The busness world has been long notable for their CYA practices. Why buy Dell when you can fabricate your own machines for less than 1/2 the price of the Dell machine? Well, if it screws up, then everybody else does the same thing... Same with Windoze, and Intel. Most folks would rather be in the crowd rather than in the right. Unfortunately for Intel, they are losing market share in Europe (especially Germany) to AMD. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people most of the time, but sooner or later the truth will out.
The folks at PowerDVD supposedly have a software DVD player for Linux. They solicited interest in the oem/bundled market, but have yet to release it as a seperate product the way they have done with their regular PowerDVD. Their web site lists Linux as a supported os at this point. I have a jangle into them to find out what is up. When I do, I will try and let folks know.
In my previous job (a number of years ago at this point), I worked for a company run by an Indian brahmin. It started out as a really good hi-tech engineering firm, but eventually this "gentleman's"
family back in India (heavily intertwined into the Congress party btw) persuaded him that they would send over cheap Indian engineers. They arranged for a small apartment in the area and packed them in like cattle (perhaps it was spacious by Calcutta standards though). The most infamous quote about this was when one of them got sick and they asked the family back in India about health insurance. The quote was: "Why is XXX sick? Send him back we will send you another one." Needless to say, I was gone around this point.
I personally feel that the US should open its doors to the infow of talent from whereever it may come. It is the thing that has kept the US vital and inventive. But, there has to be a way to protect folks that are imported like this.
There is a difference I am afraid. Apple can legally bundle its software with its own hardware since it manufactures both. M$ does not manufacture the hardware (thank goodness) and to force such bundling practices is a restraint of trade.
Gad, even if I were in love with M$ software (and I am not), it might be that I wish to upgrade my 233 Pentium system. Forcing me to buy this crap again and again and again, is totally absurd and unethical. Does it even cross the minds of these bozos that someone might just want to upgrade their machine legally. The class action suit in California starts this week (if I remember correctly), while I usually don't root for such things, this one is totally justified.
Seriously, this is the sort of stuff that the Justice Dept. needs to continue to look at. Is there a unwritten (and they usually are) understanding that if you don't sell the pc with the os installed, m$ will make it tough for you in the future? If so, then this is again a restraint of trade and illegal.
There is also a story
at the Register about the current exec shuffle that Intel is doing related to the P4. Sounds more and more like panic to me given its recent set of fiascos...
AMD is expected to cut their prices again later this month when they release the 1.2 GHz part. How does 250$ for a 1 GHz T-Bird sound against a non-available overpriced withdrawn 1.14 P3 sound? Intel has already had to take a price cut on their P4 line before they have released it. Jerry is finally putting the screws and fud to Andy instead of the other way around.
It is my understanding that there are boards in development using the 751 southbridge. It is hard for AMD to take away Intel's lunch without this. What I suspect has happened is that the board manufacturers ignored AMD until VIA came "on board" bigtime to give them a credible base.
that reported lower sales because he has missed the european clue train that folks want to buy athlons while he is trying to sell overpriced intel rot, or maybe the same michael dell that was one of the premier "bundlemeisters" for m$ personally, i would think a little about conflict of interest here... was the claim for apache under linux or apache unter nt? having some microsquish type configure the linux system so it swaps from the floppy can really do a job on your performance bigtime...
Yes, when it was not sure whose processesor was going to prevail pre-ibm pc days, they cross-liscensed each others stuff. Intel thereafter took every opportunity to try and get out of the agreement after their processor was adopted. In the 386 suit, the judge found for AMD and awarded them everything that he could and then made the statement that he wished he could give them more because of Intel's bad faith.
They managed to win all the suits that Intel brought against them and I don't think that Jerry is going to fold his hand just because some bunch of hoohas bring another one. Rambus has to be getting desparate at this point. Intel has all but dropped sponsorship and their P4 chips are not flying very well. If this is where American industry is going with bullcrap IP suits over everything, its going to be a sad commentary. Also if I remember right, IBM has an earlier patent that is perhaps more applicable to the technology.
Way I figure it, if you could convince them that they should do this to promote their "MP3 Anywhere Product", they would do the whole million all by themselves...
Barney Frank doesn't even have an email address...
on
Million E-mail March
·
· Score: 1
methinks you are being a bit on the too legal end of the stick here. i grant you that there is a great body of law over a great number of things.
some of this law is good, some of this law is bad, some of this law is antiquated. in theory under the common law, i can still have the right to trial by combat as an example. (please see coke, etc. if you need the reference) the reality is that the RIAA and the MPA can either embrace and have an influence in the control of the new method of distribution (in the process getting the rights of the copyholders recognized and rewarded) or put the entire process of copyright protection in a position where it will be totally ignored. distribution to folks who can demonstrate that they have paid the copyright holder for the right to utilize the media adds value to the copyright holder, since it is being performed at no cost to them and encourages the purchase of their media. no argument about the right to payment. no argument about the distribution to folks who have not paid.
It is about time that the legal status of this stuff was really cleared up bigtime. When I purchase a CD or a Video or a Book or a... I regard this as the purchase of a license to use the content for my personal enjoyment in a non commercial setting in whatever manner I care to. If I want to rip a CD to play on my MP3 player in my car or make a tape of it, or use it for skeet practice, this should be ok under the law. If someone facilitates this, they are adding value to the creator of the media by encouraging purchase of the origional license. It takes an extreme amount of effort to create the origional content in many cases. (Example, I am at the end of a 20 min documentary that has taken myself and the other editor roughly 2 mounths of effort to create) The creator of the content should recieve their tithe, but the present position of the MPA and RIAA is an position that is totally greed oriented and does them little credit.
Surplus/auction for about $130, upgradeable to a 550 Mhz sock 7, 2 dimm slots, ati video on board, nic on board (10/100) 2 usb, parrallel, serial, etc. comes with 64 mb and a winchip-2 at 200 mhz.
Runs a linux of a 16 mb sandisk as is. 2 pci slots off of a riser. (And yes, I actually am building a beowulf cluster of them...)
Loss leaders are just fine thanks. What I think the problem here is:
that a company has foisted these on the public without adequate disclosure of the degree of invasion of privacy that will exist and
the company has taken an agressive atitude toward a bogus "intellectual property".
Such companies deserve to be held up to general aprobation so that others don't think that these tactics are a good idea. What I would love to see is that someone would write a filter that scrambles the id randomly on each use. Why we could call it "Screw Cat".
Lets leave out the legality/illegality of what the kid was doing. What disturbs me here is that the UNIVERSITY obtained a search warrent and seized things related to this issue. Since when is the university a police power of this sort? To be sure, Campus police must have deputy power to enforce law and order on their campus, but for this stuff?? It is an open question as to who was committing anything anyway. Well gotta run now, gotta fund raise for our new gym down at 'ol holmstead, gonna meet some real important entertainment folks and don't want to piss em off none...
You are linking to a story that links to Flask which has imbedded DeCSS code. You are thus declared to be a BAD BOY and the MPAA will now take legal measures to punish you. Ye Gods, when will the MPAA understand that the genie is out of the bottle and that no amount of legal horse dung will put him back in.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Clinton "Justice" Department under Ms. Reno has been one of the most politicized Justice Departments in the history of the US government. Further, this is an election year and not a little bit of support for one of the worthy candidates of one of the worthy parties comes from the entertainment industry. Yes, you can call me cynical, but somehow I smell special interest infuence in this one...
My bill is about $300 for 3,000 kwh per month. Using my MIT PhD, this gives a marginal rate of about $0.30 per kwh (yes, this is simplified, but given the itemized transmission charges, generation charges, fuel adjustments, warthog taxes, all all the rest on your bill, not a bad approximation). A P2 333 will take roughly 16 hours to do a seti set under Windoze and 12 hrs to do it under BeOS (since it is the same machine it must be M$ "innovation" tax I guess...). Lets figure it as 12 hrs, lets further figure that there is a 200 watt load for this. This is thus 2.4 Kwh for the set or $0.72
per seti set of electicity. If you are someplace that needs air conditioning, figure the cost of the heat removal also, if you are heating, give yourself a credit. A 450 Mhz G4 will do it in 6 hrs, thus $0.36 for the sake of argument. Seti scales directly with the speed of the cpu, but the Athlon and P3 etc. machines are more power consumptive than the standard P2, so I would assume that although a 750 Athlon does it in 6 hrs, it requires 300 watts to do it. On average, the "fair price" to cover the electricity seems to be around $0.50 per seti equivalent set. A bargain compared with the $1000+/cpu hour that things used to cost, but I suspect that break even is only going to be on machines whre someone else pickes up the electricity bill.
Although I admit to a somewhat libertarian bent in my politics, I think the Cato Institute is HUA (head up ass) on this one. There may be 70,000 "official" applications of some sort or other, but I am afraid there are more than a few others around. An example: I have a defective 60GB disk from Maxtor that has a bad case of the "tic-tocs". In checking their web pages, their utilities, etc. are all Windoze/Dos based. No Mac/No Beos/No Linux/No Solaris, & etc. Ok, that's fine, but they demand the code from one of them (maxdiag) before you use their web based rma page. Since the disk in question was used in a firewire context on one of my Mac systems, this was not a possibility.
For once, I have to strongly disagree with the Libertarian/Wall Street Journal crowd. Windoze got where it is by means of business practices that were found to be in violation of the law. To allow it to stand as is (and put this all behind us...) is to provide a brass ring to the next company that figures it can exhaust the legal opposition after performing illegal and un-ethical acts.
If I build a machine with a "lemon" mobo (such as the "Great Cape Cod" fiasco by Intel) who is responsible for the "lemon"? Does Intel have to take back the machine and replace the mobo, or do I have to be their agent, or...?
Granted a reputable firm will recall its defective products and supply or compensate the users (such as Intel did, not that I am a fan of Intel's), but I can also envision other circumstances where the liability is more diffuse and the defect more nebulous than that case.
Usually because some mindless twit has decreed that "Our Office runs on Windoze, get over it." as I was told when I mentioned that Windoze was not sufficently stable to process an entire video file without crashing, and that I am running it on a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
The busness world has been long notable for their CYA practices. Why buy Dell when you can fabricate your own machines for less than 1/2 the price of the Dell machine? Well, if it screws up, then everybody else does the same thing... Same with Windoze, and Intel. Most folks would rather be in the crowd rather than in the right. Unfortunately for Intel, they are losing market share in Europe (especially Germany) to AMD. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people most of the time, but sooner or later the truth will out.
The folks at PowerDVD supposedly have a software DVD player for Linux. They solicited interest in the oem/bundled market, but have yet to release it as a seperate product the way they have done with their regular PowerDVD. Their web site lists Linux as a supported os at this point. I have a jangle into them to find out what is up. When I do, I will try and let folks know.
I personally feel that the US should open its doors to the infow of talent from whereever it may come. It is the thing that has kept the US vital and inventive. But, there has to be a way to protect folks that are imported like this.
There is a difference I am afraid. Apple can legally bundle its software with its own hardware since it manufactures both. M$ does not manufacture the hardware (thank goodness) and to force such bundling practices is a restraint of trade.
Seriously, this is the sort of stuff that the Justice Dept. needs to continue to look at. Is there a unwritten (and they usually are) understanding that if you don't sell the pc with the os installed, m$ will make it tough for you in the future? If so, then this is again a restraint of trade and illegal.
There is also a story at the Register about the current exec shuffle that Intel is doing related to the P4. Sounds more and more like panic to me given its recent set of fiascos...
AMD is expected to cut their prices again later this month when they release the 1.2 GHz part. How does 250$ for a 1 GHz T-Bird sound against a non-available overpriced withdrawn 1.14 P3 sound? Intel has already had to take a price cut on their P4 line before they have released it. Jerry is finally putting the screws and fud to Andy instead of the other way around.
It is my understanding that there are boards in development using the 751 southbridge. It is hard for AMD to take away Intel's lunch without this. What I suspect has happened is that the board manufacturers ignored AMD until VIA came "on board" bigtime to give them a credible base.
that reported lower sales because he has missed the european clue train that folks want to buy athlons while he is trying to sell overpriced intel rot, or maybe the same michael dell that was one of the premier "bundlemeisters" for m$ personally, i would think a little about conflict of interest here... was the claim for apache under linux or apache unter nt? having some microsquish type configure the linux system so it swaps from the floppy can really do a job on your performance bigtime...
Yes, when it was not sure whose processesor was going to prevail pre-ibm pc days, they cross-liscensed each others stuff. Intel thereafter took every opportunity to try and get out of the agreement after their processor was adopted. In the 386 suit, the judge found for AMD and awarded them everything that he could and then made the statement that he wished he could give them more because of Intel's bad faith.
They managed to win all the suits that Intel brought against them and I don't think that Jerry is going to fold his hand just because some bunch of hoohas bring another one. Rambus has to be getting desparate at this point. Intel has all but dropped sponsorship and their P4 chips are not flying very well. If this is where American industry is going with bullcrap IP suits over everything, its going to be a sad commentary. Also if I remember right, IBM has an earlier patent that is perhaps more applicable to the technology.
Way I figure it, if you could convince them that they should do this to promote their "MP3 Anywhere Product", they would do the whole million all by themselves...
At least he is honest about ignoring it...
methinks you are being a bit on the too legal end of the stick here. i grant you that there is a great body of law over a great number of things. some of this law is good, some of this law is bad, some of this law is antiquated. in theory under the common law, i can still have the right to trial by combat as an example. (please see coke, etc. if you need the reference) the reality is that the RIAA and the MPA can either embrace and have an influence in the control of the new method of distribution (in the process getting the rights of the copyholders recognized and rewarded) or put the entire process of copyright protection in a position where it will be totally ignored. distribution to folks who can demonstrate that they have paid the copyright holder for the right to utilize the media adds value to the copyright holder, since it is being performed at no cost to them and encourages the purchase of their media. no argument about the right to payment. no argument about the distribution to folks who have not paid.
this is so totally lame that ms must be getting their ideas from netpliance and clue-cat. talk about stupid...
It is about time that the legal status of this stuff was really cleared up bigtime. When I purchase a CD or a Video or a Book or a ... I regard this as the purchase of a license to use the content for my personal enjoyment in a non commercial setting in whatever manner I care to. If I want to rip a CD to play on my MP3 player in my car or make a tape of it, or use it for skeet practice, this should be ok under the law. If someone facilitates this, they are adding value to the creator of the media by encouraging purchase of the origional license. It takes an extreme amount of effort to create the origional content in many cases. (Example, I am at the end of a 20 min documentary that has taken myself and the other editor roughly 2 mounths of effort to create) The creator of the content should recieve their tithe, but the present position of the MPA and RIAA is an position that is totally greed oriented and does them little credit.
Surplus/auction for about $130, upgradeable to a 550 Mhz sock 7, 2 dimm slots, ati video on board, nic on board (10/100) 2 usb, parrallel, serial, etc. comes with 64 mb and a winchip-2 at 200 mhz. Runs a linux of a 16 mb sandisk as is. 2 pci slots off of a riser. (And yes, I actually am building a beowulf cluster of them...)
Such companies deserve to be held up to general aprobation so that others don't think that these tactics are a good idea. What I would love to see is that someone would write a filter that scrambles the id randomly on each use. Why we could call it "Screw Cat".
Lets leave out the legality/illegality of what the kid was doing. What disturbs me here is that the UNIVERSITY obtained a search warrent and seized things related to this issue. Since when is the university a police power of this sort? To be sure, Campus police must have deputy power to enforce law and order on their campus, but for this stuff?? It is an open question as to who was committing anything anyway. Well gotta run now, gotta fund raise for our new gym down at 'ol holmstead, gonna meet some real important entertainment folks and don't want to piss em off none...
You are linking to a story that links to Flask which has imbedded DeCSS code. You are thus declared to be a BAD BOY and the MPAA will now take legal measures to punish you. Ye Gods, when will the MPAA understand that the genie is out of the bottle and that no amount of legal horse dung will put him back in.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Clinton "Justice" Department under Ms. Reno has been one of the most politicized Justice Departments in the history of the US government. Further, this is an election year and not a little bit of support for one of the worthy candidates of one of the worthy parties comes from the entertainment industry. Yes, you can call me cynical, but somehow I smell special interest infuence in this one...
My bill is about $300 for 3,000 kwh per month. Using my MIT PhD, this gives a marginal rate of about $0.30 per kwh (yes, this is simplified, but given the itemized transmission charges, generation charges, fuel adjustments, warthog taxes, all all the rest on your bill, not a bad approximation). A P2 333 will take roughly 16 hours to do a seti set under Windoze and 12 hrs to do it under BeOS (since it is the same machine it must be M$ "innovation" tax I guess...). Lets figure it as 12 hrs, lets further figure that there is a 200 watt load for this. This is thus 2.4 Kwh for the set or $0.72 per seti set of electicity. If you are someplace that needs air conditioning, figure the cost of the heat removal also, if you are heating, give yourself a credit. A 450 Mhz G4 will do it in 6 hrs, thus $0.36 for the sake of argument. Seti scales directly with the speed of the cpu, but the Athlon and P3 etc. machines are more power consumptive than the standard P2, so I would assume that although a 750 Athlon does it in 6 hrs, it requires 300 watts to do it. On average, the "fair price" to cover the electricity seems to be around $0.50 per seti equivalent set. A bargain compared with the $1000+/cpu hour that things used to cost, but I suspect that break even is only going to be on machines whre someone else pickes up the electricity bill.
For once, I have to strongly disagree with the Libertarian/Wall Street Journal crowd. Windoze got where it is by means of business practices that were found to be in violation of the law. To allow it to stand as is (and put this all behind us...) is to provide a brass ring to the next company that figures it can exhaust the legal opposition after performing illegal and un-ethical acts.
Granted a reputable firm will recall its defective products and supply or compensate the users (such as Intel did, not that I am a fan of Intel's), but I can also envision other circumstances where the liability is more diffuse and the defect more nebulous than that case.
Usually because some mindless twit has decreed that "Our Office runs on Windoze, get over it." as I was told when I mentioned that Windoze was not sufficently stable to process an entire video file without crashing, and that I am running it on a Mac.