Actually if you follow some of the media in terms of the WMA versus Real debates, Real is actually going well beyond just trying to make an honest buck.
There was an article several months back where one of the biggies, like ABC dropped Real in favor of Microsoft. The main point of contention was not the cost of the server, but that Real was insistent that their logo be emblazoned over everything.
They have an arrogant attitude, like if you want to do streaming video/audio well you have to come to them. Well that's not true any more, and they're losing market share due to their attitude more than anything else.
It's the same attitude that killed Netscape.
Most companies are willing to pay good money to buy a solution to a problem, especially if it's a really good solution. But I know of no company who wants to pay a lot of money and then provide free advertising for the supplier by emblazoning their logo... they want to put their own logo to show who is actually providing the content.
Microsoft developed an open specification for sharing of word processing documents years ago.
It is called Rich Text Format(aka RTF), the specifications are available from MSDN.
It is not uncommon for application vendors to support open specifications for data sharing, but not provide the details of their internal file formats. There are a lot of reasons for this, and not all of them are "evil".
For instance, searching the Corel website I can't seem to find the file format for WordPerfect.
Obviously Corel must be an evil corporation. Oh wait, they can't be, they're going bankrupt and supporting Linux.
More sniveling from Linux Slashdotters
on
Cleartype In Depth
·
· Score: 1
Yessir, this is a troll, and you should probably moderate it down so that I don't offend any intellectually challenged people.
I'm curious why people can't just accept something new for what it is? This is pretty neat, don't you think? It certainly helps with readability problems on LCD displays.
Do you have to attack it just because it's from Microsoft? Can't you for once just admit that Microsoft does indeed build some pretty cool stuff and make it available to the public. You know what, I'll bet that they are even going to bundle this technology into their OS! (How utterly shocking! Maybe we should call the DOJ and complain?)
Yes, Apple did something very similar, but in a very different way for a very different purpose with a very different effect.
One might as well say "But isn't there already prior art existing in the Atanasoff-Berry computer" because they used digital calculations.
Sheesh. I was curious about this myself the other day because a friend of mine said he just bought a copy of Office97 for $50. I've seen this in the past, another friend bought a copy a few years ago which was obviously pirated as the insert was a photocopy.
I was kind of curious of the state of piracy today and how they were being advertised, So I went over to ebay and did a search to see what I came up with.
Quite a lot of interested little advertisements. There are people auctioning off instructions on how to buy stuff off the MS website... I love that!
There were also a lot off Office97 stuff up for sale, a lot of which had been cancelled.
What I found was that if the description for the item said "Retail copy with discs and box", the auction still existed. Or if it mentioned the statement of authenticity, etc it was still there.
If it said something about it being just a CD with no documentation... Yank
If it said it was an OEM Not-for-Resale copy... Yank
If it looked mighty suspicious like they had 100 copies for sale, no mention of boxes, etc... Yank
If you looked into this enough, you'd come to quickly realize that a large portion of the software for sale on ebay is pirated. And I'm not talking just OEM copies being resold. I'm talking blatant make a new CDROM, photocopy an insert and put it in a case, sell it for $75... pirating.
It's not just Microsoft. Adobe is having a problem with Photoshop as well. There are a slew of these counterfeitors out there screwing people over left and right.
Think about it. Even if you are one of these/. zealots who believes software piracy is perfectly legit, they're still screwing over customers by selling something that cost them $5 in materials to make for $75.
Hell even Linux is being missold on ebay. I see tons of people trying to auction off $5 Cheapbytes CD's for $20...
It's a huge scam. Ebay is likely supportive because these things make them look bad as well.
Back in the early 1980's when the personal computer world was coming into being, the kids running about with their wareZ BBS systems were using the term "Pirate" to describe themselves.
Besides, the term is accurate. A Pirate is one who preys on others, and takes their work and claims the profit.
I purchased my first CD player in 1987. At that time I bought some stupid CD like Top Gun soundtrack or something... but it was $15.99. That was pretty typical at the time, some were upwards of $20.
During the same time period I did buy several vinyl albums like Tears for Fears, etc. and they were around $9.
Ahh, but that was 13 years ago...
I go out to cdnow.com and look at the latest Pearl Jam album Binaural.
CD = $12.58 vinyl = $15.49
This was the situation for every new release I went and looked at. Now older releases like Vitalogy do have lower prices for vinyl:
CD = $12.49 vinyl = $8.99
There's a lot of other factors that go into pricing older releases, such as how much stock is on hand and how well it still sells versus how fast they want to get rid of it.
Anyway, so not only have CD prices come down since 1987 in terms of the dollar figure, they have not been impacted by inflation at all.
Take for example in 1987 as a college student I made $3.50/hour, today they make $6-8/hour if not more.
So who really is the lying bastard here? I don't agree that it is the record company.
You do realize that IBM was found guilty of the same thing and the anti-monopoly lawyers smacked them around and prevented them from pre-announcing products?
And this is why IBM was unable to compete against Microsoft.
Oh, and being prevented from implementing non-open protocols is anti-competitive.
I'm in favor of the breakup proposal as I think it'll boost innovation and competition.
If I hadn't already posted and had some moderator points, I'd rank you as Insightful.:)
Seriously, this really starts to come down to a value issue. For some reason young males 18-25 value computer games over pretty much every thing else.(except Taco Bell)
Even music. I think with music as you get older you begin to appreciate particular types of music and it becomes more important to you to have a good copy of the music, thus you purchase the CD.
I know at least when I was in college, I didn't mind listening to say Pet Shop Boys(does this give an idea how old I am?), but I really didn't care enough about their music to want to buy it to have around forever. So what I did was make tape copies from friends, or even tape their songs off the radio.
But I've bought more music over the past 2 years than I ever did while in college, and it doesn't have much to do with me making more money. I bought a lot more pizza in college than I do now.:)
Anyway, for the RIAA now I think one of the key items in this world which will help them is to make the value of a CD much more than the value of an MP3 off Napster. And as of right now that is only true if the music is of a complex nature and the listener can appreciate the sound difference.
This will only last until storage and transmission costs go down such transmitting a full sampled WAV file via Napster is appealing.
Well perhaps at that point, we'll have educated the population such that they can now realize why the CD is also a poor recording medium and they'll be buying DVD-audio discs at 96Khz samping, 24 bit... or whatever the latest and greatest is.
No way you're going to download a gig of data for one song.:)
Or the Motif article the other day... They make it available for free, but it's not free enough.
The more extreme the attitudes of the userbase become, the less likely commercial companies are going to be willing to risk their intellectual capital investment by supporting Linux.
I was an Amiga zealot for many years, and I think the current Linux base is very similar at least in terms of demographics, definately in terms of computing skill.
We griped endlessly about how no company would support us, but when they did release something then we'd gripe about how it was too expensive, or whatever. What's worse is that piracy was rampant amongst the Amiga users.
I see the same thing with Linux, it's a bit different in that Linux users have now de-evolved to a point where they think the world owes them free software. It's not even piracy any more, it's self-justified because corporations are evil. At least Amiga users were willing to admit the truth, even if we were hypocrites about it.
It really is quite sickening, and I can guarantee you that this attitude will kill Linux, just as it killed the Amiga.
Perhaps not kill since it is not dependent on the profitability of a company, but Linux will never gain the widespread support that even the Macintosh enjoys, much less Windows.
Of course it is easy to sarcasticaly dismiss something when you have not put any thought into your own argument.
I do not understand what logic of yours makes intellectual property obsolete solely because it is easier to copy it. The ability to copy someone's thoughts and work does not diminish the amount of work that went in to create them.
Further this notion of infinite abundance is seriously flawed. There is no infinite abundance in the creation of the work, there is the sole individual or group of individuals. You are confusing the ability to copy something with the effort of creation.
It's like saying... well if only people had respect and personal responsibility they would never murder other humans, therefore we do not need laws against murder.
This is obviously not true, as it is obviously not true in this thread.
Our morals, our ethics, and our laws provide guidance as to the way we should act as mature adults. Ethics state that you should respect the work of others... it does not distinguish "Well unless you don't like them, then it's ok to rip off their work."
One can respect the work of another without respecting the individual. If you paint your house, and I go and paint graffiti all over it that is disrespectful of your hard work, would you not agree?
As has been evidenced here by some misguided Linux users, and by many of the responses, the concept of respecting the work of others is quite lost.
This is why we have had to pass such laws, to protect people from inscrupulous miscreants who do not respect the mores of our society.
This isn't censorship, it never was. I read the original unedited thread reading the Kerberos spec and nearly all of the responses involved how to circumvent the license agreement. I remember specifically at least 3 instances where someone posted the entire content of the Microsoft spec...
There were also some warnings from some that this type of behavior does nothing than to label Open Source activitists as immature children who like to steal other peoples work.
Obviously that point was lost on many as witnessed in the responses yesterday.
This isn't censorship. Microsoft has not asked that critical commentary be deleted, only posts which contain the specification verbatim, and some links to other stolen versions.
What I find particularly disturbing is how slashdot.org is purposefully misrepresenting this issue in order to generate traffic to their site.
Oh, and everybody go up and click on one of them ad banners to make slashdot's effort worth while!
I see a lot of excuses being raised. It's difficult to do this, and so forth. This is completely understandable, I'm the lone developer on my own open source project.
But part of the reason I'm the lone developer is solely because I haven't taken the time to make it easy for others to join. I don't have the documentation available on how to work with the CVS structure, how to recompile, etc. etc. etc. Therefore it's my own fault that I'm alone.
This is the issue that is brought up by the Anonymous Coward in his article, that people seem to be missing.
He's not asking for anything special, all he is asking is that SourceForge provide a model example for Open Source development.
I think that is an appropriate position for VA Linux to be in. If they can't get OSS to work well, then how can they advocate to the masses that it's a good idea?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually if you follow some of the media in terms of the WMA versus Real debates, Real is actually going well beyond just trying to make an honest buck.
There was an article several months back where one of the biggies, like ABC dropped Real in favor of Microsoft. The main point of contention was not the cost of the server, but that Real was insistent that their logo be emblazoned over everything.
They have an arrogant attitude, like if you want to do streaming video/audio well you have to come to them. Well that's not true any more, and they're losing market share due to their attitude more than anything else.
It's the same attitude that killed Netscape.
Most companies are willing to pay good money to buy a solution to a problem, especially if it's a really good solution. But I know of no company who wants to pay a lot of money and then provide free advertising for the supplier by emblazoning their logo... they want to put their own logo to show who is actually providing the content.
Microsoft developed an open specification for sharing of word processing documents years ago.
It is called Rich Text Format(aka RTF), the specifications are available from MSDN.
It is not uncommon for application vendors to support open specifications for data sharing, but not provide the details of their internal file formats. There are a lot of reasons for this, and not all of them are "evil".
For instance, searching the Corel website I can't seem to find the file format for WordPerfect.
Obviously Corel must be an evil corporation. Oh wait, they can't be, they're going bankrupt and supporting Linux.
Yessir, this is a troll, and you should probably moderate it down so that I don't offend any intellectually challenged people.
I'm curious why people can't just accept something new for what it is? This is pretty neat, don't you think? It certainly helps with readability problems on LCD displays.
Do you have to attack it just because it's from Microsoft? Can't you for once just admit that Microsoft does indeed build some pretty cool stuff and make it available to the public. You know what, I'll bet that they are even going to bundle this technology into their OS! (How utterly shocking! Maybe we should call the DOJ and complain?)
Yes, Apple did something very similar, but in a very different way for a very different purpose with a very different effect.
One might as well say "But isn't there already prior art existing in the Atanasoff-Berry computer" because they used digital calculations.
Sheesh.
Sheesh. I was curious about this myself the other day because a friend of mine said he just bought a copy of Office97 for $50. I've seen this in the past, another friend bought a copy a few years ago which was obviously pirated as the insert was a photocopy.
/. zealots who believes software piracy is perfectly legit, they're still screwing over customers by selling something that cost them $5 in materials to make for $75.
I was kind of curious of the state of piracy today and how they were being advertised, So I went over to ebay and did a search to see what I came up with.
Quite a lot of interested little advertisements. There are people auctioning off instructions on how to buy stuff off the MS website... I love that!
There were also a lot off Office97 stuff up for sale, a lot of which had been cancelled.
What I found was that if the description for the item said "Retail copy with discs and box", the auction still existed. Or if it mentioned the statement of authenticity, etc it was still there.
If it said something about it being just a CD with no documentation... Yank
If it said it was an OEM Not-for-Resale copy... Yank
If it looked mighty suspicious like they had 100 copies for sale, no mention of boxes, etc... Yank
If you looked into this enough, you'd come to quickly realize that a large portion of the software for sale on ebay is pirated. And I'm not talking just OEM copies being resold. I'm talking blatant make a new CDROM, photocopy an insert and put it in a case, sell it for $75... pirating.
It's not just Microsoft. Adobe is having a problem with Photoshop as well. There are a slew of these counterfeitors out there screwing people over left and right.
Think about it. Even if you are one of these
Hell even Linux is being missold on ebay. I see tons of people trying to auction off $5 Cheapbytes CD's for $20...
It's a huge scam. Ebay is likely supportive because these things make them look bad as well.
Something you begin to learn when you hit 30...
Working over 40 hours a week doesn't prove you care about the company. It just means you don't care about yourself.
I am far more productive working 8 hour days and getting 8 hours of sleep a night, than I am working 16 hour days and cramming in 5 hours of sleep.
Actually I think I learned that lesson when I was 25.
That only checks to make sure you aren't trying to allocate 0 bytes...
;)
What happens if the malloc() call itself fails, as in say there is no more memory to give out?
Ok, yeah, your system is probably hosed, but is it your applications duty to make you feel worse about that?
Back in the early 1980's when the personal computer world was coming into being, the kids running about with their wareZ BBS systems were using the term "Pirate" to describe themselves.
Besides, the term is accurate. A Pirate is one who preys on others, and takes their work and claims the profit.
There's a big difference between arguing the length of Copyright and Copyright in general.
RMS says copyright is bogus, and nobody should have any control over what they create.
Don't confuse the issue.
I purchased my first CD player in 1987. At that time I bought some stupid CD like Top Gun soundtrack or something... but it was $15.99. That was pretty typical at the time, some were upwards of $20.
During the same time period I did buy several vinyl albums like Tears for Fears, etc. and they were around $9.
Ahh, but that was 13 years ago...
I go out to cdnow.com and look at the latest Pearl Jam album Binaural.
CD = $12.58
vinyl = $15.49
This was the situation for every new release I went and looked at. Now older releases like Vitalogy do have lower prices for vinyl:
CD = $12.49
vinyl = $8.99
There's a lot of other factors that go into pricing older releases, such as how much stock is on hand and how well it still sells versus how fast they want to get rid of it.
Anyway, so not only have CD prices come down since 1987 in terms of the dollar figure, they have not been impacted by inflation at all.
Take for example in 1987 as a college student I made $3.50/hour, today they make $6-8/hour if not more.
So who really is the lying bastard here? I don't agree that it is the record company.
Ahh, ye old pre-announce ploy.
You do realize that IBM was found guilty of the same thing and the anti-monopoly lawyers smacked them around and prevented them from pre-announcing products?
And this is why IBM was unable to compete against Microsoft.
Oh, and being prevented from implementing non-open protocols is anti-competitive.
I'm in favor of the breakup proposal as I think it'll boost innovation and competition.
I think you're missing the point.
Bundling implies that you have two seperate products operating in seperate markets brought together.
That is the direction Netscape took with their product, but it is not the direction Microsoft took.
Worms is a windows game.
http://www.microprose.com
335,000 people would be considered very few when you take it in comparison to the population of the world.
But just how many people actually use Napster? Probably only a few million, which makes that a rather large percentage.
You're absolutely correct.
:)
:)
:)
:)
If I hadn't already posted and had some moderator points, I'd rank you as Insightful.
Seriously, this really starts to come down to a value issue. For some reason young males 18-25 value computer games over pretty much every thing else.(except Taco Bell)
Even music. I think with music as you get older you begin to appreciate particular types of music and it becomes more important to you to have a good copy of the music, thus you purchase the CD.
I know at least when I was in college, I didn't mind listening to say Pet Shop Boys(does this give an idea how old I am?), but I really didn't care enough about their music to want to buy it to have around forever. So what I did was make tape copies from friends, or even tape their songs off the radio.
But I've bought more music over the past 2 years than I ever did while in college, and it doesn't have much to do with me making more money. I bought a lot more pizza in college than I do now.
Anyway, for the RIAA now I think one of the key items in this world which will help them is to make the value of a CD much more than the value of an MP3 off Napster. And as of right now that is only true if the music is of a complex nature and the listener can appreciate the sound difference.
This will only last until storage and transmission costs go down such transmitting a full sampled WAV file via Napster is appealing.
Well perhaps at that point, we'll have educated the population such that they can now realize why the CD is also a poor recording medium and they'll be buying DVD-audio discs at 96Khz samping, 24 bit... or whatever the latest and greatest is.
No way you're going to download a gig of data for one song.
Well at least for another 5 years or so.
Or the Motif article the other day... They make it available for free, but it's not free enough.
The more extreme the attitudes of the userbase become, the less likely commercial companies are going to be willing to risk their intellectual capital investment by supporting Linux.
I was an Amiga zealot for many years, and I think the current Linux base is very similar at least in terms of demographics, definately in terms of computing skill.
We griped endlessly about how no company would support us, but when they did release something then we'd gripe about how it was too expensive, or whatever. What's worse is that piracy was rampant amongst the Amiga users.
I see the same thing with Linux, it's a bit different in that Linux users have now de-evolved to a point where they think the world owes them free software. It's not even piracy any more, it's self-justified because corporations are evil. At least Amiga users were willing to admit the truth, even if we were hypocrites about it.
It really is quite sickening, and I can guarantee you that this attitude will kill Linux, just as it killed the Amiga.
Perhaps not kill since it is not dependent on the profitability of a company, but Linux will never gain the widespread support that even the Macintosh enjoys, much less Windows.
Every time I see one of these posts it reminds me of the days when the Amiga was the most powerful computer on earth, and nobody realized it.
:)
That was said with a bit of sarcasm.
Hey Dunderhead, this patch from Microsoft does exactly what you suggest!
It pops up a box and says "Hey, some program is trying to send email... do you want it to?"
GPL = EULA... They are both license agreements which put restrictions upon you.
And if you think the GPL is not also evil, go read the section that says... NO WARRANTY
This is the part where the GPL says the program can be bug ridden and defective...doing anything it wants to your files, and you have no recourse.
It appears as though the editors of slashdot feel that license agreements in general are ridiculous.
I assume this also includes the GPL.
Of course it is easy to sarcasticaly dismiss something when you have not put any thought into your own argument.
I do not understand what logic of yours makes intellectual property obsolete solely because it is easier to copy it. The ability to copy someone's thoughts and work does not diminish the amount of work that went in to create them.
Further this notion of infinite abundance is seriously flawed. There is no infinite abundance in the creation of the work, there is the sole individual or group of individuals. You are confusing the ability to copy something with the effort of creation.
You are ignoring human nature in your analysis.
It's like saying... well if only people had respect and personal responsibility they would never murder other humans, therefore we do not need laws against murder.
This is obviously not true, as it is obviously not true in this thread.
Our morals, our ethics, and our laws provide guidance as to the way we should act as mature adults. Ethics state that you should respect the work of others... it does not distinguish "Well unless you don't like them, then it's ok to rip off their work."
One can respect the work of another without respecting the individual. If you paint your house, and I go and paint graffiti all over it that is disrespectful of your hard work, would you not agree?
As has been evidenced here by some misguided Linux users, and by many of the responses, the concept of respecting the work of others is quite lost.
This is why we have had to pass such laws, to protect people from inscrupulous miscreants who do not respect the mores of our society.
I do not understand how you could possibly think that the concept of intellectual property is obsolete in the digital age.
Are you saying that because it is not easier to steal someone's work than ever before?
I would have thought that the Xerox photocopier machine, or the Fax machine would have made this true.
Or was it the printing press? What about when the pencil was invented?
The concept of "property" will never be obsolete until we live in a Communist society where your thoughts and your work are owned by the State.
I do not wish for that day to ever happen.
BTW, your supporting argument is a crock of horse manure generating methane, as is your conspiracy theory.
This isn't censorship, it never was. I read the original unedited thread reading the Kerberos spec and nearly all of the responses involved how to circumvent the license agreement. I remember specifically at least 3 instances where someone posted the entire content of the Microsoft spec...
There were also some warnings from some that this type of behavior does nothing than to label Open Source activitists as immature children who like to steal other peoples work.
Obviously that point was lost on many as witnessed in the responses yesterday.
This isn't censorship. Microsoft has not asked that critical commentary be deleted, only posts which contain the specification verbatim, and some links to other stolen versions.
What I find particularly disturbing is how slashdot.org is purposefully misrepresenting this issue in order to generate traffic to their site.
Oh, and everybody go up and click on one of them ad banners to make slashdot's effort worth while!
I see a lot of excuses being raised. It's difficult to do this, and so forth. This is completely understandable, I'm the lone developer on my own open source project.
But part of the reason I'm the lone developer is solely because I haven't taken the time to make it easy for others to join. I don't have the documentation available on how to work with the CVS structure, how to recompile, etc. etc. etc.
Therefore it's my own fault that I'm alone.
This is the issue that is brought up by the Anonymous Coward in his article, that people seem to be missing.
He's not asking for anything special, all he is asking is that SourceForge provide a model example for Open Source development.
I think that is an appropriate position for VA Linux to be in. If they can't get OSS to work well, then how can they advocate to the masses that it's a good idea?
Ewww... don't buy from Sam Goody.
I go to the local Best Buy and pick them up for $12.99.
How about a little perspective. When I was in college and bought my first CD player ('87) the CD's cost $12-15 and I was making $4/hour.
Today the CD's cost $12-15, and the kids make $8/hour.