You're right. That isn't simple. In theory, you have an excellent opportunity to create lower cost games and start your own business. Undercutting the "big guys" will allow you to grow until you can produce like them. Since we're talking about the Wii here, I have no idea what it takes to get development materials and kits for it and that is probably an insurmountable barrier seeing that a single game is 10% of your monthly income.
Prices and piracy are linked right now. If you invested the 300 pesos in a new game and decided to become a small time pirate, would you be able to sell more than 10 copies at 30 pesos in the first month? It would probably be easy since the modchips are freely available. I was thinking that enabling the piracy was actually hurting the "little guys" more than anybody else, but console games are pretty much dominated by the big players.
Possibly, but given the option of getting either one for free, would you still use GIMP? Maybe there's a feature that you need that GIMP lacks but both *Shops have it. Then, do you spend the $150 or download?
There is nothing wrong (obviously) with choosing a different software package when all of them are available on their own terms. Adobe should be able to price PhotoShop at whatever they think the market will bear. If they price it too high, it allows other companies to come in and undercut them. But, if PhotoShop is free then there's no incentive to buy _any_ product. Just because it isn't hurting Adobe, it may be causing indirect damage. It's impossible to prove it tho, and the only way the playing field can be "leveled" is to allow each company to distribute it's product under terms that it sees fit. PhotoShop being ridiculously expensive drives people to look for alternatives and may actually increase the exposure of GIMP.
So if there was a Linux version of PaintShop, would you buy instead of using GIMP? Why were you a legal owner of PaintShop to begin with? What if you were stuck with Windows because of other software constraints? Even if you are a responsible person who would rather buy the software you use, not everybody is.
It is nearly impossible to prove that piracy costs money since you can't prove the sale wouldn't have happened anyway. You also can't prove that somebody didn't simply move to a new product. But you also can't assume that everybody who downloads pirated software does it because they are unable to pay the retail price. Having a "high-quality" product like PhotoShop out there for free has to hurt the smaller players. In fact, if people choose to download PhotoShop over buying something else, they are just solidifying Adobe's market dominance (not that Adobe will see it that way). Would you rather pay $49 for something that does most of the job in a difficult way, or download something that does everything you need easily?
So what you're saying is that if only one person will stand up and say "Yes, I would have purchased product XYZ but I downloaded it instead" you'll admit that piracy actually does cause monetary damage to the original creators of the content? I'm pretty sure there are a few people who would admit that they took the cheaper option.
In a lot of TPB cases we're not talking about $0.99 per song either, but about somebody who would rather not pay $700 for Photoshop. Maybe Adobe wouldn't have gotten the money, but it's very possible that MacroMedia (bought JASC) is out the $150 they get for Paintshop as an alternative. So even though there is no monetary damage to Adobe, somebody else also loses a sale.
Checkpoint is stable, secure and has an excellent track record. If you actually have to administer the firewall, the Checkpoint GUI is second to none. Simple, intuitive, everything you could want. SecuRemote isn't any more annoying than most other VPN clients. Of course, none of that comes cheap. Checkpoint (especially on Nokia hardware) is the most expensive choice by far.
Juniper seems to make a pretty good device. I've been running a Netscreen 208 and a Netscreen 50 for a while now and they haven't given me any grief. It was like going back in time to get used to the GUI, but Checkpoint pretty much spoils you for anything else. Logging is pretty good on the Netscreen, and permanent VPN tunnels (IPsec) seemed to be a little easier to build than with the Checkpoint FW.
Fortinet works well too, but it a pain in the ass to set up. When my last company migrated from Checkpoint to a Fortinet (as an asinine budget driven decision) it took 4 seperate "policies" to accomplish what could be done in one rule in Checkpoint.
If you have the budget, go with Checkpoint. Otherwise, Juniper is a solid choice.
Retail already does, but they don't count for much. Retail allows people to see, touch, and/or hear things before they buy. The problem is that after they do that at a retail outlet, they go buy it on the internet for less money. In effect, they're using the services of retail without paying for them. Even an competent sales person gets burned by that. They spend 20 minutes educating the consumer who then says "I'll have to think about it" which is code for "cool, now I'll go home and buy it from Amazon".
I think the real problem is related to a previous./ submission about allowing manufacturers to set the retail price of goods. Depending on your point of view it's either:
a) Retail is an obsolete business model since the internet offers more convenience for lower prices
or
b) Retail needs protection from the internet in order to preserve jobs
Circuit City is, IMO, doing the only thing they can to try to compete with Amazon, NewEgg, etc. They need to cut costs to keep _some_ people employed or given more time they're all unemployed. It isn't like NewEgg will pick up the slack and need 3400 more people even if every person who shops at Circuit City suddenly started to buy from them.
There comes a time where you have to decide whether it's better to save $5 for yourself, or spend it so that somebody else has a job.
I wasn't saying families where both parents work are greedy. I was saying that there are a lot of families that I see where they choose toys over their kids. They're the ones with the big houses and the 7-series and the Lexus SUV parked out front on the weekends and their nanny takes their kids to Gymboree during the week. They are the ones who are buying a $350,000 house for $450,000, demolishing it, and building a $750,000 monstrosity on the land. And, apparently, can afford it because they have 2 incomes.
Living in Florida apparently isn't much different than living in Mass apparently, apart from the quality of the schools. My property taxes have risen by 1/3 over the past 5 years as well and living on 1 income isn't getting any easier for us either. No offense meant.
I think one of the things to consider is whether the lifestyle afforded by the second income is necessary. You don't _need_ a 4500 sq ft McMansion, a pool, a live-in nanny, and 2 $50k+ SUVs. Housing is expensive because too many dual income "families" are willing to overbid on a house where the greatest feature is that it's close to work.
Most people are unwilling or incapable of changing their lifestyle to provide a decent home for their kids. It seems that most parents are completely unwilling to give up their toys. Maybe because they didn't get them when they were younger or something, but generally they're a pretty selfish lot lately. They have kids and buy them things just to gain status with the other dysfunctional idiots in their particular gated community.
In the "lower-middle-class" bracket tho, you're screwed. You're pushed out of the housing markets by the other greedy fuckers who only had kids because they suddenly woke up to their own mortality. You can't afford to live close to work, so you lose 3 hours a day driving, leave before your kids are awake and get home just in time to eat dinner and put them to bed. If you care about your kids, it's depressing as hell.
You cannot link the amount of music available for illegal download with the number of thieves. In a hard goods market (shoplifed CDs for example) there is a correlation between the available of illicit material available and the level of illegal activity. This doesn't necessarily apply with digital goods.
Why not? Everybody who is sharing music illegally is still committing a criminal act. I've been careful not to call them thieves or accuse them of stealing because of the semantics when dealing with digital copies. However, everybody on a P2P network who is sharing a particular track is just as guilty as the first person to rip it and post it especially if they know it (for the odd P2P user who uses ignorance as a defense). Everybody sharing the file is guilty of the copyright violation, and there may be the argument for lost revenue in there as well even if it is shaky. The availability of illegal material correlates directly to the amount of illegal activity.
The "problem" here is that P2P sharing is effectively zero cost for end users, with zero latency between desire and gratification. They already have the computer and the internet connection, hard drives are incredibly cheap and really large these days. You could spend weeks building a music library of only the stuff you want at zero added cost. Not $0.99 per track, not a subscription cost, nothing. Without an admittedly minimal DRM barrier and the threat of legal proceedings _everybody_ would rip and share their music. That's where the RIAA and iTunes realize that they need some form of DRM or their revenue dries up.
Sharing music is like speeding in a way... it's generally fine and nobody gets hurt, and most importantly it doesn't cost you anything unless you get caught. 80mph in a 65mph zone and an RIAA lawsuit have a lot in common. Everybody else was doing it, but you're the one who got the ticket. DRM, on the other hand, is building cars that only go 65mph. Since the RIAA is not making money like police forces do on tickets, DRM is the "sensible" way for them to go.
It will be interesting to see how it settles out. The RIAA will most certainly die, but what will take it's place and how people will get music are still unknowns. Will new bands be able to charge enough per song to support themselves and pay for the bandwidth to sell their own stuff?
Also, if you RTFA you will see that the user couldn't even get the songs to play on the PC on which he had downloaded them. According to Rhino "support" he needed to disable firewalls or even use different ISPs until he could somehow get the magic license files to download - The point is the guy was happy to give Rhino $10 for the music, but DRM, which assumes that the customer is a "crimial", made the whole experience painful for the customer and lost them the customer.
I did RTFA, and because of that I think the license error may have been on the part of Rhino or may have been by the user. It may have been a firewall issue, or the files may have downloaded fine and he couldn't find them. He admits that he isn't the most technical person, and Rhino's support apparently sucks. Not the perfect combination.
DRM assumes the customer is a criminal because the customer has already proven to be a criminal. Look at the amount of music that is out there for downloading. Regardless of what you believe about whether it's "stealing" music, whether the RIAA distributon model is outdated, whether it's morally wrong/right, it's still illegal. Given the fact that the illegality of it isn't stopping anybody, DRM is the next step for those who have a revenue stream they feel inclined to protect. Even if they came up with a new distribution model (whole catalog for $19.99/month) there would still have to be DRM because people would download an P2P everything they could get their hands on without it. Generally, it just seems to be human nature.
And point 2 is well taken. I hadn't thought of the nightmare of pulling all that into OSX, yet not doing it makes Apple's own OS harder to use with their product than MS.
The problem seems to be that he purchased the wrong format to begin with because he didn't understand what he was doing. To use your car analogy, it's more like buying a new car that runs on unleaded and then filling it up with diesel and expecting it to work because it works in other cars. And I don't mean that to imply that the guy is stupid at all, just that he didn't take the time to educate himself about what he was trying to do before the forked over his money. It was something new and he thought it would be easy. Turns out that it wasn't. Given that, I don't know how much credence I can lend to the "licenses wouldn't come through" argument.
(The other solution to this is that since the iPod is the de-facto standard for personal music players at this point Apple could just pony up the money to license the WMA codecs. I'm sure that Microsoft would take the money no matter where it came from)
It might make you a slightly better driver, but the best thing you could to is take the money you would have spent on your game console and driving "simulator" of choice and spend it on a 2 or 3 day race school. Get in a real car, on a real track and take it to the limit in a controlled environment. No matter how good the visuals or controls, simulators can't communicate the amount and direction of G-forces on your body. When you're really driving, it's your butt that's going to let you know that you're losing the rear end long before you'll pick up on it visually.
Spending some time in a real car being taught by professionals will have far more impact than playing with spring rates and downforce in a video game ever will. Hell, you'll learn more about trail braking at your local go-kart course than in a video game.
Knowing how the internet works and claiming Archive.org and Google are massive copyright violators are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Pot is plentiful and easy to obtain, but that doesn't mean it isn't illegal (in the US).
While I understand the importance of web searches, would it be so hard to change the nature of web crawlers so that they didn't spider a site unless they were specifically allowed? You know, like you don't generally walk into somebody's house or cube at work and start rummaging through their stuff just because the door is open. Unless a web-crawler is invited into a site (via robots.txt) then it doesn't index it. It doesn't deal with browser cache, but people generally seem to be worried about centralized collection of their sites, not whether a few hundred scattered people grabbed the pages.
It seems like a simple solution, but I can't decide whether it would improve or harm the overall content of search engines. On one hand you wouldn't get a bunch of personal home pages when searching for some topics, but on the other hand you might lose information simply because a different person "doesn't understand how the internet works".
Licensing may hurt, but some Windows things are still easier... Using a combination of a Windows Update server and some SMS stuff, the windows admins patched all the machines here for DST automatically and in about 90 minutes once they had proof-of-concept and testing done.
Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX machines all had to be patched individually. Probably not because it was impossible, but because it was easier than building the infrastructure to do it. Windows already had the tools in that case, and could make a big dent in TCO depending on the overall number and mix of Linux distros nevermind the other *nix machines. Whether the TCO savings on that offsets the licensing costs would depend a lot.
1. Yeah, but no.... They still have people sitting in the call queues, tying up techs, harassing them about why they can't help, etc, etc. Not worth the bother to distribute a free product.
2. I was under the impression that if you were redistributing a GPL'd product you had to provide the source for that product if requested. Dell shouldn't be able to point to the OOo repositories since that forces OOo to pay for the bandwidth on an app that Dell is redistributing. I figured that stamping out CDs would be a cheaper option than anything else. Once again, it could be worked out, but from a business viewpoint it isn't worth the effort.
Dell probably could point to the OpenOffice source repository only with the prior consent of the OpenOffice group. Otherwise, Dell is "unfairly" causing the OpenOffice group to pay for bandwidth on a product that Dell is redistributing.
Anything else on Dell's part is a sunk cost that they will never recover. Anybody who would want to do anything with the source would get it from OpenOffice.org anyway, or wouldn't be running the Dell distributed version of OOo anyway. It's just more hassle than it's worth for Dell for something that people can download for free anyway.
MS Office isn't installed on a new PC by default either. Even at an OEM type discount, it isn't free.
OpenOffice is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, and Dell simply doesn't see the business case for distributing and supporting it. Even if they tried to distribute with a support disclaimer there would still be a lot of calls to support about it. Also, Dell would have to distribute CDs with the source code since OpenOffice is GPL'd, etc, etc. None of it is a show-stopper, but why go through all the hassle with no reward? Distributing free software that they don't want to support (or don't think they can sell support on) doesn't make sense for Dell.
Yeah, it would be nice, but warm feelings and the respect of the/. community doesn't keep the lights on.
"Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?"
Polar bears are endangered because the ice is melting. The snow is melting. The glaciers are melting. All of that is because the earth is getting warmer on average. Lots of species become extinct when their habitat changes through natural or man made phenomenon. Dinosaurs are way past endangered.
CO2 is higher than we have found in ice cores, but the earth is old compared to the ice cores (I think the go back ~600,000 years). Just because it's higher than we have observable evidence of does not mean that it has never been higher. Maybe it was higher 2 million years ago and we're having a hard time finding that out because there is no ice that old. Admittedly tho, 600,000 years is a pretty solid sample.
All that being said, the key question shouldn't be whether the earth is warming. Observably, it is. If most of the warming is caused by increases in solar radiation, cutting our CO2 output might not be the most effective solution or the best use of the resources we have. Sure it will help, but the correlation of temperature and solar activity is fairly striking. The combination of solar activity _and_ CO2 levels is obviously having a significant effect, but most of the wording of the latest conference suggested that humans were "more likely than not" contributing. While it sounds like there is some work that we should be doing, "more likely than not" is hardly a ringing condemnation of our hand global warming.
Right now, global warming as a concept has also become an economic force. Look at all the Prius (Prii?, wtf is the plural of Prius?) that Toyota is selling. They aren't selling because they are great, fun cars to drive. Same with the bans on incandescent light bulbs, etc. Now, are the bans really called for? Who's making money from it? Will they cause more long-term damage (like the mercury in florescent bulbs may)?
I still think that even if we had detailed evidence of the last 10 million years on earth we wouldn't be able to develop a baseline for what the "normal" state of the planet is. It's like watching somebody for 5 minutes and trying to guess their entire life history. You may do really well on our short term predictions, but long term trends may not be observable. People are afraid of change, especially when it isn't obvious whether the change will be for the better.
OK, I was in a really bad mood last night since there was a funeral this morning for the 23 year old sister of a friend of mine. I was way over the top. Sorry.
I can see the reason people like the GPL, but there is nothing that you can do with GPL software that you couldn't do with BSD-style licensing. The GPL is more restrictive than BSD style licensing, and I think it hinders development of some really great software in the same way software patents kill development. The GPL stops me from taking something like OpenOffice and working really hard on it and trying to sell it myself for $9.99 a copy with my improvements. Yeah, I could link in non-GPL code and then have to distribute the source for all the GPL stuff, but that's a pain in the ass.
I think that your view gets more code out there, so there will be some better code developed. I think that allowing people to close the source again and try to create something for profit more easily would result in more polished products. You have to admit, compared to most commercially produced software GPL produced code lacks polish and documentation. One of the major reasons for that, IMO, is that documentation is not fun. You have to pay people to do it, and in a lot of cases there isn't the money available to pay people for that.
Still, most of your big shops that are paying people to write GPL code are making money supporting the code, not selling the product. That's a big difference. I think it's an important one to recognize too. It makes it harder for smaller organizations to get in the game.
Anyway, keep your Aquos. I'm going DLP projection next. Sorry for being an asshole.
Well, you're a retard, and you've lost your TV (assuming that I'd want it).
If you want to pull your head out of your ass, you'd look up the fact that Apache doesn't use the GPL for theit primary license. They use the Apache license, which is an OSL-approved license, but NOT THE GPL. They realize how fscking ridiculous the GPL is and how much anybody who actually understands it should oppose it.
And, you're not understanding that IBM is making profit off SUPPORT on shitty GPL software, not writing GPL software.
OpenOffice frankly sucks compared to MS office. Better now, but still only 80% there. Features? Quick, unencrypt a.xls file in OpenOffice even with the correct password. Ohhh.. unfair? Fine. Load a.doc file without fucking up the table format. Yeah, I thought so.
Firefox is OK, but there are better options out there (Seamonkey, Opera) and the only reason they haven't been exposed as the bug-riddled ham-fisted morons they are is because they have a 0.1% market share compared to IE. Nobody bothers to hack FireFox because there's no install base. And show me any money they make that isn't PR donations from companies trying to cuddle up to open source for the geek cred. Yeah, yout can't.
For the record, I have a Zaurus, know that my DVR runs Linux, have installed Debian on Sparc, and have compiled Gentoo from Stage 1 on both Sparc and x86. I've run RedHat since 5.2 when all I had was an IPX. Still you miss my point....
Free software enriches all. Given. The GPL sucks because it discourages people from creating truly free software. Adopting the GPL is literally "drinking the Kool-Aid". It sounds good if you haven't been paying attention, but is ultimately fatal.
What kind of TV do you have, and where can I pick it up? Actually, don't bother. I'm sure that it's a GPL TV, which means that it's 13" B&W, and only gets VHF channels. 20 years behind the curve, but "free".
No, I know that profit has nothing to do with the GPL. That's why almost all work on GPL code is done by volunteers and the quality of most GPL applications is marginal at best. Occasionally there are some real gems, but they are the exception. The primary purpose of the GPL is to distribute an ideology on people under the guise of "freedom". The ideals that it promotes pretty effectively stops anybody except the biggest players in the space from having any incentive to do anything constructive, and those players (IBM, Redhat, etc) are selling support, not software.
Securing private licensing agreements with the authors of GPL'd software is nearly impossible unless the program is so small that you could re-write it yourself anyway. You aren't going to be able to get 150 individual developers all over the world to agree on anything, much less using their code in a proprietary product. You can argue that's a problem with the developers and not the GPL, but another license would prevented the issue from arising.
MS improving hasn't improved any other products. BSD licensing their stack in the way that they do allowed MS to improve their product, as well as anybody else who chooses to use it.
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You're right. That isn't simple. In theory, you have an excellent opportunity to create lower cost games and start your own business. Undercutting the "big guys" will allow you to grow until you can produce like them. Since we're talking about the Wii here, I have no idea what it takes to get development materials and kits for it and that is probably an insurmountable barrier seeing that a single game is 10% of your monthly income.
Prices and piracy are linked right now. If you invested the 300 pesos in a new game and decided to become a small time pirate, would you be able to sell more than 10 copies at 30 pesos in the first month? It would probably be easy since the modchips are freely available. I was thinking that enabling the piracy was actually hurting the "little guys" more than anybody else, but console games are pretty much dominated by the big players.
Possibly, but given the option of getting either one for free, would you still use GIMP? Maybe there's a feature that you need that GIMP lacks but both *Shops have it. Then, do you spend the $150 or download?
There is nothing wrong (obviously) with choosing a different software package when all of them are available on their own terms. Adobe should be able to price PhotoShop at whatever they think the market will bear. If they price it too high, it allows other companies to come in and undercut them. But, if PhotoShop is free then there's no incentive to buy _any_ product. Just because it isn't hurting Adobe, it may be causing indirect damage. It's impossible to prove it tho, and the only way the playing field can be "leveled" is to allow each company to distribute it's product under terms that it sees fit. PhotoShop being ridiculously expensive drives people to look for alternatives and may actually increase the exposure of GIMP.
So if there was a Linux version of PaintShop, would you buy instead of using GIMP? Why were you a legal owner of PaintShop to begin with? What if you were stuck with Windows because of other software constraints? Even if you are a responsible person who would rather buy the software you use, not everybody is.
It is nearly impossible to prove that piracy costs money since you can't prove the sale wouldn't have happened anyway. You also can't prove that somebody didn't simply move to a new product. But you also can't assume that everybody who downloads pirated software does it because they are unable to pay the retail price. Having a "high-quality" product like PhotoShop out there for free has to hurt the smaller players. In fact, if people choose to download PhotoShop over buying something else, they are just solidifying Adobe's market dominance (not that Adobe will see it that way). Would you rather pay $49 for something that does most of the job in a difficult way, or download something that does everything you need easily?
So what you're saying is that if only one person will stand up and say "Yes, I would have purchased product XYZ but I downloaded it instead" you'll admit that piracy actually does cause monetary damage to the original creators of the content? I'm pretty sure there are a few people who would admit that they took the cheaper option.
In a lot of TPB cases we're not talking about $0.99 per song either, but about somebody who would rather not pay $700 for Photoshop. Maybe Adobe wouldn't have gotten the money, but it's very possible that MacroMedia (bought JASC) is out the $150 they get for Paintshop as an alternative. So even though there is no monetary damage to Adobe, somebody else also loses a sale.
It's your IT department.
Checkpoint is stable, secure and has an excellent track record. If you actually have to administer the firewall, the Checkpoint GUI is second to none. Simple, intuitive, everything you could want. SecuRemote isn't any more annoying than most other VPN clients. Of course, none of that comes cheap. Checkpoint (especially on Nokia hardware) is the most expensive choice by far.
Juniper seems to make a pretty good device. I've been running a Netscreen 208 and a Netscreen 50 for a while now and they haven't given me any grief. It was like going back in time to get used to the GUI, but Checkpoint pretty much spoils you for anything else. Logging is pretty good on the Netscreen, and permanent VPN tunnels (IPsec) seemed to be a little easier to build than with the Checkpoint FW.
Fortinet works well too, but it a pain in the ass to set up. When my last company migrated from Checkpoint to a Fortinet (as an asinine budget driven decision) it took 4 seperate "policies" to accomplish what could be done in one rule in Checkpoint.
If you have the budget, go with Checkpoint. Otherwise, Juniper is a solid choice.
Retail already does, but they don't count for much. Retail allows people to see, touch, and/or hear things before they buy. The problem is that after they do that at a retail outlet, they go buy it on the internet for less money. In effect, they're using the services of retail without paying for them. Even an competent sales person gets burned by that. They spend 20 minutes educating the consumer who then says "I'll have to think about it" which is code for "cool, now I'll go home and buy it from Amazon".
I think the real problem is related to a previous ./ submission about allowing manufacturers to set the retail price of goods. Depending on your point of view it's either:
a) Retail is an obsolete business model since the internet offers more convenience for lower prices
or
b) Retail needs protection from the internet in order to preserve jobs
Circuit City is, IMO, doing the only thing they can to try to compete with Amazon, NewEgg, etc. They need to cut costs to keep _some_ people employed or given more time they're all unemployed. It isn't like NewEgg will pick up the slack and need 3400 more people even if every person who shops at Circuit City suddenly started to buy from them.
There comes a time where you have to decide whether it's better to save $5 for yourself, or spend it so that somebody else has a job.
and, apparently, I developed a liking for the word "apparently" about 1/2 way thorough my post. And apparently didn't notice it.
I wasn't saying families where both parents work are greedy. I was saying that there are a lot of families that I see where they choose toys over their kids. They're the ones with the big houses and the 7-series and the Lexus SUV parked out front on the weekends and their nanny takes their kids to Gymboree during the week. They are the ones who are buying a $350,000 house for $450,000, demolishing it, and building a $750,000 monstrosity on the land. And, apparently, can afford it because they have 2 incomes.
Living in Florida apparently isn't much different than living in Mass apparently, apart from the quality of the schools. My property taxes have risen by 1/3 over the past 5 years as well and living on 1 income isn't getting any easier for us either. No offense meant.
I think one of the things to consider is whether the lifestyle afforded by the second income is necessary. You don't _need_ a 4500 sq ft McMansion, a pool, a live-in nanny, and 2 $50k+ SUVs. Housing is expensive because too many dual income "families" are willing to overbid on a house where the greatest feature is that it's close to work.
Most people are unwilling or incapable of changing their lifestyle to provide a decent home for their kids. It seems that most parents are completely unwilling to give up their toys. Maybe because they didn't get them when they were younger or something, but generally they're a pretty selfish lot lately. They have kids and buy them things just to gain status with the other dysfunctional idiots in their particular gated community.
In the "lower-middle-class" bracket tho, you're screwed. You're pushed out of the housing markets by the other greedy fuckers who only had kids because they suddenly woke up to their own mortality. You can't afford to live close to work, so you lose 3 hours a day driving, leave before your kids are awake and get home just in time to eat dinner and put them to bed. If you care about your kids, it's depressing as hell.
Why not? Everybody who is sharing music illegally is still committing a criminal act. I've been careful not to call them thieves or accuse them of stealing because of the semantics when dealing with digital copies. However, everybody on a P2P network who is sharing a particular track is just as guilty as the first person to rip it and post it especially if they know it (for the odd P2P user who uses ignorance as a defense). Everybody sharing the file is guilty of the copyright violation, and there may be the argument for lost revenue in there as well even if it is shaky. The availability of illegal material correlates directly to the amount of illegal activity.
The "problem" here is that P2P sharing is effectively zero cost for end users, with zero latency between desire and gratification. They already have the computer and the internet connection, hard drives are incredibly cheap and really large these days. You could spend weeks building a music library of only the stuff you want at zero added cost. Not $0.99 per track, not a subscription cost, nothing. Without an admittedly minimal DRM barrier and the threat of legal proceedings _everybody_ would rip and share their music. That's where the RIAA and iTunes realize that they need some form of DRM or their revenue dries up.
Sharing music is like speeding in a way... it's generally fine and nobody gets hurt, and most importantly it doesn't cost you anything unless you get caught. 80mph in a 65mph zone and an RIAA lawsuit have a lot in common. Everybody else was doing it, but you're the one who got the ticket. DRM, on the other hand, is building cars that only go 65mph. Since the RIAA is not making money like police forces do on tickets, DRM is the "sensible" way for them to go.
It will be interesting to see how it settles out. The RIAA will most certainly die, but what will take it's place and how people will get music are still unknowns. Will new bands be able to charge enough per song to support themselves and pay for the bandwidth to sell their own stuff?
I did RTFA, and because of that I think the license error may have been on the part of Rhino or may have been by the user. It may have been a firewall issue, or the files may have downloaded fine and he couldn't find them. He admits that he isn't the most technical person, and Rhino's support apparently sucks. Not the perfect combination.
DRM assumes the customer is a criminal because the customer has already proven to be a criminal. Look at the amount of music that is out there for downloading. Regardless of what you believe about whether it's "stealing" music, whether the RIAA distributon model is outdated, whether it's morally wrong/right, it's still illegal. Given the fact that the illegality of it isn't stopping anybody, DRM is the next step for those who have a revenue stream they feel inclined to protect. Even if they came up with a new distribution model (whole catalog for $19.99/month) there would still have to be DRM because people would download an P2P everything they could get their hands on without it. Generally, it just seems to be human nature.
And point 2 is well taken. I hadn't thought of the nightmare of pulling all that into OSX, yet not doing it makes Apple's own OS harder to use with their product than MS.
The problem seems to be that he purchased the wrong format to begin with because he didn't understand what he was doing. To use your car analogy, it's more like buying a new car that runs on unleaded and then filling it up with diesel and expecting it to work because it works in other cars. And I don't mean that to imply that the guy is stupid at all, just that he didn't take the time to educate himself about what he was trying to do before the forked over his money. It was something new and he thought it would be easy. Turns out that it wasn't. Given that, I don't know how much credence I can lend to the "licenses wouldn't come through" argument.
(The other solution to this is that since the iPod is the de-facto standard for personal music players at this point Apple could just pony up the money to license the WMA codecs. I'm sure that Microsoft would take the money no matter where it came from)
It might make you a slightly better driver, but the best thing you could to is take the money you would have spent on your game console and driving "simulator" of choice and spend it on a 2 or 3 day race school. Get in a real car, on a real track and take it to the limit in a controlled environment. No matter how good the visuals or controls, simulators can't communicate the amount and direction of G-forces on your body. When you're really driving, it's your butt that's going to let you know that you're losing the rear end long before you'll pick up on it visually.
Spending some time in a real car being taught by professionals will have far more impact than playing with spring rates and downforce in a video game ever will. Hell, you'll learn more about trail braking at your local go-kart course than in a video game.
Knowing how the internet works and claiming Archive.org and Google are massive copyright violators are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Pot is plentiful and easy to obtain, but that doesn't mean it isn't illegal (in the US).
While I understand the importance of web searches, would it be so hard to change the nature of web crawlers so that they didn't spider a site unless they were specifically allowed? You know, like you don't generally walk into somebody's house or cube at work and start rummaging through their stuff just because the door is open. Unless a web-crawler is invited into a site (via robots.txt) then it doesn't index it. It doesn't deal with browser cache, but people generally seem to be worried about centralized collection of their sites, not whether a few hundred scattered people grabbed the pages.
It seems like a simple solution, but I can't decide whether it would improve or harm the overall content of search engines. On one hand you wouldn't get a bunch of personal home pages when searching for some topics, but on the other hand you might lose information simply because a different person "doesn't understand how the internet works".
Licensing may hurt, but some Windows things are still easier... Using a combination of a Windows Update server and some SMS stuff, the windows admins patched all the machines here for DST automatically and in about 90 minutes once they had proof-of-concept and testing done.
Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX machines all had to be patched individually. Probably not because it was impossible, but because it was easier than building the infrastructure to do it. Windows already had the tools in that case, and could make a big dent in TCO depending on the overall number and mix of Linux distros nevermind the other *nix machines. Whether the TCO savings on that offsets the licensing costs would depend a lot.
1. Yeah, but no.... They still have people sitting in the call queues, tying up techs, harassing them about why they can't help, etc, etc. Not worth the bother to distribute a free product.
2. I was under the impression that if you were redistributing a GPL'd product you had to provide the source for that product if requested. Dell shouldn't be able to point to the OOo repositories since that forces OOo to pay for the bandwidth on an app that Dell is redistributing. I figured that stamping out CDs would be a cheaper option than anything else. Once again, it could be worked out, but from a business viewpoint it isn't worth the effort.
Dell probably could point to the OpenOffice source repository only with the prior consent of the OpenOffice group. Otherwise, Dell is "unfairly" causing the OpenOffice group to pay for bandwidth on a product that Dell is redistributing.
Anything else on Dell's part is a sunk cost that they will never recover. Anybody who would want to do anything with the source would get it from OpenOffice.org anyway, or wouldn't be running the Dell distributed version of OOo anyway. It's just more hassle than it's worth for Dell for something that people can download for free anyway.
MS Office isn't installed on a new PC by default either. Even at an OEM type discount, it isn't free.
/. community doesn't keep the lights on.
OpenOffice is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, and Dell simply doesn't see the business case for distributing and supporting it. Even if they tried to distribute with a support disclaimer there would still be a lot of calls to support about it. Also, Dell would have to distribute CDs with the source code since OpenOffice is GPL'd, etc, etc. None of it is a show-stopper, but why go through all the hassle with no reward? Distributing free software that they don't want to support (or don't think they can sell support on) doesn't make sense for Dell.
Yeah, it would be nice, but warm feelings and the respect of the
"Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?"
Polar bears are endangered because the ice is melting. The snow is melting. The glaciers are melting. All of that is because the earth is getting warmer on average. Lots of species become extinct when their habitat changes through natural or man made phenomenon. Dinosaurs are way past endangered.
CO2 is higher than we have found in ice cores, but the earth is old compared to the ice cores (I think the go back ~600,000 years). Just because it's higher than we have observable evidence of does not mean that it has never been higher. Maybe it was higher 2 million years ago and we're having a hard time finding that out because there is no ice that old. Admittedly tho, 600,000 years is a pretty solid sample.
All that being said, the key question shouldn't be whether the earth is warming. Observably, it is. If most of the warming is caused by increases in solar radiation, cutting our CO2 output might not be the most effective solution or the best use of the resources we have. Sure it will help, but the correlation of temperature and solar activity is fairly striking. The combination of solar activity _and_ CO2 levels is obviously having a significant effect, but most of the wording of the latest conference suggested that humans were "more likely than not" contributing. While it sounds like there is some work that we should be doing, "more likely than not" is hardly a ringing condemnation of our hand global warming.
Right now, global warming as a concept has also become an economic force. Look at all the Prius (Prii?, wtf is the plural of Prius?) that Toyota is selling. They aren't selling because they are great, fun cars to drive. Same with the bans on incandescent light bulbs, etc. Now, are the bans really called for? Who's making money from it? Will they cause more long-term damage (like the mercury in florescent bulbs may)?
I still think that even if we had detailed evidence of the last 10 million years on earth we wouldn't be able to develop a baseline for what the "normal" state of the planet is. It's like watching somebody for 5 minutes and trying to guess their entire life history. You may do really well on our short term predictions, but long term trends may not be observable. People are afraid of change, especially when it isn't obvious whether the change will be for the better.
OK, I was in a really bad mood last night since there was a funeral this morning for the 23 year old sister of a friend of mine. I was way over the top. Sorry.
I can see the reason people like the GPL, but there is nothing that you can do with GPL software that you couldn't do with BSD-style licensing. The GPL is more restrictive than BSD style licensing, and I think it hinders development of some really great software in the same way software patents kill development. The GPL stops me from taking something like OpenOffice and working really hard on it and trying to sell it myself for $9.99 a copy with my improvements. Yeah, I could link in non-GPL code and then have to distribute the source for all the GPL stuff, but that's a pain in the ass.
I think that your view gets more code out there, so there will be some better code developed. I think that allowing people to close the source again and try to create something for profit more easily would result in more polished products. You have to admit, compared to most commercially produced software GPL produced code lacks polish and documentation. One of the major reasons for that, IMO, is that documentation is not fun. You have to pay people to do it, and in a lot of cases there isn't the money available to pay people for that.
Still, most of your big shops that are paying people to write GPL code are making money supporting the code, not selling the product. That's a big difference. I think it's an important one to recognize too. It makes it harder for smaller organizations to get in the game.
Anyway, keep your Aquos. I'm going DLP projection next. Sorry for being an asshole.
Well, you're a retard, and you've lost your TV (assuming that I'd want it).
.xls file in OpenOffice even with the correct password. Ohhh.. unfair? Fine. Load a .doc file without fucking up the table format. Yeah, I thought so.
If you want to pull your head out of your ass, you'd look up the fact that Apache doesn't use the GPL for theit primary license. They use the Apache license, which is an OSL-approved license, but NOT THE GPL. They realize how fscking ridiculous the GPL is and how much anybody who actually understands it should oppose it.
And, you're not understanding that IBM is making profit off SUPPORT on shitty GPL software, not writing GPL software.
OpenOffice frankly sucks compared to MS office. Better now, but still only 80% there. Features? Quick, unencrypt a
Firefox is OK, but there are better options out there (Seamonkey, Opera) and the only reason they haven't been exposed as the bug-riddled ham-fisted morons they are is because they have a 0.1% market share compared to IE. Nobody bothers to hack FireFox because there's no install base. And show me any money they make that isn't PR donations from companies trying to cuddle up to open source for the geek cred. Yeah, yout can't.
For the record, I have a Zaurus, know that my DVR runs Linux, have installed Debian on Sparc, and have compiled Gentoo from Stage 1 on both Sparc and x86. I've run RedHat since 5.2 when all I had was an IPX. Still you miss my point....
Free software enriches all. Given. The GPL sucks because it discourages people from creating truly free software. Adopting the GPL is literally "drinking the Kool-Aid". It sounds good if you haven't been paying attention, but is ultimately fatal.
What kind of TV do you have, and where can I pick it up? Actually, don't bother. I'm sure that it's a GPL TV, which means that it's 13" B&W, and only gets VHF channels. 20 years behind the curve, but "free".
No, I know that profit has nothing to do with the GPL. That's why almost all work on GPL code is done by volunteers and the quality of most GPL applications is marginal at best. Occasionally there are some real gems, but they are the exception. The primary purpose of the GPL is to distribute an ideology on people under the guise of "freedom". The ideals that it promotes pretty effectively stops anybody except the biggest players in the space from having any incentive to do anything constructive, and those players (IBM, Redhat, etc) are selling support, not software.
Securing private licensing agreements with the authors of GPL'd software is nearly impossible unless the program is so small that you could re-write it yourself anyway. You aren't going to be able to get 150 individual developers all over the world to agree on anything, much less using their code in a proprietary product. You can argue that's a problem with the developers and not the GPL, but another license would prevented the issue from arising.
MS improving hasn't improved any other products. BSD licensing their stack in the way that they do allowed MS to improve their product, as well as anybody else who chooses to use it.
Not all the other kids. The BSD kid is saying the same things that the anti-RIAA people speak of. He's saying:
"Have a copy of my ball. I lose nothing by giving it to you, so have a blast and do whatever you want."
I don't even have a vested interest in the licensing one way or another, but I'm really tired of the GPL zealots touting how "free" their code is.