Why should such a licence not be enforceable? Why should you not be liable for breaking the contract?
Several reasons:
1. I may not actually have read it or agreed to it. With software, you often need to buy the product before you see that what you are purchasing is actually not a product at all, just a license. Will music be any different?
2. I don't have the opportunity to negotiate it. The contracts are written by the lawyers for big media companies, and are deliberately one-sided, often containing terms that are not even legally enforeable.
3. Advertising (particularly for DVDs) frequently tells me that I can "own" content. If what I am really buying is a license, this is deception and fraud.
4. I may be a minor. In most jurisdictions, people under a certain age (usually 18) cannot enter into legally binding contracts. These people make up a large proportion of the target market for games, music and (especially) music.
Firefox doesn't stay beta forever: The beta versions are quickly (within weeks to months) followed by the full, final product.
If a beta version is stable enough to use every day, that's a good thing. (And really how it should be: Alphas are for versions that lack major chunks of code and crash all the time.) Firefox is something of a special case because the competition (IE) had set the bar really low.
The issue is whether OEMs need to pay extra for the media player and (even more important) whether MS will allow them to install other media players too.
If I was an OEM, I'd want to install RealPlayer and Quicktime in addition to WMP (all configured not to run at startup, of course). Also Firefox alongside IE, and maybe the Yahoo or AOL IM clients alongside MSN Messenger. Perhaps even OpenOffice.
However, MS forces some OEMs into agreements that prohibit this. And we can't know exactly what they say, becaus the agreements are secret.
Google has already struck deals with some news sites regarding registration: The NY Times likes getting traffic from Google News, and so it lets people who click on the Google links read the stories withotu registering.
Similar deals could prevent lawsuits: News sites who want to get linked to would have to agree not to sue for copyright infringement when Google summarizes their stories. (I'm referrring only to Google News itself, of course: Cutting a deal with a search engine shouldn't affect a site's ranking in the main index.)
This is the big advantage of betas, especially with services (as there is already a lot of good, non-beta free software).
Still, a service like GMail isn't free in the same sense as ICQ or Google News: It has the same text ads as the main search engine, and I imagine it brings in just as much revenue for Google.
Not that I'm really complaining: GMail is probably the only Web site that I'd really miss if it suddenly shut down. (And not just because it would take my data with it!) I'd even pay for it if I could have even more storage, more labels, etc.
Works for me too. The only non-spyware site I've found that won't work with Firefox is WIndowsupdate. (On the public Internet, at least. Intranets have all kinds of horrible IE-only or MS-JVM apps.)
The issue is that, according to Opera's CEO, some MS sites are deliberately serving broken HTML if the browser identifies itself as Opera. When Opera tells the site it's IE (or Firefox, or anything else), the sites work fine.
There isn't exactly a watermark (unless Apple is being very secretive about it), just some metadata in the headers that says the file was bought from iTunes and identifies the purchaser. There are tools that can edit or remove this metadata, but hymn and iOpener don't do it automatically.
All that this means is that music files made usign hymn and iOpener can, in theory, be traced back to a particular iTunes customer. This was a deliberate choice by DVD Jon and the other hackers, as they wanted to restore the same kind of fair use that people get with CDs and analog media, not enable anonymous P2P file sharing.
iTunes DRM isn't liberal enough. It breaks the most basic kind of interoperability: You can't listen to music on a non-iPod mp3 player.
Still, at least there are fixes available (hymn and iOpener). AFAIK, there's no equivalent fix for Microsoft DRM yet, but that's only because so few people use it that no-one has bothered to develop one.
Even on flat plans, U.S. cell phone companies often charge you more for calls made from parts of the country outside a pre-defined calling area. Sometimes there's a rational (to them) reason for this --- you're roaming on another provider's network --- but sometimes it's just a way for them to increase your bill.
The scam in Europe is a bit different: The phone companies charge a lot for calls made to cell phones (sometimes ten times as much as for calls to landlines). This can come as quite a shock when you're calling from outside the country and don't know the special area codes used to identify mobile phones.
Wikipedia is the top (or near top) search result for an incrasing number of search terms in Google. The site can't handle all that traffic, so lots of people end up having to click on the "cached" link after waiting a few seconds and seeing an error message.
This is simply a way of making it official. Google won't be using any more bandwidth or RAM than its cache of Wikipedia already needs, but itwill save users a few seconds and some frustration.
This is how most extensions work, but why they would they make it for Windows only if it was just based on XUL, JS and CSS? These are all cross-platform standards supported by all Firefox versions. Or is the implementation under Windows slightly different?
Not trying to spread FUD: I tried out the toolbar, and it doesn't appear to do anything bad (except for ask you whether you want to set your home page to Yahoo when it first runs). It's not something I'll use regularly, but it's nice that people have the option.
Many people spend months in jail while awaiting trial. So it's also a problem with the judicial system.
That was not the case here, but even if you're not in jail, the prospect of jail is a very stressful and disruptive experience: You need to appear in court multiple times, and perhaps pay for lawyers and bail. It also destroys relationships and careers, so it's really a problem with society as a whole.
Not anymore. US agricultural land is rapidly being turned into suburban sprawl. This year, the US will become a net importer of food.
Of course, China's growing population means that it too needs to import an increasing amount of food. The same is true of most countries. That's a big problem, which will soon mean a lot of starving people.
A large number of apps depend on the Microsoft JVM, which (of course) only works with IE. However, Microsoft isn't actually supporting this anymore: It isn't included in XP, and you can't even download it from Microsoft's site. (Usually, it's distributed by the app vendor.) So even IE users will have to transition to Sun's (browser-independent) JVM eventually, and those who have done so already have the same problems with these apps as Firefox users.
In the meantime, you need to have two separate JVMs (Sun and MS) installed to get every Java app to work, and sometimes just guess which one a particular Web app is designed for. And that's just on Windows.
Neither will I. But some companies might not actually know that they are advertising in spyware: The ad salesmen for spyware companies are just as deceptive as the programs themselves.
So the best way to make a difference is to tell the companies about the spyware, and to tell them that your (and many others) are boycotting them because of it.
Actually acquiring SCO would be crazy. It has so many liabilities that the buyer would have to take on.
SCO probably still has some assets, and it's possible that Novell might be interested in some of them. But if so, it would better off buying them from SCO's creditors in bankruptcy court.
For this to work, you have to be able to see into the future. You don't know when exactly a stock has reached its low point for the day until after it's too late.
Penny stocks (which SCO is quickly becoming) are very volatile, often losing or gaining 14% in a day. It's going to zero eventually, of course, but what it will do tomorrow is anyone's guess.
After Challenger, Feynman calculated the shuttle's reliability to be two 9s (ie. a 1 in 100 chance of failure), and he seems to have been about right.
The overall safety rate for commercial airliners is about six 9s (a crash every million flights), so space travel is a long way from that. Keep in mind that flying is safer than driving, crossing the street, etc.
There was a big legal battle about who owned the rights, and eventually the new studio was allowed to remake it (as Never Say Never Again) though without the regular James Bond theme music and credits.
But all the legal wrangling does help to prove your point: Copyright is a monopoly.
Napster too. It was essentially only providing a directory and search service. The same applies to most P2P software.
The Torrent sites marks yet another layer of abstraction. The.torrent files are showing people where to obtain files, and the sites were showing people how to get to.torrent files.
I often read Salon, but always look at another tab (or work in a different app window) during the ad. The advertiser doesn't know, so Salon still gets revenue.
The thing to watch out for is sound: Some of the ads have audio, so you need to mute your speakers before visiting Salon.
I love GMail's filter. It gets the occasional false positive, but only from mailing lists (mostly at yahoogroups) that I actually did subscribe to. Actual personal mail always gets through.
And the filter is improving. I have another email account that's set to forward all messages to GMail, which means a lot of spam gets forwarded too. I've never actually marked any of it as spam in GMail, because it all appears to come from me (my other address) and I don't want to report myself as a spammer. But about a week ago, GMail starting accurately filtering that mail too, even though the spam and the real email all has the same "From" address.
It also has a link to a warning page about phishing whenever an address looks spoofed, which is nice.
A year ago, many airlines let you bypass the check-in lines by using the automated machine. Now they've fired all the human check-in agents, so you have to stand in line to use the machine too.
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Why should such a licence not be enforceable? Why should you not be liable for breaking the contract?
Several reasons:
1. I may not actually have read it or agreed to it. With software, you often need to buy the product before you see that what you are purchasing is actually not a product at all, just a license. Will music be any different?
2. I don't have the opportunity to negotiate it. The contracts are written by the lawyers for big media companies, and are deliberately one-sided, often containing terms that are not even legally enforeable.
3. Advertising (particularly for DVDs) frequently tells me that I can "own" content. If what I am really buying is a license, this is deception and fraud.
4. I may be a minor. In most jurisdictions, people under a certain age (usually 18) cannot enter into legally binding contracts. These people make up a large proportion of the target market for games, music and (especially) music.
Firefox doesn't stay beta forever: The beta versions are quickly (within weeks to months) followed by the full, final product.
If a beta version is stable enough to use every day, that's a good thing. (And really how it should be: Alphas are for versions that lack major chunks of code and crash all the time.) Firefox is something of a special case because the competition (IE) had set the bar really low.
The issue is whether OEMs need to pay extra for the media player and (even more important) whether MS will allow them to install other media players too.
If I was an OEM, I'd want to install RealPlayer and Quicktime in addition to WMP (all configured not to run at startup, of course). Also Firefox alongside IE, and maybe the Yahoo or AOL IM clients alongside MSN Messenger. Perhaps even OpenOffice.
However, MS forces some OEMs into agreements that prohibit this. And we can't know exactly what they say, becaus the agreements are secret.
Google has already struck deals with some news sites regarding registration: The NY Times likes getting traffic from Google News, and so it lets people who click on the Google links read the stories withotu registering.
Similar deals could prevent lawsuits: News sites who want to get linked to would have to agree not to sue for copyright infringement when Google summarizes their stories. (I'm referrring only to Google News itself, of course: Cutting a deal with a search engine shouldn't affect a site's ranking in the main index.)
This is the big advantage of betas, especially with services (as there is already a lot of good, non-beta free software).
Still, a service like GMail isn't free in the same sense as ICQ or Google News: It has the same text ads as the main search engine, and I imagine it brings in just as much revenue for Google.
Not that I'm really complaining: GMail is probably the only Web site that I'd really miss if it suddenly shut down. (And not just because it would take my data with it!) I'd even pay for it if I could have even more storage, more labels, etc.
Works for me too. The only non-spyware site I've found that won't work with Firefox is WIndowsupdate. (On the public Internet, at least. Intranets have all kinds of horrible IE-only or MS-JVM apps.)
The issue is that, according to Opera's CEO, some MS sites are deliberately serving broken HTML if the browser identifies itself as Opera. When Opera tells the site it's IE (or Firefox, or anything else), the sites work fine.
There isn't exactly a watermark (unless Apple is being very secretive about it), just some metadata in the headers that says the file was bought from iTunes and identifies the purchaser. There are tools that can edit or remove this metadata, but hymn and iOpener don't do it automatically.
All that this means is that music files made usign hymn and iOpener can, in theory, be traced back to a particular iTunes customer. This was a deliberate choice by DVD Jon and the other hackers, as they wanted to restore the same kind of fair use that people get with CDs and analog media, not enable anonymous P2P file sharing.
iTunes DRM isn't liberal enough. It breaks the most basic kind of interoperability: You can't listen to music on a non-iPod mp3 player.
Still, at least there are fixes available (hymn and iOpener). AFAIK, there's no equivalent fix for Microsoft DRM yet, but that's only because so few people use it that no-one has bothered to develop one.
Even on flat plans, U.S. cell phone companies often charge you more for calls made from parts of the country outside a pre-defined calling area. Sometimes there's a rational (to them) reason for this --- you're roaming on another provider's network --- but sometimes it's just a way for them to increase your bill.
The scam in Europe is a bit different: The phone companies charge a lot for calls made to cell phones (sometimes ten times as much as for calls to landlines). This can come as quite a shock when you're calling from outside the country and don't know the special area codes used to identify mobile phones.
Wikipedia is the top (or near top) search result for an incrasing number of search terms in Google. The site can't handle all that traffic, so lots of people end up having to click on the "cached" link after waiting a few seconds and seeing an error message.
This is simply a way of making it official. Google won't be using any more bandwidth or RAM than its cache of Wikipedia already needs, but itwill save users a few seconds and some frustration.
This is how most extensions work, but why they would they make it for Windows only if it was just based on XUL, JS and CSS? These are all cross-platform standards supported by all Firefox versions. Or is the implementation under Windows slightly different?
Not trying to spread FUD: I tried out the toolbar, and it doesn't appear to do anything bad (except for ask you whether you want to set your home page to Yahoo when it first runs). It's not something I'll use regularly, but it's nice that people have the option.
Many people spend months in jail while awaiting trial. So it's also a problem with the judicial system.
That was not the case here, but even if you're not in jail, the prospect of jail is a very stressful and disruptive experience: You need to appear in court multiple times, and perhaps pay for lawyers and bail. It also destroys relationships and careers, so it's really a problem with society as a whole.
Not anymore. US agricultural land is rapidly being turned into suburban sprawl. This year, the US will become a net importer of food.
Of course, China's growing population means that it too needs to import an increasing amount of food. The same is true of most countries. That's a big problem, which will soon mean a lot of starving people.
Star Wars too. The two biggest franchises in s.f. are both dying, while BSG is perhaps the best thing on TV.
A large number of apps depend on the Microsoft JVM, which (of course) only works with IE. However, Microsoft isn't actually supporting this anymore: It isn't included in XP, and you can't even download it from Microsoft's site. (Usually, it's distributed by the app vendor.) So even IE users will have to transition to Sun's (browser-independent) JVM eventually, and those who have done so already have the same problems with these apps as Firefox users.
In the meantime, you need to have two separate JVMs (Sun and MS) installed to get every Java app to work, and sometimes just guess which one a particular Web app is designed for. And that's just on Windows.
Neither will I. But some companies might not actually know that they are advertising in spyware: The ad salesmen for spyware companies are just as deceptive as the programs themselves.
So the best way to make a difference is to tell the companies about the spyware, and to tell them that your (and many others) are boycotting them because of it.
Actually acquiring SCO would be crazy. It has so many liabilities that the buyer would have to take on.
SCO probably still has some assets, and it's possible that Novell might be interested in some of them. But if so, it would better off buying them from SCO's creditors in bankruptcy court.
For this to work, you have to be able to see into the future. You don't know when exactly a stock has reached its low point for the day until after it's too late.
Penny stocks (which SCO is quickly becoming) are very volatile, often losing or gaining 14% in a day. It's going to zero eventually, of course, but what it will do tomorrow is anyone's guess.
Absolutely right. They're just like stock analysts who wait until a company is already bankrupt before saying it's time to sell.
After Challenger, Feynman calculated the shuttle's reliability to be two 9s (ie. a 1 in 100 chance of failure), and he seems to have been about right.
The overall safety rate for commercial airliners is about six 9s (a crash every million flights), so space travel is a long way from that. Keep in mind that flying is safer than driving, crossing the street, etc.
There was a big legal battle about who owned the rights, and eventually the new studio was allowed to remake it (as Never Say Never Again) though without the regular James Bond theme music and credits.
But all the legal wrangling does help to prove your point: Copyright is a monopoly.
Napster too. It was essentially only providing a directory and search service. The same applies to most P2P software.
.torrent files are showing people where to obtain files, and the sites were showing people how to get to .torrent files.
The Torrent sites marks yet another layer of abstraction. The
I often read Salon, but always look at another tab (or work in a different app window) during the ad. The advertiser doesn't know, so Salon still gets revenue.
The thing to watch out for is sound: Some of the ads have audio, so you need to mute your speakers before visiting Salon.
I love GMail's filter. It gets the occasional false positive, but only from mailing lists (mostly at yahoogroups) that I actually did subscribe to. Actual personal mail always gets through.
And the filter is improving. I have another email account that's set to forward all messages to GMail, which means a lot of spam gets forwarded too. I've never actually marked any of it as spam in GMail, because it all appears to come from me (my other address) and I don't want to report myself as a spammer. But about a week ago, GMail starting accurately filtering that mail too, even though the spam and the real email all has the same "From" address.
It also has a link to a warning page about phishing whenever an address looks spoofed, which is nice.
A year ago, many airlines let you bypass the check-in lines by using the automated machine. Now they've fired all the human check-in agents, so you have to stand in line to use the machine too.