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Slashback: Ascent, Patents, Transferability
Your ruse, your clever trick. On August 22nd, we reported that OpenOffice.org's OS X version had been delayed for two years.
However, bluethundr writes "Hold the phone! Is it delayed or isn't it? Well, according to this story in the register, it AIN'T DELAYED...just undermanned. Apparently there are only TWO (count 'em! one...aw heck, where was I?) developers working on the OS X development team. Dan Williams (who is one of the two in question) says that 'the Mac version is in a Catch-22: with only two developers, it desperately needs man power. But no one will join the porting effort until they see momentum behind the Aqua port.' Maybe some of the coders among us could lend them a hand?"
Too late for the colonies, help save the mothership. leif.singer writes "While there still is some time left, please consider signing Eurolinux' petition against software patents in Europe." You'll be in good company: vinsci writes "In their news section, FFII has posted a more detailed story: "Within a few days, the petition calling the European Parliament to reject software patentability accumulated 50,000 new signatures.""
Free as in FreeDOS Jim Hall writes "I thought I'd submit this before the news item fell too far down our web page. If you remember about a year ago, Dell was to offer Windows-less PC's, instead pre-installing FreeDOS. You can now order a Dell with FreeDOS (or Linux) ... and have been for a while now. They are pretty nice machines, too (3.06GHz). We have the news item (with links to Dell) at the FreeDOS Project web site."
Nasty worms ought to at least produce spice. The NRC released an alert about worm infections and nuclear power plants. This is a reaction after the SQL-Slammer attacked the shut-down Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January.
Tomorrow is another year. RoadKillian writes "New Scientist reports thats the QinetiQ 1, the record-breaking balloon which was supposed to rise to an altitude of 40km (131,000ft) has ripped during inflation. The weather is unlikely to permit another attempt this year."
When EULAs collide. Yesterday's story about selling a song downloaded from iTunes seems to have an unhappy ending: sideswipe76 writes "As I was watching this auction today, it approached $16,600! Now, if you try and check this link from eBay you get 'invalid item.' Is eBay wussing out just to avoid any legal snafus that _might_ occur? Or did he violate some ebay policy? Thoughts?"
I guess eBay is covering its ass with that clause. They probably only pull it out when there's something potentially dangerous being auctioned, and let it slide when something the RIAA isn't going to get pissed about goes under the virtual hammer. With the RIAA in the trigger-happy state its in currently, I can hardly blame them.
I don't think people intend to use FreeDOS itself for anything big - the point is that you can buy a PC without the "Windows tax." If you're going to install Linux (or BSD or whatever) anyway, there's no reason to pay for a copy of windows to go with your machine. The FreeDOS I'd assume, is so that you can at least boot up the machine when you get it.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Which is total hogwash. How many Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Ages of Camelot (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) items do you see on there? And they don't exist either.
Ebay is wussing out completely.
No, it's just one of those rules that they state and don't enforce very actively, unless it gets to a high profile.
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Hence, people get away with selling online gaming stuff, as it doesn't get up to $16,000 and doesn't usually end up on
As I said, they enforce that rule when it helps them, and lets it slide when it doesn't.
Actually, maybe it is OK they didn't go through with it. It would have become popular I am sure when people started using it like a used CD store. Ebay (if they managed to defeat the RIAA and Apple) would just have ended up turning into another RIAA...
And if I have to keep paying rent instead of a flat fee, I'll go patronize artists who don't expect lifetime tenure or get huffy when I ask them "So what have you written lately?"
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
"Buy a PC with a blank disk"
Good luck. Most (if not all) OEMs will -not- ship you a system without an operating system preloaded. For many of them certain confidential contracts prohibit doing that in the name of "reducing piracy" (obviously the only reason to buy a computer with no OS is because you intend to use a pirated copy...).
If FreeDOS satisfies their contractural obligations, then is absolutely does enable this.
"eBay prohibits the listing of items or products to be delivered electronically through the Internet."
Does that mean it can be delivered electronically through a different medium? What if the seller dialed up the buyer's modem and set up a zmodem transfer? Or does nobody do that any more?
E-bay is a nice place for the exposure if you can't get it anywhere else and don't mind the fees, but what's stopping him from firing up a site and taking bids via e-mail? He's certainly got plenty of attention.
Considering a 99 million dollar bid was placed it'd also be handy to list all the bids placed allowing people to bid in between in case higher bids fall through. It was also aliviate false inflation.
No point in putting in a fake high bid if anyone can bid lower.
It would then also be possible to contact the losing bidders at the end and ask them to donate their bid to the EFF or whatever even though they won't get a crappy song for it.
Using e-bay doesn't test the legality of anything relevant. It simply tests E-Bay's TOS. Selling it himself would test the legality of selling the iTune.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I wonder if any of the MS worms that were circulating at the time actually were to blame for the outage as has been speculated here before?
If that's true, than the "MS worms" aren't actually to blame. The admins who left those machines open to the net and who also didn't patch two months ago are to blame.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I would applaud Apple if they kicked more of the cash to artists, but that's like asking Best Buy to pay a share of their profits to the artist. The distribution channel is not responsible to the artist, the record company is. That's where we should look for reform.
Dan
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
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It misstates the relationship of artists to iTunes. You do NOT have to be an RIAA-member published artist to get your music onto iTunes, and there's at least one company, CD Baby, that makes this a piece of cake with the bulk of the
.99 going to the artist. iTunes insists on a middleman, it doesn't insist that Hilary Rosen be that "man".
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It suggests that artists are ripped off by this system but somehow are not by Kazaa and their ilk. How? Not explained. Just repeated, ad-nausium, like some kind of Hanzo-San.
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It suggests that making artists maintain the hardware and infrastructure for distributing music would, in some way, be preferable to Apple doing it and charging their 30c. Again, no explanation.
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Ultimately the agenda is revealed in the same paragraph - apparently 99c per song is too high! It should be 50c! And the artists should foot the bill (as above)
Downhillbattle is going to have an uphill battle unless it recognizes a few realities. Not paying artists is ripping them off - the music publishers may not be perfect, but if you buy a CD, you do ultimately transfer money in the direction of the artists, something you do not do if you download it from Kazaa. Rather than this mindless boycott campaign, if DHB really is serious and is concerned about artists (as with the rhetoric but as unsupported by every actual suggestion they make) rather than cheap music, they should be supporting the efforts to create infrastructures for the easy exchange of music (to the listeners) and money (to the artists.) I'd no more boycott CDs to help artists than I'd napalm Ethiopia to help the hungry.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I haven't tried the X11 port, but I can imagine there could be a metric tonne of problems: Clipboard handling, Printing, Drag-n-Drop are all very different under X11. And all of that is required by Mac end users for an "acceptable" application.
The Mac platform has never been only about Look-N-Feel -- It's key selling point is overall integration. You ain't gonna get that by using X11 like "just another toolkit", you need a native port.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! You're a hair's breadth beneath the troll threshold on this one.
... DRM has absolutely nothing to do with rights. It should really be called "DPM", for Digital Profit Management, since that's all it is. If this kind of thing becomes widespread "rights" will go right out the window. Who do you believe is best qualified to manage your data: you, or the RIAA? Perhaps you would feel more comfortable with Microsoft pulling your strings. If you choose anyone but yourself, you are giving up control in order to provide someone else with security. That's a defective bargain, my friend, and you would be a fool to make it.
... that's just too bad. Let them gracefully fade into the background noise of history with the rest of the big green lizards, while those of us who walk upright on two legs will use our expanded cranial capacity to enjoy whatever takes their place. This is evolution in action, folks: enjoy the show.
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Where is it written that any organization or business should be guaranteed an unending flow of green? That attitude is about as anti-capitalistic, anti-consumer, anti-innovation and for that matter anti-competitive as I can imagine, and I can imagine quite a lot. Business is supposed to respond to the dictates of the marketplace, not the other way around! And the reason that businesses listen to the market is because of competition: if you aren't keeping your customers happy, why, someone else will. And probably for less money.
Conversely, if you give your customers what they want for a price they are willing and able to pay, they will take care of you. The genius of good business is in finding ways to keep customers happy while still turning a profit. The music industry has not, for nearly thirty years, concerned itself with improving quality or pricing. As a matter of fact, they have given us music that is of poorer quality and lesser variety than ever before, and charge us more for it. And the only way they've been able to get away with that is because they are a monopoly (quite possibly of the illegal kind) and they will do anything to maintain that status.
We already have a perfectly functional music distribution system. It's called "The Internet" and "MP3". I simply will not relinquish control of computer equipment and software that I own in order to provide corporations that I don't like, and won't support, a guaranteed revenue stream. "Rights" my left big toe
By way of comparison, the software industry learned to deal with illegal copying of its "intellectual property" years ago and in spite of "rampant piracy" has still managed to innovate and turn handsome profits. In fact, those companies that eliminated heavy-handed copy-protection and activation schemes are often among the most successful because they put the customer first!
So just who are these people, that they believe they are some kind of national treasure that must be preserved at all costs? If the RIAA and all of its member companies disappeared from the face of earth tomorrow, the music would still go on. And, we would enjoy it all the more since our tastes wouldn't be dictated by a bunch of Pointy Haired Music Executives who may perform market surveys but obviously don't listen to them. Hell, some of us might even learn to (*gasp*) make our own music! Keyboards anyone? Sax?
But more to the point, if these Luddites can't handle the pace and nature of progress and advancing technology
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.