misc. links before I go to my 8am class (ugh)

5 thoughts on “misc. links before I go to my 8am class (ugh)”

  1. I think what’s more aggravating than the expected closed platform is the number of patents that Apple put into this device. From what I understand, no one else will be able to use multitouch for a decade unless someone can find prior art. What use are new intuitive gestures if there’s only one device that supports them? Picking up on your model T analogy, it’s as if someone invented the steering wheel but patented it, meaning all other cars had to make due with joysticks or simulated horse reins.

  2. I don’t think it has a lot to do with the DMCA, actually. It’s more that most people find it makes sense to watch video exactly as it’s delivered: in the right order, sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

    the amount of people who actually want to watch video on a portable device or cut it into bits and mix it with other bits of video is very, very small. And they can mostly do it already – it’s not like the software isn’t out there.

  3. I don’t think people want to watch things on portable devices (until we have a train culture, that will never be as popular here as it is in Japan) but there are lots of other things you can do if you can rip your DVDs or decrypt HDMI streams. Most households have more than one TV, for example, which could all draw on a central household video storage if that were legal; many SUVs now come with DVD players in the back seat, which could access entire DVD libraries if that were legal (many parents I know would kill for that); and there are many forms of content which people would be happy to watch in small doses while they work out or are otherwise occupied (daily show, for example.) At any rate, whether or not there is demand for consuming content that way should be determined by the market- instead they are being determined by a small oligopoly, whose power is enforced by the DMCA.

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