Apple gives you a no-DRM file, and slaps a watermark on it so that, if you're so inclined to share it with wild abandon, they can ID you.
That's not nasty. That's fair. It's YOUR music file, and there are no technical limitations on what you can do with it. if you do the one thing you're not allowed to do with it, they'll be able to (*gasp!*) track down that you did it.
you're absolutey right. I mean, look at how quickly the meat packing industry cleaned up after The Jungle. Or how quickly the automobile industry rolled out seat belts and air bags to all their automobiles, even the cheap ones, just because it was a good idea.
Self-regulation is a fool's dream, moreso than industry by demand.
There's a HUGE difference between Amy Lee saying "Hey, that guitar solo's right out of The Open Door" and her saying "I'm suing you for making an unlawful derivative work." Or, to use physical law as a property, how about the difference between "You're on private property" and "I'm calling the Sherrif."
The victim of a tort, like patent infringement, always has the option of not going to court. The few apparent exceptions are cases where not acting may be a denial of ownership -- and in those cases, all you need to do is to get the offender to recognize your ownership.
WTF? so Internet Explorer's abysmal CSS/W3C complience means it is a quality product? No, IE is not a product. It is a free POS given away with Windows. (And the value of standards-compliance is exactly the dollar value that customers will pay for it. Notice how well Opera did with their for-sale browser?)
XP and other flavors of windows having the administrator account as default as well as other HORRIBLE, UNSPEAKABLE security policies means it is a quality product?
1: XP doesn't "default" you to "Root." It "defaults" you as a member of "Administrators", which is something subtly different.
2: Running as root on a local machine is hardly a major security sin. It's the rough equivalent of a sign-in sheet at a bank: nice to have, but the rest of your defenses should expect it to fail.
3: Customers want it to just work. They don't give two shits if the PC they read porn on is "secure" -- and if they do, they'll hire or pay someone to make it that way. Or they'll just go do a five-second web search, and get all the benefit of a more-secure default setting, along with the knowledge that security is a process, not a magic box.
I am starting to wonder what your idea of quality is... "Worth paying money for." Is there another definition of product quality I don't know about?
The only reason no one changes from MS office is due to the low pain threshold users have.
That's one way to say it. The other way to say it is "OOo isn't good enough." Your way is excusatory; mine is clearer.
OOo won't win until the pain threshhold is less than $100 a seat -- as in, "would you rather pay $100, or endure this?". I look forward to that day, and you thinking that it's already here doesn't help it come one second sooner.
MS has also been CONVICTED of leveraging it's OS to prevent all new comers from challenging.
Not in Office. Not in Visual Studio. The finding-of-fact was strictly based on pricing practices and bundling -- which MS doesn't do with either Office or Visual Studio because each is a money maker.
And, EVEN IF you spun off Office and Visual Studio, they'd still have huge marketshare (Office moreso than VS) because they really are worth the money.
Won't work, as you were unable to read the EULA due to your own unreasonable action. Same as if you tell your six-year old to do it, or if you intentionally get yourself legally drunk before you go to negotiate a business deal.
Re:"professional-level", what do you mean?
on
The History of Photoshop
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What do digital [SLR] cameras, high-spec computers, and [High-end] audio recording devices have in common?
They're all high-quality versions of previously existing products.
The first digital cameras were el-cheapo 35mm replacements. The first audio recording devices were essentially toys that just got better and better. And as for computers -- well, they're just an outgrowth of specialized adding machines.
The Republicrats and Democans enacted this and you voted for them asking for an intrusive and activist government. You have no room to complain now. You asked for this. By that logic, the libertarians are asking for broken roads, an end to education standards, and the conquest of the United States by Mexico.
Given the choice between total obliteration of our society and the fiscal raping of a few for-profit companies, I think we'll screw Real.
they can't compete based on the quality of their products, that's for sure But that's just it -- they do.
No one would ever use MS Office, or Visual Studio, or Windows, if there wasn't sufficient quality therein to justify the expense of staying. There are huge flaws and gaping shortcomings, to be sure, but somehow MS still manages to have enough quality over the free alerternatives that they stay in business.
If you think otherwise, I offer that you may not understand exactly what "quality product" means. A Ford Yarius might be a crappy toy car, but it's weird and efficient enough that it fits an exact niche big enough to earn a profit -- it is a quality product.
If the lack of a popular uprising that affects the country is a sign of democracy, then even North Korea is a democracy. Don't get silly. You get a D for reading comprehension.
The sign of a democracy is that a civil popular uprising has a clear effect on the government. This is in contrast to a tyranny, where the uprising doesn't happen at all, or an undemocratic regime, where the uprising has no effect.
The federal government today is notacbly, though subtly, different than it was twelve months ago. Our Democracy works.
Democracy hasn't seemed to work all that well lately, at least in a two party system.
What makes you think that? Did I miss a popular uprising that failed to affect the country?
Democracy is working just fine. If it seems like there's been little effect by the Nov 2006 elections, that's because only 4/12 of the federal democracy was up for review. Expect a stronger effect in 2008, when 10/12 will be up for review. And that 1/3 had more than a little effect, as the soon-to-pass immigration compromise underscores.
Ummm...excuse me but, what in the fuck are 8 year olds doing wandering about in the malls and other places without a parent/guardian in the first place?
Getting lost.
These kids are 3rd graders. They run around small towns hunting bugs, play sports, and are that odd combination of curiosity and bravery that leads them to get into all kinds of trouble. (Or be obnoxious and infuriating if you force them to stay by your side.)
A kid with a cell phone, OTOH, can just dial "Mom" and get himself un-lost. Or Mom can call and say "where are you?"
No, it isn't. "Normal" is a view where the text has the horizontal margins of the paper view, but no vertical margins. Page breaks happen in the background, and don't disturb the page.
In 2007 they re-named it "draft" view.
But proprietary is the clincher. It won't hurt now, but it will. Eventually.
Actually, it hurts now. To share a spreadsheet with my Linux friends, I need to either gut it or endure OOo.
It's just that using OOo hurts more. This is why MS has a finite lifespan -- eventually, the F/OSS software will be better, or close enough that MS can't make a profit on a price low enough to justify the purchase. But it's not there yet, which is why people still try Linux and then turn away in frustration.
But my point still stands: Is there some reason why customers (such as yourself) wouldn't want MS Office to support ODF? Nope. So long as there's 100% fidelity, there's NO reason to not support it.
So why do so many people with no vested interest in Microsoft seem to be so against a common format supported by multiple office suites? Because the ODF-side is engaging in FUD. One forced format is as bad as another, be it controlled by the government or a single company.
legislation mandating ODF should mandate a "Freely implementable XML format" or some other such language. Not ODF. Not OpenXML. The laws should be simple and clear, and agnostic towards Open or Closed software. If MS's "NewOpenXML" winds up being a billion times better than ODF, we shouldn't be tied to ODF by law.
To call mommy or daddy without talking to a stranger.
To call 9-1-1 when they are in danger.
For mommy or daddy to call them when they are lost in the mall.
Any child old enough to use a telephone is old enough to use a cell phone. And any parent with the means to provide their child a cell phone should. And those cell phones should be locked down to reference only a few numbers.
If the community moves to GPL3 it means that for the MS/Novell deal to continue they must branch their code and maintain their own branch.
The GPL3 will cause a GNU/Fork. There is enough money invested in customizing Linux et al that, even if Linux embraces GPL3 wholeheartedly, the non-GPL3'd system will maintain themselves indefinitely.
Why the FSF thinks this isn't so, or that trying to change the rules when the game's in play will work at all, is anybody's guess.
I have had the problem where people have sent me proprietary files and well, not owning Office meant I couldn't get the data. (OpenOffice didn't have compatibility with the new versions.) You, sir, are showing your ignorance. MS's new "OpenXML" file formats are far EASIER to get your information out of, not less. At the worst, you just unzip the darn file and read the XML. If you can do it with OOo files, you can do it with MS '07. (Where do you think they got the idea?)
The things that make MS office superior are, off the top of my head:
Breadth of features. OOo Write doesn't do list view, "full screen" view, or even the "normal" view. Last time I checked, calc has no "alt +;" shortcut to insert the current time. And OOo's bugzilla is filled with other missing features. What OOo does and MS doesn't (word auto-complete) doesn't outshadow the inverse.
Easy of extensibility: Anyone can fire up Office, "record" a macro, and see a native-VBA representation of how to do that in code. Do the same thing in OOo, and you get a series of function calls to an obscure "SunOffice" object model, in the language of your choice. Try and write a macro yourself, and MS gives you practially the full Visual Studio treatment: OOo gives you, well, code highlighting in the language of your choice.
Usability: MS spends a few million dollars a year on their interface, and everything from the help files to the control layouts is chosen, adjusted, and re-chosen do suit the customers. OOo's interface is somewhat haphazardly thrown together, with part being a new plan, part being a copy of MS Office, and part just whatever the designer thought would work for now. ("Word Count", a rather frequently used metric, is hard to find in OOo. In MS Word, it's a single menu command or less away.)
A few years back I peppered my journal with things that OOo did well and did not do well. A few months ago I tried recreating a custom spreadsheet from Excel in OOo. I paid $160 for the home version of Office, and I don't even have OOo on my PC anymore because using it is such a pain.
And let's not even get into the pain I suffered when I tried to get my friends & family to use OOo. Anything more than "here, it's free and legal" falls flat. If they aren't a Linux geek or aren't poor but honest, they don't use OOo -- because they have a superior product.
That appears more like reverse engineering to me, which IS legal.
In and of itself, for an in-house project? Sure. If it's patented it needs to be in the patent description, so fuddling around to better understand that patent (so you can use it the day it expires) is fine. If it's just copyritten, the ideas therein aren't protected.
But by and large, writing down the fingerings of a song isn't going after ideas -- it's going after the specific collection of them. It's like, as I say elsewhere, writing down the script of a play. Or to be/.ish, decompiling the source code of a compiled program. Doing it doesn't free you from copyright.
What's the difference between listening to a song so you can guess at the tablature and publishing that and Reading a book so you can publish a review (with spoilers and character names)? A matter of appropriate metaphor. A song is a perforamnce -- there is a copyright both on the actual sound produced and the original sheet music. Re-creating the sheet music is closer to watching a play, and writing your own line-pages for a production.
(And, FWIW, a review is a derivative work only allowable via Fair Use. Hew close enough to be derivitive (names, plots, et al) and use them in a way that isn't Fair Use (like, oh, making an RPG) and you'll get slapped with a lawsuit.)
By this logic a dictatorship is the only free system, because it includes the freedom to take away yours. And the system lives with that "freedom".
By this logic, I shouldn't be allowed to kick my daughter's boyfriend out of her room in my house, I'm shouldn't be able to keep people from smoking in my house, and I should be unable to turn off my TV.
Denial of freedom as a condition of some other free action is a necessary part of freedom. The only one who shouldn't be able to do that is the government, whose actions are only rarely "free".
Microsoft's shit-formats are designed to break with version changes.
No. They "were" designed to reflect the internal workings of the program, which means that whenever the program had a signficant change -- that is, a reason to upgrade -- they broke.
The new file format, being no more binary than a zip file, should be much more stable. Especially if they become a formal standard.
Microsoft will offer special free tools for everyone to convert away from plain old ODF to Extended ODF (aka a.doc file with angle brackets around it).
Sheesh.
1: MS's "OpenXML" format is not an outgrowth of ODF. It's an outgrowth of the five-year-old "OfficeML" XML language from Office 2003. All they did was copy OOo's "zip up the XML" idea.
2: MS offering free tools for anyone to convert from ODF to OpenXML, on top of the "safe as ODF" project they're working on for Office, will mean that we finally get what we've wanted for years from MS -- a file format that's independent of the program used to write it. I don't care if they're closed source nonredistributable binary freeware: MS speaking other file formats, and teaching others to speak theirs, is a GOOD THING.
Lobbying is the weakest part of US democracy. No, it isn't. That honor would go to the television news cycle.
Think about it -- the ONLY qualification for a lobbyist is an ability to connect those in power with people who really care about something. You don't need to get a license, or pass a test, or (AFAIK) even be a citizen. You cross the T's, dot the I's, and in most cases report what you spend and give so "Clinton supported the RIAA!" can be screamed in the next election. And when all that's said and done, the honorable whomever still gets to do whatever the heck they want to until the next election.
And the alternative is worse -- instead of sending professional intelligent people to Washington, they could just rally folk and spam Washington, drowning out any other issue.
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Apple gives you a no-DRM file, and slaps a watermark on it so that, if you're so inclined to share it with wild abandon, they can ID you.
That's not nasty. That's fair. It's YOUR music file, and there are no technical limitations on what you can do with it. if you do the one thing you're not allowed to do with it, they'll be able to (*gasp!*) track down that you did it.
you're absolutey right. I mean, look at how quickly the meat packing industry cleaned up after The Jungle. Or how quickly the automobile industry rolled out seat belts and air bags to all their automobiles, even the cheap ones, just because it was a good idea.
Self-regulation is a fool's dream, moreso than industry by demand.
These two statements are contradictory.
Not in the USA they're not.
There's a HUGE difference between Amy Lee saying "Hey, that guitar solo's right out of The Open Door" and her saying "I'm suing you for making an unlawful derivative work." Or, to use physical law as a property, how about the difference between "You're on private property" and "I'm calling the Sherrif."
The victim of a tort, like patent infringement, always has the option of not going to court. The few apparent exceptions are cases where not acting may be a denial of ownership -- and in those cases, all you need to do is to get the offender to recognize your ownership.
XP and other flavors of windows having the administrator account as default as well as other HORRIBLE, UNSPEAKABLE security policies means it is a quality product?
1: XP doesn't "default" you to "Root." It "defaults" you as a member of "Administrators", which is something subtly different.
2: Running as root on a local machine is hardly a major security sin. It's the rough equivalent of a sign-in sheet at a bank: nice to have, but the rest of your defenses should expect it to fail.
3: Customers want it to just work. They don't give two shits if the PC they read porn on is "secure" -- and if they do, they'll hire or pay someone to make it that way. Or they'll just go do a five-second web search, and get all the benefit of a more-secure default setting, along with the knowledge that security is a process, not a magic box. I am starting to wonder what your idea of quality is... "Worth paying money for." Is there another definition of product quality I don't know about?
The only reason no one changes from MS office is due to the low pain threshold users have.
That's one way to say it. The other way to say it is "OOo isn't good enough." Your way is excusatory; mine is clearer.
OOo won't win until the pain threshhold is less than $100 a seat -- as in, "would you rather pay $100, or endure this?". I look forward to that day, and you thinking that it's already here doesn't help it come one second sooner.
MS has also been CONVICTED of leveraging it's OS to prevent all new comers from challenging.
Not in Office. Not in Visual Studio. The finding-of-fact was strictly based on pricing practices and bundling -- which MS doesn't do with either Office or Visual Studio because each is a money maker.
And, EVEN IF you spun off Office and Visual Studio, they'd still have huge marketshare (Office moreso than VS) because they really are worth the money.
Won't work, as you were unable to read the EULA due to your own unreasonable action. Same as if you tell your six-year old to do it, or if you intentionally get yourself legally drunk before you go to negotiate a business deal.
What do digital [SLR] cameras, high-spec computers, and [High-end] audio recording devices have in common?
They're all high-quality versions of previously existing products.
The first digital cameras were el-cheapo 35mm replacements. The first audio recording devices were essentially toys that just got better and better. And as for computers -- well, they're just an outgrowth of specialized adding machines.
Given the choice between total obliteration of our society and the fiscal raping of a few for-profit companies, I think we'll screw Real.
No one would ever use MS Office, or Visual Studio, or Windows, if there wasn't sufficient quality therein to justify the expense of staying. There are huge flaws and gaping shortcomings, to be sure, but somehow MS still manages to have enough quality over the free alerternatives that they stay in business.
If you think otherwise, I offer that you may not understand exactly what "quality product" means. A Ford Yarius might be a crappy toy car, but it's weird and efficient enough that it fits an exact niche big enough to earn a profit -- it is a quality product.
The sign of a democracy is that a civil popular uprising has a clear effect on the government. This is in contrast to a tyranny, where the uprising doesn't happen at all, or an undemocratic regime, where the uprising has no effect.
The federal government today is notacbly, though subtly, different than it was twelve months ago. Our Democracy works.
how that mushy grey matter in the skull can "record" memories..
not too dissimilarly from how that magnetic dust on your HDD "records" a movie.
Imagine an OS that can edit its own hardware, and that continually customizes its own file allotment system. that's the brain.
Democracy hasn't seemed to work all that well lately, at least in a two party system.
What makes you think that? Did I miss a popular uprising that failed to affect the country?
Democracy is working just fine. If it seems like there's been little effect by the Nov 2006 elections, that's because only 4/12 of the federal democracy was up for review. Expect a stronger effect in 2008, when 10/12 will be up for review. And that 1/3 had more than a little effect, as the soon-to-pass immigration compromise underscores.
Ummm...excuse me but, what in the fuck are 8 year olds doing wandering about in the malls and other places without a parent/guardian in the first place?
Getting lost.
These kids are 3rd graders. They run around small towns hunting bugs, play sports, and are that odd combination of curiosity and bravery that leads them to get into all kinds of trouble. (Or be obnoxious and infuriating if you force them to stay by your side.)
A kid with a cell phone, OTOH, can just dial "Mom" and get himself un-lost. Or Mom can call and say "where are you?"
1. 'Print View' = 'Normal' view.
No, it isn't. "Normal" is a view where the text has the horizontal margins of the paper view, but no vertical margins. Page breaks happen in the background, and don't disturb the page.
In 2007 they re-named it "draft" view.
But proprietary is the clincher. It won't hurt now, but it will. Eventually.
Actually, it hurts now. To share a spreadsheet with my Linux friends, I need to either gut it or endure OOo.
It's just that using OOo hurts more. This is why MS has a finite lifespan -- eventually, the F/OSS software will be better, or close enough that MS can't make a profit on a price low enough to justify the purchase. But it's not there yet, which is why people still try Linux and then turn away in frustration.
legislation mandating ODF should mandate a "Freely implementable XML format" or some other such language. Not ODF. Not OpenXML. The laws should be simple and clear, and agnostic towards Open or Closed software. If MS's "NewOpenXML" winds up being a billion times better than ODF, we shouldn't be tied to ODF by law.
what does an 8 year old need a cell phone for?
To call mommy or daddy without talking to a stranger.
To call 9-1-1 when they are in danger.
For mommy or daddy to call them when they are lost in the mall.
Any child old enough to use a telephone is old enough to use a cell phone. And any parent with the means to provide their child a cell phone should. And those cell phones should be locked down to reference only a few numbers.
If the community moves to GPL3 it means that for the MS/Novell deal to continue they must branch their code and maintain their own branch.
The GPL3 will cause a GNU/Fork. There is enough money invested in customizing Linux et al that, even if Linux embraces GPL3 wholeheartedly, the non-GPL3'd system will maintain themselves indefinitely.
Why the FSF thinks this isn't so, or that trying to change the rules when the game's in play will work at all, is anybody's guess.
The things that make MS office superior are, off the top of my head:
A few years back I peppered my journal with things that OOo did well and did not do well. A few months ago I tried recreating a custom spreadsheet from Excel in OOo. I paid $160 for the home version of Office, and I don't even have OOo on my PC anymore because using it is such a pain.
And let's not even get into the pain I suffered when I tried to get my friends & family to use OOo. Anything more than "here, it's free and legal" falls flat. If they aren't a Linux geek or aren't poor but honest, they don't use OOo -- because they have a superior product.
That appears more like reverse engineering to me, which IS legal.
/.ish, decompiling the source code of a compiled program. Doing it doesn't free you from copyright.
In and of itself, for an in-house project? Sure. If it's patented it needs to be in the patent description, so fuddling around to better understand that patent (so you can use it the day it expires) is fine. If it's just copyritten, the ideas therein aren't protected.
But by and large, writing down the fingerings of a song isn't going after ideas -- it's going after the specific collection of them. It's like, as I say elsewhere, writing down the script of a play. Or to be
and
Reading a book so you can publish a review (with spoilers and character names)? A matter of appropriate metaphor. A song is a perforamnce -- there is a copyright both on the actual sound produced and the original sheet music. Re-creating the sheet music is closer to watching a play, and writing your own line-pages for a production.
(And, FWIW, a review is a derivative work only allowable via Fair Use. Hew close enough to be derivitive (names, plots, et al) and use them in a way that isn't Fair Use (like, oh, making an RPG) and you'll get slapped with a lawsuit.)
By this logic a dictatorship is the only free system, because it includes the freedom to take away yours. And the system lives with that "freedom".
By this logic, I shouldn't be allowed to kick my daughter's boyfriend out of her room in my house, I'm shouldn't be able to keep people from smoking in my house, and I should be unable to turn off my TV.
Denial of freedom as a condition of some other free action is a necessary part of freedom. The only one who shouldn't be able to do that is the government, whose actions are only rarely "free".
Meh. It's not that archaic. "King James" is used as an adjective, not a noun.
Clearest example: "Three day window." "one month notice." "superman complex."
(And, to the extent that it IS archaic, it's proper -- proper names of anything are always as they were when created.)
Microsoft's shit-formats are designed to break with version changes.
.doc file with angle brackets around it).
No. They "were" designed to reflect the internal workings of the program, which means that whenever the program had a signficant change -- that is, a reason to upgrade -- they broke.
The new file format, being no more binary than a zip file, should be much more stable. Especially if they become a formal standard.
Microsoft will offer special free tools for everyone to convert away from plain old ODF to Extended ODF (aka a
Sheesh.
1: MS's "OpenXML" format is not an outgrowth of ODF. It's an outgrowth of the five-year-old "OfficeML" XML language from Office 2003. All they did was copy OOo's "zip up the XML" idea.
2: MS offering free tools for anyone to convert from ODF to OpenXML, on top of the "safe as ODF" project they're working on for Office, will mean that we finally get what we've wanted for years from MS -- a file format that's independent of the program used to write it. I don't care if they're closed source nonredistributable binary freeware: MS speaking other file formats, and teaching others to speak theirs, is a GOOD THING.
Think about it -- the ONLY qualification for a lobbyist is an ability to connect those in power with people who really care about something. You don't need to get a license, or pass a test, or (AFAIK) even be a citizen. You cross the T's, dot the I's, and in most cases report what you spend and give so "Clinton supported the RIAA!" can be screamed in the next election. And when all that's said and done, the honorable whomever still gets to do whatever the heck they want to until the next election.
And the alternative is worse -- instead of sending professional intelligent people to Washington, they could just rally folk and spam Washington, drowning out any other issue.
"Cold temperatures" are noticably less than the body's acclimated temperature -- somewhere between 60 and 80, F.
"Fast speeds" are where we are moving faster than we typically do -- over 20mph on foot, or 15+ over the posted limit on a typical roadway.
"Far distances" are measured in time -- more than about 30 minutes travel time is "far".