and they'd be more likely to survive if a massive meteor shower came today. But we have intelligence, creativity, and self awareness. We have a greater ability to shape the world around us, a will of our own, and the potential to even advance beyond this planet (though admittedly the bacteria will come along for the ride.) 1000 years from now, and 100,000 years from now, we can imagine exactly what bacteria will be like and what they'll be doing, but we can only make wild guesses about humanity.
Also, I can bench more than bacteria.
Wait, so morality is not a natural phenomenon, it's just a product of natural evolution?
I agree that we probably couldn't end life on earth, even with a nuclear war. But we could end our own species, and set the planet back a few dozen million years. Humanity is the greatest thing to come from our planet in 4.5 billion years, so I believe we're worth preserving. We should preserve as many other species as possible too, but we come first.