So Apple really is a religious thing...

[superboyac]

With continuous lobbying, groups like the RIAA, MPAA, et al. have waged war on the internet (not just file sharing) by spending billions to get governments to outlaw illegal playing of media, from DMCA to ACTA, and more assaults to follow soon.  Now many ebooks have thrown in the mix, with Amazon urging you to buy a restrictive kindle (apple, too), only to secretly retain control of what's on the device whether you like it or not.

This results in where we are -- a subscription-based media consumption model, where you buy everything you like over and over for each different device you ever buy.

No thanks, I'll sit that fraudulent trail of tears out until there are open devices using open formats.

-zridling (May 21, 2011, 11:04 PM)

]
This is an issue I continually struggle with.  From a personal/consumer's perspective, I desperately want open devices and open formats.  But from a business perspective, I understand the need to protect the content.  So I try to intellectually figure out a good balance, and there doesn't seem to be any.  In the end, and this may very well be a gross generalization, I think it's just another product of what has happened to our global financial system, which rules every other common issue in today's urban world.

[Dormouse]

Maybe it's the "image-processing and interpretation" part of the brain. You know, from looking at pictures and images and processing them into some kind of meaning.

-Deozaan (May 22, 2011, 03:47 PM)

Quote from the article:

A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks’ brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks’ reactions to the different products.

Image processing areas would, of course, have been triggered by both Apple & non-Apple products, so that cannot be what they were looking at. There have been quite a few fMRI studies on religion.

[Deozaan]

Maybe it's the "image-processing and interpretation" part of the brain. You know, from looking at pictures and images and processing them into some kind of meaning.

-Deozaan (May 22, 2011, 03:47 PM)

Quote from the article:

A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks’ brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks’ reactions to the different products.

Image processing areas would, of course, have been triggered by both Apple & non-Apple products, so that cannot be what they were looking at. There have been quite a few fMRI studies on religion.

-Dormouse (May 22, 2011, 05:21 PM)

Okay, so my example was incorrect. That doesn't discount other possibilities. Such as what if those areas of the brain that light up were the areas associated with "responding to images/thoughts about things we like vs. things we don't like" areas of the brain? In that case, someone who likes Apple is going to have positive thoughts/feelings associated with images of Apple products, and someone who is religious is going to have positive thoughts/feelings associated with images of their religion. Someone who likes Snickers candy bars may also have brain activity in the same way when they view a commercial or picture(s) of Snickers bars.

As I said. Either the article does a poor job of explaining the science involved, or something is wrong with the science, since next to nothing appears to be conclusive about the information described. If the same area of two separate brains shows activity, all that necessarily indicates is that the same area of two separate brains are showing activity.

As I learned recently from App103:

Think about this the next time someone tries to explain a cause/effect relationship between statistics.

-http://mnsfw.blogspot.com/2011/05/statistics-can-say-whatever-you-want.html

[Renegade]

This is an issue I continually struggle with.  From a personal/consumer's perspective, I desperately want open devices and open formats.  But from a business perspective, I understand the need to protect the content.  So I try to intellectually figure out a good balance, and there doesn't seem to be any.  In the end, and this may very well be a gross generalization, I think it's just another product of what has happened to our global financial system, which rules every other common issue in today's urban world.

-superboyac (May 22, 2011, 05:14 PM)

It's one thing to ask your customers to pay for your products, and an entirely different thing to ask them to repeatedly pay for the same product, and to cripple the product from the outset so that its use is limited.

The software licensing model works. And it's fair. (Brainfart: Fairware? Sounds kind of interesting...)

I think you're 100% right about balance -- there isn't any right now. But that's the fault of the industry -- they are the ones that have dropped the ball. They've not come up with anything that is reasonable and makes sense for people. God forbid they have to be innovative or creative in devising a decent system.

Yeah... I'm still pissed as I have been having troubles again with some DVDs... Macrovision... Regions... Sheesh...

What would be nifty is a system that let YOU play stuff YOU bought on all YOUR devices, but also let you lend it to a friend, who could pay a token amount, e.g. $0.50 or $1.00, to unlock it and play it for something like 48 or 72 or 168 hours just like a rental. In effect, you could turn your customers into store fronts. A buck? Who cares? Just as long as it's EASY to use. With broadband being ubiquitous (just about), and always-on connections, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out something that would work.

It would certainly be nice if they'd drop the proprietary formats and adopt an open specification that isn't encumbered by patents. That would make the burden of encoding and playback almost nothing, and they could then focus on the product delivery system more. Right now there are too many obstacles.

I tried buying things through iTunes (and spent quite a bit there), but it's just second rate at best. It's better to buy physical DVDs as they are more portable and the same price or often less. Buying digitally has no advantage other than being accessible at any time.

<shakes head />

Back to reality...

[Renegade]

@Deozaan - Love that graphic!

[Stoic Joker]

Would this be a bad time to point out that my grandmother was killed by a Mexican lemon truck?

[Dormouse]

There will be other possibilities, but not simply about liking. There has been quite a bit of fMRI research into religion (as with many other things, including liking), so they will have known what they expected to look for with this case. AFAICS, they just looked at one fervent Apple lover & checked to see whether the pattern fitted with previous research on religious people. It should have been easy to discount most obvious alternative possibilities. But it's not a study, just a single test used given all the spin by a journalist. Doesn't mean that other Apple lovers will be the same (though the behaviour & belief of many is very similar), &, if they were, they would then expect to see the same pattern with other things that engender the same apparent fervour.

[Renegade]

...if they were, they would then expect to see the same pattern with other things that engender the same apparent fervour.

-Dormouse (May 22, 2011, 06:05 PM)

Has it to do with the feverish passion, or the irrationality that led to it?

[Dormouse]

Has it to do with the feverish passion, or the irrationality that led to it?

-Renegade (May 22, 2011, 06:10 PM)

I wouldn't want to speculate on that