You're shifting the burden of proof, but no matter. Prove that H.264 is not subject to as-yet-unknown patents that wouldn't be covered by the MPEGLA licenses, and then we'll be on an equal footing. What's that? Hard to say for sure? Well, gee, too bad you don't have as much skill at search as, say, Google!:p;)
Was a proprietary format. Is not a standard (yet).
governed by Google
Only for so long as the rest of the world accepts their governship. Now that the spec is out in public, Google only retains as much control as people are willing to cede them. This will be quite a lot for now, I admit, because Google has quite a bit of clout, especially with their ownership of Youtube, but since WebM/VP8 is not a standard (yet), there's nothing preventing a proper consortium from forming and taking control if it becomes necessary. All that's required is for a sufficient amount of the industry to decide that Google's stewardship is inadequate. We've seen similar things happen in the past (EGCS, XFree86), and even have a few similar efforts (e.g. Libreoffice) going on at present.
it's worth noting that there are some concerns as to whether or not this standard would survive an IP infringement claim
That's true of just about anything, including H.264. The main difference is that we know H.264 uses/"violates" a number of existing patents. It may also be violating uncounted numbers of as-yet-unrevealed patents. We don't know. We don't know of any specific patents violated by VP8, so random claims about how it (and it alone) might be violating all sorts of random patents is basically pure FUD. Apache or Firefox or Linux might be violating any number of undiscovered patents too, so why single out VP8 to worry about?
And the same could be said about the C++ and ODF standards yet those are called "open" standards by the same people talking about how H.264 is "closed".
That's because those standards aren't patent-encumbered. I mean, duh!
Is it really? Can any individual really have any meaningful say in the direction of how the VP8 codec is developed unless you work at Google?
Probably. Why not? You might as well complain that Apache is under the control of the Apache Foundation or GCC is under the control of the Free Software Foundation. Or X11 under the control of Xfree86--oh wait.... Try contributing to Linux without the help and stewardship of the current maintainers and see how far you get.
At the moment, everyone (including, e.g. Debian) uses Google's implementation, but if Google stumbles, there's absolutely nothing stopping the rest of the world from continuing with their own fork, as with EGCS (when the FSF stumbled) or Xorg (when XFree86 stumbled).
Most folks who have analyzed the videotape format war agree Betamax was technically superior, at least at first.
That's basically true, as far as picture quality went.
Technical superiority played no part in the ultimate victory of VHS over Betamax.
That's not so true. VHS wasn't limited to 1 hour like Beta was at first, and that one detail of technical superiority may have played a part, although opinions are divided whether it was a major factor.
In essence, VHS was popular because simply it was popular
That's definitely not true. VHS was cheaper, and wasn't subject to the whims and restrictions of a single company. There were rumors--quite false, but they may have had an impact on the market--that Sony wouldn't license Beta technology for porn. For many people, though, VHS was simply good enough, given the differences in price, and those who insisted on paying extra for Beta were often perceived as pretentious and yuppie, somewhat like hardcore audiophiles are often perceived today.
Price and play time are usually considered to be the two main factors in VHS's ultimate triumph. The network effect was no doubt a contributing factor in the long run, but only after other factors had given VHS a solid lead. For that matter, grandparent poster is incorrect when he says Beta was first. Actually, Beta was second, and VHS was third. But when we're talking about implementing an open standard, as NFC seems to be, the whole analogy of the (incompatible) video tape format wars seems to fail big time. This seems to me more analogous to the competition among early VHS manufacturers, all working to the same standard. And here, early mover is more likely to be a factor, I suspect, but price is also going to be a big factor. Overall, though, I think the market is more likely to remain competitive, with multiple companies offering a variety of products.
Moreover, the SCO litigation had nothing to do with patents! Well, IBM, in their counterclaims, cited some of their patents that they claimed SCO was infringing early on, but they dropped their patent claims (w/o prejudice, IIRC) quickly in order to simplify the litigation. But the SCO v Novell case never had anything to do with any patents by any participant. Unlike copyrights, there was no question that the Novell->OldSCO purchase agreement excluded patents. Groklaw never helped anybody save any patents; the summary is completely misleading on this point.
Just to clarify--Groklaw predates the SCO litigation entirely (though not by much). SCO quickly became its primary focus, but the original intent was always something more broad.
That won't work. Problem is, if you are a company without an IPv4 address, you are not reachable by 99% of Internet users, i.e. you don't exist.
I'm dubious about your 99% figure, though I suspect you're not too far off. But technically, you only need approximately one, unless you're an ISP. Everything else can (at least in theory) be handled with NAT and tunnels and proxies and the like. In fact, smaller companies might even be able to share one.
Not saying it would be easy to go with just one (or ceil(max_needed_bandwidth/bandwidth_per_machine))--in fact, I'm sure it would be a nightmare to make that work--but I'm certain that the number we collectively need is a lot lower than the number we presently use.
I think you forgot (c) they can audit the code and look for backdoors. (And no, Richie's trick of hiding the backdoor in the compiler so it doesn't appear in the source doesn't negate this--it's too easy to detect if you actually look for it, and too easy to work around by, e.g. building your compiler with a C interpreter. Not to mention the fact that it would require extremely advanced AI to work with code that has changed as frequently and drastically as GCC's has.)
I was going to post exactly this, but you beat me to the punch. There is another factor too, though. If you struggle to type, you're more likely to use brief, cryptic, incomprehensible identifiers in your code, and to omit even the most minimal of comments, creating major long-term headaches just to save yourself some short-term pain. In my experience, there is a minimal threshold below which I wouldn't want a programmer, because I simply wouldn't trust 'em to produce maintainable code, but I think it's around 30 wpm. Anything above that is probably gravy (and yes, I'm noticeably above that).
What if you don't need a web browser at all? Decrypting 1940s-era "secure" communications doesn't require all these newfangled applications. If the machines built at Bletchly Park were good enough for Allied Intelligence in WWII, they ought to be good enough for you. Or are you trying to say that you're better than those heroes that helped save the world?
For that matter (and I actually think this may be a better analogy), why do we need interactive terminals at all? Batch processing with punch cards worked fine for decades. Who cares if it is orders of magnitude slower, overall, from the user's perspective? It's simple and uses minimal processor time, just like retransmitting an entire web page simply to change a few bytes is so much simpler than merely updating one element of the page via JS.
And BTW, no I hadn't noticed that "/. works just 'fine'" w/o JS, unless by "just fine", you mean "like crap". (Not that the JS doesn't have its own set of problems and annoyances, but the overall net result is, at least for me, a Big Win(tm).)
I do have to say that I'm impressed by your footnote #3, though. One of the best examples of a straw man argument I've seen in some time. "It could be argued X", where "X" is blatantly false, followed by "the only thing Y is helpful for is Z", where Z is far, far, FAR from being the only thing that Y is helpful for--just brilliant! I don't think you could have done better if you were actually trying to troll!
Except glider doesn't access the game servers. They access the game client - which then accesses the game servers.
Ah, the overly-literal geek mind trying (and failing) to interpret the law again. "I didn't rob those people, I merely built the robot that robbed those people!" If the game client accesses the servers under the direction of glider, then glider is effectively accessing the servers--it's just doing it indirectly, like the guy with his robot.
Nope, there's free drivers that provide basic functionality with NVidia cards, and once you're booted and on the net, you can still go ahead and install the non-free drivers from Debian's non-free repo.
Wait! When did Debian ever provide NVidia's non-free drivers in main? This is about firmware blobs, and as far as I know, NVidia cards need drivers, not firmware. AFAIK, NVidia users are no more or less boned than they were before.
Here's the actual article, as opposed to a link to what I presume is somebody's blog. Took me all of two seconds to find. In any case, as I expected, the "non-free" firmware will be available from the official non-free repository. The only thing we really need now is for someone to provide a minor-variant boot/install disc that includes the non-free network drivers, and everybody should be happy. (No, I'm not volunteering--my hardware works.)
If Wikipedia lowered its quality to match that of slashdot, both in terms of content (misleading summaries and dupes, anyone?) and contributions, I think it would kill the project faster than just about anything else possibly could. Frist post, anyone? GNAA? Apple sux/rules/sux/rules/sux/rules! Oh, and get your science from my blog where I misrepresent the facts, because that way, I may get some advertising bux!
Yes? And? You don't think a footballer deserves to have an article for some reason? You think only stuff that interests you is important? Geeks hate sports, so we should all be outraged here? (Note, I'm both a programmer and a huge football fan.)
In any case, I see no evidence that anyone has nominated that content-free stub for deletion, so how do you know that they're "allowing" it? Maybe they've simply overlooked it. But it is backed by a reliable historical record, which is presumably more than can be said for your obscure geeky minor variant game. IMO, Wikipedia shouldn't have either article, but ioQuake (whatever it is) could possibly be mentioned in the Quake article as a variant (I assume that's what it is), and the footballer could be mentioned in a list of footballers for that league and time period.
But hey, outrage and posturing is a lot easier than trying to actually do something useful or productive.
If the so-called "editors" can't even begin to get the bare facts straight, it simply takes too freakin' much work to find out what the story actually is. I don't mind stupid people misinterpreting the facts, but I do mind a quasi-reputable site blatantly misrepresenting the facts and confusing the average reader.
This is a particularly bad example. First of all, the headline implies that this affects overseas, when, in fact, a US Supreme Court decision, pretty much by definition, has no legal impact outside the US. But if that weren't bad enough, it turns out that First Sale is, in fact, tangential (at best) to this issue, and it has absolutely nothing to do with where a good was produced! So what did slashdot get right? Well, the summary suggests that this involved a Supreme Court decision, and that, at least, turns out to be correct. Pretty much everything else was either misleading or flat-out wrong. The Supreme Court failed to overturn a ruling that a purchase is governed by the law of the country where the purchase was made. That's all that happened. Hardly earth-shattering. The First Sale doctrine still applies to all goods legitimately purchased in the US, regardless of their country of origin.
Slashdot has enough interesting links that I keep coming back, and I don't even bother to block their ads, but as long as the quality of the "editing" remains this low, there is absolutely nothing that will persuade me to buy a membership. What, you want me to reward incompetence? Dream on!
Anal Bum? I think I saw them open for the Butthole Surfers once. Their music was pretty simple, three-chord stuff; should be easy for your band to cover.:)
Hey, it could be true. And some 9th century peasant who spent his entire short life standing behind an ox may have been the most gifted mathematician the world has ever seen. We'll never know.
Actually the CDDL, just like the BSD license, is considered by "most people" to be MORE open than the GPL.
Most people? Where do you get your stats? The Institute of Asspullery? I doubt if most people know or care about the difference. In fact, most people probably think that closed-source freeware is basically the same as public domain.
In any case, you're committing the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum. It doesn't matter how many people consider one or the other license to be "MORE open". What matters is the facts. And the facts ain't so strong for either side of this debate. (Which is why I argue either side with equal abandon, depending on who I'm talking to.)
Basically, the main counterargument is that the freedom to deprive others of their freedoms is not necessarily a valid freedom. It's hard to argue that a society which allows its citizens the freedom to enslave one another is more free than one which prohibits slavery, even though the latter lacks the "freedom to enslave".
Of course, the "freedom to make proprietary derivatives" is not quite the same as the "freedom to enslave". But it is in opposition to the "freedom to tinker", which makes the "BSD/CDDL is more free" argument at least as dubious as its opposite.
If something disappears from streaming, you should still be able to get the DVDs sent so you can finish watching. It's no worse than the case where you finish streaming the last episode of season 3, and then discover that season 4 is DVD-only (Farscape is an example of this).
Anyway, my main point was that the streaming content is not decreasing. Yes, the items disappearing from the streaming catalog is annoying and stupid (and I'm sure Netflix is not doing it willingly), but that's a separate matter.
That said, it seems their streaming content is getting less rather than more. I had several titles in my queue that I was watching that are no longer available for streaming.
Um, they add and remove titles all the time. To conclude that it's "getting less rather than more", you would have to show that the number they remove each month exceeds the number they add, which does not match what I see. In fact, I frequently have movies that were in my DVD queue magically appear in my streaming queue (which is nice of them to do).
On top of that, none of what I want to watch seems to be available for streaming.
That sounds like a personal problem. I'm sorry your tastes are so limited.:p
I actually felt a little like that at first, but I've become very pleased with the opportunity and encouragement to explore all the interesting indie and foreign films they offer, and have actually ended up enjoying that more than when my movie-watching time was spent on whatever new Hollywood Blockboiler had the advertising budget to make me interested.
Almost everyone already has a PC, so there isn't a large group going out in the same time period to buy one.
And for people who live alone in their parent's garage, that's all that needs to be said, but for families (which are actually a fairly large segment of the population, outside of geekdom), there's another factor, which is that while before, they may have needed several PCs, now they may be able to get by with one PC and several tablets and/or smartphones. So there may well be a decrease in PC use, even if it won't affect anyone on slashdot.
Another factor is that after the public reaction to Vista, MS was basically forced to make Win7 not be a slow, bloaty mess (relatively speaking), so there's not as much incentive to replace your older machines; people can upgrade, and many probably have. My prediction (you read it here first) is that MS is going to be persuaded by the hardware makers to make the next version of Win noticably bigger and bloatier, though probably not by as much as Vista was.
Slashdot Mirror
Please prove that VP8 is not "patent encumbered"?
You're shifting the burden of proof, but no matter. Prove that H.264 is not subject to as-yet-unknown patents that wouldn't be covered by the MPEGLA licenses, and then we'll be on an equal footing. What's that? Hard to say for sure? Well, gee, too bad you don't have as much skill at search as, say, Google! :p ;)
Also tell me that you don't use MP3
Ok, I don't use MP3.
VP8 is a proprietary standard
Was a proprietary format. Is not a standard (yet).
governed by Google
Only for so long as the rest of the world accepts their governship. Now that the spec is out in public, Google only retains as much control as people are willing to cede them. This will be quite a lot for now, I admit, because Google has quite a bit of clout, especially with their ownership of Youtube, but since WebM/VP8 is not a standard (yet), there's nothing preventing a proper consortium from forming and taking control if it becomes necessary. All that's required is for a sufficient amount of the industry to decide that Google's stewardship is inadequate. We've seen similar things happen in the past (EGCS, XFree86), and even have a few similar efforts (e.g. Libreoffice) going on at present.
it's worth noting that there are some concerns as to whether or not this standard would survive an IP infringement claim
That's true of just about anything, including H.264. The main difference is that we know H.264 uses/"violates" a number of existing patents. It may also be violating uncounted numbers of as-yet-unrevealed patents. We don't know. We don't know of any specific patents violated by VP8, so random claims about how it (and it alone) might be violating all sorts of random patents is basically pure FUD. Apache or Firefox or Linux might be violating any number of undiscovered patents too, so why single out VP8 to worry about?
And the same could be said about the C++ and ODF standards yet those are called "open" standards by the same people talking about how H.264 is "closed".
That's because those standards aren't patent-encumbered. I mean, duh!
Is it really? Can any individual really have any meaningful say in the direction of how the VP8 codec is developed unless you work at Google?
Probably. Why not? You might as well complain that Apache is under the control of the Apache Foundation or GCC is under the control of the Free Software Foundation. Or X11 under the control of Xfree86--oh wait.... Try contributing to Linux without the help and stewardship of the current maintainers and see how far you get.
At the moment, everyone (including, e.g. Debian) uses Google's implementation, but if Google stumbles, there's absolutely nothing stopping the rest of the world from continuing with their own fork, as with EGCS (when the FSF stumbled) or Xorg (when XFree86 stumbled).
"reasonable" in this context does not mean "so cheap every mom&pop can afford it".
Then maybe it's not a very reasonable definition of "reasonable".
Still, it's nice to know that the giant corporations haven't given up on attempting to redefine the language to suit their own needs.
Most folks who have analyzed the videotape format war agree Betamax was technically superior, at least at first.
That's basically true, as far as picture quality went.
Technical superiority played no part in the ultimate victory of VHS over Betamax.
That's not so true. VHS wasn't limited to 1 hour like Beta was at first, and that one detail of technical superiority may have played a part, although opinions are divided whether it was a major factor.
In essence, VHS was popular because simply it was popular
That's definitely not true. VHS was cheaper, and wasn't subject to the whims and restrictions of a single company. There were rumors--quite false, but they may have had an impact on the market--that Sony wouldn't license Beta technology for porn. For many people, though, VHS was simply good enough, given the differences in price, and those who insisted on paying extra for Beta were often perceived as pretentious and yuppie, somewhat like hardcore audiophiles are often perceived today.
Price and play time are usually considered to be the two main factors in VHS's ultimate triumph. The network effect was no doubt a contributing factor in the long run, but only after other factors had given VHS a solid lead. For that matter, grandparent poster is incorrect when he says Beta was first. Actually, Beta was second, and VHS was third. But when we're talking about implementing an open standard, as NFC seems to be, the whole analogy of the (incompatible) video tape format wars seems to fail big time. This seems to me more analogous to the competition among early VHS manufacturers, all working to the same standard. And here, early mover is more likely to be a factor, I suspect, but price is also going to be a big factor. Overall, though, I think the market is more likely to remain competitive, with multiple companies offering a variety of products.
Moreover, the SCO litigation had nothing to do with patents! Well, IBM, in their counterclaims, cited some of their patents that they claimed SCO was infringing early on, but they dropped their patent claims (w/o prejudice, IIRC) quickly in order to simplify the litigation. But the SCO v Novell case never had anything to do with any patents by any participant. Unlike copyrights, there was no question that the Novell->OldSCO purchase agreement excluded patents. Groklaw never helped anybody save any patents; the summary is completely misleading on this point.
Just to clarify--Groklaw predates the SCO litigation entirely (though not by much). SCO quickly became its primary focus, but the original intent was always something more broad.
That won't work. Problem is, if you are a company without an IPv4 address, you are not reachable by 99% of Internet users, i.e. you don't exist.
I'm dubious about your 99% figure, though I suspect you're not too far off. But technically, you only need approximately one, unless you're an ISP. Everything else can (at least in theory) be handled with NAT and tunnels and proxies and the like. In fact, smaller companies might even be able to share one.
Not saying it would be easy to go with just one (or ceil(max_needed_bandwidth/bandwidth_per_machine))--in fact, I'm sure it would be a nightmare to make that work--but I'm certain that the number we collectively need is a lot lower than the number we presently use.
Oh come on. Just because it has enough unique addresses for every atom in the universe doesn't mean we won't discover more universes! :)
I think you forgot (c) they can audit the code and look for backdoors. (And no, Richie's trick of hiding the backdoor in the compiler so it doesn't appear in the source doesn't negate this--it's too easy to detect if you actually look for it, and too easy to work around by, e.g. building your compiler with a C interpreter. Not to mention the fact that it would require extremely advanced AI to work with code that has changed as frequently and drastically as GCC's has.)
I was going to post exactly this, but you beat me to the punch. There is another factor too, though. If you struggle to type, you're more likely to use brief, cryptic, incomprehensible identifiers in your code, and to omit even the most minimal of comments, creating major long-term headaches just to save yourself some short-term pain. In my experience, there is a minimal threshold below which I wouldn't want a programmer, because I simply wouldn't trust 'em to produce maintainable code, but I think it's around 30 wpm. Anything above that is probably gravy (and yes, I'm noticeably above that).
What if you don't need a web browser at all? Decrypting 1940s-era "secure" communications doesn't require all these newfangled applications. If the machines built at Bletchly Park were good enough for Allied Intelligence in WWII, they ought to be good enough for you. Or are you trying to say that you're better than those heroes that helped save the world?
For that matter (and I actually think this may be a better analogy), why do we need interactive terminals at all? Batch processing with punch cards worked fine for decades. Who cares if it is orders of magnitude slower, overall, from the user's perspective? It's simple and uses minimal processor time, just like retransmitting an entire web page simply to change a few bytes is so much simpler than merely updating one element of the page via JS.
And BTW, no I hadn't noticed that "/. works just 'fine'" w/o JS, unless by "just fine", you mean "like crap". (Not that the JS doesn't have its own set of problems and annoyances, but the overall net result is, at least for me, a Big Win(tm).)
I do have to say that I'm impressed by your footnote #3, though. One of the best examples of a straw man argument I've seen in some time. "It could be argued X", where "X" is blatantly false, followed by "the only thing Y is helpful for is Z", where Z is far, far, FAR from being the only thing that Y is helpful for--just brilliant! I don't think you could have done better if you were actually trying to troll!
Except glider doesn't access the game servers.
They access the game client - which then accesses the game servers.
Ah, the overly-literal geek mind trying (and failing) to interpret the law again. "I didn't rob those people, I merely built the robot that robbed those people!" If the game client accesses the servers under the direction of glider, then glider is effectively accessing the servers--it's just doing it indirectly, like the guy with his robot.
Nope, there's free drivers that provide basic functionality with NVidia cards, and once you're booted and on the net, you can still go ahead and install the non-free drivers from Debian's non-free repo.
Wait! When did Debian ever provide NVidia's non-free drivers in main? This is about firmware blobs, and as far as I know, NVidia cards need drivers, not firmware. AFAIK, NVidia users are no more or less boned than they were before.
Here's the actual article, as opposed to a link to what I presume is somebody's blog. Took me all of two seconds to find. In any case, as I expected, the "non-free" firmware will be available from the official non-free repository. The only thing we really need now is for someone to provide a minor-variant boot/install disc that includes the non-free network drivers, and everybody should be happy. (No, I'm not volunteering--my hardware works.)
Did we learn nothing from what happened to TVTropes earlier this year?
There are ads on Slashdot though.
If Wikipedia lowered its quality to match that of slashdot, both in terms of content (misleading summaries and dupes, anyone?) and contributions, I think it would kill the project faster than just about anything else possibly could. Frist post, anyone? GNAA? Apple sux/rules/sux/rules/sux/rules! Oh, and get your science from my blog where I misrepresent the facts, because that way, I may get some advertising bux!
Wikipedia deleted the article on ioQuake3
Never heard of it. Can you provide evidence of coverage by reliable sources?
while allowing the article on John Miller (footballer born 1878)
Yes? And? You don't think a footballer deserves to have an article for some reason? You think only stuff that interests you is important? Geeks hate sports, so we should all be outraged here? (Note, I'm both a programmer and a huge football fan.)
In any case, I see no evidence that anyone has nominated that content-free stub for deletion, so how do you know that they're "allowing" it? Maybe they've simply overlooked it. But it is backed by a reliable historical record, which is presumably more than can be said for your obscure geeky minor variant game. IMO, Wikipedia shouldn't have either article, but ioQuake (whatever it is) could possibly be mentioned in the Quake article as a variant (I assume that's what it is), and the footballer could be mentioned in a list of footballers for that league and time period.
But hey, outrage and posturing is a lot easier than trying to actually do something useful or productive.
If the so-called "editors" can't even begin to get the bare facts straight, it simply takes too freakin' much work to find out what the story actually is. I don't mind stupid people misinterpreting the facts, but I do mind a quasi-reputable site blatantly misrepresenting the facts and confusing the average reader.
This is a particularly bad example. First of all, the headline implies that this affects overseas, when, in fact, a US Supreme Court decision, pretty much by definition, has no legal impact outside the US. But if that weren't bad enough, it turns out that First Sale is, in fact, tangential (at best) to this issue, and it has absolutely nothing to do with where a good was produced! So what did slashdot get right? Well, the summary suggests that this involved a Supreme Court decision, and that, at least, turns out to be correct. Pretty much everything else was either misleading or flat-out wrong. The Supreme Court failed to overturn a ruling that a purchase is governed by the law of the country where the purchase was made. That's all that happened. Hardly earth-shattering. The First Sale doctrine still applies to all goods legitimately purchased in the US, regardless of their country of origin.
Slashdot has enough interesting links that I keep coming back, and I don't even bother to block their ads, but as long as the quality of the "editing" remains this low, there is absolutely nothing that will persuade me to buy a membership. What, you want me to reward incompetence? Dream on!
Anal Bum? I think I saw them open for the Butthole Surfers once. Their music was pretty simple, three-chord stuff; should be easy for your band to cover. :)
And when they do, it's usually because they aren't actually sure that they've got the correct answer.
Hey, it could be true. And some 9th century peasant who spent his entire short life standing behind an ox may have been the most gifted mathematician the world has ever seen. We'll never know.
Actually the CDDL, just like the BSD license, is considered by "most people" to be MORE open than the GPL.
Most people? Where do you get your stats? The Institute of Asspullery? I doubt if most people know or care about the difference. In fact, most people probably think that closed-source freeware is basically the same as public domain.
In any case, you're committing the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum . It doesn't matter how many people consider one or the other license to be "MORE open". What matters is the facts. And the facts ain't so strong for either side of this debate. (Which is why I argue either side with equal abandon, depending on who I'm talking to.)
Basically, the main counterargument is that the freedom to deprive others of their freedoms is not necessarily a valid freedom. It's hard to argue that a society which allows its citizens the freedom to enslave one another is more free than one which prohibits slavery, even though the latter lacks the "freedom to enslave".
Of course, the "freedom to make proprietary derivatives" is not quite the same as the "freedom to enslave". But it is in opposition to the "freedom to tinker", which makes the "BSD/CDDL is more free" argument at least as dubious as its opposite.
If something disappears from streaming, you should still be able to get the DVDs sent so you can finish watching. It's no worse than the case where you finish streaming the last episode of season 3, and then discover that season 4 is DVD-only (Farscape is an example of this).
Anyway, my main point was that the streaming content is not decreasing. Yes, the items disappearing from the streaming catalog is annoying and stupid (and I'm sure Netflix is not doing it willingly), but that's a separate matter.
That said, it seems their streaming content is getting less rather than more. I had several titles in my queue that I was watching that are no longer available for streaming.
Um, they add and remove titles all the time. To conclude that it's "getting less rather than more", you would have to show that the number they remove each month exceeds the number they add, which does not match what I see. In fact, I frequently have movies that were in my DVD queue magically appear in my streaming queue (which is nice of them to do).
On top of that, none of what I want to watch seems to be available for streaming.
That sounds like a personal problem. I'm sorry your tastes are so limited. :p
I actually felt a little like that at first, but I've become very pleased with the opportunity and encouragement to explore all the interesting indie and foreign films they offer, and have actually ended up enjoying that more than when my movie-watching time was spent on whatever new Hollywood Blockboiler had the advertising budget to make me interested.
Almost everyone already has a PC, so there isn't a large group going out in the same time period to buy one.
And for people who live alone in their parent's garage, that's all that needs to be said, but for families (which are actually a fairly large segment of the population, outside of geekdom), there's another factor, which is that while before, they may have needed several PCs, now they may be able to get by with one PC and several tablets and/or smartphones. So there may well be a decrease in PC use, even if it won't affect anyone on slashdot.
Another factor is that after the public reaction to Vista, MS was basically forced to make Win7 not be a slow, bloaty mess (relatively speaking), so there's not as much incentive to replace your older machines; people can upgrade, and many probably have. My prediction (you read it here first) is that MS is going to be persuaded by the hardware makers to make the next version of Win noticably bigger and bloatier, though probably not by as much as Vista was.