Why not use a billing service that supports the subscription model you want, rather than trying to find some minefield-laden path toward storing credit card info?
>They cut the rate being charged to
>consumers by 33 percent.
Yes, this is the classic scam. Disguise deteriorating service as an improvement by lowering prices. If they had the balls to raise their prices to cover their users' bandwidth then they wouldn't be in this pickle. Someday people will realize that questing Wal-Mart prices gets you Wal-Mart quality. This here is yer lowest-common denominator mentality in action, folks.
Only if the user is logged in as root. A big problem with Windows is that the user logged in with local admin permissions (default) runs everything under the Windows equivalent of root. So yes, it's possible for Linux to be vulnerable, but at least it gives you a choice of not acting as root.
This implies an interesting tactic that may or may not be occurring: confusing the constituency. The language of all of the cases against Microsoft seems to be converging into a morass of similar criteria and solutions. Who can keep them straight? Why not just choose one and apply it to all of the cases! I'm sure they would love for this to happen.
Exactly. It's just shades of the dotcom shyster's lamenting The Market for not holding up their business model. The cable companies are trying to have their cake and eat it too, but it seems they've made a mistake in pricing or bandwidth allocation. I wonder if they'd blame it on focus groups or something, "Well, our research indicates that people want a T-1 for $40 per month, so that's our business!" It's up to the customers to make it so, or get nicked for not helping their business model succeed.
Indeed. I'm weary of data = object-theft analogies, but this one seems apt. The interesting implication is that it's seen as a crime (whether real or not) to *not* purchase a company's product if you're in its demographic or market. No more "I can just do it myself", or using a community...if you are seen to be in the market for , but you make your own instead of purchasing , then a crime has been committed. It would seem analogous that since there are companies that make cars, and you don't own one, that you are stealing one car's worth of sales from the car company whenever you get a ride from a friend.
In the absence of copyright, how exactly do you think games would get written? How would John Carmack earn a living?
Copyright has been abused and ruined, and serves primarily moneyed interests. I don't think John Carmack or any of the other original-work creators are idiots, and therefore have immense confidence that they would figure something out. The only reason people think that the economic world would fall apart if Free Software or Copyright Reform held sway is that they're simply unable to imagine a world working this way. "Fear is the mindkiller," someone once said, and in this case it precludes rational assessment of the *possibilities" of another world. This round peg in a square hole desire to create some kind of open-source dominator is just more of the same old big-biz line that got us into this in the first place.
I don't know about you, but I'd want my kids to aspire for more than the temp-slave Office products line. You speak the line of "Gosh, how did we ever learn anything before computers!" that just softpedals the issue. What Linux does better than Windows is "Let the user work". When you say "Understand Word and Excel" you are really saying "accustom yourself to the idiosyncrasies of this text editor and this spreadsheet app" because the only difference between "Word" and any other text editor is what gets in the way of actually putting words or formulas down. By using Linux, the children have a chance to see the "features" of Word and Excel as disappointments rather than wonders. "...possibly use Photoshop"?! Are you planning on having retarded children or something? They hire developmentally disabled kids and adults to do IT in some school districts (sorry, no link), you know. Where do those Office-type apps rate in the sysadmin level of job capacity? Your kids have several years of elementary-through-high school worth of computer learning, do you really want to limit them to mundane uses for computers? Maybe they can include "Cash Register Class" with the Office stuff?
Good point. I believe that it's part of their media campaign. Once again XP gets brought up in the media, in a week or so there will be some stories about how "THEY MADE MORE!" This same kind of tactic came up in the lead-up weeks, too. The "crippled MP3s" brou-ha-ha and definitely the activation stuff. In two weeks or a month, they will announce preliminary sales figures for the XP launch.
It is highly unpatriotic (even if you aren't American) to value calm and order in this situation. If you can post to Slashdot, you aren't at a high enough state of alert. I suggest the "Die of Panic" level.
But again, as the NYT article indicates, that might not have been done at the upper levels; it could have been some younger native programmer not realizing the right way to impose such a block. However, given that the latter version happened over the former, it suggests there might have been much more deeper alternative motives for this switch.
This is code that inserts a page *before the front page* of msn.com, do you really think this is the work only of some coder monkey?
But somehow, it became a story that we were looking for special new powers to hack into personal computers.
This could be taken to mean: we're satisfied that we've retained our prior legal right to hack into personal computers. Nowhere in that response do they disavow hacking end-users' PCs. They just say they never lobbied congress for that right. They do go on and on about "technical measures". Isn't a virus a technical measure?
Indeed. What they don't say speaks just as much as what they do. The RIAA is using the time-tested tactics of misdirection and beating-around-the-bush to say "we didn't mean that thing that you thought we said." We are all safe with the original interpretation, I think. I'm pretty sure that people will be able to conduct their lives as they wish, even while having overestimated the RIAA's self-serving sliminess. Their statement was released only with the hope that we won't think they are as underhanded as they really are.
This is even easier than programming the home-shopping channels out of my TV. If they don't want me to see their dreck, fine. It's not like MSN has anything that isn't available anywhere else. I'd also say that it's telling that they *lock people out* on XP day. The connection makes itself, Microsoft is shameless in their self-justification of anything they do in the pursuit of business.
If that is the case, then Microsoft's total lack of security, and lack of timely response to reported security holes should be regarded as "harboring a terrorist".
That may have been a quick thought, but this point does bear out. Perhaps, as another poster suggested, it's a situation closer to neglect. Microsoft is now crying to the government to step into the game now that Gartner has given a decidedly weighty voice to IIS detractors. Think of it this way: Microsoft writes the software they write because their customers demand it (see "trials of IE"), but now that some customers are visibly saying that they don't want certain features of IIS (the problems that other httpd's don't have) they ask the government to step in and fence off their part of the consumer's featurescape. Of course, they aren't saying that the government should help force people to continue using IIS, but if this kind of legislation is passed, the discourse will shift completely away from demanding any responsibility from the software developers. "Neglect" is probably the wrong word, "recklessness" is more apt.
Microsoft releases software that is written without regard for security if it impinges any marketing feature. For the sake of logical continuity, Microsoft is inarguably creating environments in which exploitive code can flourish (think of those "crack house" laws that hold landlords responsible for the actions of their tenants). It's apparent that Microsoft is running to Daddy when they realize that people they care about [are starting to] hold them to higher standards than they hold themselves.
Oh yes, especially this page where indie king of the early 80's Miles Copeland talks about how immutable the marketing costs of CDs are and that every CD that Ark21 sells is sold at a loss, even when it's priced at $14!
The thing about the RIAA is that they are throwing all of these red herring lawsuits into the mix and it confuses people. The RIAA companies are RIGHT NOW devising P2P services that will further convince their potential subjects that signing with RIAA affiliates is the only way to succeed in music. This is not so, and the more people that distract themselves with these random potshots rather than helping to set up a communitarian distribution network (take Napster into meatspace) the more successful RIAA affiliates will be in commandeering mind- and marketshare for the future. Sure, there will always be pirating and the pirates will try to self-justify by casting themselves as futuristic ex-patrons of The Man, but for any benefits to reach musicians, there needs to be an updating of the structures of success so that up-and-comers can know that there are alternatives to "getting signed".
Re:What can be done? Nothing.
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 1
The answer to terrorism- find out who did it and who harbored them, and then destroy both. Not a missle into a factory, carpet bomb the whole area.
"Oh, you bombed our embassy? Say goodbye to your entire country."
Thanks for the input, Al Bundy.
There's your answer when it comes to terrorism- reply with more terror than a bomber can imagine.
The point of terrorism is to terrify the target. The news media is sure doing everything it can do to publicize the acts of terrorism and keep people freaked out, do you think we should give in? Innocent people being killed does not mean it's open season on brown people (though those days are shortly coming, no doubt). In response to the horror of killing so many innocent people, its ironic that people suggest the exact same in retribution. Let resentment rule!
I fear most of all the US reaction to this, because the US will experience the effects of this reaction for years to come. I can imagine the difficulty of these decisions when people are so shrill in their exhortations to quickly shape public opinion and to shoot from the hip.
What's bothered me is that nearly every linux distribution includes one or more web browsers. Recently they also include spreadsheets, graphic manipulation (gimp), and soon they'll all include word processors similar to MS Word and email/calendar/contact magangement similar to MS Outlook.
Right, and the distribution organizers are tantamount to OEMs. Linus et al don't force distributors to include (or not) certain packages, and in fact a perfectly legitimate distribution could consist of only the kernel. However, Microsoft *does* tell the OEMs what they can and can not include in their installations, and this has been the argument against tying (which you acknowlege and dismiss without reason).
I can understand bowing to the peer pressure on apologizing for Microsoft's behavior for them (DoJ leads the way!), but it certainly doesn't justify the behavior. DoJ gearing up for a settlement (terms undisclosed, of course;) just encourages the environment that allows corporations to do whatever they want and pay a small fine if some crybaby raises a stink. How long did you think it would be before "it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission" would become a fundable business model?
I think soon we will be living William Gibson's vision of the Garage Kubrick. Very soon the line in quality between talented amateur and seasoned pro will be very much blurrier. I can't wait to see that day.
Well, the Red Queen Principle holds that "seasoned pros" will get better tools just as the "talented amateur" does. The definition of quality will change and evolve to suit the limits of the tools available. Not surprisingly, limit-tools tend to be expensive and only available to pros.
Well, there's something to be said for laying in the bed you've made for yourself. These exclusionary programming habits and mediums finally rear their heads when something beneficial comes down the pike that doesn't kowtow to the status quo. Programming for interoperability is its own reward, and to construct a business model which can't receive those rewards is a choice your executives made. Big whoop, I'm sure someone will fill the void left by the companies who code to IE4+ only...unless companies start lobbying for schools and such to be IE-only-by-law so as to protect your company's commercial goals!
Your whining is better served by writing letters and making huge soft-money contributions.
What is going to motivate anyone but idealogically motivated open source advocates to switch to Ogg Vorbis?
Well, there are any number of reasons which would be best researched on oggvorbis' website/FAQ, but your point seems to be that "people" need to use Ogg in order for it to "win out". This is a silly and narrowminded premise that valorizes dominance and...monopolies.
There is no need for there to be one encoding format any more than there needs to be only one OS. Choice is something that can be preserved by supporting alternative formats (even if they're of better quality;). This support can come in many forms, and the most effective forms of support that I can think of are availability and usability.
People who are tech-friendly and willing to be early adopters are in a crucial position to get set up for encoding Ogg, dealing with plugins, etc. This is important because it *makes.ogg files available". There won't be any reason to listen to.ogg files if there aren't any to listen to. "People" aren't going to be able to listen to these.ogg files if it's too complicated to go get a plugin or set up MIME types or something, so player support is important to make it easy for Joe Random Lamer to listen. Keep in mind that JRL has no concept of file formats. If there's a file that his default player (thinking "Windows") doesn't play, they'll just go on to something else. If the player supports.ogg (among others), then the person can listen to a file without having to deal with the complications.
So, on the face of it you've got a problem with.ogg not being ubiquitous. Same here. But the problem of.ogg becoming a prevalent format is easy to solve: start making.ogg files! Nobody has to "switch" to.ogg except for people doing the encoding, which is just as easy in *nix as in Windows as it is for MP3's. If you think MP3 is a better-sounding or faster or whatever format than.ogg, then that's fine. But what are you going to do as the major companies start clamping down on MP3 in favor of DRM formats? Certainly none of this matters to someone who encodes CDs (or whatever) they bought and are not going to be trading MP3s, but every time these files trade hands or are posted for public consumption it's an opportunity to let someone know there are other (better sounding;) choices out there. It's time for people to stop allowing themselves to be scandalized by the MP3 hysteria and just move on. Ideological? Sure, in the sense that maintaining a range of choice is an ideal.
So, Three Code Reds and a SirCam later, the question just begs to be asked:
Who's calling Whose code "Potentially Viral"?
Perhaps a way to turn the tables is to start speaking of these Microsoft weaknesses in terms of immunodeficiency, as being extremely hospitable to worms and viruses. Which is worse, to be viral or to welcome the infection by design?
Something just occurred to me: Is any portion of the increased price of stamps related to an rise in the amount of nonstamped mail that has to be processed and delivered by the postal service?
> Does the word "duh" mean anything to you? Welcome to capitalism, Mr. Nathans.
It seems the only thing one can do is to do the same old capitalistic thing: vote with your dollars. The ILEC-DSL companies are fooling everyone into catering to the lowest common denominator but those who buy into the bargain-hunter trap are going to get bargain-quality. Not only that, but they're also taking away market-share from the independent providers.
Certainly the financial profile of the readers here is such that they could pay higher prices for the same bandwidth, so instead of railing against the system we all could pay what we already know the value of these services is. The suspicion (with some evidence, natch) is that the prices will go up anyway once the competition is eliminated, so putting yourself ahead of the game by paying those prices to an independent provider can help their margins and stave off the big guys. Will it work? I don't know, but just going straight to the big guys so you can pay as little as possible is going to get you what you're paying for: as little as possible.
For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people.
This is not exactly a close reading, either. My understanding from reading the petition is that they'd like on-demand streams covered under existing broadcast royalty structure. Furthermore, they'd like (limited) downloads to be covered under their existing mechanical royalty structure. For those who might not know, "mechanical royalties" are those royalties paid in exchange for the right to turn a recording into a tangible object like a CD or 8-track tape. Broadcast royalties are your typical ASCAP/BMI dollars toward which radio stations and (radio-model) webcasters are paying flat yearly fees. See jwz's write up at http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html for some detail.
The RIAAs fights against mp3.com/Napster/et al. have always been about the control of the distribution channels. This is an extension of the classic political tactic summarized by "they who control the water supply controls the people". The issue of whether non-RIAA mechanisms are "right" or "wrong" is beside the point of the conflict, as many people have speculated that the RIAA just plain has a problem with alternative distribution systems. This "problem" is that their revenue stream is dependent on maintaining a consistent channel of commerce in which to place the works of the artists under their contracts, intercepting the money that is spent on recorded works. This, rather than the wellbeing of artists, is what the embattled online services threaten. So it comes as no surprise that they want to duplicate the function of these services, and those who determine the interpretation of copyright are not only aware of this dynamic, but are fully supportive of their desire to be the only legal gateway for this form of distribution. Increasingly, it seems the only way around them is to start over with a new distribution model that doesn't include them or any of their labels and consequently, artists.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not use a billing service that supports the subscription model you want, rather than trying to find some minefield-laden path toward storing credit card info?
>They cut the rate being charged to
>consumers by 33 percent.
Yes, this is the classic scam. Disguise deteriorating service as an improvement by lowering prices. If they had the balls to raise their prices to cover their users' bandwidth then they wouldn't be in this pickle. Someday people will realize that questing Wal-Mart prices gets you Wal-Mart quality. This here is yer lowest-common denominator mentality in action, folks.
Only if the user is logged in as root. A big problem with Windows is that the user logged in with local admin permissions (default) runs everything under the Windows equivalent of root. So yes, it's possible for Linux to be vulnerable, but at least it gives you a choice of not acting as root.
This implies an interesting tactic that may or may not be occurring: confusing the constituency. The language of all of the cases against Microsoft seems to be converging into a morass of similar criteria and solutions. Who can keep them straight? Why not just choose one and apply it to all of the cases! I'm sure they would love for this to happen.
Exactly. It's just shades of the dotcom shyster's lamenting The Market for not holding up their business model. The cable companies are trying to have their cake and eat it too, but it seems they've made a mistake in pricing or bandwidth allocation. I wonder if they'd blame it on focus groups or something, "Well, our research indicates that people want a T-1 for $40 per month, so that's our business!" It's up to the customers to make it so, or get nicked for not helping their business model succeed.
Indeed. I'm weary of data = object-theft analogies, but this one seems apt. The interesting implication is that it's seen as a crime (whether real or not) to *not* purchase a company's product if you're in its demographic or market. No more "I can just do it myself", or using a community...if you are seen to be in the market for , but you make your own instead of purchasing , then a crime has been committed. It would seem analogous that since there are companies that make cars, and you don't own one, that you are stealing one car's worth of sales from the car company whenever you get a ride from a friend.
Copyright has been abused and ruined, and serves primarily moneyed interests. I don't think John Carmack or any of the other original-work creators are idiots, and therefore have immense confidence that they would figure something out. The only reason people think that the economic world would fall apart if Free Software or Copyright Reform held sway is that they're simply unable to imagine a world working this way. "Fear is the mindkiller," someone once said, and in this case it precludes rational assessment of the *possibilities" of another world. This round peg in a square hole desire to create some kind of open-source dominator is just more of the same old big-biz line that got us into this in the first place.
I don't know about you, but I'd want my kids to aspire for more than the temp-slave Office products line. You speak the line of "Gosh, how did we ever learn anything before computers!" that just softpedals the issue. What Linux does better than Windows is "Let the user work". When you say "Understand Word and Excel" you are really saying "accustom yourself to the idiosyncrasies of this text editor and this spreadsheet app" because the only difference between "Word" and any other text editor is what gets in the way of actually putting words or formulas down. By using Linux, the children have a chance to see the "features" of Word and Excel as disappointments rather than wonders. "...possibly use Photoshop"?! Are you planning on having retarded children or something? They hire developmentally disabled kids and adults to do IT in some school districts (sorry, no link), you know. Where do those Office-type apps rate in the sysadmin level of job capacity? Your kids have several years of elementary-through-high school worth of computer learning, do you really want to limit them to mundane uses for computers? Maybe they can include "Cash Register Class" with the Office stuff?
Good point. I believe that it's part of their media campaign. Once again XP gets brought up in the media, in a week or so there will be some stories about how "THEY MADE MORE!" This same kind of tactic came up in the lead-up weeks, too. The "crippled MP3s" brou-ha-ha and definitely the activation stuff. In two weeks or a month, they will announce preliminary sales figures for the XP launch.
It is highly unpatriotic (even if you aren't American) to value calm and order in this situation. If you can post to Slashdot, you aren't at a high enough state of alert. I suggest the "Die of Panic" level.
This is code that inserts a page *before the front page* of msn.com, do you really think this is the work only of some coder monkey?
Indeed. What they don't say speaks just as much as what they do. The RIAA is using the time-tested tactics of misdirection and beating-around-the-bush to say "we didn't mean that thing that you thought we said." We are all safe with the original interpretation, I think. I'm pretty sure that people will be able to conduct their lives as they wish, even while having overestimated the RIAA's self-serving sliminess. Their statement was released only with the hope that we won't think they are as underhanded as they really are.
This is even easier than programming the home-shopping channels out of my TV. If they don't want me to see their dreck, fine. It's not like MSN has anything that isn't available anywhere else. I'd also say that it's telling that they *lock people out* on XP day. The connection makes itself, Microsoft is shameless in their self-justification of anything they do in the pursuit of business.
If that is the case, then Microsoft's total lack of security, and lack of timely response to reported security holes should be regarded as "harboring a terrorist".
That may have been a quick thought, but this point does bear out. Perhaps, as another poster suggested, it's a situation closer to neglect. Microsoft is now crying to the government to step into the game now that Gartner has given a decidedly weighty voice to IIS detractors. Think of it this way: Microsoft writes the software they write because their customers demand it (see "trials of IE"), but now that some customers are visibly saying that they don't want certain features of IIS (the problems that other httpd's don't have) they ask the government to step in and fence off their part of the consumer's featurescape. Of course, they aren't saying that the government should help force people to continue using IIS, but if this kind of legislation is passed, the discourse will shift completely away from demanding any responsibility from the software developers. "Neglect" is probably the wrong word, "recklessness" is more apt.
Microsoft releases software that is written without regard for security if it impinges any marketing feature. For the sake of logical continuity, Microsoft is inarguably creating environments in which exploitive code can flourish (think of those "crack house" laws that hold landlords responsible for the actions of their tenants). It's apparent that Microsoft is running to Daddy when they realize that people they care about [are starting to] hold them to higher standards than they hold themselves.
Oh yes, especially this page where indie king of the early 80's Miles Copeland talks about how immutable the marketing costs of CDs are and that every CD that Ark21 sells is sold at a loss, even when it's priced at $14!
The thing about the RIAA is that they are throwing all of these red herring lawsuits into the mix and it confuses people. The RIAA companies are RIGHT NOW devising P2P services that will further convince their potential subjects that signing with RIAA affiliates is the only way to succeed in music. This is not so, and the more people that distract themselves with these random potshots rather than helping to set up a communitarian distribution network (take Napster into meatspace) the more successful RIAA affiliates will be in commandeering mind- and marketshare for the future. Sure, there will always be pirating and the pirates will try to self-justify by casting themselves as futuristic ex-patrons of The Man, but for any benefits to reach musicians, there needs to be an updating of the structures of success so that up-and-comers can know that there are alternatives to "getting signed".
The answer to terrorism- find out who did it and who harbored them, and then destroy both. Not a missle into a factory, carpet bomb the whole area.
"Oh, you bombed our embassy? Say goodbye to your entire country."
Thanks for the input, Al Bundy.
There's your answer when it comes to terrorism- reply with more terror than a bomber can imagine.
The point of terrorism is to terrify the target. The news media is sure doing everything it can do to publicize the acts of terrorism and keep people freaked out, do you think we should give in? Innocent people being killed does not mean it's open season on brown people (though those days are shortly coming, no doubt). In response to the horror of killing so many innocent people, its ironic that people suggest the exact same in retribution. Let resentment rule!
I fear most of all the US reaction to this, because the US will experience the effects of this reaction for years to come. I can imagine the difficulty of these decisions when people are so shrill in their exhortations to quickly shape public opinion and to shoot from the hip.
Right, and the distribution organizers are tantamount to OEMs. Linus et al don't force distributors to include (or not) certain packages, and in fact a perfectly legitimate distribution could consist of only the kernel. However, Microsoft *does* tell the OEMs what they can and can not include in their installations, and this has been the argument against tying (which you acknowlege and dismiss without reason).
I can understand bowing to the peer pressure on apologizing for Microsoft's behavior for them (DoJ leads the way!), but it certainly doesn't justify the behavior. DoJ gearing up for a settlement (terms undisclosed, of course ;) just encourages the environment that allows corporations to do whatever they want and pay a small fine if some crybaby raises a stink. How long did you think it would be before "it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission" would become a fundable business model?
Well, the Red Queen Principle holds that "seasoned pros" will get better tools just as the "talented amateur" does. The definition of quality will change and evolve to suit the limits of the tools available. Not surprisingly, limit-tools tend to be expensive and only available to pros.
Your whining is better served by writing letters and making huge soft-money contributions.
What's the point? The case will only wind up being settled out of court.
Well, there are any number of reasons which would be best researched on oggvorbis' website/FAQ, but your point seems to be that "people" need to use Ogg in order for it to "win out". This is a silly and narrowminded premise that valorizes dominance and...monopolies.
There is no need for there to be one encoding format any more than there needs to be only one OS. Choice is something that can be preserved by supporting alternative formats (even if they're of better quality ;). This support can come in many forms, and the most effective forms of support that I can think of are availability and usability.
People who are tech-friendly and willing to be early adopters are in a crucial position to get set up for encoding Ogg, dealing with plugins, etc. This is important because it *makes .ogg files available". There won't be any reason to listen to .ogg files if there aren't any to listen to. "People" aren't going to be able to listen to these .ogg files if it's too complicated to go get a plugin or set up MIME types or something, so player support is important to make it easy for Joe Random Lamer to listen. Keep in mind that JRL has no concept of file formats. If there's a file that his default player (thinking "Windows") doesn't play, they'll just go on to something else. If the player supports .ogg (among others), then the person can listen to a file without having to deal with the complications. .ogg not being ubiquitous. Same here. But the problem of .ogg becoming a prevalent format is easy to solve: start making .ogg files! Nobody has to "switch" to .ogg except for people doing the encoding, which is just as easy in *nix as in Windows as it is for MP3's. If you think MP3 is a better-sounding or faster or whatever format than .ogg, then that's fine. But what are you going to do as the major companies start clamping down on MP3 in favor of DRM formats? Certainly none of this matters to someone who encodes CDs (or whatever) they bought and are not going to be trading MP3s, but every time these files trade hands or are posted for public consumption it's an opportunity to let someone know there are other (better sounding ;) choices out there. It's time for people to stop allowing themselves to be scandalized by the MP3 hysteria and just move on. Ideological? Sure, in the sense that maintaining a range of choice is an ideal.
So, on the face of it you've got a problem with
Perhaps a way to turn the tables is to start speaking of these Microsoft weaknesses in terms of immunodeficiency, as being extremely hospitable to worms and viruses. Which is worse, to be viral or to welcome the infection by design?
Something just occurred to me: Is any portion of the increased price of stamps related to an rise in the amount of nonstamped mail that has to be processed and delivered by the postal service?
> Does the word "duh" mean anything to you? Welcome to capitalism, Mr. Nathans. It seems the only thing one can do is to do the same old capitalistic thing: vote with your dollars. The ILEC-DSL companies are fooling everyone into catering to the lowest common denominator but those who buy into the bargain-hunter trap are going to get bargain-quality. Not only that, but they're also taking away market-share from the independent providers. Certainly the financial profile of the readers here is such that they could pay higher prices for the same bandwidth, so instead of railing against the system we all could pay what we already know the value of these services is. The suspicion (with some evidence, natch) is that the prices will go up anyway once the competition is eliminated, so putting yourself ahead of the game by paying those prices to an independent provider can help their margins and stave off the big guys. Will it work? I don't know, but just going straight to the big guys so you can pay as little as possible is going to get you what you're paying for: as little as possible.
For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people. This is not exactly a close reading, either. My understanding from reading the petition is that they'd like on-demand streams covered under existing broadcast royalty structure. Furthermore, they'd like (limited) downloads to be covered under their existing mechanical royalty structure. For those who might not know, "mechanical royalties" are those royalties paid in exchange for the right to turn a recording into a tangible object like a CD or 8-track tape. Broadcast royalties are your typical ASCAP/BMI dollars toward which radio stations and (radio-model) webcasters are paying flat yearly fees. See jwz's write up at http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html for some detail.
The RIAAs fights against mp3.com/Napster/et al. have always been about the control of the distribution channels. This is an extension of the classic political tactic summarized by "they who control the water supply controls the people". The issue of whether non-RIAA mechanisms are "right" or "wrong" is beside the point of the conflict, as many people have speculated that the RIAA just plain has a problem with alternative distribution systems. This "problem" is that their revenue stream is dependent on maintaining a consistent channel of commerce in which to place the works of the artists under their contracts, intercepting the money that is spent on recorded works. This, rather than the wellbeing of artists, is what the embattled online services threaten. So it comes as no surprise that they want to duplicate the function of these services, and those who determine the interpretation of copyright are not only aware of this dynamic, but are fully supportive of their desire to be the only legal gateway for this form of distribution. Increasingly, it seems the only way around them is to start over with a new distribution model that doesn't include them or any of their labels and consequently, artists.