My girlfriend uses iTunes to buy music. I tried to explain to her why buying DRM'd music is a bad idea, and how she might lose it. As far as she's concerned, she can download it and send it to her iPod, and that's all she needs it for.
The only part of it that she found annoying so far is that she couldn't transfer music from her laptop to her AppleTV, so she couldn't listen to it when her network was switched off.
Apple has proven that if DRM doesn't interfere with the way ordinary users expect to use a product, people will put up with it. It's the same with DVDs.
However, if DRM does prevent an ordinary user from doing what they expect to with a product, such as preventing them from ripping music CDs, then that product will probably not sell.
Much of Apple's success is due to the fact that they have what is IMNHO by far the best consumer OS on the planet. They have the exclusive right to distribute that OS. As they should: they put up a sizable investment of human and technological resources to build it. Normally, I'm against harsh "intellectual property" laws, but this is Apple's investment in a huge competitive advantage, and they've earned it.
Naturally with their "monopoly" on OS X distribution, they're able to skim off the top and limit distribution and the types of computers (ex cheap minitowers) that can run it. This has all kinds of people frustrated, as I'm sure some in the Slashdot crowd are. Apple tolerates a few hackers jumping through hoops to get it running on commodity PCs, as long as that means they lose maybe 0.1% of their potential customers.
Now some small fry entrepreneur is willing to take the risk of tapping into the rest of the 99.9% of the OS X market by selling PCs with OS X loaded on them. Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs), they figure it's worth the risk. If they argue that they paid for every shrink-wrapped copy of OS X, then they stand a moderately better chance of succeeding.
Still, I imagine there's massive unsatisfied demand for OS X, which seems to be what MacOSX86 and Pystar are all about.
Apparently, this is for U.S. customers only. bestbuy.ca doesn't sell Ubuntu.
All in all, this is great news though. The fact that they charge $20 has some zealots complaining, but I think that any exposure for non-Windows OS's is great. The fact that Best Buy will install it for customers is better news still.
Hopefully they follow up by selling PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed.
So.... why aren't there any high profile lawsuits against Rogers yet?
First they throttle BitTorrent traffic. Then, when BitTorrent users encrypted their connections, all encrypted traffic was throttled, making VPN connections unbearably slow.
The only reason I can think of that they're getting away with this is that...uh...people in Ontario don't telecommute at all?
Why is everybody letting Rogers get away with these shenanigans? Rogers' practises must be costing some business users serious money. I simply don't understand.
This will benefit Mac users tremendously, as NeoOffice is too bloated (although making good progress at getting more efficient) and the native version of OpenOffice is probably several months away at best.
There is no lean, simple free and/or open source spreadsheet app for Mac yet. When KOffice 2.0 comes out, cheap Mac users (like me) will have more choice. When MS Office 2007 comes out for Mac in January 2008 (sorry, had to poke fun at Microsoft:D ), and iWork 2008 out starting last month, Mac users willing to pay for a good office suite will have even more choice.
This will also benefit the KDE team, as their installed based will expand by one (and possibly two) OS's, giving them more bug reports and feature requests.
I haven't read the article because the site forces me to register.
Stopping people from abusing the carpool lane makes sense. There's far too many people who sneak into the carpool lane, defeating the purpose of the lane. There's far too many people on the road driving alone in their car, which makes for a rather disturbing waste of a non-renewable resource (petroleum), and producing harmful greenhouse gases.
There should be strong incentives against doing this. More transportation should be pooled in order to conserve resources and save the environment.
So I have no problem with this initiative, as long as all they're doing is detecting that there is in fact more than one person in the car and not gathering any additional information about the passenger(s).
For the simple reason that SWT uses Carbon for its GUI widgets, instead of Cocoa. Only Cocoa and Java will be made 64-bit, with Carbon being left behind like the legacy pre-OS X API that it is.
In fact, the only reason Carbon exists at all on OS X is because Adobe and other third party developers were too cheap to port their apps to OS X, so Apple had to guarantee backward compatibility for old apps.
Also, more NetBeans is better supported on OS X that Eclipse because more of the developers working on NetBeans code use OS X. This means NetBeans looks and feels better on OS X than Eclipse.
I've tried both on Mac, and this is indeed the case.
Murdering Russian Journalists and anyone else who dares criticize him are the marks of a mafioso thug, not a statesman.
Who modded you +5 insightful? Do you have proof for these allegations?
The only reason Russia is resurfacing is the high price of oil.
Yes, just like every African country that exports oil, right? Just like Iran, right? Russia is the world's best weapons manufacturer, among other things.
Communism is evil.
Since Russia is no longer communist, that's a non sequitur.
Seems like the next logical step since Canada is a very similar market to the U.S.
I don't buy the excuse that they would have to deal with French language regulations, since they're extending their deal to France and to another non-English country, namely, Germany.
you're paying for both, though i don't see what your issue is with 1. you're paying for being able to download at no cost and share with others.
Here's my issue:
I choose quite deliberately to take my business elsewhere than the RIAA. In fact, I make a point of actively paying money to somebody else. By sending my dollars elsewhere, I'm simultaneously supporting their competitors and making it clear I'm taking money away from them. It sends a clear signal of how much money they *would* have gotten from me.
Also, by actively giving my money to their competitors, I'm helping put those bastards out of business by promoting independent labels that sell DRM-free music. The dinosaurs are closer to becoming extinct.
"Copyright socialism" helps keep those dinosaurs alive. I have a real problem with the government seizing my music dollars and helping prop up these DRM-touting, student-suing, and customer-contemptuous fossils and prevent the new digital market from driving them into the ground.
I posted these comments on Michael's site, and I'll post them here as well:
-------- Am I paying for:
1) The right to share copies with my "friends" on the internet. 2) The right to transfer content that I already paid for to another device that I owned for my exclusive personal use. IE "private copying".
If I'm paying for 2), then this is an egregious form of copyright socialism whereby I have been deprived of the ability to choose the musical entity that I will support financially. This means, among other things, that I can't deprive the RIAA of my music dollars in favour of independent artists via emusic.
If I'm paying for 1), then our copyright laws defy logic and common sense. The notion that I must "pay" for the privilege of using the music I paid for more than once is repugnant. Also, it defies any reason, given the proliferation of computers and the internet. -------
It's kind of disigenuous that they didn't mention allowing people to legally copy their DVDs. People (especially parents with young children) have been screaming about this for years.
Also, since CSS was cracked years ago, there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't have allowed DVD copying already, other than to use as a means of sending otherwise law-abiding citizens to jail. With the advent of Apple TV (along with similar products) and the possibility of ripping one's entire DVD collection and making it available in an easily browsable interface (like an MP3 collection), the outcry is probably getting louder.
Since I live in Canada, there's no DMCA, and I'm already paying taxes on blank DVDs, so this is not yet a problem. Still, I figure Stephen Harper and his cronies will bless us with a DMCA-like law soon.
And, yeah, the timing of this announcement is just a little too coincidental, what with the latest AACS crack.
So how will they identify me? By my work surfing profile, or my home surfing profile?
Yes, I surf at work, both to take a break, and to keep abreast of developments in I.T., specifically, the Java world.
At home, I'll probably surf the BBC, Slashdot, Apple sites, and my blog.
So which "me" does Microsoft hope to profile? Combine that with the fact that I use a Mac at home, and that my surfing habits will change when I change jobs.
Still, methinks this is the quid pro quo for Microsoft's deal with the Bushies to gets itself out of an enforced monopoly breakup....
You're making the Look-and-Feel argument, which was legally thrown out in the 80s, not a patent argument.
Are you referring to Apple vs. Microsoft. Much of that decision going Microsoft's way was due to the fact that Apple didn't bother filing defencive patents for their GUI innovations. That was John Sculley's screw-up.
I hate Microsoft and refuse to use their products. Still, Slashdot is replete with articulate anti-Microsoft arguments, so I thought I'd play Devil's Advocate.
Microsoft spent billions of dollars, thousands upon thousands of man hours for programmers as well as typographers and visual design specialists, not to mention as untold research and interviews with focus groups on developing their GUIs, only to see them egregiously ripped off by Linux copycats. The "Start" button, Windows taskbar, menu bars, MS Office programs and their associated interfaces, as well other genuine GUI interfaces from Microsoft that did not exist on Mac. At least NeXT, Mac, and then OS X invented their own GUI conventions. These "Free Software" losers stole Microsoft's IP by blatantly ripping off all their GUI ideas. Can the Free Software community afford typographers, GUI design specialists and consumer focus groups? No. So they piggy back off Microsoft's investments in these specialists. GNOME and KDE have come up with ZERO GUI innovations. Switching OK and Cancel? PUH-LEASE!
It's about time Microsoft called a spade a spade. Free Software does nothing more than leach off the hard work of true capitalists.
What's worse is that they have this stupid clause called the GPL that prevents Microsoft and other true capitalists from actually using their code. They steal from Microsoft, and yet they don't let us steal from them? Unacceptable! At least BSD/Apache/Mozilla licensed code is available for Microsoft to use. That's a fair trade. The GPL is a one-way deal and Microsoft can't accept that. That's why Redmond has been forced to use its patent portfolio to defend its investments from this flagrant uncompensated theft.
I'm 100% sure that this is how Ballmer and the rest of Microsoft view GPL software. They can't accept competition. They don't believe in reverse engineering. They don't believe in innovating, only harvesting decades-old investments via the preposterous U.S. patent system.
What if two companies with very similar patents sue each other for violating each other's respective patents?
Let me use a exaggeratedly simple example:
Amazon has a patent on "one-click shopping". IBM has a patent on "single-click shopping". Due to USPTO incompetence and laziness, both patents were granted at the same time. Each sues the other over their respective patents.
What happens? How do the courts deal with the respective lawsuits? How does the patent office settle each disputed patent?
I'm surprised a similar situation hasn't occurred already.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhh... check out his sig:
Once you've had Mac, you can't go back!
I highly doubt it.
Just curious, have you ever used a Mac for more than an hour at a time?
My girlfriend uses iTunes to buy music. I tried to explain to her why buying DRM'd music is a bad idea, and how she might lose it. As far as she's concerned, she can download it and send it to her iPod, and that's all she needs it for.
The only part of it that she found annoying so far is that she couldn't transfer music from her laptop to her AppleTV, so she couldn't listen to it when her network was switched off.
Apple has proven that if DRM doesn't interfere with the way ordinary users expect to use a product, people will put up with it. It's the same with DVDs.
However, if DRM does prevent an ordinary user from doing what they expect to with a product, such as preventing them from ripping music CDs, then that product will probably not sell.
Much of Apple's success is due to the fact that they have what is IMNHO by far the best consumer OS on the planet. They have the exclusive right to distribute that OS. As they should: they put up a sizable investment of human and technological resources to build it. Normally, I'm against harsh "intellectual property" laws, but this is Apple's investment in a huge competitive advantage, and they've earned it.
Naturally with their "monopoly" on OS X distribution, they're able to skim off the top and limit distribution and the types of computers (ex cheap minitowers) that can run it. This has all kinds of people frustrated, as I'm sure some in the Slashdot crowd are. Apple tolerates a few hackers jumping through hoops to get it running on commodity PCs, as long as that means they lose maybe 0.1% of their potential customers.
Now some small fry entrepreneur is willing to take the risk of tapping into the rest of the 99.9% of the OS X market by selling PCs with OS X loaded on them. Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs), they figure it's worth the risk. If they argue that they paid for every shrink-wrapped copy of OS X, then they stand a moderately better chance of succeeding.
Still, I imagine there's massive unsatisfied demand for OS X, which seems to be what MacOSX86 and Pystar are all about.
Apparently, this is for U.S. customers only. bestbuy.ca doesn't sell Ubuntu.
All in all, this is great news though. The fact that they charge $20 has some zealots complaining, but I think that any exposure for non-Windows OS's is great. The fact that Best Buy will install it for customers is better news still.
Hopefully they follow up by selling PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed.
So.... why aren't there any high profile lawsuits against Rogers yet?
First they throttle BitTorrent traffic. Then, when BitTorrent users encrypted their connections, all encrypted traffic was throttled, making VPN connections unbearably slow.
The only reason I can think of that they're getting away with this is that...uh...people in Ontario don't telecommute at all?
Why is everybody letting Rogers get away with these shenanigans? Rogers' practises must be costing some business users serious money. I simply don't understand.
An enterprising developer is already working to get FreeBSD's Java 6 on Leopard:
http://www.theserverside.com/blogs/thread.tss?thread_id=47500
Lots of people are pissed off about this:
http://javablasphemy.blogspot.com/
KOffice 2.0 will run natively on OS X:
:D ), and iWork 2008 out starting last month, Mac users willing to pay for a good office suite will have even more choice.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/02/1930232
This will benefit Mac users tremendously, as NeoOffice is too bloated (although making good progress at getting more efficient) and the native version of OpenOffice is probably several months away at best.
There is no lean, simple free and/or open source spreadsheet app for Mac yet. When KOffice 2.0 comes out, cheap Mac users (like me) will have more choice. When MS Office 2007 comes out for Mac in January 2008 (sorry, had to poke fun at Microsoft
This will also benefit the KDE team, as their installed based will expand by one (and possibly two) OS's, giving them more bug reports and feature requests.
Everybody wins!
I haven't read the article because the site forces me to register.
Stopping people from abusing the carpool lane makes sense. There's far too many people who sneak into the carpool lane, defeating the purpose of the lane. There's far too many people on the road driving alone in their car, which makes for a rather disturbing waste of a non-renewable resource (petroleum), and producing harmful greenhouse gases.
There should be strong incentives against doing this. More transportation should be pooled in order to conserve resources and save the environment.
So I have no problem with this initiative, as long as all they're doing is detecting that there is in fact more than one person in the car and not gathering any additional information about the passenger(s).
So....now that Microsoft can't get ISO approval for OOXML, they've gone straight for an amendment to basic mathematics specs? :D
For the simple reason that SWT uses Carbon for its GUI widgets, instead of Cocoa. Only Cocoa and Java will be made 64-bit, with Carbon being left behind like the legacy pre-OS X API that it is.
In fact, the only reason Carbon exists at all on OS X is because Adobe and other third party developers were too cheap to port their apps to OS X, so Apple had to guarantee backward compatibility for old apps.
Also, more NetBeans is better supported on OS X that Eclipse because more of the developers working on NetBeans code use OS X. This means NetBeans looks and feels better on OS X than Eclipse.
I've tried both on Mac, and this is indeed the case.
Putin's a thug.
And Bush isn't?
Murdering Russian Journalists and anyone else who dares criticize him are the marks of a mafioso thug, not a statesman.
Who modded you +5 insightful? Do you have proof for these allegations?
The only reason Russia is resurfacing is the high price of oil.
Yes, just like every African country that exports oil, right? Just like Iran, right? Russia is the world's best weapons manufacturer, among other things.
Communism is evil.
Since Russia is no longer communist, that's a non sequitur.
Has it ever occurred to you that Russia could be using these bombs to:
a) Sell to other countries.
b) Act as a counter-balance to U.S. global hegemony.
No, of course you haven't.
As for Russia being a superpower, they're getting closer to that status everyday, now that they actually have a competent leader.
Why wouldn't Dell extend this deal into Canada?
Seems like the next logical step since Canada is a very similar market to the U.S.
I don't buy the excuse that they would have to deal with French language regulations, since they're extending their deal to France and to another non-English country, namely, Germany.
So if the bank overcharges me or pays out less money than I got debited at the ATM, I can charge them with a crime, right?
you're paying for both, though i don't see what your issue is with 1. you're paying for being able to download at no cost and share with others.
Here's my issue:
I choose quite deliberately to take my business elsewhere than the RIAA. In fact, I make a point of actively paying money to somebody else. By sending my dollars elsewhere, I'm simultaneously supporting their competitors and making it clear I'm taking money away from them. It sends a clear signal of how much money they *would* have gotten from me.
Also, by actively giving my money to their competitors, I'm helping put those bastards out of business by promoting independent labels that sell DRM-free music. The dinosaurs are closer to becoming extinct.
"Copyright socialism" helps keep those dinosaurs alive. I have a real problem with the government seizing my music dollars and helping prop up these DRM-touting, student-suing, and customer-contemptuous fossils and prevent the new digital market from driving them into the ground.
So, yeah, I have a real problem with 1).
I posted these comments on Michael's site, and I'll post them here as well:
--------
Am I paying for:
1) The right to share copies with my "friends" on the internet.
2) The right to transfer content that I already paid for to another device that I owned for my exclusive personal use. IE "private copying".
If I'm paying for 2), then this is an egregious form of copyright socialism whereby I have been deprived of the ability to choose the musical entity that I will support financially. This means, among other things, that I can't deprive the RIAA of my music dollars in favour of independent artists via emusic.
If I'm paying for 1), then our copyright laws defy logic and common sense. The notion that I must "pay" for the privilege of using the music I paid for more than once is repugnant. Also, it defies any reason, given the proliferation of computers and the internet.
-------
Excellent news!
I'm curious about when Sun plans to GPL 3 Java, OpenSolaris, along with ZFS, DTrace, and hopefully NetBeans.
It's kind of disigenuous that they didn't mention allowing people to legally copy their DVDs. People (especially parents with young children) have been screaming about this for years.
Also, since CSS was cracked years ago, there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't have allowed DVD copying already, other than to use as a means of sending otherwise law-abiding citizens to jail. With the advent of Apple TV (along with similar products) and the possibility of ripping one's entire DVD collection and making it available in an easily browsable interface (like an MP3 collection), the outcry is probably getting louder.
Since I live in Canada, there's no DMCA, and I'm already paying taxes on blank DVDs, so this is not yet a problem. Still, I figure Stephen Harper and his cronies will bless us with a DMCA-like law soon.
And, yeah, the timing of this announcement is just a little too coincidental, what with the latest AACS crack.
How close am I?
:D
Weak are you in the Force, young Padawan. Microsoft profiling software, use you must.
So how will they identify me? By my work surfing profile, or my home surfing profile?
Yes, I surf at work, both to take a break, and to keep abreast of developments in I.T., specifically, the Java world.
At home, I'll probably surf the BBC, Slashdot, Apple sites, and my blog.
So which "me" does Microsoft hope to profile? Combine that with the fact that I use a Mac at home, and that my surfing habits will change when I change jobs.
Still, methinks this is the quid pro quo for Microsoft's deal with the Bushies to gets itself out of an enforced monopoly breakup....
You're making the Look-and-Feel argument, which was legally thrown out in the 80s, not a patent argument.
Are you referring to Apple vs. Microsoft. Much of that decision going Microsoft's way was due to the fact that Apple didn't bother filing defencive patents for their GUI innovations. That was John Sculley's screw-up.
I hate Microsoft and refuse to use their products. Still, Slashdot is replete with articulate anti-Microsoft arguments, so I thought I'd play Devil's Advocate.
Microsoft spent billions of dollars, thousands upon thousands of man hours for programmers as well as typographers and visual design specialists, not to mention as untold research and interviews with focus groups on developing their GUIs, only to see them egregiously ripped off by Linux copycats. The "Start" button, Windows taskbar, menu bars, MS Office programs and their associated interfaces, as well other genuine GUI interfaces from Microsoft that did not exist on Mac. At least NeXT, Mac, and then OS X invented their own GUI conventions. These "Free Software" losers stole Microsoft's IP by blatantly ripping off all their GUI ideas. Can the Free Software community afford typographers, GUI design specialists and consumer focus groups? No. So they piggy back off Microsoft's investments in these specialists. GNOME and KDE have come up with ZERO GUI innovations. Switching OK and Cancel? PUH-LEASE!
It's about time Microsoft called a spade a spade. Free Software does nothing more than leach off the hard work of true capitalists.
What's worse is that they have this stupid clause called the GPL that prevents Microsoft and other true capitalists from actually using their code. They steal from Microsoft, and yet they don't let us steal from them? Unacceptable! At least BSD/Apache/Mozilla licensed code is available for Microsoft to use. That's a fair trade. The GPL is a one-way deal and Microsoft can't accept that. That's why Redmond has been forced to use its patent portfolio to defend its investments from this flagrant uncompensated theft.
I'm 100% sure that this is how Ballmer and the rest of Microsoft view GPL software. They can't accept competition. They don't believe in reverse engineering. They don't believe in innovating, only harvesting decades-old investments via the preposterous U.S. patent system.
The article is awfully vague. Does anybody have any additional information or links?
Silly question:
What if two companies with very similar patents sue each other for violating each other's respective patents?
Let me use a exaggeratedly simple example:
Amazon has a patent on "one-click shopping". IBM has a patent on "single-click shopping". Due to USPTO incompetence and laziness, both patents were granted at the same time. Each sues the other over their respective patents.
What happens? How do the courts deal with the respective lawsuits? How does the patent office settle each disputed patent?
I'm surprised a similar situation hasn't occurred already.