Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 30th Apr 2012 15:25 UTC
"File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled. The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly-pirated free music and video. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site." Because, as we all know, protecting failing and outdated business models is more important than upholding stodgy old and annoying concepts like 'freedom of speech'. Repeat after me: we live in the free world, not China. Maybe if we say it often enough, we'll start believing it.
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RE[2]: The two extremes
by Thom_Holwerda on Mon 30th Apr 2012 17:07
in reply to "RE: The two extremes"
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2008-12-09
A movie is 1h30.
You may watch about 5-10 a month. If you include tv shows, those are about 3-4 a week (so up to 16 a month).
You'd like to watch all this in 1080p cause, u know, its 2012, 1080p have been around for years.
Price is about $30 for movies and $10 for shows (those are the low prices for recent content i generally find)
10*30 = $300
16*10 = $160
Is $460 reasonable? No. It just isn't. It doesn't even include music.
Then again if that was the only issue! In general you just _cannot_ even buy the said media.
So yeah, there's a problem, unless you're ok with watching year old or more movies, and one or two a month, zero tv show.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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2006-02-28
Clearly content companies have a right to protect their assets, and thus they do everything they can to deter piracy. No one can blame them for that, and people that support out-right illegal distribution of copyrighted material are in the wrong. On the other hand, the content companies are too narrow minded to realize that pirating exists for very simple market-principled reasons --not simply b/c their are "thieves" out there that must be stopped. People want the content, but can't get access to it, either b/c it is not available or not for a price that people can afford. Case in point, I watch Project Runway. But last season I missed the first four episodes. I could not find any legitimate means to catch-up. I had to resort to illegal distributions. I can tell you that if I was not able to catch-up, I would not have watched any of that season at all.
So the real cause of piracy lies with content provider's own short-sightedness. There will alwasy be some piracy, of course, but if the content providers would simple make all their content available at reasonable cost, then it wouldn't be enough to fuss about.