It's all well and good to provide a Linux distro with e-mail, httpd, etc preinstalled and pre set up (though it's far from trivial to preconfigure a mail server such that any given home user could use it), but do you want to be the one who gets a phone call from your mom every time her home server stops working for whatever reason?
For that matter, do you really think the average home user wants to run two computers (their desktop and a server) to do what they normally do when right now they only need to run one? Do you really think the average home user will be willing to pay for a server, however low-end?
As others have pointed out, RMS doesn't seem to realize that Not Everybody Is A Programmer, and even more interesting, that Not Everybody Wants To Be A Programmer.
My dad (an accountant with vague programming experience) has no interest in running his own web server, e-mail server, and so on for his company, even though he's capable of doing it himself, because his time is expensive, and he makes a heck of a lot more money doing someone's audit than he would "save" by not using SaaS. Hiring someone else would lose him just as much money.
Running the code yourself doesn't prevent that, you know, even if you have access to the source code.
Furthermore, the risk of server-side bugs is often offset by removing the need to pay for servers, data storage, software development, and other stuff (as your parent post mentions). Sometimes it's better to trust other people.
Would RMS argue that it's stupid to drink milk produced by someone other than your own cow in the backyard? At some point we have to trust the product of someone else's work, and (IMNSHO) it's ridiculous to be as pure about it as RMS seems to be.
I would argue that simply releasing the source code is insufficient.
Many companies who use SaaS webapps and such simply don't have the expertise among their own employees to run the source code themselves if the provider were to disappear overnight. It's somewhat ridiculous to expect every small business owner to hire someone to set it up for them, and even if they did, they wouldn't gain anything - they would still lack understanding of how things work, and if it breaks (or if someone breaks it) they're still up a creek without a paddle.
Owning the machine running the open source code, and even having the machine onsite, does not mean it's any more "free" than the original SaaS if you lack the expertise to fix things when they break. Does RMS really think everyone currently using SaaS should develop that expertise?
Has anyone gotten Netflix streaming to work in Windows Firefox under Wine? Netflix claims that their streaming service works with Firefox 2 or greater on XP or Vista, but when I run Firefox under Wine it tells me I don't have a compatible browser...
The city government didn't set the end-user prices on Provo's fiber network, the ISPs who leased the fiber network set the prices. (It was actually very reasonable pricing, too; $39.99/month for 15/15Mbps and no bandwidth limit.)
No, the city did not provide its own service on the network. All service was provided through either Mstar or Veracity, depending on whether you were a residential or corporate customer. The network was sold to Broadweave last year.
Come to think of it, I'm unaware of any advertising efforts by Broadweave. Why would you buy a fiber network and not advertise your service on it?
Except it's sometimes not legal for new commercial providers to move into an area (it's a legally granted monopoly in a smallish area). In other words, it's quite possible that even if they had presented their desire for faster internet to {Verizon|Comcast|Whoever}, that company couldn't have moved in anyway, so going to TWC was their only option.
I'm not sure what the case exactly is there, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Because the cop-op ISN'T government. Co-ops don't take taxes, co-ops don't pass legislation (that would protect its own interests), etc.
But Greenlight didn't take any taxes (it was funded through bonds), and I can't see any indication they passed any legislation to protect its interests, so your argument doesn't hold up.
So if it's government-owned but behaves like a co-op, you'd still argue against it?
Residential pricing for 15Mbps service in Murray and most other Utopia cities is $50/month, and no TV subscription is required.
In Layton and Tremonton, you can get 10Mbps Utopia service for $42/month, with no other requirements.
These are set prices. Comcast may be $19.99/month for their 12Mbps (including PowerBoost) service, but that's only for the first six months; after that it's $42.99/month, putting it more on par with Utopia's offerings.
I'm not sure where your information is coming from. Yes, it's a little more expensive than Comcast, but it's also faster. Faster is more expensive? Go figure...
I'm not arguing for nor against the idea. I'm simply describing what happened over the last year or two in Provo and Sandy, and the reasons behind those events.
I don't think a city-run utility needs to run a profit; however, running a "huge loss" is probably undesirable, especially if most residents of an area don't want (or worse, don't know about) the new service.
I live in Provo, UT (for the next week, anyway). Provo used tax money to build a fiber infrastructure, then leased it out to two companies who provided tv/internet/phone.
Provo lost money every month. Know why? Provo wasn't legally allowed to advertise service on their own network, precisely because it was city-owned; the majority of Provo-dwellers I've spoken with didn't even know about it. (For unknown reasons, the companies who the city leased the networks to weren't advertising either. I heard about it from my neighbor who had service from them. I have no idea how he found out about them.)
Eventually, Provo simply sold the fiber network to some company in Salt Lake City at a huge loss.
This is why Sandy (where my parents live) refused to join Utopia (a loose coalition of cities in Salt Lake Valley building fiber networks) - they felt it would be a waste of taxpayer money, since they felt they would inevitably lose a lot of money on the project in the long run.
All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal.
is incorrect. You claim that these signs are illegal; I simply pointed out that they're not illegal. In fact, the signs themselves are never illegal, and refusing to do business with a customer is only illegal in cases of discrimination.
So what I'm saying is that my comments seem to be directly contradictory to yours: I say refusal to do business is rarely illegal, whereas you seem to be implying that it's (almost?) always illegal.
I'm the same way. If the room is silent, I inevitably find myself doing something unproductive yet enthralling like crawling Wikipedia at random, or if I'm at home, playing games.
You do retain possession of the ebook, as long as you don't delete it. If you throw your copy of Imzadi in the trash, do you expect your local Barnes & Noble to replace it for you free of charge?
I realize that the situation is slightly different with electronic books, as infinite copies can be made at little or no cost. However, Amazon provides as a service the storage of archival copies of your purchased works. If they end the service, then you'd better hope you have your own backup copies.
Also, you're wrong about time limits. As long as you don't delete the ebook, there is no time limit on your ownership of that ebook. They cannot remotely remove the ebook from the Kindle, nor could they prevent any backup copies from functioning on that Kindle. If you die, your Kindle passes into the possession of your daughter, for whom the Kindle will function exactly the same. There is no time limit, unless you delete the book, just as there is no time limit on the possession of a paperback novel unless you throw it away.
So if you don't want your Kindle ebook to disappear, don't delete it. It's as simple as that.
His mistake was in not keeping his own backups of his purchases. If you do that and your account is disabled, you can still read all of them by simply copying them to the Kindle from your computer again.
He was not able to use its wireless with that account. Nobody has claimed that he could not simply tie the Kindle to another account, which would presumably give him wireless access again.
Besides, wireless access is not its entire feature set; it's quite easy to make (nearly) full use of the Kindle without ever using its wireless capabilities.
When I do price comparisons, I'm specifically comparing the hardware. This allows me to determine the cost that Apple is assigning to OSX.
In my above example, they've given OSX a value of $1070. If Microsoft charged $1070 for Windows, there would be an outcry of unparalleled proportions; but because it's Apple doing it, it's totally legit.
That is what I have a problem with; I don't have any problem with OSX itself.
Ah, but now you're asserting that the ToS contains terms that are illegal. The burden of proof is yours, I'm afraid.
Until you can show that the Terms of Service that were broken are illegal (not just shady or slimy, but illegal), you have no basis for your accusation.
However note that they COULD deactivate books he had previously purchased. That means that in the future they could do it intentionally for whatever reason suited them at the time.
Actually, they can't. Amazon's DRM scheme has no such mechanism, and a working Amazon.com account is not necessary to read DRM'ed Kindle ebooks. You don't need Internet access at all, in fact, except perhaps for the initial purchase.
You may have been modded up, but we really need a "-1 Factually Incorrect".
You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. [...] You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.
Wow. You are so wrong my brain is melting.
A business can legally refuse service to anyone, unless the reason is race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. More information here and here. Feel free to google some more.
In short, refusing service to a customer who is breaking the terms of service is perfectly legal.
Why does everyone think this customer's ebooks were remotely disabled? Did anybody RTFA? Oh, wait, this is slashdot, I forgot. (This paragraph, perhaps, deserves -1 Troll, or perhaps -1 Flamebait.)
Allow me to clarify: The customer in question did NOT lose access to ebooks he had already downloaded. He was simply denied the ability to purchase anything in the future. (This paragraph, however, deserves a +1 Yes I Actually RTFA.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's all well and good to provide a Linux distro with e-mail, httpd, etc preinstalled and pre set up (though it's far from trivial to preconfigure a mail server such that any given home user could use it), but do you want to be the one who gets a phone call from your mom every time her home server stops working for whatever reason?
For that matter, do you really think the average home user wants to run two computers (their desktop and a server) to do what they normally do when right now they only need to run one? Do you really think the average home user will be willing to pay for a server, however low-end?
As others have pointed out, RMS doesn't seem to realize that Not Everybody Is A Programmer, and even more interesting, that Not Everybody Wants To Be A Programmer.
My dad (an accountant with vague programming experience) has no interest in running his own web server, e-mail server, and so on for his company, even though he's capable of doing it himself, because his time is expensive, and he makes a heck of a lot more money doing someone's audit than he would "save" by not using SaaS. Hiring someone else would lose him just as much money.
Running the code yourself doesn't prevent that, you know, even if you have access to the source code.
Furthermore, the risk of server-side bugs is often offset by removing the need to pay for servers, data storage, software development, and other stuff (as your parent post mentions). Sometimes it's better to trust other people.
Would RMS argue that it's stupid to drink milk produced by someone other than your own cow in the backyard? At some point we have to trust the product of someone else's work, and (IMNSHO) it's ridiculous to be as pure about it as RMS seems to be.
I would argue that simply releasing the source code is insufficient.
Many companies who use SaaS webapps and such simply don't have the expertise among their own employees to run the source code themselves if the provider were to disappear overnight. It's somewhat ridiculous to expect every small business owner to hire someone to set it up for them, and even if they did, they wouldn't gain anything - they would still lack understanding of how things work, and if it breaks (or if someone breaks it) they're still up a creek without a paddle.
Owning the machine running the open source code, and even having the machine onsite, does not mean it's any more "free" than the original SaaS if you lack the expertise to fix things when they break. Does RMS really think everyone currently using SaaS should develop that expertise?
Speaking of Netflix streaming...
Has anyone gotten Netflix streaming to work in Windows Firefox under Wine? Netflix claims that their streaming service works with Firefox 2 or greater on XP or Vista, but when I run Firefox under Wine it tells me I don't have a compatible browser...
The city government didn't set the end-user prices on Provo's fiber network, the ISPs who leased the fiber network set the prices. (It was actually very reasonable pricing, too; $39.99/month for 15/15Mbps and no bandwidth limit.)
No, the city did not provide its own service on the network. All service was provided through either Mstar or Veracity, depending on whether you were a residential or corporate customer. The network was sold to Broadweave last year.
Come to think of it, I'm unaware of any advertising efforts by Broadweave. Why would you buy a fiber network and not advertise your service on it?
Except it's sometimes not legal for new commercial providers to move into an area (it's a legally granted monopoly in a smallish area). In other words, it's quite possible that even if they had presented their desire for faster internet to {Verizon|Comcast|Whoever}, that company couldn't have moved in anyway, so going to TWC was their only option.
I'm not sure what the case exactly is there, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Because the cop-op ISN'T government. Co-ops don't take taxes, co-ops don't pass legislation (that would protect its own interests), etc.
But Greenlight didn't take any taxes (it was funded through bonds), and I can't see any indication they passed any legislation to protect its interests, so your argument doesn't hold up.
So if it's government-owned but behaves like a co-op, you'd still argue against it?
Residential pricing for 15Mbps service in Murray and most other Utopia cities is $50/month, and no TV subscription is required.
In Layton and Tremonton, you can get 10Mbps Utopia service for $42/month, with no other requirements.
These are set prices. Comcast may be $19.99/month for their 12Mbps (including PowerBoost) service, but that's only for the first six months; after that it's $42.99/month, putting it more on par with Utopia's offerings.
I'm not sure where your information is coming from. Yes, it's a little more expensive than Comcast, but it's also faster. Faster is more expensive? Go figure...
I'm not arguing for nor against the idea. I'm simply describing what happened over the last year or two in Provo and Sandy, and the reasons behind those events.
I don't think a city-run utility needs to run a profit; however, running a "huge loss" is probably undesirable, especially if most residents of an area don't want (or worse, don't know about) the new service.
I live in Provo, UT (for the next week, anyway). Provo used tax money to build a fiber infrastructure, then leased it out to two companies who provided tv/internet/phone.
Provo lost money every month. Know why? Provo wasn't legally allowed to advertise service on their own network, precisely because it was city-owned; the majority of Provo-dwellers I've spoken with didn't even know about it. (For unknown reasons, the companies who the city leased the networks to weren't advertising either. I heard about it from my neighbor who had service from them. I have no idea how he found out about them.)
Eventually, Provo simply sold the fiber network to some company in Salt Lake City at a huge loss.
This is why Sandy (where my parents live) refused to join Utopia (a loose coalition of cities in Salt Lake Valley building fiber networks) - they felt it would be a waste of taxpayer money, since they felt they would inevitably lose a lot of money on the project in the long run.
I'm just trying to say that your comment:
All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal.
is incorrect. You claim that these signs are illegal; I simply pointed out that they're not illegal. In fact, the signs themselves are never illegal, and refusing to do business with a customer is only illegal in cases of discrimination.
So what I'm saying is that my comments seem to be directly contradictory to yours: I say refusal to do business is rarely illegal, whereas you seem to be implying that it's (almost?) always illegal.
I'm the same way. If the room is silent, I inevitably find myself doing something unproductive yet enthralling like crawling Wikipedia at random, or if I'm at home, playing games.
You do retain possession of the ebook, as long as you don't delete it. If you throw your copy of Imzadi in the trash, do you expect your local Barnes & Noble to replace it for you free of charge?
I realize that the situation is slightly different with electronic books, as infinite copies can be made at little or no cost. However, Amazon provides as a service the storage of archival copies of your purchased works. If they end the service, then you'd better hope you have your own backup copies.
Also, you're wrong about time limits. As long as you don't delete the ebook, there is no time limit on your ownership of that ebook. They cannot remotely remove the ebook from the Kindle, nor could they prevent any backup copies from functioning on that Kindle. If you die, your Kindle passes into the possession of your daughter, for whom the Kindle will function exactly the same. There is no time limit, unless you delete the book, just as there is no time limit on the possession of a paperback novel unless you throw it away.
So if you don't want your Kindle ebook to disappear, don't delete it. It's as simple as that.
His mistake was in not keeping his own backups of his purchases. If you do that and your account is disabled, you can still read all of them by simply copying them to the Kindle from your computer again.
He was not able to use its wireless with that account. Nobody has claimed that he could not simply tie the Kindle to another account, which would presumably give him wireless access again.
Besides, wireless access is not its entire feature set; it's quite easy to make (nearly) full use of the Kindle without ever using its wireless capabilities.
When I do price comparisons, I'm specifically comparing the hardware. This allows me to determine the cost that Apple is assigning to OSX.
In my above example, they've given OSX a value of $1070. If Microsoft charged $1070 for Windows, there would be an outcry of unparalleled proportions; but because it's Apple doing it, it's totally legit.
That is what I have a problem with; I don't have any problem with OSX itself.
You can keep your own backup copies of DRM'd Kindle eBooks, without any interaction with Amazon's servers or your Amazon account.
I'm not sure about format-shifting. There are programs out there that remove DRM from Kindle ebooks, but I can't vouch for their legality.
Ah, but now you're asserting that the ToS contains terms that are illegal. The burden of proof is yours, I'm afraid.
Until you can show that the Terms of Service that were broken are illegal (not just shady or slimy, but illegal), you have no basis for your accusation.
That's not how the Kindle works...
However note that they COULD deactivate books he had previously purchased. That means that in the future they could do it intentionally for whatever reason suited them at the time.
Actually, they can't. Amazon's DRM scheme has no such mechanism, and a working Amazon.com account is not necessary to read DRM'ed Kindle ebooks. You don't need Internet access at all, in fact, except perhaps for the initial purchase.
You may have been modded up, but we really need a "-1 Factually Incorrect".
You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. [...] You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.
Wow. You are so wrong my brain is melting.
A business can legally refuse service to anyone, unless the reason is race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. More information here and here. Feel free to google some more.
In short, refusing service to a customer who is breaking the terms of service is perfectly legal.
It should be mentioned that Amazon encourages authors to push for DRM-free ebooks when they sell for the Kindle.
Oh good, I'm not the only one pointing out the idiocy of the Amazon customer in question...
All this discussion is almost enough to make me buy a kindle for myself.
Why does everyone think this customer's ebooks were remotely disabled? Did anybody RTFA? Oh, wait, this is slashdot, I forgot. (This paragraph, perhaps, deserves -1 Troll, or perhaps -1 Flamebait.)
Allow me to clarify: The customer in question did NOT lose access to ebooks he had already downloaded. He was simply denied the ability to purchase anything in the future. (This paragraph, however, deserves a +1 Yes I Actually RTFA.)