Disqus - Latest Comments for ianbetteridge

Re: New Warcraft expansion may not be playing on MacBooks

ianbetteridge — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:47:58 -0000

My partner isn't fond of playing WoW on her MacBook already - and the need for good WoW performance is why I won't be trading in my MacBook Pro for a MacBook any time soon.. :)

Re: Google needs to mind its own business

ianbetteridge — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:27:20 -0000

Remember that AI that Google is supposed to be building? :)

Re: Steve Jobs: Citizen journalism didn’t fail

ianbetteridge — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:31:15 -0000

"it didn’t take long for the rumour to be corrected (and not by a traditional journalist either),"

I think the division between journalists and non-journalists is a false one. As I've argued on a number of occasions, peel away the job title and the paycheck, and what you're left with isn't a role, as such, but a process: the process of building contacts, gathering sources, researching the story, and so on.

So, while it wasn't a "traditional journalist" that debunked the rumour, it was someone using the journalistic process - simply by the tried and trusted method of picking up the phone, and calling someone in full possession of the facts.

The truth of "citizen journalism" is that anyone can *be* a journalist, simply by *doing* journalism. When re-twitttering a rumour, you weren't doing journalism - that doesn't make you any poorer as a journalist, though, because I think you were pretty clear that you weren't putting up a story :)

Re: Time for a Mac Netbook? I don't think so - mediabistro.com: MobileDevicesToday

ianbetteridge — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:41:09 -0000

Isn't pretty much all the unit-sales growth in Windows-based laptops coming from the netbook segment, though? If you believed that there was a shift going on from high-spec laptops to cheaper, low-power (companion) machines, now might be a good time for Apple to jump in.

My bet is they won't, though :)

Re: I joined Nokia today! - RussellBeattie.com

ianbetteridge — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:50:24 -0000

Nice one! Congratulations, Russ!

Re: Best Buy and Napster: Dumb 2.0

ianbetteridge — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:25:32 -0000

I don't think it's quite right to blame resistance to *streaming* for Napster's failure.

I don't know if it's different in the US, but in the UK Napster has had a download store for years. However it used "PlaysForSure" DRM - so it would only play the songs you'd downloaded as long as you had a subscription. And it's the public's resistance to that "all you can eat for a monthly fee, until you stop paying" model which has stymied Napster.

Of course, not being able to play any songs you buy/rent from it on the Number 1 portable music player doesn't help either... :)

Re: J.K. Rowling: Totally wrong on copyright

ianbetteridge — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:39:54 -0000

Well think of the consequences of allowing scholorly research to quote an entire text without permission. Suppose I'm the publisher of Ripoff Books Inc, a company which really doesn't like to pay authors (weasels, the lot of them!). So, I take the new edition of "Harry Potter and the Order of Copyright Lawyers", and reprint it with some "scholarly" comments in small type at the margins. Ones that, you know, I've made up.

I sell it, $20 cheaper than the original, calling it the "expanded scholars" edition. Rowling's sales tank, because my edition is cheaper (which is easy when you don't have to pay the author). She goes back to being unemployed, and I rake in the cash. Woot!

Is that fair use? I suspect most people would say "no". I'm not adding any value, for a start. But even if I was, would the value of my additions give me the right to reduce the value of Rowling's work, by producing something which could effectively replace that work?

The point is that there are - and should be - no hard and fast rules to what is "fair use". Quoting everything without permission - even for scholarly purposes - is hard to justify, although there may be edge cases where it's fine. Like wise, taking even small sections out could be unfair.

You're totally right to identify that copyright exists for the benefit of all of us, not just those who create original work. And that's why it's complex - and why saying that Rowling is totally wrong is overstepping the mark. She might have a case. She might not - and without looking at the work involved, I can't really say. But there's no automatic carte blanche to scholarly work, even if it does add genuine value.

Re: J.K. Rowling: Totally wrong on copyright

ianbetteridge — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:23:39 -0000

"paradoxically, the judge rules against the Lexicon because it uses too much content from the Potter books, and then later says that it isn’t protected as a scholarly work because it isn’t scholarly enough."

Hmm. That isn't actually paradoxical. A true "scholarly work" isn't measured by how much of something it cites, but by whether there is "original research" involved in it. Otherwise, I could potentially republish the whole of (say) Potter 1 as a "scholar's edition" and simply claim that it was protected as a scholarly work because I'd cited it in its entirety. Sounds like a daft argument, but hey, this is the law we're talking about... :)

It's also worth remembering that with the "four factors", you don't need to fail all of them - they're "standards" rather than rules - and even failing just one or two can outweigh all the others. If, for example, I produced a version of Potter which annotated the entire text with high quality, scholarly research, the fact that I'd quoted the entire text and sold it (or given it away) would outweigh the original work I'd done.

Re: The Sky is Falling: Comcastic Caps

ianbetteridge — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:46:29 -0000

Even if (when) Google comes up with such a solution, it will not be free unless they choose to subsidize the service. And experience tells us that subsidized services like that, sooner or later, come with a price - would you use "free" bandwidth from Google if they put interstitials between every few web pages you viewed, for example?

The root of this is really simple economics: someone downloading 100GB of data per month costs Comcast a lot more than someone using 10GB. At some point along the line of how much you download, Comcast stops making a profit on a per-user basis, and starts making a loss. At that point, unless you cut your usage, they're really better off if you're NOT a customer.

Comcast hasn't set that 250GB cap in a vacuum: that's probably close to the point at which it starts to lose money on a per-customer basis (and in fact, that point may even be lower - it may have decided it can afford to subsidize customers who use, say, 100GB-250GB in the short term simply to have a higher cap).

Re: http://technovia.co.uk/2008/08/techdirt-has-th.html

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:31:23 -0000

The people should, indeed, mould the law. But which people? All humanity?

Find a set of human rights which every human agrees with.

And, of course, the idea that the people should mould the law contradicts the idea of natural law, which is based solely on factors beyond the control of people.

Re: SoundExchange Head Likes Pandora But Says It Needs Audio Ads | Listening Post from Wired.com

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:06:40 -0000

So we'll now refer to it as the initial instantiation of the work.

And, as I said, this does not take negligible work to produce.

Re: http://technovia.co.uk/2008/08/techdirt-has-th.html

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:58:25 -0000

First, I think you're conflating a theory of natural rights with one of natural law. You're certainly making the classical error of conflating "is" with "ought" - and the article you link to on Wikipedia about natural rights points this out perfectly well. You confuse "right" with "ability", too - hence the issues we have about copying.

I'm with Bentham on this: "Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense on stilts."

Re: SoundExchange Head Likes Pandora But Says It Needs Audio Ads | Listening Post from Wired.com

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:44:34 -0000

In which case, we're just arguing semantics: both of us are referring to the first instantiation of the work.

Re: http://technovia.co.uk/2008/08/techdirt-has-th.html

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:04:32 -0000

Point to this natural law. Show it to me.

Re: SoundExchange Head Likes Pandora But Says It Needs Audio Ads | Listening Post from Wired.com

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:04:08 -0000

The original art *is* the original copy. A 500,000 word novel takes no less work to produce because it's a single original file existing on your laptop than it would if it were a typed manuscript.

Art, like everything exists when it's instantiated. There is no mystical state for art where it is "produced" but no copies exist.

Re: So Muxtape is shut. Golf-clap to the downloader writers

ianbetteridge — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:06:25 -0000

Oh crap, I wrote a long response and Disqus ate it.

The short version: go read the comments by Justin on the Greasemonkey script page I link to above. It's clearly having an adverse effect on his business, because the company goes to some length to try and stop it working. The scripters treat Muxtape's efforts to prevent downloading as a game. It isn't a game: it has serious consequences for the business. What they're doing isn't illegal, and shouldn't be - but it is unethical, and they are assholes for doing it.

Re: Muxtape: What’s our lawyer’s number again?

ianbetteridge — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:30:43 -0000

You're right, of course, kb - but I think it will take something like that happening for the (relatively few) people who do download to learn that their actions have consequences. It's a shame, but perhaps they'll learn.

Re: Muxtape: What’s our lawyer’s number again?

ianbetteridge — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:00:42 -0000

I really get sick of the techie attitude that if you can write something it's morally ok to do so. If it proves that the "unspecified issues" with the RIAA are around people using third-party scripts to download, I hope that Muxtape stays shut - just so some of the idiots who write those scripts learn that their actions have bad consequences.

Re: Mac vs. Windows: Does it even matter?

ianbetteridge — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:07:07 -0000

There's an entire blog post about "do rich desktop applications really matter?" here, which I won't write :)

That, really, is what effects whether you're platform agnostic or not. I'm not. There is no Windows or Web tool for managing my to do lists as good as OmniFocus. The same is true for Scrivener, which lets me research, structure and write longer documents better than anything else I've ever come across. On the OS side, Time Machine has taken my backup regime and actually made it work.

And at the end of the day, that's the kind of thing that keeps me preferring my Mac - the unique things that I can't get on any other platform.

Re: Cloud computing makes me nervous

ianbetteridge — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:33:55 -0000

"Encouraging staff not to disclose IP, and making such non-disclosure easy, is another problem."

Well indeed :)

Re: Cloud computing makes me nervous

ianbetteridge — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:57:26 -0000

Crosbie, think of the number of stories of employees not having encrypted documents on their laptops - and then losing them. Do you think IT managers would trust them to always encrypt documents to share via p2p? The only alternative would be a p2p system which always builds in encryption... and that starts to look a lot like a DRM system, which I'm sure you'd be against on principle (the principle that DRM doesn't actually work).

IT managers are not early adopters of disruptive technologies for good reason: a lot of disruptive technologies actually turn out to be lemons, or dead ends, or have massive technology issues. They're paid NOT to trust new technology until it's proven.

Re: Cloud computing makes me nervous

ianbetteridge — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:35:01 -0000

For business, P2P is a non-starter. There's no way on earth that an IT manager would allow a P2P distribution system of business documents, and rightly so.

Re: Are Apple machines really overpriced?

ianbetteridge — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:54:23 -0000

Yes, Wes - I couldn't have put it better myself. Since that review, the MacBook Pro has been updated with a 2.4GHz processor (against a 2.2GHz originally), the HD has gone up to 200 from 120Gb, and that's it. Dell doesn't even make that model of Inspiron anymore. The equivalent Dell these days is the XPS M1530, and guess what? It has a better spec, and costs $400 less.

Re: Are Apple machines really overpriced?

ianbetteridge — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:39:27 -0000

Absolutely - Apple attempting to be a commodity player would be a disaster for the company, at least for the foreseeable future.

One thing that I didn't mention - and perhaps should - is that I suspect that current Mac users may well just defer buying a new Mac, rather than switch to anyone else. It's the non-converts which I think will have a harder time justifying spending money on a new Mac.

Re: Are Apple machines really overpriced?

ianbetteridge — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:59:25 -0000

Yeah, I think that the headline of Joe's post is a bit misleading, because ASP is only part of the story. If you look a little deeper in his article, when you compare a Windows PC which is equivalently (or better) specced to an Apple one, the Windows machine is much, much cheaper. Pay $1500 for a Windows machine, and you'll get a lot more for your money than an equivalent Mac.

Now you've always paid a premium for Macs, and of course lots of people are happy to do that (including me). But when equivalently-specced Dell to an iMac costs $700 compared to $1200, most people will stop and thing twice about the Mac. That's especially true in an economic downturn, when price becomes more important.

You are, I think right about the industrial design point - although it's got a lot closer lately, with some manufacturers (even Dell) wising up to making their machines at least not-entirely butt ugly. The Dell you mention is also much better specced than a Mac mini - it's comparible to an iMac in performance.