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Posted by Gene E. Bloch on 04/28/06 18:07
On 4/27/2006, Ken Moiarty posted this:
> "Gene E. Bloch" <spamfree@nobody.invalid> wrote in message
> news:mn.da6c7d64424ea6de.1980@nobody.invalid...
>> On 4/27/2006, Ken posted this:
>>> Sorry, I'll elaborate: I didn't mean that DVD "finalizing" is
>>> technically a part of DRM. I meant to infer that the apparent
>>> "convenient neglect" of the designers (and/or manual writers) of my DVD
>>> recorder to make it reasonably plain to the uninitiated consumer, the
>>> need to manually finalize a recording, looks to me to be a
>>> DRM-motivated.
>>>
>>> Ken
>>
>> Sorry for the misunderstanding.
>>
>> OTOH, after a lifetime of dealing with many, many badly designed user
>> interfaces and badly written manuals, I do not agree with you at all.
>
> Well thank you for sharing observation. ;-)
>
>>
>> Was it H. L. Mencken who said "Do not ascribe to malice what can be
>> adequately explained by stupidity"?
>
> Nobody's ascribing anything to malice here. (At least not I.)
Your earlier comments about DRM certainly made me think you thought the
corporations were malicious (and conspiring); but anyway, the word
'malice' was used in the only quote I had, so I used the quote,
assuming that an average reader could reinterpret the saying for the
situation, rather than take it so literally.
BTW, and OT, somebody told me that the quote was made by Heinlein, not
Mencken. So, I Googled on the two words malice stupidity. Google
ascribes it to Wm James, or calls it either Henlen's Razor or Hanlan's
Razor... At that point I decided not to explore further, although
seeing that I had also cited Occam's razor, I certainly appreciate the
latter two names for the saying.
>> It was someone, anyway, and in conjunction with Occam's razor, it is all I
>> need to explain the problem with the location and documentation of
>> finalizing commands.
>>
>
> Fine, you have _an_ explanation. It's not necessarily an optimum
> explanation. But it's an explanation and it's one which makes you content
> that there's nothing more in this vein that you can possibly learn or change
> your mind about. That's typical and it's only human.
And exactly the same comments could be made about your holding so
steadfastly to your position, so we would need an impartial arbitrator
to resolve it...
>> But then, I normally reject conspiracy theories, regardless of any evidence
>> to the contrary :-)
>
> Problem is you see, DRM is not about a "conspiracy theory". DRM is an
> aggressive response by the content provider industry to protect their
> copyrighted digital material (as well as analog material; something which
> they lament as being, "the analog hole"), which includes bringing their
> immense combined corporate muscle and pressure to bear on hardware
> manufacturers to comply, so as to more than adequately protect their
> intellecutal property from piracy and rampant consumer file sharing. They
> are in their rights. So much so that hardware manufacturers follow every
> means at their disposal to avoid provoking them, whilst also trying to do so
> in subtle, barely nuanced, ways that should be least likely to alienate the
> average customer in the process.
So is this really that far from a conspiracy? But again, I was also
relying on the reader to perceive an analogy.
>> Besides that, I just can't see how the quality of the UI and the
>> documentation can be ascribed to DRM. It is there, it is documented, and it
>> not the world's biggest secret, it's just clumsy.
>
> This is a case of someone with enough intelligence, but for whatever reason
> unable/unwilling to see the forest for the trees.
And which of us is that?
>> Moreover, in the devices I've used, it is neither obscure in the UI nor
>> obscure in the manual.
>>
>
> Okay this sounds like your almost contradicting yourself where you wrote
> above: "after a lifetime of dealing with many, many badly designed user
> interfaces and badly written manuals, I do not agree with you at all."...
Note that I didn't say that *all* manuals were clear and that *all*
user interfaces were not clumsy. I said there were, in my experience, a
couple of counter-examples to your claim that all UIs and manuals were
designed to make finalizing extremely difficult in order to provide a
layer of DRM. Also, though I didn't mention it before, I have not seen
any manuals or UIs that are so obscure in that area
> But I get the gist of your message. It clearly implies that you doubt that
> this finalization thing is even obscure as I claim it to be [for the
> uninitiated] in my DVD recorder's interface/manual at all! Well you feel
> free to look up, both, the manual and the interface on the web to see for
> yourself if you care to.
I might, seeing that you specify the device in your OP, but I'm not
strongly motivated, since an example of obscurity doesn't negate the
examples of clarity.
If you want to look at the manuals, these are two devices I have used:
LiteOn LVW-5005 and Philips DVDR75. I have also read a few other
manuals, maybe 5 or 6, either in my own research or out of curiosity
based on users' questions on Usenet, and I don't recall any
difficulties in them either.
> Ken
I am saying that, although it might have been very obscure for you, it
was not for me, nor for the many who post replies here to help people
who *do* find it obscure. For that and other reasons, I don't agree
with you about DRM.
I would like to add this thought: if the media companies were so intent
on protecting their media against copying, would they have been so
inept as to rely on trying to get the makers of all recording devices
to obscure the relevant command and its documentation? Don't forget:
they could have tried to get them just to leave the function out
altogether...
Gino
--
Gene E. Bloch (Gino)
letters617blochg3251
(replace the numbers by "at" and "dotcom")
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