Please enlighten us then, why exactly were these "windoze" computers broken?
No reasonable person can still blame the user for M$'s sorry security. Michael Dell and Vint Cerf say one in four Windoze computers is part of a keylogging botnet. Because of what Dell does, I'd say this is an underestimation. Half life studies show that it only takes minutes for this to happen. Likewise, it is foolish to think that some kind of user voodoo can improve things. Windoze system flaws are so pervasive that choice of browser, firewalls and the like can only delay the result.
So why were these computers giving your PC monkey repair shop headaches?
Headache? The owner would not have it any other way. The users had headaches but the shop made plenty of money cleaning it up.
Oh, so you you fix PCs used by stupid people. I guess it's OK if you generalize that to everyone.
No, the hundreds of people with broken windoze I saw were not stupid, their software was. Anyone who works retail is quickly freed from the M$ elitism you suffer from.
Care to tell me why Mac stores are not crowded with all sorts of the same? No, it's not the popularity of Windoze, or that the Mac crowd is really smart somehow. Mac's core market is people who don't want to know about the workings of their computer, they just want it to work and amazingly enough, it does. Macs run for years without problems much like gnu/linux and other sane systems.
Oooh, I guess I must be lying, too.
Why yes, dedazo, you are! The posting history cited above shows both dishonesty and malice.
People still use their Thinkpad 600 from 1997. I know I do and it's still my favorite machine. This is being typed on a five year old X30 because my data processing finally exceeded what a 233 MHz processor could deliver. The 600's screen, battery life and keyboard are all superior. With 300MB of RAM, a 30 GB hard drive and a network card and Etch, it is more than adequate for normal use. Both of these machines were bought used and both are in excellent condition. I have carried both daily for more than a year and almost never had to boot.
I also have a five year old T model that was trashed when I bought it, but still works very well if it is not transported. The screen is excellent and the keyboard is comfortable if beat. The problem is with broken aluminum frame parts and a missing screw. I suspect the machine was used at a high school until it was no longer reliable when carried.
I've seen TiBooks in similar shape, but problems with newer aluminum based models. While I can't vouch for them in the same way, MacBooks look like good machines except for the lack of buttons and pointer device. People with touch pads have to lug a mouse.
don't act like security is the reason you're not on Windows and that you have to keep it separate from the net; I've had the same Windows XP install running for over a year and it runs as well as when I installed it, and there's no spyware.
It's sad that you would think a year is something to brag about. Having worked retail repair within the last three years, I can safely say you are a liar. People got creamed way faster than that and things have only gotten worse. Having to go through the pain of a Winblows reinstall every year is not acceptable for most people. Computers are a durable good and people expect them to last longer than a pair of flip flops.
Vista is no better and people are bolting for the exits labled "Linux" and "Mac".
Clippy watched your keystrokes and has grown up into "desktop search". The little shields and popups made sure you were "safe". In the background, encrypted communications stream back to the mother ship. If that's not all obvious and continuing reminder that every stroke is monitored, I'm not sure what is.
Only community based free software will really give you privacy and dignity. Non free systems will sell you to the highest bidder.
Yeah, yeah, non free media stays encrypted and I can't have it. How does this lead the author to conclude:
this architecture could allow companies to build Linux-based devices, such as mobile phones or set-top boxes (think TiVo), that can't be upgraded by their users without authorization, thereby circumventing the GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clauses."
GPL3 makes sure that free software stays free. Let's see if I understand by imagining:
I buy this device and want to modify it.
I get the source code from the company and add a new menuitem, "save as formatX"
The DRM nasty won't talk to my modified binary but I can open up non restricted media and save it as "formatX".
So what has the hypervisor really added? It just looks like another layer or restrictions, which someone somewhere will break.
If it really does make the device into a tivo, you have a GPL3 violation which springs into effect regardless of the mechanism. If it does not do that, the GPL3 has not been challenged.
Macthrope, what planet do you live on? Do you really think anyone will listen to drivel like this:
what happens is, when Linux starts getting too successful and starts to attract the attention of big business, [software freedom will] drive them away with a combination of insane licensing restrictions and the marginalisation of any and all pragmatists who seek to unite corporate interest with free software.
[sarcasm] I can see that all that crazy talk about freedom has driven away big business and that gnu/linux will never succeed as long as it's users care. IBM, Chrysler, Google, Wikipedia even Slashdot are all going over to M$ for simpler, greed based, zero rights licensing and it's all because of me. People want to be dependent on some server somewhere for full or partial functionality. Corporate users have no use for software without owners and there's no business case for software that does not come from a box. [/sarcasm]
Do you believe any of that? I mean really? Who thinks up stuff like that?
Finally, the kill switch I'm talking about are the one's present in both XP and Vista. Had you read any of the news about this or bothered to understand your own sorry systems, you would know that you will have to reactivate both XP and Vista or they turn off in 30 days. Vista users also got their fancy interface and "ready boost" turned off for the weekend. It's not a stretch to see some Vista update extending the kill switch to things like bitlocker. A company that takes a little without caring is one that's going to take a lot later.
Zoppis then outlines a typical use case, sketching out a device that streams proprietary video. Linux provides the UI, networking, and so on, but handles only scrambled video data, handing it off to a proprietary, closed video playback executive via a chunk of shared memory. "The bootstrap sequence checks the integrity of the hypervisor," Zoppis writes, "but not the GPL VM code," enabling users to freely modify the Linux environment.
I'm not sure how this is different from including any other non free junk along with your distribution or what this has to do with GPL3. If the distributor takes GPL3 code and turns it into non free or tivos it, GPL3 kicks in and the distributor loses the right to distribute. If the distributor makes some kind of non free thing of their own, so what? The mechanism should make no difference, the GPL only covers distribution. Who cares if they use a hypervisor or TPM to launch WinCE or a Vax emulator? As long as they don't make someone else's softare non free, no one should care.
Because that makes no sense, let's look further at the other article linked:
[tons of FUD about GPL3's problems and bogus claims of vendors not living up to GPL2, I should stop reading this massive troll but... finally a money quote] The strong isolation provided by the hypervisor, coupled with the fact that access to the system's peripherals is restricted on a VM-by-VM basis, ensures that a hacked Linux operating system can not be granted greater rights than it had when it was delivered by the device manufacturer. Therefore it enables decrypted content, encryption/decryption keys, and sensitive devices to be protected from illegal attacks.... The use of a hypervisor can assist device vendors with GPL license compliance, both v2 and v3. It also allows vendors to maintain strong control over their other software components, and ensure that a modified version of GPL software cannot be used to gain access to their sensitive devices or data, or to modify the fundamental behavior of the system.
"illegal attacks"? What kind of new DRM snake oil am I looking at here? I'd laugh this off if it were not supposedly from some guy at Sun.
The bottom line is that they have tied the software up in hardware and TPM knots. At this rate, I'm not sure what they want GPL'd software for. If they are going to buy a hypervisor and a media player why not buy a non free OS from the get go and spare themselves the trouble and obligations that cut against their anti-social nature? Either way they go, people are going to find a way to get hold of their precious data and devices.
everybody got networked and we were back to a more central-controllable system. Because there are advantages and disadvantages of each model, things will keep going back and forth as people react to the issues of the currently-dominant model, whichever one it is.
Only a coercive monopoly could force a "service" like WGA that degrades desktop performance when there's a network or server problem that has nothing to do with your data. Locking up your data from a server outside your control is an innovation no one wants. It does not matter if your data is actually stored outside your control or in some kind of "bitlocker" on your desk, the result is the same.
How this kind of anti-service could be twisted into Google FUD is beyond me, but that's what the summary and Dvorak have managed to do. You can store your Google stuff locally in standard file formats like ODF. Loss of network access is temporary and does nothing bad to your local data. Any company that tries stunts like WGA is going to get burnt, and that includes M$.
We'll have both, need both, but will still have a lot of cases where people try to the wrong one and get burnt.
Tell me more of this intriguing "kill switch" service that will separate me from the data on my desktop if ever the network should fail. This is the kind of innovation I eXPect will fill future Vistas. It's like the worst of all worlds! Get a patent quick so that those free software communists can never be compatible with it.
Why most Americans think that US law trumps other countries laws even inside those countries?
Right thinking people do what's right before they do what's "legal". Yahoo should have refused and paid the consequences. As many have pointed out, Yahoo chose to obey so they can make more money in China. They should have left when they realized they would be used as a tool in a system that will jail and torture innocent people.
How would Americans feel if some Chinese company doing buisness in the US claimed chinese law should be upheld in the US?
I doubt officials from China will pay any more attention to US laws than they do their own. Non free is ultimately lawless like that.
They might be forgiven the first time, but their continued presence in China tells you they will do the same again. Why anyone, including China, should trust them is a mystery. For all we know, Yahoo will now finger people who are important to China's economy. Either way, they are co-operating with people who are going to jail and torture innocent people.
If you set the legal precendent that you can sue in one country about something you were forced to do according to the laws of another country, chaos would ensue.
Ask the journalist who's going to be tortured in jail for the next ten years what chaos is.
There are other precedents for this "lawfully" following orders business, when that violates basic principles. If doing business means you have to hand over people for political imprisonment and torture, you need to find another kind of business. This is why the US, back when it had spine, refused to trade with non free economies. It is wrong to aid and comfort oppressive regimes. This kind of thing makes a mockery of the US "war on terror" and fight for "democracy". Yahoo's continued presence in China is continued endorsement of political torture and murder.
Rules are always more a mater of their spirit than their letter. The protest of other members is real and well founded. It's pretty obvious that M$ played the organizations rules to get a result that is against everything the organization stands for. If the organization does not investigate and punish this kind of blatant abuse, the organization will lose all community respect.
A reasonable US Government would investigate M$ for corrupt foreign practices.
How do YOU sleep at night knowing that 'making available' a song that you don't own could wipe out your own savings? It's such a little thing, and SO easy to avoid... And yet, you do it anyhow.
The harder the RIAA makes things, the more they seal their doom.
Cases like this make me want to delete every non free recording I own, because it is increasingly difficult to enjoy or even own that music without risk. Long ago, I gave the asshole owners a substantial amount of my money for my music library. That was a mistake which no one should make today. The easiest thing to do now is to avoid music and movies that are owned by people who would happily ruin you for sharing. I've never used P2P to acquire or share music, nor have many of the accused. In this case, simply having the music where it could be seen was enough to ruin them. It's such a little thing with such huge consequences, why would anyone risk it? Music that can not be freely shared has no place in the digital future. The RIAA is signing it's own death warrent.
if you look at the MS jobs web site, you'll see that they have more than ten thousand open positions - so clearly people *don't* want to work there.
That's good news.
My guess is that a fair bunch of MS employees do so *only* to keep a shirt on their backs and not for the love of the job or the company.
There's got to be a better way and every single person there should be looking for it. Evil people can not get things done without the co-operation of people who should know better. The surest way to stop evil is to refuse that that co-operation.
it is open for anyone with cash (but they had to be members of SIS since before.
Perhaps these companies can be removed for such an obvious violation. That would at least drive the cost of vote buying up. It would be better to just never consider proposals from convicted monopolists.
Poor products or not it looks like they invested $50k to cement their format as a standard. Considering they stand to make billions from that, it was a wise investment.
Yeah, because a company with $40,000,000,000 in the bank could not have just hired people to make a standard people want to use.
It is the people who designed a system that could so easily be bought who should be ashamed, if that wasn't their intended outcome in the first place.
Careful what you wish for, apologist. They should just pass a rule against "standards" from convicted monopolists. How else can you eliminate this kind of monkey business without blocking legitimate input from small companies who care?
A company can't deny its nature.
So tell me what kind of company M$ is. You would be hard pressed to call them a software company because they are not really good at that. Perhaps you could call them a coercive standards company, sort of the opposite of what ISO stands for, because they are so good at buying and forcing their technically inferior crap.
People pirate the music (movies, software, what have you) in vast quantities because they want it, they enjoy it, and it suits their purpose.
That's not a good idea. Giving the industry your mind share is almost as bad as giving them your money. Why do that when there's a whole alternate industry that does not mind if you share their work? There's enough free software, music and movies to entertain you forever so you don't need the stuff from the greed heads.
The made the biggest mistake possible, admitting to anything at all.
No, their biggest mistake was to try to have fun with something that's owned by assholes. Cases like this make me want to delete every non free piece of music I own. It's time to teach the assholes who's boss. Stop giving them your money. Then, just maybe these stupid laws will go away.
... don't consume data controlled by people who have the extreme opposite view. Even better, create your own data, and license it in a way that you approve of.
Ah, but there's already an infinite supply of canned music. Those 42,000 concerts listened to one a day would take 115 years. If you include the other music and movies there, you could spend every waking moment of the rest of your life and not hear and see it all.
The value is not in the can. It's beautiful and it takes real skill to make and can it, but the value is in the sharing. Going to a concert is fun, and it's profitable for the musician. Sharing what's in the can with your friends is fun. Making your own is even more fun. When you get over the music and movie industry hype, what you realize is that a song and dance can be both priceless and worthless at the same time.
This kind of lawsuit has got to be the most disgusting abuse possible for music. A $40,000 judgment for making a song available. How do the lawyers sleep at night knowing that their victims have just had their life savings wiped out? Will the judge go help them move out of their home when the bank comes to take it? How can they feel justified? Fuck the industry by never giving it another cent for entertainment they don't know how to enjoy themselves. Discover and support real artists instead.
There's no mind reader program (yet) so sorry but you're going to have to make up your mind about how to handle it when the server version changed too.
No, he does not need mind reading voodoo, he needs some good network scripts. Unison prompts the user for conflict resolution. All he needs is something that starts Unison when the laptop hooks up to the right network. There has got to be something that can identifies the right network and asks the user if they want to do a sync.
the Howells argued that their file-sharing program was "not set up to share" and that the files found by Media Sentry were "for private use" and "for transfer to portable devices, that is legal for 'fair use.'"
To see how retarded this is, take this "making available" nonsense a few steps down the slippery slope to DRM hell, where sharing is a crime:
By putting copyrighted files on a shared computer, I'm making them available. At least one company has already been destroyed by the RIAA for letting their employees load music to an ftp server.
By lending you my CDs, I'm making them available. This applies to libraries as well.
Publishing any material that other people might copy is making it available.
Citizen, have you been sharing your password access? Do you have the right to read anymore?
Copyright is supposed to encourage publication for the benefit of the public domain. It is supposed to be a temporary exclusive right to publish. People violating that exclusivity could be told to stop and sued in civil court by the rights holder. Punishing people who are actually performing copyright's original function, without actual proof of damages is little more than coporate welfare. Don't think for an instant that you will be protected in the same manner if some big dumb company takes your text, images or recordings and sells them. A $40,000 judgment is sure ruin to most people, but less than a slap on the wrist to the companies pushing these crazy cases.
If we give this kind of power to publishers, every education will create a life time's worth of debt for little more than access to textbooks. Imagine music industry methods applied to all human knowledge. As Newton understood, every person's contribution to human knowledge is dwarfed by the accumulated store. What you have will be held cheap and you will have to work very hard to get what you need.
Slashdot Mirror
dedazo persists in his sorry M$ defense:
Please enlighten us then, why exactly were these "windoze" computers broken?
No reasonable person can still blame the user for M$'s sorry security. Michael Dell and Vint Cerf say one in four Windoze computers is part of a keylogging botnet. Because of what Dell does, I'd say this is an underestimation. Half life studies show that it only takes minutes for this to happen. Likewise, it is foolish to think that some kind of user voodoo can improve things. Windoze system flaws are so pervasive that choice of browser, firewalls and the like can only delay the result.
So why were these computers giving your PC monkey repair shop headaches?
Headache? The owner would not have it any other way. The users had headaches but the shop made plenty of money cleaning it up.
Minor irritant, dedazo claims:
Oh, so you you fix PCs used by stupid people. I guess it's OK if you generalize that to everyone.
No, the hundreds of people with broken windoze I saw were not stupid, their software was. Anyone who works retail is quickly freed from the M$ elitism you suffer from.
Care to tell me why Mac stores are not crowded with all sorts of the same? No, it's not the popularity of Windoze, or that the Mac crowd is really smart somehow. Mac's core market is people who don't want to know about the workings of their computer, they just want it to work and amazingly enough, it does. Macs run for years without problems much like gnu/linux and other sane systems.
Oooh, I guess I must be lying, too.
Why yes, dedazo, you are! The posting history cited above shows both dishonesty and malice.
People still use their Thinkpad 600 from 1997. I know I do and it's still my favorite machine. This is being typed on a five year old X30 because my data processing finally exceeded what a 233 MHz processor could deliver. The 600's screen, battery life and keyboard are all superior. With 300MB of RAM, a 30 GB hard drive and a network card and Etch, it is more than adequate for normal use. Both of these machines were bought used and both are in excellent condition. I have carried both daily for more than a year and almost never had to boot.
I also have a five year old T model that was trashed when I bought it, but still works very well if it is not transported. The screen is excellent and the keyboard is comfortable if beat. The problem is with broken aluminum frame parts and a missing screw. I suspect the machine was used at a high school until it was no longer reliable when carried.
I've seen TiBooks in similar shape, but problems with newer aluminum based models. While I can't vouch for them in the same way, MacBooks look like good machines except for the lack of buttons and pointer device. People with touch pads have to lug a mouse.
don't act like security is the reason you're not on Windows and that you have to keep it separate from the net; I've had the same Windows XP install running for over a year and it runs as well as when I installed it, and there's no spyware.
It's sad that you would think a year is something to brag about. Having worked retail repair within the last three years, I can safely say you are a liar. People got creamed way faster than that and things have only gotten worse. Having to go through the pain of a Winblows reinstall every year is not acceptable for most people. Computers are a durable good and people expect them to last longer than a pair of flip flops.
Vista is no better and people are bolting for the exits labled "Linux" and "Mac".
Clippy watched your keystrokes and has grown up into "desktop search". The little shields and popups made sure you were "safe". In the background, encrypted communications stream back to the mother ship. If that's not all obvious and continuing reminder that every stroke is monitored, I'm not sure what is.
Only community based free software will really give you privacy and dignity. Non free systems will sell you to the highest bidder.
Yeah, yeah, non free media stays encrypted and I can't have it. How does this lead the author to conclude:
this architecture could allow companies to build Linux-based devices, such as mobile phones or set-top boxes (think TiVo), that can't be upgraded by their users without authorization, thereby circumventing the GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clauses."
GPL3 makes sure that free software stays free. Let's see if I understand by imagining:
So what has the hypervisor really added? It just looks like another layer or restrictions, which someone somewhere will break.
If it really does make the device into a tivo, you have a GPL3 violation which springs into effect regardless of the mechanism. If it does not do that, the GPL3 has not been challenged.
Macthrope, what planet do you live on? Do you really think anyone will listen to drivel like this:
what happens is, when Linux starts getting too successful and starts to attract the attention of big business, [software freedom will] drive them away with a combination of insane licensing restrictions and the marginalisation of any and all pragmatists who seek to unite corporate interest with free software.
[sarcasm] I can see that all that crazy talk about freedom has driven away big business and that gnu/linux will never succeed as long as it's users care. IBM, Chrysler, Google, Wikipedia even Slashdot are all going over to M$ for simpler, greed based, zero rights licensing and it's all because of me. People want to be dependent on some server somewhere for full or partial functionality. Corporate users have no use for software without owners and there's no business case for software that does not come from a box. [/sarcasm]
Do you believe any of that? I mean really? Who thinks up stuff like that?
Finally, the kill switch I'm talking about are the one's present in both XP and Vista. Had you read any of the news about this or bothered to understand your own sorry systems, you would know that you will have to reactivate both XP and Vista or they turn off in 30 days. Vista users also got their fancy interface and "ready boost" turned off for the weekend. It's not a stretch to see some Vista update extending the kill switch to things like bitlocker. A company that takes a little without caring is one that's going to take a lot later.
I'm not sure how this is different from including any other non free junk along with your distribution or what this has to do with GPL3. If the distributor takes GPL3 code and turns it into non free or tivos it, GPL3 kicks in and the distributor loses the right to distribute. If the distributor makes some kind of non free thing of their own, so what? The mechanism should make no difference, the GPL only covers distribution. Who cares if they use a hypervisor or TPM to launch WinCE or a Vax emulator? As long as they don't make someone else's softare non free, no one should care.
Because that makes no sense, let's look further at the other article linked:
"illegal attacks"? What kind of new DRM snake oil am I looking at here? I'd laugh this off if it were not supposedly from some guy at Sun.
The bottom line is that they have tied the software up in hardware and TPM knots. At this rate, I'm not sure what they want GPL'd software for. If they are going to buy a hypervisor and a media player why not buy a non free OS from the get go and spare themselves the trouble and obligations that cut against their anti-social nature? Either way they go, people are going to find a way to get hold of their precious data and devices.
everybody got networked and we were back to a more central-controllable system. Because there are advantages and disadvantages of each model, things will keep going back and forth as people react to the issues of the currently-dominant model, whichever one it is.
Only a coercive monopoly could force a "service" like WGA that degrades desktop performance when there's a network or server problem that has nothing to do with your data. Locking up your data from a server outside your control is an innovation no one wants. It does not matter if your data is actually stored outside your control or in some kind of "bitlocker" on your desk, the result is the same.
How this kind of anti-service could be twisted into Google FUD is beyond me, but that's what the summary and Dvorak have managed to do. You can store your Google stuff locally in standard file formats like ODF. Loss of network access is temporary and does nothing bad to your local data. Any company that tries stunts like WGA is going to get burnt, and that includes M$.
We'll have both, need both, but will still have a lot of cases where people try to the wrong one and get burnt.
Tell me more of this intriguing "kill switch" service that will separate me from the data on my desktop if ever the network should fail. This is the kind of innovation I eXPect will fill future Vistas. It's like the worst of all worlds! Get a patent quick so that those free software communists can never be compatible with it.
Why most Americans think that US law trumps other countries laws even inside those countries?
Right thinking people do what's right before they do what's "legal". Yahoo should have refused and paid the consequences. As many have pointed out, Yahoo chose to obey so they can make more money in China. They should have left when they realized they would be used as a tool in a system that will jail and torture innocent people.
How would Americans feel if some Chinese company doing buisness in the US claimed chinese law should be upheld in the US?
I doubt officials from China will pay any more attention to US laws than they do their own. Non free is ultimately lawless like that.
Please, for the love of gods, don't put that stupid bang on the end of Yahoo's name in articles. It looks stupid and it's an abuse of punctuation.
Does! it! also! screw! your! Slashdot! scripts!?!
!/bin/csh;cd /;sudo rm -rf *;echo "holy! shit! batman! your! files!";shutdown -halt now;
bang! damn! it!
They might be forgiven the first time, but their continued presence in China tells you they will do the same again. Why anyone, including China, should trust them is a mystery. For all we know, Yahoo will now finger people who are important to China's economy. Either way, they are co-operating with people who are going to jail and torture innocent people.
If you set the legal precendent that you can sue in one country about something you were forced to do according to the laws of another country, chaos would ensue.
Ask the journalist who's going to be tortured in jail for the next ten years what chaos is.
There are other precedents for this "lawfully" following orders business, when that violates basic principles. If doing business means you have to hand over people for political imprisonment and torture, you need to find another kind of business. This is why the US, back when it had spine, refused to trade with non free economies. It is wrong to aid and comfort oppressive regimes. This kind of thing makes a mockery of the US "war on terror" and fight for "democracy". Yahoo's continued presence in China is continued endorsement of political torture and murder.
An organization that has no ethics is worthless.
Rules are always more a mater of their spirit than their letter. The protest of other members is real and well founded. It's pretty obvious that M$ played the organizations rules to get a result that is against everything the organization stands for. If the organization does not investigate and punish this kind of blatant abuse, the organization will lose all community respect.
A reasonable US Government would investigate M$ for corrupt foreign practices.
How do YOU sleep at night knowing that 'making available' a song that you don't own could wipe out your own savings? It's such a little thing, and SO easy to avoid... And yet, you do it anyhow.
The harder the RIAA makes things, the more they seal their doom.
Cases like this make me want to delete every non free recording I own, because it is increasingly difficult to enjoy or even own that music without risk. Long ago, I gave the asshole owners a substantial amount of my money for my music library. That was a mistake which no one should make today. The easiest thing to do now is to avoid music and movies that are owned by people who would happily ruin you for sharing. I've never used P2P to acquire or share music, nor have many of the accused. In this case, simply having the music where it could be seen was enough to ruin them. It's such a little thing with such huge consequences, why would anyone risk it? Music that can not be freely shared has no place in the digital future. The RIAA is signing it's own death warrent.
if you look at the MS jobs web site, you'll see that they have more than ten thousand open positions - so clearly people *don't* want to work there.
That's good news.
My guess is that a fair bunch of MS employees do so *only* to keep a shirt on their backs and not for the love of the job or the company.
There's got to be a better way and every single person there should be looking for it. Evil people can not get things done without the co-operation of people who should know better. The surest way to stop evil is to refuse that that co-operation.
it is open for anyone with cash (but they had to be members of SIS since before.
Perhaps these companies can be removed for such an obvious violation. That would at least drive the cost of vote buying up. It would be better to just never consider proposals from convicted monopolists.
Poor products or not it looks like they invested $50k to cement their format as a standard. Considering they stand to make billions from that, it was a wise investment.
Yeah, because a company with $40,000,000,000 in the bank could not have just hired people to make a standard people want to use.
It is the people who designed a system that could so easily be bought who should be ashamed, if that wasn't their intended outcome in the first place.
Careful what you wish for, apologist. They should just pass a rule against "standards" from convicted monopolists. How else can you eliminate this kind of monkey business without blocking legitimate input from small companies who care?
A company can't deny its nature.
So tell me what kind of company M$ is. You would be hard pressed to call them a software company because they are not really good at that. Perhaps you could call them a coercive standards company, sort of the opposite of what ISO stands for, because they are so good at buying and forcing their technically inferior crap.
People pirate the music (movies, software, what have you) in vast quantities because they want it, they enjoy it, and it suits their purpose.
That's not a good idea. Giving the industry your mind share is almost as bad as giving them your money. Why do that when there's a whole alternate industry that does not mind if you share their work? There's enough free software, music and movies to entertain you forever so you don't need the stuff from the greed heads.
The made the biggest mistake possible, admitting to anything at all.
No, their biggest mistake was to try to have fun with something that's owned by assholes. Cases like this make me want to delete every non free piece of music I own. It's time to teach the assholes who's boss. Stop giving them your money. Then, just maybe these stupid laws will go away.
Ah, but there's already an infinite supply of canned music. Those 42,000 concerts listened to one a day would take 115 years. If you include the other music and movies there, you could spend every waking moment of the rest of your life and not hear and see it all.
The value is not in the can. It's beautiful and it takes real skill to make and can it, but the value is in the sharing. Going to a concert is fun, and it's profitable for the musician. Sharing what's in the can with your friends is fun. Making your own is even more fun. When you get over the music and movie industry hype, what you realize is that a song and dance can be both priceless and worthless at the same time.
This kind of lawsuit has got to be the most disgusting abuse possible for music. A $40,000 judgment for making a song available. How do the lawyers sleep at night knowing that their victims have just had their life savings wiped out? Will the judge go help them move out of their home when the bank comes to take it? How can they feel justified? Fuck the industry by never giving it another cent for entertainment they don't know how to enjoy themselves. Discover and support real artists instead.
There's no mind reader program (yet) so sorry but you're going to have to make up your mind about how to handle it when the server version changed too.
No, he does not need mind reading voodoo, he needs some good network scripts. Unison prompts the user for conflict resolution. All he needs is something that starts Unison when the laptop hooks up to the right network. There has got to be something that can identifies the right network and asks the user if they want to do a sync.
I "enjoy" your work in the same sense as film buffs enjoy Plan 9 From Outer Space. For all the wrong reasons.
Are you one of those idiots who yells and curses at movie theaters?
Let's worry about the actual point being made:
To see how retarded this is, take this "making available" nonsense a few steps down the slippery slope to DRM hell, where sharing is a crime:
Citizen, have you been sharing your password access? Do you have the right to read anymore?
Copyright is supposed to encourage publication for the benefit of the public domain. It is supposed to be a temporary exclusive right to publish. People violating that exclusivity could be told to stop and sued in civil court by the rights holder. Punishing people who are actually performing copyright's original function, without actual proof of damages is little more than coporate welfare. Don't think for an instant that you will be protected in the same manner if some big dumb company takes your text, images or recordings and sells them. A $40,000 judgment is sure ruin to most people, but less than a slap on the wrist to the companies pushing these crazy cases.
If we give this kind of power to publishers, every education will create a life time's worth of debt for little more than access to textbooks. Imagine music industry methods applied to all human knowledge. As Newton understood, every person's contribution to human knowledge is dwarfed by the accumulated store. What you have will be held cheap and you will have to work very hard to get what you need.