Yes, I remember the "I'm not going to buy any music right now because nothing is compatible" stage well. My media experience with respect to music & movies sounds like yours. I don't buy movies anymore, but I still buy music. Mostly I use services such as spotify and netflix.

> I can't think of any precedent saying that having relatively painless DRM has resulted in better media access.

Netflix? Kindle books? Steam? Almost everyone I know uses the first two, and most don't even know there's DRM. However, if the DRM wasn't there, the studios/publishers would not have made their content available.

It's clear the studios are much more tech savvy then the music companies were, and much less likely to make the same DRM-free decision. I just don't see it happening (at least, not any in the next 5-10 years). It seems like the studios are still trying to prop up physical with UltraViolet (their attempt at DRM interoperability) rather than learning from the music industry's mistakes. They still have a chance to make it work, but it's certainly not there yet. If it fails, they are more likely to further fragment and do multiple, incompatible things rather than go DRM-free.

> The standard is a standardised API to an external encryption plugin.

Section 6 of the draft lays out a baseline called simple encryption: "This ensures that there is a common baseline level of protection that is guaranteed to be supported in all user agents, including those that are entirely open source. Thus, content providers that need only basic protection can build simple applications that will work on all platforms without needing to work with any content protection providers."

I get what you are saying, though - how successful this is will depend on what happens on the content decryption module side, and whether people opt to use the simple encryption option or not. No one is being forced to use this. Best case scenario, things become interoperable. Worst case, it's no different than today, because the Adobe analogy you use is exactly what we have with our various plug-ins and external apps.

> The web is no longer an open medium designed to be usable by anyone with any browser.

I don't understand how this changes anything. Aren't there already plug-ins and even HTML5/Javascript/CSS features that are browser or platform specific? If this gets adopted, will there be more or less content available in-browser? Most media services want to maximize their addressable user base, not minimize it, so interoperability is in their interest.

As far as this being a corner case, maybe you have not seen the recent numbers on internet traffic (yes I know internet != web, but this is what people are doing). See: http://allthingsd.com/20130514/netflix-still-eats-a-third-of-the-web-every-night-amazon-hbo-and-hulu-trail-behind/

I think this is a reasonable application of the 80/20 rule: as media consumption becomes the 80%, browsers want to continue playing a central role, and that will be made easier by this.

Yes, I know I will be flamed for this, but I think the thing that is getting lost in the conversation is that we've all be using DRM for years, and the point of this is to increase interoperability. How many of us have netflix or amazon movie streaming? Buy kindle books? Use steam? Even the books downloadable from my library use some form of protection. Most people don't care, because those protections don't impact our typical usage patterns. But all of these services live in their own separate worlds, because they are not interoperable. Adding support for a common protection standard doesn't suddenly make it possible to encrypt movies or harder to download images on the net because that already exists today (and has for years)! The point is to end the balkanization of media players and let everything work in your vanilla browser. That sounds good to me.

I have had contact with Manu Sporny, and his portrait doesn't look like him. You can google him to see for yourself. Of course, I imagine this kind of tech will only get better...

Doesn't putting it in the public domain accomplish that? You could just include that as a comment in your code when you post?

I agree - it looks and works great. To me, it feels like a phone OS designed with the small form-factor in mind, rather than a porting of a "desktop icon" metaphor to a smaller screen. The home screen is designed to expose a number of things you want to do/see without requiring to navigate anywhere or launch an app. Simple things like the way the buttons feel and animate make the experience better. I find it both more enjoyable to use than Android and iPhone, and also snappier (using a Samsung phone, haven't used the Nokia). The main thing it lacks at the moment is the breadth of apps, but it's getting there. My normal phone is Android, but when I'm due for an update I'm likely to switch to WP.

"I don't have a 3D TV, but want one for gaming"

I had a chance to play 3D games at CES, and they were great. Using the shutter glasses or special polarized glasses, it's also possible for two people to see different 2D images on the same display (ie, instead of alternating right/left eye, the glasses alternate person1/person2). This allows PvP gaming on a single TV with each person getting the full-screen experience. Either way, I think the technology is great for gaming.

Even the honor system won't work. Now that the on-line retailers like Amazon and iTunes have a cloud service that stores your purchases, the concept of deleting local copies doesn't work.

Anyone who works regularly with lawyers (as I do, (and I'm a geek (as demonstrated by these nested parens))) will know that it will take nothing short of full strength AI to replace them, lawyer jokes aside. There is so much nuance, subtlety, and tweaking of agreements that a using a simple computerized approach won't work for a substantial portion of what (say) normal corporate law firms do. If we magically move to a machine readable contract language, portions of contract verification might be automated, but certainly not the writing. And good luck getting lawyers to move to such a thing any time soon.

My interpretation is that it's freebase.com but with a different (easier?) API, loose (or absent) semantics, and no starting data.

I have & like the Lowepro Fastpack 350, and I think it will meet your needs. There's a full sized laptop sleeve along the back. The bottom part of the compartment will hold a DSLR+lens and 4 other lenses or 2 lenses+flashes. The camera compartment can be opened from the side, so you can get your camera out without taking the backpack off. There's a side pouch that can be used to carry a tripod (be careful with the mesh) if you add a strap at the top, or you can strap it to the bottom/back. The top compartment is large enough to hold a light jacket + other random stuff (MP3 player, chargers, mouse, grad filters, cleaning gear, filters, etc). Take a look at the pictures on Amazon to get a better sense of the layout.

I visited a local photo store to check out options before ordering this one, which met my needs and was reasonably priced relative to the alternatives.

See his book Emperor's New Mind. Most AI people viewed this skeptically back then, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computers/dp/0192861980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306449679&sr=8-1

Arduino is great, I've got my own, but it seems like the choice you'd make if you were pursuing hobbyists instead of commercial device manufacturers. Am I wrong?

"This can only mean..."

Spoken like someone with no knowledge of the actual negotiation. Why does Google need the labels to do a dropbox style locker in the first place? They've had Google Docs for a while now. Maybe what it means is they got caught with their pants down due to the Amazon launch, and felt pressure to get something out at I/O faster than they had expected, and when the labels didn't accept every term they offered, they just went without.

Of course a lawsuit may be coming, but the evidence suggests not. Other "dumb" lockers have been around for years. If Google starts using a single copy of a given track to serve everyone (as opposed to uploading each person's file) or does any number of other things that clearly require a license, then they'll be exposed.