This is slightly off topic (sorry), but on the topic of the legal status of links, there is a story over at ZDNet about our friends suing over links to DCSS. It don't seem to matter about right or wrong no more, just the size of your legal department...
It appears that someone read the contract. Now lets try for the home run:
By viewing this text you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this contract. This contract stipulates that you may not view this post with any money remaining in your pocket without immediately putting it in an envelope and mailing it to me.
Contracts imply the exchage of consideration. When no consideration is given, no contract exists...
If you desire to restrict the linking of content to a site, you do what the NYT did, have a login to the site. This keeps out spiders, bots, and other sorts of randoms (not really, but it at least declares the intent to do so), while allowing access to their content. A link past the front door on such a page is dubious.
However, if you do not impose such a lion at the gate, then you have declared your urls to be available to the web by whatever means folks choose. Its like saying that I can't buy a copy of a newspaper and post an interior page on a (paper and tack) bulliten board. Gee, so many of my book marks are "deep links". Is my bookmark file illegal? O well... When you can 't win by a legit means, litigate...
Good manners sez you don't link into someones site as part of your content (as opposed to a link to send them there), without some "By your leave". Now if we are going to legislate some manners, I have some manners employed by drivers near the "Big Pig" in Boston that I would like to have included;-)
That fiasco is/was one of a business plan that used a total loss leader for their internet service. As they used to say (in the chicken add) "Parts is parts." The underlying os is of no matter if you can get it cheaply enough to remove that and install your own...
So NOW you understand why Microsquish is not settling. They can string this thing out till doomsday. They regard legal as just another biz expense. Ethics, morals, etc. be damned...
Quicktime is an Apple product, but there are a number of codecs that can live in it Motion-Jpeg, DV, Cinepack, Sorenson, etc. etc, even Indeo. The best of these for the vast majority of folks (and the one I use when I do a quicktime movie for distribution) is the Sorenson 2.1 codec.
I have a feeling that the problem lies more with Sorenson than with Apple. Sorenson regards their product as proprietary and thus not open source. Though not as user grumpy a company as Heuris, they extract a fair amount of cash out of you to encode using it. Its the best on the block for video of this sort so I guess I can't blame them.
Re:Rambus Yields - Link to a disussion of problem
on
Intel Roadmap
·
· Score: 1
Why yields on Rambus have indeed gotten better, it is going to be a loooooooong time before they are reasonable. You can test the parts for basic function ok, but when you have to test the full 128 Meg module for speed, you have to have the whole puppy assembled with heat sink cement and all. One slow chip and the whole thing is slow, and you CAN'T tell beforehand, and you can't take it apart to replace that one part either. Gotta sell it as slow. Kingston reports yields of 50%, others as low as 10% for the full speed units. With crappy yields like that, the price is not comming down soon, if at all, on the high speed (and wasn't that why you wanted it in the first place?) units. Somehow, I think that with the price of double clock, folks will use that in their 820 chipsets. Indeed, there are some tests that have shown that Rambus actually UNDEPERFORMS a GX chipset pushed to 133. I don't own or short it, but be careful if you want to buy stock in that dog, sharkyextreme or no... Please remember that every once in a while Intel backs a real loser. Remember Bubble memory... My understanding is that Intel is going through the motions, but is going to keep their options open wrt Rambus.
The value of anything is the total sum of the capital (human, inhuman and otherwise) that has to be expended to repliicate the object within a reasonable amount of time. It does not matter how much anyone has spent previously, what matters is what you would have to spend now. The value of/. is similar to the value of Kellogg's cereals. There is a value in the "brand name" which is hard to replicate without the passage of time. This complicates things. Previous revenue streams are not terrible important. The biz model of the person doing the aquiring may have an entirely different "revenue" stream from what has previously prevailed.
Beats me. With the Althion 600 at 133 FSB and a street price of $166, they are going to have to sell this turkey way under $100 to get sales. Of course we have the arrogance factor on the part of Intel. Wanna commit Intellicide?
Hey folks. Why would Apple release Darwin for anything, much less a PC. The reason is APPS. Ask anyone why they don't use OSX Server, etc. and they will tell you that the apps aren't there. As open source for linux has demonstrated, having a Intel platform gets you apps written. Nuff said?
Please remember that this is Roman law and not English law that is in effect. Instead of innocent till proven guilty, it is guilty until proven innocent. Rather silly though. Information is the most fungible of things. Can't host in France? OK, get a isp in Tonga.
But why bother with an iMac
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
All due respect to these folks and all, but it would be useful to do a rack mount conversion of a real machine such as a 450 G4. Given the overall design with the nice access it has, it ought to be a piece of cake. It would be nice to see some "mil grade" servers out there.
The bios is in a socket. So even if you can't flash it to a new version within the machine, you should be able to do so outside of the case. Again, this may be how they go, but like the ide header, is only a small detrement to restoring their full cuntion. Musing on things in general, it seems to me likely that the i-openers are containerized and shipped across by boat. It would be highly unlikely that they could have reacted fast enough to mod the ones shipped out currently and have had them cross the Pacific. I could be wrong, but...
A posting at iopener-linux.net dated March 22 16:39, states that a number of folks who had ships done on March 21 have received un-modified machines. This raises the flag that the whole thing may be a pile of merde to support their stock price which has taken a hit and now trades 2$ under its ipo price. The ipo was monday, so I suspect that there are a large number of totally bs investors at this point.
There are really only two modifications that they could make to make it hard for the (sub)average hacker. One is to remove the ide header, the other is to get Award to modify the bios so that it could only boot from the SanDisk. I suspect that they will take the former route, if any since it is easy for the manufacturer of the boards just to leave out inserting the part. Many folks don't know which end of the soldering iron is hot anymore, so it will deter the more casual. Unfortunately, they (i-opener) have unfortunately failed to realize that by fighting these mods they are issuing a chalange to those inclined to mod them. I will guarantee modified post mod i-openers will be available a day or two after you can buy them at circuit city. Indeed, as soon as they become available, I will be buying one to crack it open just to see if I can get it to fly myself.
In many ways its a shame. If they had offered folks the option of buying these at (say) $500 a pop, they could make $100 a piece on them and there would be a reasonable demand for it. And hey, a 25% margin with no ad campaign isn't too bad a roi. The company I work for would gladly buy a number of them. Alternately, since my company would like to equip some of their employees with an inexpensive home machine to telecomute using cytrix or such, a modifiable machine to run the software combined with a reasonable term contract for the isp service would have also been of interest to them.
O well, I suppose its more than I can expect from the folks with a b-school degree to think logically and not be reactive.
There is a moderately informative article in the current Scientific American about the entire topic of brown drarfs. Recommended reading for those who are rusty on the topic.
Please remember that the source of Coca Cola was as a medicinal in the late 1800s that used the coca leaf (cocaine and all). It was later that it was a "soft" drink.
In the state of Massachusetts, if you buy anything from out of state and import it into the state you are legally required to file a Use Tax form and pay a Use Tax based on its value at the Sales Tax rate. It does not matter how you purchased it. It can be via the Web, while you were on vacation, via the tellephone, via a catalog, etc. You still owe the tax and are legally obliged to pay it. Needless to say, almost everyone in Massachusetts ignores it. What the compaint is is that, since all the folks in Massachusetts are scofflaws in this regard, they want to compel out of state merchants to collect their tax for them. As a sometime web merchant in Mass, I have an obligation to collect Mass tax on Mass sales. Since I do not derive any benefit from any of the other 49 states (as their citizen), I do not care to be their pro bono tax collector and have to file 49 additional forms and be familiar with 49 more state sales tax laws because their citizens are scofflaws.
Actually, the only thing that is hanging up faster G4 chips is production problems at Motorola. IBM already has 600 Mhz+ G4 processors ready to roll. Check out MacOsRumors for their March 6 story.
Answer is that they can't. This is obviously a fud manuver to keep more folks like Gateway from jumping ship and going with AMD. You gotta wonder what is going through Michael Dell's mind at a time like this though. If I were him, I might just want to keep my options open...
Slashdot Mirror
This is slightly off topic (sorry), but on the topic of the legal status of links, there is a story over at ZDNet about our friends suing over links to DCSS. It don't seem to matter about right or wrong no more, just the size of your legal department...
By viewing this text you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this contract. This contract stipulates that you may not view this post with any money remaining in your pocket without immediately putting it in an envelope and mailing it to me.
Contracts imply the exchage of consideration. When no consideration is given, no contract exists...
However, if you do not impose such a lion at the gate, then you have declared your urls to be available to the web by whatever means folks choose. Its like saying that I can't buy a copy of a newspaper and post an interior page on a (paper and tack) bulliten board. Gee, so many of my book marks are "deep links". Is my bookmark file illegal? O well... When you can 't win by a legit means, litigate...
Good manners sez you don't link into someones site as part of your content (as opposed to a link to send them there), without some "By your leave". Now if we are going to legislate some manners, I have some manners employed by drivers near the "Big Pig" in Boston that I would like to have included ;-)
That fiasco is/was one of a business plan that used a total loss leader for their internet service. As they used to say (in the chicken add) "Parts is parts." The underlying os is of no matter if you can get it cheaply enough to remove that and install your own...
So NOW you understand why Microsquish is not settling. They can string this thing out till doomsday. They regard legal as just another biz expense. Ethics, morals, etc. be damned...
Quicktime is an Apple product, but there are a number of codecs that can live in it Motion-Jpeg, DV, Cinepack, Sorenson, etc. etc, even Indeo. The best of these for the vast majority of folks (and the one I use when I do a quicktime movie for distribution) is the Sorenson 2.1 codec.
I have a feeling that the problem lies more with Sorenson than with Apple. Sorenson regards their product as proprietary and thus not open source. Though not as user grumpy a company as Heuris, they extract a fair amount of cash out of you to encode using it. Its the best on the block for video of this sort so I guess I can't blame them.
Sorry that I aqm replying to my own post, but I didn't have this url last night. Here is a link to a discussion of the Rambus yield/cost factor.
Why yields on Rambus have indeed gotten better, it is going to be a loooooooong time before they are reasonable. You can test the parts for basic function ok, but when you have to test the full 128 Meg module for speed, you have to have the whole puppy assembled with heat sink cement and all. One slow chip and the whole thing is slow, and you CAN'T tell beforehand, and you can't take it apart to replace that one part either. Gotta sell it as slow. Kingston reports yields of 50%, others as low as 10% for the full speed units. With crappy yields like that, the price is not comming down soon, if at all, on the high speed (and wasn't that why you wanted it in the first place?) units. Somehow, I think that with the price of double clock, folks will use that in their 820 chipsets. Indeed, there are some tests that have shown that Rambus actually UNDEPERFORMS a GX chipset pushed to 133. I don't own or short it, but be careful if you want to buy stock in that dog, sharkyextreme or no... Please remember that every once in a while Intel backs a real loser. Remember Bubble memory... My understanding is that Intel is going through the motions, but is going to keep their options open wrt Rambus.
The value of anything is the total sum of the capital (human, inhuman and otherwise) that has to be expended to repliicate the object within a reasonable amount of time. It does not matter how much anyone has spent previously, what matters is what you would have to spend now. The value of /. is similar to the value of Kellogg's cereals. There is a value in the "brand name" which is hard to replicate without the passage of time. This complicates things. Previous revenue streams are not terrible important. The biz model of the person doing the aquiring may have an entirely different "revenue" stream from what has previously prevailed.
Are the chickens included for geeking?
Beats me. With the Althion 600 at 133 FSB and a street price of $166, they are going to have to sell this turkey way under $100 to get sales. Of course we have the arrogance factor on the part of Intel. Wanna commit Intellicide?
Hey folks. Why would Apple release Darwin for anything, much less a PC. The reason is APPS. Ask anyone why they don't use OSX Server, etc. and they will tell you that the apps aren't there. As open source for linux has demonstrated, having a Intel platform gets you apps written. Nuff said?
Please remember that this is Roman law and not English law that is in effect. Instead of innocent till proven guilty, it is guilty until proven innocent. Rather silly though. Information is the most fungible of things. Can't host in France? OK, get a isp in Tonga.
All due respect to these folks and all, but it would be useful to do a rack mount conversion of a real machine such as a 450 G4. Given the overall design with the nice access it has, it ought to be a piece of cake. It would be nice to see some "mil grade" servers out there.
The bios is in a socket. So even if you can't flash it to a new version within the machine, you should be able to do so outside of the case. Again, this may be how they go, but like the ide header, is only a small detrement to restoring their full cuntion. Musing on things in general, it seems to me likely that the i-openers are containerized and shipped across by boat. It would be highly unlikely that they could have reacted fast enough to mod the ones shipped out currently and have had them cross the Pacific. I could be wrong, but...
A posting at iopener-linux.net dated March 22 16:39, states that a number of folks who had ships done on March 21 have received un-modified machines. This raises the flag that the whole thing may be a pile of merde to support their stock price which has taken a hit and now trades 2$ under its ipo price. The ipo was monday, so I suspect that there are a large number of totally bs investors at this point.
There are really only two modifications that they could make to make it hard for the (sub)average hacker. One is to remove the ide header, the other is to get Award to modify the bios so that it could only boot from the SanDisk. I suspect that they will take the former route, if any since it is easy for the manufacturer of the boards just to leave out inserting the part. Many folks don't know which end of the soldering iron is hot anymore, so it will deter the more casual. Unfortunately, they (i-opener) have unfortunately failed to realize that by fighting these mods they are issuing a chalange to those inclined to mod them. I will guarantee modified post mod i-openers will be available a day or two after you can buy them at circuit city. Indeed, as soon as they become available, I will be buying one to crack it open just to see if I can get it to fly myself.
In many ways its a shame. If they had offered folks the option of buying these at (say) $500 a pop, they could make $100 a piece on them and there would be a reasonable demand for it. And hey, a 25% margin with no ad campaign isn't too bad a roi. The company I work for would gladly buy a number of them. Alternately, since my company would like to equip some of their employees with an inexpensive home machine to telecomute using cytrix or such, a modifiable machine to run the software combined with a reasonable term contract for the isp service would have also been of interest to them.
O well, I suppose its more than I can expect from the folks with a b-school degree to think logically and not be reactive.
There is a moderately informative article in the current Scientific American about the entire topic of brown drarfs. Recommended reading for those who are rusty on the topic.
Please remember that the source of Coca Cola was as a medicinal in the late 1800s that used the coca leaf (cocaine and all). It was later that it was a "soft" drink.
If our buddy can get out from under Motorola's thumb and offer a multi-processor Mach Kernal for this puppy...
In the state of Massachusetts, if you buy anything from out of state and import it into the state you are legally required to file a Use Tax form and pay a Use Tax based on its value at the Sales Tax rate. It does not matter how you purchased it. It can be via the Web, while you were on vacation, via the tellephone, via a catalog, etc. You still owe the tax and are legally obliged to pay it. Needless to say, almost everyone in Massachusetts ignores it. What the compaint is is that, since all the folks in Massachusetts are scofflaws in this regard, they want to compel out of state merchants to collect their tax for them. As a sometime web merchant in Mass, I have an obligation to collect Mass tax on Mass sales. Since I do not derive any benefit from any of the other 49 states (as their citizen), I do not care to be their pro bono tax collector and have to file 49 additional forms and be familiar with 49 more state sales tax laws because their citizens are scofflaws.
Actually, the only thing that is hanging up faster G4 chips is production problems at Motorola. IBM already has 600 Mhz+ G4 processors ready to roll. Check out MacOsRumors for their March 6 story.
It is highly telling that a trip past the Dell site today shows that you cannot order a desktop system from them with this chip in it...
Answer is that they can't. This is obviously a fud manuver to keep more folks like Gateway from jumping ship and going with AMD. You gotta wonder what is going through Michael Dell's mind at a time like this though. If I were him, I might just want to keep my options open...