But that was steven king, who also had the money and backing to get the word out that the book was out there... So people did buy it who were true fans... but if you're an unknown, you'll pretty much have to trust that people will get the cracked version and then hope that they decide to pay...
Plus, the with the submitters question about a cross platform format covering Windows, Mac, BeOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux (i think all those were mentioned)... I can't think of anything that'd be secure across all those platforms. PDF would function on all of those, but (I know I'll get a drubbing for this, but:) as far as securely publishing the file, it seems that a closed-source solution would be best. Why?
For one, it could have any means of exporting the data closed off. If it were an opensource solution than any developer could add code to enable saving without the encryption, which would basically defeat the entire purpose.
But as someone else said here... Witnessing Naptster, SDMI, Steven King's ebook, and the numerous security sites, it should be common wisdom that if you don't want something freely proliferating, don't put it on the net... Likewise if you want to be sure that you'll be paid for your creations.
Well, how could they shift IE development up north... Afterall, they've stated numerous times that it's inseparable from Windows... They'ed have to move their Windows division up north. And if they did just that, then that's basically what the US is asking for anyways... separate the two. Besides which, they could move there and not get broken up, but it's unlikely that they'ed be allowed to sell into the US without adhering to government guidelines.
I think reviews which talked about features and usability could be made. The exception was for mention of performance...
And as far as I know, it's a practice followed by Oracle as well... the only way you can mention performance in a review is if someone from the company arrives and helps configure your machine and software to make sure that you don't do something like plot a head to head comparisson between a highly tuned SQL Server vs. an untuned (or even worse, hobbled) Oracle 8i configuration.
Do that and you'll turn Napster into a completely unusable service and they'll close their doors anyways... Don't do it and then you don't get to feel like you're screwing with the system.
As far as i know, i'd believe that if the title of a song is copywritten, then it'd be illegal to name a files that and offer it to the world... Perfectly legal to name it that and leave it on your hard drive, but not in a way that it'd be accessible by Napster.
Dr Dre posted and exact list of what songs he didn't want on Naptster... what makes you think that they're just searching for the name "metallica" rather than the actual names of their songs? Or what makes you think that they wouldn't start looking for their individual songs if they started turning up lots of bogus files and users...
The people who benefit from CD sales are the record companies. The money goes to a number of things, including paying off advances given to the band to record the CD, studio time, manager, producer, promotion, packaging, etc... Part of that money goes to the band as well. As a matter of fact, for many mid-size bands, CD sales are the largest part of their income.
Most of the artists revenue comes from touring. Again, for very very (unsigned) small acts and very very large acts, that's the case, but the middle of the road acts (those just signed, or those who don't go gold or platinum with each release) tend to bleed money on tours in order and use touring as a promotional vehicle for their CD's.
I want to see the artist get more of a cut from the CD sales. If you want to talk about greed, rmember that it's entirely possible to record and distribute a CD on your own... The artists that sign with labels in many times don't have the resources to do so, and therefore need to BORROW money from the record labels in order to produce and promote their CD... The CD sells, the artists get paid, the labels get paid, etc...
The table looks a lot more skewed than it is, because labels typically have tens, hundreds or even thousands of artists operating below them, so their profits look incredibly magnified compared to what each of the artists get.
I want to see reduced CD prices. Well, if you're using Napster currently, buying CD's for anything (even 1/2 their current costs) would amount to spending MORE money than you're currently spending... I'd call it doubtful that you'd be willing to spend more when you've already found that you can get it for free.
Have you read anything here or on any of the other news sites in the past few weeks? I'm guessing no... Here's a recap.
Nobody is going after anybody for illegally downloading songs from Napster. No one is going after anyone and requesting proof that they own the CD since they downloaded songs from it. The grounds that the labels, bands and lawyers are using are that the people they're going after are makind their (the artists) copyrighted materials available for download by people who don't have the legal right to do so.
No search of a house is necessary. They can just say "look at this college student. Now look at the 10,000 songs in his shared Napster directory. He made each and every one of these songs available for the entire internet population to download.
It's a point that seems to get overlooked over and over... Napster helps perpetuate it, I think. But the fack of the matter is that no one's is gettting yelled at or risking getting in trouble or being kicked off of napster for downloading songs. That's happening because they're making those songs available to other Napster users...
Looking at the license agreement for Windows 95 OEM, it seems that you can NOT sell or transfer your license to that software unless you infact sell the computer. You also can't transfer that license to another computer, hence company's, when they upgrade their machines, need to buy all new versions of software tehy already own even if they don't want it because they're legally bound to purchase new versions. That's a sucky clause, but then OEM versions cost 1/2 as much as retail versions, so if you want to get your software bundled, you get it cheaper but lose a couple more rights.
Funny, though.., The company I work for has Mac OS site licenses... Microsoft could never get away with that, since their entire revunue model is to get people to buy their software any way they can, where as apple makes money selling hardware and can therefore be a bit more lenient with software licensing revenues...
If wine becomes successful in allowing Windows users to run all of their favorite apps under Linux, it would stand to dramatically increase the base of people using Linux on the desktop everyday, and therefore increase the likelihood of companies offering native linux applications.
Even if Wine suceeded in 100% compatibility and no companies decided to port their apps to linux since they ran without a glitch under wine, how could that possibly be a bad thing? Who cares what API's the programs are calling, so long as their taking standard input and creating standard output, as the users expect? There is no downside, so far as I can see.
Ebay has no need to verify that software is unopened. I've sold a few legal versions of MSFT software (Frontpage and VB 5.0 learning edition) and in both cases when people emailed asking about the legality of transfering my licenses, I refered them to this:
License Transfer
If you are seeking permission to donate or transfer software product, software licenses, or hardware loaded with Microsoft software to another party, you may do so without obtaining written permission provided you follow the terms and conditions of your End User License Agreement (EULA). All transfers of license, either through a sales transaction, donation, or gift must include all product documentation, product manuals, original disks and licenses. Further conditions of transfer may be included in your EULA. The individual or entity giving up their software and license(s) must understand that they are giving up all of their rights to the transferred software, including all rights to upgraded versions of the software.
The specific text can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/permission/copyrgt/cop- soft.htm. It's about 3/4's of the way down the page under the heading "license transfer".
Sorry about any funky line breaks in there. I just copied it from my email... so, unless they've changed that policy in the past month or so, it's always been perfectly legal to transfer/sell your license to someone else. They're (Microsoft... I don't blame eBay for wanting to steer itself out of Microsofts sights) just being major assholes/bullies for no good reason except they think they can wring a few more dollars from the world.
I built my box from scratch and purchased an OEM copy of WIndows 98 for it, to complement Windows NT workstation and Redhat Linux that I'd also purchased and installed. I think it's rude that you can't (or have to try really hard to) buy a machine from Dell, Gateway, or IBM without Windows installed, but in the end I ended up paying the Microsoft tax anyways...
So far as their other apps go... I use Microsoft Office on the PC because I like it. It's the most functional, stable office suite in my eyes. I also like using Outlook for my email... Though I do prefer Netscape for browsing. Microsoft's graphics applications are laughable, though, so they'll never win a place on my machine at the rate they're going.
Even on my Mac, I run Microsoft Office 98, and for some reason Internet Explorer 5 runs much better then Netscape 4.7...
The point of all this is is that Microsoft does indeed create programs that people want to run... For most people, it's an added conveience that Microsoft software is preinstalled and at a steep discount when they first turn on their machines.
Let's not mix up my defense of some Microsoft applications with their anti-competitiveness. For instance, I use Office on my Mac namely because there aren't any other office suites to choose from. Netscape probably could have kept up with Microsoft, had they not lost their sources of revenue (clients and servers) due to Microsoft's integrations into the OS (though, with Apache free for the taking, I doubt their server business would have lasted anyhow).
But ignoring all that, and looking at the application landscape, Microsoft, in my eyes, does field a number of great products. It's just too bad that the way they got them there was by destroying all their competition... The next few years would have been aweful if it had not been for the anti-trust case... With microsoft sitting i n the driverseat and having no one to catch up to, their 'innovative" pool of idea's is looking pretty dried up.
I wouldn't think that Intel would be at all interested in selling off the shares it would get from Rambus in the event that they fulfilled their obligation to them... Instead, they'ed exercise their warrants and instead own a minority stake in them... People would buy Intel CPU's, with Intel chipsets, Intel graphics adapters, using Intel memory, with Intel networking products, in tehir ideal world... Even if their products aren't in fact the *best* in the market, they're making a very concerted effort to own every piece of your computer.
Am I wrong, or doesn't Intel own the USB spec, whereas Apple owns the Firewire name, and the standard isn't owned by anybody? Therefore it'd be in intel's interest to push their product over the "standard".
A few years ago, Intel was just a bit player in the chipset market. They captured 100% share by patenting Slot 1, and finally had to license it to competitors a few years later in order to head of an antitrust investigation. With their moves into networking products, graphics chipsets, and licensing a patented memory system, it seems pretty obvious that, aside from the hard drive, Intel want's to own every piece of silicon inside every computer...
In reply to your comments prior to you alphebetizing them... Yes, hard drives died all the time for me, too... But with the wonders of disk arrays and warrantee's, I never lost data or was stuck drumming my fingers on the desk waiting for Fedex to arrive...
A - Who knows?
B - They're just plain old not cost effective. Whatever you can manage out of them, you can manage out of 5 or 6 10K RPM drives, since they're both connected to the PCI bus
C - That's a good question... If they'ed just been nice and made it a SCSI or Firewire peripheral, that question wouldn't even need to come up... But now we need to be concerned with driver support.
This drives only purpose seems to be for very busy, yet relatively small, databases, in my eyes...
People have been having to capture video compressed ever since digital video first sprung to life. All you need to capture uncompressed video is 30megs/second plus LOTs of capacity... RAID 5 (composed of 4 or 5 drives) is much more feasible for that application.
Solid state RAM drives are WAAAAY overpriced for even video editting applications... For the price of an 8 GB RAM drive, think of what else you could get... You can probably end up with at least a half a terrabyte of RAID 5 storage, Fiber channel controller, AND an a dual xeon workstation for the price of 8 gigs of ram alone...
No... Ram drives will go the way of eccentricities/oddities, only used sparingly in the area's of extreme need. Video's surely not it... Something that requires a LOT of seeks... but even then, why dedicate 8 gigs of ram to storage when you could just add 8 gigs to your server and use it however you wnnted? Make a ram disk, set a higher disk cache, use it for applications, etc...
I don't think that Napster has disclosed how they intend to make money as of yet.
Here's a VERY rough concept, though.
Napster could integrate into the software the ability to read and create MD5 signatures. Artists who were so inclined could scour their servers and compile a list of signatures that belong to their music. When someone downloaded a song from another user, as a final step after downloading, the client program could send the signature of the file that it just received to Napsters "billing" server. Every month, Napster could send print out with a check, or else electronically transfer funds and email a report to the bands...
I'm assuming that Napsters revenues are going to be advertising dependant. To figure out who gets how much money, Napster could just figure out how many ads were served and then divy out the money to artists in proportion to the number of their songs that were downloaded...
For instance (in one month) (every number here is assumed)
10,000,000 searches mean that 10 million ads were displayed for 1 cent each equals revenues of $100,000.
Napster keeps $15,000.
With that remaining $85,000 napster looks at it's list of signatures and determines;
The owner of the song with the signature 00x8814o341 accounted for 10% of the completed downloads. They should recieve a check for 10% of the $85,000.
The owner of the song with the signature 10x2517u3ax accounted for 5% of the completed downloads. They should recieve a check for 5% of the $85,000.
And so forth and so on... It might seem like a measily amount of money, but 2 factors could be assumed.
1 - With Napster directing revenues towards the artists, they (the artists) would be more swayed towards talking kindly and even promoting Napster to their fans.
2 - Napster use will undoubtably grow as more and more people get broadband connections. So even if they only have 1 million users today, 3 years from now that number could be 10,000,000.
3 - The number of songs in the universe will only expand, not contract. Therefore as time goes on napster users will continue to search out new songs, meaning that the average number of searches per user will only go upwards.
If Napster did things right, they could have a great future ahead of them... Everyone would be happy, except the labels that everyone loves to hate... But since the artists would be assured of getting paid for their efforst of putting out a CD or just releasing digital files, their dependance on the major labels could lessen. As of right now, that's not the case. They're being extremely inconsiderate to the musicians whose music they're distributing.
Again, that's an entirely rought outline of an idea...
I was noticing that too...But it turns out that in the past few weeks they've upgraded their server setup, switched hosting providers, and were subjected to a DDOS attack... Those aside, it's been running smoother than it has in quite some time in my eyes... And it's not like they're going to upgrade their mahcines again in the near future or switch to yet another host. And you can't blame anyone for the lack of response from their site during a DDOS attack.
Not like you'll ever see my reply, since you're an AC or anything, but if anyone decides to peruse this at a later date, here's why i do:
I'm a music fan! I've been involved with bands in the past, and i still have many friends who are in bands. I think artists should be paid for their work so they can continue making music. The majority of music out there today sucks, yes, but if you listen to it and by extension enjoy it, in all fairness you should be paying the people who produced the music for you.
All of the rhetoric people spill defending napster, i think, is completely bunk. It's one thing in my mind to tape a CD and give it to a friend or email mp3's to one another. But Napster has the motivation of making a PROFIT... So, in effect, they'll be making money while the artists whose material they're helping to distribute will get zero dollars compared to the measly amount that they receive from the record companies today... The system's fucked up, but at least the labels have figured a way to PAY the artists something, where as napster fans just expect that the artists should make up.
If napster were to figure out a cohesive way to pay the artists involved which sounded feasible and realistic, i'll immediately jump onto their side of this battle. But until then, I'd rather see the artists get paid something rather than nothing.
Geez... For $25 a month you can generally get 25 to 50 megabytes of disk space... for $50 a month it's around 100 to 150... 25 megs should be fine for a 56 or 64 kbps album... which would also be good because then the files wouldn't be that great a quality for burning to a CD... it'd still sound fine via headphones and if they wanted people could record it and hear the distorted bass and other artifacts, but if they really liked it they'ed go buy it.
So why aren't we seeing more rampant piracy of such products as Windows NT, Backoffice Server, Oracle 8i, 3D Studio, etc...? Those all cost the exact same amount of money to press to a CD as music does. Where is the public, searchable server that allows "registered owners" the ability to download new disk images in case their previous copies "failed" for some reason? I'm not talking warez channels on IRC, here... I'm talking about the company that takes VC money and aspires to go public for providing this service to "registered owners" of software. People jump to defend software prices and the market valuations of computer companies yet deride the music industry for much pretty much doing the same exact thing.
For all the griping everyone has about the record industry and how over paid the successful artists are around here, one must consider that Microsoft nearly equalled the amount of profits of the entire recording industry last year. And they're just one software company. One also must point out that the "overpaid" bunch of artists are in fact less than 1% of the recording population, where as just about anyone who can get out of a 4 year school with a computer science major can easily earn $60,000+ per year. If they took less money, software could undoubtably be cheaper... Would it be, though? No.
And lastly, since this is a site primarily devoted to opensource issues... When RMS wanted a freely redistributable base of software, did he just decompile commercial software and attatch a new license to it? No. When Linus wanted access to a workable Unix kernel so that he and others could build on it, did he just decomile the Minix kernel, post it on an ftp site, and invite everyone to copy away? No. In both cases, they didn't like the terms that were attached to what was available, and rather than outright stealing it, they CREATED new versions with more favorable terms (licenses) attatched.
If you're unhappy with the current music scheme, start you own band. You really only need to know 3 cords if you want to make most rock songs... less if you're an aspiring punk band... else you can turnto the keyboard in front of you and create some pretty amazing stuff. Distribute your music free of charge, if that's what you want to do. Even if yo uhave absolutely no musical inclination, you could still start your own label and convince your friends' bands to sign on with you. Look at what your luminaries did (create) and compare what you're doing (stealing) and think about it a little bit.
I don't think that anyone is reasonably trying to argue that MP3's in and of themselves are bad... For personal use, they're wonderous. I've got several days worth of music (all from my own CD's, thank you very much) stored on my hard drive at work. MP3's as a promotional tool is also a great thing. I know several artists who release *some* of their songs as MP3's to spur interest in their eventual CD.
If an artist decides that they want to release their music in the MP3 format, they would most likely choose to put it on their own website in order to gauge interest, spur communication with their fans, and receive any revenues (from ads, links to purchase their CD's, T-shirts, etc...) associated with the distributiuon of their music.
Napster does nothing to steer listeners towards buying the actual CD, is unable to produce any data to show interest or number of downloads, and (worst of all, IMHO) is, or will be soon, profitting from it's activities. In essense, they'll be earning money distributng music that the artists themselves will have no way of ever profiting from. The pickings from the labels might be slim, but Napster is effectively zeroing them out.
It's one thing (not that I'm condoning it) to email an MP3 to your friend orrun an anonymous ftp server with mp3's on it. It's another thing to attempt to earn a profit by making that music EASILY available to anyone for the asking, but not return any of those profits to the artists. Napster really should figure out a way log transfers and cut artists checks for 50-75% of their (Napsters) projected take (once they've figured a way to make money... ads, anyone?)
Quantum encryption is based on quantum physics, not quantum computing... While I'm not sure how exactly quantum computers work, progress has been made on the front of quantum encryption which is based on the idea of measuring the alignments of photons... I can't articulate any more than that, though, because I know nothing about either! Maybe someone else could clue us all in?
OKay... It could get kind of tricky... How about having them set up a CVS server in the DOJ's office? Mandate all the 3 companies to have unfettered access to one anothers Windows source code? Or, they could DOCUMENT all thier API's so that developers could keep up with the changes. At the same time, the other Microsofts could presumably sign on as developers and find out about changes that were being made, so that they could stay compatible with the crowd!!!
I don't think that any of the companies would dare market a 90% compatible windows implentation. In the past the market has proven it only wants 100% compatible anything. 90% compatible IBM clones... remember those? They didn't last too long, did they? The answer to all of this is that they *should* document their OS for developers...
Okay... so maybe a little oversight is needed... but not as much as the DOJ wants to impose.
The ENTIRE reason this anti-trust case came to being is because Microsoft didn't obey the new rules that were set out in the consent decree that they agreed to in 1995. They had their chance and they've shown they're not going to obey any restrictions placed on their behavior.
Breaking Microsoft up, in anyway, will lessen their dominace of the industry... Split horiztonally, they'ed have to compete against one another. Splet vertically, the windows group will no longer be able to trust the fact that Office is basically developed solely for them...
If the office group decided to start developing for Linux, BeOS, Solaris, or any other OS, today (yes, they do develop for the mac, but the mac isn't a commodity x86 platform, so many corporations shy away from it), Windows sales would stand to take a beating because then people and offices could run their operations using cheaper OSes... Therefore alternative versions of Office never surface. If the Office group was separated and didn't have to keep the OS group happy and prop up their income, Office might still remain the only game in town for Office Suites, but the OS landscape would change dramatically. And with more and more online applications arriving, the application landscape stands to shift on it's own.
I still think that Larry Ellison had the best idea, which was to split Microsoft horizontally, in effect creating 3 mini-microsofts, each selling windows, office, developers tools, etc... That way there'd be real competition in the Windows arena, and with multiple suppliers, no one could strong arm the customers around because they could just take their business elsewhere. It'd also require a minimal amount of oversight, as opposed to now where it seems that once Microsoft is split up, all the decisions made by the individual companies are likely to face governmental scrutiny ("hmmm... should this program be allowed to be distributed with the operating system?").
Not only that, but it seems (in my eyes) that the DOJ is making unreasonable demands on the conduct of Microsoft once it is broken up... Just for starters, requiring them to notify all affected developers if they intend to change the OS in such a way that their programs will break... It just seems unworkable, because there are slews of compilers and programing languages, each with their own nuances, so that Microsoft will have to test too many 3rd party apps to be assured of compatiability. I know what the DOJ is trying to accomplish with that demand, but again, I think it would be better solved with a horizontal split, because then the companies would be forced to compete and gain customers and therefore wouldn't make any wholesale changes to the OS just to break a competitors product, because all the users of that product could switch to Microsoft #2's Windows operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
But that was steven king, who also had the money and backing to get the word out that the book was out there... So people did buy it who were true fans... but if you're an unknown, you'll pretty much have to trust that people will get the cracked version and then hope that they decide to pay...
Plus, the with the submitters question about a cross platform format covering Windows, Mac, BeOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux (i think all those were mentioned)... I can't think of anything that'd be secure across all those platforms. PDF would function on all of those, but (I know I'll get a drubbing for this, but:) as far as securely publishing the file, it seems that a closed-source solution would be best. Why?
For one, it could have any means of exporting the data closed off. If it were an opensource solution than any developer could add code to enable saving without the encryption, which would basically defeat the entire purpose.
But as someone else said here... Witnessing Naptster, SDMI, Steven King's ebook, and the numerous security sites, it should be common wisdom that if you don't want something freely proliferating, don't put it on the net... Likewise if you want to be sure that you'll be paid for your creations.
Well, how could they shift IE development up north... Afterall, they've stated numerous times that it's inseparable from Windows... They'ed have to move their Windows division up north. And if they did just that, then that's basically what the US is asking for anyways... separate the two. Besides which, they could move there and not get broken up, but it's unlikely that they'ed be allowed to sell into the US without adhering to government guidelines.
I think reviews which talked about features and usability could be made. The exception was for mention of performance...
And as far as I know, it's a practice followed by Oracle as well... the only way you can mention performance in a review is if someone from the company arrives and helps configure your machine and software to make sure that you don't do something like plot a head to head comparisson between a highly tuned SQL Server vs. an untuned (or even worse, hobbled) Oracle 8i configuration.
Do that and you'll turn Napster into a completely unusable service and they'll close their doors anyways... Don't do it and then you don't get to feel like you're screwing with the system.
As far as i know, i'd believe that if the title of a song is copywritten, then it'd be illegal to name a files that and offer it to the world... Perfectly legal to name it that and leave it on your hard drive, but not in a way that it'd be accessible by Napster.
Dr Dre posted and exact list of what songs he didn't want on Naptster... what makes you think that they're just searching for the name "metallica" rather than the actual names of their songs? Or what makes you think that they wouldn't start looking for their individual songs if they started turning up lots of bogus files and users...
The people who benefit from CD sales are the record companies.
The money goes to a number of things, including paying off advances given to the band to record the CD, studio time, manager, producer, promotion, packaging, etc... Part of that money goes to the band as well. As a matter of fact, for many mid-size bands, CD sales are the largest part of their income.
Most of the artists revenue comes from touring.
Again, for very very (unsigned) small acts and very very large acts, that's the case, but the middle of the road acts (those just signed, or those who don't go gold or platinum with each release) tend to bleed money on tours in order and use touring as a promotional vehicle for their CD's.
I want to see the artist get more of a cut from the CD sales.
If you want to talk about greed, rmember that it's entirely possible to record and distribute a CD on your own... The artists that sign with labels in many times don't have the resources to do so, and therefore need to BORROW money from the record labels in order to produce and promote their CD... The CD sells, the artists get paid, the labels get paid, etc...
The table looks a lot more skewed than it is, because labels typically have tens, hundreds or even thousands of artists operating below them, so their profits look incredibly magnified compared to what each of the artists get.
I want to see reduced CD prices.
Well, if you're using Napster currently, buying CD's for anything (even 1/2 their current costs) would amount to spending MORE money than you're currently spending... I'd call it doubtful that you'd be willing to spend more when you've already found that you can get it for free.
Have you read anything here or on any of the other news sites in the past few weeks? I'm guessing no... Here's a recap.
Nobody is going after anybody for illegally downloading songs from Napster. No one is going after anyone and requesting proof that they own the CD since they downloaded songs from it. The grounds that the labels, bands and lawyers are using are that the people they're going after are makind their (the artists) copyrighted materials available for download by people who don't have the legal right to do so.
No search of a house is necessary. They can just say "look at this college student. Now look at the 10,000 songs in his shared Napster directory. He made each and every one of these songs available for the entire internet population to download.
It's a point that seems to get overlooked over and over... Napster helps perpetuate it, I think. But the fack of the matter is that no one's is gettting yelled at or risking getting in trouble or being kicked off of napster for downloading songs. That's happening because they're making those songs available to other Napster users...
Looking at the license agreement for Windows 95 OEM, it seems that you can NOT sell or transfer your license to that software unless you infact sell the computer. You also can't transfer that license to another computer, hence company's, when they upgrade their machines, need to buy all new versions of software tehy already own even if they don't want it because they're legally bound to purchase new versions. That's a sucky clause, but then OEM versions cost 1/2 as much as retail versions, so if you want to get your software bundled, you get it cheaper but lose a couple more rights.
Funny, though.., The company I work for has Mac OS site licenses... Microsoft could never get away with that, since their entire revunue model is to get people to buy their software any way they can, where as apple makes money selling hardware and can therefore be a bit more lenient with software licensing revenues...
If wine becomes successful in allowing Windows users to run all of their favorite apps under Linux, it would stand to dramatically increase the base of people using Linux on the desktop everyday, and therefore increase the likelihood of companies offering native linux applications.
Even if Wine suceeded in 100% compatibility and no companies decided to port their apps to linux since they ran without a glitch under wine, how could that possibly be a bad thing? Who cares what API's the programs are calling, so long as their taking standard input and creating standard output, as the users expect? There is no downside, so far as I can see.
Ebay has no need to verify that software is unopened. I've sold a few legal versions of MSFT software (Frontpage and VB 5.0 learning edition) and in both cases when people emailed asking about the legality of transfering my licenses, I refered them to this:
- soft.htm. It's about 3/4's
License Transfer
If you are seeking permission to donate or transfer software product,
software licenses, or hardware loaded with Microsoft software to another
party, you may do so without obtaining written permission provided you
follow the terms and conditions of your End User License Agreement (EULA).
All transfers of license, either through a sales transaction, donation, or
gift must include all product documentation, product manuals, original disks
and licenses. Further conditions of transfer may be included in your EULA.
The individual or entity giving up their software and license(s) must
understand that they are giving up all of their rights to the transferred
software, including all rights to upgraded versions of the software.
The specific text can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/permission/copyrgt/cop
of the way down the page under the heading "license transfer".
Sorry about any funky line breaks in there. I just copied it from my email... so, unless they've changed that policy in the past month or so, it's always been perfectly legal to transfer/sell your license to someone else. They're (Microsoft... I don't blame eBay for wanting to steer itself out of Microsofts sights) just being major assholes/bullies for no good reason except they think they can wring a few more dollars from the world.
I built my box from scratch and purchased an OEM copy of WIndows 98 for it, to complement Windows NT workstation and Redhat Linux that I'd also purchased and installed. I think it's rude that you can't (or have to try really hard to) buy a machine from Dell, Gateway, or IBM without Windows installed, but in the end I ended up paying the Microsoft tax anyways...
So far as their other apps go... I use Microsoft Office on the PC because I like it. It's the most functional, stable office suite in my eyes. I also like using Outlook for my email... Though I do prefer Netscape for browsing. Microsoft's graphics applications are laughable, though, so they'll never win a place on my machine at the rate they're going.
Even on my Mac, I run Microsoft Office 98, and for some reason Internet Explorer 5 runs much better then Netscape 4.7...
The point of all this is is that Microsoft does indeed create programs that people want to run... For most people, it's an added conveience that Microsoft software is preinstalled and at a steep discount when they first turn on their machines.
Let's not mix up my defense of some Microsoft applications with their anti-competitiveness. For instance, I use Office on my Mac namely because there aren't any other office suites to choose from. Netscape probably could have kept up with Microsoft, had they not lost their sources of revenue (clients and servers) due to Microsoft's integrations into the OS (though, with Apache free for the taking, I doubt their server business would have lasted anyhow).
But ignoring all that, and looking at the application landscape, Microsoft, in my eyes, does field a number of great products. It's just too bad that the way they got them there was by destroying all their competition... The next few years would have been aweful if it had not been for the anti-trust case... With microsoft sitting i n the driverseat and having no one to catch up to, their 'innovative" pool of idea's is looking pretty dried up.
I wouldn't think that Intel would be at all interested in selling off the shares it would get from Rambus in the event that they fulfilled their obligation to them... Instead, they'ed exercise their warrants and instead own a minority stake in them... People would buy Intel CPU's, with Intel chipsets, Intel graphics adapters, using Intel memory, with Intel networking products, in tehir ideal world... Even if their products aren't in fact the *best* in the market, they're making a very concerted effort to own every piece of your computer.
Am I wrong, or doesn't Intel own the USB spec, whereas Apple owns the Firewire name, and the standard isn't owned by anybody? Therefore it'd be in intel's interest to push their product over the "standard".
A few years ago, Intel was just a bit player in the chipset market. They captured 100% share by patenting Slot 1, and finally had to license it to competitors a few years later in order to head of an antitrust investigation. With their moves into networking products, graphics chipsets, and licensing a patented memory system, it seems pretty obvious that, aside from the hard drive, Intel want's to own every piece of silicon inside every computer...
In reply to your comments prior to you alphebetizing them... Yes, hard drives died all the time for me, too... But with the wonders of disk arrays and warrantee's, I never lost data or was stuck drumming my fingers on the desk waiting for Fedex to arrive...
A - Who knows?
B - They're just plain old not cost effective. Whatever you can manage out of them, you can manage out of 5 or 6 10K RPM drives, since they're both connected to the PCI bus
C - That's a good question... If they'ed just been nice and made it a SCSI or Firewire peripheral, that question wouldn't even need to come up... But now we need to be concerned with driver support.
This drives only purpose seems to be for very busy, yet relatively small, databases, in my eyes...
People have been having to capture video compressed ever since digital video first sprung to life. All you need to capture uncompressed video is 30megs/second plus LOTs of capacity... RAID 5 (composed of 4 or 5 drives) is much more feasible for that application.
Solid state RAM drives are WAAAAY overpriced for even video editting applications... For the price of an 8 GB RAM drive, think of what else you could get... You can probably end up with at least a half a terrabyte of RAID 5 storage, Fiber channel controller, AND an a dual xeon workstation for the price of 8 gigs of ram alone...
No... Ram drives will go the way of eccentricities/oddities, only used sparingly in the area's of extreme need. Video's surely not it... Something that requires a LOT of seeks... but even then, why dedicate 8 gigs of ram to storage when you could just add 8 gigs to your server and use it however you wnnted? Make a ram disk, set a higher disk cache, use it for applications, etc...
I don't think that Napster has disclosed how they intend to make money as of yet.
Here's a VERY rough concept, though.
Napster could integrate into the software the ability to read and create MD5 signatures. Artists who were so inclined could scour their servers and compile a list of signatures that belong to their music. When someone downloaded a song from another user, as a final step after downloading, the client program could send the signature of the file that it just received to Napsters "billing" server. Every month, Napster could send print out with a check, or else electronically transfer funds and email a report to the bands...
I'm assuming that Napsters revenues are going to be advertising dependant. To figure out who gets how much money, Napster could just figure out how many ads were served and then divy out the money to artists in proportion to the number of their songs that were downloaded...
For instance (in one month) (every number here is assumed)
10,000,000 searches mean that 10 million ads were displayed for 1 cent each equals revenues of $100,000.
Napster keeps $15,000.
With that remaining $85,000 napster looks at it's list of signatures and determines;
The owner of the song with the signature 00x8814o341 accounted for 10% of the completed downloads. They should recieve a check for 10% of the $85,000.
The owner of the song with the signature 10x2517u3ax accounted for 5% of the completed downloads. They should recieve a check for 5% of the $85,000.
And so forth and so on... It might seem like a measily amount of money, but 2 factors could be assumed.
1 - With Napster directing revenues towards the artists, they (the artists) would be more swayed towards talking kindly and even promoting Napster to their fans.
2 - Napster use will undoubtably grow as more and more people get broadband connections. So even if they only have 1 million users today, 3 years from now that number could be 10,000,000.
3 - The number of songs in the universe will only expand, not contract. Therefore as time goes on napster users will continue to search out new songs, meaning that the average number of searches per user will only go upwards.
If Napster did things right, they could have a great future ahead of them... Everyone would be happy, except the labels that everyone loves to hate... But since the artists would be assured of getting paid for their efforst of putting out a CD or just releasing digital files, their dependance on the major labels could lessen. As of right now, that's not the case. They're being extremely inconsiderate to the musicians whose music they're distributing.
Again, that's an entirely rought outline of an idea...
I was noticing that too...But it turns out that in the past few weeks they've upgraded their server setup, switched hosting providers, and were subjected to a DDOS attack... Those aside, it's been running smoother than it has in quite some time in my eyes... And it's not like they're going to upgrade their mahcines again in the near future or switch to yet another host. And you can't blame anyone for the lack of response from their site during a DDOS attack.
Not like you'll ever see my reply, since you're an AC or anything, but if anyone decides to peruse this at a later date, here's why i do:
I'm a music fan! I've been involved with bands in the past, and i still have many friends who are in bands. I think artists should be paid for their work so they can continue making music. The majority of music out there today sucks, yes, but if you listen to it and by extension enjoy it, in all fairness you should be paying the people who produced the music for you.
All of the rhetoric people spill defending napster, i think, is completely bunk. It's one thing in my mind to tape a CD and give it to a friend or email mp3's to one another. But Napster has the motivation of making a PROFIT... So, in effect, they'll be making money while the artists whose material they're helping to distribute will get zero dollars compared to the measly amount that they receive from the record companies today... The system's fucked up, but at least the labels have figured a way to PAY the artists something, where as napster fans just expect that the artists should make up.
If napster were to figure out a cohesive way to pay the artists involved which sounded feasible and realistic, i'll immediately jump onto their side of this battle. But until then, I'd rather see the artists get paid something rather than nothing.
Geez... For $25 a month you can generally get 25 to 50 megabytes of disk space... for $50 a month it's around 100 to 150... 25 megs should be fine for a 56 or 64 kbps album... which would also be good because then the files wouldn't be that great a quality for burning to a CD... it'd still sound fine via headphones and if they wanted people could record it and hear the distorted bass and other artifacts, but if they really liked it they'ed go buy it.
So why aren't we seeing more rampant piracy of such products as Windows NT, Backoffice Server, Oracle 8i, 3D Studio, etc...? Those all cost the exact same amount of money to press to a CD as music does. Where is the public, searchable server that allows "registered owners" the ability to download new disk images in case their previous copies "failed" for some reason? I'm not talking warez channels on IRC, here... I'm talking about the company that takes VC money and aspires to go public for providing this service to "registered owners" of software. People jump to defend software prices and the market valuations of computer companies yet deride the music industry for much pretty much doing the same exact thing.
For all the griping everyone has about the record industry and how over paid the successful artists are around here, one must consider that Microsoft nearly equalled the amount of profits of the entire recording industry last year. And they're just one software company. One also must point out that the "overpaid" bunch of artists are in fact less than 1% of the recording population, where as just about anyone who can get out of a 4 year school with a computer science major can easily earn $60,000+ per year. If they took less money, software could undoubtably be cheaper... Would it be, though? No.
And lastly, since this is a site primarily devoted to opensource issues... When RMS wanted a freely redistributable base of software, did he just decompile commercial software and attatch a new license to it? No. When Linus wanted access to a workable Unix kernel so that he and others could build on it, did he just decomile the Minix kernel, post it on an ftp site, and invite everyone to copy away? No. In both cases, they didn't like the terms that were attached to what was available, and rather than outright stealing it, they CREATED new versions with more favorable terms (licenses) attatched.
If you're unhappy with the current music scheme, start you own band. You really only need to know 3 cords if you want to make most rock songs... less if you're an aspiring punk band... else you can turnto the keyboard in front of you and create some pretty amazing stuff. Distribute your music free of charge, if that's what you want to do. Even if yo uhave absolutely no musical inclination, you could still start your own label and convince your friends' bands to sign on with you. Look at what your luminaries did (create) and compare what you're doing (stealing) and think about it a little bit.
I don't think that anyone is reasonably trying to argue that MP3's in and of themselves are bad... For personal use, they're wonderous. I've got several days worth of music (all from my own CD's, thank you very much) stored on my hard drive at work. MP3's as a promotional tool is also a great thing. I know several artists who release *some* of their songs as MP3's to spur interest in their eventual CD.
If an artist decides that they want to release their music in the MP3 format, they would most likely choose to put it on their own website in order to gauge interest, spur communication with their fans, and receive any revenues (from ads, links to purchase their CD's, T-shirts, etc...) associated with the distributiuon of their music.
Napster does nothing to steer listeners towards buying the actual CD, is unable to produce any data to show interest or number of downloads, and (worst of all, IMHO) is, or will be soon, profitting from it's activities. In essense, they'll be earning money distributng music that the artists themselves will have no way of ever profiting from. The pickings from the labels might be slim, but Napster is effectively zeroing them out.
It's one thing (not that I'm condoning it) to email an MP3 to your friend orrun an anonymous ftp server with mp3's on it. It's another thing to attempt to earn a profit by making that music EASILY available to anyone for the asking, but not return any of those profits to the artists. Napster really should figure out a way log transfers and cut artists checks for 50-75% of their (Napsters) projected take (once they've figured a way to make money... ads, anyone?)
End of rant, for now.
Quantum encryption is based on quantum physics, not quantum computing... While I'm not sure how exactly quantum computers work, progress has been made on the front of quantum encryption which is based on the idea of measuring the alignments of photons... I can't articulate any more than that, though, because I know nothing about either! Maybe someone else could clue us all in?
OKay... It could get kind of tricky... How about having them set up a CVS server in the DOJ's office? Mandate all the 3 companies to have unfettered access to one anothers Windows source code? Or, they could DOCUMENT all thier API's so that developers could keep up with the changes. At the same time, the other Microsofts could presumably sign on as developers and find out about changes that were being made, so that they could stay compatible with the crowd!!!
I don't think that any of the companies would dare market a 90% compatible windows implentation. In the past the market has proven it only wants 100% compatible anything. 90% compatible IBM clones... remember those? They didn't last too long, did they? The answer to all of this is that they *should* document their OS for developers...
Okay... so maybe a little oversight is needed... but not as much as the DOJ wants to impose.
The ENTIRE reason this anti-trust case came to being is because Microsoft didn't obey the new rules that were set out in the consent decree that they agreed to in 1995. They had their chance and they've shown they're not going to obey any restrictions placed on their behavior.
Breaking Microsoft up, in anyway, will lessen their dominace of the industry... Split horiztonally, they'ed have to compete against one another. Splet vertically, the windows group will no longer be able to trust the fact that Office is basically developed solely for them...
If the office group decided to start developing for Linux, BeOS, Solaris, or any other OS, today (yes, they do develop for the mac, but the mac isn't a commodity x86 platform, so many corporations shy away from it), Windows sales would stand to take a beating because then people and offices could run their operations using cheaper OSes... Therefore alternative versions of Office never surface. If the Office group was separated and didn't have to keep the OS group happy and prop up their income, Office might still remain the only game in town for Office Suites, but the OS landscape would change dramatically. And with more and more online applications arriving, the application landscape stands to shift on it's own.
I still think that Larry Ellison had the best idea, which was to split Microsoft horizontally, in effect creating 3 mini-microsofts, each selling windows, office, developers tools, etc... That way there'd be real competition in the Windows arena, and with multiple suppliers, no one could strong arm the customers around because they could just take their business elsewhere. It'd also require a minimal amount of oversight, as opposed to now where it seems that once Microsoft is split up, all the decisions made by the individual companies are likely to face governmental scrutiny ("hmmm... should this program be allowed to be distributed with the operating system?").
Not only that, but it seems (in my eyes) that the DOJ is making unreasonable demands on the conduct of Microsoft once it is broken up... Just for starters, requiring them to notify all affected developers if they intend to change the OS in such a way that their programs will break... It just seems unworkable, because there are slews of compilers and programing languages, each with their own nuances, so that Microsoft will have to test too many 3rd party apps to be assured of compatiability. I know what the DOJ is trying to accomplish with that demand, but again, I think it would be better solved with a horizontal split, because then the companies would be forced to compete and gain customers and therefore wouldn't make any wholesale changes to the OS just to break a competitors product, because all the users of that product could switch to Microsoft #2's Windows operating system.