OK, first, is Apple bad today? I thought they were good just the other day?
Second, I think Apple has every right to tell a distributor or reseller that they have to stop selling Macs with patched versions of iDVD and non-Apple DVD burners. After all, Apple wrote the software and they make the rules if you want to be an authorized (by...guess who...Apple...tada!) distributor or reseller.
That being said, I think it's fscked up that Apple would cripple software that comes with its SuperDrives so that it won't work with alternative DVD burners.
I mean, if I bought a Mac with a SuperDrive thereby getting iDVD, then I bought a different DVD burner from a third party...well, Apple's already got my money...and there's no reason iDVD shouldn't be allowed to work on the new drive as well...other than Apple is being pissy about it.
But then, I doubt Apple is going after people in this case. They just don't want dealers selling Macs without SuperDrives but including iDVD and the crack.
If we had the time to write everything exactly how we wanted, we would, but we really don't have the time, or the money typically, to do that.
Understood. We also buy software. But we write a lot more of it. And the more of it we write for ourselves, the more we realize it is generally just as cost effective as buying...but it usually does take more time. We find that the extra time taken is often justified because we get exactly what we want, we have no EULAs to worry over, and we are our best support.
How many times when you call a vendor for support on their app do you think the developers themselves get involved? Rarely. With our internal apps, the developers are almost always involved. Also, when you call a vendor, what is their vested interest in helping you? It's just about money. But if they can't help you, they still got their money off the licensing and supprot fees didn't they? When one of our internal apps has a problem, there's a strong urge to fix it...fast. You can bet there's way more incentive than a vendor may have.
While I'll grant you that I should indeed be a LOT slower to call people "morons & idiots"... this is slashdot, isn't it?
And I understand the EULA is crap. I understand the EULA says you might as well give up every last bit of freedom you thought you had and hand it over to Microsoft. And I understand that people bleating and griping about the EULA are not forced to accept it.
Our company does third-party medical billing. Our client systems run DOS. There is NO NEED for them to run Win-anything.
We wrote our own apps. You can too. We are looking to port the apps to Linux because it's pretty freaking simple, but there's little need. The apps run just fine as is. And the server where the database of client records exists does not run a Microsoft OS. By choice...you know...that thing I hear everybody saying they don't have.
Additionally, saying "Just use Linux" isn't a solution when all the custom software that people have and that is developed for lab work is done in a Windows32 environment.
...
We really don't have much of a choice in what OS to use, though, since if all the programs we need are only available in Win32 versions, that's what we'll use.
I think this is total bullshit. We have custom software (note that it's not for lab work) that is not written for Win32. How? We wrote our own. Saying "the only apps out there are win32" meaning you have no choice is a cop out. Write or hire someone to write your own. With the licensing fees you'll pay some company (probably in the many many thousands of $$ [USD]) you could likely pay someone to write an app to do just what you want in an alternative platform.
Your statements here simply strike me as the easy way out.
I get it. The EULA sucks. I know and agree. That's not to say there are not technical ways around it.
If my server runs Linux, Solaris, or NetWare (providing Sun and Novell don't have similar clauses in their EULAs) and my client systems run FreeDOS, Linux, OS/2, MacOS, or even Windows 2000 w/ SP3 it makes no difference.
In order for MS to have access to the records, they need access to the DB. If the DB is not on a system w/ an MS OS, they have no right to that machine. Period. Get it?
They can have all the access they want to the client systems...but they'd be hard-pressed to explain to the government why they needed a keylogger to capture user/password combos for accessing the DB on a NON-MS system.
Look, the point of HIPAA is that you have to do all you can to make the data secure from misuse. It doesn't mean you have to make it impossible. We've taken all the reasonable (and even some almost unreasonable) steps to make sure our patient data is and stays confidential.
If MS wants to butt in and abuse its EULA to argue they have a right to the data, the lawyers can fight it out. I'm confident this is not a problem.
It just strikes me as another reason for people on/. to bash MS...which I'm happy to do...but geez, people...I don't see how this is a problem for anyone other than small Dr's offices with only one system that may unfortunately be running Windows 2000...because if you're big enough to have two PCs, you're big enough to need a server...and there's all kinds of things you can do to keep this theoretical problem under control.
Very good point. In those cases, I am at a loss. I was thinking of it from our setup: several people accessing a central server with patient information.
If you're a standalone dentist's office though, I don't know...
Maybe if you knew me you could assume I'm not doing any HIPAA stuff. But you don't...and I am.
If my DB server is Oracle on Linux, Solaris, or even NetWare...and my PCs run FreeDOS (why medical billing apps need to be GUI is beyond me), I'm quite certain they are all compliant.
Even if I upgrade all the PCs to W2K w/ SP3 and they still only access those records through TERMINAL EMULATION software, MS can have all the access they want to those PCs. The EULA doesn't give them the right to run keylogging software on my PC and trap user/password combos.
If they can't login to the server, they can't access the records.
First off, if you're storing the medical records on individual workstations instead of a centralized database, you're a moron.
Seond, if you let your servers auto-update and apply patches from *ANY* vendor without doing your own testing and verification of those patches before hand, you're an idiot.
And third, if you don't have proper egress filtering and logging in place to make sure this isn't happening and know who keeps hitting the damn Windows Update buttons when they're not supposed to...then you're a fool.
It implements only the server side of exchange, client still depends on MS
Exchange client.
Not true. It has its own client software as well as a web interface. And it supports ANY POP3 or IMAP client. Of course, it supports MAPI (the Outlook interface) as well.
Many of us seldom handle paper money any more, in fact the vast majority of all "money" transactions do not actually use real government minted money anymore. The bits in the bank are the only money.
I respectfully disagree. Even paper money and coins are faux representations of gold sitting in Fort Knox. Well, actually, it started out that way, but the dollar is not really based on the value of gold anymore. It's more the promise of the US government to honor the amount printed on the paper.
At any rate, the bits themselves have no intrinsic value. And again, if someone alters the bank records to indicate the money I'm supposed to have belongs to them, they are altering the original. If they copy it such that they now have their own copy of the records that say some money belongs to me, it does no harm.
Am I to understand this that downloading music illegally is "kinda legal" as long as you don't like the music you download and thus would never have bought that piece of music?
Only if you understand wrong. I clearly stated that the copier likes it. Why the hell copy it if you don't like it? The point is the value associated with it. If the record company wants to say its value is $15, fine. If someone else believes it's worth $1, that's the value they apply to it...and if they can't get it for that amount or less, they'll do without. If a black market exists that lets them get it for $1, they are not robbing the music industry of $15. They would never buy it at $15 because it's only worth $1 to them.
As for sneaking into movies, etc., well if you sneak into a movie, you are possibly depriving the theatre of a sale of the seat you occupy to someone willing to pay...if the theatre is half-empty when you sneak in, and you're sneaking in not because you wanted to save the $8 for popcorn or whatever but perhaps because you haven't got the money, what is the harm? You're not hurting anyone and you accept the risk that if you get caught, you get thrown out. Big deal.
I think what people on the "copying is stealing" side of the argument fail to acknowledge is that with digital copying, the original is left intact. Sneaking into a movie takes a seat that would otherwise be occupied by a paying customer. Not paying your bus ticket does the same. These actions quite possibly do deprive someone of something. If I copy a song that I ain't gonna buy nowhere nohow from a friend, I am not depriving anyone of anything. The original is still intact. The company selling it can still sell it to customers who want to buy it.
Now, if I turn around and distribute that en masse to a bunch of strangers, I may be depriving someone of something because I have no way of knowing if those people would go buy that CD or not if I hadn't let them download it from me for free. So you see, I think there is a clear distinction between copying and distributing.
Also, I sense there's disdain that the argument I make gets into "intent" on the part of the downloader/copier. You seem to think I'm full of crap because I think intent has a lot to do with it. Well, a lot of laws on the books in a lot of countries deal with intent. You can do many a thing and if intent to do harm is not shown, it may not be considered a crime by the courts. So don't tell me intent is a bullshit argument. It's all over lawbooks and is obviously a globally understood principle of ethics.
And as for "try-before-buy", forgive me if I don't have the energy to trapse through a music store with my three kids, trying to get them to sit still for an hour while I listen to a CD before I decide whether it's worth the purchase. It ain't gonna happen. If I can download it or (even better) borrow it from a friend and listen to it on my way to/from work over a couple of days, I can decide whether to buy it or not without killing my children. There are fewer and fewer music stores that will let you return opened materials for a cash refund and I've found a perfectly acceptable (to me) alternative way of finding things to try before I buy that doesn't involve being hassled by store clerks and managers only to receive in-store credit.
I guess, overall, what I'm saying is that just like before "the digital age" when music was on cassettes, you could occassionally borrow and copy a friend's cassette, or even tape songs off the radio (I've done it) and there is no harm done. The music industry even got acclimated to it and only get their panties in a bunch when the *scale* of it gets big. So I would not share my music with anyone I didn't know personally offline because as much as people say people you know online are "friends" you can't really know someone until you've been around them physically for a while. And you can't really measure the intent of strangers...and intent matters.
But I don't think me ripping a track off my friend's CD is any more wrong than taping a song off the radio.
The bits in the banks computers are not my money. They are records. Just like paper records before them. They indicate that a real object somewhere belongs to me. Altering them so they say a real object somewhere belongs to someone else deprives me of that real object.
The bits in an MP3 represent sound. They do not represent a record of ownership of the music.
If someone copies the records in the bank that says I have X number of dollars, I still have X number of dollars. I couldn't care less. They aren't stealing them from me.
If I change the music stores computers to say whenever they buy those CDs to send the money to me instead of RIAA or some record label, that'd be analogous to your bank reference, and thusly would be stealing.
The example of someone hacking a bank account is a flawed analogy. Those bits in the bank's computer are a digital representation of a physical thing: the money in the bank's vault that belongs to me. If someone alters the representation that says that money belongs to them now, they deprive me of that physical thing: the money. Hence, they are stealing.
I am not rationalizing anything as I agree the US Courts would likely disagree with me if I were to use this argument as a legal defense of the action. But then, the US Courts for many many years believed that black persons were property, that women had no right to vote, that it was perfectly acceptable to discriminate against homosexuals, etc.
Point being, a court ruling may make it legally binding, but it doesn't make it the truth.
I could buy the Shrek soundtrack for $19 or I could buy the Shrek DVD for the same $19.
Example:
I purchased the Moulin Rouge DVD when it came out.
I *downloaded* the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack
Now I know the soundtrack is not to my liking
Now I will rip the audio from the DVD and make my own freaking soundtrack with the songs I want
This was the first album I downloaded off the net and I'm glad I have that "try-before-buy" option. Otherwise, I'd have a CD that I would be unhappy with that I couldn't return.
As it is, I get to make my own Soundtrack from the DVD and not only will I get what I want without paying for the soundtrack CD, it will be more fun than shopping.
When you steal property, you deprive someone of it.
When you steal something you otherwise would have paid for, you deprive someone of the revenue they would get from the sale.
When you make a copy of some digital bits that you only are willing to copy precisely because it costs you next to nothing, and honestly (there's the rub) would rather do without if it cost you more, you do not deprive anyone of anything.
You cannot steal revenue that would never be realized in the first place.
Let's say you like this one song, but not so much that you would ever pay $15 for a CD or even $5 for a single, even if that were the only way to get it...instead you'd just call up the radio, request it, wait for it, and enjoy it while it lasts...or otherwise just do without.
If you found yourself in this situation, downloading this song to listen to on your computer is not (do I actually need to add an IMHO?) stealing.
Copyright infringement, maybe. But stealing, no.
That being said, if the music industry offered product these "pirates" were interested in at *realistic* prices (as opposed to artificially maintained fixed prices) they might find a large contingent of "pirates" buying their product instead of "stealing" (wink, wink) it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is great and all, but will it let iDVD automatically detect my non-SuperDrive DVD burner?
OK, first, is Apple bad today? I thought they were good just the other day?
Second, I think Apple has every right to tell a distributor or reseller that they have to stop selling Macs with patched versions of iDVD and non-Apple DVD burners. After all, Apple wrote the software and they make the rules if you want to be an authorized (by...guess who...Apple...tada!) distributor or reseller.
That being said, I think it's fscked up that Apple would cripple software that comes with its SuperDrives so that it won't work with alternative DVD burners.
I mean, if I bought a Mac with a SuperDrive thereby getting iDVD, then I bought a different DVD burner from a third party...well, Apple's already got my money...and there's no reason iDVD shouldn't be allowed to work on the new drive as well...other than Apple is being pissy about it.
But then, I doubt Apple is going after people in this case. They just don't want dealers selling Macs without SuperDrives but including iDVD and the crack.
I find karaoke to be much more fun when you're the one liquored up.
How many times when you call a vendor for support on their app do you think the developers themselves get involved? Rarely. With our internal apps, the developers are almost always involved. Also, when you call a vendor, what is their vested interest in helping you? It's just about money. But if they can't help you, they still got their money off the licensing and supprot fees didn't they? When one of our internal apps has a problem, there's a strong urge to fix it...fast. You can bet there's way more incentive than a vendor may have.
While I'll grant you that I should indeed be a LOT slower to call people "morons & idiots" ... this is slashdot, isn't it?
And I understand the EULA is crap. I understand the EULA says you might as well give up every last bit of freedom you thought you had and hand it over to Microsoft. And I understand that people bleating and griping about the EULA are not forced to accept it.
Our company does third-party medical billing. Our client systems run DOS. There is NO NEED for them to run Win-anything.
We wrote our own apps. You can too. We are looking to port the apps to Linux because it's pretty freaking simple, but there's little need. The apps run just fine as is. And the server where the database of client records exists does not run a Microsoft OS. By choice...you know...that thing I hear everybody saying they don't have.
Your statements here simply strike me as the easy way out.
I get it. The EULA sucks. I know and agree. That's not to say there are not technical ways around it.
/. to bash MS...which I'm happy to do...but geez, people...I don't see how this is a problem for anyone other than small Dr's offices with only one system that may unfortunately be running Windows 2000...because if you're big enough to have two PCs, you're big enough to need a server...and there's all kinds of things you can do to keep this theoretical problem under control.
If my server runs Linux, Solaris, or NetWare (providing Sun and Novell don't have similar clauses in their EULAs) and my client systems run FreeDOS, Linux, OS/2, MacOS, or even Windows 2000 w/ SP3 it makes no difference.
In order for MS to have access to the records, they need access to the DB. If the DB is not on a system w/ an MS OS, they have no right to that machine. Period. Get it?
They can have all the access they want to the client systems...but they'd be hard-pressed to explain to the government why they needed a keylogger to capture user/password combos for accessing the DB on a NON-MS system.
Look, the point of HIPAA is that you have to do all you can to make the data secure from misuse. It doesn't mean you have to make it impossible.
We've taken all the reasonable (and even some almost unreasonable) steps to make sure our patient data is and stays confidential.
If MS wants to butt in and abuse its EULA to argue they have a right to the data, the lawyers can fight it out. I'm confident this is not a problem.
It just strikes me as another reason for people on
Very good point. In those cases, I am at a loss. I was thinking of it from our setup: several people accessing a central server with patient information.
If you're a standalone dentist's office though, I don't know...
Maybe if you knew me you could assume I'm not doing any HIPAA stuff. But you don't...and I am.
If my DB server is Oracle on Linux, Solaris, or even NetWare...and my PCs run FreeDOS (why medical billing apps need to be GUI is beyond me), I'm quite certain they are all compliant.
Even if I upgrade all the PCs to W2K w/ SP3 and they still only access those records through TERMINAL EMULATION software, MS can have all the access they want to those PCs. The EULA doesn't give them the right to run keylogging software on my PC and trap user/password combos.
If they can't login to the server, they can't access the records.
Not that the EULA doesn't suck anyway.
Most businesses that fail do so because of a number of influences. Not least among these is proper management or lack thereof.
Because Loki failed, one cannot argue there is no market. Only that Loki didn't work.
There may well be a thriving Linux games market, but Loki is a lesson in how not to tap it.
First off, if you're storing the medical records on individual workstations instead of a centralized database, you're a moron.
Seond, if you let your servers auto-update and apply patches from *ANY* vendor without doing your own testing and verification of those patches before hand, you're an idiot.
And third, if you don't have proper egress filtering and logging in place to make sure this isn't happening and know who keeps hitting the damn Windows Update buttons when they're not supposed to...then you're a fool.
And a fool and his job are soon parted.
Thank goodness I bought all those CDs!
Problem solved! Great solution!
Amen, Brother!
At any rate, the bits themselves have no intrinsic value. And again, if someone alters the bank records to indicate the money I'm supposed to have belongs to them, they are altering the original. If they copy it such that they now have their own copy of the records that say some money belongs to me, it does no harm.
As for sneaking into movies, etc., well if you sneak into a movie, you are possibly depriving the theatre of a sale of the seat you occupy to someone willing to pay...if the theatre is half-empty when you sneak in, and you're sneaking in not because you wanted to save the $8 for popcorn or whatever but perhaps because you haven't got the money, what is the harm? You're not hurting anyone and you accept the risk that if you get caught, you get thrown out. Big deal.
I think what people on the "copying is stealing" side of the argument fail to acknowledge is that with digital copying, the original is left intact. Sneaking into a movie takes a seat that would otherwise be occupied by a paying customer. Not paying your bus ticket does the same. These actions quite possibly do deprive someone of something. If I copy a song that I ain't gonna buy nowhere nohow from a friend, I am not depriving anyone of anything. The original is still intact. The company selling it can still sell it to customers who want to buy it.
Now, if I turn around and distribute that en masse to a bunch of strangers, I may be depriving someone of something because I have no way of knowing if those people would go buy that CD or not if I hadn't let them download it from me for free. So you see, I think there is a clear distinction between copying and distributing.
Also, I sense there's disdain that the argument I make gets into "intent" on the part of the downloader/copier. You seem to think I'm full of crap because I think intent has a lot to do with it. Well, a lot of laws on the books in a lot of countries deal with intent. You can do many a thing and if intent to do harm is not shown, it may not be considered a crime by the courts. So don't tell me intent is a bullshit argument. It's all over lawbooks and is obviously a globally understood principle of ethics.
And as for "try-before-buy", forgive me if I don't have the energy to trapse through a music store with my three kids, trying to get them to sit still for an hour while I listen to a CD before I decide whether it's worth the purchase. It ain't gonna happen. If I can download it or (even better) borrow it from a friend and listen to it on my way to/from work over a couple of days, I can decide whether to buy it or not without killing my children. There are fewer and fewer music stores that will let you return opened materials for a cash refund and I've found a perfectly acceptable (to me) alternative way of finding things to try before I buy that doesn't involve being hassled by store clerks and managers only to receive in-store credit.
I guess, overall, what I'm saying is that just like before "the digital age" when music was on cassettes, you could occassionally borrow and copy a friend's cassette, or even tape songs off the radio (I've done it) and there is no harm done. The music industry even got acclimated to it and only get their panties in a bunch when the *scale* of it gets big. So I would not share my music with anyone I didn't know personally offline because as much as people say people you know online are "friends" you can't really know someone until you've been around them physically for a while. And you can't really measure the intent of strangers...and intent matters.
But I don't think me ripping a track off my friend's CD is any more wrong than taping a song off the radio.
Feel free to call me crazy.
The bits in the banks computers are not my money. They are records. Just like paper records before them. They indicate that a real object somewhere belongs to me. Altering them so they say a real object somewhere belongs to someone else deprives me of that real object.
The bits in an MP3 represent sound. They do not represent a record of ownership of the music.
If someone copies the records in the bank that says I have X number of dollars, I still have X number of dollars. I couldn't care less. They aren't stealing them from me.
If I change the music stores computers to say whenever they buy those CDs to send the money to me instead of RIAA or some record label, that'd be analogous to your bank reference, and thusly would be stealing.
Websters does not a definitive legal answer make.
Your comment that my comment is false is false.
The example of someone hacking a bank account is a flawed analogy. Those bits in the bank's computer are a digital representation of a physical thing: the money in the bank's vault that belongs to me. If someone alters the representation that says that money belongs to them now, they deprive me of that physical thing: the money. Hence, they are stealing.
I am not rationalizing anything as I agree the US Courts would likely disagree with me if I were to use this argument as a legal defense of the action. But then, the US Courts for many many years believed that black persons were property, that women had no right to vote, that it was perfectly acceptable to discriminate against homosexuals, etc.
Point being, a court ruling may make it legally binding, but it doesn't make it the truth.
- I purchased the Moulin Rouge DVD when it came out.
- I *downloaded* the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack
- Now I know the soundtrack is not to my liking
- Now I will rip the audio from the DVD and make my own freaking soundtrack with the songs I want
This was the first album I downloaded off the net and I'm glad I have that "try-before-buy" option. Otherwise, I'd have a CD that I would be unhappy with that I couldn't return.As it is, I get to make my own Soundtrack from the DVD and not only will I get what I want without paying for the soundtrack CD, it will be more fun than shopping.
When you steal property, you deprive someone of it.
When you steal something you otherwise would have paid for, you deprive someone of the revenue they would get from the sale.
When you make a copy of some digital bits that you only are willing to copy precisely because it costs you next to nothing, and honestly (there's the rub) would rather do without if it cost you more, you do not deprive anyone of anything.
You cannot steal revenue that would never be realized in the first place.
Let's say you like this one song, but not so much that you would ever pay $15 for a CD or even $5 for a single, even if that were the only way to get it...instead you'd just call up the radio, request it, wait for it, and enjoy it while it lasts...or otherwise just do without.
If you found yourself in this situation, downloading this song to listen to on your computer is not (do I actually need to add an IMHO?) stealing.
Copyright infringement, maybe. But stealing, no.
That being said, if the music industry offered product these "pirates" were interested in at *realistic* prices (as opposed to artificially maintained fixed prices) they might find a large contingent of "pirates" buying their product instead of "stealing" (wink, wink) it.
Sorry. CD-RW.
I have an HP made by Samsung