Don't be stupid. They are enforcing their rules on everyone just to protect their profits and their control of the artists.
really? I can choose not to follow their rules by not playing to begin with. You should try it sometime.
and controlling the artists? I feel no sympathy for the artists. They sign a contract which puts them in the position to be controlled. It's not at gunpoint, and now, with lots of info on the Internet, they should be very aware of such agreements.
Try buying a piece of hardware from intel in a year and tell me you'll be able to run free software. Try fixing the machine so that you can run your remixed piece of code. You'll be breaking the law courtesy of the DMCA. Disney's police will come get you.
Intel lost the hardware game. You should have started the sentence with "try buying a piece of hardware from AMD". I just went to a Microsoft Vista Seminar and they were all over the fact that they had a new partnership with AMD.
So you believe that Microsoft didn't choose to engage in predatory pricing, didn't choose to add intentional incompatibilities to its software, didn't choose to bully and intimidate other companies, didn't choose to break anti-trust consent decrees, and didn't choose to unlawfully abuse its market power to create and maintain a virtually unchallenged monopoly?
I believe that dwelling on the past will assure you of no future. Instead of dwelling on the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly (in fact, It's not that truthful these days..You can get Linux Distros in many computer stores) why not figure out a way to destroy them at their own game? it's thinking like this that will keep open source and linux in the minority.
Microsoft, Disney, and big corporations are the pirates here. They are stripping us of our rights to fair use, to our privacy, and they have the nerve to claim it's for the artists. They've been ripping off artists and consumers for years. They are the real pirates.
you aren't forced to use the products of Microsoft, Disney, or any large corporation. Fair use is not a right. If you don't agree with their tactics, STOP FUCKING USING THEIR PRODUCTS!
on the other hand, people sharing their software illegally are pirates. The large companies have no choice in the matter, unlike you.
Seriously. Why can't MS just make an OS which isn't so prone to it? If they somehow made Vista impervious (without a built in addon or tool) do you think people would be mad at them for killing the competition?
because it's impossible, unless you get rid of all the dumbass users that install malware-ridden programs or sue the malware creators out of existance.
Even if they had system-file protection in place with user accounts (similar to the *nix form of security), a spyware program can still be created.
As long as it is still profitable, spyware will always exist (in one form or another).
some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community, the reliability coming from hundreds of reviewers that spend more than 8 hours a day on the programs (because of passion) and the dependability that you can see on millions of servers worldwide
There aren't that many people that contribute to open source projects. I have led a few smaller projects on sourceforge, and 99% of the people use the app, 1% contribute, and of that 1%, about 1% of that is even worth adding to the next update. I would imagine this happens at the larger Open source apps as well.
The Open source model sounds great on paper, but because of the above issues, it requires a team of main developers (or in my case, one developer) at the top that oversee everything, which is basically the same development model as closed/proprietary source. Adding developers on a massive scale does improve the efficiency or create better programs.
other people want microsoft products
Most people don't give a flying fuck about open source or the community behind it. They want a product that works. They also want a company behind that product that can be called up and bitched at when a problem occurs. Microsoft is more popular because they have better marketing and, not because they have a better product.
seriously, I've seen interviews with ex-ms-employees stating that the deadlines forced them to leave bugs unfixed so a commercial software model, that needs deadlines because of the needed income, forcing programmers to leave bugs unfixed is more reliable than a software model that has no deadlines and hundreds of reviewers? I don't think so...
I'm not ignoring or denying the fact that Microsoft products have a lot of bugs. There are many open source projects, however, that don't ever get bugs fixed properly or in a timely fashion (sendmail comes to mind).
The fact that there are no deadlines in open source is not a good thing. It means development takes at least 3 or 4 times as long as a project that does have deadlines and people only work on things they feel like working on.
the problem with monopolies is that they make it much more convenient to use their products and a hell of a lot less convenient to use ther competitors products. The playing field is not leveled.
Why would you want to make it any easier for your competition? The purpose of any company is to make money and beat out your competition. Does slashdot make it easier for you to use digg? should there be laws that force them to? Nobody ever said the "playing field" should be "leveled".
This is why there are monopoly laws. Companies like MS and Apple have a lot of weight they push around. Sure you shouldn't punish them, but what about holding them accountable for mistakes they've made that we have to pay for ? What about IE being artifically and nonsenseically 'bundled' with MS just for legal reasons, and years later customers and companies paying billions for that mistake in spyware/security incidents? should we blame them for that? Because a small competitor sure as shit can't pull that off.
Unless you can go after the FSF for all the security holes in any piece of software released under the GNU.
I have a better idea: Why doesn't NVidia or ATI release documentation? Then poor Linux users wouldn't have to make the decision between their anal cherry and three-dee graphics.
I think the linux community is getting a little ahead of themselves. ATI and Nvidia have all the power in this situation. They can just tell the community to fuck off, and it just means you and I won't be able to get our video cards supported and both companies will see little revenue loss because of it. If a linux distro had a much larger marketshare in the desktop market, it would be a different story.
The linux community should be embracing ATI and Nvidia, even if they have proprietary drivers. This would allow the linux OS (any distro) to become more of a mainstream desktop operating system. This is one of the main reasons people won't switch. Because of hardware support. Especially Video cards.
Many in the community wonder why more people aren't using linux. This situation should be taken as an example. I predict nothing will be learned from it. The main figurehead behind the Free Software community, Richard Stallman, will refuse to use anything proprietary and in 10 years there will still be people bitching about why linux isn't being used by their grandma. Microsoft May or may not be on top (after seeing the latest Vista Beta, I am leaning towards not) and we will all be using Operating System X, which allows companies such as ATI and nVidia to develop proprietary drivers.
The GPL isn't about getting stuff for free, it is about getting the source code for whatever software you purchase. Just because software is GPL'd does not mean any joe and his bro have a right to get a copy. They only have a right to get a copy of the source if they are somehow able to put their hands on a binary.
it may not be about "getting stuff for free", but most users are only using GPLd software because they are getting it at no cost. It doesn't give anyone the right to copy it, but does not stop them from doing so, thus making it very difficult to charge money per copy.
Ms uses their monopoly in OS's to allow them to lose lots of money in consoles, apple uses their monopoly(AFAIK it technically is one) in mp3 players to keep their PC business safe.
I see many distros of linux being sold in many computer stores (and pre-installed on machines). Just because Microsoft is the most popular at this time, doesn't make them a monopoly. Nothing is stopping you from creating an OS and selling it.
The same thing with apple. There are 100s of companies out there selling mp3 players (proving it is not a monopoly). Apple just happens to be the most popular.
We shouldn't punish companies for being successful.
Funny how everyone (mainstream soceity atleast) thinks it is so evil when other cultures impose their values, but completely OK when we impose ours
please.
I hardly consider IP law the same as what the Chinese government is doing. Comparing sharing music and software to people actually getting their right to free speech shows that you do not understand the definition of freedom.
Wouldn't their sales decrease over time anyway, in most cases?
Not necessarily. Depending on the product, they could increase over time. In the case of my friends' products, you could directly see a correlation between cracked copies and a decrease in sales.
They lose exactly zero. They have exactly the same amount of money whether I download a movie or don't buy it at all. I'm not going to go out and buy the latest new film on DVD. I can't afford to most of the time, and I've better things on which to spend what money I do have. But I might borrow a copy a friend has bought, or maybe my parents or my brother bought it. Or maybe I'll download it and watch it myself. Either way, the industry would have gained no money from me whatsoever, so THEY HAVE LOST EXACTLY NOTHING.
They lose money, but not in a direct sense, like they are trying to tell us. It is more of a gradual process. It's similar to counterfeiting money.
If enough of movie X is pirated, over time, more and more people will just get it for free rather than paying for it, and the actual value of the movie will go down.
I have seen examples of this with friends of mine that own small software companies. After a crack is released for their app, their sales figures start to decrease over time.
The inefficiency of a product's development has zero bearing on its value. A case can be made for the value of Vista being $0, because that's the price of a substitute product
yes it does. This generally determines how much a company is going to charge for their software app. Yes, linux is $0, but only if you are saying that all the man power and labor that went into it is worth nothing.
Redhat and all the linux distro companies have it very easy. They didn't have to pay for almost any of the initial development of their operating system, which could allow for more profit (if they didn't have the same "free software" forces working against them).
Microsoft can charge $1000 for the new home edition of Vista, if they really want to. It doesn't mean i'm going to pay for it though. This is the beauty of competition (which shows there isn't as much of a monopoly as many people around here say there is).
Everything above $1 better have a very serious justification for why it is so expensive.
Other than "to make the studios/developers really rich."
above $1? You are starting to sounds a little naive here. a dollar is almost the cost of a blank DVD. They don't have to have any justification. The justification is to make a profit, like any business, and if you don't like it, just don't buy it (or pirate it). If enough people stop buying it, they will be forced to lower the price (or not turn a profit). The problem is that there are enough people buying it at the high price point, so they have no incentive to change it. If I were in their position, I wouldn't change the price either.
when you abuse your monopoly position by price gauging, piracy becomes your competition.
Then how do you explain the countless number of small software shops that get their apps pirated?
Piracy happens because software, music, or anything digital is very easy to copy. It takes no effort to copy bits, but a large effort to create those bits. I think of it almost like counterfeiting money.
this is true, but it wasn't my point. they have a huge disconnect on what that stuff is worth, and IF they were selling enough, they wouldn't be complaining about the piracy, because at a cheap enough point, a lot more people would be buying the discs. that was the whole point of the article, they DO recognize that at the prices they are charging legitimately now (in china) most people don't care and go buy the "pirate" copies instead. I know I can go into walmart and get any number of older movies for $5 or even less sometimes, so I know it's possible for them to sell movies on DVDs for much less than what they charge now. Volume sales works.
Blank media is so cheap these days (and will continue to get cheaper). Piracy will not stop because DVDs are $5. The people pirating it will just charge $3. The only way to stop it using this tactic is to make it slightly more expensive than a blank DVD, which will not turn a profit.
I don't know if charging $5 will actually increase sales. There is a perfect price point that will allow for the greatest number of sales. They might have alredy done a lot of research and found that $20 is that perfect point. Many people associate value with price.
Not all people who download things are moral-free. With music, for example, many people download music to try it out and then buy it if they think the artist deserves the money - and not buy it if it's not worth the money.
This sounds like a nice idea, but most people that download music, burn it and don't bother buying it.
When I was in college back in 2000, everyone I knew stopped buying music when napster came out.
It's human nature. If you are not forced to buy something, you most likely won't.
a quote from the end of the article: "It's probably not possible to make a good living on Donationware, but it might be possible to give up your day job and live above the poverty line eventually, if you're willing to take the work seriously and willing to invest a lot of time and energy"
Then everyone else in the world should be making $40,000 a year, too
Tell that to the corrupt leaders of third world countries that are preventing their own people from a moderate lifestyle. Look at China for instance. They aren't third-world per se, but most of the people are poor.
3 for bits on a plastic disk (let alone the $1.50 figure in the article
music and movies are as much "bits on a plastic disk" as a new bestselling book is just some paper bound together. You are paying for the time and effort and money that it takes to make a movie or song or book, not the physical media.
or people that watch Friends or people that listen to top 40 music or people who watch the OC or people who read People Magazine or George Bush or people that don't vote or people that watch American Idol or people that believe in Creationism or people that follow celebrities closely or etc...
Social networking, by definition, can not be monolithic and centrally controlled.
your idea is nice, but I don't see it becoming as popular as a myspace or facebook. Here is why:
most people on the Internet do not know or want to know how to setup a website. They need to be guided and told what to do. The more a user can just point and click their way through a process, the better.
appleseed might gain some traction among the more tech savvy users, but the average user will shy away from it and toward easier and centralized services.
However, regarding Linux, I believe that Linux should not tolerate closed source binary drivers. It does us no good to update a kernel, and then have X break or the kernel panic. Fortunately at this time, I don't need good X support because I run headless (more or less) servers, and an $8 graphics card is fine by me.
do people really have a choice? It's either get a close source binary driver or nothing. I would rather have a binary driver.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be stupid. They are enforcing their rules on everyone just to protect their profits and their control of the artists.
really? I can choose not to follow their rules by not playing to begin with. You should try it sometime.
and controlling the artists? I feel no sympathy for the artists. They sign a contract which puts them in the position to be controlled. It's not at gunpoint, and now, with lots of info on the Internet, they should be very aware of such agreements.
Try buying a piece of hardware from intel in a year and tell me you'll be able to run free software. Try fixing the machine so that you can run your remixed piece of code. You'll be breaking the law courtesy of the DMCA. Disney's police will come get you.
Intel lost the hardware game. You should have started the sentence with "try buying a piece of hardware from AMD". I just went to a Microsoft Vista Seminar and they were all over the fact that they had a new partnership with AMD.
So you believe that Microsoft didn't choose to engage in predatory pricing, didn't choose to add intentional incompatibilities to its software, didn't choose to bully and intimidate other companies, didn't choose to break anti-trust consent decrees, and didn't choose to unlawfully abuse its market power to create and maintain a virtually unchallenged monopoly?
I believe that dwelling on the past will assure you of no future. Instead of dwelling on the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly (in fact, It's not that truthful these days..You can get Linux Distros in many computer stores) why not figure out a way to destroy them at their own game? it's thinking like this that will keep open source and linux in the minority.
Fascinating.
indeed. It is.
Microsoft, Disney, and big corporations are the pirates here. They are stripping us of our rights to fair use, to our privacy, and they have the nerve to claim it's for the artists. They've been ripping off artists and consumers for years. They are the real pirates.
you aren't forced to use the products of Microsoft, Disney, or any large corporation. Fair use is not a right. If you don't agree with their tactics, STOP FUCKING USING THEIR PRODUCTS!
on the other hand, people sharing their software illegally are pirates. The large companies have no choice in the matter, unlike you.
Why not use open source alternatives?
Seriously.
Why can't MS just make an OS which isn't so prone to it?
If they somehow made Vista impervious (without a built in addon or tool) do you think people would be mad at them for killing the competition?
because it's impossible, unless you get rid of all the dumbass users that install malware-ridden programs or sue the malware creators out of existance.
Even if they had system-file protection in place with user accounts (similar to the *nix form of security), a spyware program can still be created.
As long as it is still profitable, spyware will always exist (in one form or another).
some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community, the reliability coming from hundreds of reviewers that spend more than 8 hours a day on the programs (because of passion) and the dependability that you can see on millions of servers worldwide
There aren't that many people that contribute to open source projects. I have led a few smaller projects on sourceforge, and 99% of the people use the app, 1% contribute, and of that 1%, about 1% of that is even worth adding to the next update. I would imagine this happens at the larger Open source apps as well.
The Open source model sounds great on paper, but because of the above issues, it requires a team of main developers (or in my case, one developer) at the top that oversee everything, which is basically the same development model as closed/proprietary source. Adding developers on a massive scale does improve the efficiency or create better programs.
other people want microsoft products
Most people don't give a flying fuck about open source or the community behind it. They want a product that works. They also want a company behind that product that can be called up and bitched at when a problem occurs. Microsoft is more popular because they have better marketing and, not because they have a better product.
seriously, I've seen interviews with ex-ms-employees stating that the deadlines forced them to leave bugs unfixed
so a commercial software model, that needs deadlines because of the needed income, forcing programmers to leave bugs unfixed is more reliable than a software model that has no deadlines and hundreds of reviewers? I don't think so...
I'm not ignoring or denying the fact that Microsoft products have a lot of bugs. There are many open source projects, however, that don't ever get bugs fixed properly or in a timely fashion (sendmail comes to mind).
The fact that there are no deadlines in open source is not a good thing. It means development takes at least 3 or 4 times as long as a project that does have deadlines and people only work on things they feel like working on.
the problem with monopolies is that they make it much more convenient to use their products and a hell of a lot less convenient to use ther competitors products. The playing field is not leveled.
Why would you want to make it any easier for your competition? The purpose of any company is to make money and beat out your competition. Does slashdot make it easier for you to use digg? should there be laws that force them to? Nobody ever said the "playing field" should be "leveled".
This is why there are monopoly laws. Companies like MS and Apple have a lot of weight they push around. Sure you shouldn't punish them, but what about holding them accountable for mistakes they've made that we have to pay for ? What about IE being artifically and nonsenseically 'bundled' with MS just for legal reasons, and years later customers and companies paying billions for that mistake in spyware/security incidents? should we blame them for that? Because a small competitor sure as shit can't pull that off.
Unless you can go after the FSF for all the security holes in any piece of software released under the GNU.
I have a better idea: Why doesn't NVidia or ATI release documentation? Then poor Linux users wouldn't have to make the decision between their anal cherry and three-dee graphics.
I think the linux community is getting a little ahead of themselves. ATI and Nvidia have all the power in this situation. They can just tell the community to fuck off, and it just means you and I won't be able to get our video cards supported and both companies will see little revenue loss because of it. If a linux distro had a much larger marketshare in the desktop market, it would be a different story.
The linux community should be embracing ATI and Nvidia, even if they have proprietary drivers. This would allow the linux OS (any distro) to become more of a mainstream desktop operating system. This is one of the main reasons people won't switch. Because of hardware support. Especially Video cards.
Many in the community wonder why more people aren't using linux. This situation should be taken as an example. I predict nothing will be learned from it. The main figurehead behind the Free Software community, Richard Stallman, will refuse to use anything proprietary and in 10 years there will still be people bitching about why linux isn't being used by their grandma. Microsoft May or may not be on top (after seeing the latest Vista Beta, I am leaning towards not) and we will all be using Operating System X, which allows companies such as ATI and nVidia to develop proprietary drivers.
The GPL isn't about getting stuff for free, it is about getting the source code for whatever software you purchase. Just because software is GPL'd does not mean any joe and his bro have a right to get a copy. They only have a right to get a copy of the source if they are somehow able to put their hands on a binary.
it may not be about "getting stuff for free", but most users are only using GPLd software because they are getting it at no cost. It doesn't give anyone the right to copy it, but does not stop them from doing so, thus making it very difficult to charge money per copy.
Ms uses their monopoly in OS's to allow them to lose lots of money in consoles, apple uses their monopoly(AFAIK it technically is one) in mp3 players to keep their PC business safe.
I see many distros of linux being sold in many computer stores (and pre-installed on machines). Just because Microsoft is the most popular at this time, doesn't make them a monopoly. Nothing is stopping you from creating an OS and selling it.
The same thing with apple. There are 100s of companies out there selling mp3 players (proving it is not a monopoly). Apple just happens to be the most popular.
We shouldn't punish companies for being successful.
Funny how everyone (mainstream soceity atleast) thinks it is so evil when other cultures impose their values, but completely OK when we impose ours
please.
I hardly consider IP law the same as what the Chinese government is doing. Comparing sharing music and software to people actually getting their right to free speech shows that you do not understand the definition of freedom.
Sorry publishers, the future of education is free
how so? Unless there is some way of creating a digital copy of a textbook with almost no effort there will still be money in publishing.
Unless you can somehow create a digital book or song through random button clicks, Entertainment and publishing will never be free.
Wouldn't their sales decrease over time anyway, in most cases?
Not necessarily. Depending on the product, they could increase over time. In the case of my friends' products, you could directly see a correlation between cracked copies and a decrease in sales.
They lose exactly zero. They have exactly the same amount of money whether I download a movie or don't buy it at all. I'm not going to go out and buy the latest new film on DVD. I can't afford to most of the time, and I've better things on which to spend what money I do have. But I might borrow a copy a friend has bought, or maybe my parents or my brother bought it. Or maybe I'll download it and watch it myself. Either way, the industry would have gained no money from me whatsoever, so THEY HAVE LOST EXACTLY NOTHING.
They lose money, but not in a direct sense, like they are trying to tell us. It is more of a gradual process. It's similar to counterfeiting money.
If enough of movie X is pirated, over time, more and more people will just get it for free rather than paying for it, and the actual value of the movie will go down.
I have seen examples of this with friends of mine that own small software companies. After a crack is released for their app, their sales figures start to decrease over time.
The inefficiency of a product's development has zero bearing on its value. A case can be made for the value of Vista being $0, because that's the price of a substitute product
yes it does. This generally determines how much a company is going to charge for their software app. Yes, linux is $0, but only if you are saying that all the man power and labor that went into it is worth nothing.
Redhat and all the linux distro companies have it very easy. They didn't have to pay for almost any of the initial development of their operating system, which could allow for more profit (if they didn't have the same "free software" forces working against them).
Microsoft can charge $1000 for the new home edition of Vista, if they really want to. It doesn't mean i'm going to pay for it though. This is the beauty of competition (which shows there isn't as much of a monopoly as many people around here say there is).
Everything above $1 better have a very serious justification for why it is so expensive.
Other than "to make the studios/developers really rich."
above $1? You are starting to sounds a little naive here. a dollar is almost the cost of a blank DVD. They don't have to have any justification. The justification is to make a profit, like any business, and if you don't like it, just don't buy it (or pirate it). If enough people stop buying it, they will be forced to lower the price (or not turn a profit). The problem is that there are enough people buying it at the high price point, so they have no incentive to change it. If I were in their position, I wouldn't change the price either.
when you abuse your monopoly position by price gauging, piracy becomes your competition.
Then how do you explain the countless number of small software shops that get their apps pirated?
Piracy happens because software, music, or anything digital is very easy to copy. It takes no effort to copy bits, but a large effort to create those bits. I think of it almost like counterfeiting money.
Piracy will only stop when all software is $0.
this is true, but it wasn't my point. they have a huge disconnect on what that stuff is worth, and IF they were selling enough, they wouldn't be complaining about the piracy, because at a cheap enough point, a lot more people would be buying the discs. that was the whole point of the article, they DO recognize that at the prices they are charging legitimately now (in china) most people don't care and go buy the "pirate" copies instead.
I know I can go into walmart and get any number of older movies for $5 or even less sometimes, so I know it's possible for them to sell movies on DVDs for much less than what they charge now. Volume sales works.
Blank media is so cheap these days (and will continue to get cheaper). Piracy will not stop because DVDs are $5. The people pirating it will just charge $3. The only way to stop it using this tactic is to make it slightly more expensive than a blank DVD, which will not turn a profit.
I don't know if charging $5 will actually increase sales. There is a perfect price point that will allow for the greatest number of sales. They might have alredy done a lot of research and found that $20 is that perfect point. Many people associate value with price.
Not all people who download things are moral-free. With music, for example, many people download music to try it out and then buy it if they think the artist deserves the money - and not buy it if it's not worth the money.
t ml
This sounds like a nice idea, but most people that download music, burn it and don't bother buying it.
When I was in college back in 2000, everyone I knew stopped buying music when napster came out.
It's human nature. If you are not forced to buy something, you most likely won't.
a very interesting article on donations: http://www.donationcoder.com/Articles/One/index.h
a quote from the end of the article: "It's probably not possible to make a good living on Donationware, but it might be possible to give up your day job and live above the poverty line eventually, if you're willing to take the work seriously and willing to invest a lot of time and energy"
Then everyone else in the world should be making $40,000 a year, too
Tell that to the corrupt leaders of third world countries that are preventing their own people from a moderate lifestyle. Look at China for instance. They aren't third-world per se, but most of the people are poor.
3 for bits on a plastic disk (let alone the $1.50 figure in the article
music and movies are as much "bits on a plastic disk" as a new bestselling book is just some paper bound together. You are paying for the time and effort and money that it takes to make a movie or song or book, not the physical media.
or people that watch Friends or people that listen to top 40 music or people who watch the OC or people who read People Magazine or George Bush or people that don't vote or people that watch American Idol or people that believe in Creationism or people that follow celebrities closely or etc...
or pompous assholes like you?
Social networking, by definition, can not be monolithic and centrally controlled.
your idea is nice, but I don't see it becoming as popular as a myspace or facebook. Here is why:
most people on the Internet do not know or want to know how to setup a website. They need to be guided and told what to do. The more a user can just point and click their way through a process, the better.
appleseed might gain some traction among the more tech savvy users, but the average user will shy away from it and toward easier and centralized services.
However, regarding Linux, I believe that Linux should not tolerate closed source binary drivers. It does us no good to update a kernel, and then have X break or the kernel panic. Fortunately at this time, I don't need good X support because I run headless (more or less) servers, and an $8 graphics card is fine by me.
do people really have a choice? It's either get a close source binary driver or nothing. I would rather have a binary driver.
this is simiar with pei-king and bei-jing
Why the hell was this marked as troll?
I was merely stating that mysql has more support in the IT field (which is true).