You are not talking of Space Business, I hope
because lots of people are in it. If you are
talking about spending money just for the fun of
exploration then NASA is probably about the only
one, I don't know enough to vouch for it though.
I am not against NASA doing the dirty work, somebody
has to do it, and USA having the most money should
probably do it. When they can spend so much money
building nukes they should spend some money
helping science.
The really good point was that Music Industry
has been very slow to get online. Till they get
their act together they should not be allowed to
complain. There is a need for easily downloadable
songs, and if they don't fill it, people will do
so themselves. Its not like in the past when the
public could not do anything about it. A possible
short term plan could be to allow the download
legitimately from their sites of reduced quality
files. This would get the songs to their fans,
and still give them the incentive to buy the
songs.
I am from India, and its almost impossible to
get hindi songs here in Switzerland. So we try
to download from where ever possible. Recently
we found a site which puts up songs with low
quality, and their ends slightly cut off. We use
that. In India you could listen to them on the
TV or on Radio to determine whether they are
good before buying. Now this site fills up that
purpose. Ofcourse we can buy only when we get to
India.
Here also I have seen that the same songs keep
on repeating all day, on the TV channels. What
is the point. If they were instead giving a
broader range of songs maybe they would be
increasing sales of other songs as well.
If this thing succeeds, it could be great.
on
Quarter-sized CD's?
·
· Score: 1
I think the Music Industry should start giving
out walkman like players very cheap for the
disks. This will result in lots of people
buying them, and the disk will certainly succeed.
All players based on this disk should only
give analogue output, so that its not copied
with the same fidelity.
Also they should ban the device surfacing on
the PCs. The PCs if ever they get these disks
should have a very different surface format.
So that they can never be read on any general
purpose computing device. This way they will be
able to disallow copying.
Now if they can supply their songs without
the possibility of people copying it in the
same quality, they will have less and less
reason's to go after people using P2P software.
They can also supply their songs on the internet
at reduced quality.
Since people cannot get the songs any longer, in
their desired quality on PCs, they will have to
buy these songs in the disk format only. But the
smaller guys will have a field day. They will be
able to get famous without any backing from the
RIAA. People who want good quality music, not
necessarily the one being doled out on all other
media, can get their music from the net free of
cost. The musicians who get famous this way can
earn money by doing shows. I believe people will
want to see these musicians sing in person, and
they will pay for the priviledge.
I say more power to the boulder and RIAA. The
RIAA can make themselves obsolete in whatever
way they want.
Opening Windows Source is bad, but a better
alternative would be to force them to produce an
open source emulator, which would run any and every
software that they do not bundle with their OS.
Make it mandatory that all of their software must
run on that emulator. Also they should also
be forced to open their file formats.
The other thing is that this open source emulator
must also run on another OS which is not from MS.
This will keep them honest and their interfaces
open. It will also let them INNOVATE as much as
they want without stopping others from innovating.
The only way the RAND policy can be Reasonable and
Non-Discriminatory, if it takes only as much money
from the user as they can gain monetarily from the
Patented standard. That is if it is Microsoft that
is using the standard then they should be paying a
very large amount of money because they would gain
the most. If it is a small company like Redhat,
they can make very little money so they should
be charged less. While free software developers
don't make any money, so they should not be
charged any money.
This is the only way it can be reasonable
and non-discriminatory. I am very much for having
RAND licensing but unless its really RAND, we
should rather not have it. I know my scheme is
too complicated in practise but any RAND scheme
should have a simplified version of the above,
and free software should get the standard free,
otherwise web will not be free anymore.
My question is can we expect the RAND licensing
to reasonable and non-discriminatory to every
body involved including the Free Software people?
I am not into the hardware part, and work only on
software part of this equation. But I do work on
Powerline modems which give 2Mbps. So its slightly
higher than what you claim. I also have heard that
10Mbps is within reach. One company DS2 also claims 45Mbps. I agree that you could just have
ethernet in a building, but then each would have
to take care of their own security. Lots of
peoples files would be available on default
shares, with the wonderful ease of use provided by
MS. The powerline modems provide security by
acting as routers.
Not quite. The power does not go directly to your
computer. You use a modem with the power input.
And connect your PC someother way, Ethernet or may
be USB, maybe even Firewire.
Well being in a Powerline firm I can tell you
that, that is not a problem. It does use the power
cable for its data transmission but not
necessarily the power.
It also can have an auxiliary power, like a 9V
battery. The best thing is there would be lesser
noise when there is no power. You get a free cable;-).
These companies are also trying to sell their
products in developing nations. So it would be
necessary to work over power outages.
The more difficult thing is when the transformer
goes down due to overload. Ever seen that, it is
a very common sight where I come from, India.
That still is a trademark infringement. The other
two are not infringements because the uses have
been allowed by the trademark owners. MySQL.com
does not endorse Nusphere's use of their trademark.
They might have had permission at one time when
they were having negotiation but not any more.
MySQL.com guys can keep an alternate license,
because they have the ownership for the whole
code that they distribute.
Nusphere cannot distribute their code in anything
but the GPL. Because they don't own the whole code.
They cannot sell their own code separately from
MySQL.com code, because it needs to be linked,
in an other than GPL license.
It is not the LGPL where you can sell the object
separately. But here you cannot link if its not
GPL. Linux kernel allows modules to be linked
but that is an explicitly allowed feature, by
Linus Torvalds. Unless MySQL.com guys allow
Nusphere they can't sell their Gemini tables in
anything but GPL.
The Nusphere Guys are the bad guys here.
The FSF should be after their case, if they want
people to take GPL seriously.
I read an Asimov Story about people getting to see everywhere using nutrino's. The story tries to tell you that not everything in science is good. But I tried to think of what worst could happen with the device. You get absolute lack of privacy. Anybody can look at what you did and even if it was done in the past. What you have is hell, for us who have had privacy. Initially this condition will create a lot of problems. But when everybody gets used to everybody finding out what you did. It will eventually lead to I believe more honesty. When you know that you cannot hide behind a lie you have not enough motivation to lie. It would also need people to be infallible. But that really is not necessary because people will become a lot more tolerant of others mistakes. Because everybody would make some mistakes. Life will become much more simple. You cannot play politics, because if you say something at one place and something else at a different place you could get caught. I don't know about you all but I think that this could be good.
This requires absolute lack of privacy anything less would not be helpful. Everybody should be able to peer into everybody else, and very easily. If only few get the power to peer into everybody else it is the worst possible way of losing privacy.
Yes they could take any, of the above alternatives
but the point is they won't, if they only wanted
to do all the development themselves, their own
unix weren't bad at all. They could just open the
source to them. But the whole point of the
exercise is that they want the OSS or FS community
to do their job for them. They would only want to
help where they are required. The point is to
bring down the development cost. The other point
is Applications. If the OS is open source, they
will get lots of free apps as well, but that would
be mostly secondary.
The cost factor has become significant lately
precisely because of Linux, providing the
stability that they are getting pushed into ever
reducing niches. They know they can sell more
of their systems with better margins if they spend
less developmental effort over software.
Linux is the perfect vehicle here. It has the
maximum momentum, and it has the maximum no. of
brains behind it. And could as well become the
defacto standard for servers.
I think this will give MS a long time to play. As anybody knows that now their major revenue is from MS Office. If they were to open source Windows. This will increase the life of Windows by quite a bit. And also help others write WINE type emulators which will let their software go into other markets. Linux will be a good place for them to be. Ofcourse they don't have an immediate pressure on them to do this but after three years who knows;-).
Slashdot Mirror
Any man distinguishable from God is not sufficiently
advanced.
You are not talking of Space Business, I hope
because lots of people are in it. If you are
talking about spending money just for the fun of
exploration then NASA is probably about the only
one, I don't know enough to vouch for it though.
I am not against NASA doing the dirty work, somebody
has to do it, and USA having the most money should
probably do it. When they can spend so much money
building nukes they should spend some money
helping science.
The really good point was that Music Industry
has been very slow to get online. Till they get
their act together they should not be allowed to
complain. There is a need for easily downloadable
songs, and if they don't fill it, people will do
so themselves. Its not like in the past when the
public could not do anything about it. A possible
short term plan could be to allow the download
legitimately from their sites of reduced quality
files. This would get the songs to their fans,
and still give them the incentive to buy the
songs.
I am from India, and its almost impossible to
get hindi songs here in Switzerland. So we try
to download from where ever possible. Recently
we found a site which puts up songs with low
quality, and their ends slightly cut off. We use
that. In India you could listen to them on the
TV or on Radio to determine whether they are
good before buying. Now this site fills up that
purpose. Ofcourse we can buy only when we get to
India.
Here also I have seen that the same songs keep
on repeating all day, on the TV channels. What
is the point. If they were instead giving a
broader range of songs maybe they would be
increasing sales of other songs as well.
I think the Music Industry should start giving
out walkman like players very cheap for the
disks. This will result in lots of people
buying them, and the disk will certainly succeed.
All players based on this disk should only
give analogue output, so that its not copied
with the same fidelity.
Also they should ban the device surfacing on
the PCs. The PCs if ever they get these disks
should have a very different surface format.
So that they can never be read on any general
purpose computing device. This way they will be
able to disallow copying.
Now if they can supply their songs without
the possibility of people copying it in the
same quality, they will have less and less
reason's to go after people using P2P software.
They can also supply their songs on the internet
at reduced quality.
Since people cannot get the songs any longer, in
their desired quality on PCs, they will have to
buy these songs in the disk format only. But the
smaller guys will have a field day. They will be
able to get famous without any backing from the
RIAA. People who want good quality music, not
necessarily the one being doled out on all other
media, can get their music from the net free of
cost. The musicians who get famous this way can
earn money by doing shows. I believe people will
want to see these musicians sing in person, and
they will pay for the priviledge.
I say more power to the boulder and RIAA. The
RIAA can make themselves obsolete in whatever
way they want.
-anand
Opening Windows Source is bad, but a better
alternative would be to force them to produce an
open source emulator, which would run any and every
software that they do not bundle with their OS.
Make it mandatory that all of their software must
run on that emulator. Also they should also
be forced to open their file formats.
The other thing is that this open source emulator
must also run on another OS which is not from MS.
This will keep them honest and their interfaces
open. It will also let them INNOVATE as much as
they want without stopping others from innovating.
The only way the RAND policy can be Reasonable and
Non-Discriminatory, if it takes only as much money
from the user as they can gain monetarily from the
Patented standard. That is if it is Microsoft that
is using the standard then they should be paying a
very large amount of money because they would gain
the most. If it is a small company like Redhat,
they can make very little money so they should
be charged less. While free software developers
don't make any money, so they should not be
charged any money.
This is the only way it can be reasonable
and non-discriminatory. I am very much for having
RAND licensing but unless its really RAND, we
should rather not have it. I know my scheme is
too complicated in practise but any RAND scheme
should have a simplified version of the above,
and free software should get the standard free,
otherwise web will not be free anymore.
My question is can we expect the RAND licensing
to reasonable and non-discriminatory to every
body involved including the Free Software people?
I am not into the hardware part, and work only on
software part of this equation. But I do work on
Powerline modems which give 2Mbps. So its slightly
higher than what you claim. I also have heard that
10Mbps is within reach. One company DS2 also claims 45Mbps. I agree that you could just have
ethernet in a building, but then each would have
to take care of their own security. Lots of
peoples files would be available on default
shares, with the wonderful ease of use provided by
MS. The powerline modems provide security by
acting as routers.
-anand
Not quite. The power does not go directly to your
computer. You use a modem with the power input.
And connect your PC someother way, Ethernet or may
be USB, maybe even Firewire.
It is not very fast yet, about 2Mbps, shared, among
as many subscribers as the Power company wants or
the geography allows. But they could be better.
-anand
Well being in a Powerline firm I can tell you
that, that is not a problem. It does use the power
cable for its data transmission but not
necessarily the power.
It also can have an auxiliary power, like a 9V
battery. The best thing is there would be lesser
noise when there is no power. You get a free cable;-).
These companies are also trying to sell their
products in developing nations. So it would be
necessary to work over power outages.
The more difficult thing is when the transformer
goes down due to overload. Ever seen that, it is
a very common sight where I come from, India.
That still is a trademark infringement. The other
two are not infringements because the uses have
been allowed by the trademark owners. MySQL.com
does not endorse Nusphere's use of their trademark.
They might have had permission at one time when
they were having negotiation but not any more.
MySQL.com guys can keep an alternate license,
because they have the ownership for the whole
code that they distribute.
Nusphere cannot distribute their code in anything
but the GPL. Because they don't own the whole code.
They cannot sell their own code separately from
MySQL.com code, because it needs to be linked,
in an other than GPL license.
It is not the LGPL where you can sell the object
separately. But here you cannot link if its not
GPL. Linux kernel allows modules to be linked
but that is an explicitly allowed feature, by
Linus Torvalds. Unless MySQL.com guys allow
Nusphere they can't sell their Gemini tables in
anything but GPL.
The Nusphere Guys are the bad guys here.
The FSF should be after their case, if they want
people to take GPL seriously.
-anand
I read an Asimov Story about people getting to see everywhere using nutrino's. The story tries to tell you that not everything in science is good. But I tried to think of what worst could happen with the device. You get absolute lack of privacy. Anybody can look at what you did and even if it was done in the past. What you have is hell, for us who have had privacy. Initially this condition will create a lot of problems. But when everybody gets used to everybody finding out what you did. It will eventually lead to I believe more honesty. When you know that you cannot hide behind a lie you have not enough motivation to lie. It would also need people to be infallible. But that really is not necessary because people will become a lot more tolerant of others mistakes. Because everybody would make some mistakes. Life will become much more simple. You cannot play politics, because if you say something at one place and something else at a different place you could get caught. I don't know about you all but I think that this could be good.
This requires absolute lack of privacy anything less would not be helpful. Everybody should be able to peer into everybody else, and very easily. If only few get the power to peer into everybody else it is the worst possible way of losing privacy.
Yes they could take any, of the above alternatives
but the point is they won't, if they only wanted
to do all the development themselves, their own
unix weren't bad at all. They could just open the
source to them. But the whole point of the
exercise is that they want the OSS or FS community
to do their job for them. They would only want to
help where they are required. The point is to
bring down the development cost. The other point
is Applications. If the OS is open source, they
will get lots of free apps as well, but that would
be mostly secondary.
The cost factor has become significant lately
precisely because of Linux, providing the
stability that they are getting pushed into ever
reducing niches. They know they can sell more
of their systems with better margins if they spend
less developmental effort over software.
Linux is the perfect vehicle here. It has the
maximum momentum, and it has the maximum no. of
brains behind it. And could as well become the
defacto standard for servers.
-anand
"We are the most ripped of company around" - Bill Gates 1980 Now they must be the biggest rippers around, some turn around this ;-).
-anand
I think this will give MS a long time to play. As anybody knows that now their major revenue is from MS Office. If they were to open source Windows. This will increase the life of Windows by quite a bit. And also help others write WINE type emulators which will let their software go into other markets. Linux will be a good place for them to be. Ofcourse they don't have an immediate pressure on them to do this but after three years who knows ;-).