I think the same mentality of entitlement which allowed people to basically electronically shoplift music via Napster ("Hey the record companies are making a lot of money so why should I pay for a record?") is the motivating factor behind people who gripe about paying $15 for a distribution of Linux. Somewhere the notion seems to have arisen that just because you can take a digital copy of something, you should be allowed to take that digital copy without paying anything for it. Not that anyone would ever confuse the people running the RIAA with saints but that does not justify the electronic equivalent of shoplifting either.
I think if anything could kill the Open Source movement it will be this sense of entitlement that seems to be so prevalent on the internet. People will not pay for something they think they're entitled to have for free whether they should pay or not.
-- Onorio Catenacci
-- "And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
Let me start by saying that while I don't think much of AOL's behavior in regard to opening up their IM, I don't think the consequences of their behavior come anywhere close to the stuff that Microsoft has pulled. So I really don't see why the FCC (or any other government agency) should be involved here.
If I were to compare the two circumstances (as many have done) while they might superficially seem similar, I think there are some quite salient differences.
First, IM is not as central to people's use of a PC to do productive work as an OS is. I mean, IM is neat but without an OS, one cannot even use the PC (or any computer for that matter).
Second, there are lots of viable alternatives to AIM. Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, IRC etc. etc. And there are OS alternatives to Windoze. However, no one forces PC manufacturers to load AIM on every machine.
And lest there be any mistake, I am not a Microsoft apologist. I detest their underhanded (and illegal) behavior.
In sum, while I think that AOL is stupid for not opening up AIM to as many users as want to use it, I'm tired of hearing people say that the government should force AOL to open it up. I have no problem with the government going after Microsoft but I think that is a different circumstance. They are two different things.
I now don my flameproof shorts and await the inevitable disagreements that such a statement is bound to engender
-- Onorio Catenacci
-- "And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
It seems like ChiliSoft must be thinking of the new Mac OS. Otherwise, why bother with a port?
This naturally leads to the question of how many websites they think are hosted on Mac now and how many they expect to be hosted on Macs running OS X. I can't believe there would be a lot of sites hosted on Macs. Of course, I can't imagine there can be much call for ASP on any *nix flavor because PHP/Perl/Python etc. etc. are free and they can do the job better than ASP. So maybe any increase in market share is a good thing from ChiliSoft's point of view.
All things considered, CmdrTaco, I think you did the smartest thing. While this is distasteful to all of us, as you say, it's just as important to know when not to fight as it is to fight hard when important principles are at stake.
I wonder if these two believed that nonsense that you see on a lot of the spams about HR 1605 which "makes it legal to spam as long as you include a method to get removed from the mailing list". Of course, if you go and look up that law, you'll see that it was never passed. Maybe these two started believing their own spam.
Considering the financial health of both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Com, I wonder if either of them will be in business long enough for this suit to get settled one way or the other.
You know I realize that the results of the last election are discouraging to a lot of people. However, consider that it was a peaceful transfer of power. I don't know but I do believe there are more than a handful of countries in this world where power is transferred at the end of a gun barrel.
We look at atrocities like the Rodney King beating and the death of that poor man in New York who was shot to death by the police and we say "We have horrid people working as policemen". But consider how many places, police forces simply abduct people and they're never heard from again.
You may or may not be a religious person. However, at least in this country being religious or not is your choice. There are countries in the world with state-mandated religions where people who do not practice that religion are disenfranchised and worse.
When you say corporate entities are gradually eroding our freedoms, I say that strikes me as being analogous to a rich, fat person complaining that his second helping of dessert didn't arrive yet. Being able to freely trade music on-line is nice but it's not exactly as essential to life as clean water (something we take for granted that's not available everywhere in the world).
We have it really good here in the US. Things are not perfect but this does seem to be the system that does the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
It's interesting that this article discusses the fact that the Catholic Church is trying to do something to address the so-called "Digital Divide" and so many people key on the fact that they're filtering porn. Yes, freedom of speech is important; however one should bear in mind that many of these poor people would have no access to the internet at all if it weren't for the Catholic Church helping them. I think that the church should be applauded for at least trying to address an issue of social justice. Maybe they could go about it in a better way but at least they're trying to do something to bridge the gap between the digital haves and have-nots.
There's a difference between the Iran, Afghanistan and this. In the case of Iran and Afghanistan, they controlled the legislatures and set up theocracies--their religious beliefs became law. In the case of the Phillipines, the church is acting as an ISP. If one does not agree with the church's filtering software all one has to do is either get a different ISP or not get on-line. No one is being forced to do anything; large difference between that and religious beliefs having the force of law.
You know the worst thing about this is that there may be a legal precedent about linking to someone else's page. I seem to recall that TicketMaster and someone else had a legal case regarding "deep linking". And if I remember correctly, the judge ruled that someone could not link to a site without the site's permission. So, unfortunately, there may be a legal precedent for charging people to link to your site. I hope that I'm remembering wrong or that the judges have a different interpretation of the law in this case.
--
"I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."
Actually, HM, I understand that in the case of punitive damages, how much money the firm being punished makes is a factor. I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that punitive damages are supposed to punish the company that's been found to be committing the wrong-doing. $1 million dollars is hardly punishing to Microsoft.
The only problem with this ruling is that the judge only fined Microsoft $1 million. Bill Gates makes more money than that in the time it takes him to say "We are not a monopoly".
The regulon in this case is simple supply and demand. If people did not give such high television ratings to events such as the OJ Trial, the Lewinski scandal etc. etc. no television network would bother to cover it beyond the two days that it would take to figure out that no one cares. Many people decry the media overkill; however, our media is not a charity. If we did not consume the product that the media produces, it would simply dry up and go away.
In a sense, we're not making more information; we're simply making better ways of getting the information to the consumer. To use the fish analogy--we're not growing more codfish, we're making it easier for the codfish to get to the predators that will ultimately consume them.
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I think the same mentality of entitlement which allowed people to basically electronically shoplift music via Napster ("Hey the record companies are making a lot of money so why should I pay for a record?") is the motivating factor behind people who gripe about paying $15 for a distribution of Linux. Somewhere the notion seems to have arisen that just because you can take a digital copy of something, you should be allowed to take that digital copy without paying anything for it. Not that anyone would ever confuse the people running the RIAA with saints but that does not justify the electronic equivalent of shoplifting either.
I think if anything could kill the Open Source movement it will be this sense of entitlement that seems to be so prevalent on the internet. People will not pay for something they think they're entitled to have for free whether they should pay or not.
--
Onorio Catenacci
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
Let me start by saying that while I don't think much of AOL's behavior in regard to opening up their IM, I don't think the consequences of their behavior come anywhere close to the stuff that Microsoft has pulled. So I really don't see why the FCC (or any other government agency) should be involved here.
If I were to compare the two circumstances (as many have done) while they might superficially seem similar, I think there are some quite salient differences.
First, IM is not as central to people's use of a PC to do productive work as an OS is. I mean, IM is neat but without an OS, one cannot even use the PC (or any computer for that matter).
Second, there are lots of viable alternatives to AIM. Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, IRC etc. etc. And there are OS alternatives to Windoze. However, no one forces PC manufacturers to load AIM on every machine.
And lest there be any mistake, I am not a Microsoft apologist. I detest their underhanded (and illegal) behavior.
In sum, while I think that AOL is stupid for not opening up AIM to as many users as want to use it, I'm tired of hearing people say that the government should force AOL to open it up. I have no problem with the government going after Microsoft but I think that is a different circumstance. They are two different things.
I now don my flameproof shorts and await the inevitable disagreements that such a statement is bound to engender
--
Onorio Catenacci
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
It seems like ChiliSoft must be thinking of the new Mac OS. Otherwise, why bother with a port?
This naturally leads to the question of how many websites they think are hosted on Mac now and how many they expect to be hosted on Macs running OS X. I can't believe there would be a lot of sites hosted on Macs. Of course, I can't imagine there can be much call for ASP on any *nix flavor because PHP/Perl/Python etc. etc. are free and they can do the job better than ASP. So maybe any increase in market share is a good thing from ChiliSoft's point of view.
All things considered, CmdrTaco, I think you did the smartest thing. While this is distasteful to all of us, as you say, it's just as important to know when not to fight as it is to fight hard when important principles are at stake.
Onorio Catenacci
I wonder if these two believed that nonsense that you see on a lot of the spams about HR 1605 which "makes it legal to spam as long as you include a method to get removed from the mailing list". Of course, if you go and look up that law, you'll see that it was never passed. Maybe these two started believing their own spam.
Onorio Catenacci
Considering the financial health of both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Com, I wonder if either of them will be in business long enough for this suit to get settled one way or the other.
You know I realize that the results of the last election are discouraging to a lot of people. However, consider that it was a peaceful transfer of power. I don't know but I do believe there are more than a handful of countries in this world where power is transferred at the end of a gun barrel.
We look at atrocities like the Rodney King beating and the death of that poor man in New York who was shot to death by the police and we say "We have horrid people working as policemen". But consider how many places, police forces simply abduct people and they're never heard from again.
You may or may not be a religious person. However, at least in this country being religious or not is your choice. There are countries in the world with state-mandated religions where people who do not practice that religion are disenfranchised and worse.
When you say corporate entities are gradually eroding our freedoms, I say that strikes me as being analogous to a rich, fat person complaining that his second helping of dessert didn't arrive yet. Being able to freely trade music on-line is nice but it's not exactly as essential to life as clean water (something we take for granted that's not available everywhere in the world).
We have it really good here in the US. Things are not perfect but this does seem to be the system that does the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
It's interesting that this article discusses the fact that the Catholic Church is trying to do something to address the so-called "Digital Divide" and so many people key on the fact that they're filtering porn. Yes, freedom of speech is important; however one should bear in mind that many of these poor people would have no access to the internet at all if it weren't for the Catholic Church helping them. I think that the church should be applauded for at least trying to address an issue of social justice. Maybe they could go about it in a better way but at least they're trying to do something to bridge the gap between the digital haves and have-nots.
There's a difference between the Iran, Afghanistan and this. In the case of Iran and Afghanistan, they controlled the legislatures and set up theocracies--their religious beliefs became law. In the case of the Phillipines, the church is acting as an ISP. If one does not agree with the church's filtering software all one has to do is either get a different ISP or not get on-line. No one is being forced to do anything; large difference between that and religious beliefs having the force of law.
You know the worst thing about this is that there may be a legal precedent about linking to someone else's page. I seem to recall that TicketMaster and someone else had a legal case regarding "deep linking". And if I remember correctly, the judge ruled that someone could not link to a site without the site's permission. So, unfortunately, there may be a legal precedent for charging people to link to your site. I hope that I'm remembering wrong or that the judges have a different interpretation of the law in this case.
--
"I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."
--New York City Detective
You know the choice isn't just between Mozilla and IE. There are other browsers available. You ever tried Opera? How about Lynx?
Actually, HM, I understand that in the case of punitive damages, how much money the firm being punished makes is a factor. I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that punitive damages are supposed to punish the company that's been found to be committing the wrong-doing. $1 million dollars is hardly punishing to Microsoft.
The only problem with this ruling is that the judge only fined Microsoft $1 million. Bill Gates makes more money than that in the time it takes him to say "We are not a monopoly".
The regulon in this case is simple supply and demand. If people did not give such high television ratings to events such as the OJ Trial, the Lewinski scandal etc. etc. no television network would bother to cover it beyond the two days that it would take to figure out that no one cares. Many people decry the media overkill; however, our media is not a charity. If we did not consume the product that the media produces, it would simply dry up and go away.
In a sense, we're not making more information; we're simply making better ways of getting the information to the consumer. To use the fish analogy--we're not growing more codfish, we're making it easier for the codfish to get to the predators that will ultimately consume them.