I love this model because if Amazon wants to offer something more appealing for creators and consumers, they'll sell more "stuff" and people will be happier. And if this is popular more merchants will set up something similar.
This is a good thing. Everybody getting more choices, everybody will make more money.
"though I'm a bit doubtful of that as the risk of backfire would be pretty large. "
I'm not clear what the "backfire" would be. If you had terrible secrets that you didn't want exposed, you'd try anything to cast doubt on the integrity of the "leaker". The idea is that the focus of the press moves away from the leak to the charge of rape itself. If the charge is false, then the story becomes "oh, the charge is false". If someone important is involved in the false charge, the story moves to that topic. So the press never quite gets around to talking about the contents of the leak themselves.
Meanwhile, the actual story, the "secret" becomes less important than the story about the intrigue.
Let me give you a recent parallel, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. At first, the story was about the leak and how poorly BP managed the rig and had taken shortcuts that caused the problem, but quickly moved to how the CEO and board members were insensitive, how they were taking yacht trips and called us "the little people" to finally BP has set up a $20B fund to help everyone to "BP saved the day stopping the well". The day after the well was capped, a "leaked" document from the US Government said the oil was mostly all gone. People have lost interest and that's the end of the story as far as the press is concerned.
The real story on the leak won't be known until someone is willing to dig in and write a real story in a book, but by the time that comes out, there will be new people in power in the government, in BP, and people won't care so much anymore.
Today, governments and corporations are very good at steering the media to deliver the message they want. And when the stakes are high enough, I don't think either of those institutions has any sort of moral qualms about the mechanisms used to distract us.
I don't think he meant that. I don't believe software patents were ever designed to protect inventors, rather they were always intended for use by large corporations to limit competition.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that software patents are working exactly as they were intended.
"People spend $1500 on leather upholstery and another $1200 on a fancy stereo system"
Nobody is complaining about people spending money for an option that lets them express their opinion and show their feelings about the environment. I think what the discussion is centered around is whether hybrids will save the owner any money. The evidence appears (to me) to say that if you do save any money, it's less than you think.
"Compare hybrid owners who drive more because they own a hybrid"
Or the hybrid owners who trade a perfectly good car, go $20,000 into debt because the hybrid gets better gas mileage (probably save them *at most* $500/year).
I wish people would realize the most environmentally friendly car is one that you already own. There's no pollution involved in making the new car, you're not disposing of the old car, and you won't have car payments. What's not to like?
As recently as 3-5 years ago you could go to a hamfest get a reasonably up-to-date laptop computer and save $500-700 from a new computer.
Now with new laptop with good specs going for $400-500, the margins are gone, so the hamfest guys are selling laptop computers for $300$400. There's no sense in buying used in that case since it has no warranty and will probably be less energy efficient than a new one.
The issue really is that we're getting so efficient at building new computers that it makes the old stuff worthless pretty quickly.
"If a person X writes a piece of code and licenses it under the GPL, it's X' decision. If I take that code and embed it in my own code, not giving credits to X nor open my own code, "
You're absolutely right.
That said, both positions when taken to extremes are absurd.
If I download a piece of GPL code and tweak it so it does something very very useful to me and my friend and I give it to my friend, but don't give him (or anyone else) the new source code, I've broken the GPL agreement. But so what? Same way if I buy a CD and make a copy for my wife, that may break a copyright, but....so what?
If I'm the composer in question, I want to lock down my sheet music. Hell, I may want the sheet music designed in such a way that every time you play from my sheet music, you have to pay me. Why not? I probably worked hard to compose it, sell it, and convince some publisher to print it and sell it and pay me royalties. I'd love to have an annuity like that!
I don't think we can get around the fact that the ability to make easy copies of songs, films, computer code and yes, sheet music diminishes their individual values can be debated. It simply does. We may all think that it's not fair, that it's stealing, but....that's reality. Deal with it. The question we have to answer is from a collective standpoint does it lead to more benefit to society. Do we have more creative works now than 50 years ago? If the economic value of each individual work is falling but yet there are more works being created, then *that's a good thing*.
Personally, I would cut back on copyright terms, enforce a sane law and let these companies, composers and creators deal with the economic forces that will drive the value of their works to a point that customers are willing to spend. Life will go on for everyone.
"The day Apple makes iPhone available on Verizon, the market for Android devices will take an enormous hit."
Apple should have released it on Verizon 6 months ago. Apple is letting Google's platform become firmly entrenched, and now that hardware manufacturers don't have to write their own OS, they can provide all kinds of interesting handset features. This will rapidly become a PC versus Mac type battle.
The point is, if Apple waits another year to release to Verizon, the impact will be interesting, but it will be too late to have the kind of impact you think.
"The MPEG LA is forming a patent pool because there's tons of other companies who think they have a patent claim against VP8. There's absolutely nothing Google can do about that or grant you any form of license for or immunity against."
Yes, but Google is effectively doing the same thing with VP8. They're offering to defend it against the patent attacks that are bound to come. In this case, if Google effectively clears VP8 after a few years, most of the world is better off.
More importantly, by creating a viable competitor to H264, the market will drive MPEG LA to offer better licensing agreements and it makes H264 worth less to the patent holders.
Again, this is a good thing for everybody except those trying to charge toll for HD video on the web and is particularly good for HTML5.
It seems to me that our current view of copyright is that it somehow establishes "ownership" of a work, which is an interesting idea if you think about it. Copyright should encourage a view that promotes what the name implies: it gives me exclusive copying rights to a work for a moderate time period.
My package with FIOS is 35/35 (and it's not the top package). That's pretty good by any measure. I suspect FIOS supports 100/100, but that's not offered yet. I think they'll wait until Comcast rolls out DOCIS 3 (probably by 2100, if not sooner), then they'll mention 100/100.
I've purchased that turntable, tried it and given it away to an enemy.
I'm not a crazy stereophile by any means, but the quality of this turntable was so poor that you would not use this for any collectible vinyl, or anything worth keeping. The quality of construction is poor, the cartridge is utter crap, it was difficulty to set up the anti-skate, it tracked marginal vinyl not at all. In short, don't get this.
Instead, just buy a used turntable in good condition (so many are available), or I realized my 40 year old Dual turntable ( http://www.dual-reference.com/ ) was still head and shoulders above this unit. Couple it with a reasonable phono preamp ( http://www.zzounds.com/item--ARTDJPREII ) and send it through your line in. Combine it with very nice free software ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download ) and you have a solution, possibly for as little as $50 and you'll have a turntable that won't ruin your good vinyl, and get excellent sound as well.
It points out the folly when people say "Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/whomever has to pay huge upstream bandwidth costs, bandwidth isn't free y'know!", and it always gets marked as insightful.
These guys are so large, bandwidth, other than physical maintenance of their physical plant, isn't a big part of their expenses. When Comcast says "We need to limit bandwidth because of those evil hackers", that's code for "I don't feel like rolling out DOCIS 3 for a few years". When AT&T Mobile says "Those iPhone users are sucking up all the bandwidth so we have to limit you", that's code for "We dont' want to upgrade our cell towers".
People still have this picture in mind of a tier-1 provider asking their local LEC to run a couple DS-3's over to their data center. It's such a 1992 view of how ISPs actually work.
That's simply not true. It's the difference between driving and racing. Even if they made all the cars out of nerf balls, and put foam padding around, the drivers competing against each other that makes it compelling to watch. Racing isn't really a contest to see who can drive fastest, it's a contest to see who can come in 1st place.
There's a rather large distinction between driving and competing. The essence of sport is a direct competition to see who's better. If you don't have that element, it's far less compelling. It's why people enjoy short track skating. It's not about who skates the fastest, it's about who has the will to win.
Slashdot Mirror
If you scroll to the bottom of the article, somebody spent some time colorizing and tagging various parts of the photo:
http://www.lunarlog.com/colorized-boulevard-du-temple-daguerre/
"I already ordered iLife 11 for $50 yesterday. I begrudge giving MS money because it's the same old thing release after release"
The irony of these two sentences side by side is breathtaking.
It's slower, shows you less posts, and provides less information, and locks up firefox for 5 seconds as it waits to download... something.
I had to click the classic preferences a couple times and restart the browser, and then close the tab with slashdot in it to work.
There are plugins that already do that.
If you want to find them, use Google.
I love this model because if Amazon wants to offer something more appealing for creators and consumers, they'll sell more "stuff" and people will be happier. And if this is popular more merchants will set up something similar.
This is a good thing. Everybody getting more choices, everybody will make more money.
"though I'm a bit doubtful of that as the risk of backfire would be pretty large. "
I'm not clear what the "backfire" would be. If you had terrible secrets that you didn't want exposed, you'd try anything to cast doubt on the integrity of the "leaker". The idea is that the focus of the press moves away from the leak to the charge of rape itself. If the charge is false, then the story becomes "oh, the charge is false". If someone important is involved in the false charge, the story moves to that topic. So the press never quite gets around to talking about the contents of the leak themselves.
Meanwhile, the actual story, the "secret" becomes less important than the story about the intrigue.
Let me give you a recent parallel, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. At first, the story was about the leak and how poorly BP managed the rig and had taken shortcuts that caused the problem, but quickly moved to how the CEO and board members were insensitive, how they were taking yacht trips and called us "the little people" to finally BP has set up a $20B fund to help everyone to "BP saved the day stopping the well". The day after the well was capped, a "leaked" document from the US Government said the oil was mostly all gone. People have lost interest and that's the end of the story as far as the press is concerned.
The real story on the leak won't be known until someone is willing to dig in and write a real story in a book, but by the time that comes out, there will be new people in power in the government, in BP, and people won't care so much anymore.
Today, governments and corporations are very good at steering the media to deliver the message they want. And when the stakes are high enough, I don't think either of those institutions has any sort of moral qualms about the mechanisms used to distract us.
I don't think he meant that. I don't believe software patents were ever designed to protect inventors, rather they were always intended for use by large corporations to limit competition.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that software patents are working exactly as they were intended.
"People spend $1500 on leather upholstery and another $1200 on a fancy stereo system"
Nobody is complaining about people spending money for an option that lets them express their opinion and show their feelings about the environment. I think what the discussion is centered around is whether hybrids will save the owner any money. The evidence appears (to me) to say that if you do save any money, it's less than you think.
I think that's a reasonable discussion to have.
Read the comments below the article. They're far more entertaining than the article itself.
"Compare hybrid owners who drive more because they own a hybrid"
Or the hybrid owners who trade a perfectly good car, go $20,000 into debt because the hybrid gets better gas mileage (probably save them *at most* $500/year).
I wish people would realize the most environmentally friendly car is one that you already own. There's no pollution involved in making the new car, you're not disposing of the old car, and you won't have car payments. What's not to like?
As recently as 3-5 years ago you could go to a hamfest get a reasonably up-to-date laptop computer and save $500-700 from a new computer.
Now with new laptop with good specs going for $400-500, the margins are gone, so the hamfest guys are selling laptop computers for $300$400. There's no sense in buying used in that case since it has no warranty and will probably be less energy efficient than a new one.
The issue really is that we're getting so efficient at building new computers that it makes the old stuff worthless pretty quickly.
Instead of debating what was and wasn't said, here's the clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlcNUq77_LM
It's not a 10 second clip, it's about 2-3 minutes long so you can understand the context and decide for yourself what the director meant.
Rather than debate what was said and not said, just watch the video. People will draw their own conclusions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlcNUq77_LM
"If a person X writes a piece of code and licenses it under the GPL, it's X' decision. If I take that code and embed it in my own code, not giving credits to X nor open my own code, "
You're absolutely right.
That said, both positions when taken to extremes are absurd.
If I download a piece of GPL code and tweak it so it does something very very useful to me and my friend and I give it to my friend, but don't give him (or anyone else) the new source code, I've broken the GPL agreement. But so what? Same way if I buy a CD and make a copy for my wife, that may break a copyright, but....so what?
If I'm the composer in question, I want to lock down my sheet music. Hell, I may want the sheet music designed in such a way that every time you play from my sheet music, you have to pay me. Why not? I probably worked hard to compose it, sell it, and convince some publisher to print it and sell it and pay me royalties. I'd love to have an annuity like that!
I don't think we can get around the fact that the ability to make easy copies of songs, films, computer code and yes, sheet music diminishes their individual values can be debated. It simply does. We may all think that it's not fair, that it's stealing, but....that's reality. Deal with it. The question we have to answer is from a collective standpoint does it lead to more benefit to society. Do we have more creative works now than 50 years ago? If the economic value of each individual work is falling but yet there are more works being created, then *that's a good thing*.
Personally, I would cut back on copyright terms, enforce a sane law and let these companies, composers and creators deal with the economic forces that will drive the value of their works to a point that customers are willing to spend. Life will go on for everyone.
"The day Apple makes iPhone available on Verizon, the market for Android devices will take an enormous hit."
Apple should have released it on Verizon 6 months ago. Apple is letting Google's platform become firmly entrenched, and now that hardware manufacturers don't have to write their own OS, they can provide all kinds of interesting handset features. This will rapidly become a PC versus Mac type battle.
The point is, if Apple waits another year to release to Verizon, the impact will be interesting, but it will be too late to have the kind of impact you think.
"The MPEG LA is forming a patent pool because there's tons of other companies who think they have a patent claim against VP8. There's absolutely nothing Google can do about that or grant you any form of license for or immunity against."
Yes, but Google is effectively doing the same thing with VP8. They're offering to defend it against the patent attacks that are bound to come. In this case, if Google effectively clears VP8 after a few years, most of the world is better off.
More importantly, by creating a viable competitor to H264, the market will drive MPEG LA to offer better licensing agreements and it makes H264 worth less to the patent holders.
Again, this is a good thing for everybody except those trying to charge toll for HD video on the web and is particularly good for HTML5.
Steve Job's isn't a tech visionary, he's a *salesman*! That's all you need to know.
I think 14 years is probably about right.
It seems to me that our current view of copyright is that it somehow establishes "ownership" of a work, which is an interesting idea if you think about it. Copyright should encourage a view that promotes what the name implies: it gives me exclusive copying rights to a work for a moderate time period.
My package with FIOS is 35/35 (and it's not the top package). That's pretty good by any measure. I suspect FIOS supports 100/100, but that's not offered yet. I think they'll wait until Comcast rolls out DOCIS 3 (probably by 2100, if not sooner), then they'll mention 100/100.
"no USB ports"
I saw a reply to a Washington Post article on this point, the clearly infatuated apple fan said quite sincerely:
"This is a new device, filled with new possibilities. You don't want to use just any old USB device"
The funny part is, this person was being serious.
I've purchased that turntable, tried it and given it away to an enemy.
I'm not a crazy stereophile by any means, but the quality of this turntable was so poor that you would not use this for any collectible vinyl, or anything worth keeping. The quality of construction is poor, the cartridge is utter crap, it was difficulty to set up the anti-skate, it tracked marginal vinyl not at all. In short, don't get this.
Instead, just buy a used turntable in good condition (so many are available), or I realized my 40 year old Dual turntable ( http://www.dual-reference.com/ ) was still head and shoulders above this unit. Couple it with a reasonable phono preamp ( http://www.zzounds.com/item--ARTDJPREII ) and send it through your line in. Combine it with very nice free software ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download ) and you have a solution, possibly for as little as $50 and you'll have a turntable that won't ruin your good vinyl, and get excellent sound as well.
It points out the folly when people say "Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/whomever has to pay huge upstream bandwidth costs, bandwidth isn't free y'know!", and it always gets marked as insightful.
These guys are so large, bandwidth, other than physical maintenance of their physical plant, isn't a big part of their expenses. When Comcast says "We need to limit bandwidth because of those evil hackers", that's code for "I don't feel like rolling out DOCIS 3 for a few years". When AT&T Mobile says "Those iPhone users are sucking up all the bandwidth so we have to limit you", that's code for "We dont' want to upgrade our cell towers".
People still have this picture in mind of a tier-1 provider asking their local LEC to run a couple DS-3's over to their data center. It's such a 1992 view of how ISPs actually work.
"It's defamation, pure and simple"
In free countries, it's recognized that you can't defame public officials.
"There is no other reason"
That's simply not true. It's the difference between driving and racing. Even if they made all the cars out of nerf balls, and put foam padding around, the drivers competing against each other that makes it compelling to watch. Racing isn't really a contest to see who can drive fastest, it's a contest to see who can come in 1st place.
There's a rather large distinction between driving and competing. The essence of sport is a direct competition to see who's better. If you don't have that element, it's far less compelling. It's why people enjoy short track skating. It's not about who skates the fastest, it's about who has the will to win.
"The problem is the very real and growing problem of pirated paid apps on jailbroken phones."
This doesn't fix that problem, unfortunately.