It seems like what's necessary at this point is for someone with a public platform to actually say what we all know, that security theater (a) has gone too far and (b) isn't helping anyway.
It's probably too risky for someone who, say, works for an airline, or an airport, to say it even if they know it, because then if that airline or airport is the target of the next attack, even if it had nothing to do with what they said, the lawsuits would fly even faster and more furiously than usual. It's unlikely that a politician from the spineless Democratic Party would say anything that could be construed as being soft on terrorists. I'd like to think that some of the Republicans (especially some of these newly elected Tea Party types) might, but I also think they count on the whole atmosphere-of-constant-fear thing to drive up demand for their preferred policies of military spending, gun rights, the death penalty, and so on, so I am not counting on them either. And anyone who has to answer to the politicians (like the head of the TSA) probably has to shut up for the same reasons.
So I'm not sure who I'm counting on here. I dunno if some 2nd-tier broadcaster could do for this issue what Rick Santelli did for the mortgage bailout, because when he ranted, it was politically easy for others to say "yeah! what he said!" But there must be someone. Right?
As noted in the article, EVE isn't a classic example of skill-based levelling because in EVE skills level in real time only and independent of what you do in the game. There's no skill "grind", for better or worse. The more classic example would be UO.
You have WoW (and most other MMOs) where you gain XP from almost everything you do, and with enough XP you advance a level and your character gets better in many ways. Or you have UO where if you hit something with a sword you get better at swords, if you block with your shield you get better at shields, etc. Or EVE where you get better at whatever skill you specify, regardless of what you're doing in game (or even, in EVE's case, if you're not playing at all).
The people referring to "your boss" and "your job" are looking for polite examples. Do a search for "voter coercion" (depending on your political persuasion you may be more moved by the results if you add "union", "employer", or "government" to the search term) and you get an idea of the risks of non-secret ballots, which run into territory far more serious than missing a promotion, and which cannot be remedied by a lawsuit. You don't hear much "recent non-anecdotal" evidence of voter coercion because we have secret ballots, so it's not generally feasible (the victim can simply lie), but a relevant search will point you to examples from other countries, or non-government elections here.
Those are valid flaws in my argument and I am aware of them. I personally don't buy that they make my argument "bullshit" (especially your claim of the "main" flaw -- if we were talking about one post's moderation, sure, but take a look at all the posts and all the moderation -- together, that represents the opinion of a lot more than 4 people -- personally I think the flaw you cited "secondly" is the main flaw in my argument, still not enough to make me disown it though). I wouldn't use my logic in a scientific study but I think it shows a truth. You don't need a majority of a population to get a representative sample and deduce a collective opinion. Admittedly my sample is not representative (due to your "secondly" point) but close enough, I say =).
Example: Yes, there are a lot of diverse opinions that go into/., but it would hardly be controversial to state that slashdotters, overall, don't particularly like the RIAA. It's clearly possible to get a feel of the collective opinion of a diverse group of people. I feel like I have a read on the/. collective opinion on the two issues here, you may have a different read but yours is wrong =P. But I could be wrong about that =).
At any rate, the fact that there are varied opinions is sort of the point, isn't it? Many comments are ganging on up "bad parents" in this thread, but we can see from other opinions, collective or otherwise, that there isn't a single answer that would prevent bad things from happening to children. Sometimes bad things happen because bad people really wanted them to happen, not because good people screwed up, and it's not always necessary for good guys to take sides against the other good guys who do things a different way. That means parents shouldn't sue because their daughter met a predator through MySpace, and/.'ers shouldn't assume someone is a bad parent because their daughter met a predator through MySpace. It is quite possible that the only person who did anything truly wrong in the entire situation was the predator.
Nice job yourself replying to a statement never made. The "moron"'s comment didn't compare a poster here to another poster in another thread. The "moron" noted that highly-rated comments in other threads express views that are possibly inconsistent with the highly-rated comments in this thread./. isn't a hive mind, but in aggregate, the moderation reflects a collective opinion. The collective opinion in other threads the "moron" alludes to has been that, generally, people (including children? teenagers? not clear) should not be subject to intrusive monitoring of their 'net activities. The collective opinion in this thread is that people are responsible for their own actions, unless they are children, in which case their parents are (in part? largely? not clear) responsible for their actions.
The conflict (I think the "moron" went over the top in calling it "hypocrisy") comes down to how much monitoring of children by parents collective opinion would consider to be reasonable. Just to make it interesting let's call the child a 17-year-old high school senior. If she ends up assaulted by someone she met online she should have been more closely monitored in her 'net use? After being a responsible computer user for 15 years?
Other posters in this thread have noted that a daughter in a "good" family wouldn't get into this situation because she would tell her parents about the relationship, etc. I think it's pretty bold to judge a person guilty of being a bad parent just because a teenage daughter doesn't tell them about every guy she meets. It's not like these guys are advertising themselves as sleazy child molesters -- she might well consider him a friend, a guy her age from a neighboring town. I suspect the perverts know how to make themselves sound like reasonable people.
Disclaimer: Amen to those who say this is a ridiculous lawsuit, it really is. But it's just strange that so many posts are so over the top blaming flat-out bad parents. There is an obvious person to blame here: the child molester. Sometimes the bad guy wins and that doesn't mean the good guys need to take sides and blame other good guys.
Giving the working population cash (and letting them decide whether to put it into health insurance or not) only works if we as a society are prepared to let people regularly die or be permanently maimed by treatable conditions like cavities or broken arms or pneumonia. As long as there is the emergency care "safety net" paid for by society -- and, honestly, there always will be because emergency workers can't be the insurance police, checking if you have enough cash or insurance before treating you -- then people have insufficient motivation to buy sufficient insurance for uncommon but expensive treatment.
In a simple but extreme example, economically it doesn't make sense for me to set aside enough cash to save myself if I get into a bad car accident or my house burns with me in it. I could never afford it and anyway, I don't have to -- emergency care will be provided regardless. Another poster noted that Americans seem to have too much respect for human life to let me die at the emergency room door.
Less obvious but, I suspect, also true: there is insufficient economic motivation to invest in preventive care. Getting a regular checkup and a prescription for $100 might avoid a $1000 emergency room visit, but that $100 pays for a lot of food and clothing and shelter that are clearly needed today, and society isn't willing to let me die at the door of the emergency room anyway, so my motivation to pay the $100 now isn't enough, and I end up costing everyone 10 times more.
Relying on that emergency system is not an efficient way to pay for health care, but as long as that system is in place, just giving workers cash means people _will_ rely on it. There are just a lot more obvious needs for that cash in many people's lives. Preventive care that might avoid the emergency room visit, and insurance to cover that visit if it happens, definitely look like luxuries in a lot of budgets.
Having employers automatically enroll employees in a health care plan takes many workers out of this wildly inefficient emergency care system and puts them into the slightly less inefficient semi-privatized insurance system. Also really not a great system for the reasons you mentioned, among others. Time to consider alternatives like a national single-payer system.
It won't be _that_ long before you can save the video like you'd save your text chat, search its history, skip over the boring parts, and so on. Complaining about the overhead of video may eventually seem as silly as complaining about the overhead of mobile phones when you could be using a simple telegraph.
-Scot
"Ahhh. A billion dollars of infrastructure so I don't have to yell." -my friend Mitch, on a phone call from 50' away
There's also a distinct risk that if you let computers crunch at something long enough, you'll actually get proofs of wrong or at least misleading ideas. I've heard it noted that if Copernicus and Galileo had computers, we might still think of the Earth as the center of the universe, since the motions of the other celestial bodies with respect to the Earth can be described to good approximation if you keep making adjustments, adding additional epicycles, etc...if computers were available to solve that hard math problem, it might have taken longer to realize that it's much simpler not to think of the Earth as a fixed point after all.
"but fails to mention that the converse is also true: the wealthiest nation in the world is similarly, under the GPL, forced to "disgorge all its IP back to the developing nations" as well."
The point is that this is very specifically not the case. Because the developed nations developed largely without the benefit/hurdle of GPL, those wealthy nations/corporations have the choice of disgorging their IP or not. He "fails to mention" the converse obligation because it's not generally true. You/I might think this is a mistake and wish it were different, but much of the IP created by wealthy nations is proprietary.
Is there more info on this subject (not linked from the Slashdot post and not linked in the PC World article) that implies some connection to the GPL? Or is everyone just assuming that "an open source license" means "the GPL"? I even checked some history and none of the previous articles I found on it (including one from Slashdot the other day) mention it as being GPL-related.
Anyway, I don't think I see this proposal being compatible with the GPL itself, but that's also not what the article claimed. The Slashdot post subject is just misleading, AFAICT. It seems like a good proposal, although you'd have to get the right people to trust the Center for Open Source & Government as an escrow agent for it to really work. I have no idea how easy or hard that might be.
It's interesting to note, the entertainment software market is narrowing down to 2 main publishers, EA and Microsoft, making the market less friendly towards independents hoping for publishing deals.
Seems like you're overlooking some pretty big players with that statement. Sony (SCEA, SOE) still seems to be holding up okay (EverQuest, anyone?). Infogrames also publishes a wide variety of games, some quite popular (Civ3, for example). Obviously EA and MS are huge, but there are others.
Of course, I wouldn't want to bet against MS dominating anything they felt like dominating...but it doesn't seem like they've really targeted the games publishing market as something they want to own. I could be very wrong about that though.
Yep. I gotta throw my voice in here in favor of Chimera for a lot of reasons, but this is a big one.
Of course, it's not going to matter once commercial web sites figure out to put their content in the popup and the advertising on the "main" (non-popup) page...=(
You're making the assumption that the buyer has actually paid for the pre-installed software. Most likely, they haven't. In similar cases I've seen, software is pre-installed to make it easier to access in the event that the customer DOES pay for it. Similar thinking may be being applied here.
All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.
That's not new. I've been other examples of software that comes pre-installed but "locked" where you need a key that you can get by calling the company and paying more money. I seem to remember Adobe having some fonts like that pre-installed at some point, and I definitely recall special-purpose PC's coming with application software pre-installed but disabled until you bought an access key...
I'm not sure what kinds of "legal wrinkles" might apply, but I do know this is not the first time it's been done.
"You don't support user-modified code, you support what you shipped."
Yeah, right.
Customers will make "fixes" or "enhancements" and then call you when it doesn't work, and swear up and down that they are using it straight out of the box (because in their mind they are -- it's pretty much straight out of the box except for this one little tiny change unrelated to this issue they're calling about...they think).
If you don't think so, check out the Linux kernel discussion explaining the origin of the "tainted" flag. Alan Cox will be happy to learn ya.
Such services could be (already are) provided even without source code. I don't need the code to tell you that Windows Me is a buggy piece of junk, or that Blizzard games are usually pretty reliable. What layman-comprehensible detail are you going to pass along to customers that you can't tell without the source code? That you didn't find any buffer overruns? Even if you could make the average American understand what that meant, you'd be screwed the first time your team overlooked one...which WOULD happen.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the source code for every piece of software I use. But for most products, the benefit to a company's competitors far outweighs the benefit to the average consumer.
I know a lot of good artists (independent ones, mostly) who depend on CD sales more than anything else to make their money, and can personally attest to the damage done to their chances of success by music sharing programs.
Since I like and respect these artists, I don't steal music. But I listen to CD's on my computer more than any other player I own, and I would be essentially forced to pirate music if this sort of protection became widespread (most likely, I'd be forced to illegally download music that I already own on CD -- *boggle*).
It's truly bizarre. Don't they have anyone intelligent working for these music labels? Surely someone must be able to stop the madness and get moving on a real, sustainable, profitable music distribution system for the 21st century...
I do recognize, though, that the music industry has to go through the phase it's going through right now. If no one stole music digitally, the industry would keep cranking out overpriced CDs that are 25 years behind digital content distribution technology. The recent/current heyday of anarchic music sharing has made the industry take notice. They are not yet savvy enough to know what to do (because they saw no need to learn before now), so they turn to tricks that failed for software 20 years ago, tricks that will be worked around and voided in a naturally escalating technology war reminiscent of the one that the software industry eventually gave up on when I was in middle school. Sooner or later the music industry will recognize one or more of the many valid ways to make money distributing digital content that are more convenient and efficient for both the publisher and the customer (as many software companies have done already). But we have to go through this insanity first. Sigh.
So for the low end, Apple now offers...well, nothing, really; Steve said that the lineup will be all flat-panels, which means the classic iMac is going away. The iBook is their cheapest "current" computer, but not everyone wants a notebook. Next is the basic new iMac at $1300 -- not available until the end of this quarter at the earliest.
It makes me wonder what will happen to all the old (2001) iMacs still for sale (and perhaps more to the point, when the classic iMac will lose its spot on store.apple.com). Old iMacs should be cheaper because they're obsolete now that their replacement has been announced, but realistically the replacement isn't replacing them if it costs 50% more, so it seems to me that there still ought to be decent demand and the price might stay put.
Whatever happens to the old ones, though, the fact that the cheapest new iMac is well over $1k and is, in fact, more expensive than their notebook is a Bad Thing. Not that I'm personally in the market for the low-ender, nor do I think Apple should complete strictly on price, but I do think if they're going to take an option out of their price/performance lineup they should be ready to legitimately replace it.
You think a new, locally-popular act could make enough money to tour, attract attention, and be successful charging $.50 for their CD's? I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that; check out what the bands themselves think.
There are a lot of tools available that perform similar or the same functions as Napster (photocopiers, scanners, hi-speed multi-tape dubbing machines, VCRs, etc.). The fact that people sometimes use these tools to do bad things like infringe on somebody's copyright DOES NOT MEAN they should be outlawed. The Napster situation is EXACTLY the same.
It is not exactly the same, no matter how many capital letters you use to say so. You can't use those tools to make thousands of copies of your copyrighted work at (basically) no cost to yourself. As I said previously, there's a standard of reasonableness here, and personally I think that Napster, Gnutella, etc., cross the line.
"Fair Use" is awfully convenient, isn't it? Yes, let's lock on to bit of legalese that technically allows something like Napster music sharing within the law. Then we'll be on really solid ground when the law is changed or re-interpreted (say, by the judge in the Napster case, which seems extremely likely) such that Napster-like sharing on a massive scale is no longer Fair Use.
Sure, you and I can trade/loan CDs back and forth or even make mix tapes/CDs and that's fair use. But I think it's safe to say that there's a standard of "reasonableness" here, and somewhere between me loaning you a CD or making a mix CD and me putting the CD out there in MP3 format for millions of people I don't know, the line between reasonable and unreasonable is crossed.
What's "not the damn point" to me is that Napster, Gnutella, etc., shouldn't even have to exist. They've shown that people are willing to pay money ($40/month broadband access, $5 blank CD's, $100 CD recorders, plus Joe Napsteruser's time at $200/hr) to download music electronically, even if it's a bit dodgy legally. Musicians and (potentially) their distribution companies will soon see that this is a valid way for them to make money, if they haven't seen that already. All this "Fair Use" and "sharing" garbage will just go away...
I received the following as part of a "summer tour" update from a performer I follow (Elizabeth Elmore, formerly of Sarge):
Ok, napster. A couple points. I feel like I've had this discussion a million times in the past few days so I'm not going to go overboard today. For those of you interested, Jenny Toomey from Tsunami has started/joined a great lobbying group representing the interests of smaller artists (ie not Metalllica) in conjunction with the Washington DC law firm Bracy Williams. I'm going to be getting involved with the group also
1. The most frequent argument that I hear is "well, napster isn't always bad because I got to hear a few of your songs and then I went out bought your CD. So it was ok!" Here's the deal. I appreciate you buying the CD so much! But if a band wants to give away some of their songs for free as a promotional device, that should be their choice. You DONT have the right to make that decision for them. And just because YOU go out and buy the CD that doesn't mean everyone else does. Just because you're (somewhat) ethical doesn't mean everyone is. But once something is up on Napster, there's no way to screen these people. No matter how you defend it, taking these songs IS STEALING. And yes, there are lesser and greater degrees of stealing but it's still stealing. All of these excuses are simply rationalizations. The point is, you as a consumer don't have the right to make that choice for the "creator" of the music. It's not your decision to make.
For the record, sarge has offered free mp3's at different points. We also have sound clips up in different places. If people wanted to just hear sarge before they bought a CD, there are plenty of other avenues for them. I recognize these avenues take more time on your part and offer less than Napster does but they're legal _and_ ethical. Sooner or later some musician's going to sue the shit out of an individual napster user for illegally copying their material and then making it illegally available for distribution to millions of people. This person could potentially receive thousands of counts of copyright infringement. You don't want to be the test case!!!!!!!
2. The other (extremely silly and poorly thought out excuse I've heard) is that napster is a way to "stick it" to corporations and the big music labels. Well, I guess you can justify stealing by saying you're stealing from the right people. But personally, I never thought it was ok to steal from anyone, no matter who they were.
Anyway, the problem is that the band getting the most attention for protesting Napster is Metallica. I believe Metallica has every right to protest Napster (they're getting dicked on a monumental scale) but obviously they are protesting it more from a political and artists' rights standpoint. The thing is, bands like Metallica make most of their money from Alternative Revenue Streams (ARS). ARS are basically money earned through touring, the sale of merchandise, etc. Bands on major labels only get a very small percentage (probably a few cents) from every CD that's sold. Although they may sell millions of CD's, most of their money still comes from other touring and merch.
On the other hand, indie bands (whom I assume you all support!) can make a very large percentage of their money from sales and have very low ARS. Mud and Parasol Records give us a wonderful deal. After the agreed up expenses are covered, they split money with us 50/50. That means after the first hundred or two hundred CD's sold for each 1000 pressed, we make $3.50 for every CD that's wholesaled at $7. That's a fantastic deal and the only way we _ever_ survived touring 6 months a year when we made less than $50 on plenty of nights.
So anyway, you may think you only download major label songs. But in reality you're lending your support to a product that facilitates the stealing of music from _your_ friends. If touring indie bands can't make money on CD sales they won't be able to afford to tour at all - and then no more bands will be cruising through your town anytime soon.
Once again, I'm not taking a pro-corporate stance! Or a capitalistic "bands should make more money" stance. But we do have to survive.
Ok, I'm tired and this is probably really incoherent so I'm going to shut up.
Enough. xo e
I was never a particularly determined MP3 pirate, but after Elizabeth's e-mail, I'll never support a product like Napster again.
Reverse-engineering a 300-pin ASIC using just the hardware and binary code is non-trivial. Developing competing hardware that supports the same API's is much easier if you have C source code to work from.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like what's necessary at this point is for someone with a public platform to actually say what we all know, that security theater (a) has gone too far and (b) isn't helping anyway.
It's probably too risky for someone who, say, works for an airline, or an airport, to say it even if they know it, because then if that airline or airport is the target of the next attack, even if it had nothing to do with what they said, the lawsuits would fly even faster and more furiously than usual. It's unlikely that a politician from the spineless Democratic Party would say anything that could be construed as being soft on terrorists. I'd like to think that some of the Republicans (especially some of these newly elected Tea Party types) might, but I also think they count on the whole atmosphere-of-constant-fear thing to drive up demand for their preferred policies of military spending, gun rights, the death penalty, and so on, so I am not counting on them either. And anyone who has to answer to the politicians (like the head of the TSA) probably has to shut up for the same reasons.
So I'm not sure who I'm counting on here. I dunno if some 2nd-tier broadcaster could do for this issue what Rick Santelli did for the mortgage bailout, because when he ranted, it was politically easy for others to say "yeah! what he said!" But there must be someone. Right?
As noted in the article, EVE isn't a classic example of skill-based levelling because in EVE skills level in real time only and independent of what you do in the game. There's no skill "grind", for better or worse. The more classic example would be UO.
You have WoW (and most other MMOs) where you gain XP from almost everything you do, and with enough XP you advance a level and your character gets better in many ways. Or you have UO where if you hit something with a sword you get better at swords, if you block with your shield you get better at shields, etc. Or EVE where you get better at whatever skill you specify, regardless of what you're doing in game (or even, in EVE's case, if you're not playing at all).
The people referring to "your boss" and "your job" are looking for polite examples. Do a search for "voter coercion" (depending on your political persuasion you may be more moved by the results if you add "union", "employer", or "government" to the search term) and you get an idea of the risks of non-secret ballots, which run into territory far more serious than missing a promotion, and which cannot be remedied by a lawsuit. You don't hear much "recent non-anecdotal" evidence of voter coercion because we have secret ballots, so it's not generally feasible (the victim can simply lie), but a relevant search will point you to examples from other countries, or non-government elections here.
-Scot
Those are valid flaws in my argument and I am aware of them. I personally don't buy that they make my argument "bullshit" (especially your claim of the "main" flaw -- if we were talking about one post's moderation, sure, but take a look at all the posts and all the moderation -- together, that represents the opinion of a lot more than 4 people -- personally I think the flaw you cited "secondly" is the main flaw in my argument, still not enough to make me disown it though). I wouldn't use my logic in a scientific study but I think it shows a truth. You don't need a majority of a population to get a representative sample and deduce a collective opinion. Admittedly my sample is not representative (due to your "secondly" point) but close enough, I say =).
/., but it would hardly be controversial to state that slashdotters, overall, don't particularly like the RIAA. It's clearly possible to get a feel of the collective opinion of a diverse group of people. I feel like I have a read on the /. collective opinion on the two issues here, you may have a different read but yours is wrong =P. But I could be wrong about that =).
/.'ers shouldn't assume someone is a bad parent because their daughter met a predator through MySpace. It is quite possible that the only person who did anything truly wrong in the entire situation was the predator.
Example: Yes, there are a lot of diverse opinions that go into
At any rate, the fact that there are varied opinions is sort of the point, isn't it? Many comments are ganging on up "bad parents" in this thread, but we can see from other opinions, collective or otherwise, that there isn't a single answer that would prevent bad things from happening to children. Sometimes bad things happen because bad people really wanted them to happen, not because good people screwed up, and it's not always necessary for good guys to take sides against the other good guys who do things a different way. That means parents shouldn't sue because their daughter met a predator through MySpace, and
-Scot
Nice job yourself replying to a statement never made. The "moron"'s comment didn't compare a poster here to another poster in another thread. The "moron" noted that highly-rated comments in other threads express views that are possibly inconsistent with the highly-rated comments in this thread. /. isn't a hive mind, but in aggregate, the moderation reflects a collective opinion. The collective opinion in other threads the "moron" alludes to has been that, generally, people (including children? teenagers? not clear) should not be subject to intrusive monitoring of their 'net activities. The collective opinion in this thread is that people are responsible for their own actions, unless they are children, in which case their parents are (in part? largely? not clear) responsible for their actions.
The conflict (I think the "moron" went over the top in calling it "hypocrisy") comes down to how much monitoring of children by parents collective opinion would consider to be reasonable. Just to make it interesting let's call the child a 17-year-old high school senior. If she ends up assaulted by someone she met online she should have been more closely monitored in her 'net use? After being a responsible computer user for 15 years?
Other posters in this thread have noted that a daughter in a "good" family wouldn't get into this situation because she would tell her parents about the relationship, etc. I think it's pretty bold to judge a person guilty of being a bad parent just because a teenage daughter doesn't tell them about every guy she meets. It's not like these guys are advertising themselves as sleazy child molesters -- she might well consider him a friend, a guy her age from a neighboring town. I suspect the perverts know how to make themselves sound like reasonable people.
Disclaimer: Amen to those who say this is a ridiculous lawsuit, it really is. But it's just strange that so many posts are so over the top blaming flat-out bad parents. There is an obvious person to blame here: the child molester. Sometimes the bad guy wins and that doesn't mean the good guys need to take sides and blame other good guys.
-Scot
Giving the working population cash (and letting them decide whether to put it into health insurance or not) only works if we as a society are prepared to let people regularly die or be permanently maimed by treatable conditions like cavities or broken arms or pneumonia. As long as there is the emergency care "safety net" paid for by society -- and, honestly, there always will be because emergency workers can't be the insurance police, checking if you have enough cash or insurance before treating you -- then people have insufficient motivation to buy sufficient insurance for uncommon but expensive treatment.
In a simple but extreme example, economically it doesn't make sense for me to set aside enough cash to save myself if I get into a bad car accident or my house burns with me in it. I could never afford it and anyway, I don't have to -- emergency care will be provided regardless. Another poster noted that Americans seem to have too much respect for human life to let me die at the emergency room door.
Less obvious but, I suspect, also true: there is insufficient economic motivation to invest in preventive care. Getting a regular checkup and a prescription for $100 might avoid a $1000 emergency room visit, but that $100 pays for a lot of food and clothing and shelter that are clearly needed today, and society isn't willing to let me die at the door of the emergency room anyway, so my motivation to pay the $100 now isn't enough, and I end up costing everyone 10 times more.
Relying on that emergency system is not an efficient way to pay for health care, but as long as that system is in place, just giving workers cash means people _will_ rely on it. There are just a lot more obvious needs for that cash in many people's lives. Preventive care that might avoid the emergency room visit, and insurance to cover that visit if it happens, definitely look like luxuries in a lot of budgets.
Having employers automatically enroll employees in a health care plan takes many workers out of this wildly inefficient emergency care system and puts them into the slightly less inefficient semi-privatized insurance system. Also really not a great system for the reasons you mentioned, among others. Time to consider alternatives like a national single-payer system.
-Scot
It won't be _that_ long before you can save the video like you'd save your text chat, search its history, skip over the boring parts, and so on. Complaining about the overhead of video may eventually seem as silly as complaining about the overhead of mobile phones when you could be using a simple telegraph.
-Scot
"Ahhh. A billion dollars of infrastructure so I don't have to yell." -my friend Mitch, on a phone call from 50' away
There's also a distinct risk that if you let computers crunch at something long enough, you'll actually get proofs of wrong or at least misleading ideas. I've heard it noted that if Copernicus and Galileo had computers, we might still think of the Earth as the center of the universe, since the motions of the other celestial bodies with respect to the Earth can be described to good approximation if you keep making adjustments, adding additional epicycles, etc...if computers were available to solve that hard math problem, it might have taken longer to realize that it's much simpler not to think of the Earth as a fixed point after all.
"but fails to mention that the converse is also true: the wealthiest nation in the world is similarly, under the GPL, forced to "disgorge all its IP back to the developing nations" as well."
The point is that this is very specifically not the case. Because the developed nations developed largely without the benefit/hurdle of GPL, those wealthy nations/corporations have the choice of disgorging their IP or not. He "fails to mention" the converse obligation because it's not generally true. You/I might think this is a mistake and wish it were different, but much of the IP created by wealthy nations is proprietary.
-Scot
Is there more info on this subject (not linked from the Slashdot post and not linked in the PC World article) that implies some connection to the GPL? Or is everyone just assuming that "an open source license" means "the GPL"? I even checked some history and none of the previous articles I found on it (including one from Slashdot the other day) mention it as being GPL-related.
Anyway, I don't think I see this proposal being compatible with the GPL itself, but that's also not what the article claimed. The Slashdot post subject is just misleading, AFAICT. It seems like a good proposal, although you'd have to get the right people to trust the Center for Open Source & Government as an escrow agent for it to really work. I have no idea how easy or hard that might be.
It's interesting to note, the entertainment software market is narrowing down to 2 main publishers, EA and Microsoft, making the market less friendly towards independents hoping for publishing deals.
Seems like you're overlooking some pretty big players with that statement. Sony (SCEA, SOE) still seems to be holding up okay (EverQuest, anyone?). Infogrames also publishes a wide variety of games, some quite popular (Civ3, for example). Obviously EA and MS are huge, but there are others.
Of course, I wouldn't want to bet against MS dominating anything they felt like dominating...but it doesn't seem like they've really targeted the games publishing market as something they want to own. I could be very wrong about that though.
Yep. I gotta throw my voice in here in favor of Chimera for a lot of reasons, but this is a big one.
Of course, it's not going to matter once commercial web sites figure out to put their content in the popup and the advertising on the "main" (non-popup) page...=(
You're making the assumption that the buyer has actually paid for the pre-installed software. Most likely, they haven't. In similar cases I've seen, software is pre-installed to make it easier to access in the event that the customer DOES pay for it. Similar thinking may be being applied here.
All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.
That's not new. I've been other examples of software that comes pre-installed but "locked" where you need a key that you can get by calling the company and paying more money. I seem to remember Adobe having some fonts like that pre-installed at some point, and I definitely recall special-purpose PC's coming with application software pre-installed but disabled until you bought an access key...
I'm not sure what kinds of "legal wrinkles" might apply, but I do know this is not the first time it's been done.
"You don't support user-modified code, you support what you shipped."
Yeah, right.
Customers will make "fixes" or "enhancements" and then call you when it doesn't work, and swear up and down that they are using it straight out of the box (because in their mind they are -- it's pretty much straight out of the box except for this one little tiny change unrelated to this issue they're calling about...they think).
If you don't think so, check out the Linux kernel discussion explaining the origin of the "tainted" flag. Alan Cox will be happy to learn ya.
Such services could be (already are) provided even without source code. I don't need the code to tell you that Windows Me is a buggy piece of junk, or that Blizzard games are usually pretty reliable. What layman-comprehensible detail are you going to pass along to customers that you can't tell without the source code? That you didn't find any buffer overruns? Even if you could make the average American understand what that meant, you'd be screwed the first time your team overlooked one...which WOULD happen.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the source code for every piece of software I use. But for most products, the benefit to a company's competitors far outweighs the benefit to the average consumer.
I agree with everything you said.
I know a lot of good artists (independent ones, mostly) who depend on CD sales more than anything else to make their money, and can personally attest to the damage done to their chances of success by music sharing programs.
Since I like and respect these artists, I don't steal music. But I listen to CD's on my computer more than any other player I own, and I would be essentially forced to pirate music if this sort of protection became widespread (most likely, I'd be forced to illegally download music that I already own on CD -- *boggle*).
It's truly bizarre. Don't they have anyone intelligent working for these music labels? Surely someone must be able to stop the madness and get moving on a real, sustainable, profitable music distribution system for the 21st century...
I do recognize, though, that the music industry has to go through the phase it's going through right now. If no one stole music digitally, the industry would keep cranking out overpriced CDs that are 25 years behind digital content distribution technology. The recent/current heyday of anarchic music sharing has made the industry take notice. They are not yet savvy enough to know what to do (because they saw no need to learn before now), so they turn to tricks that failed for software 20 years ago, tricks that will be worked around and voided in a naturally escalating technology war reminiscent of the one that the software industry eventually gave up on when I was in middle school. Sooner or later the music industry will recognize one or more of the many valid ways to make money distributing digital content that are more convenient and efficient for both the publisher and the customer (as many software companies have done already). But we have to go through this insanity first. Sigh.
-Scot
So for the low end, Apple now offers...well, nothing, really; Steve said that the lineup will be all flat-panels, which means the classic iMac is going away. The iBook is their cheapest "current" computer, but not everyone wants a notebook. Next is the basic new iMac at $1300 -- not available until the end of this quarter at the earliest.
It makes me wonder what will happen to all the old (2001) iMacs still for sale (and perhaps more to the point, when the classic iMac will lose its spot on store.apple.com). Old iMacs should be cheaper because they're obsolete now that their replacement has been announced, but realistically the replacement isn't replacing them if it costs 50% more, so it seems to me that there still ought to be decent demand and the price might stay put.
Whatever happens to the old ones, though, the fact that the cheapest new iMac is well over $1k and is, in fact, more expensive than their notebook is a Bad Thing. Not that I'm personally in the market for the low-ender, nor do I think Apple should complete strictly on price, but I do think if they're going to take an option out of their price/performance lineup they should be ready to legitimately replace it.
You think a new, locally-popular act could make enough money to tour, attract attention, and be successful charging $.50 for their CD's? I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that; check out what the bands themselves think.
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There are a lot of tools available that perform similar or the same functions as Napster (photocopiers, scanners, hi-speed multi-tape dubbing machines, VCRs, etc.). The fact that people sometimes use these tools to do bad things like infringe on somebody's copyright DOES NOT MEAN they should be outlawed. The Napster situation is EXACTLY the same.
It is not exactly the same, no matter how many capital letters you use to say so. You can't use those tools to make thousands of copies of your copyrighted work at (basically) no cost to yourself. As I said previously, there's a standard of reasonableness here, and personally I think that Napster, Gnutella, etc., cross the line.
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"Fair Use" is awfully convenient, isn't it? Yes, let's lock on to bit of legalese that technically allows something like Napster music sharing within the law. Then we'll be on really solid ground when the law is changed or re-interpreted (say, by the judge in the Napster case, which seems extremely likely) such that Napster-like sharing on a massive scale is no longer Fair Use.
Sure, you and I can trade/loan CDs back and forth or even make mix tapes/CDs and that's fair use. But I think it's safe to say that there's a standard of "reasonableness" here, and somewhere between me loaning you a CD or making a mix CD and me putting the CD out there in MP3 format for millions of people I don't know, the line between reasonable and unreasonable is crossed.
What's "not the damn point" to me is that Napster, Gnutella, etc., shouldn't even have to exist. They've shown that people are willing to pay money ($40/month broadband access, $5 blank CD's, $100 CD recorders, plus Joe Napsteruser's time at $200/hr) to download music electronically, even if it's a bit dodgy legally. Musicians and (potentially) their distribution companies will soon see that this is a valid way for them to make money, if they haven't seen that already. All this "Fair Use" and "sharing" garbage will just go away...
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Ok, napster. A couple points. I feel like I've had this discussion a
million times in the past few days so I'm not going to go overboard today.
For those of you interested, Jenny Toomey from Tsunami has started/joined a
great lobbying group representing the interests of smaller artists (ie not
Metalllica) in conjunction with the Washington DC law firm Bracy Williams.
I'm going to be getting involved with the group also
1. The most frequent argument that I hear is "well, napster isn't always
bad because I got to hear a few of your songs and then I went out bought
your CD. So it was ok!" Here's the deal. I appreciate you buying the CD so
much! But if a band wants to give away some of their songs for free as a
promotional device, that should be their choice. You DONT have the right to
make that decision for them. And just because YOU go out and buy the CD
that doesn't mean everyone else does. Just because you're (somewhat)
ethical doesn't mean everyone is. But once something is up on Napster,
there's no way to screen these people. No matter how you defend it, taking
these songs IS STEALING. And yes, there are lesser and greater degrees of
stealing but it's still stealing. All of these excuses are simply
rationalizations. The point is, you as a consumer don't have the right to
make that choice for the "creator" of the music. It's not your decision to
make.
For the record, sarge has offered free mp3's at different points. We also
have sound clips up in different places. If people wanted to just hear
sarge before they bought a CD, there are plenty of other avenues for them.
I recognize these avenues take more time on your part and offer less than
Napster does but they're legal _and_ ethical. Sooner or later some
musician's going to sue the shit out of an individual napster user for
illegally copying their material and then making it illegally available for
distribution to millions of people. This person could potentially receive
thousands of counts of copyright infringement. You don't want to be the
test case!!!!!!!
2. The other (extremely silly and poorly thought out excuse I've heard) is
that napster is a way to "stick it" to corporations and the big music
labels. Well, I guess you can justify stealing by saying you're stealing
from the right people. But personally, I never thought it was ok to steal
from anyone, no matter who they were.
Anyway, the problem is that the band getting the most attention for
protesting Napster is Metallica. I believe Metallica has every right to
protest Napster (they're getting dicked on a monumental scale) but
obviously they are protesting it more from a political and artists' rights
standpoint. The thing is, bands like Metallica make most of their money
from Alternative Revenue Streams (ARS). ARS are basically money earned
through touring, the sale of merchandise, etc. Bands on major labels only
get a very small percentage (probably a few cents) from every CD that's
sold. Although they may sell millions of CD's, most of their money still
comes from other touring and merch.
On the other hand, indie bands (whom I assume you all support!) can make a
very large percentage of their money from sales and have very low ARS. Mud
and Parasol Records give us a wonderful deal. After the agreed up expenses
are covered, they split money with us 50/50. That means after the first
hundred or two hundred CD's sold for each 1000 pressed, we make $3.50 for
every CD that's wholesaled at $7. That's a fantastic deal and the only way
we _ever_ survived touring 6 months a year when we made less than $50 on
plenty of nights.
So anyway, you may think you only download major label songs. But in
reality you're lending your support to a product that facilitates the
stealing of music from _your_ friends. If touring indie bands can't make
money on CD sales they won't be able to afford to tour at all - and then no
more bands will be cruising through your town anytime soon.
Once again, I'm not taking a pro-corporate stance! Or a capitalistic "bands
should make more money" stance. But we do have to survive.
Ok, I'm tired and this is probably really incoherent so I'm going to shut
up.
Enough.
xo
e
I was never a particularly determined MP3 pirate, but after Elizabeth's e-mail, I'll never support a product like Napster again.
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scot@austin.rr.com
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Reverse-engineering a 300-pin ASIC using just the hardware and binary code is non-trivial. Developing competing hardware that supports the same API's is much easier if you have C source code to work from.
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