Re:I happen to need a centralized version ...
on
The Future of Subversion
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· Score: 2, Informative
All version-control systems do that. It's not optional: you have to have meta-information about the checked-out files available, and there's no place in the files themselves to put that information. Now, you might want to look at the distinction between a working directory (with all the tracking files present, allowing the developer to check in and out, compare with different revisions in the tree, all the normal things) and an exported tree (created using for example the CVS "export" command, contains only the source files with none of the meta-data present (which means you can't check modifications of it back in)). My normal working method is to have a working directory for actual development, then once I've got everything checked in make an export tree if I need to package the source code up for builds.
If you're in a highly-distributed development environment like Linux, where the developers are spread across multiple continents and have very little shared infrastructure and a high need to work independently of each other (either because of preference or because they don't want their work stalled by another undersea cable cut half a world away), then yes using a centralized VCS like Subversion is stupid. But if you're a developer on a project where all the developers are in a common location sharing common infrastructure, often literally within speaking distance of each other, then a decentralized VCS like Git is stupid. It's harder to maintain and, in that situation, yields none of the offsetting benefits.
Analogy: a fleet of Chevy vans vs. a freight train. The vans are far more flexible, they can travel any route needed whereas the freight train's limited to fixed tracks, and their smaller size and lower cost each let you buy a lot of them and dedicate each one to just a few deliveries in a particular area without a lot of overhead. You can fan the vans out all over the city, sending just what you need where it's needed and rerouting each one to adapt to changes without upsetting the others. But if your only delivery each day is 1000 tons of a single product from one warehouse to another 600 miles away, you're better off with that one big freight train.
Mostly it's because the defendants almost always try to claim the EULA isn't enforceable or valid or something. In the process they admit to having read it and clicked on the Accept button. The software companies then claim that means the defendant accepted the agreement, which winds up not being disputed and the judge has to rule based on the defendant being bound by the terms.
IMO the proper way to handle it is to start by asserting that the EULA simply isn't relevant. That is, that I read it and rejected it, and am now relying on my rights under the contract of sale formed when I handed my cash over at the retail point of sale and the clerk handed me my receipt and the software. But now I have a technical obstacle placed in my way by the installer. I'm now entirely within my legal rights to get around that obstacle without incurring any additional obligations to the software company, as long as I don't do any damage to their property (and my specific copy of the software isn't their property anymore, so they can't use any alleged damage to it by my accessing it). Analogy: I buy a car, pay cash, sign the paperwork and take the keys. When I get to the car there's tape over the doors saying "By breaking this tape you accept the additional terms found on the paper on the driver's seat.". I can break the tape and ignore the paper, because at that point the car dealership has no legal right to put that tape on the door.
Especially since the copying of the program into RAM is specifically covered in USC Title 17 117(a)(1) which says that making that copy isn't and can't under law be an infringement.
Why would there be such a difference? The Uniform Commercial Code doesn't indicate there's any difference in the terms of the default contract of sale. I didn't sign any other terms at the time of sale, so according to the UCC the default terms apply at that point. This "license" you talk about wasn't mentioned until after I got the software out of the box and started to install it. Why should some contract I was never offered and never accepted have anything to do with the terms under which I own my copy?
I'd note in the case of WoW and the Glider software there's another catch. Whether or not there's any copyright infringement on the client side, to play WoW you have to connect to Blizzard's servers. To connect you have to accept the Terms of Service for those servers. Using Glider violates those terms. No need to bring copyright or ownership vs. licensing of the client software into it. Glider's sole purpose, known to and intended by it's author, is to induce Blizzard's customers to break the agreement they have to make every time they log in. That's tortious interference with contract, as I understand it.
Interestingly, Yahoo's stock isn't falling. Monday morning it went down, but since then it's been consistently gaining ground again. Today it's up $1.41, at $25.78/share.
For normal driving, no. But when I'm going to head out off the main roads, especially into rough or treacherous areas, or if there's some special condition like a bad storm headed in that I may get caught in, you can bet I make sure somebody knows where I'm going, what route I plan to take and when I expect to arrive at my destination and possibly intermediate check-in points. That way if something happens searchers know where to start looking.
The problem is there's two types of people who need rescuing. One class is people who honestly did run into unexpected trouble. The other, and unfortunately based on experience more common, are the idiots who go doing stupid things (eg. going out into back-country areas they've never been in before, without telling anyone where they're planning on being, without proper gear and supplies and without any of the easy ways of telling searchers where they are (like radio beacons), and doing this when a bad storm's scheduled to blow in later that day), on the theory that "Hey, if anything happens the sheriff's department will come find me. No problem.". So a lot of volunteers spend a lot of their time, and the sheriff's department spends a lot of money, rescuing people from their own stupidity. And eventually the volunteers get tired of it and stop volunteering, and the sheriff doesn't have the money left to keep fuel in the search aircraft, and then someone who did take every precaution, did everything they could to make it easy for rescuers, did everything to avoid needing to be rescued but who still got caught by one of the things nobody would've expected winds up dead because the idiots burned up all the resources.
No, the above isn't uncommon. I've lived in back-country areas and seen it all too often. Which is why I tend to agree with the states that reserve the right to bill for rescue efforts. Note that normally they reserve the right, they don't mandate it. Usual practice is to look at why the person needed rescuing. If it was because they were stupid, they get a bill. If they weren't stupid, normally they won't.
In the case of Steve Fossett, I have to agree with sending his estate a bill. With his background, there's no arguing that he knew exactly what could happen if he had a problem out there. Yet he still went out without telling anybody where he'd be and without the radio beacon that'd make him easy to locate. He knew better than to do that.
There's another reason we don't see extra-terrestrial civilizations: time and distance.
As the article notes, we can't actually see extra-terrestrial planets. All our looking for ET civilizations is done by watching for indirect signs of them passing Earth, primarily radio waves. Here on Earth, though, it's only been in the last 2 centuries that we've been putting out any radio signature at all, and we're rapidly moving towards putting out less and less of a signature. Communications systems that broadcast indiscriminately in all directions are less efficient than ones that focus their broadcast, and non-broadcast systems are more efficient yet. There might only be a 500-year-wide band in which we're detectable by radio emissions at any given point in the galaxy. And if it's true for us, it's probably true for other civilizations as well.
So, take any star out there. It's going to be a fixed distance away from Earth, so we can ignore the distance factor. If it's say 700 light-years away, then for us to be able to see any civilization on it's planets they would've had to have reached the point where they began using radio between 700 and 1200 years ago. If they discovered it more recently than 700 years ago, their very first broadcasts haven't had time to arrive here yet. If they discovered radio more than 1200 years ago, 700 years ago they'd've reached the point where they stopped broadcasting detectable radio signals. The trailing edge of their bubble has already passed us, and we won't see detectable traces of them again.
So there could be hundreds of civilizations out there. If they didn't pass through the radio-emitting stage at the right time for their distance away from us, they'd be invisible to us. And that "right time" is a fairly tight window as such things go.
Not really. The fact that MediaSentry was authorized to make the downloads doesn't retroactively grant the plaintiff authorization to make the files available for download. And the case is against the plaintiff, not MediaSentry, so it's the plaintiff's authorization and not MediaSentry's that's at issue. Plaintiff might be able to win if he can show that he knew it was MediaSentry doing the download and had in his hands legally-admissable evidence that MediaSentry was authorized to download the songs before allowing them to be downloaded from his machine, but it's unlikely plaintiff will be able to manage to show that.
Fairly easy: a typical consumer wants to share their own files between their own computers. KaZaa's publicized as an easy way to get and share files, so they have their local geek set them up with it. Said geek does, but doesn't disable external access and doesn't clue them in to all the technicalities. Consumer has no clue, since it's doing what he asked for it to do.
Analogous to the situation where I leave my books out on the porch table and the local kids keep coming in while I'm not there and stealing copies (imagine for a moment that it's as easy to copy a physical book as it is to copy a computer file). I never considered that, since I've got a locked gate. My friend who brought over the chairs and table didn't bother to tell me that he had to unlock the gate to get them in and never bothered locking it again afterwards, and since I don't use that gate I never thought to check it. And since making copies doesn't leave me wondering where my books are, I've no clue copies are going walkabout on me. I'm certainly making the books available, if I hadn't left them outside the kids couldn't have made their copies. But by the same token I'm hardly intending to distribute those copies. I own my copies, I've got them on the porch for my own use that's perfectly legitimate, and I've no reasonable expectation that people will be breaking into my yard.
I don't think it eviscerates the RIAA's claims, but it's certainly a major blow to their theories. As I read it, the judge is saying that merely making them available isn't automatically infringement. This makes sense if you think of an analogy. If I put a book down on the table on my front porch while I go inside to get a drink, and someone comes along and takes it, I surely made it available but nobody in their right mind would claim I intended to distribute it to the thief. Compare that to the case where I put a whole bunch of books on a table out by the sidewalk with a sign "Free books, take as many as you want.". I suspect the judge here is ruling along similar lines: it's not sufficient for the RIAA to claim that the files were merely available, they have to claim the files were (reasonably) knowingly made available for the purposes of infringing distribution. OTOH, if the files were available to the public, but were put where they were for a non-infringing purpose and the defendant wouldn't reasonably (given their knowledge) expect the files to be open for the taking by anyone else, then the RIAA's claim fails. Which to me sounds reasonable, so seems more reasonable than either of the extreme positions take by the RIAA or the P2P advocates.
It's not so much MS claiming Aero would work or not as that MS never advertised Vista showing anything but Aero as the interface. You never saw the basic interface, never saw any statement that the interface shown wouldn't be there in all cases. A reasonable person would conclude that what you saw in the ad was what you'd actually get if you ran Vista on a computer advertised as being capable of running Vista. And in some cases, such as the Intel 915 graphics chip that's one of the explicit reasons for the "Vista Capable" label, even trying Aero isn't an option. The chipset lacks the hardware capabilities Aero requires, and if you've got a machine with that chipset Vista forces Aero to be disabled.
With video games, somewhere in the ad you'll find a disclaimer stating what's needed for the graphics shown, or at least that not all systems will be capable of the graphics shown.
Whether they're legal or not unfortunately doesn't give you any leverage to force a competitor to serve you. If your complex has an illegal exclusivity agreement with the local telco for broadband Internet, they refuse to lease space on their lines to competing DSL providers (which they can do) and the local cable company refuses to wire up the complex (which they can do), then you're still stuck with only one ISP available.
And it may not be just the ISPs. Local to me the District Attorney is prosecuting the cable company for providing Internet service into an area where another has the franchise, even though that other cable company doesn't serve that particular area and has no plans to.
In most cases, yes, you'll have a choice between at most two broadband ISPs: your local cable company (providing cable Internet) and your local telephone company (providing DSL). Note that that's a maximum. In a noticeable number of areas you'll have only one. Sometimes it's because one or the other simply doesn't serve that chunk of real estate. Sometimes in the case of apartments, condominium complexes and newer developments it's because the owner/developer has given one company exclusive rights to provide high-speed Internet service there.
IIRC the plaintiff's argument here isn't that Vista runs. It's that:
Microsoft presented certain things in their advertisements, eg. the Aero interface, as being what Vista was. They didn't mention anywhere in the ads that not all versions of Vista would have what they were representing Vista to have.
The machines with the "Vista Capable" sticker on them would not run what Microsoft represented Vista to be.
It's not a question of minimum requirements, it's a basic false-advertising claim. You can see a parallel any time you see a commercial for cars. You'll see the ad showing the tricked-out, fully-equipped top-end model, the one with the best performance and all the fancy accessories. And at the end you'll see a price. And down below the price, you'll see "Base model price. As shown, $MUCHMORE.". That's because, back in the day, the car makers would show for example the $20,000 model in the ad, and at the end there'd be the picture of that specific model and underneath they'd say "Starting at $8000." with no indication that this statement didn't apply to that specific model. And someone sued them when they refused to sell him that model for $8000. And the courts agreed: if the price shown in the ad didn't apply to the product shown in the ad, that was false advertising. The plaintiffs here are making the same claim: Microsoft certified systems as being capable of running Vista, Microsoft advertised Vista as being certain things with no indication anywhere that some versions might not have everything shown, and now Microsoft themselves are saying those machines won't run what Microsoft said they would. And worse, that Microsoft knew this when they made the claims.
Because, when Ford shuts down the factories, the Aerostar van you bought doesn't vanish from your driveway, nor does it refuse to unlock it's doors or start when you turn the key.
I can think of one very good reason: they want access to the data when they get to their destination. There's no guarantee they'll have network access when they get where they're going. Not all hotels offer it, and many that do restrict you to browsing the Web only (ports 80 and 443 are the only ones usable). Even ones that do open all ports do things like require a browser session active with their authentication server, and if that session ends the server cuts off all network connectivity for you. And of course the instant you fire up a VPN client, the routing change kills the connection to the authentication server. When you get to the customer, they're likely to be behind a firewall and have various access controls in place. A prudent person isn't going to depend on getting network access and a VPN link working through an unknown network with unknown controls in place, especially not with a multi-milllion-dollar (or even multi-billion-dollar) contract riding on it. So if you're smart you have everything loaded onto your laptop and ready to go, no dependence on anything that's not under your direct control.
I don't want a P2P user's bill of rights. I want an ISP subscriber's bill of rights. Top entries:
As a subscriber I have the right to use the bandwidth I pay for, and to use it in whatever manner I find appropriate so long as that activity is not against the law.
As a subscriber I have the right to know what policies the ISP will impose before I subscribe, so that I can decide whether those policies are acceptable to me.
And all the joys of having parts of your software upgraded to versions that aren't compatible with other business-critical applications, with no warning and no opportunity to delay the upgrade. Congratulations. Your salespeople can't pursue contracts because their contact and CRM software was broken by the upgrade. Several critical applications are dead in the water because the documents coming into them aren't in a format they understand anymore. And the timecard system and payroll software aren't working, and you have 7 days to get this fixed or people aren't going to get their paychecks and that's gonna open a whole new can of worms with the state government (not to mention both state and Federal tax people when the withholding payment doesn't get made).
There's a reason Microsoft had to quick-like create SUS and give local admins a way to control updates.
Unfortunately, no fix is feasible. The basic problem is twofold:
If you tell someone how to fix a problem, you tell them what the problem was.
It's not possible to push updates to all affected systems simultaneously.
That the first is true should be obvious if you think about it for a minute. As for the second, that comes from the fact that the affected systems are owned by different entities with different requirements and different environments. A fix for a problem affects more than just the fixed software, especially when the fix is in the operating system on which other business-critical software runs. Any fix has to be checked for compatibility with that entity's specific environment, this checking can't start until after the entity has gotten the fix, and everybody's going to take a different amount of time to check and get clearance to deploy.
The only "fix" would be a mandatory push to all systems at one time, and that won't be accepted by the people who own the systems unless Microsoft or someone else accepts complete 100% liability for all costs associated with any failure. And I just don't see that happening.
I think he covered that in his letter. Monster is claiming trade-dress infringement, ie. infringement on distinctive appearance and markings. Based on what he says, Monster a) sent images of the appearances allegedly infringed upon that're so small and indistinct that you can't reliably see what they look like to compare it to eh allegedly-infringing items, and b) to the extent that the multiple items Monster submitted can be discerned, they're so radically different that no single item could possibly be similar to all of them at once as Monster seems to be claiming. And his response seems equally reasonable: Monster should send him either actual samples or clear, large images of the Monster cables of the designs they claim are infringed upon, and should identify the exact Blue Jeans products which they believe are unacceptably similar to each of their samples. If Monster can't do that, they deserve to get smacked around by a judge if they take it to court.
Except that what Virgin wants isn't tiered pricing. I look at net neutrality analogously to UPS delivery. UPS doesn't care who you are, or who you're shipping to, or what (modulo hazardous materials) you're shipping. They care about basically two things and two things only: how big/heavy your package is, and how far you're shipping it. If you and I both go in to the same UPS office to ship the same package to two recipients in the same city, UPS will charge us both the same price. Sure I'll pay more if I pick overnight shipping and you pick standard ground, but if I pick the same shipping as you I won't get nicked for more.
What Virgin wants, though, isn't anything analogous. Suppose the situation is that I'm buying mail-order, and as the customer I've paid the shipping charge for overnight delivery. What Virgin wants is to go to the merchant and go "We know your customer paid for overnight shipping. But if you, Mr. Merchant, don't cross our palm with some extra money on top of that, we won't deliver the package overnight. Oh, and don't think you can just stop offering overnight shipping, because if you ship standard we'll slow that down too unless you pay us.". This is known as "a kickback", and in every other field it gets you in legal trouble. For my money, I'm not willing to do business with someone who's demanding kickbacks.
Most of us geeks would have no problem with Virgin charging their customers tiered pricing based on how much those customers used. We'd probably take our business somewhere that offered a better deal, but Virgin would at least be being honest. Virgin, though, seems to want to extort kickbacks from people who aren't it's customers so that they don't have to charge their customers based on usage. Sorry, but no.
Simple: sell your music. Why take a small royalty from the label when you can sell your music directly to your customers and keep all the money. You have to pay the bills, but I'm betting you can arrange hosting and an e-commerce site for a low enough cost that you can sell cheap enough to have people buying while still making more actual profit than label royalties would be. The key is to shake loose of the idea that the only way to make money selling music is to collect royalties from a label. Once you do that, many more options are available.
And yes, people will buy. The Baen Free Library has proven that. You just need to sell them what they want at a price they think is reasonable (note: it does NOT have to be ridiculously cheap, just reasonable). That probably means giving up on the idea of selling albums and just selling individual tracks, and a price somewhere in the 50 cents to a dollar per track range. I'd think it'd also be smart to co-opt the P2P file-sharing networks too. Don't wait for copies of your music to appear, seed lower-quality copies yourself. Set the quality so the seeded tracks are reasonably listenable but the tracks from your site are audibly better, and embed information about your site and how to purchase the high-quality copy in the ID3 tags so players will show it while your music is playing. My bet is that, while the file-sharers will cheerfully upload copies if there's none available, if the songs are already on the network the people who'd seed the high-quality copies won't pay for the high-quality copies and won't have them to upload.
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All version-control systems do that. It's not optional: you have to have meta-information about the checked-out files available, and there's no place in the files themselves to put that information. Now, you might want to look at the distinction between a working directory (with all the tracking files present, allowing the developer to check in and out, compare with different revisions in the tree, all the normal things) and an exported tree (created using for example the CVS "export" command, contains only the source files with none of the meta-data present (which means you can't check modifications of it back in)). My normal working method is to have a working directory for actual development, then once I've got everything checked in make an export tree if I need to package the source code up for builds.
If you're in a highly-distributed development environment like Linux, where the developers are spread across multiple continents and have very little shared infrastructure and a high need to work independently of each other (either because of preference or because they don't want their work stalled by another undersea cable cut half a world away), then yes using a centralized VCS like Subversion is stupid. But if you're a developer on a project where all the developers are in a common location sharing common infrastructure, often literally within speaking distance of each other, then a decentralized VCS like Git is stupid. It's harder to maintain and, in that situation, yields none of the offsetting benefits.
Analogy: a fleet of Chevy vans vs. a freight train. The vans are far more flexible, they can travel any route needed whereas the freight train's limited to fixed tracks, and their smaller size and lower cost each let you buy a lot of them and dedicate each one to just a few deliveries in a particular area without a lot of overhead. You can fan the vans out all over the city, sending just what you need where it's needed and rerouting each one to adapt to changes without upsetting the others. But if your only delivery each day is 1000 tons of a single product from one warehouse to another 600 miles away, you're better off with that one big freight train.
Mostly it's because the defendants almost always try to claim the EULA isn't enforceable or valid or something. In the process they admit to having read it and clicked on the Accept button. The software companies then claim that means the defendant accepted the agreement, which winds up not being disputed and the judge has to rule based on the defendant being bound by the terms.
IMO the proper way to handle it is to start by asserting that the EULA simply isn't relevant. That is, that I read it and rejected it, and am now relying on my rights under the contract of sale formed when I handed my cash over at the retail point of sale and the clerk handed me my receipt and the software. But now I have a technical obstacle placed in my way by the installer. I'm now entirely within my legal rights to get around that obstacle without incurring any additional obligations to the software company, as long as I don't do any damage to their property (and my specific copy of the software isn't their property anymore, so they can't use any alleged damage to it by my accessing it). Analogy: I buy a car, pay cash, sign the paperwork and take the keys. When I get to the car there's tape over the doors saying "By breaking this tape you accept the additional terms found on the paper on the driver's seat.". I can break the tape and ignore the paper, because at that point the car dealership has no legal right to put that tape on the door.
Especially since the copying of the program into RAM is specifically covered in USC Title 17 117(a)(1) which says that making that copy isn't and can't under law be an infringement.
Why would there be such a difference? The Uniform Commercial Code doesn't indicate there's any difference in the terms of the default contract of sale. I didn't sign any other terms at the time of sale, so according to the UCC the default terms apply at that point. This "license" you talk about wasn't mentioned until after I got the software out of the box and started to install it. Why should some contract I was never offered and never accepted have anything to do with the terms under which I own my copy?
I'd note in the case of WoW and the Glider software there's another catch. Whether or not there's any copyright infringement on the client side, to play WoW you have to connect to Blizzard's servers. To connect you have to accept the Terms of Service for those servers. Using Glider violates those terms. No need to bring copyright or ownership vs. licensing of the client software into it. Glider's sole purpose, known to and intended by it's author, is to induce Blizzard's customers to break the agreement they have to make every time they log in. That's tortious interference with contract, as I understand it.
Interestingly, Yahoo's stock isn't falling. Monday morning it went down, but since then it's been consistently gaining ground again. Today it's up $1.41, at $25.78/share.
For normal driving, no. But when I'm going to head out off the main roads, especially into rough or treacherous areas, or if there's some special condition like a bad storm headed in that I may get caught in, you can bet I make sure somebody knows where I'm going, what route I plan to take and when I expect to arrive at my destination and possibly intermediate check-in points. That way if something happens searchers know where to start looking.
The problem is there's two types of people who need rescuing. One class is people who honestly did run into unexpected trouble. The other, and unfortunately based on experience more common, are the idiots who go doing stupid things (eg. going out into back-country areas they've never been in before, without telling anyone where they're planning on being, without proper gear and supplies and without any of the easy ways of telling searchers where they are (like radio beacons), and doing this when a bad storm's scheduled to blow in later that day), on the theory that "Hey, if anything happens the sheriff's department will come find me. No problem.". So a lot of volunteers spend a lot of their time, and the sheriff's department spends a lot of money, rescuing people from their own stupidity. And eventually the volunteers get tired of it and stop volunteering, and the sheriff doesn't have the money left to keep fuel in the search aircraft, and then someone who did take every precaution, did everything they could to make it easy for rescuers, did everything to avoid needing to be rescued but who still got caught by one of the things nobody would've expected winds up dead because the idiots burned up all the resources.
No, the above isn't uncommon. I've lived in back-country areas and seen it all too often. Which is why I tend to agree with the states that reserve the right to bill for rescue efforts. Note that normally they reserve the right, they don't mandate it. Usual practice is to look at why the person needed rescuing. If it was because they were stupid, they get a bill. If they weren't stupid, normally they won't.
In the case of Steve Fossett, I have to agree with sending his estate a bill. With his background, there's no arguing that he knew exactly what could happen if he had a problem out there. Yet he still went out without telling anybody where he'd be and without the radio beacon that'd make him easy to locate. He knew better than to do that.
There's another reason we don't see extra-terrestrial civilizations: time and distance.
As the article notes, we can't actually see extra-terrestrial planets. All our looking for ET civilizations is done by watching for indirect signs of them passing Earth, primarily radio waves. Here on Earth, though, it's only been in the last 2 centuries that we've been putting out any radio signature at all, and we're rapidly moving towards putting out less and less of a signature. Communications systems that broadcast indiscriminately in all directions are less efficient than ones that focus their broadcast, and non-broadcast systems are more efficient yet. There might only be a 500-year-wide band in which we're detectable by radio emissions at any given point in the galaxy. And if it's true for us, it's probably true for other civilizations as well.
So, take any star out there. It's going to be a fixed distance away from Earth, so we can ignore the distance factor. If it's say 700 light-years away, then for us to be able to see any civilization on it's planets they would've had to have reached the point where they began using radio between 700 and 1200 years ago. If they discovered it more recently than 700 years ago, their very first broadcasts haven't had time to arrive here yet. If they discovered radio more than 1200 years ago, 700 years ago they'd've reached the point where they stopped broadcasting detectable radio signals. The trailing edge of their bubble has already passed us, and we won't see detectable traces of them again.
So there could be hundreds of civilizations out there. If they didn't pass through the radio-emitting stage at the right time for their distance away from us, they'd be invisible to us. And that "right time" is a fairly tight window as such things go.
Not really. The fact that MediaSentry was authorized to make the downloads doesn't retroactively grant the plaintiff authorization to make the files available for download. And the case is against the plaintiff, not MediaSentry, so it's the plaintiff's authorization and not MediaSentry's that's at issue. Plaintiff might be able to win if he can show that he knew it was MediaSentry doing the download and had in his hands legally-admissable evidence that MediaSentry was authorized to download the songs before allowing them to be downloaded from his machine, but it's unlikely plaintiff will be able to manage to show that.
Fairly easy: a typical consumer wants to share their own files between their own computers. KaZaa's publicized as an easy way to get and share files, so they have their local geek set them up with it. Said geek does, but doesn't disable external access and doesn't clue them in to all the technicalities. Consumer has no clue, since it's doing what he asked for it to do.
Analogous to the situation where I leave my books out on the porch table and the local kids keep coming in while I'm not there and stealing copies (imagine for a moment that it's as easy to copy a physical book as it is to copy a computer file). I never considered that, since I've got a locked gate. My friend who brought over the chairs and table didn't bother to tell me that he had to unlock the gate to get them in and never bothered locking it again afterwards, and since I don't use that gate I never thought to check it. And since making copies doesn't leave me wondering where my books are, I've no clue copies are going walkabout on me. I'm certainly making the books available, if I hadn't left them outside the kids couldn't have made their copies. But by the same token I'm hardly intending to distribute those copies. I own my copies, I've got them on the porch for my own use that's perfectly legitimate, and I've no reasonable expectation that people will be breaking into my yard.
I don't think it eviscerates the RIAA's claims, but it's certainly a major blow to their theories. As I read it, the judge is saying that merely making them available isn't automatically infringement. This makes sense if you think of an analogy. If I put a book down on the table on my front porch while I go inside to get a drink, and someone comes along and takes it, I surely made it available but nobody in their right mind would claim I intended to distribute it to the thief. Compare that to the case where I put a whole bunch of books on a table out by the sidewalk with a sign "Free books, take as many as you want.". I suspect the judge here is ruling along similar lines: it's not sufficient for the RIAA to claim that the files were merely available, they have to claim the files were (reasonably) knowingly made available for the purposes of infringing distribution. OTOH, if the files were available to the public, but were put where they were for a non-infringing purpose and the defendant wouldn't reasonably (given their knowledge) expect the files to be open for the taking by anyone else, then the RIAA's claim fails. Which to me sounds reasonable, so seems more reasonable than either of the extreme positions take by the RIAA or the P2P advocates.
It's not so much MS claiming Aero would work or not as that MS never advertised Vista showing anything but Aero as the interface. You never saw the basic interface, never saw any statement that the interface shown wouldn't be there in all cases. A reasonable person would conclude that what you saw in the ad was what you'd actually get if you ran Vista on a computer advertised as being capable of running Vista. And in some cases, such as the Intel 915 graphics chip that's one of the explicit reasons for the "Vista Capable" label, even trying Aero isn't an option. The chipset lacks the hardware capabilities Aero requires, and if you've got a machine with that chipset Vista forces Aero to be disabled.
With video games, somewhere in the ad you'll find a disclaimer stating what's needed for the graphics shown, or at least that not all systems will be capable of the graphics shown.
Whether they're legal or not unfortunately doesn't give you any leverage to force a competitor to serve you. If your complex has an illegal exclusivity agreement with the local telco for broadband Internet, they refuse to lease space on their lines to competing DSL providers (which they can do) and the local cable company refuses to wire up the complex (which they can do), then you're still stuck with only one ISP available.
And it may not be just the ISPs. Local to me the District Attorney is prosecuting the cable company for providing Internet service into an area where another has the franchise, even though that other cable company doesn't serve that particular area and has no plans to.
In most cases, yes, you'll have a choice between at most two broadband ISPs: your local cable company (providing cable Internet) and your local telephone company (providing DSL). Note that that's a maximum. In a noticeable number of areas you'll have only one. Sometimes it's because one or the other simply doesn't serve that chunk of real estate. Sometimes in the case of apartments, condominium complexes and newer developments it's because the owner/developer has given one company exclusive rights to provide high-speed Internet service there.
IIRC the plaintiff's argument here isn't that Vista runs. It's that:
- Microsoft presented certain things in their advertisements, eg. the Aero interface, as being what Vista was. They didn't mention anywhere in the ads that not all versions of Vista would have what they were representing Vista to have.
- The machines with the "Vista Capable" sticker on them would not run what Microsoft represented Vista to be.
It's not a question of minimum requirements, it's a basic false-advertising claim. You can see a parallel any time you see a commercial for cars. You'll see the ad showing the tricked-out, fully-equipped top-end model, the one with the best performance and all the fancy accessories. And at the end you'll see a price. And down below the price, you'll see "Base model price. As shown, $MUCHMORE.". That's because, back in the day, the car makers would show for example the $20,000 model in the ad, and at the end there'd be the picture of that specific model and underneath they'd say "Starting at $8000." with no indication that this statement didn't apply to that specific model. And someone sued them when they refused to sell him that model for $8000. And the courts agreed: if the price shown in the ad didn't apply to the product shown in the ad, that was false advertising. The plaintiffs here are making the same claim: Microsoft certified systems as being capable of running Vista, Microsoft advertised Vista as being certain things with no indication anywhere that some versions might not have everything shown, and now Microsoft themselves are saying those machines won't run what Microsoft said they would. And worse, that Microsoft knew this when they made the claims.Because, when Ford shuts down the factories, the Aerostar van you bought doesn't vanish from your driveway, nor does it refuse to unlock it's doors or start when you turn the key.
I can think of one very good reason: they want access to the data when they get to their destination. There's no guarantee they'll have network access when they get where they're going. Not all hotels offer it, and many that do restrict you to browsing the Web only (ports 80 and 443 are the only ones usable). Even ones that do open all ports do things like require a browser session active with their authentication server, and if that session ends the server cuts off all network connectivity for you. And of course the instant you fire up a VPN client, the routing change kills the connection to the authentication server. When you get to the customer, they're likely to be behind a firewall and have various access controls in place. A prudent person isn't going to depend on getting network access and a VPN link working through an unknown network with unknown controls in place, especially not with a multi-milllion-dollar (or even multi-billion-dollar) contract riding on it. So if you're smart you have everything loaded onto your laptop and ready to go, no dependence on anything that's not under your direct control.
I don't want a P2P user's bill of rights. I want an ISP subscriber's bill of rights. Top entries:
And all the joys of having parts of your software upgraded to versions that aren't compatible with other business-critical applications, with no warning and no opportunity to delay the upgrade. Congratulations. Your salespeople can't pursue contracts because their contact and CRM software was broken by the upgrade. Several critical applications are dead in the water because the documents coming into them aren't in a format they understand anymore. And the timecard system and payroll software aren't working, and you have 7 days to get this fixed or people aren't going to get their paychecks and that's gonna open a whole new can of worms with the state government (not to mention both state and Federal tax people when the withholding payment doesn't get made).
There's a reason Microsoft had to quick-like create SUS and give local admins a way to control updates.
Rudyard Kipling covered this already. Why don't they learn?
Unfortunately, no fix is feasible. The basic problem is twofold:
- If you tell someone how to fix a problem, you tell them what the problem was.
- It's not possible to push updates to all affected systems simultaneously.
That the first is true should be obvious if you think about it for a minute. As for the second, that comes from the fact that the affected systems are owned by different entities with different requirements and different environments. A fix for a problem affects more than just the fixed software, especially when the fix is in the operating system on which other business-critical software runs. Any fix has to be checked for compatibility with that entity's specific environment, this checking can't start until after the entity has gotten the fix, and everybody's going to take a different amount of time to check and get clearance to deploy.The only "fix" would be a mandatory push to all systems at one time, and that won't be accepted by the people who own the systems unless Microsoft or someone else accepts complete 100% liability for all costs associated with any failure. And I just don't see that happening.
I think he covered that in his letter. Monster is claiming trade-dress infringement, ie. infringement on distinctive appearance and markings. Based on what he says, Monster a) sent images of the appearances allegedly infringed upon that're so small and indistinct that you can't reliably see what they look like to compare it to eh allegedly-infringing items, and b) to the extent that the multiple items Monster submitted can be discerned, they're so radically different that no single item could possibly be similar to all of them at once as Monster seems to be claiming. And his response seems equally reasonable: Monster should send him either actual samples or clear, large images of the Monster cables of the designs they claim are infringed upon, and should identify the exact Blue Jeans products which they believe are unacceptably similar to each of their samples. If Monster can't do that, they deserve to get smacked around by a judge if they take it to court.
Except that what Virgin wants isn't tiered pricing. I look at net neutrality analogously to UPS delivery. UPS doesn't care who you are, or who you're shipping to, or what (modulo hazardous materials) you're shipping. They care about basically two things and two things only: how big/heavy your package is, and how far you're shipping it. If you and I both go in to the same UPS office to ship the same package to two recipients in the same city, UPS will charge us both the same price. Sure I'll pay more if I pick overnight shipping and you pick standard ground, but if I pick the same shipping as you I won't get nicked for more.
What Virgin wants, though, isn't anything analogous. Suppose the situation is that I'm buying mail-order, and as the customer I've paid the shipping charge for overnight delivery. What Virgin wants is to go to the merchant and go "We know your customer paid for overnight shipping. But if you, Mr. Merchant, don't cross our palm with some extra money on top of that, we won't deliver the package overnight. Oh, and don't think you can just stop offering overnight shipping, because if you ship standard we'll slow that down too unless you pay us.". This is known as "a kickback", and in every other field it gets you in legal trouble. For my money, I'm not willing to do business with someone who's demanding kickbacks.
Most of us geeks would have no problem with Virgin charging their customers tiered pricing based on how much those customers used. We'd probably take our business somewhere that offered a better deal, but Virgin would at least be being honest. Virgin, though, seems to want to extort kickbacks from people who aren't it's customers so that they don't have to charge their customers based on usage. Sorry, but no.
Simple: sell your music. Why take a small royalty from the label when you can sell your music directly to your customers and keep all the money. You have to pay the bills, but I'm betting you can arrange hosting and an e-commerce site for a low enough cost that you can sell cheap enough to have people buying while still making more actual profit than label royalties would be. The key is to shake loose of the idea that the only way to make money selling music is to collect royalties from a label. Once you do that, many more options are available.
And yes, people will buy. The Baen Free Library has proven that. You just need to sell them what they want at a price they think is reasonable (note: it does NOT have to be ridiculously cheap, just reasonable). That probably means giving up on the idea of selling albums and just selling individual tracks, and a price somewhere in the 50 cents to a dollar per track range. I'd think it'd also be smart to co-opt the P2P file-sharing networks too. Don't wait for copies of your music to appear, seed lower-quality copies yourself. Set the quality so the seeded tracks are reasonably listenable but the tracks from your site are audibly better, and embed information about your site and how to purchase the high-quality copy in the ID3 tags so players will show it while your music is playing. My bet is that, while the file-sharers will cheerfully upload copies if there's none available, if the songs are already on the network the people who'd seed the high-quality copies won't pay for the high-quality copies and won't have them to upload.