If you want mobility check out Sharp UW32 http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/datashe ets/PC -UM32W.PDF
I'm not sure what the big deal is. The Panasonic doesn't seem significantly different from the Sharp UW32 minus the built in combo drive. I bought the Sharp UW32 a a few months ago for only $1200 and it is sweet!
Its almost as light as the Panasonic (only 3.0 lbs), just as fast with same memory and HD size standard. Although it has external cdrom, it has built in wilress, USB (2), firewire and even a compact flash slot! The exterior styling is the same cool metallic.
Whats best about the sharp is the depth. Its less than an inch thick (.77"). Unlike the VAIO though the keys on the keyboard have a great tactile feel because the whole keyboard pops up slightly when the lid is opened.
And its only around $1300 or $1400 and available in the US. I've even seen it at Circuit City.
I find this article mostly nonsense. Its very premise is flawed:
The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free.
The problem with the current distribution of "analog" copies is that they are not cheap and they are not perfect.
The crux of RIAA's problems with Napster comes from the fact that the digital copies are all perfect. No matter how many generations of copies you make each copy is as perfect as the original. Trying making analog copies and after even 4 generations you can hear obvious quality loss. The Recording industry's original purpose was that they owned the originals and could make their reproductions from that. Since digital copies are cheap (not free, computing time, equipment and bandwidth all have costs those close to zero) and perfect their is no need to "go to the source". In other words, they are no longer necessary. Anyone who has any digital copy, can do exactly what the recording companies can do, and cheaply.
Napster isn't driven by people who want to edit music. Napster is driven by people who want exact same piece of music for a price thats more reasonable than what Recording Industry provides. Making good music is still hard. Making copies is now easy. Napster not a musical revolution, it is a distribution revolution.
And is it just me, or do all the ideas at the end sound like some kind of dot-com fantasy. The same people who believed in loosing money per unit but making it up in volume.
Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.
Searching and indexing music is far cheaper than making music! Its also cheaper than distributing music. Indexes take up less space and bandwidth than the material itself.
On auction sites, music lovers buy and sell active playlists, which arrange hundreds of songs in creative sequences. The lists are templates that reorder songs on your own disc. If you can copy music for free, why on earth would you not be able to do the same for playlists?
The most popular band in the world produces only very good ''jingles,'' just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials.
What does this have to do with anything? If you're not paying for digital music (author's premise) why would you pay for "jingles". And I don't see commercials edging out movies.
Musicians with the highest status are those who have a 24-hour Net channel devoted to streaming only their music. If I stream 24 hours of crap and U2 streams 10 minutes of Joshua Tree, who do you think is going to get the most hits and have the most "status".
Despite the fact that with some effort you can freely download the song you think you want in a format you think will work for your system, most people choose to go to a reliable retailer online and use the retailer's wonderful search tools and expert testimonials to purchase what they want because it is simply easier and a better experience all around.
This I think is makes sense. BUT, would you pay $20 for 8 tracks? That is why are willing to sit on their 56k and search for songs. Because $20/cd is too expensive! And the retailer does not want you to use your music on any system. If you want to use it in your car and home, they want you to buy another copy! Too bad if its inconvient and expensive for you. If they have no competition they can do whatever you want.
I think the best analogy I heard about Napster is this: Imagine if we had a duplicator. So lets say we could duplicate apples from one original apple. Farmer's would be out business. Would we stamp out such technology on the basis that we are pirating apples and destroying a farmer's ability to make an income?
If farmer's took a cue from the software industry they would probably include a EULA to the effect that they are licensing use of the apple to us for eating purposes, but we would not actually own what we eat!
The whole point of this article is that what MS did is illegal by anti-trust law. MS having a monopoly is not illegal. But leveraging that monopoly to to continue to keep competitors out is illegal.
Therefore actions which by themselves might not be illegal, when taken in the context of a monoply can be illegal.
Look at it this way. Pretend Ford owned 95% of the gas stations in America and said that their gas could only be sold to Ford cars. Now you (the consumer) want to a buy a car. Normally you would never want to be limited to a car that can only use one vendor's gas. But because Ford own's 95% of the gas stations, you have no choice. If you buy a non-Ford car only 5% of the gas stations will sell gas to you making it unlikely you'll find gas when you need it. Take that one step further. Since everyone buys only Ford cars, no one is going to start a non-Ford gas station since there aren't enough non-Ford cars to support it. Hence Ford can sustain its monopoly through its monopoly power. There is no way to break out of this cycle, no matter how much better or cheaper compeitors make thier cars. The only way to open up to competition is through government intervention via anti-trust law.
I see a perfect use for this system that marketers would froth at the mouth for. Think of all the junk mail you get now. Almost all of that mail is sent at random to people hoping they'll buy stuff. Imagine if marketers knew who was actually going to what store. They would have a field day sending you all kinds of crap because they know that you had visted the store at least once.
How might this happen? Easy. We already know that CO was willing to sell all their current DMV information. What would keep them from selling the facial recognition database? All the marketers would need would be the same cameras in their store and access to the DMV database and volia! they suddenly know everyone who enters their store and where they live!
Its similar to what doubleclick wanted to do by linking thier ad info to the info online sellers had on you. Except this the info is almost being mandatorily collected.
I think MS has a good chance of making this happen. Its not a certainty but it is very possible. IMHO it all starts from the desktop monopoly.
The key is that when Hailstorm gets integrated into applications (instead of being "on the web") people won't feel as uncomfortable with it. They won't even notice its happening.
Imagine that some music distribution company offers a jukebox like system where you pay a small amount of money to instantly play a song. If they teamed up with MS, they could install this ability in MS Media Player to log you into Hailstorm so you could "securely" transmit finaical information neccesary to get the song. And the normal user barely even notices becasue all the info gets typed into regular windows dialog boxes that don't look anything like the "scary, unsafe" web. For the music industry its great because they don't have to worry about keeping user accounts and the security. For MS its great becasue they get money even though they have nothing to do with music. Hell, that might even make it easy for artists to directly charge for music. Easy distribution, and easy money collection. It works with anything. Like the MLB's plan to charge people for the game broadcasts.
Its all perception. People get scared only when they take out their credit card and type it into the computer. Imagine MLB get you to type in your credit card just once into Hailstorm. From then on all you'll see is a dialog box that pops up saying "Do you want to buy this? YES NO" Peopel will just hit yes and barely think about. Since all the info is already in Hailstorm, you won't need to retype your cc.
Once people are in the system and comfortable with it other companies will dive in. Make the same modification to Internet Explorer and then companies can sell you stuff over the internet using Hailstorm as the payment scheme (a la PayPal)Companies probably won't even give you any option other than paying via Hailstorm since its a lot easier for them.
And this is exactly what the article is getting to. MS suddenly becomes the doorway to a whole host of services. In other words _everyone_ is dependant on MS. MS can raise prices however they see fit since comapanies would need the MS user db to conduct transactions.
Although I've never suffered anything beyond minor aches from extensive typing, a friend of mine had/has a serious case of RSI. She developed it after extensive typing in during a single summer internship. She had to use a brace as well as take some time off from school since she was not able to write. In the end she's done quite well even though she needed to stay an extra semester.
She's worked extremely hard to do well despite RSI, its no hoax for her.
The problem with your analogy is that when you buy shares in a company, you've created a conflict of interest for yourself. The people who own these corporations aren't usually "evil" in themselves. But in the course to make more money for themselves and their shareholders they do things which society/consumers do not agree with. Once you become a shareholder its becomes much harder to weigh the decions the company makes vs. whether your stock price goes up or down.
When you vote, you vote for who you want. You don't vote for the other guy and then try to change his policies from the inside. Therefore there's no conflict of interest: your interest is your represenative's interest. When you buy shares to uphold ideals, you're interested in not loosing your money and you're interested in doing things which may not be as profitable.
The only way to make impact by buying shares is to buy shares in companies that do what you beleive. In this case maybe regional DSL providers. But thats why this issue is a problem. Even if you support the local guys and give them money which they might use the advertise. They can't compete becasue they've been locked out of advertising by their monopoly competitor.
i believe there is a legal precedent against TiVo
on
TiVo Upgrade Isn't
·
· Score: 1
I'm pretty sure I read a long time ago about a case where the author of a shareware program tried to remotely disable or remove any products of his that the user had not registered for. It was brought to the courts and found illegal to remotely access a user's computer, without the user's permission even if that person was trying to access software that they made and even if they gave it away for free.
Since in this case they actually paid for TiVo without signing away any rights their case should be even stronger.
Slashdot really undermines its ability to be used by guests b/c of its thread organization. Just about everyone who uses/. regularly is logged in and therefore sees highest posts first. Try looking at it with oldest first, and its a mess. You get a lot of score 1 stuff that's not very good above score 5 posts. (its faster and to write and submit a one liner with little thought than a coherent response)
Imagine if someone sent a link of this/. article to Sullivan. She would click on the link and just see a mess. No one has the time to wade through all of it; that's what moderation is for!
And the defense of "well they should just get a login" is silly and somewhat hypocritical. Why after all do people post links to non-login NYTimes articles? If you don't come to/. that often you shouldn't have to go through the hassle of a login to get something worthwhile out of it. It just hurts/. and doesn't help anyone.
If guest users were defaulted to highest post first, I think people like Sullivan would appreciate/. a lot more. And the insightful posts would get far more use and recognition.
No doubt Rambus was trying to really rush through a royalty deal. But it would have been crazy for any company to sign without such a disclaimer, especially when there is a good chance of Rambus' royalty scheme being struck down.
Its not enough that a device be created, but it needs to be distributed to people to use them. After all DeCSS has been created, but no one can easily develop a DVD player that uses it since the MPAA (with the help of the courts) would try to shut them down.
This is especially the case with hardware. Its not as easy to build a device from schematics as it is to directly copy and use some sort of circumvention software. As with the "old" DirectTV hack, you'd have to go through the effort to buy hacked cards from somewhere (like ebay).
I think MS has ever right to question to business model on which open source software is based. As the dot-com fallout out has shown, ideas that look great on paper don't always work so well in the real world. That's not to say that OSS won't be useful or successful, but I think the market will determine that. Apache being a grweat example for OSS.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the comments on OSS in other countries. The quote sounded rather ominous to me:
He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that the open-source idea was making in other countries.
"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
This makes OSS sound like a health epidemic in a third world country. What does MS mean by they are "concerned" about OSS in other countries? It sounds ominous and egotistical (not a surprise really) It doesn't sound like they're just referring to companies in other countries, but governments. Government software is one area where in my mind there should be a mandate for open source.
Employment: NEVER write your own software while you are an employee of someone else, EVEN if you do it in your own time. While technically you might be within your rights, your employer most likely has far more resources to fight you than you do to defend yourself
Thats why this was #1 in the article. When it comes to fighting a company, it doesn't matter how clear cut the case is. Without money to legally defend (or assert) your claims you're screwed. The company can just bury you in paperwork or other useless things which do nothing but eat money. Not to mention that most companies won't bother to agree to your terms anyway.
Karrade
I think more important than the this specific case of auctioning of Nazi memorabelia is its exponential impact on the internet. Could China impose fines on any internet site for anti-communist publications? And why stop at countries. Setting a precedent like this could oepn a flood of govermental fines and regulations from companies and even states or cities.
While I agree that the most important consequences from this deal with the credibility of televised news; the improtance of the advertising itself shouldn't be over looked. Some people are indifferent to this issue because it revoloves around the advertising of monstoruous companies. I agree advertising can be annoying, but in a capitalistic world it becomes incredibily important. Without it there would be no network television at all (it would all have to be subscription cable). Forget about running large sites of interest on the Internet, there would be no way to cover expenses. Many services would become subscription based becuase no one would want to support anything that wouldn't break even. Without advertising, we'd be watchign the Superbowl on Pay-per-View. If people have the ability to alter or remove advertising in a certain medium, advertisers will become more leary of paying for advertising space and then will hurt the users of that medium. Which means that free services are going to have to find another way to break even. Its sort of like the mentality behind the movie "Network". So this shouldn't be shrugged off as some unimportant fight between media giants, because in the end, it will affect you.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want mobility check out Sharp UW32e ets/PC -UM32W.PDF
http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/datash
I'm not sure what the big deal is. The Panasonic doesn't seem significantly different from the Sharp UW32 minus the built in combo drive. I bought the Sharp UW32 a a few months ago for only $1200 and it is sweet!
Its almost as light as the Panasonic (only 3.0 lbs), just as fast with same memory and HD size standard. Although it has external cdrom, it has built in wilress, USB (2), firewire and even a compact flash slot! The exterior styling is the same cool metallic.
Whats best about the sharp is the depth. Its less than an inch thick (.77"). Unlike the VAIO though the keys on the keyboard have a great tactile feel because the whole keyboard pops up slightly when the lid is opened.
And its only around $1300 or $1400 and available in the US. I've even seen it at Circuit City.
I find this article mostly nonsense. Its very premise is flawed:
The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free.
The problem with the current distribution of "analog" copies is that they are not cheap and they are not perfect.
The crux of RIAA's problems with Napster comes from the fact that the digital copies are all perfect. No matter how many generations of copies you make each copy is as perfect as the original. Trying making analog copies and after even 4 generations you can hear obvious quality loss. The Recording industry's original purpose was that they owned the originals and could make their reproductions from that. Since digital copies are cheap (not free, computing time, equipment and bandwidth all have costs those close to zero) and perfect their is no need to "go to the source". In other words, they are no longer necessary. Anyone who has any digital copy, can do exactly what the recording companies can do, and cheaply.
Napster isn't driven by people who want to edit music. Napster is driven by people who want exact same piece of music for a price thats more reasonable than what Recording Industry provides. Making good music is still hard. Making copies is now easy. Napster not a musical revolution, it is a distribution revolution.
And is it just me, or do all the ideas at the end sound like some kind of dot-com fantasy. The same people who believed in loosing money per unit but making it up in volume.
Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.
Searching and indexing music is far cheaper than making music! Its also cheaper than distributing music. Indexes take up less space and bandwidth than the material itself.
On auction sites, music lovers buy and sell active playlists, which arrange hundreds of songs in creative sequences. The lists are templates that reorder songs on your own disc.
If you can copy music for free, why on earth would you not be able to do the same for playlists?
The most popular band in the world produces only very good ''jingles,'' just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials.
What does this have to do with anything? If you're not paying for digital music (author's premise) why would you pay for "jingles". And I don't see commercials edging out movies.
Musicians with the highest status are those who have a 24-hour Net channel devoted to streaming only their music.
If I stream 24 hours of crap and U2 streams 10 minutes of Joshua Tree, who do you think is going to get the most hits and have the most "status".
Despite the fact that with some effort you can freely download the song you think you want in a format you think will work for your system, most people choose to go to a reliable retailer online and use the retailer's wonderful search tools and expert testimonials to purchase what they want because it is simply easier and a better experience all around.
This I think is makes sense. BUT, would you pay $20 for 8 tracks? That is why are willing to sit on their 56k and search for songs. Because $20/cd is too expensive! And the retailer does not want you to use your music on any system. If you want to use it in your car and home, they want you to buy another copy! Too bad if its inconvient and expensive for you. If they have no competition they can do whatever you want.
I think the best analogy I heard about Napster is this: Imagine if we had a duplicator. So lets say we could duplicate apples from one original apple. Farmer's would be out business. Would we stamp out such technology on the basis that we are pirating apples and destroying a farmer's ability to make an income?
If farmer's took a cue from the software industry they would probably include a EULA to the effect that they are licensing use of the apple to us for eating purposes, but we would not actually own what we eat!
The whole point of this article is that what MS did is illegal by anti-trust law. MS having a monopoly is not illegal. But leveraging that monopoly to to continue to keep competitors out is illegal.
Therefore actions which by themselves might not be illegal, when taken in the context of a monoply can be illegal.
Look at it this way. Pretend Ford owned 95% of the gas stations in America and said that their gas could only be sold to Ford cars. Now you (the consumer) want to a buy a car. Normally you would never want to be limited to a car that can only use one vendor's gas. But because Ford own's 95% of the gas stations, you have no choice. If you buy a non-Ford car only 5% of the gas stations will sell gas to you making it unlikely you'll find gas when you need it. Take that one step further. Since everyone buys only Ford cars, no one is going to start a non-Ford gas station since there aren't enough non-Ford cars to support it. Hence Ford can sustain its monopoly through its monopoly power. There is no way to break out of this cycle, no matter how much better or cheaper compeitors make thier cars. The only way to open up to competition is through government intervention via anti-trust law.
>Or imagine being able to zap someone your business card through SMS. That's another cool feature.
FYI Nokia phones already support this capability.
I see a perfect use for this system that marketers would froth at the mouth for. Think of all the junk mail you get now. Almost all of that mail is sent at random to people hoping they'll buy stuff. Imagine if marketers knew who was actually going to what store. They would have a field day sending you all kinds of crap because they know that you had visted the store at least once.
How might this happen? Easy. We already know that CO was willing to sell all their current DMV information. What would keep them from selling the facial recognition database? All the marketers would need would be the same cameras in their store and access to the DMV database and volia! they suddenly know everyone who enters their store and where they live!
Its similar to what doubleclick wanted to do by linking thier ad info to the info online sellers had on you. Except this the info is almost being mandatorily collected.
I think MS has a good chance of making this happen. Its not a certainty but it is very possible. IMHO it all starts from the desktop monopoly.
The key is that when Hailstorm gets integrated into applications (instead of being "on the web") people won't feel as uncomfortable with it. They won't even notice its happening.
Imagine that some music distribution company offers a jukebox like system where you pay a small amount of money to instantly play a song. If they teamed up with MS, they could install this ability in MS Media Player to log you into Hailstorm so you could "securely" transmit finaical information neccesary to get the song. And the normal user barely even notices becasue all the info gets typed into regular windows dialog boxes that don't look anything like the "scary, unsafe" web. For the music industry its great because they don't have to worry about keeping user accounts and the security. For MS its great becasue they get money even though they have nothing to do with music. Hell, that might even make it easy for artists to directly charge for music. Easy distribution, and easy money collection. It works with anything. Like the MLB's plan to charge people for the game broadcasts.
Its all perception. People get scared only when they take out their credit card and type it into the computer. Imagine MLB get you to type in your credit card just once into Hailstorm. From then on all you'll see is a dialog box that pops up saying "Do you want to buy this? YES NO" Peopel will just hit yes and barely think about. Since all the info is already in Hailstorm, you won't need to retype your cc.
Once people are in the system and comfortable with it other companies will dive in. Make the same modification to Internet Explorer and then companies can sell you stuff over the internet using Hailstorm as the payment scheme (a la PayPal)Companies probably won't even give you any option other than paying via Hailstorm since its a lot easier for them.
And this is exactly what the article is getting to. MS suddenly becomes the doorway to a whole host of services. In other words _everyone_ is dependant on MS. MS can raise prices however they see fit since comapanies would need the MS user db to conduct transactions.
Although I've never suffered anything beyond minor aches from extensive typing, a friend of mine had/has a serious case of RSI. She developed it after extensive typing in during a single summer internship. She had to use a brace as well as take some time off from school since she was not able to write. In the end she's done quite well even though she needed to stay an extra semester.
She's worked extremely hard to do well despite RSI, its no hoax for her.
The problem with your analogy is that when you buy shares in a company, you've created a conflict of interest for yourself. The people who own these corporations aren't usually "evil" in themselves. But in the course to make more money for themselves and their shareholders they do things which society/consumers do not agree with. Once you become a shareholder its becomes much harder to weigh the decions the company makes vs. whether your stock price goes up or down.
When you vote, you vote for who you want. You don't vote for the other guy and then try to change his policies from the inside. Therefore there's no conflict of interest: your interest is your represenative's interest. When you buy shares to uphold ideals, you're interested in not loosing your money and you're interested in doing things which may not be as profitable.
The only way to make impact by buying shares is to buy shares in companies that do what you beleive. In this case maybe regional DSL providers. But thats why this issue is a problem. Even if you support the local guys and give them money which they might use the advertise. They can't compete becasue they've been locked out of advertising by their monopoly competitor.
I'm pretty sure I read a long time ago about a case where the author of a shareware program tried to remotely disable or remove any products of his that the user had not registered for. It was brought to the courts and found illegal to remotely access a user's computer, without the user's permission even if that person was trying to access software that they made and even if they gave it away for free.
Since in this case they actually paid for TiVo without signing away any rights their case should be even stronger.
And no, profit != evil.
...
Just like guns != evil. And code != evil
These are just inanimate objects. Its how we as people use them that determines their alignment to good or evilness.
Slashdot really undermines its ability to be used by guests b/c of its thread organization. Just about everyone who uses /. regularly is logged in and therefore sees highest posts first. Try looking at it with oldest first, and its a mess. You get a lot of score 1 stuff that's not very good above score 5 posts. (its faster and to write and submit a one liner with little thought than a coherent response)
/. article to Sullivan. She would click on the link and just see a mess. No one has the time to wade through all of it; that's what moderation is for!
/. that often you shouldn't have to go through the hassle of a login to get something worthwhile out of it. It just hurts /. and doesn't help anyone.
/. a lot more.
Imagine if someone sent a link of this
And the defense of "well they should just get a login" is silly and somewhat hypocritical. Why after all do people post links to non-login NYTimes articles? If you don't come to
If guest users were defaulted to highest post first, I think people like Sullivan would appreciate
And the insightful posts would get far more use and recognition.
Karrade
No doubt Rambus was trying to really rush through a royalty deal. But it would have been crazy for any company to sign without such a disclaimer, especially when there is a good chance of Rambus' royalty scheme being struck down.
Its not enough that a device be created, but it needs to be distributed to people to use them. After all DeCSS has been created, but no one can easily develop a DVD player that uses it since the MPAA (with the help of the courts) would try to shut them down.
This is especially the case with hardware. Its not as easy to build a device from schematics as it is to directly copy and use some sort of circumvention software. As with the "old" DirectTV hack, you'd have to go through the effort to buy hacked cards from somewhere (like ebay).
I think MS has ever right to question to business model on which open source software is based. As the dot-com fallout out has shown, ideas that look great on paper don't always work so well in the real world. That's not to say that OSS won't be useful or successful, but I think the market will determine that. Apache being a grweat example for OSS.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the comments on OSS in other countries. The quote sounded rather ominous to me:
He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that the open-source idea was making in other countries.
"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
This makes OSS sound like a health epidemic in a third world country. What does MS mean by they are "concerned" about OSS in other countries? It sounds ominous and egotistical (not a surprise really) It doesn't sound like they're just referring to companies in other countries, but governments. Government software is one area where in my mind there should be a mandate for open source.
Employment: NEVER write your own software while you are an employee of someone else, EVEN if you do it in your own time. While technically you might be within your rights, your employer most likely has far more resources to fight you than you do to defend yourself Thats why this was #1 in the article. When it comes to fighting a company, it doesn't matter how clear cut the case is. Without money to legally defend (or assert) your claims you're screwed. The company can just bury you in paperwork or other useless things which do nothing but eat money. Not to mention that most companies won't bother to agree to your terms anyway. Karrade
I think more important than the this specific case of auctioning of Nazi memorabelia is its exponential impact on the internet. Could China impose fines on any internet site for anti-communist publications? And why stop at countries. Setting a precedent like this could oepn a flood of govermental fines and regulations from companies and even states or cities.
While I agree that the most important consequences from this deal with the credibility of televised news; the improtance of the advertising itself shouldn't be over looked. Some people are indifferent to this issue because it revoloves around the advertising of monstoruous companies. I agree advertising can be annoying, but in a capitalistic world it becomes incredibily important. Without it there would be no network television at all (it would all have to be subscription cable). Forget about running large sites of interest on the Internet, there would be no way to cover expenses. Many services would become subscription based becuase no one would want to support anything that wouldn't break even. Without advertising, we'd be watchign the Superbowl on Pay-per-View. If people have the ability to alter or remove advertising in a certain medium, advertisers will become more leary of paying for advertising space and then will hurt the users of that medium. Which means that free services are going to have to find another way to break even. Its sort of like the mentality behind the movie "Network". So this shouldn't be shrugged off as some unimportant fight between media giants, because in the end, it will affect you.