The studios listed for HD-DVD are *also* listed for BR ("CYA group"), but Sony's got more lined up for BR only. When little Joey wants his Disney fix in HD, and the parents find out it's only to be had on BR, guess what wins? Add the gaming boost from Playstation's market share and Sony may actually have something here.
Even given this administration's please-bend-me-over attitude towards business, I can't imagine a deal of this sort wouldn't draw some attention from the DOJ. And with their EU counterparts already looking to drop a half-billion-Euro fine on MSFT, something like this would only encourage them to take a hard line.
Then there's the problem that MS has traditionally managed to fsck up most companies they've partnered with, so why would Yahoo willingly get themselves into that situation?
I'm all in favor of open *standards* for public documents, but that doesn't mean vendors can't offer solutions that cost money, either in license or support fees. It's called competition, and it's what we basically don't have in the desktop market today. The MS-Office format lock-in precludes competitors from getting in; widespread adoption of something like ODF puts multiple vendors on a level playing field, and yes, allows for free/open-source implementations as well. It also facilitates looking at other OS platforms to host those implementations.
Novell has claimed the UNIX copyrights never went to SCOX/Caldera because they didn't go to Santa Cruz that Caldera acquired. And with this they can claim whatever copyrights SCOX *does* have are subject to the terms of the UnitedLinux agreement with SuSE that Novell now owns.
Agreed SCOX went after Novell, but with slander of title vs. copyright infringement, and prompted Novell to publish letters from SCOX asking could they pretty-pretty-please transfer the copyrights?
When (not if) this one goes Novell's way, it's going to blow a hole in the case against IBM, since how can SCOX be claiming infringement if they don't own the copyrights?
>>The longer the trial takes, the more FUD there is...
But the near-instantaneous deconstruction of SCOX's claims in the tech press, Groklaw, etc., has only reduced the available avenues for FUD'g Linux by claiming infringement from UNIX.
You can tell this by MSFT's returning to their "Get the (non)Facts" nonsense, and Monkey-Boy's recent attempt to claim patent problems.
>>The goal of SCO's intentionally vague requests seem to be to essentially consume the defendant's resources.
The goal of SCOX's original filing was to annoy IBM enough to get a quick pay-off or buy-out to silence them, since they knew their business was sliding steeply downhill.
What they got instead was a "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute" response, that they now have to make their case against.
As well as a countersuit, and a suit from Red Hat claiming Lanham Act offenses, and from Novell claiming the copyrights didn't transfer with the sale, etc.
Given the relative sizes of the companies, and the utter lack of grounds for their case, SCOX's only hope at this point is postponing the date of execution.
If they were actually interested in the dollar amount, you'd be right.
But the legal fees of harassing these people probably offset the actual settlement money by a significant amount.
The *AA are looking for the PR value ("We're prosecuting thousands of file-sharers for fill-in-ludicrous-dollar-amount-here") to take to the legislators to try and get Yet More Draconian DRM passed into law, versus actually persuing the bulk disc copiers that actually make up most of the bootleg business, 'cause that'd be *hard*.
I'll admit that the theaters have improved in recent years with tiered seating, better sound, etc.
But (a) the *content* is still strongly adhering to Sturgeon's Law, with endless sequels, remakes and Old-TV-Show-To-Film adaptations, (b) the 20 minutes of ads in front of the feature, maybe half of them actual trailers and (c) the complete disrespect by about half the audience for the half that actually WANT TO SEE THE DAMN MOVIE.
Thanks, there's not that many films I'm so jazzed to see that I'll put up with the crap at the local megaplex. I'll wait the 3-6 months for the DVD, and be able to pause the movie for bio-breaks or getting the snacks *I* want, and not miss anything but the excess noise, parking hassles, etc.
How many of these 'founding members' are just hedging their bets by being in both this and the ODF Alliance group? And how do file formats matter to a company like Intel; they shouldn't care what office suite someone's using, as long as it running on their CPUs, yes?
Lucent was spun out as the hardware end of the old Bell System; yes they inherited The Labs, but why in Ghu's name they didn't take back the traditional name of WESTERN ELECTRIC still astounds me. And the Sphincter of Innovation (it dilates every so often and something plops out) as a logo - WTF?
Auntie Beeb usually has better standards than this. The response column at least admits they put their collective foot in it, and asks the question whether we've embarked on a digital arms race between the ISPs trying to ration bandwidth and the techs' traditional "censorship=blockage, route around it".
I think the ISPs are going to have to deal with their own success and open the spigots a bit wider; we *are* paying for our bandwidth, let us get to it.
3) Threatened the OEM contracts of those PC makers that bundled Netscape on their boxes 4) Paid bounties to prominent web sites with "Best Viewed with IE" tags
Given the atrocity that was the Lensman anime, it's not surprising Doc's daughter shot down the idea of filming them; she pulled the print rights from the publisher for licensing the anime. When I run across a random copy of the tape at cons, I buy it solely for the purpose of smashing it under my heel in front of the dealer.
With the current state of SFX though, a proper version could be managed. The battle scenes would make the Warz folks crawl off and die with envy. And the elementally eeeee-vil Eddorians are the sort of villains Hollywood dreams of.
>>3.) There really are not all that many Blackberry users out there versus Exchange users (or even Domino users)
No argument there.
The point is what number of them are likely to be interested that aren't already on Blackberry? The existing base has already spent the money, and how much of the remainder are potential customers? Not everyone is interested in 24/7 email into their cells.
If you need a Windows Mobile phone to do it, there's a goodly percentage of folks that aren't interested in investing that much in their cell. And a lot of those that are already carry Blackberries.
Like the other markets they've tried to break into, *THEY DON'T OWN THE PLATFORM HERE*, so their ability to strangle the competition (RIP Netscape) is limited. May it remain so.
They seem to think their position in the PC market will let them dominate whatever else they jump into. The market seems to be telling them they're delusional: XBox v. PS2, MSN v. Yahoo/Google/..., set-top box software, smartphones, etc.
I can see where they'd want to diversify; they can't own the PC market forever, but they haven't been able to get nearly the traction elsewhere, which is probably a Very Good Thing for the market.
(a) First iteration of MS products are seldom stable, RIM is already there.
(b) The existing Crackberry addicts will only switch when their existing units are pried from their cold dead fingers.
(c) I'll contend that the majority of type-A folks that need this already have it in Blackberry, and MS and the cell providers will be trying to get people to switch vs. trying to get lots of new customers to buy in. Smaller potential market, and perhaps already near saturation.
My first box was a Cromemco Z-2 rackmount S-100 box with three, count 'em, THREE 8" floppy drives. Assembled the thing myself and had my first major geek experience seeing CP/M start up on the on-board video card. Whoo-hoo.
The problems are (a) anyone looking at the source and then working on a counterpart product can expect an IP lawsuit from MS and (b) if interoperability is a moving target then looking at source in 2006 may not help you in 2007 when it gets changed again.
The answer is (a) provide a SPEC of the protocol that you can actually implement against and (b) have MS stop tweaking said spec every other year in order to break interoperability with competitors.
Is MS saying their protocols aren't specified anywhere, and the only way to interoperate is to reverse-engineer directly from source?
A lot of the F/OSS folks won't want to touch that for fear of later legal claims of plagiarizing, even if they had the 50K license fees available.
What they were *asked* for, and owe the EU antitrust folks, is a complete protocol spec for others to work from. They don't *want* the source, they don't care; they're quite capable of writing their own code, thanks, if they know what to work to.
The FISA law allows DOJ to get their warrants up to 72 hours *after* the monitoring starts, and approval is almost always given.
I'm all in favor of keeping an eye on the bad guys, but I can't help thinking that they're dodging the law because their evidence is so weak even FISA is calling BS on them.
>>Granted, it allows production and sales to a degree that wasn't fathomable for porn before, however, the mass filesharing means that one well off user can make off with tons of files from the site and host it else where.
Yah, but it also means that the wanker that likes the video he downloaded with [fill-in-bimbo-here] may go buy more of them with her in it. So the online stuff becomes an overlong commercial.
Slashdot Mirror
The studios listed for HD-DVD are *also* listed for BR ("CYA group"), but Sony's got more lined up for BR only. When little Joey wants his Disney fix in HD, and the parents find out it's only to be had on BR, guess what wins? Add the gaming boost from Playstation's market share and Sony may actually have something here.
Of course people want dependable, that's why they're looking for something not laden with spyware, viruses, etc.
Sorry, MS.
Even given this administration's please-bend-me-over attitude towards business, I can't imagine a deal of this sort wouldn't draw some attention from the DOJ. And with their EU counterparts already looking to drop a half-billion-Euro fine on MSFT, something like this would only encourage them to take a hard line.
Then there's the problem that MS has traditionally managed to fsck up most companies they've partnered with, so why would Yahoo willingly get themselves into that situation?
I'm all in favor of open *standards* for public documents, but that doesn't mean vendors can't offer solutions that cost money, either in license or support fees. It's called competition, and it's what we basically don't have in the desktop market today. The MS-Office format lock-in precludes competitors from getting in; widespread adoption of something like ODF puts multiple vendors on a level playing field, and yes, allows for free/open-source implementations as well. It also facilitates looking at other OS platforms to host those implementations.
Novell has claimed the UNIX copyrights never went to SCOX/Caldera because they didn't go to Santa Cruz that Caldera acquired. And with this they can claim whatever copyrights SCOX *does* have are subject to the terms of the UnitedLinux agreement with SuSE that Novell now owns.
Rock, hard place, SCOX.
Agreed SCOX went after Novell, but with slander of title vs. copyright infringement, and prompted Novell to publish letters from SCOX asking could they pretty-pretty-please transfer the copyrights?
When (not if) this one goes Novell's way, it's going to blow a hole in the case against IBM, since how can SCOX be claiming infringement if they don't own the copyrights?
>>The longer the trial takes, the more FUD there is...
But the near-instantaneous deconstruction of SCOX's claims in the tech press, Groklaw, etc., has only reduced the available avenues for FUD'g Linux by claiming infringement from UNIX.
You can tell this by MSFT's returning to their "Get the (non)Facts" nonsense, and Monkey-Boy's recent attempt to claim patent problems.
>>The goal of SCO's intentionally vague requests seem to be to essentially consume the defendant's resources.
The goal of SCOX's original filing was to annoy IBM enough to get a quick pay-off or buy-out to silence them, since they knew their business was sliding steeply downhill.
What they got instead was a "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute" response, that they now have to make their case against.
As well as a countersuit, and a suit from Red Hat claiming Lanham Act offenses, and from Novell claiming the copyrights didn't transfer with the sale, etc.
Given the relative sizes of the companies, and the utter lack of grounds for their case, SCOX's only hope at this point is postponing the date of execution.
If they were actually interested in the dollar amount, you'd be right.
But the legal fees of harassing these people probably offset the actual settlement money by a significant amount.
The *AA are looking for the PR value ("We're prosecuting thousands of file-sharers for fill-in-ludicrous-dollar-amount-here") to take to the legislators to try and get Yet More Draconian DRM passed into law, versus actually persuing the bulk disc copiers that actually make up most of the bootleg business, 'cause that'd be *hard*.
But (a) the *content* is still strongly adhering to Sturgeon's Law, with endless sequels, remakes and Old-TV-Show-To-Film adaptations, (b) the 20 minutes of ads in front of the feature, maybe half of them actual trailers and (c) the complete disrespect by about half the audience for the half that actually WANT TO SEE THE DAMN MOVIE.
Thanks, there's not that many films I'm so jazzed to see that I'll put up with the crap at the local megaplex. I'll wait the 3-6 months for the DVD, and be able to pause the movie for bio-breaks or getting the snacks *I* want, and not miss anything but the excess noise, parking hassles, etc.
How many of these 'founding members' are just hedging their bets by being in both this and the ODF Alliance group? And how do file formats matter to a company like Intel; they shouldn't care what office suite someone's using, as long as it running on their CPUs, yes?
Lucent was spun out as the hardware end of the old Bell System; yes they inherited The Labs, but why in Ghu's name they didn't take back the traditional name of WESTERN ELECTRIC still astounds me. And the Sphincter of Innovation (it dilates every so often and something plops out) as a logo - WTF?
Auntie Beeb usually has better standards than this. The response column at least admits they put their collective foot in it, and asks the question whether we've embarked on a digital arms race between the ISPs trying to ration bandwidth and the techs' traditional "censorship=blockage, route around it".
I think the ISPs are going to have to deal with their own success and open the spigots a bit wider; we *are* paying for our bandwidth, let us get to it.
People are on call for various *legitimate* reasons.
If something comes up where they need/want to be unavailable, like say a concert, etc. they trade off with somebody else and TURN THE PAGER/PHONE OFF.
There just aren't any cases I can think of where somebody needs to be "available" 24/7/365 and disrupting public gatherings.
3) Threatened the OEM contracts of those PC makers that bundled Netscape on their boxes
4) Paid bounties to prominent web sites with "Best Viewed with IE" tags
With the current state of SFX though, a proper version could be managed. The battle scenes would make the Warz folks crawl off and die with envy. And the elementally eeeee-vil Eddorians are the sort of villains Hollywood dreams of.
>>3.) There really are not all that many Blackberry users out there versus Exchange users (or even Domino users)
No argument there.
The point is what number of them are likely to be interested that aren't already on Blackberry? The existing base has already spent the money, and how much of the remainder are potential customers? Not everyone is interested in 24/7 email into their cells.
If you need a Windows Mobile phone to do it, there's a goodly percentage of folks that aren't interested in investing that much in their cell. And a lot of those that are already carry Blackberries.
Like the other markets they've tried to break into, *THEY DON'T OWN THE PLATFORM HERE*, so their ability to strangle the competition (RIP Netscape) is limited. May it remain so.
They seem to think their position in the PC market will let them dominate whatever else they jump into. The market seems to be telling them they're delusional: XBox v. PS2, MSN v. Yahoo/Google/..., set-top box software, smartphones, etc.
I can see where they'd want to diversify; they can't own the PC market forever, but they haven't been able to get nearly the traction elsewhere, which is probably a Very Good Thing for the market.
(a) First iteration of MS products are seldom stable, RIM is already there.
(b) The existing Crackberry addicts will only switch when their existing units are pried from their cold dead fingers.
(c) I'll contend that the majority of type-A folks that need this already have it in Blackberry, and MS and the cell providers will be trying to get people to switch vs. trying to get lots of new customers to buy in. Smaller potential market, and perhaps already near saturation.
My first box was a Cromemco Z-2 rackmount S-100 box with three, count 'em, THREE 8" floppy drives. Assembled the thing myself and had my first major geek experience seeing CP/M start up on the on-board video card. Whoo-hoo.
The problems are (a) anyone looking at the source and then working on a counterpart product can expect an IP lawsuit from MS and (b) if interoperability is a moving target then looking at source in 2006 may not help you in 2007 when it gets changed again.
The answer is (a) provide a SPEC of the protocol that you can actually implement against and (b) have MS stop tweaking said spec every other year in order to break interoperability with competitors.
Is MS saying their protocols aren't specified anywhere, and the only way to interoperate is to reverse-engineer directly from source?
A lot of the F/OSS folks won't want to touch that for fear of later legal claims of plagiarizing, even if they had the 50K license fees available.
What they were *asked* for, and owe the EU antitrust folks, is a complete protocol spec for others to work from. They don't *want* the source, they don't care; they're quite capable of writing their own code, thanks, if they know what to work to.
I'm all in favor of keeping an eye on the bad guys, but I can't help thinking that they're dodging the law because their evidence is so weak even FISA is calling BS on them.
>>Granted, it allows production and sales to a degree that wasn't fathomable for porn before, however, the mass filesharing means that one well off user can make off with tons of files from the site and host it else where.
Yah, but it also means that the wanker that likes the video he downloaded with [fill-in-bimbo-here] may go buy more of them with her in it. So the online stuff becomes an overlong commercial.