"In a world where copyright is 15 years or less, there would only be small music distributors who profit from new music."
It's equally good. So they would have had the pressure to produce new music fast and to improve quality of the new music. But I tend to disagree with you.
I think the only reason because public domain music is not selling well, is because public domain music is so old thanks to the freaky long copyright protection. For example in the USA it's 95 years, do you really want to listen to music from the 20s? Now in the EU it will be the same, music that should go in PD will get extended copyright again, that's not a business climate you want to have.
People are copying music right now anyway, we have copyright laws and we have DRM, but it doesn't stop them. But the rise of iTunes and Amazon Music shows that the same people are willing to pay for their music if the format and the price is right.
Put the copyright term to 5, 10 or 15 years and you will have a lot of music distributors that will sell you the music in PD. The CDs will be dirt cheap and the profit margin will be thin as a hair, but it will work. It's works for old computer games (they sell for 5Euro or less) or for second hand videos.
With the internet it's so much easier to distribute music, the distributors need to pay only the servers. They can even go to the cloud to cut costs even further. They don't need to sell CDs anymore. Services like Pandora, lastFm will get a boost from shorter copyright.
I'm really glad I'm not living in the USA. I really like more and more that I live in Germany and in Germany we have a social democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
At least the idea is that the government should take into concentrations not only the well of the economy but the well of the citizens. Because of that I can enjoy the luxury of a health insurance even if I can't afford it. And I can be sure not to be rubbed by a man who lost his job, because the state will give him enough money to buy food. You know, there is not just one democracy, there are many forms of democracy.
Anyway, the problem is do decide what is really good for the economy. Is it good for the economy that the world music is controlled by 4 big cooperation or it is better that we have multiple market participants that can compete with each other, lowering their prices and increase the quality of their products and services?
That's not how digitalized works work. A real product can be put to an end by the company, because if the company stops to produce the product, the product is gone (except maybe for second hand/eBay). If the old music goes into public domain, now everyone can sell it.
The big music industry is lobbying for extended copyright just to prevent old music become public domain so they can make music a scarce product. They want to be the only entity that have control over the distribution of music.
What would happen if copyright would be 15 years or less? We would have a lot of small music distributors that profit from old music, and a lot of small music distributors that profit from new music. The music industry would come closer to a "free market" with lots of market members compete with each other.
That is the worst nightmare for entities like the BMG and other groups. There are only 4 big record labels in the whole world, each have almost equal market share and they are dominating with 70% the music market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_music_market#Statistics
That is a lot of concentration of capital in the hands of a few. 3 are based in the USA and one in the UK. You can see how much money they can put in to legislation in countries were such buy-off of laws is the norm.
That's why I don't really care anymore. Where is the difference if music is protected 50 years, 90 years or 200 years? In all cases I can't do anything with music that I know in my lifespan. It's already indefinitely protection. I just don't care. I just don't buy anything anymore and if I buy a CD or DVD I don't care about copyright. I rip it, I copy it to my friends, I give it to them when they ask for it. If I had kids I would teach them to be careful with Torrents but they can and should copy any music or movie they like.
This copyright law will only do two things: * it will make copyright law more ridiculous and make the generations to come just ignore it (like this generation already do) * it will dry the big music industry out, because they will rely on old music or on remix from music they own. Like what happening with Hollywood right now with the pre- and sequels.
It's really sad that politicians are either so corrupt or so clueless. Or they really do believe that longer copyright equals to more art (music in this case). But why they just don't make copyright indefinitely?
To buy and maintain? An external hard disk is now 70$ for 1TB. You can buy that once plugin it to your computer with USB and you are finished.
StarTrek Original is from 1966, ST TNG 1987, ST DSN 1993, ST V 2001. I see no moral obligation to pay for 10 years, 17 years, 24 years and 45 years old series, that were countless times on TV already. In my opinion they should all be in the public domain already, because they paid them self more than enough. The actors have their pay, the producers have their profits, why should I have any moral obligation to pay them again to watch the same episodes just in a different format?
You are missing the point. It is not about science and evolution vs. religion. It's about people who think they are special and who think their opinion is the most important in the world vs. everyone else. Those people just believe that god have chosen them to lead the world and everybody who is like them, they want to impose their believes and opinions on everyone else. Such people really do think they are the absolute truth and if you don't follow them you are the enemy.
Watch a random episode of South Park and observe Eric Cartman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cartman. That are the people you are dealing with, only 1000 times worse.
Because than white Americans wouldn't be the chosen people anymore and would be on the same level as African American, Filipinos and Chinese. That is what "creationism" is all about.
"GPL pretty much forces closed source to make their own implementations of standards, which may or may not be 100% compatible."
Why is that a bad thing? A standard is only a standard if there are multiple different implementations. Also, BSD code opens up closed source code to modify the standard to their whishes with very little work of their own. With GPLed code I at least have the right to fix a broken implementation, with closed up BSD code I don't have the right. It's then nice to have BSD code that implements the standard 100% only to be forced to use an application that just takes the BSD code and modifies the implementation just a little in a way that I'm stuck with this one application.
Yes, I can change the font there. But the webpage is still using Arial and TimeNewRoman and not my font. In Firefox is a checkbox "Allow web pages to chose their own font instead of my selection above". I don't want that web page are choosing their own font, I want that every web page using the same font so that my eyes don't have to adjust every time I switch the site.
Also the font size in Chromium don't work. The page is first shown with the default font size, after the page loads Chromium adjusts the page's font size to my settings. Ah no, that was the MiniumFontSize addon. Chromium still doesn't have a minimum font size settings. So Chromium is totally unusable to me because every page's text is just too tiny and I don't know how to change it.
Totally agree. Chromium is now with version 11 and I still can't use the browser, because I can't change the fonts. Finally I can change the minium font size (I think that was with version 11) but I still can't fix the font. I really don't like TimesNewRoman or Arial. For me Chrome is still like a 0.11
Why they even need the plain password? The service providers have the (salted) hash of the password, with it the user can access the account. What the state agencies need is the hash and an interface to input the hash to access the user account.
Why they need even that? The service providers are storing the information on their servers anyway, why can't they give a copy of it to the state agencies?
The only reason that requires to save the plain text password is that the state agencies want to have the password in the hope that the person uses that password for other accounts. A lot of people don't bother to make up new passwords, they just think of a password and use it everywhere.
I don't think the thread of software patents have any stand. I'm sure there are a lot software patents for C#/.NET that Microsoft holds, but who are they going to sue?
They can't sue Google, because Google don't sell Android phones. They can sue all the others, like Motorola, etc. (what they already do without Mono or C#). But they can't sue the others because of.NET patents because they won't deliver Mono with Android anyway.
Theoretically they can go after the developers that uses Mono on Android, but I think the risk is minimal. But if Microsoft really do it, it will be suicide for any open source efforts that Microsoft have done in the past and in the future. Nobody will ever again trust Microsoft in anything they are opening as open source, which is quite a lot from a company with in the past stated "Open source is a cancer".
In my opinion, C# is just an awful language. Which is a mix of Java, C++, it's just a mishmash of language features, which many language features just don't make any sense and are just redundant. For example, the distinction between struct and class. Delegates are not type safe. The properties. Operator overloading. No checked exceptions. Two collections frameworks, one without generics, one with generics.
It's just my opinion after programming in C++ for 4 years, Java for 6 years, and starting with C# back in C# 2.0, and recently with C# 3.0 making a web project in ASP.NET.
Yes, I want it now, I want it cheap (if not for free), I don't want to go to a shop.
That's capitalism, globalization and technology for you. Why should only global corporations profit from technology and globalization? The times have changed, media and entertainment is cheap (if not for free) and is everywhere. The peoples mind about media and entertainment have changed according to technology.
Sure, the artists need to make a living but the times have changed and we are not in the 50s anymore. Everyone have a computer, laptop, smart phones. Everyone have fast internet access. You can either whine about it all day long or you can embrace the technology and come with a smart way to make money of the new market.
Youtube is working, so is Netflix and Hulu.com. I have so much free media and entertainment I don't know what to consume first. And then you come and whine all "Bähh the people don't want to wait 3 days for DVDs, the people don't want to buy my stuff for $x or $x/2 or $x/100." Not my problem, dude.
The technology is here to stay, it changed the minds of a whole generation. Sorry that the artists are a little bit short right now, but it's their fault. No laws will change the minds of the new generation back again.
Yes, it's selfish, yes, it's unfair. So was the car to the horse carriage.
But I don't see any decline in the music, movies, books, pictures and software available. I see a sharp rise in the media produced. I can go to Lastfm and listen to millions of new works, I can go to Youtube and watch countless of content. Maybe Hollywood is crying a river about the pirates, but there is just no decline in produced media. If anything, the computer technology and the Internet increased the produced media dramatically.
So please, show me a decline in media produced (worldwide, not just from Hollywood). If you can show me that the Internet, computers and ThePirateBay actually slowing down the production of media worldwide, than I can see the reason for stricter laws against piracy.
Yes, would work, if there were only a fraction of Windows applications out there, like on the Mac. And If Windows would only be run on a few hardware components.
How about they build a new Windows, without the 'legacy garbage' and every mom and pop need to buy all the software they all love and use again for no reason other than the older version doesn't run on the new Windows?
Would be nice if Windows would start to compete with other systems on fair grounds and not how well Windows application can be run on the different systems (which no matter how well your system is, Windows will always run Windows applications better).
After decades we finally have somewhat of a fair ground where Microsoft Office needs to compete on fair grounds and not how well the office suites can open and save Microsoft Office documents. But of course that move was undermined by Microsoft with their OOXML format.
Yes, Microsoft should have been split up and the new companies should have been under control by the feds. Further, the APIs and the document formats should be opened up, for Wine, Samba, and OpenOffice. The judgment did in fact nothing at all and you can see how well the governmentcooperation relationship is doing.
First, he is developing a web application in python, that means he is probably a web programmer not a web designer and seconds, his web page look extremely good. Nice clean design, no popus, no JavaScript menus, no frames, no distractions. I wish a lot more websites would follow his example. Since his site is just a blog, it's the best design ever.
Would be awesome if everyone would be using just Jabber XMPP protocol, so I can chat with my client to Yahoo, Hotmail, etc, and the other way around too, and we would use an open protocol, that means that I could have multiple clients to choose from. Like that everybody is using the email protocol (POP3, IMAP, SMTP), everybody wins.
Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. would be competing on who's have the best client and who's offers the best service and not how well they can lock in the users. How about that the EU steps in mandate to them the open protocol? Like they mandate the use of EU power plugs and EU norm lamps.
From the TFA: "CNET and others have reported that Google is negotiating for the right to store users' existing music libraries on the company's servers, the sources said." "Licensing rights for digital lockers of this sort is largely uncharted territory for the labels. There are no templates for these kinds of deals lying around and the record companies want to move cautiously as they assess Apple's and Google's plans."
My brain just exploded.
Did I understand that correctly? Why is that Google need to negotiate a license agreement to store music from customers on their servers? What have the music industry to do if Google wants to store my data for me on their servers?
What is next, Google needs to negotiate rights with the Authors Guild if they want to save text from their customers on their servers and they need to negotiate rights with the BSA if they want to save binary data?
PS: "Welcoming Google to the party: At the 2009 Vevo launch party, Google CEO Eric Schmidt (center) visited with Doug Morris (left), the then CEO of Universal Music, and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, former CEO of Sony Music. "
Why do I have the urge to pick up a gun and make some target practice as I saw the CEOs in their black suites?
Hm, if I would watch TV anymore the Slingbox would be quite useful. Just looked what I could watch and the only decent movie is Star Wars V, which I have on DVD and a rip on my media server, also I watched it already like 50 times.
"... representing more than 100 companies, organizations and individuals, including venture capitalists, individuals from the military and now, the government." vs. "... Electronic Frontier Foundation and 37 law and economics professors". Capitalists, military and the government vs. the EFF and 37 law and economics professors. Who could win this one? I take 50 to 5 for the guys with the money.
"Groovy is slow as snot, and I wouldn't use it for anything other than perhaps a user scripting language for a java application, and even for that I think there are better options. No clue how Mirah compares to Scala. That was my first question as well."
You use Groovy if you like to do some dynamic stuff. I don't think it will be faster with anything else anyway. If you don't want the dynamic stuff but still like Groovy, there is Groovy++.
"Since none of those benefits ever came to the US, I hold some hope in that this merger will bring some good."
Yes, for the shareholder. That will happen after the merge is complete: 25% of the staff will be lay out, underused coverage will be shut down. The shareholder will be happy, because AT&T shares will go up and there will be more dividend because of the better profit.
I find it a good idea to make Internet only for 18+, so we can finally stop the stupid debates of content filtering, content ratings, etc. As I can see the only way children can access to the internet is only if the adults are get a connection. A child can't get DSL or any other connection, it's always the parents which get the connection from the ISP and allowing their children to access the internet. So why should other adults suffer if the parents won't check what websites their children access?
Please make the internet an "adult zone" and just stop all discussions about internet ratings and content filtering.
Who cares what a scientist believing in? That's the problem with the whole creationism debate, there are people with try to mix what they are believe with science. They call creationism a "theory" without even knowing what a theory is, they think a theory is something you believe is true. No, that is not science nor a theory.
All this efforts of try and change the laws is an attempt to get a feet in the door of schools, universities and other institutions to be taught as a science theory. The arguments they bring is always like "but evolution is a theory, too, just like creationism". The problem is that they don't know (yes, they know but they try to sell it anyway) what a scientific theory is and that the evolution theory is a theory (something you can disprove), but creationism is a faith (something you cannot disprove).
Now, scientist have no problem with religion. Religion and science are not at "war", some of the greatest scientists were deeply religious. Newton and Einstein to name just two. Creationists are usually a bunch of narcissistic people which are trying to get their agenda pushed to every who disagrees.
Are you kidding? Try to "tinkering" (ala hack) Microsoft Windows and you will get a few nice letters from their lawyers. Did you ever read their EULA?
Last I checked, in WM7 you have to use the Marketplace, but on Android it's optional and you can create your own marketplace for Android. You need to Jailbreak your WM7 first.
http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/tool-jailbreak-unlock-windows-phone/ > Just like any other market place, Windows Market Place is a one stop official apps repository where apps can be searched, > downloaded as well as installed onto the Windows Phone 7 mobile phone. As this Windows Mobile device is a locked device with > which you cannot install apps from other means or from other source.
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"In a world where copyright is 15 years or less, there would only be small music distributors who profit from new music."
It's equally good. So they would have had the pressure to produce new music fast and to improve quality of the new music. But I tend to disagree with you.
I think the only reason because public domain music is not selling well, is because public domain music is so old thanks to the freaky long copyright protection. For example in the USA it's 95 years, do you really want to listen to music from the 20s? Now in the EU it will be the same, music that should go in PD will get extended copyright again, that's not a business climate you want to have.
People are copying music right now anyway, we have copyright laws and we have DRM, but it doesn't stop them. But the rise of iTunes and Amazon Music shows that the same people are willing to pay for their music if the format and the price is right.
Put the copyright term to 5, 10 or 15 years and you will have a lot of music distributors that will sell you the music in PD. The CDs will be dirt cheap and the profit margin will be thin as a hair, but it will work. It's works for old computer games (they sell for 5Euro or less) or for second hand videos.
With the internet it's so much easier to distribute music, the distributors need to pay only the servers. They can even go to the cloud to cut costs even further. They don't need to sell CDs anymore. Services like Pandora, lastFm will get a boost from shorter copyright.
I'm really glad I'm not living in the USA. I really like more and more that I live in Germany and in Germany we have a social democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
At least the idea is that the government should take into concentrations not only the well of the economy but the well of the citizens. Because of that I can enjoy the luxury of a health insurance even if I can't afford it. And I can be sure not to be rubbed by a man who lost his job, because the state will give him enough money to buy food. You know, there is not just one democracy, there are many forms of democracy.
Anyway, the problem is do decide what is really good for the economy. Is it good for the economy that the world music is controlled by 4 big cooperation or it is better that we have multiple market participants that can compete with each other, lowering their prices and increase the quality of their products and services?
That's not how digitalized works work. A real product can be put to an end by the company, because if the company stops to produce the product, the product is gone (except maybe for second hand/eBay). If the old music goes into public domain, now everyone can sell it.
The big music industry is lobbying for extended copyright just to prevent old music become public domain so they can make music a scarce product. They want to be the only entity that have control over the distribution of music.
What would happen if copyright would be 15 years or less? We would have a lot of small music distributors that profit from old music, and a lot of small music distributors that profit from new music. The music industry would come closer to a "free market" with lots of market members compete with each other.
That is the worst nightmare for entities like the BMG and other groups. There are only 4 big record labels in the whole world, each have almost equal market share and they are dominating with 70% the music market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_music_market#Statistics
That is a lot of concentration of capital in the hands of a few. 3 are based in the USA and one in the UK. You can see how much money they can put in to legislation in countries were such buy-off of laws is the norm.
That's why I don't really care anymore. Where is the difference if music is protected 50 years, 90 years or 200 years? In all cases I can't do anything with music that I know in my lifespan. It's already indefinitely protection. I just don't care. I just don't buy anything anymore and if I buy a CD or DVD I don't care about copyright. I rip it, I copy it to my friends, I give it to them when they ask for it. If I had kids I would teach them to be careful with Torrents but they can and should copy any music or movie they like.
This copyright law will only do two things:
* it will make copyright law more ridiculous and make the generations to come just ignore it (like this generation already do)
* it will dry the big music industry out, because they will rely on old music or on remix from music they own. Like what happening with Hollywood right now with the pre- and sequels.
It's really sad that politicians are either so corrupt or so clueless. Or they really do believe that longer copyright equals to more art (music in this case). But why they just don't make copyright indefinitely?
To buy and maintain? An external hard disk is now 70$ for 1TB. You can buy that once plugin it to your computer with USB and you are finished.
StarTrek Original is from 1966, ST TNG 1987, ST DSN 1993, ST V 2001. I see no moral obligation to pay for 10 years, 17 years, 24 years and 45 years old series, that were countless times on TV already. In my opinion they should all be in the public domain already, because they paid them self more than enough. The actors have their pay, the producers have their profits, why should I have any moral obligation to pay them again to watch the same episodes just in a different format?
You are missing the point. It is not about science and evolution vs. religion. It's about people who think they are special and who think their opinion is the most important in the world vs. everyone else. Those people just believe that god have chosen them to lead the world and everybody who is like them, they want to impose their believes and opinions on everyone else. Such people really do think they are the absolute truth and if you don't follow them you are the enemy.
Watch a random episode of South Park and observe Eric Cartman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cartman. That are the people you are dealing with, only 1000 times worse.
Because than white Americans wouldn't be the chosen people anymore and would be on the same level as African American, Filipinos and Chinese. That is what "creationism" is all about.
"GPL pretty much forces closed source to make their own implementations of standards, which may or may not be 100% compatible."
Why is that a bad thing? A standard is only a standard if there are multiple different implementations. Also, BSD code opens up closed source code to modify the standard to their whishes with very little work of their own. With GPLed code I at least have the right to fix a broken implementation, with closed up BSD code I don't have the right. It's then nice to have BSD code that implements the standard 100% only to be forced to use an application that just takes the BSD code and modifies the implementation just a little in a way that I'm stuck with this one application.
Yes, I can change the font there. But the webpage is still using Arial and TimeNewRoman and not my font. In Firefox is a checkbox "Allow web pages to chose their own font instead of my selection above". I don't want that web page are choosing their own font, I want that every web page using the same font so that my eyes don't have to adjust every time I switch the site.
Also the font size in Chromium don't work. The page is first shown with the default font size, after the page loads Chromium adjusts the page's font size to my settings. Ah no, that was the MiniumFontSize addon. Chromium still doesn't have a minimum font size settings. So Chromium is totally unusable to me because every page's text is just too tiny and I don't know how to change it.
Totally agree. Chromium is now with version 11 and I still can't use the browser, because I can't change the fonts. Finally I can change the minium font size (I think that was with version 11) but I still can't fix the font. I really don't like TimesNewRoman or Arial. For me Chrome is still like a 0.11
Why they even need the plain password? The service providers have the (salted) hash of the password, with it the user can access the account. What the state agencies need is the hash and an interface to input the hash to access the user account.
Why they need even that? The service providers are storing the information on their servers anyway, why can't they give a copy of it to the state agencies?
The only reason that requires to save the plain text password is that the state agencies want to have the password in the hope that the person uses that password for other accounts. A lot of people don't bother to make up new passwords, they just think of a password and use it everywhere.
I don't think the thread of software patents have any stand. I'm sure there are a lot software patents for C#/.NET that Microsoft holds, but who are they going to sue?
They can't sue Google, because Google don't sell Android phones. They can sue all the others, like Motorola, etc. (what they already do without Mono or C#). But they can't sue the others because of .NET patents because they won't deliver Mono with Android anyway.
Theoretically they can go after the developers that uses Mono on Android, but I think the risk is minimal. But if Microsoft really do it, it will be suicide for any open source efforts that Microsoft have done in the past and in the future. Nobody will ever again trust Microsoft in anything they are opening as open source, which is quite a lot from a company with in the past stated "Open source is a cancer".
In my opinion, C# is just an awful language. Which is a mix of Java, C++, it's just a mishmash of language features, which many language features just don't make any sense and are just redundant. For example, the distinction between struct and class. Delegates are not type safe. The properties. Operator overloading. No checked exceptions. Two collections frameworks, one without generics, one with generics.
It's just my opinion after programming in C++ for 4 years, Java for 6 years, and starting with C# back in C# 2.0, and recently with C# 3.0 making a web project in ASP.NET.
Yes, I want it now, I want it cheap (if not for free), I don't want to go to a shop.
That's capitalism, globalization and technology for you. Why should only global corporations profit from technology and globalization? The times have changed, media and entertainment is cheap (if not for free) and is everywhere. The peoples mind about media and entertainment have changed according to technology.
Sure, the artists need to make a living but the times have changed and we are not in the 50s anymore. Everyone have a computer, laptop, smart phones. Everyone have fast internet access. You can either whine about it all day long or you can embrace the technology and come with a smart way to make money of the new market.
Youtube is working, so is Netflix and Hulu.com. I have so much free media and entertainment I don't know what to consume first. And then you come and whine all "Bähh the people don't want to wait 3 days for DVDs, the people don't want to buy my stuff for $x or $x/2 or $x/100." Not my problem, dude.
The technology is here to stay, it changed the minds of a whole generation. Sorry that the artists are a little bit short right now, but it's their fault. No laws will change the minds of the new generation back again.
Yes, it's selfish, yes, it's unfair. So was the car to the horse carriage.
But I don't see any decline in the music, movies, books, pictures and software available. I see a sharp rise in the media produced. I can go to Lastfm and listen to millions of new works, I can go to Youtube and watch countless of content. Maybe Hollywood is crying a river about the pirates, but there is just no decline in produced media. If anything, the computer technology and the Internet increased the produced media dramatically.
So please, show me a decline in media produced (worldwide, not just from Hollywood). If you can show me that the Internet, computers and ThePirateBay actually slowing down the production of media worldwide, than I can see the reason for stricter laws against piracy.
Yes, would work, if there were only a fraction of Windows applications out there, like on the Mac. And If Windows would only be run on a few hardware components.
Funny, because this "legacy garbage" is the only reason why Windows is still so popular. In addition, the "legacy garbage" (aka ActiveX, ask the people in South Korea why they can't use anything but IE. http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/09/21/update-on-the-cost-of-monoculture-in-korea/ ).
How about they build a new Windows, without the 'legacy garbage' and every mom and pop need to buy all the software they all love and use again for no reason other than the older version doesn't run on the new Windows?
Would be nice if Windows would start to compete with other systems on fair grounds and not how well Windows application can be run on the different systems (which no matter how well your system is, Windows will always run Windows applications better).
After decades we finally have somewhat of a fair ground where Microsoft Office needs to compete on fair grounds and not how well the office suites can open and save Microsoft Office documents. But of course that move was undermined by Microsoft with their OOXML format.
Yes, Microsoft should have been split up and the new companies should have been under control by the feds. Further, the APIs and the document formats should be opened up, for Wine, Samba, and OpenOffice. The judgment did in fact nothing at all and you can see how well the governmentcooperation relationship is doing.
First, he is developing a web application in python, that means he is probably a web programmer not a web designer and seconds, his web page look extremely good. Nice clean design, no popus, no JavaScript menus, no frames, no distractions. I wish a lot more websites would follow his example. Since his site is just a blog, it's the best design ever.
The Jabber protocol can be extended, for example with the Jingle protocol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_(protocol)
Would be awesome if everyone would be using just Jabber XMPP protocol, so I can chat with my client to Yahoo, Hotmail, etc, and the other way around too, and we would use an open protocol, that means that I could have multiple clients to choose from. Like that everybody is using the email protocol (POP3, IMAP, SMTP), everybody wins.
Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. would be competing on who's have the best client and who's offers the best service and not how well they can lock in the users. How about that the EU steps in mandate to them the open protocol? Like they mandate the use of EU power plugs and EU norm lamps.
From the TFA:
"CNET and others have reported that Google is negotiating for the right to store users' existing music libraries on the company's servers, the sources said."
"Licensing rights for digital lockers of this sort is largely uncharted territory for the labels. There are no templates for these kinds of deals lying around and the record companies want to move cautiously as they assess Apple's and Google's plans."
My brain just exploded.
Did I understand that correctly? Why is that Google need to negotiate a license agreement to store music from customers on their servers? What have the music industry to do if Google wants to store my data for me on their servers?
What is next, Google needs to negotiate rights with the Authors Guild if they want to save text from their customers on their servers and they need to negotiate rights with the BSA if they want to save binary data?
PS:
"Welcoming Google to the party: At the 2009 Vevo launch party, Google CEO Eric Schmidt (center) visited with Doug Morris (left), the then CEO of Universal Music, and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, former CEO of Sony Music. "
Why do I have the urge to pick up a gun and make some target practice as I saw the CEOs in their black suites?
Hm, if I would watch TV anymore the Slingbox would be quite useful.
Just looked what I could watch and the only decent movie is Star Wars V, which I have on DVD and a rip on my media server, also I watched it already like 50 times.
"... representing more than 100 companies, organizations and individuals, including venture capitalists, individuals from the military and now, the government." vs. "... Electronic Frontier Foundation and 37 law and economics professors". Capitalists, military and the government vs. the EFF and 37 law and economics professors. Who could win this one? I take 50 to 5 for the guys with the money.
"Groovy is slow as snot, and I wouldn't use it for anything other than perhaps a user scripting language for a java application, and even for that I think there are better options. No clue how Mirah compares to Scala. That was my first question as well."
You use Groovy if you like to do some dynamic stuff. I don't think it will be faster with anything else anyway.
If you don't want the dynamic stuff but still like Groovy, there is Groovy++.
"Since none of those benefits ever came to the US, I hold some hope in that this merger will bring some good."
Yes, for the shareholder. That will happen after the merge is complete: 25% of the staff will be lay out, underused coverage will be shut down. The shareholder will be happy, because AT&T shares will go up and there will be more dividend because of the better profit.
I find it a good idea to make Internet only for 18+, so we can finally stop the stupid debates of content filtering, content ratings, etc. As I can see the only way children can access to the internet is only if the adults are get a connection. A child can't get DSL or any other connection, it's always the parents which get the connection from the ISP and allowing their children to access the internet. So why should other adults suffer if the parents won't check what websites their children access?
Please make the internet an "adult zone" and just stop all discussions about internet ratings and content filtering.
Who cares what a scientist believing in? That's the problem with the whole creationism debate, there are people with try to mix what they are believe with science. They call creationism a "theory" without even knowing what a theory is, they think a theory is something you believe is true. No, that is not science nor a theory.
All this efforts of try and change the laws is an attempt to get a feet in the door of schools, universities and other institutions to be taught as a science theory. The arguments they bring is always like "but evolution is a theory, too, just like creationism". The problem is that they don't know (yes, they know but they try to sell it anyway) what a scientific theory is and that the evolution theory is a theory (something you can disprove), but creationism is a faith (something you cannot disprove).
Now, scientist have no problem with religion. Religion and science are not at "war", some of the greatest scientists were deeply religious. Newton and Einstein to name just two. Creationists are usually a bunch of narcissistic people which are trying to get their agenda pushed to every who disagrees.
Are you kidding? Try to "tinkering" (ala hack) Microsoft Windows and you will get a few nice letters from their lawyers. Did you ever read their EULA?
Last I checked, in WM7 you have to use the Marketplace, but on Android it's optional and you can create your own marketplace for Android. You need to Jailbreak your WM7 first.
http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/tool-jailbreak-unlock-windows-phone/
> Just like any other market place, Windows Market Place is a one stop official apps repository where apps can be searched,
> downloaded as well as installed onto the Windows Phone 7 mobile phone. As this Windows Mobile device is a locked device with
> which you cannot install apps from other means or from other source.