Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: IP Protection, ReligiousDocument, LiPS Savings
Sony leading a price-fixing cartel? Sheridan writes "Hot on the heels of the SonyBMG XCP rootkit fiasco The Times is reporting that Sony may have been charging online retailers up to 15% more for its products than high street outlets in an attempt to block online bargains from forcing prices down. Perhaps they're trying to recoup some of their losses on the rootkitted CDs, although somebody ought to let them know that most of their loss was to their reputation, which this certainly won't help."
Deconstructing the IP protection act. Brent writes "Ars Technica takes a more in-depth look at the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005 and shows that some of the original fears of the Act were overstated. The article states that the act is primarily concerned with criminal acts of infringement, namely infringement done for commercial gain or competitive advantage, and not with criminalizing the mere attempt at commonplace infringement. In short, the act is aimed at commercial piracy. The article also ends with an reasonable challenge to the US government, including the call for a referendum on consumer rights and the penalization of the use of any digital rights technology that impedes fair use."
Even the clergy are jumping into the OpenDocument fray. da6d writes "The LXer has an article about clergy joining the fray surrounding Microsoft's refusal to support OpenDocument. From the article: '[they] see Microsoft's stance as intentionally withholding support so that it can turn a technical business decision into a political fight. By refusing to support OpenDocument, Microsoft is ignoring the cross-platform document sharing needs of visually impaired users, not only in Massachusetts, but also in the other 49 states, not to mention the rest of the world. The economically disadvantaged will also suffer from the lack of Opendocument support in Microsoft Office.'"
UK spammer gets his due. delete writes "Notorious UK internet spammer Peter Francis-Macrae, who referred to himself as "weaselboy", has been convicted of fraud. The 23-year-old earned more than £1.5 million through his activities, primarily through spam mails offering the registration of unavailable domain names. Up to £425,000 of his earnings remain unrecovered."
Linux to make smartphones and high end communication devices cheaper. nitinah writes "In an interview with Phonemag, the founders of LiPS comment that mainstream adoption of Linux would make smartphone and high end communication devices more affordable than ever before. Founding members John Ostrem, lead scientist of PalmSource and Michel Gien, EVP of Jaluna also commented that Linux would also extend the economics to not just phones but applications and services."
The summary on Sony price-fixing portrays it as a Bad Thing. Here's a counter-argument.
If Acme sells the Acme Wizmaster 5000 cheaper to high-street stores than to "e-tailers", it could be because Acme believes that the stores are providing Acme with additional benefits. A potential buyer can go into Gadgets-R-Us and see the Acme Wizmaster, see how big it really is (much more useful than text saying "15 cm diameter"), how solid it feels, what the UI is like etc. There is a shop attendent who can answer questions on the spot. These services make it more likely the shopper will buy the Acme Wizmaster. If Acme doesn't sell at discount to the brick-and-mortar stores, they will go out of business because they can't compete with the web stores, and potential customers won't have anywhere they can go to see an actual Wizmaster. (Or Acme has to set up "demonstration stores", where they demonstrate but don't necessarily sell stuff. The high-street stores save them this expense.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You seem to be misinformed about exactly what this policy entails and when it is to take place. MS office will not be banned, but it cannot be used to generate new documents after January 2007 - That's more than a year from now. There are several projects already tackling the accessability issues for ODF. There are also several programs that will allow you to convert ODF to a MS compatible format should that be necessary. For more information, try reading these articles on groklaw for starters (the first one should address your issues quite adequately):
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051029
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051114
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051015
As a concerned citizen of Massachusetts myself, I find the position of locking all Mass citizens into the use of MS office to be quite unfair.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I think you mean two weeks ago, not last year.
I can understand why the clergy avoids Microsoft formats. They obviously don't believe in Intelligent Design.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Microsoft had two options to avoid being excluded by this policy: Either permit their own XML-based document format to be freely enough licensed to meet the state's requirements, or support a document format that is freely enough licensed to meet the state's requirements.
Let me say that again: Microsoft needed to do no development work whatsoever to meet the state's requirements; they simply needed to make the MSXML license sublicensable (or do development work and support ODF). They have declined to do either.First, the Massachusets policy permits disabled users to use whatever software they need, even if this would otherwise be in conflict with their policy.
Second, there will be freely available 3rd-party filters to allow Office to read and write ODF documents before 2005 is out, so the policy doesn't really prohibit use of MS Office -- so long as it's used in conjunction with onesuch filter.
Third, there are multiple companies on crash courses to finish accessibility work on competing ODF-aware tools long before the policy goes into effect.