In a hypothetical copyright-free world, the fight is not open-source software versus today's expensive proprietary software. It's open source versus nasty binary-only freeware.
If copyright had never existed, perhaps.
In a world where copyright is abolished overnight, while Microsoft already has 90% marketshare and Trusted Computing is fast becoming reality, I wouldn't be so confident. Right now (ignoring copyright) you can duplicate DVD's of Vista as much as you like but getting it to install and run (and keep running) is a little trickier. But not impossible, because the code is unencrypted and runs on commodity hardware. If Microsoft could rely on TPM hardware and had a real incentive to do the job properly (like not being able to rely on copyright at all) I think they could make it damn near impossible to have Windows run without paying for it.
I don't think it's terribly likely, but I think it's at least possible if Microsoft could persuade enough hardware manufacturers to play along, and do a good enough job that each version of Windows was reasonably outdated before it was cracked.
What makes you think that that crippled binary-only malware with the activation codes is going to win in the marketplace
That's basically what they're selling now and still seems to be doing OK.
Hardware interfaces aren't *copyrighted* now, nor can they be. Well, designs are copyrighted to some extent. Methods are patented. Quite a lot of it is still trade secret. It's hard to guess how this would change in a copyright-free environment.
BSD has next no copyright protection worth the name, and it hasn't died yet after 15 years or so.
That's true. But if most commodity (cheap) hardware got locked down and was undocumented I think they would be in trouble.
BSD aren't currently faced with supporting completely undocumented and intentionally obfuscated (TPM-style) hardware.
In a copyright-free world, it could fall either way. MSFT might become insignificant and the rest of the world become more open. Or MSFT might survive by leveraging TPM as an alternative to copyright, with the help of hardware manufacturers who would rather sell to Microsoft's 90% market than OSS's 10%, and conveniently kill off the OSS community. BSD too.
We don't need to wait for a copyright-free world anyhow; Microsoft's big push towards Protected Media Path and TPM has little to do with protecting the MAFIAA companies, and much more to do with pushing hardware manufacturers to choose between Microsoft and FOSS by making it much harder to support both.
"Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary."
Completely untrue.
Without copyright, companies could (perhaps would have no choice but) release binary-only software with strong "product activation" which could take a while to crack. The next version of Microsoft windows and all future propriatory software would require hardware TPM. Hardware manufacturers would stop documenting anything at all, because they have no other protection for their designs.
And they'd be completely free to take and modify previously open-source code to do it.
Without any copyright protection, OSS would be dead in fairly short order.
The Linux Mark Institute has been defending the Linux trademark quite aggressively, perhaps you missed it. There was even a big bitchfest here and other blogs a while back because everybody thought it was some kind of scam, but anybody using the name 'linux' as part of a product or company name got hassled to pay up or drop the 'linux'.
With a little luck this is where the strategy pays off and LMI tell Microsoft they can't use the Linux trademark in such an ambiguous way, the same way they'd hassle us if we used 'Windows' or 'Microsoft'. How long do you think "www.microsoftpersonas.com" would be left unchallenged? Seriously!
OEMS that provide a linux or naked pc option usually price it the same or slightly higher than the same hardware running Windows. That's a common and verifiable observation that you can check yourself.
The reason they can do this is because the advertising deals they make (three month trial of norton, 100 free hours on AOL, and all that crap) pay well enough to more than cover the price of OEM Windows. The combined cost of OEM Windows with bundled advertising is less than zero.
Most people on/. would argue that the value of OEM windows is also less than zero. Not a problem, since this negative-value software is trivially removed. Win-win.
Sorry, my comment was directed at the thread in general rather than your message in particular.
In reply to your message specifically; I totally agree. People don't lobby for 'filtering per-se'.. they lobby for filtering because they already have a fairly clear set of 'images, ideas and concepts' that offend them personally which they think everyone else needs to be shielded from.
You're assuming that the politicians actually want a well thought out and workable solution. They don't.
They want to pass a quick 'we're doing something about porn, think of the children, vote for us' piece of legislation that will have no significant effect at all. If they actually did anything that really solved the problem (assuming there even is a problem, which is also debatable) they would have no easy way of drumming up a few votes the next time they needed them.
Bah, whoever just modded me interesting please read the replies. parent was talking about something quite different; mod me "-1 clueless and uninformed guess"
You get a virus or spyware thats causing the system to crash frequently. Pull the drive out, ghost the new drive with a clean copy of the OS and the machine stops crashing. This surprises you?
I get given quite a few drives that are suspected faulty. I run diagnostics and zero-fill them, and about one in three is just fine. Haven't had to buy a drive for quite a while.
I think they're just pointing out that Microsoft's "vista-capable" minimum specification will let you boot the OS. You can probably change the desktop wallpaper if you can stand a little swapping and about three security warning dialogs, but that's about all Vista will do until you get some real hardware.
The restriction on using VM is like Ford telling you you're not allowed to drive your car inter-state because you only paid for the cheap around-town model.
The restriction on being able to view DRM media is like Ford telling you that no matter what model car you bought, you won't be able to drive to Hawaii.
The cost of production is still the same. The cost of distribution goes from whatever it is now to practically zero.
I won't pay NZ$30 for a DVD but I would be perfectly happy to pay $3 for a legal drm-free download (about what I pay to rent a DVD now). And I'd far rather pay $3 than piss around with emule, downloading crappy handycam rips and mislabeled files at often barely-dialup speeds.
I'd probably buy three or four movies a week at that price and I suspect a hell of a lot of other people would too. I also suspect that most (but not all) people who paid would treat it like a rental; watch it a few times then delete it to make space for new movies.
I suspect that at one tenth the price they would easily sell far more than ten times the volume, making the same or likely more profit simply by giving consumers exactly what they want.
But I'll probably never find out for sure, because the MAFIAA have decided they're in the business of selling little plastic disks rather than the business of providing entertainment..
Slashdot Mirror
In a hypothetical copyright-free world, the fight is not open-source software versus today's expensive proprietary software. It's open source versus nasty binary-only freeware.
If copyright had never existed, perhaps.
In a world where copyright is abolished overnight, while Microsoft already has 90% marketshare and Trusted Computing is fast becoming reality, I wouldn't be so confident. Right now (ignoring copyright) you can duplicate DVD's of Vista as much as you like but getting it to install and run (and keep running) is a little trickier. But not impossible, because the code is unencrypted and runs on commodity hardware. If Microsoft could rely on TPM hardware and had a real incentive to do the job properly (like not being able to rely on copyright at all) I think they could make it damn near impossible to have Windows run without paying for it.
I don't think it's terribly likely, but I think it's at least possible if Microsoft could persuade enough hardware manufacturers to play along, and do a good enough job that each version of Windows was reasonably outdated before it was cracked.
What makes you think that that crippled binary-only malware with the activation codes is going to win in the marketplace
That's basically what they're selling now and still seems to be doing OK.
Hardware interfaces aren't *copyrighted* now, nor can they be.
Well, designs are copyrighted to some extent. Methods are patented. Quite a lot of it is still trade secret. It's hard to guess how this would change in a copyright-free environment.
BSD has next no copyright protection worth the name, and it hasn't died yet after 15 years or so.
That's true. But if most commodity (cheap) hardware got locked down and was undocumented I think they would be in trouble.
BSD aren't currently faced with supporting completely undocumented and intentionally obfuscated (TPM-style) hardware.
In a copyright-free world, it could fall either way. MSFT might become insignificant and the rest of the world become more open. Or MSFT might survive by leveraging TPM as an alternative to copyright, with the help of hardware manufacturers who would rather sell to Microsoft's 90% market than OSS's 10%, and conveniently kill off the OSS community. BSD too.
We don't need to wait for a copyright-free world anyhow; Microsoft's big push towards Protected Media Path and TPM has little to do with protecting the MAFIAA companies, and much more to do with pushing hardware manufacturers to choose between Microsoft and FOSS by making it much harder to support both.
"Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary."
Completely untrue.
Without copyright, companies could (perhaps would have no choice but) release binary-only software with strong "product activation" which could take a while to crack. The next version of Microsoft windows and all future propriatory software would require hardware TPM. Hardware manufacturers would stop documenting anything at all, because they have no other protection for their designs.
And they'd be completely free to take and modify previously open-source code to do it.
Without any copyright protection, OSS would be dead in fairly short order.
The Linux Mark Institute has been defending the Linux trademark quite aggressively, perhaps you missed it. There was even a big bitchfest here and other blogs a while back because everybody thought it was some kind of scam, but anybody using the name 'linux' as part of a product or company name got hassled to pay up or drop the 'linux'.
With a little luck this is where the strategy pays off and LMI tell Microsoft they can't use the Linux trademark in such an ambiguous way, the same way they'd hassle us if we used 'Windows' or 'Microsoft'. How long do you think "www.microsoftpersonas.com" would be left unchallenged? Seriously!
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.
OEMS that provide a linux or naked pc option usually price it the same or slightly higher than the same hardware running Windows. That's a common and verifiable observation that you can check yourself.
/. would argue that the value of OEM windows is also less than zero. Not a problem, since this negative-value software is trivially removed. Win-win.
The reason they can do this is because the advertising deals they make (three month trial of norton, 100 free hours on AOL, and all that crap) pay well enough to more than cover the price of OEM Windows. The combined cost of OEM Windows with bundled advertising is less than zero.
Most people on
Sorry, my comment was directed at the thread in general rather than your message in particular.
.. they lobby for filtering because they already have a fairly clear set of 'images, ideas and concepts' that offend them personally which they think everyone else needs to be shielded from.
In reply to your message specifically; I totally agree. People don't lobby for 'filtering per-se'
You're assuming that the politicians actually want a well thought out and workable solution. They don't.
They want to pass a quick 'we're doing something about porn, think of the children, vote for us' piece of legislation that will have no significant effect at all. If they actually did anything that really solved the problem (assuming there even is a problem, which is also debatable) they would have no easy way of drumming up a few votes the next time they needed them.
Bah, whoever just modded me interesting please read the replies. parent was talking about something quite different; mod me "-1 clueless and uninformed guess"
this probably evolved into Teletext.
That might not work..
/ 04/msg00301.html
http://archive.cert.uni-stuttgart.de/bugtraq/2006
And if you look at every location where they went from electronic back to paper ballots -- Democratic tickets made huge gains.
This is probably not evidence of fraud;
- It's mostly Democrats that have concerns about electronic voting.
- People who think their vote isn't being counted may not bother to vote at all.
"absolut transparency" ?
As a matter of fact, I might call you a master. Of debating.
Well, aren't you a cunning linguist!
That's what you get when you steal Disaster Area's stunt ship...
You get a virus or spyware thats causing the system to crash frequently. Pull the drive out, ghost the new drive with a clean copy of the OS and the machine stops crashing. This surprises you?
I get given quite a few drives that are suspected faulty. I run diagnostics and zero-fill them, and about one in three is just fine. Haven't had to buy a drive for quite a while.
1)Ninjas
2)Pirates
3)Robots
4)Monkeys
5)Lawyers
6) CowboyNeal
That's exactly why he likes the levy. You're paying for his music.
I think they're just pointing out that Microsoft's "vista-capable" minimum specification will let you boot the OS. You can probably change the desktop wallpaper if you can stand a little swapping and about three security warning dialogs, but that's about all Vista will do until you get some real hardware.
Say goodbye to bittorrent and emule though...
To continue the car analogy;
The restriction on using VM is like Ford telling you you're not allowed to drive your car inter-state because you only paid for the cheap around-town model.
The restriction on being able to view DRM media is like Ford telling you that no matter what model car you bought, you won't be able to drive to Hawaii.
Yeah, but that's because it actually costs them more to fit them. The car doesn't come with those things fitted and then deliberately dissabled.
Actually I think there was a fairly realistic show about life in a (UK) government office, once. It was called "Yes, Minister"
The cost of production is still the same.
The cost of distribution goes from whatever it is now to practically zero.
I won't pay NZ$30 for a DVD but I would be perfectly happy to pay $3 for a legal drm-free download (about what I pay to rent a DVD now). And I'd far rather pay $3 than piss around with emule, downloading crappy handycam rips and mislabeled files at often barely-dialup speeds.
I'd probably buy three or four movies a week at that price and I suspect a hell of a lot of other people would too. I also suspect that most (but not all) people who paid would treat it like a rental; watch it a few times then delete it to make space for new movies.
I suspect that at one tenth the price they would easily sell far more than ten times the volume, making the same or likely more profit simply by giving consumers exactly what they want.
But I'll probably never find out for sure, because the MAFIAA have decided they're in the business of selling little plastic disks rather than the business of providing entertainment..
~~ swish ~~