Soon to be part of the standard corporate dress code!
Posted on 12/05/2008 9:33:10 PM PST by Swordmaker
I am talking about real life experience, not some contrived, totally against what most people experience hypothesis, that you are coming up with.
My kids have a couple of generic MP4 players. They work fine, nice sound, screens just as big as iPod or Zune, not DRM capable, and cheap. They download music videos from youtube and are quite happy.
People will still have keyboards and large monitors at home that these pocket devices can plug into. In fact, you will soon be able to use your television as a monitor so for example when you stay in a hotel or are visiting somebody, you can just hit a button and show a movie or get some email or web surfing done on pretty much any TV (which are all digital these days).
The iPhone and iPod products will eventually merge into one powerful product that does it all and will render those big computer cases and laptops obsolete. They are even designing trousers that have keyboards embedded in them where you can type on an airplane or in other tight spaces as if you had a full-size keyboard in your lap. You will essentially have the left side of the keyboard on your left leg trousers and the right side of the keyboard on the right side of the trousers. They need to be careful where to put the mouse however, lest others think you are playing with yourself.
Soon to be part of the standard corporate dress code!
As a veteran complete with the arrows in the back, of the OS/2 wars, I can attest to the fact that M$ is capable of a multitude of sins. Now that I am a Mac user, I smile at the Mac-PC commercials, grimace at Algore being on Apple's Board and use Parallel Software to run those Widoze products I can't do without.
Pardon my stupidity, but what’s DRM?
I haven’t moved into the iPhone generation yet, but would like to at some point.
Oh man, does that ever open up some texting possibilities!
DRM is "Digital Rights Management", though I and many others call it "Digital Restrictions Management".
It's software codes, keys, or encryption, built into the data you buy (programs, data, media, CDs, DVDs, downloaded songs, videos, etc.), which restrict and constrain your ability to use that product as you please.
For example, "copy protection", which makes it impossible to backup your purchase in case of damage to the original. Or special codes that only allow it to be used with certain players.
Ostensibly used to protect copyrights, DRM in fact is a means to force consumers to purchase products associated with certain other products (which have the proper DRM "unlocking" mechanism). Also, to force consumers to pay for the same product multiple times (e.g. buy one copy for your living room stereo, and another for your car, and another for your portable player; instead of one item you can copy yourself, you pay three times over for the same thing).
Thus it restricts your ability to use what you bought. Imagine, for example, that you bought a car, and then discovered that due to the manufacturer having arranged a business deal with the states of Nevada, Minnesota, and Maine, you could only drive your car in those states! DRM is like that -- you buy a certain music player, and then discover that it only plays music sold by a few selected outlets, and they don't have what you want to hear!
DRM also has an aspect of "time-out", wherein you don't actually "buy" the product, you "license" it, and the license has an expiration date, and after that date your music, or data, or programs, become unusable. And of course you have to pony up more money to be able to keep using the product you thought you bought outright.
If all these restrictions were made plain and clear in large print by the manufacturers on their products, I would say, "Caveat empetor - let the buyer beware", and encourage everyone to read before they buy.
But in fact they put the DRM restrictions in the fine print, or not on the box but in fine print on the manual you only see once you've opened the box. Or not at all -- surprise!!
Thus DRM is evil.
It is not limited to the products mentioned above -- a host of players and formats carry DRM. IMO, the wise consumer studies before buying, and selects products and media that do not have DRM. They exist, and they are worth the search.
What is amazing are the idiots that come on these Mac threads like Terpfen that give tech advice and have no friggen idea what they are talking about.
Worse that the billy gates sycophants.
How can you tell if the user is playing with his computer or with himself???
It's not stupidity. You are merely suffering from acronymitis. It stands for Digital Rights Management and has to do with preventing copying or unlicensed use of copyrighted materials.
Well, assuming that you already have the iPhone and the PDF documents you wish to view, get something like the free “Files lite” app from the App Store:
There are others, of course, but they all let you load up files on your iPhone or iTouch.
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