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    Who controls the past controls the future

    In George Orwell's classic book about totalitarian government 1984, the main character's "job" was to destroy old information that the gooberment didn't like and replace it with a revised version - then instantly "forget" having done so.

    One of the beauties of science fiction is that, sometimes, it can so accurately predict the future (I can't help noticing this as I read Fahrenheit 451) - although the future doesn't always unfold the way it's predicted.

    Sooo... It turns out that it isn't really the gooberment we have to worry about... It's those massive companies that have control of information... Google, Apple, etc.

    Here's an interesting sign of things to come:

    Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.

    Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.


    #2
    Re: Who controls the past controls the future

    Apple demonstrates once again that it can't be trusted though I could see that stunt coming back to bite them eventually. Terms of use are annoying barriers but not always perfect. Anyway, yes, hold onto media that you value and if you see a book or movie that you really want to guarantee access to then get hard copy. I'm replacing a number of my fiction books with google play versions because right now, I value space and easy mobility more than the assured ownership of those novels but there is a distinct risk when you deal with e-books that you'll be screwed over.

    EDIT: Though this particular bit of screwing over the customer is far more egregious than I ever expected and I tend to think it should be followed by criminal prosecutions.
    Last edited by MaskedOne; 10 May 2016, 06:29.
    life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

    Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

    "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

    John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

    "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

    Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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      #3
      Re: Who controls the past controls the future

      Always keep hard copies of your data somewhere safe.

      The delete/import does seem pretty bad though. I use spotify and it recognises the songs/mp3s I have on my pc but it doesn't automatically import them (it does register that they are in my music however; I can see all the files on other devices, but I can't access them.)
      Work hard Play hard.
      What is history?

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        #4
        Re: Who controls the past controls the future

        My Cable Company does this with "Buy" a movie BUT it remains on their system,and if you bought it and then left for another provider,you lose your "Bought" movie. I love hard copy,something I can touch and see.
        MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

        all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
        NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
        don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




        sigpic

        my new page here,let me know what you think.


        nothing but the shadow of what was

        witchvox
        http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

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          #5
          Re: Who controls the past controls the future

          Amazon did the same thing. Back in 2000, I got a Dell PC and they offered a free Dell music player. You copied all your physical cd's into it. When that was discontinued it was transferred into Yahoo, also free, then to Amazon, free for a while. When Amazon did their most recent update, a couple of my cd's were missing from my music files. I was able to re-do them and Amazon rejected at least one. I was able to copy it to Google music so i can play it on my phone, which was all I wanted.

          But, yeah, they are deleting my stuff which I pay an annual fee to have access to, across devices. I'll hold on to my records/tapes/cd's, and real books, TYVM. This Kindle thing is the next big ripoff.
          sigpic
          Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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            #6
            Re: Who controls the past controls the future

            <-------owner of records and paper books


            The only e-things I buy online are things I either intend to consume once or twice and don't care about otherwise, or things I already own or plan to own once I find it used at a decent price.
            Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
            sigpic

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              #7
              Re: Who controls the past controls the future

              Personally, I've never subscribed to cloud stuff like Itunes, kindle, etc because of stuff like this. I would like a Kindle, but like Thal said, only for stuff I already have physically or cheap stuff that is kind of interesting but not a must have. With my music, I've never even had an Ipod or other MP3 player because either you have to purchase the music from their database or they make it a complete pain to transfer your music into their format. Adobe has made it near impossible to outright buy Photoshop; instead it's a month to month lease that will cost you so much more.

              In the bigger scheme, this does slightly chill me. It doesn't even have to be taken to an extreme. Changing history because of the bad associations guarantees we can't learn from our mistakes and do better.
              ~Rudyard Kipling, The Cat Who Walks By Himself

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                #8
                Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                In this we ponder why people would "Pirate" things...In fact the whole copy protection thing back in the way back,spawned much of the Cracking/hacking scene when a lot of people had C64's and the Copy protection could/would knock your drive out of alignment.and it could cost you a lot to get the drive realigned. Stripping the CP,would save you the cost of doing that. Over protection breeds work around's. Think about what is termed "Jail breaking" with phones. Try to restrict peoples access and it turns into an attitude of "They did it to me first"...turnabout is fair play.
                MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                sigpic

                my new page here,let me know what you think.


                nothing but the shadow of what was

                witchvox
                http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                  I read this article the other day and it was a huge wake-up call for me. Because I write music as well, I'm not really sure what to do now with all my original music to keep it safe other than buy a tape deck!!!! I was going to transfer all my CDs onto my PC and then get rid of the CDs, but I've changed my mind now!!!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                    Originally posted by Azvanna View Post
                    I read this article the other day and it was a huge wake-up call for me. Because I write music as well, I'm not really sure what to do now with all my original music to keep it safe other than buy a tape deck!!!! I was going to transfer all my CDs onto my PC and then get rid of the CDs, but I've changed my mind now!!!
                    Keeping music on a machine can be done safely. Just

                    A. Keep backups
                    B. Be very careful with stuff like Apple Music

                    I've got some ebooks through google that I can lose if google does something silly. I have others that are just watermarked pdfs that don't have that risk. Computer storage isn't inherently risky if handled right, the random silliness that several large companies are indulging in is.
                    life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                    Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                    "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                    John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                    "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                    Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                      Aside from an entity like Apple, Amazon, etc., controlling things, there's the simple fact that the way we access our stuff changes. Vinyl - 8-tracks - cassettes - cd's - mp3, etc. And after some time, it's hard to find a way to play the stuff you have. Turntables are still around but 8-track players aren't. As far as anything on a computer, that changes too. I have a box full of floppy disks, and a micro-cassette from an old answering machine with someone's voice on it. That sort of thing. Kindle changes your edition. A real book, however, is still a book, until the pages turn to dust.

                      Change vs. tradition. I'll take tradition.
                      sigpic
                      Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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                        #12
                        Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                        The feel of texture as you turn the pages...the optical scan as you sit or lay with the book in your hands and fingers touching the words on the page....
                        MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                        all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                        NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                        don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                        sigpic

                        my new page here,let me know what you think.


                        nothing but the shadow of what was

                        witchvox
                        http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                          Originally posted by thalassa View Post
                          <-------owner of records and paper books


                          The only e-things I buy online are things I either intend to consume once or twice and don't care about otherwise, or things I already own or plan to own once I find it used at a decent price.
                          Same. I just never really caught on to electronic stuff. I have a few mp3s I bought on iTunes and a few eBooks I bought on Amazon, but it just didn't feel the same so I resumed buying physical media again.

                          I do listen to streaming music and download public domain books, but that's about it.

                          I think it's stuff like this that makes me hold onto my physical media, though. When you buy digital downloads, you don't *own* those products. You buy a license to use them. It's not the same as owning a record or a book.

                          This guy's case is way worse than just a few ripped CDs though. From the sounds of it, he's a musician or producer, and the program ripped his own music and deleted it from his hard drive, which is HORRIBLE. I'm not really prolific with recording, but I have a few folk demos and some experimental sound layering pieces that I made on my hard drive. If one of my music apps deleted those, I'd be PISSED. Also, I wouldn't even want to give any of them permission to access them or upload them. Those are mine, and many of them aren't even finished products. I want to choose what, where, and when I share my own music on the Internet.

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                            #14
                            Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                            I actually like electronic files - over the course of my life I have accumulated so much stuff, in the form of books and music, that I have no place to put them, so I have to go on periodic "purges" to make room. Then, of course, immediately after sending a load of books off to the library book sale, I find that I need to get hold of a source... that I no longer have access to.

                            However, I don't like having my stuff stored by a "service." First, because I don't have extremely reliable internet so the "service" is not always available when I want it, and second, because I am then at the mercy of the "service" and what it's owners may or may not decide to do, like changing format or raising costs, or going out of business.

                            I much prefer having actual copies of efiles on my computer, or thumb drive, or where ever - that is the only way that I feel I "own" the stuff outright.

                            The whole idea of a "service" having control OF ANY KIND over my person files is abhorrent.

                            (I have trust issues. I earned them the hard way)
                            Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Who controls the past controls the future

                              I just don't even listen to stuff on my computer. If I want to listen to music while I'm on the computer, it's easier to just launch Spotify.

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