Copyright is concerned with COPYING work. It does not apply if someone else independently (usually defined as "was not exposed to your work") recreates the thing in question.
So, even if they have a phone number in their melody database, you don't infringe if you dial that number, because you created the melody independently.
So some people complained that Doom, etc, were murder simulators. Everyone missed the fact that Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc, are probably the real murder simulators. A terrorist organization can now train a person to fly a big jet well enough to hit a building. Maybe not taking off and landing, but the easy flying skills are easily attainable.
No pilot, even with a gun at his head, is going to hit the TWC rather than the Hudson river.
It's sad, but I've seen a lot of ex-dotcommers looking for jobs recently.
The good ones just sit down and show their skills. We talk about a real job versus returning to school, etc.
The bad ones explain that they were a CEO/CTO, whatever, and want an equivalent job at our "real" company. We try to keep to a straight face while we explain that, if they are hired, they will have the title of "ultra-junior hire," and will be reporting to a person that left school a year or two before them (but who actually put the effort into learning about a real business.)
The real entrepeneurs aren't returning to school... they're getting decent jobs with good advancement possibilites right now. It's the poseurs that took a flier on cheap VC capital who are slinking back to an education on their parents' money.
This is a hard position to defend... if a thumbnail (lower resolution) image is copyright free, this implies that I can, for example, release a VHS version of a DVD and be immune from copyright law.
You, an individual, have a right to save it and view it later. The issue is about a company that saves your image and redistributes it while possibly making profits on banner ads, etc.
Posting on the web is not the same thing as having a table on the side of the road with a sign that says "free." By posting on a website, you let people look at your stuff, make a copy for personal use/commentary, etc. You don't give up ownership (i.e. copyright.)
Huh? So what? I can't legally redistribute a Walt Disney movie with the disclaimer "oh, by the way, this is copyright by Disney."
Great books, but way out of the genre
on
Harry Potter Wins Hugo
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I love the HP books, but a Hugo? Look at the previous winners: all are hard sci-fi:
2000 A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
1999 To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
1998 Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
1997 Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1996 The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
1995 Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1994 Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
1992 Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1990 Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
1989 Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh
1988 The Uplift War, by David Brin
1987 Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
1986 Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
1985 Neuromancer, by William Gibson
1984 Startide Rising, by David Brin
1983 Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
1982 Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
1981 The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge
1980 The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke
1979 Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre
1978 Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
1976 The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
1975 The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
1973 The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
1972 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
1971 Ringworld, by Larry Niven
1970 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
1968 Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
1966...And Call Me Conrad, by Roger Zelazny; Dune, by Frank Herbert
1965 The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
1964 Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
1963 The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
1962 Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
1960 Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
1959 A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
1958 The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber
1957 No Award
1956 Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
1955 They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton (currently sold as The Forever Machine)
1954 No Award
1953 The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
You're looking at it the wrong way, I think. Charity dinners are not a way to reward donors, but rather to serve two other purposes:
First, they raise money (probably about $180 out of the $250.) Attendees know they could get a much better meal for $500 a couple by eating out at a real restaurant.
Secondly, big donors get a chance to meet the people behind the foundation, and judge for themselves if their money is being put to good use. I.e. does this foundation have smart, honest people working for it? If it looks good, donors may write a big check based on their belief that the money will be well spent.
I donated a decent sum to the EFF last year, but if I wanted my father to donate, I'd advise him to go the dinner: it's a painless way to get an education, especially because he has better things to do than read/.
He is crazy, and has zero chance of making it into space.
His efforts to date have used HPR hobby motors. His highest flight to date is 20,000ft: you could get to 30,000 with two of those Aerotech motors (the K700 reload as a booster, and the J570 reload as a sustainer), add two fiberglass tubes, two Acme fincans, a nose cone, and a Blacksky timer in the interstage coupler/reducer, and you've trashed his "record" for about $700.
Look at his "rocket" for fuck's sake: what is the point of that steep reduction behind the nose section, especially when it expands to about the same outside diameter at the booster base! I guess the "large penis shape" is a proven aerodynamic design. Who cares about all those annoyong wind tunnel tests that show a reducer of more than 10 degrees or so will just delaminate the airflow?
True, but for every Van Gogh, there are a thousand bad artists doing "new stuff."
It's hard to judge the conservatism of the critics without seeing the artist's work. My bet, however, is that if the work was really great, the issue of "computer art, is it really art?" wouldn't even come up. 99.9% of all college art major art is crap. Sorry, but that is the reality, the medium doesn't make a difference.
For example, defacing billboards is art when done well, however most billboard defacement is just junk. Same with graffitti, fighting robots, etc.
So far, the only good computer art I've seen is by the dude that did historical scenes in a "the sims" like setting. (was a/. article, but I can't find it.)
I don't mean to sounds too negative negative, but if you're in college and complaining that your medium is not treated seriously, I suggest you either ignore the critics and do your thing, or switch to acrylics, graduate with a B average, and look forward to a career as a Red Lobster manager.
I think the guy should have been let off with a stern lecture, but I can't say I wish him a ton of luck. My sympathies are with people trying to make the world a better place; not with the ones who are looking to see how close to the edge of legality they can come with their death threats. And I can't help wondering whether Canada might not have had room for one more individual who is facing genuine danger for his private beliefs instead of a Usenet troll skipping out on a misdemeanor charge.
KH's death threat was a "Tom Cruise Missile" joke, and the phrase "Destroy them utterly." "Destroy them utterly" was a direct quote from L Ron Hubbard, referring to dealing with enemies of his cult. KH has spent the last several years of his life trying to make the world a better place by exposing a vicious, money-grubbing cult.
No, I'm not a Scientologist. I've never met one and couldn't care less about them either way.
Maybe you should care - the COS is as famous as Cantor and Seigel for making the net a worse place. They started with an attempted rmgroup to silence their critics. It looks as if they then escalated to cancels of critic's posts, then auto-generated spam floods, cross-posts to Nazi hate groups, and now seem to be trying child porn floods of alt.religion.scientology (probably to later claim it is a haven for pedophiles.) Fear those that try to drown the free exchange of ideas.
Oh God... please, please, please do not listen to this guy. This type of thinking, which is borderline unethical, is what causes bubbles and dot com disasters.
Since when did math become unethical?
1. Current price is essentially irrelevant to the value of an option. The difference between the option price and the current price is the relevant measure.
The option price has nothing to do with it (I think you mean the strike price.) See
the math
2. Volatility is NOT good for stock options, or for stocks i n general--except in one, unethical scenario, i.e. when you absolutely no faith in your company and are waiting for the right moment to sell all your shares to suckers who don't know any better. When one exercises one's option, more often than not, given the AMT and other archaic tax rules, one will be paying TAX on the difference between the option price and the current stock price. If volatility is high, and the stock later drops (and volatility, of course, implies big movement in BOTH directions), you STILL foot the tax bill--resulting in the possibility of a huge LOSS on the option (say the
company's stock price dips into the penny stock range), but ALSO an ONEROUS tax bill (say, at the time of exercise, you made a killing -- but a killing in stock assets that are now worthless).
The price of an option clearly depends on volatility. Consider a option with a strike price of $10 on a stock trading at $10. If the stock has very low volatility (e.g. it will end at either $9.99 or $10.01) the option is clearly worth very little. If, on the other hand, the stock will end at either $1 or $100, then the option is worth quite a lot of money. This isn't ethics, it's math.
Why do these supposed 'experts' on 'Wall Street' always presume to know better than tenured faculty members at one of the best (if not the best) b-schools in the country? If anything, this fellow proves the Wharton profs' point -- people do NOT understand how options work....
I said the article sucked, I didn't say I'm an expert.
First, a quick recap recap as to what an option is: it is the right, but not the obligation, to buy stock at an agreed upon price (the strike price) some time in the future. Depending on the type of option, there may be a single date at which the owner must choose to exercise (buy at the price) or there may be a period in which the choice can be made (an American, rather than European, option.)
Obviously, an option has worth. The price depends on:
The current price of the company's stock (the higher the better).
The strike price of the option (the price you get to buy at, the lower the better)
The volatility of the stock (how much it bounces up and down, the more bounciness, the better.)
The time to expiration (the longer you have until you must buy or pass, the better.)
Interest rates (ignore these, they aren't really important.)
Black-Scholes is a simple formula to compute the price of an option given the above numbers. Because most employees can't immediately sell their options when given them, their options are obviously worth less than unencumbered options: the price should be less than the market price.
I.e. an option you can sell is worth more than an option you can't sell.
With this in mind, the article makes a couple of errors:
Given the timing of the survey, it is not surprising that stock prices of many of the respondents? firms had fallen during the previous year; the average one-year stock price return (volatility) preceding the survey went down 50%, and the average volatility was 98%.
The change in stock price (down) is not volatility: it is lower stock price. The fact that it happened implies volatility. A vol number of 98% is meaningless: 20% vol means a stock will go up or down by less than 20% two out of three years. 98% implies a distribution so non-normal (i.e. companies going out of business left and right, or growing like rabbits) as to be mere math junk.
The survey question was painfully confusing:
How much cash would your company have to offer you per option to return a fully vested stock option with seven years life remaining"? In other words, "what is that option worth to you?
Huh? I hardly understand that question, and I work on Wall Street. The rest of the aricle is equally painful.
One side note: employees may overvalue options because they know how well their company is doing. If they think it's doing well, they figure the options will be worth money. If it's imploding, they just quit and move to a new job (the survey doesn't see them.) This is classic survivorship bias.
The problem with your argument is that Communism never made anybody rich. The forces that caused the collapse of the USSR were economic more than political; they were just bankrupted by their "business model" of oppressive centralized control. People seem to have much more patience with repression than with starvation,
and I'm not seeing too many economic problems over at MS.
I think that's partially right: the problem with communism was more that it didn't make the right people rich. By allowing only politicians to get rich (i.e. have the perks of society,) you disenfranchise many of your most talented citizens. Microsoft has always been a very talent-based organization, and this has allowed them to prosper (they hired smart geeks when geeks were very unfashionable, and really believed in talent over schooling/family, etc.) Organizations seem to die rapidly when people
see that the organization's goals and their's are not aligned
when they have a choice of going elsewhere.
As long as Microsoft continues to shower riches on the employees that do well, I don't think they'll have a problem.
MS will probably collapse in time, as do most huge organizations, but it probably won't be because they're evil. It will probably be more like a shift in the economic
climate, such as the one that did in the great rail companies.
I think two other scenarios are more likely:
Bill Gates leaves. The power vacuum is filled by politicians and sycophants. Employees see that talent and hard work are less important than politics.
Microsoft uses lawsuits and the courts to such an extent that employees feel their technical work is less important than the business/legal side.
Both these situations might cause the firm to collapse, and if it does, the collapse might to surprisingly rapid.
That's nothing... the real anagram is:
LEONARD F WHEAT = THIS IS REAL, DAMNIT
Actually, this is what I call a "3/10 anagram," but the point still stands.
This is a case of companies that are more to be pitied than censured: Real, AOL, and Norton fighting MS. All firms involved are tied to the closed-source, proprietary formats, customer tie-in model of doing business. Who really cares what the outcome of this is? I will either get Microsoft streaming media or Real streaming media... whats the difference?
Real's CEO (Rob Glaser) is an ex-Microsoft VP. His business behavior is classic Microsoft (proprietary formats, octopus-like software that grabs various parts of your PC, spyware reporting to RealNetworks' servers, lawsuits galore.)
AOL is running the closed network, constantly breaking interoperability of Chat, etc.
Norton is marginalized, and basically was making a living off Microsoft's bugs (e.g. disk recovery software.) Eventually, MS manages to produce a somewhat stable product: game over.
While I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I don't see this battle affecting me: I only use Windows for games. It will affect my mom, but only to the extent that the out-of-box OS she uses will have a few more features. My dad (68 years old,) will probably switch to Linux soon, because he needs more automatic task scheduling and customization than Windows gives him.
The keys are exchanged between the transmitter and receiver (i.e. the hardware devices.) If you write a "receiver" (e.g. a Linux DVD viewer,) that "borrows" a secret key, that key will be declared compromised. The next time you player any media that lists the key as compromised (e.g. a new release movie,) the DVD player will see the revoke, and refuse to send *any* content to your viewer in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
So, even if they have a phone number in their melody database, you don't infringe if you dial that number, because you created the melody independently.
So some people complained that Doom, etc, were murder simulators. Everyone missed the fact that Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc, are probably the real murder simulators. A terrorist organization can now train a person to fly a big jet well enough to hit a building. Maybe not taking off and landing, but the easy flying skills are easily attainable.
No pilot, even with a gun at his head, is going to hit the TWC rather than the Hudson river.
This is really, really, scary.
It's sad, but I've seen a lot of ex-dotcommers looking for jobs recently.
The good ones just sit down and show their skills. We talk about a real job versus returning to school, etc.
The bad ones explain that they were a CEO/CTO, whatever, and want an equivalent job at our "real" company. We try to keep to a straight face while we explain that, if they are hired, they will have the title of "ultra-junior hire," and will be reporting to a person that left school a year or two before them (but who actually put the effort into learning about a real business.)
The real entrepeneurs aren't returning to school... they're getting decent jobs with good advancement possibilites right now. It's the poseurs that took a flier on cheap VC capital who are slinking back to an education on their parents' money.
This is a hard position to defend... if a thumbnail (lower resolution) image is copyright free, this implies that I can, for example, release a VHS version of a DVD and be immune from copyright law.
You, an individual, have a right to save it and view it later. The issue is about a company that saves your image and redistributes it while possibly making profits on banner ads, etc.
Posting on the web is not the same thing as having a table on the side of the road with a sign that says "free." By posting on a website, you let people look at your stuff, make a copy for personal use/commentary, etc. You don't give up ownership (i.e. copyright.)
Huh? So what? I can't legally redistribute a Walt Disney movie with the disclaimer "oh, by the way, this is copyright by Disney."
I love the HP books, but a Hugo? Look at the previous winners: all are hard sci-fi:
...And Call Me Conrad, by Roger Zelazny; Dune, by Frank Herbert
2000 A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
1999 To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
1998 Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
1997 Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1996 The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
1995 Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1994 Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
1992 Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
1990 Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
1989 Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh
1988 The Uplift War, by David Brin
1987 Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
1986 Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
1985 Neuromancer, by William Gibson
1984 Startide Rising, by David Brin
1983 Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
1982 Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh
1981 The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge
1980 The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke
1979 Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre
1978 Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
1976 The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
1975 The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
1973 The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
1972 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
1971 Ringworld, by Larry Niven
1970 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
1968 Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
1966
1965 The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
1964 Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
1963 The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
1962 Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
1960 Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
1959 A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
1958 The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber
1957 No Award
1956 Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein
1955 They'd Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton (currently sold as The Forever Machine)
1954 No Award
1953 The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
The Structure And Interpretation of Computer Programs
WTF! Is the house selling advertising space in its reports?
First, they raise money (probably about $180 out of the $250.) Attendees know they could get a much better meal for $500 a couple by eating out at a real restaurant.
Secondly, big donors get a chance to meet the people behind the foundation, and judge for themselves if their money is being put to good use. I.e. does this foundation have smart, honest people working for it? If it looks good, donors may write a big check based on their belief that the money will be well spent.
I donated a decent sum to the EFF last year, but if I wanted my father to donate, I'd advise him to go the dinner: it's a painless way to get an education, especially because he has better things to do than read /.
So much of fast calculation is just knowing useful transforms (e.g. Pi seconds is a nanocentury.)
b) Steve Bennett is a self-aggrandizing loon.
Probably 53 miles, set by Reaction Research Society in 1996.
His efforts to date have used HPR hobby motors. His highest flight to date is 20,000ft: you could get to 30,000 with two of those Aerotech motors (the K700 reload as a booster, and the J570 reload as a sustainer), add two fiberglass tubes, two Acme fincans, a nose cone, and a Blacksky timer in the interstage coupler/reducer, and you've trashed his "record" for about $700.
Look at his "rocket" for fuck's sake: what is the point of that steep reduction behind the nose section, especially when it expands to about the same outside diameter at the booster base! I guess the "large penis shape" is a proven aerodynamic design. Who cares about all those annoyong wind tunnel tests that show a reducer of more than 10 degrees or so will just delaminate the airflow?
It's hard to judge the conservatism of the critics without seeing the artist's work. My bet, however, is that if the work was really great, the issue of "computer art, is it really art?" wouldn't even come up. 99.9% of all college art major art is crap. Sorry, but that is the reality, the medium doesn't make a difference.
For example, defacing billboards is art when done well, however most billboard defacement is just junk. Same with graffitti, fighting robots, etc.
So far, the only good computer art I've seen is by the dude that did historical scenes in a "the sims" like setting. (was a /. article, but I can't find it.)
I don't mean to sounds too negative negative, but if you're in college and complaining that your medium is not treated seriously, I suggest you either ignore the critics and do your thing, or switch to acrylics, graduate with a B average, and look forward to a career as a Red Lobster manager.
KH's death threat was a "Tom Cruise Missile" joke, and the phrase "Destroy them utterly." "Destroy them utterly" was a direct quote from L Ron Hubbard, referring to dealing with enemies of his cult. KH has spent the last several years of his life trying to make the world a better place by exposing a vicious, money-grubbing cult.
No, I'm not a Scientologist. I've never met one and couldn't care less about them either way.
Maybe you should care - the COS is as famous as Cantor and Seigel for making the net a worse place. They started with an attempted rmgroup to silence their critics. It looks as if they then escalated to cancels of critic's posts, then auto-generated spam floods, cross-posts to Nazi hate groups, and now seem to be trying child porn floods of alt.religion.scientology (probably to later claim it is a haven for pedophiles.) Fear those that try to drown the free exchange of ideas.
Since when did math become unethical?
1. Current price is essentially irrelevant to the value of an option. The difference between the option price and the current price is the relevant measure.
The option price has nothing to do with it (I think you mean the strike price.) See the math
2. Volatility is NOT good for stock options, or for stocks i n general--except in one, unethical scenario, i.e. when you absolutely no faith in your company and are waiting for the right moment to sell all your shares to suckers who don't know any better. When one exercises one's option, more often than not, given the AMT and other archaic tax rules, one will be paying TAX on the difference between the option price and the current stock price. If volatility is high, and the stock later drops (and volatility, of course, implies big movement in BOTH directions), you STILL foot the tax bill--resulting in the possibility of a huge LOSS on the option (say the company's stock price dips into the penny stock range), but ALSO an ONEROUS tax bill (say, at the time of exercise, you made a killing -- but a killing in stock assets that are now worthless).
The price of an option clearly depends on volatility. Consider a option with a strike price of $10 on a stock trading at $10. If the stock has very low volatility (e.g. it will end at either $9.99 or $10.01) the option is clearly worth very little. If, on the other hand, the stock will end at either $1 or $100, then the option is worth quite a lot of money. This isn't ethics, it's math.
Why do these supposed 'experts' on 'Wall Street' always presume to know better than tenured faculty members at one of the best (if not the best) b-schools in the country? If anything, this fellow proves the Wharton profs' point -- people do NOT understand how options work....
I said the article sucked, I didn't say I'm an expert.
Obviously, an option has worth. The price depends on:
Black-Scholes is a simple formula to compute the price of an option given the above numbers. Because most employees can't immediately sell their options when given them, their options are obviously worth less than unencumbered options: the price should be less than the market price. I.e. an option you can sell is worth more than an option you can't sell.
With this in mind, the article makes a couple of errors:
Given the timing of the survey, it is not surprising that stock prices of many of the respondents? firms had fallen during the previous year; the average one-year stock price return (volatility) preceding the survey went down 50%, and the average volatility was 98%.
The change in stock price (down) is not volatility: it is lower stock price. The fact that it happened implies volatility. A vol number of 98% is meaningless: 20% vol means a stock will go up or down by less than 20% two out of three years. 98% implies a distribution so non-normal (i.e. companies going out of business left and right, or growing like rabbits) as to be mere math junk.
The survey question was painfully confusing:
How much cash would your company have to offer you per option to return a fully vested stock option with seven years life remaining"? In other words, "what is that option worth to you?
Huh? I hardly understand that question, and I work on Wall Street. The rest of the aricle is equally painful.
One side note: employees may overvalue options because they know how well their company is doing. If they think it's doing well, they figure the options will be worth money. If it's imploding, they just quit and move to a new job (the survey doesn't see them.) This is classic survivorship bias.
I think that's partially right: the problem with communism was more that it didn't make the right people rich. By allowing only politicians to get rich (i.e. have the perks of society,) you disenfranchise many of your most talented citizens. Microsoft has always been a very talent-based organization, and this has allowed them to prosper (they hired smart geeks when geeks were very unfashionable, and really believed in talent over schooling/family, etc.) Organizations seem to die rapidly when people
- see that the organization's goals and their's are not aligned
- when they have a choice of going elsewhere.
As long as Microsoft continues to shower riches on the employees that do well, I don't think they'll have a problem.MS will probably collapse in time, as do most huge organizations, but it probably won't be because they're evil. It will probably be more like a shift in the economic climate, such as the one that did in the great rail companies.
I think two other scenarios are more likely:
Bill Gates leaves. The power vacuum is filled by politicians and sycophants. Employees see that talent and hard work are less important than politics.
Microsoft uses lawsuits and the courts to such an extent that employees feel their technical work is less important than the business/legal side.
Both these situations might cause the firm to collapse, and if it does, the collapse might to surprisingly rapid.
That's nothing... the real anagram is: LEONARD F WHEAT = THIS IS REAL, DAMNIT Actually, this is what I call a "3/10 anagram," but the point still stands.
C'mon /., half the articles are about copyright vs trademark vs patent. Try to at least get this right!
I thought Rainz assassinated him a while ago.
Probably never.
This is a case of companies that are more to be pitied than censured: Real, AOL, and Norton fighting MS. All firms involved are tied to the closed-source, proprietary formats, customer tie-in model of doing business. Who really cares what the outcome of this is? I will either get Microsoft streaming media or Real streaming media... whats the difference?
Real's CEO (Rob Glaser) is an ex-Microsoft VP. His business behavior is classic Microsoft (proprietary formats, octopus-like software that grabs various parts of your PC, spyware reporting to RealNetworks' servers, lawsuits galore.)
AOL is running the closed network, constantly breaking interoperability of Chat, etc.
Norton is marginalized, and basically was making a living off Microsoft's bugs (e.g. disk recovery software.) Eventually, MS manages to produce a somewhat stable product: game over.
While I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I don't see this battle affecting me: I only use Windows for games. It will affect my mom, but only to the extent that the out-of-box OS she uses will have a few more features. My dad (68 years old,) will probably switch to Linux soon, because he needs more automatic task scheduling and customization than Windows gives him.
I'll give you a kilo of carbon and nitrogen. How much would it cost you to make one CD-RW disk?
The keys are exchanged between the transmitter and receiver (i.e. the hardware devices.) If you write a "receiver" (e.g. a Linux DVD viewer,) that "borrows" a secret key, that key will be declared compromised. The next time you player any media that lists the key as compromised (e.g. a new release movie,) the DVD player will see the revoke, and refuse to send *any* content to your viewer in the future.