I was going to comment to ask whether you could make the site full-width in the responsive version, then I decided to log in to comment... and et voila the site was full width, then I remembered when you made that an option.
So I'll still ask if you'd consider making the site full-width on large screens by default, but there's a workaround so there is that.
Bluetooth doesn't work, because then I have to duplicate my collection on my phone and my wife's... And it doesn't fit on either (FLAC). Plus they are more expensive for worse quality compared to the Sonos range, from my experience. If I want to listen to music on my phone, I have acceptabke headphones that don't require charging.
Normal speakers are great, but I still need an audio source, and a way to distribute the audio where I want it. Sonos speakers require hard-wiring into a power socket, but that's exactly where I want the music, so I don't need to run cables around my house or backyard.
I realise that I didn't mention my wife needing to use the system in my request post (I did in my earlier post up-thread). You guys have offered alternatives for which I offered thanks, but I still haven't heard anything that's a close substitute for even the limited subset of features that we use.
Of course you *could* roll your own in a number of ways, but that's not feasible for most households.
What alternatives are there for systems that let me play music from my personal collection or from a variety of online services including radio, lets me move speakers around freely and put them wherever there's power without needing to run wires, has decent (not audiophile) quality for the price point and has no ongoing subscription costs?
Problem 6, it is not direct wifi, you have to purchase their 100$ (at least when I bought it) proprietary bridge device. Yet another dick move on their part. Come on guys your hardware is already overpriced AND you force customers to buy a bridge because you can't figure out how to make your equipment work directly with wifi.
Sonos does work directly with wifi now. That's how I have it set up at home.
Problem 4, for the money they are an expensive speaker.
I thought the opposite personally, but I'll admit I don't really know the market. From my point of view, a $2k Sonos set produces quality and connectivity for a media room that used to require in excess of $10k in hardware.
I have a love/hate relationship with my own Sonos device, for what that's worth. The most annoying thing for me is frequency of updates that don't have any functional impact on how I use the device, but require me to update every other controller (particularly my wife's phone) after I connect my phone to the speaker after my phone has auto-updated its software. Particularly when I update the other controller, find that it has updated the speaker again and then I need to update the first controller again.
While I generally agree with this sentiment, it does butt up against another problem.
Devices that are connected to the internet but don't update automatically... typically won't be updated, and so security flaws that are discovered over time don't get fixed over time, leading to IoT devices that are happy to participate in distributed attacks of some nature.
The ability to create limited-time codes to access the property seems like a perfect fit for the AirBNB or similar model, so I'd say that this is far less of a pink elephant than most internet-connected devices. If it provides access audits per code, then homeowners could determine that the cleaners did or didn't access the property at times when they were supposed to, amongst other simple conveniences. This sounds to me like a genuinely useful device.
Internet-facing security would of course have to be bullet-proof and upgradeable. Maybe the simple fix would have been for firmware upgrades to be pushed by the device owner rather than the device manufacturer, with escalating warnings over time from the manufacturer if devices are left without upgrade perhaps resulting in a loss of warranty (support? Warranty is probably a legal thing) if a device hasn't received an update flagged as security for more than (say) 3 months.
At least if the owner is doing the upgrade, and it fails, they are aware of the failure *at that moment* and so can respond to it at the time. I fail to have much sympathy for owners for whom this approach would be too hard because they own too many properties.
I still say that even though VirtualVM's actions may have been necessary, that doesn't make it ok. And, that trying to make it ok is plastering over the symptom while ignoring the problem.
I still say that asking virus scanners to enforce license agreements makes everyone less safe.
Again, not quite the same thing. Working with the other party and getting the unlicensed product removed from the market is exactly the correct thing to do, if negotiations fail to produce a valid license in a reasonable timeframe.
The difference here is that VMProtect didn't work with Denuvo; they worked with Sophos to effect the recall. Anti-virus is not supposed to be a license enforcement tool, and everyone is less safe if that becomes the norm.
So you'd be ok with a vanilla flavoring company issuing a food safety recall on Vanilla Coke if Coca Cola failed to pay its bills, as long as they didn't go after any other flavors of Coke?
This is not a trust issue. It is a licensing issue, pure and simple. Paying for something does not make it trustworthy, and failing to pay for something does not make it untrustworthy. The only thing that changes is whether or not it's used with a valid license. Paying a bill can't possibly change the trustworthiness of the software in question, surely?
Using anti-virus to sidestep or add leverage to a licensing dispute is absolutely, heinously, the wrong thing to do. No matter how much you agree with the result, it is not the correct way to go about business, and it sets a terrible precedent if allowed.
They negotiated with an AV vendor to flag THEIR OWN product as malware. That is, an unauthorized and therefor untrusted copy of their own software.
Those are not the same thing. Either they are flagging a competitor's software, or they are using a third party as leverage in a licensing dispute. Neither of these situations is something to applaud.
Again, ignore the IP dispute and there's STILL good reason to flag it as malware. But there's also the issue of trust:
The point, as I see it, that Scote seems to be raising is that ignoring the IP dispute is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Just like you should champion any bad guy who is being denied due process (to extent that he should be allowed due process), I agree with Scote that anti-virus has no place in an IP dispute. Saying that behaviour is ok is like saying using the DMCA to censor content online is ok as long as you don't like the content.
If you think about it, this is quite the grand money laundering scheme. They can't exactly pay the money to themselves directly... but who would complain about war chests fighting on behalf of the poor starving artists?
How is the money used? Well, it pays for advertisements in traditional media outlets, and other ventures significantly owned by the people who wanted the money in the first place. All legal!
Maybe it's just a slightly different take on the truth?
"It was never our intention to threaten people with copyright strikes, our masters in Japan made us do it, and we clearly chose the wrong tone for how to communicate this."
There's no false equivalence to the stories. You can't move to a world without Facebook either, but you DO have to make a conscious effort to read either kind of news story.
I'm all for DH's suggestion for media to stop reporting on wars, but rather than wait for it to happen I'll just not read those stories.
I fear it may be a long battle riddled with fictions, however.
My fear is that you're being overly optimistic thinking there will be a battle at all. As the commenter above you lamented, the government has to first read it, then decide it's not worth keeping an entire sector's worth of political donations, for any kind of fight to start.
Ok, I concede that it's possible to complain about an OTA update bricking a device and the lack of control over the things you own without actually wanting to own said device.
But at that point, isn't the story basically "Old man yells at cloud"?
I mean, seriously: "I yearn for the good old days, when the faulty devices we owned were OUR faulty devices, and we had to check the back of the paper every day if we cared to find out if it had been recalled yet"
Still fixed width by default
So I'll still ask if you'd consider making the site full-width on large screens by default, but there's a workaround so there is that.
Re: Re: Alternatives?
Normal speakers are great, but I still need an audio source, and a way to distribute the audio where I want it. Sonos speakers require hard-wiring into a power socket, but that's exactly where I want the music, so I don't need to run cables around my house or backyard.
I realise that I didn't mention my wife needing to use the system in my request post (I did in my earlier post up-thread). You guys have offered alternatives for which I offered thanks, but I still haven't heard anything that's a close substitute for even the limited subset of features that we use.
Of course you *could* roll your own in a number of ways, but that's not feasible for most households.
Alternatives?
What alternatives are there for systems that let me play music from my personal collection or from a variety of online services including radio, lets me move speakers around freely and put them wherever there's power without needing to run wires, has decent (not audiophile) quality for the price point and has no ongoing subscription costs?
Re: Sonos has been a PITA from the start
Sonos does work directly with wifi now. That's how I have it set up at home.
I thought the opposite personally, but I'll admit I don't really know the market. From my point of view, a $2k Sonos set produces quality and connectivity for a media room that used to require in excess of $10k in hardware.
I have a love/hate relationship with my own Sonos device, for what that's worth. The most annoying thing for me is frequency of updates that don't have any functional impact on how I use the device, but require me to update every other controller (particularly my wife's phone) after I connect my phone to the speaker after my phone has auto-updated its software. Particularly when I update the other controller, find that it has updated the speaker again and then I need to update the first controller again.
Re: Re:
Devices that are connected to the internet but don't update automatically... typically won't be updated, and so security flaws that are discovered over time don't get fixed over time, leading to IoT devices that are happy to participate in distributed attacks of some nature.
The ability to create limited-time codes to access the property seems like a perfect fit for the AirBNB or similar model, so I'd say that this is far less of a pink elephant than most internet-connected devices. If it provides access audits per code, then homeowners could determine that the cleaners did or didn't access the property at times when they were supposed to, amongst other simple conveniences. This sounds to me like a genuinely useful device.
Internet-facing security would of course have to be bullet-proof and upgradeable. Maybe the simple fix would have been for firmware upgrades to be pushed by the device owner rather than the device manufacturer, with escalating warnings over time from the manufacturer if devices are left without upgrade perhaps resulting in a loss of warranty (support? Warranty is probably a legal thing) if a device hasn't received an update flagged as security for more than (say) 3 months.
At least if the owner is doing the upgrade, and it fails, they are aware of the failure *at that moment* and so can respond to it at the time. I fail to have much sympathy for owners for whom this approach would be too hard because they own too many properties.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt misses the lede: Sophos falsely tags disputed IP as malware
I still say that even though VirtualVM's actions may have been necessary, that doesn't make it ok. And, that trying to make it ok is plastering over the symptom while ignoring the problem.
I still say that asking virus scanners to enforce license agreements makes everyone less safe.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt misses the lede: Sophos falsely tags disputed IP as malware
The difference here is that VMProtect didn't work with Denuvo; they worked with Sophos to effect the recall. Anti-virus is not supposed to be a license enforcement tool, and everyone is less safe if that becomes the norm.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt misses the lede: Sophos falsely tags disputed IP as malware
So you'd be ok with a vanilla flavoring company issuing a food safety recall on Vanilla Coke if Coca Cola failed to pay its bills, as long as they didn't go after any other flavors of Coke?
This is not a trust issue. It is a licensing issue, pure and simple. Paying for something does not make it trustworthy, and failing to pay for something does not make it untrustworthy. The only thing that changes is whether or not it's used with a valid license. Paying a bill can't possibly change the trustworthiness of the software in question, surely?
Using anti-virus to sidestep or add leverage to a licensing dispute is absolutely, heinously, the wrong thing to do. No matter how much you agree with the result, it is not the correct way to go about business, and it sets a terrible precedent if allowed.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt misses the lede: Sophos falsely tags disputed IP as malware
Those are not the same thing. Either they are flagging a competitor's software, or they are using a third party as leverage in a licensing dispute. Neither of these situations is something to applaud.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt misses the lede: Sophos falsely tags disputed IP as malware
The point, as I see it, that Scote seems to be raising is that ignoring the IP dispute is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Just like you should champion any bad guy who is being denied due process (to extent that he should be allowed due process), I agree with Scote that anti-virus has no place in an IP dispute. Saying that behaviour is ok is like saying using the DMCA to censor content online is ok as long as you don't like the content.
Re: Re: where does the money go?
How is the money used? Well, it pays for advertisements in traditional media outlets, and other ventures significantly owned by the people who wanted the money in the first place. All legal!
Re: A harmless misunderstanding I'm sure
Maybe it's just a slightly different take on the truth?
Middle fingers
I think keeping all malicious actors out is the primary intent of the "phones he can't get into".
The middle finger to the feds does make for a nice cherry on top, though!
Re: Re: Same old wish entirely ignoring that so soon as one digital version is out it's totally pirated.
I think they're called "serialised video content" now.
Re: Australia should Build A Wall !!
We already did! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-proof_fence
Okay, it's not a wall, but it's the biggest best fence there ever was...
(untitled comment)
Are you angling for funniest story of the week here, Mike?
Re: Re: Re:
I'm all for DH's suggestion for media to stop reporting on wars, but rather than wait for it to happen I'll just not read those stories.
Re:
My fear is that you're being overly optimistic thinking there will be a battle at all. As the commenter above you lamented, the government has to first read it, then decide it's not worth keeping an entire sector's worth of political donations, for any kind of fight to start.
Too much?
Or in this case, too much bronze.
Re: Re: Re: You don't really own what you own
But at that point, isn't the story basically "Old man yells at cloud"?
I mean, seriously: "I yearn for the good old days, when the faulty devices we owned were OUR faulty devices, and we had to check the back of the paper every day if we cared to find out if it had been recalled yet"
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