In order to support Vista, Microsoft will need to create 50000 new jobs : Advertizers for Vista products, support for Vista,...
But in the same time, they are removing support for previous versions... So, how many jobs lost for XP advertisement, 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 support (they won't keep as many people to support these "outdated OS"),...
And how many jobs in "competitors" (all anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall,... makers for example) will also dissappear ?
During IRC communications, you could ask for a DCC (DCC SEND, DCC CHAT) which is Direct Client to Client (P2P). DCC Requests include the IP address and the port to be used to establish the communication, either to send a file or to use a direct chat (without using the IRC server anymore)
We always think about secret services like sinister and serious people...
But they can also be good humorists... that website is a good example...
But I also guess that after the site having been slashdotted, they'll have to spend month to sort out all the access to the site... They'll be busy for a long time... and maybe they'll have to recruit more people... Maybe is it the answer to the unemployment problems;-)
there are many car producers (Honda, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, BMW, Saab, Fiat, Peugeot, Renauld and many more) which are sharing that market...
But Microsoft is NOT sharing the computer market with anyone... Microsoft do use bad practices to grab more and more share market and alternative (MacOS, Linux,...) are a very little part of the market.
On one side, we have a competitive market, on the other side, we have a quasi-monopolistic market...
That allowed Microsoft to put a "Microsoft tax" on computer (which is slowly being removed as more and more PC makers are selling PC without Windows), to push many other poduct while making their competitor's fail (as if Honda was also selling park-doors and was using his position in selling cars to push people to only uses his doors ),...
Anti-monopoly laws are to prevent such misuse of a dominant position in one market...
- Matmatah : l'apologie and Lambe An Dro. (the second one wqas an hit for several month) - billy ze Kick : Mangez moi - O fortuna remix
these are 3 examples that come in mind... but I'm sure that with some research more are to be found...
Some songs are critics on how things are going in a country. some subjects are very sensible because they are political controversy in the country... For example, mariage between homosexuals, light drugs (mostly Cannabis which is legal in some European countries, tolerated in other or forbidden in other), subjects like international politics (remind the controversy about Gulf War ?),...
And the most successful the song is, the more it makes the politicians unhappy... For example, Lambe An dro (which is now forbidden to be sold/on air in France) had big success and was to be heard everywhere...
I don't know if it has been banned, but the "American Life" of Madonna is quite critical about America and it's habit to act as world's police...
And you also have the censorship for other reasons... For example, some video clips who get banned like one of the versions of Relax (Frankie goes to Holliwood).
Well, I know this is about copyrights, but same problem arise with other IP laws... Things have evolved too fast lately and the laws were NOT able to follow.
The problem is that years ago, when here was a very high setup-fee for duplicating music, that kind of monopoly-situation was needed (and it was for a much shorted time than it is now).
Now, anyone can make copies at about no cost. This is a major change that should have requested a full rethought of the law, now a small adaptation to preserve some status-quo (which profit mostly to big companies and some big copyrights holders as, for example, Michael Jackson).
When a big part of the (educated) population is acting agaisnt a law, it's time to sit down and wonder if that law is still OK for the current days... It's not like if those who do these copy didn't have the money to buy that music...
I don't know the extend of that non-sense in USA, but in europe, small artists don't get anything back from "SABAM" and have indeed to PAY money to it. When they want to record their own songs, they have to pay a fee to the SABAM per CD made, When they are on a concert, the concert organizer has to pay the SABAM a fee for these songs... (and I'm not speaking about bands which play someone else's songs).
Basically, the music system in Belgium is AGAINST the artists and the people who want to organize musical events...
About open source, you should have a look before saying that there are only Tetris-clones. you've Word-processors (Open Office, AbiWord, KWord, PW,...), speadsheets (Open Office again, Gnumeric and many other), Presentation software (OO and other (don't remind the names, I never use Presentation softwares)), Publishing software (Scribus), 2D-bitmap graphic (GIMP), 2D-Vectorial (xfig, sketch), 3D (Blender, PovRay,...), Mathematical tools (Octave, Scilab,...), development tools (GCC/G++, Perl, Python, Tk/TCL,... most of them being also used in non-opensource environments), Browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror,...), DB servers (PostgreSQL, MySQL,...) and many other... This time, it's me who could say you that you don't give any argument to prove your affirmation;-)
It is true that Open source is still lacking games... But there are more than just Tetris/Breakout clones...
The foundation for the current MMORPG games is the MUD/MUSH/MOO which exists for a very long time and were open source. There are countless text adventures (with a competition each year), nethack evolved to nethack-falcon eye which is in 3D graphics, several older commercial games have been put in open-source (at least, their engines) (Descent, Doom, Beneath a Steel Sky,...), you've projects like Crystal space, Vegastrike, Parsec, Flight Gear,... Free free to have a look on Freshmeat if you want to find more (these are those I know of).
And, if you had read the FSF Manifesto, you'd have had your answer about software as Air trafic control and such... Developpers can still earn money by contract-programming... they'd be paid to develop that program (even if after that, the program would be Open source) and to give support to that program. But, where in current situation, new programs are developpe without any need for them then pushed down in the troat of the consumer, there, that way of doing wouldn't work. Which means better stability for the software installed as features would only appear when needed and no big change would appear every 2-3 years like we see these days...
Most of the Intellectual Property rules have been created at a time when the use of these involved a costly setup. At that time, creating a record was a process that involved costly devices. Patents were usualy related to industrial processes which needed lots of investisment to be started.
Now, these are used nearly "as is" for things that can be copied using cheap processes. Sofware patents are mostly about things quite trivial (and often abusive) and that can be implemented at no cost.
When these laws were writen, they were bound strongly to the physical world. Now, they are also used for things that are only "logical" and not "physical" anymore.
As such, these don't take into account facts like computer software running on hardware which don't exists anymore, the fact that, while before a costly setup was needed to start production, now a cheap computer from the local store can do the thing...
while big companies are pushing for more and more IP protection, the people (which are the one who are said to be represented by politicians) are more and more AGAINST these IP protections. Before, the barrier protecting these IP was mostly physical, now, it's mostly law and, as such, artificial.
Should IP protection dissappear, what would it means ?
- RIAA, and such would have an hard time and probably dissappear - Musician would continue to create new songs but would mostly earn their money from concerts. They'll have to renew themself and to keep a good level if they want to see cash keeping flowing in. - film industry would be in big trouble. Special FX are expensive. as are big figures. They'd probably have to stop paying insane salaries to actors (and that would also openthe door to new actors, less known but asking less money). - Computer companies would have to change much. But that won't distroy them (think about these linux companies who make it although their product is free and this, in a very "hostile" environment as Linux/*BSD are still not so widespread). For more, see FSF web site. - industry should still have some protection (I mean, for physical processes, not for software/business models and such junk patents).
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About the price of Music, as you said, the price jumped up when the switch was made to CD. and it's probably to do it again at the next format change. And for books, well, their history is much longer than your life !!! i I remind well, gutemberg was in mid 15 century...
About the film prices, well, DVD are about 1,5 times more costly than video-tapes in Belgium. And many films can't be found on tape anymore...
Thanks to that "Zone" system, we have to buy our DVD at a basic cost higher than the cost of the same film in USA... when the film shows up in Europe !!!
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You repeated the argument that we can (I could) choose the music/films we buy and avoid the junk one. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I don't buy these TOP-X music nor go to see all these junk-films... But how does it come that artists worth buying don't get so much advertisement ?
These junk artists are very interresting to record companies. they take a basic joe, clueless about the legal entanglement they got caught into when they sign their contract. They make a fast record, grab the money, give him peanuts and junk him... That's the way these companies work...
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About things unavailable, try to find some tape/CD of "Meco the time machine, Encounter of every kind" (well, even the vinyl is very difficult to find...).... you're out of luck !!! And I'm not speaking about these songs which were censored in some countries, for example, for political reasons. Because they made some people uneasy, you can't find these anymore... Great !!!
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About "free-market" of the labels, I'm NOT talking about the choice for the artists (many of them are locked by a contract with a single label anyway... so, they are NOT free to choose
- car MP3 players are still not common so, to listen to the songs in car, you'd need to put these on CD anyway.
- a computer in a livingroom is ugly... (even those expensive computers with special design), in comparison to HiFi (which has been created to integrate nicely).
And you can add the fact that it's also supporting the bands you really like...
Well... should there be NO copyrights, all works would be available freely for everyone anyway...
GPL is there to be sure that noone can take a GPL work and lock it using copyright law and such... Should there be no copyrights then the need for the GPL licence would disappear at the same time as the GPL.
And you should avoid to use the dichotomy : Evil file-traders and good law-followers. It's far more complex...
you've file-sharer who grab everything they can and other who search for things they can't find otherwise... Somehow, filetrading works great against censorship...
I've managed to find on filesharing tools songs which have been forbidden to be sold because they made some politician uneasy and such... And I've managed to find some obscure songs that are out of print for years and that can't be found anywhere else.
I also managed to find things that can't be found in europe because noone even thought it could interrest european people.
But I don't want to grab that brand new album from XYZ... perhaps because a CD is much better on my CD-Rack than a file lost somewhere on my HD... although with the coming of so said "copy-protected" CD which I can't read on either my car CD-player or my computer (the only things I use to play CD), I could change my mind...
In the beginning, books could only be reproduced by carefully copying it line after line, like monk did. It took very much time to make a single copy. Every copy had a great value... But anyone with enough time and knowledge (not everyone was able to write) could do it... without being prosecuted.
Then came Gutemberg. He found a way to make numbers of copies of a single work much faster. The initial work was still a long process.
Now, anyone can have a copier at home and copying of paperwork became available to anyone. But "production" costsof a copy and the finish of that copy are still quite expensive in comparison to "commercial" process. And duplicating a book damage the original and is still slow.
There are some "pirate" distribution of books, but having a book scanned in PDF or in TXT is not similar to hving the real thing.
For the music, the way was a little bit different...
At the beginning, there was NO way of recording music. Bands were paid to play. Then came the firsts recording, which were process unavailable to people (a little like Gutemberg press) and there was a protection which was mostly between companies (not companies vs individuals). This is like what we have for books.
Then, new media appeared, beginning by big tapes on a wheel, then the tapes we still use today, then the CD and now, computer formats like MP3.
The biggest difference is that, where it's still more expensive, destructive and less appealing to copy a book by an individual, copying a song is (very) cheap, don't damage the original recording and with color printers and scanners, you can have a CD-box with a copy of the original artwork or some custom artwork. Only the on-cd picture can't be done.
So, even if the law protecting both a book and a music record is the same, we have 2 distinct situations.
Add to that the fact that many musician complain about recording companies, that even if the manufacturing costs have dropped, the cost of music has increased (the cost of books has DROPPED).
One more is the fact that record companies are introducing more and more "one-shot" artists (making new stars from nothing, using mass advertisement and such). When you like some artist which make new musics of equal (or similar) quality over the time, you are more willing to buy its CD than when it's some "jack out of the box" artist you don't know and which won't last past the summer. You can be willing to support some artist you like, but when it's a one-shot artist, you are NOT given that opportunity.
And you can add to that the fact that many songs are unavailable at stores because the recording companies found that these were too old or that there is no interrest in these. While you can rent a book at the local library and won't probably read it again and again, this is not true when we are speaking of music because when you like a song/tune, you'll listen to it again and again nad will need to keep it. and if you can't find it at your local music-store, you're left with only ONE solution : copying it.
We have a similar problem with films. many films are NOT worth the price you've to pay for them. and, when you've paid to see it in a theater, you could find it incorrect to have to pay for it again to see it at home... not speaking about the many films which NEVER find their way out of their original country because of lack of interrest.
For films, we see more and more films with nearly no story but loads of known actors and of special effects. This lead to lots of "junk" with little interrest, which cost more and more to produce and is less and less worth it's price... and while the actual manufacturing of the film support (VHS or DVD) is less and less expensive, prices have actually gone UP.
Both for music and films, the people feel that it has a "real" value which is constantly decreasing and a price which is increasing... Add to that the wories like protected-CD (well... these are not really CD as they don't conform to the standard)
DRM, authorized application and OS... Isn't it the thing Senator Disney Holling has been trying to put as a law ?
This is something that both Microsoft, in his fight against OpenSource and RIAA/MPAA in their fight to restrict rights of consumers want...
But there are two ways it can be implemented : mandatory or optionnal.
Mandatory means that if the OS don't authenticate, it's access to some of the hardware would be limited. That could prevent OS like linux to run.
Optionnal means that it would be possible for the OS to authenticate with the chip and then, to get access to some cryptographic system that can be used when dealing with DRM-specific content but otherwise don't interfer with the OS.
With many (and more coming) big companies and governments betting on Linux, we can hope that it'd be optionnal... Allowing it to be mandatory would be suicidal for all those relying on Linux (like Disney, IBM, HP,...)
Future will tell us... But Palladium is a dangerous bet for Microsoft as, in the beginning, there will be both Palladium-enabled and Palladium-free systems available... and with more and more people switching from Microsoft to Linux, these Palladium machines could remain unsold and Palladium could sign the end of Microsoft in OS market...
Thursday, 28 march 2002 - The music-exchange-service KaZaA is not responsible for violation of author-rights by the users of the program.
The Court of Amsterdam has decided so this morning. The court has broken the decision from judge R Oribio de Castro in the affair that Buma/Stemra had against KaZaA.
Following the Buma/Stemra, KaZaA make it easier with it's software to break author-rights. The software was mostly used for music-swapping, with the authors NOT being retributed.
Oribio de Castro decided that KaZaA should take measure to prevent the breaking of author-rights. If KaZaA didn't take there in account, should the company get a big fine. The people from KaZaA decided then to sell the software to the australian company Sharman.
As it can be seen now, thuis was not needed. The court of Amsterdam decided in het higher appeal that KaZaA was right agaisnt the ruling of Oribio de Castro and can not be held responsible for the breaking of author-rights of the users of the program. "As far as author rights are concerned, the infrigements are done by the users of the computer progam and not by KaZaA".
Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm is happy with the ruling but find the whole way the affair went "a little [zuur---acid ?]". The CEO Niklas Zennström got the ruling with mitigated feelings too. "For KaZaA, the ruling came too late. I hope that music-organisations like Buma/Stemra will now be ready to come to speak instead of going to the court", said Zennström.
The court has seen the difference between Napster and KaZaA as said Alberdingk Thijm. "With Napster, there is a central server, with KaZaA, not. To go further, KaZaA is not only about sharing of music files".
"What must still be seen is the meaning of the arrest for KaZaA" said KaZaA in a press declaration. The sharing diesnt said that they were forced to end their worldwide company activity by the earlier court ruling and have thus sold the most important company-parts.
This was acknowledged by the court too [Sorry, can't translate this]
This means that Buma had applied a ruling that was not valid, said Alberdingk Thijm. "In theory, Buma is responsible for the selling at a value much lower than it would have been otherwise". It is still unknown if there will be step taken against the athor-rights organization.
I tried Blender without prior experience of any 3D system (except from POVRay). And, from a clean point of view, the interface was well thought...
But I agree that for people coming for the infamous 3D Studio MAX, it may be disorienting... As for people coming from any other similar application. Each has it's own shortcuts, each has it's own defaults and each has it's own features... 3D isn't a simple matter as Word Processing... So there are many way to do it.
I'm happy to have bought the various reference books from them beore they went out... And I think I'll continue to use it. Now, I'd find it great if it can be open sourced and go even further, even if it's unlikely.
I'm not using blender professionnally, it's only on freetime to create some simple scenes. I would certainly NOT invest thousands of Euros in buying a commercial package. For people like me, Blender was a good LEGAL way to do some 3D graphics (unlike all these people using PIRATED versions of 3DS MAX). That's one thing we owe them, bringing 3D to people wanting to have a try...
By the way, I intend to make last version available from my Web Site as it is allowed by the license. If the company can't survive, let's help the soft survive !!!
You are hereby granted permission to copy and distribute the Software without written agreement from NaN, only for non-commercial purposes.
In your example, you went from the [A-Z] (26 values) character set to the [0-9A-Z] (36 values) character set, adding 10 symbols in your alphabet.
should you be using binary data, the starting alphabet is composed of all binary values from 0 to 255 (0000 0000 to 1111 1111). If you want to add symbols to that alphabet, you've to add at least one bit to all symbols.
Your 8 characer sample (8*5 = 40 bits) to to a 6 extended character compressed form (6*6 = 36). reducing by 4 bits (which is less than 1 character reduction). (you need 5 bits to encode up to 32 values and 6 to encode 64 values)
But, should you try to compress ABCDEFGH with the same method, you'd go from 8*5= 40 bits to 8*6 = 48 bits, expanding by 8 bits.
So, if you have to compress AAABBBCDABCDEFGH with your algorithm, you'd lose 4 bits (instead of winning some) and bot expand your data and slow down it's reading (decompression needed)
Compression, after all, is removing all redundancy from the original data.
So, if there is no redundancy, there is nothing to remove (if you want to remain lossless).
When you use some text, you may compres by remving some letter evn if tht lead to bad ortogrph. That is because English (as other langages) is redundant. When compressing some periodical signal, you may give only one period and tell that the signal is then repeated. When compressing bytes, there are specific methods (RLE, Huffman's trees,...)
But, in all these situations, there was some redundancy to remove...
A compression algorithm may not be perfect (it usually has to add some info to tell how the original data was compressed). Then, recompressing with another compression algorithm (or sometimes, the same will do the trick) may improve the compression. But the information quantity inside the data is the lower limit.
Now, take a true random data stream of n+1 bits. Even if you know the value of the n first bits, you can't predict the value of n+1. In other words, there is no way that could allow the express these n+1 bits with n (or less) bits. By definition, true random data can't be compressed.
And, to finish, compression ratio of 1:100 can be easily archived with some data... take a sequence of 200 bytes at 0x00... It may be compressed to 0xC8 0x00. Compression ratio is really only meaningful when comparing different algorithms compressing the same data stream.
Indeed, Microsoft is not THE enemy but one of them... And one of the most dangerous...
I don't agree with closed source being an enemy... After all, if you don't want everyone peeking in your code, it's your right.
Buggy software is usually damaging the people who wrote it.
What must be fought are the bad commercial practices that are aimed at denying other programs to be used (like Microsoft's monopolistic practices), that try to remove some of our rights (like the Region Coding of DVD and the CSS system that removes the right to program our own DVD player) or that try to deny small companies/individual the right to create program by over-patenting.
I do like opensource (and GPL) and contributed to several GPL programs (bugfixes or code contribution) but I want to have the right to do my own closed source program. There may be several legitimate reason behind closed source.
For example, generated code... Take the output of yacc+lex... No-one sane will try to reverse engineer it... If the source generator behaved in a more visual way than yacc/lex, it may be very unpractical to give the source code away.
Most probably, that book will be read by people who are already AGAINST Bill Gates and his (anti-)commercial practices.
The majority of the people don't mind about the trial, the MS background,... as long as they can have their little computer with Windows preinstalled, a quick recovery CD-Rom and their brand new game/MS Office working.
So it will end up in hands of people who already know a lot of what is told and don't have to be shown that Bill Gates is using bad practices.
Too bad... The audience who could have learned something from that book won't probably read it.
A link to that CGI with the mention "install the certificate into my Netscape" and you're done. (I don't know if it works with MSIE... I never use it !!!)
some people are holding their cellular in the same hand they are using to type. the other fingers are used to hold the phone
when the keys are small or when the user had big fingers, using the tip of the index finger is easier to type
Keyboard entry use all fingers but for DIFFERENT keys. Here, it's about using all fingers on the SAME key.
You have far less strength in your small fingers and more in your thumb and index.
Anyway, cyclic typing is the best possible way to do blind typing (for example, while driving, in order to keep your eyes on the road) and DictAssisted typing is usually the fastest way to type (except when you use a lot of words not in the dictionnary).
What is great with cell phones is that, even if you're blind, you can use it...
look at the 5 digit... About all cellphones have marks either on the key or around it (a little like the 5 on a computer keypad and the F and J on the keyboards).
These allows blind people to dial the phone number even without seeing the keys.
With a little practice, you may even use it if you're not blind... You're in your car and want to phone someone, no need to have a look at your phone in his carkit to dial the number !!!
What a lot of people don't realize when they invest in free software (GPL, BSD, artistic licence,...) is that, even if they don't get something back in money, they anyway get something back.
Free Software works by personnal contribution, the more people that contribute, the more software and services are available FOR FREE and FOR EVERYONE (including those who are investing time and/or money).
We can continue with the fact that the more software and services are available, the more people will adopt free software solutions as they are most likely to find what they are looking for.
And to complete the cycle, the more people have adopted free software, the more people will contribute. Some may contribute because they feel in debt toward the Free Software community, other would program anyway and, as they are in the free software environment, they contribute in free software (think of great sharewares/freewares that existed like pkzip, rar, winamp,...). And other may be just caught by the game, beginning by adding a feature they needed and contributing it back to end by being a major contributor on the project.
So, enterprises who are investing in free software are investing in tools that they may be already using (Apache for example) or that they will find later and for which they won't have to pay license fees (and thus, they'll have to spend less money on software... They don't win money, they just allow a way to not spend it to be possible.
Relying on only one source is risky... Freshmeat could turn commercial and ask for a subscription in order to consult their services, or could dissappear... an that don't even take in account the fact that they may have hardware problems and be out of service for several days or weeks.
The whole point bout a technology such as internet is that it allows tu implement redundancy easily (mirror or alternate sites/programs providng the same service).
These peçple should attack Microsoft instead... Especially if they are NOT using Microsoft products.
When you buy Microsoft products, the EULA says that Microsoft is not liable to any damage done to you...
But if you are using let's say, FreeBSD (or Linux, or Solaris,...), you never agreed with Microsoft Eula. So, Microsoft products DID HARM YOU via this Code Red Worm thing and you ARE NOT BOUND to Microsoft Eula... Microsoft clauses telling hey are not liable to any damage done to you don't apply in that case...
In the worst case, Microsoft could forward the complain to its users... But that would be a very unpopular move... "Use Microsoft products and you could be sued by non-Microsoft users because of the flaws in Microsoft products and can't attack Microsoft because of the Eula"...
From a previous article on Slashdot, I learnt that Mexico took the step of installing Linux + Free software on the computer it bought for Education as Microsoft licenses were too costly...
Here, Microsoft is pushing other school to behave the same way... I'm wondering what Microsoft is after these times... It seems pissing off it's users everywhere...
Microsoft Passport to access MSDN
The Microsoft activation system
The change in it's Passport policy with it's implications to privacy
...
That looks like Microsoft is on the falling way... and try to catch something to stop the fall... That makes me remind a financial analysis from Bill-Parish telling that Microsoft is cheating on it's reports by using a pyramidal scheme and that the efective losses are greater and greater (instead of greater and greater earnings)...
Slashdot Mirror
In order to support Vista, Microsoft will need to create 50000 new jobs : Advertizers for Vista products, support for Vista, ...
... makers for example) will also dissappear ?
But in the same time, they are removing support for previous versions... So, how many jobs lost for XP advertisement, 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 support (they won't keep as many people to support these "outdated OS"),...
And how many jobs in "competitors" (all anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall,
During IRC communications, you could ask for a DCC (DCC SEND, DCC CHAT) which is Direct Client to Client (P2P). DCC Requests include the IP address and the port to be used to establish the communication, either to send a file or to use a direct chat (without using the IRC server anymore)
We always think about secret services like sinister and serious people...
;-)
But they can also be good humorists... that website is a good example...
But I also guess that after the site having been slashdotted, they'll have to spend month to sort out all the access to the site... They'll be busy for a long time... and maybe they'll have to recruit more people... Maybe is it the answer to the unemployment problems
Well, you are missing one significant point :
...) are a very little part of the market.
...
there are many car producers (Honda, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, BMW, Saab, Fiat, Peugeot, Renauld and many more) which are sharing that market...
But Microsoft is NOT sharing the computer market with anyone... Microsoft do use bad practices to grab more and more share market and alternative (MacOS, Linux,
On one side, we have a competitive market, on the other side, we have a quasi-monopolistic market...
That allowed Microsoft to put a "Microsoft tax" on computer (which is slowly being removed as more and more PC makers are selling PC without Windows), to push many other poduct while making their competitor's fail (as if Honda was also selling park-doors and was using his position in selling cars to push people to only uses his doors ),
Anti-monopoly laws are to prevent such misuse of a dominant position in one market...
- Matmatah : l'apologie and Lambe An Dro. (the second one wqas an hit for several month)
...
- billy ze Kick : Mangez moi
- O fortuna remix
these are 3 examples that come in mind... but I'm sure that with some research more are to be found...
Some songs are critics on how things are going in a country. some subjects are very sensible because they are political controversy in the country... For example, mariage between homosexuals, light drugs (mostly Cannabis which is legal in some European countries, tolerated in other or forbidden in other), subjects like international politics (remind the controversy about Gulf War ?),
And the most successful the song is, the more it makes the politicians unhappy... For example, Lambe An dro (which is now forbidden to be sold/on air in France) had big success and was to be heard everywhere...
I don't know if it has been banned, but the "American Life" of Madonna is quite critical about America and it's habit to act as world's police...
And you also have the censorship for other reasons... For example, some video clips who get banned like one of the versions of Relax (Frankie goes to Holliwood).
Well, I know this is about copyrights, but same problem arise with other IP laws... Things have evolved too fast lately and the laws were NOT able to follow.
...), Mathematical tools (Octave, Scilab, ...), development tools (GCC/G++, Perl, Python, Tk/TCL,... most of them being also used in non-opensource environments), Browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror, ...), DB servers (PostgreSQL, MySQL,...) and many other... This time, it's me who could say you that you don't give any argument to prove your affirmation ;-)
...), you've projects like Crystal space, Vegastrike, Parsec, Flight Gear,... Free free to have a look on Freshmeat if you want to find more (these are those I know of).
The problem is that years ago, when here was a very high setup-fee for duplicating music, that kind of monopoly-situation was needed (and it was for a much shorted time than it is now).
Now, anyone can make copies at about no cost. This is a major change that should have requested a full rethought of the law, now a small adaptation to preserve some status-quo (which profit mostly to big companies and some big copyrights holders as, for example, Michael Jackson).
When a big part of the (educated) population is acting agaisnt a law, it's time to sit down and wonder if that law is still OK for the current days... It's not like if those who do these copy didn't have the money to buy that music...
I don't know the extend of that non-sense in USA, but in europe, small artists don't get anything back from "SABAM" and have indeed to PAY money to it. When they want to record their own songs, they have to pay a fee to the SABAM per CD made, When they are on a concert, the concert organizer has to pay the SABAM a fee for these songs... (and I'm not speaking about bands which play someone else's songs).
Basically, the music system in Belgium is AGAINST the artists and the people who want to organize musical events...
About open source, you should have a look before saying that there are only Tetris-clones. you've Word-processors (Open Office, AbiWord, KWord, PW,...), speadsheets (Open Office again, Gnumeric and many other), Presentation software (OO and other (don't remind the names, I never use Presentation softwares)), Publishing software (Scribus), 2D-bitmap graphic (GIMP), 2D-Vectorial (xfig, sketch), 3D (Blender, PovRay,
It is true that Open source is still lacking games... But there are more than just Tetris/Breakout clones...
The foundation for the current MMORPG games is the MUD/MUSH/MOO which exists for a very long time and were open source. There are countless text adventures (with a competition each year), nethack evolved to nethack-falcon eye which is in 3D graphics, several older commercial games have been put in open-source (at least, their engines) (Descent, Doom, Beneath a Steel Sky,
And, if you had read the FSF Manifesto, you'd have had your answer about software as Air trafic control and such... Developpers can still earn money by contract-programming... they'd be paid to develop that program (even if after that, the program would be Open source) and to give support to that program. But, where in current situation, new programs are developpe without any need for them then pushed down in the troat of the consumer, there, that way of doing wouldn't work. Which means better stability for the software installed as features would only appear when needed and no big change would appear every 2-3 years like we see these days...
About the subject, here is what I mean.
Most of the Intellectual Property rules have been created at a time when the use of these involved a costly setup. At that time, creating a record was a process that involved costly devices. Patents were usualy related to industrial processes which needed lots of investisment to be started.
Now, these are used nearly "as is" for things that can be copied using cheap processes. Sofware patents are mostly about things quite trivial (and often abusive) and that can be implemented at no cost.
When these laws were writen, they were bound strongly to the physical world. Now, they are also used for things that are only "logical" and not "physical" anymore.
As such, these don't take into account facts like computer software running on hardware which don't exists anymore, the fact that, while before a costly setup was needed to start production, now a cheap computer from the local store can do the thing...
while big companies are pushing for more and more IP protection, the people (which are the one who are said to be represented by politicians) are more and more AGAINST these IP protections. Before, the barrier protecting these IP was mostly physical, now, it's mostly law and, as such, artificial.
Should IP protection dissappear, what would it means ?
- RIAA, and such would have an hard time and probably dissappear
- Musician would continue to create new songs but would mostly earn their money from concerts. They'll have to renew themself and to keep a good level if they want to see cash keeping flowing in.
- film industry would be in big trouble. Special FX are expensive. as are big figures. They'd probably have to stop paying insane salaries to actors (and that would also openthe door to new actors, less known but asking less money).
- Computer companies would have to change much. But that won't distroy them (think about these linux companies who make it although their product is free and this, in a very "hostile" environment as Linux/*BSD are still not so widespread). For more, see FSF web site.
- industry should still have some protection (I mean, for physical processes, not for software/business models and such junk patents).
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About the price of Music, as you said, the price jumped up when the switch was made to CD. and it's probably to do it again at the next format change. And for books, well, their history is much longer than your life !!! i I remind well, gutemberg was in mid 15 century...
About the film prices, well, DVD are about 1,5 times more costly than video-tapes in Belgium. And many films can't be found on tape anymore...
Thanks to that "Zone" system, we have to buy our DVD at a basic cost higher than the cost of the same film in USA... when the film shows up in Europe !!!
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You repeated the argument that we can (I could) choose the music/films we buy and avoid the junk one. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I don't buy these TOP-X music nor go to see all these junk-films... But how does it come that artists worth buying don't get so much advertisement ?
These junk artists are very interresting to record companies. they take a basic joe, clueless about the legal entanglement they got caught into when they sign their contract. They make a fast record, grab the money, give him peanuts and junk him... That's the way these companies work...
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About things unavailable, try to find some tape/CD of "Meco the time machine, Encounter of every kind" (well, even the vinyl is very difficult to find...).... you're out of luck !!! And I'm not speaking about these songs which were censored in some countries, for example, for political reasons. Because they made some people uneasy, you can't find these anymore... Great !!!
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About "free-market" of the labels, I'm NOT talking about the choice for the artists (many of them are locked by a contract with a single label anyway... so, they are NOT free to choose
Well... there are 2 points about these :
- car MP3 players are still not common so, to listen to the songs in car, you'd need to put these on CD anyway.
- a computer in a livingroom is ugly... (even those expensive computers with special design), in comparison to HiFi (which has been created to integrate nicely).
And you can add the fact that it's also supporting the bands you really like...
Well... should there be NO copyrights, all works would be available freely for everyone anyway...
GPL is there to be sure that noone can take a GPL work and lock it using copyright law and such... Should there be no copyrights then the need for the GPL licence would disappear at the same time as the GPL.
And you should avoid to use the dichotomy : Evil file-traders and good law-followers. It's far more complex...
you've file-sharer who grab everything they can and other who search for things they can't find otherwise... Somehow, filetrading works great against censorship...
I've managed to find on filesharing tools songs which have been forbidden to be sold because they made some politician uneasy and such... And I've managed to find some obscure songs that are out of print for years and that can't be found anywhere else.
I also managed to find things that can't be found in europe because noone even thought it could interrest european people.
But I don't want to grab that brand new album from XYZ... perhaps because a CD is much better on my CD-Rack than a file lost somewhere on my HD... although with the coming of so said "copy-protected" CD which I can't read on either my car CD-player or my computer (the only things I use to play CD), I could change my mind...
In the beginning, books could only be reproduced by carefully copying it line after line, like monk did. It took very much time to make a single copy. Every copy had a great value... But anyone with enough time and knowledge (not everyone was able to write) could do it... without being prosecuted.
Then came Gutemberg. He found a way to make numbers of copies of a single work much faster. The initial work was still a long process.
Now, anyone can have a copier at home and copying of paperwork became available to anyone. But "production" costsof a copy and the finish of that copy are still quite expensive in comparison to "commercial" process. And duplicating a book damage the original and is still slow.
There are some "pirate" distribution of books, but having a book scanned in PDF or in TXT is not similar to hving the real thing.
For the music, the way was a little bit different...
At the beginning, there was NO way of recording music. Bands were paid to play. Then came the firsts recording, which were process unavailable to people (a little like Gutemberg press) and there was a protection which was mostly between companies (not companies vs individuals). This is like what we have for books.
Then, new media appeared, beginning by big tapes on a wheel, then the tapes we still use today, then the CD and now, computer formats like MP3.
The biggest difference is that, where it's still more expensive, destructive and less appealing to copy a book by an individual, copying a song is (very) cheap, don't damage the original recording and with color printers and scanners, you can have a CD-box with a copy of the original artwork or some custom artwork. Only the on-cd picture can't be done.
So, even if the law protecting both a book and a music record is the same, we have 2 distinct situations.
Add to that the fact that many musician complain about recording companies, that even if the manufacturing costs have dropped, the cost of music has increased (the cost of books has DROPPED).
One more is the fact that record companies are introducing more and more "one-shot" artists (making new stars from nothing, using mass advertisement and such). When you like some artist which make new musics of equal (or similar) quality over the time, you are more willing to buy its CD than when it's some "jack out of the box" artist you don't know and which won't last past the summer. You can be willing to support some artist you like, but when it's a one-shot artist, you are NOT given that opportunity.
And you can add to that the fact that many songs are unavailable at stores because the recording companies found that these were too old or that there is no interrest in these. While you can rent a book at the local library and won't probably read it again and again, this is not true when we are speaking of music because when you like a song/tune, you'll listen to it again and again nad will need to keep it. and if you can't find it at your local music-store, you're left with only ONE solution : copying it.
We have a similar problem with films. many films are NOT worth the price you've to pay for them. and, when you've paid to see it in a theater, you could find it incorrect to have to pay for it again to see it at home... not speaking about the many films which NEVER find their way out of their original country because of lack of interrest.
For films, we see more and more films with nearly no story but loads of known actors and of special effects. This lead to lots of "junk" with little interrest, which cost more and more to produce and is less and less worth it's price... and while the actual manufacturing of the film support (VHS or DVD) is less and less expensive, prices have actually gone UP.
Both for music and films, the people feel that it has a "real" value which is constantly decreasing and a price which is increasing... Add to that the wories like protected-CD (well... these are not really CD as they don't conform to the standard)
DRM, authorized application and OS... Isn't it the thing Senator Disney Holling has been trying to put as a law ?
...)
This is something that both Microsoft, in his fight against OpenSource and RIAA/MPAA in their fight to restrict rights of consumers want...
But there are two ways it can be implemented : mandatory or optionnal.
Mandatory means that if the OS don't authenticate, it's access to some of the hardware would be limited. That could prevent OS like linux to run.
Optionnal means that it would be possible for the OS to authenticate with the chip and then, to get access to some cryptographic system that can be used when dealing with DRM-specific content but otherwise don't interfer with the OS.
With many (and more coming) big companies and governments betting on Linux, we can hope that it'd be optionnal... Allowing it to be mandatory would be suicidal for all those relying on Linux (like Disney, IBM, HP,
Future will tell us... But Palladium is a dangerous bet for Microsoft as, in the beginning, there will be both Palladium-enabled and Palladium-free systems available... and with more and more people switching from Microsoft to Linux, these Palladium machines could remain unsold and Palladium could sign the end of Microsoft in OS market...
Thursday, 28 march 2002 - The music-exchange-service KaZaA is not responsible for violation of author-rights by the users of the program.
The Court of Amsterdam has decided so this morning. The court has broken the decision from judge R Oribio de Castro in the affair that Buma/Stemra had against KaZaA.
Following the Buma/Stemra, KaZaA make it easier with it's software to break author-rights. The software was mostly used for music-swapping, with the authors NOT being retributed.
Oribio de Castro decided that KaZaA should take measure to prevent the breaking of author-rights. If KaZaA didn't take there in account, should the company get a big fine. The people from KaZaA decided then to sell the software to the australian company Sharman.
As it can be seen now, thuis was not needed. The court of Amsterdam decided in het higher appeal that KaZaA was right agaisnt the ruling of Oribio de Castro and can not be held responsible for the breaking of author-rights of the users of the program. "As far as author rights are concerned, the infrigements are done by the users of the computer progam and not by KaZaA".
Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm is happy with the ruling but find the whole way the affair went "a little [zuur---acid ?]". The CEO Niklas Zennström got the ruling with mitigated feelings too. "For KaZaA, the ruling came too late. I hope that music-organisations like Buma/Stemra will now be ready to come to speak instead of going to the court", said Zennström.
The court has seen the difference between Napster and KaZaA as said Alberdingk Thijm. "With Napster, there is a central server, with KaZaA, not. To go further, KaZaA is not only about sharing of music files".
"What must still be seen is the meaning of the arrest for KaZaA" said KaZaA in a press declaration. The sharing diesnt said that they were forced to end their worldwide company activity by the earlier court ruling and have thus sold the most important company-parts.
This was acknowledged by the court too [Sorry, can't translate this]
This means that Buma had applied a ruling that was not valid, said Alberdingk Thijm. "In theory, Buma is responsible for the selling at a value much lower than it would have been otherwise". It is still unknown if there will be step taken against the athor-rights organization.
Buma/Stemra was unavailable for comments.
But I agree that for people coming for the infamous 3D Studio MAX, it may be disorienting... As for people coming from any other similar application. Each has it's own shortcuts, each has it's own defaults and each has it's own features... 3D isn't a simple matter as Word Processing... So there are many way to do it.
I'm happy to have bought the various reference books from them beore they went out... And I think I'll continue to use it. Now, I'd find it great if it can be open sourced and go even further, even if it's unlikely.
I'm not using blender professionnally, it's only on freetime to create some simple scenes. I would certainly NOT invest thousands of Euros in buying a commercial package. For people like me, Blender was a good LEGAL way to do some 3D graphics (unlike all these people using PIRATED versions of 3DS MAX). That's one thing we owe them, bringing 3D to people wanting to have a try...
By the way, I intend to make last version available from my Web Site as it is allowed by the license. If the company can't survive, let's help the soft survive !!!
You are hereby granted permission to copy and distribute the Software without written agreement from NaN, only for non-commercial purposes.
In your example, you went from the [A-Z] (26 values) character set to the [0-9A-Z] (36 values) character set, adding 10 symbols in your alphabet.
should you be using binary data, the starting alphabet is composed of all binary values from 0 to 255 (0000 0000 to 1111 1111). If you want to add symbols to that alphabet, you've to add at least one bit to all symbols.
Your 8 characer sample (8*5 = 40 bits) to to a 6 extended character compressed form (6*6 = 36). reducing by 4 bits (which is less than 1 character reduction). (you need 5 bits to encode up to 32 values and 6 to encode 64 values)
But, should you try to compress ABCDEFGH with the same method, you'd go from 8*5= 40 bits to 8*6 = 48 bits, expanding by 8 bits.
So, if you have to compress AAABBBCDABCDEFGH with your algorithm, you'd lose 4 bits (instead of winning some) and bot expand your data and slow down it's reading (decompression needed)
Compression, after all, is removing all redundancy from the original data.
So, if there is no redundancy, there is nothing to remove (if you want to remain lossless).
When you use some text, you may compres by remving some letter evn if tht lead to bad ortogrph. That is because English (as other langages) is redundant. When compressing some periodical signal, you may give only one period and tell that the signal is then repeated. When compressing bytes, there are specific methods (RLE, Huffman's trees,...)
But, in all these situations, there was some redundancy to remove...
A compression algorithm may not be perfect (it usually has to add some info to tell how the original data was compressed). Then, recompressing with another compression algorithm (or sometimes, the same will do the trick) may improve the compression. But the information quantity inside the data is the lower limit.
Now, take a true random data stream of n+1 bits. Even if you know the value of the n first bits, you can't predict the value of n+1. In other words, there is no way that could allow the express these n+1 bits with n (or less) bits. By definition, true random data can't be compressed.
And, to finish, compression ratio of 1:100 can be easily archived with some data... take a sequence of 200 bytes at 0x00... It may be compressed to 0xC8 0x00. Compression ratio is really only meaningful when comparing different algorithms compressing the same data stream.
Indeed, Microsoft is not THE enemy but one of them... And one of the most dangerous...
I don't agree with closed source being an enemy... After all, if you don't want everyone peeking in your code, it's your right.
Buggy software is usually damaging the people who wrote it.
What must be fought are the bad commercial practices that are aimed at denying other programs to be used (like Microsoft's monopolistic practices), that try to remove some of our rights (like the Region Coding of DVD and the CSS system that removes the right to program our own DVD player) or that try to deny small companies/individual the right to create program by over-patenting.
I do like opensource (and GPL) and contributed to several GPL programs (bugfixes or code contribution) but I want to have the right to do my own closed source program. There may be several legitimate reason behind closed source.
For example, generated code... Take the output of yacc+lex... No-one sane will try to reverse engineer it... If the source generator behaved in a more visual way than yacc/lex, it may be very unpractical to give the source code away.
Most probably, that book will be read by people who are already AGAINST Bill Gates and his (anti-)commercial practices.
The majority of the people don't mind about the trial, the MS background,... as long as they can have their little computer with Windows preinstalled, a quick recovery CD-Rom and their brand new game/MS Office working.
So it will end up in hands of people who already know a lot of what is told and don't have to be shown that Bill Gates is using bad practices.
Too bad... The audience who could have learned something from that book won't probably read it.
You just have to use the little CGI that follows...
#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw use strict; $|++; open(FP, "); close(FP); my $len = length($cert); print "Content-type: application/x-x509-ca-cert\r\n"; print "Content-length: $len\r\n"; print "\r\n"; print $cert;
A link to that CGI with the mention "install the certificate into my Netscape" and you're done. (I don't know if it works with MSIE... I never use it !!!)
If your phone is on the carkit, you only need ONE hand to type ;-) and the other on the wheel...
When you've a straight road with 100km ahead, nobody else (or nearly), there is no need in having BOTH hands on the wheel...
Anyway, cyclic typing is the best possible way to do blind typing (for example, while driving, in order to keep your eyes on the road) and DictAssisted typing is usually the fastest way to type (except when you use a lot of words not in the dictionnary).
What is great with cell phones is that, even if you're blind, you can use it...
look at the 5 digit... About all cellphones have marks either on the key or around it (a little like the 5 on a computer keypad and the F and J on the keyboards).
These allows blind people to dial the phone number even without seeing the keys.
With a little practice, you may even use it if you're not blind... You're in your car and want to phone someone, no need to have a look at your phone in his carkit to dial the number !!!
Free Software works by personnal contribution, the more people that contribute, the more software and services are available FOR FREE and FOR EVERYONE (including those who are investing time and/or money).
We can continue with the fact that the more software and services are available, the more people will adopt free software solutions as they are most likely to find what they are looking for.
And to complete the cycle, the more people have adopted free software, the more people will contribute. Some may contribute because they feel in debt toward the Free Software community, other would program anyway and, as they are in the free software environment, they contribute in free software (think of great sharewares/freewares that existed like pkzip, rar, winamp,...). And other may be just caught by the game, beginning by adding a feature they needed and contributing it back to end by being a major contributor on the project.
So, enterprises who are investing in free software are investing in tools that they may be already using (Apache for example) or that they will find later and for which they won't have to pay license fees (and thus, they'll have to spend less money on software... They don't win money, they just allow a way to not spend it to be possible.
Relying on only one source is risky... Freshmeat could turn commercial and ask for a subscription in order to consult their services, or could dissappear... an that don't even take in account the fact that they may have hardware problems and be out of service for several days or weeks.
The whole point bout a technology such as internet is that it allows tu implement redundancy easily (mirror or alternate sites/programs providng the same service).
These peçple should attack Microsoft instead... Especially if they are NOT using Microsoft products.
;-)
When you buy Microsoft products, the EULA says that Microsoft is not liable to any damage done to you...
But if you are using let's say, FreeBSD (or Linux, or Solaris,...), you never agreed with Microsoft Eula. So, Microsoft products DID HARM YOU via this Code Red Worm thing and you ARE NOT BOUND to Microsoft Eula... Microsoft clauses telling hey are not liable to any damage done to you don't apply in that case...
In the worst case, Microsoft could forward the complain to its users... But that would be a very unpopular move... "Use Microsoft products and you could be sued by non-Microsoft users because of the flaws in Microsoft products and can't attack Microsoft because of the Eula"...
Could be interresting
Here, Microsoft is pushing other school to behave the same way... I'm wondering what Microsoft is after these times... It seems pissing off it's users everywhere...
- Microsoft Passport to access MSDN
- The Microsoft activation system
- The change in it's Passport policy with it's implications to privacy
- ...
That looks like Microsoft is on the falling way... and try to catch something to stop the fall... That makes me remind a financial analysis from Bill-Parish telling that Microsoft is cheating on it's reports by using a pyramidal scheme and that the efective losses are greater and greater (instead of greater and greater earnings)...