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Posted by Ken Moiarty on 04/28/06 18:58
"Gene E. Bloch" <spamfree@nobody.invalid> wrote in message
news:mn.e29b7d643ef77ef4.1980@nobody.invalid...
> 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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