We need to go back to pure P2P sharing like the olden days. No centralized servers. No web site that can be taken down or blocked. Just your computer connecting to your friend's computers. I'm thinking something like using WASTE or Gnutella to share .torrent files, then using torrent for the actual file sharing.
Just sneak your own food in (as long as it is a chain theater).
This should already be SOP.
Box of Milk Duds at Regal: $3.75. Larger box of Milk Duds at the Drug Mart across the parking lot: $1.
LOL. Too easy. You need to sneak real food in; make it a challenge. I remember going to the movies with my Godfather when I was little. He would sneak entire meals in to theatre for us to share. One time, he snuck in ribs, four brownies, two cans of soda, and two cobs of corn on sticks.
I'm all for sneaking in food, but if you start bringing in warm food, you must realize that this is quite fragrant. One time, in a theater, I sat next to some kids eating french fries. The smell was not pleasant. Also, when you have food that's loud (I'm looking at you, chips), please only interact with the bag during loud action scenes.
Just sneak your own food in (as long as it is a chain theater).
This should already be SOP.
Box of Milk Duds at Regal: $3.75. Larger box of Milk Duds at the Drug Mart across the parking lot: $1.
LOL. Too easy. You need to sneak real food in; make it a challenge. I remember going to the movies with my Godfather when I was little. He would sneak entire meals in to theatre for us to share. One time, he snuck in ribs, four brownies, two cans of soda, and two cobs of corn on sticks.
I've heard Rym and Scott's general opinion on the impossibility of internet privacy, but I'm seeing more and more of this kind of reaction to Google's new consolidation of data. Is anyone actually surprised that the company whose internet search service you use, and whose servers store your data . . . are actually storing your data? Google has all of this information. It has always had this information. There doesn't seem to be much way for Google to have done its job and NOT acquire this information. Why is it that the fact that it wants to cross-reference the data it already has is such a big deal?
I've heard Rym and Scott's general opinion on the impossibility of internet privacy, but I'm seeing more and more of this kind of reaction to Google's new consolidation of data. Is anyone actually surprised that the company whose internet search service you use, and whose servers store your data . . . are actually storing your data? Google has all of this information. It has always had this information. There doesn't seem to be much way for Google to have done its job and NOT acquire this information. Why is it that the fact that it wants to cross-reference the data it already has is such a big deal?
Because people are paranoid nutjobs.
If something can be digitized and it becomes digitized, then it is effectively broadcast to the whole world. You can not stop it. The same principle applies to copying music as it does to your address and hpone number.
Yet, it seems that a lot of people on the Internets are very confused. They understand it's impossible to stop piracy, but they think that privacy is achievable! Likewise companies and governments that think they can fight piracy, don't give a shit about people having privacy. Sometimes I feel like the only person who is consistent.
If you type something into the Internets, you have effectively broadcast it to the entire world, and there is no taking it back. Hell, if you even tell a secret to a friend, and they type it into the Internets, then it it broadcast to the whole world.
In the world we live in today the only way to keep something truly private is for it to have a purely physical form, and have it stored in a physical vault. That will be mostly safe, except from expert safecrackers and such. The only other way is to keep it in your brain.
Also, if whatever it is you are keeping private can not, or did not, take a digital form, then you can also keep it safe pretty easily. Like if you do something in private and there are no people, cameras, or microphones watching or listening.
Generally it is accurate to say that you can't keep anything secret on the internet. It's not technically impossible, just practically impossible. If you created something like a giant encrypted virtual private network, you can get relatively close - but it's even more complciated than that. You would actually have to make the traffic indecipherable and seem to have no origin or target... eh... and even more.
Actually since the company I work for provides MPLS services somewhat of that nature. It's just not "the internet" as we know it.
Generally it is accurate to say that you can't keep anything secret on the internet. It's not technically impossible, just practically impossible. If you created something like a giant encrypted virtual private network, you can get relatively close - but it's even more complciated than that. You would actually have to make the traffic indecipherable and seem to have no origin or target... eh... and even more.
Actually since the company I work for provides MPLS services somewhat of that nature. It's just not "the internet" as we know it.
Yeah, I forgot. If you use real encryption, you can keep a secret. But that secret is only between you and the recipient. But even encryption only gets you to the same level of privacy as a conversation with a friend. Someone out there has the keys to decrypt, and that person can just take it and put the decrypted info on the Internets.
Even though I do trust my friends and family to keep secrets and such, I still assume that almost everything I do or say is 100% public. Mostly there's just nothing I have that is so important that I want or need to keep it secret.
iTunes hasn't had DRM for a long time, and it's doing just as fine as ever.
Quite true. The music industry is a hair ahead of the movie/TV industry in this regard, but only just a hair. You also had better believe that if they had their way, they'd lock everything down again completely.
Well the crappy thing is that movie/tv production costs are radically higher than music prod costs, so the costs are always bound to be higher. I mean movie prices are still pretty gouge-y and they're still harping the physical media stuff, but I don't think we'll see $10/12 digital releases for just-released-from-theaters movies for quite a while, if ever.
Probably, considering that potentially the biggest factor to iTunes music's success is the fact that you can purchase and download music directly to your device for $1 per song. As long as this remained true and the iPhone still became as popular as it is, it wasn't possible for it to fail.
You seem to be forgetting the vendor lock in aspect. Once your music purchases reach a certain level your not going to jump to a new mp3 player or store if you can't bring your prior purchases with you.
You seem to be forgetting the vendor lock in aspect. Once your music purchases reach a certain level your not going to jump to a new mp3 player or store if you can't bring your prior purchases with you.
Their DRM was pretty lame and trivial to work-around though... at least I recall there being articles about it floating around. Once you strip the DRM, they are a standard music format file, albeit one that isn't as popular as mp3.
Which is why Apple pressured record companies to allow non-DRM encoded files. It didn't even make sense within Apple's own hardware release model, given that you can only copy the songs to 5 different devices and customers might be wary of buying a new device if it means they potentially can't access their music on it. It's only really a benefit for record companies, who make a lot of money from these sales, and would love to have everyone buying shit over and over again.
Which is why Apple pressured record companies to allow non-DRM encoded files. It didn't even make sense within Apple's own hardware release model, given that you can only copy the songs to 5 different devices and customers might be wary of buying a new device if it means they potentially can't access their music on it. It's only really a benefit for record companies, who make a lot of money from these sales, and would love to have everyone buying shit over and over again.
Remember, the original slogan for iTunes was "Rip, Mix, Burn."
See, back in the olden days proprietary file formats were a big deal. You couldn't open a document you made on a DOS computer on a Mac or vice versa. Even if the file format was the same, the file systems on the floppy disks were different. Everyone made programs that read and wrote exactly one file format, so that whatever you used, you were locked into, and you could only communicate with people using the exact same thing. Obviously the power of consumer demand and sheer necessity of being able to do business broke this ridiculousness, but not completely.
Nowadays there is a new strategy, that Apple is actually winning at. What you do is you make software that opens as many file formats as possible. That way no matter what people use, your product will get the job done. It's really easy for people to switch TO your platform.
Then you make just one more proprietary file format that works only on your platform. That file format has extra features that go above and beyond what other platforms can do. For example, Apple's new eBook format which allows for animations and other crazy shit. Since iBooks can read your epub, txt, pdf, etc. you have no problem switching to it. Then since you are an iBooks user, you get some iBooks-only files that are all fancy. Now you are stuck on iBooks.
Even without DRM, iTunes uses AAC, not mp3. You switch to iTunes/iPod because it supports mp3 and such. But once you buy some iTunes music, you are stuck because the competitors don't really support AAC all that well. It's going to be some amount of work to get your library and your files transferred over even if you don't have to transcode.
Easy to switch to, hard to switch away from. That's the formula for today.
Yeah, I know plenty of things can, but there is another factor. All apple iPod/ad/hones that I am aware of have dedicated AAC decoding hardware. That means they can play such files with significantly less battery usage. More importantly they can play the files without using the regular CPU. That makes a much better listening experience where the music continues to play smoothly even as you have an intense program running and using 100% CPU and such. Apple's devices also have hardware decoding for MP3, H264, and other codecs that Apple likes. If you try to jailbreak your iPhone and listen to ogg or flac, the battery will die and the music will stutter if you try to do things while listening because it has to use the regular CPU to decode those files.
Well it won't be work to get your library ported over is all I meant, nitty gritty aside. I do agree Apple functions and massively profits by maintaining a tight ecosystem for its customers. Once you start using their stuff, it just makes no damn sense to jump to any other platform given how invested you are in even just the surface things like their tightly standardized UI.
Yeah, I know plenty of things can, but there is another factor. All apple iPod/ad/hones that I am aware of have dedicated AAC decoding hardware. That means they can play such files with significantly less battery usage. More importantly they can play the files without using the regular CPU. That makes a much better listening experience where the music continues to play smoothly even as you have an intense program running and using 100% CPU and such. Apple's devices also have hardware decoding for MP3, H264, and other codecs that Apple likes. If you try to jailbreak your iPhone and listen to ogg or flac, the battery will die and the music will stutter if you try to do things while listening because it has to use the regular CPU to decode those files.
Well, AAC is an ISO standard, at least it is now, as part of both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. It's also the default audio codec for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DSi. Finally, as an ISO standard, it's supposedly the replacement for mp3, although it hasn't quite caught on anywhere near as much as mp3 has. Anyway, given that it's part of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, any hardware decoder chip that's compliant with these standards would be required to also support hardware decoding of AAC, otherwise they can't be fully compliant. Your point probably does stand on older hardware, but there's no reason for anything other than utterly bargain basement hardware to not support AAC these days.
Yeah, I know plenty of things can, but there is another factor. All apple iPod/ad/hones that I am aware of have dedicated AAC decoding hardware. That means they can play such files with significantly less battery usage. More importantly they can play the files without using the regular CPU. That makes a much better listening experience where the music continues to play smoothly even as you have an intense program running and using 100% CPU and such. Apple's devices also have hardware decoding for MP3, H264, and other codecs that Apple likes. If you try to jailbreak your iPhone and listen to ogg or flac, the battery will die and the music will stutter if you try to do things while listening because it has to use the regular CPU to decode those files.
Well, AAC is an ISO standard, at least it is now, as part of both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. It's also the default audio codec for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DSi. Finally, as an ISO standard, it's supposedly the replacement for mp3, although it hasn't quite caught on anywhere near as much as mp3 has. Anyway, given that it's part of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, any hardware decoder chip that's compliant with these standards would be required to also support hardware decoding of AAC, otherwise they can't be fully compliant. Your point probably does stand on older hardware, but there's no reason for anything other than utterly bargain basement hardware to not support AAC these days.
Interesting information! But, IIRC, aren't all those codecs still covered by patent bullshit? So only companies that are in the patent pool or consortium or whatever can actually use them for reals?
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribler
Just some food for thought.
So, mere weeks after we discuss the need to completely decentralize, TPB moves to do it. Awesome.
If something can be digitized and it becomes digitized, then it is effectively broadcast to the whole world. You can not stop it. The same principle applies to copying music as it does to your address and hpone number.
Yet, it seems that a lot of people on the Internets are very confused. They understand it's impossible to stop piracy, but they think that privacy is achievable! Likewise companies and governments that think they can fight piracy, don't give a shit about people having privacy. Sometimes I feel like the only person who is consistent.
If you type something into the Internets, you have effectively broadcast it to the entire world, and there is no taking it back. Hell, if you even tell a secret to a friend, and they type it into the Internets, then it it broadcast to the whole world.
In the world we live in today the only way to keep something truly private is for it to have a purely physical form, and have it stored in a physical vault. That will be mostly safe, except from expert safecrackers and such. The only other way is to keep it in your brain.
Also, if whatever it is you are keeping private can not, or did not, take a digital form, then you can also keep it safe pretty easily. Like if you do something in private and there are no people, cameras, or microphones watching or listening.
Actually since the company I work for provides MPLS services somewhat of that nature. It's just not "the internet" as we know it.
Even though I do trust my friends and family to keep secrets and such, I still assume that almost everything I do or say is 100% public. Mostly there's just nothing I have that is so important that I want or need to keep it secret.
So once again we see that piracy is only a threat to shitty business models.
Nowadays there is a new strategy, that Apple is actually winning at. What you do is you make software that opens as many file formats as possible. That way no matter what people use, your product will get the job done. It's really easy for people to switch TO your platform.
Then you make just one more proprietary file format that works only on your platform. That file format has extra features that go above and beyond what other platforms can do. For example, Apple's new eBook format which allows for animations and other crazy shit. Since iBooks can read your epub, txt, pdf, etc. you have no problem switching to it. Then since you are an iBooks user, you get some iBooks-only files that are all fancy. Now you are stuck on iBooks.
Even without DRM, iTunes uses AAC, not mp3. You switch to iTunes/iPod because it supports mp3 and such. But once you buy some iTunes music, you are stuck because the competitors don't really support AAC all that well. It's going to be some amount of work to get your library and your files transferred over even if you don't have to transcode.
Easy to switch to, hard to switch away from. That's the formula for today.