Do you really believe people will continue to spend a lot of time and money if there is NO protection for whatever they create?
I do. Most of the greatest art, literature and (one could argue) software ever created was done without this magical combination of profit plus copyright that people try to argue is so crucial.
Artists and craftspeople are motivated by all kinds of things -- notoriety, artistic expression, raw unbundled creativity. A "guarantee for a decent return" is a pretty poor motivation for an artist.
The FSF model is frankly more natural than the "guaranteed profit" model: distribute my creative works all you want, just don't plagarize them.
Listen: The web browser engine as just another component instead of having a monolithic web browser is a good thing 99.5% of the time. You can thank Microsoft for that.
Actually, you can thank Apple for that. Remember cyberdog?
Yeah, Microsoft (arguably) did it better, but Apple did it first. And we're talking about innovation here...
Actually, the spam law doesn't even go that far. You simply can't shoot into people's home's while wearing a mask-- to take your analogy to the next step...
And you wonder why the EFF tries to avoid 'computers == houses' and 'computers == guns' analogies...
Ford has every right to just throw the book at them. I sure would. If you don't show a smattering of common sense and respect for others then you deserve to be dragged through the mud.
I don't understand. You think it ought to be illegal to be disrespectful?
You cannot burn a pirate DVD disk that works in an ordinary DVD player with an ordinary DVD-RAM drive. The reason: the decryption data for a DVD is stored at a very specific place on the disk. Every DVD-RAM disk comes with that area pre-burned zeroed out. Ordinary DVD players cannot play these disks.
So if I wanted to put the videos of my wedding on a DVD for my family to watch on their DVD players, I couldn't do this? Or, if I made an independent film I couldn't distribute it on DVD without licensing an encryption key?
Good old Wired -- they invariably wring every storey for the most emotional value they can, even when they have to downplay an obvious truth to do so.
If the four-hundred-some messages on this board are any indication so far, the overwhelming reaction to this isn't "Great, now I can pirate DVDs", it's "Great! Linux drivers!" Which, of course, means MORE dvd sales, not less.
I don't typically believe in cosmic justice, but a little part of me is glad to see Real in the hotseat after this week's Real Jukebox Trojan Horse debacle.
The whole purpose of Lycos is that they're the first place you go to get somewhere else, with a few vanilla web tools like chat and e-mail to keep you around and show you a few more ads.
You gotta figure most websites compete with Lycos directly or indirectly for features and/or eyeballs one way or another. So why send users ANYWHERE without a strong warning that they're leaving your beautiful Lycos.com?
Because it'd be a pretty effing stupid portal, that's why.
I guess I have trouble getting really worked up over something like this -- this is a pretty par-for-the-course tactic for a contemporary non-profit. Plenty of environmental groups raise money to buy up big swatches of land so that nobody can build subdivisions and shopping malls on them. And it's one of the big reasons that the government uses "pollution credits" -- basically selling the right to dump X amount of certain chemicals into air/water every year to companies. Environmental groups can buy the credits up themselves and just not use them. Presto! Less pollution!
Somehow it always seems weird to see a social service organization working within the capitalist system, but this is a growing trend. Gun buyback and guns-for-shoes programs are another good example of the same thing.
I'd hardly call it cybersquatting, even: the 'business' of the NAACP is to advance afro-american causes, and holding onto (or using for some other purpose) n-word.com indisputably achieves their business objectives, much more effectively (and inexpensively) than petitioning the NSI or lobbying congress or waiting for other people to register the name and then suing them.
In fact, what a boon! And exactly for the reasons you mentioned. Think of it -- most folks use e-mail in lieu of personal first-class letters which have got to be a HUGE loss leader for the USPS. For practically every personal letter that's sent you've got to have a clerk sell somebody a stamp, pay somebody to (usually) sort the message by hand, and send almost every piece off to a different city.
Bulk mail, magazines, etc., which the internet isn't even close to replacing, come to the USPS pre-sorted and bundled by zip code, and they move massive amounts of it to a smaller number of locations. That's what they really make money on. So heck, if they could deliver only bulk mail, and everybody used e-mail instead of first-class letters, they'd save a ton of dough.
The other great thing the internet does for the USPS is to create a lot of catalog-style commerce that requires shipping, shipping, shipping. And most folks, when they buy a book from Amazon, will opt to wait a few extra days so they can save a buck or two by shipping with USPS. "Priority mail" (which is, like, the biggest scam in the world) has gotten a totally new lease on life, thanks to online commerce.
And the post office takes advantage of this -- they give ebay sellers free shipping materials, and they even print special boxes for Amazon. Now if we could just get record labels to realize what a non-threat MP3 is...
I've been shopping out of their classic remainders catalog since I was just a wee little thing, and their website is a perfect, perfect extension of it.
One thing they got right, that I think Katz correctly identified, is that atmosphere and aesthetics have a lot to do with a good book-buying experience.
Red Hat charges an INCREDIBLY fair price for what they provide. For one, their CD distribution DOES include some non-free commercial software (I'm thinking, specifically, Metro-X and BRU. The latter of which, at least, is quite useful.) That plus the excellent manual plus the install media alone is worth more than $50. And that's all before you even start talking about the added value of a user-oriented linux distribution.
Oh come on, Michael Dell. That statement just sounds so cynical. If all he's learned from the iMac is that a candy-colored one-piece computer can revive a flagging hardware company, he still doesn't get it at all. And he must think very little of consumers to think that iMacs succeeded with the public because they're "stylish."
The thing that cracks me up is that Dell isn't the first company to say this. After the iMac came out, a slew of PC makers (eMachines for one) and even Intel started pooh-poohing it, saying many of the same things that are being said on this discussion board. You know, not enough options, where's the floppy?, underpowered, overpriced, hard to expand, blah blah blah. And I remember a couple of companies slapping together prototype lookalikes and saying they could sell the same thing for $600 or whatever.
But the proof is in the pudding, and almost a year later, nobody's actually brought forth a competitor. Even Dell is, what, over a year away? And I don't think they'll ever be able to. The first iMac-style PC will be an embarrassment: you'll have to wade through a thousand options before you even buy it (processor, ram, video card, sound card, etc.), it'll have PCI and ISA slots, serial ports, external speakers, and forty-five minutes of "registration and personalization" when you turn the computer on, like any Windows PC you buy these days. PC makers just won't be able to make the tough sacrifices that Apple did when they designed the iMac.
The iMac succeeded because most people don't have the interest, patience or knowledge to seek out, configure and maintain the absolute top-of-the-line computer. Most people just want to run Office, IE, Outlook and a couple of games. And for that stuff, a 450 MHz Pentium versus a 266 MHz G3 just does not provide much extra benefit. USB is a great consumer interface -- it's so easy -- and Apple was right to force everyone to use it. And, to be honest, I think Apple sells a lot of iMacs because techy people like us know that we can tell our mothers, girlfriends and co-workers to buy them for home, spend at best an hour helping them set up, and never have to think about it again.
The pretty boxes sure got a lot of attention at the beginning, but I think they could start making beige iMacs at this point and they'd sell just as well. Listen to the testimonials and you'll hear that people in general are very pleased with their computers.
David Talbot's been at the head of Salon forever. You've just gotten it confused with Slate, which is still a Microsoft joint. Always has been, and always will. Or are you just yanking my chain?
What an interesting history for Salon. Weren't they Macintosh/Frontier when they started out? And after Dan Shafer left I think they started moving towards NT. But Linux/Apache, that's like a no-brainer. Hooray for the good guys.
Funny, I was just having a conversation with somebody about this. A friend of mine was interviewing for a job yesterday, and he was being interviewed by the guy he would be replacing. At the end of the interview, my friend asked the guy why he was quitting.
"Do you really want to know?" the guy said. My friend insisted.
"I'm going to go wait in line for the Star Wars movie."
Now THAT is devotion. It's also why I'm going to wait for the weekend.
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Artists and craftspeople are motivated by all kinds of things -- notoriety, artistic expression, raw unbundled creativity. A "guarantee for a decent return" is a pretty poor motivation for an artist.
The FSF model is frankly more natural than the "guaranteed profit" model: distribute my creative works all you want, just don't plagarize them.
Actually, you can thank Apple for that. Remember cyberdog?
Yeah, Microsoft (arguably) did it better, but Apple did it first. And we're talking about innovation here...
So if I wanted to put the videos of my wedding on a DVD for my family to watch on their DVD players, I couldn't do this? Or, if I made an independent film I couldn't distribute it on DVD without licensing an encryption key?
Is that for real? Please tell me I'm mistaken.
Good old Wired -- they invariably wring every storey for the most emotional value they can, even when they have to downplay an obvious truth to do so.
If the four-hundred-some messages on this board are any indication so far, the overwhelming reaction to this isn't "Great, now I can pirate DVDs", it's "Great! Linux drivers!" Which, of course, means MORE dvd sales, not less.
I don't typically believe in cosmic justice, but a little part of me is glad to see Real in the hotseat after this week's Real Jukebox Trojan Horse debacle.
Speaking of MACOS, the original Macintosh OS used a 2-digit year for some things, and 'windowed' it as 1920-2019.
The whole purpose of Lycos is that they're the first place you go to get somewhere else, with a few vanilla web tools like chat and e-mail to keep you around and show you a few more ads.
You gotta figure most websites compete with Lycos directly or indirectly for features and/or eyeballs one way or another. So why send users ANYWHERE without a strong warning that they're leaving your beautiful Lycos.com?
Because it'd be a pretty effing stupid portal, that's why.
Somehow it always seems weird to see a social service organization working within the capitalist system, but this is a growing trend. Gun buyback and guns-for-shoes programs are another good example of the same thing.
I'd hardly call it cybersquatting, even: the 'business' of the NAACP is to advance afro-american causes, and holding onto (or using for some other purpose) n-word.com indisputably achieves their business objectives, much more effectively (and inexpensively) than petitioning the NSI or lobbying congress or waiting for other people to register the name and then suing them.
In fact, what a boon! And exactly for the reasons you mentioned. Think of it -- most folks use e-mail in lieu of personal first-class letters which have got to be a HUGE loss leader for the USPS. For practically every personal letter that's sent you've got to have a clerk sell somebody a stamp, pay somebody to (usually) sort the message by hand, and send almost every piece off to a different city.
Bulk mail, magazines, etc., which the internet isn't even close to replacing, come to the USPS pre-sorted and bundled by zip code, and they move massive amounts of it to a smaller number of locations. That's what they really make money on. So heck, if they could deliver only bulk mail, and everybody used e-mail instead of first-class letters, they'd save a ton of dough.
The other great thing the internet does for the USPS is to create a lot of catalog-style commerce that requires shipping, shipping, shipping. And most folks, when they buy a book from Amazon, will opt to wait a few extra days so they can save a buck or two by shipping with USPS. "Priority mail" (which is, like, the biggest scam in the world) has gotten a totally new lease on life, thanks to online commerce.
And the post office takes advantage of this -- they give ebay sellers free shipping materials, and they even print special boxes for Amazon. Now if we could just get record labels to realize what a non-threat MP3 is...
Or my new personal favorite, Daedalus Books:
http://www.daedalusbooks.com/
I've been shopping out of their classic remainders catalog since I was just a wee little thing, and their website is a perfect, perfect extension of it.
One thing they got right, that I think Katz correctly identified, is that atmosphere and aesthetics have a lot to do with a good book-buying experience.
Red Hat charges an INCREDIBLY fair price for what they provide. For one, their CD distribution DOES include some non-free commercial software (I'm thinking, specifically, Metro-X and BRU. The latter of which, at least, is quite useful.) That plus the excellent manual plus the install media alone is worth more than $50. And that's all before you even start talking about the added value of a user-oriented linux distribution.
Oh come on, Michael Dell. That statement just sounds so cynical. If all he's learned from the iMac is that a candy-colored one-piece computer can revive a flagging hardware company, he still doesn't get it at all. And he must think very little of consumers to think that iMacs succeeded with the public because they're "stylish."
The thing that cracks me up is that Dell isn't the first company to say this. After the iMac came out, a slew of PC makers (eMachines for one) and even Intel started pooh-poohing it, saying many of the same things that are being said on this discussion board. You know, not enough options, where's the floppy?, underpowered, overpriced, hard to expand, blah blah blah. And I remember a couple of companies slapping together prototype lookalikes and saying they could sell the same thing for $600 or whatever.
But the proof is in the pudding, and almost a year later, nobody's actually brought forth a competitor. Even Dell is, what, over a year away? And I don't think they'll ever be able to. The first iMac-style PC will be an embarrassment: you'll have to wade through a thousand options before you even buy it (processor, ram, video card, sound card, etc.), it'll have PCI and ISA slots, serial ports, external speakers, and forty-five minutes of "registration and personalization" when you turn the computer on, like any Windows PC you buy these days. PC makers just won't be able to make the tough sacrifices that Apple did when they designed the iMac.
The iMac succeeded because most people don't have the interest, patience or knowledge to seek out, configure and maintain the absolute top-of-the-line computer. Most people just want to run Office, IE, Outlook and a couple of games. And for that stuff, a 450 MHz Pentium versus a 266 MHz G3 just does not provide much extra benefit. USB is a great consumer interface -- it's so easy -- and Apple was right to force everyone to use it. And, to be honest, I think Apple sells a lot of iMacs because techy people like us know that we can tell our mothers, girlfriends and co-workers to buy them for home, spend at best an hour helping them set up, and never have to think about it again.
The pretty boxes sure got a lot of attention at the beginning, but I think they could start making beige iMacs at this point and they'd sell just as well. Listen to the testimonials and you'll hear that people in general are very pleased with their computers.
David Talbot's been at the head of Salon forever. You've just gotten it confused with Slate, which is still a Microsoft joint. Always has been, and always will. Or are you just yanking my chain?
What an interesting history for Salon. Weren't they Macintosh/Frontier when they started out? And after Dan Shafer left I think they started moving towards NT. But Linux/Apache, that's like a no-brainer. Hooray for the good guys.
Funny, I was just having a conversation with somebody about this. A friend of mine was interviewing for a job yesterday, and he was being interviewed by the guy he would be replacing. At the end of the interview, my friend asked the guy why he was quitting.
"Do you really want to know?" the guy said. My friend insisted.
"I'm going to go wait in line for the Star Wars movie."
Now THAT is devotion. It's also why I'm going to wait for the weekend.