An interesting test would be to compare a "clean upgrade" install (where fresh XP install gets upgraded to Vista) to a "clean full" install and identify anything that works differently. If your suggestion is not just common wisdom, but real honest fact, it'd be interesting to see how MS rationalizes selling a faulty product, and what the public winds up doing about that.:)
My logic is probably bad or even illogical but never mind hehe.
Really abstract hypotheticals are usually part bullshit anyway, even if they're pieced together particularly well. I myself was having a bitch of a time explaining the whole "rights are artificial" thing because I'm very into preserving a fair quantity of them.:)
On to real life and the DRM thing. I admit I havn't used many DRM-riddled files so it has not affected me. Also, I'm usually a bit of an optimist (at least in the long term.) If the DRM situation gets too bad I really think non-tech people will notice and complain, but maybe that is too optimistic. Although, the DRM, the DMCA and the crazy RIAA lawsuits are kind of like the large records companies going down with a big fight, they are lashing out whereever they can.
I'm not particularly optimistic over the present situation. Consumers generally don't do much to educate themselves (look how telecom prices rise far faster than the services improve), and none of these companies really ever talk about DRM up front. DRM itself isn't a selling point; instead, it's portrayed (if at all) as a slight necessary inconvenience to increase...well, convenience, I suppose. It's pretty stupid, but when I see the large numbers of folks *even here* who readily accept such things, I feel that I've got every reason to be fearful of what could happen.
You're missing my point. Anybody claiming that any particular "right" is universally trivial would have to make that claim about any and all rights, because all rights are artificial concepts created by man. There *are* no intrinsic rights. Rights don't exist until they're conceived and pushed heavily against the rest of a given social group until somebody else accepts them. Even so, this is no assurance that they're upheld, for other individuals in the social group might opt not to accept them, or may embrace particular tenets of the idea but ultimately interpret the meaning differently. Conceiving of a "right" will *always* sound needless and crazy to some people, but this should by no means indicate that the idealists are flat-out "wrong".
Getting to what you're talking about... Yes, nobody forces you to buy DRM music, much as nobody forces you to buy or even listen to music at all. But if you *want* to listen to music, and you *want* to play within the letter of the law, your choices of what you can purchase for your listening pleasure become severely limited. The more accepted DRM becomes by consumers, the more the industry will feel they can get away with it, and so the DRM could be become even more widespread, which limits your options further. What happens when it's so wide-spread that suddenly there's precious little in the way of mass-produced readily-available devices on which to play non-restricted music formats? Just "hacking" some device and getting it to play un-restricted formats isn't acceptable, because it involves extra time and effort to learn how to do such a thing, and at the point where that's a necessity, such efforts could be made illegal by laws even more restrictive than the DMCA, because not enough people cared and too many people told a few cranks that there was nothing to worry about. We're trying to *avoid* ever getting to that point.
So will any manufacturers step up to the plate and start producing hardware that complies with the letter of the law but that's easy for the skilled user to circumvent? Say by doing a firmware update to the BIOS or something.
The problem is that said "skilled user" still might be violating the law. Which is fine if one doesn't get caught, but then, why should that sort of jeopardy present itself in the first place? A user should not be treated like a criminal or a small dumb child.
This isn't about "Freedom". There is no right for anybody to be able to purchase a movie without DRM. Nobody's rights are being violated. All that's happening is that for anti-DRM fanatics, there are fewer and fewer things available for them to buy. So what? That sucks for them, true. But how about my rights to buy a new car with an eight-track player built in? Is my "Freedom" being trampled? No. Discussing movies with secret codes that only let you play them on certain players with the same vocabulary that is used to discuss "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" does nothing but belittle real, actual freedoms. Somebody please point to me where Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Constitution our Inalienable Right to Buy DVD's without Digital Rights Management.
Oh please. Those other freedoms are similarly arbitrary. What natural mandate put them in place? It's more that some people agree that those things are "right" and decided to fight from them, because the alternative's shit enough to not be considered an option to the idealists. If everybody shared your line of reasoning throughout history, the entire human race would be nothing but scattered oppressed masses indebted to a couple of asshole kings who had decided not to wall some of them up on a given day. Who needs to be able to say what they like, and why should they? It's more important that Lord Flacid assure us that we get one turnip for each hard day of work and not burn our houses down.
Here's the thing about DRM: some of us enjoy being able to go investigate a multitude of the creative efforts of other human beings without having to be grossly inconvenienced, and we're trying to ensure that such continues to be easy so that it doesn't become *more* difficult to do that. Sure, it's lower-priority than the more obviously pressing issues like world hunger and bad labor conditions, but none of these things go on in a vaccuum. Idealists have to fight for all their beliefs at once.
Until they want to play the latest and greatest games. Then what? And don't give me the emulator lines, I'm talking out of box ready to play. You will not get rid of Windows, face that fact. The trick is to educate people on how to better protect their Windows machines against such things.
Your argument's a little off because games aren't a big issue for everybody.
But wait, let me finish. I'm not going where you think I am with this.
I'm a big Linux guy myself, and I've gotta say that, for the non-gaming everyday-user set, the *real* issue remains peripherals. Yes, it's *much* better than it used to be. Stuff that's compatible actually tends to more or less "just work" with the more enduser-centric distros out there, and the number of compatible devices is increasing at a good clip. But I converted a couple of neighbors to Linux desktops in my last apartment building, where we had a common WLAN for serving media to each other. And now that I've moved out of state, I have to keep up with various advances geared towards the stuff they do everyday, because the sooner one thing gets easier, the less I can expect getting a confused and frustrated phone call. In addition, though, when somebody decides they want a new scanner or printer or digital camera, I have to help them research what works, be aware of any tricks (substituting CUPS drivers from one printer for another model from the same manufacturer that it just happens to work with, for instance), and then help them find who's got said compatible item in stock for cheap.
Pain in the ass? Yeah, maybe a bit...though it's not as bad as, "Okay, there's an exploit for the spyware remover you used before and it doesn't work right, so install another one...but only trust what I tell you to trust, because the internet's a wild and scary place, okay?", and it *sure* is better than advising that they go sink their cash on overblown application software to use one or two features. These are the kinds of people who generally *don't* want to install a whole bunch of extra stuff in the first place, just have what they need for the four-five hours a week they need the machine and that's it, so there's hardly ever anything genuinely worth worrying about, and as the knowledgeable friend, they'd probably seek out my advice on anything computing related. Each time things get better, there's less I've got to worry about for them. If the day ever comes where Linux desktops are ubiquitous enough for it to be worthwhile for somebody writing malware to target them (or whatever other *ahem* previously "alternative" platform takes the lead), enough time will have elapsed where the boxes these people have now will have died from hardware failure and they'll either have buckled down and learned enough to be smart about things, or not learned anything and be right back to where they were when they were struggling with Windows boxes of increased mysterious slowness. It's either a gain or no harm done.
While I was working there, two full-time, regular employees (not contractors like me) left because of "personal issues". It was well known that the reason was they didn't agree with the "culture" (I am talking about one of Google's international offices, with less than a few dozens of engineers).
I don't consider that especially odd. When people don't like the values, image, and so on put forth at a company or organization, internally or externally, they tend to leave because it makes them unhappy and feel they can't be themselves in such an environment. It's not uncommon. The folks who stick around unhappy are either the ones who love to bitch about what a bunch of creeps they work for, or the ones who acquired their jobs through nepotism instead of on the basis of skills and qualifications and fearfully await the day they're found out.
Actually, after they left, it was sort of taboo to mention or talk about them. Weird.
Taboo how? It's one thing if the bosses corrected somebody off-the-record for talking about what John and Jeff had moved on to (very creepy indeed), but beyond that, it could have been anything from regular ol' professionalism (who wants to spend time talking on and on about why so-and-so left for a good deal of time after their departure?) to jealousy ("Curse that talented fellow getting the higher-ranking position at Company X!") to whatever. Could you be more specific as to what you mean?
It was indeed a very weird environment. I have worked in other big companies, but never say anything like that. The day my contract ended was a good one.
Now I've honestly never been roped into a real live cult, but aren't they supposed to be notoriously difficult to leave? My guess would be that the environment wasn't your own personal ideal workplace and you're just exercising hyperbole while simultaneously saying what few can: "I worked for Google." Really, no character assault intended here, but it's not like you went in every day and praised the cadre for sharing the sun and sky and water with you.
so you want a tiny quite computer that allows users to upgrage piece? Those are mutual exclusive.
No, they're not. Sure, a small case means *limited* space for extra hardware, but it depends on how small of a case you go with and what board you choose to mount in there. Some folks are going to want room to mount an additional hard drive, or add those one or two expansion cards (capture card for a media center, anyone?) to get some manner of functionality that's not integrated with the motherboard.
The discussion is abut small computers, and in that context the Mac Mini is worth noting.
Again: it's a great choice, but if and only if its off-the-shelf hardware specification matches up with what a person needs. If it doesn't, it's not the right choice. Hell, it's probably a waste even if it meets 90% of the needs of the individual in question, because, like most small form-factor machines, it's expensive for what you get. It's also not likely to be satisfying to the sort of person who *enjoys* the ritual of picking out particular bits of hardware and putting it all together themselves. Granted, that's not everybody, but it is pretty likely for anyone picking up this book.
You can build a PC for 200 dollars that includes a first class OS, and all the functionality in the command line? That just works when adding perf.? Can play a lot of popular games well?
No. I never even came close to suggesting it. It's certainly not possible to pull off without either stealing or being given a mound of the necessary stuffs - as I said before, small form factor stuff is over-priced. But hey, while we're at it, let's also consider that the Mac Mini alone presently costs $600 -$400 more than your hypothetical dreambox- and requires extra software and a whole extra OS to play "a lot" of popular games as well. Considering your demanding specs, it would be a poor choice.
go get a cheapo mac mini, it even comes pre-installed with BSD
That's fine if the Mac Mini is the right solution.
There are a multitude of applications for a small form factor PC in the first place. The Mac Mini's hardware is of pre-determined specification and the case leaves next to no room for expandability. Coming from the other direction, the review seems to indicate that the book contains projects more along the lines of tiny embedded computers that are substantially smaller than the Mac Mini. Couple this with the fact that just going out and buying a computer is a different experience than selecting your own configuration of components and piecing it together yourself, and you'll see that your suggestion is not an end-all/be-all solution to everybody all of the time.
Actually, you can change that preference in the account settings so that you can download the songs as a regular mp3 download (through the browser).
I'm well aware of it. Re-read my original post and you'll see that that's exactly what I've done the last few times I've tried it out, as I don't like the idea of installing a binary-only application that handles buying stuff.
Why should I have to install a third-party client to have a decent and predictable music-buying experience? Their answer seems to be that they've made the regular mp3 download via the site an ugly and painful afair. I'm not asking for a hot towel and shave here, just a clean, cut-and-dry web interface that's devoid of extraneous garbage.
Aw, you only say that because it works well for you 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time. If you guys turn out to be wrong with your classic "Apple's only embracing light DRM to placate the big players of the content industry so they can in turn sell their product in a generally convenient way", I'll...I'll...I'll box yer ears.;)
1. The idea of a sample is to show how good your product is.
Indeed. A sample is perhaps best likened to as a form of advertisement. Advertisements *cost* money and there's no guaranteed return of investment.
2. This was a sample included on a CD with a magazine. Bandwidth issues do not apply here.
Ah, I see. Feel free to blame me for mis-reading this portion of your posting. My own experiences have been limited to dealing through dealing with the site directly. I must admit, I'm puzzled by eMusic choosing to try to promote their download service via pressing and distributing music CDs in magazines. Yes, optical media's cheap, but seriously, what were they thinking?
3. It is perfectly feasible to make a great-sounding, crystal-clear recording at low bitrates if the audio engineer knows what s/he is doing.
This certainly comes down to definition territory, and, not being a pro audio engineer or a $1000-volume-knob-on-a-vacuum-tube-amplifier audiophile, I'm not in a position to discuss that definition.:) If the songs on the CD sounded like shit, we can easily agree that this was completely stupid move on eMusic's part.
Still, that's 1/3 in your context alone, and at *least* 2/3 in my own. I wouldn't go so far as to claim that my argument doesn't make *any* sense.:)
Oh, I by no means think my opinion is law, and apologize for coming off that way.
How unusually courteous of someone of a differing point of view, and on Slashdot, no less. Thanks!:)
Although I acknowledge that it's frustrating for those that don't... I find it hard to pity them. It's clearly marked, and really not that big of a deal. it makes legalities much easier for apple, and doesn't hurt the consumer(much.) I feel the pain of those using third-party players, but only to a small extent. If you're really so bent on not using an iPod of any sort, why are you so obsessed with using the ITMS?
Because it's already been sold to the public at large.
This is not to say that everybody's *using* it. I know plenty of people, and I'm sure you do as well, who have iPods and aren't even particularly tech-savvy, and they don't bother using the iTMS because it's cheaper/easier to copy/pirate/however-you-care-to-call-it. They likely haven't ever done any pay-for music downloads and probably never will, if only because there's always a friend passing them something on an optical disc of some sort or willing to let them copying off of their external harddrive/laptop/LAN/whatever.
But for the people who have never done this buying-music-online stuff before and aren't already up on the issues being discussed above and below, iTMS is *the* music store. It's the only one anybody tends to hear about most of the time. It's only $.99 cents per song, and all you have to do is run the client, select your desired tunes, and pop in your payment info. There's seemingly no catch -as you said, nobody reads that EULA thing. Later they might find out about the limitations imposed on their purchase, but, only having one, maybe two computers tops and a lone iPod, it's doubtful that they feel as though it's a real genuine restriction, because it doesn't even really seem to affect them. Maybe a friend of theirs has even figured out the work-around for reproducing their songs an infinite number of times (never mind that it's technically illegal...nobody's been prosecuted that anyone's ever heard of). Result? A lot of these people start accepting the restrictions, just because "that's the way it is", and they don't seem like a big deal. This in turn results in more money going to several companies supporting DRM, which not only makes them richer, but also encourages them to continue with their DRM efforts, because a large number of consumers don't seem to mind at all.
And yes, perhaps it's paranoid to assume that the DRM industry aims to lock things down further and further with time. However, I haven't really seen any good examples of things moving in the opposite direction, so while it *is* an assumption, I figure it's at least a fair one.
So again: why fixate on iTMS? Because it's ubiquitous *and* it uses DRM, and the DRM seems so light and dainty to the other schemes out there that it's seemingly the right way to go. The "bad" feature is minimized to a substantial degree, but it's still there and it's easily downplayed.
That is, it's a compromise. It's like having vaguely similar carry-out restaurants right in a row, where one's got a history of all sorts of health code violations and uses MSG, maybe two or three have got a history of all sorts of health code violations but have cleaned up theirs acts and uses less MSG, one's incredibly clean, stylish, has better service than you'd expect for a carry-out place and uses an incredibly tiny amount of MSG, and then one is spotless but pretty spartan, has a limited menu until they can afford to expand, and uses no MSG. What's the best solution? Well, probably go to some other place where they have better restaurants, or go to the grocery store for your food and *possibly* eat better. But which is fastest, easiest, and has the most locations? The place that's clean and uses only a little MSG, and that's where people wind up going given the option. Do they know about what they're consuming? Sure, if they cho
Ever been to the grocery store (or Costco) when they're handing out free samples? They don't make the free samples taste like moldy dung because they're "not making any money" on them -- they just make the samples smaller. Samples are (theoretically) a small, yet indicative representation of what you'd get for your purchase. . . whether it's food or music.
I see your point, but it doesn't map particularly well. There isn't any sense in offering a ten-second clip of a song that's encoded at a fairly high bit rate. Sure, those ten seconds may be highly indicative of how well the song is recorded, but there's no way to tell whether it's worth purchasing or not with such a small sample.
If you actually download from iTunes, chance are you have an iPod. If you don't, who cares?
I don't use iTunes because I don't believe in supporting a company that (spin it however you like) endorses DRM if I can help it. I do, however, care about other people using iTunes. Beyond the ranks of informed geeks and geek-alikes, who knows about DRM? Next to nobody, right? If these uninformed individuals remain uninformed, they don't really get to make the choice of how their dollar-vote goes. This results in the unwilling setting of a precedent, and the result is that various industries concerned with DRM and similar technologies figure, "Hey, it's okay, they either a) love DRM or b) don't care, and we can get away with it. Let's push things a hair further." Then *my* options decrease because of people who didn't learn about *their* options in the first place.
Face it: an uninformed market makes decisions based on nothing or damn near close to it, and stands a good chance of ruining everything for everyone. I can disagree with folks like you're aware of the situation because you've given the issue some thought and made a choice...fine, we disagree. But I don't see how it's okay for one side to get fucked over *just* because you believe your choice to be some sort of mandate rather than opinion and have all dissenters shut up.
A magazine I subscribe to included in this month's issue a free 35 song sample from eMusic.com. I investigated it and the service was horrible in every way. Music catalog sucked. Finding songs in their catalog sucked. The sound quality of samples sucked. Their purchasing options were limited to three subcription models. Even with free music samples I could not find any compelling reason to use their service. If a company wants to compete successfully against an iTunes, they better offer an advantage somewhere.
I'll agree with you on eMusic's site being quite the unholy steaming coil of a mess (don't like installing mystery stand-alone clients myself, so I didn't bother trying theirs). I'd say you couldn't rightly say the catalog (meaning selection) "sucked", but rather that you considered it less extensive than that of iTunes, devoid of the artists you enjoy, or both. I'd disagree about the sound-quality of samples from a functional perspective: why would you expect a free sample to sound particularly crystal-clear? The samples aren't making them any money, and as such, it's best to keep the bitrate low to both decrease the download time for the potential costumer and to conserve bandwidth and thus save costs for eMusic.
The real clinker, though, is your talk about competitive advantage. eMusic's got a very clear advantage: no DRM. Thus, no buy-burn-re-rip dance maneuvers (minimal as they are, it's about as fun and convenient as killing fruit flies), no voting in favor of DRM with your hard-earned dollar, and no guilt.
I sign up for a trial with eMusic about two to three times a year when offered just to see what's changed. The main problem is that the site itself is getting *worse* and is a real bitch to navigate through efficiently. The number of artists, however, is growing, and I'm finding more and more quality stuff up there every time I give it a look. If they'd fix the site, I'd be a customer for sure.
Or, is it that this process is:
a) too complicated
b) too much work
c) too time consuming
for most Europeans to figure it out?
Not a European myself, and I'm not so sure they're actually railing against DRM in and of itself so much as one particular brand of DRM being restricted to one piece of software and one portable device, but as you brought up this issue...well, let's face it: it's almost as much work as pirating something, and unless you plan on keeping that music on one device, you're effectively paying to experience this inconvenience. As such, one could argue it's foolish, and the only reason to bother is to avoid the risk of prosecution through buying legally, and you still do the so-far-so-good legally gray bit that nobody's gotten a slap on the wrist for as of yet.
What net neutrality always fails to take into account is that ISPs don't exist on an island. If my ISP starts making things unusable, I will complain loudly and vocally... I will tell my friends. Other customers get pissed. If enough of us get pissed and they refuse to take action, we'll be lobbying our towns to get rid of the local franchise.
Very idealistic, and I'm with this type of action all the way. However, you're making the huge mistake of assuming that you're going to have enough people who aren't only just pissed, but willing to simultaneously raise a stink *and* boycott the service provider. This means a *huge* investment of time and resources, and, if the provider in question is the only game in town, or the other provider in the area is similarly evil, no internet connection of a tolerable speed. Which, for a fair proportion of the people who will do anything, isn't an option as they probably in some line of work which requires a reliable, speedy connection.
In short, you're looking at few people willing to do much of anything, fewer of them able, and all the rest of the folks sitting there with at most an occasional grumble of discontent prior to sending off the check for this month's bill. The market may ultimately decide, but the market isn't generally informed, and thus often makes poor decisions - frequently by default.:(
UAC is one of the biggest improvements in my opinion; not in that it makes Windows nicer to use (far from it in fact), but that finally, Windows has adopted a more *nix based approach to user-security (in at least, you don't have to be a full admin to do anything useful, and full-admin rights are difficult to obtain) and thank god for that!
I never knew that the United Aerospace Corporation did *nix security in the first place. Does this mean I can trade daemons for demons?
It's probably got more to do with the fact that Konfabulator (released February 10th 2003) preceded both Dashboard and SuperKaramba, and that each one was an effort to reproduce Konfabulator's functionality. IANAL, but I would guess this would mean Apple couldn't get away with claiming prior art or any similar such thing.
And yes, there's always the infamous Desk Accessories argument, but Apple hasn't exactly jumped on it themselves, which would indicate that it's either a) not a tenable legal argument or b) they're not interested.
I've never gotten people like you who act like OS X is ridden with DRM the way Vista is. You don't have to deal with DRM whatsoever on a Mac if you don't want to.
Well, almost. The truth is that you don't have to deal with DRM on a Mac providing you know what it is in the first place.
The average user probably has no clue that there's a better way out there and makes a "hey, that's how these computer things work and I have no choice" assumption. If such an individual were asked, point blank, "Would you like us to limit what you can do with your purchased music and require jumping through a few hoops to do absolutely common and practical thing, or would you like to have simplicity and choice right from the get-go?", what do you think they would say? Apple never clearly and obviously lets on that there is in fact any other way, and while that certainly makes sense from a business perspective, it's not looking out for the best interests of their userbase.
Yes, I know: if people actually did things like read EULAs and made sincere efforts to make informed decisions, sure, a real live bonafide decision would be made and we could all agree that people have in fact made their own respective choice and can live with it. But damn dude, that print's always so tiny, and it's so much quicker to check that box and skip it...
The way Linus talks, I think he would be happier with a BSD license than with the GPL.
So Linus effectively saying that preventing end-users from loading binary drivers to make things go is stupid equates with giving developers license to do whatever they please with given available code how?
Is it really better to depict people being killed for no reason whatsoever than to depict them being killed for having some philosophical or theological difference from the protagonist?
I see where you're going with this, and I advise you to be careful in the same way all of us free speech types have to be careful.
Saying that it's no worse than all the other violent games, despite pushing an agenda, means that you also have to step up and defend games like Ethnic Cleansing. No, you don't necessarily have to agree with the ideas pushed by either, but if you defend the one from the "is it really worse?" P.O.V., you have to defend the other or be labeled as a hypocrite.
But to answer your question: is it really worse? Well, no, not really. Chances are that anyone who's liable to agree with the agendas being promoted in either the Left Behind game or Ethnic Cleansing probably weren't swayed by the game but their overall environment. These games don't really work so well as propaganda, but are instead just merchandise to be hawked to the previously indoctrinated, plus maybe the scant handful of people who find things riding on the hype of controversy and questionable taste to be a briefly interesting diversion.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting test would be to compare a "clean upgrade" install (where fresh XP install gets upgraded to Vista) to a "clean full" install and identify anything that works differently. If your suggestion is not just common wisdom, but real honest fact, it'd be interesting to see how MS rationalizes selling a faulty product, and what the public winds up doing about that. :)
My logic is probably bad or even illogical but never mind hehe.
Really abstract hypotheticals are usually part bullshit anyway, even if they're pieced together particularly well. I myself was having a bitch of a time explaining the whole "rights are artificial" thing because I'm very into preserving a fair quantity of them. :)
On to real life and the DRM thing. I admit I havn't used many DRM-riddled files so it has not affected me. Also, I'm usually a bit of an optimist (at least in the long term.) If the DRM situation gets too bad I really think non-tech people will notice and complain, but maybe that is too optimistic. Although, the DRM, the DMCA and the crazy RIAA lawsuits are kind of like the large records companies going down with a big fight, they are lashing out whereever they can.
I'm not particularly optimistic over the present situation. Consumers generally don't do much to educate themselves (look how telecom prices rise far faster than the services improve), and none of these companies really ever talk about DRM up front. DRM itself isn't a selling point; instead, it's portrayed (if at all) as a slight necessary inconvenience to increase...well, convenience, I suppose. It's pretty stupid, but when I see the large numbers of folks *even here* who readily accept such things, I feel that I've got every reason to be fearful of what could happen.
You're missing my point. Anybody claiming that any particular "right" is universally trivial would have to make that claim about any and all rights, because all rights are artificial concepts created by man. There *are* no intrinsic rights. Rights don't exist until they're conceived and pushed heavily against the rest of a given social group until somebody else accepts them. Even so, this is no assurance that they're upheld, for other individuals in the social group might opt not to accept them, or may embrace particular tenets of the idea but ultimately interpret the meaning differently. Conceiving of a "right" will *always* sound needless and crazy to some people, but this should by no means indicate that the idealists are flat-out "wrong".
Getting to what you're talking about... Yes, nobody forces you to buy DRM music, much as nobody forces you to buy or even listen to music at all. But if you *want* to listen to music, and you *want* to play within the letter of the law, your choices of what you can purchase for your listening pleasure become severely limited. The more accepted DRM becomes by consumers, the more the industry will feel they can get away with it, and so the DRM could be become even more widespread, which limits your options further. What happens when it's so wide-spread that suddenly there's precious little in the way of mass-produced readily-available devices on which to play non-restricted music formats? Just "hacking" some device and getting it to play un-restricted formats isn't acceptable, because it involves extra time and effort to learn how to do such a thing, and at the point where that's a necessity, such efforts could be made illegal by laws even more restrictive than the DMCA, because not enough people cared and too many people told a few cranks that there was nothing to worry about. We're trying to *avoid* ever getting to that point.
So will any manufacturers step up to the plate and start producing hardware that complies with the letter of the law but that's easy for the skilled user to circumvent? Say by doing a firmware update to the BIOS or something.
The problem is that said "skilled user" still might be violating the law. Which is fine if one doesn't get caught, but then, why should that sort of jeopardy present itself in the first place? A user should not be treated like a criminal or a small dumb child.
This isn't about "Freedom". There is no right for anybody to be able to purchase a movie without DRM. Nobody's rights are being violated. All that's happening is that for anti-DRM fanatics, there are fewer and fewer things available for them to buy. So what? That sucks for them, true. But how about my rights to buy a new car with an eight-track player built in? Is my "Freedom" being trampled? No. Discussing movies with secret codes that only let you play them on certain players with the same vocabulary that is used to discuss "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" does nothing but belittle real, actual freedoms. Somebody please point to me where Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Constitution our Inalienable Right to Buy DVD's without Digital Rights Management.
Oh please. Those other freedoms are similarly arbitrary. What natural mandate put them in place? It's more that some people agree that those things are "right" and decided to fight from them, because the alternative's shit enough to not be considered an option to the idealists. If everybody shared your line of reasoning throughout history, the entire human race would be nothing but scattered oppressed masses indebted to a couple of asshole kings who had decided not to wall some of them up on a given day. Who needs to be able to say what they like, and why should they? It's more important that Lord Flacid assure us that we get one turnip for each hard day of work and not burn our houses down.
Here's the thing about DRM: some of us enjoy being able to go investigate a multitude of the creative efforts of other human beings without having to be grossly inconvenienced, and we're trying to ensure that such continues to be easy so that it doesn't become *more* difficult to do that. Sure, it's lower-priority than the more obviously pressing issues like world hunger and bad labor conditions, but none of these things go on in a vaccuum. Idealists have to fight for all their beliefs at once.
Until they want to play the latest and greatest games. Then what? And don't give me the emulator lines, I'm talking out of box ready to play. You will not get rid of Windows, face that fact. The trick is to educate people on how to better protect their Windows machines against such things.
Your argument's a little off because games aren't a big issue for everybody.
But wait, let me finish. I'm not going where you think I am with this.
I'm a big Linux guy myself, and I've gotta say that, for the non-gaming everyday-user set, the *real* issue remains peripherals. Yes, it's *much* better than it used to be. Stuff that's compatible actually tends to more or less "just work" with the more enduser-centric distros out there, and the number of compatible devices is increasing at a good clip. But I converted a couple of neighbors to Linux desktops in my last apartment building, where we had a common WLAN for serving media to each other. And now that I've moved out of state, I have to keep up with various advances geared towards the stuff they do everyday, because the sooner one thing gets easier, the less I can expect getting a confused and frustrated phone call. In addition, though, when somebody decides they want a new scanner or printer or digital camera, I have to help them research what works, be aware of any tricks (substituting CUPS drivers from one printer for another model from the same manufacturer that it just happens to work with, for instance), and then help them find who's got said compatible item in stock for cheap.
Pain in the ass? Yeah, maybe a bit...though it's not as bad as, "Okay, there's an exploit for the spyware remover you used before and it doesn't work right, so install another one...but only trust what I tell you to trust, because the internet's a wild and scary place, okay?", and it *sure* is better than advising that they go sink their cash on overblown application software to use one or two features. These are the kinds of people who generally *don't* want to install a whole bunch of extra stuff in the first place, just have what they need for the four-five hours a week they need the machine and that's it, so there's hardly ever anything genuinely worth worrying about, and as the knowledgeable friend, they'd probably seek out my advice on anything computing related. Each time things get better, there's less I've got to worry about for them. If the day ever comes where Linux desktops are ubiquitous enough for it to be worthwhile for somebody writing malware to target them (or whatever other *ahem* previously "alternative" platform takes the lead), enough time will have elapsed where the boxes these people have now will have died from hardware failure and they'll either have buckled down and learned enough to be smart about things, or not learned anything and be right back to where they were when they were struggling with Windows boxes of increased mysterious slowness. It's either a gain or no harm done.
While I was working there, two full-time, regular employees (not contractors like me) left because of "personal issues". It was well known that the reason was they didn't agree with the "culture" (I am talking about one of Google's international offices, with less than a few dozens of engineers).
I don't consider that especially odd. When people don't like the values, image, and so on put forth at a company or organization, internally or externally, they tend to leave because it makes them unhappy and feel they can't be themselves in such an environment. It's not uncommon. The folks who stick around unhappy are either the ones who love to bitch about what a bunch of creeps they work for, or the ones who acquired their jobs through nepotism instead of on the basis of skills and qualifications and fearfully await the day they're found out.
Actually, after they left, it was sort of taboo to mention or talk about them. Weird.
Taboo how? It's one thing if the bosses corrected somebody off-the-record for talking about what John and Jeff had moved on to (very creepy indeed), but beyond that, it could have been anything from regular ol' professionalism (who wants to spend time talking on and on about why so-and-so left for a good deal of time after their departure?) to jealousy ("Curse that talented fellow getting the higher-ranking position at Company X!") to whatever. Could you be more specific as to what you mean?
It was indeed a very weird environment. I have worked in other big companies, but never say anything like that. The day my contract ended was a good one.
Now I've honestly never been roped into a real live cult, but aren't they supposed to be notoriously difficult to leave? My guess would be that the environment wasn't your own personal ideal workplace and you're just exercising hyperbole while simultaneously saying what few can: "I worked for Google." Really, no character assault intended here, but it's not like you went in every day and praised the cadre for sharing the sun and sky and water with you.
so you want a tiny quite computer that allows users to upgrage piece? Those are mutual exclusive.
No, they're not. Sure, a small case means *limited* space for extra hardware, but it depends on how small of a case you go with and what board you choose to mount in there. Some folks are going to want room to mount an additional hard drive, or add those one or two expansion cards (capture card for a media center, anyone?) to get some manner of functionality that's not integrated with the motherboard.
The discussion is abut small computers, and in that context the Mac Mini is worth noting.
Again: it's a great choice, but if and only if its off-the-shelf hardware specification matches up with what a person needs. If it doesn't, it's not the right choice. Hell, it's probably a waste even if it meets 90% of the needs of the individual in question, because, like most small form-factor machines, it's expensive for what you get. It's also not likely to be satisfying to the sort of person who *enjoys* the ritual of picking out particular bits of hardware and putting it all together themselves. Granted, that's not everybody, but it is pretty likely for anyone picking up this book.
You can build a PC for 200 dollars that includes a first class OS, and all the functionality in the command line? That just works when adding perf.? Can play a lot of popular games well?
No. I never even came close to suggesting it. It's certainly not possible to pull off without either stealing or being given a mound of the necessary stuffs - as I said before, small form factor stuff is over-priced. But hey, while we're at it, let's also consider that the Mac Mini alone presently costs $600 -$400 more than your hypothetical dreambox- and requires extra software and a whole extra OS to play "a lot" of popular games as well. Considering your demanding specs, it would be a poor choice.
go get a cheapo mac mini, it even comes pre-installed with BSD
That's fine if the Mac Mini is the right solution.
There are a multitude of applications for a small form factor PC in the first place. The Mac Mini's hardware is of pre-determined specification and the case leaves next to no room for expandability. Coming from the other direction, the review seems to indicate that the book contains projects more along the lines of tiny embedded computers that are substantially smaller than the Mac Mini. Couple this with the fact that just going out and buying a computer is a different experience than selecting your own configuration of components and piecing it together yourself, and you'll see that your suggestion is not an end-all/be-all solution to everybody all of the time.
Actually, you can change that preference in the account settings so that you can download the songs as a regular mp3 download (through the browser).
I'm well aware of it. Re-read my original post and you'll see that that's exactly what I've done the last few times I've tried it out, as I don't like the idea of installing a binary-only application that handles buying stuff.
Why should I have to install a third-party client to have a decent and predictable music-buying experience? Their answer seems to be that they've made the regular mp3 download via the site an ugly and painful afair. I'm not asking for a hot towel and shave here, just a clean, cut-and-dry web interface that's devoid of extraneous garbage.
Aw, you only say that because it works well for you 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time. If you guys turn out to be wrong with your classic "Apple's only embracing light DRM to placate the big players of the content industry so they can in turn sell their product in a generally convenient way", I'll...I'll...I'll box yer ears. ;)
Your argument doesn't make any sense.
Really? None at all? Check your math:
1. The idea of a sample is to show how good your product is.
Indeed. A sample is perhaps best likened to as a form of advertisement. Advertisements *cost* money and there's no guaranteed return of investment.
2. This was a sample included on a CD with a magazine. Bandwidth issues do not apply here.
Ah, I see. Feel free to blame me for mis-reading this portion of your posting. My own experiences have been limited to dealing through dealing with the site directly. I must admit, I'm puzzled by eMusic choosing to try to promote their download service via pressing and distributing music CDs in magazines. Yes, optical media's cheap, but seriously, what were they thinking?
3. It is perfectly feasible to make a great-sounding, crystal-clear recording at low bitrates if the audio engineer knows what s/he is doing.
This certainly comes down to definition territory, and, not being a pro audio engineer or a $1000-volume-knob-on-a-vacuum-tube-amplifier audiophile, I'm not in a position to discuss that definition. :) If the songs on the CD sounded like shit, we can easily agree that this was completely stupid move on eMusic's part.
Still, that's 1/3 in your context alone, and at *least* 2/3 in my own. I wouldn't go so far as to claim that my argument doesn't make *any* sense. :)
Oh, I by no means think my opinion is law, and apologize for coming off that way.
How unusually courteous of someone of a differing point of view, and on Slashdot, no less. Thanks! :)
Although I acknowledge that it's frustrating for those that don't... I find it hard to pity them. It's clearly marked, and really not that big of a deal. it makes legalities much easier for apple, and doesn't hurt the consumer(much.) I feel the pain of those using third-party players, but only to a small extent. If you're really so bent on not using an iPod of any sort, why are you so obsessed with using the ITMS?
Because it's already been sold to the public at large.
This is not to say that everybody's *using* it. I know plenty of people, and I'm sure you do as well, who have iPods and aren't even particularly tech-savvy, and they don't bother using the iTMS because it's cheaper/easier to copy/pirate/however-you-care-to-call-it. They likely haven't ever done any pay-for music downloads and probably never will, if only because there's always a friend passing them something on an optical disc of some sort or willing to let them copying off of their external harddrive/laptop/LAN/whatever.
But for the people who have never done this buying-music-online stuff before and aren't already up on the issues being discussed above and below, iTMS is *the* music store. It's the only one anybody tends to hear about most of the time. It's only $.99 cents per song, and all you have to do is run the client, select your desired tunes, and pop in your payment info. There's seemingly no catch -as you said, nobody reads that EULA thing. Later they might find out about the limitations imposed on their purchase, but, only having one, maybe two computers tops and a lone iPod, it's doubtful that they feel as though it's a real genuine restriction, because it doesn't even really seem to affect them. Maybe a friend of theirs has even figured out the work-around for reproducing their songs an infinite number of times (never mind that it's technically illegal...nobody's been prosecuted that anyone's ever heard of). Result? A lot of these people start accepting the restrictions, just because "that's the way it is", and they don't seem like a big deal. This in turn results in more money going to several companies supporting DRM, which not only makes them richer, but also encourages them to continue with their DRM efforts, because a large number of consumers don't seem to mind at all.
And yes, perhaps it's paranoid to assume that the DRM industry aims to lock things down further and further with time. However, I haven't really seen any good examples of things moving in the opposite direction, so while it *is* an assumption, I figure it's at least a fair one.
So again: why fixate on iTMS? Because it's ubiquitous *and* it uses DRM, and the DRM seems so light and dainty to the other schemes out there that it's seemingly the right way to go. The "bad" feature is minimized to a substantial degree, but it's still there and it's easily downplayed.
That is, it's a compromise. It's like having vaguely similar carry-out restaurants right in a row, where one's got a history of all sorts of health code violations and uses MSG, maybe two or three have got a history of all sorts of health code violations but have cleaned up theirs acts and uses less MSG, one's incredibly clean, stylish, has better service than you'd expect for a carry-out place and uses an incredibly tiny amount of MSG, and then one is spotless but pretty spartan, has a limited menu until they can afford to expand, and uses no MSG. What's the best solution? Well, probably go to some other place where they have better restaurants, or go to the grocery store for your food and *possibly* eat better. But which is fastest, easiest, and has the most locations? The place that's clean and uses only a little MSG, and that's where people wind up going given the option. Do they know about what they're consuming? Sure, if they cho
Ever been to the grocery store (or Costco) when they're handing out free samples? They don't make the free samples taste like moldy dung because they're "not making any money" on them -- they just make the samples smaller. Samples are (theoretically) a small, yet indicative representation of what you'd get for your purchase. . . whether it's food or music.
I see your point, but it doesn't map particularly well. There isn't any sense in offering a ten-second clip of a song that's encoded at a fairly high bit rate. Sure, those ten seconds may be highly indicative of how well the song is recorded, but there's no way to tell whether it's worth purchasing or not with such a small sample.
If you actually download from iTunes, chance are you have an iPod. If you don't, who cares?
I don't use iTunes because I don't believe in supporting a company that (spin it however you like) endorses DRM if I can help it. I do, however, care about other people using iTunes. Beyond the ranks of informed geeks and geek-alikes, who knows about DRM? Next to nobody, right? If these uninformed individuals remain uninformed, they don't really get to make the choice of how their dollar-vote goes. This results in the unwilling setting of a precedent, and the result is that various industries concerned with DRM and similar technologies figure, "Hey, it's okay, they either a) love DRM or b) don't care, and we can get away with it. Let's push things a hair further." Then *my* options decrease because of people who didn't learn about *their* options in the first place.
Face it: an uninformed market makes decisions based on nothing or damn near close to it, and stands a good chance of ruining everything for everyone. I can disagree with folks like you're aware of the situation because you've given the issue some thought and made a choice...fine, we disagree. But I don't see how it's okay for one side to get fucked over *just* because you believe your choice to be some sort of mandate rather than opinion and have all dissenters shut up.
A magazine I subscribe to included in this month's issue a free 35 song sample from eMusic.com. I investigated it and the service was horrible in every way. Music catalog sucked. Finding songs in their catalog sucked. The sound quality of samples sucked. Their purchasing options were limited to three subcription models. Even with free music samples I could not find any compelling reason to use their service. If a company wants to compete successfully against an iTunes, they better offer an advantage somewhere.
I'll agree with you on eMusic's site being quite the unholy steaming coil of a mess (don't like installing mystery stand-alone clients myself, so I didn't bother trying theirs). I'd say you couldn't rightly say the catalog (meaning selection) "sucked", but rather that you considered it less extensive than that of iTunes, devoid of the artists you enjoy, or both. I'd disagree about the sound-quality of samples from a functional perspective: why would you expect a free sample to sound particularly crystal-clear? The samples aren't making them any money, and as such, it's best to keep the bitrate low to both decrease the download time for the potential costumer and to conserve bandwidth and thus save costs for eMusic.
The real clinker, though, is your talk about competitive advantage. eMusic's got a very clear advantage: no DRM. Thus, no buy-burn-re-rip dance maneuvers (minimal as they are, it's about as fun and convenient as killing fruit flies), no voting in favor of DRM with your hard-earned dollar, and no guilt.
I sign up for a trial with eMusic about two to three times a year when offered just to see what's changed. The main problem is that the site itself is getting *worse* and is a real bitch to navigate through efficiently. The number of artists, however, is growing, and I'm finding more and more quality stuff up there every time I give it a look. If they'd fix the site, I'd be a customer for sure.
Or, is it that this process is: a) too complicated b) too much work c) too time consuming for most Europeans to figure it out?
Not a European myself, and I'm not so sure they're actually railing against DRM in and of itself so much as one particular brand of DRM being restricted to one piece of software and one portable device, but as you brought up this issue...well, let's face it: it's almost as much work as pirating something, and unless you plan on keeping that music on one device, you're effectively paying to experience this inconvenience. As such, one could argue it's foolish, and the only reason to bother is to avoid the risk of prosecution through buying legally, and you still do the so-far-so-good legally gray bit that nobody's gotten a slap on the wrist for as of yet.
What net neutrality always fails to take into account is that ISPs don't exist on an island. If my ISP starts making things unusable, I will complain loudly and vocally... I will tell my friends. Other customers get pissed. If enough of us get pissed and they refuse to take action, we'll be lobbying our towns to get rid of the local franchise.
Very idealistic, and I'm with this type of action all the way. However, you're making the huge mistake of assuming that you're going to have enough people who aren't only just pissed, but willing to simultaneously raise a stink *and* boycott the service provider. This means a *huge* investment of time and resources, and, if the provider in question is the only game in town, or the other provider in the area is similarly evil, no internet connection of a tolerable speed. Which, for a fair proportion of the people who will do anything, isn't an option as they probably in some line of work which requires a reliable, speedy connection.
In short, you're looking at few people willing to do much of anything, fewer of them able, and all the rest of the folks sitting there with at most an occasional grumble of discontent prior to sending off the check for this month's bill. The market may ultimately decide, but the market isn't generally informed, and thus often makes poor decisions - frequently by default. :(
UAC is one of the biggest improvements in my opinion; not in that it makes Windows nicer to use (far from it in fact), but that finally, Windows has adopted a more *nix based approach to user-security (in at least, you don't have to be a full admin to do anything useful, and full-admin rights are difficult to obtain) and thank god for that!
I never knew that the United Aerospace Corporation did *nix security in the first place. Does this mean I can trade daemons for demons?
That's actually living in Beaverton but claiming to live in Portland for you.
It's probably got more to do with the fact that Konfabulator (released February 10th 2003) preceded both Dashboard and SuperKaramba, and that each one was an effort to reproduce Konfabulator's functionality. IANAL, but I would guess this would mean Apple couldn't get away with claiming prior art or any similar such thing.
And yes, there's always the infamous Desk Accessories argument, but Apple hasn't exactly jumped on it themselves, which would indicate that it's either a) not a tenable legal argument or b) they're not interested.
I've never gotten people like you who act like OS X is ridden with DRM the way Vista is. You don't have to deal with DRM whatsoever on a Mac if you don't want to.
Well, almost. The truth is that you don't have to deal with DRM on a Mac providing you know what it is in the first place.
The average user probably has no clue that there's a better way out there and makes a "hey, that's how these computer things work and I have no choice" assumption. If such an individual were asked, point blank, "Would you like us to limit what you can do with your purchased music and require jumping through a few hoops to do absolutely common and practical thing, or would you like to have simplicity and choice right from the get-go?", what do you think they would say? Apple never clearly and obviously lets on that there is in fact any other way, and while that certainly makes sense from a business perspective, it's not looking out for the best interests of their userbase.
Yes, I know: if people actually did things like read EULAs and made sincere efforts to make informed decisions, sure, a real live bonafide decision would be made and we could all agree that people have in fact made their own respective choice and can live with it. But damn dude, that print's always so tiny, and it's so much quicker to check that box and skip it...
The way Linus talks, I think he would be happier with a BSD license than with the GPL.
So Linus effectively saying that preventing end-users from loading binary drivers to make things go is stupid equates with giving developers license to do whatever they please with given available code how?
Is it really better to depict people being killed for no reason whatsoever than to depict them being killed for having some philosophical or theological difference from the protagonist?
I see where you're going with this, and I advise you to be careful in the same way all of us free speech types have to be careful.
Saying that it's no worse than all the other violent games, despite pushing an agenda, means that you also have to step up and defend games like Ethnic Cleansing. No, you don't necessarily have to agree with the ideas pushed by either, but if you defend the one from the "is it really worse?" P.O.V., you have to defend the other or be labeled as a hypocrite.
But to answer your question: is it really worse? Well, no, not really. Chances are that anyone who's liable to agree with the agendas being promoted in either the Left Behind game or Ethnic Cleansing probably weren't swayed by the game but their overall environment. These games don't really work so well as propaganda, but are instead just merchandise to be hawked to the previously indoctrinated, plus maybe the scant handful of people who find things riding on the hype of controversy and questionable taste to be a briefly interesting diversion.