Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Licensing Fee Intended To Reduce Hobbyists
BokLM writes "Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, explained at a DRM conference in London why they require a license fee from device makers." From the article: "According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
I'm reminded of a movie called Revolution OS which enlightened me to Gates' history with hobbyists.
Remember the open letter to hobbyists that Gates penned on the third of February, nineteen seventy six?
A choice selection of his letter:
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written.
And for those of you that hate reading the word of Gates, I'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words:
Remember, don't you dare try to write your own software. Leave that to me. Then buy it from me. Any resistance to this shows that you are ruining the software industry as we know it. If we fool everyone into thinking they need to pay us money for software, then we can rape the world, are you blind?
Look what you've done! You horrible hobbyists. You steal software. You make technology do what you want it to do. You write and distribute freely. For shame.
*Gates shakes rolled up newspaper at the world*
No DRM for you. No. Bad hobbyist. Get.
This is why we can't have nice things.
My work here is dung.
... but what if my hobby is annoying microsoft?
"A Microsoft spokesman has described their DRM licensing scheme as a system for reducing the number of device vendors to a manageable number, so that the company doesn't have to oversee too many developers."
Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
Yeah, uh huh... right... sounds more like THIS discussion...
Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for!
Ed Dillinger: DOING OUR BUSINESS is what computers are for.
Isn't that sort of monopolistic of them? Forcing everyone to pay them, whether you develop for them or buy from them.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Will this have the same effect as other licensing schemes (i.e. to completely discourage use of the product?)
Specifically I am thinking of the difficulty experienced by Firewire, and Macintosh Hardware...
So Slashdot links directly to BoingBoing now? There's something spectacularly lame about that . . . . . . .
That's totally fine with me, because I refuse to buy any digital media with DRM on it. I only buy PDFs (at most watermarked) and mp3s.
Really? I thought that everybody -- especially Slashdot -- had this impression.
Everyone knows that decentralized efforts never amount to anything. Why take advantage of the long-tail when monolithic models never teeter?
Jazzercise on, Microsoft!
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Considering we're talking about the oh-so-chipper WMA/V format, they should be paying people to have to work with it.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Those damn hobbyists are the entire problem! Those bastards! Er...this has nothing to do with tromping the little guys...
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Microsoft has the resources to "manage" nearly any number of "hobbyists"? I mean, laziness is one thing, but sheesh...
I wonder if there are any backroom deals being made here?
Did you know that "Steve Ballmer" is an anagram for "Tremble, slave!". This explains a lot :)
Guess we can add the "War on Cusotmers" (started by the RIAA) to the country's other great successes -- the War on Terror, War on Drugs, and War on Kids on My Lawn
MS certainly isn't winning over any of the open source community with that move. It really drives the wedge deeper and give more people more reason to not use Windows.
I do have to wonder how much of this is to show a strong front to the increasingly powerful media companies and their mostly oppresive DRM schemes.
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/
1. Microsoft 2. Profit!!!
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
Sometimes hobbyists are phenomenal for a platform (the Apple II platform, Linux). Sometimes they don't seem to provide enough benefit to be essential. Game consoles are effectively closed to hobbyists and despite the degree of amateur work, Flash was never really a free platform to seriously develop for.
The only area in which I can think of that this isn't true is when monopolies exist (such as the cell phone market, where cell providers can force the platform closed by requiring that anyone that uses their services provide only a closed platform).
Anyone can sit down and provide something an an encoded audio and video format. There are a lot more MPEG-based players out there than anything else, and it's not as if hobbyists can't produce content for these. Microsoft's chosen their market (at least in the short term). Let them play with the idea and see whether it pans out.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
In order for a consumer to hold both a protected object and the ability to use it, then they must have the key to unlock the protection...somewhere. So, in addition, companies now have to deal with licensing and compliantcy issues. And DRM sacrificies the rights of the majority at the expense of the minority.
Every leg of DRM is trying to collapse it: except two.
The only supporting legs are a company's desire to "protect" their work and the necessary laws to make circumvention of DRM illegal
And, as we all know, a two-legged table can't stay up for long.
:wq
to find another hobby for a lot of people.
Ohhh, you know what just occurred to me? Duct/gaff tape has to be the answer to this. That, or paperclips.
With Bic pens unshackling bicycles, and sharpies defeating copy protection on CDs, it's gotta be just a matter of time before the other Most Useful Thing Ever items are used to fight against tyranny!
.... to ashes!
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. -- Michel de Montaigne
This isn't news, nor is it some grand conspiracy. It's perfectly normal business practice. If you price a product (or worse, make it available for free,) you'll have huge demand. This demand carries with it a customer support expense, which can be quite large. You can break a company with excessive expenses, of which customer support is one.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor. Yes, you'll lose a couple of potential sales because the price presents a barrier to entry, but if you did the math properly, that minor loss is substantially easier to swallow than the loss from a huge non-revenue-generating support obligation. If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
"Isn't that why the Justice Department and the EU went after Redmond in the first place?" Ballmer: "Oh crap we need to get our bribery I mean lobbing funds to congress ASAP to make it legal for monopolies I mean redine laws to help our business become better." RandomEMployee: "Isn't that immoral Ballmer: "Nope its just a way to eterminate low life scum that believe in freedom, I mean piracy. That's why we need to be proactive like the RIAA and MPAA. Also you're banished to the lava pit for eternity for challenging your master."
This really isn't news - Microsoft has been actively trying to limit hobbyists and small businesses entry into creating new applications for the PC for ten years or more. This is just one more way to squeeze them (us) out.
Personally, I don't understand this behavior because it is so damaging in the long term - students (who can also be thought of as "hobbyists") will not be able to easily work on Microsoft products and will naturally gravitate towards more open solutions...
I've never understood why Microsoft wasn't more supportive of the student, hobbyist and small business marketplace. I can understand that they do not want products propagating that use obsolute interfaces/methodologies but there should be some halfway point, not freezing out those of us that want to experiment with PC applications and don't have deep pocket sponsors.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
...that these 'hobbyists' would be able to come up with some of the more innovative and interesting stuff for Windows.
Beyond MS and the XBox, this practice is pretty common in both the HW and SW industries. If you've ever: tried to synthesize FPGA code, get a compiler for a up,uc that's not mainstream, tried to get an eval board, tried to get API info, tried to program for any console or handheld, you've come across this practice.
Most of that stuff is FREE to corporate customers, companies will voluntarily lose money just to get people to try to use their product. However for people on the street, or companies too small to be "real", they will charge thousands upon thousands of dollars for these materials, if they will let you have them at all.
On one hand they're right, true hobbyists often have day jobs that are not in the industry (since those in the industry often gank this stuff from work) and can generate a lot of cost by a multitude of questions and misunderstandings. On the other hand, one persons hobby could turn into a good business, if their idea or project becomes interesting. By discouraging this, they are effectively discouraging innovation in anything less than a rather well funded start-up.
I recently bought (and returned) a Philips mp3 player to use for audiobooks. Not only can the thing not display track time > 1 hr., but there is no mid-track resume feature. Some of the WM licensed players may have this, but some don't. Unfortuantely, this strict control of licensing (or lack thereof) is why the iPod works so well. Well, that and the software on the back-end, but that's a whole different argument.
Steve BALLmer wants the developers to engorge their mouths with his component for which his last name refers. Microsoft--try as you may, but you're swinging the pendulum the wrong way. In ten or twenty years, you will have swung to your peak, and F/OSS will begin to open things back up again...until the government gets its musty and filth-ridden hands all over F/OSS and starts censoring.
The big guys just want to be in control.
If Microsoft can't bother with the hobbyists, then the hobbyists won't bother with Microsoft. Result: The new cool things will happen on Linux or Mac, not on Windows.
This is not the smartest thing Microsoft has ever done...
As far as I remember, Microsoft has been calling the OSS community a bunch of hobbyists since the OSS movement appeared on their radar (as a threat, of course). The article agrees, as MS tells "the intention is to reduce the number of licensors [...] to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with", the article says this is plain anticompetitive: "I was pretty surprised to hear an executive from Microsoft describe his company's strategy as intentionally anti-competitive and intended solely to freeze out certain classes of operators [...]"
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Bill Gates sure reminds me of Gollum... My Precious! Those stinkin' little Hobbitses want to steal it from me... Precious... *Gollum* *Gollum*
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
He says hobbyists cannot write good software:
He says he's the best at doing it:
He says that if you sell software written by yourself, you're just distributing bugs. So that implies that only software written by his company should be distributed because only he has the resources to make it immaculate.
Free software is bad because he can't make money: That "deluge" would almost certainly cause him some financial gain from people who otherwise would have worked on projects to distribute as a hobbyist.
My work here is dung.
But it looks like Microsoft is unable to manage swarms of Windows fans
so they decided to make a "WinSelection":
Microsoft Certification Test:
1) Are you a windows hobbyist? [YES: 1 point, NO: 0 points]
2) Do you have a planty of cash? [YES: 2 point, NO: 0 points]
Test results:
0-1 points - useless windows community member (possible linux hacker)
2-3 points - usefull windows community member
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Speaking as a longtime Mac user who's tired of seeing neat/useful peripherals that are Windows-only, I think this is a great move.
I understand that Bill Gates has a business to run these days, but blocking out the hobbysists isn't the answer - that's where the most innovation happens, most great inventions have come from "hobbyists." (Think TV, Phone, Linux...)
Perhaps someone should remind Bill Gates where MS came from, wasn't he (and co) a hobbyist at Uni where MS started??
Haydn.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
> Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
But they are starting the long slow trend that ends with Xbox bow. They still want developers, but only large ones. Because in the end the goal is to turn the PC into an Xbox. All applications are signed by Microsoft and they collect a piece of the action in exchange for it. It solves most of their security problems, lets them tap vast new revenue streams to show investors some growth and allows them the total freedom to screw each developer in turn by introducing their own replacement and deciding the 3rd party app no longer 'meets our strategic vision' and refusing to continue signing.
Democrat delenda est
Gates: "No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system." -- From: 'Programmers at work', Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [c1986]:
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were students at Harvard University at the time, adapted BASIC to run on the popular Altair 8800 computer and sold it to the Altair's manufacturer, MITS. The Altair BASIC interpreter was the first computer language program to run on the type of computer that would later become known as the home computer or personal computer. Even though the BASIC programming language was already in the public domain by then, the interpreter that could run it on home computers wasn't. Thus Gates and Allen had created an original product; a true innovation. It would be one of their last.
Gates and Allen had initially met at Lakeside School (an exclusive private school for rich boys) where Gates became an adept at BASIC on a General Electric Mark II. Shortly thereafter they got access to a PDP-10 run by a private company in Seattle. The company offered free time to the Lakeside school kids to see if they could crash the system. Gates proved to be particularly adept at doing so. When the free time ran out Gates and Allen figured out how to get free time on the PDP-10 by logging on as the system operator. About a year later the private company running the PDP-10 went bankrupt.
This left Gates and Allen without a source of free computing power. Therefore Allen went over to the University of Washington and began using a Xerox computer by pretending to be a graduate student. Gates soon followed, and this went on until they were caught and removed from the campus. They continued to break into university and privately owned computer systems until about 1975. By that time Gates was a student at Harvard University. The BASIC he sold to MITS had been developed and tested on a Harvard PDP-10 using an 8080-emulation program that Allen had adapted from earlier code. In fact, by the time Gates contacted MITS to announce their product, it had never ran on an actual 8080 CPU. The demonstration Gates and Allen put up for MITS in New Mexico was the first time the product actually ran on the system it was intended for. Gates sold it by announcing a product that didn't exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, not testing it very seriously, demonstrating an edition that didn't fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay. From then on this modus operandi became Microsoft's trademark.
After Gates sold the new BASIC interpreter to MITS he left Harvard University, and went into business for himself with Allen as a partner. Allen was also an MITS employee at the time, which made his position rather interesting. Gates' departure from Harvard is shrouded in controversy: some say he dropped out, others say he was expelled for stealing computer time. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that Gates did most of the work on his BASIC version in a Harvard computer lab without having been authorized to use the (expensive) computer time needed for the project. Perhaps he did not really steal unauthorized computer capacity (which was a valuable commodity in those days) to develop his first commercially successful product. Yet he has never offered another explanation. He did however send his now-infamous "Open Letter To Hobbyists" to every major computer publication in February 1976, in which he decried the copying of Microsoft software by home computer hobbyists as simple theft. -- excerpt borrowed from Why I hate Microsoft
"The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written."
...
... Any resistance to this shows that you are ruining the software industry as we know it. If we fool everyone into thinking they need to pay us money for software, then we can rape the world, are you blind?
And for those of you that hate reading the word of Gates, I'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words:
Actually a better introduction would be: "for those of you that do not see the things I am imagining, I'll distort the above for you."
Remember, don't you dare try to write your own software. Leave that to me. Then buy it from me
He does not write that. He is complaining about the widespread use of pirated software, an entirely legitimate complaint. If it is OK to violate his copyright and his license, wouldn't it also be OK to violate the copyright and license of authors who choose to release software under the GPL?
Software piracy does hurt the software industry. Products and technologies fail not due to technical shortcomings but rather the shallow pockets of the developers. Piracy destroys the little guy, not the guy with the deep pockets like Bill Gates.
A lot of DVDs made in Finland get region code 0. I can understand that (some noble but ultimately futile dreams on Finnish cinema getting big on foreign market, I guess =). But most of the DVDs don't seem to have CSS either, which kind of puzzles me.
I'm not familiar with how CSS licensing works for content authors, but maybe, maybe some Finnish producers said "hey, let's copy protect these things" and another producer said "well, that's not going to happen, have you seen what prices they're asking for that?" (that's just for the sake of argument, I guess in real life, it's more likely the other guy is saying "but that doesn't work anyway - why bother..." =)
The point is, if you're using DRM licensing fees to fend out "hobbyists", you're also likely fending out smaller players. In an analogy that hopefully makes it all clear (even when I think DRM in general is such a failure that it practically fails in this goal, too): what use, really, is a protection that is just intended to keep rich people richer and poor people poor?
I find it way too easy to replace "hobbyists" with "independent music producers" in that quote. And lock them out to benefit who? Organized Music? Almost certainly. MS wants to play nice with Big Music, get their content, and make a few more tens of billions in the process. Get government to close the so called "Analog Hole". Lock struggling producers out of a standard for DRM. Nothing here to hurt the big players at all. All this is just another reason why MS must die.
(As a company, you idiot lawyers.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is it just me or is it a little ironic for them to say this. I mean after all, didn't MS, along with most of the other modern computing giants, start as a couple of geek hobbyists in a garage somewhere? The Quest for Cash is getting a little beyond stupid these days. It is one thing to be cutthroat, unethical, and often illegal in business, but more and more the trends are following more along the lines of head in the sand, or pure insanity. At least when they are being cutthroat, unethical, and often illegal, they are a little more stable and predictable.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
*BEEP* *BOP* *BOOP* CHICKACHICKACHICKA *ZIP* *BOOP*
Readout:
We write software! NOT YOU!
Now the major difference is these distributors have competition, but the only competetion to protected WMA/V DRM is Apple's FairPlay, which only Apple gets to use.
Also realize that, in effect, this is exactly what the DVD-CCA does. Only issues liscences to people who agree to play by their restrictive terms.
On a certain level MS probably also believes that their DRM will be cracked more easily/quickly if smaller, less "ethical" coders could get their hands on it. But it didn't do the DVD people much good. IIRC, DVD Jon was able to crack CSS after the cypher was anonymously leaked to him
Free MacMini
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
Honestly, what would hobbyists do with a truly open DRM SDK for devices? The secure path audio only applies to media sources LEAVING the PC, not input sources, so it doesn't affect microphones, instruments and the types of devices that casual users might actually be developing. Hobbyists won't have the substantial financial backing to produce their own playback device. Any small company who has the desire and financial resources is going to have the cash to spend on this liscensing scheme, especially considering that Microsoft has always employed hefty discounts for small ISVs. This doesn't prevent hobbyists from working with DRM'd media streams on devices they purchased - if the device manufacturer liscensed the DRM from Microsoft (which it would have to, or you couldn't enjoy media on the device), then you can still use a healthy amount of the Windows Media SDK to work with media stream, limitted to some extent by the secure path, but that's a different gripe.
Given the financial difficulty of building a full device capable of full media playback, what would hobbyists do with an SDK that allowed raw access to protected content - most of them would write software the emulates a virtual device to circumvent the DRM. That's exactly what Microsoft is attempting to prevent.
Let's not buy any hardware that *has* to have windows drivers, Windows logos, Made for Microsoft, and all that rot. Let's also ensure that we don't plan to write drivers, own drivers, or use drivers for any hardware requiring MS.
That said, I happen to have a version of win32 source code that will be fully obsolete as soon as the WIN64 platform is "done." And I'll sell it to all you hobbyists cheap! It's 100% royalty laden! What more could anyone ask for you say?
Well, it runs on Linux, Entirely DRM free, and can perform such tasks as running "calc", mspaint, and even possibly, maybe, some of your other favorite programs like MS Excel, MS Word, Internet Explorer, and maybe more!
As a matter of fact, it acts just like Windows! You might even be able to run a popular game or two!!! Yes! The future of Windows-like OSes is here and you can be part of history by owning this hobby based, royalty laden, DRM free, semi-windows-like OS for a fraction of the cost.
With Win-o-dows, you can go wrong!
(Did I mention I can't stand Bill and his Billions? Screw that guy. I can't wait till my new laptop get's here and I dont' have to run Windows anymore)
--SuperBug
I had no idea you were managing us. Don't try anymore.
Who, exactly, is the little guy? I'll give him $100. But seriously, who in the software business isn't a large corporation? The Open Source movement? They're giving people the code - not exactly a target for piracy...
Priceless.
get muvaudio.com. It lets you turn WMA to MP3 files so you can actually listen to the music you paid for without this hassle.
The iPod has its quirks, too. Unlike some of the MP3 players you mentioned, it does not run on regular batteries, and the guys who designed it forgot a regular on/off switch (which is a way too common design blunder anymore).
The simple solution is this: if support is an expense, charge for support. It's just that simple. Businesses do it all the time. Cygnus made millions that way; Red Hat is doing all right too, I hear. From the hardware side, Sun makes a pretty penny on the hardware, but they make even more on support contracts.
Pricing something just to freeze out a certain segment of the population might be standard business practice, but it has nothing to do with the economics of support. It has to do with freezing out a certain portion of the population.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Microsoft says: don't try to write better drivers. Linux fan-base grows.
*** Don't be dull.***
And remember, it's the HOBBYISTS who've done more to advance computing than anything Microsoft has done to advance the state of software development in the world. (Linus Torvalds anyone?)
Linux didn't really advance computing, Linux is yet another reimplementation of Unix. AT&T advanced computing by developing Unix. I'm open to the idea of giving UC Berekeley some credit too, but we have the reimplementation issue as well. However Berkeley does deserve credit for it's open license, Linux's GPL license being a reimplementation of the the open distribution idea. Please don't misunderstand, I am not slamming Linux or minimizing the enormous efforts that went into it's development. Linux is an outstanding technical achievement, but it does not offer original ideas, it merely offers original source code.
I work in Developer Relations for a big wireless carrier, so this is close to my heart. While I've been a Mac user since 1985 ('nuff said), I do have a lot of respect of Microsoft when it comes to Developer Relations... they do know what they're doing in that area.I can understand the source of the Microsoft's VP's statement, although if his wording was close to what was paraphrased in the article, it was a poor choice of words.
If Microsoft is hoping to get real devices out there that include their DRM component, then what they're doing is putting up a barrier to entry to ensure that only those who are truly committed to building a mass-market product get the attention of internal staff so that MS can make money indirectly through devices that use and license the DRM component.
Whether or not that's a sound business practice is their decision to make. But it's not a unique model. If you want to release a game on PlayStation, Gamecube or XBox, you license the development kits from Sony, Nintendo or XBox. They do this because they're in a mass market and need to ensure that the companies they work with and who use their name are equipped for what happens when something succeeds massively or has major problems. Microsoft's approach for their DRM is no different--the only difference is that a VP went out and actually set realistic expectations for what it takes to be a developer for those platforms in a forum that pissed boingBoing off--enough of a commitment and a financial stake in the game to make sure that something useful comes out of all the work people put into it.
It's true that hobbyists are often the source of completely original, unexpected innovations, and any company that is serious about innovation encourages that. Developer programs that embrace this open themselves up to very new ideas. But let's make a clear distinction between encouraging hobbyists and the business drive behind encouraging real applications, services or devices that make money for a developer and the company that makes money from the platform.
Please don't get me wrong: I stay at my job managing a developer program because I love answering developer questions. I love helping someone out and seeing them succeed, particularly if they have a great idea and the nads to see it through. I also believe that developers should have as many tools freely available as they can have. Where I work, I always try to argue for making information, APIs and toolkits open and accessible to every developer. I often get into some very heated discussions with people who argue that we should only make this API or that piece of documentation available to existing partners because they don't want to deal with hobbyists--in fact, I'm actively lobbying for something like that as I type. I tell internal resistors that by staying closed off they're never going to hear of the new stuff, they'll only hear from the same people over and over again and they'll still have to deal with hobbyists. I also help hobbyists and independent developers figure out ways of selling their product without having to build a business relationship with MegaCorp and dealing with what can be a bureaucratic process.
Being on the support side of things, I also contend with the reality of this internal advocacy--I often have to guide hobbyists and amateurs who are dabbling and who can consume hours of my day while clearly showing me that they're very unlikely to actually come up with something that could be a marketable product even if they go it alone.
Hobbyists-cum-entrepreneurs often have very unrealistic expectations regarding what they need to do to succeed. Some hobbyists tend to consume an inordinate amount of time from a company's developer relations and business development staff and don't turn out something that can actually become a product--and honestly, my business is to get developers from idea to market. These things include adequate support staff, sales teams, marketing funds, technical acumen and enough wherewithal to deal with contract n
***Foucault is watching you..***
have done had DEC locked the system from hobbyist?
7
The first computer he used was a DEC PDP-10 that was owned by General Electric. His high school paid General Electric for time that the students could use to program the computer. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen spent many hours at the computer, eventually causing their grades to suffer from skipped classes and late homework. When they were given a new system to work with, they hacked into the system to make it so that the computer did not record the time that they spent on it, causing them to be banned from it for weeks.
Excerpt from here, http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=9
Bill Gates would not be where he is today if it weren't for open systems.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Ever since PS/2 fiasco, Microsoft backstabbing IBM on account of OS/2 and rise of Wintel trust, Microsoft was having the last word in design of PC hardware and controlled the evolution of PC.
It is still so, because, unfortunately, various Windows are still most ubiquituous, despite recent explosive proliferation of free OS's. I am certain they are cospiring to, using DRM as an excuse, lock free competition out, by bullying hardware vendors into ever tighter subjugation to themselves. In the end (and I suppose that is where MS is trying to get us), it may become illegal (under DMCA) to run non-MS OSes on latest, greatest and cheapest PC hardware. With IBM bailing out of PC hardware business, I don't see anyone with large back to cover for us.
Then, we'll have to make our own "free (as in free speech) hardware" (Wheee!!!) and it will get expensive, or have inferior performance. It depends of how deep are they going to dig to uproot us. What are we going to do if something at very basic level, i.e. memory chips or modules, get access control (lock) that will be illegal to circumvent? There are limits to practical avoidance. RMS was right in his insight that free OS is prerequisite for free software, but he had overseen that OS is not a basic layer of computing. Then again, at the time, hardware was far less "alive" and blackboxed then today and no one could predict that someday hardware could turn against its owner and side with some remote corporate bigbrother.
They are beyond selling to us what we can't do ourselves. Now it is preventing us from doing ourselves what they can sell to us. I feel like if the sky was closing each day a little bit more. And it is all caused by IP monopolies and creeping consent that someone has right to my money so if they don't take it from me, it's like I robbed them. Are we going to lay down and just die?
It is widely thought that Gates did not develop the MITS Altair BASIC in a clean room. It is thought that Gates started his Altair BASIC with a little help from some purloined BASIC interpreter source code... (The internet rumors say it was stolen from Digital, which I could believe, because I am aware that source code was not tightly held by DEC, in fact, an early PDP-11 unix version of BASIC was derived from the same source.)
In any event, Gates old rant about stolen software sounds to me like the pot calling the kettle black.
is, "We don't want to be bothered with you unless you have a lot of money we can transfer from your bank accounts to ours.
I was ranting about this a couple weeks ago for the guy who wanted to stream all sound off his windows computer. There used to be a fake sound card drive which would pipe to esound, but it was for WinNT4, back when DDK was free, or at least included with Visual Studios.
1997 is calling. they want their news back assholes. and i want my fucking mod points you didnt give me the first time around for this story.
Towels
emt 377 emt 4
Who, exactly, is the little guy? I'll give him $100. But seriously, who in the software business isn't a large corporation? The Open Source movement? They're giving people the code - not exactly a target for piracy...
You mention two extremes, the mega corporation and open source. The little guy is in the middle. He's the guy that ends up working for the former and sometimes donating to the latter, rather than having his own small company. Gates claimed 90% piracy, lets dial that back to 50%. Do you think there is a shortage of failed small software companies where a doubling of sales could have made the difference between success and failure? What if Gates was accurate and sales would have been ten fold? Piracy greatly increases the cost and risk of entering the software business.
Microsoft Proprietary Software, Intended to Reduce Hobbyists.
.!..
I mean, well, duh! They're not a hobbyist friendly business. They work for food, not give it away.
Besides, long ago hobbyists were created as a cross between a hacker and a pirate. They're unethical by nature, and thus should be made illegal.
Microsoft is only trying to provide for the safety and security of all mankind. Such an honorable and noble cause. All Hail Microsoft
The pre-internet days of clearly delineated 'producers' and 'consumers' is an artifact of a bygone era.
Microsoft and other large corporations (MPAA, RIAA etc..) want to turn back the clock, and force us to become 'good consumers'. Why build when you can buy? Of course what you buy will be a tasteless vanilla mush - and you can buy versions with any color - provided that color is blue (with a Windows logo of course).
This is initially why we see independents gain ground in music and computing - and it will only continue to increase as Gen Y makes its presence felt -- particularly given the large amounts of their income that will be needed to support the Boomers (who will be mostly retired and a powerful lobby to lock-in their retirement benefits in Congress). Their decisions will be motivated by monetary pressures that will not support traditional 'producer'/'consumer' corporations. They will expect high value for nominal prices - and if you can't compete in that space, you will see your revenue and thus stock value plummet.
Non-open DRM schemes are just a means to the end of staving off this change - securing a steady flow of income from a flawed and outdated business plan. This will not work, because Gen Y - who outnumber both Gen X and the Boomers - will not be able to sustain it, feed themselves and save for their own retirement. The wave of change is already in motion. You can choose to ride the wave, or be smothered by it.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
If the Evil Empire is hostile to small developers, that can only help the other platforms.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh, pure evil! Down with Microsoft!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
[a darkened man is sitting on a park bench talking to an FBI agent facing away from him]
... thing ... this "eldavojohn" that posts twice the same information--in a single thread no less? ...
Agent Fox "AC" Mulder: What is this
Deep "CmdrTaco" Throat: The answers are out there, Agent Mulder, you need to open your eyes and see people for what they really are.
Agent Fox "AC" Mulder: He's a Karma Whore... one who prays on the moderator points divvied out by others
Deep "CmdrTaco" Throat: You're quicker than the thousands before you, Agent Mulder.
Agent Fox "AC" Mulder: They're posting here aren't they?
Deep "CmdrTaco" Throat: Mr. Mulder, THEY'VE been posting here for a long, long time.
My work here is dung.
There once was a bus system called the Microchannel. In its age, it was revolutionary. Look it up, and be stunned by the opportunities this system presented. Remember, this was the age of ISA (Not even VLB, heck, not even EISA and faaaaar from PCI) cards.
It was good. Unlike the DRM junk, this was REALLY good. It only had one single flaw:
IBM threatened to execute patent rights. And the card manufacturers were afraid they couldn't actually make a buck with MCA cards after paying royalties to IBM for the patents.
So most of them, besides a few big players, went down the conservative road and decided it would be better to stick with ISA. It's slower, yes, it's limited, yes, but at least we can actually make a buck there.
Customers split up. Those who decided to stick with ISA, to be compatible with their old hardware, hardware they needed and was not available on MCA, and those who stood true to IBM and trusted them to create new line of hardware. The first group saw that they could get cheaper hardware, not only add-on cards but even the "main machine" from 3rd party vendors that are still compatible with their old ISA cards.
The other group went after the first when IBM decided to dump the Microchannel Architecture in the early 90s, leaving their customers with big investments that led into a dead end, forcing them to buy completely new hardware altogether as well. And understandably, they did not want to sink more money into IBM...
And the MCA, which was a great design, went away before it even started to fly. And marked one of the cornerstones of IBMs decline from THE computer company to ONE computer company today.
Let's hope DRM will be the same for MS.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look around you.
Everyone is to busy hanging out at the mall, or spending their pocket money for ringtones and other junk. A "buy this!" generation is growing up, unable to do the most basic tasks by themselves.
In the 80s, people dumped video games for home computers. The slogan was "Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college?"
That trend has already changed.
Today the slogan is more akin to "Why bother with operating systems and incompatible hardware when you can just slip in a DVD and play?"
We "old" people might even be able to do things ourselves. Our next generation won't be able to do anything by themselves unless it's part of their job. We already need repairmen for things our parents would've done themselves. Our kids will need assistance when it comes to upgrading their operating system...
Not because they're dumber. It's simply lazyness. We don't want to learn more than we have to to get by.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What you're writing is classic spin. You're inferring things from the article, nothing more, then stating your interpretations as facts.
The quotes you offer are nowhere near "smoking guns". Does he dislike hobbyists? Well, I think it's fairly clear he strongly dislikes the 'hobbyists' who are stealing his software. But then you twist that and put words into his mouth, such as "hobbyists cannot write good software". Correction: what he SAID was that he doesn't see how programmers can spend 3 years on their 'hobby' without making any money from it and still put out a quality product, with quality assurance, documentation and all. It's worth noting, too, that this was from a long time ago. Free software models did not exist then, and there weren't people willing to fund/sponsor hobbyist projects.
"He says he's the best at doing it:"
Sorry, the quote you give does not support that conclusion at all. He's just saying he invested a lot of money into it, and then many hobbyists take the fruit of that labor without paying the piper, as they say. I don't believe it'd be fair to sell software someone gave away for free without their permission, and conversely, I don't believe it's fair to give away software someone sells without their permission. Those who stole his software were not fair and respectful to Bill Gates, and he is justifiably (in my opinion) upset about that.
"Free software is bad because he can't make money:"
Again, spinning around and around. He said he wants to sell a product, and hire developers to make his product much better. However, his plan is somewhat hindered by the fact that most people are stealing, rather than purchasing, his software.
You know, I don't think Bill Gates is some great guy or anything, in fact, I do consider he's more about making the sale than providing a quality product; but at the same time I don't like to see people putting words in someone's mouth, which you most certainly are doing. Criticize him for what he actually did, or actually said, but not for what you think he meant to say.
If you truly feel it's fair to do this, then that is because you're the one on the giving end, not receiving. When someone puts words in YOUR mouth, I can assure you, you will not think it is very fair to you for someone to do so.
Develop around their DRM and find a clever way to circumvent it. Bet that pisses them off good?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the cool things may happen on the Mac or Linux, but you can bet your last dollar that you will NOT be able to legally play any of these DRM'd videos on those boxes...
As far as Microsoft are concerned, Linux developers and users == hobbyists... that's all this is intended to do, lock Linux users out of the Microsoft garden... prevent them from legally viewing that premium content.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Immaculate...Windows
Anyone else waiting for those two words to start fighting? :D
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
piracy hurts the open source movement because there is little incentive to use things like OpenOffice or The Gimp when joe user can pick up keygens or cracked versons of MS Office, Adobe Photoshop or whatever the current must have application du jour is, for next to nothing at the car-boot sale or download them off the web.
Piracy helps Bill Gates and others because it means fewer people are forced to choose between stumping up for a genuine product or going without and using an OSS, freeware or shareware alternative.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
By protection, you must mean lock out all but a few publishers. Why else limit who can make a player? This is an "our way or the highway" kind of admission. Yes, trying to control popular culture through outdated laws and bogus technology is wrong.
Given the financial difficulty of building a full device capable of full media playback, what would hobbyists do with an SDK that allowed raw access to protected content - most of them would write software the emulates a virtual device to circumvent the DRM. That's exactly what Microsoft is attempting to prevent.
Oh yeah, piracy is the only reason people would ever want to watch a movie. No it's not.
This is about a foolish attempt to control. People are going to make and distribute players for M$'s crappy formats with or without an SDK to help them. This issue will come to a head and hopefully overturn the dumber restrictions of the DMCA, which was passed before most people understood it's implications. More importantly, people are going to publish in alternative formats and economic forces will pull the whole scheme under.
The harder they push, the faster they lose. The "Works for Sure" devices are miserable. WM formats are also second rate and the adoption of both is just not going to happen.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ever since I started using a Windows OS that implemented driver-signing, I'd estimate that about 99% of all drivers I've either added (with new HW) or upgraded (for video, sound, etc) have produced dire warnings that the driver was not Microsoft-tested and certified. I'd guess ATI, nVIDIA, and Creative Labs aren't paying their fair share to MS for the privilege of playing in their sandbox.
--- I stand corrected ---
As a Mac user with a friendly relationship with Linux and BSD, I urge Microsoft to do precisely that.
Windows would be a locked Microsoft and Certified Vendors platform and as a result would both help those its really meant for: corporate users, by making their systems secure for a change; and would also help the rest of us by removing this monstrosity of a platform from the home hobbyist and gamer community outright.
Alas, MS will do no such thing. They learned at some point that the user wants a billlion different choices of crapware and was willing to pay for it with a whored box.
DRM for music and video players is a different arena. MS are playing a canny game there for the moment. Though have Apple to catch up to. Should be an entertaining fight.
what apple has been dong for years!
All the hoobyists I know are more interested in removing DRM. Who wants to make their media less useful?
That "fee" has no other purpose than to tilt the playing field against FOSS.
The question is NOT why do device makers allow themselves to become enslaved to Microsoft? The question is why doesn't the DOJ nip this MONOPOLIST action right now?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
...that's the reason he has to block hobbists.
Because enough hobbists can build a good enough development system to threat windows hegemony and MS.
By good enough I mean:
- Good for windows applications, so they look nice, run fast, and are easy to install.
- Multiplatform, so Linux and OSX versions are just a recompile at most.
That development system would make the windows platform less relevant because all software will not be windows only.
MS can not impose anything on Linux and OSX developers, so they change the way to develop apps on Windows, to ensure that those apps are not developed simultaneously for Linux and Mac.
This multiplatform development system exists for Win32 (wxWidgets, QT and others), but Windows Vista will surely try to break it.
Only hobbists can create a developing system that challenges MS, so yes, you are right, but what is good for us is not necesarily good for MS.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Unfortuantely, this strict control of licensing (or lack thereof) is why the iPod works so well. Well, that and the software on the back-end, but that's a whole different argument.
You know, I own a cheap "Works for Sure" MP3 player. It works for me because usbfs works and it will play the music I put there that way and my ID3 tags show up. The thing I hate about it is the crappy shuffle. It has two orders of play, alphabetical and "random". Both orders only change if you change the files on the device.
If M$ wanted to have a rich media scene, they would come up with trade marks that mean a device complies with reasonable standards. They don't want that, they want control and think that will earn them more. It's damaged and people will continue to route around them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's not an issue of "sit and stagnate and rot," it's "who's on top." The corporates would probably rather not have society "sit and stagnate and rot," but the first priority is to be on top, and if that means that they sit on top of a stagnating, rotting society, so be it.
First things first.
T'was ever thus.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So how many more feet does Microsoft have left to shoot itself in?
I don't think any hobbyists do, but I'm sure that a great deal of Lobbyists do.
Well, "dude," I wasn't projecting my personal hatred and bias against Gates. I've read a lot of his books. He's a smart rich bastard with a lack of certain business ethics and morals. Would I want to be him? You bet.
... especially with the recent power to quash anti-trust convictions. Now there's influence.
...
I'm not afraid to say I'm jealous of where he sits
What I was doing was taking his background motive, adding the letter and inferring what he was really saying. No, they're not stated anywhere. But if that's what everyone (including Gates) is thinking, then surely there's some merit to them.
According to the Interesting modifier the post currently holds, people think what I have to say is interesting. It's not hard to figure out. You obviously think I'm full of shit. Right on, I love good arguments and I'm not afraid to admit I'm wrong so please post more than one line and refute my assumptions about his motives.
Slashdot is waiting
My work here is dung.
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
The market, left to its own devices, will often produce gargantuan companies that exclude any potential competitor from entering--we have seen plenty of examples of that throughout the 20th century. Microsoft is no different from the monopolists and robber barons that came before them. As for not wanting to deal with so-called "hobbyists", that is standard monopolistic practice.
Nevertheless, complaining about Microsoft not licensing DRM to small players is missing the point--Microsoft shouldn't be in control of DRM technologies at all. If there is to be DRM at all, then it should be open, freely implementable, and public. But, in fact, it can be argued that any use of DRM technologies should automatically void copyright since people using DRM are not holding up their part of the copyright bargain.
The last line of TFA mentions antitrust, also:
>Isn't that why the Justice Department and the EU went after Redmond in the first place?
But does anyone think there's any real danger of an antitrust suit, at least in the next 3 years? After all, antitrust is *punishing* a company for being *successful*.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
As I understand it the problem is that Microsoft has to validate submitted drivers to see that they follow the DRM rules and don't have any back doors to let content be extracted. This is a big job so they can't afford to do it for every driver that any person feels like submitting, opening themselves up to a sort of DOS attack. By charging a fee for submissions they limit their work to only people who are really serious about it, and shut out the merely curious and those who hate DRM and would try to monkey-wrench it.
Just replace 'hobbyists' with 'Open Source programmers' and you'll have what Billy boy is really saying. It's always about obstructing competition. Always.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
There may be another reason for restricting the developer set. Keep in mind that this isn't a general restriction, it's only in the area of DRM.
From what I remember, DVD CSS was cracked because one company used a weak key. That key was SO bad it was fairly easy to brute-force, and then there were more fundamental weaknesses that allowed them to extract the other keys, given the first one.
Had there never been a weak key, perhaps DVD John never would have gotten his 15 minutes of fame.
So perhaps this DRM developer restriction is to make sure that nobody makes a weak key, that they do a better job of educating this smaller set of developers.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.
From this article
But thanks for playing.
My first 'OS' was GEOS (unless you count Commodore64 basic as an OS)
After that it was PC Dos (not MS Dos although I switched to that later)
THEN Windows OS/2, THEN Windows 95.
At least, not yet. Napster and many other music stores distribute in DRM'd WMA. Windows Media Player rips CDs in DRM'd WMA by default (and to rip in MP3 you have to install a codec). If MP3 players can't read WMA, a lot of people are going to get annoyed that none of their music will play on their shiny new device, and will return it for this reason.
The solution is that someone needs to make a music store in a non-DRM format (MP3 or OGG). Unfortunately, again, record companies require draconian DRM methods on any files "officially" distributed on the internet. So in the end, what we have here is a network of large companies conspiring to keep newcomers from the market. That almost sounds like antitrust, doesn't it?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm as much of an OSS advocate as the next guy, but MS has done a LOT to advance the state of software development. Largely by taking other people's ideas and reimplementing them, yes, but the point is that they have made quite a success out of widely distributing technological innovation in software. Windows... um... ::counts::
2000! Yes! And afterward. They're proof of that. Everything else before, well... let's just say it took them a while to get it right.
+++ATH0
Microsoft wants companies to pay them if they plan on writing software that works on Windows. If they don't pay, they don't get a "certificate" from microsoft, and they intend for Windows to refuse to execute any software that doesn't have this special "certificate"?
This sounds conspicuously like "pay us a 'protection' fee so nothing 'bad' will happen".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Result: The new cool things will happen on Linux or Mac, not on Windows.
And the fully-financed and, thus, well-marketed things will continue to happen on the platform with 95% market share: Windows. "New cool things" appeal to geeks with time to tinker and aren't afraid of things like soldering. The jillions of other folks with disposable income are looking for well-packaged products that they can buy off the shelves at best buy. And those things will continue to be sufficiently "new" and "cool" enough to not make Linux or Mac any more important than you wish they were.
I'm typing this from my Linux workstation at work. Yes, I love Linux, but you have to admit that there are things more significant that your sense of l337ness at being a geek.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Doesn't this smack of anti-competitive practices? WTF, I must declare; So some bright innovator who doesn't have an established financing can't create, distribute and integrate with windows? Exactly. The case of power corrupts and (monopolistic) power corrupts absolutely. Let the little guy do his/her thing! It only breeds more reliance on your operating system anyway.
... is that we're ranting about companies feeling entitled to things they're not necessarily owed, while demanding our "fucking mod points" that we're not necessarily owed.
You probably use computers today specifically because of Microsoft Windows at some point in the past.
/.er...most certainly under 25 anyways...
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing a BASIC interpreter was a pretty garden-variety activity for enthusiastic hobbyists fortunate enough to have access to minicomputers. BillG is not a vrey good innovator, but he is a visionary of sorts and can spot unexploited opportunities.
Other innovatinos borrowed by Microsoft:
* Modern microcomputer architecture of BIOS and OS borrowed from Digital Research (BDOS and CP/M)
* Colour graphics (Cromemco(?) Dazzler card, Apple II, Atari 800 all before 1980)
* Mouse (Douglas Engelbart, 1964)
* Graphical User Interface (Xerox Alto in 1973, Apple Lisa in 1983)
* Web Browser (CERN WorldWideWeb, 1990 and NCSA Mosaic, 1993 - MSIE started off as a a re-branded/derivative version of this browser licensed from Spyglass Software--a firm trying to commercialise the academic project)
Microsoft was simply savvy enough to know how to bring these technologies to the masses and establish a dominant, standard platform. Standardisation--THAT is why we all use computers as much as we do today, NOT because MS makes such good software. I think that if we were all lucky enough to have companies that had both Microsoft's "vision" (business savvy, really) and Xerox/Digital Research/Apple/Atari/Commodore's talent for innovation that computing would be far more advanced and ubiquitous than it is today, because computers would actually "work".
It was likely your first operating system.
On this forum, likely NOT. My first exposure to computers was on a freinds TRS-80 CoCo (The original, silver, memory-challenged model 1), and on my school's Apple II (no plus, e, c or gs). The first OS I seriously used was CP/M 2.2. I remember when the lab for Jr/Sr high was upgraded from Commodore PETs to 8088 machines, with the brand-new MSDOS 2.11. Slashdotters are enthusiasts and generally got into computers as early as possible in their lives. If Windows was your first OS then (with a few exceptions) you are probably quite a young
...Hobbyists reduce DRMs.
"Microsoft's DRM requires that device makers pay Microsoft a license fee for each device that plays back video encoded with its system. it also requires every such vendor to submit to a standardized, non-negotiable license agreement that spells out how the player must be implemented. This contract contains numerous items that limit the sort of business you're allowed to pursue, notably that you may not implement a Microsoft player in open source software."
Hobbyists aren't building devices to sell, so there's no point in dealing with them because they're not going to sell anything that generates revenue for MS. Apple doesn't bother. Why should Microsoft. Apple has the biggest DRM monopoly around, and no one's complaining that fairplay is completely closed.
"Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share."
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
"According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM..."
Of course not. Micro$oft had to pay nearly half a billion dollars to InterTrust for violating their DRM patents! HELLO! Micro$oft is probably still having to pay licensing fees to them also.
Today InterTrust is owned by Sony and Phillips (at least last time I checked) so we know who is really in the driver's seat.
What suprises me is that Microsoft would blatantly say so in exactly those words. Their lawyers must be asleep at the switch. Or muzzled.
It would have been very easy for MS just to charge the fee as a cost-of-service, and proving leverage would be very difficult. Instead, they've handed in a confession! Without any water torture :)
WMA is chump change compared to Fairplay. Why isn't someone complaining that you can't license Fairplay for any price? Apple has a monopoly on audio DRM, at least a monopoly in the same sense that MS has a monopoly in the OS realm.
Vote for Pedro
Then God must have descended and beat me on Tuesday December 20, @10:43AM. Sorry you missed him
My work here is dung.
If you only sell a few hundred or a few thousand of something this STILL maybe too much to spend.
You may see a whole scale move from Windows to the Mac and Linux in the Vertical and technical markets.
Need a computer for that new side scan sonar? Forget about Windows.
Need a four port video digitizer card for a security system? Write it for Linux.
Nice... How many industrial controllers will now move to Linux and away from Windows?
Sweet move.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Wankers.
Remember in the old days when people built their own home computers using a soldering iron or wire wrap tool ?
Well in those days Bill Gates was doing the rounds selling his Microsoft BASIC to try to make a dollar.
If it wasn't for the hobbyist then Bill would be just another poor geek.
Shame on Microsoft
In a galaxy not so far away,
the Old Software was crumbling away, rotting from the corruption and treachery within. Power-hungry technocrats and wealthy bureaucrats maneuvered and bribed their way into office, while one ambitious ex-Hobbyist plotted to destroy the Hobbyists and rule the galaxy. Hoping to restore virtue and the remembered glory of the Software, the High Council of Free Software dispatched the Geeks - protectorate of justice in the galaxy - on a quest to retrieve the lost Source Code. They believed that the small incomprehensible object (which intensified the power of the Code) would unite the disaffected among the people and would destroy the corruption around them. However, within their Free Software, the evil ex-Hobbyist had other traitorous designs. Foreseeing that the Code would secure his position as The Hacker, he deceived one of the...uhh Wookies! and sent him to acquire the Code. . .
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
The current generation of teens/(very) young adults is taking a step backwards as far as the amount of functional knowledge. Generation X will be looked upon by history as the high point of digital innovation. Gen X will be to network-driven innovation what the Apple II/C64 generation was to computer hardware development: the initial blossoming of innovation before the chilling onset of a corporate homogenization of methods and implementations (an ice age, if you will).
So many people honestly believe that they aren't complete morons for paying a dollar (or more) for a fucking ringtone! (And a ringtone that has terrible sound quality at that.) The current young generation's attitude towards learning is far more apathetic than gen X's. The prevailing attitude is, "Why should I learn about something when I can just google it on demand?"
What I think is really going to define the social dynamics of the Gen Y job market and society is a new kind of digital divide. Not the 'digital divide' that refers to some people not having access to technology. The real digital divide will be between those people who have made technology their masters (by refusing to actually learn anything - relegating knowledge to the machines - and elites), and those who instill in their children the importance of being the masters of technology. That will be the real digital divide.
This is the very same education ethic you refered to when you said Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college? The difference will be that getting the access to the physical hardware isn't the barrier to success. It's going to be the inquisitive epiphany that "I should pull that compliance chip off my motherboard and figure out what's happening inside that $30 computer? After all, if the hardware's so cheap, what is it about computers that makes them the key to making a lot of money in the (idustrialized) world?"
And that epiphany is going to become something that is less and less spontaneous as companies like MS, Apple, Google, etc. start pumping more and more of their advertising budgets into building a "just use it - don't worry about how it works" culture.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Hey, if Steve Jobs is smart, he will make the new Intel imacs able to be interface with any type of hardware/software that the new generations of hobbyists/inventors/software engineers/innovators/game devellopers need.
This DRM stuff from MS is going to kill innovation, the only "innovation" will be from big companies and everyone knows that big companies don't have a clue what is going on.
After all, the PC revolution appeared out of nowhere (from hobbyists etc) and took all those big companies by surprise.
It's about time all the innovators used FPGA's and cheap CPU's to develop the open soruce DRM-less PC of the future.
If enough people/far-east companies etc, develop and distribute this technology underground, then hollywood,the recording industry, and one certain large annoying software company can forget any large sales.
I wonder what sort of case a developer of keyboards or mice, or controllers could make that the OS monopoly is being leveraged to limit competitors with their hardware.
LetterRip
I recall 2 hobbyists some years ago they flogged a scientific calculator and a VW combi to raise money to buy an Intel processor, wonder what happened to them?
You never catch me alive
For the same reasons.
However Berkeley does deserve credit for it's open license, Linux's GPL license being a reimplementation of the the open distribution idea.
O rly? I seem to remember that it was RMS and his Free Software Foundation who talked the Regents of UC into distributing BSD under a free software license.
There's competition now from the free software world.
Not if free software can't boot. Have you tried to run free software on a video game console without making modifications that are illegal in at least one major developed country? Even if free software is allowed to boot, it is likely not to be able to get an IP address because all the residential high-speed ISPs use Trusted Network Connect and only "trust" specific unmodified Microsoft and Apple operating systems. It could very well happen by 2015.
The developers will just go where they're welcome.
And if that no longer includes the Internet, then what happens?
every console from the VCS to the PSP has had homebrewed software developed for and executed on it.
Without having to open the console or authentic game media and solder? And on all revisions of the console? And lawfully under DMCA and foreign counterparts? As soon as hobbyist developers can meaningfully self-publish on a mainstream video game console, let me know.
Strangely, though, some people believe that no-legged analogies can stay up forever.
Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.
One of the rules of business is that you always know what you gained, but you never knows what you lost. That small hobbyst that you put away can dominate your maket a few years later. Go check with MS.
Rethinking email
So now that the other 5,999,999 people on this planet are defined as hobbyists, it's time the majority shut Bill gates out.
"If it is OK to violate his copyright and his license, wouldn't it also be OK to violate the copyright and license of authors who choose to release software under the GPL?"
The GPL is a weapon to deny resources to competition, just like most other EULAs. That's what RMS described it as, though (being something of a hippie) he didn't use the word "weapon". I don't follow it and use it because I think it's sacred; I follow and use it because doing so helps things move the way I want them to. I don't attack people who break it due to moral superiority, I attack them because that's how the weapon is meant to be used - to attack "IP".
In the past week I have started researching and purchasing for a DIY PVR. Smug Smug Smug!
I Reasearched two XP based PVR systems, Two Linux Systems and one OSX System. Smug Smug Smug!
I have legal versions of all three OS's just hanging around. Smug Smug Smug!
I decided to go for a MythTV setup mainly because of the M$ DRM Hell! Smug Smug Smug!
I strted purchsing the missing pieces of hardware I needed to complete the system, making sure that each part is Linux compatible. Smug Smug Smug!
Within a week M$ starts screwing all the M$ kiddies. Dumb Dumb Dumb!
MythTV has a very bright future it would seem. Smug Smug Smug!
When they start rising prices just to get rid of customers!
Enough people use free software to access the internet (especially all those web/email/gateway/application/etc servers running on linux, BSD etc) that you could never exclude free software from the internet without a lot of complaints.
Under Trusted Network Connect, the ISP would approve only TNC compatible gateways for use on residential connections, and this generally means a router appliance with a TPM running unmodified firmware. In addition, the ISP would require an approved and unmodified operating system on each machine behind the gateway. Residential users aren't supposed to run servers per TOS, but we can upgrade you to business class service for the low, low price of just $100 extra per month.
Monopoly ~ Shamopoly!
Damn Those Pesky Kids!
Non-CEOs need not apply...
Main question is .. is that license even WORTH 500$?
If anyone is selling me a nice box with nice contents and it feels it's worth 500$, I'd buy it, but I don't got that feeling I get the same value back as they are charging. Wether-the-less I did buy myself 2 XP licenses, which I have now
both problems with since the "activation key" does not work unless I call to Microsoft; which I already did 4 times but their automatic activation service says it's a "unknown key".
It's like buying a cat in a bag; the outside looks nice and promising but the inside requires a lot more than handing over an amount of money to the cashier.
Is it worth the price I've paid for these 2 "licenses" to "use" this software? hell no... I guess that's the main reason for the most people to not buy and just download their software. Insane prices not matching the quality and reality.
Also, Bill Gates should know better; since he started as hobbyist not?
Maybe he is afraid someone will get in his shoes?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Just like XBox or Playstation you will need a special developers version of Windows and/or PC-Hardware. I belive for XBox it's called a Modchip or so. Or the special "blue" PS1.
Only trusted and wealthy corporations will be allowed to officialy purchaise those. They will then develop the programm have it signed by MS and all is good - for them.
Hobbist will have to do with pirate copies and black marked Modchips turning every hobbiest programmer into a criminal.
Martin
Go to your library and check out Business at the Speed of Thought. Not for the sake of continuing this argument but for the sake of educating yourself about the man we both hate. There are some very key ideas in there that I've touched on before and I think would benefit you greatly to realize.
I'm not telling you to be like Gates, I'm telling you to understand how his mind works because that is the kind of strategy and attitude that dominate today's industry. If you can't understand it, you can't hope to compete with it.
By the way, I rarely chase arguments like this but you did encourage me to defend myself. Sorry for being so obtuse towards you earlier but I believe you were the first to direct comments towards me
My work here is dung.
Problem is that 1. games developed with the Linux kit can only be played on other Linux kits, meaning that you have to sell a Linux kit with each copy of the game because the majority of PS2 owners do not have a Linux kit, and 2. the Linux kit and the console it runs on (non-slimline PS2) have been discontinued, so you couldn't do 1 even if you wanted to.