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Ballmer Says iPod Users are Thieves
A 'music thief' (apparently) writes "According to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft: "The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."
He appears convinced Microsoft will lead the way in Digital Rights Management and also believes Microsoft will steal a march on Apple in making the digital home a reality because Apple "doesn't have the volumes".
"There is no way that you can get there with Apple. The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device," he said."
They stolds it frums us.
meet kettle.
More on this at 11.
I really don't know why Balmer is so mad at Ipod?
He really seems to love his...
...is 74.8 stolen copies of Windows XP Professional.
Beep beep.
I think he means: 'the critical mass has to come from windows'. Why? No technical reason, it's just because people at MS will have a temper tamtrum if this doesn't go their way.
Film at 11.
...the pope recommends catholicism for an optimal afterlife.
sudo ergo sum
Yes, the "stolen" music format...aka MP3 ... when those Franhofenzeigen guys invented MP3 compression, I don't even know why they went with the .MP3 extension. It would have been a lot clearer if they had just gone with the .stolen extension.
type: audio-x/stolen
SPAM
from Ballmer:
"My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it," he joked.
Translation:
"When I tried to use my kid's iPod on a recent family trip, my son told me to shove my Barry Manilow CD up my ass."
under the induce act, wouldn't this hold balmer liable for inducing his customers to steal music?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Just like they can insure that all installations of their software are perfectly legagl. I'll believe it when I see it.
Follow me
... another heavy skinhead makes verbal attack against arty-farty digital gadget.
...
Unless something better and cheaper comes out of his arse we won't listen
A single red cent, no. Many thousands of red cents, yes.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
I can see Ballmer's personal security now. He's taking a break from his body guard duty (his second in command is monitoring Ballmer in another room), when he pulls up Slashdot (an informed body guard) and sees this story.
He immediately drops his laptop on the floor and rushes into a board meeting where Ballmer is talking about the Longhorn delay in a conference call to institional investors. He yells "CODE APPLE - CODE APPLE!" and scares the living hell out of everyone in the room.
He grabs Ballmer by the arm, dragging him to the equivalent of a secured bunker about 10 levels beneath the basement sub-level at Microsoft headquarters. All other Ballmer security personal, meanwhile, are coming out of weapons lockers located around the Redmond, WA campus -- fully equipped for a medium tactical incursion situation (it's in the Microsoft CEO security handbook, page 354, paragraph 7a).
At this point, a mysterious announcement goes out to Microsoft employees. The campus is closing for an employee appreciation day. Everyone must go home immediately. Speculation runs rampant, but several employees have a pretty good idea why they're getting a free paid holiday -- some Microsoft asshat said something to piss off the rest of the Linux/Mac/geek world. It always happens.
Ballmer, meanwhile, remains locked in the MS CEO bunker, sitting on a cot surfing the Internet on a tablet PC. He's cursing because he has to keep going to the taskbar to look at different IE windows. "Damn, you, FireFox."
IronChefMorimoto
I'm putting the new hit single Microsoft BASIC on Paper Tape on my iPod.
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
It's so tragicomic, all these futile efforts to reverse progress, all this money spent...
... it sould be mandatory for any CEO to have a minor in history of civilization. You just can't stop progress. You can't possibly believe that people will volutary chose to be chained down by greaty corporate legislation and their moronic DRMs and DMCAs and such. They will all be graciously bypassed. You can't imprison a whole society because you are greedy. You can't wage war at your customers for starters!
:-)
This is more funny than tragic after all...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
Well, yeah right now most iPod users have pcs. Of course when Longhorn arrives, there will be a little problem uploading your music, and every now and then the entire iPod memory will be wiped.
You know that MS will be working hard for a solution...
From MS marketing, 2006:
"It's probably due to Apple's implementation of some standard."
"You could get a solution quicker if you switch to our new win-Pod(TM) that implements Microsoft standards. It uses a new version of Embedded Windows Media Player(TM). Here's a coupon for %75 off your purchase price, and we have a $20.oo rebate as well."
"But we'll keep working on that i-pod 'fix', don't you worry. When the 'fix' is in, you'll know it!"
Microsoft, The job isn't done until Lotus, Novell, Netscape, iPod won't run
What operating system does most of this stealing happen on?
Oh my!
"Microsoft will steal a march.."
Sure, it starts with stealing a march.. then it's an April, followed by May and June, and before you know it you're wandering around with half an ill-gotten year bulging beneath your jacket.. after that it's down the slippery slope to stealing days of the week, and even whole decades if the habit goes unchecked.
Now what's worse? Grabbing a few little MP3s for listening on the go, or depriving the whole world of entire chunks of history. I think we know who the REAL criminals are here.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
"Any MS representative want to take a guess as to what the other format is for my stolen music?"
Likely it's not ogg, since, you know, you wouldn't want to use an encoder that takes 4 seconds to encode a 2 second sound.
dance monkeyboy dance! Microsoft complaining about Apple users?! Oh, and of course, they and their users are lily-white and never steal a single thing. Snort! I have to remember not to drink a new cup of coffee when reading /. lest I blow it out my nose reading comments like this from the Ballmer B-boy Monkeyboy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Steve Balmer
Watch the first movie on this link and be afraid. Be very afraid.
...and Influence People the Microsoft Way" we show you how to insult everyone under 25.
Boring Old Fart (40, married, 3 kids...er no...make that 49, married, 3 grown up kids...it's been a long time)
The critical mass has to come from the PC,
Yup. Just like USB. Oh, wait...
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Who wouldn't want 100 dollar bils?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
iPod users say Steve Ballmer is a monkey...
Depends... who's askin'?
I've been trying to play some 'stolen' audio files, but I can't seem to find a Linux codec - not even mplayer can handle it. Can anyone point me to one?
So you see, children, much like the mythical "copyright" the whole concept of "recorded" "music" is a mental fiction and at odds with the natural order of things. Kill your iPod now!
or something.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I would reply to Mr. Ballmer, but I'm writing this on my stolen copy of Windows...
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
I have 25GB on my 4G Ipod
Wow, that's some mean compression
iPod sales are unaffected
states that most Windows users are using stolen copies of the now defacto OS.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
They're not celibate, dude, they're just not sleeping with you.
Does this mean we should support the INDUCE act now? ;)
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Cause now, all the pc people can join all of us mac people in saying "Steve, lick my ass, you sweaty pig"
How do you and your friends manage to keep your songs original and not accidentally copied?
May I suggest a solution to this problem? Purely in the interest of protecting copyrights, of course.
If you think that you might ever write any music, then first, download every possible mp3 you can get from the internet. Listen to them regularly. This way, you can be sure that when or if you write your own music, you aren't infringing anyone else's music copyright.
But please, download all these mp3s only in the interest of protecting the RIAA members' copyrights. Think of the poor record labels.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!