While that's true, the net effect of the GPL is to drive the cost of software down to zero. I can sell all the software I like, but I can't prevent my first customer from undercutting me, just as he can't prevent his form undercutting him, etc.
If you're working exclusively with GPL software, you have to rely on goodwill, donations, and charging for related services - eg support, custom modifications, training, documentation, etc.
Note that I'm not saying that that's a bad thing (or a good thing), just that realistically that's the way it is.
Wait, you're blaming MS for something that Bethseda/Take 2 has done? Might as well blame Visa while you're at it for allowing them to process transactions via their merchant services...
it would be really nice if it were also tied to the actual "cost" of the content...
The cost of the content is essentially however much it cost to pay the guy who created it, plus other overheads (equipment, associated support staff, bandwidth, possibly server hire, etc). Just because things can be easily and cheaply reproduced does not mean that the initial creation was anywhere near as easy or cheap.
Besides which, what did he mean, "allowing" developers to ship "stripped-down" games? So, suddenly MS has to take control of other companies' edvelopment process and force them to meet all their initial feature predictions?
I can just imagine the outrage if they tried messing with other companies like that...
So basically they expect people to watch the films exclusively on their PC, rather than their living room TV.
Not that I'm defending the idea (I think it's a step in the right direction, but that it doesn't go far enough), but as media PCs become more and more common, more people watching the films "exclusively on their PC" will be watching it on "their living room TV".
Perhaps this sort of thing will be a more attractive proposition as media centre-style PCs become more common, but it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - without a compelling reason to buy one, few people will...
Well now, read any story about DRM, the DMCA and its (mis)use, the RIAA suing people and such like, and you'll see scores of comments bemoaning the RIAA's lack of technological progress, and calling on them to change their business model and embrace downloads, or die.
Well, here's the first song (in the UK) to make it to the top of the charts based solely on legal downloads.
Don't you think that this provides some sort of proof of what so many people here have been saying? That it *is* possible to make a viable business model out of downloadable tracks? This is bigger than ITMS passing a billion downloads - this sends a message that downloads of specific songs (not just music in general) is a viable model.
Seems a little strange not to want to have the proof to back up our assertions, but then again, this is slashdot, where anecdotal evidence and prejudgements are taken as gospel.
you are forced to use Sonic State to use a MiniDisc player
Now, it's been three or four years since my MD player/recorder died, but that wasn't the case then. Sure, if you want to use an MD player *with a PC* then you're stuck using Sonic State. If all you want to do is record to MD from am audio source, as long as you can connect them physically you're good to go. You could also get hi-fis and separates that had MD recorders in, and so solve the problem that way.
So it's not entirely accurate to say that you were forced to use the software to use the player.
I think the point was that this article is basically saying "Look, see how the guy was screwed, and how they planned to screw him/his estate over even more if they got the chance!", and yet he's still insanely rich.
As you yourself allude to, strictly speaking the incident photon is absorbed, and then a different photon is emitted; they are not the same photon. "Absorbed and re-emitted" gives the impression of the photon being captured, then released, which isn't what's happening.
Well, you could open up task manager and see what your memory usage is like. If it's too much higher than your physical RAM then duh, of course it's going to slow right down. Same thing happens on LInux, or any other OS I've ever used - exceed your physical RAM and watch the machine crawl as it thrashes the discs.
Of course they would! Your single biggest competitor, paying to advertise* your product for you on the packaging of their own? You can't buy that sort of thing!
(* The "Designed for Windows..." or "Windows... Capable" sticker isn't going to be free, if only because it takes an amount of work and some tests to achieve the requirements, and MS isn't going to pay for you to do it)
April Fools Day is a nice, fun day on which you can be irreverant. It's fun to say or publish something that seems plausible, slipped in amongst everything else, and see how many people fall for it. That's great, it's traditional, it's a fun thing to do.
This is beyond stupid. No-one with half a brain in their head would fall for this. Everyone in the UK has a mobile phone. (Ok, not everyone, but those who don't are negligible in number compared to those who do) There have been BBC news stories about mobiles marketed at five year olds for fuck's sake, that's how saturated the market is here.
There are currently tens of millions of GMS phones in daily use in the UK. It will be practically impossible to switch off the network for a good few years yet. Hell, cable and satellite TV has been around for a decade or more, digital broadcasts have been available for free (yes, yes, licence fee, whatever) for anyone with a compatible TV or (cheap) set-top box for years, and still we can't switch off analogue TV broadcasts yet because too many people rely on them. The situation is exactly the same for phones.
As I say, April Fool's Day is fun. But you're meant to run with one or two plausible-sounding stories, not a glut of them all so far out as to be instantly recognisable. I appreciate that slashdot is essentially a news aggregation service, but that doesn't mean that you have to aggregate all the jokes.
However, you clearly haven't seen any modern pornography. It's not just naked human beings. It's guys cumming on womens faces saying, "Take that bitch, want some more?"
And you clearly haven't seen much modern pornography if you think it's all like that. Sure, a lot of American stuff is, but there's plenty (more than enough) that isn't.
Besides, it's like anything else; the extreme stuff is never suitable for kids. Take violent films as an example - would you want a kid watching Reservior Dogs? No. How about Karate Kid? Hell, cartoons are *full* of violence.
Same goes for porn - some of it is more objectionable than the rest. I don't think that anyone is trying to argue that all of this stuff is perfectly reasonable; some of it is pretty nasty stuff. But it's not black and white - would you ban it all, just because a minority of it truly is objectionable by any reasonable standard?
No matter how nasty worms get a user still has to execute them for his/her PC to become infected
No. That's the whole point of a worm - it spreads itself without need for user intervention. Typically they exploit holes in server software, using buffer overruns and similar to cause it to execute a copy of their code. They then infect the machine and look for other hosts to spread to.
Bagle and similar email-borne "worms" generally are not true worms, in that they generally do require user intervention. While they spread themselves (by grabbing address out of the email address book and mailing copies of themselves to each), the user has to actually execute the attachment. Thus they are not strictly worms.
Note that true worms, such as slammer and the Morris worm, are relatively very rare, as they're so much harder to write.
The amazing thing about modern society is that it hasn't produced more great art with more people, it's just produced more junk to get in the way.
That's not amazing. Creating art takes talent; creating great art takes great talent. The majority of people with the talent are already doing it; most of those who could but choose not to aren't going to change their mind just because of the Internet.
(British Rail is the old state-owned company that used to run the railways; it was privatised 20 or so years ago, and essentially no longer exists to my knowledge)
Maybe we're thinking of different versions of IE, but while I agree with your comments on security, I can't agree with that statement.
I remember IE 3; it was no match for Netscape 3 in terms of features or stability. Compared to Netscape 4 it was laughable; Navigator shat all over it from a great height.
Then IE 4 came out, and everything changed.
IE 4 was far more stable, faster and had more features. As an example, when resizing the window, Netscape had to rerequest the page from the server; IE did not. Netscape crashed on average a couple of times a day for me, both under Windows and Linux. When Mozilla development started and they published their set of browser torture tests, I distinctly remember one page that featured a lot of deeply nested tables. IE (5?) rendered it in a handful of seconds; Netscape 4 took over a minute.
Now don't get me wrong, I have never and likely never will use IE as my primary browser. I went straight from Netscape 4 to one of the milestone builds of Mozilla (and currently use Firefox). Despite all the issues with Netscape 4 (instability, incresing number of sites that didn't work with it, etc) I simply could not bring myself to use IE. Even now, the only time I use IE is when I have to, if a site doesn't work in Firefox (generally my fault these days due to an over-zealous Adblock config) or if I have to for a site I'm working on at work. I'm no IE fan-boy; quite the opposite in fact, I can't stand it.
However, saying that IE was of "slipshod quality" is disingenuous at best. Yes, modern browsers are superior to IE 6 in almost every regard, but at the time that IE was being integrated into Windows, it had little or no competition.
let's stop by your bank and credit card accounts on the way to an organized crime hangout and/or third-world country! Fun!
What's wrong with surfing a site in a third-world country?
(In the real world would you trust a porn purveyor with your credit card?)
Given that I'm not liable for the cost of fraudulent transactions made against my card, and further given that I have no reason to believe that any given "porn purveyor" is any less trustworthy than any other business, yes of course I would.
Slashdot Mirror
While that's true, the net effect of the GPL is to drive the cost of software down to zero. I can sell all the software I like, but I can't prevent my first customer from undercutting me, just as he can't prevent his form undercutting him, etc.
If you're working exclusively with GPL software, you have to rely on goodwill, donations, and charging for related services - eg support, custom modifications, training, documentation, etc.
Note that I'm not saying that that's a bad thing (or a good thing), just that realistically that's the way it is.
Wait, you're blaming MS for something that Bethseda/Take 2 has done? Might as well blame Visa while you're at it for allowing them to process transactions via their merchant services...
it would be really nice if it were also tied to the actual "cost" of the content...
The cost of the content is essentially however much it cost to pay the guy who created it, plus other overheads (equipment, associated support staff, bandwidth, possibly server hire, etc). Just because things can be easily and cheaply reproduced does not mean that the initial creation was anywhere near as easy or cheap.
Limited to Windows, Solaris, one of the BSDs, OS X, Plan 9, OS/2, Beos...
(Ok, so OS/2 and Beos are essentially defunct, but both still have user communities)
Besides which, what did he mean, "allowing" developers to ship "stripped-down" games? So, suddenly MS has to take control of other companies' edvelopment process and force them to meet all their initial feature predictions?
I can just imagine the outrage if they tried messing with other companies like that...
run on Microsoft Windows operating systems (so that they don't require re-buying hardware)
I don't get it - since when did you have to re-buy hardware to slap a new OS on it?
Sounds like we're getting a bargain then - a third of the price, give or take, and a little faster.
So basically they expect people to watch the films exclusively on their PC, rather than their living room TV.
Not that I'm defending the idea (I think it's a step in the right direction, but that it doesn't go far enough), but as media PCs become more and more common, more people watching the films "exclusively on their PC" will be watching it on "their living room TV".
Perhaps this sort of thing will be a more attractive proposition as media centre-style PCs become more common, but it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - without a compelling reason to buy one, few people will...
Well now, read any story about DRM, the DMCA and its (mis)use, the RIAA suing people and such like, and you'll see scores of comments bemoaning the RIAA's lack of technological progress, and calling on them to change their business model and embrace downloads, or die.
Well, here's the first song (in the UK) to make it to the top of the charts based solely on legal downloads.
Don't you think that this provides some sort of proof of what so many people here have been saying? That it *is* possible to make a viable business model out of downloadable tracks? This is bigger than ITMS passing a billion downloads - this sends a message that downloads of specific songs (not just music in general) is a viable model.
Seems a little strange not to want to have the proof to back up our assertions, but then again, this is slashdot, where anecdotal evidence and prejudgements are taken as gospel.
you are forced to use Sonic State to use a MiniDisc player
Now, it's been three or four years since my MD player/recorder died, but that wasn't the case then. Sure, if you want to use an MD player *with a PC* then you're stuck using Sonic State. If all you want to do is record to MD from am audio source, as long as you can connect them physically you're good to go. You could also get hi-fis and separates that had MD recorders in, and so solve the problem that way.
So it's not entirely accurate to say that you were forced to use the software to use the player.
what they really mean is that 1 phone is going to be launched, possibly this year, in japan, ... not going to tiny
Assuming you meant "not going to be tiny", you realise that that and the statement "launched... in Japan" are mutually exclusive, right?
If it's big, it'll flop in Japan, end of story.
I think the point was that this article is basically saying "Look, see how the guy was screwed, and how they planned to screw him/his estate over even more if they got the chance!", and yet he's still insanely rich.
I should be so screwed.
And yet, people still buy diamonds.
Do you really think that articles such as this one would make any difference at all to the buying habits of the average consumer?
the photon is absorbed and remitted many times
As you yourself allude to, strictly speaking the incident photon is absorbed, and then a different photon is emitted; they are not the same photon. "Absorbed and re-emitted" gives the impression of the photon being captured, then released, which isn't what's happening.
Well, you could open up task manager and see what your memory usage is like. If it's too much higher than your physical RAM then duh, of course it's going to slow right down. Same thing happens on LInux, or any other OS I've ever used - exceed your physical RAM and watch the machine crawl as it thrashes the discs.
Of course they would! Your single biggest competitor, paying to advertise* your product for you on the packaging of their own? You can't buy that sort of thing!
(* The "Designed for Windows..." or "Windows... Capable" sticker isn't going to be free, if only because it takes an amount of work and some tests to achieve the requirements, and MS isn't going to pay for you to do it)
Stop it.
April Fools Day is a nice, fun day on which you can be irreverant. It's fun to say or publish something that seems plausible, slipped in amongst everything else, and see how many people fall for it. That's great, it's traditional, it's a fun thing to do.
This is beyond stupid. No-one with half a brain in their head would fall for this. Everyone in the UK has a mobile phone. (Ok, not everyone, but those who don't are negligible in number compared to those who do) There have been BBC news stories about mobiles marketed at five year olds for fuck's sake, that's how saturated the market is here.
There are currently tens of millions of GMS phones in daily use in the UK. It will be practically impossible to switch off the network for a good few years yet. Hell, cable and satellite TV has been around for a decade or more, digital broadcasts have been available for free (yes, yes, licence fee, whatever) for anyone with a compatible TV or (cheap) set-top box for years, and still we can't switch off analogue TV broadcasts yet because too many people rely on them. The situation is exactly the same for phones.
As I say, April Fool's Day is fun. But you're meant to run with one or two plausible-sounding stories, not a glut of them all so far out as to be instantly recognisable. I appreciate that slashdot is essentially a news aggregation service, but that doesn't mean that you have to aggregate all the jokes.
"What the fuck!?"
My second thought
"Oh fuck, April 1st."
(Any chance of just having one or two "jokes" this year guys?)
However, you clearly haven't seen any modern pornography. It's not just naked human beings. It's guys cumming on womens faces saying, "Take that bitch, want some more?"
And you clearly haven't seen much modern pornography if you think it's all like that. Sure, a lot of American stuff is, but there's plenty (more than enough) that isn't.
Besides, it's like anything else; the extreme stuff is never suitable for kids. Take violent films as an example - would you want a kid watching Reservior Dogs? No. How about Karate Kid? Hell, cartoons are *full* of violence.
Same goes for porn - some of it is more objectionable than the rest. I don't think that anyone is trying to argue that all of this stuff is perfectly reasonable; some of it is pretty nasty stuff. But it's not black and white - would you ban it all, just because a minority of it truly is objectionable by any reasonable standard?
No matter how nasty worms get a user still has to execute them for his/her PC to become infected
No. That's the whole point of a worm - it spreads itself without need for user intervention. Typically they exploit holes in server software, using buffer overruns and similar to cause it to execute a copy of their code. They then infect the machine and look for other hosts to spread to.
Bagle and similar email-borne "worms" generally are not true worms, in that they generally do require user intervention. While they spread themselves (by grabbing address out of the email address book and mailing copies of themselves to each), the user has to actually execute the attachment. Thus they are not strictly worms.
Note that true worms, such as slammer and the Morris worm, are relatively very rare, as they're so much harder to write.
27B stroke 6? 27B stroke 6?!?! Aarrrggghhhh!
Now look what you've done!
The amazing thing about modern society is that it hasn't produced more great art with more people, it's just produced more junk to get in the way.
That's not amazing. Creating art takes talent; creating great art takes great talent. The majority of people with the talent are already doing it; most of those who could but choose not to aren't going to change their mind just because of the Internet.
Here's an example from the UK - British Rail patents flying saucer.
(British Rail is the old state-owned company that used to run the railways; it was privatised 20 or so years ago, and essentially no longer exists to my knowledge)
It was rushed, with slipshod quality
Maybe we're thinking of different versions of IE, but while I agree with your comments on security, I can't agree with that statement.
I remember IE 3; it was no match for Netscape 3 in terms of features or stability. Compared to Netscape 4 it was laughable; Navigator shat all over it from a great height.
Then IE 4 came out, and everything changed.
IE 4 was far more stable, faster and had more features. As an example, when resizing the window, Netscape had to rerequest the page from the server; IE did not. Netscape crashed on average a couple of times a day for me, both under Windows and Linux. When Mozilla development started and they published their set of browser torture tests, I distinctly remember one page that featured a lot of deeply nested tables. IE (5?) rendered it in a handful of seconds; Netscape 4 took over a minute.
Now don't get me wrong, I have never and likely never will use IE as my primary browser. I went straight from Netscape 4 to one of the milestone builds of Mozilla (and currently use Firefox). Despite all the issues with Netscape 4 (instability, incresing number of sites that didn't work with it, etc) I simply could not bring myself to use IE. Even now, the only time I use IE is when I have to, if a site doesn't work in Firefox (generally my fault these days due to an over-zealous Adblock config) or if I have to for a site I'm working on at work. I'm no IE fan-boy; quite the opposite in fact, I can't stand it.
However, saying that IE was of "slipshod quality" is disingenuous at best. Yes, modern browsers are superior to IE 6 in almost every regard, but at the time that IE was being integrated into Windows, it had little or no competition.
let's stop by your bank and credit card accounts on the way to an organized crime hangout and/or third-world country! Fun!
What's wrong with surfing a site in a third-world country?
(In the real world would you trust a porn purveyor with your credit card?)
Given that I'm not liable for the cost of fraudulent transactions made against my card, and further given that I have no reason to believe that any given "porn purveyor" is any less trustworthy than any other business, yes of course I would.
In other words, they're just proving the old proverb - "give someone an inch and they'll take a mile".
So use "Plain Old Text" formatting instead, it's always worked perfectly for me.
See?
(Ok, so no you don't, but trust me when I say that both those blank lines were inserted with nothing more than two carriage returns each)