they want to kill the little guys off and just have the field to themselves.
What they want and what will happen is not the same. What will change is the format of the stations. Many will go to talk radio. Many others will go to Creative Commons and other inde content and ban any music with high cost. Not all stations will go home when the owner of the base ball says I'm taking my ball and going home. The game just changes to football or basketball.
Re:Product upgrade or Software upgrade?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, because you should trust dell, hp, or e-machines when it comes to building you a high quality reliable computer.
I can often buy a pre-assembled box with XP installed much cheaper than I can build my own box with a legal copy of XP. When I do, most of the time all the hardware works. What most often is a problem is removing all the demo trial crap they installed.
Many times it is cheaper to buy a pre-assembled box and wipe the free included OS and all the crud and it is still cheaper than building your own.
If you don't need Windows for Turbo Tax or other MS only critical application, then it is often times cheaper to build your own do you don't have to throw away things like motherboards, WiFi cards, and modems that are Windows only.
If you want to use the all in one scanner, fax, printer they try to include in your order, remember, there are only Windows drivers for it.
First thing they did (apart from searching for the sample for an hour or two) marked it with a wide fatty red stripe.
The engineer put on the stripe.
The scientist noticed it was easy to find if it was set on a sheet of white paper.
Product upgrade or Software upgrade?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Due to the issues I have had in the past with upgrades, I don't bother to do just software upgrades. Here are my reasons;
That old hardware was fine for running some stuff. An upgrade to just the software leaves the system in an unstable state with not all features hardware or software supported in most cases. Most of my systems are running the original OS on them with the exceptions where the usefullness of the new applications outweighed the loss of the old applications. For example, upgrading from Windows 98 and 2K to Ubuntu is a great move. I lose the upgrade patch cycle, endless security upgrades and AV upgrades and instead get a stable machine for web applications.
I still have my Windows 95 laptop. It is useless for online use and is a sitting duck. It still makes a great MIDI workstation sitting on my synth. It has no USB. It is at it's maximum capacity of EDO memory at 72 Megs. Upgrading the software would be a bad mistake.
More modern hardware gets Linux upgrades. It is relatively pain free. It provides stability and security with lots of new features. I don't have to spend a lot of money to find out if it won't work and needs a hardware upgrade to get it going. Too bad Vista does not have a free Live CD for testing old hardware.
I'll get a new purchased OS when it comes on the new hardware. Then it is up to the vendor to make sure everything is working and compatible. It saves a lot of headaches. I have not seen any reason to spend the money at this time.
DVD's are the highest consumer format for purchase.
And DVDs are not the same quality as the original movie, or even the same quality as they show on HBO HD or the network HD feeds.
A concert is a performance just like a movie in the theatre. Neither performance is sold to the consumer to take home.
When I buy a song from iTunes I can easily play the song on anyones CD Player, It is an inexact copy. There is a generation loss in the format change. This requires extra expense of time and materials. What you get from iTunes will not play in my players without modification. Burning a CD is one thing. Putting the iTunes digital track on an MP3 CD and having it play in my living room DVD player is entirely another. To do that, it's not add the song to the playlist and burn a 12 hour MP3 CD. It's burn and audio CD, Rip the audio CD to MP3 and burn the result. How about eliminate the brun and rip an audio CD steps. The investment in time and materials is a roadblock to using the format. For me it is a show stopper. I don't buy in incompatible formats in the first place even though they do permit burning a DRM audio CD.
I've bought plenty of songs to make a mix CD for other people and plays fine. You haven't made jukebox MP3 CD mixes for other people, otherwise you would have run into the burn, rip, extra steps. Burning a single album from an artist is one thing. Burning a MP3 CD with all 8 of an artists albums is much better.
Or you could tell iTunes that you want to manually manage the songs on the iPod and grab just that one song.
I think I saw something on newer iPods having the ability to manage more than one set of keys so it can have the keys to your songs from you PC and the keys for the songs from a PC not in your authorised 5 computers list. Older iPods do not have this ability and when a new key for the new song from a computer not in your list, you original key is lost so all of your original songs on the iPod are lost with it. When you get back home, you can re-sync and put the songs back and their keys, but then you would lose the key and ability to play that new song.
Am I missing anything. The above applies to the DRM tracks, not MP3's.
Did he buy a DVD or game instead of a song with DRM...Think about that statement for a minute....
I did. When I sell the DVD, it will play in your player just fine. It will play in all my players just fine unlike any DRM music format which won't play in most of my digital music players and certianly won't play on anybody else's player when I sell it on Craigslist.
DVD's are high quality (not compressed) unlike any DRM music store's product. iTunes tracks are not the same quality as CD tracks. DVD's are at DVD quality and can be resold, lent, borrowed, etc. with out a 3 day 3 play squirt requiring a re-purchase to transfer to a new owner.
Buying DRM music tracks is like buying a VHS tape of a DVD at the DVD price and having it locked to your player guranteed to not work in anybody else's player. No thanks. I'll stick with the original DVD instead. It will play in someone else's player.
What should this be telling them? People WILL purchase music online, they are willing to pay and not pirate.
That sould be "some are willing to pay and not pirate."
Some are not willing to pay high prices for an incompatible product of marginal quality. This is where their sales are off. I buy DVD's instead. They are cheaper and I retain the right of first sale (Craigslist or ebay). DVD's play on any DVD player I own and will work on somebody elses DVD player later. The quality is very good.
Not a single DRM music store is offering the same benefits of my cheaper DVD's. Any DRM music store has marginal bitrates, fair quality, high prices, and incompatiblity with several of my media players and all of someone elses. There is no right of first sale. The track is incompatible with anyone else's player. I can even find DVD's of old cartoons at Wal-Mart for around a dollar. Seen any legal music CD's of old (back catalog) classics for near a dollar lately?
I don't know that it's quite as difficult as you make it out to be. You can burn music purchased from the iTunes music store to CD, and then import that CD back back to your computer in MP3 format.
I've hear that again and again. Here is the problem, barier to entry.. It has a real world expense of 3 things.. Money, time and quality. You pay more for less. Your result is not a bit for bit same quality result. You have 3 generation losses in quality. Applel's DRM format at only 128K encoding to CD aduio and then from there into another inexact compression into MP3. Artifacts from each conversion are added together in the result, not eliminated by the re-encoding. The time needed and the expense of the raw materials are self evident except most pepole don't look at the fact the ID3 information is lost in the conversion process adding to the time requiremet to re-key that in manualy. Many poeple consider their lesiure time as worthless. I on the other hand value my time.
So why am I wasting my time here on Slashsot? I'm investing in a DRM free future through education and grass roots movement for consumer rights.
What I want to buy (compatibility & value) music the industry does not want to sell, and then they complain their sales numbers are poor.
I've voting against DRM'ed music with my money. Maybe they should count the votes. I do live in a free market economy. My vote counts. I may be outvoted by those buying DRM tracks, but my votes count and they are noticed in reduced sales.
I've been using ITMS and iTunes & I'm on my third iPod. I can't say I've ever felt restricted in my ability to move the content I bought between devices, back it up etc.
They are upset because their DRM is not industry wide. Take your iPod and subscribe to Yahoo Music.. The device DRM is not universal. Tunes from the iTunes store won't work on your brother's Zune. The industry (music) wants DRM. They don't want partitioning of the market between Apple, Real, and Microsoft. They want anybody's DRM songs to be bought from any DRM music store.
Its EASY for people to transfer from iPod to iPod Only within severe limits. Try this.. Take your iPod to your friends house. Try putting one track from his iTunes library onto your iPod. Congratulations, you added the one song, but deleted all the other itunes songs on the player.
At least with my MP3 player, I can add tracks from work, home, my laptop, and from a library computer while traveling. I bought an MP3 player that supports nobodys DRM. It's the only format I use because it works. All DRM formats are incompatible with at least 4 of my digital media players.
This works pretty much the same with DVDs & co-workers.
In a dorm it is easy to find someone with the same music taste. Find what you like while walking down the hall and inquire within. At work where they don't permit speakers, finding who has what is a lot more difficult.
""We're running out of time," Ted Cohen, managing director of music consulting firm TAG Strategic, told the roughly 200 attendees. "We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again."
Correction, It's control. If it were about money, they would listen to consumers and provide the value they demand. Providing tracks that are low bit quaility (well modest at best), low quality (compressed removing dynamic range and S/N ratio to just be loud), at a high price, and being incompatible with my living room DVD player, car stereo, my Linux PC, and my flash player is a way to provide a low value product. Top that off with the loss of right of first sale. (try selling a used iTunes track on ebay) They then gripe that sales are poor. Umm Hey guys, it's clue stick time. How about some value in your product?
I buy $10 DVD's. I can sell them for $8-$10 when I am done if I want. I do not buy $ a track DRM stuff they expect me to recycle with my used newspapers when I'm done. A whole newspaper is less expensive and has more value than a DRM music track.
It almost drives me to find the song elsewhere. I said almost.
So pray tell, how did you vote on the DRM issue with your pocketbook? Did you not buy the DRM track and do without? Did you buy a DVD or game instead? or did you vote for DRM by buying the DRM track?
There is a lot of tracks I don't find elsewhere. I also don't vote for DRM with my pocketbook. emusic is your friend. There are alternatives to voting for DRM with your money.
I bought a laptop computer instead of buying DRM music tracks.
Personal responsibility and ownership of one's actions goes a long way here. Having that fast Internet connection sure makes it tempting to build your music library with P2P, but it's essential to understand the potential consequences and to also understand that you don't need to have that music -- and if you just can't do without music, there are plenty of free and legal sources. Trust me: I got through all seven years of college without once firing up a P2P app. Those kids could have, too.
I can certianly see a few pissed kids wanting to share the damage back to the RIAA. Somehow I see entire external hard drives loaded with MP3s being passed down the dorm hall for everyone to take a copy and add to the library just to spite the RIAA. The sneaker net will be back in full force. I remember those days with 12 inch LP's and cases of blank cassette tapes.
Portable hard drives are like cassette tapes on steroids. I have a 400 gig one. Too bad I'm no longer in a dorm.
Well, this is part of the problem with the patent system. SCO can sue people that use systems, and not just those making them. Since, in fact, the people using the patented systems are committing actual infringement (i.e. using a system that is under patent, without a license).
If that is the case, then I better stop using Windows as it is very clear I do not have license to use all the patented systems in it. I need to stop using a DVD player for the same reason.. Um Apple, Sans Disk, RCA, Iriver, and any other MP3 player.. Do any of them have proper licenses to play MP3 files? How is an end user to know?
Hopefully this case will show how this whole patent thing is wrong and steps will be taken to fix it.
For those who think the MP3 patent will expire in 2010, you better have old codecs handy. New patented improvements have been rolled into the format. Check the Fraunhofer website for a list of the patents they have in the MP3 format.
I don't have deep pockets, so I don't expect to be sued for the MP3 players I have.
If you believe Alcatel-Lucent's lawyers and the court, then Microsoft did not have a 'fully paid up license'.
So why didn't they sue Fraunhofer for selling the license in the first place? I would hate to buy a copy of Vista and have Apple sue me for having a 3D desktop.
This is like SCO suing Auto Zone instead of suing Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Knoppix,...
They sued a licensee, not the licensor. I smell a rat.
Couldnt Dell just use hardware that is compatible with SUSE (the SUSE people probably have a list somewhere...), and then pass the burden of software support along to SUSE?
Do you think SUSE wants to bother trying to get the Dell all in one printers to work? I think Dell has some work set out if they want their ink sales department to be included.
The simple solution is to ship a hardware testing CD with the box and let whatever distribution provide the "support" for anyone installing it.
It may be a while before they are ready for the home market. There seems to be some compatiblilty issues with the all in one printers they try to include in the sales.
We shouldn't pretend that a patent cloud over MP3 means that everyone will move to Vorbis.
The chilling effect is the fact Microsoft did pay for the MP3 format. Even though they had a fully paid up license, another party claimed otherwise and won. It would be just like having a fully licensed copy of Windows Vista and Apple winning a lawsuit against you for the 3D desktop effects and winning.
It calls questions the liability of propery licensed software of any kind and expecialy software codecs. Having a license from the license holder is not good enough anymore. This alone may drive the move to formats without such an obvious liability.
Actually at some point in the future they would be required for that 13 inch tv/vcr combo that I keep in my kitchen.
At that time, the tech will be entrenched enough so the tuner does not add $200 to the price of a $125 tv set. That is when I will start replacing the smaller sets. If you check the FCC website, they have the deadlines set for what size set requires a tuner.
Deep link is here showing deadlines for 13 inch to 24 inch TV to include a digital tuner.
I should be able to start picking up small sets for the motorhome soon if the price is within reason. There should be a fire sale on small analog flatscreen TV sets soon as the deadline nears.
I agree with the other posters, they're just setting this up for a failure so they have a "look see!" business case for DRM.
The ace on our side which will eat that arrogance for lunch is emusic. They provide higher quailty at lower prices without DRM and pay the artists more. Artists are starting to notice and migrate. Consumers follow. This is going to be very difficult for the DRM die hards to explain.
Value sells. High prices, low quality, and high restrictions are a killer combination. Getting all 3 wrong is obsolence as the door is wide open to the competition to take your market. Bye-bye DRM. Apple has 3 of the 3 half right which is the only reason they are doing OK. They refused to raise prices and limited the damage from DRM and at a modest bitrate. Someone with a good catalog with great prices, less (no) DRM, and quality bitrates are going to clean up the market. emusic is building catalog and customer base.
I haven't seen the numbers, but I think emusic is growing at a faster rate percentage wise than i-Tunes.
Slashdot Mirror
they want to kill the little guys off and just have the field to themselves.
What they want and what will happen is not the same. What will change is the format of the stations. Many will go to talk radio. Many others will go to Creative Commons and other inde content and ban any music with high cost. Not all stations will go home when the owner of the base ball says I'm taking my ball and going home. The game just changes to football or basketball.
Yeah, because you should trust dell, hp, or e-machines when it comes to building you a high quality reliable computer.
I can often buy a pre-assembled box with XP installed much cheaper than I can build my own box with a legal copy of XP. When I do, most of the time all the hardware works. What most often is a problem is removing all the demo trial crap they installed.
Many times it is cheaper to buy a pre-assembled box and wipe the free included OS and all the crud and it is still cheaper than building your own.
If you don't need Windows for Turbo Tax or other MS only critical application, then it is often times cheaper to build your own do you don't have to throw away things like motherboards, WiFi cards, and modems that are Windows only.
If you want to use the all in one scanner, fax, printer they try to include in your order, remember, there are only Windows drivers for it.
I can do better with a can of black spray paint... not just low reflectivity, no reflectivity.
7 4
Umm the reflectivity of black paint is listed here..
Look about halfway down the page at table 2. Black paint is listed.
http://www.concretethinker.com/Papers.aspx?DocId=
First thing they did (apart from searching for the sample for an hour or two) marked it with a wide
fatty red stripe.
The engineer put on the stripe.
The scientist noticed it was easy to find if it was set on a sheet of white paper.
Due to the issues I have had in the past with upgrades, I don't bother to do just software upgrades. Here are my reasons;
That old hardware was fine for running some stuff. An upgrade to just the software leaves the system in an unstable state with not all features hardware or software supported in most cases. Most of my systems are running the original OS on them with the exceptions where the usefullness of the new applications outweighed the loss of the old applications. For example, upgrading from Windows 98 and 2K to Ubuntu is a great move. I lose the upgrade patch cycle, endless security upgrades and AV upgrades and instead get a stable machine for web applications.
I still have my Windows 95 laptop. It is useless for online use and is a sitting duck. It still makes a great MIDI workstation sitting on my synth. It has no USB. It is at it's maximum capacity of EDO memory at 72 Megs. Upgrading the software would be a bad mistake.
More modern hardware gets Linux upgrades. It is relatively pain free. It provides stability and security with lots of new features. I don't have to spend a lot of money to find out if it won't work and needs a hardware upgrade to get it going. Too bad Vista does not have a free Live CD for testing old hardware.
I'll get a new purchased OS when it comes on the new hardware. Then it is up to the vendor to make sure everything is working and compatible. It saves a lot of headaches. I have not seen any reason to spend the money at this time.
DVDs are not compressed?
DVD's are the highest consumer format for purchase.
And DVDs are not the same quality as the original movie, or even the same quality as they show on HBO HD or the network HD feeds.
A concert is a performance just like a movie in the theatre. Neither performance is sold to the consumer to take home.
When I buy a song from iTunes I can easily play the song on anyones CD Player,
It is an inexact copy. There is a generation loss in the format change. This requires extra expense of time and materials. What you get from iTunes will not play in my players without modification. Burning a CD is one thing. Putting the iTunes digital track on an MP3 CD and having it play in my living room DVD player is entirely another. To do that, it's not add the song to the playlist and burn a 12 hour MP3 CD. It's burn and audio CD, Rip the audio CD to MP3 and burn the result. How about eliminate the brun and rip an audio CD steps. The investment in time and materials is a roadblock to using the format. For me it is a show stopper. I don't buy in incompatible formats in the first place even though they do permit burning a DRM audio CD.
I've bought plenty of songs to make a mix CD for other people and plays fine.
You haven't made jukebox MP3 CD mixes for other people, otherwise you would have run into the burn, rip, extra steps.
Burning a single album from an artist is one thing. Burning a MP3 CD with all 8 of an artists albums is much better.
Or you could tell iTunes that you want to manually manage the songs on the iPod and grab just that one song.
I think I saw something on newer iPods having the ability to manage more than one set of keys so it can have the keys to your songs from you PC and the keys for the songs from a PC not in your authorised 5 computers list. Older iPods do not have this ability and when a new key for the new song from a computer not in your list, you original key is lost so all of your original songs on the iPod are lost with it. When you get back home, you can re-sync and put the songs back and their keys, but then you would lose the key and ability to play that new song.
Am I missing anything. The above applies to the DRM tracks, not MP3's.
Did he buy a DVD or game instead of a song with DRM...Think about that statement for a minute....
I did. When I sell the DVD, it will play in your player just fine. It will play in all my players just fine unlike any DRM music format which won't play in most of my digital music players and certianly won't play on anybody else's player when I sell it on Craigslist.
DVD's are high quality (not compressed) unlike any DRM music store's product. iTunes tracks are not the same quality as CD tracks. DVD's are at DVD quality and can be resold, lent, borrowed, etc. with out a 3 day 3 play squirt requiring a re-purchase to transfer to a new owner.
Buying DRM music tracks is like buying a VHS tape of a DVD at the DVD price and having it locked to your player guranteed to not work in anybody else's player. No thanks. I'll stick with the original DVD instead. It will play in someone else's player.
What should this be telling them? People WILL purchase music online, they are willing to pay and not pirate.
That sould be "some are willing to pay and not pirate."
Some are not willing to pay high prices for an incompatible product of marginal quality. This is where their sales are off. I buy DVD's instead. They are cheaper and I retain the right of first sale (Craigslist or ebay). DVD's play on any DVD player I own and will work on somebody elses DVD player later. The quality is very good.
Not a single DRM music store is offering the same benefits of my cheaper DVD's. Any DRM music store has marginal bitrates, fair quality, high prices, and incompatiblity with several of my media players and all of someone elses. There is no right of first sale. The track is incompatible with anyone else's player. I can even find DVD's of old cartoons at Wal-Mart for around a dollar. Seen any legal music CD's of old (back catalog) classics for near a dollar lately?
I don't know that it's quite as difficult as you make it out to be. You can burn music purchased from the iTunes music store to CD, and then import that CD back back to your computer in MP3 format.
I've hear that again and again. Here is the problem, barier to entry.. It has a real world expense of 3 things.. Money, time and quality. You pay more for less. Your result is not a bit for bit same quality result. You have 3 generation losses in quality. Applel's DRM format at only 128K encoding to CD aduio and then from there into another inexact compression into MP3. Artifacts from each conversion are added together in the result, not eliminated by the re-encoding. The time needed and the expense of the raw materials are self evident except most pepole don't look at the fact the ID3 information is lost in the conversion process adding to the time requiremet to re-key that in manualy. Many poeple consider their lesiure time as worthless. I on the other hand value my time.
So why am I wasting my time here on Slashsot? I'm investing in a DRM free future through education and grass roots movement for consumer rights.
What I want to buy (compatibility & value) music the industry does not want to sell, and then they complain their sales numbers are poor.
I've voting against DRM'ed music with my money. Maybe they should count the votes. I do live in a free market economy. My vote counts. I may be outvoted by those buying DRM tracks, but my votes count and they are noticed in reduced sales.
I've been using ITMS and iTunes & I'm on my third iPod. I can't say I've ever felt restricted in my ability to move the content I bought between devices, back it up etc.
They are upset because their DRM is not industry wide. Take your iPod and subscribe to Yahoo Music.. The device DRM is not universal. Tunes from the iTunes store won't work on your brother's Zune. The industry (music) wants DRM. They don't want partitioning of the market between Apple, Real, and Microsoft. They want anybody's DRM songs to be bought from any DRM music store.
Its EASY for people to transfer from iPod to iPod
Only within severe limits. Try this.. Take your iPod to your friends house. Try putting one track from his iTunes library onto your iPod. Congratulations, you added the one song, but deleted all the other itunes songs on the player.
At least with my MP3 player, I can add tracks from work, home, my laptop, and from a library computer while traveling.
I bought an MP3 player that supports nobodys DRM. It's the only format I use because it works. All DRM formats are incompatible with at least 4 of my digital media players.
This works pretty much the same with DVDs & co-workers.
In a dorm it is easy to find someone with the same music taste. Find what you like while walking down the hall and inquire within. At work where they don't permit speakers, finding who has what is a lot more difficult.
Other than that... Shhhh. it happens.
""We're running out of time," Ted Cohen, managing director of music consulting firm TAG Strategic, told the roughly 200 attendees. "We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again."
Correction, It's control. If it were about money, they would listen to consumers and provide the value they demand. Providing tracks that are low bit quaility (well modest at best), low quality (compressed removing dynamic range and S/N ratio to just be loud), at a high price, and being incompatible with my living room DVD player, car stereo, my Linux PC, and my flash player is a way to provide a low value product. Top that off with the loss of right of first sale. (try selling a used iTunes track on ebay) They then gripe that sales are poor. Umm Hey guys, it's clue stick time. How about some value in your product?
I buy $10 DVD's. I can sell them for $8-$10 when I am done if I want. I do not buy $ a track DRM stuff they expect me to recycle with my used newspapers when I'm done. A whole newspaper is less expensive and has more value than a DRM music track.
It almost drives me to find the song elsewhere. I said almost.
So pray tell, how did you vote on the DRM issue with your pocketbook? Did you not buy the DRM track and do without? Did you buy a DVD or game instead? or did you vote for DRM by buying the DRM track?
There is a lot of tracks I don't find elsewhere. I also don't vote for DRM with my pocketbook. emusic is your friend. There are alternatives to voting for DRM with your money.
I bought a laptop computer instead of buying DRM music tracks.
Or set the useragent so the website would send them the page instead of a IE required nag page.
What, at Slashdot? I think not.
So who sets it up per site visited?
Personal responsibility and ownership of one's actions goes a long way here. Having that fast Internet connection sure makes it tempting to build your music library with P2P, but it's essential to understand the potential consequences and to also understand that you don't need to have that music -- and if you just can't do without music, there are plenty of free and legal sources. Trust me: I got through all seven years of college without once firing up a P2P app. Those kids could have, too.
I can certianly see a few pissed kids wanting to share the damage back to the RIAA. Somehow I see entire external hard drives loaded with MP3s being passed down the dorm hall for everyone to take a copy and add to the library just to spite the RIAA. The sneaker net will be back in full force. I remember those days with 12 inch LP's and cases of blank cassette tapes.
Portable hard drives are like cassette tapes on steroids. I have a 400 gig one. Too bad I'm no longer in a dorm.
"oh, uh, well, I guess it's people having to use IE at work, or something..."
Or set the useragent so the website would send them the page instead of a IE required nag page.
Well, this is part of the problem with the patent system. SCO can sue people that use systems, and not just those making them. Since, in fact, the people using the patented systems are committing actual infringement (i.e. using a system that is under patent, without a license).
If that is the case, then I better stop using Windows as it is very clear I do not have license to use all the patented systems in it. I need to stop using a DVD player for the same reason.. Um Apple, Sans Disk, RCA, Iriver, and any other MP3 player.. Do any of them have proper licenses to play MP3 files? How is an end user to know?
Hopefully this case will show how this whole patent thing is wrong and steps will be taken to fix it.
For those who think the MP3 patent will expire in 2010, you better have old codecs handy. New patented improvements have been rolled into the format. Check the Fraunhofer website for a list of the patents they have in the MP3 format.
I don't have deep pockets, so I don't expect to be sued for the MP3 players I have.
If you believe Alcatel-Lucent's lawyers and the court, then Microsoft did not have a 'fully paid up license'.
So why didn't they sue Fraunhofer for selling the license in the first place? I would hate to buy a copy of Vista and have Apple sue me for having a 3D desktop.
This is like SCO suing Auto Zone instead of suing Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Knoppix,...
They sued a licensee, not the licensor. I smell a rat.
Couldnt Dell just use hardware that is compatible with SUSE (the SUSE people probably have a list somewhere...), and then pass the burden of software support along to SUSE?
Do you think SUSE wants to bother trying to get the Dell all in one printers to work? I think Dell has some work set out if they want their ink sales department to be included.
The simple solution is to ship a hardware testing CD with the box and let whatever distribution provide the "support" for anyone installing it.
It may be a while before they are ready for the home market. There seems to be some compatiblilty issues with the all in one printers they try to include in the sales.
We shouldn't pretend that a patent cloud over MP3 means that everyone will move to Vorbis.
The chilling effect is the fact Microsoft did pay for the MP3 format. Even though they had a fully paid up license, another party claimed otherwise and won. It would be just like having a fully licensed copy of Windows Vista and Apple winning a lawsuit against you for the 3D desktop effects and winning.
It calls questions the liability of propery licensed software of any kind and expecialy software codecs. Having a license from the license holder is not good enough anymore. This alone may drive the move to formats without such an obvious liability.
Actually at some point in the future they would be required for that 13 inch tv/vcr combo that I keep in my kitchen.
/ FCC-05-190A1.pdf
At that time, the tech will be entrenched enough so the tuner does not add $200 to the price of a $125 tv set. That is when I will start replacing the smaller sets. If you check the FCC website, they have the deadlines set for what size set requires a tuner.
Deep link is here showing deadlines for 13 inch to 24 inch TV to include a digital tuner.
PDF aleart.. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch
I should be able to start picking up small sets for the motorhome soon if the price is within reason. There should be a fire sale on small analog flatscreen TV sets soon as the deadline nears.
I've got a projector. No built-in HD tuner there..
Which is why there is a limited supply of set top boxes.
They are not for the 13 inch tv/vcr combo unit you keep in the kitchen.
I agree with the other posters, they're just setting this up for a failure so they have a "look see!" business case for DRM.
The ace on our side which will eat that arrogance for lunch is emusic. They provide higher quailty at lower prices without DRM and pay the artists more. Artists are starting to notice and migrate. Consumers follow. This is going to be very difficult for the DRM die hards to explain.
Value sells. High prices, low quality, and high restrictions are a killer combination. Getting all 3 wrong is obsolence as the door is wide open to the competition to take your market. Bye-bye DRM.
Apple has 3 of the 3 half right which is the only reason they are doing OK. They refused to raise prices and limited the damage from DRM and at a modest bitrate. Someone with a good catalog with great prices, less (no) DRM, and quality bitrates are going to clean up the market. emusic is building catalog and customer base.
I haven't seen the numbers, but I think emusic is growing at a faster rate percentage wise than i-Tunes.