What the iPad has demonstrated is that people are cheap bastards that will knock themselves out to get a cheap $600 tablet while not even being aware of the $2000 one.
Loads of marketing, even free marketing helps.
Apple is where Microsoft used to be. The media treats them as an unstoppable force and gives them a metric ton of free advertising.
Meanwhile other products like the Archos 9 are invisible.
That doesn't really seem like a great burden. Windows is already dirt cheap for the large brand name box vendors. It's only consumers that pay absurd sums for Windows and then only if they go out of their way to do so.
The price advantage here seems grossly overblown.
It's not like you're talking about a $400 copy of Nextstep.
> I bet you're outraged when farmers ask for a reasonable price for their corn or milk too.
Nope. I belong to a CSA.
As far as farmers getting the short end of things, they are very much like musicians in this respect. They are bullied by large corporations that control the situation, encourage them to take on large debts, and then not pay them squat for raw materials.
As a debater, you're like someone bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Clearly you have no clue regarding the purpose or intention of patents in the modern era. They aren't mean to be some sort of virtual land grant or some monopoly granted to the friends of the king.
Patents exist to encourage the disclosure of useful inventions that would otherwise remain trade secrets.
It's not like I needed another reason to avoid their land line monopoly in favor of satellite providers. This is yet another confirmation that I made the right choice in that regard.
Once you have the commercial cut point markers, you can program the player to do anything you want. You can either skip the commercial upon seeing the initial cutpoint or disable navigation controls entirely.
Yet another patent on the obvious with plenty of prior art.
In other words, you're fine with a platform tyrant banning certain types of software and certain licenses simply because they can.
The GPL came first. If the Apple store is incompatible with the GPL, then it is Apple that made it that way. It's not the fault of the FSF that some jerks 20 years later decided to be fascists.
The fact that you're happy about the situation does you no credit.
This isn't about "a single performer". This is about lack of modern production technology.
For most of the history of recorded music, there simply wasn't the option to monkey around with the process much or make up for the fact that you're trying to put no-talent posers on a pedestal.
The tech simply didn't provide a means to hide a total lack of talent.
> State funding levels (for state run institutions) have remained largely the same in many cases
In your dreams. State governments have been gutting higher education funding over the last 20 years. Never mind the higher education stuff, even the primary education stuff has seen serious budget cuts in recent years.
Or those mansions could all be about concert proceeds and have little to do with actual album sales. Although the Beatles did have enough #1 singles to fill an entire album.
If that's the best you can come up with then it's really not a compelling reason for the gatekeepers and it's certainly no good justification for subverting the rest of our laws and technology to suit them.
Also, the entire Beatles catalog should be in the public domain now.
The only real issue is money. Once money changes hand then you have some actual damages as opposed to some self-serving fantasy. Up until that point, you have no reason to believe that anyone would have paid you anything under any conditions.
Draconian copyright enforcement would just deprive the pirates and do nothing to benefit you. While that might give you some nice sense of shadenfreude, the cost of the externalities would likely be too high.
This is why old school pirates always drew the line at taking money and lumped great derision on those that cross this line.
Making money should be the sole domain of the author. Anything beyond that is problematic.
Slashdot Mirror
What Apple product is the xbox360 meant to compete against?
On the other hand, it is meant to compete against a technically far inferior Nintendo product. Nintendo wiped the floor with Microsoft in that regard.
Microsoft has trouble competing with a company and a product that the tech press love to hate. How are they going to manage against a media darling?
Yeah... 2nd best selling console.
That's 2nd out of a race of 3 consoles.
You might as well give Microsoft a ribbon that says "participant".
Lies, damn lies, and Microsoft marketing...
No. You need cheap.
If Apple tried to price the iPad at $2000 or even $1000, the amount of interest would have been pretty effectively castrated.
The walled garden is entirely gratuitous. Good core tech may or may not help you. Again Apple is a great example of that.
Microsoft had $2000 tablets.
What the iPad has demonstrated is that people are cheap bastards that will knock themselves out to get a cheap $600 tablet while not even being aware of the $2000 one.
Loads of marketing, even free marketing helps.
Apple is where Microsoft used to be. The media treats them as an unstoppable force and gives them a metric ton of free advertising.
Meanwhile other products like the Archos 9 are invisible.
What's the Dell price for Windows? $30?
That doesn't really seem like a great burden. Windows is already dirt cheap for the large brand name box vendors. It's only consumers that pay absurd sums for Windows and then only if they go out of their way to do so.
The price advantage here seems grossly overblown.
It's not like you're talking about a $400 copy of Nextstep.
> To me, that's like saying a Porsche
To me that says that you just repeat brand marketing propaganda and have no real clue.
> I bet you're outraged when farmers ask for a reasonable price for their corn or milk too.
Nope. I belong to a CSA.
As far as farmers getting the short end of things, they are very much like musicians in this respect. They are bullied by large corporations that control the situation, encourage them to take on large debts, and then not pay them squat for raw materials.
As a debater, you're like someone bringing a knife to a gun fight.
> Why do you say ridiculous?
Ten times more expensive?
I suspect that the vast majority of people would call that "ridiculous".
Based on consumer feedback, they also seem to be lacking the reliability of HDDs.
That's kind of sad when you think about it (Seagate).
Clearly you have no clue regarding the purpose or intention of patents in the modern era. They aren't mean to be some sort of virtual land grant or some monopoly granted to the friends of the king.
Patents exist to encourage the disclosure of useful inventions that would otherwise remain trade secrets.
Otherwise they INTERFERE WITH MAKING MONEY.
This approach also fails for any commercial skipping aproach that analyzes the entire recording.
I think Jim Parsons took your share.
It's not like I needed another reason to avoid their land line monopoly in favor of satellite providers. This is yet another confirmation that I made the right choice in that regard.
I pity the fool that bought their cable service.
Once you have the commercial cut point markers, you can program the player to do anything you want. You can either skip the commercial upon seeing the initial cutpoint or disable navigation controls entirely.
Yet another patent on the obvious with plenty of prior art.
Besides. It's not biology that you would be "practicing without a license". It's chemistry.
What rules you use to judge the result are another matter.
Good metaphors don't need an explanation.
It's funny you should mention puppies.
The whole torturing of puppies thing has been done before.
Edison could be viewed as inspiration of Gates and he engaged in an interesting big of FUD against Tesla that included electrocuting puppies.
...except it is no longer THEIR device once they sell it to ME.
In other words, you're fine with a platform tyrant banning certain types of software and certain licenses simply because they can.
The GPL came first. If the Apple store is incompatible with the GPL, then it is Apple that made it that way. It's not the fault of the FSF that some jerks 20 years later decided to be fascists.
The fact that you're happy about the situation does you no credit.
This isn't about "a single performer". This is about lack of modern production technology.
For most of the history of recorded music, there simply wasn't the option to monkey around with the process much or make up for the fact that you're trying to put no-talent posers on a pedestal.
The tech simply didn't provide a means to hide a total lack of talent.
> State funding levels (for state run institutions) have remained largely the same in many cases
In your dreams. State governments have been gutting higher education funding over the last 20 years. Never mind the higher education stuff, even the primary education stuff has seen serious budget cuts in recent years.
Public universities were increasing tuition rates as much as they could legally get away with long before any of these changes were made.
This is just a weak excuse for robber barons and associated wannabes to rob from the poor and give to the rich.
It's the WSJ after all. Although Republicans believed in investing in public infastructure once upon a time.
She could sign up for Pandora and get the same net result without doing anything "unethical" or "illegal" and still not give the artists a dime.
Legal payment avoidance has always been easy.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Or those mansions could all be about concert proceeds and have little to do with actual album sales. Although the Beatles did have enough #1 singles to fill an entire album.
If that's the best you can come up with then it's really not a compelling reason for the gatekeepers and it's certainly no good justification for subverting the rest of our laws and technology to suit them.
Also, the entire Beatles catalog should be in the public domain now.
The only real issue is money. Once money changes hand then you have some actual damages as opposed to some self-serving fantasy. Up until that point, you have no reason to believe that anyone would have paid you anything under any conditions.
Draconian copyright enforcement would just deprive the pirates and do nothing to benefit you. While that might give you some nice sense of shadenfreude, the cost of the externalities would likely be too high.
This is why old school pirates always drew the line at taking money and lumped great derision on those that cross this line.
Making money should be the sole domain of the author. Anything beyond that is problematic.