TCP/IP, the protocol which was used to provide the transport to have this little discussion we're all having, is a good example of an Open Standard.
"Industry Standard Servers" isn't "Open Standard Servers" unless you're going to allow that Linux MIGHT be such a standard. At which point, you could use Intel, AMD, Sierra PMC, ARM, and a few others to use as a CPU for your server. (And we would want to tell the people calling Windows stuff "open" to quit taking bong hits before posting or talking about that sort of stuff...:-D ).
"Open Systems Storage"... Hm... Are they talking about using Fiber Channel in a JBOD configuration, or perhaps are they talking about an E-SATA JBOD or perhaps even a 1 Gig or 10 Gig iSCSI interface over Ethernet? All of which ARE open standards. If they're talking about MS specific stuff, there's nothing "open" about that and someone should correct them on that score.
1) Java wasn't an open standard at that time. 2) MS, if you'll remember, got to pay a settlement to Sun over it. 3) MS, if you'll remember, pulled said play at that game when they got called on it. 4) It doesn't lead that Open Standards will mean what you claim it will- we have tons of open standards (such as the one that defines nuts, bolts, screws, etc. and we don't have that sort of thing going on.
No, the two terms don't equate to each other. But what you're claiming is equally fallacious.
Considering that the hardware you mention doesn't ALL exist on all platforms- and that support for the hardware doesn't exist on all platforms...your argument rings a bit hollow there.
Yes, it's in hardware. But not on everything like you claim, nor is it all supported because most of the vendors are trying to worry about supporting the DRM stuff along with it- and we won't get into software support for the codec in question.
Heh... I pretty much won't take their stuff if they tried to force it on me, never mind the silver platter. Most of it all is pretty craptastic these days and I pretty much treat the "remastered" stuff like it was infested with the black plague (For more than one reason, even...I don't appreciate being treated like I was a thief or infringer...).
Word has it, though, that Guns and Roses just recently released an album with NO compression and you can tell the quality difference even over the radio. They stand out like a lighthouse during a storm according to the reports from others.
Wouldn't know, though. I've opted out of listening to the Radio because of things like the labels' conduct over the last 10 or so years, the Loudness Wars included in it. I don't buy the stuff they're peddling over the airwaves or in the music stores. I get better from unsigned acts, including folk music artists- and they don't muck with the audio or treat me like a thief.
This would be a personal preference item. I'm not picky, but the range compressed music sounds like crap to me on anything but the absolute cheapest stuff. Moreover, there's a stunning example of what I and others are trying to get at.
(This is with AAC compression on the audio at YouTube's standard def settings.)
It doesn't matter if you're looking at the compressed or uncompressed version- they both are telling as to what you're claiming "sounds better" really sounds like. Doing an analysis of the sound tracks, it doesn't appear to be trickery. He's pinned it down and I've got noise in my environment and it's still better with the uncompressed sample. You turn the volume knob up if you can't hear the non-range-compressed stuff. Don't make it "louder" to compensate for crap hardware or really noisy environments (if it's THAT noisy, you're not going to hear much of the music even IF it's range-compressed...)- you don't have to be an audiophile to actually tell the difference.
Uh, they can prescribe things that are valid. Closing the stuff off just because they're not a medical doctor is bogus. What about DO's as well, hm?
If it's got a prescription, it probably ought to be allowed unless it's being misused.
The truth of the mater is that Schools should use the sense God gave a rock- not that they seem to be doing this of late. It's damned simple. If it's got a purpose, unless it's being used in a disruptive manner intentionally, you let it stay. If it's disruptive (or potentially so...) and no other legit uses, confiscate the damned things. If they won't let you confiscate, suspend/expel the student on proper grounds- because you'll have them at that point.
But noooo...we can't do that. We can't discipline our kids either- it's "abuse".
Oh, they DO have closed source ones, though. Wouldn't have Q3:A running on the Beagle otherwise (Or have something like Caster in development for it...;-) )
There's been efforts on several fronts to get Imagination to relent on either FOSS drivers or release of the technical info. Unfortunately, every one of the SoC's on the table right at the moment have GPU hardware with no technical data available (not even Snapdragon- while they bought the mobile GPU division from AMD, those chips aren't the same as the R-series parts we've got info for...). I'm hoping Imagination will realize it's to their advantage or Qualcomm will at this point- I'm not holding my breath for NVidia for a while yet to come.
The deletion is analogous to the infringer being ordered to enter into the homes of the people to remove the infringed records or books, with or without a refund.
Seriously.
Copyright law is powerful- but not THAT powerful. No court of competent jurisdiction would ever order such an act. Even to the kindles. Even if they had the ability. Amazon didn't HAVE to do anything remotely resembling what they did.
Actually, in this case, Amazon DID break into something and made off with Data.
It was just after the rights holder pointed out to them they didn't have a license to sell the data to the people they stole the data back from. People will say that they got their money back- but this is beside the point. If I went and did this sort of thing, I'd be cooling my heels in a jail somewhere for data theft/destruction in the case of an e-book, or theft outright in the case of a meatspace item.
Amazon's doing amazing here. They go and do an infringement aaand then top it off with data theft and destruction on a scale that would make malware writers PROUD.
Excuse me... PLEASE quit associating infringement with theft.
What transpired was an infringement. It was NOT stolen goods. Theft has an explicit definition of what it is on the law books as does Infringement. They're completely differing things and as such, they didn't buy "stolen" goods. They bought unlicensed copies and the law sees this quite a bit differently than if they'd sold a batch of books that were swiped from, say, Harcourt's (or any other publisher's) warehouse somewhere. In the latter case, the books would be stolen goods, and subject to the line of thinking you've put forward. In the former case, which is what the subject of the lawsuit we're discussing, what Amazon did is willful data destruction, roughly analogous to actual theft of data as it was sold to them as such and then they just simply took it away from them for no other reason than they had no license to distribute it. It doesn't matter if they got a refund or not. What Amazon did wasn't legit.
Actually, that line of thought leads down FURTHER ILLEGAL acts to be committed by the infringer. There is no court in the world that would rationally incite Amazon to have done what they did "to ensure no further infringements" as you describe.
Inciting illegal acts as settlement is a quick way to have an appeal reverse a decision on a Judge.
Actually, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. The resulting suits that will follow on over the people having lost the e-books in the manner that they did (willful data destruction by Amazon) may exceed the losses they could have faced and settled for over the infringements in question.
They received bad legal advice on the matter, then.
This is going to cost them quite a bit more money than settling on the accidental infringement would have, I suspect.
Before, they were just guilty of infringement on those two books.
Once they removed the books in question, they were guilty of something roughly analogous to theft- refunding the money doesn't change that. If I take something of yours that I sold you and give your money back without your permission and agreement, I would be cooling my heels in a Jail cell over it. This is no different, but on a rather larger scale.
There is a consequence to this and the reckoning for Amazon over it is only beginning. It won't stop for a while yet to come.
Actually, the original sale is not theft. Theft has an explicit definition that differs from what happened here- and there's a reason it's that way. What transpired with the original sale was infringement, breaching the right to control the publication and distribution of the original work. Infringement isn't stolen goods.
Since it's not stolen goods (no matter how RIAA/MPAA/ASCAP/etc... would like you to believe it IS...) what Amazon did amounts to stealing items- they DID commit an act of theft, considering that the people were deprived of the use of the thing in question and there WAS no disclosure of any of what Amazon had to do this or the right they reserved to do it. They're in a bit more hot water now than they would have been if they'd just stayed with accidental infringement via their resale of stuff from Mobireference (who was the guilty party for the root infringement here...). It's just beginning for them.
Actually, that won't get them out of the hot water they're in.
I expected at least ONE class-action as a result of this little fubar they did to themselves- not disclosed they may do this, nor is it really allowed by US law to begin with.
Heh... In the case of your laptop and netbook, the odds are good you don't have the power management turned on or turned up much. Stock configs for Linux leave that turned off. Windows turns it on and you deal with it or turn it off after the fact. Without the power management, it eats batteries like candy.
Now... To put this in a perspective you and others can clearly understand:
The netbooks we're about to see from ARM licensees are roughly in the same ballpark of performance and capacity (depending on RAM included with the devices...) of the eeePC when it first came out to the 900 series devices.
The Intel based devices for these models needed a 49 watt-hour battery to do 3 or so hours runtime, whether you're talking Linux or WindowsXP.
The OMAP3 boards I've had the fortune of having in my possession at one point in time were able to go roughly 10 hours...on a 13.5 watt-hour battery. While I've not abused it as much as others, some were not letting it just set idle- it did these amazing runtimes with emulators running full-tilt. It'd probably get approximately 8-ish in the same configuration if you had the 3D accel running.
Oh... By the way... That was without any power management- not that it'd been kicking in with what they did to it.
This is using the Cortex-A8. The A9, is out-of-order plus SMP capable, and has a few other gems going for it. It's like having 1-4 of the pre-Core P4M devices at the same rated clock speed as the ARM based SoC- and consuming only slightly more juice per core than the A8. That's NEXT year's crop of fun from ARM.
It might have been for dramatic effect, the taking the dump part, but it's the actual attitude they're espousing over all of this, so it's not an over the top analogy there.
That's fallacious. You are no more forced to buy a new phone based on that scheme than the current one they run.
Seriously. When they give you the phone at a discount for a 2yr contract (I got my current smartphone for sales tax due to the discounts, rebates, and the bonus for extending my contract for another year...) you're getting a similar deal. You can ALWAYS buy another phone. You can ALWAYS opt to not do so if the phone is working well for you.
Don't bet on it. A canid would have the same biological imperatives- ditto a felinoid.
To be sure, there'd be some arguing, but you wouldn't find them arguing about NOT killing lesser animals because they haven't ANY choice. They're carnivores. Keep in mind, it's not our natural diet either- we're omnivores, we're supposed to eat some meat.
That's because he worked for them. While I won't say I would trust them on things (mainly because I've been close enough to be working for one of their Enterprise Partners at one point)- I can see someone at the grunt level trusting them after a fashion.
However, having said this, I think their perspective is a bit skewed- right up until prior to this little release and their other one they were mouthing off about GPL being a cancer, etc. and we were guilty of patent violations, etc.
This all isn't in keeping with their company line up to this point- and companies typically don't change this much this fast. Ever. I doubt that they're telling the truth here on this- as much because of what they've done in the past and how radically different it is from what that was.
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Open Standards are just what they claim to be.
TCP/IP, the protocol which was used to provide the transport to have this little discussion we're all having, is a good example of an Open Standard.
"Industry Standard Servers" isn't "Open Standard Servers" unless you're going to allow that Linux MIGHT be such a standard. At which point, you could use Intel, AMD, Sierra PMC, ARM, and a few others to use as a CPU for your server. (And we would want to tell the people calling Windows stuff "open" to quit taking bong hits before posting or talking about that sort of stuff... :-D ).
"Open Systems Storage"... Hm... Are they talking about using Fiber Channel in a JBOD configuration, or perhaps are they talking about an E-SATA JBOD or perhaps even a 1 Gig or 10 Gig iSCSI interface over Ethernet? All of which ARE open standards. If they're talking about MS specific stuff, there's nothing "open" about that and someone should correct them on that score.
Excuse me...
1) Java wasn't an open standard at that time.
2) MS, if you'll remember, got to pay a settlement to Sun over it.
3) MS, if you'll remember, pulled said play at that game when they got called on it.
4) It doesn't lead that Open Standards will mean what you claim it will- we have tons of open standards (such as the one that defines nuts, bolts, screws, etc. and we don't have that sort of thing going on.
No, the two terms don't equate to each other. But what you're claiming is equally fallacious.
Words have meaning. So, nothing is "just a word". Open has the following meaning:
From dictionary.com:
It's not just a word and it DOES apply here and it does adjust what "standard" means, considerably.
Considering that the hardware you mention doesn't ALL exist on all platforms- and that support for the hardware doesn't exist on all platforms...your argument rings a bit hollow there.
Yes, it's in hardware. But not on everything like you claim, nor is it all supported because most of the vendors are trying to worry about supporting the DRM stuff along with it- and we won't get into software support for the codec in question.
Heh... I pretty much won't take their stuff if they tried to force it on me, never mind the silver platter. Most of it all is pretty craptastic these days and I pretty much treat the "remastered" stuff like it was infested with the black plague (For more than one reason, even...I don't appreciate being treated like I was a thief or infringer...).
Word has it, though, that Guns and Roses just recently released an album with NO compression and you can tell the quality difference even over the radio. They stand out like a lighthouse during a storm according to the reports from others.
Wouldn't know, though. I've opted out of listening to the Radio because of things like the labels' conduct over the last 10 or so years, the Loudness Wars included in it. I don't buy the stuff they're peddling over the airwaves or in the music stores. I get better from unsigned acts, including folk music artists- and they don't muck with the audio or treat me like a thief.
This would be a personal preference item. I'm not picky, but the range compressed music sounds like crap to me on anything but the absolute cheapest stuff. Moreover, there's a stunning example of what I and others are trying to get at.
This is an uncompressed version of the video:
http://homedir-b.libsyn.com/podcasts/7e24bfaa5acaa3c0c22fd937c31d5b84/4a771a4c/psn/images/Loudness_War.mov
(Warning, it IS uncompressed...)
This is the YouTube version of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
(This is with AAC compression on the audio at YouTube's standard def settings.)
It doesn't matter if you're looking at the compressed or uncompressed version- they both are telling as to what you're claiming "sounds better" really sounds like. Doing an analysis of the sound tracks, it doesn't appear to be trickery. He's pinned it down and I've got noise in my environment and it's still better with the uncompressed sample. You turn the volume knob up if you can't hear the non-range-compressed stuff. Don't make it "louder" to compensate for crap hardware or really noisy environments (if it's THAT noisy, you're not going to hear much of the music even IF it's range-compressed...)- you don't have to be an audiophile to actually tell the difference.
Uh, they can prescribe things that are valid. Closing the stuff off just because they're not a medical doctor is bogus. What about DO's as well, hm?
If it's got a prescription, it probably ought to be allowed unless it's being misused.
The truth of the mater is that Schools should use the sense God gave a rock- not that they seem to be doing this of late. It's damned simple. If it's got a purpose, unless it's being used in a disruptive manner intentionally, you let it stay. If it's disruptive (or potentially so...) and no other legit uses, confiscate the damned things. If they won't let you confiscate, suspend/expel the student on proper grounds- because you'll have them at that point.
But noooo...we can't do that. We can't discipline our kids either- it's "abuse".
Oh, they DO have closed source ones, though. Wouldn't have Q3:A running on the Beagle otherwise (Or have something like Caster in development for it... ;-) )
There's been efforts on several fronts to get Imagination to relent on either FOSS drivers or release of the technical info. Unfortunately, every one of the SoC's on the table right at the moment have GPU hardware with no technical data available (not even Snapdragon- while they bought the mobile GPU division from AMD, those chips aren't the same as the R-series parts we've got info for...). I'm hoping Imagination will realize it's to their advantage or Qualcomm will at this point- I'm not holding my breath for NVidia for a while yet to come.
The deletion is analogous to the infringer being ordered to enter into the homes of the people to remove the infringed records or books, with or without a refund.
Seriously.
Copyright law is powerful- but not THAT powerful. No court of competent jurisdiction would ever order such an act. Even to the kindles. Even if they had the ability. Amazon didn't HAVE to do anything remotely resembling what they did.
Actually, in this case, Amazon DID break into something and made off with Data.
It was just after the rights holder pointed out to them they didn't have a license to sell the data to the people they stole the data back from. People will say that they got their money back- but this is beside the point. If I went and did this sort of thing, I'd be cooling my heels in a jail somewhere for data theft/destruction in the case of an e-book, or theft outright in the case of a meatspace item.
Amazon's doing amazing here. They go and do an infringement aaand then top it off with data theft and destruction on a scale that would make malware writers PROUD.
Excuse me... PLEASE quit associating infringement with theft.
What transpired was an infringement. It was NOT stolen goods. Theft has an explicit definition of what it is on the law books as does Infringement. They're completely differing things and as such, they didn't buy "stolen" goods. They bought unlicensed copies and the law sees this quite a bit differently than if they'd sold a batch of books that were swiped from, say, Harcourt's (or any other publisher's) warehouse somewhere. In the latter case, the books would be stolen goods, and subject to the line of thinking you've put forward. In the former case, which is what the subject of the lawsuit we're discussing, what Amazon did is willful data destruction, roughly analogous to actual theft of data as it was sold to them as such and then they just simply took it away from them for no other reason than they had no license to distribute it. It doesn't matter if they got a refund or not. What Amazon did wasn't legit.
Actually, that line of thought leads down FURTHER ILLEGAL acts to be committed by the infringer. There is no court in the world that would rationally incite Amazon to have done what they did "to ensure no further infringements" as you describe.
Inciting illegal acts as settlement is a quick way to have an appeal reverse a decision on a Judge.
Actually, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. The resulting suits that will follow on over the people having lost the e-books in the manner that they did (willful data destruction by Amazon) may exceed the losses they could have faced and settled for over the infringements in question.
It was a very, very stupid thing they did here.
They received bad legal advice on the matter, then.
This is going to cost them quite a bit more money than settling on the accidental infringement would have, I suspect.
Before, they were just guilty of infringement on those two books.
Once they removed the books in question, they were guilty of something roughly analogous to theft- refunding the money doesn't change that. If I take something of yours that I sold you and give your money back without your permission and agreement, I would be cooling my heels in a Jail cell over it. This is no different, but on a rather larger scale.
There is a consequence to this and the reckoning for Amazon over it is only beginning. It won't stop for a while yet to come.
Actually, the original sale is not theft. Theft has an explicit definition that differs from what happened here- and there's a reason it's that way. What transpired with the original sale was infringement, breaching the right to control the publication and distribution of the original work. Infringement isn't stolen goods.
Since it's not stolen goods (no matter how RIAA/MPAA/ASCAP/etc... would like you to believe it IS...) what Amazon did amounts to stealing items- they DID commit an act of theft, considering that the people were deprived of the use of the thing in question and there WAS no disclosure of any of what Amazon had to do this or the right they reserved to do it. They're in a bit more hot water now than they would have been if they'd just stayed with accidental infringement via their resale of stuff from Mobireference (who was the guilty party for the root infringement here...). It's just beginning for them.
Actually, that won't get them out of the hot water they're in.
I expected at least ONE class-action as a result of this little fubar they did to themselves- not disclosed they may do this, nor is it really allowed by US law to begin with.
Heh... In the case of your laptop and netbook, the odds are good you don't have the power management turned on or turned up much. Stock configs for Linux leave that turned off. Windows turns it on and you deal with it or turn it off after the fact. Without the power management, it eats batteries like candy.
Now... To put this in a perspective you and others can clearly understand:
The netbooks we're about to see from ARM licensees are roughly in the same ballpark of performance and capacity (depending on RAM included with the devices...) of the eeePC when it first came out to the 900 series devices.
The Intel based devices for these models needed a 49 watt-hour battery to do 3 or so hours runtime, whether you're talking Linux or WindowsXP.
The OMAP3 boards I've had the fortune of having in my possession at one point in time were able to go roughly 10 hours...on a 13.5 watt-hour battery. While I've not abused it as much as others, some were not letting it just set idle- it did these amazing runtimes with emulators running full-tilt. It'd probably get approximately 8-ish in the same configuration if you had the 3D accel running.
Oh... By the way... That was without any power management- not that it'd been kicking in with what they did to it.
This is using the Cortex-A8. The A9, is out-of-order plus SMP capable, and has a few other gems going for it. It's like having 1-4 of the pre-Core P4M devices at the same rated clock speed as the ARM based SoC- and consuming only slightly more juice per core than the A8. That's NEXT year's crop of fun from ARM.
It might have been for dramatic effect, the taking the dump part, but it's the actual attitude they're espousing over all of this, so it's not an over the top analogy there.
That's fallacious. You are no more forced to buy a new phone based on that scheme than the current one they run.
Seriously. When they give you the phone at a discount for a 2yr contract (I got my current smartphone for sales tax due to the discounts, rebates, and the bonus for extending my contract for another year...) you're getting a similar deal. You can ALWAYS buy another phone. You can ALWAYS opt to not do so if the phone is working well for you.
Don't bet on it. A canid would have the same biological imperatives- ditto a felinoid.
To be sure, there'd be some arguing, but you wouldn't find them arguing about NOT killing lesser animals because they haven't ANY choice. They're carnivores . Keep in mind, it's not our natural diet either- we're omnivores, we're supposed to eat some meat.
That's because he worked for them. While I won't say I would trust them on things (mainly because I've been close enough to be working for one of their Enterprise Partners at one point)- I can see someone at the grunt level trusting them after a fashion.
However, having said this, I think their perspective is a bit skewed- right up until prior to this little release and their other one they were mouthing off about GPL being a cancer, etc. and we were guilty of patent violations, etc.
This all isn't in keeping with their company line up to this point- and companies typically don't change this much this fast. Ever. I doubt that they're telling the truth here on this- as much because of what they've done in the past and how radically different it is from what that was.
Fixed that for you. Nearly half a year for something they did screw up on isn't "promptly".
The only gripe I have is with the spin they're putting on it.
They screwed up.
They should OWN UP to it.
There'd be a bit less acrimony if they'd quit going "but we didn't...", when they know and we know they did.
Are you kidding? They get sued over crap like this all the time.