You're looking for this quote, though you might not realize it...
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei
Nothing new under the sun... The jokes on the internet are old, and so are the problems...
Ever listened to the statement made at the end of an NFL game? It goes something like this Any re-broadcast, description or accounts of this event are prohibited without the express written consent of the NFL.
I've often wondered what would happen if people actually obeyed all these stupid disclaimers...
No description or account of any NFL event... Great, no one in the country can talk about the football game they saw on TV the night before when they come in the office or get together with friends. No talking about the play that just finished with your friends around the bar.
See how fast the NFL dies when people aren't allowed to talk about the game they just watched.
Really... if everyone would obey all these silly rules, we'd see how fast the industry finds out "oh, crap, we didn't really mean it!"
Yes, I'm aware they claim much more than they legally can. But then, "fair use" is an affirmative defense only applicable in a court room. It is decided by a judge in that particular instance, and only by a judge only for that particular instance. Claiming fair use is saying "yes, I'm willing to go to court and spend $50,000 to prove I don't have to pay you an $8 license fee" because no one but a judge gets to decide if something is fair use or not. The rights holder may decide something is not worth their time in court, but they don't decide "yes, that's fair use."
The backup at your house, the running version on your lan, and the bank all go the way of the Dodo when that terribly inconvenient Category 5 slams down on top of you. (And no, that's not a roll of network cable I'm talking about.)
Different branches doesn't help, if they are in the same city. If it's that important, get a safe deposit box at a branch in a city a couple hundred miles away or more. Say, somewhere a good friend or family member lives, so you can stop in when you visit them anyway. No, the backups there won't be updated as often, but they'll be safer from city-level disasters.
There's a legitamate problem to be solved here. I don't like their solution, but I will refrain from critisizing it until I come up with one of my own.
Umm... NO.
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Something like that, right? That leads to anarchy. Not interested./me grabs a rock and throws it with vigor.
How about another one...
"For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, easy, and wrong."
Not knowing the "right" solution to a problem should in no way prevent you from pointing out difficulties with a proposed solution.
I'll give you a stupid example for this one... Global warming is a problem. My solution is to kill you. (Hey, it's a psuedo-valid solution... grobal warming is in part a problem because of population pressures... I'll fix global warming by removing some population pressure...) Until you have a solution, you're not gonna criticize my solution? Better think of one fast.:)
(Okay, that was a bad example partly because there are a lot of people that aren't really convinced that global warming is actually a problem.)
Internet porn may be a problem where "no solution" is better than "a bad solution".
But what about the mortals? 99% of this monopolistic company's customers have this crap installed on their computer, didn't ask for it, didn't agree to it, and don't even know it's there! Doesn't that strike you as wrong?
Okay, so go talk to a lawyer.
You say you have a company installing what you seem to think is monitoring and surveillance technology in your private residence without your informed consent.
If this is realy the case, it is probably illegal. Now, more than likely, you signed the little paper giving them blanket permission to do anything they wanted to your machine, and this is another case of "read the contract before you sign it" so you probably will just be wasting your $150 talking with the lawyer.
But hey, maybe they missed something in the contract because the tech people at the cable company didn't talk to the lawyers at the cable company, and you can get something out of it. Maybe a "no extra software" install option, or maybe more complete informed consent.
Assuming you want to go to that much trouble.
But, really, you just wanted to complain to the crowd here, right?
I looked into this once tryong to convince myself to buy an LCD panel instead of a CRT for my next computer.
For an 18" LCD vs a 19" CRT, I'd have to keep the LCD for something like 17 years before it paid for the price difference in power costs, compared to a CRT running 9 hours per day. (Home computer, where I'm at work or asleep most of the day and so the CRT is turned off or in powersave mode when I'm not in front of it.) $200 for the CRT, $600 for the LCD, and 7cents per kilowatt-hour. Don't remember where I got the power usage figures, I think it was from NEC CRT and LCD monitor spec sheets.
I did not include power costs for running the AC extra in the summer. Bear in mind, though, that you run the heater less in winter too, so it is possible that you will balance this out. I didn't look into this, but it may be a wash.
This let me know that power consumption/cost alone was not a reason to get an LCD monitor for a desktop computer.
You don't realize how little power really costs... An extra 50watts, used 24 hours per day, increases a power bill about $30 per year. Takes a long time to make up for $1000 difference in system price at $30 per year.
If service availability (*not* uptime) is a serious concern, you don't use a single machine anyway.
You can get systems with 99.999% availability guarantees form various major manufacturers. IBM loves these things, they price them so only major corps can afford them.
The interesting thing... These aren't single computers. Read more about them. Every system sold as "99.999% availability guarantee" is a system cluster with failover. One goes down, the other picks up within some specified timeout period.
If your web server needs a good uptime, use a server farm and a load-balancing switch. Even just 2 web servers behind a round-robin switch. When a web server needs a reboot, take it out of the pool at the switch, reboot it, put it back in the pool.
This has been common practice for years with systems that need service availabilility guarantees.
Uptime is for bragging. Service availability is for people that actually need to get work done.
A good sysadmin, who is familiar with the OS being run, using proper security procedures, and working in a reasonable corporate environment, can keep a system stable and working properly for reasonable periods of time.
A bad sysadmin, who is not familiar with the OS being run, and does not follow proper security procedures, will not have a stable secure system, regardless of the system being run.
This is much more an issue of having good people following proper guidelines. I might accept that some OSes require fewer patches than others. Maybe.
But most of this "my system is better than yours" is coming from people who know one OS and not the other. This is not informed comparisons. This is trying to validate your personal choice by saying any other choice is stupid.
Doesn't matter if you are a Windows admin trying out Linux, or a Linux admin trying out Windows. How much time did you invest in the OS you know now? Spend that long working on the competition, and then you can make an informed comparison.
I commented a while ago on the "temporary copies in order to use a computer program as intended is an infringement" in a thread a couple weeks ago.
Someone replied with this Cornell Law url that seems to say temp copies of a computer program for the express purpose of using it as intended (copies in ram in order to run it) are non-infringing.
Your "MAI Software was the ridiculous decision" seems to imply that was a court case... If so, was this case before or after the referenced statute on that Cornell site? I'd like to know which came first. Was the law a response to the court case? Or did the court case say the law was not sufficient to make it a non-infringement?
"I am a great admirer of Larry Lessig," says Jack Valenti, Hollywood's master lobbyist. "But Congress has the power to say what 'limited' is. It's there, it's unambiguous. Fifty-five men in Philadelphia decided it, and there's no way a court can overrule that."
Sorry, he's confused on the purpose of the 3 branches of US government.
The Legislative Branch makes the law.
The Executive Branch enforces the law.
The Judicial Branch interprets the law.
The Supreme Court specifically interprets the US Constitution. They have the last word on that.
Otherwise, there would be no "unConstitutional" laws... after all, Congress decided, so it must be right, right?
And finally, accellerating growth in animals is selfish and can only damage the health of the animals involved.
I found this too funny to pass up commenting on...
You're worried about damaging the health on an animal we'll be slaughtering to eat in a couple months?
Do you complain that people fleeing from a forest fire are disturbing the natural beauty of the area by putting tire tracks in the field right before the fire sweeps through and burns the dried grass to the ground?
I don't care about being able to record in every writable dvd format available.
I care about being able to burn one disc, and have it usable in every dvd reader I come across.
This is not a good thing. This is simply a less-bad thing while we wait for these bozos to decide on a single recordable dvd format. Unfortunately, I don't really believe that will happen, so this may be the least-bad option available.
Adding to the bad side, as has already been commented, it's a Sony. What kind of restrictions does it come with, anyway? Simply by putting the Sony nameplate on there, you know it isn't your hardware. It belongs to Sony, they are just letting you use it in a few restrictive ways for a little while.
Consumer hard drives are not spinning faster now than they did 3 years ago. Three years ago standard consumer computer harddrives spun at 5400 rpm, and high-end consumer harddrives spun at 7200 rpm. Same is true now.
Three years ago most consumer harddrives had MTBF ratings of 300,000 hours. Now consumer harddrives have MTBF ratings of 500,000 hours or longer.
Three years ago most consumer harddrives had 3 year warranties. Now consumer harddrives are moving towards 1 year warranties.
Huh? Same physical mechanisms. Longer MTBF ratings. Shorter wrranty periods? Is someone lying about the MTBF rating?
As to this:
After having three IBM hard drives die on me within a yaer, it became crystal clear to me that drive manufacturers were losinga pretty penny on RMAs.
The solution to building a crappy product is not to shorten the warranty period until your RMAs stop causing you problems. The solution is to build a good quality product.
Oh, sorry, that would imply that these companies are purposefully ripping people off, rather than simply attempting to "maximize profits" or whatever you call it.
I personally believe that (with a few case-by-case exceptions), non-violent offenders should not be thrown in jail as a rule. What is wrong with giving them community service and the like? Thsis warez guy could have spent his time teaching disadvantaged children how to use a computer.
The question should be; do they pose a threat to other people and need to be removed from society? Pirating software (however your feelings on the subject) doesn't do that.
Or it could just be that prison is more about vengence rather than justice.
You're starting to get into a discussion of the purpose of the prison system.
And, unfortunately, the answer is that society is confused.
One group wants prison to be punishment. You break the law, you get punished.
One group wants prison to be about reform. You break the law, you get taught the error of your ways and you come out a nice productive member of society. (This is why prisons have libraries and educational courses.)
One group wants prisons to be simply "lock these horrible people up and never let them out where they can be dangerous again." This is where the 10-20-life and "Three Strikes" laws come from.
Which is right? Ahh, that's where you get the nifty arguments. Reform sounds better, but is very expensive. It also gets into other societal areas outside the prison system. Lock up forever is also expensive, and gets very high percentages of the population behind bars. (The US has the highest percentage population behind bars of any 1st world country.) Punish seems to mean that, when released, most convicts will commit worse crimes. (Revenge on society for how they were treated inside?)
Do you really not get it? The advertisers believe that a significant number of people will buy a certain product (car?) after seeing it advertised on the show repeatedly. What bothers me is I think they're right.
They don't necessarily believe there will be a direct link like that. What most advertisers think is that, when you go to buy a product, you'll be more comfortable buying something you've heard of before. If you go to a store, and see a row of effectively-identical cleaners, you'll buy the one whose name sounds familiar.
It's mostly just a way of "helping" people make a meaningless decision.
If I'm going to buy product type X, I'll look at the choices, eliminate those brands I've had bad experiences with, and make what amounts to a random choice among the rest, assuming research into them says they are effectively identical. If I've heard advertising recently concerning one of the remaining selections, that vague "I've heard of that one before" may tilt me towards selecting it. And most consumer goods, up to and including cars, are effectively identical inside a product category.
Does Microsoft Canada Co. pay taxes? (Okay, if they're anything like Microsoft US they probably find interesting ways not to...)
Do employees of Microsoft Canada pay taxes on their salary? Congratulations, the tax system is working as it is supposed to, and Microsoft Canada is putting money back into the government.
You want to force endowments and charitable giving to a place or thing not of the giver's choice, and you are no longer doing charity. You are doing taxes and just calling them something else. At least be honest.
"Frequently artists will even retain the right to borrow the painting for purposes such as exhibition" Not if you don't get past my shotgun.
It's a term in the contract -- if you don't want it, it isn't necessary, but most people who pay for portraits are honored that their portrait will be recognized as a work of art by the public and exhibited. I don't believe many artists would be interested in exhibiting an image if the owner wasn't willing to have it on exhibit.
And this illustrates one of the things that exists but is being ignored in most paintings, and seems to be a problem with photography.
If you commission a painting/portrait, you are probably familiar with the works of that painter, and probably respect their work as an artist. You may have met them at a gallery that exhibited their work once. You probably have a decent relationship with this person.
You probably don't have an adversarial relationship. The artist may not be a real friend, but I doubt they are someone you would go after with a shotgun. This is a person you chose to deal with because you liked their work.
We seem to have a lot of fun around here hating the evil corporation, and making it into an adversaial relationship. I'm tempted to say they started it, but that sounds so incredibly childish that, well, maybe it fits the topic pretty well after all.:)
When you're dealing with a person, talk to them and ask questions. When you're dealing with a corporation, you don't usually have that option. This is where a lot of the problems come in. Take advantage of the fact that you are dealing with a person, and talk to them.
The problem here is that the photographer is trying to charge for the wrong part of the work. The photographer is trying to charge high prices for the easy part of the work - making copies - and keep prices low for the hard part of the work - setting up a good pose with good lighting and a good background - because the technology used to allow this pricing model.
It has become too easy for the customer to do his own copying, and the pricing plan needs to change to reflect the current realities. The high-cost part of this should be showing up at the wedding and setting up the shots. The resulting photographs should be supplied at close to actual cost, because that isn't the hard part of this. And none of this crap about how making the album is art, that's a cookie-cutter operation, pull out one set of photos and put in the next set.
I do agree, this isn't an issue of "open sourcing". This is an issue of not recognizing where your "art" is, and charging properly for it. Trying to charge for a package with a built-in (false!) assumption that people will come back to you for re-prints is not recognizing the realities of the business.
And yes, I *do* strongly object to being told I have to pay again and again and again for a picture of me. No, I paid for you to set up the shot. The resulting shot belongs to me.
I paid for your expertise at arranging the shots, not your abiltiy to make copies of pictures.
Because looking at the quality of software produced now, it seems that the only way to get reliable software is to regulate it. To require that you train software developers properly. To require that you develop software properly to minimize errors.
Why do you want to rob me of the right to write software?
I don't. I want to make you produce good quality software.
Why do you want to rob my customers of the right to buy my software?
I don't. I want to get your customers to buy good quality software.
Because it seems the industry as a whole is incapable of doing it properly ourselves.
Software bugs don't exist because somebody neglects to do his job.
Bull. Anyone that writes code with a buffer overflow neglected to do his job right. Anyone that doesn't do input checking has a problem because he didn't do his job right. Most software bugs exist because programmers don't bother to learn how to do things right.
Complex applications with complex interactions? Break it into component pieces. Write interface specs, follow those specs, publish those specs, and if you use them, read those specs. This is not inflexible. This is doing things right. This is showing that quality matters more than playing around. You can have fun and enjoy your work and still do things right.
You say that software relies on other software. Yes, it does. When you rely on other software to do other than what it does, that is your fault for not reading and understanding the documentation for that software. When you rely on software to do what it does, and it changes what it does, that is not your problem. That is the problem of the author of the relied-upon software. You use a system interface and it changes behavior? We learned quite a while ago how to put version numbers on system libraries, and load the proper version when called in the proper manner. We know how to freeze APIs and ABIs for versions so that minor changes can be made and not break software that relies on these libraries.
These are *solved* problems.
The major problem is we let insufficiently-trained people produce software and pretend it is good-quality, or even almost-acceptable-quality, code. It isn't. Programming is hard, yes. It takes brains and education to do it right. Get proper training, and stop thinking it's something you can pick up in a couple of evenings playing with a compiler.
We regulate building contractors because it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and quality matters. We should regulate software development because it is a multi-billion dollar industry and quality matters.
No, this isn't popular to say here, because we like freedom. I like freedom too. But I'm tired of seeing freedom used as a defense to produce crap. You want to produce crap under the protection of freedom? That's fine. You call it art, you sell it as art, and the source code gets hung on a wall to be admired for its beauty and elegance, but it doesn't get used. You want to sell a product that is used, and you can no longer hide behind freedom, because you just hit product liability, and you are being forced to produce good-quality product and stand behind that product.
Personally I feel there should be MORE responsibility placed on the consumer, not less. Why should we have laws protecting them from their own bad decisions? Did Microsoft advertise that their product would be bug-free? On the contrary, their EULA says exactly the opposite. It's the consumer's responsibility to buy products from companies which they believe will support them in the future, won't cause death or financial loss, etc.
Find me a car manufacturer that a consumer can reasonably believe will make a vehicle that won't "cause death". Or just one that won't cause inconvenience.
You think car makers support previous year models because they want to? Nope. The government makes them. More specifically, the government makes them correct product defects at the manufacturer's cost. If you ever paid for recall work to be done on your car, you were ripped off.
By the same logic, if you pay for correction of a defective software product... are you getting ripped off?
And don't think this is just for serious injury or death. Car recall work covers such non-life-threatening things as air conditioning.
When a company sells a defective product, consumer protection laws are *supposed* to make the manufacturer repair or replace that product. Doesn't matter if it is a kid's toy, a car, a television, a computer, or computer software. A defective product is a defective product.
And don't give me any of this crap about how hard software development is. Designing bridges so they don't fall down is hard. (Look at Tacoma-Narrows.) Designing cars so they don't have exploding gas tanks is hard. (Look at Ford Pintos, and appearently some police cruisers too.)
Saying "but it's hard" is another way of saying "I don't want to be bothered doing it right".
And the academic CS response of "it is mathematically impossible to verify complicated software"... We used to think it was physically impossible for bumblebees to fly too, the models of their wings said they couldn't possibly do that. Somebody noticed bumblebee wings are curved, not flat, and everyone that said it was impossible suddenly stopped talking. "It's impossible" is another way of saying "we don't know how yet".
If your justification is "the industry is immature" then the solution is to either outlaw use of your products until they are mature, or to force manufacturers to offer additional protections for this immature product, not fewer protections.
Slashdot Mirror
You're looking for this quote, though you might not realize it...
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei
Nothing new under the sun... The jokes on the internet are old, and so are the problems...
I've often wondered what would happen if people actually obeyed all these stupid disclaimers...
No description or account of any NFL event... Great, no one in the country can talk about the football game they saw on TV the night before when they come in the office or get together with friends. No talking about the play that just finished with your friends around the bar.
See how fast the NFL dies when people aren't allowed to talk about the game they just watched.
Really... if everyone would obey all these silly rules, we'd see how fast the industry finds out "oh, crap, we didn't really mean it!"
Yes, I'm aware they claim much more than they legally can. But then, "fair use" is an affirmative defense only applicable in a court room. It is decided by a judge in that particular instance, and only by a judge only for that particular instance. Claiming fair use is saying "yes, I'm willing to go to court and spend $50,000 to prove I don't have to pay you an $8 license fee" because no one but a judge gets to decide if something is fair use or not. The rights holder may decide something is not worth their time in court, but they don't decide "yes, that's fair use."
Hurricane.
Can you tell I live in Florida?
The backup at your house, the running version on your lan, and the bank all go the way of the Dodo when that terribly inconvenient Category 5 slams down on top of you. (And no, that's not a roll of network cable I'm talking about.)
Different branches doesn't help, if they are in the same city. If it's that important, get a safe deposit box at a branch in a city a couple hundred miles away or more. Say, somewhere a good friend or family member lives, so you can stop in when you visit them anyway. No, the backups there won't be updated as often, but they'll be safer from city-level disasters.
Umm... NO.
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Something like that, right? That leads to anarchy. Not interested.
How about another one...
"For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, easy, and wrong."
Not knowing the "right" solution to a problem should in no way prevent you from pointing out difficulties with a proposed solution.
I'll give you a stupid example for this one... Global warming is a problem. My solution is to kill you. (Hey, it's a psuedo-valid solution... grobal warming is in part a problem because of population pressures... I'll fix global warming by removing some population pressure...) Until you have a solution, you're not gonna criticize my solution? Better think of one fast.
(Okay, that was a bad example partly because there are a lot of people that aren't really convinced that global warming is actually a problem.)
Internet porn may be a problem where "no solution" is better than "a bad solution".
Okay, so go talk to a lawyer.
You say you have a company installing what you seem to think is monitoring and surveillance technology in your private residence without your informed consent.
If this is realy the case, it is probably illegal. Now, more than likely, you signed the little paper giving them blanket permission to do anything they wanted to your machine, and this is another case of "read the contract before you sign it" so you probably will just be wasting your $150 talking with the lawyer.
But hey, maybe they missed something in the contract because the tech people at the cable company didn't talk to the lawyers at the cable company, and you can get something out of it. Maybe a "no extra software" install option, or maybe more complete informed consent.
Assuming you want to go to that much trouble.
But, really, you just wanted to complain to the crowd here, right?
I looked into this once tryong to convince myself to buy an LCD panel instead of a CRT for my next computer.
For an 18" LCD vs a 19" CRT, I'd have to keep the LCD for something like 17 years before it paid for the price difference in power costs, compared to a CRT running 9 hours per day. (Home computer, where I'm at work or asleep most of the day and so the CRT is turned off or in powersave mode when I'm not in front of it.) $200 for the CRT, $600 for the LCD, and 7cents per kilowatt-hour. Don't remember where I got the power usage figures, I think it was from NEC CRT and LCD monitor spec sheets.
I did not include power costs for running the AC extra in the summer. Bear in mind, though, that you run the heater less in winter too, so it is possible that you will balance this out. I didn't look into this, but it may be a wash.
This let me know that power consumption/cost alone was not a reason to get an LCD monitor for a desktop computer.
You don't realize how little power really costs... An extra 50watts, used 24 hours per day, increases a power bill about $30 per year. Takes a long time to make up for $1000 difference in system price at $30 per year.
Absolutely nothing.
If service availability (*not* uptime) is a serious concern, you don't use a single machine anyway.
You can get systems with 99.999% availability guarantees form various major manufacturers. IBM loves these things, they price them so only major corps can afford them.
The interesting thing... These aren't single computers. Read more about them. Every system sold as "99.999% availability guarantee" is a system cluster with failover. One goes down, the other picks up within some specified timeout period.
If your web server needs a good uptime, use a server farm and a load-balancing switch. Even just 2 web servers behind a round-robin switch. When a web server needs a reboot, take it out of the pool at the switch, reboot it, put it back in the pool.
This has been common practice for years with systems that need service availabilility guarantees.
Uptime is for bragging. Service availability is for people that actually need to get work done.
A good sysadmin, who is familiar with the OS being run, using proper security procedures, and working in a reasonable corporate environment, can keep a system stable and working properly for reasonable periods of time.
A bad sysadmin, who is not familiar with the OS being run, and does not follow proper security procedures, will not have a stable secure system, regardless of the system being run.
This is much more an issue of having good people following proper guidelines. I might accept that some OSes require fewer patches than others. Maybe.
But most of this "my system is better than yours" is coming from people who know one OS and not the other. This is not informed comparisons. This is trying to validate your personal choice by saying any other choice is stupid.
Doesn't matter if you are a Windows admin trying out Linux, or a Linux admin trying out Windows. How much time did you invest in the OS you know now? Spend that long working on the competition, and then you can make an informed comparison.
Repeating a saying that was old 10 years ago (and admitting it)...
Umm... giving that a moderation of "Redundant" is kind of redundant itself, isn't it?
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes."
Something like that. Think it was the sig line from someone's rec.humor posting in the early 90s.
I commented a while ago on the "temporary copies in order to use a computer program as intended is an infringement" in a thread a couple weeks ago.
Someone replied with this Cornell Law url that seems to say temp copies of a computer program for the express purpose of using it as intended (copies in ram in order to run it) are non-infringing.
Your "MAI Software was the ridiculous decision" seems to imply that was a court case... If so, was this case before or after the referenced statute on that Cornell site? I'd like to know which came first. Was the law a response to the court case? Or did the court case say the law was not sufficient to make it a non-infringement?
I don't believe this is legal. Which, admittedly, just means that you have to spend a bit more money buying the law.
Right now, over-the-air analog tv broadcasters are not *allowed* to put content-protection like macrovision in their signals. It is illegal to do so.
Putting macrovision on the analog output of a converted over-the-air digitial tv broadcast signal? That sounds remarkably like an illegal act.
Sorry, he's confused on the purpose of the 3 branches of US government.
The Legislative Branch makes the law.
The Executive Branch enforces the law.
The Judicial Branch interprets the law.
The Supreme Court specifically interprets the US Constitution. They have the last word on that.
Otherwise, there would be no "unConstitutional" laws... after all, Congress decided, so it must be right, right?
I found this too funny to pass up commenting on...
You're worried about damaging the health on an animal we'll be slaughtering to eat in a couple months?
Do you complain that people fleeing from a forest fire are disturbing the natural beauty of the area by putting tire tracks in the field right before the fire sweeps through and burns the dried grass to the ground?
I don't care about being able to record in every writable dvd format available.
I care about being able to burn one disc, and have it usable in every dvd reader I come across.
This is not a good thing. This is simply a less-bad thing while we wait for these bozos to decide on a single recordable dvd format. Unfortunately, I don't really believe that will happen, so this may be the least-bad option available.
Adding to the bad side, as has already been commented, it's a Sony. What kind of restrictions does it come with, anyway? Simply by putting the Sony nameplate on there, you know it isn't your hardware. It belongs to Sony, they are just letting you use it in a few restrictive ways for a little while.
Three years ago most consumer harddrives had MTBF ratings of 300,000 hours. Now consumer harddrives have MTBF ratings of 500,000 hours or longer.
Three years ago most consumer harddrives had 3 year warranties. Now consumer harddrives are moving towards 1 year warranties.
Huh? Same physical mechanisms. Longer MTBF ratings. Shorter wrranty periods? Is someone lying about the MTBF rating?
As to this:
The solution to building a crappy product is not to shorten the warranty period until your RMAs stop causing you problems. The solution is to build a good quality product.
Oh, sorry, that would imply that these companies are purposefully ripping people off, rather than simply attempting to "maximize profits" or whatever you call it.
You're starting to get into a discussion of the purpose of the prison system.
And, unfortunately, the answer is that society is confused.
One group wants prison to be punishment. You break the law, you get punished.
One group wants prison to be about reform. You break the law, you get taught the error of your ways and you come out a nice productive member of society. (This is why prisons have libraries and educational courses.)
One group wants prisons to be simply "lock these horrible people up and never let them out where they can be dangerous again." This is where the 10-20-life and "Three Strikes" laws come from.
Which is right? Ahh, that's where you get the nifty arguments. Reform sounds better, but is very expensive. It also gets into other societal areas outside the prison system. Lock up forever is also expensive, and gets very high percentages of the population behind bars. (The US has the highest percentage population behind bars of any 1st world country.) Punish seems to mean that, when released, most convicts will commit worse crimes. (Revenge on society for how they were treated inside?)
No easy answers.
Do you really not get it? The advertisers believe that a significant number of people will buy a certain product (car?) after seeing it advertised on the show repeatedly. What bothers me is I think they're right.
They don't necessarily believe there will be a direct link like that. What most advertisers think is that, when you go to buy a product, you'll be more comfortable buying something you've heard of before. If you go to a store, and see a row of effectively-identical cleaners, you'll buy the one whose name sounds familiar.
It's mostly just a way of "helping" people make a meaningless decision.
If I'm going to buy product type X, I'll look at the choices, eliminate those brands I've had bad experiences with, and make what amounts to a random choice among the rest, assuming research into them says they are effectively identical. If I've heard advertising recently concerning one of the remaining selections, that vague "I've heard of that one before" may tilt me towards selecting it. And most consumer goods, up to and including cars, are effectively identical inside a product category.
Ahh... now you know why I hated NBC's coverage of the Sydney Olympics in America. They did the same thing, showed taped events as if they were live.
The dishonesty of the whole process turned my stomach.
NBC has the contract for showing the Olympics in the US until 2012? *sigh* That's a long time to boycott them, dangit.
Does Microsoft Canada Co. pay taxes? (Okay, if they're anything like Microsoft US they probably find interesting ways not to...)
Do employees of Microsoft Canada pay taxes on their salary? Congratulations, the tax system is working as it is supposed to, and Microsoft Canada is putting money back into the government.
You want to force endowments and charitable giving to a place or thing not of the giver's choice, and you are no longer doing charity. You are doing taxes and just calling them something else. At least be honest.
And this illustrates one of the things that exists but is being ignored in most paintings, and seems to be a problem with photography.
If you commission a painting/portrait, you are probably familiar with the works of that painter, and probably respect their work as an artist. You may have met them at a gallery that exhibited their work once. You probably have a decent relationship with this person.
You probably don't have an adversarial relationship. The artist may not be a real friend, but I doubt they are someone you would go after with a shotgun. This is a person you chose to deal with because you liked their work.
We seem to have a lot of fun around here hating the evil corporation, and making it into an adversaial relationship. I'm tempted to say they started it, but that sounds so incredibly childish that, well, maybe it fits the topic pretty well after all.
When you're dealing with a person, talk to them and ask questions. When you're dealing with a corporation, you don't usually have that option. This is where a lot of the problems come in. Take advantage of the fact that you are dealing with a person, and talk to them.
Or have you never heard that saying?
The problem here is that the photographer is trying to charge for the wrong part of the work. The photographer is trying to charge high prices for the easy part of the work - making copies - and keep prices low for the hard part of the work - setting up a good pose with good lighting and a good background - because the technology used to allow this pricing model.
It has become too easy for the customer to do his own copying, and the pricing plan needs to change to reflect the current realities. The high-cost part of this should be showing up at the wedding and setting up the shots. The resulting photographs should be supplied at close to actual cost, because that isn't the hard part of this. And none of this crap about how making the album is art, that's a cookie-cutter operation, pull out one set of photos and put in the next set.
I do agree, this isn't an issue of "open sourcing". This is an issue of not recognizing where your "art" is, and charging properly for it. Trying to charge for a package with a built-in (false!) assumption that people will come back to you for re-prints is not recognizing the realities of the business.
And yes, I *do* strongly object to being told I have to pay again and again and again for a picture of me. No, I paid for you to set up the shot. The resulting shot belongs to me.
I paid for your expertise at arranging the shots, not your abiltiy to make copies of pictures.
Why do you want to regulate software development?
Because looking at the quality of software produced now, it seems that the only way to get reliable software is to regulate it. To require that you train software developers properly. To require that you develop software properly to minimize errors.
Why do you want to rob me of the right to write software?
I don't. I want to make you produce good quality software.
Why do you want to rob my customers of the right to buy my software?
I don't. I want to get your customers to buy good quality software.
Because it seems the industry as a whole is incapable of doing it properly ourselves.
Software bugs don't exist because somebody neglects to do his job.
Bull. Anyone that writes code with a buffer overflow neglected to do his job right. Anyone that doesn't do input checking has a problem because he didn't do his job right. Most software bugs exist because programmers don't bother to learn how to do things right.
Complex applications with complex interactions? Break it into component pieces. Write interface specs, follow those specs, publish those specs, and if you use them, read those specs. This is not inflexible. This is doing things right. This is showing that quality matters more than playing around. You can have fun and enjoy your work and still do things right.
You say that software relies on other software. Yes, it does. When you rely on other software to do other than what it does, that is your fault for not reading and understanding the documentation for that software. When you rely on software to do what it does, and it changes what it does, that is not your problem. That is the problem of the author of the relied-upon software. You use a system interface and it changes behavior? We learned quite a while ago how to put version numbers on system libraries, and load the proper version when called in the proper manner. We know how to freeze APIs and ABIs for versions so that minor changes can be made and not break software that relies on these libraries.
These are *solved* problems.
The major problem is we let insufficiently-trained people produce software and pretend it is good-quality, or even almost-acceptable-quality, code. It isn't. Programming is hard, yes. It takes brains and education to do it right. Get proper training, and stop thinking it's something you can pick up in a couple of evenings playing with a compiler.
We regulate building contractors because it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and quality matters. We should regulate software development because it is a multi-billion dollar industry and quality matters.
No, this isn't popular to say here, because we like freedom. I like freedom too. But I'm tired of seeing freedom used as a defense to produce crap. You want to produce crap under the protection of freedom? That's fine. You call it art, you sell it as art, and the source code gets hung on a wall to be admired for its beauty and elegance, but it doesn't get used. You want to sell a product that is used, and you can no longer hide behind freedom, because you just hit product liability, and you are being forced to produce good-quality product and stand behind that product.
Personally I feel there should be MORE responsibility placed on the consumer, not less. Why should we have laws protecting them from their own bad decisions? Did Microsoft advertise that their product would be bug-free? On the contrary, their EULA says exactly the opposite. It's the consumer's responsibility to buy products from companies which they believe will support them in the future, won't cause death or financial loss, etc.
Umm, huh???
Have you ever looked at the NHTSA Recalls web site?
Find me a car manufacturer that a consumer can reasonably believe will make a vehicle that won't "cause death". Or just one that won't cause inconvenience.
You think car makers support previous year models because they want to? Nope. The government makes them. More specifically, the government makes them correct product defects at the manufacturer's cost. If you ever paid for recall work to be done on your car, you were ripped off.
By the same logic, if you pay for correction of a defective software product... are you getting ripped off?
And don't think this is just for serious injury or death. Car recall work covers such non-life-threatening things as air conditioning.
When a company sells a defective product, consumer protection laws are *supposed* to make the manufacturer repair or replace that product. Doesn't matter if it is a kid's toy, a car, a television, a computer, or computer software. A defective product is a defective product.
And don't give me any of this crap about how hard software development is. Designing bridges so they don't fall down is hard. (Look at Tacoma-Narrows.) Designing cars so they don't have exploding gas tanks is hard. (Look at Ford Pintos, and appearently some police cruisers too.)
Saying "but it's hard" is another way of saying "I don't want to be bothered doing it right".
And the academic CS response of "it is mathematically impossible to verify complicated software"... We used to think it was physically impossible for bumblebees to fly too, the models of their wings said they couldn't possibly do that. Somebody noticed bumblebee wings are curved, not flat, and everyone that said it was impossible suddenly stopped talking. "It's impossible" is another way of saying "we don't know how yet".
If your justification is "the industry is immature" then the solution is to either outlaw use of your products until they are mature, or to force manufacturers to offer additional protections for this immature product, not fewer protections.
Now why does this remind me of the town entry/market scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ???
Admittedly, that was water, not mushrooms, but it is still much too close not to be amusing.
(Can you tell I didn't read the article?)