Issue 31: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Comparing Apples to Amigas

Lately I’ve been reading books about technology companies and technological entrepreneurs, in particular taking in lots of early Commodore and Apple history. I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve found this to be just about the most interesting stuff I’ve ever read. As a computer programmer I think it’s a subconscious search for heroes, an attempt to get to know a little more about the giants upon whose shoulders I’m trying to climb.

These two companies, Commodore and Apple, offer some interesting comparisons. Both broke into the computing world in the late 1970’s and in the mid-eighties both released a computer they thought would change the world, (”put a dent in the universe” in Steve Job’s words), Apple with their Macintosh and Commodore with their Amiga.

The Macintosh

Apple had been working on a new computer that would sport a feature yet to be seen outside experimental computer labs, the Graphic User Interface, (GUI), driven by a mouse. This computer was called the Lisa, (besides being the name of several Apple’s employees’ daughters I haven’t tracked down a great reason for this name.) It was originally designed to be a $2000 computer, but by the time they were finished it cost an exorbitant, (especially in 1980’s dollars), $10,000.

About the time that Lisa development was cranking up, an Apple manager got the idea to build a cheap and simple computer. He put together a rag-tag group of engineers and developers and they started designing what would eventually become the Macintosh. They built it in secret for the first few months, afraid that if the higher-ups found out about it they would cancel the project. Eventually Steve Jobs discovered the secret Mac project and came in to take it over. (Jobs was one of Apple’s co-founders, but at this time he was not much more than that. He had been removed from the Lisa project and from what I’ve read, it seems like he just kind of drifted around the Apple offices looking for a promising project to take over and then take most of the credit.) He basically ran off the existing Macintosh manager and then started exerting his unique style of management which consists mostly of plowing through the office, dropping his opinion on what everyone is doing, (often something like: “That’s shit”), and then moving on. That being said, the guy gets results and lots of people that have worked for him say that they would do it again.

The original Macintosh, for all the ground it broke GUI-wise, had some major flaws. It had less RAM than it needed and only had one floppy drive. When you don’t have a hard-drive, these two design choices can combine for some pretty terrible user experiences. For example, to make a back-up of a floppy disk, (and the computer booted off a disk since there was no hard drive, so disks were much more important back then than they are now), you had to switch out the source and the destination disk sometimes over 30 times as the computer copied sections of the disk in and out of memory. If the computer had come with a second floppy drive or more RAM, this wouldn’t have been an issue. The original Mac also had a black and white screen and a relatively low resolution. Mostly because of these design issues and its price, (they ended up selling it for $2500, much more than the engineers that built it intended), the original Mac sales were pretty bad. Jobs more or less turned a blind eye on the poor sales, acting like everything was going great. The next year Jobs was removed from any meaningful position at Apple and soon after he and a lot of good people left to start NeXT, (which would go on to do cool things like build the operating system that OS X is based on and take some artists and engineers off George Lucas’s hands for cheap and turn them into Pixar, but that’s another set of stories…)

The Amiga

Throughout the first half of the 1980’s Commodore experienced immense success with their Commodore 64, (C64), computer. During this time Commodore was run by one of the most ruthless businessmen I’ve read about- Jack Tramiel. (I highly recommend Brian Bagnall’s “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore” for a lot more about this.)

Tramiel was all about selling computers for impossibly low prices. He was able to do this because he built every part of his computers in-house, including the difficult-to-produce CPUs. Just a year after its launch, Tramiel was able to cut the C64’s price by two thirds, ($200, which in today’s terms is around $400 – an incredible price for what was a very capable computer.)

Tramiel had a way of burning bridges. Tramiel would do things like take out a huge order for some parts from a company, get that company to spend all its time and resources supplying the order, hold out on paying them until they were desperate and then offer to buy the whole company for a cut-throat price. Tramiel acquired more than one company this way. He was pretty shady with his retailers too. He would sell a batch of computers to a trusty retailer like ComputerLand for a certain price, and then turn around and sell the same computers to K-mart for half that price. ComputerLand would be forced to sell their lot at a loss. Needless to say, Tramiel made a lot of enemies in the computer and retail industries.

By the time the Amiga entered the Commodore picture, Tramiel had been ousted, (for no very good reason, really.) Commodore’s majority shareholder and chairman of the board, Irving Gould, believed Tramiel was receiving undue credit for the C64’s success and decided that it was time for Tramiel to be put in his place. Tramiel went on to buy one of Commodore’s biggest competitors, Atari, and from there did what he could to be a thorn in Commodore’s side.

Commodore needed a new computer and one of the hottest computers at the trade shows was built by a company called Amiga. After some intense negotiating, (which included paying off a loan that Amiga owed to none other than Atari), Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984. A year later Amiga released their first computer, what would later be known as the Amiga 1000. The Amiga had a few things in common with the Macintosh. They both used the same Motorola CPU and they both had a mouse-driven GUI.

In pretty much every other way though, the Amiga was superior to the Macintosh. It was a true multimedia computer years before the word “multimedia” took it’s current meaning. It had a high resolution monitor and special graphics chips that supported thousands of colors. It shipped with twice the amount of RAM and supported multitasking. (The Mac wouldn’t get multitasking until later versions.) And it cost $1000 less than the Mac.

So why is it that “Macintosh” is a household name and most people have never heard of the Amiga? In a word, marketing. In the past, Commodore had a good record for marketing. One of their first spokespersons was the ever-popular William Shatner (watch this if only to hear the Shat say: “Coming soon, Gorf! The wonder arcade game in a home version!”) With the Amiga though, Commodore botched its launch in a stellar fashion. Until late in the game, the few advertisements they did run were mostly print ads and for some reason, those were printed in sepia tone. When you’re the first company to launch a really incredible color computer, don’t you think you’d run some color ads to show it off? Apple on the other hand launched the Mac with what is generally considered to be the Greatest Commercial of All Time – the Ridley Scott-directed 1984 Superbowl commercial with that girl throwing a hammer through a video screen showing a Big Brother-like dictator.

Commodore was in financial trouble after paying millions more than necessary for Amiga, (the company), and Tramiel at Atari was putting up some tough competition with their Atari ST computer. Commodore also faced problems finding distributors for the Amiga. Tramiel had so thoroughly ruined Commodore’s image in the retailer’s minds that most were hesitant to deal with Commodore, even though Tramiel had moved on. It’s sad, but it’s probably the case that Commodore simply couldn’t afford to produce the sorts of ads that their hardware deserved. The Amiga engineers, who had been recently acquired in the Commodore/Amiga merge, expressed their feelings by coding a hidden message into the Amiga: “We made the Amiga, they f*cked it up.” Here’s one of the Amiga engineer’s talking about the easter-egg:

You had to do this keystroke where it took eight fingers and both thumbs to press all the keys that you needed to get the first message to come up that said, “We made the Amiga.” Then, while you had that message up and while you continued to hold all of those keys down, if you could some how get the floppy disk inserted into the machine (for instance, if you leaned over and shoved it in with your nose) then for 1/60th of a second, the other message would show up. It would blink up and go away

This prank, hidden as deep as seemingly possible, was never-the-less discovered a few weeks after the Amiga launched and tens of thousands of units had to be recalled and modified. This didn’t help Commodore’s financial situation.

Between the lackluster ad campaigns and poor management, mostly on the part of chairman Gould who more than once fired a CEO because they were more competent than he was comfortable with, the Amiga did not have much chance for success. Commodore was on a downward spiral and would be out of the picture by the early 1990’s.

Apple generally handled things better than Commodore. They continually pushed out better versions of the Macintosh and had success selling to schools. One of the world’s first “killer apps”, PageMaker, was available only on the Mac and when paired with Apple’s LaserWriter, invented the whole desktop publishing industry that took off in a big way. So, though their machine was the lesser of the two, Apple was able to outlast Commodore. Unfortunately for both Apple and Commodore, 1985 saw the launch of another significant piece of computer history. Microsoft released version 1.0 of their GUI program, Windows. It would be years until Microsoft would build a usable version of Windows, (insert smart-ass remark here), but eventually their operating systems running on cheap IBM-clone PCs would come to dominate the computer market.

Issue 23: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Behold, the Power of the Wii

“I named my Wii Mii McGeeky.”

When Nintendo announced that they were naming their new video game system the Wii, I thought it was a really lame name. Especially compared to the code name they had been using up to that point – the Revolution. The Revolution is infinitely cooler sounding than Wii. The name is slowly growing on me though. One thing I like is that you find yourself saying ridiculous, (and potentially dangerous), sorts of things when talking about the Wii. When a friend of mine said the phrase at the beginning of this article he drew a roomful of blank stares and doubled-over laughter. Besides the obvious, (to a fifth grader), male genitalia connotations, the name implies several other things that I’m sure Nintendo had in mind: it sounds like the word “we” which implies groups of people can play it and it sounds like the word “wee” as in “Fun!.” Also, if you flip the “W” over you get the word “Mii” which is what Nintendo calls the avatars you can create for yourself (see below).

What is the Wii?
The most noticeable thing about the Wii is the controller. It’s a wireless device that looks like a fat television remote with several buttons on the front and one trigger on the back. An optional attachment called the “nun-chuck” offers another joystick and two more triggers. Both the remote and the nun-chuck are motion sensitive and in most of the games that are out now you control the game by mimicking whatever action is taking place on the screen, (swinging your arm to hit a tennis ball, flicking your hand to swing Link’s sword.) Basically what this means is that where there is a Wii, there will be much flailing of arms.

The Wii can connect to the internet using its built-in wireless network card. (I think they will be releasing a wired network card at some point in the future). There aren’t any online games out yet, but eventually you will be able to play against your friends over the internet which is cool.

Another cool feature of the Nintendo Wii are mii’s. These are on-screen characters that you can customize to look like yourself or pretty much anyone.)

Some games are mii-compatible meaning that the mii’s on your system and mii’s that are shared from your friends’ Wii will show up in your games. I was playing Wii Sports bowling the other day and saw a friend’s mom, dad and wife bowling in the lane next to mine. It’s really cool how seamlessly the whole mii integration works.

The biggest negative about the Wii is that it is terribly under-powered compared to the other new video game systems, (the Xbox 360 and the PS3.) Both of the latter systems boast much more powerful processors and push out graphics in high-def, (up to 1080p.) The Wii gimps out a meager 480p on hardware that is marginally better than the Wii’s predecessor, the Gamecube. One nice-ish side effect of the Wii being mostly a Gamecube is that it will play all the Gamecube games, (and there are a few that are worth playing.)

What are the games like?
So far I’ve only played 5 or 6 games on the Wii. One game, Wii Sports, comes bundled with the system. It’s fun, but it’s basically just a nice demo of some of the stuff you can accomplish with the motion sensing features of the Wii. The sports – tennis, baseball, boxing, golf and bowling, with the exception of bowling, are all very simplified versions of the sports. In Wii baseball, for instance, you don’t have control over the fielding or base running… you simply concern yourself with timing your swing right and the system handles everything else. It’s still actually a lot of fun, but it leaves you wanting a more complete baseball game. It was probably a really wise decision to leave the bundled game relatively simple… the last thing Nintendo wants is for people to quit because the games are just so hard they’re not fun. (And within a year or two there will probably be several baseball games offering more complete control over the action.)

Speaking of games so hard they are more like work than fun… I’ve been playing a lot of Trauma Center 2: Second Opinion. In this game you are a surgeon and the remote and nun-chuck become the tools of your trade: scalpels, forceps, syringes, bandages, etc. I was joking about this game being “work” because most of the time this game is a blast. There are a few levels, (ie: surgeries), that take a few tries and some that require what I’ll call a trick to pass, and the details of the trick are basically left up to you to pull out of thin air. On one level in particular I kept doing something wrong because after about 7 minutes of complicated procedures my patient kept dying. I finally googled for some help and found that I needed to do one particular thing at a particular time or else it was impossible to pass the level. Attempting to increase the difficulty of a game by requiring the player to perform arbitrary and mysterious actions is pretty lame. Besides this, everything about Trauma Center 2 is great.

The Wii also emulates a ton of old video game systems, (NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, Turbo Grafix 16.) You have to buy the games and they range from $5 to $10, which seems a little expensive to me. Nintendo will be releasing 4 games each Monday and there are already some pretty great games available. I have not bought any Virtual Console games yet, but I’ll probably pick up some of the old classics like Kid Icarus or Metroid. I haven’t seen this myself, but I read that you can suspend these emulated games, save this saved state to the Wii’s memory and restore them later. Most of those old games wouldn’t let you save at all, (or used passwords), so this is a huge improvement. I’m hoping that Nintendo goes through the trouble of adding some internet multi-player functionality to some of these old games. I can just imagine turning on my Wii, noticing a friend is online and challenging him to a quick race in Super Mario Kart.

The Wii is a great video game system. I was a bit skeptical about the control system, but the few games I’ve played so far have convinced me that it works really well. I can imagine future Wii games exploiting the new control system in cool and ridiculous ways – like strapping a remote to each of your arms and legs and controlling your character by running in place, jumping and just generally acting like a lunatic.

Issue 21: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Next Generation DVD Format War or Here We Go Again

What do you get when you mix Back to the Future II, a naive twelve-year-old and a format war? You get one of the more disappointing experiences of my childhood, (and it’s not even that bad so I should probably just shut up.) What happened was I had been loaned BttFII, which I had been told was a really cool movie, (”Hoverboards?!! Are you serious?!!”), and was really excited about getting home to watch it. (By the way, I grew up in Taiwan and things like new movies and American TV shows were sometimes hard to come by.) To my dismay, the tape did not even fit in our VCR Recorder, (I technically shouldn’t make this Borat reference because we had a lame VCP Player.) I was a casualty of the Betamax/VHS war and I was not happy. I think I eventually tracked down a Betamax player from a neighbor, but there was still something wrong with the tape because I don’t remember actually getting to watch BttFII until years later.

You would think that we would learn from the past and not let another format war like Betamax vs. VHS spill out into the consumer world. Unfortunately, this is just what is happening with the two formats, (HD-DVD and Blu-ray), fighting to replace standard DVDs. DVDs store from 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes of data, which translates to about two and a half hours of standard definition video, (the sort of video we’ve all been watching for the last 20 years.) The new formats can hold a lot more data, which opens the door for movie studios to release much higher quality versions of their movies. High-definition (HD), TV’s will eventually become the norm and we will need a supply of actual HD video to watch on them. These new DVD formats offer one way to get high definition video delivered to your living room. Other methods include HD broadcast feeds through the airwaves, HD cable and satellite, and HD downloads to devices like the XBox 360, (more on this later).

A word about HD video. One assumption that is made when talking about these next generation DVDs is that you will have an HDTV to watch them on. If you don’t, then they don’t really make much sense. Regular non-HD TV’s, (aka Standard Definition TVs or SDTVs), go up to 480i, which means there are 480 lines of detail in the video image from the top of the screen to the bottom. The i stands for “interlaced,” which means that the screen only shows every other line and then quickly switches out to show the other set of lines. It happens so fast that we don’t really notice that we’re only seeing half the detail at a time. So SDTV’s use 480i. HDTV’s come in several flavors: 480p, (which is also called Enhanced TV or EDTV), 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The p stands for “progressive” which means that all the lines of detail are displayed simultaneously, (as opposed to interlaced, where they are constantly traded out.) The result is a clearer picture. 720 and 1080 mean that there are that many lines of image detail from the top of the screen to the bottom. Most computer monitors these days run at a resolution of at least 1280×1024. The second number, 1024, is referring to the same thing as the 1080 in HDTVs, so your computer monitor is in effect high def, (and this should be pretty obvious – computer monitors are much clearer than SDTVs… that’s why we work in front of monitors and not televisions.)

So what are the differences between these competing formats? The main differences that I’ve seen are in the amount of data they hold and the price of the players.

Blu-ray

• Blu-ray holds 25-50 gigabytes of data which is good for about 5 to 9 hours of HD video.
• In theory, blu-ray discs eventually could hold up to 100-200 gigabytes, or a lot of hours of HD video.
• 7.1 surround sound.
• Blu-ray movies currently cost from $25-$35 (btw… does anyone else think $35 for any version [HD or not] of Click is too much?)
• Blu-ray players are currently really expensive: $1000 for a Samsung Blu-ray player at Best Buy.
• Sony’s PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray drive and plays Blu-ray movies. Eventually you will be able to buy one for $600. As of press time, though, (which was the PS3 launch date), pretty much the only way to get one is to drop over $2000 for one on Ebay!

HD-DVD

• HD-DVDs hold 15-30 gigabytes of data or 4 to 8 hours of video, (from what I’ve read, the video on Blu-ray disc will be higher quality than HD-DVD… that’s why Blu-ray holds fewer hours of video relative to HD-DVD.)
• According to the official HD-DVD website they have a theoretical limit of 60 gigabytes.
• Like Blu-ray, they can handle 7.1 surround sound.
• HD-DVD movies currently cost from $25-35.
• HD-DVD players cost less. Best Buy is selling one for under $500.
• Microsoft will have an HD-DVD add-on for their Xbox 360. It will cost around $300.

So what does all that mean to me?

It really sucks that the industry is letting this format war be decided by the consumers. People will have to choose one and hope that their format wins. It’s also possible that both formats will survive. (This happened with writable DVDs: there are two formats: DVD+R and DVD-R and eventually hardware manufacturers just supported both.) However, the two next gen DVD formats are different enough that building machines that could play both would be challenging and expensive.

If I had to guess which one would win, I’d have to lean towards Blu-ray. Blu-ray players cost more, but there’s one built into the PS3, (as opposed to the $300 HD-DVD add-on for the 360.) Sony is really struggling to get these systems out, but eventually there will be millions of them in households and this will go a long way towards solidifying Blu-ray’s hold on the market.

If I had to make a recommendation, I’d say “Don’t get either.” You’ll really be kicking yourself if you buy a $500+ device and then have nothing to play on it in a year. Just keep watching your regular DVDs for a year or two.

Finally, as if two options weren’t enough, there will soon be a third way to get HD video. Microsoft recently announced that they will offer HD video downloads to Xbox 360s. This is kind of cool because it’s good quality video delivered to a device that is already in your living room. From what I’ve read, the HD movies they rent, (I don’t think they plan on selling downloads yet), will be about 6 gigabytes each which will really tear through the 360’s meager 20 gigabyte hard-drive. Hopefully Microsoft will soon announce larger, (100 gig+), drives, which would make this HD download service a little more appealing.

Issue 19: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Through RSS Colored Lenses

Do you find yourself going to the same five or ten websites every day, multiple times a day? Over the last few years the lists of sites I frequent grew to over fifty and keeping up with them was becoming a daunting and not so enjoyable task. I was suffering from information overload and it was really starting to ruin my whole web-surfing experience. I had even started to consider taking some pretty drastic steps, like leaving my computer off all evening at home just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. What I needed was a tool to help manage and deliver all the content of my favorite websites. This is exactly what RSS feeds and feed readers do, and depending on the reader, they can do a really good job.

Any website that gets new content posted regularly and is database driven, (the content is stored in a database instead of just HTML files), probably has an RSS feed. (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication). An RSS feed is a file that describes the last twenty or so articles or posts, (the number of which is specified by the website creator). The descriptions contain at least the headline or title of the post and either part or all of the contents of the post. A feed reader is an application or website that manages a list of feeds you “subscribe” to and puts the contents of the RSS feed on the screen in a useful way. I prefer the web-based feed readers because you can access your list of feeds, (and what posts you have read or not read) on any computer, instead of just the one that your feed reader application is installed on. With some application feed readers there are ways to sync your read/unread lists between multiple computers, but this seems kind of unnecessary when the web-based feed readers work really well.

On a regular basis your RSS feed reader checks if there is any new content on each website you frequent. If it finds a new post or article, it adds it to your “unread” list. When you log in to your reader, all the unread articles show up in one place. This makes it simple to keep up with a lot of websites. One of the coolest things about feed readers is that you can save up all your reading for a convenient time such as the weekend or evenings. I usually come home from work and sift through all the day’s news and articles in about 30 minutes.

I have used several feed readers over the last year or so. The best one is actually one of the newest ones. Google’s Reader is really easy to use and allows you to quickly skim through headlines (I only actually read about 30% of the articles that get posted each day).

Here’s a screenshot of Google Reader. On the left are some of the feeds I subscribe to with the number of unread items in parenthesis. On the right is the list of unread items. You can add feeds by clicking the Add Subscription link and just typing the URL of the website or blog you want to subscribe to. Google Reader goes out and determines the link to the actual RSS feed file for you.

When you click on an item, it opens, revealing the contents of that post. This article is from one of my favorite blogs, Boing Boing.

The current Google Reader is actually their second attempt at building a feed reader. The first one had some design issues and started feeling really clunky if you were trying to keep up with more than a few feeds. Google’s redesigned Reader is actually just a blatant rip-off of another web-based feed reader, Bloglines. Bloglines was one of the first web-based feed readers and it is pretty good. Google’s new interface is just a little easier to use and I like the way it doesn’t mark items as read until I actually click on them. Bloglines automatically marks all items as read when you click on a feed or group of feeds which can lead to some time-consuming mistakes, (accidentally click the “All Items” link and you’ll have marked everything as read, even if you don’t have time to actually sit down and read all the items.)

Reading the Internet through a feed reader has a few drawbacks. For example, all the articles look exactly the same. All the design and colors of the original site are lost. For me this isn’t a big deal, but YMMV. If you want to read the article on the original site you can do so easily by just clicking the headline link. Also, sometimes an article’s images do not show up in Google Reader.

The other big drawback with feed readers is that you don’t get to see comments left on posts. Some blog engines offer RRS feeds for the comments of each post, but trying to keep up with comment feeds for each post of a blog seems pretty unwieldy to me. If I’m really interested in a certain post, I usually just click through to the original website to see if there are any interesting comments.

While feed readers are probably not for everyone, I think everyone should at least give them a shot. Just subscribe to a few of your favorite websites or blogs, (assuming they have RSS feeds), in Google Reader and see what you think.

Issue 18: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

DRM -or- Why Your Technology Isn’t As Cool As It Could Be

As consumers we have found ourselves in a strange place when it comes to technology and content. Up until a little while ago, the limits placed on technology were “natural,” meaning engineers could create as cool or tricked-out a device as they wanted and the only limitation was their creativity and/or skills. Lately, though, a rather troubling trend has emerged. The people that create the content that is played by these devices have started exerting control over the design specifications of the devices themselves. DVD players must be approved by, I think, the FCC and the FCC will only approve players that include certain anti-piracy solutions. These solutions prohibit most of what we as consumers have grown to understand as fair-use, (ex: the ability to make a backup of a DVD so that the original doesn’t get scratched).

A good question to ask yourself is: “Whose interests are being served?” When Tivo makes the new version of their DVR, are they really trying to build the ultimate recording device for their consumers? Or are they caving to the demands of backbone-less content providers? For me, the ultimate TiVo would include the following features:

• The ability to quickly and easily move my recorded video onto a device such as an iPod Video or some other video playing device. (Note: this would require that Apple made the iPod more flexible than it currently is… again the technology industry is catering to the content providers instead of the consumers)
• The ability to quickly and easily move my recorded video onto a computer in my house to do things like edit out commericials, (assuming the ultimate-TiVo didn’t do this for me already)
• Maybe a built-in DVD burner to burn shows or movies to DVD
• WiFi enabled, (to easily move files to and from a computer or other wifi-enabled device)
• Support for high def video
• No DRM (Digital Rights Management)

Nothing in this list would be crazy difficult to implement. Ten engineers with a decent chunk of money could probably spit out a prototype of this device in a few weeks. A 13-year-old hacker dude could make his computer do most of what I’m talking about in one afternoon with software that is either free or relatively cheap. With a tiny bit of marketing, these would sell like frickin’ hotcakes too.

The main reason we as consumers don’t have and will probably never get this wonderful machine is DRM. The content providers are terrified of piracy and in their eyes DRM is part of the solution. I think DRM is a terrible solution. It gives the content providers a gross amount of control over what we as consumers do with the content we buy. I’ve already written a whole article about how much I hate DRM, (to read it, go here), so I won’t go on about this too much longer. But to support some of the stuff in this article, here is a list of my main beefs with DRM:

• DRM breaks fair-use. If I buy music or a movie, I should be able to play it or convert it so that it will play on any device.
• DRM doesn’t work. Thanks to the so-called “analog hole” as long as we are still allowed actually to experience the content, (listen to it, view it, etc.), there’s a way to copy it, (recording it off the sound card, using a camera to record the video off the screen.)
• DRM is not needed. Every single drm’ed song or TV show that is available for sale online is also available DRM-free on some sort of p2p pirating website. It is not like putting DRM in a song will keep it from ever leaking out onto the web. Piracy has always been an issue and will always be an issue but there are ways to make a profit selling content without DRM. Not many have tried this, but eMusic is an example of a company that has Just Said No to DRM and is still doing incredibly well.

For consumers, buying from a legitimate online store is more convenient than searching for a pirated copy of the item they want. If I had to choose between A) searching for 15 minutes for a song and then downloading it from an unknown source at potentially slow speeds, and B) logging into a legitimate online store and pay a dollar or so to download the same file quickly, I’d choose option B every time… IF there was no DRM on the file. I wish more companies would follow on the path that eMusic has bravely blazed.

What I am asking for here is nothing short of complete interoperability between all the devices in my house, where applicable. To get this, digital content needs to be stored in open, non-proprietary formats. This would require a change in the mindset of all content providers. Start selling your content in open, non-DRM formats. If this happens, the people who make the technology that plays your content will be free to pull out all the stops and create some kick-ass hardware, hardware like the hypothetical Tivo described above. iTunes and eMusic have gone a long way towards proving that people are willing to pay money to have access to commercial free music, TV and movies. Imagine a future where you could download a TV show from iTunes for a dollar or two in HD with 5.1 surround sound and be assured that it would play on any TV or video-playing device in your house. Until the content providers get over their infatuation with DRM this sort of exciting technological future is basically impossible.