Why do we have this "grow or perish" mentality?
on
Should Sun Just Fold Now?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
A company can survive without growing. Wall Street
may not like it, but look at Apple, as an example.
Sun has a pretty cool niche - They produce some of the
best server-class machines in the world. And I say this
as a fairly vocal proponent of using commodity PC hardware
whenever possible... I've had the opportunity to use a few
decked-out UltraSparc boxen, and quite simply, they rock.
A cluster of PCs can do the same task 90% of the time, but
when you need high performance in a single box, you just
can't do better (I also say that having used some of IBMs
high-end offerings, and they just don't compare IMO).
So should Sun fold? No. They need to reprioritize, from
growth to maintaining market share and quality. Not cutting
costs, not appealing to more of shrinking market, but just
doing what they do well.
As for the whole Java debacle... Well, if they can find a
way to make money from it, okay. But if not, they need to
stop flogging a dead horse, and just bury it.
DeBeers had a method for finding manafactured
diamonds... it worked on the sub-atomic level,
at that scale its indistingushable from a
natrually formed on to the naked eye
A tad OT, but I'll respond anyway...
"So what?"
I have no interest whatsoever in supporting the
DeBeers cartel. I care about results, not
"Some oppressed African child died to get this
small rock to me". If vapor deposition of
carbon can make a diamond cheaper than child
labor, good. Screw DeBeers.
Of course, it really amuses me that people buy
diamonds at all (for non-industrial purposes).
"I love you, here, have a small clear chunk of
rock. Without destroying it, you can't really
tell it apart from anyof a hundred other kinds
of small clear rock, but this paper says it
costs more". You want to make her happy, spend
"two months' salary" as a downpayment on a parcel
of land, and give her a pebble from that set into
a ring. More meaningful, more useful, and you
can't lose it down the sink.
The equating of "very expensive rock" with "love"
has always stumped me. I'd have to rate it as
one of the greatest PR scams ever pulled... Better
even than the classic frontier snake-oil salesmen.
At least some of their products worked,
if purely by accident (ie, cinchona bark extract,
aka quinine, for malaria).
If Apple pulls out of the market because it
tires of people breaking their rules out of a
overblown sense of entitlement, we'll all be
worse off.
How the hell did this get a "5, Insightful"?
If Apple pulls out of the market because the
market won't accept DRM'd products, then we all
BENEFIT. Other sources of music without
DRM will eventually appear, and in the interim,
we can still get music via conventional routes
(ie, buy CD, rip CD, add to playlist).
I for one do not really understand why people
like iTMS so much. Convenient? Okay, I'll
grant that, purely from the POV of making the
actual purchase. But how about price and
use? I have somewhere on the order of 500 CDs,
and have paid full price (usually $12-$18,
though I have a handful of multi-CD sets for
which I paid around $25) for fewer than two
dozen. The rest I obtained used, or from the
"cutout bin", or just on sale. I'd say that,
over my whole collection, the average CD cost
me roughly $6. And from the "use"
perspective - Yeah, sure, many folks have
defended Apple's DRM on the grounds that it
still lets you do quite a lot (as long as you
run a Mac or Windows, and have an iPod as your
portable - Otherwise, don't even bother trying).
But no matter how lax they make the DRM, I will
always have more flexibility from doing
my own CD rip to a totally non-DRM'd format.
So, where does the greatness of iTMS come into
this?
Overall, an unneeded product, with unwanted
"features" (such as FairPlay, needlessly encrypted
streaming, and both software and hardware lock-in),
and VERY unwanted forced upgrades, for at best a
small savings over just buying an actual
CD (and for those like me who (used to, until the
RIAA pissed me off enough) purchase a lot of music,
it actually costs more). Yeah. Cool, where
do I sign up? The IRS didn't screw me hard enough
this year, I feel a need to atone.
So, as far as I am concerned, they've
fucked themselves on this one.
Other people's comments aside (about the CC
field as optional for a signup), why would you
say they fucked themselves?
They got the PR associated with giving away
$100M worth of stuff. They only had to pay
out $5M (less, since this certainly doesn't
cost them as much as it would cost an actual
customer). And you say they fucked
themselves?
More like they fucked us. At least
they used lube, but still... "Distribution
problems" my ass. For anyone who considers
every aspect of this as anything but well
thought out and perfectly coordinated, I have
a bridge to sell you...
Okay, can somebody put this in politer, more persuasive language...?
Sure. Translate it, by analogy, into an issue that most
people do have a sensitivity to...
"Why would people object to segregation?"
"I'll tell you, because I'm black, I'm a black business owner,
and this year I bought a home. But because of the Jim Crow laws,
if I wanted to vote, that would be illegal."
"How many blacks in the United States own their own homes?"
"Well, I'm talking about ones who do."
"Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 75 million people in
this country. You can't have a public policy that is aimed at 100,000
people when the other multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it
that way."
Does that make the problem seem a bit more obvious?
Do you claim that a kernel can't detect
Bochs just as easily as it detects VMware?
I don't think anyone would claim that. However,
what about Floz? Or Blah? Or SquiVM?
Sure, they can deliberately detect any given
virtualizer or emulator. They can even look
for some common traits of such programs. But
They can't detect them all, certainly
not ones as yet nonexistant.
And, speaking of nonexistant at the moment, even
if they deliberately detect Bochs, nothing stops
Bochs from deliberately concealing itself from
the emulated system.
So, as in all wars-of-escalation, if one side
has nothing to lose, they all but win by default.
For a recent example, the iTunes update... A
crack for FairPlay comes out, iTunes releases
a fix to address that crack. And next week,
we'll see a new crack for the update. If no
such new-and-improved crack comes out, "we"
lose nothing. If it does, Apple loses their
DRM until the next round.
You are what is wrong with the Linux community,
thinking that everything should be/is free.
No. If you have any interest at all in Linux, he
embodies everything right with Linux. Even if
your "interest" only extends so far as trying to make
a buck off it, you still owe him (or at least, people
like him) a heart-felt "thanks".
BR>
Linux (specifically, GNU/Linux) exists because
a large number of people said "Hey, I can
write an app to do that, why should I pay Microsoft
for it?"
You don't like the very philosophy that led to Linux
existing in the first place? No problem. You don't
have to use it. If, however, you enjoy using Linux
(or even just enjoy getting some hardware cheaper
because, by using Linux as a base for the firmware,
they could trim the development budget by a third),
then don't knock the very essence of it.
You are helping to propagate the myth that everything
about Linux is free, if that were the case, I highly
doubt as many big name companies would do ANY development
work in porting their apps to Linux
See my point above about Linux as a base platform for
firmware. Even companies appreciate Linux for
precisely that reason - They can get it, and its source
code, for free.
If you have a product for Linux, cool, sell that.
If you have a product using Linux, cool, sell that.
If you want to take an off-the-shelf pile of free (as in
speech) software and try to make a buck on it - Hey, good
for you if you find enough suckers, but don't come whining
when people notice that you don't actually have a product.
thanks to Linux's memory protection and I/O
abstraction, nothing affects system reliability
unless it goes through the kernel... a few
proprietary apps shouldn't break the increased
reliability that the free software process brings
to the rest of your system. Or what evidence can
you provide against my assertion?
No, no, you have a fair point that I hadn't
considered. I agree with you completely - No
kernel mods, this should at worst crash the
player in question, not the whole system.
I do, though, have to wonder if (at least)
WMP9 support requires a (binary-only, of
course) kernel module to enforce its DRM...
If so, my earlier comment on stability would
still apply. If not, will this allow playback
of protected content, or have they glossed
over that small omission from full
compatibility?
It shows that there is a real place for
Linux in the commercial/proprietary software
market.
And you consider that a "good" thing?
I (and I think many of us) consider Linux
as embodying freedom (in both the RMS and
and the beer senses) in the IT world. Now,
I certainly won't put down some of the great
work the major distro companies have done
for us, but this goes a little too far - The
difference between "added value" to "basically
un-free (in both senses).
Using this, as a foot in the door, the more
open standards can be intorduced and promoted
to gain larger foothold.
I hope you meant that as sarcastic.
Using this as a precedent, companies can
feel safer about making totally closed
standards, with the hope that if they become
popular enough, even "those Linux nuts" will
eventually license it from them.
Not good. I can see this from three main
angles... First, while nice to have a legal
way to do most of the things mentioned in the
FP, I would point out that a legal way to
do that already existed - Use Windows.
Second, illegal (in some countries) ways to
do all of those already existed, making this
very unlikely to see adoption by any but the
most picky of people and companies. And third,
I do consider it nice to have native (rather
than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support
for a given format, but not at the expense
of making Linux have the same stability as
Windows.
are all y'all nuts? Reinstalling the OS once a month or even once a
year? Holy shit! My current box is 4 years old and I've never reinstalled
the OS and hope I never have to.
Once a month I consider rather excessive, but for a Windows box,
reinstalling at least once a year greatly reduces the kruft.
After a clean install, you can feel the improved
responsiveness.
Anyway, my list of the first ten (+1 x2):
0) Turn off half of the default Windows crap (services, the recycle bin,
CD autostart, etc), and perform assorted registry tweaks to
stop Windows from acting like a crippled DOS-box-with-GUI (ala Win95)
with only 64MB of RAM (such as LargeSystemCache, NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, CompletionChar, and
DisablePagingExecutive).
1)
PageDefrag, which keeps your registry and pagefile in a single
contiguous file (though you should always have your min and max pagefile
the same, so that doesn't get fragmented in the first place).
2) AntiVir. No sane person goes
without an AV program, and IMO, this counts as the best of the free
ones (for that matter, I consider it better than Norton as well - Slightly
more awkward autoupdates, but it doesn't hog system resources). Best of
all, as a non-USian program, it doesn't deliberately ignore "official"
virii such as the FBI's Magic Lantern.
3) AdAware. We all know what it
does.
4) SpyBot. Ditto, and it
catches some things that AdAware doesn't (and vice-versa).
5) Mozilla, of course.
6) Winamp. I still prefer the v2.x
series, but, gotta have at least one of them.
7)
TeraTerm Pro and
TeraTerm SSH. Technically two installs, but only a moron would
use unencrypted telnet these days.
8) Calypso, a
really nice (and free-as-in-beer) email program. Want the latest, greatest
features in your email program, making it all but indistinguishable from
a full-featured web browser and media player? Don't use this. Want a
safe medium for text communication, with fairly powerful regexp filtering?
You'll consider Calypso a godsend.
9) The GIMP. 'nuff said.
10) Finally, a compiler (or three... The next dozen installs after this
one would include various other dev tools). Currently I still prefer
Borland C 5.02, sadly not free. Although advancing technoology has
already made it basically obsolete, it has what I consider the most
straightforward IDE of any development suite out there.
0, part 2) Repeat step 0, since by this point Windows will have tried to
undo half of my changes from the first time.
SCO has ceased to exist in my opinion. Based
on the delay of AZ's response, I had assumed they
to decided to pretend SCO doesn't exist, and to
just ignore them.
Nope. (Places fingers in ears and slowly rocks
back and forth chanting "blah blah blah i can't
hear you blay blah blah" over and over)
The only interesting part of all of this? The
amusing phrasing I've seen from the various
briefs and filings and fnords and amendments and
so on and so forth... "Hide the eight-ball"?
I don't quite know the meaning of that in
normal language, can someone elaborate on its
specific legal-context meaning?
Could we stop the Microsoft, Debian, Gentoo
and Fedora, and *BSD astroturfing please?
Debian (and Linux in general) does not exist in
a vaccuum. In a discussion on the merits of following
the "free" philosophy to an irrational conclusion
(seemingly, what Debian has chosen to do with Sarge),
you need to mention other Linux distros
(Fedora), other 'nix-like OSs (*BSD), and other
popular OSs (Windows).
Philosophically, I agree with the idea of Debian.
I consider it a truly wonderful goal. In the
current IP climate among hardware manufacturers,
however, a move like this all but dooms Debian.
I don't like using binary-only NVidia drivers any
more than the rest of you. But I like it a hell
of a lot better than using X in 640x480 stdVGA mode
on my shiny new $150 video card. Get the idea?
However, Google will also give other
sponsored links in context to what was
searched for... in this case being
insurance, so it shows competitors.
How is that grounds for a lawsuit? AXA paid
for sponsored links, they got them. End of
story.
Perhaps a nice, easy way out of this (in the
future) exists for Google - Offer "Exclusive"
sponsorships, at such an amazingly high rate
that no one will ever take one (and if someone
does actually buy one, Google will
gladly go out of its way to accomodate them).
That way, when asshats like AXA file frivolous
suits like this, Google can just point to their
offerings and say "Sorry, you had the chance to
buy an exclusive sponsored link, and chose to
scrimp on a few bucks. Your choice, deal".
The GIMP? The name of some poor bastard
imprisoned in a box, zipped up in filthy
leather from head to toe, tortured for months
until he loses his mind and identifies with
his torturers?
Hmm, when you put it like that, I have
to consider it all the more appropriate.
I only thought of the "crippled" implication of
the word, not the one you describe. Now, I could
see gimp==crippled as a downer, but I don't think
I could give a better description of corporate
life than you did...
"Have a minor in Color Selection, but your boss
really likes fuscia? Don't worry, The
GIMP feels your pain". Something like that.;-)
Given all the European snickering about
Americans complaining when Janet Jackson
showed a tit on TV, I would think they
wouldn't care about hand gestures.
And this got a "funny" mod?
Hey, no one would call me overly nationalistic,
but I consider this pretty damned insightful!
At the same time they scold us for freaking over
a nipple (hey, I'll agree to that extent),
they would scold us for a stoned gull making
an "obscene" gesture?
Yeah, whatever. Moral high ground?
"Ring Ring", "Clue phone on line 2!"
I've reached the point now where I always
apologize before I tell them the name.
Wimp.
Take pride in the software you use.
"I use The GIMP. Yeah, you heard me right,
The GIMP! Don't like it? Run
back to mama PhotoShop, ya pussy! In the
meantime, I'll do laps around your pathetic
filters and layers, and pay a few hundred less
for the honor!"
All in presentation. A "bad" name can seem
like a liability, but if you make it "in your
face" enough, it can help. Don't
apologize - Confront! It takes quite a lot
these days to snap the sheep out of their
stupor, every little bit helps. With The
GIMP, you have an advantage right away, if
you don't get squeamish and throw it away as
a liability.
I feel this might set a very bad precedent
if we are required to give the gov't our
encryption keys..
It would also prove impossible to enforce.
Consider just SSH... Sure, I use a login
password to make the connection, but the
key to the actual encryption for the
connection? I have no idea. I have some file
somewhere or other that I could find, that
changes once per hour, but I don't think that
even contains the real "key", just some random
crap from which the magical SSH faeries
produce the "real" key.
And that, for something any moron with an
out-of-the-box Linux machine can use. How
about something with "real" encryption, such
as a pseudo one-time pad (ala SecureKey) or
the like?
Sadly, the reality of this won't stop our
lawmakers; if anything, it will encourage
them. What better than to have a populace
not only guilty of a crime, but not even
capable of complying? Easy excuse to
arrest anyone at any time with no better
reason.
Damned scary, IMO, and we don't even need to
get into topics such as how much it would suck
if even in basically-secular countries, we
needed to watch ourselves with respect to
f'd up religious/legal systems such as
Sharia.
So far he has won and avoided jail. But, if
he continues to push his luck, like this, some
corporation is going to bury him.
Why? It seems to me like he has an almost
uniquely good position from which to produce
tools like this - Namely, the courts found let
him off for an almost identical tool.
Legal systems have a lot of problems, but they
hate admitting errors; in this case, that
stubbornness works in our favor, for a
change. Finding him guilty (or in favor of
industry-group-X in a civil suit) would require
admitting they made a mistake in the last round.
That simply will not happen.
Also, no one else seems to have pointed this
out, but Jon didn't get inspired by PlayFair;
rather, PlayFair based its work on Jon's own
contribution to VideoLan, which had the ability
to crack FairPlay a few month ago.
Anyone in any way connecting to a network... I
mean, you don't really have a choice, right?
What is the name of your computer?
Currently sitting at Teleute, my primary
machine (which slowly sucks away my life,
thus the name). Across the room I have
Lucien the file-server, and downstairs
I have Virago (my SO's machine) and
Bimbo (my masq'ing gateway).
In what way is removing the DRM from
iTunes music "fair use"?
In the "format shifting" sense, which most
certainly does fall under "fair use".
You can argue this from any angle you want, but
in actual trials, the courts have repeatedly
upheld the idea that people have the "right"
to use media they purchase (regargless of the
whole "bought" vs "licensed" issue). If that
means using tools like playfair to unlock that
media, then so it goes.
The injunction against DeCSS really counts as
one of the first findings that contradicts the
idea of format-shifting as fair use. And, you
could interpret that as not so much of a slam
against format shifting (remember, it had
nothing to do with any actual, specific
copyright violations), as against a
DMCA-defined "circumvention device".
Of course, it really bothers me how
many people want to step up to defend Apple
here. Any other company, and we'd have a
totally united front against this blatant use
of the legal system to quash our rights. But
blessed, inviolable Apple? No! "They need
the money" (to cover their otherwise invalid
business model?). "It allows enough uses to
not affect anyone" (until your third computer
crashes with you unable to release the key).
"You can always burn it to a CD and re-rip it"
(completely ignoring the resulting hideous loss
of quality compared to what the user paid
for)...
Just astounding, what the Apple fanboys will
defend. "Steve needs to eat the brains
of still-living childen", "Zombie sounds like
such a harsh word, can we please call
it by the correct medical term,
'necroambulate'?". If this time they hadn't
stepped into the PC world to screw us all,
I'd consider this almost self-served legal
Darwinism. But as it stands - Grow some balls!
Steve can err, deal.
but doesn't the requirement for a permit
to engage in a sub-orbital flight set a bad
precedent as far as the politicalization of
space goes.
As long as you don't plan to come back down,
you can safely ignore the FAA.
Come back, though, and don't have the right
permits? You'll wish you'd burned up on
reentry.
Basically, I agree with you. The idea of a
US government agency having control over attempts
at flights outside the Earth's atmosphere just
annoys me to no end. But as I said, if you plan
to come back, you'd better make damned sure you've
dotten your Is and crossed your Ts.
Doesn't a packeting kiddie DOSing, say,
financial websites count as terrorism?
Under NewSpeak, yes. By any rational definition,
no. Blowing up financial institutions
counts as terrorism. DOSing them would count as
"annoyism", if such a concept existed. It just
annoys a very visible and powerful target,
thus the swift response to such acts.
And I really don't understand what you're
saying about the prostitution thing...are you
for or against??
Then you missed the point entirely. It doesn't
matter if he considers himself for or
against prostitution - More importantly, while
the collective US (and several international)
intelligence agencies had an immediate and
urgent need to track down those responsible
for 9/11, the FBI instead decided to play
"screw the hooker twice". Sure it counts as
illegal, but these people have some seriously
screwed up priorities - Do you go after the
guy in the belltower with a rifle, or the
litterbug in the park? So far, the answer
seems to favor clean parks.
Are you saying the FBI should just abandon
any sort of domestic crime investigation chasing
phantom terrorists?
Ummm... Quick geography quiz - In which US state
do you find the Netherlands? Last time I checked,
Northern Europe (ie, where most of the Operation
Fastlight raids took place) didn't quite count as
"domestic" relative to the US...
As for ignoring lesser crimes in favor of
bigger ones - Hell yeah!!! Goes back to that
"prioritize" idea I mentioned above. No, I
wouldn't have the FBI tracking down phantom
terrorists (I personally consider the War on
Terrorism a really bad joke), but in a list of
the "worst" crimes of the past year, you can
bet "a bunch of kids spreading cracked software"
should fall so far from the top as to
not even show up in an executive summary.
Thus, the argument others have put forward about
the FBI looking after corporate interests. This
doesn't save lives. It doesn't make the world
safer. It merely goes after some people who
have cost a few bucks to organizations that
donate heavily to political causes. Money,
money, money, it all goes back to that.
Students need to learn that when they hit
industry, sharing credentials just isn't
acceptable.
Yeah, sure - Tell that to every admin who has
pulled his hair out trying to keep a machine
up and running, when a few dozen users all have
the root password. And sure, you can tell me
"That shouldn't happen", but put bluntly, it
does.
As kids, they share "credentials" out of either
fear, the desire to look cool, to get something
in exchange, or perhaps just out of niceness
(Most of us learn to share from a young age,
in direct contradiction to the RIAA's message).
As adults, we share to spread accountability.
I know of more than one situation where some
higher-up finds a few gigs of MP3s on a
development server, all owned by a non-user
account, and the sheer number of people who
could have done it kept anyone from losing
their job (of course, we all know that in
such situations, everyone contributed
and had access to that music).
So what do these kids need to learn? The
right reasons to share credentials,
and how to minimize traceability. Which I
believe they do learn - School provides
a fairly safe environment in which to try out
various accountability-avoidance strategies,
figure out which ones work, and (usually) suffer
only token punishments when they screw up.
I must be pretty lucky, my neighbor & 2 of
my good friends have large (200+) cd
collections
Same here... I personally (well, between my own
collection and my SO's) have over 500, though
I haven't bought all that many in the last few
years, due to the RIAA's antics. All of my
close friends have at least 100 or so;
I have one FOAF, who does semi-professional
remixing (like for local DJs), with literally
10k+ CDs - His collection occupies a full
room, with a few thousand of his
"favorites" in floor-to-ceiling racks,
and the rest in gigantic (but alphabetically
sorted) piles in the closet. Sadly, with all
that to pick from, he doesn't have much I
like... I enjoy most of the Techno family
of genres, but not House (go figure), which
he mostly deals with.
Perhaps this has some sort of regional
influence (I live in New England, myself)?
Or just a college-kid thing (why spend what
little money you have on CDs when you can
download them)? I dunno. I personally had
a pretty nice collection even in college,
although I didn't really get into CDs until
midway through HS.
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A company can survive without growing. Wall Street may not like it, but look at Apple, as an example.
Sun has a pretty cool niche - They produce some of the best server-class machines in the world. And I say this as a fairly vocal proponent of using commodity PC hardware whenever possible... I've had the opportunity to use a few decked-out UltraSparc boxen, and quite simply, they rock. A cluster of PCs can do the same task 90% of the time, but when you need high performance in a single box, you just can't do better (I also say that having used some of IBMs high-end offerings, and they just don't compare IMO).
So should Sun fold? No. They need to reprioritize, from growth to maintaining market share and quality. Not cutting costs, not appealing to more of shrinking market, but just doing what they do well.
As for the whole Java debacle... Well, if they can find a way to make money from it, okay. But if not, they need to stop flogging a dead horse, and just bury it.
DeBeers had a method for finding manafactured diamonds... it worked on the sub-atomic level, at that scale its indistingushable from a natrually formed on to the naked eye
A tad OT, but I'll respond anyway...
"So what?"
I have no interest whatsoever in supporting the DeBeers cartel. I care about results, not "Some oppressed African child died to get this small rock to me". If vapor deposition of carbon can make a diamond cheaper than child labor, good. Screw DeBeers.
Of course, it really amuses me that people buy diamonds at all (for non-industrial purposes). "I love you, here, have a small clear chunk of rock. Without destroying it, you can't really tell it apart from anyof a hundred other kinds of small clear rock, but this paper says it costs more". You want to make her happy, spend "two months' salary" as a downpayment on a parcel of land, and give her a pebble from that set into a ring. More meaningful, more useful, and you can't lose it down the sink.
The equating of "very expensive rock" with "love" has always stumped me. I'd have to rate it as one of the greatest PR scams ever pulled... Better even than the classic frontier snake-oil salesmen. At least some of their products worked, if purely by accident (ie, cinchona bark extract, aka quinine, for malaria).
If Apple pulls out of the market because it tires of people breaking their rules out of a overblown sense of entitlement, we'll all be worse off.
How the hell did this get a "5, Insightful"?
If Apple pulls out of the market because the market won't accept DRM'd products, then we all BENEFIT. Other sources of music without DRM will eventually appear, and in the interim, we can still get music via conventional routes (ie, buy CD, rip CD, add to playlist).
I for one do not really understand why people like iTMS so much. Convenient? Okay, I'll grant that, purely from the POV of making the actual purchase. But how about price and use? I have somewhere on the order of 500 CDs, and have paid full price (usually $12-$18, though I have a handful of multi-CD sets for which I paid around $25) for fewer than two dozen. The rest I obtained used, or from the "cutout bin", or just on sale. I'd say that, over my whole collection, the average CD cost me roughly $6. And from the "use" perspective - Yeah, sure, many folks have defended Apple's DRM on the grounds that it still lets you do quite a lot (as long as you run a Mac or Windows, and have an iPod as your portable - Otherwise, don't even bother trying). But no matter how lax they make the DRM, I will always have more flexibility from doing my own CD rip to a totally non-DRM'd format. So, where does the greatness of iTMS come into this?
Overall, an unneeded product, with unwanted "features" (such as FairPlay, needlessly encrypted streaming, and both software and hardware lock-in), and VERY unwanted forced upgrades, for at best a small savings over just buying an actual CD (and for those like me who (used to, until the RIAA pissed me off enough) purchase a lot of music, it actually costs more). Yeah. Cool, where do I sign up? The IRS didn't screw me hard enough this year, I feel a need to atone.
So, as far as I am concerned, they've fucked themselves on this one.
Other people's comments aside (about the CC field as optional for a signup), why would you say they fucked themselves?
They got the PR associated with giving away $100M worth of stuff. They only had to pay out $5M (less, since this certainly doesn't cost them as much as it would cost an actual customer). And you say they fucked themselves?
More like they fucked us. At least they used lube, but still... "Distribution problems" my ass. For anyone who considers every aspect of this as anything but well thought out and perfectly coordinated, I have a bridge to sell you...
Okay, can somebody put this in politer, more persuasive language...?
Sure. Translate it, by analogy, into an issue that most people do have a sensitivity to...
"Why would people object to segregation?"
"I'll tell you, because I'm black, I'm a black business owner, and this year I bought a home. But because of the Jim Crow laws, if I wanted to vote, that would be illegal."
"How many blacks in the United States own their own homes?"
"Well, I'm talking about ones who do."
"Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 75 million people in this country. You can't have a public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way."
Does that make the problem seem a bit more obvious?
Do you claim that a kernel can't detect Bochs just as easily as it detects VMware?
I don't think anyone would claim that. However, what about Floz? Or Blah? Or SquiVM?
Sure, they can deliberately detect any given virtualizer or emulator. They can even look for some common traits of such programs. But They can't detect them all, certainly not ones as yet nonexistant.
And, speaking of nonexistant at the moment, even if they deliberately detect Bochs, nothing stops Bochs from deliberately concealing itself from the emulated system.
So, as in all wars-of-escalation, if one side has nothing to lose, they all but win by default. For a recent example, the iTunes update... A crack for FairPlay comes out, iTunes releases a fix to address that crack. And next week, we'll see a new crack for the update. If no such new-and-improved crack comes out, "we" lose nothing. If it does, Apple loses their DRM until the next round.
You are what is wrong with the Linux community, thinking that everything should be/is free.
No. If you have any interest at all in Linux, he embodies everything right with Linux. Even if your "interest" only extends so far as trying to make a buck off it, you still owe him (or at least, people like him) a heart-felt "thanks".
BR> Linux (specifically, GNU/Linux) exists because a large number of people said "Hey, I can write an app to do that, why should I pay Microsoft for it?"
You don't like the very philosophy that led to Linux existing in the first place? No problem. You don't have to use it. If, however, you enjoy using Linux (or even just enjoy getting some hardware cheaper because, by using Linux as a base for the firmware, they could trim the development budget by a third), then don't knock the very essence of it.
You are helping to propagate the myth that everything about Linux is free, if that were the case, I highly doubt as many big name companies would do ANY development work in porting their apps to Linux
See my point above about Linux as a base platform for firmware. Even companies appreciate Linux for precisely that reason - They can get it, and its source code, for free.
If you have a product for Linux, cool, sell that. If you have a product using Linux, cool, sell that. If you want to take an off-the-shelf pile of free (as in speech) software and try to make a buck on it - Hey, good for you if you find enough suckers, but don't come whining when people notice that you don't actually have a product.
thanks to Linux's memory protection and I/O abstraction, nothing affects system reliability unless it goes through the kernel ... a few
proprietary apps shouldn't break the increased
reliability that the free software process brings
to the rest of your system. Or what evidence can
you provide against my assertion?
No, no, you have a fair point that I hadn't considered. I agree with you completely - No kernel mods, this should at worst crash the player in question, not the whole system.
I do, though, have to wonder if (at least) WMP9 support requires a (binary-only, of course) kernel module to enforce its DRM... If so, my earlier comment on stability would still apply. If not, will this allow playback of protected content, or have they glossed over that small omission from full compatibility?
It shows that there is a real place for Linux in the commercial/proprietary software market.
And you consider that a "good" thing?
I (and I think many of us) consider Linux as embodying freedom (in both the RMS and and the beer senses) in the IT world. Now, I certainly won't put down some of the great work the major distro companies have done for us, but this goes a little too far - The difference between "added value" to "basically un-free (in both senses).
Using this, as a foot in the door, the more open standards can be intorduced and promoted to gain larger foothold.
I hope you meant that as sarcastic.
Using this as a precedent, companies can feel safer about making totally closed standards, with the hope that if they become popular enough, even "those Linux nuts" will eventually license it from them.
Not good. I can see this from three main angles... First, while nice to have a legal way to do most of the things mentioned in the FP, I would point out that a legal way to do that already existed - Use Windows. Second, illegal (in some countries) ways to do all of those already existed, making this very unlikely to see adoption by any but the most picky of people and companies. And third, I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
are all y'all nuts? Reinstalling the OS once a month or even once a year? Holy shit! My current box is 4 years old and I've never reinstalled the OS and hope I never have to.
Once a month I consider rather excessive, but for a Windows box, reinstalling at least once a year greatly reduces the kruft. After a clean install, you can feel the improved responsiveness.
Anyway, my list of the first ten (+1 x2):
0) Turn off half of the default Windows crap (services, the recycle bin, CD autostart, etc), and perform assorted registry tweaks to stop Windows from acting like a crippled DOS-box-with-GUI (ala Win95) with only 64MB of RAM (such as LargeSystemCache, NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, CompletionChar, and DisablePagingExecutive).
1) PageDefrag, which keeps your registry and pagefile in a single contiguous file (though you should always have your min and max pagefile the same, so that doesn't get fragmented in the first place).
2) AntiVir. No sane person goes without an AV program, and IMO, this counts as the best of the free ones (for that matter, I consider it better than Norton as well - Slightly more awkward autoupdates, but it doesn't hog system resources). Best of all, as a non-USian program, it doesn't deliberately ignore "official" virii such as the FBI's Magic Lantern.
3) AdAware. We all know what it does.
4) SpyBot. Ditto, and it catches some things that AdAware doesn't (and vice-versa).
5) Mozilla, of course.
6) Winamp. I still prefer the v2.x series, but, gotta have at least one of them.
7) TeraTerm Pro and TeraTerm SSH. Technically two installs, but only a moron would use unencrypted telnet these days.
8) Calypso, a really nice (and free-as-in-beer) email program. Want the latest, greatest features in your email program, making it all but indistinguishable from a full-featured web browser and media player? Don't use this. Want a safe medium for text communication, with fairly powerful regexp filtering? You'll consider Calypso a godsend.
9) The GIMP. 'nuff said.
10) Finally, a compiler (or three... The next dozen installs after this one would include various other dev tools). Currently I still prefer Borland C 5.02, sadly not free. Although advancing technoology has already made it basically obsolete, it has what I consider the most straightforward IDE of any development suite out there.
0, part 2) Repeat step 0, since by this point Windows will have tried to undo half of my changes from the first time.
Okay. Ego-post of the day done.
"Yawn".
I don't care. Nope. Not even a little.
SCO has ceased to exist in my opinion. Based on the delay of AZ's response, I had assumed they to decided to pretend SCO doesn't exist, and to just ignore them.
Nope. (Places fingers in ears and slowly rocks back and forth chanting "blah blah blah i can't hear you blay blah blah" over and over)
The only interesting part of all of this? The amusing phrasing I've seen from the various briefs and filings and fnords and amendments and so on and so forth... "Hide the eight-ball"? I don't quite know the meaning of that in normal language, can someone elaborate on its specific legal-context meaning?
Could we stop the Microsoft, Debian, Gentoo and Fedora, and *BSD astroturfing please?
Debian (and Linux in general) does not exist in a vaccuum. In a discussion on the merits of following the "free" philosophy to an irrational conclusion (seemingly, what Debian has chosen to do with Sarge), you need to mention other Linux distros (Fedora), other 'nix-like OSs (*BSD), and other popular OSs (Windows).
Philosophically, I agree with the idea of Debian. I consider it a truly wonderful goal. In the current IP climate among hardware manufacturers, however, a move like this all but dooms Debian.
I don't like using binary-only NVidia drivers any more than the rest of you. But I like it a hell of a lot better than using X in 640x480 stdVGA mode on my shiny new $150 video card. Get the idea?
However, Google will also give other sponsored links in context to what was searched for... in this case being insurance, so it shows competitors.
How is that grounds for a lawsuit? AXA paid for sponsored links, they got them. End of story.
Perhaps a nice, easy way out of this (in the future) exists for Google - Offer "Exclusive" sponsorships, at such an amazingly high rate that no one will ever take one (and if someone does actually buy one, Google will gladly go out of its way to accomodate them). That way, when asshats like AXA file frivolous suits like this, Google can just point to their offerings and say "Sorry, you had the chance to buy an exclusive sponsored link, and chose to scrimp on a few bucks. Your choice, deal".
The GIMP? The name of some poor bastard imprisoned in a box, zipped up in filthy leather from head to toe, tortured for months until he loses his mind and identifies with his torturers?
;-)
Hmm, when you put it like that, I have to consider it all the more appropriate.
I only thought of the "crippled" implication of the word, not the one you describe. Now, I could see gimp==crippled as a downer, but I don't think I could give a better description of corporate life than you did...
"Have a minor in Color Selection, but your boss really likes fuscia? Don't worry, The GIMP feels your pain". Something like that.
Given all the European snickering about Americans complaining when Janet Jackson showed a tit on TV, I would think they wouldn't care about hand gestures.
And this got a "funny" mod?
Hey, no one would call me overly nationalistic, but I consider this pretty damned insightful!
At the same time they scold us for freaking over a nipple (hey, I'll agree to that extent), they would scold us for a stoned gull making an "obscene" gesture?
Yeah, whatever. Moral high ground? "Ring Ring", "Clue phone on line 2!"
I've reached the point now where I always apologize before I tell them the name.
Wimp.
Take pride in the software you use.
"I use The GIMP. Yeah, you heard me right, The GIMP! Don't like it? Run back to mama PhotoShop, ya pussy! In the meantime, I'll do laps around your pathetic filters and layers, and pay a few hundred less for the honor!"
All in presentation. A "bad" name can seem like a liability, but if you make it "in your face" enough, it can help. Don't apologize - Confront! It takes quite a lot these days to snap the sheep out of their stupor, every little bit helps. With The GIMP, you have an advantage right away, if you don't get squeamish and throw it away as a liability.
I feel this might set a very bad precedent if we are required to give the gov't our encryption keys..
It would also prove impossible to enforce.
Consider just SSH... Sure, I use a login password to make the connection, but the key to the actual encryption for the connection? I have no idea. I have some file somewhere or other that I could find, that changes once per hour, but I don't think that even contains the real "key", just some random crap from which the magical SSH faeries produce the "real" key.
And that, for something any moron with an out-of-the-box Linux machine can use. How about something with "real" encryption, such as a pseudo one-time pad (ala SecureKey) or the like?
Sadly, the reality of this won't stop our lawmakers; if anything, it will encourage them. What better than to have a populace not only guilty of a crime, but not even capable of complying? Easy excuse to arrest anyone at any time with no better reason.
Damned scary, IMO, and we don't even need to get into topics such as how much it would suck if even in basically-secular countries, we needed to watch ourselves with respect to f'd up religious/legal systems such as Sharia.
So far he has won and avoided jail. But, if he continues to push his luck, like this, some corporation is going to bury him.
Why? It seems to me like he has an almost uniquely good position from which to produce tools like this - Namely, the courts found let him off for an almost identical tool.
Legal systems have a lot of problems, but they hate admitting errors; in this case, that stubbornness works in our favor, for a change. Finding him guilty (or in favor of industry-group-X in a civil suit) would require admitting they made a mistake in the last round. That simply will not happen.
Also, no one else seems to have pointed this out, but Jon didn't get inspired by PlayFair; rather, PlayFair based its work on Jon's own contribution to VideoLan, which had the ability to crack FairPlay a few month ago.
How many people name their computers?
Anyone in any way connecting to a network... I mean, you don't really have a choice, right?
What is the name of your computer?
Currently sitting at Teleute, my primary machine (which slowly sucks away my life, thus the name). Across the room I have Lucien the file-server, and downstairs I have Virago (my SO's machine) and Bimbo (my masq'ing gateway).
In what way is removing the DRM from iTunes music "fair use"?
In the "format shifting" sense, which most certainly does fall under "fair use".
You can argue this from any angle you want, but in actual trials, the courts have repeatedly upheld the idea that people have the "right" to use media they purchase (regargless of the whole "bought" vs "licensed" issue). If that means using tools like playfair to unlock that media, then so it goes.
The injunction against DeCSS really counts as one of the first findings that contradicts the idea of format-shifting as fair use. And, you could interpret that as not so much of a slam against format shifting (remember, it had nothing to do with any actual, specific copyright violations), as against a DMCA-defined "circumvention device".
Of course, it really bothers me how many people want to step up to defend Apple here. Any other company, and we'd have a totally united front against this blatant use of the legal system to quash our rights. But blessed, inviolable Apple? No! "They need the money" (to cover their otherwise invalid business model?). "It allows enough uses to not affect anyone" (until your third computer crashes with you unable to release the key). "You can always burn it to a CD and re-rip it" (completely ignoring the resulting hideous loss of quality compared to what the user paid for)...
Just astounding, what the Apple fanboys will defend. "Steve needs to eat the brains of still-living childen", "Zombie sounds like such a harsh word, can we please call it by the correct medical term, 'necroambulate'?". If this time they hadn't stepped into the PC world to screw us all, I'd consider this almost self-served legal Darwinism. But as it stands - Grow some balls! Steve can err, deal.
PS - IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot.
but doesn't the requirement for a permit to engage in a sub-orbital flight set a bad precedent as far as the politicalization of space goes.
As long as you don't plan to come back down, you can safely ignore the FAA.
Come back, though, and don't have the right permits? You'll wish you'd burned up on reentry.
Basically, I agree with you. The idea of a US government agency having control over attempts at flights outside the Earth's atmosphere just annoys me to no end. But as I said, if you plan to come back, you'd better make damned sure you've dotten your Is and crossed your Ts.
Doesn't a packeting kiddie DOSing, say, financial websites count as terrorism?
Under NewSpeak, yes. By any rational definition, no. Blowing up financial institutions counts as terrorism. DOSing them would count as "annoyism", if such a concept existed. It just annoys a very visible and powerful target, thus the swift response to such acts.
And I really don't understand what you're saying about the prostitution thing...are you for or against??
Then you missed the point entirely. It doesn't matter if he considers himself for or against prostitution - More importantly, while the collective US (and several international) intelligence agencies had an immediate and urgent need to track down those responsible for 9/11, the FBI instead decided to play "screw the hooker twice". Sure it counts as illegal, but these people have some seriously screwed up priorities - Do you go after the guy in the belltower with a rifle, or the litterbug in the park? So far, the answer seems to favor clean parks.
Are you saying the FBI should just abandon any sort of domestic crime investigation chasing phantom terrorists?
Ummm... Quick geography quiz - In which US state do you find the Netherlands? Last time I checked, Northern Europe (ie, where most of the Operation Fastlight raids took place) didn't quite count as "domestic" relative to the US...
As for ignoring lesser crimes in favor of bigger ones - Hell yeah!!! Goes back to that "prioritize" idea I mentioned above. No, I wouldn't have the FBI tracking down phantom terrorists (I personally consider the War on Terrorism a really bad joke), but in a list of the "worst" crimes of the past year, you can bet "a bunch of kids spreading cracked software" should fall so far from the top as to not even show up in an executive summary.
Thus, the argument others have put forward about the FBI looking after corporate interests. This doesn't save lives. It doesn't make the world safer. It merely goes after some people who have cost a few bucks to organizations that donate heavily to political causes. Money, money, money, it all goes back to that.
Students need to learn that when they hit industry, sharing credentials just isn't acceptable.
Yeah, sure - Tell that to every admin who has pulled his hair out trying to keep a machine up and running, when a few dozen users all have the root password. And sure, you can tell me "That shouldn't happen", but put bluntly, it does.
As kids, they share "credentials" out of either fear, the desire to look cool, to get something in exchange, or perhaps just out of niceness (Most of us learn to share from a young age, in direct contradiction to the RIAA's message).
As adults, we share to spread accountability. I know of more than one situation where some higher-up finds a few gigs of MP3s on a development server, all owned by a non-user account, and the sheer number of people who could have done it kept anyone from losing their job (of course, we all know that in such situations, everyone contributed and had access to that music).
So what do these kids need to learn? The right reasons to share credentials, and how to minimize traceability. Which I believe they do learn - School provides a fairly safe environment in which to try out various accountability-avoidance strategies, figure out which ones work, and (usually) suffer only token punishments when they screw up.
There are many high-quality stations on Shoutcast
:-)
Wow... Well, call me an idiot, but I've never checked out Shoutcast before.
Not a bad selection, and yes, quite a good number of 256k and above streams.
I guess I retract my former sarcasm, and owe RevMoo an apology.
I must be pretty lucky, my neighbor & 2 of my good friends have large (200+) cd collections
Same here... I personally (well, between my own collection and my SO's) have over 500, though I haven't bought all that many in the last few years, due to the RIAA's antics. All of my close friends have at least 100 or so; I have one FOAF, who does semi-professional remixing (like for local DJs), with literally 10k+ CDs - His collection occupies a full room, with a few thousand of his "favorites" in floor-to-ceiling racks, and the rest in gigantic (but alphabetically sorted) piles in the closet. Sadly, with all that to pick from, he doesn't have much I like... I enjoy most of the Techno family of genres, but not House (go figure), which he mostly deals with.
Perhaps this has some sort of regional influence (I live in New England, myself)? Or just a college-kid thing (why spend what little money you have on CDs when you can download them)? I dunno. I personally had a pretty nice collection even in college, although I didn't really get into CDs until midway through HS.