Yes, but you've got to realize that the theft alluded to by the Slashdot story, as explained in the article, was that of a record executive getting a copy of an analyst's report without paying the $895 to Forrester to have that copy. If a song valued at ~$1 (observed price for an electronic copy of a song from iTMS) is worth $150,000, then Forrester should sue the record executive for $134.25 million dollars! Let's see how the RIAA like a taste of their own medicine!
Raw creativity? I hear that in Massachusetts, they now have to put a warning at the bottom of the paint that reads something like: "This creativity is raw, partially raw or creatively structured per order. Consuming them may increase your risk of mental illness.""
Say that now. How will you feel when you try to take a picture of the bug that popped up in Windows, and for some reason the screenshot shows the system working fine? When you take a screenshot, you want it to be a picture of "what you see now".
Forget ExtremeTech's article, and go check out the one at The Tech Report. According to Gabe Newell of Valve, one of the graphics card companies was trying to detect when a screen shot was being made, so that it could output a higher resolution frame, hiding the quality trade-offs made by the driver. From the article: "He also mentioned that he's seen drivers detect screen capture attempts and output higher quality data than what's actually shown in-game."
Before I sold my consoles (I moved out of the U.S. and haven't gotten around to buying local versions yet), I had a Gamecube and a PS deux (yes, I'm in France now). The Gamecube, which has much less software than the PS2, I used to play Zelda, Metroid, Pikmin, Mario, Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros., and Super Monkey Ball. This basically breaks down into two categories, platformers and party games. On the PS2, I played Ico, Dance Dance Revolution, and Squaresoft games. I looked at the Xbox, and sort of envied the Xbox Live thing...
Anyway, what it all comes down to is that each console serves a certain area the best. If you want platform games, you get a Gamecube. If you want DDR, Square, or edgy games, you get a PS2, and if you want online play, you get an Xbox...
In the long term, the financial stability of software vendors and the legality of their software products are more important to enterprise customers than free software.
I think the enterprises customers can speak for themselves on this matter, and they clearly have spoken...
In enterprise installations, it is customary for the customer to be charged an additional 15% of whatever they payed for the software each year for maintenance. (which ends up being about 13% of the total).
Let's take a theoretical enterprise customer who owns 12,428 computers (you'll see the reason for the oddball number in a moment). Now, if they just spent $700 per client on software, plus an additional 15% on maintenance, they've spent about 10 million in total. Now let's assume that the client software was free, but the maintenance stays the same, then the company has gone from spending 10 million, to ~1.3 million. Now let's suppose that someone at this company likes round numbers, so they take an additional.7 million and hire 10 people (at a nice $70k/position). The company has just saved 8 million dollars (!!!), and now has an additional team of 10 developers whose sole job is to make sure that the client software works best in their environments... The customer doesn't have to re-release this code, because they're not selling it, so no liability for them. And even if they decide to (which we hope they will), it's not part of their product line, so they're not directly helping their competitors...
Face it, McBride, enterprise customers are the ones for whom it makes the most sense to go to free software, and to not put all of their eggs in one basket (software company).
The reason the Darl McBride's of the world don't like Open Source is it takes large amounts of money that went to a single company, where it could be nicely controlled and funneled to the top of the hierarchy (CEOs and the like), and instead distributes it in smaller amounts, spread out, and only to the people who can get the work done.
The large corporations of the world are spending this money anyway, and Open Source is just a way for the doers (developers, admins, e.g. instead of deciders/managers) to take a share.
I know it sounds awfully corny, but in a society that's doing it's best to recreate nobility and privilege, open source is way of taking some power back for the people. The cathedral creates centralization of power and wealth, which lead to class hierarchies. The bazaar distributes power, which leads to an educated and informed participant, and higher standards of living for the majority.
How about instead of sounding all high and mighty about graffiti art, you go and actually check out this guys art gallery? If you had, (you know, the whole RTFA thing?), you'd see that he has five galleries, one of which is of subway cars, which is definitely a no-no in New York City. Remember the whole Clean Car program? He does have a gallery of commissioned work, which gives his some credit, but there is no question as to whether or not he is a "person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them costing the city money to clean up their crap." HE IS. The proof is there for anyone to see on this guy's website!
I admit, I've seen some graffiti that enhanced, rather than detracted from the environs, but you'll be hard pressed to find ANY graffiti artist who hasn't at one time or another "published art" without permission...
Don't kid yourself... Almost NO ONE except from Microsoft will turn this on. It's possible today to lock down shares, folders, and individual files with NTFS permissions, but it's too much hassle for most companies, so everything is left wide open... And don't forget that the CEO who needs to have his email printed by his secretary in order to read it will always have paper copies conveniently lying around...
Ahh, but you've missed the point... This is a relatively inexpensive (Read the article) upgrade to a phone that can change it from a cell phone that can take pictures, to a device that is both a cell phone AND a camera. There's a big difference between being able to take pictures with something, and being able to use that same thing as a replacement for a dedicated camera. We're not talking about pro-level manual control, we're talking about the el-cheapo auto-focusing that is done in entry level consumer cameras. (As opposed to the no-focus of disposable cameras). With the cost of multi-megapixel CCDs coming down, the cell phone manufacturer who gets an exclusive contract on this tech will own this market.
Unfortunately, to be safe, you have to load the library in a debugger, and are only allowed to look at the data being sent to the chip, or returning from the chip. That would be reverse engineering the driver. However, unless there was a licensing agreement prohibiting it, dissasembling the driver to learn how it works is a legal way to learn how to use the chip, so long as your end goal is not writing a drop-in replacement for the library. Think of it like this: Reading from a book on programming is learning, and legal. Copying from a book on programming (whether word for word, or paraphrasing) in order to write your own book on programming is illegal.
So, this person asks you to do his homework for him, and because it's interesting, you fall all over yourselves to help him? I can't wait until the Harvard vs. Slashdot (Replace with University of your choice.) plagiarism case.:)
Do you feel software publishers should have the right to peer into users data, if their software suspects foul play on the machine, or should it do the easy and intelligent thing and just stop working?
He... he he... ha ha... <Breaks out onto the floor in hysterical fits of laughter> No, no, this is Slashdot, you see...
Seriously, though, I've often installed cracks on software I own, just because I don't feel like dealing with the hastle (need to have the CD for no reason, etc.). I use a laptop without a built in CD drive, which means that a large amount of software would be completely unusable to me when I'm away from my home, and that's just simply unacceptable. I'm not just talking about games here, either...
When will the publishers realize that a little sharing (what most call piracy) is a good thing? They accept that promotional copies generate buzz, and more sales, but electronic copies, which don't cost them to distribute, automatically destroy sales?
I've read all of the books in the Honor Harringtion series by David Weber, either through the library, or borrowing from a friend. When the latest book came out, my friend who introduced me to the series, had just moved to Washington (from Boston), so he took the CD that came with it, and sent me an e-book version of the book. (From the CD: "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold", emphasis not mine.)
After reading it and enjoying it, I picked up a copy next time I was at the book store, and to my great surprise, it included not just the other books in the series on the CD, but 26(!) other books by Baen authors. Some of which, no doubt, after reading, will cause me to buy more books because I enjoyed the authors' writing style. These are authors I would never have been exposed to, if not for a little sharing. Check out the Baen Free Library to read some books from a publisher that gets it...
Think about the word. Copyright. They have it (they being the owner/distributer), you don't. Therefore they have the right to make copies of this work. They have sold you a copy of this work. You're allowed to do anything you want with it, so long as you don't copy it, because you don't have the copy right. (Unless that copying is covered under the very hazy "Fair Use"). That's it. If you lose/destroy/scratch the copy, that's your tough luck. (Which is why a backup copy is so often allowed under "Fair Use".)
Copyright law is so straightforward, that I don't understand why people don't get it. There is NO license involved whatsoever, you just aren't allowed to copy what is copyrighted. The GPL is a license that you can enter into with a party that has the copyright on a work that transfers some limited copy rights to you that are dependant on the license's conditions...
The problem with electronic distribution is that it's so ephemeral, making copies doesn't require intent, you might just accidentally copy the work if the CTRL key is pressed (on Windows) when you really just wanted to move it. Now, court cases have allowed backups, traditionally (e.g. the Sony case), and ripping/encoding can be seen as a form of backup, so no judge has had the temerity to try to outlaw this form of copying, but this is probably the greatest extent to which copyright law will be stretched...
Class action lawsuits are a joke. They're pursued by small lawyers who realize that if enough people join, they'll be the ones making the money... Remember, most class-action lawsuits are settled, not won...
What is needed is for someone who is seriously wronged to get a good lawyer to do the work Pro Bono, and win the case. This will open up the door for all the okay lawyers to win in the other cases after the established precedent.
You can bet that somebody is going to figure out how to open it and extract the images without destroying the camera, and then Ritz camera is going to have a loss leader on their hands.
It's going to be just like the cuecat. Many, many geeks are going to acquire them, and not recycle them in the way that allows Ritz to make it's money back...
But nowhere in the article does it mention that the wrestler has trademarked the name, just that he has used it. If he had trademarked the name back in 1988 (when the article says he started using it), he'd lose for failing to uphold his trademark in the years since the videogame was released.
If my name were Gordon Freeman, and I was a local musician, I couldn't sue Valve for "stealing my identity". (Gordon Freeman is the name of the main character in Half-Life) The case could only be won if it turns out that the character was actually modelled after the wrestler, which I highly doubt. The Wachowski brothers have a better chance of suing (do you remember the Max Payne demo that took place in The Matrix's lobby?).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but you've got to realize that the theft alluded to by the Slashdot story, as explained in the article, was that of a record executive getting a copy of an analyst's report without paying the $895 to Forrester to have that copy. If a song valued at ~$1 (observed price for an electronic copy of a song from iTMS) is worth $150,000, then Forrester should sue the record executive for $134.25 million dollars! Let's see how the RIAA like a taste of their own medicine!
Raw creativity? I hear that in Massachusetts, they now have to put a warning at the bottom of the paint that reads something like: "This creativity is raw, partially raw or creatively structured per order. Consuming them may increase your risk of mental illness.""
Say that now. How will you feel when you try to take a picture of the bug that popped up in Windows, and for some reason the screenshot shows the system working fine? When you take a screenshot, you want it to be a picture of "what you see now".
Forget ExtremeTech's article, and go check out the one at The Tech Report. According to Gabe Newell of Valve, one of the graphics card companies was trying to detect when a screen shot was being made, so that it could output a higher resolution frame, hiding the quality trade-offs made by the driver. From the article: "He also mentioned that he's seen drivers detect screen capture attempts and output higher quality data than what's actually shown in-game."
Before I sold my consoles (I moved out of the U.S. and haven't gotten around to buying local versions yet), I had a Gamecube and a PS deux (yes, I'm in France now). The Gamecube, which has much less software than the PS2, I used to play Zelda, Metroid, Pikmin, Mario, Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros., and Super Monkey Ball. This basically breaks down into two categories, platformers and party games. On the PS2, I played Ico, Dance Dance Revolution, and Squaresoft games. I looked at the Xbox, and sort of envied the Xbox Live thing...
Anyway, what it all comes down to is that each console serves a certain area the best. If you want platform games, you get a Gamecube. If you want DDR, Square, or edgy games, you get a PS2, and if you want online play, you get an Xbox...
What a dilemna for moderators... Do you moderate +1 Informative for reposting a slashdotted text, or -1 Troll for the content? Hmmm....
It contains such juicy tidbits like:
In the long term, the financial stability of software vendors and the legality of their software products are more important to enterprise customers than free software.I think the enterprises customers can speak for themselves on this matter, and they clearly have spoken...
In enterprise installations, it is customary for the customer to be charged an additional 15% of whatever they payed for the software each year for maintenance. (which ends up being about 13% of the total).
Let's take a theoretical enterprise customer who owns 12,428 computers (you'll see the reason for the oddball number in a moment). Now, if they just spent $700 per client on software, plus an additional 15% on maintenance, they've spent about 10 million in total. Now let's assume that the client software was free, but the maintenance stays the same, then the company has gone from spending 10 million, to ~1.3 million. Now let's suppose that someone at this company likes round numbers, so they take an additional .7 million and hire 10 people (at a nice $70k/position). The company has just saved 8 million dollars (!!!), and now has an additional team of 10 developers whose sole job is to make sure that the client software works best in their environments... The customer doesn't have to re-release this code, because they're not selling it, so no liability for them. And even if they decide to (which we hope they will), it's not part of their product line, so they're not directly helping their competitors...
Face it, McBride, enterprise customers are the ones for whom it makes the most sense to go to free software, and to not put all of their eggs in one basket (software company).
The reason the Darl McBride's of the world don't like Open Source is it takes large amounts of money that went to a single company, where it could be nicely controlled and funneled to the top of the hierarchy (CEOs and the like), and instead distributes it in smaller amounts, spread out, and only to the people who can get the work done.
The large corporations of the world are spending this money anyway, and Open Source is just a way for the doers (developers, admins, e.g. instead of deciders/managers) to take a share.
I know it sounds awfully corny, but in a society that's doing it's best to recreate nobility and privilege, open source is way of taking some power back for the people. The cathedral creates centralization of power and wealth, which lead to class hierarchies. The bazaar distributes power, which leads to an educated and informed participant, and higher standards of living for the majority.
How about instead of sounding all high and mighty about graffiti art, you go and actually check out this guys art gallery? If you had, (you know, the whole RTFA thing?), you'd see that he has five galleries, one of which is of subway cars, which is definitely a no-no in New York City. Remember the whole Clean Car program? He does have a gallery of commissioned work, which gives his some credit, but there is no question as to whether or not he is a "person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them costing the city money to clean up their crap." HE IS. The proof is there for anyone to see on this guy's website!
I admit, I've seen some graffiti that enhanced, rather than detracted from the environs, but you'll be hard pressed to find ANY graffiti artist who hasn't at one time or another "published art" without permission...
Don't kid yourself... Almost NO ONE except from Microsoft will turn this on. It's possible today to lock down shares, folders, and individual files with NTFS permissions, but it's too much hassle for most companies, so everything is left wide open... And don't forget that the CEO who needs to have his email printed by his secretary in order to read it will always have paper copies conveniently lying around...
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
That is, unless, it's a 24 hour clock. And yes, there are 24 hour analog clocks... :p
Ahh, but you've missed the point... This is a relatively inexpensive (Read the article) upgrade to a phone that can change it from a cell phone that can take pictures, to a device that is both a cell phone AND a camera. There's a big difference between being able to take pictures with something, and being able to use that same thing as a replacement for a dedicated camera. We're not talking about pro-level manual control, we're talking about the el-cheapo auto-focusing that is done in entry level consumer cameras. (As opposed to the no-focus of disposable cameras). With the cost of multi-megapixel CCDs coming down, the cell phone manufacturer who gets an exclusive contract on this tech will own this market.
1) An operating system designed by a committee is going to fail.
What? You mean like Multics? But that's everywhe... oh...
For all the ladies reading slashdot:
In Soviet Russia, power source makes vibrations for YOU!
Unfortunately, to be safe, you have to load the library in a debugger, and are only allowed to look at the data being sent to the chip, or returning from the chip. That would be reverse engineering the driver. However, unless there was a licensing agreement prohibiting it, dissasembling the driver to learn how it works is a legal way to learn how to use the chip, so long as your end goal is not writing a drop-in replacement for the library. Think of it like this: Reading from a book on programming is learning, and legal. Copying from a book on programming (whether word for word, or paraphrasing) in order to write your own book on programming is illegal.
Every computer I've ever owned cost more to purchase than my current car. What's your point?
Priorities.
You obviously have yours well arranged. Good man...
:)
So, this person asks you to do his homework for him, and because it's interesting, you fall all over yourselves to help him? I can't wait until the Harvard vs. Slashdot (Replace with University of your choice.) plagiarism case. :)
He... he he... ha ha... <Breaks out onto the floor in hysterical fits of laughter> No, no, this is Slashdot, you see...
Seriously, though, I've often installed cracks on software I own, just because I don't feel like dealing with the hastle (need to have the CD for no reason, etc.). I use a laptop without a built in CD drive, which means that a large amount of software would be completely unusable to me when I'm away from my home, and that's just simply unacceptable. I'm not just talking about games here, either...
Yes.
I think not... Windows had syncing technology long before people began trying to sync Macs with anything (be it cell phones, or PDAs, etc.).
As did Linux...
Efficeon? This is why the marketing department is always the first to go when the IT guy snaps, and starts stalking the cubicles with an AK-47...
When will the publishers realize that a little sharing (what most call piracy) is a good thing? They accept that promotional copies generate buzz, and more sales, but electronic copies, which don't cost them to distribute, automatically destroy sales?
I've read all of the books in the Honor Harringtion series by David Weber, either through the library, or borrowing from a friend. When the latest book came out, my friend who introduced me to the series, had just moved to Washington (from Boston), so he took the CD that came with it, and sent me an e-book version of the book. (From the CD: "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold", emphasis not mine.)
After reading it and enjoying it, I picked up a copy next time I was at the book store, and to my great surprise, it included not just the other books in the series on the CD, but 26(!) other books by Baen authors. Some of which, no doubt, after reading, will cause me to buy more books because I enjoyed the authors' writing style. These are authors I would never have been exposed to, if not for a little sharing. Check out the Baen Free Library to read some books from a publisher that gets it...
Think about the word. Copyright. They have it (they being the owner/distributer), you don't. Therefore they have the right to make copies of this work. They have sold you a copy of this work. You're allowed to do anything you want with it, so long as you don't copy it, because you don't have the copy right. (Unless that copying is covered under the very hazy "Fair Use"). That's it. If you lose/destroy/scratch the copy, that's your tough luck. (Which is why a backup copy is so often allowed under "Fair Use".)
Copyright law is so straightforward, that I don't understand why people don't get it. There is NO license involved whatsoever, you just aren't allowed to copy what is copyrighted. The GPL is a license that you can enter into with a party that has the copyright on a work that transfers some limited copy rights to you that are dependant on the license's conditions...
The problem with electronic distribution is that it's so ephemeral, making copies doesn't require intent, you might just accidentally copy the work if the CTRL key is pressed (on Windows) when you really just wanted to move it. Now, court cases have allowed backups, traditionally (e.g. the Sony case), and ripping/encoding can be seen as a form of backup, so no judge has had the temerity to try to outlaw this form of copying, but this is probably the greatest extent to which copyright law will be stretched...
And lest I forget, I Am Not A Lawyer
Class action lawsuits are a joke. They're pursued by small lawyers who realize that if enough people join, they'll be the ones making the money... Remember, most class-action lawsuits are settled, not won...
What is needed is for someone who is seriously wronged to get a good lawyer to do the work Pro Bono, and win the case. This will open up the door for all the okay lawyers to win in the other cases after the established precedent.
You can bet that somebody is going to figure out how to open it and extract the images without destroying the camera, and then Ritz camera is going to have a loss leader on their hands.
It's going to be just like the cuecat. Many, many geeks are going to acquire them, and not recycle them in the way that allows Ritz to make it's money back...
But nowhere in the article does it mention that the wrestler has trademarked the name, just that he has used it. If he had trademarked the name back in 1988 (when the article says he started using it), he'd lose for failing to uphold his trademark in the years since the videogame was released.
If my name were Gordon Freeman, and I was a local musician, I couldn't sue Valve for "stealing my identity". (Gordon Freeman is the name of the main character in Half-Life) The case could only be won if it turns out that the character was actually modelled after the wrestler, which I highly doubt. The Wachowski brothers have a better chance of suing (do you remember the Max Payne demo that took place in The Matrix's lobby?).