I'm talking about how things should be, not the sleazy way things are. But nevertheless, note what you've just said about who's being paid: the various governments.
Governments are the ones who decide who gets what part of the spectrum, for how long and under what terms. Governments have that job because they are administering a public trust. If our governments are simply going for the biggest bucks they can get, and not trying to enforce terms favoring consumers at the same time, that's exactly the problem I'm complaining about, and why I think the laws should be changed.
If government has sold out on us by merely looking for the highest bidder and nothing else, isn't watching out for the interest of the general public when they dole out pieces of the broadcast spectrum, that's not going to make me feel any particular sympathy for "these companies" which have "paid billions" if they think they now own the right to abuse the power that their share of the spectrum gives them.
The governments are mostly going for the big bucks.
Sure, they must decide what the spectrum is being used for, but beyond that, no. And they shouldn't be.
Sure, they must decide what the spectrum is being used for, but beyond that, no. And they shouldn't be.
Why "shouldn't be"? There's a limited public resource being doled out on behalf of the public. "The public" has many and varied interests which need to be represented in such a deal. Getting the biggest boost for government coffers is hardly the only interest the public has.
Those hackers you can't stand are part of reality too.
But yes, let's let the moneyed interests and power brokers have their way. God forbid we try to mess with the optimal world they have created for us. We should be grateful, feel lucky that we get what we get, and be good little consumers respecting and following all of their wise rules.
Those hackers you can't stand are part of reality too.
But yes, let's let the moneyed interests and power brokers have their way. God forbid we try to mess with the optimal world they have created for us. We should be grateful, feel lucky that we get what we get, and be good little consumers respecting and following all of their wise rules.
Cute!
But you miss the point here. If people didn't buy the phone, Apple would be forced to understand why. They would then either change their policy, which wasn't working, of be forced to discontinue the product, and perhaps come up with a better one.
In the end, the consumer has the power, unlike what you are saying, but not for the reasons you think they should.
Actually, reality is the way things ARE, not the way they should be. Is that what you meant?
Things are the way they should be. The way things are - reality - is the result of every influence.. every personality, every interest, all concerns thrown into a bowl and stirred.
"The way things should be" is a personal perspective and fails to consider someone elses personal perspective.
The philosophy of "The way things should be" led to the "Little Red Book", for instance...
But you miss the point here. If people didn't buy the phone, Apple would be forced to understand why. They would then either change their policy, which wasn't working, of be forced to discontinue the product, and perhaps come up with a better one.
In the end, the consumer has the power, unlike what you are saying, but not for the reasons you think they should.
If people won't buy the iPhone because they can only use it with AT&T, then what might happen is that Apple, and consumers who'd like an iPhone to use with another carrier, might simply be screwed for the next five years, depending on how firmly Apple is locked into its contract with AT&T, and what escape clauses they might have set aside for themselves.
(I wonder which is harder to do? Breaking Apple's SIM lock, or breaking out of a contract with AT&T? )
Consumers certainly have some power here -- please don't overstate what I'm saying a false no-power/all-power dichotomy. But they have power on uneven terms, and their choices are therefore among the artificially restricted range of options that the current market provides.
That would rock in the beginning and devolve into a legal quagmire. I'd rather the phone manufacturer and the service provider stay separate.
There is no legal "Gigitty, Gigitty, Gigitty" about Apple having Mac HW that works exclusively with their ,Mac service. But I see your point. Someone in America will sue.
There are plenty of MVNOs that use GSM netowrks with no removal SIM card. These are hardwired in and therefore have to be used on their network. Still, someone in America will sue.
If people won't buy the iPhone because they can only use it with AT&T, then what might happen is that Apple, and consumers who'd like an iPhone to use with another carrier, might simply be screwed for the next five years, depending on how firmly Apple is locked into its contract with AT&T, and what escape clauses they might have set aside for themselves.
(I wonder which is harder to do? Breaking Apple's SIM lock, or breaking out of a contract with AT&T? )
Consumers certainly have some power here -- please don't overstate what I'm saying a false no-power/all-power dichotomy. But they have power on uneven terms, and their choices are therefore among the artificially restricted range of options that the current market provides.
If people didn't buy the phone because they weren't happy with what Apple had done, then they wouldn't be screwed, because the phone wasn't the right product for them. The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall. Being screwed is when you hire a contractor to work on your house, and he walks away with your money without finishing the job.
Not buying a product that fails your needs test is not being screwed.
Why do you guys keep bringing up ring tones as though Apple owns the music. Apple does not own the intellectual rights and does not have the legal ability to give it away for free.
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Whereas many of us are just simply waiting for Apple to add features to the iPhone we've already got with $30 phones you can get from a supermarket with cheap or no contracts and the ability to choose our own carrier
You forget to mention that many of the phone have terrible UI's. And the features are buried in submenus to the point they become near useless.
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Which at the moment seems to be at our expense, not of the carrier or Apple. Thanks Steve for really breaking the lock carriers had on our phones.
I have more functionality on my phone or pay a cheaper rate for the same amount of functionality than many people I know with smart phones.
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Many of you in the US do not appreciate how crazy Apples apparent strategy for the iPhone in Europe seems to us.
I said in my statement above that I could not speak for Europe, but what Apple is doing is good in the US. If you in Europe feel the phone is a bad deal don't buy it. But the reality is that people will buy it.
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The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall.
Really, if you buy a product fully knowing what it does but complain that you want it to do something different. The only reason you are screwed is because you are an idiot.
Why do you guys keep bringing up ring tones as though Apple owns the music. Apple does not own the intellectual rights and does not have the legal ability to give it away for free.
It is within Apple's power, however, to design a phone which allows you use any piece of music you already have in iTunes as a ringtone. There most certainly is NOT any legal barrier to that.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
You are so completely wrong. By the RIAA's reckoning you aren't even allowed to make a copy of an audio CD and transport it to another format like MP3 without violating federal laws. Crazy huh?
Seriously you should think about it for a moment. Apple could care less if you edit all your music into annoying ringtones. It's the record companies that are preventing them and, frankly, the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else.
If people didn't buy the phone because they weren't happy with what Apple had done, then they wouldn't be screwed, because the phone wasn't the right product for them. The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall. Being screwed is when you hire a contractor to work on your house, and he walks away with your money without finishing the job.
Not buying a product that fails your needs test is not being screwed.
I simply mean "screwed" in the sense "Damn, it sure would have been nice to have all that other neat stuff an iPhone does if I didn't have to swallow being stuck with AT&T as part of the deal."
In much the same sense one might say, "If you were hoping for the Yankees to win the series this year, well, now you're screwed."
Not in the "Oh! Poor me! I've been victimized!" sense that TenoBell seems to have picked up and then ran with.
What I favor is, in exchange for the rights to use broadcast spectrum that our various governments grant to carriers and cellphone manufactures, is enforced compatibility and service mobility. Phenomena like the Apple/AT&T exclusive deal is not a pure free-market outcome, but one that reflects the leverage of power in a somewhat rigged game.
By the way, I personally have an iPhone with AT&T service, and I'm fine with what I've got, but I understand why others might want other choices, and I don't care much for the system that limits those choices.
You are so completely wrong. By the RIAA's reckoning you aren't even allowed to make a copy of an audio CD and transport it to another format like MP3 without violating federal laws. Crazy huh?
Seriously you should think about it for a moment. Apple could care less if you edit all your music into annoying ringtones. It's the record companies that are preventing them and, frankly, the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else.
Fortunately for us, the RIAA's blustering about the law and the actual meaning of the law aren't the same thing -- at least not yet, at least not in all countries. I think Australians, as an example, do have to put up with the bullshit of it being truly illegal to rip your own CDs, but even then, that's an interpretation of the law that's pretty roundly ignored. In the US, there's not the slightest thing illegal about installing music as a ringtone that you've already purchased legally once.
Even if it was illegal to, say, rip a CD and make a ringtone from it, it doesn't necessarily follow that Apple is legally obligated to install barriers against that. Apple doesn't disable CD ripping on Macs sold in Australia. It's up to the individual Australian citizen to refrain (or not) from taking advantage of their Mac's ripping capability.
As for "the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else" , that is certainly not true. I still have my previous phone (one of these), which I purchased as an unlocked phone, and I can freely able to install any audio I like as a ringtone, for no extra charge, from a much larger selection of music and sound effect than Apple provides.
It is within Apple's power, however, to design a phone which allows you use any piece of music you already have in iTunes as a ringtone. There most certainly is NOT any legal barrier to that.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
totally wrong. Have you been following this conversation over several stories during the past month, or so?
If so, then you would know that Apple has no say over these songs, as Apple doesn't own the copyrights, just like you.
The songs are allowed to be used for a music download that doesn't include ringtomes. That's what the copyright owners specify everywhere. You must pay them for use as a ringtone.
You might not like it because there are some small programs that allow you to break the copyrighted use allowed. But it's wrong, and you are breaking your contract with Apple if you use them in such a way.
I simply mean "screwed" in the sense "Damn, it sure would have been nice to have all that other neat stuff an iPhone does if I didn't have to swallow being stuck with AT&T as part of the deal."
That's not being screwed. That's being disappointed that a product doesn't do all that you'd like it to.
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In much the same sense one might say, "If you were hoping for the Yankees to win the series this year, well, now you're screwed."
no. If you were conned into buying Yankees pennent tickets, then you would be screwed. Being disappointed isn't being screwed.
I'm a Met fan. They screwed up at the end of the year. That a screwup. But, I wasn't screwed.
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Not in the "Oh! Poor me! I've been victimized!" sense that TenoBell seems to have picked up and then ran with.
That what being screwed means.
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What I favor is, in exchange for the rights to use broadcast spectrum that our various governments grant to carriers and cellphone manufactures, is enforced compatibility and service mobility. Phenomena like the Apple/AT&T exclusive deal is not a pure free-market outcome, but one that reflects the leverage of power in a somewhat rigged game.
In the US at least, we generally don't like the government to interfere too much with what goes on. Paradoxically, that usually even means if it badly impinges on us.
Look at health care. People want it, but many, if not most, don't want the government to run it the way Europeans do. Many people would rather suffer with the way it is instead.
leverage of power in a "somewhat rigged game" (whatever that means) is capitalism.
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By the way, I personally have an iPhone with AT&T service, and I'm fine with what I've got, but I understand why others might want other choices, and I don't care much for the system that limits those choices.
Fortunately for us, the RIAA's blustering about the law and the actual meaning of the law aren't the same thing -- at least not yet, at least not in all countries. I think Australians, as an example, do have to put up with the bullshit of it being truly illegal to rip your own CDs, but even then, that's an interpretation of the law that's pretty roundly ignored. In the US, there's not the slightest thing illegal about installing music as a ringtone that you've already purchased legally once.
Even if it was illegal to, say, rip a CD and make a ringtone from it, it doesn't necessarily follow that Apple is legally obligated to install barriers against that. Apple doesn't disable CD ripping on Macs sold in Australia. It's up to the individual Australian citizen to refrain (or not) from taking advantage of their Mac's ripping capability.
As for "the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else" , that is certainly not true. I still have my previous phone (one of these), which I purchased as an unlocked phone, and I can freely able to install any audio I like as a ringtone, for no extra charge, from a much larger selection of music and sound effect than Apple provides.
Apple has contracts with the content suppliers. There is no way that Apple would get those contracts for this kind of business of supplying content without being required to do everything in its power to prevent disallowed usage. That's what the DRM is there for. It's nice that Apple is trying to get rid of it (though they don't seem to be trying that hard), but they still are required to prevent that unauthorized use. If they don't, the content company's can pull their content.
This is pretty standard. It's out of Apple's hands.
You should be talking about how great it is that Apple has gotten the price down so low, and has not put a timer on the ringtones the way everyone else does. That was quite a concession Apple got from their content providers, though they couldn't yet convince them to allow every song as a ringtone.
Think in steps. Don't expect everything all at once.
Please. I can understand a bit of misunderstanding about how I was using the word, but trying to defend one and only one take on what "screwed" means as the ultimate and definitive meaning is kind of silly. I've heard plenty of people use the term "screwed" to simply mean "disappointed" (in the sense of forced to face or deal with disappointment) or "shit out of luck".
Perhaps we need someone else in this thread insisting that being "screwed" must involve sexual intercourse or small mechanical fasteners featuring spiral threads.
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In the US at least, we generally don't like the government to interfere too much with what goes on. Paradoxically, that usually even means if it badly impinges on us.
Who's the "we" of whom you speak? I'm not pretending to express anything other than my own opinions. I'm not trying be the voice of the American collective, or to pretend to know definitively what that composite voice is saying.
On the other hand, I'm willing to stand by my opinions, but it would take a long, far-ranging, and lengthy discourse to fully elaborate the theories of government behind those opinions.
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Look at health care.
It's like looking at a train wreck.
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People want it, but many, if not most, don't want the government to run it the way Europeans do. Many people would rather suffer with the way it is instead.
Hopefully "many people" are finally waking up, and that will change.
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leverage of power in a "somewhat rigged game" (whatever that means) is capitalism.
My respect for capitalism is akin to what Churchill said about democracy: the worst possible system... except compared to all of the others we've tried.
Besides, there are many flavors of capitalism, from near socialism to laissez-faire, robber-baron capitalism. These days I think we're leaning a bit too close to the latter extreme. There's plenty of cronyism too, which is certainly not a true free-market force.
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Then don't support it by buying the products.
Hey, how about I decide which buttons and levers to push and pull to effect what I'd consider to be beneficial changes? Many of the changes I'd like to see are beyond what market pressure -- certainly the humble effects of my own individual purchase decision -- can affect.
Are you attempting to create a false dilemma where the only two choices are to buy into, accept, and support "the system" just as it is, in order to avail yourself of any of the good things it provides, or to otherwise completely "opt out" of any purchase you deemed tainted in the slightest, until you're living in the woods and growing your own food to escape the system?
Comments
I'm talking about how things should be, not the sleazy way things are. But nevertheless, note what you've just said about who's being paid: the various governments.
Governments are the ones who decide who gets what part of the spectrum, for how long and under what terms. Governments have that job because they are administering a public trust. If our governments are simply going for the biggest bucks they can get, and not trying to enforce terms favoring consumers at the same time, that's exactly the problem I'm complaining about, and why I think the laws should be changed.
If government has sold out on us by merely looking for the highest bidder and nothing else, isn't watching out for the interest of the general public when they dole out pieces of the broadcast spectrum, that's not going to make me feel any particular sympathy for "these companies" which have "paid billions" if they think they now own the right to abuse the power that their share of the spectrum gives them.
The governments are mostly going for the big bucks.
Sure, they must decide what the spectrum is being used for, but beyond that, no. And they shouldn't be.
Read "The Monkey Paw" by William Wymark Jacobs.
Sure, they must decide what the spectrum is being used for, but beyond that, no. And they shouldn't be.
Why "shouldn't be"? There's a limited public resource being doled out on behalf of the public. "The public" has many and varied interests which need to be represented in such a deal. Getting the biggest boost for government coffers is hardly the only interest the public has.
You really don't want to mess with reality.
Those hackers you can't stand are part of reality too.
But yes, let's let the moneyed interests and power brokers have their way. God forbid we try to mess with the optimal world they have created for us. We should be grateful, feel lucky that we get what we get, and be good little consumers respecting and following all of their wise rules.
Reality is the way things should be. A ton of influences has gone into making it exactly what it is. You really don't want to mess with reality.
Read "The Monkey Paw" by William Wymark Jacobs.
Actually, reality is the way things ARE, not the way they should be. Is that what you meant?
Those hackers you can't stand are part of reality too.
But yes, let's let the moneyed interests and power brokers have their way. God forbid we try to mess with the optimal world they have created for us. We should be grateful, feel lucky that we get what we get, and be good little consumers respecting and following all of their wise rules.
Cute!
But you miss the point here. If people didn't buy the phone, Apple would be forced to understand why. They would then either change their policy, which wasn't working, of be forced to discontinue the product, and perhaps come up with a better one.
In the end, the consumer has the power, unlike what you are saying, but not for the reasons you think they should.
Actually, reality is the way things ARE, not the way they should be. Is that what you meant?
Things are the way they should be. The way things are - reality - is the result of every influence.. every personality, every interest, all concerns thrown into a bowl and stirred.
"The way things should be" is a personal perspective and fails to consider someone elses personal perspective.
The philosophy of "The way things should be" led to the "Little Red Book", for instance...
But you miss the point here. If people didn't buy the phone, Apple would be forced to understand why. They would then either change their policy, which wasn't working, of be forced to discontinue the product, and perhaps come up with a better one.
In the end, the consumer has the power, unlike what you are saying, but not for the reasons you think they should.
If people won't buy the iPhone because they can only use it with AT&T, then what might happen is that Apple, and consumers who'd like an iPhone to use with another carrier, might simply be screwed for the next five years, depending on how firmly Apple is locked into its contract with AT&T, and what escape clauses they might have set aside for themselves.
(I wonder which is harder to do? Breaking Apple's SIM lock, or breaking out of a contract with AT&T?
Consumers certainly have some power here -- please don't overstate what I'm saying a false no-power/all-power dichotomy. But they have power on uneven terms, and their choices are therefore among the artificially restricted range of options that the current market provides.
That would rock in the beginning and devolve into a legal quagmire. I'd rather the phone manufacturer and the service provider stay separate.
There is no legal "Gigitty, Gigitty, Gigitty" about Apple having Mac HW that works exclusively with their ,Mac service. But I see your point. Someone in America will sue.
There are plenty of MVNOs that use GSM netowrks with no removal SIM card. These are hardwired in and therefore have to be used on their network. Still, someone in America will sue.
If people won't buy the iPhone because they can only use it with AT&T, then what might happen is that Apple, and consumers who'd like an iPhone to use with another carrier, might simply be screwed for the next five years, depending on how firmly Apple is locked into its contract with AT&T, and what escape clauses they might have set aside for themselves.
(I wonder which is harder to do? Breaking Apple's SIM lock, or breaking out of a contract with AT&T?
Consumers certainly have some power here -- please don't overstate what I'm saying a false no-power/all-power dichotomy. But they have power on uneven terms, and their choices are therefore among the artificially restricted range of options that the current market provides.
If people didn't buy the phone because they weren't happy with what Apple had done, then they wouldn't be screwed, because the phone wasn't the right product for them. The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall. Being screwed is when you hire a contractor to work on your house, and he walks away with your money without finishing the job.
Not buying a product that fails your needs test is not being screwed.
Like not paying for ringtones for example?
Why do you guys keep bringing up ring tones as though Apple owns the music. Apple does not own the intellectual rights and does not have the legal ability to give it away for free.
Whereas many of us are just simply waiting for Apple to add features to the iPhone we've already got with $30 phones you can get from a supermarket with cheap or no contracts and the ability to choose our own carrier
You forget to mention that many of the phone have terrible UI's. And the features are buried in submenus to the point they become near useless.
Which at the moment seems to be at our expense, not of the carrier or Apple. Thanks Steve for really breaking the lock carriers had on our phones.
I have more functionality on my phone or pay a cheaper rate for the same amount of functionality than many people I know with smart phones.
Many of you in the US do not appreciate how crazy Apples apparent strategy for the iPhone in Europe seems to us.
I said in my statement above that I could not speak for Europe, but what Apple is doing is good in the US. If you in Europe feel the phone is a bad deal don't buy it. But the reality is that people will buy it.
The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall.
Really, if you buy a product fully knowing what it does but complain that you want it to do something different. The only reason you are screwed is because you are an idiot.
Why do you guys keep bringing up ring tones as though Apple owns the music. Apple does not own the intellectual rights and does not have the legal ability to give it away for free.
It is within Apple's power, however, to design a phone which allows you use any piece of music you already have in iTunes as a ringtone. There most certainly is NOT any legal barrier to that.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
You are so completely wrong. By the RIAA's reckoning you aren't even allowed to make a copy of an audio CD and transport it to another format like MP3 without violating federal laws. Crazy huh?
Seriously you should think about it for a moment. Apple could care less if you edit all your music into annoying ringtones. It's the record companies that are preventing them and, frankly, the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else.
If people didn't buy the phone because they weren't happy with what Apple had done, then they wouldn't be screwed, because the phone wasn't the right product for them. The talk of being "screwed" is off the wall. Being screwed is when you hire a contractor to work on your house, and he walks away with your money without finishing the job.
Not buying a product that fails your needs test is not being screwed.
I simply mean "screwed" in the sense "Damn, it sure would have been nice to have all that other neat stuff an iPhone does if I didn't have to swallow being stuck with AT&T as part of the deal."
In much the same sense one might say, "If you were hoping for the Yankees to win the series this year, well, now you're screwed."
Not in the "Oh! Poor me! I've been victimized!" sense that TenoBell seems to have picked up and then ran with.
What I favor is, in exchange for the rights to use broadcast spectrum that our various governments grant to carriers and cellphone manufactures, is enforced compatibility and service mobility. Phenomena like the Apple/AT&T exclusive deal is not a pure free-market outcome, but one that reflects the leverage of power in a somewhat rigged game.
By the way, I personally have an iPhone with AT&T service, and I'm fine with what I've got, but I understand why others might want other choices, and I don't care much for the system that limits those choices.
You are so completely wrong. By the RIAA's reckoning you aren't even allowed to make a copy of an audio CD and transport it to another format like MP3 without violating federal laws. Crazy huh?
Seriously you should think about it for a moment. Apple could care less if you edit all your music into annoying ringtones. It's the record companies that are preventing them and, frankly, the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else.
Fortunately for us, the RIAA's blustering about the law and the actual meaning of the law aren't the same thing -- at least not yet, at least not in all countries. I think Australians, as an example, do have to put up with the bullshit of it being truly illegal to rip your own CDs, but even then, that's an interpretation of the law that's pretty roundly ignored. In the US, there's not the slightest thing illegal about installing music as a ringtone that you've already purchased legally once.
Even if it was illegal to, say, rip a CD and make a ringtone from it, it doesn't necessarily follow that Apple is legally obligated to install barriers against that. Apple doesn't disable CD ripping on Macs sold in Australia. It's up to the individual Australian citizen to refrain (or not) from taking advantage of their Mac's ripping capability.
As for "the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else" , that is certainly not true. I still have my previous phone (one of these), which I purchased as an unlocked phone, and I can freely able to install any audio I like as a ringtone, for no extra charge, from a much larger selection of music and sound effect than Apple provides.
It is within Apple's power, however, to design a phone which allows you use any piece of music you already have in iTunes as a ringtone. There most certainly is NOT any legal barrier to that.
Treating a ringtone as a special category of audio material which requires separate purchase, with limitations on which bits of audio you can do that with, is a deliberate design choice on Apple's part, requiring extra effort to impose artificial barriers.
totally wrong. Have you been following this conversation over several stories during the past month, or so?
If so, then you would know that Apple has no say over these songs, as Apple doesn't own the copyrights, just like you.
The songs are allowed to be used for a music download that doesn't include ringtomes. That's what the copyright owners specify everywhere. You must pay them for use as a ringtone.
You might not like it because there are some small programs that allow you to break the copyrighted use allowed. But it's wrong, and you are breaking your contract with Apple if you use them in such a way.
I simply mean "screwed" in the sense "Damn, it sure would have been nice to have all that other neat stuff an iPhone does if I didn't have to swallow being stuck with AT&T as part of the deal."
That's not being screwed. That's being disappointed that a product doesn't do all that you'd like it to.
In much the same sense one might say, "If you were hoping for the Yankees to win the series this year, well, now you're screwed."
no. If you were conned into buying Yankees pennent tickets, then you would be screwed. Being disappointed isn't being screwed.
I'm a Met fan. They screwed up at the end of the year. That a screwup. But, I wasn't screwed.
Not in the "Oh! Poor me! I've been victimized!" sense that TenoBell seems to have picked up and then ran with.
That what being screwed means.
What I favor is, in exchange for the rights to use broadcast spectrum that our various governments grant to carriers and cellphone manufactures, is enforced compatibility and service mobility. Phenomena like the Apple/AT&T exclusive deal is not a pure free-market outcome, but one that reflects the leverage of power in a somewhat rigged game.
In the US at least, we generally don't like the government to interfere too much with what goes on. Paradoxically, that usually even means if it badly impinges on us.
Look at health care. People want it, but many, if not most, don't want the government to run it the way Europeans do. Many people would rather suffer with the way it is instead.
leverage of power in a "somewhat rigged game" (whatever that means) is capitalism.
By the way, I personally have an iPhone with AT&T service, and I'm fine with what I've got, but I understand why others might want other choices, and I don't care much for the system that limits those choices.
Then don't support it by buying the products.
Fortunately for us, the RIAA's blustering about the law and the actual meaning of the law aren't the same thing -- at least not yet, at least not in all countries. I think Australians, as an example, do have to put up with the bullshit of it being truly illegal to rip your own CDs, but even then, that's an interpretation of the law that's pretty roundly ignored. In the US, there's not the slightest thing illegal about installing music as a ringtone that you've already purchased legally once.
Even if it was illegal to, say, rip a CD and make a ringtone from it, it doesn't necessarily follow that Apple is legally obligated to install barriers against that. Apple doesn't disable CD ripping on Macs sold in Australia. It's up to the individual Australian citizen to refrain (or not) from taking advantage of their Mac's ripping capability.
As for "the $0.99 fee and nifty iTunes editor is much better than you get from anyone else" , that is certainly not true. I still have my previous phone (one of these), which I purchased as an unlocked phone, and I can freely able to install any audio I like as a ringtone, for no extra charge, from a much larger selection of music and sound effect than Apple provides.
Apple has contracts with the content suppliers. There is no way that Apple would get those contracts for this kind of business of supplying content without being required to do everything in its power to prevent disallowed usage. That's what the DRM is there for. It's nice that Apple is trying to get rid of it (though they don't seem to be trying that hard), but they still are required to prevent that unauthorized use. If they don't, the content company's can pull their content.
This is pretty standard. It's out of Apple's hands.
You should be talking about how great it is that Apple has gotten the price down so low, and has not put a timer on the ringtones the way everyone else does. That was quite a concession Apple got from their content providers, though they couldn't yet convince them to allow every song as a ringtone.
Think in steps. Don't expect everything all at once.
Think in steps. Don't expect everything all at once.
But... but ... instant gratification is the "New American Way™"!
That's not being screwed.
Please. I can understand a bit of misunderstanding about how I was using the word, but trying to defend one and only one take on what "screwed" means as the ultimate and definitive meaning is kind of silly. I've heard plenty of people use the term "screwed" to simply mean "disappointed" (in the sense of forced to face or deal with disappointment) or "shit out of luck".
Perhaps we need someone else in this thread insisting that being "screwed" must involve sexual intercourse or small mechanical fasteners featuring spiral threads.
In the US at least, we generally don't like the government to interfere too much with what goes on. Paradoxically, that usually even means if it badly impinges on us.
Who's the "we" of whom you speak? I'm not pretending to express anything other than my own opinions. I'm not trying be the voice of the American collective, or to pretend to know definitively what that composite voice is saying.
On the other hand, I'm willing to stand by my opinions, but it would take a long, far-ranging, and lengthy discourse to fully elaborate the theories of government behind those opinions.
Look at health care.
It's like looking at a train wreck.
People want it, but many, if not most, don't want the government to run it the way Europeans do. Many people would rather suffer with the way it is instead.
Hopefully "many people" are finally waking up, and that will change.
leverage of power in a "somewhat rigged game" (whatever that means) is capitalism.
My respect for capitalism is akin to what Churchill said about democracy: the worst possible system... except compared to all of the others we've tried.
Besides, there are many flavors of capitalism, from near socialism to laissez-faire, robber-baron capitalism. These days I think we're leaning a bit too close to the latter extreme. There's plenty of cronyism too, which is certainly not a true free-market force.
Then don't support it by buying the products.
Hey, how about I decide which buttons and levers to push and pull to effect what I'd consider to be beneficial changes? Many of the changes I'd like to see are beyond what market pressure -- certainly the humble effects of my own individual purchase decision -- can affect.
Are you attempting to create a false dilemma where the only two choices are to buy into, accept, and support "the system" just as it is, in order to avail yourself of any of the good things it provides, or to otherwise completely "opt out" of any purchase you deemed tainted in the slightest, until you're living in the woods and growing your own food to escape the system?