Unfortuantely, you're saying that any business model that involves "giving away the razors and making money off the blades" is doomed.
No, I'm saying that any business that assumes that they can make their money in such a way is taking a BIG risk, sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not. If it does not, you shouldn't be able to use lawyers to punish people for your failure.
If a E*Trade wanted to give me a free device that would let me trade stocks from anywhere, with the agreement that I only use it with their service, they should be able to. And their doing so should be protected from abuse.
If you sign an agreement to only use Widget X with service Y, then you'd have a point. In this case, as I understand it, the scanners were handed out willy nilly and the only agreement was presented to the user as s/he installed the windows software. If you didn't install that software then you didn't have to sign any agreement.
If you need to sell the hardware below cost to hit your $199 price point, knowing you'll make the money back later, then you can't afford to lose sales to people who just want to take advantage of you.
You use that phrase as if there is a malicious intent. If you offer a good product at a good price, but someone else has a different use in mind, even one which will cost you money, that's YOUR FAULT for depending on a house of cards for your income.
Should AOL and earthlink be able to sue NetZero or Bluelight because their free internet service undermined the revenue streams that AOL's business plan was targetting? In two words, FUCK NO!
What's next, will stenographers or secretaries sue IBM and Dragon because their voice recognition software threatens their ability to earn a living?
Non-digtal products are not protected by the DMCA. The cuecat software is.
Just about every car on the market has a computer of some type inside of it, to control ignition timing, air to fuel ratios and what not. Since these computers run software they could try to extend that to cover the rest of the car.
You can take the scanner itself apart all day long with a number 1 screw driver until you get bored, but if you reverse engineer the software the cuecat use, it is illegal since the software is protected by the DMCA.
Is it possible that they could have figured out how to use the scanner without using their software? Did they do so? Just because someone doesn't like what you're doing, doesn't make it illegal.
Their business model is one I support, and one that I could see growing quite quickly - the one where you give people some physical thing that ties them to the service that pays for it. I don't think that it's a bad business model - but it needs legal protection because it would be very easy to destroy it.
No business has the right to anyone's money. If some company chooses to give away some widget because they think that you can't use it without paying for their service, that's a gamble.
As we all know, not every gamble pays off. There should be no additional legal protection for those who choose a risky business model. Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
No, they're giving it away. If they wanted to rent it, then fine let them rent it. The way things stand they are giving it away. It becomes YOUR scanner, if you wanted to, you could drop it off a cliff or run it over with your car, it is YOURS.
I don't think it's your right to destroy their business.
They don't have any RIGHT to have their business model succeed. They bet on the wrong horse, tough luck for them.
Sure, the device isn't their business, but it's a vital (and vulnerable) part.
A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, so too is a business plan. If they made a bad assumption about how the devices could be used, then that is their fault and their problem. As long as nobody stole and code from them, there is nothing questionable here.
Why they think that some third party developing a compatible driver is a violation of their IP. Does this mean that Ford, GM and Chrysler could sue Haynes and Chilton for publishing manuals on the repair of the vehicles?
In order to publish such a manual, one has to "reverse engineer" the car in question. Haynes even brags that every manual is "based on a complete teardown and rebuild" of the car that it's for.
And, well, saying that fantasy and science fiction need to be totally realistic seems to me to miss the point.
Not totally, but to some degree. For example of Conan, or Solomon Kane were to charge the bad guys with an AK-47 or a SAW that he found in some mystical lair, that would pretty much suck ass.
Titanium is lighter than steel, that's why eyeglass frames are often made from it. My frames are Titanium and they're lighter than the steel+plastic ones that I wore as a kid. Granted, modern plastics are lighter than those of 10/15 years ago, but even the empty frames of my old glasses were heaver than the titanium ones that I have now.
Heard of Joan of Arc? Sure. Can I be positive about how much I've heard is accurate? No. Even if it is, does one exception change the fact that combat has historically been a male domain?
Does it strike anyone else as an odd assumption US citizens only have rights if they are written in the constitution?
This assumption is only made by those who wish to to take them away, and those stupid enough to buy the catch all boogey man arguement. 'If we don't do X criminals will hurt OUR CHILDREN' blah blah blah...
Let me remind you of a little something...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I'm not talking about Epson. I'd remember if it was Epson, I'm talking about that French company. I believe it was Nomai. They also produced a 500MB removeable drive that was like 1/2 the price of a Jaz.
Remember a few years back when someone (Nomai I think) started to make disks and/or drives that were compatible with the Zip? Iomega got really pissed and sued them left and right.
I think that Nomai wom in court, but in the marketplace Iomage kicked their ass. Nomai's "Super Floppy" was just too cheap for people to trust I guess...
Bottom-Feeding Scumsukers: Lawyers for the recording and motion-picture industries
If you're looking for something to blame on lawyers, there are plenty of examples, but this isn't one of them. Blame lawyers for the tobacco lawsuits, blame lawyers for the gun industry lawsuits, blame lawyers for the whole "I'll sue you if you have two cents more than I do" mentality.
The MPAA and RIAA issues are completely different. Blame corporate greed. These lawyers are just hired guns, they're not the ones who initiated this. The private on the battlefield is not the one whom you blame for the war, it's the government of his country. How do you beat an army? Amass your own ary and outwit the enemy. We need good lawyers on the right side of this. We need good lawyers who can beat the suits at their own game. I once heard a comedian talk about why black people were so interested in the OJ Simpson case. He said that it wasn't because of concern about OJ, it was because it was great to see Johnnie Cochran beat the white lawyers at their own game.
You're assuming that all radio waves are intentionally created for communication. Let us look at nuclear explosions. The EMP created by a nuclear explosion could be detected. Hopefully not every race to have ever existed is so warlike as to have blown themselves to bits with these devices, but no doubt as technology progresses the use of nuclear energy is going ot become more necessary for a civilization to thrive.
Hydrogen, most likely the most abundant substance in the unverse would provide an almost endless supply of energy. Nuclear energy, or some other type that we do not yet understand, has to be the fuel source of choice for an advanced civilization. High energy requirements of technology and all.
Unless we're abnormally slow in our development, it's not unreasonable to conclude that a civilization would be detectable from a radiologicla standpoint for several hundred out to several thousand years.
Well the problem is that a judge WOULD forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open source code in any program ever.
Not possible. No European government would give a good God damn about what Judge Fucknutz in Podunk Idaho rules. No Judge in the US has the jurisdiction to ever compell anyone outside of the country to obey him/her.
And then all of a sudden a new precident is set that screws over open source development. Welcome to the wonderful world of the commercial internet.
You can't win a war by runing away. Look at what heppened in the US during the 1960s. What good would have been done if the black people in the southern states of the US had just sat back and refused to do anything?
A commercial internet is what worries you? What do you think we have now?
Very good point. Since DeCSS source is available (I'm assuming GPL) all one would have to do is change the code in some minor way like adding a "screwthempaa:" somewhere inside of it.
Poof new program. The MPAA then has to pay their lawyers to fight everyone again to forbid linking to CUSS. If they win against CUSS, then we produce REmoveCSS. RECSS is a whole new battle. I'd like to see a judge try to forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open sourced code in any program ever.
The DOJ is going after them for violation of antitrust laws, the class action lawsuit is about holding them accountable for the negative impact that their products have had on consumers.
Two cases with related issues behind them, but still separate and distinct.
I remember hearing that CD-ROMs of commercial manufacture only have a lifespan of approx 100 years. CDR and CD-RW only have a lifespan of 5-7 after burning. How are these going to be useful in 50000 years? Coasters of the future?
In the three in a half years since they bought next, and all of the work that they did on that OS, they could have added many of these features to Be's OS.
If six different Linux distros are able to support the Mac, what's Be's problem?
Six different distros, one kernel. It's the kernel that does all of the work, the distro is just clothes for the laborman.
Be couldn't have incorporated any of the open source code from the linux kernel without opening their entire OS.
Be's engineers kept on trucking, they released a version of their or for x86 and would still be kicking ass on the Mac is Apple hadn't started withholding specs from them.
Instead of buying next(fuck you Steve Jobs, I'm not playing the little "e" game). Apple should have bought Be. If they had, they'd have the "modern" OS that everyone keeps bitching about 3 years ago.
I use current Apple equipment, I have 3 Macs and one clone, but screw apple from now on.
You're stuck with ADB, and the mini DIN serial ports, when USB offers you a ton more products, non-hardware specific?
There was nothing wrong with ADB or standard serial. Why do I need 1.5mbps to use a 56k modem?
Why does USB make more sense than SCSI for external storage?
And this saves the customer money, no? The ability to NOT have to see four Mac products on the shelf? same with firewire? I have five Macs, from an SE30 to a G3 400 PB, and i've been more impressed with a Mac's viability than the changes (some welcome, some not) made to the platform.
Saves the customer money? What kind of ass backwards thinking can produce such an answer? If I want USB I'll buy a PCI card for my PCI powermac. Problem solved. Firewire, same deal. By making the computers easier to make peripherals for only allows garbage products to hit the market. Like the winstation USB superdrive.(wretch!) Or the cheap ass scanner du jour.
You were kid in third grade that was upset when those one or two kids up front caught on faster and pushed the class along, weren't you?
Actually I was the kid in the back of the class who had to find a way to occupy myself during that period of time after I'd learned the material and I had to wait for the three kids who had to have the same old information dressed up in spiffy new clothes.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortuantely, you're saying that any business model that involves "giving away the razors and making money off the blades" is doomed.
No, I'm saying that any business that assumes that they can make their money in such a way is taking a BIG risk, sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not. If it does not, you shouldn't be able to use lawyers to punish people for your failure.
If a E*Trade wanted to give me a free device that would let me trade stocks from anywhere, with the agreement that I only use it with their service, they should be able to. And their doing so should be protected from abuse.
If you sign an agreement to only use Widget X with service Y, then you'd have a point. In this case, as I understand it, the scanners were handed out willy nilly and the only agreement was presented to the user as s/he installed the windows software. If you didn't install that software then you didn't have to sign any agreement.
If you need to sell the hardware below cost to hit your $199 price point, knowing you'll make the money back later, then you can't afford to lose sales to people who just want to take advantage of you.
You use that phrase as if there is a malicious intent. If you offer a good product at a good price, but someone else has a different use in mind, even one which will cost you money, that's YOUR FAULT for depending on a house of cards for your income.
Should AOL and earthlink be able to sue NetZero or Bluelight because their free internet service undermined the revenue streams that AOL's business plan was targetting? In two words, FUCK NO!
What's next, will stenographers or secretaries sue IBM and Dragon because their voice recognition software threatens their ability to earn a living?
LK
Non-digtal products are not protected by the DMCA. The cuecat software is.
Just about every car on the market has a computer of some type inside of it, to control ignition timing, air to fuel ratios and what not. Since these computers run software they could try to extend that to cover the rest of the car.
You can take the scanner itself apart all day long with a number 1 screw driver until you get bored, but if you reverse engineer the software the cuecat use, it is illegal since the software is protected by the DMCA.
Is it possible that they could have figured out how to use the scanner without using their software? Did they do so? Just because someone doesn't like what you're doing, doesn't make it illegal.
LK
Their business model is one I support, and one that I could see growing quite quickly - the one where you give people some physical thing that ties them to the service that pays for it. I don't think that it's a bad business model - but it needs legal protection because it would be very easy to destroy it.
No business has the right to anyone's money. If some company chooses to give away some widget because they think that you can't use it without paying for their service, that's a gamble.
As we all know, not every gamble pays off. There should be no additional legal protection for those who choose a risky business model. Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
It's like their renting you the device, not giving it to you - the price of the rental is that you pay them for it's use.
No, they're giving it away. If they wanted to rent it, then fine let them rent it. The way things stand they are giving it away. It becomes YOUR scanner, if you wanted to, you could drop it off a cliff or run it over with your car, it is YOURS.
I don't think it's your right to destroy their business.
They don't have any RIGHT to have their business model succeed. They bet on the wrong horse, tough luck for them.
Sure, the device isn't their business, but it's a vital (and vulnerable) part.
A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, so too is a business plan. If they made a bad assumption about how the devices could be used, then that is their fault and their problem. As long as nobody stole and code from them, there is nothing questionable here.
LK
Why they think that some third party developing a compatible driver is a violation of their IP. Does this mean that Ford, GM and Chrysler could sue Haynes and Chilton for publishing manuals on the repair of the vehicles?
In order to publish such a manual, one has to "reverse engineer" the car in question. Haynes even brags that every manual is "based on a complete teardown and rebuild" of the car that it's for.
LK
And, well, saying that fantasy and science fiction need to be totally realistic seems to me to miss the point.
Not totally, but to some degree. For example of Conan, or Solomon Kane were to charge the bad guys with an AK-47 or a SAW that he found in some mystical lair, that would pretty much suck ass.
LK
Titanium is lighter than steel, that's why eyeglass frames are often made from it. My frames are Titanium and they're lighter than the steel+plastic ones that I wore as a kid. Granted, modern plastics are lighter than those of 10/15 years ago, but even the empty frames of my old glasses were heaver than the titanium ones that I have now.
LK
Never heard of Joan Of Arc?
Heard of Joan of Arc? Sure. Can I be positive about how much I've heard is accurate? No. Even if it is, does one exception change the fact that combat has historically been a male domain?
LK
Does it strike anyone else as an odd assumption US citizens only have rights if they are written in the constitution?
This assumption is only made by those who wish to to take them away, and those stupid enough to buy the catch all boogey man arguement. 'If we don't do X criminals will hurt OUR CHILDREN' blah blah blah...
Let me remind you of a little something...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
That's the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution.
LK
I thought I learned that there are severe punishments for doing that.
Unless you can get all of your friends, coworkers, and underlings to tell everyone that it was "all about sex" and then you'll get off scott free.
LK
I'm not talking about Epson. I'd remember if it was Epson, I'm talking about that French company. I believe it was Nomai. They also produced a 500MB removeable drive that was like 1/2 the price of a Jaz.
Yes, that's it. Unless I'm mistaken it was Nomai.
LK
Remember a few years back when someone (Nomai I think) started to make disks and/or drives that were compatible with the Zip? Iomega got really pissed and sued them left and right.
I think that Nomai wom in court, but in the marketplace Iomage kicked their ass. Nomai's "Super Floppy" was just too cheap for people to trust I guess...
LK
Bottom-Feeding Scumsukers: Lawyers for the recording and motion-picture industries
If you're looking for something to blame on lawyers, there are plenty of examples, but this isn't one of them. Blame lawyers for the tobacco lawsuits, blame lawyers for the gun industry lawsuits, blame lawyers for the whole "I'll sue you if you have two cents more than I do" mentality.
The MPAA and RIAA issues are completely different. Blame corporate greed. These lawyers are just hired guns, they're not the ones who initiated this. The private on the battlefield is not the one whom you blame for the war, it's the government of his country. How do you beat an army? Amass your own ary and outwit the enemy. We need good lawyers on the right side of this. We need good lawyers who can beat the suits at their own game. I once heard a comedian talk about why black people were so interested in the OJ Simpson case. He said that it wasn't because of concern about OJ, it was because it was great to see Johnnie Cochran beat the white lawyers at their own game.
Remember that, we can win this.
LK
You're assuming that all radio waves are intentionally created for communication. Let us look at nuclear explosions. The EMP created by a nuclear explosion could be detected. Hopefully not every race to have ever existed is so warlike as to have blown themselves to bits with these devices, but no doubt as technology progresses the use of nuclear energy is going ot become more necessary for a civilization to thrive.
Hydrogen, most likely the most abundant substance in the unverse would provide an almost endless supply of energy. Nuclear energy, or some other type that we do not yet understand, has to be the fuel source of choice for an advanced civilization. High energy requirements of technology and all.
Unless we're abnormally slow in our development, it's not unreasonable to conclude that a civilization would be detectable from a radiologicla standpoint for several hundred out to several thousand years.
LK
Given the appalling ignorance regarding computers the populace, I don't see how any of them are harmed.
Most of them probably don't know HOW they were harmed, but that doesn't mean that they weren't.
100 years ago people didn't "KNOW" that cigarettes were harming them, but they were.
LK
Well the problem is that a judge WOULD forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open source code in any program ever.
Not possible. No European government would give a good God damn about what Judge Fucknutz in Podunk Idaho rules. No Judge in the US has the jurisdiction to ever compell anyone outside of the country to obey him/her.
And then all of a sudden a new precident is set that screws over open source development. Welcome to the wonderful world of the commercial internet.
You can't win a war by runing away. Look at what heppened in the US during the 1960s. What good would have been done if the black people in the southern states of the US had just sat back and refused to do anything?
A commercial internet is what worries you? What do you think we have now?
LK
Very good point. Since DeCSS source is available (I'm assuming GPL) all one would have to do is change the code in some minor way like adding a "screwthempaa:" somewhere inside of it.
Poof new program. The MPAA then has to pay their lawyers to fight everyone again to forbid linking to CUSS. If they win against CUSS, then we produce REmoveCSS. RECSS is a whole new battle. I'd like to see a judge try to forbid everyone on the planet from ever using open sourced code in any program ever.
LK
Windows 98 retails for $99.
Windows 98 upgrade retails for $99. Windows 98 sells for ~$179.
Why can't we just let the doj handle this?
The DOJ is going after them for violation of antitrust laws, the class action lawsuit is about holding them accountable for the negative impact that their products have had on consumers.
Two cases with related issues behind them, but still separate and distinct.
LK
I remember hearing that CD-ROMs of commercial manufacture only have a lifespan of approx 100 years. CDR and CD-RW only have a lifespan of 5-7 after burning. How are these going to be useful in 50000 years? Coasters of the future?
LK
Disk Setup tool now includes options for Unix partitions and "recommended LinuxPPC" setup.
It has for years. A/UX anyone? Big deal.
LK
In the three in a half years since they bought next, and all of the work that they did on that OS, they could have added many of these features to Be's OS.
If six different Linux distros are able to support the Mac, what's Be's problem?
Six different distros, one kernel. It's the kernel that does all of the work, the distro is just clothes for the laborman.
Be couldn't have incorporated any of the open source code from the linux kernel without opening their entire OS.
LK
Be, couldn't have incorporated open source developments into their OS and remained proprietary.
LK
Be's engineers kept on trucking, they released a version of their or for x86 and would still be kicking ass on the Mac is Apple hadn't started withholding specs from them.
Instead of buying next(fuck you Steve Jobs, I'm not playing the little "e" game). Apple should have bought Be. If they had, they'd have the "modern" OS that everyone keeps bitching about 3 years ago.
I use current Apple equipment, I have 3 Macs and one clone, but screw apple from now on.
LK
You're stuck with ADB, and the mini DIN serial ports, when USB offers you a ton more products, non-hardware specific?
There was nothing wrong with ADB or standard serial. Why do I need 1.5mbps to use a 56k modem?
Why does USB make more sense than SCSI for external storage?
And this saves the customer money, no? The ability to NOT have to see four Mac products on the shelf? same with firewire? I have five Macs, from an SE30 to a G3 400 PB, and i've been more impressed with a Mac's viability than the changes (some welcome, some not) made to the platform.
Saves the customer money? What kind of ass backwards thinking can produce such an answer? If I want USB I'll buy a PCI card for my PCI powermac. Problem solved. Firewire, same deal. By making the computers easier to make peripherals for only allows garbage products to hit the market. Like the winstation USB superdrive.(wretch!) Or the cheap ass scanner du jour.
You were kid in third grade that was upset when those one or two kids up front caught on faster and pushed the class along, weren't you?
Actually I was the kid in the back of the class who had to find a way to occupy myself during that period of time after I'd learned the material and I had to wait for the three kids who had to have the same old information dressed up in spiffy new clothes.
LK