You're not getting it. What is "successful for an open source project?
In other words, the "Enterprise" can go screw. (I don't mean the venerable starship)
Seems to me the "Enterprise" is too big and slow to make much of a difference to the adoption of new technology. It is individuals and small/medium sized businesses that make up the vast majority of the marketplace and also are the ones that really drive new technology. If you are talking about "The Enterprise" you are talking about an organization that can't afford to take risks even if they promise great benefit.
I as an individual or small business person can adopt or drop new OSS as soon as something better becomes available. But the Enterprise has to send proposals to committee and department heads to have it evaluated and put a plan together and train its staff and all those things that Big business needs to do for better or worse. All this means that big business is not where you should expect the most innovation and to expect big business to drive OSS adoption is beyond foolish and isn't necessary for OSS to succeed.
OSS is for the rest of us, it is not for the guys that can afford to piss money out the windows.
Basically... his answer was science and religion address different questions. Don't try to mix them
Yes, that attitude might have held water a couple centuries ago. But physics has been trying to understand the fundamental "nature" of the universe for quite some time and even goes so far as to extrapolate back to the big bang, which is itself a creation story. Biology seeks to explain life itself.
What exactly do you think religion should cover? The attitude of seperation is exactly the attitude that allowed Intelligent Design in the door in the first place. The fundamental attitude of ID is that everything that Biology can't adequately explain, probably can't be explained and just is because that is the way God made it. It puts a big stop sign up at the edge of current scientific understanding and tells us to look no further because that is just the way God made it and it is beyond our human comprehension.
To me science is an integral part of religion. To know creation is to better know the creator. Religion and Science should both be about the pursuit of Truth regardless of where it leads us. If our preconceived notions don't match reality then we must reconsider. To say science and religion have seperate domains is little different than what Intelligent Designers are really saying. There is only room for one reality in my reality. It may ultimately be unknowable, because we are finite, but to say there is no sense in trying to figure it out is both anti religious and anti scientific. At least in my book it is.
Either God gave you a brain or your brain is the result of Billions of years of evolution, either way you should use it.
I have eMagin's Z800 3dVisor (It is from the company that came out with the borglike EyeBud prototype at CES)
The Z800 is the real deal for $900, with dual 800x600 OLED displays which are much better higher quality than LCDs at that small size. If you have followed HMDs, it is a big leap in quality for under $1000. Stereoscopic 3d with headtracking in First Person shooters and flight sims is really cool. I haven't tried any MMORPGs with it. You can find out more about at their website.
Don't wonder. I recently signed up for skype, just because my family was on it and it was free. But I think it may be time to think about alternatives. Thing about a free service, it is really easy to walk away when they do stupid things like this. I can't possibly see why skype thought crippling its software would be good for business. And it really makes me think Intel is on its way out if they can't compete anymore on the merits of their products, but have to conspire with other businesses to exclude competition.
Basically, there's no real advantage for a typical consumer to these formats over plain old DVD, so they won't buy them, and the people who would are the people railing against it. Who, then, precisely, does Hollywood think is going to buy this DRM-encumbered garbage?
I think you said it before, the people that this would piss off are the ones that probably already have HD equipment. Putting DRM into everything will make it more likely that the content providers will subsidize cheap equipment, like the way your mobile phone costs $20 with the catch that it can only be used with a particular company's service.
I think the equipment manufacturers should be afraid of the DRM model, since it severely limits the real value to the customer of their equipment arbitrarily. The manufacturers might as well merge with big media, like Sony did or like what has been talked about with Apple and Disney, because their DRM crippled equipment won't be worth anything unless they can license content.
Of course, I really think out of all this crippleware the small players (maybe with google's help) will just continue to expand uncrippled or reasonably crippled content available through the Internet. The cheap DRM'd equipment that you get along with your satellite or Cable tv will just be supplemental to your home electronics. I already treat my satellite tv as just a way to get a few shows I like, so it really isn't worth too much more to me than the $30 per month I spend. At some point it might be that I will be just willing to wait for the DVDs to come out and won't care about watching new episodes at all. I spend a lot more time and money on my computer anyway. There is something strange in the assumption that tv will be forever the primary way people spend their free time. Sure display devices might be here to stay, but forms of entertainment have come and gone in the past and as people find healthier and more satisfying alternatives I think you will continue to see an erosion of tv audiences.
I don't think the CIA is going to want thier agents permanantly broacasting a message that says 'hey I work for the CIA' to anybody that has the desire and technology to listen.
Interesting, clearly this presents a national security reason everyone should be tagged. Otherwise it will be too easy to pick out the government agents.
I don't see a good reason they couldn't do this with email as well. It wouldn't be cheap, but all but the smallest businesses will want to keep their business communications in house. email is too central to business operations to let it out the door.
but just as yelling "Fire" in a theater is not free speech, neither is not allowing a black family to rent a house because of their color. People will be sued, legal behavior will be enforced, and the situation will be better.
yelling Fire in a theater is free speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is also free speech if you are an actor or there is actually a fire or if you could reasonably construe that your words would have no harm. Putting an ad up saying that you don't want black people living in your apartment should be protected by free speech until the point that it actually harms someone.
If I were looking to stop racial discrimination I could think of nothing better than to have people advertising their practices in an open ad. The content might be offensive, but that in no way should implicate websites or any other means of conveying the communication. The people that should be punished are the people putting up the ads and investigators should follow up to see if the landlords are actually applying the illegal criteria.
For speech to be a crime it should have a fraudulent nature and an immediate and inevitable harmful effect. And never should those conveying the content of the speech be held culpable or liable unless they actively contribute to the harmful content.
Re:Not sure I buy it... at least not yet
on
Apple to Buy out Palm?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
domain knowledge around smart phones, and existing relationships with contract manufacturers and carriers.
Don't discount this. The area of cell phone manufacturing seems very closed to entry by new players. You need licenses and such to even start playing with prototypes and you need to work with each of the spectrum holders that you want your device to be comaptible with. Clearly it is in Apple's interest to begin making some devices that can natively work with the existing wireless telephone networks which are increasingly being used for data. Palm has already done this with their Treo smartphones, which would mean an aquisition would give Apple a big headstart down this path and would complete its product offerings in this area.
With their ipod flywheel, they could really make a simple easy to use cell phone, where calling a number was as easy as scrolling to it with the flywheel just as you would scroll to a song. I could see them even getting rid of a number pad altogether or combining a flywheel with a graffiti pad.
Maybe the telecoms are using that little-knownrhetorical device called hyperbole.
More like that very well know rhetorical device called lying.
Google should just turn around and start charging dumb fuck telecoms like this for each time one of its customers decides to use google. Or block customers of those networks that try to charge it. After all, those networks are getting all this content for free shouldn't they have to pay google for adding value to the internet which in turns makes Internet access more valuable to verizon's customers?
This telecom rhetoric should stop. It is dumb. John Thorne is a greedy asshole who wants to use Verizons marketshare to force unfair and unreasonable business practices on a profitable company. Verizon is in trouble with shitheads like this in charge.
I will not be a Verizon customer very soon. And with Google's capital they could probably build out a nationwide fiber network and offer last mile wireless access for a fraction of the so called "fortune" that Verizon has spent trying to retrofit its ancient network with its baby bell way of doing things. If verizon and others attempt to charge content providers for the bandwidth its customers are already paying for, then Google will win either way and the telecoms are going to bleed customers.
This may mean that companies have to stop from the absurd practice of over specifing what they need.
Quite to the contrary. This seems to be just what the definition of an "applicant" means. So, an applicant is no longer just a person who says they are interested in the job, an applicant is someone with a resume that matches the requirements of the job.
Does it mean, however, that the hiring manager is not allowed to see all the resumes that are submitted for the job? And that they can't hire someone who doesn't meet every requirement. This definition of "applicant" is a response to employers complaining about being labeled racist when all the black people that apply for the job aren't qualified. So, now when reporting "applicant" numbers they don't have to include people that weren't specifically qualified.
Seems like this redefinition of the word applicant could have a ridiculous effect if taken too far, and that you could see employers reporting 1 person hired out of 0 applicants if nobody met all the requirements. Or having to "pre" screen appliers (used to call them applicants) and have them resubmit applications after they specify requirements.
If anything this is just going to further promote resume inflation and outright lying. And this isn't going to do anything to help identify racism.
No it isn't, it has just about the same potential for latency as email. Just with email you usually have to "open up" the message to read it. With IM it is just a different UI. IM is very simiilar to the way gmail treats conversations already, so it is an easier transition for them.
only peer to peer IM's should be considered "private" Otherwise you are passing off your messages to a third party, like considering a post card as a "private" message.
Get the picture? Jamming in a war-zone gives you a very short life expectancy.
Yes, if you focus on the fact that it is easy to jam radio communications you forget to think about the fact that it is even easier to triangulate a jammer and kill it. The only practicle military jamming comes from airborne or very mobile jamming equipment. But even then, once you start jamming radio signals you move up the top of the list of targets. Jamming is really only effective when you already have military superiority. Or as a way to briefly confuse an attacker.
A commercial company has a serious incentive to make software that fits the needs of those other people. The people who write OSS tend to just want to write things that are fun and useful to them -- and that severly limits adoption of Linux in non-technical areas. Of course, it also doesn't help that so many Linux people seem to take the attitude that the Linux desktop is fine, but artists and other non-technical types are just too stupid to use it.
The problem isn't geek arrogance, there is a chicken and egg problem. Commercial companies are only going to make software if they now people will be able to use it.
Some people don't need photoshop and some people do. Let the ones that don't move to Linux and maybe photoshop will be ported later.
Linux works as a desktop for internet applications and now since OpenOffice 2.0 it has an excellent productivity suite. GIMP is lacking in some areas, but is usable for most basic image manipulations (I actually use it on windows since I don't have photoshop). Really I think you have to look at Linux Desktop in terms of what applications are needed and why, and then make a decision. But it isn't going to please everyone.
Monopoly just isn't healthy in the software business. If even 5-10% move from Windows to Linux and Apple continues to be a viable alternative (even Sun is still hanging on in some corners), then that is a good thing for everyone. Besides, I don't think serious photoshop users make up even that big of a percentage. That isn't arrogance. I am just saying that you have to work with what you have and push your strengths rather than dwell on the weeknesses.
I actually do trust google's management at this point, I think the problem comes when the management changes in 10 years or Google gets bought. No one company should have that much control over essential infrastructure. Just look at ATT's long tenure in charge of "The Network" and how many decades did they stifle competition and innovation just because they could? No, if Google gets that big (it is no where near that big now) then it should be broken up.
In fact, maybe it is a better idea for Google to start incubating other companies outside its core business rather than trying to put everything under one roof. Big companies often invest in other companies and I think a lot of other companies could benefit from Google's guidance and backing.
I think you misunderstand, I don't aim to outlaw DRM, just to make it so that copyright laws don't apply if content is only released under DRM.
Effectively, it would make the use of DRM terribly risky and unwise, because once the DRM was compromised the work would then be effectively in the public domain.
The battle over intellectual property laws has brought to light many issues of inequality in our society. Big corporate entities account for vast swaths of ownership of intellectual property, creating a dynamic of ever increasing inequality of information, where the interests of the individual are put at an inferior position to the interests of the corporation.
One thing that could be done to stop the spread of this inequality is to pass a law prohibiting the use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology on works that receive legal copyright protection. Analogously this is already the case with patent law which requires a patent seeker to disclose full information about the method or device they wish to patent. Otherwise it is considered a trade secret where the people retain their legal right to reverse engineer the method or device. Likewise by making the method of copying a secret by means of DRM, content producers erect a barrier to fair use of the content. With DRM, Libraries are prevented from archiving published works in an easily reproducible form, threatening the loss of an entire generation's productive work to the ravages of time. And DRM prevents individuals from copying the content which is their right after the expiration of the copyright under law. By preventing these and other fair uses under copyright law, DRM has broken the bargain that copyright laws have traditionally struck.
Digital technology certainly allows much more than was ever foreseen by preceding generations. But the principle of copyright remains one of give and take; society gives content creators the protection of our laws for a period of time, and after that period of time has ellapsed the content creators then have given their work to society for its perpetual use, or forever long we see value in its reproduction. With DRM content creators are attempting to have their cake and eat it too.
By preventing legitimate copying, use of DRM should forfeit a content producer's right to legally prevent others from copying. If content is protected by technology, then it should receive no benefit of protection by laws.
Therefore, certain provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act should be repealed and new legislation should make it clear that if you use DRM, then you do not have a copyright.
They could be legally required to do so, and it could be illegal to use any DRM system that continued to prevent copying beyond the copyright expiry date, if our legislatures weren't in the pockets of the big media companies.
And it could be made illegal to use DRM at all, as I believe it should. If you want legal Copyright protection then your content should be copyable, otherwise it is like asking for a patent but keeping how your invention works a secret. Unrestrained DRM sacrifices our legitamite right to copy other peoples work.
why AOL users have no friends and are the butt of many a joke...
Yes, I would be terribly upset at this completely assinine move on the part of AOL, but I don't think it is worth anyone's time to get upset over, since AOL is a dying company and this is just one more nail in the coffin. And I assume there would some whitelist for paying aol subscribers to add their friends and family? Otherwise, this wouldn't get very far, the first time grandma couldn't get her grandchildren's emails there will be hell to pay.
This should be seen for exactly what it is, AOL's attempt to cash in on SPAM directly to the detriment of its paying customers.
Sure its their network, fine. But they are for the most part using the public's right of way. Or from easements across people's private property.
So, collectively we have a right to impose reasonable regulations on its use. Personally, I don't see any problem with Verizon managing how the bandwidth is used, to a point. Just as the cable companies allocate certain bandwidth for cable tv and internet respectively. I see no difference.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not getting it. What is "successful for an open source project?
In other words, the "Enterprise" can go screw. (I don't mean the venerable starship)
Seems to me the "Enterprise" is too big and slow to make much of a difference to the adoption of new technology. It is individuals and small/medium sized businesses that make up the vast majority of the marketplace and also are the ones that really drive new technology. If you are talking about "The Enterprise" you are talking about an organization that can't afford to take risks even if they promise great benefit.
I as an individual or small business person can adopt or drop new OSS as soon as something better becomes available. But the Enterprise has to send proposals to committee and department heads to have it evaluated and put a plan together and train its staff and all those things that Big business needs to do for better or worse. All this means that big business is not where you should expect the most innovation and to expect big business to drive OSS adoption is beyond foolish and isn't necessary for OSS to succeed.
OSS is for the rest of us, it is not for the guys that can afford to piss money out the windows.
Basically... his answer was science and religion address different questions. Don't try to mix them
Yes, that attitude might have held water a couple centuries ago. But physics has been trying to understand the fundamental "nature" of the universe for quite some time and even goes so far as to extrapolate back to the big bang, which is itself a creation story. Biology seeks to explain life itself.
What exactly do you think religion should cover? The attitude of seperation is exactly the attitude that allowed Intelligent Design in the door in the first place. The fundamental attitude of ID is that everything that Biology can't adequately explain, probably can't be explained and just is because that is the way God made it. It puts a big stop sign up at the edge of current scientific understanding and tells us to look no further because that is just the way God made it and it is beyond our human comprehension.
To me science is an integral part of religion. To know creation is to better know the creator. Religion and Science should both be about the pursuit of Truth regardless of where it leads us. If our preconceived notions don't match reality then we must reconsider. To say science and religion have seperate domains is little different than what Intelligent Designers are really saying. There is only room for one reality in my reality. It may ultimately be unknowable, because we are finite, but to say there is no sense in trying to figure it out is both anti religious and anti scientific. At least in my book it is.
Either God gave you a brain or your brain is the result of Billions of years of evolution, either way you should use it.
I have eMagin's Z800 3dVisor (It is from the company that came out with the borglike EyeBud prototype at CES)
The Z800 is the real deal for $900, with dual 800x600 OLED displays which are much better higher quality than LCDs at that small size. If you have followed HMDs, it is a big leap in quality for under $1000. Stereoscopic 3d with headtracking in First Person shooters and flight sims is really cool. I haven't tried any MMORPGs with it. You can find out more about at their website.
Why in hell did you sign up your family on a closed monopoly-based communication system?
I was the last to sign up, not the first.
I wonder if this will backfire on Skype?
Don't wonder. I recently signed up for skype, just because my family was on it and it was free. But I think it may be time to think about alternatives. Thing about a free service, it is really easy to walk away when they do stupid things like this. I can't possibly see why skype thought crippling its software would be good for business. And it really makes me think Intel is on its way out if they can't compete anymore on the merits of their products, but have to conspire with other businesses to exclude competition.
It is a sad day for those two companies.
Basically, there's no real advantage for a typical consumer to these formats over plain old DVD, so they won't buy them, and the people who would are the people railing against it. Who, then, precisely, does Hollywood think is going to buy this DRM-encumbered garbage?
I think you said it before, the people that this would piss off are the ones that probably already have HD equipment. Putting DRM into everything will make it more likely that the content providers will subsidize cheap equipment, like the way your mobile phone costs $20 with the catch that it can only be used with a particular company's service.
I think the equipment manufacturers should be afraid of the DRM model, since it severely limits the real value to the customer of their equipment arbitrarily. The manufacturers might as well merge with big media, like Sony did or like what has been talked about with Apple and Disney, because their DRM crippled equipment won't be worth anything unless they can license content.
Of course, I really think out of all this crippleware the small players (maybe with google's help) will just continue to expand uncrippled or reasonably crippled content available through the Internet. The cheap DRM'd equipment that you get along with your satellite or Cable tv will just be supplemental to your home electronics. I already treat my satellite tv as just a way to get a few shows I like, so it really isn't worth too much more to me than the $30 per month I spend. At some point it might be that I will be just willing to wait for the DVDs to come out and won't care about watching new episodes at all. I spend a lot more time and money on my computer anyway. There is something strange in the assumption that tv will be forever the primary way people spend their free time. Sure display devices might be here to stay, but forms of entertainment have come and gone in the past and as people find healthier and more satisfying alternatives I think you will continue to see an erosion of tv audiences.
I don't think the CIA is going to want thier agents permanantly broacasting a message that says 'hey I work for the CIA' to anybody that has the desire and technology to listen.
Interesting, clearly this presents a national security reason everyone should be tagged. Otherwise it will be too easy to pick out the government agents.
If they had a gmail appliance however, this may solve both of the above issues - but now you own the software/hardware - going agains google's pitch.
l s.html
They do this already with their google search appliances.
http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/product_mode
I don't see a good reason they couldn't do this with email as well. It wouldn't be cheap, but all but the smallest businesses will want to keep their business communications in house. email is too central to business operations to let it out the door.
but just as yelling "Fire" in a theater is not free speech, neither is not allowing a black family to rent a house because of their color. People will be sued, legal behavior will be enforced, and the situation will be better.
yelling Fire in a theater is free speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is also free speech if you are an actor or there is actually a fire or if you could reasonably construe that your words would have no harm. Putting an ad up saying that you don't want black people living in your apartment should be protected by free speech until the point that it actually harms someone.
If I were looking to stop racial discrimination I could think of nothing better than to have people advertising their practices in an open ad. The content might be offensive, but that in no way should implicate websites or any other means of conveying the communication. The people that should be punished are the people putting up the ads and investigators should follow up to see if the landlords are actually applying the illegal criteria.
For speech to be a crime it should have a fraudulent nature and an immediate and inevitable harmful effect. And never should those conveying the content of the speech be held culpable or liable unless they actively contribute to the harmful content.
-1, Nutjob
That's funny I wanted to moderate it "+1 Nutjob".
domain knowledge around smart phones, and existing relationships with contract manufacturers and carriers.
Don't discount this. The area of cell phone manufacturing seems very closed to entry by new players. You need licenses and such to even start playing with prototypes and you need to work with each of the spectrum holders that you want your device to be comaptible with. Clearly it is in Apple's interest to begin making some devices that can natively work with the existing wireless telephone networks which are increasingly being used for data. Palm has already done this with their Treo smartphones, which would mean an aquisition would give Apple a big headstart down this path and would complete its product offerings in this area.
With their ipod flywheel, they could really make a simple easy to use cell phone, where calling a number was as easy as scrolling to it with the flywheel just as you would scroll to a song. I could see them even getting rid of a number pad altogether or combining a flywheel with a graffiti pad.
Maybe the telecoms are using that little-knownrhetorical device called hyperbole.
More like that very well know rhetorical device called lying.
Google should just turn around and start charging dumb fuck telecoms like this for each time one of its customers decides to use google. Or block customers of those networks that try to charge it. After all, those networks are getting all this content for free shouldn't they have to pay google for adding value to the internet which in turns makes Internet access more valuable to verizon's customers?
This telecom rhetoric should stop. It is dumb. John Thorne is a greedy asshole who wants to use Verizons marketshare to force unfair and unreasonable business practices on a profitable company. Verizon is in trouble with shitheads like this in charge.
I will not be a Verizon customer very soon. And with Google's capital they could probably build out a nationwide fiber network and offer last mile wireless access for a fraction of the so called "fortune" that Verizon has spent trying to retrofit its ancient network with its baby bell way of doing things. If verizon and others attempt to charge content providers for the bandwidth its customers are already paying for, then Google will win either way and the telecoms are going to bleed customers.
This may mean that companies have to stop from the absurd practice of over specifing what they need.
Quite to the contrary. This seems to be just what the definition of an "applicant" means. So, an applicant is no longer just a person who says they are interested in the job, an applicant is someone with a resume that matches the requirements of the job.
Does it mean, however, that the hiring manager is not allowed to see all the resumes that are submitted for the job? And that they can't hire someone who doesn't meet every requirement. This definition of "applicant" is a response to employers complaining about being labeled racist when all the black people that apply for the job aren't qualified. So, now when reporting "applicant" numbers they don't have to include people that weren't specifically qualified.
Seems like this redefinition of the word applicant could have a ridiculous effect if taken too far, and that you could see employers reporting 1 person hired out of 0 applicants if nobody met all the requirements. Or having to "pre" screen appliers (used to call them applicants) and have them resubmit applications after they specify requirements.
If anything this is just going to further promote resume inflation and outright lying. And this isn't going to do anything to help identify racism.
except that IM is instantaneous and email isn't.
No it isn't, it has just about the same potential for latency as email. Just with email you usually have to "open up" the message to read it. With IM it is just a different UI. IM is very simiilar to the way gmail treats conversations already, so it is an easier transition for them.
only peer to peer IM's should be considered "private" Otherwise you are passing off your messages to a third party, like considering a post card as a "private" message.
Get the picture? Jamming in a war-zone gives you a very short life expectancy.
Yes, if you focus on the fact that it is easy to jam radio communications you forget to think about the fact that it is even easier to triangulate a jammer and kill it. The only practicle military jamming comes from airborne or very mobile jamming equipment. But even then, once you start jamming radio signals you move up the top of the list of targets. Jamming is really only effective when you already have military superiority. Or as a way to briefly confuse an attacker.
Funding terrorist groups was the norm all in the name of fighting the cold war.
Rest assured that we aren't still involved with any alliances of convenience with any crazy motherfuckers that will come back and bite us.
http://turkmenistan.usembassy.gov/
A commercial company has a serious incentive to make software that fits the needs of those other people. The people who write OSS tend to just want to write things that are fun and useful to them -- and that severly limits adoption of Linux in non-technical areas. Of course, it also doesn't help that so many Linux people seem to take the attitude that the Linux desktop is fine, but artists and other non-technical types are just too stupid to use it.
The problem isn't geek arrogance, there is a chicken and egg problem. Commercial companies are only going to make software if they now people will be able to use it.
Some people don't need photoshop and some people do. Let the ones that don't move to Linux and maybe photoshop will be ported later.
Linux works as a desktop for internet applications and now since OpenOffice 2.0 it has an excellent productivity suite. GIMP is lacking in some areas, but is usable for most basic image manipulations (I actually use it on windows since I don't have photoshop). Really I think you have to look at Linux Desktop in terms of what applications are needed and why, and then make a decision. But it isn't going to please everyone.
Monopoly just isn't healthy in the software business. If even 5-10% move from Windows to Linux and Apple continues to be a viable alternative (even Sun is still hanging on in some corners), then that is a good thing for everyone. Besides, I don't think serious photoshop users make up even that big of a percentage. That isn't arrogance. I am just saying that you have to work with what you have and push your strengths rather than dwell on the weeknesses.
I actually do trust google's management at this point, I think the problem comes when the management changes in 10 years or Google gets bought. No one company should have that much control over essential infrastructure. Just look at ATT's long tenure in charge of "The Network" and how many decades did they stifle competition and innovation just because they could? No, if Google gets that big (it is no where near that big now) then it should be broken up.
In fact, maybe it is a better idea for Google to start incubating other companies outside its core business rather than trying to put everything under one roof. Big companies often invest in other companies and I think a lot of other companies could benefit from Google's guidance and backing.
I think you misunderstand, I don't aim to outlaw DRM, just to make it so that copyright laws don't apply if content is only released under DRM.
Effectively, it would make the use of DRM terribly risky and unwise, because once the DRM was compromised the work would then be effectively in the public domain.
Please use the content of my message freely.
Though I suggest you paraphrase if you or anyone else chooses to contact your representative yourself. They tend not to appreciate form letters.
I just wrote my congressman:
Mr. Tierney,
The battle over intellectual property laws has brought to light many issues of inequality in our society. Big corporate entities account for vast swaths of ownership of intellectual property, creating a dynamic of ever increasing inequality of information, where the interests of the individual are put at an inferior position to the interests of the corporation.
One thing that could be done to stop the spread of this inequality is to pass a law prohibiting the use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology on works that receive legal copyright protection. Analogously this is already the case with patent law which requires a patent seeker to disclose full information about the method or device they wish to patent. Otherwise it is considered a trade secret where the people retain their legal right to reverse engineer the method or device. Likewise by making the method of copying a secret by means of DRM, content producers erect a barrier to fair use of the content. With DRM, Libraries are prevented from archiving published works in an easily reproducible form, threatening the loss of an entire generation's productive work to the ravages of time. And DRM prevents individuals from copying the content which is their right after the expiration of the copyright under law. By preventing these and other fair uses under copyright law, DRM has broken the bargain that copyright laws have traditionally struck.
Digital technology certainly allows much more than was ever foreseen by preceding generations. But the principle of copyright remains one of give and take; society gives content creators the protection of our laws for a period of time, and after that period of time has ellapsed the content creators then have given their work to society for its perpetual use, or forever long we see value in its reproduction. With DRM content creators are attempting to have their cake and eat it too.
By preventing legitimate copying, use of DRM should forfeit a content producer's right to legally prevent others from copying. If content is protected by technology, then it should receive no benefit of protection by laws.
Therefore, certain provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act should be repealed and new legislation should make it clear that if you use DRM, then you do not have a copyright.
Thank You,
They could be legally required to do so, and it could be illegal to use any DRM system that continued to prevent copying beyond the copyright expiry date, if our legislatures weren't in the pockets of the big media companies.
And it could be made illegal to use DRM at all, as I believe it should. If you want legal Copyright protection then your content should be copyable, otherwise it is like asking for a patent but keeping how your invention works a secret. Unrestrained DRM sacrifices our legitamite right to copy other peoples work.
why AOL users have no friends and are the butt of many a joke...
Yes, I would be terribly upset at this completely assinine move on the part of AOL, but I don't think it is worth anyone's time to get upset over, since AOL is a dying company and this is just one more nail in the coffin. And I assume there would some whitelist for paying aol subscribers to add their friends and family? Otherwise, this wouldn't get very far, the first time grandma couldn't get her grandchildren's emails there will be hell to pay.
This should be seen for exactly what it is, AOL's attempt to cash in on SPAM directly to the detriment of its paying customers.
Sure its their network, fine. But they are for the most part using the public's right of way. Or from easements across people's private property.
So, collectively we have a right to impose reasonable regulations on its use. Personally, I don't see any problem with Verizon managing how the bandwidth is used, to a point. Just as the cable companies allocate certain bandwidth for cable tv and internet respectively. I see no difference.