There's quite a bit more available in the way of CPU architechtures than x86 that nspluginwrapper doesn't fix. Now, while PPC may be less relevant, ARM is very much so with the new wave of Linux smartphones. To my knowledge, there's only the player bundled with the N770 and N800 available right now.
In reality, the Open Source solution, flumotion is cheaper than pretty much any commercially supported solution. But, it doesn't do DRM for all intents and purposes, which is the thing they're worrying so damn much about.
DRM is why they're doing this BS. Without the DRM, the Open Source friendly, Open Source served solution will beat all of the commercial streaming answers, hands down. Now, having said this, the DRM in the Real Networks commercial Helix server offering is comparable, the players exist pretty much on any relevant platform. Now, is Real's offering all that much more expensive than the Microsoft one- or might it be more expensive overall to go with MS' answer? It's my understanding that they're charging a pretty penny for that WMA support to the people using it.
Didn't notice LG. Thing is, they're no different than the other big players- they're doing the same sorts of things. My guess then would be that they've got licensing deals and the ones in the suit didn't come to the table. Biggest problem is, LG will try to invalidate their patents. Why sue when you're holding a busted flush?
This is probably due to them having problems of this nature. It's a perfectly reasonable means to which they can handle the problem, so long as the person KNOWS they're buying one if they see what they're intending on buying, etc. To be honest, Best Buy, if they did do this to the guy (I'm not "sure" that they did, but having seen this crap go on in the past from these people, to the point of arresting people trying to get them to honor their end of the business deal they'd done, I'm disinclined to suspect the guy is lying to us at this time...) then they did the dead last thing someone should be doing in this situation.
I MIGHT buy an item with a "Sicker of Shame" on it, but there's some things (like...motherboards, RAM, CPUs, etc...) that I won't touch with a 10' pole. Sure, it might be okay, but the odds aren't terribly good in that space... >:-)
The largest problem is that Best Buy has been guilty of this sort of thing in the past- on several occasions, even.
There's a reason WHY people are making the snarky, "I can't believe people are still shopping at that crappy place," remarks in the first place.
Perhaps they're not guilty of it this time- but I'm not 100% sure of that at this point because I've watched it play out this way in the past, not with myself, but with my friends and me being a witness to some of the drama that ensued.
The NEO 1973 is a first cut. Nokia, however, seems to be reaching in the same direction. IF they have open drivers for the WiMax hardware and Sprint does the right things in securing their G4 network they're building right now, we'll have EVERYTHING you're talking to in the smartphone through the G4 capable version of the N810.
As for the comment about us "not looking at fancy glamour but for useful attributes," heh I think he's missed the cluetrain there. I want BOTH, thank you very much. Nokia seems to have figured that one out and if they manage to convince Sprint to allow the WiMax drivers to have open source drivers on the N810 or whatever ends up being that smartphone on Sprint's G4 network and Sprint does the right thing by doing proper securing so that you don't have to lock down the phone to get their due, then we may still get what you're hoping for.
As for the NEO1973 being weak, I think that's more because you're dealing with engineering prototypes than production items. I've not laid hands on any of them yet (no budget to do more than the Nokia stuff I'm futzing with right at the moment...) but what you've said strikes me as being akin to that sort of thing. I should know, I've dealt with QUITE a bit of that sort of stuff when I was doing board support packages for a Linux Set-Top distribution in days past. It still bothers me that someone over there in OpenMoko has it in their head that we're all about function and nothing about flash. I'm less concerned about it, yes. But if it's there, it's 100% or more better than without it if it doesn't get in the way of ability.
As others have pointed out, they may have licensing deals. It is also worth noting that each and every one of the omitted ones in that list is well big enough to have their own patents to annihilate SanDisk or has enough resources to invalidate the patent(s) in question, which would be a bad thing for them at this point.
I do know one thing, I'm going to be disinclined to deal with SanDisk at this point unless it's shown that they really DID try doing the negotiations work and didn't just delay this action until they had everyone using their stuff without realizing it like Rambus did with DDR memory.
No, active enforcement applies to ALL things in the Intellectual Property space; it's just that Trademark requires it or you lose it completely. In the case of Patents, if you delay, the BEST you can hope for is someone to stop using your invention- you will definitely not get damages if you wait this long and you may also get told you don't get the parties in question to stop using it for the devices designed up to that point that are infringing.
I expect a lot of Laches defenses being erected as well as responses using the lates Supreme Court of the US ruling about obviousness on a patent (which I suspect that SanDisk is going to get tripped up on...).
Maybe Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software as a means of delivering abuse. If you look at it that way, Microsoft is excellent at what it does.
Aaaand, I suspect that this was the MAIN reason why it was BitTorrented instead of DLed from their site.
But then, asking for Journalistic Integrity from Forbes (they let Dan Lyons spew his rubbish, right?) is like asking the poo flingers on/. to not post.
Uh... You're still conflating things that aren't supposed to be.
Piracy, as the term is applied to Protected Works is properly called "Infringement" and should be referred to as such. Theft implies that one is deprived of the item so stolen- there is no such thing going on with Infringement.
Now, having said this, I wish Forbes would fscking QUIT calling things like this "piracy" as you're dead on right in everything else- if the deal was, you can download it for nada, etc. you aren't actually infringing.
Because it's there all the same, whether Bill and Co. discounted the stuff in the first place.
I didn't want his piece of garbage, Vista (And it IS that, 6 months of debugging a chip vendor's drivers for Vista pretty much cinched that opinion...), in the first place, but since that's all you've got as a choice on most x86 machine options until recently, you got stuck with it.
Moreover, they made it difficult with a lot of those machines you quoted to downgrade the machine. I know for a fact that it was VASTLY more painful to get the legit XP license I put on my laptop along with the Ubuntu install up and running- the driver situation was a blasted pain. Ubuntu, on the other hand... Heh... It just installed just fine.
Now, according to HP, I voided my warranty (WTF? The software doesn't break the hardware guys...)- but since it was refurb anyhow, I didn't care all that much. As it stands, I popped open the DVD drive with a paper clip and burned it right down and did the installs without worrying about that Vista install. Didn't even KEEP the damn thing.
Unfortunately for them, they can't ever use them now- Laches takes over since they've been rattling that sabre for 2-3 years now without stating with specificity what the "infringements" are. Since they're unwilling to do so, they'd better hope they've got those patents for real because I suspect that IBM, Red Hat, and a few others are going to take MS on for Lanham Act violations over this garbage next (Never take on more than one lawsuit at a time if you can at all help it- and pick lesser ones over major ones if you can't. This would be another major suit for IBM and Red Hat at this point. Once SCO's settled, however....).
I would not want to be Allchin, Ballmer, or Gates right now- I suspect this isn't a good time to be in upper management for MS.
Ahem... They weren't placed under an OSS license...
They're under a Creative Commons License, which covers artistic works not software.
You have to simply abide by the license grants for all of the Copyrighted and Patented works you're using, no matter what their licenses are. It's just that the OSS licenses are easy to follow- I did not imply that anything else is, and trying to muddy the issue by dragging in free usage allowed literary and artistic licensing doesn't prove your argument you're trying to reach as the licenses aren't analogous. Just because your icons can be used with software doesn't MAKE them that.
Heh... Letsee.. 9 out of 9. (Honest...I've been doing this stuff, writing software and licensing it appropriately, for the last TWO decades...) Stallman and Moglen would be proud of me... >:-)
If you think the GPL and LGPL has intricacies, one would best stay clear and wide of pretty much most of the stuff out there that's proprietary as they've got much more restrictive and complicated licensing than the GPL requires. It's honestly not THAT difficult to follow the licensing on GPLed software- it's that companies tend to be filled with greedy people that think that anything's cool as long as they get rich quickly and just don't get caught cheating while doing it.
It really isn't that hard to comply with one of the actual FOSS licenses, no matter which one you choose as they're ALL done to be easy to follow what your requirements are and you can't be in question as to what you're liabilities are with regards to the license grant.
The problem is... You are applying the concept of "theft" to the wrong thing.
It's NOT theft. Congress delimited it quite correctly. "Intellectual" property isn't property in the normal sense. It's a State (as in the Union of States) granted Monopoly over the right to produce copies of the protected work(s).
In the case of Copyright, it's the right to produce copies or derivative works of a piece of music, literature, or other art- and to distribute said copies or derivatives to other people.
In the case of Patent, it's the right to control the manufacture of a device that meets the description of the Patent grant or to make derivatives thereof.
In the case of Trademark, it's the right to use a given phrase or illustration to represent your work, company, or product.
These are given for everything except Trademarks for a limited time to encourage the development of more works of similar or different nature.
They're NOT property. They can't really be "stolen" in the sense of the definition of theft. When I steal (theft) something, you are deprived of the use thereof of the item in question. With infringement, you are only deprived of the right to control the replication or derivation of a protected work. You are not deprived of the use thereof as you still HAVE the item in your possession.
You might be able to apply the theory that when I infringe on one of the aforementioned right grants from the government, that I'm stealing money from the party being so infringed. Unfortunately, the law doesn't see that this way. With the so-called "intellectual" property, there are no guarantees you will see a dime from it, no matter what you might say to the contrary. All that has been done is that your rights to reproduce something has been infringed upon, which isn't theft.
Please refrain from conflating the two- it's part of the problem everyone's having and it's the same type of games the media companies and their representatives, RIAA, MPAA, etc. have been at. Right along with this lawsuit BS that's hopefully coming to an end.
Because, as the Fool pointed out... Their making available theory (which went the way of the Dodo recently...) made quite a few people guilty as a cat caught in a goldfish bowl. The problem is, it was a bad theory and they were working of the shock and awe play in litigation, hoping and praying people didn't know their rights and would settle and it'd have the desired effect on their members' control on the market.
Problem is, it didn't work- for either the litgation/settlement or the control of the market.
Because the native library is only useful to THAT platform, but anything that is targeted to "PSGL" is going to be a hell of a lot like OpenGL ES 2.0 which means it's an easy migration to/from other OS platforms. Unless it's a dramatic drop in performance (I have to wonder exactly how fast that "native library" really is in comparison to OpenGL ES (which is what they're using on the PS3...) as I've not heard about this uber fast API... I also wonder how easy it is to use and develop for...) you'll do your level best to pick a base API that is similar or identical to one of your other targets.
In this case, you can...
Target Sony's API and gain maximal speed- but be spending effort on a SINGLE platform that's dead last in the race right at the moment and is unlikely to be seen on anything BUT the PS3.
Target OpenGL/OpenGL ES 2.0 and have a codebase that targets everything except Microsoft platforms that performs, albeit slower, but consistently correct on all those platforms as long as the drivers do what they're supposed to.
If the GPL is read as a license that waives the right to sue for copyright infringement, that would leave only the ability to sue for breach of contract
How could one read that one?
You don't waive the right to sue for Copyright infringement with the acceptance of the terms.
You get the right to distribute the Protected Work(s) and make Derivative Protected Work(s) (Also covered by the same license) as long as you abide by the terms- which is you give access to the source code to the original and any derivative work to any recipient of the code in source or binary form that you give it to. The bulk of the GPL license is the boilerplate for establishing the aforementioned grant of rights and establishing what is considered to be a breach of the agreement and what happens if that breach occurs. Given that there is no waiving of ANYTHING stated or implied in the verbiage, there is none. Just because there is no remuneration present in the form of monetary exchange does NOT make it a waiving of rights or anything else.
If you want people citing legal precedent plus discussions of interesting, possibly viable legal theories- interspersed with at at least a little of the same poo flinging you find around here on/., go over to Groklaw.
In reality, it's due to a disconnect from the business people and the people doing the work.
All it takes is one unscrupulous developer- or a batch of abjectly clueless business people to cause one of these messes. To them it's all by magic and they "own" everything they do. I see it all the time.
If you want, blame the business schools and all for graduating people that haven't been taught a lot of these things and are taught silly, useless "business optimization" things like Six Sigma that're only really useful for the largest companies- and that probably only really work because doing some process is better than none at all and obtains SOME useful results.
Slashdot Mirror
Your mistake was in thinking that Microsoft was a Software Company.
They're nothing of the sort.
They are an Abuse Company that uses Software as the vehicle to deliver this abuse, as opposed to words, whips, and/or chains. >:-)
There's quite a bit more available in the way of CPU architechtures than x86 that nspluginwrapper doesn't fix.
Now, while PPC may be less relevant, ARM is very much so with the new wave of Linux smartphones. To my knowledge, there's only the player bundled with the N770 and N800 available right now.
In reality, the Open Source solution, flumotion is cheaper than pretty much any commercially supported solution. But, it doesn't do DRM for all intents and purposes, which is the thing they're worrying so damn much about.
DRM is why they're doing this BS. Without the DRM, the Open Source friendly, Open Source served solution will beat all of the commercial streaming answers, hands down. Now, having said this, the DRM in the Real Networks commercial Helix server offering is comparable, the players exist pretty much on any relevant platform. Now, is Real's offering all that much more expensive than the Microsoft one- or might it be more expensive overall to go with MS' answer? It's my understanding that they're charging a pretty penny for that WMA support to the people using it.
Didn't notice LG. Thing is, they're no different than the other big players- they're doing the same sorts of things. My guess then would be that they've got licensing deals and the ones in the suit didn't come to the table. Biggest problem is, LG will try to invalidate their patents. Why sue when you're holding a busted flush?
This is probably due to them having problems of this nature. It's a perfectly reasonable
means to which they can handle the problem, so long as the person KNOWS they're buying one
if they see what they're intending on buying, etc. To be honest, Best Buy, if they did
do this to the guy (I'm not "sure" that they did, but having seen this crap go on in the
past from these people, to the point of arresting people trying to get them to honor their
end of the business deal they'd done, I'm disinclined to suspect the guy is lying to us
at this time...) then they did the dead last thing someone should be doing in this situation.
I MIGHT buy an item with a "Sicker of Shame" on it, but there's some things (like...motherboards, RAM, CPUs, etc...) that I won't touch with a 10' pole. Sure, it might be okay, but the odds aren't terribly good in that space... >:-)
The largest problem is that Best Buy has been guilty of this
sort of thing in the past- on several occasions, even.
There's a reason WHY people are making the snarky, "I can't believe people
are still shopping at that crappy place," remarks in the first place.
Perhaps they're not guilty of it this time- but I'm not 100% sure of
that at this point because I've watched it play out this way in the
past, not with myself, but with my friends and me being a witness
to some of the drama that ensued.
The NEO 1973 is a first cut. Nokia, however, seems to be reaching in the same direction. IF
they have open drivers for the WiMax hardware and Sprint does the right things in securing
their G4 network they're building right now, we'll have EVERYTHING you're talking to in the
smartphone through the G4 capable version of the N810.
As for the comment about us "not looking at fancy glamour but for useful attributes," heh
I think he's missed the cluetrain there. I want BOTH, thank you very much. Nokia seems
to have figured that one out and if they manage to convince Sprint to allow the WiMax drivers
to have open source drivers on the N810 or whatever ends up being that smartphone on Sprint's
G4 network and Sprint does the right thing by doing proper securing so that you don't have
to lock down the phone to get their due, then we may still get what you're hoping for.
As for the NEO1973 being weak, I think that's more because you're dealing with engineering
prototypes than production items. I've not laid hands on any of them yet (no budget to
do more than the Nokia stuff I'm futzing with right at the moment...) but what you've said
strikes me as being akin to that sort of thing. I should know, I've dealt with QUITE a bit
of that sort of stuff when I was doing board support packages for a Linux Set-Top distribution
in days past. It still bothers me that someone over there in OpenMoko has it in their head
that we're all about function and nothing about flash. I'm less concerned about it, yes.
But if it's there, it's 100% or more better than without it if it doesn't get in the way
of ability.
Considering that the poster suggested this in response TO being locked out in the first place...
As others have pointed out, they may have licensing deals. It is also worth noting that each and every one of the omitted ones in that list is well big enough to have their own patents to annihilate SanDisk or has enough resources to invalidate the patent(s) in question, which would be a bad thing for them at this point.
I do know one thing, I'm going to be disinclined to deal with SanDisk at this point unless it's shown that
they really DID try doing the negotiations work and didn't just delay this action until they had everyone
using their stuff without realizing it like Rambus did with DDR memory.
No, active enforcement applies to ALL things in the Intellectual Property space; it's just that Trademark requires it or you lose it completely. In the case of Patents, if you delay, the BEST you can hope for is someone to stop using your invention- you will definitely not get damages if you wait this long and you may also get told you don't get the parties in question to stop using it for the devices designed up to that point that are infringing.
I expect a lot of Laches defenses being erected as well as responses using the lates Supreme Court of the US ruling about obviousness on a patent (which I suspect that SanDisk is going to get tripped up on...).
Heh... There's no "maybe" about it.
Aaaand, I suspect that this was the MAIN reason why it was BitTorrented instead of DLed from their site.
/. to not post.
But then, asking for Journalistic Integrity from Forbes (they let Dan Lyons spew his rubbish, right?) is
like asking the poo flingers on
Uh... You're still conflating things that aren't supposed to be.
Piracy, as the term is applied to Protected Works is properly called "Infringement" and should be referred to as such. Theft implies that one is deprived of the item so stolen- there is no such thing going on with Infringement.
Now, having said this, I wish Forbes would fscking QUIT calling things like this "piracy" as you're dead on right
in everything else- if the deal was, you can download it for nada, etc. you aren't actually infringing.
Because it's there all the same, whether Bill and Co. discounted the stuff in the first place.
I didn't want his piece of garbage, Vista (And it IS that, 6 months of debugging a chip vendor's drivers for Vista pretty much cinched that opinion...), in the first place, but since that's all you've got as a choice on most x86 machine options until recently, you got stuck with it.
Moreover, they made it difficult with a lot of those machines you quoted to downgrade the machine. I know for a fact that it was VASTLY more painful to get the legit XP license I put on my laptop along with the Ubuntu install up and running- the driver situation was a blasted pain. Ubuntu, on the other hand... Heh... It just installed just fine.
Now, according to HP, I voided my warranty (WTF? The software doesn't break the hardware guys...)- but since it was refurb anyhow, I didn't care all that much. As it stands, I popped open the DVD drive with a paper clip and burned it right down and did the installs without worrying about that Vista install. Didn't even KEEP the damn thing.
Unfortunately for them, they can't ever use them now- Laches takes over since they've been rattling that sabre
for 2-3 years now without stating with specificity what the "infringements" are. Since they're unwilling to
do so, they'd better hope they've got those patents for real because I suspect that IBM, Red Hat, and a few
others are going to take MS on for Lanham Act violations over this garbage next (Never take on more than one
lawsuit at a time if you can at all help it- and pick lesser ones over major ones if you can't. This would be
another major suit for IBM and Red Hat at this point. Once SCO's settled, however....).
I would not want to be Allchin, Ballmer, or Gates right now- I suspect this isn't a good time to be in upper
management for MS.
Ahem... They weren't placed under an OSS license...
They're under a Creative Commons License, which covers artistic works not software.
You have to simply abide by the license grants for all of the Copyrighted and Patented works you're using,
no matter what their licenses are. It's just that the OSS licenses are easy to follow- I did not imply
that anything else is, and trying to muddy the issue by dragging in free usage allowed literary and artistic
licensing doesn't prove your argument you're trying to reach as the licenses aren't analogous. Just because
your icons can be used with software doesn't MAKE them that.
Heh... Letsee.. 9 out of 9. (Honest...I've been doing this stuff, writing software and licensing
it appropriately, for the last TWO decades...) Stallman and Moglen would be proud of me... >:-)
If you think the GPL and LGPL has intricacies, one would best stay clear and wide of pretty much
most of the stuff out there that's proprietary as they've got much more restrictive and complicated
licensing than the GPL requires. It's honestly not THAT difficult to follow the licensing on GPLed
software- it's that companies tend to be filled with greedy people that think that anything's cool
as long as they get rich quickly and just don't get caught cheating while doing it.
It really isn't that hard to comply with one of the actual FOSS licenses, no matter which one you choose
as they're ALL done to be easy to follow what your requirements are and you can't be in question as
to what you're liabilities are with regards to the license grant.
The problem is... You are applying the concept of "theft" to the wrong thing.
It's NOT theft. Congress delimited it quite correctly. "Intellectual" property isn't property in the normal sense.
It's a State (as in the Union of States) granted Monopoly over the right to produce copies of the protected work(s).
In the case of Copyright, it's the right to produce copies or derivative works of a piece of music, literature, or
other art- and to distribute said copies or derivatives to other people.
In the case of Patent, it's the right to control the manufacture of a device that meets the description of the Patent
grant or to make derivatives thereof.
In the case of Trademark, it's the right to use a given phrase or illustration to represent your work, company, or product.
These are given for everything except Trademarks for a limited time to encourage the development of more works of
similar or different nature.
They're NOT property. They can't really be "stolen" in the sense of the definition of theft. When I steal (theft)
something, you are deprived of the use thereof of the item in question. With infringement, you are only
deprived of the right to control the replication or derivation of a protected work. You are not deprived of the
use thereof as you still HAVE the item in your possession.
You might be able to apply the theory that when I infringe on one of the aforementioned right grants from the
government, that I'm stealing money from the party being so infringed. Unfortunately, the law doesn't see that
this way. With the so-called "intellectual" property, there are no guarantees you will see a dime from it, no
matter what you might say to the contrary. All that has been done is that your rights to reproduce something has
been infringed upon, which isn't theft.
Please refrain from conflating the two- it's part of the problem everyone's having and it's the same type
of games the media companies and their representatives, RIAA, MPAA, etc. have been at. Right along with this
lawsuit BS that's hopefully coming to an end.
Because, as the Fool pointed out... Their making available theory (which went the way of the Dodo recently...) made quite a few people guilty as a cat caught in a goldfish bowl. The problem is, it was a bad theory and they were working of the shock and awe play in litigation, hoping and praying people didn't know their rights and would settle and it'd have the desired effect on their members' control on the market.
Problem is, it didn't work- for either the litgation/settlement or the control of the market.
Because the native library is only useful to THAT platform, but anything that is targeted to "PSGL" is going to be a hell
of a lot like OpenGL ES 2.0 which means it's an easy migration to/from other OS platforms. Unless it's a dramatic drop
in performance (I have to wonder exactly how fast that "native library" really is in comparison to OpenGL ES (which is
what they're using on the PS3...) as I've not heard about this uber fast API... I also wonder how easy it is to use and
develop for...) you'll do your level best to pick a base API that is similar or identical to one of your other targets.
In this case, you can...
Target Sony's API and gain maximal speed- but be spending effort on a SINGLE platform that's dead last in the race
right at the moment and is unlikely to be seen on anything BUT the PS3.
Target OpenGL/OpenGL ES 2.0 and have a codebase that targets everything except Microsoft platforms that performs, albeit
slower, but consistently correct on all those platforms as long as the drivers do what they're supposed to.
Couldn't be because of this incident?
How could one read that one?
You don't waive the right to sue for Copyright infringement with the acceptance of the terms.
You get the right to distribute the Protected Work(s) and make Derivative Protected Work(s) (Also covered by the same license)
as long as you abide by the terms- which is you give access to the source code to the original and any derivative work to any
recipient of the code in source or binary form that you give it to. The bulk of the GPL license is the boilerplate for establishing
the aforementioned grant of rights and establishing what is considered to be a breach of the agreement and what happens if that
breach occurs. Given that there is no waiving of ANYTHING stated or implied in the verbiage, there is none. Just because
there is no remuneration present in the form of monetary exchange does NOT make it a waiving of rights or anything else.
This is /.
/., go over to Groklaw.
If you want people citing legal precedent plus discussions of interesting, possibly viable legal theories- interspersed with at
at least a little of the same poo flinging you find around here on
In reality, it's due to a disconnect from the business people and the people doing the work.
All it takes is one unscrupulous developer- or a batch of abjectly clueless business people to cause one of these messes.
To them it's all by magic and they "own" everything they do. I see it all the time.
If you want, blame the business schools and all for graduating people that haven't been taught a lot of these things
and are taught silly, useless "business optimization" things like Six Sigma that're only really useful for the
largest companies- and that probably only really work because doing some process is better than none at all and
obtains SOME useful results.