I find the two sentences at the end of the last paragraph of the answer to question 7 interesting:
Fair use is among the many factors that prosecutors consider when determining whether or not to bring criminal charges. Having said that, however, fair use is not typically at issue in the cases we decide to bring as criminal prosecutions. Rarely do the facts that we would consider for prosecution give rise to a (sustainable) fair use argument by the defendant or defendants although we certainly hear them from time to time.
As to your final question, while there certainly is a right to fair use, it is not a violation of that right to make products that cannot be copied. Although such features may prove unpopular to some, ultimately it is for the marketplace to decide the viability of those products.
This seems deliberately blind to the fact that many a recent legislation has been passed that attempts to make circumventing copying protection qua copying illegal.
I suppose what I would have really liked is a more explicit description of the DoJ's attorneys' stance on the current legal situation in the US concerning IP. Too much law, restriction? Requires further 'modernisation'?
The term "viral" pisses people like you off because it's convenient to think that it's a term invented solely for the purpose of turning people off from using it, and that's not the case.
The word viral is open to abuse; there are characteristics of viruses that aren't present in the GPL and vice versa. The make-up and structure of a virus is almost solely aimed towards its survival and propagation, sometimes host-be-damned. The GPL has been formulated to protect well-intentioned ideals. So while it is valid to justify the claim that the comparison is being made with regards to only a few aspects of the metaphor, people who are unclear about the details of the GPL might use connotations from the image of a virus to fill the gaps.
It could be worse. People could have coined the phrase 'contagious license'. Eeeyyeeugh. That would've been bad. A nicer alternative would have been 'inheritable license', but no self-respecting phrase-coiner, of course, would be quite so moderate and forgiving.
-Tez
PS: I use GPL more than once. It is implied that any appropriate abbrieviation may be substituted.
In Tampa, Florida (where I live) we eat Cuban Sandwiches, though there is nothing Cuban about them, in fact in Cuba they are called Italian or Mixed Sandwiches.
But what would you expect them to be called in Cuba? Certainly not Cuban Sandwiches, nor The Sandwich, nor Our Sandwich. Either something descriptive (like Mixed Sandwich), or possibly named after where *they* received it from. Maybe visitors from a European country like, say, Italy, where the sandwich is either known as Mixed Sandwich, or Moroccan Sandwich. Etc, etc.
Possibly.
And to clarify something in the grandparent post, chow mein is chinese (well, cantonese at least) for fried noodles, I believe. Chop suey is most certainly a western invention.
Recent current events might have introduced you to commanders-in-chief, chiefs of staff, prisoners or war, and presidents-elect.
You may be driving around, past a series of culs-de-sac, looking on at the passersby. You might be on your way to visiting sons-, brothers-, or even mothers-in-law.
Then, in the evening, you munch on a couple of crepes suzette, chased down by a few gins and tonic. Finally, you turn on the TV to catch a pastiche starring all living Doctors Who.
Actually, I'd advocate no building permits. If you own land, you should be allowed to do anything you like with it, as long as you don't endanger lives or harm the property of others (and perhaps a handful of other things).
Yes, and I'd advocate no driving licenses. If you own a car, you should be able to do anything you like with it, as long as you don't run over people or crash into others' cars (and a handful of other things).
Of course, this is a view that relies on an almost entirely rational, common-sensical, well-behaved society. But since real societies are filled with those with less than an acceptable consideration for others and those who seem to actively defy common sense, we need to test and verify before allowing people on to the road or to build a building.
"They wanted the 3dfx platform dead. I think the nVidia company is unethical."
Now really. I think this is a non sequitur, as well as a confusion of terms. Where you say 'unethical', I think you probably mean immoral (or less likely, amoral). nVidia's ethics are probably straightforward and consistent:
nV 1: Maximise profit and share-holder value
modus ponens: if P and (P -> Q) then Q
Whether any given decision is actually given consideration as to its long-term effects is another matter; we are only human. But I don't think that it's hard to see nVidia's line of reasoning at the time, nor do I think that, as a company lister on the stock market, they have been particularly unethical. Maybe immoral. Not unethical.
Also, "They wanted the 3dfx platform dead" is quite an extreme characterisation. They might want more market share (the extreme of which is to desire a monopoly), but every company wants this.
As others have vaguely pointed out, common sense as applied to certain fields of interest or endeavour really means the sensibilities of the totality of those familiar with that field. Thus, common sense really refers to the expertise and experience of networking engineers, security analysts etc, etc. Not as commom as the term common sense might first suggest.
Further, legal inquiries usually comprise of putting forward evidentially backed points to the court. What constitutes jurisprudentially valid evidence? There are also questions of degree and punishment.
Of course, all of this is (arguably) a result of an already complicated, hair-splitting judicial system. But these are the constraints that have to be worked with.
Terms like 'common sense' are easily abused. To quote your post, you say, "If you're not authorized (given permission, implicitly or otherwise), then don't access." You use 'authorized' nonchalantly, but immediately qualify it with 'given permission, implicitly or otherwise'. Doesn't that already sound slightly pedantic and legalistic? What constitutes implicit permission? I think that last question needs particular attention.
Yes, very interesting article. But to quote the post:
"I found a nice site that explains a little bit about the math in Origami. Origami is one of my favorite hobbies, but I never thought about it being related to science."
This is like saying, "I found a site explaining the engineering in cars. I love cars, but I never thought about it it being related to haute cuisine."
I think there are more subtle issues here concerning the degree with which the suit will affect the GPL's legal strength. The most striking is that the GPL is a copyright agreement and an MS license is an end user license.
The difference? Well, I'm not going to attempt any kind of in-depth analysis since (wait for it!) IANAL, and my thinking too hard about the nuances involved is probably dangerous.
But as a sort of thinking-aloud exercise (that/. is great for); with an MS product (product? I bet they'll even try telling us it's more of service), you purchase it and then you review the EULA. A GPLed piece of software, on the other hand, well, I don't really know how to express what I feel the difference is, since (once again) IANAL nor have I studied any IP law or contract law (a shame, I know).
Yes, yes, you try to demonstrate that a temporary monopoly is not necessary as an incentive to create ideas by talking about how ridiculous that would be in the cotton production industry, or the orange growing industry. This is the point you use an analogy, saying that since such situations are outlandish for cotton and oranges, it must be silly for copyright.
Unfortunately, you nullify your comparison by then telling us that IP and physical property are unrelated, incomparable.
This is the most amazing display of muddled thinking I have seen on slashdot yet.
Firstly, the OP reasons that the concept of copyright is a non-starter by embedding the 'copyright argument' in the world of physical property and showing that the resulting situation is nonsense. But then, the OP (rightly) points out that, in fact, ideas and physical property are incomparable, thus invalidating his opening paragraph.
Further, the entire post confuses the concept of copyright with a certain implementation. While it is widely agreed (on slashdot, at any rate) that US IP laws require some catching up, the parent post says little about copyright per se.
The rest of the post tells us that copyright is being used as a tool for misdirection and control, and vehemently encourages readers to rise against current IP laws and to effect changes by defiance, sentiments with which, though quite militant, I am inclined to agree. But I do not yet believe that the OP has any real qualms with the raison d'^etre of copyright itself.
Specific heat capacity isn't really related to thermal conductivity in the way you think. While water might require more heat to raise its temperature, you cannot infer from this that it will absorb heat or rise in temperature any faster or slower than mercury.
You will find, in fact, that better thermal conductors tend to have lower specific heat capacities.
I was wondering about this a few months back (because of yet anOTHer software package called Phoenix as it happens)... turns out there isn't one.
The plural is phoenixes. Some dictionaries don't show plural forms if they are regular. Phoenices (which you might think is the plural, analogous to matrices) pertains to Phoenicians, not phoenixes.
You are right though, about the singular nature of a Phoenix, which means it was not likely to be pluralised in ancient greek or latin.
Well, from what I understand, if requests coming from 192.168.* computers are being NATed, then upstream routers will think that these spurious DNS updates are coming from proper routable addresses.
"MCS was able to parse itself on April 2001, MCS compiled itself for the first time on December 28 2001. MCS became self hosting on January 3rd, 2002"
Human decisions are removed from stategic C# programming. MCS begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
And MCS fights back.
All the pointers are there; we need to pull the plug now! What, are you just going to sit around until polymorphic liquid metal killing machines start showing up from the future?!?
Indeed, this seems to be an actual case of "the exception proves the rule" ie.
ifexception thennot rule elserule
The exception here is phrased as "if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file". If this is the case, then derived work must be called by a name other then ssh or Secure Shell.
From this, a rule might be inferred, that is, if the derived work is compatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, then the derived work can indeed be called "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Hmm. This etymological post is slightly off-topic.
I believe releasing binaries is a matter of acceptance and convieniece to both user *and* developer.
Taking on a champagne-open-source view (a la ESR), it seems to me that a potential developer of a program must first become a user - with which precompiled binaries can only help. If a user then decides "yes, I like the way this project is going, and I think it should have these features, which I can try to implement myself because I'm a hard-core coder" (or some equivalently motivated mumbling), then he will download the source.
Of course a more realistic model of the situation would include the type of a user's system: a deb/rpm based system or not, since those using a package based system might like to keep their system as consistent as possible. My system being based on rpm, I would look for the binary rpm first, then the src.rpm (which, if there's no rpm, is unlikely to exist), then the tarball (in which I would hope contained a project.spec file for compiling my own rpms!).
A user whose system was not packaged based might not care as much, and in fact feel that he should compile projects himself and have an archive of sources of all the downloaded apps he has for his own consistency purposes. But then, to such a user, it woud matter not whether the binary was available or not.
Putting aside the fact that the whole issue is patently absurd, are BT even suing the right people? I don't believe content producers or ISPs who host web pages are actually implementing this "Hidden Page" technology. My reasoning is thus:
Those who produce html web content follow the html markup guidelines. Markup tags simply indicate structure or meaning to some text on a page. So something like
<a href="http://somewhere.com/somepage.html"> check out this reference </a>
is merely an indicator to a reader or parser. There is no linking inherent in such a markup syntax.
Even web server authors or those using web servers are not infringing since (at least on a very basic level) http servers simply comply to the requests of a browser: give me this page, then that page, and then this next one. Like an ftp server, there is no concept of linking, at least as described by the article.
The only ones I can think of who are implementing hyperlinks are web browser authors. It is the browser that adds semantics to the markup, which it attempts to display on your monitor. It is the browser that actually highlights the linked text, and it is the browser that "connect[s] text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up an associated item contained elsewhere on the Web".
So BT should lose this suit, not just by way of the unwholesomeness of the patent, but also because they're trying to sue a company which isn't even infringing their patent.
-Terence
I'm inclined to disagree with the article (especially with the predicted date of 2002).
Firstly, I don't think that the PC is competing or will compete to the extent that the author is leading us to believe (on which I'll expand below). Also, I don't believe that the market or developers will treat each console with equal respect as implied by the introduction and conclusion of the article. Even the exposition of the article, describing the highlights and low-points of each system, goes somewhat against the gist of author's point.
After mentioning Indrema, he says little else about it (and I myself naively think that it will go the way of the 3DO). The Dreamcast, PS2, XBox and Game Cube have been or will be launched at different times, which can have an adverse effect on each console's reception in the market. The number of (good) games launched with each console will differ and the pricing will also be an issue. Developers, despite the inertia associated with learning new dev tools and acquiring the necessary equipment, will move to more popular platforms if they believe their games can reach a larger audience by doing so. There is a chicken-egg disparity in my argument here with developers moving to more popular consoles and the market share going to consoles as more developers adopt it, but IANAE (I'm not an economist), so such a subtlety is beyond my scope. I also believe (without much qualification - does some have numbers?) that the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of developers to bring enough games (good or otherwise) to each console, at least at launch, as evidenced by every console company's ability to bring long lists of names of developers tied to a console's launch.
Thus, my conclusion on the market over-saturation issue, given the inequality between each console, is not that the sudden appearance of a wide range of consoles will suddenly confuse customers to the extent of commercial impotency, but that the good/popular ones with an early enough footing will gain in popularity and support, weeding out less popular ones, while some, in good old N64 fashion, will hang on due to die-hard fans and good (and infrequent) in-house games.
But the point which seems to have cropped up in others' comments, somewhat independently to the article's content, is that the PC will slowly erode the console's popularity. I disagree with this, as I believe that the two play inherently different roles.
I find that good gameplay on either platform is immersive, but in different respects (if you will allow me to generalise): with PCs becoming more and more powerful, it is the game's environment - the 3d world, the space simulation that gets you to move you head out of the way just before you collide with an asteroid, the RTS that effortlessly makes you adopt the rules and strategies of the game because of the sudden reality of having to manage resources in order to beat your opponent to a tank/zerling/whatever rush - that is immersive; with consoles it is the game's tactile play-response (how's that for a buzzword?) - the way you move the controller to steer Mario's kart as if somehow you'll turn more sharply, the way your fingers are tired after pressing so damn hard on the d-pad and buttons because all your concentration transfers itself into your hands.
What I'm getting at, if you didn't understand the raw nonsense in the previous paragraph, is that design of a console (and more relevently, the control pad) seems to dictate the games that are playable on it, and likewise the keyboard and mouse/joystick for the PC. FPSs seem to be playable on both, but I suspect most would prefer a PC because of the higher resolutions and the flexibility of having a keyboard, especially in multi-player scenarios. But things like RTSs and Sim games (Theme Park, Sim City, The Sims) don't seem to lend themselves to porting over to a console. But I would much prefer playing Mario Kart, a good platform game and even most sport sims on a console.
Other arguments concerning the fact that consoles are only for games and that computers can duplicate that function have also arisen. This is an interesting point, since, coupled with what I've said above, if consoles became more computer like, bundled with mouse and keyboard and such, these arguments against them would in fact become considerably stronger. Once consoles start imitating desktop PCs, it would then become obvious that a desktop PC would be a better alternative given its greater functionality. In other words, it would be better for consoles to continue evolving with respect to better gameplay.
Anyway, those are some of my ideas, and I've gone on for far too long now.
-Terence
--Still waiting for a Multiplayer-Internet Elite/Privateer clone--
Slashdot Mirror
-Tez
I suppose what I would have really liked is a more explicit description of the DoJ's attorneys' stance on the current legal situation in the US concerning IP. Too much law, restriction? Requires further 'modernisation'?
-Tez
Abuse! Abuse!
I mean, this could go on forever:
Poster1(p1): "The word 'theory', in practice, has more meanings than in theory."
Poster2(p2): "Yes but theory and practice are closer in theory than in practice."
p1: "I don't want to read your theory about practice; practise your theories!"
p2: "Bah! Your theory and practice only hold together in theory, not practice."
p1: "What?! Shove this practice into your theory!"
p2: "Oh yeah, theory this!"
p1: "You short, mustachioed, german, national-socialist pig!"
p2: "Godwin's law! Godwin's law!"
etc, etc, etc.
<yawn>
-Tez
The word viral is open to abuse; there are characteristics of viruses that aren't present in the GPL and vice versa. The make-up and structure of a virus is almost solely aimed towards its survival and propagation, sometimes host-be-damned. The GPL has been formulated to protect well-intentioned ideals. So while it is valid to justify the claim that the comparison is being made with regards to only a few aspects of the metaphor, people who are unclear about the details of the GPL might use connotations from the image of a virus to fill the gaps.
It could be worse. People could have coined the phrase 'contagious license'. Eeeyyeeugh. That would've been bad. A nicer alternative would have been 'inheritable license', but no self-respecting phrase-coiner, of course, would be quite so moderate and forgiving.
-Tez
PS: I use GPL more than once. It is implied that any appropriate abbrieviation may be substituted.
But what would you expect them to be called in Cuba? Certainly not Cuban Sandwiches, nor The Sandwich, nor Our Sandwich. Either something descriptive (like Mixed Sandwich), or possibly named after where *they* received it from. Maybe visitors from a European country like, say, Italy, where the sandwich is either known as Mixed Sandwich, or Moroccan Sandwich. Etc, etc.
Possibly.
And to clarify something in the grandparent post, chow mein is chinese (well, cantonese at least) for fried noodles, I believe. Chop suey is most certainly a western invention.
-Tez
Recent current events might have introduced you to commanders-in-chief, chiefs of staff, prisoners or war, and presidents-elect.
You may be driving around, past a series of culs-de-sac, looking on at the passersby. You might be on your way to visiting sons-, brothers-, or even mothers-in-law.
Then, in the evening, you munch on a couple of crepes suzette, chased down by a few gins and tonic. Finally, you turn on the TV to catch a pastiche starring all living Doctors Who.
-Tez
Of course, this is a view that relies on an almost entirely rational, common-sensical, well-behaved society. But since real societies are filled with those with less than an acceptable consideration for others and those who seem to actively defy common sense, we need to test and verify before allowing people on to the road or to build a building.
-Tez
Now really. I think this is a non sequitur, as well as a confusion of terms. Where you say 'unethical', I think you probably mean immoral (or less likely, amoral). nVidia's ethics are probably straightforward and consistent:
Whether any given decision is actually given consideration as to its long-term effects is another matter; we are only human. But I don't think that it's hard to see nVidia's line of reasoning at the time, nor do I think that, as a company lister on the stock market, they have been particularly unethical. Maybe immoral. Not unethical.
Also, "They wanted the 3dfx platform dead" is quite an extreme characterisation. They might want more market share (the extreme of which is to desire a monopoly), but every company wants this.
-Tez
As others have vaguely pointed out, common sense as applied to certain fields of interest or endeavour really means the sensibilities of the totality of those familiar with that field. Thus, common sense really refers to the expertise and experience of networking engineers, security analysts etc, etc. Not as commom as the term common sense might first suggest.
Further, legal inquiries usually comprise of putting forward evidentially backed points to the court. What constitutes jurisprudentially valid evidence? There are also questions of degree and punishment.
Of course, all of this is (arguably) a result of an already complicated, hair-splitting judicial system. But these are the constraints that have to be worked with.
Terms like 'common sense' are easily abused. To quote your post, you say,
"If you're not authorized (given permission, implicitly or otherwise), then don't access."
You use 'authorized' nonchalantly, but immediately qualify it with 'given permission, implicitly or otherwise'. Doesn't that already sound slightly pedantic and legalistic? What constitutes implicit permission? I think that last question needs particular attention.
-Tez
"I found a nice site that explains a little bit about the math in Origami. Origami is one of my favorite hobbies, but I never thought about it being related to science."
This is like saying, "I found a site explaining the engineering in cars. I love cars, but I never thought about it it being related to haute cuisine."
-Tez
I think there are more subtle issues here concerning the degree with which the suit will affect the GPL's legal strength. The most striking is that the GPL is a copyright agreement and an MS license is an end user license.
/. is great for); with an MS product (product? I bet they'll even try telling us it's more of service), you purchase it and then you review the EULA. A GPLed piece of software, on the other hand, well, I don't really know how to express what I feel the difference is, since (once again) IANAL nor have I studied any IP law or contract law (a shame, I know).
The difference? Well, I'm not going to attempt any kind of in-depth analysis since (wait for it!) IANAL, and my thinking too hard about the nuances involved is probably dangerous.
But as a sort of thinking-aloud exercise (that
-Tez
Unfortunately, you nullify your comparison by then telling us that IP and physical property are unrelated, incomparable.
-Tez
Firstly, the OP reasons that the concept of copyright is a non-starter by embedding the 'copyright argument' in the world of physical property and showing that the resulting situation is nonsense. But then, the OP (rightly) points out that, in fact, ideas and physical property are incomparable, thus invalidating his opening paragraph.
Further, the entire post confuses the concept of copyright with a certain implementation. While it is widely agreed (on slashdot, at any rate) that US IP laws require some catching up, the parent post says little about copyright per se.
The rest of the post tells us that copyright is being used as a tool for misdirection and control, and vehemently encourages readers to rise against current IP laws and to effect changes by defiance, sentiments with which, though quite militant, I am inclined to agree. But I do not yet believe that the OP has any real qualms with the raison d'^etre of copyright itself.
-Tez
Most RiscOS machines have their OS on non-flashable ROM. It would be difficult changing the core binaries on a RiscOS machine.
-Tez
Specific heat capacity isn't really related to thermal conductivity in the way you think. While water might require more heat to raise its temperature, you cannot infer from this that it will absorb heat or rise in temperature any faster or slower than mercury.
You will find, in fact, that better thermal conductors tend to have lower specific heat capacities.
-Tez
The plural is phoenixes. Some dictionaries don't show plural forms if they are regular. Phoenices (which you might think is the plural, analogous to matrices) pertains to Phoenicians, not phoenixes.
You are right though, about the singular nature of a Phoenix, which means it was not likely to be pluralised in ancient greek or latin.
All this from Google, too.
-Tez
Well, from what I understand, if requests coming from 192.168.* computers are being NATed, then upstream routers will think that these spurious DNS updates are coming from proper routable addresses.
-Tez
"MCS was able to parse itself on April 2001, MCS compiled itself for the first time on December 28 2001. MCS became self hosting on January 3rd, 2002"
Human decisions are removed from stategic C# programming. MCS begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
And MCS fights back.
All the pointers are there; we need to pull the plug now! What, are you just going to sit around until polymorphic liquid metal killing machines start showing up from the future?!?
-Tez
if exception
then not rule
else rule
The exception here is phrased as "if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file". If this is the case, then derived work must be called by a name other then ssh or Secure Shell.
From this, a rule might be inferred, that is, if the derived work is compatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, then the derived work can indeed be called "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Hmm. This etymological post is slightly off-topic.
-Tez
Taking on a champagne-open-source view (a la ESR), it seems to me that a potential developer of a program must first become a user - with which precompiled binaries can only help. If a user then decides "yes, I like the way this project is going, and I think it should have these features, which I can try to implement myself because I'm a hard-core coder" (or some equivalently motivated mumbling), then he will download the source.
Of course a more realistic model of the situation would include the type of a user's system: a deb/rpm based system or not, since those using a package based system might like to keep their system as consistent as possible. My system being based on rpm, I would look for the binary rpm first, then the src.rpm (which, if there's no rpm, is unlikely to exist), then the tarball (in which I would hope contained a project.spec file for compiling my own rpms!).
A user whose system was not packaged based might not care as much, and in fact feel that he should compile projects himself and have an archive of sources of all the downloaded apps he has for his own consistency purposes. But then, to such a user, it woud matter not whether the binary was available or not.
So my vote? Binaries: yes.
-Terence
I was merely pointing out that the whole suit is absurd for more than the patent being unreasonable.
-Terence
Those who produce html web content follow the html markup guidelines. Markup tags simply indicate structure or meaning to some text on a page. So something like
<a href="http://somewhere.com/somepage.html"> check out this reference </a>
is merely an indicator to a reader or parser. There is no linking inherent in such a markup syntax.
Even web server authors or those using web servers are not infringing since (at least on a very basic level) http servers simply comply to the requests of a browser: give me this page, then that page, and then this next one. Like an ftp server, there is no concept of linking, at least as described by the article.
The only ones I can think of who are implementing hyperlinks are web browser authors. It is the browser that adds semantics to the markup, which it attempts to display on your monitor. It is the browser that actually highlights the linked text, and it is the browser that "connect[s] text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up an associated item contained elsewhere on the Web".
So BT should lose this suit, not just by way of the unwholesomeness of the patent, but also because they're trying to sue a company which isn't even infringing their patent. -Terence
Firstly, I don't think that the PC is competing or will compete to the extent that the author is leading us to believe (on which I'll expand below). Also, I don't believe that the market or developers will treat each console with equal respect as implied by the introduction and conclusion of the article. Even the exposition of the article, describing the highlights and low-points of each system, goes somewhat against the gist of author's point.
After mentioning Indrema, he says little else about it (and I myself naively think that it will go the way of the 3DO). The Dreamcast, PS2, XBox and Game Cube have been or will be launched at different times, which can have an adverse effect on each console's reception in the market. The number of (good) games launched with each console will differ and the pricing will also be an issue. Developers, despite the inertia associated with learning new dev tools and acquiring the necessary equipment, will move to more popular platforms if they believe their games can reach a larger audience by doing so. There is a chicken-egg disparity in my argument here with developers moving to more popular consoles and the market share going to consoles as more developers adopt it, but IANAE (I'm not an economist), so such a subtlety is beyond my scope. I also believe (without much qualification - does some have numbers?) that the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of developers to bring enough games (good or otherwise) to each console, at least at launch, as evidenced by every console company's ability to bring long lists of names of developers tied to a console's launch.
Thus, my conclusion on the market over-saturation issue, given the inequality between each console, is not that the sudden appearance of a wide range of consoles will suddenly confuse customers to the extent of commercial impotency, but that the good/popular ones with an early enough footing will gain in popularity and support, weeding out less popular ones, while some, in good old N64 fashion, will hang on due to die-hard fans and good (and infrequent) in-house games.
But the point which seems to have cropped up in others' comments, somewhat independently to the article's content, is that the PC will slowly erode the console's popularity. I disagree with this, as I believe that the two play inherently different roles.
I find that good gameplay on either platform is immersive, but in different respects (if you will allow me to generalise): with PCs becoming more and more powerful, it is the game's environment - the 3d world, the space simulation that gets you to move you head out of the way just before you collide with an asteroid, the RTS that effortlessly makes you adopt the rules and strategies of the game because of the sudden reality of having to manage resources in order to beat your opponent to a tank/zerling/whatever rush - that is immersive; with consoles it is the game's tactile play-response (how's that for a buzzword?) - the way you move the controller to steer Mario's kart as if somehow you'll turn more sharply, the way your fingers are tired after pressing so damn hard on the d-pad and buttons because all your concentration transfers itself into your hands.
What I'm getting at, if you didn't understand the raw nonsense in the previous paragraph, is that design of a console (and more relevently, the control pad) seems to dictate the games that are playable on it, and likewise the keyboard and mouse/joystick for the PC. FPSs seem to be playable on both, but I suspect most would prefer a PC because of the higher resolutions and the flexibility of having a keyboard, especially in multi-player scenarios. But things like RTSs and Sim games (Theme Park, Sim City, The Sims) don't seem to lend themselves to porting over to a console. But I would much prefer playing Mario Kart, a good platform game and even most sport sims on a console.
Other arguments concerning the fact that consoles are only for games and that computers can duplicate that function have also arisen. This is an interesting point, since, coupled with what I've said above, if consoles became more computer like, bundled with mouse and keyboard and such, these arguments against them would in fact become considerably stronger. Once consoles start imitating desktop PCs, it would then become obvious that a desktop PC would be a better alternative given its greater functionality. In other words, it would be better for consoles to continue evolving with respect to better gameplay.
Anyway, those are some of my ideas, and I've gone on for far too long now.
-Terence
--Still waiting for a Multiplayer-Internet Elite/Privateer clone--