and it creates a monopoly-style pricing situation.
Imagine if Intel and AMD got together and agreed to not sell CPUs for less than $500. Suddenly you would have to pay much more for a computer, and Intel and AMD would get much higher profit margins. As long as they keep to this agreement, people who want to run an x86 computer, don't have a choice but pay the extra. The reason the prices are so low for most CPUs at the moment is because of the competition between those two manufacturers.
The suggestion is that the large music companies, rather than trying to compete against eachother on price, have an (informal?) agreement on what they will sell their music at, somewhat above their actual cost.
One important difference is that music companies don't compete on price as much as they compete with their "artists". No matter how low a britany spears album is priced, I won't buy it.
Are you suggesting that OEM is completely independent from retail? If 60% of retail computers use AMD chips, those chips were sold to the computer manufacturer from the OEM.
A very small percentage of people buy retail CPUs to put into their computers.
Skype can do what they want. If they choose to drop all support for every platform except the Amiga, nobody can stop them. Nobody is suggesting Skype did anything illegal (it is arguable that they are acting as jerks, but that isn't illegal... yet.) The question is whether intel used their monopoly to muscle them into building that limitation into their program... The further question that I was asking is: Is intel still a monopoly?
Assuming intel is behind this, it would only be illegal if they were a monopoly. All of the recent numbers show that AMD is selling close to as many as intel is now. Historically intel has been a monopoly, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Perhaps a better word would be "neo-racism" or "defacto-racism". Instead of saying "no blacks can live in this neighborhood" communities are saying "no poor people may live in this neighborhood" when a vast disproportionate number of poor people are black.
An interesting side effect of this is the rise of the idea of "white trash" - or poor white people who are treated as badly as poor blacks.
I think that for the most part, race is less of an issue than poverty in determining crime. However, the fact is that in most places with white and black populations, whites are generally much wealthier. While I think race is less of issue now, it certainly was a major issue from at least 40-200 years ago, and simply maintaining the status quo isn't good enough. For example, Australian Aborigines were goverened under the "flora and fauna Act (NSW)" until the 60s. It isn't good enough to just say "sure, they are classified as people now, they should just quit complaining". These underprivileged people in our societies come from such a disadvantage that it is unacceptable to dismiss their current situation by saying it is "racially equal" (because poor whites are treated as badly as poor blacks.)
I am unaware of your country, but in common law countries, the job of the jury is to make a decision of fact. The judge makes the decision of law. The juries' choice is not "guilty or innocent" but rather "did the person do this action or not". It is a subtle, but important distinction.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft gets "protection money" from companies afraid that Microsoft will compete against them? That is a really stupid argument.
Microsoft Office for the mac has a strong connection with Quicktime. Microsoft only killed Mac IE after Apple released Safari. Microsoft had been working on a much improved Mac IE version for some time (which ended up going into their MSN service)
Real player always had a free player and a sold player. (It is arguable that a substantial portion of the people who pay for their player only pay because they are unaware, or unable to find the free version of the player, which is extremely anti-consumer... but I digress) Apple only started selling a version of Quicktime *after* windows media player was released. I agree that my post mislead about netscape always being free, but while IE3 made little headway against NN 3, in roughly the same conditions, IE4 was wildly successful against NN4, largely because IE4 was much better. (I have read articles by ex-netscape people saying that the management at the time were making huge blunders with running the company anyway). Certainly Microsoft did some nasty things to undermine Netscape, but to argue that is the only reason Netscape failed would be like arguing the only reason Cuba isn't a rich, prosperous nation is because the excessive sanctions.
Anyway, you missed the point of my post: I doubt that Microsoft has made more than a few billion dollars from those actions, while the Gates foundation has an endowment of almost $30 Billion
People keep on dismissing Gates' donations by saying all of the money microsoft makes is from breaking the law, or unethical practices. Correct me if I am wrong, but the only "illegal" activities that have even come close to sticking to microsoft are their actions in relation to IE and windows media player.. both of which are free, and compete against free alternatives. Microsoft makes a very substantial portion of their income from Office, and the fact is that Office is the best office suite available.
I am no microsoft fanboy (I use macs exclusively) but the constant dismissal of Gates' philanthopy is really pathetic
I know that there will be a lot of anti-recording industry comments on here, but it is clear that their main interest in extending the copyright period is to protect us from low quality Beatles compilations. Consider the irreversable damage that could be caused to children if their first experience of the Beatles has the songs in a less than ideal order. Please think of the children.
Can you purchase/make a regular PC with the screen/compactness of the imac? It is silly to compare the price/performance of a generic tower PC with an iMac because people don't purchase an iMac purely for the performance. It will be interesting how the standard desktop Intel Mac (whatever it will be called) compares with regular desktops, but we have no idea how they are going to spec-ed or priced.
Even if it wasn't officially supported, with apple now using commodity chipsets and other hardware it wouldn't take too long for third parties to release unnoficial clones. These clones could have essentially identical chipsets (meaning few if any hardware compatibility issues) but for a significantly lower price (given apple's margins).
The information in the article is quite limited, but I think it is likely that it is built to last. While most consumer level products are generally built to be cheap, and only survive very limited wear and tear, there are still many products out there that are truly built to last. Consider the long lasting nature of old vehicles such as the first generations of Land Rover, and Land Cruiser which have often functioned for many decades compared to many modern cars which are designed to last for 5 years or so. These ramps are selling for GBP 25,000, which is far from inexpensive, and I expect that they are designed to survive.
That would be a peak flow, when the car is actually crossing it. Unless cars are crossing it every instant (which is impossible) the average wattage would be much lower.
If it was designed well, the maintenance should be negligible. There might also be a benefit in that the lights would stay on in a power outage. As far as electricity usage goes, I would guess that each bulb might be 200 Watts. Depending on the design of an intersection, there would probably be between 8 and 16 of these lights on constantly. According to http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp the cost per month would be about £130/month, or a bit more than £1500/year. Assuming there is no interest (or increase in the price of electricity) it would take almost 16 years before these savings make up for the cost of the equipment. Many governments make investments on this time-scale anyway. Additionally, if it could be used to power more than one traffic light, it might only take 7 or 8 years to pay for itself.
Without copyright, there is no property and no need to license the software. "GPL"ed software would become public domain with source. It would be impossible to create the same kind of thing as the GPL purely through contracts, because of the communal nature of the GPL (who would have the right to enter into a contract for linux for example). Additionally, breach of a "GPC" would only require payment of damages, and as breaching the GPL does not cause fiscal damages, it would be unenforceable.
I have been a supporter of the objective "-1 Clueless" moderation option for quite a while, although it wouldn't really be applicable in this case. Perhaps a "-1 Fucktard" would be more appropriate. Of course, a "-1 Poor Spelling/Grammar" would also be applicable.
Are you talking about copyrights or patents? if copyrights: are you suggesting that because somebody wrote a good song, you enjoy, you should be entitled to have it for free (more than the enjoyment you already have with it being in your head.
If you are referring to patents, let me tell you a few stories: When I was in grade 8, I derived Pythagorus proof. Surprisingly, I didn't slaughter a goat to celebrate. Is it fair to say that because a 12 year old could prove what Pythagorus did, then what he did was pointless, and overrated? When I was in grade 11, I derived the basic rules of Calculus. Leibniz and Newton got a lot of credit for that, but come on, a 15 year old could come up with the same answer. Anyone with an undergraduate physics degree (and many who don't) can come up with the theory E=mc^2. Does that mean that Einstein's genius is comparable to an undergraduate? The Post-it note is a simple invention that anyone could have come up with - a bit of paper with some weak glue. The paperclip is just a bent piece of wire. What is so special about that?
My point is that just because an idea can appear trivial and obvious, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be protected. If you were the first person to envision a large, artificial body of water that could be placed on private property for the use and enjoyment of people, you developed that idea, and registered it at the patent office, then I think that you should have the right to stop a neighbor who just read the idea and wanted one. Of course, you weren't the first person to have that idea, and you didn't put any effort into developing it, and so your argument is completely stupid.
"IP Law" isn't monolithic. Different aspects of IP law have different purposes. Patents are intended to encourage and protect innovation. Copyrights are designed to protect creativity. Trademarks are designed to protect brand names. There are many many more fields of "IP Law" that have completely different goals and rules associated with them. In general, "IP Law" is designed to acknowledge that there is value to things other than purely physical objects. Many refer to our current "era" as being the "Information Age". The vast majority of the population (at least in first world nations) are employed using their brains rather than their hands. In general, IP law is designed to protect those peoples' work and effort.
Real Property Law is designed to protect land either used to generate income (such as a farm or rental property) or value stored in Land (such as your home.) The law around chattels is to protect objects that people either created, or purchased with value from their work.
So broadly, all property law is designed to protect work. Just because someone is not a farmer, or a builder, doesn't mean what they do should not be protected.
In any case, how is this a case of discouraging innovation? People are trying to create clones of a 20 year old gaming system. This isn't a matter of some people being unable to develop innovative devices because of patents (or copyrights) applied for by Nintendo.
Slashdot Mirror
and it creates a monopoly-style pricing situation.
Imagine if Intel and AMD got together and agreed to not sell CPUs for less than $500. Suddenly you would have to pay much more for a computer, and Intel and AMD would get much higher profit margins. As long as they keep to this agreement, people who want to run an x86 computer, don't have a choice but pay the extra.
The reason the prices are so low for most CPUs at the moment is because of the competition between those two manufacturers.
The suggestion is that the large music companies, rather than trying to compete against eachother on price, have an (informal?) agreement on what they will sell their music at, somewhat above their actual cost.
One important difference is that music companies don't compete on price as much as they compete with their "artists". No matter how low a britany spears album is priced, I won't buy it.
Are you suggesting that OEM is completely independent from retail? If 60% of retail computers use AMD chips, those chips were sold to the computer manufacturer from the OEM.
A very small percentage of people buy retail CPUs to put into their computers.
Skype can do what they want. If they choose to drop all support for every platform except the Amiga, nobody can stop them. Nobody is suggesting Skype did anything illegal (it is arguable that they are acting as jerks, but that isn't illegal... yet.) The question is whether intel used their monopoly to muscle them into building that limitation into their program... The further question that I was asking is: Is intel still a monopoly?
My question was: "Is intel a monopoly?", not "did they push skype to release intel-only software"
From what I have heard, AMD has been out-selling intel in the retail field, which is incompatible with the "intel monopoly" idea.
Assuming intel is behind this, it would only be illegal if they were a monopoly. All of the recent numbers show that AMD is selling close to as many as intel is now. Historically intel has been a monopoly, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Perhaps a better word would be "neo-racism" or "defacto-racism". Instead of saying "no blacks can live in this neighborhood" communities are saying "no poor people may live in this neighborhood" when a vast disproportionate number of poor people are black.
An interesting side effect of this is the rise of the idea of "white trash" - or poor white people who are treated as badly as poor blacks.
I am sorry, but I cannot understand your statement. Can you please rephrase it.
I think that for the most part, race is less of an issue than poverty in determining crime. However, the fact is that in most places with white and black populations, whites are generally much wealthier. While I think race is less of issue now, it certainly was a major issue from at least 40-200 years ago, and simply maintaining the status quo isn't good enough. For example, Australian Aborigines were goverened under the "flora and fauna Act (NSW)" until the 60s. It isn't good enough to just say "sure, they are classified as people now, they should just quit complaining". These underprivileged people in our societies come from such a disadvantage that it is unacceptable to dismiss their current situation by saying it is "racially equal" (because poor whites are treated as badly as poor blacks.)
I am unaware of your country, but in common law countries, the job of the jury is to make a decision of fact. The judge makes the decision of law. The juries' choice is not "guilty or innocent" but rather "did the person do this action or not". It is a subtle, but important distinction.
and you can criticize an article without reading it... it just means that your criticism is meaningless
Well, video killed the radio star.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft gets "protection money" from companies afraid that Microsoft will compete against them? That is a really stupid argument.
Microsoft Office for the mac has a strong connection with Quicktime. Microsoft only killed Mac IE after Apple released Safari. Microsoft had been working on a much improved Mac IE version for some time (which ended up going into their MSN service)
Real player always had a free player and a sold player. (It is arguable that a substantial portion of the people who pay for their player only pay because they are unaware, or unable to find the free version of the player, which is extremely anti-consumer... but I digress) Apple only started selling a version of Quicktime *after* windows media player was released.
I agree that my post mislead about netscape always being free, but while IE3 made little headway against NN 3, in roughly the same conditions, IE4 was wildly successful against NN4, largely because IE4 was much better. (I have read articles by ex-netscape people saying that the management at the time were making huge blunders with running the company anyway). Certainly Microsoft did some nasty things to undermine Netscape, but to argue that is the only reason Netscape failed would be like arguing the only reason Cuba isn't a rich, prosperous nation is because the excessive sanctions.
Anyway, you missed the point of my post: I doubt that Microsoft has made more than a few billion dollars from those actions, while the Gates foundation has an endowment of almost $30 Billion
Obviously you have not read the book of Lovejoy. As sayeth him in 1F08:
"Once something has been approved by the Government, It's no longer immoral"
People keep on dismissing Gates' donations by saying all of the money microsoft makes is from breaking the law, or unethical practices. Correct me if I am wrong, but the only "illegal" activities that have even come close to sticking to microsoft are their actions in relation to IE and windows media player.. both of which are free, and compete against free alternatives.
Microsoft makes a very substantial portion of their income from Office, and the fact is that Office is the best office suite available.
I am no microsoft fanboy (I use macs exclusively) but the constant dismissal of Gates' philanthopy is really pathetic
I know that there will be a lot of anti-recording industry comments on here, but it is clear that their main interest in extending the copyright period is to protect us from low quality Beatles compilations. Consider the irreversable damage that could be caused to children if their first experience of the Beatles has the songs in a less than ideal order.
Please think of the children.
Can you purchase/make a regular PC with the screen/compactness of the imac?
It is silly to compare the price/performance of a generic tower PC with an iMac because people don't purchase an iMac purely for the performance.
It will be interesting how the standard desktop Intel Mac (whatever it will be called) compares with regular desktops, but we have no idea how they are going to spec-ed or priced.
Even if it wasn't officially supported, with apple now using commodity chipsets and other hardware it wouldn't take too long for third parties to release unnoficial clones. These clones could have essentially identical chipsets (meaning few if any hardware compatibility issues) but for a significantly lower price (given apple's margins).
The information in the article is quite limited, but I think it is likely that it is built to last. While most consumer level products are generally built to be cheap, and only survive very limited wear and tear, there are still many products out there that are truly built to last. Consider the long lasting nature of old vehicles such as the first generations of Land Rover, and Land Cruiser which have often functioned for many decades compared to many modern cars which are designed to last for 5 years or so.
These ramps are selling for GBP 25,000, which is far from inexpensive, and I expect that they are designed to survive.
That would be a peak flow, when the car is actually crossing it. Unless cars are crossing it every instant (which is impossible) the average wattage would be much lower.
If it was designed well, the maintenance should be negligible. There might also be a benefit in that the lights would stay on in a power outage.
As far as electricity usage goes, I would guess that each bulb might be 200 Watts. Depending on the design of an intersection, there would probably be between 8 and 16 of these lights on constantly. According to http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp the cost per month would be about £130/month, or a bit more than £1500/year. Assuming there is no interest (or increase in the price of electricity) it would take almost 16 years before these savings make up for the cost of the equipment. Many governments make investments on this time-scale anyway. Additionally, if it could be used to power more than one traffic light, it might only take 7 or 8 years to pay for itself.
Without copyright, there is no property and no need to license the software. "GPL"ed software would become public domain with source.
It would be impossible to create the same kind of thing as the GPL purely through contracts, because of the communal nature of the GPL (who would have the right to enter into a contract for linux for example). Additionally, breach of a "GPC" would only require payment of damages, and as breaching the GPL does not cause fiscal damages, it would be unenforceable.
I have been a supporter of the objective "-1 Clueless" moderation option for quite a while, although it wouldn't really be applicable in this case. Perhaps a "-1 Fucktard" would be more appropriate. Of course, a "-1 Poor Spelling/Grammar" would also be applicable.
Are you talking about copyrights or patents?
if copyrights: are you suggesting that because somebody wrote a good song, you enjoy, you should be entitled to have it for free (more than the enjoyment you already have with it being in your head.
If you are referring to patents, let me tell you a few stories:
When I was in grade 8, I derived Pythagorus proof. Surprisingly, I didn't slaughter a goat to celebrate. Is it fair to say that because a 12 year old could prove what Pythagorus did, then what he did was pointless, and overrated?
When I was in grade 11, I derived the basic rules of Calculus. Leibniz and Newton got a lot of credit for that, but come on, a 15 year old could come up with the same answer.
Anyone with an undergraduate physics degree (and many who don't) can come up with the theory E=mc^2. Does that mean that Einstein's genius is comparable to an undergraduate?
The Post-it note is a simple invention that anyone could have come up with - a bit of paper with some weak glue. The paperclip is just a bent piece of wire. What is so special about that?
My point is that just because an idea can appear trivial and obvious, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be protected. If you were the first person to envision a large, artificial body of water that could be placed on private property for the use and enjoyment of people, you developed that idea, and registered it at the patent office, then I think that you should have the right to stop a neighbor who just read the idea and wanted one.
Of course, you weren't the first person to have that idea, and you didn't put any effort into developing it, and so your argument is completely stupid.
"IP Law" isn't monolithic. Different aspects of IP law have different purposes. Patents are intended to encourage and protect innovation. Copyrights are designed to protect creativity. Trademarks are designed to protect brand names. There are many many more fields of "IP Law" that have completely different goals and rules associated with them.
In general, "IP Law" is designed to acknowledge that there is value to things other than purely physical objects. Many refer to our current "era" as being the "Information Age". The vast majority of the population (at least in first world nations) are employed using their brains rather than their hands. In general, IP law is designed to protect those peoples' work and effort.
Real Property Law is designed to protect land either used to generate income (such as a farm or rental property) or value stored in Land (such as your home.) The law around chattels is to protect objects that people either created, or purchased with value from their work.
So broadly, all property law is designed to protect work. Just because someone is not a farmer, or a builder, doesn't mean what they do should not be protected.
In any case, how is this a case of discouraging innovation? People are trying to create clones of a 20 year old gaming system. This isn't a matter of some people being unable to develop innovative devices because of patents (or copyrights) applied for by Nintendo.