The spam laws are actually getting this strict. For instance in Texas, effective 1 September 2003, it seems that spammers can get jail time for sending unsolicited obscene material. In other states it seems that jail time is reserved for spammers that cause actual quantifiable harm.
Check you local laws. In some cases you do not have to prove that the email was unsolicited. A misleading subject line is sufficient to make the email prohibited.
The other day i was looking up a spammers IP. I think I was on internic. The server crapped out and the image would not load. I was not able to look up the address.
I can imagine such techniques to limit the availability of data. Today it is the 1% of the population who cannot use the image form. Tommorow it may be the few percents of users that do run IE. Next year it may the several percent of us who choose not to run MS validated hardware.
By demanding universal availability, we help insure that we will have access in the future.
I am sure you are correct. I am sure that we do need to worry about the blind people. What you failed to quantify is who do we have to worry about. Visually impaired people constitute about 0.5% of the U.S. population. Would that be your standard? As long as it only effects 0.5% of the population, we can ignore them? I suppose this includes Linux and non-IE users in general, Of course the U.S. population is only about 0.5% of the world population, so I suppose the U.S. is irrelevant. New York State is only a little over 0.5% of the population, and I know a lot of people who wold be happy to kick their whiny little white asses out of the union.
A big issue with web is usability. Although it is not difficult for a competent web designer to make pages that are at least partially usable for all groups, and as a consequence more usable for the general population, many designers choose to make the pages unnecessarily complicate with roll over menus and small target areas in the name of "coolness."
The problem exists in computers over all as well. A good example is the mouse. While a multi-button mouse is efficient for most people, it is nearly impossible for a person with a hand disability to use. Therefore, any application that does not make accommodations for a single button mouse is ignoring a whole group of people, really for no reason other than laziness.
Science is a tricky thing, and when applied to the U.S. court system it becomes even tricker. Both sides need to win and so will lose or fabricate evidence to fit their case. Science, which has few fast acting safeguards against people who will maliciously misuse the process, is a prime area for prosecutors, defense, and all other lawyers to engineer evidence. In most cases, the jury are not trained to understand good science from bad science, so someone has to arbitrate the validity of the claim. The judge is, in many cases, the person who makes the decision. On appeal other judges may agree or disagree.
For instance, some prosecutors, if allowed to spout pseudo science, would have juries believe that a decedents matching DNA at a crime scene is 100% irrefutable evidence that the defendant was at the crime scene, which is absolutely untrue. Bayes Theorem tells us that there is a good probability that the match is accurate, like maybe 99%, but nowhere near the one in 10,000 that many believe. On the other hand, non-matching DNA is plenty good to introduce reasonable doubt. Try to explain Bayes theorem to a jury and you might as well call a mistrial.
The same is true for fingerprinting which has been widely abused. If a complete finger print matches a suspects fingerprint that is pretty good evidence, even without a lot of corroborating evidence. However, the partial print most often lifted of crime scenes is not good enough to match to a suspect. There is conjecture and interpretation involved. When the prosecutor claims that match is perfect, this is abuse of science.
Some will say that only tort lawyers would be afraid of judges vetting evidence. if that were true, why has this ruling had so little effect on judgments. The reality is that individual lawsuits are incredible hard to win, even harder to collect on, and requires the company to have done something really stupid. Stupid things include ignoring 200 hundred years of science attesting to the negative effects of tobacco or engineering cars in such a way that safety margins are ignored. Juries also do not like company feeding on peoples negative self esteem to make a profit, as was shown in the breast implant case. I tell you know that persons who love breasts love breasts of all sizes, and if they require a breast of a certain size psychological help is in order. There is no small breast disease. The case was lost not based on science, which was nonexistent, but because the companies were greedy. It is interesting to note that those judgments. which have been critized as unfair an extreme, has had no apparent effect on the medical industry as they are now marketing contact lenses and prescription skin care to children.
The GUI chain goes
xerox->Lisa->Macintosh->(Windows)
X->(KDE|GNOME)
with some convergence
the memory management chain goes
DEC->Windows
The NT memory management, the only one that really worked, was written based on the DEC model.
Unix->(Macintosh(PMM) & Linux kernel)
In early 90's Apple moved to the page memory model
internet browsers
First WWW browers back in '93 for X and Macintosh
Mosaic released later that year for X, Macintosh and Windows
Netscape released browsers derived from the Mosaic codebase in early '94
Finally MS licenses Spyglass, also based of Mosaic, and released IE in mid '95
The main contribution of IE was the incredible horizontal scrolling text.
Honorable mention for Cyberdog
You are correct that MS will embrace and extend. They may also innovate. However, the UI is pretty much stolen. XP looks line OS X, not the other way around. The browser was pretty much stolen and extended as other companies thought up new features. The new longhorn file system has been thought about extensively for many years by many other people, for instance in 'The Humane Interface.' I am sure it is an amazing implementaton. I am also sure that like always, it is a feature mismash that sacrifices usability.
You are correct to point, but it is a chicken and egg thing.
Many firms use Windows and Office because a large number of persons, not to mention the owners of the firms, are familiar with the software. This familiarity provides a significant comfort level. This is a great change from 20 years ago where most were not familiar with any microcomputer technology, and so it was truly a wide open game.
Which leads to how we teach our students? Do we teach them commands and processes by rote, explaining that such and such mouse movements are magic incantations that cause the Lord MS to bless us with text, figures, and presentation, or do we teach them critically that the computer is a tool, just like a microwave oven, and not every one will work the exact same way but there are fundamental similarities.
I hear the people back in the peanut gallery saying that students are too stupid to learn critical thinking and that may be true. But let me ask you this? Who is the more likely to have a lifetime of employment. A person who believes that the only OS is MS Windows or MacOS, or *nix, or the person who understands that all of these do similar things and is comfortable enough to go into an read a book the week before an interview and then go in a proudly claim they know the system and are willing to work on whatever tool the employer has.
No one seriously believes that MS can create a secure OS. What can happen is that MS, along with laws that will make circumvention activities illegal, will create enough a of a facade of security that people will trade certain current freedoms for safety and convenience. It always happens. People want convenience and simplicity.
OTOH it looks like this stuff will only effect Intel and MS products. Personally, I have always used Apple products myself. It has protected me from MS viral licenses. It has protected me from Intel's occasional desire to track all users. It is now protecting me from silly DRM schemes that do nothing but protect antique business models. Apple has done more for security by allowing the user to turn off HTML in mail.app that MS could possibly hope to do in a decade.
The same could be said for GNU/Linux and other non-MS users. For these users there are only three concerns. First, laws could be passed to require certain attributes in entire classes of software. For example, as the article suggests, all email and music might have to be signed with a CPU generated hash. Of course all advanced users know that such technology could be circumvented, and, even with laws against circumvention, such actions will routinely occur.
Second, the makers of Intel clone chips might, and probably will, succumb to pressure and include security features. This would be bad because right now OSS is very tied to Intel class chips. The solution to this is to build open hardware platforms around non-Intel class chips, and create OSS projects that run on such platforms. Intel may be a slave to MS, but AMD and others might be more scared of lost sales due to OSS moving to Motorola and IBM chipsets. In five years if OSS is still tied to the Intel instruction set, and Intel is only making chips that spy on the user, there will be no one to blame.
The third issue comes from a quote in the article the system will also require a new generation of computer hardware, not only replacing the computer logic board but also peripherals like mice, keyboards and video cards
from this we can infer that MS intends to push DRM to all hardware connected to the CPU, which, of course, is the logical course of action. The issue is as above. OSS runs mostly on what is essentially MS hardware. If all MS hardware requires software that is cryptographically signed and externally validated, probably by MS related service, one wonders if OSS will exist. If OSS does exist, one wonders if it would have any purpose the user was still ultimately tied to MS licenses and security schemes.
This has always been the danger of the single environment ecosystem. The OSS people seem to forget how inherently dependent on MS whims they are. One wonders if some diversification might be in order.
First, most comments on/. want the artist to be compensated. Most see swapping files as a at worst a minimal net loss for artists, and at best a better alternative to the Clear Channel dominated commercial radio spectrum.
Second, the point of the quote is that no system exists that allows consumers to purchase music online. It is clear that consumers want music online. It is clear many are willing to pay. However, the labels are not willing to support any reasonable system to facilitate this. Therefore, people just steal the music.
As i said before, you have to make things cheaper and easier to buy than to steal. It is what keeps movie sales up. They put some much extra crap on the DVD that people want, and in most cases quickly make it available for $15, that is just mostly easier to buy.
Re:SCO: The new 'Military Intelligence'
on
Darl McBride Interview
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think we can interpret the paraphrased statement that "IBM wants to buy but we don't want to be bought' as meaning that IBM is not willing to pay enough to but the company.
Given the stock price the most that IBM should pay is $150 million, maybe $200 if they are being especially nice. Given the size of the original lawsuit, I suspect SCO wants something more in the neighborhood of $500 million dollars. In fact I can see SCO going to IBM a year ago and saying 'for $500 million I will nor ruin this skit!'
I suspect the situation remains largely the same. The $3 billion number is just the normal escalation as something goes to trial.
This is really something that SCO is doing to recoup the losses, and probably generate profits, for insiders. Most of the stock, almost 70%, is owned by insiders. Almost none of it is own by institutions. I wonder how much of the stock not owned by insiders is controlled by insiders. The theory of pumping up the stock price is probably invalid as the management is probably looking for a buyout based on nuisance, not on price.
The TiVo demographic is probably not representative of the U.S. television population, but it is probably somewhat representative of the demographic the Advertiser want. Specifically the relatively young population with lots of disposable income with which to buy silly toys.
If you have a TiVo you are probably not old, as old people wouldn't spend money on a TiVo. If you have a TiVo you probably have more money than sense, which is good because you are more likely to buy the $253 dollar bottle of diet pills or believe that drinking the right beer or driving the right car will get you a mate. So, I believe such statistics would be very useful for advertisers and would be applicable to the general population.
I agree with you completely. Old systems must be yanked as they become obsolete. The fact that MS provided the opportunity for it's customer's to pay for support on the obsolete systems was commendable. The fact that provided patches for free was even more commendable.
The question must be asked, now that they are not supporting it so there will be no costs in terms of upgrades, technical support, and the like, when, like Apple and Red Hat and so many others, are they going to put it up for a free download? After all System 7.5, which is not that much older than NT4, and about the same technological level, is available for free download. I suppose Apple will do the same thing for 8.X when OS X is up and running. Whether MS will do that for anything, remains to be seen.
I agree. Speculative fiction is not written to predict the future. It is written to talk about the present in a non threatening way, much like satire. By setting the story in a time and place that is not now, people will not be so defensive while reading it. The motivation is, however, to discuss philosophical concerns in a an effort to prevent a perceived gloomy future.
The future these books, though, often do come true, mostly because the government and high minded literature pseudo intellectuals get together and discredit such fiction as trash. What is even more frightening is how much more simpler the dreaded effects are caused in reality. For example, in Fahrenheit 451 it took a walls covered in televisions to produce mind control. In reality, a single 20 to 40 inch set in every home is all that is needed.
The thing is that people and businesses will do what they need to do to survive and profit no matter what the laws are. If there is a law or patent that is a problem, and it is enough of problem to enough people, it will get changed.
If some businesses think they can patent everything and force competitors and customers to pay an exaggerated price, they will quickly learn the realities of the world says that when there comes a point where is just easier to destroy the troublemaker. IBM and ATT have both learned this lesson. MS due to the unusually corrupted corrupted U.S. government has yet to learn this lesson in full force.
Consumers steal music. Businesses steal software. MS validates the stealing of software by consumers by forcing large corporations to pay licensing fees so the agents of the company do not have to formally steal the software. What has been proven many times, in many countries, if that if there is no reasonable way to legally acquire what is wanted, people will steal it. The key is to make the legal acquisition easier than theft.
GNU/Linux is embedded. You can be sure that Apple, IBM, Sun, etc are all looking at this carefully. Patents aren't necessarily a problem. The current SCO is not a problem, and may be necessary to clarify some historical details. People who currently use OSS already probably have a good reason and aren't easily going to be scared away. If it does become a real problem, we may see the courts or markets enter a destructive mode to restore balance.
If this were a business I would agree with you. The fact that it was not well secured would not be negligence. However, this is a University. Universities, from what I have seen, have much stricter rules about what they can do with student data, and in general they take, or should take, the protection of student data much more seriously. The reality is that allowing strangers into the school computer is equivelent to allowing strangers into the secure room where the physical information is stored. Doing either is negligence, and doing either is allowing the data to be stolen.
What is wrong with this is that they are potentially attacking customers. This is more than protecting copyrights. It is using the legal system and abusing customers to insure that no new thinking will be required. The record companies are just businesses. Businesses fail when they cannot adapt.
As has been stated, they are going against people who trade large numbers of files. Sharing files is arguable a bad thing. Under many interpretations giving away music that you are not licensed to give away is illegal. One instance of this is renting a movie from Blockbuster and showing it at church or school. That is illegal, even though you never charged for the movie.
However, a business has a choice of how to against potential customers that break the law. For instance, Wal-Mart assumes every customer is a criminal and checks their bags on the way out. I generally don't shop at Wal-Mart because I prefer not to spend my time with the criminal element. The RIAA is taking a similar approach. By sending letters to people with unfortunately named files on their public directory structure, by threatening to trash a computer if it has any potentially threatening material, by threatening to sue every person who trades one file, the RIAA is acted beyond reasonability.
Does the RIAA have a right to protect it's copyrighted material? Absolutely. Do I have the right to complain about? Absolutely. Do I have the right to buy only used CDs from now on so I do not fund their abuse of the legal system? Absolutely.
They RIAA can do anything they wish, but the reality is that no one has ever bought every piece of music the possess. Teenagers have always swapped music. Most people have never cared that much about copy quality. I don't know of anyone who ever went out to replace a copy with an original just because the copy quality sucked. Customers buy music because they have a devotion to the quality of the artist, and if the artist of label is deemed as disrespectful to the customer, the customer will go away. The fact is that I do have the right to download some free music, if the artists and label says i can. This is really the radio and MTV thing all over again.
I think the patenting of business models is really silly and should be one of the prime target of the so-called lawsuit abuse people, but this does not seem so bad. It is not overly broad and may allow firms to come in with slightly different models.
to wit some simple modifications might be:
1) Pay a monthly subscription fee, based on the number of rentals you wish to have out at once at total for month. This converts it to a cell phone like structure.
2) You may only keep for six months at which point the costumer is charged for the video.
3) And, oh, I don't know, charge a monthly fee to part of a club, not rent the films. for $20 a month you get access to a special members only web site that lets you check movies out of a library.
I also notice that netflix participates in the vile behavior of not letting you browse their site unless you accept their cookie. This is like a car salesperson not talking to you unless 'you are ready to buy.'
It is not just online. Students, adults, everyone must be critical of all information no matter what the source. Good teachers try to promote critical thinking. They make a game out finding the mistakes in the textbooks. They encourage students to test all statements made by anyone.
The problem is that such critical thinking is inefficient. Those who want schools to produce worker drones and cannon fodder do not wants the kids learning that authority is fallible. The executives do not want the public school kids competing with his private school educated children. The government does not want the ghetto kids knowing they are being screwed when Head Start gets gutted so the millionaire can own a 10th Porsche.
Believe me, almost every teacher wants to teach critical thinking. Almost every teacher would teach critical thinking if they did not have 35 students.
As an aside, I always find it funny when people are infuriated with the inaccuracy of the NYT. It is the paper of record, not the paper of truth. There is no paper of Objective Truth. You read it and other papers to get educated about the world. It is meant to be read critically. At least the writes can create grammatically correct english paragraphs, unlike the WSJ.
This is my concern exactly. For instance here in Texas we have this lunatic religious fundamentalist terrorist who doesn't believe he should have to pay taxes to the wonderful country homes his family, business, and fellow countrymen.
This guy has made threats on his web site against the United States, and specifically against the AG, pledging that the wrath of god will destroy any official who moves against him. This clearly a dangerous man. If there is a reason to have anti-terrorism law, he and his form or Christianity are it. And yet he remains at large while our useless Texas representative go after kids downloading music.
The value of an HOV lane is that reduces automobile trips. There have been a lot of talk that carpool lanes, or HOV lanes, do not work. It depends on the location, but if there is a lot of sprawl, and there is bus services to the suburbs, the HOV does work. It encourages some people to share rides, and more importantly it provides added incentive to ride the bus. The lanes work so well, in fact, that in some cases the minimum people in a car is increased to 3 during peak hours. Since the purpose is to cut down on the number of vehicles on the road, and not to minimize drive time, the lanes are meeting the objective.
The reason that the HOV lanes appear not to be working, i.e. traffic is getting worse, is that people are moving further and further out from where they work, and then expecting 'government' to magically come up with money and other resources to provide them with the infrastructure they deserve. Of course some of these people moved out of the city specifically so they would not have to pay for such services. In many places extraordinary amounts of money is being spent providing services for people who think they shouldn't have to pay for them.
In any cases, the main concern should be the present users of the lanes. If the HOV lanes become too crowded, then some drivers may stop using them and we end up with the original pollution and fuel consumption problems.
The purpose of the HOV lane is to reduce automobile trips, and as a result pollution and fuel consumption. The speed of the HOV lane is a reward to those people who share rides. The lanes also increase the desirability of taking the bus from the suburbs to central business districts. These services have helped quite a bit in keeping traffic tolerable.
The value of such a service, if we choose to open the lane to single occupancy vehicles, can be determined by looking at other type of paid traffic, like toll roads. This can be used as a baseline, then perhaps double or trebled to get a starting price. If there are not enough purchasers, then the price can be lowered.
The goal has to be protection of the current users.
This could be a real boon for those juggling lovers. If the phone can learn the preferences of each person you sleep with, there will be no more embarrassment of accidently taking the vegetarian to the steak house.
In my mind the art of the album is a smokescreen. I believe some artists work to make an album a wonderful listening experience from one beginning to end. They put in touches that can only be enjoyed at high fidelity. They interlace the songs and vary the emotion to create a moving experience. I will even stipulate that most of the listed artist work to do create such an effect.
I also believe that a true artist creates works that can and should be enjoyed as a subset. One does not have to listen to the entire performance of Swan Lake
to be moved by oft played love theme. One can enjoy a photograph of a Kandinsky painting, even though it is difficult to appreciate the colors and textures.
Which is to say that the current protest is still about money. Look at the artists. They are all reasonable good. I own stuff from most of them. However, most of these artist are either at the end of their career, with no new blockbusters, or looking toward a time when they have no more block busters. How will they make money. Well, traditionally, they would put out over priced boxed sets, which the retail chains can sell, and do cross promotions for comeback tours and the like. The die hard fan will buy the boxed set just out of loyalty, and the casual fan might buy the boxed set because they never bought the original albums.
But what happens now? All but the most die hard fan is not going to buy the boxed set because they already have created the box set themselves. The low level fan is totally lost because they have already downloaded the 12 songs they like for $12, and certainly are not going to spend $20 to just to get the 3 more songs they hate. This is bad for the artist and label. They did not sell the albums up front. They cannot sell the compilations now. It screws up the business model.
The best example I have seen of this is on Apple with the song American Pie. Don McLean knows on which side his bread is buttered, and therefore does not sell this song alone. You can buy any other song on the album as single, but not this one. It makes good business sense to do this, but don't insult our intelligence by claiming artistic integrity.
This, of couse, is why an article like this is quite useless. There is no basis for comparison. The numbers are just presented in a vacuum. For instance, most retail will more up thier cost 100% to cover cost of doing bussinees. The fact that the markup is only 66% might be generous. Likewise, the 12% to artists clearly an average, as such a number is negotiated between the label and each artist.
One the essays in Salmon of Doubt, by the late Douglas Adams, talks about a sign on a bridge which stated the punishment for defacing the bridge would be exile to Australia. He was surprised that the bridge was still in one piece.
Adams then goes to ponder what one can say about a country where, at one time, one of the harshest punishment was exile to one the most beautiful places on Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Check you local laws. In some cases you do not have to prove that the email was unsolicited. A misleading subject line is sufficient to make the email prohibited.
What is an order of magnitude between friends
I can imagine such techniques to limit the availability of data. Today it is the 1% of the population who cannot use the image form. Tommorow it may be the few percents of users that do run IE. Next year it may the several percent of us who choose not to run MS validated hardware.
By demanding universal availability, we help insure that we will have access in the future.
A big issue with web is usability. Although it is not difficult for a competent web designer to make pages that are at least partially usable for all groups, and as a consequence more usable for the general population, many designers choose to make the pages unnecessarily complicate with roll over menus and small target areas in the name of "coolness."
The problem exists in computers over all as well. A good example is the mouse. While a multi-button mouse is efficient for most people, it is nearly impossible for a person with a hand disability to use. Therefore, any application that does not make accommodations for a single button mouse is ignoring a whole group of people, really for no reason other than laziness.
For instance, some prosecutors, if allowed to spout pseudo science, would have juries believe that a decedents matching DNA at a crime scene is 100% irrefutable evidence that the defendant was at the crime scene, which is absolutely untrue. Bayes Theorem tells us that there is a good probability that the match is accurate, like maybe 99%, but nowhere near the one in 10,000 that many believe. On the other hand, non-matching DNA is plenty good to introduce reasonable doubt. Try to explain Bayes theorem to a jury and you might as well call a mistrial.
The same is true for fingerprinting which has been widely abused. If a complete finger print matches a suspects fingerprint that is pretty good evidence, even without a lot of corroborating evidence. However, the partial print most often lifted of crime scenes is not good enough to match to a suspect. There is conjecture and interpretation involved. When the prosecutor claims that match is perfect, this is abuse of science.
Some will say that only tort lawyers would be afraid of judges vetting evidence. if that were true, why has this ruling had so little effect on judgments. The reality is that individual lawsuits are incredible hard to win, even harder to collect on, and requires the company to have done something really stupid. Stupid things include ignoring 200 hundred years of science attesting to the negative effects of tobacco or engineering cars in such a way that safety margins are ignored. Juries also do not like company feeding on peoples negative self esteem to make a profit, as was shown in the breast implant case. I tell you know that persons who love breasts love breasts of all sizes, and if they require a breast of a certain size psychological help is in order. There is no small breast disease. The case was lost not based on science, which was nonexistent, but because the companies were greedy. It is interesting to note that those judgments. which have been critized as unfair an extreme, has had no apparent effect on the medical industry as they are now marketing contact lenses and prescription skin care to children.
The GUI chain goes xerox->Lisa->Macintosh->(Windows)
X->(KDE|GNOME)
with some convergence
the memory management chain goes
DEC->Windows
The NT memory management, the only one that really worked, was written based on the DEC model.
Unix->(Macintosh(PMM) & Linux kernel)
In early 90's Apple moved to the page memory model
internet browsers
First WWW browers back in '93 for X and Macintosh
Mosaic released later that year for X, Macintosh and Windows
Netscape released browsers derived from the Mosaic codebase in early '94
Finally MS licenses Spyglass, also based of Mosaic, and released IE in mid '95
The main contribution of IE was the incredible horizontal scrolling text.
Honorable mention for Cyberdog
You are correct that MS will embrace and extend. They may also innovate. However, the UI is pretty much stolen. XP looks line OS X, not the other way around. The browser was pretty much stolen and extended as other companies thought up new features. The new longhorn file system has been thought about extensively for many years by many other people, for instance in 'The Humane Interface.' I am sure it is an amazing implementaton. I am also sure that like always, it is a feature mismash that sacrifices usability.
Many firms use Windows and Office because a large number of persons, not to mention the owners of the firms, are familiar with the software. This familiarity provides a significant comfort level. This is a great change from 20 years ago where most were not familiar with any microcomputer technology, and so it was truly a wide open game.
Which leads to how we teach our students? Do we teach them commands and processes by rote, explaining that such and such mouse movements are magic incantations that cause the Lord MS to bless us with text, figures, and presentation, or do we teach them critically that the computer is a tool, just like a microwave oven, and not every one will work the exact same way but there are fundamental similarities.
I hear the people back in the peanut gallery saying that students are too stupid to learn critical thinking and that may be true. But let me ask you this? Who is the more likely to have a lifetime of employment. A person who believes that the only OS is MS Windows or MacOS, or *nix, or the person who understands that all of these do similar things and is comfortable enough to go into an read a book the week before an interview and then go in a proudly claim they know the system and are willing to work on whatever tool the employer has.
OTOH it looks like this stuff will only effect Intel and MS products. Personally, I have always used Apple products myself. It has protected me from MS viral licenses. It has protected me from Intel's occasional desire to track all users. It is now protecting me from silly DRM schemes that do nothing but protect antique business models. Apple has done more for security by allowing the user to turn off HTML in mail.app that MS could possibly hope to do in a decade.
The same could be said for GNU/Linux and other non-MS users. For these users there are only three concerns. First, laws could be passed to require certain attributes in entire classes of software. For example, as the article suggests, all email and music might have to be signed with a CPU generated hash. Of course all advanced users know that such technology could be circumvented, and, even with laws against circumvention, such actions will routinely occur.
Second, the makers of Intel clone chips might, and probably will, succumb to pressure and include security features. This would be bad because right now OSS is very tied to Intel class chips. The solution to this is to build open hardware platforms around non-Intel class chips, and create OSS projects that run on such platforms. Intel may be a slave to MS, but AMD and others might be more scared of lost sales due to OSS moving to Motorola and IBM chipsets. In five years if OSS is still tied to the Intel instruction set, and Intel is only making chips that spy on the user, there will be no one to blame.
The third issue comes from a quote in the article
the system will also require a new generation of computer hardware, not only replacing the computer logic board but also peripherals like mice, keyboards and video cards
from this we can infer that MS intends to push DRM to all hardware connected to the CPU, which, of course, is the logical course of action. The issue is as above. OSS runs mostly on what is essentially MS hardware. If all MS hardware requires software that is cryptographically signed and externally validated, probably by MS related service, one wonders if OSS will exist. If OSS does exist, one wonders if it would have any purpose the user was still ultimately tied to MS licenses and security schemes.
This has always been the danger of the single environment ecosystem. The OSS people seem to forget how inherently dependent on MS whims they are. One wonders if some diversification might be in order.
First, most comments on /. want the artist to be compensated. Most see swapping files as a at worst a minimal net loss for artists, and at best a better alternative to the Clear Channel dominated commercial radio spectrum.
Second, the point of the quote is that no system exists that allows consumers to purchase music online. It is clear that consumers want music online. It is clear many are willing to pay. However, the labels are not willing to support any reasonable system to facilitate this. Therefore, people just steal the music.
As i said before, you have to make things cheaper and easier to buy than to steal. It is what keeps movie sales up. They put some much extra crap on the DVD that people want, and in most cases quickly make it available for $15, that is just mostly easier to buy.
Given the stock price the most that IBM should pay is $150 million, maybe $200 if they are being especially nice. Given the size of the original lawsuit, I suspect SCO wants something more in the neighborhood of $500 million dollars. In fact I can see SCO going to IBM a year ago and saying 'for $500 million I will nor ruin this skit!'
I suspect the situation remains largely the same. The $3 billion number is just the normal escalation as something goes to trial.
This is really something that SCO is doing to recoup the losses, and probably generate profits, for insiders. Most of the stock, almost 70%, is owned by insiders. Almost none of it is own by institutions. I wonder how much of the stock not owned by insiders is controlled by insiders. The theory of pumping up the stock price is probably invalid as the management is probably looking for a buyout based on nuisance, not on price.
If you have a TiVo you are probably not old, as old people wouldn't spend money on a TiVo. If you have a TiVo you probably have more money than sense, which is good because you are more likely to buy the $253 dollar bottle of diet pills or believe that drinking the right beer or driving the right car will get you a mate. So, I believe such statistics would be very useful for advertisers and would be applicable to the general population.
The question must be asked, now that they are not supporting it so there will be no costs in terms of upgrades, technical support, and the like, when, like Apple and Red Hat and so many others, are they going to put it up for a free download? After all System 7.5, which is not that much older than NT4, and about the same technological level, is available for free download. I suppose Apple will do the same thing for 8.X when OS X is up and running. Whether MS will do that for anything, remains to be seen.
The future these books, though, often do come true, mostly because the government and high minded literature pseudo intellectuals get together and discredit such fiction as trash. What is even more frightening is how much more simpler the dreaded effects are caused in reality. For example, in Fahrenheit 451 it took a walls covered in televisions to produce mind control. In reality, a single 20 to 40 inch set in every home is all that is needed.
If some businesses think they can patent everything and force competitors and customers to pay an exaggerated price, they will quickly learn the realities of the world says that when there comes a point where is just easier to destroy the troublemaker. IBM and ATT have both learned this lesson. MS due to the unusually corrupted corrupted U.S. government has yet to learn this lesson in full force.
Consumers steal music. Businesses steal software. MS validates the stealing of software by consumers by forcing large corporations to pay licensing fees so the agents of the company do not have to formally steal the software. What has been proven many times, in many countries, if that if there is no reasonable way to legally acquire what is wanted, people will steal it. The key is to make the legal acquisition easier than theft.
GNU/Linux is embedded. You can be sure that Apple, IBM, Sun, etc are all looking at this carefully. Patents aren't necessarily a problem. The current SCO is not a problem, and may be necessary to clarify some historical details. People who currently use OSS already probably have a good reason and aren't easily going to be scared away. If it does become a real problem, we may see the courts or markets enter a destructive mode to restore balance.
If this were a business I would agree with you. The fact that it was not well secured would not be negligence. However, this is a University. Universities, from what I have seen, have much stricter rules about what they can do with student data, and in general they take, or should take, the protection of student data much more seriously. The reality is that allowing strangers into the school computer is equivelent to allowing strangers into the secure room where the physical information is stored. Doing either is negligence, and doing either is allowing the data to be stolen.
As has been stated, they are going against people who trade large numbers of files. Sharing files is arguable a bad thing. Under many interpretations giving away music that you are not licensed to give away is illegal. One instance of this is renting a movie from Blockbuster and showing it at church or school. That is illegal, even though you never charged for the movie.
However, a business has a choice of how to against potential customers that break the law. For instance, Wal-Mart assumes every customer is a criminal and checks their bags on the way out. I generally don't shop at Wal-Mart because I prefer not to spend my time with the criminal element. The RIAA is taking a similar approach. By sending letters to people with unfortunately named files on their public directory structure, by threatening to trash a computer if it has any potentially threatening material, by threatening to sue every person who trades one file, the RIAA is acted beyond reasonability.
Does the RIAA have a right to protect it's copyrighted material? Absolutely. Do I have the right to complain about? Absolutely. Do I have the right to buy only used CDs from now on so I do not fund their abuse of the legal system? Absolutely.
They RIAA can do anything they wish, but the reality is that no one has ever bought every piece of music the possess. Teenagers have always swapped music. Most people have never cared that much about copy quality. I don't know of anyone who ever went out to replace a copy with an original just because the copy quality sucked. Customers buy music because they have a devotion to the quality of the artist, and if the artist of label is deemed as disrespectful to the customer, the customer will go away. The fact is that I do have the right to download some free music, if the artists and label says i can. This is really the radio and MTV thing all over again.
to wit some simple modifications might be:
1) Pay a monthly subscription fee, based on the number of rentals you wish to have out at once at total for month. This converts it to a cell phone like structure. 2) You may only keep for six months at which point the costumer is charged for the video. 3) And, oh, I don't know, charge a monthly fee to part of a club, not rent the films. for $20 a month you get access to a special members only web site that lets you check movies out of a library.
I also notice that netflix participates in the vile behavior of not letting you browse their site unless you accept their cookie. This is like a car salesperson not talking to you unless 'you are ready to buy.'
The problem is that such critical thinking is inefficient. Those who want schools to produce worker drones and cannon fodder do not wants the kids learning that authority is fallible. The executives do not want the public school kids competing with his private school educated children. The government does not want the ghetto kids knowing they are being screwed when Head Start gets gutted so the millionaire can own a 10th Porsche.
Believe me, almost every teacher wants to teach critical thinking. Almost every teacher would teach critical thinking if they did not have 35 students.
As an aside, I always find it funny when people are infuriated with the inaccuracy of the NYT. It is the paper of record, not the paper of truth. There is no paper of Objective Truth. You read it and other papers to get educated about the world. It is meant to be read critically. At least the writes can create grammatically correct english paragraphs, unlike the WSJ.
This guy has made threats on his web site against the United States, and specifically against the AG, pledging that the wrath of god will destroy any official who moves against him. This clearly a dangerous man. If there is a reason to have anti-terrorism law, he and his form or Christianity are it. And yet he remains at large while our useless Texas representative go after kids downloading music.
The reason that the HOV lanes appear not to be working, i.e. traffic is getting worse, is that people are moving further and further out from where they work, and then expecting 'government' to magically come up with money and other resources to provide them with the infrastructure they deserve. Of course some of these people moved out of the city specifically so they would not have to pay for such services. In many places extraordinary amounts of money is being spent providing services for people who think they shouldn't have to pay for them.
In any cases, the main concern should be the present users of the lanes. If the HOV lanes become too crowded, then some drivers may stop using them and we end up with the original pollution and fuel consumption problems.
The value of such a service, if we choose to open the lane to single occupancy vehicles, can be determined by looking at other type of paid traffic, like toll roads. This can be used as a baseline, then perhaps double or trebled to get a starting price. If there are not enough purchasers, then the price can be lowered.
The goal has to be protection of the current users.
This could be a real boon for those juggling lovers. If the phone can learn the preferences of each person you sleep with, there will be no more embarrassment of accidently taking the vegetarian to the steak house.
I also believe that a true artist creates works that can and should be enjoyed as a subset. One does not have to listen to the entire performance of Swan Lake to be moved by oft played love theme. One can enjoy a photograph of a Kandinsky painting, even though it is difficult to appreciate the colors and textures.
Which is to say that the current protest is still about money. Look at the artists. They are all reasonable good. I own stuff from most of them. However, most of these artist are either at the end of their career, with no new blockbusters, or looking toward a time when they have no more block busters. How will they make money. Well, traditionally, they would put out over priced boxed sets, which the retail chains can sell, and do cross promotions for comeback tours and the like. The die hard fan will buy the boxed set just out of loyalty, and the casual fan might buy the boxed set because they never bought the original albums.
But what happens now? All but the most die hard fan is not going to buy the boxed set because they already have created the box set themselves. The low level fan is totally lost because they have already downloaded the 12 songs they like for $12, and certainly are not going to spend $20 to just to get the 3 more songs they hate. This is bad for the artist and label. They did not sell the albums up front. They cannot sell the compilations now. It screws up the business model.
The best example I have seen of this is on Apple with the song American Pie. Don McLean knows on which side his bread is buttered, and therefore does not sell this song alone. You can buy any other song on the album as single, but not this one. It makes good business sense to do this, but don't insult our intelligence by claiming artistic integrity.
This, of couse, is why an article like this is quite useless. There is no basis for comparison. The numbers are just presented in a vacuum. For instance, most retail will more up thier cost 100% to cover cost of doing bussinees. The fact that the markup is only 66% might be generous. Likewise, the 12% to artists clearly an average, as such a number is negotiated between the label and each artist.
Adams then goes to ponder what one can say about a country where, at one time, one of the harshest punishment was exile to one the most beautiful places on Earth.