First adopters are idiots who'll pay to show they can afford the latest and greatest gadgets. Businesses are perfectly aware of this and quite rightly take fool advantage of them.
You miss a point. This means that businesses are generally very aware that even if a customer is an idiot, he's an idiot who is willing to give you their money. And if you make the customer feel like an idiot for buying the latest gadgets, they'll stop doing it. There may be some schadenfreude in it for people like you, but this wasn't a great business decision, period.
First, we'll drop smaller networks that try and play rough. We can afford to.
But what happens when Fox wants a better deal? They run commercials saying how the local cable company is trying to take your channels away. Most of our customers think they have a God-given right to TV and we're just getting in our way. It can be surprising what people will do without before going without TV. The pecking order is something along the lines of Rent, power, TV, food, phone, etc on down the line. We'll take lots of blame for dropping Fox Sports, but a $3 increase will be tolerated by the customer.
Just the leaders of comcast time warner etc do not have the motivation to fight for the benefit of there customers. And the accusation being made is this is intentional.
There is a nugget of truth to this, as I explained above. They will only fight as hard as they need to keep us the most profitable. And while this is intentional, it's merely economics. Why SHOULD our negotiators and buyers negotiate bad deals? We have no motivation from competitive or customer pressure to change the deal. You can blame us, you can blame Fox, Universal, or Viacom, or you can blame the market, it won't matter except to make lawyers richer and the plaintiffs feel smug. Blame won't change the fundamental economics of the matter, and that's what needs to change if you want to see a la carte pricing. A lawsuit won't fix the underlying issues
Interestingly, channels like HBO and Cinemax (Time-Warner companies) are cheap compared to ad network channels like ESPN (around $6 a head). Our basic access, which is dirt cheap at under $10 a month, you get the local channels, and the shop-at-home channels. It's pretty much free to send it to you, because the shop-at-home channels pay us per subscriber, subsidizing the line.
But places like NFL network and ESPN charge us for them, even though we don't send them the signal for their channel. NFL costs $10-$20 a head and, as I said, ESPN about $6. So, since most people around here want ESPN, and if enough people want NFL network, you'll likely have to pay, in one way or another, for those channels.
God knows I wish it wasn't the case. I wish sat TV offered decent competition, and I'm sure they think the same about us. But we're fundamentally a cartel of 2-3 providers for a given area selling overpiced goods from monopoly suppliers. And since there's no niche provider for geeky TV, customer demand and monopoly pressure would mean that we'd probably just serve ESPN, NFL, shop-at-home, and populist reality shows, and not negotiate the rest of the channels, whatever is most profitable to serve to most people.
And hey, it is our problem to work out pricing with the networks. But what the the lawsuit should be over is why there is no competition in the cable and content distribution markets, and why Verizon and Sprint are so slow in rolling out their TV options. You've been paying for non-existent fiber for a decade or more, why can't you reap the benefits of their cabling and content negotiating power?
No, we don't treat our customers like mindless drones. Our division has pretty good customer satisfaction. It would be higher if we had serious telecom or sat competition. That's the nature of our market, it's simple economics.
You have two options, study our market, find the inefficiency (lack of cable competition, IP monopolies from the networks), and solve the problem in innovative ways like pollution credits worked for the power industry. Or you can pass stupid laws that create giant externalities and could easily put the customer in a worse position (consolidate content companies, promote more exclusive channel deals, and remove competition from the market which drive up prices).
But we can't do that. They wouldn't let us show Fine Living but NOT Food Network. We could potentially do a la carte for packages, but we kinda do that already. The only improvement would be to break the bigger packages along networks. But you'll still see lots of crap channels bundled with the likes of Viacom.
Remember, our relationship with networks isn't friendly. Comcast got sued, and we're under current litigation over the remote DVR "Start Over" service. It's copyright infringement to start the show over if you switch the channel, because we're the ones recording it, not you. Heck, we get threats all the time during negotiations over offering the DVR service. Networks are convinced that home recording is illegal and think we may be liable because we aren't forcing you to watch your show in 3 days without skipping commercials or delete it. They think shifting the commercial time as much as 30 minutes ruins the value of the commercial.
Sure, we may be incompetent from no weak competition. But we don't get get our jollies by screwing customers. Remember, if a network can keep your eyeballs, they'll run roughshod over you. Viacom knows there's no substitute for MTV, but God knows if we piss off enough customers, sat TV would destroy us.
Disclaimer: I work in accounting for a large cable company, so I'm going to be a bit biased.
We would love to offer a la carte programming, but there are two huge obstacles.
1) Many times, we are charged per cable subscriber for a network even if we don't offer it the subscriber. ESPN is this way, as well as some of the sports channels. You'll pay for it as a customer even if you don't want it, because we get charged for it. That charge is comming to you one way or another, either through a package price or a base price as a cost of business. If you don't want ESPN, we're still paying for you to have it.
2) Many networks like Discovery and Fine Living give us massive price breaks if we show their second and third tier channels to a certain percent of subscribers. If we ran an a la carte service, this would be a nightmare. It means that if in a given month, if 30% of our subscribers didn't want Fine Living, but wanted Food TV, your price would triple. Do you really want to have a monthly bill that fluctuates that badly from month-to-month based on the whim of a TV network?
This isn't meant to FUD you. God knows, we'd like to be able to offer you a la carte, we have the technology to do it. And honestly, even though cable and sat companies piss customers off, we don't really want to. You are our customers. But to the networks, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. The advertisers are the customers, and they are selling your eyeballs. Until that situation changes, and the networks have less power over us in contact negotiations, you probably won't see a la carte. For all the malfeasance you can lay at the feet of cable companies, this is surprisingly not included.
You're not wrong, you just misunderstood. And I'm glad you understand copyright issues. If more people did, we would have a more sane and just copyright/patent system.
No, I didn't say it's legal. I'm saying that's what they think. The remote DVR system is very, very, very much illegal. They are recording a show at the head-end and rebroadcasting it, starting at the beginning, if you push a button at any time the show is still on.
Comcast was successfully sued over this technology. It is copyright infringement, plain and simple. However, there is a cavalier feeling towards the network's copyrights in regard to broadcasts and timeslots. They figure since they can monetize the remote DVR feature, they should, law be damned.
PS- They aren't my overlords. I've consulted them over the legalities of doing their remote DVR/Start-Over feature. I know it's not legal. But that doesn't stop them.
I'm not implying it's legal. I'm saying at least one big content company views copyright that way.
If you or I were to show a large chunk/all of a Viacom TV show with our own commentary, you can beat your sweet ass we would be sued if we didn't get permission first. But, if Viacom could show and mock our home-rolled 5-minute youTube video for their latest "Web's Dumbest Geeks" episode, they certainly would without our permission.
Viacom certainly doesn't care about copyright. Viacom cares about protecting their revenues. If copyright can help them do that they'll use it. If it gets in their way, they'll certainly ignore it. And if they can selectively interpret fair use (we can use a full copyrighted work of yours with commentary, but you can't do it to us), they certainly will.
Copyright, as it exists today, isn't to protect content creators. Few music and graphic artists actually keep copyright to their works, instead losing them as works-for-hire. Copyright exists soley to monetize "content." You were not monetizing it, and that's probably why Viacom stepped in to claim copyright.
To sound preachy for a minute, this is the capitalist version of nationalization. Seriously, I'm currently working with a major content company (Time Warner), and that's the way they treat content. Look at their remote DVR. They feel they can make money by violating the copyright of many, many content creators. Many in operations and senior management feel that if it's not being monetized, then it should be yours.
So, your problem was that you weren't making sufficient money, and that you weren't sufficiently powerful to protect yourself. Get yourself a good lawyer and prove them wrong.
Insurance was a way to calculate and spread risk. Actuaries take into account aggregate risks, and you get to pay a flat fee to absorb any risk covered by the insurance.
However, when you start "tailoring" clients like this, you aren't spreading risk and you aren't providing economic benefit. You are a pivileged monopoly not subject to the will of the market.
Even hardcore conservative economy wonks like me do not like the idea of allowing insurance companies to charge wildly variable rates and deny reasonable coverage. Much of what is OK in health insurance wouldn't fly in life insurance, for example.
I have a BMI over 30. I used to play baseball. Heartrate? 63. BP? 122/63. Glucose, white cell count, red cell count? Normal. My doctors say I'm perfectly healthy, except for the rare form of cancer.
I truly fear the future where we treat insurance as a personal thing. We invented insurance as a way to spread risk. If we charge you directly for your risk, we are creating no economic benefit. It just means that in the future, I'll have to bear the entire cost of my cancer treatments.
And the healthy? You'll get the privilege to pay a private company to absorb zero risk.
Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
He's as wrong about this as he was his "cyberspace." It will obviously be followed by the invention of something to shut down an army of robots controlled by the world's first ultraintelligent machine.
I know I'm killing a sacred cow here, but were any of his predictions all that accurate? I'm not trolling, but after recommending Neuromancer to my far more literate wife and suffering major embarrasment that she called it "the worst kind of pseudo-intellectual garbage," I had to re-read it. All I can say is that it's a good book to read in middle school 20 years ago. It doesn't hold up very well.
No, I'm saying it doesn't change. Latin is dead too, that doesn't mean it isn't used regularly. It just means that the language no longer changes, and meets the needs of it's users. I'm saying HTML may just not need to change, as it seems to be meeting our needs. The W3C's
I do like your suggestion, and yes, that does solve the problem of XHTML. However, I'm going to take issue with this:
It would be trivial to have forum users post their comments with some simplified markup, (like: [b]wow![/b]) and then convert that to something that works with your site's stylesheet on the server side.
That just creates thousands of different implementations of web style languages. The W3C was formed to help steer standards. I find it quite ironic that their method of standardization leaves us with a less standard web. Remember, most activity on the web comes from user-generated content, and hopefully most tagging in the future would be done ON websites, not IN websites. Why should we, as web developers, get the lions share of simplicity, and users get the shaft in usability? Aren't we creating these sites for the user, and their ease of use?
Private implementations of markup scare the shit out of me. If the W3C can't move without making the web less standard, they need to congratulate them selves on a job well done and go home.
The a tag does everything from HTML 4 the same way in XHTML.
Well, there is also that problem with taking away a few attributes, like the target I mentioned. I can provide a list if you like. My point isn't that things are broken yet, just that the W3C will likely pull crap to remain relevant. XHTML just doesn't seem to provide everything some people need, and thus the reason for the continued use of HTML.
Frames are also still part of the XHTML spec.
Yes, in the frames spec, not strict. But, as I said, nobody liked it anyway.
Seriously, the b, u, i and big tags are _exactly the same_ in XHTML. There was never a super element in HTML 4, it's just sup, and it's unchanged.
I know, I'm asking what will change in the future. I don't think XHTML is necessarily a bad thing either, as it's part of a larger standard, and required many changes. However, I don't like them removing perfectly good functionality for reasons of "We don't find it aesthetic."
And I know, it's sup and sub, but since I use them about twice a decade, forgive me for forgetting. I defer to your obviously superior HTML skills. You win the day again, Captain Ad Hominem Tu Quoque! I shall not make a mistake next time!
The font tag however, is gone and won't be missed...
Untrue. Those of us who use HTML enabled web forums rely on font sometimes. Sure, you can do some ugly, crazy stuff with it. However, let me decide how my presentation should look. Sure CSS is wonderful if I'm writing web pages, because I want to enforce a standard look. However, person to person communication sometimes benefits from a finer grain of control. Font can give us that. Target gives us that. That means HTML will still be used in the future.
Until the W3C can enforce websites filling more than 10% of my 24" screen and scale beyond 640x480, prevent idiots from using painful color schemes, or non-intrusive placement of ads, they need to stop making my job of communicating over the web harder, less standard, more fragmented, and less useful. The biggest benefit from their bloviating recently has been with keeping themselves relevent, not useful.
No one said HTML was dieing, you can always use a different doctype and the browser will compensate.
Umm, the definition of a "dead" language is one that is no longer changing. Pascal is "dead" but may people can still program in it. Heck, C is "dead" but commonly used. But, nobody really needs a C working group to address changes to the language. That's what the W3C is, a group that pushes the direction of the evolution of HTML.
Without changing the language, they no longer need to exist.
In fact most people still use the font tag.
Indeed they do, but in 10 years if every web board declares XHTML strict convention, there's plenty of handy stuff that no longer works, and has no replacement. So, you now have a giant class of web developers that are not going to adopt those changes, and as such go against W3C recommendations. If the W3C doesn't make useful recommendations, they become annoying. Some of us will follow their guidelines, some will ignore them. They aren't standardizing us, which is their job, they are just keeping themselves relevant.
They can't let HTML die. The W3C would become irrelevant quickly if they stopped tweaking the language. Finally, even nomral users and web surfers have started to use HTML in web forums and MySpace (to usually garish effect, but still. XHTML just doesn't have the portability and ease of use that HTML did for things like forums.
Take Fark for instance. After years and years, a critical mass of people are finally learning a, b, u, i, big, super, img, and other standard tags, most of which just don't work the same or at all under XHTML.
Sadly, many useful old tags probably won't work in HTML 5, or not in any useful fashion. The W3C will most certainly mess with the language to bring it in line with XHTML conventions. They've already taken target="_blank" from us, what other useful gizmos are they going to futz with this time, bookmarks? You can pry my octothorpe from my cold, carpel-tunnel hands.
Sure, CSS is damn useful and nobody generally liked frames. However, everything else about HTML was fine circa 1995. Maybe I'm being an old codger who still writes HTML pages without fancy crap like Frontpage, but I'm getting tired of their self-important crap. Breaking useful conventions just makes trying to communicate on the web that much harder. But, every time I tag font or add target="_blank", I do think about the W3C. Maybe that was just their goal all along.
I believe GPLv3 is GPL's swan song, and I can't be happier that it's going away.
Indeed! I'm pretty sure that the GPL's death will come soon, a mere 6 months before Microsoft's and about 3 months after Apple's demise. I've even got it scheduled on my calendar. It was hard extending Evolution accept Ragnarok as a date, though.
It's not a license. You procure absolutely no license when you buy that CD, tape, record, or stone tablet. You own a copy of a recording, yes, but you are granted no license. You own a copy, and in the case of a group of people, yes you all own it or an oganization can own it, subject to normal property laws.
You do have a right to listen to the music as you own the copy. You even have the legal ability to let a bunch of friends listen to the recording, assuming you don't charge them admission.
However, you do not have the legal ability to copy that CD. You can defend against a copyright infringement with a fair use DEFENSE, in court. If you made a backup of a rare cd, you'd certainly be able to defend yourself. However, that still requires a trial.
The short of it is that MP3s are most probably illegal. You make a copy of the work without a license, and those copies give you abilites that the recorded medium doesn't allow (such as shared folders). It's stickier when the CD comes with it's own MP3s, but they are rarely not locked down.
I frequently post about Intellectual Property in threads like this. Usually I get some responses saying that I'm full of it, and companies wouldn't slash our throats and bleed us dry. I have four words for you:
Are you convinced yet?
There are too many market pressures on monopolizing ideas. A monopoly on an idea gives you an excellent competitive advantage. For some goods, say a book, a copyright is neccessary for you to take a risk and publish the book. For others, it lets you invent things like a cotton gin and make money off of it while being a good citizen and showing the world how it works, and what new technologies you have invented. On the whole, these are to the public's advantage when used wisely.
But a monopoly is always a competitive advantage, even when it isn't in the public's advantage. And currently, business lobbies are pushing to allow more and more kinds of monopolies because they make business sense. Granted, plot patents, business patents, process patents, software patents, copyright on 3 note sequences, etc, etc, etc are not in the public's interest, as we don't carry massive IP portfolios to cross-license or lawyers to fight with. But they do allow large companies to create a massive barrier to entry that only certain industries or monopolies enjoyed before.
There is money to be made in massively expanding the definition of IP to include all ideas. There is more money in eternally owning ideas than in all of the property rights or mineral rights in the solar system. This fight will not be over in our lifetimes.
Excellent post. You are right, software patents aren't going anywhere. You will see more properties like this, where basic, everyday information is walled away from you. And as long as we allow congress to be bribed by lobbyists, this will continue to happen. Remember, what's good for GM is good for America. We have a long tradition of bending over for business interests.
Consider too, that many companies like Microsoft would love the chance to spend their research dollars on finding vital security holes in programs like Apache and Open Office, patenting them, and preventing anyone from releasing a patch. Don't think they wouldn't. This could be turned into a terrible weapon against the competition. You are not required by law to develop your patents, remember. Nor are you required to sell them if you do. Funny, the company name is Intellectual Weapons...
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You miss a point. This means that businesses are generally very aware that even if a customer is an idiot, he's an idiot who is willing to give you their money. And if you make the customer feel like an idiot for buying the latest gadgets, they'll stop doing it. There may be some schadenfreude in it for people like you, but this wasn't a great business decision, period.
First, we'll drop smaller networks that try and play rough. We can afford to.
But what happens when Fox wants a better deal? They run commercials saying how the local cable company is trying to take your channels away. Most of our customers think they have a God-given right to TV and we're just getting in our way. It can be surprising what people will do without before going without TV. The pecking order is something along the lines of Rent, power, TV, food, phone, etc on down the line. We'll take lots of blame for dropping Fox Sports, but a $3 increase will be tolerated by the customer.
There is a nugget of truth to this, as I explained above. They will only fight as hard as they need to keep us the most profitable. And while this is intentional, it's merely economics. Why SHOULD our negotiators and buyers negotiate bad deals? We have no motivation from competitive or customer pressure to change the deal. You can blame us, you can blame Fox, Universal, or Viacom, or you can blame the market, it won't matter except to make lawyers richer and the plaintiffs feel smug. Blame won't change the fundamental economics of the matter, and that's what needs to change if you want to see a la carte pricing. A lawsuit won't fix the underlying issues
Interestingly, channels like HBO and Cinemax (Time-Warner companies) are cheap compared to ad network channels like ESPN (around $6 a head). Our basic access, which is dirt cheap at under $10 a month, you get the local channels, and the shop-at-home channels. It's pretty much free to send it to you, because the shop-at-home channels pay us per subscriber, subsidizing the line.
But places like NFL network and ESPN charge us for them, even though we don't send them the signal for their channel. NFL costs $10-$20 a head and, as I said, ESPN about $6. So, since most people around here want ESPN, and if enough people want NFL network, you'll likely have to pay, in one way or another, for those channels.
God knows I wish it wasn't the case. I wish sat TV offered decent competition, and I'm sure they think the same about us. But we're fundamentally a cartel of 2-3 providers for a given area selling overpiced goods from monopoly suppliers. And since there's no niche provider for geeky TV, customer demand and monopoly pressure would mean that we'd probably just serve ESPN, NFL, shop-at-home, and populist reality shows, and not negotiate the rest of the channels, whatever is most profitable to serve to most people.
And hey, it is our problem to work out pricing with the networks. But what the the lawsuit should be over is why there is no competition in the cable and content distribution markets, and why Verizon and Sprint are so slow in rolling out their TV options. You've been paying for non-existent fiber for a decade or more, why can't you reap the benefits of their cabling and content negotiating power?
No, we don't treat our customers like mindless drones. Our division has pretty good customer satisfaction. It would be higher if we had serious telecom or sat competition. That's the nature of our market, it's simple economics.
You have two options, study our market, find the inefficiency (lack of cable competition, IP monopolies from the networks), and solve the problem in innovative ways like pollution credits worked for the power industry. Or you can pass stupid laws that create giant externalities and could easily put the customer in a worse position (consolidate content companies, promote more exclusive channel deals, and remove competition from the market which drive up prices).
But we can't do that. They wouldn't let us show Fine Living but NOT Food Network. We could potentially do a la carte for packages, but we kinda do that already. The only improvement would be to break the bigger packages along networks. But you'll still see lots of crap channels bundled with the likes of Viacom.
Remember, our relationship with networks isn't friendly. Comcast got sued, and we're under current litigation over the remote DVR "Start Over" service. It's copyright infringement to start the show over if you switch the channel, because we're the ones recording it, not you. Heck, we get threats all the time during negotiations over offering the DVR service. Networks are convinced that home recording is illegal and think we may be liable because we aren't forcing you to watch your show in 3 days without skipping commercials or delete it. They think shifting the commercial time as much as 30 minutes ruins the value of the commercial.
Sure, we may be incompetent from no weak competition. But we don't get get our jollies by screwing customers. Remember, if a network can keep your eyeballs, they'll run roughshod over you. Viacom knows there's no substitute for MTV, but God knows if we piss off enough customers, sat TV would destroy us.
We would love to offer a la carte programming, but there are two huge obstacles.
1) Many times, we are charged per cable subscriber for a network even if we don't offer it the subscriber. ESPN is this way, as well as some of the sports channels. You'll pay for it as a customer even if you don't want it, because we get charged for it. That charge is comming to you one way or another, either through a package price or a base price as a cost of business. If you don't want ESPN, we're still paying for you to have it.
2) Many networks like Discovery and Fine Living give us massive price breaks if we show their second and third tier channels to a certain percent of subscribers. If we ran an a la carte service, this would be a nightmare. It means that if in a given month, if 30% of our subscribers didn't want Fine Living, but wanted Food TV, your price would triple. Do you really want to have a monthly bill that fluctuates that badly from month-to-month based on the whim of a TV network?
This isn't meant to FUD you. God knows, we'd like to be able to offer you a la carte, we have the technology to do it. And honestly, even though cable and sat companies piss customers off, we don't really want to. You are our customers. But to the networks, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. The advertisers are the customers, and they are selling your eyeballs. Until that situation changes, and the networks have less power over us in contact negotiations, you probably won't see a la carte. For all the malfeasance you can lay at the feet of cable companies, this is surprisingly not included.
You're not wrong, you just misunderstood. And I'm glad you understand copyright issues. If more people did, we would have a more sane and just copyright/patent system.
No, I didn't say it's legal. I'm saying that's what they think. The remote DVR system is very, very, very much illegal. They are recording a show at the head-end and rebroadcasting it, starting at the beginning, if you push a button at any time the show is still on.
Comcast was successfully sued over this technology. It is copyright infringement, plain and simple. However, there is a cavalier feeling towards the network's copyrights in regard to broadcasts and timeslots. They figure since they can monetize the remote DVR feature, they should, law be damned.
PS- They aren't my overlords. I've consulted them over the legalities of doing their remote DVR/Start-Over feature. I know it's not legal. But that doesn't stop them.
That's a very good way to put it. And it's far easier for a large company to apologize in dollars than it is for smaller companies and individuals.
I'm not implying it's legal. I'm saying at least one big content company views copyright that way.
If you or I were to show a large chunk/all of a Viacom TV show with our own commentary, you can beat your sweet ass we would be sued if we didn't get permission first. But, if Viacom could show and mock our home-rolled 5-minute youTube video for their latest "Web's Dumbest Geeks" episode, they certainly would without our permission.
Viacom certainly doesn't care about copyright. Viacom cares about protecting their revenues. If copyright can help them do that they'll use it. If it gets in their way, they'll certainly ignore it. And if they can selectively interpret fair use (we can use a full copyrighted work of yours with commentary, but you can't do it to us), they certainly will.
Copyright, as it exists today, isn't to protect content creators. Few music and graphic artists actually keep copyright to their works, instead losing them as works-for-hire. Copyright exists soley to monetize "content." You were not monetizing it, and that's probably why Viacom stepped in to claim copyright.
To sound preachy for a minute, this is the capitalist version of nationalization. Seriously, I'm currently working with a major content company (Time Warner), and that's the way they treat content. Look at their remote DVR. They feel they can make money by violating the copyright of many, many content creators. Many in operations and senior management feel that if it's not being monetized, then it should be yours.
So, your problem was that you weren't making sufficient money, and that you weren't sufficiently powerful to protect yourself. Get yourself a good lawyer and prove them wrong.
Yes, but they're paid not to see through it.
Insurance was a way to calculate and spread risk. Actuaries take into account aggregate risks, and you get to pay a flat fee to absorb any risk covered by the insurance.
However, when you start "tailoring" clients like this, you aren't spreading risk and you aren't providing economic benefit. You are a pivileged monopoly not subject to the will of the market.
Even hardcore conservative economy wonks like me do not like the idea of allowing insurance companies to charge wildly variable rates and deny reasonable coverage. Much of what is OK in health insurance wouldn't fly in life insurance, for example.
They can go screw.
I have a BMI over 30. I used to play baseball. Heartrate? 63. BP? 122/63. Glucose, white cell count, red cell count? Normal. My doctors say I'm perfectly healthy, except for the rare form of cancer.
I truly fear the future where we treat insurance as a personal thing. We invented insurance as a way to spread risk. If we charge you directly for your risk, we are creating no economic benefit. It just means that in the future, I'll have to bear the entire cost of my cancer treatments.
And the healthy? You'll get the privilege to pay a private company to absorb zero risk.
?! That sentence ended in preview. The W3C is threatening to do what all powerful groups do after a while: make changes to stay relevant.
No, I'm saying it doesn't change. Latin is dead too, that doesn't mean it isn't used regularly. It just means that the language no longer changes, and meets the needs of it's users. I'm saying HTML may just not need to change, as it seems to be meeting our needs. The W3C's
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I do like your suggestion, and yes, that does solve the problem of XHTML. However, I'm going to take issue with this:
That just creates thousands of different implementations of web style languages. The W3C was formed to help steer standards. I find it quite ironic that their method of standardization leaves us with a less standard web. Remember, most activity on the web comes from user-generated content, and hopefully most tagging in the future would be done ON websites, not IN websites. Why should we, as web developers, get the lions share of simplicity, and users get the shaft in usability? Aren't we creating these sites for the user, and their ease of use?
Private implementations of markup scare the shit out of me. If the W3C can't move without making the web less standard, they need to congratulate them selves on a job well done and go home.
Well, there is also that problem with taking away a few attributes, like the target I mentioned. I can provide a list if you like. My point isn't that things are broken yet, just that the W3C will likely pull crap to remain relevant. XHTML just doesn't seem to provide everything some people need, and thus the reason for the continued use of HTML.
Yes, in the frames spec, not strict. But, as I said, nobody liked it anyway.
I know, I'm asking what will change in the future. I don't think XHTML is necessarily a bad thing either, as it's part of a larger standard, and required many changes. However, I don't like them removing perfectly good functionality for reasons of "We don't find it aesthetic."
And I know, it's sup and sub, but since I use them about twice a decade, forgive me for forgetting. I defer to your obviously superior HTML skills. You win the day again, Captain Ad Hominem Tu Quoque! I shall not make a mistake next time!
Untrue. Those of us who use HTML enabled web forums rely on font sometimes. Sure, you can do some ugly, crazy stuff with it. However, let me decide how my presentation should look. Sure CSS is wonderful if I'm writing web pages, because I want to enforce a standard look. However, person to person communication sometimes benefits from a finer grain of control. Font can give us that. Target gives us that. That means HTML will still be used in the future.
Until the W3C can enforce websites filling more than 10% of my 24" screen and scale beyond 640x480, prevent idiots from using painful color schemes, or non-intrusive placement of ads, they need to stop making my job of communicating over the web harder, less standard, more fragmented, and less useful. The biggest benefit from their bloviating recently has been with keeping themselves relevent, not useful.
Umm, the definition of a "dead" language is one that is no longer changing. Pascal is "dead" but may people can still program in it. Heck, C is "dead" but commonly used. But, nobody really needs a C working group to address changes to the language. That's what the W3C is, a group that pushes the direction of the evolution of HTML.
Without changing the language, they no longer need to exist.
Indeed they do, but in 10 years if every web board declares XHTML strict convention, there's plenty of handy stuff that no longer works, and has no replacement. So, you now have a giant class of web developers that are not going to adopt those changes, and as such go against W3C recommendations. If the W3C doesn't make useful recommendations, they become annoying. Some of us will follow their guidelines, some will ignore them. They aren't standardizing us, which is their job, they are just keeping themselves relevant.
They can't let HTML die. The W3C would become irrelevant quickly if they stopped tweaking the language. Finally, even nomral users and web surfers have started to use HTML in web forums and MySpace (to usually garish effect, but still. XHTML just doesn't have the portability and ease of use that HTML did for things like forums.
Take Fark for instance. After years and years, a critical mass of people are finally learning a, b, u, i, big, super, img, and other standard tags, most of which just don't work the same or at all under XHTML.
Sadly, many useful old tags probably won't work in HTML 5, or not in any useful fashion. The W3C will most certainly mess with the language to bring it in line with XHTML conventions. They've already taken target="_blank" from us, what other useful gizmos are they going to futz with this time, bookmarks? You can pry my octothorpe from my cold, carpel-tunnel hands.
Sure, CSS is damn useful and nobody generally liked frames. However, everything else about HTML was fine circa 1995. Maybe I'm being an old codger who still writes HTML pages without fancy crap like Frontpage, but I'm getting tired of their self-important crap. Breaking useful conventions just makes trying to communicate on the web that much harder. But, every time I tag font or add target="_blank", I do think about the W3C. Maybe that was just their goal all along.
I believe GPLv3 is GPL's swan song, and I can't be happier that it's going away. Indeed! I'm pretty sure that the GPL's death will come soon, a mere 6 months before Microsoft's and about 3 months after Apple's demise. I've even got it scheduled on my calendar. It was hard extending Evolution accept Ragnarok as a date, though.
It's not a license. You procure absolutely no license when you buy that CD, tape, record, or stone tablet. You own a copy of a recording, yes, but you are granted no license. You own a copy, and in the case of a group of people, yes you all own it or an oganization can own it, subject to normal property laws.
You do have a right to listen to the music as you own the copy. You even have the legal ability to let a bunch of friends listen to the recording, assuming you don't charge them admission.
However, you do not have the legal ability to copy that CD. You can defend against a copyright infringement with a fair use DEFENSE, in court. If you made a backup of a rare cd, you'd certainly be able to defend yourself. However, that still requires a trial.
The short of it is that MP3s are most probably illegal. You make a copy of the work without a license, and those copies give you abilites that the recorded medium doesn't allow (such as shared folders). It's stickier when the CD comes with it's own MP3s, but they are rarely not locked down.
I frequently post about Intellectual Property in threads like this. Usually I get some responses saying that I'm full of it, and companies wouldn't slash our throats and bleed us dry. I have four words for you:
Are you convinced yet?
There are too many market pressures on monopolizing ideas. A monopoly on an idea gives you an excellent competitive advantage. For some goods, say a book, a copyright is neccessary for you to take a risk and publish the book. For others, it lets you invent things like a cotton gin and make money off of it while being a good citizen and showing the world how it works, and what new technologies you have invented. On the whole, these are to the public's advantage when used wisely.
But a monopoly is always a competitive advantage, even when it isn't in the public's advantage. And currently, business lobbies are pushing to allow more and more kinds of monopolies because they make business sense. Granted, plot patents, business patents, process patents, software patents, copyright on 3 note sequences, etc, etc, etc are not in the public's interest, as we don't carry massive IP portfolios to cross-license or lawyers to fight with. But they do allow large companies to create a massive barrier to entry that only certain industries or monopolies enjoyed before.
There is money to be made in massively expanding the definition of IP to include all ideas. There is more money in eternally owning ideas than in all of the property rights or mineral rights in the solar system. This fight will not be over in our lifetimes.
Excellent post. You are right, software patents aren't going anywhere. You will see more properties like this, where basic, everyday information is walled away from you. And as long as we allow congress to be bribed by lobbyists, this will continue to happen. Remember, what's good for GM is good for America. We have a long tradition of bending over for business interests.
Consider too, that many companies like Microsoft would love the chance to spend their research dollars on finding vital security holes in programs like Apache and Open Office, patenting them, and preventing anyone from releasing a patch. Don't think they wouldn't. This could be turned into a terrible weapon against the competition. You are not required by law to develop your patents, remember. Nor are you required to sell them if you do. Funny, the company name is Intellectual Weapons...